SHELLEY’S WIDOW AND HER SISTER-BY-AFFINITY.
The Widow in Italy--Her Return to England--Sojourn in the Strand--Life
at Kentish Town--Residence at Harrow--She is forbidden to write her
Husband’s ‘Life’--‘Moonshine’ and ‘Celestial Mate’--Her closing
Years--Claire in her later Time--Trelawny’s inaccurate Talk about
Shelley’s Will--Claire’s double Legacy--She becomes a Catholic--Dies
in the Catholic Faith.
At the close of this attempt to exhibit the Real Shelley, so unlike the
Shelley of biographical romance, a few more words should be said of
William Godwin’s daughter and of Claire.
On her husband’s death, Mrs. Shelley was in a pitiable condition. In Italy
she had no friends, able and at the same time willing to render her
effectual help. The Gisbornes were poor; the Hunts, in losing Shelley, had
lost their surest means of subsistence in the foreign land; for several
years Claire would have enough to do, to shift for herself; Mrs. Williams
was not provided for bountifully; and, apart from them, the poet’s widow
knew in Italy scarcely any one whom she could regard as aught more than a
mere acquaintance. Trelawny, who (without liking her) befriended her nobly
in the crisis of her troubles, she had known for little more than
half-a-year. For months her husband’s and her own relations with Byron had
been strained almost to rupture. Though he recognized her cleverness, and
was not insensible to her beauty, Byron had never delighted in her
greatly; and now that Shelley was gone, he had lost his strongest reason
for trying to regard her cordially. Fretted by the Hunts, he was on uneasy
terms with the woman, who was too closely associated with them, for him
not to think of her position as part of the embarrassment arising out of
the _Liberal_. Knowing they had her affection, he was, of course, aware
that she gave them her sympathy, and thought he treated them badly. Still
he rendered her the civilities to which she was entitled at his hands; and
whilst consulting him on her affairs, she confided to him the delicate and
difficult task of addressing Sir Timothy Shelley in her behalf.
Whilst the widow’s position in Italy was depressing, her prospect in
England was cheerless. Eight years older and poorer than he was on the
July morning that saw her flit from his roof, her father could only give
her sympathy, invite her to a smaller home, and assure her that, should
she be placed in sudden and urgent need of money, he would do his best to
send her a small sum. At Field Place she was known only by name, and by
circumstances that were necessarily regarded there as circumstances to her
discredit. To use Lady Shelley’s expression, the young widow (still only
four-and-twenty years of age) was ‘coldly regarded by her husband’s
family.’ It would have been strange had the family regarded her
affectionately. The persons of all the world, with the exception of her
own kindred, who had suffered most from her career, are scarcely to be
censured for thinking of her with disapproval. What title had she to the
affection of her husband’s father, mother, sisters? She had no doubt a
son, who was Sir Timothy Shelley’s grandson? But in 1822 this little boy
was not heir-apparent to the Castle Goring baronetcy, Shelley’s son
(Charles Bysshe) being the heir-apparent; and it was not till Charles’s
death, in 1826, that William Godwin’s daughter could say, ‘If my boy
survives his grandfather, he will be Sir Percy Florence Shelley.’ It is
not surprising that, whilst recognizing Percy’s claim to his
grand-paternal consideration, Sir Timothy could not see what title the
little fellow’s mother had to his paternal care. In reply to Byron’s
letter, it seemed enough to Sir Timothy Shelley, that he should offer to
take charge of Mary’s boy, should she consent to surrender the little
fellow unreservedly to his custody and government--a proposal which,
stirring William Godwin to indignation, was, of course, declined with
disdainful firmness by his daughter.
Returning with her child to England in the autumn of 1823, Mrs. Shelley
lived under her father’s roof in the Strand, till she moved into the small
house in Kentish Town, from whose window she and Mrs. Williams saw Byron’s
hearse pass slowly on its way from London to Nottinghamshire. Some ten
years later (1833) she moved to Harrow, where she remained during the
period of her boy’s education at the famous school. For some time after
her return to England, she and her child lived on the earnings of her pen;
but at a later time she received from her father-in-law the allowance,
which, towards the end of 1838, he threatened to stop, if she ventured to
write and publish her husband’s life. By her friends Sir Timothy Shelley
was declared guilty of revolting inhumanity in denying her the solace she
would have derived from producing a worthy record of her husband’s
virtues. But in forbidding her to write a book, that could scarcely have
failed to pain him acutely and torture even more sharply the feelings of
his children, Sir Timothy cannot be fairly charged with exceeding the
powers pertaining to him as the chief of his family. There are also
reasons why every judicious admirer of Shelley’s genius, and all sober
worshipers of his memory, should be thankful for the menace that
determined Mrs. Shelley to relinquish the work which she began in the vein
of fantastic egotism, that caused her to proclaim herself ‘the chosen mate
of a celestial spirit’ whom she hoped ‘to join in his native sky,’ and to
speak of herself as ‘moonshine’ destined to ‘be united to her planet and
wander no more, a sad reflection of all she loved on earth.’
The marvellous piece of egotism on the highest of romantic stilts, from
which these scraps are taken, appears at large in the preface to Hogg’s
_Life_, where it is followed by the letter (dated 41 Park Street, Dec. 11,
1838, from Moonshine to her Celestial Spirit’s future biographer)
containing these words: ‘Sir Timothy forbids Biography, under a threat of
stopping the supplies.’ Certainly the present generation has no reason to
regret Sir Timothy’s menace and its consequence. A biography, written in a
vein of such affectation, could not have redounded to the poet’s honour.
Nor would it have been in any way creditable to Moonshine, who, without
ever fulfilling the promise of her first work of fiction, was in her sober
and unaffected moods an equally industrious and capable woman of letters.
The examples given in previous pages of her ways of dealing with matters
of her own, her father’s, and her husband’s history, warrant a confident
opinion, that, had she been allowed to go her own way by the stern Sir
Timothy, Mrs. Shelley’s biography of the poet would not have been
commendable for severe accuracy.
Of Mrs. Shelley’s way of living, from the date of her husband’s to the
moment of her own death, no biographer will venture to speak
disrespectfully, apart from such slight reprehension as may be fairly
awarded to her exhibitions of animosity and vindictiveness against her
stepmother and her stepmother’s daughter. Trelawny, who thought her a
fretful, trying, jealous wife at Pisa, found fault with her in subsequent
years for her nervous sensitiveness of social opinion, and excessive care
for the conventional proprieties. Instead of blaming her for the pains she
took in her later time to stand well with the world, most readers of this
page will probably concur in thinking it to her credit, that she expressed
in so natural and appropriate a manner her regret for the indiscretions of
her girlhood. A good daughter to her old father in his declining years, an
affectionate friend, and a faultless mother, Mary Wollstonecraft’s child
had at least a fair share of the womanly virtues, though she was not the
phenomenally noble creature people have been required to think her.
Surviving her father by about fourteen years and ten months, she died in
February, 1851, nearly seven years after her son’s succession to the
Castle Goring baronetcy. For the one great error of her life, the error of
her girlhood, she rendered ample atonement; and had it not been for the
extravagances of her eulogists, her other failings would by this time have
passed from human interest and recollection.
How about Mary’s sister-by-affinity? Reference has been made in a previous
chapter to the liberality with which Shelley, by his will, provided for
the charming and vivacious Claire, in whose brilliant endowments he
delighted, whilst pitying her for her misfortunes. Trelawny seems to have
been one of those who thought that Claire gained twice as much by the
poet’s testament as he meant to bequeath her. ‘Trelawny,’ says Mr.
Rossetti, in his equally valuable and entertaining _Talks with Trelawny_,
contributed to the _Athenæum_ in 1882, ‘says that Shelley left Miss
Clairmont, by will, no less a sum than 12,000_l._ He had left 6000_l._ in
the body of the will, and then (whether by inadvertence or otherwise) he
bequeathed another 6000_l._ in a codicil. Miss Clairmont, however, did not
manage the money prudently--one unfortunate speculation being the purchase
of a box or boxes in Lumley’s Italian Opera-house, now burned down. She is
still in Florence, Via Valfonda. I asked Trelawny whether he thought I
might call on her if I am at Florence this year; but he considers she
would not be pleased at my doing so. He and I continued talking about
Shelley’s will, which he says was regarded as a remarkable document in a
legal sense.’ In a previous chapter it was remarked how little Trelawny
knew about the will, of which he spoke so freely and confidently to Mr.
Rossetti:--a will drawn by a lawyer, to which no codicil is attached.
Trelawny was, however, right in saying that Claire was neither prudent nor
fortunate in her investments. Mrs. Shelley may well have disapproved of
her husband’s great, and even excessive, testamentary munificence to her
sister-by-affinity; though she was wrong in thinking that the entire
bequest exceeded the testator’s purpose, at the date of the will. Of
course Claire did not come into the legacy till the settlement of the
poet’s affairs after his father’s death, which took place in 1844. Since
29th April, 1873, the date of Mr. Rossetti’s talk with Trelawny about the
poet’s will, Claire passed from this world to the majority of the actors
of the Byronic-Shelleyan drama. In the time when she used to flash about
London after coming into her money, Claire was on friendly terms with more
than one of the present writer’s acquaintance. Surviving most of those,
who knew her in the days of her girlish waywardness and brightest womanly
loveliness, she became a devout member of the Catholic Church (‘a somewhat
bigotted Roman Catholic,’ in Trelawny’s opinion), and did not close her
old age, without having suffered from straitened circumstances and much
painful illness. Possibly affection for her lost child may have been an
influence, disposing her to seek spiritual solace from the Church, in
whose arms they both died. Anyhow it gives another pathetic touch to her
story that Claire lived to embrace the faith, from which she did her
utmost to preserve her little Allegra.