GRAVES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE
Of the three young girls who had given life and gaiety to the house in
Skinner Street, one only, Fanny Imlay, was left. She alone, who was
neither Godwin’s child, nor yet Mrs. Godwin’s, lived at home with them
and called them “papa” and “mamma.” She alone, so gentle and so loving,
had found neither lover nor husband. Modest and unselfish, these are
virtues which men praise—and pass by. For a moment she had wondered
whether Percy would not think of her, and with a beating heart had begun
a correspondence with him. But Mary’s hazel eyes had quenched the hopes
to which the timid Fanny had never given definite form.
In this silent home, saddened by money-worries, it was on Fanny that
Mrs. Godwin wreaked her ill-humour, while Godwin let her understand that
he could not continue to keep her, and that she ought to see about
earning her own living. She asked nothing better, and would have liked
to become a teacher, but the flight of Mary and Jane had thrown a mantle
of disrepute over the household, and the heads of schools distrusted the
way in which the Godwin girls had been brought up.
Sick at heart and with a touch of envy, Fanny admired from afar her
sisters’ life of wild adventure, a life which was sometimes dangerous,
but always amusing. How she, too, would have loved to be over there at
Lake Leman, in the company of the famous Lord Byron, of whom all London
was talking!
“Is his face as fine as in your portrait of him? . . . Tell me
also if he has a pleasing voice, for that has a great charm with
me. Does he come into your house in a careless, friendly,
dropping-in manner? I wish to know, though not from idle
curiosity, whether he was capable of acting in the manner that
London scandal-mongers say he did. I cannot think from his
writings that he can be such a _detestable being_. Do answer me
these questions, for where I love the poet, I should like to
respect the man.
“Shelley’s boat excursion with him must have been very
delightful. . . . I long very much to read the poems the ‘Poet’
has written on the spot where Julie was drowned. When will they
be published in England? May I see them in manuscript? Say you
have a friend who has few pleasures, and is very impatient to
read them. . . . It is impossible to tell the good that POETS do
their fellow creatures, at least those that can feel. Whilst I
read I am a poet. I am inspired with good feelings—feelings
that create perhaps a more permanent good in me than all the
everyday preachments in the world; it counteracts the dross
which one gives on the everyday concerns of life and tells us
there is something yet in the world to aspire to—something by
which succeeding ages may be made happy and perhaps better.”
Mary and Claire would read these charming letters with a condescending
pity. Poor Fanny! How Skinner Street! Always thinking that Godwin’s
novels, Godwin’s debts, and Mrs. Godwin’s bad tempers were the most
important things in the world! Fanny’s slavery gave the two others a
more vivid appreciation of their own freedom. Her loneliness enhanced
for them the value of their lovers’ society, and, in their compassion
for her, Mary got Shelley to buy her a watch before leaving Geneva.
When the Shelleys and Claire came back to England, to settle down at
Bath, they saw Fanny as they passed through London. She was depressed,
and spoke of nothing but her loneliness and her uselessness; no one
wanted her. In saying good-bye to Shelley, her voice quivered. Yet she
wrote to him at Bath with the same affectionate frankness as before,
although her letters now had that indefinable note of reproach which
those who lead a death-in-life feel towards those whose life is filled
with living. Godwin, his literary work broken into by fresh money
troubles, became more and more grumpy; an aunt, Everina Wollstonecraft,
who had promised to take Fanny as governess in her school, wrote to say
that a sister of Mary and Claire would certainly be too terrifying a
teacher for the narrow-minded middle-class parents.
One morning the Shelleys received from Bristol a curious letter, in
which Fanny bade them farewell in mysterious sentences: “I am going to a
place whence I hope never to return.”
Mary implored Shelley to go to Bristol at once. He came home during the
night without any news. Next morning he went again, and this time
brought Mary lamentable tidings. Fanny had left Bristol for Swansea by
the Cambrian Coach, and had put up at the Mackworth Arms Inn. She had
gone at once to her room telling the chamber-maid that she was tired.
When she did not come down next morning, her door was forced, and she
was found lying dead, her long brown hair spread about her. By her was
the little Genevan watch given her by Mary and Shelley. On the table was
a bottle of laudanum and the beginning of a letter:
“I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to
put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was
unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to
those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to
promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you
pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that
such a creature ever existed as . . .”
Godwin had taught in _Political Justice_ that suicide is not a crime;
the only difficulty being to decide in each individual case whether the
social advantage of thirty supplementary years of life forbids recourse
to a voluntary death. After the tragedy he wrote to Mary for the first
time since her flight. It was to implore the three outcasts to avoid
anything leading to publicity, “which to a mind in anguish is one of the
severest of all trials.”
* * *
Shelley’s nerves were badly shaken by Fanny’s terrible death, and Mrs.
Godwin in her amiable way insinuated she had killed herself for love of
him. He then remembered certain signs of emotion he had seen in her, and
reproached himself for having always considered her as of a slightly
lower status. Perhaps he had, though quite unwittingly, awakened her
love at the moment when, deserted by Harriet, he sought a shelter in any
feminine tenderness. Perhaps she had weighed and counted and analysed
with care, words and glances, into which he had meant to put mere
friendliness. “How difficult it is to understand the soul of another;
How much suffering one may cause without wishing it, or knowing it; How
one may live in presence of the most profound, sometimes of the most
despairful feelings without even suspecting their existence!” It does
not suffice therefore to be sincere, nor to have good intentions. You
can do just as much harm through not understanding as through
unkindness. He was plunged into a blank despondency.
To shake it off, he went to spend a few days alone with a young literary
critic, Leigh Hunt, who had praised his poetry with intelligence and
enthusiasm. Hunt lived on Hampstead Heath in the Vale of Health, a spot
as tree-embowered and almost as charming to-day as it was then. His wife
Marianne was homely and hospitable. He had a whole brood of jolly
children with whom Shelley could walk and play. There, he could forget
for a time poor Fanny and Godwin. The visit was short but delicious, and
he came home much cheered.
On his return, he found awaiting him a letter from Hookham, which he
opened eagerly, for he had asked Hookham to find out for him what
Harriet was doing. He had had no news of her for two months. She had
drawn her allowance in March and in September, being then in her
father’s house. But since October nothing was known of her.
“My dear Sir,” Hookham wrote, “It is nearly a month since I had
the pleasure of receiving a letter from you, and you have no
doubt felt surprised that I did not reply to it sooner. It was
my intention to do so; but on enquiring, I found the utmost
difficulty in obtaining the information you desire relative to
Mrs. Shelley and your children.
“While I was yet endeavouring to discover Mrs. Shelley’s
address, information was brought me that she was dead—that she
had destroyed herself. You will believe that I did not credit
the report. I called at the house of a friend of Mr. Westbrook;
my doubt led to conviction. I was informed that she was taken
from the Serpentine river on Tuesday last. . . . Little or no
information was laid before the jury which sat on the
body. . . . The verdict was _found drowned_. Your children are
well and are both, I believe, in London.”
Shelley went up to town in an agonizing condition of mind. With horror
he saw in imagination the blonde and childlike head, which he had so
loved, befouled by the mud of the river-bed, green and swollen through
its sojourn in the water. He asked himself how was it possible she could
have abandoned her children and chosen so dreadful a death.
The Hunts and Hookham showed him every kindness, and told him all they
knew. A paragraph in _The Times_ stated: “On Thursday a respectable
female far advanced in pregnancy was taken out of the Serpentine river,
and brought home to her residence in Queen Street, Brompton, having been
missed for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger. A
want of honour in her own conduct is supposed to have led to this fatal
catastrophe, her husband being abroad.”
The gossips of Queen Street repeated the little they had gleaned:
Harriet no longer received letters from her husband, because her former
landlady had failed to forward them, and she had given up all hope of
his ever coming back to her. She had fallen, from despair. Living first
with an army officer, he had been obliged to leave her on his regiment
being ordered to India. Then, unable to endure the loneliness of life,
she found a protector of humble grade, said to be a groom, and that he
deserted her. The Westbrooks had deprived her of her children, and
refused to receive her back. She was said to be in the family way,
absolutely alone, and terrified at the approaching scandal. Then, came
the body in the river.
Shelley passed an appalling night. . . . “Far advanced in
pregnancy. . . .” What an end to her life . . . what madness. . . .
Detailed and intimate memories of poor Harriet crowded back into his
mind against his will, and he saw in imagination with terrible vividness
the last scenes. . . . Harriet in love, Harriet in terror, Harriet in
despair . . . every expression he knew too well. Ah, this name which
during a few years had meant the whole world to him, for the future he
must associate with all that is basest and most vile! “Harriet, my wife,
a prostitute! Harriet, my wife, a suicide!”
There were moments when he asked himself if he were not responsible, but
he pushed this idea from him with all his strength. “I did my duty.
Always on every occasion in life, I have done what seemed to me the
loyal and disinterested thing to do. When I left her, I no longer loved
her. I assured her existence to the utmost of my means, and even beyond
them. Never have I treated her with unkindness . . . it is those odious
Westbrooks alone. . . . Ought I to have sacrificed my sanity and my
life, to one who was unfaithful to me, and second-rate?”
His reason told him “No.” Hogg and Peacock, who surrounded him with
affectionate attentions, told him “No.” He besought them to repeat it to
him, for at instants he seemed to glimpse some mysterious and
super-human duty towards Harriet, in which he had failed. “In breaking
traditional ties one sets free in man unknown forces, the consequences
of which one cannot foresee. . . . Freedom is only good for the strong
. . . for those who are worthy of it. . . . Harriet’s soul was
weak. . . .” Ah, little head, blonde and childlike, of drowned
Harriet. . . .
Next day he wrote a tender letter to Mary, eager to dwell by contrast on
her gentle serenity. He asked her to become a mother to his “poor babes,
Ianthe and Charles.” His counsel had just informed him that the
Westbrooks would take action to contest his guardianship of the
children, on the pretext that his irreligious opinions, and his living
in concubinage with Miss Godwin, rendered him unfit to bring them up.