The Vampyre Family: Passion, Envy and the Curse of Byron by Andrew McConnell Stott (review)

A book was published a couple of years ago, claiming to be a kind of biographical novel about Byron. In its first chapter, he was shown practising the waltz – with Augusta – in public. In the second, Lord Kinnaird was described as his banker. I read no more. Later it was explained to me that the author was using a ‘postmodernist’ approach, in which, the past being deemed irrecoverable no matter how well documented, it was thought acceptable to ignore evidence and invent your own version of the past if that seemed more profitable. The current book shows a cunning variation on the same technique.

Studies of the ‘romantics’ do not proceed exponentially. In re-retelling the tale of Byron, Polidori, Shelley and the ladies in Switzerland, Italy and England, Andrew McConnell Stott traces paths often traced before, by William St Clair, Leslie Marchand, Janet Todd, and others – and adds little to them. His originality lies in the focus he puts on Polidori (who is always ‘John’, where the other men are surnames-only) and Claire Claremont (who is always ‘Claire’). Polidori and Claremont are sad but small appendices to the overall Byron/Shelley epic: by concentrating on these two losers, McConnell Stott wants us to see Byron and Shelley as vampires: sick, lost souls battening on what would otherwise have been the healthy growths around them. In the longer run, Shelley himself might also count among those ‘bitten’ by the vampiric Byron.

The book reads halfway between a novel and a composite biography. What McConnell Stott has done is to research the primary sources and then rewrite them, padding them out with small touches which seem to add to their authenticity but in fact detract slightly from it: though there is nothing so blatant as Byron waltzing. Here is Hobhouse’s diary entry for Friday 26 April 1816 (BL Add. Mss. 47232):

Lady Melbourne is in a fright. She is sure that Lady Byron has seen some of her letters to Lord Byron, for Caroline Lamb has quoted some passages to her, so that Caroline Lamb must be the worthy associate of her Ladyship […] I think she may have looked at the letters without their having been shown to her, for I know she looked at a trunk in which Byron kept his black drop [a mixture of opium and vinegar with black spices: see Don Juan, IX, 67, 5] and [de Sade’s] Justine – Mrs Leigh confessed this.

Here is what McConnell Stott does with it:

Searching for evidence to confirm her fears, she riffled through his private things and discovered a small bottle of laudanum and an illustrated copy of the Marquis de Sade’s pornographic novel Justine

(my emphasis).

There is no evidence as to the size of the bottle, or that the book was illustrated (and were any of de Sade’s novels not pornographic?). But the touches seem to give the narrative first-hand conviction.

Sometimes McConnell Stott falsifies the record – slightly. Claire Claremont is described as ‘sending him [Byron] copies of Shelley’s poems Queen Mab and Alastor’, whereas what Claire actually writes is this:

The ‘Demon of the World’ is an extract from the poem entitled ‘Queen Mab’. The latter was composed at the early age of twenty; although it bears marks of genius, yet the style is so unpoetical & unpolished that I could never admire it. Shelley is now turned three & twenty & interested as I am in all he does it is with the greatest pleasure I receive your approbation. ‘Alastor’ is a most evident proof of improvement; but I think his merit lies in translation – the sonnets from the Greek of Moschus & from Dante are the best. If you think ill of his compositions I hope you will speak – he may improve by your remarks. It was Shelley who sent you ‘Queen Mab’ – I know not wherefore.

(Clairmont Correspondence, I, 29–31)

So she sent...