She left a note on the table
next to her body which in part reads,
“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 pain
to those persons who hurt their health
in endeavoring 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 …”
The note was torn off there
so as to obscure the author.
Left beside the body was
the gold watch that Shelley
and I brought Fanny from Geneva.
There can be no mistake.
Why exactly Fanny did this
we will never know.
It may be partially because
our aunts retracted their offer
for Fanny to live with them.
Or perhaps our mother made suicide
seem a legitimate option for one so lost.
I break down to my core.
I fall limp as though
my bones have been removed
from my body.
I should have invited Fanny to come
visit us and provided her more family.
I should have guessed at her distress.
Shelley equally feels my pain.
Father does something I do not
understand. He finally writes to me,
but it is to ask me to hide the fact
that Fanny has committed suicide.
He bids me not to go to Swansea
and “disturb the silent dead.”
He believes Fanny wanted
to die in obscurity so we are
to leave her to be buried
in an unmarked grave.
He does not intend to inform
my brother Charles Clairmont
of her death for many months.
To avoid scandal
he will tell others later
that Fanny died a natural death,
from a fever on the way to Dublin.
I’m not sure that it is right,
but I do as Father bids.
Claire sheds not a tear for Fanny.
It is as though Fanny
were a stranger to her.
I wear clothes of mourning.
Without my Shelley
Fanny’s fate might well
have been mine.
I find some solace
in my reading and writing,
but such a kind creature
as Fanny there will never be again.
A GOTHIC TALE
Fall 1816
The monster in my book
feeling alone and unloved
enacts vengeance
on his creator by murdering
Victor’s family.
Victor’s young innocent brother
and Victor’s wife
lose their lives at the hands
of cruel fate.
I know all too well
the horror that it is to lose
one’s sibling and one’s child.
One may become
mad at the world
and the injustice of it all,
rage with fists and fury.
But eventually you must
face your own contributions
to their sad ends.
ACCOLADES AND CONTINUED ENDEAVORS
December 1, 1816
Leigh Hunt, the editor of The Examiner,
a London newspaper, publishes
an article called “Young Poets”
where he names Keats, Reynolds,
and my own Shelley as resurrecting
English poetry to the heights
of Milton and Spenser.
He calls them the new school of poetry,
which he claims began in excess
like most revolutions, but now
is “a real aspiration after real nature
and original fancy remains
that calls to mind
the finer times of the English Muse.”
My love’s work will now
gain some publicity. And Byron
had so fervently urged Shelley
that he needed publicity this summer.
I am as delighted as a kitten
licking her milk-stained paws.
A bit of sunlight seeps into
what has been darkness as of late.
Hunt and Shelley strike up
a fine friendship and Shelley
visits him.
I continue with Frankenstein,
sometimes with the aid of Shelley.
He smiths my language
and offers suggestions
that push the narrative forward.
More than four chapters complete,
I begin to see this book take shape,
less like the monster it describes
pieced together from scraps,
but more as something of a whole.
I dream of a home
like a proper mouse hole
where we can retire to,
that might have a river or a lake.
One that would not contain Claire.
She wears on me,
now eight months pregnant.
She feels a bit like prisoners’ chains,
increasingly difficult to bear.
Claire still writes Lord Byron,
but he is more silent than Fanny.
HARRIET
December 1816
Harriet’s body was discovered
floating in the Serpentine
in Hyde Park in London
on December 10.
I feel beyond remorse
and reconciliation right now.
I think that this will haunt me
for the rest of my days.
It is as though I helped
push her into the cold depths
and feel directly to blame
for some of her misery.
Harriet’s last letter to her sister, Eliza
says that she forgives Shelley
and wants him to enjoy the happiness
she could not without him.
She wishes her daughter,
Ianthe, to remain with her sister.
Nothing was explicitly indicated
about her son, Charles.
Harriet said she felt so wretched and tired
and lowered in everyone’s opinion
that she could not drag on
a miserable existence.
She lost hope for the future.
The coroner found
that she was again pregnant,
and the baby I do not believe
could have been Shelley’s.
I wish we could have
prevented this.
Shelley takes on an attitude
much like my father did
after the suicide of dear Fanny.
He blames Harriet’s family
for her problems and says
Harriet became a prostitute.
There is no proof of this,
but I do not contradict Shelley.
Shelley files to get custody
of his two children,
who remain in the care
of Harriet’s sister, Eliza.
Shelley shows little promise
of gaining custody however
because we are not married.
MARRIAGE
December 30, 1816
We marry at the handsome
Wren church in London, much
to the pleasure of my father,
who now welcomes
Shelley and me back
into his Skinner Street home.
So after years of exile
&nb
sp; now that I am married
I am once again
my father’s daughter.
Whether this will strengthen
the case against Harriet’s
family, the Westbrooks,
for custody of Shelley’s children
remains a large question mark.
I am ambivalent as the wind
about getting married.
In one great gust I am thrilled
to be united with my love
and that my children
will now be legitimate
and my father will accept us.
But blown around in a second gale
I feel that this has come about
at too great a cost
and may be tainted
like a poison broth
from the start.
MY ESCAPE
Winter 1816–1817
My writing desk
shelters me like
a cave in a thunderstorm.
As the torrents
of life drop hail
and sleet at my door
I retreat to the world
of my story.
I find serenity
as I sculpt my plot
and search out my words.
And for a time
I forget the chaos
and devastation
that surround me.
TOGETHER
Winter 1817
Does art flourish more
when the artist works
alone in a room with
just her thoughts and her pen
and little distraction
or is it communal contribution
that births the best work?
Shelley has struggled
with this dichotomy
his whole career.
I welcome my love’s
input and instruction.
I sometimes
wish for a world
with less personal turmoil
but know that
I would have less
emotional experience
from which to draw
my characters.
Shelley inserts the sentence,
“It is even possible
that the train of my ideas
might never have received
that fatal impulse which
led me to my ruin,”
into my manuscript
and the paragraph springs to life.
I wrap my arms
around his shoulders.
“That is precisely
what I intended to say,”
I tell him.
He smiles. “I know.
You left a tiny hole
for me to fill,
and I delight
in patching your garden.”
ALBA
January 12, 1817
Claire gives birth today
to a beautiful baby girl
she calls Alba after
the nickname we gave
to Lord Byron, Albe (for L. B.),
when we were in Geneva.
Claire hopes this baby
will bring her closer
to Byron, but he still
sends no reply
to her letters.
Bryon acknowledges the news
of the birth through Shelley
and requests that Alba’s
name be changed to
Clare Allegra Byron,
so we shall call her Allegra.
Claire takes to motherhood
like flares illuminate the sky.
She revels in every moment
of it, just as I do.
Sadly my wish for a house
absentia Claire will not be.
Shelley believes we are responsible
for Claire and her little one
and after what happened
to Fanny and Harriet
I do not offer much complaint.
We lease a house in Marlow,
just far enough away from London
to feel the countryside.
Shelley has a library, and I have a garden.
It is however not a quiet existence.
We entertain many visitors,
chief among them
the Hunts, Leigh and Marianne
and their many children,
and Thomas Love Peacock,
who has taken a liking
to Claire and proposed to her.
She turned him down flat,
even though it would be
anyone’s guess what her
other prospects might be.
Unfortunately,
all her hope and ambition
is still tangled up
in Byron
like one caught
in the snares
of a bear trap.
PRETENSE
Winter 1817
Although the truth
of Allegra
is as well known
among our friends
as is her name, we act
as though the baby belongs
to someone else.
And that Claire is a maiden.
When my father
and stepmother come to call
we allege that Allegra
is a cousin of the Hunts
that Claire helps care for.
I do not enjoy
the deceit I must
employ for the benefit
of Claire. I believe this lying
digs a moat between Shelley and me
where he always bolsters
Claire’s position
and protects her like he’s the king
of her castle, and I play the opposition.
DEVELOPING A STORY
Winter 1817
I retreat to writing.
In my book
I selected my characters’ names
as deliberately as I chose
my child’s name.
Victor is a pen name Percy
used in his youth
and refers to Milton’s God
from Paradise Lost. Frankenstein
alludes to a castle we visited
on our elopement back when
I was sixteen. William,
Victor’s younger brother,
contains multiple connotations
for me from my father
to my stepbrother to my son.
William would have been my own name
had I been born a boy.
And Elizabeth, Victor’s adopted sister
whom he marries, recalls
both Shelley’s favorite sister
and his mother.
I base my story
on traditional gothic folklore
about the alchemist or sorcerer
who relentlessly seeks knowledge
where the ego of the sorcerer
leads to his downfall.
I explore the renewal of life
as I would wish
more than anything
to have my baby, my sister,
my mother, and Harriet brought
back to me, but science
like a foundling branch
reaches only so far.
I also try to investigate
how sometimes
that which we create
can destroy us
or those we love.
ALBION HOUSE
March 1817
As we now receive
an annual income
from Shelley’s inheritance
we renovate a new home
on West Street in Marlow
called Albion House.
With five large bedrooms,
a fir-shaded garden,
and a library that houses
all of our books
and two full-sized statues
of Venus and Apollo,
our home is blesse
d with love and poetry.
I labor on the final
chapters of Frankenstein.
The novel takes
hold of me like a carriage
drawn by wild horses.
I cannot stop its progress.
It is now a story within
a story within a story.
The manuscript grows
to novel length this way,
and I also distance myself
a bit from some of the emotion,
as the characters sat a little too close
to the real people in my life.
All three of my storytellers
are male. The first, Robert Walton,
is an explorer seeking to reach
the North Pole. He writes letters
to his sister about saving Victor Frankenstein,
the doctor who has animated a creature
from grave-stolen body parts.
When Walton meets Victor,
Victor pursues his Creature
to the end of the earth.
Victor then recounts
his story to Walton
and finally within Victor’s tale
is the story narrated by
the monster himself,
the tale of the monster’s plight.
I am encouraged
by the progress of the novel
and think I see my way
to the light of the end.
CHILDREN
March 1817
I am pregnant again,
the baby due
at the end of the summer.
The idea of increasing
my family pleases me
like one who does not realize
she is hungry but then
when presented with a well-prepared feast
relishes in the food.
It also inspires me to finish
my book before the baby’s arrival.
Shelley loses his custody
fight for his children by Harriet,
but so do the Westbrooks.
Charles and Ianthe are assigned
neutral guardians by the courts.
Shelley is required to send them money
and is granted visitation.
My love’s heart pains
over this decision,
but then he seems
to forget his first two children
almost as if they have died.
He will never again visit them.
I cannot understand this
as I would rather
cut off my tongue and give up writing
than be separated
a day from my own child.
MY BOOK
April 1817
To write a book
for me is as to finally
truly breathe,
my senses
engaging with the world.
I cannot be assured of
exactly what I created
be it madness and monster
or beauty and light,
but I tried to apply both
what I have learned
and read and observed
and that which
I can only imagine
and think and dream.
And more
than anything
I want to make
my father
proud.
THE END
May 1817
I end my book
with these lines,
“‘But soon,’ [the monster] cried,