"Man Made" (1960) by Albert R. Teichner, with Commentary

"Man Made"

© 1960

by

Albert R. Teichner  

If I listed every trouble I've accumulated in a mere two hundred odd years you might be inclined to laugh. When a tale of woe piles up too many details it looks ridiculous, unreal. So here, at the outset, I want to say my life has not been a tragic one—whose life is in this day of advanced techniques and universal good will?—but that, on the contrary, I have enjoyed this Earth and Solar System and all the abundant interests that it has offered me. If, lying here beneath these great lights, I could only be as sure of joy in the future....


My name is Treb Hawley. As far back as I can remember in my childhood, I was always interested in astronautics. From the age of ten I specialized in that subject, never for a moment regretting the choice. When I was still a child of twenty-four I took part in the Ninth Jupiter Expedition and after that there were many more. I had a precocious marriage at thirty and my boys, Robert and Neil, were born within a few years after Marla and I wed. It was fortunate that I fought for government permission that early; after the accident, despite my high rating, I would have been denied the rare privilege of parenthood.

That accident, the first one, took place when I was fifty. On Planet 12 of the Centauri System I was attacked by a six-limbed primate and was badly mangled on the left side before breaking loose to destroy it. Surgical Corps operated within an hour. Although they did an excellent prosthetic job after removing my left leg and arm, the substituted limbs had their limitations. While they permitted me to do all my jobs, phantom pain was a constant problem. There were new methods of prosthesis to eliminate this weird effect but these were only available back on the home planets.

I had to wait one year for this release. Meanwhile I had plenty of time to contemplate my mysterious affliction; the mystery of it was so great that I had little chance to notice how painful it actually was. There is enough strangeness in feeling with absolute certainty that a limb exists where actually there is nothing, but the strangeness is compounded when you look down and discover that not only is the leg gone but that another, mechanical one has taken its place. Dr. Erics, who had performed the operation, said this difficulty would ultimately prove a blessing but I often had my doubts.


He was right. Upon my return to Earth, the serious operations took place, those giving me plastic limbs that would become living parts of my organic structure. The same outward push of the brain and nervous system that had created phantom pain now made what was artificial seem real. Not only did my own blood course through the protoplastic but I could feel it doing so. The adjustment took less than a week and it was a complete one.

Fortunately the time was already past when protoplast patients were looked upon as something mildly freakish and to be pitied. Artificial noses, ears and limbs were becoming quite common. Whether there was some justification for the earlier reaction of pity, however, still remains to be seen.

My career resumed and I was accepted for the next Centauri Expedition without any questions being asked. As a matter of fact, Planning Center preferred people in my condition; protoplast limbs were more durable than the real—no, let us say the original—thing.

At home and at the beach no one bothered to notice my reconstructed arm and leg. They looked too natural for the idea to occur to people who did not know me. And Marla treated the whole thing like a big joke. "You're better than new," she used to tell me and the kids wanted to know when they could have second matter limbs of their own.

Life was good to me. The one-year periods away from home passed quickly and the five-year layoffs on Earth permitted me to devote myself to my hobbies, music and mathematics, without taking any time away from my family. Eventually, of course, my condition became an extremely common one. Who is there today among my readers who has all the parts with which he was born? If any such person past the childhood sixty years did, he would be the freak.

Then at ninety new difficulties arose. A new Centaurian subvirus attacked my chest marrow. As is still true in this infection, the virus proved to be ineradicable. My ribs weren't, though, and a protoplastic casing, exactly like the thoracic cavity, was substituted. It was discovered that the infection had spread to my right radius and ulna so here too a simple substitution was made. Of course, such a radical infection meant my circulatory system was contaminated and synthetically created living hemoplast was pumped in as soon as all the blood was removed.

This did attract attention. At the time the procedure was still new and some medical people warned it would not take. They were right only to this extent: the old cardioarterial organs occasionally hunted into defective feedback that required systole-diastole adjustments. Protoplastic circulatory substitutes corrected the deficiency and, just to avoid the slight possibility of further complications, the venous system was also replaced. Since the changeover there hasn't been the least trouble in that sector.

By then Marla had a perfect artificial ear and both of my sons had lost their congenitally diseased livers. There was nothing extraordinary about our family; only in my case were replacements somewhat above the world average.

I am proud to say that I was among the first thousand who made the pioneer voyage on hyperdrive to the star group beyond Centaurus. We returned in triumph with our fantastic but true tales of the organic planet Vita and the contemplative humanoids of Nirva who will consciousness into subjectively grasping the life and beauty of subatomic space. The knowledge we brought back assured that the fatal disease of ennui could never again attack man though they lived to Aleph Null.

On the second voyage Marla, Robert and Neil went with me. This took a little political wrangling but it was worth throwing my merit around to see them benefit from Nirvan discoveries even before the rest of humanity. Planetary Council agreed my services entitled me to this special consideration. Truly I could feel among the blessed.

Then I volunteered for the small expeditionary force to the 38th moon that the Nirvans themselves refused to visit. They tried to dissuade us but, being of a much younger species, we were less plagued by caution and went anyway. The mountains of this little moon are up to fifteen miles high, causing a state of instability that is chronic. Walking down those alabaster valleys was a more awesome experience than any galactic vista I have ever encountered. Our aesthetic sense proved stronger than common sense alertness and seven of us were buried in a rock slide.

Fortunately the great rocks formed a cavern above us. After two days we were rescued. The others had suffered such minor injuries that they were repaired before our craft landed on Nirva. I, though, unconscious and feverish, was in serious condition from skin abrasions and a comminuted cranium. Dr. Erics made the only possible prognosis. My skull had to be removed and a completely new protoskin also had to be supplied.


When I came out of coma Marla was standing at my bedside, smiling down at me. "Do you feel," she stumbled, "darling, I mean, do you feel the way you did?"

I was puzzled. "Sure, I'm Treb Hawley, I'm your husband, and I remember an awful fall of rocks but now I feel exactly the way I always have." I did not even realize that further substitutions had been made and did not believe them when they told me about it.

Now I was an object of curiosity. Upon our return to Earth the newsplastics hailed me as one of the most highly reintegrated individuals anywhere. In all the teeming domain of man there were only seven hundred who had gone through as many substitutions as I had. Where, they philosophised in passing, would a man cease to be a man in the sequence of substitutions?

Philosophy had never been an important preoccupation of mine. It was the only discipline no further ahead in its really essential questions than the Greeks of four thousand years ago. Oh certainly, there had been lots of technical improvements that were fascinating but these were peripheral points; the basic issues could not be experimentally tested so they had to remain on the level of accepted or rejected axioms. I wasn't about to devote much time to them when the whole fascinating field of subatomic mirror numbers was just opening up; certainly not because a few sensational journalists were toying with dead-end notions. For that matter the newsplastics weren't either and quickly went back to the regular mathematical reportage they do so well.

A few decades later, however, I wasn't so cocksure. The old Centaurian virus had reappeared in my brain of all places and I started to have a peculiar feeling about where the end point in all this reintegrating routine would lie. Not that the brain operation was a risk; thousands of people had already gone through it and the substitute organisms had made no fundamental change in them. It didn't in my case either. But now I was more second matter than any man in history.

"It's the old question of Achilles' Ship," Dr. Erics told me.

"Never heard of it," I said.

"It's a parable, Treb, about concretised forms of a continuum in its discrete aspects."

"I see the theoretical question but what has Achilles' Ship to do with it?"

He furrowed his protoplast brow that looked as youthful as it had a century ago. "This ship consisted of several hundred planks, most of them forming the hull, some in the form of benches and oars and a mainmast. It served its primitive purpose well but eventually sprang a leak. Some of the hull planks had to be replaced after which it was as good as new. Another year of hard use brought further hull troubles and some more planks were removed for new ones. Then the mast collapsed and a new one was put in. After that the ship was in such good shape that it could outrace most of those just off the ways."

I had an uneasy feeling about where this parable was leading us but my mind shied away from the essential point and Erics went relentlessly on. "As the years passed more repairs were made—first a new set of oars, then some more planks, still newer oars, still more planks. Eventually Achilles, an unthinking man of action who still tried to be aware of what happened to the instruments of action he needed most, realized that not one splinter of the original ship remained. Was this, then, a new ship? At first he was inclined to say yes. But this only evoked the further question: when had it become the new ship? Was it when the last plank was replaced or when half had been? His confidently stated answer collapsed. Yet how could he say it was the old ship when everything about it was a substitution? The question was too much for him. When he came to Athens he turned the problem over to the wise men of that city, refusing ever to think about it again."

My mind was now in turmoil. "What," I demanded, "what did they decide?"

Erics frowned. "Nothing. They could not answer the question. Every available answer was equally right and proved every other right answer wrong. As you know, philosophy does not progress in its essentials. It merely continues to clarify what the problems are."
"
I prefer to die next time!" I shouted. "I want to be a live human being or a dead one, not a machine."

"Maybe you won't be a machine. Nothing exactly like this has happened before to a living organic being."
I knew I had to be on my guard. What peculiar scheme was afoot? "You're trying to say something's still wrong with me. It isn't true. I feel as well as I ever have."

"Your 'feeling' is a dangerous illusion." His face was space-dust grey and I realized with horror that he meant all of it. "I had to tell you the parable and show the possible alternatives clearly. Treb, you're riddled with Centaurian Zed virus. Unless we remove almost all the remaining first growth organisms you will be dead within six months."

I didn't care any more whether he meant it or not; the idea was too ridiculous. Death is too rare and anachronistic a phenomenon today. "You're the one who needs treatment, Doctor. Overwork, too much study, one idea on the brain too much."

Resigned, he shrugged his shoulders. "All the first matter should be removed except for the spinal chord and the vertebrae. You'd still have that."

"Very kind of you," I said, and walked away, determined to have no more of his lectures now or in the future.
Marla wanted to know why I seemed so jumpy. "Seems is just the word," I snapped. "Never felt better in my life."

"That's just what I mean," she said. "Jumpy."

I let her have the last word but determined to be calmer from then on.

I was. And, as the weeks passed, the mask I put on sank deeper and deeper until that was the way I really felt. 'When you can face death serenely you will not have to face it.' That is what Sophilus, one of our leading philosophers, has said. I was living this truth. My work on infinite series went more smoothly and swiftly than any mathematical research I had engaged in before and my senses responded to living with greater zest than ever.

 
Five months later, while walking through Hydroponic Park, I felt the first awful tremor through my body. It was as if the earth beneath my feet were shaking, like that awful afternoon on Nirva's moon. But no rocks fell from this sky and other strollers moved across my vision as if the world of five minutes ago had not collapsed. The horror was only inside me.

I went to another doctor and asked for Stabilizine. "Perhaps you need a checkup," he suggested.

That was the last thing I wanted and I said so. He, too, shrugged resignedly and made out my prescription for the harmless drug. After that the hammer of pain did not strike again but often I could feel it brush by me. Each time my self-administered dosage had to be increased.

Eventually my equations stopped tying together in my mind. I would stare at the calculation sheets for hours at a time, asking myself why x should be here or integral operation there. The truth could not be avoided: my mind could no longer grasp truth.

I went, in grudging defeat, to Erics. "You have to win," I said and described my experiences.

"Some things are inevitable," he nodded solemnly, "and some are not. This may solve all your problems."

"Not all," I hoped aloud.

Marla went with me to hospital. She realized the danger I was in but put the best possible face on it. Her courage and support made all the difference and I went into the second matter chamber, ready for whatever fate awaited me.

Nothing happened. I came out of the chamber all protoplast except for the spinal zone. Yet I was still Treb Hawley. As the coma faded away, the last equation faded in, completely meaningful and soon followed by all the leads I could handle for the next few years.

Psychophysiology was in an uproar over my success. "Man can now be all protoplast," some said. Others as vehemently insisted some tiny but tangible chromosome-organ link to the past must remain. For my part it all sounded very academic; I was well again.

There was one unhappy moment when I applied for the new Centauri Expedition. "Too much of a risk," the Consulting Board told me. "Not that you aren't in perfect condition but there are unknown, untested factors and out in space they might—mind you, we just say might—prove disadvantageous." They all looked embarrassed and kept their eyes off me, preferring to concentrate on the medals lined up across the table that were to be my consolation prize.

I was disconsolate at first and would look longingly up at the stars which were now, perhaps forever, beyond my reach. But my sons were going out there and, for some inexplicable reason, that gave me great solace. Then, too, Earth was still young and beautiful and so was Marla. I still had the full capacity to enjoy these blessings.


Not for long. When we saw the boys off to Centauri I had a dizzy spell and only with the greatest effort hid my distress until the long train of ships had risen out of sight. Then I lay down in the Visitors Lounge from where I could not be moved for several hours. Great waves of pain flashed up and down my spine as if massive voltages were being released within me. The rest of my body stood up well to this assault but every few seconds I had the eerie sensation that I was back in my old body, a ghostly superimposition on the living protoplast, as the spinal chord projected its agony outward. Finally the pain subsided, succeeded by a blank numbness.

I was carried on gravito-cushions to Erics' office. "It had to be," he sighed. "I didn't have the heart to tell you after the last operation. The subvirus is attacking the internuncial neurones."

I knew what that meant but was past caring. "We're not immortal—not yet," I said. "I'm ready for the end."

"We can still try," he said.

I struggled to laugh but even gave up that little gesture. "Another operation? No, it can't make any difference."

"It might. We don't know."

"How could it?"

"Suppose, Treb, just suppose you do come out of it all right. You'd be the first man to be completely of second matter!"

"Erics, it can't work. Forget it."

"I won't forget it. You said we're not immortal but, Treb, your survival would be another step in that direction. The soul's immortality has to be taken on faith now—if it's taken at all. You could be the first scientific proof that the developing soul has the momentum to carry past the body in which it grows. At the least you would represent a step in the direction of soul freed from matter."

I could take no more of such talk. "Go ahead," I said, "do what you want. I give my consent."

The last few days have been the most hectic of my life. Dozens of great physicians, flown in from every sector of the Solar System, have examined me. "I'm leaving my body to science," I told one particularly prodding group, "but you're not giving it a chance to die!" It is easy for me to die now; when you have truly resigned yourself to death nothing in life can disturb you. I have at long last reached that completely stoical moment. That is why I have recorded this history with as much objectivity as continuing vitality can permit.


The operating theatre was crowded for my final performance and several Tri-D video cameras stared down at me. Pupils, lights and lenses, all came to a glittering focus on me. I slowly closed my eyes to blot out the hypnotic horror.

But when I opened them everything was still there as before. Then Erics' head, growing as he inspected my face more closely, covered everything else up.

"When are you going to begin?" I demanded.

"We have finished," he answered in awe that verged upon reverence. "You are the new Adam!"

There was a mounting burst of applause as the viewers learned what I had said. My mind was working more clearly than it had in a long time and, with all the wisdom of hindsight, I wondered how anyone could have ever doubted the outcome. We had known all along that every bit of atomic matter in each cell is replaced many times in one lifetime, electron by electron, without the cell's overall form disappearing. Now, by equally gradual steps, it had happened in the vaster arena of Newtonian living matter.

I sat up slowly, looking with renewed wonder on everything from the magnetic screw in the light above my head to the nail on the wriggling toe of my left foot. I was more than Achilles' Ship. I was a living being at whose center lay a still yet turning point that could neither be new nor old but only immortal.

 END.

===

COMMENTS:  This story makes the point that given a sufficiently-advanced prosthetic technology, humans could become immortal -- and would remain essentially human even if no part of their original body remained.  This notion was not entirely new -- Edgar Allan Poe (sarcastically) played with the idea in "The Man That Was Used Up" (1839), in which John A. B. C. Smith is made almost entirely of prosthetic parts after numerous war injuries (which is similar to the manner in which Treb Hawley becomes wholly mechanical, though of course 19th-century technology is not depicted as being capable of wholly-duplicating the functions of the missing parts.

Jean de la Hire (pen name of the Comte Adolphe d'Espie) wrote the Nyctalope series (starting in 1908), about a man who becomes a cyborg superhero and space adventurer.  In a similar vein is Edmond Hamilton's The Comet Doom (1928) and Neil R. Jones' Zoromes and Professor Jameson.(first story, "The Jameson Satellite," 1931, reprinted here).  The most famous Golden Age science-fictional cyborg has to be Deirdre from C. L. Moore's "No Woman Born" (1944).

What Teichner does here, of considerable conceptual value to the long science-fictional conversation on this issue, is to show how something like this could happen slowly and without originally deliberate intent, as part of a normal process of surgical therapy and life extension.  Treb Hawley does not mean to become entirely machine -- it just happens due to the accumulated injuries from his dangerous occupation as an interstellar explorer.  It is also obvious that Treb is still psychologically human -- his pattern has not changed, merely because of the change in its substrate.  This point is amplified by the fact that the story is told in the first person.

This is an important realization, and one which will be increasingly-important in real life as our prosthetic capabilities continue to develop.  Teichner deserves praise for grasping this, at a time when many writers were still imagining human cyborgs as some sort of monsters.

This is part of the social role of science fiction -- letting us view the strange rationally and unflinchingly, and thus providing us the ability to see ahead as we advance through Time into the Universe.

END.

"The Picture in the House" (1921) by H. P. Lovecraft, with Notes and Comments

"The Picture in the House"

© 1921

by

H. P. Lovecraft

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous (1).
      

Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years and more (2) they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things (3).
      

In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the scions of a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilisation, the strength of these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk were not beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days; and they are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream (4).
      

It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data (5); and from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham; overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge leafless elms near the foot of a rocky hill. Distant though it was from the remnant of a road, the house none the less impressed me unfavourably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly, and in my genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before which biassed me against places of this kind (6). Yet the force of the elements was such as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive.
      

I had somehow taken it for granted that the house was abandoned, yet as I approached it I was not so sure; for though the walks were indeed overgrown with weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little too well to argue complete desertion. Therefore instead of trying the door I knocked, feeling as I did so a trepidation I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough, mossy rock which served as a doorstep, I glanced at the neighbouring windows and the panes of the transom above me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque with dirt, they were not broken. The building, then, must still be inhabited, despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my rapping evoked no response, so after repeating the summons I tried the rusty latch and found the door unfastened. Inside was a little vestibule with walls from which the plaster was falling, and through the doorway came a faint but peculiarly hateful odour (8). I entered, carrying my bicycle, and closed the door behind me. Ahead rose a narrow staircase, flanked by a small door probably leading to the cellar, while to the left and right were closed doors leading to rooms on the ground floor.
      

Leaning my cycle against the wall I opened the door at the left, and crossed into a small low-ceiled chamber but dimly lighted by its two dusty windows and furnished in the barest and most primitive possible way. It appeared to be a kind of sitting-room, for it had a table and several chairs, and an immense fireplace above which ticked an antique clock on a mantel. Books and papers were very few, and in the prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles. What interested me was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every visible detail. Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in relics of the past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for in all the room I could not discover a single article of definitely post-revolutionary date. Had the furnishings been less humble, the place would have been a collector’s paradise (9).
      

As I surveyed this quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared or loathed, I could by no means define; but something in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should be forgotten. I felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about examining the various articles which I had noticed. The first object of my curiosity was a book of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an antediluvian aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum or library. It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent state of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter in an abode so lowly. When I opened it to the title page my wonder grew even greater, for it proved to be nothing less rare than Pigafetta’s account of the Congo region, written in Latin from the notes of the sailor Lopez and printed at Frankfort in 1598 (10). I had often heard of this work, with its curious illustrations by the brothers De Bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in my desire to turn the pages before me. The engravings were indeed interesting, drawn wholly from imagination and careless descriptions, and represented negroes with white skins and Caucasian features; nor would I soon have closed the book had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my sensation of disquiet. What annoyed me was merely the persistent way in which the volume tended to fall open of itself at Plate XII, which represented in gruesome detail a butcher’s shop of the cannibal Anziques. I experienced some shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless disturbed me, especially in connexion with some adjacent passages descriptive of Anzique gastronomy (11).
      

I had turned to a neighbouring shelf and was examining its meagre literary contents—an eighteenth-century Bible, a Pilgrim’s Progress of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana (12), and a few other books of evidently equal age—when my attention was aroused by the unmistakable sound of walking in the room overhead. At first astonished and startled, considering the lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I immediately afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound sleep; and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the creaking stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to contain a curious quality of cautiousness; a quality which I disliked the more because the tread was heavy. When I had entered the room I had shut the door behind me. Now, after a moment of silence during which the walker may have been inspecting my bicycle in the hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch and saw the panelled portal swing open again.
      

In the doorway stood a person of such singular appearance that I should have exclaimed aloud but for the restraints of good breeding. Old, white-bearded, and ragged, my host possessed a countenance and physique which inspired equal wonder and respect. His height could not have been less than six feet, and despite a general air of age and poverty he was stout and powerful in proportion. His face, almost hidden by a long beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high forehead fell a shock of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue eyes, though a trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his horrible unkemptness the man would have been as distinguished-looking as he was impressive. This unkemptness, however, made him offensive despite his face and figure. Of what his clothing consisted I could hardly tell, for it seemed to me no more than a mass of tatters surmounting a pair of high, heavy boots; and his lack of cleanliness surpassed description (13).
      

The appearance of this man, and the instinctive fear he inspired, prepared me for something like enmity; so that I almost shuddered through surprise and a sense of uncanny incongruity when he motioned me to a chair and addressed me in a thin, weak voice full of fawning respect and ingratiating hospitality. His speech was very curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had thought long extinct; and I studied it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation (14).
      

“Ketched in the rain, be ye?” he greeted. “Glad ye was nigh the haouse en’ hed the sense ta come right in. I calc’late I was asleep, else I’d a heerd ye—I ain’t as young as I uster be, an’ I need a paowerful sight o’ naps naowadays. Trav’lin’ fur? I hain’t seed many folks ’long this rud sence they tuk off the Arkham stage.”
      

I replied that I was going to Arkham, and apologised for my rude entry into his domicile, whereupon he continued.
      

“Glad ta see ye, young Sir—new faces is scurce arount here, an’ I hain’t got much ta cheer me up these days. Guess yew hail from Bosting, don’t ye? I never ben thar, but I kin tell a taown man when I see ’im—we hed one fer deestrick schoolmaster in ’eighty-four, but he quit suddent an’ no one never heerd on ’im sence—” Here the old man lapsed into a kind of chuckle, and made no explanation when I questioned him (15). He seemed to be in an aboundingly good humour, yet to possess those eccentricities which one might guess from his grooming. For some time he rambled on with an almost feverish geniality, when it struck me to ask him how he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta’s Regnum Congo. The effect of this volume had not left me, and I felt a certain hesitancy in speaking of it; but curiosity overmastered all the vague fears which had steadily accumulated since my first glimpse of the house. To my relief, the question did not seem an awkward one; for the old man answered freely and volubly.
      

“Oh, thet Afriky book? Cap’n Ebenezer Holt traded me thet in ’sixty-eight—him as was kilt in the war.”(16)  Something about the name of Ebenezer Holt caused me to look up sharply. I had encountered it in my genealogical work, but not in any record since the Revolution (17). I wondered if my host could help me in the task at which I was labouring, and resolved to ask him about it later on. He continued.
      

“Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman for years, an’ picked up a sight o’ queer stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess—he uster like ter buy things at the shops. I was up ta his haouse onct, on the hill, tradin’ hosses, when I see this book. I relished the picters, so he give it in on a swap. ’Tis a queer book—here, leave me git on my spectacles—” The old man fumbled among his rags, producing a pair of dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small octagonal lenses and steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the table and turned the pages lovingly.
      

“Ebenezer cud read a leetle o’ this—’tis Latin—but I can’t. I hed two er three schoolmasters read me a bit, and Passon Clark, him they say got draownded in the pond (18)—kin yew make anything outen it?” I told him that I could, and translated for his benefit a paragraph near the beginning. If I erred, he was not scholar enough to correct me; for he seemed childishly pleased at my English version. His proximity was becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without offending him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man for the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better he could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This revelation of simplicity removed much of the ill-defined apprehension I had felt, and I smiled as my host rambled on:
      

“Queer haow picters kin set a body thinkin’. Take this un here near the front. Hev yew ever seed trees like thet, with big leaves a-floppin’ over an’ daown? And them men—them can’t be niggers—they dew beat all. Kinder like Injuns, I guess, even ef they be in Afriky (19). Some o’ these here critters looks like monkeys, or half monkeys an’ half men, but I never heerd o’ nothing like this un.” Here he pointed to a fabulous creature of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon with the head of an alligator (20).
      

“But naow I’ll shew ye the best un—over here nigh the middle—” The old man’s speech grew a trifle thicker and his eyes assumed a brighter glow; but his fumbling hands, though seemingly clumsier than before, were entirely adequate to their mission. The book fell open, almost of its own accord and as if from frequent consultation at this place, to the repellent twelfth plate shewing a butcher’s shop amongst the Anzique cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned, though I did not exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist had made his Africans look like white men—the limbs and quarters hanging about the walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was hideously incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much as I disliked it.
      

“What d’ye think o’ this—ain’t never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see this I telled Eb Holt, ‘That’s suthin’ ta stir ye up an’ make yer blood tickle!’ When I read in Scripter about slayin’—like them Midianites was slew—I kinder think things, but I ain’t got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is to it—I s’pose ’tis sinful, but ain’t we all born an’ livin’ in sin?—Thet feller bein’ chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at ’im—I hev ta keep lookin’ at ’im—see whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar’s his head on thet bench, with one arm side of it, an’ t’other arm’s on the graound side o’ the meat block.” (21)
      

As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy the expression on his hairy, spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at least his partial perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now, with a huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.
      

“As I says, ’tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin’. D’ye know, young Sir, I’m right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a lot, especial when I’d heerd Passon Clark rant o’ Sundays in his big wig (22). Onct I tried suthin’ funny—here, young Sir, don’t git skeert—all I done was ter look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market—killin’ sheep was kinder more fun arter lookin’ at it—” (23) The tone of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that his words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain, and to the rattling of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a rumbling of approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer seemed not to notice it.
      

“Killin’ sheep was kinder more fun—but d’ye know, ’twan’t quite satisfyin’. Queer haow a cravin’ gits a holt on ye— As ye love the Almighty, young man, don’t tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy—here, set still, what’s ailin’ ye?—I didn’t do nothin’, only I wondered haow ’twud be ef I did— They say meat makes blood an’ flesh, an’ gives ye new life, so I wondered ef ’twudn’t make a man live longer an’ longer ef ’twas more the same—” (24) But the whisperer never continued. The interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly increasing storm amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky solitude of blackened ruins. It was produced by a very simple though somewhat unusual happening.
     

The open book lay flat between us, with the picture staring repulsively upward. As the old man whispered the words “more the same” a tiny spattering impact was heard, and something shewed on the yellowed paper of the upturned volume. I thought of the rain and of a leaky roof, but rain is not red. On the butcher’s shop of the Anzique cannibals a small red spattering glistened picturesquely, lending vividness to the horror of the engraving. The old man saw it, and stopped whispering even before my expression of horror made it necessary; saw it and glanced quickly toward the floor of the room he had left an hour before. I followed his glance, and beheld just above us on the loose plaster of the ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which seemed to spread even as I viewed it (25). I did not shriek or move, but merely shut my eyes. A moment later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting that accursed house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind (26).

END.

NOTES

(1) - As I will discuss at length in the Comments, this was then an unusual setting for horror fiction.

(2) - Since Lovecraft is writing in 1919 about an incident which happens in 1896, "two hundred years and more" means roughly "1700 and earlier," meaning that some of these houses were built during the creepy Puritan late 17th century of witch-hunts and other religious manias which Lovecraft was to mine so effectively in his later work.

(3) - To translate from the Lovecraftian, these houses were badly-maintained, practically falling down.  Lovecraft was pointing out that the rural life was also one of decay, once one got off the main roads.

(4) - In the time when Lovecraft was writing, the New England Puritans were mostly also seen as the epitome of good rock-ribbed American wholesomeness (even though Hawthorne had discussed the dark side of this as early as the 1830's).  Lovecraft (an atheist brought up by two highly-religious aunts of dubious sanity) is pointing out that religious manias can go in some very strange directions, and foreshadowing the very strange man whom the narrator will encounter in the tale.

(5) - This is the first mention of the Miskatonic Valley in any of Lovecraft's fiction. 

(6) - This hint is left completely open:  we never find out just what fearful family legends he discovered.

(7) - Why is the narrator willing to approach this strange and possibly-abandoned house?  He's caught in a downpour, he wants shelter from the storm, and people in 1896 were both less afraid of getting injured in abandoned houses and more willing to ask for or give shelter in these sort of situations than most Americans are today.

(8) - Given what is later implied to be in the upper storey, this might be a "hateful odor" indeed.

(9) - He did knock, and it was raining hard, but searching the premises may be imposing more than a bit on even c. 1900 rural New England presumptions of hospitality.  On the other hand, this is a Lovecraft antiquarian character, and he's just entered a room out of one of his wildest fantasies.  When he says that there's nothing in the room of definitely post-Revolutionary origin, he's saying that he's in a room full of artifacts all of which are over a hundred years old.

(10) - Antonio Pigafetta (c. 1491 - c. 1531) was real:  he was Magellan's assistant and chronicler on the first circumnavigation of the Earth.  The book's full title is (in English) A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, and the Surrounding Countries, Drawn Out of the Writings and Discourses of the Portuguese, Duarte Lopez, according to the Miskatonic Museum website.

(11) - Books do tend to fall open on the favorite pages of the readers.

(12) - Both real books:  Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan, 1678) and Magnalia Christi Americana (Cotton Mather, 1702).  The first is easy to find in reprints, and the second is available online here.  These books are ironic, given the nature of their owner, who is certainly no true Christian any more, and has made a personal pilgrimage into utter depravity.

(13) - In other words, he looks both disgustingly-decrepit and terrifyingly-healthy, which makes perfect sense given that he's an immortal sustained by dark culinary alchemy.

(14) - This is a clue as to the man's true age:  he's speaking the dialect common at the time of his youth.  This is obvious in hindsight, but of course you wouldn't think it if you didn't know the truth about him.

(15) - I guess the old man invited him over for dinner.  (*cue Cryptkeeper chuckling*)

(16) - Lovecraft deliberately if briefly misleads his audience here.  Anyone saying that a year was "sixty-eight" in 1896 or reading this in 1921 would, naturally, think that the old man was talking about 1868, in which case "the war" couldn't be  the Civil War (because Holt is alive in "68" and the Civil War ended in 1865); nor could it be the Spanish-American War nor the Great War, because neither had yet started by 1896 -- so the "war" would have to be some Indian War.  But then why would the old man say "the war?" 

Of course the answer, as Lovecraft hints in the very next sentence ...

(17) - ... is that the old man means 1768, and "the war" in question is the American Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783), which means that the old man has to be something like a century and a half old to be saying this in 1896.  But of course if you haven't read this story before, and aren't all that familiar with the Really Seven Hundred Years Old trope (as Lovecraft's initial readers wouldn't have been) it's not so obvious.  The effect is one of chronological disorientation, which is exactly at what Lovecraft was aiming.

(18) - Visiting the old man would seem to be a high-risk occupation.  Note that the old man isn't directly lying -- his exact words are "... him they say got draownded in the pond ..." (emphasis mine).  Nice to know that even depraved immortal cannibals appreciate the virtue of honesty!

(19) - This might be due to ignorance on the part of the artist, or something more.  When Lovecraft wrote this, it was common to assume that only "higher" races (those that looked "white," or at worst "yellow") could possibly have cultures advanced in any way.  So if there were African cannibals who had learned a culinary spell which granted immortal life, by this logic they ought to be some lost white race who happened to live in Sub-Saharan Africa, rather than actual black Africans.  There is not enough information in the story to determine if this is what Lovecraft meant to imply.

(20) - This being Lovecraft, one suspects that the "fabulous" creature might have been drawn from a living model.

(21) - This is a pretty clear depiction of the more violent aspects of the Old Testament inspiring a sociopathic sadist to pseudo-sexual excitement at the thought of bloodshed, and hence religious mania feeding homicidal mania, and thus turning the religious sentiment in darker directions.  This follows the theme of the work as expressed in the story's initial paragraphs.

(22) - Another clue that the old man met Ebenezer Holt in the 18th rather than 19th centuries -- clergymen still wore "big wigs" in the late 18th century, but certainly not in the late 19th.

(23) - When a man tells you that killing sheep is fun, you know that it's time to leave his house.  The problem is that by that point he may not let you leave.

(24) - Mmm, delish.

(25) - A scene which has been much-copied in later horror fiction.

(26) - Saved by the deus ex machina.  There may have been something which saved the narrator beyond incredibly well-timed and well-aimed dumb luck:  but if so, there is no textual clue as to the reason.

COMMENTS

This story is significant because it is the story which introduced "Lovecraft Country" to the world.  Indeed, it introduced not merely Lovecraft Country but the whole idea of a writer setting stories in a fictionalized version of his home region, complete with Houses and Towns with Dark Secrets.

In the very first paragraph, Lovecraft's narrator argues that true horror need not be found in exotic European locales, but can be found in the countryside right at home in New England.  This is an important statement, because Lovecraft was writing in the Gothic tradition of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, and in that tradition true romantic horror is supposed to be found in Europe, preferably in some ancient ancestral castle with dark secrets in the vaults below.  Later stories in that tradition, by such writers as Algernon Blackwood, Bram Stoker and Lord Dunsany, located the realms of mystery in the deep wilderness, Eastern Europe, or the Orient.  Lovecraft grew up loving these stories set in strange lands, and he wrote some of them, but here he is trying something different.

Lovecraft is staking the claim that you can find true horror anywhere, and he's going to show you a tale of true horror in as mundane (to Lovecraft) a place as the Massachusetts back country.  Indeed, to the popular fiction of the 1900's and 1910's, rural America was not merely not supposed to be a horrific place, but even a wholesome one, full of good, "salt-of-the-earth" people who at worst might occasionally figure in a murder or other scandal.  Ambrose Bierce had played around with the notion of rural horror in some of his sarcastic tales:  Lovecraft would take the idea and run with it.  And it started with this story.

The story makes some valid points.  It really is easy for someone living along a seldom-frequented stretch of rural road to be utterly-mad; even to waylay and kill strangers, provided that he is careful about it.  It's probably easier to do this and get away with it in the country than in the city, because the crimes are less likely to be witnessed.  This was even more true a century or more ago, when rural life was far more isolated:  no cars, no cell phones, in fact normally no phones or electricity outside of town.  Isolated, sometimes inbred country folk can become quite strange.

In this story, the resident of the house, who was even more isolated in the mid to late 18th century than he would have been in the mid to late 19th century, and who was obviously more than a bit insane to begin with, was driven completely mad by the revelations of the cannibal cult described in Regnum Congo, which had an unwholesome synergy with his previous religious mania.  The effect was to turn him into a compulsive cannibal, and what's worse:  the ritual actually worked, making him effectively emmortal as long as he regularly maintained his cannibal feasts.

And nobody noticed.  Is this plausible, for over a century?  Yes, if the old man was very isolated (and who would want to know him?) and was very careful about whom, where and how he killed.  It would be hard for him to get away with a similar string of murders today, but in the 19th century, village constabularies and state troopers were not equipped either technologically or mentally to detect and catch serial killers.  In fact the general concept of a "serial killer" was not widely grasped until the murders of Jack the Ripper -- which took place only eight years before the story's setting.

This leads to a moment of Fridge Horror.  The old man has been carrying out his cannibal feasts for a period stretching from sometime after 1768 to the narrator's encounter with him in 1896.  This is a period of roughly a century.  Even if the old man only kills one person a year to (literally) feed his unholy appetites, that means he's murdered around 100 human beings.  And given that when the narrator encounters the old man, he is obviously preparing one such feast (and thinking about picking up some extra meat in the form of the narrator), there is no reason to think that he limits himself to just 1 victim a year.

Somewhere near that old house, there are buried a lot of human bones.  Assuming, that is, that the old man doesn't somehow render those down too, to make other victuals (one can boil bones down into a sort of edible paste -- takes a while, but the old man has nothing but time on his hands -- he probably doesn't need to work for a living, if you consider just how long he's had to draw interest on his savings).

Which leads to another moment of Fridge Horror, picked up on and run with by Sandy Peterson of Chaosium Games in one of the Call of Cthulhu Lovecraft Country supplements.  There's absolutely no reason to assume that the old man is dead:  there is no mention of any corpse having been found, and we know that he has preternatural vitality.  He may be holing up somewhere, rebuilding his equipment, and preparing more cannibal feasts.  For all we know, he may have decided to train an apprentice ...

Lovecraft was to repeatedly re-use this basic background:  both the geographical one of the Miskatonic Valley and Arkham; and the plot background of Horror From Abroad Infects American Home (or Community) leading to it possessing a Dark Secret (note that the old man learned of the cannibal feasts from a book describing the Congo).  He did this most famously in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," where Obed Marsh learns of the Deep Ones and the cult of Dagon from Polynesian half-human hybrids, and uses them to take over a Massachusetts seaport for some eighty years (interestingly, a full Strauss-Howe Cycle).

Other writers, too, would adopt the basic idea of creating a fictional version of one's own home region and using it as a horror setting.  The big advantage of doing this is that one is writing what one knows, and so the fictional towns, counties and so forth can seem very real, greatly aiding verisimilitude when the fantastic elements are introduced.  Most famously, Ramsey Campbell set many of his Cuthlhu Mythos stories in a fictional Severn Valley, modeled after the vinicity of his native Liverpool; and Stephen King (many of whose stories are loosely tied to the Mythos) in a fictional version of Western Maine.

Another interesting thing is that this may be one of the first Cthulhu Mythos stories, since it takes place in the Miskatonic Valley setting, but there's no actual reference to any Mythos beings.  Even the cannibal cuisine which confers long life may simply be some sort of alchemical or shamanic secret.  The only religion mentioned in the tale is Puritan Protestant Christianity:  the cult of the Congo cannibals remains undefined. 

This may be quite deliberate:  Lovecraft was only 20 when he wrote this story, and this may have been a way for the young atheist to express rebellion against his religious aunts, who had raised him since the age of three.  There are at least two points in which the cannibal directly refers to (a warped version of) Puritan Christianity as fueling or excusing his actions, which certainly seems like a Take That to me.

This was not quite Lovecraft's first story, but it was his first story to really succeed both as prose poetry and straight narrative.  It clearly showed the talent which would make him the early 20th-century American master of horror fiction.

END.

"The Mortal Immortal" (1833) by Mary Shelley, With Commentary

 

"The Mortal Immortal"

 

© 1833

 

by

 

Mary Shelley    

July 16, 1833.--today is my 323rd birthday!  

The Wandering Jew?--certainly not. More than 18 centuries have passed over his head. Compared to him, I am a very young Immortal.  

Am I, then, immortal? This I have asked myself day and night for 303 years; yet I cannot answer. I found a gray hair amid my brown locks this very day. Yet it may have remained concealed there for 300 years. Some 20-year-olds are whiteheaded.   You may judge for me.

I will tell my story, and pass some few hours of a long and wearisome eternity. To live forever! Can it be? I have heard of enchantments that plunged the victims into deep sleep, to wake, after 100 years, fresh as ever; I have heard of the Seven Sleepers--thus to be immortal would not be so burdensome: but, oh! the weight of neverending time--the tedious passage of the still-succeeding hours! But to my task.  

Everyone has heard of Cornelius Agrippa.  His memory is as immortal as his arts have made me.  Everyone has also heard of his scholar, who, unawares, raised the foul fiend during his master's absence, and was destroyed.  The report, true or false, of this accident, caused the renowned philosopher many inconveniences. All his scholars and servants deserted him. He had no one to put coals on his ever-burning fires while he slept, or to attend to the changeful colors of his medicines while he studied. Experiment after experiment failed.  

I was then very young, very poor, and very much in love. I had been for about a year the pupil of Cornelius, though I was absent when this accident occured. On my return, my friends told me the dire tale, imploring me not to return to the alchemist's abode. I required no second warning; when Cornelius came and offered me a purse of gold if I would remain under his roof, I felt as if Satan himself tempted me. My teeth chattered; my hair stood on end. I fled as fast as my trembling knees would permit.  

My failing steps were directed whither for two years they had every evening been attracted: a bubbling spring of pure living waters, beside which lingered a dark-haired girl, whose beaming eyes were fixed on the path I was accustomed each night to tread. I cannot remember a time when I did not love Bertha; we had been neighbors and playmates from infancy. Her parents, like mine, were of humble life, yet respectable; our attachment had been a source of pleasure to them. But a malignant fever had carried off both her father and mother, making Bertha an orphan. She would have found a home with us, but, unfortunately, the old lady of the near castle, rich, childless, and solitary, adopted her. Henceforth Bertha was highly favored by fortune. But in her new situation among new associates, Bertha remained true to the friend of her humbler days; she often visited my father's cottage, and when forbidden to go thither, she would meet me beside that shady fountain in the neightboring wood.  

She often declared that she owed no duty to her new protectress equal in sanctity to that which bound us. Yet I remained too poor to marry, and she grew weary of being tormented on my account. She had a haughty, impatient spirit, and grew angry at the obstacles preventing our union. We met now after an absence, and she had been sorely beset while I was away; she complained bitterly, and almost reproached me for being poor.  

I replied hastily, "I am honest, if I am poor! Were I not, I might soon become rich!"  

This exclamation produced a thousand questions. I feared to shock her, but she drew the story from me. Then, with disdain, she said, "You pretend to love, yet you fear to face the Devil for my sake!"  

Thus goaded, and led on by love and hope, I returned to accept the alchemist's offer, and was instantly installed in my office.  

A year passed. My savings grew even as my fears dwindled. Despite my vigilance, I never detected a trace of a cloven foot, nor was the studious silence of our abode ever disturbed by demonic howls. I continued my stolen interviews with Bertha, and Hope dawned on me--but not perfect joy, for Bertha, though true of heart, was somewhat a coquette, and I was jealous as a Turk. She slighted me in a thousand ways, yet would never admit she was in the wrong. She would drive me mad with anger, then force me to beg her pardon. Sometimes, fancying I was not sufficiently submissive, she told some story of a rival, favored by her protectress. She was surrounded by rich, cheerful, silk-clad youths; what chance had the sad-robed scholar of Cornelius?  

Once, the philosopher became engaged in some mighty work, and I was forced to remain, day and night, feeding his furnaces and watching his chemical preparations. Bertha waited for me in vain at the fountain. Her haughty spirit fired at this neglect; and when at last I stole out during the few short minutes alloted me for slumber, hoping to be consoled by her, she received me with disdain, dismissed me in scorn, and vowed that any man should possess her hand rather than he who could not be in two places at once for her sake. She would be revenged!--And truly she was. In my dingy retreat I heard she had been hunting, attended by Albert Hoffer. Hoffer was favored by her protectress, and the three passed in cavalcade before my smoky window. Methought I heard my name--followed by a derisive laugh, as her dark eyes glanced contemptuously toward my abode.  

All the venom and misery of jealousy entered my breast. Now, I shed a torrent of tears, to think that I should never call her mine; anon, I cursed her inconstancy. Yet, still I must stir the fires of the alchemist, still attend the changes of his unintelligible medicines.  

Cornelius had watched for three days and nights, nor closed his eyes. The progress of his alembics was slow. Despite his anxiety, sleep weighed on his eyelids. Again and again he threw off drowsiness with superhuman energy; again and again it stole away his senses. He eyed his crucibles wistfully. "Not ready yet," he murmured; "will another night pass before the work is accomplished? Winzy, my boy, you are vigilant and faithful--you slept last night. Look at that glass vessel. The liquid it contains has a soft rose-color; the moment it begins to change, awaken me--till then I may close my eyes. First, it will turn white, then emit golden flashes; but wait not till then; when the rose-color fades, rouse me." I scarcely heard the last words, muttered, as they were, in sleep. Even then he did not quite yield to nature. "Winzy, my boy," he again said, "touch not the vessel--do not put it to your lips; it is a philter to--to cure love; lest you cease loving your Bertha--beware to drink!"  

And he slept. His venerable head sunk on his breast, and I scarce heard his regular breathing--for he had reminded me of Bertha. Serpents and adders filled my heart. False, cruel girl! Nevermore would she smile on me as that evening she smiled on Albert. Oh, how I wished them both dead! I despised her--and loved her. Yes, it was love that held me in hopeless, abject thrall to Bertha. Could I but regard her with indifference--forget her and love instead someone fairer and truer--that would be victory!  

A bright flash darted before my eyes.  I had forgotten the adept's medicine!  I gazed on it with wonder:  flashes of admirable beauty, brighter than the gleams of a sunlit diamond, glanced from the surface of the liquid:  the most ftragrant and graceful odor stole over my sense; the vessel seemed one globe of living radiance, lovely to the eye, and irresistible to the taste. My first instinctive thought: I must drink! I raised the vessel to my lips. "It will cure me of love--of torture!" I had quaffed half of the most delicious liquor ever tasted by the palate of man, when the philosopher stirred. I started--dropped the glass--and the fluid flamed and spread along the floor, while Cornelius gripped my throat, shrieking, "Wretch! You have destroyed my lifework!"  

The philosopher was unaware I had drunk any portion of his drug. He assumed I had raised the vessel from curiosity, and, frighted at its intense flashes, let it fall. I never undeceived him. The medicine's fire was quenched; its fragrance dissipated; he grew calm, as a philosopher should under the heaviest trials, and dismissed me to rest.  

I cannot describe the sleep of glory and bliss which bathed my soul in paradise that memorable night. Words would be faint echoes of the gladness that possessed my bosom when I woke. I trod air; Earth appeared heaven, and my inheritance on it was to be one trance of delight. "This it is to be cured of love," I thought; "I will see Bertha today, and she will find her lover cold and regardless; too happy to be disdainful, yet utterly indifferent to her!"  

The hours danced away. The philosopher, encouraged by his near-success, began concocting the same medicine once more. He was shut up with his books and drugs, and I had a holiday. I dressed carefully; looking in a mirror, I thought my good looks had wonderfully improved. I hurried beyond the precincts of the town, my soul joyous, the beauty of heaven and earth around me. I turned toward the castle; I could look on its lofty turrets with lightness of heart, for I was cured of love. My Bertha saw me afar off, as I strode up the avenue. I know not what sudden impulse animated her bosom, but at the sight, she sprang with a light fawnlike bound down the marble steps, and hastened toward me. But the old highborn hag, her protectress--nay, her tyrant!--had seen me also; she hobbled, panting, up the terrace; a page, as ugly as herself, held up her train, and fanned her as she hurried along, and stopped my fair girl with a "How, now, my bold mistress? Whither so fast? Back to your cage--hawks are abroad!"  

Bertha clasped her hands, eyes still bent on my approaching figure. I saw the contest, and abhorred the old crone who checked the kind impulses of my Bertha's softening heart. Hitherto, respect for her rank had caused me to avoid the lady of the castle; now I disdained such trivial considerations. Cured of love, lifted above human fears, I hastened forward, and reached the terrace. How lovely Bertha looked--eyes flashing fire, cheeks glowing with impatience and anger. She was a thousand times more graceful and charming than ever. I no longer loved--Oh! no, I adored--worshipped--idolized her!  

She had that morning been given an ultimatum: should she refuse immediate marriage with my rival, she would be cast out in disgrace and shame. Her proud spirit rose in arms at the threat; but when she remembered the scorn she had heaped upon me, and how, perhaps, she had thus lost her only true friend, she wept with remorse and rage. At that moment I appeared. "O, Winzy!" she exclaimed, "take me to your mother's cottage, away from the detested luxuries and wretchedness of this noble dwelling--take me to poverty and happiness."  

I clasped her in my arms with transport. The old lady was speechless, and broke forth into furious invective only when we were far on the road. My mother received the fair fugitive, escaped from a gilt cage to nature and liberty; it was a day of rejoicing, which did not need the alchemist's celestial potion to steep me in delight.  

I soon became Bertha's husband. I ceased to be the scholar of Cornelius, but continued his friend. I always felt grateful to him for that delicious draught of divine elixir, which, instead of curing me of love (sad cure! solitary and joyless remedy for evils which seem blessings now), had inspired me with the courage and resolution to win an inestimable treasure: my Bertha.  

The invigorating, blissful effects of Cornelius' drink faded by degrees, yet lingered long--and painted life in hues of splendor. Bertha often wondered at my lightness of heart and unaccustomed gaiety; for, before, my disposition had been serious--even sad. She loved me the better for my cheerfulness, and our days were winged with joy.  

Five years afterward I was unexpectedly summoned to the bedside of the dying Cornelius. I found him stretched enfeebled on his pallet; all of life that yet remained animated his piercing eyes, and they were fixed on a glass vessel full of roseate liquid.  

"Behold," he said, in a broken, inward voice, "the vanity of human wishes! a second time my hopes are about to be crowned--and destroyed. Look at that liquor--five years ago I prepared the same, with the same success. Then, as now, my thirsting lips expected to taste the immortal elixir. You dashed it from me! and at present it is too late."   He spoke with difficulty, and fell back on his pillow. I could not help saying,--  

"How, revered master, can a cure for love restore you to life?"  

A faint smile gleamed across his face as I listened earnestly to his scarcely audible answer.   "A cure for love and for all things--the Elixir of Immortality. Ah! if now I might drink, I should live forever!"  

As he spoke, a golden flash gleamed from the fluid; a well-remembered fragrance stole over the air; he raised himself, weak as he was--strength seemed miraculously to reenter his frame--he stretched forth his hand--a loud explosion startled me--a ray of fire shot up from the elixir, and the glass vessel containing it shivered to atoms! The philosopher fell back, eyes glassy, features rigid. He was dead!  

But I lived and would live forever! So said the unfortunate alchemist, and for a few days I believed. I remembered the glorious drunkenness following my stolen draught, that bounding elasticity of frame and bouyant lightness of soul. I surveyed myself in a mirror, and could perceive no change in my features during the five years which had elapsed. I remembered the radiant hues and grateful scent of that delicious beverage--worthy of the gift it could bestow----I was, then, IMMORTAL!  

I soon laughed at my credulity, however. The adage, "A prophet is least regarded in his own country," was true of me and my defunct master. I loved him as a man and respected him as a sage, but derided the notion that he could command the powers of darkness, and laughed at the superstitious fears with which vulgar folk regarded him. His science was simply human; and human science, I persuaded myself, could never conquer nature's laws so far as to imprison the soul forever within its carnal habitation. Cornelius had brewed a soul-refreshing drink--more inebriating than wine--sweeter and more fragrant than any fruit; it probably possessed strong medicinal powers, imparting gladness to the heart and vigor to the limbs; but its effects would wear off; already were they diminished. I was lucky to have quaffed health and joyous spirits, and perhaps long life, at my master's hands, but my good fortune ended there: longevity was far different from immortality.  

Thus, for many years, I believed I would meet the fate of all the children of Adam at my appointed time--a little late, but still at a natural age. Yet I certainly retained a wonderfully youthful look. I was laughed at for my vanity in consulting the mirror so often, but I consulted it in vain--my brow was untrenched--my cheeks--my eyes--my whole person continued as untarnished as in my 20th year.  

I grew troubled. I looked at Bertha's faded beauty--I seemed more like her son. And Bertha herself grew uneasy. She became jealous and peevish, and at length began to question me. We had no children; we were in all to each other; and though, as she grew older, her vivacious spirit became a little ill-tempered, and her beauty sadly diminished, I cherished her in my heart as the mistress I had idolized, the wife I had sought and won with perfect love.  

But some obstacles love cannot overcome. Our neighbors became suspicious, calling me the "Scholar Bewitched" and spreading rumors that I had kept up an iniquitous acquaintance with some of my former master's supposed friends. I was regarded with horror and detestation, while poor Bertha was pitied, but deserted. I was forced to journey 20 miles, to some place where I was unknown, just to sell my farm's produce.  

Finally we sat by our lonely fireside--the old-hearted youth and his antiquated wife. Again Bertha insisted on knowing the truth; she recapitulated all she had ever heard about me, and added her own observations. She entreated me to cast off the spell; she described how much more comely gray hairs were than my chestnut locks; she descanted on the reverence and respect due age. And could the despicable gifts of youth and good looks outweigh disgrace, hatred, and scorn? Nay, in the end I should be burnt as a dealer in the black art, while she might be stoned as my accomplice. At length she insinuated that I must share my secret with her, and bestow on her like benefits to those I myself enjoyed, or she would denounce me--then she burst into tears.  

Thus beset, methought it best to tell the truth. I revealed it as tenderly as I could, and spoke only of very long life, not immortality. When I ended, I rose and said,  

"And now, my Bertha, will you denounce the lover of your youth? You will not, I know. But you should suffer no more from my ill-luck and the accursed arts of Cornelius. I will leave you--you have wealth enough saved away, and friends will return in my absence. Young as I seem, and strong as I am, I can work and gain my bread among strangers, unsuspected and unknown. I loved you in youth; God is my witness that I would not desert you in age, but that your safety and happiness require it."  

I took my cap and moved toward the door; in a moment Bertha's arms were around my neck and her lips pressed to mine. "No, my husband, my Winzy," she said, "you shall not go alone--take me with you. As you say, among strangers we shall be unsuspected and safe. I am not so very old as quite to shame you, my Winzy; and I dare say the charm will soon wear off, and, with the blessing of God, you will age as is fitting; you shall not leave me."  

Thus we prepared secretly for our emigration. We made great pecuniary sacrifices--it could not be helped. We realized a sum sufficient, at least, to maintain us while Bertha lived; and, without saying adieu to anyone, quitted our native country to take refuge in a remote part of western France.  

It was cruel to transport poor Bertha from her native village, and the friends of her youth, to a new country, new language, new customs. The strange secret of my destiny rendered this removal immaterial to me; but I compassioned her deeply, and was glad to perceive that she found compensation for her misfortunes in a variety of little ridiculous circumstances. She sought to decrease the apparent disparity of our ages by a thousand feminine arts--rouge, youthful dress, and assumed juvenility of manner. I grieved deeply when I remembered that this was my Bertha, whom I had loved so fondly--the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl, of enchanting smile and fawnlike step--this mincing, simpering, jealous old woman. I should have revered her gray locks and withered cheeks; but thus!--It was my fault, I knew; but I nonetheless deplored this type of human weakness.  

Her jealousy never slept. Her chief occupation was to discover that, in spite of outward appearances, I was growing old. The poor soul loved me truly in her heart, but she had a tormenting way of showing it. She would discern wrinkles in my face and decrepitude in my walk, while I bounded along in youthful vigor, the youngest looking of 20 youths. I never dared address another woman; one time, fancying that the village belle regarded me with favoring eyes, she brought me a gray wig. Her constant discourse among her acquaintances was that though I looked so young, there was ruin at work within my frame; and she affirmed that the worst symptom about me was my apparent health. My youth was a disease, she said, and I ought always to prepare, if not for sudden and awful death, at least to awake some morning white-headed, and bowed down with the marks of advanced years. I let her talk--I ofted joined in her conjectures. Her warnings chimed in with my never-ceasing speculations concerning my state, and I took an earnest, though painful, interest in listening to all that her quick wit and excited imagination could say on the subject.  

Why dwell on these minute circumstances? We lived on for many long years. Bertha became bed-ridden and paralytic: I nursed her as a mother might a child. She grew peevish, and still harped on one string--of how long I should survive her. It has ever been a source of consolation to me that I performed my duty scrupulously toward her. She had been mine in youth, she was mine in age, and at last, when I heaped the sod over her corpse, I wept because I had lost all that really bound me to humanity.  

Since then how many have been my cares and woes, how few and empty my enjoyments! I pause here in my history--I will pursue it no further. A sailor without rudder or compass, tossed on a stormy sea--a traveler lost on a widespread heath, without landmark or stone to guide him--such have I been: more lost, more hopeless than either. A nearing ship, a gleam from some far cot, may save them; but I have no beacon except the hope of death.  

Death! mysterious, ill-visaged friend of weak humanity! Why alone of all mortals have you cast me from your sheltering fold? O, for the peace of the grave! the deep silence of the iron-bound tomb! that thought would cease to work in my brain, and my heart beat no more with emotions varied only by new forms of sadness!  

Am I immortal? I return to my first question. Is it not more probable that the alchemist's beverage was fraught rather with longevity than eternal life? Such is my hope. And remember that I only drank half the potion. Was not the whole necessary to complete the charm? To have drained half the Elixir of Immortality is but to be half immortal.  

But again, infinity halved is still infinity.  

Sometimes I fancy age advancing on me. One gray hair I have found. Fool! do I lament? Yes, the fear of age and death often creeps coldly into my heart, and the more I live, the more I dread death, even while I abhor life. Such a paradox is man--born to perish--when he wars, as I do, against the established laws of nature.  

But for this fear surely I might die: the medicine of the alchemist would not be proof against fire, sword, and the strangling waters. I have gazed into the blue depths of placid lakes, and the tumultuous rushing of mighty rivers, and have said, peace inhabits those waters; yet I turned away, to live yet another day. I have pondered whether suicide would be a crime in one to whom thus only the portals of the other world could be opened. I have done all, except becoming a soldier or duelist, an object of destruction to my--no, not my fellow-mortals, and therefore I have shrunk away. They are not my fellows. The inextinguishable power of life in my frame, and their ephemeral existence, places us wide as the poles asunder. I could not raise a hand against the humblest or most powerful among them.  

Thus I have lived on for many years--alone, and weary of myself--desiring death, yet never dying--a mortal immortal. Neither ambition nor avarice can enter my mind, and the ardent love that gnaws at my heart, never to be returned--never to find an equal on which to expend itself--lives there only to torment me.  

Today I conceived a design by which I may end all--without self-slaughter, without making another man a Cain--an expeedition no mortal frame could ever survive, even endued with the youth and strength that inhabits mine.  Thus I shall put my immortality to the test, and rest forever--or return, the wonder and benefactor of the human species.  

Before I go, a miserable vanity has caused me to pen these pages.  I would not die, and leave no name behind.  Three centuries have passed since I quaffed the fatal beverate, another year shall not elapse before, encountering gigantic dangers--warring with the powers of frost in their home--beset by famine, toil, and tempest--I yield this body, too tenacious a cage for the soul which thirsts for freedom, to the destructive elements of air and water--or, if I survive, my name shall be recorded among the most famous of the sons of men; and, my task achieved, I shall adopt more resolute means, and, by scattering and annihilating the atoms that compose my frame, set at liberty the life imprisoned within, and so cruelly prevented from soaring from this dim Earth to a sphere more congenial to its immortal essence.

THE END.  

COMMENTS  

This is one of the first science-fiction stories to deal with the concept of immortality.  It counts as "science fiction" because, in the 1830's, when no one knew anything about atomic valences and hence why chemistry worked, it seemed perfectly reasonable to imagine that the alchemists had been fundamentally-right and hence that the greatest of alchemists might have actually achieved the secret of immortality after which so many sought. 

Compare with the similar premise of "Child of All Ages" by P. J. Plaguer, which was written in 1975.   "Winzy" has it much easier than did dear Melissa, since he was male and almost full-grown when he gained immortality.  Yet ultimately he faces the same problem:  eternal loneliness, since he is doomed to live on forever and see his loves die of old age.  His situation is slightly different, in that he can't make anyone else immortal, whereas Melissa could but found that no one else was willing to remain a child forever.  Another difference is that he comes to regret his immortality -- by contrast Melissa, who despite her many skills and deep wisdom is still fundamentally an eternal child, retains her zest for life even after living for two and a half millennia.

There is a very strong focus here on his loss of his first love, Bertha.  Winzy gets to marry his beloved, but as he is immortal, it does him no good.  Even though Bertha lives to a ripe old age, and keeps the hero's love, her happiness is marred by the knowledge that her husband will outlive her, probably by many centuries.  And when she dies, Winzy must indeed face centuries of life without her, which depresses him to the point that by the end of the story, some three centuries later, he is resolved to risk his immortal life in the accomplishment of some sort of Arctic or Antarctic exploration.  

One thing I noticed about the tale was that Winzy is very monogamous, a situation only enhanced by the detail that Bertha was his sweetheart from childhood on.  He may or may not have met and loved other women, but none of them could be an anchor to his own past and deepest identity as was Bertha.  

This is understandable, because -- despite her professions of "free love" (by which she meant having the right to be with or not to be with a man as she herself chose, rather than as others chose for her) -- Mary Shelley was herself strongly monogamous.  She fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was in her mid-teens, and from that moment until his death was utterly loyal to him (and after his death, was essentially loyal to his memory). 

Winzy's long loneliness after his wife's death parallels Mary's own long loneliness after Percy drowned in 1822:  she had been widowed eleven years when she wrote this story and lived for eighteen more years alone.   It's interesting that the hero of "A Mortal Immortal" chooses to risk is life in polar exploration.  As one may recall, Mary Shelley's most famous novel, Frankenstein (1818), ends with Adam (Frankenstein's Monster) lost in the Arctic ice, apparently buried in an ice avalanche.  Given Adam's extraordinary constitution, it is quite possible that he survived, and several writers have continued the tale from that point.  Winzy is also a creature of extraordinary constitution, somewhat more than human, who intends to venture into polar dangers and is very likely to survive them.  This was clearly a situation that excited the imagination of the author.  

Mary Shelley should be famous because she was one of the first science-fiction writers:  which is to say that she not only wrote a work of science-fiction, but several such tales.  These include most obviously Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) in addition to "A Mortal Immortal":  there may have been others which I have not yet had the pleasure to peruse.  

She was also a really good writer.  Yes, her stories were intensely sentimental, perhaps even a bit fevered in execution, but she had a smooth, beautiful, and highly-descriptive-style with which to support her conceptions, and she really makes you believe in her characters and hence their strange situations.  This was especially important since science fiction was as yet a new (and nameless) genre, which meant that she could not count on genre conventions to help her achieve verisimilitude.  

Indeed, while what she was writing was objectively "science-fiction," she would never have known the term (an early 20th-century invention).  What she thought she was writing were Romantic novels, and specifically Gothic ones.  The Gothic genre dealt with sentimental responses to strange and frightening situations, and Mary Shelley's novels were no exception to this rule.  What was different about her work was that she always tried to make her stories work logically:  she took her initial assumptions and worked out their consequences.   This was very different from most earlier and some later gothics, in which emotional effects were simply piled one atop another without regard for reason.  This is why what she was writing was truly proto-science-fiction, rather than merely gothic romances.  

I salute you, Mary Shelley.  If not for you, the dark fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, and hence of H. P. Lovecraft and all those inspired by them down the road in our contemporary world, might have never been.  I wish you'd lived longer, and written more, but I'm happy for what you achieved.  You were a worthy daughter of a brilliant mother and erudite father, and a worthy mother herself for the genre of science fiction.  

END.