Mary Shelley

by Miranda Seymour

  If Mary sounds peevish, her situation makes her feelings wholly understandable. By the end of a single summer in their new house, they were mired in debt again. Doing a hasty round of potential creditors in London in September, Shelley was briefly arrested on the order of his own uncle. Mary, taught caution by her father’s precarious business affairs, was terrified of what was to become of them and miserable at being abandoned. ‘How happy shall I be – my own dear love to see You again – Your last was so very very short a visit …’ she wrote on 5 October. ‘Come teusday dearest and let us enjoy some of each others company come and see your sweet babes …’ She ended by sending him ‘a thousand kisses for you my own one’. By the 16th, she was growing frantic: ‘So you do not come this night – Love – Nor any night – you are always away and this absence is long and becomes each day more dreary.’ On 18 October, she wrote again. Godwin was about to make a visit. He was sure to ask questions about the future. They had already started arrangements to sell off the rest of their twenty-year lease on Albion House, but then, ‘he will talk as if we meant to stay here and I must – must I? Tell fifty privarications or direct lies … Had you not better speak –’ She would come to London, as Shelley kept suggesting, if only she dared. She reminded him of the occasion when all their possessions at Bishopsgate had been seized as soon as they left the house empty: ‘here we have much more to loose & I must not leave this house untill such things as we do not dispose of are put in a place of safety.’

  Shelley eased one of Mary’s worries by accompanying Godwin to Marlow the following day; talk of their plans was skilfully avoided and the visitor went away full of good cheer. Claire was looking so neat, and so pretty, he told his wife, and it was all thanks to the good influence of Mary and Shelley. An inspection of the library had given him great satisfaction; Mary had evidently taken inspiration from his own methodical reordering of the Skinner Street books that summer, with new shelves being added and a proper catalogue made. All the indications were of security and permanence; and Shelley had again promised to underwrite his debts. One hardly knows whether to wonder more at Godwin’s credulity or at his host’s gift for deceiving him.

  Mary let herself be persuaded to leave the house empty in November while she spent two weeks at new lodgings in London. Visits to the Hunts and to Skinner Street gave a lift to her spirits but she, like Shelley, was horrorstruck by the news that three men had, on 8 November, been executed as traitors in Derby. Their alleged crime, an attempt to stir up protest, had already been publicly connected to the undercover operations of a government spy. Shelley, outraged, immediately wrote a pamphlet on the death of British liberty; Mary approvingly recorded its completion. Whatever disagreements they might have had about Claire, or about the way Shelley kept recklessly borrowing against his future, they thought as one when it came to challenging injustice. This, they both believed, was his mission, to fight with his pen for free speech and a society ruled by love, not law. It was probably as well for Shelley’s personal safety that his publisher, Charles Ollier, got cold feet after printing twenty copies. Boldly signed ‘The Hermit of Marlow’, it left little doubt about the author’s identity.29

  Literature dominated their lives at the end of the year. Godwin’s Mandeville was published on 1 December. Mary took only a day and a half to devour a novel she thought almost equal to Caleb Williams in its power. After passing it over to Shelley, she decided to make amends to Peacock for her crossness that September by copying out his long poem, ‘Rhododaphne’, in her fine, easy-flowing hand. Shelley wanted her opinion of his own major work of that year; they had just finished discussing ‘Laon and Cythna’ when Shelley’s nervous publisher announced that all printed copies would have to be recalled so that the brother—sister love theme could be modified, along with any passages which might be thought blasphemous and for which the printer risked prosecution. Even the title was to be altered. Aware of the difficulty of getting such a work published at all in the present political climate, Shelley submitted to Ollier’s conditions. Mary must have thought herself lucky that nobody at Lackingtons had objected to Victor Frankenstein’s passionate feelings for his first cousin. By 1831, when incest had become a still more unacceptable topic, she was ready to banish the blood connection and let Elizabeth become an adopted, but wholly unrelated, sister to Victor.

  *

  The fact that only five hundred copies of Frankenstein had been published did not mean that it went unnoticed on its appearance in January 1818. In her home circle, Mary was showered with praise for the extraordinary powers of her imagination and the boldness of her idea; the outside world, able only to note that the book was respectfully dedicated to William Godwin and that the tone of the Preface sounded masculine, credited Shelley with the authorship.

  The homage which most pleased Mary came later, from her father. Writing to her in 1823, at a time when she was in desperate need of reassurance and comfort, Godwin told his daughter that it was, quite simply, ‘the most wonderful work to have been written at twenty years of age [she was actually nineteen] that I have ever heard of’.30

  The critics were less enthusiastic. One of the most hostile was the first to publish his opinion. Writing in the Quarterly Review in January, the rigidly right-wing critic John Wilson Croker (he was Secretary to the Admiralty throughout the long period of Tory rule) damned Mary’s novel as ‘a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity’, written by one of the ‘out-pensioners of Bedlam’ who formed William Godwin’s school. Croker’s aggressiveness was probably increased by his evident belief that Frankenstein, which carried a dedication to Godwin, had been written by the blasphemous author of Queen Mab. Another reviewer, in La Belle Assemblée (March), thought the book audacious and impious, but likely to win popularity by its originality and good style. The episode of the Creature’s vicarious education when living beside the de Laceys’ cottage was, however, condemned as wretchedly implausible, an objection made by almost all the reviewers. The Edinburgh Magazine (March) conceded moments of beauty and a certain fascination in the subject; the British Critic (April) found the mixture of absurdity and horror strongly reminiscent of Godwin’s Mandeville. The Gentleman’s Magazine (April) was milder, praising the author’s inventive talent and descriptive gifts. The Monthly Review (April) curtly dismissed an ‘uncouth’ work, void of any moral or philosophical conclusion, although leanings toward the doctrines of materialism would have merited scrutiny in a more serious novel. In June, the Literary Panorama dismissed Frankenstein as a weak imitation of Godwin’s St Leon.

  It is impossible to know how many of these reviews were read by Mary, given that she had left England before most of them appeared. We do know that she was delighted by the appreciation which her father’s friend Sir Walter Scott wrote for the March 1818 issue of Blackwood’s Magazine. Shelley had sent Scott a copy of the novel at the beginning of the year and Scott understandably took the book to be his own work; writing to thank him for his kindness, Mary proudly revealed the truth. She had, she explained in her letter of 14 June, only concealed her name ‘from respect to those persons from whom I bear it’. This suggests that she was fully aware of the bold impiety of her invention, and of the implications of portraying man as creating man, aided only by science. The novel’s dedication to her father was the nearest she dared come to exposing her connection to him and, consequently, doing him harm.

  It would be a mistake to imagine that the fame of a book depends on the number of published copies. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication achieved its celebrity – and notoriety – by word of mouth and by privately circulated copies; this seems also to have been the case with Mary’s Frankenstein. In August 1818, Peacock wrote to tell Shelley that, on a visit to Egham racecourse, he had been pestered by ‘a multitude of questions concerning “Frankenstein” and its author. It seems,’ he added, ‘to be universally known and read.’31 While this does not mean that every household in the land was talking about Mary’s book, it does suggest that the novel’s repu
tation had already spread far beyond what might be supposed from the small number of copies printed. The fact that Peacock was singled out for interrogation by the racegoers indicates that there was a degree of certainty about the book’s authorship. Peacock’s role as the Shelleys’ friend would have been well known at Egham, which was only a few miles from Marlow.

  *

  It is not clear what was behind the words ‘Le rêve est fini’ which Mary wrote and then crossed out in her journal for 22 December. Perhaps it was a reference to the end of their dream of a happy country existence at Albion House; a purchaser had been found to take on the remainder of their lease. January 1818 was the last bonechilling month they spent there. For Shelley, there was less reading than usual due to a painful eye infection caught while paying visits among the poor villagers over Christmas. Games of chess became a regular feature of Mary’s diary; a lengthy visit from Hogg and the regular calls of Peacock offered welcome diversion. Neither Mary nor her husband seem to have been conscious that Peacock was falling in love with Claire. His suit was hopeless; Claire was still trying to accept that she had given her romantic, impulsive heart to a man who had merely, and briefly, enjoyed her body. She was in no mood for lovemaking.

  Godwin, paying them a last quick visit in late January together with his thirteen-year-old son and namesake, went home feeling confident about his financial future. Mary was reading Rob Roy and packing up their possessions in the first week of February when the storm broke.|| Shelley had obtained a new post-obit on 30 January, promising away £4,500 on his father’s death to obtain £2,000 that day. Godwin, who had been anticipating a hefty share to relieve his own considerable debts, received a small percentage, perhaps as little as £150.32 This was not acceptable at a time when Godwin knew that Leigh Hunt, a relatively new friend with no family connection, was being given well over a thousand pounds. Already cast down over the recent deaths of his sister Hannah and of his close friend the barrister John Curran, Godwin was moved to compose one of his most self-righteous letters. He insisted on his right to an interview at which he proposed to explain the principles which Shelley had, in his view, betrayed. Shelley declined to answer. Mary, who loved them both, was in misery. Shelley seemed always able to borrow against his estate; her father had no such resource. What, when they had gone abroad, perhaps for ever, was to become of him?

  There was, as a result of this unhappy situation, little intercourse with Skinner Street in the hectic weeks before the Shelleys and Claire left England. Staying at lodgings in Great Russell Street – Mary disliked them but could find no alternative – they plunged into every form of culture and entertainment the city could offer. Dinners with the Hunts and their witty, poetry-loving friend Horace Smith were interspersed by nights at the theatre or the opera. They admired the Elgin Marbles in their new home at the British Museum; they went with Peacock to see the great India Office library. (Peacock took up his appointment as a clerk at East India House shortly afterwards, following in the footsteps of Charles Lamb.) An exhibition of Salvator Rosa landscapes and a gigantic scenic view of Rome on display in the Strand whetted their appetite for the pleasures in store when they reached Italy; both Mary and Claire had already begun their background reading. Visiting the enticingly named ‘Inventors’ House’ in St Martin’s Lane, Mary listened to the Apollonicon, an astonishing painted organ with nineteen hundred pipes capable of imitating ‘all the most admired wind instruments, with the effect of a full orchestra’.33

  Isabella Booth came down from Scotland to visit her father in London. She told Mary of her plans. Six days before leaving England, Mary wrote to her, begging for a secret meeting and for a chance to introduce their young children to each other. It would be nice to think that Isabella defied her husband’s wishes and took the risk. No record survives to tell us that she did.

  It was probably Mary who decided that William, Clara and Alba should be baptized together before they left England. The service was performed on 9 March; Alba was renamed Clara Allegra, the second name having been chosen for her by Byron in memory, perhaps, of the Montalègre area in which the Shelleys had been living during their summer at Geneva.**

  Mr and Mrs Godwin, still distressed by their son-in-law’s refusal to produce the money they believed he had promised them, did not attend the triple christening, although Shelley called on them at Skinner Street that day, perhaps to request their presence. The departure was planned for 11 March. On the final evening, 10 March, Godwin’s resolve weakened and he decided to visit their lodgings in Great Russell Street. The timing was unlucky.34 Mary had just finished dining with the Hunts and Peacock, after a disappointing visit to the opera for The Barber of Seville, the first performance in England of Rossini’s work. She was exhausted after a long day of packing; Shelley fell asleep even before the Hunts went home. Then Godwin came. ‘Our adieus,’ Mary noted with her usual reserve. If she cried a little at the thought of leaving behind the father she loved and worried for so much, she was not going to admit such weakness to her diary.

  The party of eight, including the three babies, Claire, and two nurses, Elise Duvillard and young Milly Shields from Marlow, left for Dover at dawn the following day. Peacock and Horace Smith had been put in charge of their finances, a job which Peacock uneasily realized was going to involve placating a large number of angry creditors. (For a man who cared so much about public welfare, Shelley was extraordinarily indifferent to the hardship he imposed on the families from whom he freely took, for a piano, a carriage, a new set of curtains.) Two days later, after a brisk and unpleasantly choppy crossing, the travellers arrived in Calais for the third time.

  Perhaps with a view to constructing a second travel book, Shelley and Mary resumed their old habit of keeping a joint journal. Advancing towards Italy, they began to regain the high spirits of the excited runaways of 1814. ‘The sun shines bright and it is a kind of Paradise which we have arrived at …’ Mary wrote happily to the Hunts from Lyons. ‘Shelley’s health is infinitely improved and I hope the fine climate we now enjoy and are proceeding to will quite restore him …’35 Her letter bubbled with anecdotes and observations. Life offered itself again as a grand adventure, a leap into the unknown.

  Notes

  1. MWS–MH, 13.1.1817.

  2. PBS–Eliza Westbrook, 18.12.1816. Shelley’s observation was quoted in Miss Westbrook’s deposition of 10 January 1817. Although it is not certain that Mary saw this, Shelley shared most of his anxieties over the Chancery proceedings with her.

  3. Leigh Hunt, ‘To TLH During a Late Sickness’, Examiner, 1.9.1816.

  4. MWS–MH, 2.3.1817.

  5. MWS–LH, 5.3.1817.

  6. LH–Vincent Novello, 17.4.1817, in Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (1878), pp. 198–9.

  7. PBS, ‘To Constantia, Singing’ (1817), stanza 4.

  8. G.H. Lewes, Westminster Review (April 1841), p. 310, reviewing Shelley’s letters and poems. Since Lewes was a close friend of Leigh Hunt’s son, Thornton, who had been at Marlow in 1817, the allusion to Shelley’s companion is probably accurate.

  9. Dowden, Shelley, 2, pp. 121–3. Dowden’s account was based on interviews with surviving Marlow residents.

  10. Talks, pp. 66–7.

  11. MWS–PBS, 16.10.1817.

  12. MWS–MH and LH, 30.6.1817.

  13. LH–MWS, 16.11.1821 in Shelley and Mary, 4 vols. (privately printed, 1882), 3, p. 705 (hereafter S&M).

  14. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diaries, 23.12.1817 (Dr Williams’ Library) notes Kenney’s comment.

  15. LH–MWS, 16.11.1821, in S&M, 3, p. 705.

  16. PBS, ‘Dedication to Mary’ in The Revolt of Islam, first published under this title in January 1818.

  17. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1, ed. E.B. Murray (Oxford University Press, 1993).

  18. MWS–Christina Baxter, 4.1.1817.

  19. PBS–Byron, 9.7.1817.

  20. MWS–PBS, 5.10.1817.

  21. MWS–PBS, 26.9.1817.

 
22. Ibid.

  23. MWS–PBS, 24.9.1817.

  24. W.T. Baxter–Isabella Booth, 3.10.1817 (Shelley and His Circle, 5), pp. 339–40.

  25. W.T. Baxter–PBS, 29.12.1817 (ibid., pp. 380–1).

  26. David Booth–Isabella Booth, 9.1.1818 (ibid., pp. 390–2).

  27. MWS–PBS, 5.10.1817.

  28. MWS–PBS, 16.10.1817.

  29. A Shelley Library, ed. T.J. Wise (1924), p. 56. The reference here is to an edition published in 1840, supposedly from a ‘fac-simile’ reprint of one of twenty copies printed by Charles Ollier for Shelley.

  30. WG–MWS, 14–18.2.1823 (Abinger, Dep. c. 524).

  31. TLP–PBS, August 1818 (S&M‚ 2), p. 327.

  32. St Clair, G&S, p. 444.

  33. John Timbs, Curiosities of London (1855), p. 16.

  34. Godwin’s journal gives ‘Tea’ as the time of the meeting; tea equated to our after–dinner coffee.

  35. MWS–LH and MH, 22.3.1818.

  * Hunt drew attention to the custody suit in the Examiner, alluding to a Chancery case which ‘threatens to exhibit a most impolitic distinction between the Prince and the subject’ if regard was not given to ‘the most tolerant and best affections of humanity’. This, put in plainer language than Hunt dared use, was a declaration of the father’s right to be awarded custody of his children. The piece was published three days after the adjournment was announced.

  † The first and better known collection was Rejected Addresses (1812); Horace in London was published the following year.