As someone said in the youtube comments :

No reason to be this good of a song 😂

Je suis si déçue que ce ne soit pas le vrai thème

Hi !
Coming back a few months later to thank you for organizing this bookclub !
I think I left the party in October, being busy with other projects and, not gonna lie, got tired of Dracula’s hunters ;).
It was the second time I tried to read Dracula (the first was 10 years ago) and…well, I still couldn’t finish it this time nether.
But I really enjoyed participating and doing all the research on the Victorian period !
Looking forward to your next bookclub.

Effectivement, on était plus là face à un excès d’enthousiasme, d’optimisme et de confiance en ses capacités ^^.

L’article cite une lettre du peintre John Roddam Spencer Stanhope quand il a appris le projet :

Rossetti s’est vu confier la peinture murale de l’Oxford Union. C’est vraiment une grosse erreur de la part des responsables, mais je soupçonne que cela est l’œuvre de l’architecte. Il [Rossetti] a un caractère très mal réglé car je crois qu’il n’a jamais terminé une seule chose qu’il a entreprise, seulement achevé de petites choses avant de s’en lasser ; de plus, il ne connaît pas du tout l’art de la fresque et n’a jamais travaillé à grande échelle, si bien que je m’attends à ce que sa tentative échoue.

Pour rester dans le thème des martiens, Los marcianos llegaron ya.

How could Lucy get out of her coffin if it is still sealed ?

Funny ! Just started to read today’s entries, and the Dracula Project explains :

Collins’ work is one of the earlier examples of epistolary storytelling, and early reviews of Dracula made frequent mention of Collins when describing Stoker’s adoption of the same format for his own novel. Stoker also personally knew Collins, and a copy of the manuscript for a dramatization of The Woman in White was among the items auctioned from Stoker’s estate after his death. There is also some faint similarity between the two texts outside of their similar narrative structure.

She did steal from Lucy before van Helsing said that. I can’t really blame him tbh.

Well, I don’t know… Expecting total loyalty from servants is extremely naive of rich people… I mean, I don’t know what Arthur intends to do for them (I guess we’ll never know) but if she expects to be let go without any garantie… Can’t blame her.

The best I can say is that Mrs Westenra was perhaps showing an incredibly naive level of trust.

Yes, and it’s kind of sad considering how women were treated under the Victorian Law. I don’t know if you ever read Wilkie Collins’ novels, they are really interesting in that regard.

That’s great ! On RTS, there’s a very moving wildlife refuge documentary. I posted it here a few months back, if you’re interested !

A cartwheel hat from the early 1900s.

A few passages made me wince here.

First off, this :

“She makes a very beautiful corpse, sir. It’s quite a privilege to attend on her. It’s not too much to say that she will do credit to our establishment!”

What an awful thing to say…

Then, I couldn’t help but laugh at those stupid, rich protagonists…Between Seward’s warm, condescending thoughts about the servant, a “devoted”, “poor girl putting aside her terrors” to pay tribute to her “mistress”, and Van Helsing treating her like crap and calling her a “worthless wretch”…

Also, maybe Van Helsing thinks no one would believe him until they saw for themselves what Lucy had become, but asking someone to blindly trust him, decapitate and dig out the heart of a loved one, for no reason, is very gourou-like.

And finally, having Mrs. Westenra suddenly prejudice her own daughter and designate Arthur as her heir, without any explicit reason, feels a bit like a Deus ex machina…

I was wondering why you did not post the rest of Seward’s entry, then I looked at the Dracula Daily newsletter :

Matt again! In most texts this day’s diary continues on after a chapter break… but covers the following day. That’s confusing! We’re firmly in ‘Bram Stoker is not very precise with dates’ territory here. So! I’m taking another editorial liberty and posting tomorrow’s events TOMORROW.

I found Van Helsing very cruel to Arthur and Lucy’s friends. Apart from the suspense needed for the story, it seems unnecessary to keep them in the dark.

Seward is quoting Thomas Hood’s 1831 poem “The Death Bed”:

“We watch’d her breathing thro’ the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
So silently we seem’d to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied--
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed – she had
Another morn than ours.”

Ah yes ! I had “personnage” in mind when I wrote the comment and I couldn’t find the word “character”.

I am glad you liked it ! Do you still work with owls ? On what occasions ?

So far, I find that Bersicker, Mr. and Mrs. Bilder are the most likeable protagonists.

Also I do wonder… How could Dr. Seward, weakened by the blood transfusion and caught off guard, knock down a man driven by madness, adrenaline and violence ? What a man !

In my copy, Lucy’s memorandum and Mina’s letter are both dated the 18th of September. Am I the only one ?

The time did not seem long, but very, very awful, till I recovered consciousness again. Somewhere near, a passing bell was tolling.

According to the Dracula Project,

A passing bell refers to a bell rung for a funeral or to announce a death

and

Whitby tradition holds that the passing bell [the local term was “soul bells”] is rung while a dying person is still alive, in order that those hearing it might pray for them. It is also held that its sound will ward off demons interested in the soon-to-be deceased.

That’s a fateful premonition for Lucy…

"My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity

Is that a common expression ? Maybe an old one ? It feels weird and dracula-ish. Wouldn’t it be “I want to drink to your health and prosperity” ? Maybe Stoker is making a pun here.

@pseudo@jlai.lu, c’est pour toi !

Presently he took an opportunity of telling Mrs. Westenra that she must not remove anything from Lucy’s room without consulting him; that the flowers were of medicinal value, and that the breathing of their odour was a part of the system of cure.

Well, if only Victorian men didn’t treat women like toddlers…

While Stoker is criticizing Van Helsing here, he also depicts Mrs. Westenra as a dumb and selfish woman, oblivious to her daughter’s sickness…