August 26th, 17—
You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not feel
your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles mine?
Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale; at
others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty the words so
replete with anguish. His fine and lovely eyes were now lighted up with
indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow and quenched in infinite
wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his countenance and tones and related
the most horrible incidents with a tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of
agitation; then, like a volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly
change to an expression of the wildest rage as he shrieked out imprecations
on his persecutor.
His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet
I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me, and
the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater
conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however
earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existence! I cannot
doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I endeavoured
to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation, but
on this point he was impenetrable.
Are you mad, my friend?
said he.
Or whither does your senseless
curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a
demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek to
increase your own.
Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history; he asked to
see them and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places, but
principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with
his enemy.
Since you have preserved my narration,
said he,
I would
not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity.
Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale that
ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been
drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his own elevated
and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him, yet can I counsel one
so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live?
Oh, no! The only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his
shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the
offspring of solitude and delirium; he believes that when in dreams he holds
converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for
his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the
creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the
regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that
render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.
Our conversations are not always confined to his own
history
and misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded
knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible
and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic incident or
endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without tears. What a
glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he
is thus noble and godlike in ruin! He seems to feel his own worth and the
greatness of his fall.
When younger,
said he,
I believed myself destined for some great
enterprise. My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness of
judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of
the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been
oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those
talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures. When I reflected on
the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive
and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common
projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of
my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my
speculations and hopes are as nothing, and like the archangel who
aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. My imagination
was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by
the union of these qualities I conceived the idea and executed the
creation of a man. Even now I cannot recollect without passion my
reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod heaven in my thoughts,
now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.
From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but
how am I sunk! Oh! My friend, if you had known me as I once was, you
would not recognize me in this state of degradation. Despondency rarely
visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell,
never, never again to rise.
Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have
sought one who would sympathize with and love me. Behold, on these desert
seas I have found such a one, but I fear I have gained him only to
know his value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life,
but he repulses the idea.
I thank you, Walton,
he said,
for your kind intentions towards so
miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties and fresh affections,
think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me
as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where the
affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the
companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our
minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine
dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never
eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain
conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother
can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect
the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however
strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be contemplated
with suspicion. But I enjoyed friends, dear not only through habit and
association, but from their own merits; and wherever I am, the soothing
voice of my Elizabeth and the conversation of Clerval will be ever
whispered in my ear. They are dead, and but one feeling in such a
solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. If I were engaged in any
high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow
creatures, then could I live to fulfil it. But such is not my destiny; I
must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence; then my lot
on earth will be fulfilled and I may die.
September 2nd
My beloved Sister,
I write to you, encompassed by peril and ignorant whether I am ever doomed to
see again dear England and the dearer friends that inhabit it. I am
surrounded by mountains of ice which admit of no escape and threaten every
moment to crush my vessel. The brave fellows whom I have persuaded to be my
companions look towards me for aid, but I have none to bestow. There is
something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do
not desert me. Yet it is terrible to reflect
that the lives of
all these men are endangered through me. If we are lost, my mad schemes are
the cause.
And what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind? You will not hear of my
destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. Years will pass, and
you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope. Oh! My
beloved sister, the sickening failing of your heart-felt expectations is, in
prospect, more terrible to me than my own death. But you have a husband and
lovely children; you may be happy. Heaven bless you and make you so!
My unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. He endeavours
to fill me with hope and talks as if life were a possession which he valued.
He reminds me how often the same accidents have happened to other navigators
who have attempted this sea, and in spite of myself, he fills me with
cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel the power of his eloquence; when he
speaks, they no longer despair; he rouses their energies, and while they
hear his voice they believe these vast mountains of ice are mole-hills which
will vanish before the resolutions of man. These feelings are transitory;
each day of expectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a
mutiny caused by this despair.
September 5th
A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that, although it is highly
probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot forbear
recording it.
We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of
being crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of my
unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of
desolation. Frankenstein has daily declined in health; a feverish fire still
glimmers in his eyes, but he is exhausted, and when suddenly roused to any
exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent lifelessness.
I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny. This
morning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend—his
eyes half closed and his limbs hanging listlessly— I was roused by
half a dozen of the sailors, who demanded admission into the cabin. They
entered, and their leader addressed me. He told me that he and
his companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to
me to make me a requisition which, in justice, I could not refuse. We were
immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they feared that if, as
was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free passage be opened, I
should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh
dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They insisted,
therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel
should be freed I would instantly direct my course southwards.
This speech troubled me. I had not despaired, nor had I yet conceived the
idea of returning if set free. Yet could I, in justice, or even in
possibility, refuse this demand? I hesitated before I answered, when
Frankenstein, who had at first been silent, and indeed appeared hardly to
have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled, and his
cheeks flushed with momentary vigour. Turning towards the men, he said,
What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you, then,
so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious
expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was
smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers
and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be
called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death
surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it
a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. You were
hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species, your names
adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and
the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of
danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your
courage, you shrink away and are content to be handed down as men who
had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls,
they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why, that
requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far and
dragged your captain to the
shame of a defeat merely to
prove yourselves cowards. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to
your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as
your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say
that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of
disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and
conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the
foe.
He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed
in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can you
wonder that these men were moved? They looked at one another and were unable
to reply. I spoke; I told them to retire and consider of what had been said,
that I would not lead them farther north if they strenuously desired the
contrary, but that I hoped that, with reflection, their courage would
return.
They retired and I turned towards my friend, but he was sunk in languor and
almost deprived of life.
How all this will terminate, I know not, but I had rather die than return
shamefully, my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my fate; the
men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honour, can never willingly continue
to endure their present hardships.
September 7th
The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed. Thus are
my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and
disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this
injustice with patience.
September 12th
It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and
glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these bitter
circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England
and towards you, I will not despond.
September 9th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard at
a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. We were in
the most imminent peril, but as we could only remain passive, my chief
attention
was occupied by my unfortunate guest, whose illness
increased in such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed. The ice
cracked behind us and was driven with force towards the north; a breeze
sprang from the west, and on the 11th the passage towards the south became
perfectly free. When the sailors saw this and that their return to their
native country was apparently assured, a shout of tumultuous joy broke from
them, loud and long-continued. Frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke and asked
the cause of the tumult.
They shout,
I said,
because they will
soon return to England.
Do you, then, really return?
Alas! Yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them
unwillingly to danger, and I must return.
Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose, but mine
is assigned to me by heaven, and I dare not. I am weak, but surely the
spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient
strength.
Saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the bed, but the
exertion was too great for him; he fell back and fainted.
It was long before he was restored, and I often thought that life was
entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes; he breathed with difficulty
and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing draught and
ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the meantime he told me that my
friend had certainly not many hours to live.
His sentence was pronounced, and I could only grieve and be patient. I sat by
his bed, watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he slept; but
presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me come near, said,
Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall soon die,
and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being. Think not,
Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning
hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed; but I feel myself
justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During these last days
I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it
blamable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature
and was bound towards
him to assure, as far as was in my
power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was
another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own
species had greater claims to my attention because they included a
greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this view, I
refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the
first creature. He showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in
evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who
possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know
where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself that he may
render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction
was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious
motives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work, and I renew this
request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue.
"Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil this
task; and now that you are returning to England, you will have little chance
of meeting with him. But the consideration of these points, and the well
balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I leave to you; my judgment
and ideas are already disturbed by the near approach of death. I dare not
ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion.
"That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in
other respects, this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the
only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of the
beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell,
Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be
only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science
and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in
these hopes, yet another may succeed.
His voice became fainter as he spoke, and at length, exhausted by his effort,
he sank into silence. About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to
speak but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed for
ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from
his lips.
Margaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this glorious
spirit? What can I say that will enable you to understand the depth of my
sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and feeble. My tears
flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment. But I journey
towards England, and I may there find consolation.
I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the breeze
blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there is a sound as
of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of
Frankenstein still lie. I must arise and examine. Good night, my sister.
Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the
remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to detail
it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete without this
final and wonderful catastrophe.
I entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and able friend.
Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to
describe—gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its
proportions. As he hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long
locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent
texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he
ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the
window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such
loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily and
endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer.
I called on him to stay.
He paused, looking on me with wonder, and again turning towards the lifeless
form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every feature and
gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some uncontrollable
passion.
That is also my victim!
he exclaimed.
In his murder my crimes are
consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh,
Frankenstein!
Generous and self-devoted being! What does
it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably
destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he
cannot answer me.
His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had suggested to me
the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in destroying his enemy,
were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I approached
this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my eyes to his face, there
was something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. I attempted to
speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster continued to utter
wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to
address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion.
Your
repentance,
I said,
is now superfluous. If you had listened to the
voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had
urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would
yet have lived.
And do you dream?
said the demon.
Do you think that I was then dead
to agony and remorse? He,
he continued, pointing to the corpse,
he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the
ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering
detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my
heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the groans of Clerval
were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love
and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not
endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot
even imagine.
"After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken and
overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror; I abhorred
myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my
existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness,
that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his
own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I
was forever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me
with an insatiable
thirst for vengeance. I recollected my
threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. I knew that I was
preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the
master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey. Yet when
she died! Nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling,
subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil
thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt
my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of
my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it is ended;
there is my last victim!
I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called
to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and
persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend,
indignation was rekindled within me.
Wretch!
I said.
It is well
that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. You
throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you
sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! If he whom
you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he
become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you
feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity as withdrawn
from your power.
Oh, it is not thus—not thus,
interrupted the being.
Yet
such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the
purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No
sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of
virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole
being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue
has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned
into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I
am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die,
I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my
memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of
enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my
outward form, would love me for the excellent
qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high
thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath
the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can
be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of
my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts
were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and
the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a
malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and
associates in his desolation; I am alone.
"You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my
crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he
could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in
impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own
desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and
fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to
be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do
you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why
do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his
child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and
the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled
on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.
"But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the
helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death
his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my
creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration
among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin.
There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence
cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which
executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was
conceived and long for
the moment when these hands will meet
my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.
"Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is
nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to consummate
the series of my being and accomplish that which must be done, but it
requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this
sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me thither
and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my
funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may
afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such
another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies
which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched.
He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very
remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun
or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will
pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago,
when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt
the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the
warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die;
now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest
remorse, where can I find rest but in death?
"Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes
will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet
cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in
my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my
extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in
some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou
wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I
feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for
the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until
death shall close them for ever.
But soon,
he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm,
I shall die, and
what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be
extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the
agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade
away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will
sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.
Farewell.
He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay
close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in
darkness and distance.