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XLIX. Shelley and Claire Clairmont
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Students of Shelley's highly complex and puzzling personality have always found it necessary to be concerned with the “sisters of his soul.” No great amount of attention has, however, thus far been paid to Claire (Clara Mary Jane) Clairmont, daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin by a previous marriage, companion of Shelley and Mary on the elopement, and thereafter for long intervals a member of the Shelley household. Gossip involving the poet with her was current during his lifetime; veiled charges of misconduct with her were sometimes brought against him, even in print. Partly as a result of a reaction against the virulence and obvious prejudice of these attacks, partly because Claire's liaison with Byron distracted attention from Shelley, but chiefly because it was the settled policy of Shelley's family that in all biographies written with their co-operation the poet's union with Mary should be represented as an ideal one, the Victorian tendency was to deny Claire any real importance for Shelley. Such was Dowden's doctrine, as will hereafter be made abundantly clear; and Dowden has determined the course for subsequent biographers. W. E. Peck either intentionally avoids developing a theory of Shelley-Claire relationships, or fails to do so. In that part of his biography in which he comes closest to committing himself, he shows the Dowden influence.
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References
1 E.g., Literary Gazette, v (May 19, 1821), 303 ff. In this review of Queen Mab the poet is referred to as “an incestuous wretch.... A disciple following his tenets, would not hesitate to ... rob a confiding father of his daughters, and incestuously to live with all the branches of a family whose morals were ruined by the damned sophistry of the seducer.”
2 Claire Clairmont by R. Glynn Grylls (Mrs. G. Mander) published in London by John Murray on May 19 of this year, came to hand after this article was already in proof and too late for the adequate representation which I should otherwise have wanted to give it. With respect to the problem studied here the book is orthodox, the author being, I should say, decidedly more certain than was Dowden that Shelley and Claire were not emotionally attracted to each other. Thus: “That she was an extremely attractive young woman he never seems to have noticed.... Shelley had eyes only for Mary and to Jane was not a major poet, but a lanky young man with a stoop and a high-pitched voice ...” (p. 41). “It was not that she was in love with Shelley, either at this time or any other, for he had none of the qualities to strike the romantic imagination.... She may not have been above wanting to keep up with Mary by having a poet-lover of her own, but she never wanted to take Shelley from her (p. 85).
3 Cf. his Shelley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), ii, 199, and Dowden's Life (London: Kegan Paul, 1886), ii, 349–350.
4 Prior to this date Dowden's Life had been the only source of information about the contents of these letters. His source was Shelley and Mary, a privately printed record which the Shelley family permitted him to use. It contains “imperfect transcripts” of only ten of the twenty-one letters published by Murray. See Newman I. White, “Shelley's Biography: the Primary Sources,” SP, xxxi (1934), 482. Dowden was permitted only to summarize the Shelley and Mary versions of the letters.
5 Oxford: John Johnson, 1926.
6 This book has until recently been very difficult of access, the family having restricted the first and only printing of it to twelve copies. In 1922 the Bodleian Library's set of bound proofs (incomplete) became accessible; in the fall of 1937, by purchase of the library of the late Thomas J. Wise, the British Museum acquired the copy used by Dowden. Since that date, nine other copies have been traced; four of these are American owned. See R. Glynn Grylls (Mrs. Mander), Mary Shelley (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1938), pref. p. vi. The manuscript Shelley diaries are not accessible. So far as I am aware, only Mrs. Mander has used them. In her book cited, she lists many minor variations between the manuscripts and the versions previously printed, but appears to have found no differences of major importance; it seems consequently fair to conclude that a check with the manuscripts today would not add much to what can be gathered from the Shelley and Mary diary.
In the preparation of this paper I have consulted the copy of Shelley and Mary now the property of the University of Texas. Whenever possible, however, citations from the diaries follow the extracts in the only generally available sources—Dowden, and Mrs. Julian Marshall, Life and Letters of Mary Shelley (London: Richard Bentley, 1889). Small variations from Shelley and Mary have been disregarded.
7 Books containing these were acquired by the British Museum by purchase of the Wise library. They are as yet unpublished. I have, however, been able to study Claire's journals through the kindness of Professor Newman White, who photostated them entire prior to the B.M. purchase. He has very generously allowed me to borrow a typescript of the whole from the Duke University Library and procured for me a number of photographs of pages, at considerable personal inconvenience to himself.
In addition, in the preparation of this paper I have been indebted to him for many helpful criticisms conveyed in correspondence. In order to avert possible embarrassment for him, however, I wish to make clear at this point that in making these acknowledgments I do not mean to claim his sponsorship for the ideas herein expressed. Professor White's theory of Shelley-Claire relationships differs materially from mine. There are some points upon which we agree, but what these are will not appear until he has spoken for himself.
8 Mrs. Marshall, op. cit., ii, 195.
9 Rossetti Papers (London: Sands, 1903), pp. 375–376.
10 Lines 277 ff. Unless another edition is specified, all references to the poems are to the Cambridge Edition, ed. G. E. Woodberry.
11 Thus Woodberry, n. to 308–320: “The elucidation of the passage as autobiography is futile”; n. to 368 ff.: the Comet is “not to be identified.” Similarly Brooke, intro. to Epipsychidion, ed. R. A. Potts, Shelley Soc. Pub. (London, 1887), p. xxvii “... no certainty can be arrived at concerning the actual women whom Shelley represents under these symbols.”
12 By Ackerman. Cf. Locock's ed. of the Poems (London: Methuen, 1911), ii, 457. I have not consulted the original.
13 Suggestion first advanced by Todhunter. Cf. ibid.
14 Shelley, ii, 192–193.
15 Medwin's Life, ed. Forman (London: Oxford Press, 1913), pp. 204 ff. Medwin's account suggests that Shelley had never seen the lady before the moment of her appearance, she having learned to admire, to love him through reading his works. “Shelley was at that moment on the eve ... of departing from England with one to whom he was devotedly attached.” He was grateful for the stranger's admiration, but although “he endeavored to infuse a balm into her wounded soul, to soothe her hurt pride” he explained that he could not allow her to “renounce her husband, name, family, friends” and follow him through the world.
16 E.g., by Todhunter. See Locock's ed., ii, 457.
17 Shelley, ii, 193.
18 The Best of Shelley (New York: Nelson, 1932), p. 503.
19 Vol. ii, 225 ff. My ideas about the Shelley-Claire relationship were fully formed before I found this article, which, although inaccurate in some respects, has deserved to be seriously considered. It appears to have been boycotted or ignored in its own time and almost entirely overlooked since. I have seen it referred to only in Select Poems of Shelley ed. W. J. Alexander, and in Otto Maurer, “Shelley und die Frauen,” Literarhistorische Forschungen, xxxiii (1906). Maurer covers the whole ground of Shelley's relationships with women, but as his doctrine is very different from mine, I shall not attempt to deal with it in detail. He does not connect the Planet with Claire. He does (pp. 113–114) identify the Comet with her, but attributes the language of the passage to the firing-up of the poet's imagination as the lines were written.
20 Fleay, p. 230.
21 Dowden (ii, 379) so dates its composition, and so the Julian Ed. (ii, 428). Rossetti's assertion (Poems, 1870, ii, 550) that “the work was mainly—perhaps completely—written in 1820” derives from Thornton Hunt's misunderstanding of a statement in a letter from Mary to Leigh Hunt, Dec. 29, 1820. See The Correspondence of Leigh Bunt (London, 1862), i, 160.
22 Locock's warning that “the ‘Tempest’ and the ‘Planet,‘ usually supposed to be one and the same, are not necessarily so” (op. cit., ii, 456) can, it seems to me, safely be ignored.
23 J. C. Jeaffreason, The Real Shelley (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885), ii, 264.
24 Op. cit., i, 517.
25 Op. cit., i, 88–89; 116.
26 Mrs. Godwin has much to say about the period; see Dowden's summaries of her letters to Lady Mountcashel with notes and editings by Claire, printed in his Life, App. B. Dowden did not use this material in his work, as he was convinced of its unreliability—an opinion with which Garnett was in agreement, if he did not originate it. Rossetti, on the contrary, thought that there was “a good deal in the letters” which seemed to bear “the impress of truth.” Letters about Shelley, ed. R. S. Garnett (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), p. 49.
There are mistakes of fact in what Claire added and without doubt a good deal of misrepresentation in what Mrs. Godwin wrote—some of it misrepresentation with which one can thoroughly sympathize. I feel that there is not as much, on the whole, as Dowden found. Since Mrs. Godwin's testimony is, at any rate, suspected, however, I shall not employ it in what follows.
27 Marshall, i, 78.
28 Dowden, i, 480–482, prints Shelley's account in full. I shall not quote it, but plead that the reader will look it up.
29 Ibid., 483.
30 Claire's Journal, Oct. 19 (Dowden, i, 479), Shelley Journal, Nov. 9 (ibid., 478), Nov. 10 (ibid., 479), Nov. 26 (ibid., 478).
31 Marshall, i, 92.
32 Dowden, i, 483.
33 In correspondence, Professor White suggests that “& I explain” should be read instead of this word.
34 i, 480.
35 Ibid., 496.
36 Again I am indebted to typescript and photographs loaned by Professor White.
37 Printed by Dowden, i, 502–503. In Shelley and Mary this letter is dated Nov. 2. But Dowden's date appears to be correct.
38 Ibid., 502 n.
39 Pp. 99–100.
40 See entry for Dec. 19 (Dowden, i, 478); for Jan. 24 (Marshall, i, 105).
41 i, 514.
42 i, 109.
43 Ibid.
44 Dowden, i, 517; Marshall, i, 109.
45 Dowden, i, 518.
46 Thus, March 19: “Play a game of chess with Clara”; March 20: “Go with Shelley, Hogg, and Clara to Bullock's Museum”; April 9: “Walk with Shelley, Hogg, Clara, and C.C. to pond in Kensington Gardens.”
47 March 19: “In the evening Shelley and Hogg play at chess. Shelley and Clara walk part of the way with Charles Clairmont.”
48 Dowden's summary of the material presented in these five entries offers a curious instance of his technique. To quote (i, 517): “Mary had a jealousy, natural and not dishonorable, which made her unwilling to share with another the higher companionship of his mind. In Shelley's walks and talks Clara equally with herself [italics mine] went forward with him day by day; ”Shelley and Clara read ‘Pastor Fido’ ... and suchlike are Mary's entries in the journal.“ Next: by now (p. 517) coming at once to the March 11, 12, entries, Dowden gives the reader the impression that these Italian studies with Claire preceded the date at which Mary declared herself, and thus carefully obscures the fact— which is of great importance and which I have tried to bring out—that Shelley continued his attentions to Claire after that date.
49 Ibid., p. 112.
50 Pp. 112 ff.
51 Alluded to in the diary for March 20. Marshall, i, 111.
52 The two entries concerning Seneca acquire significance when one bears in mind that the book had been Claire's gift to Shelley. Dowden supplies this information (i, 473) but his handling of the “Shelley reads Seneca” entries is characteristic. He lifts them out of their context and cites them to show Shelley's studiousness!
53 Dowden (i, 518) begins to cite the diary again at this point. He admits that Mary “chronicles the event of Clara's departure with touches of unusual asperity.”
54 It is singularly unfortunate that the diary for a part of precisely this stretch should have been “lost.”
55 Dowden, i, 520.
56 Printed by Dowden, i, 524.
57 Professor George Gordon's Shelley Letters (Grayson and Grayson Ltd.), publication of which has been delayed, will, I understand, supply additional information about the spring of 1815 relations between Shelley, Claire, Mary, and Hogg—particularly the two last named.
58 Carl Grabo, The Magic Plant (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Univ. Press, 1936), p. 175.
59 Harold L. Hoffman, An Odyssey of the Soul (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1933), p. 34.
60 Professor Raymond D. Havens, in “Shelley's Alastor,” PMLA, xlv (1930), 1106–07, makes the same assumption.
61 H. Buxton Forman, The Elopement ... as Narrated by William Godwin (Pr. printed, 1911), p. 6.
62 Paris, 1910.
63 Pp. 242–243.
64 P. 242.
65 P. 240.
66 P. 248.
67 Cf. Peck, i, 432.
68 Dowden, ii, 5.
69 The Works of Lord Byron; Letters and Journals, ed. R. E. Prothero, iii (London: John Murray, 1904), 435.
70 Ibid., p. 437.
71 “The Biographical Element in the Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,” PMLA, xxxviii (1923), 210.
72 Article cited.
73 A third possibility remains—the possibility that Mary meant to reprehend her own coldness in Evadne's. But as it has not as yet been shown that she at any time caused Shelley real distress by showing an attachment for Byron—or anybody of the Pisa set or anybody else for that matter—this possibility can, I think, be ruled out.
74 Writing to Byron from Paris, May 6, 1816, Claire says that Shelley, in deciding to make the journey, “yielded to my pressing solicitations” (Shelley and Mary, p. 91). On the other hand, two Claire-to-Byron letters in Mrs. Mander's Claire Clairmont (pp. 64–65), printed by the author by permission of Sir John Murray, would seem to indicate that at least as late as the first days after Byron's arrival at Geneva Shelley did not know the whole truth. It seems impossible to tell just when he did find it out.
75 Dowden (i, 422n.) considers it to have been addressed to Mary and assigns it to June 1814, and he may be right. Fleay's conjecture (Poet Lore, ii, 230) that the name Claire had been suppressed as a rhyme-word in the second-last line is not borne out by the MS.; see Note Books of Shelley ed. H. Buxton Forman (St. Louis: Priv. pr. for W. K. Bixby, 1911), pp. 3–8. Forman assigns it to Mary, Marlow period. Assignment to Claire seems to me to be at least as plausible.
76 “Shelley's ‘Julian and Maddalo’,” Gentleman's Magazine, cclxiii.
77 “A Study of Shelley's ‘Julian and Maddalo’,” Shelley Soc. Papers, Part i (1888).
78 Ibid., p. 326.
79 Ed. cited, i, 586 ff.
80 Shelley, ii, 104.
81 “Julian and Maddalo,” SP, xxvii (1930), 653 n. 7.
82 Ingpen, ii, 705.
83 Op. cit., 330 ff.
84 Shelley, ii, 104.
85 Dowden, i, 390.
86 Op. cit., pp. 334–335.
87 Article cited, p. 653 n. 7.
88 The 'Magic Plant, P. 268.
89 Dowden, ii, 357 n.
90 From her diary for Oct. 14, 1814. Dowden, i, 484.
91 Ingpen, ii, 844.
92 Marshall, ii, 160.
93 Ingpen, ii, 842. The explanation usually given for Claire's desire that the poem should be suppressed is that she objected to its mention of Allegra. I believe that I have found a more likely one.
94 Cf. ibid., ii, 705, 760, 781, 832.
95 Ibid., 857.
96 From the Duke University Library typescript, courtesy of Professor White.
97 Ethel C. Mayne, Byron (London: Methuen, 1912), ii, 65.
98 Memoirs, Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, trans. Hon Robert Clifford, iii, pp. 2–3. My reference is to the first American edition, 1799.
99 Ingpen, ii, 949.
100 Lord Byron's Correspondence (1922), ii, 16.
101 Dowden, i, 515 n.
102 Marshall, i, 112.
103 See Dowden, ii, 331. Claire's Ms. diary lists five entries of “Walk out with Shelley in the evening” between June 25 and July 13.
104 ii, 349–350.
105 Ingpen, ii, 826. Dowden (ii, 356) suppresses the last ten words of the quotation.
106 Ingpen, ii, 844.
107 Cf., e.g., letters to Claire of June 8, 1821 (ii, 873) and Feb. 1822 (ii, 940).
108 Her allusion (in a letter written to Jane Williams in the late 1820's) to a “happy passion” in her life, which “like all things perfect in its kind” was “fleeting” and “only lasted ten minutes” (letter printed in full in Marshall, ii, 159–160) might be taken to refer to one for Shelley. Her diary, however, would suggest that she is talking about Trelawny, with whom she had some sort of memorable emotional experience on Sept. 6, 1822. Miss Isabel C. Clarke, Shelley and Byron (London: Hutchinson, 1934), p. 63, notices this letter, but connects it with the Byron affair.
109 Lack of space prevents me from considering in detail the scandal promulgated by Paolo and Elise in the summer of 1820, reported by Hoppner to Byron in September of that year, denied by Mary, Aug. 1821. The complete text of Mary's letter, recovered in Lord Byron's Correspondence (1922) unfortunately adds nothing of consequence. I shall only say here that a careful consideration of the available evidence leads me to the conclusion that the story was pure slander, the result of a blackmail attempt. As he did not make it good, William Graham's assertion in his introduction to Last Links with Byron, Shelley and Keats (London, 1898) that he knew “the rights of the story” and would tell all subsequent to the publication of the Hobhouse Memoirs, can, I think, be dismissed as pure bluff. I am convinced that Claire did not tell Graham much about herself and Shelley. Professor White's paper, “Shelley's Neapolitan ‘Daughter’,” read at the last M.L.A. meeting, revealed his discovery of a birth-record, baptismal-record, and death-record for the child whom it has been known Shelley befriended and who died at Naples in the summer of 1820. In these documents the child is designated as Elena Adelaide Shelley, daughter of Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin—yet she was no child of Mary's. Professor White discusses the various possibilities. I am convinced by his argument that Elena was not Shelley's child but a nameless infant whom the Shelleys intended to adopt, and am heartily in accord with his belief that she was not Shelley's child by Claire.
110 I shall not give evidence for this statement in full. See, e.g. the following passage in Shelley's letter to John Gisborne of June, 1822 (not given in Ingpen's version, recovered in the Julian Ed., x, 403): “Mary is not, for the present, much discontented with her [Claire's] visit, which is merely temporary, and which the circumstances of the case rendered indispensable.”
111 I am afraid that this was the way of it, in spite of the attempts of Dowden (ii, 419 ff.) to explain the facts (a) that Aug. 4 was Shelley's birthday and (b) that on Aug. 4 he was at Leghorn with Claire. Dowden tries to explain these awkward facts in such a way as to clear the poet of disloyalty to Mary. Beginning with the phrase “A letter with news” in the diary entry for Aug. 2 (Shelley and Mary, p. 658) he makes the assumptions that this was a letter from Byron, informing Shelley of his intention to depart, with the Gamba tribe, for Switzerland; that Shelley would fear that it was his intention to leave Allegra behind, and—with Mary, of course, concurring—would feel that it was necessary to depart for Ravenna with all haste; that on the way he would of course wish to consult with Claire (then vacationing at Leghorn) with regard to a matter so involving the safety of her child. Mrs. Marshall (i, 291–292), Ingpen (ii, 885, n. 2) and the Julian ed. (x, 295, n. 1) follow Dowden.
The story, however, does not hang together. To begin with: Byron, on July 23, intended to take Allegra with him (letter to Hoppner, Letters and Journals, v, 327). Dowden knew this letter (see his p. 419) and recognized it as a difficulty, which he attempts to surmount by supposing that “before the close of July either Byron's intention was altered, or he had not thought well to inform Shelley of his plans,” citing in a note the fact that “Shelley tells Mary that he himself had persuaded Byron to take Allegra to Switzerland.”
It is true that Shelley does so (see his letter to Mary, Aug. 15, Julian Ed. Letter dxlix). Dowden thus secures a color of plausibility for his thesis. But when one turns to the whole of the letter, which Dowden does not print in full, it becomes obvious that, far from initiating Shelley's departure for Ravenna, the Allegra matter develops later. Paragraph 3 of the letter begins: One thing of great consequence, however, and which cannot be thought of too soon is Allegra—and what is to be done with her.“ Shelley would surely not have expressed himself quite thus if he had talked to Mary upon the subject before his departure. And so with regard to his detailed account to Mary of the situation at Ravenna, in other letters of the group, which can be read in Ingpen's edition.
What makes it certain, however, that Dowden's story is at least erroneous is a passage in the Aug. 6 letter to Mary (recovered in R. H. Hill, Shelley Correspondence, p. 36) in which Shelley requests her to “take care both on your part and on that of the Masons that she [Claire] does not known that I am on a visit to A [Albé, i.e. Byron].” This, of course, explodes Dowden's explanation, which he had been at pains to frame in order to throw a favorable light upon Shelley's birthday absence.
Dowden has a chance to escape here, since he was working with the Shelley and Mary version of this letter—a version from which the passage recovered by Mr. Hill from the original had been excised. But it must be remembered that he begins his three pages of special pleading with “On August 2, Shelley was again at home, but on the same day arrived a letter from Byron, earnestly requesting that he might see him at Ravenna ....” Dowden, I am convinced was aware that with regard to the sender and contents he was making assumptions, and that his positive statement was misleading. However, he appears to have felt that the end justified the means. The point is a small one, but I have thought it worth while to set it forth at length as an illustration of the Dowden bias and method.
112 Ingpen, ii, 886. Dowden does not print this part of the letter.
113 Ingpen, ii, 905.
114 See the cancelled passage at the head of Shelley's letter to Claire, Apr. 2, 1822 (passage recovered in the Julian Ed., x, 367): “Address me at the post offce—not Hodgson (for that name is liable to mistakes, but) Joe James, and I will take care to procure the letter.”