*to the tune of Once in Royal David’s City, with apologies to just about everyone.
Living in the Nashville area puts me within easy driving distance of the University of the South’s annual Lessons & Carols. For many good Episcopalians (and a good many more lapsed ones), a trek Up the Mountain to Sewanee the first weekend in December is the true sign that the season of preparation, Advent, has arrived.
As I read, the events surrounding Dracula’s coming feel like a bizzarro Advent season.
As he draws closer to his “dear new country of England,” all sorts of strange things happen. As readers we see these things in toto. However, the players with the story see only their parts, and so don’t have the advantage of perspective that we enjoy. So!
- Lucy Westenra begins wandering around her hotel room, spooking out Mina and dredging up all sorts of negative memories of summer camp for me.
- Renfield’s zoophagy climbs the evolutionary ladder, culminating in birds. At the rate he was progressing, I dare say he would have worked his way up to either wildebeests or small children by August 6, the day the the ship bearing the Count was sighted out past the reef in Whitby.
- On August 6, Cap’n Swale, citing no more than a change in the weather, seems to forget his previous blasphemies to Mina Murray and instead make everything short of his Last Confession to her.
I point out these occurrences as examples that Evil/Dracula’s ability to project mojo/vibe/Dracularity well beyond himself. Vampires’ ability to hold humans and animal in thrall is well documented. Stoker, however, has given us several glimpses of the long-distance spookiness the Count can direct.
What I am not yet clear on is whether those who pick up on the vibes are pre-selected or simply happen to be receptive to Dracula’s evil mind control powers. I am much more spooked out by the possibility that the Count is little more than an Amplified Radio Tower of Evil, sending out wave upon wave of death and the three who pick up on it were somehow targeted from afar.
Unlike the lil Babe who was born in a lowly cattle shed in “Royal David’s city,” Dracula’s advent in the West will definitely not shine as a light unto the world.
Infinite Zombies 
This is great and I agree, it’s wild that he seems to project himself in so many ways including the weather! Your comment on whether his “subjects” are pre-selected or just more receptive got me thinking. This idea ties beautifully into the tension in the Victorian era between “free will” and “pre-ordained destiny”; faith/belief v reason/logic. I don’t have time to go into this more, but I think it’s something to watch.
I was going to say that of course they’re pre-selected–Stoker’s collected their stories–until it suddenly occurred to me that the only reason Stoker’s exposing us to these people is because Stoker is writing from the future, and he’s going back now to collect all the articles pertaining to these people that he can, doing his best to figure out how things went so very very wrong.