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

by Charlotte Gordon

  Mary sent Matilda to her father to find a publisher as soon as she had finished, but the novel did not appear in print until nearly a century and a half later, in 1959. Ironically, Mary had her father to thank for this delay. Calling the manuscript “disgusting,” he refused to send it to publishers and would not return her copy. Although some biographers have assumed that this was because of the incest theme, Godwin was probably attempting to keep further scandal away from the family. Mary did not contest her father’s judgment; she did not want another rupture with him, but this was a significant loss for her career. Matilda could easily have been a popular novel, suited as it was to the era’s taste for gothic drama.

  ON NOVEMBER 12, AFTERovember 12, after just two hours of labor, Mary gave birth to little Percy Florence, named after the city where he was born. Nursing her baby helped revive Mary’s spirits. Shelley said she looked “a little consoled,” and on the day after Percy’s birth, she rallied enough to write Mrs. Gisborne:

  [He] has a nose that promises to be as large as his grandfather’s.…His health is good, and he is very lively, and even knowing for his age—although like a little dog I fancy his chief perfection lies in his nose, and that he smells me out, when he becomes quiet the moment I take him.

  On a darker note, she told Marianne Hunt:

  [Little Percy] is my only one and although he is so healthy and promising that for the life of me I cannot fear yet it is a bitter thought that all should be risked on one yet how much sweeter than to be childless as I was for 5 hateful months—Do not let us talk of those five months; when I think of all I suffered…I shudder with horror yet even now a sickening feeling steps in the way of every enjoyment when I think—of what I will not write about.

  This “sickening feeling” would stay with Mary the rest of her life, sometimes rising, sometimes in abeyance. She learned to be grateful for those times when it was in the background, almost forgotten.

  In the weeks after Percy’s birth, the days grew colder and Mary began to worry about his health, asking the Hunts to send flannel to keep him warm and complaining that the Italians made no provisions against winter. Despite her joy over her new son, Mary did not soften toward Shelley. She had lost interest in making love after William died, writing to Marianne that “a woman is not a field to be continually employed in bringing forth or enlarging grain.” Shelley, who had hoped the new baby would bring Mary back to him, was disappointed. To both husband and wife, their passion had represented an example of a true union between a man and a woman, as well as a consolation for the sacrifices they had made to be together. But after the losses Mary had sustained, she, who had always been self-contained and even-tempered in domestic life, shied away from his touch and was easily irritated, reproachful, and quarrelsome. Shelley began to dream about taking a long trip to England by himself, and he complained to Maria, “Mary feels no more remorse in torturing me than in torturing her own mind.” Claire, meanwhile, warned Mary not to drive her husband away, reflecting, “A bad wife is like Winter in a house.”

  Claire’s metaphor was remarkably apt, as the winter of 1819–20 was the worst Florence had experienced in seventy years. The only way to stay warm was to clutch small warming pots filled with embers. Shelley had found a huge serge cloak with a fur collar that he flung on before leaving the house, but Mary stayed indoors in bed with the baby. Claire entertained her by singing, her voice greatly improved by her many lessons. When he was home, Shelley read to Mary, but these quiet moments became less and less frequent. Sophia Stacey, a pretty young cousin of Shelley’s, had arrived in town that December, eager to meet her estranged relative even though he was condemned by the rest of the family.

  To Sophia, Shelley’s rakishness was part of his appeal. Headstrong and used to getting her own way, Sophia defied the wishes of her elderly traveling companion by knocking on Shelley’s door. Before long, he had won over Sophia’s guardian, who allowed him to spirit his young cousin off on expeditions, and he had a splendid time showing Sophia the sights. She did not sigh and weep like Mary. Nor did she complain about the cold. Together, they went to parties and visited the galleries. By the end of her stay, Sophia had fallen a little bit in love with her older cousin. In her diary, she carefully recorded how he had held her in his arms when lifting her out of a carriage, and how, when she had a toothache, he had come downstairs and gently applied cotton to the back of her mouth.

  The snow fell through most of January. Finally, at the end of the month, there was a thaw, and Shelley seized the opportunity to move the household to Pisa, where the weather was milder. After taking leave of a sorrowful Sophia, who was heartbroken to say goodbye to Shelley, they boarded a boat early in the morning on January 26 and arrived in the late afternoon, repairing immediately to the closest inn, the Albergo delle Tre Donzelle, on the north side of the Arno.

  Pisa appealed to Shelley for many reasons. It was affordable, since it was off the beaten tourist track; and as in Florence, the Arno ran through the center of town, so he could take walks along the water’s edge and go boating when it was spring. Renaissance palazzi lined the river, their façades faded but their elegance intact. The marble was chipped, the stonework crumbling. Everything seemed old—the mullioned windows, the dark medieval churches, the exotic Byzantine mosaics. Grass grew in the streets. There was an air of Ozymandias here—the decay, the deserted palazzi, the homes of long-gone, nameless princes—all of which suited him, and would, he knew, appeal to his wife.

  Margaret King, Mary Wollstonecraft’s student from her days in Ireland, was another draw. Now living under the assumed name of Mrs. Mason, after Wollstonecraft’s idealized governess in Original Stories, she had a home just outside Pisa. At age forty-eight, Margaret was a medical doctor and had grown into exactly the kind of woman Wollstonecraft would have admired. Having been forced by her family to marry a wealthy count (Lord Mountcashell), she had borne eight children. At age twenty-nine, she ran away with a gentle Irishman, George Tighe, who showed his independence of mind by falling for this formidable woman. Margaret was six feet tall with huge muscular arms and no interest in female fripperies. She wore shabby dresses without any stays because she said they hurt the digestion. When she was younger, she had dressed as a man so she could attend medical school in Germany. After she graduated, she and Tighe moved to Italy for the climate and the more relaxed moral atmosphere, and they were raising their two daughters in the Italian countryside.

  Both Claire and Mary admired Mrs. Mason’s radicalism. Over the years, Margaret had stayed in contact with Godwin, and after Wollstonecraft died, she had paid him several visits in London, meeting young Mary and following her career with interest. Godwin had viewed Margaret’s escape from her husband as heroic—yet another reason why his disapproval of the girls’ flight to Paris had surprised them.

  Mrs. Mason encouraged her young friends to set up housekeeping on the Lung’Arno, the city’s most fashionable avenue. Crowded with carriages and pedestrians, this avenue was the heart of Pisa. The grand palaces glittered in the golden light, and although the city would never draw the crowds that flocked to Florence, there were still many tourists who strolled along the long curve of the river admiring the views and enjoying cakes and tea at the outdoor cafés. One visitor said you could hear at least twenty languages on the Lung’Arno. The Shelleys took Mrs. Mason’s advice, moving a few times that first year until at last they settled on the spacious top floor of the Casa Frassi, where the winter sunlight streamed in the windows and the view stretched across the farmlands. The apartment had enough rooms for Shelley to have a study all to himself and for Claire and Mary to have separate spaces, vital because the sisters were once again grating on each other. Mary was annoyed by the rekindled camaraderie between Shelley and Claire; Claire was annoyed by Mary’s sarcasm and constantly gloomy mood.

  Margaret King, aka Mrs. Mason, once Mary Wollstonecraft’s student in Ireland. (illustration ill.27)

  Mary, ever the practical one in the family, was rel
ieved that food and other essentials were cheap in Pisa. She wrote to Marianne Hunt that for the first time since she had been with Shelley she was “undisturbed by weekly bills and daily expences.” She decorated the front room with potted plants and settled into a routine of taking care of Percy, reading and writing while he napped. However, despite periods of contentment, she remained irritable. She despised the “ragged-haired, shirtless condition” of the men in the street. She ridiculed the Pisan women, who allowed their gowns to drag in the dirt and wore ugly pink hats and white shoes.

  They made frequent visits to Mrs. Mason’s house, Casa Silva, which was surrounded by the citrus orchards they had come to expect, but also by surprisingly large fields of crops, as though they were back in Ireland. Known as Tatty because of his passion for growing potatoes, George Tighe was widely read in the chemistry of soil compounds and alert to the latest agronomical discoveries, placing his interests in the context of his wife’s radicalism. He reasoned that if peasants (particularly Irish ones) could grow crops more effectively and more reliably, they would be less dependent on aristocrats like Margaret’s ex-husband, the count.

  From potatoes to independence! Shelley loved this idea and, inspired by Tatty’s peculiar brand of agrarian republicanism, wrote his famous call to freedom:

  Men of England, wherefore plough

  For the lords who lay ye low?

  Wherefore weave with toil and care

  The rich robes your tyrants wear?

  The seed ye sow, another reaps;

  The wealth ye find, another keeps.

  Mary did not participate in Shelley’s new enthusiasms. She remained preoccupied with the baby, alternately ignoring her husband or snapping at him, until Shelley broke down and complained about her in letters to his friends, begging them to visit to break the tension. He grew even more despondent when the Gisbornes, who were just back from a trip to England, gave him a new volume of poems by Keats—Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. Keats, evidently, was enjoying a fertile period while Shelley was not currently working on any important poems, nor did he feel any on the horizon. Instead, he felt exhausted. The previous year, he had written to Ollier, Keats’s publisher, that he thought Keats’s Endymion was full of the “highest and finest gleams of poetry” but was so wordy and lacking in structure that it was impossible to read all the way through—“no person should possibly get to the end of it.” Now, as he read Keats’s new book, he decided the young poet was just the person he needed to see. Keats’s presence would stir him to work again and would also break the stalemate between himself and Mary. It would be like the summer with Byron all over again: there would be a rich exchange of ideas and the pleasure of a new friendship developing; best of all, everyone would write, and so it would be good for Mary, too. At any rate, he and Keats should become better friends. The unfinished poem Hyperion was the poet’s best work, he told Marianne Hunt; it demonstrated that the young man was “destined to become one of the first writers of the age.” Shelley was aware that Keats, who suffered from tuberculosis, had been advised to travel to Italy for his health, and so Shelley asked Marianne to extend an invitation to him, since he did not know how to reach the younger man himself:

  I am anxiously expecting him in Italy where I shall take care to bestow every possible attention on him. I consider his a most valuable life, & I am deeply interested in his safety. I intend to be the physician both of his body and his soul, to keep the one warm & to teach the other Greek & Spanish. I am aware indeed in part that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me and this is an additional motive & will be an added pleasure.

  Shelley could not know that Keats still regarded Shelley with ambivalence after he had ventured to give him publication advice when Hunt introduced them. Keats remained resentful of Shelley’s aristocratic background and would not have welcomed Shelley’s offer of friendship and hospitality if he had ever heard of it. Certainly, he would have detected Shelley’s condescension about his abilities. Keats had also found Mary alarming, regarding her as sharp-tongued and overly precise. After a visit to the Shelleys, Keats had written to Hunt, “Does Mrs. S cut bread and butter as neatly as ever?” He added sarcastically, “Tell her to procure some fatal scissors and cut the thread of life of all to be disappointed poets.”

  But even as Shelley was writing to Marianne, inquiring about the young poet’s whereabouts, Keats was cooped up on a ship in Naples harbor, unable to disembark until he had waited out the period of quarantine. When at last he was free to go ashore, he did not contact Shelley, and the two men would never see each other again.

  Nevertheless, Shelley still hoped for a visit from Keats and waited to hear from him, growing increasingly despondent when there was only silence. With no new company to enliven his days and without a project to work on, Shelley took more long walks—sometimes alone, sometimes with Claire, but never with Mary. However, Claire had her drawbacks, abusing Byron to anyone who would listen. His lordship had forbidden her to be in contact with him directly, leaving Shelley as the go-between—an impossible situation, as Shelley saw it. By early June, around the anniversary of William’s death, Claire and Mary had descended into a state of mutual exasperation. As Claire wrote in her journal, “Heigh-ho the Clare & the Mai / Find something to fight about every day.” In desperation, Shelley issued an invitation to a childhood friend and distant cousin, Thomas Medwin, to come change the mood in the house. Medwin wrote that he would come but would not arrive for several more weeks.

  That summer, news came from Naples that little Elena had died and that their old servant Paolo wanted payment for his role in covering up her identity. Mary urged Shelley to review their finances. She did not want Paolo to ruin them; also, Godwin continued to ask for money, though she had repeatedly told him that they did not have much to spare. With uncharacteristic practicality, her husband agreed, going over his accounts and becoming overwhelmed as he did so. “My affairs are in a state of the most complicated embarrassment,” Shelley wrote Godwin, adding that if Godwin petitioned them again, he would not show Mary her father’s letters as they “produce an appalling effect on her frame; on one occasion, agitation of mind produced through her a disorder in the child [Percy], similar to that which destroyed our little girl two years ago.”

  Although Shelley delivered this stern message, it was likely Mary’s idea. She was breast-feeding Percy, and her milk supply faltered when she was anxious; when it came to the baby, Godwin’s feelings no longer mattered. She was dedicated to Percy’s health, determinedly hiking through the countryside, partly because she had heard that exercise stimulated milk production and also, of course, because she had read her mother’s books preaching the virtues of maternal vigor.

  At the end of the month, Shelley put Paolo off with a token payment and moved his family to a small house in the spa town of Bagni di Pisa, about four miles outside Pisa. Here he wrote The Witch of Atlas, a poem that disappointed Mary. This was the first time she had ever been critical of his work. Although she thought it was beautiful, she felt it had no plot and no realistic characters and therefore would not appeal to ordinary readers who lacked Shelley’s imaginative powers. Mary longed for Shelley to be a success, not for the wealth it might bring them but for his own sake, for the acclaim she felt he deserved. Still, Shelley was hurt by her lack of enthusiasm and wrote an acerbic little dedication:

  TO MARY (ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST)

  How, my dear Mary,—are you critic-bitten

  (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,

  That you condemn these verses I have written,

  Because they tell no story, false or true?

  Despite this quarrel, life gradually became more tranquil. Mary and Shelley took dips in the baths, explored the countryside, and enjoyed the beauties of the Italian summer. Claire left for a few days to stay with the Masons, giving the two sisters a welcome break from each other. Mrs. Mason, wh
o viewed Claire as an honorary Wollstonecraft, was worried by her reports of the arguments with Mary and began a campaign to persuade Claire to stay in Livorno for the month of September and then move to Florence to prepare herself for suitable employment. When Claire protested, Mrs. Mason asserted her medical expertise, telling her young friend that she needed to leave for the sake of her health. She also worried that if Claire stayed with the Shelleys much longer, she would lose any chance of finding a position as a teacher or lady’s companion, not to mention a husband, telling Claire that her continued association with Mary and Shelley was bad for her reputation.

  Shelley and Claire did not want to separate, but Mrs. Mason rarely lost a battle, and Shelley, defeated by the ex-countess, delivered Claire to Florence that September, where she set up residence with friends of the Masons. Relieved that Claire was gone, Mary sprang into action, finishing the research for the novel she had begun to dream of in Naples, Valperga, and starting to write in earnest, filling her pages with details that Shelley said she had “raked out of fifty old books.” And indeed, to the modern reader, Valperga’s historical veracity is daunting. The text fairly bristles with Italian phrases; Mary expounds on the ins and outs of thirteenth-century Italian politics, making the novel somewhat slow going for those who are not as interested in this period as Mary was.