Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“I trust she enjoys it,” I said.

“And what would you have me read to her? The novels of Fanny Burney? They are the fetters that bind young women in their servitude. I am lending this book to Daniel.” He returned to the pile, and held up Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. “When he has thoroughly absorbed it, I will present it to his sister. Do you agree, Daniel?”

“What was the phrase you used to me?” Westbrook asked. “‘We must break up the ground.’”

“Precisely. We speak of radical reformation, but radical means root. Root and branch. We must take reform to all spheres of activity. Victor is interested in voltaic activity. I am interested in Harriet’s soul. They are precisely comparable.” He had excited himself in the course of this conversation, and opened the window to breathe in the cool damp air.

“What a night,” he said. “On such a night as this I imagine stray watery phantoms in the streets of London. But can you see ghosts in mists?”

I went over to Westbrook. “Your sister is happy with the new arrangement?”

“She is overjoyed, Mr. Frankenstein. She has a thirst for knowledge.”

“So be it.” I turned to Shelley. “I had never considered you to be a teacher, Bysshe.”

“Every poet is a teacher. Daniel agrees with me in that matter. He worships the Lake poets. He can quote from memory ‘Tintern Abbey.’”

“I know the last lines,” Westbrook murmured to me. “I have never forgotten them.”

“When does Miss Westbrook begin her studies with you?” I asked Bysshe.

“Tomorrow morning. She will be coming here early. I gave her a copy of Mrs. Barbauld’s Moral Tales to impress her father, but we will discard it. I would like her to read some Aesop to begin. He charms the fancy, and instructs the mind. There will be some hard words, too, which I will interpret.”

“I will call for her at six tomorrow evening,” Daniel Westbrook said.

“But that means you cannot come to the play.”

“The play? What play?”

“Melmoth the Wanderer. It is Cunningham’s latest. It opens tomorrow night. But wait. If you take her home in a cab, Daniel, you can meet us in front of the theatre.”

“I am not accustomed to cabs,” Westbrook said.

“Here.” Bysshe took from his pocket a sovereign. “You cannot miss the drama.”

It was clear to me that Westbrook did not want to accept the coin; he was awkward and abashed. Bysshe understood this immediately, and regretted what had been an instinctive gesture. “Or would you rather enjoy the evening with your sister?”

“I think so. Yes.” Westbrook returned the sovereign to Bysshe. “It is generous of you, sir, but I am not really used to generosity. My sister is more worthy of it.”

“We are all unworthy,” Shelley said. “Of course you must come, Victor. We will sup full of horrors.”

I agreed, and I took my leave soon after. I was dreadfully tired by the events of that night. Westbrook accompanied me to Berners Street since, as he said, I needed a native to guide me through Soho. I could hear the sound of revelry close by, and instinctively I shrank from it.

“Are you a lover of London?” he asked me.

“I scarcely know it. I am excited by it.”

“In what way?”

“By its energetic life. It is possible to feel here that you are part of the movement of the age. Part of a great enterprise. I come from a secluded region where such things are unknown.”

“I heard you say that you came from Geneva.”

“In a sense. Yes. But Geneva is a small city. I am really from the Alpine country, where we walk among the mountains. We are by nature solitary.”

“I envy you very much.”

“Do you? I have never considered it a state to be envied.”

“It gives you power, Mr. Frankenstein. It gives you will.”

I was surprised by this and stayed silent as we crossed the Oxford Road. “In Geneva, we have no gas lamps.”

“These are a novelty. Yet it is surprising how quickly one grows accustomed to the glare. Do you see the intense shadows that it casts? Look how your shadow stretches across the wall! Here is your street.”

“Which way do you go, Mr. Westbrook?”

“East. Where else?” He laughed. “That is where my destiny lies. We will see each other soon. Goodnight to you.”

I watched him walking briskly down the Oxford Road, and then I turned into Berners Street. I approached the door with some dread, all the more powerful for being indefinable, but then I quickly crossed the threshold and mounted the stairs. My chambers were dark, and I lit with a Lucifer match a small oil-lamp; in its sputtering wick the room seemed to change shape and size before settling to its customary dimensions. I sat down in an old-fashioned elbow chair, by the side of my bed, and sought to reflect upon the experiences of that night. I was aware that I had been brushed by some power, but I did not know how I was supposed to consider it.

In the silence I could hear footsteps coming along Berners Street -the tread of one person, but very pronounced and awkward as if he or she were labouring under some burden. The steps then halted, just outside my window. I sat very still, all my faculties in absolute suspense. Then after a minute or so the footsteps resumed upon the cobbles, but with a lighter tread than before. I went over to the window. But I could see no one.

As I lay in my bed that night, I dreamed that I was being buried, and that my coffin was being slowly lowered into the earth. I seemed to be aware of this without any particular consciousness of dread. But then, as my coffin was settled onto the bed of soil, I became aware that I was not alone. Someone was lying beside me.

ON THE EVENING OF THE NEXT DAY I called upon Bysshe in Poland Street. He was in very good humour, and embraced me as I entered the door. “The first lesson has ended,” he said.

“Miss Westbrook has gone?”

“Daniel has just escorted her home. On foot.” He laughed. “She will be the most wonderful scholar, Victor. I spoke to her today about the poetry of Chaucer and the troubadours, and I recited some lines from Guillaume de Lorris.”

“I thought that you were to teach her Aesop.”

“I found him too dry. I wish that you had seen her face, Victor, when I read to her from The Romance of the Rose. It was shining. As if her soul were peeping out of her eyes!”

I suspected then that Bysshe’s interest in Harriet Westbrook was stronger than that of master and pupil. “You read to her from French romance?”

“Of course. I must begin somewhere. Where else but in a medieval garden? And then we will go on to Spenser. Then Shakespeare. I will shower her with delights!”

“It must be strange for her to be freed from work.”

“I believe that it terrifies her and delights her equally. Do you know what she said to me? She said that it was like dying and being reborn. Do you see what a soul she has?”

“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.”