Work Text:
Dearest Elizabeth,
It is to you I write, as you attempt a slow recovery from your terrible illness. How your adoptive mother and younger brother must miss having you near them, when you have been sent to take the sea cure in Naples. Yet it was a saving grace for my fate, and Victor's, that you did not recover completely from your fever. I believe, as I must, that you shall, before too long, and perhaps even meet that person of whom you dreamed, the one you told me of in strictest confidence. I told no one, not even Victor, and I will not. Fate has come to the rescue of us both.
And furthermore, as my father believes me to have accompanied you there rather than Victor to Bavaria, I must inform you of what I have told him of my doings there, so that you may support my deceit. Untold apologies for involving you in this charade, dear friend. You must continue to understand that it was necessary. You know how difficult it would be for Victor alone here. What terrible fate might befall him with neither of us at his side? And since you were too ill, it needed to be me.
Thank you for your last letter, as it was more than welcome. How brilliant you are to collect such useful information that will please Father and give him more than enough reason to continue to allow me an allowance and my freedom. You inquired about Victor. He was devastated by his lecturers' opinions of the alchemists he set so much store by. I was able to cheer him up, though, by an application of that principle I learned from the greatest storytellers of the past: that a new truth does not invalidate an older one, even if it seems to contradict. He --
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The rest of the letter was not retained by the bagni marini, and the historian who supplied us with this letter stated that he believed it to be from Henry Clerval due to the handwriting matching other letters which Clerval signed.
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To my Father -
The sea air is treating Elizabeth well. I believe she will soon grow healthy enough to return home to Caroline, the greatest of her heart's desires. Perhaps another year's time will suffice. The rent for the cabin she occupies, salary for her nurse and chaperone, for the cook to make meals for us, and the maid, is paid by the Frankenstein family, but your contributions allow me to contribute to buying food and other supplies as they are needed, and paying the doctor who has attended her.
I do not believe her affections are, or ever will be, fixed on my person, no matter your hopes, Father. But anything is possible. She believes she will find love here, she has confided in me, and such romance is her destiny, that is my belief. I am her friend and confidant, nothing more.
Furthering your commercial interests in Naples has been my secondary pursuit, after supporting Elizabeth. Here enclosed you will find a list of goods I believe you will be able to successfully bring to market in Naples, as there is good demand for them that is not being well met in either price or quality at this time.
Your dutiful son, Henry Clerval
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Henry looked at the laboratory, refusing to give in to despair. He had obtained a lizard, with the assistance of the cat belonging to the cook at the apartment where he and Victor spent what time they had that was not taken up with lectures, chapel attendance, and study. Victor's experiments were done in this laboratory, and though Henry did not fully understand the advanced chemistry Victor pursued in the school of medicine, he did know more than most of his fellow liberal arts students.
This was due to his continual close attention to every word Victor Frankenstein uttered. He wrote story after story concerning an intense young student of the natural sciences, sometimes a mathematician, sometimes a medical student or chemist, whose singleminded pursuit left him no time to notice the devotion of his friend. This was because he had no other outlet for those feelings. His muse, he considered, was his noble courtly love. It was best that it never be spoken aloud and that Victor never know. It was not as though there was anything that Henry would change about their relationship, he told himself. He was there, supporting Victor, pursuing his own ends, and a happier life was not to be imagined.
If only he had not, completely inadvertently, persuaded Victor to attempt bringing a lizard back to life to house a summoned demon. Victor was convinced he understood the nature of life, and Henry's objection had been that of the spirit. The soul has returned to God's side, Henry had said, so what would occupy the body in that case? Only a devil of some kind, he had then said.
And, completely to Henry's surprise and horror, Victor's eyes had gone alight. "It is the answer the alchemists never found!" he shouted gleefully. He thought immediately of a human body, as he had been studying the dead in his pursuit of medicine very intensely. But Henry had at least been able to dissuade him of the safety of giving a devil a human body to use to its evil ends. Instead, the lizard had been the best compromise he could manage.
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Dearest Elizabeth,
Perhaps only you can help me. And if you cannot, I fear no one can. Victor has succeeded, and it is the most terrible success I can imagine. The demon in the lizard he has brought back to life speaks to him alone. I cannot hear it.
I do not want to tell the priests who guide this university of the damnation that now walks among their students. It would end in Victor's expulsion and perhaps mine as well for aiding him. And if he is expelled, I will not want to stay anyway. I am responsible, I must be, though my soul cannot bear the burden. You have always been his moral light and guide, Elizabeth. I know it is a terrible thing to ask of you. But will you come and try to bring him back to godly understanding? To counteract this demon's possession of his imagination and his will?
If you are still too ill to travel, I shall attempt to persuade him that we must visit you. And I will try to prevent his bringing it along. I fear what might happen if he did.
Yours most sincerely and in the utmost gratitude,
Henry Clerval