Jane Austen – Frankenstein Diaries: Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley

Mrs Godwin (?) Portrait at Chawton House

On a recent visit to Chawton House in Hampshire England, most familiarly known for its connection to Jane Austen, I came across this portrait. The Chawton House library has obtained a collection of the writings of early woman travel writers, referred to as The Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing, 1600–1830, including Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.

This oil on canvas original painting hangs in an upper hallway. One might expect it to be in the National Portrait Gallery or some other vaunted institution of collection, but you have to go to Hampshire to see it. A card below the painting asks, “Could this be Mary Wollstonecraft?” Two cards provide its uncertain provenance and clues.

“Portrait of a lady said to be Mrs. Godwin, née Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) Attributed to George Beare (1725-1749) Oil on Canvas 1792 (?)”

“Is this Mary Wollstonecraft, famous women’s rights writer. The answer remains a mystery. At auction, it was attributed to George Beare and said to be ‘Mrs Godwin, authoress, 1792’ (as per a faint inscription on the front). She does not closely resemble the known portrait by John Opie and George Beare died 10 years before Wollstonecraft was born.”

“Her ‘mob cap’ is characteristic of the late 1780s, so it is unlikely that George Beare painted it. Another label on the back attributes it to John Downman RA, a plausible possibility as he was working in London at this time.”

I agree that the subject of the portrait bears little resemblance to any known likenesses of Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. But it does seem to bear a resemblance to someone else in the Godwin household. I’ll let you be the judge.

The attribution to George Beare I think can easily be dismissed, while John Downman, who was a prolific painter of portraits, in admittedly different styles, could be accurate. But what of the reference “said to be Mrs Godwin, authoress, 1792 (?).” What if it is indeed Mrs Godwin, however not the first, but the second, Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin, Mary Shelley’s stepmother?

If the date of 1792 is correct, this is negative evidence, as Mary Jane Clairmont was of no notoriety at that time. But if the other characteristics are considered, perhaps the date (?) is off.

In the portrait, she is holding a book in her hands, clearly suggesting her connection to writing, or publishing. Of the precious little we know of Mary Jane Clairmont’s physical look, is that her daughter had brown hair, and a brief comment in Mary Shelley’s History of a Six Weeks Tour, a French hotel page referred to her as “a fat lady’. How he may have meant that is open to interpretation, but the woman in the portrait is not slight or thin.

After her marriage to William Godwin in 1801, four years after the death of Wollstonecraft, the Godwins opened their publishing business, The M.J. Godwin Juvenile Library. The business first opened in 1805 off Oxford Street and relocated to 41 Skinner Street in 1807, registered in her name. William Godwin was well known in the literati circle, for his writing and his philosophical bent, but his wife was now a London publisher. They published the Swiss Family Robinson (1816) and other works that came to some prominence, including the Charles and Mary Lamb’s volumes of Shakespear. Though the business struggled later, in the years of its beginning must have been of some notoriety. Mary Jane Godwin was an editor and nominal writer on her own, so a reference to “authoress” is not out of line, or connected to a mistaken identification as Wollstonecraft.

It would seem quite natural that an artist like Downman might be persuaded to paint the wife of a prominent London literary figure like Godwin and a formidable person on her own. And in the first decade of the Juvenile Library, the money for a portrait paid by the business earnings seems reasonable.

If this were indeed M. J. Godwin and not Mary Wollstonecraft the date would likely be around 1806 to 1812. This could easily be within the timeframe John Downman was in London, presenting his works in exhibits. The “mob cap” for older women was still in style into the 1820s with added lace popular beginning around 1800. The cap in this portrait appears to have lace as a prominent feature of its fashionable design and the proud dress of the middle-class is unlike the more egalitarian simple style of Wollstonecraft.

Mrs Godwin ? Mystery Portrait Comparison

Comparison of “Mrs Godwin” at Chawton House and two known portraits of Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie

For the other “evidence” we would have to rely on the visual. If we look at the portrait in question in comparison to the known portraits of Wollstonecraft, painted by John Opie, one painted within a year of Wollstonecraft’s death in childbirth, said by Mary to be painted while she was pregnant with her, they look wholly different. If we then compare the painting of “Mrs Godwin” with the known portrait of Claire Clairmont, the resemblance is striking, while the quality of the Clairmont portrait is somewhat less.

Comparison of “Mrs Godwin” at Chawton House to Claire Clairmont

Is this comparison conclusive? Clearly not, and as mysterious as the question of its being Wollstonecraft, it seems to me well within the realm of possibility that a “lost” portrait of Mary Jane Vail Godwin née Clairmont, London publisher, editor and step-mother of Mary Shelley, authoress of Frankenstein, has lain misidentified for two centuries. You be the judge.

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Jane Austen and Mary Shelley An interesting question, as these two most prominent women authors who have survived in popularity to today were being published as contemporaries. There is no known record or mention of one another in their writings and they were not in the same public circles. But it is a tantalizing question anyway.

Mary Shelley recorded most of what she read in her diaries, and there is nothing regarding anything of Austen. She occasionally lists “read novel” without further comment, either having no effect on her, or not taking them seriously. Shelley’s recorded interest in reading tended much more to the classical and philosophical, than the popular. And they were almost polar opposites in life experience and artistic sensibility. Austen came from a country life and wrote of themes of obtaining a good marriage and keeping a good name, in a comedic tone. Mary Shelley spent her formative life in a city environment surrounded by radical philosophers and her work was intellectual and dark, with tragedy at its core.

Yet, there are intersections of commonalities. Mary Shelley wrote her famous work when she was eighteen years old and revised it over years. Jane Austen wrote the first drafts of her most prominent works when she was twenty to twenty-two and revised them over years.

Austen began her first novels in the form of a series of letters. Shelley begins Frankenstein as a series of letters. Austen’s parents were from Bath and environs, and she lived there for several years. Mary Shelley’s parents were from Bath and she lived there for several months.

Okay, these are curious intersections, more having to do with the nature of women authors in their times. Could they ever have been in the same society? Austen lived in Bath from 1800 to 1809; Shelley wasn’t a resident until 1816.

Austen was being published in her lifetime beginning in 1811 until 1816. The first publishing of Frankenstein was in March 1818, several months after Austen had died on July 18, 1817. But yet, there are some connections where, if not encountering in person, they could have been aware of one another. Beginning with that summer trip of 1814 to France and Switzerland, Mary’s diaries made a fairly precise record of what she read daily, even in the circumstances of the greatest tragedies, but what she was reading before that is not detailed, and she was an ardent reader.

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility first appeared in October 1811, published by Thomas Egerton. It had favorable reviews and the novel became fashionable among the young aristocratic class and the first edition sold out. And like Mary Shelley, it was first published anonymously. Pride and Prejudice followed in January 1813, was widely advertised, and sold well. Mary Shelley was the daughter of publishers and surrounded by writers. She was beginning her early attempts at writing at least by 1812. Surely she must have been aware of a successful authoress, though her peers may have looked down on work like Austen’s. The kind of societal focus on marriage central to her stories was the philosophical opposite of Mary’s father’s ideas. Even Austen’s most formative works included a satirical sendup of the kind of historical biography William Godwin was writing, though he would not have seen it. While William Godwin himself did read an Austen work, mentioned by him well after her death.

After Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park came out in May of 1814, at about the time Mary and Percy Shelley were becoming involved and her step-sister Jane (Claire) was taking an avid interest in the fashions of the time. Austen’s third novel was not-so-well reviewed but sold out. Austen’s writings became popular enough that the Prince Regent was counted as a fan and reportedly kept a set of her novels at his residences. In mid-1815, Jane Austen changed publishers from Thomas Egerton to John Murray for her anticipated new novel Emma.

Austen had occasion to come to London in November of 1815, when the prince’s librarian, the Rev. James Stanier Clarke, invited her to visit Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s London residence, and hinted Austen should dedicate the forthcoming novel Emma to the Prince. Austen resided at 23 Hans Place in Knightsbridge while in London corresponding with Murray regarding a special limited edition of Emma dedicated to His Royal Highness, to be issued before public distribution of the novel.

Whether she visited the publisher while in London is not recorded, but Murray was well known for his salons of prominent writers gathering for meetings at his 50 Albemarle Street address in Mayfair. It was nearly the epicenter of the London publishing world. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a friend of the Godwins and the Shelleys, was also being published by John Murray II, and William Godwin had many dealings with him as a writer and publishing competitor.

John Murray was the publisher of Lord Byron. The Shelleys became good friends with Bryon the summer of 1816 and on their return to England from Switzerland, Shelley took on the task of supervising the publishing of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Third Canto with Murray. Austen had completed a draft of Persuasion (The Elliots) in July of 1816 with the intention of publishing with Murray but was having financial difficulties with the failure of her brother Henry’s bank in March of 1816.

Austen was dealing with John Murray by correspondence while her brother may have been the conduit of manuscripts, though she very likely did meet the publisher in person, at least enough to write in a letter to her sister Cassandra in October of 1816, “He is a rogue of course, but a civil one.” This was at the same time Shelley was complaining to Murray that he had not been dealing appropriately with the proofs of Childe Harold which Byron had entrusted to him and may have visited Murray that October in London while he was staying in Marlow and meeting with Leigh Hunt.

In 1818, Bryon needed money. His library was valued at £450 and included in the inventory was a 1st edition of Emma, probably given to him by Murray, their common publisher. He was permanently traveling away from England by that time, but published in December of 1815, Bryon would possibly have been aware of it when spending time with the Shelleys in Geneva. And even though it was published with no author name, Murray would possibly have commented privately on the author’s identity to his other client. So, would Lord Byron have discussed the work of a female author with Mary Godwin when she was aspiring to write, especially an author who’s themes on marriage were so antithetical to Mary’s family influences, while she herself was risking her reputation in an unmarried relationship with Shelley?

Austen’s health was failing in 1816. She completed two revision drafts of Persuasion by August of 1816. She began another work, Sanditon, but stopped writing in March of 1817. She died on July 18, 1817 in Winchester. Percy Shelley began submitting the draft of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in note book form to publishers beginning in May of 1817, first offering it to Murray, then to Charles Ollier, both of whom declined to publish. Percy Shelley did not reveal at the time who the author was, only saying it was the work of a friend. It was finally accepted by George Lackington of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, printed in November of 1817 and formally published with anonymous author in March of 1818.

So, did Mary Shelley meet Jane Austen? It’s hard to prove a negative. Could she have been encouraged or inspired by the success of a woman author of her day like Jane Austen? She never mentioned it. Was Jane Austen familiar with Mary’s mother’s writing, Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, when Austen was 17? She never mentioned it.

William Godwin published his memoir about Mary Wollstonecraft, Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798, when Jane Austen was at the height of her creative energy, writing about the fear of loss of reputation when one of the pre-eminent woman authors of the day found her reputation sent her into the dustbin by the resulting scandal of the baring of her affair with Gilbert Imlay and illegitimate birth of her daughter. There is some suggestion that an acquaintance of Jane Austen’s father was a friend of the Wollstonecraft family, and the salacious scandal of the daughter of the eminent author and radical philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, eloping with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a friend of the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron could not have escaped her. But she never mentioned it. After all, it was far from Austen’s country world of polite manners, and probably best not to mention it.

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