Dracula and the Eastern Question

Dracula and the Eastern Question British and French Vampire Narratives of the Nineteenth-Century Near East Matthew Gibson

Dracula and the Eastern Question

By the same author YEATS, COLERIDGE AND THE ROMANTIC SAGE

Dracula and the Eastern Question British and French Vampire Narratives of the Nineteenth-Century Near East Matthew Gibson

Matthew Gibson 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978 1 4039 9477 6 hardback ISBN-10: 1 4039 9477 3 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Maps Acknowledgements Note on Translations vi vii viii Introduction 1 1 Polidori s The Vampyre and the Dangers of Philhellenism to Italian Liberation 15 2 J. Sheridan Le Fanu s Carmilla and the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich (1867) 42 3 Bram Stoker s Dracula and the Treaty of Berlin (1878) 69 4 Bram Stoker s The Lady of the Shroud and the Bosnia Crisis (1908 09) 96 5 The Vampires of Illyria: Nodier, Mérimée and the French Occupation of the Dalmation Coast 123 6 Jules Verne s Le Château des Carpathes (1892) and the Romans of Transylvania 147 Conclusion 173 Appendix: Translations from Mérimée s La Guzla 175 Notes 188 Short Chronology of Relevant Events 207 Bibliography 209 Index 217 v

List of Maps 1. South Eastern Europe in 1812 35 2. The Balkans after the Treaty of Berlin 72 3. Map of South Western Transylvania in Reclus Voyage 155 vi

Acknowledgements I would like to extend my thanks to Dr Terry Hale of Hull University and Dr Diane Mason of Bath Spa University College for their willingness to share vital information with me, and would also like to express my gratitude to the University of Surrey for having provided research money which allowed me to undertake valuable trips to the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast and to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (François Mitterand) in Paris. In particular, I would like to thank the staff at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, Leeds University Library and Mrs Virginia Murray, curator of the John Murray Archive, for their generous help while conducting my research. I should also like to extend a very warm thank-you to my patient map-maker, Vaughan Allen. The book is dedicated to the memory of my parents Hugh Ian and Sheila June Gibson. The author and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyrighted material. An extract of a letter by Jules Verne to his father. La Correspondance Familiale de Jules Verne, Lettre 159 de Jules Verne à son père, le lundi [novembre (?)] 1870, in Jules Verne (Lyons: La Manufacture, 1988), p. 454 is reproduced by permission of Olivier Dumas. An extract from John Polidori s letter to Lord Byron, 11 January 1817 by permission of John Murray Archive. An extract from John Polidori s letter to Gaetano Polidori, Dec 1813 (Angeli-Dennis collection, box 31, folder 5) by permission of University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Extracts from letters by Anthony Hope Hawkins to Bram Stoker (13 June 1897; 27 Jan 1898; 28 May 1901) by permission of A.P. Watt Ltd on behalf of John Hope Hawkins. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. vii

Note on Translations All translations from French and Italian are by the author. The attempt has been in most cases to prioritise exactitude over stylistic felicity. In nearly all cases (except where it would prove too cumbersome or obvious) I have provided notes reproducing the original text or have placed the original French beneath the English text. viii

Introduction In his amusing travel book of 1875, the mysteriously initialled R.H.R describes how he decided to relax after what he considered to have been one of the best meals of his life at the Russian consulate in Cattaro, Dalmatia: I got another chair, and stretched my legs on it; the natives stared no Oriental ever thinks of stretching his legs the acme of comfort for him is to tuck them under him. 1 This distinction between an Oriental and a Western custom is designed to show the exotic nature of his location what can be more exotic than a difference of custom in a function which for most of us seems natural, not cultural? but also to define the area in which the traveller finds himself: it is a part of the Orient, and he is amongst Orientals. Few people today would define the Dalmatian coast (now southern Croatia and Montenegro) as Oriental, although they would not hesitate, I should think, to describe it as Balkan, and a part of Eastern Europe. However, the idea of the South Eastern European countries of the Balkans as being not merely Eastern (in the sense of a Slavic Eastern Europe to which, as Larry Wolff has shown, 2 they have also variously been perceived as belonging since Venetian times) but Oriental (i.e., part of the East that not does include North Eastern Europe and Russia, and is mainly non-christian) is a common one throughout the nineteenth century and up until the first Balkan war. In Eothen (1835), Alexander Kinglake declared that having left Austro-Hungarian Semlin for Turkishoccupied Belgrade I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and Havoc of the East. 3 Europe ends at Belgrade for Kinglake, although in his travels to Constantinople he is almost oblivious of the Christian Slavs and interested only in the Turks, even though he would have travelled through Southern Serbia, an area by then independent of Ottoman rule. H. Charles Woods, 1