A taste of the Gothic

'In Mr Stoker's Hand' A Kendal (2014)

If you happen to be in London over the holidays and are wondering what to do, then why not pop along to the British Library to catch it’s exhibition, Terror and Wonder: The Gothic imagination?

We took it in last week, as part of my post-work birthday celebrations – and a damned good option it was too.

It begins in 1764 – a crucial date, as this was when Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, generally accepted as the first Gothic novel.

Indeed, by it’s second edition, it bore the words ‘A Gothic Story’ on the title page.

Walpole, who lived in Twickenham in a house called Strawberry Hill, was such a fan of all things Gothic that he converted his home to reflect that obsession, with thousands of people visiting to see the results.

This is not to say that the Gothic novel emerged from nowhere: its roots can be found in a variety of works from the likes of Shakespeare (think Tempest and even Hamlet) to Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene.

Mind, the minute I started seeing these connections, I started thinking of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe as having Gothic elements.

Gothic may sound like a small niche market, but when looked at through the prism of this exhibition, you realise just how far-reaching its tendrils are.

The exhibition, though, takes us from these beginnings right up to the present day, with a series of photographs from the twice-yearly gathering of Goths in Whitby.

These, incidentally, were commissioned by the library for this exhibition and are well worth paying attention to – don't just rush past.

In between, there’s plenty to see and learn, including on Bram Stoker and Dracula, and we can see that the populist fears of our own times are not new: immigration/foreigners, disease, sexuality, science/technology and change can all be found in the Gothic literature of the past, although new themes have emerged in recent years, including the impact of humanity on the environment.

There are the pulp novels, and the satires as well as the literature; filmed versions of classic tales such as Hollywood versions of Frankenstein are represented, plus our own The Whicker Man and there is even, in a stand-alone glass case, the eponymous bunny from Wallace and Gromit’s The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

There’s a particularly interesting section on Edgar Allen Poe, who I have now been inspired to start reading.

And the section on Poe was not the only area where the power of a good book illustration could be seen too.

Boris Karloff as an iconic Frankenstein's monster

Showing an overlap of issues, one exhibit was a letter to police from 'The Boss’ who claimed to be Jack the Ripper and goaded police by saying he’d lop the ear off his next victim. When the next victim had a damaged ear, the police were slightly less skeptical.

But with this is displayed the front page from a sensation paper of the time, with its illustrations, including ghoulish – and clumsy – sketches of the face of the second victim, Annie Chapman, “before and after death”.

It’s a reminder of how the sensationalistic press – and the concomitant voyeuristic and vicarious public – has been with us for a far longer time than we might think.

But from a personal perspective, the highlights include two pages of Mary Shelley’s manuscript for Frankenstein, complete with notes in the margin from Percy.

If you have any fascination for old documents and original handwriting by famous writers, then this has the sort of jaw-dropping impact that’s worth the exhibition price alone.

This exhibition requires time: we had 90 minutes, but were still rushing a tad by the end.

It is, however, well worth the effort.

In an entirely coincidental manner, my birthday continued in Gothic vein, with dinner a few steps further along Euston Road in the Gilbert Scott, which is housed in the restored Midland Grand Hotel (now the St Pancras Renaissance) and originally designed by George Gilbert Scott.

Watch out for the Were-Rabbit!

Since we were in good time, we had cocktails – and a brief glance at the cocktail menu told me that I could manage to find a perfectly Gothic-sounding cocktail to sip.

The Herbalist is a mix of Tanqueray 10 gin, green Chartreuse, elderflower, lemon and an absinthe rinse. Pale green, and served with a garnish of mint and thyme, it looks the business, but is far more subtle than one might expect – although packing a powerful punch. But how Gothic an you get?

The food was as good as ever: foie gras to start, with a delicate garnish of cranberries, followed by haddock with a crust of crumbs and toasted almond, and served on a bed of charred broccoli with a gremolata, and with new potatoes on the side, with a garnish of seaweed (treated like chives).

For dessert, I couldn’t resist having a special Marcus Wareing confection: Kendal mint cake choc ice, which gave a rather green tinge to a dinner that had started with a pale Gothic green cocktail.

So often I struggle with portion size, but I swear, every single one of those three plates was absolutely scraped clean.

All in all, a most enjoyable evening.

And as you can see from the illustration at the top of this piece, the inspiration continued well into the weekend.

For far fuller reviews of the Gilbert Scott, see if you think food is food, think again and Comfort and joy.

Plus: Dracula: The Gothic classic with a sexy bite

The Gothic classic with a sexy bite

Gary Oldman as a less clichéd screen Dracula

When Jonathon Harker, a newly-qualified solicitor, is sent to visit a client in Transylvania, he little realises that his trip to the Carpathians will change from romantic journey to life-threatening horror.

But his experiences at Count Dracula’s castle are just the beginning. While Harker is still on his way home, his fiancé, Mina, is visiting her best friend in Whitby.

And when Lucy falls mysteriously ill, shortly after the arrival in port of a ship that is manned only by a dead skipper, lashed to his wheel, her friends call on Professor Van Helsing to come to their aid.

Not the ‘original’ vampire tale by a long chalk – Polidori’s The Vampyre, from 1819, was the first to employ vampires as a stock figure in gothic horror – but Bram Stoker’s is the one that, since its initial publication in 1897, has stood the test of time.

It remains an excellent example of the genre. Taking an epistolary form made up of letters, notes, newspaper reports and diary entries from various characters, Stoker avoids overly flowery language, while his theatre background (he was stage manager to the legendary Victorian actor, Sir Henry Irving) shows in his ability to write various characters’ in a way that helps you ‘hear’ their voices. Van Helsing, for instance, ‘speaks’ and writes English with a slight hint of Germanic foreignness, while various working-class figures speak in the expected manner.

But what makes this novel stand out are the themes that Stoker deals with.

New-fangled technology and science rear their heads – typewriters, cameras and recording machines are seen alongside the new-fangled sciences such as psychology. In the novel, science in particular needs, if not to be overcome, then tamed.

Van Helsing’s understanding of what Dracula is depends on his ‘openness’ to things other than science and the empirical world. The other characters have to learn to accept what they find so difficult to believe – the message being that that difficulty is a direct consequence of faith in science etc.

And religion is important – not simply for the artifacts that protect (crucifixes, crosses and holy water) – but those fighting Dracula increasingly appeal to God for help in their quest. Folklore too is a help, seen in the role of garlic in keeping vampires away.

This is fin de siècle Europe, with Stoker appealing for the ‘old beliefs’ in the face of the new. But his concerns go further.

Max Schreck being scary as Nosferatu

The dominant theme here is of the danger of female sexuality – specifically, its danger to men.

The main threat to Harker’s life in Transylvania is not from Dracula himself, but from his three vampire brides, whom he rejects and flees, although it nearly kills him.

Once the count has made his way to England, though, he infects the innocent Lucy.

Stoker’s choice of vocabulary leaves no doubt.

The vampire brides and the infected Lucy are examples of “voluptuousness” and “wantonness”, while the pre-infected Lucy is “pure” and “innocent”. Such vocabulary is used time and time again.

Dracula comes to Lucy – and later Mina – at night, when they’re in bed.

The scene where he takes Mina is clearly sexual – having bitten her, he cuts his own breast and, forcing her head to him, makes her drink his blood. They’re discovered with Mina at his breast – a parody of maternity.

And what would men have to be so frightened of, other than sexuality itself?

In the late 19th century, syphilis was rife. Theories of the origins of the disease are manifold. Suggestions include it having come to Europe via the Spanish conquest of the New World.

However, in England, the disease was known at a 13–14th century Augustinian friary in the north-eastern port of Hull (not very far from Whitby). That Hull is a port suggests that the virus could have been ‘imported’ via its maritime links.

Dracula AD72 – a different sexual aspect

What is clear is that syphilis has long been blamed on foreigners. It has been variously called the ‘French disease’ in Italy and Germany, and the ‘Italian disease’ in France. The Dutch called it the ‘Spanish disease’, the Russians called it the ‘Polish disease’, the Turks called it the ‘Christian disease’ or ‘Frank disease’ and the Tahitians called it the ‘British disease’.

In Stoker’s England, respectable women didn’t like sex – the only reason for it was to procreate. As a result, with little or no sexual outlet at home, middle-class Englishmen visited prostitutes widely.

And the fear of syphilis caused them to hunt for virgins, in an effort to stay ‘clean’. Hunting for virgins then translated into a hunt for ever younger prostitutes, in order to be more sure that they were indeed virgins.

On a visit to London, the French writer Émile Zola was shocked to be propositioned by a child he estimated to be as young as six. She gave him a mouthful when he refused, but tried to give her some money.

In Dracula, the deadly infection is imported by a foreigner, who ‘seduces’ women in their beds at night, exchanging bodily fluids as he passes on the killer infection.

Arthur Holmwood cannot be allowed to kiss his dying Lucy, because it would infect him. Only after the undead Lucy is staked can she really die and, her soul cleansed once again, take her place in Heaven.

With Mina, after Dracula’s assault on her, she is ‘unclean’ – to the extent that, when van Helsing presses a communion wafer to her forehead, a mark is ‘burnt’ onto her skin. Even God blames and rejects her, and sees her as unholy.

Female sexuality is presented as an inevitable – women need little or no tempting. Mina and Lucy are “pure”, exemplary women – yet neither is able to resist the count’s blood lust. They need to be protected by men and by religion. Men need to protect themselves, by controlling and subduing female sexuality.

The contradictions are obvious – the idea that men are somehow ‘innocent’ in all this, together with the refusal to recognise that female ‘respectability’ is itself a part of the problem.

Evolving vampire sexiness in Underworld

But the attitudes are far from new – they hark back to ancient beliefs, including Biblical ideas of female impurity and the myth of Adam and Eve and the serpent.

And they still exist today – for instance, in the idea of a Muslim woman needing to cover herself ‘modestly’ so as not to tempt men.

Vampires have remained popular, from the obviously sexual Christoper Lee incarnation in the Hammer films, to Anne Rice’s Lestat series or Kim Newman’s enjoyable Anno Dracula novels, the Buffy TV series or the Underworld films.

They have evolved beyond simplistic representations of dangerous foreigners, but have retained a strong sexual element.

One suspects that this is at least part of the continuing attraction.

Thus Stoker’s Dracula is not only a great work of gothic horror, but an insight into Victorian social attitudes and fears. And that alone makes it a worthwhile and absolutely fascinating read.

* This was originally a 2008 piece written for a literature forum, that came to mind during an online discussion of the novel. It has been slightly edited and extended here.