Know that, in spite of my personal ambitions and the foibles derived therefrom, my ultimate devotion was always to the scientific arts. Nothing was more precious to me than the pursuit of knowledge, the human conquest over the natural mysteries so that the whole of humanity all might be bettered. Was I though, and am I still, a selfish man? I cannot deny it. Indeed, all through the formalities of my education and experimentation in medicine, organic chemistries, and increasingly niche advancements in the understanding of the underpinnings of that fundamental force which separates animate life from dull matter, I was almost singularly possessed by the grasping lure of my name, Victor, the Baron von Frankenstein, being printed in all the great, esteemed medical journals and on the lips of the eminent men who ran such establishments. I thought it an inevitability that I would, by the magnitude of my tireless research, be counted as a premier member among their ranks. After all that has transpired, I wonder if those academies would now consider me anything but a wretched madman.
Contrary to the popular impression that noble birth and affluence entirely relieve one of strife in the acquisition of romantic companionship, the proper ritual of courtship remained evasive to me. Perhaps it was the admittedly obsessive nature of my work ethic that drove my severe disposition which women found so disagreeable. After many years of enduring such persistent lonesomeness, a most opportune convergence in my aims presented itself. If happenstance would not deliver a bride into my arms, I was in the unique position of being able to create one.
I make it my solemn testament that it was purely by providential coincidence and no deliberateness of my own that I should be in England precisely amid the outbreak of an infamous spree of murders of young, attractive women. That their demises aligned entirely with my purposes was a circumstantial boon. Why commit so wastefully into the potter's ground when I alone possessed the ideal capacity to make useful purpose of it?
It was to my great fortune that the perpetrator of these grisly crimes, whoever he may be, possessed uncommonly great surgical precision and committed them without excessive trauma or mutilation to the body, preserving the integrity of the majority of their organs and their feminine beauty.
Think me not so depraved as the necrophile for appreciating the comeliness of these girls, for the qualities of the grave had barely begun to set into their features before I set upon my work crafting an amalgam of the most desirable features from my pick of the lot. I would graft together a lithe, supple body with the generous bosom of another, take the delicate hands from one, and then the length of leg would be donated from yet another and so on, until I had formed the most pleasing possible silhouette.
On my laboratory slab I was certain to have a woman who was not only the chief physical curiosity of our time, but also the envy of Europe and the world. Though stitched and sewn of disparate assemblage that marred her perfect symmetry of face and form, the blemishes were all solvable, I assured myself, through natural regeneration and the mere application of more cosmetic operations to come in due time.
The critical hour had come, as the lightning rod harnessed those enormous heavenly energies to be harnessed by my machines. I threw the lever and could but watch as the chemical solutions bubbled and the great electrical arcs cast from one station to the next, all according to my design. And, at last, after moments of tension, I observed her first stirrings.
"She's alive! Alive!