The Shelley Kids

This article is part of an exploration of Frankenstein or The Modern Day Prometheus and it’s author Mary Shelley by The FrankenPod (A Frankenstein Podcast).

Top image: Nerijus Navickas [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Percy Bysshe Shelley was married twice in his short lifetime. He had two children, Ianthe and Charles from his doomed marriage with Harriet and four children with Mary, only one of which survived into adulthood. But what happened to these kids that came from one of the most discussed tragedies of the romantic movement. Prepare yourself for a lot of child death, it’s going to get grim.

 

 

Ianthe Shelley

Ianthe Elizabeth Shelley

Daughter of Harriet and Percy

Born: 28th of June, 1813, Middlesex, London, England

Died: 16th of June 1876, Gloucestershire, England

Commonly called Eliza, Ianthe married Sir Edward Jefferies Esdaile. Harriet left her some of Percy’s rough draft notebooks later referred to as “The Esdaile Notebooks”. There is also a book of Percy’s Sonnets addressed to her.

She had six children, one of which is listed as being born after Ianthe’s death on geni which is weird, not sure what is happening there. Her children were named; Ianthe Harriet, Eliza Margaret, Charles Edward Jefferies, William, Mary Emily Sydney, Una Dean (which is the one that is mysteriously born after her death? I think it might be an estimate. If anyone knows what is going on here please get in touch thefrankenpod@gmail.com)

 

Charles Shelley

Born: 12th (?) of November 1814

Died: Struck by lightning in 1826?

I can’t find any corroboration for the lightning, he would have been 12. He did however have tuberculosis so it is more likely he succumbed to that. Both Charles and Ianthe were in the care of their maternal family after their mother’s suicide.

 

Clara Shelley

Daughter of Percy and Mary

Born in 1815, died at 13 days old

 

William Shelley By Amelia Curran (1775-1849) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

William Shelley

Son of Percy and Mary

Born: 24th of January 1816

Died: 2nd of January 1819

Named after his grandfather, William Godwin, William travelled with his parents from the moment he was born. He was present at the holiday by Lake Geneva. He had the nickname Willmouse and in a time of high infant mortality was doing pretty well, until he contracted cholera in Italy. He died aged 2. There seem to be similarities between Willmouse and William, the younger brother of Frankenstein who is the creature’s first murder victim.

 

Clara Everina Shelley

Daughter of Percy and Mary

Born: 14th of May 1817

Died: 24th September 1818

Clara died as an infant whilst the family was travelling.

 

 Elena Adelaide Shelley

Daughter of Percy and “Marina Padurin”

Referred to by Shelley as his “Neopolitan ward”

Born: 27th of December 1818

Died: 10th of June 1820

The details of this baby girl are somewhat of a mystery, some claim she was Claire Clairmont’s baby (Mary Shelley’s sister), others claim that she was adopted by Shelley in a perhaps misguided attempt to distract Mary from the death of her children.  There is a further theory that perhaps she was the daughter of Percy and the Shelley family nursemaid Elise Fogg. Elena was left in the care of an Italian family and died a year and a half later.

 

Percy Florence Shelley

Born: 12th of November 1818

Died: 5th of November 1889

Percy Florence Shelley deserves a whole post of his own as he was largely responsible for Mary’s legacy after her death and his influence had shaped contemporary understandings of her authorship in much the same way a Charlotte Brontë “preserved” her family legacy. So we will come back to him at a later date.

See page for author [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography

References

geni_family_tree. (2018). Ianthe Elizabeth Esdaile. [online] Available at: https://www.geni.com/people/Ianthe-Esdaile/6000000018078868508 [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].

Knarf.english.upenn.edu. (2018). Harriet Shelley. [online] Available at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/People/hshelley.html [Accessed 26 Feb. 2018].

Knarf.english.upenn.edu. (2018). Percy Bysshe Shelley. [online] Available at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/pshelley.html [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].

Knarf.english.upenn.edu. (2018). William Shelley. [online] Available at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/People/wshelley.html [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].

Wikitree.com. (2018). Ianthe Eliza (Shelley) Esdaile (1814-1876) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree. [online] Available at: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Shelley-562 [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].

Bysshes Love Poetry – Percy Bysshe Shelley

This article is part of The FrankenPod‘s (A Frankenstein Podcast) continued exploration of Frankenstein and its author Mary Godwin/Mary Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born: 4th of August, 1792 in Sussex, England

Died: 18th of July 1822, by drowning in Lerici, Italy

Percy Bysshe Shelley is a strange and even a little elusive character; not destructive like Byron, but certainly not without his own brand of violence and willfulness. Elusive actually is probably a fair assessment, he is only elusive in the same way that most of us are, in that we can’t really guess at his motivation for many of the actions he takes, some of which seem totally inexplicable.

The young Percy was born into a family of means and went to Syon House Academy in London for his early education where he showed a particular interest in science, and a violent response to bullying. This may have planted the seed that lead to the poet pushing back against all forms of control and governance, which he saw as a form of bullying, for the rest of his life³. This anti authoritative streak inevitably drew him to the great antiestablishment thinker of his time, the often anarchsitic writer and philosopher, William Godwin (The father of Mary Godwin, later Shelley). But before we end up at William Godwin’s residence in The Polygon we must first address the often pushed aside figure in this story¹:

Ianthe Shelley

Harriet Westbrook/Shelley

Harriet Westbrook was born on the 1st of August 1795. She was intellegent, witty and the daughter of a coffee house owner in Grosvener Square². Harriet forged a friendship with Shelley’s younger sister Helen, and the match appears to have been encouraged, at least by the Westbrook’s as a marraige between the two would mean an elevation in class for their daughter². The two eloped to Scotland when Harriet was 16 and Percy, 19. The legality of the marraige was dubious so they remarried 3 years later. They had two children, Charles and Ianthe together, but not long after the birth of their first child Percy began disappearing for long periods of time. Supported by her family, and given financial support from Percy, the rapid and messy separation did not leave her financially destitute, but emotionally the whole ideal had caused a great deal of distress and trauma. This grief, for grief we must call it, was intensified when Percy and Mary ran off together. There is talk of her taking a lover, and it is documented that she took lodging away from her family as she had become pregnant again, this time out of wedlock.

At some stage after this, still pregnant, in 1816, the year of the events in the Villa Diodati, she wrote emotional farewell letters to her family, and drowned herself in the Serpentine River.

I think we’ll end this post here with the death of Harriet Shelley nee Westbrook and pick up on Percy’s narrative another time, because this tragedy is too often glossed over.

At what cost do we have Frankenstein in the form Mary wrote it?

It’s certainly not worth the life of a 21 year old, who never asked to be part of this romantic tragedy in the first place.

References

1. Knarf.english.upenn.edu. (2018). Percy Bysshe Shelley. [online] Available at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/pshelley.html [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].
2. Knarf.english.upenn.edu. (2018). Harriet Shelley. [online] Available at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/People/hshelley.html [Accessed 26 Feb. 2018].
3. Bieri, J., 2004. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography: Youth’s Unextinguished Fire, 1792-1816 (Vol. 1). University of Delaware Press.
4. Featured image: Percy Bysshe Shelley by Amelia Curran- National Portrait Gallery: NPG 1234