The Lady and Her Monsters (4 page)

O
n a warm Tuesday afternoon in May 1801, William Godwin found himself sitting beneath one of his balconies reading a stack of notes, when he heard a woman's voice from a nearby window directed toward him. He looked up and saw a woman who was neither young nor beautiful in the conventional sort of way, but homely by most people's standards.

She must have smiled as she craned her neck forward and said, “Is it possible that I behold the immortal Godwin?” Conceited and easily duped by flattery, Godwin married the neighbor not long after the initial encounter, on December 21, 1801.

William Godwin's desire to remarry had been kindled soon after Mary's death. Though he had been content in his younger days to study and write, he had enjoyed his late-in-life marriage. And now he knew he could not go back to the way things used to be: he was a lonely man in his forties, with two young daughters, one of whom wasn't even his natural daughter, though he had given her his name. Servants were aiding him in rearing the two “unfortunate little wretches,” but it didn't take long to see he didn't possess the fortitude or sensitivity to be a single parent.

The job called for a special kind of woman. He met a few women who he believed were worthy candidates to join his household, but for some reason or another, his advances were always met with disappointments. He also wanted to return to his writing and studies with a more methodical schedule, something that full-time parenting didn't allow him to do.

True, in 1799 he had managed to publish the gothic novel
St. Leon,
a tale dealing with isolation, immortality, alchemy, the elixir of life, and the consequences of forbidden knowledge, but through it all the topic of child development and rearing remained at the back of his mind. He desired a wife, someone he knew would do a better job with the girls than he did while he continued on with his work. As it happened, the next Mrs. Godwin would come from right next door.

Mrs. Jane Clairmont, the woman who so famously uttered the words that overwhelmed William Godwin's soul, had a spotty past herself. Quarrelsome and highly business-minded, she found it difficult to keep her anger in check. Few believed she had any talent for ingratiating herself in the lives of others; if anything, she appeared to work hard to alienate those Godwin knew from his past, as well as his daughter, Mary, who in time came to believe Jane Clairmont's main duty was to draw her father away from her.

Her observations were not entirely untrue. Later in life Mary Shelley, in writing to her friend Maria Gisborne, said, “Mrs. Godwin had discovered long before my excessive & romantic attachment to my father.”

Mrs. Jane Clairmont had declared herself a widow for several years, and she had two children close in age to Godwin's. It's doubtful that the two children, Charles Goules Clairmont and Jane Clairmont, had the same father, though their mother never spoke of it. She had also been searching for a new mate for some time; spotting the famous Mr. Godwin beneath the balcony must have seemed like the moment she had been waiting for.

It did not take long for Godwin's friends and acquaintances to decide that they were not pleased by the new woman in his life. “The Professor is COURTING,” his friend Charles Lamb said. “The Lady is a widow (a disgusting woman) and the Professor has grown quite juvenile. He bows his head when spoken to, and smiles without occasion . . . You never saw . . . anyone play Romeo so unnaturally.”

Unlike his marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft, whom they had all found intellectually challenging and formidable, this woman came across as horrendous, at the very least. This was not a bond sealed by intellectual debates or an amicable companionship, they all felt. Instead, it seemed like a business deal between two floundering individuals who had now the opportunity to begin again.

This fresh start, and a new son, William Godwin, brought them to the home on Skinner Street. In theory, the older five-story structure should have allowed for more space, more privacy, and a good measure of solitude. This would also be a perfect spot to open the bookshop the Godwins had in mind, as the street was lined with bookshops and other storefront businesses.

Unfortunately, they soon discovered that the house was not as ideally located as it sounded. It was near the city's prisons and courthouses, and on hanging days, which were quite popular with many Londoners, the family heard not only the banging and hammering of the gallows going up, but also the crowds as they gathered as early as dawn for a chance to catch even a glimpse of the proceedings, their desire for a good spectacle seeming to contaminate all that surrounded them. This frightened Godwin because the people began to work themselves into a frenzy, and by the time the convict arrived, they thirsted for blood, often with deadly results.

The hangings were gruesome, but the public still looked forward to them as if they were attending a sporting event. They were so common in London's squares that the barrister Charles Phillips said, “We hanged for everything—for a shilling—for five shillings—for five pounds—for cattle—for coining—for forgery, even for witchcraft—for things that were and things that could not be.” If the execution was of a particularly notorious criminal, mobs numbering in the tens of thousands gathered outside the prison—often the Old Bailey—and waited around until the convict had seen his last moment.

The throngs came from all walks of life: the well-to-do paid handsomely for a spot near the actual gallows (it was said that from there it was easier to view the final twitching of the body and hear the actual gurgle of the man as the air left his lungs). Everyone else stood where they could, jostling and bumping into one another or going so far as to hang from windows and balconies to get a better view. Young officers stood toe-to-toe with mothers-to-be or those clutching small children at their breasts. Fathers brought their young sons with them as an occasion for male bonding. Some attended as a family and wore their Sunday best, the mothers carrying wicker baskets full of goodies and the fathers holding their children up so they could see over everyone else's heads. If the criminal's sentence also included an anatomization, the people followed the dead criminal as he was hauled to the site of the procedure and stood there until the dissections were complete.

On most occasions people behaved, viewing the proceedings in an orderly, if loud, manner, their hilarity echoing the tolling of the bells nearby, while a few murmured the words of the bellman of St. Sepulchre's on such occasion, whose job it was to announce the pending ordeal: “
All you that in the condemned hold do lie / Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die. / Watch all and pray, the hours is drawing near / That you before the Almighty must appear. / Examine yourselves, in time repent, / That you may not to eternal flames be sent / And when St. Sepulchre's bell tomorrow tolls, / The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
”

They often jeered louder as the convicts were marched up to the scaffolds. But sometimes, when the masses were unusually large, matters turned rough, as happened on February 4, 1807. On that day, people came from all over the city and the surroundings to see the hangings of John Holloway and Owen Haggerty, who were found guilty of killing a man and sentenced to hang. The fatal testimony had come from one of their accomplices, who had ratted them out in exchange for his own life. Many thought the two men were innocent and were being railroaded by a failed judicial system. But still the crowds gathered for their execution, and “by eight o'clock, not an inch of the grass was unoccupied in view of the platform.”

When the men arrived, the crowd pressed forward and a “terrible occurrence” took place. According to the
Newgate Calendar,
a monthly calendar that provided notices on executions, “the pressure of the crowd was such that, before the malefactors even appeared, numbers of persons were crying in vain to escape it . . . Several females of low stature who had been so impudent as to venture among the mobs were in a dismal situation; their cries were dismal. Some who could be no longer supported by the men were suffered to fall, and were trampled to death.”

The chaos continued as men, women, and children were pushed, shoved, stomped upon, suffocated, and crushed to death, and “those who once fell were never more suffered to rise.” The area was later cleared, after the two men were hung and left to dangle for an hour. When the stream of onlookers dispersed, “there lay nearly one hundred people dead, or in a state of insensibility strewn about the street.” Later, it was determined that the people had died from “compression and suffocation.”

Godwin did not attend these spectacles, but he did correspond with some of the prisoners and even considered visiting one of them. Around the mid-1790s, he wrote to an unnamed prisoner in the Tower of London whom he wanted to possibly see. After some squabbles with those in charge, Godwin reconsidered the visit but kept up his correspondence. The letters themselves seemed to be an effort made to lift the prisoner's mood, but to a man shackled in the fetid cell, the appeal probably came across as an unsympathetic spew of doctrine. For instance, Godwin told the prisoner he hoped this time alone would allow him to “reflect on his error.” Perhaps being imprisoned would let him feel “the beauty of universal benevolence.” He seemed to lack an understanding of why the prisoner felt so embittered and angry.

Though the recipient of Godwin's letters remains unknown, there are two likely candidates who might have stirred his interest at the time. One was the political prisoner John Augustus Bonney. While a prisoner he was also immersed in writing a history of the Tower and all that occurred to him while he was there. At one point, he was transferred to Newgate Prison, though he later returned and continued his writing. But there was also a reverend, John Tooke, who was accused of having been a member of the London Corresponding Society, a political society. Tooke had also been imprisoned in the Tower. He also kept a journal and jotted down a history of the Tower.

Though Godwin wrote to one of these men, he never went to any of the hangings. Instead he secluded himself in his study, and on Sunday afternoons, he held intellectual gatherings in his parlor where his friends, such as the medic Anthony Carlisle, as well as the up-and-coming young natural philosophers of the day, discussed works and ideas that were stirring the public's mind and imagination. One person whose works were being discussed was Humphry Davy.

G
odwin met Davy in early December 1799. They were introduced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had befriended the young scientist not long before. Coleridge had become so enthralled with Davy, he had begun to delve deeper into the mysteries of chemistry. But Coleridge was as interested in learning about chemistry as he was in becoming even closer to Davy.

And this bond had developed because of the poet's desire to get high. In the late 1790s, Humphry Davy had been hired by Thomas Beddoes to work in the newly established Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. Beddoes, a notorious physician who made a living catering to the wealthy of that city, had set up the institution as a place to study the various properties of gases and how their administration on the body could be used to cure various diseases. As it happened, he was in need of an assistant to mind the well-stocked laboratory. Earlier that year, Humphry Davy had become friends with Gregory Watt, son of the famous engineer James Watt, as well as Davies Giddy, who was friendly with Thomas Beddoes. They introduced Davy to Beddoes.

At the Pneumatic Institution, the notion that gases could somehow be linked to the vital powers took root, and Humphry Davy was asked to perform experiments to prove or disprove that link.

Davy realized this was a great opportunity. “Who,” he later wrote, “would not be ambitious of becoming acquainted with the most profound secrets of nature; of ascertaining her hidden operations; and of exhibiting to men that system of knowledge which relates so intimately to their own physical and moral constitution?”

On April 9, 1799, Humphry Davy inhaled sixteen quarts of nitrous oxide gas, commonly referred to as laughing gas. Predictably, the gas worked as a hallucinogenic, and he was so surprised and delighted by the results that he “resolved to breathe the gas for such a time, and in such quantities, as to produce excitement equal in duration and superior in intensity to that accomplished by high intoxication from opium or alcohol.”

In the cocoon of his laboratory, the inhalation of the gas produced the desired effects. “I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas. I theorized; I imagined that I made discoveries . . . ,” Davy later wrote. “My emotions were enthusiastic and sublime . . . As I recovered . . . I felt an inclination to communicate the discoveries I had made during the experiment. I endeavored to recall the ideas . . .
Nothing exists but thoughts! The universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures and pains
.”

As more and more people heard about the institute's and Davy's experiments, the idea of indulging in such feelings of benignity and mental stimulation appealed to a select group of individuals. One of them was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who rushed to Davy straightaway.

Not long after the experiments, Davy left Bristol for the recently founded Royal Institution in London. There, his scientific pursuits and dazzling displays of chemistry quickly earned him a reputation as one of the scientific leaders in London, his lectures always a well-received mixture of the practical and the spectacular. Electricity featured prominently in his lectures, as did the possibility of reanimation.

I
n 1802 Davy delivered a lecture at the Royal Institution that was later published as “Discourse Introductory to a Course of Lectures in Chemistry.” In it, he described the latest findings about man's ability to conquer nature, and about the so-called vital powers.

Davy had argued that chemistry had “given to him an acquaintance with the different relations of the parts of the external world; and more than that, it [had] bestowed upon him powers which may be almost called creative; which have enabled him to modify and change beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power.”