Who was Bram Stoker – and why did he write Dracula? Through the words of Damaris Sterne, daughter of an old seafaring family, we meet a man escaping from the pressures of his life in London. As the two become involved in a passionate but dangerous affair, he is introduced to the wild sea, the wrecks, and Whitby’s local legends – while she is shown glimpses of the wider world beyond.
Evocative and mysterious, Moon Rising opens out to become not only the gripping story of a tragic love-affair, but a revealing commentary on the genesis of an immortal classic.
Evocative and mysterious, Moon Rising opens out to become not only the gripping story of a tragic love-affair, but a revealing commentary on the genesis of an immortal classic.
Moon Rising, Bram Stoker and
Dracula
In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, the vampire count’s arrival in
Whitby is one of the novel’s most dramatic episodes. The ferocious storm, the
wreck of the Russian ship, the great hound leaping ashore, is so vivid it seems
like something that really happened.
Shipwrecks abound along that coast,
but the one described in the book is curious. Stoker’s Demeter, of Varna, appears to have been taken directly from an
actual wreck which occurred during a violent storm in October 1885 – the Dmitry of Narva.
The name leapt out at me from a
book of photographs by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. His picture of a Russian ship,
wrecked below the east cliff, led me to an account of the day’s events in the Whitby Gazette. Comparing that with
Stoker’s description of how his
Russian ship came into the harbour, suddenly I could picture him watching as
the drama unfolded.
With that, my vague ideas for the
novel that was to become Moon Rising suddenly
had focus. I re-read Dracula and
began researching in earnest. Whitby’s 19th century remoteness, its
dramatic location with church, graveyard and ruined abbey standing atop the
cliffs, made it popular with Stoker and the London literati – while local folk tales
had clearly provided the author with a stock of material. Certainly, the great
spectral hound – the Barghest – said to haunt both the town and moors, was
utilised in Dracula to great effect.
Born and raised in Dublin, Bram
Stoker trained as a barrister, and in his 25 years as business manager to the Shakespearean
actor, Sir Henry Irving, Stoker combined the attributes of lawyer, accountant,
secretary and playwright. In his spare moments – largely on holiday – Stoker
wrote novels, most of which have slipped into obscurity.
The exception, of course, is Dracula, which everyone knows but few
people have read. Nowadays we tend to regard it as a Gothic novel – yet Stoker
was at pains to anchor it as a ‘modern’ work, set clearly in the 1890s. The
story unfolds through a collection of papers: diary entries, letters and
newspaper accounts, like snapshots capturing the movements of a nightmare
being.
Stoker doesn’t spell it out – he
heightens the suspense by suggestion, leaving the reader to assume the worst.
Dracula’s activities in Whitby are conveyed by mere glimpses – the bat, the
gleaming red eyes of a figure seen close by – enough for us to suspect that
this is the Count at work. All very unsettling.
By contrast, later, sexually
suggestive scenes are dwelt upon – some shockingly erotic. But while the modern
reader is able to spot references that Stoker’s original readers may have
missed, Dracula the novel is far more
than a tale of sexual aberration. Like an early James Bond, it concerns the
abuse of power – and it plays on Victorian fears of invasion, of the occult, of
sex. Most of all perhaps, fear of powerful, dominant male figures.
Vampire legends aside, who could
have inspired the central character? My choice is Henry Irving, Stoker’s friend
and employer. Irving fits the description like a glove: aquiline features and
autocratic manner; his passion for sitting up talking all night after a
performance; and most of all, his ability on stage to transform himself into
another being. As Stoker once reported, ‘his
eyes were like cinders glowing red…’
It’s impossible not to see the
Count’s blood-sucking activities as a metaphor for the actor’s ability to feed
off other people’s creativity. Famous, powerful, Irving demanded, and got,
everything from the people around him. He could not have succeeded without
Stoker’s wide-ranging talents. In the end, Irving sucked Stoker dry – and then
dropped him.
Irving, hypnotic, powerful; Stoker
his star-struck acolyte, working literally all hours to further the great man’s
career; his wife cold and resentful – the rush of possibilities fired my
imagination.
As it happened, I was living in
Whitby for several weeks of a long, hot summer, walking the town and cliffs,
learning the place as well as its history – all of which became a haunting
background for my novel. But with Bram Stoker in the foreground, and Irving
lurking in his background, what might
have been a Victorian romance became a Gothic tale of passion and possession.
In Moon Rising, Stoker has reached breaking point, escaping to Whitby
before his life in London tips him over the edge. Young Damaris Sterne, rebellious
daughter of an old seafaring family, is working as a fisherlass and posing as a
photographer’s model. As she attracts his attention, thus begins a dangerous
affair which changes the course of both their lives.
Sensual, sunlit afternoons become
moonlit nights with disturbing encounters. Damaris soon discovers that
everything has a cost; and, on meeting Irving, that her rival is not the one
she imagined…
Relating the tale from a distance
of twenty years, Damaris tells how Stoker went on to write his most famous
novel, while she pursued her own ambitions, battling memory and consequence
along the way. But only as chance throws them together again does she begin to understand
the truth, discovering the disastrous effect Dracula had on Stoker, Irving and the whole theatrical company…
‘As though,’ Stoker says, ‘in writing about evil I had given it life…’
Ann Victoria Roberts
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About the Author
