The story behind the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is legendary. The English writer had travelled to Switzerland in the summer of 1816 with her fiance, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her stepsister Claire Clairmont. The trio was visiting Lord Byron at his villa near Lake Geneva, when they were confined indoors for days due to an unseasonal rainstorm.Amusing each other by reading aloud ghost stories, it was ineviatble that the bunch of writers should get cracking on their own. Of those cooked up that fateful week, only two saw print. One was Mary Shelley's. The other, The Vampyre, was written by Byron's doctor, a young man named John Polidori who harbored literary ambitions.John Polidori is a now a footnote in litereray history, interesting for three things. First, he bore a strong physical resemblance to Byron. Second, he was the uncle to British writers Dante Gabriel, Christina and William Rossetti, although he died before they were born. Third, his story The Vampyre -- expanded from Byron's effort that week -- is sometimes credited as being the father of the English vampire story, and directed influenced works such as Dracula.Its central character, Lord Ruthven, seduces and eventually kills the sister of the protagonist, a young man who had accompanied the aristocrat to Europe, similar to Byron and Polidori. Furthermore, Ruthven was the name used by Byron's former lover Lady Caroline Lamb for a thinly disguised Byron in her novel Glenarvon.When Byron dismissed Polidori from his service at the end of the year, the doctor eventually returned to England, and somehow -- it is unclear how -- The Vampyre was published anonymously in a magazine. The publisher encouraged the public's belief that the writer is Lord Byron, who had left England after the scandal of divorcing his wife, and the magazine sold thousands on the first day.Imposture opens on the day that The Vampyre is published. Annoyed that the work has been wrongly attributed to his former master, Polidori bangs on the door. The publisher is out, but a young woman, a humble governess-nurse named Eliza, mistakes him for the poet, and tells him they had danced together years ago. Starved for affection, Polidori allows her to believe this; in turn, the young woman is faking her acquainatnce with the poet. In fact, Byron had danced before with her older sister, who has married well. The bulk of the novel plays out this relationship of imposture, two people loving and hoping to be loved for what they are not.Indeed, as the readres go deeper into the story, you realise that The Vampyre is not a straightforwrad allegorical representation of Byron and Polidori. Byron might have seemed insatiable in satisfying his lusts, but it was Polidori who fed greedily off the fame of another, hurting an innocent life in the process. Markovits enjoys playing with layers: in fact, a prologue attributes the bulk of the book to have been written by a mysterious teacher Markovits meets while teaching at a private school in New York. This man is beloved by his students, but Markovits eventually realises that his name "Peter Pattieson", is that of Walter Scott's schoolmaster narrator in the Waverley novels. Pattieson admits it is an alias, but Markovits agrees to stay silent. Over a decade later, Markovits receives several manuscripts from Pattieson's estate, of which the ensuing story is one. It seems tagged on and unnecessary.Those hoping for a historical drama about Byron will be disappointed: the poet makes mainly cameo appearances, and alternates between sympathetic and arrogant. Byron was not above laughing at his doctor's expense, once saying that he was "exactly the kind of person to whom, if he fell overboard, one would hold out a straw to know if the adage be true that drowning men catch at straws". Yet, as Markovits paints Polidori, Byron seems like a saint for having kept him on so long. Defensive of his mediocrity, Polidori is sour and sarcarstic, and Byron is shown exercising admirable restraint, even once unknowingly saving Polidori from suicide through a show of compassion.
Lord Byrons personal physician; identity conflict.
