Friday, August 7, 2015

Dracula's Guest (1914)

by Bram Stoker

Dracula’s Guest” is widely believed to be the original opening chapter of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, but the reason for that is primarily due to Stoker’s widow, Florence. Stoker had been planning to publish collections of his short fiction, and his wife decided to include the story in the third one published two years after her husband’s death. “I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work.” It’s possible that she simply made the assumption that it was part of the larger work because of the title. Though it’s far more likely that its inclusion was at the insistence of the publisher in order to have the name Dracula in the title to ensure sales. If the story has any relationship to the novel itself it is probably as the beginning of an alternate draft. And it is all the more intriguing for that. As it stands, it certainly doesn’t fit with the epistolary construct of Stoker’s eventual novel, and the main character doesn’t appear to share any similarities to Jonathan Harker, as he is much more irresponsibly reckless for someone who has an important task to carry out for the Count. The draft idea has further traction because there are some real inconsistencies to the story that don’t lend themselves to the feel of a polished and completed work. What that novel would have been like with that character as the protagonist, however, is incredibly intriguing.

The story opens with an unnamed British traveller in Munich, heading out into the countryside by coach. In a scene that would be repeated in numerous Universal horror films, the innkeeper warns the coachman to be back well before nightfall as it is April 30th, Walpurgisnacht, “when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad--when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel.” The coachman readily agrees, yet during their journey he is unable to convey to his rider exactly why the date is so infamous. This is the first of the inconsistencies, as the narrator seems genuinely frustrated by the coachman’s inability to tell him what he was so frightened of.

          There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his
          talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something--the very idea of which evidently fright-
          ened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself: “Walpurgisnacht!”
          I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language.

And yet, later in the story when the narrator himself becomes frightened, it is he who provides the description of Walpurgisnacht given above. In fact, this makes his British arrogance all the more insulting when he seems to have known all along why the man was frightened and yet refused to acknowledge it. “I pitied the poor fellow, he was deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German.”

While it is the beginning of spring, and it is sunny out, the weather has not quite turned all the way, and the driver has been warned about a storm that is on the way. But the narrator has seen an intriguing road that leads down into a valley, which he wants to explore. At this, however, the coachman hops down and flatly refuses, and during their discussion there is plenty of foreshadowing about the folly of such an adventure.

          Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking
          around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles, and led
          them on some twenty feet . . . Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark
          clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind
          seemed to drift over us. It was only a breath, however, and more of a warning than a fact, for
          the sun came out brightly again.

The narrator insists on going, in spite of the warning, sending the coachman back to Munich and walking alone. Just before he loses sight of the coach, the narrator sees a man walking along the road who stops the coach. The horses rear in fright, and after the coach lurches forward the man seems to have disappeared. There is supposedly the ruins of an old village where the narrator is headed, which the coachman said was cursed, evil and unholy, something to do with dead people who would not die, looking very much alive in their coffins. After a couple of hours walking in the desolate countryside, the narrator feels a definite chill in the air, especially after the sun goes behind the trees. “The air was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a sort of far-away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf.” Before long it begins to snow, hard and steadily, and soon the narrator winds up off of the road and seeks shelter in a dense copse of trees. Discovering a decaying rock wall, he decides to see if he can find the ruins of a home that might offer more protection, but when the storm breaks momentarily and the moon illuminates his surroundings he realizes that he is in a graveyard.

One of the things that always bothered me when I read the story before was the idea of a storm that suddenly comes out of nowhere. It was a sunny day in the spring, and while one understands a squall, it seemed to strain credulity to thing that something this sever could seeming appear with no warning. But recently I read a description from The Denham Tracts, written by Michael Denham in 1892, that talked about exactly this sort of phenomenon and demonstrating that it’s not as much of a freak occurrence as I had previously thought.

          In the mountainous parts of this country, towards the northwest, a very remarkable phenomenon
          frequently appears called the helm-wind. A rolling cloud, sometimes three or four days together,
          hovers over the mountain tops, the sky being clear in other parts. The [cloud] is not dispersed or
          blown away by the wind, but continues its station till a violent hurricane comes roaring down the
          mountain. Then, on a sudden, ensues a profound calm, and then again . . . the tempest gradually
          ensues. This tempest, however, seldom extends into the country beyond a mile or two from the
          bottom of the mountain.

Another of the inconsistencies in the story is the matter of language. Early in the story, the narrator claims to understand little German at all. “The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue.” At the end of the story, however, he is apparently listening to all of the conversation around him and understanding German with perfect clarity. There’s also the matter of the crypt at this point in the story, on which is written an inscription in German and which he reads quite easily, informing him that the countess buried there had died in 1801. This in addition to the Russian Cyrillic writing on the iron stake driven into the top of the tomb reading, “The dead travel fast.” The narrator is in no mood to explore any further, but when the snow turns to hail he is driven inside the crypt, and there he sees something inexplicable. “I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm.” The hand would turn out to be very real, though from here on the narrator loses any semblance of full consciousness. The last of his recollections of the event are related in a dreamlike state of near hallucination, and he wakes to find a great wolf sitting on his chest.

Though his rescue at first seems more than improbable, the denouement of the story is actually quite good in the way that it weaves all of the loose threads together, in addition to giving the reader information about Dracula’s motivations and identity. The end result is that the inconsistencies are minor and in no way detract from the telling of the tale. The collection the story first appeared in was Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories, from 1914, and included both published and unpublished works by the author. David O. Selznik originally purchased the story for MGM, but there was no way the studio could have produced the film owing to Universal’s copyright on the character name, and so he eventually sold it to Universal. The studio attempted to produce it as a film, but after numerous rewrites the film it was made into, Dracula’s Daughter, bears no resemblance to Stoker’s tale. Several other films have taken the name of the story for their inspiration, but none have followed the plot closely enough to be recognizable as Stoker’s work either. The story itself has also appeared in a variety of anthologies, and under a number of different names in collections edited by Peter Haining, attempting to make them appear as new stories by Stoker. What it may lack in finesse, “Dracula’s Guest” more than makes up for in thrills and is certainly a satisfying part of the Dracula mythos.