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

by Charlotte Gordon

  32 “that world where” Ibid., 53.

  33 “She had two” Ibid., 6.

  34 “freed her mind” Margaret’s unpublished autobiography, quoted in Janet Todd, MW:ARL, 116.

  CHAPTER NINE: MARY GODWIN: THE BREAK (1814)

  1 who held her tightly Mary and Shelley kept a joint journal until Shelley’s death. In Shelley’s account of their elopement, he wrote, “she was in my arms.” PBS, July 28, 1814. Paula Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, eds., The Journals of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 1814–1844 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987; reprint, 1995), 6.

  2 “Mary, look” July 28, 1814, Journals MWS, 7.

  3 “a fat lady” July 29, 1814, ibid.

  4 freedom from slavery PBS, July 29, 1814, ibid., 8.

  5 Mary-Jane was a dangerous For an example of one such letter, see Mary-Jane Godwin to Lady Mountcashell, November 15, 1814, in Dowden, Life of Shelley, appendix, 2:546–48.

  6 Harriet, also launched Seymour, MS, 100.

  7 He had won This is Seymour’s point. She argues that Shelley believed “Tyranny had been vanquished.” Ibid., 99.

  8 Buttoned up to the chin Seymour writes, “the primly dressed and bonneted English girls felt embarrassed and out of place among the revealing, clinging gowns of Parisian ladies.” MS, 105.

  9 “too happy” August 2, 1814, Journals MWS, 9.

  10 their “bridal night” “The Revolt of Islam.” In this, Shelley’s second long poem after “Queen Mab,” Shelley’s description of the romantic union of Laon and Cyntha is based on his relationship with Mary. The passages used to describe Mary and Shelley’s first night together are from Laon and Cyntha’s first night of passion: “eager lips,” stanza xxxiii; “her white arms,” stanza xxix; “I felt the blood,” stanza xxxiv; “speechless swoon,” stanza xxxiv. Thomas Hutchinson, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914).

  11 Mary told Shelley In their joint journal, Shelley wrote, “[Mary] feels as if our love would alone suffice to resist the invasions of calamity. She rested on my bosom & seemed even indifferent to take sufficient food for the sustenance of life.” August 7, 1814, Journals MWS, 11.

  12 “delightful” to walk August 7, 1814, ibid.

  13 “filth, misery, and famine” PBS to HS, August 13, 1814, Letters PBS, 1:392.

  14 rats ran across Jane’s face August 12, 1814, Journals MWS, 13.

  15 “the glorious founders” William Godwin, Fleetwood (London: 1853), 74.

  16 “firm and constant” PBS to HS, August 13, 1814, Letters PBS, 1:392.

  17 “Their immensity” August 19, 1814, Journals MWS, 17.

  18 Mary had lied August 20, 1814, Marion Kingston Stocking, ed., The Journals of Claire Clairmont (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). Jane, who changed her name to Claire, added this story when she revised her original journal in 1820. The original diary is in the British Library (Ashley 394).

  19 ridiculously puritanical Ibid.

  20 the Swiss “are rich” August 25, 1814, ibid.

  21 “conjectur[ing] the astonishment” August 26, 1814, Journals MWS, 20.

  22 forests of beech Godwin, Fleetwood, 73.

  23 they had to wait August 26, 1814, Journals MWS, 20.

  24 “Our only wish” August 28, 1814, ibid.

  25 There was a disturbing legend For a more complete retelling of the legend, see Seymour, MS, 11.

  CHAPTER TEN: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: LONDON (1786–1787)

  1 “philosophical sloven” John Knowles, The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli (London: 1831), 164.

  2 “despair and vexations” This is a phrase that Mary used later that fall to describe her situation. MW to Everina, November 7, [1787], Letters MW, 139.

  3 Between 1750 and 1801 Roy Porter, London: A Social History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 131.

  4 “Here you have the Advantage of solitude” Henry Fielding, The Works of Henry Fielding, with Memoir of the Author, ed. Thomas Roscoe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1845), 121. Also available on Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=JGYOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

  5 “the clouds of Stinking Breathes” Quoted in Porter, London: A Social History, 162.

  6 “a common and most noisome sewer” Quoted in ibid.

  7 the average age Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 13.

  8 “whoever is sick” Quoted in Porter, London: A Social History, 165.

  9 the river “was almost hidden” Ibid., 138.

  10 “a long wintry forest” Quoted in ibid., 136.

  11 “I am then going to be the first of a new genus” MW to Everina, November 7, [1787], Letters MW, 139.

  12 But Mary was the first female writer “Wollstonecraft differed from previous literary women,” writes the scholar Mary Waters, because “her connection with Johnson was not simply that of an author to the bookseller who purchased her finished manuscripts for publication.…Rather, Wollstonecraft had engaged with Johnson as a staff writer who would accept the work assigned to her and in return could count on a steady supply of literary work coming her way.” British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism 1789–1832 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 86.

  13 “I have determined on one thing” MW to George Blood, May 16, [1788], Letters MW, 154.

  14 “disasters and difficulties” MW to George Blood, March 3, [1788], ibid., 148.

  15 “If I have ever any money” MW to Everina, March 22, [1788], ibid., 152.

  16 Mary made many dramatic departures My discussion of Wollstonecraft’s translation is based on Todd’s exegesis in MW:ARL, 135–36.

  17 like “fetters” Christian Salzmann, Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children, 3 vols. (London: 1792), 2:106.

  18 “[He] put her hair in papers” Ibid., 106–7.

  19 “Why do you wish to go” Ibid., 114–17.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: MARY GODWIN: LONDON AND BISHOPSGATE (1814–1815)

  1 “was sick as death” September 11, 1814, Journals CC.

  2 One afternoon, Mary-Jane Holmes, Pursuit, 251.

  3 Furious at the pain Sunstein, MS:R&R, 88–89. Shelley wrote Mary, “I have been shocked and staggered by Godwin’s cold injustice.” October 24, 1814, Letters PBS, 1:420.

  4 he would have to be everything Mary wrote to Shelley, “hug your own Mary to your heart perhaps she will one day have a father till then be everything to me love,” October 28, 1814, Bennett, ed., Letters MWS, 1:3.

  5 “the witching hour” October 7, 1814, Journals MWS, 32.

  6 “Just as the dawn” Ibid., 33.

  7 he “sheltered himself” Mary Shelley, Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839; Project Gutenberg, 2002, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4695/4695.txt).

  8 she also decided to change her name For a discussion of why Jane changed her name to Claire, see Deirdre Coleman, “Claire Clairmont and Mary Shelley: Identification and Rivalry Within the ‘Tribe of the Otaheite Philosophers,’ ” Women’s Writing 6, no. 3 (1999), 309–28, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09699089900200075?journalCode=rwow20#preview (accessed September 18, 2013).

  9 “I made one dark, the other fair” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (New York: Modern Library, 1945), 444.

  10 “community of women” Marion Kingston Stocking, the editor of Claire’s journals, suggests that Claire’s idea of a “community of women” may have come from reading Ludvig Holberg’s book A Journey to the World Under-Ground, which describes an underground society in which women are superior. October 7, 1814, Journals MWS, 32 n1.

  11 She dreamed of writing a novel Journals CC, 40.

  12 “Let every female” James Lawrence, introduction to The Empire of the Nairs; or, The Rights of Women: An Utopian Romance, in Twelve Books, 4 vols. (London: T. Hookham, 1811), I, xvii.

  13 “ought to be ushered” Decembe
r 6, 1814, Journals MWS, 50.

  14 “love of Wisdom” November 29, 1814, ibid., 48.

  15 weak and confused Ibid. For more complaints about Hogg, see November 20, 1814, ibid.

  16 “I…love him” MWS to Hogg, January 24, 1815, Letters MWS, 1:9.

  17 Mary backpedaled See Seymour’s account of the complicated relationship of Shelley, Hogg, and Mary in MS, 125–30.

  18 “My baby is dead” MWS to Hogg, [March 6, 1815], Letters MWS, 1:11.

  19 “Dream that my little baby” March 19, 1815, Journals MWS, 70.

  20 witty little notes Referring to herself as “the Dormouse,” Mary wrote, “The Dormouse is going to take a long ramble today among green fields & solitary lanes as happy as any little Animal could be in finding herself in her native nests again,” MWS to Hogg, April 25, 1815, Letters MWS, 1:14.

  21 Shelley’s “friend” May 12, 1815, Journals MWS, 78.

  22 “so much discontent” CC to FG, May 5, 1815, Letters CC.

  23 her “regeneration” May [date?], 1815, Journals MWS, 79.

  24 “Mary, have I dined?” quoted in Sunstein, MS:R&R, 104.

  25 According to Hogg Life of Shelley, 2:320–22.

  26 “hereditary aristocracy” quoted in Sunstein, MS:R&R, 105.

  27 “I never before felt the integrity” PBS to Hogg, October 4, 1814, Letters PBS, 1:403.

  28 “You alone reconcile me” PBS to MWS, November 4, 1814, ibid., 1:419.

  29 “elfin Knight” May 1815, Journals MWS, 80.

  30 “a poet’s heart” Mary Shelley, “Notes on Alastor, by Mrs. Shelley” in Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (1816; London: Scribner’s, 1926–30), 10 vols., 1:198.

  31 the issue that most gripped her Seymour provides a comprehensive account of Mary’s reading on slavery. MS, 138–39.

  32 “My astonishment” PBS to Godwin, March 1816, Letters PBS, 1:460.

  33 the annual income of skilled Brian Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 153.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: THE FIRST VINDICATION (1787–1791)

  1 “the HISTORIANS of the Republic” Stuart Andrews, The British Periodical Press and the French Revolution, 1789–99 (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 157.

  2 “add to the stock” Gerald Tyson, Joseph Johnson: A Liberal Publisher (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979), 99.

  3 were “trash” MW to Joseph Johnson, [c. July 1788], Letters MW, 156.

  4 “unnatural characters” Analytical Review 2/1789, in Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler, eds., The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: New York University Press, 1989), 7:82–83.

  5 “scribbling women” Mitzi Myers, “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Literary Reviews,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Claudia Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 85.

  6 “poison the minds” quoted in ibid.

  7 “Why is virtue to be always rewarded” Analytical Review, in Todd and Butler, ed., Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, 7:228.

  8 This does not mean that Mary was against sentiment See Myers, “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Literary Reviews,” in Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, 84.

  9 “indiscriminately from tea cups” Knowles, The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli (London: 1831), 165.

  10 “timid, mean” quoted in Todd, MW:ARL, 138.

  11 “an heterogeneous” Analytical Review in Todd and Butler, ed., Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, 7:19.

  12 “Ye dungeons” “The Task” in William Cowper and James Thomson, The Works of Cowper and Thomson (Philadelphia: 1832), 88.

  13 “Advice is received from Paris” St. Clair, Godwins and the Shelleys, 41.

  14 “I have seen, within a year” Quoted in Kirstin Olsen, Daily Life in Eighteenth-Century England (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999), 10.

  15 “hailed the dawn” The French Revolution, 213. Wollstonecraft wrote these words a few years later, when she had come to view the taking of the Bastille as a far more complicated event than she had at first hoped. Ultimately, she would argue that the taking of the prison unleashed the violence that would result in the Terror. But she always acknowledged its fall as an important event in the history of the Revolution and remembered how she too had believed that it would result in greater freedom for the French and for all humankind. Diane Jacobs provides a thorough analysis of Wollstonecraft’s graduated endorsement of the Revolution. She also connects Wollstonecraft’s “melting” over the Bastille with her new relationship with Henry Fuseli. Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 88.

  16 his liaisons with men and women Todd, MW:ARL, 153.

  17 “phallic coiffures” Simon Schama, A History of Britain, vol. 3, The Fate of Empire, 1776–2000 (New York: Miramax Books, Hyperion, 2002), 76.

  18 Recent scholars have even suggested Lyndall Gordon writes, “Is it possible that Mary stumbled on love at the heart of the lifelong intimacy of Johnson and Fuseli? Same sex love could explain Mary’s silence on the subject of Fuseli.…” VAL, 386–87.

  19 “masculine” style Wollstonecraft, Vindication of Woman, 26–27.

  20 ready to embrace the new ideals Although many scholars agree with this depiction of Wollstonecraft as a pioneering figure in the Romantic movement, there are some notable exceptions. Barbara Taylor argues, “Not much is to be gained, in my view, from classifying Wollstonecraft as a romantic or pre-romantic writer. Her debt to earlier eighteenth-century sources for her ‘romantic’ themes is readily traced…and treating her ideas as anticipations of later romantic motifs is less illuminating to my mind than understanding them in their own terms.” Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 282 n208.

  21 “artless energy” Analytic Review 7 (May 1790). Jacobs provides a comprehensive discussion of the change in Wollstonecraft’s outlook during this period; see HOW, 89.

  22 to make Fuseli’s wife uneasy “an uneasy mind,” Todd, MW:ARL, 154.

  23 “My die is cast!” MW to Everina, September 4, [1790], Letters MW, 178.

  24 “precedent, authority, and example” Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London (London: J. Dodsley, 1790), 45.

  25 “turgid bombast” Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (London: J. Johnson, 1790), 62.

  26 “flowers of rhetoric” Ibid., 6. Wollstonecraft would also use this argument against the “flowers of rhetoric” in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. As Laura Runge writes, “Wollstonecraft employs her strongest rhetoric to counteract the persuasiveness of gallantry, ‘those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence.’…She exposes the illusion of female mastery that is ambiguously encoded in the language of gallantry by emphasizing how the seductive forms of language actually infantilize women and circumscribe their agency.” Gender and Language in British Literary Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 24.

  27 “[The poor] must respect” Ibid., 135–36.

  28 “Charity is not” Ibid., 11.

  29 “champion of property” Ibid., 19.

  30 “piqued her pride” Godwin, Memoirs, 78.

  31 “hyena in petticoats” Horace Walpole to Hannah More, January 24, 1795. Helen Toynbee and Paget Toynbee, ed., The Letters of Horace Walpole: Fourth Earl of Oxford, vol. 15 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), 337.

  32 “The rights of men asserted by a fair lady!” The Gentleman’s Magazine 1791, 151, http://books.google.com/books?id=1K5JAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA151&lpg=PA151&dq=The+rights+of+men+asserted+by+a+fair+lady!+.

  33 “happy in having such an advocate” Dr. Price to MW, January 17, 1790, Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle (New York: New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, 1822).

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: MARY
GODWIN: “MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW” (1816)

  1 “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Quoted in Paul Douglas, The Life of Lady Caroline Lamb (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 104.

  2 “I can never resist” Claire’s remarks about marriage come directly after she has quoted Dante’s “inscription over the gate of Hell ‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate’ [Abandon hope, all who enter here]. I think it is a most admirable description of marriage. The subject makes me prolix.” CC to Byron, [March or April 1816], Marion Kingston Stocking, ed., The Clairmont Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Fanny Imlay Godwin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 31.

  3 “There be none of Beauty’s daughters” “Stanzas for Music,” Lord Byron, The Works of Lord Byron, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (1900; Project Gutenberg, 2007, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21811/21811.txt).

  4 But his enthusiasm soon ebbed For a summary of their relationship with excerpts from their letters, see Mayne, Byron, 62–65.

  5 Mary did love Byron’s poetry See Seymour on Mary, Shelley, and Claire’s admiration of Byron, MS, 148–49.

  6 “But I am exclusively thine” Mary Shelley’s inscription in “Queen Mab,” quoted in St. Clair, Godwins and the Shelleys, 366.

  7 “The glance” Byron, “To Thyrza” in The Works of Lord Byron, ed. Coleridge.

  8 “I have pledged” Mary Shelley’s inscription in “Queen Mab,” quoted in St. Clair, Godwins and the Shelleys, 366.

  9 She had some trepidation In a letter to Byron, preparing him for the meeting with Mary, Claire urged him to be on time: “On Thursday Evening I waited nearly a quarter of an hour in your hall, which though I may overlook the disagreeableness—she, who is not in love would not.…She is very curious to see you.” CC to Byron, April 21, 1816, TCC, 39.

  10 “Mary is delighted” CC to Byron, April 21, 1816, ibid.

  11 “desert my native country” PBS to Godwin, February 21, 1816, Letters PBS, 1:453.

  12 “morbidly sensitive” PBS to Godwin, December 1816, Letters PBS, 1:460.