October 19, 2020 • 39 mins
Dracula is an iconic character, and the man who created him has become almost as much of a source of fascination for many as his famous vampire.. But even Bram Stoker's own life story - at least as he told it - may have some fictional elements.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracy.
The story that begins with Jonathan Harker's travels to Transylvania
on a business trip to complete a real estate deal
(00:23):
is one almost everybody knows. If I tell you that phrase,
you would say, I would say Dracula, right, because Dracula
is iconic. And we have talked about Dracula on several
episodes of this podcast, when we talked about the lives
of Christopher Lee and f. W. Murnow and Bella Lugosi
and Dwight Fry, And it seems like we must have
(00:43):
talked about the life of Bram Stoker before. Yeah, we
have not. No, we had a whole conversation where you
were like, I can't believe we haven't done this, and
I was like, but we did, though, No, it has
come up. I feel like what's come up more than
Bram Stoker himself is his estate and his widow not
giving people permission to adapt his work. But really we
(01:07):
have not talked about him at all. Uh It this
is a case where once I started getting into the research.
After you and I had that discussion, I knew we
had not talked about it at all, because there's part
of his story I would have remembered and have been
texting all of my friends about for the last several
days leading up to this recording. So today we are
(01:29):
going to talk about Bram Stoker. Abraham Stoker was born
on November eight eight His parents lived in the Clontarf
suburb of Dublin, Ireland. His father was also named Abraham Stoker.
His mother was Charlotte Matilda Blake Thornley Stoker, and this
was a large family. Braham had two siblings when he
(01:50):
was born, and the Stokers had another four more children
after him. And as a child, Bram, who was still
going by Abraham at that age but to separate from
his dad go ahead and go to his adopted name
of Brann, was not healthy. He was confined to his
bed or wherever an adult would carry him for the
first seven years of his life. And we don't actually
(02:11):
know what the nature of this illness was, and there
have been all kinds of theories, from it possibly having
been some sort of a fever, to a psychological element
being part of it, possibly a trauma of some kind,
but this is absolutely all speculation. We do not know
what was up here. Most biographers make the case that
this early phase of Stoker's life definitely influenced everything that
(02:34):
came afterward. Braham's mother told him about the cholera epidemic
that she had lived through, and specifically people being buried alive.
His father would tell him family stories, including military battles,
and also described plays that he had seen. All of
this seated Stoker's imagination, and he had a lot of
(02:56):
time alone with his thoughts since he couldn't really get
up and go with his siblings and his peers. But
despite this early start in this mystery ailment, Stoker made
a full recovery. Biographer Barbara Belford, who was one of
several biographers that wrote about him, mentions how very odd
it is that Stoker never gave any detail of his
(03:17):
illness in his writing about himself. This was not a
family that was ignorant of medical matters. His uncle, William
Stoker was the family doctor. He also had three brothers
who became doctors. But the truth of those early years
seems to have been obscured and lost to time. Although
a lot of scholars of Stoker's work have scoured his
(03:39):
writing for clues like any time he mentions a child
being ill, or they like is this a reference to
his youth? But details regarding the end of his illness
are as murky as the illnesses itself. He would later write, quote,
this early weakness passed away, and I grew into a
strong boy in time, in large to the biggest member
of my family. In eighteen sixty four, when Stoker was seventeen,
(04:01):
he enrolled at Trinity College at the University of Dublin,
And while he may have started life in pretty poor
health as a college student, he was actually really athletic.
He was an accomplished gymnast and a rugby player. He
also participated in endurance racewalking. He won prizes in five
and seven mile walks. He also cut a pretty striking figure.
(04:23):
He was six ft two with red hair, and he
was popular. Invited to join both the Historical Society and
the Philosophical Society, and he was elected to positions of
responsibility in each of them. His time at Trinity overlapped
with that of Oscar Wilde, who was younger than Stoker.
The two of them knew each other, and Bram had
actually nominated Wild for membership of the Philosophical Society. Yeah,
(04:47):
that's an interesting overlap. It will come up again in
just a bit. So here's the thing. Stoker's performance in
school did not really hint at his future legacy. While
he excelled at sports, was kind of an average student academically,
but he was writing essays and papers about things that
sparked his interest in his societal participations, including one's titled
(05:11):
Sensationalism in Fiction and Society and the Necessity for Political Honesty.
In eighteen seventy, he graduated from Trinity. He would later
say he graduated with honors in mathematics. This is untrue.
Trinity College actually has a biography of him, and they're like,
we don't know where he got this. If you're wondering
(05:31):
about it taking six years for him to earn a
bachelor's degree, that's because he was also working for all
but the first two years of that schooling. Stoker took
a civil service job at Dublin Castle thanks to an
assist from his father, who had also worked there as
a civil servant until his retirement in eighteen sixty five.
So he was working six and a half days a
(05:52):
week while also taking classes. So at that point six
years is past to me. Yes, me as well. And
it's one of those things where it's almost like this
sets the stage for his whole life of just being
constantly working on a lot of things and making time
for more things than anyone humans should fit in a day.
But after he finished school, he continued in his civil
(06:13):
service position, although he also continued to be interested in literature.
In his last years of school, Stoker became somewhat obsessed
with Walt Whitman, and that deep interest in the man
and his work continued long after graduation from Trinity. In
February seventy two, Stoker wrote Whitman a two thousand word
(06:34):
letter in which he said, among other things, quote, you
have shaken off the shackles and your wings are free.
I have the shackles on my shoulder still, but I
have no wings. Stoker's letter continues on to describe himself
and detail including the sorts of things that a person
today might normally share, maybe with a therapist, including how
(06:56):
he chose to interact with people, as well as the
sort of things he might tell pen pal, and then
it concluded with quote, now I have told you all
I know about myself. So couldn't actually mail this letter
to Whitman, though instead he left it in his desk
for the next four years, intending to make a clean
copy to send. This is a level of procrastination I
(07:18):
feel like I can experience in my life. I think
we all can. There's also the possibility, and again this
is a matter of speculation that some people have theorized
that he recognized how sort of raw and familiar this
letter was, and like, while that may have been his
truest feelings, he was also a little trepidacious about actually
(07:40):
sharing it, Like maybe I shouldn't send this to someone.
Maybe I don't even want to acknowledge that I just
wrote all of these things to my literary hero, because
that's weird. We'll talk more about this whole thing on Friday.
But after a gathering at which Whitman's work was criticized
and rebutted in eighteen seven six, and we should point
(08:01):
out that, you know, Whitman was controversial in his time.
There were poems, for example, that were part of Leaves
of Grass that were left out of some publications of
that work, particularly in Britain. There was a lot of
discussion about whether his work was appropriate in some cases,
but at that gathering Stoker provided the defense position of
the poet, And afterwards he wrote another letter to Walt Whitman,
(08:24):
similarly familiar and kind of intimate. He talked about having
defended him because he thinks he is such a great man.
And this time he actually mailed it, as well as
that one that had sat in his destroyer all of
the intervening time. And Whitman got these letters and replied
that he hoped that the two of them would one
day meet, and he commented on the unconventional, manly and
(08:46):
affectionate way in which Stoker had addressed him. Those are
all adjectives that I am quoting from Whitman regarding Bram
Stoker's writing. If if you want to know more about
Walt Whitman and his writing, we have a previous episode
on him that I feel has been a Saturday classic,
not that long ago, but it has been long ago
enough ago since we recorded it that I have no recollection.
(09:07):
If it mentions Bram Stoker in any way, I don't
think so, because I think I would have remembered. Uh
so anyway, Whitman had been particularly delighted in all this
by a passage in which Stoker called him the quote father, brother,
and wife to his soul. Whitman later told a friend
(09:28):
that he felt that Stoker had actually been writing to
himself and kind of working through his own thoughts, and
that he felt compelled to respond to the young man.
Although Stoker had hoped that Whitman might one day travel
to Ireland and they could meet, Whitman's health at the
time kept that from ever happening. Yeah, he was not
able to travel, um, but don't give up on that thought.
(09:51):
This writing, these letters to Walt Whitman are the only
instances of writing from Stoker's youth where he speaks so
openly about himself and his inner world. He tends to
kind of keep his private thoughts private for most of
the rest of his writing, so they have become a
really important part of his history. In eighteen seventy six,
(10:11):
Stoker was promoted into the newly created position of Inspector
of Courts of Petty Sessions, and this money had to
travel to various municipalities and audit their small claims courts.
Three years into the job, he published a book on
this subject called The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions
in Ireland. Bless him. This sounds dull as dirt. I
(10:32):
mean it's literally like going to a court and hearing
people talk about things. Uh. In one biography they mentioned
like him him sitting in on hearings about things like
dog licenses. Uh, you know, neighbors complaining against one another.
But meanwhile, while working in his civil service job by
day and probably finding it a little less than intellectually stimulating,
(10:55):
Stoker started a side hustle in the evenings as a
writer on more interesting topic. He first wrote theater reviews.
He did not get paid for these, but he did
create a significant change at the Dublin Evening Mail in
working on them. Up to that point, theater reviews normally
published two days after the show that was being reviewed,
so if you went to a show on Friday night,
(11:16):
the review of it would appear Sunday. But Stoker, who
again was a very busy bee and would pack a
lot of work into any day, instigated a shift so
that next day reviews would run at the paper. So
if you saw that Friday show, the review would run
on the Saturday morning and learning the discipline of writing
and doing this on a deadline enabled him to turn
his pen to more creative efforts, and he started writing
(11:39):
short stories as well. In eighteen seventy two, he had
actually already published the first of his short stories, that
was one called The Crystal Cup. But in the late
eighteen seventies he also started editing a fiction magazine. In
eighteen seventy five, he published a novella over several installments
in the periodical The Shamrock. That story is called The
Primrose Path was published under the name A Stoker Esquire
(12:02):
that unfolds over ten chapters. This is a morality tale
about the dangers of alcohol, and it tells the story
of a carpenter from Dublin who moves to London and
becomes an alcoholic, which ultimately leads to misery, so much misery.
It's a very dark, dark story in many ways. In
late eighteen seventy six, bram Stoker wrote a theater review
(12:26):
that changed the course of his life. And we're going
to talk about that. After we first paused for a
sponsor break, as we said before the break. In eighteen
seventy six, bram Stoker wrote a review this review was
of Henry Irving's performance as Hamlet, and it was glowing.
(12:47):
Bram was already something of a Henry Irving fan. He
had seen the famous actor on stage for the first
time in eighteen sixty seven, when he had attended a
performance of The Rivals in Dublin, and he had, when
he saw that first performance, been thinking about a career
in acting himself, and Irving asked Stoker out to dinner
as a thank you for this. This was a start
(13:08):
of a long and very close friendship. Henry Irving became
a pivotal figure in Bram Stoker's life, so it's worth
giving his biography a little attention, just for context. So
Irving was born John Henry broad Rib in Somerset, England,
on February and when he was six his parents moved
to Bristol, where his father had found a new job,
(13:28):
but they left John Henry with an aunt and uncle
in Cornwall rather than moving him to a city. He
did rejoin his parents a few years later in London
at the age of ten. He started work as a
clerk as a young man, but really always wanted a
life in the theater, so with financial assistance from a relative,
he started purchasing costumes and wigs, and then he bought
(13:48):
a role for himself in a local production of Romeo
and Juliet. He appeared in that as Henry Irving. From
there he started working with stock companies. This a bit
performer and was an hund of shows touring Great Britain. Yeah,
I read one statistics that said something like over the
course of three years he was in four hundred different roles,
so he was doing a lot of very small bit
(14:11):
players kind of acting. Irving really started gating recognition in
the mid eighteen sixties, and in eighteen seventy one he
became very famous for his appearance in The Bells at
the Lyceum Theater. He appeared at the Lyceum as the
star of the company for the next several years, and
it was in late eighteen seventy six that he starred
in Hamlet, which was of course reviewed by Bram Stoker
(14:33):
for the Dublin Evening Mail, and after reading that review
in the morning, Irving wanted to have dinner with Stoker
that very evening. The two men wrote letters to one
another for several years, and in eighteen seventies seven, Irving
made a move that really changed Stoker's life. He purchased
the Lyceum Theater in London and asked Stoker to be
(14:53):
its manager. Irving would work as the director of the
productions and of course also star in them, and then
Stoker would handle the business, from tickets to press releases
and managing the staff. This was a really big ask.
Henry Irving was the most famous actor in late nineteenth
century England, and he was also known to be intense
(15:14):
and demanding and uncompromising. And Bram Stoker, who adored Irving,
didn't think twice about it. He bid a jew to
Ireland and his civil service job to start a new
as Henry Irving's business manager, essentially in eighteen seventy eight,
and this job was not a hobby job, so the
two of them could hang out. The Lyceum was large,
(15:34):
with a seating capacity of two thousand, and it was
a social hub for London society in addition to all
the regular business of his position, entertaining the illustrious patrons
of the theater after shows with luxurious dinners that also
fell under Stoker's job description. This is a gigantic job
for one person. Yes, it is in doing this though
(15:57):
he met numerous luminaries, including Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and Prime Minister Gladstone. This is so much work, and
despite these long hours demanded of this job, Stoker still
found time to write, and this was on top of
the fact that he was writing several dozen letters a
day on behalf of Henry Irving, so handling both his
(16:20):
business correspondents and his personal correspondents and things like fan mail. Somehow,
while doing all of this, Stoker also got married in
eighteen seventy eight to Florence Malcolm. Florence was eleven years
younger than he was and was pretty outgoing, whereas he
was more shy and reserved. Her claim to historical fame
(16:41):
is being the exquisitely pretty girl that Oscar Wilde fell
in love with, and she didn't apparently tell wild that
she had married his friend from Trinity. While he was
off traveling. Oscar Wilde wrote her a letter that he
wished to have a gold cross back that he had
given to her because it represents the sweetest time of
his youth. She told him that he could come to
(17:03):
their home and get it, but he thought that would
be inappropriate and asked that they meet at her parents
home instead, and Florence, for her part, also wanted something back.
She wanted all of the letters that she had sent
Oscar Wilde when they were corresponding and courting. It is
unclear if these things were ever exchanged and given back
to each other. Uh This whole interaction, and this sort
(17:26):
of triangle of relationships is often summarized as Florence having
the choice to marry either Bram Stoker or Oscar Wilde.
But while Oscar Wilde, in his writing to her, does
seem to have really been hurt by Florence marrying his friend,
there's no evidence that he was ever suggesting that he
should be her husband or that they should get married,
and wild An Stoker did remain friends despite this whole thing.
(17:50):
Bram and Florence had one child, a son named Noel.
That was the first year after they were married, maybe
in response to finding himself a father. In eighty one,
Stoker published a book of children's stories called Under the Sunset.
There didn't seem to be a lot of discord in
the Stoker marriage, but there also didn't seem to be
that much closeness or devotion between them either. No, they
(18:12):
did a lot of stuff separately. Um Stoker was a
man who valued efficiency and organization, and he was absolutely
excellent at managing Irving's every need at the theater, and
he seemed to put his job and Irving ahead of
everything else in his life, including his own family. For example,
the newlywed Stoker's even skipped a honeymoon instead, Bram and
(18:35):
Florence had traveled to Birmingham so Bram could work. Stoker
had not even told his boss that he was getting married.
In eighteen eighty three, the Lyceum Theater mounted a tour
in North America. Stoker managed all of the logistics, so
the first of many such tours, and Stoker collected his
experiences into a travelog called A Glimpse of America that
(18:57):
came out in eighteen eighties six. On these travels to
the U S, Stoker met two presidents, McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt,
and more importantly, he was finally able to meet Walt Whitman.
And at this point these two writers had been trading
letters for years, so there was a pretty easy friendship
to their meeting. Although descriptions kind of make it sound
(19:18):
like Stoker was initially a little nervous there was one
blemish to mar this beautiful occasion, though Henry Irving had
insisted on going to meet Walt Whitman as well, so
Stoker felt a little bit cheated of the intimate conversation
that he had dreamed of having with his idol. Woman
noted also that Stoker had switched from going by Abraham
Stoker to Bram Stoker, and he did not particularly like
(19:41):
that shift in name. He just didn't think it was
very dignified. But overall it was a really, really good meeting,
and Stoker declared Walt Whitman to be quote, a man
amongst men. During the eighteen nineties, Stoker was still publishing novels,
including The Waters Moo and that feature star crossed lovers
as part of the story. There's also The Shoulder of Shasta,
(20:03):
which is a romance set in northern California. Even as
these books were being published, he was also working on
what would become his masterpiece, Dracula. While Bram Stoker was
normally a very fast writer, Dracula took him far longer
than his previous novels. He wrote it over the course
of seven years, and perhaps even longer, but that's how
(20:23):
long we know he was working on it while he
was touring with Irving and working on other writing projects.
We'll talk a little more about some of the research
that went into the most famous of Stoker's books after
we first take a break for a word from the
sponsors that keep stuff UMIs in history class going. If
(20:46):
you look at the notes that Stoker compiled as he
was assembling his Vampiric Tail, it becomes really apparent that
he was, as we mentioned earlier, meticulous. He had carefully
plotted out Jonathan Harker's journey to Transylvania by train, using
actual train schedules and only using connections that he believed
would have actually worked, and he created a table of
(21:08):
all of the correspondents that would appear in the book
to ensure that the dates that they posted in the
dates that they would arrive in the recipient's hands was realistic.
It also seems as though all of his work running
at theater and tours kind of informed the way he
constructed narrative. He also was a writer who really believed
in research, and his work researching what would become the
(21:29):
novel Dracula is really deeply associated with the town of Whitby, England,
on the country's east coast. He is said to have
visited a library in Whitby to look at a specific
selection of the Special Collections title by William Wilkinson, which
is an account of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia
with various political observations relating to them. It is from
(21:52):
this book that he is said to have learned of
the name Dracula in relation to lad Tepeesh. Prior to this,
Stoker was planning to name his villainous character Count vomp Here.
This was a rare book. It's an odd thing for
Stoker to have just known about. But a friend he
knew from his theater circle, Arminius van Berry, had told
(22:12):
him about the story of the locking a count and
the book that he could find it in. Yeah, piece
of knowledge. It's a very strange thing, right. I can
only imagine as a librarian having someone walk in and
be like, hey, you know that rare book that you
don't even tell people you have. I would like to
see it please. I mean, it's literally that strange um.
(22:37):
Stoker then visited the Whippy Museum to work on that
route that we mentioned a moment ago for Harker to take,
including making notes about latitude and longitude, and next Stoker
consulted with the Royal Coast Guard at the nearby harbor
and discussed the topic that would figure prominently in the
story of Dracula. In five, the ship Dmitri had left
(22:57):
the port of Narva in Estonia and had on the
ground near Whitby. According to the locals, only a few
members of the crew survived, and there was a black
dog that emerged from the ship and ran off while
rescue efforts were under way. The Dmitri had been carrying
crates of silver sand. That may sound mysterious, but silver
sand is actually a fine white sand that is commonly
(23:19):
used in construction mortar. But if you've read Dracula, that
might sound familiar, but not exactly the way you remember it.
Stoker borrowed the story of the Dimitri for the novel,
making the ship the conveyance of Count Dracula from his
home country to London, but in the fictional version the
name is changed to the Demeter, which also invokes the
(23:41):
Greek goddess and its associations with the cycle of life
and death, and Narva changes to Varna, Bulgaria as the
departure point for the ship, and Stoker's fictionalized version the
silver sand remains, but the ship is also filled with
crates of earth from Count Dracula's homeland, and then, of
course the black Dog becomes an embodiment of the vampire himself.
(24:03):
Stoker's research wasn't confined to Whitby. He continued to consult
the library regularly to make notes that would contribute to
Dracula once he was back in London, but would be
is very closely associated with the book at this point.
Vampire stories long predated Dracula, and like there are a
vampire like entities like all over the world in various
(24:25):
mythology and folklore and fiction. But Stoker's version of vampireism
is really what we've come to know as like the
classic vampire tropes, the vampire being able to shape shift
into animals, the Count suddenly becoming almost crazed with thirst
when Harker cuts himself shaving, and the vampire needing to
be invited into a home. All that's present here in
(24:47):
the nineteen o one Icelandic edition of Dracula titled Mocked
Meer Crana which translates to powers of darkness. The preface
that Stoker wrote includes insistence that the events relate in
the Dracula story are true, writing quote, I am quite
convinced that there is no doubt whatever that the events
here described really took place, however unbelievable and incomprehensible they
(25:09):
might appear at first sight, and I am further convinced
that they must always remain, to some extent incomprehensible, although
continuing research in psychology and natural sciences may in years
to come give logical explanation of such strange happenings, which
at present neither scientists nor the secret police can understand.
(25:31):
I state again that this mysterious tragedy which is here
described is completely true in all its external respects, though
naturally I have reached a different conclusion on certain points
than those involved in the story. But the events are incontrovertible,
and so many people know of them that they cannot
be denied. So this has led to all kinds of
(25:52):
speculation since it came out about whether Stoker was referencing
Jack the Ripper here. The Icelandic version of the book
is different from the originally published version though having been
abridged quite a bit when it was translated back into English,
and it became really apparent that the original translator of
(26:13):
Stoker's work into Icelandic Vladimar Asmondson, had reworked the plot
significantly and created a very different story. I remember when
the English speaking world found out about this and was like, what, Yeah,
it's actually really good. Um. If anybody wants to seek
it out, I think right now as we record this
(26:35):
in October, Uh, if you have an Amazon Prime account,
I think you can download the Kindle version for free,
and Audible has the audio version available as a freebee. Um.
And it's really quite delightful. And if you are a
person who loves Dracula, it's very interesting because there are
characters you have never seen before in the story are
(26:56):
events play out very differently. Some things are condensed, some
things are gone completely. Uh. And it's just a new
way to experience this piece of lore. Yeah. I also
feel like I should just clarify that most people in
Iceland also speak English. When I say the English speaking world,
I mean like places like the United States in Britain. Yes. Uh.
(27:18):
When Dracula was originally published in seven it was really
well received, but it really didn't hit the global long
reaching popularity it would eventually achieve. It was kind of like,
you know, if you see a movie and it's like
a great movie that year, but you don't think, like, oh,
this is going to launch a kajillion things. Uh. Stoker's mother, Charlotte,
is said to have quite liked it and actually believed
(27:39):
it would be a huge success and and be one
of the things for which her son would be remembered.
Publishers in the United States were not initially interested in
this story, so Stoker actually purchased the U S copyright
for himself. The first American edition of the book appeared
in eight Analysis of the text alongside Stoker's life story
(28:00):
has sometimes led people to believe that Dracula as a
character is based at least partially on Henry Irving and
his demanding nature. It's also possible that rather than modeling
it on Irving, Stoker was kind of thinking about how
Irving could play the count in a stage version of
the story that actually did not work out. Stoker had
(28:20):
arranged a reading of the Dracula story in play form
at the theater before the novel came out, Irving declared
it dreadful the fool Um. At this point in time,
the Lyceum was faltering. The plays that they staged were
not doing as well as they once had, and Stoker
had thought that Dracula might be an opportunity to regain
(28:42):
some interest in financial footing for the business, but Irving
would not have it, and then the theater had a fire.
The building was not destroyed, but they lost a lot
of their stock, props, and scenery. It was expensive and
messy as all of these problems piled up, and the
Lyceum had to enter into a receivership so that its
assets could be liquidated to cover its debts. The productions continued,
(29:05):
although in less grand stagings than the theater had once seen.
Henry Irving gave his last performance in October nineteen o five.
He died that night, just after returning to his hotel.
Stoker got there soon after his friend had collapsed, but
it was too late to save his life. After Irving's death,
Bram Stoker wrote about his own life and his long
(29:27):
business partnership and friendship with Irving in a two volume
book titled Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. This was Stoker's
most popular work in his lifetime. Although this was not
some scandalous reveal of the man behind the public face.
Bram Stoker wrote of Irving in the most positive, agilation
soaked way imaginable. At this point, Stoker was without the
(29:51):
job that had required all of his attention for so
many years, and so he turned to writing full time.
From nineteen o five to nineteen eleven, he published several
short stories and novels in addition to his Irving memoir.
The last of these was The Layer of the White Worm.
It's a very strange horror tale with a lot going
on in terms of plot threads, including a story about
(30:13):
Mongoose's Yeah, there's a whole lot going on in that.
Some of it is um very outdated in terms of
how different people so the worlds are perceived. In his
last year, Stoker found himself financially strapped. He did some
more theater management to make ends meet, but primarily he
continued to focus on writing. Dracula continued to be popular
(30:35):
enough to earn some royalties, and Stoker also wrote a
bit as a journalist for the Daily Chronicle, profiling notable
figures of the day. He also did something that seems
a little bit odd, which is that he took up
the flag of censorship, as in he was pro censorship.
He advocated for banning inappropriate books and writing that quote.
A close analysis will show that the only emotions which
(30:57):
in the long run harm are those arising from sex impulses.
During that time, his health also declined. He had a
series of strokes starting in nineteen o six, and in
nineteen ten he had what he described as a breakdown
from overwork. That was on a petition for a grant
from the Royal Literary Fund in nineteen eleven. Continually, dwindling
(31:20):
finances led Bram and Florence to move into a more
modest apartment. They left the one that had been their
home in London for more than three decades. Bram Stoker
died at the age of sixty four in nineteen twelve.
That was the same week that the Titanic sank. In
the days leading up to his passing, he had, like
all of London, been transfixed by the story of the
(31:40):
ship's demise and the investigation that was soon to begin.
Even in death, Stoker left something of a mystery. There
are three causes of death listed they are kidney disease, exhaustion,
and locomotor ataxia, So that last one, locomotor ataxia, was
generally used as a synonym for tertiary syphilis, and that,
(32:03):
of course has led to all kinds of speculation about various,
usually salacious ways that he could have contracted syphilis. But
looking at all of his symptoms and his behavior leading
up to his death, that doesn't really add up. It's
possible that he was misdiagnosed due to some of the
lingering effects of the strokes he had had, but we
(32:23):
will not ever really know. Yeah, I have read. Uh
some biographers are like, We're not even sure why the
corner put multiple causes of death when just saying kidney
disease would have covered it. Um. But this fascination with
the possibility that Stoker could have had syphilis is really
part of a much bigger speculation that has gone on
(32:44):
for over a century about the author's sexuality, and he
seems in so many ways to be a tangle of
repression and confusion regarding sexuality and desire in his writing,
with so much erotic content that it sometimes seems he
doesn't even realize he is, including There are multitudes of
papers analyzing the sexuality of Dracula and the disdain for
(33:06):
the Victorian new woman that is present in a lot
of Stoker's work. His obsession with figures like Whitman and Irving,
and his friendship with Oscar Wilde, who he saw goes
through the trial that ultimately, you know, kind of ruined
Oscar Wild's life, have naturally led to speculation about an
attraction to men that he may never have truly recognized.
But this, like his childhood infirmity and his cause of death,
(33:28):
can never be conclusively known. What we do know, though,
is that Dracula has never been out of print. It
has been adapted into films and musicals and ballet, and
has inspired innumerable other vampire stories, and it also just
continues to do so. Oh Bram Stoker's Dracula. Um, we
can talk more about it in the behind the scenes. Yes,
(33:52):
he's so um fascinating and complex. And I really did
not know all of that while Whitman stuff to the
degree that laid well and I took a second while
we were kind of in our in in a sponsor
break movements um to see, I don't think we mentioned
any connection to bram Stoker in the Walt Whitman episode. Yeah,
(34:13):
I don't think so. Um I yeah, I want to
rewatch all of the Dracula now and think about him
in this way. Um. I don't have regular listener mail,
I have an illustrative tale. I'm eager for this. Well,
(34:34):
it's just one of those things where it's kind of
a peek behind how this works. And you mentioning that
you looked up in the Walt Whitman episode whether we
mentioned bram Stoker kind of plays into it. Um. This
is uh. I got a Facebook message from our listener
and our friend Mariam, who I met through the podcast
and and have you know, exchanged notes with back and forth.
(34:56):
We met her also at one of our live shows
and she mentioned that she was doing paper on pandemics
and she had found an older episode of Stuff You
Missed in History class that talked about the Black Plague
and she thought there had been a more recent one
with the two of us, but couldn't find it. And
it gave me a moment where I was like, I
have to look this up because I don't remember. Um.
(35:17):
And it is one of those things that I feel
like comes up often and We've talked about it a
little before, but I I always like to illustrate it.
It literally just the same as we were, like, did
we do a bram Stoker episode? Um, there are moments
where the Black Death and things like plague in particular,
and bram Stoker is another good example, and Walt Woman
because he comes up in many things where it's really
(35:40):
hard to remember what we haven't haven't not done as
a full episode, particularly when that topic comes up in
many other episodes as sort of a secondary piece of
the story. So it it always cracks me up a
little bit because people will often be like, you did
an episode on this, and we're like, no, we'd and
(36:00):
sometimes we will realize that what has happened is that
they have stitched together what they thought was a longer
episode in their head. Uh. Sometimes it is people confusing
our show for other shows. Yeah, and I'm not making
fun of anybody, because I have absolutely done this before
where I've been like I remember hearing this on an
(36:21):
episode of n Invisible and it was like actually on
Criminal or something like it was those shows are very dissimilar.
I don't know how. I don't think that's a real
example from my actual life. But we have for sure
had people email us and say, hey, I just I'm
trying to find this episode you all did and I
can't find it anywhere, and I'm like, that was not us.
I'm really sorry. Yeah, it's just uh an interesting illustratous
(36:45):
example of how and sometimes we don't even know for sure.
We literally have to go back to an index that
Tracy put together a while back when we were changing
um over the way our website worked, and she just
gathered all of our metadata into a big document, especially
when you go back to shows that were before you
and I hosted. I I have a lot of gaps
(37:06):
in my knowledge of that, even though we try to
keep track of it and look at it periodically. But
it is an interesting thing and I feel like it's
a good illustrative example of what has often come up
in the show. I feel like it's come up a
lot lately of cases like Bram Stoker where he misremembers
things about his past, and there are oftentimes it came
(37:29):
up to in the Elena Blovotsky episode. People will report
even their own biographies incorrectly, and sometimes in some cases
the initial response is to presume a sort of nefarious
level that they're lying or covering something up. But it's
also worth noting that people have faulty memories. Is often
(37:55):
also what occludes historical records is that even when you're
talking is someone fairly recently after an event has taken place,
they will relate the events incorrectly. Um. Just just a
little point of reference for everyone as we all talk
about history all the time, to remember personal personal accounts
(38:16):
are great, uh and sometimes like the most primary source
you can get. But also to remember that they are
not remembering necessarily right. And one day someone will um
be like, Holly and Tracy remembered stuff incorrectly, and we'll
be like, that is correct. Yeah, I definitely remembered it
(38:37):
incorrectly all the time. Anyway, that was my little trip down.
I wonder if people realize how tricky it is to
keep dragon what we've actually done episodes. If you would
like to write to us and ask us questions about
episodes we may or may not remember doing, you can
do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(39:00):
You can also find us on social media as missed
in History, and you can subscribe to the show them.
Just remember to do that you only have to remember
for a second. You can do that on the I
heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is
you listen. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
(39:21):
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracy.
The story that begins with Jonathan Harker's travels to Transylvania
on a business trip to complete a real estate deal
(00:23):
is one almost everybody knows. If I tell you that phrase,
you would say, I would say Dracula, right, because Dracula
is iconic. And we have talked about Dracula on several
episodes of this podcast, when we talked about the lives
of Christopher Lee and f. W. Murnow and Bella Lugosi
and Dwight Fry, And it seems like we must have
(00:43):
talked about the life of Bram Stoker before. Yeah, we
have not. No, we had a whole conversation where you
were like, I can't believe we haven't done this, and
I was like, but we did, though, No, it has
come up. I feel like what's come up more than
Bram Stoker himself is his estate and his widow not
giving people permission to adapt his work. But really we
(01:07):
have not talked about him at all. Uh It this
is a case where once I started getting into the research.
After you and I had that discussion, I knew we
had not talked about it at all, because there's part
of his story I would have remembered and have been
texting all of my friends about for the last several
days leading up to this recording. So today we are
(01:29):
going to talk about Bram Stoker. Abraham Stoker was born
on November eight eight His parents lived in the Clontarf
suburb of Dublin, Ireland. His father was also named Abraham Stoker.
His mother was Charlotte Matilda Blake Thornley Stoker, and this
was a large family. Braham had two siblings when he
(01:50):
was born, and the Stokers had another four more children
after him. And as a child, Bram, who was still
going by Abraham at that age but to separate from
his dad go ahead and go to his adopted name
of Brann, was not healthy. He was confined to his
bed or wherever an adult would carry him for the
first seven years of his life. And we don't actually
(02:11):
know what the nature of this illness was, and there
have been all kinds of theories, from it possibly having
been some sort of a fever, to a psychological element
being part of it, possibly a trauma of some kind,
but this is absolutely all speculation. We do not know
what was up here. Most biographers make the case that
this early phase of Stoker's life definitely influenced everything that
(02:34):
came afterward. Braham's mother told him about the cholera epidemic
that she had lived through, and specifically people being buried alive.
His father would tell him family stories, including military battles,
and also described plays that he had seen. All of
this seated Stoker's imagination, and he had a lot of
(02:56):
time alone with his thoughts since he couldn't really get
up and go with his siblings and his peers. But
despite this early start in this mystery ailment, Stoker made
a full recovery. Biographer Barbara Belford, who was one of
several biographers that wrote about him, mentions how very odd
it is that Stoker never gave any detail of his
(03:17):
illness in his writing about himself. This was not a
family that was ignorant of medical matters. His uncle, William
Stoker was the family doctor. He also had three brothers
who became doctors. But the truth of those early years
seems to have been obscured and lost to time. Although
a lot of scholars of Stoker's work have scoured his
(03:39):
writing for clues like any time he mentions a child
being ill, or they like is this a reference to
his youth? But details regarding the end of his illness
are as murky as the illnesses itself. He would later write, quote,
this early weakness passed away, and I grew into a
strong boy in time, in large to the biggest member
of my family. In eighteen sixty four, when Stoker was seventeen,
(04:01):
he enrolled at Trinity College at the University of Dublin,
And while he may have started life in pretty poor
health as a college student, he was actually really athletic.
He was an accomplished gymnast and a rugby player. He
also participated in endurance racewalking. He won prizes in five
and seven mile walks. He also cut a pretty striking figure.
(04:23):
He was six ft two with red hair, and he
was popular. Invited to join both the Historical Society and
the Philosophical Society, and he was elected to positions of
responsibility in each of them. His time at Trinity overlapped
with that of Oscar Wilde, who was younger than Stoker.
The two of them knew each other, and Bram had
actually nominated Wild for membership of the Philosophical Society. Yeah,
(04:47):
that's an interesting overlap. It will come up again in
just a bit. So here's the thing. Stoker's performance in
school did not really hint at his future legacy. While
he excelled at sports, was kind of an average student academically,
but he was writing essays and papers about things that
sparked his interest in his societal participations, including one's titled
(05:11):
Sensationalism in Fiction and Society and the Necessity for Political Honesty.
In eighteen seventy, he graduated from Trinity. He would later
say he graduated with honors in mathematics. This is untrue.
Trinity College actually has a biography of him, and they're like,
we don't know where he got this. If you're wondering
(05:31):
about it taking six years for him to earn a
bachelor's degree, that's because he was also working for all
but the first two years of that schooling. Stoker took
a civil service job at Dublin Castle thanks to an
assist from his father, who had also worked there as
a civil servant until his retirement in eighteen sixty five.
So he was working six and a half days a
(05:52):
week while also taking classes. So at that point six
years is past to me. Yes, me as well. And
it's one of those things where it's almost like this
sets the stage for his whole life of just being
constantly working on a lot of things and making time
for more things than anyone humans should fit in a day.
But after he finished school, he continued in his civil
(06:13):
service position, although he also continued to be interested in literature.
In his last years of school, Stoker became somewhat obsessed
with Walt Whitman, and that deep interest in the man
and his work continued long after graduation from Trinity. In
February seventy two, Stoker wrote Whitman a two thousand word
(06:34):
letter in which he said, among other things, quote, you
have shaken off the shackles and your wings are free.
I have the shackles on my shoulder still, but I
have no wings. Stoker's letter continues on to describe himself
and detail including the sorts of things that a person
today might normally share, maybe with a therapist, including how
(06:56):
he chose to interact with people, as well as the
sort of things he might tell pen pal, and then
it concluded with quote, now I have told you all
I know about myself. So couldn't actually mail this letter
to Whitman, though instead he left it in his desk
for the next four years, intending to make a clean
copy to send. This is a level of procrastination I
(07:18):
feel like I can experience in my life. I think
we all can. There's also the possibility, and again this
is a matter of speculation that some people have theorized
that he recognized how sort of raw and familiar this
letter was, and like, while that may have been his
truest feelings, he was also a little trepidacious about actually
(07:40):
sharing it, Like maybe I shouldn't send this to someone.
Maybe I don't even want to acknowledge that I just
wrote all of these things to my literary hero, because
that's weird. We'll talk more about this whole thing on Friday.
But after a gathering at which Whitman's work was criticized
and rebutted in eighteen seven six, and we should point
(08:01):
out that, you know, Whitman was controversial in his time.
There were poems, for example, that were part of Leaves
of Grass that were left out of some publications of
that work, particularly in Britain. There was a lot of
discussion about whether his work was appropriate in some cases,
but at that gathering Stoker provided the defense position of
the poet, And afterwards he wrote another letter to Walt Whitman,
(08:24):
similarly familiar and kind of intimate. He talked about having
defended him because he thinks he is such a great man.
And this time he actually mailed it, as well as
that one that had sat in his destroyer all of
the intervening time. And Whitman got these letters and replied
that he hoped that the two of them would one
day meet, and he commented on the unconventional, manly and
(08:46):
affectionate way in which Stoker had addressed him. Those are
all adjectives that I am quoting from Whitman regarding Bram
Stoker's writing. If if you want to know more about
Walt Whitman and his writing, we have a previous episode
on him that I feel has been a Saturday classic,
not that long ago, but it has been long ago
enough ago since we recorded it that I have no recollection.
(09:07):
If it mentions Bram Stoker in any way, I don't
think so, because I think I would have remembered. Uh
so anyway, Whitman had been particularly delighted in all this
by a passage in which Stoker called him the quote father, brother,
and wife to his soul. Whitman later told a friend
(09:28):
that he felt that Stoker had actually been writing to
himself and kind of working through his own thoughts, and
that he felt compelled to respond to the young man.
Although Stoker had hoped that Whitman might one day travel
to Ireland and they could meet, Whitman's health at the
time kept that from ever happening. Yeah, he was not
able to travel, um, but don't give up on that thought.
(09:51):
This writing, these letters to Walt Whitman are the only
instances of writing from Stoker's youth where he speaks so
openly about himself and his inner world. He tends to
kind of keep his private thoughts private for most of
the rest of his writing, so they have become a
really important part of his history. In eighteen seventy six,
(10:11):
Stoker was promoted into the newly created position of Inspector
of Courts of Petty Sessions, and this money had to
travel to various municipalities and audit their small claims courts.
Three years into the job, he published a book on
this subject called The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions
in Ireland. Bless him. This sounds dull as dirt. I
(10:32):
mean it's literally like going to a court and hearing
people talk about things. Uh. In one biography they mentioned
like him him sitting in on hearings about things like
dog licenses. Uh, you know, neighbors complaining against one another.
But meanwhile, while working in his civil service job by
day and probably finding it a little less than intellectually stimulating,
(10:55):
Stoker started a side hustle in the evenings as a
writer on more interesting topic. He first wrote theater reviews.
He did not get paid for these, but he did
create a significant change at the Dublin Evening Mail in
working on them. Up to that point, theater reviews normally
published two days after the show that was being reviewed,
so if you went to a show on Friday night,
(11:16):
the review of it would appear Sunday. But Stoker, who
again was a very busy bee and would pack a
lot of work into any day, instigated a shift so
that next day reviews would run at the paper. So
if you saw that Friday show, the review would run
on the Saturday morning and learning the discipline of writing
and doing this on a deadline enabled him to turn
his pen to more creative efforts, and he started writing
(11:39):
short stories as well. In eighteen seventy two, he had
actually already published the first of his short stories, that
was one called The Crystal Cup. But in the late
eighteen seventies he also started editing a fiction magazine. In
eighteen seventy five, he published a novella over several installments
in the periodical The Shamrock. That story is called The
Primrose Path was published under the name A Stoker Esquire
(12:02):
that unfolds over ten chapters. This is a morality tale
about the dangers of alcohol, and it tells the story
of a carpenter from Dublin who moves to London and
becomes an alcoholic, which ultimately leads to misery, so much misery.
It's a very dark, dark story in many ways. In
late eighteen seventy six, bram Stoker wrote a theater review
(12:26):
that changed the course of his life. And we're going
to talk about that. After we first paused for a
sponsor break, as we said before the break. In eighteen
seventy six, bram Stoker wrote a review this review was
of Henry Irving's performance as Hamlet, and it was glowing.
(12:47):
Bram was already something of a Henry Irving fan. He
had seen the famous actor on stage for the first
time in eighteen sixty seven, when he had attended a
performance of The Rivals in Dublin, and he had, when
he saw that first performance, been thinking about a career
in acting himself, and Irving asked Stoker out to dinner
as a thank you for this. This was a start
(13:08):
of a long and very close friendship. Henry Irving became
a pivotal figure in Bram Stoker's life, so it's worth
giving his biography a little attention, just for context. So
Irving was born John Henry broad Rib in Somerset, England,
on February and when he was six his parents moved
to Bristol, where his father had found a new job,
(13:28):
but they left John Henry with an aunt and uncle
in Cornwall rather than moving him to a city. He
did rejoin his parents a few years later in London
at the age of ten. He started work as a
clerk as a young man, but really always wanted a
life in the theater, so with financial assistance from a relative,
he started purchasing costumes and wigs, and then he bought
(13:48):
a role for himself in a local production of Romeo
and Juliet. He appeared in that as Henry Irving. From
there he started working with stock companies. This a bit
performer and was an hund of shows touring Great Britain. Yeah,
I read one statistics that said something like over the
course of three years he was in four hundred different roles,
so he was doing a lot of very small bit
(14:11):
players kind of acting. Irving really started gating recognition in
the mid eighteen sixties, and in eighteen seventy one he
became very famous for his appearance in The Bells at
the Lyceum Theater. He appeared at the Lyceum as the
star of the company for the next several years, and
it was in late eighteen seventy six that he starred
in Hamlet, which was of course reviewed by Bram Stoker
(14:33):
for the Dublin Evening Mail, and after reading that review
in the morning, Irving wanted to have dinner with Stoker
that very evening. The two men wrote letters to one
another for several years, and in eighteen seventies seven, Irving
made a move that really changed Stoker's life. He purchased
the Lyceum Theater in London and asked Stoker to be
(14:53):
its manager. Irving would work as the director of the
productions and of course also star in them, and then
Stoker would handle the business, from tickets to press releases
and managing the staff. This was a really big ask.
Henry Irving was the most famous actor in late nineteenth
century England, and he was also known to be intense
(15:14):
and demanding and uncompromising. And Bram Stoker, who adored Irving,
didn't think twice about it. He bid a jew to
Ireland and his civil service job to start a new
as Henry Irving's business manager, essentially in eighteen seventy eight,
and this job was not a hobby job, so the
two of them could hang out. The Lyceum was large,
(15:34):
with a seating capacity of two thousand, and it was
a social hub for London society in addition to all
the regular business of his position, entertaining the illustrious patrons
of the theater after shows with luxurious dinners that also
fell under Stoker's job description. This is a gigantic job
for one person. Yes, it is in doing this though
(15:57):
he met numerous luminaries, including Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and Prime Minister Gladstone. This is so much work, and
despite these long hours demanded of this job, Stoker still
found time to write, and this was on top of
the fact that he was writing several dozen letters a
day on behalf of Henry Irving, so handling both his
(16:20):
business correspondents and his personal correspondents and things like fan mail. Somehow,
while doing all of this, Stoker also got married in
eighteen seventy eight to Florence Malcolm. Florence was eleven years
younger than he was and was pretty outgoing, whereas he
was more shy and reserved. Her claim to historical fame
(16:41):
is being the exquisitely pretty girl that Oscar Wilde fell
in love with, and she didn't apparently tell wild that
she had married his friend from Trinity. While he was
off traveling. Oscar Wilde wrote her a letter that he
wished to have a gold cross back that he had
given to her because it represents the sweetest time of
his youth. She told him that he could come to
(17:03):
their home and get it, but he thought that would
be inappropriate and asked that they meet at her parents
home instead, and Florence, for her part, also wanted something back.
She wanted all of the letters that she had sent
Oscar Wilde when they were corresponding and courting. It is
unclear if these things were ever exchanged and given back
to each other. Uh This whole interaction, and this sort
(17:26):
of triangle of relationships is often summarized as Florence having
the choice to marry either Bram Stoker or Oscar Wilde.
But while Oscar Wilde, in his writing to her, does
seem to have really been hurt by Florence marrying his friend,
there's no evidence that he was ever suggesting that he
should be her husband or that they should get married,
and wild An Stoker did remain friends despite this whole thing.
(17:50):
Bram and Florence had one child, a son named Noel.
That was the first year after they were married, maybe
in response to finding himself a father. In eighty one,
Stoker published a book of children's stories called Under the Sunset.
There didn't seem to be a lot of discord in
the Stoker marriage, but there also didn't seem to be
that much closeness or devotion between them either. No, they
(18:12):
did a lot of stuff separately. Um Stoker was a
man who valued efficiency and organization, and he was absolutely
excellent at managing Irving's every need at the theater, and
he seemed to put his job and Irving ahead of
everything else in his life, including his own family. For example,
the newlywed Stoker's even skipped a honeymoon instead, Bram and
(18:35):
Florence had traveled to Birmingham so Bram could work. Stoker
had not even told his boss that he was getting married.
In eighteen eighty three, the Lyceum Theater mounted a tour
in North America. Stoker managed all of the logistics, so
the first of many such tours, and Stoker collected his
experiences into a travelog called A Glimpse of America that
(18:57):
came out in eighteen eighties six. On these travels to
the U S, Stoker met two presidents, McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt,
and more importantly, he was finally able to meet Walt Whitman.
And at this point these two writers had been trading
letters for years, so there was a pretty easy friendship
to their meeting. Although descriptions kind of make it sound
(19:18):
like Stoker was initially a little nervous there was one
blemish to mar this beautiful occasion, though Henry Irving had
insisted on going to meet Walt Whitman as well, so
Stoker felt a little bit cheated of the intimate conversation
that he had dreamed of having with his idol. Woman
noted also that Stoker had switched from going by Abraham
Stoker to Bram Stoker, and he did not particularly like
(19:41):
that shift in name. He just didn't think it was
very dignified. But overall it was a really, really good meeting,
and Stoker declared Walt Whitman to be quote, a man
amongst men. During the eighteen nineties, Stoker was still publishing novels,
including The Waters Moo and that feature star crossed lovers
as part of the story. There's also The Shoulder of Shasta,
(20:03):
which is a romance set in northern California. Even as
these books were being published, he was also working on
what would become his masterpiece, Dracula. While Bram Stoker was
normally a very fast writer, Dracula took him far longer
than his previous novels. He wrote it over the course
of seven years, and perhaps even longer, but that's how
(20:23):
long we know he was working on it while he
was touring with Irving and working on other writing projects.
We'll talk a little more about some of the research
that went into the most famous of Stoker's books after
we first take a break for a word from the
sponsors that keep stuff UMIs in history class going. If
(20:46):
you look at the notes that Stoker compiled as he
was assembling his Vampiric Tail, it becomes really apparent that
he was, as we mentioned earlier, meticulous. He had carefully
plotted out Jonathan Harker's journey to Transylvania by train, using
actual train schedules and only using connections that he believed
would have actually worked, and he created a table of
(21:08):
all of the correspondents that would appear in the book
to ensure that the dates that they posted in the
dates that they would arrive in the recipient's hands was realistic.
It also seems as though all of his work running
at theater and tours kind of informed the way he
constructed narrative. He also was a writer who really believed
in research, and his work researching what would become the
(21:29):
novel Dracula is really deeply associated with the town of Whitby, England,
on the country's east coast. He is said to have
visited a library in Whitby to look at a specific
selection of the Special Collections title by William Wilkinson, which
is an account of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia
with various political observations relating to them. It is from
(21:52):
this book that he is said to have learned of
the name Dracula in relation to lad Tepeesh. Prior to this,
Stoker was planning to name his villainous character Count vomp Here.
This was a rare book. It's an odd thing for
Stoker to have just known about. But a friend he
knew from his theater circle, Arminius van Berry, had told
(22:12):
him about the story of the locking a count and
the book that he could find it in. Yeah, piece
of knowledge. It's a very strange thing, right. I can
only imagine as a librarian having someone walk in and
be like, hey, you know that rare book that you
don't even tell people you have. I would like to
see it please. I mean, it's literally that strange um.
(22:37):
Stoker then visited the Whippy Museum to work on that
route that we mentioned a moment ago for Harker to take,
including making notes about latitude and longitude, and next Stoker
consulted with the Royal Coast Guard at the nearby harbor
and discussed the topic that would figure prominently in the
story of Dracula. In five, the ship Dmitri had left
(22:57):
the port of Narva in Estonia and had on the
ground near Whitby. According to the locals, only a few
members of the crew survived, and there was a black
dog that emerged from the ship and ran off while
rescue efforts were under way. The Dmitri had been carrying
crates of silver sand. That may sound mysterious, but silver
sand is actually a fine white sand that is commonly
(23:19):
used in construction mortar. But if you've read Dracula, that
might sound familiar, but not exactly the way you remember it.
Stoker borrowed the story of the Dimitri for the novel,
making the ship the conveyance of Count Dracula from his
home country to London, but in the fictional version the
name is changed to the Demeter, which also invokes the
(23:41):
Greek goddess and its associations with the cycle of life
and death, and Narva changes to Varna, Bulgaria as the
departure point for the ship, and Stoker's fictionalized version the
silver sand remains, but the ship is also filled with
crates of earth from Count Dracula's homeland, and then, of
course the black Dog becomes an embodiment of the vampire himself.
(24:03):
Stoker's research wasn't confined to Whitby. He continued to consult
the library regularly to make notes that would contribute to
Dracula once he was back in London, but would be
is very closely associated with the book at this point.
Vampire stories long predated Dracula, and like there are a
vampire like entities like all over the world in various
(24:25):
mythology and folklore and fiction. But Stoker's version of vampireism
is really what we've come to know as like the
classic vampire tropes, the vampire being able to shape shift
into animals, the Count suddenly becoming almost crazed with thirst
when Harker cuts himself shaving, and the vampire needing to
be invited into a home. All that's present here in
(24:47):
the nineteen o one Icelandic edition of Dracula titled Mocked
Meer Crana which translates to powers of darkness. The preface
that Stoker wrote includes insistence that the events relate in
the Dracula story are true, writing quote, I am quite
convinced that there is no doubt whatever that the events
here described really took place, however unbelievable and incomprehensible they
(25:09):
might appear at first sight, and I am further convinced
that they must always remain, to some extent incomprehensible, although
continuing research in psychology and natural sciences may in years
to come give logical explanation of such strange happenings, which
at present neither scientists nor the secret police can understand.
(25:31):
I state again that this mysterious tragedy which is here
described is completely true in all its external respects, though
naturally I have reached a different conclusion on certain points
than those involved in the story. But the events are incontrovertible,
and so many people know of them that they cannot
be denied. So this has led to all kinds of
(25:52):
speculation since it came out about whether Stoker was referencing
Jack the Ripper here. The Icelandic version of the book
is different from the originally published version though having been
abridged quite a bit when it was translated back into English,
and it became really apparent that the original translator of
(26:13):
Stoker's work into Icelandic Vladimar Asmondson, had reworked the plot
significantly and created a very different story. I remember when
the English speaking world found out about this and was like, what, Yeah,
it's actually really good. Um. If anybody wants to seek
it out, I think right now as we record this
(26:35):
in October, Uh, if you have an Amazon Prime account,
I think you can download the Kindle version for free,
and Audible has the audio version available as a freebee. Um.
And it's really quite delightful. And if you are a
person who loves Dracula, it's very interesting because there are
characters you have never seen before in the story are
(26:56):
events play out very differently. Some things are condensed, some
things are gone completely. Uh. And it's just a new
way to experience this piece of lore. Yeah. I also
feel like I should just clarify that most people in
Iceland also speak English. When I say the English speaking world,
I mean like places like the United States in Britain. Yes. Uh.
(27:18):
When Dracula was originally published in seven it was really
well received, but it really didn't hit the global long
reaching popularity it would eventually achieve. It was kind of like,
you know, if you see a movie and it's like
a great movie that year, but you don't think, like, oh,
this is going to launch a kajillion things. Uh. Stoker's mother, Charlotte,
is said to have quite liked it and actually believed
(27:39):
it would be a huge success and and be one
of the things for which her son would be remembered.
Publishers in the United States were not initially interested in
this story, so Stoker actually purchased the U S copyright
for himself. The first American edition of the book appeared
in eight Analysis of the text alongside Stoker's life story
(28:00):
has sometimes led people to believe that Dracula as a
character is based at least partially on Henry Irving and
his demanding nature. It's also possible that rather than modeling
it on Irving, Stoker was kind of thinking about how
Irving could play the count in a stage version of
the story that actually did not work out. Stoker had
(28:20):
arranged a reading of the Dracula story in play form
at the theater before the novel came out, Irving declared
it dreadful the fool Um. At this point in time,
the Lyceum was faltering. The plays that they staged were
not doing as well as they once had, and Stoker
had thought that Dracula might be an opportunity to regain
(28:42):
some interest in financial footing for the business, but Irving
would not have it, and then the theater had a fire.
The building was not destroyed, but they lost a lot
of their stock, props, and scenery. It was expensive and
messy as all of these problems piled up, and the
Lyceum had to enter into a receivership so that its
assets could be liquidated to cover its debts. The productions continued,
(29:05):
although in less grand stagings than the theater had once seen.
Henry Irving gave his last performance in October nineteen o five.
He died that night, just after returning to his hotel.
Stoker got there soon after his friend had collapsed, but
it was too late to save his life. After Irving's death,
Bram Stoker wrote about his own life and his long
(29:27):
business partnership and friendship with Irving in a two volume
book titled Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. This was Stoker's
most popular work in his lifetime. Although this was not
some scandalous reveal of the man behind the public face.
Bram Stoker wrote of Irving in the most positive, agilation
soaked way imaginable. At this point, Stoker was without the
(29:51):
job that had required all of his attention for so
many years, and so he turned to writing full time.
From nineteen o five to nineteen eleven, he published several
short stories and novels in addition to his Irving memoir.
The last of these was The Layer of the White Worm.
It's a very strange horror tale with a lot going
on in terms of plot threads, including a story about
(30:13):
Mongoose's Yeah, there's a whole lot going on in that.
Some of it is um very outdated in terms of
how different people so the worlds are perceived. In his
last year, Stoker found himself financially strapped. He did some
more theater management to make ends meet, but primarily he
continued to focus on writing. Dracula continued to be popular
(30:35):
enough to earn some royalties, and Stoker also wrote a
bit as a journalist for the Daily Chronicle, profiling notable
figures of the day. He also did something that seems
a little bit odd, which is that he took up
the flag of censorship, as in he was pro censorship.
He advocated for banning inappropriate books and writing that quote.
A close analysis will show that the only emotions which
(30:57):
in the long run harm are those arising from sex impulses.
During that time, his health also declined. He had a
series of strokes starting in nineteen o six, and in
nineteen ten he had what he described as a breakdown
from overwork. That was on a petition for a grant
from the Royal Literary Fund in nineteen eleven. Continually, dwindling
(31:20):
finances led Bram and Florence to move into a more
modest apartment. They left the one that had been their
home in London for more than three decades. Bram Stoker
died at the age of sixty four in nineteen twelve.
That was the same week that the Titanic sank. In
the days leading up to his passing, he had, like
all of London, been transfixed by the story of the
(31:40):
ship's demise and the investigation that was soon to begin.
Even in death, Stoker left something of a mystery. There
are three causes of death listed they are kidney disease, exhaustion,
and locomotor ataxia, So that last one, locomotor ataxia, was
generally used as a synonym for tertiary syphilis, and that,
(32:03):
of course has led to all kinds of speculation about various,
usually salacious ways that he could have contracted syphilis. But
looking at all of his symptoms and his behavior leading
up to his death, that doesn't really add up. It's
possible that he was misdiagnosed due to some of the
lingering effects of the strokes he had had, but we
(32:23):
will not ever really know. Yeah, I have read. Uh
some biographers are like, We're not even sure why the
corner put multiple causes of death when just saying kidney
disease would have covered it. Um. But this fascination with
the possibility that Stoker could have had syphilis is really
part of a much bigger speculation that has gone on
(32:44):
for over a century about the author's sexuality, and he
seems in so many ways to be a tangle of
repression and confusion regarding sexuality and desire in his writing,
with so much erotic content that it sometimes seems he
doesn't even realize he is, including There are multitudes of
papers analyzing the sexuality of Dracula and the disdain for
(33:06):
the Victorian new woman that is present in a lot
of Stoker's work. His obsession with figures like Whitman and Irving,
and his friendship with Oscar Wilde, who he saw goes
through the trial that ultimately, you know, kind of ruined
Oscar Wild's life, have naturally led to speculation about an
attraction to men that he may never have truly recognized.
But this, like his childhood infirmity and his cause of death,
(33:28):
can never be conclusively known. What we do know, though,
is that Dracula has never been out of print. It
has been adapted into films and musicals and ballet, and
has inspired innumerable other vampire stories, and it also just
continues to do so. Oh Bram Stoker's Dracula. Um, we
can talk more about it in the behind the scenes. Yes,
(33:52):
he's so um fascinating and complex. And I really did
not know all of that while Whitman stuff to the
degree that laid well and I took a second while
we were kind of in our in in a sponsor
break movements um to see, I don't think we mentioned
any connection to bram Stoker in the Walt Whitman episode. Yeah,
(34:13):
I don't think so. Um I yeah, I want to
rewatch all of the Dracula now and think about him
in this way. Um. I don't have regular listener mail,
I have an illustrative tale. I'm eager for this. Well,
(34:34):
it's just one of those things where it's kind of
a peek behind how this works. And you mentioning that
you looked up in the Walt Whitman episode whether we
mentioned bram Stoker kind of plays into it. Um. This
is uh. I got a Facebook message from our listener
and our friend Mariam, who I met through the podcast
and and have you know, exchanged notes with back and forth.
(34:56):
We met her also at one of our live shows
and she mentioned that she was doing paper on pandemics
and she had found an older episode of Stuff You
Missed in History class that talked about the Black Plague
and she thought there had been a more recent one
with the two of us, but couldn't find it. And
it gave me a moment where I was like, I
have to look this up because I don't remember. Um.
(35:17):
And it is one of those things that I feel
like comes up often and We've talked about it a
little before, but I I always like to illustrate it.
It literally just the same as we were, like, did
we do a bram Stoker episode? Um, there are moments
where the Black Death and things like plague in particular,
and bram Stoker is another good example, and Walt Woman
because he comes up in many things where it's really
(35:40):
hard to remember what we haven't haven't not done as
a full episode, particularly when that topic comes up in
many other episodes as sort of a secondary piece of
the story. So it it always cracks me up a
little bit because people will often be like, you did
an episode on this, and we're like, no, we'd and
(36:00):
sometimes we will realize that what has happened is that
they have stitched together what they thought was a longer
episode in their head. Uh. Sometimes it is people confusing
our show for other shows. Yeah, and I'm not making
fun of anybody, because I have absolutely done this before
where I've been like I remember hearing this on an
(36:21):
episode of n Invisible and it was like actually on
Criminal or something like it was those shows are very dissimilar.
I don't know how. I don't think that's a real
example from my actual life. But we have for sure
had people email us and say, hey, I just I'm
trying to find this episode you all did and I
can't find it anywhere, and I'm like, that was not us.
I'm really sorry. Yeah, it's just uh an interesting illustratous
(36:45):
example of how and sometimes we don't even know for sure.
We literally have to go back to an index that
Tracy put together a while back when we were changing
um over the way our website worked, and she just
gathered all of our metadata into a big document, especially
when you go back to shows that were before you
and I hosted. I I have a lot of gaps
(37:06):
in my knowledge of that, even though we try to
keep track of it and look at it periodically. But
it is an interesting thing and I feel like it's
a good illustrative example of what has often come up
in the show. I feel like it's come up a
lot lately of cases like Bram Stoker where he misremembers
things about his past, and there are oftentimes it came
(37:29):
up to in the Elena Blovotsky episode. People will report
even their own biographies incorrectly, and sometimes in some cases
the initial response is to presume a sort of nefarious
level that they're lying or covering something up. But it's
also worth noting that people have faulty memories. Is often
(37:55):
also what occludes historical records is that even when you're
talking is someone fairly recently after an event has taken place,
they will relate the events incorrectly. Um. Just just a
little point of reference for everyone as we all talk
about history all the time, to remember personal personal accounts
(38:16):
are great, uh and sometimes like the most primary source
you can get. But also to remember that they are
not remembering necessarily right. And one day someone will um
be like, Holly and Tracy remembered stuff incorrectly, and we'll
be like, that is correct. Yeah, I definitely remembered it
(38:37):
incorrectly all the time. Anyway, that was my little trip down.
I wonder if people realize how tricky it is to
keep dragon what we've actually done episodes. If you would
like to write to us and ask us questions about
episodes we may or may not remember doing, you can
do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(39:00):
You can also find us on social media as missed
in History, and you can subscribe to the show them.
Just remember to do that you only have to remember
for a second. You can do that on the I
heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is
you listen. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
(39:21):
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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