Frankenstein's Bride

Frank_Final_COV 8/29/07 3:09 PM Page 1 THE SEQUEL TO MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein contin...

Author: Hilary Bailey

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THE SEQUEL TO MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein continues

with Mary Shelley’s unabridged Frankenstein included

(including a copy of the original)

TWO TALES OF TERROR IN ONE!

FRANKENSTEIN’S

Hilary Bailey has created a classic horror story in the vein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—and a monster even more terrifying than the original.

But Goodall slowly realizes that his partnership with Dr. Frankenstein has engulfed him in a dark, ugly history. In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Dr. Frankenstein began to make a woman—a bride for his creation—but then destroyed her. Bailey’s gripping sequel imagines that he actually pursued the plan.

“In this chilling and intelligent sequel to the never-forgotten story, Hilary Bailey imagines what might have happened if Frankenstein had made a woman, a bride, for his male creature… icy, atmospheric and riveting.” —Observer

“Icily convincing” —Mail on Sunday

“Frankenstein’s bride makes Frankenstein’s monster look like a pussycat.” —Sunday Times

FICTION

FRANKENSTEIN’S

Y

BRIDE

ears after he inadvertently set in motion the events that caused a series of deranged murders, Dr. Frankenstein, now living a happy and privileged life, is introduced to young, wealthy Jonathan Goodall. Impressed by Frankenstein’s brilliance, Goodall becomes the doctor’s assistant and confidante. Together they begin to work on restoring the voice of a beautiful young opera singer, little anticipating the strong pull of her feminine charms.

BRIDE

The sequel plus the original

$16.95 U.S. / $21.95 CAN / £9.99 UK

BAILEY a novel

EAN

www.sourcebooks.com

UPC

ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-0870-6 ISBN-10: 1-4022-0870-7

HILARY BAILEY

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Frankenstein’s Bride Hilary Bailey

Frankenstein or the modern prometheus

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

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© 1995, 2007 by Hilary Bailey Cover and internal design © 2007 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover photo © Getty Images/Stone+ Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc. First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1995 Copyright Hilary Bailey, 1995 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc. P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900 Fax: (630) 961-2168 www.sourcebooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bailey, Hilary Frankenstein’s bride / Hilary Bailey. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-1992-4 (trade pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Monsters—Fiction. I. Title. PR6052.A3186F73 2007 823′.914—dc22 2007020746 Printed and bound in the United States of America. CH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Frankenstein’s Bride Hilary Bailey

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ilary Bailey was born in 1936 and was educated at thirteen schools before attending Newham College, Cambridge. Married with children, she entered the strange, uneasy world of sixties science fiction, writing some twenty tales of imagination which were published in Britain, the USA, France and Germany. She has edited the magazine New Worlds and has regularly reviewed modern fiction for the Guardian. Her first novel was published in 1975 and she has since written ten novels and a short biography.

H

Also by Hilary Bailey Polly Put the Kettle On Mrs. Mulvaney Hannie Richards All The Days of My Life Vera Brittain (Biography) As Time Goes By A Stranger to Herself In Search of Love, Money and Revenge The Cry From Street to Street Cassandra The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

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“YOU MUST CREATE A FEMALE FOR ME. . .”

“As I proceeded in my labor it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. “Three years before I had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose disposition I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. “I thought, with a sensation of madness, of creating another like to him and, trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged.” Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley 1818

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Frankenstein and Mary Shelley Hilary Bailey

APRIL 23, 1816, Lord Byron, then twentyeight and already a celebrated poet, left London with his doctor/companion, twenty-one-year-old John William Polidori and headed, fast, in his coach, for the port of Dover and a boat to France. He was leaving under a cloud of debt and scandal, with creditors at his heels. He had just signed papers legally separating from the wife he had married just over a year earlier. There was a child, a daughter. He had been reluctant to sign (money was involved), but gave way to threats made by his wife’s family that if he did not they would reveal his homosexual acts, then punishable by law, and his incestuous affair with his half-sister. Then came the money problems—a legacy expected to go to his wife (which would then have belonged to Byron) had been left to her mother. As soon as his many creditors knew about her inheritance, they descended in force. Thus the flight—they would have no power over him once he was out of the country. Ten days later a similar fleeing party set off for Dover. This consisted of the (less well-known) twenty-four-year-old poet Percy Shelley and his lover, eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin. Mary was the daughter of the radical William Godwin and the feminist writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, who had died when Mary was born. With them, too, was Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Godwin’s second wife, and Shelley and Mary’s eighteen-month-old son. Ten days earlier—on the

A

T DAWN ON

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same day Byron fled—a court judgement concerning family money had gone against Shelley, who was heavily in debt. Shelley’s father, Sir Timothy, had been in constant conflict with his eldest son and heir for many years. Shelley was a declared atheist and radical. He did not believe in private property. At twenty-one, he had eloped with a sixteen-year-old girl, married her and then, only two years later, abandoned her to elope with sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin. What made this situation worse from Sir Timothy’s point of view was that Harriet Shelley’s second child, born after Shelley left her, was a boy, and therefore the heir to his lands and title if Shelley died young. In spite these concerns, though, Sir Timothy granted his wayward son £1,000 a year—enough to live well, but not enough to pay his massive debts. Shelley and Byron planned to meet in Geneva, although the two men did not know each other. In addition to their many similarities—age, social class, radical politics, literary interests, financial, legal and marriage problems—they had something else in common. Only two months before the flight Mary’s step-sister, Claire, had thrown herself at Byron and captured him. The consequences would be disastrous, but for the time being Claire was happy to be orchestrating the meeting between the two men she loved. The poets met and liked each other. Not long after they rented two houses on the shore of Lake Geneva. Byron’s house, the Villa Diodati, stood on a height and was more imposing than the Shelleys’, whose house was lower down, on the shore of the lake. The two houses connected by a path through an olive grove. By June the weather was very bad—a climatic change had affected most of Europe, due to far-off volcanic eruption. The group was forced to stay indoors a great deal while storms raged

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outside. They passed their evenings in speculative, semiphilosophical talk. They spoke of the origins of life; they read ghost stories. But the atmosphere deteriorated. Shelley had a frightening hallucination. Byron began to tire of Claire. Then, one evening after dinner, Byron suggested everyone should write a ghost story. He began his own tale but abandoned it after a few pages. (It was later finished by his doctor, John Polidori.) But Mary, in June 1816, began Frankenstein. At the end of summer the party split up. Shelley returned to England to continue the fight about his grandfather’s will, taking with him the now-pregnant Claire, a copy of Byron’s completed long narrative poem, Childe Harold, for his publisher and, of course, Mary, who now had the early chapters of Frankenstein in her portable writing desk. Byron left for Italy. The Villa Diodati group would not meet again for two years. Mary wrote on doggedly throughout a year of crisis, completing her book in May of the following year, when six months pregnant. The book was published in November 1817 and received much attention. Most of us are so familiar with the images of the iconic film that we think we know what the book, Frankenstein, is like—but we don’t. The book has a circular movement. We begin with letters from an English sea captain to his sister telling her that, with his ship iced in somewhere in Arctic zones, he has seen a huge figure in a sleigh traveling fast in the distance. He and his crew then rescue a man in a second sleigh, about to perish of cold. Asked what he is doing out there, alone on the ice, the traveler, Victor Frankenstein, replies, “To seek one who fled from me.” The end of the book completes the story in the Arctic, but the

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bulk of the narrative is the tale Frankenstein tells the ship’s captain, Captain Walton, about the events leading up to his pursuit of the monster, his own creation, over the ice. He explains to Walton how he grew up in a good family in Switzerland, became, in his teens, a passionate student of chemistry and other sciences and, finally, discovered the secret of imparting life. He constructs, from body parts from the dissecting room and the mortuary, a disfigured creature, eight feet tall. Then, horrified, he immediately abandons his creation, whom he calls “a wretch,” “a miserable monster.” Frankenstein tells Walton of his effort to forget his creation until, suddenly, his much-loved little brother is killed. Frankenstein knows the murderer is his own creation, his monster, but he is too ashamed to confess and allows a trusted servant of the family to be accused and convicted of the crime. Then the monster confronts him, saying that he killed the child by accident. Deformed and terrifying in his appearance, he has had to live as a fugitive, and only by cunning and accident has managed to understand something of the world and learned how to speak. He reproaches Frankenstein. “Remember that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” This is the voice of William Godwin’s daughter and Percy Shelley’s wife, telling us it is cruelty that deforms the human heart; well treated, we could all be good. In fact, Victor Frankenstein repudiates and denounces his creation again and again. Throughout the book all the arguments

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are on the monster’s side, all the aggression and denial on Frankenstein’s. When his creature offers to go to a far country and live quietly there, if Frankenstein will make him a wife, Frankenstein delays and then, having created his female monster, destroys it. Breaks the deal, in fact. The consequences, of course, are awful. The idea we have of Frankenstein’s monster, how we even use the term in everyday speech, is about a scientist creating a destructive force he cannot control. What Mary Shelley is saying is more complex. There are two extraordinary things about the writing of Frankenstein. One: how did a young woman two months short of her nineteenth birthday manage to produce a work that has lasted for two hundred years, as a book, a play, a film, a cartoon. And the other: where did the book come from? As far as the first question is concerned, one thing is certain. Mary Shelley, as an aspiring author, would not have suffered from lack of confidence. Her mother had been a writer. Some years before her birth, her father, having completed his influential Political Justice, followed it with a commercially successful popular novel, Caleb Williams. During Mary’s childhood, William Godwin had become a publisher and her stepmother, Mary Anne Clairmont, had opened a bookshop to help with the precarious family finances. The whole family—Fanny, who was Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Mary herself, her stepmother’s two children, Claire and Charles, and the Godwin son, all lived above the shop. Mary had been brought up among books and writers, had been well educated for a girl of her times and had not been subjected to discrimination on grounds of her sex. Great

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things had always been expected of her. She would have had no inhibitions about taking up her pen. Why is Frankenstein the book it is? The answer is complicated. It is a mixture of conventional forms, scientific and political theory, the author’s background and the author’s thoughts about her life. It is not a simple book. It is a tapestry. Basically, the book is a Gothic novel, based on the then-popular genre involving old houses, mad monks, terrified heroines and specters. The big difference is that Mary Shelley was a child of reason, and lived with Shelley, a man passionately—and unusually, for his time—interested in science. Even as a boy his enthusiasm led him to wire a doorknob at school to give his housemaster, literally, a shock—not bad, considering the discovery of electricity had only been made twenty years earlier and its practical uses were a generation away. Eventually, after several other experiments, the school made him pack up his chemistry books and send them home. Nevertheless, his clear-eyed interest in science did not fail. At Diodati, for example, he had his young son vaccinated against smallpox by Byron’s doctor, even though immunization was a fairly new process and was still regarded with fear and suspicion by many. Possibly the evening discussions at the Villa Diodati about the origins of life were led by Shelley. Possibly the ghost stories were Byron’s, for he was a man for whom science held little interest— at the time, it was considered a subject scarcely fit for a gentleman. Mary Shelley’s “ghost” story, as proposed by Byron, contains no elements of the supernatural. Instead, Victor Frankenstein, perhaps thanks to Shelley, uses science to create his creature.

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Yet it is not science that turns Frankenstein’s creation into a monster. It is a man—Frankenstein, his creator. Still, there are Byronic shadows in Frankenstein, echoes of the gloomy romantic hero, lonely, doomed, set apart from others by some secret sin. In fact, as Mary wrote the opening chapters of Frankenstein Byron was completing his long poem, Childe Harold, the hero of which was just such a man. But in Frankenstein it is unclear whether Victor Frankenstein or his creation represents the doomed hero. During the course of the book each, in his own way, becomes solitary, despairing and exiled. There are religious elements in the book. It would have been impossible to avoid them. Even though the Godwins were freethinkers their whole society was permeated with Christian thought. Laws, morality, the books they read, the paintings they saw, even the language they spoke were influenced by religion. So when the creature calls himself Frankenstein’s “Adam,” acknowledging himself as created and Frankenstein as his creator, we know—and Mary Shelley knew—without saying so, that we are in a place of awe. Frankenstein has taken on the role of God. He has created life. On the other hand, Mary Shelley does not stress this vision. What she seems to be saying about the relationship between the creator and created appears to have as much to do with politics as religion. Her background was radical. Her father was a supporter of the French Revolution (and the American War of Independence). Her mother had actually been in France during the revolution and was author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women. If ever there was a red-diaper baby it was Mary Godwin, then living with Shelley, a man who was libertarian to the core. Frankenstein tells us that science can have as much influence on

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people’s lives as God, that man can improve himself and others by effort, that, as Rousseau asserted, man in a state of nature is virtuous—it is civilization, with its greed, rules and regulations, which perverts natural virtue. The two central ideas modern readers have drawn from the Frankenstein story—one about a frightening, wicked figure more powerful than we are, the other about the mad scientist loosing evil on the world—may tell us more about ourselves than about Mary Shelley. And yet—and yet—what readers get from books is sometimes an underlying message, one the writer was unaware of as he or she wrote. Historically, Mary was an heir of the French Revolution, which both her parents had ardently supported. But liberty, equality and fraternity had ended in the Terror and led indirectly to the rise of Napoleon and fifteen years of European war. When Mary and Shelley—and her sister—eloped in 1814, they found themselves in a France half-destroyed by the conflict. There are lessons parents impart, and there are lessons children learn for themselves. The two do not always mesh. The sight of maimed veterans of the war with Napoleon begging in London streets, the spectacle of a ruined and starving France, might have been more influential than any number of lectures. Perhaps in Frankenstein Mary Shelley was saying: beware of what you loose into the world, whether it is an idea or a monster. Perhaps she was quietly turning herself, page by page as she wrote, from a liberal into a conservative. Apart from that, Mary had been living with Shelley for two years when she began to write. During those years she had seen her first child die after living for only ten days. Scandal, debt and alienation from her family had become part of her life. Mar-

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riage seemed at that time to be out of the question. Shelley’s principles were against exclusivity in sexual relations. He believed in free love. She must have wondered sometimes what would happen to her and her small son if Shelley left or died. And she must have known, just as she started to write, that her stepsister, Claire, was probably carrying Byron’s child. Byron and Shelley, men with status and money behind them, whatever their present difficulties, spoke in large terms and Mary, as an intellectual, could understand them. But there must have been times when as a woman, a mother, without family backing, she feared the future. It has even been suggested that Frankenstein, the new man, represented, in Mary’s mind, the man she was living with, Shelley, with his ideas of social reform and scientific progress. If we accept that Frankenstein and his shadow—doppelganger, evil twin, monster—are one and the same, and that Mary, probably without knowing it, was writing of Frankenstein as a warped version of her husband, then what is she saying about him, or their lives together? More than she knew, or could have known at that time. Frankenstein’s intentions were good; instead, he brought destruction into the world. And so were Shelley’s—but death and disaster were to follow him everywhere he went, until his own tragically early death at the age of twenty-nine. The reality is that Mary Shelley’s book is a concoction of scientific and ethical ideas, of her own past, her present and, I believe, her premonitions about the future. It is impossible to separate the strands, which is perhaps a working definition of inspiration in writing. This is why it has fascinated people for two hundred years.

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Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818. It was dedicated to Mary’s father, William Godwin. The preface was written, also anonymously, by Shelley, as if he had been the author. There was no reason why Mary should not have put her name to the book—authorship was a relatively respectable career for a woman—but it may have been that whatever name she chose, Godwin or Shelley, would have labeled the book as subversive and biased reviewers and editors against it. The two notorious radicals were not household names (there was hardly any such thing in those days of poor communications and mass illiteracy), but they would have been well known to reviewers, newspapers, editors and others. And so would the scandals, which included now the suicide of Shelley’s wife. The book was successful and was eventually turned into a play. Mary does not seem to have referred to it much herself. Perhaps she thought it too mundane, just a potboiler. More likely, she was just trying to endure. On their return to England the Shelleys, and Claire, retired to Bath. Claire’s child was to be born in January, but the party had only been back in England for a month when dreadful news reached them. Fanny, Mary’s older sister (the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and an American lover who had abandoned her) was missing. Shelley tracked her down, but too late: she had killed herself. Two months later news just as bad, if not worse, arrived. Harriet, Shelley’s wife, had also committed suicide. Impregnated by someone who has never been identified, she had drowned herself in a London river. A fortnight later Mary and Shelley married, and another fortnight later Claire’s baby, to be called Allegra, was born. And Mary, through all this, apparently managed to go on writing.

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The disasters were not at an end. The Shelleys (and Claire, of course) went to Italy in the Spring of 1818, almost two years after their visit to Switzerland. With them went Shelley and Mary’s two children—William, aged three, and the baby, Clara—and Claire’s one-year-old daughter by Byron. The plan was that Allegra should be raised by her father and eventually Claire, reluctantly, handed the child over to Byron. During the summer, Mary’s baby, sick and teething, died in Venice after a hurried journey from Tuscany in the heat of summer. A year later, Mary and Shelley’s son, William, died in Rome. Three years later, Allegra, now age four, who had been placed in a convent by Byron, also died. Three months later, Shelley drowned. Byron died two years later, at age thirty-six, in Greece, where he had gone to assist the Greeks in their fight against the occupying Ottoman Turks. It had been eight years since the party of friends had spent their evenings talking in the Villa Diodati. After Shelley’s death, Mary returned to England with her remaining son and lived on a small income from Shelley’s father—which kept her well under his control. Sir Timothy’s aim was to censor Shelley’s work and keep his widow from revealing who he had been and what their lives had been like. In this endeavor he largely succeeded. Mary did write four further novels but none achieved the success of Frankenstein. Meanwhile, Claire Clairmont, penniless, worked in hard circumstances as a governess in Russia. When Sir Timothy Shelley died twenty years later at the age of ninety-one, Mary’s son was his heir. Shelley’s older son, by his first wife, had died of tuberculosis. Sir Timothy’s death had

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unlocked Shelley’s will, in which he had provided for Claire generously (there is little doubt they were lovers), and she was able to return to Britain. Mary died seven years later but Claire, who lost the Shelley legacy through unwise speculation, nevertheless lived on, in Florence, into her eighties. Mary’s son Percy married. He and his wife had no children. Lord Byron’s surviving daughter by his wife grew up to work with Charles Babbington on what is considered to be the earliest version of a computer. This edition of Frankenstein also includes my own sequel to the book, the basis of which is that, instead of destroying the monster’s bride, Frankenstein allows her to live. I suppose I was interested partly in what interests all of us: actions and their consequences. Another motivation was personal. In the late sixties, many years before writing Frankenstein’s Bride, I was living in London with my husband and three children. My husband, a writer, edited a cutting-edge science fiction magazine. Our flat was filled with writers, painters and musicians. We were libertarians and free thinkers; we knew the old world would soon give way to the new, better one. (We knew a lot about Shelley and Byron, too.) On the other hand, although there was no doubt everyone in the world must be, and would be liberated, there was evasion in the midst of the debate, where the women ought to have been. There were perfectly good arguments against treating women as a separately oppressed class but these arguments failed to convince in the face of brutal facts. Men still wrote the manifestos while women still cooked, cleaned, did the laundry and brought

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up the children. Small wonder I took Mary Shelley and her sister Claire to heart. Meanwhile, there were casualties. People were arrested, went mad, committed suicide. We lived from crisis to crisis. And then the music stopped. Authority, which had been lurking all along, biding its time, and the power of money, which had never really abated, resumed full control again. Just as it had in Victorian times. And that is the barely recalled background which was with me when I began to write Frankenstein’s Bride.

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To Joshua Alwyne Compton, Marquis of Northampton, President of the Royal Society, London

August 31st, 1846 Kittering Hall, Nottingham My Lord, You will recall, I believe, our meeting at the house of my wife’s kinsman Mr. Flint. After dinner you made mention of the curious old story of the death of Victor Frankenstein over twenty years ago now, and of the rumors that have since circulated round his name. Perhaps you will recall my confiding privately to you later that evening that I had been a friend of Mr. Frankenstein, had been a witness and sometimes a participant in the events surrounding his death. I added that I had a full account, made from notes concerning the affair kept daily around the turn of the year 1825— that in my possession I had also Mr. Frankenstein’s scientific notes and diagrams made over many years—and also his own account of his life and the events leading up to his death. I believe I told you that my ownership of these papers had made, and was making me increasingly, uneasy. I think I may say that this

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information caused you much astonishment. You were good enough to suggest that if I would send you my account of the life—and death—of Mr. Frankenstein, as well as papers of his I have in my possession, you would be content to read the documents and appraise them, volunteering to give me some idea of what, in your opinion, I should do with the material. I now gladly send you these papers, happy to be able to share the burden of them with a man of such reputation as your own. I fear the contents may shock you gravely, although I venture to guess they will also interest you greatly. I give you my assurance that all you read is true to the best of my belief. I remain, thanking you for your goodness in undertaking the task of reading this account, your obedient servant. My Lord, Jonathan Goodall

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one

I HAVE TO TELL, my Lord, which for twenty years or more I have kept to myself, is a strange and terrifying one. There are those who might say it would be better to leave the story forever untold. Yet, as a man reaches a certain age he must, perforce, settle his debts and fulfill his obligations to those who will live after him. I do not believe that in my case this ordering of affairs should stop at my own gates. I believe it is my duty, my debt to the past, to tell the story I have to tell. So I will relate the history of my friend, the unfortunate Victor Frankenstein, the story of a soul which took itself to perdition, a man who was the author of his own, terrible, downfall. Whether my revelations will bring good or evil in themselves I am unable to predict. My story begins in November 1825—but first I will say something of myself as I then was, a young man of not quite thirty

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years, healthy, not poor, a possessor, I believe, of a cheerful disposition, the only great grief of my life having been, up to that point, the death of my dearly loved mother when I was but fifteen years old. The remainder of my family, my father and two younger sisters, Arabella and Anna, resided near Nottingham at Kittering Hall, in a house which had been owned by our family for more than a hundred years. In that neighborhood lived also many friends and kinsfolk. Our family believed we had been in the neighborhood, farming our land since the Domesday Book. What family does not? But there are records to prove that, if we had not been there quite since the first William’s time, the Goodalls had been for long enough as honest a family as any in the county, being careful landlords, maintaining the common land, showing justice to their tenants and in the years just preceding the time of which I write, having lowered their rents during the bad years following the war against Napoleon. But I digress. Suffice it to say the family did its duty and over the years produced its own share of honest doctors, lawyers, magistrates and the like. In the later years of my grandfather’s life, though, came a change in the family fortunes—not, as these words normally mean for the worse but for the better. Grandfather discovered coal on our land, whereupon fields which had formerly produced a modest income through tilling and grazing became the source of considerable profit to us. To cut the story short, then, that black crop from our fields made of me a young man with no need to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow or the scratch of my pen. I was thus able to pursue a course of study without care. It was, as it turned out, through these studies that the connection between myself and Victor Frankenstein arose.

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Having almost enjoyed my schooldays, which is, I believe, as much as any man can honestly say, I rejoiced in my years at Oxford. In addition to the normal pursuits of a man in his university years such as friendships, suppers, rowing, horseplay and disturbing the peace of the worthy, I took greatly to the study of languages, not for themselves alone but for what they indicate about the lives of men and the operations of the many different societies in which they live. So I graduated from Oxford not merely skilled in the arts of port and claret—and love, which I took lightly, though, I hope, leaving neither myself nor my beloved of the time any worse off than either of us had been before—but also as something of a scholar in philology. In the beginning was the Word, says St. John the Divine. The study of language is the study of man, for it is language which distinguishes man from the beast, language alone which allows us to convey higher thoughts, scientific, religious or poetic. Through the study of languages and their origins we may learn much of ourselves. King James I, it is said, suffered a baby to be put in a pit for seven years, without seeing any human being during all that time, on the grounds that when pulled up the child might speak Latin! I came to London to work on my dictionary of Aramaic, the very tongue in which Our Lord spoke. My friend David Hathaway, a printer and publisher, has since published this work—though at the time of which I speak he was still waiting for me to complete it. One evening I attempted to explain my theories of languages to my landlady Cordelia Downey. She, I am afraid, laughed at me. “Why,” she exclaimed, looking up, I believe from the mending of her little daughter’s stockings, and fixing me with her large, bright, blue eyes, “language is a simple thing, we learn it as

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babies, babbling and mumbling as we attempt to copy the speech of our elders. And that,” said she, “Mr. Goodall, is that.” “Then why are there so many tongues?” I questioned. “Why do we not all, from here to China, use the same language? What of that speaking with tongues when, as the Bible tells us, each man in the crowd at Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, wherever he came from and whatever tongue he spoke, could understand the other? What of oracular speech, what of speech when we dream—whence come those voices when the conscious mind is not in control?” Well, I regret to say that Mrs. Downey offered no answer to these questions. Instead she gave a puzzled frown, followed by a dismissive noise—I will not call it a snort—and then turned to cutting out a small dress for her daughter. Women in general have little taste for the speculative, preferring the here and now of things. Yet it was those studies of mine, however arcane they may have appeared to Mrs. Downey, which led to my part in the sad and horrifying tale of Victor Frankenstein and, I believe, changed my view of life completely. However, at the time when my story begins I was a contented man, the times we lived in forced no great efforts on us. The war with France was over; the country at peace. As I look back, to use an image drawn from science, I see my younger self as unshaped and undefined, a mass of gases, so to speak, made up of my own natural qualities and of my circumstances in life, waiting only for the catalyst which would turn those gases into solid form—my later self. To think that these changes came through the study of philology! For that was the reason why, to take you to the heart of the tale, that on that November afternoon of which I spoke earlier I found myself walking through rapidly swelling river fog, at dusk, beside the

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Thames, looking longingly but with little hope for a conveyance I could hire to take me back to my lodgings in Gray’s Inn Road. I had arrived by the riverside on foot to visit my friend Dr. Victor Frankenstein at his house in Cheyne Walk. I regretted having to make my way home by the same means, for the fog thickened, it grew ever darker and I was alone. There was not a soul about as I trod the road which lies beyond the northern bank of London’s great river. Missing the warmth and hospitality of Victor and Elizabeth Frankenstein’s house, I hurried on, not altogether happy about the prospect of a dark and foggy walk through the suburbs of London. The fields, manufactories and market gardens beside the road on which I was traveling were deserted at that season and hour. All were places where a footpad or some other assailant could lurk undetected—and I had no stick or cudgel with me. It was at this point that, looking down towards the strand, I spotted, by the light of a flaming torch which had been set up on a small wharf below the road, a massive and extraordinary figure. He stood on a small stone quay built out a little distance into the river. On this tiny wharf, only about fifteen feet wide and twenty across, men were unloading large crates and some barrels from a barge which had come from upriver. In astonishment I gazed at this monstrous figure, almost six-anda-half feet tall, I judged, and correspondingly massive, clad in what seemed like a long, ragged black coat with flapping sleeves. He was bare-headed, and dark, flowing locks hung to his shoulders. As the barge slipped and slopped at anchorage this man I noted with such awe and disbelief was bending into the vessel, seizing wooden boxes from within, then, with enormously powerful movements, half-throwing them on to the

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jetty. The weight of the boxes to an ordinary man could be judged by the efforts his companions were making with the others. Where they strained, the other threw them about like so many children’s bricks. There came a cry, as the men hurled one on to a pile on the jetty, as if the crate had struck, or almost struck, another man. Yet, as if in a frenzy to get done, he continued to haul them out, not acknowledging the protest. Then came another cry. The ogre (for so he seemed), then clambered in an ungainly way into the barge, apparently dragging a crippled leg behind him, and went on unloading from inside the vessel. I watched him stagger a little as the water moved the barge, then raise a cask above his head and almost hurl it into the arms of another man, who reeled and nearly lost his footing. Someone, to provide more illumination, set light to a pile of wood and tarred rope on the jetty. Just as the resultant stench struck me, the light caught this vast creature, flickered away with the wind, then caught him again, revealing him more clearly. The face was heavy-browed, heavyjawed and seemed twisted somehow, as if malformed at birth. It was a face such as one sees sometimes on those unfortunate enough to have come into the world feeble-minded. I could not see his eyes. They were hidden under jutting brows. His shoulderlength black hair blew about in the wind. I noted his feet were bare—cruel in such weather. As he stood on that swaying deck I thought of some old figure from mythology, half-brute, half-human. So seized was I by this extraordinary spectacle I forgot for a moment my predicament, alone in freezing fog and darkness, yet as it came back to me, to my horror, the creature threw back his head and gave a great howl, a howl of agony. I do not know how to describe this sound.

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It was not the cry of a wolf or other beast but the cry of a man, as if in unbearable pain. And as he howled he pointed an arm in a flapping sleeve, in my direction. I froze—but no—he had not seen me, found some mad prejudice against me. He was pointing beyond me, and a little to my right, up the strand, across the road in the direction of the houses of Cheyne Walk, the direction whence I had just come. The bargee, at the head of his barge while the off-loading proceeded, did not hesitate. He leapt instantly from his position, crossed the body of his vessel and brought up his arm and crashed some heavy object, a bludgeon or a piece of wood across the side of the head of the pointing figure. Then, shouting something I could not properly hear, he did the same thing again, with all his force. In the face of the blows which would have toppled a normal man, this ogre dropped his pointing arm and threw it round his head, to ward them off—and went back to his work again. And I, suddenly more afraid of all this than I was of my lonely walk, hurried away, dreading footpads less than something so terrifying, so pathetic and, I sensed, so contrary both to Nature and civilization. Yet I told myself, walking the ruts of the road from Chelsea, this was surely only a sad example of an idiot, a poor creature lacking in his wits, distorted in body, face and mind; no doubt hideously exploited for his strength by his fellow man. He would be paid little and beaten when he would not work. I pitied him and pondered why God, in his wisdom, had seen fit to make so many of his creatures fall so short of the Divine. Came the heretical thought that perhaps our world is not controlled by God but is an arena for the eternally waged battle between God and his opponent. Had that creature on the strand been created at some time or in some place where the Devil

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reigned? Men have been burned at the stake for saying aloud what I then thought. I did not know then that man was not made either by God or the Devil, but by a far more terrible creator—another man. I sped my steps along the river, through the wastes of Pimlico and eventually to the Strand, where the increasing light from windows and busier streets encouraged me. I slowed my pace and, much in need of warmth and company, I broke my journey at the Voyagers’ Club in Covent Garden, where I enjoyed, by an encouraging fire, an hour’s respite with friends of a like turn of mind, speaking of fossils with Knight, and the natural roots of our language with Smith. I mentioned to no one the sight I had just seen. It seemed at the time to be one of those scenes one witnesses, a scene that produces a little, momentary curiosity and then is done, forgotten. Some days later the grim story I must now relate began in earnest, but forgive me if I go back from that figure on the waterfront at Chelsea to speak of the previous summer, when the world was still young and I first met my friend Victor Frankenstein.

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VICTOR MET on a cricket field! Though Swiss and having passed most of his life in that country or in others more remote, Victor, having arrived with his wife in this country only a few years earlier, was promptly introduced to the game by Hugo Feltham, who had been a fellow student at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany. Hugo had later come on to Oxford, which is where we two had met and become friends. Thus it came about that, as soon as I arrived at Hugo’s home, Old Hall, at Longtree in Kent, I was directed by his mother, on Hugo’s instructions, to the village green. Her message was that the annual cricket match between Upper and Lower Longtree, always hotly contested, was now taking place. Hugo, she told me, urgently required my services as a batsman, one of the team having been enticed away by the other side, yet another having absconded from the village with another man’s wife.

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Leaving my horse at the house I walked through the pleasant grounds of Old Hall. A small gate in the wall took me through the fields of the home farm, where corn was already tall under the July sun. I passed the church and went down the village street, a matter of a draper’s forge and two inns, and arrived at the village green, where stood a mighty oak of the kind always described as having sheltered King Charles I when in flight from his enemies; and beyond that, what a heart-lifting sight lay ahead of me! Spread out over the greensward in the sunshine were thirteen men, some in white trousers and shirts, others in their dayto-day moleskins, with flannel shirtsleeves rolled up. Even as I stood beneath the massive oak, watching, I saw a burly fellow in brown trousers with a white shirt open at the throat swing his bat and send the ball flying high in the air, away from where I stood and into a clump of trees on the other side of the green. I heard Hugo’s enthusiastic voice—“Well played, Simcox.” Hugo himself lay extended on the grass in a cluster of spectators and players, which included some ladies in pale dresses and straw hats. Spotting me as I walked towards them, Hugo leapt to his feet and came towards me, arms extended, beaming and pushing his long fair hair from his face in the way I so well remembered. “Jonathan!” he cried. “Welcome, thrice welcome, my dear fellow.” “Your mother informs me that you need me,” I responded. “We do indeed, my dear,” he told me, “for we’re almost out and fifty runs behind. Only three men to go. Those ruffians of Lower Longtree have seduced away our blacksmith, who is to marry the daughter of the captain of their team. We lost a second player in another affair of the heart, he and his inamorata having left for London on Tuesday. Love has no scruples, as we know.

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At the wicket now is one of our footmen, a sturdy fellow in his father’s trousers, which he wears for luck, and our local innkeeper, who, you will see, shows all the signs of having overimbibed his own wares. He describes himself as feeling as if struck by a cricket ball, which he shortly will be—“Ah!” he exclaimed as the other team cried out, “There! He’s lost his wicket. Now it’s up to you, Jonathan. We have only you and my good friend Victor now between us and defeat. Let us demand a pause of a few minutes while I take you to meet him.” And Hugo, signaling to the captain of the other side, led me across to the group on the grass. I loved Hugo, an excellent friend and a truly happy man. He had little to make him unhappy, coming, as he did, from a good, sound family, heir to a prosperous estate and enjoying the love of his family and his charming wife Lucy, mother of two healthy boys. Yet, even as I followed him across the grass I reflected that one man, given the best of circumstances, can still find misery, even ruin if he so wishes, while another can often wring contentment from disaster. We now came up to Hugo’s party, where his wife sat on a stool, her boys at her feet; his father was ensconced in dignity on a chair placed there specially for him. After I had greeted them, Hugo said, “Now meet my friend Victor Frankenstein and his wife Elizabeth, whom we all love.” Thus, for the first time, I encountered Victor Frankenstein. His wife first—a delightfully dressed, very pretty blonde woman, seated on a stool, with a little boy of about two, very like her, on her lap. Then—Victor, who stood to greet me. He was a tall, wellknit man, with dark brown hair, an oval face tanned by the sun and large brown eyes of the most alert, sympathetic kind. He smiled, showing white, even teeth and took my hand in a firm

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grasp. At first sight he was a man the gods had smiled on, a man with all the virtues. Later, I found him a little serious, a little melancholy, lacking the lightness and humor so prized by Englishmen, but none the worse for that. Yet on that sunny day, as Hugo pushed me forward on to the pitch, thrusting a bat in my hand, I saw no traces of that fundamental gravity of Victor’s as he smiled and said, “Come on then. It is all for you to do now.” Then he added, “Let us talk later—I have been abroad for a good many years, studying languages. Hugo tells me you have interests of that kind.” And, “I look forward to it,” said I as we parted and I advanced to the wicket. There are those, not a few, who grow weary at accounts of cricket matches, fencing bouts and the hedge-by-hedge, gate-bygate tales of the last hunt, so I will abridge my story of our narrow defeat at the hands of Lower Longtree. Suffice it to say that a twisting ball from the hands of the defaulting blacksmith had Simcox the footman out, so I was joined on the field by Victor Frankenstein. As we had walked over to meet him Hugo had explained he put him in late, so as not to offend local susceptibilities, not wishing it to appear he had imported a talented visitor, and a foreigner to boot, to win the match. But I had been skeptical about the gifts of Frankenstein, since I knew he had not learned the game in youth. He proved to be one of those individuals gifted with a natural coordination of hand and eye, capable of shining at any game after very little practice. He had a tall, agile body, not apparently muscular, but stringy and wiry and was soon driving the ball all over the village green. Thus as the sun went down and the shadow of the old oak lengthened and the ladies donned mantles and shawls against the slight chill in the air, we contrived to turn our useful alliance into a pleasant

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few runs. When I was caught out by the treacherous blacksmith we left the field, defeated but not humiliated. I shall not easily forget that afternoon, the pleasure of the game, the peace of an English village at play in summer. The cheerful day went on with a barrel of beer produced for the teams and spectators, lemonade for the ladies and children. We gentry soon retired, leaving the villagers to their own celebrations, and returned to Old Hall for a good dinner, with much laughter and conversation. After dinner, as we sat in the drawing-room with the doors open on to the terrace, the pretty Elizabeth Frankenstein delighted us with some charming songs, Lucy Feltham moved us much with her singing of The Ash Grove and we gentlemen rent the ether with some lusty choruses from The Beggar’s Opera. The guests departed, the household went to bed, but Victor and I repaired to the library where we talked over our wine into the next morning. We spoke of science and our common interest in philology. He himself had spent seven years touring among the Indian tribes of America and attempting to put together a dictionary of their various tongues. Then he had met his wife in Boston and come to settle in England. I find it hard now, so many years later, to sum up exactly the quality of Victor’s mind and conversation. Such things are hard to express. His intelligence was lively as quicksilver, his memory prodigious, yet employed to make connections between one subject and another, constructively, not a mere exercise in the recollection of facts. He expressed himself attractively, his voice low and pleasant and his choice of words and phrases felicitous. When I retired to bed later that night, or rather in the early morning, my mind was buzzing with ideas, all inspired by Victor.

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What changes, what advances could man not make if only we applied sufficiently our intellect and will? “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.” Bliss indeed. What a day it had been, I thought, as I fell asleep—carefree and full of all the joys man is heir to: enjoyment of the open air, song, laughter and thought. Yet it was that day of happiness which led me on to others, some of the most gloomy and frightful days of my life. My poor Victor—it is hard not to believe it was his very virtues which brought about his ruin. He had such energy, such restless curiosity, such a questioning spirit—qualities which may bring greatness to a man and benefits of many kinds to others but which in his case brought him to destruction. Victor was imbued with that feeling of man as his own god, man as capable of constructing his own fate, becoming master of all knowledge or reorganizing society according to his own principles and beliefs. This was one of the legacies of the thinking of a previous century, which in effect threw first France, then all Europe, into turmoil. Not for Victor the common mistakes of youth—riding hell for leather over the country, breaking his horse’s neck (or his own), spending wildly, falling into the hands of money-lenders, folly over women, ending in disgrace or exile. No—Victor’s vices had been virtues stood on their head. In the name of science he challenged the gods and lost all. Having gone so late to bed I was late up next morning (although Victor, I learned, had risen early as usual for he needed very little sleep). I was on the terrace drinking some coffee when Hugo joined me, dressed for church. He asked if I would attend with his family. Victor and Elizabeth had already said they would go. My agreement would mean, declared Hugo, that Old

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Hall would make as good a display of church-going on Sunday as they had at cricket the previous day. How had I enjoyed my conversation with Victor, Hugo asked. I replied I had rarely enjoyed talking so much to any man and spoke with great enthusiasm of Victor’s rare intelligence, learning and liveliness of mind. Victor, I said, appeared to me to be nothing less than a genius—all the more so as he had told me he came late to the study of philology, his earlier studies having been all in the natural sciences. Hugo did not answer me immediately but after a pause said, rather gravely, “You are right, Jonathan. When at Ingolstadt Victor was immersed in studies leagues away from words and languages.” Then he cheered somewhat and embarked on an entertaining story of their student days, the substance of which was that, as a young and extravagant student, far from home, he had overspent his normal allowance and this, compounded with the late arrival of money from home, had prompted his landlady, a ferocious Swiss woman, to become severe with the impecunious English student. In short, she had said if he did not pay the rent immediately, Hugo would find himself in the street. He had therefore rushed to Victor’s laboratory and beaten urgently on the door, intending to ask for a loan until his money should arrive. “And so immersed in his studies was he,” Hugo told me with a smile, “that though I knew he was inside he did not answer the door to me. I must have hammered on his door in vain for some twenty minutes, calling out his name and my own. I saw his lights, yet he was too engrossed to hear me. That is the nature of the man, that is the nature of his concentration on his work—” “And you?” I then enquired. “And your uncharitable landlady?” “She ejected me,” Hugo smiled. “I spent an uncomfortable two nights in a graveyard with my baggage around me until my

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money at last arrived from England, whereupon I secured much better lodgings in the town, where the landlady’s soup contained meat, her bread was light and white and her daughter a very pretty girl.” “You are indeed a man to turn disaster into good cheer,” I said to him affectionately. “Alas, though,” he responded. “That was the last time for seven years I saw Victor. For once I was settled in my new lodgings it was soon time for a brief visit to England. When I returned to Ingolstadt and went to find him, he was gone. While I was away, he had become ill, gravely ill, and gone home to his family.” It was at this point that Victor himself, dressed in sober black for church, came across the lawn towards us, smiling up at the terrace. I greeted him, yet, as I called down to him the sun was crossed by a cloud, the light changed, a darkness fell over the garden. Later the party for church, Hugo’s parents Mr. and Mrs. Feltham, his Lucy and their sons, Victor and Elizabeth Frankenstein and myself walked pleasantly through the fields to the service. Once it was over and we had knelt for a little while in private prayer, as is customary, we left with the rest of the congregation—all but Victor, who remained on his knees in the pew. I do not know how long the black-clad figure remained thus as we waited for him outside. His wife did not comment on her husband’s long praying, no one else cared to refer to it, though I noted Lucy Feltham had some difficulty in preventing her sons from remarking about their delayed dinner. Eventually, Victor gravely joined us and we returned to the house, he very silent as we went. The older Mrs. Feltham told us only a cold repast was provided. She was one of the school who held that the servants

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of a house, too, should keep the Sabbath as a day of rest. Hugo asked if she would have any objection to our spending the afternoon by the river bank and then she laughed and said she felt a day of rest need not mean a day of misery and long faces, with children trapped in the house as if in prison, doing nothing but read the Bible. What better way, she demanded, to turn a natural heathen child into a grown-up heathen in earnest? So that afternoon the younger members of the parry repaired to the river bank. It was there I heard for the first time from Victor’s lips the name of Maria Clementi.

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I RECALL VIVIDLY the ladies on the river bank in their light dresses, the sparkling of that narrow brilliant piece of water, and the fringe of mighty trees overhung by the sun on the opposite bank. I almost hear the laughter of the children, see the two bigger boys, trousers rolled up, paddling with their fishing-nets in the shallows, watch Elizabeth Frankenstein beside them, holding her skirt high with one hand and leading her own little boy to wade in the sparkling stream. Lucy Feltham sat apart from us, surrounded by that clutter of articles ladies feel compelled to carry with them on afternoons—a hat, some salve in case of stings and bites, apples for the horses on the way home. Hugo, Victor and I sat on the grass a little further off, by request of the ladies who preferred to be at a distance from Hugo’s old pipe, which he now puffed at, sending a plume of smoke up through the crystalline air, watching it waft over the water to diffuse, at last, into the trees beyond. We

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sat in contented silence until Victor turned to me, saying, “Jonathan, after our conversation last night a thought came to me. I wonder if you would be interested in joining me in a scientific project I have in view?” “I should be more than happy to consider it,” I responded warmly. Hugo, glad to have been the author of a new friendship, beamed at both of us. “The two cleverest men of my acquaintance in alliance,” he said. “An interesting prospect.” “You do me too much justice,” I told him and knew I spoke the truth. I have always had a certain facility, but my own gifts, compared with Victor’s detailed learning and wide-ranging, speculative ability, were as nothing. Where he roved freely, I toddled after him like a little child. Victor told us, “The matter concerns Miss Maria Clementi, of whom I am sure you have heard.” We had. Who, at that time, had not? One spring she had arrived in London to appear at Drury Lane and taken the town by storm as Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera. On one occasion six thousand people arrived at the theatre to purchase tickets and the manager, fearing riot, had called the militia to keep order. She was invited everywhere, mobbed everywhere she went. A man, it was rumored, fell and fatally cracked his skull in Bond Street one day because, trying to see into Miss Clementi’s carriage as it passed, he had stood on a friend’s shoulders, fallen off and hit his head against the corner of a building. When she sang her voice was so pure and sweet and lifted to the high notes of the songs so effortlessly that she might have been a bird. Her charming face and figure and her elegant dancing were just as captivating—her grace, lightness and suppleness were an angel’s, not a mortal woman’s. I had seen her as Polly Peachum, and been enraptured, coming home in a daze

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with the memory of her thistledown body and her enchanting voice. I had become, as my landlady Mrs. Downey frankly told me, a slave to Maria Clementi. And so, I told her, were all the men in London. To which she replied rather tartly, “I don’t wonder at it, for they all know Miss Clementi cannot speak, and perhaps that is a state all men would prefer in women.” For Maria Clementi was dumb. She could sing most beautifully in several languages, yet she had no other power of communication at all. Report had it that she could generally understand what was said to her, though when she could not, a sweet yet uncomprehending smile would cross her face. There was apparently no organic reason for her silence. At one time some had claimed she pretended to be dumb for reasons of her own. But this ceased after a performance when she had come too close to the flaring lamps at the foot of the stage and flames had caught the gauzy dress she wore. Then, for moments, as the orchestra ceased to play and screams and cries arose in the audience, the graceful figure of Maria Clementi stood there engulfed in fire, and though her face bore an expression of the utmost terror and her two hands grasped at her throat, no sound, no scream or plea for help came from her lips. The figure was only seconds later smothered by a cloak fetched from the side of the stage. Miss Clementi was mercifully largely unhurt. But all knew then that if she had been capable of making any sound, that would have been the moment she must have done so. Whether because of her affliction or merely as a result of her own temperament, the singer had an excellent personal reputation. Our stage was then, as The Journal put it, “tinsel.” At the time we had in England no dramatists worth the name, and, while on the Continent they had their Webers, Rossinis, Bellinis,

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musicians of the utmost genius, we had few composers either. We had instead performances of Macbeth with mimes and dances between the acts, the spectacle of Master Betty “the infant Roscius” and his tribe playing Hamlets and Ophelias at the age of nine before audiences of such unparalleled noisiness and coarseness that foreigners turned away in horror. Oh, those Columbinas, Lucindas and Aphrodites—more prized for their bosoms and legs than their talent—Oh, those Romeos and Juliets, played as ballet-burlettas, those King Lears acted by children! We pined for the days of dramas played by men such as Garrick, for musical performances, grave—or gay— which a man could watch without the interruptions of a ballet, a clog-dance, a hornpipe, a low comedian or an exhibition of whistling, put on as if for children needing constant variety without meaning. Plainly, in this atmosphere of folly and craving for novelty, a young, beautiful and adulated actress might lose her head. Yet Miss Clementi contrived in such a poor environment to bring some inspiration, some artistry, to the London stage. By all accounts she lived quietly with a loyal lady companion and attended church regularly, though never going to the same church twice, since any church she might attend regularly would be mobbed by her admirers. She steered clear of society, in the main, took no lovers and stayed away from those haunts some actresses love to visit—the race courses, prize fights, gamblinghouses, places no decent woman would frequent. Perhaps her affliction protected her from these follies. Hearing Victor mention Miss Clementi’s name at first surprised me. Then I thought I understood his reasons and asked, “Do you wish to try to restore her voice?”

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“Restore it or perhaps produce a voice she has never had,” he answered. “Yes—that is my ambition. If successful the attempt would of course greatly benefit Miss Clementi, enabling her to lead a normal life among her fellows. But there is more—and this is why I would wish you to join me in my efforts, Jonathan. Imagine—just imagine—the information to be gained from studying a hitherto voiceless person (except when she sings the words of others on the stage) slowly gaining the power of speech. What might we not learn of grammar, of the meanings of words and their implications, simply by being present as the mute woman began to speak? Imagine studying an adult person who would be able to tell us all that passed in her mind as she achieved speech! Such a chance might arrive only once in a lifetime.” “As scientific experiments go,” Hugo said robustly, “it would be by no means unpleasant, a good deal less nasty then cutting up an eyeball or playing with noxious gases, for example. Many a man would pay guineas for the chance of sitting in a room with Miss Clementi for any reason. You are a bachelor, Jonathan. I advise you strongly to take up this burden.” I assured him I knew my duty; if my studies compelled me to enter the society of one of London’s most beautiful and admired women, I would not shirk it. I then turned to Victor and asked him how the attempt to find Miss Clementi’s voice had come about. He told me, “I visited a performance by Miss Clementi some months ago. It was a piece based on a theme from the Commedia dell’arte, vulgarly done and redeemed only by Miss Clementi’s performance. I knew of course of the dreadful incident of the fire at the theater and of Miss Clementi’s complete inability to make

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any sound, even when in extreme pain and danger. It came to me that her being unable to speak did not merely shut her out from communication with her fellow creatures, but could imperil her in situations where she could not appeal for help. I was seized with pity for this poor young creature, who, for all her gifts and beauty, lacks that one faculty we all possess, use daily and take completely for granted. “Consequently I wrote to her, saying that I understood she had sought help from many sources and that whatever advice or treatment she had received had proved useless, but that I thought and hoped I might be able to help her, train her, to learn to speak. “I said I would be more than happy to arrange some meetings between us to make the attempt, if she would do me the honor of agreeing. There was a silence at first, until some ten days later when her companion, a respectable woman of about forty, the widow of a captain who fought against Napoleon, I heard, called at my house. She told me that since the fire the lady, Miss Clementi, had been afflicted with melancholy. At first when asked its cause she had refused to respond in the manner she used, but the sadness persisted and in the end her companion asked her if her dumbness was the cause. Then she sighed and nodded her head, pointing sadly at her throat. The companion, Mrs. Jacoby, rediscovered my letter and asked Miss Clementi if she would like help in finding a voice. Receiving her approval she came to visit me. It emerged they had both attended a lecture I had given on the structure of languages and the relationships between one tongue and another.” “At the Royal Society in June,” I interjected. “I read of it. It was a most excellent occasion, was it not; the room packed with

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the most brilliant men and women in London, both eminent scientists and the fashionable? I believe the King himself attended, Victor. Is that not so?” “His Majesty did me that honor,” Victor agreed. “And have you met Miss Clementi?” I asked. Victor was rueful. “I have, on one occasion, but we made little progress. This is my reason for asking for your help, Jonathan. I should dearly like someone with your gifts and knowledge to help me.” “What is Miss Clementi like?” demanded Hugo. “Very beautiful,” Victor said. “And refined, quietly dressed and beautifully mannered. She has so far visited me only once and then, alas, in spite of all my best efforts, she only sighed, tried to speak, sighed, made another, unsuccessful attempt. In the end, she looked at me with such an air of sadness and failure it was quite heartbreaking. She gazed at me as if I held the key to some door she could not open for herself. If you could attend our meetings, Jonathan, study them, and reveal your observations to me, I would be most happy.” Flattered and full of enthusiasm, I agreed whole-heartedly to Victor’s suggestion and we settled that the next time Miss Clementi visited him in London I would be present. Two months, however, elapsed before our first encounter took place. During August I stayed with my family in Nottingham. It was said that Miss Clementi and her companion were at a spa in Germany, where she was resting after the strains of her earlier season in London and before a Continental tour. I returned to London in late September, but by that time Miss Clementi had begun her visits to Austria, Germany and Italy, where she was rapturously received.

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Back in London I continued to work quietly on my dictionary of the Aramaic tongue, that vast and demanding task I had begun with all the enthusiasm of youth some five years before and which now, many years after its inception, was nearing completion and eagerly awaited by Mr. Hathaway, who would publish it. It was during this period of quiet study that I mentioned to Mrs. Downey Victor’s suggestion of helping him find a cure for Maria Clementi. I must explain I had dwelt in her narrow house in Gray’s Inn Road for two years, occupying a pair of rooms on the floor immediately below the servants’ bedrooms. It was a modest household. I was the only lodger; Mrs. Downey and her seven-year-old daughter Flora had their bedrooms on the floor below my own, and we sat and took our meals together in the rooms on the ground floor. Mrs. Downey, the widow of a solicitor, was herself twenty-eight years old, only a year younger than myself, and this put us on confidential terms. There are those who might question the propriety of a young widow, alone but for the child and the servants, taking a bachelor of her own age as a lodger. Indeed, at the time there were those who criticized our arrangement. Nevertheless, it suited us very well. Mrs. Downey, though poor, was of a good family notorious since Elizabeth’s time for going its own way without concern for the opinions of others. In our household there was no need to state that men and women were honorable by nature, needing no duennas, chaperones or magistrates to guide their conduct. This assertion of freedom was characteristic perhaps of the age we lived in, which still had vestiges of the old libertarian thinking of the previous century. The narrow-minded and suspicious might have said I should not have spent so many evenings alone with Mrs.

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Downey in her comfortable parlor at the back of the house—the dining-room being the room closer to the street. But as a man with loving sisters I was accustomed to and enjoyed the company of women, for, if less weighty and informed, it is often more lively and civilized than that of men. Indeed, we often joked of being like brother and sister. To put it bluntly I believe I was lonely and so, I think, was she. Thus we drifted into the habit, when neither had other plans for the evening, into sitting together while she sewed or mended and I read. At the time of which I speak it was late summer. We had both but recently returned to London, I having been in Nottingham and she having spent August with her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Frazer, in Scotland. So one evening when we were together I mentioned my expectation that now I was back in London a meeting between Miss Maria Clementi and Victor Frankenstein might take place and that I might be present. I explained the reasons for this meeting but instead of expressing interest Mrs. Downey raised her head from a little dress she was making for her daughter and gravely said to me, “Perhaps I should not take the liberty of commenting, but if you will allow me, Mr. Goodall, to speak to you as a sister might, I must admit this affair makes me uneasy on your behalf. I do not wish to impugn Mr. Frankenstein, for I have never heard anything but good of him from your lips or those of others. Miss Clementi is also reputed to be a most excellent woman. But I am afraid this scientific attempt to restore Miss Clementi’s speech alarms me, though I do not know why. Please be cautious and forgive me for producing warnings, like Cassandra, with no reasons for them.” I answered, smiling, “Then, addressing you as a brother might, Mrs. Downey, I think you should find some.”

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She sighed, let her sewing fall into her lap and gazed at me earnestly, frowning. “Well then,” she said, “and risking your disapproval, I will say I do not altogether trust Miss Clementi’s mute tongue.” “You heard of the occasion when her dress caught fire and she was still not able to speak or cry out,” I pointed out. “I did,” she agreed, and here her tone took on the tone of a lawyer, perhaps that of her late husband, “but you will not deny I’m sure that a sudden shock may strike some people dumb, just as some people instinctively shout and cry out. Nevertheless, that is not what perturbs me. I merely wonder if she is willfully dumb; if she does not understand our language and does not wish that to be known; if indeed, she is truly mute.” “That may be so,” I said, “but if by chance she could speak, but will not, is that any reason for your anxiety—which I much appreciate—on my account?” “There are no reasons I can express,” she told me. “I feel only you may be entering deep waters.” “Men enter deep waters in pursuit of knowledge and truth,” I replied—too lightly, too arrogantly, I now know. “If we all stayed perpetually in the shallows, near the shore, few discoveries would be made.” My landlady picked up her sewing again, but only looked at it with a puzzled frown. She said, to the little red dress she was making, rather than to me, “I am a little surprised by what you told me of Mr. Frankenstein spending such a long time on his knees in the church after you had all attended the service. Some twenty minutes I think you said he spent alone in the church.” “An unusual criticism to make of a man,” I responded, “that he spent too long praying in a church.”

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“Not a criticism,” she said, “but to me that indicates a heavy conscience.” “Oh!” I think I exclaimed, and I believe I threw myself back in my chair impatiently, as if I were truly arguing with one of my sisters. “How you women twist a man’s behavior—put in a bad light anything which removes itself from the narrow welltrodden track. What you not know you fear. While we men must live to extend the boundaries, explore, discover—” Cordelia replied, with restraint, “Perhaps you are right, Mr. Goodall. I am sorry if my comments have offended you.” And she began to sew again, diligently this time, and, noting that my further attempts at conversation were not well met, I took myself off to bed. I own, and I am ashamed to admit it now, that I entertained the half-pleased thought that what my dear Mrs. Cordelia Downey most feared about my future meeting with Miss Clementi was the effect the other lady’s beauty and charm might have on me—that though, in sport, we referred to each other as brother and sister, the delightful Mrs. Downey was, in fact, jealous! Fool that I was, retiring in vanity to my bed! Jealous or no, Mrs. Downey’s impression that involvement with Victor Frankenstein and Maria Clementi might prove dangerous to me was to prove all too true. As I write this memoir I sometimes forget how young we all were at the time. Neither Hugo, Victor nor I had yet reached thirty; Cordelia was twenty-eight and Maria Clementi only twenty-four. Not only were we young (though old enough to know better, I admit), but we were still tainted with the spirit of the Bastille and all the new thought which had swept over Europe since. Crowns and kingdoms and all established order

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had toppled during the Napoleonic era. Scepter and crown had come tumbling down so why should we not throw overboard all we did not like and make our world anew, in the light of pure reason? Why could we not discover more, understand more and change the world according to our new-found knowledge? Let us, we thought, treat our world like an old house—tear down the ancient hangings, brush away the cobwebs, fling wide the windows, allow in the pure air of truth and knowledge. That was the thinking, I believe, which led me to ignore Mrs. Downey’s warnings. She was no philosophical reasoner, no student of her times or any other, merely a young woman of some natural intelligence and more greatness of heart, sobered early by a marriage not altogether happy, followed by widowhood, and the care of a young daughter. I, a man with a good fortune and good health, had met little hardship in my life; she, younger than myself, had been made cautious by bereavement and rearing a young child in straitened circumstance—that was the difference between us.

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in mid-October when, following a message from Victor, I set out for Chelsea to meet Maria Clementi for the first time. (This was not the occasion I mentioned earlier, when I encountered that frightening ogreish man.) I walked from Gray’s Inn Road on a pleasant bright autumn afternoon. As I got down to Chelsea the tide was coming in, lapping at the mud, shingle and stone of the shore. Craft of every kind had come upriver with the tide—there were barges, wherries, even a great sailing ship springing and bounding upriver, wind filling its sails. In those days no walk could have been more pleasant. On one side lay the river, unbanked, with all its interest, on the other, the fields and market gardens. I was excited at the thought of joining Victor in his attempt to solve the mystery of Miss Clementi’s muteness. I rejoiced at the prospect of the wider learning which might be open to us as a

A

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result of this experience. For a scholar there is no joy to equal that of joining his mind with that of another like mind, with the intention of widening the boundaries of knowledge. Nor, I must confess, as I mounted the steps of Victor’s imposing house in Cheyne Walk, was I altogether reluctant to make the acquaintance of that ornament of the stage, Maria Clementi. Victor himself answered my knock. He let me in, his fine eyes alive with excitement and interest. I had been punctual, Maria Clementi more than punctual. “She’s here,” Victor told me and led me with his lithe, agile step through the hall, lofty and tiled in marble, up a handsome curved staircase to a small drawing-room with tall windows looking out over the road and the river. Maria was seated in a low brocaded chair close to where a fire burned brightly in its ornate marble fireplace. She was small and very dark with a head of black curls worn quite short, almost à la victime or à la guillotine, as the women of the French Revolution named their mannish hair arrangements, though she had a small knot of curls simply dressed with red ribbons on top of her head. The tendrils framed her face, half-covering small, pretty ears. She had very dark eyes, framed with thick, dark lashes, an oval face, small straight nose and a charming, rosy mouth, curved now in a smile. She wore a simple bonnet in pale grey and a loose woolen dress in the same color, a lace fichu lying over her shoulders and tied in a knot over her bosom. Had it not been for a posture indicating, even in repose, the strong musculature and physical control of a dancer, one might have taken her for any charming young married woman of the middle class. Maria’s eyes were cast down as I entered but she raised them to me as we were introduced. This gaze had an effect on me very

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different from what I expected. The eyes of Maria, as I have said, were huge, dark and very lovely. I expected her look to seduce me, win me. I had looked forward, with some enjoyment, to the effect of first meeting the eyes of Maria Clementi. Yet, as our glances met, I felt first—awe. There is what we call a “speaking look” where the eyes alone convey their possessor’s meaning and mood. This “speaking look” is more common in women, creatures of sentiment, than in men, whose gaze is more direct and thoughtful. Maria’s eyes were the opposite of “speaking.” They were silent, as her own tongue. To look into them was to gaze into the black waters of one of those bottomless tarns of the North. One fears; one half wishes to throw oneself into those still expressionless depths; one attempts to see through the dark waters—and sees nothing. As I made greetings I wondered if the silence imposed on Maria by her dumbness had created this great, fathomless calm in her slate-colored eyes. As I gazed, half-mesmerized, into Maria Clementi’s eyes the awe I had felt at once began to verge on fear. I knew I wished to look forever, to come closer, look again, and never cease to look. Victor interrupted, mercifully, by proposing to introduce me to Maria’s companion, Mrs. Jacoby. On hearing her name, this lady stood up from the window seat and came across the room to greet me. She was a woman of about forty years old, of medium height, erect in her bearing, with a direct look and what I believe ladies call a practical bonnet. She bore the stamp of a soldier’s wife who has followed her husband on many a campaign, set up house in many a place, made do in all manner of hardships and difficulties. Her forthright blue eyes met mine, perfectly civilly but saying to me, as to all the world, I believe. “No nonsense from you, if you please.” As soon as I had bowed to her and murmured

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I was happy to meet her, she went back to her seat, leaving the three of us, Victor, Maria and myself, by the fire. We all sat down, Maria in her former chair, Victor opposite her on the other side of the fireplace; I took a third chair between them. I had no idea how Victor had conducted his previous interview or how he meant to proceed, so I broke the silence, rather awkwardly, by commenting on the pleasant afternoon and saying I had walked to Chelsea from my lodgings. I spoke slowly, as if addressing a foreigner, and felt a little foolish for doing so. Maria bent her head to me, heeded me as if she understood, and when I had finished gave me a small, charming smile. Victor, rather to my astonishment, then asked her in German if she would care to stand up and walk to the door. Maria merely gazed at him, biting her lip, seeming to be trying to understand him. Whereupon Victor addressed her in French, again asking her if she would go to the door. And Maria, smiling, stood up— and went to the door. She turned there, still smiling, asking, it would seem, for Victor’s approval, which he, with a smile of great satisfaction, gave. And then he spoke to her in other languages, many of which I did not know myself, plainly asking her to do various things. In no case, except when he asked her in Italian to go to the window (which instruction he had to repeat various times before she could understand him), did she stir from her chair and do so. As this went on she gazed at him, I thought, with increasing weariness. After this, Victor turned to me and asked, “Curious, is it not, that Miss Clementi knows French, evidently, and some Italian and English, but no other languages?” I nodded, a little embarrassed. Maria was with us and could understand us, yet we discussed her as if she were not present, as

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often happens with children or the very old or ill. This seemed stranger still when the subject was a young woman in her right mind, merely dumb. I asked, “Have you spoken in various languages to Miss Clementi before?” And he said that he had not. I then spoke to Miss Clementi, asking her if she had known French since childhood or had learned it later in her life. She shrugged prettily, indicating she did not know—or perhaps could not understand what I was asking. Mrs. Jacoby then spoke up from her window seat. “Miss Clementi sings in all languages,” she said. “But parrot-fashion,” Victor said. “For apparently she understands only French and English.” Then to Maria he proposed, “Well then, Miss Clementi, shall we try our exercises?” He then launched into a series of consonants, as if encouraging a child to speak, “B-b-b-b, D-d-d-d, M-m-m-m.” He urged Maria, as one would a child, to copy him. But, lips parted and showing every sign of effort in trying to do as he asked, she had no success. She made no sound at all. All I heard were pitiful exhalations of breath—and sometimes a sigh—a sad contrast to that voice I had heard at the theatre, soaring high, in the duet of Polly Peachum and Captain Macheath: I would love you all the day All day long we’d kiss and play. If with me you’d fondly stray, Over the hills and far away . . . There was nothing of that carefree spirit now. Maria was distressed. Victor then broke off, saying nothing but looking at her reprovingly; while she became confused and a little ashamed.

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Then, “Again,” he urged. “Let us try again.” They began again, the demonstration becoming more painful but just as futile. I knew some method would have to be developed if Maria were to find her speaking voice, and that some toil, even agony might be involved if the method were to succeed. Nevertheless Maria’s increasing distress was not pleasant to see. I abandoned the painful scene by the fire and crossed to the window to speak to Mrs. Jacoby, reasoning that she might, even without knowing it herself, possess some clue to the secret of Maria’s locked tongue. Victor had embarked on vowels, “A-e-i-o-u,” he pronounced. “Come, Maria—try—try.” But she made no sound. “So far there’s been no success at all that you can see, Mrs. Jacoby?” I asked. She shook her head and replied steadily. “We had much hoped—after Maria’s time away, resting and working on the exercises—” Her voice trailed away. “The exercises being what is happening now?” “And some others connected with breathing,” she told me. “It’s very mysterious,” I said. “There is nothing organically wrong with Miss Clementi and she sings so beautifully—yet cannot speak. Tell me, Mrs. Jacoby, does she never, never make any sound—cry out, sob aloud, groan, laugh? Perhaps she talks in her sleep, or makes some sound—” And I noted as I spoke the last words that Mrs. Jacoby looked at me more attentively. There was a long silence between us. She was summing me up, as she might have summed up a subaltern newly arrived in her husband’s regiment. Then she said, “Can you swear to keep a secret?” I responded that I was unwilling to swear to keep any secret when I did not know what it was.

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“Well, then,” she said wryly, “you will never know, will you?” And at this point my curiosity so much got the better of me that I said, “If what you tell me is not a guilty secret, and will harm no one, then—I swear not to tell it.” “Fair enough,” she said, with something of the decisiveness of the battlefield in her tone, “then I’ll tell you. I have never heard Maria Clementi speak one word or make a sound—except at night. Then I have heard her, in nightmare, calling out, crying out in fear.” “Have you told anyone of this?” I asked her. “Never,” she replied. “Earlier she seemed content enough to be dumb—but lately she appears increasingly distressed by her position.” I asked her, “You have not told Mr. Frankenstein of these cryings out, in nightmare?” She shook her head. By now I was puzzled. “Remember—you have promised,” she warned me. “But Mr. Frankenstein should know this.” I reproached her. “Why do you not tell him?” She did not reply because at that moment Victor stood and said, amiably enough, in our direction, “I think we have had enough for today. Miss Clementi must not get too tired. I know she is to perform tonight in Acis and Galatea. Mrs. Jacoby, if you return next week Mr. Goodall and I will have had the opportunity to discuss the matter and devise some new plans.” And thus the first consultation, if that is what I should call it, ended. Maria, I thought, looked pale. In parting, she pressed my hand gently, while Mrs. Jacoby expressed goodwill and hoped she would see me at Cheyne Walk the following week.

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After they left Victor bit his lip, looking anxious and thoughtful. “Let us sit down,” he said. “Some wine?” I refused this and we sat down to talk. Frowning he said, “All this is most baffling. I know she can speak. I am certain of it, I know. Sometimes I feel Miss Clementi is defying me to help her. Her efforts to produce a voice appear great, but I do not think they are great enough. I fear she may be deceiving me. As an actress, she is fully capable of miming a struggle to speak. I must—must—discover the key to open that door—or break it down.” He sighed vigorously, then said impatiently, “I really do not understand. In all the literature there is no comparable case. And, my dear Jonathan, if only we could succeed, what might we not find out about the structure of our language and its connection with the workings of the mind?” He smacked his fist into his palm and I think if he had been another man he would have started swearing and cursing. I felt some guilt at suppressing the information Mrs. Jacoby had given me, that Maria cried out in her sleep, but I had given my word, and could see no way of breaking it. Worse, it was my impression that Mrs. Jacoby had not only made me swear to keep the secret in general but specifically to keep it from Victor. This seemed absurd—why should not the whole world know Maria Clementi had some voice and particularly why should not Victor, who was dedicated to helping her? However, there was nothing I could do. “You have established that Miss Clementi has knowledge of two languages but no others,” I said. “That is interesting. We may assume her understanding of speech is like that of any other person. She knows these tongues she has encountered, or learned.

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But tell me, what is her past? Where does she come from? Who are her parents?” “Very little is known of her,” Victor said. “She, of course, can tell people nothing of herself. But it would seem she was found by the man who is still her impresario—whatever that may mean—in Ireland some four years ago and was taken by him to the manager of Drury Lane, the famous Mr. Robert Elliston. He took her up with enthusiasm and began her career.” “And is Maria Clementi truly her name?” “I believe it was invented by her manager, the impresario Mr. Gabriel Mortimer, in discussion with Mr. Elliston,” Victor told me. “I suppose no one knows her real name.” “Except herself, and she cannot tell us,” I responded. “What a strange, sad time she must have had of it, poor Miss Clementi.” “She is a most beautiful and gifted creature,” Victor said. “Unique. Extraordinary. Compensation enough.” I could not answer him. Naturally I asked Victor if Maria was able to communicate her thoughts in writing but in those days fewer could read and write than in these more enlightened times, so it was no surprise when Victor informed me that Maria was scarcely literate. I suggested to Victor, therefore, that the restoration of Miss Clementi’s voice would not be harmed by learning to read and write. The study of words in their written form might help to concentrate her mind and will on speaking them out loud. And even if this was not the effect, then at least she would have the benefit of expressing herself more freely in writing. Victor showed little enthusiasm for this scheme.

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Mrs. Jacoby had said nothing would persuade Maria to write more than the odd scribbled word—and that she could do. He added, “Cannot—will not—I do not know. Sweet-natured and good as she appears, I wonder if there is not something hard, uncooperative, obstinate about the girl.” For my part, I wondered if, like many a teacher, in the momentary frustration of making no progress with a pupil, Victor was not resorting to blaming his student, instead of devising a method to encourage her. “You cannot mean that she is a fraud—could write but will not and therefore—could speak but will not?” I asked wonderingly. “No,” he said. “But there must be something—some machinery—which would make her speak.” I saw in him the ever-enthusiastic, ever-able student unable to believe there are those in the world who cannot learn. This was to him a battle which he must win. Mercifully at that moment in came his charming wife and offered us tea; Victor became more easy and the atmosphere more cordial. We began to talk rationally about finding some method to make Maria talk, deciding that one course would be to ask Maria to start by singing, then induce her to say the words of the song instead of singing them. It was a simple plan, but simplicity is sometimes effective. We did not begin that week, or the week after, for Maria was studying a new operetta, Hera’s Revenge by Maestro Valli and encountering difficulties with the work. Rehearsals were prolonged and, as she was also performing daily at die playhouse in another piece it was not until that gloomy afternoon in November, which I have previously described, that we met again at Cheyne Walk in the same small parlor as before.

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Though the fire burned, fog from the river crept through the drawn curtains making the atmosphere in the room obscure. Once again, Mrs. Jacoby, now in a thick Paisley shawl, sat by the window. Maria was in her old position by the fire, with Victor again opposite her and I between them. Victor explained to Maria the plan that she should begin with song then modify the song into speech. She appeared to understand what was said, though she frowned a little, whether because she disliked the idea or because she secretly believed it would not work. I do not know. I said, recalling the happy evening at Old Hall in Kent when we had all so merrily sung “Youth’s the season made for joys” from Mr. Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, that I would dearly love to hear Maria sing some of the work and she cheerfully agreed. I shall never forget, even after all that occurred later, the spectacle of that small, slender figure, standing at the fireplace as, in that thrilling voice, she began to sing the simple air, forget her beautifully shaped face and great, sad eyes turned slightly upwards, the fall of her black curls, the perfect oval of her opened mouth giving out such a glorious, effortless sound in the dull, foggy room. Dance and sing, Time’s on the wing, Life never knows the return of spring Let us drink and sport today, Love with youth flies swift away. Perhaps it was then I became fascinated by her, doomed to fulfill the dark suspicions I thought Cordelia Downey harbored concerning my motives in wishing to assist Victor in his work with Maria

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Clementi. I sat entranced, wishing that this perfect, untouched creature—for so she seemed to me at that time—could be mine. A part of me, recognizing danger, tried to insist it was the artist, not the woman I admired. But this was not true. I felt hopeless longing. When she finished her song I sat in awe, knowing how few men can have been so privileged as to have sat on a drab afternoon, in an ordinary room, hearing Maria sing. But I yearned for her at that moment and whatever occurred later I cannot swear I ever lost that longing. Bluntly, she was an actress; she was mute. Both in terms of society and because of her disablement I knew she could have become unconditionally mine. I am a man. I think as men do and I am no better than the others. Then, our efforts had to begin. The song had been well chosen for our purposes, and it ought to have been easy enough to eliminate the music from it, gradually turning the song into speech, rather like operatic recitative. Or like a chanted psalm, half-speech, half-song. This exercise, as I say, should have been easy—but was not. Maria would sing a line with perfect purity, would sing it in a minor key if required to do so, but what it seemed she could not do was take the song word by word, or make the words sound like ordinary speech. It was as though she saw words and music as one single entity and could not separate the two. Asking her to break up a phrase into its component parts was as if one required a bird to stop its song at a certain point or slow it, or repeat a phrase of its cadence. A bird could not do this; nor, apparently, could Maria. All afternoon we labored, altering from song to song, then attempting some psalms. But Maria could not “drone” psalms any more than she could “speak” songs, though her voice rose and fell like an angel’s. An hour passed, then another. Victor’s demands grew sharper and Maria, I thought, began to tire. At

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one point I glanced at Mrs. Jacoby and her face told me she was regretting the exercise. As Victor felt doubt and fatigue overwhelming hope he grew ever more determined, while my role became less that of the helper and witness of the attempt, more that of one trying to contain the worst elements of the struggle. It was then that Maria, unprompted, embarked on the lament addressed to Aeneas by the deserted Queen Dido in Purcel’s opera, Dido and Aeneas, wherein she sadly sings: “When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast. Remember me—but forget my fate.” I was entranced. I glanced at Victor who was strained and pale. He looked like a man who had been struck. Then he rallied and broke into the song, chanting unmelodically the words for her to imitate, “My wrongs create no trouble—Remember me . . .” And Maria tried to copy him—and sang, her voice soaring to the ceiling. And “Remember me,” said Victor in a speaking voice, and “Remember me” sang Maria. They went over and over it until Maria followed Victor, who had once more said-sung “Remember me,” by bursting triumphantly out with the rest of the song—and concluding it. Victor sprang from his chair with an exclamation of impatience he could not control—at which poor Maria sat down abruptly, put her hands to her face and broke into dreadful, soundless sobs. Victor was at her side in an instant, kneeling at her side with his arms around her, soothing her, apologizing for his behavior: “I have pressed you too hard. I am a villain. Forgive me—I have asked too much of you.” These were the muttered words I heard. This scene, I must admit in my brutal Saxon way, struck me at the time as “foreign,” over-emotional, lacking in restraint. This, at any rate, was how I explained these outpourings of emotion on Victor’s part, and the fact that Maria, whose tears had ceased

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continued to sit bent in her chair, apparently listening to his explanations and apologies. But his words were extreme and the situation hardly suitable between a man and a woman, the man married. This was quickly perceived by the already uneasy Mrs. Jacoby, who was soon close to the pair, urging Victor to his feet. She then confronted him, saying stiffly, “I am sure Maria knows you are doing all you can to help her, but she is tired and has a performance tonight. I must take her away to rest.” Which she did. Farewells were made and, as they left, I saw Maria turn back in the doorway fixing those great luminous eyes on Victor’s with the expression, I thought, of a loved, and loving dog—then she was gone. That look of hers alarmed me. I then told Victor I must leave myself, but he scarcely heard, I think, for he was standing by the window looking out, not down to the road, where Maria and Mrs. Jacoby were departing in their carriage, but through the darkening air, across the river. Elizabeth Frankenstein was in the hall as I left. I raised my hand to her in farewell as I walked off, but in that light, with snow falling, I saw her only as an obscure, monochromatic figure standing in her own doorway, like a ghost. Not three minutes later came the moment when I observed that monstrous figure on the wharf, who, later, raised his accusatory arm towards the house in Cheyne Walk, howling out his grief. You may well imagine how disturbed I was at this scene, following so hard on the earlier events at Cheyne Walk. So shaken was I by my afternoon—for, though there was superficially nothing in it truly to disturb a young healthy man with strong nerves, I was disturbed—that after my diversion at the Voyagers’ Club on my return home, I quietly took my place

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by Cordelia Downey’s parlor fire, saying nothing about the events of the afternoon. What I might have told her was too nebulous and too disturbing. And she herself was tired after a trying domestic day and her daughter’s invalid demands, for little Flora, was in bed with a cold. So we chatted for a little time and then I took my candle up to my room. There the idea came to me that if we, Victor and I, were really to assist Maria to speak, then I would do well to keep a record of our procedures. Whether Victor himself were doing this or not, I reasoned, in such a cases, two accounts can be more useful than one. So, taking a pile of paper and a pen I sat shivering (for my fire had not been lit) and, heading the first page of my account with the date, November the eleventh, I then solidly set down, in every detail, what had occurred that day. And throughout the horrible events I shall go on to describe I continued to make this daily record; which is why I am now able to give a complete account, from my point of view, of what passed. You may picture me, during that winter of 1825 in my small sittingroom on the second floor, furnished barely, with table, chair, chest, and sometimes without a fire, often chilled cold, sometimes shivering with horror and incredulity, as I made my recording. Many times as I wrote, I thought I was mad.

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after a troubled night, my sleep penetrated by repeated strains of music, by the anguished face of Maria, by the howls of that great creature on the quay. Just before I woke, I dreamed that the sad expression of Maria as she tried, hopelessly, to speak, and the twisted, beetle-browed face of the creature on the quay changed places. On Maria’s face I saw ferocity and torment, while the great savage man’s expression as he pointed North and howled was replaced by the pleading countenance of Maria. Unable to sleep longer, I rose, dressed and was downstairs before the sun was fully up. Yet evidently I had not risen before Victor, for not long after, I was handed a note which had been delivered earlier by one of his servants. It said only, “Come to me early, I beg you. I must speak to you.” “I must go early to Mr. Frankenstein’s,” I told Cordelia, who was pouring tea.

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She mused, “Mr. Hathaway is waiting for your dictionary.” True enough, for, as I have remarked, my friend David Hathaway, respected bookseller and printer, was very desirous of having my dictionary of Aramaic to print and publish and I had all too often put forward the date on which I was to deliver it to him. Perhaps I ought to have seen Mrs. Downey’s criticism as a warning rather than a reproach. In general I lack the usual masculine ability to ignore the voices of women. Men ask, why listen to the voices of those ill-educated creatures, whose limited intellectual capacity leads them to concern themselves only with bonnets and the dishonesty of laundry women? True enough—yet in practice I cannot always ignore the comments of women for they can often come to wise conclusions based on no experience or information whatsoever. I have often wondered how this can be. However, this time I accepted neither reproach nor warning. “So, Mrs. Downey, you disapprove still of the attempt to help Maria Clementi?” I enquired. What woman asked for a comment will deny you one? She instantly responded with a question, “Would you be so concerned for her if she were a nasty old man with a beard?” At this I laughed and she crossly added, “You know nothing of the past.” “Miss Clementi, being mute, is hardly in a position to account for her past life,” said I. “I did not make myself clear. I spoke of the past life of Mr. Frankenstein,” said she. “Mrs. Downey,” I answered her, “I do not think, with all respect, that you know at all what you are talking about.” Happily this exchange ended when a maid came in to announce the coalman had arrived bringing the wrong supplies.

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As Victor’s note was urgent, I went straight to Cheyne Walk in a hired carriage. There the butler, a reliable-looking middleaged man, led me straight to Victor’s study. He turned from the window where he had been standing with a paper in his hand and declared, in great agitation, “See this! It is a letter from Mrs. Jacoby saying Miss Clementi will come here no more! The visits are tiring, says the woman, and each defeat plunges Maria deeper into despondency. Maria cannot mean it! She is under the influence of her foul companion. It may be she does not even know what that woman is doing in her name. We must go to her, Jonathan.” This vehemence bewildered me. I did not find it so strange that Maria had become discouraged by our lack of progress. And Victor’s impatience at the end of the last meeting had caused her distress. It seemed all too probable she had decided to discontinue the efforts to help her regain or discover her powers of speech. I attempted to reason with Victor, saying, “Victor— Victor—my dear fellow—let us think calmly what to do.” “We must go to her immediately,” was all he said. “Victor,” I said, “we cannot assume that this letter does not convey Miss Clementi’s own decision.” “That is nonsense—nonsense,” he said passionately. “She has been influenced. We must go to her.” As I have said, I saw ample reason why Miss Clement! might herself want to end her lessons, not least of which was the very ferocity of passion about them that Victor now demonstrated. Nor was she a lady of leisure who might spend the afternoon with Victor and consider herself as well entertained as if she had spent the time visiting on other ladies for tea and conversation. Each night Maria Clementi faced an audience to whom she was

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a goddess—and knew no doubt that if she began to disappoint her worshippers they would soon enough become her revilers. Such is the nature of fame. But Victor’s agitation was so dreadful that, to calm him, I unwisely agreed to go with him to call at Maria’s house. To my alarm he proposed to start immediately. It was barely nine o’clock. I pointed out that it was too early to call, and that a stage performer may sleep later into the morning than other folk, but he would have none of this. He ordered his carriage to be brought to the door and only half an hour later we were at the tall house in Russell Square that Maria had taken, I assume, because of its proximity to the theatre. This was an imposing dwelling, and very well furnished. As I had anticipated Maria had not yet risen and we were shown into a handsome diningroom decorated in the Chinese style, with an oriental carpet on the floor and many charming vases in niches round the room. Mrs. Jacoby, who was arranging a handsome lacquer table for breakfast, greeted us with some surprise. She was beginning, politely, to offer us some hospitality when Victor, still standing in the doorway, (the manservant behind him vainly asking if he might take his coat,) immediately burst out, “Mrs. Jacoby—what is the meaning of this letter? Do you know what you are doing? I will not accept the termination of my efforts to help Miss Clementi!” Mrs. Jacoby, plainly trying to contain anger at his tone, replied coolly, “Mr. Frankenstein. I wrote to you because Miss Clementi indicated to me that she no longer wishes to continue to visit you. She does not feel your efforts are helping her and she finds your manner unsympathetic.” “How can you tell?” he demanded. “You put words into her mouth because she cannot speak. Let me see her.”

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“She is in her room,” Mrs. Jacoby told him. “Then I shall wait until she descends,” he said and sat down at the table. I began to regret very much I had not prevented Victor from making this assault on the house in Russell Square. I had believed that once we had arrived he would moderate his behavior, but this was certainly not the case. I could not comprehend this rude and bullying behavior; he seemed a different man. I suggested we might leave and find a better time to talk to Maria. Mrs. Jacoby regarded me with some scorn, as Victor responded instantly, “No. This matter must be settled now.” Then she allowed her anger to show. “There is no ‘must’ about it, Mr. Frankenstein. Miss Clementi does not wish to continue her meetings with you. I wrote on her behalf to inform you of that fact. You have come here, uninvited, at an early hour and settled down to wait for her without invitation, and I must confess I find your behavior unseemly. Mr. Frankenstein—Miss Clementi is a young woman without family, unprotected in the world, whose only resources come from what she earns, by her own talents, which she must preserve. Her mental equilibrium is therefore essential to her. She has told you her wishes. Please respect them.” “You wish to keep her away from the world, no doubt,” Victor said. “Her talents are your fortune, and I suppose you want to keep them to yourself. Perhaps it would be unfortunate for you if Miss Clementi recovered her voice and were able to meet the world on equal terms. I must see her, to learn from her what she truly wants.” Victor’s language was shocking and I opened my mouth to restore him to order, only to find Mrs. Jacoby before me, and perfectly equal to the task.

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“It appears you have parted from your reason, Mr. Frankenstein, and I hope for your sake the condition is temporary. But while you are in this state I do not want you in this house. You will kindly leave.” And at that point Maria, fresh in a simple morning gown of pale yellow, her short curls piled on her head, entered with a charming smile, apparently unaware of any troubling situation. She went to kiss Mrs. Jacoby, then offered her hand to Victor and myself. As she did this, and before Victor could speak, as he evidently wished to, Mrs. Jacoby said to Maria in a gentle voice, “Maria, my dear. Mr. Frankenstein has come to ask you to reconsider your intention to break off your lessons with him. Will you let him know in some manner that your decision not to continue is firm, and your own?” But Maria did nothing, only gazing at Victor, gently smiling while he stood still, his eyes fixed on hers, his face very pale. “Maria,” said Mrs. Jacoby, “please indicate your wishes to Mr. Frankenstein.” As this went on I heard the front door bang and then some steps in the hall. The dining-room door then opened and in stepped as obnoxious a fellow as I have seen for many a long day. They say you should not judge a man by his appearance, but one glance at this person said all there was to say about him. He was clad from top to toe in a dreadful shade of burgundy. His trousers were too tight, his boots too glossy, the black hat under his arm too high. His face was long and sallow, his head covered with oiled black curls. He had weary dark eyes, of the kind which have looked on too many dawns without benefit of sleep. He showed very white teeth as he stood, smiling, or rather, posing in

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the doorway, as if for his portrait. This was Gabriel Mortimer, Maria’s impresario, fop, dandy—and villain. He looked very coolly at Victor and myself as Mrs. Jacoby introduced us. She did not mention the reason for our presence. Mortimer nodded to each of us and told Mrs. Jacoby, “I have come with information about Maestro Valli’s Hera’s Revenge. The composer wants the order of three scenes changed and nothing will persuade him to leave matters as they are.” Victor, ignoring Mortimer completely, urged Maria, “Please, Maria. Come to me again next week. I implore you—for your own sake, do as I say.” And Maria—nodded! “Maria!” cried Mrs. Jacoby in reproachful tones. Could it be true, as Victor believed, that she had indeed attempted to force a separation between the poor mute woman and the man who might save her from perpetual silence? “Thank God,” cried Victor. “Oh—thank God!”—and Maria smiled. Some chilly adieux followed and Victor, nodding briefly at Mortimer, left the room. Having said goodbye to Mortimer myself, I was bidding Mrs. Jacoby farewell when she went with me to the door, saying in a low voice, “Will you be at Frankenstein’s when Maria next goes there?” and I replied that I hoped I would. “Try,” she said then. “I would be most grateful if you would attend.” Uncertain within myself, I agreed I would do my best to do what she asked. But as I joined Victor in the street I wondered what role Captain Jacoby’s widow was playing in this strange affair. Victor, as we parted outside the house, questioned nothing; he was all happiness, overjoyed that Maria had come back to him.

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Nevertheless, I was puzzled. Was Mrs. Jacoby a female villain, controlling the life of Maria for her own reasons? Or had Maria told her at some point that she did want to cease her lessons with Victor and then simply changed her mind? Where did the unsavory Gabriel Mortimer figure in the affair? If Mrs. Jacoby were indeed a villain, and Mortimer pretty certainly another, in what dreadful situation was Maria placed, helplessly, between that pair? I thought Maria’s innocence must have been preserved, despite daily contact with this dreadful fellow, only because she could not converse with him. As I walked back to my lodgings, another thought occurred to me. I am a virtuous man now, to the extent of my poor powers and even at the time of which we speak I was not indulging myself in dalliance with women. In fact I had made a resolution that before the hot blood of youth turned to the thin blood of debauchery I would make what efforts I could to mend my ways, for no sight is more repellent than an aging man creeping about after women when he should be at his work or his own fireside. Yet I recalled how often in the past I had played the old game of creeping downstairs from a bedroom, shoes in my hand, then opening the front door from the inside, slamming it as if I had just come in, and then—on with the shoes and—lo—entering the parlor comes honest young Jack Trueblood, calling with an open smile just as if he had not spent all night in that very house, upstairs in bed with Polly Perkins. I could not be sure Gabriel Mortimer’s entry that morning had not been an appearance of the kind I have described. I had not heard the bell ring or the knocker knock. I had not heard a servant go to the door. Perhaps, then, he had a key to the house but that would hardly be suitable—a man with the key to a

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house inhabited by two ladies? But if he had been in the house all along and only crept down from upstairs? What a picture that raised in the mind! My chivalrous soul—or, rather, my jealous soul—roused up on Maria’s behalf. Was Mortimer Mrs. Jacoby’s lover? That would make her predicament, mute and unbefriended, except by that pair, even more frightful, her position as pawn in their game more frightful still.

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between Victor and Maria, for the very next day came a message from my sister Arabella, desiring me to return home immediately, for my father was very ill. And so I galloped back to Nottingham at all speed, through mud and ice, to find my father gravely affected by a congestion of the lungs. Mercifully this abated and he turned the corner, though his recovery was slow. He was better, though still weak, six weeks later when the Christmas festivities began. There was much visiting to and fro between neighbors, and some twenty at our table for the Christmas feast. During this time, as my father recovered his health, it was incumbent on me to play the head of the family and keeper of the estate. Thus I was fully occupied with many things, from the tenants’ quarterday payments to escorting my sisters hither and yon. It was at a ball ten miles off, whence I had gone wearily in a carriage, that my sister Arabella consented to be the wife of our

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neighbor’s son, Dudley Hight, a good fellow (though I thought him dull) trained for the law. And just after the New Year my younger sister Anna threatened to marry the curate of our parish church and was dispatched hastily to Northumberland with my father’s sister, who had joined us for the festivities and was returning there. Between suitors, desirable and undesirable, broken hedges, rents, leases, parties, hunting and the entertainment of friends and kin I was held, pleasantly, in Nottingham until the middle of January, though London, my studies—and David Hathaway— called. Truth to tell, I discovered my only real desire to return to London was to rejoin Mrs. Downey for I found I missed her presence, her nice looks and charming companionship, and began to wonder if Nottingham might not have been even more enjoyable had she been there. I could open my heart and mind to her even more freely than I could to my family and I imagined her daughter, little Flora, child of the bad air and adulterated foodstuffs of the city, benefiting from all we had in Nottingham. These thoughts even interrupted my sleep as I imagined my charming landlady in the place I loved most in all the world. Meanwhile my comfortable country life went on—had to go on, for tomorrow I must see Mr. Such-and-Such about the wood, next day we would hunt, the day after that there was a visit, the day after the bailiff would come about planting, and so it went on. It was a letter from my friend Hugo Feltham which dug me from my rut and brought me speedily back to London. This letter, delivered by a muddy cart from the village, arrived one day just as I had come in from the fields for my breakfast. I read it standing before the fire, warming my bones, while Arabella cut slices of beef for my father. We had gone up in the world but still

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kept to the old country habit of good beer, good meat and good bread for breakfast, taken after the house had been up and doing for many hours: even a lady who did not come down for breakfast was held to be sick, a man who failed to arrive was taken to be on his deathbed and past praying for. I was surprised to receive a letter from Hugo, no lover of pen and paper. I have known him ride ten miles to communicate a message in person rather than send a letter or note. Consequently, when I opened the letter I knew some serious matter was afoot. “My dearest Jonathan,” the letter read, “I have been hesitating for some time whether to write to you. But Lucy urges me to do so and we both agree you must be told what is happening as regards our valued friend Victor, whom I know we both love. Alas, all is not well with him. I am no penman, as you know, Jonathan, so I must put the matter bluntly—Victor is in love with Miss Maria Clementi. He haunts the theatre after her performances; he buys her gifts which, apparently, she receives; he visits her frequently at Russell Square. Poor Elizabeth has twice been dispatched to us by Victor, who tries to conceal what he is doing, but Elizabeth is undeceived and just now she has been here, with us at Old Hall, for a week. She has now resolved to return to London to be with her husband, however distressing his behavior. Lucy and I have offered what help we can and have said that if she finds her situation intolerable she must come again to us. I am detained here for the present and think you could be useful in this matter. In short, I ask you to go to Victor and attempt to find out the nature of his relations with Miss Clementi and tell him of the distress he is causing his wife. My dear old Jonathan, you know this is not the kind of task one man

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lightly hands to another, but for the sake of poor Elizabeth Frankenstein, and Victor himself also—will you assist?” I was shocked by this message, after a moment I was still more shocked by my own stupidity. It should have been plain to me, witnessing Victor’s agitation when Maria threatened to give up her lessons with him and his violent behavior at Russell Square later, that I was not observing a scientist but a man in the throes of passion for a woman. Such was my respect for Victor’s intellectual gifts I had been blind to conduct which, in anyone else, I would have seen plainly as amorous folly. Then, I reflected what a dreadful task lay ahead of me. I should have to appeal to Victor to give up Maria for the sake of his wife and child, not to mention for the sake of his own reputation. Then most probably there would be an interview with Mrs. Jacoby, and Heaven only knew how that little causerie would turn out. The vision was so afflicting, I believe, standing by the fireplace, I may have sworn aloud. At any rate Arabella uttered a startled sound and my father uttered a warning “Hmph!” But Hugo had appealed to me, no doubt at Lucy’s instigation, and I had no choice but to tackle this unpleasant duty. No point in delaying—I packed rapidly, said my farewells and took the London Road, which was mercifully dry for the time of year. I thus reached London by nightfall of the same day and, having made arrangements for the return of my horse to Nottingham, set off straight away for the theatre where Maria was appearing. I thought that if matters were as described in Hugo’s letter, I might well find Victor there. The house was packed. By bullying and bribing I managed to find a place standing at the back of the theatre and so saw,

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through a crowd of heads, the last act of Hera’s Revenge. It did not fall short of the traditions of the London stage at the time, which is to say it was trumpery and trivial as a prize at a fair. Nevertheless, as the curtain went up on the slender, lonely figure of Maria Clementi, hands clasped in front of her, playing Jove’s young lover Constantia and singing a pretty song expressing her love for the god, the audience, unable to contain itself (and lacking that restraint which these days we prefer to observe), stood, shouted, and cried out in delight. There were calls of “Brava, brava.” Having completed her song, Maria began to dance. That vision will never leave me—a gold-clad form, gossamer-light yet strong as a young aspen—white arms raised above a beautifully poised head, garlanded with flowers—her grace, her purity, her loveliness. How the men standing about me at the back of the theatre cheered and groaned. It was easy to see how Victor Frankenstein, like so many others, could feel passion for Maria. Who would not? The dance ended and some black-faced dancers came on, for little dramatic reason, naming themselves African Sal and Dusty Bob and began some silly dance from the plantations, he in ragged trousers, she in a print dress with a rag tied round her head. Then came the implausible arrival of Jove, who appeared on the scene to court Constantia dressed as a golden ram (if sense were lacking in the piece the costumes and scenery were outstanding). With the entrance of his jealous wife Hera, rightly suspecting his plan to seduce Constantia, a duet began between the pair. At this point I realized that, Victor, who was not in the theatre as far as I could see, might have elected to arrive before the end of the performance and gone directly to join what I was sure

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would be a mighty crowd behind the scenes. So I began pushing my way from the theatre, causing more protest, even, than when I had pushed my way in. Just before I left I turned to see a new backdrop, an English landscape with meadows and sheep. Against it stood Jove, Hera and a full chorus, all singing. In front of them was Maria, in her golden shift, a coronet of flowers in her hair, singing like a bird, with no harshness, yet clearly audible against the chorus of other singers. It was a pretty spectacle. I went into the alley beside the theatre and found the stage door. As the result of a bribe and a claim of acquaintanceship with Miss Maria Clementi, I was ushered behind the scenes and in to a crowded greenroom. I spotted a marquis, an ambassador and many other dignitaries. There were ladies of fashion with plumes in their hair and officers in uniform just come from their duties. In one corner a parrot screamed in a golden cage and in another two large hounds sat perfectly still, looking a great deal more dignified than the people around them. But there was no sign of Victor. My eyes sought, and found, Mrs. Jacoby. She wore a black silk dress. Then Maria entered with other members of the cast—the crowd opened to receive her, then closed again. I thought, wrongly, as it turned out, that if I could get to Mrs. Jacoby I might have a private word with her about whatever state of affairs existed between Frankenstein and Maria. But, push as I might against shoulders clad in silk, red tunics or black wool, I could get no closer than the second rank of worshippers. Whatever my suspicions of Mrs. Jacoby I was forced to admire her composure and competence. She was, after all, Maria’s voice. For many years now she had had to judge what Maria wanted to say, and should or should not say. In that sense she had been a true support to the young woman. She now stood

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beside her, dealing with myriad comments and enquiries. I heard her say, “Miss Clementi finds this role taxing, but less so than the more sombre role of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, in which part you have no doubt seen her. Miss Clementi thanks your lordship for his most kind comments. Miss Clementi exercises at a barre, as dancers do in Russia, for one hour each day.” At one point she caught my eye, and, I think, controlled a startled expression at seeing me. I inclined my head but saw no purpose in staying longer; it would have been impossible to get a word, so I forced my way from the throng, feeling more respect for Mrs. Jacoby and more pity for Maria who, each night, whether in London, Paris, Rome or Vienna, must have to face first the demands of performance and then the demands of her admirers. I left by the stage door and entered the alley beside the wall of the theatre, which was blocked at its end by a high wall. As I left the door and was turning to walk towards the street, I observed from the corner of my eye a movement in the darkness at the far end of the alley, by the wall, some ten or twelve feet away from me. Suddenly a hulking figure rose up from the ground where evidently it had been crouching. The man was enormous, almost a giant, clad in some long dark coat. All I could see was the whiteness of a face and long, unkempt, dark hair. I stared, appalled and expecting a plea for money or an attack, but neither came. The man, who had inclined his head towards me almost as if studying me, then once more sank slowly to the ground, again becoming invisible, part of the darkness. Having feared attack, I now conceived of some sick and starving wretch, too weak to beg, seeking only a quiet place to sleep. I found a coin in my pocket and flung it towards him. There was a scrabbling at the alley’s end and a growling mumble, which might have been thanks.

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I found a conveyance for hire and asked to be taken to Victor’s house in Cheyne Walk. I wanted to get this business behind me and it was still early enough to find the household awake. It was on the way here that I began wondering if, by some curious coincidence, that sad, huge figure in the alley was the same man I had seen on the quay in Chelsea. There could surely not be two such monstrous figures in London. But if it had been the same man, this time he had seemed less intimidating, more pitiable. My main thoughts, however, were of my visit. I was anxious to get to Victor’s house before he and Elizabeth retired, yet dreaded the conversation which would ensue after I reproached him with his conduct towards his wife. Men do not like to charge others in this way, knowing most have been tempted to make curs of themselves over women, and a good many have fallen. At Cheyne Walk I heard Elizabeth Frankenstein had retired and Victor was at his club. I had kept the carriage waiting so it was to this club, the Chesterfield in Dover Street, that I now went, feeling by this time quite fatigued. Indeed, I had been halfminded to go home to bed on finding Victor out, but there was something in the face of Victor’s manservant when he opened up to me and told me his master was away at his club that silently appealed to me to concern myself in this matter. Servants know all that passes in a household and this man I swear, was telling me, silently, that something was amiss at Cheyne Walk. At any rate, he seemed relieved when I had told him I would go and find his master at his club. It was past ten when I descended into Dover Street. Few were abroad. I walked past the linkmen on the steps and entered the club’s dignified portals. The club’s porter was sitting in his

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wooden box in the hall. He directed me to the library where, he said, I would find Victor, I walked through some cold, marblefloored passageways and entered the dark, vaulted room which was the club’s library. A few candles in the sconces burned here and there but the room was largely dark, book-lined walls making it seem even more sombre. Victor was alone in the room, hunched over the fire like a man who would never get warm. Even as I walked up to him I could see a change. Never a fat man, he had become thinner. His nose stood out between more emphatic cheekbones, his eyes were sunken. Far from the flamboyant adulterer I had somehow expected, here was a wretched figure hiding away from home, but with nowhere else to go. “Jonathan,” he said flatly, in greeting. There was no way of presenting my mission as a cheerful visit. I looked at him as grimly as I could and said, “I have just been at the theatre, Victor.” “Did you see Maria?” he asked me, too quickly. “I saw her but we did not speak. She was surrounded by a crowd. Victor—” I appealed. He said dully, “You come as a missionary, I know. I will spare you the embarrassment you anticipate. Hugo Feltham is not a man to go behind another’s back. He wrote to me saying that during her visit to Old Hall Elizabeth confided her anxieties about me to his wife and that he had written you a letter appealing to you to visit me and discuss the state of affairs. So let me be plain. It pains me to say this but say it I must. I love Maria Clementi. That love torments me for she does not love me in return. I am completely wretched, made all the more so because I know my good wife, who has never injured me in any way, is wretched also. I cannot sleep. I cannot work. I can think of

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nothing but Maria. I do not know what to do for I must have her but she will not have me. “Do you know, Jonathan, what my plan was for this evening? Because she has forbidden me, through Mrs. Jacoby, to visit the theatre every night, I was intending to go to her house, to hide in the trees of the square, to watch her arrive home in her carriage and spy out who might be with her. Then I would keep vigil opposite the house, watch the lights being extinguished and so stay on until at last I was weary enough to return here to sleep for a few hours. That is how I planned to spend this evening, Jonathan, as I did last night and will no doubt do tomorrow. You see to what state I am reduced.” “My dear Victor!” I exclaimed. “Do not pity me,” he said, “for I am being punished.” I put a log on the fire and tried to kick it into a blaze. “Punished? Victor! For what do you think you are being punished?” The fire threw out smoke, but no flames. “I cannot tell you that,” he said. I suppose when I undertook to speak to Victor I had imagined that familiar kind of conversation in which a friend appeals to the husband on behalf of his distressed wife and is told either to go away and mind his own business or receives assurances, true or false, from the culprit that he plans to give up his mistress. I had not bargained for this—and, dishonorably, my heart soared. I knew I could not have Maria—or thought I could—I might—I did not know what I thought. My animal nature, where reason does not prevail, was organizing my thoughts, or failing to do so. All I knew was that Victor had not possessed that wonderful creature, Maria. And that made me rejoice. If I could not have her, it would still have upset me if Victor had. In this respect I

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was a madman and I confess it. Those who never looked into the deep, grey eyes of Maria Clementi, never saw her dance or heard that thrilling voice may condemn me; no man who did could fail to understand what I felt. But, meanwhile Victor had spoken of punishment, his punishment. “What can you mean? Do you mean Maria will never love you?” He did not reply. I continued to tussle with him as he sat there, thin and weary, seeming like a beaten man. “My dear friend,” I said, “it is dreadful to see you in this state. Should you not battle with this desire for Maria, which may lose you everything you hold most dear, the affections of your wife, your work—would it not be better to take your family away from London, settle for a time elsewhere, try to shake off this passion, starve it by taking it far from its object? Dishonor can only come of this. Even if Maria loved you in return, what good could you do her? She is a young woman of good reputation in a profession where few others like her are to be found. As yet there is no scandal attached to her name. Do you, a married man, truly wish to seduce her and ruin her, setting her inevitably on the path downwards?” “Unhappily, it is a bitter truth, one I would rather not admit, but that is exactly what I wish to do. I have no care for consequences, for her or for myself. I want her to be mine.” “You know you can only harm her, and yourself and your wife. You must summon up your will—and go away.” “It is a punishment,” he said again. I stared at Victor Frankenstein, that man of intellect and command. “You think me mad,” he went on, “but if you knew—if you only knew—if I could tell you. I am miserable and I deserve my misery.”

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“Are you sure you are not answering to some fierce Calvinist God of your youth, some God of predestination, hell fire and damnation?” I appealed to him. “You have not slept, you say, and plan some vigil in Russell Square tonight. Let me take you home—or let us even order two beds here at the club, obtain a sleeping draught for you from the porter. I will stay with you until you sleep. By morning, when you have rested, matters may look different and we can talk again. If you agree, I will send a message to Elizabeth saying where you are.” “My presence is an affliction to my wife,” he said. “Your absence is also an affliction to her,” I returned. “Elizabeth loves you dearly. Come, Victor, you must go home. Let me come with you.” He said sadly, “What a villain, what a slave I am. How I wish my wife did not love me. How I wish Maria did.” Then he looked at me impatiently, saying, “Jonathan—leave me. You cannot help me.” “I cannot abandon you in this condition,” I said and, hooking my arm under his, I raised him to his feet. “I shall take you home, see you swallow some opiate to make you sleep and return in the morning so that we can speak more of this.” He agreed, being perhaps too weak to resist, but gazed at me as if he knew how little my plain man’s approach would help his situation. Then began the dreadful nightmare . . . The club’s porter sent for a carriage which could not be found quickly. We stood outside, snow falling, waiting while Victor spoke disjointedly of Maria. Eventually the servant returned through the snow walking beside an aged carriage drawn by a tired horse. The journey took place with a hideous slowness as I sat wearily in the

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carriage, Victor beside me, staring hollow-eyed, at something I could not see. At Cheyne Walk there was a crowd milling about outside the house. The front door stood wide open. The windows of the house were all lighted. Victor cried out, “My God! What is this? What has happened?” and threw himself from the carriage and ran to his house. I came rapidly behind, pushing through the people in front of the house, taking the steps two at a time, passing two maidservants clinging to each other in the doorway. By the time I reached the hall Victor had run upstairs. The head manservant came up to me. “What’s occurred?” I asked him. He told me the awful news. “Mrs. Frankenstein is dead. She and the little boy have been murdered. They are in her bed, both of them, with their throats cut. Both,” he said, his voice trembling, “lying there in sheets all drenched with their blood—” “But who—?” I asked. “We do not know. A maid woke after the household had gone to bed, thinking she heard the sound of glass breaking downstairs. She roused me and another manservant. We lit candles and went downstairs. There we found the window of the long drawing-room, the salon, broken. It was plain an intruder had entered—” “And Mrs. Frankenstein—the boy?” “As we blundered about downstairs in the darkness we heard a scream. Another maid, searching about upstairs had opened the door of her room and found her there, with the boy.” I ran upstairs. I found Victor, in a room full of men staring down at the blanched face of his wife, her throat cut. The little

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boy, whom she had evidently taken into her bed, to comfort him, or herself, still clutched her, as if in fear. His throat also was cut. It fell to me to drag my poor friend from the deathbed of his family, where a doctor who had been hastily summoned bent over the bodies and the smell of fresh blood filled the air. Even as I tried to get him from the room, where his wife and child lay grey and ghostly in their own blood, heavy feet overhead indicated that a search continued for the individual who had committed this atrocious crime. It is a scene which even now I flinch to recall. No one was found in the house, only an open attic window in the bedroom of the servant who had first been aroused by the sound of breaking glass. It was concluded that the murderer, having entered by the window of the drawing-room, had run upstairs, done his dreadful work and then, as the servants blundered about downstairs in the darkness, had run up to the attics, and made his escape from there, either clambering over the rooftops of adjacent houses or making his way perilously down the front of the house. Whatever he had done—and he was evidently a man of some speed and agility—by the time the open attic window had been discovered he was long gone; the prospect of finding him was small. That, though, hardly concerned me, for I was with Victor, whose agony was terrible to witness. We could not use the pleasant room upstairs, made charming by his wife and so redolent of her character and taste. We were, perforce, in the very salon into which the murderer had first come. This room, created perhaps as a ballroom, was some thirty feet long and sparsely furnished. There was a sofa in front of a vast, empty grate. A spinet stood against a wall. Overhead were big chandeliers, uncandled and

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swathed in cloth. Because of the room’s great size it was rarely used by the Frankensteins, who did not entertain on a grand scale. In this bleak apartment, snow drifting past its long windows over the darkened garden, I sat with my poor friend, able to do nothing to ease his pain. What was worse, perhaps, than the grief he felt for his wife and child were the torments of inexplicable remorse he suffered. “My fault—my fault. Oh, my poor Elizabeth, my little child, what have I done to you?” he repeated over and over again. He sat on the floor, his head buried in the upholstery of a long, armless sofa. As I busied myself with lighting a fire, I heard him moan, “Better to have ended it then—when my crime was fresh.” At first I thought these agonies of guilt were caused by his having been away from the house at the time of the murder—at his club— unable to bear returning home to his wife under the burden of his love for Maria. A normal man in such a dreadful situation might well have reproached himself in that way. Yet he did not directly accuse himself of having been absent when his wife and child died, nor did he speak of finding out and punishing the man who had done this deed. His agony seemed connected with some guilt he could not name, with a punishment he had earned but which had been visited, instead, on Elizabeth and his son. I did what little I could to comfort him and form a buttress between him and those who came to discuss the crime, ask if he had any enemies, establish if there had been robbery, as well as murder, done in the house. As dawn came I was at the drawing-room window while Victor lay on the couch, his despairing countenance down which tears continually poured turned to the ceiling. Glancing out, I thought I

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saw a figure in the trees beyond the lawn. There was little light and some mist about the dark trunks of the trees, so it was difficult to see the huge form of a man among the tree trunks, especially as he stood so still. I closed my eyes and opened them again. I still believed what I saw there was a man—and not just a man but that ogreish figure I had seen earlier outside the theatre. “My God, Victor!” I cried out. “I believe he is there, among the trees—the murderer!” Victor jumped up and came towards me. I turned, left the room, ran down a passageway and pulled back the bolts of the door leading to the garden. But by the time I had got them undrawn and hastened outside there was no sign of the figure I thought I had seen. I ran across the snow-sprinkled lawn to the trees but no one was there. If he had been there, and I was still not quite sure of what I had seen, then he had escaped over the garden wall, where I found the bent-back branches of an elder bush growing close to some old crates piled up against the wall, which might have assisted him in scrambling over. I thought I saw his footprints on the path leading to the wall, but in the dim light with snow falling, then melting on the earth of the path the marks were hard to read. I went slowly back to the house, thinking of that great, limping figure I had now seen, I thought, three times. Or had the figure been on this occasion the product of my imagination, worked on by fatigue and emotion? But if it was that same hideous creature I had seen before, was he the author of this dreadful crime? When I re-entered the drawing-room Victor was still by the window, ashen and hopeless. The early light showed deep lines carved on his face, lines which had not been there the evening before. He seemed twenty years older.

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“I thought I saw a hulking brute out there.” I told him. “I may have been mistaken. At any rate, if he was there before, he is gone now.” Victor shivered. I took him to the fire and put a rug over his shoulders. As I did so I said, “It may be imagination, but I believe I am haunted by a vast and ugly individual. I saw him once two months ago, by the river near this house, then last night, outside the theatre.” As I described my encounters with the man and his appearance Victor’s eyes seemed to sink deeper into their sockets and he entered a state of profound and deadening despair. Then he said in a low voice, “Then he is back.” “You know him?” I said, startled. “Who is he?” Victor stood, went to the window again. “Who?” I asked. “Who, Victor? Who is this enemy?” For I assumed this man and the murderer were one and the same. Victor turned to me and through the half-dark of the room said, “Do not ask who, Jonathan. Ask rather what—what fiend— what thing—is that?” And then merciful nature came to his rescue and he fainted.

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for many days. I insisted I must summon his parents from Switzerland, but this he would not allow. When I pressed him to ask them to come, he became agitated, so I assumed temporary responsibility for his health for a time. My first thought was to persuade him to leave that house in which his wife and child had been slain. I even wondered if the murderer would return to strike again, for it was very obscure what the man’s motive had been in killing an innocent woman and child, and I had become doubtful whether the matter could be as simple as a thief interrupted and killing those who might identify him. Victor, though, refused to remove to Mrs. Downey’s, who had sympathetically agreed to assist a man she did not know. He was so insistent about staying where he was that I yielded, thinking more argument would impede his recovery and instead hired, as well as nurses for Victor, two sturdy watchmen to protect him.

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For the first week he lay in a raging fever, but later improved, at which point I felt it safe to ask him who he thought the man in the garden might have been and whether he thought he had any part in the murders. But he only replied, “I cannot tell you. To tell you anything would mean telling you everything and that I cannot do—cannot.” And with that he turned his wasted face from me on the pillow. “Victor,” I persisted, “tell me, I implore you. Describe the man. Say what he is to you.” He turned a tear-stained face to me and whispered, “Jonathan—please leave me.” And I was forced to go, though I could not believe that with such a weight as seemed to be pressing on his mind, my friend’s recovery could be either quick or complete. Meanwhile, Hugo and Lucy Feltham, who had heard of the death of Elizabeth Frankenstein and her son, arrived in London to stay with Victor and do what they could for him. Slowly he recovered his health.

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that Mrs. Downey’s sister Mrs. Alice Frazer arrived from Scotland. Mrs. Frazer did not generally travel with her husband since they had one of those comfortable marriages whose happiness depends to some extent on the couple spending considerable portions of their time apart. Therefore she always brought with her on the long journey south a stout young man, twenty years of age, Donald Gilmore by name, who protected her while traveling and accompanied her about London when she wished to go out alone. However, once in town there was little for Gilmore to do, so the custom was that, since he was a skilful man especially as regards carpentry, Mrs. Downey would set him to repairing her house where repairs were needed. Some two weeks after the murders, an afternoon was dictated by Mrs. Feltham to be Victor’s first excursion into the outside world since his illness. Therefore a party consisting of Victor and

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Hugo and Lucy Feltham arrived at the front door in Gray’s Inn Road. Young Gilmore was at the open door, in the act of filing off the bottom, for it had begun to stick. I had just gone out into the hall to look into the street to see if the guests were arriving when their carriage drew up. I therefore saw all that happened as they descended. Victor, well muffled up and appearing still very weak, began to walk to the door leaning on Hugo’s arm. It was then that Gilmore, seeing three people intending to enter the house, straightened up and stood beside the door to allow them through. As they walked past him into the hall Gilmore glanced at Victor, whose scarf was half pulled up over his face, then peered at him searching. To the astonishment of all of us, he cried out harshly, “Frankenstein!” and raced in a state of obvious fear down the steps of the house and out into the street. I heard him cry out again from the street, as he went running off, “Frankenstein!” Mrs. Downey, who had come to the parlor door to greet the guests, asked in a bewildered manner, “What was that? Where is Gilmore?” But none of us, of course, could tell her. I shut the front door and we went into the parlor for tea. Once Victor was settled in front of the parlor fire she asked him how he came to know the man, Mrs. Frazer’s servant, but Victor professed as much bewilderment as the rest of us and said that, inasmuch as he had observed the man in the doorway, whom he had taken to be a carpenter employed from outside the household, he had no idea who he was. “A mystery indeed,” Mrs. Downey remarked, pouring the tea. “Yet he knew your name, Victor. Is that not curious?” Lucy Feltham persisted, but Mrs. Downey, seeing her guest to be uncomfortable and knowing him to be barely recovered from a serious illness, capably turned the conversation in other directions

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and under her agreeable guidance the short visit passed off well. Victor, though subdued, seemed in a little better spirits. Later we prevailed on Mrs. Downey, who played and sang charmingly, to entertain us all. Nevertheless, after our guests had taken themselves off, Mrs. Downey, having ascertained from the maid that Gilmore had not returned, looked at me gravely and began to speculate about why he had run away. “My sister will be most upset if he does not come back,” she said, “for he has been with her since boyhood. His father, an Orkney boatman, was drowned at sea when Donald was twelve years old and as his mother was also dead the village sent him off to his only surviving relative, my sister’s butler. Mrs. Frazer found some work for him, helped, I believe, with his education, which was utterly lacking when he came, and he has been with the household ever since.” And then each of us repeated the same thing to each other several times—I, “How can it be that this young man who spent most of his time in the wilds of Scotland, could have come across Victor Frankenstein?” and she, “Young Donald is the steadiest fellow in the world. What can have prompted such behavior?” When Mrs. Frazer returned she was very astonished and put out by Gilmore’s disappearance. She could not account for her servant’s recognizing Victor, or understand why the sight of him could have caused him such fear. Next day, we concluded, if the man had not returned we must try to find him, but when we retired that night Gilmore had still not come back to the house. However, the following morning at breakfast a maid reported she had earlier let the shivering Gilmore in, though, she added, he had not been prepared to enter the house until she had assured

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him that the man he called “the doctor” was not inside. “I would rather walk back to Scotland,” he had said. I suggested we have the man up and ask him together what all this was about. Poor Gilmore, summoned, came into the room twisting his hat in his hands. He was a short, stalwart, red-haired young man, ordinarily cheerful and good-humored, but less so now. Mrs. Frazer opened the proceedings by telling him roundly he had behaved very badly in running off without permission and staying out all night. She told him she knew him to be a most reliable and honest young man but did not understand what had come into him. She could not have him running the city streets at night and very much required an explanation. He replied without confidence, but respectfully, that she must forgive him—he could not give her the explanation she desired. Mrs. Frazer’s color rose. She had, she said, requested an explanation, now she demanded one. Gilmore looked at the carpet and then met her eyes, “Madam—I cannot.” Stirrups and reins were rapidly being lost. I saw Gilmore’s dismissal by an angry mistress looming when he looked towards me and appealed, “Sir,—it is a dreadful story unfit for the cars of ladies. This is why I cannot speak. It is a horrid tale I have not told before, not even to my uncle and aunt, for they would be very grieved to hear it.” The ladies, Mrs. Downey and Mrs. Frazer, looked demanding and demure all at once, as ladies will when told a subject is not fit for their ears. Mrs. Frazer then said that however unsuitable Gilmore’s story might be, as his mistress she had a right to hear it, for unless she did, how could she judge if he was still fit for her service? She declared she was not prepared, when she left London,

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to find herself embarked on a long journey back to Scotland with a henchman who might take it into his head to run off at any moment. Distressed, he protested he would never do any such thing. To cut all this short, I suggested I would take Gilmore off to a quiet spot, examine him and his reasons for disappearing and then tell his mistress only what it seemed suitable for her to hear. This proposition was icily agreed to by Mrs. Frazer and her sister. Under their reproachful eyes Gilmore and I left the room and repaired to a nearby inn. There I ordered him a pint of ale, and as soon as our tankards were brought and we were settled at a table near the fire I asked him to explain himself. With his honest eyes on me, speaking in the soft tones of the Orkneys—and speaking well, for he was an intelligent young man—he told me a story to upset all my previous notions of Victor Frankenstein—a dreadful story.

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as Gilmore began his tale. He said, “I met the doctor, Frankenstein, before I came to the mainland, when I was a boy living with my father in the Orkneys. My mother was dead, having lost her life in bearing me. It was a poor life. Our bleak little hamlet on the coast was connected to the main island by a causeway which was uncovered by the tide only twice a day. It was a very hard life. We were no more than ten families and even then the sea and the land could barely keep us. We lived mainly by fishing in our rough seas; the land was not fertile. It was riches among us to have a full set of saucepans, sufficient bedding to keep us warm at night; luxury to have enough fuel in winter and enough to eat. I tell you of our poverty and the uncertainty of our lives to explain—excuse—the work my father did later—for Dr Frankenstein.” “Frankenstein came to the island?” I asked.

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“He lived there.” Gilmore told me. “He came one day with wagons and took over a large, empty house on the hill above the village. This had in olden times belonged to a smuggler who had made his living through contraband and robbing wrecks—sometimes wrecking ships himself for his own gain. But he had been caught and hanged some years before and a stop put to him and to that trade. Dr Frankenstein brought with him three sturdy henchmen who did all the work of the place. So—he moved into the house.” Gilmore paused, wrestling with his feelings and finally said, “My father was not a gentle man, nor a clever one, but he loved me and was anxious for me, motherless as I was, with only one other living relative in the world, my uncle, and he a man neither of us had seen or heard from for many years. My poor father feared what would become of me if he were to die at sea while I was still young. So he became fixed on money, saved every penny he could of the little we got. His idea was to get somewhere else, perhaps even as far as America, where there was an opportunity to escape the trap of poverty and hardship in which we were caught. “Then the doctor moved in and father began to work for him in ways he should not. This is why I have never even spoken to my uncle of this, for he would be distressed if he knew what my father had done—and what, I regret, I did to help him. And for many years I was afraid of the law, though now I am older I do not think they would be hard on a man like me who did what he should not when a boy under his father’s orders. But as a lad I would lie awake at night, dwelling on what had happened over in Orkney. It was like a nightmare but true and far worse than any dream.”

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Here Donald Gilmore was again silent. “I believe I shall shed some of my burden by telling you what occurred.” And I nodded and agreed, little guessing how heavy a load would fall on my own shoulders with the easing of Donald Gilmore’s burden. But even at that moment I suspected that what I was to hear about Victor Frankenstein, whom I so much liked and admired, would reflect badly on him. But to deny knowledge, I then thought, was almost to deny God himself. I am less sure of this now. So I said, “Well, Donald, my good fellow, I am sure whatever you did was done in youth and ignorance. So continue your story.” “You must imagine, Mr. Goodall,” said he, “the effect it had on us, living on our poor, wild coast with the land so sparsely covered with soil we were hard put to get any crops from it, when from Lerwick one day, going through the single street of our village, came laden wagons making their difficult way up the hill to where the old unoccupied house of the smuggler stood. This was a low stone house on a cliff with some dignity to it. The main windows faced out to sea. There was a forecourt in a paved yard and on either side of this there were big stone buildings, one a barn, one stables with enough stalls for several horses. Both house and outbuildings were dilapidated. Without more ado the doctor began to repair them, paying some attention to the barn and part of the stables, for he let it be known he was a scientist, on the island to get enough peace for his work, and these were to be his laboratories. This meant little to us. We were pleased enough to get work from him, the men to build, the women to clean and prepare the house. We looked forward to more work and more pay from that quarter, but as soon as the house was ready Dr. Frankenstein

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made it very plain that he had no more use for us and moreover he had his three burly men keep watch over his premises, day and night. They would accost any man or woman who came up to the house and ask them what they wanted, telling them they had no need to call on the doctor for anything and generally seeing them off. And from that moment on we saw little of Dr. Frankenstein, only his horse going through the street. So the goodwill which existed earlier for the doctor began to evaporate. Rumors started up—that he was practicing black arts, that in his converted stable he was keeping some kind of strange animal which was never seen. And truly, strange noises came to us in the village, when the wind was right, noises the like of which we had never heard before. Being ignorant people, we told each other the animal must be a lion, a tiger or a bear and only felt very deprived that he would not let us come to the house to see it. “Then, alas, our troubles began. Dr. Frankenstein, during the repairing and preparation of his house, had often made use of my father’s sturdy little boat to fetch and carry from the mainland, and now he asked him if he would take the boat to the Low Countries to collect an item of which he must never speak. He would be well paid for this. My father agreed and I went along with him to lend a hand with the sails, as this was to be a long journey for such a small craft and apart from my father and myself, only the doctor and two of his men were to go. Frankenstein’s other man was left behind to guard the house. “We made our voyage successfully, landing at Ostend where we took on board some crates, the largest by far having been conveyed earlier by boat from Dieppe, and being labeled ‘Paris.’ This measured some ten feet by eight and appeared, from the weight and the sound which came from inside, to contain liquid,

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for the sound of it slopping about was audible. Indeed, it was so heavy that at Ostend we had to get it aboard with a winch—this alarmed the doctor who knew that there was no such equipment to be had at our harbor in the Orkneys. Two days later we were back and unloading. The largest crate, that which contained the liquid, was hauled off and put on a waiting wagon with the improvised assistance of the ropes and pulleys we used to haul our boats up the beach. The wagons then set off slowly up the hill to the doctor’s isolated house, but on account of the weight of the largest box and the general difficulties of unloading, Dr. Frankenstein asked my father to come along to help. My father dispatched me to a neighbor’s. Thus the party set off, one of the men in front with a lantern, for it was late, the other driving the wagon with the doctor and my father walking behind to relieve the weight. Now—though my father had sent me to a neighbor—I did not go. Instead, I followed on and thereby saw my father’s guilt.” “You cannot blame him for accepting a desperately needed commission to take a boat to the Continent—” I began. “Not that—no,” Gilmore assured me. “It was because of the large box—or rather, what was in it.” He paused. His honest face had been grave throughout his whole recital and now took on an expression of misery. “Imagine me, a boy who had never been away from Orkney,” he said sadly, “I had seldom been even as far as Lerwick, suddenly transported to the Low Countries in the company of such a man as the doctor, so different from us fisherfolk that he might have come from off the moon—then sent back on the instant to stop in a dark cottage with a tallow candle burning. I followed on secretly, curious to see what would happen, taking a sheep path which ran from above the village right along

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to where, on a ledge, I could look down on the house of the doctor from about twenty feet above. If it had been daylight, and the men less occupied with getting their heavy freight uphill without toppling over the wagon, I would have been spotted for sure. As it was, some time before they entered the courtyard I was safe in my eyrie, peering down. It took some courage, though, to stay in my position for down below was the grange in which Frankenstein kept his animal, whatever it was, and it was groaning fit to bust, poor creature—whether the men left behind had maltreated it or whether it had some affection for its master and knew him to be coming I do not know. But it groaned and moaned in a bloodchilling way, and it was dark and the surf crashed on to the shore below the house—only curiosity conquering cowardice kept me in place that night. “Then the wagons reached the top of the hill and turned on to the paved area before the house. The unloading of the boxes began, the men, including my father, taking the cargo from the wagon either into the outbuilding opposite where I was, which I knew to be the doctor’s laboratory, or into the house. A man had brought a torch and set it in the entrance of the house, and Frankenstein held aloft a lantern. “Meanwhile the groaning of the beast in the old barn became louder and more pitiful. It began to bang itself against the door holding it in, but the men took no notice. They had left the offloading of the largest crate until last, for that would be the most difficult task. Then, with two men on the wagon, one of them my father, and two more below, they eased the large crate to the back of the cart, the doctor nearby holding up the lantern. The plan was evidently to push the big crate forward until one end was supported by the two men on the ground, while the weight at the

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back end would be taken by the men on the wagon. Thus they would ease it off gradually. But it was not to be. The two on the ground had just begun to edge the rear end of the crate forward from the wagon when the beast, whose complaints had subsided to a sort of rumble, suddenly gave out a huge, echoing scream. It began to batter furiously at the door of its prison. The shock of this noise—for later we found it had been loud enough to be heard as far away as the village below—caused someone to falter in the difficult business of getting the crate from the wagon. It fell, the men leapt clear—it broke open. And there, lying half in, half out of a vast, spreading pool of liquid, was the naked body of a young woman, her golden hair spread all about her. I suppose she had been lying in that fluid all the while.” “Dead?” I asked. “I thought so then,” he said. “I thought it was a corpse.” “She was alive?” I questioned, amazed. “Yes,” he said gravely, “alive!” He went on, “She was motionless, lying, so white in that puddle, with all her long hair seeming to be floating round her. I still recall it, as if it were before my eyes. I had never seen a naked woman before,” he told me. “A most terrifying way to encounter one for the first time,” said I, attempting to disguise my consternation. I wondered if this spectacle, seen in semi-darkness by a mere boy, had been exactly what he supposed it to be. Surely that had not been the figure of a real woman? Had it not been a model or perhaps some rare kind of ape with an uncanny resemblance to the human? Easier to think those thoughts, rather than that Victor Frankenstein had imported a woman, dead or alive, in order to

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conduct some experiments upon her. “What happened then?” I demanded. “The doctor was greatly concerned, exclaimed aloud and cursed the men for their clumsiness as he tenderly gathered up the woman and carried her in his arms, her long hair drooping down over his arm, into the house. And all this time the creature in the barn kept roaring and, as soon as I had got over the shock of seeing the crate fall and the woman lying there, I took to my heels and raced back to where I was meant to be, hoping my father would never find out about my hiding on the hill that night, as he did not.” “He never spoke to you of this?” “Never. Though he may have spoken to others, for I know it was later said, behind men’s hands, that Dr. Frankenstein had imported a woman, drugged, to Orkney for his use. He was rich; we were poor and afraid. Nothing was done.” “Unlike what we hear of the stout-hearted Orkneyman,” said I. “Stout hearts sink when bellies are empty,” Gilmore replied. “The men feared that if they reported the doctor for kidnapping or the like, the law would be turned against them and they would be taken away from hungry wives and children.” I shook my head, “This story of a woman drugged and brought to Orkney by Frankenstein seems to me most unlikely, Gilmore, from everything I know of the man.” “I cannot help that, sir,” he responded doggedly. “I am telling you the truth—and the truth gets worse. For after this we did not see the woman again, though my father was again employed by the doctor, this time to take a crate, much the same as the last, to Dublin. But there was no liquid inside it. The crate was landed at Dublin, where the doctor stayed for a week. Then he came back with my father in the ship, but this time without the crate.”

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I looked sharply into Gilmore’s eyes, searching for the truth. Either the man was a consummate liar who actually believed his own lies, or he was telling the truth as he knew it. “You think he took the woman to Dublin in a crate?” I asked, incredulously. “Left her there and came back alone?” “But it was not the woman,” he said, “for we saw her at his house, while the doctor was away.” “Saw her?” I repeated, astonished. “That is how I know she was alive. For she was in the house while the doctor and my father were away on their voyage. The doctor had left only one of his guards behind and once he was gone this man, a big fellow, speaking a harsh tongue none could understand, seized the opportunity to come down to the village and drink and try to get hold of a woman. So I and another lad, knowing there was no one at the house, ran up the hill to see what we could spy out and there she was. We peeped through a big window on the ground floor and there was the young lady, in a blue dress, lying asleep on a couch, with a kind of picture book, like one for a child, in her hand, and all her long fair hair trailing over the sofa. She was, indeed, a lovely sight,” Gilmore said. “So young and so pretty, with a sort of innocence on her sleeping face.” “Not dead?” I asked. “No, not dead; for we saw her stir a little as we watched—and we, fearing she would wake and spot us, ran off laughing, like the two young loons we were. But we never saw her again. Thereafter the house stayed guarded. Rumors grew; there was more bad feeling against the doctor, and my father too, for helping him. I do not know how it would have ended, but not two weeks after the doctor and my father came back from Ireland we awoke to the sound of the doctor’s wagon going hell for leather through the village

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street, heading for the causeway. His men carried flares, all his baggage was piled up behind—and even as they left the village we saw the flames of a great fire on the hill. The doctor’s house burned down—not entirely, of course, for it was solid stone, but enough to destroy anything in the buildings and most of the timber as well, bringing in the roofs. We thought he must have started the fire himself, for all his possessions had been packed up and loaded, we supposed, before the fire began. The wagons were out of the village almost before we knew it, so we did not know if the doctor himself, or all his men, or the pretty woman, survived the fire.” Gilmore paused. “So now, sir, you will understand, perhaps, why seeing the man you call Mr. Victor Frankenstein made me run for my life. For I truly believe,” he said in a low voice, “that he, Frankenstein, is the Devil, or something very near it.” Still between doubt and belief, I again studied Gilmore’s face, searching it as if it could provide the answer to my questions. How could Victor—that frank, honest, open, studious, serious man—a man of whom it was impossible to think badly—how could he have hidden himself away in Orkney to indulge in such mysterious and seemingly evil practices as Gilmore spoke of? Yet it could not be denied that Gilmore had instantly recognized Victor as he came through the door at the house in Gray’s Inn Road or that the sight had plainly terrified him. Small wonder, if there was any truth in his tale. Was it possible Gilmore had been traduced into inventing this story? But what possible reason would anyone have to bribe him to say such things? The only way to explain Gilmore’s story without believing Victor to be a villain, or practitioner of the black arts, was to conclude that Gilmore, a mere boy at the time, with no wide experience of the world, had misunderstood what had happened on Orkney.

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What he said next did little to support this theory. “I do not now believe it was a beast he had penned up in the barn,” he said slowly. “I thought it was then, but now I believe it was a man, some suffering idiot crying out in pain and incomprehension. But what would he have been doing to the poor creature, all that while?” I confessed to him that the same thought had occurred to me as he told his story. What I did not tell him was that what had crossed my mind, as he spoke, was a vision of that hideous creature I had seen at the dock, outside the theatre and in the trees at the end of Victor’s garden after poor Elizabeth’s murder. If Gilmore’s report were correct in its essentials, then was it such a flight of fancy to imagine that whatever unfortunate creature Victor had kept in captivity had returned in order to take a hideous revenge? That would explain Victor’s passivity in the face of his wife’s murder and his belief that somehow he himself was the cause of the calamity. And yet—we know man can be boundlessly cruel, that some evil men take pleasure in the torment and suffering they cause to others. But how could I believe Victor Frankenstein one of those men, one who would capture and torment a fellow creature—or seize a woman and take her helpless to a remote island to enjoy her? I could not believe it; the thought was impossible. Gilmore regarded me sympathetically. “I am sorry to be bearer of this ill news concerning your friend, sir. I assure you all I have said is true to the best of my knowledge.” “I am sure that is so, Gilmore,” I said, “but we must think of the present now. I will tell Mrs. Frazer something of this story— enough, I hope, to satisfy her and persuade her to keep you on.”

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As we walked back I became suddenly alarmed. If there were any chance that Victor was being trailed by a madman, then the man might have tracked him to Mrs. Downey’s on the afternoon he visited us. This could put the household at risk. If the madman had killed Elizabeth Frankenstein (who had not even known her husband at the time Gilmore described) then he might just as easily, in his insanity, take his revenge on others connected with Victor. On the way back to the house I therefore said to Gilmore, “I am still confused by your story, but I am greatly afraid that Mr. Frankenstein may be being pursued by someone who wishes to hurt him or those who know him. Mrs. Frankenstein is already dead, murdered. And at Mrs. Downey’s house there are, at present, two ladies, a child and female servants. All may be in danger. Whatever the truth of your story, Gilmore, you must promise me that you will never in any circumstances go off as you did before. There must be a strong and active man in the house at all times.” Gilmore frowned and asked, “Who is the doctor’s enemy, do you think?” “I am sure of nothing,” I told him, “but I think it possible he is that unfortunate creature Mr. Frankenstein kept in captivity on Orkney. We must take precautions for a while. You had better say nothing of this to the household. You must be vigilant, but keep the reasons for your vigilance secret.” He nodded in agreement. As we hurried back to Gray’s Inn Road I thought of Hugo and Lucy Feltham, and how they were, in all innocence, bearing the grieving Victor company at Cheyne Walk. Ought I to warn them they might be in danger? However unpleasant it might be I must now confront Victor with Gilmore’s story at the earliest moment. Even Maria Clementi, outside whose theatre the creature had been waiting, might be in peril. Unhappily, I recognized I must act. 9 6

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ETURNING TO THE HOUSE I explained as calmly as I could

to Mrs. Downey and her sister Mrs. Frazer that Gilmore, as a boy, had met Victor while he was conducting experiments on Orkney. Being young and infected with the superstitious ignorance of a small and unlettered community, he had taken Victor for some kind of wizard, and conceived a great fear of him. On seeing him unexpectedly in London, that fear had suddenly revived, thus his flight. Yet, I told them, there was some evidence that during his days on the island Victor had made an enemy. Since his wife had been murdered, and the murderer was as yet uncaught, it might be wise to take precautions against anyone who might do any of us some harm. I suggested that until there was proof that my fears were unfounded, either Gilmore or I should remain in the house at all times; and that one of us should accompany the ladies on any outing or visit they might make. Other ladies might have welcomed such consideration for their

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safety, but these sisters, whether by reason of temperament or upbringing were not so inclined to do. Mrs. Downey and Mrs. Frazer were the daughters of a lawyer, John Jessop, and had been reared in Cornwall on a small estate (so small one might call it a garden, Mrs. Downey once merrily told me). Mr. Jessop practiced law in the nearby town. The family on both sides was well connected, but the Jessops were not rich. Mrs. Jessop, being a reading woman, whom some might have termed a blue-stocking, was not the most careful mama in the world. Her two daughters spent more time with the village children, blocking up streams, stealing watercress from farmers’ fields and the like, than some parents would think advisable for young ladies. Nevertheless, young ladies they were, though from an unconventional household liberal in its ways of thinking. The late Mr. Downey was the son of Mr. Jessop’s partner. When he and the young Cordelia Jessop made a match they removed to London, where, after only eight years of marriage, Downey died, leaving his wife little more than the lease on the small house in Gray’s Inn Road. Her mother’s sister had mercifully left her a little money some years earlier, so she was able to continue to make a home for herself and her little girl Flora. To make ends meet, Mrs. Downey decided to take a lodger. How I became that man is easy to tell. Two years earlier I had come to London to pursue my researches. Needing a spot near to the libraries and individuals whom I should need to consult, I asked at an inn where I might find lodgings in the neighborhood. I was directed up the street to Mrs. Downey’s. I was a little surprised to discover when I met my prospective landlady that the widow looking for lodgers was not a motherly woman of forty but a young woman of twenty-six. But as she appeared to have a

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clear sense of what she was doing in the matter of candles, laundry and chops, I took the rooms. It was not until I had been there six months that I discovered I was Mrs. Downey’s first lodger— I was also to be her last, but that tale comes later. This digression may help to explain why Mrs. Downey and Mrs. Frazer were not happy about recommendations without explanations. Respectable as they were, they had been reared according to the advanced principles of education promulgated by Mr. Godwin and French savants such as M. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. According to these men, there ought to be very little discrimination between boys and girls as far as their education and rearing is concerned. Training had produced a very curious, animated, questioning, independent spirit in Mrs. Frazer and Mrs. Downey. Admirable as this spirit might be in many ways, it does not produce blind obedience to male suggestions and wishes (and was, I believe, one of the chief reasons for the less than cordial relations between Mrs. Frazer and her husband). Therefore I left the house as the questions began, abandoning Gilmore, I suspected, to an interrogation which would make him wish he had fallen, rather, into the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. I had to trust him not to reveal too much of his horrible and mysterious story when pressed, yet had no choice, I thought, but to leave him to his fate, for I had to speak to Victor. I decided first, however, to visit Maria Clementi’s house and communicate my suspicions of the man I had seen outside the theatre to Mrs. Jacoby, asking her if she, too, had observed him on any occasion. When I arrived, Maria was not at home. Ushered into a small sewing-room upstairs, I found myself addressing Mrs. Jacoby as she bent over a heap of theatrical costumes to which she was

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making repairs. It was not a cordial welcome. I launched into my story, telling her bent head much of what I had told the ladies at Gray’s Inn Road. I added that I had seen a hulking figure concealed outside the very theatre at which Maria was performing, and that I suspected he might be the same man I had observed in Victor’s garden on the night of the murder of his wife. Victor, I said, might have an enemy in this man and since the murder of Mrs. Frankenstein, it behoved all who knew him to take precautions to ensure their own safety. I was not sure how much of this strange story was believed. As I concluded she put down her work, lifted her head and told me robustly that she had already called on the services of an old sergeant of her husband for the defense of the household. After a pause she apparently came to some resolution and, with angrily tightened lips, told me, “There would seem to be matters connected with Mr. Frankenstein of which you are unaware. My decision to employ a strong man in the house was taken for reasons not unconnected with Mr. Frankenstein, but I do not want them spoken of on every corner. I would not tell you of this had you not come here with this strange story. But you have, and now I will relate what occurred here only yesterday.” This was of course the very day when Victor had been brought to Gray’s Inn Road, and Gilmore, recognizing him, had run off. Mrs. Jacoby then told me that Victor, very weak, had arrived at Russell Square in the early evening accompanied by some friends who had been very reluctant to let him leave the carriage. The lady of the party, Mrs. Feltham, had come to the door saying that Mr. Frankenstein, who was traveling back to his home with them, had suddenly insisted on visiting Russell Square to see Maria Clementi about an urgent matter.

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Plainly, Mrs. Jacoby told me, she was unhappy about the proposed visit but could not prevent it. She appealed for Mrs. Jacoby’s cooperation in making the visit a short one for Mr. Frankenstein was still weak after an illness. Mrs. Jacoby had agreed to all this, though reluctantly, but told me, “I was very unhappy he had come. Let us be quite candid— before his wife’s death Mr. Frankenstein was seized with an alarming passion for Miss Clementi and I feared that, in spite of his bereavement, that emotion had returned. I believe Mrs. Feltham knew this and also disapproved of the visit. “I am employed to guard Miss Clementi against the sort of scandal which attaches itself to young women in prominent positions. I exist, moreover, to spare her agitation and fatigue. Mr. Frankenstein’s visit was not welcome to me.” According to Mrs. Jacoby, Lucy Feltham returned to the carriage to wait. Victor descended and entered the house looking, Mrs. Jacoby said, very ill and feverish. He pleaded for an interview alone with Maria, even if it were to last only five minutes. His manner was so agitated she thought it better to agree to a brief meeting between the two in private, if this was Maria. But she herself would be in the adjoining room all the time. Her aim, she said, was to get this interview over quickly and calmly and set the sick man on his way home with his friends. Maria agreed to see Victor alone in the small drawing-room for five minutes. Mrs. Jacoby therefore retreated to the diningroom, with which it was connected by large double doors. She sat down and kept her eye fixed firmly on the clock. But not a minute after Maria entered the drawing-room she heard Victor’s voice raised in passionate speech, though whether his tones were those of love or anger she could not tell. The voice went on and on and

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she was about to interrupt the interview, even before the agreed five minutes were over, when she heard him cry out in a dreadful voice, “Maria! Maria! You will be the death of me!”, then leave the drawing-room and, indeed, the house, slamming the front door behind him. She had rushed into the room to find Maria, very white, collapsed in a chair and unable, of course, to give any account of what Victor had said or what he wanted. Plainly, said Mrs. Jacoby, Mr. Frankenstein had upset her very much—and not, she added grimly, for the first time. “I shall not let him in the house again,” she told me. “To do so would be insanity. He is a sick man and, I believe, deranged. I dread to think of the state of mind of a man returning to pay court to a woman two weeks—two weeks!—after the death of his wife. Yet what else could his visit have meant? If that is so, then he is a monster. The story you have just told me of an enemy keeping watch on him is unpleasant. Whether it is entirely true I do not know—but of such a man as Mr. Frankenstein I must tell you I can believe almost anything. To be honest, I half-suspected when you first arrived he had persuaded you to come and press his case with Maria. I apologize for that suspicion. But now you see why I have already sent for a sturdy man to guard the door. I cannot have him here again. And if you have any sense at all, Mr. Goodall, I should leave this matter strictly alone. It is none of your business and involving yourself in it can only harm you.” I stood up. “In spite of all, Mrs. Jacoby,” I said, “I still regard Mr. Frankenstein as a friend and I am going now to speak to him and try to help him.” “I wish you joy of it, then,” she said. “And if you will take my advice you will get him to a quiet spot far from London where, with help, he can recover his strength and his sanity.”

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As I left the door a carriage came up the street towards me. In it I saw a smiling Maria Clementi, a young woman I imagined to be her servant, and that degenerate, Gabriel Mortimer, dressed in his burgundy coat and trousers, a tall green hat on his head from which his jet ringlets hung down in profusion. He and Maria seemed to be laughing together at some remarks of his. Having no wish to encounter them when they dismounted from the carriage, I turned, as if I had not seen them, and went off rapidly in the other direction, searching for a hackney carriage to take me to Cheyne Walk. I thought of that merry party in the carriage. How could the delicate Maria Clementi manage to stay on those terms with a fellow of such an obviously disreputable kind? What a strange household that was—in spite of an appearance of honesty, even Mrs. Jacoby did not seem utterly candid and open. I could not decide whether she was what she purported to be, the loyal friend and protector of Maria, or a woman of a more sinister and self-interested kind. On my journey to Chelsea snow began to fall. My heart sank at the prospect of the necessary but unpleasant interview I would be forced to have with Victor. Only a few weeks before I had been reproaching him with his conduct towards his wife. Now I was searching him out in order to imply there might be some unadmitted, shameful secret in his past. It would not do, I thought. I must disentangle myself from the web of Victor’s affairs, part of which was the enticing, fascinating Maria. I was pleased to hear, when I arrived, that Mrs. Feltham was out, calling on friends. I wanted neither to raise specters in front of her nor to be forced to draw Victor aside in order to speak to him.

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I was shown into the study, where I found Victor in a chair by a roaring fire. A shawl was over his knees. Hugo was leaning negligently against the desk, upon which lay a half-empty bottle of claret. The two were laughing as I entered. I felt a little foolish when I saw all this. Here was I, bent on investigating a dark secret involving a friend, on warning the household of danger; there was Victor, glass in hand, health plainly much restored, enjoying a pleasant afternoon. I looked at him as he greeted me with a smile. I could not believe that this was the same man I had seen desperate for Maria Clementi, seen racked with remorse after the death of his wife and child, and who now, if Mrs. Jacoby was to be believed, had resumed his courtship, with wife and child barely cold in their graves. And then, there was Gilmore’s tale of what had happened in Orkney. My heart failed me. It seemed impossible Victor had anything with which to reproach himself. Yet I had come to the house for a purpose and decided, most reluctantly, to fulfill it, although knowing this interview might well cost me some part of a friendship. Victor began by offering me wine, which I declined. I asked him where were the two men I had employed on his behalf to guard the house while the madman who had killed Elizabeth and the child was still at large, for I had seen no trace of them when I arrived. “Oh,” Victor responded to my enquiry, “I discharged the fellows. I did not like having them about and I have come to the conclusion, as has the magistrate, that the murderer was a thief who disturbed my wife as he went about his business and wickedly killed her to avoid detection. The magistrate thinks, and so do I, that he is unlikely to return to the scene of his crime.” In a voice I knew to be less confident than his own, I asked, “But what of the man I saw lurking in the trees in your garden on that

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dreadful night, the same man, I believe, I saw earlier in the evening outside the theatre where Miss Clementi was performing?” “I did not see the man myself on either occasion,” replied Victor. “And nor, I believe, did anyone else.” “Dear God,” I burst out. “Are you telling me I imagined that man? Victor—do not deceive yourself or your friends. There is some bad work afoot here. That young man who left my landlady’s house so suddenly yesterday when you arrived was Donald Gilmore, her sister’s servant, son of the boatman you employed when you were on Orkney. You did not recognize him because since you last saw him he has turned from a boy into a man. But he knew you the moment he saw your face—and named you. He has told me of the woman you caused to be brought to the island in his father’s boat, of a creature you kept in the barn, of the guards around your house—of a fire. Victor—do you not think that all this had something to do with that malformed creature who appears to be watching you and those you know, and with the death of your wife and the boy? For your own safety, and ours, be frank.” He regarded me with a steady demeanor, perfectly at ease. But I noticed his face had gone very pale. Hugo was gazing at me in astonishment. He asked, “Jonathan—what is all this?” Victor only said, “So that was Gilmore’s lad. He was but a boy when I was in the Orkneys. The fisherfolk there did not like me. Indeed, they feared me. I had thought to find peace for my scientific researches in that remote spot, but in the end was driven off by hostile and superstitious local folk. I had my house guarded because I knew their temperament. I had reason to think that one night, after drink and inflammatory remarks at the bare cottage

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room they called the tavern, they might march on me and do me and my work harm. Indeed, I think they may have started the fire which burned my house. I do not take it at all kindly, Jonathan, that you chose to discuss me and my affairs with your landlady’s sister’s servant and give your attention to wild boyish tales he related to you. Now you come here fantastically prating of some imaginary enemy—” I was shaken by his all too plausible denials. Yet there was at least one fact in a cloud of what Victor correctly pointed out to be hearsay. I cried “You saw the man in your garden. His appearance distressed you. You spoke of guilt—” “My wife had been murdered a few hours before. And my only son,” Victor said shortly. His tone was very cold. I stood quite still, as shocked as if he had struck me. Either I was a fantasist or my friend Victor was a cold-blooded liar. Hugo the peace-maker intervened. “Jonathan,” he appealed, “if there is some old story the man Gilmore has told you, can we not talk of it later? Victor has been ill, is still unwell.” “Not too ill, it seems, to prevent him yesterday from descending from the carriage taking him home to have a noisy interview at Russell Square with Miss Clementi,” said I. “So you have spoken about me to Miss Clementi’s paid companion, as well as a manservant at the house you live in,” Victor said, his tone verging on the contemptuous. “Well, I am grateful for the interest, Jonathan, you seem to be showing in my affairs. Would you like to discuss me with my butler now? May I introduce you to the boot-boy?” He paused, and regained control of himself. He continued in a less unfriendly voice, “I went to see Miss Clementi to ask her to resume her lessons with me, as a favor to both of us, for I must work and occupy my mind so as

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not to dwell on the tragedy that has taken place. The sooner I begin, the better it will be for me. Jonathan, my dear man, can we not forget all that has been said here this afternoon? Let us put it behind us. Will you not sit down and take a glass of wine with us? We dine in an hour. Will you stay?” The bewildered Hugo added his voice to Victor’s, “Stay, Jonathan, do. Shall we not sit down together, the four of us, you, Victor, Lucy and myself, and talk together as we have done in the past?” But I shook my head and said in great confusion, “No, no— I cannot. I must leave. Victor—I am truly sorry if I have said anything to upset you. I will go now. I must think.” And I blundered from the room, as mortified as I have ever been in my life. The scene had not taken above ten minutes and yet, during it, I had angered Victor, shocked Hugo and acted, as I saw it, like a fool and a villain. Such scenes are forgiven, I knew, but never quite forgotten. I cursed myself as I walked quickly along, as if escaping from the house, although snow was swirling round me and the ground beneath my feet slippery. Then I saw, through the blowing snow, some hundred yards away, what I took to be a figure, dark against the surrounding whiteness. It was on top of the wall which surrounded Victor’s garden. As I looked, it moved, heaved itself a little higher up and put one knee on top of the wall. Then the man hurled himself over and dropped the ten feet or so to the ground below in a wild tangle of arms and legs. Once on the ground this individual instantly scrambled upright and began to run away down the road, with a curious lop-sided gait. He was huge—he was the man I had seen before, whose existence Victor had so recently denied—and he had been watching Victor’s house.

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I set off after him as fast as I could go, shouting, “Stop! Stop, man! I must speak to you!” I did not reflect that there was no one about and that, if I caught up with him, an encounter might be the worse for me. He ran on, though looking over his shoulder, then put on speed, going quickly enough for a crippled man traveling over a slippery surface. This chase, with both pursuer and pursued hampered and often sliding through a snow storm, might have struck an observer as comical. Yet we were both, I’m sure, in dead earnest—me to catch him, he to get away. He crossed the road to the riverside. I followed. Then there was a sudden flurry of snow which went into my face, blinding me. When I brushed the snow from my eyes the man was gone— but I knew where he was. He had returned to the quay where I had first seen him. So I walked straight down to the strand, spied out the steps up to the wharf ahead of me (the tide was low) and struggled on to the quay. As my head rose up to the stone surface of the dock I saw, through the snow, first a braced pair of legs, then a trunk, and found myself facing a sturdy man with a sack over his shoulder. As he looked doubtfully at me I asked him, “Have you seen a man with a limp?” From his reply, “Why would you want to know that?” I deduced that the man was here, though he was not to be seen. “Who is he?” I asked. “What is his name?” He peered at me through the swirling snow. “What’s he done?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Who is he?” “We calls him Oberon,” the fellow said, “—in jest, for the King of the Fairies, you know. We don’t know his name. He says nothing. He’s weak in the head, but he’s strong in the back and does

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what he’s told. They keep him on, paying him in scraps of food and copper coins. He sleeps in that shed over there and acts as watchman by night. But I wouldn’t go over there and stir him up. He’s meek as a lamb most of the time, but sometimes he’ll fall into a sudden rage, and that makes him dangerous.” “I must talk to him,” I said. “I’ve told you—he’s feeble-witted, you’ll get nothing from him. But if you want him you’ll find him in the hut. I’ve got to get this sack of wood back to my family.” And with that he plodded along the jetty and began to climb the steps up to the road. In some apprehension I went to the wooden building the man had called the ogre’s home and pushed open the door. The building was some ten feet square and used as a storehouse. At the back were piled crates and barrels, almost to the roof, while to the right were coils of rope, a pickaxe, an upright spar. But to the left a small corridor between stacked crates some three feet wide led to cleared space at the back, and there was what appeared to be a heap of bedding. In the dim light, I saw crouched, even cowering, rather like a child hiding in a cupboard, the vast figure of the man they called, cruelly, Oberon. I could not at first make out his expression, but as I took, fearfully, a step into the hut I saw his teeth, bared in fear, like an ape’s. I said, “Fellow—man—whoever you are—tell me why you are spying on Victor Frankenstein.” The sound of the name made him start, which caused me to fall back a pace, thinking he meant to attack me. But then he lapsed into apathy again and his low, gruff voice started up, but he only babbled out an incomprehensible mix of sounds from which it was impossible to make out any words. Yet I thought he was trying to say something. “Come,” I said. “I mean you no harm—but I saw you in

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Mr. Frankenstein’s garden one night and today saw you come over his garden wall. What do you want with him? What have you done?” I then saw him, in the dim light of that cold shed, sobbing, crying helplessly, wiping his eyes and nose on the sleeve of the black coat that he wore. Fearful as I had been of him, and still was, I felt pity too. And I thought I caught, mixed with his sobs and babblings, one word I could understand: “Bride, bride, bride,” he seemed to be saying. I copied this word back to him, “Bride, you say? What bride?” The hideous thought came to me suddenly that poor Elizabeth Frankenstein’s death could have come about because this deluded creature, watching her comings and goings from opposite her house, had persuaded himself that she was his—had broken in and, when she resisted him, killed her, and the child with her. This vision was most terrible to me. And now he arose and began to shout, babbling, stumbling, yet, from the incoherent sentences I still thought I heard, “my bride, my bride.” He took a step towards me. His eyes were very large and brown. They burned. Uncertain whether he was asking my help or menacing me, I retreated from the doorway, yet thought I was beginning to understand some of his incoherent speech. “He—has—my—bride,” he seemed to be saying. Unheroically, I did not stay to question him further about what he meant. The snow was still swirling down, we were alone and already what daylight there was began to wane. I decided on retreat. As I walked backwards from the hut in the direction of the road, I still spoke to him calmly, “Who has your bride? Is that what ails you? Tell me what is your trouble.”

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He came towards me, not, I think, with menace in mind but nevertheless, his great shambling figure was menacing enough. Then, haltingly, but clearly enough, he bellowed, “Frankenstein!” and pointed again, as he had when I first saw him on the barge, throwing his arm to the left in the direction of Victor’s house. And he cried again, “Frankenstein!”. This time there was no doubt about the violence of his feelings. At this, I confess, my nerve broke. I turned and ran along the paving of the quay, scrambled up the slippery steps to the road and, with one glance behind me at the top, to assure myself he was not coming after me, hastened homewards, sliding on the snow, now an inch deep, under my feet. Later, I again looked behind me to see if he was following. Seeing he was not, I slowed my pace and, wet and cold, continued to plod forward as fast as I could. Yet in spite of my retreat it did not seem to me that the poor, misshapen creature had meant me any real harm. He had done no more than chase me off and return to his lair. His pathetic babbling speech might have been more appeal than threat. And he had called out Frankenstein’s name, called it out, it seemed to me, in pain and indignation. What could it mean? My head reeled, but this I knew—Victor’s cold denials of any knowledge of this man must have been lies. He was no chimera, no figment of my imagination. Victor had not told me the truth. This greatly saddened me on the long, uncomfortable walk to my lodgings. I arrived back at Gray’s Inn Road in a deplorable state. Gilmore opened the door to me and was disconcerted by my appearance, but all I could say to him in the hall, as the parlor door flung open and Mrs. Downey appeared with many exclamations, was. “Be vigilant, Gilmore. Nothing is any better.”

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Then came the usual kindly attentions from the two ladies of the house, the fire lit in the bedroom, the production of a steaming hipbath, fresh clothes and a seat at the parlor fire, feet boiling in a mustard bath like a piece of beef. Then came supper and a whisky toddy—for Mrs. Frazer never came over the border without bringing with her several stone jars of her native brew. There was, however, a quid pro quo behind these kindly female attentions. In exchange the ladies required a fuller account of the story Gilmore had told me at the inn. Evidently their questioning had got little out of him. Nevertheless, further confused by the events of the day, I felt it better to say nothing. I wished I could, for safety’s sake, have commanded the whole household to move to another place, away from these mysteries. But of course, as a mere lodger in the house I could not give orders and to have attempted persuasion would have meant telling all. So, contributing nothing to the happiness of Mrs. Downey and her sister, I claimed fatigue and went early to bed, but not before I had surreptitiously visited Gilmore in the kitchen, telling him we must keep watch that night over the house and requesting him to rouse me at eleven o’clock, so that he might go to bed while I stayed awake watching. When he looked at me in alarm I told him that I believed I had found Victor’s enemy, that he was most probably a lunatic and not far off from here. “He appears harmless, but that may not be his permanent state. We must be careful. Tomorrow I shall endeavor to make some better plan, but for tonight we must stay on guard.” I then retired and lay down in my clothes to get some hours’ rest. At eleven Gilmore duly shook me awake and, the rest of the household having gone to bed, I went downstairs. Looking from the window of my room, I saw that the trees, the yards behind

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the houses with their little patches of vegetables had turned white. The looming houses, most windows unlit, were black against the snow. From their crooked chimneys smoke still streamed into the dark night sky. As far as I could see not a footprint marred the whiteness behind the house in any direction. Nor was there any sound of traffic or people in the streets, as if the snow had laid a great, quiet blanket over all. Downstairs, I listened out, occasionally rising from the parlor fire to look from windows, back and front, to see if there were anyone near the house. Alone, in the unusual silence snow brings to a city, I wondered if my precautions were needless. Had my imagination carried me into fantasy? Suppose, I wondered, that a charge were laid of slandering Victor’s good reputation. The prosecution could well make a strong case that I was mad—none but I had seen the ungainly, half-witted man I claimed was threatening Frankenstein. As for Gilmore, what lawyer could not easily discredit the unsupported word of a witness about what he believed to have occurred so long ago when he was a boy? Either Victor Frankenstein, my friend, was deceiving me or I was myself deluded, sorely mistaken about much in this affair. Such uncomfortable thoughts did not, though, overcome my fatigue and the warmth of the fire. I regret to report I fell asleep. Alas, a flinging out of my arm jolted some knick-knack from the parlor table. I heard it, but slept on. Not so Mrs. Downey, who, a woman to her fingertips, could in her sleep hear a pin drop in the cellar. I was woken by a cry from the doorway: “Mr. Goodall! What are you doing here? Why are you not in bed?” Mrs. Downey, a wrap over her shift, hair falling down her back, holding a candle in her hand, was a pretty sight, I thought,

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coming from sleep. She glanced about the room, taking in the fallen bibelot, happily unbroken, and then her eyes began to roam on, in search, I think, of the bottle or bottles she thought must be involved in the affair. I had already deduced the late Mr. Downey had not been a temperate man. Yawning and rubbing my eyes I told her I was on watch for trouble, though not, as she had discovered, conscientious enough to carry out my selfdesignated duties. She responded vehemently saying she could bear all this no longer. There were mysteries and secrets in the house, she knew I had anxieties I was not revealing to her, I was not to imagine she had not perceived Gilmore’s extra vigilance or did not know I was at the back of it. She had not been told what Gilmore, her sister’s own servant, had revealed to me as to his running off. Now there was danger—“I repeat,” she said, “I can bear this secrecy no longer. Surely I have a right to know what is happening? My sister’s, my own and my defenseless child’s safety appears threatened by a mystery. And,” she concluded, “if you believe keeping secrets concerning myself and my family to be chivalrous then I have the honor to inform you it is not. It is merely folly.” Like most men, I do not like to hear myself roundly abused by a woman on waking. I became a little angry. “For God’s sake, Cordelia, I am doing my best,” I exclaimed—this was the first time I had used her Christian name and I was surprised to hear it burst from my lips. She did not comment on this use of her name, only saying gently, “Would it not be better to tell me what is happening?” I sighed and leaned back, feeling very weary. “It is very late, Cordelia.”

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“That does not concern you for you are on watch,” she said pertly. “I will make a little tea and butter some bread. We will call it an early breakfast and it will restore you.” And this she did, rekindling the embers of the fire, suspending the brass kettle on its hook above it, taking the loaf set out for breakfast and toasting slices in front of the flames; while I, fighting sleep, wondered if I should tell her all, or any of the story. If I were wrong? Could it be right to pass off suppositions as truth, frightening a woman? Such struggles availed me nothing in the face of pretty Mrs. Downey at work with a toasting-fork, her hair curling down her back. Looking as she did, she would have set a Trappist monk singing a roundelay. I asked myself were she indeed my sister, but widowed, with a child, would I have the right to keep knowledge and therefore the power of deciding her own affairs, from her? So—warning her that the story I had to tell was unpleasant and frightening, and that she herself would have to decide how much of it to believe, I told her all, or almost all the story. Throughout my relation, which must have taken half an hour, she sat quietly looking at me with a level gaze, moving only when she stood to offer me tea or make more toast. I was ravenously hungry. I was astonished by her calm. At some points I thought it might be she could not understand what I was telling her but, no, she understood perfectly. I concluded my tale by weakly appealing to her for a judgment: “Mrs. Downey—Cordelia—tell me, do you think I am deluded, a false accuser of my friend Victor Frankenstein?” Gravely she told me, “I do not think you understand everything about this, Jonathan” (she used my own first name, I noticed). “There are mysteries here. But I am sure much of what you say is correct. Remember, I have known Donald Gilmore

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since he first came to my sister’s house as a lad. His tale concerning Mr. Frankenstein may not be accurate in every point, but not, I think, the fiction Mr. Frankenstein makes it out to be.” “Cordelia,” I said, and I may say the joy of using her name and having her use mine filled me. “What you say relieves my mind. I feared I was mad.” She said pensively. “Not that, but I am afraid I think Mr. Frankenstein a danger to you. And the singer, Maria Clementi— and very possibly her companion, too.” I think I have said I thought Cordelia, as I now will call her, a little hard on Maria, whom she had never met, through jealousy, perhaps, and because she had a respectable woman’s mistrust of actresses and the like. “Miss Clementi is the purest and most innocent creature imaginable, as you would know if you met her,” said I. “Whom you last saw in a carriage, laughing with a man you describe as one of the most degenerate creatures you ever encountered—” I sighed. “I know. It is a mystery. And now Hugo and Lucy Feltham are at Cheyne Walk and I know not what may be occurring there. Now I have dragged you into this affair. What can I do?” “Wash your hands of the business now,” she told me. “But I fear you and your household are in danger. How can I turn my back and pretend nothing is the matter?” “Then go to the magistrate Mr. Wortley in the morning and inform him you have reason to believe the man who killed Mrs. Frankenstein is at the Chelsea wharf. Demand that he should be taken up and questioned,” said the lady, evidently once a keen student of her late husband, the lawyer.

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“My dear Cordelia,” I said, taking her hand. “Of all women you are the most excellent.” She seized back her hand. “My goodness, Jonathan,” she cried. “You are too bold. I should not be here with you at all at this hour and dressed as I am.” And with that she whisked out of the room and I heard her go upstairs. But though she had reproved me, she had called me by my given name. She had not been severe. Filled with a surprising joy, I might have sat on in delighted contemplation of a life to be, but I had not done my patrol for some hours now, so was obliged to take up my chilly vigil again. Until morning there was no sign of anything untoward inside or outside the house. I resolved to adopt Cordelia’s suggestion. I would lay information against the man on the wharf as early as possible that morning. Some evidence concerning the attack might be got from him and, at all events, once in prison he would not be able to harm anyone. And it was my dear Cordelia who had clear-headedly gone straight to this solution! I began to dream of a future with her, if only she would consent to marry me. I began to imagine her at Kittering, mistress of my house, tender friend to my sisters, comfort to my father as he grew older. Would she have me? A worldly woman would not have hesitated—but Cordelia was not a worldly woman. She would do only what her heart directed. I went wearily to bed at six, when the loyal Gilmore took over from me. I thought of Cordelia—my head touched the pillow— I was asleep. Yet it was not of Cordelia I dreamed. I dreamed instead of that awful figure I had so recently encountered. In my dream he was bare-chested and barefoot on some tropical island under a strong sun. He stood on yellow sand, gazing out over a blue sea.

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There was the distorted figure, misshapen face, burning eyes and tangled mass of wild black hair. I felt the heart within his breast drumming, sensed the violent movements of his brain, with its capacity for sudden, violent emotion, for good or ill. And then he altered. His face softened and became more regular, his great black eyes ceased to burn like coals and took on a gentler light—he smiled. From somewhere in the trees surrounding the bay I heard a voice, singing. It was the true voice of Maria Clementi, heard in dream, though she was not to be seen. She sang some old mediaeval tune, somberly yet with great feeling and conviction. It was a song such as one hears in holy processions in Spain and Italy. And the man stood, as if he could not hear her, looking out to sea. The notes of Maria’s song were in my ears as Gilmore, according to my instructions, awoke me at half past seven. Not much later I was on my feet in the dining-room, having taken a cup of coffee from the hand of Cordelia (already up and fresh as a new coin, though silent to her sister on the subject of the night’s doings). I intended setting off immediately for the house of Mr. Wortley, who lived only a few streets away. At that moment the doorbell jangled and in came my friends Hugo and Lucy, dressed for traveling. This was very strange for the hour was early and there had been nothing about their going the day before. Moreover, few with any choice would set off for Kent with snow on the ground and the chance of more to come. Invited to take some breakfast Hugo agreed with some relief and urged his wife to sit down and take something. She, however, pale, with two angry red spots on her cheeks, remained standing and shook her head determinedly. Cordelia stood up and, putting an arm round her shoulders, led her to a chair by the fire. She spoke to her softly and evidently induced her to take some cordial.

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Mrs. Frazer, at the table, gazed at this scene in surprise. “Well, Hugo,” I asked, “what brings you here so early?” Eating heartily, he said, “I apologize for this early arrival, Mrs. Downey, and thank you for your kindness. I regret there is an unhappy affair to discuss.” “You had better say what it is, Hugo,” I told him. He glanced at Mrs. Frazer, sitting at the table alertly, eyebrows raised, and at Cordelia, standing near his wife. “I have been made aware of something amiss at Cheyne Walk,” Cordelia then said. Mrs. Frazer’s eyebrows went further up at this. It was Lucy who turned her head from the fire and said to her. “We have left that house.” “In haste, I assume,” said I. She stood up again and took a position by the fire, her eyes bright and her whole body rigid with anger. Showing none of Hugo’s compunction about what ought or ought not to be discussed before ladies, she exclaimed passionately. “That woman— that actress—Clementi—arrived at midnight last night. You were right, Jonathan, to accuse Victor of continuing to court that woman when he should have been mourning his poor wife. But what none of us could have known, believed—ah—it’s disgraceful—Elizabeth hardly in her grave—monstrous—I told Hugo I could not stay.” And again Cordelia urged her to sit down and calm herself. With Lucy seated once more Hugo continued the story. “Let me explain why we could stay no longer at Cheyne Walk. She— the woman Clementi—arrived as Lucy says late last night in a carriage, still in her gold stage dress, her face brightly painted, the very model of a—well, I will spare us all the word. Lucy and I had

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just gone to our room, but came down again when the bell rang, for it was very late and I had been alarmed Jonathan, by what you said the previous day. She burst in, dressed as I have described, and straight away fell to sobbing in the hall. Victor, who had come from his study, went into something like a frenzy, clasped her to him, told her (for she could say nothing, of course) that some coarse man must have pressed his attentions on her and frightened her, threatened murder, called fire and brimstone on the head of her supposed abuser—all the while she clung to him, giving no assent or denial to his suppositions about what had brought her to the house. There in the hall in front of Lucy and myself he embraced her, she entwined about him, he told her he loved her, swore he would marry her. And all the while she clung to him, with her painted face turned up to his, allowing him to woo her. Even as we watched, unable to think what to do, he drew her tenderly into the study and closed the door. We heard him turn the key in the lock.” “He slammed the door, rather, in our faces, without a word,” Lucy exclaimed. “We would have left then, but it was late, dark and cold. We were forced to sleep there, as much as we could, rose early, packed and left. There was no sign of Victor or the woman.” “The study door was open as we left,” Hugo reported. “There was no one in the room. I felt we could not leave London without coming to you, Jonathan, and telling you of this new state of affairs. I was disturbed by your argument yesterday with Victor— and bewildered. But after what we have just seen I ask myself— what am I, what is anybody, to think of Victor Frankenstein? I am sorry, Mrs. Downey, to bring this unpleasantness to your house.” “You are well out of that horrible place,” said Cordelia. “Jonathan was on his way to lay information against the deformed man of whom he spoke to you yesterday. What you do

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not know is that when he left you, he saw the fellow climbing over the wall of Mr. Frankenstein’s house, then bravely followed him to his lair and questioned him.” “That’s more than I would have done,” said Hugo. “What did he say?” “The fellow is feeble-witted and hard to understand,” I said, “but he knows the name of Frankenstein and, my impression was, resents him bitterly. Like you, I do not know what to think.” As I spoke, there came another jangle at the doorbell and Mrs. Frazer, who had sat in amazement as this conversation continued, jumped up to answer it herself, no doubt expecting more alarms—as was the case, for she was almost pushed back into the room by a determined Mrs. Jacoby who came through the door like a tornado. Behind her was Gabriel Mortimer, less cock-ofthe-walk now, and looking grim. “Maria—have you seen her?” Mrs. Jacoby demanded of me. “What?” cried Cordelia standing up. “Who are you? Why do you come here?” “This is Mrs. Jacoby, Miss Clementi’s companion, and Mr. Mortimer, her impresario,” I explained. “Mr. Mortimer, Mrs. Jacoby, this lady rightly asks why you come here, uninvited, at this hour. Do you suppose I have Miss Clementi hidden somewhere in the house?” At that point I confess I was anxious to dispel any impression Cordelia might have that they had any reason to suppose this might be the case. Mrs. Jacoby replied to my question, saying passionately, “Of course I don’t think she’s here. But I believe she may be at Frankenstein’s. You are his friend.” “What has that to do with it, Mrs. Jacoby?” Cordelia asked.

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“The lady is most certainly at Frankenstein’s—or was, last night,” Hugo intervened. “Ah,” Mrs. Jacoby said angrily. “It is just as I thought—just as I told you, Gabriel.” She turned to me, “Will you go to him and persuade him to release her?” she asked. Hugo, however, said, “She went there of her own free will. I and my wife were reluctant witnesses to the scene. She arrived late last night still in her stage dress in a state of great agitation and appeared to be asking for shelter. Which,” he said grimly, “was granted.” “That villain!” exclaimed Mortimer. “What does he want with her?” “But what do you want with her?” came the clear voice of Cordelia Downey. “What do either of you want with her?” There was a silence, broken by Mrs. Jacoby, “You appear to me to be a sensible and respectable woman, and I feel ashamed that the upset of Maria’s going has caused Mr. Mortimer and I to intrude on you so early.” “Thank you for your tribute to my character,” Mrs. Downey said. “It does not explain your presence.” “I must tell you—none of you knows Maria Clementi as I do,” Mrs. Jacoby cried out passionately. “She is the most wicked, immoral creature who ever trod the earth. Come, Gabriel—this is not the place for us. Maria has gone to Frankenstein—did I not tell you that witch was not abducted? Mr. Goodall cannot help us. We must go to Cheyne Walk and have it out.” And apologizing hastily for their intrusion, the couple left as abruptly as they had arrived, leaving Hugo and Lucy, Cordelia and Mrs. Frazer looking at each other in bewilderment.

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“There is nothing we can do,” Hugo announced stoutly, “The woman went to Frankenstein, Frankenstein received her, what more is there to say? We must go, Lucy, now. Mrs. Downey, I fear you have had a bad start to your day. I thank you for your hospitality.” “Well, my dear,” Cordelia said to Lucy Feltham. “Mr. Feltham may be prepared to whisk you breakfast-less from the house before you have had a chance to arrange yourself, but I will defy him on your behalf. You must have an egg, hot water, a little cologne and some small chance to restore your equanimity. While all that is taking place my servant can put up some food for your journey and these gentlemen can step round together to the magistrate’s to put in hand the matter of the arrest of the imbecile.” She could not resist adding, to me, “As for the character of Miss Clementi—you now have it from the lips of her own, paid companion.” We were swept from the house as by a broom leaving the ladies to deal with their arrangements. Mrs. Frazer, naturally enough, was bursting with curiosity as to what all the events of the morning might mean. As we walked to Mr. Wortley’s house Hugo said, “A woman of some character, your Mrs. Downey. You could go further and fare worse—” but I did not reply. At Mr. Wortley’s I reported I had reason to suspect that a man who lived on a wharf at Chelsea might have information bearing on the death of Mrs. Frankenstein and her child, might indeed be the perpetrator of the crime. Hugo supported this statement and Wortley dispatched men to lay hands on him. I heard from him later that the fellow had decamped during the night. When his workmates arrived in the morning they found him and his very few possessions gone from the hut.

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How happy I was during the next weeks. How little I desired gloom, mystery, dreads and doubts. And, though few would have believed it, I was able to banish such thoughts for some weeks as all my tenderness for Cordelia Downey increased and, so she said, did hers for me. Such times are rare and precious for all of us. Since I was now an admitted lover, it appeared unsuitable for Cordelia, scion of a freedom-loving family though she might have been, to stay alone in the house with her prospective husband. Either I must remove myself or Mrs. Frazer stay on as chaperone, and Mrs. Frazer having no pressing reason to return home, it was decided she should remain. So, in the light of love offered and returned, small wonder it was possible for me to put darkness from my mind. We planned a visit to my family in Nottingham. I began to forget the frightening and complicated affairs of Victor Frankenstein (who, during this period, did not approach me in friendship, nor I him). When I thought of the affair, I hoped it was over. Alas, this was not to be. Dreadful news arrived all too soon.

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FEBRUARY the magistrate Mr. Wortley arrived, calling me from work on my dictionary to impart some most dreadful news. Victor Frankenstein lay gravely ill, near death. He had been found, the day before, in the early morning, stabbed as if by a lunatic, in his own drawing-room—that same long, gloomy salon overlooking the garden from which I had observed the lurker, now missing. The window of this room had been broken, exactly as on the night Elizabeth Frankenstein was killed. On the otherwise unbroken snow of the lawn huge, erratic footprints, as if made by a limping man of great stature had been discovered. Wortley added the dreadful fact that a gardeners’ hut near the house bore traces of occupation. Inside was discovered a pile of bedding, some of which had been taken from Victor’s house. There was a ragged, black coat, crusts of food lay about, even a plate from the house. Plainly someone had been living in the hut

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and stealing supplies from Victor’s household. Mr. Wortley did not doubt that this man was he who had broken in and almost killed Victor, nor that the madman was the very monster I had reported to him. “While men had been searching everywhere for the culprit,” Wortley said bitterly, “he was in the last place anyone might have expected to find him—hiding close to his prey. Far from escaping, he had come closer to the man he wished to kill.” I expressed the utmost horror at this story. I would, I said, go to Victor immediately. “There is another thing,” Wortley said, a little uncomfortably. “When the servants raised the alarm they found your friend, bleeding, and a lady with him, a lady who is dumb, cradling him in her arms. I think you will discover she is still there.” It made a dreadful picture. Victor mortally wounded in that bleak drawing-room at Cheyne Walk, under a broken window, the footprints of his murderer leading away across the white expanse of lawn while Maria, unable to speak or cry out for help, stayed with him as he lay there, near death. Wortley continued, “It is unfortunate she cannot speak, for when we catch Mr. Frankenstein’s attacker—who may, alas, by then be his murderer, for he is between life and death even now—we will need a witness to what happened. But she cannot tell us what she saw. Do you know her? Is there any way she can be got to speak?” I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, there was not. I then went to see Victor, accompanied by Cordelia, who offered to give any help she might. It was very cold but bright as we clopped over hard-packed frozen snow to Cheyne Walk. The sun glinted from the ice of the

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Thames which was solidly frozen. A ship, sails furled, was trapped in mid-channel; little boys were sliding and whooping on the ice. On the pier where Victor’s assassin had once lived and worked, the men had lit a big fire of driftwood round which they stood to warm themselves, though there would be little work for them until the river unfroze. Victor’s butler, a man with an expression of deep doubt and anxiety on his face, opened the door to us, and said he would conduct us to Victor’s room. The house was cold, for which he apologized, saying that morning all the maids and the other manservant had left, out of fear. We began to mount the huge, cold staircase to Victor’s bedroom, but as we ascended I looked down and through the open door to that large and desolate drawing-room where I observed two burly men sitting on chairs, playing cards. They had been hired, no doubt, to protect the house and Victor from further attack. However, when I commented on this the butler shook his head. “Would that they had been here last night. I have locked the stable door after the horse has bolted. Alas, the doctor’s opinion is that Mr. Frankenstein may not have long to live.” As we reached the landing at the top of the stairs, I was surprised to see seated outside Victor’s sick-room the heavily mantled figure of Mrs. Jacoby. She stood up as Cordelia and I approached. Her face was very lined; she looked ten years older. She spoke to me with some urgency: “Mr. Goodall, Maria is within, sitting with Mr. Frankenstein. But I must speak to you privately—alone.” “Yes—perhaps,” I said, “but first let me see poor Victor.” My hand was on the handle of the door. She grasped me by the arm. “Make her leave that room,” she urged. “Mr. Goodall—make her leave.”

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I entered the vast room where a great fire burned. Victor lay in a four-poster bed, his face turned away from me, looking at Maria, who sat beside him. All the hair was gone from the back of his skull, cut away so as not to clog his wounds. There were two great slashes which had been stitched in black in the form of a cross at the back of his head. His arms lay outside the bedclothes, both heavily bandaged. Mr. Wortley had said the weapon used had been a heavy knife, such as cooks employ for large joints of meat. Thirty separate wounds had been made, Wortley said, but of these the most serious would probably be those less visible which had penetrated his chest and stomach. Maria sat on a chair by the window, clad in a pretty grey dress with a lace fichu at her shoulders. Her hair was arranged in curls on top of her head. She smiled as I approached the bed. She was holding Victor’s hand. I said, “Victor—Victor—I am desolated to find you like this. What can I do for you?” But Maria, with a little wave of her small hand, attracted my attention and, wearing a small, rueful smile, pointed at Victor, then at her own mouth, shaking her head. I did not take her meaning at first, so she went through the pantomime again. This time I understood. “He cannot speak?” I questioned. She shook her head again. I went round the bed to the side where she sat, to show him my concern, even if it was impossible to speak to him. I gazed down at that grey, wasted face and was appalled by what I saw. Maria had his hand in hers, his eyes were upon her face—and on his face was an expression of absolute horror. He gazed into that pretty face as if he were looking into the pits of hell. She continued to smile gently at him, then bent gracefully to kiss him on the brow. A puff of smoke caused by some back draught came

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from the fireplace into the room. For a moment I saw, as if in a dream, smoke curling round Maria, and the prone figure of Frankenstein. I thought of Mrs. Jacoby’s appeal to me to make Maria leave the sick-room. I dropped to my knees beside the bed (which inevitably meant that Maria had to let go of Victor’s hand) and put my face to his, saying, “My dear fellow—my very dear fellow—are you afraid, what is the matter?” His eyes met mine in fear and underneath I thought I saw an appeal. I glanced at Maria, who shook her head, smiled and indicated by her expression that what I saw was not to be taken seriously. I gazed deep into her inexpressive, lovely eyes and felt I was drowning. I wrenched my own eyes away and they fell on Victor’s fearful face. “Victor,” I appealed. “Can you tell me what ails you?” But he could not, though he seemed to be pleading with me. Then, as if he had been mesmerized, his gaze, frightened, yet in some way obedient like a beaten child’s, went back to Maria. “Miss Clementi,” I said. “I know you mean well, but it appears to me that your presence in this sick-room is disturbing Victor in some way. Would it not be better to end your visit and return at a later time?” She smiled directly into my eyes—a pang, most shameful in these circumstances, went through me. I thought, I am mad. I must be mad. Then she bent her pitying look on the invalid, whose hand she took again in her own, and at that his face seemed to become more ashen, more lined, if that were possible. I was forced to say again, “I truly think your presence agitates him. A man as ill as Victor must be indulged, or his recovery will be slowed.” Or never take place at all was what I meant, though I did not say so. “Why do you not leave him now,”

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I continued, “and return tomorrow, when perhaps he will be a little stronger.” But she only smiled and shook her head and held the hand of the terrified man. She would not leave. I flung myself from the room, finding Mrs. Jacoby in sympathetic conversation with Cordelia, as if the unpleasant early morning interview at Gray’s Inn Road had never taken place, I exclaimed, “Mrs. Jacoby, she makes love to him even as he lies there dying, but his eyes are full of fear when he looks at her! She terrifies him. He pleads wordlessly with me to make her go but she will not—will not. He has conceived some irrational fear of her. She must leave him.” “That was why I asked you to try to get her from the room,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “She has been with him now for a day and a half, ever since he was attacked.” “Can you not influence the doctor to force her out and install some determined nurse to stay with Mr. Frankenstein all the time?” Cordelia asked. “One must pander to the fancies of a man so ill.” “Fancies?—These are no fancies,” replied Mrs. Jacoby, grimly. “I told the doctor yesterday of this, but he was taken in, no doubt by Maria’s pretty face. Mr. Goodall—he comes in an hour. Will you speak to him?” “I will,” I said. “But should not Victor’s parents be here to direct matters now he is so ill?” “Mrs. Jacoby tells me he will not have them called,” Cordelia told me. “Is it right to be guided by him over that? I doubt it. He is very ill and his judgment may be affected. I am sure they would wish to be here.”

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Mrs. Jacoby said, “All I know is that Maria must be excluded from the sick-room.” I felt I could hardly bear to re-enter the room and look again into the terrified eyes staring desperately from that grey and wasted face. Yet I forced myself to do so, crossing the room to where Maria sat, still clutching Victor’s hand. I assured him I would speak to the doctor as soon as he came and that we would get a capable nurse to be with him all the time. Having said that, which I thought from his expression relieved his mind somewhat, I cast a glance at Maria, who smiled as ever. Was there malice in her eyes or did I imagine it? After I left the room Cordelia took my arm and said, “Mrs. Jacoby must speak to you.” I followed her downstairs to that long, cold salon with its shrouded chandeliers and fading light. A couple of candles stood on the mantelpiece where a pathetic fire burned. As we came in the two guards leapt up as if to appear vigilant. We stood away from them by the window, conversing in low tones, possibly on the very spot where Victor had lain, stabbed, after the attack. Outside the snow still lay on the branches of the trees and on the grass. Now the ground was covered with the marks of frozen footprints, left by the belated search for Frankenstein’s attacker. But the searchers had gone—I only wondered, had the man for whom they searched returned? Was he out there, his body pressed against the black trunk of a tree? Then Mrs. Jacoby grasped my arm—I felt her fingers pressing hard into my flesh, in spite of my coat. She said urgently, “I can stay silent no longer. You must know the truth, I must tell you everything about Maria Clementi.”

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JACOBY’S FACE was very strained as she said, “You must hear what I have to say now, for tomorrow I leave Miss Clementi’s service. Would that I had gone sooner. I have stayed on with her, though, God knows, my conscience has urged me over and over again to leave. Why did I stay? For the money, I confess. She paid me well. And because, in my vanity, I thought I did more good than harm by staying and even—vain hope—believed I could convert her, eventually into a reasonable human being, a creature with a heart and with a soul. But now I must tell you everything about her.” “You are very bitter, Mrs. Jacoby,” Cordelia said. “Pray, do not say too much in the heat of your anger and disappointment with Miss Clementi—” “There is no heat to my anger,” Mrs. Jacoby interrupted. “Nor to my distress, nor my loathing of that abominable creature. I am stone cold. I have been with her for years. I have seen all her

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doings. I have no feeling left but disgust. Maria Clementi,” she went on, “is immoral, profoundly immoral by any normal standards, yet I believe she is actually beyond morality, if any mortal can be. She is evil—yet I believe she does not know, she does not understand what she does. She is a savage—perhaps even worse than a savage, for we read that savages have their society, their laws, their taboos, however strange. Maria is secretly cruel: she steals, if she thinks she will not be caught; she is a libertine, but conceals it. She cares not what she does, only whether she will be found out. And I—I have helped to hide what she does.” “Mortimer is her lover?” Mrs. Downey asked calmly, as if asking the price of fish. I thought, he cannot be—that venal, shady creature cannot be Maria’s lover—but Mrs. Jacoby answered, “Yes. Of course he is. He and a hundred others. I have been with her for five years in all the capitals of Europe and there have always been men, too many to count. Some loved her, poor creatures, their sufferings were the worst. She did not know how she wounded them. How could she, for she cannot give or receive love? I have seen dogs with more apparent love and loyalty. As to the rest, I cannot tell you all the terrible things she has done and which I, for my sins, have helped her conceal. “There was a beggar woman in Vienna, a poor woman with a child in her arms who stopped Maria nightly as she entered the opera house asking for money. This woman Maria could not abide. She began by kicking the woman when she begged of her. But the woman persisted. One evening, as she was entering the theatre, Maria fell on that woman—and her child—in a frenzy. She tore at the woman’s eyes and there was blood all over her face—and Maria’s hands. The child fell to the ground—doctors had to be called. Silence cost us dear. It was in Vienna too, on

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another occasion, when she thought the director of the theatre was favoring another singer over her—this woman was given a song Maria thought was hers, she was put in the center of the stage where Maria thought she should be. Perhaps the director was her lover and favoring his mistress. Maria put lime in the cream the other actress used to clean her face. Imagine the pain and deformity with which that woman was left. Even in Dublin, where she was first found, they told me she had killed a man among the people with whom she then lived. Perhaps she had some cause. Perhaps he had attacked her but—oh—I have seen her close to murder so many times that I would not be sure she had any good cause to kill the man. “You see,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “Maria is unlike anyone in the world. She is violent, vengeful, without remorse. I have tried to control her. I have covered up her misdeeds. But this affair with Mr. Frankenstein is the end. I knew she wanted him—but why? Yet, as she wanted him, she had him. She is skilled at the measures of the old dance—as he moved forward, she moved back, but only so far as to be nearly within reach. Then he moved forward again and she, with the appearance of the utmost purity and virtue, moved away again—but only to bring him further on. She knew she must do that, for if she yielded too soon he would value her less. And thus she hooked him and even now as he lies on what may be his deathbed she sucks the life out of him. “I have borne enough; she has bought five years of my life at a price I should never have agreed—the price, almost, of my soul.” She paused for a moment, the cold winter light on her drained face. She was no longer the capable woman I had first met. “Why?” she questioned. “Why, having enticed him, does she wish to torment him? I have thought sometimes her evil ways

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were the result of her upbringing, mute and defenseless among Irish tinkers, though not of them. She was untaught, used to beg and sing for money in the streets. I had thought to help and improve her, make her more gentle in spirit, but now, after five years, she is more ruthless and immoral than before. This refusal to leave Mr. Frankenstein’s sick-bed is vile, a new vileness, I cannot understand it. I will not bear it. I must leave.” “But where will you go?” I asked. “To my sister’s in Chatham, today,” she told me. “She is a widow on a small pension. There will be little money and she is an adherent of a narrow, canting sect. I expect to have their pastor with me continually exhorting me to wash in the blood of the Lamb. It will not be a pleasant life, but better, better by far, than that with Maria Clementi. I leave you to protect Mr. Frankenstein from her attentions.” Cordelia then asked, “Who is she? Where did she first come from? You must have some knowledge of what made her what she is? What of these gypsies, or tinkers?” “It was Gabriel Mortimer who found her at the house of friends in Dublin, where they had her to sing after supper. She had been singing and begging in the street for some time before that, and due to the sweetness of her voice and her beauty it came to be the habit of some of the better families to hire her to perform for them in the evenings after supper. The beautiful gypsy, they called her. At that time she was in the charge of a dirty old woman who controlled her comings and goings and I’m sure took her wages from her when she was paid. That woman may have been a tinkerwoman or have bought her from tinkers. Anyhow neglect and cruelty must have been Maria’s portion. Sometimes she screams aloud at night, as I confided to you, Mr.

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Goodall. Sometimes she will sit and stare with clouded eyes as if recollecting some scene from the past. But because she cannot speak she is locked away from ordinary discourse with others, as a prisoner is locked away, and for that reason I believe she lives much in the past, even as a prisoner will. For that I pity her. But for nothing else. “I came into her employment as a result of Mr. Mortimer’s visit to some members of my husband’s family in Merrion Square. I was staying with them and had become used to the occasional visits of Maria, who was brought to the house by the old woman of whom I have spoken. Even then she had a fastidious nature, for considering her condition she was as clean as a cat, and of course able to sing most beautifully, not just in English and French but also the old Erse songs. One could not understand the words of them, yet listening one found oneself almost weeping. She had, you see, a facility, perhaps compensating her for her dumbness—she could learn any piece of music after hearing it only once. “Then we come to Gabriel Mortimer. He was visiting my brother-in-law having some business with him touching a joint share in a trading venture in Canada—this on the verge of going wrong (Mortimer has a finger in many pies; money is his god). He heard the girl sing and there was I, on a soldier’s widow’s pension, vigorous and lacking occupation—who better to act as the girl’s guide and companion when Mortimer rapidly decided to take her to London for her debut? I believe he bought her from the old woman. “At first all went well. She was pleased to be well housed and fed and not beaten—her body was and is badly marked by beatings. On her arm there is a scar where she was pushed or fell into

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a fire as a child. She most rapidly learned the manners of those in a better way of life, how to comport herself and to dress and to behave abroad and at table. Her progress was so rapid I wondered if she might have been at one time locked away by a respectable family ashamed of her deficiency in speech, given away or stolen away from her parents, unable to cry out. That might account for her aptitude in learning so quickly the niceties of life. But it was not long before her evil ways emerged—she would steal anything and everything, always with the utmost skill. She was cruel, wantonly needlessly cruel, as if possessed. To try to make her love something, even if she could love no human being, I tried the experiment of getting her a little dog. She burned its body, artfully hiding the burns for as long as she could. When I found out, the wounds had festered—Mortimer and I had to have it killed. “And her behavior was lewd, debauched. Not two months after we reached London Mortimer was her lover—I daresay he was after two days but I did not suspect until later. Though when I say he was her lover I do not mean there was love involved in the affair. On his side, low as he is, there may have been some— on hers, none. She took him as an animal will, with no thought but to satisfy her base desires. She is not, however, exclusive. Those looking for her relationships with Lord This or the Count of That will find nothing. Thus, as well as due to my help, she retains her reputation for extraordinary purity in a profession not given over to virtue. No—if you wish to find out where Maria Clementi disposes of her body, go to the waterfronts of any of the capital cities of Europe, go to the stews, go into the filthiest parts of the towns—there you will find her, with one man, or many. I will spare you more. I have said enough already before Mrs.

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Downey. Leave it that she is the foulest creature who ever walked the earth. “Mercifully, we were always moving from city to city—from Vienna to Rome, from Rome to Budapest. Had that not been the case much trouble would have come to us. Mortimer and I, in conspiracy, by bribery and by continually moving on, were able to hide what she did. All the while we pretended Maria was an angel—and all the while I knew I was protecting, was paid to protect, a woman who, thwarted, prevented or annoyed in any way, reacted by attacking the source of her pain without any consideration at all, who saw no reason not to take what she wanted, hurt whom she wished to hurt, without any remorse. I do not know how long it is,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “since I realized I had lost all hope of influencing her for good. I know that for too long I have eaten her bread and quenched my conscience.” As this confession continued I wished my dear Cordelia absent. Mrs. Jacoby’s tale, as she had said, was unsuitable for her ears. However, inasmuch as I could tell what Cordelia, who listened intently, was thinking, she showed no signs of shock or horror. She now said, “My dear Mrs. Jacoby, if what you say is true, you have been in a most unusual situation, one you could not have prepared for, and must have had much difficulty in understanding.” “Well,” said Mrs. Jacoby, fastening her bonnet strings and folding her mantle firmly about her, “thank you for those words. I must now go to earn my forgiveness in Chatham and regret I shall have to leave the business of the doctor to you, for, to be honest, I hope never to hear the names of Mr. Frankenstein and, above all, that of Maria Clementi, ever again. I go to do my penance now, but, before I go, I warn you, if you become any further involved

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in this matter you may find yourselves having to do your own penance later. This affair is damnable and may entangle the best of individuals like weed dragging them down to the bottom.” And with that she turned abruptly, crossed the long room and went out, leaving us standing in that cold room together. Cordelia gazed after the departing figure, then turned to me and asked, “Jonathan? Do you believe what Mrs. Jacoby says?” “I do not fully know,” I answered her, “but it is as well we are due in Nottingham as soon as the weather is sufficiently improved for us to make the journey. We cannot disappoint my family, who dearly wish to meet you and I long to take you to my home. And in that way I do what I ought, and dearly desire to do and we take Mrs. Jacoby’s parting advice also. We will be far away from London soon.” Cordelia said, “Will you not call for Mr. Frankenstein’s parents? They ought to be with him—and may manage to keep that viper from his side. But I will see Mrs. Jacoby before she leaves.” I did not ask her what she hoped to discover by a further conversation with the lady. When the doctor arrived I urged him in the strongest terms to ensure Victor had nurses day and night and that Maria Clementi was not allowed near the sick man at any time. We had taken a carriage home and it was there that Cordelia, one small cold hand in mine, said, with some diminution of her normal confidence, “I am afraid of all this, Jonathan, and not for fear of any madman coming to murder us. I dread further entanglement in Mr. Frankenstein’s affairs may end our joy, destroy our love.” I laughed and called her a goose.

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HAT EVENING,

we sat at our fireside. The ladies sewed and rather than dwell upon the melancholy and alarming events of that gloomy house in Chelsea, we spoke rather of our forthcoming visit to Kittering Hall. Mrs. Frazer then recalled she had been invited to attend a private performance by Mr. Augustus Wheeler one evening the following week at the house of a friend, a titled Scottish lady residing in London. On account of our journey, she said, she would be obliged to tell her friend she could not come. Cordelia said she considered this a great sacrifice. A scientist as well as a showman, Augustus Wheeler had been causing much interest with his displays on the London stage and in private homes over the past few months. Audiences had been delighted and horrified by his power over those members of his audience—apparently unknown to him—who, having been subjected to his mesmeric powers, crowed like cocks, walked about

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the stage on their hands, delivered long poems they claimed earlier to have forgotten and all manner of such things. Some called Wheeler a charlatan, while others were entirely convinced by him. Others still pointed to the consultations he conducted in private, for a fee, at which he cured people of stammering, bashfulness and, in the case of one lady, of an apparent inability ever to leave her own front door without fainting. The newspapers debated the truth of mesmerism; clerics warned their congregations against his displays; Wheeler was a celebrity. He was invited to great men’s houses and entertained many important persons with his displays. Said I to Mrs. Frazer, “You would not, I hope, have offered yourself for a demonstration.” “Good heavens, no,” she exclaimed, “I have no wish to be seen clucking like a chicken in front of half London.” “Do you think the man a fraud?” Cordelia asked Mrs. Frazer. “I do not know what to think,” she responded. “What of you, Jonathan?” Cordelia asked me. “There is much evidence to say it is true,” I answered. “Yet it violates our belief in man’s free will if one man can mesmerize another and persuade him to do things he would ordinarily eschew.” “That is what is so frightening,” mused Cordelia. There was a silence and then it was as though we two thought as one, for, just as Cordelia began, in a thoughtful tone, “Miss Clementi—” I myself said, “I wonder if Mr. Wheeler—” and we stared at each other in, as the poet says, “wild surmise” and both fell silent again. “Come, come, the pair of you,” Mrs. Frazer said. “You know you must not start sentences without finishing them.”

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I said, “I believe Cordelia and I both thought at the same moment that Mr. Wheeler might be the last hope of restoring Maria Clementi’s powers of speech. She has seen many doctors and other eminent men of science, but so far none has been able to help her. Surely it is at least possible that a man who can make a lifelong stammerer cease to stutter, as Wheeler has, and has performed many other apparent miracles, might have some effect on Miss Clementi. Is that not so—is that not what you were about to suggest, Cordelia?” Cordelia nodded and Mrs. Frazer said, “Maybe so. But why do you want to do anything for that nasty creature?” “She is the only person who may know what happened on the night Victor Frankenstein was attacked. She may have seen his assailant. But she cannot speak and Mr. Wortley says even if they lay hands on the villain and accuse him of murder, there is a chance the jury will pronounce him innocent, as there is insufficient evidence.” “Surely that cannot be true,” Mrs. Frazer said. “Here is a man, half a beast, who has been haunting Mr. Frankenstein’s house. Mrs. Frankenstein has been murdered, Frankenstein himself attacked—how could they declare the man not guilty?” “Wortley knows his juries,” said I. “He tells me they can behave most unpredictably, especially when, as in this case, there are no other witnesses to the man’s guilt.” “If they ever find him,” Mrs. Frazer said tartly. “If they do,” said I. “Nevertheless,” Cordelia said, “if Mr. Wheeler could assist Miss Clementi to speak, what might she not be able to tell of the attacker?” “I imagined I heard you say earlier we should have no more to do with the affair,” I said, pretending confusion.

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“And that I most sincerely believe,” Cordelia responded. “Yet a lady may think two things at the same time and go unchallenged. Poor Mr. Frankenstein needs any help we can give up before we leave for Nottingham.” “Then I will speak to Mr. Wortley tomorrow,” I said. “He may consider any attempt to get evidence against the assassin worthwhile. But then comes the matter of persuading Miss Clementi to accept the treatment. I suppose there will be no trouble with Wheeler. He will welcome the notoriety such an attempt would bring. But to persuade Maria Clementi without the stabilizing influence of Mrs. Jacoby—” And there was another sentence left unfinished. I saw Wortley next day and, though initially startled by the proposition that testimony might be got from Maria by the intervention of a mesmerist, he agreed that information from any source was better than none at all. He added that it was after all my affair and Miss Clementi’s if we chose to seek the help of Mr. Wheeler. That afternoon Cordelia and I set off for Cheyne Walk and, on our arrival, were somewhat astonished to hear that Miss Clementi was again upstairs with Mr. Frankenstein. Had not the doctor given explicit instructions that Miss Clementi be not allowed in the sick-room, I demanded of the manservant? He looked at me helplessly, but did not reply. “She has got round the nurse,” Cordelia declared in an undertone as we set off up the stairs. “I believe she must be one of the cleverest women in England.” Her prediction was all too true. When we reached Victor’s chamber door the nurse was seated outside. Recalling the dreadful fear on Victor’s face I had seen last time Maria was with him,

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I lost my temper with the woman and asked her harshly had she not heard the doctor say Miss Clementi was not to be allowed into the sick-room? What now possessed her to run against the doctor’s orders? The nurse, evidently seduced by Maria’s fame and charm of person, responded with some rambling tale about never having seen before such sweet and selfless devotion, she had heard the sick man calling for her and much rubbish of that kind. “Go in and ask her to come out,” I ordered. But she would not. Happily at that moment the doctor arrived, visited Victor in his room and came out with a compliant and sweetly smiling Maria. The nurse was discharged and Cordelia went to get a good woman of whom she knew. “This is a most difficult situation,” the doctor told me. “There is no one here to take charge. Mr. Frankenstein’s condition is very grave.” “I have sent for Mr. Frankenstein’s parents,” I told him and then turned to Maria, still standing by, and asked if I might have a private word with her. She had evidently organized the household to her liking, for she led me to the little parlor which had once been Mrs. Frankenstein’s and there I found a good fire burning and, over the fireplace, a portrait of Maria herself, satined and bejewelled, as Aeneas’ jilted lover, Dido, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. This shocked me, though I said nothing. Instead, I explained to her, as clearly as I could, that it might be that Mr. Augustus Wheeler, by mesmerizing her, could restore her lost powers of speech. She appeared to understand completely, knew the name of Wheeler and charmingly mimicked his work by closing her eyes and laying her pretty head sideways on her hands. I added

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it was felt she might be able to help with the investigation into Victor’s assailant, should she be able to speak. Again she smiled nodded and showed every willingness to help. Would she, I asked, permit me to talk to Mr. Wheeler about the matter and see if he agreed with our plan? To this she agreed, indicating to me by gestures she would not be found at Cheyne Walk but (pointing) at Russell Square henceforth. Plainly, she had decided to abandon Cheyne Walk and return to her own home (picture as well, I suppose). “Very well,” said I to her, “I will find you there when I have spoken to Wheeler,” and I began to take leave of her. She was all happiness, with the gaiety of a child and charm a woman in one. She came up to me, put her little hands on my shoulders and lifted her face for a kiss. I kissed her brow, then stepped back quickly, for the urge to take her in my arms was almost irresistible. I found myself beginning to mistrust the account of her given by Mrs. Jacoby, though I knew I would not confide my doubts to Cordelia. I returned to Gray’s Inn Road where my bride-to-be awaited me. There we sat down to talk, hand in hand. Cordelia smiled at me a little wearily. “How I yearn for all this to be over and done with and you and I married and living peacefully together, I keeping your house, you taking care of your land and completing the work on your dictionary.” I felt a terrible tiredness wash over me like a wave and could scarcely answer her. Meanwhile, whether Mrs. Frazer had engagements or no, we were unable to leave London. It froze hard, snowed, then froze for over a week. There was no question of making the journey of

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one hundred miles to Nottingham in such conditions. A man on horseback would have had a very hard time of it and to journey in a carriage containing two ladies and a child would have been madness. Beggars froze to death in their doorways, birds froze on their branches. It was a hard year when we felt spring would never come. I used the time to write to Augustus Wheeler at his theatre, telling him what I was sure he must know, of the mysterious muteness of Maria Clementi and asking if he would contemplate making a last attempt to restore her powers of speech. I added he might be aware she had been present at the time of the maniacal attack on Mr. Victor Frankenstein, and therefore might have some information to give as to the identity of the criminal. The undertaking, I said forcibly, must be entirely private and not used to enlarge his name. The very next day an answer came from Mr. Wheeler, thanking me for my confidence, stating that he would be very happy to attempt to restore Miss Clementi’s voice by mesmerism and assuring me he would observe the utmost confidentiality over the experiment. He made some references to the power of mesmerism and added that if I or Miss Clementi would care to attend what he called “a demonstration in mesmerism” at the theatre one night he would be pleased to present us with tickets. His writing, I observed, was flowery and ornate; the ink he used the palest blue. I guessed from this flamboyance he must be only part scientist, the rest showman. That settled, I sent a message to Gabriel Mortimer at Russell Square, telling him I would call on him on a matter of importance the following afternoon, unless I heard from him earlier that he would be away from home.

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Next day I went there and I was shown into a sitting-room on the first floor of the house, which overlooked the icy branches, laden with snow, of the trees in the square outside. A bright fire burned in the room, which was charming, decorated with pictures, delicate furniture and bright carpets. I observed the portrait of Maria as Dido on the wall opposite the fireplace. She and her painted representation had evidently re-established themselves at Russell Square. The lady who was seated, sewing, when I entered, put her work away and got up to greet me, both hands outstretched. Mortimer remained in his chair, legs extended to the fire, as Maria put both soft hands in mine. I could not convict her. I was not even sure I should. Was I to reject her on Mrs. Jacoby’s words alone? Had there not been, perhaps, a grievance between the two, resulting in Mrs. Jacoby’s dismissal and her subsequent bitterness? Even the look of fear on Victor’s face as Maria sat by him—might that not be caused by pain or terror of death, rather than by the woman sitting near him? Nonetheless, I reflected that Gabriel Mortimer seemed more at home in this house than perhaps he ought, Maria being without the chaperonage of Mrs. Jacoby. Yet this need not mean the pair were lovers; these were after all stage folk, made intimate in special ways by long and arduous journeys together and all the alarms and excitements of their trade. I was not a censorious old woman—Maria Clementi might merely be unwise not depraved. These were my thoughts at the time—I told myself what I wished to believe. I briefly gave my message, that Augustus Wheeler would be happy to mesmerize Miss Clementi in the hope of restoring her powers of speech. Gabriel Mortimer, in spite of his foppish

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appearance—on this day he sported green velveteen trousers and a butter-colored waistcoat, over which spread a watch-chain thick and heavy enough to rival the Lord Mayor of London’s chain of office—took my point. He stood up, went to Maria and, looking down on her, asked her earnestly if it was true she wished to try the experiment with Wheeler. She nodded eagerly. He questioned her again, urgently, did she understand what he could do, put her to sleep, tell her to speak, did she understand she would have no control over herself while she was in his power, that, in the end, sadly, the attempt could fail? She smiled, stood up, twirled round gracefully, a delighted child looking forward to a treat. She smiled at me radiantly. Poor creature, I thought, how hard her life must have been, from her beginnings as a mute, exploited girl in Ireland to her present existence of continual travel and performance. I compared the lot of my sisters, sheltered and protected from all harm, with Maria’s. How hard it must have been, leading such a life, to be unable to speak, to express herself, or to communicate with others. Her existence, though filled with applause and heaps of golden guineas, lacked gentleness and solace. No wonder she now danced, I thought, with her skirts sailing round her, her motions light and feathery, her smile full of innocent pleasure. Seconds later she was at my chair, gazing down at me, still smiling, her great eyes with those enormously dilated pupils fixed on mine. I felt, I confess, a surge of passion for her which I simultaneously wished to deny. It was an urge to succumb to her to which I knew I must not yield. I greatly feared that small, light creature, frail but strong. And I knew she knew all I was feeling—and rejoiced.

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I took a hasty leave of her and Mortimer, wondering if they laughed at me once I was down in the street. I walked home, cursing myself for a fool, resolving never to see her again nor have anything to do with her. It would not take much for her to ruin me, as she had ruined poor Victor. That innocence was false, she had deceived me, Maria Clementi was a serpent. As I walked I began to wonder ruefully if Wheeler would succeed in mesmerizing her or would she, with those great eyes, mesmerize him? Once home I discovered Cordelia and Mrs. Frazer were off visiting, attended by the faithful Gilmore—and was pleased for once to find them away from the house, for I was thoroughly shaken and ashamed of myself and needed time to recover from that great wave of sick desire and the equally strong impulse of resistance. Time, and past the time to be gone from London, I thought I had done what I could and now it was for Mortimer and Wheeler to put their heads together and decide how the matter of the mesmerism should go on. Then mercifully the thaw came and by the end of February sun and wind had cleared the thaw, or most of it, and the roads were open again. Our decision was made—we would take Mrs. Frazer’s coach North. Cordelia, myself and little Flora would at last get to Nottingham, Mrs. Frazer would spend a few days with us and then, with Gilmore as ever, proceed home to Scotland. Late in the evening before our departure the hall was full of corded boxes, young Flora was up and down from her bed crying out she was unable to sleep, and Cordelia busy giving instructions to her maid and cook, who were to stay behind to mind the house. Just then a servant brought me a message from Mr. Wheeler. I opened this missive, addressed in his flourishing blue ink. “Sir,” the letter began.

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“I have had a first encounter with Miss Clementi and am satisfied she can speak! This is most wonderful and surprising to me. But I am afraid to go further with our meetings as I am most alarmed. Will you meet me urgently for I must discuss this matter with you. Mr. Mortimer is all for going on with the experiments, but I am doubtful and, alas, cannot think of anyone other than yourself to consult. May I therefore take the liberty of calling tomorrow at noon? Please let me know if this is not convenient to you. At all events I beg for an early interview.” Yet we were eagerly expected at Kittering Hall by my father and sisters and my sister’s intended husband, and this was the occasion on which I was to introduce Cordelia as my wife-to-be. Having been already detained by bad weather, I could not allow an occasion so important to all of us to be postponed again. I knew, too, that I must resist the temptation to have any more to do with Maria. If I did, I could lose all. Worse, I could lose all, and not care what I lost. Accordingly I left a note with Cordelia’s servant telling Wheeler we had left for a journey and he might write to me if he chose at Kittering. Thus we departed Gray’s Inn Road next morning early, leaving behind the glooms, the frights—and perhaps, just as importantly, the temptations—of London.

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fourteen

E MADE STEADY SPEED,

with Gilmore at the reins, though the carriage was heavily laden. Flora, who had done little traveling in her life, was full of excitement and I was pleased to see that the journey put my dear Cordelia in good heart, in spite, perhaps, of her being a little nervous of her reception by her new family. As we moved North in cold but sparkling weather, my restlessness and anxiety began to abate. We decided to put up at an inn half-way and it was here, as Gilmore and I occupied ourselves with the horses in the stables, that he turned to me and asked for more news of Frankenstein. He had heard of the attack, of course, as had all London. I told him what I could. He said only, “I truly believe that the poor creature which the doctor kept locked up on Orkney was a man, however degraded his condition, and that the fellow has come back for him.”

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I responded I thought he might be right and we should all thank God we were away from London. To this he assented heartily. When we arrived at Kittering my father, Arabella and Anna were there to give us a warm welcome. Also at the house was the good Dudley Hight, who would marry Arabella in May. Mrs. Frazer stayed on with us for a few days, so we were a large and merry party. Little Flora rejoiced in the freedom of having a large house and a whole estate to roam in, rapidly becoming a favorite of my father’s estate manager, who found a pony from somewhere and was soon taking her round with him, he in front on his big bay, she plugging on behind on Tansy, as her pony was called. On one memorable night, not long after our arrival, they went out to watch badgers play under the moon. I cannot speak too highly of the warmth of the greeting given Cordelia by my father and sisters. I knew—who could not have?—that my father had hopes of a better match for me, in worldly terms, than a solicitor’s poor widow, with a growing girl of her own. Yet he welcomed her cordially and full-heartedly, taking an instant liking to her, as did my sisters. It was no disadvantage that my father soon discovered what neither Cordelia nor I had found out ourselves—that he had been at Trinity with her father, John Jessop. We laughed much over dinner to hear of the capers they had had in their university days. We found the college had rechristened Cordelia’s father Radical Jack in his youth because of the nature of his views. It would seem that Jack had kept a couple of wolfhounds in his room and a pair of hawks, which had not delighted either his fellow students or the college authorities. There had been all kinds of roistering, gaming and running up of debts in the circles in which father and Jack Jessop had moved, enough to make me rueful, when I recalled the many

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admonitory letters I had received from my watchful parent during my college days. So there was laughter, there were visits from neighbors and kinsfolk in the locality and comings and goings from one house to another. Among the ladies, of course, was much exchange of patterns, discussions of the latest style and countless demonstrations of stitchings, launderings, tuckings, ruchings and gopherings—all matters mysterious to men and giving some answer to the mystery of why ladies have, mercifully, so little energy left over from their interests to devote to deep study and philosophical speculation. So there were four days of pleasure and gaiety until some five days after our arrival, when, like a cloud coming over a perfect day, another disturbing letter arrived from Augustus Wheeler. That morning we were to go hunting, the hunt due to assemble at Kittering Hall. All was excitement and flurry, Flora had been up since daybreak, having been given leave to follow the hunt on her pony from a safe distance. Dressed for riding we broke our fast from laden tables, with whatever neighbors had arrived betimes. Meanwhile outside the house was confusion as grooms brought up our saddled horses or held the mounts of the early-comers. It was a bright morning and we all looked keenly forward to the day. In the midst of all, a boy came up from the village with letters. Even as servants cleared the tables and others carried round hot punch to the mounted riders outside, even as I heard the baying of the hounds being brought up the drive to the house, I opened Wheeler’s letter, suddenly gloomy, suspecting the happy days at Kittering had been only a respite from the affairs of Victor Frankenstein, not an ending of them.

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Whatever the message, though, I declared to myself, I would not leave Kittering. The letter read: “My dear Mr. Goodall, “I much regret having missed you in London and now consider it most necessary to communicate to you the strange and alarming results of my first encounter with Miss Clementi, whom you asked me to visit. I am sorry to disturb you in this way but you must, and I think would wish, to hear of this, since you were good enough to suggest I might be able to help her. “First I should say that in the past I have been asked to bring my powers to bear on certain mystifying cases where there is no seeming cause for the patient’s affliction. In attempting to relieve these conditions, much like any Physician, I have had my cures, my failures and those apparent successes which do not endure because, after a brief remission, the sufferer lapses back into his previous condition. But I have never experienced anything like what I met with on my visit to Miss Clementi, not because it was a failure—indeed, the encounter contained promise of future success. But it was very alarming, so much so that I am anxious about continuing my treatment. “I went to Miss Clementi’s house in Russell Square on February 19th, the day before I sought my interview with you. I arrived at about half past two and was welcomed by Miss Clementi herself and her impresario Mr. Mortimer. Another gentleman, never introduced to me, arrived a little later and was present with Mr. Mortimer during the proceedings. “I would have preferred another lady, some relative or trusted companion, to be present—indeed I had assumed such a person would be there. Had I foreseen what would occur I would have

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insisted. But as it was, although I found the absence of any lady and the presence of Mr. Mortimer and the young gentleman a little unusual, I saw no reason to object. I recognized the unknown gentleman as having been present at one of my exhibitions at a private house, though I did not then know his name. “It may have been Miss Clementi herself was not fully at ease in this situation. At any rate she proved singularly hard to mesmerize. My method is, in accordance with established practice, to persuade the object of my study to sink into a trance by the swinging of some object (I use a crystal on a silver chain) before his eyes while speaking to him in a low voice, thus relaxing his mind and persuading him into the necessary state of trance. “As I swung the crystal on its chain before her, Miss Clementi sat in one chair, while I sat opposite in a similar chair, drawn up close. During this exercise Mr. Mortimer and his friend stood against a wall close to the door, to witness this procedure, acting in a most deplorable and quite unsuitable way, talking loudly to each other and at one point calling for wine. This undesirable atmosphere may also have made its contribution to the difficulty I found in having any effect on Miss Clementi. She was not an easy subject for mesmerism. The normal individual approaching mesmerism will either be willing to comply, or adopt a kind of nervous defiance of it, the former attitude being more common with ladies, the latter, with gentlemen. Miss Clementi reacted in neither of these ways but sat in her chair, charmingly, regarding the swinging crystal with a kind of neutral interest. “I presumed that, hardened by her own work on the stage, she believed at bottom my scientific experiments in mesmerism to be some form of illusion, as with a magician or conjuror. In vain I swung the crystal to and fro before her, uttering what some have

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called my ‘incantations’ (in fact a mélange of suggestions to her that she should repose herself and fall into a reverie). “At one point, the crystal proving ineffective, I asked her to look into my own eyes, hoping thus to influence her. This I ceased to do, for, when she turned her gaze to mine I saw an emptiness in her eyes which alarmed me. They were like great dark pools, the pupils being much enlarged. They were almost, at that moment, if I dare say it, like the eyes of an animal, quite inhuman. I suspected for a moment, I confess, that she was turning the tables on me—attempting to entrance me.” Here, I think, I laid the letter down on the mantelpiece. The room had emptied. Through the long windows I could see, on the grass outside, the crowd of horsemen and those who would follow on foot. The hounds wove in and out of the melee; there was all the gaiety and anticipation of the moments before a hunt sets off. I could hear cries, laughter, the baying of dogs and noted in the jostling throng, the groom holding my horse and gazing questioningly in my direction. Cordelia, who was mounted (to follow, not to hunt), nudged her chestnut through the crush and rode close to the windows, also, mutely, asking me when I would emerge. I gestured to her with the letter and indicated I would not be long. An unconfident rider, she turned her horse and urged it through to where it was less crowded. Now that I had begun to read this letter, though every line pointed towards an alarming conclusion, I thought that I had better finish it for good or ill. As I read on I heard the horn begin to blow, the hounds go off at full cry and the thud of hooves galloping away. I pictured the hunt streaming off over the grass towards the fields beyond. They had found a scent quickly, as I

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had believed they might, for only the night before, leaning from my window, I had seen a pair of foxes playing on the grass outside the house. I had told no one of this, thinking to give them a chance—I am great for the chase but not for the kill, as many are, would they but confess it. As the sounds grew fainter I stood alone in the room, continuing to read Wheeler’s letter, which went on: “Some fifteen minutes after I had commenced my efforts to induce a trance in Miss Clementi, I believe I had worn down her resistance for, though she herself was not aware of it, as I continued to swing the crystal, her eyelids began to droop—the two against the wall, I am forced to say, continuing their racket as if they were at an inn. Ere long Miss Clementi became lethargic, I took her two hands in mine, her eyes opened, then closed again. She was at last in a trance. “Mr. Mortimer and his companion, observing some change in the situation, now stopped their banter and came closer. I then commanded Miss Clementi to open her eyes. She did. She was under my influence at last. “I began by asking her a few trifling questions, to which she did not respond in any way. I then said, ‘Maria—you know you can speak. And now you must speak. Speak now.’ She did not, but I observed her head twitching a little, as if in agitation, and that she breathed faster. The two men were now all attention. I knew I must proceed slowly and with care. I recognized Miss Clementi was an imperfect subject for mesmerism. She was one of those rare persons who, even in a trance, retain some final controls. And I recognized it was my reference to her inability to speak which caused her such agitation.

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“Mr. Goodall—on one occasion long ago I continued to demand answers to questions which disturbed my subject rather as I was now disturbing Miss Clementi. I will not describe the consequences but they were very grave and I vowed I would never do such a thing again. But I had witnesses urging me on as if they were at a cockfight; I had the most intense curiosity to get to the heart of this intriguing mystery. I took a risk I should not have taken and repeated my words to her, telling her that she could speak and must speak. Alas, her agitation increased. She began to toss her head from side to side with the very motion of a woman trying to keep strangling hands from her neck. Her chest rose and fell convulsively as if she were about to go into a frenzy. And still she made no sound. “Then her mouth opened. She screamed. She cried, ‘The fire! I’m burning! The fire!’ Then she screamed again, then began twisting in her chair as if in great pain, as if, veritably, burning. “I reached forward, took her by the shoulders, put my face to hers and was about to demand that she woke, for the pain she was in seemed terrible, when her body suddenly relaxed and she began, my face still close to hers, but completely unaware of my presence, to sing, in French, in a childish voice—by no means that of the Maria Clementi we have heard on the stage. What she sang was that odious ditty of the French revolutionaries, the ça ira, which they sang as they advanced through the streets and countryside of France to kill and loot their fellow countrymen. Though that song is half a century old now, it still represents that spirit of frenzied rebellion which brings a shudder to all who remember the past—or fear the future. ‘Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira...’ she sang, but as if—to me, it seemed—she had learned it as a child at her mother’s or father’s knee. Not such a strange idea, I suppose,

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for nothing is known of her past. Perhaps her parents had worn the red bonnet of the Revolution. “By this time Mr. Mortimer and his nameless companion had become much alarmed. It is one thing to witness a demonstration where a man mimics animals or a lady holds her arm above her head without apparent pain or discomfort for five minutes: it is another to see a young woman mesmerized and brought to the portals of the madhouse. And this was, alas, what I had brought about. “The young nobleman, for so I judged him to be, stood there, mouth agape, half-horrified and half-fascinated, and there was that in his manner which unhappily reminded me of a visitor in a brothel, a man watching a display in a whorehouse. Mortimer, a man of some sense, whatever his moral character, acted to stop the matter, though misguidedly, and rushed forward, attempting to lay hands on Miss Clementi, crying as he did so, ‘Maria! Maria! Wake up, for God’s sake!’ “I, still having hold of Miss Clementi’s shoulders, shook my head violently and hissed at him, ‘No—let me do this. You may harm her.’ Whereupon he retreated a pace and I roused Miss Clementi with one calm order that she should awake and forget all that had occurred during her trance condition. She ceased to sing, opened her eyes and gazed quite calmly at all of us, seeming unaware of what had taken place during the preceding minutes. Then she rose to her feet, looked round at our astonished faces and left the room with a graceful tread. With difficulty I prevented Mortimer and his friend from following. I rang for a servant and sent her to her mistress, whom she reported, only minutes later, to be lying on her bed fully dressed but for her shoes, in a profound sleep.

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“ ‘But will she speak when she wakes?’ was Mortimer’s urgent question. I could not know and told him this. I warned him not to inform her of what had befallen her while in her trance, for I feared to recall to her conscious mind that which had so disturbed her. “Since that afternoon I have met with Mortimer, who tells me that when Miss Clementi awoke from her sleep some hours later and in time for her evening’s performance, she was mute as ever. Mortimer had obeyed my instructions and told her little of what had passed that afternoon though she had been curious, inasmuch as she was able to express that curiosity. Miss Clementi, he told me, wished to proceed with the attempt to regain or restore her powers of speech. I responded by saying I was most reluctant to try again soon, particularly, I stressed to him, in the undesirable atmosphere he and his friend had created on the previous occasion. Emphatically, I told him, it had been obvious to me, as it must have been to him, that Miss Clementi was able to speak, for she had done so when she cried out ‘Fire! I’m burning!’ in such a harrowing manner. “But I told him I considered her affliction to be such as I had met before, though seldom, where my subject appeared to be obeying unheard orders to behave in a particular manner. I told Mortimer I had caused cripples to walk and stammerers to cease stammering. But always my impression had been that the condition was imposed on the sufferer by orders given to that individual by himself which he dared not disobey until in a mesmeric trance, when I countermanded the order he had given to himself. Did Mortimer, I asked, know of Miss Clementi’s having been in a fire where she lost those she loved—had per-

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haps not raised the alarm in time, and therefore sentenced herself to perpetual silence? “Mortimer said he knew nothing of such an event and, to put it bluntly, seemed to dismiss all I said as rubbish. His proposition was that while mesmerized some imaginings of Miss Clementi’s had been released and that they were not to be taken seriously. The important thing, he claimed, was that while under my influence she had spoken, and therefore the sooner she and I met again to continue the work, the better. He had no doubt that in a week or two she would speak. told him that, while under mesmeric power subjects were not dreaming, as he seemed to imagine, but were less given to fancy and imagination than most of us are in our day-to-day lives. “He ignored everything I said; there was no reasoning with him. I believe he is partly altruistic in wishing to get Miss Clementi to speak, but it cannot be ignored that he sees profit ahead not only for the lady but more for himself if she could take speaking pans. I have told him bluntly that I hesitate to proceed, fearing for Miss Clementi’s sanity, as much as anything else—and certainly would not contemplate seeing her in the pothouse atmosphere he and his friend had created on the previous occasion. Were I to attempt again, I told him, I would need the support of a doctor and some respectable female friend of Miss Clementi’s. Her reaction, I told him, had been as unusual and as horrifying as anything I had seen in thirty years and I would not answer for the consequences if some reckless and ill-thought-out attempt to restore her voice were made. “I confess to you, Mr. Goodall, that only these considerations prevent my recommencing the work immediately. For I am immensely curious about the case of Miss Clementi, which might

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advance our knowledge of mesmerism considerably. But science has its responsibilities. A man yearning to learn more of medicine may dissect a hundred corpses without harming any living thing and the results of his dissections may be beneficial to future generations. But where the subject is alive a man in pursuit of knowledge must take his responsibilities seriously. Knowledge must not be gained at the expense of the health and happiness of another—yet, alas, Mr. Goodall, a man will always be tempted—always. “To conclude, I parted on bad terms with Mortimer. He wrote me an hour later, full of apologies, and since then I have received a letter daily from him, urging me to visit Miss Clementi again and use my powers of mesmerism on her. He has offered me a large sum of money, which I have refused. He is now recruiting others to his cause and I fear the pressures on me will mount. “In short, my dear Mr. Goodall, I appeal to you to favor me with your thoughts and advice about what should be done. Miss Clementi has no family and appears to have no true friends about her, though there are many, I think, who wish to exploit her. Can you help or can you direct me to someone else who might provide me with guidance? I keenly await your reply.” I cursed as I put down the letter. Yet even as I cursed, I wondered what should I do? I was tempted to go to London, from a curiosity I knew I should restrain and because, I argued, it was I who had set this affair in motion, therefore I owed it to myself to see it through. In my mind’s eye I saw Maria writhing in her chair, afflicted by visions, even the very sensation of fire. But, great gods!—what would my family think? I had come here with my bride-to-be and would be abandoning her after less than a

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week. What would Cordelia think of me for leaving her with my family, whom she had only just met, to go off to London and involve myself again in this murky affair? No, I declared to myself, I could not go, would not go, did not wish to go. I would write a judicious letter to Wheeler that very night. I would not go to London. With that thought I left the room rapidly and found my groom back in the stable yard, walking my horse up and down. I got up on my good old Rodney and off I went. A good gallop across open fields chasing the sound of the hunting horn blew away thoughts of Wheeler’s letter. Soon I was up to the infantry, then caught up with the riders, passing Flora, spurring on her little mount, with Cordelia riding soberly beside her. Galloping on over a little rise, I found the hunt streaming across a vast ploughed field under a sky of clear pale blue. Ahead of them, plunging for the cover of a hedge, I detected the darting fox. We crossed another field and headed at a gallop through our own coalfields, the horses’ hooves drumming on the hardpacked earth as we passed the winches carrying swaying buckets to the surface, a group of black-faced men, a small group of drably dressed women sorting coal in vast troughs. Once through these two acres of blackened earth and puddles we were back in fields and it was in a copse at the end of one that the hounds finally caught up with our quarry and it was over. But no sooner had we clustered round the kill than some of the dogs caught another scent and we were off again, over hill and dale. We killed twice that day and would have gone on, but then down came the rain, drenching horses, men and hounds

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and the scent, too; so we turned for home, well satisfied, arriving weary, soaked, but in excellent heart. Later, by the drawing-room fire we sat comfortable again. My sisters, Cordelia and Mrs. Frazer were sewing for dear life: there was to be a ball at a neighbor’s house in three days’ time, so that many hems were being raised and lowered, ribbons being replaced and necklaces rethreaded. My father was in his study, though Arabella’s betrothed was with us, handing thimbles and the like. I sat to one side, watching the rain pour down over the window panes and over the flat landscape, and began to think anew of Wheeler’s letter. Cordelia might have read those thoughts for she raised her head from her sewing and asked. “What was the burden of this morning’s letter to you, Jonathan?” “It was from Mr. Wheeler, the mesmerist,” I responded. This caused much interest, of course. On the way down from London Cordelia, Mrs. Frazer and I had agreed to spare the Kittering folk as much as possible of the horrid story of Frankenstein, though the news of his attack, so shortly after the murder of his wife and child, was of course known. Now I told the company, “Miss Maria Clementi, the singer, whom you may know is able to sing but is otherwise completely mute, was present at the time of the attack on my friend Victor Frankenstein. Many doctors have tried to restore her power of speech and failed, so as a last resort it was thought a mesmerist should be asked if he could help her. Thus she might be able to tell us what she saw when Mr. Frankenstein was attacked.” “Dangerous games,” Dudley Hight observed from his chairpredictably, perhaps. Stout-hearted squire that he was, he was

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more concerned with his land and the doings in the locality than the strange affairs of the city. “Well, then,” said Cordelia. “Did he report on a meeting between himself and Miss Clementi? What was the outcome?” I left the window and went to sit with the party by the fire. I was not altogether happy about speaking. Flora was among us, frowning over her cross-stitch, and I am not one who thinks it a duty to present children with unpleasant facts at an early age in order to harden them. I had decided earlier not to go to London but to write instead to Wheeler. Yet I now began to recognize I was tempted as a man recognizes he has a sickness in the blood. I said only, “The outcome was not a good one. Wheeler believes he will make no further attempts to discover Miss Clementi’s voice,” and that, in spite of many curious questions, was all I said. That night I wrote to Wheeler advising him to visit Maria no more. I would see him, I said, when I came next to London. The rain poured down next day and the next, but the morning after that dawned fresh and blue. In the evening there would be a ball at a neighbor’s to which even I looked forward. I rose early and was about to set out to our coalfields for an early interview with the overseer there when a maid came with a letter into the stable yard, where I was waiting for my horse to be saddled. With sinking heart I recognized that flourishing, ornate hand and the pale blue ink. I had resisted going to London. What fresh horrors had Wheeler to impart from a distance? Any faint hope I had that the news might be reassuring was destroyed as soon as I read the opening sentences:

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“Mr. Goodall—I expect you will by now have received my last letter in which I told you I feared to go further with Miss Clementi. I mentioned also that I had warned Mr. Mortimer it might be dangerous to do so, but, alas, far from heeding my advice he has ignored it completely and has embarked on a course which alarms me greatly. Events move fast. I need your advice and, perhaps, practical help in the matter. “Mr. Mortimer and his associate, the young man of whom I told you—it appears he is Mr. John Nottcutt, nephew of the Duke of North Shields (and the biggest libertine at large, in my opinion and that of many others)—have hatched a plot together. They have arranged for March 4th a demonstration of mesmerism with Miss Clementi at the Royal Society in front of a host of invited dignitaries, both scientists and other notables. I have said over and over I dread going on with Miss Clementi without good safeguards. Now—imagine my horror of proceeding without such safeguards and before a large audience of people. “You might say, Mr. Goodall—then Wheeler, do not do so. But consider my position as sympathetically as you can, I beg you. I am a man without means other than what I can earn by my powers. I depend on the favor of others. Mr. Nottcutt is the eldest son of the brother of a Duke. The Duke himself is in poor health. If I refuse I run the risk of earning the enmity of the future head of one of the most powerful families in the land (and Mr. Nottcutt, let us be clear, is not one to take lightly the smallest slight). I live by the patronage of such men. I fear to offend them, I much need now the counsel and perhaps the support of a gentleman such as yourself, more able than I am to engage with Mr. Nottcutt on equal terms, more capable, to put it bluntly, of taking the force of his wrath and weathering it.

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‘I assure you I am more upset than I can say in addressing you so soon again, and particularly in these terms, but I fear for Miss Clementi and for myself if the plan devised by Mortimer and Mr. Nottcutt goes ahead.” The brightness left the day as I finished reading this letter. I rode out across fields to the coalfields in a miserable frame of mind. I saw some men, women and children plodding off to their work. These dark-visaged people in their work-blackened clothes depressed my spirits even further. I would have welcomed any letter from Wheeler removing the temptation to go off to London. This, however, removed any excuse to stay away—it was I who bore most of the responsibility for the terrible outcome of an attempt to get Maria to speak. That graceless fellow Gabriel Mortimer and his strange ally, John Nottcutt, proposed to put Maria on public exhibition, like a freak at a fair. Mortimer obviously felt that this would increase her—and his—fame; Nottcutt, I suppose, was moved by idle curiosity, as a boy pokes an anthill with a stick to see the insects run about. And Wheeler had earned himself many a guinea by his association with the powerful, a living, understandably enough, he did not wish to endanger. All of which left poor Maria Clementi being moved by a villain, a knave and a poltroon. I had been away from the febrile excitement, the terrors, the mysteries of the situation surrounding Victor Frankenstein for one week—and already I was being drawn irresistibly back. No help for it—if I was going next day I must impart the news immediately to my family—and to Cordelia. This I did. It would be for days only, I told them, then I would return at speed. Faces were pulled, pity was expressed that I found myself forced to go again

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to London. Into Cordelia’s eyes I could not look. She spoke to me little during the day. It was that evening, as I dressed for the ball, she came to my bedroom and sat unceremoniously on my bed, watching me put on my tailcoat. She said, “Jonathan—must you return to London? Can it not wait? Can it not go on without you at all?” “I fear I must go, dear,” said I, feeling a hypocrite and growing angry as a man will. “Are you bored here in the country?” she asked. “My dear Cordelia. This is my home where those I hold dearest in the world are all gathered together. I assure you, I leave because I feel I must, not because I wish to.” Yet I knew as I spoke that my desire to pry into all the corners of the world was leading me from home, a man of my disposition would leave Heaven itself to see what mesmeric power could make of Maria Clementi. I would choose differently now, but then I was young and eager, lured against my will, by Maria. I had not discovered into what danger the lust to know may take a man. Cordelia stood up to retie my cravat for me and said, as she did so, “I fear for you, Jonathan. It is not only that the murderer is at large, and is close to those he is persecuting, though that is bad enough: it is that I sense something the Scotch would call ‘uncanny.’ It makes me shudder. It has done so from the start, and now it grows worse. Can you wonder I am afraid for you?” Then I took her in my arms and will say no more of what followed. I was misled by vanity again, believing the main reason for her disliking my visit to London was her fear of Miss Clementi’s charms. And—my Cordelia’s instincts have ever been true—her battle too was with the demon of curiosity within me, that devilish heretical impulse to know.

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As we went downstairs to take a little tea and bread and butter before the ball I told her, “My greatest comfort is that you and Flora will be here in safety with my family, who have already taken you to their hearts.” “It is sad I shall not feel as comfortable about you,” was all she replied—reducing my ease considerably. In short, making me feel a villain. Meanwhile we took our tea. My father had been persuaded to accompany us to the dancing and had put on his old bottle-green coat, always pulled out for such occasions. As Arabella and Anna often disrespectfully remarked, this garment might have made its first bow at the court of Queen Anne. The ladies went off to take last looks in their glasses, leaving my father and myself alone at the table among the tea-cups. We had settled for a stiffening glass of claret apiece when he said to me, quite harshly, “I hear you leave us tomorrow, Jonathan. I do not understand you. I’m given to believe you’ll ride a hundred miles in all weathers to witness an experiment in mesmerism, leaving behind you, after only a few days, the charming woman you wish to make your wife. I had counted on you to be here, sir, to assist in the business of the estate. More important, Mrs. Downey needs you here. I believe you’re mad.” “Well, I think I must go, father,” I said. “I hope you don’t plan to fall in love with this foreign dancer,” he said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “A dumb beauty may have much appeal for a man but I pray you’ll resist. I have long hoped for your marriage and the arrival of the admirable Cordelia Downey rejoiced my heart. No better woman could have been found, had she had ten thousand pounds a year. I fear she will take your defection as a rejection of her, which she does

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not deserve. I would much dislike to see anything go amiss with the marriage.” “It will not,” I assured him, in no very good temper, for I half lied, but would not admit it, and that makes a man angry. And my father believed what I said, and that made it all the worse. The ball took place and I will not describe the candles, the dresses or the music, though I fancied my Cordelia just a little distant with me, nor was I encouraged when I saw her lightly tripping over the floor in a polka and then in a cotillion with the local cavaliers. It was a mercy in our backward part of the country the waltz was still considered less than decent at that time, for had I seen her whirling in the close embrace of others, I might have burst my buttons. Even so, the sight of Cordelia dancing gaily with others at all did not cheer me. Gloom is always our attendant as we embark on a voyage for dubious reasons. Next day I left the house before anyone was up. I was in London by afternoon, muddied from head to toe and the horse near dropping. Horse stabled, I went straight to Wheeler’s lodgings in Farringdon Road where his landlady told me sullenly he was gone—had packed a valise and been driven off to Grosvenor Square in a coach with a coat of arms painted on the side. On I went to Russell Square to find Maria and was there told she was visiting at Nottcutt House, in Grosvenor Square. So that was where the cast of the play was assembling, thought I, and off I too went to Grosvenor Square, to one of the handsome new mansions there, houses of unprecedented splendor. The door was opened to me by a footman in livery who looked askance at my travel-stained clothes.

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By using the name of Mr. Nottcutt, I achieved an entrance into the large marble hall hung with pictures, where a great fire burned in a marble fireplace and a porter snoozed in a red leather armchair. This hall was large enough to absorb a whole floor of Mrs. Downey’s house and still leave room to hang the laundry. The sight of such wealth helped me to understand more fully Wheeler’s fear of a quarrel with its possessors. A butler with more presence than a prime minister claimed me and led me up a sweeping marble staircase, then along lofty carpeted corridors, under candle-holders burning with lights, to a door, where the butler knocked—and knocked again. After a pause this door was opened a crack, in a furtive manner hardly consistent with the dignity of the house. The face in the doorway was that of Augustus Wheeler. His look when he saw me was cautious, almost suspicious. He made no move to open the door further. As the recipient of two letters from him imploring my intervention I had thought he would hail me as a savior. It appeared this was not to be the case. “Let me in, Wheeler?” I asked, though he had no right to deny me. Reluctantly it seemed, he opened up further and I stepped in. He shut the door quickly behind me. This must have been one of the smaller rooms in the house, though it was twenty feet square. It was handsomely furnished in blue and gilt with a beautiful and no doubt costly Chinese carpet upon the floor and a gilt mirror from France over the fireplace. The individuals in the room did not match its style. On a chaise-lounge opposite the fire, in the center of the room, lay Maria Clementi in a loose blue robe in Arabic style, her hair undone and falling over her shoulders. She was pale, appearing lethargic, even exhausted, though just as beautiful as ever. Gabriel Mortimer

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lay negligently in a chair wearing his burgundy coat and trousers, one gleaming boot propped up on a stool. His curls shone no less glossily, his watch-chain was no smaller than before. The black eyes of his ruined face were on Maria; he barely glanced at me as I came in. Standing by the fireplace was a tall, dandified figure in a smoking-coat of dark red velvet, whom I assumed was Mr. Nottcutt. This gentleman’s hair and moustache were yellow as butter, his face long, pale and inexpressive and his mouth rather small and slack. One glance at John Nottcutt and I knew him and disliked what I saw. Here was a man whose wealth and position had from his earliest years supplied him with everything but that which may ultimately be of most value to us, the close and loving attention of parents, friends and kinsfolk, often as hard to come by in the houses of the wealthy as in the overcrowded hovels of the poor. Reared by the basest servants, introduced to every indulgence at an early age by those who had not the power to restrain him, trained neither to work nor think nor to exercise self-control, Nottcutt was an empty man. Boredom was an ever-lurking enemy, one to be defeated at all costs and by all means. Meanwhile, he loved my appearance as much as much as I loved his. He gave me and my bespattered clothing a smile of amusement, intended to insult. Wheeler, having let me in, moved rapidly across the room to the thickly curtained windows and sat down close by them as if attempting to conceal himself in their folds. About the room stood plates and dishes, relics of an old meal, or several. On a Chinese chest stood wine bottles and a flask of yellowish liquid I took to be laudanum. The air was heavy with smoke. One would have sworn from the postures of those present that no one and nothing in the room had moved for hours. It was as though the sun stood still; time had ceased.

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Meanwhile, no one spoke to greet me, to introduce me to Mr. Nottcutt, or to invite me to be seated. I was obliged, still standing by the door like a servant come for orders, to break the uncomfortable silence myself, saying across the room to Augustus Wheeler, “Mr. Wheeler—alarmed by your recent letters I have hastened here from Nottingham. I apologize for arriving still in my traveling clothes, but I felt from your tone it was a matter of urgency. I must ask you gentlemen whether it is right to put Miss Clementi on public show at the Royal Society. Do you think her nerves will stand this, after what you saw at the last encounter?” (I wondered whether Maria’s belle indifference had come from the laudanum flask.) Nottcutt, at the fireplace, looked me up and down and asked insolently. “Who are you? What right have you to interfere?” Mortimer hastily introduced me to him, but did not supply his name to me, treating me as if I had come in with coals for the fire. This made me love neither of them better I must tell you. Mortimer, stating my name, called Nottcutt “Sandor,” and I thought “Sandor?” What sort of a name is that, and what jiggery-pokery is occurring here? The atmosphere in the room was so strange and so private and the air of those in the room so like a conspiracy that I felt as if I were in a coven of witches and warlocks. However, I was forced to blunder on, addressing Maria, saying, “Miss Clementi—has anyone spoken to you of the distress you endured while in your trance? Did they tell you that you cried out ‘Fire!’, then contorted yourself as if you were burning? Has the gentleman I see over there in his corner, as if planning to disappear into the wall, mentioned to you that he has written to me twice in one week, saying he feared for you if you undertook more experiments like the first,

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are you not concerned that you will be helpless on a stage before a large crowd of men and women? Think, Miss Clementi, think, I beg you, what you are doing.” My vehemence was wasted. To the earlier questions she gave an indifferent nod, to the rest she raised a shoulder where she lay, as if in a shrug. I despaired for her—and of her. I felt also much at a disadvantage and very angry with Wheeler, who had called me here, and now took no part in the conversation, afraid, no doubt, of Nottcutt’s displeasure. “Wheeler!” I cried out to him. “Will you risk this woman’s health, risk her possible humiliation in a most public manner?” He gazed at me for a second, then turned his eyes to Gabriel Mortimer, who was frowning slightly. None in that room, neither the lounging men, nor the reclining woman, moved. Nottcutt now regarded me steadily with some menace behind his stare. It would not be long before he summoned a servant to escort me out. Thinking to avoid the final shame of being conducted from the house at his orders, I took my leave, to the perfect indifference of all there. As I left I said, “I shall go to Sir Humphry, President of the Royal Society, and put my case; tell him I believe this performance, for so it is, ought to be cancelled.” “You may do as you please,” mumbled Nottcutt, as if obliged to comment on the weather. I left that room feeling thoroughly foolish, put out and angry. Wheeler, who had brought me to London to defend him against the others, was now their accomplice—even Maria, for whatever reason, was prepared to perform. Had she been intimidated, drugged, or was it from vanity? I could not guess. Sir Humphry Davy, whom we coal-owners have reason to bless, and to whom I had the honor of being presented when a

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boy, was not in London, but I was directed to the home of another officer of the esteemed Society whom I was assured would be able to assist me. This gentleman, Mr. Plomer, alas, told me much what I expected, that many invitations had gone out and been accepted, some by those living at a distance. It would be impossible to inform all these guests in time that Wheeler’s demonstration had been cancelled. I then informed him of what I had not said earlier, that it was believed Miss Clementi knew details of the horrible attack on Mr. Frankenstein and that this evidence had been one of the reasons for embarking on the attempt to restore her powers of speech. If, I stated, she were to blurt all that information forth in public, it would be very disagreeable for any ladies present and certainly a most undesirable way for evidence against a vile criminal to be presented. He shook his head at this, uttering that most discouraging of phrases, “I wish I had known this earlier.” Science is a ruthless mistress. She can put a fever in the blood. For her sake a man can disregard all the laws of God and man as a man may gamble away his estates and ruin his family to satisfy a mistress’s whims. However, propriety is also a stern mistress. I pointed out that I found it quite indecent that Miss Clementi, a young woman, should be embarking on this ordeal, as it might prove to be, in front of a large audience without a single person, still less one of her own sex, to support her. This gave him pause. Plomer, alarmed now, declared, “Goodall, I do not know if you are right or wrong in your suspicions of Mr. Wheeler’s demonstrations—let us hope you are wrong—but the invitations are out and, alas, it is too late to withdraw them. So that is that. Nevertheless, it is quite undesirable for Miss Clementi to have with her no suitable attendant. Will you find one?”

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To this I agreed. I returned to Gray’s Inn Road, suspecting Sir Humphry might have done better for me than Plomer. I reflected that had those invited to the demonstration—performance, rather—been colliers and washerwomen rather than the luminaries of the land, a stop might have been put to the proceedings. But there was no help for it now. The demonstration would take place unless some other means could be found of preventing it. Much fatigued by now, I got to the house, where my arrival much disconcerted the servants, who were enjoying the absence of the family. I sat down and penned a letter to Mrs. Jacoby, whose address in Chatham my clever Cordelia had thought to obtain before the lady left for the cold home of her sister. In it I begged her to forget the pains of the past and come once again, and for the last time, to the aid of her former employer. I feared, I said, Miss Clementi had fallen utterly into the wrong hands. I told her of the unholy alliance of Wheeler, Mortimer and Nottcutt and of the way Miss Clementi, while in a trance, had called out about fire. Now this dangerous experiment was about to be repeated in public. Would she, I asked, take a chaise from Chatham at my expense and come at all speed to London? I was not sure my appeal would succeed. Mrs. Jacoby might be absent from home and even if she received my letter in time I thought she might stick to her guns and refuse to have any more dealings with Maria. Nevertheless, I sent off my message by the fastest means possible, hoping Mrs. Jacoby would come to my assistance in time. The upper part of the house was in the process of thorough cleaning and very cold, no fires having been lit there for days, so

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I told the servants I would make do in the parlor. I had a fire lit there, stripped off my muddy clothes, arranged for food and hot water to be brought and generally set up an encampment. Early that evening I went to that mournful house at Cheyne Walk which had been rendered a little more hospitable by the arrival of Victor’s parents. The two guards, however, still occupied the drawing-room. Mrs. Frankenstein was a tall, handsome woman, though evidently worn by caring for her son, still, she said, gravely ill. She greeted me kindly and took me into a little room downstairs which she had taken over for herself. She described to me how she had been forced to stop the visits of Miss Clementi to Victor, who, on one occasion, had found the strength to whisper, “Mother. She is killing me.” Of course she asked me about the relations of her son and Maria Clementi but I could scarcely tell her of the wicked passion for the actress Victor had conceived, even before his wife’s cruel murder. I felt, however, that I must describe the efforts being made to bring back Maria’s power of speech, and the hope that she would be able to give evidence about Victor’s attacker. Mrs. Frankenstein expressed keen interest in this and asked me whether she and Mr. Frankenstein might attend the Royal Society demonstration. I offered to write then and there to request that seats be made available to them. The message was taken off by a servant. It was then that Victor’s mother told me something which astonished and disturbed me, speaking of the matter as if she assumed I was familiar with it. “He is much afflicted by the death of his wife and child,” she told me, “and I fear his recovery is much impeded by grief. And sometimes in delirium, he murmurs of his first wife, his loved step-sister, of course, with whom he grew up.”

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I could not conceal my expression of astonishment at her words. Victor had not told me he had been married before. Mrs. Frankenstein noted my surprise before I had a chance to hide it and asked me, “You did not know of Victor’s first wife, Elizabeth Lavengro?” “I do not know. I forgot, perhaps,” was my very inadequate response. It seemed very strange Victor had not mentioned an earlier marriage. Mrs. Frankenstein looked at me in some puzzlement, unable to credit a man could entirely forget the marriage of a friend, or this is what I thought. Alas, what she said next was far more alarming. “Poor Victor. What unlucky stars must have been in the heavens at his moment of birth. How could a man bear two such great afflictions? How could any man recover from two bereavements such as he has sustained—two wives, both murdered?” Both murdered, she said. My head reeled. I felt I was taking leave of my senses and must indeed have looked very odd, for Mrs. Frankenstein bent towards me and asked if I felt ill, and indeed I did. I could not face a visit to the sick man upstairs, knowing what he had kept from me, from all of us and so, left the house. I made my way somehow back to Gray’s Inn Road, flung myself in an armchair with a bottle of brandy by my side and spent the remainder of the evening brooding over what Victor’s mother had innocently revealed. The universe was spinning round me, not at first due to the brandy (though perhaps later). Then, wearily undressing, I fell into a deep, fuddled sleep, my last thought being only what my first had been on hearing Mrs. Frankenstein’s words. How could a man, a friend, have kept back from others all information about a first marriage, ending cruelly in murder? He might refrain at first, unable to speak of the pain of the event—but surely he would inevitably refer to it

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when a second wife was killed? Not to do so was unnatural. Unless—it was an unworthy thought, but most men would have thought it—he had himself been responsible for both crimes. It was only thanks to the long gallop to London and my business during the afternoon—as well as to the brandy, I suppose— that I managed to sleep that night. I was in fact awoken late in the morning by the arrival of Mrs. Jacoby, who had received my message the previous day and set out at dawn from Chatham. She came in bundled up in many layers of clothing and deeply chilled. Over a glass of mulled wine she told me, “I wish to God I were not here, Mr. Goodall. I never slept a wink last night. I have a premonition of disaster. Something dreadful will occur, I’m certain of it. I would not have come, but for knowing I have helped to create this situation, and I feel it is a duty to see how it comes out and help to relieve myself of guilt.” At this she flung up her arms and cried out, “Oh, Lord! Oh, my good Lord! I have collaborated with sin, Oh Lord, Lord! Hear me and forgive. I have been a handmaiden to Satan, Lord. Forgive me, forgive me!” I gazed at this exhibition with some horror. I was not then, and still am not, a believer in public rantings, weepings and declarations of faith. These days I may be a little more sedulous in my religious duties but I have as little taste for all that now as I had then. When Mrs. Jacoby had left Maria Clementi’s service she had stated she felt she had much to atone for, but this remorse, in the hands of her nonconformist sister, had flourished and thrown out exotic blooms. I could not help preferring the old unreclaimed Mrs. Jacoby and was uncertain how useful she would be in her new form when it came to dealing with a world far from the chapels of Chatham. All I felt able to say was, “Take more hot wine, Mrs. Jacoby. Our breakfast will soon be here.”

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She looked at me severely, saying, “Call on your Maker, Mr. Goodall. You, I and Maria Clementi—all need His help. Are you a true believer?” Still preoccupied with my extraordinary suspicions of Frankenstein, and anxious about the day ahead, I responded to this bluntly, “I asked you to come here, Mrs. Jacoby, and am happy you have done so, but let me be frank, if you are to keep calling on your Maker and putting into His hands what should rightly be in your own, I would prefer to send you straight back to Chatham.” This sobered her a little. “I will help you, of course.” she said. “Yet I dread what is to come.” “Then you had better eat and take some rest for we must be ready for action,” I said as the food came in. The soldier’s widow saw the point of this advice. I was cheered to hear her say, “From your letter I concluded it would be best if Maria did not take part in this demonstration at all. I propose to go and see her and shall try to get her alone and dissuade her from appearing. Do you know where she is to be found?” I told her Maria had cancelled her theatrical performances, so would be away from the theatre but most probably at Russell Square or Nottcutt House in Grosvenor Square. “Very well, then,” said the good woman. “I shall try to find her at one of those addresses and prevent this ungodly show.” And after taking a rapid meal she called on her Maker a little more, then collected herself together and left the house in military style. I repaired to the Voyagers’ Club and over coffee read the newspapers. Wheeler’s coming demonstration at the Royal Society was announced, to my gloom. I earnestly hoped Mrs. Jacoby would succeed in persuading Maria to withdraw from the event. If she could not, it would go ahead, and God knew what the result would be. At

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least, I thought, at the end of the day it would be over, for good or ill, and I on my way back to Nottingham. Whatever the outcome I must not let this affair detain me in London. If I did, I knew Cordelia would cease to believe in me and my promises. She loved me. I was sure of it. But she was a proud and high-spirited woman and would not take insult from me. It would seem her late husband had not been the easiest of men. She was wary of marrying another husband like the first and might well take the view that a man who cannot behave himself during the courtship would be unlikely to improve later. And what would I do, I thought, if she believed I stayed in London because I was entranced by Maria Clementi? What would my future be if Cordelia rejected me, if I lost her while stranded in this melancholy, mysterious world, this dark side of the moon? When I returned to the house Mrs. Jacoby had already returned. Her search for Maria had been futile. She had been told at Russell Square that Maria had not been there for some days. Enquiring for her at Nottcutt House she heard that Mr. Nottcutt and a party of friends had left for another of his residences at Richmond and would not come back until much later in the day. There was hardly time, before the demonstration, to go to Richmond on the chance that Maria was still there. I guessed Maria had been deliberately hidden away from other influences until the time came for the demonstration at the Royal Society. I hoped at least they had rehearsed her there, to make certain nothing untoward would occur during the demonstration. But in the event, that, alas, was not to be.

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it was dark; in the great hall at the Royal Society many candles glowed in the chandeliers, casting light on the dignified and fashionable assembly. I arrived in good time with Mrs. Jacoby, but even so we had to force our way to the front of the hall through a chattering crowd standing or seated on narrow, fragile chairs. Further off was a platform with two seats. We had earlier called at Nottcutt House in a last attempt to talk to Maria, but were told that the Richmond party had not returned. We now found ourselves part of the vast audience which comprised grey-bearded dignitaries, ladies in silks with fans, politicians, fops, professors, men and women of great rank and position. There, too, seated quietly together, were Victor’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein. As we reached the front Mrs. Jacoby indicated another couple, sitting in the front row of chairs, “Those are Nottcutt’s parents in front. They are quiet country dwellers. I should not have expected to find them here.”

O

N THE AFTERNOON OF THE DEMONSTRATION

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“Let us hope that nothing in this charade will upset their quiet rural temper,” I responded. There was an upholstered settle to the side of the room and on it we found Maria Clementi seated, simply attired in a cream dress and mantle, a small low-crowned bonnet on her head. Beside her sat Augustus Wheeler, severely dressed in a dark coat and trousers. Nottcutt leaned against the wall beside Maria and in front of the pair on the settle stood Gabriel Mortimer, a little soberer in his attire than usual, but, when he turned to greet, or rather, confront me, I saw a large diamond pin, big as a pea, in his cravat. Outside this inner circle were others, orbiting Maria’s planet as it seemed, all trying to beg a word, seize a glance, find out in advance what was to be the nature of the event to come— a politer version of the kind of shoving and crowding which takes place among the French when a man or woman of notoriety is present. Mrs. Jacoby and I determinedly achieved the settle, where an eminent man of science was bent over Wheeler in conversation. Two ladies in silks and Indian shawls leaned talking towards Maria, who stared ahead of her not acknowledging their presence in any way, this being tolerable to them, I suppose, merely because she was known to be mute. Wheeler spotted me, though he did not, at that point, observe Mrs. Jacoby, who stood slightly behind me. Seeing me, Wheeler looked shocked and broke off his talk with the eminent man. He stood up abruptly, evidently attracting the attention of Gabriel Mortimer, for he swung round, by which time both I and Mrs. Jacoby were up to them. The ladies near Maria also straightened and turned to hear Mortimer saying angrily to me, “What are you doing here, Goodall? And you, Rebecca? You are unwelcome.”

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Mrs. Jacoby then said, “To you perhaps, Gabriel. But I wish to speak to Maria.” Mortimer said nothing more but looked at her furiously. Mrs. Jacoby, somehow pushing Wheeler aside, sat down beside Maria, who barely acknowledged her. She placed a firm hand on her arm and began to speak urgently into her face. Meanwhile, Nottcutt was still leaning against the wall. He called over, “Ah, Mr. Goodall—the muddy gentleman of yesterday, come to spoil our amusement, I see.” I responded loudly, “If you consider this a good way to amuse yourself, Mr. Nottcutt, putting a dumb woman on show, then we have nothing to say to each other.” This caused some consternation, even indignation, among those surrounding us. Nottcutt merely gave a condescending smile. Mortimer then said to me, “Goodall. I can’t imagine what you’re doing in this business. I take it you have dragged Mrs. Jacoby back to London to be here—I hate your confounded interference.” I would have liked to have struck him in the face and have followed this up with doing the same to Nottcutt. Instead, I bent my head to hear Mrs. Jacoby’s urgent whisper to Maria: “Oh, Maria, you cannot do this. It is disreputable. Maria, through this you may hurt yourself. Have you ever had any reason to think I had not your best interests at heart? Or Mr. Goodall, for that matter. We have come to persuade you not to go through with this demonstration. What will you say, in your trance? This is reckless.” But all Maria did was put her fingers to Mrs. Jacoby’s lips, shake her head and smile. She seemed to have very little awareness of what was going on about her. Gabriel Mortimer was about to argue, but at this point Nottcutt walked coolly forward, took Maria’s elbow and raised her up,

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with the intention of presenting her to his parents. No attempt was made to stop this. He looked spitefully at Mrs. Jacoby as he led Maria off. “What is she doing? What does she think?” I asked Mrs. Jacoby. She shook her head. “She will take part in the demonstration,” she told me. “I am sure of it. Her mind is made up and she is very strong. Yet at the same time she seems strange, unlike herself. She has not been like this before. Gabriel, have you been dosing her with something? You know she cannot tolerate soporifics or stimulants. Have you?” Mortimer did not reply, but instead went over to Maria, who had made her curtsey to Nottcutt’s parents, Lord and Lady St. Elder. Wheeler followed him. Mrs. Jacoby looked up at me and sighed. I sat down beside her. “All my efforts have failed,” I said despondently. My companion merely gazed at the scene now taking place. Wheeler was leading Maria up the three wooden steps of the platform and there he placed her in one of the two chairs. She sat looking in front of her, perfectly composed, her arms laid along the arms of the chair. That vigor of movement she had always possessed was entirely missing. Now Wheeler seated himself in the chair opposite Maria’s, so close that their knees almost touched. The audience ceased to clatter, chatter and move about. All were now seated; a perfect silence reigned. “If not drugged, she is ill,” muttered Mrs. Jacoby beside me. “Perhaps Wheeler has taken the precaution of putting her in a trance before they came here,” I said. “I wonder how much of her time she has spent under his mesmeric power during the last few days?”

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The performance was about to begin. The afternoon grew darker. Shadows flickered to and fro as draughts caught at the candles. The audience, grave professors, fine ladies, peers and all, watched silently. Wheeler made several passes with his crystal before Maria’s eyes, indicating confidence and satisfaction throughout. As I suspected, Maria must have been brought here already mesmerized. He then asked her, gazing into her eyes, “Maria Clementi, are you in a trance and completely under my control?” To which she answered, “Yes,” in a clear voice. “Have you hitherto been entirely mute?” “Yes,” she said again. “I could sing but I could not speak.” Her voice was light, low and very clear. There was movement, exclamation, a buzz of comment from the audience. “Why was it that you could not speak?” he asked. If, as I supposed, the whole performance had been thoroughly rehearsed at Richmond, to ensure all would go smoothly in front of this distinguished audience, then this was the moment when all began to go badly wrong. From the beautiful lips of Maria Clementi came a coarse and dreadful voice, quite different from the tone in which she had spoken earlier, which bore a distinct relationship to the voice which had captured all Europe. This was deep and grating, slurred, inconsistent in tone and accent. Indeed, throughout this whole, horrible episode Maria moved from voice to voice, imitating the tones of others as if uncertain of her own, as she perhaps was—as ignorant of her voice as of the thoughts and feelings, the very identity, it represented. It was most terrible, this inconsistency, more terrible still in that one of the voices she used was undeniably that of—Victor Frankenstein.

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But first she grated in that uncouth voice, awful and slurred, “I never spoke, damn you, because I had no language—no language was given to me by my creator at my second birth, when I was brought back from death by my maker, far away on that rocky island, where the cold sea lashed the shores. So cold,” said the voice, “so cold. May his God damn him forever.” There was a horrified stir in the audience, uncertain now whether it was being deceived by a staged performance or presented with a madwoman. There was a babble of talk. I heard a high, nervous laugh. Maria now stood up, turned to face the audience. Her legs were apart, her stance full of tension, her chin up. I glanced at Wheeler, still in his chair. He was disconcerted but, showman that he was, attempted to conceal his alarm. The performance was not going according to plan. He hoped, no doubt, it would right itself, or that he would be able to set it back on course again. But he could not. “Damn him,” she said again. Then Wheeler leapt to his feet, saying, “Lovely Maria—tell me the truth—” but his voice was drowned by hers as she continued. This time her voice was that of a young girl, a child, and she spoke in French: “The first I remember is light, coming from darkness into light, cold, very cold, I was very cold.” Then in English she said, in a loving tone, deep in register, alas, all too like the voice of Victor Frankenstein, “Then I saw a dark face bending over me, the face of a lover, the face of my creator, Victor, who loved me because he made me, made me because he loved me.” The slurred voice in which Maria had begun came again now, like that of a man in a drunken rage, “I know what he did, the villain, he took the other he made, my dearest, my Adam, and

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beat him and imprisoned him, then carried him away and sent him far, far off, to a desert, alone. Yet I knew where he was— Adam, my Adam—always where he was, what pain he was in, from the moment when I opened my eyes on the island and looked into the face of my creator, I always knew where Adam was, whether near or far. Damn Frankenstein. God damn Frankenstein.” Wheeler, now beside her, tried to interrupt. She went on, though, now cruelly mimicking the tones of Victor himself, “I have brought you to life, my darling, and you were to be a companion and bride to my other creation, but he shall not have you. You are mine.” A woman screamed. A man rose to his feet and cried, “Blasphemy! What is this blasphemy?” his voice half lost amid a host of other cries. There came a woman’s piercing cry, “No!” I thought of Victor’s parents sitting in the crowd hearing these hideous calumnies against their son. I turned, saw them sitting quite still, expressions of horror on their faces. I turned then to Mrs. Jacoby, who had her hand to her mouth and was muttering, “Is it true? Can this be true?” I grasped her arm. She was like a woman stunned. “Help me stop this,” I urged. Mortimer meanwhile was trying to pull her to her feet, understanding that Wheeler had not the presence of mind to stop the atrocity (and still Maria’s words were flowing over us) and that we must, with as much decency as was left to us, get to Maria and pull her away. And all the time the horrid monologue went on. Did she speak the truth or not? Was this the end of Maria’s long silence, the moment when all her pent-up delusions broke the banks of reason and flooded over us—or was it the truth?

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The audience was still astir. There were sounds of people leaving. A man’s voice called out, “Will no one stop this?” The danger was that there might be an assault on Maria, or Wheeler or both. She spoke again and this time there was no doubt in my mind that the voice was Victor’s. She crooned, “My lover, my sweetheart. I did not mean to hurt you. But you are mine, mine now, mine forever. Oh, my love, forgive me.” “Dear God!” I exclaimed. Then I pulled at Mrs. Jacoby. “Mrs. Jacoby. Stand—help me stop this!” But she did not stir. Maria’s own voice, clear and carrying, now resumed. “He beat my lover and he beat him and beat him and kept him in the cold and dark. He said I should be his, for he was my maker. I would not be his. I knew nothing, knew not myself, even, except that I did not want him. So then he took him away and put him, Adam, for many weeks and weeks in chains in a ship sailing for a far away shore. Then he was kind to me, my maker, and I turned to him for he fed me and petted me and tried to make me love him, but though I turned to him—for he was my god and said I must love and worship him yet—yet—I still yearned after my true love, the other he had created, the man he had created me for.” Then her voice became savage. “He gave me drink. I slept. Then there was fire, much fire.” She screamed. “Burning. Burning. The door will not open. He has locked it. Where is he, my creator? Save me. Save me. His face is outside the window, watching me burn. Watching me burn!” She began to tremble and put her hands to her face now. There was a cry—I heard a chair topple as gentlemen hastened their ladies from the room. But others, men, came to crowd about the foot of the platform where Maria stood.

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Maria straightened her body. “I came to another place,” she continued. “They beat me, put me in the streets to sing. I could not speak. I could not speak. I knew no words. Victor had given me no words.” Now there was a gentleman on the stage, speaking urgently to Wheeler. But Wheeler was in his seat, slumped over, his head in his hands. I stood up, Gabriel Mortimer was at my side and we linked arms and went forward, ready to push our way through the crowd to Maria. With my other hand, as we started off, I grasped Mrs. Jacoby’s hand and pulled her to her feet. Thus we advanced as Maria spoke on. “I found out the words, then I could not utter them and had I spoken they would have come from a void, from nothing, for I was nothing. I had no beginning—only Victor—and some shadows in my mind—shadows —a field and a mother—city streets, a man—dark water, pulling me down.” On the steps of the stage Mortimer, Mrs. Jacoby and I stopped short—as Maria extended her arms in a parody of stage craft. Then she said in her own clear voice, as if aping the voice of reason, “And there you have it, lords, ladies and gentlemen, I speak now but am nothing. Victor Frankenstein made me and I am nothing. He tried to kill me—and I am nothing. And now I have destroyed him, his family, his work and now his life, for he will die soon.” And she began to laugh, a light, merry sound as if someone had amused her, but going higher, less controllable as Mortimer and I, pulling Mrs. Jacoby, forced our way on to the stage. Once there Mrs. Jacoby dropped my hand and rushed forward, crying to Wheeler, “Stop this! Stop whatever you are doing to her!” But he turned to her and said, as though his voice were being dragged from his throat, “I have done nothing to her. She—what has she done to me?”

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In the meanwhile I had seized Maria and called to Mrs. Jacoby, “Come on!” and we hustled her through the crowd and away to the double doors at the end of the room, joining the crowds attempting to leave. I glanced about as much as I was able, trying to glimpse Victor’s poor parents, but in all that mêlée could not see them. As we tried to struggle out there were those who gazed at Maria in horror and pushed away from her, but a vast crowd was after us, jostling and shouting questions, “Was it real? Is it true? What happened?” We got through the doors somehow and just outside then, to one side, was a tall, lean man in black, sane and charitable enough, it appeared, to assist. He very quickly took my arm and gently but firmly led me, Maria and Mrs. Jacoby through the next room, then quickly through another door to one side and into an empty corridor. Mortimer had disappeared, pushed away from us in the crowd or deliberately abandoning us, I do not know which. The man led us down the corridor, through another door, into an alley. “We have lost them for a while. I will get my carriage,” he said. We huddled in the alley in dark and cold until, not long after, he came up with the conveyance. My only thought was to get away from the place discreetly. We dared not go into the main street in front of the building, where those who had attended the demonstration might be assembled in numbers, some repelled, some indignant, altogether unpredictable in their responses. There were those who might think Maria’s claim to have destroyed Victor Frankenstein a confession of murder—and perhaps it was. They might try to lay hands on her for that reason and on Mrs. Jacoby and myself as her abetters. Others might attack us from fear or from disgust. The curious would surround us. As we stood waiting, Mrs.

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Jacoby recovered a little and in a calm manner, with admirable sang-froid, asked Maria, “Were you speaking the truth, Maria, or was what you said all wicked fictions?” Maria did not reply, for then the carriage arrived and the dark-suited gentleman who had rescued us leaned out, saying, “Get in quickly, I pray you,” which we did and set off smartly eastwards in a direction evidently prearranged between our rescuer and his coachman. I and Mrs. Jacoby sat on either side of Maria, the stranger opposite us. This man, I now saw, was about thirty-five years of age, with a long, handsome, thoughtful face, very pitted with old smallpox marks. His dark hair fell to just below his ears. He had fine dark eyes. I said to him, “Thank you, sir, for your help. May I ask where we are going and why you help us in this way?” “My name is Simeon Shaw. I am vicar of St. Michael and All Angels near Spitalfields. If there is any truth in this young woman’s tale, it may have much bearing on the subject of the soul.” Beside me I heard Mrs. Jacoby, who was plainly fatigued and whose own conversations with her soul had become less and less frequent during the day, give a weary sigh. “I think, sir, I should like to go to Russell Square,” she said. She turned to Maria quite naturally and asked, “Maria—should you like to go home?” She displayed no surprise when Maria said, in a clear and pleasant voice, though tired and indifferent, “It would be too dangerous. A crowd might assemble and kill me for a witch or a murderess.” I, however, was truly astonished. If Maria had been in a trance, how did she know what she had said? Mrs. Jacoby responded dryly. “I’m glad to find, Maria, that recovering your voice has not altered your nature. You still think first and last of yourself.”

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Maria answered, “Of whom else should I think? You have heard my story now. I have no conscience—I have no soul.” Simeon Shaw interrupted this extraordinary exchange hastily, “I came to the demonstration today interested in finding out if the hidden soul of a man could emerge during a mesmeric experience. For, under that influence a man might come closer to God. What I heard, Miss Clementi, interested me deeply. I am uncertain of the precise nature of what we saw tonight, whether sideshow, horror tale, or what, but I feel, bewildered as I am, some kind of mystical truth may have been involved.” “A devilish truth, if that is what you want,” Mrs. Jacoby said sharply. “I should have thought it your duty as a clergyman to avoid such things, not embrace them. Do you know all you said tonight Maria? Have you any recollection?” But she did not reply. I felt her body, very limp against mine in the carriage. It was as though she were ill. Often enough, my mind had pictured Maria’s body close to mine. Now it was, but in these circumstances I did not know what to think or what I felt. Mrs. Jacoby continued. “Understand now, Maria, that what you said under Mr. Wheeler’s mesmeric influence was this—that in some manner Victor Frankenstein had created you and another, whom you called Adam—that he had attempted to burn you to death and dispatched the man to some dreadful place far away, hoping, no doubt, that he would die there. And you claimed to be nothing and no one—and rejoiced in Mr. Frankenstein’s coming death, laughing like a maniac the while. Maria—we must know more.” To this she made no answer. She did not care about us, I realized, nor about anything that had occurred. It was as if she had dropped to our planet from the moon.

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“Maria’s tale,” said I, “tallies all too well with what I was told by Donald Gilmore, who was present as a boy on the Orkneys, the cold and lonely sea-girt place described by Maria.” And—“So there is supporting testimony,” murmured Mr. Shaw the clergyman to himself. Though he had rescued us, I began to like the man less, and mistrust him more. He was plainly in the grip of some kind of theological fanaticism concerning the human soul, researches perhaps best left alone and certainly irrelevant to our present predicament. Meanwhile we rode on. Maria lay back in the carriage, her eyelids flickering like someone in a fit. “Where are we going, Mr. Shaw?” I asked him. “These ladies are in my charge.” “To my church,” he said. “Never,” said I, with more firmness than I felt. “These ladies need fire and food, not the cold interior of a church. I thank you for rescuing us but I think now we had better make our own arrangements.” I had no idea what these might be. It seemed to me then it would be undesirable to go to Russell Square, equally so to Gray’s Inn Road. In either place we might face arrest or hostile crowds. Should we find some quiet suburban inn to pass the night? Shaw offered another suggestion. “If you will not come to the church, then let me take you to the house of my Bishop. He will see to your comfort and I will explain things to him.” Mrs. Jacoby asked, as if to herself, “And what will you explain?” Meanwhile he had leaned forward and shouted up another address at the driver. The carriage turned into the road and clopped back in the other direction.

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“The soul—” Shaw began. “I have no soul,” came Maria’s dreamy voice. Shaw said, “But this is blasphemy. Why do you say that?” “Mr. Frankenstein told me so,” she said, then lapsed into silence again. “Can it be possible?” questioned Shaw. “Frankenstein is a villain,” declared Mrs. Jacoby. “I have never heard such blasphemy in my life. You are speaking now, Maria. So speak. For the love of God, tell us everything you know.” But whether from fatigue, illness or obstinacy, she would say no more. A few minutes later we evidently reached our destination, the Bishop’s house, for we passed through gates, drawing up on a paved semicircle before the house. A servant let us in. Mrs. Jacoby, Maria and I were ushered into a small, fireless room where Mrs. Jacoby and I took seats on wooden chairs while Maria extended herself on a hard leather sofa, which had seen better days. Shaw went off to explain matters to the Bishop. Some fifteen minutes passed. We grew colder and colder and it became more and more apparent that the Bishop was extending no welcome to Mr. Shaw, or our party. Mrs. Jacoby expressed this first: “The Bishop will have none of us or of Mr. Shaw’s theories of the soul. He sees danger to the Church, or himself, in all this. An argument rages while we freeze. We need fire and food, perhaps a nurse for Maria.” “And almost certainly a lawyer,” I agreed. “What to do? I think we must risk going to Gray’s Inn Road and on the way I will leave a note for my lawyer Mr. Finborough to attend immediately. We must resolve this matter of Maria’s confession.”

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“Made under the influence of a mesmerist, and therefore nonsense,” Mrs. Jacoby said decidedly. The godly woman of Chatham now pushed firmly from the door, the practical woman in charge. “Very well, let’s go to Gray’s Inn Road. We must at least have some shelter. When we arrive, you must descend from the carriage at a distance and scout out the house before we enter. If anyone is encamped there, either outside or inside, you will not return and I and Maria will go elsewhere.” “Where then?” I asked. “That will be my business,” said she. We left without ceremony, finding ourselves in a cold empty street near St. Paul’s Cathedral with Maria supported between us and no conveyance in sight. A sleeting rain began and I said, “We had better reconcile ourselves to walking,” which we did. At Mr. Finborough’s in Fleet Street I left a message asking him urgently to call on me. I persuaded the reluctant servant to hasten to a nearby mews where there were carriages for hire. Meanwhile we waited in a hall, Mrs. Jacoby and I standing, Maria on the only chair. Mrs. Jacoby, looking at Maria, said severely, “She could speak if she would. She feigns illness.” I admired the pragmatism of her approach but I knew, and so must she, there were grave considerations here. Had Maria’s outburst been caused by insanity, had she been put up to the entire thing by Wheeler, or had she said what she did deliberately to mislead and cause sensation? It could not be as simple as that. I knew Gilmore’s story; furthermore, Elizabeth Frankenstein was dead, Frankenstein himself was gravely wounded, and there was the missing man-beast I had seen so close to all of us, even now being hunted for attempted murder. It was hard to believe Maria’s statements merely insane or deceitful.

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It was equally impossible to believe, in a reasonable world, in Victor’s conducting deadly experiments with human beings. Yet he had done something, some terror had taken place on Orkney. But what? Above all, I wondered what of Cordelia? I had earlier that day envisaged myself on my way back to her this very evening, undertaking the first part of my journey home before darkness made it too difficult. Yet here I was in a carriage going back to Gray’s Inn Road, worse entangled than ever in this sinister affair. Mrs. Jacoby now addressed the fainting Maria, in no uncertain terms. In fact she grasped her by the shoulders and shook her. “Speak up, you bad, wicked girl. You could speak—if you would—we know it. Why did you say what you did? What is the truth? Do you understand you must now face the charge that you killed Frankenstein? Certainly you will be suspected of involvement in his attack. And where did you come from and what is your proper name? You must tell us now.” And with this she dealt her a blow across the face. Maria did not respond in any way, so Mrs. Jacoby gave her another buffet. Then Maria, with an access of strength of which she had not seemed capable, wrenched away from her and cried out in an anguished voice, “Adam!” She leaned past me, over my lap and grasped the handle of the carriage door. Even as I lunged to stop her, she had thrown it open and hurled herself over me and out of the vehicle. Few could have so quickly evaded my toolate clutching hands; even fewer could have jumped past me from the moving carriage—and landed on their feet. But this Maria did.

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As Mrs. Jacoby shouted for the carriage to stop I leaned from the door, and saw her running ahead down the road, then veering into an alley. I heard her cry, “Adam! I come to you!” Then she was lost to sight, gone into the darkness like a frightened cat. I suppose we both realized we had little chance of finding her, though we combed the streets in different directions for an hour, I on foot, Mrs. Jacoby in the carriage. When I returned to Gray’s Inn Road I was not surprised to find Mrs. Jacoby there with two burly men from Mr. Worley’s, the magistrate, wishing to question me about the whereabouts of Maria Clementi. Word of what had taken place at the Royal Society had been spread quickly to all ears. There was little we could tell these men that would satisfy them. To get rid of them I suggested Maria might have gone to Mr. Frankenstein’s house at Cheyne Walk and for the same reason Mrs. Jacoby suggested the house in Russell Square, the theatre and certain other places. But neither of us believed that Maria would go to any of them. She was in pursuit of her Adam, whoever and wherever he was. The men left and we sat alone for a while, thinking of Maria roaming through the darkness, going towards, I supposed, this Adam she was trying to find. Mrs. Jacoby told me she knew nothing of him, adding, in a tired and disillusioned manner, that she had come to London at the demand of her conscience, but only with the gravest doubts, knowing that anything concerning her erstwhile employer could not go healthily or right. This had proved to be the case. She said she was not a young woman, had not slept the previous night from anxiety, had come post-haste from Chatham that morning and, though it was but eight o’clock in the evening, she craved to end a long and disquieting day. She

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wished to hear no more of the business, or think any longer about it. With my permission she would go upstairs to bed and leave early next morning by the coach to Kent, glad to be out of it all. At least, she said, with a weary smile, she had been plunged back into the hectic and disreputable life she had once led in such a way that she could never again doubt the wisdom of leaving it, even for her present dull and melancholy life. And she added kindly, “Mr. Goodall, you summoned me back for the best of motives, to a life I had renounced out of shame and remorse. I do not complain. But this affair is not over. No—it is not over—it will get its tentacles about you and drag you to the bottom of the sea. And I note what perhaps you have not—there is no disinterested person in this matter other than yourself. Gabriel Mortimer has profited handsomely by Maria’s effort since he first discovered her in Ireland and hoped to do better if she could speak. Wheeler put her on show to placate his rich masters and increase his own fame—after this recent horrible display he may have failed but who can tell about that, the world is very strange. And Nottcutt—Nottcutt was a bored degenerate in search of sensation, now, I suspect, trying to distance himself from the affair which has shocked his parents. “But these men, Mr. Goodall, involved themselves in this matter desiring some personal satisfaction. Alone among them, you did not. Let me tell you, nothing concerning Maria Clementi is without criminality, or frenzy, or lust. She is a magnet for men with empty pockets or fevered brains or bodies. She may not be entirely to blame. After what we heard this evening, whatever the real truth, it appears at least that she has been very ill-used. “But you, Mr. Goodall—Jonathan—are innocent. You must withdraw from this matter before it overwhelms you. You have,

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I know, a worm of curiosity in your brain, a desire to know more, a feeling truths can be discovered which will transform the world. The light of reason, you think, can be induced to play over the world; all will be transformed; we shall live in Paradise. “Well, my dear, I am older than you and have seen the world transformed twice, once by revolution in France and then by the Emperor Napoleon, and this second transformation widowed me. I have no love for transformers and no desire to see a world transformed again. Leave things as they are, Mr. Goodall. Leave them alone. Go down to the country, live with your good young woman and your family, look to your land and care for the families who tend it for you. In short, cultivate your garden, that is the best a man can do. Do not lose your grip on the good and the real, I beg you.” After Mrs. Jacoby had retired to bed I was very thoughtful. She had told me forcibly what I knew, gave me the advice I gave myself. Maria had gone; I did not think she would return. I determined I would visit Victor next day to see how he did (revealing nothing of today’s transactions even if he were in a state to understand what was told) and then go swiftly back to Kittering before I lost everything I held dear.

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EXT DAY, EARLY,

Mrs. Jacoby and I parted with all good will. I secured a place on a coach leaving for Nottingham at eleven that morning and went to pay a visit to Victor before my departure. Mrs. Frankenstein was greatly distressed when I arrived, and not very welcoming either, for she and Victor’s father had seen me getting Maria from the room at the Royal Society and discovered from the men calling at the house that she had escaped. She thought me to be Maria’s accomplice. Maria must be found, Victor’s mother insisted, and forced to confess the dreadful allegations she had made against Victor were false. However, the poor woman had greater cares even than that. Victor, she told me, had the day before gone into a high fever: the doctor despaired of him, saying that during the attack vital organs must have been penetrated which were now mortifying. Little could be done, said Victor’s unhappy mother, stricken

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with grief at the approaching death of her son—and deeply bewildered also. Apparently at three the previous morning he had called for pens, paper and ink which his nurse had been afraid to refuse him. Since then he had been propped up in his bed, dreadfully ill, writing furiously. His mother had not discovered all this until daylight broke when she went in to see him. Finding out what he was doing she had pleaded with him to stop. He would not; she dared not force him to do so, even though she knew this exercise could only weaken him further. He was still there, she told me, leaning against his pillows, scribbling, the bed strewn with written-over sheets of paper. “He cannot be writing an account of his attack,” she said. “For why would he write so much? He gave me the keys to his desk, also, and insisted I bring certain papers to him. When I refused he became so agitated I was forced to comply. Please,” she urged, “please, Mr. Goodall, will you go to him, try to calm him, persuade him to rest?” I agreed I would do this and went upstairs to Victor’s room. The situation was exactly as Mrs. Frankenstein had described. Victor lay propped up, yellow-faced and indescribably thin. There was a roofing fire, a nurse sitting by it but doing nothing, for there was nothing to do. As I came in she gave me an anxious look, then rose to her feet. Around Victor’s head was a bandage badly stained. I guessed even there his wounds were not healing. As I approached I saw his face was beaded with sweat. In his hand was a pen, spluttering ink as his hand moved rapidly across a tablet of paper propped on a writing desk he had against his slightly raised knees. His position looked painful; his whole face and attitude spoke of agony. The entire expanse of the bed was covered with sheets of paper, some written, others containing diagrams and chemical

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formulae. As I went to him the nurse intercepted me, saying, in an undertone, “Can you persuade him to cease this frantic work?” I nodded and went to the bedside. Victor looked at me and smiled, a mere rictus, yet somehow, his sunken eyes were more peaceful than they had been for many months. I was happy to see it, yet I grieved. “Jonathan,” he whispered in a rasping voice—he had much trouble breathing and as I came closer I heard his breath sawing in and out—”Jonathan, I am glad to see you. Will you take my papers?” “Of course I will, Victor,” I answered. “There are also some notes of my work.” I nodded again. “Do not let my parents see this,” he said, gesturing with the pen at what he had been writing. “They must never see it.” “I will make sure of it. But Victor, you must cease writing. It is doing you damage.” “I know, but I have finished now,” he said. “Jonathan, there’s no help for me. It is over, and I am glad it is. For I have made my world a hell and I can live in it no longer. These papers are my testament and my confession. Preserve them, and preserve the scientific papers also. I have made advances, scientific advances in a way no man should have, but the knowledge, Jonathan, the knowledge—” And as he said these last trailing words it was in the tone of a man who speaks the name of a lover. Then he gasped, “Gather them up. Hide them. Take them with you when you go.” I could do no more for him than relieve his mind of anxiety, so I gathered the papers roughly in a bundle and put the weighty document into the inside pocket of my coat. I removed the pen

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from his hand and the desk from his knees as he shut his eyes, unutterably exhausted. As I went about my business with the papers and the desk I tried to speak levelly to him, but kept my eyes from him, for they were full of tears. “Victor,” I said, “whatever you have done you have repented and repented bitterly. There is a God who will forgive you. May I not send for a clergyman now, to whom you can unburden yourself and who will assure you of that forgiveness?” He sighed. Each word, as he spoke, gave him pain. “No churchman could—no priest could give me absolution for what I have done. God himself could not forgive. I have abrogated His rights, done what no man should do—I have tried to make myself a god.” “Victor,” I groaned, weeping openly now, “this stern Lutheran conscience—this self-punishment—it cannot be right.” I fell to my knees beside his bed. “Jonathan,” he said, “I cannot truly repent unless I destroy my work, the work from which so much evil has come. And that I cannot—no—will not, do. Read my pages—read them.” “I will,” I said. “Of course I will.” His eyes closed again, and “Farewell,” he whispered, His breathing became harsher, more labored. In his physical struggle he forgot me, then, I saw, lapsed into unconsciousness. So, “Farewell, Victor,” I said and kissed his brow and left, weeping. I descended the stairs. At the bottom, Mrs. Frankenstein awaited me. I must not show her the papers, the writing of which had cost her son so dear, yet I knew she would think she had a right to them. Reaching the bottom tread, I wiped the tears from my eyes, looked at her anxious face and saw it change as she realized from my expression that I, too, believed her son would die.

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I told her Victor had finished writing and had given me his papers to put in order. I would take them to the country to do so. Mercifully she did not ask me then for copies. Her first—her only thought—was for Victor, whom she, bidding me a hasty farewell, went up stairs to tend. Later I received a letter from Victor’s father asking for his son’s last testimony. I replied telling him that as he knew his son had been in a high fever when he wrote, the pages, alas, were rambling and incomprehensible, the diagrams and formulae appeared meaningless. I had therefore, I said, taken the liberty of burning the pages, which would have brought no further credit to his name. The work he had done and the feelings of his friends and family for him would remain his best memorial. Mr. Frankenstein did not reply to this letter. It gave me no joy to refuse the request of the bereaved father but I had promised Victor I would keep his papers from his family. And had I broken that promise, what consolation would they have brought? Certainly, possession of the last testament of Victor Frankenstein over the years I have held it, has brought me no peace of mind. I set off for Gray’s Inn Road, where I would pack my small bag and go to the coach, but I had not gone very far on the frosty road, under a laden, yellow sky, when the first snowflakes began to blow in my face. Before I reached home I was walking halfblind through the snowstorm and there was an inch of snow on the ground beneath my feet. I suspected the coach might not set out in such conditions and this proved to be the case. When I arrived with my bag in the City, the coachman was well muffled on his seat atop the vehicle, six coach-horses in their traces. Then he began to clamber down again, passengers put their heads out

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of the coach windows, demanding to know what was going on. The coachman shouted that reports from further up the road told of snow having started early in the morning, and roads already half-blocked. To proceed would be folly. I was sorely tempted to hire a horse or a private carriage and blunder my way through to Nottingham. But a moment’s consideration made me realize this would have been madness. Cordelia, given any choice, would prefer a delayed husband-tobe to a frozen corpse by the wayside. I returned to Gray’s Inn Road, frustrated and melancholy. It was therefore in Cordelia Downey’s little parlor that I sat alone before a roaring fire and, putting the pages of drawings and scientific information aside (and I have not looked at them since), I began to read the account Victor Frankenstein had scrawled that day, from what was to prove his deathbed.

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know myself to be a dying man, killed by that beautiful creature I created. I know I am irrevocably doomed for I have committed the unforgivable sin, the ultimate blasphemy. I have usurped my Maker, and made life. I made a new Adam and a new Eve. They are wicked; they have proved my punishment. Oh, my poor wife and my little son, innocent even of the knowledge of what I had done, now both dead, dead as if by my own hand. “But I must be as brief as I can for I have little strength or time left to me. I dread being unable to finish this, my account of my life, of my sins. “The first creature I made as a young man was a brute, though whether I created a brute or turned my creation into one, I cannot say. However, it was that creature which turned against me, which destroyed my life and, made it a waste. He taught me what I had never known before, bitterness, loss of hope, self-contempt.

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“After this occurred I would not learn the lesson it taught me. A wiser man, a less ambitious man would have felt remorse—as I did—then, never meddled again in such business. But I, arrogantly, thought I could put right what I had done—by going further. It came to me that the softening effect on my creature of one of his own kind, but a woman, might render him harmless and thus decrease my guilt. And he wanted one, a bride, as he called it, moaning, ‘My bride, get my bride,’ in his strangled tongue until I was forced to lock him up to get him away from me or I would have killed him. “His nature was not all savage. His fits of bestiality would come on him at random, or when he became disturbed about some matter, big or small. Sometimes, God help him, he was pleading and gentle enough, whining, asking questions and demanding little playthings which I would sometimes supply. Seeing that grisly, monstrous figure in his jail-room, playing like a child with a little wooden horse and cart I had given him, knowing I had created this perversion, this freak of nature— I cannot describe to you the rage and self-disgust I felt. Yet I had brought this awful thing into the world and pride, evil pride, forbade me to do what should have been done—destroy it. “It was pride made me think I could solve the hideous problem I had created by making a woman for my monster. In my arrogance I supposed I could correct my first error by further effort, by making a woman for my man, a Frankenstein’s Eve to match that abortion, Frankenstein’s Adam. “Pride, all pride. Fatal pride, which killed my wife and son and now kills me. “‘Make my bride, my bride, my bride.’ As I lie here that mumbling grating voice still rings in my ears, as if he were in the room

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with me. And he might be, for he is still at large, the villain, and will outlive his creator. Does he know it? I think he does. “In the Orkneys, then, with only the backward inhabitants of that poor little fishing village, a people ignorant, degenerate and barbarous as any Mohican or Apache in America, I thought to hide my beast and make for him his beastly bride. “I got information from the mainland (a man with money can buy anything he desires if he can find one base enough to supply it) that over in France they could obtain for me the body of a young woman, only nineteen years old. They told me she was a country girl who had come to Paris to sing and dance, had been seduced, was with child—had killed herself. To this day I do not know whether it was suicide or murder. Knowing me to be willing to pay, having found the girl, my villainous associates might well have taken matters into their own hands and caused her death themselves. I asked no questions then, desperate to continue my experiments, find some way of controlling the monster I had made—and improve on him. I had made a man, yes, but a maimed and horrid figure of a man. I thought, if I am to create afresh, let my new creation do me credit. So, using a man desperate for gold as my boatman, I sailed to France and came back with the corpse, a beautiful young woman, whole and undamaged. I needed not fashion her, like the last, merely use the technique I had found of giving life to animate her corpse, thus bringing the dead to life again. I did not this time blasphemously create man like God, as I had done before, but blasphemously mocked Our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought Lazarus back to life. Yet, one might ask, what harm is there in restoring life to one of God’s creatures? Is that not only one step further on from what a doctor, bound by sacred oath, must do? That was what I said then to myself.”

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“Ill-luck dogged me. I shall be glad to leave this cruel world. For who could have guessed that seven years after I left Orkney Donald Gilmore, son of the owner of the fishing-boat I used to transport the girl, would be in London, in the very doorway I was entering? That he would recognize me, that he would tell all he knew?” “There on Orkney I had my brute locked up in his barn, roaring and yelling, while I made his partner (first removing all traces of the child she was to bear). Soon I had, living and breathing, the bride, the wife for my monster. She was so beautiful, soft-haired, smooth-skinned—so beautiful. And, because her mind was wiped clear of all memory, she was so innocent, primally innocent. Even as she awoke from her unconscious state she looked into my eyes—mine was the first face she saw in her new life—and smiled such an innocent smile, the smile of a baby. “At that moment it came to me, with some vast pang which tore through my body, that I could not give over this angel to that beast. For all I knew then, he would kill her. If he did not he would brutalize her, make her, for all her beauty, as foul as he was. She was mine, I thought. Not his—but mine. Thus, one sin gave birth to another. “In his barn, knowing my work proceeded, the beast grew more noisy and importunate. I had to send the men in to quieten him, but even then he would not be still. And all the while I contemplated teaching my woman—my blasphemously titled Eve— to speak, to teach her what she must know to be my consort. And yet, within days, even before she understood anything, she yearned to go to where he lay on straw in his barn. At night I was forced to lock the doors, for otherwise she would creep out at

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night and be found outside the door of the barn at morning, halffrozen and completely ignorant of what she had done. When he cried and called out she would gaze towards where the cries came from, rise and try to escape, to be with him. “I could not, would not, give her to him. “Yet, while he, that accursed creature, was there to distract her, I knew she would never be able to love me properly. So, I concluded—I must get rid of my maimed Adam and, when he was gone she, my Eve, would be truly mine. I was employing madman’s logic, and like a madman, I did not know it. “I might have killed him, but the villagers in that primitive place were becoming suspicious. They suspected me of magic— and even Gilmore might have balked at helping me dispose of the corpse at sea. And—in any case—I made him. The creature was mine. Something prevented me from destroying my own creation with my own hands. I had attempted it before many years before. God help me, the result was that he as good as killed me. “I therefore took him to Dublin, drugged and crated, and released him. Describing him as my manservant, I accused him of the theft of my watch and had him searched. The watch was on his person, of course, for I had put it there. I handed him, and his future, over to the authorities there, to let them decide whether to hang or imprison him. I scarcely cared which, only to get rid of the creature. He did not understand what he was supposed to have done, nor what was happening, and stood in the dock when he was tried, blubbering mumbling and grimacing. “When they led him away—the verdict was transportation to Australia for the rest of his life—he held his arms out to me, tears running down his vile face, blubbering, ‘Master—master.’ Even as they hauled him, struggling, down the passageways to the place of

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imprisonment I heard him calling out again and again those fatal words, ‘Master—my bride, my bride.’ “I quit Dublin, thinking soon he would be taken away to live out his life in chains on the other side of the world, and if he did not die there, in that inhospitable land, then certainly he could never more return to Europe. Alas, ugly, feeble-minded, misbegotten as he was, he was strong. He survived that life of cruelty, that fierce climate, the deprivations, the beatings. He survived and somehow contrived to return here, still seeking his bride. “Even before I returned from Dublin my Eve—Marie had been her name, while she lived—had begun to deteriorate horribly, not in her body, which was beautiful as ever, but in her mind. Once I was gone with the creature she at first wept, then enticed both my guards. When I returned to my house the first sight I saw was the woman with my guards at my table. There was a bottle of brandy in front of them, my Eve was sitting on the knee of one, bare to the waist, as he fondled her and she laughed. The other guard stood before the seated couple and the woman—my woman—had her head buried in his waist. The men were terrified when they saw me and fled. I took her, my angel, and beat her black and blue. At first she screamed and tried to escape, then began to fight me tigrishly, biting, scratching and kicking. When I had done with the beating I let her go and she went and sat in a corner, her eyes following me—but when I looked at her, when I bent down and tried to reason with her and tell her what she had done was wrong, she would not meet my eyes. When I put my hand upon her she flung it off. “But the next day she was miraculously changed, an angel, and I praised her. The day after that she was good, and the next. But the following night she ran away. Next morning, from dawn on, we searched and found her on the hillside only two miles off,

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exhausted, for she had run and run frantically, not knowing where she was going, hither and thither round in circles. Tired as she was, though, she fought to get away from us. She bit my hand to the bone. That taught me she had learned cunning. She had pretended to love me, to be good in order to disarm me and put me off guard so that she could make her escape. Before, she had been licentious and violent in her behavior—now she was cunning! She had learned guile in the space of a week! And they say man is innately virtuous! Jonathan, he is not. He is bad from his moment of creation. And woman worse—that I know. “From that point forward she was the most evil creature in the world—cruel, dishonest, needing continual watching and guarding. She shrank, spat, flinched from me, growled like an animal when I came near her. “Yet—I loved her! But she hated me, that was the truth of it. She would run vainly to the barn all the time, if she got the chance, to look round its now-empty space and howl. She refused food, would not come to the table, would not wash or be washed, sat on the floor in a corner, glaring at me through her matted hair, that hair I had found so beautiful. The lovely face was smeared. She grew thin. In my despair I became angry. What could I do with her? She was no fit bride for me now. Now she was only fit for that other hideous creature for whom I had created her. “She was mad. I, too, became mad, prowled the house at night, fell sobbing on my knees to her in the corner where she lay. Where was the beautiful creature I had brought to life? I did not want this filthy, hating, hateful woman, if woman she was. I wanted my beauty, my creation—but she would not return. I wept to her and tried to lay my head on her angry breast. Then I did, alas, it is bitter to confess, what I had never done to any woman before, nor

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ever thought I would. I took the creature, raped her while she loathed me and I was sickened by her. We lay together on the floor after that awful, bestial act—and she smiled at me—such a smile! Such a devilish smile. Then she became affectionate, as it seemed, clung to me, followed me, would not have me out of her sight— and smiled and smiled—that indescribable smile. “I could not truly believe she had come to love me for my brutality. I thought this smiling guise was a deceit, that she feigned love now as once she had feigned obedience, to put me off my guard. And this time, I feared, instead of running away as she had before—this time her plan would be to kill me! For I thought she hated me and knew some pan of myself now hated her. “And all this confusion of mind produced only one clear thought, though it may have been a thought springing from madness. I knew I must kill her or she would murder me. I must finish this dreadful experiment in the creation of life or the restoration of the dead, whatever I had done. I must finish it and quickly end this futility and shame. I had been on that island only six months—a man may wipe out six months of his life, I reasoned, and go back to a normal life. Why, I thought—a man may with any luck wipe out years of degradation, shame and error, may hide all, put all behind him and go back to a contented and reputable life, enjoying the society of his fellows and the love of a wife—all crimes gone, healed, swept away. Many men have done this. Why not I, so I reasoned? Why not I? Why should I suffer the consequences, for the rest of my days, of those short, illfated years spent in creation of creatures who betrayed me? Why, said I to myself in my pride, should I be forever doomed for having made scientific advances of the most extraordinary kind (for they were, Jonathan, they were).

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“What harm would it do if I thrust back into oblivion those creatures I had made? It was not murder. They were not human, either of them. How could they be? The man I made. The woman I had brought back from death, rescued, like some Orpheus rescuing his bride from the Underworld. I would be doing nothing but what a potter does when he finds his work come from the kiln malformed or spoiled in some way and breaks it. “So I reasoned—so it was done. We packed our goods, a fire was set and matches put to it and the house burned down as the woman lay, drugged, inside. Or—so I thought. “I began to travel in places far from civilization. I had a need to be alone for a time and my ever-restless mind led me to making a study of the languages of the regions to which I went. Gradually I became calmer, and found some kind of forgetfulness. I lived among the Algonquians of Upper Canada for a time, studying their languages and customs. On a visit to New York I met my beautiful wife, Elizabeth van Dahlen. I believed, truly believed, my penance done, I might leave my solitude and create for myself a new, happier life. “We came to England to live. It was here in this house my child was born, here I continued my studies of language, those studies which brought us together, Jonathan. But how dreadful that those very studies made it possible for me to come close to Maria Clementi and in that way meet the fate which had been awaiting me for so many years. “A week ago was the anniversary of the day I saw her. It was last year, at the end of winter. My wife and I had gone to the opera. You will remember Maria singing “Remember Me” that afternoon here at Cheyne Walk, Jonathan? Now, alas, the irony of that, her satire, will become clear to you. For that night she

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was taking the part of Dido, poor deserted queen, in Dido and Aeneas. “At first, like any other individual in the audience I was charmed by her grace and the uncanny beauty of her voice. Her hair was dark, she was made up for the stage—how could I recognize in this talented, fêted, worldly creature that girl who had opened her slate-grey eyes to mine—and smiled—when she was born a second time, reborn at my hand? “Yet slowly, as the performance continued, a strange sense of familiarity stole in on me—and with it a sick longing to come closer to Maria Clementi. My wife sat beside me in the box. I have never felt further away from her. As the performance continued my yearning grew greater, deeper than I ever felt when about to marry my first wife—whom I loved but almost as sister, for we had grown up together—or when courting my second wife, for, lovely as she was, to me she represented the final lifting of the cloud that had hung over me since Orkney, was the symbol of my re-entering the world of my fellow beings. But these are mere excuses for my feelings for Maria: what I knew was that we were twin souls, locked together, creator and created. I was afraid, of course I was afraid of what I felt for the actress, but my longing was too strong for fear. “It was when Maria came to the footlights at the front of the stage to acknowledge the rapture of the audience that I knew—I knew! Older by seven years, her hair darkened by artifice, I still recognized her as the woman to whom I had given life on Orkney. I had of course believed her dead in the fire. But I knew now she must have escaped for this was her—my Maria—my Eve—my Maria Clementi.

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“I was forced to go home that night with my wife and pretend that all was well. But all that night I did not sleep and knew that when morning came I must begin my plans to meet her. “I showed the caution and cunning of the true villain. Resisting the temptation to rush and find her, I went to the theatre later that day and found Gabriel Mortimer. I told him I was a student of languages presenting him with credentials of every kind. I said I had heard that Miss Clementi was mute (as all London knew) and that it might be possible for me to discover the cause of this condition and, that done, perhaps help her to find her speaking voice again. This was something of a risk, for I saw at once that this ‘impresario’ was as good as an exploiter of the young woman and thought therefore that he could have invented the tale of Maria’s dumbness to attract more fame and attention. And if that were so, Maria could expose me for what I was—if she remembered. “I cannot tell you what rage I felt then, and thereafter, when talking to Mortimer. This man was daily close to the woman I loved, knew her in all her most intimate moments, was, my fevered brain told me, perhaps her lover. But I had to suppress this hostility for I needed Mortimer to get me to Maria. I enquired into her past and heard she had been found barefoot, singing in the streets of Dublin, had been taken up by the better people in that city and produced at their entertainments, then brought to London by Mortimer, who added that in spite of her unprotected past she was a good young woman, ever attended by the most respectable of chaperones. “As we conversed I acted with calm and cunning. I took Mortimer in, I think, but he was so hopeful I detected of restoring Maria’s voice, for profit, I believe he would have made a friend of

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Satan if he had promised Maria the gift of speech. Though I was not sincere, I had no desire to help Maria to speak, for she might denounce me. I only desired her. When I thought she was dead, I thought my desire for her died. It had not. It merely lay frozen ready to thaw—and now was the time of the thawing. “Mortimer detected none of this. He suggested I visit Maria’s companion, Mrs. Jacoby, who would say if she thought me acceptable to Maria. “How I endured the three days before the appointed afternoon I do not know. I writhed, I twisted, was restless, distracted, incapable of any concentration. My mind was filled with suspicion about Mortimer’s relations with Maria; and I cursed in advance the old woman who could, if she chose, keep me from her. I was forced to send my patient wife to the Felthams, so that she would not see my trouble and begin to question me in an attempt to share a burden I could not reveal to her. Truth to tell, I wanted Elizabeth from me. She stood between me and my desires. From the moment I saw Maria again, I wanted my wife away. This confession causes me profound shame, but it is the truth. “Came the day of our meeting. In the small drawing-room at Russell Square with Mrs. Jacoby’s solid presence guarding the tea-table, I saw again, close to, the face of my Eve—Maria. For it was she. I knew it instantly. She was composed, charmingly but quietly dressed in pale blue. She greeted me with a handshake, a pleasant smile and no apparent recognition in her eyes. Gone was the girl who opened her eyes and smiled her first smile at me. Gone the filthy, biting, scratching creature that girl became. But it was her. “How could I guess that licentious, spiteful creature, subject to violent, uncontrolled emotions of every kind, had exchanged

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her undisguised lusts and malevolence for a quiet air and smile, like that of a Sicilian who will wait ten, twenty, thirty years for his revenge? She knew me, of course. She had known of me for many years, I have no doubt. But she had not come to me. She had waited for me to go to her so as to disguise her plans and make my final torments at her hands more dreadful. “The lessons designed to help her speak began. To cover my desires I enticed you, my friend, to share those periods of instruction with me, and for that I can only say I am deeply sorry. It was, moreover, useless, for when she rejected me I became desperate, as you know very well. It was all the beginning of her making my life a hell. “Of course, my relations with my poor wife grew worse. I did what so many other weak and treacherous men have done, allowed her to grow bewildered, denied there was aught wrong, became angry when she piteously asked me, yet again, if anything was the matter. Intimidated by my anger and vehement denials she then ceased to ask me anything, kept herself away from me as much as possible, grew thin and pale. I felt nothing for her but irritation when she was trying to make me speak and relief when she withdrew from me. I felt no guilt, no shame, nothing. I just wished I could remove her entirely so that I could pursue Maria without impediment. What a wretch I was—how unconscious of my own wickedness—and would that I had made Elizabeth leave my house and return to America. Had I done so, she would be alive now, and my child also. But she was too devoted, too loyal to leave me when she knew all was not well with me, and death was the reward she reaped for that loyalty. “It terrified me, Jonathan, when you told me of having seen that monstrous Other just after my wife was killed. I truly

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believed the crime had been committed by a robber disturbed in the course of conducting a theft. When you told me you had seen a man in the garden, even then the horrid suspicion came to me that the creature I had made had somehow found his way back from the other side of the world to punish me and lay waste my life. And all the while Maria beguiled me more and more, turning me into her slave. “Elizabeth was killed and I—I was so sunk in the mire I was almost happy. I felt so little for her by then, my head was so full of Maria. I thought little, even at that moment, except that now I could court Maria without shame, bring her to the house, marry her. “Hugo and Lucy saw me let her in just after my wife’s death. She held me off, though, until that last night, fatal for me. I still did not suspect her. It was Maria, of course, who killed my wife and child, Maria who attacked me. The man, that ogreish creature I had made (and whom I believe she paid to have brought back from Australia) was innocent of anything. “She waited to tell me until the night came when she acceded to my desire to possess her. She kept me in torment for two weeks after she came to the house, an agonizing two weeks, for she allowed me to kiss her, allowed me every familiarity other than the final embrace. “She came to my room late one night when the house was dark and quiet and in the bed in which I now lie dying she gave herself to me, coiled about me serpent-like, draining me of vital force, consuming me. I knew I would never have enough of her. She was Lamia. She was not Eve, my Eve, but Eve’s bad counterpart, Lilith. “It was as I lay there, weak and extinguished yet utterly happy, that she pointed to the scar on her shoulder, past relic of the fire

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on Orkney from which she had escaped. She began to whisper. It was at first not so much what she said than that she spoke at all, which astounded me. She had been all along capable of speech! And then, as she leaned over me in the bed, her long hair trailing, I began to hear what she said—that she had known me all along, that she had escaped my fire and smuggled herself aboard a boat to Ireland, been picked up hungry and cold on the shore by tinkers and taken to Dublin. It was true, she said, she could not speak at first, for she had no language. Had she been able to speak, she would have had nothing to say. She had no experience of the commonest things of life, no account of herself to give, no past, no memories except certain little trailing recollections of France as a child, then a sharp memory of Paris streets and betrayal. Her only vivid memories were of Orkney, of me, of Adam, my creature. Otherwise, she knew nothing, remembered nothing, so what good would words have been to her, even if she had them? “Later, she said; after Mortimer had picked her up and made her fortune, she heard I was in London, for my name at least she knew. When I walked into her net, she said, she played with me a little, then killed my wife and child, to play with me a little more, then made me pant after her like a dog. I lay beneath her, her strong hands pushing me down, her hair half-blinding me. And then, as if all that were not hideous enough, she said, smiling—oh, the horror of it—“Adam is here. I hid him for a long time in your garden.” Then she brought her face closer to me and said, “We have met every day in his hiding place. I stole your food for him. Are you not amused? Each day, hour on hour, I have made love to him. Do you laugh? He loves me, Victor Frankenstein, as I do him. We cannot love anyone but each other. And now he and I are here—both here—in this house and you who made us, who

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treated us as you would and disposed of us as you wished when you found you could not love us—you will die yourself, at our hands.” “And even as I thought in horror of graceful Maria being savaged by that maimed, inarticulate monster, the bedroom door burst open—and he was there. I saw in the doorway the huge body of the man I had created, heard his heavy tread, felt his great hands seize me as a child seizes a doll and looked into his savage, gloating face. I could not cry out. Effortlessly, he pulled me from my bed, threw me over his shoulder and ran downstairs with me. In the drawing-room by the window he held me, my arms pinioned at my sides, my feet barely touching the floor, while she, Maria, in her nightdress, stabbed and slashed at me in a frenzy with a knife saying, “This is for the blows you struck, this is for the hunger you did not assuage, this is for the cold, for the whip, for the chains.” “I remember falling, hearing a crash of glass as I suppose the beast sprang out through the window to make his escape. Then I recall Maria bending over me crooning, “Now you die, my dear creator and Adam’s creator. Now you die.” She must have been found thus as if very grieved at my injuries, by those who came into the room. I knew nothing of this, for I had lost my senses. “This, Jonathan, is my most dreadful story. I am sorry, my friend, that I deceived you and used you to mask my passion for Maria. I am sorry I deceived you, to protect-myself when you began to come across the truth. I could not endure the thought that all would soon know what atrocities I had committed, I could not bear to believe it was impossible to return to Eden, the week before I constructed my downfall. But that garden, once one

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has eaten the fruit of the tree, cannot be re-entered. I know there is no hope for me in this life; I think there is none in the next. I believe I’m going towards damnation. “Jonathan, forgive me, and pray for me if you will. “Finally, for the love of God, protect yourself and your family from these two abominations I have made. They will have fled and I do not think they will be caught. Beware of them, I implore you. “God bless you, dear fellow. You have been loyal to a fault to your most unworthy friend. If you can, I beg you to pray for me, pray for Victor Frankenstein, little as you may think he merits your prayers.”

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eighteen

LORD—I MUST ADD A POSTSCRIPT to the dreadful and pathetic tale of Victor Frankenstein, one of the unhappiest of men who can ever have walked the earth, and creator of his own unhappiness. For there is more. You may perhaps see in Frankenstein’s account the ravings of a man enfevered and near death. Often and often I have tried to persuade myself that is all there is to the tale, but, alas, there is too much evidence to support its substance. You will recall that I read Frankenstein’s final testimony at Gray’s Inn Road on the afternoon of the day he died. I read, as would have anyone, with growing horror, yet the doubt, that twilight of half-seen shapes and forms in which I had been living had been almost as terrible in its way as was the horror, fully revealed. Yet what frightening intellectual questions it raises! I took no note of Victor’s warnings about the uncaptured pair. They had no reason to attack me or mine, if his account were

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true. If it were true. For to believe Victor’s account one would have to believe that Victor had made—created—revived from the dead—two seemingly human beings who ought never to have existed. As in an old tragedy Victor had dared the gods, usurped their power, suffered direly as a result of his own ambition, pride and vanity. Even in his final, desperate confession one can still see traces of that lack of humility. Perhaps to those vices he also added one further sin, that of inhumanity. For though that misbegotten pair were not as we are, one constructed and brought to life, the other brought back from the grave where she should have been left peacefully at rest, were they not in some ways human? Did they not share, in however warped a manner, some of our humanity? The art of Maria Clementi—the passion of the monster for his bride—are those the attributes of mere beasts? Are they not close to our human qualities? Let us settle that, though not man, they were not beasts. My friend had not treated them as men, for they were not. Yet they were not quite beasts, but he had used them as such; tried to kill them as a man does a dog—worse—as if they were cattle bred and slain for man’s use. To me it seemed strange that he had never, from beginning to end, contemplated the way he should treat these creatures or in what relation to him they stood. As for my part in this tragedy—I was no protagonist, more like one of those ancient tragic choruses, deluded and bewildered, admonitory, ever powerless to alter anything. As I dropped the pages to the floor, wishing them out of my hands completely, I knew poor Victor would all too soon be standing before his own Maker, to receive final judgment. I pitied him.

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As my story will have demonstrated, my Lord, I had up to that point been an indifferent Christian, no Christian at all. My religion had been a background to my life, but I had thought, as many men do, that it was a matter more for women and children, not the concern of grown men. This view, unacceptable as it might be to the Church is common enough, we all know. But Victor’s terrible story compelled me to contemplate many grave matters which had never concerned me before. Principal among these questions was that of redemption. And I knew, even as the last pages of Victor’s own history left my hands I must make one final effort to find a way of convincing my poor friend, before his death, of the mercy of God. For he seemed certain his God was about to condemn him to eternal hell. I could not endure that this would be his last thought before he died. My acquaintance with the clergymen of London was small, but I found Simeon Shaw at the bedside of an old woman of his parish and hauled him out into the snow to go to Cheyne Walk. On the way I confided to him much of Victor’s story, which he half-believed. As the coach crawled forward through snow, he made the telling point that if Victor Frankenstein had bequeathed to me his scientific papers I might be in possession of the secret of the creation of life. He then ambitiously suggested I put these papers into the hands of the Church—by which I think he meant, himself. My lack of faith in religion has always been inextricably mingled with my lack of faith in the clergy, for, throughout the ages, has not the priesthood suppressed knowledge to incease superstitious power among the credulous? Therefore I said plainly and in an angry manner, “Mr. Shaw—I am taking you to the deathbed of my friend in order that you may convince him there is a

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Redeemer who will forgive all if he truly repents of his sins. That, and no more. I will give you no papers, and if you indicate to anyone that such papers exist I shall deny all knowledge and claim that you are inventing. If you wish to do any more than bring the consolations of religion to a dying man then we will turn the coach round here and now and go back.” I felt sure of my ground here, having already the impression that he did not stand well with his Bishop, being considered cranky and perhaps in some respects not altogether in his right mind. At all events, this statement silenced him. But his suggestion that Victor’s papers might convey the secret of his experiments has haunted me over the years, thus my great relief in handing the documents to you. We were let in by the butler, very grave. His master’s parents were with him; he was dying. I took Simeon Shaw upstairs. I had no place in the room where parents were bidding the last farewell to their only son, I went downstairs. Poor Victor, I learned, died only a little later. While Victor’s mother had held one of his hands, Mr. Shaw had the other in his own grip. They said Shaw told him of the all-embracing mercy of God. Victor had squeezed the clergyman’s hand, unable to speak, and died. But that is often said on such occasions. Whether Victor was consoled, whether he had truly repented, I know not. After I blundered down that chill staircase and as those final scenes took place upstairs I remained in the salon where full of melancholy thought. I pressed my forehead against the freezing panes of the long windows. The two guards were there, playing cards, as ever. Then something—some shadow—caught my eye. In the moonlight on the snow-covered lawn, two hundred yards away from me, were two dark shapes dancing, one huge and

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lumbering, crippled, in a long black flapping coat, the other a graceful, bird-like, swooping figure. They danced in the snow and ice, bowing, capering, gliding, following some pattern understood only by themselves. Even he, ungraceful as he was, showed a peculiar, clumsy agility. They were completely caught up in each other. I saw Maria—for I knew one of the figures was hers, the other being that of her monstrous bridegroom—raise her arms above her head and twirl into his embrace—then he released her and she spun again on the white carpet of their outdoor ballroom. The dance continued, their feet making black patterns on the snowy grass. I closed my eyes, thinking the sight an hallucination—but, no, when I opened them again, there they still were. Now the courtly dance had become wilder, a twirling, stamping fandango, as they swung each other round by their extended arms. It ended as they went into a long embrace. Then straightaway they parted and still hand-in-hand began to run, as two children will run happily towards some morning game on a summer’s day, away from the house and into the trees. I believe that must have been the moment when Victor died. This was the triumphal dance of the creatures he had brought into being. “Two kings—a deuce.” I heard one of the guards say. “No—curse this light,” said the other. Then a gust caught their one candle and it went out. We were left in the darkened room with only the moonlight coming through the window. The figures outside had gone now. There was only the trampled snow they had left behind and a trail of their footmarks over the grass. It was, of course, a horror beyond anything. I should have called out the guards, now cursing as they searched for their tinder to

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relight the candle. But what would have been the point? To find and seize that pair would have taken a regiment, and I knew that now they had accomplished the death of Frankenstein, their maker, and they were reunited, they would go far away. Frankenstein was dead. They had found each other; they needed no more. I left that mournful house without speaking to anyone. That night Cordelia, bolder than I, came to me over the icy roads. We were married a month later after the thaw, when sun and light returned and spring was making its first efforts to warm and cheer the world. In that year I gave her Victor’s terrible account to read and when I asked her opinion as to what she thought I should do with it—should I preserve it, put it into other hands, burn it?—she advised that Victor’s testament along with the drawings and formulae should be safely locked up, where no one could ever find them. And this we did. It is only now, as I am trying to settle my affairs and my conscience (though, I hope still looking forward to many years of health and contentment), that I have felt I must solve the difficulty of what to do with this material. But, my Lord, there is a further postscript to this affair which I feel I must relate. This event occurred some years after those I have described when I and my wife were on holiday in Switzerland. We were sitting with Flora and our little son at the edge of one of that country’s many beautiful lakes, gazing with pleasure across the body of water at the view on the opposite side. Here there was a small, grassy foreshore, behind that a forest of tall pine trees. It was a clear day, the distance between ourselves and the other side of the water being some two hundred yards. Sud-

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denly my wife rose to her feet and cried, “Look! Jonathan—what is that?” On the verge of the lake opposite us walked two figures, one huge, lame, clumsy, the other, nearer to us, a woman, small and graceful. And between them, holding the hand of either parent, a small child, by her clothing a girl. Then they were gone, into the pines, too quickly for either of us to be perfectly certain of what we had seen, whether they had been there at all. We gazed at each other, though, in some horror. My wife asked me, in awe, “Was it them, do you think?” But I could not answer her. My Lord, we may have been mistaken in what we saw but, since you are to be the recipient of Victor Frankenstein’s papers, and since they may contain the secret of how to create human life by artificial means, it is vital that you should be told this later part of the story. For—imagine—if those figures were those of Frankenstein’s creations, his Adam and his Eve, if the child was a child they had between them, then not only are they still at large but between them have bred a child like themselves. And so might any other creature produced as they were. Will such children, if nurtured as ours are, be different from us, be more or less evil than we are ourselves? Who, what will they be? And another sober thought came to my mind then. If the child was born of Maria Clementi, then she might be the only surviving child of Victor Frankenstein himself, fathered on the woman he brought back to life, his creation. Dreadful, impossible thoughts, my Lord, but dare we in conscience ignore them? It is almost twenty years since I saw those figures. From time to time there are still moments when I dread the reappearance of that child, grotesque or inhumanly lovely in form—an angel—or devil? What might she be? I pray, my Lord, I shall never encounter her.

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For the rest, I confide these papers to you in the confidence that your good judgment will help you to decide better what to do with them. Whatever you decide may I make one plea—that you offer up a prayer for poor Victor Frankenstein—and another for me, witness to these frightening events. Then also, if I may presume to suggest it, I suggest you pray also for yourself, who now know all the story of Frankenstein, and to whom it is given to decide what to do with his heritage. I remain, most respectfully, my Lord, your servant, Jonathan Goodall.

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Frankenstein or the modern prometheus

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

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L ETTE R 1 TO M RS . SAVI LLE , E NG LAN D S T. P ETE RS B U RG H , D EC . 11 TH , 17— You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking. I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has traveled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendor. There— for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators— there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those

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undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine. These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favorite dream of my early years. I have read with ardor the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good Uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life. These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might

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obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent. Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whalefishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness, so valuable did he consider my services. And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing. This is the most favorable period for traveling in Russia. They fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stagecoach. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs—a dress which I have already adopted, for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your

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veins. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and Archangel. I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never. Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness. Your affectionate brother, R. Walton

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L ETTE R 2 TO M RS . SAVI LLE , E NG LAN D A RCHANG E L , 28 TH M ARCH , 17— How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage. But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas’s

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books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavor to regulate my mind. Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel; finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise. The master is a person of an excellent disposition and is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. This circumstance, added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship: I have never believed it to be necessary, and when I heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness of heart and the respect and obedience paid to him by his crew, I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his services. I heard of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness of her life. This, briefly, is his story. Some years ago

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he loved a young Russian lady of moderate fortune, and having amassed a considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the match. He saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she was bathed in tears, and throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to spare her, confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union. My generous friend reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover, instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought a farm with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life; but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited the young woman’s father to consent to her marriage with her lover. But the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honor to my friend, who, when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned until he heard that his former mistress was married according to her inclinations. “What a noble fellow!” you will exclaim. He is so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command. Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little or because I can conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate, and my voyage is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. The winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well, and it is considered as a remarkably early season, so that perhaps I may sail sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care. I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions, to “the land of mist and snow,” but I shall

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kill no albatross; therefore do not be alarmed for my safety or if I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the “Ancient Mariner.” You will smile at my allusion, but I will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labor—but besides this there is a love for the marvelous, a belief in the marvelous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. But to return to dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look on the reverse of the picture. Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again. Your affectionate brother, Robert Walton

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L ETTE R 3 TO M RS . SAVI LLE , E NG LAN D J U LY 7 TH , 17— My dear Sister, I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe—and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected. No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a letter. One or two stiff gales and the springing of a leak are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record, and I shall be well content if nothing worse happen to us during our voyage. Adieu, my dear Margaret. Be assured that for my own sake, as well as yours, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool, persevering, and prudent.

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But success shall crown my endeavors. Wherefore not? Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man? My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus. But I must finish. Heaven bless my beloved sister! R. W.

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L ETTE R 4 TO M RS . SAVI LLE , E NG LAN D A UG U ST 5 TH , 17— So strange an accident has happened to us that I cannot forbear recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before these papers can come into your possession. Last Monday (July 31st) we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea-room in which she floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog. We accordingly lay to, hoping that some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather. About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile; a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveler with our telescopes until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice.

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This appearance excited our unqualified wonder. We were, as we believed, many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. Shut in, however, by ice, it was impossible to follow his track, which we had observed with the greatest attention. About two hours after this occurrence we heard the ground sea, and before night the ice broke and freed our ship. We, however, lay to until the morning, fearing to encounter in the dark those large loose masses which float about after the breaking up of the ice. I profited of this time to rest for a few hours. In the morning, however, as soon as it was light, I went upon deck and found all the sailors busy on one side of the vessel, apparently talking to someone in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night on a large fragment of ice. Only one dog remained alive; but there was a human being within it whom the sailors were persuading to enter the vessel. He was not, as the other traveler seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but a European. When I appeared on deck the master said, “Here is our captain, and he will not allow you to perish on the open sea.” On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a foreign accent. “Before I come on board your vessel,” said he, “will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?” You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to me from a man on the brink of destruction and to whom I should have supposed that my vessel would have been a resource which he would not have exchanged for the most precious wealth the earth can afford. I replied, however, that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the northern pole. Upon hearing this he appeared satisfied and consented to come on board. Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man

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in so wretched a condition. We attempted to carry him into the cabin, but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air he fainted. We accordingly brought him back to the deck and restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he showed signs of life we wrapped him up in blankets and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen stove. By slow degrees he recovered and ate a little soup, which restored him wonderfully. Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak, and I often feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. When he had in some measure recovered, I removed him to my own cabin and attended on him as much as my duty would permit. I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if anyone performs an act of kindness towards him or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equaled. But he is generally melancholy and despairing, and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him. When my guest was a little recovered I had great trouble to keep off the men, who wished to ask him a thousand questions; but I would not allow him to be tormented by their idle curiosity, in a state of body and mind whose restoration evidently depended upon entire repose. Once, however, the lieutenant asked why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle. His countenance instantly assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom, and he replied, “To seek one who fled from me.” “And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?” “Yes.” “Then I fancy we have seen him, for the day before we picked you up we saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.” This aroused the stranger’s attention, and he asked a multitude of questions concerning the route which the demon, as he called him, had pursued. Soon

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after, when he was alone with me, he said, “I have, doubtless, excited your curiosity, as well as that of these good people; but you are too considerate to make inquiries.” “Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman in me to trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine.” “And yet you rescued me from a strange and perilous situation; you have benevolently restored me to life.” Soon after this he inquired if I thought that the breaking up of the ice had destroyed the other sledge. I replied that I could not answer with any degree of certainty, for the ice had not broken until near midnight, and the traveler might have arrived at a place of safety before that time; but of this I could not judge. From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger. He manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon deck to watch for the sledge which had before appeared; but I have persuaded him to remain in the cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of the atmosphere. I have promised that someone should watch for him and give him instant notice if any new object should appear in sight. Such is my journal of what relates to this strange occurrence up to the present day. The stranger has gradually improved in health but is very silent and appears uneasy when anyone except myself enters his cabin. Yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle that the sailors are all interested in him, although they have had very little communication with him. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable. I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart. I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should I have any fresh incidents to record.

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August 13th, 17— My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence. He is now much recovered from his illness and is continually on the deck, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet, although unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery but that he interests himself deeply in the projects of others. He has frequently conversed with me on mine, which I have communicated to him without disguise. He entered attentively into all my arguments in favor of my eventual success and into every minute detail of the measures I had taken to secure it. I was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced to use the language of my heart, to give utterance to the burning ardor of my soul and to say, with all the fervor that warmed me, how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. As I spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener’s countenance. At first I perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickle fast from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast. I paused; at length he spoke, in broken accents: “Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!” Such words, you may imagine, strongly excited my curiosity; but the paroxysm of grief that had seized the stranger overcame his weakened powers, and

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many hours of repose and tranquil conversation were necessary to restore his composure. Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. He asked me the history of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told, but it awakened various trains of reflection. I spoke of my desire of finding a friend, of my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot, and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness who did not enjoy this blessing. “I agree with you,” replied the stranger; “we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I—I have lost everything and cannot begin life anew.” As he said this his countenance became expressive of a calm, settled grief that touched me to the heart. But he was silent and presently retired to his cabin. Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures. Will you smile at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer? You would not if you saw him. You have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are therefore somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man. Sometimes I have endeavored to discover what quality it is which

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he possesses that elevates him so immeasurably above any other person I ever knew. I believe it to be an intuitive discernment, a quick but never-failing power of judgment, a penetration into the causes of things, unequalled for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music. August 19, 17— Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had determined at one time that the memory of these evils should die with me, but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you in case of failure. Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvelous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature; nor can I doubt but that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.” You may easily imagine that I was much gratified by the offered communication, yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer.

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“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sympathy, but it is useless; my fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace. I understand your feeling,” continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt him; “but you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny; listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.” He then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day when I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have resolved every night, when I am not imperatively occupied by my duties, to record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure; but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips—with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day! Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within. Strange and harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it—thus!

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C HAPT ER 1

G ENEVESE, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counselors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honor and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family. As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honorable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived

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unknown and in wretchedness. My father loved Beaufort with the truest friendship and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. He bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct so little worthy of the affection that united them. He lost no time in endeavoring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance. Beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself, and it was ten months before my father discovered his abode. Overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean street near the Reuss. But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. Beaufort had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes, but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in the meantime he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant’s house. The interval was, consequently, spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection, and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion. His daughter attended him with the greatest tenderness, but she saw with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing and that there was no other prospect of support. But Caroline Beaufort possessed a mind of an uncommon mould, and her courage rose to support her in her adversity. She procured plain work; she plaited straw and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life. Several months passed in this manner. Her father grew worse; her time was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in

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her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her, and she knelt by Beaufort’s coffin weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care; and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife. There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection. There was a sense of justice in my father’s upright mind which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly. Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth. There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace to his behavior to her. Everything was made to yield to her wishes and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind. Her health, and even the tranquility of her hitherto constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. During the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy, and the change of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders, as a restorative for her weakened frame.

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From Italy they visited Germany and France. I, their eldest child, was born at Naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. I remained for several years their only child. Much as they were attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. My mother’s tender caresses and my father’s smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something better— their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me. For a long time I was their only care. My mother had much desired to have a daughter, but I continued their single offspring. When I was about five years old, while making an excursion beyond the frontiers of Italy, they passed a week on the shores of the Lake of Como. Their benevolent disposition often made them enter the cottages of the poor. This, to my mother, was more than a duty; it was a necessity, a passion—remembering what she had suffered, and how she had been relieved—for her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the afflicted. During one of their walks a poor cot in the foldings of a vale attracted their notice as being singularly disconsolate, while the number of half-clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst shape. One day, when my

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father had gone by himself to Milan, my mother, accompanied by me, visited this abode. She found a peasant and his wife, hard working, bent down by care and labor, distributing a scanty meal to five hungry babes. Among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin and very fair. Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the molding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features. The peasant woman, perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wonder and admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then. They had not been long married, and their eldest child was but just born. The father of their charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of Italy—one among the schiavi ognor frementi, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty of his country. He became the victim of its weakness. Whether he had died or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria was not known. His property was confiscated; his child became an orphan and a beggar. She continued with her foster parents and bloomed in their rude abode, fairer than a garden rose among darkleaved brambles. When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub—a

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creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. The apparition was soon explained. With his permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection. They consulted their village priest, and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents’ house—my more than sister—the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures. Everyone loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, “I have a pretty present for my Victor—tomorrow he shall have it.” And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine—mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me—my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only.

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C HAPT ER 2

E WERE BROUGHT UP TOGETHER;

there was not quite a year difference in our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardor, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge. She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home —the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers—she found ample scope for admiration and delight. While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn

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the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember. On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagne on Belrive, the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league from the city. We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows in general; but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure. He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulcher from the hands of the infidels. No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love. My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in my temperature they were turned not towards

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childish pursuits but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world. Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home. Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become sullen in my study, rough through the ardor of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. And Clerval—could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval? Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition. I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early

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days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.” If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardor to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me

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that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labor and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boy’s apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same pursuit. The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomize, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined. But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple. It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of Geneva, I was, to a great degree,

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self-taught with regard to my favorite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favorite authors, the fulfillment of which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not

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splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed. Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration. Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life—the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquility and gladness of soul which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. It was

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thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard. It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.

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C HAPT ER 3

I HAD ATTAINED THE AGE of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen, as it were, of my future misery. Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had at first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper—Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was

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accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself. “My children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavor to resign myself cheerfully to death and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.” She died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we

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must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized. My departure for Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick of life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me, and above all, I desired to see my sweet Elizabeth in some degree consoled. She indeed veiled her grief and strove to act the comforter to us all. She looked steadily on life and assumed its duties with courage and zeal. She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and cousins. Never was she so enchanting as at this time, when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us. She forgot even her own regret in her endeavors to make us forget. The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavored to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce. We sat late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor persuade ourselves to say the word “Farewell!” It was said, and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived; but when at morning’s dawn I

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descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there—my father again to bless me, Clerval to press my hand once more, my Elizabeth to renew her entreaties that I would write often and to bestow the last feminine attentions on her playmate and friend. I threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavoring to bestow mutual pleasure—I was now alone. In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends and be my own protector. My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers, Elizabeth, and Clerval; these were “old familiar faces,” but I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place and had longed to enter the world and take my station among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent. I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted and was conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the evening as I pleased. The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to some of the principal professors. Chance—or rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me from the moment I turned my reluctant

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steps from my father’s door—led me first to M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. He asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied carelessly, and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor stared. “Have you,” he said, “really spent your time in studying such nonsense?” I replied in the affirmative. “Every minute,” continued M. Krempe with warmth, “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.” So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Waldman, a fellow professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he omitted. I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not pre-

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possess me in favor of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand; but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth. Such were my reflections during the first two or three days of my residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming acquainted with the localities and the principal residents in my new abode. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of the information which M. Krempe had given me concerning the lectures. And although I could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit, I recollected what he had said of M. Waldman, whom I had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town. Partly from curiosity and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing room, which M. Waldman entered shortly after. This professor was very unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head

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were nearly black. His person was short but remarkably erect and his voice the sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervor the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: “The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.” Such were the professor’s words—rather let me say such the words of the fate—enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer

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a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning’s dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight’s thoughts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent. On the same day I paid M. Waldman a visit. His manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public, for there was a certain dignity in his mien during his lecture which in his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness. I gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as I had given to his fellow professor. He heard with attention the little narration concerning my studies and smiled at the names of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Krempe had exhibited. He said that “These were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names and arrange in connected classifications the facts which they in a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The labors of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.” I listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affectation, and then added that his lecture had removed my prejudices against modern chemists; I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have made me ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended

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labors. I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure. “I am happy,” said M. Waldman, “to have gained a disciple; and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success. Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.” He then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure and promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list of books which I had requested, and I took my leave. Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.

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natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation. I read with ardor those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the lectures and cultivated the acquaintance of the men of science of the university, and I found even in M. Krempe a great deal of sound sense and real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive physiognomy and manners, but not on that account the less valuable. In M. Waldman I found a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism, and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension. My application was at first fluctuating and uncertain; it gained strength as I proceeded and soon became so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.

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As I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress was rapid. My ardor was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency that of the masters. Professor Krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on, whilst M. Waldman expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress. Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make. None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study; and I, who continually sought the attainment of one object of pursuit and was solely wrapped up in this, improved so rapidly that at the end of two years I made some discoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments, which procured me great esteem and admiration at the university. When I had arrived at this point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay. One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did

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not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analyzing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me— a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

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Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labor, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened upon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavors so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light. I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be; listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that subject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier

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that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow. When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibers, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labor. I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect, yet when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began. No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break

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through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardor. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realize. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labors, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my

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employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion. The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them, and I well remembered the words of my father: “I know that while you are pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected.” I knew well therefore what would be my father’s feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed. I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to

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which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed. But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed. My father made no reproach in his letters and only took notice of my silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before. Winter, spring, and summer passed away during my labors; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves— sights which before always yielded me supreme delight—so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation. The leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a close, and now every day showed me more plainly how well I had succeeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favorite employment. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete.

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of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.

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The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavoring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking

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up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life. Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived. I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete! Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky. I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavoring by bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:

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Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the various diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew not why; but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that was coming towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew nearer I observed that it was the Swiss diligence; it stopped just where I was standing, and on the door being opened, I perceived Henry Clerval, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. “My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed he, “how glad I am to see you! How fortunate that you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!” Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval continued talking for some time about our mutual friends and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. “You may easily believe,” said he, “how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of book-keeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the

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Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: ‘I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.’ But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge.” “It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left my father, brothers, and Elizabeth.” “Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you so seldom. By the by, I mean to lecture you a little upon their account myself. But, my dear Frankenstein,” continued he, stopping short and gazing full in my face, “I did not before remark how very ill you appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for several nights.” “You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one occupation that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see; but I hope, I sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an end and that I am at length free.” I trembled excessively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to allude to, the occurrences of the preceding night. I walked with a quick pace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive and walking about. I dreaded to behold this monster, but I feared still more that Henry should see him. Entreating him, therefore, to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, and a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a specter to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was

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empty, and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy and ran down to Clerval. We ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast; but I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed me; I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse beat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud. Clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival, but when he observed me more attentively, he saw a wildness in my eyes for which he could not account, and my loud, unrestrained, heartless laughter frightened and astonished him. “My dear Victor,” cried he, “what, for God’s sake, is the matter? Do not laugh in that manner. How ill you are! What is the cause of all this?” “Do not ask me,” cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I thought I saw the dreaded specter glide into the room; “he can tell. Oh, save me! Save me!” I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit. Poor Clerval! What must have been his feelings? A meeting, which he anticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. But I was not the witness of his grief, for I was lifeless and did not recover my senses for a long, long time. This was the commencement of a nervous fever which confined me for several months. During all that time Henry was my only nurse. I afterwards learned that, knowing my father’s advanced age and unfitness for so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make Elizabeth, he spared them this grief by concealing the

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extent of my disorder. He knew that I could not have a more kind and attentive nurse than himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he did not doubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest action that he could towards them. But I was in reality very ill, and surely nothing but the unbounded and unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him. Doubtless my words surprised Henry; he at first believed them to be the wanderings of my disturbed imagination, but the pertinacity with which I continually recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event. By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses that alarmed and grieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared and that the young buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was a divine spring, and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion. “Dearest Clerval,” exclaimed I, “how kind, how very good you are to me. This whole winter, instead of being spent in study, as you promised yourself, has been consumed in my sick room. How shall I ever repay you? I feel the greatest remorse for the disappointment of which I have been the occasion, but you will forgive me.” “You will repay me entirely if you do not discompose yourself, but get well as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, I may speak to you on one subject, may I not?”

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I trembled. One subject! What could it be? Could he allude to an object on whom I dared not even think? “Compose yourself,” said Clerval, who observed my change of color, “I will not mention it if it agitates you; but your father and cousin would be very happy if they received a letter from you in your own handwriting. They hardly know how ill you have been and are uneasy at your long silence.” “Is that all, my dear Henry? How could you suppose that my first thought would not fly towards those dear, dear friends whom I love and who are so deserving of my love?” “If this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad to see a letter that has been lying here some days for you; it is from your cousin, I believe.”

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C HAPT ER 6

C LE RVAL HAN DS .

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MY

My dearest Cousin, You have been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear kind Henry are not sufficient to reassure me on your account. You are forbidden to write—to hold a pen; yet one word from you, dear Victor, is necessary to calm our apprehensions. For a long time I have thought that each post would bring this line, and my persuasions have restrained my uncle from undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. I have prevented his encountering the inconveniences and perhaps dangers of so long a journey, yet how often have I regretted not being able to perform it myself! I figure to myself that the task of attending on your sickbed has devolved on some mercenary old nurse, who could never guess your wishes nor minister to them with the care and affection of your poor cousin. Yet that is over now: Clerval writes that indeed you are getting better. I eagerly hope that you will confirm this intelligence soon in your own handwriting.

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Get well—and return to us. You will find a happy, cheerful home and friends who love you dearly. Your father’s health is vigorous, and he asks but to see you, but to be assured that you are well; and not a care will ever cloud his benevolent countenance. How pleased you would be to remark the improvement of our Ernest! He is now sixteen and full of activity and spirit. He is desirous to be a true Swiss and to enter into foreign service, but we cannot part with him, at least until his elder brother returns to us. My uncle is not pleased with the idea of a military career in a distant country, but Ernest never had your powers of application. He looks upon study as an odious fetter; his time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the lake. I fear that he will become an idler unless we yield the point and permit him to enter on the profession which he has selected. Little alteration, except the growth of our dear children, has taken place since you left us. The blue lake and snow-clad mountains—they never change; and I think our placid home and our contented hearts are regulated by the same immutable laws. My trifling occupations take up my time and amuse me, and I am rewarded for any exertions by seeing none but happy, kind faces around me. Since you left us, but one change has taken place in our little household. Do you remember on what occasion Justine Moritz entered our family? Probably you do not; I will relate her history, therefore in a few words. Madame Moritz, her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third. This girl had always been the favorite of her father, but through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this, and when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at our house. The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in

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France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being. Justine, you may remember, was a great favorite of yours; and I recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humor, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica— she looked so frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions I never heard one pass her lips, but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition was gay and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all excellence and endeavored to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her. When my dearest aunt died every one was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other trials were reserved for her. One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favorites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. She was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your departure for Ingolstadt, Justine was called home by her repentant mother. Poor girl! She wept when she quitted our house; she was much altered since the death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to her manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity. Nor was her residence at her mother’s house of a nature to restore her gaiety. The poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. She sometimes begged

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Justine to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting at length threw Madame Moritz into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace for ever. She died on the first approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter. Justine has just returned to us; and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is very clever and gentle, and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her mien and her expression continually remind me of my dear aunt. I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling William. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health. He has already had one or two little wives, but Louisa Biron is his favorite, a pretty little girl of five years of age. Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip concerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage with a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly sister, Manon, married M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your favorite schoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the departure of Clerval from Geneva. But he has already recovered his spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a lively pretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much older than Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favorite with everybody. I have written myself into better spirits, dear cousin; but my anxiety returns upon me as I conclude. Write, dearest Victor,—one line—one word will be a blessing to us. Ten thousand thanks to Henry for his kindness, his affection, and his many letters; we are sincerely grateful. Adieu! my cousin; take care of your self; and, I entreat you, write! Elizabeth Lavenza.

Geneva, March 18, 17—

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E LIZABETH!” I exclaimed, when I had read her letter: “I will write instantly and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel.” I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to leave my chamber. One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained. Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labors, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. He had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these cares of Clerval were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M. Waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that I disliked the subject; but not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement, to the science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me out. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. I writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt. Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his total ignorance; and the conversation

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took a more general turn. I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide in him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply. M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. “D—n the fellow!” cried he; “why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has outstripped us all. Ay, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster who, but a few years ago, believed in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as in the gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.—Ay, ay,” continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, “M. Frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval: I was myself when young; but that wears out in a very short time.” M. Krempe had now commenced a eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me. Clerval had never sympathized in my tastes for natural science; and his literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me. He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the oriental languages, and thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself. Resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes toward the East, as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise. The

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Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages engaged his attention, and I was easily induced to enter on the same studies. Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellowpupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the Orientalists. I did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement. I read merely to understand their meaning, and they well repaid my labors. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating, to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses,—in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome! Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long, from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place, before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness. The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily which was to fix the date of my departure, when Henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt, that I might bid a personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I

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acceded with pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Clerval had always been my favorite companion in the ramble of this nature that I had taken among the scenes of my native country. We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children. Excellent friend! how sincerely you did love me, and endeavor to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own. A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy. The present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud. I was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me, notwithstanding my endeavors to throw them off, with an invincible burden. Henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathized in my feelings: he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often, in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other

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times he repeated my favorite poems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity. We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.

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C HAPT ER 7

ON MY RETURN, I FOUND THE FOLLOWING LETTER from my father:

My dear Victor, You have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of your return to us; and I was at first tempted to write only a few lines, merely mentioning the day on which I should expect you. But that would be a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be your surprise, my son, when you expected a happy and glad welcome, to behold, on the contrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Victor, can I relate our misfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent son? I wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now your eye skims over the page to seek the words which are to convey to you the horrible tidings. William is dead!—that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!

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I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the circumstances of the transaction. Last Thursday (May 7th), I, my niece, and your two brothers, went to walk in Plainpalais. The evening was warm and serene, and we prolonged our walk farther than usual. It was already dusk before we thought of returning; and then we discovered that William and Ernest, who had gone on before, were not to be found. We accordingly rested on a seat until they should return. Presently Ernest came, and enquired if we had seen his brother; he said, that he had been playing with him, that William had run away to hide himself, and that he vainly sought for him, and afterwards waited for a long time, but that he did not return. This account rather alarmed us, and we continued to search for him until night fell, when Elizabeth conjectured that he might have returned to the house. He was not there. We returned again, with torches; for I could not rest, when I thought that my sweet boy had lost himself, and was exposed to all the damps and dews of night; Elizabeth also suffered extreme anguish. About five in the morning I discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before I had seen blooming and active in health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murderer’s finger was on his neck. He was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my countenance betrayed the secret to Elizabeth. She was very earnest to see the corpse. At first I attempted to prevent her but she persisted, and entering the room where it lay, hastily examined the neck of the victim, and clasping her hands exclaimed, “O God! I have murdered my darling child!” She fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. When she again lived, it was only to weep and sigh. She told me, that that same evening William had teased her to let him wear a very valuable miniature that she possessed of your mother. This picture is gone, and was doubtless the temptation which urged the murderer to the deed. We have no trace of him at present, although our exertions to discover him are unremitted; but they will not restore my beloved William!

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Come, dearest Victor; you alone can console Elizabeth. She weeps continually, and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death; her words pierce my heart. We are all unhappy; but will not that be an additional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter? Your dear mother! Alas, Victor! I now say, Thank God she did not live to witness the cruel, miserable death of her youngest darling! Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies. Your affectionate and afflicted father, Alphonse Frankenstein Geneva, May 12th, 17—

LERVAL, WHO HAD WATCHED

my countenance as I read this letter, was surprised to observe the despair that succeeded the joy I at first expressed on receiving new from my friends. I threw the letter on the table, and covered my face with my hands. “My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed Henry, when he perceived me weep with bitterness, “are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend, what has happened?” I motioned him to take up the letter, while I walked up and down the room in the extremest agitation. Tears also gushed from the eyes of Clerval, as he read the account of my misfortune. “I can offer you no consolation, my friend,” said he; “your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do?”

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“To go instantly to Geneva: come with me, Henry, to order the horses.” During our walk, Clerval endeavored to say a few words of consolation; he could only express his heartfelt sympathy. “Poor William!” said he, “dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! To die so miserably; to feel the murderer’s grasp! How much more a murdered that could destroy radiant innocence! Poor little fellow! One only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep, but he is at rest. The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end for ever. A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain. He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors.” Clerval spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words impressed themselves on my mind and I remembered them afterwards in solitude. But now, as soon as the horses arrived, I hurried into a cabriolet, and bade farewell to my friend. My journey was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I longed to console and sympathize with my loved and sorrowing friends; but when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. I passed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for nearly six years. How altered every thing might be during that time! One sudden and desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little circumstances might have by degrees worked other alterations, which, although they were done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive. Fear overcame me; I dared no advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.

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I remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm; and the snowy mountains, “the palaces of nature,” were not changed. By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my journey towards Geneva. The road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as I approached my native town. I discovered more distinctly the black sides of Jura, and the bright summit of Mont Blanc. I wept like a child. “Dear mountains! My own beautiful lake! How do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?” I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative happiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My country, my beloved country! Who but a native can tell the delight I took in again beholding thy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely lake! Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. Night also closed around; and when I could hardly see the dark mountains, I felt still more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure. It was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the gates of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night at Secheron, a village at the distance of half a league from the city. The sky was serene; and, as I was unable to

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rest, I resolved to visit the spot where my poor William had been murdered. As I could not pass through the town, I was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at Plainpalais. During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm appeared to approach rapidly, and, on landing, I ascended a low hill, that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased. I quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It was echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in Switzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. The most violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over the part of the lake which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of Copet. Another storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes; and another darkened and sometimes disclosed the Mole, a peaked mountain to the east of the lake. While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! This is thy funeral, this thy dirge!” As I said these words, I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its

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aspect more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support. The figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could have destroyed the fair child. He was the murderer! I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact. I thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have been in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Saleve, a hill that bounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit, and disappeared. I remained motionless. The thunder ceased; but the rain still continued, and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. I revolved in my mind the events which I had until now sought to forget: the whole train of my progress toward the creation; the appearance of the works of my own hands at my bedside; its departure. Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother? No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of evil and despair. I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done,

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nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me. Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were open, and I hastened to my father’s house. My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain silent. It was about five in the morning when I entered my father’s house. I told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library to attend their usual hour of rising. Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace, and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and venerable parent! He still remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantel-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father’s desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale; but

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there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of William; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus engaged, Ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome me: “Welcome, my dearest Victor,” said he. “Ah! I wish you had come three months ago, and then you would have found us all joyous and delighted. You come to us now to share a misery which nothing can alleviate; yet your presence will, I hope, revive our father, who seems sinking under his misfortune; and your persuasions will induce poor Elizabeth to cease her vain and tormenting self-accusations.—Poor William! He was our darling and our pride!” Tears, unrestrained, fell from my brother’s eyes; a sense of mortal agony crept over my frame. Before, I had only imagined the wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster. I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and her I named my cousin. “She most of all,” said Ernest, “requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused the death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. But since the murderer has been discovered—” “The murderer discovered! Good God! How can that be? Who could attempt to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw. I saw him too; he was free last night!” “I do not know what you mean,” replied my brother, in accents of wonder, “but to us the discovery we have made completes our misery. No one would believe it at first; and even now Elizabeth will not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who would credit that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and

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fond of all the family, could suddenly become so capable of so frightful, so appalling a crime?” “Justine Moritz! Poor, poor girl, is she the accused? But it is wrongfully; every one knows that; no one believes it, surely, Ernest?” “No one did at first; but several circumstances came out, that have almost forced conviction upon us; and her own behavior has been so confused, as to add to the evidence of facts a weight that, I fear, leaves no hope for doubt. But she will be tried today, and you will then hear all.” He then related that, the morning on which the murder of poor William had been discovered, Justine had been taken ill, and confined to her bed for several days. During this interval, one of the servants, happening to examine the apparel she had worn on the night of the murder, had discovered in her pocket the picture of my mother, which had been judged to be the temptation of the murderer. The servant instantly showed it to one of the others, who, without saying a word to any of the family, went to a magistrate; and, upon their deposition, Justine was apprehended. On being charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a great measure by her extreme confusion of manner. This was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied earnestly, “You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Justine, poor, good Justine, is innocent.” At that instant my father entered. I saw unhappiness deeply impressed on his countenance, but he endeavored to welcome me cheerfully; and, after we had exchanged our mournful greeting, would have introduced some other topic than that of our disaster, had not Ernest exclaimed, “Good God, papa! Victor says that he knows who was the murderer of poor William.”

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“We do also, unfortunately,” replied my father, “for indeed I had rather have been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and ingratitude in one I valued so highly.” “My dear father, you are mistaken; Justine is innocent.” “If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be tried today, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.” This speech calmed me. I was firmly convinced in my own mind that Justine, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. I had no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be brought forward strong enough to convict her. My tale was not one to announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as madness by the vulgar. Did any one indeed exist, except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world? We were soon joined by Elizabeth. Time had altered her since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years. There was the same candor, the same vivacity, but it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect. She welcomed me with the greatest affection. “Your arrival, my dear cousin,” said she, “fills me with hope. You perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless Justine. Alas! who is safe, if she be convicted of crime? I rely on her innocence as certainly as I do upon my own. Our misfortune is doubly hard to us; we have not only lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor girl, whom I sincerely love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. If she is condemned, I never shall know joy more. But she will not, I am sure she will not; and then I shall be happy again, even after the sad death of my little William.”

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“She is innocent, my Elizabeth,” said I, “and that shall be proved; fear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance of her acquittal.” “How kind and generous you are! every one else believes in her guilt, and that made me wretched, for I knew that it was impossible: and to see every one else prejudiced in so deadly a manner rendered me hopeless and despairing.” She wept. “Dearest niece,” said my father, “dry your tears. If she is, as you believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our laws, and the activity with which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality.”

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until eleven o’clock, when the trial was to commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture. It was to be decided whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow beings: one a smiling babe full of innocence and joy, the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror. Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave, and I the cause! A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me. The appearance of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning, and her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the

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solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands, for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She was tranquil, yet her tranquility was evidently constrained; and as her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the court she threw her eyes round it and quickly discovered where we were seated. A tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us, but she quickly recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter guiltlessness. The trial began, and after the advocate against her had stated the charge, several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined against her, which might have staggered anyone who had not such proof of her innocence as I had. She had been out the whole of the night on which the murder had been committed and towards morning had been perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the murdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she did there, but she looked very strangely and only returned a confused and unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight o’clock, and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she replied that she had been looking for the child and demanded earnestly if anything had been heard concerning him. When shown the body, she fell into violent hysterics and kept her bed for several days. The picture was then produced which the servant had found in her pocket; and when Elizabeth, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the same which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed round his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court.

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Justine was called on for her defense. As the trial had proceeded, her countenance had altered. Surprise, horror, and misery were strongly expressed. Sometimes she struggled with her tears, but when she was desired to plead, she collected her powers and spoke in an audible although variable voice. “God knows,” she said, “how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me; I rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me, and I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a favorable interpretation where any circumstance appears doubtful or suspicious.” She then related that, by the permission of Elizabeth, she had passed the evening of the night on which the murder had been committed at the house of an aunt at Chene, a village situated at about a league from Geneva. On her return, at about nine o’clock, she met a man who asked her if she had seen anything of the child who was lost. She was alarmed by this account and passed several hours in looking for him, when the gates of Geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain several hours of the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. Most of the night she spent here watching; towards morning she believed that she slept for a few minutes; some steps disturbed her, and she awoke. It was dawn, and she quitted her asylum, that she might again endeavor to find my brother. If she had gone near the spot where his body lay, it was without her knowledge. That she had been bewildered when questioned by the market-woman was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless night and the fate of poor William was yet uncertain. Concerning the picture she could give no account.

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“I know,” continued the unhappy victim, “how heavily and fatally this one circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of explaining it; and when I have expressed my utter ignorance, I am only left to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been placed in my pocket. But here also I am checked. I believe that I have no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me wantonly. Did the murderer place it there? I know of no opportunity afforded him for so doing; or, if I had, why should he have stolen the jewel, to part with it again so soon? “I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my character, and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt, I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my innocence.” Several witnesses were called who had known her for many years, and they spoke well of her; but fear and hatred of the crime of which they supposed her guilty rendered them timorous and unwilling to come forward. Elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused, when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the court. “I am,” said she, “the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion, but when I see a fellow creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived in the same house with

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her, at one time for five and at another for nearly two years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Frankenstein, my aunt, in her last illness, with the greatest affection and care and afterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner that excited the admiration of all who knew her, after which she again lived in my uncle’s house, where she was beloved by all the family. She was warmly attached to the child who is now dead and acted towards him like a most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to say that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I believe and rely on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for such an action; as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her, so much do I esteem and value her.” A murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful appeal, but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favor of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the demon who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy? I could not sustain the horror of my situation, and when I perceived that the popular voice and the countenances of the judges had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.

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I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to the court; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal question, but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my visit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and Justine was condemned. I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before experienced sensations of horror, and I have endeavored to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I addressed myself added that Justine had already confessed her guilt. “That evidence,” he observed, “was hardly required in so glaring a case, but I am glad of it, and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive.” This was strange and unexpected intelligence; what could it mean? Had my eyes deceived me? And was I really as mad as the whole world would believe me to be if I disclosed the object of my suspicions? I hastened to return home, and Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result. “My cousin,” replied I, “it is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape. But she has confessed.” This was a dire blow to poor Elizabeth, who had relied with firmness upon Justine’s innocence. “Alas!” said she. “How shall I ever again believe in human goodness? Justine, whom I loved and esteemed as my sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray? Her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or guile, and yet she has committed a murder.” Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a desire to see my cousin. My father wished her not to go but said that he left

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it to her own judgment and feelings to decide. “Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I will go, although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany me; I cannot go alone.” The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet I could not refuse. We entered the gloomy prison chamber and beheld Justine sitting on some straw at the farther end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested on her knees. She rose on seeing us enter, and when we were left alone with her, she threw herself at the feet of Elizabeth, weeping bitterly. My cousin wept also. “Oh, Justine!” said she. “Why did you rob me of my last consolation? I relied on your innocence, and although I was then very wretched, I was not so miserable as I am now.” “And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also join with my enemies to crush me, to condemn me as a murderer?” Her voice was suffocated with sobs. “Rise, my poor girl,” said Elizabeth; “why do you kneel, if you are innocent? I am not one of your enemies, I believed you guiltless, notwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had yourself declared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be assured, dear Justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment, but your own confession.” “I did confess, but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate. Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could

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I do? In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable.” She paused, weeping, and then continued, “I thought with horror, my sweet lady, that you should believe your Justine, whom your blessed aunt had so highly honored, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a crime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated. Dear William! Dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in heaven, where we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as I am to suffer ignominy and death.” “Oh, Justine! Forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why did you confess? But do not mourn, dear girl. Do not fear. I will proclaim, I will prove your innocence. I will melt the stony hearts of your enemies by my tears and prayers. You shall not die! You, my playfellow, my companion, my sister, perish on the scaffold! No! No! I never could survive so horrible a misfortune.” Justine shook her head mournfully. “I do not fear to die,” she said; “that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven!” During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison room, where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul. Justine started. When she saw who it was, she approached me and said, “Dear sir, you are very kind to visit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty?”

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I could not answer. “No, Justine,” said Elizabeth; “he is more convinced of your innocence than I was, for even when he heard that you had confessed, he did not credit it.” “I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sincerest gratitude towards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my misfortune, and I feel as if I could die in peace now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin.” Thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed gained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation. Elizabeth also wept and was unhappy, but hers also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish. We stayed several hours with Justine, and it was with great difficulty that Elizabeth could tear herself away. “I wish,” cried she, “that I were to die with you; I cannot live in this world of misery.” Justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth and said in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, “Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven, in its bounty, bless and preserve you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer! Live, and be happy, and make others so.” And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth’s heart-rending eloquence failed to move the judges from their settled conviction in the criminality of the saintly sufferer. My passionate and indignant appeals were lost upon them. And when I received their cold

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answers and heard the harsh, unfeeling reasoning of these men, my purposed avowal died away on my lips. Thus I might proclaim myself a madman, but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess! From the tortures of my own heart, I turned to contemplate the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth. This also was my doing! And my father’s woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands! Ye weep, unhappy ones, but these are not your last tears! Again shall you raise the funeral wail, and the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard! Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend; he who would spend each vital drop of blood for your sakes, who has no thought nor sense of joy except as it is mirrored also in your dear countenances, who would fill the air with blessings and spend his life in serving you—he bids you weep, to shed countless tears; happy beyond his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and if the destruction pause before the peace of the grave have succeeded to your sad torments! Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.

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to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died, she rested, and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness and the love of virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings. Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe.

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This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, deathlike solitude. My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition and habits and endeavored by arguments deduced from the feelings of his serene conscience and guiltless life to inspire me with fortitude and awaken in me the courage to dispel the dark cloud which brooded over me. “Do you think, Victor,” said he, “that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother”—tears came into his eyes as he spoke—“but is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself, for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society.” This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I should have been the first to hide my grief and console my friends if remorse had not mingled its bitterness, and terror its alarm, with my other sensations. Now I could only answer my father with a look of despair and endeavor to hide myself from his view. About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten o’clock and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night, I took the boat and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left

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the boat to pursue its own course and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly—if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore—often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. I thought also of my father and surviving brother; should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them? At these moments I wept bitterly and wished that peace would revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear so long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his head and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.

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Our house was the house of mourning. My father’s health was deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles. “When I reflect, my dear cousin,” said she, “on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; at least they were remote and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood. Yet I am certainly unjust. Everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the death of any human being, but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men. But she was innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavoring to plunge me into the

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abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch.” I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed, but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, “My dearest friend, you must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me tremble. Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember the friends around you, who center all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power of rendering you happy? Ah! While we love, while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing—what can disturb our peace?” And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before every other gift of fortune suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror, lest at that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her. Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me. Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me, but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some

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relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed towards the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during my boyhood. Six years had passed since then: I was a wreck, but nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes. I performed the first part of my journey on horseback. I afterwards hired a mule, as the more sure-footed and least liable to receive injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine; it was about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence—and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. Still, as I ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains, the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings. I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that

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overhangs it. Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of Servox, through which I had just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries, but I saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dome overlooked the valley. A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognized, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the lighthearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly influence ceased to act—I found myself fettered again to grief and indulging in all the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and more than all, myself—or, in a more desperate fashion, I alighted and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair. At length I arrived at the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion succeeded to the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which I had endured. For a short space of time I remained at the window watching the pallid lightnings that played above Mont Blanc and listening to the rushing of the Arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath. The same lulling sounds acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations; when I placed my head upon my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it as it came and blessed the giver of oblivion.

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roaming through the valley. I stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills to barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. I retired to rest at night; my slumbers, as it were, waited on and ministered

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to by the assemblance of grand shapes which I had contemplated during the day. They congregated round me; the unstained snowy mountain-top, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods, and ragged bare ravine, the eagle, soaring amidst the clouds—they all gathered round me and bade me be at peace. Where had they fled when the next morning I awoke? All of soul-inspiriting fled with sleep, and dark melancholy clouded every thought. The rain was pouring in torrents, and thick mists hid the summits of the mountains, so that I even saw not the faces of those mighty friends. Still I would penetrate their misty veil and seek them in their cloudy retreats. What were rain and storm to me? My mule was brought to the door, and I resolved to ascend to the summit of Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it. It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. I determined to go without a guide, for I was well acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene. The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground, some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain or transversely upon other trees. The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is particularly dangerous, as

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the slightest sound, such as even speaking in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker. The pines are not tall or luxuriant, but they are sombre and add an air of severity to the scene. I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers which ran through it and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain poured from the dark sky and added to the melancholy impression I received from the objects around me. Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us. We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability! It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field

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of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I now stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league; and above it rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, “Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.” As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me, but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt. “Devil,” I exclaimed, “do you dare approach me? And do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your

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miserable head? Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust! And, oh! That I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!” “I expected this reception,” said the daemon. “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.” “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! You reproach me with your creation, come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed.” My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another. He easily eluded me and said, “Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest

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me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” “Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall.” “How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favorable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow beings. If the multitude of mankind knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my destruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no terms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale; when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall

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judge that I deserve. But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defense before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me; listen to me, and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands.” “Why do you call to my remembrance,” I rejoined, “circumstances of which I shudder to reflect, that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed (although I curse myself) be the hands that formed you! You have made me wretched beyond expression. You have left me no power to consider whether I am just to you or not. Begone! Relieve me from the sight of your detested form.” “Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; “thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me and grant me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of this place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon the mountain. The sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends to hide itself behind your snowy precipices and illuminate another world, you will have heard my story and can decide. On you it rests, whether I quit forever the neighborhood of man and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of your own speedy ruin.” As he said this he led the way across the ice; I followed. My heart was full, and I did not answer him, but as I proceeded, I weighed the various arguments that he had used and determined at

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least to listen to his tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my resolution. I had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my brother, and I eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion. For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand. We crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite rock. The air was cold, and the rain again began to descend; we entered the hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart and depressed spirits. But I consented to listen, and seating myself by the fire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began his tale.

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that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe, descended, but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations. Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from my fatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and

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thirst. This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the brook, and then lying down, was overcome by sleep. “It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were, instinctively, finding myself so desolate. Before I had quitted your apartment, on a sensation of cold, I had covered myself with some clothes, but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of night. I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept. “Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens and gave me a sensation of pleasure. I started up and beheld a radiant form rise from among the trees. I gazed with a kind of wonder. It moved slowly, but it enlightened my path, and I again went out in search of berries. I was still cold when under one of the trees I found a huge cloak, with which I covered myself, and sat down upon the ground. No distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rang in my ears, and on all sides various scents saluted me; the only object that I could distinguish was the bright moon, and I fixed my eyes on that with pleasure. “Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had greatly lessened, when I began to distinguish my sensations from each other. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with drink and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me

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and to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again. “The moon had disappeared from the night, and again, with a lessened form, showed itself, while I still remained in the forest. My sensations had by this time become distinct, and my mind received every day additional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light and to perceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from the herb, and by degrees, one herb from another. I found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing. “One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! I examined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be composed of wood. I quickly collected some branches, but they were wet and would not burn. I was pained at this and sat still watching the operation of the fire. The wet wood which I had placed near the heat dried and itself became inflamed. I reflected on this, and by touching the various branches, I discovered the cause and busied myself in collecting a great quantity of wood, that I might dry it and have a plentiful supply of fire. When night came on and brought sleep with it, I was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished. I covered it carefully with dry wood and leaves and placed wet branches upon it; and then, spreading my cloak, I lay on the ground and sank into sleep.

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“It was morning when I awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire. I uncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame. I observed this also and contrived a fan of branches, which roused the embers when they were nearly extinguished. When night came again I found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat and that the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food, for I found some of the offals that the travelers had left had been roasted, and tasted much more savory than the berries I gathered from the trees. I tried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the live embers. I found that the berries were spoiled by this operation, and the nuts and roots much improved. “Food, however, became scarce, and I often spent the whole day searching in vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger. When I found this, I resolved to quit the place that I had hitherto inhabited, to seek for one where the few wants I experienced would be more easily satisfied. In this emigration I exceedingly lamented the loss of the fire which I had obtained through accident and knew not how to reproduce it. I gave several hours to the serious consideration of this difficulty, but I was obliged to relinquish all attempt to supply it, and wrapping myself up in my cloak, I struck across the wood towards the setting sun. I passed three days in these rambles and at length discovered the open country. A great fall of snow had taken place the night before, and the fields were of one uniform white; the appearance was disconsolate, and I found my feet chilled by the cold damp substance that covered the ground. “It was about seven in the morning, and I longed to obtain food and shelter; at length I perceived a small hut, on a rising ground, which had doubtless been built for the convenience of some

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shepherd. This was a new sight to me, and I examined the structure with great curiosity. Finding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it, near a fire, over which he was preparing his breakfast. He turned on hearing a noise, and perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable. His appearance, different from any I had ever before seen, and his flight somewhat surprised me. But I was enchanted by the appearance of the hut; here the snow and rain could not penetrate; the ground was dry; and it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandemonium appeared to the demons of hell after their sufferings in the lake of fire. I greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd’s breakfast, which consisted of bread, cheese, milk, and wine; the latter, however, I did not like. Then, overcome by fatigue, I lay down among some straw and fell asleep. “It was noon when I awoke, and allured by the warmth of the sun, which shone brightly on the white ground, I determined to recommence my travels; and, depositing the remains of the peasant’s breakfast in a wallet I found, I proceeded across the fields for several hours, until at sunset I arrived at a village. How miraculous did this appear! The huts, the neater cottages, and stately houses engaged my admiration by turns. The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite. One of the best of these I entered, but I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld

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in the village. This hovel however, joined a cottage of a neat and pleasant appearance, but after my late dearly bought experience, I dared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so low that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. No wood, however, was placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, I found it an agreeable asylum from the snow and rain. “Here, then, I retreated and lay down happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more from the barbarity of man. “As soon as morning dawned I crept from my kennel, that I might view the adjacent cottage and discover if I could remain in the habitation I had found. It was situated against the back of the cottage and surrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig sty and a clear pool of water. One part was open, and by that I had crept in; but now I covered every crevice by which I might be perceived with stones and wood, yet in such a manner that I might move them on occasion to pass out; all the light I enjoyed came through the sty, and that was sufficient for me. “Having thus arranged my dwelling and carpeted it with clean straw, I retired, for I saw the figure of a man at a distance, and I remembered too well my treatment the night before to trust myself in his power. I had first, however, provided for my sustenance for that day by a loaf of coarse bread, which I purloined, and a cup with which I could drink more conveniently than from my hand of the pure water which flowed by my retreat. The floor was a little raised, so that it was kept perfectly dry, and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was tolerably warm. “Being thus provided, I resolved to reside in this hovel until something should occur which might alter my determination. It

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was indeed a paradise compared to the bleak forest, my former residence, the rain-dropping branches, and dank earth. I ate my breakfast with pleasure and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little water when I heard a step, and looking through a small chink, I beheld a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The girl was young and of gentle demeanor, unlike what I have since found cottagers and farmhouse servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair hair was plaited but not adorned: she looked patient yet sad. I lost sight of her, and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing the pail, which was now partly filled with milk. As she walked along, seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose countenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head and bore it to the cottage himself. She followed, and they disappeared. Presently I saw the young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the cottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the house and sometimes in the yard. “On examining my dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been filled up with wood. In one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate. Through this crevice a small room was visible, whitewashed and clean but very bare of furniture. In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man, leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude. The young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play and to produce sounds sweeter than the

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voice of the thrush or the nightingale. It was a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch who had never beheld aught beautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love. He played a sweet mournful air which I perceived drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her and smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature; they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear these emotions. “Soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a load of wood. The girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of his burden, and taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on the fire; then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage, and he showed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese. She seemed pleased and went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she placed in water, and then upon the fire. She afterwards continued her work, whilst the young man went into the garden and appeared busily employed in digging and pulling up roots. After he had been employed thus about an hour, the young woman joined him and they entered the cottage together. “The old man had, in the meantime, been pensive, but on the appearance of his companions he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to eat. The meal was quickly dispatched. The young woman was again occupied in arranging the cottage, the old man walked before the cottage in the sun for a few minutes, leaning on the arm of the youth. Nothing could exceed in beauty

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the contrast between these two excellent creatures. One was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence and love; the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his features were molded with the finest symmetry, yet his eyes and attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency. The old man returned to the cottage, and the youth, with tools different from those he had used in the morning, directed his steps across the fields. “Night quickly shut in, but to my extreme wonder, I found that the cottagers had a means of prolonging light by the use of tapers, and was delighted to find that the setting of the sun did not put an end to the pleasure I experienced in watching my human neighbors. In the evening the young girl and her companion were employed in various occupations which I did not understand; and the old man again took up the instrument which produced the divine sounds that had enchanted me in the morning. So soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play, but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the harmony of the old man’s instrument nor the songs of the birds; I since found that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the science of words or letters. “The family, after having been thus occupied for a short time, extinguished their lights and retired, as I conjectured, to rest.”

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but I could not sleep. I thought of the occurrences of the day. What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people, and I longed to join them, but dared not. I remembered too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching and endeavoring to discover the motives which influenced their actions. “The cottagers arose the next morning before the sun. The young woman arranged the cottage and prepared the food, and the youth departed after the first meal. “This day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it. The young man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in various laborious occupations within. The old man, whom I soon perceived to be blind, employed his leisure hours on his instrument or in contemplation. Nothing could exceed the love and respect which the younger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion. They performed towards him every little

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office of affection and duty with gentleness, and he rewarded them by his benevolent smiles. “They were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often went apart and appeared to weep. I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched. Yet why were these gentle beings unhappy? They possessed a delightful house (for such it was in my eyes) and every luxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill and delicious viands when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more, they enjoyed one another’s company and speech, interchanging each day looks of affection and kindness. What did their tears imply? Did they really express pain? I was at first unable to solve these questions, but perpetual attention and time explained to me many appearances which were at first enigmatic. “A considerable period elapsed before I discovered one of the causes of the uneasiness of this amiable family: it was poverty, and they suffered that evil in a very distressing degree. Their nourishment consisted entirely of the vegetables of their garden and the milk of one cow, which gave very little during the winter, when its masters could scarcely procure food to support it. They often, I believe, suffered the pangs of hunger very poignantly, especially the two younger cottagers, for several times they placed food before the old man when they reserved none for themselves. “This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption, but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots which I gathered from a neighboring wood.

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“I discovered also another means through which I was enabled to assist their labors. I found that the youth spent a great part of each day in collecting wood for the family fire, and during the night I often took his tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days. “I remember, the first time that I did this, the young woman, when she opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a great pile of wood on the outside. She uttered some words in a loud voice, and the youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. I observed, with pleasure, that he did not go to the forest that day, but spent it in repairing the cottage and cultivating the garden. “By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was baffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation was quick, and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse; I learned and applied the words, ‘fire,’ ‘milk,’ ‘bread,’ and ‘wood.’ I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man had only one, which was ‘father.’ The girl was called ‘sister’ or ‘Agatha,’ and

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the youth ‘Felix,’ ‘brother,’ or ‘son.’ I cannot describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas appropriated to each of these sounds and was able to pronounce them. I distinguished several other words without being able as yet to understand or apply them, such as ‘good,’ ‘dearest,’ ‘unhappy.’ “I spent the winter in this manner. The gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys. I saw few human beings besides them, and if any other happened to enter the cottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the superior accomplishments of my friends. The old man, I could perceive, often endeavored to encourage his children, as sometimes I found that he called them, to cast off their melancholy. He would talk in a cheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure even upon me. Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, which she endeavored to wipe away unperceived; but I generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after having listened to the exhortations of her father. It was not thus with Felix. He was always the saddest of the group, and even to my unpracticed senses, he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his friends. But if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more cheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old man. “I could mention innumerable instances which, although slight, marked the dispositions of these amiable cottagers. In the midst of poverty and want, Felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little white flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. Early in the morning, before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that obstructed her path to the milk-house, drew water from the well, and brought the wood from the outhouse, where, to his

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perpetual astonishment, he found his store always replenished by an invisible hand. In the day, I believe, he worked sometimes for a neighboring farmer, because he often went forth and did not return until dinner, yet brought no wood with him. At other times he worked in the garden, but as there was little to do in the frosty season, he read to the old man and Agatha. “This reading had puzzled me extremely at first, but by degrees I discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when he talked. I conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs for speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend these also; but how was that possible when I did not even understand the sounds for which they stood as signs? I improved, however, sensibly in this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of conversation, although I applied my whole mind to the endeavor, for I easily perceived that, although I eagerly longed to discover myself to the cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become master of their language, which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure, for with this also the contrast perpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted. “I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers—their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity. “As the sun became warmer and the light of day longer, the snow vanished, and I beheld the bare trees and the black earth.

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From this time Felix was more employed, and the heart-moving indications of impending famine disappeared. Their food, as I afterwards found, was coarse, but it was wholesome; and they procured a sufficiency of it. Several new kinds of plants sprang up in the garden, which they dressed; and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced. “The old man, leaning on his son, walked each day at noon, when it did not rain, as I found it was called when the heavens poured forth its waters. This frequently took place, but a high wind quickly dried the earth, and the season became far more pleasant than it had been. “My mode of life in my hovel was uniform. During the morning I attended the motions of the cottagers, and when they were dispersed in various occupations, I slept; the remainder of the day was spent in observing my friends. When they had retired to rest, if there was any moon or the night was star-light, I went into the woods and collected my own food and fuel for the cottage. When I returned, as often as it was necessary, I cleared their path from the snow and performed those offices that I had seen done by Felix. I afterwards found that these labors, performed by an invisible hand, greatly astonished them; and once or twice I heard them, on these occasions, utter the words ‘good spirit,’ ‘wonderful’; but I did not then understand the signification of these terms. “My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to know why Felix appeared so miserable and Agatha so sad. I thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people. When I slept or was absent, the forms of the venerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the excellent Felix flitted before me. I looked upon them as

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superior beings who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanor and conciliating words, I should first win their favor and afterwards their love. “These thoughts exhilarated me and led me to apply with fresh ardor to the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows and execration. “The pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the aspect of the earth. Men who before this change seemed to have been hid in caves dispersed themselves and were employed in various arts of cultivation. The birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves began to bud forth on the trees. Happy, happy earth! Fit habitation for gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome. My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy.”

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moving part of my story. I shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am. “Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine and the skies cloudless. It surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and a thousand sights of beauty. “It was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested from labor—the old man played on his guitar, and the children listened to him—that I observed the countenance of Felix was melancholy beyond expression; he sighed frequently, and once his father paused in his music, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired the cause of his son’s sorrow. Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and the old man was recommencing his music when someone tapped at the door. “It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a country-man as a guide. The lady was dressed in a dark suit and covered with a

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thick black veil. Agatha asked a question, to which the stranger only replied by pronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of Felix. Her voice was musical but unlike that of either of my friends. On hearing this word, Felix came up hastily to the lady, who, when she saw him, threw up her veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. Her hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a lovely pink. “Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his eyes sparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I thought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by different feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held out her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously and called her, as well as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian. She did not appear to understand him, but smiled. He assisted her to dismount, and dismissing her guide, conducted her into the cottage. Some conversation took place between him and his father, and the young stranger knelt at the old man’s feet and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her and embraced her affectionately. “I soon perceived that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood by nor herself understood the cottagers. They made many signs which I did not comprehend, but I saw that her presence diffused gladness through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the morning mists. Felix seemed peculiarly happy and with smiles of delight welcomed his Arabian. Agatha, the ever-gentle Agatha, kissed the hands of the lovely

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stranger, and pointing to her brother, made signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came. Some hours passed thus, while they, by their countenances, expressed joy, the cause of which I did not comprehend. Presently I found, by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she was endeavoring to learn their language; and the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the same instructions to the same end. The stranger learned about twenty words at the first lesson; most of them, indeed, were those which I had before understood, but I profited by the others. “As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early. When they separated Felix kissed the hand of the stranger and said, ‘Good night sweet Safie.’ He sat up much longer, conversing with his father, and by the frequent repetition of her name I conjectured that their lovely guest was the subject of their conversation. I ardently desired to understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found it utterly impossible. “The next morning Felix went out to his work, and after the usual occupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian sat at the feet of the old man, and taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or dying away like a nightingale of the woods. “When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first declined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. The old man appeared enraptured and said some words which Agatha endeavored to explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.

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“The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends. Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors. “In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods; the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun, for I never ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same treatment I had formerly endured in the first village which I entered. “My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little and conversed in broken accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken. “While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters as it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight. “The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney’s Ruins of Empires. I should not have understood the purport of this book had not Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of

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the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans—of their subsequent degenerating—of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants. “These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honor that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing. “Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood. “The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant,

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but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? “I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat! “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death—a state which I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of becoming one among my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha and the animated smiles of the charming Arabian were not for me. The mild exhortations of the old man and the lively conversation of the loved Felix were not for me. Miserable, unhappy wretch! “Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. I heard of the difference of sexes, and the birth and growth of children, how the father doted on the smiles of the infant, and the

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lively sallies of the older child, how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up in the precious charge, how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge, of brother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds. “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans. “I will soon explain to what these feelings tended, but allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them).”

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before I learned the history of my friends. It was one which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding as it did a number of circumstances, each interesting and wonderful to one so utterly inexperienced as I was. “The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good family in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence, respected by his superiors and beloved by his equals. His son was bred in the service of his country, and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction. A few months before my arrival they had lived in a large and luxurious city called Paris, surrounded by friends and possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford. “The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin. He was a Turkish merchant and had inhabited Paris for many years, when, for some reason which I could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government. He was seized and cast into prison the very day

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that Safie arrived from Constantinople to join him. He was tried and condemned to death. The injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant; and it was judged that his religion and wealth rather than the crime alleged against him had been the cause of his condemnation. “Felix had accidentally been present at the trial; his horror and indignation were uncontrollable when he heard the decision of the court. He made, at that moment, a solemn vow to deliver him and then looked around for the means. After many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison, he found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building, which lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate Muhammadan, who, loaded with chains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence. Felix visited the grate at night and made known to the prisoner his intentions in his favor. The Turk, amazed and delighted, endeavored to kindle the zeal of his deliverer by promises of reward and wealth. Felix rejected his offers with contempt, yet when he saw the lovely Safie, who was allowed to visit her father and who by her gestures expressed her lively gratitude, the youth could not help owning to his own mind that the captive possessed a treasure which would fully reward his toil and hazard. “The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on the heart of Felix and endeavored to secure him more entirely in his interests by the promise of her hand in marriage so soon as he should be conveyed to a place of safety. Felix was too delicate to accept this offer, yet he looked forward to the probability of the event as to the consummation of his happiness. “During the ensuing days, while the preparations were going forward for the escape of the merchant, the zeal of Felix was warmed by several letters that he received from this lovely girl, who

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found means to express her thoughts in the language of her lover by the aid of an old man, a servant of her father who understood French. She thanked him in the most ardent terms for his intended services towards her parent, and at the same time she gently deplored her own fate. “I have copies of these letters, for I found means, during my residence in the hovel, to procure the implements of writing; and the letters were often in the hands of Felix or Agatha. Before I depart I will give them to you; they will prove the truth of my tale; but at present, as the sun is already far declined, I shall only have time to repeat the substance of them to you. “Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female followers of Muhammad. This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill-suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society was enchanting to her. “The day for the execution of the Turk was fixed, but on the night previous to it he quitted his prison and before morning was distant many leagues from Paris. Felix had procured passports in the name of his father, sister, and himself. He had previously

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communicated his plan to the former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under the pretence of a journey and concealed himself, with his daughter, in an obscure part of Paris. “Felix conducted the fugitives through France to Lyons and across Mont Cenis to Leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favorable opportunity of passing into some part of the Turkish dominions. “Safie resolved to remain with her father until the moment of his departure, before which time the Turk renewed his promise that she should be united to his deliverer; and Felix remained with them in expectation of that event; and in the meantime he enjoyed the society of the Arabian, who exhibited towards him the simplest and tenderest affection. They conversed with one another through the means of an interpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and Safie sang to him the divine airs of her native country. “The Turk allowed this intimacy to take place and encouraged the hopes of the youthful lovers, while in his heart he had formed far other plans. He loathed the idea that his daughter should be united to a Christian, but he feared the resentment of Felix if he should appear lukewarm, for he knew that he was still in the power of his deliverer if he should choose to betray him to the Italian state which they inhabited. He revolved a thousand plans by which he should be enabled to prolong the deceit until it might be no longer necessary, and secretly to take his daughter with him when he departed. His plans were facilitated by the news which arrived from Paris. “The government of France were greatly enraged at the escape of their victim and spared no pains to detect and punish his deliverer. The plot of Felix was quickly discovered, and De Lacey and Agatha were thrown into prison. The news reached Felix and

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roused him from his dream of pleasure. His blind and aged father and his gentle sister lay in a noisome dungeon while he enjoyed the free air and the society of her whom he loved. This idea was torture to him. He quickly arranged with the Turk that if the latter should find a favorable opportunity for escape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain as a boarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian, he hastened to Paris and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the law, hoping to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding. “He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the trial took place, the result of which deprived them of their fortune and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native country. “They found a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I discovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honor and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance. “Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix and rendered him, when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could have endured poverty, and while this distress had been the meed of his virtue, he gloried in it; but the ingratitude of the Turk and the loss of his beloved Safie were misfortunes more bitter and irreparable. The arrival of the Arabian now infused new life into his soul. “When the news reached Leghorn that Felix was deprived of his wealth and rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her lover, but to prepare to return to her native country.

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The generous nature of Safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to expostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his tyrannical mandate. “A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter’s apartment and told her hastily that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn had been divulged and that he should speedily be delivered up to the French government; he had consequently hired a vessel to convey him to Constantinople, for which city he should sail in a few hours. He intended to leave his daughter under the care of a confidential servant, to follow at her leisure with the greater part of his property, which had not yet arrived at Leghorn. “When alone, Safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it would become her to pursue in this emergency. A residence in Turkey was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike averse to it. By some papers of her father which fell into her hands she heard of the exile of her lover and learnt the name of the spot where he then resided. She hesitated some time, but at length she formed her determination. Taking with her some jewels that belonged to her and a sum of money, she quitted Italy with an attendant, a native of Leghorn, but who understood the common language of Turkey, and departed for Germany. “She arrived in safety at a town about twenty leagues from the cottage of De Lacey, when her attendant fell dangerously ill. Safie nursed her with the most devoted affection, but the poor girl died, and the Arabian was left alone, unacquainted with the language of the country and utterly ignorant of the customs of the world. She fell, however, into good hands. The Italian had mentioned the name of the spot for which they were bound, and after her death the woman of the house in which they had lived took care that Safie should arrive in safety at the cottage of her lover.”

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of my beloved cottagers. It impressed me deeply. I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues and to deprecate the vices of mankind. “As yet I looked upon crime as a distant evil, benevolence and generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were called forth and displayed. But in giving an account of the progress of my intellect, I must not omit a circumstance which occurred in the beginning of the month of August of the same year. “One night during my accustomed visit to the neighboring wood where I collected my own food and brought home firing for my protectors, I found on the ground a leathern portmanteau containing several articles of dress and some books. I eagerly seized the prize and returned with it to my hovel. Fortunately the books were written in the language, the elements of which I had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives,

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and The Sorrows of Werter. The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations. “I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. In the Sorrows of Werter, besides the interest of its simple and affecting story, so many opinions are canvassed and so many lights thrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects that I found in it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle and domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and feelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded well with my experience among my protectors and with the wants which were forever alive in my own bosom. But I thought Werter himself a more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but it sank deep. The disquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely understanding it. “As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none. ‘The path of my departure was free,’ and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What

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was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them. “The volume of Plutarch’s Lives which I possessed contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had a far different effect upon me from the Sorrows of Werter. I learned from Werter’s imaginations despondency and gloom, but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns and large assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the only school in which I had studied human nature, but this book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardor for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these feelings, I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations. “But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity

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struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me. “Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. Soon after my arrival in the hovel I discovered some papers in the pocket of the dress which I had taken from your laboratory. At first I had neglected them, but now that I was able to decipher the characters in which they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was your journal of the four months that preceded my creation. You minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences. You doubtless recollect these papers. Here they are. Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.’

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“These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues they would compassionate me and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship? I resolved, at least, not to despair, but in every way to fit myself for an interview with them which would decide my fate. I postponed this attempt for some months longer, for the importance attached to its success inspired me with a dread lest I should fail. Besides, I found that my understanding improved so much with every day’s experience that I was unwilling to commence this undertaking until a few more months should have added to my sagacity. “Several changes, in the meantime, took place in the cottage. The presence of Safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants, and I also found that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. Felix and Agatha spent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in their labors by servants. They did not appear rich, but they were contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine became every day more tumultuous. Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade. “I endeavored to crush these fears and to fortify myself for the trial which in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic

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countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him. “Autumn passed thus. I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. Yet I did not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat. But my chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer; when those deserted me, I turned with more attention towards the cottagers. Their happiness was not decreased by the absence of summer. They loved and sympathized with one another; and their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around them. The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures; to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. I dared not think that they would turn them from me with disdain and horror. The poor that stopped at their door were never driven away. I asked, it is true, for greater treasures than a little food or rest: I required kindness and sympathy; but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it. “The winter advanced, and an entire revolution of the seasons had taken place since I awoke into life. My attention at this time was solely directed towards my plan of introducing myself into the cottage of my protectors. I revolved many projects, but that on which I finally fixed was to enter the dwelling when the blind old

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man should be alone. I had sagacity enough to discover that the unnatural hideousness of my person was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld me. My voice, although harsh, had nothing terrible in it; I thought, therefore, that if in the absence of his children I could gain the good will and mediation of the old De Lacey, I might by his means be tolerated by my younger protectors. “One day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, Safie, Agatha, and Felix departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own desire, was left alone in the cottage. When his children had departed, he took up his guitar and played several mournful but sweet airs, more sweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before. At first his countenance was illuminated with pleasure, but as he continued, thoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the instrument, he sat absorbed in reflection. “My heart beat quick; this was the hour and moment of trial, which would decide my hopes or realize my fears. The servants were gone to a neighboring fair. All was silent in and around the cottage; it was an excellent opportunity; yet, when I proceeded to execute my plan, my limbs failed me and I sank to the ground. Again I rose, and exerting all the firmness of which I was master, removed the planks which I had placed before my hovel to conceal my retreat. The fresh air revived me, and with renewed determination I approached the door of their cottage. “I knocked. ‘Who is there?’ said the old man. ‘Come in.’ “I entered. ‘Pardon this intrusion,’ said I; ‘I am a traveler in want of a little rest; you would greatly oblige me if you would allow me to remain a few minutes before the fire.’

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“‘Enter,’ said De Lacey, ‘and I will try in what manner I can to relieve your wants; but, unfortunately, my children are from home, and as I am blind, I am afraid I shall find it difficult to procure food for you.’ “‘Do not trouble yourself, my kind host; I have food; it is warmth and rest only that I need.’ “I sat down, and a silence ensued. I knew that every minute was precious to me, yet I remained irresolute in what manner to commence the interview, when the old man addressed me. ‘By your language, stranger, I suppose you are my countryman; are you French?’ “‘No; but I was educated by a French family and understand that language only. I am now going to claim the protection of some friends, whom I sincerely love, and of whose favor I have some hopes.’ “‘Are they Germans?’ “‘No, they are French. But let us change the subject. I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.’ “‘Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair.’ “‘They are kind—they are the most excellent creatures in the world; but, unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. I have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster.’

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“‘That is indeed unfortunate; but if you are really blameless, cannot you undeceive them?’ “‘I am about to undertake that task; and it is on that account that I feel so many overwhelming terrors. I tenderly love these friends; I have, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily kindness towards them; but they believe that I wish to injure them, and it is that prejudice which I wish to overcome.’ “‘Where do these friends reside?’ “‘Near this spot.’ “The old man paused and then continued, ‘If you will unreservedly confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in undeceiving them. I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere. I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.’ “‘Excellent man! I thank you and accept your generous offer. You raise me from the dust by this kindness; and I trust that, by your aid, I shall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your fellow creatures.’ “‘Heaven forbid! Even if you were really criminal, for that can only drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. I also am unfortunate; I and my family have been condemned, although innocent; judge, therefore, if I do not feel for your misfortunes.’ “‘How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor? From your lips first have I heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; I shall be forever grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success with those friends whom I am on the point of meeting.’ “‘May I know the names and residence of those friends?’

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“I paused. This, I thought, was the moment of decision, which was to rob me of or bestow happiness on me forever. I struggled vainly for firmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my remaining strength; I sank on the chair and sobbed aloud. At that moment I heard the steps of my younger protectors. I had not a moment to lose, but seizing the hand of the old man, I cried, ‘Now is the time! Save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I seek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!’ “‘Great God!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Who are you?’ “At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel.”

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URSED, CURSED CREATOR!

Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery. “When night came I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed me and ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness. Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.

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“But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery. “The sun rose; I heard the voices of men and knew that it was impossible to return to my retreat during that day. Accordingly I hid myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours to reflection on my situation. “The pleasant sunshine and the pure air of day restored me to some degree of tranquility; and when I considered what had passed at the cottage, I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my conclusions. I had certainly acted imprudently. It was apparent that my conversation had interested the father in my behalf, and I was a fool in having exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable, and after much consideration I resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to my party. “These thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon I sank into a profound sleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by peaceful dreams. The horrible scene of the preceding day was forever acting before my eyes; the females were flying and the enraged Felix tearing me from his father’s feet. I awoke exhausted, and finding that it was already night, I crept forth from my hidingplace, and went in search of food.

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“When my hunger was appeased, I directed my steps towards the well-known path that conducted to the cottage. All there was at peace. I crept into my hovel and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when the family arose. That hour passed, the sun mounted high in the heavens, but the cottagers did not appear. I trembled violently, apprehending some dreadful misfortune. The inside of the cottage was dark, and I heard no motion; I cannot describe the agony of this suspense. “Presently two countrymen passed by, but pausing near the cottage, they entered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but I did not understand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country, which differed from that of my protectors. Soon after, however, Felix approached with another man; I was surprised, as I knew that he had not quitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover from his discourse the meaning of these unusual appearances. “‘Do you consider,’ said his companion to him, ‘that you will be obliged to pay three months’ rent and to lose the produce of your garden? I do not wish to take any unfair advantage, and I beg therefore that you will take some days to consider of your determination.’ “‘It is utterly useless,’ replied Felix; ‘we can never again inhabit your cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and my sister will never recover from their horror. I entreat you not to reason with me any more. Take possession of your tenement and let me fly from this place.’ “Felix trembled violently as he said this. He and his companion entered the cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then departed. I never saw any of the family of De Lacey more.

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“I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As night advanced I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage, and after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my operations. “As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my brand; it sank, and with a loud scream I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues. “As soon as I was convinced that no assistance could save any part of the habitation, I quitted the scene and sought for refuge in the woods.

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“And now, with the world before me, whither should I bend my steps? I resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated and despised, every country must be equally horrible. At length the thought of you crossed my mind. I learned from your papers that you were my father, my creator; and to whom could I apply with more fitness than to him who had given me life? Among the lessons that Felix had bestowed upon Safie, geography had not been omitted; I had learned from these the relative situations of the different countries of the earth. You had mentioned Geneva as the name of your native town, and towards this place I resolved to proceed. “But how was I to direct myself? I knew that I must travel in a southwesterly direction to reach my destination, but the sun was my only guide. I did not know the names of the towns that I was to pass through, nor could I ask information from a single human being; but I did not despair. From you only could I hope for succor, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. But on you only had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form. “My travels were long and the sufferings I endured intense. It was late in autumn when I quitted the district where I had so long resided. I traveled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human being. Nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless; rain and snow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface of the earth was hard and chill, and bare, and I found no shelter. Oh, earth! How often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! The mildness of my nature had fled, and all

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within me was turned to gall and bitterness. The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more deeply did I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow fell, and the waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents now and then directed me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I often wandered wide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived on the confines of Switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth and the earth again began to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and horror of my feelings. “I generally rested during the day and traveled only when I was secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun, which bestowed such joy upon me. “I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring. Here I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard the sound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a cypress. I was scarcely hid when a young girl came running towards the spot where I was concealed,

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laughing, as if she ran from someone in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding-place and with extreme labor, from the force of the current, saved her and dragged her to shore. She was senseless, and I endeavored by every means in my power to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired. I sank to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood. “This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted. “For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavoring to cure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder, and I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any rate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction. My daily vows rose for revenge— a deep and deadly revenge, such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had endured.

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“After some weeks my wound healed, and I continued my journey. The labors I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery which insulted my desolate state and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure. “But my toils now drew near a close, and in two months from this time I reached the environs of Geneva. “It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among the fields that surround it to meditate in what manner I should apply to you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger and far too unhappy to enjoy the gentle breezes of evening or the prospect of the sun setting behind the stupendous mountains of Jura. “At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection, which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came running into the recess I had chosen, with all the sportiveness of infancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him and educate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in this peopled earth. “Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream; I drew his hand forcibly from his face and said, ‘Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.’ “He struggled violently. ‘Let me go,’ he cried; ‘monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre. Let me go, or I will tell my papa.’ “‘Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.’

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“‘Hideous monster! Let me go. My papa is a syndic—he is M. Frankenstein—he will punish you. You dare not keep me.’ “‘Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy—to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’ “The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet. “I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, ‘I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.’ “As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright. “Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind and perish in the attempt to destroy them. “While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hidingplace, I entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect

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and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over her and whispered, ‘Awake, fairest, thy lover is near—he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved, awake!’ “The sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me. Should she indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer? Thus would she assuredly act if her darkened eyes opened and she beheld me. The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me—not I, but she, shall suffer; the murder I have committed because I am forever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. The crime had its source in her; be hers the punishment! Thanks to the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work mischief. I bent over her and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress. She moved again, and I fled. “For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place, sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and its miseries forever. At length I wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning passion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.”

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and fixed his looks upon me in the expectation of a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my ideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. He continued, “You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.” The latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had died away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and as he said this I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within me. “I do refuse it,” I replied; “and no torture shall ever extort a consent from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never consent.”

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“You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.” A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed himself and proceeded— “I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me, for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a hundred and a hundredfold; for that one creature’s sake I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realized. What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our

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lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!” I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent, but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale and the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations, and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of feeling and continued, “If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again; I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favorable moment and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.” “You propose,” replied I, “to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile? You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be; cease to argue the point, for I cannot consent.”

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“How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighborhood of man and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker.” His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle these sensations; I thought that as I could not sympathize with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow. “You swear,” I said, “to be harmless; but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge?” “How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence everyone will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded.” I paused some time to reflect on all he had related and the various arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise

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of virtues which he had displayed on the opening of his existence and the subsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him. His power and threats were not omitted in my calculations; a creature who could exist in the ice caves of the glaciers and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of inaccessible precipices was a being possessing faculties it would be vain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection I concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request. Turning to him, therefore, I said, “I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe forever, and every other place in the neighborhood of man, as soon as I shall deliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile.” “I swear,” he cried, “by the sun, and by the blue sky of heaven, and by the fire of love that burns my heart, that if you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again. Depart to your home and commence your labors; I shall watch their progress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready I shall appear.” Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in my sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice. His tale had occupied the whole day, and the sun was upon the verge of the horizon when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent towards the valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my heart was heavy, and my steps slow. The labor of winding among the little paths of the mountain and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced perplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences of the day had produced.

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Night was far advanced when I came to the halfway resting-place and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars shone at intervals as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground; it was a scene of wonderful solemnity and stirred strange thoughts within me. I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed, “Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.” These were wild and miserable thoughts, but I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me and how I listened to every blast of wind as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to consume me. Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; I took no rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own heart I could give no expression to my sensations—they weighed on me with a mountain’s weight and their excess destroyed my agony beneath them. Thus I returned home, and entering the house, presented myself to the family. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm, but I answered no question, scarcely did I speak. I felt as if I were placed under a ban—as if I had no right to claim their sympathies—as if never more might I enjoy companionship with them. Yet even thus I loved them to adoration; and to save them, I resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task. The prospect of such an occupation made every other circumstance of existence pass before me like a dream, and that thought only had to me the reality of life.

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aY AFTER DAY, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva; and I could not collect the courage to recommence my work. I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father’s consent to visit England for this purpose; but I clung to every pretence of delay and shrank from taking the first step in an undertaking whose immediate necessity began to appear less absolute to me. A change indeed had taken place in me; my health, which had hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionately. My father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which every now and then would

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return by fits, and with a devouring blackness overcast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. But the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure, and on my return I met the salutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful heart. It was after my return from one of these rambles that my father, calling me aside, thus addressed me, “I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former pleasures and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still unhappy and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in conjecture as to the cause of this, but yesterday an idea struck me, and if it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a point would be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all.” I trembled violently at his exordium, and my father continued, “I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage with our dear Elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort and the stay of my declining years. You were attached to each other from your earliest infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes, entirely suited to one another. But so blind is the experience of man that what I conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have entirely destroyed it. You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with another whom you may love; and considering yourself as bound in honor to Elizabeth, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear to feel.” “My dear father, reassure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth

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does, my warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union.” “The expression of your sentiments of this subject, my dear Victor, gives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you feel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast a gloom over us. But it is this gloom which appears to have taken so strong a hold of your mind that I wish to dissipate. Tell me, therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnization of the marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from that everyday tranquility befitting my years and infirmities. You are younger; yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future plans of honor and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose, however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you or that a delay on your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words with candor and answer me, I conjure you, with confidence and sincerity.” I listened to my father in silence and remained for some time incapable of offering any reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of thoughts and endeavored to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! To me the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay. I was bound by a solemn promise which I had not yet fulfilled and dared not break, or if I did, what manifold miseries might not impend over me and my devoted family! Could I enter into a festival with this deadly weight yet hanging round my neck and bowing me to the ground? I must perform my engagement and let the monster depart with his mate before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of a union from which I expected peace. I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to England or entering into a long correspondence with

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those philosophers of that country whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory; besides, I had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father’s house while in habits of familiar intercourse with those I loved. I knew that a thousand fearful accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale to thrill all connected with me with horror. I was aware also that I should often lose all self-command, all capacity of hiding the harrowing sensations that would possess me during the progress of my unearthly occupation. I must absent myself from all I loved while thus employed. Once commenced, it would quickly be achieved, and I might be restored to my family in peace and happiness. My promise fulfilled, the monster would depart forever. Or (so my fond fancy imaged) some accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him and put an end to my slavery forever. These feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to visit England, but concealing the true reasons of this request, I clothed my desires under a guise which excited no suspicion, while I urged my desire with an earnestness that easily induced my father to comply. After so long a period of an absorbing melancholy that resembled madness in its intensity and effects, he was glad to find that I was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a journey, and he hoped that change of scene and varied amusement would, before my return, have restored me entirely to myself. The duration of my absence was left to my own choice; a few months, or at most a year, was the period contemplated. One paternal kind precaution he had taken to ensure my having a companion. Without previously communicating with me, he had, in concert with Elizabeth, arranged that Clerval should join me at

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Strasbourg. This interfered with the solitude I coveted for the prosecution of my task; yet at the commencement of my journey the presence of my friend could in no way be an impediment, and truly I rejoiced that thus I should be saved many hours of lonely, maddening reflection. Nay, Henry might stand between me and the intrusion of my foe. If I were alone, would he not at times force his abhorred presence on me to remind me of my task or to contemplate its progress? To England, therefore, I was bound, and it was understood that my union with Elizabeth should take place immediately on my return. My father’s age rendered him extremely averse to delay. For myself, there was one reward I promised myself from my detested toils—one consolation for my unparalleled sufferings; it was the prospect of that day when, enfranchised from my miserable slavery, I might claim Elizabeth and forget the past in my union with her. I now made arrangements for my journey, but one feeling haunted me which filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy and unprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my departure. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go, and would he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in itself, but soothing inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends. I was agonized with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this might happen. But through the whole period during which I was the slave of my creature I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the moment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend would follow me and exempt my family from the danger of his machinations.

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It was in the latter end of September that I again quitted my native country. My journey had been my own suggestion, and Elizabeth therefore acquiesced, but she was filled with disquiet at the idea of my suffering, away from her, the inroads of misery and grief. It had been her care which provided me a companion in Clerval—and yet a man is blind to a thousand minute circumstances which call forth a woman’s sedulous attention. She longed to bid me hasten my return; a thousand conflicting emotions rendered her mute as she bade me a tearful, silent farewell. I threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly knowing whither I was going, and careless of what was passing around. I remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with me. Filled with dreary imaginations, I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes, but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the borne of my travels and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured. After some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed many leagues, I arrived at Strasbourg, where I waited two days for Clerval. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He was alive to every new scene, joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise and recommence a new day. He pointed out to me the shifting colors of the landscape and the appearances of the sky. “This is what it is to live,” he cried; “how I enjoy existence! But you, my dear Frankenstein, wherefore are you desponding and sorrowful!” In truth, I was occupied by gloomy thoughts and neither saw the descent of the evening star nor the golden sunrise reflected in the Rhine. And you, my friend, would be far more amused with the journal of Clerval, who observed the scenery with an eye of feeling

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and delight, than in listening to my reflections. I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment. We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns. We stayed a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth from our departure from Strasbourg, arrived at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene. We traveled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the laborers as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the bottom of the boat, and as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquility to which I had long been a stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to fairy-land and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man. “I have seen,” he said, “the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance were it not for the most verdant islands that believe the eye by their

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gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean; and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud; but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equaled. Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of laborers coming from among their vines; and that village half hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who pile the glacier or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of our own country.” Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your words and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He was a being formed in the “very poetry of nature.” His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardor: The sounding cataract Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,

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The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to him An appetite; a feeling, and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrow’d from the eye. —Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? Has this mind, so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life of its creator—has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend. Pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry, but they soothe my heart, overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will proceed with my tale. Beyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland; and we resolved to post the remainder of our way, for the wind was contrary and the stream of the river was too gentle to aid us. Our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery, but we arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to England. It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that I first saw the white cliffs of Britain. The banks of the Thames presented a new scene; they were flat but fertile, and almost every town was marked by the remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury Fort and remembered the Spanish Armada,

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Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich—places which I had heard of even in my country. At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul’s towering above all, and the Tower famed in English history.

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point of rest; we determined to remain several months in this wonderful and celebrated city. Clerval desired the intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time, but this was with me a secondary object; I was principally occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of my promise and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction that I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural philosophers. If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness, it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But busy, uninteresting, joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw an insurmountable

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barrier placed between me and my fellow men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish. But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement. He was also pursuing an object he had long had in view. His design was to visit India, in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade. In Britain only could he further the execution of his plan. He was forever busy, and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind. I tried to conceal this as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by any care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement, that I might remain alone. I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate. After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person in Scotland who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned the beauties of his native country and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth, where he resided. Clerval eagerly desired to accept this invitation, and I, although I abhorred society, wished to view again mountains and streams and all the wondrous works with which Nature adorns her chosen dwelling-places.

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We had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now February. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the north at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not intend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor, Oxford, Matlock, and the Cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the completion of this tour about the end of July. I packed up my chemical instruments and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labors in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland. We quitted London on the 27th of March and remained a few days at Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new scene to us mountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of stately deer were all novelties to us. From thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city our minds were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted there more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles I had collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him, after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of Parliament and liberty. The memory of that unfortunate king and his companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Goring, his queen, and son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city which they might be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees.

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I enjoyed this scene, and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind, and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man could always interest my heart and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be—a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself. We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs and endeavoring to identify every spot which might relate to the most animating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery were often prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves. We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden and the field on which that patriot fell. For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrances. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a free and lofty spirit, but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self. We left Oxford with regret and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next place of rest. The country in the neighborhood of this village resembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland; but everything is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of distant white Alps which always attend on the piny mountains of my native country. We visited the wondrous cave and the little cabinets of natural history, where the curiosities are disposed

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in the same manner as in the collections at Servox and Chamounix. The latter name made me tremble when pronounced by Henry, and I hastened to quit Matlock, with which that terrible scene was thus associated. From Derby, still journeying northwards, we passed two months in Cumberland and Westmorland. I could now almost fancy myself among the Swiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the northern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the rocky streams were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we made some acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. The delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. “I could pass my life here,” said he to me; “and among these mountains I should scarcely regret Switzerland and the Rhine.” But he found that a traveler’s life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are forever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties. We had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants when the period of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached, and we left them to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had now neglected my promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the daemon’s disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland and wreak his vengeance on my relatives.

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This idea pursued me and tormented me at every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace. I waited for my letters with feverish impatience; if they were delayed I was miserable and overcome by a thousand fears; and when they arrived and I saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the fiend followed me and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion. When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment, but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime. I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being. Clerval did not like it so well as Oxford, for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic castle and its environs, the most delightful in the world, Arthur’s Seat, St. Bernard’s Well, and the Pentland Hills compensated him for the change and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey. We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St. Andrew’s, and along the banks of the Tay, to Perth, where our friend expected us. But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humor expected from a guest; and accordingly I told Clerval that I wished to make the tour of Scotland alone. “Do you,” said I, “enjoy yourself, and let this be our rendezvous. I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my motions, I entreat you; leave me

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to peace and solitude for a short time; and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper.” Henry wished to dissuade me, but seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate. He entreated me to write often. “I had rather be with you,” he said, “in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom I do not know; hasten, then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence.” Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the monster followed me and would discover himself to me when I should have finished, that he might receive his companion. With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labors. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the mainland, which was about five miles distant. On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession, an incident which would doubtless have occasioned some surprise had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbed by want and squalid

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poverty. As it was, I lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave, so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men. In this retreat I devoted the morning to labor; but in the evening, when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea to listen to the waves as they roared and dashed at my feet. It was a monotonous yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland; it was far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky, and when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean. In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived, but as I proceeded in my labor, it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days, and at other times I toiled day and night in order to complete my work. It was, indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labor, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands. Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from

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the sight of my fellow creatures lest when alone he should come to claim his companion. In the mean time I worked on, and my labor was already considerably advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.

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in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my employment, and I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should leave my labor for the night or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighborhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater

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abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species. Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race. I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by the light of the moon the daemon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress and claim the fulfillment of my promise. As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.

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I left the room, and locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own heart never to resume my labors; and then, with trembling steps, I sought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the gloom and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible reveries. Several hours passed, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea; it was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed under the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone specked the water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices as the fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence, although I was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity, until my ear was suddenly arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed close to my house. In a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if some one endeavored to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot; I felt a presentiment of who it was and wished to rouse one of the peasants who dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you in vain endeavor to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the spot. Presently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door opened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Shutting the door, he approached me and said in a smothered voice, “You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and misery; I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England and among the deserts of Scotland. I have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy my hopes?”

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“Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.” “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!” “The hour of my irresolution is past, and the period of your power is arrived. Your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness; but they confirm me in a determination of not creating you a companion in vice. Shall I, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a daemon whose delight is in death and wretchedness? Begone! I am firm, and your words will only exasperate my rage.” The monster saw my determination in my face and gnashed his teeth in the impotence of anger. “Shall each man,” cried he, “find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.” “Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words. Leave me; I am inexorable.”

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“It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night.” I started forward and exclaimed, “Villain! Before you sign my death-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe.” I would have seized him, but he eluded me and quitted the house with precipitation. In a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across the waters with an arrowy swiftness and was soon lost amidst the waves. All was again silent, but his words rang in my ears. I burned with rage to pursue the murderer of my peace and precipitate him into the ocean. I walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered him to depart, and he had directed his course towards the mainland. I shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words—“I will be with you on your wedding-night.” That, then, was the period fixed for the fulfillment of my destiny. In that hour I should die and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear; yet when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth, of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her, tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle. The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of the last night’s contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I almost regarded as an insuperable barrier

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between me and my fellow creatures; nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole across me. I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily, it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery. If I returned, it was to be sacrificed or to see those whom I most loved die under the grasp of a daemon whom I had myself created. I walked about the isle like a restless specter, separated from all it loved and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. The sleep into which I now sank refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the fiend rang in my ears like a death-knell; they appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality. The sun had far descended, and I still sat on the shore, satisfying my appetite, which had become ravenous, with an oaten cake, when I saw a fishing-boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet; it contained letters from Geneva, and one from Clerval entreating me to join him. He said that he was wearing away his time fruitlessly where he was, that letters from the friends he had formed in London desired his return to complete the negotiation they had entered into for his Indian enterprise. He could not any longer delay his departure; but as his journey to London might be followed, even sooner than he now conjectured, by his longer voyage, he entreated me to bestow as much of my society on him as I could spare. He besought me, therefore, to leave my solitary isle and to meet him at Perth, that we might proceed south-

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wards together. This letter in a degree recalled me to life, and I determined to quit my island at the expiration of two days. Yet, before I departed, there was a task to perform, on which I shuddered to reflect; I must pack up my chemical instruments, and for that purpose I must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious work, and I must handle those utensils the sight of which was sickening to me. The next morning, at daybreak, I summoned sufficient courage and unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to collect myself and then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I conveyed the instruments out of the room, but I reflected that I ought not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants; and I accordingly put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and laying them up, determined to throw them into the sea that very night; and in the meantime I sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus. Nothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place in my feelings since the night of the appearance of the daemon. I had before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair as a thing that, with whatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but I now felt as if a film had been taken from before my eyes and that I for the first time saw clearly. The idea of renewing my labors did not for one instant occur to me; the threat I had heard weighed on my thoughts, but I did not reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in my own mind that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness, and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion.

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Between two and three in the morning the moon rose; and I then, putting my basket aboard a little skiff, sailed out about four miles from the shore. The scene was perfectly solitary; a few boats were returning towards land, but I sailed away from them. I felt as if I was about the commission of a dreadful crime and avoided with shuddering anxiety any encounter with my fellow creatures. At one time the moon, which had before been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took advantage of the moment of darkness and cast my basket into the sea; I listened to the gurgling sound as it sank and then sailed away from the spot. The sky became clouded, but the air was pure, although chilled by the northeast breeze that was then rising. But it refreshed me and filled me with such agreeable sensations that I resolved to prolong my stay on the water, and fixing the rudder in a direct position, stretched myself at the bottom of the boat. Clouds hid the moon, everything was obscure, and I heard only the sound of the boat as its keel cut through the waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time I slept soundly. I do not know how long I remained in this situation, but when I awoke I found that the sun had already mounted considerably. The wind was high, and the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skiff. I found that the wind was northeast and must have driven me far from the coast from which I had embarked. I endeavored to change my course but quickly found that if I again made the attempt the boat would be instantly filled with water. Thus situated, my only resource was to drive before the wind. I confess that I felt a few sensations of terror. I had no compass with me and was so slenderly acquainted with the geography of this part of the world that the sun was of little benefit to me. I might be driven into the wide Atlantic and feel all the tortures of starvation or be swallowed

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up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me. I had already been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that flew before the wind, only to be replaced by others; I looked upon the sea; it was to be my grave. “Fiend,” I exclaimed, “your task is already fulfilled!” I thought of Elizabeth, of my father, and of Clerval—all left behind, on whom the monster might satisfy his sanguinary and merciless passions. This idea plunged me into a reverie so despairing and frightful that even now, when the scene is on the point of closing before me forever, I shudder to reflect on it. Some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze and the sea became free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell; I felt sick and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of high land towards the south. Almost spent, as I was, by fatigue and the dreadful suspense I endured for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes. How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery! I constructed another sail with a part of my dress and eagerly steered my course towards the land. It had a wild and rocky appearance, but as I approached nearer I easily perceived the traces of cultivation. I saw vessels near the shore and found myself suddenly transported back to the neighborhood of civilized man. I carefully traced the windings of the land and hailed a steeple which I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. As I was in a state of extreme debility, I resolved to sail directly towards the town, as a place where I could most easily procure nourishment. Fortunately I had

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money with me. As I turned the promontory I perceived a small neat town and a good harbor, which I entered, my heart bounding with joy at my unexpected escape. As I was occupied in fixing the boat and arranging the sails, several people crowded towards the spot. They seemed much surprised at my appearance, but instead of offering me any assistance, whispered together with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me a slight sensation of alarm. As it was, I merely remarked that they spoke English, and I therefore addressed them in that language. “My good friends,” said I, “will you be so kind as to tell me the name of this town and inform me where I am?” “You will know that soon enough,” replied a man with a hoarse voice. “Maybe you are come to a place that will not prove much to your taste, but you will not be consulted as to your quarters, I promise you.” I was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a stranger, and I was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and angry countenances of his companions. “Why do you answer me so roughly?” I replied. “Surely it is not the custom of Englishmen to receive strangers so inhospitably.” “I do not know,” said the man, “what the custom of the English may be, but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.” While this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly increase. Their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which annoyed and in some degree alarmed me. I inquired the way to the inn, but no one replied. I then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose from the crowd as they followed and surrounded me, when an ill-looking man approaching tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Come, sir, you must follow me to Mr. Kirwin’s to give an account of yourself.”

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“Who is Mr. Kirwin? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is not this a free country?” “Ay, sir, free enough for honest folks. Mr. Kirwin is a magistrate, and you are to give an account of the death of a gentleman who was found murdered here last night.” This answer startled me, but I presently recovered myself. I was innocent; that could easily be proved; accordingly I followed my conductor in silence and was led to one of the best houses in the town. I was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger, but being surrounded by a crowd, I thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical debility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. Little did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death. I must pause here, for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory of the frightful events which I am about to relate, in proper detail, to my recollection.

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into the presence of the magistrate, an old benevolent man with calm and mild manners. He looked upon me, however, with some degree of severity, and then, turning towards my conductors, he asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion. About half a dozen men came forward; and, one being selected by the magistrate, he deposed that he had been out fishing the night before with his son and brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent, when, about ten o’clock, they observed a strong northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put in for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen; they did not land at the harbor, but, as they had been accustomed, at a creek about two miles below. He walked on first, carrying a part of the fishing tackle, and his companions followed him at some distance. As he was proceeding along the sands, he struck his foot against something and fell at his length on the ground. His companions came up to assist him, and by the light of their lantern they found that he had fallen on the body of a man, who was to all appearance dead. Their first supposition was that it

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was the corpse of some person who had been drowned and was thrown on shore by the waves, but on examination they found that the clothes were not wet and even that the body was not then cold. They instantly carried it to the cottage of an old woman near the spot and endeavored, but in vain, to restore it to life. It appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age. He had apparently been strangled, for there was no sign of any violence except the black mark of fingers on his neck. The first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me, but when the mark of the fingers was mentioned I remembered the murder of my brother and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support. The magistrate observed me with a keen eye and of course drew an unfavorable augury from my manner. The son confirmed his father’s account, but when Daniel Nugent was called he swore positively that just before the fall of his companion, he saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the shore; and as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same boat in which I had just landed. A woman deposed that she lived near the beach and was standing at the door of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an hour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was afterwards found. Another woman confirmed the account of the fishermen having brought the body into her house; it was not cold. They put it into a bed and rubbed it, and Daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was quite gone. Several other men were examined concerning my landing, and they agreed that, with the strong north wind that had arisen during

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the night, it was very probable that I had beaten about for many hours and had been obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which I had departed. Besides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body from another place, and it was likely that as I did not appear to know the shore, I might have put into the harbor ignorant of the distance of the town of —— from the place where I had deposited the corpse. Mr. Kirwin, on hearing this evidence, desired that I should be taken into the room where the body lay for interment, that it might be observed what effect the sight of it would produce upon me. This idea was probably suggested by the extreme agitation I had exhibited when the mode of the murder had been described. I was accordingly conducted, by the magistrate and several other persons, to the inn. I could not help being struck by the strange coincidences that had taken place during this eventful night; but, knowing that I had been conversing with several persons in the island I had inhabited about the time that the body had been found, I was perfectly tranquil as to the consequences of the affair. I entered the room where the corpse lay and was led up to the coffin. How can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched with horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without shuddering and agony. The examination, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses, passed like a dream from my memory when I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clerval stretched before me. I gasped for breath, and throwing myself on the body, I exclaimed, “Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny; but you, Clerval, my friend, my benefactor—” The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions.

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A fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death; my ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful; I called myself the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval. Sometimes I entreated my attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom I was tormented; and at others I felt the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror. Fortunately, as I spoke my native language, Mr. Kirwin alone understood me; but my gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses. Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents; how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by jailers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon. It was morning, I remember, when I thus awoke to understanding; I had forgotten the particulars of what had happened and only felt as if some great misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me; but when I looked around and saw the barred windows and the squalidness of the room in which I was, all flashed across my memory and I groaned bitterly. This sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside me. She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her countenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterize that class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of persons accustomed to see without sympathizing in sights of

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misery. Her tone expressed her entire indifference; she addressed me in English, and the voice struck me as one that I had heard during my sufferings. “Are you better now, sir?” said she. I replied in the same language, with a feeble voice, “I believe I am; but if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror.” “For that matter,” replied the old woman, “if you mean about the gentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you were dead, for I fancy it will go hard with you! However, that’s none of my business; I am sent to nurse you and get you well; I do my duty with a safe conscience; it were well if everybody did the same.” I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a speech to a person just saved, on the very edge of death; but I felt languid and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality. As the images that floated before me became more distinct, I grew feverish; a darkness pressed around me; no one was near me who soothed me with the gentle voice of love; no dear hand supported me. The physician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared them for me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the expression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the second. Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer but the hangman who would gain his fee? These were my first reflections, but I soon learned that Mr. Kirwin had shown me extreme kindness. He had caused the best room in the prison to be prepared for me (wretched indeed was the best); and it was he who had provided a physician and a nurse. It

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is true, he seldom came to see me, for although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of every human creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and miserable ravings of a murderer. He came, therefore, sometimes to see that I was not neglected, but his visits were short and with long intervals. One day, while I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my eyes half open and my cheeks livid like those in death. I was overcome by gloom and misery and often reflected I had better seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with wretchedness. At one time I considered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than poor Justine had been. Such were my thoughts when the door of my apartment was opened and Mr. Kirwin entered. His countenance expressed sympathy and compassion; he drew a chair close to mine and addressed me in French, “I fear that this place is very shocking to you; can I do anything to make you more comfortable?” “I thank you, but all that you mention is nothing to me; on the whole earth there is no comfort which I am capable of receiving.” “I know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to one borne down as you are by so strange a misfortune. But you will, I hope, soon quit this melancholy abode, for doubtless evidence can easily be brought to free you from the criminal charge.” “That is my least concern; I am, by a course of strange events, become the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me?” “Nothing indeed could be more unfortunate and agonizing than the strange chances that have lately occurred. You were thrown, by some surprising accident, on this shore, renowned for its hospitality, seized immediately, and charged with murder. The first sight that

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was presented to your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so unaccountable a manner and placed, as it were, by some fiend across your path.” As Mr. Kirwin said this, notwithstanding the agitation I endured on this retrospect of my sufferings, I also felt considerable surprise at the knowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. I suppose some astonishment was exhibited in my countenance, for Mr. Kirwin hastened to say, “Immediately upon your being taken ill, all the papers that were on your person were brought me, and I examined them that I might discover some trace by which I could send to your relations an account of your misfortune and illness. I found several letters, and, among others, one which I discovered from its commencement to be from your father. I instantly wrote to Geneva; nearly two months have elapsed since the departure of my letter. But you are ill; even now you tremble; you are unfit for agitation of any kind.” “This suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event; tell me what new scene of death has been acted, and whose murder I am now to lament?” “Your family is perfectly well,” said Mr. Kirwin with gentleness; “and someone, a friend, is come to visit you.” I know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my misery and taunt me with the death of Clerval, as a new incitement for me to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes, and cried out in agony, “Oh! Take him away! I cannot see him; for God’s sake, do not let him enter!” Mr. Kirwin regarded me with a troubled countenance. He could not help regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt and said in rather a severe tone, “I should have thought, young

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man, that the presence of your father would have been welcome instead of inspiring such violent repugnance.” “My father!” cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed from anguish to pleasure. “Is my father indeed come? How kind, how very kind! But where is he, why does he not hasten to me?” My change of manner surprised and pleased the magistrate; perhaps he thought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium, and now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. He rose and quitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it. Nothing, at this moment, could have given me greater pleasure than the arrival of my father. I stretched out my hand to him and cried, “Are you, then, safe—and Elizabeth—and Ernest?” My father calmed me with assurances of their welfare and endeavored, by dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart, to raise my desponding spirits; but he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode of cheerfulness. “What a place is this that you inhabit, my son!” said he, looking mournfully at the barred windows and wretched appearance of the room. “You traveled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you. And poor Clerval—” The name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too great to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears. “Alas! Yes, my father,” replied I; “some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfill it, or surely I should have died on the coffin of Henry.” We were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that could ensure tranquility. Mr. Kirwin came in and insisted that my strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But

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the appearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I gradually recovered my health. As my sickness quitted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black melancholy that nothing could dissipate. The image of Clerval was forever before me, ghastly and murdered. More than once the agitation into which these reflections threw me made my friends dread a dangerous relapse. Alas! Why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life? It was surely that I might fulfill my destiny, which is now drawing to a close. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extinguish these throbbings and relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust; and, in executing the award of justice, I shall also sink to rest. Then the appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present to my thoughts; and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins. The season of the assizes approached. I had already been three months in prison, and although I was still weak and in continual danger of a relapse, I was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the country town where the court was held. Mr. Kirwin charged himself with every care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defense. I was spared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was not brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand jury rejected the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found; and a fortnight after my removal I was liberated from prison. My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country. I did not participate in these feelings, for to me the walls of a dun-

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geon or a palace were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they were the expressive eyes of Henry, languishing in death, the dark orbs nearly covered by the lids and the long black lashes that fringed them; sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster, as I first saw them in my chamber at Ingolstadt. My father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. He talked of Geneva, which I should soon visit, of Elizabeth and Ernest; but these words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish for happiness and thought with melancholy delight of my beloved cousin or longed, with a devouring maladie du pays, to see once more the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early childhood; but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair. At these moments I often endeavored to put an end to the existence I loathed, and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence. Yet one duty remained to me, the recollection of which finally triumphed over my selfish despair. It was necessary that I should return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous. My father still

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desired to delay our departure, fearful that I could not sustain the fatigues of a journey, for I was a shattered wreck—the shadow of a human being. My strength was gone. I was a mere skeleton, and fever night and day preyed upon my wasted frame. Still, as I urged our leaving Ireland with such inquietude and impatience, my father thought it best to yield. We took our passage on board a vessel bound for Havre-de-Grace and sailed with a fair wind from the Irish shores. It was midnight. I lay on the deck looking at the stars and listening to the dashing of the waves. I hailed the darkness that shut Ireland from my sight, and my pulse beat with a feverish joy when I reflected that I should soon see Geneva. The past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream; yet the vessel in which I was, the wind that blew me from the detested shore of Ireland, and the sea which surrounded me told me too forcibly that I was deceived by no vision and that Clerval, my friend and dearest companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I repassed, in my memory, my whole life— my quiet happiness while residing with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for Ingolstadt. I remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the night in which he first lived. I was unable to pursue the train of thought; a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly. Ever since my recovery from the fever I had been in the custom of taking every night a small quantity of laudanum, for it was by means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of life. Oppressed by the recollection of my various misfortunes, I now swallowed double my usual quantity and soon slept profoundly. But sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a thousand objects

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that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare; I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears. My father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible.

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We landed, and proceeded to Paris. I soon found that I had overtaxed my strength and that I must repose before I could continue my journey. My father’s care and attentions were indefatigable, but he did not know the origin of my sufferings and sought erroneous methods to remedy the incurable ill. He wished me to seek amusement in society. I abhorred the face of man. Oh, not abhorred! They were my brethren, my fellow beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them, as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. But I felt that I had no right to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they would, each and all, abhor me and hunt me from the world did they know my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me! My father yielded at length to my desire to avoid society and strove by various arguments to banish my despair. Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to

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answer a charge of murder, and he endeavored to prove to me the futility of pride. “Alas! My father,” said I, “how little do you know me. Human beings, their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as I felt pride. Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause of this—I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry—they all died by my hands.” My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence. I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself would forever have chained my tongue. But, besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret. Yet, still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me. I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth in part relieved the burden of my mysterious woe. Upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder, “My dearest Victor, what infatuation is this? My dear son, I entreat you never to make such an assertion again.” “I am not mad,” I cried energetically; “the sun and the heavens, who have viewed my operations, can bear witness of my truth. I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my

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machinations. A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their lives; but I could not, my father, indeed I could not sacrifice the whole human race.” The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation and endeavored to alter the course of my thoughts. He wished as much as possible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in Ireland and never alluded to them or suffered me to speak of my misfortunes. As time passed away I became more calm; misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. By the utmost self-violence I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world, and my manners were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey to the sea of ice. A few days before we left Paris on our way to Switzerland, I received the following letter from Elizabeth: My dear Friend, It gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle dated at Paris; you are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may hope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you must have suffered! I expect to see you looking even more ill than when you quitted Geneva. This winter has been passed most miserably, tortured as I have been by anxious suspense; yet I hope to see peace in your countenance and to find that your heart is not totally void of comfort and tranquility. Yet I fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable a year ago, even perhaps augmented by time. I would not disturb you at this period,

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when so many misfortunes weigh upon you, but a conversation that I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some explanation necessary before we meet. Explanation! You may possibly say, What can Elizabeth have to explain? If you really say this, my questions are answered and all my doubts satisfied. But you are distant from me, and it is possible that you may dread and yet be pleased with this explanation; and in a probability of this being the case, I dare not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I have often wished to express to you but have never had the courage to begin. You well know, Victor, that our union had been the favorite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place. We were affectionate playfellows during childhood, and, I believe, dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. But as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each other without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our case? Tell me, dearest Victor. Answer me, I conjure you by our mutual happiness, with simple truth—Do you not love another? You have traveled; you have spent several years of your life at Ingolstadt; and I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude from the society of every creature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our connection and believe yourself bound in honor to fulfill the wishes of your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But this is false reasoning. I confess to you, my friend, that I love you and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend and companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own when I declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to think that, borne down as you are by the cruelest misfortunes, you may stifle, by the word “honor,” all hope of that love and happiness which would alone restore you to yourself. I, who have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. Ah! Victor, be assured that your cousin and

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playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this supposition. Be happy, my friend; and if you obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to interrupt my tranquility. Do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer tomorrow, or the next day, or even until you come, if it will give you pain. My uncle will send me news of your health, and if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness. Elizabeth Lavenza Geneva, May 18th, 17— This letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat of the fiend—“I will be with you on your wedding night! ” Such was my sentence, and on that night would the daemon employ every art to destroy me and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings. On that night he had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. Well, be it so; a deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were victorious I should be at peace and his power over me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I should be a free man. Alas! What freedom? Such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless, and alone, but free. Such would be my liberty except that in my Elizabeth I possessed a treasure, alas, balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death. Sweet and beloved Elizabeth! I read and reread her letter, and some softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisiacal dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already

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eaten, and the angel’s arm bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make her happy. If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet, again, I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner, but if my torturer should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had vowed to be with me on my wedding night, yet he did not consider that threat as binding him to peace in the meantime, for as if to show me that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clerval immediately after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore, that if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to hers or my father’s happiness, my adversary’s designs against my life should not retard it a single hour. In this state of mind I wrote to Elizabeth. My letter was calm and affectionate. “I fear, my beloved girl,” I said, “little happiness remains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy is centered in you. Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my life and my endeavors for contentment. I have one secret, Elizabeth, a dreadful one; when revealed to you, it will chill your frame with horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only wonder that I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place, for, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. But until then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. This I most earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply.” In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth’s letter we returned to Geneva. The sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection, yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a change in her also. She was thinner

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and had lost much of that heavenly vivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness and soft looks of compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as I was. The tranquility which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought madness with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed me; sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and despondent. I neither spoke nor looked at anyone, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me. Elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle voice would soothe me when transported by passion and inspire me with human feelings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me and for me. When reason returned, she would remonstrate and endeavor to inspire me with resignation. Ah! It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief. Soon after my arrival my father spoke of my immediate marriage with Elizabeth. I remained silent. “Have you, then, some other attachment?” “None on earth. I love Elizabeth and look forward to our union with delight. Let the day therefore be fixed; and on it I will consecrate myself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin.” “My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.”

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Such were the lessons of my father. But to me the remembrance of the threat returned; nor can you wonder that, omnipotent as the fiend had yet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as invincible, and that when he had pronounced the words, “I will be with you on your wedding night! ” I should regard the threatened fate as unavoidable. But death was no evil to me if the loss of Elizabeth were balanced with it, and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful countenance, agreed with my father that if my cousin would consent, the ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined, the seal to my fate. Great God! If for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself forever from my native country and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim. As the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice or a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me. But I concealed my feelings by an appearance of hilarity that brought smiles and joy to the countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the ever-watchful and nicer eye of Elizabeth. She looked forward to our union with placid contentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes had impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness might soon dissipate into an airy dream and leave no trace but deep and everlasting regret. Preparations were made for the event, congratulatory visits were received, and all wore a smiling appearance. I shut up, as well as I could, in my own heart the anxiety that preyed there and entered with seeming earnestness into the plans of my father,

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although they might only serve as the decorations of my tragedy. Through my father’s exertions a part of the inheritance of Elizabeth had been restored to her by the Austrian government. A small possession on the shores of Como belonged to her. It was agreed that, immediately after our union, we should proceed to Villa Lavenza and spend our first days of happiness beside the beautiful lake near which it stood. In the meantime I took every precaution to defend my person in case the fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger constantly about me and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice, and by these means gained a greater degree of tranquility. Indeed, as the period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty as the day fixed for its solemnization drew nearer and I heard it continually spoken of as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent. Elizabeth seemed happy; my tranquil demeanor contributed greatly to calm her mind. But on the day that was to fulfill my wishes and my destiny, she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her; and perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret which I had promised to reveal to her on the following day. My father was in the meantime overjoyed and in the bustle of preparation only recognized in the melancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride. After the ceremony was performed a large party assembled at my father’s, but it was agreed that Elizabeth and I should commence our journey by water, sleeping that night at Evian and continuing our voyage on the following day. The day was fair, the wind favorable; all smiled on our nuptial embarkation.

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Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the feeling of happiness. We passed rapidly along; the sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mont Saleve, the pleasant banks of Montalegre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavor to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it. I took the hand of Elizabeth. “You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! If you knew what I have suffered and what I may yet endure, you would endeavor to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy.” “Be happy, my dear Victor,” replied Elizabeth; “there is, I hope, nothing to distress you; and be assured that if a lively joy is not painted in my face, my heart is contented. Something whispers to me not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us, but I will not listen to such a sinister voice. Observe how fast we move along and how the clouds, which sometimes obscure and sometimes rise above the dome of Mont Blanc, render this scene of beauty still more interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom. What a divine day! How happy and serene all nature appears!” Thus Elizabeth endeavored to divert her thoughts and mine from all reflection upon melancholy subjects. But her temper was fluctuating; joy for a few instants shone in her eyes, but it continually gave place to distraction and reverie.

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The sun sank lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance and observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it and the range of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung. The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity, sank at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. The sun sank beneath the horizon as we landed, and as I touched the shore I felt those cares and fears revive which soon were to clasp me and cling to me forever.

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when we landed; we walked for a short time on the shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines. The wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in the west. The moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descend; the clouds swept across it swifter than the flight of the vulture and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that were beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended. I had been calm during the day, but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. I was anxious and watchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in my bosom; every sound terrified me, but I resolved that I would sell my life dearly and not shrink from the conflict until my own life or that of my adversary was extinguished. Elizabeth

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observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence, but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her, and trembling, she asked, “What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?” “Oh! Peace, peace, my love,” replied I; “this night, and all will be safe; but this night is dreadful, very dreadful.” I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife, and I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy. She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fiber was suspended; I could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed into the room. Great God! Why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the destruction of the best hope and the purest creature on earth? She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Everywhere I turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this and live? Alas! Life is obstinate and clings closest where

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it is most hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fell senseless on the ground. When I recovered I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn; their countenances expressed a breathless terror, but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She had been moved from the posture in which I had first beheld her, and now, as she lay, her head upon her arm and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. I rushed towards her and embraced her with ardor, but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the fiend’s grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips. While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened, and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. I rushed towards the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom, fired; but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and running with the swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake. The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats; nets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned hopeless, most of my companions

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believing it to have been a form conjured up by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to search the country, parties going in different directions among the woods and vines. I attempted to accompany them and proceeded a short distance from the house, but my head whirled round, my steps were like those of a drunken man, I fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion; a film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I was carried back and placed on a bed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the room as if to seek something that I had lost. After an interval I arose, and as if by instinct, crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay. There were women weeping around; I hung over it and joined my sad tears to theirs; all this time no distinct idea presented itself to my mind, but my thoughts rambled to various subjects, reflecting confusedly on my misfortunes and their cause. I was bewildered, in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet. This idea made me shudder and recalled me to action. I started up and resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed. There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but the wind was unfavorable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it was hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired men to row and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured rendered me incapable of any exertion. I threw

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down the oar, and leaning my head upon my hands, gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up, I saw scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time and which I had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection. Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man. But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last overwhelming event? Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached their acme, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My own strength is exhausted, and I must tell, in a few words, what remains of my hideous narration. I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable old man! His eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their delight—his Elizabeth, his more than daughter, whom he doted on with all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him; the springs of existence suddenly gave way; he was unable to rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms.

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What then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth, but I awoke and found myself in a dungeon. Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation and was then released from my prison. For they had called me mad, and during many months, as I understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation. Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause—the monster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head. Nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; I began to reflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about a month after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town and told him that I had an accusation to make, that I knew the destroyer of my family, and that I required him to exert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer. The magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness. “Be assured, sir,” said he, “no pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to discover the villain.” “I thank you,” replied I; “listen, therefore, to the deposition that I have to make. It is indeed a tale so strange that I should fear you would not credit it were there not something in truth which, however wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to be

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mistaken for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood.” My manner as I thus addressed him was impressive but calm; I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death, and this purpose quieted my agony and for an interval reconciled me to life. I now related my history briefly but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy and never deviating into invective or exclamation. The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I continued he became more attentive and interested; I saw him sometimes shudder with horror; at others a lively surprise, unmingled with disbelief, was painted on his countenance. When I had concluded my narration I said, “This is the being whom I accuse and for whose seizure and punishment I call upon you to exert your whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and hope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of those functions on this occasion.” This address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my own auditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, “I would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit, but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice and inhabit caves and dens where no man would venture to intrude? Besides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes, and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered or what region he may now inhabit.” “I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit, and if he has indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted

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like the chamois and destroyed as a beast of prey. But I perceive your thoughts; you do not credit my narrative and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the punishment which is his desert.” As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated. “You are mistaken,” said he. “I will exert myself, and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable; and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should make up your mind to disappointment.” “That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand; I have but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction.” I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a frenzy in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavored to soothe me as a nurse does a child and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium. “Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say.” I broke from the house angry and disturbed and retired to meditate on some other mode of action.

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was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it molded my feelings and allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been my portion. My first resolution was to quit Geneva forever; my country, which, when I was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became hateful. I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few jewels which had belonged to my mother, and departed. And now my wanderings began which are to cease but with life. I have traversed a vast portion of the earth and have endured all the hardships which travelers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet. How I have lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my failing limbs upon the sandy plain and prayed for death. But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being. When I quitted Geneva my first labor was to gain some clue by which I might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. But my plan

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was unsettled, and I wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain what path I should pursue. As night approached I found myself at the entrance of the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father reposed. I entered it and approached the tomb which marked their graves. Everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark, and the scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested observer. The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the mourner. The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to rage and despair. They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also lived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence. I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed, “By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the daemon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.” I had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion, but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked my utterance. I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh. It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains

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re-echoed it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter. Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have destroyed my miserable existence but that my vow was heard and that I was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away, when a well-known and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an audible whisper, “I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have determined to live, and I am satisfied.” I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil eluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than mortal speed. I pursued him, and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The blue Mediterranean appeared, and by a strange chance, I saw the fiend enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I took my passage in the same ship, but he escaped, I know not how. Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I have ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants, scared by this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die, left some mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw the print of his huge step on the white plain. To you first entering on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand what I have felt and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue were the least pains which I was destined to endure; I was cursed by some devil and carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps and when I most murmured would suddenly extricate me

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from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes, when nature, overcome by hunger, sank under the exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspirited me. The fare was, indeed, coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate, but I will not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had invoked to aid me. Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and I was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the few drops that revived me, and vanish. I followed, when I could, the courses of the rivers; but the daemon generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the country chiefly collected. In other places human beings were seldom seen, and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my path. I had money with me and gained the friendship of the villagers by distributing it; or I brought with me some food that I had killed, which, after taking a small part, I always presented to those who had provided me with fire and utensils for cooking. My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that I could taste joy. O blessed sleep! Often, when most miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture. The spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours, of happiness that I might retain strength to fulfill my pilgrimage. Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night, for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again I saw the benevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my Elizabeth’s voice, and beheld Clerval enjoying health and youth. Often, when wearied by a toilsome march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should come and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends. What agonizing fondness did I feel for them!

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How did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived! At such moments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my heart, and I pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul. What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know. Sometimes, indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees or cut in stone that guided me and instigated my fury. “My reign is not yet over”—these words were legible in one of these inscriptions—“you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives, but many hard and miserable hours must you endure until that period shall arrive.” Scoffing devil! Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee, miserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I give up my search until he or I perish; and then with what ecstasy shall I join my Elizabeth and my departed friends, who even now prepare for me the reward of my tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage! As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened and the cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. The peasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from their hiding-places to seek for prey. The rivers were covered with ice, and no fish could be procured; and thus I was cut off from my chief article of maintenance.

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The triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labors. One inscription that he left was in these words: “Prepare! Your toils only begin; wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred.” My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; I resolved not to fail in my purpose, and calling on heaven to support me, I continued with unabated fervor to traverse immense deserts, until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary of the horizon. Oh! How unlike it was to the blue seasons of the south! Covered with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior wildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when they beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary’s gibe, to meet and grapple with him. Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. I know not whether the fiend possessed the same advantages, but I found that, as before I had daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him, so much so that when I first saw the ocean he was but one day’s journey in advance, and I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched hamlet on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the fiend and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said, had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols, putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of his terrific

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appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the ice or frozen by the eternal frosts. On hearing this information I suffered a temporary access of despair. He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few of the inhabitants could long endure and which I, the native of a genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance returned, and like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling. After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered round and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my journey. I exchanged my land-sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of the frozen ocean, and purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I departed from land. I cannot guess how many days have passed since then, but I have endured misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Immense and rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard the thunder of the ground sea, which threatened my destruction. But again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure. By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of hope, returning back upon the heart, often

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wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery. Once, after the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain. I strained my sight to discover what it could be and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well-known form within. Oh! With what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart! Warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might not intercept the view I had of the daemon; but still my sight was dimmed by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that oppressed me, I wept aloud. But this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food, and after an hour’s rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly irksome to me, I continued my route. The sledge was still visible, nor did I again lose sight of it except at the moments when for a short time some ice-rock concealed it with its intervening crags. I indeed perceptibly gained on it, and when, after nearly two days’ journey, I beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within me. But now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my foe, my hopes were suddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of him more utterly than I had ever done before. A ground sea was heard; the thunder of its progress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every moment more ominous and terrific. I pressed on, but in vain. The wind arose; the sea roared; and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake, it split and cracked with a tremendous and

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overwhelming sound. The work was soon finished; in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice that was continually lessening and thus preparing for me a hideous death. In this manner many appalling hours passed; several of my dogs died, and I myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when I saw your vessel riding at anchor and holding forth to me hopes of succor and life. I had no conception that vessels ever came so far north and was astounded at the sight. I quickly destroyed part of my sledge to construct oars, and by these means was enabled, with infinite fatigue, to move my ice raft in the direction of your ship. I had determined, if you were going southwards, still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose. I hoped to induce you to grant me a boat with which I could pursue my enemy. But your direction was northwards. You took me on board when my vigor was exhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships into a death which I still dread, for my task is unfulfilled. Oh! When will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the daemon, allow me the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live? If I do, swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape, that you will seek him and satisfy my vengeance in his death. And do I dare to ask of you to undertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that I have undergone? No; I am not so selfish. Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear, if the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he shall not live—swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated woes and survive to add to the list of his dark crimes. He is eloquent and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart; but trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice. Hear

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him not; call on the names of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and thrust your sword into his heart. I will hover near and direct the steel aright. Walton, in continuation. August 26th, 17— You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not feel your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles mine? Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty the words so replete with anguish. His fine and lovely eyes were now lighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow and quenched in infinite wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his countenance and tones and related the most horrible incidents with a tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation; then, like a volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression of the wildest rage as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor. His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me, and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existence! I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I endeavored to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature’s formation, but on this point he was impenetrable. “Are you mad, my friend?” said he. “Or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek to increase your own.” Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history; he asked to see them and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places, but

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principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. “Since you have preserved my narration,” said he, “I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity.” Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him, yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live? Oh, no! The only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium; he believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth. Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic incident or endeavors to move the passions of pity or love, without tears. What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin! He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall. “When younger,” said he, “I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures. When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the

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herd of common projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of these qualities I conceived the idea and executed the creation of a man. Even now I cannot recollect without passion my reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk! Oh! My friend, if you had known me as I once was, you would not recognize me in this state of degradation. Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell, never, never again to rise.” Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathize with and love me. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one, but I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea. “I thank you, Walton,” he said, “for your kind intentions towards so miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be contemplated with suspicion. But I enjoyed friends, dear not only through habit and association, but from their

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own merits; and wherever I am, the soothing voice of my Elizabeth and the conversation of Clerval will be ever whispered in my ear. They are dead, and but one feeling in such a solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. If I were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow creatures, then could I live to fulfill it. But such is not my destiny; I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence; then my lot on earth will be fulfilled and I may die.” My beloved Sister, September 2nd I write to you, encompassed by peril and ignorant whether I am ever doomed to see again dear England and the dearer friends that inhabit it. I am surrounded by mountains of ice which admit of no escape and threaten every moment to crush my vessel. The brave fellows whom I have persuaded to be my companions look towards me for aid, but I have none to bestow. There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me. Yet it is terrible to reflect that the lives of all these men are endangered through me. If we are lost, my mad schemes are the cause. And what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind? You will not hear of my destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. Years will pass, and you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope. Oh! My beloved sister, the sickening failing of your heart-felt expectations is, in prospect, more terrible to me than my own death. But you have a husband and lovely children; you may be happy. Heaven bless you and make you so! My unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. He endeavors to fill me with hope and talks as if life were a possession which he valued. He reminds me how often the same accidents have happened to other

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navigators who have attempted this sea, and in spite of myself, he fills me with cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel the power of his eloquence; when he speaks, they no longer despair; he rouses their energies, and while they hear his voice they believe these vast mountains of ice are mole-hills which will vanish before the resolutions of man. These feelings are transitory; each day of expectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a mutiny caused by this despair. September 5th A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that, although it is highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot forbear recording it. We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of my unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of desolation. Frankenstein has daily declined in health; a feverish fire still glimmers in his eyes, but he is exhausted, and when suddenly roused to any exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent lifelessness. I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny. This morning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend—his eyes half closed and his limbs hanging listlessly—I was roused by half a dozen of the sailors, who demanded admission into the cabin. They entered, and their leader addressed me. He told me that he and his companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to me to make me a requisition which, in justice, I could not refuse. We were immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free passage be opened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They insisted, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel should be freed I would instantly direct my course southwards.

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This speech troubled me. I had not despaired, nor had I yet conceived the idea of returning if set free. Yet could I, in justice, or even in possibility, refuse this demand? I hesitated before I answered, when Frankenstein, who had at first been silent, and indeed appeared hardly to have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled, and his cheeks flushed with momentary vigor. Turning towards the men, he said, “What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you, then, so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this was it an honorable undertaking. You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species, your names adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honor and the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why, that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.” He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved? They looked at one another and were unable to reply. I spoke; I told them to retire and consider of what had been said, that I would

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not lead them farther north if they strenuously desired the contrary, but that I hoped that, with reflection, their courage would return. They retired and I turned towards my friend, but he was sunk in languor and almost deprived of life. How all this will terminate, I know not, but I had rather die than return shamefully, my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my fate; the men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honor, can never willingly continue to endure their present hardships. September 7th The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience. September 12th It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavor to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England and towards you, I will not despond. September 9th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. We were in the most imminent peril, but as we could only remain passive, my chief attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest whose illness increased in such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed. The ice cracked behind us and was driven with force towards the north; a breeze sprang from the west, and on the 11th the passage towards the south became perfectly free. When the sailors saw this and that their return to their native country was apparently assured, a shout

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of tumultuous joy broke from them, loud and long-continued. Frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke and asked the cause of the tumult. “They shout,” I said, “because they will soon return to England.” “Do you, then, really return?” “Alas! Yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them unwillingly to danger, and I must return.” “Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose, but mine is assigned to me by heaven, and I dare not. I am weak, but surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient strength.” Saying this, he endeavored to spring from the bed, but the exertion was too great for him; he fell back and fainted. It was long before he was restored, and I often thought that life was entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes; he breathed with difficulty and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing draught and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the meantime he told me that my friend had certainly not many hours to live. His sentence was pronounced, and I could only grieve and be patient. I sat by his bed, watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he slept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me come near, said, “Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being. Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed; but I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blamable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to

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create a companion for the first creature. He showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself that he may render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work, and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue. “Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfill this task; and now that you are returning to England, you will have little chance of meeting with him. But the consideration of these points, and the well balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I leave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near approach of death. I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion. “That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in other respects, this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of the beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.” His voice became fainter as he spoke, and at length, exhausted by his effort, he sank into silence. About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed forever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips. Margaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this glorious spirit? What can I say that will enable you to understand the depth of my sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and feeble. My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment. But I journey towards England, and I may there find consolation.

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I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise and examine. Good night, my sister. Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to detail it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete without this final and wonderful catastrophe. I entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe—gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in color and apparent texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily and endeavored to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer. I called on him to stay. He paused, looking on me with wonder, and again turning towards the lifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion. “That is also my victim!” he exclaimed. “In his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me.” His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly

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in his ugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion. “Your repentance,” I said, “is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.” “And do you dream?” said the daemon. “Do you think that I was then dead to agony and remorse? He,” he continued, pointing to the corpse, “he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the groans of Clerval were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. “After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror; I abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was forever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey. Yet when she died! Nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it is ended; there is my last victim!”

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I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. “Wretch!” I said. “It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power.” “Oh, it is not thus—not thus,” interrupted the being. “Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honor and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

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“You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the savior of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice. “But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more. “Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man’s death is needed to consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be done, but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I shall

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die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death? “Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever. “But soon,” he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.” He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

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THE SEQUEL TO MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein continues

with Mary Shelley’s unabridged Frankenstein included

(including a copy of the original)

TWO TALES OF TERROR IN ONE!

FRANKENSTEIN’S

Hilary Bailey has created a classic horror story in the vein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—and a monster even more terrifying than the original.

But Goodall slowly realizes that his partnership with Dr. Frankenstein has engulfed him in a dark, ugly history. In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Dr. Frankenstein began to make a woman—a bride for his creation—but then destroyed her. Bailey’s gripping sequel imagines that he actually pursued the plan.

“In this chilling and intelligent sequel to the never-forgotten story, Hilary Bailey imagines what might have happened if Frankenstein had made a woman, a bride, for his male creature… icy, atmospheric and riveting.” —Observer

“Icily convincing” —Mail on Sunday

“Frankenstein’s bride makes Frankenstein’s monster look like a pussycat.” —Sunday Times

FICTION

FRANKENSTEIN’S

Y

BRIDE

ears after he inadvertently set in motion the events that caused a series of deranged murders, Dr. Frankenstein, now living a happy and privileged life, is introduced to young, wealthy Jonathan Goodall. Impressed by Frankenstein’s brilliance, Goodall becomes the doctor’s assistant and confidante. Together they begin to work on restoring the voice of a beautiful young opera singer, little anticipating the strong pull of her feminine charms.

BRIDE

The sequel plus the original

$16.95 U.S. / $21.95 CAN / £9.99 UK

BAILEY

EAN

www.sourcebooks.com

UPC

a novel

HILARY BAILEY