Who Was Dracula? Read Online Free PDF Page B

changing intent, or avoiding a difficulty. It was a revelation to Stoker, a Captain Absolute “full of dash and fine irony, whose ridicule seemed to bite, an inoffensive egotist even in his love-making.” After marveling at Irving’s layered interpretation, Stoker was stunned that the newspapers failed to single out his hero for praise.
    Four years later Irving returned to Dublin in a play called
Two Roses
. Again, Stoker was thrilled by his quirky Digby Grand and disappointed by the Dublin newspaper reviews. He volunteered to write criticism for the
Dublin Evening
Mail
. It was an unpaid position, but his reviews gave him access to opening nights, put him at the center of theatrical news and gossip, and offered some prestige. He was writing, and readers were noticing what he wrote.
    â€”
    Bram Stoker checked the invitation in his hand, paused to remove his derby and button his coat, and then walked through the door at 1 Merrion Square in Dublin. It was among Dublin’s largest residences, and the Saturday “at home” soirees were arranged grandly by the Wildes, with rooms lit by candle and tables of food prominently displayed. Stoker was guided from room to room by the sound of laughter and murmured conversation. Classical piano music reverberated from somewhere in the back of the house. The assortment of guests—artists, poets, professors, scientists, authors—were randomly scattered into tiny groups, but the hostess, Lady Jane Wilde, called Speranza by her friends, seemed to tie every conversation together by swanning from room to room, effortlessly offering clever introductions, witty and vaguely insulting bon mots, and an assortment of tea cakes and sandwiches. She was a tall, ungainly figure swathed in a Gypsy-inspired skirt and festooned with long sashes and dangling brooches.
    Stoker was then working part-time as a reviewer and full-time as a clerk in the Petty Sessions, following his father’s lead in civil service. The job was hardly the drudgery that the title might have suggested. Stoker did a good amount of traveling through Ireland and was highly regarded for his efficiency, earning regular promotions. But he had aspirations to a literary or theatrical career, writing short stories and submitting them to periodicals, and auditioning for theatrical roles in Dublin. At the Wildes’ home in Merrion Square, he was able to rub elbows with the Dublin literati and any number of eccentrics who appealed to Speranza.
    The Wildes were a famous, and famously odd, Dublin family. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who knew the family around this same time, remembered the Wildes as “dirty, untidy, daring . . . very imaginative and learned.” Speranza was her nom de plume; she had become infamous for writing inflammatory poetry, as well as articles espousing Irish nationalism and damning the British throne. Her husband, Sir William Wilde, was a small, angular man with a full gray beard. He was prone to monopolizing dinner conversations on myriad fascinating topics. He had been knighted for his services as an eye doctor to Queen Victoria; he was an expert in eye diseases, a student of Irish history and superstition, and an early, amateur Egyptologist.
    The family had known its share of controversy. Lady Jane had given dramatic testimony in a treason trial. Before their marriage, her husband had fathered several illegitimate children, and after his knighthood he was accused of rape by one of his patients. These scandals were open secrets, bothering everyone in Dublin except, seemingly, the Wildes themselves.
    Sir William and Lady Jane had two sons (a daughter had died in childhood). William Charles Kingsbury Wilde, known as Willie, was five years younger than Bram, and was a good student at Trinity who was talented beyond his aspirations. Their younger son, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was seven years younger than Bram. In 1871, he had just entered Trinity