In the summer of 1816 we visited Switzerland and became the neighbours of Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake or wandering on its shores … But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories translated from German into French fell into our hands … I have not seen these stories since then, but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday.
It was with these famous words that Mary Shelley, writing the Preface to the Standard Novels Edition in 1831, describes the inspiration which led directly to the celebrated ghost story competition at the Villa Diodati and the writing of Frankenstein.
Diodati was in the Swiss Alps, near Compegny, about three miles beyond Geneva. It was a large porticoed house with an extensive shaded balcony, which had once been occupied by the poet John Milton. It was now home to Lord Byron and his new amanuensis, Dr William Polidori, who had trained in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After his flight from scandal in England, Byron had picked this lakeside house so that he and Shelley, who intended to rent an adjoining property, could share the costs of a boat to go sailing on the lake. The wet evenings which kept the party indoors around the blazing wood fire were ideal for encouraging their imaginations to run wild over the German ghost stories of which Mary speaks.
In August 1816 Shelley recorded the visit of Matthew Gregory Lewis —”Monk Lewis” or, as Byron had dubbed him, “Apollo’s sexton” — who had recently returned from his estates in the West Indies. He was on his way to Italy, and stayed briefly at the Villa Diodati with Byron. On Sunday 18th August 1816, Shelley wrote in the diary which he shared with Mary:
See Apollo’s Sexton, who tells us many mysteries of his trade. We talk of Ghosts—Neither Lord B. or M.G L. seem to believe in them, & they both agree in the very face of reason, that none could believe in Ghosts without also believing in God. —I do not think that all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations, really discredit them, or if they do in the daylight, are not admonished by the approach of loneliness and midnight to think more respectfully of the world of Shadows.
Shelley then went on to record four stories told by Lewis at this meeting, of which perhaps the best is “The King of the Cats”.
The King of the Cats
A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an extensive forest in the East of Germany lost his way. He wandered for some hours among the trees when he saw a light in the distance. On approaching it he was surprised to observe that it proceeded from the interior of a ruined monastery.
Before he knocked at the gate he thought it prudent to look though the window. — He saw a multitude of cats assembled round a small grave, four of whom were at that moment letting down a coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual sight, and imagining that he had arrived among the retreat of fiends or witches, mounted his horse and rode away with the utmost precipitation.
He arrived at his friend’s house at a late hour. His friend had sat up waiting for him. On his arrival, his friend questioned him as to the cause of the traces of trouble visible in his face. He began to recount his adventure after much difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friend should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the coffin with the crown upon it, than his friend’s cat, who seemed to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up saying “Then I’m the King of the cats” and scrambled up the chimney and was seen no more.
From “The Goth”, September 1990
Illustrative detail from one of the cat-in-cemetery postcards, 1998, showing feral cats in Cemeterio do Bras, Sao Paulo, Brazil, photographed by Paul Duarte.