Book review: The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker; The Dublin Years

BRAM Stoker occupies a peculiar space in the pantheon of great Gothic novelists. In his lifetime he was better known as the business manager of the actor Henry Irving.

His most famous novel, Dracula, is one of those texts that surprise people when they actually read it: the story is so well known through its multiple stage, film, television, cartoon and parody versions that re-encountering the actual book can be a disconcerting experience. It is an intricate and oblique novel, a polyphonic story told by multiple narrators, and despite the archaic nature of the villain, it is suffused with “modern” communications technologies: typewriters, telegrams, phonographs.

Yet academic recognition came late to Stoker. It was well into the 1980s before Dracula was taken seriously by literary scholars. By contrast, Mary Shelley was always recognised as a “literary” figure whose output was not limited to Frankenstein, nor was Edgar Allen Poe remembered solely for The Pit and the Pendulum or The Fall Of The House Of Usher. William Beckford, as well as being the author of Vathek, was a significant art collector and taste-maker, and his other books – including the brilliant satires Modern Novel Writing and Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters – attracted critical attention. Horace Walpole’s The Castle Of Otranto did not overshadow his role in the Gothic Revival, or distract from his position as one of the finest letter writers of his age.

Stoker, however, is inextricably linked to Dracula. In part this may be because Dracula is a singular work within his oeuvre. Occasionally people make claims for the virtues of The Lair Of The White Worm or The Lady Of The Shroud, but books like Miss Betty or The Primrose Path (or even his first book, the non-fiction The Duties Of Clerks Of Petty Sessions In Ireland) seem sunk in oblivion. In part, the lack of properly scholarly labours can be attributed to a lack of primary biographical sources. Stoker kept a diary and filled memorandum books continually – certainly the details in Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving cannot be the work purely of memory. The whereabouts of these volumes is not, at present, known. It was as late as 1984 than an anonymous seller contacted the book dealer John McLaughlin to offer the typewritten and emended manuscript of Dracula (which revealed, for example, that it was called The Un-Dead until the last possible moment, and that the posthumously published story “Dracula’s Guest” was the original second chapter). Against such a background, any new texts which shed light on Stoker are to be welcomed.

Such a book is this. The journal, covering 1871-1882 is in the possession of Stoker’s great-grandson and this edition has been prepared by the Stoker expert Professor Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker, the great-grandson of Bram’s youngest brother, and the author of a sequel to Dracula.

So what light does it shed? Well, we learn that Stoker wrote some truly abysmal poetry, and that one of them is an acrostic spelling out the name “Bessie L’Estrange”, about whom he may have entertained some romantic feelings. Judging by lines like “Before we met I had not thought of love // Except in poems where it rhymes with dove” it’s unsurprising that if she did exist, she chose not to become Mrs Abraham Stoker. It is interesting to see Stoker as an Irish writer and there are some acutely observed anecdotes, ranging from the ghastly – young tyros using vomit on the floor of Exhibition Palace during a St Patrick’s Ball as an impromptu skating rink – to the genuinely pathetic: Stoker was well aware of the poverty around him. He had an ear for a good piece of craic. One old woman is overheard to say “he was always a good husband to me. All the years I was married to him he never once gave me a black eye”. There are a great many very laboured jokes, usually based on puns (“Why is death like a psalm? Because kicking the bucket resembles a can tickle [canticle]).

By far the most interesting aspect are the story ideas he jots down, some of which will eventually be alchemically transformed into Dracula. There is the story of a boy with a bottle of flies – shades of Renfield – and musings on the “strange waste of Death … the time & money spent on acquiring personal accomplishments which die with us & leave no trace”. Some of the story ideas show promise – Stoker beats both Neil Gaiman and Marie Philips in imagining Greek gods in contemporary dress – and some were perhaps best left in the notebook form: the heading “Mem for story ‘The Death Eels of the Wey’” is probably enough. There are moments that are truly touching and psychologically intriguing. What are we to make of this entry: “I felt as tho’ I were my own child – I feel an infinite pity for myself – Poor, poor little lonely child”?

That said, this is a curiously unsatisfactory volume. The editors have chosen to present selected snippets from the manuscript in thematically organised sections. We cannot tell, from this, much about Stoker’s development as a writer. A footnote tells us he was “not averse to occasional touches of off-colour humour” yet there is scant evidence for such presented here. Stoker married Florence Balcombe, who had been wooed by Oscar Wilde, in 1878 (when the Journal ends) and we are told that the volume does not tell us much about their relationship. It would be preferable if scholars could make their own judgment on that. In a very odd afterword, Dacre Stoker writes “there were important issues to be resolved. Posthumous copyright laws are complicated. Which country’s laws could protect the notes from public domain?” Stoker’s work is long out of copyright, and this seems to be a deliberate strategy to control access to his literary legacy, and one which jars with the ideals of academic endeavour. As such, this book hints at significance but prevents the reader from weighing the evidence accurately. It will no doubt sell to aficionados of Stoker’s work and at goth festivals in Whitby, but it will do little to bring Stoker out from under the overbearing fame of Dracula.

The Lost Journal Of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years

by Bram Stoker; edited by Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker

The Robson Press, 338pp, £18.99