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III
Of the seven altered or alternate character names in the Last Draft of Frankenstein, two are of particular interest: Carignan/Clerval/Clairval and Amina/Maimouna/Safie. The first of these is in fact the first encountered in the Last Draft and in both cases the order I have given of the alternative names depends upon their appearance in the Last Draft narrative sequence — a sequence that may or may not have corresponded to the order of its writing.
In the second paragraph of Part A of the Last Draft are two references (the first introductory) to Frankenstein's long-term friend "Henry Carignan," with "Carignan" deleted and "Clerval" substituted: "Henry [Carignan cancelled] ˄Clerval˄ was the son[e cancelled] of a merchant [as cancelled] of Geneva [and cancelled] an intimate friend of my father[s cancelled]" (p. 41; see Fig. 1; cf. Rieger 30.27 — 28); "In [this cancelled] the description of our domestic circle I include Henry [Carignan cancelled] ˄Clerval˄" (p. 42; cf. Rieger 31.25 — 26). But a couple of sentences later, at the end of the paragraph, the name "Clerval" appears on its own as the unambiguous first choice: "we were never completely happy when Clerval was absent" (p. 43; Rieger 32.4). It is the form "Clerval," of course, which appears throughout the published text. The question arises: Was "Carignan" Mary's first choice for the name of Frankenstein's friend, in which case the deletions and the inserts represent her subsequent preference for "Clerval," a preference apparently fixed on at the end of the paragraph containing the second deleted "Carignan"? Or had she fixed on "Clerval" at some previous point in the composition process and experimentally or absent-mindedly substituted "Carignan" in the initial instances in Part A of the Last Draft but quickly changed her mind and reverted to "Clerval"? To determine which of these possibilities is the more likely it is necessary to track all the references to "Clerval" and "Clairval" ("Carignan" does not reappear in the entire extant Last Draft).
In the Part A1 insert material, the name "Clerval" appears in a passage which was deleted by a zigzag line: "[one evening cancelled] that I spent in town at the house of Clerval's [father?]" (folio 3r, as numbered by Margaret Crum of the Bodleian; the entire omitted material follows on "cheerfully consented" at Rieger 36.2).
After the initial page 43 instance an unsubstituted "Clerval" appears twenty more times in Part A of the Last Draft: three times on page 80 (Rieger 55.2, 55.6, 55.12), once on pages 83, 84, 86, and 87 (Rieger 56.24, 56.35, 57.33, 58.9), twice on page 96 (Rieger 62.32, 63.11), once on page 97 (Rieger 63.22), three times on page 98 (Rieger 64.2, 64.10, 64.15), twice on page 100 (Rieger 65.2, 65.12), once on pages 101 and 106 (Rieger 65.20, 68.20), twice on page 107 — the first time in a Percy insert (Rieger 68.29, 68.32), and on page 108 (Rieger 69.12).
After Frankenstein bids farewell to Clerval following the last reference
But all the following references in Last Draft Chapter 11 (albeit "11" is deleted and replaced by "2," the chapter number in the 1818 edition Volume Three) through to Chapter 17 — twenty-two in all — are to "Clairval" corrected as "Cl[air cancelled] ˄er˄val" or "Cl[ai cancelled] ˄e˄rval."
When Frankenstein's friend is next referred to — in Chapter 18 of Volume II of the Last Draft (the last Part D chapter) — it is after his death and he appears once more as "Clerval": in his sleep Frankenstein "beheld Clerval enjoying health & youth" (p. 177; cf. Rieger 202.7). And the remaining three references follow suit (p. 183, Rieger 206.26; p. 187, Rieger 209.18; p. 188, Rieger 209.32).
In the Last Draft the various references to Frankenstein's friend appear in the following sequential order of variants: [Carignan cancelled] (in Part A) and Clerval (in parts A and A1); and Clairval, Clerval, Cl[air cancelled] ˄e˄rval or Cl[ai cancelled] ˄e˄rval, and Clerval (all in Part D). If this order of variants does in fact correspond to the order of writing, one must attribute the bizarre order to extreme forgetfulness or inconsistency.
Whatever might be imputed to the order Carignan-Clerval-Clairval, there is, however, at least one readily recoverable logic to the sequence Clairval-Clerval-Carignan. It could represent an increasing movement away from Mary's likely source, the surname Clairmont as in Mary Jane Clairmont, her stepmother, Charles Clairmont, her stepbrother, and Clara Mary Jane Clairmont (or Claire Clairmont as she preferred to be known), her stepsister. Claire was Mary's co-dweller (along with Shelley) at the Maison Chapuis. Mary could well have arrived at the name "Clairval" by substituting the French "val" (valley) for the French "mont" (mountain), a feminine symbol for a
Considered in the light of the hypothesis that "Clairmont" was a move away from "Clerval," Mary's momentary recourse to the name "Carignan" may not have been her starting point; rather it may be evidence of a later impulse to obliterate entirely what might too easily be seen as an allusion to the name "Clairmont." A more likely hypothesis, however, would be that "Carignan" was the name that Mary originally used in the now lost rough draft, or rough drafts. Its brief appearance at the beginning of the Last Draft would represent a momentary confused harking back to that earlier version because the Last Draft was being copied from the earlier version. In either case, it seems most productive to focus attention on the Clairval/Clerval variants.
The most plausible model for Clerval is not Mary's stepsister but her stepbrother Charles Gaulis Clairmont. Born in 1795, in 1816 he would have been much the same age as Clerval when the plot of Frankenstein begins. Clerval displays Charles' talent for languages. Indeed "Languages were his [chief cancelled] ˄principal˄ study for he wished to open a field for ˄their˄ self-instruction on his return [to Geneva] — [Greek cancelled] Persian [& cancelled] Arabic & Hebrew gained his attention [when cancelled and followed by Percy's "X" keyed substitution X as soon as] he had become perfectly master of the Greek & Latin languages" (Vol. I, p. 99; cf. Rieger 64.16 — 20). In The Godwins and the Shelleys, William St Clair writes of Charles, "As befitted a child from such an international background [his mother had French family connections and his father Karl Gaulis, anglicized to Charles Clairmont, came from a noted Swiss family] he showed an early talent for languages, speaking French and German as well as later learning Spanish and Italian" (297). He would work as an English language teacher in Vienna and, in 1828, hoped (futilely) to be appointed professor of German at the University College of London.[19]
If, discounting "Carignan," the surviving Last Draft of Frankenstein was written according to the sequence "Clairval," then "Clerval" (and the "Clairval"s then corrected), Mary must have begun with Part D on the British paper (the 1818 Volume Two, Chapter VII — Volume Three, Chapter VII). In other words, in Part D she first decided on "Clairval" at the beginning of Chapter 10, toyed with "Clerval" in the remainder of Chapter 10 (apparently both before and after Percy's read-through and his re-write suggestion), returned to "Clairval," and finally fixed on "Clerval" in Chapter 18; then, in Part A she continued to use "Clerval," except for a brief, perhaps absentminded, initial substitution of "Carignan."[20] However, if Mary was to some
At least consistent evidence for this reconstruction of the order in which Mary Shelley wrote the surviving Last Draft — essentially a process of circling back — is provided by the Amina/Maimouna/Safie sequence of variants. These variants follow five other altered character names in the Last Draft which occur in the following order: Waldham/Waldman, Justine Martin/Justine Moritz, Miss Mansfeld/Miss Mansfield, Hofland/Duvillard, and the particularly teasing Elizabeth/Myrtella/Elizabeth. While all these are of interest in their own right, they will not help us with the task of de-composing Frankenstein and hence my discussion of them is relegated to an appendix.
The character finally named Safie figures in the monster's narrative, the central of three concentric or nested narratives (Walton's, Frankenstein's, and the monster's). In an improbably contrived situation, while eavesdropping on the inhabitants of a cottage (an old blind man named De Lacey and his grown children, Agatha and Felix, and Felix's fiancée Safie), the monster learns to understand and speak French (as Felix teaches the Turkish-born Safie the language), reads three books (Paradise Lost, one volume of Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther), and learns of Safie's history.[21]
After the missing pages 22 — 57 (which would have included the introduction of Safie), in the complicated, jumbled text of Part Cr that Percy headed
In a previous version, on the cancelled page 57A there is one reference to "[the Arabian cancelled]" that was changed to "Safie" in the rewrite on page 57B (the first such reference noted above); the immediately following "Safie" reference in the revision is missing in the concelled version. That version breaks off with "in his favour" (unpaginated verso of 57A; Rieger 118.21) and, after a horizontal line, a lengthy passage commences on the same physical page under the continuation number "59" in the left margin. This passage, which follows on "the consummation of his happiness" on the recto numbered 59 (Rieger 118.33), begins with the words "During the ensueing days" ("59"; Rieger 118.34) and ends with the words "deprived of his wealth" (p. 63; Rieger 121.24). It is in the first paragraph of this "59" passage that the Amina/Maimouna/Safie variants first appear. Since "Safie" was the third chronological choice, the conclusion is inescapable that the "59" passage, like the cancelled passage it follows on, was written before the passages containing the unequivocal "Safie" references detailed above.
In the "59" passage opening paragraph, the monster recalls that "[Amina cancelled] ˄Safie˄ related that her mother was a Christian Arab" who "had won the heart of the [pr cancelled] father of [Amina cancelled] ˄Safie˄" (cf. Rieger 119.13 — 15) and (continuing on page 60) that "This Lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed in the mind of [Maimouna cancelled] [˄Amina˄ cancelled] ˄Safie˄" (see Fig. 2; cf. Rieger 119.22). At the conclusion of this essay I shall explain Mary's choice of the names "Amina," "Maimouna," and "Safie"; but for the moment it is essential to note only that in this paragraph "Amina" was Mary's first chronological choice, "Maimouna" her second, and "Safie" her third.
The two appearances of "Amina" here are as puzzling as the two earlier appearances of "Carignan." Both deleted names disappear entirely from the surviving draft after their second appearance. And in both cases Mary could be accidentally copying superseded name choices from her earlier, now lost, rough draft(s). There may well have been a preliminary version of the novel
In Part D of the Last Draft there are six instances where Mary's apparent second choice "Maimouna" appears; in each case "Maimouna" is deleted in favour of the inserted "˄Safie˄" (p. 67 [Rieger 126.35], p. 70 [Rieger 128.21], twice on p. 75 [Rieger 131.23 and 25], 82 [Rieger 135.26], and p. 184 [Rieger 207.13] in the closing Walton frame).[22] The conclusion is again inescapable. Since a cancelled "Maimouna" replaced by a "Safie" insert appears in the last Part D chapter, virtually all of Part D must have been written before at least all the portions of Part Cr where the name "Safie" appears not as an insert but as Mary's clear final name choice — something which happens at least once somewhere on every page (including the scrap) except for the three first written (pages 57A, its unpaginated verso with the continuation number "59," and page 60). In fact, since this rewritten material, however erratic, appears to have been drafted consecutively, we may conclude that all of Cr must have been written after virtually all of Part D; the Safie variants in the first paragraph of what I have called the "'59' passage" are all accidental throwbacks to, or copyings of, superseded name choices. This could well apply even if the change of ink and pen-cut at the start of the page 60 paragraph immediately following the Safie variants indicates an interval elapsed after Mary's decision to temporarily break off at that point and rewrite the first rewrite (see Fig. 2). What we have here, then, is a circling back movement, similar to the movement suggested by the Clairval/Clerval variants from Part D to parts A and A1.[23]
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