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

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Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley Page 11

by Charlotte Gordon


  Joseph Johnson, one of the most famous publishers in London. (illustration ill.11)

  As Lady Kingsborough wanted her to begin right away, Mary arrived in Mitchelstown in October 1786. Most people were impressed by the splendor of the Kingsborough estate, but Mary felt she had entered a prison. Her loyalties lay with the tenant farmers, whose hovels she had passed on the approach to her new home. Circumstances had forced her—she, who hated oppression in all its forms—to live with those she despised, English overlords who had stolen Irish land. And Lord and Lady Kingsborough were not just any overlords; they were the largest landowners in Ireland. They had received their seat in County Cork as a reward for their enthusiastic participation in the wars against the Irish. In return, they helped enforce British rule—an unjust system in Mary’s eyes, which effectively established two different codes, one for Irish Catholics and another for English Protestants. Catholics could not hold office, vote, carry a gun, become lawyers, go to school, or even own an expensive horse. The English, on the other hand, felt entitled to enjoy their freedoms at the expense of their Irish neighbors.

  Mitchelstown was a large, castle-like house, renovated in the latest style. A long yew-lined avenue led toward the pillared mansion and its outbuildings—stables, laundry, kitchens, bakery, blacksmith, and offices, all connected by open colonnades. This was precisely the kind of excess Mary disliked—why should the employers have so much and their tenants so little? Even the glorious location chilled her soul. Originally a fortress, the estate was as isolated and difficult to leave as an island, deepening Mary’s feeling of imprisonment. To improve his view, Lord Kingsborough had razed the original village and had it moved to another nearby location out of his sight.

  When Mary was shown into the front hall, she saw that the rape of Proserpina was painted on the ceiling, the young maiden’s arms flung back in helplessness as she was ravaged. Rape was an occupational hazard of being a governess. Although Charlotte Brontë would romanticize the relationship between a young governess and her employer a generation later in Jane Eyre, there was nothing consensual about what happened to those governesses who fell victim to their employers’ sexual advances. Mary had heard whispers that Lord Kingsborough, a famous philanderer, had taken advantage of the last governess and that Lady Kingsborough had dismissed her out of spite. In the large receiving room, Mary met a battery of well-trained servants and “a host of females—my Lady—her step mother, and three sisters—and Mrse’s [sic] and Misses without number.” To her dismay, the ladies examined her with the most minute attention. Faced with these stiff women in their jewel-encrusted gowns, their towers of hair making them seem much taller than they were, her confidence began to slip. “I am sure much more is expected from me than I am equal to,” she confessed to Everina.

  At first Lady Kingsborough was gracious to the new member of her household. Married at age fifteen, her ladyship was barely thirty when she hired Mary, and she prided herself on being a good employer. She gave Mary presents and paid her small flattering attentions, inviting her to dine with the family and attend balls and concerts with them. Highly placed servants like governesses were usually grateful for such gestures, but Mary, filled with both pride and shame, brushed off her ladyship’s attempts, prickling at her gifts and refusing her invitations. Even if she had wanted to go to the Kingsboroughs’ parties, she did not have the money to buy a new dress or to pay a maid to style her hair.

  Mary’s refusals mystified her ladyship. She had wanted a conventional governess—someone who was deferential and modest and would rush to do her bidding. But Mary was more radical than ever, having spent the previous summer studying political philosophy, as though she were preparing to lead a revolution rather than educate the scions of an aristocratic family. Of course, she had also worked on improving her skills in the subjects she was expected to teach—French, music, and art—but only cursorily, as she had resented her new job before she even got there.

  Mary included her charges in her general condemnation of Mitchelstown. “Wild,” she thought contemptuously when she first laid eyes upon stocky, spotted Margaret, age fourteen, and her two prettier sisters, Caroline, age twelve, and seven-year-old Mary. The girls were united in their desire to drive this new governess away, and Mary wrote them off as “not very pleasing.”

  However, before long Mary began to pity her students. Lady Kingsborough had little use for her children, having, as Mary said, “no softness in her manners.” Her ladyship liked parties and enjoyed flirting and gossiping about her friends and their love affairs. No one, it seemed, was faithful to anyone else. At home, she turned to her yappy dogs for entertainment, cradling them in her arms during tea, laughing as they ran through her chambers, chewed up pillows, or nipped at Mary’s heels, and ignoring them when they relieved themselves in the middle of the room. She spoke to them in baby talk, a mode of address that Mary disapproved of with children, let alone animals.

  About a month into Mary’s stay, the three girls fell ill. Instead of caring for her daughters, Lady Kingsborough avoided their sickbeds. Mary, appalled at her ladyship’s cold heart, immediately stepped in, taking over their care. Mary’s kindness was a new experience for the Kingsborough daughters, and their rebelliousness evaporated. Margaret, who, as the eldest, had taken the brunt of Lady Kingsborough’s ill humors and was “very much afraid of her mother,” grew the most attached. Mary understood what it felt like to have a cold and distant mother and reached out to the girl, discovering before long that Margaret was intelligent and had a loving disposition.

  In the schoolroom, Mary did not hide her contempt for Lady Kingsborough or her disdain for the shallow life of society women. To the astonishment of her charges, she called the accomplishments their mother deemed so important—fancy needlework and French pleasantries—a “heap of rubbish.”

  Every morning she took the children for walks outside—an innovation for the sisters, who were used to being cooped up in the schoolroom—and created lessons based on their questions and observations. Concerned about their lack of compassion for the poor, she took them to visit the tenant farmers. In the schoolroom, she not only talked to them about their ideas, she comforted them when they were worried or sad. Having never met a person like Mary, someone who took them seriously and actually cared about their feelings, by Christmas, all three girls were devoted to their governess.

  But the affection of her students was not enough to disperse the cloud that hung over Mary’s head. Even the news that Thoughts on the Education of Daughters had appeared in the London bookstalls did not cheer her up. At night, she closed the door to her room at the back of the enormous house and wept over the loss of Fanny, as well as the sacrifice of her independence. She penned unhappy letters to her sisters. Only gradually, as the winter deepened, did she act on her dream of being a full-time author, sketching out an idea for a book in which she could express her outrage at her situation in life and reveal the ideas and opinions she had to keep hidden while working at Mitchelstown.

  By January, Mary no longer hid her criticism of Lady Kingsborough’s “haughti[ness]” and “condescension.” Although she was pleased that she was treated as a gentlewoman, her position remained a lonely one. More than eighty servants worked for Lord and Lady Kingsborough, but she had as little in common with them as she did with the aristocrats. She was trapped in a strange netherworld between classes—“betwixt and between,” as she said.

  On those occasions when she did join Lady Kingsborough’s elegant soirees, Mary sought out what she called “rational” company, particularly if the rational individual was a handsome man. But her ladyship disapproved. To her way of thinking, Mary did not act as a servant should; instead of retiring into the shadows where she belonged, she thrust herself into the center of animated conversations, stealing attention from her mistress. Toward the end of March, Mary wrote Everina about a friend of Lord Kingsborough, George Ogle, who was “between forty and fifty—a genius and unhappy. Such a man, you may suppose
would catch your sister’s eye.” However, Lady Kingsborough also liked Ogle, and she competed with Mary for his attention, increasing the friction between them. Mary took pleasure in triumphing over her ladyship, telling Everina, “Lady K. has chosen him for her flirt—don’t mistake me—her flirtations are very harmless and she can neither understand nor relish his conversation.”

  As the spring turned slowly into summer, tensions were compounded by Margaret’s rebellious behavior. Inspired by Mary, Margaret protested against her mother’s teas and resisted making a society marriage. She wanted an education, not a husband, and having absorbed her governess’s contempt for fashion, shocked her mother with her “disgust to the follies of dress, equipage & the other usual objects of female vanity.” Lady Kingsborough may have been willing to overlook the oddities of her governess, but she had plans for her daughter—potential suitors had already been picked out—and it was Mary’s job to help bring these plans to fruition.

  But Mary’s restlessness had become impossible to hide. In the privacy of her room, after the girls were asleep, she read Rousseau’s Émile, relishing the author’s glorification of his hero’s sensitivity. Perhaps her own moods were symptoms not of weakness but of greatness. She filled her letters with descriptions of her aches and inner torments, wearing them like badges. She told her sisters that one day at church her nerves were so disordered, “I fell into…a violent fit of trembling…and it continued in a lesser degree all day—I very frequently am very near fainting and have almost always a rising in my throat, which I know to be a nervous affection.”

  However, although she admired Rousseau’s writing and was inspired by the importance he attached to emotions and political freedom, she did not like his depiction of women. She grumbled that Sophie, Rousseau’s heroine in Émile, existed solely for the benefit of the hero and that her only role was to desire and be desired, to attract and charm. Where was Sophie’s inner life? “Rousseau declares that a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself independent,” Mary wrote, “that she should be governed by fear…and made a coquettish slave in order to render her a more alluring object of desire, a sweeter companion to man.” It was time, she declared, to show readers “the mind of a woman.”

  That June, Mary devoted her time to what was fast becoming a novel. On the opening page, in the novel’s “advertisement,” she announced that her heroine would not be a “Sophie,” but would be a woman with “thinking powers,” a character different from those generally portrayed by male novelists. With an autobiographical flourish, she named her heroine Mary and structured most of the plot using elements from her own life: an oppressive father named Edward and a best friend who dies of consumption while living in Lisbon. In the second half, Mary is forced to marry a villain and collapses on her deathbed before the marriage can be consummated, rejoicing that she will soon enter “that world where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.” Throughout, Mary emphasized the interior life of her heroine, determined to demonstrate that women do not simply exist for the benefit of men. She also took revenge on her enemies, particularly Lady Kingsborough, who is the basis for the heroine’s mother:

  She had…two most beautiful dogs, who shared her bed, and reclined on cushions near her all the day. These she watched with the most assiduous care, and bestowed on them the warmest caresses. This fondness for animals was not the kind of attendrissement which makes a person take pleasure in providing for the subsistence and comfort of a living creature; but it proceeded from vanity, it gave her an opportunity of lisping out the prettiest French expressions of ecstatic fondness, in accents that had never been attuned by tenderness.

  Although Mary shares many of the characteristics of other novels of the period—a sighing, weeping heroine, a gothic plot—Mary’s dark vision of marriage is antithetical to the eighteenth-century principle that a happy wedding should reward a well-behaved heroine. Having witnessed the suffering of both her mother and her sister, Mary hoped to galvanize her readers, to stir them to fight for a world where women were allowed to develop freely without being fettered by, or abused by, men.

  Mary finished the first draft late in the summer of 1787. By the time it was completed, she was consumed with impatience at her own lowly position. Even Margaret’s loyalty did not assuage her despair. She was tired of swallowing annoyances, enduring trivial conversations, and pretending she did not have opinions. In July she and Lady Kingsborough had several full-blown quarrels, and by the end of August her ladyship finally dismissed Mary, casting her out into the world without a job or a place to stay.

  This was just the dramatic break Mary needed. She packed her bags with relief, angry but not afraid. Although they would never meet again, Mary would rail against Lady Kingsborough for the rest of her life, using her ladyship as the basis for many critical portraits of the aristocracy in her future work. Lady Kingsborough, on the other hand, was convinced that Mary had ruined her daughters. Only Margaret viewed her governess’s tenure with satisfaction. Later in life, long after Mary was dead, she declared that Mary had “freed her mind from all superstitions.” She made an unhappy marriage, but instead of resigning herself to a life of suffering, Margaret rebelled, disguising herself as a man to train as a doctor in Germany, then moving with her lover to Italy. Mary’s grown daughter, the motherless Mary Shelley, would one day seek out Margaret, giving Margaret the opportunity to befriend her beloved governess’s daughter, just as Wollstonecraft had once befriended her.

  CHAPTER 9

  MARY GODWIN: THE BREAK

  [ 1814 ]

  the days immediately following his dramatic invasion of Skinner Street, Shelley swung into action, sending notes with detailed plans to Mary via a bribed servant after Jane was caught delivering their letters. Having eloped three years earlier, he knew exactly how to proceed, and he was happy to discover that, unlike Harriet, Mary was not dismayed by the prospect of living with a man out of wedlock. This was precisely the kind of excitement she had dreamed of in Scotland. She had no use for custom; what did marriage matter when two hearts were one? Her only hesitation was leaving her father.

  For all the complexity that marked Jane and Mary’s relationship—the competition, the jealousy, the one-upmanship—Jane was still Mary’s only true confidante. Fanny would have felt duty bound to report all to Godwin. Jane, on the other hand, enjoyed being in on the secret. Her only caveat was that she did not want to be left behind. Not only did she dread the prospect of facing Godwin and Mary-Jane after the lovers had fled, she hated that Mary was always the special one. First Godwin, and now Shelley.

  Well aware of Jane’s envy, Mary was not eager to have her stepsister join them, but Shelley liked the idea of releasing two young women from domestic imprisonment. It had been his dream for his own younger sisters. Besides, Jane would be a fine addition to their trip. She was a vivacious, ringleted sixteen-year-old, and she spoke French, which would be helpful since they hoped to reach Paris. He would even have liked to bring Fanny, but he agreed with Mary that the poor pliant nineteen-year-old could not be counted on to keep quiet about their plans.

  Shelley sent word to the two girls to meet him on July 28 at four in the morning. On the night before, Mary and Jane tried to act normally. They joined the family for dinner and retired to bed at the usual time. If Mary-Jane and Godwin had been more attentive, perhaps they would have noticed that Mary was a little more pale and Jane less talkative than usual. But instead, they said good night to their daughters and settled down to sleep, never suspecting the drama that was about to unfold. The girls lay awake, their nerves stretched taut. Jane was excited for their adventure to begin, but Mary was anxious. She wanted to be with Shelley, but once she left Skinner Street, she knew that her life would never be the same. When at last it was time to go, in the predawn darkness, with the stars still out, they stole down the stairs and ran toward the waiting vehicle on the corner of Hatton Garden, Jane bursting with anticipation, Mary still unsure. When they reached Shelley, Jane climbed
right into the carriage, but Mary froze. She could picture her father’s disappointment, his hurt and rage, and it was too much to bear. She turned on her heel and fled back home to scrawl a last-minute note begging him to understand. She propped the note on her father’s dressing table and tiptoed down the stairs, running back to her lover, who held her tightly in his arms as they rattled over the cobblestones.

  They had chosen France as their destination, because Mary’s mother had lived there during the Revolution, but first they had to cover the seventy-five miles to Dover, where they would cross the Channel. The road was deeply rutted and Mary, always a poor traveler, could do little more than sink against the cushions. The sturdier Jane gazed out the window, exhilarated but afraid of being caught. Shelley, too, was worried about pursuers and did not allow his beloved’s suffering to slow them down, stopping only a few times to rest. At Dartford he hired four fresh horses, and at four in the afternoon, after twelve hours of traveling, they arrived in Dover. Mary was so ill that she was close to losing consciousness. Still Shelley did not stop. Certain that they were being followed and anxious to depart, he hired a fishing boat to ferry them to France immediately. Mary lay in Shelley’s arms, seasick, cold, and frightened. After midnight, the wind picked up and the waves towered over the bow, and before sunrise, a thunderstorm struck, drenching them and swamping the small vessel. Mary cowered in the bottom, gripping Shelley’s knees. Shelley was ecstatic; this was just the sort of danger he loved. Jane feared for their lives but prided herself on not being seasick.

 

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