Mrs. Shelley by Lucy M. Rossetti

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Claire's cleverness and liveliness made her a pleasant companion at
times for Shelley and Mary; but even had they been sisters--and they
had been brought up together as such--Mary might have found her
constant presence in confined lodgings irksome, especially as Claire
tormented herself with superstitious alarms which at times, even in
reading Shakespeare, quite overcame her. Her fanciful imagination also
conjured up causes of offence where none were intended, and magnified
slight changes of mood on Shelley's or Mary's part into intentional
affronts, when she ought rather to have taken Mary's delicate health
and difficult position into consideration. Mary, by all accounts,
seems naturally to have had a sweet and unselfish disposition,
although she had sufficient character to be self-absorbed in her work,
without which no work is worth doing. It is true that her friend
Trelawny later appeared to consider her somewhat selfishly indifferent
to some of Shelley's caprices or whims; but this was with the
pardonable weakness of a man who, although he liked character in a
woman, still considered it was her first duty to indulge her husband
in all his freaks. However this may be, we have constantly recurring
such entries in the joint diary as:--"Nov. 9.--Jane gloomy; she is
very sullen with Shelley. Well, never mind, my love, we are happy.
Nov. 10.--Jane is not well, and does not speak the whole day.... Go to
bed early; Shelley and Jane sit up till twelve talking; Shelley talks
her into good humour." Then--"Shelley explains with Clara."
Again--"Shelley and Clara explain as usual."

Mary writes--"Nov. 26.--Work, &c. &c. Clara in ill humour. She reads
_The Italian_. Shelley sits up and talks her into humour." Dec.
19.--A discussion concerning female character. Clara imagines that I
treat her unkindly. Mary consoles her with her all-powerful
benevolence. "I rise (having already gone to bed) and speak with Clara.
She was very unhappy; I leave her tranquil." Clara herself writes as
early as October--"Mary says things which I construe into unkindness.
I was wrong. We soon became friends; but I felt deeply the imaginary
cruelties I conjured up."

It is clear that where such constant explaining is necessary there
could not be much satisfaction in perpetual intimacy.

Mary is amused at the way Shelley and Claire sit up and "frighten
themselves" by different reasons or forms of superstition, and on one
occasion we have their two accounts of the miraculous removal of a
pillow in Claire's room, Claire avowing it had moved while she did not
see it; and Shelley attesting the miracle because the pillow was on a
chair, much as Victor Hugo describes the peasants of Brittany
declaring that "the frog _must_ have talked on the stone because
there was the stone it talked upon." The result might certainly have
been injurious to Mary, who was awakened by the excited entrance of
Claire into her room. Shelley had to interpose and get her into the
next room, where he informed Claire that Mary was not in a state of
health to be suddenly alarmed. They talked all night, till the dawn,
showing Shelley in a very haggard aspect to Claire's excited
imagination (Shelley had been quite ill the previous day, as noted by
Mary). She excited herself into strong convulsions, and Mary had
finally to be called up to quiet her. The same effect tried a little
later fortunately fell flat; but there seemed no end to the vagaries
of Claire's "unsettled mind" as Shelley calls it, for she takes to
walking in her sleep and groaning horribly, Shelley watching for two
hours, finally having to take her to Mary. Certainly philosophy did
not seem to have a calming effect on Claire Claremont's nature, and
often must Shelley and Mary have bemoaned the fatal step of letting
her leave her home with them. It was more difficult to induce her to
return, if indeed it was possible for her to do so, with the remaining
sister, Fanny, still under Godwin's roof. Fanny's reputation was
jealously looked after by her aunts Everina and Eliza, who
contemplated her succeeding in a school they had embarked in in
Ireland. But it is not to be wondered at that the excitable, lively
Clara should have groaned and bemoaned her fate when transferred from
the exhilaration of travel and the beauties of the Rhine and
Switzerland to the monotony of London life in her anomalous position;
and although both Mary and Shelley evidently wished to be kind to her,
she felt more her own wants than their kindness. Want of occupation
and any settled purpose in life caused pillows and fire-boards to walk
in poor Claire's room, much as other uninteresting objects have to
assume a fictitious interest in the houses and lives of many
fashionably unoccupied ladies of the present day, who divide their
interest between a twanging voice or a damp hand and the last poem of
the last fashionable poet. Shelley is not the only imaginative and
simple-minded poet who could apparently believe in such a phenomenon
as a faded but supernatural flower slipped under his hand in the dark,
other people in whom he has faith being present, and perchance helping
in the performance. Genius is often very confiding.

Peacock was perhaps the one other friend who, during these sombre, if
not altogether unhappy, days of Mary, visited them in their lodgings.
Shelley, through him, hears of some of the movements of his family,
and at one time Mary enters with delight into the romantic idea of
carrying off two heiresses (Shelley's sisters) to the west coast of
Ireland. This idea occupies them for some days through many delightful
walks and talks with Hogg. Peacock also frequently accompanied Shelley
to a pond touching Primrose Hill, where the poet would take a fleet of
paper boats, prepared for him by Mary, to sail in the pond, or he
would twist paper up to serve the purpose--it must have been a
relaxation from his projects of Reform.

We must not leave this delightfully unhappy time without making
reference to the series of letters exchanged between Mary and Shelley
during an enforced separation. Unseen meetings had to be arranged to
avoid encounters with bailiffs, at a time when the landlady refused to
send them up dinner, as she wanted her money, and Shelley, after a
hopeless search for money, could only return home--with cake. During
this time some of their most precious letters were written to each
other. We cannot refrain from quoting some touching passages after
Mary had received letters from Shelley expressing the greatest
impatience and grief at his separation from her, appointing vague
meeting-places where she had to walk backwards and forwards from
street to street, in the hopes of a meeting, and fearful animosity
against the whole race of lawyers, money-lenders, &c., though all his
hopes depended on them at the time. The London Coffee House seemed to
be the safest meeting-place.

Mary, not very clear about business matters at the time, felt most the
separation from her husband: the dangers that surrounded them she only
felt in a reflected way through him. They must have confidence in each
other, she thinks, and their troubles cannot but pass, for there is
certainly money which must come to them!

She thus writes (October 25):

For what a minute did I see you yesterday! Is this the way, my
beloved, we are to live till the 6th? In the morning when I wake, I
turn to look for you. Dearest Shelley, you are solitary and
uncomfortable. Why cannot I be with you, to cheer you and press you to
my heart? Ah! my love, you have no friends. Why then should you be
torn from the only one who has affection for you? But I shall see you
to-night, and this is the hope that I shall live on through the day.
Be happy, dear Shelley, and think of me! Why do I say this, dearest
and only one? I know how tenderly you love me, and how you repine at
your absence from me. When shall we be free from fear of treachery? I
send you the letter I told you of from Harriet, and a letter we
received yesterday from Fanny (this letter made an appointment for a
meeting between Fanny and Clara); the history of this interview I will
tell you when I come, but, perhaps as it is so rainy a day, Fanny will
not be allowed to come at all. I was so dreadfully tired yesterday
that I was obliged to take a coach home. Forgive this extravagance;
but I am so very weak at present, and I had been so agitated through
the day, that I was not able to stand; a morning's rest, however, will
set me quite right again; I shall be well when I meet you this
evening. Will you be at the door of the coffee-house at five o'clock,
as it is disagreeable to go into such places? I shall be there exactly
at that time, and we can go into St. Paul's, where we can sit down.

I send you "Diogenes," as you have no books; Hookham was so
ill-tempered as not to send the book I asked for.

Two more distracted letters from Shelley follow, showing how he had
been in desperation trying to get money from Harriet; how pistols and
microscope were taken to a pawnshop; Davidson, Hookham, and others are
the most hopeless villains, but must be propitiated. Trying letters
also arrive from Mrs. Godwin, who was naturally much incensed with
Mary, and of whom Mary expresses her detestation in writing to
Shelley. One more short letter:

October 27.

MY OWN LOVE,

I do not know by what compulsion I am to answer you, but your letter
says I must; so I do.

By a miracle I saved your L5, and I will bring it. I hope, indeed, oh,
my loved Shelley, we shall indeed be happy. I meet you at three, and
bring heaps of Skinner St. news.

Heaven bless my love and take care of him.

HIS OWN MARY.

As many as three and four letters in a day pass between Shelley and
Mary at this time. Another tender, loving letter on October 28, and
then they decide on the experiment of remaining together one night.
Warned by Hookham, who regained thus his character for feeling, they
dared not return to the London Tavern, but took up their abode for a
night or two at a tavern in St. John Street. Soon the master of this
inn also became suspicious of the young people, and refused to give
more food till he received money for that already given; and again
they had to satisfy their hunger with cakes, which Shelley obtained
money from Peacock to purchase. Another day in the lodgings where the
landlady won't serve dinner, cakes again supplying the deficiency.
Still separation, Shelley seeking refuge at Peacock's. Fresh letters
of despair and love, Godwin's affairs causing great anxiety and
efforts on Shelley's part to extricate him. A Sussex farmer gives
fresh hope. On November 3 Mary writes very dejectedly. She had been
_nearly_ two days without a letter from Shelley, that is, she had
received one of November 2 early in the morning, and that of November
3 late in the evening. That day had also brought Mary a letter from
her old friends the Baxters, or rather from Mr. David Booth, to whom
her friend Isabel Baxter was engaged, desiring no further
communication with her. This was a great blow to Mary, as, Isabel
having been a great admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary had hoped she
would remain her friend. Mary writes:--"She adores the shade of my
mother. But then a married man! It is impossible to knock into some
people's heads that Harriet is selfish and unfeeling, and that my
father might be happy if he chose. By that cant of selling his
daughter, I should half suspect that there has been some communication
between the Skinner Street folks and them."

But now the separation was approaching its end, and the danger of
being arrested past, they move from their lodgings in Church Terrace,
St. Pancras, to Nelson Square, where we have already seen Hogg in
their company and heard of the sulks, fears, and bemoanings of poor
Claire.

Mary Shelley's novel of _Lodore_ gives a good account of the
sufferings of this time, as referred to later. The great resource of
intellectual power is manifested during all this period. During a time
of ill-health, anxieties of all kinds, constant moves from lodgings
where landladies refused to send up dinner, while she was discarded by
all her friends, while she had to walk weary distances, dodging
creditors, to get a sight from time to time of her loved Shelley,
while Claire bemoaned her fate and seems to have done her best to have
the lion's share of Shelley's intellectual attention (for she partook
in all the studies, was able to take walks, and kept him up half the
night "explaining"), Mary indefatigably kept to her studies, read
endless books, and made progress with Latin, Greek, and Italian. In
fact, she was educating herself in a way to subsist unaided hereafter,
to bring up her son, and to fit him for any position that might come
to him in this world of changing fortunes. Whatever faults Mary may
have had, it is not the depraved who prepare themselves for, and
honestly fight out, the battle of life as she did.

CHAPTER VI.

DEATH OF SHELLEY'S GRANDFATHER, AND BIRTH OF A CHILD.

After Shelley had freed himself, for a time, of some of his worst
debts towards the close of 1814, the year 1815, with the death of his
grandfather on January 6, brought a prospect of easier circumstances,
as he was now his father's immediate heir.

Although Shelley was not invited to the funeral, and only knew of the
death through the papers, he determined at once to go into Sussex,
with Claire as travelling companion, as Mary was not well enough for
the journey. Shelley left Claire at Slinfold, and proceeded alone to
his father's house, where he was refused admittance; so he adopted the
singular plan of sitting in the garden, before the door, passing the
time by reading _Comus_. One or two friends come out to see him,
and tell him his father is very angry with him, and the will is
most extraordinary; finally he is referred to Sir Timothy's
solicitor--Whitton. From him, Mary writes in her diary, Shelley hears
that if he will entail the estate he is to have the income of one
hundred thousand pounds.

The property was really left in this way, as explained by Professor
Dowden. Sir Bysshe's possessions did not, probably, fall short of
L200,000. One portion, valued at L80,000, consisted of certain
entailed estates, but without Shelley's concurrence the entail could
not be prolonged beyond himself; the rest consisted of unentailed
landed property and personal property amounting to L120,000. Sir
Bysshe desired that the whole united property should pass from eldest
son to eldest son for generations. This arrangement, however, could
not be effected without Shelley. Sir Bysshe, in his will, offered his
grandson not only the rentals, but the income of the great personal
property, if he would renew the entail of the settled property and
would also consent to entail the unsettled property; otherwise he
should only receive the entailed property, which was bound to come to
him, and which he could dispose of at his pleasure, should he survive
his father. He had one year to make his choice in.

Shelley is considered to have been business-like in his negotiations;
but to have retained his original distaste of 1811 to entailing large
estates to descend to his children--in fact, he appears to have
considered too little the contingency of what would come to them or to
Mary in the event of his death prior to that of his father. Pressing
present needs being paramount at this time, he agreed to an
arrangement by which a portion of the estate valued at L18,000 could
be disposed of to his father for L11,000, and an income of L1,000 a
year secured to Shelley during his and his father's life. At one time
there was an idea of disposing of the entailed estate to his father,
as a reversion, but this was not sanctioned by the Court of Chancery.
Money was also allowed by his father to pay his debts.

So now we see Mary and Shelley with one thousand pounds a year, less
two hundred pounds which, as Shelley ordered, was to be paid to
Harriet in quarterly instalments.

Now that the money troubles were over, which for a time absorbed their
whole attention, Mary began to perceive signs of failing health in
Shelley, and one doctor asserted that he had abscesses on the lungs,
and was rapidly dying of consumption. Whatever these symptoms were
really attributable to they rapidly disappeared, although Shelley was
a frequent sufferer in various ways through his life.

In February, we see also the effect of the mental strain and fatigue
on Mary, as she gave birth, about the 22nd of that month, to a
seven-months' child, a little girl, who only lived a few days, but
long enough to win her mother's and father's love, and leave the first
blank in their lives. The diary of this time, kept up first by Claire,
and then by Mary, gives some details of the baby's short life. On
February 22--

Mary is well and at ease, the child not expected to live, Shelley sits
up with Mary. Much agitated and exhausted. Hogg sleeps here.

23.--Mary well; child unexpectedly alive. Fanny comes and stays the
night.... 24.--Mary still well; favourable symptoms of the child. Dr.
Clarke confirms our hope.... Hogg comes in evening. Shelley unwell and
exhausted. 25.--Child and Mary very well. Shelley is very unwell.
26.--Mary rises to-day. Hogg calls; talk. Mary retires at 6
o'clock.... Shelley has a spasm. On 27 Shelley and Clara go about a
cradle. 28.--Mary goes down-stairs; nurses the baby, and reads
_Corinne_ and works. Shelley goes to consult Dr. Pemberton. On
March 1st nurse baby, read _Corinne_, and work. Peacock and Hogg
call; stay till half-past eleven.

On March 2 they move to fresh lodgings. It is uncertain whether it was
to 26 Marchmont Street, from which place letters are addressed in
April and May. or whether they were in some other lodgings in the
interval. This early move was probably detrimental to Mary and the
baby, for on March 6 we find the entry: "Find my baby dead. Send for
Hogg. Talk. A miserable day."

Mary thinks, and talks, and dreams of her little baby, and finds
reading the best palliative to her grief.

March 19.--Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had
only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived.
Awake to find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in
good spirits. Shelley is very unwell.

March 20.--Dream again about my little baby.

Mrs. Godwin had sent a present of linen for the infant, and Fanny
Godwin repeated her visits; but the little baby, who might have been a
link towards peace with the Godwins, has escaped from a world of
sorrow, where, in spite of a mother's love, she might later on have
met with a cold reception.

Godwin at this time was in the anomalous position of communicating
with Shelley on his business matters; but for the very reason that
Shelley lent him, or gave him, money, he felt it the more necessary to
hold back from friendly intercourse, or from seeing his daughter--a
curious result of philosophic reasoning, which appears more like
worldly wisdom.

From this time the company of Claire was becoming insufferable to Mary
and Shelley. At least for a time, it was desirable to have a change.
We find Mary sorely puzzled in her diary at times, as on March 11 she
writes--"Talk about Clara's going away; nothing settled. I fear it is
hopeless. She will not go to Skinner Street; then our house is the
only remaining place I plainly see. What is to be done?

March 12.--"Talk a great deal. Not well, but better. Very quiet in the
morning and happy, for Clara does not get up till four...." Again on
the 14th March--"The prospect appears more dismal than ever; not the
least hope. This is, indeed, hard to bear."

At one time Godwin, Shelley, and Mary tried to induce Mrs. Knapp to
take her, but she refused. Claire also tried to get a place as
companion, but that fell through, till at length the bright idea
occurred to them of sending her into Devonshire, under the excuse of
her needing change of air; and there, according to a letter from Mrs.
Godwin to Lady Mountcashell, she was placed with a Mrs. Bicknall, the
widow of a retired Indian officer. Two more entries in Mary's journal,
of this time, show with what feelings of relief she contemplates the
departure of Shelley's friend, as she now calls Claire. Noting that
Shelley and his friend have their last talk, the next day, May 13,
Shelley walks with her, and she is gone! and Mary begins "a new diary
with our regeneration."

There is a letter from Claire to Fanny Godwin, of May 28, apparently
from Lynmouth, describing the scenery in a very picturesque manner,
and saying how she delights in the peace and quiet of the country
after the turmoil of passion and hatred she had passed through. She
also expresses delight that their father had received one thousand
pounds--this was evidently part of what Shelley had undertaken to pay
for him, and was included in the sum which Sir Timothy paid for his
debts. Claire--or Jane, as she was still called in Skinner
Street--supposed her family would be comfortable for a month or two.

Shelley and Mary now yearned for the country, and truly their eight
months' experience in London had been a trying period, from various
causes, but redeemed by their love and intellectual conversation. Now
they felt unencumbered by pressing money troubles, and free from the
burden of Claire's still more trying presence, at least to Mary. In
June we find them together at Torquay, and we can imagine the
delight of the poet and his loved Mary in their first unshared
companionship--the quiet rambles by sea and cliff in the long June
evenings, the sunsets, the quiet and undisturbed peace which
surrounded them. They were able to give each other quaint pet names,
which no one could or need understand--which would have sounded silly
in the presence of a third person. This was a time in which they could
grow really to know each other without reserve, when there need be no
jealous competition as to who was most proficient in Greek or Latin;
when Shelley was drawn to poetry, and _Alastor_ was contemplated,
the melancholy strain of which seems to indicate love as the only
redeeming element of life, and which might well follow the time of
turmoil in Shelley's career. May not this poem have been his
self-vindication as exhibiting what he might have become had he not
followed the dictates of his heart? "Pecksie" and the "Elfin Knight"
were the names which still stand written at the end of the first
journal, ending with Claire's departure. Mary added some useful
receipts for future use. One is: "A tablespoonful of the spirit of
aniseed, with a small quantity of spermaceti;" to which Shelley adds
the following: "9 drops of human blood, 7 grains of gunpowder, 1/2 oz.
of putrified brain, 13 mashed grave-worms--the Pecksie's doom salve.
The Maie and her Elfin Knight."

We next find Mary at Clifton, July 27, 1815, writing in much
despondency at being alone while Shelley is house-hunting in South
Devon. Although she wishes to have a home of her own, she dreads the
time it will take Shelley to find it. He ought to be with her the next
day, the anniversary of their journey to Dover; without him it will be
insupportable. And then the 4th of August will be his birthday, when
they must be together. They might go to Tintern Abbey. If Shelley does
not come to her, or give her leave to join him, she will leave in the
morning and be with him before night to give him her present with her
own hand. And then, is not Claire in North Devon? If Shelley has let
her know where he is, is she not sure to join him if she think he is
alone? Insufferable thought! As Professor Dowden shows, Mary must have
been very soon joined by Shelley after this touching appeal. In all
probability a house was fixed on, but in a very opposite direction,
before the end of the week, and the lease or arrangements made by
August 3, as the following year he writes from Geneva to Langdill to
give up possession of his house at Bishopsgate by August 3, 1816. So
here, far from Devonshire, by the gates of Windsor Forest, near the
familiar haunts of his Eton days, we again find Shelley and Mary. Here
Peacock was not far distant at Marlow, and Hogg could arrive from
London, and here they were within reach of the river. No long time
elapsed before they were tempted to experience again the delights of a
holiday on the Thames. So Mary and Shelley, with Peacock and Charles
Clairmont to help him with an oar, embarked and went up the river.
They passed Reading and Oxford, winding through meadows and woods,
till arriving at Lechlade, fourteen miles from the source of the
Thames, they still strove to help the boat to reach this point if the
boat would not help them. This proved impossible. After three miles,
as cows had taken possession of the stream, which only covered their
hoofs, the party had perforce to return, still contemplating
proceeding by canal and river, even as far as the Clyde, the poet ever
yearning forwards. But this, money and prudence forbade, as twenty
pounds was needed to pass the first canal; so they returned to their
pleasant furnished house at Bishopsgate. On this trip Mary saw
Shelley's old quarters at Oxford, where they spent a night, and they
must have lingered in Lechlade Churchyard, as the sweet verses there
written indicate. Shelley and Mary were now settled for the first time
in a home of their own: she was making rapid progress with Latin,
having finished the fifth book of the Aeneid, much to Shelley's
satisfaction, as recounted in a letter to Hogg. Hogg was expected to
stay with them in October, and in the meanwhile, under the green
shades of Windsor Forest, Shelley was writing his _Alastor_, and,
as his wife describes in her edition of his poems, "The magnificent
woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of
forest scenery we find in the poem." She writes:--

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