The Dracula Dossier

by James Reese

  JOURNAL OF BRAM STOKER

  30 May.—Night now after a day most drear; sleepless; and so I write.

  Henry dined again last night at the Garrick with Tumblety. To spite me? To allay my suspicions?

  I have not seen the American since Speranza’s salon; but when I do see him, I will put my questions to him, and pointedly, too: Has he a key? And was it his dogs that dirtied the costume shop so? Surely it was. No other dogs could have done it, as the terriers are in fact no longer let to stray from the dressing areas, not since Ellen’s Drummie came so perilously close to making her debut in The Lady of Lyons. What is more, I here record, Holmes-like, the indelicate fact that the tiny terriers do not produce spoors the size of those found in the shop.30

  But whatever was Dr. Tumblety doing in the costumery? Thievery cannot be the motive; for why would he steal something he is free to borrow? Upon this point I learn little from Mrs. Pinch, who holds that the requested inventory is impossible, owing to her present work on The Merch., her preliminary work on Macb., &c. She’ll discover what, if anything, has gone missing only when next she needs it, says she; and with that I must content myself.

  Another question to put to the American: How long does he plan to linger in London? I shall suffer him better when once again a sea separates us. Many questions remain for Caine, Caine, Caine! The Isle of Man might be the moon, so distant, so quiet is the newly-contemptible Caine.

  …To Tumblety my pen too often returns. Did I not open these pages to tell of to-day’s excursion to Stepney Latch? Indeed I did.

  I went round to Ellen’s house in a hansom. My Bradshaw’s did not disappoint: We arrived at King’s Cross in time to secure first-class passage upon the listed 9.14 a.m. train to Purfleet, where Dr. Stewart awaited our arrival.31

  At the Purfleet station, I and one Mrs. Stevenson—E.T., of course, done up as a dowager searching out an asylum in which to stow a troublesome son—hired another hansom to take us to Stepney Latch. As its driver cast not a second glance at England’s best-known actress, Ellen and I nodded, satisfied, and settled in for the ride, which was shortened by my promising to add a guinea to the fare if the driver delivered us at double-speed. The added haste, however, threatened to tip Mrs. Stevenson’s gray wig from its north-south axis to one oriented east-west; but pins were soon applied to the task, and the coiffure came under control.

  Soon enough we slowed before a place seeming perfectly suited to its purpose. A stony edifice spread its wings over untold acreage, this last delineated by a short wall fallen deeply into disrepair. Trees were innumerable upon the land. The place, the land seemed perpetually shadowed. A low and leaden sky improved the asylum’s aspect not at all as we drove down its long drive. “Oh, my,” mused Mrs. Stevenson as we passed beneath an iron arch on which was writ—or rather wrought—STEPNEY LATCH ASYLUM.

  So long and noisy was our approach up the shell-and cinder-coated drive that Dr. Stewart knew of our arrival before it had been accomplished. Out he came in the company of a nurse quite short, quite stout. There our hosts stood at the asylum doors. We’d hardly alighted from the cab, Mrs. Stevenson and I—only Dr. Stewart knew my companion’s true identity—when our driver, fare and a guinea further in hand, rounded out and up the driveway in haste. Having first waved away the dust thusly stirred, Dr. Stewart and I applied our hands to the duties of introduction.

  The nurse’s name was Nurske, hard on the e, if you please; and so at first I thought Dr. Stewart had provided a pet name of sorts: Nursey. Oh, but here was no man’s pet, and so I asked that he repeat the name. He did so, saying, to clear my confusion, “Yes, sir: Nurse Nurske it is.” I then introduced my Mrs. Stevenson—mine, I say, for I’d named her: Stevenson’s J&H, of which all the world still talks, sits beside my reading chair presently, so good, so damn good, I am cutting the pages at a snail’s pace so as to savor the read.32

  It was with actorly discipline that E.T. managed to stifle a smile upon being consigned to the care of Nurse Nurske; but there soon followed from my Mrs. S. a look that led me to ask Dr. Stewart for a word aside.

  We walked two steps from the women. Behind me I heard E.T. speak platitudes appropriate to any occasion, even one as strange as this—words regarding the weather, the want of sun, &c.; all of which words Nurse Nurske met with a silence as stony as her place of employ. I had best be about my business then, and so:

  “Doctor,” said I in low, clubbish tones—here were words btw. Men—“my brother Thornley insists that I convey to you his very best.”

  “I am indebted to your brother for favors conferred in Dublin, sir,” said he, “and I shall remain indebted—happily so—for some while.”

  “Well, sir,” said I, “if that be the case, know that my brother is an inveterate forgiver of debts. I have had cause to discover this myself over the decades, again and again…. Now, as for myself and”—clearing of throat—“Mrs. Stevenson, I thank you for indulging what may seem to you a whim; but I assure you, sir, that if ever you have seen my companion upon the”—whispering now—“stage, you will understand that her art—”

  “I have done so, Mr. Stoker, and often.” His voice rose with excitement, and in so doing betrayed a slight accent, one betokening either an Irish birth or a green sojourn of some duration. “And though I am beholden to your brother—brothers, may I say, for I am privileged to call George Stoker a friend as well33—your presence here to-day is owing, too, I must admit it, to the way in which Miss…or rather, Mrs. Stevenson moved me, deeply, when I saw her play in Hamlet beside Mr. Irving in Manchester. I could not pass up the opportunity to tell her so in person, even in surrounds as inauspicious as these; but rest assured, sir: I shall convey my compliments in whispers.” Whereupon we four headed toward the asylum’s oaken doors.

  Ellen had recoiled from Nurse Nurske. Indeed, she now clung to me; and it was doubtless this that caused Dr. Stewart to say, assuagingly:

  “We have a wing, Mr. Stoker, Mrs. Stevenson, in which the sexes are integrated. And there we four shall be a partie carrée at all times; so fear not.”

  “Excellent,” said I, commending the plan. This despite my disdain of the foreign phrase; for it put me in mind of Mlle Dupont, Noel, &c., such that I could only deem myself in dereliction of my duties as a father, being at Stepney Latch amongst the mad when I could have, nay should have, passed those hours at home. Alas.

  “But be forewarned, sir,” appended the warder, “that some of our hardest cases are resident in the West Wing. We keep them in common as it’s they who need the greater share of care, day and night.” Hearing this, Ellen steeled herself; and I might have chided the doctor for frightening her so if I’d not decided in his favour mere minutes after having met him.

  I quite liked him, yes. He was of Ireland, true; but also his face bespoke a solid character: a strong jaw frames his relative handsomeness, the latter marred only by his black hair being rather more recessed than his years would warrant. He is perhaps thirty, the doctor, no older; and it dawns on me now that Thornley likely taught the man in Dublin, or perhaps supervised his residency at Dean Swift’s.

  Only later, on the train back to London, would I wonder if perhaps Dr. Stewart doesn’t indulge in some of the many medicaments he doles out daily. Sleep, to some men, is more a problem than a palliative; and the administrator of Stepney Latch showed marked symptoms of insomnia: a slightly tremulous handshake, and purpled disks beneath dark eyes. Little wonder it would be, too; for the doctor’s private rooms must be within the asylum, the same we now entered to a chorus of howls and other auditory horrors the like of which would deprive the deaf of sleep.

  Mrs. Stevenson kept close to my side, relieved that her role was one of few lines. She observed in silence, cupping to nose and mouth her violet-trimmed kerchief. “Oh, Ma,” whispered she, mere minutes into our tour, “is it not terrible? I feel as though we’ve come to a human zoo.”

  “Some would say we have,” I rejoined. “The stories I hear from Thornley would curl tho
se horsey locks of yours, Mrs. Stevenson.” Further referencing her wig, I added, with a leavening wink, “You’d best tug it forward a quarter-inch”; for, forgetting herself, she’d dislocated it, just so, with a scratching fingertip. My own scalp now prickled from the proximity of Dr. Stewart’s patients, too. Indeed, the air at Stepney Latch seemed electro-static, as if madness were an emission of sorts.

  I’d have been relieved if E.T. had turned to me then—in or out of character—and asked that we leave: I’d no need to see the insane myself, and still I doubted that she stood to learn a great deal from watching madwomen wailing at walls, &c. Moreover, the ever-tenuous peace at the Lyceum was dependent upon our timely return: H.I. could not be let to miss us, to wonder where we were. My Bradshaw’s told me that the 2.20 train from Purfleet was the preferred one, returning us to London with time to spare. I’d see that we were on it. Meanwhile, our tour continued.

  We passed through a common area in which a woman—white of hair, deficient of tooth—clawed at herself most indelicately. (“No place upon the stage for that,” said I to Mrs. S.) Now another woman bowed deeply, as if we passed in a royal procession. A third asked if we’d brought the pastilles we’d promised her Sunday last and met our apologies with screams, screams that gave rise to others till the stones of the asylum verily rang. Quite disquieting, this; literally so. We walked away, ever faster; and this, mind, was not the ward we’d been warned of.

  I pitied our hosts: To be insane in such a place was bad, terribly bad, but to be sane amongst the mad was surely worse. I could only hope Ellen might benefit from our having come. Myself? I would know no benefit but distraction. Amongst the mad, I gave no thought to those questions which have dogged me for days; such as: What have I committed to to-morrow with Constance and young Billiam? And what of Caine? Will I have to search him out in person? Or will this Tumblety take himself off, elsewhere? Tumblety, blasted Tumblety! Once again the man pilots my pen & drinks my ink; and I shall have reason to re-write his name as I continue the tale of our visit to Stepney Latch; which now I do:

  Having reached the end of a cold, long, and lightless corridor, albeit one blessedly less cacophonous than the common area, we came to a wide flight of stairs. These we ascended, as to do so seemed the proper course; but midway up the stairs, Nurse Nurske set to coughing. Either she was suffering a sudden-coming consumption or she meant to convey something to Dr. Stewart. The latter was the case, of course; but the doctor was distracted: ensorcelled by E.T.—as men so often are—he had taken this quieter time to lay his accolades at the actress’s feet. This he did whisperingly whilst Nurse Nurske coughed herself hoarse. So it was that as we turned at the stair-top onto the wing marked West, we—all of us save Nurse Nurske, of course—were startled by the low-timbred and refined salutation that greeted us.

  The words issued from a room three walls of which were covered in quilted sail-cloth or canvas. And there, before the fourth, iron-barred wall of the cell, stood the strait-jacketed speaker. “Good morning, Dr. Stewart.”

  Our host took a step back from the bars. The inmate, smiling now, offered a stiff nod toward Nurse Nurske while asking Dr. Stewart, “To what do we owe this call? It would appear social in nature, as I see Nurske hasn’t her stick in hand.

  “It has been so very long since you’ve brought me guests, Dr. Stewart, and though I thank you, truly I do, words of warning would not have gone amiss. I might have…”—here he strained to look back over his shoulder at his cell, and doing so showed where his restraints chafed: he bore a livid scar upon his neck, such as one might see on a victim of strangulation—“well, I might have tidied up a bit,” concluded he, theatrically, sardonically; for there was nothing in his cell save some rudimentary plumbing and a rubberised pallet upon the floor.

  “My apologies,” said Dr. Stewart; whereupon he introduced the inmate to us as if the man were invisible, insensate, and not standing mere feet from us, albeit behind bars:-

  “Mr. T. M. Penfold, fifty-odd years of age. Previously a cavalryman in Her Majesty’s service. Sanguine temperament, great physical strength, morbidly excitable, and prone to periods of gloom—”

  “I shouldn’t doubt it,” muttered Mrs. Stevenson.

  Dr. Stewart resumed: “—and fixed, quite, upon self-mutilation, self-murder.”

  “Suicide,” said I, staring at the inmate; and the moment I’d mouthed the word, I wished I hadn’t. “But why…why the strait-jacket?”

  “I am afraid that Penfold”—who was, of course, listening as intently as we—“would, if he were allowed the use of his arms, tear at his own flesh with his fingers. And further, there is the matter of his teeth. Too, the man has shown over the years a certain…talent for escape, let me say.”

  “Oh, my,” mused E.T., clasping her kerchief to her mouth and nose, as if the words she’d just heard were themselves malodorous.

  Much struck by the idea of a man—this man—bent on doing himself to death, were he able, I asked, “Do you mean, Doctor, that Mr. Penfold desires to…to bleed himself to death? Or do we speak of carnivorous intent?” I’d adopted the doctor’s habit of distancing the very present patient, only to be brought up short by Penfold himself:-

  “May I respond to that, Dr. Stewart?” This, uttered in tones appropriate to any London parlour.

  Dr. Stewart said nothing, and so Mr. Penfold spoke on:

  “What I wish, sir,” said he to me, “is simply to die. Rather, I no longer wish to live. And, as no other means of suicide avails itself to me in this cushioned cell—neither utensil nor tool, not even a hardened corner on which to dash the brains from my head–the doctor speaks true: I would, yes, if able, tear and rend my flesh with fingers and teeth. Not with carnivorous intent, no, but rather to rid myself, my body, of its blood; for the blood, sir, is the life, and, as said, I have had done with life.”

  The blood is the life. Whence did those words come? Forthwith I was informed, by Penfold himself:-

  “So it says in Deuteronomy 12:23, where the interdiction is, and I quote, ‘Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life.’ But of course I do not wish to drink my own blood, Mr. Stoker. I would, however, see it spilled. I would watch with increasing relief, yes, if the red of life were to run from me.”

  So struck was I by the sentiment, so sanely expressed, that I was the last of our party to realise that Penfold had addressed me by name. It was Ellen’s sudden, sharp intake of breath, her sudden taking hold of my hand, that alerted me. She may even have whispered what it was had happened. I cannot recall.

  “Do we know each other, sir?” I prefer to think I spoke the words with equanimity; even so, this was naught compared to the cold smile of Penfold’s reply.

  “Perhaps,” said Dr. Stewart, “we should leave Penfold now, as such talk as this is sure to upset—”

  “To upset Miss Terry?” asked Penfold. We stood there thunder-struck. “Oh, I think not, Doctor. Miss Terry is very much…of the world.”

  “Sir,” said I, stepping nearer the cell, “explain yourself.” I’d have taken him by the lapels but for the bars between us—that and the fact that such jackets as the one he wore sport no lapels. The eyes into which I stared were hard and dark. I stood near enough to smell his soiled self. “And if you are the gentleman you wish to seem, you will address myself and not Miss Terry”; but Ellen had already drawn up beside me to ask:

  “However did you know?” I wonder: Was Ellen more abashed at being addressed so familiarly or by having her performance as Mrs. Stevenson deemed deficient? With actors one never knows: as Henry is wont to say, they never forget a hiss.

  Penfold circled his cell. Never was an audience more rapt than we. Finally:-

  “It was Mr. Stoker I recognised first, madam; but may I suggest you pay closer attention to your props when next you play…Mrs. Stevenson, was it? A lady of her supposed station does not carry another woman’s kerchief, and yours, there, bears a rather broadly embroidered ‘E.T.’ in its crumpled corner
.” And so it did. “From the kerchief, I concluded—via a chain of deduction needful of but few links—that yes, before me stood the Lyceum’s brawn and brain, Mr. Bram Stoker.”

  I did not appreciate being dismissed so. “I ask again, Mr. Penfold, and with lessening patience: Are we acquainted?”

  “At present, it would seem so; but previously? No. Would that our common host might untie me, so that we could meet as men ought to: with a handshake.”

  “You trifle with me, Mr. Penfold,” said I.

  “If I do, sir, it is only to retain your company—company being a quite rare commodity here at Stepney Latch; and to pass the time, of course…. Of time, sir, I have entirely too much.”

  “Really, now,” said Dr. Stewart, trying to turn our party back towards those stairs up which we’d lately come, “I must insist—”

  Just then Penfold spoke on, and I daresay we all four hung upon his words.

  “You do realise that we,” said Penfold—meaning, presumably, his fellow inmates—“were once…out there.” He had been pacing, pontificating; but now he nodded, as best he could, towards his barred slit of window, adding, “And whilst out there, I once had the great good fortune to see you, Miss Terry, play alongside Mr. Irving. It was an occasion I shan’t soon—”

  “Lord alive!” This from Nurse Nurske, who, previously, in tallying the two-plus-two of our talk, had arrived at only three. Now here was four. “Henry Irving, does he mean? That would make you, missus, Ellen Terry, the Lady of the Lyceum.”

  “I am afraid it would, yes,” said a chagrined E.T., stuffing the tell-tale kerchief into her purse. She’d have relieved herself of the wig, too, I’m sure, had it not been for the netting she wore beneath it. “I apologise for the charade, but…” and her words fell away unsaid. Meanwhile, Nurse Nurske sidled nearer the star. From the look upon her doughy face, in particular the twitching of her pug nose, one would have thought her hopeful of catching the scent of fame.