~ Count Dracula ~


nd then there's Count Dracula himself. Drawn from the ancient legends of Vlad Dracul's family, heavily embellished by the hand of Bram Stroker, we learn that the Count was a tall and visibly old man, clean shaven except for a long white mustache - not something that is generally portrayed in the many movies - his body clad from head to foot in black without a single dash of color on any part of his body.
Stroker enhances his hero's first impression with a facility for perfect English but with a strange "intonation" and great charm. His face, on closer examination, is strong, very strong and aquiline "with high bridge of the thin nose and peculairly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere."
The master's eyebrows were "very massive," almost meeting across the top of his nose and his mouth, beneath the mustache, was peculiarly cruel-looking with disturbingly sharp white teeth which "naturally" protruded over his lips, these in turn showing great vitality and redness for one so evidently old. The general effect was observed to be pallor.
The combination of elegance and crudeness is brilliantly brought out by Stroker's discription of Dracula's hands -

Hitherto I had noticed the back of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine; but seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather course - broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say there were hairs in the center of his palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over to me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder.

The master's breathe , of course, was terrible, but then this would perhaps not have been so uncommon in days when cleanliness was not of the utmost importance. More significant may have been the fact that the close presence of Dracula simply caused Harker to almost faint.
Count Dracula has been rejuvinated a hundred times since Stroker wrote his most famous novel, and there are many today who would dearly love to beleive that the most mounstrous of vampires still walks the silent and black hills of Romainia, surviving all the attempts to destroy him, father of monsters, the most superb hypnotist, fabulous gentleman, and the crudest of all killers. If he does, then the world is ultimately and forever a dangerous place to be.







Funeral March