The Mortal Immortal, a variation on the theme of St. Leon, is the record of a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, who drank half of the elixir his master had compounded in the belief that it was a potion to destroy love. It is written on his three hundred and twenty-third birthday. Transformation, like Frankenstein, dwells on the pathos of ugliness and deformity, but the subject is treated rather in the spirit of an eastern fairy tale than in that of a novel of terror. The dwarf, in return for a chest of treasure, borrows a beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the books on which she expended great labour.
The literary history of Byron's fragmentary novel and of Polidori's short story, The Vampyre, is somewhat tangled, but the solution is to be found in the diary of Dr. John William Polidori, edited and elucidated by William Michael Rossetti. The day after that on which Polidori states that all the competitors, except himself, had begun their stories, he records the simple fact: "Began my ghost-story after tea." He gives no hint as to the subject of his tale, but Mrs. Shelley tells us that Polidori had some idea of a "skull-headed lady, who was so punished for looking through a key-hole, and who was finally buried in the tomb of the Capulets." In the introduction to Ernestus Berchtold, or the Modern OEdipus, he states definitely:
"The tale here presented to the public is one I began at Coligny, when Frankenstein was planned, and when a noble author, having determined to descend from his lofty range, gave up a few hours to a tale of terror, and wrote the fragment published at the end of Mazeppa."
As no skull-headed lady appears in Ernestus Berchtold, it is probable that her career was only suggested to the rest of the party as an entrancing possibility, and never actually took shape. This theme would certainly have proved more frightful and possibly more interesting than the one which Polidori eventually adopted in Ernestus Berchtold, a rambling, leisurely account of the adventures of a Swiss soldier, whose wife afterwards proves to be his own sister. Their father has accepted from a malignant spirit the gift of wealth, but each time that the gift is bestowed some great affliction follows. This secret is not divulged until we are quite near the close of the story, and have waited so long that our interest has begun to wane. Ernestus Berchtold is, as a matter of fact, not a novel of terror at all. The supernatural agency, which should have been interlaced with the domestic story from beginning to end, is only dragged in because it was one of the conditions of the competition, as indeed Polidori frankly confesses in his introduction:
"Many readers will think that the same moral and the same colouring might have been given to characters acting under the ordinary agencies of life. I believe it, but I agreed to write a supernatural tale, and that does not allow of a completely everyday narrative."
The candour of this admission forestalls criticism. Strangely enough, Polidori adds that he has thrown the "superior agency" into the background, because "a tale that rests upon improbabilities must generally disgust a rational mind." With so decided a preference for the reasonable and probable, it is remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who, like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before his death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister. On this foundation Polidori constructed The Vampyre. The story opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose appearance and character excite great interest in London society. His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "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, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that laid (sic) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table; and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome. Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven. While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished. When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven, but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted the thirst of a vampyre."
Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the verge of the unspeakable.
Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A writer in the Dublin University Magazine tells of a vampire who plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire in one of George Macdonald's stories, Adela Cathcart. The prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's Dracula, round whom centres a story of absorbing interest.
De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many admirable illustrations for his essay on Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts, and who seems to have been attracted by the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in sensational fiction. In Klosterheim, a one-volumed novel published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's story is very different. The adventures of the Masque and of the Lady Pauline are cast in Germany amid the confusion of the Thirty Years' War. In The Household Wreck, published in Blackwood's Magazine, January 1838, De Quincey shows his power of conveying a sense of foreboding, that anticipation of horror which is often more harrowing than the reality. Another tale of terror, The Avenger, published in the same year, describes a series of bloodcurdling murders which baffle the skill of the police, but which eventually prove to have been committed by a son to avenge dishonour done to his Jewish mother. For a collection of Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations, published in 1823, De Quincey translated Der Freischütz from the German of J.A. Apel, under the title of The Fatal Marksman. By means of ill-gotten magic bullets the marksman wins his bride, but by one of those little ironies in which the devil delights to indulge, she is slain on the wedding-day by a bullet, which is aimed straight, but goes askew. In The Dice, another short story from the German, De Quincey once again exploits the old theme of a bargain with the devil.
De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror shrink into unimportance beside the rest of his work, and are not in themselves remarkable. They are of interest as showing the widespread and long-enduring vogue of the species. It is noteworthy how many writers, whose main business lay elsewhere, have found time to make erratic excursions into the realms of the supernatural.