The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

18

“THERE IS A STRANGER AT THE DOOR,” Fred said.

“What stranger?”

“He is small. He looks like a bruised pippin.”

“That will be the doctor. Bring him in.”

“Doctor? Whatever is wrong with you?”

“He is going to take off my leg.” He looked at me in horror. “There is nothing the matter with me, Fred. The doctor is a friend.”

“If you say so, sir. I have never heard of a doctor being a friend before.” So, with a certain amount of suspicion, he brought Polidori into the room.

“Ah, Frankenstein, I trust you are well.”

“He is very well, sir,” Fred said. “Tip-top.”

“That will be all, Fred.”

“Call me if you need me, sir.” Fred reluctantly left the room, watched intently by Polidori.

“I notice that these London boys,” he said, “have a tendency to rickets. It makes them somewhat bow-legged.”

“I have not seen it in him. I think in the city that the walk is known as a swagger.”

“Really? It is social, then, not physical?”

“They imitate each other. Or so I believe.”

“You are a keen observer, Mr. Frankenstein. Now, I have brought it with me.” He opened the small case that he carried with him, and took out a glass-stopped phial. “I have already mixed the powder with the laudanum. Five or six drops will be sufficient for you in the beginning.”

“In the beginning was the word.” I do not know why I said it. I simply said it.

“There will be no words, I hope. Only peacefulness.”

“At what time of day is it recommended?”

“I favour the early evening. You will feel its benefits on the following day, after a profound slumber. But if the tremor causes you anxiety-or if there is any other great anxiety-then you should take it at once.”

“What is the cost, Dr. Polidori?”

“It will have no adverse effect upon your constitution.”

“No, I mean the price of this liquid?”

“It is a gift to you, sir. I will accept nothing for it. If in the future you wish to procure more, then we will arrive at some sensible settlement.”

We left the matter there. I was grateful for the cordial, but I could not shake off the disagreeable sensations Polidori aroused in me. He was too watchful. He told me that Bysshe and Byron had spent the entire evening carousing in Jacob’s while he slept with his head upon the table. When eventually they walked out into the Strand, they spent an hour or more looking for a hackney carriage. “I have left his lordship,” he said, “nursing a swollen head. I must return to my charge.” I thanked him again for his ministrations, and he urged me to call upon him and Lord Byron at their house in Piccadilly.

I left the phial on the table where Polidori had placed it. “What is this?” Fred asked me when he came into the room.

“It is a cordial,” I said. “To help me sleep.”

“Like porter?”

“Not exactly. But it has a similar effect.”

“You will be careful then, sir. My poor father-”

“You have told me of Mr. Shoeberry’s early death.”

“His toes was just twitching.” He paused, and picked up the phial. “His face was cold as any stone.”

“Be so good as to leave the bottle where it is, Fred. It is precious fluid.”

“Precious?” He put down the phial very gently.

“As gold.”

In truth, ever since the onset of my accursed ambition, I had been labouring under a weight of nervous excitement and irritability that no human constitution could properly bear; my animal spirits rose and fell disproportionately, so that I was in a continual battle with fear and doubt. There were many occasions when I suffered a peculiar sensation within my stomach of harbouring rats that were attempting to gnaw their way out.

Yet I did not touch the opiate all that day. From my chair I contemplated the glass phial, gleaming in the rays of the weak and fitful sun that penetrated into Jermyn Street. In the early evening a particular form of melancholy, not at all pleasing, customarily fell upon me. It was then that I measured out six drops of the opiate and swallowed them.

The effect was not immediate. But gradually, over a space of approximately half an hour, I became aware of a sensation of mild warmth spreading through my limbs; it was as if I were stretched out in the sun. This was succeeded by feelings of calmness and equipoise, so that I seemed to glide rather than walk across the room. I felt utterly self-possessed, with an elevation of spirits that I had never before experienced. Fred came into the room, with my evening dish of tea, and at first did not seem to recognise my enhanced state.

“Ah, Fred, immortal Fred.”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“You bring the fragrance of the Indian plains.”

“I have just been in Piccadilly, sir.” Then he noticed the silver spoon with which I had measured out the drops. “It is the liquor, sir, is it? Perhaps you might sit down.”

I had not been aware that I was pacing the room. “No, Fred. I must savour the moments of ease.”

I walked over to the window. The pedestrians and porters and carriages in the street below me seemed to be united in one continuous melody, as if they had become a line of light. Instinctively I realised that this was not a compound that would stupefy my faculties but, on the contrary, one that would awaken them to fresh and vigorous life. I went into my bedroom, and lay down upon the bed in a delicious reverie. Fred hovered by the door, but he had become part of my sensation of bliss. I may not have slept, but I dreamed. I was lying in a warm boat, moving across the calm surface of a lake or sea, while all around me the light dappled the water. Above me were no clouds but the deep blue empyrean reaching into infinity.

It was one continuous dream, and I rose from my bed on the following morning utterly relaxed and refreshed. I believed, too, that my intellectual powers had been awakened, and with great ardour I took from my shelf a copy of Tourneur’s Tables of Electrical Fluxions. I found that I was able to calculate with ease, and from the very shape and fitness of the numbers I gathered an enormous intellectual pleasure. I could even visualise the stream of the electrical charge. With the phial of laudanum in my pocket I travelled down to Limehouse where once more I began to experiment with my electrical machines. I believe that the sensation of equipoise lasted for a further eight hours, by which time I had grown weary enough to settle into a chair.

I had taken no more of the opiate, but I had the sensation of being conveyed across a broad sheet of water with the light playing all around me. The sky had become a deeper blue than before, and I realised that the nature of the water had changed. I was moving upon a river. I knew it to be the river Thames. I could see the reflections of overhanging trees on its surface, and I was at once aware of another world within our own where the trees grew downward and the sky was below me; there I wandered, amazed, and through the veiled atmosphere I saw an image of myself looking down upon me. And in my face I saw wonder.

The craft was travelling faster than in my first dream, and the notion of a destination provoked in me some discontent. Yet I settled back into a reverie, where the banks and fields beside me were bathed in light and where the grass seemed gilded. And I murmured to myself, “I have found the word golden.” The boat now had lost its momentum, and was drifting slowly with the current of the Thames. I felt a gentle wind upon me, and the rustling of leaves was like the whispering of many voices. For some reason I felt the first vague symptoms of unease. I came within reach of the bank, and felt the softness of the earth and grass: the colours of the blossom were so bright and fiery that for a moment I closed my eyes. The boat of its own will then turned and found the current once again. Never had the sky seemed so clear to me, and there below me was its reflection even more bright. I was surrounded by skies. I let my fingers trail in the warm and slowly moving water, sensing the freshness of its flow. Then something grasped my hand. It grabbed hold upon me firmly, and tried to pull me down. I awoke with a start, my opiate dream dissolved in a moment of terror.

It was night. I had slept for several hours, and quickly I lit the oil-lamps so that I would not be utterly cast into darkness. I sat trembling upon the chair, fearful that I was still in a dream.

Then with an enormous effort of will I resumed my calculations. I realised, too, that to leave Limehouse at this hour would invite the notice of footpads and vagabonds. Yes, my fears had returned. In my opiate condition I fancied that I was no longer part of the tumult of life-that the fever and the strife had been suspended-and that I was capable of repose and rest. The burden had been put down; the anxiety had been lifted. But now all those sorrows had been revived. The enemy, fear, had returned. The battle was renewed. I was no longer master of myself.

I examined the phial for several minutes-how could such a small measure provoke such extraordinary changes in the human frame? There were mysteries here as obscure as galvanism and reanimation. I decided to experiment with two drops only of the tincture. After a short while I found myself walking, as I believed, down an avenue brilliantly lit by naphtha lamps; I was back in Geneva, and I was hurrying to meet my father and sister with news of my success at university. I was filled with such youthful enthusiasm that I leapt high into the air and soared effortlessly over the city and the lake.

Then I found myself sitting in the workshop, as before, my calculations spread about before me on the table. My equations were of the utmost lucidity-I recognised that from the neat formulations I had managed and from the comments of “precise” and “wonderful!” in the margins. But what was this? I heard the sound of oars pulling against the tide, and the creaking of a boat upon the water. Who would be rowing upon the Thames at this hour? I went to the door of the workshop and opened it by a fraction. The familiar smell of mud and brine assailed me. But there was another odour, too. I peered out and saw a shallow vessel making its way slowly to the jetty. “Who is there?” I called out. There came no answer. “For God’s sake, tell me who you are!”

The boat had come to a stop beside the wooden platform of the jetty itself. I could hear the water lapping beside it. Then Harriet Westbrook-Harriet Shelley-stepped out. She was not as she had been in life. She was infinitely more bright and splendid. Then I noticed that she was carrying upon her shoulders a coarsely woven sack. “Why are you here, Harriet?” She did not answer, but seemed to turn back to someone else in the boat. There was some murmuring, and I recognised the voice of Martha. Then there was a light note of laughter. Now she turned again to me. “I am not here, Victor. You are here.” So I awoke again at the table, the papers strewed about it.

Throughout that night, and for the next morning, the dreams or visions emerged and then disappeared. I was in a position of complete enslavement, helplessly in thrall to whatever hallucination passed before me. I was in the estuary, walking among its sad flats and wild marshes with the gulls crying overhead; the strong savour of salt was in the damp air. I was somehow aware of some great, dark shape brooding in the distance-out of sight-and then I knew that the malevolent presence was that of London. Man had created London. Man had not created the estuary. I was seized with a great fear that this land had just emerged from the sea, and that the incoming water was about to overwhelm me. So I ran inland-or what I believed to be inland-and sought shelter in a small and crudely built hut that stood alone upon a mound in a field of pasture. In contrast to the world outside, it was perfectly dry and warm. There was a crackling sound, as of branches and twigs burning in flame, but I could see no fire.

Then I found myself walking down a street in London. It was a street of black stone, with no doors or windows or openings of any kind. But, as I walked upon it, the stone began to shriek-in agony, in fear, in consternation, I knew not what. I turned the corner and there before me was another street of stone; as soon as I ventured upon it, it gave out a loud cry of pain, which came from the walls as well as the ground. I could not bear the cacophony but as I hurried down the streets, and turned down other alleys, the screaming grew more immense.

WHEN I AWOKE, it was broad day. I was too troubled by these laudanum dreams to resume the study of my papers, so I left the workshop and walked into Limehouse. There was a carriage stop at the tavern by the church, and I waited there for the next vehicle. I knew the crossing sweeper who stood here and who, for a penny, would hold the horses while the driver refreshed himself in the tavern or relieved himself in the churchyard. He was a black man by the name of Job. “Job,” I said. “When did the last one leave?”

“He be gone a good half-hour. It be a good half-hour yet.”

“Was it full?”

“Pretty tight, sir. There was a seat on the top.”

So I went into the tavern and brought out two mugs of porter. “There we are, Job. Sluice the dust from your throat.”

Job had told me in the past that he had been shipped from Barbados as a captain’s boy, or slave, and that he had been abandoned by his master on their arrival in England. The ship had docked at Limehouse, and he had lived in the neighbourhood ever since. He survived now on the few coins he obtained from those using his crossing, and from the drivers of the carriages. “Where do you live?” I asked him as we sat on a wooden bench outside the tavern.

“Along the street yonder.” He pointed out to me an alley of tenements that led off Limehouse Church Street. “It is a mouse-hole, sir.”

“Are you married, Job?”

“I never be married. Who want a poor black man like myself?”

“Your race does seem to be unfortunate.”

“We be harried and cursed and beaten. Some of these fine gentlemen will aim a kick at me on the crossing. Some of them swear dreadful.”

I do not know whether it was the effect of the powder, but I experienced a sudden and overwhelming feeling of pity for the sweeper. “Come inside,” I said. “It is a raw day.”

“No permission, sir. Mrs. Jessop will not abide black people.”

“Then I will bring another drink to you, Job. I wish to learn more of you.” When I returned I questioned Job closely about his life in Limehouse. Much to my surprise, he had stories worse than his own to relate: of newborn babies abandoned on the streets, of small children forced to wade into the stinking cesspits in search of the cheapest items of any value, of the dead buried under the floorboards to save the trifling expense of a pauper’s funeral.

At night Job himself would go down to the foreshore, and search for objects that he might use or sell; on one occasion, he told me, he had found an ancient dagger that he had sold for a shilling to a tobacconist in Church Row. It was now on display in the shop window. “But some nights,” he said, “there is something happening in the river.”

“Happening?”

“Something arriving. From downstream.”

“You mean some kind of boat?”

“No boat. No. Something moving fast under the water. All the shore is silent when it passes.”

“A whale?”

“No. No fish. A thing.”

“I do not understand you, Job.”

“Have you been hearing, sir, how the estuary is haunted? Down by Swanscombe Marshes?” I shook my head. “No one goes near. Even the fishermen will not work there.”

“What is this apparition? Does it have a name?”

“No name, sir. It is a dead thing living. It is greater than a man.”

“How do you know this, Job?”

“It is my supposal. My mother told me the stories she had heard.”

“These were the stories of the slaves?”

“Yes, sir. But the stories come from far back. When there were not slaves. My mother told me of the dogon. It is a dead man brought to life by magic. Living in the forests and the mountains. A phantom, sir, with eyes of fire.”

“Surely you do not believe that such a thing lives on the estuary?”

“I know nothing, sir. I am a poor black sweeper. But I wonder what this thing is that moves under the water.”

At this point the carriage arrived, with Holborn as its destination. Job stood up and went over to the horses, which seemed to recognise him. They became still when he spoke to them and stroked them. I called up to the driver. “Do you have a seat?”

“Inside, sir. One of the parties is leaving.”

So I mounted the step and, within a short time, the carriage was on its way to the city.

WHEN I CAME BACK to Jermyn Street, I went at once to my study where I had left some of my calculations. I renewed my work with fresh enthusiasm, knowing that I was close to a precise formula for the reversal of the electrical charge in the process of its formation. If I were able to create and to maintain this negative force, it might subvert and utterly undo the power of the original charge.

I was interrupted by the sound of voices, and of laughter; then Bysshe and Mary came into the room, with Fred following. “I could not stop them, sir,” he said. “They rushed me from the door.”

“I cannot be stopped, Fred.” Bysshe was in the highest spirits. “I am Phaethon in his fiery chariot. Have you heard of Phaethon?”

“There is a fly driver in Haymarket, sir.”

“Fly? That is a new word, is it not?” Then he turned to me. “May I present to you, Victor, Mary Shelley?”

I rose from my chair, and embraced them both warmly. “When did you do this?”

“This very morning. In St. Mildred’s, Bread Street.”

“For the sake of any future children,” Mary said, “we observed the form.”

“It was a lovely ceremony, Victor. Mr. Godwin cried. I cried. The parson cried. God bless us all!”

“I did not cry.” Mary was smiling as she spoke. “And I do not think that God will bless us.”

“Old Father Nobody had nothing to do with it,” Bysshe replied. “We are free. We are not exiles on the earth. Will you join us for tea at the Chapter? I can promise you the finest Marsala in London.”

“Do come,” Mary urged me.

It was not a place, in truth, I would recommend to the newly married. It was one of those eating houses that have preserved the manners of the last century while manifesting all the inconveniences of the present one. The parlour was dark, even in the early afternoon, since precious little light filtered through the thick and small-paned windows. The beams were large, the roof low, and the space was partitioned into a number of dark wood compartments or “boxes” as the Londoners call them. The word has always reminded me of coffins.

The three of us were shown to a “box,” and Bysshe immediately ordered a round of ham sandwiches with a bottle of sherry. An elderly waiter, of gloomy demeanour, proceeded to serve us. He was wearing knee-breeches, in the old style, with black silk hose and none too spotless cravat. I gathered from Mary that his name was William. “Will the foreign gentleman,” he asked Bysshe, “be requiring mustard?”

“I will ask the foreign gentleman.” He said this in the most grave manner. “Will you be requiring mustard?”

“I think not.”

“You have your answer, William.”

“Very good, sir.”

Mary burst out laughing, after he had walked away with dignified step. “He has never been known to smile,” she said. “People have perished in the attempt.”

She broke off as William returned with the sandwiches. Bysshe fell upon them as if he were quite famished. “We have good news, Victor,” he said. “Byron has invited us to join him on the shores of Lake Geneva. Your old home.”

“He has rented a villa there,” Mary told me. “In the event of an imminent marriage, as he put it, he has thrown the doors open to us. You are invited.”

“Me?”

“Why ever not?” she replied.

“Do you know the name of the villa?”

“Diodati,” Bysshe replied for her.

“Diodati? I know it well. I have climbed into its garden at night, and tasted the fruit.”

“An omen, my dear Victor,” he said. “You must taste the fruit again. We will travel to Switzerland together.”

Bysshe was in a state of great exhilaration, and I could not resist the tide of his enthusiasm. So I consented. I believed, too, that a suspension of my labours and calculations might assist me; the mind needs rest as surely as the body, and I trusted that a period of indolence would restore all my faculties. We agreed to set out within the month.

“We will speed across the plains of Holland -” Mary said.

“-And see the castles of the Rhine nestling in their turpitude,” Bysshe added.

“And you, Victor, you will see your old familiar places.”

“I am afraid,” I replied to her, “that I will seem a stranger there.”

Bysshe laughed and signalled for another bottle. “You are a stranger everywhere, Victor. That is your charm.”

“I wonder that Lord Byron has invited me.”

“He must enjoy your company,” Bysshe replied. I was not so sure that I would enjoy his, but I said nothing. “Byron is an odd being. He is at once courageous and defensive, deeply proud and deeply uncertain.”

“I think,” Mary said, “that he feels shame. He feels his deformity.”

“I take it,” I asked her, “that he has a club foot? That is the phrase, is it not?”

“Yes. That is the phrase. But the pain goes deeper. He is ashamed of life. He wishes to expend it quickly.”

“He can be very fierce,” Bysshe said, “with the people around him.”

“That is because he is fierce with himself,” she replied. “He has no mercy.”

William, without prompting, had brought over another plate of ham sandwiches. Bysshe attacked them with renewed appetite. “I wonder,” he said, “that he has not been wholly spoiled by his success. I have said that he is proud. But he has no vanity.”

“You mean,” Mary replied, “that he deigns to speak to mortals such as ourselves.” Bysshe seemed offended by this. She noticed his reaction and added, very quickly, “Of course he respects you as a poet, Bysshe. He is disparaging of his own verse.”

“It comes too easily to him. He sees no merit in that which flows freely. He relishes a struggle.”

“I agree with him there,” I said. “Out of adversity comes triumph. All great natures aspire.”

Bysshe raised his glass. “I commend your spirit, Victor. Death or victory!”

Mary evidently disliked this turn of the conversation. “That is easy for you to say. Men have an appetite for glory.”

“And women have not?” he asked her.

“We wish for a different kind of renown. We do not seek conflict. We seek harmony.”

“I drink to that,” he said. “But sometimes the world will not allow it. That reminds me, Victor. Byron wrote of dreadful storms.”

“We are used to storms in the mountains.”

“No. These are out of all reckoning. The local people prophesy a season of darkness. From some unknown cause.”

“I look forward to it,” I said. “I like the aberrations of nature.”

AT THE END OF THE MONTH we assembled at Dover -Bysshe and Mary with their young serving maid, Lizzie, myself and Fred. It was Fred’s first journey out of England, and he was in a state of high excitement. He had never seen the open sea. “I expect,” he said, “that we will see islands and such like.”

“There are very few of those, Fred,” I replied, “in this stretch of water.”

“Just a bare flat plain of sea, then?”

“I am afraid so.”

“How deep is it, sir?”

“I have no idea, Fred. You must ask the captain when we board.”

“Deep enough for whales?”

“I am not sure.”

“I would welcome the opportunity of spying one of them,” he said. “I saw a print of one knocking over that boat.” He was referring to an incident eleven months before, when the Finlay Cutter was broken up by an irate whale. “Beg pardon, Mr. Frankenstein. Not meaning to suggest any danger.” He had gathered up our luggage and, whistling to a porter, spoke to him very confidentially and persuaded him to transport it down to the quay where our boat was berthed. The Lothair was undecked, and with much pulling and pushing we were eventually lodged in two small and uncomfortable cabins. “This is snug,” Fred said.

“We will not be here long.”

“That must be the smallest window in the world.”

“I do not think that is the word in English. There is a nautical term for it. Porthole.”

“It is of glass, sir, and you can barely see through it. So I call it a window.”

The captain, a surly fellow named Meadows, scarcely bothered to stop as he walked along the corridor between the several cabins. “We set sail now,” he said. “Without delay. The wind is fresh.”

Within an hour we had begun our journey and were upon the open sea. Fred could scarcely contain his excitement. “It is very boisterous, sir. My stomach hits the floor and then comes up into my mouth.”

“You should sit, Fred. You will be ill.”

“Not me, sir. I have ridden in my father’s cart. The streets of London are worse than any sea. Look, sir. Over there. There is the whale I mentioned.” I looked out of the porthole, but I could see nothing through the spray. “Did you not see that creature following us? It popped its head in and out of the water.” I looked again, and for a moment thought that I glimpsed something. But it had gone beneath the waves.

“It was a piece of timber, Fred. A plank.”

Bysshe came into our cabin. “Mary is unwell,” he said. “She wishes to be left with Lizzie. I have given her a powder, but the sea is very high.”

“High and low at the same time,” Fred said. “It is a regular seesaw.”

“But we are making progress, I think. Come and sit with me, Bysshe.”

“Yes. We will discuss old tales of sea adventures. We will relive the journeys to Virginia and the Barbadoes. We will hail the sapphire ocean!” Bysshe had a wonderful ability to rise above circumstances and, as we sat in the tossing cabin, he entertained me and Fred with the tales of sea journeys he had read as a child. He recited with vigour the lines from the Odyssey where Odysseus sails up the narrow strait between the islands of Scylla and Charybdis where the sea “seethed and bubbled in utter turmoil, and high overhead the spray fell on the tops of the cliffs.” It was Bysshe’s own translation, and I am sure that he composed it as he went along.

There was a sudden knock on the door of the cabin, and Lizzie stood before us. She gave a little curtsy. “Please to tell you, Mr. Shelley, that my mistress is a deal better and craves a little bit of your company.”

“I shall be there, Lizzie, before you are gone.” He gave me a hasty adieu, and retired.

Fred and I sat in silence, Fred whistling as he looked out of the porthole. “Do refrain from that noise, Fred. It is giving me a headache.”

“There goes that whale again.”

“Are you sure? I am not convinced that whales frequent these waters.”

“Where there is water, sir, there is a whale. Look.”

I went over to the porthole. “I can see nothing, Fred. You are dreaming. Will you please seek out the captain, and ask him how much longer we will be at sea?”

“He is an old cuffin,” Fred said on his return from the captain’s quarters. “A matter of hours, he says. How many hours, I says. Am I God, he says. Far from it, I says. Then he slams his door shut.”

It was indeed a matter of hours-hours more than I had anticipated, since for a while we lay becalmed in the wallowing sea. Eventually Bysshe came into the cabin. “We are approaching land,” he said. “The seamen are scampering about.”

There was in fact some delay, and our ship was becalmed just before we reached the harbour; but a sudden gust was admirably caught by the captain, and we reached our moorings. There was a line of various coaches and carriages along the dockside, some already taken and some waiting to be hired. Mary, with what I soon discovered to be her usual expedition, went up to one of the drivers and engaged in some form of bargain: we had agreed to hire a carriage to take us through Holland and part of Germany, even though Bysshe had expressed a desire to travel through France and Italy. Yet his wish was quite ignored by Mary, and it was agreed with the driver that we would ride through the plains of Holland before going onward to Cologne. “I have heard from others of ruined France,” Mary said as we settled in the carriage. “The Cossacks have spared nothing. The villages are burned, and the people beg for bread. The auberges are filthy, too. There is disease everywhere. Really, Bysshe, France is not the country of your imagination.”

“No country ever can be,” he replied. “But I live in infinite hope.”

The five of us were comfortably accommodated in the vehicle, and there was a stair to a seat on the roof in case any of us should prefer the air. Lizzie and Fred were engaged in an elaborate charade of unconcern; they did not speak to each other, nor even glance at one another. Fred sat next to me, by the window in one corner of the carriage, looking out at the passing landscape; Lizzie sat beside Mary, in the opposite corner, busily engaged in the same pastime. The landscape was uniform enough in this part of Holland, with the occasional dwelling or village that might have been drawn by the pen of Van Ruysdael-except for the fact that they were invariably dirty, ill-kept and unrepaired. I pointed this out to Bysshe, who preferred to dwell with rapture on the view of the Alps that we would find at our destination. “Humankind needs grandeur and solitariness,” he said. “Not these placid pastures.”

“There is much to be said for quietness,” I replied.

“It is the quietness of decay,” he said. “The spirit of the age has passed on. Now it belongs to the hero, to the individual soul facing its destiny.” Then he began to quote from one of his own poems, declaiming the words out of the carriage window as we passed through one Dutch hamlet:

“I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt

His presence flow and mingle through my blood

Till it became his life, and his grew mine,

And I was thus absorbed, until it passed.”

Our journey continued across Holland, and at last we ascended the road towards Cologne. The air was fresher here, close to the Eifel mountains, and we were entertained by fresh prospects of heath and forest. I knew the juniper and the beech from my childhood days, but I had never known them to grow in such profusion: here, too, were great outcrops of stone that are a sure token of the mountains beyond. We rested in Cologne, in a small lodging house close to the principal square. “I will not visit the cathedral,” Bysshe announced. “I detest cathedrals. They are monuments to pain and folly. They are tributes to superstition. Cold and gloomy places.”

“You will walk with me through the markets,” Mary replied. “The prosperity of the people will not disturb you.”

“Not at all. Trade is a great solvent in the eventual union of mankind. It is a general blessing.” So we set out, on the following morning, on a tour through the mercantile districts of Cologne close to the river. The old merchants’ houses there reminded me of Geneva, and I was seized by a fervent longing to return to the place of my birth. I consented willingly, therefore, when Bysshe proposed that we take a boat upon the Rhine as far as Strasbourg. From there we would hire a coach to Geneva itself.

My native tongue was now of use, and I bargained with the captain of a barge; his main trade was in conveying cloths from the East to the markets of Cologne and elsewhere, and he was about to return to Strasbourg after delivering a large consignment. Our route would take us through Mainz and Mannheim before reaching our destination. We purchased cold provisions, and made ourselves pretty comfortable for a journey that would last several days. Mary was in high spirits as we set off from the jetty at Cologne. “It is believed,” she said, “that the Rhine and the Thames were conjoined in some distant age of the earth. They formed one mighty river.”

“That is Thomas Burnet’s theory,” Bysshe replied. “How can it ever be proved?”

“Poets need no proof, Bysshe. You always laud the power of the imagination. Of intuition.”

“True, Mary dear. I declare this to be the Thames. We are sailing past Oxford on our way to Richmond and the Tower!”

We made steady progress along the Rhine, and I must say that I marvelled at the landscape; along some stretches of the river were extensive vineyards and gently sloping hills, where the virtues of calm nature were preserved. But these were succeeded by rugged mounts, and crags, and precipices, where castles had been erected among rocks and torrents. “There,” said Bysshe, pointing to one of them, “is tyranny visible. Every stone is fashioned out of blood. It is built upon foundations of suffering.”

Mary sat at the prow of the boat, looking eagerly ahead as we made our way. “The spirit of this place is more friendly than you suppose, Bysshe,” she said. “It is more intimate with humankind. Do you not see? How much more harmonious than those mountain peaks and abysses you praise so highly! This landscape is touched by the human spirit.”

“Please, Miss, but your hair is unloosed.” Lizzie spoke out from the middle of the boat. “Are you wishing me to fix it?”

“No, Lizzie. In the open boat we are free.”

“It will hang down awful,” the girl replied.

Bysshe laughed. “By all means see to the appearance of your mistress, Lizzie. She is now a married woman.”

I had moved to the stern of the barge, where a small wooden bench had been set up. Fred sat down beside me and whispered, “Lizzie is very bold, sir. Talking to the mistress like that.”

“Is she bold in other matters, Fred?”

“I don’t talk to her. I don’t look at her. I don’t consider her.”

“You must not be so bashful.”

“Ma warned me about London girls. That Lizzie comes from Bethnal Green.”

“How do you know that?”

“Mr. Shelley told me so. He said that she had been rescued by the mistress.” He needed to say no more.

WE MADE GOOD PROGRESS up the Rhine. By day we passed several populous villages, as well as the fields and vineyards tended by labourers; by night I could hear the soughing of the wind in the trees mixed with the distant bells and the calls of the wolves resounding in the woods. Never had the world seemed so vivid to me. The new poetry of nature, which Bysshe extolled, seemed then to settle in my bosom.

Nevertheless I was overjoyed to reach Strasbourg. It marked the end of our river journey, and the latest milestone on our progress to my home town. The landscape by degrees had now become more rugged and more majestic, filled with intimations of the grandeur of the Alpine region that we would soon be entering. We hired a carriage to Geneva as soon as we reached the market square of Strasbourg, and before long we were upon the highway to Switzerland. I rejoiced in the sight of my native country, where every prospect reminded me of my happy infancy. I remarked to Bysshe with pride that here the inns were clean and wholesome. He concurred, and commented also upon the bracing air of the region. “It sustains the soul,” he said. “We are living in the higher realms.”

My first sight of Geneva elevated my spirits to the utmost degree: here I could return to what I might call my native innocency. My visits to the hallowed spots where my father and sister lay buried would serve to strengthen me against any calamity, and my walks in the familiar forests would restore my calm. These, at least, were my expectations. I ordered the coachman to drive us directly to the Villa Diodati, where Byron had already installed himself. It was beside the lake, surrounded by a large garden that sloped down to the water; I remembered it well, having as a boy roamed through the neighbourhood. We had come off the principal avenue that skirted the lake, and were with considerable difficulty manoeuvring our way down the narrow road that led to the villa, when suddenly Byron was striding beside us. “I glimpsed you from the balcony,” he said. “Only you would arrive in a Strasbourg carriage.”

We were soon tumbling out of the vehicle onto the lawn. Byron embraced Mary with the greeting of “Bonjour, Madame Shelley!” Then he shook hands with Bysshe and myself. “You are on home ground, Mr. Frankenstein,” he said to me. “Do not forget to worship the Penates of this house. You will bring us good fortune.”

I was about to reply, when Dr. Polidori emerged from the far side of the lawn. I cannot say that I was pleased to see him. “William is here to minister to me,” Byron said. “But he spends his days reading beneath the trees. I have warned him against the study of books, but he will not listen to me.” I could see all around me the wild rhododendron and mountain roses I had known as a child; the air was very still, and the surface of the lake unruffled. I knew that in this region the twilight was of short duration, and I could sense the arrival of dusk and the night. “This gentleman,” Byron said, looking up at the driver, “is in desperate need of being paid. Pray do so. The servants will take in your bags.”

We were soon comfortably ensconced in the villa. My own room overlooked the garden and the lake, and in the gathering darkness I could see the feeble lights of the villages on the further shore. There were sounds of shouting, and of a general commotion, coming from somewhere in the distance; but I paid little regard to them. I was too much in thrall to the spell of this place, and to the force of my own old memories.