Harry Clarke
- At October 02, 2018
- By Great Quail
- In Vampire
0
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, from Atalanta in Calydon
Harry Clarke
Clan: Toreador antitribu
Affiliation: Byzantium Coven
Role: Artist
A shy Toreador with delicate features and wide, staring eyes, Harry Clarke wanders Byzantium in full Edwardian dress, a sketchbook in one hand and a volume of poetry in the other. He has a dreamy aspect that tends to render him almost insubstantial, and his gentle voice carries a soft, Irish accent that evokes a vanished era. Despite his muted demeanor, Harry Clarke has placed his indelible stamp on the aesthetics of the Gotham Sabbat, and his visionary work informs everything from the décor of Club Byzantium and Sarnath to the physical appearance of humans flesh-crafted by Tzimisce artisans. Unfortunately, he exhibits little awareness of his influence. The only progeny of the great Veronica Tryst, Harry suffers from a terrible blood curse, and remains trapped in an endless nightmare by his jealous dream-lover, the Lamia Faustine.
History
The Beginning of Years
Born in Dublin in 1889, Henry Patrick Clarke began his artistic career in his father’s stained glass studio, making windows and ornaments for Irish churches. Steeped in the Celtic Twilight and fascinated by the literature of Symbolism, Harry began designing windows based on Yeats’ poetry, and his sketches of the Irish countryside acquired an increasingly mystical quality. After a disappointing year of art school in London, Harry returned to the comforting familiarity of Dublin and continued to beautify Ireland’s scared spaces with panes of colored light.
In 1912 Harry met Laurence Ambrose Waldron, a sybaritic Irish MP known for his lavish salons. Impressed by Harry’s sketches of the Aran Islands and his work on Yeats, “Larky” asked Harry to create private illustrations for The Rape of the Lock—the more titillating, the better. Harry allowed his imagination to run wild, drawing inspiration from the wealthy patrons and decadent literati frequenting Larky’s salons, and investing his work with a previously unseen degree of licentiousness. Larky was delighted by the results, and compared Harry to Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham. Before long Harry was pursuing a parallel career as a gift-book illustrator, gaining public acclaim for his ongoing illustrations of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales.
Love That Endures
Now in his mid-twenties, Harry found himself struggling to navigate the diverging currents of his artistic life. His stained glass windows were celebrated for their beautiful religious iconography, while his book illustrations became increasingly grotesque. As the two worlds drifted out of harmony, his health began to break down. Like his brother and father before him, Harry had a weak constitution and suffered from tuberculosis. As the disease accelerated, he distracted himself from his symptoms by plunging deeper into his work, but the sacred and secular continued to divide his soul.
In 1914, Harry experienced a series of strange and terrible dreams; complex, lucid affairs revolving around a dark-haired woman named “Faustine.” These dreams were extraordinarily vivid, and afterwards Harry was gripped by a singular fever, a fusion of delirium and inspiration that pushed him to creative heights before crippling him with exhaustion. These episodes were tinctured with horror as well, as if Faustine were draining Harry of life, hollowing out his body as his imagination caught fire. He turned to absinthe to relieve the pain, and began including ironic self-portraits in his creations, likening himself to suffering saints, tortured artists, and both Faust and Mephisto at once.
Ignoring the tectonic politics shifting around his Dublin studio, Harry embarked on a new project, an illustrated edition of Coleridge’s epic poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Faustine continued her nocturnal visits, and Harry began avoiding his wife and children—anything to complete the work, the monumental work.
In the April of 1916, Harry met a woman at a café on Grafton Street, an extraordinary American named Veronica Tryst. She was dressed in a man’s suit of herringbone tweed, had tousled red hair crowned by a straw boater, and suffered from a rare ailment that made her painfully sensitive to sunlight. Recognizing Harry on sight, she introduced herself as a fellow devotée of stained glass, currently touring Ireland to “take in its magnificent churches.” Harry struck up an acquaintance with the charming American, whose praise of Harry’s work was embarrassingly effusive. While Veronica was certainly unusual, there was something else about her that fascinated Harry; a fey, otherworldly quality that evoked his dream-lover, Faustine. Two weeks into their friendship, Veronica announced her imminent departure for New York. When she asked to be entrusted with his precious illustrations for Ancient Mariner, Harry—unbelievably—didn’t think twice. The next day, his studio was damaged during the Easter Uprising, damage that surely would have destroyed his work. Veronica Tryst had vanished.
That same night, Faustine demanded that Harry accept a gold wedding ring as a token of their union. With some reluctance, he slid the ring on his finger. Harry woke up aroused and wet, his body enervated by the ordeal and his ring finger bitten nearly to the bone. Nevertheless, it marked the beginning of a decade of relative peace and prosperity.
Pleasure, with Pain for Leaven
After the war, Harry attempted to bring his aesthetic worlds into closer alignment. Accepting commissions from outside the Church, he crafted stained glass windows illuminating secular subjects from Irish literature. Some of these windows included nudity, the drinking of absinthe, and the embrace of delirium. While such pieces naturally ran afoul the Irish government, there was no shortage of work, and he continued to earn medals and acclaim. His books sold well in America, particularly his illustrations of Poe and Goethe, and the Irish clergy still sought out Harry’s studio whenever their churches were in need of refurnishing.
In 1928, Harry ran into Veronica Tryst in London. Inexplicably, he neglected to bring up his “borrowed” illustrations; but the American helped him secure a Swinburne commission from John Lane the Bodley Head. As he spent time with Veronica, his dream-lover’s visitations became more tempestuous, as if Faustine were punishing Harry for some waking indiscretion. Still, the renewed passion brought fresh inspiration. Returning to Dublin, Harry’s work took a decidedly erotic turn, but the spiritual turbulence took an increasing toll on his health. As his body continued to deteriorate, Harry’s eyesight began to fail.
Night, the Shadow of Light
In 1929 Harry’s disease compelled him to a sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland. Veronica Tryst was there to meet him. One evening gazing at the frosty stars, Veronica finally revealed the truth. She was a vampire, a member of a clan devoted to glorifying the arts. She explained that years ago, Harry had attracted the attention of another vampire, something called a Lamia, and this “dream-lover” was destroying Harry with her nocturnal feeding. At this point, his death was inevitable. Although Veronica could do nothing about the Lamia, she offered to transform Harry into an immortal creature like herself. He would be free from Faustine forever, but would become a Toreador, forced to drink human blood to survive.
Deeply conflicted, Harry refused Veronica’s offer and rejoined his family in Dublin. Researching legends about the Lamia, he read about a restorative spring in the Alps that had the power to sever the bond between a Lamia and her doomed paramour. Harry set his affairs in order and returned to Switzerland. In 1931, his disease finally overtook him in the ancient town of Coire. For one, the sudden appearance of Veronica Tryst did not take him by surprise. Sensing the approach of Faustine, Harry weakly extended his wrist. “I’m ready. Take me to Tír na nÓg.”
It was Veronica’s first Embrace, and it was willfully foolish—the legends of the Toreador were explicit regarding the Lamia, and forbade Kindred from interfering with a Lamia’s prey. But Veronica was an American, an antitribu, and ever the brash iconoclast. Smiling wryly at Harry’s romantic gesture, she set his wrist aside and bit down on his throat, draining him to the brink of death. Opening her shirt, she made an incision across her heart and cradled Harry’s head to her chest. His lips trembling, he drank willingly.
Deprived of her fatal consummation, the Lamia materialized in a rage. Flinging Veronica against the hostel wall, the ancient creature calling herself Faustine coiled around Veronica and drove her hand through the incision, cracking open the Toreador’s ribcage. Gripping Veronica’s heart in her talon, the Lamia spat her curse—“You have made me a widow! Your blood shall be fouled for seven times seven years of seven, and until those days have passed, your childer shall be broken and mad!” Casting the dazed Toreador aside, Faustine placed a kiss on Harry’s bloody lips and concluded her curse. “Yes, Arikelite, including this one. My husband shall be your first deathless abortion!”
Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,
Being mixed therein
Since first the devil threw dice with God
For you, Faustine
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Faustine”
Current Role
Madness Risen from Hell
As a result of Faustine’s curse, Harry Clarke is a damaged Cainite. He is unquestionably a Toreador, and continues to produce remarkable works of art; but for the most part Harry behaves like a Malkavian. He seems stranded in a perpetual twilight of make-believe, where the Sabbat appear as angels and demons, human blood is ambrosia, and the mortal world is occluded behind a diaphanous veil. Unless he’s discussing art, Harry finds it difficult to sustain a conversation, and remains oblivious to the politics, pettiness, and pain inextricably threaded through the world of the undead. Most distressing for his Sire, Harry conflates Veronica with the absent Faustine, and has no memory of their “waking” life or his Embrace.
Not everyone believes that Harry is beyond redemption. His best work has a haunting, sublime quality, suggesting a repressed awareness of the world struggling to speak through the language of Symbolism. For instance, the one time Harry attended a Blood Feast, he withdrew into a near catatonic state. The following night, Harry acted as if nothing had happened, even alluding to a pleasant evening “strolling along the waterfront.” A week later, Harry accepted a commission from Libyrinth Press to illustrate Demons By Daylight, Ramsey Campbell’s collection of horror stories. Harry retreated into his studio for three months, making contact only with Veronica, who nourished him from her own veins. Harry emerged with a series of illustrations that raised even Malachi’s eyebrows. The perfect accompaniment to Campbell’s narratives of confusion, isolation, and despair, every image was pregnant with menace, as if something unnamable was shuddering below the surface, waiting to rupture the delicate lines and soil the page with filth. Only Veronica understood—Harry had sublimated the monstrosity of the Sabbat ritual into a subconscious cry of pain and outrage.
Life, the Shadow of Death
In 1980, Harry Clarke met Venus and Orchid and became hopelessly bewitched. Recognizing that the Byzantium Coven was better suited for Harry than Sarnath, Veronica released her damaged progeny and entrusted him to Venus. Of all the Sabbat save his Sire, Venus is the most sympathetic to Harry’s condition. The Irish Toreador reminds Venus of her upbringing in London’s decadent Lamia Club, and his antiquated style resonates with her fin de siècle nostalgia. As the progeny of Gotham’s Praelatus, Harry is afforded a wide degree of latitude, and even the coven’s most cynical Cainites understand “the artist” is not to be harassed.
Harry lives in a small apartment on Byzantium’s fifth floor. He feeds conservatively from young women he views as paramours, but rarely contacts again after seeing them to the door. He also drinks from handsome young men, but seems unable to accept this as a sexual transaction, despite all the kissing and entangled naked bodies. Every so often, Harry seeks out Sister Elsie Toshiro and makes “confession.” The Malkavian nun enjoys these moments, and treats them with solemn mock gravity, assigning Harry appropriate acts of penance which usually involve mild diablerie. When he’s not wandering Byzantium, Harry is found at his studio in Bloomindale. Two major projects command his current attention. The first is an oversized volume of Baudelaire’s complete works, each poem accompanied by a full-color illustration. The second a stained-glass “chapel” devoted to Bram Stoker, each wall a shimmering tribute to drowning maidens, elegant vampires, crumbling castles, and white worms. Expected to be completed soon, the chapel will be installed in the Empusa Theatre.
Remembrance, Fallen from Heaven
Harry Clarke remains Veronica Tryst’s only progeny. In three centuries she’ll be free from Faustine’s curse; but until then, he’s all she has, and Veronica watches over his progress discreetly from the heights of her penthouse studio. Harry has never been invited to his Sire’s home. Veronica can’t bear the thought he might not recognize her most treasured possessions—beautiful illustrations for Rime of the Ancient Mariner, stolen from their creator and rescued from the pitiless scythe of history. Framed in sequence along her walls, they remain a constant and necessary reminder that forgiveness is more powerful than damnation.
LOVE AND SLEEP
Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said—
I wist not what, saving one word—Delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to my eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sources & Notes
I normally avoid turning famous historical figures into vampires, but I couldn’t resist with Harry Clarke. Not only was Harry an original inspiration for Veronica Tryst, his biography is perfectly contoured to suggest the invisible presence of a Lamia: inspiration, obsession, decadence, tuberculosis, eye problems, even a death in Switzerland! Part of the original New York By Night site, the Lamia are an ancient clan of vampires that fuse succubus and muse. They are inspired by Tim Powers’ wonderful novel, The Stress of Her Regard.
All images on this page are by Harry Clarke. To get a better look at his amazing work, I recommend the Calla reprints of Goethe’s Faust and Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. There are many decent Harry Clarke resources on the Web, such as Harry Clarke Studios, a blog with some lovely images of his stained glass; Kelly Sullivan’s article “Harry Clarke’s Looking Glass” at the Public Domain Review; the 50 Watts Harry Clarke page; and Grandma’s Graphics Harry Clarke page.
I adapted Harry Clarke’s biography from two main sources: Harry Clark: The Life & Work by Nicola Gordon Bowe, and Harry Clarke: An Imaginative Genius in Illustrations and Stained-glass Arts by Hiroshi Unno. Though the latter book is mostly in Japanese, there’s some bilingual sections, and the book features many illustrations.
Author: Great Quail
Original Upload: 1 September 2018
Last Modified: 13 January 2020
Contact: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [TBD]