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 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.
TWO
IAND 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.
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 day-to-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. 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 over-imbibed 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, well-knit 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 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-by-gate 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 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 villa
ge 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. 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 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 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 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.
T H R E E
EVEN NOW, 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 sat in con
tented 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 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.”
Frankenstein's Bride Page 3