by Hans De Roos
Sir Charles Burton Barrington captained Trinity College’s rugby football team from 1867 till 1870; Stoker studied there 1864-1870 and played on the rugby team. Benjamin Barrington was one of the Trinity students linked to a nighttime shooting that killed a professor in his own house at the Trinity Campus, in March 1734. This Barrington became notorious for influencing witnesses during the trial and his name still belongs to Trinity’s campus lore.
For “Tellet,” an extremely rare name occurring only five times in the 1891 census for England, Wales, and Scotland, I also found a plausible link. On 23 April 1837, the comedy actress Clarissa Anne Chaplin married Daniel John Tellet at St. John’s Church in Liverpool and became known as “Mrs. C. A. Tellet” or—for the stage—as “Miss Clara Tellet.” In Fifty Years of an Actor’s Life (1904), her colleague John Coleman described her as “Miss Clara Tellet, who was a perfect pocket Venus, and one of the brightest and most vivacious of soubrettes. This fairy-like creature ultimately became Mrs. Sam Emery and mother of the charming Winifred of that ilk (Mrs. Cyril Maude), who has inherited no small share of her mother’s charm.”38 Samuel (“Sam”) Emery performed in Not Guilty at the Queen’s Theatre (1869) together with Henry Irving, Stoker’s later employer. Sam and Clara’s daughter Winifred Emery played female lead roles at the Lyceum Theatre next to Ellen Terry from 1881 to 1887 and toured America twice with Irving and Stoker.
Charles Burton Barrington (center, with the ball) and his rugby team
The Morning Advertiser of 14 Nov. 1848
The name of Varkony, which appears only in the Icelandic version, may also have sounded familiar to Stoker, from stories his mother told of her home county, Sligo. On 11 April 1811, the aristocrat Francis Taaffe married Antonia Amadé Varkony of Hungary, while Taaffe’s sister Clementina on the very same day married Count Thaddaeus Amadé Varkony, Antonia’s cousin.39 Taaffe bore the title of “Baron of Ballymore” in County Sligo. Perhaps, Bram’s mother reported on the curious double wedding.
The most intriguing connection, though, concerns the character—again new to Makt Myrkranna—of Holmwood’s sister Mary. Possibly, Stoker took it from the writer Mary Singleton (whose name already appeared in Stoker’s early notes for “a psychical research agent, Alfred Singleton”), famous in London literary circles for her beauty and witty conversation. She played a prominent role as the unhappily married Mrs. Sinclair in W.H. Mallock’s roman à clef, named The New Republic (1877). Mary Singleton was unhappily married indeed: after being rejected by her lover, she married the elderly Henry Sydenham Singleton, but in the early 1880s exchanged secret vows with Philip Lord Currie of the Foreign Office, and also had an affair with Philip’s cousin. In well-informed circles, to which also Stoker belonged,40 her liaison with Sir Philip became a public secret—especially as she hinted at her luckless situation in The Edwin and Angelina Papers41 and in her novel The Adventures of a Savage (1881). The latter dealt with a young woman bored with her elderly husband and betraying him with a younger lover; the story had a happy ending when the “old squire” died and the heroine was reunited with her “young squire.” Appropriately, Henry S. Singleton died in March 1893 and within ten months Mary had married Sir Philip Currie, the newly appointed Ambassador to Constantinople. The couple moved to Constantinople only a few days after their wedding.42The similarities between Mary Singleton’s story and the plight of Makt Myrkranna’s Mary Holmwood are striking and unique.43
Count Thaddaeus Amadé Varkony
Mary Singleton, née Montgomerie Lamb (Violet Fane)
5. BRAM STOKER’S PREPARATORY NOTES FOR DRACULA
Still another point suggests Stoker’s active contribution to the Icelandic version. In what will come as a surprise to every Dracula scholar, plot elements that were described in Stoker’s early preparatory notes for the novel, but did not appear in the book, are found in Makt Myrkranna:
The notes feature a deaf and mute housekeeper woman acting as the Count’s servant. Exactly such a woman is described in Makt Myrkranna.
The early notes indicate that the Count visits the diseased Lucy as a regular guest. Such visits are reported in the Icelandic version, while in Dracula, the Count enters Lucy’s house only stealthily or by force.
In Stoker’s original plan, the Carfax house and Seward’s asylum were located in London itself—just like in Makt Myrkranna. Only in the 1897 typescript version of Dracula, these buildings were removed to Purfleet, 20 miles east of Piccadilly.
The notes repeatedly mention a blood-red secret room in Count Dracula’s residence. In Makt Myrkranna, Harker discovers a secret temple in the castle, where bloody rituals take place. The Carfax house also contains a hidden room. In Dracula, no such secret space is mentioned.
Originally, Stoker planned for the appearance of a police detective, Cotford. In Dracula, the police are not active at all. In Makt Myrkranna, however, we find police detective Barrington, assisted by his colleague Tellet. The murder of Lucia’s housemaid is also actively investigated by the police.
The Stoker notes mention a dinner for thirteen people at Dr. Seward’s house, where the Count arrives as the last guest. In Makt Myrkranna, an evening party takes place in Carfax with Seward as the only English guest. Although the Count is the host now, he again enters last.
In his notes, Stoker refers to Dr. Seward as a “mad doctor,” so that the editors of the facsimile edition had to ask themselves whether or not Stoker intended Seward to be as mad as his patient Renfield. In Makt Myrkranna, Dr. Seward—of all characters—actually loses his mind.
If we are not prepared to accept these seven similarities between Stoker’s notes and the new plot elements in Makt Myrkranna as a mere coincidence, Bram Stoker must have passed his early plot ideas to Valdimar.
Handwritten list Historiae Personae, from Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula
6. THE MYSTERIES OF THE PREFACE
How can we be sure that Bram Stoker wrote the preface himself and thus was aware of at least some of the changes to his story?
One important authorship clue is that the preface highlights Van Helsing as a “real” person, appearing under a pseudonym. If Valdimar wrote the preface on his own account, he must have read an interview with Bram Stoker in The British Weekly of 1 July 1897—the only known document describing Van Helsing as “based on a real character.” The chances that Valdimar ever came across this interview are small, however: in the Icelandic press, the magazine was only mentioned in 1912 for the first time and the National Library of Iceland in Reykjavík never had a subscription to it. Moreover, the author of the preface must have known about the rumors in the London newspapers that the Thames Torso Murders and the Ripper Murders might stem from the same root. Bram Stoker, living in London and forced to cancel the performances of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at his Lyceum Theatre due to the general Ripper panic, was likely to be familiar with such theories. By contrast, neither Fjallkonan nor the rest of the Icelandic press ever mentioned the Embankment Murders. And even if Valdimar had studied the Torso Murders, why should he confuse his Icelandic readers with an obscure hint that they would never have been able to understand? The Hamlet quote also reeks of Stoker: Irving performed the role of the Danish prince hundreds of times and Dracula contains several allusions to the play. All in all, it seems apparent that Stoker gave the Icelandic project his blessings and was informed about the new direction the story would take, but did not know all the details.44
Another important indication is that the preface is dated and signed: “Lundúnu, ––––– stræti, Ágúst 1898, B.S.”45 It would have been a severe—possibly criminal—act of fraud for anyone else but Stoker to sign that way. Up till 1947 Icelandic publishers were not bound by the Berne Convention.46 Stoker thus had no legal means to enforce his copyright in Iceland and prevent an unlicensed translation or even a modification of Dracula there. But fabricating a phony preface and signing it off with Stoker’s name—but without his endorsement—would add a whole new dimension of literary piracy: Valdimar wou
ld not only damage Stoker, but also hoodwink his own readers and impersonate another writer—no trivial offense in Iceland, where literature plays a central role and straightforwardness is a highly valued virtue.
A last clue is the assessment by Ásgeir Jónsson, the editor of the 2011 Icelandic edition, with whom I exchanged ideas about Stoker’s and Valdimar’s role in Makt Myrkranna in early 2014.47 In Ásgeir’s opinion, the Icelandic of the preface deviates from the style of the novel; it is less fluent, as if Valdimar had translated a text from a foreign language:
Valdimar Ásmundsson had a way with words and an extremely good command of his mother tongue. Our Nobel laureate, Halldór Laxness, has called him the “best pen in the whole of Iceland in the beginning of the twentieth century.” The translation of Dracula itself, although not loyal to the original text, is written in an extremely vivid and skillful way—that is why I decided to republish it. However, the preface is very clumsy, the sentences are very un-Icelandic and unlike Valdimar—they have much more of an English character.48
This assessment by a native Icelandic speaker and author supports the idea that the preface was written by Stoker and then translated, instead of being concocted by Valdimar.49
7. WHO CONNECTED VALDIMAR AND BRAM STOKER?
In the foreword to this book, Dacre Stoker mentions the possibility that Bram Stoker’s friend Hall Caine had been instrumental in connecting Stoker and Valdimar. Caine wrote two novels set in Iceland and visited the country twice—in 1889 and again in 1903; the second time he was invited to an official dinner organized by the Icelandic government.50 He admired William Morris’s renderings of the Icelandic sagas and may have been in touch with Valdimar, a specialist on this topic.
It is also possible that Mark Twain established the link. Although Twain never was in Iceland himself, in 1884, 1885 and 1886 respectively, three of his short stories were translated and published in Iðunn, a literary magazine run by the poet and teacher Steingrímur Thorsteinsson, the journalist Jón Ólafsson and by Björn Jónsson, the editor of Ísafold;51 all three were friends of Valdimar. In 1893, Fjallkonan published a fragment from Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869)52 and in 1894, it serialized The Million Pound Banknote.53 During his trips to America with the Lyceum Theatre, Stoker and Twain had become good friends. From early October 1896 till June 1897, Twain and his family lived just a stone’s throw away from Stoker’s house at St. Leonard’s Terrace.54 In spring 1898 Stoker offered to act as Twain’s dramatic agent in the U.K. and look through his play Is He Dead?55 From June 1899 until October 1900, Twain and his family lived in London again. It therefore would not be unlikely that Twain passed his Reykjavík contacts to Stoker.56
Thomas Hall Caine
(Painted by Robert Edward Morrison)
Mark Twain
(Photo: Associated Press)
It may also be that Frederic Myers, the secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, had given Stoker a hint. The S.P.R. had been founded by scholars gathering around Henry Sidgwick, a Cambridge philosophy professor since 1874. Their goal was to perform scientific research on paranormal phenomena. Spiritism was en vogue in Victorian London and many honorable citizens spent their evening around a table while a—usually female—medium apparently received messages from beyond through the Ouija board or table-lifting. As the society’s researchers found out, many professional mediums had developed ingenious tricks to move tables with sophisticated mechanisms or sheer body control. In 1895, for example, Frederic Myers, Oliver Lodge and Richard Hodgson exposed the celebrated medium Eusapia Palladino, proving that she had been manipulating furniture with her feet during her séances.57The Society counted as many as 1,400 members and reported on their experiments and meetings in their famous Proceedings. Stoker was friends with such prominent S.P.R. members as Alfred Tennyson, John Knowles, William Ewart Gladstone, and Arthur Conan Doyle. On 9 September 1890, Valdimar dedicated the complete front page of Fjallkonan to the S.P.R. and extensively discussed Myers’s book Phantasms of the Living.58 In June 1898, Stoker and Irving lodged at Myers’s house, along with Lord Dufferin,59 the author of the international bestseller Letters from High Latitudes, recounting Dufferin’s visit to Iceland.60 Is it possible that Myers, entertained by Dufferin’s adventures, mentioned the leading Icelandic newspaper that had shown so much interest in his paranormal research—a most suitable platform for Stoker’s supernatural novel?61
Frederic William Henry Myers
(Painted by William Clarke Wontner)
Daniel Willard Fiske
(Painted by Cei Cipriano)
As long as no letters between Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson (or manuscript versions or notes etc.) are found, the debate about the Irishman’s personal contribution to Makt Myrkranna will continue and maybe even split the field of Dracula scholars—like the mysterious identity of Count Dracula once did.
For the outstanding quality of the novel, however, this makes no difference; in the pages that follow, the reader can enjoy the story, including such vivid scenes as the tribal ceremonies in the Count’s hidden temple.62
Lord Dufferin
(Painted by George Frederic Watts)
It is the combination of Stoker’s original ideas—as documented in his notes—with original contributions by Valdimar Ásmundsson and daring innovations anticipating later movies and screenplays, that makes Makt Myrkranna such an intriguing literary work. Regardless of the mysteries attached to its creation, the novel can now be read by readers all over the world, who may make their own discoveries in the text.
Hans C. de Roos
Munich, March 2016
A ROOM WITH A VIEW:
THE FLOOR PLANS OF CASTLE DRACULA
TWO-THIRDS OF MAKT MYRKRANNA IS DEDICATED TO Harker’s stay in Castle Dracula and his desperate attempts to find a way out. While translating the novel, I followed Harker’s explorations tour in my imagination and started wondering if the Transylvanian part of the story was based on a logical plan of the building—and if yes, if it would be possible to reconstruct such a plan from the text. Here are the results.
1. A FIRST ORIENTATION:
A RECTANGULAR SHAPE WITH FOUR WINGS
The first thing we learn about the castle is that the calèche arrives in a large courtyard, surrounded by old, high walls. The simplest sketch of the castle’s floor plan would thus show a quadratic or rectangular shape, consisting of four wings, with this courtyard in the middle. We would expect towers to be placed at the corners. Starting from this most primitive sketch, we can try to fill in the rest.
To get into the building, Harker has to walk up a staircase leading to an ornamental gate, which means that the entrance hall of the building is on a raised ground floor. Later we will learn that the underground crypt has high-set windows to let some light in—these two facts agree with each other: The basement or souterrain is partly below, partly above ground. This gives us some first façade views, seen from the courtyard, with the entrance in the east wing and the crypt in the west wing.
2. HARKER’S HOME BASE: THE FOURTH FLOOR
Harker follows the Count to the living room or dining room. Here, a number of rooms are grouped together. Adjoining the dining room is the small octagonal cabin that leads to Harker’s bedroom. Moreover, the dining room has one door to a corridor, and another door to the library. As these are the rooms where Harker sleeps, eats and studies, thus spending most of his time, we might call this group of rooms his home base.
During his explorations of 10 May, Harker learns that the dining room is also connected to the Count’s personal rooms: a private study and a bedroom. Behind these two rooms is the large hall with the oaken floors and old chairs; this hall, in turn, opens up to a corner tower, where the Count stores his gold. The hall also has a door to a staircase. Harker believes this door to be locked, but some mysterious person opens it for him.
Because Harker states that the Count’s gold is stored on the fourth floor, all these interconnected rooms must be on the fourth f
loor.
3. ROUTES LEADING AWAY FROM THE FOURTH FLOOR
From this fourth floor Harker can access the other parts of the castle. Together with the Count, he goes up from the corridor next to the dining room and arrives at the portrait gallery. After seeing the murdered peasant girl, he runs down the stairs, arriving in the entrance hall, but finds all the doors locked, and notes that the way up to the gallery is the only alternative (10 May). Only much later does he discover the third vertical route leading away from the fourth floor: the secret staircase, leading to the underground temple (21 May). Later, he uses this secret staircase again to reach a tunnel to the west wing and the crypt. Here are the details:
A) THE ENTRANCE HALLS
On the elevated ground level with the entrance gate, Harker finds another hall, but there too, all the doors are locked. I imagine these two halls to lie in an L-shape, leaving enough room on this level for the chapel, and stables for the horses (which of course must have their floors on the ground level). I assume that the entrance area consists of a high, impressive hall; in combination with the raised ground level, this would mean that the first floor would be where normal houses have their second floor (½ + 1½ = 2).
B) HARKER’S TOUR OF 10 MAY
Because our hero finds no exit from the elevated ground level, Harker goes up to the portrait gallery. From here, he has access to
(i) the tower room from which he will later watch the sunset;
(ii) the west wing with its many deserted chambers;
(iii) the tower the Countess was locked in (he goes in there only on 16 June);
(iv) the room with the diamond floor patterns, and from there—through still more rooms—the gate tower, where he finds a steep staircase leading down.