Varney the Vampire
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Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood was a mid-Victorian era gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest), which first appeared 1845–47 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as penny dreadfuls because of their inexpensive price and typically gruesome contents. It was published in book form in 1847. It is of epic length: the original edition runs to 868 double columned pages divided into 220 chapters.
Despite its inconsistencies, Varney the Vampire is more or less a cohesive whole, utilizing or introducing many themes and conventions recognizable to modern audiences.
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[edit] Plot
The story has a confused chronological reference. It is ostensibly set in the early eighteenth century, but there are references to the Napoleonic Wars and other indications that the story is contemporary to the time in which it was written (1845-47). The story concerns the troubles that Sir Francis Varney, a vampire, inflicts upon the Bannerworths, a formerly wealthy family driven to ruin by their recently deceased father. The Bannerworths initially consist of Mrs. Bannerworth and her adult children Henry, George and Flora. However, George is never mentioned after the thirty-sixth chapter. Additionally, family friend Mr. Marchdale also lives with them in early chapters, and later Flora's fiancé Charles Holland and his seafaring uncle Admiral Bell also take residence with the Bannerworths.
Though the earliest chapters give the standard motives of blood sustenance for Varney's actions toward the family, later ones suggest that Varney is motivated by pecuniary interests. The story is at times confusing, as if the author didn't know whether to make the protagonist an actual vampire or just a human who acts like one. Varney bears a strong resemblance to a portrait in Bannerworth Hall, and the implication is that he is one Marmaduke Bannerworth, but that connection is never cleared up. He is portrayed as loathing his condition, but at one point he turns Clara Crofton, a member of another family he terrorizes, into a vampire as revenge. Over the course of the book, Varney is presented with increasing sympathy as a victim of circumstances. He tries to save himself, but is unable and ultimately commits suicide by throwing himself into Mount Vesuvius, after having left a written account of his origin with a sympathetic priest. According to Varney, he was cursed with vampirism after betraying a royalist to Oliver Cromwell and accidentally killing his own son afterwards in a fit of anger, although he "dies" and is revived several times in the course of his career. This afforded the author a variety of origin stories, including one in which a medical student (Dr. Chillingworth) applies galvanism to Varney's hanged corpse and revives him.
[edit] Legacy
Varney was a major influence on later vampire fiction, particularly Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. Many of today's standard vampire tropes originated in Varney: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the necks of his victims, has hypnotic powers, and has superhuman strength. Unlike later fictional vampires, he is able to go about in daylight and has no particular fear or loathing of crosses or garlic. He can eat and drink in human fashion as a form of disguise, but he points out that human food and drink do not agree with him. His vampirism seems to be a fit that comes on him when his vital energy begins to run low; he is a regular person between feedings.
This is also the first example of the "sympathetic vampire," a vampire who loathes his condition but is nonetheless a slave to it. This archetype has been widely exemplified, notably by such characters as Barnabas Collins in the TV soap opera Dark Shadows, Louis de Pointe du Lac in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, Kain in Legacy Of Kain, Morbius, the Living Vampire, Nick Knight in Forever Knight and Angel from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The makers of Marvel Comics were also influenced by this story. In the Marvel Universe, "Varnae" is the name of the first vampire, created by the people of Atlantis before it sank.[1]
A standard joking phrase, common today in Northern England, is possibly first recorded in Varney, where a comical character twice describes himself as having "never been backward in coming forward".
[edit] References
- E.S. Turner's Boys Will be Boys (1948) discusses this story and many others
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ "Vampire." The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Book of the Dead. Issue 5. 1985 Ser. 20. Feb. 1988. ALos, the original Verney appears as a servant of Morgan Le Fay in the pages of Doctor Strange.[1]
