Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley

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Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley Page 30

by Charlotte Gordon


  Bathing naked had never appealed to Mary, as Shelley well remembered from the first time he had invited her to join him. But even if it had, she had a ten-month-old and a two-year-old who came first. In this new home, with the rich drafts of mountain air blowing through the window, the sparkle of the rushing river, and the abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit from the market in the village, she instituted a regime of playtime, frequent baths, and nutritious meals. Wilmouse might consent to play with Aunt Claire or Milly, but he preferred his mother, and she in turn liked to be there to admire his discoveries, answer his questions, or comfort him after a fall; meanwhile little Clara was beginning to get her first teeth and was often so miserable that only her mother could console her.

  Mary did not resent these interruptions. After the death of her first baby, she was grateful to have two healthy children. With corn-silk hair, a long elfin face, and huge expressive eyes, Wilmouse was rarely naughty, but quiet like his mother and very attached to her. Although Shelley did not like “squallers,” as he called infants, he doted on William, who was now old enough to laugh at his father’s games and jokes. Mary had read her mother’s books on childrearing and gave Wilmouse far more freedom than was usual for the time. She was planning to allow Clara the same liberties once the little girl could walk. Like Wollstonecraft, she believed in vigorous outdoor exercise for both girls and boys, and this was easy to achieve at the Villa Bertini. Wilmouse could run out onto the lawn and Clara could crawl toward the laurels with no danger from the road. It was an ideal spot for the children. Wilmouse had not had a fever since England. Clara, too, was growing bigger and stronger every day, and when she was not teething, she was growing increasingly independent, giving Mary the time to work.

  Alone in her study, she devoted herself to reading Ariosto. This Renaissance poet had once lived in the region, and Mary liked to immerse herself in the literature of the places where she lived. Shelley had raved about Ariosto’s dramatic poem Orlando Furioso, which had curious similarities to Frankenstein. When Orlando is rejected in love, he goes on a murderous rampage, destroying everything in his path. In addition, there are monsters and several supernatural passages, including a trip to the moon, as well as many tragic love affairs—exactly the sort of literature the Shelleys enjoyed.

  Meanwhile, Shelley had decided his next undertaking would be to translate Plato’s Symposium. Today this may seem like a staid scholarly choice, but in 1818, the Symposium was considered immoral for its frank discussion of homosexual love. In fact, it would take thirty more years for Oxford to include any of Plato’s works on the college’s list of approved readings. But of course that was precisely what appealed to Shelley. Mary did her best to help him with the translation, studying Greek in the morning, memorizing irregular verbs and learning vocabulary. Like Shelley, she embraced Plato’s ideas, writing to Maria:

  It is true that in many particulars [The Symposium] shocks our present manners, but no one can be a reader of the works of antiquity unless they can transport themselves from these to their times and judge not by our but by their morality.

  Mary and Shelley shared a belief in what Shelley called a “civilized love.” To Shelley, true love was not mere physical attraction. He and Mary existed on a plane above lust, their souls so in tune with each other that they were like the strings “of two exquisite lyres” that “vibrate” as one. In a commentary on his translation, Shelley asserted Wollstonecraft’s point that an imbalance in power between the sexes made men masters and women slaves, and that without equality there could be no true love. This was also Plato’s belief, Shelley said, although Plato thought that such an ideal love could exist only between men—a mistake, Shelley argued. Women were not the inferior beings Plato assumed them to be. Wollstonecraft and her daughter were examples of just how brilliant women could be when freed from servitude.

  His description of what ancient Greek women were not (and why Greek men had to find love with one another) helps explain what he felt he had discovered in Mary:

  [Women in ancient Greece] were certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual loveliness with which the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of sentiment animates, as with another life of overpowering grace, the lineaments and the gestures of every form which it inhabits. Their eyes could not have been deep and intricate from the workings of the mind, and could have entangled no heart in soul-enwoven labyrinths.

  Mary knew that Shelley loved what he called her ability to see “into the truth of things.” Again and again, he had told her that it was not her red-gold hair, not her white shoulders, not her smooth forehead or delicate mouth that drew him to her, although all of these helped. It was her spirit and her mind.

  During July, Mary copied Shelley’s translation in her tidy hand so he could send it to his publisher. As she worked, she felt a quiet satisfaction. She wrote letters to the Hunts and to her father, with whom she and Shelley were in frequent correspondence. Much as she looked forward to hearing from Godwin, his letters were always a mixed blessing. He detailed his financial problems, insisting that it was Shelley’s responsibility to pay off his debts. Mary knew that her husband’s finances were also in disarray, but she did not like to disappoint her father. In addition, Godwin had resumed his role as Mary’s severest critic and urged her to start a new book. He even had a topic he thought she should pursue—a history of the English revolution. But Mary did not feel ready to start a new project. She was happy to steep herself in Shelley’s version of Plato. She appreciated his mastery of this beautiful language; reading his translation was like listening to a philosophical discussion between her husband and his scholarly friends.

  For seven weeks, they enjoyed their hilltop retreat. Wilmouse thrilled Shelley by saying “Father,” and eleven-month-old Clara was on the brink of becoming a toddler. She had begun to eat a little solid food, and although she was not yet walking, she could pull herself up on the furniture and crawl after her big brother on his adventures. She was the right age to point at the birds outside the window, play peek-a-boo, laugh at Wilmouse’s antics, and enjoy outings to the village. Mary rejoiced in her little girl, this beautiful second chance at a daughter. She and Claire could teach her the Wollstonecraft legacy of independence and thirst for knowledge. Who knew what this child might accomplish?

  But in mid-August, a heat spell crept in over the mountains, and as the days became unbearably humid, everyone suffered. Clara, or little Ca as Shelley called her, developed a high fever, and Mary was desperately worried. Claire’s ankle had healed, but she was grumpy after injuring her other leg while riding with Shelley in the woods. Shelley was restless, having lost the attention of both Mary and Claire. Then, on August 14 and 16, two letters arrived in quick succession from Venice. Life with Lord Byron was a disaster, Elise wrote. He had forced her to move out with little Allegra, and if Claire cared about her daughter, she needed to rescue her from his lordship’s clutches immediately. Byron was so debauched that he wanted to raise her as his future mistress. Wild though these claims were, Claire took Elise’s words at face value. Mary and Shelley did not, but they also realized that something terrible must have happened for Elise to write such an urgent plea. Perhaps Byron had gotten drunk and assaulted Elise. Maybe she was frightened for her own safety.

  At Claire’s insistence, she and Shelley left immediately for Venice, taking Paolo with them and leaving a disgruntled Mary home with Milly and the two children. Suddenly the silence in Villa Bertini was frightening. When she was living ensconced in her family, the isolation had suited Mary, but now she was too much alone. A two-and-a-half-year-old and an eleven-month-old were a handful in the best of circumstances. The sticky summer heat persisted and Clara’s fever spiked—all of her teeth seemed to be coming through at the same time. Milly had no words of advice. Clara was the first baby she had taken care of, and when the baby was this miserable, she refused to leave her mother’s lap. Milly tried to entertain the bored and listless Wilmouse, but he, too, clung to his mo
ther. At her wits’ end, Mary wrote to the Gisbornes begging for help. Maria, alarmed at the tone of Mary’s letter, arrived as fast as she could and found Mary holding a very sick little girl. She did her best to help, but she could not assuage Mary’s fears. The death of her first baby haunted the young mother. She could not bear the thought of losing Ca.

  Into this misery sailed a letter from Shelley. Mary opened it, hoping he had somehow intuited how awful things were and was coming home. Instead, the letter said he needed her to come to Venice immediately. He had mapped out the trip for her and counted the days it would take her to arrive, allowing one day to pack and four days to travel. She had to come, he said, because he had lied to Byron, telling him that it was Mary who was waiting in the wings to receive Allegra, not Claire; Byron’s “horror” of Claire might prevent him from handing the child over, and also, paradoxically, his lordship would disapprove of Shelley’s staying alone with Claire. They needed Mary to come if they wanted to save little Alba.

  Mary had to make up her mind immediately. Either she started packing or she stayed home, disappointing Shelley and perhaps endangering Allegra. Her old worry that Shelley would abandon her resurfaced. If she did not go, she worried that her husband would never return to her. Perhaps Claire would succeed in stealing him away. She yearned to fly to his side. But she was torn. Clara’s fever was worsening and she had begun to suffer from dysentery, one of the most dangerous diseases of the era. Dehydrated, she needed quiet, liquids, and rest. The trip to Venice would be hot, exhausting, and long. The inns were unreliable, as was the food. Finally, though, the thought of letting Shelley down was too much to bear. Mary spent her twenty-first birthday packing up the house while Maria took care of Clara, an uncanny replication of what had happened exactly twenty-one years earlier, although this time around, Maria was tending to Mary’s daughter, not Wollstonecraft’s motherless girl.

  Mary left on August 31. Shelley had sent Paolo to help, but there was little the servant could do to make the trip any easier. It took four days, as Shelley had said it would, and when at last they arrived at the mansion Byron was lending them in Este, a town about a ten-hour journey from Venice, Clara was slipping in and out of consciousness. When she did open her eyes, she did not seem to recognize anyone. Even Wilmouse could not make her smile.

  They were greeted by Claire, Allegra, and Shelley, who recited a beautiful little poem he had written for Mary: “As sunset to the sphered moon / As twilight to the western star, / Thou, Beloved, art to me.” Despite Clara’s worsening condition, Mary’s spirits improved after hearing this testimonial to her husband’s love. Surely, her daughter would recover here. After all, Shelley was not worried. “Poor little Ca” would get better, he told his wife. Byron’s house, Il Cappuccini, was magnificent, as all of his residences were. It was set in the plains of Lombardy; from the garden they could see as far west as the Apennines, and to the east, the horizon “was lost in misty distance.” The wide expanse was gratifying after living in the woods in the Villa Bertini. A stone-flagged path led under a pergola to a summerhouse where Shelley worked each day. The ruins of Este Castle were nearby, just across a ravine, its walls so massive that if William shouted there was a glorious echo. At night owls and bats “flitted forth” and they could watch “the crescent moon s[ink] behind the black and heavy battlements.”

  But though Clara held on, she did not improve. She turned one on September 2, and as the month drew to an end, she grew steadily weaker. Shelley paid a visit to Byron, who suggested they consult his personal physician in Venice. Mary and Clara left Este at three o’clock in the morning on September 24, leaving William with Claire and Milly. After more than ten hours of travel, the baby started convulsing. Mary was helpless. She kissed the sick child’s forehead, smoothed back her hair, sang songs of comfort, tried to get her to sip water, but nothing could slow the terrible process. Clara was slipping away. Alone, exhausted, and overwhelmed, Mary knew that “life and death hung upon our speedy arrival at Venice.”

  When at last they arrived, Shelley rushed them into the inn, and while Mary waited in the hallway holding the baby, he ran for the doctor. But it was too late. By the time he returned, Ca had stopped breathing. Mary clutched her little girl and would not let go. She refused to speak to Shelley or help make the necessary arrangements. “This is the Journal book of misfortunes,” she wrote that night in the notebook that contained her record of the last year, including Fanny and Harriet’s deaths. After consulting Byron, Shelley buried Clara on the Lido without erecting any kind of marker, an act that has never been remedied. The Lido is now a crowded beach resort. If one wants to pay tribute to the little girl, one must brave the crowds, the tourists in their swimming suits, the lines outside the pizza joints, and the couples strolling on the sand to imagine one’s own memorial for Clara Shelley.

  Byron paid the heartbroken Mary a visit and tried to distract her by giving her a task: to copy two of his newest poems for his publisher. Self-centered though it may sound, Byron wanted to help Mary recover, and this was his way of offering her a distraction. Mary politely agreed to transcribe the poems for Byron, but any healing was a long way off. Her spirits did not lift even when she was reunited with Wilmouse in Este. She found it exquisitely painful to watch Claire with Allegra. She believed that her own little girl would still be alive if she had not traveled across Italy to help Claire. Shelley, too, was culpable. He should have been more cautious, less demanding. If William, his favorite, had been the sick one, he would never have allowed them to make the trip.

  The reason for their ill-fated journey to Venice—Elise’s accusations—no longer mattered to Mary, but Shelley applied himself to finding out whether Allegra was safe with Byron, at last determining that Elise’s claims were false. He convinced Claire that Elise had overstated matters, and so once again she surrendered Allegra to Byron, who placed the child in the safekeeping of the British consul in Venice, Richard Hoppner, and his wife. But Elise refused to stay with his lordship, evidence that her terror probably had more to do with her own situation than Allegra’s. Shelley took her back as Wilmouse’s nurse and sent Milly home to England. Before Clara died, they had decided to spend the winter in Naples, and Shelley kept to the plan, packing up his family and organizing the trip entirely on his own as Mary had retreated into a stony, impervious silence. Saddened by the intensity of her grief and her detachment from him, Shelley recorded his lament in a secret notebook:

  Wilt thou forget the happy hours

  Which we buried in Love’s sweet bowers

  Heaping over their corpses cold

  Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?

  Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet

  There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,

  Memories that make the heart a tomb,

  Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,

  And with ghastly whispers tell

  That joy, once lost, is pain.

  In reality, Shelley did not need to keep this poem hidden from Mary. If she had read these lines, she would likely have nodded in agreement rather than seeing them as an accusation. To her, all joy was indeed gone. And in its place was a terrible, aching nothingness, worse than pain, worse than gloom. She began to wonder if she was being punished for the hurt she had caused others. Maybe this was Harriet’s revenge.

  CHAPTER 22

  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: ABANDONED

  [ 1794–1795 ]

  Imlay sailed to London in the late summer of 1794, Mary decided to take Fanny and go to Paris. Le Havre had lost what little charm it had possessed now that Gilbert was gone. Her sense of being alone was intensified, as she had still not received any letters from her sisters. For their part, Eliza and Everina had resorted to writing to Johnson; just as Mary had suspected, they had not received any of her letters, and so it was through him that they learned the news about Mary’s “husband” and child. Now they were waiting to hear what impact this would have on their lives. Would Mary invite them to P
aris to meet the baby? Would she ask them to live with her and her American? Could they finally quit their jobs? These questions went unresolved for the moment, since the mail remained unreliable.

  Having economized by taking a public coach on the trip to Paris, Mary was alarmed when the coach almost tipped over four times. Fanny clung to Mary and cried, refusing to leave her mother’s lap. When Mary finally dismounted with her baby in her arms, she went straight to Imlay’s old apartment, but once she was there his absence only seemed all the more palpable.

  But with each day that passed, Mary adjusted to life back in the capital. It helped that Paris was slowly returning to life. People strolled through the streets, dressed up for parties and the theater, laughing and gossiping without fear of the authorities. There were outdoor concerts and festivals, some of which commemorated the trauma Parisians had experienced in novel ways, such as the famous “Ball of the Victims” at the Hôtel Richelieu. Mary did not go, but everyone was talking about it when she arrived in the city. Only those who had lost someone to the guillotine were invited. Men cut their hair short to emulate the victims, and women painted a thin red line around their necks. There were other equally macabre events. On September 21, Mary took Fanny to the Pantheon to watch the Jacobins exhume the body of Mirabeau—a leader of the early Revolution who had been scorned as too moderate and whom Mary had greatly admired—and bury their hero, the more radical Marat, in Mirabeau’s place. Fanny, unaware of what was happening, delighted in the “loud music” and “scarlet waistcoat[s],” Mary wrote Gilbert.

  For Mary, some of these changes were more hopeful than others. She was glad to see that it was the rage to avoid any appearance of the “artificiality” that had once been so prized by Lady Kingsborough and Mrs. Dawson, her erstwhile employers. Silk, satin, velvet, brocade, and ribbons had gone the way of the ancien régime; panniers, hoops, and pinched waists stank of aristocratic privilege. Designers looked to ancient Rome and Greece for inspiration. Gowns were meant to reveal the beauties of the natural form, not conceal them.

 

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