Not completely up on my Seward backstory, but had a couple of BGsO (Blinding Glimpses of the Obvious) this morning.

“Journals for go, recordings for show.” Like all of the characters, we only know of Seward what we read in his personal papers.  While the Harker and Murray journals are personal papers, meant for each other and possibly their descendants, Seward’s notes get laid over to Gramophone with an eye (ear?) toward permanence.  As a “physician,” Seward would have been educated to keep scrupulous notes.  Van Helsing even comments on the fact that Seward’s case-books were always the best of all his students.  I can’t help but get the sense that Seward records knowing that these reels will be used as source material for some future generations’ research.  Contrast his reels with the journals kept by the others and Seward’s tone is decidedly more professional, which would be expected.  That said, he also comes off as much more of a self-promoter and the reels end up sounding, in many ways, like what Seward meant to function as medical cases-work ended up working much more as a Book of Grievances.

Locker room talk sucks regardless of age or century.  Seward proposes to Lucy (assuming, I get the feeling, as close to a sure thing as Victorians would be capable of) and gets a tearful rejection because Lucy’s heart already belongs to another.  Later, he hears that his wasn’t the only proposal on the table.  I make that assumption based on the sausagefest Quincey sets up at the end of Chapter V as Holmwood promises to bring messages which will “make both your ears tingle.” One can only imagine much later that night as Morris drunkenly pulls Jackie aside and drunkenly whispers, “Dude, I totally tapped that” as they all three drank healths to Lucy.  Sure it was a kiss.  But even if we take Lucy to be a reliable source, “just a kiss” would have been the sociological equivalent of a party hook-up.

“‘Let’s be friends'” cuts deep. So having his proposal rebuffed by the Hot One, and the Hot One’s BFF also removed from the pool by reason of her previously engagedness to that prig Harker, Seward can’t even throw himself into the work of guiding poor fly-eating Renfield down the corridors of madness before he’s summoned by his rich friend Holmwood to check up on the Hot One, now in waning health. (Chapter 9).  So Seward gets to check up on a weakened Former Love Object, including, we assume, some amount of diagnostic palpating and such.  Considering the times, wouldn’t have this been the equivalent of asking Seward to play eunuch and take good care of the harem?  I think yes.

But wait there’s more.  Seward is just about to give blood for the first of Lucy’s transfusions when Holmwood bursts into the room.  “Come,” Van Helsing commands, all but pushing Seward aside.  “You (Holmwood) are a man and it is a man we want.  You are better than me, better than my friend John.”  Call for Dr. Inadequacy, call for Doctor John Seward Inadequacy.  Please report to the Emasculation Suite, stat!

THEN, when Seward’s blood is finally called for, only a half-measure is taken, the blood of “her lover, her fiance,” being better suited to the purpose.

Thrice shunned from Lucy.  Twice required to become at least medically intimate with Lucy.

Is it any wonder some amount of rumor/speculation exists that links Jack Seward and Jack the Ripper to each other.  You KNOW that if this was a comic book universe that we would have had an entire series devoted to Seward the Ripper.

I for one, am maybe interested a bit more now in the Seward/Holmwood/Lucy dynamic than I was before.  Let’s keep an eye on that one.