Something in the Blood by David J. Skal

Author:David J. Skal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2016-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

One half-expected to see witches flying past the chimneypots and people being burned at the stake in Trafalgar Square. People became beasts. Everything that had been progressive and modern in the world of art and literature was suddenly suspect. . . . Panic spread amongst the inverts of London. Today it was Oscar, but who would it be tomorrow? If evidence had been obtained by threats, bribes, blackmail and stolen address-books, who was safe? What other names would come out in cross-examination? Incriminating letters were burned, certain books and journals disposed of, bachelor households dissolved, and hasty marriages arranged. Those who could afford to fled the city. The boat-trains to Calais and Dieppe were filled with nervous gentlemen whose blood turned to ice every time they saw a grim-faced official.

Stoker needn’t have feared unwelcome attention himself. After all, he was married to one of the most beautiful women in London, even if they saw little of each other during waking hours. Much of the time they did share was public—Lyceum openings and Florence’s Sunday at-homes. To a certain degree, even to an essential degree, the Stokers had a marriage for show. And why not? They were an extraordinarily handsome couple. Bram was strikingly good-looking—burly, bearded, with piercingly blue eyes and retaining the imposing build of the athlete he once was. Almost coinciding with the Wilde trials, a stunning, just-commissioned portrait of Florence adorned a wall at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition. It was painted by the well-known Dublin artist Walter Frederick Osborne, a master of plein air, or natural lighting effects.** Even though the word “heterosexual” had yet to be coined, Mr. and Mrs. Bram Stoker presented a seemingly unassailable picture of an idealized Victorian union. For Florence, there still may have been a hidden Wildean connection. It is said she vowed never to be photographed or painted after she turned forty, and in 1895 she was only a few years away from the point of no return. Walter Osborne may not have been a Basil Hallward, but his portraiture managed, in its own nonsupernatural way, to effectively suspend the aging process of a woman who might have married the creator of Dorian Gray but chose the author of Dracula instead.

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