by Mary Shelley
I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing.15 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,16 and among others to M.17 Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He received me with politeness, and asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I mentioned, it is true, with fear and trembling, the only authors I had ever read upon those subjects. 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 stept 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,18 a fellow-professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he missed.19
I returned home, not disappointed, for I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor had so strongly reprobated; but I did not feel much inclined to study the books which I procured at his recommendation.20 M. Krempe was a little squat man, with a gruff voice and repulsive countenance;21 the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his doctrine.22 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:23 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 days24 spent almost in solitude. 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;25 a few gray hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head 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 fervour 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 pour over the microscope26 or crucible,27 have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens;28 they have discovered how the blood circulates,29 and the nature of the air we breathe.30 They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven,31 mimic the earthquake,32 and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”33
I departed highly pleased with the professor and his lecture, and paid him a visit the same evening.34 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.35 He heard with attention my little narration concerning my studies, and smiled at the names of Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Krempe had exhibited.36 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 labours 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;37 and I, at the same time, requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure.
Chemical lecture at the Surrey Institution, 1808, by Thomas Rowlandson.
“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 petty38 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.39
1. Founded in 1472 by Ludwig IX, the duke of Bavaria, the University of Ingolstadt was in the city of Ingolstadt, in the duchy of Bavaria-Ingolstadt (later combined with the duchy of Bavaria-Landshut). With faculties in humanities, sciences, theology, law, and medicine, it was a Christian university, its initial chancellor the Bishop of Eichstätt. The Jesuits arrived in 1549 and, while the order was dissolved in the late 1770s, Jesuit faculty members were not entirely displaced. By the end of the eighteenth century, the university had become a hotbed of intellectual ferment, under the influence of Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law and the founder of the society known as the Illuminati.
Born Jewish and raised by Jesuits after the death of his father when he was six, Weishaupt had converted to Protestantism while reading law at Ingolstadt but subsequently realigned himself with the Jesuits, for reasons that remain somewhat obscure. The announced goals of the Illuminati (or the Order of Perfectibilists, as they were first known) were opposition to superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power: in short, a new, radical Enlightenment. Its leaders were called Aeropagites, from the Greek Areios pagos (literally, hill of Ares), where the members of the highest Athenian tribunal, the Aeropagus, convened; the name “Dionysius the Aeropagite” may be found in the Bible (Acts 17:34).
Largely secret, and composed of rationalist freethinkers, the I
lluminati exerted an influence at Ingolstadt University and in subsequent popular culture that was far out of proportion to the society’s membership. Today, Weishaupt is invoked in comic books and other works (often purposely conflated with George Washington), and the phrase “the Illuminati” is frequently used to refer to presumed masterminds of the world order.
Portrait of Adam Weishaupt, possibly by C. K. Mansinger (1799).
The Illuminati have been credited by conspiracy theorists with fomenting the French Revolution and acting as the force behind many other events. However, historical research suggests that the society effectively disbanded in 1785, with Weishaupt’s banishment following dismissal from the university amid accusations of sedition. Said to have nonetheless been offered a pension by school authorities, he refused it, eventually assuming a professorship at the University of Göttingen. Effective 1784, all secret societies were banned in Bavaria by edict of Duke Karl Theodor, the elector palatinate, with membership punishable by death; the Illuminati were specially singled out by further edicts issued over the next several years.
In 1800, the university was shut down, purportedly for financial reasons (one of several preemptive closings in its history), and was moved to Landshut. Two years later it was renamed Ludwig Maximilian University, and in 1826 it was moved to Munich, where it is located today, styled LMU.
“The day of my departure at length arrived.” Illustration from Frankenstein (1831), artist unknown.
2. Thus in Victor’s mind he is not to blame for departing Geneva—he is forced by his father (with whom his mother sides) to leave the family home.
3. The balance of the sentence and the following three sentences have been replaced in the 1831 edition by the following: “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 favourite 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 accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event.”
Ingolstadt town hall (photo by Brian Snelson, used under CC-by-SA 2.0 license).
Thus, because her illness was severe, Elizabeth could be viewed by Victor as blameless in the death of Victor’s mother. This is a subtle change but important in undermining a psychoanalytic reading of the tale as Victor’s unconscious persecution of Elizabeth for depriving him of his mother. This reading is largely based on Victor’s post-Creation dream of kissing Elizabeth, who transforms in the dream into his mother’s corpse, but interestingly, though Shelley here lessens Elizabeth’s blame, she did not later eliminate the strange dream from the text.
Scarlet fever, also historically called scarlatina, was probably known to the Greeks and was first definitively recorded in 1553, in De Tumoribus praeter Naturam, by the Sicilian anatomist and physician Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, who labeled the disease rossalia or rosania. It was again observed in an epidemic in Germany in 1564–65 by Dutch physician Johann Weyer, who referred to it as scalatina (or scarlatina) anginosa. Scientists believe that from ancient times until the late eighteenth century, scarlet fever was endemic to every population, that is, present at low levels. When statistically significant numbers of cases occurred, they were relatively benign and widely separated in time. Beginning around 1825, however, outbreaks began to occur regularly and were quite severe, with many fatalities. Scarlet fever was the scourge of mid-Victorian England; countless young children fell victim. After 1885, when the disease was first recognized as the outcome of a streptococcal infection, it appeared far less frequently in developed countries, and by the mid-twentieth century, after serums, vaccines, and eventually penicillin had been developed, fatalities were rare.
4. Percy Shelley added to the Draft the language regarding the danger of infection.
5. The Thomas Text softens the word to “amiable.”
6. The word “cousins” is replaced by “children” in the 1831 edition.
7. The Stoic sentiment following was appended by Percy Shelley in the Draft.
8. This phrase is replaced by “My departure for” in the 1831 edition. The psychoanalytic critics contend that Victor now not only feels that his father is banishing him for having killed his mother (or having wished her dead—as is evidenced by his later dream), but that he also irrationally feels that his father’s action in eventually making him leave home was the real cause of Caroline’s death.
9. This sentence and the balance of the paragraph are replaced in the 1831 edition with the following:
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 endeavours to make us forget.
10. The balance of this paragraph and the next paragraph are deleted from the 1831 edition, and the following is substituted:
Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured 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 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.
11. The balance of the sentence was added to the Draft by Percy Shelley.
12. The Thomas Text makes a considerable revision to the character of Clerval, striking the two previous sentences and substituting: “Clerval loved poetry and his mind was filled with the imagery and sublime sentiments of the masters of that art. A poet himself, he turned with disgust from the details of ordinary life. His own soul mind was all the possession that he prized, beautiful & majestic thoughts the only wealth he coveted—daring as the eagle and as free, common laws could not be applied to him; and while you gazed on him you felt his soul’s spark was more divine—more truly stolen from Apollo’s sacred fire, than the glimmering ember that animates other men.” Interestingly, Mary Shelley moved in the opposite direction in the 1831 edition, making Clerval into a man of enterprise rather than a poet.
13. A carriage, usually two-wheeled.
14. Victor quotes Charles Lamb’s January 1798 poem, “The Old Familiar Faces,” which begins:
Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she died, and left me,
Chaise.
Died prematurely in a day of horrors—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
The “day of horrors” to which Lamb refers is September 22, 1796, when his sister, Mary (one of only three siblings who survived infancy), killed his
mother with a knife in a fit of madness. (Their mother, Elizabeth Field, had borne seven children.) The date of publication of this poem is an important clue to the dates of Frankenstein, tending to confirm that Victor’s narration to Walton took place in August 1799. Frankenstein left Geneva in January 1798, and he must have read the poem before his hunt took him away from civilized regions and north to the Arctic. Of course, the phrase itself was a commonplace, but the poem seems singularly apt for Frankenstein’s recital of the death of his mother, and the phrase is in quotation marks in the narrative, confirming that it is intended to refer to Lamb’s poem.
15. Indeed, the distance from Geneva to Ingolstadt is more than 300 miles in a straight line; by road, it was likely over 400 miles, and the journey may have taken as long as two weeks. Today, it is a drive of 409 miles (658 km), taking just over six hours on high-speed toll roads and the Autobahn.