Читать книгу The Zombie Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 63

Born to Richard Crosse and Susannah Porter on June 17, 1784, at Fyne Court, Broomfield, Somerset, England, Andrew Crosse was a definitively self-made amateur scientist and an early pioneer in the field of electricity. He was also someone who, ultimately, was likened to a real-life equivalent of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, of Mary Shelley’s much-revered 1818 novel, Frankenstein. It’s a book that tells the story of a crazed scientist who procures various human body-parts and stitches them together. Then, via electricity, he animates the terrible, obscene creation, which goes on a violent killing spree. But how, and under what particular circumstances, did Andrew Crosse become so linked to Mary Shelley’s fictional mad-scientist?

In 1800, when Crosse was still just in his mid-teens, his father passed away. Five years later, his mother did likewise. As a result, at the age of just twenty-one, Crosse took on the running of the family estate. And, with a significant inheritance in-hand, Crosse was free to pursue his passions of alternative science and electricity. Such was the strange nature of many of Crosse’s early experiments—which were conducted in a laboratory of the type in which Dr. Victor Frankenstein would have been right at home—that, amongst the locals in the village of Broomfield, Somerset, Crosse quickly became known as “the thunder and lightning man.”

By the 1830s, Crosse’s research had reached epic and impressive proportions: his lab was packed with advanced and unusual machines; powerful batteries dominated the room, and rumors flew around Broomfield that Crosse was up to no good. Then, in 1836, something remarkable happened: Crosse found in his lab what he described as “the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail.” In the days that followed, yet more curious, little insects appeared. Very soon, Crosse’s laboratory was teeming with them. It appeared to Crosse that they had spontaneously manifested during an electro-crystallization experiment that he had performed.

The local media soon got wind of the story and Crosse found himself deep in controversy. The reason why was simple: dark tales started surfacing to the effect that Crosse had found a way to both create and animate new life. Anonymously sent threats reached his mailbox. There were accusations that he was engaged in Witchcraft and the black-arts, and Crosse was even blamed, by irate farmers, for a crop-failure in the area.

To this very day, there is still a great deal of debate on the nature of Crosse’s bizarre experiments and the apparently spontaneous manifestation of unusual insects in the lab. The most obvious explanation is that the experiments were unknowingly contaminated from the beginning, and the insects hatched in wholly normal fashion. There are, however, suggestions that Crosse may have succeeded in animating life—even if he, himself, was unsure how such a phenomenon was astonishingly achieved. Crosse’s fringe science research continued until May 1855, when he died from the effects of a devastating stroke. Nevertheless, the legend of “the thunder and lightning man” lives on.

As mentioned above, one person who has very often been described as a definitive real-life Dr. Frankenstein, and someone on whom Mary Shelley may very well have based the lead character in her novel, is Andrew Crosse. And the significant fact that much of Crosse’s lifework was undertaken in complete and utter solitude and behind the firmly closed doors of a futuristic-looking laboratory dominated by bangs and crashes, flashes of lightning, and bolts of electricity, only succeeds in adding to the eerie Frankenstein parallels. There is, however, one particular flaw in this argument: Mary Shelley’s classic novel was written almost twenty years before Crosse’s most controversial and strange research of all, even began. But, that does not mean that Crosse did not play at least some sort of role in the nurturing and creation of Frankenstein. The evidence strongly suggests that he did exactly that.

Meet the real Dr. Frankenstein: Andrew Crosse.

Rather interestingly, Mary Shelley actually met Crosse, albeit a significant time before his wildest research began. Mary, and her husband, Percy Shelley, were introduced to Crosse by a mutual friend: a poet named Robert Southey. Moreover, both husband and wife attended one of Crosse’s lectures on the nature of life and death in London in 1814. It was a lecture in which Crosse expanded at great length on his then-burgeoning research into the domain of electricity and how it might conceivably revive the dead. And twenty-two years later, in 1836, Edward W. Cox, a writer for the England’s Taunton Courier newspaper, interviewed Crosse and learned that both Mary and Percy had visited the Crosse residence on several occasions, specifically prior to Mary having written Frankenstein.

We can—and, indeed, are forced to—speculate on what might have been discussed between Mary Shelley and Andrew Crosse while behind the closed doors of the latter’s bizarre lab. But of one thing we can be sure: Mary Shelley, the brains behind the world’s most infamous patchwork zombie of all time, had a connection to a man who earnestly believed he had uncovered something significant about life, death, and animation.

The matter of the full extent to which the character and work of Crosse inspired Shelley is something that, two centuries later, is unlikely to ever be resolved to the satisfaction of students of both Shelley’s Frankenstein and Crosse’s work. Without any shadow of doubt, however, Andrew Crosse—the man, the visionary, and the self-made alternative scientist—was a character that, one way or another, will forever remain tied to Mary Shelley and to her diabolical zombie-like creation: Victor Frankenstein’s terrifying but tragic monster.

In late 1836, and in the wake of the publicity given to Andrew Crosse’s controversial experimentation, a journalist, Edward W. Cox, had an article published in England’s Taunton Courier newspaper that served to deeply reinforce the growing whispers that Crosse was a real-life maker—or reanimator—of monsters. It was an article prompted by the fact that, as part of an effort to have the public and the media view him in a favorable light, Crosse invited Cox to his Broomfield, Somerset home. It was an action that proved to be very costly for Crosse.

If Cox thought, prior to visiting the Crosse residence, that the Frankenstein parallels were uncalled for, his views soon changed. In his article, Cox wrote that on entering the old mansion he was confronted by “the philosophical room, which is about sixty feet in length and upwards of twenty feet in height, with an arched roof—it was built originally as a music hall—and what wonderful things you will see: a great many rows of gallipots and jars, with some bits of metal, and wires passing from them into saucers containing dirty-looking crystals.”

Adding even more to the legend of Crosse, Cox expanded that, while in the creepy house “you are startled in the midst of your observations, by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of the electrical spark; you hear also the rumbling of distant thunder.” And the Frankenstein-like comparisons continued to flow forth from Cox in fine style: “Your host is in high glee, for a battery of electricity is about to come within his reach a thousand–fold more powerful than all those in the room strung together. You follow his hasty steps to the organ gallery, and curiously approach the spot from where the noise proceeds that has attracted your notice. You see at the window a huge brass conductor, with a discharging rod near it passing into the floor, and from the one knob to the other, sparks are leaping with increasing rapidity and noise.”

If that wasn’t enough to convince many of the Courier’s readers that Crosse was a definitive mad scientist, there is the following from Cox, who said of his host: “Armed with his insulated rod, he plays with the mighty power; he directs it where he will; he sends it into his batteries: having charged them thus, he shows you how wire is melted, dissipated in a moment by its passage; how metals—silver, gold, and tin—are inflamed, and burn like paper, only with the most brilliant hues.”

While Cox’s article was not a damning one, it most certainly helped to reinforce the unease that the villagers of Broomfield had about Crosse. And, in addition to that, Cox’s amusing and entertaining piece helped to solidly cement the Frankenstein parallels that still exist to this very day.