Drs Seward and Van Helsing's handling of the case of a young woman afflicted by a vampire? Worst ever! I mean, if someone you love is in danger of becoming nosferatu, should you call those two clowns for help! Not! I mean, they mess up with Lucy not one, not two, not three, but four times or more, and then completely fail to see the signs of problem with Mina too!
Despite somewhat contrived story line and numerous silly opinionations from the characters that sometimes border on misogynism, this is a book that's worth reading, at least for one reason: pretty much 100% of everything that has been written about vampires seems to derive from Dracula.
My Mobi/Kindle (non DRM) version is available here (click).Quotes:
Denn die Todten reiten Schell (The dead travel fast)
The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion. (Jonathan Harker)
Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! (Dracula - about the howling of wolves)
The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. (About Dracula's English estate)
Come! We must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not. We must fight him all the same. (Van Helsing)
A brave man's blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. (Van Helsing)
His face was not a good face. It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal's. (Mina Harker)
"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. (Van Helsing)
Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to what poor Lucy died of, not after all the hints given, not only by events, but by me? (Van Helsing)
You are a 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. (Van Helsing)
May I cut off the head of Miss Lucy? (Van Helsing)
Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man's brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman's heart. (Van Helsing)
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 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.
...
but we too, are not without strength. We have on our side power of combination, a power denied to the vampire kind, we have sources of science, we are free to act and think, and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally. In fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are free to use them. We have self devotion in a cause and an end to achieve which is not a selfish one. These things are much. (Van Helsing)
I heed him not. But to fail here, is not mere life or death. It is that we become as him, that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. To us forever are the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us again? We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. (Van Helsing)
I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many. Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks. (Jonathan Harker)
Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when basely used. (Mina Harker)
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