For those interested in the old texts that inspired gothic tales of vampires, an interesting place to start is to read The Travels of three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, being the Grand Tour of Germany, in the year 1734.
First published in volume IV of The Harleian Miscellany: A Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts, this work is anonymous but very interesting and entertaining. You can find the original text here and read it for yourself.
C. M. Vassie read it as part of his research for SCRAVIR.
“What I loved most about Travels of Three English Gentlemen was the language and style,” says Vassie. “The details of observation and the descriptions are wonderful.”
While the Scravir are not vampires, understanding how people hundreds of years ago might have reacted to those menacing beings was important to Vassie.
Travelling around Europe was a very different undertaking three and four hundred years ago. The poor would have had little opportunity to venture far but in the 17th and 18th centuries young English elites would go on Grand Tours (designed to broaden their horizons) that could last between two and four years. They would study art, languages, culture and geography.
Because of the risk of highway robberies, the young gadabouts carried little money. Instead they took letters of credit from reputable London banks.
The authors of Travels of Three English Gentlemen may well have been such gadabouts. They provide us with an early description of Vampires.
It is worth noting that this travelogue is not all about vampires. It also gives many fascinating insights into the flora and fauna the travellers saw on their journey, with descriptions of vampires being interspersed with notes on dormice, glow-worms, bears and river crabs. A paragraph about witches is as easily followed by a description of wines and pies, peaches and apples as by the history of a local war.
Vassie borrowed the writing style of the journal for a key moment of discovery in SCRAVIR.
You can learn more about the Grand Tour here.
