Outcasts (29 page)

“Man is born free, by nature,” Shelley said, munching bread. Crumbs scattered over his plate, where the remains of a Welsh rarebit and a quiche lay mangled.

“But everywhere in chains,” Byron said, “Yes, yes, I have read my Rousseau. And you know my opinion of him.”

“Then if you know him, you know of his belief that man is naturally good. It is only through the pernicious influence of human society and its institutions that he becomes corrupted.”

Polidori signaled to Fletcher to bring him a platter from the sideboard. “And is this not the same Rousseau who abandoned his own children? I read that he lived openly with a mistress—”

Byron laughed. “Remember who sits at this table,” he said. “You will find no condemnation of that conduct here.”

Polidori flushed a bit. “And his dereliction concerning his own offspring? He forced his mistress to give them to foundling hospitals. Is that the perfectible man?”

Byron set down his fork. “You speak pointedly, physician, of abandoned offspring. Have you some remark to make?” His voice was soft, his tone dangerous.

“He speaks of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” Mary said sharply, heading him off. “There is no need to take such a remark personally, Albé. Rousseau is quite eloquent when it comes to describing the blessings of a state of nature, but nothing could be more unnatural than his ‘natural man'.”

Shelley looked at her quizzically. “Truly? But surely you agree that Rousseau's description of the unfortunate effects of society on the natural man are substantive?”

“Substantive, but perhaps disingenuous. He seems not even to have understood how criminal his actions were.” Mary glanced sharply at Byron, but noticed that Claire was staring down at her plate, her face pale. “His capacity for self-deception, though vast, is only typical of Man.”

“How do you mean?” Byron said. “I find this critique, from a woman no less, fascinating.”

“As well, perhaps, you should. As a man, you are granted freedoms and liberties we females are denied, and all because of ignorance and superstition. Your idea of ‘freedom' is sometimes literally death to us and those we love.”

Shelley looked shocked. “Mary!”

She reached over and patted his hand. “Dearest, you know I agree with much of what we both have read of Rousseau. We agree that the nature of Man is basically good, that education is the root of social good. But in his personal life, he fell well short of those ideals for which we often praise him.”

“He took them away from her.” Claire's voice arrested them all. Fervid, low, fraught with meaning, she raised her eyes from her plate to stare at Byron. Yet it was as if she stared through him, into some other room or place. “His natural instinct, as a father, should have been to protect them. He should have protected their mother. He should have cared for them.”

“But she was his mistress, not his wife,” said Polidori.

The other four stared at him until he dropped his gaze to his plate.

“Claire is right,” Mary said. “Our first duty is to render those to whom we give birth, wise, virtuous and happy, as far as in us lies. Rousseau failed in this. The distortion of intellect that blinded him to the first duties of life made him an example among men for self-inflicted sufferings.”

“Would you have had him marry his mistress, then?” Shelley asked, squinting at her over a wineglass.

“Oh, I am content that marriage, as we agree, is but slavery writ small. As a connection between men and women, it is nothing but chains and agony.”

Byron lifted his glass. “Hear, hear!” he said, and tossed back the wine.

“But Rousseau's otherwise egalitarian society was more like that of Moloch,” Mary continued, stabbing at her potatoes. “Little children were ruthlessly sacrificed to principle, even as the ancients threw their children into a fire for the sake of their false god.”

“I perceive the shade of William Godwin haunting us,” murmured Polidori.

Mary glared at him, almost hating him for his bad timing, his insensitivity. “Surely the most fundamental characteristic of man is his affections. Yet Rousseau describes his natural man, in his
Confessions
, as satisfying his desires by chance. He leaves his woman on a whim, while she goes through pregnancy and childbirth alone. No matter how civilized or barbarous a society is, surely that man is most noble who loves his woman and offspring with constant and self-sacrificing passion.”

“My dear, I have never known you to speak so forcefully against Rousseau,” Shelley said.

“Perhaps she is speaking through him to you,” Byron said. “I am aware, as are we all, that you left a wife and two children back in England. In that, you have bested me by one, as I have left only a wife and one child. I suppose, Mary dear, that only the good doctor here deserves your respect and praise.”

Mary shook her head. “Shelley has not abandoned his children,” she said staunchly. “Our son sleeps under this very roof tonight, sheltered and protected by his father's love. He supports and cares for his children by Harriet. You cannot call him indifferent to their welfare.”

Byron's hand tightened on his dinner napkin. “Perhaps you see a fault in me, then,” he said.

“I see a fault in all men,” Mary said. “Less so in yourself, not at all in Shelley, but definitely in Rousseau and the men who made the Revolution after him. Despite his genius and his
aspirations after virtue, he failed in the plainest dictates of nature and conscience. It shows us that a father may not be trusted with ‘natural' instincts towards his offspring. Only imagine what the children of that man might have become, raised in his shadow, taught by him. Instead, I believe that he was plagued later in life by such guilt, as to color his whole philosophy of the state of natural man.”

“So man's natural state is to swive women and abandon their children? This sounds more like a beast than a human being,” Polidori said.

“Your mother would not have agreed,” said Claire. She looked across the table at Mary, challenging her. “Your mother thought that Man is naturally a creature of reason, that that reason is God-given.”

“Yes, Mary Wollstonecraft believed in God,” Shelley said. “Therefore she could not agree with Rousseau.”

“Her faith is not mine,” Mary replied. “Rousseau can attribute only two traits to humans in the natural state: self-preservation and compassion. He says nothing of a divine reason.”

“And yet, is this not the state of the true hero,” Shelley said. “To preserve his life and reason, and to perfect them? And through compassion, lift up all mankind to the same perfected state?”

“And how shall he lead them to this blessed state?” Byron asked.

“Why, from without. The true hero leads from nature, not from a throne.”

“So it is necessary that we all return to a state of nature, to perfect ourselves? I confess, on a raw night like this, I am disinclined to strip bare and run about perfecting myself.”

“You would catch an ague,” said Polidori. “I cannot recommend it to your lordship.”

“But I require an answer,” Byron said, his jaw suddenly clenching. “You must tell me, Shiloh. Would it be your contention, or Mary's here,” he bowed to her. “That only a man raised outside of civilization, one who grew up with only grim Nature for a teacher, would be a superior being?”

“He would be Prometheus,” Shelley said simply. “He would bring true civilization to Man.”

“And what of those natural affections of which Mary spoke? Would such a man scatter his seed neglectfully as, as—” Byron stopped, groping for a word.

“As neglectfully as any English lord?” Polidori supplied.

Byron's mouth drew into a tight line. “You live dangerously, sir. But yes, such a creature, driven by self-preservation, would naturally ignore any calls upon his food supply or other needs. And this creature, neglecting his own children, is this the hero you would have as the savior of mankind?”

Shelley leaned forward eagerly to address his answer, but Mary intervened. “You forget, Albé. Rousseau described such a creature as being led by compassion as well as self-preservation. Even the lowliest creature of wood and meadow will give its life to preserve its own young.”

There was a long silence, while a footman silently cleared the table of plates and glasses. Shelley toyed with the stem of his glass. Claire folded and refolded his napkin.

Mary looked from Byron to Shelley. Byron's father had abandoned the family shortly after his birth. Shelley's father had cut him off after he married Harriet against his father's wishes. She and Claire were barred from their father's house. Of all the people at the table, only young Polidori enjoyed the full love and support of his parents and family.

Byron said slowly, “I confess, I have had a new experience tonight: I have been entertained by not one but two lady philosophers. A most singular occurrence.”

Polidori wiped his mouth with his napkin. “So many poets and philosophers, so much about the perfectibility of Man,” he said slowly, “yet not a word about how this is to be accomplished. I take it, Mr. Shelley, that you do not seriously propose that we abandon our cities and towns, go into the woods and try to live? Because I do not think that many of us would long survive so brutal a schooling in perfection. Is there no other way?”

“No way that a poet can conceive, perhaps,” Byron said ironically. “Possibly a medical man would know. Did they teach you perfectibility at Edinburgh?”

Polidori met his gaze with composure. “No, they taught me anatomy. Bones and flesh, brain and marrow and tissue. The real composition of man, not the theories of a Swiss revolutionary.”

Fletcher set the final course, a dessert array consisting of walnuts, raisins, almonds and oranges, as well as a pear cake, on the table. Shelley immediately held out a plate for a slice of the cake. “Then tell us, Doctor. Among all those anatomies, which is the most capable of perfection? The limbs? Muscles? Where shall we start, to build our perfect man?”

“With the brain,” Polidori said immediately. “The seat of reason is surely the point of beginning.”

Byron took up an apple and began to pare it. “You would replace the brain of a man with, perhaps, the brain of some other animal? You could make a lion-man, or a dog-man. What wonders would we see! Yet you cannot argue that such a creature would be superior, let alone perfected.”

Mary recalled Polidori's notion of the clockwork man. “A machine,” she said. “Could a man's brain be replaced by a machine?”

“Such as the Luddites fear?” Byron said, his eyebrows climbing nearly to his hair. “Are we not already replacing men with machines? The frame-breakers and the rioting workers will not welcome your suggestion.”

Polidori shrugged. “Machines must be powered. Even if we built a clockwork man, he would be inferior, since he could not move or walk about unless he was wound up.”

“We must give him, then, a source of his own power,” Shelley said. He picked a raisin up with his fingers. “Give him an electric brain.”

The entire company stared at him. Then Byron grinned. “So he would have to be paraded about during thunderstorms? What an imagination you have, Shiloh! I declare, I do not know what you will suggest next.”

“I suggest a recess,” Claire said suddenly. “This talk of mechanical men is making me tired. And the fire has died down. I shall go into the drawing room, where it is warmer. Mary, will you come?”

Without waiting for an answer, Claire rose. A footman stepped forward to move her chair back. Mary was reluctant to end the conversation, but stood. The men got to their feet and bowed.

“We shall join you momentarily,” Byron said. “To lose your company for an hour would bereave me.”

Mary doubted it, but curtsied back at the men. “We shall leave you to your feast of reason, then.”

Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. There was the
History of the Inconstant Lover,
who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise…. “We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron—and his proposition was acceded to.

—Frankenstein,
1831 Edition,
Preface

A
s Mary stepped
across the threshold of the drawing room, thunder crashed like cannon fire overhead. She flinched, then straightened.

“Gracious!” Claire said. “The draft has blown out half the candles!”

Mary took a taper to the fire, and was relighting the candles as Shelley and Byron came in, laughing together. Byron noted her action and clapped his hands together. “Yes, that's the way of it,” he cried. “We must have light! Fletcher! Bring every candle we have in the house! Let us fire a blaze to o'erset the levin itself!”

Claire sank into the arm chair nearest the fire, arranging her curls. Byron cast himself into the opposite chair, stretching his boots to the fire. “Shelley! Mary! How shall we amuse ourselves in this dark hour?”

A shadow filled the doorway; Mary turned, her heart lurching. Then she sighed with relief as Polidori limped painfully into the room. “Come, doctor,” she said. “There is a chair here, and a footstool.”

“I can manage,” Polidori said shortly.

Byron laughed. “No, we cannot have more than one cripple at a time. Shelley, draw up that chair, and the other as well. We
may huddle round the fire in better comfort than the yeomen down in their huts in the valley.”

Shelley brought two occasional chairs to the fire, and Mary settled Polidori into one, with his foot propped on the footstool. She seated herself next to him. Shelley leaned his elbows on the back of Claire's armchair.