The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

10

I WAS DOZING BY THE FIRESIDE, in my apartments at Jermyn Street, when I was roused by a sudden rapping at the street door. I scarcely had time to prepare myself when Fred came into the room. “Ever so much beg your pardon, sir, but there is a Fish to see you.”

“Whatever are you saying, Fred?”

“That’s what I asked him, sir. But he kept on saying, ‘Fish, Fish.’ I told him we had a fishmonger just down the street.”

At that moment Bysshe rushed into the room, bursting past Fred and embracing me with all the fervour and animation I remembered.

“My dear fellow,” I said, “I thought you were living in the North.”

“I have returned to warmer climes, Victor. To my friends.” He stepped back and looked at me. “Are you angry with me?”

“I was. Yes. I admit. Very. But now that I see you, I cannot be angry.”

“I am glad of it. You know, Victor, I can return the fifty guineas. My dreaded father has paid my allowance.”

“No need. No need at all.”

He resumed his gaze at me for a moment. “Why did you not write to me that you were ill?”

“ Ill? I have never felt better in my life. I am in perfect health.” He seemed perplexed. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Bysshe.”

“There is a change in your countenance, Victor. I cannot be deceived in that.”

“Well. Youth turns to age. Think no more of it.” I tried to remain cheerful and composed. “Where are you staying in London?”

“Harriet and I have found rooms in Soho. Back to our old haunts, Victor.”

“And how is Harriet?”

“She is well. She is thriving.” He laughed. “She is swelling in the most peculiar manner.”

“Do you mean-?” He nodded. “Very well done, Bysshe!”

“I am not the one to be congratulated. It is the woman who carries the burden. But I must confess to some pride in creating life.”

“It must be an exhilarating sensation.”

“I am reciting poetry to the unborn babe, Victor, so that in the womb it will become accustomed to sweet sounds. And Harriet sings lullabies. She swears that it soothes the child.”

Fred knocked upon the door, and entered the room with a flask of brandy spirit. “It has struck five,” he said.

Bysshe looked at the liquor in surprise. “You drink brandy now, Victor?”

“It soothes the child. Will you join me? We will raise a glass to companionship.”

Bysshe was eager to explain his schemes of future happiness. He wished to start a little community in Wales devoted to the principles of equality and justice; he was intent upon writing an epic poem on the subject of the legendary Arthur; he wished to travel to Ireland to assist in the project for freedom. I understood that he had found a new favourite in Mr. Godwin, the philosopher. He had sought him out, and had already visited him in a charming house in Somers Town. Then once more he gave me a quick, watchful glance. “And you, Victor, what is your news?”

“I am experimenting still. I am testing the capacity of the electrical fluid. I am measuring its strength.”

“Wonderful! You are going to its limits, as we used to discuss?”

“I remember that we used to speak of electrical kites and balloons. I am not so much in the air now, Bysshe. I am in the earth.” I had no desire to explain my work, until it had reached a successful conclusion, and so I discussed with him the generalities of electrical science. He was as impetuous, and as eager to learn, as he had always been. I had never encountered anyone who was so filled with animated and spirited life.

“You will come and visit us then?” he asked me as he was about to take his leave. “Harriet will be overjoyed to see you.”

“Of course. Whenever you wish.”

He embraced me, and a few moments later I heard his light rapid steps upon the stairs. I heard him speaking to Fred, but could not understand what he said. I went to the window and looked down into Jermyn Street; he was walking quickly through the throng, but then he glanced up at my window. For some reason I stepped back.

Fred came in to clear away the glasses. “That friend of yours,” he said, “is curious enough. He asked me if you were in good health. I say yes. He asked if you were eating well. I say yes. He asked if you was drinking. I say yes and no. Then he opens the door for himself, although I was right behind him, and then he rushes out like a squib.”

“What do you mean, Fred, yes and no?”

“Yes, he drinks. And no, he don’t drink in that way.” He pretended to stagger and fall.

“It is good of you to say so.”

“Thank you, sir. I do my best.”

I HAD NO INTENTION of visiting Bysshe and Harriet while my work continued. I could no more prepare myself for society than if I had spent the past months in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. Ever since the resurrectionists had first visited me at Limehouse they had plied a busy trade. I had more need than ever of their services since I was intent upon testing every fibre and muscle of the human frame for its electrical potential. I had learned that the muscles of the leg were at first most resistant to the power, but that a slight repositioning of the metal strip above the tarsal bone worked wonders with movement and flexibility. The bones and ligaments of the human hand were highly responsive to the electrical fluid, and I discovered that a slight contact with the various carpal bones set off a frenzy of fluttering and trembling. The carotidal and vertebral arteries were also a source of much satisfaction to me, being highly delicate and flexible when charged. So by degrees I devised an electrical map of the human body.

I had more success than I expected on the transplantation of limbs. I believed that all the emanations of the human body possessed an innate living principle, seeking as well as manifesting life, taking energy and animation from whatever source was available. The late John Hunter had excelled at what he called the transplanting of teeth, from the mouth of a healthy young sweep to the decaying jaw of a London merchant, and I saw no reason to deny the principle to the arm or to the leg. In the Limehouse workshop I removed two arms from the body of a young man by means of surgical amputation, and then quickly stitched them onto the torso of an elderly specimen who, as Boothroyd informed me, had expired of the dropsy. When I applied the electrical charge the hands and forearms worked as if they were in perfect order, with no sign of dropsical trembling; he continued to clench his fists, and raise his palms outward, for the duration of the experiment. When I repeated the procedure, I observed the same movements executed with a slight increase of motion. I was curious to see the extent of the change if I altered the rate and rapidity of the charge, and to my surprise the hands began to communicate with each other-so to speak-by the touching of the fingertips. There was a defined pattern of movement, so much like sign language that I had the strangest sensation of being signalled by the cadaver in front of me. Was it possible that the young man, whose hands and arms had been severed, was skilled in the gestures of the dumb?

My principal concern was with the cerebrum, and with the excitation of sight, hearing and speech. I had isolated the electrical lobe, and in a series of trials I endeavoured to trace the paths of its influence. Much to my delight I soon discovered that it affected the visual and aural nerves equally, and that the vocal cords were stimulated by the charging of the arytenoid cartilages. I had assumed the larynx to be the responsible agent, but I was wrong. The experiments with hearing were most rewarding. Once the lobe was in an alert state I fired my blunderbuss beside the right ear of the subject; the head jerked to one side, away from the noise. On another occasion I began to whisper, and the head moved forward a fraction towards me. With sight the effects were less distinct. The eyes always opened in a state of electrical excitation, but sometimes they were so dull of hue that I could detect no evidence of a visual ray. In what I deemed to be the more intelligent subjects, however, there was a definite reaction to various stimuli. When I lit a candle in front of the eyes of one cadaver, there was a detectable movement of the pupil; when I blew out the light the pupil dilated. In one experiment I held before the eyes of one young specimen, scarcely more than a boy, a little struggling mouse; his eyes became fixed upon the creature, in the same manner as those of some cadaverous animal intent upon its prey.

In the course of these trials I noticed that, in the corpses of the younger specimens, the phallus became erect at the slightest excitation and remained in a state of alertness for the duration of the electrical charge. In the older bodies this did not occur. My work on the phallus was at first confined to an examination of the three columns of erectile tissue, but I then advanced to an attempt at the measurement of the spermal fluid. By means of the firm pressure of my fingers I brought one body to a state of ejaculation, at which point there came a groan; but no spermatozoa appeared. There was no fluid, but there was instead a sprinkling of material with the appearance and consistency of dust. It may have been a principle of nature that the dead could not bring forth new life. I was not sure, but I was determined to continue the experiment.

As the weeks passed, and the London autumn turned to bitter winter, I was still more ardent in execution and more impatient of difficulties. I was exhausting bodies at a great rate; I kept some of them in the ice-house which I had fashioned in the basement space of the old manufactory, while I discharged others into the Thames with the knowledge that the full tide would carry them downstream where they would join the score of other corpses taken up by the sheriffs of Blackwall or Woolwich; there was a promontory at North Woolwich known as Deadman’s Point, to which many of the bodies of the drowned used to drift. Many more would find their way by stages to the open sea, where all prospect of discovery was of course abandoned. There were a few specimens that I placed in a pit of lime I had created, between the foreshore and my workshop, where the action of the dissolvent soon removed all traces of their existence.

If you ask me if I had any qualms about the nature of my profession, I would answer you with a solemn denial. I did not rank myself with the herd of common projectors, nor did I consider myself to be in the least tainted by my association with the bodies of the dead. There were occasions when I experienced the pains of solitude, of course, and there came upon my mind a sense of loneliness all the more acute from my presence in the teeming city. Solitude is like despair: it has no remedy. The death of Elizabeth had only confirmed what I believed to be my fate in the world. One afternoon I picked up by chance in a coffee-house a copy of the Monthly Magazine and came upon a poem by Bysshe. My attention was immediately arrested by its opening lines:

Youth of tumultuous soul, and haggard eye!

Thy wasted form, thy hurried steps I view

On thy wan forehead starts the lethal dew

And oh! the anguish of that shuddering sigh!

Beside it was a commentary, in smaller type: His countenance told in a strange and terrible language of agonies that had been, and were, and were still to continue to be. I could not help but recall Bysshe’s look of concern when he came to my apartments, but of course I could not credit him with any prophetic skills.

It was in this period that I began my night walks. I pursued the loneliest and most silent ways, but there were moments when I believed that I could hear footsteps behind me echoing on the cobbles. I would start and look over my shoulder, expecting to see a form or the shadow of a form; but I saw nothing at all. The nights of London are gloomy enough, with all of its miserable lives pent up close together, but for a melancholy man they are an emanation or reflection of his own fearfulness. That was at least how I considered them. In the rain I saw strange shapes moving through the streets, obscure and dark, as if they were carrying burdens. On moonlit nights every sound seemed to be magnified, and a sudden cry or laugh would make me shudder. On such nights, too, the shadows were longer and more intense. Sometimes I stopped on the threshold of a courtyard, or an alley, and peered into the darkness; then a figure would suddenly appear, or pass quickly from one corner to another, and I would step back.

Yet, curiously enough, the night became my home. In the light of day I found myself to be dazed and weary; looking up at the faces of strangers, I sensed hostility and resentment and a thinly veiled contempt. Was this because I possessed a foreign manner? I cannot say. I know only that at night I felt more free. I wandered abroad, through streets of sinister aspect, without the slightest danger of being questioned; I sensed the power of the night, too, when the wildness of the city was manifest.

One dark night I found myself in Wellclose Square, looking down at the emaciated figure of a young man clad in nothing but the filthiest rags. I did not think to touch him, but I leaned over him as he lay upon the uneven stones. He was not sleeping. He opened his eyes. “You have found me,” he said. “You know me by the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Look at me.” He parted the rags across his chest, and I could see that his body was covered with welts and blisters of blood; the stench from the wounds was insupportable, and I turned away. “I am the chosen one,” he said, “and you are my disciple.”

I walked out of Wellclose Square, and with a shudder returned to my rooms in Jermyn Street.

I HAD NOW THE SETTLED DETERMINATION to create the form of a man. Could we say that a new kind of being might thereby be created, free from the imperfections of the living? My imagination was vivid enough, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of their qualities I conceived the idea and began the execution of the task. I was concentrating on the method of creating a sentient human being unencumbered by class or society or faith: it was to be Bysshe’s dream-child, so to speak, free from all the petty tyrannies of prejudice that are to be found in human society.

Where did such a person exist? Of course he existed nowhere. That was the reason, and necessity, for my creation. I believed that the component parts of an excellent human being might be found, brought together, and endued with vital warmth. I had already tested the procedure to my satisfaction, and I had succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and of life. I had achieved much, beyond my most fervent expectations, when I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The principle of union or coherency, so that all the organs and fibres of the body might work in unison, was the only one that remained to be explored. This I managed, after much weary labour and experiment, by means of a certain operation in the cerebellum.

Where was I to find the perfect frame upon which to build? There were some in the street who, when I observed them, showed signs of worth. Yet they were still in life, and thus beyond my reach. Then one evening that winter, when he arrived with his cargo, Boothroyd announced that he had a “prize” for me. “This is a good ’un,” he said. “He will be as fresh as a peach.”

“You have it here?”

“No. He ain’t dead yet.” With that he burst out laughing.

Then, with prompting from Lane and Miller, he told me the story. There was a student of St. Thomas ’s Hospital in very poor circumstances; this unfortunate young man had discovered in himself the signs of pulmonary consumption. He had coughed arterial blood into his handkerchief, and had all the signs of lassitude and debility that accompany the disorder. He knew it to be fatal, since his training with the doctors of Thomas’s and his practice among the poorer people of the area had taught him to recognise the progress of the disease. He had also nursed his brother through the stages of the phthisis. Since this young man had worked as a dresser to the surgeons Encliffe and Cato, he knew by sight the resurrectionist men; it was to him, indeed, that they consigned their load at the back steps of the hospital. He knew where they gathered, too, and two weeks previously he had approached them in the Fortune of War.

“So he comes up to us,” Boothroyd said, “as pale as a cloth. Ah, I says, there’s-”

“I do not wish to know the name,” I said.

“I ask him what he is doing in this corner of the world, and he sits down among us. ‘I have some business for you,’ he says. ‘Not perilous business.’”

He then proposed a scheme to them. The young man knew that he was dying, and that he might only have a short time to live. He appealed to the professional instincts of Boothroyd and the two others: if they paid him twenty guineas, he would allow them to take his body at the very instant of death. He required the money for his young sister, a toy-maker who would soon be alone in the world. As for him, he had no fear of being anatomised; he had witnessed the procedure too often in the surgical theatre at Guy’s Hospital to shrink from such a fate. He believed his carcass to be worth twenty guineas because it was young, sturdy and well-knit despite the ravages of the disease. He had already ventured upon the subject with his sister herself, who had agreed that the resurrectionists might occupy the little parlour beside the room where he would die. At the moment of death she would allow them to enter and take away the body of her brother. Neither of the young people had any illusions about the Christian pieties, having seen their parents and two other siblings carried off by epidemic distemper in the most painful circumstances. We are not aware of God, the young man had said.

“What age is he?”

“Tolerably young. Nineteen.”

“And you say that he is a fine specimen?”

“None finer. He is like a boxer, Mr. Frankenstein. And with a full set of teeth.”

Naturally I was excited by the prospect of obtaining such a prize-to retrieve the body moments after its death would be of incalculable benefit, and would certainly expedite the action of the electrical fluid. They told me that the young man lived with his sister near the hospital in a tenement in Carmelite Street, which was no more than yards from Broken Dock and the river; it would take them twenty minutes, with a favourable tide, to bring him to Limehouse.

“I would like to see him,” I said. “At the time you have arranged to pass him the money, I wish to be in the vicinity. Then, on my agreement, I will give you the guineas.” They consented to this, not without bargaining for a “cut” of ten further guineas for managing the transaction.

I WAITED BY THE FORTUNE OF WAR. It was a night of fierce rain, such as only London can produce. It rose like smoke all around me, and I sheltered underneath the cabmen’s stand just beyond the gate of St. Bartholomew. Boothroyd, Lane and Miller had placed themselves upon a bench by the window overlooking the gate; they had also taken the precaution of placing an oil-lamp on the table in front of them, so that despite the rain I could clearly see their features and gestures. Then I noticed a young man crossing the square, holding his cloak against the driving rain; he walked quickly and purposefully, with no sign of any weakness, but paused for a moment before entering the inn. I saw him for a moment in the flickering light outside the tavern. He had dark curling hair, and in that moment when I saw his bright eyes and full mouth I recognised that this was Jack Keat. He had worked with me in the dissection room of St. Thomas ’s Hospital. Then he entered the Fortune of War. I crept closer to the window, and watched with dismay as he came up to the resurrectionists and joined them. He seemed uneasy in their company-a circumstance that did not in the least surprise me-but he smiled and said something to Lane. At that moment Boothroyd looked at me through the window. I had told him to expect me there. I nodded, and put up my right hand. That was the signal arranged between us. He came outside and, without saying a word, I passed him the purse of guineas. What else could I have done? The imminent death of Jack troubled and saddened me but, as he had told me himself, we must take courage in the pursuit of our researches. The enlightenment and improvement of the world depended upon human valour. That was what he had said. Was I now to abandon his, and my, beliefs for the sake of my conscience? Yet there was still the possibility-the likelihood-that my electrical treatment would restore him to life. Would he live to smile and to laugh, to walk again with the same quick step? This was not known to me, or to any other being in the world.

I went back to Jermyn Street, where Fred prepared for me the mixture of saloop that always had a curiously soothing effect upon me. I asked him about the business of the day, and he informed me that three brides had married three brothers in the church of St. James across the street, and that the old man who sold the birds on the corner had dropped dead. The birds had not escaped, but had stayed quiet within their little wicker cages. “Nothing else,” he said, “has happened in London.” I was pleased to hear it, and prepared myself for bed in equable spirits-fully aware, naturally, of the great experiment that lay ahead of me. I could not calculate how long Jack Keat might live, but his pale features were a token of his gathering sickness.

I TRAVELLED DOWN TO LIMEHOUSE that morning in a carriage. I took care to hire a different cab each day, so far as this was possible, in order to avoid any easy recognition. The people of Limehouse I never saw. I always alighted by an empty brick warehouse, built between the river and a lonely path that went across the marshes of the neighbourhood. From there it was a swift journey to my workshop across the debris of the foreshore, where only the gulls observed me with suspicious eyes. There was a path that led from my workshop into the settlement at Limehouse itself, but over the months I had rendered it intractable and even dangerous. I had placed broken glass, and wooden posts, and various pieces of river wreckage, across the track so that no horse or carriage would wish to venture there. The bargees of Limehouse had their own jetty further downstream, and had no reason to cross this land. I had also placed notices saying Private on its boundaries. The only true means of access to my workshop, therefore, was by water.

Despite the winter chill I stood upon my wooden quay, wrapped in my greatcoat. I had taken to smoking a pipe, in the manner of the Londoners, and I waited expectantly for any sight or sound of the resurrectionists. Of course I had no hope that their work would be so summarily executed-the young man had walked before me only the evening before-but I was so eager to begin my operation that I could think of nothing else. I had prepared the electrical columns with all the diligence that Hayman had demanded, and according to his strict injunctions, but then in my enforced idleness of waiting I conceived the idea of experimenting upon myself.

A moment’s thought would have convinced me of the rashness of my plan; but I was seized with a sudden desire to feel the electrical fluid in as intimate a manner as possible. What was the sensation when it coursed through the fibres and muscles of the body, illuminating and energising every pathway? I was not so lunatic as to test the whole of my body, but instead I placed a metallic band upon my wrist and a small cap or thimble of brass upon each of my fingertips; I chose a relatively low level of current but, even so, when I turned on the column I was at once surrounded by what I can only call a flash of lightning. I had never witnessed this as an observer, so I surmised that the lightning could only be seen by the subject. It lasted no more than two or three seconds, but it seemed to me to have a wave-like pattern. It resembled a curtain of light being shaken.

As the sensation passed I became aware that my hand was trembling violently with some voluntary impulse: it wished to do something and quite by instinct I took up the pen and paper which I always kept by my equipment. My hand seized the pen and immediately began to write in a large and florid manner that I did not recognise as my own. It was the strangest communication I had ever received. I cannot think of external things as having an external existence, it wrote, and I commune with everything I see as something not apart from but inherent in my own nature. To feel is to exist. Then my hand rested, only to begin again with the same florid and energetic motion. I am suspended among uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any recourse to fact or reason. At this point I decided to remove, with my free hand, the metal band and the thimbles of brass.

I was perfectly astonished at the outcome of the experiment, and for the next few minutes I wandered around the workshop in a feverish state of excitation. From whom, or where, had these words sprung? Clearly they derived from me in some occluded way. But I had never represented them to myself or, as far as I was aware, ever dreamed of conceiving them. What secret voice was manifesting itself within the power of the electrical fluid? I banged my fist against the wooden side-table by my chair, and at once it splintered into fragments. I seemed to have acquired some fresh access of strength. I went over to the wooden door that separated two of the rooms of the workshop, and with immense ease I struck and shattered one of its panels. I examined my hand with interest, and saw that it was perfectly unharmed by its exertions. I tested it upon the cast-iron stairway leading down into the basement, and realised at once that it was of immense power. The electrical fluid had strengthened it immeasurably, so that I was now capable of curling in my fist a portion of the iron fabric. My other hand retained its normal strength. “I must make sure,” I said aloud, “that I do not shake hands with anyone.” This was a new power of unutterable consequence. If I had electrified the whole of my body, I would have been resurrected as a being of vast strength. And what of Jack Keat who would soon be entering the workshop? Would he also be endowed with supernatural might?

It was with some relief, I admit, that I felt my hand gradually revert to its state of normal strength; but not without a sensation of painful cramp that lasted for several minutes and caused me agonies of suffering. I could neither flex nor extend it, but laid it down upon the table while it passed through its transition. Eventually the pain abated. I tested my fingers and palm, and found them receptive to ordinary stimuli with no great increase of strength. I did not wish to inflict any pain upon my subject, of course, but I solaced myself with the knowledge that it would not be of any long duration. And surely the dead would react differently from the living?

A week after the experiment I had gone out onto the jetty to witness the effects of a London storm; it was a winter’s tale indeed, with great peals of thunder echoing down the chasms and the caverns of the streets while the lightning flash lit up the steeples of the churches and the dome of St. Paul ’s. The spectacle of the awful and majestic in nature has always the effect of solemnising my mind, especially when it was here so mixed with the haunts of men. All then becomes one life. My reverie was broken by the sight of a small boat making its way to the jetty; the heavy swell and the departing tide seemed to make it ride across the water, and I feared for the safety of its solitary occupant. But he seemed to be a skilful boatman and, when he came closer to the foreshore, I saw that it was Lane. “You have come on a foul night,” I said to him as I helped him to secure the rope around the landing post.

“I have never known such a night as this. Boothroyd sent me.” I gained the impression that Boothroyd’s commands were to be respected.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing the matter. The boy is going fast. It will be tomorrow or tomorrow night. Be prepared for your body.” He asked me for a flask of brandy spirit, which I willingly gave him, and he drank half of it down before venturing once more upon the Thames. The lightning flash seemed to accompany him onto the water, and his shape was soon lost to sight in the veil of rain.

I was deeply interested by the news of Jack’s decline. He would come to me within an hour of death, as fresh as if he had fallen asleep, and I would be able to restore his natural warmth and motion. I would awaken him. I had no thought beyond that first moment of resurrection, but now my imagination began to conjure visions of his wonder and gratitude at being restored to life. I busied myself in the workshop, preparing everything for the solemn moment of the electrical charge. I must have gone out to the jetty a thousand times, braving the wind and the rain, in order to look for the resurrectionists and their cargo. I waited throughout that night-sleep was not a consideration for me-and, when dawn came, the rain ceased. All was calm and quiet. Once more I could hear the Thames lapping against the wooden posts of my jetty. Then I heard another sound-the sound of oars splashing in the water. I jumped up from my chair and ran outside to see Boothroyd and Miller rowing quickly towards the shore. Lane stood at the prow with the landing rope in his hands, and there was another person lying at the back of the boat. It was him. They had not put him in a sack but had lain him carefully in the stern: one arm was hanging over the side, its hand trailing in the water.

I could not keep my eyes from the body as Lane secured the boat. Boothroyd and Miller leapt out, and then knelt down to take it onto the jetty. “Be careful,” I murmured. “For his sake.”

“Dead only an hour ago,” Boothroyd said. “He is served up nice and fresh.”

They carried the body into the workshop, and laid it down upon the long wooden table that I had set up. Boothroyd looked upon it with a certain satisfaction, as if he had despatched him himself. “It is the neatest job I have ever done,” he said.

I paid them ten guineas, as they had requested, and they returned to their boat. I could hear them laughing as they rowed away across the water.