This is the entry for September 25! I’m posting it solo a day late because I don’t wanna fall behind but I can’t handle writing that much today, I am just too sleepy. I’ll explain tomorrow.
Jesus christ this email has like, twelve different things in it. I will be endlessly grateful that some of them are from The Westminster Gazette which has more respect for page space than our other paper reports so far.
The Gazette informs us that local children in Hampstead have been out late with a woman who, with their poor diction, they call the “bloofer lady” (beautiful lady, don’t look it up and get spoiled like me). The kids report this beautiful lady asking them to take a walk with her at night. The bloofer lady has become a new fun game with kids in the area.
The kicker is that the kids all come home with a cut around their throat.
A second article from the Westminster Gazette recalls another such encounter, calling it “the Hampstead Horror.” Why are both of these entries on the same day? Stoker please check your dates.
The next note is a telegram from Mina to Van Helsing, inviting him to visit.
Following that is a diary entry of Mina expressing her excitement about Van Helsing’s visit. She wonders if he can help with Jonathan’s mystery, but reminds herself he’s coming about Lucy, not Jonathan. Mina assumes Van Helsing will ask about Lucy’s sleepwalking excursion that one night in Whitby. Mina hopes she didn’t cause the Westenras any harm, and hopes that Van Helsing doesn’t blame her. She’s been under a lot of stress and can’t handle much more.
I suppose a cry does us all good at times—clears the air as other rain does.
Mina writes that she has typed out her own journal from shorthand to give to Van Helsing.
The journal resumes after their meeting and Mina seems distressed by some revelation he shared with her. She wonders if Jonathan will be stronger knowing everything that happened to him is true.
It may be that it is the doubt which haunts him; that when the doubt is removed, no matter which—waking or dreaming—may prove the truth, he will be more satisfied and better able to bear the shock.
This reminded me of that one line from Sherlock Holmes, apparently published the first time in Sign of the Four in 1890, seven years before Dracula.
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
I wonder if Doyle read Dracula?
Anyway, Van Helsing left a good impression on Mina. She plans to ask Van Helsing about Jonathan when he (Van Helsing) comes back tomorrow.
With the intention of practicing how to write like an interviewer and reporter (like Jonathan’s friend from The Exeter News, which I think hasn’t come up yet, but they’re already on thin ice), Mina’s maid lets Van Helsing in to see her at about two o’clock. She describes him at length and I am shocked to discover he is redheaded with blue eyes and clean shaven, but at least we all agree he has bushy eyebrows.
Van Helsing tells Mina that Lucy, imitating her, kept a diary a few days after Mina left. He asks for all she can remember and Mina can provide.
“Ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details? It is not always so with young ladies.”
SIGH.
Mina says her memory for facts and details isn’t great, but she wrote things down. She says he can read her diary and hands him the shorthand version to fuck with him. Van Helsing seems impressed and she gives him the typed version shamefully.
“You are so good,” he said.
Yeah, Mina. Stop feeling bad for showing him up a little.
Mina leaves him to it and returns to him with lunch. When she comes back, Van Helsing basically grovels and sings her praises. In return she tells him about Jonathan’s Dracula-related scare and asks for his help with her husband. He says he’ll do his best if he can and that Mina is a good woman.
“[…] you have given me hope—hope, not in what I am seeking of, but that there are good women still left to make life happy—good women, whose lives and whose truths may make good lesson for the children that are to be. […]”
She’s pretty great, I agree.
Van Helsing implores her to eat and take a break after all the stress she’s been under. When they get back to talking, she makes him promise not to laugh at the “queer things” she’s going to say. Van Helsing is like “honey, wait til you hear about what brought me here.” He swears to keep an open mind and Mina sends him off with her transcription of Jonathan’s journal with promises to eat lunch with them the next day.
One of the extra documents is a letter from Van Helsing to Mina, telling her he believes everything that Jonathan has written and how he’s super pumped to talk to them.
Mina replies with gratitude and fear, and a change in schedule to meet for breakfast. Much is being said about Mina knowing the trains off the top of her head here, which I guess is showing us that she really does have a mind for details which is so rare among women. (Whatever.)
Glad that Mina is finally getting the recognition she deserves.