I’m taking part in the Dracula read-along run by Dracula Daily. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings. Every and part of it has a date. The whole story happens between May 3 and November 7. So, on each day that something happens to the characters, I’ll read what happened and use this post to share my thoughts as I go.

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This post adds three entries: 18th, 19th and 20th July

20th July: Dr. Seward’s Journal

Seward is an idiot. He finds that Renfield’s birds have gone and sees feathers and blood in Renfield’s room.

What does he do next?

“I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.”

I imagine the Keeper having pint with his mates that night and saying:
“So then his Lord High and Mightyness turns to me and ses ‘Tell me if there’s anything odd about Renfield today.’ I ses ‘Yes sir’ but I’m thinking ‘Anything odd? Anything odd! Everthing about him is odd. If the mighty Doctor can’t see that for himself then he ain’t looking right.”

19th July: Dr. Seward’s Journal

Dr. Seward is almost as creepy as his patient, Renfield, but he still believes himself to be sane.

A fawning Renfield begs Seward for a kitten or cat. Sewarf demurs. Renfield gives him a killing look.

Seward’s conclusion: “The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac.”

Seward’s next step: “I shall test him with his present craving and see how it will work out; then I shall know more.”

They shouldn’t let Seward out of the asylum.

18th July: Log Of The Demeter

For the most part, reading Dracula on the day the entries are dated rather than the order that they appear in the novel works. This is an exception. I think it would have been better to post the entire Log of the Demeter on 8th August, when Mina pasted it into her journal. Breaking it up diminshes the impact of the Captain’s growing desperation.

I’ve always been fascinated by what happened on the Demeter – the long voyage on a small ship and then the dramatic arrival at Whitby. If it interests you, then you might want to take a look at ‘The Last Voyage Of The Demeter‘ (2023) with Liam Cunningham playing the Demeter’s captain,, Here’s the trailer:

8th July: Dr Seward’s Diary

I hope one of the vampires ends up eating this pompous idiot. Here’s how he writes in a diary that, presumably, only he reads:

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. 

“unconcious cerebration?” More like “premature self-congratulation”.

1st July: Dr Seward’s Diary

Back Dr Seward’s comments on Renfield. First he tells the man with an obsession with spiders to get rid of the spiders because they’re a nuisance (what does a spider have to do to be a nuisance?). Then he’s disgusted when he sees Renfield eat a fly but takes no action beyond wondering if Renfileld will also eat the spiders. Finally, he shares that Renfield “has evidently some deep problem in his mind” because he keeps a notebook full of calculations but he makes no effort to get Renfield to tell him what the numbers mean.

30th June: Harker’s Journal

Well, Harker may write like a drama queen (all that “These may be the last words I ever write in this diary.” and “At least God’s mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep—as a man. Good-bye, all! Mina!” hasn’t aged well) but this time he at least had the guts to attack the Count in his box. It didn’t work but not for the lack of trying.

29th June: Harker’s Journal

This was a great entry, with the Count toying with Harker by playing the good host ready to speed his guest on his way back to England the next day. Harket can’t bring himself to voice his disbelief but does ask if he might leave tonight instead. Harker can always be relied on to make himself look like prey in front of an apex predator. The count does tells him can leave immediately and opens the door so Harker can walk out… as long as he’s willing to walk through the pack of wolves.

The DraculaDaily email with this entry in it had a great subtitle:

“You can check out anytime you want…”

I’d love to see a movie version of Dracula with ‘Hotel California’ playing in the background.

25th June: Harker’s Journal

So, Harker finally screws his courage to the sticking place, takes his life in his hands by climbing out his window and up the wall of the castle to the Count’s room. I was impressed, until I got the part where he found the Count lying, unmoving but neither dead nor asleep, in a big box of earth in a ruined chapel. Harker cann’t bring himself to search the Count to find his keys. He bottles out and climbs back up to his room. Now I’m certain that Mina can do better than Harker.

24th June: Harker’s Journal

This was a great bit of gothic horror. The count dresses as Harker and allows himself to be seen stealing another child so that Harker can later be blamed for it. Later that night, Harker is looking out the window when a distressed woman comes to the courtyard, see’s Harker and calls out, “Monster, give me my child!” Before Harker can respond, the Count summons his wolves who stream into the courtyard and eat the woman.

It was a strong scene but two things bothered me about it. Firstly, I couldn’t see why the Count went to all the trouble of framing Harker if he then has the main witness killed. Secondly, I despised Harker’s reaction to the woman’s death. He says:

“I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child, and she was better dead.”

At that point, I would have been happy to see Harker being hunted down by the villagers.

18th June: Dr Seward’s Diary

Another of Seward’s updates on Renfield. I know this is his diary and not Renfield’s case notes but Seward writes about Renfield catching spiders and feeding flies to them with amused tone of a boy watching ants in an antfarm, Seward is a hard man to like.

17th June: Harker’s Journal

Harker’s last journal entry ended with him discovering that his clothes, money and ID were missing in what he called “…some new scheme of villainy” This entry, written, seventeen days later, sitting on the edge of his bed “cudgeling'” his brains. He can’t have been very good at it as he’s shocked to find that he’s locked in his room and that the peasants in the courtyard delivering empty boxes ignore him. If Harker continues to show this much lack of perspicacity, I think Mina is going to be very disappointed in him.