Frankissstein. Jeanette Winterson
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estate, said Byron.
I watched him, sardonic, cynical. A great poet, truly, yet unkind. The gifts of our nature seem not to modify the manner of our behaviour.
Shelley has little money and is the most generous of men. Byron is rich, netting £10,000 a year from his estates, yet spends only for his own pleasure. He may live as he pleases. We must take care. That is, I must take care of our accounts. Shelley scarcely seems to know what he can spend and what he cannot. We are forever in debt. Still, if I can sell the story I am writing we shall be more at ease. My mother made a living from her writing. It is my intention to follow her example.
I should like to say more about the soul, said Shelley.
Byron groaned. Polidori coughed. Claire stitched viciously at her cushion cover.
My own mind, though, was elsewhere. Since I had thought of my story I had been preoccupied by it. The looming figure in my mind blotted out other concerns. My mind was in a kind of eclipse. I must return to the monstrous shadow crossing me.
I left them to their bickering and metaphysics and went upstairs to my desk with a jug of wine. Red wine eases the ache of the damp.
For the sake of my story I have my own desire to contemplate what it is about Man that distinguishes us from the rest of biology. And what distinguishes us from machines?
I visited a manufactory in Manchester with my father. I saw that the wretched creatures enslaved to the machines were as repetitive in their movements as machines. They were distinguished only by their unhappiness. The great wealth of the manufactories is not for the workers but for the owners. Humans must live in misery to be the mind of the machines.
My father had me read Hobbes’ Leviathan when I was younger. Now I sit here, pen in hand, and into my mind comes Hobbes and his conjecture. He writes:
For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principall part within; why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch) have an artificiall life?
I ask myself: what is artificial life? Automata have no intelligence; they are but clockwork. Biological life, even the most wretched being, has intelligence enough to milk a cow, speak a name, know when rain will come and when it will not, reflect, perhaps, on its existence. Yet, if automata had intelligence … would that be sufficient to call it alive?
Shelley is improving my Greek and Latin. We lie on the bed, him naked, his hand on my back, the book on the pillow. He kisses my neck as we manage new vocabulary. Often we break off for love. I love his body. Hate it that he is so careless of himself. Truly he imagines that nothing so gross as matter can oppose him. But he is made of blood and warmth. I rest on his narrow chest, listening to his heart.
Together we are reading Ovid: Metamorphoses.
Italy is full of statues of beautiful men. Men who ripple and stand. To kiss one? To bring it to life?
I have touched such statues, their cold marble, their serious stone. And wrapped my arms around one and wondered at the form without the life.
Shelley read out to me from Ovid the story of the sculptor Pygmalion, who fell in love with the statue he had carved himself. So deep in love was he with his creation that women were nothing to him. He prayed to the goddess Athena that he might find a living lover as beautiful as the lifeless form on his bench. That night, he kissed the lips of the youth he had created. Hardly believing what he felt, he felt the youth kiss him in return. The cold stone warmed.
And there was more … Through the good offices of the goddess, the youth took on female form – a double transformation from lifeless to life and from male to female. Pygmalion married her.
It must be, said Shelley, that Shakespeare had such a picture in his mind at the close of The Winter’s Tale, when the statue of Hermione comes to life. She steps down. She embraces her husband, Leontes, the tyrant. Through his crimes, Time itself had turned to stone, and now, in her movement, Time itself flows again. That which is lost is found.
Yes, I said. The second of warmth. To kiss the lips and find them warm.
The lips are warm after death, said Shelley. Who does not lie beside the beloved all night as the body cools? Who does not hold the body in her arms, frantic to bestow heat and reanimate the corpse? Who does not tell himself that this is but winter? In the morning surely the sun will come?
Move him into the sun, I said (I don’t know why).
Artificial life. The statue wakes and walks. But what of the rest? Is there such a thing as artificial intelligence? Clockwork has no thoughts. What is the spark of mind? Could it be made? Made by us?
What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
The shadows darkened the corners of the room. I brooded upon the nature of my own mind. Yet when my heart stops so must my mind. No mind, however fine, outlasts the body.
My mind turned back to the journey I had made with Shelley and Claire, who returns to this story like a bookmark – not the text, but a marker of some kind.
I was to elope with Shelley, and Claire decided she could not be left behind, and so we agreed to go all together, keeping the plan secret from my father and stepmother.
I must add this note that after my mother died my father could not be alone, and soon enough he had married again – an ordinary woman of no imagination, but she could cook. She brought with her a daughter called Jane, who soon became the ardent pupil of my dead mother’s writings, and in time changed her name to Claire; I did not disapprove of this. Why should she not remake herself? What is identity but what we name it? Jane/Claire acted as go-between for Shelley and myself when my father grew suspicious. Shelley and I were both fond of her, and so when the time came to leave Skinner Street it was decided that we should go together.
Stars in the sky like uncounted chances.
Four o’clock in the morning. Felt slippers on our feet, our boots in our hands, so as not to wake Father, though he sleeps deeply when he takes laudanum for his ague.
We ran through the streets where the world was waking.
We reached the coach. There was Shelley, pale and pacing, an angel without wings.
He embraced me, burying his face in my hair, whispering my name. Our modest bags were loaded, but suddenly I turned from him and ran back home, stricken with conscience, to leave my father a note on the mantelpiece. I could not break his heart. I deceive myself. I could not break his heart without telling him I was breaking his heart. We live by language.
The cat curled round my legs.
And then I was off again, running, running, my hat slipping round my neck and my breath dry in my mouth.
Anxious and exhausted, we were gone, post-haste to Dover, seasick under the sails of a boat that took us to Calais – and my first night in his arms in a padded room in a dark inn with the rattle of iron cartwheels going over the cobbles and my heart sounding louder than iron and wheels.
This is a love story.
I could add that my stepmother soon followed us, pleading for Jane/Claire to return. I think she was glad enough to be rid of me. Shelley walked all three of us up and down separately and together, arguing love and liberty. I do not imagine she believed him, but eventually she was exhausted, and bade us farewell. He had prevailed. We were in France, the home of revolution. What could we not manage?
As it turned out – we could manage very little.
Our travels were not easy. We had no clothes. Paris was dirty and expensive. The food gave us cramps and foul smells. Shelley lived off bread and wine. I added cheese. At last we found a money-lender from whom Shelley was able to borrow sixty pounds.
Buoyed up by our wealth, we decided to travel, and set off into the country, seeking simplicity and the natural man that Rousseau had written about.
There