May I have my time back, please!

As holidays go (and this one has gone) I have to rate this one as something of a disaster.  I can truthfully say there has not been a single day on which I felt fully well.  Some days were better than others, but cough, cold, sneeze, headache, running eyes and gastric eventfulness have been my lot during the fag end of the year and the promise of the new.

As illnesses go mine have been generally low irritation but debilitating all the same.  I do not feel refreshed in any way, shape or form for the start of the new term which I am approaching with a lack of enthusiasm compared with which Toni is an avid supporter of Real Madrid!

The one achievement of this vacation is that “Varney the Vampyre” (over a thousand pages in my electronic version) is now read.  I think this is an achievement on a par with my reading of “Melmoth the Wanderer” about whose completion I am still wondering if that was the best outlay of academic time in University!  There was also “The Mysteries of Udolpho” which, on page eight hundred and odd says something like, “Reader, if I have been able to beguile a moment or two . . “ which certainly is understatement of a grand order!

“Varney” does not pretend to be anything more than an extended penny-dreadful with Gothic horror pilled on unlikely circumstance.  It doesn’t all fit together in a neat package and some characters die (or don’t) and their futures are not exactly clear.  Even the ending of the novel is somewhat equivocal and I suppose that we are meant to think that Varney has found another guise to continue his blasted existence.

There is nothing original in the story, which concerns a family which seems to be persecuted by a Vampyre (much more interesting spelling) – or is he?  The daughter of the family appears to have been bitten and the action of the novel (if it can be called one) is taken up with the efforts of the family to save her, get her happily married and confound the forces of evil.

The Vampyre of the title is a re-vivified criminal who has been hanged for his misdemeanours and is given an extended life span by the experimental ministrations of an eager doctor.  The Vampyre is most concerned to regain possession of a fortune lost, and then taken back by murder most foul, and then lost again by a confederate inconsiderately killing himself just before revealing where the money has been stashed for safety.  As the whole of the narrative is on this level it is hardly worth reciting the details.

The characters are cardboard and even take in a la Smollett an amusing deus ex machina retired Admiral and a drunken ex-seafarer companion.

The Gothic elements are interestingly handled with the reader being given enough information to believe in the supernatural while consequent events seem to suggest that there is a more realistic explanation for the action.  This does not, however cover all the action of the novel and the author seems to want his cake and eat it as far as realism is concerned.

The credulity of the common people is constantly ridiculed yet the form and content of this piece constantly draws on the popular fascination that the living dead has.  The Mob is constantly shown as deluded, fickle and very dangerous and the book is not without episodes of gruesome death and almost casual slaughter.

Historically this book is interesting for bringing together all the aspects which would appeal of popular prejudice and giving them an overlay of reason.  It panders to an audience who like to see virtue and steadfastness triumph, but with the triumph being achieved only at considerable cost.

For me one of the most interesting aspects of the novel is how money is treated.  A decent family brought low by the gambling debts of a wastrel father find nothing wrong in digging up the hidden corpse of the successful gambler killed by the father to take the deeds to a “modest” property that they thought that they had lost but which, by great good luck, were still on the person of the murdered player.  Having got the deeds they then carefully rebury the victim and presumably sleep easy in their beds.  Their discussion about the lost winnings taken back by murder are also interesting in that they are very easily convinced that there is no real crime involved in their using the money should they find it.

In the even the money goes back to the Vampyre probably which allows him (if he is a him and not some supernatural being) to start yet another new life.

The very end of the novel contrasts the skulduggery of the fabulous creature of the title with the honest virtue of the daughter of the oppressed family.  So that’s all right then.

Whatever I actually think about the literary value of the story, I did enjoy the (lengthy) read and it has encouraged me to look at other examples of the genre with perhaps a little more merit.  Or I could do some real work.  Perhaps.

Or indeed not.  I am finding that the various forms of non-healthy inconvenience, the low grade not wellness that has characterised the holiday is actually pretty much a full time occupation.  Even reading is difficult as my eyes are watering from the strain of something or other.

But begone self-pity: the Easter holidays will be here almost before we know it!