Mary Shelley Page 13

  The optimism in Chester Square evaporated on January 23. On that day, Mary Shelley had one seizure followed by more and then lapsed into a coma. Percy and Jane called in yet another doctor who said—probably correctly—that something was wrong with Mary’s brain. He did what he could, but the woman who had endured notoriety as the lover of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and who had gained literary fame as the author of Frankenstein, never regained consciousness. On the evening of February 1, with her son and daughter-in-law at her bedside, “her sweet gentle spirit passed away without even a sigh,” Jane Shelley wrote. According to the death certificate, she died of “Disease of the brain Supposed Tumour in left hemisphere of long standing.” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was fifty-three.

  She had asked to be buried with her parents in the St. Pancras churchyard, but Jane Shelley could not bring herself to honor this request. “It would have broken my heart to let her loveliness wither in such a dreadful place,” she explained. Construction of a railroad line had torn up the country around Somers Town, and the graveyard had been badly neglected. Instead Mary was buried in a cemetery near Boscombe Manor, where Percy and Jane planned to live after they sold Field Place and the house in Chester Square. They had the remains of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin exhumed and placed in the earth next to their daughter. They left Mary Jane Godwin to rest alone in the old St. Pancras churchyard, which angered Claire.

  Claire Clairmont moved to Italy in 1859 and converted to the Roman Catholic faith. She sometimes spoke to writers who were curious to hear her recollections of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. One who met her in 1873, the year she turned seventy-five, described her as “a slender and pallid old lady, with thinned hair which had once been dark, and with dark and still expressive eyes.” He observed that “her face was such as one could easily suppose to have been handsome and charming in youth.” Claire died in 1879, at eighty.

  Percy Florence and Jane commissioned a sculptor named Henry Weekes to create a statue of Mary Shelley cradling her drowned husband, a scene based on imagination rather than life. It was placed in Christchurch Priory, one of England’s largest and most historic churches. Sir Percy and Lady Jane had begun the work that would keep them busy for the rest of their lives: furthering interest in the writings of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley and presenting a cleaned-up version of their story. They destroyed many letters and journal entries that cast the two writers in a bad light. When Jane edited a collection of Mary Shelley’s letters, she omitted some portions that might cause readers to disapprove. Jane also created a shrine in an alcove off her bedroom. Under a ceiling painted with stars, she placed manuscripts of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry, bracelets woven from Mary Shelley’s hair, portraits of the two writers, a miniature version of Henry Weekes’s statue, and other precious items.

  Artist George J. Stodart created this engraving of Henry Weekes’s statue. Weekes had sculpted an imaginary scene of Mary Shelley embracing her husband’s body.

  Sir Percy Florence Shelley continued to love boating. As time went on, he dabbled in photography (a new technology) and took up bicycling. He and Jane had a theater built in Boscombe Manor, where they presented—and even acted in—plays. They adopted a child, Bessy Florence, who was an orphaned niece of Jane’s. Among their many friends was a woman named Adeline Drummond Wolff. She was baby Adeline, the daughter of Isabel Robinson, all grown up. Neither the Shelleys nor Wolff ever knew about the curious connection they shared.

  It has been said that when Sir Percy Florence Shelley died, in 1889, he was buried with the ashes of his father’s heart.

  Epilogue

  O listen while I sing to thee;

  My song is meant for thee alone . . .

  In 1851, the Eclectic Magazine printed news of the death of Mrs. Shelley, “the daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.” The notice continued, “It is not, however, as the authoress even of ‘Frankenstein,’ that she derives her most enduring and endearing title to our affectionate remembrance, but as the faithful and devoted wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley.”

  For many years after her death, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was remembered in much the same way, first as the illustrious poet’s wife and afterward as the author of one book, Frankenstein. Most people overlooked the fact that Mary Shelley had written six other novels, as well as short stories, essays, brief biographies, and even some poems. Anyone who commented on her later work dismissed it as inferior to her one important novel.

  That view began to change in the middle decades of the twentieth century as people took a new look at the achievements of women in many fields, including writing. Mary Shelley’s lesser-known books had been hard to find for many years, but new editions appeared. Scholars collected her shorter works and brought them out in print. Mathilda, the novel that both William Godwin and Mary Shelley herself thought too controversial, was finally published in 1959. Then, in 1997, a descendant of the Shelleys’ friend Margaret Mason discovered Maurice, or the Fisher’s Cot, the story Shelley wrote for Mason’s daughter Laurette. The handwritten book had been forgotten in a box with old letters, pamphlets, and ticket stubs. Mary Shelley’s children’s story at last was published in 1998.

  Readers now discovered a writer with imagination, one whose talent was versatile. Shelley had produced a gothic novel and a futuristic one, historical fiction and stories set in her own time. In her novels, she peered into the dark corners of the human mind and heart. She explored emotions taken to their extremes: grief in Mathilda, for example, and guilt in Falkner. She bravely took chances, as when she presented the thoughts and feelings of an incest victim in Mathilda. Mary Shelley also used her fiction to comment on social issues, such as the education of women in Lodore.

  Of course, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley will always be known as the author of Frankenstein. Her most famous novel has been reprinted many times and translated into numerous languages. Students read and discuss it in high school and college English classes. Frankenstein has been adapted into varied forms, from comic books and graphic novels to pop-up books. Mary Shelley’s eerily fascinating story has been presented on stage and radio, and it has been transformed into film. The first motion picture adaptation was created by Thomas Edison in 1910. The most famous Hollywood version, starring Boris Karloff as the creature, opened in theaters in 1931 and is still widely seen. Released in 1974, Young Frankenstein, directed by Mel Brooks and starring Gene Wilder, is now a comedy classic. Frankenstein has inspired cartoons, TV shows, songs, video games, and a breakfast cereal. The list of pop-culture references is endless.

  Thomas Edison was the first person to turn Frankenstein into a motion picture, in 1910. Edison’s film had a running time of sixteen minutes.

  Boris Karloff’s portrayal of the creature in the 1931 film Frankenstein is the best-known image of literature’s most famous monster.

  But then, who can resist traveling with Mary Shelley to that rainy November night when, by the light of a sputtering candle, Victor Frankenstein first sees “the dull yellow eye of the creature open”?

  Notes

  Opening verses

  ii “Who shall conceive . . .” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, 33.

  vii “So now my summer-task is ended . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed., The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, 155.

  vii “How like a star . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, “Stanzas,” 179.

  Prologue

  1 “If the world . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mathilda, 215.

  2 “Every thing must have a beginning . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, 167.

  2 “I did not make . . .”: Ibid., 166.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Imagination

  3 “The solitary thoughts . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Falkner, 69.

  5 “the most oppressed . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 210.

  6 “Whenever government assumes . . .”: William Godwin, A
n Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, vol. 2, 143.

  8 “Be happy . . .”: Ralph M. Wardle, Godwin & Mary, 17.

  8 “I am the most unfit person . . .”: Mrs. Julian Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 14.

  9 “Is it possible . . .”: William St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 238.

  10 “great genius . . .”: C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, vol. 2, 5.

  11 “ice, mast high . . .”: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 21.

  11 “slimy things . . .”: Ibid., 31.

  11 “singularly bold . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 35.

  11 “too grave and severe”: Kegan Paul, William Godwin, vol. 1, 37.

  11 “other objects and avocations . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 28.

  12 “Seeds of intellect . . .”: Frederick L. Jones, ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, 279.

  12 “we may learn . . .”: William Scolfield [William Godwin], Bible Stories, v.

  14 “[dashing] their brains out . . .”: Charles Lamb, The Adventures of Ulysses, 8.

  14 “a sensible, amiable woman . . .”: Mark Van Doren, ed., Correspondence of Aaron Burr and His Daughter Theodosia, 264.

  14 “les goddesses”: Matthew L. Davis, The Private Journal of Aaron Burr, vol. 2, 318.

  15 “I do not desire . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 28.

  17 “the eyry of freedom . . .”: M. W. Shelley, Frankenstein, 166.

  17 “At fourteen and fifteen . . .”: M. W. Shelley, Falkner, 68.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Escape!

  21 “Love is to me . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man, vol. 1, 74.

  21 “I must speak with Godwin . . .”: Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, 537.

  21 “Bysshe strode about the room . . . Ibid.

  22 “A thrilling voice . . .”: Ibid., 538.

  22 “Do you think . . .”: Ibid.

  22 “of a sunny and burnished brightness . . .”: Marion Kingston Stocking, ed., The Journals of Claire Clairmont, 431.

  23 “Upon my heart . . .”: Thomas Hutchinson, ed., Shelley: Poetical Works, 522.

  24 “Gain experience . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria, 35.

  24 “at first with the confidence of friendship . . .”: The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, vol. 22, part 2, 266–67.

  24 “The sublime and rapturous moment . . .”: Miranda Seymour, Mary Shelley, 93.

  24 “I could not believe . . .”: St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 362.

  24 “to give up . . .”: Richard Holmes, Shelley, 232.

  25 “His eyes were bloodshot . . .”: H. F. B. Brett-Smith, ed., Peacock’s Memoirs of Shelley, 47–48.

  26 “Our connection . . .”: Holmes, Shelley, 234.

  26 “looked extremely wild”: Edward Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, 544.

  26 “They wish to separate us . . .”: Ibid.

  26 “I won’t take this laudanum . . .”: Ibid.

  27 “love, though young and unacknowledged . . .”: M. W. Shelley, Falkner, 98.

  27 “She was in my arms . . .”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 98.

  28 “The art of travelling . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft, unsigned book review in the Analytical Review, May–August 1790, 375.

  28 “Look, Mary . . .”: Holmes, Shelley, 235.

  30 “the women with high caps . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed., Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, 80.

  30 “Our own perceptions . . .”: Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, eds., The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–1844, vol. 1, 9.

  31 “now the houses . . .”: M. W. Shelley, ed., Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, 82.

  31 “You will at least . . .”: Holmes, Shelley, 238.

  32 “What was my surprize . . .”: Stocking, ed., The Journals of Claire Clairmont, 27.

  32 “On every side . . .”: M. W. Shelley, ed., Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, 47.

  33 “sinks into melancholy . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, 71.

  34 “The Ideot”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 112.

  34 “The face of the Captain . . .”: Stocking, ed., The Journals of Claire Clairmont, 41.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Life’s Lessons

  35 “While we are young . . . M. W. Shelley, Falkner, 231.

  36 “I detest Mrs G.”: Betty T. Bennett, ed., The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 3.

  36 “Dear good creature . . .”: Ibid.

  37 “He cares not . . .”: Jones, ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, 421.

  38 “witching time of night . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 91.

  39 “Mary love . . .”: Jones, ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, 414.

  39 “. . . all my being . . .”: M. W. Shelley, ed., The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 4, 71.

  39 “Love in idleness”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 98.

  39 “To sleep & talk . . . Stocking, ed., The Journals of Claire Clairmont, 58.

  40 “[I] think of my little dead baby . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 110.

  41 “How does the meadow-flower . . .”: Henry Reed, ed., The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, 233.

  41 “his teeth so many stationary smiles . . .”: Karl Elze, Lord Byron: A Biography, 332.

  41 “the gentleman with the beautiful voice”: Ibid., 333.

  42 “To climb the trackless mountain . . .”: George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Complete Works of Lord Byron, 102.

  42 “Mary’s illness disappears . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 99.

  42 “I like him better . . .”: Ibid., 102.

  44 “veilèd maid . . .”: Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, 256.

  45 “the worship of the majesty . . .”: Ibid., 271.

  45 “Shelley even proposed . . .”: Jones, ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, 490.

  46 “thus harsh and cruel”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 127.

  46 “mad, bad, and dangerous . . .”: Frances Wilson, ed., Byromania, 200.

  47 “about the distance . . .”: Rowland E. Prothero, ed., The Works of Lord Byron, vol. 3, 436.

  47 “like music on the waters . . .”: Byron, The Complete Works of Lord Byron, 328.

  47 “Mary is delighted . . .”: Marion Kingston Stocking, ed., The Clairmont Correspondence, vol. 1, 40.

  47 “Were I to float . . .”: Ibid., 44.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Year Without a Summer

  49 “I busied myself . . .”: M. W. Shelley, Frankenstein, 167.

  49 “The lovely lake . . .”: M. W. Shelley, ed., Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, 91.

  50 “a parcel of staring boobies”: Thomas Moore, ed., Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, vol. 2, 319.

  50 “family of very suspicious appearance . . .”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 153.

  50 “social hatred”: Jones, ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, 329.

  51 “like a wild animal . . .”: Holmes, Shelley, 339.

  51 “All things that move . . .”: History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, 175–83.

  52 “the year without a summer”: C. R. Harington, ed., The Year Without a Summer?, 6.

  54 “I see the animal functions . . .”: William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, 6.

  54 “We will each write . . .”: William Mi
chael Rossetti, ed., The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 126.

  54 “with shut eyes . . .”: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary Shelley: The Dover Reader, 9.

  56 “a thrill of fear . . .”: Ibid.

  56 “What terrified me . . .”: Ibid.

  56 “But for his incitement . . .”: Ibid., 10.

  57 “I never loved . . .”: Richard Lansdown, ed., Byron’s Letters and Journals, 261.

  59 “I shall ever love thee”: Feldman and Scott-Kilvert, eds., The Journals of Mary Shelley, vol. 1, 172.

  59 “I shall love you . . .”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 163–64.

  59 “put an end to the existence . . .”: Kegan Paul, William Godwin, vol. 2, 242.

  60 “My advice and earnest prayer . . .”: Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, 58.

  61 “my house would then have been a proper asylum . . .”: Ibid., 70.

  61 “Mary is reading . . .”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 167.

  62 “the happiest and longest two years”: Tomalin, Shelley and His World,

  62 “How very happy shall I be . . .”: Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. 1, 177.

  63 “You can scarcely imagine . . .”: St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 417.

  64 “was safely delivered . . .”: John Murray, ed., Lord Byron’s Correspondence, vol. 2, 31–32.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dreams

  65 “While there is life . . .”: M. W. Shelley, The Last Man, vol. 1, 42.

  65 “a very striking . . .”: Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, 60.