‘Labours of Their Own’: Property, Blood, and the Szgany in Dracula

Abstract

In Dracula (1897), as Jonathan Harker and Professor Van Helsing are discussing ways of gaining access to the London house of Count Dracula, the professor tells a strange and seemingly unimportant story:

I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in your London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authorities help him all they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been. (Stoker, 2003: 313)

In the morning come the Szgany, who have some labours of their own here. (Stoker, 2003: 57)