Blood lines
Petronella Wyatt
It warms the blood, as it were, to see that vampires are coming into their own again. Having been made risible by years of Hammer Horror films and then a schlock, hysterical epic from Francis Ford Coppola, with Anthony Hopkins doing his usual ham, these unfortunate creatures — vampires, I mean, not actors — may be about to enjoy an Indian summer.
Let me declare an interest. Transylvania, the home of the vampire, formerly belonged to Hungary. Vlad the Impaler, the father of all vampires, had as his second wife a Hungarian girl, whose fate history fails to relate. Then there was the Hungarian blood countess, Countess Bathurst, who lived sometime during the Renaissance.
She murdered her serving girls and apparently bathed in their blood, in the belief that this was more efficacious than Clarins anti-wrinkle body lotion. When villagers began missing their wives and daughters an investigation was launched. There was some suggestion that the countess drank the blood as well, but this may have been a sexist calumny. Because the family was well-known and respected nationally, the countess was not tried in open court. Instead her relatives walled her up in a room in one of their castles until she died of starvation.
This is the only instance I know of genuine female vampirism, but in the 20th century a male of the species turned up in my family. Or rather my mother's first husband's family. This husband premier, a Hungarian asthma specialist, had a cousin called Bela Lugosi who was the first Hollywood Dracula. The poor man was typecast for the rest of his career and fell into alcoholism and poverty. He ended up in some sort of clinic and had to be bailed out by Clark Gable, among others. Before he died he insisted on being buried in his vampire costume. Lugosi that is, not Gable.
Despite Lugosi's essential good nature and sorry predicament, the vampire continued to receive a bad press. Actually. Vlad, the original, was an enormously brave Christian warrior, who was awarded the order of the dragon, or dracula, hence the name later used by Bram Stoker. The vampire also illustrates the difference between the cad and the bounder.
I was put in mind of this by the death of Major Ronald Ferguson. There was a bounder if ever there was one, badly behaved, irresistible to many women, and unable to help himself. The cad, however, makes a conscious decision to do harm and there is little spirit of fun in it. The best example of a cad in literature is de Maupasssant's Bel Ami, who is a calculatingly destructive force.
The vampire cannot help it. In any case, who can take seriously as a force for evil someone who stalks about in a ludicrous red-lined opera cape? (This came about because the actor who played the count on stage in the 19th century couldn't be bothered to change, or lacked the time before going out to supper afterwards at the Café Royale or some other rococo haunt.) Now it turns out that all that garlic smothering and crucifixes on the door were counterproductive. The vampire, apparently, is good for your health. Vampire bats are being put to the aid of humans in the development of a new clotbusting drug for stroke victims. Scientists have found that the bat secretes a powerful enzyme when it digs its fangs into its intended.
To ensure that the animal receives its nutritional fill of blood its saliva contains a substance that prevents the blood clotting and helps to keep it flowing. Doctors in Britain are currently carrying out tests to see if this enzyme breaks down clots in humans, thus preventing ischaemic strokes, The UK drugs company AstraZeneca has bought the rights to the drug and plans to market it for use within the next two years, if this year's final trials are successful.
How much more powerful and benign, though, would be the enzyme from the human vampire. Come to think of it, one cannot recall any of its victims dying of a stroke. I suspect, too, that the treatment is infinitely more pleasant than aspirin which gives one a pronounced belly-ache. Perhaps it is time for an apology to my former fellow countrymen.
Previous page
