“No, sir. John Donaldson. His wife, Amelia, which is me. And this is Arthur.” She patted the baby with her free hand.
I must say that I experienced a moment of relief. “Forgive me, Mrs. Donaldson. May I ask if you have lived here long?”
“We came early in the summer, sir. We are from Devon.”
“There was a young man here before you, I believe. He is a friend of mine-”
“Oh. The young party. I did hear something of him from Mr. Lawson above us. A strange party. Very volatile. Is that so?” I nodded. “He vanished, sir. He left one morning. Never seen again. Now you are here-” She retreated into the rooms which I knew so well, and presently returned with a small volume. “If you were to find him, would you give him this?” She handed me the book that I recognised as a copy of Lyrical Ballads. He had often read from it, during our evening conversations. “I found it beneath the settle. It must have fallen. Mr. Donaldson and I have no use for it, sir.”
I gave her a sovereign, which she accepted with many expressions of delight. I considered calling upon Daniel West -brook in Whitechapel for news of Bysshe. Yet the memory of that neighbourhood, dark and dim, dissuaded me. Instead I determined to return to Oxford, where Bysshe might find me if he so wished. I retained my chambers in Jermyn Street, however, as a refuge from the quiet life of the university.
FLORENCE, MY COLLEGE SERVANT, greeted me at the top of the staircase with an expression of surprise. “Well, Mr. Frankenlime, we was despairing of you.”
“Never despair, Florence.”
“Then the head porter tells us you was coming back. So I gave them a good clean.” She motioned towards my rooms. “You will find them in a state of perfection.”
“I am pleased to hear it.” I walked past her and, on opening the door, was relieved to see my luggage piled high in a corner.
So I entered once more the diurnal round of divine service, college meals, and college friendships. Such was the nature of the place that, as soon as I had settled myself in my rooms, I felt a resurgence of my old life. I sought out the company of Horace Lang, who had known Bysshe before my own arrival at Oxford; together we walked by the Thames towards Binsey, or towards Godstow, and speculated about our poet. Lang had heard nothing from him since Bysshe’s forced departure from the college, and so I enlightened him about the radical meetings in London. It was with a feeling of some excitement, then, that we learned of the imminent arrival of Mr. Coleridge as a lecturer in the Welsh Hall in Cornmarket Street. His poetry was already known to me, of course, partly through Lyrical Ballads and partly through my own earnest enquiries into the political and economic science of the day. Ever since I had begun reading his essays in the Friend, I had entertained a vast respect for his intellectual powers no less than for his mental agility that seemed to surmount every challenge.
The series of lectures he was about to undertake was entitled “The Course of English Poetry,” and on the evening of the first lecture the Welsh Hall was packed to suffocation with the young men of the university. When Mr. Coleridge walked upon the platform he seemed unwell; he had a hectic flush upon his cheeks but otherwise his complexion was pale. He appeared older than I had imagined, unless his hair were preternaturally white, and his hands shook as he approached the rostrum. He was by no means ill favoured, having the open visage of a child, but there was an indefinable languor about him that suggested sloth or lack of will.
“Gentlemen,” he said, taking some papers from the pocket of his jacket, “you must forgive my frailty. I have recently returned from a long journey, during which my health has suffered. But I pray and hope that the mind is untouched by the tortures of the body.” At this the audience hurrahed and, given the generosity of the reception, Coleridge seemed to be eased. He began talking from his notes on the roots of English poetry in the Anglo-Saxon bards, but it was laboured stuff. He had no real enthusiasm for these subjects. Sensing the restlessness of his audience, I think, he laid aside his papers and began to speak warmly and spontaneously about the genius of the language itself. He had an inspired eye, if I may put it that way, and seemed able to catch sight of phrases and sentences before he uttered them. He spoke of language possessing an organic rather than a mechanical form; he extolled its active agency, as an instrument of the imagination, and declared that “man creates the world in which he lives.” I noted down one sentiment in particular that interested me immensely. “ Newton,” he said, “claimed that his theories were created by experiment and observation. Not so. They were created by his mind and imagination.” Coleridge no longer seemed weary, and in the fire of his utterance his countenance had become ennobled; he spoke very freely, with a sibilance that was strangely appealing, and he used his gestures to great effect. “Under the impress of the imagination,” he went on, “nature is instinct with passion and with change. It is altered-it is moved-by human perception.” In what sense did he mean “moved”? Did it simply denote change, or could it be construed as the sensation of pity or of joy?
I believe that these sentiments were quite novel to the audience assembled in the Welsh Hall, and they listened with keen anticipation. Coleridge seemed to be exalted by their attention, and I noticed that the hectic flush upon his cheeks had been succeeded by a radiance of-I know not what-of belief, of self-belief. “All knowledge,” he said, “rests on the coincidence of a subject with an object in living unity. We must discover the in-dwelling and living ground of all things. In that procedure, we may render the mind intuitive of the spiritual.”
I was greatly encouraged by his words, since I pursued my own researches with the firm conviction that all life was one and that the same spirit of existence breathed through all created forms. These were almost the very words that Coleridge himself then used, when he stepped towards us from behind the rostrum, and declared that “everything has a life of its own, and we are all one life.” There was some scattered applause at this, although his sentiments were so far from the usual that many could not follow their path or, rather, their ascent. I had never seen a man so transformed by the power of utterance, so that it would not have seemed to me at all surprising if he had ascended to the ceiling in an act of apotheosis. He spoke eloquently of Shakespeare, and of the dramatist’s words bringing the whole soul of man into activity, and then proceeded with an improvised celebration of the imagination itself. I wished that Bysshe had been with me at this hour. “The primary imagination,” Coleridge said, “I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a representation in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation.” So men could become like gods. Was that his meaning? What can be imagined, can be formed into the image of truth. The vision could be created.
I walked back to my rooms in a state of great excitement, while explaining to Lang the importance of Coleridge’s lecture.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked me, “that you are willing to test your wildest fantasies?”
“The imagination is the strongest possible power. Do you not recall that Adam dreamed, and that when he awoke he found it truth?”
“In the same narrative, Victor, there is a warning against the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.”
“Are we to be prevented from reaching up to the branch? Surely not.”
“I am a mere student of theology.”
“Where there is nothing more to learn?”
“The ways of God are infinite. But I do not share your-”
“Ambition?”
“Craving. Your fierce desire to explore unknown ways. You have spoken to me of the forbidden knowledge of the adepts. Of the ancient conjurors.”
“Not conjurors. Philosophers. Men of science.”
“Of the secreta secretorum of their arts. And I must say that I have been alarmed.”
“My dear Lang, there are people alarmed by Faraday and by Mesmer. All new forms of thought and practice provoke disquiet. What did Coleridge just say to us? Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed. Faraday has awa
kened dead limbs with his electrical fluid. Mesmer has relieved suffering invalids of all pain. Is that not an alteration in nature’s laws?”
“It cannot lead to good.”
“Is the passage from death to life not good? Is the alleviation of pain not good? Come now. You must think like a man, Horace, not like a theologian.”
We fell into silence, my companion uttering a subdued farewell as we parted from each other in the quad, but I climbed my staircase with a light heart. Coleridge’s valedictory words, on the shaping role of the imagination, had aroused my enthusiasm to such a pitch that I could think of nothing else. I mixed myself a hot collation of rum and milk, a legacy from my days in Chamonix, and then retired to bed with a fixed determination to rise early and to pitch myself into my studies.
When I placed my head on the pillow, however, I did not sleep; nor could I be said to think of anything in particular. My mind was like a canvas on which a succession of images passed. Once, when I had been ill of a fever in Chamonix, the same sensation had possessed me; it was as if my imagination had become my guide, leading me forward in a direction over which I had no possible control. As I lay in my bed in Oxford I saw Elizabeth, as she would have been had she still been in life; there were pictures of my father climbing steadily, along the side of a vast glacier that threatened to overwhelm him; there were pictures of Bysshe, fleeing across an open plain with a girl in his arms. And then, most tremendous of all, I saw myself kneeling by the bed of some gigantic shadowy form. This bed was my bed, and the shape was stretched out upon it. Yet I could not be sure of its nature. Then it began to show signs of life, and to stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.
I must have lapsed into sleep, for I can then only recall a sequence of sounds like some roll of drums in the prelude to an opera. I heard a gate creaking upon its hinges and then swinging back, a number of heavy steps, a key turning and then a door opening. I opened my eyes in terror, to find Florence entering the room. “You will miss the service, Mr. Frankenstone,” she was saying. “You must rouse yourself.”
Never had I washed and dressed myself with such relief, to find the phantasms of the night quite dispersed. I rushed down into chapel, where I saw Lang blinking and yawning as if he had not slept at all. I was about to join him in hall for breakfast, after the service, when the porter brought over to me a note. “This has been left for you, sir,” he said. “Just this morning.”
There was a message scrawled in pencil on a small sheet of paper torn from a notebook: May I see you? I am by the bridge at the end of the street. It was signed by Daniel Westbrook.
I HURRIED DOWN THE HIGH STREET to Magdalen Bridge. He was waiting for me on the parapet, looking down at the green ooze of the Cherwell. “Thank goodness you are here,” he said as soon as he saw me hastening towards him. “Good day to you, Mr. Frankenstein.”
“Good morning, Daniel. I hardly expected to see you in Oxford.”
“I travelled on the overnight coach. You are the only one I know-”
“What has happened?”
“Harriet has vanished.”
“What?”
“We believe that she has eloped with Mr. Shelley. There is no sign of either of them. Mr. Frankenstein, they are not married!”
“Pause a moment. Go back. How do you know that she has gone?”
“All her possessions have been taken away, including her precious books. Of course I went immediately to Mr. Shelley’s rooms.”
“Where are these rooms?”
“In Aldgate. He moved there to be closer to us. But he had gone. His landlady said that he had entered a carriage with a young woman, and that he had taken his portmanteau with him. Her description was that of Harriet. They have fled, Mr. Frankenstein. My father is in a weakened state. My sisters are dreadfully upset. What shall we do? My first thought was of you.”
“We shall stay very calm. No progress will be made in a state of excitement.” I took his arm, and we walked back towards my college. “You will have some tea with me, and revive yourself. Look how cold you are.”
“I was sitting outside during the journey. The wind was very fresh.”
“Come back to my rooms then. We will make our plans.”
WHEN WE WERE SETTLED, and the kettle warming by the hearth, Daniel explained the course of events since my departure for Switzerland four months before. Bysshe had continued to tutor Harriet, in his rooms at Poland Street, and within a few weeks there had grown up a friendship between them. That is when he had moved to Aldgate, so that she could have further lessons with him without the inconvenience of travelling across London. Harriet had no chaperone, of course, since her sisters were obliged to work; but there had been no sign of any intimacy. “Harriet would repeat to me what she had learned each day,” Daniel said. “Mr. Shelley had introduced her to the Greek poets and philosophers, but he had also acquainted her with what he called the new spirit. He read to her from the Lake poets and, in her words, guided her through wild and magical landscapes. I really do believe, Mr. Frankenstein, that she was a changed person. I had never seen her so animated, so bold.”
“And then?”
“I had not the slightest suspicion, as I said, of any connection other than that of teacher and pupil. I would not have dreamed of anything else. The gulf between them was too wide. Mr. Shelley is the son of a baronet whereas Harriet-well-she is merely the daughter of Mr. Westbrook.”
“There must have been an occasion-”
“No. Never. Not until she had fled.”
I rose, and went over to the window. “He is hardly likely to have come to Oxford. Of all places on earth, this is the one he most detests. He could not have returned to his father. That would be unthinkable. Did you enquire at the principal coach offices?”
“I went to Snow Hill and Aldersgate. They had not been seen. I even walked out to Knightsbridge, in case they had tried to avoid pursuit, but there had been no sign of them.”
“They may have gone to some other part of London.”
“In which case, we are lost.”
“This is what I will do. I will write to him, and address the letter to his father’s house. He will not have gone there, but he may have sent a message. It is the only possible means of reaching him. You must return to London, Daniel, in case your sister tries to communicate with you. Try the other coaches.”
“There is an office in Bishopsgate. And in the Tottenham Court Road. What was he thinking? Harriet is still young-”
“Be cheerful. I do not believe that Bysshe is guilty of any dishonourable action.”
I HAD RETAINED MY FAITH in Bysshe and that evening, after Daniel had gone back to London, I began a letter to him in which I wrote broadly of my own affairs. It was possible that it might be opened and read by his father, for whom he professed the most invincible dislike, and so I refrained from mentioning his removal from Oxford and his attachment to Harriet Westbrook. Instead I told him of my journey to Geneva, of the death of my sister and my father, and ended with an appeal to him for news of his own travels over the past months.
Yet I had no need to send it. The following afternoon a letter was delivered by the London carrier. It was from Bysshe, announcing in the most abrupt fashion that he had taken Harriet from Whitechapel for the simple reason that her father “was persecuting her in the most horrible way” and was about to force her return to the spice factory. She had spoken of suicide, and had clamoured for Bysshe’s “protection.” That was his word. He had felt obliged to rescue her in her distress, and to take her beyond the reach of her father’s anger. In a hurried postscript he asked me for funds. It seems that his detested father had stopped his allowance, and he had scarcely the means to live.
Bysshe had inscribed his address at the end of the letter-a house in Queen’s Square-and at once I wrote back, offering him the use of my rooms in Jermyn Street and enclosing a note for the payment of fifty guineas at Coutts. I also urged him to communicate with Daniel Westbrook, and explain the circumstances of his
sister’s sudden departure. I had no doubt that Bysshe’s intentions were as honourable as he described them. He was, in a sense, my mentor. So I experienced the noble sense of a duty well performed, and secretly congratulated myself on my liberality to my friend.
Imagine my surprise and horror, therefore, when three days later I received a further letter from London. It came from Daniel Westbrook, who had received a note from Bysshe. He was now writing to inform me, as he put it, that Mr. Shelley and Harriet had absconded to Edinburgh, with the help of the money I had given them, where they intended to be married.
My bewilderment was followed by anger. I believed that Bysshe had betrayed my trust, not only in asking money for such a purpose but also in concocting the story of Harriet’s despair. He had lied to me under the most shameful circumstances.
I took the letter Bysshe had sent to me, and tore off a small piece of it. I put it in my mouth and swallowed it. Systematically I reduced the paper to shreds, and devoured every one of them.
8
I HAD ALREADY RETURNED TO MY EXPERIMENTS with renewed enthusiasm after the long absence from my studies. My anger at Bysshe prompted me to work ever more arduously, and to shun all human company so that I could lose myself in my pursuits. I felt myself to be truly alone, having been so signally betrayed by one whom I looked upon as friend and companion. I purchased electrical apparatus from a manufacturer in Mill Street, but I soon realised that the scale of his work was not sufficient. I had made some advances. I had acquainted myself with the coroner of Oxford, a former student of my college. I explained to him that my studies required the use of human specimens, and after some reflection on the matter he agreed to help me in the cause of the advancement of science. He was himself an explorer of natural phenomena, having become interested in geological speculation and the structure of the earth, and so he sympathised with my desire to seek out the sources of life in the human frame. I promised to bring him some Alpine rocks after my next visit to Geneva.
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein Page 8