Warning: Spoilers!
While I knew that Bram Stoker had lived through the Ripper era, the idea for THE DRACULA DOSSIER did not come to me till I read the following, in Paul Murray's From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker (which was, incidentally, the third Stoker biography I read):
"Whether this lurid series of murders in 1888 had… an influence on Stoker is a matter of debate. Hall Caine's close friend, Dr. Francis J. Tumblety, an American quack doctor, was a prime suspect in the killings and this gave Stoker a direct connection to the case. …Stoker's preface to the 1901 Icelandic edition of Dracula alludes to the Jack the Ripper killings; whether this means that Stoker was genuinely influenced by Jack the Ripper when he was writing the book or was merely attempting to add verisimilitude to the alleged 'facts' of the novel, a few years after its publication, is open to question."
Open to question, indeed. In reading that paragraph, the seed of the story was sown. What if Stoker's "direct connection" was more than anyone knew? What if he had indeed been "genuinely influenced by Jack the Ripper"? What if… And the novel grew from these and other What ifs, as novels do.
As I have stated elsewhere, THE DRACULA DOSSIER is as true as fiction allowed it to be. While I cannot answer all the questions to which the work might give rise, I can address a few of the more common ones. This I do in the book, in the Author's Note, which I reproduce here as well:
In writing of his own novel, THE NAME OF THE ROSE, Umberto Eco refers to the genre of fiction known as the "swashbuckler" novel: novels that not only use historical backgrounds, but also incorporate historical figures. This is sometimes done as a pretext, one intended to add authenticity to the narrative and thereby facilitate that "suspension of disbelief" so key to a reader's enjoyment. In THE DRACULA DOSSIER, I have attempted to take the notion of "swashbuckling" fiction further, neither merely co-opting "real" history nor proposing an alternative to it, but rather writing a "shadow" history. In so doing, I have held fast to one of Eco's tenets of swashbuckling fiction; and therefore I can assure the reader that nothing—rather, nearly nothing—in THE DRACULA DOSSIER contradicts the historical record. In other words: This could have happened as written.
In response to the reader who wonders, perhaps impatiently, what, precisely, is true, I offer the following notes, which are by no means exhaustive.
All main characters in THE DRACULA DOSSIER are historical personages, excepting Mr. Penfold (analogous to DRACULA's Renfield) and those characters who come onstage in supporting roles, such as the Lyceum's pricking seamstress, Mrs. Pinch. Further, these historical figures did indeed know one another. Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde were allied by their dual courtship of Florence Bascombe; which, though it ended badly for Wilde, did not see Stoker banished from the good graces—and salon—of Lady Jane Wilde. Further, Stoker did worship Walt Whitman, and their relationship was in fact closer than the present fiction allowed. Hall Caine did know Francis Tumblety, intimately, and the excerpts from Tumblety's letters to Caine presented in the DOSSIER are more-or-less factual, as are Stoker's to Whitman. So, too, is the balance of the fiction pertaining to Hall Caine supported by fact, from the illegality of his marriage to his relationship to Rossetti (who, yes, did hope to train an elephant to wash the windows of Tudor House). Ditto the Wildes, the first family of flamboyance, upon whom no fiction could hope to improve.
Stoker did work for Henry Irving, and though he of course knew the Lyceum's leading lady, Ellen Terry—who did research sundry roles in London asylums, Stoker accompanying her on occasion—their visit to Stepney Latch is as fictitious as the place itself. So too is the novel-ending trip to Edinburgh imagined, though Irving & Co. did go there to research their much-anticipated Macbeth.
Though some famous creatives have been synesthetes—such as Chopin—Stoker, as far as is known, was not one. (Readers wishing to read more about this neurological phenomenon can turn, as I did, to Richard E. Cytowic's The Man Who Tasted Shapes.) Stoker did, however, lead an unhappy home life, and died mere days after the sinking of the Titanic. We can only wonder what the great ship must have heralded for the dying author as it set out from Southampton; for Stoker was always drawn to the sea and the ship's sinking is said to have hastened his end.
Upon his death, Stoker's papers were dispersed via auction, and though the "miscellaneous lot 128" did exist, my supposition that Stoker's journal of 1888 was among the auctioned miscellany is just that: a supposition, for which I claim a fictioneer's prerogative.
The Golden Dawn is represented here as truthfully as fact and fiction allowed, though the location and decoration of the Isis-Urania No. 3 temple is my own doing. Likewise, all persons mentioned as members of the Golden Dawn are either known, supposed, or reputed to have been members.
The "real" Francis J. Tumblety died in May of 1903 at age 73, in St. Louis. His remains were transported to Rochester, where he was interred in the family tomb. Supposedly.
In researching THE DRACULA DOSSIER, I have turned to many sources; among which: Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula, by Barbara Belford; From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker, by Paul Murray; Stoker's own Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving; The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, by Neil McKenna; Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellmann; Mother of Oscar, by Joy Melville; and Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, by Vivien Allen. Regarding the rites and rituals of the Golden Dawn, I am indebted, primarily, to The Golden Dawn, by Israel Regardie, and The Essential Golden Dawn, by Chic and Sandra Cicero.
As regards Jack the Ripper, I owe a special debt to the authors of Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer, Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey, as well as Philip Sugden, whose Complete History of Jack the Ripper is indeed that. And I acknowledge a debt to www.casebook.org, which is, as of this writing, the premier online clearinghouse of Ripperana.
I thank the authors and contributors to all those sources listed above—as well as others too numerous to cite here—and ask, too, that they forgive me for any mistakes made or liberties taken in the crafting of this fiction, the former owing to ignorance, the latter imagination.
I remind the legion of Ripperologists that my aim in writing THE DRACULA DOSSIER was not to indict Francis J. Tumblety, but rather to explore the life of Bram Stoker. And though Jack the Ripper has evolved into myth, his victims have not. Time has proved them all too mortal, and so it is they and not their murderer—whomever he may have been—who are deserving of remembrance here: Mary Ann Nichols. Annie Chapman. Elizabeth Stride. Catherine Eddowes. Mary Jane Kelly.
In response to the reader who wonders, perhaps impatiently, what, precisely, is true, I offer the following notes, which are by no means exhaustive.
All main characters in THE DRACULA DOSSIER are historical personages, excepting Mr. Penfold (analogous to DRACULA's Renfield) and those characters who come onstage in supporting roles, such as the Lyceum's pricking seamstress, Mrs. Pinch. Further, these historical figures did indeed know one another. Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde were allied by their dual courtship of Florence Bascombe; which, though it ended badly for Wilde, did not see Stoker banished from the good graces—and salon—of Lady Jane Wilde. Further, Stoker did worship Walt Whitman, and their relationship was in fact closer than the present fiction allowed. Hall Caine did know Francis Tumblety, intimately, and the excerpts from Tumblety's letters to Caine presented in the DOSSIER are more-or-less factual, as are Stoker's to Whitman. So, too, is the balance of the fiction pertaining to Hall Caine supported by fact, from the illegality of his marriage to his relationship to Rossetti (who, yes, did hope to train an elephant to wash the windows of Tudor House). Ditto the Wildes, the first family of flamboyance, upon whom no fiction could hope to improve.
Stoker did work for Henry Irving, and though he of course knew the Lyceum's leading lady, Ellen Terry—who did research sundry roles in London asylums, Stoker accompanying her on occasion—their visit to Stepney Latch is as fictitious as the place itself. So too is the novel-ending trip to Edinburgh imagined, though Irving & Co. did go there to research their much-anticipated Macbeth.
Though some famous creatives have been synesthetes—such as Chopin—Stoker, as far as is known, was not one. (Readers wishing to read more about this neurological phenomenon can turn, as I did, to Richard E. Cytowic's The Man Who Tasted Shapes.) Stoker did, however, lead an unhappy home life, and died mere days after the sinking of the Titanic. We can only wonder what the great ship must have heralded for the dying author as it set out from Southampton; for Stoker was always drawn to the sea and the ship's sinking is said to have hastened his end.
Upon his death, Stoker's papers were dispersed via auction, and though the "miscellaneous lot 128" did exist, my supposition that Stoker's journal of 1888 was among the auctioned miscellany is just that: a supposition, for which I claim a fictioneer's prerogative.
The Golden Dawn is represented here as truthfully as fact and fiction allowed, though the location and decoration of the Isis-Urania No. 3 temple is my own doing. Likewise, all persons mentioned as members of the Golden Dawn are either known, supposed, or reputed to have been members.
The "real" Francis J. Tumblety died in May of 1903 at age 73, in St. Louis. His remains were transported to Rochester, where he was interred in the family tomb. Supposedly.
In researching THE DRACULA DOSSIER, I have turned to many sources; among which: Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula, by Barbara Belford; From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker, by Paul Murray; Stoker's own Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving; The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, by Neil McKenna; Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellmann; Mother of Oscar, by Joy Melville; and Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, by Vivien Allen. Regarding the rites and rituals of the Golden Dawn, I am indebted, primarily, to The Golden Dawn, by Israel Regardie, and The Essential Golden Dawn, by Chic and Sandra Cicero.
As regards Jack the Ripper, I owe a special debt to the authors of Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer, Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey, as well as Philip Sugden, whose Complete History of Jack the Ripper is indeed that. And I acknowledge a debt to www.casebook.org, which is, as of this writing, the premier online clearinghouse of Ripperana.
I thank the authors and contributors to all those sources listed above—as well as others too numerous to cite here—and ask, too, that they forgive me for any mistakes made or liberties taken in the crafting of this fiction, the former owing to ignorance, the latter imagination.
I remind the legion of Ripperologists that my aim in writing THE DRACULA DOSSIER was not to indict Francis J. Tumblety, but rather to explore the life of Bram Stoker. And though Jack the Ripper has evolved into myth, his victims have not. Time has proved them all too mortal, and so it is they and not their murderer—whomever he may have been—who are deserving of remembrance here: Mary Ann Nichols. Annie Chapman. Elizabeth Stride. Catherine Eddowes. Mary Jane Kelly.
