We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in our ages.
I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute.
Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that
subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer
and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a
more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for
knowledge. She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets;
and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home —the
sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm,
the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers—she
found ample scope for admiration and delight. While my companion contemplated
with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I
delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I
desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of
nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the
earliest sensations I can remember. On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up
entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country. We
possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagne on Belrive, the eastern
shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league from the city.
We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed
in considerable seclusion. It was my temper to avoid a crowd and to attach
myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows
in general; but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one
among them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of
singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for
its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He composed
heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly
adventure. He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades, in
which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the Round
Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem
the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels. No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents
were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they
were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents
and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. When I mingled with
other families I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and
gratitude assisted the development of filial love. My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in
my temperature they were turned not towards childish pursuits but to an eager
desire to learn, and not to learn all things indiscriminately. I confess that
neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the
politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of
heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward
substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of
man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or
in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world. Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of
things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men
were his theme; and his hope and his dream was to become one among those whose
names are recorded in story as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our
species. The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in
our peaceful home. Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet
glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. She was
the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become sullen in
my study, rough through the ardour of my nature, but that she was there to
subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. And Clerval—could aught ill
entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval? Yet he might not have been so
perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and
tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to
him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim
of his soaring ambition. I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before
misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive
usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing
the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by
insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to
myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find
it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources;
but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has
swept away all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire,
therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection
for that science. When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of
pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to
remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of
the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he
attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed
this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and
bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked
carelessly at the title page of my book and said, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My
dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.” If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that
the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system
of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the
ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the
former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly
have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was,
by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that
the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to
my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means
assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read
with the greatest avidity. When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this
author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied
the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures
known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always having been
imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite of
the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always
came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to
have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and
unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural
philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boy’s apprehensions
as tyros engaged in the same pursuit. The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with
their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had
partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a
wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomise, and give names; but, not to
speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were
utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments
that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and
rashly and ignorantly I had repined. But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more.
I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple. It
may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth century; but while
I followed the routine of education in the schools of Geneva, I was, to a great
degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite studies. My father was not
scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child’s blindness, added to a
student’s thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I
entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone
and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention.
Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I
could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any
but a violent death! Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise
liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which I most
eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed
the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill
or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded
systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and
floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by
an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed
the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive,
when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from
behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful
loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm
lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the
door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak
which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling
light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted
stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a
singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to
thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed. Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity.
On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and
excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he
had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new
and astonishing to me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius
Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by
some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed
studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that
had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable. By one of those
caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at
once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its
progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest
disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold
of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the mathematics and
the branches of study appertaining to that science as being built upon secure
foundations, and so worthy of my consideration. Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we
bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost
miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the
guardian angel of my life—the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to
avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop
me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul
which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies.
It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution,
happiness with their disregard. It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny
was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible
destruction.