Percy Shelley must have noticed that he and Dippel had a lot in common: while they were each young and inexperienced, they embarked on experiments they weren’t familiar with and invariably made a score of mistakes.
In that laboratory, villagers believed Dippel had indeed found the formula that produced gold and was using it to purchase lands and homes for himself. The villagers would have felt it was sacrilegious to use the philosopher’s stone for one’s gain instead of employing it for the benefit of humanity. Thus, such an act, compounded by his own ignorance of how to actually work the material (he left the vials he was using on the flames for too long), caused his equipment to explode, setting fire to all he owned. In the process he lost not only his physical belongings, but also something far more precious—the secret recipe he had devised to turn metal into gold. He tried to begin anew, to buy new equipment on credit, but he could not recollect what he had used, the dosage, and the steps he had taken. All resulted in failures.
Dippel’s foes, those who disliked him but inwardly believed he had managed to find the philosopher’s stone, were glad he had lost the recipe because they felt that someone like him did not deserve to possess it to begin with. And if sheer stupidity had caused its loss, so much the better. Dippel also had to worry about the disgruntled clergymen in the area, those who had heard about his doings and were unnerved by him. How dare he fiddle with the mysteries of creation? they asked. How dare he believe himself a god, capable of prolonging life, or even creating it anew? And the villagers saw him as nothing more than the devil’s minion, someone whose soul had been sold in exchange for forbidden knowledge. In a short time, he had managed to anger and alienate everyone he knew and a good number of people he didn’t even know.
It didn’t help that soon after the fire incident, he turned his attention to finding a “universal medicine.” He was not the only one seeking this universal cure-all, whether it was a lotion or a balm. Paracelsus had also believed in his Azoth of the Red Lion’s ability to aid his patients. Such concoctions were numerous and could involve hundreds of ingredients from the natural world. One such book popular at the time was Robert Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist. If Dippel had read this book, he would have learned that such a medicine could have included olives, bile, and even grapes.
Boyle wrote, “It seems then questionable enough, whether from Grapes variously order’d there may not be drawn more distinct substances by the help of Fire, then from most other mixt Bodies. For the Grapes themselves being dryed into Raysins and distill’d, will (besides Alcoli, Phlegm, and Earth) yield a considerable quantity of Empyreumatical Oyle, and a spirit of a very different nature from that of wine . . . The Juice of Grapes after fermentation will yield a Spiritus Orders; which if competently rectified will all burn away without leaving anything remaining.”
What eventually became Dippel’s Oil was used up until the end of the eighteenth century, when new and more powerful cures were found. Whether its users knew, or wished to know, what Dippel’s Oil actually contained was a mystery, but this foul, odorous concoction was a mixture of ground-up animal blood and crushed bones, along with a few other ingredients—some human—that Dippel collected in a most unusual manner. Again, using human blood for curative concoctions was not unusual. Boyle insisted that “there is a Difference betwixt the saline spirit of Urine and that of Man’s blood; that the former will not cure the Epilepsy, but the latter will.”
And though Dippel’s Oil did nothing for Dippel in the world of academia—the university appointments he had wanted did not materialize—his reputation as an alchemist grew. He even found favor in the royal courts.
This new interest in alchemy as a way to cure people also initiated in him a desire to study medicine. He chose as his place of learning the University of Leyden, in Holland.
With its long-standing tradition of printing and book trading, Leyden provided him with the ripe intellectual environment he had always craved. To this was added the presence of the city’s university, the University of Leyden, the oldest university in the Netherlands, which was founded in 1575 by Prince William of Orange. As it happened, Leyden was also the place where the Leyden jar (a glass container insulated inside and outside with tinfoil capable of harnessing electricity) was invented in the mid-1700s, further reinforcing Dippel’s link with the occult, electricity, and Frankenstein.
In Leiden Dippel came in contact with the great professor of medicine Herman Boerhaave. Though later Boerhaave became known for the disease that bears his name—Boerhaave syndrome, an illness that results in a rupture of the esophagus—at the time of Dippel’s studies he was a celebrated professor of physics. Like Dippel, Boerhaave was the son of a clergyman who in turn had been eager to make a clergyman out of him. Like Dippel, he had also blended theology and medicine.
In the years that followed, Dippel came to believe that the gift of prophecy had been bestowed on him. As such, he set out to prophesize his own death, which he set for the year 1808. For someone who had been born in 1673, this was quite a stretch, giving rise to the rumor that perhaps he had rediscovered the philosopher’s stone.
He was remarkably mistaken about that date, obviously demonstrating that not only was the philosopher’s stone no longer in his possession, but that as a diviner his skills were lacking. On April 24, 1734, while enjoying the comforts of one of his patrons, the Count August von Wittgenstein, Dippel was found dead in his room, a peculiar bluish tint to his skin and foam collecting around his mouth. Immediately, those friends who saw the body believed that Dippel had been killed by one of his enemies. By then he had collected many, so one could only guess which enemy they were talking about.
The authorities were called, but those men, more than being suspicious, were superstitious; they had heard of Dippel’s doings and the reputation he had gained. They were afraid to go near the body, let alone open it to perform an autopsy. They recalled that as they had made their way up to the castle, they had heard the rumor already circulating around the village that the devil had returned to claim Dippel’s soul. Given that, the corpse remained untouched and the death attributed to “apoplexy.”
It remains unknown if Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin heard of the infamous alchemist Johann Dippel, as Dippel is never mentioned in Percy Shelley’s or Mary Godwin’s diaries, nor is he spoken of in Mary’s book History of a Six Weeks’ Tour Through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland. On returning to their boat, following their three-hour exertion on land, Mary continued writing in her journal in much the same vein she had done all along: “We were carried down by dangerously rapid currents, and saw on either side of us hills covered with vines and trees, craggy cliffs around by desolate towers, and wooded islands, where picturesque ruins peeped from behind the foliage . . . We heard the songs of the vintagers, and if surrounded by disgusting Germans, the sight was not as replete with enjoyment as I now fancy it to have been.”
They were cruising on their way back to England, hopeful, yet unsure of how they would be welcomed.
Chapter 6
MY HIDEOUS PROGENY
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
ALBERT EINSTEIN, APHORISMS FOR
LEO BAECK (1953); REPRINTED IN
IDEAS AND OPINIONS
On April 10 and 11, 1815, Mount Tambora, the volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, began thundering loudly from within its crevice, unleashing one of the deadliest eruptions ever recorded in history. Fire rose from the cone-shaped crater, while lava flowed toward the surrounding villages. Pumice stones flew out of its depths, followed by a funnel of thick ash, which ominously rose up into the stratosphere and mingled with the water particles found therein.
This was not the first eruption the inhabitants had ever heard. Since nearly two years earlier—and most particularly in the last several months—the earth had often trembled beneath their feet and they heard a sort of inner-land growling, though
they had ignored those signs; if anything, the inhabitants believed the volcano’s belching was the gods who lived within it expressing their anger at the strangers who had intruded on their soil. Even years later, when the cause was attributed to natural phenomena, songs were sung about the vengeful gods wreaking havoc during the tragedy.
On the island of Batavia, the lieutenant governor of Java, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (who later founded the city of Singapore), heard the loud booms and thought they were gunshots. “The first explosions were heard on this island in the evening of 5 April, they were noticed in every quarter, and continued at intervals until the following days,” he later wrote in his memoirs. “The noise was in the first instance almost universally attributed to a distant cannon; so much so that a detachment of troops were marched from Jocjacarta, in the expectation that a neighbouring post was attacked, and along the coast boats were in two instances dispatched in a quest of a supposed ship in distress.”
The volcano had been dormant for nearly five thousand years, like many volcanoes around the world, and most especially those around the so-called Ring of Fire that made up the Indonesian archipelago, but great forces had converged beneath Tambora’s surface and now they had built up to a magnificent and threatening level. By April 1815, the pressure had reached such a high point that when the final explosion occurred, the gigantic plume of gases and ashes traveled nearly twenty miles upward into the air. The larger chunks of debris that spewed out catapulted back onto the earth immediately, but many minute pieces remained up in the air, floating there for subsequent weeks and months.
The area surrounding the volcano suffered the most: “A violent whirlwind ensued which blew down nearly every house in the village of Sangir, carrying steps, or roofs, and light parts away with it. In the port of Sangir and . . . Tambora its effects were much more violent, tearing up the roots of the largest trees, and carrying them into the air, together with men, horses, cattle . . . the sea rose nearly twelve feet higher than it had ever . . . before . . . sweeping away horses . . . Every boat was forced from the anchorage,” one of the few local survivors reported. The area was immediately plunged into pitch darkness, and the inhabitants, those thousands who had not perished in the explosion, were left without potable water, vegetation, or provisions of any sort.
When the volcano quieted, Lieutenant Raffles directed his men toward the Island of Sumbawa, where they were to gather information on the condition of the remaining villagers. One man who heeded the commands and reported back to Raffles was Lieutenant Owen Philips, who, after scouring the area, declared,
The extreme misery to which the inhabitants have been reduced is shocking to behold. There were still on the road side the remains of several corpses, and the marks of where many others had been interred. The villages almost entirely deserted and the houses fallen down, the surviving inhabitants having dispersed in search of food . . . Since the eruption, a violent diarrhoea has prevailed in Bima, Dimpo, and Sang’ir, which has carried off a great number of people. It is supposed by the natives to have been caused by drinking water, which has been impregnated with ashes; and horses have also died in great numbers, of a similar complaint.
Though he did not know it yet, nearly 120,000 people had already lost their lives.
But Indonesia was not the only place that experienced the misery of Tambora. As the tiny ash particles traveled into the stratosphere, they were carried away by the west wind. Also the cloud of gas that had formed continued to rise to higher altitudes and merged with the vapor found there, forming sulfuric acid. As the wind blew this across the lands, it carried a faint sheen, a sort of thin mist that covered the lands. In later months, peculiar climatic events began to plague the entire planet, followed by the unusually rainy and cold summer of 1816, what became known as the Year Without a Summer.
As far away as the northernmost regions of Canada as well as in New England, frost persisted well into the summer, quickly destroying the entire season’s crop for many farmers. In China the weather was blamed for destroying trees and rice fields and killing farm animals used for transport and provisions. The rains there caused the country’s rivers and lakes to swell up, overflowing into villages and encampments and carrying with them cholera and diphtheria. Europe fared no better: Italy saw a peculiar yellow-tinted snow fall on its many villages and cities; potato fields died in Ireland, wheat in Germany, corn in France. Across the continent, prices rose with the riverbanks, as did riots, looting, anger, and violence.
But at the time no one knew precisely why these phenomena were occurring. Few had connected them to the Tambora eruption, because few had even heard about it. Whatever letters were sent from Indonesia to Europe or the Americas didn’t arrive for weeks or even months, and by the time they did, Tambora was old news.
Aside from the many traumatic deaths, climate changes, and economic impacts, Tambora also triggered a strange effect on peoples’ psyches. The long days of incessant rains, whipping winds, and shadowy and gloomy evenings, as well as the gray ashy snows, were not only alarming but also downright debilitating. For the members of Shelley’s household, whose mental constitutions were already a bit weak, the foreboding weather only added to their woes.
Just as Tambora had experienced a series of inner blows culminating in a major catastrophe, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin experienced a series of setbacks during the two years following their elopement. When they returned to England in September 1814, they discovered that their reputations had been tainted. Mary was ostracized by those who believed she had ruined a marriage, and by her own father, who was still as unyielding as an iron rod and refused to talk to them. She also learned at this time that she was pregnant. The pregnancy would have overjoyed Mary if she had not been preoccupied with the repercussions that came with it.
Mary had no official attachment to Percy. His marriage to Harriet Westbrook was still intact and a legal separation had yet to be discussed. She was only his mistress, so her child with Percy would be illegitimate and would not be afforded any of the legal benefits granted to a married couple’s offspring. Both sets of parents also refused to assist them—financially as well as emotionally—as they set about building a family and a home together.
They also had to face the more practical and evident matter of Jane, or rather Claire, as she was now known. She had not only assisted but actually become a part of their scheme, and having had a taste of freedom, refused to return to the Skinner Street household, where her mother would keep a constant watch on her. The idea of working as a domestic did not appeal to her, nor did the prospect of joining a convent, as Mrs. Godwin had suggested; but she did not have the means to survive on her own, either. Only one solution remained, and that was to carve a place for herself in Mary and Percy’s new home. This did not please Mary, and Claire knew it.
Yet, Claire made herself useful. When Mary’s pregnancy made her unable to accompany Shelley on the various errands that took up most of his day—visits to “lawyers, insurance agents, and money lenders”—Claire took Mary’s place during those ordeals. While this setup worked for a while, Mary soon became distrustful of the time Percy and her stepsister spent together, of the carriage rides they took, the long walks they enjoyed, of the teas they indulged in outside their home.
Claire had become a presence not only while Mary and Percy read, studied, or translated literary works, but also in their bed. Her temperament was easily influenced by outside words and tales, especially ones about ghosts, horrors, and devils, and she began to suffer nightmares after attending Percy’s meetings with Hogg, as they often partook in such mystical conversations. Claire became uncomfortable listening to these stories and eventually developed a fear of being assaulted by ghosts resting on her pillows, phantasms traipsing to and fro about the house, and strange creatures cavorting in all manners of odious ways. Gasping for air beneath her blankets, seized by fear, she dashed out of her bed and into Mary and Percy’s room, where she slunk between the two lovers and burrowed deep into
the plush bed. Mary eventually believed that her stepsister’s traumas were imaginary and only meant to break up her intimacy with Shelley. Shelley didn’t mind at first but in time Claire’s actions began to rub him the wrong way.
On February 22, 1815, Mary gave birth to a little girl, one that Dowden and others deemed a “seven months babe,” though research suggests that the baby was born full term. The little girl began ailing almost immediately and was not expected to survive. For several days she gave Mary and Percy great delight, each small breath seeming perhaps like a small beacon of hope. But on March 6, Mary awoke to find her child dead. “Dream that my little baby came to life again,” Mary later wrote in her journal, on Sunday, March 19. “That it had only been cold & that we rubbed it by the fire & it lived—I . . . awake & find no baby—I think about the little thing all day.” That particular journal entry not only showed the depth of her sorrow, but also foreshadowed the direction of her literary endeavors—the idea of reanimation, in real life as well as in fiction.
Such scientific thoughts had played a major part during her upbringing, but they had become even more magnified during her pregnancy. In the months preceding the birth, Mary, Percy, and Claire had often attended the Spring-Garden Rooms, where the brothers Garnerin had lectured on phantasmagoria, a show that was a blend of illusions, projectors, and parlor tricks commonly used in spiritual séances and that dealt with electricity and the properties attributed, or that could be attributed, to it. An advertisement that ran in The Times just over a month before the baby was born read, “Theater of Grand Philosophical Recreations [by Professor Garnerin] continues to be frequented by the most fashionable of the Nobility and Gentry. This week he will perform a great quantity of his finest experiments, entirely new, on the Gas, Electricity . . . Phantasmagoria &C.”
The Lady and Her Monsters Page 12