The Lady and Her Monsters (13 page)

Mary often made it a point to visit her late mother's grave site. St. Pancras Cemetery's northward location offered her solace on two levels: it got her away from her stepmother and afforded her a spiritual friendship with her dead mother. She would sit on that grave site and read most of Mary Wollstonecraft's published and unpublished works, as well as other manuscripts she removed from her father's library.

Like other cemeteries across London and its suburbs, St. Pancras had its share of resurrectionists and “sack-'em-up men” disturbing graves for profit; Mary Wollstonecraft's site, though, had not been touched. Jane Clairmont often went with Mary on her strolls, not because she too wanted to read in the cemetery, but because young girls should not go out alone. After Shelley started coming around, he joined their walks toward the cemetery, this time with Jane acting as a young chaperone.

Shelley must have liked the gloomy mood of the cemetery and the adjacent church. He likely told the girls about his obsession with the “marvelous stories of fairy-lands, and apparitions, and spirits, and haunted grounds.” St. Pancras, with its old history, its towering weeping willows, and its dank river nearby, could easily bring back days from the past. But St. Pancras appealed to Shelley because while there, beneath the gnarled tree sweeping above the tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft, he realized he was in love with Mary Godwin and told her so. As it happened, an exuberant Mary said she felt the same. Only one thing stood in the way of their happiness: Percy Shelley was married, and he was the father of a toddler named Ianthe.

P
ercy Shelley and T. J. Hogg may have discussed the wonders of science and the pursuit of knowledge in their rooms at Oxford. But invariably their conversations turned to women—they were, after all, young and at the brink of adulthood. Shelley seemed to place great emphasis on the qualities a woman had to possess in order to capture his senses. According to Hogg, Shelley would only be moved by a female if she possessed “absolute perfection.”

Edward Dowden agreed: “It is certain that at this time the qualities in women which most kindled [Shelley's] imagination were not beauty, or sweetness and gentleness, but intellectual strength and passionate ardour of heart.”

Some said Shelley's wife, Harriet Westbrook, had none of those qualities, though nothing was outright wrong with her. She was a beautiful girl of sixteen, who was very petite and “slightly and delicately formed.” She moved quickly on her feet and dressed in so simple a manner as to match her speech and the tone of her conversations, and “her laugh was spontenous, hearty, and jouyous.”

But people said she was not as intellectual as Shelley wanted, and he did not care much about beauty and fashion, so why did he marry her? The answer is that Shelley enjoyed playing a rescuer. Before marrying, Harriet lived at home with her father and an unmarried older sister, who had stepped into the role of mother early on. Her mother still lived, though she was a “seemingly incapable person.” Harriet, in all the wisdom of youth, had found this situation unbearable; when she met the dashing poet she quickly fell in love. In turn, after seeing her situation, Shelley promised to care for her.

But that promise was seemingly made in the heat of the moment, for in a letter he wrote to Hogg, dated on or around August 3, 1811, he declared, “In consequence . . . she has thrown herself upon my protection . . . Gratitude and admiration all demand that I should love her for ever . . . She had become violently attached to me, and feared that I should not return her attachment.”

He proposed, and the two of them rode off to Edinburgh, where they got married. They left behind them a disgruntled father and family.

It did not take long for the Shelleys to realize that Edinburgh would not agree with them, particularly not with Percy. He could not tolerate the persistent rains of autumn and the city's general darkness. After only five weeks, he had no problem convincing his wife to move to York: “she was docile, and submitted her mind to such influences as were brought to play upon it.” Even worse, “strength of intellect and strength of character were lacking in her.”

Some agreed that this was a particularly terrible flaw in her character, not so much because Harriet submitted herself to Shelley's will and moods, but because she could not keep up with his discussions on philosophy, science, and the occult. And she did not appear to have a mind of her own. She even continued to rely on her older sister for advice well into the marriage, a habit Shelley deplored so much he came to believe he had married both sisters, not just the younger one.

While they were living in York, Shelley's friendship with Hogg was challenged and redefined. Shelley left Harriet under Hogg's protection while he went away to London. When he returned, he noticed his wife was despondent and quiet. He urged her to tell him what had happened, and she revealed to Shelley that Hogg had made a pass at her, declaring his love for her and hoping she loved him back. When confronted, Hogg admitted his indiscretions, and the two didn't speak for many painful months. Again, Shelley decided he needed a change of scenery and wanted to move—something that would occur again and again. He left the choice of where to his wife, and to her sister Eliza, who was now a constant household companion.

Things got worse when Harriet became pregnant and gave birth to Ianthe. Like many women, Harriet transformed with motherhood, shifting her priorities to her child. She matured physically and mentally, though she still relied mightily on her sister. This bond only got stronger with the birth of the baby, and Percy Shelley felt left out. By this time, Shelley had reconnected with Hogg, and on March 16, 1814, he wrote to his friend: “Eliza is still with us . . . I am now little inclined to contest this part. I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe.”

I
n 1894, decades after Percy Shelley became romantically involved with Mary Godwin, Mark Twain published a long article titled “In Defence of Harriet Shelley.” By this time, Harriet, who had died in 1816, had long since been forgotten. Regardless, there were still questions about her days with Shelley, most specifically what had prompted her husband to land in Mary Godwin's arms. Mark Twain, like many others before him, didn't really know much about Harriet Shelley's life. Still, he was able to conclude that “rumour, gossip, conjectures, insinuation, and innuendo,” perpetrated by Shelley's friends and supporters and Mary's family and friends, had contributed to marking Harriet as a lowly character.

Later, after Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin eloped, a smear campaign against Harriet Westbrook Shelley broke out. She was portrayed in many circles as a cold and indifferent wife who did not fulfill Shelley's needs. She was described as uneducated, mentally incapable of keeping up with her husband's intellectual exercises, and, worse still, as the daughter of a tavern owner (among other establishments). People even began to say she had likely been a drunk.

This portrait came as a surprise to those who actually knew Harriet. The real woman was quite different. She had been well educated and attended the same school as Shelley's sister (who came from money). In that respect, she had attended better schools than Mary Godwin, whose education and knowledge were derived not from formal schooling, but from her own efforts and desire to learn, and the steps she had taken to gain that knowledge.

It also was not true that she had been indifferent to Shelley's needs. Thomas Love Peacock, a friend of Shelley's, wrote in
Memoirs of Percy Shelley,
published in 1858, that Harriet “was fond of her husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes. If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed the change of scene.”

In his 1857 book about Shelley, Edward Dowden portrayed Mary as a calm and particularly reasonable young woman, even though her bouts of anger and sour moods were well known and documented. Others also took issue with Mary's features and how she was portrayed physically. It was said that she was an exceptionally beautiful young woman Shelley could not resist, but according to Shelley's cousin, Thomas Medwin, that was not entirely true. He said: “It could not have been her personal charms that captivated him, for to judge her [Mary] in 1820 . . . she could not have been handsome, or even what may be denominated pretty.”

If Shelley had sought beauty, he had already had that. Harriet's physical beauty was startling, as were her many personal charms. Those who met her were immediately put at ease by her presence, something Mary often failed to do.

Those who came to learn of Shelley's subsequent romantic adventures knew very well why his wife had been disposed of and
that
particular mistress gained. Even Harriet knew why she had been set aside. When asked this by Thomas Love Peacock, she replied, “Nothing, but that her name was Mary, and not only Mary, but Mary Wollstonecraft.” Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, at that. Harriet might have felt slighted at that moment, and may even have been angry, but her response was not too far from the truth.

How does one go on about explaining falling in love with a name, or the notion of what that name actually means? How does one rationalize that decision or impulse? In Shelley's case, he convinced himself, Dowden agreed, that “he had married a woman who . . . had never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank, and proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery.” By shifting the blame toward Harriet, Shelley freed himself of fault. He was available to pursue his own happiness, which he thought he'd found with Mary. He had had numerous amorous escapades, was flexible in his romantic entanglements, and made it seem as if he had committed a pardonable act. Mark Twain suggested that Shelley “had done something which in the case of other men is called a grave crime,” but said that “in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do about those things.”

Harriet also faced rumors that she had been unfaithful and that the child she was carrying (her second) might not have been Shelley's. People figured the Godwins were to blame for this gossip—Mrs. Godwin was known for her fondness of gossip and flair for the dramatic. And William Godwin could have started such a rumor to save what was left of his daughter's reputation or to solidify his relationship with Shelley, who had already extended financial support and would continue to do so in the future. Callous as it sounded, those closest to him were aware that this behavior was not above him.

“As respected his own purposes, Godwin was one of the most heartless, the most callous of men,” Francis Place wrote. “He was perfectly regardless of the mischief he might bring upon anyone and quite as regardless of the feelings of others. When his own ends could be best and must be promptly answered by inflicting unhappiness on them, these matters annoyed him so little that I have sometimes doubted whether they did not even afford him satisfaction, when they fell upon those who had not readily conformed to his wishes.”

M
ary Godwin knew Shelley was married when they met. But Shelley had told her the marriage was dead, though no one else had been aware of the troubles he was facing. He described for Mary the cruel situation he found himself in and how desperate his soul was. He most likely told Mary that Harriet had been unfaithful. Whether he truly believed that is uncertain, but how was Mary to react to that? She was a young woman experiencing her first full-blown love affair, believing the object of her desire was caught in the middle of an awful predicament.

After several conversations with Mary and Percy Shelley, William Godwin believed their passion and desire for each other had been diffused, but that was not true at all.

Harriet had also come to believe that her husband's zest for the young Mary would wane. In her mind, she thought that Mary was the one “who had ensnared Shelley by her witchcraft, by her sentimental raptures at Mary Wollstonecraft's grave; by her avails of love; she alone had done this wrong.”

Given their situation, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin decided to elope to the continent. On July 28, 1814, cloaked in a long dark dress that matched the night, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley met at dawn to rush to Dover, and from there they intended to go to Switzerland.

Anchored by their sides was none other than Jane Clairmont.

Chapter 5

E
LOPING TO THE
M
AINLAND

The castled crag of Drachenfels

Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,

Whose breast of water broadly swells

Between the banks which bear the vine,

And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,

And fields which promise corn and wine,

And scatter'd cities crowning these;

Whose far white along them shine . . .

L
ORD
B
YRON,
C
HILDE
H
AROLD'S
P
ILGRIMAGE

P
ercy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Jane Clairmont fled Skinner Street during a blistering hot night, a heat wave that would stay strong as they traveled across the channel, accompanying them well into the Continent. Both girls were about to get an adventure and they eagerly hurried toward the chaise Shelley had provided. Shelley had been unsure if Mary would actually show up, but as the new day dawned, there she was.

Was he surprised to see Jane tagging along with Mary? After all, this was supposed to be a romantic elopement, and Jane was a third wheel. Why would Jane accompany Mary and why would Mary agree to it? When news of their escape broke out, some wondered if Jane had also developed a crush on Shelley and wanted to intrude on her stepsister's happiness. Many others suggested that Jane was with them because she was fluent in French, and they would be traveling through France and part of Switzerland. (But of course Shelley spoke some French and could have done well without her.)

Still others speculated that Jane had also aroused in Shelley the hero-rescuer role he was so fond of playing. He had done so when he met and married Harriet, and he was doing it again with Mary by taking her away from circumstances she despised. So why should it be any different with Jane?

Others recognized that Shelley's moral standards were flexible and were inclined to believe he had run off with the two girls. Shelley had often spoken about starting a commune, and this idea, along with Shelley's unconventionality, was further bolstered when later he dared to ask his wife, Harriet, to join them. He sought her company not as his wife but as his friend. It's possible he wanted Harriet to bring money with her—or he enjoyed adding fuel to the malicious and widespread rumors that had already started. But Harriet declined the invitation.

William Godwin learned of their escape that same morning. He found a letter on his dresser that told him his daughter had escaped behind his back. In his younger years Godwin's own views and ideas about love, relationships, and marriage had been as loose as Shelley's, but he was not as open to his daughter and his protégé engaging in such potentially scandalous activities.

In writing to his friend John Taylor sometime later, he placed the blame on Shelley, though he felt betrayed by all the participants: “I had the utmost confidence in him; I knew him susceptible of the noblest sentiments; he was a married man who had lived happily with his wife for three years . . . On Sunday June 26, he accompanied Mary, and her sister Jane Clairmont, to the tomb of Mary's mother, one mile distant from London; and there it seems, the impious idea first occurred to him of seducing her, playing the traitor to me and deserting his wife.”

Godwin was wrong, of course. Though Shelley may have made his feelings clear to Mary, all reports indicated that she was the one who made the first move. Shelley
had
spoken to Godwin earlier about his feelings for Mary, almost as if he was asking permission to begin a relationship with her, but Godwin had as much as said no.

“I expostulated with him with all the energy of which I was master, and with so much effect that for the moment he promised to give up his licentious love,” Godwin went on in his letter to Taylor. “I appealed all my diligence to waken up a sense of honour and natural affection in the mind of Mary, and I seemed to have succeeded. They both deceived me.”

After this conversation between her father and Shelley, Mary decided, at least for a short time, to blunt Shelley's advances. Ultimately she decided to run away with him, perhaps choosing that as a way of avoiding her father's anger. One story at the time, told by Mrs. Godwin, suggested that Shelley attempted suicide by ingesting a large quantity of laudanum. Mary found him and revived him, and he resumed his seduction of her. This time he won her affection.

During their journey across the channel from England to France, they were caught in a severe thunderstorm that churned up the seas. Crossing torrid waters had always caused Mary to become violently nauseous and this time was no different. But scholars have speculated that Mary might have been suffering the initial pangs of morning sickness, due to early pregnancy.

The Godwins always claimed that Mary and Shelley's sexual relationship began after their elopement (when Percy had officially, if not legally, left his wife), but Mary and Percy's works and diaries indicate that the affair had become intimate weeks earlier, in, of all places, St. Pancras Churchyard. Surrounded by tall, old weeping willows and ancient tombstones—including Mary Wollstonecraft's—the churchyard gave them the privacy they sought, away from any watchful eyes. And if Jane had chaperoned on those occasions, as she always did, she could have stood watch to make certain no one was around while they went about their business, and made herself scarce when asked. She said she was most often sent away once they reached the cemetery.

“They always sent me to walk some distance away,” Jane later wrote, “alleging that they wished to talk philosophical subjects and that I did not like or know anything about those subjects.”

As the boat bobbed from side to side and the three of them clung to one another, Mary's nausea got worse. And when they disembarked, Mary seemed to become deeply frustrated, her snide remarks including insults to the locals. She compared them unfavorably to the English by scrutinizing their clothing, manners, looks, and general attitudes, declaring, while in Calais, that “unfortunately the manners are not English.” Her behavior could have been due to the storm's severity, her physical discomfort, or Jane's presence, but whatever the reason, it was noticeable to everyone.

France was experiencing the same vicious heat wave, but at least in Paris they were able to stroll along the wide boulevards and lush green gardens like tourists, though even there they waited for a sum of money that would set them “free from a kind of imprisonment which [they] found very irksome.” Percy knew that when he abandoned his wife, he would not be able to count on his family's financial support for this new adventure. Mary, as well as Jane, had no money of her own to contribute to the party. Shelley continued to be in contact with his mother and sisters, who, not only then but throughout his life, offered the little support they could. Once again, he wrote to them and awaited whatever they could send, however minimal.

Eager to leave the city as soon as the money arrived, they conceived a plan that was not only romantic but silly and delusional: they decided “to walk through France.” The idea that three young people—two teenage girls burdened by long frocks, one of them probably pregnant, and a frail-looking man who was no more than a boy himself—could cross an entire country on foot in the middle of summer must have seemed ludicrous even to them. They bought a donkey to carry their supplies and planned to take turns riding him during the journey. But this donkey was skinny and feeble and could not even carry their provisions. The animal's legs buckled when weight was placed upon it. Still, undeterred, they departed.

Mary delighted in the natural views. Despite the people, the heat, the trudging on foot along pebbled roads and through ruined villages, she still clung to the notion that beauty might be found in the natural surroundings they encountered. “A rocky hill rose abruptly on one side, on the top of which stood a ruined citadel with extensive walls and hives,” she recalled at one point. “Lower down but beyond, was the cathedral, and the whole formed a scene for a painting.”

Given Mary's love of landscapes, it's not surprising that
Frankenstein,
aside from the deep philosophical questions and debates it raised, always managed to astound its readers also with its depiction of the natural world that surrounded its characters. In it, in the loneliness and isolation of the thick Swiss and German forests, the characters always find time to revere their landscape, to bask, while exploring nature, in the idea of something bigger and beyond them, something that, not unlike a forest, was at once as forbidden as it was eager to be penetrated. But Mary, Percy, and Jane did not find beauty in everything they passed; desolate walkways, lonely towns, and barren villages ruined by war seemed to quiet their spirits and sour their moods.

That gloominess was lifted upon crossing the border into Switzerland. Mary wrote, “The scenery of this day's journey was divine, exhibiting piney mountains, barren roads, and spots of verdure surpassing the imagination.” True, the landscape was magnificent, but there must have been a different reason as to why Mary felt, at first, so profoundly attracted to the land: this was the country her mother had wished to spend time in. Their primary goal was to make “a journey toward the lake of Uri, and seek in that romantic and interesting country some cottage where [they] might dwell in solitude.” Their plans were once again thwarted by money, or the lack of it. They finally accepted that neither of their families was sending anything and they had better return to England.

To do so, they had to pass Lucerne, which was dominated by a lake of the same name, and that is where Mary began collecting local tales. Aside from offering natural beauty, Lucerne was also ripe with old legends and stories. “The summits of several of the mountains that enclose the lake to the south are covered by eternal glaciers,” she wrote. “On one of these, opposite the Brunen, they tell the story of a priest and his mistress, who, flying from persecution, inhabited a cottage at the foot of the snows. One winter night an avalanche overwhelmed them, but their plaintive voices are still heard in stormy nights, calling for succor from the peasants.”

The fact that she described this short tale not only shows her interest in folklore and the stories of a particular region, but also displays her propensity to use what she had heard in her own work and to mold the tales in order to make them fit her needs.

She used the story in the first edition of the
Frankenstein
tale, where the legend she had heard now read: “I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean, and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind.”

As they traveled, and what money they had began to run out, it became obvious that they couldn't afford to take a coach. As it was, water offered the best solution for a return to London, most specifically, the Rhine River.

With their dream of a romantic elopement dashed, Mary's mood darkened even further, and she became almost remorseless in what she said to the people she encountered. As they left Switzerland behind, she could not help making one last jab: “The Swiss appeared to us then, and experience had confirmed our opinion, a people slow of comprehension and of action,” she wrote. “But habit has made them unfit for slavery, and they would, I have little doubt, make a brave defense against any invader of their freedom.”

On August 28, the Shelley party boarded a boat on the Rhine.

At any other time, traveling along the sublime beauty of the Rhine would have been a magnificent experience. Travel on Europe's major rivers became quite common during the second half of the eighteenth century, among not only the wealthy but also those wishing to move up the ladder of prosperity. Some took such journeys for the simple pleasure of viewing the panoramic landscapes, but others were transporting goods from one end of the country to the other. Still others were taken in not only by the natural beauty that fanned across their eyes, but by the histories they encountered. The Rhine in particular, rushing from the Alps and snaking along its path to the North Sea, crossed boundaries steeped in myths, legends, and fables. All of those were surrounded by landscapes that varied remarkably and could display at once a patchwork of gentle vineyards rising up the slopes of a hill or the ugly turns of the Via Mala, the Evil Way, so called because the extraordinary gorge bearing the same name narrowed at a certain point before plunging malevolently into the river.

Some travelers might have learned the legend that surrounded the Rhine, that of the Lorelei, and journeyed down the river's harrowing waterways in the hopes of debunking it. Lorelei was a German girl who had learned of her lover's unfaithfulness. Soon thereafter, she committed suicide by jumping into the river, where, upon her death, she was immediately turned into a mermaid. From then on she spent her days on a rock near St. Goar, chanting a melodious tune that so enraptured sailors passing by that they eagerly rowed toward her. Unfortunately, the sadness from her voice pulled them too close and they rowed toward their deaths, because the rock she sat upon was located in the deepest and most impenetrable portion of the river. The legend became well known not only in Germany, but also throughout Europe, especially upon the publication of Heinrich Heine's poem of the same name, “The Loreley,” which read in part:

A song of mysterious power

That lovely maiden sings

The boatman in his small skiff is

Seized by a turbulent love,

No longer he marks where the cliff is