I love how you guys are discovering spicy Hungarian paprika, and yes it is super good! But as a Hungarian I feel like it’s my duty to mention that paprika hendl is simply german for our national dish paprikás csirke and it is Not made with spicy paprika. It’s got sweet paprika. Jonathan Harker is unfortunately just british.
It has sweet paprika now, but in the late 1800s…
The plant used to make the Hungarian version of [paprika] was grown in 1569 by the Turks at Buda (now part of Budapest, the capital of Hungary). Central European paprika was hot until the 1920s, when a Szeged breeder found a plant that produced sweet fruit, which he grafted onto other plants. Wikipedia
So since Dracula is currently very in Vogue thanks to Dracula Daily, would anybody be interested if I rambled about John William Polidori’s 1819 novella, The Vampyre first modern published vampire story, and grandfather to Bram Stoker’s Draculanovel?
Count Dracula, reclining on a sofa casually reading a railway timetable: I am being so normal right now
My favorite explanations for this moment, in order of how much they make me laugh:
Likely Doylist explanation: Bram Stoker wants you to realize this is weird and feel nervous about the Count because of it.
Likely Watsonian explanation: This is another facet of Dracula’s studying, so that he’ll blend in better once he gets to England.
Unlikely but funny Doylist explanation: Bram Stoker (as will be shown later) thinks this is a reasonable thing to do, and the sign of a species of Superior Intellect.
Funnier Watsonian explanation: While Jonathan was fetching paperwork, Dracula ran into the other room, set the table at superspeed, ran back to the library, grabbed the first book his hand fell on, and carefully posed himself to look like he’d been there the whole time. Whereupon he realized that he had picked up the Weirdest Possible Casual Reading Choice but didn’t have time to pick another book and now has to brazen it out. Like a cat, Dracula at all times has to act like He Meant to Do That. He’s studying train timetables - of course he is! That’s a completely reasonable and normal human thing to do in preparation for moving to a new country! Train travel is a vital piece of British infrastructure that he needs to understand!
Jonathan now thinks that Dracula is a train enthusiast.
This is made a million times funnier by the fact that Mina Harker is in fact a train enthusiast, and her comprehensive knowledge of railway schedules is a crucial plot point. Johnathon is probably thinking, “Oh no, another one.”
