Frankenstein's Bride (4 page)

T H R E E

EVEN NOW, I RECALL VIVIDLY the ladies on the river bank in their light dresses, the sparkling of that narrow brilliant piece
of water, and the fringe of mighty trees overhung by the sun on the opposite bank. I almost hear the laughter of the children,
see the two bigger boys, trousers rolled up, paddling with their fishing-nets in the shallows, watch Elizabeth Frankenstein
beside them, holding her skirt high with one hand and leading her own little boy to wade in the sparkling stream.

Lucy Feltham sat apart from us, surrounded by that clutter of articles ladies feel compelled to carry with them on afternoons—a
hat, some salve in case of stings and bites, apples for the horses on the way home. Hugo, Victor and I sat on the grass a
little further off, by request of the ladies who preferred to be at a distance from Hugo's old pipe, which he now puffed at,
sending a plume of smoke up through the crystalline air, watching it waft over the water to diffuse, at last, into the trees
beyond. We sat in contented silence until Victor turned to me, saying, “Jonathan, after our conversation last night a thought
came to me. I wonder if you would be interested in joining me in a scientific project I have in view?”

“I should be more than happy to consider it,” I responded warmly. Hugo, glad to have been the author of a new friendship,
beamed at both of us. “The two cleverest men of my acquaintance in alliance,” he said. “An interesting prospect.”

“You do me too much justice,” I told him and knew I spoke the truth. I have always had a certain facility, but my own gifts,
compared with Victor's detailed learning and wide-ranging, speculative ability, were as nothing. Where he roved freely, I
toddled after him like a little child.

Victor told us, “The matter concerns Miss Maria Clementi, of whom I am sure you have heard.” We had. Who, at that time, had
not? One spring she had arrived in London to appear at Drury Lane and taken the town by storm as Polly Peachum in
The
Beggar's Opera
. On one occasion six thousand people arrived at the theatre to purchase tickets and the manager, fearing riot, had called
the militia to keep order. She was invited everywhere, mobbed everywhere she went. A man, it was rumored, fell and fatally
cracked his skull in Bond Street one day because, trying to see into Miss Clementi's carriage as it passed, he had stood on
a friend's shoulders, fallen off and hit his head against the corner of a building. When she sang her voice was so pure and
sweet and lifted to the high notes of the songs so effortlessly that she might have been a bird. Her charming face and figure
and her elegant dancing were just as captivating—her grace, lightness and suppleness were an angel's, not a mortal woman's.
I had seen her as Polly Peachum, and been enraptured, coming home in a daze with the memory of her thistledown body and her
enchanting voice. I had become, as my landlady Mrs. Downey frankly told me, a slave to Maria Clementi. And so, I told her,
were all the men in London. To which she replied rather tartly, “I don't wonder at it, for they all know Miss Clementi cannot
speak, and perhaps that is a state all men would prefer in women.”

For Maria Clementi was dumb. She could sing most beautifully in several languages, yet she had no other power of communication
at all. Report had it that she could generally understand what was said to her, though when she could not, a sweet yet uncomprehending
smile would cross her face. There was apparently no organic reason for her silence. At one time some had claimed she pretended
to be dumb for reasons of her own. But this ceased after a performance when she had come too close to the flaring lamps at
the foot of the stage and flames had caught the gauzy dress she wore. Then, for moments, as the orchestra ceased to play and
screams and cries arose in the audience, the graceful figure of Maria Clementi stood there engulfed in fire, and though her
face bore an expression of the utmost terror and her two hands grasped at her throat, no sound, no scream or plea for help
came from her lips. The figure was only seconds later smothered by a cloak fetched from the side of the stage. Miss Clementi
was mercifully largely unhurt. But all knew then that if she had been capable of making any sound, that would have been the
moment she must have done so.

Whether because of her affliction or merely as a result of her own temperament, the singer had an excellent personal reputation.
Our stage was then, as
The Journal
put it, “tinsel.” At the time we had in England no dramatists worth the name, and, while on the Continent they had their Webers,
Rossinis, Bellinis, musicians of the utmost genius, we had few composers either. We had instead performances of
Macbeth
with mimes and dances between the acts, the spectacle of Master Betty “the infant Roscius” and his tribe playing Hamlets and
Ophelias at the age of nine before audiences of such unparalleled noisiness and coarseness that foreigners turned away in
horror.

Oh, those Columbinas, Lucindas and Aphrodites—more prized for their bosoms and legs than their talent—Oh, those Romeos and
Juliets, played as ballet-burlettas, those King Lears acted by children! We pined for the days of dramas played by men such
as Garrick, for musical performances, grave—or gay—which a man could watch without the interruptions of a ballet, a clog-dance,
a hornpipe, a low comedian or an exhibition of whistling, put on as if for children needing constant variety without meaning.

Plainly, in this atmosphere of folly and craving for novelty, a young, beautiful and adulated actress might lose her head.
Yet Miss Clementi contrived in such a poor environment to bring some inspiration, some artistry, to the London stage.

By all accounts she lived quietly with a loyal lady companion and attended church regularly, though never going to the same
church twice, since any church she might attend regularly would be mobbed by her admirers. She steered clear of society, in
the main, took no lovers and stayed away from those haunts some actresses love to visit—the race courses, prize fights, gambling-houses,
places no decent woman would frequent. Perhaps her affliction protected her from these follies.

Hearing Victor mention Miss Clementi's name at first surprised me. Then I thought I understood his reasons and asked, “Do
you wish to try to restore her voice?”

“Restore it or perhaps produce a voice she has never had,” he answered. “Yes—that is my ambition. If successful the attempt
would of course greatly benefit Miss Clementi, enabling her to lead a normal life among her fellows. But there is more—and
this is why I would wish you to join me in my efforts, Jonathan. Imagine—just imagine—the information to be gained from studying
a hitherto voiceless person (except when she sings the words of others on the stage) slowly gaining the power of speech. What
might we not learn of grammar, of the meanings of words and their implications, simply by being present as the mute woman
began to speak? Imagine studying an adult person who would be able to tell us all that passed in her mind as she achieved
speech! Such a chance might arrive only once in a lifetime.”

“As scientific experiments go,” Hugo said robustly, “it would be by no means unpleasant, a good deal less nasty then cutting
up an eyeball or playing with noxious gases, for example. Many a man would pay guineas for the chance of sitting in a room
with Miss Clementi for any reason. You are a bachelor, Jonathan. I advise you strongly to take up this burden.”

I assured him I knew my duty; if my studies compelled me to enter the society of one of London's most beautiful and admired
women, I would not shirk it. I then turned to Victor and asked him how the attempt to find Miss Clementi's voice had come
about.

He told me, “I visited a performance by Miss Clementi some months ago. It was a piece based on a theme from the
Commedia
dell'arte
, vulgarly done and redeemed only by Miss Clementi's performance. I knew of course of the dreadful incident of the fire at
the theater and of Miss Clementi's complete inability to make any sound, even when in extreme pain and danger. It came to
me that her being unable to speak did not merely shut her out from communication with her fellow creatures, but could imperil
her in situations where she could not appeal for help. I was seized with pity for this poor young creature, who, for all her
gifts and beauty, lacks that one faculty we all possess, use daily and take completely for granted.

“Consequently I wrote to her, saying that I understood she had sought help from many sources and that whatever advice or treatment
she had received had proved useless, but that I thought and hoped I might be able to help her, train her, to learn to speak.

“I said I would be more than happy to arrange some meetings between us to make the attempt, if she would do me the honor of
agreeing. There was a silence at first, until some ten days later when her companion, a respectable woman of about forty,
the widow of a captain who fought against Napoleon, I heard, called at my house. She told me that since the fire the lady,
Miss Clementi, had been afflicted with melancholy. At first when asked its cause she had refused to respond in the manner
she used, but the sadness persisted and in the end her companion asked her if her dumbness was the cause. Then she sighed
and nodded her head, pointing sadly at her throat. The companion, Mrs. Jacoby, rediscovered my letter and asked Miss Clementi
if she would like help in finding a voice. Receiving her approval she came to visit me. It emerged they had both attended
a lecture I had given on the structure of languages and the relationships between one tongue and another.”

“At the Royal Society in June,” I interjected. “I read of it. It was a most excellent occasion, was it not; the room packed
with the most brilliant men and women in London, both eminent scientists and the fashionable? I believe the King himself attended,
Victor. Is that not so?”

“His Majesty did me that honor,” Victor agreed.

“And have you met Miss Clementi?” I asked.

Victor was rueful. “I have, on one occasion, but we made little progress. This is my reason for asking for your help, Jonathan.
I should dearly like someone with your gifts and knowledge to help me.”

“What is Miss Clementi like?” demanded Hugo.

“Very beautiful,” Victor said. “And refined, quietly dressed and beautifully mannered. She has so far visited me only once
and then, alas, in spite of all my best efforts, she only sighed, tried to speak, sighed, made another, unsuccessful attempt.
In the end, she looked at me with such an air of sadness and failure it was quite heartbreaking. She gazed at me as if I held
the key to some door she could not open for herself. If you could attend our meetings, Jonathan, study them, and reveal your
observations to me, I would be most happy.”

Flattered and full of enthusiasm, I agreed whole-heartedly to Victor's suggestion and we settled that the next time Miss Clementi
visited him in London I would be present. Two months, however, elapsed before our first encounter took place.

During August I stayed with my family in Nottingham. It was said that Miss Clementi and her companion were at a spa in Germany,
where she was resting after the strains of her earlier season in London and before a Continental tour. I returned to London
in late September, but by that time Miss Clementi had begun her visits to Austria, Germany and Italy, where she was rapturously
received.

Back in London I continued to work quietly on my dictionary of the Aramaic tongue, that vast and demanding task I had begun
with all the enthusiasm of youth some five years before and which now, many years after its inception, was nearing completion
and eagerly awaited by Mr. Hathaway, who would publish it.

It was during this period of quiet study that I mentioned to Mrs. Downey Victor's suggestion of helping him find a cure for
Maria Clementi. I must explain I had dwelt in her narrow house in Gray's Inn Road for two years, occupying a pair of rooms
on the floor immediately below the servants' bedrooms. It was a modest household. I was the only lodger; Mrs. Downey and her
seven-year-old daughter Flora had their bedrooms on the floor below my own, and we sat and took our meals together in the
rooms on the ground floor. Mrs. Downey, the widow of a solicitor, was herself twenty-eight years old, only a year younger
than myself, and this put us on confidential terms.

There are those who might question the propriety of a young widow, alone but for the child and the servants, taking a bachelor
of her own age as a lodger. Indeed, at the time there were those who criticized our arrangement. Nevertheless, it suited us
very well. Mrs. Downey, though poor, was of a good family notorious since Elizabeth's time for going its own way without concern
for the opinions of others. In our household there was no need to state that men and women were honorable by nature, needing
no duennas, chaperones or magistrates to guide their conduct. This assertion of freedom was characteristic perhaps of the
age we lived in, which still had vestiges of the old libertarian thinking of the previous century. The narrow-minded and suspicious
might have said I should not have spent so many evenings alone with Mrs. Downey in her comfortable parlor at the back of the
house—the dining-room being the room closer to the street. But as a man with loving sisters I was accustomed to and enjoyed
the company of women, for, if less weighty and informed, it is often more lively and civilized than that of men. Indeed, we
often joked of being like brother and sister. To put it bluntly I believe I was lonely and so, I think, was she. Thus we drifted
into the habit, when neither had other plans for the evening, into sitting together while she sewed or mended and I read.

At the time of which I speak it was late summer. We had both but recently returned to London, I having been in Nottingham
and she having spent August with her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Frazer, in Scotland. So one evening when we were
together I mentioned my expectation that now I was back in London a meeting between Miss Maria Clementi and Victor Frankenstein
might take place and that I might be present. I explained the reasons for this meeting but instead of expressing interest
Mrs. Downey raised her head from a little dress she was making for her daughter and gravely said to me, “Perhaps I should
not take the liberty of commenting, but if you will allow me, Mr. Goodall, to speak to you as a sister might, I must admit
this affair makes me uneasy on your behalf. I do not wish to impugn Mr. Frankenstein, for I have never heard anything but
good of him from your lips or those of others. Miss Clementi is also reputed to be a most excellent woman. But I am afraid
this scientific attempt to restore Miss Clementi's speech alarms me, though I do not know why. Please be cautious and forgive
me for producing warnings, like Cassandra, with no reasons for them.”