Dracula (1897), Dram. Personae: Jonathan Harker (betrothed then married to Mina); Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming); - betrothed to Lucy Westenra; Quincy Morris (American friend of Harkness and Seward); Van Helsing (medical man called in by Seward).
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The Undead (Van Helsing): ‘When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of imortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from preying of the Un-dead become themselves Un-dead, and prey on their kind.’ (Dracula, Penguin Edn., 1994; p.257; Nico Kassebaum, UUC UG Diss., 2002.)
Van Helsing: ‘The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger; and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men; he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages; he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination of the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements: the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things: the rat, and the moth, and the fox, and the wolf; he can grow and become become small; he can at time vanish and come unknown.’ ( Dracula , Penguin Edn., 1994; p.283; in Kassebaum, op. cit.) |
TEXT: [...] no statement of past events wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range of knowledge of those who made them. [Preface] [...] some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a noble of that country
[...] [9]
[No] map giving the exact location of Castle Dracula [...] there are four distinct nationalities [...] Szekelys [...] descended from Attila and the Huns [...] every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians as it were the centre of some imaginative whirlpool [10] further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains [...] little towns or castles [...] as [...] we see in old missals [...] The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist ...Slovaks [...] more barbarian [...] big cowboy hats [...] not look prepossessing [...] brigands [...] wanting in natural self-assertion. [11]
[Harker, on being given a crucifix:] I did not know what to do for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous [13] and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well [...] [14]
Ordog ... pokol ... stregoica .. [14] vrolok ... vlkoslak [15] goitre painfully present [17] Denn die Todten reiten schnell [20] as he swept his long arms, as if brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves fell back [23] Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor’s clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? [25] [Description of Dracula:] eyebrows [...] very massive ...mouth [...] fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth [...] lips [...] remarkable ruddiness [...] ears [...] extremely pointed [...] backs of his hands [...] rather coarse [...] nails [...] cut to a sharp point [...] I could not repress a shudder [28] ‘Ah, sir, you city dwellers cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter’ [29] books of reference [30] ‘ [...] I only know your tongue through books [...]’ [31]
‘We are in Transylvania and Transylvania is not England [...]’ [32] ‘blue flame [...] treasure hidden [...]’ [32] ‘peasant is at heart a coward and a fool!’ [33] [Note series of ironies, viz., ‘I must ask the Count’ 10; [...] ‘know no more than the dead’, &c. [35] Kodak [35] I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. [...] do not love that to think that our bones may be amongst the common dead. [...] not gaiety nor mirth [...] no longer young [...] weary years of mourning over the dead [...] not attuned to mirth [...] walls of my castle are broken [...] shade [...] shadow [35] no reflection of him in the mirror! [27] ‘What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins? [...] a conquering race [41] [...] my own race [...] Voivode [...] [41] [...] The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.’ [42] ‘It is the nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill.’ [49] [ref. to Hamlet, 50]
‘You yourself never loved; you never love [...] ‘Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past.’ [53] they are fearless and without religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the Romany tongue.’ [56] gold of all kinds, Roman, and British, and Austrian, and Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money .. [62] in one of the great boxes [...] on a pile of newly dug earth, lay the Count! [63] gorged with blood [...] a filthy leech [...] the being I was helping to transfer to London [...] amongst its teeming millions, [to] satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless [67] naught in common [with Mina, a woman] [...] the devil and his children still walk with earthly feet! [69] Whitby [70ff.] typewriter [...] stenographer [70] [Lucy:] Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her ...’ [76].; slang [75] ‘Little girl [...]’ [77] suicide [...] resurrection [narrative of Mr. Swales, 85]
New Woman [110] [...] an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing herself. [111] on the band of her night-dress was a drop of blood [115] blood [...] analysed [...] normal [136] [...] Van Helsing [137] [Dr. Seward] I have written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as anyone in the world. [...] He is a seemingly arbitrary man, but this is because he knows what he is talking about better than anyone else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day; and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice brook, an indomitable resolution, selfcommand and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats - these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy. I tell you these facts that you may know why I have such confidence in him. I have asked him to come at once. [...] [137] [transfusion 149] so young and strong and of blood so pure that we need not defibrinate [149] not to be found in any pharmacopoeia [159] phonography [172] [death of Lucy’s mother 173-4] air seemed full of specks [175] [...] etiquette of death which British women of the lower classes always rigidly observe [179]
[Quincy’s tranfusion:] A brave man’s blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. You’re a man and no mistake [...] the devil may work against us [...] but God sends us men when we want them. [180] [Van Helsing prevents Arthur from kissing the dying Lucy:] Not for your living soul or hers!’ [194] [...] the sharp teeth champed together [195] [Van Helsing:] ‘I want to [cut] off her head and take out her heart’ [198] [whole estate goes to Arthur 210] [On the solicitor Marquand:] He was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little part - in which he was officially interested - of so great a tragedy was an object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding. [202]
Miss Lucy’s papers and letters [...] I took them before we knew that all was yours, so that no strange hand might touch them - no strange eye look through words into her soul. [205; purity] [Quincy:] a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed. [209] [an Helsing’s fit of hysterics:] He laughed till he cried [...] he cried till he laughed again, and laughed and cried together just as a woman does. I tried to be stern with him as one is with a woman under the circumstances; but had no effect. Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness [...] [210] His reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was logical and forceful and mysterious. [...] bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard and tears that burn as they fall - all dance together [...] [210] Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us in different directions.’ [211] ‘bloofer lady’ [214ff.] typewritten out my own journal [217]
Description of Van Helsing: ‘a man of medium height, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes one at once as indicative of thought and power; the head is noble, well-sized, broad and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute [218] mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick sensitive nostrils, that seem to broad as the big, bushy eyebrows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart; such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man’s moods.’
Van Helsing: ‘Ah, then you have a good memory for facts, for details? It is not always so with young ladies.’ ‘No, doctor, I wrote it all down at the time. I can show it to you if you like.’ [219] [Van Helsing:] I who am old, and who have studied all my life men and women; I, who have made my speciality the brain and all that belongs to him and all that follow him ...Oh, Madam Mina, good woman tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such things as angels can read [...] [221] but that there are good women still left to make life happy - good women, whose lives and truths may make good lessons for the children that are to be.’ [222] phsyiognomist [226] She is one of God’s women fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So sweet, so noble, so little an egotist - and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish. [226]
Van Helsing: ‘You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know - or think they know - some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young - like the fine ladies at the opera. [231]
‘why in the Pampas [...] there are bats that come at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and such dry their veins [...] &c.] [Jonathan Harker:] ‘Do you mean to tell me that Lucy was bitten by such a bat; and that such a thing is here in London in the nineteenth century?’ [231] ‘ ...an American who so defined faith: ”That which makes it possible for us to believe things which we know to be untrue.”’ [232]
[...] the sperm [of candle wax] drooped in whites patches which congealed as they touched the metal [...] made assurance of Lucy’s coffin [...] took out a turnscrew [236] ‘It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman whom I had loved.’ [241] ‘... we four who gave our strength to Miss Lucy it also is all to him.’ [244] [Arthur:] ‘as far as my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is concerned, I cannot make such a promise’ [viz., open Lucy’s coffin, &c.; 246] ‘Undead!’ [247]
Van Helsing: ‘if my death can do her good [...] when she is the dead Undead, she shall have it freely’ [248] The Host [252] Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew [253] Medusa [254] a nightmare of Lucy [256] devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity [256] nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe [257] Arthur placed the point over her heart [...] white flesh [258] high duty [in his face 259] feet on the ploughshare [261] phonograph [263] I have copied out the words on my typewriter [266] Strange that it never struck me that the very next house might be the Count’s hiding place! [169] [...] that way madness lies! [269] To use an Americanism [...] ‘taken no chances’ [271] true grit [273] I suppose there is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood [275] too true a gentleman [275]
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Nailing Lucy
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| Chap. XVI: Dr. Seward’s diary |
It was just a quarter before twelve o’clock when we got into the churchyard over the low wall. The night was dark, with occasional gleams of moonlight between the rents of the heavy clouds that scudded across the sky. We all kept somehow close together, with Van Helsing slightly in front as he led the way. When we had come close to the tomb I looked well at Arthur, for I feared that the proximity to a place laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset him; but he bore himself well. I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a counteractant to his grief. The Professor unlocked the door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first himself. The rest of us followed, and he closed the door. He then lit a dark lantern and pointed to the coffin. Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly; Van Helsing said to me: “You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that coffin?”
“It was.” The Professor turned to the rest saying: “You hear; and yet there is no one who does not believe with me.” He took his screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin. Arthur looked on, very pale but silent; when the lid was removed he stepped forward. He evidently did not know that there was a leaden coffin, or, at any rate, had not thought of it. When he saw the rent in the lead, the blood rushed to his face for an instant, but as quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness; he was still silent. Van Helsing forced back the leaden flange, and we all looked in and recoiled.
The coffin was empty!
For several minutes no one spoke a word. The silence was broken by Quincey Morris:
“Professor, I answered for you. Your word is all I want. I wouldn’t ask such a thing ordinarily - I wouldn’t so dishonour you as to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honour or dishonour. Is this your doing?”
“I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed nor touched her. What happened was this: Two nights ago my friend Seward and I came here - with good purpose, believe me. I opened that coffin, which was then sealed up, and we found it, as now empty. We then waited, and saw something white come through the trees. The next day we came here in day-time, and she lay there. Did she not, friend John?”
“Yes.”
“That night we were just in time. One more so small child was missing, and we find it, thank God, unharmed amongst the graves. Yesterday I came here before sundown, for at sundown the Un-Dead can move. I waited here all the night till the sun rose, but I saw nothing. It was most probable that it was because I had laid over the clamps of those doors garlic, which the Un-Dead cannot bear, and other things which they shun. Last night there was no exodus, so to-night before the sundown I took away my garlic and other things. And so it is we find this coffin empty. but bear with me. So far there is much that is strange. Wait you with me outside, unseen and unheard, and things much stranger are yet to be. So” - here he shut the dark slide of his lantern - “now to the outside.” He opened the door, and we filed out, he coming last and locking the door behind him.
Oh! but it seemed fresh and pure in the night air after the terror of that vault. How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing and passing - like the gladness and sorrow of a man’s life; how sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay; how humanising to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city. Each in his own way was solemn and overcome. Arthur was silent, and was, I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner meaning of the mystery. I was myself tolerably patient, and half inclined again to throw aside doubt and to accept Van Helsing’s conclusions. Quincey Morris was phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has to stake. Not being able to smoke, he cut himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. As to Van Helsing, he was employed in a definite way. First he took from his bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white napkin; next he took out a double-handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands. This he then took, and rolling it into thin strips, began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb. I was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close, asked him what it was that he was doing. Arthur and Quincey drew near also, as they too were curious. He answered: “I am closing the tomb, so that the Un-Dead may not enter.”
“And is that stuff you have put there going to do it?” asked Quincey. “Great Scott! Is this a game?”
“It is.”
“What is that which you are using?” This time the question was by Arthur. Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered: “The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence.” It was an answer that appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the Professor’s, a purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred of things, it was impossible to distrust. In respectful silence we took the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but hidden from the sight of any one approaching. I pitied the others, especially Arthur. I had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to this watching horror; and yet I, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the proofs, felt my heart sink within me. Never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom; never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.
There was a long spell of silence, a big, aching void, and then from the Professor a keen “S-s-s-s!” He pointed; and far down the avenue of yews we saw a white figure advance - a dim white figure, which held something dark at its breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds and showed in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave. We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw to be a fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and dreams. We were starting forward, but the Professor’s warning hand, seen by us as he stood behind a yew-tree, kept us back; and then as we looked the white figure moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognised the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we all advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the concentrated light that fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.
We shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that even Van Helsing’s iron nerve had failed. Arthur was next to me, and if I had not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.
When Lucy - I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape - saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight. As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from Arthur; when she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in his hands.
She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said: “Come to me Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”
There was something diabolically sweet in her tones - something of the tingling of glass when struck - which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.
When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped as if arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from Van Helsing’s iron nerves. Never did I see such baffled malice on a face; and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death - if looks could kill - we saw it at that moment.
And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of entry: Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur: “Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?”
Arthur threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as he answered: “Do as you will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more”; and he groaned in spirit. Quincey and I simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms. We could hear the click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it down; coming close to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred emblem which he had placed there. We all looked on in horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice where scarce a knife-blade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the Professor calmly restoring the strings of putty to the edges of the door.
When this was done, he lifted the child and said: “Come now, my friends; we can do no more till to-morrow. There is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton lock the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do; but not like this of to-night. As for this little one, he is not much harm, and by to-morrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where the police will find him, as on the other night; and then to home.” Coming close to Arthur, he said:
“My friend Arthur, you have had sore trial; but after, when you will look back, you will see how it was necessary. You are now in the bitter waters, my child. by this time tomorrow you will, please God, have passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters; so do not mourn overmuch. Till then I shall not ask you to forgive me.”
Arthur and Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on the way. We had left the child in safety, and were tired; so we all slept with more or less reality of sleep.
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Mina: ‘We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above small matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man’s head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it was.’ [275]
No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart [276] the Scriptural phrase, “For the blood is the life” [280]
Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain - a brain that a man should have were he much gifted - and woman’s heart [281] And, besides, she is a young woman and not so long married; there may be other things to think of some time, if not now. [viz., pregnancy and childbirth; 281] a sort of board or committee [282]
Van Helsing: ‘There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist. [...] The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger; and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men; he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages; he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements: the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things: the rat, and the owl, and the bat - the moth, and the fox; and the wolf; he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown. How then are we to begin our strife to destroy him? [283] .. a blot on the face of God’s sunshine; an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. [284] A brave man’s hand can speak for itself; it does not even need a woman’s love to hear its music. [284]
[See Van Helsing on Vampires, as in Quotations, supra.]
Mina: Manlike, they have told me to go to bed [...] [290] Reception of Texas into the Union:] a precedent which may have far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place as a political fable. [291]
Dr. Seward on Renfield: [H]e seems so mixed up with the Count in an indexy kind of way that I am afraid of doing anything wrong by helping his fads’. [296] .. this game of chess which we play for the stake of human souls [303] Aerated Bread Company [318] zoophagy [320] don’t care about life and don’t want souls [321] [...] ‘I don’t want any souls!’ [322] how are we to get the life without getting the soul? [322] the souls of thousands of flies and spiders [...] [322] Renfield: ‘Pray do not put me in a strait-waistcoat’ [324] American interviewer calls ‘a story’ [324] We must sterilise all the imported earth between sunrise and sunset [326] The Acherontia atropos of the Sphinges [ 333; ?pl. Sphinxes] ‘made me mad to know he had been taking the life out of her’ [334] holding [towards the Count] the envelope which contained the Sacred Wafer [i.e., Host; 336] The Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast [...] to see that the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. [339] ‘Thank God there is the other copy in the safe!’ [340]
Dracula: First a little refreshment to reward my exertions!’ [342] While they played wits against me - against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born - I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood [343] When my brain says “Come!”, to you, you shall [...] [343] euthanasia [346] sterilise his lairs [347] one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments [US slang; 350]
Van Helsing: [J]ust as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sargeant for their ghastly ranks. [354] We must sterilise this earth, so sacred of holy memories, that he has brought from a far distant land for such fell use. [355] Sacred Wafer [355] not a soul took the slightest notice of the whole transaction [357] As I learned from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesht, he was in life a most wonderful man [...] He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a hear that knew no fear and [359] no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay. Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death; though it would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child; but he is growing, and some things that were childish at first are now of man’s stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well; and if it had not been that we have crossed his path he would be yet - he may be yet if we fail - the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead to Death, not Life [...] [360] Is there not more at stake for us than for him? [361] dominant spirit [...] [i]n all our hunting parties [...] Quincy Morris [363] impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity [364]
Dracula: Your girls [women] that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine - my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!’ [365] [Host burns Mina’s forehead:] she in all her goodness and purity and faith was outcast from God [367]
Mina: Thank God for good brave men! [370].
Van Helsing: Yes, it is necessary - necessary - necessary! For your sake in the first, and then for the sake of humanity. This monster has done much harm already, in the narrow scope where he find himself, and in the short time when as yet he was only as a body groping his so small measure in darkness and not knowing. All this have I told these others; you, my dear Madam Mina, will learn it in the phonograph of my friend John, or in that of your husband. I have told them how the measure of leaving his own barren land - barren of people and coming to a new land where life of man teems till they are like the multitude of standing corn, was the work of centuries. Were another of the Un-Dead, like him, try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the centuries of the world that have been, or that will be, could aid him. With this one, all the forces of nature that are occult and deep and strong must have worked together in some wondrous way. The very place where he have been alive, Un-Dead for all these centuries, is full of strangeness of the geologic and chemical world. There are deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither. There have been volcanoes, some of whose openings still send out waters of strange properties, and gases that kill or make to vivify. Doubtless, there is something magnetic or electric in some of these combinations of occult forces which work for physical life in strange way; and in himself were from the first some great qualities. In a hard and warlike time he was celebrate that he have more iron nerve, more subtle brain, more braver heart, than any man. In him some vital principle have in strange way found their utmost; and as his body keep strong and grow and thrive, so his brain grow too. All this without that diabolic aid which is surely to him; for it have to yield to the powers that come from, and are, symbolic of good. And now this is what he is to us. He have infect you [380] - oh, forgive me, my dear, that I must say such; but it is for good of you that I speak. He infect you in such wise, that even if he do no more, you have only to live - to live in your own old, sweet way; and so in time, death, which is of man’s common lot and with God’s sanction, shall make you like to him. This must not be! We have sworn together that it must not. Thus are we ministers of God’s own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise; and like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause.’ He paused and I said: “But will not the Count take his rebuff wisely? Since he has been driven from England, will he not avoid it, as a tiger does the village from which he has been hunted?”; ‘Aha !’ he said, ‘your simile of the tiger good, for me, and I shall adopt him. Your man-eater, as they of India call the tiger who has once taste blood of the human, care no more for other prey, but prowl unceasing till he get him. This that-we hunt from our village is a tiger, too, a man-eater, and he never cease to prowl. Nay, in himself he is not one to retire and stay afar. In his life, his living life, he go over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be beaten back, but did he stay? No? He come again, and again, and again. Look at his persistence and endurance. With the child-brain that was to him he have long since conceive the idea of coming to a great city. What does he do? He find out the place of all the world most of promise for him. Then he deliberately set himself down to prepare for the task. He find in patience just how is his strength, and what are his powers. He study A new tongues. He learn new social life; new environment of old ways, the politic, the law, the finance, the science, the habit of a new land and a new people who have come to be e since he was. His glimpse that he have had whet his appetite [381] only and enkeen his desire. Nay, it help him to grow as to his brain; for it all prove to him how right he was at the first in his surmises. He have done this alone; all alone I from a ruin tomb in a forgotten land. That more may he not do when the greater world of thought is open to him? He that can smile at death, as we know him; who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. Oh I if such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil, what a force for good might he not be in this old world of ours! But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armour, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, four who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love - for the good of mankind, and for the honour and glory of God.’ [380-82]
It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstruction cause, no matter what, be removed in any way - even by death - and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. [383] Vampire’s baptism of blood’ [383] Well, there may be a poison that distils itself out of good things; in an age when the existence of ptomaines is an mystery we should not wonder at anything! [383] [Van Helsing:] if it be that she can, by hypnotic trance, tell what the Count see or hear, is it not more true that he [...] should compel her mind to disclose to him that which she know?’ [384] We went at once into our Plan of Campaign. [sic; 385; cf. Plan of attack, 363] add a Winchester to our armaments [386] wild rose [...] there is not can emerge; so at least says the superstition. [390] I know that all brave and earnest men can do for a poor weak woman, whose soul is perhaps lost - no, no, not yet, but at any rate at stake - you will do. [...] There is a poison in my blood [392] I cannot believe that to die in such a cause, when there is hope before us and a better task to be done, is God’s will. [393]
Van Helsing: ‘There have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womankind [394] [Van Helsing:] Ah, there I have hope that our man-brains, that have been of man so long and have not lost the grace of God, will come higher than his child-brain that lie in his tomb for centuries, that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only work selfish and therefore small. Here comes Madam Mina! [...] we want all her great brain which is trained like a man’s brain, but is of sweet woman and have a special power which the Count give her, and which he may not yet take away altogether - though he think not so. [404] What does this tell us? Not much I! No! The Count’s child-thought see nothing; therefore he speak so free. Your man-thought see nothing; my man-thought see nothing, till just now. No! But there comes another word from someone who speak without thought because she too know not what it mean - what it might mean. Just as there are elements which rest, yet when in nature’s course they move on their way and they touch - then pouf! and there comes a flash of light, heaven’s wide, that blind and kill and destroy some; but that show up all earth below, for leagues and leagues. Is it not so? Well, I shall explain. To begin, have you ever study the philosophy of crime? “Yes” and “No.” You, John, yes; for it is a study of insanity. You, no, Madam Mina; for crime touch you not - not but once. Still, your mind works true, and argues not a particular ad universal. There is this peculiarity in criminals. It is so constant, in all countries and at all times, that even police, who know not much from philosophy, come to know it empirically, that it is. That is to be empiric. The criminal always work at one crime - that is the true criminal what seems predestinate to crime, and who will of none other. This criminal has not full man-brain. He is [405] clever and clever and cunning and resourceful; but he be not of man stature as to brain. He be of child-brain in much. Now this criminal of ours is predestinate to crime also; he too have child-brain, -and it is of the child - to do what he have done. - The little bird, the little fish, - the little animal learn not by principle, but empirically; and when he learn to do, then there is to him the ground to start from to do more. “Dos pou sto” said Archimedes. “Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!” To do once, is the fulcrum whereby child brain become man-brain; and until he have the purpose to do more, he continue to do the same again every time, just as the have done before!’ [405-06]
Mina: ‘The Count is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind. Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know - and that from his own lips - tells that once before, when in what Mr Morris would call a “tight place” [recte spot], he went back to his own country from the land he had tried to invade, and thence, without losing purpose, prepared him self for a new effort. He came again, better equipped for his work; and won. So he came to London to invade a new land. He was beaten, and when all hope of success was lost, and his existence in danger, he fled back over the sea to his home; just as formerly he had fled back over the Danube from Turkey land.’ [406]
Van Helsing: The terrible baptism of blood which he gave you makes you free to go to him in spirit [...] this is all more precious that he know it not, and to guard himself have even cut himself off from his knowledge of our where. We, however, are not all selfish, and we believe that God is with us through all this blackness, and these many dark hours. [... &c. ; 407] typewriter [408]
Van Helsing: ‘Oh, Madam Mina’, he said sadly, ‘it is proof, if proof be needed, of how I love and honour you, when a word for your good, spoken more earnest than ever, can seem so strange because it is to order her whom I am proud to obey!’ [412; in response to ‘as if I were a bad child!’] ‘We men here, all save Jonathan, have seen with our own eyes what is to be done before the place can be purify [...]’ [422] ‘How women help loving men when they are so earnest, so true, and so brave!’ [423] [Mina:] [...] I am not worthy in His sight [430; note poss. confusion with husband.] [Van Helsing’s Memorandum, on Harker in Castle Dracula:] the fascination of the wanton Undead have hypnotised him [440] [On Lucy in her coffin:] ‘... She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new emotion.’ [440] something wild and uncanny about the place [442; note status quo ante] [Harker:] her sweetness and loving care [...] how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake. [449]. |