The Monsters (15 page)

One piece of good news, from their standpoint, was the death of Percy’s grandfather Sir Bysshe on January 6, 1815. He divided
his estate between his son and oldest male heirs. This enabled Percy to get one thousand pounds a year, of which one-fifth
went to Harriet and the children. Learning of these events, Godwin promptly broke his frosty silence and asked Shelley to
make good on his earlier promise to settle the older man’s debts. Percy did send a generous sum of money but it was insufficient
to bring about a permanent solution to Godwin’s financial difficulties.

Shelley went to the family estate at Field Place for the reading of the will and took Claire with him, leaving Mary in London,
with Hogg a frequent visitor. How frequent were his visits, and how passionate, is impossible to know, for all the pages in
Mary’s journal for this period, from January 14 to January 29, have been removed. After Shelley and Claire returned, Mary
noted in the journal that Hogg now sometimes slept overnight at the apartment. Nothing was said, in the pages that remain,
about her having sex with him, but in her condition it would have been improbable.

Mary gave birth to a baby girl on February 22, 1815, going into labor so suddenly that the infant arrived before the doctor.
The night of the birth, Hogg stayed at the Shelleys’, making himself as useful as he could and remaining through the next
day. While Mary was still weak and in bed, Shelley complained of ill health (as he would each time Mary gave birth) and Claire
took him several times to visit a doctor. The delivery had been an easy one because the baby was two months premature. Dr.
John Clarke, the same physician who had attended Mary’s own mother after her birth (and killed her with his ignorance of sanitary
measures), told Mary that the child could not survive. But Mary refused to accept defeat: she put her baby to her breast and
tried to suckle it. In two days it took milk and Mary nursed it, hoping that she could keep it alive.

For some reason, Shelley even chose this time to make another of their numerous changes in residence. Though they had just
moved on February 8, Shelley found a place he liked better, requiring them to relocate on March 2. Mary had to carry her eight-day-old
baby to their new home. Hogg continued to visit, spending all day with Mary on March 5, for Percy and Claire were again out.
On the following day, Mary’s journal begins, “find my baby dead,” followed by a long dash. The night before, she had looked
in on the infant, and found it sleeping in its crib. It had lived just eleven days, the same length of time Mary’s mother
had survived after Mary’s birth. In both instances, Mary had been the survivor.

Significantly, Mary turned to Hogg for support. “My dearest Hogg,” she wrote him, “my baby is dead—will you come as soon as
you can? I wish to see you . . . you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer
a mother now.” Shelley again was showing his obsession with breasts, and was further concerned (with himself) because a doctor
had told him that he was dying of tuberculosis, a diagnosis that proved to be erroneous.

The death of her baby haunted Mary, and Percy’s attitude hurt her deeply. Though never named, the infant had lived long enough
for Mary to form a real attachment to her. After its death, Mary often daydreamed of her little girl, frequently referring
to these thoughts in her journal. Almost every day, Shelley and Claire left the house, leaving Mary to her lonely grief. She
asked herself if she could ever have another child. Could she be a mother and nurture another life? Could she create life
and not death in those she loved? Was she a monster?

On Sunday, March 19, a vision came to Mary as she slept: “my little baby came to life again—that it had only been cold & that
we rubbed it before the fire & it lived—I awake & find no baby—I think about the little thing all day—not in good spirits.”
In her depression, she wanted life to be as Shelley had led her to think it could be: that wishing for things made them true.
Mary heard a story that the doctor who had attended her had earlier revived a sailor who had been comatose for seven months—in
effect, bringing him back to life. Could that really be done? Could he, somehow, do it for her dead child?

Mary roused herself enough to bring a different order to her life. She began to demand that Claire leave the household. “I
see plainly—what is to be done,” Mary wrote. The others at first resisted. Claire said she could never return to the Godwins
at Skinner Street, and Percy protested that he and Mary bore a responsibility for Claire since it was they who were responsible
for her predicament. This time, however, Mary persisted. If Claire could not go to Skinner Street, then she must move somewhere
else.

The decision was delayed, as usual. When feelers were put out to the Godwins, they declared they no longer wanted to take
Claire back, explaining that the scandal was hurting Fanny’s chances of obtaining a teaching post in a school that her aunts
ran in Dublin. Shelley agreed to take financial responsibility for Claire—as well as to “form her mind” (one of the few responsibilities
in his life that he would live up to). But Claire continued to live with the couple as Mary seethed.

In mid-April, Shelley and Mary suddenly went by themselves to stay at an inn at Salt Hill in Buckinghamshire, in the Thames
valley northwest of London. It may have been intended as a holiday, but there is evidence that Shelley was dodging his creditors
again. Several pages have been ripped out of Mary’s journal during this period, covering all the time she spent with Shelley
at Salt Hill. It seems very likely that she became pregnant on this trip. The security of Shelley all to herself at last completely
changed her mood. In the four letters she wrote to Hogg during that time—urging him to come and join them—the bereaved mother
was gone, and the coquette returned: “I am no doubt a very naughty Dormouse [here a drawing of a dormouse] but indeed you
must forgive me. . . . Do you mean to come down to us—I suppose not Prince Prudent well as you please but remember I should
be very happy to see you.”

After three days, they returned to London, where Hogg had found them (yet again!) new lodgings, with room for him to stay
there as well. To Mary’s annoyance, Claire had moved in ahead of them. The degree of hostility in the household must have
been high, for Shelley began reading the calming works of the Stoic philosopher Seneca to escape from the chaos around him.
On May 12 Mary wrote icily in her journal that Shelley had gone out with “his friend” in the morning and “the lady” in the
afternoon. In the evening he had a last talk with “his friend.” All these are references to Claire.

The next day, the first thing Mary wrote was “Clary goes.” That day’s entry was the last in this volume of her journals. Though
there were blank pages left to write on, Mary finished the book with, “I begin a new journal with our regeneration.” However,
the next volume has been lost, and we have only the letters written by her and Shelley to determine what happened between
then and July of the following year, 1816. By that time, though Mary had hoped otherwise, her brief period of exclusivity
with Shelley would be over.

Claire had gone to stay in Lynmouth, a village in Devon on the west coast of England. A friend of hers lived there, and Shelley
paid for Claire’s expenses. On the day of her departure, he escorted her to the place where she was to board a carriage, and
when he did not return till late in the day, Mary became “very anxious,” no doubt feeling that even now Shelley might choose
Claire over her. Claire, on her part, felt relief at escaping the friction that had developed among the threesome. She wrote
to her other stepsister, Fanny, from Lynmouth: “I am perfectly happy—After so much discontent, such violent scenes, such a
turmoil of passion & hatred you will hardly believe how enraptured I am with this dear little quiet spot.”

Lynmouth would prove to be too boring a place for Claire, who loved excitement, but for eight months Mary was free of her.
The threesome became a twosome. Mary knew that she was again pregnant and Shelley constantly complained of his health, so
they too spent much of the summer away from London, often staying in seacoast towns such as Clifton and Torquay. The resort
village of Torquay was filled with visitors that summer, for Napoleon was temporarily held there aboard a British warship;
tourists could see him walking the deck. To Mary and Percy, like many others, Napoleon’s presence marked the disappointing
end of a long period of idealism that the French Revolution had sparked, for even though Napoleon was more despot than liberator,
his downfall signaled the restoration of a monarchy in France.

Even in these pleasant vacation spots, Shelley could not stay put for long. He went off to London to consult with doctors
about his illnesses, which now included a serious abdominal complaint. He told Mary that while he was away he would look for
a house where the two of them could live. That left Mary stranded in Clifton, a town near the seaport of Bristol, alone and
pregnant (not to mention unmarried, though Shelley introduced her as “Mrs. Shelley” to avoid controversy). Mary constantly
feared that he might be with Claire, for Lynmouth was not too far away.

Mary wrote Shelley a letter that shows how disturbed she was at this time; the tone veers between desperation and cuteness.
“We ought not to be absent any longer indeed we ought not—I am not happy at it,” she began,

when I retire to my room no sweet Love—after dinner no Shelley. . . .

Pray is Clary with you? for I have enquired several times . . . but seriously it would not in the least surprise me if you
have written to her from London & let her know that you are there without me. . . .

Tomorrow is the 28th of July [the anniversary of their elopement]— dearest ought we not to have been together on that day—indeed
we ought my love. . . . Your Pecksie is a good girl & is quite well now again—except a headach[e] when she waits so a[n]xiously
for her loves letters—dearest best Shelley pray come to me.

Mary knew that Shelley had abandoned Harriet even though she was his legal wife. She had only faith that her erratic lover
would not repeat the scene with her. Nevertheless, Shelley did return to Mary by the end of the week. He had good news: Dr.
William Lawrence, the eminent surgeon, had assured him that he need not worry. Shelley did not have consumption, nor was he
on the edge of death.

That out of the way, it was time to move again. In August, Shelley found a place for the two of them to live near Windsor,
west of London. It was a two-story house of red brick with a garden for Mary. There the summer and fall passed quite peacefully.
It was the longest time in their relationship that they lived as a couple, with no additional members of the household. Thomas
Peacock, who lived close by, was a regular visitor, and at the end of August he and Mary’s stepbrother, Charles Clairmont,
joined the lovers for a trip along the Thames. Shelley, as always entranced by water, proposed they row a boat up the river
to its source. While the men rowed, Mary enjoyed the lovely scenery along the winding banks.

When the group reached Oxford, they disembarked so Shelley could show them his former rooms and the Bodleian Library. As Charles
wrote to Claire in a letter about the trip, they saw “the very rooms where the two most noted infidels, Shelley and Hogg .
. . pored, with the incessant . . . application of an alchemyst, over the artificial and natural boundaries of human knowledge.”

The trip was a productive one for Shelley; the relief from anxiety over bill collectors, ill health, and quarrels between
Mary and Claire prompted a surge of poetic works. Charles reported to Claire, “We have all felt the good effects of this jaunt;
but in Shelley the change is quite remarkable; he has now the ruddy healthy complexion of the Autumn upon his countenance,
& he is twice as fat as he used to be.” Perhaps the real reason for Shelley’s newly robust appearance was that Peacock had
persuaded him to give up his vegetarian diet and eat some pork chops.

Mary gave birth to a son on January 24, 1816, finally able to give her father the gift she herself was supposed to have been.
She named the child William, hoping that would soften her father’s heart and persuade him to resume their relationship. Shelley
wrote sarcastically to Godwin that it would make Fanny and Mrs. Godwin happy to know that Mary had given birth to a son and
that both mother and child were healthy. Despite this, Godwin was not reconciled with his daughter, though for that day he
noted in his journal, “William,
nepos,
born.”

Mary’s son proved to be healthy, and at long last she had a home where she did not have to share Shelley with anyone else.
Such happiness could not last—and it didn’t. Shelley funded a scheme that had sent Charles Clairmont and Claire off to Ireland
to start a business. That did not pan out, and early in 1816, Claire had returned to London, where she finally was able to
move back into the Skinner Street residence of the Godwins. Shelley’s legal battles over his will and the settlement with
Harriet frequently took him to London as well. Mary fretted that he and Claire would resume their relationship, and Mary knew
by this time that she did not want to share Shelley any more than she had wanted to share her father’s love.

Claire, however, was about to make a literary catch of her own. She had written a letter to a man whose very presence, it
was said, could make respectable women faint. It was Claire’s ambition not just to meet Lord Byron, but to become his lover.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow’d to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

—“She Walks in Beauty,” Lord Byron, 1815