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A review by roxanamalinachirila
Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood by James Malcolm Rymer
2.0
Full title, according to the cover of the first issue of this penny dreadful novel:
“Varney, the Vampire
- or the Feast of Blood -
A Romance of Exciting Interest”
First of all, holy mother of long novels, this was LONG. I think it’s the longest published novel I’ve ever read.
When I decided I wanted to read it, I downloaded the Project Gutenberg version. Everybody’s seen Dickens novels, so I’ll just say it was 330,000 words long, which is slightly shorter than Bleak House, and vaguely longer than Our Mutual Friend.
Little did I know that the Gutenberg version isn’t complete – only about half of it is there, and the rest is hard to find on the internet (But not impossible).
“Varney” is actually longer than “War and Peace”, and considerably less action-packed.
Because it's relatively unknown and reading it in its entirety is a bit of a commitment, I'll write a longer review than usual, with a full summary of the book.
But first, what's it about, right?
"Varney, the Vampire" was published in 1845-1847. It was a penny dreadful, which means it came out in weekly installments, each costing a penny. There are no pretenses that this is high art - and even the authorship is debated.
"Varney" came before Dracula and before our concepts of what a vampire is solidified. He can walk in the sunlight, but moonlight really makes his vampiric nature shine. It revives him if he's died again, and it makes him stronger if he's weak. He can eat normal food, but it doesn't agree with him. If he dies, the entirety of nature conspires to bring him into the moonlight to revive him again. He can never get rest - for once, it's pretty clear why being an immortal vampire is a curse, not a blessing.
The book itself is strangely down-to-earth, especially in the first part. In fact, it often reads like the author himself couldn't decide whether Varney was a vampire or a scoundrel. In the first half of the novel, he has huge money issues and he does his best to get his hands on a fortune, the way a scoundrel would.
The main characters don't even know whether he's a vampire at all, or if it's a trick to swindle them - they eventually decide it's a trick. Later on, it's revealed that he was a vampire pretending to be a gentleman, pretending to be a vampire. I bet the author himself didn't know that to start with.
Varney is a very depressed, sad, gallant figure. He seems to want to get his way, but preferably without harming anyone - if he can frighten instead of harm, it's all for the good. (Except he does kill people in cold blood a few times)
This might sound cool, but it's very long and very uneven, with splatterings of purple prose and passages which seem to have been inserted for the word count.
And, since I promised a summary...
The first chapter is quite cool and gothic. Flora Bannerworth is asleep in her bed, when the dreaded vampire makes its way into her chamber and proceeds to suck her blood. She screams for help, and her two brothers, Henry and George Bannerworth, rush to her aid, along with their friend, Marchdale, who happens to be staying with them and their mother for awhile.
The attacker looks EXACTLY like the portrait of one of their ancestors, who's been dead a hundred years. If you remember this throughout the book, your memory is better than the author's. Varney gets a different origin story by the end.
In chapters 2-10, Henry, George, Marchdale and the local doctor go off to check the coffin of the Bannerworth ancestor who resembles the vampire. There's nobody there!
Meanwhile, the vampire shows up at the house, who's shot by Flora. After this deed of bravery, she turns around and swoons in the arms of her fiancee, Charles Holland, who happened to arrive from the continent precisely in time to make sure she doesn't get any bruises from collapsing on the floor. A true romantic hero!
In chapters 11-26, people fret. Francis Varney (rrooooolll credits), a neighbor of the Bannerworths, says he wants to buy their house, which is quickly losing value since it has a vampire attached. The fact that he looks precisely like that vampire is Highly Suspicious to everyone.
Charles Holland's uncle, admiral Bell, shows up along with his friend, the sailor Jack Pringle. They're a bit of comic relief and they speak in ocean-related terms a lot (it gets tiring, and then it starts being cute again).
There's a lot of fretting, but not much going on. The vampire keeps showing up, then running off. Sir Francis Varney is repeatedly challenged to about a million duels.
When the author forgets where he's going, he has a character read a story, and we read that story instead of the usual chapter.
In chapter 27, Charles Holland vanishes. We later find out he's been kidnapped by Varney and Marchdale, the friend of the Bannerworths who was staying with them, and trapped in some old ruins. He'll eventually be set free - and Marchdale will die a terrible death, squashed to death when the old ruins collapse over him. This happens in chapter... 75? Maybe?
Seriously, he's gone half the arc. And Marchdale would be a good Disney villain.
In chapters 28-39, we find out Varney owes people money. He later persuades Flora that he wants to suck her blood because he loves her - therefore, she should run far, far away. Because this isn't "Twilight", she thinks this is a very sensible idea, but the people around her want to catch the vampire, so she can't leave, either.
Varney actually fights a duel, but refuses to shoot at his opponent. He's such a gentleman.
The phrase "interview with the vampyre" shows up in chapter 36.
In chapters 40-89, we meet the most remarkable character in the book: the mob. (I'll capitalize it, because heck.) The Mob is truly frightening, and when it gets going, it stops at nothing. It's superstitious and it wants to kill the vampire.
But The Mob isn't a clever force. It's brutal and irrational. It digs up a corpse in the graveyard, it stakes the corpse of a stranger who happened to die at the inn, it burns down Varney's house, it burns down the ruins where Charles was entrapped and where Marchdale lies dead, it kills a stranger who arrived in the village to demand blackmail money from Varney and, finally, it chases Varney around with such criminal intent that Flora Bannerworth decides to help him out by hiding him in her bedroom.
You know, being brutally murdered by The Mob is too terrible a fate even for a vampire.
Somewhere around this time, Flora's second brother, George, is completely forgotten and left out of the story. I'd have mentioned how she does nearly nothing except be protected and talked to like a pre-feminism heroine, but to be honest, her brother vanishes out of the story. He was so useless I even forgot he existed before checking wiki. And everyone around her is so incompetent that Varney doesn't even need to try hard to escape them - his single real enemy is The Mob.
Somewhere in there, we find out that Chillingworth, the doctor who's a friend of the Bannerworths, attempted to revive a cadaver Frankenstein-style - and that cadaver was Varney. So that's an origin story (but, we later find out, not the real one). (Although, to be honest, I don't think the author remembered much of his own story by the end.)
Also, a Hungarian nobleman who doesn't drink... wine... shows up at the local inn (he specifically says this! A century before the movie!) He wants to meet Varney, but The Mob catches him and shoots him. He falls into a river, is revived by the moon, fished out by a fisherman, then tries to suck the blood out of the fisherman's daughter.
In chapters 90-92, Varney manages to get his hands on the treasure in Bannerworth house!
It turns out he used to be gambling buddies with the father of the Bannerworths. After he and daddy dearest lost a fortune, they killed the guy who won it from them, stole it, then the elder Bannerworth hid it in a portrait and killed himself. Yes. He hid the money and offed himself. Varney's life is basically one big bag of suck.
In chapters 93- 126, the Bannerworths become less important. Flora Bannerworth and Charles Holland get married. The admiral Bell has a bit of comic relief with a quaker.
What's more important is that Varney pretends to be a baronet from the continent and throws money around in the hopes of marrying quickly. And he quickly finds a bride in the person of a greedy widow's beautiful daughter. The daughter has another sweetheart, but who cares? Definitely not Varney and the mother.
The Hungarian nobleman vampire comes to visit and ask for money, and Varney tries to kill him - to no avail, because the guy escapes on a boat on the sea. I suppose the author was going somewhere with this, but just like Flora's brother George or the origin story with the Bannerworth portrait, the other vampire sails off the page, never to return.
At Varney's wedding to the unwilling girl, the Bannerworths show up and recognize him, prompting him to run off.
In chapters 127-142, Varney goes to London, where he pretends he's a rich and retired colonel from India, in order to lure a greedy widow's greedy daughter into marriage. However, admiral Bell shows up at the wedding and interrupts it, unmasking the vampire and causing him to flee again. (Varney also tries to feed off of another girl, unsuccessfully, because she screams and wakes up the whole house - like all of his victims, really.)
In chapters 143-144, we find out what happens to Varney if he doesn't feed: he dies of natural causes, then is revived again. This apparently Sucks Big Time - it's a Suck of a Million Sucks. Varney doesn't want to harm people, but he's caught between a rock and a hard place.
In chapters 145-156, Varney encounters a group of travelers and gives them a hand on the road, supposedly saving two women from a tragic fate. He tries to woo the unmarried one (and tries to feed on her during the night), but she doesn't like him (I wonder why - could it be the fact that he sucks? Specifically, sucks her blood?).
When her family pressures her into marrying the nice vampire, admiral Bell shows up at the wedding, interrupting it and prompting him to flee.
In chapters 157-163, Varney goes to Naples - probably in an attempt to get away from admiral Bell and his tendency to show up long after his story arc is done. Varney murders a monk and impersonates him, then tries to kidnap a woman who's been sent to a nunnery to stop her from eloping. He's discovered, and flees.
In chapters 164-168, Varney is in a shipwreck and is the only one who makes it alive to the shore (or rather, he was dead, but he got revived by moonlight). He's brought into the house of the fisherman and feeds off his daughter.
In chapters 169-173, Varney saves the life of an Italian count, who's been attacked by assassins, and tries to get the count's daughter's hand in marriage as reward. He's foiled again and flees.
In chapters 174-178, Varney stops at an inn and kills the landlord's daughter by feeding on her.
In chapters 179-194, Varney stops at a hotel, where there's a plot afoot with a heiress and an attempt to steal her fortune. I was kinda bored at this point, but the gist of it is that her uncle is trying to convince her she's a foundling, and thus penniless, in the hopes that she'll marry her cousin and thus bring the family money into the uncle's hands.
Varney sucks her blood a bit, but all ends well - she remains alive, the plot against her is discovered and she marries her sweetheart. (SO MANY women marrying their sweethearts.)
There are also two chapters in which Varney gets summoned to help raise another vampire - apparently, vampires rise if they committed a terrible crime, or if someone turns them. At this point, the author was like, "oh, yeah, world building, that thing I was supposed to do 150 chapters ago - well, better late than never".
But most importantly, this is when Varney learns how to place his hand over the mouth of a victim to stop her from screaming! You go, Varney! Learn useful skills!
In chapters 195-226, Varney is kind of sick of life. Unfortunately, whenever he dies, something happens to bring him under the moonlight and revive him. So he decides to jump off a ship in the middle of the ocean and hopefully sink to the bottom of the ocean, where the moonlight can't reach him.
It's a good plan, but God sends another coincidence to torment him: he's saved by two fishermen and brought back to their house. Sick of everything, he turns their sister into a vampire. I don't know if he wanted her to be his bride (it would certainly fit the theme), but she barely has a chance to terrify a single girl in the village before she's quickly killed by a mob.
In chapters 227-236, a clergyman shows Varney kindness, in exchange for the story of how Varney became a vampire.
Varney writes down a story in which he was alive during the reign of Charles I and of Cromwell. He was involved in smuggling political dissenters out of London until he was discovered by Cromwell and murdered.
He became a vampire because, in a fit of anger, he hit his son who'd come to warn him about the plot, striking him dead.
At the end, in the very last chapter that's about one page long, there's a report that Varney committed suicide by throwing himself in the lava of Mt. Vesuvius. It's oddly satisfying.
“Varney, the Vampire
- or the Feast of Blood -
A Romance of Exciting Interest”
First of all, holy mother of long novels, this was LONG. I think it’s the longest published novel I’ve ever read.
When I decided I wanted to read it, I downloaded the Project Gutenberg version. Everybody’s seen Dickens novels, so I’ll just say it was 330,000 words long, which is slightly shorter than Bleak House, and vaguely longer than Our Mutual Friend.
Little did I know that the Gutenberg version isn’t complete – only about half of it is there, and the rest is hard to find on the internet (But not impossible).
“Varney” is actually longer than “War and Peace”, and considerably less action-packed.
Because it's relatively unknown and reading it in its entirety is a bit of a commitment, I'll write a longer review than usual, with a full summary of the book.
But first, what's it about, right?
"Varney, the Vampire" was published in 1845-1847. It was a penny dreadful, which means it came out in weekly installments, each costing a penny. There are no pretenses that this is high art - and even the authorship is debated.
"Varney" came before Dracula and before our concepts of what a vampire is solidified. He can walk in the sunlight, but moonlight really makes his vampiric nature shine. It revives him if he's died again, and it makes him stronger if he's weak. He can eat normal food, but it doesn't agree with him. If he dies, the entirety of nature conspires to bring him into the moonlight to revive him again. He can never get rest - for once, it's pretty clear why being an immortal vampire is a curse, not a blessing.
The book itself is strangely down-to-earth, especially in the first part. In fact, it often reads like the author himself couldn't decide whether Varney was a vampire or a scoundrel. In the first half of the novel, he has huge money issues and he does his best to get his hands on a fortune, the way a scoundrel would.
The main characters don't even know whether he's a vampire at all, or if it's a trick to swindle them - they eventually decide it's a trick. Later on, it's revealed that he was a vampire pretending to be a gentleman, pretending to be a vampire. I bet the author himself didn't know that to start with.
Varney is a very depressed, sad, gallant figure. He seems to want to get his way, but preferably without harming anyone - if he can frighten instead of harm, it's all for the good. (Except he does kill people in cold blood a few times)
This might sound cool, but it's very long and very uneven, with splatterings of purple prose and passages which seem to have been inserted for the word count.
And, since I promised a summary...
The first chapter is quite cool and gothic. Flora Bannerworth is asleep in her bed, when the dreaded vampire makes its way into her chamber and proceeds to suck her blood. She screams for help, and her two brothers, Henry and George Bannerworth, rush to her aid, along with their friend, Marchdale, who happens to be staying with them and their mother for awhile.
The attacker looks EXACTLY like the portrait of one of their ancestors, who's been dead a hundred years. If you remember this throughout the book, your memory is better than the author's. Varney gets a different origin story by the end.
In chapters 2-10, Henry, George, Marchdale and the local doctor go off to check the coffin of the Bannerworth ancestor who resembles the vampire. There's nobody there!
Meanwhile, the vampire shows up at the house, who's shot by Flora. After this deed of bravery, she turns around and swoons in the arms of her fiancee, Charles Holland, who happened to arrive from the continent precisely in time to make sure she doesn't get any bruises from collapsing on the floor. A true romantic hero!
In chapters 11-26, people fret. Francis Varney (rrooooolll credits), a neighbor of the Bannerworths, says he wants to buy their house, which is quickly losing value since it has a vampire attached. The fact that he looks precisely like that vampire is Highly Suspicious to everyone.
Charles Holland's uncle, admiral Bell, shows up along with his friend, the sailor Jack Pringle. They're a bit of comic relief and they speak in ocean-related terms a lot (it gets tiring, and then it starts being cute again).
There's a lot of fretting, but not much going on. The vampire keeps showing up, then running off. Sir Francis Varney is repeatedly challenged to about a million duels.
When the author forgets where he's going, he has a character read a story, and we read that story instead of the usual chapter.
In chapter 27, Charles Holland vanishes. We later find out he's been kidnapped by Varney and Marchdale, the friend of the Bannerworths who was staying with them, and trapped in some old ruins. He'll eventually be set free - and Marchdale will die a terrible death, squashed to death when the old ruins collapse over him. This happens in chapter... 75? Maybe?
Seriously, he's gone half the arc. And Marchdale would be a good Disney villain.
In chapters 28-39, we find out Varney owes people money. He later persuades Flora that he wants to suck her blood because he loves her - therefore, she should run far, far away. Because this isn't "Twilight", she thinks this is a very sensible idea, but the people around her want to catch the vampire, so she can't leave, either.
Varney actually fights a duel, but refuses to shoot at his opponent. He's such a gentleman.
The phrase "interview with the vampyre" shows up in chapter 36.
In chapters 40-89, we meet the most remarkable character in the book: the mob. (I'll capitalize it, because heck.) The Mob is truly frightening, and when it gets going, it stops at nothing. It's superstitious and it wants to kill the vampire.
But The Mob isn't a clever force. It's brutal and irrational. It digs up a corpse in the graveyard, it stakes the corpse of a stranger who happened to die at the inn, it burns down Varney's house, it burns down the ruins where Charles was entrapped and where Marchdale lies dead, it kills a stranger who arrived in the village to demand blackmail money from Varney and, finally, it chases Varney around with such criminal intent that Flora Bannerworth decides to help him out by hiding him in her bedroom.
You know, being brutally murdered by The Mob is too terrible a fate even for a vampire.
Somewhere around this time, Flora's second brother, George, is completely forgotten and left out of the story. I'd have mentioned how she does nearly nothing except be protected and talked to like a pre-feminism heroine, but to be honest, her brother vanishes out of the story. He was so useless I even forgot he existed before checking wiki. And everyone around her is so incompetent that Varney doesn't even need to try hard to escape them - his single real enemy is The Mob.
Somewhere in there, we find out that Chillingworth, the doctor who's a friend of the Bannerworths, attempted to revive a cadaver Frankenstein-style - and that cadaver was Varney. So that's an origin story (but, we later find out, not the real one). (Although, to be honest, I don't think the author remembered much of his own story by the end.)
Also, a Hungarian nobleman who doesn't drink... wine... shows up at the local inn (he specifically says this! A century before the movie!) He wants to meet Varney, but The Mob catches him and shoots him. He falls into a river, is revived by the moon, fished out by a fisherman, then tries to suck the blood out of the fisherman's daughter.
In chapters 90-92, Varney manages to get his hands on the treasure in Bannerworth house!
It turns out he used to be gambling buddies with the father of the Bannerworths. After he and daddy dearest lost a fortune, they killed the guy who won it from them, stole it, then the elder Bannerworth hid it in a portrait and killed himself. Yes. He hid the money and offed himself. Varney's life is basically one big bag of suck.
In chapters 93- 126, the Bannerworths become less important. Flora Bannerworth and Charles Holland get married. The admiral Bell has a bit of comic relief with a quaker.
What's more important is that Varney pretends to be a baronet from the continent and throws money around in the hopes of marrying quickly. And he quickly finds a bride in the person of a greedy widow's beautiful daughter. The daughter has another sweetheart, but who cares? Definitely not Varney and the mother.
The Hungarian nobleman vampire comes to visit and ask for money, and Varney tries to kill him - to no avail, because the guy escapes on a boat on the sea. I suppose the author was going somewhere with this, but just like Flora's brother George or the origin story with the Bannerworth portrait, the other vampire sails off the page, never to return.
At Varney's wedding to the unwilling girl, the Bannerworths show up and recognize him, prompting him to run off.
In chapters 127-142, Varney goes to London, where he pretends he's a rich and retired colonel from India, in order to lure a greedy widow's greedy daughter into marriage. However, admiral Bell shows up at the wedding and interrupts it, unmasking the vampire and causing him to flee again. (Varney also tries to feed off of another girl, unsuccessfully, because she screams and wakes up the whole house - like all of his victims, really.)
In chapters 143-144, we find out what happens to Varney if he doesn't feed: he dies of natural causes, then is revived again. This apparently Sucks Big Time - it's a Suck of a Million Sucks. Varney doesn't want to harm people, but he's caught between a rock and a hard place.
In chapters 145-156, Varney encounters a group of travelers and gives them a hand on the road, supposedly saving two women from a tragic fate. He tries to woo the unmarried one (and tries to feed on her during the night), but she doesn't like him (I wonder why - could it be the fact that he sucks? Specifically, sucks her blood?).
When her family pressures her into marrying the nice vampire, admiral Bell shows up at the wedding, interrupting it and prompting him to flee.
In chapters 157-163, Varney goes to Naples - probably in an attempt to get away from admiral Bell and his tendency to show up long after his story arc is done. Varney murders a monk and impersonates him, then tries to kidnap a woman who's been sent to a nunnery to stop her from eloping. He's discovered, and flees.
In chapters 164-168, Varney is in a shipwreck and is the only one who makes it alive to the shore (or rather, he was dead, but he got revived by moonlight). He's brought into the house of the fisherman and feeds off his daughter.
In chapters 169-173, Varney saves the life of an Italian count, who's been attacked by assassins, and tries to get the count's daughter's hand in marriage as reward. He's foiled again and flees.
In chapters 174-178, Varney stops at an inn and kills the landlord's daughter by feeding on her.
In chapters 179-194, Varney stops at a hotel, where there's a plot afoot with a heiress and an attempt to steal her fortune. I was kinda bored at this point, but the gist of it is that her uncle is trying to convince her she's a foundling, and thus penniless, in the hopes that she'll marry her cousin and thus bring the family money into the uncle's hands.
Varney sucks her blood a bit, but all ends well - she remains alive, the plot against her is discovered and she marries her sweetheart. (SO MANY women marrying their sweethearts.)
There are also two chapters in which Varney gets summoned to help raise another vampire - apparently, vampires rise if they committed a terrible crime, or if someone turns them. At this point, the author was like, "oh, yeah, world building, that thing I was supposed to do 150 chapters ago - well, better late than never".
But most importantly, this is when Varney learns how to place his hand over the mouth of a victim to stop her from screaming! You go, Varney! Learn useful skills!
In chapters 195-226, Varney is kind of sick of life. Unfortunately, whenever he dies, something happens to bring him under the moonlight and revive him. So he decides to jump off a ship in the middle of the ocean and hopefully sink to the bottom of the ocean, where the moonlight can't reach him.
It's a good plan, but God sends another coincidence to torment him: he's saved by two fishermen and brought back to their house. Sick of everything, he turns their sister into a vampire. I don't know if he wanted her to be his bride (it would certainly fit the theme), but she barely has a chance to terrify a single girl in the village before she's quickly killed by a mob.
In chapters 227-236, a clergyman shows Varney kindness, in exchange for the story of how Varney became a vampire.
Varney writes down a story in which he was alive during the reign of Charles I and of Cromwell. He was involved in smuggling political dissenters out of London until he was discovered by Cromwell and murdered.
He became a vampire because, in a fit of anger, he hit his son who'd come to warn him about the plot, striking him dead.
At the end, in the very last chapter that's about one page long, there's a report that Varney committed suicide by throwing himself in the lava of Mt. Vesuvius. It's oddly satisfying.