by Mary Shelley
10. Geneva was, at the time of most of the events in Frankenstein, an independent city-state, although it was annexed to France by the Directoire in 1798. In 1812, it joined the Swiss Confederation. Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland (hereinafter “Murray”), first published in 1838 and a landmark in the history of guidebooks, writes of Geneva,
Though capital of the smallest of the Swiss Cantons, except Zug, [it] is the most populous town in the Confederation, since it contains 29,960 inhabitants [in 1838]. It is well situated, at the W. Extremity of the lake of Geneva, at the point where ‘the blue waters of the arrowy Rhone’ issue out of it. The river divides the town into two parts, and the intensely blue colour of its waters, alluded to by Byron, is certainly very remarkable, and resembles nothing so much as the discharge of indigo from a dyer’s vat. …
Although Geneva is a great focus of attraction for travellers of all nations, 30,000 being the number which is calculated to pass through the town annually, it possesses few objects of interest to the passing stranger. As a town it is not very prepossessing; it has no fine public buildings, and scarcely any sights. It is owing to its beautiful environs, its vicinity to Charmouni, to the charming scenery of its lake, and to its position on the high road from Paris to Italy, that it has become a place of so much resort.
Murray goes on to comment on the importance of Geneva as the birthplace of Calvinism and the home of radical thinkers such as Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau:
Geneva, if looked at in a historical point of view, may be said to possess an interest for the intelligent traveller far greater than that to be derived from the individual objects of curiosity contained within its walls. The influence which she has exercised, not only over Europe, but over the world, by means of her children, or those whom she has adopted as her citizens, is quite out of proportion to the limited extent of a territory which one may traverse from end to end in a morning’s ride. … Geneva emulated those religious doctrines whence Scotland, Holland, and a large part of France, Germany, and Switzerland derive their form of faith, and which was transported by the pilgrim fathers to the opposite shores of the Atlantic. Here also were sown those political opinions which bore fruit in the English revolution under Charles I., in the American and the French revolutions.” (131–33)
The Encyclopædia Britannica (3rd ed., 1797) found it equally unprepossessing: “It is handsome, well fortified, and pretty large; the streets in general are clean and well paved, but the principal one is encumbered with a row of shops on each side between the carriage and foot-paths. The latter is very wide, and protected from the weather by great wooden penthouses projecting from the roofs; which, though very convenient, give the street a dark and dull appearance” (Vol. 7, 617).
11. The book appears to have been Fantasmagoriana; ou Recueil d’Histoires, d’Apparitions, de Spectres, Revenans, Fantomes, etc., traduit de l’allemand, par un amateur, translated into French anonymously by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès (1767–1846). It contains a selection of German ghost stories first published in Paris in 1812. The stories included were “L’Amour Muet,” (“Foolish Love”), “Portraits de Famille” (“Family Portraits”), “La Tête de Mort” (“The Death-Head”), “La Morte Fiancée” (“The Death Bride”), “L’Heure Fatale” (“The Fatal Hour”), “Le Revenant” (“The Revenant”), “La Chambre Grise” (“The Grey Chamber”), and “La Chambre Noire” (“The Black Chamber”).
Title page of Fantasmagoriana; ou Recueil d’histoires, d’apparitions, de spectres, revenans, fantômes, etc., traduit de l’allemand, par un amateur (1812).
12. Actually, of the five (Claire Clairmont, John Polidori, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron composed the group), only Claire Clairmont did not participate, though Percy Shelley’s contribution is lost.
13. In 1817, Percy Shelley was correct in this statement. However, in 1819, Dr. John Polidori, another of those present at the Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816, published The Vampyre (in the New Monthly Magazine, April 1819). Originally heralded as a work of Byron’s—and then seen as a satire of Byron—the story recounts some of the activities of the vampire Lord Ruthven, a nobleman marked by his aloof manner and the “deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint.” In the early part of the nineteenth century, the enigmatic yet strangely compelling Ruthven befriends a gentleman named Aubrey, who finds that even Ruthven’s death does not rid him of his deadly companion. When Ruthven returns from death, he rejoins Aubrey, to the latter’s horror, and soon attacks and kills Ianthe, the object of Aubrey’s affections. Plunged into a breakdown, Aubrey finally recovers, only to find that his beloved sister has also become the victim of the creature, who then vanishes.
John Polidori, by F. G. Gainsford (date unknown).
The Vampyre (1816).
Polidori was no great writer—“Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!,” the book’s concluding sentence, is more or less representative of the whole—but his work is credited as the first of the great vampire tales, primarily for its portrayal of a gentleman vampire. The character was a far remove from the disgusting, blood-sucking corpses detailed in the accounts of the Benedictine Dom Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757), author of Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c. (Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants: of Hungary, Moravia, et al.) (1752), and other historians. It was immensely successful; within Polidori’s lifetime (he died two years after publication), the work was translated into French, German, Spanish, and Swedish and adapted into several stage plays, which played to horror-struck audiences until the early 1850s.
St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt, by Benjamin Paterssen (1799).
View of the English Embankment and Galerny Dvor from Vasilievsky Island, by Benjamin Paterssen (1799).
LETTER I1
To Mrs. SAVILLE,2 England
St. Petersburgh Dec. 11th, 17—.3
YOU will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.
I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight.4 Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible;5 its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators6—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe.7 Its productions and features may be without example, as the phænomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall
confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries,8 to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet,9 which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose,—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole.10 You may remember, that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes11 were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a sea-faring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking.12 I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day, and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler,13 and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud, when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel, and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness; so valuable did he consider my services.
Map of the Arctic Circle, by Gerhard Mercator (“Septentrionalium Terrarum description,” 1595) from his posthumously published atlas, Atlantis pars altera (1606).
And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose. My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage; the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.
This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stagecoach.14 The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapt in furs, a dress which I have already adopted; for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road15 between St. Petersburgh and Archangel.16
I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not intend to sail until the month of June: and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent, Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.
Your affectionate brother,
R. WALTON.17
1. Thus the tale begins in the form of an epistolary novel. The presentation of a collection of letters or other documents organized to tell a story was a form that was widely used in the eighteenth century. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) was so successful that it spawned a parody, Shamela, by Henry Fielding (1741). Richardson’s Clarissa (1749) was also widely read. The epistolary format lends a certain verisimilitude to a story that might be less convincing if told as a straight narrative and was revived with great success in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). As will be seen, however, Mary Shelley quickly discarded the structure for the more complex “Chinese box” of narratives by Victor Frankenstein, the creature, and people with whom the creature interacts, returning to epistolary format only for the conclusion.
2. Note the initials of the recipient of Walton’s letters, Margaret Walton Saville: MWS, those of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (a point made by Mellor in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, 54), though Mary Shelley had probably written this when she was MWG.
3. As will be seen below, the year appears to be 1798. Why the obfuscation? The elision of the date suggests that the letters have been edited for publication.
4. Edward Jerrmann, in his Pictures from St. Petersburg, first published in English in 1852, wrote for German visitors in 1851: “St. Petersburg … ; which annually receives several hundred German guests, is nevertheless as imperfectly known to us as if it lay beyond the Mountains of the Moon; and the accounts we get of it are so fabulously strange, that when we come to visit it we scarcely dare to trust the evidence of our own eyes. … His mind full of such erroneous anticipations, the traveller fancies himself a stage or two beyond Christendom, expects to make acquaintance with a semi-barbarous land, and approaches the City of the Czars with trepidation and anxiety. How startling and agreeable is the contrast, to these gloomy forebodings, of the reality that presents itself on entering the Russian capital …” (Edward Jerrmann, Pictures from St. Petersburg, trans. Frederick Hardman [New York: G. P. Putnam & Co., 1899], 9).
Petersburg at the time of Walton’s visit was a new metropolis, having been built by order of Peter the Great in 1703 by more than 300,000 workers out of a morass of mud and ice. Determined to move the center of his empire from Moscow to Petersburg, Peter demanded that many Muscovites, including nobles, relocate. His aim was to move trade from Archangel (see note 18, below) to Petersburg, in order to establish a Russian fleet that could dominate the Baltic Sea and connect efficiently to the European capitals. After Peter’s death, the royal court moved back to Moscow, but it returned to Petersburg when his daughter Elizabeth took the throne as empress in 1741. She spent lavishly on improving the city, building grand structures in the Baroque style. Catherine the Great, who died in 1796, just shortly before Walton’s arrival in Petersburg, made the Russian capital a cultural center as well, establishing a magnificent art collection (now housed in the Hermitage).
5. Corrected in the Thomas Text to “constantly visible for more than half the year,” factually correct but far less powerful as a symbol of the appeal of the pole.
6. There were no “preceding navigators” of “the pole,” in a strict sense, though by the end of the seventeenth century, many explorers had crossed the Arctic Circle (that arbitrary line at 66° 33' 44" north of the Equator), establishing footholds on places as far north as Bear Island, Spitsbergen, Archangel, and Greenland
The earliest account of Arctic exploration is that of Pytheas, a contemporary of Aristotle and Alexander, who wrote of a voyage north, in about 325 BCE, that led him to an island that he named Thule. It
is unknown whether this was the Shetlands, the Faroes, or even Iceland, but regardless, he reportedly continued north, turning back in dismay only when he came upon what he described as a great dark wall, while his ship was seized and held motionless. Arctic historians suggest that he had come across “frost-smoke,” dense fog resulting from significant temperature gradients, and quick-freezing ice thick enough to hold his small ship. Pytheas was also disconcerted by the appearance of the heavens, which shifted from eternal daylight to eternal night.
Pytheas’s own account is not extant; instead, we must rely on works like Strabo’s Geographica, first published around 7 BCE, and Pliny’s Natural History (77–79 CE), which paraphrase Pytheas. Strabo in particular had grave doubts about the veracity of many of Pytheas’s claims of discovery, and there is no corroborative evidence of his voyage.
7. The origins of the idea of a “Golden Age” and its primary situs in the antediluvian North are complex and manifold. Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–1793), astronomer and mystic, was convinced that the scientific knowledge of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, China, and India—newly discovered by the West—was the half-remembered residue of a superior northern culture that was eradicated by the Flood. This was consistent, he believed, with theories advanced by the Comte de Buffon, who argued that the polar regions were the birthplace of life, because, as the Earth cooled after separating from the Sun, those regions would have been the first to be sufficiently cool enough to sustain it.
