A Mystery of the Campagna By Anne Crawford von Rabe
Actual rate: 3.75 stars 🌟
This was a nice novella. I liked the general setting of story, and the tone too. English The ending is very reminiscent to a scene from Dracula, a special treat for those that enjoy seeing a wicked vampire executed in classic fashion. English First published in 1887 this story takes place in the coutryside near Rome. It is broken into two parts with the first part of the story related by a painter, Martino who is tellting the story of his friend Marcello, a composer. Martino becomes concerned about Marcello who has to decided to stay alone in a country house in order to finish his opera. Martino falls ill and the story is taken up by another friend, this time a Brit named Sutton. The story revolves around how Martino and his illness are somehow linked to something strange happening to Marcello, so there is much that happens off stage. Crawford is a good writer who only published one book and then became a baroness. Her brother and sister are also both writers. This is an interesting take on the vampire tale. English Extraordinary sublime supernatural short story. English [https://books.google.com.au/books?id=...
An 1886 publication.
French opera composer, Marcello Souvestre, acquires a new villa; the perfect place to write, he tells his friend Martin the artist. He is never practical when he has an opera in his head. But Martin Detaille worries about Marcello and has nightmares. Detaille falls ill and starts raving and in order to comfort him, his own friends go to the villa to see Marcello so they can assure the ill man he is okay.
At this point the Englishman Robert Sutton, takes up the tale. He is the usual practical man, does not believe these portents of doom, and grumbles much over being required to make the trip to the outskirts of Rome. He sneaks in to the villa and sees Marcello embracing a beautiful woman on the balcony, and decides that is the 'mystery'. He looks much changed and moves mechanically, but he's fine, right? The woman has her face buried in his neck.
Magnin (another friend) reports that Detaille had a fit at the exact moment Sutton saw his friend and the woman. The Nun helping them nurse him is sure that if he has another fit like that one, he will die. He keeps humming what he says is a funeral dirge and crying for his friend.
The next night, he has a violent fit and throws people off him. Sutton sees Marcello standing in the room but when he tries to touch him, his hand goes through a material like a spider's web.
Genuinely worried, Magnin and Sutton hire a carriage and go back to the villa.
[At this point, I am going to assume that Bram Stoker read this book. 1897 for Dracula; it's almost ten years later. The google edition is the 3rd one, printed in 1891]
The villa is empty, but underneath there is a crypt where they find Marcello's body with some tools and an inscription on a large stone sarcophagus to Vespertilia from her lover Flavius. Inside there is a beautiful woman lying among rotting rags.
Our practical hero cuts a piece of wood off the pickaxe handle, climbs up into the sarcophagus, and stakes her.
I looked for one moment at that white breast, but only to choose the loveliest spot, where the network of azure veins shimmered like veiled turquoises, and then with one blow I drove the pointed stake deep down through the breathing snow and stamped it in with my heel.
An awful shriek, so ringing and horrible that I thought my ears must have burst; but even then I felt neither fear nor horror. There are times when these cannot touch us. I stooped and gazed once again at the face, now undergoing a fearful change — fearful and final!
Foul vampire, I said quietly in my concentrated rage. You will do no more harm now!
dayum. Stamped in with his heel... then they take Marcello back to be buried. They also note that the opera he was working on has the funeral march Detaille kept singing. He could not have seen it; it was considered poor form to look on any artist's work before it is complete.
ooh *shivers*.
WHY did this woman only write one story??! I know, she became a baroness and presumably was not allowed to write.
4 stars English
Reprint by Adams Press, Chicago, IL, in conjunction with the Count Dracula Fan Club of the 19th century vampire novella, originally published by the Cassell Publishing Company as part of their Unknown Library series in 1891. A Mystery of the Campagna