Read Online The Monsters by Dorothy Hoobler - Free Book Online Page B

Robespierre, who was also noted for wearing tinted eyeglasses. Usually generous in his opinions, Lamb called her “That
     damn’d infernal bitch Mrs. Godwin.” Another visitor was more unkind, calling her “a pustule of vanity.”
    Mary grew up in a strange blended family of five children with no child having the same two parents. First there was Mary’s
     older half-sister Fanny, who was quiet and withdrawn. Fanny’s biological father had by now vanished, never to be heard from
     again, and Godwin brought her up as his own child, not revealing the truth until she was about eleven; she was called Fanny
     Godwin. In his novel
St. Leon,
Godwin describes a character who bears an eerie likeness to Fanny; the passage contains a key to her ultimate fate: “Uncommonly
     mild and affectionate. . . . She appeared little formed to struggle with the difficulties of life and frowns of the world;
     but, in periods of quietness and tranquillity nothing could exceed the sweetness of her character and the fascination of her
     manners.”
    Mary’s new step-siblings, Charles and Clara Jane, visibly reflected the fact that each had different fathers: Charles was
     fair while the boisterous, temperamental Clara Jane had dark hair and eyes. Finally there was Mary’s half brother William,
     the baby of the family, who was doted on by the second Mrs. Godwin. Mary had plenty of competition for her father’s attention.
    Aaron Burr, the former United States vice president, visited the Godwin family and found the household charming. He referred
     to the girls in mock-French as “les goddesses,” and recalled that the children often gave little performances and lectures.
     He noted that eight-year-old William read “from a little pulpit . . . with great gravity and decorum” just as William Sr.
     had in his childhood. After little William’s “sermon,” the family had tea and “the girls sang and danced an hour.” Fanny and
     Mary, he reported, were talented in drawing and Clara had a lovely singing voice.
    The household’s routine was organized around Godwin’s work needs. In the mornings everyone was expected to be quiet while
     he wrote in his study. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after a visit to the Godwin home, described it as having a “cadaverous
     silence . . . quite catacombish.” After lunch, Godwin would take the children for a walk, which he used for imparting lessons
     of natural history. Clara would recall that she and the others worked at “learning and studying . . . we all took the liveliest
     interest in the great questions of the day—common topics, gossiping, scandal, found no entrance in our circle.”
    In Godwin’s philosophy, self-examination was the principal means of improvement. Once a person had concluded that his or her
     actions were correct, then he or she might disregard the criticism, indeed even the condemnation, of others. Mary would follow
     this philosophy to a fault. Clara Jane Clairmont, who was also raised according to Godwin’s principles, recalled later in
     life: “Nothing could be more refined and amiable than the doctrines instilled into us—only they were utterly erroneous.”
    Though the two boys went to school, Godwin taught the girls personally, giving them the essentials of literacy and basic mathematics,
     the history of Greece, Rome, and England, as well as literature in both Latin and English. (Mary thus did not get the advantage
     of attending a coeducational school outside the home, which her mother had advocated in the
Vindication
.) The only outside teacher for the girls was a man who came to teach singing and reading music once a week. Even Clara was
     sent to a boarding school for a while, but Mary’s teacher was the man she revered, her father. Years later, Mary admitted
     that Godwin “was too minute in his censures, too grave and severe.” Yet she also wrote of him that “Until I knew Shelley,
     I may justly say that he was my God.”
    There were constant