It all started so well for Erzsebet. She was born with a diamond-encrusted gold spoon in her mouth in Hungary on the 7th August 1560. After that things just got better. Her family was one of the richest and most powerful in Europe and she was on kissing cousin terms with most of the Royal families. She did blot her pristine copy book a little when she seduced a gardener and fell pregnant but she was just whisked off to one of the seven large estates the family owned and the whole sordid affair hushed up. So was the unfortunate gardener. Erzsebet grew up beautiful, intelligent and wilful. Like England’s own Elizabeth l she was well educated and ran her property in a manner unusual for a lady of high birth at that time. At the age of 11 she was betrothed to Count Ferenc Nadasdy and four years later married him. The marriage didn’t interfere with her life much. Ferenc was in it for the money and clout and spent most of his time away from home killing the Turkish invaders. So far the life of the Countess seems to have a firm base in fact. It is from this time that the lurid tales which appear in folk lore, books and films get fertilised. Ferenc had been pretty liberal with Erzsebet’s money and favour and was owed a good deal by various cousins and hangers on. Now they felt that they no longer had the fearsome spouse to deal with they refused to pay their debts. One cousin in particular, Count Gregor Thurzo, a favourite of King Matthias, one of Countess Bathori’s debtors, whispered in a few ears and started the rumour that Erzsebet’s home castle at Csejthe wasn’t the Camelot it was cracked up to be. Matthias liked the sound of that and ordered Thurzo to investigate. It was just what Thurzo wanted to hear. He gathered together his man, practised a saintly demeanour and arrived at Csejthe with all the power of a council official searching dust bins. And that is where the legend of Countess Erzsebet Nadasdy-Bathori got kick-started and is still picked over and embroidered to this day. Last week I was asked to appear on a programme for ITV and give my two pennorth about the Bloody Countess. It seemed that because I had played her in a film called Countess Dracula in 1970 I was the nearest thing to an expert they could find ready and willing to work cheap. Luckily I had written a hagiography of her in a book I wrote a few years ago. It was the usual stuff based on Tuoczi’s 1729 book. I thought I had better bone up a bit so that I could get the occasional fact right. It soon struck me that what appeared to be ‘facts’ were anything but. And where was the Countess? Locked up in her castle and guarded by Thurzo’s men. She wasn’t even allowed a representative to speak for her. The verdict, when it came, held no surprises. Most of the witnesses were put to death so that they couldn’t rock the boat at a later date if a more open minded member of the Bathori clan turned up and started to ask awkward questions. The estates owned by the Countess were put under the administration of Count Thurzo by the grateful King Matthias and the Countess herself was locked up in a room in Csejthe castle where she died some months later. The story is gory enough to have galvanised writers to play variations on the original theme and many new nuances have been added to the story. It is even said that when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula he based the king of the vampires originally on the Countess and Vlad Tepes was only introduced as a role model in later drafts of his manuscript. There have been films galore. Some sticking closely to the transcripts from the trial and many just making the story up as the director went along. In 2007 two films featuring Bathori were made and there are at least another couple due out this year.
I’ve been invited to a RAF Bomber Command Day at the Heritage site in Purfleet, Essex on Sunday 25th May. I’m told there will be Pilots from WW2 there as well as special exhibitions. Sounds interesting. And don’t forget to drop in on Those Were The Days. Ingrid will be back next Tuesday; in the meantime, read her last column here.
