THE FORGOTTEN WRITINGS OF BRAM STOKER

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Edited by John Edgar Browning Foreword by Elizabeth Miller

Afterword by Dacre Stoker

Th e FORGOTTEN WRITINGS of

BRAM STOKER

All rights reserved.

the forgotten writings of bram stokerCopyright © John Edgar Browning, 2012.Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-1-137-27722-0

First published in 2012 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN®in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.ISBN 978-1-349-44702-2 ISBN 978-1-137-33084-0 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9781137330840 Image 17.1 Illustration of Henry Irving and Bram Stoker (1890) (From Judy: or The London Serio-Comic Journal [April 16, 1890]: 184, is reproduced by permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission.

The text of Bram Stoker's works are out of copyright, but the compilation and annotations, as well as the editorial and introductory matter are the copyright of the editor, whose work should be acknowledged in any quotation or reproduction of this work.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems, Ltd., Chennai, India

First edition: December 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Harry Ludlam, Jeanne Youngson, and the Stokers

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C O N T E N T S

List of Illustrations xi

A Note on the Texts xiii

Foreword: Bram Stoker, His Life and Works xvElizabeth Miller

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction: A Periodical Portrait of the “Author of Dracula” 1John Edgar Browning

Part I Unknown Poetry by Bram Stoker (1890–1892)

One The Member for the Strand (1890) [song] 17

Two The Wrongs of Grosvenor Square (1892) [poem] 19

Part II Unknown Fiction by Bram Stoker (1893–1908)

Three Old Hoggen: A Mystery (1893) [short story] 25

Four When the Sky Rains Gold (1894) [short story] 57

Five Bengal Roses (1898) [short story] 93

Six A Young Widow (1899) [short story] 113

Seven A Baby Passenger (1899) [short story] 121

Eight Lucky Escapes of Sir Henry Irving (1900) [fictionalized self-narrative] 127

CONTENTSviii

Nine What They Confessed: A Low Comedian’s Story (1908) [short story] 133

Part III Unknown Journalistic Writings

by Bram Stoker (1891–1908)

Ten Recollections of the Late W. G. Wills (1891) [obituary article] 145

Eleven Sir Henry Irving: An Appreciation by Bram Stoker, His Longtime Friend (1904) [article] 149

Twelve 12,000 Miles of Irving’s Audiences (1906) [eulogy] 155

Thirteen Where Hall Caine Dreams Out His Romances (1908) [article] 157

Part IV Unknown Interviews with Bram Stoker

(1886–1890)

Fourteen Irving and Hudson: Bram Stoker Tells What He Thinks about the Controversy (1886) 169

Fifteen A Chat with Mr. Stoker about Irving (1886) 171

Sixteen The Gangway Seats at the Lyceum (1890) 175

Part V Rare and Uncollected Works by

Bram Stoker (1896–1906)

Seventeen Sir Henry Irving and Miss Ellen Terry in Robespierre, Merchant of Venice, The Bells, Nance Oldfield, The Amber Heart, Waterloo, etc. (1896) [souvenir booklet] 179

Eighteen Henry Irving’s Fight for Fame (1906) [article] 187

Part VI Period Writings about Bram Stoker

(1896–1913)

Nineteen To Bram Stoker (1893) [dedication], by Hall Caine 201

CONTENTS ix

Twenty Green Room Gossip (1896) 203

Twenty-One Night with Sir Henry Irving: With Intimations That Bram Stoker Was Also in the Neighborhood (1900) [poem], by R. M. Field 205

Twenty-Two Acting-Manager and Author: Bram Stoker Finds Recreation in Writing Romances (1902) [article] 209

Twenty-Three Story of Senator Quay (1904) [short short story] 213

Twenty-Four Bram Stoker (1912) [obituary] 215

Twenty-Five Bram Stoker, Irishman (1913) [article] 217

Part VII Catalogue of Valuable Books,

Autograph Letters, and Illuminated and

Other Manuscripts, Including The Library of the

Late Bram Stoker, Esq. and Associated Press (1913)

Twenty-Six First Day’s Sale: The Property of Bram Stoker, Esq. (Deceased) (1913) [catalog] 221

Twenty-Seven Bram Stoker’s Valuable Library to Be Sold (1913) [article] 243

Twenty-Eight Low Prices for Americana: Library of Late Bram Stoker Sold in London (1913) [article] 245

Twenty-Nine Whitman Writings Sold: Lecture on Lincoln Brings $25 at Bram Stoker Library Sale (1913) [article] 247

Afterword 249Dacre Stoker

Notes 257

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I L L U S T R A T I O N S

F.1 Bram Stoker’s first known published poem, “One Thing Needful,” with punctuation that differs slightly from the two subsequent printings xiv

I.1 Photograph of Sir Henry Irving (1905) addressing crowd at unveiling of the tablet placed at the residence of famous eighteenth-century Irish actor James Quin, by Walter G. Lewis, showing Bram Stoker peering down behind Irving xxi

I.2 Photograph of Sir Henry Irving (1905) unveiling the tablet placed at Quin’s residence, by T. C. Leaman, with Bram Stoker emerging from behind Irving xxii

1.1 Illustration, “A First Night at the Lyceum” (1890), by George C. Haite 16

2.1 Illustration, “Mr. Henry Irving Unveiling the Marlowe Memorial at Canterbury” (1891), with Bram Stoker appearing far right 22

6.1 Illustration appearing with Bram Stoker’s “A Young Widow” 112

6.2 Illustration appearing with Bram Stoker’s “A Young Widow” 119

7.1 Illustration appearing with the American editions of Bram Stoker’s “A Baby Passenger” 120

8.1 Photograph of “Mr. Bram Stoker” (ca. 1905) 12611.1 Photogravure of Sir Henry Irving (1904), by

William Brooke, Edinburgh 149

ILLUSTR ATIONSxii

12.1 Illustration, “Irving between England and America,” from a drawing by Fred Barnard (1883), after the picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, “Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy” 155

13.1 Photograph of Bram Stoker (ca. 1906) by W. & D. Downey, London 157

14.1 Illustration of “Mr. T. Hall Caine,” Bram Stoker’s dear friend, from a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Frye 168

15.1 Illustration of “Mr. Bram Stoker” (1885) at “Mr. William Creswick’s farewell benefit at Drury Lane Theatre” 171

17.1 Illustration of Henry Irving and Bram Stoker (1890) 17817.2 Illustration of “Miss Ellen Terry” (1891) from a photo

by Window & Grove 17818.1 Photographs of some of the late

Sir Henry Irving’s characters 18619.1 Photograph of Bram Stoker (ca. 1893), by Walery 20020.1 Illustration of “Mr. Bram Stoker” (1897) 20421.1 Illustration, “Whitelaw Reid Welcomed to England

by the Pilgrims” (1905) in which are pictured, among other notable attendees, “Mr. Bram Stoker,” Sir Henry Irving, and “Mr. Kipling” 208

22.1 Photograph of Bram Stoker (ca. 1904) at his craft, used to help promote the publication of The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) 209

23.1 Illustration appearing with “The Story of Senator Quay” 21324.1 Painting of an aging Bram Stoker (ca. 1911) 21525.1 Bram Stoker modeling as William II in 1911 for

the Mural Panel, “William II Building the Tower of London,” by G. Goldsborough Anderson, in the Royal Exchange, London 217

26.1 Death mask of President Lincoln “without the disfiguring beard,” in bronze, from the original mould by Leonard W. Volk 220

A N O T E O N T H E T E X T S

The edition of each text, as well as any textual variations, is covered in the endnotes, and volume and issue numbers are given where

available; British or American spelling has been kept depending on the country of origin of the edition being reproduced. Minor typographical errors and misspellings have been silently corrected; in the case of “Old Hoggen” (1893), missing text is designated by an ellipsis enclosed in rect-angular brackets (“[. . .]”); missing text that can be reasonably inferred is enclosed in rectangular brackets (“[text]”); partially obscured text is designated in italics (“[. . .]rts”); and in the few instances in which vari-ant capitalization or spacing is given—like “cousin Jemima” and “old Hoggen” instead of the more regularly seen “Cousin Jemima” and “Old Hoggen,” or “coastguard” instead of “coast guard”—the text has been altered for uniformity.

Figure F.1 Bram Stoker’s f irst known published poem, “One Thing Needful,” with punc-tuation that differs slightly from the two subsequent printings.

(From The Youth’s Companion [December 10, 1885]: 522)

F O R E W O R D

BRAM STOKER, HIS LIFE AND WORKS

Elizabeth Miller

A braham (Bram) Stoker was born on November 8, 1847 in Clontarf, on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland. He was the third of seven chil-

dren born to Charlotte Thornley (1818–1901) from western Ireland and Abraham Stoker (1799–1876), a civil servant in Dublin. He was a sickly child, practically bedridden during his early years. During this time, his mother entertained him with stories and legends from Sligo, which included supernatural tales and accounts of death and disease. This may have helped lay the foundation for some of the gothic motifs to be found later in his fiction.

By the time he entered Trinity College in 1864, he had fully recovered from his mysterious (and undiagnosed) illness. Indeed, he was a strong young man who excelled at athletics, winning several awards for prowess in football, racing, and weightlifting. He followed in his father’s foot-steps and joined the Civil Service at Dublin Castle. During the 1870s, he worked on what would be his first book The Duties of Clerks of Petty

FOREWORDxvi

Sessions in Ireland (1879) and penned several short stories, as well as the-atre reviews written gratis for the Dublin Evening Mail. It was one of his reviews (of Hamlet) that brought him into contact with the British actor Henry Irving. A close friendship developed between the two men that was to last until Irving’s death in 1905. In 1878, Irving invited Stoker to join him in London as business manager of his Lyceum Theatre.

Just before leaving Dublin, Bram married Florence Balcombe, reputed to be one of Dublin’s most beautiful women. The couple had just one child, a son named Irving Noel Thornley, born in December 1879. Stoker’s work at the Lyceum made great demands on his time. His responsibilities included arranging provincial seasons and overseas tours, keeping financial records and acting as Irving’s secretary. He orga-nized the Lyceum’s eight North American tours, during which he met and befriended Walt Whitman (whose poetry he had defended as an undergraduate at Trinity) and Mark Twain. His association with Irving brought him into contact with many of the leading figures of his day, such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Franz Liszt, Richard Burton, Henry Morton Stanley, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill, and William Gladstone.

Stoker continued his writing, publishing numerous short stories as well as novels. He began work on what would become Dracula early in 1890. His working notes for the novel (now available as Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition) provide much information about the development of characters, settings, and elements of the plot, as well as the nature of his research. The town of Whitby, which Stoker visited with his family in the summer of 1890, had a significant influence on the shaping of his book. In fact it was at the library in Whitby that he came across the name “Dracula,” which he quickly appropriated for his vampire. Earlier vampire literature, most notably Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872), also likely helped him develop his own story.

As a writer, Stoker was best known in his own day for Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906). Some of his lesser-known works include the novels The Snake’s Pass (1890), The Shoulder of Shasta (1895), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1904), Lady Athlyne (1908), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Also of note are

FOREWORD xvii

two collections of short stories—Under the Sunset (1881) and Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914)—as well as the nonfictional A Glimpse of America (1886).

He died in London on April 20, 1912. His ashes are located at Golders Green Crematorium. But he left behind copious writings including nov-els, short stories, poetry, theatre reviews, newspaper/magazine articles, a two-volume biography, and a journal.

The pioneer in the field of Stoker bibliography was Richard Dalby, who published Bram Stoker: A Bibliography of First Editions in 1983. Building on that foundation, he joined forces with William Hughes in 2004 to produce a much more complete listing of Stoker’s work—Bram Stoker: A Bibliography (Desert Island Books). This has been and still is regarded as the standard record of his literary production. But 100 years after Bram Stoker’s death, the list of published works is expanding. Scholars are still unearthing obscure writings, the most recent being his missing journal, edited by Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker. The pub-lication of his journal, written for the most part while he was still living in Dublin during the 1870s, provides a clear sense of the extent of his versatility as a writer.

The challenge now is to compile a complete bibliography of Stoker’s writing. New technology has allowed for more digitizing of newspa-pers and magazines, so that dozens of stories and articles both by and about Stoker are resurfacing and changing the face of Stoker studies. Leading the field is John Edgar Browning who has prior to this present work succeeded in finding dozens of previously unknown reviews and notices about Dracula from 1897 (its date of publication) to 1913 (the year following Stoker’s death). This body of material forces us to chal-lenge the long-held notion that the early critical reception of Dracula was “mixed,” an error in judgment resulting from reliance on a limited sample of reviews.

Browning’s continued research has yielded a bumper crop of Stoker’s published writing that is only now coming to the surface. He divides his findings into 4 categories: poetry, short stories, journalistic prose, and period writings (1896–1912) about Stoker.

FOREWORDxviii

Stoker’s first known published poem was “One Thing Needful,” pub-lished in The Youth’s Companion in December 1885 and reissued in A Volunteer Haversack in 1902 and in The Queen’s Carol in 1905. Several other poems by Stoker appear in his journal, though there is no indication that any of them were ever published (see Journal, Chapter 1). Browning, however, has discovered at least two more: “The Member for the Strand” (lyrics for a song, 1890) and “The Wrongs of Grosvenor Square” (1892). In addition, Browning has unearthed six short stories (mostly from the 1890s), five articles, six period writings about Stoker (1896–1912) and a few miscellaneous items. Of special import for scholars is the inclusion in this volume of the contents of the “First Day’s Sale: The Property of Bram Stoker, Esq.” from the Catalogue of Valuable Books, Autograph Letters, and Illuminated and Other Manuscripts, Including the Library of the Late Bram Stoker, Esq., and Associated Press (1913).

This volume helps to resolve a problem that has nagged Stoker schol-ars for decades: the serialization of Dracula. In 1926, Florence Stoker wrote a foreword for a serialization in Argosy, stating clearly that this was the first appearance of the novel in that form. Yet references to a serialization in 1899 sent scholars (including myself) scurrying to find the first such publication—but to no avail. Now thanks to Browning, along with David J. Skal who will present his findings in his forthcom-ing book (2013) Bram Stoker: The Final Curtain, this mystery has been solved. Dracula did indeed appear in serial form in 1899. In fact, Stoker arranged for the serialization of at least two of his other novels: The Gates of Life (1908) and Lady Athlyne (1909).

One wonders how much more Stoker material is out there. But with eager young scholars such as John Edgar Browning on the trail, we may rest assured that any further hidden treasures will someday be uncovered.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

A s the wise and ever kind Carol A. Senf said of her Bram Stoker (Gothic Authors: Critical Revisions) (2010), the present book on

Stoker could not have been “Without the help and support of numerous people around the world.” The world enjoys a love affair with Stoker, but it is certainly not a new one. Indeed, newspapers and journals throughout much of the English-speaking world have been Stoker crazy since at least the 1880s. Today, his allies don many languages and abound from many cultures. This book owes everything to you, and we owe everything to Stoker. Contrary to surviving photos, the Blackburn Weekly Standard and Express said of Stoker on April 22, 1899 that he “flattered everybody with his irresistible smile” (12)—this is how I like to think of him if he could read this book here and now.

I would like to start by thanking a crew of very dedicated gradu-ate students who helped me to complete in record time the transcrip-tions of the works collected here. They include (alphabetically): Ronan Crowley (SUNY-Buffalo), Justin De Senso (SUNY-Buffalo), Kyle Fetter (SUNY-Buffalo), Juliette Highland (Louisiana State University), Chelsea Jones (SUNY-Buffalo), Jennifer Loft (SUNY-Buffalo), Monica Miller (Louisiana State University), Conor Picken (Louisiana State University), and Rachel Van Sickle (Louisiana State University). Digital Humanities is rarely easy work, but these burgeoning scholars performed brilliantly. They have my infinite gratitude.

The inclusion of many of the illustrations reproduced herein was made possible by the following kind people, institutions, and organiza-tions: Logan Rath, Drake Memorial Library, SUNY-Brockport; Melissa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSxx

S. Mead, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester; Rockefeller Library, Brown University; the University of North Texas Libraries; the Lockwood Memorial Library, Libraries Annex, and the Teaching & Learning Center, SUNY-Buffalo; British Periodicals and ProQuest, The Quorum, Barnwell Road, Cambridge, CB5 8SW, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1223 215512, Web page: http://www.proquest.co.uk; the National Library of Australia; the British Library Board; and the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside, htttp://cdnc.ucr.edu.

Finally, I would like to extend my personal gratitude to David J. Skal, the Bram Stoker Estate, Dacre Stoker, Elizabeth Miller, Carol J. Senf; to my terrific editors at Palgrave who believed in this project—Brigitte Shull and Maia Woolner; and most especially to Michael Agan.

John Edgar BrowningBuffalo, New York

Figure I.1 Photograph of Sir Henry Irving (1905) addressing crowd at unveiling of the tablet placed at the residence of famous eighteenth-century Irish actor James Quin, by Walter G. Lewis, showing Bram Stoker peering down behind Irving.

(National Library of Australia)

Figure I.2 Photograph of Sir Henry Irving (1905) unveiling the tablet placed at Quin’s residence, by T. C. Leaman, with Bram Stoker emerging from behind Irving.

(From Black & White [February 25, 1905]: 258)