Cruella de Vil - The Suffolk Vampire

December 09, 2020

Cruella de Vil - The Suffolk Vampire

Cruella de Vil – The Suffolk Vampire

I think I may have graduated this month. Maybe. I can’t be sure. I didn’t go to a ceremony, or a party, I didn’t wear the hat and gown and I didn’t shake anybody’s hand (on a separate note, I hope handshaking stops being a thing in a post-corona world). I do, however, now have two certificates on fancy paper telling me I have a BA and MA in English.

One of the things I enjoyed most about studying stories was being able to take a nosedive into a fictional universe and treating it like it was real. In that spirit, I’ve been learning about Cruella de Vil. I even never realised that the Disney movie was a novel before it was a film, until recently, when I heard that much of the action takes place in the Suffolk town of Sudbury. When I heard that, my ears pricked up and I tried to find out everything I could about Suffolk’s role in this story, and connection with its most infamous character…

Side note: I've written this for a bit of fun, so don't take it too seriously!

Gather round the campfire, kids, I've got a story to tell.

101 Dalmatians was written in 1956 by Dodie Smith, an accomplished actress, novelist and playwright from Lancashire who later moved to Essex and died in 1990. Dodie achieved much success for her plays during her lifetime, but it’s 101 Dalmatians for which she is best remembered.

Although we might not want to boast about a claim to the villain of the tale (remember, if she doesn’t’ scare you, no evil thing will) Cruella de Vil in the original story is, without a doubt, a Suffolk girl. A tall woman with ‘eyes with a tinge of red in them,’ Cruella was a childhood friend of Mrs Dearly’s, expelled from their school for ‘drinking ink.’ She is the last of the de Vil line, a family renowned for the flourishing traits of instability and violence which have survived throughout the generations, and has persuaded her down-trodden furrier husband to take on her last name to prevent it from dying out. We’re all familiar with Cruella’s obsession with fur, and her evil plot to kidnap Pongo and Perdita’s new-born pups and turn their skins into a new fur coat to add to her collection. But we might not know that the dalmatians were whisked away from their home in London to Suffolk, to Cruella’s aptly named abode, Hell Hall.

Stricken parents Pongo and Perdita (named ‘Missus’ in the novel) discover this from the ‘Twilight Barking’ chain of dogs from all over the country and try to tell the Dearlys where the puppies are. Alas, dogs cannot pronounce the ‘s’ sound in Suffolk (a fact which local dogs can surely vouch for), and the Dearlys remain none the wiser, leaving the desperate dalmatians to seek out their puppies themselves.

After a long and eventful journey across England, Hell Hall is eventually found. It is said to be a squat building with ‘an ugly face.’ This is surely a far cry from the inspiration behind Smith’s creation, a magnificent Essex mansion which goes by the name of Greys Hall in Sible Hedingham. The vast Grade II listed property was placed on the market in 2017 by Essex Heritage for a whopping £925,000. Smith bought a cottage in the nearby village of Finchingfield in the late 1930s, at which point she was presumably struck by the inspiration for Cruella’s lair.

The journey from the River Stour to Sible Hedingham, where Hell Hall is thought to be located.
Image accessed using Google Maps: © 2020 TerraMetrics

The Suffolk town of Sudbury plays a prominent role in Smith’s story, for it is there that Perdita and Pongo pause on their rescue mission. As the frantic parents cross the bridge over the River Stour, Pongo triumphantly announces that “Here we enter Suffolk.” The pair stop to drink at the fountain and horse trough by St Peter’s Church, just in time to hear the church bell strike midnight. “Oh, Pongo,” exclaims Perdita (or Missus as she goes by here), ‘it’s tomorrow! Now we shall be with our puppies today!”

As we all know, Pongo and Perdita’s story has a happy ending; they are reunited with their 15 puppies, and become parents to many more besides, becoming a thriving family of one hundred and one. The Dearlys visit Suffolk and discover that Hell Hall has been put up for sale, since the dogs have put the unfortunate Mr de Vil out of business, the puppies having destroyed his supply of dubiously acquired furs and animal skins. Mr Dearly, as luck would have it, has just been paid a large amount of money by the government (who “had again got itself into debt and he had again got it out”). He uses his ample funds to buy Hell Hall and moves with his growing family down to our part of the country, where they set about restoring the good name of Hill Hall, as the house used to be known, turning it into a beloved family home.

~ The End

But what of Cruella? She, it seems, has swanned off abroad leaving only a cryptic note declaring that ‘Owner gone to warm climate.’ Whether her long-suffering husband has been dragged along is unclear. Here, we are reduced to speculation and, if readers will indulge me, a foray into the world of fictional lore.

The Hell Hall of Smith’s imagination was built in 1898 by the original Mr de Vil, who had grand intentions of turning it into a castle. This dream never came to fruition, for he is said to have gone insane, the house earning its unfortunate nickname from the wild parties he hosted there. Legend has it that when a vengeful mob finally came after Mr de Vil, possibly exasperated with the steady flow of undesirable persons he invited to their village, he fled into the night, never to be seen again. Some say his disappearing form took the shape of a demon. The present Cruella de Vil is probably his granddaughter, and, from Smith’s description of her red-tinged eyes, seems sure to have inherited his devilish streak.

But could there be more to this shared family trait of instability and evil-doing than simple disposition? It is a fairly obvious that Smith alludes to Cruella’s ‘cruel’ nature in her first name, and de-vil -ish nature in her iconic last name. Smith could possibly have taken inspiration from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which had been published in 1897 – the year before the original, mysterious Mr de Vil arrived at Hell Hall. Indeed, a ‘Count de Ville’ also appears in Stoker’s novel, a foreign nobleman wishing to purchase a property in Piccadilly and requests for transactions to be completed before sunrise. The Count is of course revealed to be Dracula himself, the name ‘de Ville’ being nothing but a non-de-plume. However, if we are allowing ourselves to be fanciful, does that mean that there is no relation between Smith’s de Vils and their red eyes and the vampires of Stoker’s creation? Could the name be intended as an allusion, a clue to Smith’s readers that there is more to this shady and untrustworthy family than meets the eye?

Perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. Be that as it may, the dalmatians know that they have not seen the last of Cruella – she makes a brief appearance in the novel’s sequel, The Starlight Barking, and is shown to be alive and well. Missus (Perdita) also tellingly remarks that ‘Cruella’s not human,’ with Pongo darkly responding that ‘We were never sure of that,’ the dogs having speculated amongst themselves that she may well have been ‘some kind of devil.’

With this unsettling exchange in mind, perhaps Suffolk residents would do well to hope that Cruella has remained abroad. If the dogs are right in their pronouncements and my instincts are correct, they may not be the only ones who need to be afraid.