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

by Charlotte Gordon

  23 “this struggle” Ibid., 252.

  24 “uncommonly healthy” MW to Ruth Barlow, July 8, 1794, ibid., 254.

  25 “so manfully” MW to Ruth Barlow, May 20, 1794, ibid.

  26 giving Ellefson According to a recently discovered letter (2005) that Mary wrote to the Danish foreign minister in 1796, she was actually the last English person to see the silver and had been the one to give Ellefson his parting instructions, as Imlay was away on business when Ellefson set sail: “I, Sir, gave Elefsen [sic] his last orders,” she declared. See Lyndall Gordon and Gunnar Molder, “The Treasure Seeker,” The Guardian, January 7, 2005.

  27 “peace [would] take place” MW to Everina, September 20, 1794, Letters MW, 262.

  28 some “knavery” MW to Imlay, August 20, 1794, ibid., 259.

  29 “[business] is the idea” MW to Imlay, August 17, 1794, ibid., 257.

  30 “There are qualities” MW to Imlay, August 19, 1794, ibid., 258.

  31 “reserve of temper” MW to Imlay, August 20, 1794. ibid., 259.

  32 four hundred thousand Europeans Stefan Riedel, “Edward Jenner and the History of Smallpox and Vaccination,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings 18, no. 1 (2005), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/.

  33 “treat th[e] dreadful” MW to Everina, September 20, 1794, Letters MW, 262.

  34 like a “slave” MW to Imlay, September 28, 1794, ibid., 267.

  35 “She has got” MW to Imlay, August 19, 1794, ibid., 258.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: MARY SHELLEY: ITALY, “THE HAPPY HOURS” (1818–1819)

  1 “The fruit trees” MWS to the Hunts, April [6], 1818, Letters MWS, 1:63.

  2 “there is more fruit” PBS to Peacock, April 20, 1818, Percy Shelley, Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mary Shelley (London: Moxon, 1845), 106.

  3 “two large halls” Mary’s description of a fictional villa in The Last Man was based on the Villa Pliniana. Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826; Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2007), 373.

  4 shockingly bachanalian Fiona MacCarthy argues that Byron had sex with many women in order to repress and master his homosexual impulses. Byron, 163, 173.

  5 “I send you my child” CC to Byron, April 27, 1818, TCC, 1:115.

  6 “I love [Allegra]” CC to Byron, ibid.

  7 “a stupid town” Journals MWS, 209.

  8 Maria’s enormous dog, Oscar Maria Gisborne to MWS, Maria Gisborne and Edward E. Williams, Shelley’s Friends: Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951), 53. Later, Mrs. Gisborne wrote the Shelleys that Oscar suffered terribly when they left, Letters from Abroad, 186.

  9 “His nose” PBS to Peacock, August [22], 1819, Letters PBS, 2:114.

  10 “frank affectionate” Mary Shelley, preface in Letters from Abroad, 1:xix.

  11 “I like nothing” MWS to Mrs. Gisborne, June 15, 1818, Letters MWS, 1:72.

  12 “When I came here” Ibid.

  13 il prato fiorito MWS to Maria Gisborne, July 2, 1818, ibid., 1:74.

  14 “My custom” PBS to Peacock, July 25, 1818, Letters PBS, 2:96.

  15 “It is true” MWS to Maria Gisborne, August 17, 1818, Letters MWS, 1:77.

  16 “of two” Richard Holmes, ed., Shelley on Love (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 72.

  17 “[Women in ancient Greece] were” Richard Shepherd, ed., The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: 1897), 2:45.

  18 “into the truth” PBS to Hogg, April 10, 1814, Letters PBS, 1:389.

  19 Byron’s “horror” PBS to MWS, August 23, 1818, Letters PBS, 2:37–38.

  20 Mary had to make up her Her father’s daughter, Mary summed this debate up in her journal with one word: “consultation.” August 28, 1818, Journals MWS, 225.

  21 “As sunset” “To Mary,” in Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 549.

  22 “Poor little Ca” PBS to MWS, September 22, 1818, Letters PBS, 39–40.

  23 “was lost in misty distance” Mary Shelley, “Editor’s note” in Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mary Shelley (London, 1839), 160–61.

  24 “life and death” “Letter VI,” Mary Shelley, Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (London, 1844), 79.

  25 “This is the Journal” September 24, 1818, Journals MWS, 226.

  26 “Wilt thou forget” “The Past” in Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 549.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: ABANDONED (1794–1795)

  1 “loud music” MW to Imlay, September 22, 1794, Letters MW, 263.

  2 “enthralled him” Durant, “Supplement,” 251–52.

  3 “reveries and trains” MW to Imlay, September 23, 1794, Letters MW, 266.

  4 “I have been playing” Ibid.

  5 “Take care of yourself” MW to Imlay, September 28, 1794, ibid., 267.

  6 “He very unmanily” MW to Imlay, February 10, 1795, ibid., 282.

  7 “vivac[ious],” young woman MW to Imlay, October 1, 1794, ibid., 269.

  8 “employed and amused” MW to Imlay, October 26, 1794, ibid., 270.

  9 “Her manners” William Drummond, ed., The Autobiography of Archibald Hamilton Rowan (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972), 253–54, 56, 49.

  10 “I shall be half in love” MW to Imlay, October 26, 1794, Letters MW, 270.

  11 “Come, Mary—come” Durant, “Supplement,” 247.

  12 “When you first” MW to Imlay, February 10, 1795, Letters MW, 282.

  13 “Believe me” MW to Imlay, September 22, 1794, ibid., 264.

  14 “I know what I look for” MW to Imlay, February 9, 1795, ibid., 281.

  15 What was important Lyndall Gordon also argues that the struggle between Imlay and Mary was philosophical as well as personal. VAL, 242–52.

  16 their daughter would be freer MW to Imlay, February 19, 1795, ibid., 284.

  17 “Am I only to return” Ibid.

  18 “Business alone” Imlay to MW, quoted in ibid., 285 n643.

  19 “the good people” MW to Archibald Hamilton Rowan, April [date?], 1795, ibid., 288.

  20 “I have indeed been so unhappy” MW to Imlay, April 7, 1795, ibid., 286.

  21 “Here we are” MW to Imlay, April 11, 1795, ibid., 289.

  22 “to press me” MW to Imlay, September 28, 1794, ibid., 267.

  23 he needed “variety” MW to Imlay, June 12, 1795, ibid., 297.

  24 “to assume” MW to Imlay, May 22, 1795, ibid., 293.

  25 the “elasticity” “How am I altered by disappointment!” Mary wrote. “When going to [Lisbon], ten years ago, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness.” MW to Imlay, June 20, 1795, ibid., 304.

  26 “It is my opinion” MW to Eliza, April 23, 1795, ibid., 290.

  27 “She swallowed the laudanum” Wollstonecraft, Maria, 147.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: MARY SHELLEY: “OUR LITTLE WILL” (1818–1819)

  1 “a smoke” PBS to Peacock, December 22, 1818, Letters from Abroad, 140.

  2 “looking at almost the same scene” MWS to Maria Gisborne, January 22, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:85.

  3 “A poet could not have a more sacred” November 30, 1818, Journals MWS, 241.

  4 “orange trees” MWS to Sophia Stacey, March 7, 1820. Betty Bennett, “Newly Uncovered Letters and Poems by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 46 (July 1997).

  5 their servants tiptoed Sunstein, MS:R&R, 159.

  6 “I could lie down” Hutchinson, ed. Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 567.

  7 So, who was this baby? Many theories have been put forward. For an overview, see Seymour, MS, 221–28. See also Holmes’s earlier summary, Pursuit, 481–84. As usual, the Shelleys, or their descendants, did a superb job of covering their tracks. Unfortunately, at least one crucial letter is missing. We know that many months later Mary wrote to the Gisbornes explaining why they would have to r
eturn to Naples for six months in the summer of 1819, as the Gisbornes mention receiving such a letter, but the letter was either destroyed or lost, leaving us in the dark.

  8 Claire was the mother The only evidence for this claim is Mary’s notation that Claire was “unwell” on December 27, 1818, Journals MWS, 246.

  9 Mary defended Shelley MWS to Isabella Hoppner, August 10, 1821, Letters MWS, 1:207.

  10 “at an emerald sky” PBS to Peacock, March 23, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:84.

  11 “arches after arches” Ibid.

  12 “Oh Rome!” Byron, “Childe Harold,” Canto IV, LXXVIII, Lord Byron: Selected Poems, ed. Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006), 537.

  13 “Rome repays” MWS to Marianne Hunt, March 12, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:88.

  14 Even Claire was happy Holmes, Pursuit, 221.

  15 “O Dio che bella” MWS to Marianne Hunt, March 12, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:88–89.

  16 “Our little Will” MWS to Maria Gisborne, April 9, 1819, ibid., 1:93.

  17 “antique winding staircase” PBS to Peacock, March 23, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:84–85.

  18 “It is a scene of perpetual enchantment” MWS to Marianne Hunt, March 12, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:89.

  19 “spirit of beauty” Mary Shelley, Valperga (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 96.

  20 “dreadfully tired” MWS to Marianne Hunt, March 12, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:88.

  21 “The manners of the rich” PBS to Peacock, March 23, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:85.

  22 “The place is full of English” MWS to Maria Gisborne, April 9, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:93.

  23 Amelia Curran For a more complete portrait of Curran, see Holmes, Pursuit, 513–14.

  24 “He is so very delicate” MWS to Maria Gisborne, May 30, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:98.

  25 “convulsions of death” MWS to Mrs. Gisborne, June 5, 1819, ibid., 1:99.

  26 “I never know one moment’s ease” MWS to Marianne Hunt, June 29, 1819, ibid., 1:101.

  27 “The world” MWS to Leigh Hunt, September 24, 1819, ibid., 1:108.

  28 “William was so good” MWS to Marianne Hunt, June 29, 1819, ibid., 1:102.

  29 “My lost William” Hutchinson, ed. Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 576.

  30 “My dearest Mary” Ibid., 577.

  31 “I shall never recover” MWS to Amelia Curran, June 27, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:100.

  32 then “ascend[ed]” PBS to Peacock, August 22, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:114.

  33 “his airy cell” Mary Shelley, “Preface” to The Cenci, in Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 336.

  34 “I ought to have died” MWS to Leigh Hunt, September 24, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:108.

  35 “sing not very” MWS to Marianne Hunt, August 28, 1819, ibid., 1:102.

  36 “Though at first” Godwin to MWS, September 9, 1819, Paul, Friends, 2:270.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: “SURELY YOU WILL NOT FORGET ME” (1795)

  1 “A…vision” Wollstonecraft, Maria, 147.

  2 Imlay came up with a plan For an overview of what Imlay’s motives may have been, see Todd, MW:ARL, 303–5.

  3 “tomb-like house” MW to Imlay, June 10, 1795, Letters MW, 295.

  4 seemed “diminutive” MW to Imlay, June 14, 1795, ibid., 300.

  5 “Papa” to “come” MW to Imlay, June 12, 1795, ibid., 299.

  6 “Surely, you” MW to Imlay, June 16, 1795, ibid., 301.

  7 “play[ed] with the cabin boy” MW to Imlay, June 17, 1795, ibid., 303.

  8 “anguish of mind” MW to Imlay, June 18, 1795, ibid., 303.

  9 “in a stupour” MW to Imlay, June 27, 1795, ibid., 306.

  10 “My friend” MW to Imlay, June 29, 1795, ibid., 307.

  11 torturing him When Imlay complained that her letters were upsetting him, Mary wrote, “Believe me (and my eyes fill with tears of tenderness as I assure you) there is nothing I would not endure in the way of privation, rather than disturb your tranquility.” MW to Imlay, July 3, 1795, ibid., 309.

  12 “Ah, why do you” MW to Imlay, July 4, 1795, ibid., 311.

  13 “the culture of sensibility” Originally known as “the cult of sensibility.” G. J. Barker-Benfield introduces this term in his groundbreaking study The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  14 “the grossness” MW to Imlay, July 4, 1795, ibid., 311.

  15 being abandoned had two meanings For an analysis of the double meaning of “abandonment,” see Lawrence Lipking, Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 82.

  16 “from the tranquil” Mary Robinson, Sonnet V, Sappho and Phaon (1796; Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, reprint, 2004), 14.

  17 “degree of vivacity” MW to Imlay, July 4, 1795, Letters MW, 311.

  18 “I contemplated all nature at rest” Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (London: J. Johnson, 1796), 14.

  19 “I feel more than a mother’s fondness” Ibid., 66.

  20 “human petrifications” Ibid., 91.

  21 “reclin[e] in the mossy” Ibid., 93–95.

  22 “I must love” Ibid.

  23 “piney air” Ibid.

  24 “thickened” the water Ibid., 97.

  25 “so much hair with a yellow” Ibid., 100.

  26 “uncommonly bad” Ibid., 102.

  27 “the language is soft” Ibid., 104.

  28 “My head turned” Ibid., 119.

  29 “The view” Ibid., 132.

  30 “To be born” Ibid., 133.

  31 A recently discovered Gunnar Molden is the Norwegian historian who found the missing letter. For a full account of his discovery, see Lyndall Gordon and Gunnar Molden, “The Treasure Seeker,” The Guardian, January 7, 2005. Also VAL, 260–62.

  32 “The clouds” Ibid., 167.

  33 For Mary, Gilbert’s rejection Eleanor Ty argues that Wollstonecraft’s sense of loss had far deeper roots than Imlay’s rejections. She writes, “In both Freud’s and Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories, desire and sexuality are linked to an original object that is lost.…Thus, Wollstonecraft’s desire is not solely for Gilbert Imlay, or for another lover.” Ty goes on to argue that even if Imlay had committed himself to Wollstonecraft, his love would have never fulfilled her desire, as “he is merely an object that stands for something else.” “ ‘The History of My Own Heart’: Inscribing Self, Inscribing Desire in Wollstonecraft’s Letters from Norway,” in Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft: Writing Lives, ed. Helen M. Buss, D. L. Macdonald, and Anne McWhir (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001), 71.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: MARY SHELLEY: “THE MIND OF A WOMAN” (1819)

  1 “make a stir” PBS to Peacock, July 6, 1819, Ingpen, ed., Letters PBS, 696.

  2 Pessimism versus optimism Mary Shelley’s pessimism is so emphatic, writes Barbara Jane O’Sullivan, that she can be said to have a “Cassandra” complex: “Mary Shelley develops an alternative to the Promethean optimism of Romanticism. Percy Shelley heralded his triumphant poetic vision with the embodiment of a Prometheus Unbound—a hero-god at the center of a metaphysical tale of the renewal and release of creative energy. Mary Shelley, on the other hand, portrays a tragic and all-too-human heroine, who is reminiscent of the ancient prophetess Cassandra. A close study of Mary Shelley’s works reveals that the Cassandra figure is a pervasive image, and that Mary Shelley felt a strong personal identification with Cassandra at certain times in her life.” “Beatrice in Valperga: A New Cassandra,” in The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein, ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 140.

  3 “May you…never” MWS to Marianne Hunt, June 29, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:101.

  4 “We look on the past” August 4, 1819, Journals MWS, 293.

  5 “Wednesday 4th” Ibid.

  6 “A littl
e patience” Mary Shelley, Matilda, in Mary Wollstonecraft: Mary and Maria; Mary Shelley: Matilda, ed. Janet Todd (London: Penguin Classics, 1992), 201.

  7 Incest, as Shelley’s poetry had already shown Later, Shelley would write: “Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circumstance. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of another, which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism; or it may be that cynical rage which confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy.” PBS to Mrs. Gisborne, November 16, 1819, Ingpen, ed., Letters PBS, 749.

  8 Like Mary, Beatrice was “pale” Although Shelley’s biographer Richard Holmes believes that Shelley’s description of Beatrice bears an uncanny resemblance to Shelley himself, Shelley’s adjectives are ones he often used for Mary—“pale” and “clear.” And Mary’s eyes were certainly swollen with weeping. See Holmes, Pursuit, 516–17.

  9 Mary’s take on incest Janet Todd points out an interesting parallel between Mary Shelley and the French psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, one of Freud’s most famous patients, whose own mother had died giving birth to her. Bonaparte wrote about the phenomenon of the daughter who longs to be both her father’s wife (her own mother) and her father’s child. “To be dead for me was to be identified with the mother, was to be in the place of the wife of my father, was like my mother to die.” Revue française de psychanalyse 2.3 (1928), quoted in Janet Todd, introduction to Mary Wollstonecraft: Mary and Maria; Mary Shelley: Matilda (London: Penguin Classics, 1992), xx.

  10 “I am, I thought, a tragedy” Mary Shelley, Matilda, 199.

  11 In a retaliatory swipe Claire Raymond writes that although Mary Shelley does not explicitly cite The Cenci, yet Matilda “implicitly responds to Percy Shelley’s text, arguing with his vision of what constitutes bravery. Matilda contradicts the image of the courageous Beatrice Cenci in Percy Shelley’s play by presenting in her stead the slow methodical self mortification of a defeated daughter who has suffered but not committed sin. Matilda gets her revenge through text, however, a lasting response to betrayal.” Claire Raymond, The Posthumous Voice in Women’s Writing, from Mary Shelley to Sylvia Plath (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 86.