The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

21

THE CREATURE WAS STARING at me. With his usual agility and speed he must have climbed up to the balcony before my room, and was now waiting for me to unlock the casement. I hesitated, and he knocked quite violently upon the window. Fearing his discovery, I allowed him to enter. Now he stood before me, looking at me with what seemed to be an expression of infinite pity. “Why are you here?” I asked him.

“Where else am I to come, if I seek for a companion?”

I was overcome at once by a sense of misery and foreboding. “I had not expected to see you. Not after-”

“Marlow?” He put his hand up to his face, in a gesture of self-abasement. “I had rather be a piece of clay than what I am. Anything without sensation.”

“You feel sorrow then? And regret?”

“I do not know what I feel. I know only what I do not feel. Yes. Once I felt joy. In the first expression of my new life I felt wonder and gratitude. I was free. I looked upon the world with fresh perception of its glory. I was newborn, and in that state I felt the bliss of all creation. The hope and bliss have fled. This thing has crept into my heart, weighing me down to the dust.”

“Guilt for your crimes.”

“If you say so.”

“You have murdered two young women, for no other reason than that they were in my company.”

He turned from me, and walked back towards the window. “I wish that I had joined them.”

“Do you mean that you wish to die?”

“Look at me. Do you see me clearly? Why would I wish to live?”

“Let me understand you better.”

“I find no rest in the darkest night, or comfort in the brightest day. Is not death easy in comparison? Is it not to be desired?”

“You wish to break this pact we have? This pact of life?”

“So that I might be no more. So that I might abide in darkness and blackness and empty space.”

I bowed my head, thinking of what he might have been and what he really had become. And was there also some blame to be attached to me?

“Of all creatures, I should not be saved from death.”

“If you wish to end, then surely you could hurl yourself from the summit of a high mountain or envelop yourself in flame?”

“You know better than that. You have told me yourself. He who has died once can never die again. I have lain beneath the surface of the river, and my lungs have filled with water, yet I could not succumb. I have thrown myself from a cliff into the wild sea, but I have emerged unharmed. So I come back to you. The source. The origin of my woe.” He turned back to face me. “I know that you have repaired the electrical machines.”

“You once tried to destroy them.”

“Now they may be my deliverance.”

“How so?”

“I have been considering my plight. I do not know the precise means by which you restored me to life, but I have speculated. I have spent days and nights in meditation. I am aware of the galvanic force of the electrical fluid. That must have been your method, in some form or another. Surely you can alter the fluid accordingly and reverse the process of animation? Surely you can counteract the force?”

It astonished me that the creature had arrived at conclusions similar to my own; it was as if there were a connection between us that surpassed the ordinary powers of sympathy. It surprised and delighted me, too, that he seemed now to embrace the prospect of his own destruction. There would be no reason to deceive him with promises of a female partner. “I can work to that end,” I replied. “I can study and experiment.”

“Do not be long.”

“I will work with expedition, when I have returned to England, but you will need to be patient. You still live on the estuary?”

“In my little hut? Yes. No one comes near me.”

“Will you go back there, while I persevere in my studies?”

“Where else may I rest my head? I am a pale roamer through the night, but in the night and darkness I will remain.”

“I will find you.”

“No. I will know when you are ready. I will be there.” With these words, he left me. He went over to the window and leapt onto the balcony before vanishing into the quiet night.

I COULD NOT SLEEP. When I guessed that the others had retired I went downstairs and let myself into the garden. I was reflecting upon the creature’s words, when someone sat beside me. It was Mary. “I wish you were not leaving us, Victor. I need your company.”

“You have the others.”

“What? Byron? Polidori? They are too concerned with their own selves to consider me.” She was silent for a moment. “I am fearful for Bysshe, Victor. He has become too excitable. Too fanciful. Recall his hysterics at breakfast. When I first knew him, such behaviour would have been unthinkable. Don’t you agree? Something is weakening him. You may think that it is his marriage to me.” She went on quickly. “I do not think so.”

“It never occurred to me at all, Mary.”

“And this is also odd. He never mentioned the story of his double before. Something is preying on his mind. He is be coming light-headed with anxiety. With some fear. Or premonition, perhaps.”

“Of his fate?”

“Yes. Precisely that.”

I knew then that she feared his early death; she believed that Bysshe was acting strangely because he had some sense of his own demise. Why else had he become so interested in seances and ghosts and ghost stories? I tried to reassure her. “Surely he is excited by his travels,” I told her. “And, more especially, by the company of Byron. Bysshe has never lived in such proximity to another poet. It will affect him.”

“Do you think so? I would wish that to be true.”

“He is a delicate organism, Mary. One small touch-”

“Yes. I know. But there is something else. I also fear a disaster! Over the past month I have experienced the strongest sensations of nervous apprehension. I have believed misfortune to be close to us.”

“Do not say so.” I put my hand upon her arm. “I have noticed a change in Bysshe, too. But I think you are wrong, Mary. It is not fear. It is frustration. Unsatisfied yearning. He deems himself to be a good poet-”

“A great one.”

“I grant that. But his work is known to very few. He has no audience to delight. Not yet. In the company of Byron, whose volumes sell in their thousands, is there any wonder that he should seem ill at ease? That he should have fits of extravagant behaviour? It would be more wonder if he did not.”

“I had thought of that. But Bysshe has no worldly temper, Victor. He is all fire and air. There is no earth in him. No jealousy.”

“I was not speaking of jealousy. I know that he is not an envious man. But, you see, his words are not being received. He writes of love and liberty, but no one hears him. You can see how that would exasperate him. To be understood by so few.”

“Yes, I do see that. Perhaps you are right, Victor. It may be that his friendship with Byron does him no good. His lordship is in many ways quite thoughtless. Have you noticed that? He treats Polidori as if he were a manservant. And Polidori resents it. He resents it bitterly. I would not be at all surprised if they did soon part company.”

“And what of you and Bysshe?”

She seemed horrified. “We are not about to part!”

“No. I mean, where will you go next? If you are not happy in the villa.”

“There is some talk of Italy. Oh, I am so weary of travelling, Victor. I long for England. I long to set up a household with Bysshe. And my father. A small house in Camden would suit.” There was a sudden movement between the trees, and a rustle among the fallen leaves. She stood up and peered into the darkness. “I hate rats,” she said. “Do you mind if we return to the house?”

ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING I left them. I travelled with Fred in a hired chaise to Chamonix, high among the mountains. We observed the rocks and glaciers, we climbed the passes. I pointed out to Fred a great waterfall. “Do you see,” I said to him, “how the wind carries it away from the rocks? The fine spray of its descent passes before the mountain like a mist.”

“I see it, sir. It reminds me of fire-pumps.”

We travelled up the valley of the Arve, from Bonneville to Cerveaux, where the cataracts roared down into the river. Fred looked on, unimpressed. The summits of the mountains here were hidden in cloud but there were moments when their peaks were visible in the sky, like monuments carved by a giant race before the Flood. “Imagine standing up there,” I said to Fred. “Imagine looking down from the heights into the abyss.”

“I think, Mr. Frankenstein, you had better not do it. You would never come down again.”

“You have no poetry, Fred.”

“If it made me climb them mountains, sir, then I am better without it.”

After the journey of two days we arrived at my old family house in Chamonix; it was locked and bolted, under the care of an old custodian, Eugene, but I managed to arouse him after repeated knocking on the doors and windows. He was astonished to see me, arriving unannounced after so long an absence, and began to talk in a distracted fashion about my father’s wish that I should one day move back.

“That is for the future,” I told him. “For the present, can you make up the beds? My boy will sleep in your quarters.”

He seemed to take kindly to Fred, and I watched them that evening in the garden feeding the squirrels. I saw Eugene pointing to the glacier above Chamonix which each year advanced several feet, leaving a trail of split and shattered pines. I had observed that glacier since childhood, and it had become for me a symbol of overwhelming cataclysm. As a student I had read Buffon’s prophecy that at some future period the world would be changed into a mass of ice and frost. Who could deny the power of a frozen world? Nature held within itself the seeds of destruction, utterly vast and waste. I had grown up among desolation.

ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING I set off by myself to the small cemetery of Chamonix where my sister and father were buried. They had been placed in the same grave, with Frankenstein etched on the marble tomb. I bowed my head in sorrow, but I could not help but consider the peacefulness of death. It was akin to innocence. All around me was the whiteness of the mountains, with Mont Blanc towering among them; the light of the sun struck their pinnacles, and the brightness became intense-almost intolerable. I closed my eyes for a moment. In that moment death, and the light, came together.

I came back from the cemetery with my faith renewed in the power of the sublime. I was filled with a sense of purpose. I would return to London, and test the electrical fluid. I would alleviate the suffering of the creature by returning it to nonentity.

“We are going back,” I said to Fred as soon as I entered the house.

“To the villa?” He looked downcast.

“No. To London.”

I saw him later doing a little jig in the garden.

THE JOURNEY WAS SLOW and laborious. By the end of the first week, we were thoroughly exhausted. Then we faced the rigours of the sea, where we lay becalmed for two days before a friendly wind sent us towards England. I had never been more thankful, when we passed the Nore and began our short voyage up the Thames. The flat lands of the estuary lay around us on both shores, and of course I looked with keen attention towards the region where I believed the creature to live. But all seemed waste and wild. The contrast with the Alpine region from which we had come could not be more marked: there was no grandeur here, no sublimity, only weariness and gloom. Perhaps that is why the creature, immured in the marshes, had tired of life.

We passed Limehouse, and I could see the workshop pale in the twilight.

The tide was coming in, and we floated with it towards London Bridge. On our arrival in Jermyn Street Fred unpacked the baggage and prepared for me a bowl of sassafras which, he said, was a restorative after travelling. I must say that I felt the welcome relief of the hot milk, but my peace was suddenly disturbed by a sharp exclamation from him. “What!” he shouted. “What do you want?” Then he threw one of my boots into a corner. “A mouse!” he said. “It has crept here while we were away!” He went over to the corner and peered down onto the floor. “I have killed it.”

“Well, throw it out of the window.”

“I do not like to touch it.”

“You are happy to murder it. But you are afraid to touch it. What is the matter with you?”

“I do not like the thought of dead things coming alive, sir. It might seem dead, but what if it were to wriggle in my hands?”

I opened the window and looked out into the night. I could smell the coal and charcoal from the domestic fires. Then I went over to the corner, picked up the mouse, and threw it down into the street. “There now. All your terror has gone. Would you prepare my bed?”

ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING I was about to set off for Limehouse, eager to test my new theory concerning the electrical charge, when Fred announced a visitor. Polidori entered the room, visibly excited, and flung himself down in a chair without invitation. “You are surprised to see me, Frankenstein? I hoped to find you here. You did not return to the villa, so I guessed that you had gone back. I could stand it no longer. Byron has become insufferable, and the poor Shelleys seem to follow his bidding in everything. I got back last night.” He was speaking in a disjointed manner. “You know that Byron is a danger?”

“I have my doubts about him.”

“Doubts? Certainties. He has seduced one of the girls in the neighbourhood of the villa, and the people there are ready to lynch him. His temper has become unbearable. He screams at the servants, and has abused Shelley to his face.”

“In what way?”

“He called him a doodler and an unknown scribbler.”

“And how did Shelley respond?”

“He went pale. Then he turned away and walked out of the room. I could take no more of it, Frankenstein. I left without warning, in case Byron should try and prevent me. When I last saw him he was on one of his drunken sprees, wandering in the garden and slashing at the trees with his cane.”

“Your laudanum would have calmed him.”

“You cannot give an opiate to a madman. It fuels his madness.”

“You think him insane?”

“Deranged. Degraded. Whatever word you wish.”

“No, Polidori. Madness is silent and secret. Don’t you think so? This ebullition of temper is the sign of an oversensitive constitution. Nothing more.”

“Whatever the cause of his lordship’s frenzy, I do not wish to witness it. So I have come back.”

“Do you have lodgings?”

“No.” He looked at me almost defiantly.

“Where are you going to stay?”

“I was hoping, Frankenstein, that I might stay with you.”

I could think of no convenient excuse for the moment. “Here?”

“This is where you live, is it not? I know that you have room to spare.”

In the course of that day, then, the bold and resourceful Polidori moved into Jermyn Street. There was a small room at the back that, he said, fitted him admirably. When I broke the news to Fred, he merely rolled his eyes.

“The doctor will be welcome, will he not?” I asked him.

“Oh yes, sir. Ever so welcome. I hope he eats cutlets.”

WHEN POLIDORI WAS SETTLED, I told him that I was obliged to return to my work. He nodded. He seemed to require no further explanation. So at twilight I travelled east to Limehouse. I had locked and bolted the workshop, to prevent the intrusion of neighbours, and I had barred the windows to forestall inquisitive eyes. So everything had remained untouched. I began at once to charge the electrical columns, and I was pleased to see them glow with new life. Within a few hours I was able to begin my experiments in altering the direction of the electrical fluid; I observed, for example, that by changing the position of the metallic plates and circuits that surrounded the columns, there was some momentary deflection in the fluid. I continued this work late into the night, but I could achieve nothing further. I needed greater force than any I could yet summon. I surmised, too, that I needed to discover another source of electrical attraction that would bend the fluid to its will. All this lay ahead of me.

I decided to walk back to Jermyn Street, hoping to clear my head in the quiet hour before dawn. Yet a strong wind had risen. As I walked through the streets, every falling leaf seemed to cast its shadow as it was dashed to the ground by the wind. I could see my own shadow, too, against the brickwork. It was bent forward, hastening onwards as if it had an existence of its own. And then once more he was walking beside me. He said nothing to me, but matched me pace for pace. “I have kept my promise,” he said at last in that clear sweet voice I had come to know so well. “You see. I will always be closer to you than you can imagine.” He stood still, and waited until I had taken a few steps further down the street. When I turned around, he had gone.

WHEN I ARRIVED in Jermyn Street, I was surprised to find Polidori in my study.

“My apologies, Victor. I wandered to your room quite by chance. I am in a wandering vein.” He seemed uneasy.

“You may wander where you will. I have no secrets.”

“Truly?” He looked at me warily, and not without a trace of malice.

“Why should I lie to you?”

“You are deep, Victor. Very deep. I do not think I will ever reach your depths.”

“There will be no reason ever to try.”

“I do know that you suffer from nervous fear.”

“Oh, I suffer from many things.” I cleared my throat. “I admit that there are times when I experience fear.”

“Are you afraid now?”

“Of what?”

“Of me.”

“Whatever is your reason for saying that?”

“You suspect me of something.”

“Suspect?”

“You tell me that you have no secrets. But you are afraid that I will find them out.” He laughed, but he was looking at me intently. “Have you ever done a wicked thing, Victor? Just to prove that you could do it?”

“Byron has asked me the very same question.”

“He is obsessed with the idea. He told me the story of one Monro, a clerk in holy orders. Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“It was some years ago now. Before you and I arrived here. This clerk had quite lost his faith. In his heart he said, there is no God. Yet still he took part in the services, gave out the wine and bread to his parishioners, preached from the pulpit on the Last Judgement and salvation.”

“A most arrant hypocrite.”

“He knew this. He reproached himself with bitter laments. He wept. He cut himself with knives. All this he confessed later. He had a great desire to free himself from his torments. But how was he to break free? By degrees he conceived a scheme-no, it must have happened all at once. He hit upon an act of the utmost unreason.”

“Go on.”

“If he were to commit a crime of malignant evil, without motive, he would be able to redeem himself. Say that he were to kill a child, for example. He would take no pleasure in it-he would choose a child at random, and then stifle it. Then he would be free of God. And what if he did take pleasure in the act? He would, as he put it to himself, become a god. There was no force in the universe higher than himself. There were no consequences to his action-no punishment, no shame, no guilt, no hell. He would have gone beyond the gates of good and evil. He would prove that all is allowable. That is what he said to himself.”

“And did he commit the crime he longed for?”

“He murdered an old woman. According to his testimony he picked her out of the crowd, one evening at twilight, and followed her home. He had taken off his clerical garb, and wore a simple coat and breeches. She lived alone in a cottage just beyond Hammersmith. It was there that he killed her. He stabbed her repeatedly with a knife taken from her own kitchen, and then made his escape under cover of darkness. The crime was widely reported but the murderer could not be discovered. The clerk, meanwhile, continued his ordinary life at the church. But he exulted. He led the divine service with greater fervour, and preached more eloquently than ever. He had found his salvation in one unreasonable act.”

“But then how was he apprehended?”

“This is the curious thing. He felt no remorse. He felt no guilt. Not even shame. On the contrary, he felt proud. So then, as the weeks passed, he experienced an overwhelming desire to tell his crime. He wished to announce his part. He wished to put it into words. He tried to restrain himself. But the desire to speak-to utter the final chapter, as it were-proved overwhelming. One Sunday morning, in his church, he mounted the pulpit and divulged his deed to his parishioners. He produced the knife from the folds of his cassock.”

“And then?”

“He was arrested and questioned. He was taken before the Lunacy Commission. He is now in St. Luke’s Hospital for the Insane.”

The story made a strange impression upon me. I excused myself and retired to my bed, but I could not sleep. I had been seized by a sudden fear that banished all thought of repose-what if I felt an overwhelming need to speak and to confess? In that very thought I planted the seed. Yes. Of course I wished to divulge all the horrors for which I was responsible. To unburden myself of the fact that I had brought life to this creature. But did I sense within myself triumph rather than guilt? Of this I was not sure. I believe that I burned with a sudden fever and, when eventually I slept, my dreams were frightful.

I AWOKE LATE on the following morning. I could hear Polidori talking to Fred in the kitchen, and I listened more eagerly. Polidori was questioning him about the customary routine of my day-my meals, my hours, and so forth-and I sensed that Fred was reluctant to answer him.

I rang my bell and waited.

“Yes, sir?” Fred put his head around the door.

“The usual,” I said.

He brought in the tea, and began preparing the soap and razor. “You are entertaining our guest, Fred. What were you discussing?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing can come of nothing.”

“Sir?”

“Speak your mind.”

“He says he is concerned for you. Doctors, he says, are always concerned for others. Then he says something about equations. I don’t know what equals what, sir, and I told him so.”

“And what else did you tell him?”

“I told him nothing that was a lie, sir. But nothing that was a truth neither.”

“You have done well, Fred. Now watch Dr. Polidori when I have left the house.”

I DRESSED MYSELF and walked towards Covent Garden. It was the day that Londoners call Sweep Fair and, much to my disquiet, I saw a gaggle of climbing boys at the other end of the Piazza. They were a queer sight. Their clothes were in rags, so sooty and black that they betrayed their profession at once: they might just have been dragged out of a chimney, except that they were trailing white ribbons, tied to their arms and legs. There was silver foil on their hair, and their cheeks were painted. As I walked closer to them, I could see patches of gold and silver foil plastered to their dirty clothes and faces; it was altogether a most forlorn spectacle. Then, to the sound of drums, the boys began their march. They waved their climbing tools, their rods and brushes, in the air above their heads; they sang some frightful song, full of oaths and execrations, at which the spectators laughed. Then I saw Polidori, just by the portico of the church there. He was looking around with great eagerness, and I knew at once that he was searching for me. He had been following me. I turned the nearest corner, and hailed a cab for Limehouse.

IT WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT when I returned to Jermyn Street. I called for Fred, but there was no reply. I went over to the window and looked down at the dark street; for a moment I thought there was a movement among the shadows, but then the moment passed. So I retired to bed.

On waking the next morning, I noticed that my clothes had not been laid out. I arose quickly, and left my room: the kitchen door was open, but there was no sign of Fred. He had never absented himself before, and I could think of nothing that would have detained him for the whole night. I dressed myself and went out into the street, with no definite course of action, and wandered into Piccadilly. There was a coffee-stall there, by the corner of Swallow Street, that I knew to be patronised by Fred. “Have you seen my manservant? Fred Shoeberry?” I asked the young girl pouring the coffee into tin mugs.

“Fred? The one with the crinkly hair and the tooth missing?”

“Him.”

“I have not seen him since yesterday morning, sir, when he commented on the state of the weather. Foul it was.”

I moved on, carried as much by the crowd as by my own volition. Of course I had no chance of finding him. London can be a wilderness, for those who seek out a particular face. And although I knew that Fred was experienced in all the ways of the city, I also knew how easy it was for a boy to vanish altogether as if snatched from the streets into oblivion. I believe that many were forcibly impressed as seamen; as for the fate of others, I had no notion. Of course I feared that the creature might have seized him; but in my last interview with him he had exhibited such shame and repentance, had so eagerly forsworn any further violence, that I dismissed the speculation. What possible motive could he now have in perpetrating such a deed, when he was anxiously anticipating the end of his earthly life?

I came back into Jermyn Street despondent. Many would have treated the sudden departure of a servant with no great emotion, but I had not realised how attached I had become to Fred. And then I remembered Mrs. Shoeberry. It was possible that she was sick, or ailing, and that Fred had been obliged to stay with her. I knew from him that she lived in one of the courts off Drury Lane, at the upper end of that street, and I made my way there on foot. Everyone knew Mrs. Shoeberry in that quarter, and I was directed to the tenements in Short’s Rents where I was assured she would be “rinsing.” There was another laundress by the pump in that court, with soap and pumice stone, and I supposed that the water ran more freely here: I asked her for Mrs. Shoeberry’s lodging, and she pointed to an open window on the second floor. “She,” she said, emphasising the word, “is in there.” I made my way up the staircase, not so clean as it might have been, and found Mrs. Shoeberry’s apartment. The door was ajar, and I could already smell the familiar sour odour of London laundry. I knocked, and pushed open the door, but I could see no sign of the laundress herself. Sheets and linen were hanging in profusion all about the room.

“Whoever is it?” Mrs. Shoeberry’s voice came from behind a sheet.

“Victor Frankenstein.”

“Why, Mr. Frankenstein. Beg your pardon.” She stepped out, clutching a brace of wooden pins and a roller. “What has Fred done now?”

“He has done nothing, Mrs. Shoeberry. I was hoping to find him here.”

“He ain’t been here, Mr. Frankenstein. He only comes on a Sunday, when I need him for the lifting.” I had no idea what she meant. “Has he gone, then?”

“I have not seen him since yesterday evening.”

She considered the matter for a moment. “That is not like Fred.”

“I know.”

She looked at me steadily. “Has he been in any trouble, sir?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“There will be something on his mind. I know that boy. When the late Mr. Shoeberry passed off, Fred hid himself away for two days. Said he had been sleeping on the boats. He never mentioned it again. He is deep, that boy.” She went behind the sheets, from which came the sound of an enormous sneeze. After a few moments, she recovered. “Never you mind it, Mr. Frankenstein. He will be back by Sunday. He would not leave me to the lifting.”

I departed a few minutes later, having given her a florin for her “trouble,” and walked back to Jermyn Street. I had been to some degree reassured by her confidence that Fred would return by Sunday, and so once more I devoted myself to experiment. I went to the workshop each day, where I refined the galvanic mechanism in the light of my further researches: the problem of reversal was still one that exercised me, and led me to a thousand different variations in the batteries and machines. I was confident of a solution, however, and did not weary in my efforts.

FRED DID NOT RETURN by Sunday. Mrs. Shoeberry came to Jermyn Street in a state of consternation, and asked me whether we should alert the officers of the parish. I did not put much faith in the constables, or in the watch, but I agreed to go with her to the compter in St. James’s Street. There had of course been no reports of a missing boy, but she felt that she had somehow discharged her duty. However, she was not in a comfortable state of mind. She feared something. She asked me if I wanted one of her other sons to take the place of Fred, but I declined the offer.

As the days passed, I was so intent upon my work that I paid very little attention to my outward circumstances. Polidori continued to lodge in my chambers, and often questioned me about the state of my researches. I could not, as a gentleman, ask him to leave. I never referred to his sudden appearance at Sweep Fair, but I took care to reveal nothing to him. We were, as a result, uneasy companions.

Two weeks after Fred’s disappearance I received a letter from Mary Shelley, informing me that the household (in which she included Lord Byron) had left Switzerland and made their way south to Pisa where they had procured lodgings on the Lung’Arno:

It is sufficiently commodious, and we pay only thirteen sequins a month. We have an excellent mezzanino, and three rooms on the fourth floor. From here we have a view of the sunsets, which Shelley deems incomparable. Lord Byron has taken up residence in a much grander house, but he deigns to dine with us each evening. He is at this moment reading to Shelley some passage out of a poem he has recently composed. I cannot make out the words. He wishes to remove us all to the Gulf of Spezia, but the prospect of yet another journey appals me.

When I read this out to Polidori, he grimaced. “The man is demented,” he said. “He would drive a saint to madness. He has a demon inside him that will not let him, or anyone, rest.”

“But wait. You have not heard Mary’s postscript. She must have written it some days later.” I read out to him the forlorn message with which she ended the letter:

We have now moved on to a dwelling built on the shore at Lerici. It is known as Casa Magni and, although it is indeed large, it hardly qualifies as a house. It is more like a fortress buffeted by the sea and the sea-wind. There is a rough path to take us to the little village of San Terenzo, where we can purchase only the most rudimentary provisions. And there is only one chimney for cooking! There is no garden, and the rear of the house faces a thick wood. It is the most gloomy spot imaginable, and only the prospect of the sea lifts my spirits. Oh, how I long to be in London now!”

I put down the letter. “She is tired of travelling.”

“She is tired of Byron, too, I imagine,” Polidori said.

THEN, TWO WEEKS LATER, I received another letter. I recognised the handwriting on the envelope to be Mary’s, but it was so scrawled and strained that I knew that it contained fearful news:

There is something I cannot say. And I can barely express it in words. Shelley is dead. He was drowned at sea. He died with a companion, in a boat that has not yet been found. They had set sail from Livorno into the Gulf of Spezia, when by all accounts they were overwhelmed by a sudden summer storm.

Her letter broke off at this juncture, but then at some later time she resumed it on a separate sheet.

Yesterday he was recovered. He had been washed onto the shore, near the mouth of the Serchio river, two miles from here. Lord Byron formally recognised the body. I could not do it. Bysshe was wearing the double-breasted jacket and nankeen trousers he purchased in Geneva. Do you remember them? The officials here demanded that he should be buried where he was found, with his grave filled with quicklime, but Byron and I revolted at such a coarse procedure. For once I felt grateful to Byron for assuming the manner and authority of lordship. We were given permission to cremate poor Bysshe on the sea-shore. Two servants of the house, together with Byron, built up a funeral pyre on the beach. It was a day of bright sun. How I wish you had been with me, Victor, during these last rites. We placed Bysshe on the flames, and Byron poured wine, salt and frankincense on the conflagration. I could not look, but Byron plunged his hand into the fire and took out Bysshe’s heart still intact. He means to bury the ashes in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, but I could not endure any further time in this country. I must leave. And there is an end of all but despair.

THE DEATH OF MY COMPANION had so thoroughly unnerved me that for two days I lost all sensation of living. I do not know how I conducted myself, or where I travelled; I awoke in soiled linen and, as far as I am aware, I did not eat. I believe that Polidori avoided me, in consideration of my grief, but on the third morning he knocked upon the door of my study.

“Mary is returning next week,” he said. “Here is a note from Byron.”

The imminent return of Mary roused me from my stupor. For some reason inexplicable to myself, I wished to destroy the creature before she arrived in England: I did not allow myself to suppose that there was any real threat to her, as there had been to Harriet and Martha, but I wanted to be free of that foul burden before I saw Mary again. I wished to protect her in her grief-and, perhaps, to console her. How could I perform such a task with the creature still alive? I had in any case reached the pitch of my experiments, when success now seemed to me to be assured. By the use of conducting wires, and a series of metal plates placed at variable levels and degrees of inclination, I had at last been able to alter the direction and strength of the electrical fluid. I had tried the experiment on a stray dog, tranquillised by ether, and it had immediately expired under the charge.

For an extravagant sum I now purchased a Barbary ape from a sailor in Wapping: I could not test my theory upon my fellow beings, and I believed that the ape was the closest to our species for the purposes of experiment. I tranquillised it with ether, as before, and after securing it upon the table with leather straps I subjected it to the electrical charge. It was thrown into severe convulsions, with many spasms and contortions, and expired after sixteen seconds. Then I applied the charge again: even as I watched the body began to decay, the skin shrivelling and the flesh dissolving. The stench was terrible, but I was determined to see the experiment to the end. I administered a further shock, and very soon the body was reduced to a skeleton; then the bones themselves began to fragment until they crumbled into dust. I had succeeded.