Hide Article Text (OCR)
Iron Virgin as it appeared at 1968 auction in London.ground rules vary, but vam-ave this much in common: Theyfrom their graves to feast on of the living, man or beast;e powerless by day although im-s to ordinary weapons even hey are repelled by certain plants igious symbols, and their victims,; remedial measures, will uponmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiufiiiiitold that she never ut she was a fraud, pginning to wonder[ine Iron Virgin? ^death become vampires themselves.Otherwise, the likeliest candidate for vampirehood, according to one source, is a person “who has led a life of more than ordinary immorality and unbridled wickedness; a man of foul, gross, and selfish passions or evil ambitions, delighting in cruelty and blood.”Thus Harker, the budding London solicitor who was the hero of Stoker’s novel, had his troubles cut out for him when he traveled across Europe to conclude the sale of an English castle to the recluse count. Dracula wanted to emigrate. His infectious and insatiable thirst for human blood posed a threat to the British empire, on which the sun was not then about to set.In England, Dracula claimed more victims, but in the end he was defeated, and he beat a retreat to his Transylvanian hideaway, only to be headed off at the pass just before sunset andstabbed to unequivocal death in his traveling coffin.A great story, though what Hollywood did to it shouldn’t happen to a vampire’s victim, or even a vampire. “Dracula,” however, is only of referential interest here. The Stoker tale with which we are concerned is “The Squaw,” since it is the one in which the Iron Virgin appears.“ONE would hardly have recognized it as intended for a human figure at all,” Stoker’s description begins, “had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a woman’s face. This machine was coated with rust without, and covered with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure, about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through a pulley fastened on the wooden piliar which sustained the floor above.hinged like a door at one side; then we saw that the engine was of considerable thickness, leaving just room enough inside for a man to be placed. The door was of equal thickness and of great weight, for it took the custodian all his strength, aided though he was by the contrivance of the pulley, to open it. The weight was partially due to the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its weight downwards, so that it might shut of its owrn accord when the strain was released.“The inside was honeycombed with rust — nay more, the rust alone that comes through time w'ould hardly have eaten so deep into its iron walls; the rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed! It was only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the doorthat the diabolical invention was manifest to the full.“Here w?ere several long spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the points, placed in such a position as when the door should close the upper ones would pierce the eyes of the victim and the lower ones his heart and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this timeshe fainted dead off . . . ”N all, poor Amelia was to suffer three and a half fainting spells that Nuernberg’s summer day, somewhere around the turn of the century.A newlywed, she and her husband had spent much of the day in the company of a larger-than-life American frontiersman, the loquacious, venturesome Elias P. Hutcheson.The story, briefly, goes on to relate how Hutcheson playfully drops a stone off a Nuernberg rampart, only to brain a kitten. The kitten’s mother, a vengeful cat if ever there was one, follows Hutcheson and the honeymooners to the “Torture Tower,” where the playful American climbs into the Iron Virgin while an attendant holds the door open.At this point, the vindictive mother cat springs from hiding place onto the attendant’s face, clawing at his eyes and causing him to let go of the rope. The Iron Virgin snaps shut, alas for Elias P. Hutcheson.Stoker’s narrator, Amelia’s husband, describes the damage: “And then the spikes did their work. Happily, the end was quick, for when I wrenched open the door, they had pierced so deep they were locked in the bones of the skull through which they had crushed andactually tore him — it — out of his iron prison till ... he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face turning upward as he fell.”WITH THAT we take leave of Stoker’s fin de sieele Nuernberg and return to■ ( 'ON 11 H 1/lt; tl i. n t IIIj4, 1970THE STARS AND STRIPESPage V
Newspaper Details
European Stars and Stripes
Darmstadt, Hesse, DE
Sun, Oct 04, 1970
Page 17
Full Page
Clipped by
Gary P.
IL, USA 29 Jun 2023
Other Publications Near Darmstadt, Hesse
Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung
European Stars and Stripes
