R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The House Of Dracula

[dem bones]

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The House Of Dracula (William Kimber, 1987)

ionicus

Draculain Genealogical Table
Introduction

Caroline
Marikova
Karl
Gilbert
Louis

Blurb:
"I could see in the moonlight the moisture on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Thus, in Bram Stoker's classic, Jonathan Harker records his meeting with the vampire wives of Dracula. But Stoker delves no further into the private life of Count Dracula.

Now, after careful research, R. Chetwynd-Hayes has pieced together the incredible and spine-chilling story of Dracula's descendants from those vampire 'wives' - descendants that still walk the earth today, with their protectors, The Pack. The Lord Marcus, the Princess Zena, and the Countess Irma have donned the mantle of their illustrious forebear, and their exploits are recorded in Chetwynd-Hayes' inimitable style.


Pretty daunting.

Caroline: The sequel to previous year's Dracula's Children gets off to an inauspicious start with convoluted saga concerning Simon Martin, a precocious nine-year-old blessed/ cursed with the phenomenal ability to "think dead" any person or creature who displeases him. Neglected by Thelma, his glamorous, happily widowed mother, Simon adopts a ghost who manifests from the hedge bordering supposedly abandoned house next door as a surrogate. This "night mummy" is the Princess Caroline Karlvina - Dracula's daughter.

The Princess is only too eager to care for the pompous brat as she realises he is of the extraordinary ones. She and her nephew/ love-slave, Count Andrea de Villafort, get to work on Thelma who, hopelessly smitten - she finds "kinky people" irresistible - confides that Simon is a bastard, the fruit of a romp with a complete stranger she took for a Catholic priest. It is just as the Countess hoped: His father is none other than Count Conrad von Holstein (see The Holstein Horror)! In the great Chetwynd-Hayes scheme of things, this makes Simon a Catamodo, predestined to destroy mankind on a whim - unless someone stops him first.

George Vernon, an ineffectual type, is hopelessly devoted to Thelma despite her vile personality. An unashamed coward, George is moved to intervene when the boy blithely announces his plan to unleash a plague of giant insects.

There's also a sub-plot involving the disappearance and probable "suicide" of Simon's hapless Nanny; The Pack (led by "a thing that looks like a dog in a long overcoat") get to do their thing; most alarming of all, George's testimony incorporates a sex scene.

[dem bones]

Marikova: "People called him a recluse. A hermit. A weirdo." Meet Derek Wiltshire, 40, a bachelor happiest in his own company. One night a beautiful girl pounds on his door, her dress all torn and bare feet bloody. Marikova claims to have "time jumped" while fleeing Matthew Hopkins and cronies who'd planned to burn her as a witch. One glimpse of her gorgeous unclad body and Derek is smitten. Happiness is his until Count Marcus lets loose the Pack to drag home his favourite sister before she can get into any more trouble. Derek, of course, will have to be eliminated. Marikova begs for his life and, when that fails, insists he be granted the traditional twenty-four-hour head start on the Pack. This being reluctantly agreed, she instructs Derek to seek out her vampire friend, the Countess Annanova Buhvitch, who goes by the name "Anne Mellor" and works as a tea-lady in a Kingston factory.

He high tails it for South London.

Anna, who has the appearance of a very attractive teenager, duly shelters the fugitive. Derek repays the kindness by snooping in her knicker drawer while she's at work. He's mortified to discover a stash of lesbian love letters from Marikova! Treachery!

Our increasingly unsympathetic hero has evaded the Pack for a record-equalling six days when fate deals him an unexpected advantage. Anna is zapped by a blast of sunlight. Needs must, and as Derek massages her blackened skin, she ravages his jugular. At last an even playing field. The fledgling vampire returns home to Nelham, confident in his ability to see off The Pack and claim Marikova as his bride in death!

Despite several dicey moments when author's "inimitable style" threatens to get the better of him - "It's only a Hibbie-Willy. Can't do you any real harm" - this novella is sporadically reminiscent of The Monster Club's better moments, though it's certainly no The Humgoo.

Suffragettes unlikely to appreciate the finale.

[Mike Brough]

Have you seen the price of second-hand copies on Amazon?  

[andydecker]

one often sees these fantasy prices. I can't imagine somebody ever paying this.

[Mike Brough]

Can I buy your used copy for a quid then?  

[andydecker]

Aug 22, 2018 19:13:28 GMT Mike Brough said:

Can I buy your used copy for a quid then?  

If I had one, why not? Unfortunatly I am not a Chetwynd-Hayes fan and just own a copy of the translation of The Monster Club.

[dem bones]

Aug 22, 2018 18:57:27 GMT Mike Brough said:

Have you seen the price of second-hand copies on Amazon?  

Aug 22, 2018 19:11:43 GMT andydecker said:

one often sees these fantasy prices. I can't imagine somebody ever paying this.

These prices are lunacy and it can only be hoped nobody is stupid enough to entertain them. Flashback to a remainder bookshop on the Charing X Road, some time during the early 'nineties. Copies of House Of Dracula, Dracula's Children, volumes 3 & 4 of Amy Myers' After Midnight Stories and Richard Dalby's Chillers For Christmas stacked high, 50p a time. They'd been discounted from £1 due to supreme lack of interest from book-buying public.

We had someone flogging their inherited wares on here some years back. The gist of his pitch, "Don't try to rip me off, because I've seen what these books are worth on Abes Books!"

Anyway ...

Karl: "I love to hate men. Let's expand on that. I love to hate, period. I love to read, learn, be told about something horrible that has happened to one of that hideous sex. I have created several fantasy dreams in which I torture a man ..."

Audio diary of Veronica Burnside, eighteen, confined to a wheelchair after a road accident with little hope of walking again ... until she meets her arrogant, handsome devil of a next door neighbour Karl du Vallon, the son of Dracula. Bitterly disappointed in love - her attempt to seduce dozy Ken ended in humiliation - she declares war on on all men, Karl being the closest to hand taking the brunt of her malice. The vampire treats her contempt with infuriating amusement, assuring her that she can regain full mobility whenever she wants. All she need do is submit to his will. He proves it.

Veronica receives a visit from Chief Superintendent Pickering of Scotland Yard's special 'B[lood]-Group,' loathed and feared throughout the Unlife underworld as "The Bleeney." Pickering is bent on taking Karl alive and handing him over to the lab johnnies for dissection purposes. Miss Burnside is initially ecstatic at the prospect ....

Another curates egg. Culminates in a (very decent) massacre as the Pack mount a death or glory rescue attempt.

[dem bones]

Gilbert: Retired Sergeant Major William Wildeforce festers in tranquil seclusion at his cliff-top residence, Herron House. His peaceful existence is shattered when a freak storm erodes the chalk face, causing his basement to collapse onto a hidden floor beneath. Buried under the rubble, a youth in rags. Gilbert, who has the appearance of a seventeen year old, claims to be a "vamling" who has been locked in suspended animation for the best part of a century. Despite himself, Mr. Wilderforce takes a shine to the "boy" with the beautiful face and invites him to stay until his relatives can be located.

All is well until a Mr. B. Rodent, of Bounty Hunters Inc., offers Wilberforce a £1 billion pounds finders fee if he can merely persuade the vamling to accompany him on a stroll in the sunlight. Wilberforce turns him down, but the collapse of the stock market sees him facing financial ruin and Gilbert's nightly attacks on local sheep will surely bring trouble. Loathe as he is to admit such a "perversion", Wildeforce is sexually attracted toward his adopted son and the manipulative blood-sucker knows it. Mr. Rodent merely bides his time until, inevitably, the army man caves in.

For this reader, Gilbert benefits from relative brevity and a coherent plot. Either RCH has worn down my resistance or The House of Dracula has recovered from a turgid opener. Either way, have enjoyed the last couple. One to go.

[dem bones]

Saving perhaps the best until last;

Louis: An exchange of letters and telegrams between best friends Hilda McCarthy and Liza Russell, instigated by the former. Hilda, 42 and widowed, is holidaying in Broadstairs where she meets the urbane, handsome ("like Ronald Coleman in The Prisoner of Zenda, but taller") Louis Longchamp. Back home in leafy Twickenham, Liza tactlessly advises her friend against another messy entanglement, whereupon the correspondence turns hostile. By the time Hilda comes to her senses, evil Louis has already doomed both she and tragic, besotted Arthur Minns to Limbo.

As selected by Stephen Jones to represent The House Of Dracula in The Vampire Stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes.

Here's Greg Cox on The House Of Dracula in The Transylvanian Library: A Consumers Guide To Vampire Fiction (Borga Press, 1993)

"If The Monster Club reads like Charles Addams with an English accent ("You know, Mother, that's as fine a jug of AB as you've ever served up ..."), his two Dracula books take on the more ambitious task of elucidating the Impaler's family tree. Seems that the Count had several children by his three vampire brides ... producing a modern generation of glamorous, amoral demon princes and princesses whose individual adventures Chetwynd-Hayes dutifully chronicles, with varying degrees of seriousness. While there's nothing here as overtly comic as The Monster Club's The Werewolf And The Vampire (in which the titular couple are done in by a nasty little boy who has read too many horror comics), Marikova and Karl suffer from an uneasy mixture of fear and laughter, as well as a strain of misogyny that runs through much of Chetwynd-Hayes' work. Tales like Gilbert, on the other hand, about the ambiguous relationship between a gruff military man and a diffident boy vampire, strike some genuinely eerie chords.

Idiosyncratic and off-putting, Chetwynd-Hayes' world of monsters is probably something of an acquired taste ..."

... and for good measure, Margaret L. Carter also reviews the collection on the Vampchix blog.

[ripper]

I am wary of buying anything by RCH. For every tale by him I have enjoyed, there has been at least another that has turned me off. For this reason, I read with interest recaps and opinions on his work.

Kimber horror and supernatural titles were a staple of my local library back in the 80s. Several years ago I thought I would buy a few from internet sites like ABE and Amazon, but all were way out of my budget for what I was prepared to pay. Surely these Kimber titles must have had a reasonably large print run, so it is not as though they are limited editions or anything, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to asking prices.