The Lady and Her Monsters (12 page)

Lind was interested in using galvanic electricity on diseased bodies. Through his many letters, he was kind enough to provide Cavallo with stories and anecdotes about his experiments, the ins and outs of how he used the galvanic battery on his patients. He also let Cavallo know about the results from experiments being conducted by other scientists across Europe; Cavallo did the same, providing Lind with information he received and discovered.

These interchanges between Cavallo and his friends gave him what he needed to complete a major work,
A Complete Treatise on Electricity, in Theory and Practice, with Original Experiments.
It was remarkable on many levels, not only because it explained animal electricity at length, but also because it detailed, in sometimes graphic prose, the experiments some doctors were performing not on dead bodies, but on themselves. Of particular interest was Dr. Munro, who, on one occasion, “applied a blunt probe of zinc to the Sephum Norium, and repeatedly touched it with a crown-piece of silver applied to the tongue, and thereby produced the appearance of a firefly, [and] several drops of blood fell from the nostrils.”

But throughout the years Cavallo's most noteworthy and prolific letter writer continued to be James Lind. In a letter written on August 2, 1792, Cavallo piped, “P.S. Have you made any dead frogs jump up like living ones?”

After a fulfilling life, notably as the physician to King George III, Lind settled into a cottage in Windsor with his wife. In Windsor, Lind developed a reputation for “tricks, conundrums, and queer things.” Madame D'Arblay, a Windsor resident, suggested that neighbors were afraid of him, of “his trying experiments with their constitution . . . they thought him a better conjurer than physician.” His laboratory was a cornucopia of galvanic batteries, metal probes, surgical instruments, dead frogs, scalpels, bubbling vials, gases, and poisons, a chaotic environment that strangely enough would be duplicated by a pupil in his rooms at Oxford University.

W
hen T. J. Hogg met Percy Shelley, he was perhaps hoping for a friendship that would blunt the loneliness that had settled over him once he had entered Oxford. True, he had always wanted to attend “that land of promise.” But a certain measure of melancholy had seized him when he arrived. He desperately needed company; Shelley quickly provided that. As such, he decided to visit the “young chemist's” rooms, where he discovered a strange odor emanating from the various gases bubbling forth in the vials resting on the table.

The rooms had been cleaned before the new occupants arrived, but Shelley's resembled a disastrous laboratory. Everything was in disarray, from personal belongings to “philosophical instruments,” as “if the young chemist, in order to analyze the mystery of creation, had endeavored first to re-create the primeval chaos . . . An electrical machine, an air-pump, the galvanic through, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers were conspicuous amidst the mass of matter.” Shelley quickly walked back and forth about the room, and Hogg learned that a combination of ether and some other powerful fluid had spilled out of the vials and onto the floor, igniting and leaving dark smudges on the carpet.

Shelley pointed a finger toward the electrical apparatus on the table, wishing to show his new friend how the machinery worked. Ever so eager to please, Hogg began to fiddle with the equipment, at which point he began to “work the machine until it was filled with fluid,” while Shelley turned “the handle very rapidly, so that the fierce, crackling sparks flew forth.” This process became so intense, Shelley's “long wild locks bristled and stood on end.”

Hogg recalled that Shelley was jumping back and forth across the room, from idea to idea. The process became so wild, Hogg came to believe that Shelley would “set the college on fire, or that he would blind, maim, or kill himself by the explosion of combustibles.” Hogg mused that poison would likely be the end of Shelley. He mixed and combined it in an erratic manner without regarding what dishes, cups, and bowls he was using or bothering to find out if the combinations were even plausible. When offered something to eat or drink Hogg habitually examined the cup or dish to make sure nothing unusual was in it; if he didn't see anything peculiar, he pressed his nose to it in an effort to smell it, though even then he could not be sure.

Hogg and Shelley talked well into the night, the discussion turning from the mysteries of lightning and thunder to the details of the electrical kites Shelley had constructed while a young boy at home. He also told Hogg of the love he had possessed for the macabre, which still fascinated him, and the tales of the spirit world he so loved: ghosts, goblins, and water nymphs.

S
helley's fascination with the land of the dead would plague him throughout his entire life. In a letter written to Hogg, undated but placed by experts to June 27, 1811, Shelley wrote, “I have been thinking of Death and Heaven for days. Where is the latter? Shall we set off? Is there a future life? Whom should we injure by departing? Should we not benefit some?”

From his childhood days, Shelley suffered from debilitating waking dreams which further enhanced the notion of an existing otherworldly life. They occurred so frequently he often took laudanum to quell them. But instead of helping, this potion caused him to have persistent and raging hallucinations.

Laudanum, or
tinctura thebaica,
is a derivative of opium, and it became so fashionable during Shelley's time, the Victorians were notorious for chugging it down in large quantities to relieve anything that ailed them, from gout, to the stress of migraines, to hair loss, even administering it to teething children to ease the pains in their gums. In the latter cases, some of the wet nurses were found to be a little zealous with their ministrations, so much so that some children in their care died of opium poisoning. Laudanum was even sold under such attractive names as Mother Bailey's Quieting Syrup and Godfrey's Cordial. It did not seem dangerous, merely a step removed from the soothing calmness achieved by milk and honey.

Many of the alchemists, including Paracelsus, dabbled with opium. When Paracelsus was conducting experiments dealing specifically with
Papaver
s
omniferum,
the plant from which the opium was derived, he discovered that opium's soporific abilities were a great relief to suffering patients. He continued to investigate the drug's properties and was so astounded with the results, he derived the name
laudanum
from the Latin word
laudare,
“to praise.” Unfortunately, Paracelsus did not realize that opium, in all of its forms, was also addictive, causing a whole score of problems for its users.

Percy Shelley, who was “highly sensitive to pain, easily excited, and subject to paroxysms of passions,” was one of the many addicted to laudanum. And unfortunately, it did nothing to prevent his waking dreams. His sleep was so disturbed, he often sleepwalked in the middle of the night, his hair wild and disheveled, his face as pale as one of those ghosts he often spoke of. He and his cousin Thomas Medwin lived in the same dormitory, and one night Shelley arose and dragged himself into Medwin's room. Open-eyed but asleep, Shelley walked toward an open window. Medwin jumped from his bed and took Shelley by the arm.

“He was excessively agitated,” Medwin later recalled, “and after leading him back with some difficulty to his couch, I sat by him for some time, a witness to the severe crethism of his nerves which the sudden shock produced.”

Despite the negative effects the drug could cause, Shelley still hoped that laudanum would eventually give him a reprieve from his sleepless nights and feverish nightmares, which were often bothersome but could turn dangerous. But it would not be very long before he met someone, a kindred spirit, who would understand perfectly. In fact, according to literary history, it was during one of her own waking dreams that the young Mary Godwin first saw “the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.”

I
n the summer of 1814, a meeting between Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin took place. Soon after Shelley had sent William Godwin the letter that started their friendship, Shelley began calling on the Godwins at their Skinner Street home. It is possible that Shelley and Mary Godwin met in 1812, when she returned from a period of time abroad. But if so, neither one ever mentioned it.

The situation in the Godwins' household had become not only unhappy but also downright intolerable, thanks in part to the new Mrs. Godwin's attitude toward her stepdaughter. As such, William Godwin removed the source of those disagreements: Mary. The reason given was that Mary's health had become so poor the only way to improve her constitution was a trip abroad, but that was a cover-up for the real story.

Mary was sent to Dundee, a small harbor city in Scotland. Prior to the trip, William Godwin had written to William Thomas Baxter, a man he had met only once before. Baxter's daughter, Margaret, was also married to one of Godwin's friends, David Booth, further cementing their connection. The Baxters agreed to take in Mary Godwin for a short visit so that she could recuperate from an ailment William Godwin had only described in the briefest details. Mary departed on June 7, 1812, on the
Osnaburg.
While she was staying with the Baxters, she struck up a close friendship with the two youngest daughters in the family, Christina and Isabel, becoming especially close to Isabel. At the time of her visit, Dundee was well known for several prestigious industries, such as the manufacturing of jute and fabric. More than anything, Dundee was renowned for its whaling industry and the history associated with it.

Dundee reeked of boiling whale blubber and had a population of between thirty and forty thousand inhabitants at the time of Mary's visit. Most of them were involved in some way or another in the whaling industry, whether as mariners on the many vessels that left the city's small enclosed harbor for the arctic seas, or on land, where the “whaling boiling yards” were located.

Each whaling company had one of these yards, where the whale oil and blubber were eventually transformed into the products needed. Even the women were employed in the field, “to clean the whale bone of its flesh and other impurities.”All of this bustling and brisk business in whale products created an awful smell. As late as 1825, an article that appeared in the
Dundee Advertiser
mentioned the “most disagreeable suspicious sort of smell [that] has accosted the olfactory nerves of the inhabitants of this town.” Still, the town relied on the whaling business, and the smell was part of it.

Mary Godwin must have been aware of the smell, but more important, she must have heard the many tales that abounded in Dundee. Most of them were associated with the frigid arctic seas, with the mariners and the vessels lost in the watery abyss, with those men who never returned. One such tale was that of Captain Adamson, who manned the ship
Advice.
He had been captured during the Battle of Camperdown in 1797 and brought onto a Dutch vessel, which then sank. Captain Adamson was lost for several days in the vastness of the arctic waters, alone with his thoughts and fears, before he was found anew and returned to safety. Such tales of bravery and despair would no doubt have reminded Mary of Coleridge's
Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
In it, the mariner had also been lost at sea for a time, lost companions, feared the outcome, but was eventually found, and later told his story again and again to those who would hear of it.

But in 1814, when Percy Shelley returned for a visit to Skinner Street, Mary was there, having just come back from another trip to Scotland. Shelley's eyes must have settled on her and for the first time he must have seen the young woman she had become. Edward Dowden described Mary at that age as “a girl in her seventeenth year, with shapely golden head, a face very pale and pure, great forehead, earnest hazel eyes, and an expression at once of sensibility and firmness about her delicately curved lips.”

Aside from fancying her physical features, Shelley found something far more important and appealing: Mary was the daughter of William Godwin, the illustrious mentor whose work Shelley idolized, and her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, the first feminist, whose work
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
had had such an impact. And Shelley came to believe that Mary had her parents' intellectual gifts, although there was no indication of this yet.

“The daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft had gifts of heart and minds such as Shelley had never hitherto known in a woman,” Dowden wrote. “From her father she had inherited clearness and precision of intellect, firmness of will, and a certain quietude of manner . . . under this quiet bearing lay her mother's sensitivity and ardour, with an imaginative power which quickened and widened her sympathies.”

Percy Shelley was enthralled, and so was Mary. But the situation was also not that unusual. Although his wild looks and tendencies to enjoy scientific discourses and tales of the macabre had made him unpopular with his schoolmates and earned him the nickname of “Mad Shelley,” those same traits were very appealing to women.

By the time Shelley became a constant guest at Skinner Street, three young ladies were living in the house. There was quiet and reserved Fanny, the one people spoke of the least and the one who was the most homely. She was older than the other two and obeyed the house rules; some said she did so because she felt like an outsider, given that neither Mr. Godwin nor Mrs. Godwin was her natural parent. Mary was the somewhat pretty middle girl, who was quiet but not too quiet, and who leaned toward reflection and introspection. She was the inheritor of her father and mother's legacies but was far too attached to her father, something her stepmother had tried, without success, to end. And there was the youngest, Jane (Claire) Clairmont, the most beautiful of the three, dark and alluring, bold in her looks and manners. All three, it was suspected, formed a crush on Shelley, but only Mary had the mental capabilities and legacy he was attracted to.