{Whitby, England}
Bram Stoker arrived in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast in July of 1890. It was seven years before the publication of Dracula, and the novel was still just a loose sketch in his mind. His wife and daughter wouldn’t arrive until a week later, and so he took the time to explore the town, wandering the streets and climbing the long steps to the ghostly ruins of Whitby Abbey overlooking the North Sea.
Bram Stoker only spent a month in Whitby, but it was a visit that changed the culture of the town forever. He set part of Dracula in Whitby: Jonathan Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray visits her friend Lucy Westenra there…and it is in Whitby that Count Dracula himself first steps foot on English soil, in the guise of an immense dog-like animal.
Like Bram Stoker, Mina Murray arrives in Whitby in the middle of July, and she describes the scene in her fiction journal…
“This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers, through which the view seems somehow further away than it really is.” - Mina Murray’s Journal
130 years later we, too, are arriving in Whitby in July and, as Bram Stoker and Mina Murray likely did, we are arriving by steam train. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is one of the many heritage railways in the UK - and, as the name suggests, it winds through the beautiful North York Moors National Park before arriving on the coast. It is a rainy morning, and as I watch the purple heather of the moors blowing in the wind from the train window, I catch a glimpse of the great viaduct in the distance - a sure sign that we are approaching Whitby.
The harbor at Whitby is packed with tourists, even in the rain. Fishing boats sit in the water, quietly sharing space with touring boats. A replica of Captain Cook’s Endeavour floats near the bridge - Captain Cook lived in Whitby, and used locally built ships for his voyages. The harbor is lovely, but it is noisy and crowded, and we decide to go ahead and start climbing upward, towards the cliffs and the Abbey.
“The valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are on the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are near enough to see down. The houses of the old town - the side away from us - are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other…” - Mina Murray’s Journal
The rain clouds start to break up as we climb, and as we near the top of the cliff the sun shines down on the harbor and the town. The valley is steep, and by the time we reach the top, it is impossible to see the river below. Looking across the valley you can see a line of grand-looking hotels - holdovers from Whitby’s days as a Victorian resort town - and below them the red-roofed houses of the old town that Mina writes about.
It was in this area along the quay that the Whitby public library was located during the 1890s, and during his walks Bram Stoker would occasionally stop by, looking for inspiration and conducting research. One day he came upon a specific book: a memoir of a British consul’s time in Bucharest, Hungary. The book mentioned a 15th-century prince: Vlad Tepes, who was also known as Vlad the Impaler and whose father was called Vlad Dracul. Vlad Dracul translates as Vlad the Devil, and therefore his son was known as “the son of the Devil”, or Vlad Dracula. Intrigued, Bram Stoker wrote the name down in his notes.
“Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey…It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows.” - Mina Murray’s Journal
Wait, what? A ghost? In Yorkshire?
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