Book Tea & Discussion - Dracula by Bram Stoker

My companion followed me quickly, and cautiously drew the door to, after carefully ascertaining that the lock was a falling, and not a spring, one. In the latter case we should have been in a bad plight. Then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a match-box and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured stone, and dust encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron and tarnished brass, and clouded silver plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life – animal life – was not the only thing which could pass away.

Dr. Seward’s Diary – Chapter 15

High Tea & Book Discussion this Saturday next - April 21st - at 1pm at our favorite Tearoom. If you are not finished with the highly imaginative Victorian classic, then keep the pages turning.

Conversations... Dracula & Jonathan Harker

I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling water which please the young and gay. I am no longer young. And my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may.”

Count Dracula - From Jonathan Harker’s Journal­

From Dracula by Bram Stoker - Chapter 2

From Dracula by Bram Stoker - Chapter 1

"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.)"


From Jonathan Harker’s Journal

The Next Jane Austen Tea Society Read For April

DRACULA

by Bram Stoker

"Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner?"
 Chapter 2 - Dracula

Have you ever been on a business trip that just went terribly wrong somewhere along the way?

It starts innocently enough. You enjoy the scenery. It’s always fun to try new regional cuisine and you happily take down recipes to share with friends and to try back home. And you love seeing all of the colorful clothes and fashion styles in a new and unfamiliar culture.

But then someone makes a furtive sign with their hand that you learn afterwards “guards against the evil eye” and they murmur words behind your back that you look up in your handy polyglot dictionary only to find out that they mean “vampire”…
No generous expense account is going to help you to feel much better.

If your Hampton Inn desk clerk begs you not to travel on but you insist that this trip is a necessary part of your job… If by chance she gives you a cross…. Just put it on. Seriously.

And so - basically - begins the famous epistolary novel, Dracula by Bram Stoker.

An early, unknown childhood disease kept young Abraham Stoker bedridden and left to his imagination and thoughts. Did time alone engender the stories that would later bring him to fame or was it his mother’s Irish wit and storytelling abilities… some of which may have strayed into the Irish folkloric areas of horror and superstition filled with evil spirits and vampires …

Born Abraham Stoker on November 8, 1847 in the northern side of Dublin, Ireland, Bram Stoker progressed from the innately quiet, pensive child into an athletic youth. Educated at a private school and then at Trinity College in Dublin he graduated with honors in mathematics and showed a flair for philosophy.

But throughout all Bram retained a love for writing and drama, which eventually lead him into the position of theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail. He began writing in earnest, producing reviews on current plays, various stories and a non-fiction book.

In 1898 Bram and his wife Florence moved to London for Bram to take a role as acting manager for then celebrated theatre star Henry Irving and to manage Irving’s London theater, the Lyceum. He became acquainted with worldwide high society and the popular literary community of the day. Bram traveled to many countries as Irving’s manager, but never visited the area where his most famous work was centered around – Eastern Europe.

Many theories have spread regarding exactly where the idea for Dracula came from, but the answer is not clear. It is known that he began a story revolving around a vampire after spending seven years researching European folklore and stories of vampires and then settled on the key name of Dracula during a visit to Whitby, a town located on the North Sea about 50 miles northeast of York, England. Actually begun in 1890, the book Dracula was first published in 1897.

One of the most prominent of the Gothic authors writing at the end of the Victorian age of literature, Bram Stoker died in London on April 20^th, 1912. He was cremated and his ashes placed in a display urn at Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum – the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoriums in Britain. Should you visit, you can - on request - be escorted to see Bram’s ashes…

There is a Bram Stoker Memorial Seat in Whitby where one may sit and look across the harbor to the well-worn & well-known stone steps, St. Mary’s Church and the picturesque Abbey ruins… And as dusk falls on a cold & windblown day, one might easily picture the “Demeter” coming ashore amidst wave & mist. Just don’t sit there until night completely falls.

The next read for The Jane Austen Tea Society and our study of British Victorian authors will be – Dracula by Bram Stoker. You have plenty of time to exorcise a book from your local book monger or library! Start reading! Our book tea to discuss this atmospheric & highly discussable read will be April 21^st!

Happy Birthday George Gordon

Sonnet On Chillon

by Lord Byron (George Gordon)

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

For there thy habitation is the heart--

The heart which love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd--

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom,

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar--for 'twas trod,

Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod

By Bonnivard ! May none those marks efface!

For they appeal from tyranny to God.

Written in 1816 after Byron and Shelley visited the Castle

The Château de Chillon, located near Montreux, Switzerland, is a sturdy, compact fortress nesting in lovely Lake Léman and resonating with over 800 years of feet pacing the worn stones and voices echoing along shadowed corridors.

When Lord Byron and Shelley visited the castle on the 22^nd of June 1816, Byron was deeply impressed by the history of François de Bonivard, a Genevois monk and politician who was imprisoned there from 1530 to 1536. The poet was inspired to write a sonnet and later a longer fable. While in the dungeon, he scratched his name upon a column.

As a young woman I stood in that dim and silent room. I stared long at Lord Byron’s signature above me – preserved forever in stone. I listened to the water high overhead crashing in waves against the wall, the muffled squeak of a mouse hidden nearby and registered deep within that the dust below my feet retained the chill of a grim prison that stilled the beating hearts of countless victims.

But as I walked the hallways, peered through window slits formed for archers and gazed far into the lake from battlements… I found that it was Byron’s spirit that whispered along behind me as I took these pictures…

A Quote From Gabriel

... From Our Current Read

Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd

“And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be —

and whenever I look up, there will be you.

- Gabriel Oak

It is one week until we meet for High Tea to discuss this literary masterpiece.

Keep reading!

Next Read - Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

"ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD" By Thomas Gray (1716-71)

The next read for The Jane Austen Tea Society in our current plan of British Victorian Authors is Far From The Madding Crowd, Hardy’s first major literary success.

Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840 in a small hamlet called Higher Bockhampton which is located in the southwestern English county of Dorset. His childhood was filled with a wealth of deep influences of culture and locale. From their two-storey brick and thatch cottage, Thomas Hardy naturally absorbed a love for literature from his mother, who although she had only served as a maidservant and cook loved to read Latin poets and translated French romances.

His father, a self-employed master mason and building contractor, had descended from an old Dorset family tracing back to the Isle of Jersey in the1400s and was an avid violin player who passed along his love of music to young Hardy.

Thomas Hardy’s childhood very much revolved around literature, music, the local church and life in a rustic rural setting – all of which translated into the body of work that the author became renowned for and for which he was much loved by his devoted readers.

Years ago when I was finally able to put aside the college textbooks and night times taken up with study and homework, I set out on a personal journey to read through the classics… All the ones I felt that I had missed while locked into a “school system plan” that unfortunately was a fairly Austen-free zone. Now that my reading choices were my own I delved into the Brontë sisters, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, of course – Jane Austen and… Thomas Hardy.

I didn’t lose my heart to Hardy the way I did to John Keats but his writing style totally captured my mind. His word-crafting is sublime and the wise reader will keep a dictionary handy if your love of words is equal to your love of story.

Thomas Hardy wrote six novels that were an achievement of great British literature - Far From The Madding Crowd (1874), The Return Of The Native (1878), The Mayor Of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess Of The d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude The Obscure (1895).

Far From The Madding Crowd was chosen for our current read because it was a novel of several "firsts" for Hardy. Besides being his first major success it was his first novel to include his invention of Wessex. Pastoral settings figure significantly into Hardy’s works combined with the loss of a known rural security as the Industrial Age began to change lives. As a setting for his novels, Thomas Hardy resurrected the ancient medievel Anglo-Saxon kingdom name of Wessex and it was – as Hardy described it – a “partly real, party dream” country that occupied a place in the Southwest or Dorchester region of England.

Far From The Madding Crowd first appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in the Cornhill Magazine and its rich language of place and people has the acute ability to take the reader on an atmospheric journey that is full of humor and life lived close to the rural hearth and home skillfully combine with the tragedies and twists of fate that befall the common heart.

Our next High Tea and book discussion will take place on Saturday the 21st of January, 2012 at 1pm. There is plenty of time to walk the lovely path that this book offers. Don’t pass this Thomas Hardy masterpiece by and miss the experience!