Can there be anyone in the world who hasn’t heard of
Dracula? He was the main component of a gothic novel by Abraham “Bram” Stoker
and here I am outside the Whitby boarding house where he stayed.
Bram Stoker
almost didn’t live. When he was pushed out into the world the doctor thought the
baby was stillborn and put him to one side. He made it though, born the third
of seven children who lived near Dublin. He couldn’t join in what must have
been a noisy hectic household. He was sickly lad and couldn’t stand up on his
own until he was seven years old. Spending years lying down he lost himself in
literature and this probably helped his imagination develop (also his mother
entertained him with tales and accounts of death and disease.) Nobody knows what
the medical problem was but after starting school Bram made a full recovery.
Though he would become a novelist he
graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with a BA in Mathematics. This was almost
useless as, through a friend, he had become interested in the theatre. He was
friends was Oscar Wilde at university and this friendship would be tested soon.
He soon started writing theatre reviews for the Dublin Evening Mail. Writing
didn’t stop there and he was writing stories in his spare time, the first one
published in a magazine at 29.
Soon he was
working as a civil servant in Dublin but always writing at night. At 31 he got
married to Florence Balcombe who had been engaged to Oscar Wilde. Oscar was
upset by this but soon got over it and his friendship with Bram resumed.
The Stokers
moved across the water to London. It’s thought Bram’s actor friend Henry Irving
got him a job at the Lyceum Theatre, London. He was suited to it and was the
business manager for the next 27 years. The Stoker’s had their child, Irving,
named in respect of his good chum (he idolised him.)
Bram became
heavily involved in London's high society where he met some big names like James
Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Through theatre tours Bram got the see the
world but he never visited Easter Europe where Dracula was set. All the time he
was writing and had his first novel published aged 43. One night Bram saw a man
fall into the River Thames. Though he dragged the man out of the water and
carried him to his own home he died on the kitchen table.
So where did
the horror novel Dracula - set in Whitby -
come from? Bram had met a Hungarian writer who wrote dark stories set in
the of the Carpathian mountains. He then spent years researching European
folklore stories about vampires. Perhaps he read about Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century Transylvanian-born prince also
known as Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia. With this in his head Bram visited
Whitby aged 43 and the craggy landscape and ruins on the hill probably inspired
Dracula. In the novel Dracula jumps off a ship onto the rocks at Whitby.
Bram wrote
twelve novels and three books of short stories. Dracula was the big one and the
original 541-page manuscript was believed to have been lost until it was found
in a barn in Pennsylvania in the 1980's. The title page showed the book was
called “The Un-Dead”, not Dracula (this manuscript was bought by Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen.)
Bram died at
age 64 after suffering a number of strokes. He breathed his last breath at 26,
St George's Square, Westminster, a large end terraced house looking onto a
charming square. Some biographers attribute the strokes to syphilis and others
to overwork but nobody knows. He was cremated and his ashes put in an urn at
Golders Green Crematorium. The plan was for his wife’s ashes to be added to the
urn but for some reason her ashes were scattered in the Gardens Of Rest.
However their son’s ashes were put into the urn. This urn is on display but
visitors are shown it under escort to prevent theft.
So far more
than 1000 novels and 200 films have been made about the vampire Dracula.
So here I am
at the house where Bram stayed (I even touched the door handle – could it be
the original one?) The house is now flats. I walked up to the spooky cemetery
and ruins at the top of the steps. Surely Bram walked up here – as many Goths
do now- and absorbed the atmosphere.
The link :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker
Heading up to
the graveyard…surely Bram walked up here….
Surely Bram
walked around this graveyard…
I’d read Dracula
was buried here (I'm sure he was real...)
Ooowww, impressive view…
Up near the
ruins…
Bram Stoker
stayed in a house around there…
20, St George’s
Square, Westminster, London where Bram died…..also his ashes at Golder’s Green Crematorium…