Seven years ago we all went through the flames.

NOTE

Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men together. But we call him Quincey. 

In the summer of this year we made a journey to Transylvania, and went over the old ground which was, and is, to us so full of vivid and terrible memories.   It was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were living truths. Every trace of all that had been was blotted out. The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.

When we got home we were talking of the old time, which we could all look back on without despair, for Godalming and Seward are both happily married. I took the papers from the safe where they had been ever since our return so long ago. We were struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document.  Nothing but a mass of typewriting, except the later notebooks of Mina and Seward and myself, and Van Helsing's memorandum.  We could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story. Van Helsing summed it all up as he said, with our boy on his knee.

"We want no proofs. We ask none to believe us! This boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care. Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.”

JONATHAN HARKER

Comments

[Elizabeth]

I am glad you didn't wait seven years to post this! :)

Little wonder there are so many sequels to _Dracula_. It begs them. Can Mina and Jonathan ever be truly happy after she has been "unfaithful" to him with Dracula? Does Dracula really die, or does he merely shapeshift into dust to return once more? Who did Goldaming and Seward marry? What will young Quincey think of it all when he grows up and hears the sordid details? etc, etc etc...

[Baby Jinx]

"Little wonder there are so many sequels to _Dracula_. It begs them."

I have compiled a list of prequels and sequels to _Dracula_. It is currently housed in the alt.vampyres Dracula FAQ and would be difficult to post here without screwing up the formatting, but I could email a copy to Bryan. He could then attach it to the blog in whatever manner works best, if anyone is interested in seeing the list. [NOTE: I compiled it about 2-3 years ago, so it might be in need of some updating.]

[Helen]

I'd love to see the list!

[Ben]

Baby Jinx, hopefully it'll include my novel, The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire, which gives an alternative version of what happened to Lucy Westenra.

[Ben]

And I'd be remiss if I didn't say how much I enjoyed reading the comments of Elizabeth Miller, Baby Jinx and all of the others over the past few months.

[Baby Jinx]

"...hopefully it'll include my novel, The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire..."

Is it published? The list contains only published stories.

[Elizabeth]

Happy birthday, Bram Stoker! Stoker was born on November 8, 1847.

For some strange reason, Leonard Wolf in his "Annotated Dracula" (and again in "Dracula: The Connoisseur's Guide") claims that Count Dracula was killed on Stoker's birthday. Nonsense!

[Marty Busse]

Well, I'm kind of saddened by the end of this particular project, although it's been a lot of fun for me (and, I assume, for the other readers).

Elizabeth's comment about Dracula leaving a lot of unanswered questions is a good one.

I always imagined that Dracula was a source of tension in Johnathan and Mina's married life, tension that Quincey knew about but whose origin remained a mystery to him until, when he reached a proper age, his parents told him the whole story.

I imagined Seward as a lonely bachelor, sometimes meeting up with his friend Art (though less so after Lord Goldaming married), but mostly burying himself in his work, and, late of nights, pining for lost Lucy, as he ages and the Grim Reaper approaches.

I picture Lord Goldaming eventually marrying someone, perhaps the mother of one of those women Bertie Wooster fears to marry.

I imagine Dracula biding his time, waiting, sitting in his fortress, emerging from time to time to see if the coast is clear, going as far underground as possible during the Ceacescu years, stirring fitfully during the 1990s, watching, with an intellect vast, cool and unsympathetic. Now he waits for 2007, when he will have an EU citizen's passport. Die Toten reiten schnelle, especially when they can take advantage of open borders, the Schengen accord and cheap air travel.

"Count de Ville" will no longer pass muster so easily as he did in London of the 1890s, but I'm sure the Count's servants have kept him up to date on the latest methods in identity theft and fraud. Did Van Helsing and co. keep an eye on who owns Carfax? Or the properties in Piccadilly, Mile End and Bermondsey? Perhaps they were "sold" shortly after, as a precaution, to another of the Count's identities, and he has been transferring the prperties every few years to yet another of his names, waiting for the proper moment to return to London.

Dracula, after all, had been around for centuries, and we've seen evidence that he spent years preparing before his sojourn to England.

Yes, many questions from this book dangle, begging for an answer.

[Writing-desk Raven]

> transferring the [properties] every few years
-> every few decades, if that, after initial thorough laundering. One would not want to leave any but the most minimal paper trail. In quiet neighborhoods relatively free of speculators, real property need not change hands, and so could arouse no interest at all. Like a silent partner, invisibility would be maintained as long as the taxes are paid and the properties are kept innocuous, and that could be by any of many opaque investment structures. (One of Anne Rice's characters has long kept what are now apartments in old New Orleans. The sweet old biddies don't pay no never mind to their seldom-seen landlord.)

-=-

"there is hardly one authentic document. Nothing but a mass of typewriting, except the later notebooks of Mina and Seward and myself, and Van Helsing's memorandum."
Van Helsing's memoranda.
And several telegrams as well as receipts, or copies of receipts. Photography and convenient Kodaks existed.
Stoker would have been clever by half to have had them created out of whole cloth as he wrote the novel, or vacationed on its later success. He was in Whitby and in London, where he could have any of many little print shops make forms or have firms make them out, have them handled, perhaps have sent some of the telegrams, have academic colleagues pick them up. By today whatever documents, even typescripts and carbons, would return from analyses as bona fide: correct methodology, paper, ink, age.

Marty, Ben, that could be done with a sequel set in the present, for years hence : )
A graphic artist and a forensic technician could provide necessary expertise for authentic verisimilitude.

[nada]

classical novel ( dracula) n i have read it both in english and arabic ... so i chose this novel to be my subject in the english class presentation ... i believe there is something beyond this story from it's dark history to the inspiration of the main character ... so plz if u could help me with any extra info.z about the novel .. a unique facts or about it's historical roots of this novel ???

[Baby Jinx]

"I have compiled a list of prequels and sequels to _Dracula_."

I'm going to try to post it here. If it gets mangled by the copier, feel free to delete it, Brian, because it's going to come out rather long. Anyway, here goes:

[2.02] Did Bram Stoker ever write a sequel to _Dracula_?

No, although he did publish a short story called "Dracula's Guest"
which some say was originally written to be the first chapter in
_Dracula_ (this is being disputed). A copy of "Dracula's Guest" can
be downloaded from the alt.vampyres homepage (q.v. 1.03). You'll be
happy to know, however, that other authors have added to the novel
with a number of prequels, sequels, retellings and alternative
timelines. These include:

Prequels to _Dracula_:
The Family Dracul series by Jeanne Kalogridis (includes _Covenant
with the Vampire_, _Children of the Vampire_, and _Lord of the
Vampires_)
_The Secret Life of Laszlo, Count Dracula_ by Roderick Anscombe
_Dracula Began_ by Gail Kimberly (@Roger Elwood)
_Crimson Kisses_ by Asa Drake
_I am Dracula_ by C. Dean Anderson (rewrite of Drake)

Sequels, retellings, anthologies, etc. to _Dracula_:
_Mina_, by Marie Kiraly
_Blood to Blood_ by Elaine Bergstrom
_Anno Dracula_ by Kim Newman
_Dracula the Undead_ by Freda Warrington
_The Holmes-Dracula File_ by Fred Saberhagen
_The Dracula Tape_ by Fred Saberhagen
_An Old Friend of the Family_ by Fred Saberhagen
_A Matter of Taste_ by Fred Saberhagen
_A Question of Time_ by Fred Saberhagen
_Seance for a Vampire_ by Fred Saberhagen
_A Sharpness in the Neck_ by Fred Saberhagen
_Dracula in Love_, John Shirley
_Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula_, ed. Edward E. Kramer
_Rivals of Dracula_, eds. Weinberg, Dziemianowocz, & Greenberg
_Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares_, ed. Jon J. Muth
_The Dracula Collection_, no author given
_Dracula Unborn_ by Peter Tremayne
_The Revenge of Dracula_ by Peter Tremayne
_Dracula My Love_ by Peter Tremayne
(NOTE: The Tremayne stories were also published together under
the title of _Dracula Lives_)
_The Darker Passions: Dracula_ by Amarantha Knight
_The Adult Version of Dracula_
_Dracula: Prince of Darkness_, ed. Martin H. Greenberg.
_The Mammoth Book of Dracula_, ed. Stephen Jones
_Drakulya_ by Earl Lee
_Drakulya_ by P.C. Doherty (omnibus of two previously published
books, _The Prince Drakulya_ and _The Lord Count Drakulya_)
_Vlad the Undead_ by Hanna Lutzen
_Quincey Morris, Vampire_ by P.N. Elrod

[Uli Kusterer]

Another interesting subject, IMHO, is what books inspired Dracula. Supposedly one of them is Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, but I'm sure there are others. Do you have a list of those as well? Because, in a way, one could probably see those as the stories to which Dracula is a sequel, of sorts.

[Jim Knoppow]

My Sequel

Solicitor Jonathan Harker Admits Fraud!

In a press conference held in Lambeth today
Mr Jonathan Harker, Esq. the wealthy play
boy, recently divorced from his ex-wife Mina,
admitted that he's never met Dracula or even seen a
vampire in his life.

He took few questions from the reporters who came
to the lawn in front of his considerable estate,
but allowed that it was the seeking of fame
and publicity that led him to publish the accounts of his fate,
supposedly suffered in Transylvania
but actually written in bouts of mania -
excited at the prospect of appearing heroic
to the public, and grinning inside, while outside, stoic.

Mina, once his wife of ten years did not stay,
when asked if she was involved said, "Yo no say,"
which we understand to be Spanish, although she
is English. We are told that she was to be
indicted on several counts of embezzlement from
the finishing school she owned in Tweedle-on-the-Dum.
Her husband, Barrister Jefferies, once her ex-husband's partner,
said that as long as the case was under investigation neither he nor Harker
would be making any comments upon it.
Then the two got into a waiting hansom as she primly adjusted her bonnet.

Harker, who is not under criminal action, was asked if he had remorse,
and he replied, "I had just inherited a pile from my old boss, and of course,
I wanted to make good on my own, so I wrote a book which made me, like Stoker,
a hero, and not just a broker.

I'm sorry I involved my friend Bram, he believed every word,
and put his imprimatur on a story absurd
enough that one really wonders if he's such a dunderhead.
Now I'll retreat, (your notes now replete with gossip most juicy),
and lunch with Miss Westenra, my closest friend, Lucy."

[Elizabeth]

" ... he did publish a short story called "Dracula's Guest"
which some say was originally written to be the first chapter in _Dracula_ (this is being disputed."

One could call "Dracula's Guest" a prequel, even though it was published after the novel (and after Stoker's death) in 1914. There is no doubt that the main episode in "Dracula's Guest" (adventure with snowstorm and wolf) was originally conceived of as part of the novel. But equally certain, it was never intended as the first chapter but rather a part (or all) of a second or third chapter. What we do NOT know is whether what was planned and then deleted was the same as what we read today as "Dracula's Guest" or whether Stoker at some point reworked the story. Neither do we know when the decision to delete it (and several other episodes) was taken.

[Elizabeth]

It appears likely that Stoker decided to add this Note "Seven years ago..." very late in the process. There is no reference to it in the planning evident in his Notes, nor was it included in the typescript of the novel that is presumed to have been the printer's copy. Of course he originally intended to have the castle explode - so there would have been nothing to come back to. Once he altered the ending, he must have decided to include this little epilogue.

[Elizabeth]

CORRECTION!

I made an error in my previous comment about the "Note" at the end of the novel. It DOES appear in the typescript - though there is no reference to it in Stoker's Notes for the book.

Mea culpa...