The Lady and Her Monsters (14 page)

He looks to the mountains above.

I think the waves must fling him

Against the reefs nearby

And that did with her singing

The lovely Loreley

Nearly two centuries later Sylvia Plath would become entranced with the legend, writing: “
Of your ice-hearted calling / Drunkenness of the great depths / O river, I see drifting / Deep in your flux of silver / Those great goddesses of peace / Stone, stone, ferry me down.

Mary Godwin seemed chilled by her various traveling companions and thought little of them: “Our companions on this voyage were of the meanest class, smoked prodigiously, and were exceedingly disgusting,” she wrote, seemingly repelled. “There were only four passengers besides ourselves, three of these were students of the Strasburg University: Schwitz, a rather handsome, good tempered young man; Hoff, a kind of shapeless animal, with a heavy, ugly, German face; and Schneider, who was nearly an idiot, and in whom his companions were always playing a thousand tricks.”

The area they were cruising along had been vividly described by Lord Byron and was now coming to life before their very eyes. Aside from viewing their surroundings, they also spent time reading from a book of Mary Wollstonecraft's they had carried with them. Soon they passed “a ruined tower with its desolate windows [that] stood in the summit of another hill that jutted into the river.”

On September 2, they reached the city of Mannheim. As soon as they docked, Jane wrote in her diary: “We arrive at Manheim early in the morning—breakfast there. The town is clean and good. We proceeded towards Mayence with an unfavorable wind. Towards evening the batelier rests just as the wind changes in our favor. Mary and Shelley walk for three hours; they are alone.”

Famously, those three hours Mary and Percy spent alone in that particular geographical area have, through the passage of time and more careful reading, given rise to much speculation, because the stopover would have given them time on their own, away from the ever-present Jane, and time to explore their surroundings, most especially those small towns and castles lining the lower banks of the Rhine. One such town was Nieder-Beerbach, on whose summit, barely visible from the water's edge, stood the famed, or infamous, Burg Frankenstein.

“What's in a name?” Mary Shelley wrote years later in a book titled
Rambles in Germany and Italy.
“It applies to things known; to things unknown, a name is often everything: on me it has a powerful effect; and many hours of extreme pleasure have derived their zest from a name.”

Following Mary's own words, it could be said that the name of Victor Frankenstein had not come about by mere coincidence, chance, nor in one of her waking dreams, as she always claimed. Rather, she had given her character's name much thought and consideration. But Frankenstein was not a popular name, especially not in England, so where had she heard of it? One theory, originally put forth by the historian Radu Florescu, suggests that during that three-hour walk, she got the inspiration not only for the name, but for the book's basic narrative thread as well.

C
enturies before Mary Shelley brought the name into the limelight, the surname of Frankenstein had already been tied to both fact and fiction, most particularly in the German region of the Rhineland. The real Frankenstein family had settled in a formidable castle overlooking the Darmstadt region, where their deeds, famous and infamous, began to be recorded in the annals of history.

The castle itself rose behind unbridgeable mountains, its outline shivering against the gray sky that most often covered the region. In the mid-1400s, the castle was the site of much bloodshed when a member of the family was locked in mortal combat with an enemy of unusual fortitude and cunning, with a deep understanding of psychological warfare. The enemy, intent on overtaking Burg Frankenstein, had successfully overthrown other families in the past. Known for his brutality, Vlad the Impaler and his doings provided, in part, inspiration for another gothic masterpiece: Bram Stoker's
Dracula.

Within the church located at the bottom of the castle, a brass relief revealed the figure and gory tale of an additional Frankenstein family member, Sir George Frankenstein, a knight who had lived in the burg in the sixteenth century. Sir George's death had thrown the family name from the historical to the legendary, for his mythical battle had been fought not against an enemy of the mortal kind, but of the supernatural: a fire-spewing dragon. It was said that following a fierce battle, Sir George managed to pierce the dragon's heart with his lance, but not before the dragon's tail found an opening in Sir George's armor and inflicted a deadly wound.

Did Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin hear those stories? Certainly, while the boat was docked in the area, those three hours away from Jane might have offered an excuse and opportunity for exploring the surroundings. While the time frame might not have been enough to allow them to hike up to the castle, it still could have given them ample time to visit the adjacent village of Nieder-Beerbach and to talk to its inhabitants. In the shadows of the thick forests, the people might have told them the mythical legends populating their woods and castles, and if this occurred, both, Shelley in particular, with his fascination with the occult and the mystical, would have eagerly listened on. Continuing on that thread, if they remained long enough to hear about the Frankensteins' bloody battles against Vlad the Impaler and of Sir George Frankenstein slaying the dragon, then they most certainly would have heard about the castle's most notorious inhabitant, Johann Konrad Dippel, a man who, strangely enough, bore a striking similarity to Victor Frankenstein, and to an extent, to Percy Shelley as well.

Johann Konrad Dippel was related to the Frankensteins not by blood but, in a sense, by birth. He was born in Burg Frankenstein on August 10, 1673. Because of that detail, Dippel always felt a strange affinity to the family, at times going so far as to declare himself a Frankenstein. In reality he was the son not of nobility but of a Lutheran clergyman whose intent upon Johann's birth was to make of him a clergyman, thus continuing the family's long-standing tradition. Though he actually ended up studying theology at Giessen as his father had wished, it became painfully obvious that Johann from a young age possessed doubts about his father's religious convictions and would not make the perfect clergyman, nor even a mediocre one.

While at Giessen his ideas and individual thoughts were further tested by the theologian and historian Gottfried Arnold, who was, during Dippel's attendance, a professor of church history. Unlike his father, whose religious views were strict, Dippel must have noticed in Arnold a more flexible idea of church doctrine, divinity, and mysticism. And whether it was Arnold's influence or the freedom he felt at being away from home, Dippel's own ideas morphed.

Soon he left Giessen for Wittenberg, and later for Strasbourg. Even though there was no doubt that Dippel was creative and of unusual intelligence, his personal traits seemed to rub people the wrong way and eventually were a hindrance. His excitability for the subjects he spoke of often gave rise to what some considered loud and uncalled-for displays of emotions and passions. He became fond of debating those of opposing views, and those debates could either be verbal tongue-lashings or actual physical duels. One such duel at Strasbourg caused him to flee the city, as sparring against a man with a different opinion, he killed him. Rumors also persisted that he had begun to raid the cemeteries in search of bodies, although there was no proof of that. Again he scuttled away in the middle of the night and returned to Giessen.

When Dippel was at Giessen, the study of alchemy was being undertaken in earnest. During that period, the alchemists were busily trying to find the mythical philosopher's stone. For centuries this had been thought to be a substance that would turn base metals, like lead, into gold, but more importantly, it would prolong life. Dippel had no experience in the art of transmutation, but he felt that one way to gain such experience was to read the works of those who had come before him. One such work was Raymond Lully's
Experimenta.
Dippel must have found in Lully a certain understanding, for his texts were a blend of theology and philosophy, of faith and logic, all of which, Lully believed, when merged together could obliterate the mysteries of the supernatural world and give it more rational meaning.

This divinity-based alchemy made sense for someone like Dippel, a new philosopher and inquirer into the bigger questions of life, someone who had studied theology and was, in addition, the son of a clergyman. It made so much sense, he willingly indebted himself to buy new equipment and build a state-of-the-art alchemical laboratory for himself.

Percy Shelley must have noticed that he and Dippel had a lot in common: while they were each young and inexperienced, they embarked on experiments they weren't familiar with and invariably made a score of mistakes.

In that laboratory, villagers believed Dippel had indeed found the formula that produced gold and was using it to purchase lands and homes for himself. The villagers would have felt it was sacrilegious to use the philosopher's stone for one's gain instead of employing it for the benefit of humanity. Thus, such an act, compounded by his own ignorance of how to actually work the material (he left the vials he was using on the flames for too long), caused his equipment to explode, setting fire to all he owned. In the process he lost not only his physical belongings, but also something far more precious—the secret recipe he had devised to turn metal into gold. He tried to begin anew, to buy new equipment on credit, but he could not recollect what he had used, the dosage, and the steps he had taken. All resulted in failures.

Dippel's foes, those who disliked him but inwardly believed he had managed to find the philosopher's stone, were glad he had lost the recipe because they felt that someone like him did not deserve to possess it to begin with. And if sheer stupidity had caused its loss, so much the better. Dippel also had to worry about the disgruntled clergymen in the area, those who had heard about his doings and were unnerved by him. How dare he fiddle with the mysteries of creation? they asked. How dare he believe himself a god, capable of prolonging life, or even creating it anew? And the villagers saw him as nothing more than the devil's minion, someone whose soul had been sold in exchange for forbidden knowledge. In a short time, he had managed to anger and alienate everyone he knew and a good number of people he didn't even know.

It didn't help that soon after the fire incident, he turned his attention to finding a “universal medicine.” He was not the only one seeking this universal cure-all, whether it was a lotion or a balm. Paracelsus had also believed in his Azoth of the Red Lion's ability to aid his patients. Such concoctions were numerous and could involve hundreds of ingredients from the natural world. One such book popular at the time was Robert Boyle's
The Sceptical Chymist.
If Dippel had read this book, he would have learned that such a medicine could have included olives, bile, and even grapes.

Boyle wrote, “It seems then questionable enough, whether from Grapes variously order'd there may not be drawn more distinct substances by the help of Fire, then from most other mixt Bodies. For the Grapes themselves being dryed into Raysins and distill'd, will (besides Alcoli, Phlegm, and Earth) yield a considerable quantity of Empyreumatical Oyle, and a spirit of a very different nature from that of wine . . . The Juice of Grapes after fermentation will yield a
Spiritus Orders;
which if competently rectified will all burn away without leaving anything remaining.”

What eventually became Dippel's Oil was used up until the end of the eighteenth century, when new and more powerful cures were found. Whether its users knew, or wished to know, what Dippel's Oil actually contained was a mystery, but this foul, odorous concoction was a mixture of ground-up animal blood and crushed bones, along with a few other ingredients—some human—that Dippel collected in a most unusual manner. Again, using human blood for curative concoctions was not unusual. Boyle insisted that “there is a Difference betwixt the saline spirit of Urine and that of Man's blood; that the former will not cure the Epilepsy, but the latter will.”

And though Dippel's Oil did nothing for Dippel in the world of academia—the university appointments he had wanted did not materialize—his reputation as an alchemist grew. He even found favor in the royal courts.

This new interest in alchemy as a way to cure people also initiated in him a desire to study medicine. He chose as his place of learning the University of Leyden, in Holland.

With its long-standing tradition of printing and book trading, Leyden provided him with the ripe intellectual environment he had always craved. To this was added the presence of the city's university, the University of Leyden, the oldest university in the Netherlands, which was founded in 1575 by Prince William of Orange. As it happened, Leyden was also the place where the Leyden jar (a glass container insulated inside and outside with tinfoil capable of harnessing electricity) was invented in the mid-1700s, further reinforcing Dippel's link with the occult, electricity, and
Frankenstein
.

In Leiden Dippel came in contact with the great professor of medicine Herman Boerhaave. Though later Boerhaave became known for the disease that bears his name—Boerhaave syndrome, an illness that results in a rupture of the esophagus—at the time of Dippel's studies he was a celebrated professor of physics. Like Dippel, Boerhaave was the son of a clergyman who in turn had been eager to make a clergyman out of him. Like Dippel, he had also blended theology and medicine.

In the years that followed, Dippel came to believe that the gift of prophecy had been bestowed on him. As such, he set out to prophesize his own death, which he set for the year 1808. For someone who had been born in 1673, this was quite a stretch, giving rise to the rumor that perhaps he had rediscovered the philosopher's stone.