Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
By the time they reached Byron’s villa at Este, Clara was dehydrated and suffered from mild convulsions. Mary wrote to Mrs.
Gisborne,
. . . we have arrived safe and yet I can hardly call it safe since the fatigue has given my poor Ca an attack of dysentery
and although she is now some what recovered from that disorder she is still in a frightful state of weakness and fever as
[
and
] is reduced to be so thin in this short time that you would hardly know her again—the physician of Este is a stupid fellow
but there is one come from Padua & who appears clever—so I hope under his care she will soon get well, although we are still
in great anxiety concerning her.
Over the next two weeks, Clara improved only slightly.
Meanwhile, Shelley was bothered by ailments of his own, suffering from a severe stomachache, which he believed was a result
of being poisoned by some Italian cakes. Claire too complained of health problems that summer. The two of them went to Padua
to consult a doctor on September 22. They arrived too late to see him and Shelley decided to go on to Venice by himself to
meet Byron. He sent Claire back to Este with a note telling Mary to bring little Clara to the doctor in Padua on September
24 at 8 a.m. and that he would meet her there. This meant Mary and her child had to leave Este at 3:30 in the morning and
also required taking Clara on yet another uncomfortable journey.
On the appointed day, Mary did as Shelley had asked. By the time she met him at Padua, Clara’s condition had grown worse.
Shelley insisted that they take her on to Venice, where Byron had told him of a better physician, a Dr. Alietti. Maddeningly,
they were detained at Fusina, on the coast opposite Venice, when Austrian soldiers demanded their passports, which the Shelleys
had forgotten. (Italy was not yet a nation, and parts of it belonged to the Austrian empire.) Percy finally managed to talk
their way through. While they were crossing the lagoon from the mainland to Venice by gondola, the baby started to go into
convulsions. Mary carried her to an inn while Shelley searched for the doctor, who was not at home. Clara Everina died in
her mother’s arms on September 24. Mary wrote that day in her journal (in which the deaths of Fanny Godwin and Harriet Shelley
were also recorded), “This is the Journal book of [my] misfortunes.” The child was buried on the Lido beach with no memorial
stone. Mary could not bear to attend the service.
She spent the next four days in Venice. During that time she saw Byron, who commiserated with her and then gave her two of
his new poems to transcribe for the printer. Perhaps this was not as cold as it sounds; her friends may have wanted to take
her mind off her loss, for Mary also records that at this time Mrs. Hoppner took her to the library, an art gallery, and shopping.
Percy sent a letter to Claire describing the death of Clara, and added, “All this is miserable enough—is it not? but must
be borne [
one line is here erased
]—And above all, my dear girl, take care of yourself.” He wrote to Peacock as well in early October, “I have not been without
events to disturb & distract me, amongst which is the death of my little girl. She died of a disorder peculia[r] to the climate.”
He then went on to describe his interest in Byron’s new poem
Don Juan
and mentioned that he himself was starting to write a poetic drama that would be called
Prometheus Unbound
.
Mary, not easily consoled, blamed Percy’s carelessness and Claire’s selfishness for the tragedy. She resented the fact that
Percy acted for Claire’s welfare at the expense of their own child. Mary also suspected that her husband did not feel the
loss of their little girl as keenly as she did, for his favorite was William, affectionately called Willmouse.
If Mary looked for sympathy from her father, she was disappointed as usual. Godwin, after receiving the news in a letter from
Mary, criticized her for her excessive grief: “I sincerely sympathize with you in the affliction which forms the subject of
your letter, and which I may consider as the first severe trial of your constancy and the firmness of your temper that has
occurred to you in the course of your life. You should, however, recollect that it is only persons of a very ordinary sort,
and of a pusillanimous disposition, that sink long under a calamity of this nature.”
They spent the next two months at Byron’s villa, where the sight of Claire playing with Allegra must have bitterly reminded
Mary of her own loss. At the end of October, Claire returned Allegra to the Hoppners, but she continued to travel with Mary
and Percy. They visited Rome, and then settled in Naples, where they planned to stay for the winter.
Mary sank into a deep depression. The ghost of the past in the form of Harriet came back to haunt her and cast a pall over
her marriage. For a time Mary found it difficult to have sexual relations with Shelley. Shelley, in his turn, was starting
to believe that Mary was a disappointment. Sometimes it appeared that he found Claire to be a more lively personality and
a more enthusiastic student of his principles. He caught the mood in a poem titled “The Past” that seemed directed at Mary:
Wilt thou forget the happy hours
Which we buried in Love’s sweet bowers
Heaping over their corpses cold
Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?
Blossoms which were the joys that fell,
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.
Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the heart a tomb,
Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,
And with ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain.
The winter of 1818-19 brought another potentially dangerous secret into Percy and Mary’s relationship. On February 27, 1819,
Percy went to a courthouse in Naples and registered the birth of a daughter, Elena Adelaide Shelley, whose birthdate he gave
as December 27, 1818. He listed himself and Mary as parents, although the “mother” was not present to sign the certificate;
two witnesses, a barber and a cheese merchant, attested to the fact that Mary had given birth to the child. Little is known
for sure about the baby, except that Mary was definitely
not
the mother.
Literary historians still argue over the parentage of Elena Adelaide. Mary’s journal makes no mention of her, nor did Mary
seem otherwise to be aware of her existence. Elena Adelaide was turned over to foster parents and never entered the Shelley
household. Mary did note in her journal that Claire was “not well” on December 27, the date that the mysterious child had
been born. Elise Duvilliard, the nursemaid who was again traveling with the Shelleys, later claimed that Claire had given
birth to the child, and that its father was Percy. However, her testimony is colored by the fact that in January 1819, when
the Shelleys discovered Elise herself was pregnant, by Paolo Foggi, both servants were dismissed. Shelley’s ideas of sexual
freedom evidently had some limits. Unfortunately, Claire’s journal between April 1818 and March 1819 is—like so many other
crucial records—missing. It would be possible to tell her condition during this time because she marked the onset of her menstrual
periods with a cross.
If the true parents of the child were Percy and Claire, she would have had to have become pregnant either during their final
days in England or the first days in Europe. On the other hand, if the baby was indeed Claire’s child, would she have been
willing to give it up, so soon after losing possession of Allegra? It could be argued that Claire might have agreed to this
arrangement because a second child would have weakened her position with Byron, but she clearly enjoyed being a mother.
Another theory is that the child was a foundling that Shelley wanted to adopt as a replacement for Clara Everina and restore
Mary’s happiness. If so, it would not be the first time Shelley had such a harebrained idea. As a little boy, he had wanted
his family to adopt a Gypsy child, and on the elopement trip through France with Mary, he had actually offered to take a French
child as his own, but the parents refused. If that were the case, however, why didn’t he bring this child home to Mary?
In any event, the baby, to whom Shelley referred as his “Neapolitan charge,” died June 9, 1820, when it was a mere fifteen
months old—one more casualty left behind in Shelley’s wake. Registering the child’s birth had been Shelley’s last act in Naples.
He was on the move again, taking his loved ones wherever his whims commanded. Mary’s journal for February 28, 1819, has the
notation: “A most tremendous fuss.” Six days later, on March 5, they arrived in Rome. Here they met Amelia Curran, the daughter
of an Irish politician, who had come to Italy to study painting. In Rome, she made a portrait of Shelley; more important,
she painted the only known portraits of Claire and little William. William appeared positively angelic in Curran’s painting—much
the way his counterpart is described in
Frankenstein:
“with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek,
which are rosy with health.”
Mary regained some of her spirits, and evidently her relationship with Shelley improved, for in March, she became pregnant
again. But the ghosts were not finished. Three-year-old Willmouse was the delight of his parents. He was talking now, chattering
away in three languages—English, Italian, and French. On May 25, William fell ill; the doctor diagnosed an attack of worms
and prescribed laxatives. Three days later, the boy appeared to be convalescing, but the doctor advised the Shelleys to leave
Rome, for the oppressive summer heat could be dangerous for him. Actually, the Tiber marshes near the city were breeding grounds
for mosquitoes that spread malaria, but the connection was not yet realized.
For once, Shelley did not seize the opportunity to run off to another location—a lack of action that may have killed his son.
On June 2, Willmouse fell ill with a high fever and the sweats and chills of malaria. Mary was frantic at the thought of losing
another child, and she and Claire sat up with the boy during his restless, sleepless nights. The Shelleys enlisted the help
of John Bell, an expatriate English doctor, who was the physician of Pauline Borghese, sister of Napoleon. Mary anxiously
watched for any sign of improvement. On June 3, she recorded hopefully, “William is very ill but gets better towards the evening—.
. .”
But the next day William suffered convulsions that left him exhausted and weak. By June 5, his condition was critical. For
Mary, it was a repetition of the nightmare she had endured with Clara Everina. She wrote a frantic note to Maria Gisborne,
“William is in the greatest danger—We do not quite despair yet we have the least possible reason to hope—Yesterday he was
in the convulsions of death and he was saved from them—Yet we dare not must not hope—. . . The misery of these hours is beyond
calculation—The hopes of my life are bound up in him.”
Mary’s journal stops after she wrote the date for the fourth of June. By then she must have known that the doctor could not
save her son. Little Willmouse died at noon on June 7, a victim of the malaria epidemic that was sweeping Rome. Mary may have
thought of the lines she wrote in
Frankenstein
: “William is dead!—that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay.” He was
buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome. Amelia Curran was asked to set a small stone pyramid over William’s grave—but even
that tender gesture would bring another more crushing revelation to Mary three years later.
With Willmouse’s death, Mary felt her happiness had ended. They soon left Rome for Leghorn with Mary clutching the painting
of William that Amelia Curran had made. She wrote to Amelia on June 27, saying that she could think of nothing else but her
dead child. “I am going to write another stupid letter to you—yet what can I do—I no sooner take up my pen than my thoughts
run away with me —& I cannot guide it except about
one
subject & that I must avoid.” Mary asked about the tomb for William that Amelia had promised to decorate: “near which I shall
lie one day & care not—for my own sake—how soon—I shall never recover [from] that blow—I feel it more now than at Rome—the
thought never leaves me for a single moment—Everything on earth has lost its interest to me.”
On June 29, Mary wrote to Leigh Hunt’s wife, Marianne: “I never know one moments ease from the wretchedness & despair that
possesses me. . . . I feel that I am no[t] fit for any thing & therefore not fit to live . . . William was so good so beautiful
so entirely attached to me—To the last moment almost he was in such abounding health & spirits.”
Percy also mourned his son. He wrote to Thomas Peacock on June 8, “Yesterday after an illness of only a few days my little
William died. There was no hope from the moment of the attack. You will be kind enough to tell all my friends, so that I need
not write to them—It is a great exertion to me to write this & it seems to me as if, hunted by calamity as I have been, that
I should neve[r] recover any cheerfulness again —.” He more easily found expression for his grief in poetry.
My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived, and did
That decaying robe consume
Which its lustre faintly hid, —
Here its ashes find a tomb,
But beneath this pyramid
Thou art not—if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother’s grief and mine.
Where are thou, my gentle child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds
Among these tombs and ruins wild;—