Though critics generally read Lucy as a frivolous naif, there is far more to her than the sweetness her beaux enthuse over. (26) Her nerve and intelligence come through in her diary entries and in the remarkably lucid memorandum she pens just before her death, when she realizes the importance of giving "an exact record of what took place" so that "no one may by chance get into any trouble through me" (130). Lucy, like Ibsen's Nora Helmer, is a shrewd performer of naivety. An astute observer of character, she analyzes Dr. Seward, even as she detects him trying to analyze her as if she were one of his patients. Whereas Seward never sees beyond the frivolous femininity that he finds so enchanting, Lucy discerns the nervous personality that underlies Seward's apparent calm. She notes how he fiddles with his lancet and nearly sits on his hat as he works up the nerve to propose marriage to her. Her tears silenced his unwelcome proposal, she gaily reports to Mina, noting how his hands trembled as she wept. She ventriloquizes Quincey Morris's Americanisms, observing that he indulges in them only when he is around her and "there was no one to be shocked" (59).

Lucy is a free spirit. She enjoys using slang and doesn't mind who hears her. Though she's wealthy, she finds fashion "a bore" and dismisses "Town" as "pleasant," with barely a mention of the galleries and parks she visits (56-57). [...]  in her conversations with Dr. Seward, she analyzes the analyst. She has the audacity to admit, not only to Mina but also to her would-be husbands, that she loves a man who has not yet declared his love for her. Though she does not say that she had to "do the proposing" to Arthur Holmwood, her vague description--"all so confused"--of the meeting that settled their marriage allows for that possibility. [...]  I agree that Stoker endows Lucy with a sensuality perhaps offensive to Victorian convention, just as he endows her with intelligence and initiative, but, as I will argue, the novel works on the whole to endorse rather than condemn unconventional traits in women.

Winstead, Karen A. 2020 Mrs. Harker and Dr. Van Helsing: Dracula, Fin-de-Siecle Feminisms, and the New Wo/Man.

RAVENCLAW:

"Books, books, BOOKS kept Insanely breeding. De Quincey wept, And went on reading."

–Helen Bevington (De Quincey Wept)

'Suddenly as thus they rode from infinite to infinite, suddenly as thus they tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose -- that systems more mysterious, worlds more billowy, other heights and other depths, were dawning, were nearing, were at hand. Then the man sighed, stopped, shuddered, and wept. His overladen heart uttered itself in tears; and he said, “Angel, I will go no further. For the spirit of man aches under this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God's house. Let me lie down in the grave, that I may find rest from the persecutions of the Infinite; for end, I see, there is none.” And from all the listening stars that shone around issued one choral chant -- “Even so it is: Angel, thou knowest that it is: end there is none that ever yet we heard of.” “End is there none?” the Angel solemnly declared. “And is this the sorrow that kills you?” But no voice answered, that he might answer himself. Then the Angel threw up his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens, saying, “End is there none to the Universe of God? Lo! also THERE IS NO BEGINNING.''’ 

-- final paragraph from Thomas De Quincey’s ‘Systems of Heavens’ (1846)

[[ My blogs with classic horror connections:

@princeofconjurers ( originally @princeofconjurers2 briefly ) The Angels Wept Tonight Name: Erik, the Phantom Fandom: The Phantom of the Opera Multi-Adaptational | Emphasis on ALW with combined traits from Kay and Leroux

@likeblacknessitself  You Are Music Name: Erik Carriere, the Phantom (often referred to as “Cherik” ooc) Fandom: The Phantom of the Opera Adaptation: The 1990 Charles Dance miniseries and the Yeston/Kopit musical

@theabandonedroo  The Phantom of Anti-Matter Name: Omega, Erik, The Phantom Fandom: The Phantom of the Opera, Doctor Who AU crossover character combination of Erik from Phantom and Omega from Doctor Who, now stuck inside of/as a TARDIS

@spawnsoftheoperaghost Is There Music in Your Head? Fandom: Phantom of the Opera Multi-Muse of the children of the Phantom from various adaptations, including Gustave from Love Never Dies, Charles from Susan Kay’s novel, Pierre from Phantom of Manhattan, Operetta from Monster High, and Evelina from Mystery Legends: The Phantom of the Opera (who is actually the daughter of Christine and Raoul, not the Phantom), with lesser muses of Phantasia from Beetlejuice Graveyard Mashup and Phantasma from Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School

@levicomtededogny Monsieur Raoul, le Vicomte de Dogny Name: Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, Wishbone Fandom: Phantom of the Opera, Wishbone Multi-adaptational | Emphasis on Wishbone!Raoul from Pantin’ at the Opera

@quinceymorris-southerngentleman   Even a Man Who is Pure in Heart Name: Quincey P. Morris Fandom: Dracula Book-Based Werewolf AU generally but not always Post-Dracula, some inspiration from The Wolf Man

@chosenonedracula  Vladimir Dominus Imperator Electus Name: Vladimir Dracula  Fandom: Dracula Adaptation: CBBC’s Young Dracula

@whatsweet-musictheymake Welcome to My Home! Name: Count Dracula Fandom: Dracula Multi-adaptational | Emphasis on the original book and Young Dracula

@miserymademeafiend We Are Bound on a Wheel of Pain, Thee and Me Name: Caliban, John Clare, Frankenstein’s Creature Fandom: Frankenstein Adaptation: Penny Dreadful

@doyouwannaplaylions Trust Me, I’m a Psychopath Name: Dr. Henry Jekyll, Mr. Edward Hyde and their descendants  Fandom: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Multi-Adaptational & Multi-Muse | Emphasis on Tom Jackman and Billy Hyde from the BBC miniseries Jekyll and on Robert Jekyll and Hyde from the ITV show Jekyll and Hyde

@universally-monstrous There’s Beauty in the Beasts Fandom: Universal’s Classic Monsters Multi-Muse for Universal’s Classic Monsters including Erik/Erique Claudin The Phantom from the Phantom of the Opera, Count Dracula from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Creature/Frankenstein’s Monster/The Frankenstein Monster/Frankenstein from Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein from The Bride of Frankenstein, Lawrence “Larry” Talbot/The Wolf Man from The Wolf Man, Imhotep/The Mummy from The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dr. Griffin/Jack Griffin/The Invisible Man from The Invisible Man, Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame/Notre Dame de Paris, Jekyll and Hyde from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dorian Gray from The Picture of Dorian Gray ]]

Thomas de Quincey fled his school in Manchester and came to London, aged seventeen. Homeless, he gained access to an empty house on Greek Street and there found a frightened girl. He thought she might be ‘ten years old; but she seemed hunger-bitten and sufferings of that sort often make children older than they are.“ The child was elated to have someone share the dark hours with her, and De Quincey paints a starting picture of what it was like: ‘from the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. ” At night, they slept together [not meant in a sexual context], she tolerably warm, and he in what he called his “dog-sleep,” constantly waking up from fear. The girl was a servant for the tenant of the house. The tenant did not live there but attended in the early to get her to clean his shoes or run errands. His business had failed and he did not dare live at the house full time, yet did not want to take the girl with him to his own lodgings. Perhaps there was not enough room, perhaps he didn’t want to pay her. De Quincey left the house shortly afterwards, but the memory of the little girl remained with him: ‘she was neither pretty nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in manner….I loved the child because she was partner in wretchedness.’ Soon, to quell the pains of his hunger, the seventeen year old De Quincey turned to opium, bought from the chemist at 173 Oxford Street. His only companion during this time was Ann, a fifteen year old prostitute. They wandered the streets together as she plied her business, or sometimes he 'rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porticoes.’ One day, he collapsed in a doorway of Soho Square. He realised he had to leave London and return to his family. Ann walked with him to his coach, but in Golden Square they sat 'not wishing to part in tumult and blaze of Piccadilly.’ He remembered how she 'put her arms around my neck and wept without speaking a word. I hope to return in a week farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night from that, and every night afterwards, she would wait for me at six o'clock near the bottom of Great Titchfield Street, which had been our customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford Street.’ And yet, Thomas had forgotten to ask Ann her last name. On his return to London, he searched and searched but he never found her.

Georgian London: Into the Streets // Lucy Inglis

On the essayist, Thomas de Quincey (most famous for his “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”) and his time in London at the age of 17 in 1803. He had run away from home.