The Monsters

by Dorothy Hoobler

  The suicide of “a respectable-looking female” was reported in the Swansea newspaper for October 12. Among her effects were a gold watch (a present that Percy and Mary had brought her from Geneva). The newspaper noted that the corpse’s stockings were marked with the letter “G” and her stays with the initials “M.W.”

  Fanny’s motives for killing herself remain unclear. The most likely suggestion is that she was despondent at being denied the chance to go to Ireland and teach at the school operated by her aunts, Mary Wollstonecraft’s sisters. Her aunt Everina had recently come to London to discuss the possibility, but turned Fanny down.

  Another possible motive was that Fanny maintained a secret, hopeless love for Percy Shelley. A Godwin family friend, Maria Gisborne, wrote in her journal in 1820: “Mr. G. told me that the three girls were all equally in love with ———, and that the eldest put an end to her existance [sic] owing to the preference given to her younger sister.” That it was Godwin’s suggestion throws some doubt on this theory, for he made up a number of stories trying to conceal Fanny’s suicide altogether. Indeed, Godwin acted abominably. Fear of disgrace led him to abandon Fanny in death. He never went to claim the body and forbade the rest of his family to do so as well. He wrote to Mary on October 13, “Go not to Swansea; disturb not the silent dead; do nothing to destroy the obscurity she so much desired that now rests upon the event.” Mary and Shelley wanted to claim Fanny’s body to make sure it received a proper burial but honored Godwin’s wishes. As a result, no member of the family was present at the pauper’s funeral. No one knows whether Fanny was buried in a potter’s-field grave or if, as sometimes happened with other unclaimed bodies, hers was acquired by a Frankenstein-like medical experimenter.

  Godwin, trying to account for her absence, told others that Fanny died a natural death. He wrote a friend in May of the following year:

  From the fatal day of Mary’s elopement, Fanny’s mind had been unsettled, her duty kept her with us; but I am afraid her affections were with them. Last autumn she went to a friend in Wales—and there was a plan settled about her going from thence to spend a short time with her aunts in Dublin, but she was seized with a cold in Wales which speedily turned to an inflammatory fever which carried her off.

  This from a man whose philosophical teaching said lying was wrong even when it was meant to save people’s feelings. Fanny’s stepbrother Charles was not even informed of her passing until much later, and he continued to send her letters as late as August of the following year.

  The news hit Mary hard, and she wore mourning clothes for some time. She and Fanny had shared the distinction of being the children of a fearless pioneer of sexual freedom. The words “unfortunate birth” in Fanny’s suicide note hit home, for Mary had already given birth to two children to whom that phrase could apply, and Claire was pregnant with another. Mary inevitably asked herself if she could have done something more for Fanny, even wondering if she should have invited Fanny to move in with the already extended “family” around Shelley. Later Percy himself would memorialize Fanny’s death with these lines:

  Her voice did quiver as we parted,

  Yet knew I not that heart was broken

  From which it came, and I departed

  Heeding not the words then spoken.

  Misery—O misery,

  This world is all too wide for thee.

  As always, Mary found solace in reading and work. In her journal entry for October 28, she noted that she was reading the Humphry Davy pamphlet A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry. She spent several days with it, so there is no doubt it was of great interest to her. In it, Davy celebrated the accomplishments of the modern chemist, particularly “his” ability to “modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeming only to understand her operations, but rather [as] a master, active with his own instruments.” Davy sounds here, with his idea of mastering nature, much like Victor Frankenstein.

  Mary also read Lord George Anson’s A Voyage Around the World, which familiarized her with the ongoing process of mapping the regions of the world. Nowhere, of course, was the map so incomplete as in the polar areas, which were subjects of intense speculation. Magnetism was another of the forces of nature that scientists of the time were investigating, and they wondered what polar property might be attracting compass needles to point in that direction. Also on Mary’s reading list was John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. She used much of its observations on learning and sensation to describe her creature’s intellectual development. Her conscientious research on what must have been difficult topics show Mary’s serious purpose: this was not to be a Gothic potboiler, but a novel that posed—and perhaps answered—serious questions.

  In addition, unlike the Gothic novelists, Mary didn’t intend to create horror from magic, superstition, or fantasy, but from the fear of modern science. The “mad scientist” whose experiments spin out of control may be a cliché today, but in Mary’s time it was brand new, and she was ahead of her time in imagining that scientific discoveries could be as scary as the witchcraft and sorcery of the past. She recognized that the “gift” that the scientist Victor Frankenstein gave to the world was as much a threat as a blessing, anticipating the fears of a scientist as notable as Albert Einstein, who wrote about the unintended consequences of the search for knowledge, “By painful experience we have learned that rational thinking does not suffice to solve the problems of our social life. Penetrating research and keen scientific work have often had tragic implications for mankind.”

  To lengthen and enrich her tale, Mary filled in details, now writing a subplot about the unjust accusation made against the Frankenstein family’s servant Justine, who is framed for William’s murder when the monster leaves incriminating evidence on her sleeping form. Although Victor’s cousin/fiancée Elizabeth stoutly defends Justine at her trial, Victor himself—who knows the truth—fails to testify in her behalf. He leaves the courtroom because he fears the shame of admitting it was his creation that has killed his brother. Victor’s inaction is clearly analogous to Godwin’s attempts to deny Fanny’s suicide, in which he considered only his own reputation. Soon Mary would see an example of that kind of dishonesty in the other man in her life.

  Harriet had never recovered emotionally after Shelley abandoned her and their two children, Ianthe and Charles. As her hopes for a reconciliation dwindled, Harriet’s depression deepened. In a letter to a friend in Ireland, she asked, “Is it wrong, do you think, to put an end to all one’s sorrows? I often think of it—all is so gloomy and desolate. Shall I find repose in another world? Oh grave, why do you not tell us what is beyond thee?”

  On November 9, Harriet left her lodgings in London and was never seen alive again. She wrote to her elder sister Eliza, revealing that she planned to kill herself and asking her forgiveness. As for her husband, “I have not written to Bysshe. Oh, no, what would it avail, my wishes or my prayers would not be attended to by him, and yet should he receive this, perhaps he might grant my request to let Ianthe remain with you always. Dear lovely child, with you she will enjoy much happiness, with him none. My dear Bysshe, let me conjure you by the remembrance of our days of happiness to grant my last wish.” Her desperate, pathetic tone should have moved even the hardest heart: “Do not refuse my last request, I never could refuse you and if you had never left me I might have lived, but as it is I freely forgive you and may you enjoy that happiness which you have deprived me of.” If there was a reason for suicide, the letter expressed it: “Too wretched to exert myself, lowered in the opinion of everyone, why should I drag on a miserable existence? embittered by past recollections & not one ray of hope to reason on for the future.”

  Harriet’s body was discovered on December 10, floating in the Serpentine in Hyde Park in London. She had been living by herself under the name Harriet Smith, and a coroner’s jury looking into her death brought d
own the verdict “found drowned.” Mary and Shelley did not receive the news for five days, and then only secondhand through a friend of theirs.

  Harriet’s suicide brought out the worst in Shelley, as Fanny’s had in Godwin. The Times printed a brief notice of the coroner’s trial, noting that the deceased had been “far advanced in pregnancy.” Shelley, who had gone to London after he heard the news, wrote Mary that Harriet had become a prostitute. He denied any responsibility for her death, instead choosing to blame her family, the Westbrooks. He wrote,

  It seems that this poor woman—the most innocent of her abhorred & unnatural family—was driven from her father’s house, & descended the steps of prostitution until she lived with a groom of the name of Smith, who deserting her, she killed herself.— There can be no question that the beastly viper her sister, unable to gain profit from her connexion with me—has secured to herself the fortune of the old man—who is now dying—by the murder of this poor creature.

  These lies only indicate Shelley’s inability to face up to the consequences of his own actions.

  Many years later, Claire Clairmont told a different story. She described Harriet’s lover, presumably the father of her unborn child, as a soldier who had been ordered abroad. His letters did not reach her and she became depressed that she had been abandoned a second time by a man she had loved. She had remarked to her sister, “I don’t think I am made to inspire love, and you know my husband abandoned me.” So on a gloomy, rainy day Harriet acted on the suicidal impulses that she had entertained for a long time.

  This suicide would haunt Mary, for in her mind Harriet’s fate was linked to her own. It hit her even harder than Fanny’s death had, for she could more seriously blame herself for Harriet’s despair, and she felt keenly the guilt that Shelley repressed or denied. Indeed, Mary would come to believe that this lonely death marked the beginning of a series of tragedies. Harriet became Mary’s own personal ghost who returned to haunt her whenever she was at a low ebb, leading to Mary’s belief that her happiness always came at the expense of someone else. In her journal in 1839, twenty-three years later, she would write, “Poor Harriet to whose sad fate I attribute so many of my own heavy sorrows as the atonement claimed by fate for her death.” An attempt to cross out the last nine words was made later, in a different color ink.

  Shelley now filed suit to gain custody of his children, who were with Harriet’s sister, but Harriet’s family took steps to block him. Shelley’s lawyer suggested that his case for regaining the children would be stronger if he were a married man, so on December 30, less than a month after the discovery of Harriet’s suicide, Mary and Percy pledged their vows in a London church. The unseemly haste with which this was done was also a result of pressure by the Godwins. Mrs. Godwin had told Percy that her husband would commit suicide if they did not marry.

  Shelley presented the idea of marriage to Mary in a letter containing probably the least romantic proposal in history—certainly by a great poet: “[Y]our nominal union with me . . . a mere form appertaining to you will not be barren of good.” According to Mrs. Godwin—not necessarily a reliable source, but she should have her say too—Mary told Percy, “Of course you are free to do what you please . . . [but] if you do not marry me . . . I will destroy myself and my child with me.” In any event, the knot was speedily tied. Percy wrote to Lord Byron that his marriage to Mary “was a change, (if it be a change) which had principally her feeling in respect to Godwin for its object. I need not inform you that this is simply with us a measure of convenience.” Claire was unable to appear at the wedding, for her advanced pregnancy was now impossible to conceal.

  Godwin was by his account the happiest person at the ceremony. He wrote to his brother,

  The piece of news I have to tell, however, is that I went to church with this tall girl some little time ago to be married. Her husband is the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, of Field Place, in the county of Sussex, Baronet. So that, according to the vulgar ideas of the world, she is well married, and I have great hopes the young man will make her a good husband. You will wonder, I daresay, how a girl without a penny of fortune should meet with so good a match. But such are the ups and downs of this world. For my part I care but little, comparatively, about wealth, so that it should be her destiny in life to be respectable, virtuous, and contented.

  Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  As for the happy bride, she wrote a few lines in her journal summarizing everything that happened between December 16 and the end of the month. Cryptically, she mentions “a marriage takes place on the 29th,” even getting the date wrong. Two weeks later, she wrote Byron,

  Another incident has also occurred which will surprise you, perhaps; It is a little piece of egotism in me to mention it—but it allows me to sign myself—in assuring you of my esteem and sincere friendship—Mary W. Shelley

  So Mary had chosen to take the name from the tombstone rather than that of the father who had raised and educated her. Ever after, she would call herself “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” Even Godwin referred to her in his journals as “MWS.”

  The greater part of the letter Mary sent Byron in January was concerned with another event. On January 12, 1817, Claire gave birth to a girl she called Alba. The Shelley group’s nickname for Byron had been Albé (for L. B.). Claire had written Byron at least four letters since she last saw him, typically alternating between teasing (she quoted from Glenarvon) and appealing for his love. It was Claire’s hope that the birth of the child would bring her and Byron back together. Mary’s letter informed him that Claire “sends her affectionate love to you.” As with the letters he had received from Claire, Byron did not respond to this one. Through Shelley, however, he made a request that Claire change Alba’s name. The child was later baptized Clare Allegra Byron, and she would become known as Allegra.

  Byron wrote to a friend giving his opinion about the affair with Claire.

  You know . . . that odd-headed girl—who introduced herself to me shortly before I left England. . . . I never loved nor pretended to love her—but a man is a man —& if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours—there is but one way—the suite of all this is that she was with child—& returned to England to assist in peopling that desolate island. . . . The next question is the brat mine? I have reason to think so—for I know as much as one can know such a thing.

  Before their wedding, Mary had begged Shelley for “a house with a lawn a river or lake—noble trees & divine mountains that should be our little mouse hole to retire to—But never mind this—give me a garden & absentia Clariae [“the absence of Claire”] and I will thank my love for many favours.” She would get the house, but not the absence.

  The Shelleys took a lease on a house in Marlow, up the Thames River just far enough from London so that it had a rural feeling. It had a large room that Shelley used as a library, and a backyard garden where Mary could putter. Life at Marlow was not the private, quiet existence Mary had yearned for. Because they were so close to London, many friends and acquaintances came to visit. The house was often filled with guests like Leigh Hunt, his wife, and their many children. Hunt and his brother John had been imprisoned for two years for publishing attacks on the prince regent in their journal. Shelley had donated money for their defense, and Hunt became an early enthusiast of Shelley’s poetry. Another regular visitor was Shelley’s old friend Thomas Love Peacock, who lived nearby with his mother. Peacock and Mary did not like each other very much, for he felt loyal to Harriet, whom he had known first. (Peacock was so attracted to Claire, on the other hand, that he proposed to her. Claire turned him down; all her hopes were still on Byron.)

  The Shelleys also went to literary gatherings at Peacock’s mother’s house and the home of the Hunts, where Shelley first met John Keats, then also struggling to make his reputation as a poet. William Hazlitt, critic, essayist, and friend of Godwin’s, described Shelley at this time as a man with “a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in hi
s brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic . . . there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit.”

  Though their friends knew the truth, the Shelleys kept up the pretense that Claire’s baby belonged to someone else. “Claire has reassumed her maiden character,” Shelley wrote Byron, as if posing as such made it so. When the Godwins came to visit, Allegra was presented as a cousin of the Hunts that Claire was helping to care for. She was a beautiful child, quite like her parents. Shelley told Byron, “Her eyes are the most intelligent I ever saw in so young an infant. Her hair is black, her eyes deeply blue, and her mouth exquisitely shaped.”

  Claire was fiercely proud of the infant. She wrote to Byron:

  My affections are few & therefore strong—the extreme solitude in which I live has concentrated them to one point and that point is my lovely child. I study her pleasure all day long—she is so fond of me that I hold her in my arms till I am nearly falling on purpose to delight her. We sleep together and if you knew the extreme happiness I feel when she nestles closer to me, when in listening to our regular breathing together, I could tear my flesh in twenty thousand different directions to ensure her good.

  Claire’s happiness increased when Percy bought her a piano at the end of April. She would play and sing by candlelight in the evenings, and Percy liked to sit and listen. Percy—as Byron had earlier—wrote a lyric poem celebrating Claire’s voice. Contrary to his usual procedure, Shelley did not show the poem to Mary but sent it to the Oxford Herald to be published under a pseudonym. Even the title, “To Constantia,” was intended to conceal the identity of the author and his subject. Marriage did not end the secrets that existed between Mary and Shelley.