Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

I was greatly encouraged by his words, since I pursued my own researches with the firm conviction that all life was one and that the same spirit of existence breathed through all created forms. These were almost the very words that Coleridge himself then used, when he stepped towards us from behind the rostrum, and declared that “everything has a life of its own, and we are all one life.” There was some scattered applause at this, although his sentiments were so far from the usual that many could not follow their path or, rather, their ascent. I had never seen a man so transformed by the power of utterance, so that it would not have seemed to me at all surprising if he had ascended to the ceiling in an act of apotheosis. He spoke eloquently of Shakespeare, and of the dramatist’s words bringing the whole soul of man into activity, and then proceeded with an improvised celebration of the imagination itself. I wished that Bysshe had been with me at this hour. “The primary imagination,” Coleridge said, “I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a representation in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation.” So men could become like gods. Was that his meaning? What can be imagined, can be formed into the image of truth. The vision could be created.

I walked back to my rooms in a state of great excitement, while explaining to Lang the importance of Coleridge’s lecture.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked me, “that you are willing to test your wildest fantasies?”

“The imagination is the strongest possible power. Do you not recall that Adam dreamed, and that when he awoke he found it truth?”

“In the same narrative, Victor, there is a warning against the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.”

“Are we to be prevented from reaching up to the branch? Surely not.”

“I am a mere student of theology.”

“Where there is nothing more to learn?”

“The ways of God are infinite. But I do not share your-”

“Ambition?”

“Craving. Your fierce desire to explore unknown ways. You have spoken to me of the forbidden knowledge of the adepts. Of the ancient conjurors.”

“Not conjurors. Philosophers. Men of science.”

“Of the secreta secretorum of their arts. And I must say that I have been alarmed.”

“My dear Lang, there are people alarmed by Faraday and by Mesmer. All new forms of thought and practice provoke disquiet. What did Coleridge just say to us? Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed. Faraday has awakened dead limbs with his electrical fluid. Mesmer has relieved suffering invalids of all pain. Is that not an alteration in nature’s laws?”

“It cannot lead to good.”

“Is the passage from death to life not good? Is the alleviation of pain not good? Come now. You must think like a man, Horace, not like a theologian.”

We fell into silence, my companion uttering a subdued farewell as we parted from each other in the quad, but I climbed my staircase with a light heart. Coleridge’s valedictory words, on the shaping role of the imagination, had aroused my enthusiasm to such a pitch that I could think of nothing else. I mixed myself a hot collation of rum and milk, a legacy from my days in Chamonix, and then retired to bed with a fixed determination to rise early and to pitch myself into my studies.

When I placed my head on the pillow, however, I did not sleep; nor could I be said to think of anything in particular. My mind was like a canvas on which a succession of images passed. Once, when I had been ill of a fever in Chamonix, the same sensation had possessed me; it was as if my imagination had become my guide, leading me forward in a direction over which I had no possible control. As I lay in my bed in Oxford I saw Elizabeth, as she would have been had she still been in life; there were pictures of my father climbing steadily, along the side of a vast glacier that threatened to overwhelm him; there were pictures of Bysshe, fleeing across an open plain with a girl in his arms. And then, most tremendous of all, I saw myself kneeling by the bed of some gigantic shadowy form. This bed was my bed, and the shape was stretched out upon it. Yet I could not be sure of its nature. Then it began to show signs of life, and to stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.

I must have lapsed into sleep, for I can then only recall a sequence of sounds like some roll of drums in the prelude to an opera. I heard a gate creaking upon its hinges and then swinging back, a number of heavy steps, a key turning and then a door opening. I opened my eyes in terror, to find Florence entering the room. “You will miss the service, Mr. Frankenstone,” she was saying. “You must rouse yourself.”

Never had I washed and dressed myself with such relief, to find the phantasms of the night quite dispersed. I rushed down into chapel, where I saw Lang blinking and yawning as if he had not slept at all. I was about to join him in hall for breakfast, after the service, when the porter brought over to me a note. “This has been left for you, sir,” he said. “Just this morning.”

There was a message scrawled in pencil on a small sheet of paper torn from a notebook: May I see you? I am by the bridge at the end of the street. It was signed by Daniel Westbrook.

I HURRIED DOWN THE HIGH STREET to Magdalen Bridge. He was waiting for me on the parapet, looking down at the green ooze of the Cherwell. “Thank goodness you are here,” he said as soon as he saw me hastening towards him. “Good day to you, Mr. Frankenstein.”

“Good morning, Daniel. I hardly expected to see you in Oxford.”

“I travelled on the overnight coach. You are the only one I know-”

“What has happened?”

“Harriet has vanished.”

“What?”

“We believe that she has eloped with Mr. Shelley. There is no sign of either of them. Mr. Frankenstein, they are not married!”

“Pause a moment. Go back. How do you know that she has gone?”

“All her possessions have been taken away, including her precious books. Of course I went immediately to Mr. Shelley’s rooms.”

“Where are these rooms?”

“In Aldgate. He moved there to be closer to us. But he had gone. His landlady said that he had entered a carriage with a young woman, and that he had taken his portmanteau with him. Her description was that of Harriet. They have fled, Mr. Frankenstein. My father is in a weakened state. My sisters are dreadfully upset. What shall we do? My first thought was of you.”

“We shall stay very calm. No progress will be made in a state of excitement.” I took his arm, and we walked back towards my college. “You will have some tea with me, and revive yourself. Look how cold you are.”

“I was sitting outside during the journey. The wind was very fresh.”

“Come back to my rooms then. We will make our plans.”

WHEN WE WERE SETTLED, and the kettle warming by the hearth, Daniel explained the course of events since my departure for Switzerland four months before. Bysshe had continued to tutor Harriet, in his rooms at Poland Street, and within a few weeks there had grown up a friendship between them. That is when he had moved to Aldgate, so that she could have further lessons with him without the inconvenience of travelling across London. Harriet had no chaperone, of course, since her sisters were obliged to work; but there had been no sign of any intimacy. “Harriet would repeat to me what she had learned each day,” Daniel said. “Mr. Shelley had introduced her to the Greek poets and philosophers, but he had also acquainted her with what he called the new spirit. He read to her from the Lake poets and, in her words, guided her through wild and magical landscapes. I really do believe, Mr. Frankenstein, that she was a changed person. I had never seen her so animated, so bold.”