Well, not a whole lot happened here, besides Victor ultimately secreting himself off the coast of Scotland to finish his work. Lots of notes, though, mostly about people and places Victor and Henry see and discuss on their journey. But first, our cover!
This edition, issued by Tor in 1989, features a cover by well-known fantasy artist Boris Vallejo. More of his work can be found on his official site, though his work tends heavily to the "half-naked barbarians" end of the spectrum, and later into "completely naked fantasy ladies," so maybe don't check it out at work. Anyway, this cover shows the trend from the late 20th century of veering away from Karloff's monster into representing him somewhat more how he's described in the book, while also attempting to re-emphasize his humanity. Though, it should be noted, Karloff's portrayal was in fact very humanistic, but that's not how it really stuck in the public's consciousness.
Notes after the jump!
13:31 - "where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche." Henry lists a bunch of his travels, mentioning this story. There, uh, appears to be very little mention of this story anywhere except through Mary Shelley. Before putting it in Frankenstein, she mentions it in her 1817 travel narrative History of a Six Weeks' Tour, saying:
The summits of several of the mountains that enclose the lake to the south are covered by eternal glaciers; of one of these, opposite Brunen, they tell the story of a priest and his mistress, who, flying from persecution, inhabited a cottage at the foot of the snows. One winter night an avalanche overwhelmed them, but their plaintive voices are still heard in stormy nights, calling for succour from the peasant.And that's... that's about all we've got about this story.
13:40 - "La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud." Here, Henry is referring to the Cantons (or states) of Valais, where the Matterhorn is, and Vaud, which produces a lot of wine and is the official home to the International Olympic Committee.
14:33 - "the very poetry of nature." Shelley herself notes this one (though it was apparently cut from my edition for some reason) as being from "Leigh Hunt's 'Rimini'" referring to the poet's 1816 poem "The Story of Rimini," which relates the story of Paolo and Francesca, a pair of tragic lovers most famously mentioned in Canto V of Dante's Inferno, where they suffer in the second circle of Hell, reserved for those who succumb to lust.
(It should, perhaps, be noted here that Leigh Hunt was friends with Percy Shelley.)
15:04 - "The sounding cataract... Unborrowed from the eyes." Victor does another lengthy poetry quote here, which I was really afraid would end up being from another of Percy's poems, but no. This instead is a portion of William Wordsworth's succinctly-titled poem "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, July 13, 1798." Surprisingly, Wordsworth wasn't a friend of Percy's, though Shelley was of course acquainted with his work.
Oh, and a "cataract" here is an old-fashioned word for "waterfall."
16:17 - Victor and Henry ride "post the rest of the way." As we discussed back in Sense and Sensibility, this means that they went by speedy post-chaise.
16:49 - "Tilbury Fort, and remembered the Spanish Armada; Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich." Another list of places. All right, Tilbury Fort was built in the 16th Century by Henry VIII and sits on the Thames estuary in Essex to protect London from attack by sea. Elizabeth I reinforced it and famously rallied her army there in response to the threat of invasion from the Spanish Armada in 1588. Gravesend is an ancient town in Kent on the opposite side of the Thames estuary from Tilbury, and contains the remains of another fort built by Henry VIII. Woolwich was a town in Kent before being absorbed into South East London that was a major military and industrial center. If you've heard of the Arsenal Football Club in England, it was founded in the late 1800s by workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. Greenwich is another district in South East London, this one notable for its maritime history which lead to it being deemed the center of timekeeping with the Greenwich (or "Prime") Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.
20:44 - Here, Victor discusses the history of Oxford, specifically how Charles I had been driven out of London by Parliament during the English Civil War, setting up his court in Oxford instead. "Amiable Falkland" was Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount of Falkland, who started out as a member of the Parliament set against Charles, but eventually broke with them to become Charles's secretary of state. "Insolent Gower" is apparently supposed to (and was corrected in later editions to) refer to George Goring, Lord Goring, one of Charles's generals who later betrayed him to Parliament.
21:34 - "The lovely Isis" is a portion of the Thames River that runs through Oxford. Apparently, there are those who've claimed that the whole of the Thames is properly called the Isis, but today it's really only referred to as such for the sake of the Oxford rowing team.
22:51 - "tomb of the illustrious Hampden." John Hampden was one of the major leaders of the Parliament that opposed Charles I in the Civil War previously mentioned. He died in battle early in the war, and has since been embraced as an English patriot who helped establish greater limitations to the power of the monarchy. I used to live in a neighborhood named after him!
23:24 - "Matlock." Matlock is a town in Derbyshire that was known for many years as a spa town, being home to some natural thermal springs discovered in 1698. The "wondrous cave" they visit is presumably the Great Rutland Cavern, part of the Heights of Abraham and then known as "Nestor Mine." Note it was first opened to the public in 1812, well after the novel is supposedly taking place (again).
26:29 - "Edinburgh... romantic castle... Arthur's Seat, St. Bernard's Well, and the Pentland Hills." Oh, for... okay, another list of random places they see. Edinburgh is of course the capital city of Scotland, since at least the 15th century. The "romantic castle" is, naturally enough, Edinburgh Castle, which is located on Castle Rock high above the city. About a mile east of Castle Rock is the high hill called Arthur's Seat. It's unclear why exactly it's called "Arthur's Seat," but naturally many claim it's linked to the legend of King Arthur. Both Castle Rock and Arthur's Seat were formed by a now-extinct ancient volcanic system that was subsequently eroded by glaciers. St. Bernard's Well is a mineral water well located in the ritzy Stockbridge area of Edinburgh. The well-house has a distinctive pump room designed to look like a circular Greek temple, with a statue of Hygieia, the Greek goddess of health. The Pentlands are a 20-mile-long range of hills southwest of the city.
28:23 - Victor seeks solitude to finish the Bride on "one of the remotest of the Orkneys." Orkney, or the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago of around 70 islands off the northern coast of mainland Scotland. Fun fact: the people who live there are called "Orcadians."
Man, Victor's travels are KILLING me with these notes. Stop looking at so much stuff!
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
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