Celebrate Poe

Poe's Vampires - Part Two

October 31, 2021 George Bartley Season 1 Episode 83
Celebrate Poe
Poe's Vampires - Part Two
Show Notes Transcript

Episode Eighty Three - Poe’s Vampires - Part Two

  • This episode has a brief introduction regarding Dr. Harry Lee Poe - and sections from two vampiric stories by Edgar Poe.  Berenice is the story of a man suffering from monomania - he is obsessed with his cousins teeth.  (And the story has more teeth than Dracula!)  Then Mr. Poe reads a section of The Fall of the House of Usher.)  George concludes the episode with the ending of the destruction of the House of Usher with the (very similar) destruction of the Castle of Dracula.


  • Who is Dr. Harry Lee Poe?
  • What justifications does Poe try to give to his editor for the “unpleasantness” of Berenice?
  • How are Berenice and the narrator of the story related?
  • On what does the narrator have an unusual fixation?
  • Why does the narrator of “Usher” visit the house?
  • Who is Usher? (not the singer!)
  • How is the ending of The Fall of the House of Usher similar to the proposed ending for Bram Stoker's Dracula?


  • 00:00 Intro  
  • 00:45 Remarks about Dr. Henry Lee Poe
  • 01:13 Letter regarding Berenice
  • 03:31 from Berenice
  • 16:35 from The Fall of the House of Usher
  • 26:04 Destruction in Usher versus Dracula
  • 29:52 Future Episodes
  • 30:44 Sources
  • 32:01 Outro

Mr. Poe's text in italics

0:00 INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Celebrate Poe. Episode Eighty Three - Poe’s Vampires, Part Two. The opening melody for this episode is said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song - Come Rest in This Bosom.  Today is the second portion of Poe’s Vampires dealing with two of the many works where Edgar Allan Poe displays his extreme anxiety about death - themes that were central to much of his life and works.  The following episode, Celebrate Poe will deal with Poe’s alcoholism.  

00:45 Remarks about Dr. Henry Lee Poe

I wrote to Dr. Harry Lee about Poe’s alcoholism, and got some incredible information.  Dr. Poe teaches at Union University, has written some excellent books on C.S. Lewis, as well as Edgar Allan Poe, and is an actual descendant of Edgar Allan Poe.

GHOST ENTERS

Well, Hello, Mr. Poe

Hello, Mr. Bartley

01:13 Letter regarding “Berenice”

Mr. Poe, I was just looking at a book that has a portion of a letter that you wrote to your editor, Thomas White about the story Berenice - would you care to read it aloud for us.

Certainly.  The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in nature — to Berenice — although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical. You may say all this is bad taste. I have my doubts about it. Nobody is more aware than I am that simplicity is the cant of the day — but take my word for it no one cares any thing about simplicity in their hearts. Believe me also, in spite of what people say to the contrary, that there is nothing easier in the world than to be extremely simple. But whether the articles of which I speak are, or are not in bad taste is little to the purpose. To be appreciated you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.

In other words, gruesome stories sell.

Well, that is one way of communicating your idea.

I have a portion of Berenice here - I think it is an excellent story, and probably even refers to teeth more than Dracula - in a different way, but still very scary. 

03:31 Certainly, I would be most happy to share the story with you.  But one small matter, in my day, Berenice (BEAR a NICE Y)  was pronounced to rhyme with what you might call “very spicy.”

That’s right.  I should have known that.

Yes - let me continue with a portion of Berenice. (BEAR a NICE Y)

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls

During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings, with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the grey of the early morning — among the trellissed shadows of the forest at noon-day — and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her — not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream — not as a being of the earth — earthly — but as the abstraction of such a being — not as a thing to admire, but to analyze.  And now — now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I knew that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.

And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, I sat, and sat, as I thought alone, in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes Berenice stood before me. Was it my own excited imagination — or the misty influence of the atmosphere — or the uncertain twilight of the chamber — or the grey draperies which fell around her figure, I remained for some time breathless, and motionless, and with my eyes rivetted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon her face. The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once golden hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with ringlets now black as the raven’s ring [[wing]], and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and I shrunk involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted: and, in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!

  * * * * * *  

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. The teeth! — the teeth! — they were here, and there, and every where, and visibly, and palpably before me, long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. I had no thoughts but for the teeth. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They — they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light — I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics — I dwelt upon their peculiarities — I pondered upon their conformation — I mused upon the alteration in their nature — and shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression.  And the evening closed in upon me thus — and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went — and the day again dawned — and the mists of a second night were now gathering around — and still I sat motionless in that solitary room At length there broke forcibly in upon my dreams a wild cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose hurriedly from my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, there stood out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, and she told me that Berenice was — no more. 

Seized with an epileptic fit she had fallen dead in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed. With a heart full of grief, yet reluctantly, and oppressed with awe, I made my way to the bed-chamber of the departed. The room was large, and very dark, and at every step within its gloomy precincts I encountered the paraphernalia of the grave. The coffin, so a menial told me, lay surrounded by the curtains of yonder bed, and in that coffin, he whisperingly assured me, was all that remained of Berenice. Who was it asked me would I not look upon the corpse? I had seen the lips of no one move, yet the question had been demanded, and the echo of the syllables still lingered in the room. It was impossible to refuse; and with a sense of suffocation I dragged myself to the side of the bed. Gently I uplifted the sable draperies of the curtains.

As I let them fall they descended upon my shoulders, and shutting me thus out from the living, enclosed me in the strictest communion with the deceased.

The very atmosphere was redolent of death. The peculiar smell of the coffin sickened me; and I fancied a deleterious odor was already exhaling from the body. I would have given worlds to escape — to fly from the pernicious influence of mortality — to breathe once again the pure air of the eternal heavens. But I had no longer the power to move — my knees tottered beneath me — and I remained rooted to the spot, and gazing upon the frightful length of the rigid body as it lay outstretched in the dark coffin without a lid.

God of heaven! — is it possible? Is it my brain that reels — or was it indeed the finger of the enshrouded dead that stirred in the white cerement that bound it? Frozen with unutterable awe I slowly raised my eyes to the countenance of the corpse. There had been a band around the jaws, but, I know not how, it was broken asunder. The livid lips were wreathed into a species of smile, and, through the enveloping gloom, once again there glared upon me in too palpable reality, the white and glistening, and ghastly teeth of Berenice. I sprang convulsively from the bed, and, uttering no word, rushed forth a maniac from that apartment of triple horror, and mystery, and death.

  * * * * * *  

I found myself again sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which had intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was rife with horror — horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain — while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed — what was it? And the echoes of the chamber answered me — “what was it?”

On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box of ebony. It was a box of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, it being the property of the family physician; but how came it there upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? 

There came a light tap at the library door, and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? — some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry heard in the silence of the night — of the gathering together of the household — of a search in the direction of the sound — and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave —  of a disfigured body discovered upon its margin — a body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive! He pointed to my garments — they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand — but it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall — I looked at it for some minutes — it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the ebony box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open, and in my tremor it slipped from out my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces, and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with many white and glistening substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.

SOUND OF TEETH SCATTERING

Mr. Poe, I would like to conclude this episode of Celebrate Poe with a portion of The Fall of the House of Usher from September 1839 and compare the story to some of the notes for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

from “The Fall of the House of Usher’

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER is one of Mr. Poe’s greatest stories, and is perhaps most well-known for its multiple layers of meaning.

Mr. Bartley - one must only consider my use of house in the story for both a family and physical house.

16:35 fron The Fall of the House of Usher

Yes, Mr. Poe - it is though when one falls, then the other will also decline.  Would you favor us with reading from a section of  The Fall of the House of Usher?

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium — the bitter lapse into common life — the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart — an unredeemed dreariness of thought. What was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies. I

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my close companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country — a letter from him — which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness — of a pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him — and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed, his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady — it was the apparent heart that went with his request — which allowed me no room for hesitation — and I accordingly obeyed.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament.

And later the story continues with …

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement — for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence,I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber, and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast — yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye, as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea — for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.

I then became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I started convulsively to my feet, but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. But, as I laid my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his frame; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over his person, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

“Not hear it? — yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long — long — long — many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it — yet I dared not — oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! — I dared not — I dared not speak! We have put my sister living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them — many, many days ago — yet I dared not — I dared not speak! And now — the rending of the coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!” — here he sprung violently to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul — “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!“

There stood the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her horrible and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had dreaded.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued — for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken, as extending from the roof of the building, in a zig-zag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened — there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind — the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight — my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder — there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters — and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”

26:04 Destruction in Usher versus Dracula

Now  according to the typescript of the novel Dracula that surfaced in the early 1980s and is now owned by a private collector, the original ending was different from the one we now have. I would like to read that deleted section now - And I’d like thank Dracula scholar Dr. Elizabeth Miller for this information from author Bram Stoker’s original notes for Dracula.

"The Castle of Dracula now stood out against the red sky":

As we looked there came a terrible convulsion of the earth so that we seemed to rock to and fro and fell to our knees. At the same moment with a roar which seemed to shake the very heavens the whole castle and the rock and even the hill on which it stood seemed to rise into the air and scatter in fragments while a mighty cloud of black and yellow smoke volume on volume in rolling grandeur was shot upwards with inconceivable rapidity. Then there was a stillness in nature as the echoes of that thunderous report seemed to come as with the hollow boom of a thunder-clap - the long reverberating roll which seems as though the floors of heaven shook. Then down in a mighty ruin falling whence they rose came the fragments that had been tossed skywards in the cataclysm.

From where we stood it seemed as though the one fierce volcano burst had satisfied the need of nature and that the castle and the structure of the hill had sunk again into the void. We were so appalled with the suddenness and the grandeur that we forgot to think of ourselves.   Sound familiar?

As mentioned in an earlier episode, the style of using journal and letter entries by Bram Stoker in Dracula may seem rather loose at first glance - as though the communication is not planned out.  But Bram Stoker literally spent years planning that almost loose style - nothing was put in the book by accident.  The section that I just read from Stoker’s notes was eventually left out.  It is suggested that Stoker had a sequel in mind, and the destruction of the castle of Dracula could have cause problems.  

We also know that Bram Stoker greatly admired Edgar Allan Poe, and the section about the destruction of the castle of Dracula sounds like it could have come straight out of The Fall of the House of Usher.  In fact, it has been suggested that Stoker did not use the section because it was too imitative of Poe’s “The Falll of the House of Usher.”  I  thought that a comparison of those two works separated by several decades was very interesting.

And for those of you who would like to hear the complete versions of Poe’s works - well, there will be time for that.  So if you didn’t hear your favorite Poe work in this episode, I am sure we will get around to it someday.  Celebrate Poe plans to take a deep dive into as many works as possible, and invites you to enter Poe’s world - easy to get into - but hard to leave.

29:52 Future episodes

In the next few episodes of Celebrate Poe, I’d like to finally go back to the life of Poe - still in England, and still a child who has faced traumatic situations.   Before we go on, I’d like to look at the trauma of Poe’s early life - and emotional trauma in general - experiences that definitely shaped Poe’s early life and certainly affected his talents. But even before that, I’d like to look at the young Poe and alcoholsim - a topic which ended up being very personal for me.  So join Celebrate Poe for a look at how Poe’s alcoholism may have been influenced by his family and how the disease may have begun when he was an infant.  And I am very exciited to share with you some fascinating information about Poe’s alcoholism obtained directly from Dr. Harry Lee Poe, one of the kindest people you would ever want to meet, and a descendant of Edgar Allan Poe.

30:44   Sources

Sources for this episode include Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula - Annotated by Elizabeth Miller, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson,, The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe by T. O. Mabbott, ed., Poe and Place by Phillip Edward Phillips, and the book and CD, Accents: A Manual for Actors by Robert Blumenfeld.

And why not visit my podcast web site at celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com - click on the episode you want to learn more about to see its show notes and a transcript. 

Well, thank you very much for making it this far, as we take a deep dive into the life, works, and influences of America’s Shakespeare - Edgar Allan Poe.

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.

Outro