The Edgar Stretch

Chapters XII, XIII and XIV are pure Edgar and they’re actually the best stretch in the book, although occurring as they do in a kind of vacuum, they seem to advance the story on a timeline that seems completely independent of the other characters.

Chapter 12, is about the invasion of birds, which is very clearly a menace and which Edgar “tortured his brain” to find a solution for. The Kite is the answer, but it’s also a new problem, since it casts a pall on every living thing in its shadow. Lilla is especially affected, which leads us to the whole Columba connection, which we actually set up with the staring contest.

After telling us how thorough the pall is, Bram serves up a double whammy:

The inhabitants of the district around took the matter with indifference. They had been freed from the noises and the silence did not trouble them. It is often so; people put a different and more lofty name on their own purposes. For instance, these people probably considered their own view founded on common weal, whereas it was merely indifference founded on selfishness.

This is two paragraphs after:

Everything was affected; gloom was the predominant note. Joy appeared to have passed away as a factor of life, and this creative impulse had nothing to take its place. That giant spot in high air was a plague of evil influence. It seemed like a new misanthropic belief which had fallen on human beings, carrying with it the negation of all hope.

! And then, we get this:

And Edgar Caswall was far too haughty a person, and too stern of nature, to concern himself about even poor or helpless people, much less the lower order of mere animals.

But…but…the whole chapter was about Edgar trying to solve this problem!

Well, we already handled this, so we’ll let Bram R.I.P. on this one. The next two chapters, though, are about Mesmer’s chest. It’s remarkable, really, how early on we are in the book. Clearly Edgar’s mania is supposed to increase in relation to the WW’s menace, but Caswall is not pacing himself.

We’re going to put in a bit before the Kite where Arabella is goading Edgar after his failure with Lilla. Then, after the Kite goes up, we’ll put in some stuff that allows us to build Mimi and Adam’s relationship, more WW badness, and mongoose 2.0.

We can stretch the time out so that the Kite menace is allowed to grow, Edgar can shut himself in to Arabella’s distress, Lilla can get sicker, and Richard and Nathaniel can…do something. Ooh, Richard can dig up something and Nathaniel can go spelunking on his request.

By the way, the book has Richard first calling Adam and Nathaniel “young men”, and later Nathaniel saying he and Richard were boys together. Nathaniel’s treatment of Richard throughout, however, suggests that he is much younger, and not just in spirit. So I think we’ll have him be of vigorous but indeterminate middle age.

In the book, Richard is nearly 80, but Bram Stoker was 65, so we’ll make him be a well-settled mid-60s. Richard can be a vigorous late-40s. Say about 15 years in life, a relationship not quite paternal but more avuncular. (This has been my idea all along but it was muddled by the contradictions in the source.)

I think I’ll have to write this out before being able to determine whether it’s enough to fill out this stretch. In order to get to Mesmer’s chest, we need to drive Edgar a little further around the bend—convince him that he’s not powerful enough to dominate Lilla. It can “make sense” if the kite gives him some sense of power, but drives Lilla away from him.

The subsequent chapters after this stretch are all about Arabella and the Snake…Edgar completely vanishes almost until the end.

Meanwhile…

As I try to get into the WW’s head, as it were, a lot of other things are clarifying. The way the original story shakes out, the White Worm is talked about a lot, but it doesn’t actually do anything until halfway through the book. This has the muddying effect of making Caswall seem like the main villain.

Stoker was really caught between an old world and a new one, and it’s not clear that he had any idea how a giant antediluvian creature was going to make its way in the world of the 20th century, but with a little focus, we can come up with something really creepy and plausible (insofar as giant monsters can be plausible).

Adding in more bits building the relationships between the characters is helping tremendously for sure, though. While I’m not crazy about how I’ve written the first encounter between Arabella and the mongoose, the basic shape is good: I’ve brought in Mimi, because we need for her and Adam to bond.

Arabella is not going to empty her revolver into the mongoose, though. That she has a revolver is interesting, and a thread that re-emerges later. That she can quick-draw it fast enough to nail a mongoose charging at her at full speed is astounding. Maybe even supernatural. That she can put six bullets into an animal smaller than a housecat—I mean, there’s nothing left of this poor corpse but a red smear on the ground—is unbelievable.

But that this can all be brushed off without so much as a “by your leave” is not credible.

A great part of the tension of Dracula is the element of mannered society confronting an unspeakable evil, and clearly this idea is meant to be revisited. Whence this bloody massacre? Is it because we had to make clear that Lady Arabella is a snake and therefore the mongoose will attack her and since we can’t have her ripped to shreds and we can’t have her actually locked in mortal kombat with a rodent, well, we’ll just give her a gun?

And this to be followed with a debate as to whether or not she’s actually a snake?

I mean, she’s a maniac with a gun! What more do you need?

A more subtle touch is needed, for now, with the mongooses. Our next issue is…once again…Oolanga.