Page 127 of The Extraordinary Florence Stoker

CHAPTER SIXTY

London, 1930

There was a time when I would have avoided the company of a woman like Dorothea Fassett. Even during those first few phone calls, she was abrasive to the point of rudeness. But she was frank and, more importantly, she listened; something the patronising, condescending men I’d been surrounded by had failed to do. In hindsight, I shudder to think where I’d be if I hadn’t hired her to replace Mr Bang.

The first time I attended her offices in a squat caramel-coloured building in Piccadilly, she was engulfed by a veritable brume of cigarette smoke. A slender woman, considerably shorter than me, she shook hands like a Queensberry boxer, spoke sharply, and quickly, with a cut-glass accent – cut-glass and yet husky. In her forties, she was a partner in the London Play Company and, according to anyone in the business, a formidable agent. You wouldn’t think so to look at her. She had russet hair laced with silver rolled into a careless chignon. Thick-lensed glasses perched on the bridge of a long, thin nose. When not moving, her lips either had a cigarette blunted between them or were like a hyphen, compressed, a statement in themselves. Her laugh, when it came, was explosive, a seal’s bark. Her heavily lined eyes, constantly narrowed due to the smoke, nevertheless twinkled. Dressed in a skirt and a cardigan that looked like a cat had slept on it, there was an artless chic about her. Between taking calls, scribbling notes to herself, interruptions from her assistant, a tall young man named Laurence Fitch, she made no bones about telling me (and Noel, who came to my first meeting) that I was a fool for keeping Mr Bang for so long. Then, she outlined why, which mostly took the form of telling me what she’d accomplished in the months since she’d represented me.

I liked her enormously. Noel, who’d only heard about her, was intimidated into silence.

We’d been together eighteen months now and, while my coffers weren’t growing at the rate I’d hoped, neither were they diminishing. So, when Miss Fassett summoned me late June in 1930, declaring she had some very significant news to impart that was best done in person (agents weren’t above creating their own dramas), I made haste to her offices, Noel in tow.

‘Since our last meeting, Mrs Stoker,’ began Miss Fassett after tea was poured and pleasantries exchanged, ‘much has happened. As you know, I wrote to Harold Freedman – Universal Studio’s London man,’ she explained rapid-fire for Noel’s benefit, the cigarette between her lips waggling up and down, sprinkling ash over the papers in front of her. She swept it aside, leaving a grey smudge on the pages.

She paused as a volley of moist coughs beset her, clamping her lips around the cigarette, but failing to cover her mouth. ‘I told him that once again this Nosferatu business has you losing sleep, and that as we were fielding inquiries about Dracula —’ She removed the cigarette and aimed it at me. ‘I wanted the Prana matter put to bed once and for all.’

My initial thought was how did she know about the nights I spent tossing and turning, waiting for my uninvited visitor to arrive? Then I understood she was being figurative. Our first communications had been all about blasted Nosferatu, the ongoing lawsuit, the role the Society of Authors played, Mr Thring (who she called as useful as a chocolate teapot), the wretched Film Society, and the inability of any court or lawyer to ensure the film was destroyed. I’d sent her copies of all the correspondence, now untidily stacked in a thick folder on her desk. When I told her a few months ago that Nosferatu had once again resurfaced in America, she swore to put an end to it.

‘If we don’t,’ she’d said, the telephone turning her voice into something slightly tinny and wheezy, ‘then your chances of selling any film rights to your husband’s work are, to use American parlance, screwed. No studio will touch a project if the copyright isn’t clear. I’m surprised Mr Bang didn’t tell you this.’

Oh, but he had. The problem, I later learned from Miss Fassett, was that Mr Deane, Mr Balderston and Mr Liveright had been working behind my back to try and secure a film deal themselves – not all together, but in partnerships that were mutually beneficial or acting individually. Partly it was retribution for daring to strike out on my own to secure a Dracula film deal that excluded them, partly it was because they recognised the money to be made, and partly because they were concerned about how a film would impact their theatrical ticket sales. They also claimed they had a right to produce a movie from their stage productions as they were so very different from Bram’s book.

Didn’t the ungrateful bastards understand they wouldn’t even have a play if it wasn’t for the book? Seemed everybody knew how to cash in on the success of Dracula except me. Without missing a beat, Miss Fassett had drawled that to these men I was simply an old lady to be taken advantage of.

Old lady! I would give them old lady.

It was utterly infuriating and put a tremendous strain on my relationship with them. Especially as Miss Fassett advised me to pretend ignorance of their machinations (I still had active agreements with all of them) until I knew exactly where I stood. Whether or not Mr Bang knew about their efforts was, according to Miss Fassett, irrelevant; the point was he should have.

At twenty-five per cent commission, darn right. Thank God I no longer had to tolerate, let alone pay, him.

Now Miss Fassett studied my face, as if determined to find evidence of those sleepless nights herself. She wouldn’t have had to look hard. Not even her office fugue could hide the shadows beneath my eyes, my dry sallow skin and weary demeanour. I silently urged her to get on with it and reveal the ‘significant news’ that had brought me and Noel to her door this day. But if there’s one thing I’d learned, Miss Fassett did things in her own time – always efficiently and with a ruthlessness I envied, but she got results. I just wanted to know what they were.

‘I demanded Mr Freedman learn whether there was still any interest in Nosferatu – as you know it’s called Dracula over there —’ Miss Fassett waved a hand towards her office door, as if America was located outside it, ‘or if arrangements were in place to kill the film once and for all. The last thing you need, Mrs Stoker, is Nosferatu haunting our efforts to sell rights to your husband’s work. Well,’ she paused to light another cigarette, ‘be damned if Mr Freedman didn’t take himself off to America to discover the lay of the land in relation to all things Dracula.’

‘And?’ I was grinding my teeth.

‘And,’ repeated Miss Fassett, her cigarette genuflecting as she lifted papers and books from her desk, searching for something. ‘He informed me that interest in the film we know as Nosferatu is waning and fast. Reviews have been terrible.’

‘So it’s been screened?’ Noel asked.

‘A few times. Across major cities. Ah, here we are.’ She pulled some newspaper clippings from under a ledger. ‘He sent these. Listen,’ she removed the cigarette and cleared her throat wetly, ‘this is from the New York Herald Tribune: “jumbled and confused”, they write, and that the story “flopped woefully due to inexpert cutting and bad continuity”.’ She chuckled and passed the piece to me.

I handed it straight to Noel. Even after my cataract surgery last year, I couldn’t read a street sign let alone the small print in the papers. Writing was now a task I delegated to my new companion, Miss Winsome Clover. (You couldn’t make up a name like that, could you?) A spinster of fifty who’d been a nurse in the Great War, she was a quiet, capable woman who nevertheless enjoyed a whisky, brisk walks and a good book. Able to assist in my recovery, she was attentive without being intrusive but also clearly fascinated by the letters I dictated and the correspondence I received, whether it was to do with Dracula and copyright, very occasionally Bram’s other books, or from Phil, my niece Phillippa, and friends. Above all, she was discreet. She was also a huge fan of Bram’s work and even remembered attending performances at the Lyceum. The day Arthur Conan Doyle came for a visit, Winsome was rendered mute with admiration. Later she said it was like a beloved character from a book stepping out of the pages. She was currently sitting outside the office, nursing my cane, which I refused to use indoors lest I appear an invalid, and ready to be summoned should I require my pills.

‘Oh,’ said Noel, reading the entire review. ‘This is harsh.’

‘Wait until you hear this one,’ continued Miss Fassett. ‘The New York Times critic wrote that it was “more a soporific than a thriller”, and that it was “like cardboard puppets doing all they could to be horrible on paper mâché settings”.’

Noel chortled.

Miss Fassett read out some more, but by then I wasn’t listening. Only Ellen knew I’d seen the film, and she was dead two years now. Everyone, even Noel, assumed I hadn’t seen it. My recollection wasn’t nearly as savage. If anyone had a right to be critical, surely it was me. The film being renamed Dracula was what upset me the most. It was as if the film and book had merged – Count Orlock and Count Dracula had become one. Just like the spectre that haunted my nights.

‘What I can say, Mrs Stoker,’ said Miss Fassett, abruptly terminating my thoughts. She was smiling. Her teeth were long and stained. ‘It’s a very good thing the American critics reviled it.’

‘How? Won’t it simply cloud the issue if they think our Dracula and Murnau’s Nosferatu are one and the same?’

‘Because,’ said Miss Fassett, taking her time, lighting yet another cigarette and drawing heavily, ‘and this is why I wanted to meet with you today – because, with one or two exceptions, no-one is taking that film seriously. They understand it’s just one problematic effort to interpret the source material. Which means it’s not seen as a real threat. On the contrary, the studios are far more interested in purchasing the rights to the original, the rights you hold, and creating something entirely new from scratch. Something better.’ She paused, waiting for me to say something.

My eyes narrowed as I churned her words over. Then, it clicked. ‘Studios? Are you telling me there’s been an expression of interest, Miss Fassett? More than one?’