Vindication (75 page)

FI's ‘florid health'
:
Memoirs
, ch. 1.

‘the Midwives'
: Marginalia to supercilious article ‘On the State of the Poor in Italy', whose author blames deformities on ‘the extreme carelessness in the science of midwifery, that generally being practised by women'. Pf: Cini Papers.

MM's opinion on the placenta
: From her
Advice to Young Mothers
. This defence of MM's medical opinion in its historical context came from Siamon Gordon, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford. More on MM's medical opinions in ch. 17 below.

Shelley's eccentric appearance
: CC's recollections for Silsbee (26 Apr. 1876). Silsbee, Papers, box 8, file 4. Cited in
ClCor
, 169.

WG to MM
: Abinger: Dep. c. 524/7. Full text in Appendix II to
MWSJ
, 585.

‘vagabond'
: To PBS [Jan. 1820]. Abinger: Dep. c. 517.

kissed
: CC to Mrs Gisborne (13 Nov. 1819),
ClCor
, 133.

‘frankness' and
‘cant': MM to PBS (14 Nov. [1819] and [winter 1819–20]). Abinger: Dep.c. 517.

Peterloo Massacre
: On 16 Aug. 1819, a month and a half before the Shelley party and MM met in Pisa. Soldiers charged a peaceful crowd of petitioning workers
from the Manchester cotton factories who had gathered at St Peter's Fields.

‘Since my country…'
: MM to the Shelleys [winter 1819–20]. Abinger: Dep. c. 517.

‘as good a physician'
: MM to MWS (31 Dec
.
1819). Ibid.

17
DAUGHTERS

no questioning of marriage; no atheism
: CC to Trelawny (30 May 1875),
ClCor
, 627.

‘baby-sullenness'
;
‘the worst of tempers'
: 28 Oct. 1803, KP, ii, 98–9.

eager sympathy…truth
: These were the qualities MWS emphasised in notes for a biography of her mother. Ibid., i, 231 and Clemit et al,
Lives of the Romantics
, ii, ed. Harriet Jump.

‘unsinking'
: WG to Mary Jane Godwin (12 Sept. 1812), Appendix A to
ClCor
, ii, 643–4.

intellectual women
;
Katherine Parr
: See ch. 4 above and note to ch. 16.

aim of education
:
The Enquirer
, cited by Clemit, ‘Anarchism in the Schoolroom', 67.

more emphasis on republican virtues
: St Clair, ‘Godwin as Children's Bookseller', 173.

English Dictionary: Published under the pseudonym of Mylius.

definition of ‘revolution'
: Clemit, ‘Anarchism', 48.

Mounseer Nongtongpaw: St Clair, ‘Children's Bookseller', 175, suggests that MWS may have written other such works.

the Wollstonecrafts and Fanny
: Rowan to EW (8 Mar. 1805). Abinger: Dep. b. 214/3.

£3000
: Harriet Shelley to Mrs Nugent in Dublin (20 Nov. [1814]), Shelley,
Letters
, i, 421: ‘I told you some time back Mr. S. was to give Godwin three thousand pounds.'

‘one of the daughters of that dear MW'
: To Mrs Nugent, ibid., i, 327.

Shelley's appearance and voice
: CC's wonderfully vivid recollections. Silsbee Papers, box 8, folders 3 and 4 (dated 18 Apr. 1874). A few cited in
ClCor
, ii, 657.

a female court
: Tomalin,
Shelley
, 3.

‘Then it was Fanny Imlay he loved'
: CC in conversation with Silsbee (Silsbee Papers, box 8, folder 3). ‘Then' refers to the period before he met their sister Mary. (Shelley and Mary first met on 11 Nov. 1812 when Mary was fifteen, but since Shelley left London two days later, he can't ‘then' have been much interested in her.) The first(1886) edition of Dowden's
Life of Shelley
has an appendix demolishing the reliability of Mrs Godwin's letters to MM, as well as CC's copies of them. These letters include reports of the attraction between Fanny and Shelley, so doubt was cast on this, along with everything else. There is no way of proving so delicate a matter, but we might assume some level of attraction on the basis of Shelley's romancing Fanny as MW's daughter and on the evidence of his flirtatious letter to her.

‘as women love'
: Ibid., box 7, folder 3. Shelley's weakness, CC adds, was not for the ‘subordinate part of love'.

‘Fanny loved Shelley'
: Ibid., box 7, folder 2.

the plain girl
;
‘odd'
: Crabb Robinson, Diary (12 Feb. 1817),
Books and their Writers
. Harriet Shelley also calls her ‘plain', though plainness is negated by the radiance of her mind–reflecting Shelley's impression.

‘nothing' of her mother
: Aaron Burr,
Journals
.

FI looked like GI
: MW's observation to GI.

‘Fannikin':
Travels
, letter 12.

WG on his daughters' education
: To E. Fordham (13 Nov. 1811). Abinger: Dep. b. 214/3. KP, ii, 213–14.

‘There is a peculiarity in the education of a daughter…'
: From MWS's autobiographical novel,
Lodore
, quoted in Dunn,
Mary Shelley
, 20.

‘bad baby'
: Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Prichard (eds),
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
(Oxford University Press, 1984).

‘amiable'…pitted with smallpox
: Reveley, ‘Notes and observations' (after Oct. 1859).
SC
, x, 1137.

‘So young in life…'
: CC to FI (28 May 1815),
ClCor
, i, 10.

‘weight'
:
The Watsons
, ed. Margaret Drabble (repr. Penguin Books, 1974), 142.

nut-brown hair
: Often said to be red-gold, but a lock preserved in Pf has no trace of red.

‘Shelley was in love with her'
: Silsbee Papers,
MSS
74, box 7, folder 2. CC says that FI was sent to Dublin but there is no supporting evidence.

PBS told Mary that Harriet no longer loved him
: Ibid., box 8, folder 4.

‘pride & delight'
: To Frances Wright (12 Sept. 1827),
MWSL
, ii, 4: ‘The memory of my Mother has been always
…
the pride & delight of my life', Mary said, and ‘the admiration of others for her, has been the cause of most of the happiness I have enjoyed.'

‘I would unite'
: ‘To Mary——',
SPP
, 101–5. Dedicatory verses to ‘Laon and Cythna; or the Revolution of the Golden City' (later revised as
The Revolt of Islam
).

‘
that churchyard…'
: 18 June 1824,
MWSJ
.

‘spirit's mate'; beautiful and free
: ‘To Mary——',
SPP
, 101–5.

‘It is no reproach…'
: 14? July 1814, Shelley,
Letters
, i, 390.

PBS draws on MW's views of free love
: 17 Aug. 1812, to James Henry Lawrence, author of
The Empire of the Nairs; or the Rights of Woman
(1811).

Mrs Godwin…blamed Mary Godwin
: Maria Gisborne,
Journals and Letters
, reports on discussions with WG in London in July 1820. Mrs Godwin refused to see her because of her closeness to MWS.

‘I shall ever remember…'
: CC to Byron (?16 Apr. 1816),
ClCor
, i, 36.

‘I have determined…'
: 29 May, 1816, ibid., i, 49.

‘the dreadful state of mind'
: To MWS (29 July–1 Aug. 1816), ibid., i, 54.

FI and Robert Owen
: Taylor,
Eve and the New Jerusalem
, 5–6, sees MW as a forerunner to the Owenite-socialist feminists of the 1830s and '40s who did not regard the liberation of their sex as an isolated goal but as part of a historic movement towards a ‘new age
…
of perfect harmony between the aspirations of the individual and the collective needs of humanity as a whole'.

‘Fanny comes…'
:
MWSJ
(13 Mar. 1815).

‘I cannot say…':
CC to Byron, after FI's death,
ClCor
, i, 92.

‘Poets…'
: The final line of Shelley's essay, ‘A Defence of Poetry', published eighteen years after his death, in 1840.
SPP
, 535.

‘sufferings'
: FI to EW (9 Apr. 1816),
ClCor
, i, 23.

‘my unhappy life'
: FI to MWS (29 July–1 Aug. 1816),
ClCor
, i, 58. Jane Austen,
The Watsons
, 110, endorses the drudge view of teaching for women in an exchange between Emma and Elizabeth Watson. Emma says to her eldest sister that there is an alternative to loveless marriage in teaching. Elizabeth puts her right: ‘I've been
in a school, Emma, and know what a life they lead you;
you
never have.' Marriage to any decent man is said to be preferable.

‘stupid letter'
:
MWSJ
(4 Sept. 1816), 138.

FI's note to MWS on 8 Oct
:
MWSJ
, 139, plus a missing letter (referred to by Lady Shelley writing to Alexander Berry on 11 Mar. 1872, cited in notes to
ClCor
, i, 85).

FI's note to PBS
: CC, whose recollection of detail is on the whole remarkably good, recalled this for Silsbee, though she admits that she did not actually see the note. PBS scrunched it up. Silsbee Papers, box 7, folder 3.

FI's warning and suicide note
:
ClCor
, i, 85–6.

candle consume it
: I can't agree with alternative speculation that the servants could have destroyed the name to avoid a scandal or that Godwin's representative would have done so. In either case, the identity would have got about. It wouldn't have been in character for Shelley to have done it–he'd have been acutely distressed rather than worldly-wise. It would seem in character for Fanny, who was mindful of others.

‘owing to the preference…'
: Gisborne,
Journals and Letters
(9 July 1820), 39. CC offered the same explanation in an interview when she was old. Silsbee Papers, box 7, folder 2. Cited in
ClCor
, i, 88–9.

‘On Fanny Godwin'
: MWS omitted the first line, as well as what was on the back, when she came to edit PBS's poems.

‘monster'
: Recalled by CC. Silsbee Papers, box 8, folder 4.

Harriet's suicide
: Cameron,
SC
, iv, 769–802, dates this 7 Dec.

‘Thy little footsteps…'
: This was thought to be about the death of William Shelley in Rome in 1819, but G. M. Matthews proved that it is addressed to FI: in ‘Whose Little Footsteps?', in
The Evidence of the Imagination
, ed. Donald Reiman, M. C. Jaye and B. Bennett (New York: 1978).

MWS reread
RW:
MWSJ
(Fri. 6–Mon. 9 Dec. 1816), 149.

the impact of FI's ‘unfortunate' birth
: See Claire Tomalin's convincing and touching portrait of Fanny in
Shelley
, 52. Tomalin notes how MWS and CC had embarked on bearing children outside marriage ‘to a considerable degree in conscious emulation of Mary Wollstonecraft'.

‘I cannot pardon'
: 12 Jan. 1818,
ClCor
, i, 110.

CC's novel
: CC to Byron (c. Mar./Apr. 1816), ibid., 33. Could an idea for a Crusoe sort of girl have derived from
The
[
Swiss
]
Family Robinson
, published by CC's mother under the Juvenile Library imprint? ‘The Ideot' as well as CC's voice to Byron suggests a pre-Brontë experiment. A precursor to Jane Eyre does not speak to the man she loves through custom and conventionalities; her voice comes from a soul equal to his.

‘hateful novel thing'
: CC to Byron (19 Nov. 1816), ibid., 92. CC claimed to have learnt her ambiguity from Gibbon. ‘I would be exactly like a diamond who to the right reflects purple & to the left pink,' she explained to Byron.

Byron's women
: Fiona MacCarthy,
Byron
, 163, 173, suggests that the numbers of women Byron bedded and his power over them served in some way as a distraction from the homosexuality he strained to repress.

ten minutes' happy passion
: CC in Moscow to Jane Williams in London (Dec. 1826),
ClCor
, i, 241.

PBS blamed MWS for coldness
: In ‘Epipsychidion'.

love for women friends
;
political
: Bennett, intro. to
MWSL
, i, xiv, xviii.

‘greatness of soul'
: To Frances Wright (12 Sept. 1827),
MWSL
, ii, 3–4.

Jemima's anticipation of Frankenstein's monster
:
WW
, chs 1 and 5.

Frankenstein
and the pattern of women's writing
: Steiner, ‘Women's Fiction', 505.

‘What art thou?'
; ‘
I know…
'; ‘
prophecy
': ‘To Mary——',
SPP
, 104.

like ‘the breath of summer's night'
: Similar to Byron's words about a voice ‘like the swell of summer's ocean' when the breast of the deep ‘is gently heaving'. ‘Stanzas for Music'.