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| London Daily News, 27-May-1922 |
125 years ago today, on 26-May-1897, Bram Stoker's novel Dracula was published. He we see an early review. "Bloofer Lady" = "Beautiful Lady."
MR. BRAM STOKER'S NEW STORY.*
[PUBLISHED TODAY.]
What has become of the "general decay of
Faith" of which Parson Holmes reproachfully
discoursed at Francis Allen's that night when
the poet read aloud his fragment, "Morte
d'Arthur," the noble precursor of "The Idylls
of the King"? Have old beliefs really ceased
to impress the imagination? It may be so ;
but our novelists are clearly experiencing a
reawakened faith in the charm of the supernatural.
Here, for the latest example, is Mr.
Bram Stoker taking in hand the old-world
legend of the Were-wolf or vampire, with all its
weird and exotic associations of blood-sucking
and human flesh devouring, and interweaving it
with the threads of a long story with an earnestness,
a directness, and a simple good faith which
ought to go far to induce readers of fiction to
surrender their imaginations into the novelist's
hands. Of course the secret lies here. The
story writer who would make others believe
must himself believe, or learn at least to write
as if he did. There must be no display of meaningless
rhetoric, no selection of faded terrors
out of the dusty scene-docks of the suburban
theaters. The more strange the facts, the more
businesslike should be the style and method of
narration. Some there be who, in handling
such themes, prefer to take shelter in a remote
time ; but the supernatural which cannot stand
the present day, and even the broad daylight of
the world around us, stands a half confessed imposture.
Mr. Stoker has not been unmindful of
these canons of the art of the weird novel
writer. His story is told in sections, in the form
of letters or excerpts from diaries of the various
personages, which is in itself a straightforward
proceeding, investing the whole narrative with
a documentary air. Ships' logs and medical
practitioners' notebooks of cases also come in aid,
with now and then a matter of fact extract
from the columns of our contemporaries, "The
Westminster" and "The Pall Mall Gazette,"
about mysterious crimes attributed to an unseen
destroyer popularly known as "the Bloofer
Lady," the victims of whom are mostly little
children whose throats are found marked with
two little punctures, such as of old were believed
to be made by the "Vampire Bat," who lives
on human blood. These details are not the
mere background of the story; for the mysteries
of Lycanthropy, once devoutly believed in
throughout Europe and the East, permeate the
whole narrative and give their peculiar colouring
to the web of romance with which they are
associated. The author's artistic instincts have
rightly suggested that the first step must be to
attune the mind of the reader to the key of the
story, for which purpose nothing could be more
effective than the opening chapters, which are
given up to the journal kept in shorthand by
the hero, Jonathan Harker, the young solicitor
who, leaving his fiancée, Mina Murray, behind
in England, starts on a mission connected
with the purchase of some estate and an
ancient manor house in this country to the
mysterious Count Dracula, a Transylvanian
nobleman, who lives in a lonely castle in the
Carpathians. The long drive from Buda-Pesth
is graphically described, while a constantly-growing
sense of some vague impending trouble
is cleverly made to intensify the interest and
curiosity of the reader. Sometimes it is the
strange, anxious glances of innkeeper and
attendants, who know that the traveler is on
the way to sojourn at the Count's gloomy and
almost inaccessible abode; at others it is a
word let fall, which, though in the Servian or
Slovak language, conveys to the mind of the
traveler a sinister idea. One worthy old
landlady at a post-house puts a rosary around her
guest's neck, reminding him that it is the eve
of St. George's Day, when at midnight all evil
things have full sway, and after vainly
imploring him to consider where he is going and
what he is going to, places for protection a
rosary around his neck. Even the crowd about the
inn doors share in the worthy hostess's solicitude:
"When we started, the crowd round the inn door,
which had by this time swelled to a considerable size,
all made the sign of the Cross and pointed two fingers
towards me. With some difficulty I got a fellow-passenger
to tell me what they meant; he would not
answer at first, but on learning that I was English he
explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil
eye. This was not very pleasant for me, just starting
for an unknown place to meet an unknown man; but
every one seemed so kind-hearted and so sorrowful,
and so sympathetic that I could not but be touched. I
shall never forget the last glimpse I had of the
inn-yard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing
themselves, as they stood round the wide archway,
with its background of rich foliage of oleander and
orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the
yard. Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers
covered the whole front of the box-seat -- 'gotza,'
they call them -- cracked his big whip over his four
small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our
journey. I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly
fears in the beauty of the scene as we drove along,
although had I known the language, or rather languages,
which my fellow passengers were speaking, I might
not have been able to throw them off so easily."
Strange, unearthly experiences indeed are in
store for the young traveler in the chateau of
the Count before this opening, which may be
regarded as the prologue of the story, is
concluded; but interest in a narrative whose effect
depends so much on the feeling of curiously
must not be forestalled. For details, therefore,
of how Jonathan Harker finally escaped from
the castle and its terrible inmates to the shelter
of a friendly convent in Buda-Pesth, where he
is found by the faithful Mina suffering from
brain fever; and also for the more marvelous
incidents after their return to England, which
form the chief substance of the narrative, we
must send the reader to Mr. Bram Stoker's
volume. Few stories recently published have
been more rich in sensations or in the Websterian
power of "moving a horror" by subtle suggestion.
* "Dracula." By Bram Stoker. (Constable and Co.)
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| Booksellers' Review, 13-May-1922 |
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| listal.com |
The book has inspired a few movie adaptions.
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| Moving Picture Weekly, 06-December-1930 |
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| Film Bulletin, 21-July-1958 |
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