The Monsters (23 page)

Those few words of encouragement from Byron were sufficient to spur Mary. “I busied myself,” she wrote “
to think of a story,
—a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and
awaken thrilling horror.” But as creative people know, the Muse resists when commanded to speak. Frustratingly, Mary had trouble
getting started.

Polidori, eager at the chance to please Byron, struggled as well. He noted in his journal on the next day, “The ghost-stories
begun by all but me.” Byron, of course, had no difficulties, for he always had a topic: himself. The hero of his piece was
an aristocrat, Augustus Darvell, who was traveling in Turkey. The story’s narrator, his companion, realizes that Darvell is
possessed by some mysterious secret. Darvell even makes the narrator promise to bury him after his death and tell no one where.
But after eight manuscript pages, Byron grew bored with the effort and quit. He felt more at home in verse than he did in
prose. (Even his letters are series of thoughts separated by dashes, as if he were writing lines of poetry.)

For his part, Shelley began a story that Mary later said was “founded on the experiences of his early life,” but like Byron
he soon gave up the effort. Ever-loyal Mary explained that Shelley was “more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance
of brilliant imagery, and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our language, than to invent the machinery
of a story.” Apparently he had lost the ability that had enabled him to write two Gothic novels while still a teenager.

Polidori, laid up with his injured ankle, finally came up with something. Fifteen years later, Mary remembered Polidori’s
story with words that were less than admiring:

Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole—what to
see I forget—something very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned
Tom of Coventry [“Peeping Tom,” who was blinded because he looked at Lady Godiva during her famous ride], he did not know
what to do with her, and was obliged to despatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted.

Perhaps as a result of Mary’s lack of enthusiasm, Polidori abandoned this effort. But eventually another idea came to him,
different from the one she describes, and he would develop it into a figure of horror whose only rival was her own creation.

Vampires were among the topics discussed by the circle of five at Byron’s villa that summer. The hidden secret of the hero
of Byron’s aborted ghost story was that he was actually one of those frightening undead creatures that are found in the myths
of many cultures. The idea that life could be extended, even to the extent of immortality, by consuming the blood of others
was an old one—and of course it fit right in with the overriding question of the summer: what was the source of the élan vital
that distinguished living things from nonliving? Romantic writers—including Byron, who had referred to vampires in his poem
The Giaour
—found the image of beings who fed on the lifeblood of others an appealing metaphor. And that metaphor was sometimes applied
to the brutally self-centered poets themselves. When Shelley had abandoned his pregnant wife for Mary, Harriet had written
a friend, “In short, the man I once loved is dead. This is a vampire.” She was not the only one to think of Shelley, or Byron,
in such terms.

The rains continued, and the group still gathered nightly at Byron’s villa. Shelley was very fond of tea, and Byron had it
served even late at night. Once more, around midnight of June 17-18, the group started to tell ghost stories. This time Byron
showed them a poem he had received just before leaving England. It was “Christabel,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom Byron
had mocked in
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
. The older poet bore no grudge, and now wanted Byron’s help in getting a new book of poetry published. Mary, of course, knew
Coleridge well; all her life she remembered the thrill of hiding behind the sofa with Claire, listening to him read
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
to her father and a group of his friends. More recently, Byron had been similarly entranced, as Coleridge had recited for
him one of his new poems, “Kubla Khan,” written under the influence of opium. The once-critical Byron had been overcome with
the magnificence of Coleridge’s voice and words, and was more than willing to help by sending “Kubla Khan” and “Christabel”
to his publisher, John Murray.

“Christabel” fit right in with the group’s other readings at the villa. It was about a female vampire, Geraldine, who sucks
the strength from the pure maiden Christabel. The stanza in which Geraldine undresses and exposes her true nature to Christabel
reads:

Then drawing in her breath aloud,

Like one that shuddered, she unbound

The cincture from beneath her breast;

Her silken robe, and inner vest,

Dropt to her feet, and full in view,

Behold! her bosom and half her side—

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

Oh shield her! shield sweet Christabel.

At that point Byron paused for dramatic effect. The silence was broken by a shriek; Shelley stood up, put his hand to his
head, and ran out of the room screaming. Polidori and Byron followed, and the doctor calmed Shelley by throwing water in his
face and administering some ether. Polidori described the incident:

. . . his lordship having recited the beginning of Christabel . . . the whole took so strong a hold of Mr. Shelly’s [sic]
mind, that he suddenly started up and ran out of the room. The physician and Lord Byron followed, and discovered him leaning
against a mantel-piece, with cold drops of perspiration trickling down his face . . . enquiring into the cause of his alarm,
they found that his wild imagination having pictured to him the bosom of one of the ladies with eyes . . . he was obliged
to leave the room in order to destroy the impression.

Shelley had long shown an obsession with breasts, and he harbored decidedly complicated feelings about them. (His bizarre
attempt to breastfeed Harriet’s baby had been but one manifestation of this.) He had been looking at Mary just before his
hysterics began. Was he thinking that it was
her
breasts that had eyes, and if so, what secrets did they perceive when they looked at him? Whatever the case, Byron was shocked
at Shelley’s behavior, for as he noted in a letter to a friend, Shelley did not lack courage.

Mary might have used the incident as a spur to her own creativity, but still her Muse was not speaking. As she came down to
breakfast each morning, the others asked her, “Have you thought of a story?” and, she recalled, “each morning I was forced
to reply with a mortifying negative.” She wanted so much to achieve something great, to compete with people whom she respected.
In some ways, the summer had been happy, but many concerns dragged at her spirits, distracting her from what she wanted to
do. Though she was not yet nineteen, she had experienced the death of one child and now had an infant to care for. She was,
still, an unmarried mother in an age when that was far more disgraceful than today. The father of her children had turned
out to be more mercurial than she had bargained for, and now complained of ill health though he had not yet turned twenty-four.
Claire’s presence was a constant reminder that Percy might at any time decide to take up with another woman. Despite all the
philosophical reasons for regarding marriage as slavery and prostitution, Mary yearned for exclusivity. Not having it hurt
her self-confidence; she blamed herself for looking for unconditional love from people—Godwin and Shelley—unable to give it.
Finally, her beloved father was not speaking to her, even though Mary had presented him with a grandson named William. She
had to do more than that to win back his affection.

Writers are often asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Fifteen years later, Mary remembered quite specifically
how the idea of
Frankenstein
had come to her. On June 22, Byron and Shelley were planning to go on a long trip around the lake together. Though Mary made
no objection to being left behind, it was another reminder that the men preferred to discuss intellectual matters with each
other, rather than with her. That night, perhaps for the last time in a week or so, the group gathered again at the Villa
Diodati, but instead of ghost stories, Byron and Shelley resumed their discussions of great things—“various philosophical
doctrines”—while Mary, the daughter of a philosopher, remained “a devout but nearly silent listener.”

According to Mary, one of the topics that night was “the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability
of its ever being discovered and communicated.” Of particular interest was an experiment said to have been performed by Erasmus
Darwin. Darwin, someone said during the discussion at Villa Diodati, had “preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case,
till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion.” It isn’t clear just what might have impelled Darwin
to try to preserve pasta in a glass case, or what the “extraordinary means” were that caused it to move. Mary seemed aware
of possible doubts when she wrote later about that evening, for she inserted the remark, “I speak not of what the Doctor really
did, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him.”

Listening to the conversation, Mary slipped into one of those silent reveries that took her deep within herself. “Perhaps,”
she recalled thinking, “a corpse would be re-animated.” Galvanism had indicated such things were possible. Then she carried
her speculations to the next level, where art began to grow. “Perhaps,” she mused, “the component parts of a creature might
be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.”

The conversation at the villa continued long into the night, “and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to
rest,” wrote Mary. But late as it was, she could not sleep. “My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the
successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie.” Though the room was pitch
black, she closed her eyes tightly. That did not shut out her “mental vision,” and she saw the figure of a man, a “pale student
of unhallowed arts,” whose name she did not yet know, “kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm
of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half
vital motion.” It lived.

In Mary’s vision, the “artist” responsible for this creation was terrified by “his odious handywork.” He fled, hoping that
the process he had set in motion would cease by itself, that “the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade
. . . that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse.” Like Mary, the creator
of the monster retreated to bed. Unlike her, he found refuge in sleep, “but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the
horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.”

Just the thought of it startled her and as she opened her own eyes, terror-stricken, Mary half expected to find the monstrous
creature standing over her. She looked around the darkened room where she slept, trying to fasten on something real. “I wished
to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around,” she recalled fifteen years later. “I see them still;
the very room, the dark
parquet,
the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps
were beyond.” But the “hideous phantom” would not leave her mind. She tried to think of something else . . . “my tiresome
unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night.”

Then she realized what had happened: “I have found it!” she exclaimed to the darkness.

Frankenstein.

Did
I
request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me man? Did
I
solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?

—
Paradise Lost,
John Milton, 1667

T
HE MORNING AFTER
her “waking vision,” Mary was able to announce that she had “
thought of a story.
” She needed no further inspiration, but promptly sat down at her work table and started to write. “It was on a dreary night
of November,” were her first words (in the voice of Victor Frankenstein), “that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.”
(This would eventually be the opening of chapter 4 in the 1818 edition and chapter 5 of the 1831 revised version of Mary’s
Frankenstein
.) In character as Victor, she described the creation of the monster in terms similar to her vision.

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark
of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against
the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow
eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

The agelong dream of humanity has been realized, and death has been conquered. Yet Victor realizes almost at once that his
creation is a “catastrophe.” He had gathered human parts from dissecting rooms and charnel houses with the intention of producing
a perfect creature—and now it is evident that he has desperately failed. It is, he tells the reader, beyond his ability to
describe