Gothic Weddings and Performing Vampires: Geneviève Ward and The Lady of the Shroud

Abstract

In Personal Reminiscences, Stoker relates the marital adventure of the American actress-manager Geneviève Ward. ‘Whilst a very young girl’, Ward had married the Comte de Guerbel in a civil ceremony in Nice in 1855 (1906, vol. 2: 170). Her husband argued that, according to Russian law, the union was not legal until another ceremony was performed in a Russian Orthodox church. After the Nice nuptials, de Guerbel had promised to solemnize the union in the Russian church in Paris. However, the Comte was not, notes Stoker, ‘of chivalrous nature’ and ‘in time his fancy veered round to some other quarter, and he declared by a trick of Russian law which does not acknowledge the marriage of a Russian until the ceremony in the Russian church has been performed, the marriage which had taken place was not legal’ (1906, vol. 2: 170–1). After waiting several months and on the discovery that de Guerbel was making marriage preparations with a Russian heiress, the well-connected Wards decided to take action.1 The rejected bride and her mother subsequently travelled to St Petersburg to petition the Tsar who, at Ward’s request, commanded de Guerbel to solemnize the marriage in Warsaw.²