‘I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pains to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as....’
There was an inquest, with the verdict ‘Found dead.’ This was the end of Fanny, who, after leaving London on the 7th instant, for a visit to her aunts, Mrs. Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft, perished by her own act at the Swansea tavern. A good, gentle, interesting girl, Fanny inherited all her mother’s early affectionateness and generosity, without acquiring from the same source the vehemence and asperity that were amongst the chief faults of her mother’s temper. But, together with exemption from the fervour and fierceness of her mother’s nature, Fanny was not so fortunate as to enjoy exemption from its morbid sensibility. Together with a full share of the Wollstonecraft sensitiveness, she derived from the Wollstonecrafts the disposition to melancholy, that qualified her to do in mild resoluteness what her mother essayed in tempestuous rage.
To account for this desperate act, the reviewer of the poor girl’s career is not driven to adopt Claire’s explanation of the tragedy. Several circumstances, distinct from her regard for Shelley, had combined to trouble her profoundly during the closing term of her existence. It was natural for her to brood over the melancholy facts of her mother’s story, which came to her knowledge, directly or indirectly, through the same channel that made them known to Mary and Claire. Her half-sister’s flight with Shelley would, under any circumstances, have caused her the keenest mental torture; but the anguish it caused her heart and soul was the sharper to so loving and sympathetic a creature, because of the grief, coming in different ways and degrees, to William Godwin (whom she loved) and his wife (with whom she lived harmoniously) from the date of the event which, violently wrenching asunder so many domestic ties, had broken up the home in Skinner Street,—though the mere shell of the old home, from which familiar joy had been driven for ever, was still maintained under conditions of deepening gloom and anxiety. No wonder the poor girl found the sorrows of her existence too heavy for endurance. Let it not, however, be imagined that she yielded to despair without brave efforts to conquer it. Whilst so many writers have used their ingenuity and skill in colouring Mary Godwin into a heroine, and varnishing her submission to Shelley’s suit into a romantic love-story, how little has been said in honour of poor Fanny—the true heroine!—who, hiding her sorrow as she best could from the old man (who had been a good father to her), and from the woman (who had been a good mother to her) strove to comfort their grief and shame, whilst the heart in her own breast was slowly breaking.
Nothing nobler and more lovely, in the way of genuine domestic devotion and unrecognized heroism, can be conceived than the life of this gentle girl during the considerable interval between Mary’s flight in July, 1814, and her own death in October, 1816. Never disdainful of those homely labours of the kitchen and store-room, which Mary has been commended for shirking, Fanny, during this long interval of her growing despair, was her step-mother’s busy housekeeper and cheerful companion. Active in the kitchen and busy with the needle, she was at the same time her step-father’s cheery ‘right-hand’ and ministrant,—ever ready to ply her pen in his service, and ever quick at his call, with bonnet on her head and smiles on her face, to accompany him in his walks. At last the brave heart broke, and the grave covered her. Is the world too virtuous to be incapable of generous compassion for the doer of her own death?
In a former page I have declared my inability to offer an opinion whether love of Shelley was in any degree accountable for poor Fanny’s fatal desperation. It has already been said that Claire (a true witness, in the esteem of the Shelleyan zealots, whenever she supports them with a fib; a liar, in their esteem, whenever she traverses their misstatements with a word of truth) gave it as her opinion that her sister Fanny died from love of Shelley, who was moved to write this elegy on the poor girl’s fate:—
‘Her voice did quiver as we parted,
Yet knew I not that heart was broken,
From which it came, and I departed,
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery—oh, Misery!
This world is all too wide for thee.’
Of course, it would be absurd to torture this utterance of emotion into evidence on either side of the question. The words would have been appropriate to the tragedy had he known himself in no way accountable for it. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the verses accord with Claire’s view of the case. Mr. Kegan Paul says roundly that, though an attached sister to Shelley, Fanny ‘was never in love with him, either before or after her sister’s flight.’ How can any writer be justified in uttering so stout a negative? If Fanny loved Shelley, she was not the girl to tell him so, till he extorted the admission from her by an avowal of a corresponding passion. Nor was she the girl to make the admission to her sixteen-years-old sister, before Shelley had made her an offer of marriage. To suppose her capable of making any such confession to Mary after the flight would be to suppose Fanny alike devoid of feminine delicacy and womanly pride. It follows that, if she loved Shelley, her lips were necessarily sealed to him, and also to Mary, on the subject. Consequently, any statements (to the point of Mr. Kegan Paul’s negative) left by Shelley and Mary can, at the most, amount to mere evidence that they knew nothing of the matter, about which they were not likely to know anything. Many conceivable circumstances might have qualified either Shelley or Mary to reply in the affirmative to the question, whether Fanny ever loved him. But known facts render it more than difficult to conceive the circumstances which would have qualified them to answer the question in the negative.
Other doleful news came to Shelley and the girls before they returned from the West country and settled themselves at Marlow. They were still at Bath when they received intelligence that Mrs. Shelley’s body had been picked out of the Serpentine on 10th December, 1816, and carried to her father’s house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. Some uncertainty covers poor Harriett’s story during the last and downward stage of her lamentable career, which thus ended by her own act, in the twenty-second year of her age; and finding enough for my purpose in facts that have been placed beyond dispute, I have been at no pains to search for other details of the closing term of the unhappy girl’s depravation. It is said that, towards the end of her passage to the grave, she left her father’s house to associate herself with a partner in Free Love? It may be so. It would be strange, had she (a married woman, discarded for reasons more or less light or grave by a husband, who went straight from her arms to another charmer) hesitated to place herself under the protection of a man who, inspiring her with affection, caused her to believe that in fidelity he would not prove inferior to the young poet, who one fine morning left her with a babe in her arms.
It is said that she took to drinking as her desolated life tapered into eternity,—drinking, in fact, so deeply that the once bright and lovely girl became a sot and drunkard. It may be so. Foolish people, and by no means altogether foolish people, when they sink into sorrow, are apt to drink for the sake of drowning care, and Heaven knows that poor Harriett (only twenty-one years old) had care enough to excuse her for trying to drown it—even in so futile and disgusting a manner. If Harriett drowned her pain of body and mind with wine and brandy, Shelley drowned his pain of body and mind with laudanum.
Of late years it has been the fashion of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to refer to Harriett’s depravation, as though it gave a certain colouring of justification to the poet’s withdrawal from her. My view of the matter is, that Shelley alone is to be blamed for the offences, committed by Harriett either during their association, or after their separation; and that human compassion for the poor girl’s errors should be larger and warmer in proportion to their number and magnitude. Let the reader who hesitates to take this view of Mrs. Shelley’s case ask himself these questions,—Who caught Harriett as a child on the door-step of her schoolroom? Who illuminated her when she was just sixteen years old out of the Christian religion? Who taught her that the matrimonial rite was a piece of antiquated mummery? Who taught her that the promises made at marriage were not obligatory? Who taught her to think conjugal constancy a vitiating sentiment, and chastity a monkish superstition? Who encouraged her in the habit of talking of suicide as the death that would probably close her career at an early date? Who, by talking of suicide as the possible termination of his own days in this world, at least, confirmed her in the habit of looking to suicide as a convenient and innocent way of escaping from this life’s wretchedness? All these questions must be answered by one name.