Yet, curiously enough, the night became my home. In the light of day I found myself to be dazed and weary; looking up at the faces of strangers, I sensed hostility and resentment and a thinly veiled contempt. Was this because I possessed a foreign manner? I cannot say. I know only that at night I felt more free. I wandered abroad, through streets of sinister aspect, without the slightest danger of being questioned; I sensed the power of the night, too, when the wildness of the city was manifest.
One dark night I found myself in Wellclose Square, looking down at the emaciated figure of a young man clad in nothing but the filthiest rags. I did not think to touch him, but I leaned over him as he lay upon the uneven stones. He was not sleeping. He opened his eyes. “You have found me,” he said. “You know me by the signs.”
“Signs?”
“Look at me.” He parted the rags across his chest, and I could see that his body was covered with welts and blisters of blood; the stench from the wounds was insupportable, and I turned away. “I am the chosen one,” he said, “and you are my disciple.”
I walked out of Wellclose Square, and with a shudder returned to my rooms in Jermyn Street.
I HAD NOW THE SETTLED DETERMINATION to create the form of a man. Could we say that a new kind of being might thereby be created, free from the imperfections of the living? My imagination was vivid enough, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of their qualities I conceived the idea and began the execution of the task. I was concentrating on the method of creating a sentient human being unencumbered by class or society or faith: it was to be Bysshe’s dream-child, so to speak, free from all the petty tyrannies of prejudice that are to be found in human society.
Where did such a person exist? Of course he existed nowhere. That was the reason, and necessity, for my creation. I believed that the component parts of an excellent human being might be found, brought together, and endued with vital warmth. I had already tested the procedure to my satisfaction, and I had succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and of life. I had achieved much, beyond my most fervent expectations, when I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The principle of union or coherency, so that all the organs and fibres of the body might work in unison, was the only one that remained to be explored. This I managed, after much weary labour and experiment, by means of a certain operation in the cerebellum.
Where was I to find the perfect frame upon which to build? There were some in the street who, when I observed them, showed signs of worth. Yet they were still in life, and thus beyond my reach. Then one evening that winter, when he arrived with his cargo, Boothroyd announced that he had a “prize” for me. “This is a good ’un,” he said. “He will be as fresh as a peach.”
“You have it here?”
“No. He ain’t dead yet.” With that he burst out laughing.
Then, with prompting from Lane and Miller, he told me the story. There was a student of St. Thomas ’s Hospital in very poor circumstances; this unfortunate young man had discovered in himself the signs of pulmonary consumption. He had coughed arterial blood into his handkerchief, and had all the signs of lassitude and debility that accompany the disorder. He knew it to be fatal, since his training with the doctors of Thomas’s and his practice among the poorer people of the area had taught him to recognise the progress of the disease. He had also nursed his brother through the stages of the phthisis. Since this young man had worked as a dresser to the surgeons Encliffe and Cato, he knew by sight the resurrectionist men; it was to him, indeed, that they consigned their load at the back steps of the hospital. He knew where they gathered, too, and two weeks previously he had approached them in the Fortune of War.
“So he comes up to us,” Boothroyd said, “as pale as a cloth. Ah, I says, there’s-”
“I do not wish to know the name,” I said.
“I ask him what he is doing in this corner of the world, and he sits down among us. ‘I have some business for you,’ he says. ‘Not perilous business.’”
He then proposed a scheme to them. The young man knew that he was dying, and that he might only have a short time to live. He appealed to the professional instincts of Boothroyd and the two others: if they paid him twenty guineas, he would allow them to take his body at the very instant of death. He required the money for his young sister, a toy-maker who would soon be alone in the world. As for him, he had no fear of being anatomised; he had witnessed the procedure too often in the surgical theatre at Guy’s Hospital to shrink from such a fate. He believed his carcass to be worth twenty guineas because it was young, sturdy and well-knit despite the ravages of the disease. He had already ventured upon the subject with his sister herself, who had agreed that the resurrectionists might occupy the little parlour beside the room where he would die. At the moment of death she would allow them to enter and take away the body of her brother. Neither of the young people had any illusions about the Christian pieties, having seen their parents and two other siblings carried off by epidemic distemper in the most painful circumstances. We are not aware of God, the young man had said.
“What age is he?”
“Tolerably young. Nineteen.”
“And you say that he is a fine specimen?”
“None finer. He is like a boxer, Mr. Frankenstein. And with a full set of teeth.”
Naturally I was excited by the prospect of obtaining such a prize-to retrieve the body moments after its death would be of incalculable benefit, and would certainly expedite the action of the electrical fluid. They told me that the young man lived with his sister near the hospital in a tenement in Carmelite Street, which was no more than yards from Broken Dock and the river; it would take them twenty minutes, with a favourable tide, to bring him to Limehouse.
“I would like to see him,” I said. “At the time you have arranged to pass him the money, I wish to be in the vicinity. Then, on my agreement, I will give you the guineas.” They consented to this, not without bargaining for a “cut” of ten further guineas for managing the transaction.
I WAITED BY THE FORTUNE OF WAR. It was a night of fierce rain, such as only London can produce. It rose like smoke all around me, and I sheltered underneath the cabmen’s stand just beyond the gate of St. Bartholomew. Boothroyd, Lane and Miller had placed themselves upon a bench by the window overlooking the gate; they had also taken the precaution of placing an oil-lamp on the table in front of them, so that despite the rain I could clearly see their features and gestures. Then I noticed a young man crossing the square, holding his cloak against the driving rain; he walked quickly and purposefully, with no sign of any weakness, but paused for a moment before entering the inn. I saw him for a moment in the flickering light outside the tavern. He had dark curling hair, and in that moment when I saw his bright eyes and full mouth I recognised that this was Jack Keat. He had worked with me in the dissection room of St. Thomas ’s Hospital. Then he entered the Fortune of War. I crept closer to the window, and watched with dismay as he came up to the resurrectionists and joined them. He seemed uneasy in their company-a circumstance that did not in the least surprise me-but he smiled and said something to Lane. At that moment Boothroyd looked at me through the window. I had told him to expect me there. I nodded, and put up my right hand. That was the signal arranged between us. He came outside and, without saying a word, I passed him the purse of guineas. What else could I have done? The imminent death of Jack troubled and saddened me but, as he had told me himself, we must take courage in the pursuit of our researches. The enlightenment and improvement of the world depended upon human valour. That was what he had said. Was I now to abandon his, and my, beliefs for the sake of my conscience? Yet there was still the possibility-the likelihood-that my electrical treatment would restore him to life. Would he live to smile and to laugh, to walk again with the same quick step? This was not known to me, or to any other being in the world.