bedtime. Not surprisingly, the claus-
trophobic atmosphere inflamed the
already sexually charged relationships.
One evening, Byron read aloud to
the group from “Christabel,” Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s unfinished poem
about a woman, Christabel, who dis-
covers a supposed kidnap victim
named Geraldine while praying in the
forest. Taking pity on the seeming naïf,
Christabel brings her home, where it
soon becomes clear that Geraldine is
in fact a sort of demon. As Geraldine
undresses, for instance, Christabel
notices an ominous mark on her
flesh: “A sight to dream of, not to tell! /
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!”
Overwhelmed by Byron’s perfor-
mance, Shelley ran screaming from the
room and was later discovered “lean-
ing against a mantle-piece, with cold
drops of perspiration trickling down
his face,” according to Polidori. During
the reading, Shelley had been struck, he
said, by a vision of a naked woman witheyes instead of nipples. As such, he felt
“obliged to leave the room in order to
destroy the impression,” Polidori con-
tinued. (A “fit of fancy,” Byron sniffed.)
The friends also read from
Fantasmagoriana, a volume of German
ghost stories translated into French. It
contained such lurid works as “The
History of the Inconstant Lover”
(about a Lothario who hugs his bride,
only to find himself in the arms of the
dead woman he’d jilted) and—shades of
things to come—a story about the reani-
mation of a corpse’s head. Inspired by
the tales, Byron decided to stage a con-
test. “We will each write a ghost story,”
he announced.
The men, at least, were enthusiastic.
Polidori “had some terrible idea about a
skull-headed lady, who was so punished
for peeping through a keyhole,” Mary
wrote, adding that Shelley decided to
write something “founded on the expe-
riences of his early life,” while Byron
was inspired by vampire stories.1313PAU
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