John William Polidori - The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori

Murray wrote to Lord Byron on April 27, 1819. He speaks of the publication of The Vampyre in The New Monthly Magazine , and afterwards in book-form, and proceeds: "The Editor of that journal has quarrelled with the Publisher, and has called this morning to exculpate himself from the baseness of the transaction. He says that he received it from Dr. Polidori for a small sum; Polidori averring that the whole plan of it was yours, and that it was merely written out by him. The Editor inserted it with a short statement to this effect; but, to his astonishment, Colburn cancelled the leaf.... He informs me that Polidori, finding that the sale exceeded his expectation and that he had sold it too cheap, went to the Editor and declared that he would deny it."

This statement by Murray makes it probable that the paragraph purporting to come from the Editor, or some substantial part of it, really emanated from the Publisher, and the same is definitely asserted in Polidori's letter to The Morning Chronicle ; but Murray's letter does not settle the question whether the allegation about a traveller at Geneva was true or false. The Editor's assertion that "he received it from Dr. Polidori for a small sum" does not by any means clear up all the facts. It seems quite possible that there really was a correspondent at Geneva who sent to the Editor the MS. of The Vampyre , along with that of Polidori's other tale, and an outline of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , as expressly affirmed in the final note signed "Ed."; and that the Editor, having no right to publish The Vampyre unless by authority of its writer, spoke to Polidori about it. How could Polidori dispose of it "for a small sum" if he alleged that it was written by Byron, or by any one other than himself? He averred "that the whole plan of it was" Byron's—and this is apparently true; adding "that it was merely written out by" himself—in the sense not of having written from Byron's dictation, but of having composed a story founded upon Byron's intended incidents. Murray's final phrase—that Polidori "went to the Editor, and declared that he would deny it"—is loosely expressed, but seems to mean that he would deny Byron's authorship of The Vampyre —and so in fact he did.

If we suppose (as did Murray apparently) that Polidori had in the first instance planned a deliberate imposture, and had palmed off upon the Editor The Vampyre as being virtually the writing of Byron, we are encountered by three difficulties left unexplained: (1) What plea could Polidori advance for having the MS. and the right of publishing it? (2) Why did he sell for "a small sum" a work which, if written by the world-famous Lord Byron, would be worth a very considerable sum? (3) Why did the Editor pay to Polidori a sum, whether small or large, for a book which, according to this assumption, was avowedly not the writing of himself, but the writing and property of Byron? All these difficulties are avoided, and no other serious difficulties arise, if we assume that the account given by Polidori is the true one, viz. that he offered the tale to the Editor as being his own composition, strictly modelled upon a series of incidents invented by Byron.

Polidori's letter, addressed to the Editor of The Morning Chronicle , was, as I have already said, delivered to the office of that paper. It was not however published there, as Messrs. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, the publishers of The Vampyre in its book-form, represented to Polidori that the appearance of such a letter would tend to compromise them, and he therefore, out of consideration for this firm, withdrew the letter unprinted. This is Polidori's own statement, contained in the Introduction to another romantic tale of his, Ernestus Berchtold , published in 1819; being the tale by Polidori which, as stated by the Editor of The New Monthly Magazine , had been sent to him along with The Vampyre and the outline of Frankenstein . Besides all this, the Doctor wrote a brief letter, published in The Courier on May 5, 1819, saying—what was clearly the fact—"Though the groundwork is certainly Lord Byron's, its development is mine."

I must now revert for a moment to the "skull-headed lady." In the Introduction above named, Polidori asserts that that tale, Ernestus Berchtold , was the one which he began at Cologny. It does not contain any sort of mention of any skull-headed lady. There is some supernatural machinery in the story, of a rather futile kind; it could be excluded without affecting the real basis of the narrative, which relates the love-affair and marriage of a young Swiss patriot with a lady who is ultimately identified as his sister. As to Mrs. Shelley's allegation that the (non-existent) skull-headed lady was punished for "peeping through a keyhole," no such incident exists in Ernestus Berchtold ; there is, however, a passage where a certain Julia seeks to solve a mystery by looking "through the wainscot of a closet for wood." Her head, after this inspection, remains exactly what it was before.

The Vampyre was in its way a great success. As stated in The Dictionary of National Biography , Byron's name gave Polidori's production great celebrity on the Continent, where The Vampyre was held to be quite the thing which it behoved Byron to have written. It formed the groundwork of Marschner's opera, and nearly half a volume of Dumas's Memoirs is occupied by an account of the representation of a French play founded upon it.

1816. April 24. —I left London at 10 in the morning, with Lord Byron, Scrope Davies, Esq., and J. Hobhouse, Esq.

[Mr. Scrope Berdmore Davies had been one of Byron's fellow-students and intimates at Cambridge University, and had continued familiar with him at Newstead Abbey and elsewhere. He has been described as "no less remarkable for elegance of taste than for a generous high-mindedness." Mr. John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Sir J. C. Hobhouse, and ultimately Lord Broughton de Gifford) was, it need hardly be said, a peculiarly close friend of Byron. He had accompanied him in his travels in Greece prior to the commencement of Childe Harold , wrote notes to that poem, and to the last upheld the essential fineness of his Lordship's character. Byron's intention to travel along with Hobhouse in the spring of 1816 was not a new project conceived in consequence of his separation, only completed on April 22, from his wife. He had entertained this scheme before his daughter Ada was born on December 10, 1815, and had announced it to his wife, to whom the notion was not agreeable.]

The view from Shooter's Hill was extensive and beautiful, being on a much larger scale than the view from Stirling.

[Polidori mentions Stirling, as being no doubt a reminiscence of his own, from the days when he had been in Edinburgh to take his medical degree.]

The plain, enamelled with various colours according to the different growth of the corn, spread far before our sight, was divided irregularly by the river. The Thames next, with its majestic waves, flowed in the plain below, bearing numerous fleets upon its flood. Its banks in many parts were beautiful. The chalky banks were alternated with the swelling hills, rising from the waves, of the pleasing green-brown, the effect of the first dawn of spring on the vegetable creation.

At Canterbury we saw the Cathedral. I know not how it was, whether my mind had been prepared by the previous sight of glorious nature to receive pleasing impressions, but the spot where the high altar and Thomas à Becket's tomb stood seemed to me one of the most beautiful effects that I had ever seen arising from Saxo-Gothic architecture; for, though it had not all the airiness and awe-inspiring height that I had seen in other cathedrals, yet its simple beauty pleased me more than anything I had yet seen.