Launch: Matthew Gibson’s Mr Stoker and the Vampires of the Lyceum

INTERVIEW BY REBEKAH SIMMERS

Born and educated in the UK, Matthew Gibson is currently Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Macau. Mr Stoker and the Vampires of the Lyceum (The Book Guild, 2023) is his first work of fiction. (See details of a talk he is giving in London in June 2023 at the bottom of this interview.)

An online bio describes you as “one of the world’s leading scholars on Bram Stoker – the author of Dracula – and the Gothic.” Mr Stoker and the Vampires of Lyceum is your first novel, but you’ve written much on the subjects. Where did your interest with Bram Stoker begin? 

Following an initial fascination with Irish literature and culture, my interest in Stoker (himself an Irishman) really took off when teaching his masterpiece, Dracula, in Bulgaria (where the students took a great interest in the novel’s Eastern geography and were forever pointing out Stoker’s errors in this regard!). Around this time, I also became aware that a lot of scholars were reading Dracula as a commentary on Britain’s relations with Ireland – not with the Balkans and Ottoman Empire – and felt that this needed to be redressed. This led to the publication, in 2006, of Dracula and the Eastern Question – my book on nineteenth-century British and French vampire narratives, notably novels – followed, in 2013, by The Fantastic and European Gothic. Reading Stoker’s voluminous correspondence propelled me further into the intricacies of his life and work – primarily his literary endeavours – just as I was becoming increasingly interested in Gothic writing more generally. I published more criticism on his writing, and now, of course, have placed Stoker at the heart of my novel.

What prompted you to dive into historical fiction? 

My work on nineteenth-century French and British writers of the Gothic steered me towards historical novels more generally. I read critics such as Georg Lukács but found they did not have a space for seeing the Gothic as constituting commentary on history, even though many Gothic novels – particularly from nineteenth-century France – contained real figures from the recent and not-so-recent past and dealt with public facts. It was then I determined to write something similar to the works of the French writers Paul Féval (himself the author of vampire fiction, and arguably of the first modern crime-fiction novel) and Charles Nodier, but set largely in Victorian England, in London. Both these writers use real historical scenarios and people but weave fantastic events into this fabric; I became enthralled with the possibility of doing the same.

Where did your novel’s inspiration come from? How closely is Stoker’s real life followed?

While the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders form the backdrop, not the foreground, of much of the novel, it was DNA investigations linking a shawl left at the scene of one of the Ripper murders to the barber, Aaron Kosminski – and the later assertion that this link was not confirmed, leaving some leeway to suggest other suspects – that first set me on the trail. From this real detail I imagined a whole set of interlinking circumstances for that particular time – a time when Stoker worked at the Lyceum for Henry Irving – prompted by my knowledge not just of Stoker but of others in his milieu (including Irving and Irving’s leading lady, Ellen Terry), and I began to devise a basic plot.

The general elements of Stoker’s real life are largely portrayed accurately (he was acting manager at the Lyceum Theatre, working for Irving, while writing novels on the side), although I did take poetic licence in relation to the exact nature of his friendships with other notables. His marriage to Florence, however, was fraught – as portrayed in the novel, a point noted by all his biographers.

You hit on familiar things – London, Jack the Ripper, theatre, vampires – while offering a fresh take with the inventor of Dracula himself as a main character. What resources did you use to build this Gothic world?

I used established Gothic traits and motifs, such as terror, mystery and even a gloomy castle, as well as familiar devices, such as the anagramming of names (something used by Sheridan Le Fanu in his early Gothic vampire novella, Carmilla), to build this world. Beyond this, I tried to follow the sorts of descriptions used in Gothic novels of the time, as well as those used in more conventional, realist novels, from the likes of Thackeray and Dickens. I tried to keep this world fresh, and the reader intrigued, by weaving fact and fiction –real people, events and circumstances with the imagined, even fantastic, playing with the idea of what is true, and what is not.

What do you hope comes across in your portrayal of Stoker? Of Irving?

I hope readers will see Stoker as a hard-working, intellectually curious man (he was famed for the amount of information he could read and absorb), who cared a great deal for his fellow workers in the theatre – even as he was clearly very conscious of his own position, and despite having to contend with fraught relations at home (this state of affairs was actually lampooned by a cartoonist at the time). I hope my portrayal of Stoker is at least accurate in spirit, and that readers will forgive any of the less pleasant aspects of his character as being largely effects of his time. My portrayal of Henry Irving is of someone outwardly more rumbustious than he was in real life, although his fanatical perfectionism and devotion to his art (not just his own physical performance but stagecraft, particularly lighting), as described in the novel, is entirely true.

What is something that surprised you while researching them?

I continue to be taken aback by the abrupt way in which Irving left his wife – exiting their carriage at Hyde Park Corner (London) and walking off into the night after she had flippantly suggested he give up acting and choosing never to see her again.

Have you visited the Lyceum Theatre and other featured settings? I read Stoker never travelled to Eastern Europe, the setting of Dracula. Have you travelled there?

Yes, I’ve visited the Lyceum, as well as read about it in Stoker’s memoir of Henry Irving, in his articles and essays. However, I’ve never been backstage, and did, as with certain other physical characteristics of the theatre, slightly bend the truth here, particularly to suit the purposes of plot.

I know London itself very well, including areas mentioned in the novel, close to the Lyceum – around the Strand, Charing Cross Road and Trafalgar Square – as well as where Stoker lived at the time, Chelsea.

It’s true that Stoker never visited Eastern Europe, although his brother, George (who features in the novel), spent some time working for the Turkish army in Rumelia (modern-day Bulgaria) as well as Macedonia and northern Greece, and so Stoker would have heard much about the region and its politics from him. I myself lived and worked in Poland and Bulgaria for upwards of seven years, learning both countries’ languages, and furnishing myself with details that later proved serviceable in the novel, such as the Scottish component of Danzig’s (modern-day Gdansk’s) history and the role of English Renaissance drama in the city’s development.

Dracula is everywhere – from classic movies to children’s cartoon movies. What do you think continues to interest people in Stoker’s character?

People love vampires, and Dracula is the most iconic, complete vampire of all time, given his expansive repertoire of tricks and traits, some of which – his fear of crucifixes and garlic, for example – were added to the character by Stoker from his research into the Transylvanian Nosferatu. Dracula is also an impressive figure when contrasted with his enemies – Holmwood, Harker, Seward et al. – who are the subject of relatively flat portrayals. These characters are all virtuous (almost too virtuous) and this banality contrasts with Dracula, making him more fascinating and exciting than his opponents; he is also more of a Byronic anti-hero than a being who is purely evil, in the spell he casts upon Lucy, Mina, and of course the reader.

Beyond this, Dracula plays into all sorts of liminal and subliminal political and social anxieties – from being read as a member of a resurgent aristocracy (as feared by the emerging middle class in Victorian England), to capitalist exploiter, to representative of an ongoing threat from the East; certainly, he is read as a sexual decadent. All this facilitates new ways of interpreting and discerning relevance in the novel.

Another point of interest is the ‘in between’ status of Dracula; an entity who is both alive and dead – ‘Undead’ and the enduring curiosity humans have towards the afterlife and its possibility. Coupled with this is the vampire’s constant ability to rejuvenate, all attractive features for us mere mortals!

What advice would you give aspiring authors when featuring a real historical figure as a main character?

Follow the spirit and personality of the historical figure and work out what will make them appealing and exciting to the reader, rather than simply reproducing them in accordance with a strict taxonomy of recorded gestures and habits. My other piece of advice when, as with Mr Stoker, writing about both real people and the imagined, is to include a coda at the end of the book, separating fact from the fiction – not only to satisfy the curiosity of readers but also to allay the concerns of any descendants of any real people depicted in the novel!

Is this novel a stand-alone?

I very much hope the novel becomes part of a series. I already have a sequel in mind! I also have other projects I would like to pursue – notably, a novel which places Bram Stoker’s brother, George, centre stage, taking him to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) to meet once again certain characters from Mr Stoker.

What was the last good book you read?  

Le Diable Amoureux (‘The Devil in Love’) by Jacques Cazotte, which is arguably the first-ever novel of the fantastic, an element of which features in Mr Stoker.

Matthew Gibson is presenting a talk referencing Mr Stoker at Westminster Music Library, 35 St Martin’s Street, London WC2H 7HP on Friday 9 June 2023, 6.00–7.30pm. Tickets here.