Bysshe argued from the precepts of reason that there was no God. He affirmed that truth was the only means to promote the best interests of mankind. Once he had discovered a truth, then it was incumbent upon him to declare it as forcefully as possible. He also stated that, since belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality can be attached to disbelief. In this, as he realised soon enough, he ignored the general prejudices of English society. He wrote a short essay, entitled “On the Necessity of Atheism,” which was then printed and put on sale at the bookseller across the high street from the college. It had been on the shelves for no more than twenty minutes when one of the fellows of the college, Mr. Gibson, read it and berated the owner of the shop for putting such incendiary literature on display. The copies were immediately withdrawn and, I believe, burned in a stove at the rear of the premises.
The authorship of the anonymous pamphlet was soon detected, on the information of the bookseller himself, and Bysshe was summoned to a meeting of the Master and fellows. A copy of “On the Necessity of Atheism” lay before them, as he told me later. But he refused to answer their questions on the grounds that the pamphlet had been published anonymously. It would be an act of tyranny and injustice, he said, to press him when they had no legal cause. His was a nature that turned into fire at any hint of oppression. Of course he was judged to be guilty. He hammered upon my door immediately after leaving this gathering.
“I am sent down,” he said as soon as he entered my rooms. “Not merely rusticated, Victor. Expelled! Can you believe it?”
“Expelled? From what date?”
“From now. This moment. I am no longer a member of the university.” He sat down, trembling. “I have no notion what my father will say.” He always spoke of his father in terms of the greatest disquiet.
“Where will you go, Bysshe?”
“I cannot go home. That would be too hard to bear.” He looked up at me. “And I would not wish to be deprived of your company for very long, Victor.”
“There is only one place for you.”
“I know it. London.” He jumped up from the chair, and walked over to the window. “I have been in correspondence with Leigh Hunt for some weeks. He knows all the revolutionaries in the city. I will live in their society.” Already he seemed to be recovering his spirit. “I will grow towards the sun of liberty! I will find lodgings. And you must accompany me, Victor. Will you come?”
I WAITED UNTIL THE END OF TERM before following Bysshe to London. He had rented lodgings in Poland Street, in the district of Soho, and I had found rooms close by in Berners Street. I had been in London once before, on my arrival from my homeland, but of course I was still amazed by the immensity of its life. No Alpine storm, no torrent among the glaciers, no avalanche among the peaks, can give the least idea of the roar of the city. I had never seen so many people, and I wandered through the streets in a constant state of excitation. What power human lives have in the aggregate! To me the city resembled some vast electrical machine, galvanising rich and poor alike, sending its current down every alley and lane and thoroughfare in the course of its pulsating life. London seemed ungovernable, obeying laws mysterious to itself, like some dim phantasm stalking through the world.
Bysshe meanwhile had sought out and found the men of liberty. Together we attended a meeting of the Popular Reform League above a perfume shop in Store Street, where to our delight we heard epithets hurled against the members of the administration that would have marked them and burned them like firebrands! I was intoxicated by the language of liberty, convinced as I was that the old order of oppression and corruption must surely pass away. It was time to breach the foundations of tyranny, and to abrogate the laws by which humanity had been enslaved. There was a new world waiting to be brought to life and light!
We were cordially welcomed by the members of the League, having satisfied themselves very quickly that we were not government spies but friends of freedom or Citizens as they called us. When I confessed that I came from Geneva there was an “hoorah” for “the home of liberty.” Bread and beer were ordered, and all became very merry. This was followed by a general debate in which the demands for annual parliaments and universal suffrage were loudly proclaimed. One young man by the name of Pearce rose to his feet and proclaimed that, “Truth and Liberty, in an age so enlightened as the present, must be invincible and omnipotent.” I could not help but interpret his words in the light of my own researches where truth, if pursued in a scientific manner, might also prove invincible. There was no possible limit to the power of the human mind if it were properly and justly harnessed.
Pearce’s words were greeted with acclamation, in which Bysshe and I joined, and I could not help but compare these enthusiastic Citizens with the supine youth of the university. I was about to whisper this to Bysshe when, his eyes shining, he rose to his feet and declared to the gathering that “we have no occasion for kings.” This was loudly huzzahed, and several men got up and shook hands with him. “What have we to fear?” he asked them. “If we stay fast to our principles of truth and freedom, then all will be well. Follow the lightning flash!” The members of the League, roused by his rhetoric, then began a song of great fervour:
“Come you sons of true liberty, let us agree
To form an alliance firm honest and free
Let’s join hand in hand as reason upholds
Her bright torch of friendship. Let us be bold!”
I do not know if Bysshe admired the poetry, but he thoroughly approved of the sentiments.
At the end of the meeting one of the Citizens came up to Bysshe and introduced himself. “How do you do, sir? I hope your Oxford residency agreed with you?”
Bysshe was taken aback. “How do you know of that?”
“I am a particular friend of Mr. Hunt. He has been in correspondence with you, has he not?”
“I have met him in London.”
“Have you? As soon as I saw you and your companion-” he bowed to me, “I knew you to be the men expelled from the university.”
“This is Mr. Frankenstein. He is not expelled. But he shares my principles.”
“My name is Westbrook. I am a shoemaker.” He looked around the hall for a moment. “We rarely give our names here, for fear of spies. But you are exceptional, Mr. Shelley. You are the son of a baronet, are you not?”
“I am. But I will use every particle of my birthright in the service of the cause.”
“Well said, sir. Now we must make our way into the street. Before the magistrates interrupt us. We have learned to avoid what we call the war whoop of Church and King.”
We walked down into Store Street, and stood together on the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Westbrook seemed to me to bear a noble mind. His physiognomy was firm and, with a prominent forehead, inclined to ideality; he was by no means shabbily dressed, despite his trade, and he wore his hair short without powder in the “liberty” fashion. “May I take you,” he asked us, “to a place where my sister is employed? It is not far from here. Distress is never far in this city. And there you will see the enemy.”
He led us through the neighbourhood of St. Giles, as he called it, which was only a few streets from where we stood. It seemed to me the most wretched and depraved district imaginable on this earth. No low quarter of Geneva, however ruinous, had the least resemblance to this foul and degrading patch of London. The streets were no more than paths of mud, or filth, where the effluent ran in rivulets from the ragged courtyards and alleys. The stench was indescribable. “Are we safe here?” I whispered to Westbrook.