Mary Shelley

by Miranda Seymour

  The answer to this seems to be twofold. Mary’s literary standing is now such that any work by her, however slight, is of interest to those scholars who regard her as a major figure in the Romantic canon. As Mary’s works become increasingly accessible (several of her novels are now available in paperback editions), so too the general reader is drawn to her in part because her story is better known and in part because her name is so frequently invoked as the author of Frankenstein: no discussion, for example, of genetic engineering in the popular press fails to mention the name of Frankenstein and its author.

  This is both a good and a bad thing. It has helped to draw attention to Mary Shelley’s name, but without deepening our knowledge of who she was. On the contrary. While the newly canonized Mary is placed increasingly beyond the grasp of the general reader, her role as ‘the wicked stepmother’ of genetic science, in the memorable phrase coined by Professor Lewis Wolpert, threatens to lead her larger but underinformed audience into new misconceptions both of the author and the intentions behind her most celebrated work. Fascinating though it is to explore the novel’s evident connections to both Mary and her husband’s knowledge of galvanism and of contemporary discussions of vitalism, to the stories Mary may have heard as a child of experiments being made on the ‘resurrected’ bodies of criminals, this is not where her own interest lay. The making of the Creature, so enthralling to film directors, concerned Mary Shelley less than the idea of parental alienation from a manufactured child, a laboratory product. The story at the heart of Frankenstein is of a monstrously selfish scientific experiment, monstrous because Victor, having made a living, loving son for himself (we remember how the Creature reaches towards him), rejects it. Love is the message at the heart of Mary’s novel; only when her creature is denied affection does he become a monster and turn on the species which gave him life in its image.

  We invoke Frankenstein – always taking the name of the creator, not his creature – whenever science dares to improve on nature. The book has a more important warning to deliver and one which brings us closer to understanding its author. No parent, under whatever conditions, has the right to deny love to a child. Mary herself wrote out of a deep sense of personal hurt, as a girl whose rebelliousness had been punished with exile by the father she loved too well to share. If our sympathy is always with the Creature, it is because his is the voice of pure pain, the voice outside the Garden of Eden, outside the circle of family affection, outside society. Maurice, as Claire Tomalin perceptively observed in her introduction to the story, offers a more hopeful view, of a child whose nature cannot be altered by harsh treatment, who is incapable of revenge. Somewhere between the Creature’s bitter misanthropy and Maurice’s trusting gentleness, we can look for Mary herself.

  Mary wrote her one great work when she had only begun to taste the bitterness of rejection. The most harrowing aspect of her life is to see how, through no fault of her own, it began to mirror her novel. Mary, like her creature, became a pariah. When Shelley died, his friends had already been made aware that his marriage was on the rocks, and that the fault was Mary’s. Disgraced by her connection to him, tortured by the sense of her own inadequacy as a wife, publicly disowned by his family, Mary in her widowhood was thrust into the icy regions of solitude to which she had banished the Creature of her imagination. Hounded, persecuted and vilified, she taught herself how to survive. She remained, until the end of her life, generous, forgiving, tolerant and hopeful. The depression which she voiced in her journals was, we always need to remember, hidden from her friends. Her father was one of the few people who saw, and pitied, the disposition to melancholy which she had inherited from his wife. One wonders how much more sympathy she might have gained if she had been a little less fiercely reserved.

  Remorse is at the heart of Mary’s life after Shelley’s death and the key to her recreation of him. Her journal tells us that she firmly believed she was condemned by fate to pay for the suffering and death of his first wife, the young woman Shelley abandoned for a greater love. Shelley himself died during a period of estrangement, the worst of emotional situations in which to lose someone you love. The terrible combination of guilt and remorse impelled Mary to dedicate herself to an act of literary atonement. Her recreation of Shelley as a man who was, if not Christian, Christlike, allowed her to repossess him, to give him in death what she felt she had wrongly withheld in life, an absolute and unconditional devotion. The cruel irony of her achievement was that, in elevating her husband, she had once again forfeited the sympathy of his admirers. They saw increasingly, as the nineteenth century wore on, a man who had been manipulated to fit his widow’s conventional views. They had read, and had believed, Trelawny’s brutal indictment of a woman he had never fully understood and whose place he was intent on usurping. They did not see that Mary was, however unconsciously, crucifying herself. The Shelley she set before them was a man of whom she could never have been worthy. Believing that she had failed him, she encouraged the world to share her view. And the world, reacting against the heroic but misguided efforts of Jane Shelley to set Mary on a pedestal at her husband’s side, became increasingly ready to oblige her.

  Mary Shelley is not the active, enthusiastic, optimistic woman described by recent biographers. She is a woman who struggled all her life against the unpredictable volatility of her own nature, who never knew when the black cloud of depression would settle around her, who was tormented by the sense of her own inability to become what she felt the world expected her to be, a second Mary Wollstonecraft, who tortured herself with the thought that every misfortune that came to her was directed by fate, as her punishment for having taken Shelley from his first wife, for having failed him herself. The most admirable thing about Mary is that, feeling as she did, she never surrendered, seldom revealed her unhappiness and continued, until the end of her life, to work to win Shelley, never herself, the honour that she felt was his due.

  Notes

  1. Talks, p. 90.

  2. M.D. Conway, ‘South Coast Saunterings in England’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (March 1869), p. 463.

  3. CC–PFS, 2–5.2.1851.

  4. Wilhelm Clairmont–CC, 3.3.1851 (CC, 2, p. 537, n. 1).

  5. E.W.L., ‘Lines on the Death of Mrs Shelley’, appeared in the Leader, 24.2.1851, edited by Thornton Hunt and G.F. Lewes. Lady Shelley liked the poem enough to reprint it in Shelley Memorials (1859).

  6. Talks, pp. 30-1.

  7. R. Glynn Grylls, from an account given to her by Mrs Bray, Mary Shelley (1938), p. 255.

  8. Albinia Locke in Sylvia Norman, Flight of the Skylark, op. cit., pp. 214–15; Mrs Bray to R. Glynn Grylls, Mary Shelley, pp. 253–4; Agnes Mott, Shelleyland (1930).

  9. EJT–JS, February 1857 (Grylls, Mary Shelley, p. 285).

  10. JS–Edward Moxon, 24.2.1857 (Pforzheimer).

  11. TJH–JS, 20.4.1857 (Abinger, Dep. c. 813/3).

  12. JS–TLP, 10.6.1858 (Houghton, Cambridge, Mass. Ms Eng. 1205.1 [9]). A copy of Hogg’s second volume, liberally annotated by Lady Shelley, is in the London Library where it arrived after being bought as a replacement volume. This has not been previously identified.

  13. JS–TJH, 15.4.1858, quoted by Hogg in a letter to Richard Monckton Milnes, 12.9.1859 (Houghton Papers 12/36, Trinity College, Cambridge).

  14. TLP–CC, 12.5.1858 (BL, Ashley 1614).

  15. JS, Preface to Shelley Memorials (1859). A first draft is in the Abinger collection (Dep. c. 812/1). The Shelleys paid Smith Elder £326 15s. 5d. to produce the first private edition of 1,000 copies, which sold slowly. It was republished in 1875.

  16. Messrs Durville & Lawrence (solicitors)–TJH, 3.2.1859 (Abinger, Dep. c. 766/6).

  17. See note 13.

  18. TLP, Fraser’s Magazine, January 1860.

  19. Richard Garnett, ‘Shelley in Pall Mall’, Macmillan’s (June 1860).

  20. JS, n.d. and with no signature, in two drafts (Abinger, Dep. c. 767/5(b)).

  21. Richard Garnett, Relics of Shelley (1862), p
. 153.

  22. Iris Origo, The Last Attachment, pp. 416–17. The thought of Teresa and Claire living in such proximity but never meeting adds piquancy to the events made famous by Henry James in The Aspern Papers (serialized in 1888). James based it on the story he heard of an American (Silsbee) paying court to an aunt and her niece in order to obtain the love letters once written to the aunt by a poet. Marion Kingston Stocking, in an appendix to volume 2 of the Clairmont letters, gives a detailed account of Silsbee’s pursuit and his connection to Shelley circles in England, CC, 2, pp. 654–8.

  23. Rennie, Traits, 1, pp. 106–9.

  24. Thornton Hunt, Atlantic Monthly (February 1863). The story of Shelley’s having contracted a sexual disease during his years at Oxford originated in this article; my own view is that Mary’s allusions to Ovid do not signify a shared secret. Would a woman so anxious to defend Shelley’s name have been so reckless? Would Shelley himself have told the gossip-loving Leigh Hunt something which he considered too private to reveal to Peacock, Hogg or Williams? I doubt it, but see also Crook & Guiton, The Envenomed Melody, op. cit.

  25. W.M. Rossetti–Richard Garnett, 11.6.1869, 18–21.6.1869, 29.6.1869, in Letters about Shelley, ed. R.S. Garnett (1917), pp. 21–6. Thornton Hunt was Rossetti’s source and even Rossetti thought that Hunt had gone too far.

  26. Algernon Swinburne–W.M. Rossetti, 22.5.1869 (BL, Ashley 1621).

  27. EJT–CC, 17.9.1869. (My Recollections of Lord Byron was translated into English earlier that year by Hubert Jernyngham.)

  28. W.M. Rossetti, Some Reminiscences (1906), p. 386.

  29. CC–EJT, 30.5.1875 (CC, 2).

  30. JS–EJT, August 1878 (Abinger, Dep. c. 812/3, retained copy in JS’s hand). An unpublished draft letter from Lady Shelley in the same collection alludes to the earlier Recollections (1858) and suggests that Trelawny was influenced by an enemy of Mary’s, someone ‘who may have had a grudge against her son’. Lady Shelley was thinking of Claire. She was wrong to see her as a malevolent adviser; Claire’s letters were voluble, but never vicious, about Mary. Percy, writing to Dowden in November 1885, told him that Claire had been extremely clever but never truthful. He blamed this on the fact that she was ‘not quite sane’. Trelawny, during his first meeting with Rossetti in 1869, told him that ‘Miss Clairmont has been mad, and in an asylum’ (W.M. Rossetti–Richard Garnett, 29.6.1869, in Letters about Shelley).

  31. R.L. Stevenson–JS, 15.1.1890 (Grylls, Mary Shelley, p. 292).

  32. Sylvia Norman, Flight of the Skylark, p. 241.

  33. Edward Dowden–JS, 19.10.1883 (Abinger, Dep. c. 769/5).

  34. Edward Dowden–JS, 11.11.1885 (Abinger, Dep. c. 769).

  35. Richard Garnett–[?unidentified] n.d. (Abinger, Dep. c. 812/4, transcript by Sir Percy Shelley). It is possible that Garnett was writing to Sir Henry Taylor, a friend and neighbour of the Shelleys who had recommended Dowden to them; the letter discussed the problematic chapter 7 of Dowden’s book in which Shelley’s defection from Harriet to Mary was discussed.

  36. Edward Dowden–PFS and JS, 17.11.1885, reminded them that this was beyond their power, and an ‘unwise’ wish (Abinger, Dep. c. 769/4, fols. 57v–59v).

  37. Edward Dowden–JS, 22.10.1886 (Abinger, Dep. c. 769/5, fols. 44v–46v).

  38. JS–Florence T. Marshall, n.d. (Abinger, Dep. c. 767/5(b)). A pencil draft.

  39. Account by John Frucchi, Director of Cemeteries at Rome, 28.2.1910 (Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome).

  40. Richard Garnett–Edward Dowden, 8.1.1903 (Letters about Shelley).

  41. Anonymous, Athenaeum, 1.7.1899.

  42. Newman Ivey White, Shelley, 2 (Secker & Warburg, 1947), p. 416.

  43. R&R, p. 402.

  * Since Everina Wollstonecraft’s burial place has disappeared, it must have been close to the grave of her sister and Godwin in the eastern part of the churchyard. A monument to Godwin and his two wives was erected at a later date in the diminished graveyard.

  † Today, one can regret the Shelleys’ decision. St Peter’s churchyard stands on a busy corner, overlooked by a hideous Stakis Hotel and confronted by the boarded-up windows of Berlin’s Wicked Fun Bar.

  ‡ The parish council of St Michael’s Church, Chester Square, took the same view in 1977, when application was made to put up a plaque to Mary Shelley on the exterior of her own home, then the rectory. A plaque was permitted, but without any reference to Frankenstein. The house is now in private hands, and the plaque has been adjusted to mention Frankenstein. The present occupants have also commissioned murals for the interior, depicting scenes from the Shelleys’ lives.

  § Many of the relics from the Sanctum are preserved in a walnut dressing-case which belonged to Mary Shelley and which is now in private hands. The most moving of its contents, tucked away in the velvet-lined lid, is the tarnished mirror in which Mary’s face was once reflected. The box also contains an oval amethyst ring once belonging to Mary Wollstonecraft which Mary and Jane wore after her, and Mary’s own little seal with her initials in Gothic letters.

  ¶ Lady Shelley commissioned the little-known artist Reginald Easton to copy Amelia Curran’s portrait of Shelley; at the same time Easton painted two miniatures as twin portraits. One was a copy of a painting done of Shelley as a child by the Duke of Montpensier; the other, allegedly taken from a death mask, was of Mary Shelley. The miniatures were probably done in 1857, when Easton was staying at Boscombe and sketching Hogg’s portrait for inclusion in the shrine. The miniature of Mary shows her wearing the circlet of the Rothwell portrait and a shawl which, mantling her hair, confers the religious status of the figure on the Weekes monument. One could guess that the suggestion came from Lady Shelley.

  || See Appendix 3.

  ** The sofa, given to Rossetti by Trelawny, is still in his family’s possession. Visiting Helen Guglielmini in Rome, I sat on it, rather nervously. Handsome but frail, it seems unlikely to have been used as a bed, except in emergencies.

  †† An American biography of Mary published in 1886 by Helen Moore appears to have escaped the Shelleys’ attention or to have been judged unworthy of interest; Moore’s book relied heavily on Trelawny’s Records.

  ‡‡ See Appendix 1.

  §§ The contents, when examined, proved disappointingly tame.

  ¶¶ See Appendix 3.

  APPENDIX 1

  AN ACCOUNT OF THE BURIAL OF SHELLEY’S HEART

  The following note was written by E. Gambier Parry at the end of his personal copy of Trelawny’s Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author. The details given in this text modify the usual account of the burial of Shelley’s heart. The Canon St John referred to here is a member of the family of Lady Shelley’s first husband.

  Shelley’s Heart

  My old friend Canon Ferdinand St John (Canon of Gloucester Cathedral) told me that he was Trustee of the Shelley family, Lady Shelley then living at Boscombe. St John paid Lady Shelley periodical visits, and on one of these occasions he came to see me at Sou[th]bourne, where we then were owing to Tom’s illness. Our conversation turned on Shelley, & I referred to the fact that his, St John’s, brother Canon at Gloucester, Canon Harvey, had been Shelley’s fag at Eton. St John said – ‘Yes, & I buried Shelley’s heart! Lady Shelley had it, & it was enclosed in a silver case. She asked me what she had better do with it, & I said – “bury it.” So it was arranged that this should be done: The heart in its case was conveyed to Christchurch Abbey, where it was duly buried, and I read the Service.’

  E Gambier Parry [undated]

  APPENDIX 2

  SOME UNPUBLISHED LETTERS

  To John Murray from Mary Shelley

  11 Bartholomew Place Kentish Town

  13 January 1827

  Sir,

  I have heard that you contemplated endeavouring to purchase the copy-right of a selection of Mr Shelley’s works – and that you even applied to my father-in-law Sir Tim. Shelley on the subject. I write merely to say that these copy-rights are mine and that if you still wish to make
such a purchase I should be happy to enter into a negotiation with you upon it.

  I am, Sir,

  Your ob[edien]t servant

  Mary Shelley*

  To Constantine Henry Phipps, First Marquis of Normanby from Mary Shelley

  Layton House Putney

  8 December 1839

  Dear Lord Normanby

  It was a great comfort & relief to me, that Lord Melbourne was good enough to give the sum in question to Mrs Godwin. I am grateful to you for the kindness you express; you have ever shown a munificent spirit with regard to deserving literary persons.

  I have told the Bookseller to send you some volumes which I think will please you. We can none of us forget that you too are an author† & one we delight to read –

  With many thanks, I am

  Ever Yrs truly

  Mary Shelley

  To Joseph Severn from Mary Shelley, n.d.

  Mr Hogg is a friend of Leigh Hunt, of Mr Shelley, and many others of your circle in England. Permit me, therefore, to introduce him to your acquaintance.‡

  T. J. Hogg to Richard Monckton Milnes, incorporating Hogg’s copy of a letter to him from Lady Shelley

  London 12 September, 1859

  Dear Sir,

  I have placed in the hands of some of my friends, who take an interest like yourself, in ‘The Life’, the letter of which I send you a copy, for I think you ought to see it, & you may make any use of it you please. The least painful refutation of the extraordinary statements contained in the Preface to the ‘Memorials’ is to be found in the belief, that there was a touch of madness in the Editor’s race: they were rather low people, & moreover somewhat crazy. I will consent therefore to the humane Verdict, ‘Not Guilty, on the ground of Insanity’.