Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
The author of
Frankenstein
confided her deepest feelings about Byron to her journal, but even there was unable to express them frankly: “At the age
of twenty six,” Mary wrote,
I am in the condition of an aged person—all my old friends are gone—I have no wish to form new—I cling to the few remaining—but
they slide away & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world—Albe, dearest Albe, was knit by long associations—Each
day I repeat with bitterer feelings “Life is the desart and the solitude—how populous the grave,” and that region to the dearer
and best beloved beings which it has torn from me, now adds that resplendent Spirit, whom I loved whose departure leaves the
dull earth dark as midnight.
Someone, using a different color ink, later crossed out the three words “whom I loved.”
Alone—alone—all—all—alone
Upon the wide, wide sea—
And God will not take pity on
My soul in agony!
—a slightly revised quotation from Coleridge’s
Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
as written in Mary Shelley’s journal, 1841
F
ROM THE TIME
Mary hid behind the family sofa and first heard Coleridge recite his great poem, it had moved her deeply. On April 16, 1841,
nineteen years after Percy’s death, Mary wrote a verse from it from memory—slightly misquoting—in her journal. Like the Ancient
Mariner, Mary now felt herself isolated, friendless, and alone.
She had felt that way for a long time. By coincidence, the day before she learned of Byron’s death in May 1824, she had begun
a new novel, titled
The Last Man
. Like
Frankenstein,
it was what we would call a science fiction novel, though no such term existed then. The book’s premise is that a plague
wipes out the entire human race, except the eponymous last man. Mary felt herself well qualified to describe such a person,
for as she wrote in her journal: “The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being’s feelings, feeling myself as
the last relic of a beloved race, my companions, extinct before me.”
She often repeated those sentiments. On July 28, 1824, she wrote, “On this very day ten years ago, I went to France with my
Shelley—how young heedless & happy & poor we were then —& now my sleeping boy [Percy Florence] is all that is left to me of
that time—my boy —& a thousand recollections which never sleep.”
In October of the same year: “Tears fill my eyes—well may I weep—solitary girl!— the dead know you not—the living heed you
not—you sit in your lone room, & the howling wind, gloomy prognostic of winter, gives not forth so despairing a tone as the
unheard sighs your ill fated heart breathes. . . . I wonder why England should be called my country. I have not a friend in
it—all those whom I have ever known here fly me.”
Since her return from Europe, Mary had found that the unconventional life she had lived with Percy had barred her from a certain
level of English polite society. She had borne Shelley’s child out of wedlock and—many people believed—lured him away from
his wife. And the rumors of her relationship with Byron did not help Mary’s reputation. While her mother might have had the
strength of personality to shrug off society’s disapproval, Mary was different. She wrote to Trelawny, who was still in Greece,
“I am under a cloud & cannot form new acquaintances among that class whose manners & modes of life are agreable [
sic
] to me —& I think myself fortunate in having one or two pleasing acquaintances among literary people.”
Mary had initially set out to rehabilitate Shelley’s reputation by creating a new version of him. Now she would do the same
for herself: changing the story of their relationship, suppressing embarrassing or scandalous details. Acting once more as
Dr. Frankenstein, this time she sought to create a perfect creature from her own parts. In the end, however, she could not
escape that sense of alienation and loneliness that tormented her creature. As the years went by, the voice of the monster
always returned to Mary’s journal.
M
ary was now the sole literary survivor of the Diodati circle. The poets’ celebrity, however, did not die with them. Tourists
could no longer view them through spyglasses, but the public’s fascination with them lingered. In time, the details of the
poets’ lives blended with exaggerations and faulty memories to become myths. Byron and Shelley would forever remain young,
and they left devotees who always associated them with their own youths. Fourteen-year-old Alfred Tennyson had run into the
woods and carved Byron’s name on a rock when he heard of his death. Ten years later, at the beginning of his own career as
a great poet, Tennyson wrote, “Such writers as Byron and Shelley, however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world another
heart and new pulses, and so are we kept going. Blessed be those that grease the wheels of the old world, insomuch as to move
on is better than to stand still.”
As one who had known both men, Mary was frequently pressed to describe her memories of them. (Claire was now in Russia, working
as a governess, and thus out of reach of English scandal-mongers.) Usually Mary turned down these requests, once claiming
that she was keeping a “vow I made never to make money of my acquaintance with Lord Byron—his ghost would certainly come and
taunt me if I did.”
Others had no such compunctions. Leigh Hunt, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Thomas Medwin, Edward Trelawny, Thomas Love Peacock, as
well as others, published their inside accounts. For the public, the two poets came to suggest opposites. Lord Byron’s darker
aspects were emphasized (he had once ironically termed himself “his Satanic Majesty”), which left Shelley to play the angel.
Mary broke her silence when Thomas Moore approached her for help on his biography of Byron. Mary had been horrified by Thomas
Medwin’s book, which purported to be a journal of conversations he had with Byron in 1821 and 1822. (Among other things, Medwin
reported that Mary had gotten the idea for
Frankenstein
from Matthew “Monk” Lewis, while the notorious author was staying at the Villa Diodati. Mary had in fact not even met Lewis
while he was there.) Mary called Medwin’s book “a source of great pain to me, & will be of more—I argued against the propriety
& morality of hurting the living by such gossip —& deprecated the mention of any of my connections—to what purpose, you see.”
Medwin had asked her to review his manuscript for errors and she refused, finding it “one mass of mistakes.” Now, however,
she realized she would have to tell someone her side of the story if only to counteract the lies that would inevitably appear.
After Byron himself, Moore was perhaps the most famous and popular poet of the time. Mary was eager to make his acquaintance,
for she had read and enjoyed his works. Only days after Byron’s funeral, they connected. Moore charmed Mary by showing his
familiarity with Shelley’s poetry, and later he told a friend that he found her “very gentle and feminine.” She related anecdotes
about Byron and brought with her a letter from Edward John Trelawny describing Byron’s death in detail. (Trelawny, who was
not actually there, had no trouble making up scenes as if he had been.) Moore reciprocated by singing for her; people said
he had a fine Irish tenor.
Quickly, Mary developed a bit of a crush on Moore. She wrote in her journal that he was “very agreeable, and I never felt
myself so perfectly at ease with anyone. I do not know why this is, he seems to understand and to like me. This is a new and
unexpected pleasure.” Moore was in fact a great philanderer and seems to have strung Mary along to get his information. In
any case, she promised to help him by writing to Trelawny on his behalf, asking for more recollections of Byron. She would
also persuade Countess Guiccioli to contribute her memories of her role in Byron’s life.
When she met Moore again, three years later, Mary told the poet she had read the early portions of Byron’s memoirs in Venice.
Presumably so had Moore, but perhaps there had been differences in the manuscripts, so Mary agreed to write what she remembered
of them. She also agreed to provide details of the 1816 summer and Shelley’s death, as well as the story of Claire’s love
affair and Byron’s child Allegra. Moore wrote in his journal after the meeting that Mary “seems to have known Byron thoroughly,
and always winds up her account of his bad traits with ‘but still he was very nice.’”
When the first volume of Moore’s
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of his Life
was published in January 1830, he sent Mary an autographed copy. She approved of what she read. “The great charm of the work
to me,” she wrote John Murray, “and it will have the same for you, is that the Lord Byron I find there is our Lord Byron—the
fascinating—faulty—childish—philosophical being—daring the world—docile to a private circle—impetuous and indolent—gloomy
and yet more gay than any other. I live with him again in these pages.”
Though Mary never remarried, she did occasionally seek love. Shunned by “proper” society in London, she nevertheless found
friends among those who were outsiders. John Howard Payne, an American actor-playwright who wrote the lyrics to “Home, Sweet
Home,” became a friend. When he was manager of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, he sent Mary free tickets and began to appear regularly
as her escort. He did not quite reach the point of proposing marriage, for she fended off a deeper relationship by asking
him to convey her affection to his friend and sometime collaborator Washington Irving. The handsome Irving, author of “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” had business interests that brought him to England, and Mary had made his acquaintance. Payne, feeling
disappointed that he was to be a go-between and not a lover, broke off his courtship. For his part, Irving turned out not
to be interested in Mary.
Mary still regarded Jane Williams as her strongest friend, once calling her “the hope and consolation of my life. . . . To
her, for better or worse I am wedded—while she will have me & I continue in the love-lorn state that I have since I returned
to this native country.” Jane’s adopting a form of marriage with Hogg, calling herself Mrs. Hogg, did not alter Mary’s feelings.
After learning Jane was pregnant Mary wrote, “Loveliest Janey—to thee tranquility and health!” In fact, Jane was not the friend
Mary imagined she was, for she had continued to spread the story that Shelley had turned to her because of Mary’s coldness.
When Mary found this out, in July 1827, she wrote in her journal, “My friend has proved false & treacherous! Miserable discovery—for
four years I was devoted to her —& I earned only ingratitude. . . . Am I not a fool! What deadly cold flows through my veins—my
head weighed down—my limbs sink under me—I start at every sound as the messenger of fresh misery —& despair invests my soul
with trembling horror—What hast thou done?”
Yet even then, Mary could not bear to break off her relationship with Jane—they had too much history together. Mary, sounding
as plaintive as her monster, wrote in her journal, “I need companionship & sympathy only —& the only one I love can afford
me so little. . . . I cannot live without loving and being loved—without sympathy—if this is denied to me I must die.”
So Mary hid her pain and did not confront Jane until the following February when she wrote her: “Though I was conscious that
having spoken of me as you did, you could not love me, I could not easily detach myself from the atmosphere of light & beauty
that for ever surrounds you—I tried to keep you, feeling the while that I had lost you.” Jane apparently showed some remorse,
and the two women maintained their relationship until death divided them. Jane outlived Mary, dying in 1884.
Although Mary needed to write to make a living, her father-in-law’s prohibition on using his son’s name in print sometimes
hindered her. Mary was now a Shelley too, so as an author, she had to become as nameless as her monster. When she published
The Last Man
in 1826, the title page declared only that it was the work of “the author of
Frankenstein
.” Sir Timothy complained anyway, for the 1823 edition of
Frankenstein,
edited by Godwin, had claimed Mary Shelley as the author.
She continued to write novels, but none acquired the fame or popularity of her first. In each of her books, whether a novel
of ideas or historical fiction, the characters are clearly drawn from the Diodati circle. Writing was her way of keeping them
alive. In
The Last Man,
for example, two of the protagonists, Lord Raymond and Count Adrian, are depictions of Byron and Shelley. Raymond/Byron was
“emphatically a man of the world.” As for Adrian/Shelley: “his sensibility and courtesy fascinated everyone. His vivacity,
intelligence, and active spirit of benevolence, completed the conquest. . . . In person, he hardly appeared of this world;
his slight frame was overinformed by the soul that dwelt within.”
In 1831, Mary had to fend off a proposal of marriage from Trelawny, along with his request for her help on another project.
Seeing the success of Moore’s book on Byron, Telawny decided to publish his own about Byron and Shelley. Mary refused to help
him, and her letter makes it clear that she feared publicity about herself:
You know me—or you do not, in which case I will tell you what I am—a silly goose—who far from wishing to stand forward to
assert myself in any way, now than [
sic
] I am alone in the world, have but the desire to wrap night and the obscurity of insignificance around me. This is weakness—but
I cannot help it. . . . Shelley’s life must be written—I hope one day to do it myself, but it must not be published now —
Her refusal irritated Trelawny, who pointed out she had helped Moore. But to Mary, contributing stories about Byron was one
thing; talking about Shelley quite another. She wrote Trelawny, again trying to discourage him, “Shelley’s life so far as
the public had to do with it consisted of very few events and these are publicly known—The private events were sad and tragical—How
could you relate them?” Trelawny took her advice, for the time being, and wrote an autobiography that Mary helped put in shape
for publication. She even supplied the title—
Adventures of a Younger Son
—and helped him find a publisher. Trelawny played on what he portrayed as his close relationship with Shelley and Byron, using
quotations from their works as chapter epigraphs. It reads as much like a Gothic novel as fact.