FRANKENSTEIN
SUNDAE
by
Daniel Dyer
Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Dyer
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For
Betty Bennett (1935–2006),
Shelley
scholar nonpareil, the generous friend who took my hand and showed me the way.
I
pursued him; and for many months this has been my task. … What his feelings were whom I pursued, I
cannot know.
—
Victor Frankenstein, in Frankenstein,
by Mary Shelley, 1818
I
saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round
and round they sped.
I
was disturbed at this;
I
accosted the man.
“It
is futile,” I said,
“You
can never—”
“You
lie,” he cried,
And
ran on.
—
Stephen Crane, Black Riders and Other
Lines, 1895
There
is a sense in which any journey is absurd.
—
William Golding, An Egyptian Journal,
1985
From the Oxford English Dictionary
sundae, n.
Pronunciation: /ˈsʌndeɪ/
Etymology: Origin uncertain. There exist a
number of differing accounts both of the invention of the dish and of the
coinage of its name.
The
name is generally explained as an alteration of Sunday, either because
the dish originally included leftover ice-cream sold cheaply on Monday, or
because it was at first sold only on Sunday, having, according to some
accounts, been devised to circumvent Sunday legislation. The alteration of the
spelling is sometimes said to be out of deference to religious people’s
feelings about the word Sunday. For several accounts see H. L. Mencken, The
American Language Suppl. I. (1945), pp. 376–7.
orig. U.S.
A
confection of ice-cream topped or mixed with crushed fruit, nuts, syrup,
whipped cream, etc. locally also called college ice.
1897
W. A. Bonham Mod. Guide for Soda Dispensers 126 Peach Sundae. Ice cream,
vanilla or peach‥5
ounces. Crushed or sliced peaches‥2 ounces. Serve with a spoon. Pear, orange,
raspberry and other fruit sundaes are made by adding the syrup or fruit to the
ice cream.
1904
N.Y. Evening Post 21
May (Sat. Suppl.) 4/7 The Sundi, so popular at the confectioner’s, can be
prepared at home. Make a rich vanilla ice cream and over it pour the juice of
your preserved fruits.
1904
Minneapolis Times 15
June 6 In one of the Jersey City churches fans and lemonade are distributed.
Some brands of ‘sundae’ might be added with propriety.
1927
A. P. Herbert Plain Jane 88
I’m fizzy and fiery and fruity and tense, So let’s have a sundae and hang the
expense!
1951
T. Sterling House without Door
ii. 22 Year after year‥Schrafft’s
had been serving lamb and mint jelly and hot fudge sundaes to others.
1970
Kay & Co. (Worcester)
Catal. 1970–71 896 Six Bohemian sundae glasses in the Zorka
design.‥
Perfect for all sweets.
I: Prelude
29 April 1999. Near Darmstadt, Germany. Around noon.
On
a blue, lightly hazy Thursday I am sitting in a little restaurant overlooking
the Rhine Valley. I am in a range of low mountains called the Odenwald, near
the Bergstrasse (mountain road), a
centuries-old north-south trading route paralleling the Rhine, a road of some
forty-five miles that links Darmstadt in the north with Wiesloch in the south. Lining
this scenic route are castles and ruins, views and panoramas—picturesque food
for photographers and tourists.
The
Rhine is barely visible from where I sit—nearly thirteen miles below, off to
the west, flowing past the riverside town of Gernsheim. But not far away from
me, perhaps 150 feet, are the ruins of Castle Frankenstein. Burg Frankenstein, in German. The
northernmost castle along the Bergstrasse.
Frankensteins started living here in the thirteenth century and stayed for four
hundred years. Then, things fell apart. In 1965 a restaurant rose among the
ruins.
I
am eating a large berry sundae, feeling that rich, piercing mixture of pleasure
and disappointment in myself familiar to those who struggle with diets and
weight gain. When I left Ohio for Europe more than two weeks ago, I had just
purchased pants and shorts with 33-inch waists—a size up from the ever-tighter
32s I’d been wearing. I would lose weight in Europe. Would slip easily back into my accommodating
32s when I returned after my month abroad. The 33s, I assured my wife, Joyce,
were just for the comfort of traveling, that’s all. Not a size I was planning
to grow into. No way. Now, as I scrape the bottom of the sundae glass with my
spoon to extract the last berry molecules, I realize the 33s are feeling a
little tight. (Probably just the way I’m sitting.)
This
restaurant, I’ve read, is very crowded on Halloween when people swarm to Burg
Frankenstein for the obvious reasons. Probably most of those people know what I
do—that this castle does not appear at all in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,
the tale that launched far more vessels than did that famous face of Helen of
Troy. But in the old Frankenstein movies
(and the parodies) there is generally a castle stormed by torch- and
pitchfork-bearing peasants determined to drive out the madman who made the
monster who’s terrorizing the countryside. The madman. The scientist. The intellectual.
Burn him!
I’m
amused with myself, sitting here eating a berry sundae in the Frankenstein
castle. And a bit pleased, too, to tell
the truth. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been charging around Europe,
visiting sites related to Victor Frankenstein’s creator, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Shelley, to her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley (the middle name—a family
name—rhymes with fish and is the name
all familiars called him), and to others in their circle: her parents (William
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron … the
usual suspects. I’ve come to Burg
Frankenstein to see for myself if something I’ve read could possibly be true …
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