Frankenstein

by Spike Milligan

  I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties were with the Lords Taverners, Grenadier Guards, and the Royal Artillery. During the Napoleonic wars my father had volunteered to serve with Lord Nelson’s cricket team. Nelson bowled him with his good arm for a duck. They were playing on deck during the battle and a Spanish marksman, knowing nothing of cricket, shot Nelson and play was halted for the day.

  The funeral over, I departed for Ingolstadt. I desired to see my Elizabeth consoled. She indeed veiled her grief – she put a blanket over her head and looked through a hole. I left her to her life or ironing, cooking, mountain climbing, scuba diving and dwarf hurling.

  On the day of my departure, Clerval spent the evening balancing on one leg and sword swallowing. Henry felt the misfortune of being debarred from a life of idleness and financial ruin.

  Next morning, grabbing the seat of my trousers, I threw myself into the chaise and shot out the other side. I love my brother Edward and my friend Clerval. Such were my reflections, which I managed by bending down and observing myself in the seat of my shiny trousers.

  There came into my life a Mr Krempe. He was uncouth – he used to be couth, but he forgot. He asked me several questions, the first was “lend us a quid?”

  He said, “Have you really spent your time studying that crap?”

  I replied, “I have studied that crap, what crap did you study?”

  “I studied a different crap in Ancient Greek.”

  So saying, he stepped aside and into it. He sold me several books, charging £1.00 a time. By the time he had finished, I had a pile of books and he was a millionaire.

  Mr Krempe had huge ears which looked like people looking over his shoulders.

  As a child I had not been content with the results promised by a philosopher of natural science. One such promise was that by waving my arms I should be able to fly. I proved that to be a myth, so I blew his brains out. I realised that Kant, Hegel and Freud were all cunts. I had utter contempt for these three mentioned Charlies. They all sought immortality but in the end they all snuffed it. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth. I exchanged my chimera ten times a day and ended up with fuck all.

  I thought of Mr Krempe and recalled what he had said of Mr Waldman.

  I went into the lecturing room. Mr Waldman entered shortly after. He appeared about fifty and disappeared about seventy. He was a redhead; no hair, just a red head. He was short for his height – three feet two inches. He began his lecture by singing ‘Ave Maria’. After a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with “A good big un will always beat a good little un.” To prove it, I knocked him down.

  Mr Waldman lectured on Ave Maria

  He knew her dimension from ear to ear

  Her blood group was ‘A’

  She used it every day

  “It’s,” she said, “the best way”

  Alas, that night she passed away.

  Modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera on sale at all good chimeraists. Scientists penetrate nature and show how she works in her hiding-places – usually Bradford. And on the third day they rise again from the dead, ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. They have discovered how the blood circulates (through the veins, would you believe it?) and the nature of the air we breathe (it’s invisible and full of crap). They can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake and even do Al Jolson. Something was wrong. I didn’t come to this school to be destroyed. If I am, they should lower the fees. I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. This was going to get me right in the shit.

  I closed not my eyes that night, only the doors. My internal being was in a turmoil – I had to swallow an enema. I believed myself to possess a natural talent, that was making moustard.*

  ≡ Unexplainable.

  I visited Waldman. I listened to his statement that was delivered without any presumption, except for a burst on the banjo. He said how ignorant they were and how enlightened were those who had removed prejudices against modern chemists like Boots.

  “I am happy,” said Mr Waldman, “to have gained a disciple. Chemistry has had a great many improvements. They now have suppositories for piles and are able to take the temperature of boiling water and the temperature of a monkey with malaria.” So I set out to take the temperature of boilding water and searched for a monkey with malaria so that I might take his temperature. Anything to forward my studies.

  Winter, Spring and Summer passed away

  So did Queen Vic they say

  She died with a bad heart

  The damn thing wouldn’t start

  It meant nothing to me

  I was looking for bits for my monster you see.

  CHAPTER IV

  From this day, chemistry in the most comprehensive sense became my sole occupation. Every day I would boil a vat of water and take its temperature and then the monkey with malaria had his temperature taken. So it went on.

  Krempe had a great deal of sound sense but he had a repulsive physiognomy. He had a face like a dog’s bum and the dirty devil let off in confined spaces. Professor Krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on? I said that he went on the bus. At the same time Mr Waldman expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress: “I have the most heartfelt exultation in your progress,” he said. Two years passed, during which time I paid no visit to Geneva but was engaged heart and soul in pursuit of some discoveries through which I hoped to make a monster. None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science – one is money. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you. Some got as far as Bexhill-on-Sea, which is not a seat of learning. In scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery; I had discovered sausage and mash with mushy peas. I, who continually sought the attainment of one object: sausage and chips and mushy peas.

  One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame. I discovered it was made up mostly of bones, skin and veins, all of which could be made into a nourishing soup. Then I asked myself, how did the principle of life proceed? The answer was mostly on foot. Next, how would life proceed to be a mystery? To find out, I shot somebody and waited by the corpse. Finally, I took it to the morgue. In life he had been a butcher. I sat by the body all night with some cheese sandwiches and a thermos of Horlicks. In the morning the sandwiches and Horlicks were gone but he was still there and still as stiff. The moral of this story was, if you shoot a butcher, he stops working. Suddenly in the midst of this darkness a light broke in upon me, a light so brilliant it must have been 200 watts, while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated. I was surprised that among so many men of genius, like George Formby, I alone should be reserved to discover so astounding a secret.

  Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. I have succeeded in discovering the cause of generation of life. I became capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, like I could make a doormat shake itself and I could make a couch animate and run around the room. I could boil an egg just by looking at it. What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp, i.e., life. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead and who found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light that led me to the Stock Exchange where I met Jeffrey Archer who immediately absconded with my life savings.

  When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I put it in my pocket. It was with these feelings I began the creation of a human being, but the size of his parts formed a great hindrance. I decided to make the being of a gigantic stature, about eight feet in height. I plundered the mortuary for parts and what I couldn’t find I would take from the butcher’s shop.

&nbs
p; Life and death appeared to me to be ideal bounds, and most people are either one or the other. I could dig up the dead departed and put them on the lawn of the grieving and say to them, “Give me four hundred guineas and I can bring that stiff back to life.” No man could refuse such an offer. This I did successfully for a few weeks.

  My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Who could conceive the horrors of my dabbling among the unhallowed damps of the grave? But then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward – so I collided with a tree. I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance; it passed me at thirty miles per hour and disappeared. I returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel houses. They disturbed the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather a cell, at the top of the house separated from all other apartments I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished a pair of balls and a willy the right size for my monster. I stuck them on with glue, they looked marvellous. I knew my silence disquieted some of my friends. One of them said, “Your silence disquiets me.”

  I knew well how my father felt – it was usually my mother. My father made no reproach in his letters and only took notice of my silence by enquiring, “What the fuck are you doing? Love, Dad.” Winter, spring and summer passed away. So did Queen Victoria. I did not watch me blossom or the expanding leaves; no, I was looking for bones and spare kidneys to fit an eight feet giant. I appeared to people like one doomed by slavery to toil in the ruins, or any other unwholesome trade like a pheasant plucker. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever; it took two days to reach me. My monster was completed and all I had to do now was to give him the gift of life. The creature lay on a slab naked; he could not be allowed thus into society. I struggled with the lifeless body and put on him a pair of giant-sized trousers and a flannel shirt.

  The monster’s trousers fell to the floor

  Some of it out the front

  Round the back there was more

  Underpants must be found

  Before it spreads around.

  The first words the monster spoke

  “Has anyone got a smoke?

  I’d give anything for a drag

  On a fag.”

  CHAPTER V

  How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom, with such infinite pains and care, I had endeavoured to form? There was the bolt that affixed his neck to his spine, there were the screws holding his forehead to his skull; but now was the moment of truth. I plunged the electrodes into his rectum and switched on the current. He gave a groan and he was alive! He spoke as he sat up, “Have you got a fag mate?” My God, I had given birth to a nicotine junky! I handed him the cigarette which I lit then, leaping off the table, he stood there. But, alas, we had forgotten one thing: he had no support for his trousers which fell to the floor revealing his manhood in all its glory. If any women saw this they would be leaving their husbands in thousands. Quickly I got some string round his trousers. What had I done? No mortal could support the horror of that countenance! I rushed downstairs to the refuge of a cupboard where I remained during the rest of the night walking up and down in great agitation – something difficult to do in a cupboard.

  I passed the night wretchedly sleeping on a clothes line. I sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness and the doctor came and said, “You have sunk to the ground through languor and extreme weakness.”

  I continued walking in a depressed manner. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what he was doing. He wasn’t doing anything. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me.

  Ohhhh…

  Like one, on a lonesome road who,

  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.*

  ≡ Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

  My eyes fixed on a coach that was coming towards me. It stopped just where I was standing. The door being opened, I perceived Henry Clerval, who sprang out of the coach and trod straight in it. “My dear Frankenstein,” he exclaimed, “how glad I am to see you!”

  Clerval’s presence brought back thoughts of my father, Elizabeth, and all those bloody hangers-on at home. I grasped his hand and the 100 kroner note in it. “It gives me the greatest delight to see you but tell me how you left my father, my brothers and Elizabeth.”

  “Penniless,” he replied. “But my dear Frankenstein,” he continued, “I did not before remark how very ill you appear, so thin and pale, you look as if you have been wanking for several nights.”

  We ascended into my room and, once seated, I was unable to contain myself. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place: I jumped over the chairs and climbed on top of the cupboard; I crawled under the table; I jumped out the window and ran back up the stairs and hid under the bed.

  I was very ill and what was wrong with me was affecting my mind

  But the pain was coming from my behind

  Perhaps the illness is in my bum

  It’s amazing where illness can come from.

  “Victor, Victor,” cried Clerval, “what the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “Oh, save me! save me!” I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell off the washing in a fit.

  Clerval took the opportunity to put a straitjacket on me. I was lifeless and did not recover my sense for a long time – eighteen months.

  I was very ill; I had no idea what the fuck was the matter with me but I raved incessantly about the monster. Doubtless my words suprised Henry. It persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event. He did not know what the fuck was the matter with me.

  By very slow degrees, and some frequent relapses that alarmed and grieved my friend, they would tighten the straps on my straitjacket. All the while there was this twittering in my head. One day the gloom disappeared, but just in case they kept my straitjacket on. But what the fuck had been wrong with me?

  “Dearest Clerval,” I exclaimed, “the whole winter, instead of being spent studying as you promised yourself, you have been consumed with me and you have watched me being sick in my room. How shall I ever repay you?”

  “A thousand guilders wouldn’t go amiss,” said Clerval. “You will repay me entirely, if you do not discompose yourself. May I speak to you of one subject? Compose yourself.”

  Immediately I knocked off a 24 bar nocturne.

  “I have observed your change of colour,” said Clerval.

  I had gone a pale green.

  “You’re the strangest colour I’ve ever seen

  You’ve gone dark green”

  So said my friend Clerval who himself was ill in bed

  Going a bright colour red.

  “Your father and cousin would be happy if they received a letter in your own handwriting.”

  Immediately I wrote the letter ‘A’ and posted it to them.

  “If this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad to see a letter that has been lying here some days from you – to your cousin, I believe.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Frankenstein to Elizabeth:

  Dearest Cousin,

  Do not come here! The countryside abounds with wolves, bears and bandits!

  Elizabeth to Frankenstein:

  Clerval writes that indeed you are getting better and have stopped hiding in the cupboard. How pleased you would be to remark the improvement of our Ernest! He is now sixteen and full of activity and learning to yodel. He is not pleased with the idea of a military career overseas, playing bagpipes to t
he Scots Guards. In the meantime he is spending time in the open air, slapping his thighs and yodelling.

  My dearest aunt and cousin died. We buried them; it seemed the best thing to do. The mortician did a job lot-he buried them all together. She, my aunt, was a Roman Catholic and she had pieces of the true cross. Put all of the pieces of the true cross together and it would show that Jesus was sixty feet high and eighty feet across. Poor girl, Justine; she wept and we were up to our ankles in tears.

  Elizabeth Lavenza

  Geneva, March 18th, 17––.

  Frankenstein to Elizabeth:

  Dear Elizabeth,

  You say one word would suffice to quiet your fears. Here it is – C O L O U R! You can choose whatever you like – white, black, red, brown, blue, Russian blue, yellow, ochre. Yes, the word can go a long way.

  One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to several professors. I introduced him to several Professor Waldman. In the absence of the other several professors, he will do. They have taken everything out of my laboratory – several noses, sets of false teeth, twelve legs, six vials of blood, twelve feet of veins, some spare kidneys, and a bottle of tomato sauce, etc. They were charging me 10 Marks a minute rent so I had to rush in, stay for three minutes, and rush out again. It was the only way I could afford it.

  I writhed under Professor Waldman’s words of praise but dared not exhibit the pain I felt. Clerval curled up on the floor in front of me, his legs behind his head, and said, “This puts me in a very difficult position.” My sin in the back of my mind was that of a monster with his trousers down.

  Mr Krempe was quite docile I kept him on a lead. He was given to bursts of speech. “Damn the fellow,” cried he. “Why Mr Clerval has outstripped us all. He’s a youngster who but a few years ago believed in Cornelius Agrippa, the Gem, the Hotspur and Boys’ Own.”