THE SECOND MRS. WILLIAM GODWIN.
The Blighted Being--Miss Jones’s Disappointment--The Blighted Being
goes to Bath--He proposes to Miss Harriet Lee--Is rejected by Mrs.
Reveley--Is accepted by Mary Jane Clairmont--Who was she?--Her
Children by her first Marriage--Their Ages in 1801--Points of
Resemblance in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Jane Clairmont--The
Blighted Being marries Mary Jane Clairmont--Mr. Kegan Paul’s serious
Misrepresentations of Claire’s Age--The Use made of this
Misrepresentation--Mr. Kegan Paul convicted by his own
Evidences--Charles Clairmont’s Boyhood--Godwin’s Regard for his second
Wife--Misrepresentations touching the second Mrs. Godwin--Childhood of
Mary and Claire--Education of Godwin’s Children and
Step-children--Charles Clairmont’s Introduction to Free
Thought--Godwin’s Care to withhold Mary from Free Thought--She is
reared in Ignorance of her Mother’s Story--The Book-shop in Hanway
Street--The Godwins of The Polygon--Their Migration to the City--The
Godwins of Skinner Street.
By Mary Wollstonecraft’s death, Godwin was left with two motherless
infants on his hands,--Fanny Imlay, three years and from four to five
months old, and Mary, just ten days old. According to Mr. Kegan Paul, he
was also left with a blighted existence. Let us see what Godwin did with
his blighted existence in the years immediately following Mary
Wollstonecraft’s death. For some time the infants in The Polygon, Somers
Town, were cared for by Miss Louisa Jones, who would fain have become the
step-mother of Mary Wollstonecraft’s legitimate child, and the tender
guardian of Fanny.
Miss Jones, however, was not allowed to settle herself for life in this
manner; for though he saw the necessity of finding a mother for the
children, the widower with a blighted existence did not think highly of
Miss Louisa.
Mary Wollstonecraft had been just six months in her grave; when the
blighted being determined to woo one of the two Misses Lee, of
Bath,--Sophia and Harriet Lee, daughters of John Lee, the Covent Garden
actor, and authors of _The Canterbury Tales_; who, as writers with many
readers, and school-mistresses with a flourishing seminary for young
ladies, were notable personages in the City of Health and Invalids. Going
to Bath in March, 1798, Godwin saw enough of Miss Harriet Lee, on four
different occasions, to resolve on laying siege (by letters from London)
to her mature affections. In April 1798 Miss Harriet Lee received the
first of the letters from London, that were intended to induce her to
dissolve partnership with her sister, and enter into a different kind of
partnership with the author of _Political Justice_. Barely seven months
had passed since Mary Wollstonecraft’s death, when her former and
inconsolable husband is making love to another woman. This seems quick
work for a blighted being. Is it usual for a blighted being to think of
re-marriage so soon after bereavement? If so, blighted beings do not
deserve more compassion than other widowers. But the suit was
unsuccessful. There were several things to make Miss Harriet Lee think
thrice before accepting William Godwin. There was his strong writing
against the honourable estate into which he desired to lure Miss Harriet
Lee; there was the unpleasant rumour that he had lived for months in Free
Love with Mary Wollstonecraft; there were Mary Wollstonecraft’s two
infants in The Polygon, Somers Town. Moreover, as a gentlewoman of elegant
letters and a respectable schoolmistress, Mrs. Harriet Lee may have been
prejudiced against the man who had admired the author of the _Rights of
Woman_. Miss Harriet Lee thought thrice; and in August, 1798, the author
of _Political Justice_ knew he must look elsewhere for a step-mother to
his little daughter.
What next with the blighted being? One of the most unpleasant of the
several ladies, with whom Shelley associated in Italy, was a certain Mrs.
Gisborne, whilom Mrs. Reveley, of whom he wrote to Peacock in August, 1819
(giving her a character not more applicable to her in her advanced middle
age than in 1799):--‘Mrs. Gisborne is a sufficiently amiable and very
accomplished woman; she is δημοκρατικη and αθεη--how far she may
φιλανθρωπη I don’t know, for she is the antipodes of enthusiasm.’ On 6th
July, 1799, this gentlewoman lost her first husband, who died no long
while after showing much uneasiness at her intimacy with the blighted
being. Within a month of Mr. Reveley’s death, Godwin pressed the widow to
give him personal interviews, in order that he might show reason why she
should hasten to become his wife;--a request that was declined by the
widow, who, though an atheist, a democrat, and a cold-blooded creature,
had some faint notions of decency, and of what was due to the memory even
of the husband with whom she had lived unhappily. Is it usual for a
blighted being to behave in this way? In something more than a year from
his wife’s death to offer a married lady attention that stirs her husband
to indignation, and in less than two years from the blighting bereavement
to make an offer of marriage to this same lady, within a month of her
husband’s death? In the name of all the domestic affections, what is it to
be a blighted being? What is blight of heart and life? It must surely be
something that impels an inconsolable widower to make an offer of marriage
to nearly every other woman who crosses his path.
Instead of marrying the man of blighted life, Mrs. Reveley in May, 1800,
gave herself in marriage to Mr. Gisborne, whose Slawkenbergian nose is
curiously associated with Shelley’s own ‘little turn-up nose;’ her action
in this matter being (Mr. Kegan Paul assures us) ‘a severe blow to Godwin,
who had never abandoned the hope he might overcome the lady’s objections
to a marriage with him!’ Twelve months later (May 1801), the blighted
being was in love with Mrs. Mary Jane Clairmont, _alias_ Clermont, whom he
married in the following December,--just four years and three months from
the day of Mary Wollstonecraft’s funeral.
My information respecting the second Mrs. William Godwin’s first husband
is slight and shadowy, though I have done my best to make it more
substantial. There is reason to believe he was a bookseller; but my
evidence on this point is not conclusive. If he was in ‘the trade,’ the
fact would account for the second Mrs. Godwin’s knowledge of printing and
publishing matters, and of the confidence with which she urged Godwin to
become a publisher of books for children. For the main purpose of this
paragraph it is enough to say, that his surname is (as I remarked in the
_Real Lord Byron_) variously spelt in Byronic and Shelleyan biography, and
that one comes upon it in the fashion of Clermont, Claremont, Clairemont,
and Charlemont, as well as Clairmont. For sufficient and obvious reasons,
in the _Real Lord Byron_ I spelt the name Clermont,--the spelling used in
the British Museum Catalogue, for the reference to Claire’s well-known
letter to Byron, preserved in the Egerton MSS. For no less sufficient and
obvious reasons I spell the name in this chapter ‘Clairmont,’--Godwin’s
way of spelling the name. Readers, therefore, must bear in mind that ‘Jane
Clairmont’ and ‘Jane Clermont’ signify the same Claire (Mrs. Shelley’s
sister-by-affinity), who was Byron’s mistress and the mother of Allegra.
By the Shelleyan apologists, who draw their inspiration from Field Place,
the first Mrs. William Godwin and the second Mrs. William Godwin have been
dealt with differently. It appearing to those apologists that to place
Mary Wollstonecraft amongst the angels is to raise a presumption that the
daughter of so pure and bright a spirit was also of angelical nature,--a
presumption favourable to the poet and his family,--they have tortured the
English language to make her into an angel. On the other hand, it
appearing to the same apologists that to exhibit the second Mrs. Godwin as
a harsh and odious step-mother is to justify Mary Godwin’s desire to get
away from so hateful a ruler, and even to palliate the young lady’s
conduct in running away to Switzerland with another woman’s husband, they
have tortured and strained the English language even more cruelly, to
prove that the second Mrs. Godwin was a superlatively disagreeable woman.
Being no partisan, the present writer declines either to think the first
Mrs. Godwin an angel of grace, or to think the second Mrs. Godwin a very
hateful person. Seeing that Mary Wollstonecraft had various faults, he
sees that Mary Jane Clairmont had several imperfections. Whilst declining
to join with the Shelleyan enthusiasts in glorifying Mary Wollstonecraft
because her daughter Mary lived to be Shelley’s second wife, and in
decrying the second Mrs. Godwin for the advantage of her step-daughter’s
reputation, he is none the less disposed to think favourably of Mrs. Mary
Jane (Clairmont) Godwin, because she cordially disapproved of the views
about marriage, which Godwin had successively promulgated and abandoned.
In several important particulars the second Mrs. William Godwin resembled
the first Mrs. William Godwin. A woman of considerable cleverness and some
education, she was an industrious woman of letters. Cleverer with her pen
at translation than in original writing, she was enthusiastic and
decidedly well looking. Even by her arch-enemy, Mr. Kegan Paul, she is
said to have been ‘clever, enthusiastic, and _handsome_.’ Having somewhat
the advantage of Mary Wollstonecraft in temper she resembled her in
disposition. Both women were quick-tempered, captious, quarrelsome, given
to imagine themselves slighted and to sulk. But the second Mrs. Godwin was
by no means so violent and outrageous in wrath as Mary Wollstonecraft. In
other respects Mary Jane had the advantage of Mary Wollstonecraft. In
social reputation she was far superior to Mary Godwin’s mother. Having
never produced so scandalous a book as the _Rights of Women_, she had not
lived in Free Love with two men or any man; she had never given birth to
an illegitimate child; her name had never been discreditably associated
with another woman’s husband; nor had she ever thrown herself in a fit of
white rage off Putney Bridge. On another point the advantage is with the
second Mrs. Godwin. On mating with her Godwin matched _evenly_; whilst the
unevenness of his match with Mary Wollstonecraft had been to his
disadvantage. On coming to her childless husband Mary Wollstonecraft
brought an illegitimate child in her arms. Godwin had _two_ children to
maintain, when Mary Jane Clairmont entered his house with a child on
either hand.
In the spring of 1801 Mrs. Mary Jane Clairmont took possession of the
tenement adjoining Godwin’s house in The Polygon, Somers Town, bringing
with her to the new home her little girl Jane (afterwards ‘Claire’), at
that time in her fourth or fifth year (older, perhaps, by a few months
than little Mary Godwin), and her elder brother, who may be regarded as
having been born on or about 4th June, 1795,--possibly on or about 4th
June, 1796. My knowledge of the month in which the little boy (Charles
Clairmont) was born came to me from a letter, dated 5th June, 1806,
written to Mrs. Godwin (at Southend) by William Godwin, who says therein,
‘Yesterday (was that right or wrong?) we kept Charles’s birthday, though
his mother was absent.’ My information about the year of the boy’s birth
is less precise, but I put it in 1795. It is certain that he was older
than his sister. On this point Mr. Kegan Paul has no doubt; if he had any
I could remove it. Hence, at the time of Mrs. Clairmont’s entry into the
house adjoining Godwin’s home in The Polygon, Somers Town, the ages of the
four children of the two households stood thus:--(1) Fanny Imlay, b.
April, 1794, _ætat._ just seven years; (2) Charles Clairmont, b. 4th June,
1795, _ætat._ five years and ten months; (3) Jane Clairmont, in her fourth
(or possibly even in her fifth) year; (4) Mary Godwin, b. 30th August,
1797, _ætat._ three years and some seven or eight months.
A great deal turns on the ages of these children. In their desire to
whitewash Mary Godwin, and exhibit her as a worthy mate for so faultless a
person as Shelley, the Shelleyan enthusiasts have discovered that she was
much younger than Claire; the discovery being used as a reason why Mary’s
grand misdemeanour should be entered in the tale of Claire’s offences, and
why, instead of censuring Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter for running off
with her friend’s husband, we should be indignant with the mature Claire
for not taking better care of her younger sister. It is well to inquire,
whether the discovery, of which so much is made, is aught else than a
misrepresentation.
Byron thought Mary and Claire were, within a few months, of the same age.
Writing of them in 1820, in the famous _Observations_, he put the case
thus ungrammatically, ‘Neither of them were, in 1816, nineteen years
old,’--_i.e._ in the months of 1816, which they passed chiefly in his
society at Geneva. It may be observed that Byron, often an inaccurate, was
sometimes an untruthful writer. But spite against Claire, with whom he was
quarrelling bitterly in 1820, would have disposed him to exaggerate her
age. Whilst habitually truthful people sometimes tell fibs, persons never
too nice about the truth sometimes tell it. On this occasion Byron seems
to have told the truth. He was right as to the age of Mary Godwin, who did
not complete her nineteenth year till 30th August, 1816. He certainly was
not far wrong about Claire’s age.
What is said about Claire’s age by Mr. Kegan Paul, who tells two different
stories about it? ‘This,’ he says of Mrs. Clairmont and her coming to The
Polygon (_vide_ pp. 57, 58, vol. ii. of _William Godwin: his Friends and
Contemporaries_), ‘was a Mrs. Clairmont, a widow, with a son then at
school, and one little daughter _somewhat older_ than Fanny, who came to
occupy the next house to Godwin in the Polygon.’ The italics of two words
of this quotation are mine. Farther on, in his book, when he comes to work
on the discovery, so as to make it appear that Claire was much older than
Mary, Mr. Kegan Paul (vol. ii., p. 213) says, ‘Jane Clairmont was only at
home for two nights during the six weeks Shelley spent in London. _She was
several years older than Fanny_, and even then led a somewhat independent
life apart from her mother and step-father, presumably as a governess,
since that was the occupation she afterwards followed in Italy, during the
intervals of her residence with the Shelleys.’ This extract (seven words
of which I print in italics) refers to Shelley’s stay in London in the
October and November, 1812. It is made up of inaccuracies. (1) Claire,
like Mary, was only fifteen years old. (2) She may have been a
pupil-teacher in some school where she was being educated; but she was not
living in independence of her stepfather and her mother. (3) She was not
several years older than Fanny.
Several years older! First, Mr. Kegan Paul says _somewhat older_, and then
_several years older_; the difference between the two expressions making
the two passages tell two different stories. The purpose of the larger
expression is obvious. Mr. Paul wishes us to think Claire several years
older than Fanny Imlay, in order that we may think her very much Mary’s
superior, by the authority of age. Several years may mean anything from
three or four years to ten or twelve. Let us put the expression at four
years. Then, as Fanny (born in April, 1794) was already eighteen years
old, Claire must, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, have been twenty-two years
old in 1812, and must have been born at least as early as April, 1790. It
follows, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, that Claire’s brother, older than
she, must have been born, at the latest, on 4th June, 1789,--might,
indeed, be fairly taken as having been born a year earlier.
Charles Clairmont was therefore, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, rising
twelve years old, when his mother came to her new house in the Polygon.
Was he?
(1) In 1802, when Charles (according to Mr. Kegan Paul’s statement) was
thirteen years old, William Godwin is admitted by Mr. Kegan Paul to have
taken much pains to put the boy into Christ’s Hospital. Had Godwin
succeeded in getting the admission, the boy would have been fourteen
before he went into the school, where boys, eighty years since, used to be
admitted, no less than now-a-days, in quite tender years. Is it probable
Godwin would have sought for the admission when the boy was so old?
(2) As an admission in the Bluecoat School could not be got for the boy,
we know from a letter, published in Mr. Kegan Paul’s own book, that
Charles Clairmont was sent to Charterhouse in the summer of 1805, and
kept at his studies there for six years. ‘I observed,’ Godwin wrote to Mr.
Fairley on 5th October, 1811, about the boy, ‘that I had kept him for six
years at the Charterhouse, one of our most celebrated schools, not without
proportionable profit, and that he has since been several months under one
of our most celebrated arithmeticians.’ If Charles was born on 4th June,
1789, he was sixteen years old when he first entered the Charterhouse
school, and twenty-two when he left it. Does Mr. Kegan Paul think this
probable or possible?
(3) Let us take some more evidence from one of the letters, which Mr.
Kegan Paul seems to have pitchforked into his book without reading them.
On 5th June, 1806, William Godwin wrote about the boy (who had been
naughty just before his birthday) to his wife at Southend, in these
words:--
‘Do not imagine that I took Charles into my good graces the moment
your back was turned.... So that I had only just time to forgive him
for his birthday. I wish to impress you with the persuasion that he is
infinitely more of a child, and to be treated as a child, than you
imagine. Monday I sent him for a frank, and set all the children to
write letters, though by his awkwardness the occasion was lost. The
letter he then wrote, though I took some pains previously to work on
his feelings, was the poorest and most soulless thing ever you saw. I
then set him to learn the poem of “My Mother,” in Darton’s _Original
Poetry_.... I went upstairs to his bedside the night before you left
us, that I might impress upon him the importance of not suffering you
to depart in anger; but instead of understanding me at first, he, like
a child, thought I was come to whip him, and with great fervour and
agitation, begged I would forgive him.’
(4) Had he been born on 4th June, 1789, as we are asked to believe by Mr.
Kegan Paul, Charles (a decidedly clever boy, who made a good position for
himself in early manhood by his mental force) was just upon seventeen
years old, when he was scolded and punished for being naughty,--was set to
learn by heart ‘My Mother’ in Darton’s _Original Poetry_, and was thrown
into lively agitation by fear that his stepfather had come upstairs to
whip him. Can Mr. Kegan Paul seriously believe that a clever boy of
seventeen years would have cried out for forgiveness, and in childish
alarm have begged his step-father not to smack him?
(5) At the close of October, 1811, when, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, he
was twenty-two years, Charles (the clever boy, who was still a mere lad
when he became a tutor in the Imperial family of Austria) was sent to Mr.
Thomas Constable’s publishing house for two years to learn business; it
being arranged that the lad should receive a yearly salary of 15_l._, to
which his stepfather should add 30_l._ for his sufficient maintenance. Can
Mr. Kegan Paul believe that this arrangement was made for so promising a
young man when he was twenty-two years old?
(6) Now let us see how Charles’s probable birthday of 4th June, 1795, fits
in with the known dates of his story. Born on that day he would be seven
years old in June, 1802; an age at which persons, wishing to get him into
Christ’s Hospital, would be on the look-out for a nomination. Born on that
day he was ten years old in 1805, when he went for the first time to the
Charterhouse,--a fit age (as matters went seventy years since) at which to
send him into the school. Born on that day, he would be still ten years
old, when he was scolded, set to learn ‘My Mother,’ and thrown into noisy
agitation by fear of being whipt. Godwin’s letter gives a picture of a
rather childish boy of ten years, not of a young man seventeen years old.
Born on that day, he would be sixteen, when he left school in 1811, and
went as a clerk into the Edinburgh publishing-house. Let it be added
(though more than enough has been said about the youngster’s age) that the
boy’s letters, published in Mr. Kegan Paul’s book of blunders, are enough
to show him to have been six or seven years younger than the book-maker
requires us to think him.
(7) Another piece of evidence touching Claire’s age, taken from Mr. Kegan
Paul’s book. If she was born, as Mr. Kegan Paul would have us believe, no
later than April, 1790, she was twenty-one years old in May, 1811. In that
month of May, Mrs. Godwin went to Ramsgate for change of air, taking her
stepdaughter, Mary, with her for the trip, whilst her own daughter Jane
(Claire) remained in London with her father and Fanny Imlay. Writing from
London to Mrs. Godwin at Ramsgate, on 18th May, 1811, William Godwin
says:--
‘I have just been into the next room to ask the children if they have
any messages. They are both anxious to hear from you. _Jane says she
hopes you stuck on the Goodwin Sands, and that the sailors frightened
you a little._’
This message from thirteen-years-old Jane was a piquant piece of sauciness
from the child to her mamma. From a young woman of twenty-one years it
would have been a piece of silliness, that Godwin certainly would not have
passed on to his wife, in order to heighten the enjoyment of her holiday.
Enough surely has been said to satisfy readers that Byron was right in
regarding Claire and Mary as girls of about the same age, _i.e._ as being
both of them only eighteen years old when they were at Geneva in 1816; and
that Mr. Kegan Paul is guilty of a serious error in making it seem that
Claire was older than Mary by at least seven years and four months. Claire
may have been older than Mary by some months; but she certainly was not
older than Fanny by several years.
Repeating a piece of malicious domestic tattle, in order to make the lady
ridiculous and contemptible, Mr. Kegan Paul says, that soon after entering
her new home in The Polygon, Mrs. Clairmont, from the balcony outside her
drawing-room window, addressed Godwin (sitting in the balcony outside his
drawing-room window) in these words, ‘Is it possible that I behold the
immortal Godwin?’--words that, tickling the philosopher’s inordinate
vanity, are represented as going far to enslave him. Let it be assumed
that the widow made the first advances to acquaintanceship with her
neighbour in this absurd fashion; that she set her cap at the widower,
angled for him, caught him. Why should so much be made of this to the
second Mrs. Godwin’s discredit, by writers who have nothing but eulogy for
Mary Wollstonecraft, though she ran wildly after Fuseli, and certainly did
not leave it to Godwin to make the first advances to her? We have Godwin’s
published word that he made no such advances to her; and we have his
serious declaration, in the private note intended only for Mary
Wollstonecraft’s eye, that his ambition to heal her wounded heart resulted
from her action in throwing herself on his compassionate sympathy.
It is urged by Mr. Kegan Paul, that Godwin’s second marriage was not a
remarkably happy one; that Godwin would have lived on the whole more
serenely, from middle to old age, had he not wedded the widow Clairmont;
that they had two or three lively quarrels, and divers keen disputes; that
some of his old friends disliked her so much that they visited her husband
less frequently; that she was a ‘managing,’ domineering woman, with a far
from happy temper. All this must be admitted, though every count of the
indictment is pressed against the lady with extravagant exaggeration.
When all has been urged that can be fairly urged to the discredit of her
temper, the second Mrs. Godwin was a less irascible and overbearing woman
than Mary Wollstonecraft. There are grounds for a strong opinion that had
Godwin been Mary Wollstonecraft’s domestic mate for thirty years, instead
of some ten or eleven months, he would have suffered far more from her
temper, than he suffered from his second wife’s temper during more than
thirty years. If in one of their squabbles arising from paltry questions,
Godwin and his second wife talked about separating from one another when
they had been married only a year and ten months, let it be remembered in
what terms he was moved to write to Mary Wollstonecraft, when he had been
(legally) married to her only three weeks. If the man of letters and his
second wife had another lively difference in August, 1811, when they had
been married nine years and seven months, the quarrel ended under
circumstances, affording evidence of much good feeling on Mrs. Godwin’s
part, and also of the strong mutual affection of the husband and wife. The
documents of Mr. Kegan Paul’s book (documents he cannot be supposed to
have read) yield conclusive testimony that, whilst falling out with her,
and scolding her roundly once in a while, Godwin had a high regard for his
second wife’s energy, a corresponding respect for her good sense and
discretion in affairs of business, a genuine admiration for several of her
qualities, a curious pride in the gentility of her birth, and a steady
affection for her,--in truth, all the sentimental fondness so cold a man
could feel for any woman. There is a homely saying in Wiltshire that
‘married people are made to bicker and breed.’ Godwin and his wife
bickered barely up to the standard of Wiltshire morals; and their recorded
bickerings are never without indications of a homely (albeit quite
unromantic) liking for one another. Of their petty tiffs and short-lived
quarrels, biography would never have said a word, had not the Shelleyan
enthusiasts thought it needful to hunt up materials for palliating Mary
Godwin’s conduct, in running away from her father’s house with another
woman’s husband.
‘The old acquaintances,’ Mr. Kegan Paul says in his general account of
Godwin’s life in 1802-3, the first year of his married life with his
second wife, ‘did not like Mrs. Godwin, and she did not like them; she was
a harsh stepmother, whom his children feared.’ There are, of course, two
sides to the story of Mrs. Godwin’s dislike of her husband’s old friends.
The dislike has in some cases been exaggerated; and her dislike of some of
the people was reasonable and even creditable to her. Possibly her
children feared her; for the way, in which children were generally
governed in English homes eighty years since, caused them often to fear
parents who abounded in parental affection. But there is no evidence that
she was a ‘harsh stepmother,’ in any fair sense of the term, apart from
Mrs. Shelley’s vindictive words against her. Such scanty evidence as Mr.
Kegan Paul gives us from the Field Place papers, goes in the other
direction. On this point Mr. Kegan Paul makes strong assertions without
supporting them with facts, which he certainly would have done, had the
facts been to hand. He says (speaking of 1802-3):--
‘She’ (_i.e._ the second Mrs. Godwin) ‘had strong views, in which many
would agree, that each child should be educated to some definite
duties, and with a view of filling some useful place in life; but this
arrangement soon had at least a show of partiality. It was found that
Jane Clairmont’s mission in life, according to her mother’s view, was
to have all the education, and even accomplishments, which their
slender means would admit, and more than they would admit; while
household drudgery was from an early age discovered to be the
life-work of Fanny and Mary Godwin.’
This is the case against Mrs. Godwin, as it is put by the gentleman who
insists that Claire (in after-life a governess) was six or seven years
older than Mary. As they were of the same age, it was incumbent on Mrs.
Godwin to treat them alike in respect to educational advantages; but it is
droll that Mr. Kegan Paul, who declares Claire to have been so much the
older of the two girls, should be so severe on Mrs. Godwin for spending
more money on the education of the elder girl (so soon to be a governess),
than on the younger who was still a little child. What accomplishments can
Mary (from five to six years old in 1802-3) have been denied by her harsh
stepmother, that so much should be made of the denial? The truth is that
the two girls of about the same age were educated precisely in the same
way, by the same governess, and with the same books. In other matters they
were treated in the same way; taking their childish ‘treats’ together or
by turns, and taking their punishments in proportion to their naughtiness.
It has already been seen, how Mary went with her stepmother in May, 1811
(a rare ‘outing’ for the Skinner-Street people in those days!), Claire
being left at home. Had Mrs. Godwin taken Claire and left Mary in Skinner
Street, what a fuss the Shelleyan apologists would have made about Mrs.
Godwin’s galling neglect of Mary and partiality for her own girl! The
alleged difference in the treatment of the two children existed only in
the imagination of Mary, who inherited some of the worst defects of her
mother’s temper.
These two children, of the same household and about the same age, were
fifteen years old, when Godwin received a letter from a stranger, begging
for information respecting Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughters, and asking
especially whether they were educated in accordance with their mother’s
educational theories,--an inquiry to which Godwin replied with a statement
that Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughters had not been educated in accordance
with their mother’s educational notions. ‘They are,’ he wrote, ‘neither of
them brought up with an exclusive attention to the system and ideas of
their mother.’ At the same time, Godwin told his unknown correspondent
that he was chiefly moved to marry his second wife by considerations
arising from his sense of his own incompetence to educate his daughters.
Further, he remarked that he and his wife were too fully occupied by the
labour of maintaining their family, to ‘have leisure enough for reducing
theories to practice;’--a series of significant admissions.
There is another piece of remarkable evidence, respecting the education
Godwin gave his children, to be found amongst the excellent materials of
Mr. Kegan Paul’s book of blunders. Four days after the boy’s withdrawal
from the Charterhouse School, Godwin sent his step-son Charles a book,
instead of another work the lad had been advised to read. On sending the
book to Ramsgate, where Charles was staying with his mother, Godwin, on
24th May, 1811, wrote to Mrs. Godwin in these words:--
‘I send Charles’s book agreeably to his desire.... The very choice of
the book is taken out of my hands; T. T. undertook to procure for him
Paine’s _Age of Reason_; this I objected to. It is written in a vein
of banter and impudence, and though I do not wish the young man to be
the slave of the religion of his country, there are few things I hate
more than a young man, with his little bit of knowledge, setting-up to
turn up his nose, and elevate his eyebrows, and make his sorry joke at
everything the wisest and best men England ever produced, have
treated with veneration. Therefore I preferred a work by Anthony
Collins, the friend of Locke, written with sobriety and learning, to
the broad grins of Thomas Paine.... Observe, I totally object to
Mary’s reading in Charles’s book. I think it much too early for him,
but I have been driven, so far as he is concerned, from the standing
of my own judgment by the improper conduct of T. T.’
It is instructive to observe how William Godwin fell away from his
philosophical theories as soon as he was required to put them in practice.
It is one thing for a scholar to theorize in his arm-chair for the
guidance of individuals, who are unknown to him; another thing for him to
act on his precepts, in the education of persons to whom he is drawn by
parental affection. In theory an enemy to marriage, when Mary
Wollstonecraft gave him her wounded heart, he had lived with her in Free
Love for only a few months, when he discovered that he had better marry
her. From the day of his marriage he moved further away from his old
hostility to wedlock, till he altogether abandoned his former views
against marriage, and became a supporter of the institution he had so long
derided. A theorist on education, he no sooner had little girls to care
for at his own hearth, than he discovered his ‘incompetence for the
education of daughters,’ and bethought himself that he had better find a
second wife, who would bring them up in the old-fashioned way. A bold
Deist whilst he was a bachelor, he became a timid Deist in private life on
becoming a father. When Charles Clairmont came to reasonable years, Godwin
shrunk from the thought of giving him the _Age of Reason_ and would fain
have postponed his introduction to Free Thought. On putting Anthony
Collins’ moderate book in the hands of the sixteen-years-old boy, he was
urgent that his daughter (in her fourteenth year) should not be allowed to
look into the book.
Godwin’s reluctance to act on his theories, his absolute abandonment in
mature middle age of several of his social views (especially his notorious
theories respecting marriage), must be borne in mind by readers, who would
judge between him and Shelley, in regard to matters that must soon be
narrated. Orthodox cynics have laughed over the old man’s chagrin at his
daughter’s elopement with another woman’s husband, and have declared him
properly punished by the scandalous incident for his denunciations of
wedlock. Men of the world, like Trelawny (a true sailor to the last in
finding a new love wherever he harboured), have made merry over Godwin’s
displeasure and wrath at the elopement. In his old age, Trelawny used to
maintain stoutly that, as Shelley acted in this matter in accordance with
the philosopher’s published doctrine, the latter had no right to complain
of the poet’s action towards Mary. By the majority of the Shelleyan
apologists, it is declared or suggested that Godwin, with a marriageable
daughter in his house, was bound by the words he uttered against marriage
long before he had a daughter; as though he had no right to change his
views after coming to mature age. Whilst questions, touching Godwin’s
relations with, and conduct to, Shelley are debated in this fashion, it
cannot be stated too plainly that his views about marriage in 1814, and in
many previous years, had nothing in common with what he thought against
marriage, before his union with Mary Wollstonecraft.
In his _Leaf from the Real Life of Lord Byron_, the rash and deplorable
article on matters about which he knew nothing, Mr. Froude asserted that
Mary Godwin was, in her childhood, ‘bred up to regard love as the
essential part of marriage;’ these words being used in a sense which
caused the essayist to assert that, notwithstanding this breeding-up, she
was ‘a perfectly pure innocent woman.’ This assertion that in her
childhood Mary was indoctrinated in the anti-matrimonial views her father
had abandoned, is absolutely the reverse of fact. Godwin’s children and
step-children were educated much like other English children of their
social degree; just as they would have been educated had he, instead of
being a Deist, been a lukewarm member of the Church of England. Sent to a
Church of England school, Charles Clairmont was in no way introduced to
Free Thought till he had entered his seventeenth year, and had it not been
for T. Turner’s busybodyism, the young man’s introduction to Free Thought
would have been deferred till he was much older. Instructed by
professional governesses and men-teachers, Mary Godwin and Claire were
taught chiefly out of the books produced by their parents in the way of
their business, for use in Church-of-England and other Denominational
Schools. Their minds were not led prematurely to think about marriage. No
eccentric notions touching the intercourse of the sexes had been put into
Mary’s mind, when Shelley made her acquaintance. It may be assumed
confidently, from the way in which she was educated, that she had never
known anything of her mother’s painful history and peculiar views, till
Shelley spoke to her about them, and used them as arguments for inducing
her to become his mistress. It is certain from her own written words that,
instead of regarding marriage as an idle form, she regarded it as a sacred
and momentous ceremony. As Godwin was so urgent that she should not be
allowed to look into ‘Charles’s book,’ and thought sixteen years a ‘much
too early’ age for Charles’s introduction to Free Thought, we may be sure
he thought the age _very_ much too early for a clever girl’s initiation in
the views of Free-thinkers.
Enough has been said to show that, though her temper was defective, the
_Edinburgh Review_ (October, 1882) had no sufficient justification for
saying, on the authority of Mr. Kegan Paul, that the second Mrs. Godwin
‘was a person who rendered life intolerable to those who shared it with
her.’ The evidence is superabundant that she did not render life
intolerable, or otherwise than fairly enjoyable, to her husband, her elder
son Charles, her younger son William, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s
illegitimate daughter Fanny. That Fanny got on pleasantly with Mrs.
Godwin, and that Mrs. Godwin proved a good and kind mother to this child
of shameful birth, are sufficient testimony that Mary’s stepmother was by
no means so bad a woman as certain of the Shelleyan apologists would have
us think her. The fault was not wholly on Mrs. Godwin’s side that, on
entering the period in which girlhood passes imperceptibly into
womanhood,--the period when high-spirited girls are sometimes very
difficult persons to control,--Mary and Claire went into rebellion against
her. Godwin’s admission to his unknown correspondent, that his favourite
child was ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious,’ points to some of the
difficulty Mrs. Godwin experienced in managing the girl, who had inherited
a liberal share of Mary Wollstonecraft’s quick, fervid, and querulous
nature. Beautiful in different styles, clever in different ways, these two
wilful, daring, saucy pusses, would have tried the temper and skill of the
most judicious governess. Mrs. Godwin being what she was, it is not
surprising that they went into rebellion against her government, and
constituted themselves ‘the opposition’ in the Skinner-Street Parliament.
It was a grievous misfortune of both damsels, that Shelley (ever quick to
sympathize with ‘the victims of domestic tyranny’) made their
acquaintance, when they were in this dangerous period of girlhood.
That the handsome, clever, managing Mrs. Godwin had great influence over
her husband, is shown by the way in which she induced him to become a
publisher and retail seller of children’s educational books,--the business
being so arranged that she was for some time its nominal and actual
manager, whilst he, keeping in the background of the affair, avoided
public observation. Knowing much of printing and the book-trade, it
occurred to the managing lady that she and her husband would do well to go
into this business. There was much to be said in favour of the project in
1805, when in the fourth year of their married life, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin
were no richer than they had been on their wedding-day. Still earning an
income that would have been wealth to him as a bachelor, Godwin had not
‘done well’ of late years. Since his second marriage things had been going
ill with him. His income was waning, his family had increased. Fanny was
rising twelve; Charley was ten; Jane (_i.e._ Claire) and Mary were rising
eight; Willie, the babe of the household, was nearing the end of his
second year. How were these children to be clothed, fed, taught, and
raised creditably into young men and women, on an income that, already
barely sufficient for present necessities, seemed likely to dwindle to
smaller revenue? With all their industry, Godwin and his wife had barely
kept things going; and they were now nearing a time of life (Godwin was in
his fiftieth year), when even the most improvident people begin to
anticipate the usual incidents of life’s decline.
Under these circumstances, the shop was opened in 1805, in Hanway Street,
Oxford Street, under the name of M. J. Godwin and Co.; the M. J. Godwin
being Mary Jane, whose Co. at The Polygon, and on the shop-front, went to
work bravely in throwing off copy for new Children’s Books, to be
published under the _nom-de-plume_ of Baldwin. Mrs. Godwin also worked
hard with her pen, whilst she went daily from The Polygon to the little
shop near Oxford Street, to look after the person who had been engaged to
wait on customers; Godwin keeping in the background, because his
reputation might be hurtful to the venture, were the shop known to be his
shop, and many of the books sold in it known to be by his pen. Something
less than two years later, when the business (which, beginning in this
modest way, became a considerable affair) was moved to Skinner Street, it
was decided with questionable discretion that Godwin should live over his
own shop, and, dropping all concealment, work the business under his own
name. The business was thus removed to Skinner Street in May, 1807.
Thus it was that the Godwins of The Polygon, Somers Town, became the
Godwins of Skinner Street. There is room for two opinions respecting the
policy of the enterprise, that made Godwin for the remainder of his
working days a struggling tradesman; whilst with failing powers he
persisted in literary toil. But much may be said against the view taken by
the partisans who, never finding aught to commend in anything for which
Mrs. Godwin was accountable, maintain it was an evil day for the man of
letters when he was persuaded by his meddlesome wife to go into ‘the
trade.’ Burdened with a wife and five children, Godwin’s only prospect,
towards the close of his time at Somers Town, was one of incessant labour
and anxiety about money. Had he kept out of business, he would, perhaps,
have needed the help of his friends in a greater degree. On the whole, I
am disposed to think that, whilst his difficulties were somewhat lighter,
his means of supporting his family were somewhat greater, than they would
have been had he remained in The Polygon, and kept clear of the commercial
side of literature. Sending his boys to good schools, he gave his girls
the usual training, together with some of the accomplishments and
pleasures, of young gentlewomen. In some respects it might have been
cheerier without being in any way costlier or more luxurious; but the
house in Skinner Street was a fairly happy home for the five young people
who, one and all, called Godwin ‘papa’ and Mrs. Godwin ‘mamma.’