Chapter C: KEGAN PAUL: ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mary at sixteen.]

When we reached Skinner Street, he [Shelley] said, “I must speak with Godwin; come in, I will not detain you long.” I followed him through the shops, which was the only entrance, and up stairs. We entered a room on the first floor; it was shaped like a quadrant. In the arc were windows; in one radius a fire-place, and in the other a door, and shelves with many old books. William Godwin was not at home. Bysshe strode about the room, causing the crazy floor of the ill-built dwelling-house to shake and tremble under his impatient footsteps.... I stood reading the names of old English authors on the backs of the venerable volumes, when the door was partially and softly opened. A thrilling voice called “Shelley!” A thrilling voice answered “Mary!” And he darted out of the room, like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting king. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him out of the room. He was absent a very short time--a minute or two; and then returned. “Godwin is out; there is no use in waiting.”

THOMAS JEFFERSON HOGG: ‘Life of Shelley,’ 1858; quoted by R. H. Stoddard. ‘Anecdote Biography of Shelley.’ New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Elopement with Shelly.]

It was not until the summer of 1814 that Shelley and Mary Godwin became really acquainted, when he found the child whom he had scarcely noticed two years before, had grown into the woman of nearly seventeen summers.... Shelley came to London on May 18th, leaving his wife at Binfield, certainly without the least idea that it was to be a final separation from him, though the relations between husband and wife had for some time been increasingly unhappy. He was received in Godwin’s house on the old footing of close intimacy, and rapidly fell in love with Mary. Fanny Godwin was away from home visiting some of the Wollstonecrafts, or she, three years older than Mary, might have discouraged the romantic attachment which sprang up between her sister and their friend. Jane Clairmont’s influence was neither then, nor at any other time, used judiciously. It was easy for the lovers, for such they became before they were aware of it, to meet without the attention of the parents being drawn to the increasing intimacy, and yet without any such sense of clandestine interviews, as might have disclosed to themselves whither they were drifting. Mary was unhappy at home; she thoroughly disliked Mrs. Godwin, to whom Fanny was far more tolerant; her desire for knowledge and love of reading were discouraged, and when seen with a book in her hand, she was wont to hear from her stepmother that her proper sphere was the store-room. Old St. Pancras church-yard was then a quiet and secluded spot, where Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave was shaded by a fine weeping-willow. Here Mary Godwin used to take her books in the warm days of June, to spend every hour she could call her own. Here her intimacy with Shelley ripened, and here, in Lady Shelley’s words, “she placed her hand in his, and linked her fortunes with his own.”

On July 28th, early in the morning, Mary Godwin left her father’s house, accompanied by Jane Clairmont. They joined Shelley, posted to Dover, and crossed in an open boat to Calais during a violent storm.... The three went to Paris, where they bought a donkey, and rode him in turns to Geneva, the others walking. Sleeping now in a cabaret and now in a cottage, they at last finished this strange honeymoon, and the strangest sentimental journey ever undertaken since Adam and Eve went forth with all the world before them where to choose.