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

by Charlotte Gordon

  12 “Farewell Woodville, the turf will soon be green” Ibid., 210.

  13 The servant Giuseppe Mrs. Gisborne to PBS, October [date?], 1819, Mary Shelley, ed., Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1847), 133.

  14 “Poor Oscar!” PBS to Mrs. Gisborne, October 13 or 14, 1819, Ingpen, ed., Letters PBS, 723.

  15 E. M. Forster in his novel Seymour takes note of this similarity in MS, 238.

  16 She took an immediate dislike Mary complained to Mrs. Gisborne, writing, “Madame M. might go on exceedingly well & gain if she had the brains of a goose but her head is a sive [sic] and her temper worse than wildfire.” December 28, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:122.

  17 “watching the leaves” PBS to the Gisbornes, November 6, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:150.

  18 “personal character” PBS to Ollier, October 15, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:128.

  19 “Mr Shelley would abrogate” Newman Ivey White, The Unextinguished Hearth (London: Octagon Books, 1966), 141. For further discussion of this review, see Holmes, Pursuit, 545.

  20 “he straightened up suddenly” Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), 226.

  21 calling it “trash” PBS to Ollier, October 15, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:128. See Holmes’s detailed account of this period in Shelley’s life, Pursuit, 545.

  22 discovered a gray hair Holmes, Pursuit, 546.

  23 “passion for reforming” Ibid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: RETURN HOME (1795–1796)

  1 “Our minds are not congenial” We do not have Imlay’s letters, but Mary quotes him in her responses. MW to Imlay, August 26, 1795, Letters MW, 319.

  2 “I have lived” Ibid.

  3 Not once did it occur Eleanor Ty uses the theories of both Freud and Lacan to analyze Wollstonecraft’s letters, arguing that Wollstonecraft’s stated yearning for her lover was actually a far deeper desire, one that was linked to all her experiences of loss. She writes, “At the time that she was travelling, Wollstonecraft expressed the wish to be united with her lover. However, in Lacanian terms this articulated demand…is always addressed to an Other, and falls short of what one needs.” “ ‘The History of My Own Heart,’ ” in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives, ed. Buss, Macdonald, and McWhir, 71. Also see the final note to chapter 24.

  4 the “indolence” Wollstonecraft, Letters from Sweden, 201–2.

  5 “But for this child” MW to Imlay, September 6, 1795, ibid., 320.

  6 “Ah,” wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters from Sweden, 235.

  7 “forced” a “confession” MW to Imlay, October 10, 1795, Letters MW, 326.

  8 “state of chaos” MW to Imlay, ibid.

  9 The Revolution had caused Todd writes, “Wollstonecraft had encountered many ‘rational’ suicides among politicians during the French Revolution.” Letters MW, 327 n694. See also MW:ARL, 354.

  10 “The impetuous dashing” Wollstonecraft, Letters from Sweden, 174.

  11 “I would encounter” MW to Imlay, October 10, 1795, Letters MW, 326.

  12 “self interest” MW to Imlay, September 27, 1795, Letters MW, 322.

  13 the “bitterness” MW to Imlay, Sunday morning, [c. October 1795], Letters MW, 327.

  14 The Royal Humane Society Todd, MW:ARL, 356.

  15 “inhumanely brought” MW to Imlay, Sunday morning [c. October 1795], Letters MW, 327.

  16 “how to extricate ourselves” Ibid.

  17 “an imaginary being” MW to Imlay, December 8, 1795, ibid., 334.

  18 of “passion” MW to Imlay, November 27, 1795, ibid., 332.

  19 She omitted complaints Mary Favret supplies the examples I cite as well as a brilliant analysis of Wollstonecraft’s strategies in organizing and composing Letters from Sweden. Favret, Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the Fiction of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 102–3. Favret argues that Wollstonecraft’s published letters “deliberately rewrite and replace the love letters, transforming Wollstonecraft’s emotional dependence and personal grief into a public confrontation with social corruption,” 101.

  20 “My eyes” Wollstonecraft, Letters from Sweden, 187.

  21 “a good dinner” Ibid., 20.

  22 “If ever there was a book” Godwin, Memoirs, 133.

  23 “revolutionary feminism” Gary Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 178–79.

  24 “A grief without a pang” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dejection: An Ode, in The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats (Philadelphia: Thomas Cowperthwait & Co., 1844), 48–49.

  25 “A savage place!” These examples from Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey are quoted in Richard Holmes, introduction to A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (New York: Penguin, 1987), 17.

  26 “How often” Wollstonecraft, Letters from Sweden, 110.

  27 A French traveler quoted in Todd, MW:ARL, 369 n6.

  28 “discard[ing] all faith” quoted in Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 256 n8.

  29 Anna Seward Seward wrote, “We should at least have expected her to conceal the weakness, whose disclosure evinced the incompetence of all her maxims.” Quoted in Todd, MW:ARL, 369 n5.

  30 The Monthly Mirror Ibid., 369 n6.

  31 a generation of British travelers Richard Holmes, introduction to Letters from Sweden, 41. The connection to Bird and Kingsley is first established by Holmes.

  32 “It was beneath the trees” Mary Shelley, introduction to Frankenstein, 7–8.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: MARY SHELLEY: “WHEN WINTER COMES” (1819–1820)

  1 “Read—Work” See entries in September, October, and November 1819, Journals MWS, 294–301.

  2 “the greatest poem” Holmes, Pursuit, 532.

  3 “the most legal and effectual means” quoted in ibid., 530.

  4 “that ideal beauty” PBS to Mrs. Gisborne, October 13 or 14, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:126.

  5 “Hope is a duty” Ibid.

  6 “tempestuous” and “animating” Shelley’s account of the composition of “Ode to the West Wind” in Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 577.

  7 His anger For a comprehensive account of the composition of “Ode to the West Wind,” see Holmes, Pursuit, 547.

  8 “O wild West Wind” Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 573.

  9 At first he thought Neville Rogers, Shelley at Work: A Critical Inquiry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 228.

  10 Calling the manuscript “disgusting” Jones, ed., Shelley’s Friends, 44.

  11 “a little consoled” PBS to Leigh Hunt, November 13, 1819, Letters PBS, 2:151.

  12 “[He] has a nose” MWS to Mrs. Gisborne, November 13, 1819, Letters MWS, 1:112.

  13 “[Little Percy] is my only” MWS to Marianne Hunt, November 24, 1819, ibid., 1:114.

  14 “a woman is not” MWS to Marianne Hunt, March 24, 1820, ibid., 1:136.

  15 “Mary feels no remorse” March 11, 1820, quoted in Seymour, MS, 240.

  16 “A bad wife” February 8, 1820, Journal CC, 123.

  17 Sophia Stacey, a pretty young cousin For excerpts from Stacey’s diary, see Helena Rossetti Angeli, Shelley and His Friends in Italy (London: 1911). See also Holmes, Pursuit, 564–68, 579, 632.

  18 “undisturbed by weekly bills” February 24 [error for March 24], 1820, Letters MWS, 1:136.

  19 “ragged-haired” Ibid.

  20 “Men of England” Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 568.

  21 “highest and finest” PBS to Ollier, September 1819, Letters PBS, 2:17. For more on Shelley’s opinion about Keats’s poetry, see Holmes, Pursuit, 613–14.

  22 “destined to become” PB
S to Marianne Hunt, October 29, 1820, Letters PBS, 1:239–40.

  23 “I am anxiously expecting him in Italy” Ibid.

  24 “Does Mrs. S” John Keats to Leigh Hunt, May 10, 1817, The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, ed. Thornton Hunt (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1862), 1:106.

  25 “Heigh-ho the Clare” July 4, 1820, Journals CC, 154.

  26 “My affairs are in a state” PBS to Godwin, August 7, 1820, ibid., 2:229.

  27 “To Mary” Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 366.

  28 “raked out of” PBS to Peacock, November 8, 1820, Letters PBS, 2:245.

  29 In Mary’s version For an analysis of Mary Shelley’s radical politics in Valperga, see Stuart Curran, “Valperga,” in Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, 111–15.

  30 a female counterforce Stuart Curran writes that the novel “offers a democratic and feminist alternative to the politics of the era.” Ibid., 110.

  31 “Honour, fame, dominion” Mary Shelley, Valperga, 205–6.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: “A HUMANE AND TENDER CONSIDERATION” (1796)

  1 “by which man” William Godwin, Caleb Williams, ed. Maurice Hindle (New York: Penguin, 1988), 3.

  2 “Throw aside” quoted in William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (1825; reprint, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1955), 182.

  3 “shown a humane & tender” Mary Hays to Godwin, January 11, 1796, in “Appendix A: Selections from the Mary Hays and William Godwin Correspondence,” Memoirs of Emma Courtney, ed. Marilyn L. Brooks (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000), 236.

  4 She “has frequently” Godwin to Mary Hays, January [date?], 1796, in Durant, “Supplement,” 311.

  5 “excellent” qualities Mary Hays to Godwin, January 11, 1796, in “Appendix A: Selections from the Mary Hays and William Godwin Correspondence,” Memoirs of Emma Courtney, ed. Brooks, 236.

  6 “very voluptuous” Amelia Alderson to MW, August 28, 1796, Abinger MSS, Dep. b. 210/6, quoted in Todd, MW:ARL, 377.

  7 “the best” Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, March 13, 1787, Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, ed. C. C. Southey (London, 1849).

  8 “old, ugly” Amelia Alderson, August 28, 1796, Abinger MSS, Dep. b. 210/6, quoted in Todd, MW:ARL, 377.

  9 “I never touched your lips” St. Clair, Godwins and the Shelleys, 162. Although most scholars are fairly certain that Holcroft wrote this letter, Holcroft’s identity must remain speculative as the letter was sent anonymously. However, Todd argues that Holcroft is the likely author based on the language of the letter as well as the ideas expressed. See Todd, MW:ARL, 377–78 n20.

  10 Mary handled his overtures Todd writes, “if she knew the anonymous writer to be Holcroft, she handled the situation with unusual tact.” MW:ARL, 378.

  11 “the softness” This passage is from a letter Godwin wrote to Maria Reveley after Mary Wollstonecraft had died to try to persuade Maria to marry him. Despite his relationship with Wollstonecraft, it is clear that he still held to his society’s view of women: “the two sexes…are different in our structure; we are perhaps still more different in our education. Woman stands in need of the courage of man to defend her, of his constancy to inspire her with firmness, and, at present at least, of his science and information to furnish to her resources of amusement, and materials for studying. Women richly repay us for all that we can bring into the common stock, by the softness of their natures, the delicacy of their sentiments, and that peculiar and instantaneous sensibility by which they are qualified to guide our tastes and to correct our scepticism. For my part I am incapable of conceiving how domestic happiness could be so well generated without this disparity of character. I would not, if I could[,] marry a man in female form, though that form were the form of a Venus.” September [date?], 1799, Paul, Friends, 336. Also, Pforzheimer Collection, reel 6.

  12 “sympathy in her anguish” Godwin, Memoirs, 154.

  13 “[Mary] speaks of her sorrows” Ibid., 133.

  14 “I part with you in peace” MW to Imlay, March [date?], 1796, Letters MW, 339.

  15 “mix the butter and flour together” Jebb, Mary Wollstonecraft, 291–92.

  16 a milkmaid Paul, Friends, 74.

  17 “cold and cunning” Coleridge did not mince words. “Mrs. Inchbald I do not like at all; every time I recollect her I like her less. That segment of a look at the corner of her eye—O God in heaven! It is so cold and cunning. Through worlds of wildernesses I would run away from the look, that heart-picking look!” Coleridge to Godwin, May 21, 1800, in The Living Age (Boston: 1864), vol. 81, 276. Also Pforzheimer Collection, reel 6.

  18 “[Mrs. Inchbald]” Cecilia L. Brightwell, ed., Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie (London: Longman, Brown, 1854), 57.

  19 “new sharp-toed red morocco slippers” Amelia Alderson to Mrs. Taylor, in The Living Age, vol. 198 (Boston, 1893), 709.

  20 “It would have entertained you” Ibid.

  21 “crude and imperfect” Godwin, Memoirs, 152.

  22 “fear of outrunning” Wollstonecraft, Maria, 78.

  23 “a bird’s eye view” MW to Godwin, July 1, 1796, Letters MW, 342.

  24 “Now, I take” Ralph Wardle, Godwin and Mary (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 8.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MARY SHELLEY: PISA (1820–1821)

  1 “the softened tints” Mary Shelley, Valperga, 207.

  2 He wished she were with them For more on Claire and Shelley at this stage of their relationship, see Holmes, Pursuit, 618, and Seymour, MS, 255, 57.

  3 Having just returned For more on Medwin’s character and appearance, see Seymour, MS, 255–56.

  4 “His figure was emaciated” Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: 1847), 2:2.

  5 “in the tenderness” Thomas Medwin, Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Co., 1833), 57.

  6 “Congratulate me” October 29, 1820, Letters PBS, 2:241.

  7 she had started to pay more attention This overview of Mary’s appearance is from Seymour, MS, 260.

  8 “much to my taste” MWS to CC, January 21, 1821, Letters MWS, 1:182.

  9 the source of her sorrow MWS to Marianne Hunt, December 3, 1820, ibid., 1:165, 167. According to Mary, Emilia was “very beautiful, very talented,” and “most unhappy. Her mother is a very bad woman; and, as she is jealous of the talents and beauty of her daughter, she shuts her up in a convent.…”

  10 “the noble and unfortunate Lady” Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 420–21.

  11 “only the ash” Emilia Viviani to MWS, December 24, 1820. The Italian originals can be found in Enrica Viviani della Robbia, Vita di una donna (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1936), quoted in Betty Bennett, ed., Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 120 n5.

  12 “a death of ice” Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 413.

  13 “a good deal” MWS to Maria Gisborne, March 7, 1822, Letters MWS, 1:222.

  14 people in Pisa PBS to Byron, September 14, 1821, Letters PBS, 2:347.

  15 “a cloud” PBS to Mr. Gisborne, June 18, 1822, ibid., 2:434.

  16 Of a broken heart Shelley wrote Byron that “Young Keats, whose ‘Hyperion’ showed so great a promise, died lately at Rome from the consequences of breaking a blood-vessel, in paroxysms of despair at the contemptuous attack on his book in the Quarterly Review.” April 16, 1821, Letters PBS, 2:284. Byron did not subscribe to Shelley’s explanation of Keats’s death: “I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats—is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing.…I read the review of ‘Endymion’ in the Quarterly. It was severe,—but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.” Byron to PBS, April 26, 1821, ed. Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: Complete in One Volume (London: 1830), 479.

  17 “better, in point” PBS to the Gisbornes, June 5, 1821, Letters from A
broad, 148.

  18 “Envy and calumny, and hate” “Adonais” in Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 435.

  19 Shelley warmed He wrote John Gisborne, “I like Jane more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions.” June 18, 1822, Dowden, Life of Shelley, 2:512.

  20 Shelley had purchased For more on this new vessel, see Holmes, Pursuit, 646–47.

  21 his “ducking” PBS to Henry Reveley, April 17, 1821, Letters PBS, 2:285.

  22 An old friend Seymour cites Sir John St. Aubyn’s warning to Mary: “There are subjects I entertain few people with, and whatever regard I may have for Mrs. Williams, she is not of the number I should choose.” MS, 271n.

  23 “We are not happy” Hutchinson, ed., Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 519.

  24 “Do you not hear the Aziola” Ibid., 636.

  25 “[We must] form for ourselves” PBS to MWS, August 15, 1821, Letters PBS, 2:339.

  26 He sent Hunt PBS to Leigh Hunt, August 26, 1821, ibid., 2:344.

  27 “nice pretty” MWS to Mrs. Gisborne, November 30, 1821, Letters MWS, 1:209.

  28 “Before I quitted” CC to Byron, May [date?], 1821, Isabel Constance Clarke, Shelley and Byron: A Tragic Friendship (1934; reprint, New York: Ardent Media), 163.

  29 (over £2,000) Sunstein, MS:R&R, 203.

  30 Mary and Claire chose Ibid.

  CHAPTER THIRTY: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: IN LOVE AGAIN (1796)

  1 “I mean to bottle up my kindness” MW to Godwin, July 21, 1796, Letters MW, 343–44.

  2 “the sentiment which trembled” Godwin, Memoirs, 159.

  3 “was so puritanical” Elizabeth Pennell, Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884), 290.

  4 “your sapient Philosophership” MW to Godwin, August 11, 1796, Letters MW, 347.

  5 “voluptuous sensations” MW to Godwin, September 13, 1796, ibid., 363.