after Byron wagered that none of his guests could create a really frightening ghost story. The weather that d ay was


sinister. An eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia sent clouds of volcanic ash billowing into the upper atmosphere blacking out the sun; rain fell incessantly, temperatures plummeted, birds roosted at noon and candles had to be lit at mid-day as darkness descended. These New Romantics, in truth a dissipated band of wealthy 19th- century hippies, had imagined their days would be filled enjoying the beauties of the landscape and the lake, of serene cruising and pastoral walks in the foothills of the Alps but, with thunder and lightning rolling down the mountains, the foul weather made them prisoners of Villa Diodati. They had been reading


Fantasmagoriana, a book of German ghost stories, and an atmosphere of impending doom prevailed as industrial quantities of drink and laudanum were consumed amid fevered conversation about sorcery and the ability of science to create man out of matter. They were particularly fascinated by the experiments with electricity by Luigi Galvani who, by shooting electricity through dead frogs, could make the animals seemingly hop into life again. As Shelley and Byron talked long


into the night, Mary, who believed both men were geniuses and wanted to impress them, took Byron’s challenge seriously and went to bed determined to create a story that would make even her heroes shake with fear. It’s significant that Mary was still haunted by the loss of a baby after she had become pregnant. She had also endured vivid dreams about the legend of Castle Frankenstein which she had seen while cruising on the Rhine. It was here that a young man called Johann Conrad Dippel was charged with robbing graveyards for corpses he believed could be re- animated by injecting them with a mixture of blood and bone. These disturbing, macabre


emotions fused in a nightmare where Mary literally dreamed how


76 SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE


We see Byron as a kind of 19th century Mick Jagger, leading an outrageous life, seducing beautiful women, taking drugs, producing hits, charismatic and heading for a heroic death


a Dr Victor Frankenstein studying transmogrification at a remote Bavarian University was overwhelmed by a messianic crusade to discover “the cause of generation and life”, the story almost fully formed when she awoke.


Mr and Mrs Shelly Courtesy of HathiTrust


In her imagination,


Frankenstein carries out mysterious experiments and constructs a titanic hulking body setting into motion a chain of events in which everything the doctor loves is destroyed by his misshapen creation. “I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life,” Mary later explained.


Geneva’s charming, Captain Pugwash-style paddle steamers pass the Villa Diodati on their cruises along the lake to Chateau Chillon, a storybook castle on the shores of Montreux where Byron was inspired to write his most celebrated poem after learning the Duke of Savoy was chained and tortured in the dungeon for opposition to the local king. Though unrelated to the monster, Chillon is on the Frankenstein trail because of Byron which, while welcomed by Geneva’s hospitality industry, leaves most of its citizens curiously apathetic. They are just not into their most famous historical figure, unimpressed by a grisly black iron statue of the walking


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