The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 13

Mamma and I are not great friends, but, always alive to her virtues, I am anxious to defend her from a charge so foreign to her character....

I told Sh.e.l.ley these (scandalous reports), and I still think they originated with your servants and Harriet, whom I know has been very industrious in spreading false reports about you. I at the same time advised Sh.e.l.ley always to keep French servants, and he then seemed to think it a good plan. You are very careless, and are for ever leaving your letters about. English servants like nothing so much as scandal and gossip; but this you know as well as I, and this is the origin of the stories that are told. And this you choose to father on Mamma, who (whatever she chooses to say in a pa.s.sion to me alone) is the woman the most incapable of such low conduct. I do not say that her inferences are always the most just or the most amiable, but they are always confined to myself and Papa. Depend upon it you are perfectly safe as long as you keep your French servant with you.... I have now to entreat you, Sh.e.l.ley, to tell Papa exactly what you can and what you cannot do, for he does not seem to know what you mean in your letter. I know that you are most anxious to do everything in your power to complete your engagement to him, and to do anything that will not ruin yourself to save him; but he is not convinced of this, and I think it essential to his peace that he should be convinced of this. I do not on any account wish you to give him false hopes. Forgive me if I have expressed myself unkindly. My heart is warm in your cause, and I am _anxious, most anxious_, that Papa should feel for you as I do, both for your own and his sake.... All that I have said about Mamma proceeds from the hatred I have of talking and petty scandal, which, though trifling in itself, often does superior persons much injury, though it cannot proceed from any but vulgar souls in the first instance.

This letter was crossed by Sh.e.l.ley's, enclosing more than 200--insufficient, however, to meet the situation or to raise the heavy veil of gloom which had settled on Skinner Street. f.a.n.n.y could bear it no longer. Despairing gloom from G.o.dwin, whom she loved, and who in his gloom was no philosopher; sordid, nagging, angry gloom from "Mamma," who, clearly enough, did not scruple to remind the poor girl that she had been a charge and a burden to the household (this may have been one of the things she only "chose to say in a pa.s.sion, to f.a.n.n.y alone"); her sisters gone, and neither of them in complete sympathy with her; no friends to cheer or divert her thoughts! A plan had been under consideration for her residing with her relatives in Ireland, and the last drop of bitterness was the refusal of her aunt, Everina Wollstonecraft, to have her. What was left for her? Much, if she could have believed it, and have nerved herself to patience. But she was broken down and blinded by the strain of over endurance. On the 9th of October she disappeared from home. Sh.e.l.ley and Mary in Bath suspected nothing of the impending crisis. The journal for that week is as follows--

_Sat.u.r.day, October 5_ (Mary).--Read Clarendon and Curtius; walk with Sh.e.l.ley. Sh.e.l.ley reads Ta.s.so.

_Sunday, October 6_ (Sh.e.l.ley).--On this day Mary put her head through the door and said, "Come and look; here's a cat eating roses; she'll turn into a woman; when beasts eat these roses they turn into men and women."

(Mary).--Read Clarendon all day; finish the eleventh book. Sh.e.l.ley reads Ta.s.so.

_Monday, October 7._--Read Curtius and Clarendon; write. Sh.e.l.ley reads _Don Quixote_ aloud in the evening.

_Tuesday, October 8._--Letter from f.a.n.n.y (this letter has not been preserved). Drawing lesson. Walk out with Sh.e.l.ley to the South Parade; read Clarendon, and draw. In the evening work, and Sh.e.l.ley reads _Don Quixote_; afterwards read _Memoirs of the Princess of Bareith_ aloud.

_Wednesday, October 9._--Read Curtius; finish the _Memoirs_; draw. In the evening a very alarming letter comes from f.a.n.n.y. Sh.e.l.ley goes immediately to Bristol; we sit up for him till 2 in the morning, when he returns, but brings no particular news.

_Thursday, October 10._--Sh.e.l.ley goes again to Bristol, and obtains more certain trace. Work and read. He returns at 11 o'clock.

_Friday, October 11._--He sets off to Swansea. Work and read.

_Sat.u.r.day, October 12._--He returns with the worst account. A miserable day. Two letters from Papa. Buy mourning, and work in the evening.

From Bristol f.a.n.n.y had written not only to the Sh.e.l.leys, but to the G.o.dwins, accounting for her disappearance, and adding, "I depart immediately to the spot from which I hope never to remove."

During the ensuing night, at the Mackworth Arms Inn, Swansea, she traced the following words--

I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death may give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as....

This note and a laudanum bottle were beside her when, next morning, she was found lying dead.

The persons for whose sake it was--so she had persuaded herself--that she committed this act were reduced to a wretched condition by the blow.

Sh.e.l.ley's health was shattered; Mary profoundly miserable; Clare, although by her own avowal feeling less affection for f.a.n.n.y than might have been expected, was shocked by the dreadful manner of her death, and infected by the contagion of the general gloom. She was not far from her confinement, and had reasons enough of her own for any amount of depression.

G.o.dwin was deeply afflicted; to him f.a.n.n.y was a great and material loss, and the last remaining link with a happy past. As usual, public comment was the thing of all others from which he shrank most, and in the midst of his first sorrow his chief anxiety was to hide or disguise the painful story from the world. In writing (for the first time) to Mary he says--

Do not expose us to those idle questions which, to a mind in anguish, is one of the severest of all trials. We are at this moment in doubt whether, during the first shock, we shall not say that she is gone to Ireland to her aunt, a thing that had been in contemplation. Do not take from us the power to exercise our own discretion. You shall hear again to-morrow.

What I have most of all in horror is the public papers, and I thank you for your caution, as it may act on this.

We have so conducted ourselves that not one person in our home has the smallest apprehension of the truth. Our feelings are less tumultuous than deep. G.o.d only knows what they may become.

Charles Clairmont was not informed at all of f.a.n.n.y's death; a letter from him a year later contains a message to her. Mrs. G.o.dwin busied herself with putting the blame on Sh.e.l.ley. Four years later she informed Mrs.

Gisborne that the three girls had been simultaneously in love with Sh.e.l.ley, and that f.a.n.n.y's death was due to jealousy of Mary! This shows that the Sh.e.l.leys' instinct did not much mislead them when they held Mary's stepmother responsible for the authorship and diffusion of many of those slanders which for years were to affect their happiness and peace.

Any reader of f.a.n.n.y's letters can judge how far Mrs. G.o.dwin's allegation is borne out by actual facts; and to any one knowing aught of women and women's lives these letters afford clue enough to the situation and the story, and further explanation is superfluous. f.a.n.n.y was fond of Sh.e.l.ley, fond enough even to forgive him for the trouble he had brought on their home, but her part was throughout that of a long-suffering sister, one, too, to whose lot it always fell to say all the disagreeable things that had to be said--a truly ungrateful task. Her loyalty to the G.o.dwins, though it could not entirely divide her from the Sh.e.l.leys, could and did prevent any intimacy of friendship with them. Her enlightened, liberal mind, and her generous, loving heart had won Sh.e.l.ley's recognition and his affection, and in a moment a veil was torn from his eyes, revealing to him unsuspected depths of suffering, sacrifice, and heroism--now it was too late. How much more they might have done for f.a.n.n.y had they understood what she endured! There was he, Sh.e.l.ley, offering sympathy and help to the oppressed and the miserable all the world over, and here,--here under his very eyes, this tragic romance was acted out to the death.

Her voice did quiver as we parted, Yet knew I not that heart was broken From which it came,--and I departed, Heeding not the words then spoken-- Misery, ah! misery!

This world is all too wide for thee.

If the echo of those lines reached f.a.n.n.y in the world of shadows, it may have calmed the restless spirit with the knowledge that she had not lived for nothing after all.

During the next two months another tragedy was silently advancing towards its final catastrophe. Sh.e.l.ley was anxious for intelligence of Harriet and her children; she had, however, disappeared, and he could discover no clue to her whereabouts. Mr. Peac.o.c.k, who, during June, had been in communication with her on money matters, had now, apparently, lost sight of her. The worry of G.o.dwin's money-matters and the fearful shock of f.a.n.n.y's self-sought death, followed as it was by collapse of his own health and nerves, probably withdrew Sh.e.l.ley's thoughts from the subject for a time. In November, however, he wrote to Hookham, thinking that he, to whom Harriet had once written to discover Sh.e.l.ley's whereabouts, might now know or have the means of finding out where she was living. No answer came, however, to these inquiries for some weeks, during which Sh.e.l.ley, Mary, and Clare lived in their seclusion, reading Lucian and Horace, Shakespeare, Gibbon, and Locke; in occasional correspondence with Skinner Street, through Mrs. G.o.dwin, who was now trying what she could do to obtain money loans (probably raised on Sh.e.l.ley's prospects), requisite, not only to save G.o.dwin from bankruptcy, but to repay Sh.e.l.ley a small fraction of what he had given and lent, and without which he was unable to pay his own way.

The plan for settling at Marlow was still pending, and on the 5th of December Sh.e.l.ley went there again to stay with Mr. Peac.o.c.k and his mother, and to look about for a residence to suit him. Mary during his absence was somewhat tormented by anxiety for his fragile health; fearful, too, lest in his impulsive way he should fall in love with the first pretty place he saw, and burden himself with some unsuitable house, in the idea of settling there "for ever," Clare and all. To that last plan she probably foresaw the objections more clearly than Sh.e.l.ley did. But her cheery letters are girlish and playful.

_5th December 1816._

SWEET ELF--I got up very late this morning, so that I could not attend Mr. West. I don't know any more. Good-night.

NEW BOND STREET, BATH, _6th December 1816_.

SWEET ELF--I was awakened this morning by my pretty babe, and was dressed time enough to take my lesson from Mr. West, and (thank G.o.d) finished that tedious ugly picture I have been so long about. I have also finished the fourth chapter of _Frankenstein_, which is a very long one, and I think you would like it. And where are you? and what are you doing? my blessed love. I hope and trust that, for my sake, you did not go outside this wretched day, while the wind howls and the clouds seem to threaten rain. And what did my love think of as he rode along--did he think about our home, our babe, and his poor Pecksie?

But I am sure you did, and thought of them all with joy and hope. But in the choice of a residence, dear Sh.e.l.ley, pray be not too quick or attach yourself too much to one spot. Ah! were you indeed a winged Elf, and could soar over mountains and seas, and could pounce on the little spot. A house with a lawn, a river or lake, n.o.ble trees, and divine mountains, that should be our little mouse-hole to retire to.

But never mind this; give me a garden, and _absentia_ Claire, and I will thank my love for many favours. If you, my love, go to London, you will perhaps try to procure a good Livy, for I wish very much to read it. I must be more industrious, especially in learning Latin, which I neglected shamefully last summer at intervals, and those periods of not reading at all put me back very far.

The _Morning Chronicle_, as you will see, does not make much of the riots, which they say are entirely quelled, and you would be almost inclined to say, "Out of the mountain comes forth a mouse," although, I daresay, poor Mrs. Platt does not think so.

The blue eyes of your sweet Boy are staring at me while I write this; he is a dear child, and you love him tenderly, although I fancy that your affection will increase when he has a nursery to himself, and only comes to you just dressed and in good humour; besides when that comes to pa.s.s he will be a wise little man, for he improves in mind rapidly. Tell me, shall you be happy to have another little squaller?

You will look grave on this, but I do not mean anything.

Leigh Hunt has not written. I would advise a letter addressed to him at the _Examiner_ Office, if there is no answer to-morrow. He may not be at the Vale of Health, for it is odd that he does not acknowledge the receipt of so large a sum. There have been no letters of any kind to-day.

Now, my dear, when shall I see you? Do not be very long away; take care of yourself and take a house. I have a great fear that bad weather will set in. My airy Elf, how unlucky you are! I shall write to Mrs. G.o.dwin to-morrow; but let me know what you hear from Hayward and papa, as I am greatly interested in those affairs. Adieu, sweetest; love me tenderly, and think of me with affection when anything pleases you greatly.--Your affectionate girl

MARY.

I have not asked Clare, but I dare say she would send her love, although I dare say she would scold you well if you were here.

Compliments and remembrances to Dame Peac.o.c.k and Son, but do not let them see this.

Sweet, adieu!

Percy B. Sh.e.l.ley, Esq., Great Marlow, Bucks.

On 6th December the journal records--

Letter from Sh.e.l.ley; he has gone to visit Leigh Hunt.

This was the beginning of a lifelong intimacy.

On the 14th Sh.e.l.ley returned to Bath, and on the very next day a letter from Hookham informed him that on the 9th Harriet's body had been taken out of the Serpentine. She had disappeared three weeks before that time from the house where she was living. An inquest had been held at which her name was given as Harriet Smith; little or no information about her was given to the jury, who returned a verdict of "Found drowned."

Life and its complications had proved too much for the poor silly woman, and she took the only means of escape she saw open to her. Her piteous story was sufficiently told by the fact that when she drowned herself she was not far from her confinement. But it would seem from subsequent evidence that harsh treatment on the part of her relatives was what finally drove her to despair. She had lived a fast life, but had been, nominally at any rate, under her father's protection until a comparatively short time before her disappearance, when some act or occurrence caused her to be driven from his house. From that moment she sank lower and lower, until at last, deserted by one--said to be a groom--to whom she had looked for protection, she killed herself.

It is a.s.serted that she had had, all her life, an avowed proclivity to suicide. She had been fond, in young and happy days, of talking jocosely about it, as silly girls often do; discoursing of "some scheme of self-destruction as coolly as another lady would arrange a visit to an exhibition or a theatre."[22] But it is a wide dreary waste that lies between such an idea and the grim reality,--and poor Harriet had traversed it.

Sh.e.l.ley's first thought on receiving the fatal news was of his children.

His sensations were those of horror, not of remorse. He never spoke or thought of Harriet with harshness, rather with infinite pity, but he never regarded her save in the light of one who had wronged him and failed him,--whom he had left, indeed, but had forgiven, and had tried to save from the worst consequences of her own acts. Her dreadful death was a shock to him of which he said (to Byron) that he knew not how he had survived it; and he regarded her father and sister as guilty of her blood.

But f.a.n.n.y's death caused him acuter anguish than Harriet's did.