Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
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To Trelawny, Shelley’s acceptance of his friendship was the gateway to a glamorous world of art and adventure. He allied himself with the younger poet, taking notes on his activities for a future memoir. Even his flirtation with Mary was a way of drawing closer to Shelley. However, one clue to Trelawny’s character is that, unlike the witty Hunt, he did not understand Shelley’s humor. When, many years later, Trelawny wrote his portrait of the poet, his Shelley “did not laugh or even smile,” although those who were close to Shelley often noted his penchant for practical jokes, as well as his ironic take on the world.
Byron, however, soon grew suspicious of this new member of their group. Like Mary, Byron thought Trelawny’s stories seemed far-fetched. Indeed, they sounded uncannily like those of the Corsair, Childe Harold, or Lara—the heroes of Byron’s own poems. Although it was foolhardy to try to pass oneself off as a Byronic hero to Byron himself, that seems to have been exactly what Trelawny was trying to do. According to Byron, he even slept with a copy of The Corsair under his pillow, so it is no wonder that Byron’s enthusiasm waned. What is less clear is why Byron chose to tolerate the Cornishman at all. Perhaps it was because the poet, who had grand sailing plans for the Bolivar that summer, saw ways to make use of him just as Shelley had. Trelawny, for his part, never forgave Byron for doubting his stories, and many years later, after Byron was dead, he took revenge in a bitter memoir, describing the poet as “weak” and “ignoble” and comparing him unfavorably with Shelley, who “was totally devoid of selfishness and vanity.”
For Mary, the Carnival had been the high point of the season. By the end of February, her pregnancy had taken a toll on her spirits. She felt sick and could not delight in the onset of spring. The almond trees bloomed in drifts of startling pink; delicate anemones and primroses brightened the gardens; but Mary had difficulty sleeping and eating and grew pale with worry and fatigue. She was convinced that there was something wrong with the baby. In March, when fourteen-month-old Percy had a low-grade fever, she sent for the doctor in a panic. Her fears escalated when Claire wrote in April that she was having nightmares that Allegra was dead. Mary associated springtime with evils, remembering William’s death and the terrible time in London, right after she had lost her first baby, when she and Claire had fought so bitterly that Claire had had to retreat to the countryside. She had felt this ominous feeling before, and each time it had predicted disaster: Fanny’s and Harriet’s suicides, Clara’s and William’s deaths. Over the years, she had come to believe that her dread was an accurate predictor of the future—that she could feel when disaster was going to strike—and this year, the dread was more acute than it had ever been.
As the warm weather set in, everybody but Mary looked forward to their summer plans, dreaming about their holiday on the sea in La Spezia, which lay about fifty miles west of Pisa. Byron almost bowed out of the plan, judging the area too desolate and the water too shallow to accommodate the Bolivar. But Shelley persuaded Byron to find a house in nearby Livorno, and once he agreed, the Spezia plan was all they talked of. They would sail every day! The poets would race their boats!
But to Mary their summer retreat seemed worrisome. Cassandra-like, she tried to suggest that perhaps they should not go, but no one listened. Shelley, Williams, and Trelawny were too excited about their boat-building scheme to heed her warnings. They were impatient for the new vessel to be finished, but there was a delay, as the final design included many more sails than were usual for a boat of this size. Here was a new worry for Mary: perhaps the Gulf of Spezia was not a safe place to sail. She voiced her fears to Jane, but if she had hoped for support, she was to be disappointed. Jane was solely in Shelley’s camp now, and she declared she would never dream of doubting either Shelley’s or Williams’s ability to take care of themselves on the water.
Mary felt alone. Trelawny had spent the end of March closeted with Shelley and Williams, going over nautical charts and sketching out rigging designs. Recently, he had traveled to Rome to visit friends and had expressed no regret when he said goodbye. What Mary could not know was that the Williamses had been filling Trelawny’s ears with reports of her coldness and insensitivity. Her low spirits had only served to confirm their reports, and instead of empathizing with her worries, Trelawny joined the Williamses in condemning Mary as a bad wife, not at all suited to the eccentric genius, Shelley.
Once Byron had agreed to stay near Shelley that summer, a slight awkwardness developed between the two poets. The issue of Allegra was always a point of contention, but now, panicked by her nightmares, Claire had written to Shelley, expecting him to persuade Byron to let Allegra leave the convent. If he could not, then she insisted that he and Mary help her kidnap her daughter. Mary and Shelley did their best to dissuade Claire from this plan; privately, they thought it would probably be best for Allegra to stay in her school, away from Byron’s profligate lifestyle. They also believed Byron would eventually leave Italy, and then Claire would be free to see her daughter as much as she wanted.
Nonetheless, Shelley, knowing how much Claire was suffering, tried to argue her case with Byron, though the poet still became enraged whenever he heard Claire’s name. Her letters were “insolent,” Byron said. She had no morals herself. She was “atheistical.” Who was she to lecture him on what to do with a little girl? The last thing he wanted was for Allegra to turn out like her mother. His goal was to have her become “a Christian and a married woman if possible.” The convent was good for her; her education was advancing. As evidence, he showed Shelley a note she had written to her father: “What is my Dear Papa doing? I am so well, and so happy that I cannot but thank my ever dear Papa who brings me so much happiness and whose blessing I ask for. Your little Allegra sends her loving greetings.” Byron did not visit his little girl, but it was his duty, he declared to Shelley, to protect her from her mother’s “Bedlam behaviour.” It was an irony apparently lost on him that he, one of the world’s most notorious rakes, always on the verge of some new outrageous adventure, would condemn either Claire’s morality or her sanity.
When Claire arrived from Florence in the middle of April to prepare for their summer trip, Mary was actually glad to see her. And indeed, Claire, alarmed by her sister’s low spirits, tried to cheer her, reminding Mary that she was always anxious when she was pregnant, and that the beauties of the Gulf of Spezia would help restore her spirits. On April 23, Claire traveled to the coast to look for houses with the Williamses, leaving Mary behind with Percy and Shelley. Just a few hours after she left, Byron’s mistress, Teresa, arrived, distraught and pale; the convent had just sent word that Allegra had died of typhus. She was five years and three months old.
Appalled, Mary wondered if this “evil news” was the catastrophe she had been dreading. Though she was grief-stricken over Allegra’s death, her thoughts flew immediately to Percy and whether he would be next. She also worried that Claire would try to take revenge on Byron, especially now that he was living so nearby. The wisest plan, Shelley decided, would be to whisk Claire back to La Spezia when she returned from house hunting and tell her the news once they were far from Pisa.
Accordingly, when Claire and the Williamses came back from their trip, reporting they had found only one acceptable house, the Casa Magni, near the tiny fishing village San Terenzo, they were surprised to hear Shelley say they should head off for the summer immediately and that Mary, instead of resisting, agreed with him. Claire, who was used to Shelley’s sudden turns, was not unduly put out, especially since Shelley assured them that they would find another house when they got there, or else they would all live together and that it would be delightful. The blue hills, the rocky coast, the sky, the bay—Claire could sing for them in the evenings surrounded by the beautiful Italian landscape.
On April 26, Mary, Claire, and Percy left for La Spezia, pushed by Shelley, who was “like a torrent, hurrying every thing in its course,” Mary wrote Maria Gisborne. He and the Williamses stayed behind to crate their furniture and pack thei
r belongings, giving Shelley the chance to tell the Williamses the sad news and prepare them for the storm ahead.
CHAPTER 32
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: “I STILL MEAN TO BE INDEPENDENT”
[ 1797 ]
most of the past year, Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin had kept an eye on the construction of homes in a new neighborhood near Chalton Street called the Polygon. Its open feeling reminded Mary of the villages she had lived in as a girl. Far removed from the filth and noise of the city, it was a bucolic spot. There were hay fields to the north, and each house had a large garden in back. It did not take much discussion for the couple to decide that this was where they wanted to live. They could walk to London if they wanted to see friends, go to the theater, or talk to their publishers. The children would be free to play in the garden, just as Mary had when she was a child.
At the end of March, just before their wedding, they finalized the deal with the landlord and purchased a lease on No. 29. During the first week of April, Mary organized her linens, kitchenware, books, and papers with the help of the maid while Marguerite played with Fanny. On April 6, the couple’s boxes and furniture were carted over from their separate lodgings to their new home, and after an exhausting day of unpacking Mary, Godwin, and Fanny spent their first night together as a family. The ceilings were high and the rooms spacious. The windows were large to let in the fresh country air, a marked difference from London apartments, whose windows had to be kept tightly shut against the dirt of the streets. Fanny, who was almost three years old, was delighted with the place and with the fact that “Man” was her new “Papa.” She gazed out the windows and declared her determination to go haying.
Mary and Godwin, however, were slightly less cheerful. The Times had printed the news: “Mr Godwin, author of a pamphlet against matrimony” has married “the famous Mrs Wollstonecraft, who wrote in support of the Rights of Woman,” and so they could no longer put off telling their friends and families. After breakfast, each sat down to write letters—among the most curious wedding announcements in the history of such things. Defiant and apologetic, brash and naïve, anxious and overblown—it was difficult for these two philosophers to strike the right note. For instance, when Mary wrote to one of her favorites among Godwin’s fairs, the young Amelia Alderson, not once did she mention happiness, love, or the baby she was expecting; instead she discussed philosophical principles and her intention to remain free of customary domestic obligations:
It is my wish that Mr. Godwin should visit and dine out as formerly, and I shall do the same; in short I still mean to be independent even to the cultivating sentiments and principles in my children’s mind, should I have more—
Amelia laughed when she received this missive, writing to a friend that Mary and Godwin were “extraordinary characters.…Heighho! What charming things would sublime theories be, if one could make one’s practice keep up with them.”
Godwin, too, painted the marriage in unsentimental colors. In almost unbearably stilted prose, he told Mary Hays that the only reason he and Mary had married was so that Mary could change her name from Imlay:
My fair neighbor desires me to announce to you a piece of news which it is consonant to the regard that she and I entertain for you, you should rather learn from us than from any other quarter. She bids me to remind you of the earnest way in which you pressed me to prevail upon her to change her name, and she directs me to add, that it has happened to me, like many other disputants, to be entrapped in my own toils; in short we found that there was no way so obvious for her to drop the name of Imlay, as to assume the name of Godwin. Mrs. Godwin—who the devil is that?—will be glad to see you…whenever you are inclined to call.
Ironically, after making such a fuss about Mary’s name change, when he wrote to his friend Holcroft, he forgot to mention Mary’s name at all. Mystified at his friend’s oversight, as well as the identity of his bride, Holcroft responded with hurt feelings, saying, “Your secrecy a little pains me.” To another friend, Godwin said the marriage was only an obligatory arrangement; he did not believe in it, it contradicted his philosophy, but it was necessary to protect Mary:
Some persons have found an inconsistency between my practice in this instance and my doctrines. But I cannot see it. The doctrine of my “Political Justice” is, that an attachment in some degree permanent, between two persons of opposite sexes is right, but that marriage, as practiced in European countries, is wrong. I still adhere to that opinion. Nothing but a regard for the happiness of the individual, which I had no right to injure, could have induced me to submit to an institution which I wish to see abolished, and which I would recommend to my fellow-men, never to practice, but with the greatest caution. Having done what I thought necessary for the peace and respectability of the individual, I hold myself no otherwise bound than I was before the ceremony took place.
Fuseli scoffed at their union, telling a friend, “The assertrix of female rights has given her hand to the balancier of political justice.” Maria Reveley cried when she heard the news. Eliza and Everina Wollstonecraft worried about the consequences for their own reputations, and their fears were borne out when, a few weeks after the news hit London, Eliza lost a new and better job because she was Mary’s sister. The writer Anna Barbauld made fun of their unconventional domestic arrangement. “In order to give the connection as little as possible the appearance of such a vulgar and debasing tie as matrimony,” she wrote, “the parties have established separate establishments, and the husband only visits his mistress like a lover when each is dressed, rooms in order &c. And this may possibly last till they have a family, then they will probably join quietly in one menage like other folks.” Not surprisingly, Mrs. Inchbald wrote Godwin a nasty note canceling a date to go to the theater, a plan made before Mrs. Inchbald knew about the marriage:
I most sincerely wish you and Mrs. Godwin joy. But, assured that your joyfulness would obliterate from your memory every trifling engagement, I have entreated another person to supply your place.…If I have done wrong, when you next marry, I will act differently.
When Mary got wind of this, however, she insisted she and Godwin should both go; she did not want to let Mrs. Inchbald have so much power. But the results were disastrous: Mary and Mrs. Inchbald had a public confrontation and never spoke again.
Other acquaintances also fell away or avoided their company and Godwin struggled with being the butt of ridicule and malicious gossip. After he died, Mary Shelley would write that “the fervour and uncompromising tone assumed by [Godwin] in promulgating his opinions made his followers demand a rigid adherence to them in action, and to comply with the ordinance of marriage was in the eyes of many among them absolute apostacy.” Already hated by conservatives for his radical views, Godwin came under fire from many of his old supporters who saw him as a traitor to the cause, the famous opponent to marriage now married himself.
For Mary, it was embarrassing to have presented herself as the victim of a grand passion gone wrong only to set up housekeeping with another man. She defended her actions to Amelia by saying the decision was purely pragmatic and that she still suffered from Imlay’s bad treatment:
The wound my unsuspecting heart formerly received is not healed. I found my evenings solitary; and I wished, while fulfilling the duty of a mother, to have some person with similar pursuits, bound to me by affection; and besides, I earnestly desired to resign a name, which seemed to disgrace me.
Fortunately, there were also those who were happy for them. Mary Hays shared Wollstonecraft’s impatience with the rules that governed women, and she celebrated her friend’s bravery, a stance that allowed Mary to reveal that she remained unshaken in her beliefs despite the criticism she faced:
Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, and to throw off, by the force of their own minds, the prejudices which the maturing reason of the world will in time disavow, must learn to brave censure. We ought not to be too anxious respecting the opinion of others.
Mary and Godwin had weathered worse controversies, and for all of their protestations to the contrary, both were content with their decision. At age thirty-eight, Mary felt secure, settled, and hopeful for their future. Her feelings for Godwin were different from those she had had for Imlay, less intense, but more durable; she admired Godwin’s integrity and intellect; she had lost all respect for Imlay. As for Godwin, although he presented his decision in reluctant terms to the outside world—the philosopher corralled by societal custom—he relished the pleasures of his new life. Many years later, after he had died, his daughter Mary Shelley would write, “all Mr Godwin’s inner and more private feelings were contrary to the supposed gist of his doctrines.” She had found out the hard way that despite his stated disapproval of marriage, when it came to his daughter, his theories did not hold. Philosopher that he was, he could not always overcome his intrinsic prejudices, fears, and ambitions—or those of the society in which they both lived.