Dracula Week '22

What we do for love

#2 Stoker’s Day Job

Okay, so where did author Bram Stoker get the idea for the character Count Dracula? Seems like a simple enough question, but writers are not the most straight-forward of folks. We tend to noodle around as famed writing teacher Brenda Ueland called it until we finally arrive at the words “The End.” To think that there is a definitive answer to how Stoker created his main character is to ignore the life of the writer.

Bram Stoker’s day job was as the business manager to actor Henry Irving and later the Lyceum Theatre in London, England which Irving owned.

Lyceum Theatre London

Before exploring how Stoker’s “real” work might have influenced his writing, let’s do a quick overview of his life.

Born: November 8, 1847 in Dublin, Ireland (Irish and a Scorpio.)

Education: 1870 Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (?) from Trinity College

First day job: Civil servant working in Dublin Castle for the British royals

First side hustle: Unpaid writer and theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail newspaper

First professional turning point: 1878 Because of Stoker’s review of Hamlet’s Shakespeare published in the newspaper, he meets acclaimed actor Henry Irving who offers Stoker a job as the business manager for Irving and the Lyceum Theatre

Personal life: 1878 Marries actress Florence Balcombe (who had previously been engaged to Oscar Wilde)

One child: 1879 Irving Noel Thornley (notice that Stoker’s only child is named after his boss Henry Irving)

Dracula: 1897 Published in England; 1899 published in America

Literary career: 1902-1911 Continues writing and publishing novels, lectures, & nonfiction

Deceased: April 20, 1912

To begin with, I’m impressed by a writer who can do math, but the university he obtained a Bachelor of Arts from is vague about the emphasis of the degree. Stoker claimed he graduated with “Honors in Pure Mathematics” then went on to keep the books for a major theatre company. Works for me. Obviously, Stoker was that creator.

He became interested in theatre in college but was known as an exemplary athlete in several sports. He must have recognized the importance of making a living and spending personal time on less lucrative endeavors such as writing. Reading Stoker’s life reminds me of Steven King’s beginnings as a school maintenance worker who wrote in the evenings. It’s no surprise then that Stoker worked the day job to pay the bills while writing pro bono for a local publication. Between his education and work experience and interest in theatrical arts, Stoker did what most writers do: endure reality to support our fantasies.

We tend to noodle around as famed writing teacher Brenda Ueland called it until we finally arrive at the words “The End.”

What does a theatre business manager do? They watch the bottom line like a hawk making sure that there is money enough to keep the actors paid and clothed and the audience intrigued enough to buy tickets. Henry Irving was one of the most famous, sought-after actors of the time. He was too busy with his craft to bother with these all-important tasks. Without the building, lights, costumes, advertising, and a script, Irving was nobody. He knew enough to hire an astute and admiring assistant.

My own work history includes more than one stint as a business manager for a local ballet company followed by a stint as the personal manager of a popular ballet teacher. I performed exactly the tasks Stoker did for Irving: correspondence, advertising, travel arrangements, negotiations, purchases of everything from food to shoes to reading materials, and much more. All while continuing my freelance work as a dance writer.

The life of an actor (or dancer, musician, author) then and now depends on ticket sales. Tickets are bought because of notoriety. The public will pay for a ticket stub and the bragging rights to be able to say that they saw so-and-so live and in person on stage. Swell. But the pace and the stress are exhausting. It is a blood-sucking existence because fame is fleeting, and artists know it. When a person is at the top of their game, that’s when the fans want to see them. Scheduling and traveling are grueling because an artist never knows when the public will turn away to follow the next fad. The managers are just as used up as the artists.

Then what?

Exactly. Most of the time, there is no notice, no exact date when an actor’s fame fades. It is a gradual thing like the ebb and flow of low tide on the beach when most sun worshipers are inside having dinner. No one is on the sand to witness the slow rise and gentle decline of a weak little wave as it barely wets the sand on its way in then out for good. Until another bigger, grander, wider, more expansive wave comes in later. Does a surfer run for a ripple? No. The crowd swells for a big swell. It’s that way with performers and their managers.

What happens next is the time to realize how exhausted on every level you are, be it performer or support staff. It can be months before energy returns. It can be years before you feel like working at all. After the hustle and adrenaline rush of a performance career, the after-party is more like a car running out of gas in the middle of the highway. There is no juiciness left. There is no life force left. You feel as if the blood that used to pump through your veins and kept you on the cutting edge has been literally sucked out of you and all you have left is a carcass not good for much of anything.

“Kiss today good-bye, and point me toward tomorrow” is a true and famous line in the song “What I Did for Love” from the Broadway musical A Chorus Line. ACL is about the fleeting life of dancers in the chorus line. Although ACL was written in the 1970s, the feeling of nothingness when the career is over is what we humans believe to feel like being dead. The walking dead. The un-dead as Bram Stoker originally called his novel eventually titled Dracula.

A Dracula sucks the life out of another being so that Dracul can go on living. The theatre will suck the life out of the players so that it can go on existing. Did Stoker’s thankless day job as a business manager to a famous actor make him feel as if the fluid of life, his blood, had been drained from his body? We all do something for love at least once in a lifetime.

Photo: http://www.its-behind-you.com/lyceummelvilles.html