The Monsters

by Dorothy Hoobler

  Mary found Maria Gisborne to be a sympathetic listener, perhaps the first she had encountered since eloping with Shelley. In time, Maria would almost resume her role as surrogate mother, and would be one of the few people Mary reached out to when tragedy struck.

  Despite the hospitality shown them by the Gisbornes, the Shelleys were not happy with Livorno. Maria suggested that they might like Bagni di Lucca, a spa town sixty miles north, where they went early in June. They settled in a little house called Casa Bertini, surrounded by mountains and woods. Mary was pleased for “we have a small garden and at the end of it is an arbour of laurel trees so thick that the sun does not penetrate it.” They also acquired a new Italian servant, Paolo Foggi, who would cause them considerable trouble in the future.

  While at Casa Bertini, the Shelleys received the March issue of Blackwood’s Magazine that contained Sir Walter Scott’s review of Frankenstein. Mary was thrilled to read his praise, but a bit taken aback that Scott thought Shelley had written the book. She sent a letter of appreciation to Scott, revealing herself as the author.

  Byron refused to respond to Claire’s letters, so she kept in touch with her child through Elise, who had stayed on as Allegra’s nursemaid. Two letters from Elise in August set in motion a tragedy that would begin the destruction of Mary’s happiness. When Claire heard that her daughter was in ill health, she wanted to rush to her. Shelley learned upon inquiry that Byron had, for the time being, turned Allegra over to the British consul at Venice, Richard Hoppner. Claire, more worried than events would prove justified, persuaded Percy to take her to Venice to see Allegra. They departed on August 17, leaving Mary at Bagni di Lucca with her two children.

  Shelley and Claire arrived at the Hoppners’ house on August 23, finding Allegra was well and in good spirits. Claire rejoiced at the sight of her daughter, whom she had not seen for two and a half months. Shelley wrote Mary that the girl was “as beautiful as ever,” but taller and paler. Hoppner took him aside and advised him not to tell Byron that Claire was in the city, for Byron often expressed his “extreme horror” of meeting her again.

  Shelley went to see Byron at his palazzo on the Grand Canal at three in the afternoon, when he was sure he would be out of bed. It was clear why Byron refused to go anywhere to meet friends or former lovers; he had gained weight and looked much older. Another visitor that year reported that Byron’s “face had become pale, bloated, and sallow. He had grown very fat, his shoulders broad and round, and the knuckles were lost in fat.” Byron was living a dissolute life about which tongues were wagging even outside of Venice. Shelley wrote of him, “He associates with wretches who . . . do not scruple to avow practices which are not only not named, but I believe seldom even conceived in England.” Byron’s sexual escapades were the talk of Venice and he immortalized them in these verses:

  So we’ll go no more a-roving

  So late into the night,

  Though the heart be still as loving,

  And the moon be still as bright.

  For the sword outwears its sheath,

  And the soul wears out the breast,

  And the heart must pause to breathe,

  And love itself have rest.

  Though the night was made for loving,

  And the day returned too soon,

  Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

  By the light of the moon.

  Despite the way Byron looked, he was happy to see Shelley again. They discussed the Claire and Allegra situation. Shelley led Byron to believe that Claire and Mary and the other children were all in nearby Padua and then brought up his plan for Allegra to visit them. Byron turned down the idea, instead offering to let Claire as well as the Shelleys stay with Allegra at Byron’s summer house in Este. To Shelley this was a welcome surprise, one that would be sure to please Claire.

  The two poets found once again that they enjoyed each other’s company. Byron, who was all image, was fascinated by Shelley, who never cared what people thought of him. Shelley, for his part, found Byron’s facility with words irresistible. The two took a gondola to the Lido, Venice’s seaside resort. It was one of Byron’s favorite spots, and he kept horses there. He and Shelley rode along the beach and talked about literature, life, and the meaning of their lives.

  The ride became the basis for Shelley’s poem Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation, written in 1819. In its prose preface, Shelley described the Venetian nobleman Count Maddalo (Byron): “He is a person of the most consummate genius. . . . But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. . . . His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion.”

  About Julian, the figure who represents himself, Shelley wrote he was “passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may yet be susceptible . . . Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known.” As night fell, the two poets returned to Byron’s palazzo and talked until five in the morning before Shelley returned to Claire.

  Shelley was now in a dilemma; he felt he had to produce Mary at Byron’s villa at Este as quickly as possible so Byron would not suspect his deception. He sent a letter explaining the situation to Mary and asked her to leave Bagni di Lucca at once. He gave her specific instructions for the journey so that she could make the trip in five days, and told her to bring Paolo Foggi. “I have done for the best—and my own beloved Mary, you must soon come & scold me if I have done wrong, & kiss me if I have done right.”

  Shelley’s request came at the worst possible time, for it was now the height of the Italian summer, and the heat was affecting Clara’s health. On the twenty-first of August Mary noted in her journal that Clara was “not well.” The notation was repeated the next two days. On the twenty-eighth of August, just as Mary was enjoying a visit from the Gisbornes, Shelley’s letter arrived, summoning her to Este. Two days later, while still packing for the journey, she celebrated her twenty-first birthday. She set out the next day with her two children, three-year-old William and Clara, just shy of her first birthday. Clara was continually crying, for she was cutting her teeth. In the suffocating heat of the journey, she contracted dysentery, a very common ailment of the time for infants.

  By the time they reached Byron’s villa at Este, Clara was dehydrated and suffered from mild convulsions. Mary wrote to Mrs. Gisborne,

  . . . we have arrived safe and yet I can hardly call it safe since the fatigue has given my poor Ca an attack of dysentery and although she is now some what recovered from that disorder she is still in a frightful state of weakness and fever as [and] is reduced to be so thin in this short time that you would hardly know her again—the physician of Este is a stupid fellow but there is one come from Padua & who appears clever—so I hope under his care she will soon get well, although we are still in great anxiety concerning her.

  Over the next two weeks, Clara improved only slightly.

  Meanwhile, Shelley was bothered by ailments of his own, suffering from a severe stomachache, which he believed was a result of being poisoned by some Italian cakes. Claire too complained of health problems that summer. The two of them went to Padua to consult a doctor on September 22. They arrived too late to see him and Shelley decided to go on to Venice by himself to meet Byron. He sent Claire back to Este with a note telling Mary to bring little Clara to the doctor in Padua on September 24 at 8 a.m. and that he would meet her there. This meant Mary and her child had to leave Este at 3:30 in the morning and also required taking Clara on yet another uncomfortable journey.

  On the appointed day, Mary did as Shelley had asked. By the time she met him at Padua, Clara’s condition had grown worse. Shelley insisted that they take her on to Venice, where Byr
on had told him of a better physician, a Dr. Alietti. Maddeningly, they were detained at Fusina, on the coast opposite Venice, when Austrian soldiers demanded their passports, which the Shelleys had forgotten. (Italy was not yet a nation, and parts of it belonged to the Austrian empire.) Percy finally managed to talk their way through. While they were crossing the lagoon from the mainland to Venice by gondola, the baby started to go into convulsions. Mary carried her to an inn while Shelley searched for the doctor, who was not at home. Clara Everina died in her mother’s arms on September 24. Mary wrote that day in her journal (in which the deaths of Fanny Godwin and Harriet Shelley were also recorded), “This is the Journal book of [my] misfortunes.” The child was buried on the Lido beach with no memorial stone. Mary could not bear to attend the service.

  She spent the next four days in Venice. During that time she saw Byron, who commiserated with her and then gave her two of his new poems to transcribe for the printer. Perhaps this was not as cold as it sounds; her friends may have wanted to take her mind off her loss, for Mary also records that at this time Mrs. Hoppner took her to the library, an art gallery, and shopping.

  Percy sent a letter to Claire describing the death of Clara, and added, “All this is miserable enough—is it not? but must be borne [one line is here erased]—And above all, my dear girl, take care of yourself.” He wrote to Peacock as well in early October, “I have not been without events to disturb & distract me, amongst which is the death of my little girl. She died of a disorder peculia[r] to the climate.” He then went on to describe his interest in Byron’s new poem Don Juan and mentioned that he himself was starting to write a poetic drama that would be called Prometheus Unbound.

  Mary, not easily consoled, blamed Percy’s carelessness and Claire’s selfishness for the tragedy. She resented the fact that Percy acted for Claire’s welfare at the expense of their own child. Mary also suspected that her husband did not feel the loss of their little girl as keenly as she did, for his favorite was William, affectionately called Willmouse.

  If Mary looked for sympathy from her father, she was disappointed as usual. Godwin, after receiving the news in a letter from Mary, criticized her for her excessive grief: “I sincerely sympathize with you in the affliction which forms the subject of your letter, and which I may consider as the first severe trial of your constancy and the firmness of your temper that has occurred to you in the course of your life. You should, however, recollect that it is only persons of a very ordinary sort, and of a pusillanimous disposition, that sink long under a calamity of this nature.”

  They spent the next two months at Byron’s villa, where the sight of Claire playing with Allegra must have bitterly reminded Mary of her own loss. At the end of October, Claire returned Allegra to the Hoppners, but she continued to travel with Mary and Percy. They visited Rome, and then settled in Naples, where they planned to stay for the winter.

  Mary sank into a deep depression. The ghost of the past in the form of Harriet came back to haunt her and cast a pall over her marriage. For a time Mary found it difficult to have sexual relations with Shelley. Shelley, in his turn, was starting to believe that Mary was a disappointment. Sometimes it appeared that he found Claire to be a more lively personality and a more enthusiastic student of his principles. He caught the mood in a poem titled “The Past” that seemed directed at Mary:

  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?

  Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

  And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

  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.

  The winter of 1818-19 brought another potentially dangerous secret into Percy and Mary’s relationship. On February 27, 1819, Percy went to a courthouse in Naples and registered the birth of a daughter, Elena Adelaide Shelley, whose birthdate he gave as December 27, 1818. He listed himself and Mary as parents, although the “mother” was not present to sign the certificate; two witnesses, a barber and a cheese merchant, attested to the fact that Mary had given birth to the child. Little is known for sure about the baby, except that Mary was definitely not the mother.

  Literary historians still argue over the parentage of Elena Adelaide. Mary’s journal makes no mention of her, nor did Mary seem otherwise to be aware of her existence. Elena Adelaide was turned over to foster parents and never entered the Shelley household. Mary did note in her journal that Claire was “not well” on December 27, the date that the mysterious child had been born. Elise Duvilliard, the nursemaid who was again traveling with the Shelleys, later claimed that Claire had given birth to the child, and that its father was Percy. However, her testimony is colored by the fact that in January 1819, when the Shelleys discovered Elise herself was pregnant, by Paolo Foggi, both servants were dismissed. Shelley’s ideas of sexual freedom evidently had some limits. Unfortunately, Claire’s journal between April 1818 and March 1819 is—like so many other crucial records—missing. It would be possible to tell her condition during this time because she marked the onset of her menstrual periods with a cross.

  If the true parents of the child were Percy and Claire, she would have had to have become pregnant either during their final days in England or the first days in Europe. On the other hand, if the baby was indeed Claire’s child, would she have been willing to give it up, so soon after losing possession of Allegra? It could be argued that Claire might have agreed to this arrangement because a second child would have weakened her position with Byron, but she clearly enjoyed being a mother.

  Another theory is that the child was a foundling that Shelley wanted to adopt as a replacement for Clara Everina and restore Mary’s happiness. If so, it would not be the first time Shelley had such a harebrained idea. As a little boy, he had wanted his family to adopt a Gypsy child, and on the elopement trip through France with Mary, he had actually offered to take a French child as his own, but the parents refused. If that were the case, however, why didn’t he bring this child home to Mary?

  In any event, the baby, to whom Shelley referred as his “Neapolitan charge,” died June 9, 1820, when it was a mere fifteen months old—one more casualty left behind in Shelley’s wake. Registering the child’s birth had been Shelley’s last act in Naples. He was on the move again, taking his loved ones wherever his whims commanded. Mary’s journal for February 28, 1819, has the notation: “A most tremendous fuss.” Six days later, on March 5, they arrived in Rome. Here they met Amelia Curran, the daughter of an Irish politician, who had come to Italy to study painting. In Rome, she made a portrait of Shelley; more important, she painted the only known portraits of Claire and little William. William appeared positively angelic in Curran’s painting—much the way his counterpart is described in Frankenstein: “with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health.”

  Mary regained some of her spirits, and evidently her relationship with Shelley improved, for in March, she became pregnant again. But the ghosts were not finished. Three-year-old Willmouse was the delight of his parents. He was talking now, chattering away in three languages—English, Italian, and French. On May 25, William fell ill; the doctor diagnosed an attack of worms and prescribed laxatives. Three days later, the boy appeared to be convalescing, but the doctor advised the Shelleys to leave Rome, for the oppressive summer heat could be dangerous for him. Actually, the Tiber marshes near the city were breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread malaria, but the connection was not yet realized.

  For once, Shelley did not seize the opportunity to run off to another location—a lack of action that may have killed his so
n. On June 2, Willmouse fell ill with a high fever and the sweats and chills of malaria. Mary was frantic at the thought of losing another child, and she and Claire sat up with the boy during his restless, sleepless nights. The Shelleys enlisted the help of John Bell, an expatriate English doctor, who was the physician of Pauline Borghese, sister of Napoleon. Mary anxiously watched for any sign of improvement. On June 3, she recorded hopefully, “William is very ill but gets better towards the evening—. . .”

  But the next day William suffered convulsions that left him exhausted and weak. By June 5, his condition was critical. For Mary, it was a repetition of the nightmare she had endured with Clara Everina. She wrote a frantic note to Maria Gisborne, “William is in the greatest danger—We do not quite despair yet we have the least possible reason to hope—Yesterday he was in the convulsions of death and he was saved from them—Yet we dare not must not hope—. . . The misery of these hours is beyond calculation—The hopes of my life are bound up in him.”