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“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Good lord, it is Mr. Frankenstein.”
I recognised Selwyn Armitage, the oculist. “I apologise, Mr. Armitage. I was not looking where I was going.”
“No one can look very far in this, Mr. Frankenstein. Even my eyes ca
“I would be grateful. How is your father? I have the most pleasant memories of his conversation.”
“Pa has passed away, alas.”
“I am very sorry to hear it.”
“It was sudden. An imposthume in his throat. In his dying moments he called for Dr. Hunter to cut it out. He was in a delirium.”
“Your mother bears up?”
“Yes. She is strong. She insists that we continue the business. Now I am behind the counter. But you know, Mr. Frankenstein, you have inspired me.”
“How so?”
“Your discourse to me on the electrical fluid led me to thinking. And thinking led me to tinkering. And tinkering led me to a galvanic machine.”
“You constructed it?”
“I went back to first principles. It is a very simple contrivance of wires and batteries.”
“For what purpose?”
“Did you know that Pa had a collection of eyes?”
“No, sir. I did not.”
“Many of them are perfectly preserved in spirits. The eyes of dogs. The eyes of lizards. The eyes of human beings.”
“You need not tell me the rest, Mr. Armitage.”
“I have caused the pupils to contract. And the irises to tremble.”
“I am obliged to you, Mr. Armitage, but I must be on my way. Good evening to you, sir.” Before he could return my farewell, I had walked across the road and lost myself in fog. I could not endure the recital of his experiments. I was now so thoroughly ashamed of my own labours and ambitions that I could not bear to see them shared by anybody else. What if this electrical mania were widespread? What would be the end of it? Slowly I made my way home through the fog.
18
“THERE IS A STRANGER AT THE DOOR,” Fred said.
“What stranger?”
“He is small. He looks like a bruised pippin.”
“That will be the doctor. Bring him in.”
“Doctor? Whatever is wrong with you?”
“He is going to take off my leg.” He looked at me in horror. “There is nothing the matter with me, Fred. The doctor is a friend.”
“If you say so, sir. I have never heard of a doctor being a friend before.” So, with a certain amount of suspicion, he brought Polidori into the room.
“Ah, Frankenstein, I trust you are well.”
“He is very well, sir,” Fred said. “Tip-top.”
“That will be all, Fred.”
“Call me if you need me, sir.” Fred reluctantly left the room, watched intently by Polidori.
“I notice that these London boys,” he said, “have a tendency to rickets. It makes them somewhat bow-legged.”
“I have not seen it in him. I think in the city that the walk is known as a swagger.”
“Really? It is social, then, not physical?”
“They imitate each other. Or so I believe.”
“You are a keen observer, Mr. Frankenstein. Now, I have brought it with me.” He opened the small case that he carried with him, and took out a glass-stopped phial. “I have already mixed the powder with the laudanum. Five or six drops will be sufficient for you in the begi
“In the begi
“There will be no words, I hope. Only peacefulness.”
“At what time of day is it recommended?”
“I favour the early evening. You will feel its benefits on the following day, after a profound slumber. But if the tremor causes you anxiety-or if there is any other great anxiety-then you should take it at once.”
“What is the cost, Dr. Polidori?”
“It will have no adverse effect upon your constitution.”
“No, I mean the price of this liquid?”
“It is a gift to you, sir. I will accept nothing for it. If in the future you wish to procure more, then we will arrive at some sensible settlement.”
We left the matter there. I was grateful for the cordial, but I could not shake off the disagreeable sensations Polidori aroused in me. He was too watchful. He told me that Bysshe and Byron had spent the entire evening carousing in Jacob’s while he slept with his head upon the table. When eventually they walked out into the Strand, they spent an hour or more looking for a hackney carriage. “I have left his lordship,” he said, “nursing a swollen head. I must return to my charge.” I thanked him again for his ministrations, and he urged me to call upon him and Lord Byron at their house in Piccadilly.
I left the phial on the table where Polidori had placed it. “What is this?” Fred asked me when he came into the room.
“It is a cordial,” I said. “To help me sleep.”
“Like porter?”
“Not exactly. But it has a similar effect.”
“You will be careful then, sir. My poor father-”
“You have told me of Mr. Shoeberry’s early death.”
“His toes was just twitching.” He paused, and picked up the phial. “His face was cold as any stone.”
“Be so good as to leave the bottle where it is, Fred. It is precious fluid.”
“Precious?” He put down the phial very gently.
“As gold.”
In truth, ever since the onset of my accursed ambition, I had been labouring under a weight of nervous excitement and irritability that no human constitution could properly bear; my animal spirits rose and fell disproportionately, so that I was in a continual battle with fear and doubt. There were many occasions when I suffered a peculiar sensation within my stomach of harbouring rats that were attempting to gnaw their way out.
Yet I did not touch the opiate all that day. From my chair I contemplated the glass phial, gleaming in the rays of the weak and fitful sun that penetrated into Jermyn Street. In the early evening a particular form of melancholy, not at all pleasing, customarily fell upon me. It was then that I measured out six drops of the opiate and swallowed them.
The effect was not immediate. But gradually, over a space of approximately half an hour, I became aware of a sensation of mild warmth spreading through my limbs; it was as if I were stretched out in the sun. This was succeeded by feelings of calmness and equipoise, so that I seemed to glide rather than walk across the room. I felt utterly self-possessed, with an elevation of spirits that I had never before experienced. Fred came into the room, with my evening dish of tea, and at first did not seem to recognise my enhanced state.
“Ah, Fred, immortal Fred.”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“You bring the fragrance of the Indian plains.”
“I have just been in Piccadilly, sir.” Then he noticed the silver spoon with which I had measured out the drops. “It is the liquor, sir, is it? Perhaps you might sit down.”
I had not been aware that I was pacing the room. “No, Fred. I must savour the moments of ease.”
I walked over to the window. The pedestrians and porters and carriages in the street below me seemed to be united in one continuous melody, as if they had become a line of light. Instinctively I realised that this was not a compound that would stupefy my faculties but, on the contrary, one that would awaken them to fresh and vigorous life. I went into my bedroom, and lay down upon the bed in a delicious reverie. Fred hovered by the door, but he had become part of my sensation of bliss. I may not have slept, but I dreamed. I was lying in a warm boat, moving across the calm surface of a lake or sea, while all around me the light dappled the water. Above me were no clouds but the deep blue empyrean reaching into infinity.
It was one continuous dream, and I rose from my bed on the following morning utterly relaxed and refreshed. I believed, too, that my intellectual powers had been awakened, and with great ardour I took from my shelf a copy of Tourneur’s Tables of Electrical Fluxions. I found that I was able to calculate with ease, and from the very shape and fitness of the numbers I gathered an enormous intellectual pleasure. I could even visualise the stream of the electrical charge. With the phial of laudanum in my pocket I travelled down to Limehouse where once more I began to experiment with my electrical machines. I believe that the sensation of equipoise lasted for a further eight hours, by which time I had grown weary enough to settle into a chair.