Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #5. Gary Lovisi
a story forces the adapter to omit, abridge or combine important characters and sub-plots. However, Doyle’s diligent study of the original work allowed him to drop countless hints about important people, places and events in Dracula. For example, five tongue-in-cheek allusions to the first page of the novel are present in the story: Both tales open on the 3rd of the month in an unspecified year in the past.* The first paragraph of Dracula mentions “Vienna” while Gruner is introduced as “… the Austrian murderer.” “Turkish rule” is lampooned by a “Turkish bath” then “The Hotel Royale” in Klausenburgh is transformed into the “Café Royal” on Regent Street in London. Eventually, Harker’s research in the British Museum is reworked as Watson’s trip to the London Library in St. James’ Square.
[*Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu’s “discovery” of Bram Stoker’s Notes led to the discovery that the novel is set in 1893.]
In the first chapter of the novel Harker’s landlady warns him not to go to Dracula’s castle: “Must you go? Oh! Young Herr, must you go?” Twenty-seven years later, Watson begs Holmes: “Must you interfere?” Like all mythic heroes, Harker and Holmes ignore these warnings.
Later, as Harker nears the castle, mysterious “blue flames” alert the Count to the location of buried treasure. In “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,” the Baron is also a treasure hunter who collects egg-shell pottery from the Ming dynasty. Holmes’s attempt to distract him with “a delicate little saucer of the most beautiful deep-blue colour” strikes a discordant note. In both tales, the color blue is associated with treasure yet, as the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sir Eric Maclaglan, informs us “… there is no Ming pottery of a ‘deep-blue colour.’”
In the novel, Dracula’s voyage to England aboard the Demeter re-awakens the primitive fear that the dead may arise from their graves to overthrow the kingdom of the living. During the voyage, the vampire emerges from his coffin in the cargo hold, feeds on hapless members of the crew, then tosses their bodies overboard. After mentioning that Baron Gruner had met Violet de Merville on a Mediterranean yachting voyage, Doyle adds “…the promoters hardly realized the Baron’s true character until it was too late.” Given the fate of the Demeter’s crew, this comment is tinged with irony.
Kitty’s “leprous mark” evokes the scar on Mina’s forehead that links her to Dracula and attests to her transformation into a creature of the night. Her cry, “Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh!” is the nadir of the novel. Like many of his contemporaries, Doyle may have seen the ultimate horror of the novel as the vampire’s threat to turn prim, proper Victorian virgins into un-dead whores. In contrast, Mina’s compassion for Dracula in chapter 23* is voiced by Violet: “If his [Gruner’s] noble nature has ever for an instant fallen, it may be that I have been specially sent to raise it to its true and lofty level.”
[* “That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser [sic] part that his better part may have spiritual immortality.” — Mina Harker.]
Dracula’s final death is initiated by the sentence “But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife.” In “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,” Gruner’s downfall is preceded by “And then! It was done in an instant … ” as Kitty throws vitriol at the Baron’s face. The dissolution of the Baron’s once-handsome features can be seen as an ingenious parody of Dracula’s final death when: “… the [vampire’s] whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.”
In a letter to John Gore, Doyle claimed: “If I were to choose the six best Holmes stories I should certainly include ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client.’” We don’t know why he never identified this story as a parody of Dracula. “The Illustrious Client” contains the sentence: “There was a curious secretive streak in the man which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be.” This quote may be a confession that describes the author rather than his immortal detective. The simplest explanation may be that it is a token of his appreciation for his friend’s singular masterpiece, but this is not the only possibility. In 1922, Bram’s widow, Florence, launched a lawsuit against F. W. Murnau and Prana Pictures for their unauthorized adaptation of Dracula. She succeeded in having every known copy of the film Nosferatu destroyed and continued to defend her rights to her major source of income for the rest of her life.
We know that Bram Stoker wrote various drafts of Dracula from at least 1890 to 1897.* While there is no evidence that he ever discussed his creation with Doyle, common sense tells us that writers like to talk about their work. The fact that they had known each other since at least 1892 makes it difficult to believe that they never discussed their creations. We don’t know when Doyle wrote “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” but it is possible that the seed was planted in an unrecorded discussion between him and Stoker. Their ongoing friendship might explain why one of the vampire hunters in Dracula resembles Holmes’s faithful companion, Dr John H. Watson. Dr John Seward introduces us to his friend and mentor, Professor Van Helsing, and chronicles his teacher’s extraordinary abilities and achievements.
[*For details about the construction of Dracula, see: Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller. ]
In 1888, Doyle chastised Mary Doyle for her favourable comparison of his psychic novel, The Mystery of Cloomber, with Robert Louis Stevenson’s story, “The Pavilion on the Links:” “You must not say that Cloomber is as good as the Pavilion… The Pavilion is far better … because it is strong without preternatural help, which I think is always more to the author’s credit …” [while] “it is more compact and the interest never flags for a moment.” This belief may have inspired him to transform Stoker’s macabre fairy tale into a rationalized detective story.
Doyle’s pastiche is full of puns and in-jokes which he may have shared with James M. Barrie (1860-1937), Hall Caine (1853-1931) or other authors who had been friends with him and Stoker. Many of Doyle’s fans are aware of Barrie’s marvelous spoof of Holmes and Watson, but it requires a working knowledge of Dracula to see the aside that “He [Gruner] played polo at Hurlingham”* as an indication of the fictional “Hillingham,” Lucy Westenra’s ancestral estate in London, or to appreciate the humour in “The villain [Gruner] attached himself to the lady, and with such effect.…” At the end of the story, Holmes’s appearance beneath Gruner’s window as a “terrible ghost, his head girt with bloody bandages, his face drawn and white” takes on new meaning if we see it as a spoof of the scene in chapter 23 where Dracula eludes the vampire hunters by jumping through a window. In this case, Doyle has taken his parody to new heights by transforming Sherlock Holmes himself into Count Dracula.
[*The image of Dracula playing polo may have given Doyle a chuckle or two. ]
* * * *
But the best joke of all may be how Arthur Conan Doyle’s adaptation of one of the cornerstones of horror literature has escaped the attention of millions of fans for almost a century.
N. B. — Towards the end of his life, Doyle became fascinated with the occult. Dracula ends with a “Note” which says the adventure took place “seven years ago,” while the first paragraph of Doyle’s story implies that the adventure occurred ten years ago.
Bibliography
Baring-Gould, William S. ed. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: Volume II. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1976. p. 685. n. 19.
Bunson, Matthew E. Encyclopedia Sherlockiana: An A-Z Guide to the World of the Great Detective. New York: Macmillan, 1994.
Doyle, [Sir] Arthur Conan. “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” New York: Collier’s Weekly Magazine (8 Nov. 1924) 5-7, 30, 32, 34. Rpt. Strand Magazine (1925). Rpt. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). Rpt.
—. “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” Strand Magazine (Jan. 1924) 3-13. Rpt.
—. “The American’s Tale” London Society (Christmas 1880) 44-48. Rpt.
—. “The Captain of the Pole-Star”