Following Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley wrote her famous Gothic novel, Frankenstein, over 200 years ago, and it was initially overshadowed by her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley’s fame. In recent years, she and her feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, have come into their own. 

Anyone interested in Mary Shelley’s life is spoilt for choice these days, and a good place to start would be two recent biographies: ‘In Search of Mary Shelley’ by Fiona Sampson, and ‘Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley’, by Charlotte Gordon. Here, I will offer a personal perspective, one prompted by old books, genealogy, and my travels.  

Many years ago I lived in Hertfordshire, and whenever I took the train to London, I must have passed St Pancras Old Church. It is a tiny building, nestled between the criss-crossed train lines that feed Kings Cross and St Pancras stations. The church is well hidden and modest, as if hiding itself from the world, while the graveyard, with its overshadowing trees, holds its history close. It was a special place for Mary Shelley, and as it turns out, for two of my ancestors as well.

A logical place to start is with the writer, Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). He was a contemporary of the Shelleys, a close friend, and a faithful recorder. He shared his home with the Shelleys, attended their wedding, travelled with them during their time in Italy, and was with Mary when her husband’s body was washed up on the beach near Viareggio. He also helped her when she embarked on her writing career. 

I have a collection of Huntiana, and such a collection brings Shelley holdings. I can’t remember what led me down that path, but I wandered down it; unaware that antiquarian booksellers, with a nose for specialist collectors, were lying in wait. Having picked up my scent, they circled like sirens, and before I knew it, a rare Mary Shelley biography sat in my library.

The Regency romantics were larger-than-life characters, and Hunt’s circle of friends illustrates that: William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Trelawney, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (nee Godwin). As Mary Shelley (1797-1851) is the focus of this piece, I will refer to her simply as Mary from here on. 

Mary’s life was long and eventful, but her teenage years and her relationship with the poet, Percy Shelley, are of particular interest. I possess a few biographies of Mary, but most importantly, a rare first edition, the first authorised biography, ’The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’. Florence Marshall published the two-volume work in 1889 (authorised by the Shelley family). Mary’s descendants had given the biographer full access to the Shelley Archives, and the resulting two volumes remain a starting point for the subsequent Shelley/Frankenstein publishing industry. After reading it again and digging into a few related areas, I was surprised to learn of a connection between my ancestors and Mary; admittedly, a wafer-thin connection, but I’ll take it, anyhow.

Mary’s father was the radical philosopher William Godwin and her mother, the feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. Both Godwin and Wollstonecraft possessed impeccable revolutionary credentials. Wollstonecraft was on the barricades during the French Revolution, and wrote ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’; her common-law partner, Godwin, was an anarchistic dissenter who wrote about overthrowing the monarchy. Both supported the French Revolution. The couple were at the centre of London’s radical circles at a time when such views were anathema, and consequently, they were despised by so-called ‘decent society’. 

At first, Wollstonecraft and Godwin lived openly as an unmarried couple, but they married just before Mary was born; neither believed in marriage, but felt the need to legitimise their child. Wollstonecraft already had a daughter, Fanny, when she met Godwin; the result of a previous relationship. Godwin happily treated the child as his own. 

In her biography, ‘Shelley and his World’, Claire Tomalin wrote;

‘The Godwin household was a genuinely extraordinary one. Godwin himself had risen from quite uneducated parents, through the Dissenting academies [Sandemanians], to become the foremost philosopher of his age. In 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft, noted for her belief in women’s rights. She had brought back from France a small daughter, Fanny, by an American businessman who had deserted her’

Tragically, Mary’s mother died of ‘childbed fever’, just 10 days after giving birth to her, and was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church (her mother’s grave thereafter becoming a place of refuge for Mary).

Her father, realising that Mary and her half-sister Fanny needed a mother, married Jane Clairmont, who had a daughter of her own, Claire Clairmont. As she grew up, Mary developed a strong dislike of her stepmother, who treated her poorly, and by the time she’d reached her teen years, she had become openly rebellious. Godwin, who had a good relationship with his daughter and valued her active mind, saw how unhappy she was and grew concerned.

He also observed her fascination for the young poets and radicals who frequented the house, most of whom were adherents of Godwin’s liberal philosophy. Mary was only 14 years old at the time, and her father, sensing her vulnerability, sent her to Dundee to live with a fellow radical dissenter, William Baxter. The year was 1812.

Baxter and Godwin had both been raised as dissenting radicals, and the Sandemanians, with their close-knit, interlinked congregations in Dundee and London, were part of that milieu. In Godwin’s view, the Sandemanian Baxter family were the epitome of radicalism. As with Mary’s upbringing, the Baxter girls had a degree of freedom, unusual for the time. It was thought an ideal place for Mary to develop her mind.

The Baxter house, a large rambling one, overlooked the River Tay, and the family treated Mary as a daughter. While there, she became deeply attached to the younger Baxter girls, Isabel and Christy. In that picturesque location, she developed a love of ‘sublime, wild landscapes’, which she later said provided her a backdrop to her ’Frankenstein’ novel. 

Other factors during those Dundee years shaped her writing, too. The discovery of Gothic novels and later, Isabel’s sudden breach with the family. Isabel fell in love with a scholar and married outside of the sect, resulting in her banishment. Being separated from her confidant and friend distressed Mary, and that sense of alienation also provided source material for the novel. 

So here is my connection; although a tenuous one, I’ll admit. My third great-grandmother, Sarah Leighton (1787-1868), a contemporary of Mary’s, was also a Sandemanian. Because sect members were forbidden to marry outsiders, the Baxter and the Leighton families were closely connected by marriage – in three separate ways. So William Baxter and his daughters Isabel and Christy were Sarah Leighton’s cousins. 

By coincidence (or maybe not), my great-grandmother, Alice (Sarah Leighton’s granddaughter), was married in St Pancras Old Church. As a Sandemanian descendant, she was following a tradition of association with the church.

That made me wonder how this ancient Anglican church was favoured by the sect. Dissenters, both Catholic and Protestant, appear to have been buried there. According to local historians, its isolation was a factor (it was a rural church outside of London proper in Mary’s time). A second factor is evidenced in its history. It is regarded as one of the oldest Christian sites in Europe, dating back to 314 AD, Romano-British (St Pancras was a 14-year-old Roman Martyr). 

On Mary’s return to London, aged 16 (1814), she fell in love with the poet, Percy Shelley, who felt the same. He was already married to Harriet Westbrook. Godwin, disapproving, believing her too young for an adult relationship and fearing for her reputation, refused to give his blessing (later biographers have accused him of hypocrisy, but I have some sympathy for him, given the laws of the day).

The couple were bitterly disappointed and met secretly beside Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave. Months later, along with Mary’s half-sister Claire, they fled to France under false names. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, France was in a sorry state; food was scarce and accommodation substandard. The trio travelled through France, Switzerland and Germany for several months until the money ran out, returning to England where they faced severe social ostracism and mounting debts.

The next few years were marred by tragedy; Mary and Percy tried to keep a low profile. Mary became pregnant twice during this period, losing her first child (a girl), and giving birth to a son. Adding to the upheaval, Percy Shelley’s first wife, Harriet, drowned herself in the Serpentine, and a disastrous custody court case followed; Shelley was denied custody on moral grounds. The situation did ease somewhat as the couple were finally able to marry. This repaired their relationship with Godwin, and fortuitously, Shelley inherited a small amount of family money. The years of dodging bailiffs had ended. 

They were also about to travel to Geneva, where the Frankenstein story begins, but the plan to travel there was not of their own making. Unbeknownst to the Shelleys, Mary’s half-sister Claire Clairmont, was having a secret affair with Lord Byron. Without telling the Shelleys, or for that matter Byron, Claire hatched a plan to ambush Byron in Switzerland. Mary was 18 years old. Shelley was about to depart England forever.

Sources and observations: ‘The Life & Letters of Mary Shelley’ by Florence Marshall; ‘Godwin on Wollstonecraft’ – Godwin, with a preface by Richard Holmes; ‘Shelley & the Unromantics’ – Olwen Campbell; ‘Shelley & his World’ – Claire Tomalin; ‘An Autobiography’ – Leigh Hunt; ‘The Keats-Shelley Journal’; ‘Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley’ – Charlotte Gordon; ‘The Life & Times of Leigh Hunt’ – Iowa University Hunt Symposium; ‘Shelley’ – A J Symonds. All photographs are the author’s, taken while following Mary’s trail or from his library.  St Pancras Old Church quartered Roundhead troops, served as a burial place for Catholics during the Reformation, and for exiles from the French Revolution. It is now designated as a ‘Chapel of Rest’, in the high-church Anglican tradition. Godwin was also buried there, as was John Polidori (who wrote the first Vampire novel and who is part of Mary’s story). William Godwin’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s remains were later disinterred and placed alongside Mary’s grave in Bournemouth, leaving Mary’s stepmother Jane to lie alone.

Part two will look at Frankenstein, Gothic tales spun in Geneva, the Pisan circle, and Shelley’s death in the Gulf of La Spezia.