Outcasts Read online

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley

  (1797-1851)

  Posthumous miniature (c. 1857)

  by Reginald Easton.

  National Portrait Gallery, London.

  Outcasts: A Novel of Mary Shelley © 2016 by Sarah Stegall

  A note on the edition cited throughout: Except where noted, all quotations are from the first edition of Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. Though the 1831 edition, heavily revised by Mary, is more commonly known, the concern in this novel is with the story Mary began in 1816.

  Cover image: “The Creature,” line drawing by William Blake, 1791.

  All images used in Outcasts are in the public domain in the United States: 1. All were first published outside the United States. 2. All were first published before 1978 without complying with U.S. copyright formalities. 3. All were in the public domain in their home country on the URAA date.

  ISBN: 978-1-60940-516-8 (paperback original)

  E-books:

  ePub: 978-1-60940-517-5

  Mobipocket/Kindle: 978-1-60940-518-2

  Library PDF: 978-1-60940-519-9

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  Wings Press books are distributed to the trade by Independent Publishers Group • www.ipgbook.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stegall, Sarah.

  Outcasts: A Novel of Mary Shelley / Sarah Stegall. Historical fiction.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-60940-516-8 (trade pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60940-517-5 (epub ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-60940-518-2 (Mobipocket ebook) --ISBN 978-1-60940-519-9 (pdf ebook)

  1. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851--Fiction. 2. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851. Frankenstein. 3. Romanticism--England--History--19th century--Fiction. 4. England--Social life and customs--19th century--Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Biographical. | FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction.

  PS3619.T4478 O94 2016

  813/.6--dc23

  2016004202

  Contents

  Preface: The Emotional Roots …

  Part One: June 14, 1816

  I.

  The Famous Daughter

  II.

  Outcasts

  III.

  Fanny’s Letter

  IV.

  Eavesdropping

  V.

  Domestic Interior

  VI.

  Mary Writes to Her Father

  VII.

  Shelley Learns the Truth

  VIII.

  Dinner at Byron’s

  IX.

  Shelley’s Experiment

  X.

  The Storm

  XI.

  Re-animation

  XII.

  Gallery

  XIII.

  Utilitarianism

  XIV.

  Brides and Lovers

  Part Two: June 15, 1816

  XV.

  Polidori the Gossip

  XVI.

  Sailing to Geneva

  XVII.

  Polly Buys a Watch

  XVIII.

  The Rake

  XIX.

  God and Man

  XX.

  The Taunt

  XXI.

  Targets

  XXII.

  Ada and Augusta

  XXIII.

  Childe Harold

  XXIV.

  Ambush

  XXV.

  Claire’s Fury

  XXVI.

  The Somnambulist

  Part Three: June 16, 1816

  XXVII.

  The New Man

  XXVIII.

  The Feast of Reason

  XXIX.

  The Challenge

  XXX.

  Byron Refuses

  XXXI.

  Principles

  XXXII.

  Nightmare

  XXXIII.

  Frankenstein is Born

  XXXIV.

  Epilogue

  Family Tree

  Family Gallery

  About the Author

  Preface

  The Emotional Roots of Frankenstein

  The publishers of the Standard Novels, in selecting Frankenstein for one of their series, expressed a wish that I should furnish them with some account of the origin of the story. I am the more willing to comply, because I shall thus give a general answer to the question so very frequently asked me: “How I, then a young girl, came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea?”

  —Introduction to Frankenstein, or,

  The Modern Prometheus, 1831 Edition

  Context is everything. Countless works have explored the scientific and historical roots of one of the most enduring and influential novels ever written, but few of them have explored the psychological or emotional roots of Frankenstein. We know about the science of the time, the advances in chemistry and biology, the raging debates on mesmerism, vitalism, magnetism, the fascination with electricity. We know about the social revolutions that accompanied the political revolutions in America and France, movements that fired Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her cohorts with ideas about perfectibility. But it is not 18th century science that has kept the book in print for 200 years, but rather the profound insight into human nature that the Creature, and even Victor, present us with.

  Victor Frankenstein has been depicted as a rogue, a mad scientist, or a colossal fool. I think Mary Shelley saw him as a deadbeat dad, a man who usurped unto himself not the prerogative of God, but the role of woman, and attempted to create life. But having done so, he rejects his Creature, abandoning it and trying to run away. One need not look far to discover the well of frustration, longing and alienation from which a high-spirited eighteen-year-old author drew what she later called her “horrid progeny.” There was the cold and distant father who rejected her, the society which spurned her for her lifestyle, her sister’s lover, who deserted his child. There was her brilliant and eccentric lover, who had turned his back on convention and society as it turned its back on him. As romantic as their lifestyle may have seemed to Mary, it must have dawned on her that there were flaws in their paradise of equals.

  When we think of 1816, many of us think of Regency romances, Jane Austen, the end of the long Napoleonic Wars. The Regency was soon followed by the stricter Victorian Age, with its repression, conventionality, and hypocrisy. Mary and her friends were, if anything, the hippies of 1816. Free love, radical politics, and the rejection of conventional religion characterized their every choice. Fiercely rebelling against the increasingly repressive establishment culture, Mary, Shelley and their friends sought a refuge in the democratic republic of Switzerland, there to live in communal sexual and political freedom, for at least a few weeks.

  But it was not the sunny refuge they longed for.

  In fact, 1816 was the “Year Without a Summer.” The lingering atmospheric effects of the explosion of the volcano Tambora in Indonesia brought on the coldest summer in European memory. It was the beginning of a three-year climate catastrophe that led to massive crop failures and widespread famine. While Mary and her friends confronted the realities of a lifestyle at odds with convention, sorting out the sexual politics of living against the grain, the weather was nothing but terrific thunderstorms, fiery sunsets, and dark, stormy nights. On such a night, by a deep, dark lake while the thunder rolled like the voice of doom, the idea of Frankenstein was born.

  —Sarah Stegall

  Part One:

  June 14, 1816

  Chapter I - The Famous Daughter

  In my education my father had taken
the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit.

  —Frankenstein, Volume I, Chapter III

  Small and quiet, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin stood at the window overlooking Lake Geneva, called by some Lake Leman, and looked out over the misty afternoon. Here and there, sunlight shafted through a break in the clouds, picking out a wave top, a soaring bird, even a fleeting glimpse of Geneva across the water. White sails bellying in the breeze, a small boat bounced over a wave, came about slightly to the left, and passed beyond her view.

  It was not them.

  She sighed. Shelley and his friend, Lord Byron, had left that morning to cross the lake to Geneva; it was now mid-afternoon. Even this brief separation from Shelley made her anxious and restless.

  Her son squirmed in her arms and she looked down. At six months, William was as fair as his mother and had his father’s lambent blue eyes. He grunted, gasped, and then gave out a wail, pushing at her breast with one small hand.

  “Is he finished?”

  Mary turned. Her step-sister, Claire Clairmont, a few months older than she, lounged across a daybed paging through an old book. She glanced up, her dark eyes half-shut with boredom. “I wish Albé had let me go with them,” she said.

  How odd, thought Mary. In the last few weeks, since meeting the famous poet, they had moved from the formal “Lord Byron” to the use of his initials “LB” to the pseudo-Italianate pun on his initials, “Albé”. Mary adjusted her dress and put William on her shoulder, patting him gently. “I do not wonder at Byron’s reluctance to go anywhere with you, after the scene at dinner the other day.”

  Claire flipped a page so forcefully she nearly tore it. “It is his fault. He treats me like a child.”

  William burped gently but continued to fuss. “I think my milk may be drying up,” Mary said. “I don’t know if I should hire a wet nurse or wean him.”

  Completely uninterested, Claire sighed and turned another page. “All I wanted to do was discuss poetry with him. A perfectly normal conversation between two persons who love one another. Yet he laughed at me, in front of Shelley! And that odious Polidori laughed with him.”

  “Dr. Polidori always echoes Lord Byron’s sentiments,” Mary said, wiping her son’s face. She turned him around into the crook of her arm and stepped close to the wall. The wallpaper displayed a pattern of pink roses on an ivory background. “Look, Will-mouse! Aren’t the roses pretty?” She turned to look over her shoulder at her sister. “Polly can hardly do otherwise, my dear. He is, after all, merely a paid employee.”

  Claire snorted. “In the pay of two masters, no less. Did you know that Murray offered him five hundred pounds to keep a journal of his travels with Albé?” Her hand toyed with a pale green ribbon decorating her yellow sprigged muslin day dress.

  Mary smiled. “Absurd. John Murray is far too conventional a publisher to actually print the escapades of our dear LB.” She frowned. “Is Polly planning to write about you and Byron?”

  Claire shrugged. “I care nothing for what John Polidori writes. Oh, look! Mary, do you remember this?” She turned the book towards Mary, holding it up to show her the illustration. In stark black and white, the image showed two small children lying flat in a bed, with their eyes closed and their arms straight out on either side of their bodies. A high window admitted a sickly yellow light, which fell on the immensely tall figure standing over the bed, looking down at the occupants with a crazed, fearful expression. Its hands were clenched in fists, thrust straight down in front of its body in an attitude of agonized anxiety; the dark shadows in its tousled hair looked almost like devil’s horns. Its gaze was fixed on the occupants of the bed, oblivious to the small dog jumping at its side.

  “That’s my mother’s book,” Mary said.

  Claire nodded, closing the book to show the title: Original Stories for Children, by Mary Wollstonecraft. “Mr. William Blake is a master of the macabre image, don’t you think? Do you remember when that picture used to give us the horrors?”

  Mary patted her son again. “I remember that it gave you the horrors.”

  Her step-sister sniffed. “No need to act so superior, as if you never got them.”

  “But I don’t. I never have.”

  Claire shuddered. “And you are fortunate. To be visited by those deathly visions, to feel the breath of monsters on your face, to writhe in agony—”

  “Nonsense,” Mary said sharply. “’Tis only your own imagination, as I have told you often. Sister, you really must resort to reason. These imaginings are best left in the schoolroom or nursery.”

  “You have no feeling!” Claire said. “Truly, Sister, I do not know how you can support a life based on so … dry an outlook! At least I have an imagination!”

  “Yes, a very melodramatic one.” Annoyed, Mary sat down in her armchair near the window, spreading her white dress around her. She placed William in his cradle beside her chair and began to rock him.

  Claire stood and strode to the window, placing a hand on one of the gold curtains. Without turning, she spoke. “Mary, I must tell you. I … I am enciente.”

  “Jane, you know I don’t speak French well. What do you mean?”

  “My name is Claire! Why can you not remember?”

  Preoccupied with William, Mary said, “I called you Jane for sixteen years! Last year you were Clary. Now you are Claire. What will you be called next week? In any case, I do not quite take your meaning. Did you say you were … ennuye? Bored? The new edition of Galignani’s Messenger is downstairs—”

  “I am with child.” Claire’s tone was firm, but Mary saw that her hand on the curtain trembled.

  Mary took a deep breath. Part of her was shocked—and yet part of her was not. “Surely you are mistaken, my dear! Perhaps you are only late? Or the exertions of our travels—”

  “I have missed my courses.” Claire’s voice wavered a little, but she continued to stare out at the Lake where her lover’s boat bobbed, somewhere in the mist.

  Mary gripped the cradle hard with one hand, a deep foreboding creeping over her. “By a week, at most—”

  “This is the third month I have done so.” Claire turned and looked steadily at her step-sister. Her olive skin flushed as she met Mary’s eyes, and she glanced away.

  “The third? How is this possible, Claire? You have only been sleeping with Lord Byron for three weeks!” Mary felt her skin grow cold. “Unless … not that I am jealous or any such nonsense, or with any idea of exclusivity, still, can it be you have been sleeping with … with Shelley?”

  Claire half-smiled and turned away. “Well, it would be within our philosophy, would it not, dear Mary? But no, I must say that Byron and I first … embraced in London.”

  “In London?” Mary was stunned. “You … when you brought me to meet him … you had already …” Her hands fell to her lap and twined together. “You had already been with him.”

  “Not yet,” Claire said candidly. “Not just then. But thereafter, yes.”

  Mary stared, seeing that rainy day in London three months before, the elegant salon in Picadilly Square, Byron emerging from the shadows with his halting gait and his impish grin, taking her hand. “You used me.” Her voice sounded flat, unlike the roiling in her head, the anger rising in her stomach. “You used me, your own sister.”

  Claire made an impatient gesture. “Is not utility the basis for all conduct? Of course it was no harm to you if he wanted to meet the famous daughter of the famous Mary Wollstonecraft and the famous William Godwin.” Her voice held an edge. “Naturally, I expect you will fall in love with Byron, too. Have you not already?”

  Mary reached for the shawl draped over the arm of her chair and gathered it into her lap. “In love with Byron? No, of course not. He is not … not to my taste.” She drew the white wool over her shoulders, seeking calm, trying to focus beyond her shock.

  Cla
ire tossed her mane of dark curls. “Well, I am not exclusive, even if you are. Despite your claims of freedom in love, you cling to Shelley like ivy to a wall. Whereas I am happy to share, in freedom and love!”

  She used me. “You know I have never traded on my mother’s name.”

  “No, of course not. No need to, when the very mention of it engages the attention of the most famous poet in England!”

  “Jane—Claire, I protest. Was there no other way to win his love, but by bartering my name? My mother’s name? I must declare I think this badly done.”

  “Badly done? Badly done? Are you now turning hypocrite on me, condemning me for what you did yourself?” Claire sneered.

  Mary felt sick at the thought of a scene with Claire. She hated melodrama. “No, I—”

  Claire’s hands balled into fists at her side. “You cannot deny that Shelley wanted to meet you for the sake of your famous name. You will not deny that you traded on that, used it to attract him!”

  Mary’s eyes flashed angrily, but she forced her voice to remain calm. “Not at all, as you know. He came to meet Godwin, not me.”

  “Bad enough that our father has cut off all contact with us because you needs must elope with Shelley. Bad enough we have been harried throughout England, out of England, by Shelley’s debts. Bad enough that I am made to feel like an extra arm or leg, useless and in the way. But now when I have found love, you condemn me? You?” She cast the book into Mary’s lap. “There. Take your sainted mother’s book, your sainted mother who bore your sister Fanny out of wedlock and married Godwin against her own philosophy! I am sick of hearing about her high-mindedness, and from you of all people!”