Summary
The Vampyre opens with the "Extract of a letter from Geneva." The writer of the letter discusses the many famous writers and thinkers who lived in this area of Switzerland, on a lake by the Jura Mountains. Among these figures, the letter-writer pays particular attention to Lord Byron, an English romantic poet who “resided many months in this neighbourhood.”
The writer visits Byron’s mansion and tries to gather information about the poet from those surrounding him, such as Byron’s servant and the man who watches over his boat. From a balcony overlooking the lake and the Jura mountain, he imagines the stormy view to be the inspiration for one of Byron’s famous works—Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage—which he cites in his letter.
The letter-writer is “unsuccessful” and only manages to gather a few anecdotes about Byron’s “uncivil” behavior. For example, the poet invited guests to his home but left at the last minute, leaving a companion to apologize for his absence. Similarly, Byron agreed to attend a gathering in town. But when he approached the room full of people, he decided to return home immediately.
The letter-writer discusses other rumors about Byron and dismisses one particularly bad one—that he had two sisters “as the partakers of his revels.” The last anecdote that the letter-writer shares relates to an evening gathering that included Lord Byron, his physician, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Miss Mary Godwin Shelley, and the latter's sister Miss Clermont.
At the gathering, the group shared ghost stories and other works, including an unpublished poem, “Christabel.” This poem moved Shelley so much that he saw a disturbing image and left the room in a cold sweat. Subsequently, the group decided that each would write a supernatural tale. Byron, the physician, and Mary Godwin each participated, and the letter-writer indicates that the story to follow emerged in this context.
The letter extract is followed by an introduction to The Vampyre. The author explains that the superstition surrounding vampires "is very general in the East." Vampire tales are common among the Arabians but were not present in Greek society until the establishment of Christianity there. Tales of vampires—who drink a portion of their victims’ blood each night, leaving them emaciated—have spread similarly throughout Western Europe.
The narrator relates one "credible account" from the London Journal of March 1732, concerning a Hungarian outlaw named Arnold Paul. Paul claimed to have saved himself from a vampire by eating the dirt from his grave and rubbing himself with his blood. However, Paul himself became a vampire and killed four people following his death. Finally, the townspeople found the body, fresh and emitting blood. They drove a stake through Paul’s heart, cut off his head, burned his body, and threw the ashes into his grave.
The author explains that he includes this tale to illustrate the beliefs about vampires as figures condemned to prey on the people they loved most when they were alive. In this vein, he cites "The Giaour," a poem by Byron, which features a character who is doomed to vampirize his loved ones in this manner. Finally, the introduction closes by mentioning other well-known allusions to vampirism in European poetry, travel writing, and theology.
Analysis
From the outset of The Vampyre, the backstory to this work of fiction, and the social and historical circumstances under which it emerged, are important. One demonstration of this is the letter and introduction that open John William Polidori’s novella.
Polidori employs the literary device of a fictional letter which at the same time alludes to real historical events. The letter-writer—a fictional character who is a great fan of Lord Byron’s—describes his visit to the Villa Diodati, where Byron and his physician, Polidori, actually stayed during the summer of 1816. The writer expresses awe of Byron and compares the poet to literary legends like Rousseau and Voltaire.
The fictional letter hints at the real historical origins of Polidori’s The Vampyre. The letter-writer indicates that Byron originally told the vampire story at the Villa Diodati during a ghost-story contest in the presence of Byron, Polidori, the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, the author Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), and her step-sister, Claire Clermont.
According to historical studies and testimony by those present, the group was stuck indoors due to an abnormally rainy, cold summer caused by a massive volcanic eruption. 1816 was known across Europe as the “Year Without a Summer.” Byron and his guests entertained themselves by reading ghost stories, until Byron suggested that each participant write a tale relating some supernatural occurrence. Mary Shelley, with help from her husband-to-be Percy, wrote Frankenstein. Byron told a vampire story that was eventually published as "Fragment of a Novel." And Polidori wrote The Vampyre, based on the story related by Byron.
From the outset, Polidori’s story was closely associated with Byron. Moreover, the letter extract and introduction to the novella intentionally portray the dark and elusive Byron as a vampire-like character.
For example, the writer describes Byron’s strange habits: he "retired to rest at three, got up at two, and employed himself a long time over his toilette; that he never went to sleep without a pair of pistols and a dagger by his side, and that he never eat animal food." The indication that Byron sleeps during the day, stays up all night, and does not consume animal meat seems to associate the poet with a vampire who must prey on human blood in secret.
Polidori’s association of vampirism with Byron is likely an allusion to the poet’s outsize personality and reputation as well as the physician’s own complicated relationship with Byron. Polidori—who British academic Robert Morrison characterized as "handsome, arrogant and hot-tempered"— was himself an aspiring writer who showed drafts of his work to Byron. But Polidori notes in his diaries that Byron was mocking and dismissive of his efforts. In one famous exchange, the physician asked the poet: "What is there excepting writing poetry that I cannot do better than you?" Byron replied: "First, I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door—Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point—and thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing."
Author Andrew McConnell Scott writes that Polidori "began to feel that his own sense of self was being drained by his proximity to the poet… It was no great leap for Polidori to believe that Byron was sucking the life from him, just as others had accused Byron of possessing a charismatic power that eclipsed their own identities." In this way, The Vampyre may be seen as an allegory for Polidori’s relationship with Byron.
