Weeks later, I read the dreadful notice in The Courier, which Mrs. Clairmont had sent me. “Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned; now he knows whether there is God or no.” When I read that hateful, misguided remark, I threw the newspaper in the fire and vowed to redeem his image. The world would know Shelley as I knew him; as a great poet, a seeker and explorer of infinite worlds. God and Mrs. Clairmont be damned.
I was lost in my reverie when Percy asked, “Why are we here, Mother? Did you and Father visit this beach when we lived in Italy?”
“No, Percy, I’ve never been here.” I paused and turned toward him. “This is where your father’s body washed ashore.” Percy looked shaken and surprised. I pulled him closer to me and pointed toward the sea. “Out there, a few miles out, is where the Ariel, their sailboat, capsized. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it, that this is the same sea that took your father’s life?” Percy and I looked out at the placid water that was Shelley’s graveyard. “I needed to come here to see where it all occurred. I hope that this doesn’t trouble you too much, my darling.”
“I am fine, Mother. I was just a child and have no memory of his death. I only recall that my nurse, Elise, spent a lot of time with me, because you were so sad. I tried to cheer you up sometimes by singing you silly songs.”
“I remember, Percy. That was inordinately sweet. You’ve always been a great comfort to me.” I held his arm tighter and interlaced my fingers with his.
We were quiet for a long while and then Percy continued, “Mother, is it true, as I’ve heard whispered at school—that Father deliberately set out to die?”
“What? That’s absurd. Who said that?” I thought of all the rumors that had swirled around Shelley and me and now, even in death, the gossipers could not resist maligning us. I also remembered that Percy read in my journal that Shelley had threatened to kill himself if I did not elope with him.
“Some boys who wish to taunt me,” he replied.
“You must ignore those heartless boys. Your father loved us. He loved life, even if our lives were sometimes troubled. He would never have purposefully set out to die. He was just foolish and believed that he could sail through a frightful storm. He wanted to come home. He missed us.” My heart ached with the thought that anyone would believe that Shelley was depressed and suicidal, least of all Percy Florence.
“But, what shall I tell those boys, if they belittle our family by calling Father a suicide?” He dared not look me in the face. He picked up a stick from the beach and started to dig in the sand as if he were hunting for buried treasure; perhaps he thought that after all these years, on this beach, he’d find a remnant of his father: a ring, a watch, a lock of hair.
“You should tell them that your father was a great poet who wished to transform the world. He was an old soul who could not abide tyranny. You understand that, yes?”
“Of course, Mother. I’ve read all of Father’s work and I’ve learned some of it by heart.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. I am so pleased.” I gave his hand a squeeze.
We sat on the seawall and then I said, “I’ve brought you here so that we could remember Shelley and memorialize him. Let’s not discuss the gossipers and those who were jealous of Shelley’s gifts. Let’s think about your father. We will go to Rome to see where his ashes rest but before we travel there, I want you to know what I had engraved on his tomb. It says ‘Cor Cordium’ and below ‘Ariel’s Song’ is inscribed. They were his favorite verses in Shakespeare.” I began,
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
“Those are my favorite lines too,” Percy said and then he asked, “May I read something, Mother?”
“Oh, you’ve written something?”
“No, of course not,” he said. His cheeks flushed. “You know I am not a poet. But I admire Father’s work and I know that Father wrote this for Keats, but it seems fitting to read it here and now. I always carry this poem with me. He pulled out a sheet of paper from his waistcoat breast pocket and began to read,
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! Though our tears
but then he placed the paper on the sand. He continued from his heart,
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!
I was so moved that my son knew by heart his father’s poem, a perfect commemoration of him. “Thank you, my darling,” I replied, as tears swelled and then gushed from my eyes. Percy quickly pulled his handkerchief from his label pocket and wiped my tears. Suddenly, a gust of wind blew the poem into the sea and I grabbed Percy’s arm as he lurched to retrieve it. “Let it go, love,” I advised.
Percy wiped his own tears with the back of his hand and then I said, “I think that you’re ready to hear what happened here. Are you ready to learn what happened to your father?” He nodded and then my voice shook as I began to tell the tale.
“On July 8th your father and Edward Williams set sail to return to us in San Terenzo. The day was fair; the winds were calm, just like today. They had hired a young swain to help with the large masts. They were eager to get home to start their writers colony here in this paradise and they no doubt discussed their plans as they sailed. Suddenly, though, a squall came up. According to Trelawny, a fisherman saw the masts lilt and then topple. The boy, who was up on the largest mast, was thrown into the sea. The fisherman raced toward them but could not reach the Ariel before it capsized. It must have quickly sank, because when Trelawny found Shelley’s and Edward’s bodies, they were still wearing their boots.”
I saw Percy flinch but I needed to continue before I lost my nerve. “They had little to no time to save themselves. Trelawny was horrified when he saw them. The only way that he could initially identify them was through their clothing. Your father was so disfigured by the sea and the sea creatures who fed on his body that he was mostly unrecognizable. Percy, Trelawny said that your father’s comely face was eaten away,” I cried. “The only way he was assured that this corpse was Shelley is that Trelawny found a copy of Keats’s poems, ‘Lamia, Isabella,’ in the pocket of Shelley’s coat. He always carried those poems near his heart.”
I looked at my son. He said nothing but stared at the horizon. The wind had suddenly picked up and storm clouds gathered above us. In the distance, we heard heat lightning.
“Trelawny wished to take Shelley’s and Edward’s bodies back to our village for a proper burial but local authorities insisted that they be interred here. But then someone decided that their bodies contained contagion because they had been in the sea for days. Percy, my darling, the Italian authorities insisted that they be dug up and then burned on the beach. Your father, like my creature, was the victim of an unholy conflagration!”
“Oh, Mother, I didn’t know. I am so sorry. That must have been dreadful for you. Did you witness it?”
“No, I couldn’t leave my bed and I couldn’t bear to watch your father be burnt. Trelawny and Byron witnessed it, but Byron was so overcome with his own grief, that he disrobed and then he swam out to sea before they placed your father on the flames. Are you certain that you want me to proceed? There’s more to tell that may disturb you.”
“No, tell all. I need to know. I am not a child.” He sat up straighter and threw back his shoulders. “Please do go on.”
I took a breath and tried to steady myself, “The authorities built a funeral pyre and before your father’s and Edward’s bodies were placed on it, Trelawny performed a ceremony of so
rts. Like a pagan priest, he poured frankincense, salt, and wine on their bodies and then read some of Shelley’s poems. Crowds gathered to watch the cremation as if it were a spectacle, a carnival. People seemed to think that this ceremony was some sort of entertainment. Then as Trelawny watched the guards place your father on the funeral pyre, he raced toward them and snatched Shelley’s heart from the flames. He burned his hands retrieving your father’s heart. Then he watched as your father’s body was consumed in flames. He waited until the flames went out and the embers died down and then he gathered his ashes.
Afterwards, he came to me and he handed me a bag that contained Shelley’s ashes and then he said, ‘I have something else for you.’
‘What is it? What have you brought me?’ I asked. I thought of Keats’s poems or perhaps a lock of Shelley’s dark hair.
‘I saved his heart for you;’ he thrust a second, smaller bag toward me.
I pushed his hand away and recoiled. ‘What? No, please, I cannot. I don’t want it. I don’t need it,’ I cried. ‘I know that you mean well, Edward, but what good will his drowned heart do me?’
‘I thought that it would bring you comfort,’ he said.
‘No, it will bring me great suffering. I cannot look at it. Please, Edward, take it away,’ I replied.
Percy didn’t respond, but after a short while, he asked, “What happened to his heart?”
“At a later time, Trelawny, under my instruction, buried it at the family’s estate that you will one day inherit.”
“Well, at least his heart remains in England,” Percy said.
I didn’t tell Percy Florence the entire truth about Shelley’s heart, for I asked Trelawny to please burn Shelley’s heart quickly and dispose of it. What good would it do for me to possess his material heart? I knew that I possessed it when he was alive, ever since I was 16 years old. His drowned heart would not serve me in any fashion. Trelawny did as I requested and then spread the ashes here in this sea that killed him.
I then told Percy Florence about his father’s premonitions and how they came true and then how later the night that he was found, I dreamt about another storm in which he nearly drowned in 1816, when his boatman held the sail too long and then finally let go. “Shelley was terrified as the waves swamped the boat but he tried and succeeding in saving his companion from being tossed overboard. In my dream, I saw him save his friend. I feel assured that he did his best to try and save Edward when the Ariel sank because, even though impetuous, he was always a brave man who never allowed others to suffer.”
Percy gathered me in his arms and said, “Mother, I am grateful that you shared this story with me. But I know that you suffered as you told it.”
“In truth, darling, I suffered more by keeping the story buried for nearly two decades in my own heart,” I replied. In telling the story, I had released it.
Just then the storm clouds began to dissipate and the sun peaked from behind a cloud. A nightingale sang and then flew over our heads. I looked at Percy and he seemed bathed in light, as if he were my child of light. I hugged him tightly to me and we sat for a long while watching the waves baptize the shore.
After Shelley’s ashes were interred in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome next to our darling boy, our Willmouse, and near our friend Keats, Claire arrived to console me, but she wept bitterly and she mostly kept to her room. She wore black as I did. One evening when she came down to dinner, she was wearing a widow’s cap. I told her that I was his widow, not her. “Take it off,” I ordered. She did as I said, but then raced to her room. In the morning, she left and I didn’t see her again. She remained on the continent and worked as a ladies’ companion. She never married.
Afterwards Percy Florence and I returned to England, which, although fraught with a history of troubles for us, made the most sense, because I could not bear to spend more time in Italy, the scene of Shelley’s, Will’s, and Clara’s deaths, even though it was our spiritual home. Regretfully, I left behind my dear surrogate mother, Margaret King, but knew that it was necessary to return to my birthplace and to my father.
Because of Shelley’s death, my father and I reconciled. While I was still in Italy, he encouraged me to come home, “I suppose [now] you can hardly stay in Italy. In that case, we will be near to, and support each other.” Once I returned to England, we spent much time in each other’s company and recently, we traveled to Athens, as I had always hoped, and walked in the Agora to trace Plato’s and Socrates’s steps.
I recall my conversation with my father when we were outside the Temple of Hephaestus at night in the Agora. The sky was cloudless and Ursa Major and Orion were profoundly bright.
“Mary, do you recollect the story that Socrates told of Thales, the first philosopher? How he gazed at the stars so intently and for so long as he walked that he fell down a well?”
I laughed and turned my attention from the stars to my father, “Yes, of course, I’ve read that story countless times. Why do you mention it?”
“Thales was perhaps foolish but Socrates failed to understand that sometimes falling into a well from gazing at the stars, contemplating the difficult and paradoxical questions, can transport you to a different world. A better world where truth prevails. Your mother and I understood that, but you’re the star-gazer who realized that.”
My heart skipped a little beat and I hesitated and then asked, “What are you implying, Father? What have I realized?”
“Dear child, I need you to know that from the beginning of your writing career, I’ve approved of all that you’ve written. You achieved what other philosophers could not. Your mother and I were your guides, but you found a new world for all of us, one based on ethical and moral principles about the potentials of the new science and one based on just and righteous principles between humans. You wrote about the need not just for reason to prevail over passion, but for humans to have compassion and love for their fellow creatures. I am indeed proud that you are my daughter. You’re the philosopher that I hoped you would be. I may be an old Prospero buried in my books but you are certainly the new Miranda who truly imagines the beginning of a new world. You, not I, have worked magic.”
My vision clouded over and I wiped moisture from my eyes. I tried to speak but couldn’t. Then, Godwin reached for my hand and we walked arm in arm out of the Agora into that new world.
With my father’s blessing, I remained a widow. I wore widow’s weeds for years, even though I received numerous marriage proposals, including an expression of love from the popular American author Washington Irving. Father knew that no one could replace my Shelley, who had owned my heart since I was 16 years old.
Since Shelley’s death, I have survived and lived because of my pen. I published three more philosophical novels and wrote biographies of literary and scientific men. I worked as a translator, remembering Keats’s implication that translation is an art, not a transcription. I gathered Shelley’s poems, edited, and published them so that the world would know him, not as a heretic, but as a believer in human perfectibility.
Despite my creature’s hideousness, Frankenstein has enjoyed considerable success; it has even been transformed into a play, H.M. Milner’s Frankenstein, or The Demon of Switzerland and has been performed frequently. I’ve been delighted to witness performances, although Milner has taken great license and has morphed my neglected creature into an inarticulate monster who lacks a conscience or a soul. This displeases me but I understand that I have no control of my own creation, which now has taken on a life of its own.
Although women have not yet attained full and equal rights, I believe that over the course of my life I have fostered my mother’s goals. Although educated and raised by my father, I have always been my mother’s disciple, ever since I read her work at her grave. Like my mother, I pursued intellectual and artistic endeavors to prove women’s humanity and equality. Like my mother, I dreamt of a new world for women. Like
my mother, I held on to my highest ideals despite endless hardship and heartache. I did this despite the universe’s attempt to kill my very soul each time each beloved child died and left me to grieve. I withstood the universe’s last attempt to annihilate me, when it stole my beloved Shelley from me.
I feel vindicated as I sit on the veranda here at Villa Diodati. The ghosts of Shelley and Byron haunt this place. Byron passed two years after my Shelley, playing the hero that he always envisioned himself as. I sit and watch the sailboats glide past. I see my Shelley, my Merman, manning one of them as he converses with Lord Byron. I see my children, Sophia, Clara, and Willmouse, in the bark with Shelley as they listen eagerly to Shelley’s stories and dreams of a perfect heaven right here on this blessed earth. Percy Florence sits by my side in this garden and is my sole earthly consolation. Unfortunately, my daughters did not live to help create this new world for all of us. Yet, even so, my ghostly mother sits next to me, as she always has, and she places her warm hand in mine. Her hand continues to guide mine, as I pick up my pen once more.
About the Author
Kathleen Williams Renk taught British and Women’s literature for nearly three decades in the United States and abroad. Her scholarly books include Magic, Science, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature: The Alchemical Literary Imagination (2012), and Women Writing the Neo-Victorian Novel: Erotic "Victorians" (2020). Renk studied fiction writing at the University of Iowa with Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Alan MacPherson. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Iowa City Magazine, Literary Yard, Page and Spine, and CC & D Magazine. Vindicated is her first novel.
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