Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised. Hi,
Speaker 1: this is Danish Wartz. Just a quick message if you
Speaker 1: want to support Noble Blood. We have a Patreon. It's
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales, where I
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Speaker 1: through the CW series Rain. We also have Noble Blood
Speaker 1: merch at d F t b A dot com, and
Speaker 1: I have a book that's out that is all linked
Speaker 1: in the episode description. But of course the best possible
Speaker 1: support is just listening to the podcast, and you don't
Speaker 1: need to do any of that. In April eighteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: the word world bore witness to one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful volcanic eruptions in human history when Mount Tambora, centered
Speaker 1: on the Indonesian island Sumbawa, erupted. It's sent debris, gas
Speaker 1: and lava to decimate the surrounding area, cloaking the island
Speaker 1: inhabitants in a two day long darkness. Tsunamis were triggered
Speaker 1: across the Java Sea and oceans of ash tore through
Speaker 1: forest and grassland. An estimated ten thousand people were killed instantly.
Speaker 1: Tambora's impact was felt far and wide. By the next year,
Speaker 1: a massive dust cloud had formed in the atmosphere, which
Speaker 1: climate scientists now believe was partially responsible for a great
Speaker 1: chill that swept across the northern Hemisphere. It led to
Speaker 1: crop failure and famine, unrest, and migration. The period became
Speaker 1: known as the Year without a Summer, with Europe covered
Speaker 1: in fog and frost even through the typically warmer months.
Speaker 1: Take a description of the weather in Geneva, Switzerland, on
Speaker 1: May seventeen. Quote. The spring, as the inhabitants informed us,
Speaker 1: was unusually late, and indeed the cold was excessive. As
Speaker 1: we ascended the mountains, the same clouds which rained on
Speaker 1: us in the valleys poured forth large flakes of snow,
Speaker 1: thick and fast. The sun occasionally shone through these showers
Speaker 1: and illuminated the magnificent ravines of the mountains, whose gigantic
Speaker 1: pines were some laden with snow, some wreathed round by
Speaker 1: the lines of scattered and lingering vapor. Others darted their
Speaker 1: dark spires into the sunny sky, brilliantly clear and azure.
Speaker 1: These are the words of the young Merry woolstone Craft
Speaker 1: Odwin as she documented her journey to Geneva alongside her
Speaker 1: soon to be husband, the poet Percy Shelley, their four
Speaker 1: month old son William, and Mary's stepsister Claire Claremont. Also
Speaker 1: finding his way to Geneva was Claire's former flame, Lord Byron,
Speaker 1: England's most scandalous celebrity of the moment, whose trip to
Speaker 1: the country was less a vacation and more of an
Speaker 1: escape from the increasingly scornful public eye. Traveling with Byron
Speaker 1: was his personal physician, John Polidori, who had literary aspirations
Speaker 1: of his own. Shelley and Byron were already fans of
Speaker 1: each other's work, so when the two parties crossed paths
Speaker 1: at the hands of a still love sick Claire, who
Speaker 1: was the one who casually suggested Geneva in the first place,
Speaker 1: it seemed only natural that they would rent accommodations near
Speaker 1: each other. The Shelley crew, not particularly well off, n
Speaker 1: did a modest house called the Maison Chapuis, located just
Speaker 1: below a rather lavish mansion rented by Byron Villa Diodati.
Speaker 1: For days on end, the unseasonable reign was relentless, and
Speaker 1: the entire group was forced to spend much of their
Speaker 1: time together inside the villa. Their nights were spent discussing
Speaker 1: literary projects and debating philosophy. One of their favorite topics
Speaker 1: was whether or not human corpses could be reanimated. Mary
Speaker 1: later described herself as a devout but nearly silent listener
Speaker 1: of those debates between the men. At some point, Byron
Speaker 1: proposed a competition to pass the time. Everyone was to
Speaker 1: try to come up with their own ghost story. From
Speaker 1: a contest among a reigned in a group of romantics,
Speaker 1: two new Gothic horror genres were born from the ashes
Speaker 1: of Tambora Row Monsters. I'm Dani Schwartz and this is
Speaker 1: Noble Blood. First things first, let's establish the players at
Speaker 1: Villa Diodati that summer. Let's start with George Byron. Where
Speaker 1: we meet George Gordon Byron, the sixth Baron. Byron in
Speaker 1: our story, is not a particularly high point in his life.
Speaker 1: Close friends would say that he was leaving England of
Speaker 1: his own volition. According to the Baron John Kim Hobhouse quote,
Speaker 1: there was not the slightest necessity, even in appearance for
Speaker 1: his going abroad. Those who weren't close friends would tell
Speaker 1: a very different tale. The eighteen twelve publication of his
Speaker 1: poem Child Harald's Pilgrimage made Byron a nearly instant literary celebrity.
Speaker 1: He was the darling of London society, a fixture at
Speaker 1: their parties and in the hearts and minds of women.
Speaker 1: He was incredibly vain, likely fueled by his insecurities about
Speaker 1: his clubbed right foot, and he acted as incredibly vain
Speaker 1: men do. Despite his fame and title, Byron was not
Speaker 1: born well off. His father, the former British officer nicknamed
Speaker 1: mad Jack. Byron, had only married his mother for her money,
Speaker 1: and he squandered it all away quite quickly. Mad Jack
Speaker 1: then abandoned his wife and young son to fend for themselves.
Speaker 1: After his uncle died without an air, Byron inherited his
Speaker 1: minor title of baron and all that came with it.
Speaker 1: But it was Byron's poetry that truly allowed him to
Speaker 1: gain access to society. A reputation came with his status mad,
Speaker 1: bad and dangerous to know. In the words of Caroline Lamb,
Speaker 1: noble Blood alumnus and one of Byron's most famous ex lovers,
Speaker 1: or take the words of writer Amelia Opie, another one
Speaker 1: of the women that Byron charmed, quote such a voice
Speaker 1: as the devil tempted Eve with you feared its fascination
Speaker 1: the moment you heard it. At this point, however, the
Speaker 1: gossip surrounding Byron went beyond hedonism and womanizing. Byron's January
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifteen marriage to Caroline Lamb's cousin Annabella was
Speaker 1: doomed from the start. Feeling trapped in monogamy, he began
Speaker 1: to act out as Caroline predicted Byron quote would never
Speaker 1: be able to pull with a woman who went to church, punctually,
Speaker 1: understood statistics, and had a bad figure within his circle.
Speaker 1: He became less secretive of past homosexual affairs and spoken
Speaker 1: innuendoes as to the nature of his relationship with his
Speaker 1: half sister Augusta. Just a year after they were wed,
Speaker 1: Annabella took the couple's infant daughter, Ada to her parents
Speaker 1: home in Leicestershire. A few short weeks later, Annabella's father,
Speaker 1: Sir Ralph Milbank, wrote to Byron to formally request a separation.
Speaker 1: After that, rumors that have been contained within the In
Speaker 1: the Know literary circle began to spread across the city.
Speaker 1: The flames of these wildfires were in some part fueled
Speaker 1: by Caroline herself, who famously wanted to see her ex
Speaker 1: lover burn marital violence, adultery, incest, sodomy. Byron's public image
Speaker 1: was becoming truly dangerous to know. Writing from London to Leicestershire,
Speaker 1: Augusta rather awkwardly informed her half sister in law of
Speaker 1: quote reports abroad of a nature too horrible to repeat.
Speaker 1: Every other sinks into nothing besides this most horrid one.
Speaker 1: In the same letter, Augusta quotes Byron's response to the rumors,
Speaker 1: or rather one of the rumors, quote even to have
Speaker 1: such a thing said is utter destruction and ruined to
Speaker 1: a man from which he can never recover. So which
Speaker 1: rumor was Byron referencing. It's worth noting at this point
Speaker 1: that many historians believe the incest rumors to be true,
Speaker 1: and that Elizabeth Madura Lee, Augusta's third daughter is still
Speaker 1: likely thought to be Byron's. Despite its taboo, incest was
Speaker 1: not a criminal offense in England at this point, so
Speaker 1: it's actually more likely that it was the sodomy accusations
Speaker 1: that ultimately dissuaded Byron from protesting his role in the
Speaker 1: divorce proceedings in court. Whether you believe Hobhouse that Byron
Speaker 1: was simply heading out for vacation, or whether you're more
Speaker 1: inclined to believe the considerable evidence pointing to the contrary,
Speaker 1: the fact is that in April Byron left England, never
Speaker 1: to return. He ordered a carriage modeled after Napoleon's, which
Speaker 1: had been famously captured as the general fled Waterloo just
Speaker 1: the year before Byron's exile. It's not hard to imagine
Speaker 1: why Byron identified with Napoleon's indulgence and tragedy. As Byron
Speaker 1: once told a friend, quote with me, there is, as
Speaker 1: Napoleon said, but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Byron's traveling companion was his newly certified physician, twenty year
Speaker 1: old John Polidori. It's unknown why exactly Byron invited Polidori,
Speaker 1: despite protests from Hobhouse, but there are several good guesses
Speaker 1: as to why the doctor accepted, one being the offer
Speaker 1: of quote no less than a sum of five pounds
Speaker 1: for an account of Byron's forthcoming tour from Byron's publisher,
Speaker 1: John Murray. Also on their way to Geneva, of course,
Speaker 1: were Mary and Percy Shelley. Mary wasn't technically a Shelley
Speaker 1: at this point. While the couple had eloped nearly two
Speaker 1: years earlier, they wouldn't wed until December eighteen sixteen, after
Speaker 1: Percy's first wife ultimately committed suicide. Yes, when the famous
Speaker 1: lovers met, the twenty one year old Percy was already
Speaker 1: married to another sixteen year old girl, Harriet, with whom
Speaker 1: he had fathered a child. Percy was a great fan
Speaker 1: of Mary's father, William Godwin, and he would join the
Speaker 1: family for dinner, eventually visiting nearly every day. Percy's anti
Speaker 1: Christian and pro free love views had drawn him to
Speaker 1: Godwin's famously antarctic works. At this point, young Percy had
Speaker 1: been kicked out of Oxford for his atheism and disowned
Speaker 1: by his wealthy father. He was living up to his
Speaker 1: childhood nickname Mad Shelley, given to him by bullies at
Speaker 1: Eton College for his head in the clouds attitude, his
Speaker 1: refusal to adhere to hazing traditions, and his sometimes violent
Speaker 1: bouts of anger. Shelley even claims his own father once
Speaker 1: tried to have him admitted to a madhouse in Godwin,
Speaker 1: Percy sought both a mentor and a surrogate parent. Though
Speaker 1: Percy and Mary had actually met once before, uneventfully in
Speaker 1: eighteen twelves. When Percy came around again two years later,
Speaker 1: Mary was immediately smitten with his poems, his politics, and
Speaker 1: his quote wild intellectual, unearthly looks, as Percy's friend Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson Hogg had described them. Neither Godwin nor Mary's stepmother
Speaker 1: approved of the Omans, so Percy and Mary would often
Speaker 1: sneak off together, namely to a local churchyard, St. Pancras
Speaker 1: Old Church. The churchyard was Mary's favorite spot, her retreat,
Speaker 1: where she spent an obsessive amount of time seeking peace
Speaker 1: and a connection with one woman buried there, her mother,
Speaker 1: the famous writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The Elder. Mary was one
Speaker 1: of the most prominent writers of her time and one
Speaker 1: of the most radical. Her seventeen two treatise A Vindication
Speaker 1: of the Rights of Women is often considered the first
Speaker 1: English language feminist text. By the time Mary Wollstonecraft met Godwin,
Speaker 1: a fellow radical, she already had a daughter, Fanny, born
Speaker 1: from an affair with an American businessman. When Mary and
Speaker 1: Godwin got together and Mary became pregnant for the second time,
Speaker 1: they agreed that marriage would be best for the children,
Speaker 1: despite neither of them believing in the practice. Baby Mary
Speaker 1: was born healthy, but her mother suffered complications. It was
Speaker 1: ultimately the result of unhygienic medical practices that Mary Wolstoncraft
Speaker 1: would not live to raise her daughter. She died of
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection just eleven days after giving birth. Though
Speaker 1: Godwin did not resent the baby Mary for the death
Speaker 1: of his wife, she grew up knowing that she was
Speaker 1: somehow responsible for her mother's absence. Still, Godwin kept his
Speaker 1: late wife's presence in Mary's life. A portrait of her
Speaker 1: was hung above the stairs, where young Mary saw it
Speaker 1: every day, and her father would frequently take her to
Speaker 1: visit her mother's grave site at the same church where
Speaker 1: the late Mary and Godwin had been married not too
Speaker 1: long before. It's said that young Mary learned how to
Speaker 1: write her own name from tracing the engraving on her
Speaker 1: mother's headstone. In the words of literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert,
Speaker 1: Mary's only real mother was a tombstone. As young Mary
Speaker 1: grew up, the grave became her place of solace, increasingly
Speaker 1: so after her father remarried. She would carry piles of
Speaker 1: books from her home and spend the day reading with
Speaker 1: her mother. Mary frequently reread her mother's own work, absorbing
Speaker 1: her knowledge, searching for it. In herself quote, I conceived
Speaker 1: it to be the duty of every rational creature to
Speaker 1: attend to its offspring, Wollstonecraft had written in Thoughts on
Speaker 1: the Education of Daughters in While wolf Stonecraft was not
Speaker 1: able to attend to her own daughter, Mary would recreate
Speaker 1: her presence as best she could. Bringing Percy to the grave, then,
Speaker 1: was the ultimate vulnerability, the ultimate invitation into her prior
Speaker 1: of it world. On Sunday, June fourteen, Mary brought Percy
Speaker 1: to the grave and declared her love. He reciprocated, and
Speaker 1: it's notoriously believed that they consummated the relationship then and
Speaker 1: there in the graveyard, an inspiration to future Goths everywhere.
Speaker 1: While the story seems almost too Gothic to be true,
Speaker 1: we can assume that they did in fact sleep together
Speaker 1: for the first time that day in the graveyard or elsewhere,
Speaker 1: as Percy refers to the day in his journal entries
Speaker 1: as his true birthday. The couple eloped later that summer,
Speaker 1: to the disapproval of Godwin. He still opposed marriage despite
Speaker 1: his own and was concerned with Percy's increasing debt. Though
Speaker 1: he didn't outright disown Mary, the relationship between father and
Speaker 1: daughter became distant and cold after Mary love for France
Speaker 1: with her new quote unquote husband. When the couple ran
Speaker 1: out of money, a then pregnant Mary asked her father
Speaker 1: for assistance, he denied her. In February of eighteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: Mary gave birth prematurely to a daughter, who would die
Speaker 1: within a month. Mary was plunged into a deep depression
Speaker 1: and would consider herself haunted by the baby for years. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: in January of the next year, she gave birth to
Speaker 1: a son and named him William, after her father. That summer,
Speaker 1: at the urging of her step sister Claire, the Shelleys
Speaker 1: decided to follow Lord Byron on a trip to Geneva.
Speaker 1: Of note is the fact that Claire was pregnant with
Speaker 1: a child rumored at the time to actually be Percy's.
Speaker 1: There's no actual evidence of an affair between Claire and Percy,
Speaker 1: and we now know that the child in fact belonged
Speaker 1: to another free loving poet Lord Byron Lake Geneva was
Speaker 1: an ideal spot for a romantic poet. It was surrounded
Speaker 1: by vineyards and hugged by the silhouettes of the Alps
Speaker 1: snowy peaks in the distance. The crescent moon shaped body
Speaker 1: of water is the largest and deepest in Central Europe.
Speaker 1: Mary described it lavishly in her travel journal as quote
Speaker 1: blue as the heavens, which it reflects. During summers when
Speaker 1: there hasn't been recent volcanic activity, the lake is warm
Speaker 1: enough to swim in. Situated on top of a hill,
Speaker 1: overlooking those heavenly depths and the stretching vineyards is the
Speaker 1: stately salmon pink Villa Diodati. The villa still stands today,
Speaker 1: its exterior largely unchanged from the time of the group's day,
Speaker 1: from its teel shuttered windows to its expansive balcony. The
Speaker 1: privately owned it's still a habit for literary tourists to
Speaker 1: try to catch a glimpse of the mansion from nearby
Speaker 1: walking ways. This is a tradition that began in eighteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: when hotels started to charge English tourists to spy on
Speaker 1: the villa from telescopes across the lake. That's how famous
Speaker 1: Byron and his friends were at the time. It said
Speaker 1: that people would sail by in boats hoping to peek
Speaker 1: at the women's underwear on the washing lines, or see
Speaker 1: anything to confirm that the villa was as debaucherous as
Speaker 1: it was in their imaginations. It was even deemed a
Speaker 1: quote league of incest at the time. Those words often
Speaker 1: attributed to the prominent poet Robert Southey. There's no actual
Speaker 1: evidence for the nightly orgies that were rumored to be
Speaker 1: happening there, and there was even an outright denial from Byron.
Speaker 1: Quote so much for scoundrels southeast story of incest. Neither
Speaker 1: was there any promiscuous intercourse whatever. Both are an invention
Speaker 1: of the execrable villain Southey, whom I will term so
Speaker 1: publicly as he deserves end quote. Still, the group's entangled
Speaker 1: web of romantic and platonic connections to one another, combined
Speaker 1: with the presence of the eager voyeurs across the lake,
Speaker 1: would soon contribute to an environment of claustrophobia. Lest we forget,
Speaker 1: thanks to the weather, they were quite literally confined to
Speaker 1: the house. It proved a wet ungenial summer and incessant
Speaker 1: rain often confined us for days to the house Mary
Speaker 1: would later describe. She recounted that during these periods, various
Speaker 1: philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others, the nature of
Speaker 1: the principle of life and whether there was any probability
Speaker 1: of its ever being discovered and communicated to ground Byron
Speaker 1: and Percy's wild imaginations was the medical knowledge of Polidori,
Speaker 1: who's due for a proper introduction in our story. Now.
Speaker 1: John Polidori had never intended to study medicine, but his
Speaker 1: father forced him to follow the track he envisioned for
Speaker 1: his son, and he had enrolled him in the University
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh to study the science. Though John never stood
Speaker 1: up to his father, he resented his rigidity, which likely
Speaker 1: played a part in his hatred for both medicine and school.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his reluctant education, Polidori discovered a
Speaker 1: passion for literature. Still, he dutifully finished his schooling and
Speaker 1: became a doctor at age twenty. At the time, however,
Speaker 1: in order to practice in London, a doctor had to
Speaker 1: be at least twenty six. It was during this waiting
Speaker 1: period that Polidori took the job of Byron's physician, which
Speaker 1: was offered thanks to a connection of his father. Their
Speaker 1: relationship was doomed from the start, each man self obsessed
Speaker 1: in his own way, but only one with the prestige
Speaker 1: to back it up and the current need for an
Speaker 1: emotional punching bag. At one of Byron's last dinners with
Speaker 1: friends in England, Polidori had asked his new employer if
Speaker 1: he could read a bit of a play he had written.
Speaker 1: Byron agreed, if only to have the opportunity to play
Speaker 1: the role of mean girl and skewer Polidori's efforts for
Speaker 1: the laughter of the table. In another exchange, the doctor
Speaker 1: had asked the poet, what is there accepting writing poetry
Speaker 1: that I cannot do better than you? Byron Calmlier replied, first,
Speaker 1: I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly,
Speaker 1: I can swim across that river to yonder point, and
Speaker 1: thirdly I can give you a damned good thrashing. If
Speaker 1: you're feeling for Polidori right now, keep in mind that
Speaker 1: at least all of that would probably provide him good
Speaker 1: material later on, back to the villa, during one of
Speaker 1: those indoor stretches, the group began to read pieces from Phantasmagoriana,
Speaker 1: a French anthology of German ghost stories. It was this
Speaker 1: collection that gave Byron his famous idea. We will each
Speaker 1: write a ghost story, he said, as Mary later recounted,
Speaker 1: Namely excluded from each was Claire, who cared less about
Speaker 1: writing and more about a certain writer. While the contest
Speaker 1: was a fun way to pass the time, it was
Speaker 1: also a desperately needed distraction from the growing tensions mounting
Speaker 1: in the house. Claire was determined to make the trip
Speaker 1: worthwhile to resume her affair with Byron. Despite his initial resistance,
Speaker 1: Claire got what she came for. I never loved her,
Speaker 1: nor pretended to love her, Byron wrote, But a man
Speaker 1: is a man, and if a girl of eighteen comes
Speaker 1: prancing to you at all hours, there is but what way?
Speaker 1: Classic Byron. Some sources report that Polydori became infatuated with Mary,
Speaker 1: who remained devoted to Percy and rejected his advances. As
Speaker 1: the doctor would recount, Mary instead saw Polidori as a brother. Percy, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: was described as falling into a depression. He struggled with
Speaker 1: mental illness from a young age, and the claustrophobic environment
Speaker 1: was beginning to weigh on his psyche. For example, one
Speaker 1: dark and stormy evening, Byron read verses from Samuel Taylor
Speaker 1: Coleridge's poem Christo Bel, in which a supernatural creature is
Speaker 1: disguising itself as a woman named Geraldine in order to
Speaker 1: trick the titular character. One particularly relevant section reads, behold
Speaker 1: her bosom and half her side, hideous, deformed, and pale
Speaker 1: of hu A site to dream of, not to tell,
Speaker 1: and she is to sleep by Christo Bell. Percy fled
Speaker 1: from the room screaming in a fit of fantasy. As
Speaker 1: Byron described it, it was only when Pola Doory threw
Speaker 1: water in Percy's face and gave him ether, the anesthetic
Speaker 1: of the time, that he calmed down. They say Percy
Speaker 1: had been haunted by visions of a monstrous woman whom
Speaker 1: some accounts describe as Mary with eyes instead of nipples
Speaker 1: on her breasts. Clearly inspired enough, the guests began to
Speaker 1: write and share their ghost stories. Byron and Percy went first,
Speaker 1: both presenting the beginnings of works that they would never finish.
Speaker 1: Percy story, which Mary remembered to have been inspired by
Speaker 1: his childhood is now completely lost Byron's story. The fragment
Speaker 1: of a novel, however, can still be read in full.
Speaker 1: His story centered on a young man traveling in Turkey
Speaker 1: with an old her companion, the wealthy aristocratic Augustus Darville.
Speaker 1: The elder's health declines rapidly, and while the to rest
Speaker 1: in a Turkish cemetery, Darville asks his companion to tell
Speaker 1: no One of his impending death. The old man gives
Speaker 1: the younger a ring and asks him to perform a
Speaker 1: ceremony with it, before turning black and instantly disintegrating. The end,
Speaker 1: the doctor hadn't managed to come up with anything worthwhile.
Speaker 1: Yet Mary, later recalled poor Polodori, had some terrible idea
Speaker 1: about a skull headed lady who was so punished for
Speaker 1: peeping through a keyhole. Mary, for her part, early on,
Speaker 1: was struck with a serious case of writer's block. I
Speaker 1: was asked each morning and each evening, I was forced
Speaker 1: to reply with a mortifying negative. She wrote. Her devout
Speaker 1: but nearly silent listening to the scientific debates of the
Speaker 1: men would soon pay off, though, having made its way
Speaker 1: into her subconscious. One conversation in particular had the greatest impact.
Speaker 1: They talked of the experiment of Dr Darwin, who preserved
Speaker 1: a piece of Vermicelli in a glass case till by
Speaker 1: some extraordinary means, it began to move with voluntary motion.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated. Galvanism had given token
Speaker 1: of such things. Perhaps the component parts of a creature
Speaker 1: might be manufactured, brought together, and endowed with vital warmth.
Speaker 1: These images and ideas embedded themselves in her mind and
Speaker 1: birthed perhaps the most famous dream of all time. As
Speaker 1: Mary wrote, night waned upon this talk. When I placed
Speaker 1: my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor
Speaker 1: could I be said to think. I saw, with shut
Speaker 1: eyes but acute mental vision. I saw the pale student
Speaker 1: of unhallowed arts, kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
Speaker 1: I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,
Speaker 1: and then, on the working of some powerful engine, showed
Speaker 1: signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.
Speaker 1: By her account, it was right then and there, after
Speaker 1: opening her eyes in terror, that Mary Shelley began to
Speaker 1: draft Frankenstein. She recounts, I returned to my ghost story,
Speaker 1: my tiresome, unlucky ghost story, I have found it. What
Speaker 1: terrified me will terrify others. And I need only describe
Speaker 1: the specter which is haunted my midnight pillow on the
Speaker 1: morrow I announced that I had thought of a story.
Speaker 1: I began that day with the words. That night, Mary
Speaker 1: Shelley read a passage to the group that began. It
Speaker 1: was on a dreary night of November. As Frankenstein developed
Speaker 1: from ghost story to novel, Villa Diodotti remained in its
Speaker 1: DNA even beyond Victor Frankenstein's Geneva family origins and the
Speaker 1: number of scenes that take place at Lake Geneva itself.
Speaker 1: The year without a summer feels present in her descriptions
Speaker 1: of the natural world that Victor and his creature experience.
Speaker 1: One of the very first sentences of the novel reads,
Speaker 1: this breeze, which has traveled from the regions towards which
Speaker 1: I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes.
Speaker 1: Inspired by this wind of promise, my day dreams become
Speaker 1: more fervent and vivid. I try, in vain to be
Speaker 1: persuaded that the poll is the seat of frost and desolation.
Speaker 1: It ever presents itself to my imagination as the region
Speaker 1: of beauty and delight the novel's protagonist, Victor Frankenstein's own
Speaker 1: scientific interest from watching a storm as a child. In Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: the natural world is as fear inspiring as it is
Speaker 1: awe inspiring. It's a perspective that feels timely given Mary
Speaker 1: writing in the wake of a catastrophic natural disaster. While
Speaker 1: many have come to the conclusion that Mary identifies with
Speaker 1: Victor the scientist, the circumstances surrounding that summer way heavily
Speaker 1: in favor of Mary actually identifying more with the monster.
Speaker 1: Remember the words of Mary's mother. I conceive it to
Speaker 1: be the duty of every rational creature to attend to
Speaker 1: its offspring. Mary's mother had died just days after she
Speaker 1: was born, and Mary had been all but abandoned by
Speaker 1: her beloved father because of her relationship with Percy. Like
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's Monster, Mary had become a lonely, wandering child, abandoned
Speaker 1: by her creator, Mary, her husband Byron Polidori. All of
Speaker 1: them were aching for the attention of their fathers. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it came up in conversation one night, and Mary had
Speaker 1: silently agreed to herself. When it came to the conversations
Speaker 1: that we know took place. Mary's devout listening likely gave
Speaker 1: her not only source material but character inspiration. Each night,
Speaker 1: three men, all remembered in part for their egos, discussed
Speaker 1: reanimation of human life. Mary's character, Victor Frankenstein, who's torn
Speaker 1: down by his own hubris, is remembered for thinking that
Speaker 1: he could play god. Speaking of those men, the second
Speaker 1: but most famous work to stem from Villa Dia Dotti
Speaker 1: was written not by Shelley, not by Byron, but by
Speaker 1: poor Polidori. He was intrigued by that unfinished piece of Byron's,
Speaker 1: and after the trip finished, he began to flush it
Speaker 1: out into a short story. Polidori story begins to about
Speaker 1: the same as Byron's two gentlemen traveling Europe, one dying
Speaker 1: of a series death and making the other swear not
Speaker 1: to speak of it. In this version, however, we see
Speaker 1: the consequences of that deal, as our protagonist is shocked
Speaker 1: to find his dead friend alive and well in London
Speaker 1: and attempting to seduce his sister. There are some changes.
Speaker 1: Right off the bat, locals tell legends of vampires, and
Speaker 1: while our protagonist Aubrey doesn't make the connection. Mysterious, seemingly
Speaker 1: vampire induced deaths take place when his companion, the wealthy,
Speaker 1: charming and suave Lord Ruthven, arrives. If you remember the
Speaker 1: Caroline Lamb episode we did on this podcast, the name
Speaker 1: Ruthven might ring a bell. Maybe not. It was a
Speaker 1: very long time ago, you see. It's the same pseudonym
Speaker 1: Caroline Lamb used for the Heartbreaker mail lead in her
Speaker 1: novel Glenn Arvin, which was a fictional account of her
Speaker 1: affair with Byron. At an early point in Polodori's novel,
Speaker 1: the vampire Ruthven abandons Aubrey during their travels after seducing
Speaker 1: an acquaintance's daughter, Polodori often found himself abandoned by Byron
Speaker 1: in favor of Byron's new preferred companion, Percy Shelley. Ruthven
Speaker 1: is described as being deadly, pale, and dark haired. He
Speaker 1: has a compelling voice and is attractive to women whom
Speaker 1: he sees as prey. It's not hard to imagine why
Speaker 1: Polidori saw Byron as a vampire plagued by scandal that
Speaker 1: was destroying the lives of those around him, treating the
Speaker 1: woman pregnant with his child as a tempting annoyance and
Speaker 1: channeling his distress into mocking Polidori. Byron was figuratively sucking
Speaker 1: the lives out of his friends. The Vampire did not
Speaker 1: end up being the revenge Polidori had hoped it would be.
Speaker 1: It wasn't originally meant to be published at all, merely
Speaker 1: circulated among peers, but the manuscript ended up in the
Speaker 1: hands of New Monthly Magazine, where the editor rather presumptuously
Speaker 1: assumed that it was written by Lord Byron. It was
Speaker 1: published under the name The Vampire, A Tale by Lord Byron,
Speaker 1: and while it was eventually amended after Polydori's demand, the
Speaker 1: resounding success of the publication would mean the story would
Speaker 1: forever be connected to Byron. Well. Polidori explained that it
Speaker 1: was Byron's initial idea to continue his fragment, with the
Speaker 1: protagonist finding his companion alive upon his return and making
Speaker 1: love to his sister. Everything else was of his Polydori's
Speaker 1: own imagination. Still, well into the eighteen nineties, the Vampire
Speaker 1: was included in collections of Byron's work. Still, it's polar
Speaker 1: Dory who we have to thank for making the vampire
Speaker 1: genre what it is today. Vampire fiction existed before Polar DOORI,
Speaker 1: but they were grotesque creatures. The byronic Lord Ruthven was
Speaker 1: dark and seductive, like the vampires we know and love today.
Speaker 1: There may not have been the Vampire without Byron's fragment,
Speaker 1: but without the vampire, we wouldn't have Dracula, or Carmela
Speaker 1: or Twilight. So who won the ghost story contest? No
Speaker 1: winner was formally declared, but we have to hand the
Speaker 1: title to the two underdogs who not only created the
Speaker 1: scariest monsters, but pioneered two literary genres. That's the story
Speaker 1: of Villadia Datti. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break,
Speaker 1: to hear more about very important work that was also
Speaker 1: created during the Year Without a Summer. In eighteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: the nineteen year old composer Franz Schubert was hard at work.
Speaker 1: In that year alone. He produced two symphonies, choral music
Speaker 1: and chamber works that dark and rainy summer when our
Speaker 1: romantic poets were writing their ghost stories. Schubert had also
Speaker 1: been inspired by the weather in a bed in. The
Speaker 1: Guardian argues that quote, almost all of his songs reflected
Speaker 1: not only the wandering, wondering and passionate romanticism of the age,
Speaker 1: but also the coldness and darkness of this mysterious period.
Speaker 1: I personally recommended Symphony Number four in C. Minor, dubbed
Speaker 1: the Tragic by Schubert. The composer would soon write Prometheus,
Speaker 1: of course, by eased down the myth of the titan
Speaker 1: who stole fire from the gods to give to humanity.
Speaker 1: Prometheus had been a prominent figure in art since the
Speaker 1: early days, but he happened to be of particular importance
Speaker 1: to the Villa Dear Dotti crew Byron published his epic
Speaker 1: poem Prometheus in eighteen sixteen. In eighteen twenty, Percy would
Speaker 1: publish one of his major works, Prometheus Unbound and Lest
Speaker 1: We Forget Mary. Shelley had actually given Frankenstein a longer title.
Speaker 1: The full title of the novel was Frankenstein or the
Speaker 1: Modern Prometheus. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show
Speaker 1: was written and hosted by Danis Schwartz. Executive producers include
Speaker 1: Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you
Speaker 1: can learn more about the show over at Noble blood
Speaker 1: Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. M