The Lady and Her Monsters (19 page)

Sweet Christabel her feet she bares,

And they are creeping up the stairs;

Now in the glimmer, and now in the gloom,

And now they pass the Baron's room,

As still as death with stifled breath!

And now have reach'd her chamber door;

And now with eager feet press down

The rusties of her chamber floor.

As lightning from the storm got nearer, it boomed across the lake and heightened the group's mood—most of all that of Shelley, who seemed entranced by the cadence of the lyrics, by the piercing thunder that weaved relentlessly among Byron's words, awakening a curious sensation in the listeners:

Beneath the lamp the lady bow'd

And slowly roll'd her eyes around;

Then drawing in her breath aloud,

Like one that shudder'd, 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!

And she is to sleep by Christabel.

Shelley fractured the silence by leaping from his chair and running out of the room. It was unclear what had frightened him—the poem, the mood in the room, or the weather outside the windows—but in the frenzy that followed, Polidori rose to the occasion. He followed Percy Shelley out of the room, took hold of him, and administered a good dose of ether.

Later that evening Polidori jotted in his diary, “June 18—Lord Byron repeated some verses of Coleridge's Christabel, of the witch's breasts; when silence ensued, and Shelley suddenly shrieking and putting his hands to his head, ran out of the room with a candle. Threw water in his face, and after gave him ether. He was looking at Mrs. Shelley and suddenly thought of a woman he had heard of who had eyes instead of nipples, which, taking hold of his mind, horrified him.”

As literary history and Mary Shelley's own recollections have always stated, it was during one of those nights in June that
Frankenstein
fully presented itself to her as the story she had been waiting all her life to tell.

“I placed my head on the pillow, I did 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,” Mary Shelley detailed in her introduction.

She continued, “I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, at the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.”

Victor Frankenstein and his unearthly creature had finally arrived.

Frankenstein observing the first stirring of his creature; print from the 1831 edition.

Chapter 7

F
RANKENSTEIN
; OR,
T
HE
M
ODERN
P
ROMETHEUS

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mold me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?—

J
OHN
M
ILTON,
P
ARADISE
L
OST

I
n the days following the start of Byron's ghost story competition, John Polidori spent a lot of time with the Shelleys, particularly with Mary. His diary entries include short notes about walks he took with Mary, as well as descriptions of the animated dinners and numerous conversations they shared. There is little detail about their creative minds; one entry, from June 28, says only, “all day at Mrs. Shelley's.”

What did they speak of during these times together? The contest's participants had agreed not to reveal anything about their stories in progress while the writing was being done. But did Mary mention, even in passing, that she had begun to write? Did she tell Polidori what direction her writing was taking? Did she ask him for any scientific and anatomical information only a doctor might know? She had to have been aware of his feelings for her, but did she, in any way, take advantage of Polidori's infatuation to sharpen her tale? If so, Polidori never made note of this in his diary, or if he did, his sister may have put it in the flames because she thought it was too salacious.

By early June, Claire had told Percy about her pregnancy, though it's unclear when they told Mary. But once Lord Byron became aware of the situation, he was not pleased. He knew Claire would need money to care for the child, and instead of accepting his responsibilities, he seemed offended and affronted. Observing this situation, Shelley had legal papers drafted that allocated a portion of his inheritance to Claire and her child.

Byron had never been entirely fond of Claire, and now he felt conned by her. He went so far as to doubt the child's paternity: “I never loved her nor pretended to love her, but a man is a man, and if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours there is but one way—the suite of all this is that she was with child—and returned to England to assist in peopling that desolate island,” he later wrote to his friend Douglas Kincaid. “Whether this impregnation took place before I left England or since I do not know; the [carnal] connection had commenced previously to my setting out—but by or about this time she is about to produce—the next question is, is the brat mine? I have reasons to think so, for I knew as much as one can know about such a thing—that she had not lived with S. during the time of our acquaintance—and that she had a good deal of that same with me.”

With summer quickly coming to an end, Mary, Percy, and Claire left the shores of Lake Geneva on August 29. Claire and Lord Byron, though mostly Byron, had decided that Claire's child would remain with one of its parents until at least the age of seven. And in order not to taint anyone's reputation further, Claire would be referred to as the child's aunt, which would allow her to see and care for the baby as she wished without inciting malicious rumors.

Almost two weeks later, on September 16, John Polidori also left Villa Diodati. He marked it in his journal simply as “Left Cologny and Lord Byron at six in the morning.”

By now Byron had become busy with his own life and had had enough of Polidori's juvenile antics. Byron had wanted a physician who would help restore his mental and physical faculties. Instead, in Polidori he got someone who, despite his age, still acted like a boy and needed near-constant supervision, discipline, and assurance. Byron was unwilling to offer any of these.

A few days after departing, Polidori wrote to his father, Gaetano, to tell him what had happened and to let him know his plans: “I was in agitation for my parting from Lord Byron. We have parted, finding that our tempers did not agree. He proposed it, and it was settled. There was no immediate cause,” he explained, “but a continued series of slight quarrels.”

Blaming himself for what had occurred, Polidori added, “I am not accustomed to have a master, and therefore my conduct was not free and easy.” In the upcoming months, he planned to make his way toward his father's native land, Italy, and there, if opportunities presented themselves, to try to settle as a doctor.

The letter seemed to give Gaetano a certain amount of satisfaction that he had been proven correct and that Polidori had decided to leave “a man so discredited in public opinion.” But still, having glimpsed a streak of indecisiveness in his child, he feared that in the months to come, he would see his son become “almost a vagrant.”

Byron was thrilled to have gotten rid of Claire's presence and lustful gazes, and he was also happy that Polidori was gone. In a later letter to his sister, Byron described Polidori as merely useless. In the young man's desire to please, he had been more of a hindrance. Still, Byron had to admit that his health had improved in the previous months, but he could not tell if that was due to Polidori's ministrations or simply having been away from the nasty rumors of London.

There were others in Byron's circle who found Polidori distasteful and were relieved to see him leave. John Hobhouse, one of Byron's closest friends, wrote in his diary: “Helped Dr. Polidori to settle his involved accounts with Lord Byron, and took leave of him . . . He is anything but an amiable man, and has a most unmeasured ambition, as well as inordinate vanity; the true ingredients of misery.”

Polidori's own diary entries lapsed as he sallied through Italy with a lot of hope but very few financial resources. When he landed in Milan, he stayed for a month and reconnected with friends and acquaintances whose social calendar included galas, dinners, and most especially concerts at the famed Scala opera house. Though he enjoyed those outings and Milan society, his medical career did not prosper there; actually, there was no indication that anything remotely resembling a career was about to be established. As his savings dwindled, he traveled to Pisa, where, under the supervision of a local doctor, he began to care for Italians as well as English expatriates living in the area. Three people under his care died due to mysterious circumstances, and following local investigations, their deaths were attributed in part to his substandard care and his general skills as a physician were questioned.

Italy was proving to be no better for him than Switzerland had been. With his patients dying and finances shoddy, Polidori wrote to his father again asking for money to return to England. He had come to believe that what his father had told him about his native land was all “but too true.”

I
n probably the only book written about Polidori,
Poor Poli
dori: A Critical Biography of the Author of “The Vampyre,”
D. L. MacDonald described the young man as being “so unsuccessful in everything he tried to do” that he went about classically “demonstrating the pattern of compulsive failure that Carl Menninger regards as a form of chronic suicide.” This propensity for failure became even more obvious when he returned to England.

He had become a doctor at his father's urgings, and now he no longer found the work or the patients appealing. He also became convinced that perhaps he should try something else and began to study law, but soon found that he had no aptitude for it and was bored by it. As he had done while on Lake Geneva, he began to frequent bordellos and houses of gambling, for which he felt a strange and repulsive attraction. Though he was book-smart, Polidori's intelligence did not translate well to a game of poker or a hand of cards, and inevitably he became indebted to loan sharks who were eager to collect on what he owed them. While returning to his rooms following one particularly nasty visit to a gambling hall, an incident occurred that, according MacDonald, caused Polidori to suffer “brain damage.”

On September 20, 1817, the
Norfolk Chronicle
and
Norwich Gazette
gave sketchy details of an accident that took place in their area. A few days earlier, on September 14, a “Dr. Polydore” had smashed his gig into a tree. “The night being dark . . . going at a slow rate, he drove against a tree, upset, and broke the gig, and following on his head, a violent concussion of the brain was the consequence . . . He remained for several days in an almost senseless state.”

They could not tell if the concussion left any permanent marks on Polidori, but after that, his life unraveled even further.

His true desire had always been to make a mark on the literary world. Following that passion, he continued to write and seek employment from many places, including with John Murray, Byron's publisher and the man who had once considered publishing Polidori's travelogue. But Murray would not answer Polidori's inquiries, and Polidori could not understand why. If he had read an earlier letter of Byron's to Murray, he would have known. After Byron heard what had occurred in Pisa, he had written to Murray: “I was never more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense . . . and ill humor and vanity of that young person.”

On April Fool's Day of 1819, while still residing in his room at the Covent Garden Chambers, Polidori began to read the day's edition of Henry Colburn's
New Monthly Magazine.
In it he discovered “The Vampyre: A Tale by Lord Byron” and was startled, to say the least.

He was surprised not only because Byron, a man who did not believe in such things, had written a story about vampires, but also because Polidori was the one who actually wrote “The Vampyre.”

Next to the story, the magazine had added an addendum noting “the tale which accompanies the latter we also present to our readers, without pledging ourselves positively for its authenticity, is the production of Lord Byron.”

How had the magazine gotten their hands on “The Vampyre”? Polidori had not sent it to them for publication. Eventually, it was revealed that someone who knew the whole Lake Geneva party had found a copy of “The Vampyre” and sent it to Colburn, attributing its authorship to Byron.

But before that was known, Polidori wrote to the journal and proclaimed that they had been “led . . . into a mistake in regard to the tale of the Vampyre which is not Lord Byron but was written entirely by me.” Even Byron wrote to the magazine: “Damn
The Vampyre—
what do I know of vampires?” He declared to Colburn: “I have seen mentioned a work entitled ‘
The Vampyre
' with the addition of my name as that of the author—I am not the author and never heard of the work in question until now . . . if the book is clever it would be base to deprive the real writer—whoever he might be—of his honours—and if stupid—I desire the responsibility of nobody's dullness but my own.”

The magazine was forced to retract its mistake but did so only partially. They reissued “The Vampyre,” this time with Polidori's name, albeit with a line that described it as being a “more extended development” by this author.

Why had such fanfare ensued over “The Vampyre”? Was it simply a matter of mistaken or stolen authorship? While arguably not the best or most terrifying gothic story ever written, in Polidori's hands, the vampire had been transformed from a common bloodsucking winged creature of the night to a slick seducer, albeit still a bloodsucking one, who enraptured his prey not with fear or loathing but with the promise of nightly sensual delights. “The Vampyre” is about Lord Ruthven, a sexy aristocrat whose prowess and libido are similar, not by coincidence, to Lord Byron's. This was also the first English-language account of a half-man and half-bat creature, which captured the public's imagination and popularized the idea of the modern-day vampire. Several editions were printed and reprinted and various very successful stage adaptations took place. Only after the 1893 publication of Bram Stoker's
Dracula
did “The Vampyre” take a backseat.

I
n August 1821, English journals ran a short article that said a “Melancholy Event” had taken place in their midst. It was learned that John Polidori had, some days earlier and while still residing in his gloomy rooms in London, ingested a large dose of prussic acid and taken his own life. The night before his demise, a servant had gone to his rooms and “found him groaning in the last agonies of death.” Concerned, the servant summoned several doctors, but they quickly determined that the poison had already traveled through his body. He died some hours later, and the doctors described the official cause of death as having been not prussic acid, but “the visitation of God.”

The obituaries were not kind to Polidori. They declared that “the deceased . . . had for some time accompanied Lord Byron to Italy.” They did not mention any details about “The Vampyre” or that he had been one of the youngest graduates of one of the most distinguished medical schools in the British Isles. They did not find it necessary to detail his publications, although they were few, or his thesis on somnambulism. His greatest accomplishment, they felt, was to have played second fiddle to Lord Byron. Polidori knew he would always be remembered for this so-called accomplishment.

Earlier in his life, while still traveling with Byron and keeping a diary, he jotted down an entry after meeting a roomful of people. It encapsulated where he felt he stood in the grand scheme of things: “May 28—Introduced to a room [full of people]—Lord Byron's name was always mentioned, mine, like a star in the halo of the moon, invisible.”

Lord Byron felt sorrow for a time after hearing of Polidori's death. He recalled their many conversations, some of them dealing with the possibility of “taking prussic acid, oil of amber, blowing into veins, suffocating by charcoal, and compounding poisons.” That Polidori had actually now gone ahead and taken his own life did not surprise Byron; he realized that perhaps “disappointment was the cause of this rash act.”