University of Virginia Library

Appendix: Five Other Altered Character Names in the Last Draft

Between Frankenstein's departure for the university of Ingolstadt and the arrival of Safie there are five variant character names in the Last Draft. They are reviewed here in the order of their appearance. Early in Part A of the Last Draft, the professor named Waldman first appears as "M. W. ------˄aldham˄" (p. 56; cf. Rieger 41.11); thereafter "Mr. Waldham" makes three appearances (twice on p. 57 [cf. Rieger 41.32, 41.35] and on p. 59 [cf. Rieger 43.12]). "Waldman" replaces "Waldham" in the following Chapter 5 of the Last Draft (p. 61; Rieger 45.9). The one subsequent reference, which is in Percy's hand, reverts to "Waldham": "M. Waldham expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress" (p. 62; cf. Rieger 45.26 — 27). Mary's alteration here was presumably made in the interest of verisimilitude — the German suffix "man" is more appropriate for the name of a professor at the German University of Ingolstadt than is the English suffix "ham."

The servant Justine is surnamed Moritz in the 1818 edition. But two cancellations in the Last Draft indicate that Mary originally gave her the too-English (or too-French) name "Martin" and later changed it to the German name Moritz. "Do you not remember [Ju cancelled] Justine [Martin? cancelled] ˄Moritz˄?" (p. 90; cf. Rieger 60.8), Elizabeth asks Frankenstein in a letter, before going on to recount Justine's history including "the death of [her father] M. [Martin cancelled] ˄Moritz˄" (p. 90; Rieger 60.11). Shortly afterwards there is a reference to "Mad[.] Martin" (p. 93; cf. Rieger 61.28 — 29: "Madame Moritz") but here "Martin" has not been deleted and "Moritz" has not been inserted.

As for a likely source, Emily Sunstein notes, "The names Moritz and Krempe, Victor's professors, and Victor's subsequent trip to England are drawn from the travel book by Carl Moritz that she had previously read" (340 n33). Mary's reading list for 1816 includes "X Moritz' tour in England," her "X" indicating that Percy also read the book (Journals I: 93). She is referring to Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahr 1782 (1783) by Carl Philipp Moritz, translated "by a lady" as Travels, Chiefly on Foot, through Several Parts of England in 1782 (1795). The nearest name to Krempe in the book is a "Mr. Kampe," who runs a German educational academy (Moritz 77).

Near the conclusion of Elizabeth's Justine letter occurs the following concentrated passage with its two name changes:

The last of these names may be traced to Mary's biography. While at the Maison Chapuis, Mary and Percy hired a Swiss nursemaid named Louise Duvillard, whom they called Elisa (see Sunstein, "Louise Duvillard" 27 — 30; Letters I: 36, 37 n9; and Journals I: 201 n1, where an "i" is [mistakenly?] added to the surname of her parents: "M. and Mme Jean Duvilliard"). Her first name, "Louise," seems to have simultaneously migrated to the immediately preceding reference to little William's favourite girlfriend "Louisa [is cancelled] [tab cancelled] Biron" (p. 93; cf. Rieger 62.5) and to the immediately following reference to "Louis Manoir": "Your favourite schoolfellow Louis Manoir [ma cancelled] has suffered several misfortunes [d cancelled] since the departure of Clerval from Geneva [b (?) cancelled][.] But he has [atready cancelled] already recovered his spirits, and he [is] reported to [m cancelled] be on the point of marrying a very lively pretty french woman — Mad. Tavernier" (p. 94; cf. Rieger 62.12 — 16). A Tavernier, an agent of Percy's friend, Thomas Hookham, according to R. Glynn Grylls' pioneering biography (33 n1), was a Paris banker or money lender who lent Shelley £60 see (Journals I: 9 and 9 n3, 10 — 11, 28; and Sunstein 85).

The most extraordinary altered name also occurs in Part A of the Last Draft. Regarding the accusation of murder levelled at Justine, Frankenstein's remaining brother, Ernest, observes that "[Myrtella will cancelled] Elizabeth will [the replacement appears in the margin] not be convinced notwithstanding all the evidence" (p. 117; cf. Rieger 74.16 — 17). The strange alternate name for Frankenstein's betrothed occurs on only one other occasion in the Last Draft — again in Part A: "At eight in the evening we arrived at Chamounix. [Myrtella cancelled] ˄My father & Elizabeth were˄ very fatigued" (p. 148; cf. Rieger 90.28 — 29). It seems clear that on both occasions the alternate name was quickly cancelled. Lemprière's Classical Dictionary of Proper Names describes a "Myrtăle" as "a courtesan of Rome, mistress to the poet Horace," and gives Horace's Odes I, number 33 ("Albi, ne doleas"), as the only source (394). Apparently the name Myrtăle, "derived from the myrtle's association with Aphrodite", was "often borne by freedwomen" (Nisbet and Hubbard 375).

Ode I.33 consoles the poet Albius Tibyllus on the loss of a mistress who had deserted him; in its fourth and last verse Horace proffers the experience of his own recovery from a similar loss:

In this translation, Lord Dunsany has anglicized the Latin "Myrtăle" by clipping off the final "e". In her journal Mary includes Horace's Odes in her reading list for 1816, and specifically mentions reading them in Bath on 3 and 5 December 1816 (I: 97; I: 148, 149); that is to say she was reading the Odes while writing the Last Draft of Frankenstein. But why — since "Myrtella" clearly is Mary's phonetic equivalent of "Myrtăle" — was she so struck by this single reference to Horace's ex-mistress? Did she in some way relate the relationship between Horace and Myrtăle to what she might have seen as the precarious relationship between Percy and herself (and hence to that between Frankenstein and Elizabeth)? At the same time, various aspects of Horace's personality might have seemed relevant to what Mary saw herself advocating in Frankenstein: Horace's enthusiasm as a young man for republican ideas and the delight he expresses in his poetry for the simple life, the beauties of nature, and the joys of friendship.

The two surprising appearances of "Myrtella" recall the two equally bewildering occurrences of both "Carignan" and "Amina." Was Mary once more absent-mindedly copying a superseded name from a preliminary rough draft? Was there, then, a version of Frankenstein in which Frankenstein's friend was called Carignan, the cousin he married Myrtella, and Felix's fiancée Amina?