Chapter 2: From Peasant to Nobleman
In contrast to the vampires described in popular literature of the nineteenth century, the medieval vampire did not have fangs; it was not pale or gaunt; it had no aversion to sunlight; nor did it have any sophistication or charisma. It certainly did not appear to its victims dressed immaculately for an upper-class dinner or ball, or sporting a long red cape. The whole sexual element, of a charming, smooth-talking, upper-class individual, was entirely missing in medieval stories. These characteristics were later additions to the myth, that came about as the vampire myth began to find its way into popular literature once the eighteenth-century panic about vampire sightings had died down.‘An enormous corpulence’
As far as we know from writings of the time, the medieval vampire was conceived of as a repellent creature with no sexual allure whatsoever. On the contrary, it was foul-smelling and ugly, and people would flee as soon as it appeared. There are several reports about sightings of vampires that date from this early period. One of the most graphic is that of William of Newburgh, also known as William Parvus, a twelfth-century English historian who made a study of ‘revenants’, that is, the deceased who come back from the dead.
In one case, Newburgh described a man of ‘evil conduct’, who escaped from jail and died when he fell out of the rafters of the roof in his bedroom (where he was hiding to spy on his wife, who was having an affair.) Newburgh relates that the man had a Christian burial, but that he later arose from his grave and wandered around the town, pursued by a pack of barking dogs. He killed a number of townspeople, terrorizing them into staying at home with their doors locked as soon as the sun went down. Eventually, the local people tired of this, and decided to trap the vampire in his lair. They went to the graveyard, dug up the man’s corpse, and laid it bare. A horrible sight awaited them. The corpse, as Newburgh describes it, was ‘swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces.’
He continues:
‘The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart.’
More fat vampires
By the eighteenth century, belief in vampires had reached a peak, so much so that a number of studies into the phenomenon were published, many of them by respected scholars. The most famous of these was by Augustin Calmet, a Benedictine scholar from Lorraine in France. In 1746, he presented his treatise, Dissertation on the apparition of angels, demons, and spirits; and on revenants and vampires in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Calmet wrongly supposed that the idea of the vampire as a reanimated corpse who survived by sucking blood was a new one, dating the phenomenon to the late seventeenth century. He wrote:
‘In this age, a new scene presents itself to our eyes and has done for about sixty years. In Hungary, Moravia, Silesia and Poland, men, it is said, who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, destroy their health and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings, by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out their hearts, or burning them. These are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, leeches ... In the twelfth century also, in England and Denmark, some resuscitations similar to those of Hungary were seen. But in no history do we read anything similar, so common, or so decided, as what is related to us of the vampires of Poland, Hungary and Moravia.’
In his treatise, Calmet carefully presented a collection of descriptions and sightings of vampires, but he himself remained ambivalent about their existence. Many of those who read his essay, however, took it to be positive proof that vampires were, indeed, stalking the land, and overall, it supported the superstitions about revenants. However, another Frenchman, Francois-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was extremely sceptical about Calmet’s findings, and in his Philosophical Dictionary, published in 1764, he employed his sharp wit to poke fun at the idea:
These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.
‘A barbarism of ignorance’
Despite Voltaire’s mocking review, Calmet’s treatise had such influence that the Empress Maria of Austria finally sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampirism in her territories. Like Voltaire, van Swieten was sceptical about the existence of vampires, but nonetheless he wrote a serious report about the allegations, entitled, A Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts. In this essay, published in 1768, he explained how the body decomposed, and how blood and gases might account for the ruddy complexion and swollen appearance of recently buried corpses. In conclusion he called the vampire myth ‘a barbarism of ignorance’, and said, ‘…all the fuss is nothing but a vain fear, a superstitious credulity, a dark and eventful imagination, simplicity and ignorance among the people.’ As a result of van Swieten’s findings, the Empress issued an edict forbidding people to exhume, mutilate, and burn buried corpses.
The aristocratic vampire
After this, the exhumations of corpses and persecution of living people with abnormalities of any kind thankfully died down. However, stories of vampires continued to thrill audiences, and were taken up in popular literature of all kinds. In the early nineteenth century, a suave and sophisticated vampire made its first appearance in John Polidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819. (For more information on this, and other literary vampires, see Chapter 5). In appearance, Polidori’s vampire was a complete contrast to his forebears; instead of being ‘fat and rosy’, he was pale, thin, and good-looking. Polidori describes him thus:
‘It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon London winter, there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman more remarkable for his singularities, than his rank. He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein … those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object’s face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart …’
Despite, or perhaps because of his deathly, soul-searching gaze, this intriguing stranger was extremely attractive to the female sex.
A ‘Winning tongue’
‘His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection.’
Polidori’s vampire was not only physically alluring, he also had a ‘winning tongue’, and his ‘apparent hatred of vice’ – he routinely ignored all the women who threw themselves at him – made him even more fascinating.
In creating his aristocratic vampire, Polidori set a template for virtually all the vampire figures that followed. Bram Stoker, author of the seminal Dracula, which was published in 1897, drew heavily on his idea of the vampire as a charming, intelligent, refined, and sophisticated man about town, and this incarnation of the vampire went on to become a staple of the horror genre up to the present day.