The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (13 page)

I still used the barn in Headington for my experiments and, in the quiet of the evening, the coroner’s two servants would bring me the corpses—or, on occasions, the parts of the corpses—which the coroner had viewed that day. They waited while I worked on them through the night, and then returned
them to the coroner’s office in Clarendon Street. I paid them liberally—a guinea each—for every visit. I do believe that the English will do anything for money.

I made some startling discoveries in the course of this work. I found a method of passing electricity through the entire human frame so that it seemed to tremble and to quiver. I was also able to transmit an electrical current through the spine of one child that prompted the eyes to open and the mouth to part. I had hoped for some sounds to be manifested by the vocal cords, but in that I was disappointed. Mr. Franklin had already suggested that electricity might be used to revive the heart, in patients just expired, and I had no reason to doubt him. Green shoots can spring from a blasted tree. I remembered the case in Geneva, some years before, when a young girl was pronounced dead after falling from a first-storey window; yet she had been restored to life by the use of the electrical vessel known as the Leyden jar.

The subjects sent to me by the coroner were generally too long gone for any hope of revival, although I nurtured a strange and wild hope when I was presented with an infant lately drowned in the Thames. I had read of drowned men being chafed or pummelled into life, and I believed that the body of an infant still contained the primal fire or the living principle. I drained the excess fluid from a small hole in the abdomen, and then placed the child on tin-foil as a good conductor. I then surrounded her with hermetically sealed jars, making up the Leyden device; there was a crack, as of summer thunder, and to my dismay the infant was dreadfully burned. But there was no life. I believe that I told the coroner that the burns were the discoloration attendant on drowning.

I could not remain in Oxford without arousing suspicion, even though I worked in the remotest corner of Headington. I had bribed the porters to ignore my nocturnal journeys, before the gates of the college were closed, and my return to my rooms after the gates had opened. They believed a woman to be in the case, and I chose not to disabuse them. But they would talk. When the Master called me into his study, for what he called a conversation, I suspected the worst. But I had already come to the conclusion that it was time for my departure. I would not obtain my degree; but with my father dead and an independent fortune bequeathed to me, I really had no need of the initials after my name.

The Master greeted me warmly enough, and we engaged in what the English call “chat.”

“Your tutor tells me that you are following the principles of natural science, Mr. Frankenstein.”

“That is my aim, sir.”

“Do they by chance lead you towards the mystic and the transcendental?”

“I do not understand you.”

“Is there a spiritual aspect?”

“I am a student of the brain and body, not of the soul.”

“This is a Christian university, Mr. Frankenstein. We must always consider the soul.”

He was a tall man, with bald head and pronounced side-whiskers; he offered me a glass of amontillado, which I accepted.

“Have you ever considered, sir, the growth of limbs?” I asked him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There is some power that forms them in embryo. There is a seed which they contain within their own frame.”

“What has this to do with the soul?”

“It is a question I might put to you, sir. What
has
it to do with the soul? If we possess such an entity, then surely it must play its part in the formation of the body. It is often said that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Professor Stokes has proved that the eyes are formed in the womb.”

“Our knowledge is finite, Mr. Frankenstein.”

“Oh, but I wish to stretch it. I wish to travel further in every sense.”

“I do not follow you.”

“There is no other way of telling you this, sir. I have determined to leave Oxford. I must thank you for your kindness, and I can say with some certainty that this has been the most formative epoch of my life.”

We shook hands. I must say that I had never been more delighted to leave anyone’s presence: the Master represented all the weight of the dead learning that I wished to shake off.

Within a week I had packed all my belongings, tipped a tearful Florence, and hired a coach to London. I set off in the highest spirits, convinced that I was about to fashion a new world. In the solitude of the carriage I recited some lines from Lord Byron as we passed through the village of Acton:

“’Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form and fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image …”

In my search for life, I believed that I was about to re-create myself.

ON ARRIVING IN JERMYN STREET
I hired a young day porter, whose stand was in the little path beside the church, to take my parcels and my other belongings to my set of rooms on the third floor. It was the top storey of the building, but he performed the task without the usual complaint and bluster of the English working man. I discovered his name to be Frederick, or Fred, and I was so taken by his eager and enthusiastic manner that I wished to learn more of him. He could have been no more than thirteen or fourteen. “Well, Fred, how is your trade?”

“So-so, sir. It could be worse. It could be better. There is no telling.” He had a mournful manner of speaking, but then he smiled as if all were a great comedy.

“How did you come by it?”

“Inheritance, sir. My father was porter here all of his life. He dropped down dead while lifting a donkey out of its traces. Terrible event.” Then he smiled again.

“When was this?”

“Three months ago. I stood at his post the very same afternoon. My mother told me it was my station in life. She says it runs in the family.”

“Do you have a brother who could take over from you?”

“Several of them, sir. All willing.”

“Then I would like to offer you another post.”

“In another street, sir?”

“No. I mean to say, I would like to offer you another position. Would you care to be my servant here?” He looked at me, and took off his cap. “Your duties will be light. I am alone in the world.”

“Where would I sleep, sir?”

“There is a small room at the end of this passage. It looks over the alley.”

“The well-beloved alley.” He seemed relieved by my answer. “I would be what they call a general boy, sir?”

“You would prepare my meals. Lay out my clothes. And so forth.”

“I would run errands, would I?”

“Naturally.” He smiled broadly. “You would be my factotum, Fred.”

“I do not know if I could do that.”

“You would do everything. A guinea a week.”

He smiled, and seemed about to break into laughter. “That would be every week, would it?”

“Every week.”

“Under the circumstances, sir, I am happy to accept. I must just run and tell Mother.”

The mother returned with him an hour later. She was a weak-legged and somewhat woebegone woman; her shawl had the remains of snuff upon it, and there was a distinct smell of spirits upon her breath. She had difficulty in recovering herself, after climbing the flights of stairs, and I offered her my flask of strong water. She accepted it readily, and gulped down most of its contents before putting her hand upon her son’s head. “He is a good boy,” she said. “He is worth the guinea.”

“Mother—”

“I hear you are a foreign gentleman, sir.”

“Yes. From the land of the Swiss.”

“Is that so? You are handsome enough to be an Englishman, if I may say so.”

“It is very kind of you.”

All the while she was scrutinising my apartments. “Fred,” she said, “you must take care of that hearth. It is rotten in the corner. And those windows need a clean.”

“You are quite right, Mrs.—”

“Shoeberry.” When she smiled at me I could distinctly see that some of her teeth were missing. “You have heard of Mr. Shoeberry and the donkey?”

“Indeed.”

“It was a blow to the neighbourhood, sir. Yet I still do the laundry. That is my profession.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to speak. “It would be very good of you, Mrs. Shoeberry, if you were to take in my laundry.”

“A shilling for the linen. Sixpence for the sheets.”

“That is very reasonable.”

“I hope I am, sir. Do you have laundresses in Swisserland, sir?”

“I do not know. I believe so.”

“They will not come cheaper than me, I can assure you of that. Now then, Fred, look sharp and brush the gentleman’s coat. He has been travelling.”

So it was that Fred Shoeberry and his mother took charge of my life in Jermyn Street. I was happy for them to do so, since I was intent upon nothing except my work. I wished to begin immediately, but of course there was no possibility of undertaking it in such a fashionable district of London; I
needed as much secrecy and isolation as I could find, and so I roamed through the less respectable areas of the city in search of suitable premises. The eastern sections, abutting on the river, seemed most promising. I inspected Wapping and Rotherhithe, in the hours of daylight, when in plain dress I walked unnoticed among the throng of nationalities and trades; it was remarkable to see the variety of garbs and faces, from Turk to Chinaman, passing along the narrow thorough fares beside the Thames. I had never seen such human life congregated together, and it put me in mind of the adage that London is a drink containing the lees of all nations.

Then I found a structure perfectly suited to my purposes. It was an old pottery manufactory in Limehouse, with its own yard or wharf upon the river. The buildings around it were warehouses of various descriptions and, as I imagined, quite deserted at night. I made enquiries in the neighbouring taverns, and I discovered that the employees had left several months before—after the owner had been declared bankrupt. Further enquiries led me to a commercial agent in Baltic Street who had an “interest” in the property. I soon discovered that he was the owner who had broken, and so it was a relatively easy matter to purchase his abandoned manufactory for what I regarded as a relatively modest sum. So I became a Limehouse freeholder.

I HAD WRITTEN
to Daniel Westbrook a few days after my arrival, announcing my intention to remain in London and asking for news of his sister. I had heard nothing from him for several days but, on my return to Jermyn Street one evening, after an inspection of my new premises, I found him in earnest
conversation with Fred at the door of the house. “My dear Daniel,” I said, “come in at once.”

“This lad has been barking at me like a Cerberus.”

“He says he knows you, sir.”

“Of course he knows me, Fred.”

“But he has no card, sir.”

“He does not need a card. Mr. Westbrook is an old friend. Now that you know his face, you must welcome him.”

“Do you hear that, old fellow?” Daniel asked him.

“My bark is worse than my bite, Mr. Westbrook.” Fred had an incurably silly look upon his face, which made us both laugh out loud.

“Well, they are safely married,” Daniel said to me as soon as we were settled in the apartment. “Harriet has written to me from Edinburgh. She is now Mrs. Shelley.”

“Are you not pleased?”

“I would have preferred better circumstances. But, yes, I am pleased for her. Her prospects in life are now immeasurably greater. Even my father sees the advantage of it.”

“Has she discussed her plans with you?”

“They are moving to Cumberland for a few months. Mr. Shelley has an interest in the Lake poets, I believe. Do you know of them?”

“I have read them.”

“He has already been in correspondence with one of them, according to Harriet, and has been offered the rental of a cottage by a lake. She did not remember which one.”

“It sounds delightful.”

“I hope it may be. They have invited me to stay with them.”