Vampires ... and Birthdays?

Image copyright Sandra Ormandy 2012 All Rights Reserved

What do vampires say to each other on their birthdays? Happy birthday seems so utterly human?

Options seem to include:

Happy UnBirthday? But then I have the Mad Hatter's song from Alice in Wonderland running through my head where it is firmly mind-wormed. This sort of destroys and counters the whole idea of a vampire not aging after their human-death.

Happy Undeath-day?  While this does not make the Mad Hatter's song run through my head, it doesn't really answer either. I am, still, thoroughly human,  and thus each day I celebrate not having yet endured death.

Happy Turn-day? I have seen this used in various author created mythos, and in many ways it does meet the criteria,celebrating the day one turns from human to vampire through whatever process is necessary for that change to occur. And yet being a creative and odd sort of person, I hear my mother telling me that if I did something or other, my father would be rolling over (turning over) in his grave. I do not think that this is quite what my mother referenced (darn it!), but nonetheless, not quite what a celebration of another year of not meeting the sun, or meeting a stake, deserves.

So if any of you ghosts in the internet machine have better suggestions, I am open to discussion. What does one say to a vampire on his rebirth day?

The Grave

Highgate Cemetery London

One of the most fascinating things I've noted in the years I've been researching, photographing, writing about, and teaching about vampires is the way different people react totally differently when the topic of death and what happens to the person after death comes up. Today's post is a short dialogue taken from the book ELOCUTION AND ORATORY (yes, all caps). The antique book arrived on my shelf with no cover, and the first twenty-four pages missing.

It does speak rather eloquently of the two approaches to the topic. One sees it is a true negative, the other sees the bright-light. 

"First Voice: How frightful the grave!  how deserted and drear!
                     With the howls of the storm-wind -- the creaks of the bier,
                      And the white bones all clattering together!
"Second Voice: How peaceful the grave! its quite how deep;
                       Its zephyres breathe calmly, and soft is its sleep,
                         And flowerets perfume it with ether.

author: unknown since all attribution is just missing in this text -- a very Victorian approach to intellectual property.

Alcoholism as a Vampire: "The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man" 1858

The Traitor's Gate, London.

When I was in London summer of 2013, I was able to spend a fair amount of time reading in the British Library (one of the most magical places on Earth). Given my interest in early usages of the term "Vampire" for a human who metaphorically sucks the life from its victim, the 1858 anonymous booklet, The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man,was a wonderful read.

In short, the author uses the metaphor of the vampire to describe the drunken life -- it is about temperance and the abstainer's pledge and the lure of drink which proves more alluring than keeping ones word. (At this time, temperance referred to abstinence from drinking.)

"She" (the anonymous author states) "Listen to me, whilst I describe to you some of the horrors of a drunkard's home, and some of the privations of the drunkard's wife and children"(2). 

She then goes on to tell the story of a young man, the son of a drunkard father who cannot stand the fact that his son, "Herbert" will not join him in his sodden ways. In spite of his father's beatings and declaration that he will cut his son out of his inheritance, Herbert takes the "Abstainer's Pledge." Not a drop of liquor is to pass his lips. He makes a fair attempt to keep his pledge and to be as good as his word, but his choice of bad companions undercuts his willpower.

At first Herbert is able to disguise the fact that he has broken his pledge from his poor, long-suffering mother, and his  increasingly pushy father, but not for long. Soon his personality changes and he becomes as abusive to his mother and the house-staff as his father has been to himself.

The young man enjoys accompanying his companions to "Mrs. Grasp-the-Air's shop, The Vampyre Inn, where Tommy, the husband serves an increasing amount of liquor to the weak-willed Herbert. Tommy and Mrs. Grasp-the-Air quite enjoy their roles in this story as devil's advocate since it brings their business increased income.

Eventually, Herbert kills one of the "friends" who attempts to talk him into changing his ways, and he is taken to the gallows while his poor mother weeps.

Like any good morality tale, the story ends, "Drink, Strong Drink! had it not, like a vampyre sucked the blood out of his father and grandfather! and finally, expinguish[ed] life itself?"

I will leave it to my reader to question if indeed the giving in to one of the many temptations of life and allowing it to have control over ones thought and deeds is indeed allowing a vampire to entirely suck life out of one.

Works Cited
"The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man." London: A W Bennett, 1858. Print.

"The Haunted Place" Poe

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow 

Shall dawn upon him desolate!)

And round about his home

 the glory

That blushed and bloomed,

Is but dim-

remembered 

story

Of the old time entombed.

-- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Haunted Palace." 

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" - - and for most of us (apart from those of the vampiric persuasion), only dim memories of names and times reflected in sepia images remain.