Monster

The Story of Young Mary Shelley

Mango Media, Inc.

I Begin

People often ask me how I, when still a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea as Frankenstein's monster.

A dreary day at the end of the year of my fourth decade: as good as any for considering my actions and thoughts. The cause for my introspection? A third edition of my little book is to be published, and I have been asked to write a foreword for it.

The fire in my room burns low. Blue coal fire weaving toward the flue distracts me with its beauty. Its crackles echo the rain outside lashing against my windows, where I see the final leaves of autumn blow by in twisting flight. I sigh, enjoying the sensation of breath expanding my lungs, and, sitting in the worn rocker made of good English oak, I look down at my hands as the wan winter light falls soft on the thinning skin. Cold settling about my shoulders defeats my shawl.

Place me astraddle the dying of the Enlightenment and the birth of the Romantic Periods: a time of bloodshed when kingdoms fell and democracies rose, a time when French terror resulted in an unbridled ambition that nearly burned down all of Europe. In Britain, a nine-year regency bridges the insanity of one king and the coronation of another. Those years saw a hero named Wellington defeat the Emperor of France, saving Europe from the yoke of his reign.

A time of confusion and upheaval? Sans doute, but I remember it as a time when I was a part of a movement where we were sure the wisdom of thought had, at last, defeated all authority when all men would be educated so as to be responsible. We knew our minds would guide the societal structure of Britain and the world from darkness to light, resulting in refinement and cultural achievement. My father and mother were at the center of great thoughts. They called my father the Great Anarchist. My mother penned the Rights of Woman, a companion to the American Rights of Man. My parents championed the idea of non-secular institutions from monarchy to marriage.

I was married, and though I ought not be called a reluctant wife, I am inclined to think of the state of marriage as superfluous. The principle of free love, that is, to love without need of the approval of church or state, is dear to me. I am a mother who took joy in her children, though I have lost children also, and I grieve them. An authoress. No reluctance in that. But of all the subjects I could have chosen, that of my little book was as great a surprise to me as to anyone. Say rather it chose me, or say I had no choice.

Often I find I must remind people my book is not truth, but fiction. Long ago, a teacher, a Scot and one I should have loved better, gave me to know that while bald history presents a flat map with markings for hills, valleys, and fields, fiction imagines those bare lands as sparkling blue rivers, verdant grass-covered alpine meadows, and dusty roads winding through forests, letting us hear birds as we walk beneath the boughs. I've tried to live my life searching for what is true, occasionally finding it revealed by flashes of insight as a midnight thunderstorm lit by lightning.

If you are to understand me, you must hear of my mother who died when I was but days old. Though I learned of her through her published works, it was not until I read her journals and handbooks that I came to know, and love, her. Often do I contemplate what she must have endured to live as an independent woman, to think, to soar among the heights of philosophy and so encourage other women to live for themselves however they would choose. That idea was her gift to me.

Although his love for my mother was great enough to take both of her children to raise as best he knew how, Father, who knew so very many things, found the raising of two small girls surpassed his wisdom. And so, the man set about finding a replacement wife the way he approached most things: with his mind rather than his heart.

What he found suited his method. In her he saw a mother and a teacher, but to me she was a liar and a harridan. My stepmother was the reason for my lack of pleasant memories associated with our home. She arrived in my house when I was three years old and Fanny was six.

* * *

My fingers trace the letters on my mother's tombstone. "M-A-R-Y. That's me!" I cry as the letters make sense!

"She's but three." Father's voice caresses me. "Her mother was brilliant, also."

"Your daughter is growing to be a beauty," murmurs Louisa. "Remarkable eyes. Gray, I think, but with more than a touch of green to them." As my governess and my father walk home with me and my sister between them, we escape the shadow of a building and a slanting radiance of early morning catches me. "Oh sir, look at your daughter's hair. How metallic it shines in the sunlight!"

"Metallic? Hardly a description for my little girl."

"But it is. Fine spun copper and gold, I'd call it."

His head turns to the side as though something pains him. "She reminds me of her mother in many ways."

Another day and my father's voice echoes from the doorway. "There you are, Pretty Mary." And I turn to see him.

I would call him ... imposing. A John Bull of a man of scarcely fifty years, more well-favored in his appearance than not (though he does have a large nose) but without the girth associated with most men of substance. Bald on top and dignified gray to either side. No need to mention that he enjoys the good repute of an elite intellectual community. To his detractors, Father is thought to be a difficult man, one tactless in voicing his opinions. Yet as I know him, he is one who places a high value on exactness and the importance of speaking truth, blunt speech or no.

At my smile, he enters the room and sits on the bed, patting his lap for me to come to him. I jump onto the bed, slide into his embrace, and kiss him.

How stiffly he returns my kiss. Have I done something wrong?

"What is it, Father?"

"I cannot hide a thing from you, can I?"

With my ear against his immaculate white shirt, I hear his voice rumble deep in his chest. "I've found you a mother! You've no need for a governess any longer, for your new mother is a teacher, one who will fill your mind and our home with her wit and thoughts."

"And where will Louisa go?" My voice trembles.

"Whither she will, as she must. You must not dwell upon a servant, Mary, for you have better now."

The woman sits in one of the chairs with red velvet cushions in the great room where Father holds salons. Short and stout with a round florid face, she's smiling as though it is a thing seldom done.

"Mary, Fanny, this is your new mother," Father says, holding our hands as he leads us to her.

Fanny's shy, but I say, "Welcome to our home, Mistress."

She blinks. "My home, Mary." She puts her hand on my shoulder. "Even as you are now mine."

"Kiss your mother." My father gently tugs me toward her. I falter two steps and put my face up. She lowers her cheek to me, I purse my lips and, feather light, touch them to hers.

I believe, for my part, I go to her full of good will and welcome, but I feel her flinch as my lips touch her cheek. Fan pecks at her, too. There, that's done.

Father says, "Now you two, kiss your new brother and sister."

The girl is in a white dress with lace edging at the neck, wrists, and hem and a pair of tiny black pumps. We seem to be of an age, or she is only slightly younger. Jane, for that is her name, bends slightly toward me that we might exchange a kiss of welcome. As she embraces me, she hisses, "You'd better be friends with me."

With my heart hammering, I turn to the boy. His name is Charlie. Older than me, dressed in yellow and busily picking his nose. He presses my lips with his, hard and long.

"Ah, look, Godwin," the woman says. "We witness a budding love between siblings." She grasps my chin and forces me to look at her. "Mary, you are fortunate, indeed to have such a brother and a new sister who will help me mold you."

Mary Jane Clairmont, a woman of modest achievement, a failed schoolmistress. She should have been gratified at the acclaim that would attach to her because of him. All of which might make a woman assure herself of the well-being of his progeny, yet she makes it plain my sister and I are beings to be suffered until we are wed and out of the house. What do I know of her reluctance to accept a marriage with so cold and indifferent a man as many perceived my father to be?

Her own children, however, are another story. I forget from what source I learned it, but her eldest child, Charles, and her daughter, Jane, were born out of wedlock. My stepmother had expediently, although ex post facto, altered their circumstances: in short, she clept the three of them with Clairmont's last name despite being a cast-off woman with two bastards. Having appropriated the name of the man who fathered her children, she pretended to be a model of motherhood in the same way she mimed the role of a caring human being. Other suitors, upon discovering her character, counted themselves fortunate to have fled.

In the interests of complete disclosure, I should admit I was spared a similar status by a matter of days. Despite his principled belief against marriage, when my mother lay dying after birthing me, the great love my father had for her prompted their marriage, thus ensuring the world knew she was cherished.

* * *

At a salon when I have but ten years of age, a time before I am thought fit to attend learned gatherings, I put into action my intention to secret myself behind the sofa and listen to the speakers. Unfortunately, I make the mistake of telling Jane.

"Let me come with you, Mary, or I'll cry."

Damn her. Jane designs her crying for the effect it has in getting her way. I grudgingly admit she's good at it, but the speaker this night is a special friend to Father, one seldom seen for many years. "Then hush yourself and listen," I tell her. "We'll steal into our hiding place as the guests arrive and wait until Mr. Coleridge reads."

With its ivory-colored plaster sheathing the walls and high ceiling reflecting light from lamps and candles, the great room is where adults meet to exchange ideas for entertainment. A place where men, in coats of black and blue and green with pantaloons of buff or yellow or white, flirt with ladies in long columnar dresses of white who flaunt bejeweled necks and ears. Tables covered with linen and supporting food and drink line the side nearest the kitchens. Overstuffed wide couches and chairs face each other, leaving a space for presenters to stand. Before our guests arrive, I pick a crevasse between one of these couches and the wall for my hiding space.

In the event, however, from the moment we creep under the couch, Jane threatens to expose us. "Shhh, Ninny!" I whisper. The girl can make a racket in a feather loft. Still, all proceeds according to my plan.

Dust tickles my nose and dries my mouth and throat as we wait, and wait, and wait. At last I peek under the couch. I know Father's shoes, with their polished toes and scuffed heels, as he rises to introduce our guest.

"We are most pleased this night to welcome Mr. Samuel Coleridge, lately returned to us from his Majesty's service in Malta.

"His thesis is that it is essential to the author's art to craft a work of vivid detail. He says through the use of this skill, an audience becomes so involved in the story, they forget themselves in the created events. Terming the effect 'the suspension of disbelief,' he cites it as a way for listeners or readers to better appreciate the message of the work.

"I invite you to listen to this poem and judge for yourselves the effectiveness of his words as the author reads."

Mr. Coleridge steps to the center of the room, though all I can see are his shoes and the striped hems of his pants, and begins to read:

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

Such is his skill, I am soon lost in the story, the meter, and the rhyme, but when he says, "The Albatross about my neck was hung ..." idiot Jane giggles.

"Out!" My father summons us. "Now!"

As we creep from behind the corner of the couch, I look up to the poet. Contemporaries like my father call him a giant among dwarves, but he does not appear to be colossal to me: a bit taller than the average man, but no Goliath.

We stand in front of the assembly awaiting our shaming when a miracle occurs. Mr. Coleridge puts his hand on my father's arm and says, "I remember well my time spent in a school for the poor and the difficulties I endured while I thirsted after poetry. If these young ears so wish to listen that they secret themselves in a most uncomfortable location, pray you allow them to remain."

"Let them sit in front of me, William." Jane's mother simulates the ideal of motherhood for the assembled company. "They shall be silent." Then, leaning forward and whispering so only I can hear, she intones, "Or you shall be whipped."

But she has no cause as I am rapt in the story and never budge until it is done.

Mr. Coleridge takes up from where we interrupted. His words spin me into a world rounded with thirst where all the men onboard the mariner's ship have died, where the very planks of the ship shrink for lack of water, all of it his fault, his fault, his most grievous fault. But wait, the mariner is saved! Salvation and rain fall upon him, and the dead albatross drops from his neck. He blesses the denizens of the ocean who have plagued him, and angels inhabit the bones of his fellows to steer the ship homeward. There he discovers he is under a compulsion to tell a man about to attend a wedding not to take the presence of God lightly, but to say his prayers with a willing heart.

So moved by the poem was I that I thought of renouncing my father's atheism and believing instead in the Christian myth; such was the suspension of disbelief Mr. Coleridge wrought in me. But now the Rime is done and the poet steps to where I sit and says, "By your face, I see my words have found their mark."

"Yes, sir. I wish I too might be a sadder and wiser person, so I could write as well as you that my words might find other hearts."

Father is both flattered and impressed by my behavior and from that time forth I am allowed to partake of the salon's feast of ideas that flows most bounteously from the likes of Charles and Mary Lamb of Wordsworth and many others.

* * *

Climbing into my bed and kneeling upon my covers, I kick off my shoes, pull my legs up, and slide back, propping my shoulders onto my pillows so their lace shams tickle my cheek as I turn to gather my writing instruments. I lean my diary against my knees before I check my inkwell to be sure it is safely anchored that I do not stain the sheets. Ready at last, I stroke my quill over my lips and think.

Father says each time I write I must know what message I wish to impart, and so I cast my mind in search of a theme. In my stillness, I listen to the London sounds streaming in my window on the breeze.

Perhaps I shall write of where I live. London's Polygon forms a cultural center for the world, and my father's house occupies a prominent place in it. Listening to the music of the city, I am aware of the background theme of commerce. The greatest city on earth rumbles with thousands of carts, wagons, and drays and the shouts of merchants. In the street below I hear horse hooves clopping on the stones. I close my eyes. Some are single mounts and riders. Do the horses of men who sit astraddle and those of ladies with their knees hooked over the pommel sound differently? Horses of the wealthy step with precise gaits clipping the pavement while tired, laden draft beasts wanting the comfort of their stalls plod to another rhythm. Wheeled traffic adds a counterpoint, with carts and wagons creaking and swaying under their loads. Carriages rattle, dogs run barking to nip at the heels of the horses, and a peddler sings of tin pots at the corner. A vegetable-seller cries his wares at our stoop, urging Cook to come out and see.

At some remove, a woman shouts. She's too distant for me to hear her words, but I can tell she wails in anger. There, that is of interest. At whom, I wonder: a less-than-faithful suitor? Or is she a maid dismissed for poor service now sensing the years of life as a drab that lie ahead?

My father praises me for using my senses. "If you would be a philosopher, you must learn to write, and daily practice is the best way to become proficient at communicating your thoughts. Remember, your mother was a powerful writer."

But what is it that makes one a writer? I stroke my lips with the feather of my quill again. Ah! Having found my theme for the day, my eyes open and I smile. I bend to my pages, wishing to be as valued for my work as my mother had been.

* * *

More than writing occurs upstairs.

My trembling breath vibrates the air within my wardrobe. I push the door ajar, touching my fingertips to the wood and tracing the grain. My eye pressed against the crack can discern the doorway to my room and a piece of the hallway beyond.