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  And all who heard should see them there,

  And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

  His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

  Weave a circle round him thrice,

  And close your eyes with holy dread

  For he on honey-dew hath fed,

  And drunk the milk of Paradise.

  His “Kubla Khan” makes me “close my eyes with holy dread” and dream of other worlds, of paradise on earth itself, not in some far off afterlife.

  1812

  2 January 1812

  Recently, the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley joined the circle of friends. I find him truly intriguing with his comely looks, his quick wit, and brilliant mind. I was so taken with him that I wanted to know more about him. So, when Father was away at the British Library one afternoon, I stole into his study and perused some of the letters that Shelley and Father exchanged. Father had haphazardly left them atop his desk so I felt little guilt in reading them; they were out in the open for anyone to read who might be passing by. Initially, Mr. Shelley wrote a letter of introduction to my father from Dublin where he was writing pamphlets about Irish independence. He wrote a sort of “fan” letter where he confessed to my father his great admiration of Father’s political philosophy located in his Political Justice. Mr. Shelley too believes that if all people exercised their reason, we would need no government. We would be free and would properly self-govern. He asked to become my father’s adept for he wishes to learn all that he can from him. He solicited my father’s guidance.

  Father thanked him for the letter, espousing mutual admiration for Mr. Shelley’s mind, but he warned him about his continued pamphleteering, which could lead to his arrest. He advised him to desist and that his actions were, even though based on noble intentions, “preparing a scene of blood,” his own and others’. He reminded him what had happened in 1803 to Robert Emmet whom the British government ordered hanged, drawn, and quartered. Emmet was convicted of treason and hanged and then beheaded on Thomas St. in front of St. Catherine’s in Dublin. Taking up arms against the British government in Ireland, especially since the penal laws were now in effect barring Irish Catholics from owning land, would not lead to lasting freedom or reform. Father advised Mr. Shelley to quickly return to London and that once home, he was most welcome to visit our home. Apparently, Mr. Shelley took this to heart and heeded Father’s caveat because soon after he was back in London.

  3 March 1812

  Mr. Shelley came to dinner with his wife Harriet, a timid girl, slightly older than me. After dinner, when I inquired further about Mr. Shelley’s life, Father told me that Mr. Shelley told him that he saved Harriet, one of his sisters’ school friends, from her despotic father; Father confessed to me that he thought Mr. Shelley noble when he acted the hero and he eloped with Harriet to Scotland on a whim. Like my father, Mr. Shelley believes very much in female and male equality and will not abide tyranny.

  Beyond his heroism, Mr. Shelley is also becoming known for his audacious broad-mindedness. He shared with the group his poem, “Queen Mab,” which envisions the future and which postulates an infinity of worlds. It is rather heretical and he claims that if he had lived in an earlier era he may have been burned at the stake, as Giordano Bruno, the Dominican friar, was; Bruno, known as Monsieur l’heretique in the French Court, first glimpsed the infinite universe in 1600 and now Mr. Shelley has. To me he seems both prescient and omniscient. When I expressed this sentiment to Father, he laughed and told me not to worship a golden calf, even if he is a handsome, brilliant one.

  Mr. Shelley dedicates the poem to his wife Harriet. He claims that her love “wards off the poisonous arrow of [the world’s] scorn.” It seems he believes that she is somehow his protector, rather than the other way around. Truly that accords her much credit and makes her heroic. He also attests that his character Ianthe in “Queen Mab,” who meets and learns about the past, present, and future from the fairy queen, is based on Harriet. It becomes more obvious to me as I grow to maturity that one should not judge a person by first impressions. Surely there is more to Harriet than meets the eye, if my “golden calf ” worships her.

  And yet I am confused because Harriet’s personality belies Mr. Shelley’s valiant characterization of her; she seems so meek. I wonder how she proves to bolster him and keep him from ridicule and the world’s scorn. After Mr. Shelley and his wife left, Fanny and I were in our bedroom. I was re-reading “Queen Mab” and Fanny was sewing a baby quilt that she was making for the poor house. I remarked that Harriet Shelley must be an extraordinary creature. Fanny agreed and suggested that perhaps she is like our mother, if the famous Mr. Shelley thinks so highly of her. Just then Mrs. Clairmont called for Fanny, probably to ask Fanny to comb out her hair. Or read the Bible to her. I returned to “Queen Mab” and tried to imagine Harriet Shelley as Ianthe, but I failed to see the resemblance. And even less so to our mother.

  5 June 1812

  This journal is not contiguous. There are times when I have not felt compelled to write in it, but now, I will reflect on my recent journey and about my mother’s life, which I have pondered considerably of late. I often imagine speaking with my mother, whenever I sit by her grave. It is difficult to record those conversations. They engender such longing that I find it hard to write about them without weeping. So, I will speak first about my travels and then reflect on my mother’s journeys and her life before she met my father, Godwin.

  I recently returned from Scotland, where my father sent me for further education on my own. And to be fair, he wished to create distance between me and my fractious stepmother who was growing increasingly contemptuous of me. I was glad to get away from her and to head north to where the “barbarians” live. The Baxters, my father’s friends and my hosts in Dundee and later in the Highlands, were certainly not “barbarians,” but rather highly refined and generous people. Their daughters were my age and we quickly became friends. When I arrived, Mr. Baxter shared with me the letter that Father wrote him as I sailed, a letter which expresses great depth of feeling for my well-being and for his hopes for me. In it he writes:

  I cannot help feeling a thousand anxieties in parting with her, for the first time, for so great a distance, and these anxieties were increased by the manner of sending her, on board a ship, with not a single face around her that she had ever seen till that morning. She is four months short of fifteen years of age . . . I daresay she will arrive more dead than alive, as she is extremely subject to sea-sickness, and the voyage, not improbably, will last nearly a week.

  And later, he weighs in on my character and his hopes for me,

  [Although] I am not a perfect judge of Mary’s character, I believe she has nothing of what is commonly called vices, and that she has considerable talent. . . . I am anxious that she should be brought up like a philosopher. I should also observe that she has no love of dissipation, and will be perfectly satisfied with your woods and your mountains. . . .

  I am, my dear sir, with great regard, yours,

  William Godwin

  So even though he provides Mr. Baxter with an assessment of my character and instructions about my care and how I should be “brought up like a philosopher,” he was not overly cautious about my trip to Dundee. He sent me away on my own with only an acquaintance, Mrs. Nelson, as my guardian on the ship. Yet, this trip to Scotland was not in the least like the kind of excursion that my mother undertook by herself with my sister Fanny, when Fanny was a toddler. My father arranged all of the travel and living arrangements for me and I was comfortable and well-cared for. Even so, the journey has piqued my interests in travel and in exploring the world. Now that I’ve travelled north into the Highlands where the “barbarians” live I have the desire to see the far reaches of the earth, just like Milton’s Eve.

  I hope to visit France, Portugal, and Scandinavia, as my mother did, and tour the continent, just like young men are encourage
d to do, and even travel to the Far East and India; “Kubla Khan” inspires me.

  My mother traveled when she was slightly older than me. She visited Lisbon, Portugal, not for fancy or exploration, but to nurse her beloved Fanny Blood, who unfortunately had consumption and who was about to give birth. I wish that I could hear my own mother’s words about the loss of her dearest friend. I have never had an intimate female friend. My sister Fanny and my stepsister Jane Clairmont, I suppose, are my closest female friends. Fanny is the dearest person with a warm, forgiving heart, but she is not interested, as Father and I are, in grand, radical ideas or literature so I find that Fanny and I have little in common. I do love her though, especially because she was our mother’s love-child. On the other hand, Jane pretends to care about literature and philosophy, but her mind is not expansive and she can be petty and annoying, and like her mother, jealous of my father’s affection. Neither of these relationships resemble the love that my mother had for Fanny Blood, whom she considered her superior in all things. Fanny wrote, sang, and drew better than my mother. Her brilliance surpassed my mother’s at the time, but her excellence did not beget resentment but only pushed my mother to improve all aspects of her innate abilities. (Jane is not my superior; she is always seeking vain attention; she is so very much like her own mother, Mrs. Clairmont. And Fanny, the dear heart, always thinks of herself as inferior to me. She praises me, even when I don’t deserve praise).

  How broken-hearted my mother must have been when she held her Fanny in her arms as Fanny took her last breath. I cannot imagine the horror of witnessing one’s beloved die and pass on into another world, never to see or hear from them again except in dreams. I fear that I would not survive such loss, but, as Father says, we must always prepare ourselves for tragedy, which, in some way or another, infects all of our lives. Regretfully, tragedy and suffering are surely part of the human condition. This is why the Greeks wrote their dramas, which remind us of the potential for and reality of tragedy and how we may purge ourselves of our anguish.

  I have read with interest that my mother wrote “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” as a way to financially assist Fanny Blood’s parents in their return to Ireland, after their daughter died. The proceeds from the sale of her book went directly to Fanny’s parents, which seems appropriate since my mother and Fanny developed their educational philosophy in concert. What a compassionate and generous heart my mother had! I only hope that my heart will grow in charity too. I must learn to forgive those people in my family who sometimes deliberately hurt me and I must always seek to empathize with the suffering of others.

  16 July 1812

  Not long after she helped Fanny’s parents return to their homeland, Mother made her own journey to Ireland, her mother’s home, taking the dreaded position as a governess, little more than a servant to the family of Lord Kingsborough. I assume that she hoped to exercise her philosophy about educating girls, but she most likely needed the work to support herself after the school that she ran with Fanny and her sister Eliza closed after two short years. My father wrote that Lady Kingsborough treated my mother with the usual disdain felt for governesses as did the girls in my mother’s charge. They taunted and ridiculed “Mistress Mary,” calling her “Mary, Mary, quite contrary.” They believed that they were better than her because they possessed peerage titles. However, somehow, she eventually won over the eldest daughter, Margaret, who developed a great affinity for my mother and her love of thought, words, and writing. My mother encouraged Margaret to write, to think freely, to exercise her body, and to acquire the virtues that some men possess, especially fortitude. How fortunate Margaret was to have been tutored by my mother, a privilege I was never granted.

  What was my mother’s reward in mentoring young Margaret? Dismissal by Lady Kingsborough who was jealous of her daughter’s abiding affection for my mother and who argued with my mother about the need for Margaret to become a lady and wear stays, to be confined to the cage of the whalebone corset, in order to be presented at Dublin Castle. I imagine that my mother audaciously challenged Lady Kingsborough and told her that a true lady is one who can be an equal companion to man, a woman who grows in intellect, reason, and wisdom, not some debutante to be presented at the King and Queen’s Progress. Besides, I don’t know that I would want to be presented to Mad King George for fear that his madness would somehow rub off. I’ve heard that even Queen Charlotte refuses to visit with him, worrying that his madness is as contagious and deadly as leprosy. Besides, in my view, Queen Charlotte would be far more exciting to meet; she is an amateur botanist who has been instrumental in the growth of Kew Gardens in London. I have also read that she is such a stupendous singer that she sang an aria with the young Wolfgang Mozart, when he visited London. She has also advocated on behalf of women’s education. (Perhaps she read my mother’s work. If I ever get a chance to meet her, I will ask). How much better off we would be if she were the Head of State and not our mad king who often babbles nonsense like a child and who has been known to foam at the mouth like a rabid dog! God save us from this mad monarch.

  20 July 1812

  One positive aspect of working for the Kingsboroughs is that she wrote her Mary, A Fiction during this period. It may not be the best of her writing. Even to my young eyes, it seems stilted and somewhat melodramatic, but, as my mother says in her preface, she disdained the usual sort of novel, which is given to romance and improbable plots; instead she says that it is not a novel. In actuality, it is a social critique of women’s lives and their lack of freedom. It also critiques those, like the Kingsboroughs, who believe that their hereditary titles make them superior to all others; the Kingsboroughs’ only aim in life was to dress well and have their supposed inferiors serve them by waiting on them hand and foot. Their only other concern was “What would the world think?” about whatever they said or did. They were only concerned with their status among their peers and counted that as the most important consideration. How awful to always fret about what others think! I give it little thought as did my mother. There is also much in this fiction that refers to my mother’s travels but also her critique of marriage. Her character, Mary, looks forward to another world where there is “neither marrying nor the giving in marriage.” I do understand the stance that my mother took; she believed that marriage was akin to slavery for women, a type of legal prostitution; yet, if true, why did she marry my father? Perhaps she agreed to marry Godwin only for my sake, so that I would not be labelled a bastard child and subsequently shunned by society, but also perhaps because her marriage, unlike most, was one of equals. She and my father even kept separate households, in order to maintain their independence. And these separate households, which were just blocks apart, allowed them not only independence, but the ability to send frequent and ardent love letters to one another.

  I secretly nicked the key to my father’s desk and read some of them. Once I counted over 100 letters that they wrote to one another. Most expressed deep and abiding love, but some were filled with anger and the passion that arises from misunderstanding. I was so moved by their content that I surreptitiously copied two of my mother’s and father’s letters that they wrote to each other after a quarrel on 17 August 1796. In her letter, my mother threatened to end their relationship. Apparently she was so hurt by whatever had passed between them that she wrote to him in the morning, “Could a wish have transported me to France or Italy, I should have caught up my Fanny and been off in a twinkle. . . . I can only say that you appear to me to have acted injudiciously; and that full of your own feelings . . . you forgot mine. . . . I am hurt—But I mean not to hurt you. . . . I will become again a solitary traveler.” He responded quickly, early in the afternoon, “I longed inexpressibly to have you in my arms. Why did I not come to you? I am a fool. I know the acuteness of your feelings, and there is nothing upon earth that would give me so pungent a remorse, as to add to your unhappiness. Do no hate me. Indeed I do not deserve it. Do not cast me off. Do not
again become a solitary traveler.” How odd to hear my father practically beg Mother to continue to love him, to not abandon him, to remain his beloved, to not be a solitary traveler. Perhaps Mother’s death snuffed out all such desperate longing. Yet his letters suggest how much he passionately loved her.

  If I marry, I will follow my parents’ example; I will marry for love and passion; I will marry my intellectual equal; I will not worry about what the world will think. Like my mother, I will endeavor to maintain independence in thought and action.

  20 October 1812

  1792 must have been a monumental year, both in my dear mother’s life, but surely in the history of humanity. That was the year that her magnum opus, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published by Joseph Johnson, her mentor. 1792 was also a watershed year since it was four years after the storming of the Bastille and two years after my mother boldly confronted the famed Irish orator and polemicist Edmund Burke in her A Vindication of the Rights of Man about his inconsistencies in regard to revolution and his belief that traditions and hereditary honors must be maintained in order to preserve social and political stability. She and her liberal friends felt that Burke betrayed them. He had previously advocated for the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of the Irish, American independence, and the reform of parliament. Now, he presented rigid conservative views that upheld and maintained the supposed natural hierarchy. He worried that the revolution would spread to Britain and that the monarchy would be abolished.

  In 1792, my mother traveled to Paris to witness the French Revolution and to dwell among the revolutionaries and the British ex-patriots who lived among them, including the writer and translator Helen Maria Williams who traveled alone to live in France during the revolution. They had dreamed of other “worlds” and all believed that a new world had been established and that people are born with rights, that one’s “station” in life is not predicated on birth, and that all people are one another’s equals. What an exciting time to be alive, when the princess and the pauper were now on equal footing! Humanity seemed capable of perfection and an ideal world was on the cusp of being created. My mother must have been truly enthralled to have entered that new world of limitless possibilities.