His other work includes the medical thesis, published in 1815, Disputatio Medica Inauguralis, Quaedam De Morbo, Oneirodynia Dicto, Complectens, on the subject of sleepwalking and its suggested treatment. The source of Polidori’s thesis was the Encyclopédie by Jean-Jacques Mènuret de Chambaud (1733–1815). Somnambulism had been defined by a treatise written by François Baissler du Sauvage de la Croix in 1768, which classified it with hallucinations of nightmares or night terrors and an accompanying inability to breathe; sufferers experienced weird creatures sitting on their chest – Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare14 captures the horror perfectly. Also published were various literary reviews and in 1911, ninety years after his death, The Journal of John Polidori, detailing his time with Lord Byron. A very short story entitled A Story of Miss Anne and Miss Emma with the Dog – Carlo was also published posthumously. Apart from these works, the collected letters of Polidori and his family have remained previously largely unpublished. Polidori offers an inimitable and previously unheard voice, enriching our understanding of the Romantic period from a unique standpoint of both an observer and intimate of the Romantic dramatis personae yet precluded from personal success by his literary failures, his non-aristocratic status and by the religious prejudice of his peers. Polidori’s professional rank as a physician with literary aspirations placed him in an uncomfortable position of peer rivalry against the aristocratic Byron and Shelley. His visceral understanding of the human condition contrasted vividly with his quixotic literary ambitions. As with his contemporary, John Keats (1795–1821), his intrinsic Romanticism was anchored by the prosaic necessities of life, Polidori as a medical physician and Keats as an apothecary, both constantly seeking expression through literary ambitions.
II
In 1816 Byron travelled through France, Belgium and into Switzerland before settling upon a summer’s residence near Geneva at the Villa Diodati by the lakeside of Lac Léman. Nearby in a cottage called Maison Chappius was the ménage à trois of Percy Shelley with his lover Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley) and her step-sister, Claire Clairmont, pregnant after an affair with Byron in London.
The group dynamics were complex: the members of the Shelley ménage were practising advocates of free love and radicalism; Byron was a cynical Romantic patronising Catholicism with mocking humour; and Polidori was a Catholic with fierce literary ambitions. Byron, irritated by the demands of Claire, used the presence of Polidori to frustrate her intended amorous nocturnal visits to the Villa Diodati. Many years later, when Byron was dead and Claire was able as a middle-aged woman to examine her teenage obsessive love she described Byron as ‘the merest compound of vanity, folly and every miserable weakness that ever met together in one human being… never was a nature more profoundly corrupted than his became, or was more radically vulgar than his was from the very outset’.15
During that fateful summer tensions within the group would manifest themselves in petty rows and irritations, especially between Byron and Polidori. Initially relations between Polidori and Percy Shelley seemed very amiable – both shared a common enthusiasm for chemistry and medicine although only Polidori held professional status. Shelley’s radicalism, atheism and embracing of Godwin’s philosophy of free love were at odds with Polidori’s Catholicism and belief in an afterlife. After one incident he challenged Shelley to a duel, which was laughed off. In his diary for 4 June 1816 Polidori wrote: ‘Went on the lake with Shelley and Byron, who quarrelled with me.’ Polidori’s vanity, sensitivity to criticism and religious psychological tensions proved a highly volatile mixture, although his friendship with Mary always appears harmonious if we read his diary – he gave her Italian lessons on a regular basis, went boating out on the lake with her until late at night and took her son William to be inoculated in Geneva. She was eighteen and he twenty, so flirtation cannot be ruled out. Certainly Polidori was not averse to the pleasures of the opposite sex: he records visiting a brothel in Geneva and he had female admirers at the numerous soirées he attended at the villas of the rich aristocrats. With Claire the situation was diametrically opposite – she found him a nuisance and an obstacle to her intended amorous liaisons with Byron.
Byron’s immediate rapport with Percy Shelley increasingly led to the exclusion of Polidori – the most notable occasion being when Byron and Shelley went on a tour of the lake in Rousseau’s footsteps, leaving the physician behind in the company of Mary and Claire. Polidori even tired of visiting the famous bluestocking intellectual, Madame de Staël,16 at the Château du Coppet although he was a regular visitor to many other aristocratic households around Geneva; indeed, Byron actively encouraged him to partake of the local high society. Polidori, with his good looks, was not short of ardent female admirers in the wealthy villas and châteaux surrounding Geneva; he also made numerous male friends both in the medical and literary circles. He delighted in giving friends a copy of his medical thesis to read and even Madame de Staël made complimentary remarks about it. Except for his friendship with Mary, it was Polidori who was increasingly made to feel the male outsider of the group. Thomas Moore17 (a friend of Byron) wrote that Polidori was the ‘constant butt for Byron’s sarcasm and merriment’.
Once when out in a boat, Byron was hurt by Polidori, who accidentally struck him on his knee with an oar; instead of apologising, the physician reportedly said, perhaps in retaliation for the many slights he had received from the poet, ‘I am glad you can suffer pain.’ Thomas Moore, a biographer of Byron, records that Polidori was ‘in a constant hectic of vanity, he seems to have alternatively provoked and amused his noble employer.’
On 15 June Polidori records in his journal that he and Percy Shelley, a keen but amateur chemist, had a ‘…conversation about principles, – whether man was to be merely an instrument’. The reference to principles concerned the then popular scientific theory of man being nothing more than a kind of animated machine. Experiments in galvanism were well known and Polidori would have been familiar from his time at medical college in Edinburgh with the work of its discoverer Luigi Galvani (1737–98) and the gruesome experiments on cadavers by Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834) which suggested life might be restored. Polidori’s Catholic sensibilities would be offended by this concept, but Percy Shelley as an atheist would have no such inhibitions. Mary Shelley overheard these conversations and they became a significant catalyst for her Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
The summer of frequent storms and rain often confined Byron, Polidori and the visiting Shelley ménage to evenings spent in the Villa Diodati. With conversations often extending into the early hours of the morning and subjects growing more obscure and macabre the group (most probably on 16 June, a night of particularly heavy storms and rainfall), agreed each to write a ghost story, as a direct result of Byron’s suggestion after readings of German ghost stories translated into French from a two-volume set ornately entitled Fantasmagoriana, ou Recueil d’Histories d’Apparitons, de Spectres, Revenans, Fantomes, &c. (1812). The flickering fire in the grand salon of the Villa Diodati provided a suitably ghostly atmosphere for the group late into the night. Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont soon gave up on their efforts at prose, while Byron wrote only a desultory fragment of an unfinished vampire tale. Mary began her Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and Polidori, Ernestus Berchtold; or, The Modern Oedipus (1819) his only novel.
Polidori, besides writing Ernestus Berchtold, was inspired to write up a vampire tale based upon the idea suggested by Byron’s uncompleted fragment. Later, in a letter to Henry Colburn, Polidori explained the origin of the tale in Geneva in 1816: ‘the Vampyre which is not Lord Byron’s but was written entirely by me at the request of a lady… which I did in two idle mornings by her side’.18 It was with her that Polidori carelessly left his original manuscript and apparently forgot all about it until he saw the story published in the New Monthly Review two years later.
Comparison with Byron’s piece of dreary prose confirms that it was without doubt Polidori who brea
thed life into the vampire tale and made it into a genre of literature that continues to fascinate, horrify and intrigue. Polidori, by basing his vampire upon the character of Lord Byron, deftly transformed the monster of distant Eastern European tradition, giving it an immediate menace and potency.
The physician turned for his inspiration to the one man he had known intimately during that summer, the famous poet who had shown to his physician that he was a mere mortal, subject to the same foibles and bodily complaints as any other. Transposing the aspects of Byron that were less than meritorious, Polidori imbues his vampire with great presence. Polidori perhaps used the tale even as a wickedly humorous kind of exorcism to release his own feelings of anguish against Byron. His description of the vampire, Lord Ruthven is highly perceptive – a portrait drawn from his intimate observations of Byron: ‘He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him – in spite of the deadly hue of his face…’ The intense, anxiety-filled, claustrophobic yet restrained prose of Polidori weaves a dreamlike intimacy throughout the tale. The companion of Lord Ruthven (the vampire) is a young man called Aubrey, enticingly something of a self-portrait of the physician. Polidori unmistakably demonstrates some acute knowledge of his own failings and inclinations: ‘He thought, in fine, that the dreams of poets were the realities of life. … the daughters – by their brightening countenances when he approached, and by their sparkling eyes, when he opened his lips, soon led him into false notions of his talents and his merit…’
Polidori belatedly tried to revive the vampire tale when he wrote, in November of 1819, to the publishers Longman to see if they ‘would undertake to buy a second part of The Vampyre from me – as I must have something to engage my mind’, but they refused his offer perhaps because the publishing furore and sensationalism of the original vampire tale had passed by.
Also published in 1819 was his only full-length novel, Ernestus Berchtold; or, The Modern Oedipus. The novel uses military, political and domestic themes, interwoven with supernatural events. The character of Olivieri may be modelled on Byron – not this time as vampire but as a corrupting aristocrat who excels in all vices and delights in debasing Ernestus. The Literary Gazette observed the novel to be, ‘well constructed and ably written…’ whilst the Monthly Review said the ‘considerable powers of imagination… proved [Polidori] capable of writing in a higher and purer strain’. However, sales of the novel were miniscule and did nothing to establish Polidori as an author.
Byron and Polidori’s ill-fated relationship during their brief period of intimacy during the summer of 1816 concluded in reflective vitriol from the physician and ambivalence from the poet, who saw only the annoying vanities of youth in his physician. Ironically, it was this failed relationship with Byron that provided Polidori with his most successful literary work, The Vampyre, casually yet cathartically written while at the feet of a female admirer. The petty rows and Polidori’s indiscretions tried Byron’s patience while the perfidy of Byron dismayed the physician. Polidori’s Catholic sensibilities and insecurities placed him constantly on the defensive in religious and spiritual debates with Byron and Shelley. Neither did his literary pretensions impress since they induced ridicule whenever he attempted to bring any of his writings to their attention. Byron relinquished with Polidori’s company in September of 1816 after just a few months. ‘We have parted, finding that our tempers did not agree. …There was no immediate cause, but a continued series of slight quarrels. I believe the fault, if any, has been on my part…’ wrote Polidori to his father.
Polidori’s historic transformation of the hideous, village vampiric ghoul of the Orient and Eastern Europe mythology into an aristocratic, travelling seducer in The Vampyre began a unique genre of vampire literature. J. M. Rymer’s Varney the Vampire (1847) reincarnated the aristocratic vampire as Sir Francis Varney whilst J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) features a female aristocrat – the Countess Mircalla Karnstein; Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) brings his vampire Count from Eastern Europe to England. Anne Rice with her best selling novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) and sequels thrilled yet another new generation of readers. The fictional vampire is constantly being re-energised for new audiences. Polidori is responsible for creating a literary vampire figure that has become part of the popular imagination and perhaps it is entirely appropriate that both he and his iconic vampire figure have achieved immortality – in a literary sense.
Notes
1 Gaetano Polidori (1764–1853): an Italian writer and scholar, son of Agostino Ansano Polidori (1714–78) a physician and poet. Gaetano was onetime secretary to the great Italian tragedian Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803). He came to settle in London from Paris in 1790 after resigning as Alfieri’s secretary. He translated various literary works into Italian, notably John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto. He married in 1793, an English governess, Anna Maria Pierce.
2 Thomas Medwin (1788–1869): see his Journal of Conversations of Lord Byron ed. Ernest J. Lovell (Princeton University Press, 1966).
3 Gabriel Dante Rossetti (1828–82): a co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.
4 Christina Rossetti (1830–94): poet famous for Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).
5 Mary Shelley (1797–1851): only daughter from the marriage of philosopher and novelist William Godwin (1756–1836) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
6 Clara Mary Jane ‘Claire’ Clairmont (1798–1879): daughter of Mary Jane Vial Clairmont (1766–1841).
7 Robert Southey (1774–1843): Poet Laureate and one of the first generation of writers in the Romantic Movement. Celebrated as one of the Lake Poets along with William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).
8 Gothic novels were a style of writing popular in the late eighteenth century, which produced stories set in lonely frightening places usually with ghosts, apparitions and hauntings and lost inheritances. Supernatural events were invariably explained away in the dénouement by prosaic means. Major authors include Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole, William Beckford and Robert Maturin amongst many others.
9 Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823): author of The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) the first ‘best seller’ gothic novel in English literature.
10 Anti-Catholicism in England and general prejudice against Catholics was common until the campaign for Catholic Emancipation succeeded in 1829.
11 Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (1772) by Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778).
12 The Romantic Movement developed in the late eighteenth century in opposition to the Enlightenment and its emphasis upon reason and science. The term Romantic was to do with the importance of emotions and individual experience.
13 Dr Polidori and the Genesis of Frankenstein from Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (1963), p. 471.
14 Henry Fuseli (1741–1825): artist and author famous for the often nightmarish contents of his paintings.
15 Claire Clairmont in a letter to Mary Shelley dated 15 March 1836.
16 Madame de Staël (1766–1817): French novelist and intellectual, a pioneer of French Romanticism. Her most famous novels are Delphine (1803) and Corinne ou I’talie (1807). She held notable soirées at her Château de Coppet near Geneva.
17 Thomas Moore (1779–1852): see his biography of Byron (1830).
18 Letter to Colburn, 2 April 1819.
Further Reading
The Diary of Dr John William Polidori, 1816, ed. William Michael Rossetti. Elkin Mathews, 1911
Franklin Bishop, Polidori! A Life of Dr John Polidori. The Gothic Society at the Gargoyle’s Head Press, 1991
D.L. Macdonald, Poor Polidori: A Critical Biography of the Author of ‘The Vampyre’. University of Toronto Press, 1991
Derek Marlowe, A Single Summer with Lord B. Viking Press, 1970
Angela Thirlwell, William
and Lucy: The Other Rossettis. Yale University Press, 2003.
Henry R. Viets, The London Editions of Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’. Bibliographical Society of America, 1969
The Vampyre
A Tale
(1819)
It happened in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon a London winter, that there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman, more remarkable for his singularities, than for his rank. He apparently gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein. It seemed as if the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention, that he might by a look quell it, and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the glance of that dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object’s face, seemed not to penetrate, and at one look to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but to throw upon the cheek a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass. Some however thought that it was caused by their fearing the observation of one, who by his colourless cheek, which never gained a warmer tint from the blush of conscious shame or from any powerful emotion, appeared to be above human feelings and sympathies, the fashionable names for frailties and sins. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. Nay more in spite of the deadly hue of his finely turned head, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection. Lady Mercer, who had been the mockery of every monster shewn in drawing-rooms since her marriage, threw herself in his way, and did all but put on the dress of a mountebank, to attract his notice: – but in vain: – when she stood before him, though his eyes were apparently fixed upon hers, still it seemed as they were unperceived; – even her unappalled impudence was baffled, and she left the field. Yet though the common adultress could not influence even the guidance of his eyes, it was not that the sex was indifferent to him: but such was the caution with which he spoke to the virtuous wife and innocent daughter, that few knew he ever addressed himself to females. He had, however, the reputation of a winning tongue; and whether it was that this even overcame the dread of his singular character, or that they were moved by his apparent hatred of vice, he was as often among those females who adorn the sex by their domestic virtues, as among those who sully it by their vices.
Vampyre' and Other Writings Page 2