Bram Stoker: Author of Dracula: An Illustrated Biography

By Neil R Storey

Bram Stoker: Author of Dracula is an affectionate and revealing biography of the man who created the vampire novel that would define the genre and lead to a new age in Gothic horror literature.

Based on decades of painstaking research in libraries, museums, and university archives and privileged access to private collections on both sides of the Atlantic, the private letters of Bram and the reminiscences of those who knew him not only shed new light on Stoker's ancestry, his life, loves and friendships they also reveal more about the places and people who inspired him and how he researched and wrote his books. Bram wrote numerous articles, short stories and poetry for newspapers and magazines, he had a total of eleven novels and two collections of short stories published in his lifetime, but he would only become known for one of them – Dracula. Tragically, he did not live long enough to see it as a huge success.

In his heyday as Acting Manager for Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End of London, Bram was a well-known figure in a golden age of British theater. He was a big-framed, ebullient, genial, gentleman, with red hair and beard, who never lost his soft Irish brogue, was blessed with wit, and a host of entertaining stories fit for every occasion. Described as having the paw of Hercules and the smile of Machiavelli, above all he knew what it meant to be a loyal friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399071086

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

It must be almost fifty years ago that I first encountered anything associated with Bram Stoker. I also think I am far from unique in that claim because as a child of the 1970s we were regularly confronted by quite startling images on posters, on the covers of magazines, books, and even bubble gum cards of Christopher Lee in his various portrayals of Bram’s most infamous creation – Count Dracula – in Hammer films. In fact, I cannot recall a time when I did not know the name or at the mention of it would fail to conjure quite a vivid image of Lee in the role of the Prince of Darkness complete with bloodshot staring eyes, a snarling grimace revealing his fangs, and a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

The images alone were, to many of us youngsters, scary, and the Board of Films ‘X’ certificate awarded to the movies, meaning they could only be seen by those aged over 18, more than ensured I would not have been permitted entry to the cinema even if I had wanted to. When the films started to appear on television a few years later they were shown at ten or eleven at night so even if we were permitted to stay up and watch (weekends or school holidays only) or crept out of bed to sneak a peek through the banisters of the stairs, we never got much further than the opening titles before fear got the better of us and we fled back to safety under the bedclothes.

But old Drac was not going to give up that easily, he had caught our imagination and the creators of the new edgier comics and magazines for pre-teens and younger teenage girls and boys in the late 1970s and ‘80s would feature Dracula, vampire, and horror stories. Leading the vanguard was Misty magazine for girls, first published in 1978, it contained an array of comic strip stories featuring ghosts, monsters, vampires, witches, weird scientists, pacts with the devil, and evil cults. Misty magazine and its annuals were enjoyed by both girls and boys, but its run was short and its last issue was printed in 1980. The genre was tried again with Scream magazine, which contained darker and more gory stories aimed at boys. It ran for just fifteen issues in 1984, followed by a few special issues over the years until 1989, then it too was no more.

The magazines may not have been long-running successes but those of us who loved them really loved them and remember them with great affection. Over the decades, having met so many others of my generation who now have a strong interest in gothic horror, dark history, and the paranormal, we find we share that common journey of like experiences in what we saw and what we read when we were growing up. We witnessed the undead count revived in film and media like never before – all in glorious technicolour. The count has left his mark upon us. We are the children of Dracula.

It was in my mid-teens when I read Dracula the novel for the first time and it gripped me like no other work of fiction before or since. Something stirred inside me, something in the way Bram created his narrative, and the places and characters he evoked held my fascination and stimulated my imagination. A really good second-hand bookshop had opened nearby so I was interested to see if I could find other books by Bram Stoker. I have always enjoyed researching the people behind stories and naturally, I was curious about the man who had written Dracula. Perhaps it was fate that before I discovered another novel I picked up a copy of the first account of Bram’s life – A Biography of Dracula, The Life Story of Bram Stoker by Harry Ludlam, which had been published in 1962. It was a fascinating read and I must admit I felt something of a kinship with Bram. As decades have gone by the more I have read, researched, and discovered about him, especially having had the chance to read so many of his personal letters, the feelings of affinity and fascination with him have only grown stronger.

I have been fortunate enough to have been able to travel across the British Isles, Ireland, Isle of Man, and America to visit places Bram would have known or to view Bram Stoker material at academic, public, or private collections. I have also had the pleasure of meeting members of his family, descendants of his friends and many fellow travellers along the way. Sadly some of them are no longer with us but I am certain Bram would have been delighted that he had brought us together and would have approved of the many convivial gatherings, excellent food, and wine we have shared over those years.

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) photographed in 1906.

Bram Stoker was far more than the author of Dracula. In his later school and university years he was a remarkable athlete and would later become a decorated hero for his gallantry. He was acquainted with royalty, artists, explorers, academics, and many leading political and influential figures of his day. He could also count many of the greatest actors and literati as friends and came to know some of them intimately. Bram took great pleasure weaving in-jokes and stories into his books that would be enjoyed by his friends. He would use the distinctive features, aspects of their personality and mannerisms of family, friends and acquaintances for the characters he created. Bram Stoker was a prime mover in the theatrical world in a golden age of British theatre. He had a total of ten novels and two novellas published in his lifetime and countless articles on a variety of subjects printed in newspapers, magazines and journals.

There have been biographies and numerous academic theses and papers on a huge variety of themes exploring Bram Stoker the man and his books, especially Dracula. With each one there are new discoveries and new perspectives shared. Bram Stoker was a great author and his legacies are still very much in evidence. If there had been no Bram Stoker, there almost certainly would not be the vampire genre of literature, films, and television that we know today. He will rightly be remembered as the creator of Dracula, one of the most extraordinary horror characters and stories of all time.

The atmospheric ruins of Whitby Abbey have changed little since Bram Stoker first visited in 1890.

I hope readers will also see Bram through the words of those who knew him personally, as a man who, just like all of us, had his faults. A man who was, in his prime a big-framed, burly, red-haired Irishman who never lost the soft roll of the brogue of his native land. Described variously as ‘a force of nature’ and ‘always in a mortal hurry’ when absorbed in his labours, or when dancing his movement at speed was described as being akin to a cavalry charge and woe betide anyone who got in his way. He was blessed with both wit and erudition as a speaker, he could also call upon his vast repertoire of funny stories and amusing anecdotes to entertain without resorting to vulgarity. He was an ebullient, genial, gentleman with the paw of Hercules and the smile of Machiavelli, but above all he knew what it meant to be a loyal friend. Even though we did not have the pleasure of knowing him personally there is every reason to raise a glass to the immortal memory of Bram Stoker.

Neil R. Storey

The Eve of St George’s Day

2023

The 1637 edition of Saxton and Hole’s map of Northumberland, land of the earliest of Bram Stoker’s ancestors to be traced to date.

CHAPTER ONE

Origins

‘We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ancestor.’

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Abraham Stoker was born at 15 The Crescent (now known as Marino Crescent), in the Dublin suburb of Clontarf on 8 November 1847. He was third of seven children who would be born to Abraham and Charlotte Matilda Stoker. Named after his father, rather than being Abraham junior or any other nom de plume the boy was known as Bram from a young age.

The oldest reliable records of the Stoker family lineage, found so far, date back to the seventeenth century when Bram’s direct ancestors were in the north-east of England in the beautiful rolling landscape of Northumberland. This historic county of England shares its borders with Scotland to the north, Cumberland to the west, Durham to the south and to the east a coastline with the North Sea. The Stoker family resided in the town of Morpeth on the River Wansbeck. The town they knew was already centuries old and had been granted a market charter in 1200. In 1540, the antiquary John Leland described Morpeth as:

The seventeenth-century Stoker ancestors would have known Morpeth in its heyday as one of the main markets for the sale of cattle in the north of England.

A wander around churchyard of the fourteenth-century St Mary’s Church on Kirkhill soon rewards the visitor with eighteenth-century headstones where the trades of skinners, butchers, dyers, and drapers that formed the backbone of industry and wealth in the town are carved with pride beside the names of those whom they commemorate. Many of these aged tablets, now strung with ivy and clad in moss, bear depictions of The Sands of Time, the reaper’s scythe and above all skulls that issue their mute warnings to those still fortunate to inhabit the land of the living and gaze upon their message of memento mori. Among their fellow residents around the cemetery are dotted the graves of successive generations of the Stoker family, some of whom remained in the town long after others had sought new lives and adventures elsewhere.

Morpeth Market Place, Northumberland, photographed in the late nineteenth century.

Peter Stoker (Bram Stoker’s Great, Great, Great Grandfather) was born in 1648 and had been baptised and raised in Morpeth. He married Elizabeth Nevilson and they started a family in the town. One of the few ways for young men, who did not have the benefit of wealth, to escape the villages and towns where they had been born and raised was to join the King’s army or the navy. Clearly life in the bustling market town was not for Peter so he joined a regiment and was deployed to Ireland as part of William of Orange’s army in 1690. In those days wives would often join their soldier husbands, even on military campaigns, and so Peter’s wife Elizabeth and their children went with him.

King William’s army garrisoned in Ireland and deciding to make the place their home, the Stokers settled in the Portlaoise and Ossory area of the country. While at Portlaoise (Maryborough), Queen’s County, in the province of Leinster in 1710 they were blessed with a son that they named Peter after his father and grandfather.

When young Peter grew up he carried on the military tradition and joined the Second Irish Horse (later the 5th Dragoon Guards), a unit often known simply as the ‘Green Horse’ because of the green facings of their tunics. Peter was clearly a steady and trustworthy soldier and he rose up through the ranks to serve as Quartermaster; an important job running the stores and ensuring his regiment had the requisite supplies to work efficiently. He married Mary Senior and they had six children one of whom was, Richard (Bram’s Great-Grandfather), who would also serve King and Country. Richard died in the Dublin barracks at the age of 49 in 1780.

Richard had married local girl, Mary Coates and they had four sons, William, John, Peter and Francis. The eldest was William Coates Stoker (Bram’s Grandfather) born in 1755. William broke the military tradition of Stokers. Perhaps it was because soldiering was a job that was still very much looked down upon if the person serving in the army was anything other than an officer, and it was also poorly paid. Whatever his reasons may have been, William served a seven-year apprenticeship to learn the trade of a staymaker. In 1780, having moved from Portlaoise to Dublin, he clearly wanted to establish himself as a respectable tradesman, with useful connections so he joined the Guild of Tailors and became a Freeman of the City of Dublin. William married Frances Smyth shortly afterwards and started a family.

William and Frances had five children who lived beyond infancy, four boys; twins Peter and Richard, then there was William, one girl they named Marion and last of all there was Abraham (Bram’s father). The twins became skilled tailors and Freemen of Dublin City in their own right. Despite entering the Guild of Tailors young William Stoker never picked up the needle, it was purely for the contacts and respectability membership of the Guild gave him. William preferred the pen of a clerk instead and had secured a position as clerk of the General Post Office but had been removed due to staffing cutbacks in 1815. He then found employment as clerk for wealthy Dublin businessman Sir Abraham Bradley King, a man who had been fortunate enough to have secured the position of the King’s Stationer in Ireland. This lucrative appointment meant that Mr King was the official supplier of printed materials, bookbinding and stationery to all government departments in the country.

William no doubt hoped his appointment with King would prove to be a golden opportunity for career progression too. King and Stoker clearly got on well and both became prominent members of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. When King was appointed Deputy Grand Master, Stoker was Deputy Grand Treasurer.¹ However, their relationship was put under the strain of controversy. In 1823 King was summoned to appear before an official enquiry into whether he and the Orange Lodge had interfered with empanelling of juries in Dublin courts and William Stoker was called to give evidence. Clearly their relationship weathered the experience but there was now a taint that would prove indelible to King’s business and his firm lost its monopoly in 1831 after the government printing and stationery contracts were opened to tender.

Just one year later in 1832 William Stoker found himself out of employment again and was soon suffering hardship. After all those years of loyal service he wrote to Sir William Gossett the Under Secretary at Dublin Castle to make him aware of his ‘deplorable situation’ and to respectfully request his assistance. His letter was also supported with letters of recommendation from John Burrowess of the Inland Office and a number of dignitaries.² What was done for him in response to the appeal, if anything, is unclear and William Stoker died the following year.

William and France Stoker’s youngest child, Abraham, had been born on 12 March 1799. To date, little is known about his boyhood or education, however, in June 1815, just a few months after Abraham’s sixteenth birthday, his father, almost certainly using his influence as clerk to the King’s stationer in Ireland, obtained him a position as a junior clerk in the Chief Secretary of Ireland’s Office at Dublin Castle. Abraham was established as an assistant clerk, he showed himself to be diligent, honest, sober and utterly reliable but he clearly had no ambition for promotion and he remained in the same grade for almost forty years of his fifty-year career in the Civil Service. Perhaps, having seen what had happened to his father, he just kept his head down, lived a life beyond reproach and was thankful for what he had.

The Stokers were staunch Protestants, their household was one where prayers and religious observation was a feature of daily life and they regularly attended church as a family. Clearly this moved the young Abraham who not only embraced the lifestyle but became an active member of the Church of Ireland and the Sunday School Society for Ireland for many years. His faith never left him, and he both regulated his own life and raised his children according to Christian doctrine and values, well evinced by his oft repeated maxim by which he led his life which was etched bold in the memories of his children: ‘Honesty is the same in every relation of life and anything obtained by a different course cannot be right.’³

Abraham married Charlotte Matilda Blake Thornley in the parish church of Coleraine, County Londonderry in 1844. Marrying aged twenty-five Charlotte was not a young, blushing bride, but she was nineteen years younger than her husband.

Charlotte was also a remarkable woman with a fascinating family history. Her paternal line had its roots in England. Her grandfather, Captain Thomas Thornley (1745-1829) had served in the 14th Regiment of Foot between 1762 and 1784. He later joined the Loyal Essex Regiment of Fencible Cavalry who were sent to Ireland when a French force had landed there to support an Irish rebel uprising in 1797. By the time the Essex Fencibles arrived at the British lines the French had surrendered. Thornley became a Barrack Master and lived out his days in a house on Park Lane, Ballyshannon. The tablet atop his box tomb in the cemetery attached to St Anne’s Church of Ireland in Ballyshannon, County Donegal records: ‘He served in the army upwards of 60 years and died on the 11th day of January 1829, aged 83 years. His character through life was that of an upright honest man, and he died in the faith of his divine redeemer.’

One of his sons, also named Thomas Thornley (1797-1840), had served in the British Army, as a subaltern in the 43rd Regiment of Foot, after which he joined his father in Ballyshannon where he joined the newly-formed Royal Irish Constabulary. While there he would meet and marry Matilda Blake in 1817. They would be blessed with three children who grew to maturity; first born was Charlotte (Bram’s Mother) in 1818, followed by Richard (b. 1821) and Thomas Blake (b.1822).

A marriage between the Thornleys with their British military and police background and the Blakes was not a match of blood that may, at first, appear one that would mingle well. Matilda’s ancestors as one of the ‘Tribes of Galway’ had been a family who had been integral to the history of Ireland for centuries. Her mother was also born an O’Donnell, a direct lineage that could also be traced back over a thousand years and included Manus O’Donnell, the sixteenth-century Lord of Tir Conaill, known to history as Manus ‘The Magnificent’. Successive generations of the O’Donnell family had been the guardians of the Cathach of St Columba since the sixth century AD.

The book box shrine which contained the Cathach had been used by the ancient Gaelic royal family of O’Donnell and their clan as a mystical talisman which could not only provide protection but, they believed, would guarantee victory in battle and became a rallying cry for their fighting men. The revered Cathach and Shrine only left the family when Sir Richard O’Donnell (a cousin of Charlotte Stoker) deposited it with the Royal Irish Academy in 1843.⁴ The Cathach survives to this day, it is acknowledged as the oldest surviving manuscript in Ireland and the second oldest Latin psalter in the world. Over many centuries both the O’Donnell’s and the Blake families had acquired quite a fearsome reputation and were quite prepared to fight and die to defend their freedom from those who sought to rule over them.

Matilda Blake’s brothers kept up that long fighting tradition. Among them was the famous duellist Richard ‘Pistol’ Blake, one of the last Irish greats in a dangerous ‘sport’. This was no mean feat either, Blake was presenting and answering challenges at a time when it was widely believed ‘if a man had not stood fire was looked upon as having shown the white feather’⁵ and Ireland was rivalled only by the other infamous duelling nation of Germany.

Another of Matilda’s brothers was rebel leader ‘General’ George Blake, who had led the Irish rebels that had risen up with the support of a French force of 800 men under the command of General Humbert (the force Captain Thomas Thornley had been deployed to Ireland to repulse). The Irish rising was rapidly put down. Blake’s rebels were routed with the loss of 500 men at the Battle of Ballinamuck in County Longford on 8 September 1798.

Hundreds of the rebels who had survived the battle were hunted down and were rounded up at Ballinalee where they were to be hanged in public as a warning to all. A local tradition adds a grim aside to this story. It tells of how there were so many rebels facing execution that they had to be reduced to more manageable numbers, so crown forces held a lottery using cards marked ‘life’ and ‘death’. Those who drew ‘life’ were set free, those that drew ‘death,’ some 200 in number, kept their appointment with the rope.

Blake himself was captured a few days later and suffered the same fate when he was strung up on gallows improvised from the front the shafts of a cart at Kiltycreevagh Hill. Such was the family history of Bram Stoker’s maternal grandparents. No wonder, when Bram gave voice to Dracula there was a dash of his own ancient family pride when the count declared:

Thomas Thornley was based in a number of towns as he progressed up the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary so as he moved from place to place, his wife Matilda and their young family moved with him. Between 1823 and the early 1830s they were living between Ballyshannon and Sligo and it was their terrible misfortune to be living in Sligo when the cholera epidemic swept through the town in 1832. They were fortunate that all of them survived, however, fate would decree both of Charlotte’s brothers would suffer untimely deaths.

Just two years later while they were still in Sligo, Richard died aged just fourteen. Among the Stoker family papers is a copy of The Cottage Hymn Book given to Richard by his father when he was nine years old, it bears