ahhh excellent today's Daily Dracula chapter is that part mentioned in Shadow of the Vampire, where the very real vampire Count Orlok talks about how terribly sad it made him to see Dracula try to remember the ways of caring for a man.
Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he... that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes... when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.
I really do like this scene from Shadow of the Vampire because while we all do joke about how Jonathan has no idea what he's getting into, he is the only perspective in the novel that we get so far, and the only other perspectives he mentions are those of the peasants who we know deeply fear Dracula as a monster (because, yknow, he's Dracula). And this is like literally "sympathy for the monster 101" but that this comes directly after the chapter where Dracula is so charming, so fascinating, talking to Jonathan all night, it does give me pause to imagine the profound loneliness of Dracula. He has his plans and predations of course, undoubtedly, but does he also just enjoy Harker's company? Is it not a relief for after multiple hundreds of years to speak with a man who does not know to fear you instinctvely? Would you not wish to speak to this man all night, even if you also had ulterior motives? Would you not savor the moments between steps in your monstrous plan, the brief time before he solves you, where you get to just...hang out?
