Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

My principal concern was with the cerebrum, and with the excitation of sight, hearing and speech. I had isolated the electrical lobe, and in a series of trials I endeavoured to trace the paths of its influence. Much to my delight I soon discovered that it affected the visual and aural nerves equally, and that the vocal cords were stimulated by the charging of the arytenoid cartilages. I had assumed the larynx to be the responsible agent, but I was wrong. The experiments with hearing were most rewarding. Once the lobe was in an alert state I fired my blunderbuss beside the right ear of the subject; the head jerked to one side, away from the noise. On another occasion I began to whisper, and the head moved forward a fraction towards me. With sight the effects were less distinct. The eyes always opened in a state of electrical excitation, but sometimes they were so dull of hue that I could detect no evidence of a visual ray. In what I deemed to be the more intelligent subjects, however, there was a definite reaction to various stimuli. When I lit a candle in front of the eyes of one cadaver, there was a detectable movement of the pupil; when I blew out the light the pupil dilated. In one experiment I held before the eyes of one young specimen, scarcely more than a boy, a little struggling mouse; his eyes became fixed upon the creature, in the same manner as those of some cadaverous animal intent upon its prey.

In the course of these trials I noticed that, in the corpses of the younger specimens, the phallus became erect at the slightest excitation and remained in a state of alertness for the duration of the electrical charge. In the older bodies this did not occur. My work on the phallus was at first confined to an examination of the three columns of erectile tissue, but I then advanced to an attempt at the measurement of the spermal fluid. By means of the firm pressure of my fingers I brought one body to a state of ejaculation, at which point there came a groan; but no spermatozoa appeared. There was no fluid, but there was instead a sprinkling of material with the appearance and consistency of dust. It may have been a principle of nature that the dead could not bring forth new life. I was not sure, but I was determined to continue the experiment.

As the weeks passed, and the London autumn turned to bitter winter, I was still more ardent in execution and more impatient of difficulties. I was exhausting bodies at a great rate; I kept some of them in the ice-house which I had fashioned in the basement space of the old manufactory, while I discharged others into the Thames with the knowledge that the full tide would carry them downstream where they would join the score of other corpses taken up by the sheriffs of Blackwall or Woolwich; there was a promontory at North Woolwich known as Deadman’s Point, to which many of the bodies of the drowned used to drift. Many more would find their way by stages to the open sea, where all prospect of discovery was of course abandoned. There were a few specimens that I placed in a pit of lime I had created, between the foreshore and my workshop, where the action of the dissolvent soon removed all traces of their existence.

If you ask me if I had any qualms about the nature of my profession, I would answer you with a solemn denial. I did not rank myself with the herd of common projectors, nor did I consider myself to be in the least tainted by my association with the bodies of the dead. There were occasions when I experienced the pains of solitude, of course, and there came upon my mind a sense of loneliness all the more acute from my presence in the teeming city. Solitude is like despair: it has no remedy. The death of Elizabeth had only confirmed what I believed to be my fate in the world. One afternoon I picked up by chance in a coffee-house a copy of the Monthly Magazine and came upon a poem by Bysshe. My attention was immediately arrested by its opening lines:

Youth of tumultuous soul, and haggard eye!

Thy wasted form, thy hurried steps I view

On thy wan forehead starts the lethal dew

And oh! the anguish of that shuddering sigh!

Beside it was a commentary, in smaller type: His countenance told in a strange and terrible language of agonies that had been, and were, and were still to continue to be. I could not help but recall Bysshe’s look of concern when he came to my apartments, but of course I could not credit him with any prophetic skills.

It was in this period that I began my night walks. I pursued the loneliest and most silent ways, but there were moments when I believed that I could hear footsteps behind me echoing on the cobbles. I would start and look over my shoulder, expecting to see a form or the shadow of a form; but I saw nothing at all. The nights of London are gloomy enough, with all of its miserable lives pent up close together, but for a melancholy man they are an emanation or reflection of his own fearfulness. That was at least how I considered them. In the rain I saw strange shapes moving through the streets, obscure and dark, as if they were carrying burdens. On moonlit nights every sound seemed to be magnified, and a sudden cry or laugh would make me shudder. On such nights, too, the shadows were longer and more intense. Sometimes I stopped on the threshold of a courtyard, or an alley, and peered into the darkness; then a figure would suddenly appear, or pass quickly from one corner to another, and I would step back.

Yet, curiously enough, the night became my home. In the light of day I found myself to be dazed and weary; looking up at the faces of strangers, I sensed hostility and resentment and a thinly veiled contempt. Was this because I possessed a foreign manner? I cannot say. I know only that at night I felt more free. I wandered abroad, through streets of sinister aspect, without the slightest danger of being questioned; I sensed the power of the night, too, when the wildness of the city was manifest.

One dark night I found myself in Wellclose Square, looking down at the emaciated figure of a young man clad in nothing but the filthiest rags. I did not think to touch him, but I leaned over him as he lay upon the uneven stones. He was not sleeping. He opened his eyes. “You have found me,” he said. “You know me by the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Look at me.” He parted the rags across his chest, and I could see that his body was covered with welts and blisters of blood; the stench from the wounds was insupportable, and I turned away. “I am the chosen one,” he said, “and you are my disciple.”

I walked out of Wellclose Square, and with a shudder returned to my rooms in Jermyn Street.

I HAD NOW THE SETTLED DETERMINATION to create the form of a man. Could we say that a new kind of being might thereby be created, free from the imperfections of the living? My imagination was vivid enough, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of their qualities I conceived the idea and began the execution of the task. I was concentrating on the method of creating a sentient human being unencumbered by class or society or faith: it was to be Bysshe’s dream-child, so to speak, free from all the petty tyrannies of prejudice that are to be found in human society.

Where did such a person exist? Of course he existed nowhere. That was the reason, and necessity, for my creation. I believed that the component parts of an excellent human being might be found, brought together, and endued with vital warmth. I had already tested the procedure to my satisfaction, and I had succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and of life. I had achieved much, beyond my most fervent expectations, when I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The principle of union or coherency, so that all the organs and fibres of the body might work in unison, was the only one that remained to be explored. This I managed, after much weary labour and experiment, by means of a certain operation in the cerebellum.