Jonathan Harker's Journal (Kept in shorthand)

CHAPTER 1

Jonathan Harker's Journal (Kept in shorthand)

3 May. Bistritz . Left Munich  at 8:35 P.M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late . Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.

I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. 

I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.

I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey Maps ; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina .

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it.

I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then .

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem., get recipe for this also.)

I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move.

It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear.

At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets, and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque.

The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them.

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.

It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier--for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina--it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.

I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress--white undergarment with a long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, "The Herr Englishman?"

"Yes," I said, "Jonathan Harker."

She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirt-sleeves, who had followed her to the door.

He went, but immediately returned with a letter:

"My friend.--Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well tonight. At three tomorrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.--Your friend, Dracula."   

Comments

[Andrew]

Ha ha!! The game is afoot! Thanks for bringing the count back again this year Bryan! Cheers

[Elizabeth]

Here's something different - the first part of this entry from a Romanian edition. (Minus the diacritics which I am unable to add...)

CAPITOLUL I

Jurnalul lui Jonathan Harker (stenografiat)

3 mai. Bistrita. Parasit Munchenul la 8,35 seara, 1 mai. Sosit devreme la Viena, a doua zi dimineata. Ar fi trebuit sa sosim la orele 6,46, dar trenul a avut o ora intirziere. Budapesta pare un oras minunat, dupa cite mi-am putut arunca ochii din vagon si dupa cele citeva strazi pe care m'am plimbat, odata coborit din tren, insa mi-a fost teama sa ma departez prea mult de gara...

Keep in mind that in the novel, Count Dracula is not Romanian - as a Szekely, his first language would be Hungarian. In 1897 when "Dracula" was published, Transylvania was part of the Hungarian Empire (it did not join Romania until after WWI).

Note that Jonathan finds his smattering of German useful. Actually, Klausenberg (Now Cluj) and Bistritz are two of seven towns settled during the Middle Ages by Germans from Saxony. Indeed the German name for Transylvania is "Siebenbergen" (7 towns). The best preserved of the old German towns is Sighisoara (Schassburg)- not mentioned in the novel but best known as the birthplace of that other Dracula - you know, the one Stoker knew little about! :) In 2 weeks from today I will be in Sighisoara giving a paper at a symposium.

[Sara Larson]

Poor Jonathan. Don't you just want to reach into the text and tell him, "No, no, don't go!"?

[Les]

So many wonderfully revealing bits in this opening entry--JH's comment about the women being pretty until one gets near them strikes me especially. Of course, much of the detail is lifted from other travel books (Paget, Boner, Crosse, Johnson, "Magyarland"--all of which are mentioned in Stoker's notes)that one must wonder whether Jonathan had anything original to observe!

[Elizabeth]

"Of course, much of the detail is lifted from other travel books (Paget, Boner, Crosse, Johnson, "Magyarland"--all of which are mentioned in Stoker's notes)"

Well - almost! :)

Though Stoker may have been familiar with it, Paget's book "Hungary and Transylvania" is not mentioned in the Notes.

[David40]

'Don't you just want to reach into the text and tell him, "No, no, don't go!"?'

It wouldn't make any difference ;). Jonathan is a lawyer who smells the money and there's not much a lawyer won't do when they smell the money. ;)

[David40]

As lawyers go, though, there are some things that impress me about Jonathan in this passage. One is that he does his homework (or at least he does his best to do what he thinks will prepare him for the trip). Whether this is because people were just more conscientious about doing their homework back in Stoker's day, or it is simply because Dracula gets special treatment being a high net worth individual, or because Jonathan is genuinely more conscientious than most, it is much more impressive than I have usually encountered from lawyers.

Although Jonathan really has no clue (of course) what he is getting himself into, I find it interesting that, via his research, he senses that the history of Transylvania will have some significance (for example the Magyars conquering it from the Huns in the 11th century). Jonathan's research focuses on Transylvania's past, not its present, which is somewhat curious given that he is going to close a real estate deal where presumably knowing about present customs would be more useful. This turns out to be rather astute on Jonathan's part although he cannot possibly know why yet.

It seems somewhat odd that Jonathan Harker doesn't research the background of Count Dracula himself a bit more, though, given the extent to which he does his homework on the country and its history. Even if Castle Dracula cannot be found on a map one would expect from the entymology of the name that Jonathan would either be able to research the Count's background, or comment on his inability to do so.

I noticed on Wikipedia that the elevation of the Borgo Pass is only 1200m. I had always imagined it to be much higher.

[Tyler]

I love Jonathan's early naivete and his, unintentionally, sardonic humor.

"The women looked pretty, except when you got near them..."

He has a few of these in the coming chapters as well. Stoker does a wonderful job of capturing a innocent, refined Englishman in the countryside.

[Steven]

I've created a map showing Jonathan's route from Munich to Vienna to Budapest to Cluj to Bistrita. Have to research further before extending into the Borgo Pass.

The route:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=118197495426206440684.00000112525d52778c426&z=6&om=1

[Elizabeth]

Re Harker's route. I checked the google map and the closest I can pinpoint the location of the fictional castle (close to where the Hotel Castle Dracula now is) is near the village of Piatra Fantanele. I'll take my map with me next week and check it out while I am there. Our tour takes us first to Bistritz and then east into the Carpathians and the Borgo Pass and on to Suceava.

[Ella]

"Jonathan's research focuses on Transylvania's past, not its present, which is somewhat curious given that he is going to close a real estate deal"

True! I wonder if it may have to do with his impression of the Count as old nobility and perhaps a sense that someone whose family has very old roots might have an interest in that sort of history. Preparing conversation starters, as it were. What a gentleman! -- though Harker's comments about wanting to "see all I could of the ways of the country" also mark him as a first-time tourist who just wants the full experience!

[Dias]

/ The book really wasn't what you'd exepct after watching the movie, was it? What I remember most though was how small the print on the copy I was reading ;p Yea, it was that tiny!ppsst, I really liked the movie!