“A princess, Mary,” said Claire proudly. “I feel sure I will have a girl.”
“You were wrong about my first baby.”
“Yes, but I was correct about William, if you recall.”
I did not recall. “Dear Claire,” I said, patting her shoulder.
We were interrupted by Elise, who had been to collect our post. She handed me a letter from Shelley, who was “on business” in London. “On business” was the phrase he used for his fundraising expeditions: a little from his father-in-law here, a little more from a publisher there, loans from three or four friends.
“Thank you, Elise,” I said.
I went into the parlour and sat by the fire. It was December, and even with my mittens on, my hands were cold. I warmed them, leaving the letter in my lap. Ever since I had received Fanny’s last one I had been wary of opening letters.
Shelley’s familiar seal, and my name written in his careless hand, stared at me from the folded paper. I collected my courage and broke the seal.
Can you hear me screaming, Mary? My wife is dead.
My head buzzed. The writing dissolved. I tore at the lace scarf around my neck. I could not breathe. “Claire!” I called.
But my voice was hoarse. She and Elise were chattering, and did not hear me. I closed my eyes, trying to compose myself. When I opened them again my vision had cleared. In disbelief I read on.
Harriet, like Fanny, had killed herself. Her body, apparently several months advanced in pregnancy, had been found in the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park.
Whose child was she carrying? If he has abandoned her, the blame must lie with him, wrote Shelley. Then the letter took on a note of desperation. I must be allowed to take care of my motherless children now, must I not? Dearest Mary, we shall take Ianthe and Charles away from these shores for ever. Italy will save us. We shall all live in peace there, my children and you and me and William, and Claire and her child, and George.
George! Grief had unhinged Shelley’s mind if he thought George would have anything further to do with us.
I forced myself to read the rest of the letter. Unexpectedly, its desperate tone collapsed at the end into two of the most tender, yet most practical sentences he had ever written to me. By surrendering herself to death, Harriet has bestowed upon us a gift more precious than any we could give each other. My darling, when will you marry me?
The events of those few weeks are as difficult to believe as the idea that a scientist could cheat death – and almost as horrific. George’s abandonment of Claire, callous though it was, seemed as nothing. The wanton self-destruction of both my sister Fanny and Shelley’s wife Harriet was an unimaginable catastrophe. He and I both suffered deeply, plunged into the pitiless darkness that only guilt can cause. Entire, all-consuming, imprisoning.
After Harriet died, Shelley began to take even more laudanum than he had taken before. I would not let myself fear for his life – madness awaited me there – but I cannot pretend I was at ease. All I could hope was that the worst of his suffering would pass quickly, and that he would come back to me, eager for love, life and poetry again.
And as he had foreseen, the dead can affect the living in unforeseen ways.
Two weeks after Harriet’s death, he and I entered together the door from which we had been unreservedly banished.
My papa stood by the drawing-room door, rigid with expectation, while Mama gushed a welcome. “My dears!” she exclaimed. “Come in, and sit down by the fire!”
I walked into my father’s waiting arms. He held me for a long time, neither moving nor speaking.
“William,” said my stepmother’s voice, a little shrilly. “Do not neglect your other guest, please.”
When I emerged from my father’s embrace I was taken, briefly, into hers. Over her shoulder I saw Shelley and Papa shake hands. Then Shelley stood by the fire, courtesy forbidding him to sit down until Mama and I did. He was wearing an expression of deep unease. It was clear we all four were remembering the last occasion we had met in that room, more than two years ago.
“Mama, I have brought you a small gift,” I announced, presenting her with one of William’s curls encased in a locket.
“My dear Mary, how delightful!” she enthused. I knew she would never wear it, but I had done my duty. “And when are we to meet the little man himself?”
“Whenever you like,” answered Shelley. “He is longing to meet his grandpapa, whose name he bears.” He glanced at Mama. “And his grandmama, of course.”
“Splendid,” said Papa with satisfaction. He had recovered his composure sufficiently to allow conversation. Holding my hand as I sat beside him on the sofa – a place I had never before been allowed to take – he began to ask us about Switzerland, and Lord Byron, and mutual acquaintances. Shelley replied amiably enough, while my attention was monopolized by Mama, who wanted to hear all about William.
Then, during a pause in Mama’s questioning, I heard a fragment of the men’s conversation. “Excuse me, Mama,” I said, and turned to Shelley. “My dear, why are you talking about John Keats?”
Shelley’s face relaxed into his warmest smile. “You see, sir,” he said to my father, “what a protégé she makes of him?”
“Who?” demanded Mama. “Who is this Keats?”
“He is a young poet,” I explained, “quite penniless, dependent upon the goodwill of others for his living. And he is not my protégé. If anything he is Shelley’s. I merely feel that his talent is worthy, and am interested in his progress.”
“If we go abroad again, I will prevail upon him to come and stay with us,” said Shelley. “Will that please you?”
“Not if George is there too,” I replied, smiling. I addressed my father. “Lord Byron calls him ‘Johnny Keats’, and says he is an upstart.”
Papa understood. “By which he means he is not of the aristocracy, I take it?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Such considerations mean nothing to Shelley, of course.”
“Of course.” Papa looked at Shelley approvingly. “I shall make it my business to procure a copy of Mr Keats’s latest poems, and give it to you as a wedding present.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Shelley, bowing.
When dinner was announced, we sat down in the dining-room of my girlhood as if we had never eaten a meal anywhere else. Tom, who waited upon us, could not forbear to smile at me when he passed with the soup. “Good evening, Miss,” he said.
My exile had apparently affected everyone in the house. I was touched, and asked after Tom’s wife. Mama, who disapproved of talking to servants during meals except to give orders, tut-tutted, but I took no notice. Her power to command me had diminished now.
When Tom had gone and Mama had made her customary remarks about the temperature of the soup, my father turned a serious eye on me. “We have spoken of Shelley’s work, Mary,” he said, “and even of that of Mr Keats, of whom I have scarcely heard. But what of your own writing?”
I took two sips of soup during the silence that followed, aware that Shelley was waiting as intently as Papa for my answer. I rarely spoke to Shelley about my growing desire to publish a story. A novel, perhaps, of the kind Claire admired so much. And although he had offered to help me with my writing during my estrangement from my father, I never showed him any of what I considered to be “scribbles” – sketchy, half-planned paragraphs on the backs of the pieces of paper containing his poems, which I gathered up in order to copy neatly for him. The copies made, I never threw the papers away but stored them carefully for my own use.
“I have an idea for a novel,” I admitted. “But it is very hazy at present. I cannot even decide upon the end.”
“That never stopped a novelist yet, to be sure!” cried Mama. “I cannot count the number of novels I have read with disappointing, muddled endings. I say to William, ‘William, you are a writer – why, you should write a book about how to write!’”
While she trilled with laughter at this witty anecdote, I smiled at my fat
her. “I thank you for your enquiry, Papa. I am persevering, and will keep you informed.”
Mama had lost the thread of our conversation. When Tom came in to get the soup plates, she signalled him to fill our wine glasses.
“You have talked enough of poetry and novels, my dear,” she said to Papa. “This is an occasion to talk of wedding breakfasts and bridal finery, is it not?” She raised her glass. “To marriage!”
We dutifully echoed the toast, and sipped our wine.
“You have been raiding the cellar, sir,” said Shelley appreciatively.
My father bowed in acknowledgement. “A fine wine for a happy reunion,” he said.
“Indeed,” said Shelley, looking at me between the branches of Mama’s most elaborate candelabra. “I drink the health of my future wife and her parents with all my heart.”
As we drove back to our hotel that evening, I nestled close to Shelley in the carriage. He seemed tired, and did not want to speak.
I could not untangle my feelings. At a stroke, Harriet’s despair had made us respectable, bestowed honourable citizenship on our son, and restored my beloved papa to me. I had even been gratified by the greetings of the familiar servants of my childhood. But could happiness and grief sit well together in the same heart? Could Shelley and I truly celebrate, with finery and a wedding breakfast?
I thought not. To the disappointment of Claire and her mama, it was with very little ostentation that I stood beside Shelley a few weeks later in a small London church. Claire wept, Mama smiled, Papa blew his nose and looked at his feet. So, on a damp day in the middle of that winter of damp days, for good or for ill, my romantic poet and I were married at last.
Shelley could not pray. After the death of Harriet I was forced to the conclusion that an atheist forfeits the commonplace comfort of prayer when he proclaims his atheism.
Night after night he could not sleep unless he took a draught. Even when he did, he slept fitfully, often starting up with a cry. I pitied him from my heart. He was adrift in the isolation to which he had driven himself.
Under his influence I believed in the power of love and the human spirit. Together we had discussed the unanswerable questions of existence, both natural and supernatural. But in moments of agony I still prayed. When my daughter had died, I had pleaded with God to give her the eternal bliss that my dear mama already enjoyed.
But if Shelley could not believe in heaven, in redemption and forgiveness, what did he suppose had happened to the spirit of this girl he had loved, who had given him two children and, in despair beyond any known to him, had drowned herself and her unborn child? What, in his own moments of agony, did he imagine?
Guilt, a skilful tormentor of even the clearest conscience, plays havoc with that of an already tormented man. Shelley drank wine, and brandy when he could get it. When strong liquor failed, he took opium. That he wept I was certain, though he tried to conceal this from me. I heard his suffering in the bleakest depths of bleak nights. I knew his faults, but my love was strong.
“Have no fear, my love,” I whispered to him as the first birdsong began after another empty night. “Fanny and Harriet are at peace, even if we cannot be.”
ITALY WILL SAVE US
Past scandal, however, is not quickly forgotten.
We were legally married, and William soon had a pretty sister, a baby girl we named Clara, the English version of her aunt’s French name. I hoped to live happily with the people I loved, bringing up my children in peace, secure in my father’s readmission of me into his society. But Shelley and I were not called upon, nor invited to call. We were unable to penetrate a society in which people desired to protect themselves and their children against irregular households such as ours. The presence of Claire and her child, a little girl named Allegra, whose father was nowhere to be seen, turned suspicious eyes on my new husband. Even the judge in Shelley’s petition to gain custody of his eldest children, Ianthe and Charles, ruled that such an immoral man was not fit to be a father.
We decided we must go away again. This time Shelley needed no persuading from Claire and me. He was under the influence of someone else.
“George adores Italy,” he informed us one day. “He has an apartment in Venice, and a summer villa at Padua.”
“With mistresses already installed in them?” I asked.
“He believes,” Shelley persisted, ignoring my interruption, “that Italy will save us from this infernal gossip we suffer in England. We can settle very contentedly in some pleasant Italian place, where society is more liberal and artistic people gather.”
Claire was impressed by this mention of artistic people, a group to which she had always felt she naturally belonged. “Oh, Shelley! If George is not too far away, do you think he will come and visit dear Allegra?”
“There is nothing to stop him,” Shelley assured her.
Except his disinclination to do so, I observed to myself.
To Claire’s delight, George arranged to join us at our rented villa in Pisa. But when we arrived there, an exhausted party of the three of us, our three children, Elise, and an English nurse with the charming name of Milly, letters awaited us. One, addressed to Shelley, was in George’s hand.
“He is not coming,” Shelley informed us. “He will send a servant to collect Allegra and take her to stay with him in his house in Venice.”
“Why does he want her to go there?” asked Claire, bewildered. “And am I not to go with her?”
“Apparently not,” said Shelley abruptly. Then he looked at her, and softened his voice. “Have no fear, my dear Claire. George wants the best for your daughter. Trust him.”
I turned away from Claire’s stricken face, and Shelley’s hollow words, knowing that nothing would lessen the pain of parting with her child. Shelley, of all people, knew this. But he would not side with Claire against George.
In the end, to appease Claire, George allowed Elise to accompany Allegra to Venice rather than sending his own servant. As the carriage carried the screaming child away, and Claire collapsed against me, I felt, though it shames me a little to record this, a measure of relief.
It had been decided that Allegra would remain in her father’s charge, leaving Claire free to take the position of governess she had long talked of. All hope of going on the stage had now been discarded. As I comforted her, I wondered whether after all this time Claire might soon cease to be our responsibility?
As the summer wore on, Shelley began to suffer severe pains in his stomach. That he was ill was without question, though he dismissed the seriousness of the symptoms. After three days of vomiting he became feverish. I was alarmed, but no physician we consulted could offer either a diagnosis or a remedy.
“Nervous exhaustion,” said one.
“Overwork and anxiety,” said another.
“A light diet,” said the first.
“Feed him on as much beef and red wine as he can stomach,” said the second.
They agreed, however, that an opiate such as laudanum would ease the patient’s discomfort. Both recommended larger measures than Shelley had taken before.
He suffered prolonged periods of the derangement we had witnessed at the Villa Diodati. Refusing to go to bed he would wander around the house, or even outside it, in the middle of the night, his eyes glassy and unseeing. He wept and laughed by turns. He could not read, nor write. I prayed to God that our children were too small to remember what they saw.
Claire, immersed in her own sorrow, liked to be near him. She read to him, and made new copies of his poems. She wrote the letters he dictated. I was so busy with housework and children, I knew not what they discussed during the hours they spent together. But gradually she became his confidante. He no longer shared troubles and pleasures with me, but turned instead to her. And slowly, very slowly, he recovered enough of his former strength to take up a pen himself, and set to work again.
In this fashion, strewing the floor around the couch with pieces of paper, written and overwritten with ver
se, which Claire gathered up and copied, he passed the days. And then, one August afternoon when the shimmering heat of Italy surrounded the villa, pouring in windows and doors and filling up its rooms, we received some news.
Shelley’s couch had been placed in the coolest room in the house. He lay there wearing his house robe, and I was sitting at the window sewing, when we heard a shriek from upstairs. Within seconds Claire had pattered down the stairs and entered the room in great agitation. There was a letter in her hand.
“Allegra is ill!” she announced. Her brimming eyes flashed. “She is with Elise at George’s villa in Padua!”
“And where is George?” I asked.
She consulted the letter. “Still in Venice. He cannot get away.”
“Why not?”
Ignoring me, she folded the letter and gazed tearfully at Shelley. “I must go to my daughter!”
“Indeed you must,” said Shelley calmly. “I shall take you there.”
I was astonished. “But George, even if he is in Venice, will not allow it!”
“George will not know,” Shelley declared. “But if he finds out, I wager that he will do what is right when a child’s life is in danger.”
“And what about your life?” I protested. “You are not well enough to travel to Padua!” I turned to Claire, who stood with the letter in her hand, her face flushed, her tears drying. “You do not think Shelley is well enough to come with you, do you? You must go alone!”
Shelley spoke before Claire could open her mouth. “A lady cannot travel alone in Italy, as you well know, Mary. And we have no male servant.” He rose from the couch. “Make haste,” he instructed Claire. “We must leave immediately.”
“I am to stay here with Milly and the children, I suppose?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Shelley, half rising from the sofa, his arm half out of the sleeve of his robe. “For pity’s sake, the children cannot travel such a distance in this heat!”
If only I had had the courage to hold him to those words. They haunt me to this day, though Shelley never afterwards admitted uttering them.
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