The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

by Peter Ackroyd

  With the assistance of two local workmen I assembled a series of benches and shelves in the workshop, sufficient for the materials I was collecting. I wanted some means of refrigeration, too, and so they constructed for me the type of ice-chamber that is found in the cellars of Billingsgate Market. The wives of the workmen cleaned everything to perfection. I told them that I was studying the slow disappearance of the fish that had once been so plentiful in the Thames, and they applauded me for a labour so useful to the area. I told them that I wished to be left in peace, since my work required long and patient study, and that I was obliged to work at night when the business of the river had diminished. I knew well enough that my words would be widely distributed in the neighbourhood.

  Within six or seven weeks Hayman began to deliver the equipment he had manufactured for me. Over several nights two wherrymen brought it over the Thames. They made use of my landing stage on the riverside, just in front of the work shop, and on the final night under cover of darkness they carried the precious electrical column into the building. Once the boatmen had departed, Hayman began the arduous task of assembling his invention.

  “I have been thinking,” I said to him. “I would like another.”

  “Another column? It is unnecessary, Frankenstein. The power of this machine is unequalled.”

  “But what if I-I mean, what if it-were to cease operation for any reason?”

  “It will not happen. I give you my word.”

  “I trust you entirely, Hayman, but what if through some error of my own the column ceased to function? My work would be at an utter stand.”

  “That is a consideration.” He stayed silent for a moment, and I could hear the lapping of the tide against a boat; there was a cry somewhere downriver, and a chain splashed into the water. “You must promise me this. You must never employ the columns at the same time. The effect would be incalculable. We know so little of the nature of the electrical fluid that no one can predict its course. It could be deathly.”

  “I promise you, Hayman.” With that, the deed was done. He agreed to construct another column, on the same principles as the first, and to deliver it within a few weeks. I believe that he was also swayed by the pledge of an equivalent sum. As I have written before, the English will do anything for profit. I was exultant. I would have within my control the energies of a vast power-perhaps more power than any one man had harboured-and through that power I would create a new form of science. By restoring human life I was about to begin an enterprise that might change human consciousness itself! I was determined to prove that nature can be a moral force, an agent for good and for benevolent change. To bring life out of death-to restore the lost spirits and functions of the human frame-what could be more beneficent?

  IT REMAINED FOR ME now to procure the subjects. I still recalled very well the conversation I had held in Paris with Armitage, the oculist, whose father had been acquainted with the resurrection men; the father had worked as an assistant for John Hunter, a surgeon of great gifts who had needed the supply of fresh specimens for the rehearsal of his skills. Armitage had given me his card but, foolishly, I had mislaid it. So I called in Fred.

  “Have you heard, Fred, of an oculist?”

  “I have not, sir. If I lived to be a hundred, I would never have heard of him.”

  “An opticist? Optician?”

  “Is it the same gentleman?”

  “Similar.”

  “Then he might as well be the man in the moon. I do not know him.”

  “Tell me this then, Fred. In your extensive travels through the metropolis-”

  “Beg your pardon, sir. I am always on foot.”

  “-have you encountered a shop with a large pair of spectacles hanging outside it?”

  “Oh, yes. Many times. I took them to be telescopes, sir. Like the one in the Strand. I know of one in Holborn, next to the cheese shop.” Then he slapped his hand on his forehead, and did a small mime of disbelief. “Let me pinch myself, sir. There is one here in Piccadilly. Run by a cove with the name of Wilkinson.”

  “Can you go to this Wilkinson, Fred, and ask if he knows of a maker of spectacles by the name of Armitage?”

  “I will try, sir. I don’t know if the old codger will speak to me.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “He is a tartar with us boys.”

  “If he will not help you, then go to Holborn. Wherever you see the sign of the spectacles, ask for Armitage.”

  So Fred set off. He returned no more than an hour later, bearing in triumph a small piece of paper. “Weeny, waxy, weedy,” he said. I must have looked surprised. “That is Julius Caesar, sir. When he won.” He handed to me the paper, upon which was written a name and address: W.W. Armitage and Son, 14 Friday Street, Cheapside.

  Such was my impatience, and urgency, that I journeyed there on the same afternoon. It was a narrow-fronted property, with a small street-door and a thin window rising up the whole length of the ground floor. When I entered a cracked bell rang above me, and within a few moments I heard the sound of shuffling steps. The tall window seemed designed to catch as much light as possible from Friday Street, and on the shelves around me I could see all possible varieties of spectacles-green spectacles, blue spectacles, convex spectacles, concave spectacles, spectacles with front glasses, spectacles with side glasses, and the like. An old man came into the shop, leaning upon a cane. The crown of his head was quite bald, and his puckered mouth suggested that he had lost his teeth, but I noticed at once the brightness of his eyes. “May I be of service to you, sir?”

  “I am looking for Mr. Armitage.”

  “You see him.”

  “I believe, sir, that you have a son.”

  “I have.”

  “I had the good fortune of meeting him in Paris, and I promised to pay him a visit on my return to London.”

  “What is your name, sir?”

  “Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein.”

  “Something-” He put his hand up to his forehead. “I am reminded.” He went into the interior passage of the shop, and called out, “Selwyn!”

  There came a hurried step down some uncarpeted stairs, and my acquaintance came into the room. “Good Lord,” he said. “I was hoping that I would see you again. This is Mr. Frankenstein, Father, who is studying the workings of human life. I told you of him.”

  The father looked at me, with his bright eyes, and seemed to be satisfied. “Tell Mother to bring us some green tea,” he said. “Do you take green tea, Mr. Frankenstein? It is very good for the ocular nerves.”

  “I will be happy to try it, sir.”

  “Selwyn drinks it morning and night. I have tested his eyes, sir. He could see the Monument from Temple Bar, if there were no houses between. From Millbank, sir, he has read a shopfront in Lambeth.”

  “Astonishing.”

  Mrs. Armitage entered the shop, carrying a tray with teapot and cups. She looked considerably younger than her husband; she was wearing a green satin gown that scarcely concealed her ample bosom, and had arranged her hair in the fashionable style of ringlets. “Will you partake?” she asked me.

  “Gladly.”

  “It will be hot, sir. The water must be boiling to bring out the beauty of the leaves.”

  So we drank the tea, and Selwyn Armitage recalled to his father the details of our meeting at the coaching inn in Paris. Then I explained to the company the course of my studies in Oxford, taking care to avoid any reference to human experiment; instead I entertained them with descriptions of the efficacy of the electrical fluid. When I mentioned a dead cat whose fur had bristled, and whose mouth had opened, after a small discharge of the fluid, Mrs. Armitage excused herself and returned to the parlour upstairs. The light had begun to fade, and the evening to approach, when the two men asked me to share a bottle of port wine with them. They seemed reluctant to dispense with my company.

  After our first glass I ventured upon the matters that most interested me. “Selwyn,” I said, “has mentioned that y
ou worked with Mr. John Hunter.”

  “Of blessed memory, sir. He was the finest surgeon in Europe. He could unblock a stricture in minutes. There was no one like him for a hernia.”

  “Tell him about your fistula, Father.”

  “He condescended to treat me, sir, when I had the complaint. He was in and out before I knew it.”

  “But you must have suffered pain, Mr. Armitage.”

  “Pain was nothing to me, Mr. Frankenstein. Not when I was in the hands of the master.”

  “The whole world has been informed of his experiments,” I said.

  “They were wonderful to behold, sir.”

  “Did he not attempt to freeze creatures and then to revivify them?”

  “He practised upon dormice, but without success. But I recall once that he froze the comb of a rooster. They fall off, you know, in hard frosts.”

  “But he believed that he might pursue the same course with humans, did he not?”

  “Now that, Mr. Frankenstein, is an interesting question.” The old Mr. Armitage went to the inner door and called to his wife, who brought down another bottle of port wine. “He held much the same opinion as you, sir, on some matters. That is why my son mentioned you in the first place. Mr. Hunter put his faith in what he called the vital principle. He was of the opinion that it might linger in the body for an hour or more after death.”

  “And then could be revived.”

  “That is so.”

  “I read a curious account in the Gentleman’s Magazine,” I said, “about the attempt to restore Dr. Dodd.”

  “That account was not accurate, sir, as far as I remember it. We did not put him in a warm bath. It would have had little effect.”

  “But Mr. Hunter tried other means of restoring him to life, did he not?”

  “After he was cut down from the gallows, he was brought to Mr. Hunter’s house in Leicester Square at the gallop. We chafed the body to revive its natural heat, while Mr. Hunter tried to inflate the lungs by means of a bellows. But he had been left swinging at Tyburn for too long. Then, sir, he tried your method. He gave the body a series of sharp shocks from a Leyden jar. But Dodd was quite inert.”

  “I believe, Mr. Armitage, that your level of electrical power was too low. No jar could effect a restoration of life. You need great force to succeed.”

  “Do you have that power, sir?”

  I grew more wary. “One day,” I replied, “I hope to achieve it.”

  “Ah. A dream. Mr. Hunter used to say that an experimenter without a dream is no experimenter at all.”

  “And he never gave up his experimenting?”

  “He did not. He would take a tooth from a healthy child, and plant it in the gum of one who needed it. He tied it with seaweed.”

  “That must have been a very remarkable operation.”

  “Oh, sir, that was nothing to him. He could put the testis of a cockerel into the belly of a hen, and see it grow.”

  “I have heard,” I said, “that his dissecting room was always full of observers.”

  “Crowded, sir. He was a great draw to the students. He could open up a subject in seconds.”

  “That must have been very gratifying.”

  “It was a pleasure to see. He was a lovely man with a knife.”

  “You must enlighten me on one thing, Mr. Armitage. How many subjects did he-”

  “There was a regular supply.” He took another glass of the port wine, and looked at his son.

  “You can tell him, Father.”

  “In London, sir, there are always more dying than being born. That is a fact. There is no room for all of them. The churchyards are bursting.”

  “Yet he must have found a source.”

  “I tell you this in the strictest confidence, sir. Mr. Hunter was the resident surgeon at St. George’s Hospital. Can you bring us another bottle, Selwyn? He had the keys of the dead house there. Have I said enough?”

  “But he must have dissected some thousands. Surely not all came from one place?”

  “You are entirely correct, sir. Not all of them could have done.” I waited impatiently as Selwyn Armitage came into the room with a fresh bottle, and began to pour the wine into his father’s glass. I declined the offer. “Have you heard of the Sack ’ Em Up Men?”

  “I do not believe so. No.”

  “Resurrectionists. Doomsday Men.” I knew precisely what he meant, of course, but I feigned ignorance for the sake of further enlightenment. “These are the men who rob the graves of their dead. Or they enter the charnel houses and filch their victims. It is not a delicate trade, Mr. Frankenstein.”

  “Yet it is necessary, sir. I have no doubt of that.”

  “How else are we to progress? Would Mr. Hunter have been able to complete his work on the spermatic cord?”

  “I think not.”

  “They were very expensive.” He drained his glass, and held it out to his son. “A guinea, or more, for a body. A child was priced by the inch. Will you oblige me, Selwyn? Yet the best of them were very expert. The subject had to be delivered after rigor mortis had passed, but before wholesale corruption. And they had to escape the attention of the mob.”

  “The mob,” Selwyn said, “was worse then.”

  “They would have been killed on the spot, Mr. Frankenstein. Torn limb from limb. The mob hated resurrectionists.”

  “You speak of them in the past tense, sir. But surely they still pursue their trade? The market must be as thriving as ever.”

  “I do not doubt it. The medical schools have grown to enormous size.”

  “Do they haunt the same places?”

  “The graveyards? Of course. There is a paupers’ graveyard in Whitechapel-”

  “No. I mean their places of business. Where they meet their clients. Where they are paid.”

  “They are paid at the back door, sir. Every hospital has one.”

  “Yet they must meet.”

  “They meet to drink. Drink is their life. Not one of them could do the work sober. I have seen some of them, sir, sitting in a tavern from dusk until dawn.”

  “What tavern is that?”

  “The most celebrated of them all, Mr. Frankenstein.” He slowly drank the full glass, and held it out for more. “It is in Smithfield. Just opposite St. Bartholomew’s. Now there is a meat market.”

  9

  THE SMITHFIELD TAVERN was not difficult to find. I left Jermyn Street at dusk, and the carriage set me down at Snow Hill soon afterwards; I walked up to St. Bartholomew’s just as its clock was striking seven, and on my left hand I could see a low public house with the sign of The Fortune of War. It showed the deck of a naval frigate, with an officer dying in the arms of his comrades. I could hear it, too, with the noise of song, laughter and raised voices echoing against the stone wall of the hospital. I steeled myself, making sure that my purse of guineas was well concealed beneath my shirt, and entered the premises.

  The smell was very strong. I could not help but associate it with dead things, although I knew that it came from the living; the taint of dirty flesh was in the air, mixed with the odours of the privy and the smell of strong spirits. I was of course accustomed to foul odours, in my work, and I registered no discomfort at all. I made my way to the wooden counter, and ordered a glass of porter. I decided to settle, and make myself as conspicuous as possible; I had no desire to be taken as a government spy, and I did not retreat into a corner. I stayed by the counter and, by remarking loudly upon the weather, made sure that my accent was heard by those around me. But they evinced little interest, being in most cases reduced to the last stages of intoxication, and after a while I was able to look around without drawing any particular attention to my presence. There were solitary drinkers, bent over their bottles and tankards; I observed that one had urinated upon the floor, of plain deal planks, without provoking any comment. In Geneva we have chamber pots in the corners of our taverns. My notice was attracted by a company of men, sitting in one alcove; all of them were smoking f
rom the long, thin pipes that I thought were out of use. They were silent, and contemplative, in the extreme. For a moment I conceived the notion that they were the resurrectionists I sought. I discovered later that they were the pure-finders whose trade was to collect the excrement of dogs, horses and humans from the thoroughfares of the city.

  Then a rough-looking fellow came in from the street and, advancing upon the counter, asked in a loud voice for a jug of brandy and seltzer. I noticed that the innkeeper served him with a word of recognition; but the fellow paid no attention to that and, slapping a few coins onto the counter, went over to a corner. There was a window there, overlooking the paved space in front of the hospital, and he seemed to be scrutinising the gates lit by a single oil-lamp. He was watching for someone, or something, very keenly; but, from my position by the counter, I could see nothing. A few minutes later two other fellows, smelling strongly of spirits and other less delectable items, joined him by the window. Another man was standing close to me at the counter. He was staring straight ahead, with a glass of gin in his hand, when he said to me, “You do not want to fall into the hands of them dogs, living or dead.”

  “I have no notion,” I replied, “of who or what they are.”

  “No need to know.” He was still staring straight ahead. “Stay clear of them. Otherwise you might end up in there.” He jerked his head in the general direction of the hospital.

  The innkeeper looked at him angrily. “Are you talking out of turn, Josh?”

  “Only saying what we all know. This young man is a new one. He may heed a warning.”

  I steadied myself by drinking down the porter and ordering another. Then I went over to the table where the three men were sitting, and placed three silver guineas in front of them. They looked at the coins, and then looked up at me.

  “You are free with the bunce,” one of them said.

  “One for each of you.”

  “Oh?” He picked up a guinea and tried it with his teeth. “What’s your game?”

  “I need something.”

  “Speak to them.” He pointed towards the group of men with the old fashion of pipes. “They pick up the filth.”