The Tragedy of the Shelley Children
The Tragedy of the Shelley Children
Mary Shelley wrote one of the most famous pieces of Gothic fiction in history. A superstitious person might think she paid for her immortal literary name with the grief she carried in her life.
Last week, my post about Mary Shelley took on a somber tone as I shifted the spotlight to Percy Shelley’s first wife, Harriet.
This turn of events wasn’t planned. Something moved me to give Harriet her rightful place in the Frankenstein narrative. She seems to have been professionally erased from the Shelleys’ story, in that way that Victorians were wont to do. It isn’t right; as Percy’s first wife and the mother of his children, she earned a place of honor that he stripped from her. Read the article here.
I have been writing these Shelley posts because my book club, Teacups and Tomes, is reading Frankenstein for the month of October. (We will be reading Little Women for November, if you’d like to join!)
When I pick up classic books, I like to learn about the author behind the work. Before I picked two biographies and began my research, I knew only the basics. I knew that that Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote an important tract about feminism; I knew that the novel Frankenstein was born when she, Percy, and her stepsister went to Byron’s home in Switzerland; I knew that her novel was inspired by a nightmare.
There is so much more to her story. As I continue to excavate, I learn that Mary’s life was laden with tragedy. I’d hoped my third Shelley post would be cheerful, but as an honest storyteller, I want to tell the truth. If we are searching for the truth, we must be honest: there was not much cheer in her life to speak of.
I have a sensation that the woman Mary Shelley would want her tale told, so that it would be known—not just Frankenstein’s. Books and articles by greater authors have been written before me attempting this; but here is my grain of sand.
This blog is called Literary Ladies’ Tearoom. It only made sense that, in my previous post, I should include tea.
Wishing wistfully that the situation was real, I imagined a tea-time session with Mary Shelley. During this hypothetical session, I asked if she thought about Harriet. Did she ever feel regret for the fate that befell the first Shelley woman?
According to the biographies, the answer turns out to be yes; by the end of her life, after she had buried so many loved ones, she began to wonder if her misfortune was a punishment for having run off with a married man.
In the real world, we see this through the lens of logic: Mary’s misfortune couldn’t have been a punishment, because that is not how the world works. Case in point: Mary’s mother died shortly after giving birth to her, before Mary could have done anything to earn the misfortune.
However, I can sympathize with her broken thoughts of regret. A battered heart cannot help but wonder these things, as she surely did when everybody in her life was killed by tragedy or disease.
Percy and Mary Shelley married in 1816, soon after Harriet’s death. Unsurprisingly, Percy became caught in a legal battle against his former in-laws for custody of the two children he’d had with Harriet. They demanded that Charles and Ianthe be given over to their care. His in-laws argued that he was not fit to be a father (and I am inclined to agree).
Shelley and his in-laws both lost the battle, and the children were sent to live with an uncle. I find it difficult to imagine him being much troubled by the loss of Charles and Ianthe, but who am I to judge? (Ha).1 In any case, considering the fates of Mary and Percy’s children, it was best in the end for Charles and Ianthe to have been taken away. At least they were in a stable, safe home.
In February of 1815, Mary’s first child with Percy was born two months prematurely. The infant girl died after a few days, without having been named. Infant mortality was not uncommon, but that did not ease the pain of the loss.
Two weeks after the tragedy, an agonized Mary wrote in her journal:
“Dream that my little baby came to life again – that it had only been cold and that we rubbed it by the fire and it lived – I awake and find no baby – I think about the little thing all day.”
This excellent article lays out the tragic details of Mary’s life as a mother: she had five pregnancies, but only one of her children survived to adulthood.
Not long after this child’s death came two more losses in their effort to start a family. In 1816, Mary’s second child, William, was born; he died in Rome in 1819, probably of cholera or typhoid infection.
Of William, Percy wrote in verse:
‘My lost William, thou in whom/Some bright spirit lived/ ….if a thing divine/Like thee can die,/ thy funeral shrine/Is thy mother’s grief and mine.’
In 1817, while the Shelleys were in Venice, Mary gave birth to a girl named Clara Everina. Months later, in 1818, Clara succumbed to dysentery. She was buried at a Venetian beach in an unmarked grave.
Though these deaths were not punishments, it was certainly a mistake on the Shelleys’ part to take their young children traveling. One can understand young lovers’ desire to see the world, but disease ran rampant in those days and infant mortality was common. If they had hired a nanny and left the children home, would William and Clara have survived? We can only speculate and lament the loss of two innocent lives.
Besides, Percy did not seem to be the type of man who cared to settle. By all accounts, he was a good friend and a brilliant poet, but I do not believe him to be a good father. Among other things, his reckless money-lending led to their constantly verging on financial ruin.
Did Mary ever speak to him about finding a house where their babies could grow up? Perhaps she would have been unable to convince him, even if she tried. Perhaps she, also, enjoyed life on the road, at least at the beginning. Their party—Shelley, Mary, her stepsister Claire, and the children (when they were living)—continued for some time to travel through Europe.
Born in 1819, their only surviving child was a son named Percy Florence, named for the city in which he was born. By that time, Mary was understandably panicked that something should befall him. She bore the weight of grief on her shoulders, even as she cradled little Percy in her arms.
Death was not limited to the family children. In 1817, Mary’s older half-sister also ended her life.
Fanny was Mary Wollstonecraft’s child with a diplomat named Gilbert Imlay. This article by Wordsworth UK tells us that Fanny posted a letter to Mary, who was in Bath at the time. It arrived on October 9, and appeared to have been penned in a state of great agitation. Alarmed by the tone of the missive, Percy traveled to Bristol, where it had been posted—but Fanny was no longer there. She had gone to Swansea, where she’d checked into the Mackworth Arms inn and overdosed on laudanum.
Mary’s stepsister, Claire, did not escape her share of grief.
In 1817, Claire had given birth to Lord Byron’s illegitimate child, a daughter. Claire had been eighteen and pursued him feverishly, but he had no romantic interest in her, confessing: “I never loved her nor pretended to love her—but a man is a man–& if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours of the night—there is but one way.”
At first, Byron showed little interest in the child Claire had named Alba (in honor of his initials). When Claire insisted, he agreed to provide for his child, but did not give her his surname; rather, he called her Allegra Biron, to distinguish her from his legitimate children. He was also adamant that, if he was to care for Allegra, Claire would see her only during brief, sporadic visits. She was also never to tell the child that she was her mother.
His stipulations caused Claire great pain, but she saw no alternative. She was penniless, trailing behind Mary and Percy like a third wheel. Even as her heart shattered, she agreed, surrendering Allegra when the child was one year old.
While he agreed to provide for Allegra, Byron found no affection in his heart. When she was one year old, he sent her to an Italian convent, calling her “obstinate as a mule and ravenous as a vulture.” He received a letter from her when she was three, to which he did not reply:
My dear Papa – it being fair time I should so much like a visit from my Papa as I have many desires to satisfy; will you please your Allegra who loves you so?
Allegra died in the convent of a “convulsive catarrhal attack” at the age of five (most likely malaria or typhus).
If Byron had he known that she would die, would he have relented and gotten to know his child? Based on correspondence with friends, it seems he was softening to the idea as the years passed, but there was never a chance for a proper meeting.
Perhaps Byron was tormented by guilt for the way that he had treated Allegra. When he found out about her death, “A mortal paleness spread over his face, his strength failed him and he sunk into a seat…He remained immovable in the same attitude for an hour and no consolation seemed to reach his ears, let alone his heart.”
This is not even the half of the tragedy that followed Mary, Percy, and the rest of the party who gathered that summer in Switzerland to write ghost stories. It is often said that the truth is stranger than fiction; it can also be said that real life can spin tragedies far greater than anything the human imagination can come up with.
Mary Shelley wrote one of the most famous pieces of Gothic fiction; some consider her to be the woman who invented science-fiction. A superstitious person might think she paid for her immortal literary name with the grief that she carried in life.
As a human, she made mistakes; as a human, she suffered losses. Also, as a human—as a woman—she wrote a masterpiece that has gripped the imaginations of readers for two hundred years.
Next week, I will have finished my read-through of Frankenstein; I will share my thoughts on the story and the brilliant ideas which put the narrative together. I will also begin to read the second Shelley biography on my list, in preparation for the essay that I plan to write.
Mary Shelley suffered much, loved much, and wrote much. She seems larger-than-life now; really, she was not that different from the rest of us flawed humans. Let us remember her, finally, for the novels that she was proud of.
This was quite an emotional journey. And wow, byron was weird. Also, a three year old can write a letter like that???
Your article suggest that the loss of so many young children did have an influence on Mary’s work. The quote you gave regarding her dreams of her dead baby presages the monster created by Frankenstein. That it was a man, not woman, who gives life to the flawed creature is significant and could reflect Mary’s assessment of parenting by fathers of her time. I would have a kinder assessment of why Mary travelled with her children. She couldn’t bear to be separated from them, particularly when infant mortality was rampant and their household did not likely lend itself to comfortable nurseries attended by loving caregivers. Her life was likely one of trying to balance the demands of her unconventional marriage and family with her abilities and ambitions as a very young writer. The behavior of Mary and her step or half sisters is not so dissimilar to groupies of the sixties who gave up conventional behavior to pursue their idols of rock. Are these earlier women exercising a choice that allows them to enter an otherwise unavailable milieu, using their sexuality as the ticket for entrance? Certainly this 19th century group of men were chaotic, creative but also careless of the women and children in their orbit, exhibiting indifference to the subsequent ruin of these women Mary likely observed this male failure to nurture that lives at the core of her work.