And then son Percy found a woman he wanted to
marry, Jane St. John.
Her biography fits right in with the Godwins
and Shelleys. She was an illegitimate child; his first husband died just three
years after their marriage in 1841. Her late husband, by the way, left behind
an illegitimate son. Jane met Mary’s son, Percy Florence, in 1847, and they
married on June 22, 1848.
From the beginning, Mary adored the woman who
would become her daughter-in-law. Mary first mentions Jane in a letter in March
1848, calling her a prize indeed in the
lottery (not as rich) being the best & sweetest thing in the world—[1]
In that same letter, however, Mary makes another comment about Jane’s (lack of)
wealth—so in some ways we see—don’t we?—that Mary has become someone quite
distant from her own family history.
Unfortunately (for us), Percy Florence and
Jane had no children. So today there is no one walking around carrying the
genes of Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley. Instead, all that genetic material lies
in the ground—and in the pages of countless books, books by them, books about
them.
On October 6, 1999, I drove to Bloomington,
Indiana, where I planned to visit the Lilly Library, which houses the rare books
and manuscripts for the University of Indiana. There, I’d found online, was a
copy of Jane Shelley’s four-volume compilation of papers, Shelley and Mary (1882), an assortment of letters and other
documents that she published in a limited edition. The Lilly had only the first
two volumes.
Here’s an excerpt from my journal later that
day: I was the only patron for a while,
and so they quickly brought me the two volumes of Shelley and Mary, and I
was thankful I had this laptop: the books were, well, books, not microfilm, so I had to type the notes I took. Not a
lot of stuff, but some golden stuff—especially the letters from Godwin to Mary
(unpublished most other places). After about two ½ hours of typing, I was ready
to leave for New Harmony, so off I went.
Today, as I look at the printout of the notes
I took that day nearly twenty years ago, I find one extract that makes me smile
even today—this excerpt from a letter that Mary’s father wrote to her in late November
1822 after reading the manuscript of her novel Valperga (1823). Here’s Godwin with his typical paternal bluntness:
Frankenstein was a fine thing; it
was compressed, muscular, and firm; nothing relaxed and weak; no proud flesh. …
[Valperga] is a work of more genius;
but it appears, in reading, that the first rule you prescribed to yourself was,
I will let it be long.[2]
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