Augustus Darvell is an unfinished horror story written during the ‘ghost story’ competition held at Villa Diodati overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland in June 1816. Darvell is widely regarded as the spark that ignited the prototype for modern literary vampires.
The prelude
The circle of literary colleagues (NightCafe AI)
On an evening of unseasonably cold and stormy weather during the summer of 1816, Byron was discussing an anthology of German ghost stories with his friends—Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin—and his physician, John Polidori. He went on to propose a competition to while away the time spent indoors during the inclement weather:
Each person should write their own (terrifying) ghost story. This is how ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’ was born (written by Mary Shelley – then Mary Godwin) and ‘The Vampyre’ evolved into a contemporary vampire archetype—Lord Ruthven (John Polidori).
Frankenstein’s Monster (NightCafe AI)
Lord Ruthven (NightCafe AI)
Byron’s Vampire story
Augustus Darvell is a man of ancient family and considerable fortune who is marked by a mysterious, self-destructive secret. He is portrayed as an intelligent, sophisticated man of wealth who haunts the drawing rooms of high society and foreign travel locations. Darvell is a “hypnotically handsome” predator who acts as a social equal to his victims, rather than a mindless monster or ghoul.
Whilst on his Grand Tour to the East, Darvell travels through Turkey, where he begins to waste away from an undiagnosed illness. The fragment culminates in a surreal death scene at a Turkish cemetery near Ephesus. Knowing he is about to die, Darvell forces the narrator to swear a solemn oath to conceal his death from everyone. As he dies, a stork appears perched on a tombstone with a writhing snake in its beak – which he takes to be an ominous sign. The story concludes with his mysterious death and rapid decomposition. The face of the corpse turns unnaturally black and Darvell is buried in a shallow grave in the Turkish cemetery.
According to Polidori, Byron intended for Darvell to rise from the dead and return to England – reappearing in high society, where he would be found ‘alive’ by the narrator. Byron’s concept shifted the vampire from a “beastly ghoul” or “dishevelled peasant” of folklore into an alluring, wealthy, and educated aristocrat who could blend undetected into human society.
In the planned conclusion, Darvell would have used his status to wreak havoc, specifically by seducing and killing the narrator’s sister. However, Byron took little interest in the competition at Villa Diodati once he realised that he and Percy Bysshe Shelley were out of the running! He was bored and abandoned the draft – which is, in part, why it remained ‘a fragment’!
While Byron provided the initial spark, it was Polidori’s work that established the archetype that Bram Stoker eventually refined. Polidori’s story sparked a ‘vampire craze’ across Europe and Lord Ruthven paved the way for Count Dracula.
Aftermath
Augustus Darvell served as a model, or at least inspired, John Polidori’s The Vampyre. When the latter was published in 1819, it was initially misattributed to Lord Byron – which contributed to its success. It is credited as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre, transforming the vampire from a folkloric monster into an aristocratic fiend.
Byron originally sent his prose fragment to John Murray from Italy. He later asserted that he had only sent the fragment to Murray to be published in a ‘periodical paper’ (like a magazine) and not as part of a formal collection of his works.
Murray published the fragment at the end of Mazeppa – without a word of explanation regarding its incomplete nature or its origin as a ‘ghost story’ contest entry. He likely included the fragment to capitalise on the ‘vampire craze’ of 1819. Byron was angered by this ‘trick’ and wrote a scathing letter to his publisher:
“I shall not allow you to play the tricks you did last year with the prose you post-scribed to ‘Mazeppa,’ which I sent to you not to be published … and there you tacked it, without a word of explanation, and be damned to you.”
The oppressive and unseasonably cold and stormy weather of the ‘Year Without a Summer’ also inspired Byron to write Darkness – a poetic reflection of the actual ‘volcanic winter’ they were experiencing (caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora).
For more information - head back to ByronBytes Poetry: Darkness (B)
For more information on the famous night at Villa Diodati and the ‘ghost horror stories’ – head back to The Horror Writers at Villa Diodati (B) and Frankenstein & The Vampyre (BBs)
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