Dr. John Polidori (1795 - 1821)

Among the more obscure personages in the history of horror and supernatural literature is that of Dr. John William Polidori, a man who proved a genius in the realm of medicine, yet whose reputation, sanity, and life were ultimately destroyed by his masochistic love for Lord Byron and his apparent belief that mere association with Byron and Shelley made him an equally gifted writer.  In fact, Polidori's place in literary history rests almost entirely on his relationship with Byron and his composition - some, unfairly, would say plagiarism - of "The Vampyre," a story whose aristocratic title character inspired such later revenants as Varney, Carmilla, Dracula, and Lestat.

John Polidori was the son of Gaetano Polidori, an Italian expatriate, and an English mother. Gaetano Polidori taught Italian and translated English works into that language for the benefit of fellow Italians settling in England to escape the wars then ravaging the Continent.  John Polidori's sister, Charlotte Lydia, was the mother of painter Gabriel Dante Rossetti and the poet Christina Rosetti.

Polidori was one of the first students at the Benedictine Ampleforth College.  At nineteen he became the youngest student ever to receive a medical doctorate at the University of Edinburgh for his dissertation, The Psychosomatic Effect of Sleepwalking and/or Nightmares.  Polidori's theories on sleepwalking, which he termed "Oneirodynia," anticipated those of later psychologists.  Soon after, Polidori began writing, producing an essay entitled On the Punishment of Death.

With initial aspirations to become a pediatrician, Polidori was considered too young to practice medicine at any hospitals or clinics, and lacked funds to set up his own practice.  Eventually he was hired as a personal physician by Lord Byron, whom Polidori admired and from whom he hoped to gain help with his own writing career.  Though a confirmed hypochondriac, Byron was probably less interested in the doctor's medical skills than in his youthfully handsome Mediterranean features and his skills in the bedchamber.  Theirs quickly devolved from a doctor / patient relationship to a dominant / submissive one.

When Byron embarked on his 1816 tour of Europe with Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin, Polidori accompanied him, having received a publisher's advance of £500 for his diary account of the journey.  Byron had by now quickly tired of Polidori's fawning sycophancy and taken up with Mary Godwin's half-sister, Claire Clairmont.  He began to tease Polidori mercilessly, calling him "Polly-Dolly." Byron's contempt for Polidori had reached such a degree that the poet described him thus, "exactly the sort of person to whom, if he fell overboard, one would hold out a straw to know if the adage be true that drowning men grasp at straws."  Byron was especially cruel in his ridicule of Polidori's writings.

While staying at the Villa Diodati outside Geneva, Byron and the Shelleys spent a stormy night in June of 1816 reading from a collection of horror stories. (Other accounts mention a seance.)  Depending on which source is consulted, either Byron or Polidori then made the suggestion that each member of the party compose a ghost story.  This was the prelude for the now famous story of how Mary Godwin came to write what some consider the first true science-fiction novel, Frankenstein.  Godwin claimed her story was inspired by a nightmare, though the investigations made by Professor Radu Florescu and published as In Search of Frankenstein show that she used other inspirations as well, including the life of the alchemist Konrad Dippel, who worked at the real Castle Frankenstein in Germany and claimed to have created a homunculus, among other achievements, before dying after drinking prussic acid, believing it to be the Elixir of Life.  Mary Godwin had also taken much professional advice from Polidori on the use of medical and biological terminology in her novel, though she later downplayed her debt to "poor Polidori" in the novel's 1831 edition.

Polidori's first contribution to the ghost story competition was derisively described by Mary Godwin in her diary as  "a terrible idea about a skull-headed lady."  His next was "The Vampyre," about Lord Ruthven, a vampire whose description and personality were modeled on Byron.  In addition to being the first vampire to appear in English literature, Ruthven was the first aristocratic vampire, moving among and preying upon members of the upper class while passing as one of their own, in contrast to the blood-sucking ghosts and animated cadavers of legend.

The story was inspired by documented accounts of vampires made in the previous century, while the name for "The Vampyre"'s title character was taken from Glenarvon, a novel written by Lady Caroline Lamb, another of Byron's love interests, who also based her character on Byron.  More significantly, much of Polidori's material was taken from a fragment of a story which Byron had abandoned.  As a result, the style was so reminiscent of Byron that when the story was published three years later in New Monthly Magazine, Byron was credited as the author.

At the end of their stay at Villa Diodati, Byron dismissed Polidori, only to find himself having to stop the first of many suicide attempts Polidori would make over the next five years.  Leaving Geneva, Polidori spent the rest of the year traveling through Italy.  Returning to England in 1817, he at first applied at his alma mater of Ampleforth to join the Benedictine order, but his "scandalous" association with Byron and the Shelleys caused him to be considered unsuitable for the monastic life.  He then settled in London and opened a dispensary, still considered too young to practice medicine.  Eventually he left medicine for law, becoming apprenticed to a London barrister.

By now Polidori's treatment at the hands of Byron and his disappointments at finding a successful and fulfilling career had culminated in  a profound depression.  A carriage accident late in 1817 which left him comatose for several days was very likely a suicide attempt.  Two years later, he received £30 for "The Vampyre," only to see it credited to his former employer, lover, and tormentor.  Polidori immediately presented proof of his own authorship to the publisher, while Byron, desperate to distance himself from the piece, released his Fragment of a Novel, the original story from which Polidori took his inspiration.  Byron however continued to receive credit for a story which he considered beneath his abilities.

Over the next two years, Polidori continued his attempts to become a great writer.  Ernestus Berchtold, or The Modern Oedipus, a novel he had begun while at Villa Diodati, had some minor success.  A  poetry collection, Ximenes, the Wreath, and Other Poems, appeared in 1819, while The Fall of Angels: A Sacred Poem, was written anonymously shortly before his death in 1821, and published posthumously.  Polidori also  wrote book reviews for Robert Gooch's Eclectic Review, and ghost wrote and illustrated R. Bridgnes' Sketches Illustrative of the Manners and Costumes of France, Switzerland, and Italy, showing considerable talent as an artist.  Success as a writer, however, continued to elude him.  Though "The Vampyre" was Polidori's own work, the mix-up considering its authorship had given the doctor a reputation as a plagiarist which made most publishers and readers avoid him.  The fact that his Lord Ruthven character was enjoying increasing popularity while still being credited to Byron only aggravated his depressive condition.

In August of 1821 Polidori was found dead under suspicious circumstances.  To preserve his family's reputation, the coroner ruled his death as resulting from "a visitation from God," or natural causes.  Most, however, believe that Polidori's death resulted from his drinking prussic acid, though unlike Konrad Dippel, Polidori was seeking death rather than eternal life.  His sister had several of his journals burned and had the account of his time with Byron purged of "inappropriate" entries.

As is common with writers and artists, Polidori's true success and appreciation came after his death.  The character of Lord Ruthven gained increasing  popularity, and eventually Polidori and not Byron was recognized as the true author.  Numerous sequels, adaptations, and pastiches of his story appeared shortly before and in the decades after his death.  A dramatic adaptation by Charles Nodier, Le Vampire, was the first ever vampire play, and was quickly followed by another adaptation by Pierre Carmouche, which was itself adapted into an English version, Lord Ruthven, or the Bride of the Isles, by James Robinson Planché.  Nodier's friend Cyprien Berard wrote his own two-volume sequel to Polidori's tale,  Lord Ruthven ou les Vampires, in 1820.   A German opera, Der Vampyr by Heinrich August Marschner, debuted in 1829.  Another play based on the story was penned by Alexander Dumas in 1851.  Eventually, the fad for Lord Ruthven began to fade, and the character was nearly forgotten by the time Bram Stoker published his more well-known and successful novel.

The 1970s saw a resurgence of interest in Ruthven and Polidori, initiated by renewed interest in both Dracula and Frankenstein and especially stimulated by Radu Florescu's In Search of Frankenstein, a follow-up to In Search of Dracula which detailed the history, background, and sources behind Mary Godwin's creature in the same manner the previous book had detailed those behind Stoker's Count.  A short story by Neil Straum, "Vanishing Breed," resurrected Ruthven as an alien vampire who settled on Earth one thousand years ago, while a comic book adaptation of "The Vampyre" was published by Marvel Comics in the premiere issue of Vampire Tales.  Ruthven also made cameos in numerous novels through the 1990s, including Kim Newman's Anno Dracula.  In Managra, part of the "Missing Adventures" paperback series based on the Doctor Who television program, the Doctor meets both mortal and vampiric clones of Byron, the latter being clearly an allusion to Ruthven.

When composing their screenplay for the television film Frankenstein: The True Story, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy  paid their own homage to Polidori's contribution to Gothic literature by bestowing his name on Victor Frankenstein's nemesis, played by James Mason and based on the character of Dr. Praetorius in the 1936 film, The Bride of Frankenstein.  As Michael Saranzin's creature finally destroys James Mason's mad doctor at the film's climax, he taunts him with the name bestowed on Polidori by Byron, "Polly-Dolly."  Poldiori also figures prominently in Ken Russell's 1986 film treatment of the Frankenstein genesis at Villa Diodati, Gothic, though Russell rather inaccurately and unfairly depicts the doctor as an unattractive, pudgy, and petulant prima donna.

Other homages to Polidori include the Polidori Lecture given each year on the Romantic Movement in literature at his alma mater of Ampleforth College.  The Polidori Party is the annual meeting  of a short story writing club based in Dallas, held each Halloween, at which members read their compositions with themes assigned on the Ides of March, in a manner intended to evoke the ghost story contest at Villa Diodati which gave birth to "The Vampyre" and Frankenstein.  The Ruthven Assembly is a scholarly group which studies the literary, cinematic, and artistic treatment of the vampire figure.

Though the least known and most pedestrian of the Gothic authors, Polidori did more to change the genre than any other, as his undead aristocrat forever changed the image of the vampire in the popular mind.  Le Fanu's Carmilla and Stoker's Dracula both share Ruthven's aristocratic birth and manner, while Anne Rice's Lestat closely matches Ruthven's arrogant personality and egoism.  All are different interpretations of what has come to be called "the Byronic Vampire."

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