The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein Page 4

  “I see that she has impressed you. Where is the play?”

  “ Drury Lane. You are not accustomed to our theatres, Victor. Everything begins and ends in Drury Lane. We should go now.”

  The street was filled with carriages, on our arrival, but we made our way without difficulty into the Theatre Royal where we were accosted by comfit-makers, fruit-sellers, and the women of the town. “We are in the pit,” Bysshe said. “A box was not to be had at any price.”

  I had never before visited a London theatre, and I was immediately struck by the disorder of the assembly. We were obliged to stand, close to the small orchestra beneath the stage, and we might as well have been in a fruit market or a horse fair. “Look over there,” Bysshe shouted at me over the general din. “There is Mr. Hunt. Do you see him? With the violet hat? A great man, Victor. A champion of the coming age.” When Leigh Hunt caught sight of Bysshe, he smiled broadly and raised his hat. “Do you know why he is here, Victor? Mr. Hunt is a friend of Cunningham. Our author is a son of liberty. It would not surprise me if there were some demonstrations tonight against the government.”

  Bysshe looked around with satisfaction as the pit filled to its margins, while the seats behind us and the boxes around us were soon fully occupied. I had never before witnessed a London crowd, if I may call it that, and I must say that I was somewhat in fear of it. Despite the laughter, and the general mood of animation, it resembled some restless creature in search of prey. Could many lives make up one life?

  The orchestra struck up an air, a melody no doubt composed for the occasion, and the curtains were drawn apart to reveal a landscape of ice and rock and mountain. “Do you recognise it?” Bysshe whispered to me. “We are in Switzerland.” Then there came upon the stage a hooded figure, accoutred all in black; he walked forward with a quick step like that of some wild creature, so odd and so menacing that it reduced the audience to silence. “Immortal Heaven, what is man?” he exclaimed in an unnaturally loud voice. “A being with the ignorance, but not the instinct, of the feeblest animal!”

  “This is Nugent,” Bysshe murmured. “Very accomplished actor.”

  The figure then turned to the audience, and removed his hood. There was an involuntary exclamation of surprise, or dismay, at his pale and sunken features-emaciated, ravaged, and tremulous.

  “The cosmetic artists have been busy,” Bysshe said.

  Yet I scarcely heeded him. There was something so woeful, so awful, about this figure that he commanded my attention. “There is an oak beside the froth-clad pool where in old time, as I have often heard, a woman desperate, a wretch like me, ended her woes. Her woes were not like mine. And mine will never end.” He seemed to be looking around the auditorium, searching out every face and every eye, and I had a most irrational fear that he would find mine! “I have committed the great angelic sin-pride and intellectual glorying. Now I am doomed to wander. Melmoth has become Cain, outcast upon the face of the earth!” I had no notion, then, of why these words so powerfully affected me. “The secret of my destiny rests with myself. If all that fear has invented, and incredulity believe of me to be true, to what does it amount? That if my crimes have exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment. I have been on earth a terror-”

  Someone called out “ Liverpool!,” then prime minister, and the people around me broke into laughter.

  Nugent seemed for a moment startled but, with his hand upon his breast and his gaze directed towards the scene of distant mountains, he waited for the uproar to subside. Then he was Melmoth once more. “I go cursing, and to curse. I go conquering, and to conquer.” I had never before witnessed the art of personation at close quarters, and I was astonished at the apparent ease with which Nugent had assumed the identity of Melmoth; he was the more vivid for being two people, himself and the desperate man. It was as if he had acquired twice the power of any single human being. “I go condemned by every human heart, yet untouched by one human hand. There is the ruin.” He pointed with trembling hand at the pile of rocks on the side of the stage. “And there beyond it is the chapel where I will marry my chosen bride.”

  I was struck by the acting and the spectacle rather than the plot. I had never before seen so large a stage or so lavish a production, and I had scarcely become habituated to the particular brightness of the gas lamps. The effect of the intense shadows, the richness of the colours, and the symmetry of the composition upon the stage, combined to form an image more real than reality itself. I was reminded of the book of illuminations that was kept in the sacristy of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford; it could be seen on presenting a letter from a fellow of the college, and I had spent a delightful morning in turning over the pages of blue and gold, decorated with the burnished images of saints and devils. So it was at Drury Lane that evening. This was like no mountainous region in my own country, but a wonderfully heightened vision of barren desolation. There were some real stones and gravel, as far as I could tell, but I noticed that the larger rocks were made out of stretched canvas that had been painted grey and blue. The stream that ran behind was no stream of water, but a long strip of silver paper that was being agitated by unseen hands.

  It was the end of the first act. The little orchestra struck up a melody, as Bysshe put his arm around my shoulders. “This is the true thing,” he said with great animation. “This is the full sublime!” I said nothing. “The outcast-the wanderer over the face of the earth-there we all tread! Only the exile has a tongue of fire! The imagination can form a thousand different men and worlds. It is the creator. It is the seed of new life.”

  “It can do so much?”

  “Of course. The imagination is the divine spark leaping across chaos.”

  “The stream was made of silver paper.”

  “Oh, that is nothing. Mortal men make up the scene, but the vision-” He stopped to purchase a bottled beer, and drank it down without a pause. Then he wiped his hand across his mouth.

  The musical interlude had stopped, and the second act began in the setting of the ruined chapel. Yet once more I was distracted. There was someone speaking to a companion, immediately behind me, his voice quite audible. “I wonder if the monster lives or dies? I wonder if he feels remorse for what he has done? What is your opinion?” There was silence for a few moments. “Who created him, do you think? What man and woman gave him birth?” He paused again. “I could never forgive the person who created such a being.” I could feel the hot breath of the man upon my neck. “I could never condone the making of a blighted life. It would deserve dire and condign punishment. Punishment without end.” I turned round but those closest to me seemed to be enthralled in the drama and not to have spoken. The acoustics of the theatre were no doubt peculiar.

  The curtains were pulled for a short interval, and then drawn back to reveal a pool or what the Scottish people call a tarn on the summit of a mountain. Melmoth now stood against a fading perspective of mountain tops and crevasses, as he grasped by her wrists the reluctant bride. “The seed of such a creature will be barren.” It was the same voice again, speaking distinctly behind me. “By his own account he has aged more than a century. Yet if he has risen above the confines of ordinary life, well, who is to say?” The girl broke away from his restraining hold, and flung herself into the water. I had been expecting a splash, or some movement in the water, but instead she descended slowly with her arms raised above her head. Of course it was part of the mechanics of the stage.

  Bysshe clutched my arm, and whispered to me. “I cannot endure this. It is too disturbing. Too tremendous.”

  “Do you wish to leave?”

  “Yes. I am in a fearful fright.” I had always believed that Bysshe was too sensitive to endure the buffets of the world, and this sign of his tremulous nature did not wholly surprise me.

  “Let us go then,” I said. “If we can make our way through this crowd.”

  When we came out into the vestibule he stopped and, taking my arm again, he laughed. “I am a fool,” he said. “Forgive me.
I was seized by some panic fear. Now it has passed. You look surprised.”

  “I am curious.”

  “When the girl threw herself into the lake, and lifted her arms above her head. That seized me with a frightful rush of terror. I am at a loss to explain why.”

  “Shall we go back?”

  “I have seen enough. Unless you, Victor-”

  “Oh, no.”

  We had reached the street, when all at once we heard someone calling out, “Mr. Shelley! Mr. Shelley!” It was Daniel Westbrook, running towards us. “Thank God I am in time!”

  “Whatever is the matter?”

  “It is Harriet. She has been taken ill. She is asking for you.”

  “What? What has happened? What is the matter with her?”

  “She collapsed just before we reached home. She was talking wildly.”

  Bysshe ran out into the road, and hailed a cab that had just turned into Drury Lane. Hurriedly we stepped in, as Daniel called out the destination in Whitechapel High Street, and the sudden jolt of the carriage threw us all into the back seat. “Is this your arm or mine?” Bysshe asked as he extricated himself and sat on the wooden seat opposite to us. “Is she in a fever? We must get ice. The fever will break. Can we go no faster?” All the time he was looking out of the window, which was covered with linen and not glass, as if he were estimating the speed of our journey. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Daniel explained that he and Harriet had left Poland Street, and walked eastwards down the Oxford Road. Daniel had been telling Harriet that we were about to visit Drury Lane for the performance of Melmoth the Wanderer, and she had expressed a wish to see the theatre herself. “There are so many things,” she said to her brother, “that I would now like to see!” He said that her eyes had filled with tears, but that he had taken her hand; together they had crossed the city by way of St. Paul ’s and Cannon Street, and had come out in Aldgate High Street. She had stopped him by the pump there, he said, and exclaimed to him, “I am so happy, Daniel! I could die now!”

  They had walked down Aldgate High Street and crossed into Whitechapel-into the main street, as he put it. They had come within a hundred yards of their home when, looking around at the shops and tenements, she had cried out to Daniel that, “I feel as if I am suffocating. I am afraid my heart will burst!” Then she collapsed into his arms. In his distress and alarm he managed to carry her back the short distance to their house. She was placed in the parlour where she began a most unusual rambling speech in which she called upon “Mr. Shelley” several times. “If Mr. Shelley will come,” she said, “then I will be at rest.”

  So naturally Daniel had left immediately, and had run all the way to Drury Lane in the hope that the play would still be continuing. By good chance, he had seen us just as we left the theatre.

  Bysshe was still impatiently looking out of the window. “This is the east, Victor.” He was silent for a while, as the cab clattered and shook over the low cobbles.

  “This is where we live.” Daniel pointed to a small cul-de-sac off the principal highway, and then called out to the driver, “Here we are!” Bysshe jumped out of the carriage and handed the man a sovereign before we had a chance to disembark; he was, I believe, in a furious and restless eagerness to see Harriet.

  I looked back at the main street and one glance was enough to reveal its poverty to me; there must have been a market there an hour or so previously, because the area was now filled with makeshift counters and platforms, with a plentiful assortment of discarded fruit, vegetable leaves, and papers among them. Bysshe had run on to the house, and knocked upon the door, not waiting for Daniel to join him. The door was opened quickly, and Bysshe gained admittance at once.

  “I trust him,” Daniel said. “He may have more efficacy than any surgeon or apothecary.”

  “Upon your sister, at least.”

  “Yes. That is what I mean.” We followed Bysshe into the house, small and narrow and imbued with the faint odour of damp straw that I had noticed in other London dwellings. There is an expression in English-no room to swing a cat. Bysshe had gone into a little parlour that overlooked the road, and joined two young women whom I assumed to be Harriet’s sisters. Daniel and I made our way into the room, now quite overcrowded, where Bysshe was already kneeling beside the prostrate girl.

  “She has been speaking of you, Mr. Shelley,” one of the sisters whispered. “But she is quite overcome.”

  Bysshe leaned over and murmured to her, “Harriet, Harriet, do you hear me?”

  His voice seemed to rouse her. “I have been quite happy, Mr. Shelley. Oh, so happy.”

  “And you will be happy again. Here. Let me place this cushion beneath your head.”

  “It was the suddenness. I was surprised.”

  “Sudden?”

  “Surprised by joy. Is that not Mr. Wordsworth’s phrase?”

  He bent down and kissed her hand.

  I was standing by the door and, at a slight noise, I turned my head. A man of middle age was standing on the stairs. He was wearing an old-fashioned swallow-tail coat of faded black, and his cravat had come untied. I noticed, too, that his hands were clenched into fists. He came down the remaining stairs very slowly, as if unaware of my presence, and stood listening to the sounds within the room. Bysshe was asking for water.

  “He will have to go to the pump,” the man said. “There is no water here.” Then he turned to me. “Your servant, sir. Look what you have brought into the house.” I did not understand what he meant, but he looked at me in what I believed to be a threatening manner.

  One of the young women came out. “Pa, there is no time to lose. Will you fetch me the pail while I put on my shawl?”

  “Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”

  “There is no time for this, Pa. Oh, where is my shawl?” She took up a large wooden vessel, beneath the stairs, and ran out into the street.

  I followed her, not wishing to linger in the baleful presence of her father. “Let me help you,” I said.

  “There is no need for help, sir. I am going to the pump for poor Harriet.”

  “You are one of her sisters?”

  “Yes. Emily. She has caused us such a fright, but she is calmer now. Mr. Shelley has spoken to her.” It seemed that Bysshe had by general consent become the saviour of the household. “We turn down here.” We had come into a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the dwellings of the poorer sort, patched and peeling, with here and there a stray flower pot perched upon a windowsill. The pump had its complement of old ladies and children. “Let me through, if you please.” Emily was obviously accustomed to the scene. “My sister has been taken ill.”

  “Don’t give her the water then, Em,” an ancient woman called out to the vast amusement of her companions. “A sure way to kill her.”

  “It is just to cool her, Mrs. Sykes.”

  “It is cold enough, I grant you. But it is ever so dirty. Plenty here have turned queer from it.”

  “Who’s the fancy man, Em?” The question came from a young boy, who had been staring at me in mingled astonishment and hilarity. I tried to dress as an Englishman, but there was some undefinable difference in my costume or manner that always proclaimed me to be a foreigner. “Does his mother know he’s out?” This brought further laughter from the assembled ladies, but by now Emily had filled her pail and turned away from the pump.

  “I apologise for them, sir,” she said as we walked out of the courtyard. “They are not accustomed to strangers. I do not know your name-”

  “Victor Frankenstein.”

  “You came as a friend of Mr. Shelley?”

  “Yes, indeed. And of your brother. You say that Harriet is improving?”

  “She is calmer. She is not talking such nonsense. No. I did not mean that. She is resting.”

  I was surprised at Emily’s demeanour, much like that of her sister, in so unpromising a place. She had not
been touched by the general filthiness. They were an unusual family. “You have another sister, I think?”

  “Yes. Jane is with us. She lives with her husband in Bethnal Green, but she happened to be calling on Pa. ”

  “So you and Harriet live with your father?”

  “Jane was wed a few months after Ma died. We look after the house.”

  “Does your father work still?”

  “Oh, no. He was obliged to retire. His nerves are very bad.” I admit that I was troubled by desire for Emily, but now all such feelings were a source of distaste to me. The purity of my purpose could not be put to jeopardy by the lusts of the flesh. I held myself apart.

  “Your last name confused me,” she said.

  “It often does. Let me help you with the water.”

  “I am accustomed to it.”

  Emily took the pail over the threshold, and went into the parlour where Harriet was now sitting up on the settle. Emily knelt beside her, and began to smooth the water over her forehead and temples with such a sisterly tenderness that I marvelled once more at the presence of this family in so mean and coarse a neighbourhood.

  “She is recovered,” Bysshe said to me. “It was a fever.”

  “Then we should not stay.” I felt quite ill at ease in this small dwelling. It was as clean and wholesome as it could be, but the quality of the surroundings tainted it like that faint odour of straw; it left me with a feeling of depression, even of weariness, that I could not master. “There is so little room here. We will suffocate Harriet.”

  “Of course. You are right. She needs air. We will go at once.” Bysshe put his hand upon Daniel’s shoulder, and told him that we intended to return to Soho.

  Daniel insisted on escorting us to a busy crossroads, just beyond Whitechapel, where there were cabs going into the city. “It was very good of you, Mr. Shelley,” he said. “And of you, Mr. Frankenstein. You have brought her back to health in less time than I thought possible.”

  “Not us, Daniel. Her natural strength supported her. She has her own star.” We hailed a cab, and Daniel waved us off. Then Bysshe put his head out of the window, and shouted, “Assure her that I will see her tomorrow!” He leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “We have done a good deed,” he said.