The play was hopelessly and forever damned, and the epilogue went down in the crash.
Over my writing-table hangs a dark oak frame containing a souvenir of this performance—the programme which Charles Lamb used on this fateful evening. It is badly crumpled, crumpled no doubt by Elia in his agony. No reference is made to the play being by Godwin except a note in Charles Lamb’s handwriting which reads, “By Godwin,” with the significant words, “Damned with universal consent.”
Godwin bore his defeat with philosophic calm. He appealed to friends for financial assistance and to posterity for applause. But it was really a serious matter. He was on the verge of ruin, and now did what many another man has done when financial difficulties crowded thick and fast—he married again.
A certain Mrs. Clairmont fell in love with Godwin even before she had spoken to him. She was a fat, unattractive widow, and apparently did all the courting. She took lodgings close by Godwin’s, and introduced herself—“Is it possible that I behold the immortal Godwin?”
This is flattery fed with a knife. When a widow makes up her mind to marry, one of two things must be done, and quickly—her victim must run or submit. Godwin was unable to run and a marriage was the result. Like his first wedding, it was for a time kept a profound secret.
An idea of Godwin and his wife at this period is to be had from Lamb’s letters. He refers constantly to Godwin as the Professor, and to his wife as the Professor’s Rib, who, he says, “has turned out to be a damned disagreeable woman, so much so as to drive Godwin’s old cronies”—among whom was Lamb—“from his house.”
It was a difficult household. Mrs. Godwin had two children by her first husband: a daughter whose right name was Mary Jane, but who called herself Claire—she lived to become the mistress of Lord Byron and the mother of his daughter Allegra; also a son, who was raised a pet and grew up to be a nuisance. Godwin’s immediate contribution to the establishment was the illegitimate daughter of his first wife, who claimed Imlay for her father, and his own daughter Mary, whose mother had died in giving her birth. In due course there was born another son, christened William, after his father.
Something had to be done, and promptly. Godwin began a book on Chaucer, of whose life we know almost as little as of Shakespeare’s. In dealing with Chaucer, Godwin introduced a method which subsequent writers have followed. Actual material being scanty, they fill out the picture by supposing what he might have done and seen and thought. Godwin filled two volumes quarto with musings about the fourteenth century, and called it a “Life of Chaucer.”
Mrs. Godwin—who was a “managing woman”—had more confidence in trade than in literature. She opened a bookshop in Hanway Street under the name of Thomas Hodgkins, the manager; subsequently in Skinner Street, under her own name, M. J. Godwin. From this shop there issued children’s books, the prettiest and wisest, for “a penny plain and tuppence colored,” and more. “The Children’s Book-Seller,” as he called himself, was presently successful, and parents presented his little volumes to their children, with no suspicion that the lessons of piety and goodness which charmed away selfishness were published, revised, and sometimes written by a philosopher whom they would scarcely venture to name. It was Godwin who suggested to Charles Lamb and his sister that the “Tales from Shakespeare” be written. Godwin’s own contributions were produced under the name of Baldwin.
Lamb writes: “Hazlitt has written some things and a grammar for Godwin, but the gray mare is the better horse. I do not allude to Mrs. Godwin, but to the word grammar, which comes near gray mare, if you observe.” It would certainly surprise Godwin could he know that, while his own “works” are forgotten, some of the little publications issued by the “Juvenile Library,” 41 Skinner Street, Snow Hill, are worth their weight in gold.