Dracula

by Stoker, Bram

  This seemed to puzzle him, so I followed it up, “A nice time you’ll have some time when you’re flying out here, with the souls of thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing and twittering and moaning all around you. You’ve got their lives, you know, and you must put up with their souls!”

  Something seemed to affect his imagination, for he put his fingers to his ears and shut his eyes, screwing them up tightly just as a small boy does when his face is being soaped. There was something pathetic in it that touched me. It also gave me a lesson, for it seemed that before me was a child, only a child, though the features were worn, and the stubble on the jaws was white. It was evident that he was undergoing some process of mental disturbance, and knowing how his past moods had interpreted things seemingly foreign to himself, I thought I would enter into his mind as well as I could and go with him. The first step was to restore confidence, so I asked him, speaking pretty loud so that he would hear me through his closed ears:—

  “Would you like some sugar to get your flies around again?”

  He seemed to wake up all at once, and shook his head. With a laugh he replied, “Not much! Flies are poor things, after all!” After a pause he added, “But I don’t want their souls buzzing round me, all the same.”

  “Or spiders?” I went on.

  “Blow spiders! What’s the use of spiders? There isn’t anything in them to eat or …” He stopped suddenly as though reminded of a forbidden topic.

  “So, so!” I thought to myself, “this is the second time he has suddenly stopped at the word ‘drink’. What does it mean?” Renfield seemed himself aware of having made a lapse, for he hurried on, as though to distract my attention from it, “I don’t take any stock at all in such matters. ‘Rats and mice and such small deer,’ as Shakespeare has it, ‘chicken feed of the larder’ they might be called. I’m past all that sort of nonsense. You might as well ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of chopsticks, as to try to interest me about the less carnivora, when I know of what is before me.”

  “I see,” I said. “You want big things that you can make your teeth meet in? How would you like to breakfast on an elephant?”

  “What ridiculous nonsense you are talking?” He was getting too wide awake, so I thought I would press him hard.

  “I wonder,” I said reflectively, “what an elephant’s soul is like!”

  The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his high-horse and became a child again.

  “I don’t want an elephant’s soul, or any soul at all!” he said. For a few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. “To hell with you and your souls!” he shouted. “Why do you plague me about souls? Haven’t I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract me already, without thinking of souls?” He looked so hostile that I thought he was in for another homicidal fit, so I blew my whistle. The instant, however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically:—

  “Forgive me, Doctor. I forgot myself. You do not need any help. I am so worried in my mind that I am apt to be irritable. If you only knew the problem I have to face, and that I am working out, you would pity, and tolerate, and pardon me. Pray do not put me in a strait waistcoat. I want to think and I cannot think freely when my body is confined. I am sure you will understand!” He had evidently self-control, so when the attendants came I told them not to mind, and they withdrew. Renfield watched them go. When the door was closed he said with considerable dignity and sweetness, “Dr. Seward, you have been very considerate towards me. Believe me that I am very, very grateful to you!”

  I thought it well to leave him in this mood, and so I came away. There is certainly something to ponder over in this man’s state. Several points seem to make what the American interviewer calls “a story,” if one could only get them in proper order. Here they are:—

  Will not mention “drinking.”

  Fears the thought of being burdened with the “soul” of anything.

  Has no dread of wanting “life” in the future.

  Despises the meaner forms of life altogether, though he dreads being haunted by their souls.

  Logically all these things point one way! He has assurance of some kind that he will acquire some higher life. He dreads the consequence, the burden of a soul. Then it is a human life he looks to!

  And the assurance …?

  Merciful God! The Count has been to him, and there is some new scheme of terror afoot!

  LATER.—I went after my round to Van Helsing and told him my suspicion. He grew very grave, and after thinking the matter over for a while asked me to take him to Renfield. I did so. As we came to the door we heard the lunatic within singing gaily, as he used to do in the time which now seems so long ago. When we entered we saw with amazement that he had spread out his sugar as of old. The flies, lethargic with the autumn, were beginning to buzz into the room. We tried to make him talk of the subject of our previous conversation, but he would not attend. He went on with his singing, just as though we had not been present. He had got a scrap of paper and was folding it into a notebook. We had to come away as ignorant as we went in.

  His is a curious case indeed. We must watch him tonight.

  LETTER, MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY TO LORD GODALMING.

  1 OCTOBER.

  “My Lord,

  “We are at all times only too happy to meet your wishes. We beg, with regard to the desire of your Lordship, expressed by Mr. Harker on your behalf, to supply the following information concerning the sale and purchase of No. 347, Piccadilly. The original vendors are the executors of the late Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield. The purchaser is a foreign nobleman, Count de Ville, who effected the purchase himself paying the purchase money in notes ‘over the counter,’ if your Lordship will pardon us using so vulgar an expression. Beyond this we know nothing whatever of him.

  “We are, my Lord,

  “Your Lordship’s humble servants,

  “MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY.”

  DR. SEWARD’S DIARY

  2 OCTOBER.—I placed a man in the corridor last night, and told him to make an accurate note of any sound he might hear from Renfield’s room, and gave him instructions that if there should be anything strange he was to call me. After dinner, when we had all gathered round the fire in the study, Mrs. Harker having gone to bed, we discussed the attempts and discoveries of the day. Harker was the only one who had any result, and we are in great hopes that his clue may be an important one.

  Before going to bed I went round to the patient’s room and looked in through the observation trap. He was sleeping soundly, his heart rose and fell with regular respiration.

  This morning the man on duty reported to me that a little after midnight he was restless and kept saying his prayers somewhat loudly. I asked him if that was all. He replied that it was all he heard. There was something about his manner, so suspicious that I asked him point blank if he had been asleep. He denied sleep, but admitted to having “dozed” for a while. It is too bad that men cannot be trusted unless they are watched.

  Today Harker is out following up his clue, and Art and Quincey are looking after horses. Godalming thinks that it will be well to have horses always in readiness, for when we get the information which we seek there will be no time to lose. We must sterilize all the imported earth between sunrise and sunset. We shall thus catch the Count at his weakest, and without a refuge to fly to. Van Helsing is off to the British Museum looking up some authorities on ancient medicine. The old physicians took account of things which their followers do not accept, and the Professor is searching for witch and demon cures which may be useful to us later.

  I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait waistcoats.

  LATER.—We have met again. We seem at last to be on the track, and our work of tomorrow may be the beginning of the end. I wonder if Renfield’s quiet has anything to do with this. His moods have so followed the do
ings of the Count, that the coming destruction of the monster may be carried to him some subtle way. If we could only get some hint as to what passed in his mind, between the time of my argument with him today and his resumption of fly-catching, it might afford us a valuable clue. He is now seemingly quiet for a spell … Is he? That wild yell seemed to come from his room …

  The attendant came bursting into my room and told me that Renfield had somehow met with some accident. He had heard him yell, and when he went to him found him lying on his face on the floor, all covered with blood. I must go at once ….

  As we’ve mentioned, Dracula makes the sort of class distinction that its characters would have made. The “upper classes” (such as Jonathan Harker, Solicitor) clearly look down upon the “lower classes”: this is not politically correct for our time, but as a representation of the late Victorian Era, it’s right on target.

  If one is writing contemporary fiction, then the story must be made in the contemporary world that the reader recognizes and responds to. If one is writing historical fiction, then it’s a certainty that then was not now and cannot be presented as such. And “historical fantasy” or “future fantasy” or “science fiction,” etc. All these genres have their rules and all those rules can be broken on occasion. As long as the “story people,” that is, the characters, are compelling and true to their inner selves and the world(s) in which they live.

  No question, Jonathan has discovered that the Count means to make all of London, from the criminal dens to the environs of the upper classes, his home … and his feeding ground.

  Stoker thus ups the ante. It is a city in peril, and by extension, a world.

  Ah, drink, the curse of the workingman. Or work, the curse of the drinking man. As you will. Certainly our upper classes do not overindulge, although Seward and crew seem to reach for the brandy bottle or an opiate for medicinal use on frequent occasion.

  Now, ain’t that a knee-slapper! I’ve made many previous remarks about Stoker’s “dialect humor” (whether intentional or not), and again my advice is to use it sparingly or not at all, mainly because it’s so seldom funny. And even if it does come off as funny, you may not have intended such a reaction.

  By establishing Dracula’s phenomenal strength as he has, Stoker has a way to give us the “quick reveal.” And of course, it was Harker who first noted the strength of “the coachman”—Dracula in disguise—and then the Count himself! It’s only fitting that he instantly picks up on this clue.

  Had Stoker chosen to employ his talent for humor, he might have given us, “The bloke must ‘a positively flew!” Perhaps it is just as well that he didn’t.

  But more and more, Harker, Van Helsing, et al are finding little difficulty in “gaining access” by means legal, illegal, or simply duplicitous.

  When in doubt, go grandiose: Harker, once so eager to shout to the world that he was a “full solicitor,” knows how to put the common man in his place.

  Thus the prig goes into kowtow mode.

  We know that Mina’s inquietude is not caused, at least not solely, by her husband’s keeping the group’s secrets. Harker, slipping back to the narcissist he had the potential to be when the book began, sees himself as the only likely cause of any difficulty for Mina: After all, he is “the husband.”

  Knowing and presenting vivid, three-dimensional story characters who are accurate for their time period is one of the keys to creating a memorable novel. You’ve no doubt heard a phrase like “characters are presented, warts and all …”

  Stoker gives us the warts—in fact, his people are wartier than many Victorian-era heroes (and heroines). But as the cliché rightly has it, “There is some good in the worst of us, bad in the best of us.”

  And one of Harker’s warts might be named “The Ego Wart.”

  And the source of Mina’s troubles wouldn’t exactly hit you like a hot fudge sundae with nuts on top. Stoker allows us to note the irony here without any of the male characters having a clue.

  Please note how Stoker directs the reader’s attention to Mina’s forehead. Is this a most subtle foreshadowing?

  Perhaps Seward continues to study Renfield, but as we can see here, he doesn’t begin to understand him.

  But knowing of Renfield’s relationship to/with Dracula, we do understand the analogy.

  And we are left to fill in the details of Dracula taking care of his “good friend” and most Obedient Servant, Renfield!

  We’ve seen Seward’s cruel kindness before. We will see more soon (annotation 18).

  I’ve never understood how the phrase “thought to myself/herself/himself” came to be accepted. Unless you are telepathic, to whom else can you think? I will advise you to drop this from your chest of writer’s tools. “Thought” is enough.

  Cruel to be kind, yet this feels less like therapy and more like bullying, even by Victorian-era medical standards. Ego continues to play a role in the “Men of Dracula.”

  At last. To use a sadly outdated cliché: The nickel drops. Only by thinking of Seward as the most rational man, even more of the scientist than Van Helsing (!), one who insists on empirical evidence, do we accept that he might have unconsciously sought to deny the link and the scheming between poor Renfield and Dracula!

  Or Count Devil? In the nicely atmospheric, if poorly acted, film Son of Dracula, a mustached Lon Chaney Jr. portrays the bloodsucker, cleverly concealing his identity by calling himself: “Count Alucard.” (If you don’t get it, read it backward!)

  Even knowing all that he does, Seward still finds it difficult to accept the entire situation. A character who continues to question his or her sanity also helps keep the story grounded in reality. if a real person immediately accepted the ideas of a vampire with no questions, even after a series of strange events, and didn’t pause now and then to consider the situation with continued disbelief, the character may come off as shallow, or at least as a shallow thinker. These horrific situations should challenge your character’s beliefs and thoughts about life and how they’ll ever recover.

  With the yell, Stoker puts his foot on the pedal. The yell is “wild,” a sharp descriptor, and then the attendant doesn’t simply enter, he “came bursting” … and the pace amps up a bit more with “I must go at once …” rather than “I will” or even “I should …”

  Chapter 21

  DR. SEWARD’S DIARY

  3 OCTOBER.—Let me put down with exactness all that happened, as well as I can remember, since last I made an entry. Not a detail that I can recall must be forgotten. In all calmness I must proceed.

  When I came to Renfield’s room I found him lying on the floor on his left side in a glittering pool of blood. When I went to move him, it became at once apparent that he had received some terrible injuries. There seemed none of the unity of purpose between the parts of the body which marks even lethargic sanity. As the face was exposed I could see that it was horribly bruised, as though it had been beaten against the floor. Indeed it was from the face wounds that the pool of blood originated.

  The attendant who was kneeling beside the body said to me as we turned him over, “I think, sir, his back is broken. See, both his right arm and leg and the whole side of his face are paralysed.” How such a thing could have happened puzzled the attendant beyond measure. He seemed quite bewildered, and his brows were gathered in as he said:—

  “I can’t understand the two things. He could mark his face like that by beating his own head on the floor. I saw a young woman do it once at the Eversfield Asylum before anyone could lay hands on her. And I suppose he might have broken his neck by falling out of bed, if he got in an awkward kink. But for the life of me I can’t imagine how the two things occurred. If his back was broke, he couldn’t beat his head, and if his face was like that before the fall out of bed, there would be marks of it.”

  I said to him, “Go to Dr. Van Helsing, and ask him to kindly come here at once. I want him without an instant’s delay.” The man ran off, and within a few minutes the Profess
or, in his dressing gown and slippers, appeared. When he saw Renfield on the ground, he looked keenly at him a moment, and then turned to me. I think he recognized my thought in my eyes, for he said very quietly, manifestly for the ears of the attendant, “Ah, a sad accident! He will need very careful watching, and much attention. I shall stay with you myself, but I shall first dress myself. If you will remain I shall in a few minutes join you.”

  The patient was now breathing stertorously and it was easy to see that he had suffered some terrible injury. Van Helsing returned with extraordinary celerity, bearing with him a surgical case. He had evidently been thinking and had his mind made up, for almost before he looked at the patient, he whispered to me:—

  “Send the attendant away. We must be alone with him when he becomes conscious, after the operation.”

  I said, “I think that will do now, Simmons. We have done all that we can at present. You had better go your round, and Dr. Van Helsing will operate. Let me know instantly if there be anything unusual anywhere.”

  The man withdrew, and we went into a strict examination of the patient. The wounds of the face were superficial. The real injury was a depressed fracture of the skull, extending right up through the motor area. The Professor thought a moment and said:—

  “We must reduce the pressure and get back to normal conditions, as far as can be. The rapidity of the suffusion shows the terrible nature of his injury. The whole motor area seems affected. The suffusion of the brain will increase quickly, so we must trephine at once or it may be too late.” As he was speaking there was a soft tapping at the door. I went over and opened it and found in the corridor without, Arthur and Quincey in pajamas and slippers; the former spoke:—

  “I heard your man call up Dr. Van Helsing and tell him of an accident. So I woke Quincey or rather called for him as he was not asleep. Things are moving too quickly and too strangely for sound sleep for any of us these times. I’ve been thinking that tomorrow night will not see things as they have been. We’ll have to look back, and forward a little more than we have done. May we come in?” I nodded, and held the door open till they had entered, then I closed it again.