She died, “and her place among those who knew her intimately has never been filled up. She walked beside them, like a spirit of good, to comfort and benefit, to lighten the darkness of life, to cheer it with her sympathy and love.”
These, her own words about Shelley, may with equal fitness be applied to her.
Her grave is in Bournemouth Churchyard, where, some time after, her father and mother were laid by her side.
As an author Mary Shelley did not accomplish all that was expected of her. Her letters from abroad, both during her earlier and later tours, the descriptive fragments intended for her father’s biography, and above all her notes on Shelley’s works, are indeed valuable and enduring contributions to literature. But it was in imaginative work that she had aspired to excel, and in which both Shelley and Godwin had urged her to persevere, confident that she could achieve a brilliant success. None of her novels, however, except Frankenstein, can be said to have survived the generation for which they were written. Only in that work has she left an abiding mark on literature. Yet her powers were very great, her culture very extensive, her ambition very high.
The friend whose description of her has been quoted in an earlier chapter tries to account for this. She says—
I think a partial solution for the circumscribed fame of Mrs. Shelley as a writer may be traced to her own shrinking and sensitive retiringness of nature. If, as Thackeray, perhaps justly, observes, “Persons, to succeed largely in this world, must assert themselves,” most assuredly Mary Shelley never tried that path to distinction....
I never knew, in my life, either man or woman whose whole character was so entirely in harmony: no jarring discords—no incongruous, anomalous, antagonistic opposites met to disturb the perfect unity, and to counteract one day the impressions of the former. Gentleness was ever and always her distinguishing characteristic. Many years’ friendship never showed me a deviation from it. But with this softness there was neither irresolution nor feebleness....
Many have fancied and accused her of being cold and apathetic. She was no such thing. She had warm, strong affections: as daughter, wife, and mother she was exemplary and devoted. Besides this, she was a faithful, unswerving friend.
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