Mary Shelley Read online

  The next night, Byron read from an old book of eerie tales that an earlier tenant had left behind at the villa. In one, a ghostly barber is condemned to haunt the castle where he plied his trade in life. In another, the stolen head of a corpse is made to live again. His friends’ fascination with the nature of life and their enjoyment of these bizarre accounts gave Byron an idea. “We will each write a ghost-story,” he said. Immediately, everyone was excited. Writing their stories would be fun and a perfect way to stay busy on rainy days.

  Mary searched her mind for an idea, but she came up with nothing. Feeling frustrated, she lay in bed one night, her thoughts too active for sleep. It was well after the witching hour when, to her astonishment, a story suddenly emerged from her imagination. One image after another arose before her, “with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,” as she later wrote. Her mind revealed a character and the unsavory work he had underway. “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life.” The student is attempting an experiment like the ones Mary and her friends had discussed, bringing dead tissue to life. He is building a horrifying, manlike creature—a monster he will release into the world. The story had come, vivid and unbidden, from the depths of Mary’s unconscious. “A thrill of fear ran through me,” she recalled. She opened her eyes and sought calm in the moonlight filtering through closed shutters onto the parquet floor and other familiar details of real life.

  “What terrified me will terrify others,” Mary knew. In the morning, she told her story to the rest of the group, all enthusiastic listeners. Shelley thought she should expand it into a novel. “But for his incitement it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world,” Mary later said. Through July and August, while the others merely toyed with their stories, Mary worked steadily. By summer’s end, she had completed a rough draft of her book about the student, whom she named Victor Frankenstein, and the being he endows with life.

  Meanwhile, letters came from England, among them one from Shelley’s father’s lawyer. Sir Timothy offered to raise Percy’s allowance by five hundred pounds, and lend him another two thousand, if Percy returned to England. Sir Timothy was furious at Percy for leaving the country without providing proper support for Harriet, Ianthe, and Charles. He wanted his flighty son to come home and take care of his dependents. Another letter came from Fanny, who wrote to say that the bookshop was losing money, and that trying to make ends meet was stressing the Godwin household. Sad to be missing out on the fun the others were having, Fanny begged for tidbits about Byron. Mary and Shelley sent a gold watch to Fanny, who so often seemed depressed.

  Claire had something to say, but not to Fanny. She announced to the circle of friends that she was having a baby. In fact, she was already carrying Byron’s child before she left England. By this time, Byron had tired of Claire. “I never loved nor pretended to love her,” he wrote to a friend in England, “but a man is a man—& if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours—there is but one way.” He said, however, that he would recognize the child as his own after it was born and raise it himself in Europe. Claire would be allowed to see her daughter or son, but she was to act the role of a visiting aunt.

  They may sound odd and coldhearted today, but those were actually generous terms, and Claire had to accept them. British law protected men’s right to custody of their children but not women’s. Byron could have excluded Claire from her child’s life altogether. He had the financial means to provide well for a child, and he wanted his son or daughter raised apart from the wandering, atheistic Shelleys.

  The law also required men to support their illegitimate children, but this provision was weakly enforced. Many desperate single mothers had no choice but to leave their babies on a church doorstep, knowing the parish provided for orphans whose relatives were unknown. Others farmed their children out, paying a fee to a broker who promised to place the babe in a competent person’s care. These brokers were unscrupulous, though. Farmed-out children were often drugged and fed watered-down milk, and they tended to die at an early age. Yet a woman knew that if she wanted to live a respectable life, she could not carry the shame of an illegitimate child.

  Driven from her home and thrown upon the world, an unwed mother carries her child through foul weather.

  Showing great kindness, Shelley said that he would support and look after Claire until Byron took over responsibility for his child. Feeling the weight of all the people depending on him, Shelley wrote a will. He left the bulk of his estate to Mary Godwin. His wife, Harriet, was to receive six thousand pounds, and the children Ianthe and Charles would get five thousand each. Shelley willed six thousand pounds to Claire; he set aside another six thousand pounds to help support her child. He also left sums to his friends Peacock, Hogg, and Byron. Of course, this document was more a wish list than a will. Shelley possessed none of this money, although he expected to inherit it one day.

  More than before, Shelley needed the funds he would get from his father by returning to England. So on August 29, Mary said goodbye to the beautiful lake. “I shall ever love thee,” she wrote. She had looked forward to a home life without Claire’s constant presence, but because of the pregnancy, she would have to wait. She agreed to stand by her stepsister and offer help and emotional support. Claire sent a note to Byron at his villa. “I shall love you to the end of my life & nobody else,” she wrote, but Byron never replied. Mary, Claire, and Shelley left for home with seven-month-old William and his Swiss nursemaid, Elise Duvillard.

  They went to Bath, a city where they knew no one, to wait out the next few months. With Claire posing as “Mrs. Clairmont,” they hoped to get her through the crisis of pregnancy and childbirth while keeping her reputation clean. This was why they informed the Godwins that Claire was unwell, and that she was in Bath to drink water from its natural springs, which were said to promote health.

  Claire awaited her baby’s birth in the resort city of Bath. Ancient Romans once bathed in the region’s mineral-rich water.

  William and Mary Jane Godwin asked no questions. Another daughter worried them more. It seems that Fanny had slipped away from Skinner Street, and no one knew where she had gone. On October 9, Mary received a dark, distressing letter from her older sister that hinted of suicide. Shelley rushed to Bristol, the city where the letter was postmarked, but he had no luck finding Fanny. The Godwins, too, received an ill-boding letter, and William Godwin made his own fruitless search.

  News, when it came, could not have been worse. Fanny’s body had been discovered in a room at an inn in the Welsh port of Swansea. She had taken her own life by swallowing laudanum. The note she left stated that she had decided to “put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare.” On her wrist she wore the gold watch from Mary and Shelley.

  Suicide was a crime in the early nineteenth century and a source of shame for surviving families. Many people considered it an evil act that made a soul unfit to enter Heaven. The spirits of people who took their own lives were said to suffer torment. The Godwins knew better, but even in their grief, they stayed away from Swansea. They ordered their other children, Claire, Charles, William—and Mary—to do the same. No one outside the family was to know what Fanny had done. “My advice and earnest prayer is that you would avoid anything that leads to publicity,” Mr. Godwin wrote in the first letter he sent to Mary since she ran off with Shelley. He and his wife told people outside the family that Fanny had gone to Ireland and died there of a fever. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

  The survivors struggled to make sense of her suicide. In Skinner Street, William Godwin convinced himself that Fanny had been secretly in love with Shelley, and that this was why she chose to die. Mary, still estranged from her father a
nd stepmother, confessed to feeling miserable and full of regret. If only she had done more to include Fanny in her life! If only Fanny had held on until Claire’s baby was born and away in Byron’s care! “My house would then have been a proper asylum for her,” Mary lamented. The sad truth is that Fanny had no clear reason for ending her life. She likely suffered from what today would be diagnosed as clinical depression, a condition that can put people at risk for suicide.

  For Fanny’s grieving family, life had to go on. Dressed in black mourning clothes, Mary took drawing lessons and went to lectures on books and philosophy. There were weeks when Shelley was away. He was looking, without luck, for a house they might dwell in after Claire’s confinement. When he was in Bath, Mary strolled with him and baby William alongside stylish vacationers. She took in a pair of cats. Mary also worked on her novel, revising her first draft so the story flowed logically and smoothly. In the evening, Shelley read aloud to Mary and Claire. He described the tranquil scene at home in a letter to Byron, who was on his way to Venice. “Mary is reading over the fire; our cat and kitten are sleeping under the sofa; and little Willy is just gone to sleep.” Claire, he noted, “is writing to you at this instant.” Claire still hoped to revive Byron’s interest in her.

  The serenity lasted only a short while. On December 15, Shelley received an upsetting letter informing him that Harriet was dead. A friend in London had written that in September Harriet had left her children at her father’s house and moved into rooms near soldiers’ quarters, using the name Harriet Smith. On November 9, she went missing. On December 10, she was found dead in the Serpentine, a lake in London’s Hyde Park, in an advanced state of pregnancy. No one knows exactly what happened, but Harriet may have been abandoned by an army officer with whom she had had an affair; she appeared to have drowned herself. Once, Harriet had described her time with Shelley as “the happiest and longest two years” of her life. Now, because she was a suicide, neither Shelley nor Harriet’s family claimed her remains.

  Shelley’s thoughts were of his motherless children, Ianthe and Charles. He barely knew them, but he wanted them to come and live with him. Mary, he believed, would be a tender mother to them, just as she was to William. And Mary was ready to welcome them into her arms. “How very happy shall I be to possess those darling treasures that are yours,” she told Shelley. By tradition and law, a widower had custody of his minor children, but Harriet’s parents, the Westbrooks, were claiming the right to be the legal guardians of the little girl and boy they loved. They filed a suit against Shelley in chancery court, alleging that his atheism, radical ideas, and relationship with Mary made him an unfit parent. Chancery court handled cases involving the distribution of property and the guardianship of children. Its judges sought to be impartial and fair, sometimes relying on good sense as much as the word of law. Months might pass until the case of Ianthe and Charles was decided; until then, the children were ordered to stay with the Westbrooks.

  Harriet’s death left Shelley free to remarry, and he believed he would appear more responsible to the court if Mary were his wife. Mary had her own reason for wanting marriage. If she and Shelley were legally wed, she thought, her father’s attitude toward them might soften. As it turned out, she was right. When Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley married, on December 30, 1816, at London’s St. Mildred’s Church, William and Mary Jane Godwin witnessed the ceremony.

  “You can scarcely imagine how great a relief this has brought to mine and Mrs. Godwin’s mind,” Mr. Godwin wrote to William Baxter in Scotland. Mary, he continued, had “acquired a status and character in society.” He praised Shelley’s “many good and even noble qualities.” William Godwin painted a rosy picture of Mary’s life, doing his best to present it as respectable. But like most of society, Baxter was less willing than Mary’s father to overlook her actions during the past two and a half years, and Isabella was still forbidden to have contact with her.

  Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley were married in St. Mildred’s Church on December 30, 1816.

  In this way, the year without a summer came to an end. Mary was now a mother and wife. She had written a novel that she hoped to see published. These joys, however, had been tempered by a dark season that brought the deaths of Fanny and Harriet.

  Would the coming year begin on a note of hope? The answer was yes. On January 13, 1817, Mary sent a letter to Byron, telling him that Claire “was safely delivered of a little girl yesterday morning.” Claire named her daughter Alba. The letters lb in the baby girl’s name stood for Lord Byron. “It is a long time since Shelley has heard from you and I am sure nothing would give him greater pleasure than to hear news of your motions & enjoyments,” Mary wrote. More time would pass, though, until his friends in England received word from Byron.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dreams

  While there is life there is action and change. We go on. . .

  In December 1816, a newspaper editor named Leigh Hunt singled out Percy Shelley as “a very striking and original thinker.” Most critics had ignored Alastor because they disapproved of Shelley’s atheism and sensational private life. But Hunt had read the long poem, and he spotted genius in its lines. He began corresponding with the poet, and soon the Hunts and Shelleys became friends. Hunt and his wife, Marianne, had no qualms about welcoming the couple who had been the focus of so much scandalous talk.

  Mary Shelley felt drawn to the Hunts and their burgeoning family. There were four Hunt children when the couples met, and there would be ten in all. They served as models for their mother, who was a sculptor. Marianne Hunt was a big, hearty woman whom it was easy to like. Leigh Hunt had dark hair and full, soft cheeks. He often lounged around the house in his dressing gown, thinking and writing about art and beauty.

  Editor Leigh Hunt was an early champion of Percy Shelley’s poetry.

  The woman in this sketch is thought to be Marianne Hunt.

  Leigh Hunt was known for speaking his mind in print. If he found fault with the actions of Parliament or a national figure, he fearlessly published his opinion. One steady reader praised his paper, the Examiner, for its “liberty-loving, liberty-advocating, liberty-eloquent articles.” In March 1812, Hunt had criticized the prince regent. The prince—the future King George IV—was reigning in place of his father, King George III, who was mentally ill. Everyone knew that the prince regent had a mistress and lived beyond his means, but to ridicule him in the press amounted to slander. Hunt, however, had called the prince an aging, overweight “Adonis” and a “libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace.” For this he had earned two years in jail.

  Leigh Hunt was not the only Englishman to criticize the prince regent in print. This political cartoon contrasts the regent’s lavish lifestyle with the poverty that many of his subjects endured.

  Leigh Hunt, who played the piano and had a pleasing voice, invited the Shelleys to come over for musical evenings. The Shelleys also went with the Hunts to concerts and the theater. One night at an opera, Leigh Hunt observed Mary as she gave all her attention to the stage. He saw a thoughtful, “sedate-faced young lady” with a “great tablet of a forehead.” Mary could be too serious, in Hunt’s view. He preferred to see her in playful conversation, when he nicknamed her “nymph of the sidelong looks.”

  Shelley often looked at Mary too. He paid tribute to her in verse:

  in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,

  And in the light thine ample forehead wears,

  And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,

  And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy

  Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears . . .

  The woman with the sweet smiles was pregnant again. She and Shelley dreamed of a home in England where they could settle down and raise their family. Shelley signed a twenty-one-year lease on a house in Marlow, a town west of London, on the Thames. Albion House was a white-painted structure that stood outside the village. The Shelleys moved in on March 18, 1817; Claire and Alba joined
them a week later. Claire had been living in rooms nearby and waiting for word from Byron. Since losing Fanny, Mary felt renewed affection for her stepsister and tried to be more accepting of Claire. Both women had young children and shared the concerns of motherhood.

  Spring brought brightness and warmth to Marlow, and summer, long missing, returned. Mary planted her alpine seeds in a tidy garden. Albion House “is very comfortable and expectant of its promised guests,” she wrote to the Hunts. “Come then, dear, good creatures, and let us enjoy with you the beauty of the Marlow sun.” Marlow was close enough to London for the Hunts and William Godwin to visit easily. A zealous hiker could even walk the distance, as Shelley sometimes did.

  The Shelleys moved into Albion House, thinking that they would settle there for a long time.

  In a burst of energy, Shelley purchased new furniture for Albion House and had old pieces reupholstered. He stocked the spacious library with books and graced it with statues of Apollo and Venus—the Greek sun god and the Roman goddess of love. Relying on credit because he had spent his allowance, he bought a piano for Claire. In his generosity, Shelley loaned cash to his friends. He also handed out coins, blankets, and clothing to Marlow’s poor. Once, after giving his shoes to a needy man, he walked back to Albion House barefoot. The people of Marlow grew used to the sight of slim, slouching Percy Shelley tapping on the doors of humble cottages, tramping off with a notebook to compose poems in the woods, or heading home with burrs sticking to his long brown coat.