Dracula

by Stoker, Bram

  8 JULY.—There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration, you will have to give the wall to your conscious brother. I kept away from my friend for a few days, so that I might notice if there were any change. Things remain as they were except that he has parted with some of his pets and got a new one. He has managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it. His means of taming is simple, for already the spiders have diminished. Those that do remain, however, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by tempting them with his food.

  19 JULY—We are progressing. My friend has now a whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated. When I came in he ran to me and said he wanted to ask me a great favour, a very, very great favour. And as he spoke, he fawned on me like a dog.

  I asked him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his voice and bearing, “A kitten, a nice, little, sleek playful kitten, that I can play with, and teach, and feed, and feed, and feed!” I was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed how his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and spiders. So I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would not rather have a cat than a kitten.

  His eagerness betrayed him as he answered, “Oh, yes, I would like a cat! I only asked for a kitten lest you should refuse me a cat. No one would refuse me a kitten, would they?” I shook my head, and said that at present I feared it would not be possible, but that I would see about it. His face fell, and I could see a warning of danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong look which meant killing. The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac. I shall test him with his present craving and see how it will work out, then I shall know more.

  10 PM.—I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner brooding. When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon it. I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner where I had found him. I shall see him in the morning early.

  20 JULY.—Visited Renfield very early, before attendant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace. I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away. There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.

  11 AM.—The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. “My belief is, doctor,” he said, “that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!”

  11 PM.—I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it. The thought that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved. My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac. What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps? It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results today! Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the brain? Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic, I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson’s physiology or Ferrier’s brain knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted. A good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?

  How well the man reasoned. Lunatics always do within their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has closed the account most accurately, and today begun a new record. How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?

  To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! Work!

  If I could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there, a good, unselfish cause to make me work, that would be indeed happiness.

  MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL

  26 JULY.—I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time. And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan. I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy. Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night. Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place. Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells me that her husband, Lucy’s father, had the same habit, that he would get up in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped. Lucy is to be married in the autumn, and she is already planning out her dresses and how her house is to be arranged. I sympathise with her, for I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to make both ends meet. Mr. Holmwood, he is the Hon. Arthur Holmwood, only son of Lord Godalming, is coming up here very shortly, as soon as he can leave town, for his father is not very well, and I think dear Lucy is counting the moments till he comes. She wants to take him up in the seat on the churchyard cliff and show him the beauty of Whitby. I daresay it is the waiting which disturbs her. She will be all right when he arrives.

  27 JULY.—No news from Jonathan. I am getting quite uneasy about him, though why I should I do not know, but I do wish that he would write, if it were only a single line. Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened by her moving about the room. Fortunately, the weather is so hot that she cannot get cold. But still, the anxiety and the perpetually being awakened is beginning to tell on me, and I am getting nervous and wakeful myself. Thank God, Lucy’s health keeps up. Mr. Holmwood has been suddenly called to Ring to see his father, who has been taken seriously ill. Lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him, but it does not touch her looks. She is a trifle stouter, and her cheeks are a lovely rose-pink. She has lost the anemic look which she had. I pray it will all last.

  3 AUGUST.—Another week gone by, and no news from Jonathan, not even to Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard. Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He surely would have written. I look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is his writing. There is no mistake of that. Lucy has not walked much in her sleep the last week, but there is an odd concentration about her which I do not understand, even in her sleep she seems to be watching m
e. She tries the door, and finding it locked, goes about the room searching for the key.

  6 AUGUST.—Another three days, and no news. This suspense is getting dreadful. If I only knew where to write to or where to go to, I should feel easier. But no one has heard a word of Jonathan since that last letter. I must only pray to God for patience. Lucy is more excitable than ever, but is otherwise well. Last night was very threatening, and the fishermen say that we are in for a storm. I must try to watch it and learn the weather signs. Today is a gray day, and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds, high over Kettleness. Everything is gray except the green grass, which seems like emerald amongst it, gray earthy rock, gray clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the gray sea, into which the sandpoints stretch like gray figures. The sea is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland. The horizon is lost in a gray mist. All vastness, the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a ‘brool’ over the sea that sounds like some passage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem ‘men like trees walking’. The fishing boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers. Here comes old Mr. Swales. He is making straight for me, and I can see, by the way he lifts his hat, that he wants to talk …

  I have been quite touched by the change in the poor old man. When he sat down beside me, he said in a very gentle way, “I want to say something to you, miss.” I could see he was not at ease, so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in mine and asked him to speak fully.

  So he said, leaving his hand in mine, “I’m afraid, my deary, that I must have shocked you by all the wicked things I’ve been sayin’ about the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn’t mean them, and I want ye to remember that when I’m gone. We aud folks that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don’t altogether like to think of it, and we don’t want to feel scart of it, and that’s why I’ve took to makin’ light of it, so that I’d cheer up my own heart a bit. But, Lord love ye, miss, I ain’t afraid of dyin’, not a bit, only I don’t want to die if I can help it. My time must be nigh at hand now, for I be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect. And I’m so nigh it that the Aud Man is already whettin’ his scythe. Ye see, I can’t get out o’ the habit of caffin’ about it all at once. The chafts will wag as they be used to. Some day soon the Angel of Death will sound his trumpet for me. But don’t ye dooal an’ greet, my deary!”—for he saw that I was crying—“if he should come this very night I’d not refuse to answer his call. For life be, after all, only a waitin’ for somethin’ else than what we’re doin’, and death be all that we can rightly depend on. But I’m content, for it’s comin’ to me, my deary, and comin’ quick. It may be comin’ while we be lookin’ and wonderin’. Maybe it’s in that wind out over the sea that’s bringin’ with it loss and wreck, and sore distress, and sad hearts. Look! Look!” he cried suddenly. “There’s something in that wind and in the hoast beyont that sounds, and looks, and tastes, and smells like death. It’s in the air. I feel it comin’. Lord, make me answer cheerful, when my call comes!” He held up his arms devoutly, and raised his hat. His mouth moved as though he were praying. After a few minutes’ silence, he got up, shook hands with me, and blessed me, and said goodbye, and hobbled off. It all touched me, and upset me very much.

  I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spyglass under his arm. He stopped to talk with me, as he always does, but all the time kept looking at a strange ship.

  “I can’t make her out,” he said. “She’s a Russian, by the look of her. But she’s knocking about in the queerest way. She doesn’t know her mind a bit. She seems to see the storm coming, but can’t decide whether to run up north in the open, or to put in here. Look there again! She is steered mighty strangely, for she doesn’t mind the hand on the wheel, changes about with every puff of wind. We’ll hear more of her before this time tomorrow.”

  A particularly well-wrought turn of phrase like this one merits highlighting. “A noble ruin … full of beautiful and romantic bits.” Romantic bits is so neatly feminine. Writing like that makes this a very accurate representation of Mina’s journaling. (Shame on you if romantic bits brought to mind Monty Python’s “naughty bits.”)

  Vivid showing, and we can guess that it was gleaned from contemporary travel books. We don’t say, “Wow, Mina is sure going on and on (and on!) in her recounting of local color; people don’t ordinarily do that sort of thing. That strikes me as pure literary device …”

  Enter Mr. Swales. On the one hand, Stoker does a remarkable transformation with this colorful character in a very tight time/space parameter. Mina initially thinks him a somewhat pompous, contradictory, and decidedly bullying curmudgeon: Swales is a “brusque” old man. But by the time we bid him farewell, with clues to the man’s softer, more sensitive nature, Mina has genuine feeling and respect for him.

  However, I do find it humorous that when Mr. Swales opens his mouth, he sounds like he is participating in “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” When Mr. Swales plunges us into one of his extended, mostly unintelligible monologues, we may think, “Huh?”

  Fortunately, we do not need to fully understand Swales to get the gist of what he contributes to the story.

  Many writers put together a detailed sketch for each character, both principal and secondary, like Mr. Swales here. No, the reader might never need to know if a character prefers real mayo to Miracle Whip, if his first car was a cherry red ’67 Ford Mustang, if he had a pet collie named Lizzie when he was five, etc.—but it helps the writer in presenting this character as a unique, three-dimensional human being.

  Fiction Is Folks is the title of Robert Newton Peck’s writing instruction book. It’s also a statement of truth for every author striving to create memorable fiction.

  A classic plant. Because the stairs play an important part in the scenes to follow, Mina must mention them now, thereby avoiding anything that reads like, “Oh, I suppose I should have told you earlier about the stairs …”

  Fiction is better ordered than real life.

  Language is always evolving, and thus the “down faces” (proper English of Mina’s day) has become our expression “faces down.”

  So sweet and such a flirt? Stoker’s earlier presentations of Lucy make us see her as a coquette, even though her good friend, Mina, would not call her that. There is so much a writer can say—and so much a writer should imply, letting the reader nod his head sagely and say, “Yes, I get it.”

  Yabblins, matey … In a moment of frustration, feel free to growl, “Yabblins,” followed by a quick “Shiver me timbers.”

  The reader never sees this as a thoughtful theological dialogue—and isn’t supposed to. There’s Stoker’s wit at work here but also a surprisingly nasty little edge to Mina’s comment. She’s subtly baiting Mr. Swales.

  We’ve all noted the difference between epitaphs and the lives of the people they supposedly memorialize. Stoker insightfully points out that truism here (albeit in Swalesian!). This difference between reality and (obligatory) remembrance serves as the foundation for the great work of the twentieth-century poetic cynicism Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, in which the dead of Spoon River, Illinois, speak of their “real lives” and often the facade provided by their carved-in-stone epitaphs.

  Foreshadowing of a sort. Not so long from now, Lucy’s friends will provide her the death her real self yearns for—and that her violated vampiric soul cannot afford her on her own.

  Just at the point the reader might be saying, She’s not worrying overmuch about her beloved Jonathan, BANG! Stoker makes her worry about Jonathan!

  Many writers, in preparing the final draft of a novel, regularly ask themselves: What would the reader want here?

  And then they ask, Should I give it to him, or not?

  Why a harsh waltz? We ordinarily think of
a waltz as flowing or gentle, or even energetic and sprightly, but harsh? Stoker is doing what all wordsmiths sometimes indulge in: He is playing with words, seeing how they sound when you bang together two words that are typically not thought of as a pair.

  And it works so beautifully here.

  Though beautiful, this is rocky terrain. Mina is going through a rough patch here, worrying about Jonathan.

  Thus, it is a time for harsh waltzes.

  Beautiful example of the simple sentence. Because we understand the context, because we know why Jonathan is not with his Mina, it has tremendous power in its succinctness.

  The shortest sentence of the King James New Testament is “Jesus wept.” Jesus has arrived seemingly too late to save his dying friend Lazarus, and so with two words we are hit with just how fully human Jesus is. Brevity works.

  Stoker dribbles out bits of information to heighten suspense. Seward knows Renfield is “up to something,” but what? We have a bit more information: We know that it is likely related to Dracula or it wouldn’t be mentioned. Once again, the epistolary style allows Stoker to provide hints for the reader while keeping characters in the dark.

  Hmm … that new butcher in town really loves cats! He’s always picking up strays and finding them good homes …

  No, Stoker will never be known for his rollicking, laugh-a-minute comedy, but he is not without some dark humor.