June 1812-May 1814

At Dundee, with the Baxters, Mary remained for five months. She was treated as a sister by the Baxter girls, one of whom, Isabella, afterwards the wife of David Booth, became her most intimate friend. An elder sister, Miss Christian Baxter, to whom the present writer is indebted for a few personal reminiscences of Mary Godwin, only died in 1886, and was probably the last survivor of those who remembered Mary in her girlhood. They were all fond of their new companion. She was agreeable, vivacious, and sparkling; very pretty, with fair hair and complexion, and clear, bright white skin. The Baxters were people of education and culture, active minded, fond of reading, and alive to external impressions. The young people were well and carefully brought up. Mary shared in all their studies.

Music they did not care for, but all were fond of drawing and painting, and had good lessons. A great deal of time was spent in touring about, in long walks and drives through the moors and mountains of Forfarshire. They took pains to make Mary acquainted with all the country round, besides which it was laid on her as a duty to get as much fresh air as she could, and she must greatly have enjoyed the well-ordered yet easy life, the complete change of scene and companionship. When, on the 10th of November, she arrived again in Skinner Street, she brought Christy Baxter with her, for a long return visit to London. If Mary had enjoyed her country outing, still more keenly did the homely Scotch girl relish her first taste of London life and society. At ninety-two years old the impression of her pleasure in it, of her interest in all the notable people with whom she came in contact, was as vivid as ever.

The literary and artistic circle which still hung about the Skinner Street philosophers was to Christy a new world, of which, except from books, she had formed no idea. Books, however, had laid the foundation of keenest interest in all she was to see. She was constantly in company with Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Constable, and many more, hitherto known to her only by name. Of Charles Lamb especially, of his wit, humour, and quaintness she retained the liveliest recollection, and he had evidently a great liking for her, referring jokingly to her in his letters as “Doctor Christy,” and often inviting her, with the Godwin family, to tea, to meet her relatives, when up in town, or other friends.

On 11th November, the very day after the two girls arrived in London, a meeting occurred of no special interest to Christy at the time, and which she would have soon forgotten but for subsequent events. Three guests came to dinner at Godwin’s. These were Percy Bysshe Shelley with his wife Harriet, and her sister, Eliza Westbrook. Christy Baxter well remembered this, but her chief recollection was of Harriet, her beauty, her brilliant complexion and lovely hair, and the elegance of her purple satin dress. Of Shelley, how he looked, what he said or did, what they all thought of him, she had observed nothing, except that he was very attentive to Harriet. The meeting was of no apparent significance and passed without remark: little indeed did any one foresee the drama soon to follow. Plenty of more important days, more interesting meetings to Christy, followed during the next few months. She shared Mary’s room during this time, but her memory, in old age, afforded few details of their everyday intercourse. Indeed, although they spent so much time together, these two were never very intimate. Isabella Baxter, afterwards Mrs. Booth, was Mary’s especial friend and chief correspondent, and it is much to be regretted that none of their girlish letters have been preserved.

The four girls had plenty of liberty, and, what with reading and talk, with constantly varied society enjoyed in the intimate unconstrained way of those who cannot afford the appareil of convention, with tolerably frequent visits at friends’ houses and not seldom to the theatre, when Godwin, as often happened, got a box sent him, they had plenty of amusement too. Godwin’s diary keeps a wonderfully minute skeleton account of all their doings. Christy enjoyed it all as only a novice can do. All her recollections of the family life were agreeable; if anything had left an unpleasing impression it had faded away in 1883, when the present writer saw her. For Godwin she entertained a warm respect and affection. They did not see very much of him, but Christy was a favourite of his, and he would sometimes take a quiet pleasure, not unmixed with amusement, in listening to their girlish talks and arguments. One such discussion she distinctly remembered, on the subject of woman’s vocation, as to whether it should be purely domestic, or whether they should engage in outside interests. Mary and Jane upheld the latter view, Fanny and Christy the other.

Mrs. Godwin was kind to Christy, who always saw her best side, and never would hear a word said against her. Her deficiencies were not palpable to an outsider whom she liked and chose to patronise, nor did Christy appear to have felt the inherent untruthfulness in Mrs. Godwin’s character, although one famous instance of it was recorded by Isabella Baxter, and is given at length in Mr. Kegan Paul’s Life of Godwin.

The various members of the family had more independence of habits than is common in English domestic life. This was perhaps a relic of Godwin’s old idea, that much evil and weariness resulted from the supposed necessity that the members of a family should spend all or most of their time in each other’s company. He always breakfasted alone. Mrs. Godwin did so also, and not till mid-day. The young folks had theirs together. Dinner was a family meal, but supper seems to have been a movable feast. Jane Clairmont, of whose education not much is known beyond the fact that she was sometimes at school, was at home for a part if not all of this time. She was lively and quick-witted, and probably rather unmanageable. Fanny was more reflective, less sanguine, more alive to the prosaic obligations of life, and with a keen sense of domestic duty, early developed in her by necessity and by her position as the eldest of this somewhat anomalous family. Godwin, by nature as undemonstrative as possible, showed more affection to Fanny than to any one else. He always turned to her for any little service he might require. It seemed, said Christy, as though he would fain have guarded against the possibility of her feeling that she, an orphan, was less to him than the others. Christy was of opinion that Fanny was not made aware of her real position till her quite later years, a fact which, if true, goes far towards explaining much of her after life. It seems most likely, at any rate, that at this time she was unacquainted with the circumstances of her birth. To Godwin she had always seemed like his own eldest child, the first he had cared for or who had been fond of him, and his dependence on her was not surprising, for no daughter could have tended him with more solicitous care; besides which, she was one of those people, ready to do anything for everybody, who are always at the beck and call of others, and always in request. She filled the home, to which Mary, so constantly absent, was just now only a visitor.It must have been at about this time that Godwin received a letter from an unknown correspondent, who expressed much curiosity to know whether his children were brought up in accordance with the ideas, by some considered so revolutionary and dangerous, of Mary Wollstonecraft, and what the result was of reducing her theories to actual practice. Godwin’s answer, giving his own description of her two daughters, has often been printed, but it is worth giving here.

On the 3d of June Mary accompanied Christy back to Dundee, where she remained for the next ten months.

No account remains of her life there, but there can be doubt that her mental and intellectual powers matured rapidly, and that she learned, read, and thought far more than is common even with clever girls of her age. The girl who at seventeen is an intellectual companion for a Shelley cannot often have needed to be “excited to industry,” unless indeed when she indulged in day-dreams, as, from her own account given in the preface to her novel of Frankenstein, we know she sometimes did. Proud of her parentage, idolising the memory of her mother, about whom she gathered and treasured every scrap of information she could obtain, and of whose history and writings she probably now learned more than she had done at home, accustomed from her childhood to the daily society of authors and literary men, the pen was her earliest toy, and now the attempt at original composition was her chosen occupation.

From the entry in Godwin’s diary, “M. W. G. at supper,” for 30th March 1814, we learn that Mary returned to Skinner Street on that day. She now resumed her place in the home circle, a very different person from the little Mary who went to Ramsgate in 1811. Although only sixteen and a half she was in the bloom of her girlhood, very pretty, very interesting in appearance, thoughtful and intelligent beyond her years. She did not settle down easily into her old place, and probably only realised gradually how much she had altered since she last lived at home. Perhaps, too, she saw that home in a new light. After the well-ordered, cheerful family life of the Baxters, the somewhat Bohemianism of Skinner Street may have seemed a little strange. A household with a philosopher for one of its heads, and a fussy, unscrupulous woman of business for the other, may have its amusing sides, and we have seen that it had; but it is not necessarily comfortable, still less sympathetic to a young and earnest nature, just awakening to a consciousness of the realities of life, at that transition stage when so much is chaotic and confusing to those who are beginning to think and to feel. One may well imagine that all was not smooth for poor Mary. Her stepmother’s jarring temperament must have grated on her more keenly than ever after her long absence. Years and anxieties did not improve Mrs. Godwin’s temper, nor bring refinement or a nice sense of honour to a nature singularly deficient in both. Mary must have had to take refuge from annoyance in day-dreams pretty frequently, and this was a sure and constant source of irritation to her stepmother. Jane Clairmont, wilful, rebellious, witty, and probably a good deal spoilt, whose subsequent conduct shows that she was utterly unamenable to her mother’s authority, was, at first, away at school. Fanny was the good angel of the house, but her persistent defence of every one attacked, and her determination to make the best of things and people as they were, seemed almost irritating to those who were smarting under daily and hourly little grievances. Compliance often looks like cowardice to the young and bold. Nor did Mary get any help from her father. A little affection and kindly sympathy from him would have gone a long way with her, for she loved him dearly. Long afterwards she alluded to his “calm, silent disapproval” when displeased, and to the bitter remorse and unhappiness it would cause her, although unspoken, and only instinctively felt by her. All her stepmother’s scoldings would have failed to produce a like effect. But Godwin, though sincerely solicitous about the children’s welfare, was self-concentrated, and had little real insight into character. Besides, he was, as usual, hampered about money matters; and when constant anxiety as to where to get his next loan was added to the preoccupation of authorship, and the unavoidable distraction of such details as reached him of the publishing business, he had little thought or attention to bestow on the daughter who had arrived at so critical a time of her mental and moral history. He welcomed her home, but then took little more notice of her. If she and her stepmother disagreed, Godwin, when forced to take part in the matter, probably found it the best policy to side with his wife. Yet the situation would have been worth his attention. Here was this girl, Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, who had left home a clever, unformed child, who had returned to it a maiden in her bloom, pretty and attractive, with ardour, ability, and ambition, with conscious powers that had not found their right use, with unsatisfied affections seeking an object. True, she might in time have found threads to gather up in her own home. But she was young, impatient, and unhappy. Mrs. Godwin was repellent, uncongenial, and very jealous of her. All that a daughter could do for Godwin seemed to be done by Fanny. When Jane came home it was on her that Mary was chiefly thrown for society. Her lively spirits and quick wit made her excellent company, and she was ready enough to make the most of grievances, and to head any revolt. Fanny, far more deserving of sisterly sympathy and far more in need of it, seemed to belong to the opposite camp.

Time, kindly judicious guidance, and sustained effort on her own part might have cleared Mary’s path and made things straight for her. Her heart was as sound and true as her intellect, but this critical time was rendered more dangerous, it may well be, by her knowledge of the existence of many theories on vexed subjects, making her feel keenly her own inexperience and want of a guide.

The guide she found was one who himself had wandered till now over many perplexing paths, led by the light of a restless, sleepless genius, and an inextinguishable yearning to find, to know, to do, to be the best.

Godwin’s diary records on the 5th of May “Shelley calls.” As far as can be known this was the first occasion since the dinner of the 11th of November 1812, when Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin saw Percy Bysshe Shelley.