My information respecting the second Mrs. William Godwin’s first husband is slight and shadowy, though I have done my best to make it more substantial. There is reason to believe he was a bookseller; but my evidence on this point is not conclusive. If he was in ‘the trade,’ the fact would account for the second Mrs. Godwin’s knowledge of printing and publishing matters, and of the confidence with which she urged Godwin to become a publisher of books for children. For the main purpose of this paragraph it is enough to say, that his surname is (as I remarked in the Real Lord Byron) variously spelt in Byronic and Shelleyan biography, and that one comes upon it in the fashion of Clermont, Claremont, Clairemont, and Charlemont, as well as Clairmont. For sufficient and obvious reasons, in the Real Lord Byron I spelt the name Clermont,—the spelling used in the British Museum Catalogue, for the reference to Claire’s well-known letter to Byron, preserved in the Egerton MSS. For no less sufficient and obvious reasons I spell the name in this chapter ‘Clairmont,’—Godwin’s way of spelling the name. Readers, therefore, must bear in mind that ‘Jane Clairmont’ and ‘Jane Clermont’ signify the same Claire (Mrs. Shelley’s sister-by-affinity), who was Byron’s mistress and the mother of Allegra.
By the Shelleyan apologists, who draw their inspiration from Field Place, the first Mrs. William Godwin and the second Mrs. William Godwin have been dealt with differently. It appearing to those apologists that to place Mary Wollstonecraft amongst the angels is to raise a presumption that the daughter of so pure and bright a spirit was also of angelical nature,—a presumption favourable to the poet and his family,—they have tortured the English language to make her into an angel. On the other hand, it appearing to the same apologists that to exhibit the second Mrs. Godwin as a harsh and odious step-mother is to justify Mary Godwin’s desire to get away from so hateful a ruler, and even to palliate the young lady’s conduct in running away to Switzerland with another woman’s husband, they have tortured and strained the English language even more cruelly, to prove that the second Mrs. Godwin was a superlatively disagreeable woman. Being no partisan, the present writer declines either to think the first Mrs. Godwin an angel of grace, or to think the second Mrs. Godwin a very hateful person. Seeing that Mary Wollstonecraft had various faults, he sees that Mary Jane Clairmont had several imperfections. Whilst declining to join with the Shelleyan enthusiasts in glorifying Mary Wollstonecraft because her daughter Mary lived to be Shelley’s second wife, and in decrying the second Mrs. Godwin for the advantage of her step-daughter’s reputation, he is none the less disposed to think favourably of Mrs. Mary Jane (Clairmont) Godwin, because she cordially disapproved of the views about marriage, which Godwin had successively promulgated and abandoned.
In several important particulars the second Mrs. William Godwin resembled the first Mrs. William Godwin. A woman of considerable cleverness and some education, she was an industrious woman of letters. Cleverer with her pen at translation than in original writing, she was enthusiastic and decidedly well looking. Even by her arch-enemy, Mr. Kegan Paul, she is said to have been ‘clever, enthusiastic, and handsome.’ Having somewhat the advantage of Mary Wollstonecraft in temper she resembled her in disposition. Both women were quick-tempered, captious, quarrelsome, given to imagine themselves slighted and to sulk. But the second Mrs. Godwin was by no means so violent and outrageous in wrath as Mary Wollstonecraft. In other respects Mary Jane had the advantage of Mary Wollstonecraft. In social reputation she was far superior to Mary Godwin’s mother. Having never produced so scandalous a book as the Rights of Women, she had not lived in Free Love with two men or any man; she had never given birth to an illegitimate child; her name had never been discreditably associated with another woman’s husband; nor had she ever thrown herself in a fit of white rage off Putney Bridge. On another point the advantage is with the second Mrs. Godwin. On mating with her Godwin matched evenly; whilst the unevenness of his match with Mary Wollstonecraft had been to his disadvantage. On coming to her childless husband Mary Wollstonecraft brought an illegitimate child in her arms. Godwin had two children to maintain, when Mary Jane Clairmont entered his house with a child on either hand.
In the spring of 1801 Mrs. Mary Jane Clairmont took possession of the tenement adjoining Godwin’s house in The Polygon, Somers Town, bringing with her to the new home her little girl Jane (afterwards ‘Claire’), at that time in her fourth or fifth year (older, perhaps, by a few months than little Mary Godwin), and her elder brother, who may be regarded as having been born on or about 4th June, 1795,—possibly on or about 4th June, 1796. My knowledge of the month in which the little boy (Charles Clairmont) was born came to me from a letter, dated 5th June, 1806, written to Mrs. Godwin (at Southend) by William Godwin, who says therein, ‘Yesterday (was that right or wrong?) we kept Charles’s birthday, though his mother was absent.’ My information about the year of the boy’s birth is less precise, but I put it in 1795. It is certain that he was older than his sister. On this point Mr. Kegan Paul has no doubt; if he had any I could remove it. Hence, at the time of Mrs. Clairmont’s entry into the house adjoining Godwin’s home in The Polygon, Somers Town, the ages of the four children of the two households stood thus:—(1) Fanny Imlay, b. April, 1794, ætat. just seven years; (2) Charles Clairmont, b. 4th June, 1795, ætat. five years and ten months; (3) Jane Clairmont, in her fourth (or possibly even in her fifth) year; (4) Mary Godwin, b. 30th August, 1797, ætat. three years and some seven or eight months.
A great deal turns on the ages of these children. In their desire to whitewash Mary Godwin, and exhibit her as a worthy mate for so faultless a person as Shelley, the Shelleyan enthusiasts have discovered that she was much younger than Claire; the discovery being used as a reason why Mary’s grand misdemeanour should be entered in the tale of Claire’s offences, and why, instead of censuring Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter for running off with her friend’s husband, we should be indignant with the mature Claire for not taking better care of her younger sister. It is well to inquire, whether the discovery, of which so much is made, is aught else than a misrepresentation.
Byron thought Mary and Claire were, within a few months, of the same age. Writing of them in 1820, in the famous Observations, he put the case thus ungrammatically, ‘Neither of them were, in 1816, nineteen years old,’—i.e. in the months of 1816, which they passed chiefly in his society at Geneva. It may be observed that Byron, often an inaccurate, was sometimes an untruthful writer. But spite against Claire, with whom he was quarrelling bitterly in 1820, would have disposed him to exaggerate her age. Whilst habitually truthful people sometimes tell fibs, persons never too nice about the truth sometimes tell it. On this occasion Byron seems to have told the truth. He was right as to the age of Mary Godwin, who did not complete her nineteenth year till 30th August, 1816. He certainly was not far wrong about Claire’s age.
What is said about Claire’s age by Mr. Kegan Paul, who tells two different stories about it? ‘This,’ he says of Mrs. Clairmont and her coming to The Polygon (vide pp. 57, 58, vol. ii. of William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries), ‘was a Mrs. Clairmont, a widow, with a son then at school, and one little daughter somewhat older than Fanny, who came to occupy the next house to Godwin in the Polygon.’ The italics of two words of this quotation are mine. Farther on, in his book, when he comes to work on the discovery, so as to make it appear that Claire was much older than Mary, Mr. Kegan Paul (vol. ii., p. 213) says, ‘Jane Clairmont was only at home for two nights during the six weeks Shelley spent in London. She was several years older than Fanny, and even then led a somewhat independent life apart from her mother and step-father, presumably as a governess, since that was the occupation she afterwards followed in Italy, during the intervals of her residence with the Shelleys.’ This extract (seven words of which I print in italics) refers to Shelley’s stay in London in the October and November, 1812. It is made up of inaccuracies. (1) Claire, like Mary, was only fifteen years old. (2) She may have been a pupil-teacher in some school where she was being educated; but she was not living in independence of her stepfather and her mother. (3) She was not several years older than Fanny.
Several years older! First, Mr. Kegan Paul says somewhat older, and then several years older; the difference between the two expressions making the two passages tell two different stories. The purpose of the larger expression is obvious. Mr. Paul wishes us to think Claire several years older than Fanny Imlay, in order that we may think her very much Mary’s superior, by the authority of age. Several years may mean anything from three or four years to ten or twelve. Let us put the expression at four years. Then, as Fanny (born in April, 1794) was already eighteen years old, Claire must, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, have been twenty-two years old in 1812, and must have been born at least as early as April, 1790. It follows, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, that Claire’s brother, older than she, must have been born, at the latest, on 4th June, 1789,—might, indeed, be fairly taken as having been born a year earlier.
Charles Clairmont was therefore, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, rising twelve years old, when his mother came to her new house in the Polygon. Was he?
(1) In 1802, when Charles (according to Mr. Kegan Paul’s statement) was thirteen years old, William Godwin is admitted by Mr. Kegan Paul to have taken much pains to put the boy into Christ’s Hospital. Had Godwin succeeded in getting the admission, the boy would have been fourteen before he went into the school, where boys, eighty years since, used to be admitted, no less than now-a-days, in quite tender years. Is it probable Godwin would have sought for the admission when the boy was so old?