INTRODUCTION.
The Publishers of the Standard Novels, in selecting "Frankenstein" for
one of their series, expressed a wish that I should furnish them with
some account of the origin of the story. I am the more willing to
comply, because I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so
very frequently asked me--"How I, when a young girl, came to think of,
and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?" It is true that I am very
averse to bringing myself forward in print; but as my account will only
appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be
confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I
can scarcely accuse myself of a personal intrusion.
It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished
literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing.
As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given
me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure
than this, which was the formation of castles in the air--the indulging
in waking dreams--the following up trains of thought, which had for
their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My
dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. In
the latter I was a close imitator--rather doing as others had done,
than putting down the suggestions of my own mind. What I wrote was
intended at least for one other eye--my childhood's companion and
friend; but my dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody;
they were my refuge when annoyed--my dearest pleasure when free.
I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a considerable
time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque
parts; but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern
shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection I call
them; they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and
the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of
my fancy. I wrote then--but in a most common-place style. It was beneath
the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides
of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy
flights of my imagination, were born and fostered. I did not make myself
the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an affair
as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or
wonderful events would ever be my lot; but I was not confined to my own
identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more
interesting to me at that age, than my own sensations.
After this my life became busier, and reality stood in place of fiction.
My husband, however, was from the first, very anxious that I should
prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of
fame. He was for ever inciting me to obtain literary reputation, which
even on my own part I cared for then, though since I have become
infinitely indifferent to it. At this time he desired that I should
write, not so much with the idea that I could produce any thing worthy
of notice, but that he might himself judge how far I possessed the
promise of better things hereafter. Still I did nothing. Travelling, and
the cares of a family, occupied my time; and study, in the way of
reading, or improving my ideas in communication with his far more
cultivated mind, was all of literary employment that engaged my
attention.
In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbours
of Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or
wandering on its shores; and Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto
of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon
paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the
light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of
heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him.
But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined
us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from
the German into French, fell into our hands. There was the History of
the Inconstant Lover, who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he
had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her
whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his
race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the
younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of
promise. His gigantic, shadowy form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet,
in complete armour, but with the beaver up, was seen at midnight, by
the moon's fitful beams, to advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The
shape was lost beneath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate
swung back, a step was heard, the door of the chamber opened, and he
advanced to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep.
Eternal sorrow sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead
of the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the
stalk. I have not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are
as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday.
"We will each write a ghost story," said Lord Byron; and his proposition
was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a
fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley,
more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant
imagery, and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our
language, than to invent the machinery of a story, commenced one founded
on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible
idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through
a key-hole--what to see I forget--something very shocking and wrong of
course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned
Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her, and was obliged to
despatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she
was fitted. The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of
prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task.
I busied myself _to think of a story_,--a story to rival those which had
excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears
of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror--one to make the reader dread
to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the
heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be
unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered--vainly. I felt that blank
incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship,
when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. _Have you thought
of a story?_ I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to
reply with a mortifying negative.
Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that
beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give
the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand
upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist
in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the
first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless
substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all
matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the
imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and
his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the
capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning
ideas suggested to it.
Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to
which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these,
various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the
nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability
of its ever being discovered and communicated. They talked of the
experiments of Dr. Darwin, (I speak not of what the Doctor really did,
or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken
of as having been done by him,) who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a
glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with
voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps a
corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things:
perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought
together, and endued with vital warmth.
Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by,
before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not
sleep, nor could I be said to think. 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. 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, on the working of some
powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital
motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the
effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the
Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would
rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope
that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated
would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect
animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the
belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient
existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle
of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the
horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on
him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.
I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of
fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my
fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the
dark _parquet_, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling
through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps
were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still
it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my
ghost story,--my tiresome unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only
contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been
frightened that night!
Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. "I
have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only
describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow." On the
morrow I announced that I had _thought of a story_. I began that day
with the words, _It was on a dreary night of November_, making only a
transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.
At first I thought but of a few pages--of a short tale; but Shelley
urged me to develope the idea at greater length. I certainly did not owe