DEDICATION
For Jessica
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
I AM MARY
MY MOTHER
LONGING TO BE DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL
MY STEPMOTHER
OUR UNUSUAL HOUSEHOLD
MY RETURN FROM DUNDEE, SCOTLAND
MR. SHELLEY
WHAT IF HE LIKES ME?
HE COMES TO CALL
LIKE MY FATHER
WALKS IN THE PARK
PAPER BOATS
LOVE AFFAIR
IS THERE ONLY ME?
AT MY MOTHER’S GRAVE
JANE
FATHER FIGURE
LAUDANUM
WITHOUT ME
ESCAPE
A BOAT TO CALAIS
A BRIGHT FUTURE
RETRIEVING CLARA JANE
NEVER ENOUGH MONEY
FREEDOM
TRAVELING TO SWITZERLAND
THE TROUBLE WITH JANE
HOMEWARD BOUND
MY LOVE
RETURN TO ENGLAND
SUNDAY
SISTERLY LOVE
OUR CHILD TOGETHER
OUR DAILY LIFE
COMMUNE
THE RETURN OF HOGG
FREE LOVE
SHELLEY AND CLAIRE
MORE THAN AN ANNOYANCE
BIRTH
MARCH
SALT HILL
GOOD RIDDANCE
TRUST
OUR REGENERATION
A HOME
A MUSE
VISITORS TO OUR HOME
BISHOPSGATE
WILLIAM SHELLEY
THE INFAMOUS POET
WHAT OF BYRON
TRAVEL ABROAD
GENEVA
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREAT POET
OUR GROUP OF FIVE
A STIRRING
STORMS IN GENEVA
VILLA DIODATI AND THE MAN-MONSTER
POLLY DOLLY
ROUTINE
A WATCH FOR FANNY
FLUTTER STORIES
CREATIVE ENDEAVORS
INSPIRATION
WRITING
A TRIP TO CHAMONIX
HAUNTING SCENERY
SHELLEY’S BIRTHDAY
CLAIRE’S SECRET
FRANKENSTEIN
TO WRITE IS TO REVISE
LEAVING GENEVA
FANNY’S LETTER OF OCTOBER 9
A GOTHIC TALE
ACCOLADES AND CONTINUED ENDEAVORS
HARRIET
MARRIAGE
MY ESCAPE
TOGETHER
ALBA
PRETENSE
DEVELOPING A STORY
ALBION HOUSE
CHILDREN
MY BOOK
THE END
SUMMER
A PUBLISHER
ANOTHER BIRTH
ANONYMITY
BYRON’S REQUEST
THE RELEASE OF FRANKENSTEIN
RUMORS AND TRUTH
HEAVEN OR HELL
A LETTER FROM CLAIRE TO BYRON
TRAVELING TO ITALY
MEETING MARIA GISBORNE
BAGNI DI LUCCA
THIEF
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
NEWS FROM BYRON
TRAVELING TOWARD BYRON
MELANCHOLIA
DISTRACTION
THEN THERE ARE DAYS
THE BABY OF NAPLES
SOMEONE ELSE’S BABY
ROME
WILLMOUSE
MY SELFISH ILL HUMOR
SOME SOLACE
PERCY FLORENCE
RADICAL LOVE
PISA
DISTRESSING NEWS
WITH AND WITHOUT CLAIRE
LEARNING TO SWIM
CLAIRE IN FLORENCE
CLAIRE FOR A MONTH
RESEARCH
JANE AND EDWARD
INFLUENCE
BYRON AND ALLEGRA
SAN GIULIANO
SAILING
BYRON AND SHELLEY
DOUBT
A LETTER FROM MY SHELLEY
JUGGLING MISTRESSES
GATHERING A GROUP OF LIKE-MINDED MALE INDIVIDUALS
MY FATHER’S PRAISE
MORE SEPARATION
DANCING AT A BALL
JANE WILLIAMS
A CATASTROPHE
MY FAIR HAND
ALLEGRA
SYMPATHY
THE RETURN OF CLAIRE
MISCARRIAGE
THE HARD DAYS
THE HUNTS’ ARRIVAL
NO GOOD NEWS FOR MARY
THEN
THE STORM
THE MEN HAVE NOT RETURNED
SHELLEY’S CALL
A FUNERAL
ELEGY FOR MY SHELLEY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
A TIME LINE OF BOOKS BY MARY SHELLEY
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
I AM MARY
I want to be beauty,
but I am not.
I want to be free,
but I am not.
I want to be equal,
but I am not.
I want to be favorite,
but I am not.
I want to be loved,
and yet I am not.
MY MOTHER
I never knew my mother.
She did not nurse me from her breast.
She could not soothe my aches and tears.
I learned to walk without her aid.
I never knew my mother.
She did not hold me in the dark.
She could not sing away my fears.
I learned to speak without her voice.
I never knew my mother.
She helped establish women’s rights.
I wear her legacy like a pledge.
I learned to think and fight reading her words.
I never knew my mother
for she died when I was eleven days old.
LONGING TO BE DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL
My father, William Godwin,
is a political philosopher
highly respected by his peers.
He is progressive,
teaching his daughters
as if they are sons.
When I stand in his presence
I feel as though I must
leap upon a chair
just to meet his shoulders.
My father, William Godwin,
is a tower of light.
MY STEPMOTHER
She was spawned from creature,
not man, and sends shivers
up one’s arms.
Under her hair must be horns.
She is Medusa
trying to turn me to stone
in the eyes of my father.
At times I swear
she was born to torture me
and for no other purpose.
She needles me
with her incessant blather.
She prods me to misbehave
when she stupidly
misuses language
and forgets facts.
She picks on me
for my impatience with others
as she herself is small-minded.
She criticizes me for not being
as pretty as her daughter, Jane,
despises me for not being Jane.
She reflects no history,
nothing of which to be proud.
All she bears is the marital hand
of my father which baffles me
more than snow in July.
She shuffles me away
to Dundee, Scotland,
when I am fourteen
and for that I am grat
eful.
OUR UNUSUAL HOUSEHOLD
1814
Fanny is the eldest,
my half-sister, daughter of my mother
and Gilbert Imlay, an American enterpriser.
She never seeks trouble
and is quiet and reserved.
Her stated last name
is the same as my father’s, Godwin.
Charles Clairmont, the next eldest,
is the son
of my awful stepmother,
Mary Jane Clairmont
and Charles de Gaulis,
who died when Charles was one.
Charles is fair haired,
and fortunate to be a boy.
I am the third eldest
and best bred.
Learning comes easily to me,
as does frustration.
Clara Jane Clairmont (Jane)
is nearly my age,
the daughter of my stepmother
and some unnamed suitor
my stepmother calls Charles Clairmont,
yet not the same man
as was Charles’s father.
We sometimes get on
and at other times I wish
to pull Jane by the roots of her hair.
And then there is William,
the youngest,
the offspring of
my stepmother and my father,
doted on by my stepmother
None of us has the same parents.
MY RETURN FROM DUNDEE, SCOTLAND
Spring 1814
At first I was afraid
to leave my home,
to leave my father’s care,
knowing that my banishment
to the Baxters
meant to punish me.
My arm of pustules and pain
represented all the ways
I could not be well and good
in my own house.
But I found a family in Scotland.
A family like I had read about in books
where the mother and father
care for one another
and all the children
are their own.
I found girl friends in Scotland,
the two daughters of the Baxters,
Isabella and Christina.
We became as inseparable
as words and letters.
My arm healed
and my temper soothed.
My imagination awoke
like a sleeping giant
in that stark landscape,
and I began to write stories.
I return to my house
of chaos, calmer
and more assured.
There is so much
of the greater world
I know now
will be a part of me,
and I am not afraid.
MR. SHELLEY
May 5, 1814
He is the buzz
of our Spinner Street home
when at sixteen
I return permanently from Dundee.
No other topic passes between anyone’s lips.
Jane declares that when Mr. Shelley
falls silent
the air ceases circulation,
that when a smile flushes his countenance
the room boils with laughter.
And even quiet Fanny agrees.
But I remembered Mr. Shelley
from my visit home
the year before
as more buzzard than noteworthy,
fairylike
with the curly blond hair
of a schoolgirl,
his hands frail as silk stockings.
I remember he stood beside
his wife and I wondered
who wore the dress?
In a voice pert as a baby starling,
he had proclaimed my father was a genius
who deserved his financial support,
and I admired Mr. Shelley for that.
But the ceaseless obsession
that my stepmother, the woman of scales and dread,
my siblings, and even my father
seem to have for Mr. Shelley is comedy.
No man can live up to it.
Jane smirks, “You’ll see,
his noble birth, his high ideals—
You’ll choke on your coal-stained doubts.”
I roll my eyes at my stepsister,
thump downstairs in my blue everyday frock,
because why would I dress up
to dine with some pansy of a man?
Even his name sounds like a girl, Shelley.
But when I slink
into the parlor
Mr. Percy Shelley
traps his gaze
upon my brow
so tight
I cannot inhale,
and then he gasps
as if I am a masterwork.
I stand stunned.
He genuflects before me.
No one has ever looked
at me, and certainly
no one has ever looked at me
like this,
like I am anything sigh-worthy,
something to hang diamonds on.
This man who owns
the breath of my father
stares at me
as though I am holy.
When Mr. Shelley
introduces himself to me
this second time,
I swear I smell rosehips
and lavender on his palms.
I glance around
and smile
to find that this evening
his wife is not in attendance.
WHAT IF HE LIKES ME?
May 1814
What if it was not only awe
and admiration for my breeding,
but something more that caught
Mr. Shelley’s eye,
something particular about me?
What if he calls again,
what shall I wear,
how coy should I act,
what exactly have I to say to him?
What if he didn’t care
for me at all and I imagined
the moment happening between us?
What if he never calls again
and I am left to wonder
what might have been?
He is yet a stranger to me,
and then somehow I feel
as though I have known him
for many years now,
as though he may be the one
I imagined would come
and whisk me away
like a valiant soldier
of my house.
HE COMES TO CALL
May 1814
At first one can
be certain whom
Mr. Shelley intends
to visit and that name
begins not with an M.
He and my father
argue into the night
about politics while
Jane and I hide on the stairs
catching phrases as if they sate,
like they are crumbs for the starving.
We listened to Mr. Coleridge’s poem
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
when I was a little girl
in much the same manner,
hiding behind a chair.
I saw nightmares because
of it for a year.
Now what I hear,
the sweet tones of Father’s
and Mr. Shelley’s sharp intellects,
breeds dreams when I sleep.
He glimpses me
one night as I linger
in the stairwell
and the next day
when Mr. Shelley calls
he requests me,
as well as Jane,
whose attendance I hope
is for nothing more
than to dissuade suspicion.
When Mr. Shelley and I meet
I will certainly stutter.
I will fall down the stairs
before I have a chance to speak.
I must remember that everything
I say reflects upon my brilliant parents.
For once I wish to bite my tongue.
LIKE MY FATHER
May 1814
Mr. Shelley does not dote
on Jane. She is but
furniture to him.
“You are finer
than your surroundings,”
he says to me.
“I see it in your
broad forehead—
intelligence, cleverness.”
I blush until my cheeks
become the color of my hair.
He gestures to the portrait
of my mother above
the mantel. “I know
the writings of your mother;
have you read them?”
I nod my head.
I wish for words
to pour from my mouth,
as usual, but today
I stand mute.
“You too
have great things to write.
It is your lovely fate.
And I believe I will
be your guide.”
His winsome eyes snare me.
And somehow
I feel in my heart
that he may be right.
WALKS IN THE PARK
June 1814
We see each other
on the forested grounds
of the Charterhouse school.
Jane and I pretend
to my stepmother
that we are just out for a walk,
but all my joy wraps
inside those moments
when Shelley
joins us and then asks
Jane to stand at a distance
for he and I must speak
of philosophical things.
“What is the purpose of poetry?”
Mr. Shelley asks me.
Today I do not hesitate to say
“To enlighten. To heighten
one’s awareness of the world
and one’s place therein.
Or some might say
to capture beauty at its
most vulnerable core.”
“What is beauty?” he demands.
“An ideal.” I smile.
“You jest, but nothing
is too ideal
that can be imagined.”
He looks as though
he might grasp my hand,
but instead breaks off a branch.
“Poetry is political.”
He swirls the branch at me
as if it were a sword.
I feign as though
I have been wounded.
“I know.”
PAPER BOATS
Summer 1814
Jane and I watch
as Shelley folds the paper
into triangles.
He fans out the bottom
so his creation
resembles a little ship.
“All you need now
is a crew,” I say.
He shakes his head.
“I require another vessel.”
He quickly transforms
paper into boat
and hands me one.
“Shall we test their might?”
I ask him, cradling his gift.
“First we must christen them.
I hereby name thee the Wollstonecraft,