15 March 1815
Last night I dreamt of Sophia and that she had returned to life. Shelley and I rubbed her by the fire and she lived. She nursed and emptied my aching breasts. I held her close, vowing that I would never leave her alone again.
I awoke and found no baby.
20 March 1815
Thomas Hogg still believes that I should be his lover. Unfortunately, Shelley thinks that I should be shared as a “treasure.” I cannot contemplate such an encounter, especially while I am still in deep mourning and think only of my sweet child. We only recently buried her. The box was so tiny it seemed fit for a doll.
I am a treasure, but I give myself to whom I please, not as someone’s bartered “prize.” I own myself. Why does Shelley not understand this and why is he not as grief-stricken as I am? Perhaps it’s because he already has two children. I have none.
14 April 1815
I continue to mourn and wonder if we are in any way responsible for Sophia’s death. Shelley refutes this and says that he and Harriet often made love in late pregnancy. This does not help my grief but only adds to it. He tells me that it is best to bury my grief. I cannot. I wear black, even though the daffodils and tulips grace the woodlands. I dream of how I had planned to share all of this with my darling girl. Now, I dare not sit in the woods and the fair face of the daffodil brings me no solace, only a deep desire for my child who sleeps below the ground tucked in next to my mother.
Sometimes I think that I hear Sophia cry out in the night and I scramble from my bed in great haste to see if she is in her cradle. But no. The cradle is cold and desolate of life. If only I could bring her back. From where does life truly emanate? If there is a creator, is the creator cruel and reckless? Neglectful of our personhood?
A child is the father (or mother) to man (or woman) as Wordsworth attests. I wish I could believe as he does that we are immortal beings. If I did, I would believe that Sophia dances in a heaven full of wildflowers, bryony, and daffodils and that she waits for me and Shelley to join her in the dance someday.
8 June 1815
I pour myself into my work to combat my grief. I think constantly about metamorphoses. All of life is change, transformation. Perhaps death is not annihilation but mere transformation. “Those are pearls that were his eyes. . .” as Ariel attests.
I think about the origins of being. What if a being were created that could not change? Or never grow old and die? What if they had the ability to learn great things and challenge themselves to ponder the thorniest of questions without fretting about paradox?
With the loss of Sophia and all the wisdom that is inherent in her name, I now assume her place as a philosopher and ponder these paradoxes. I dream about a new being who can withstand all adversity and trials, a being that could, through human contrivance, become transcendent of human failings and suffering. What would that being look like and who would dare create, incubate, and give birth to it? I talk about these ideas with Shelley who also dreams of other worlds; he defies the gods and the angels in whom he disbelieves. Such talk brings momentary peace and then I remember my sweet Sophia’s face and my heart aches.
20 June 1815
I now feel free to sit alone in Hyde Park next to the serene Serpentine Pond. I watch children launch their homemade sailboats and couples lounge in their rowboats enjoying the sun as I write in my journal. I have seen Harriet, Ianthe, and Charles here enjoying the sunshine and the warm breeze, but I do not interact with her or them. She ignores me. I endeavor to feel the joy and enthusiasm that they feel at this moment, but I cannot. My head is filled with the darkest thoughts but also the more hopeful philosophical questions that guide my belief that someday humans can and will overcome death.
23 July 1815
I have wondered why I have felt ill of late. It appears that I am pregnant again and have been for three months. Naturally, I continue to wear black, as is customary for a year of mourning, but this seems foreboding during pregnancy. However, I must don my black gown and veil until I no longer grieve for my baby girl.
I find it difficult to accept this pregnancy because of my fear of losing this child too. I shall not name her or him. I shall wait patiently to see if this new life flourishes and sustains itself. In the meantime, I will work, and try not to lament every minute the loss of darling Sophia.
6 August 1815
Shelley has agreed to send Claire away for a time so that we can set up our own home at Bishopsgate. She will stay with her aunt in Scotland. She was angry and felt rejected; she claimed that we were banishing her to where the barbarians live. She lashed out at me, but Shelley told her that it was his idea and that it was for the best. She needs to acquire her own life. When he said that, she slammed the door on him and told him to “Go to Hades, where you belong!”
I feel such relief that Claire will not be in constant attendance and that Shelley and I can grow closer without her incessant interference.
15 August 1815
Shelley continues to be fascinated by natural philosophy. He has witnessed the invisible forces that surround us. At Eton, he regularly conducted experiments with electricity and devised a way to electrify the door handle to his room, so that the older boys who taunted him would get shocked if they tried to enter his cell. And he told me that when he was at Oxford he purchased an electrical, galvanic machine. He went so far as to attach himself to the machine and much to his and Thomas Hogg’s surprise, Shelley’s wild locks stood on end and bristled with energy. Hogg quickly turned off the machine before poor Shelley’s brain was fried! Shelley says that he submitted to his impulse because he wanted to experience the effects of electricity. No sane person would undergo electrification, if they could help it! I hope that he’s just highly eccentric and not a mad man.
Of late, Shelley and I have attended galvanic experiments at the University of London. They reminded me of somewhat similar experiments with electricity that Humphry Davy undertook with chemical elements and described to my father and his friends when I was a child. At the University of London, the natural philosophers proposed to animate a dead frog by attaching an electrical wire to the frog’s appendage. Before doing so, the chief researcher asked an audience member (of course all men except for me) to approach and verify that the creature was certifiably dead. I quickly raised my hand and came forward. Naturally, frogs are cold and slimy to begin with but this was not merely cold and wet but hard like stone. The chief inquisitor, Mr. Cyrus McNabb, asked, “Miss, can you verify that the creature does not possess life?”
“Indeed, sir, there is no sign of life in the pitiful creature,” I replied.
“Thank you, you may return to your seat. Now, everyone please watch closely and you’ll witness something extraordinary, a resurrection of sorts.”
He held up an electrical wire, switched it on, and it bristled with energy. It shot sparks and wriggled like a serpent. He then attached it to the creature’s leg and within seconds the leg gyrated and danced with electrical impulse. The audience gasped and Mr. McNabb turned off the current and the creature lay still. Mr. McNabb repeated the animation and again the audience gasped and then cheered. The only problem seemed to be the inability to animate the entire corpse, which did not appear affected by the electrical current. Mr. McNabb said that soon they will be able to animate all of the protoplasm in this creature and others. It was no miracle, only the natural wonder of harnessing the energy of the fourth dimension.
I was excited by the implications of the experiment and I began to ponder the profound potential of electricity if correctly applied. What if it were possible to restore life to a dead creature via electricity? What a boon that would be to grieving parents, like myself, or to spouses whose beloved has passed into another world! Could you recall them from that other side merely by capturing and utilizing the invisible power all around us, found in what Mr. McNabb called the fourth dimension?
7 October 1815
&nb
sp; I regularly attend the galvanic demonstrations and have even gone so far as to question the good scientists. I’ve asked questions that I contemplate about restoring life. They have affirmed that restoring life is ultimately their motivation; they too are curious about electrical systems within the human body. I have also asked them whether they think that the human soul is hard-wired in such a way. If you re-animate a body, can you animate a soul? Is the soul mere consciousness or something else? If a doctor could create a creature and thus play like God, would they imbue their creature with spirit and soul merely by using the electrical force found in nature or would some other act need to be performed? No one can answer these questions and sometimes they seem perplexed and troubled about why I even dare to ask. I suspect that some of them do not believe that we possess souls. Or perhaps they think it blasphemous to assume that a researcher might attempt to create life from scratch.
20 November 1815
I’ve read Hesiod of late to remind myself of Prometheus and how he displeased the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humans. The gods punished him for his transgressive act by chaining him to a rock and then they enticed a vulture to eat his liver. And each day the liver grew back and the vulture ate it again. Prometheus, the creator and benefactor of man, is perennially punished by Zeus for giving us knowledge. Certainly the gods forbid knowledge but why? And why do we humans seem to have innate curiosity about the unknown and forbidden? Are we all Promethean when we defy our gods and act in ways that we believe will benefit and improve humanity? If our Creator gave us the ability to create tools by which we can extend our senses and capabilities, is it wrong to use them to try to better ourselves and all of humanity? Are we to have faith alone, as Orpheus was advised to do, and not rely on our senses to understand and perhaps improve the world? Do we risk losing all our Eurydices by extending our senses and abilities?
I still dream of Sophia, even as the new child kicks and squirms inside of me, and I wish that I could use natural or even unnatural forces to bring Sophia back to me. I’d be willing to make a pact with Beelzebub himself, if such a being exists. Perhaps in the future someone will devise a way to restore spirit and life in a dead body. If that were the case, I would even resort to unearthing my child from her grave; I’d be like Shelley and become a Resurrectionist, so that Sophia could live and dwell amongst us and not in some obscure and unknown bardo.
18 December 2015
Claire has returned from her exile. She despised Scotland and did not get on with her aunt who criticized her unladylike behavior. She begged Shelley to allow her to return. He gave in when she promised to find some occupation to fill her days so that she has her own life. To our amusement, she has taken up singing.
She is still annoying but she seems to have given up on trying to entice Shelley. Now she wishes to avail herself of meeting George Gordon, Lord Byron. She is sure that she can restore Childe Harold to life and ease his melancholy. She is arranging a rendezvous but also a plan whereby Shelley and Byron can become acquainted. Perhaps she envisions a threesome.
I read Byron’s poetry and find it so very dissimilar to my love’s poetry, which strives to imagine a more perfect world and a more perfect human. Shelley possesses high ideals, which he hopes to impart to his readers, whereas Lord Byron verges on intellectual cynicism; he’s even an advocate for Bonaparte despite Bony’s imperial tendencies. I favor my love’s vision of the world over the skeptical cosmopolitanism that Lord Byron seems to espouse. Although to be fair, he also favors human freedom and fights for the underdog. He aligns himself with the Greeks who struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. He’s a Panhellenist, because he supports the political union of Greek people, although I would not ascribe Hellenistic thought to him; he is no disciple of Plato as Shelley is.
I shall try more frequently to write in this journal. It offers me a way to ponder the grandest and most paradoxical questions.
1816
10 January 1816
This evening at dinner Claire said that she tracked down Byron at the Drury Theatre. She will pretend to be an actress in order to gain his attention. She will audition for Ophelia while he plays Hamlet. I would say that she’s a fair actress, since she is often given to theatrics and hysterics. Too bad Byron can’t send her to a nunnery.
13 January 1816
Claire has returned from her quest to capture Lord Byron. She announced to Shelley and me that as “Ophelia” she easily seduced Byron. He was her prey, she said. I find it doubtful that Byron was her victim. She thinks so much of her beguiling ways. Since she was unable to keep her legs closed, I do hope that she used a French letter as she had advocated. Byron is a notorious libertine. Claire risks pregnancy but also disease because the good Lord is not known for his pristine hygiene. Shelley insinuates that Byron has been dosed with mercury on many an occasion. I dare not tell Claire about this or that there are rumors that Byron and his half-sister Augusta have been sexually intimate; he has carnal knowledge of her and has even said that he is deeply in love with her as she is with him. Such rumors forced Byron to temporarily exile himself. And his wife, Annabelle Millbanke, is now seeking a divorce. Claire usually doesn’t fear scandal but that would perhaps be too much, even for her.
Claire did add that for all of his boasting he is not a great lover, only mediocre. Plus, he has a clubfoot, which he tries to hide. She found him less than his manly persona embodied in his poetry. I, for one, feel sorry for his deformity. Even a lord can be belittled for his hideous imperfection and one must have compassion for those who lack complete grace. I have learned some lessons from Coleridge.
Perhaps Claire’s ridicule of Byron is just her way of avoiding rejection; if she rejects him, his scorn for her will be less troubling to her and will help her save face.
24 January 1816
I have done my best to shield myself from the fact that I was carrying a child. I did not want to name her or him or to dream of the child as I did with fair Sophia. I may have inadvertently cursed myself by longing too much for that dear child. This time I pretended that I had just grown matronly and fat and I ignored the child’s movements within, preferring to think of the movement as gas rumblings or a bad turnip causing intestinal distress.
But today, I could no longer ignore the biological circumstances. A boy child issued forth from my body after I suffered a great deal of pain. Mrs. Blenkinsop dosed me heavily with laudanum to ease the terror and after fifteen hours the child was born. Shelley never left my side this time.
The boy is a sanguine child, rosy-cheeked and comely. I held him close and refused to let Mrs. Blenkinsop take him away to bathe him. I fretted that Sophia died because I did not hold her close; now, I know that by keeping him near my heart, he will be safe from all harm.
We have not named him, but I told Shelley that I would like to name him after my father. This may bring Godwin around to caring for me again and perhaps he will forgive Shelley for seizing his only daughter. William is a good name, regardless of whether the boy is named for my father. He looks like a William; perhaps we’ll call him Will and let on that he is named for the Bard or William Blake, rather than Godwin. Shelley affectionately calls him Willmouse and I concede that this is a good moniker for him.
10 February 1816
Shelley chastises me for refusing to let Willmouse out of my sight. The child shares our bed, even though the doctors and Mrs. Blenkinsop say that we mustn’t sleep with the child. We could accidentally smother him. I am constantly aware of his presence in our bed and know that I would never roll onto him by accident. I am his protector. I keep him near my heart. My grave error with Sophia was placing her in her own cradle too far away from me and my heart and warmth. If I awaken and fear that Will is not breathing, I can easily place my hand on his chest and feel it raise and lower. This keeps me calm and content.
Shelley must be patient with me because I cannot bear the thought of losing another chi
ld. He tells me not to worry, that Will is a hardy child and will not end up in the narrow grave like Sophia. I recall Shelley’s promises that all would go well with Sophia and remind him of that. Despite this, Shelley keeps assuring me that Will shall prosper. Shelley pronounces this so blithely that I think that this must be easy for him. After all, he already has two other children with Harriet. All I have is Will who is my only living love child.
15 March 1816
Despite our attempts to placate my father and to pay tribute to him by naming our child after him, Godwin still refuses to see or to forgive us. He continues to disavow me. Shelley is beside himself with anger towards Godwin. He finds him completely unreasonable, especially since we financially support Godwin whenever we can spare the silver.
Godwin’s ill will toward us injures Shelley profoundly. He was one of my father’s faithful disciples; Godwin was his God incarnate. Shelley deeply admired him and his intellect. He believed in his politics and Godwin’s anarchism that relies upon human reason. Like me, Shelley feels abandoned and betrayed by his mentor, his partial “creator.” Ironically, because of this, he sometimes lashes out at me, not physically, but emotionally, saying that I am as cold as my ill-tempered father. That I have no real passion. That I have no true sense of love or duty. I defend myself and remind Shelley that nothing he says to try to belittle me has any effect; his cruelty towards me cannot affect my person. I still own myself, as my mother advocated.
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