The Monsters (50 page)

Abbreviations used in the notes:

BLJ: Marchand, Leslie A., ed.,
Byron’s Letters and Journals
(London: John Murray, 1973-1979).

CC: Stocking, Marion Kingston, ed.,
The Clairmont Correspondence
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995).

F1818: Shelley, Mary,
Frankenstein,
1818 edition, ed. Marilyn Butler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

F1831: Shelley, Mary,
Frankenstein,
1831 edition, ed. Johanna M. Smith (Boston: Bedford Books, 1992).

JCC: Stocking, Marion Kingston, ed.,
The Journals of Claire Clairmont
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).

JMWS: Feldman, Paula R., and Diana Scott-Kilvert, eds.
The Journals of Mary Shelley,
1814
-
1844
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

LMW: Wardle, Ralph M., ed.,
Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979).

LMWS: Bennett, Betty T., ed.,
The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1980-1988).

LPBS: Jones, Frederick L., ed.,
The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).

PWPBS:
The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley,
edited by Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1961).

PLB:
The Poetical Works of Lord Byron
(London: Oxford University Press, 1961).

TLM: Shelley, Mary,
The Last Man,
ed. Anne Ruth McWhir (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1996).

Note: page numbers refer to the print edition.

Conception

3  weather conditions and reaction: Stommel.

3  “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”: Eisler, 340.

3  ten thousand copies: ibid., 413.

4  “the Creator”: CC, I, 25.

Chapter
1
: Love Between Equals

7  “Mary”: Sunstein,
A Different Face,
xv.

8  “My own sex”: Wollstonecraft,
Vindication,
81-82.

8  “A mistaken education”: ibid., 114.

8  “An unhappy marriage”: ibid., 115.

8  “It is vain”: ibid., 257-58.

8  “hyena in petticoats”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
110.

9  “monarchy was”: Constant, Benjamin,
De la Justice Politique
(Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1998), I, 371.

9  “There is certainly”: LMW, 394.

10  “the first and most submissive”: Godwin, William,
Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft
(London: Constable & Co., 1927), 9.

10  “parental affection”: Todd,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
4.

10  “the daughter”: Wollstonecraft,
The Wrongs of Woman,
1.

10  “Her father”: ibid., 5.

11  “I am a little singular”: LMW, 60.

11  “I cannot bear”: ibid., 62.

11  “in her heart”: Godwin,
Memoirs,
119.

11  “better than all”: LMW, 67.

11  “has a masculine”: ibid.

11  “I must be independent”: ibid., 107.

11  “toad-eating”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
16.

12  “a little patience”: Godwin,
Memoirs,
23.

12  “My child”: Wollstonecraft,
The Wrongs of Woman,
15.

13  “without someone to love”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
36.

13  “the grave has closed”: Godwin,
Memoirs,
35.

13  “I am now reading”: LMW, 145.

13  “I am determined!”: ibid., 159.

14  “the father of the book trade”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
67.

14  “I am . . . going to be”: LMW, 164-65.

15  “Whenever I am tired”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
75.

15  “I grow too excited”: ibid., 87.

17  “Bliss was it”: Brody, Miriam, introduction to Wollstonecraft,
Vindication,
20.

17  “I see the ardour”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
93.

17  “Out of the tomb”: Mulvey-Roberts, Marie, “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley” in Thomson, 390.

18  “And lo!”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
97.

18  “all women”: Poovey,
Proper Lady,
x.

19  “This [virginity] lost”: ibid., 23.

19  “rouse my sex”: Wollstonecraft,
Vindication,
231.

19  “I do not wish them”: ibid., 156.

20  “I have been much pestered”: Cracium, 112.

21  “I am a strange compound”: LMW, 221.

21  “The public walks”: Tannahill, 68.

23  “I have felt some gentle twitches”: LMW, 237.

23  “I do not want to be loved”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
169.

24  “I do not chuse”: LMW, 275.

24  “my soul is weary”: ibid., 277.

25  “Love is a want”: ibid., 302.

25  “I shall plunge . . .”: ibid., 316-17.

25  “I do not shudder”: Goethe, 126.

25  “I part with you”: LMW, 330.

26  “bold and adventurous”: Gilmour, 297.

27  “I remember”: Brown, 1.

27  “perfectly willing”: ibid., 2.

28  “It had never occurred”: ibid., 7.

28  “the most self-conceited”: Gilmour, 295.

29  “In the latter part”: Brown, 23.

29  
Imogen:
Godwin, William,
Imogen: A Pastoral Romance from the Ancient British
(New York: New York Public Library, 1963 reprint of the 1784 edition).

30  “one of the most stupid”: Sunstein,
A Different Face,
172.

30  “tell all that I apprehended”: Woodcock,
William Godwin.

31  “With what delight”: Woodcock,
Selections from
Political Justice, 12. Godwin’s seminal work is today out of print. His opinions are not likely to reach a mass audience
in the current political climate, no matter how relevant they might seem.
Selections,
printed during World War II in a city under attack from German bombers, includes Godwin’s pronouncement: “The love of our
country, if we would speak accurately, is another of those specious illusions which have been invented by imposters in order
to render the multitude the blind instruments of their crooked designs.”

31  “Damn the king”: Marshall, 91.

31  groups of people raised the money: Smith and Smith,
William Godwin,
22.

32  “he blazed as a sun”: Tomalin,
Wollstonecraft,
197.

33  “If ever there was a book”: Godwin,
Memoirs,
306.

33  “When we met again”: ibid., 100.

33  “when the heart”: LMW, 350.

34  “Mrs. Perfection”: ibid., 340.

34  “My imagination”: ibid., 337.

34  “Do not cast me off”: Wardle,
Godwin and Mary,
17.

34  “Can you solve this”: LMW, 358.

34  “You tell me”: ibid., 365.

35  “Mary Wollstonecraft, spinster”: Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
213.

35  “I begin to love”: ibid., 395.

35  “to threaten the earth”: Sunstein,
Mary Shelley,
18.

35  “I have no doubt”: LMW, 409.

36  “Mrs. Blenkinsop”: ibid., 411.

36  “Oh, Godwin, I am in heaven” and his reply, Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
226.

36  “20 minutes before 8”: ibid., 228.

37  “I firmly believe”: ibid., 229.

37  “destiny of woman”: Thompson, 72.

Chapter
2
: “Nobody’s little girl but papa’s”

38  “Reaching the cascade”: Wollstonecraft,
Letters,
152-53.

38  “One of my wife’s”: Paul, I, 285.

39  Nicholson’s report: Mellor,
Mary Shelley,
244.

39  “Damn you”: Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
232.

40  “with disgust by every female”: Williams,
Mary Shelley,
17.

40  “For Mary verily”:
Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine,
1801, IX, 518.

40  “I cannot but think”: Polwhele,
The Unsex’d Females: a Poem
(London: 1798), 30.

40  “Hard was thy fate”: Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
233.

41  “While I retain”: St. Clair, 216.

41  “This day”: ibid., 217.

42  “I am tormented”: ibid., 208.

42  “Their talking about me”: Paul, I, 364-65.

43  “Is it possible”: Paul, II, 58.

44  “widow with green spectacles”: Mellor, 6-7.

44  “That damn’d infernal”: JCC, 15.

44  “a pustule of vanity”: Rieger, xiii.

44  “Uncommonly mild”: Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
230.

44  “les goddesses”: Gittings and Manton, 9.

44  Burr’s other impressions:
The Private Journals of Aaron Burr
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858), v. 2, 307.

45  “cadaverous silence”: Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
230.

45  “learning and studying”: Gittings and Manton, 8.

45  “Nothing could be more”: Sunstein, 45.

45  “was too minute”: Seymour, 62.

45  “Until I knew Shelley”: LMWS, I, 296.

46  “spontaneous overflow”: Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Lyrical Ballads,
ed. W. J. B Owen (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 157.

47  “Alone, alone”: Coleridge, 154. This is from the 1798 version of the work. A slightly revised edition appeared in 1834.

48  “As long as I remained”: Gittings and Manton, 5.

48  Godwin’s history of Rome: Brown, 227.

49  “Her mother died”: Williams, John, 12.

49  “I did not make myself”: ibid., 24.

49  “My dreams”: Shelley, Mary, introduction to
Frankenstein,
20.

49  “nursed and fed”: Poovey,
Proper Lady,
115.

50  “In our family”: ibid., 116.

50  “always thought”: Walling, 24.

50  “more reflective”: Mellor, 15.

50  “tell Mary”: Williams, John, 34.

51  “I am quite confounded”: Marshall, Florence A.,
Life and Letters,
I, 28.

51  “beneath the trees”: F1831, 20.

Chapter
3
: In Love with Loving

53  “While yet a boy”: PWPBS, 531.

54  “ancient books of Chemistry”: Hogg, I, 305.

54  “should rise”: Medwin, 28.

54  “a sort of”: ibid., 27-28.

55  “It’s not my wish”: Blunden, 371.

55  “Never read a book”: White,
Shelley,
I, 12.

55  “The habits”: Hogg, I, 305.

55  “temper was violent”: Gilmour, 45.

56  “Verses on a Cat”: PWPBS, 838-39.

57  “like a girl”: White,
Portrait,
7.

57  “spirits” “almost on the borders”: ibid., 9.

57  “The Revolt of Islam”: PWPBS, 37-38.

58  Dr. Keate, the “Flogger,” was said to have once flogged eighty boys in a single morning. Hogg, 43.

58  Classmate’s recollections: Blunden, 34.

58  “Every night”: Gilmour, 105.

58  “a thin, slight lad”: Gronow, 123.

60  “His features”: Hogg, I, 47-48.

60  “I myself”: Tomalin,
Shelley,
17.

60  “Books, boots, papers”: Hogg, I, 55-56.

61  “his eyes close”: Gilmour, 131.

61  “The moment he entered”: Hogg, 14.

62  “Soft, my dearest angel”: PWPBS, 864.

62  “He is such a Pupil”: Hodgart, 33-34.

63  “Her complexion”: Peacock,
Memoirs,
338.

64  “quite like a poet’s dream”: Gilmour, 193.

64  “I was in love with loving”: from Latin epigraph to
Alastor,
PWPBS, 15.

64  “
Your
noble and exalted”: Gilmour, 207.

64  “radiant with youth”: ibid., 193.

64  “Jealousy has no place”: Tomalin,
Shelley,
23.

65  “loathsome worm”: Hodgart, 13.

65  “intended to fall”: Cameron,
Young Shelley,
177.

65  “He now became”: Peacock,
Nightmare Abbey,
47.

66  “Poets are the”: Holmes, 585.

67  “A husband and wife”: PWPBS, 806.

67  “Love is free”: ibid., 807.

67  “It is now”: Hogg, 306.

68  “There is no”:
Complete Works of Shelley,
VI, 12.

68  “a wet-nurse”: Peacock,
Memoirs,
323.

68  “The contemplation”: LPBS, I, 264-65.

69  “a dead & living”: ibid., 265.

69  “I go on”: Trelawney, 195.

70  “The originality”: LPBS, I, 402.

70  “suffering, like a little”: Grylls,
Mary Shelley,
29.

70  “doth equal laws”: PWPBS, 76. Canto 4, stanza 21.

70  “They say that thou”: ibid., 39-40. Dedication, stanza 12.

72  “I followed him”: Hogg, II, 147-48.

73  “They always sent me”: Gittings and Manton, 11.

73  “The sublime and rapturous”: LPBS, 403.

73  “Upon my heart”: PWPBS, 522.

73  Account of Shelley at Godwin’s: Holmes, 233.

74  “She was in my arms”: JMWS, 6.

Chapter
4
: Crackling Sparks and Free Love

75  “We are as clouds”: PWPBS, 523.

76  “I had time”: White,
Portrait,
162.

76  “I said to Mary”: JMWS, 7.

76  “As I left Dover”: Tomalin,
Shelley,
45.

77  “Mary was there”: JMWS, 7.

77  “Shelley was also”: ibid.

77  “We saw with extasy”: JCC, 442.

78  Godwin’s description: Cameron,
Golden Years,
7-8.

78  “Jane has been guilty”: Mellor, 22.

79  “a cold & stupid”: JMWS, 9.

79  “Mary especially”: ibid., 11.

79  “beds were infinitely”: ibid.

80  “four-footed enemies”: ibid., 13.

80  “so dreadfully dirty”: Cameron,
Shelley and His Circle,
III, 347.

80  “We rest at Vendeuvre”: JMWS, 14.

80  “he thought he was”: Cameron,
Shelley and His Circle,
III, 350.

81  “the moment”: JCC, 27.

81  “because we have no king”: ibid., 28.

81  “like the white”: JMWS, 17.