Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the nineteenth chapter of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

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Video welcome to Bite at a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be continuing Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Chapter 19 london was our present point of rest.

We determined to remain several months in this wonderful and celebrated city.

Harville desired the intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time.

But this was with me, a secondary object.

I was principally occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of my promise and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction that I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural philosophers.

If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness, it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure.

But a blight had come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound.

Company was irksome to me.

When alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth.

The voice of Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace.

But busy, uninteresting joyous faces brought back despair to my heart.

I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow men.

This barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish.

But in clerval I saw the image of my former self.

He was inquisitive and anxious to gain experience and instruction.

The difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement.

He was also pursuing an object he had long had in view.

His design was to visit India in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages and in the views he had taken of its society the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade in Britain only could he further the execution of his plan.

He was forever busy and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind.

I tried to conceal this as much as possible that I might not debar him from the pleasures natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life.

Undisturbed by any care or bitter recollection, I often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement that I might remain alone.

I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation and this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head.

Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish and every word that I spoke an allusion to it caused my lips to quiver and my heart to palpitate.

After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person in Scotland who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva.

He mentioned the beauties of his native country and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth, where he resided.

Cleverville eagerly desired to accept this invitation and I, although I abhorred society, wish to view again mountains and streams and all the wondrous works with which nature adorns her chosen dwelling places.

We had arrived in England at the beginning of October and it was now February.

We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the north at the expiration of another month.

In this expedition we did not intend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor, Oxford, Matlock and the Cumberland Lakes.

Resolving to arrive at the completion of this tour, about the end of July, I packed up my chemical instruments and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labors and some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland.

We quitted London on the 27 March and remained a few days at Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest.

This was a new scene to us.

Mountaineers, the majestic oaks, the quantity of game and the herds of stately deer were all novelties to us.

From thence we proceeded to Oxford.

As we entered this city, our minds were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted there more than a century and a half before.

It was here that Charles the first had collected his forces.

This city had remained faithful to him after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of Parliament and liberty.

The memory of that unfortunate king and his companions the amiable Falkland, the insolent Goring, his queen and son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city which they might be supposed to have inhabited.

The spirit of elder days found a dwelling here and we delighted to trace its footsteps.

If these feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration.

The colleges are ancient and picturesque, the streets are almost magnificent and the lovely ISIS, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verger, spread forth into a placid expanse of waters which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers and spires and domes embossed along aged trees.

I enjoyed this scene and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future.

I was formed for peaceful happiness.

During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind and if I was ever overcome by NUI, the sight of what is beautiful in nature or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart and communicate elasticity to my spirits.

But I am a blasted tree the bolt has entered my soul and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.

We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs and endeavoring to identify every spot which might relate to the most animating epic of English history.

Our little voyages of discovery were often prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves.

We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampton and the field on which that patriot fell.

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and selfsacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrances.

For an instant I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a free and lofty spirit.

But the iron had eaten into my flesh and I sank again, trembling and hopeless into my miserable self.

We left Oxford with regret and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next place of rest.

The country and the neighborhood of this village resembled to a greater degree the scenery of Switzerland.

But everything is on a lower scale and the green hills want the crown of distant white Alps which always attend on the Piny mountains of my native country.

We visited the wondrous cave and the little cabinets of natural history where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner as in the collections at Cervix and Chimenyu.

The latter name made me tremble when pronounced by Henry and I hastened to quit Matlock with which that terrible scene was thus associated.

From Derby still journeying northwards, we passed two months in Cumberland and Westmoreland.

I could now almost fancy myself among the Swiss mountains, the little patches of snow which yet lingered on the northern sides of the mountains.

The lakes and the dashing of the rocky streams were all familiar and dear sights to me.

Here also we made some acquaintances who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness.

The delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than mine.

His mind expanded in the company of men of talent and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors.

I could pass my life here, said he to me, and among these mountains I should scarcely regret Switzerland and the Rhine.

But he found that a traveler's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments.

His feelings are forever on the stretch, and when he begins to sink into repose he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new which again engages his attention and which also he forsakes for other novelties.

We have scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants when the period of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached and we left them to travel on.

For my own part I was not sorry.

I had now neglected my promise for some time and I feared the effects of the demons disappointment he might remain in Switzerland and wreak his vengeance on my relatives.

This idea pursued me and tormented me at every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace.

I waited for my letters with feverish impatience.

If they were delayed, I was miserable and overcome by a thousand fears.

And when they arrived and I saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate.

Sometimes I thought that the fiend followed me and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion.

When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment, but followed him as his shadow to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer.

I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me.

I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head as mortal as that of crime.

I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes in mind and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being clever, did not like it so well as Oxford, for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him.

But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic castle and its environs the most delightful in the world, arthur's Seat, St.

Bernard's well and the Pentland Hills compensated him for the change and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration.

But I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey.

We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Kupar, St.

Andrews and along the banks of the day to Perth where our friend expected us.

But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers, or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humor expected from a guest.

And accordingly I told Clerval that I wish to make the tour of Scotland alone.

Do, you said.

I enjoy yourself, and let this be our rendezvous.

I may be absent a month or two, but do not interfere with my emotions.

I entreat you, leave me to peace and solitude for a short time, and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper.

Henry wish to dissuade me, but seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate.

He entreated me to write often.

I had rather be with you, he said, in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people whom I do not know.

Hasten then, my dear friends, to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence.

Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland and finish my work in solitude.

I did not doubt but that the monster followed me and would discover himself to me when I should have finished and he might receive his companion.

With this resolution, I traversed the northern Highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the orcnese as the scene of my laborers.

It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves.

The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare, vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries.

And even fresh water was to be procured from the mainland, which was about 5 miles distant.

On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived.

This I hired.

It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury.

The thatch had fallen in the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges.

I ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession.

An incident which would doubtless of occasions some surprise.

Had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbered by want and squalid.

Poverty as it was, I lived ungazed, at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave so much to suffering, blunt even the coarsest sensations of men.

In this retreat I devoted the morning to labor, but in the evening, when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea to listen to the waves as they roared and dashed at my feet.

It was a monotonous yet everchanging scene.

I thought of Switzerland.

It was far different from this desolate and the polling landscape its hills are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the plains.

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky, and when troubled by the winds, they're two Maltes but as the play of a lively infant when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.

In this manner, I distributed my occupations when I first arrived, but as I proceeded in my labor, it became every day more horrible and irksome to me.

Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days, and at other times I toiled day and night in order to complete my work.

It was indeed a filthy process in which I was engaged.

During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment.

My mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labor, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings.

But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands.

Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal.

I grew restless and nervous every moment.

I feared to meet my persecutor.

Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold.

I feared to wander from the side of my fellow creatures, lest, when alone, he should come to claim his companion.

In the meantime, I worked on, and my labor was already considerably advanced.

I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question, but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.

Thank you for joining Byte at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Frankenstein.

Don't forget to tag us on your social media posts at Bite at a Time Books, and we hope to be able to feature you in this Saturday segment.

Check out the show notes or our website, Bite Out of Time Books, for the links for our show.

Hello.

Take a look and let's see what we can find.

Chapter one.