A Six Week Tour

“Some say that gleams of a remoter world

Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber,

And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber

Of those who wake and live.”

Extract from ‘Mary Shelley: The Making of A Monster’ by Isabella Shure

It was Mary’s idea to travel through an area of France where, just a few months before, war had ravaged the land.

They could just have easily made their to Switzerland by a more pleasant and comfortable route, but Mary wasn’t thinking of this as a honeymoon. The opportunity to see at first-hand how Napoleon had ravaged a great nation and squandered the promise of the revolution was too good to miss.

The escape from England had been dreamed up initially as Percy’s typically headstrong reaction to censure by London polite society and, more particularly, criticism and loud protestation from Mary’s father. It was also a golden opportunity for Percy to have his way with Mary (and with Clare, Mary’s half-sister, if he could) undisturbed by any authority that might frown upon his sexual proclivities.

Like every other young man with a poetic mind and a raging libido, Shelley had read Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’ and understood the rumours about what the mad, bad lord has been able to get up to on the Continent.  Percy may have sold the idea of an elopement to Mary as a chance to see the world, to live like free artists and create great literature, but his underlying motives for wishing to live on the Continent were almost certainly based on his desire for freedom of quite another kind.

Mary’s journals show how deeply she was in love with Shelley and would do anything for him. But she also had high-minded thoughts about living a more independent life as a free-thinking woman.

It’s no coincidence that she packed her mother’s own travelogue ‘Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark’ in her luggage. Mary Wollstonecraft’s eclectic and emotional book, written soon after not one but two suicide attempts, is not just a series of reflections about her travels throughout Scandinavia but is also a deep dive into the self and society, encompassing thoughts about nature, the liberation and education of women, the insidious effects of commerce, prison reform and much more.

“The art of travel is only a branch of the art of thinking,” Wollstonecraft wrote.

It’s very likely that her daughter Mary took this to heart when planning her own romantic adventure. By entering France so soon after the defeat of Napolean and his exile to Elba, she was dreaming of being one of the first English writers to visit the battlefields and produce a powerful and convincing anti-war treatise based on documentary evidence of the unconscionable acts of violence committed by both sides.

Mary and Percy had always been energetic anti-war protestors, seeing the European conflict as yet another example of how the levers of commerce and political power were being manipulated by the ruling class in order to cow and suppress the general populace.

But just like Byron, there was a part of Percy that sneakily admired Napoleon for his ambition, his authority, his reach, his charisma. For Mary, Napoleon was just another powerful man whose imperial values ran counter to Mary’s dream of a republic in which women were not just treated equally but could rise to take leading roles in society.

She had only just escaped the advances of her over-bearing and controlling father (and rescued her half-sister from his clutches at the same time). She was not about to spend her time writing eulogies to another archetypal male dictator.

Instead, she dragged Percy and Clare to the sites of Napoleon’s final desperate battles – to Guignes where Bonaparte’s doomed campaign was planned; to Provins, site of intense fighting between the French and the Austrian army; to Nogent where the Cossack army committed unspeakable war crimes over many days; to the villages of St Aubin and Echimine, laid so low by the fighting that virtually no buildings were left standing and the local citizens were reduced to living like rats.

Perhaps Mary might have had more time to write down her impressions of war-torn France if Percy had not strained his ankle quite early in the journey, requiring him to be fussed over mightily and dragged along the route on the back of mule.

Clare was no help, constantly finding everything to be ‘picturesque’ and ‘the prettiest place I’ve ever been’ as she mooned over derelict barns, broken trees and charred empty fields. She was only sixteen and ecstatic to be away from home and close to Percy. Under his tutelage, Clare was beginning to learn that there was something about the romantic imagination that rather liked ruined landscapes. The war didn’t so much appal her as light her adolescent fire.

Mary must have been somewhat disappointed to find her fellow-travellers were not suitably horrified by what they were finding. It also can’t have escaped Mary’s notice that Percy was sharing his affections quite freely between her and Clare. After all, the three of them slept together in single rooms (and sometimes barns) most of the time they were abroad. What went on between the three of them can only be guessed at. But it must have detracted from Mary’s more serious literary intentions.

The trip in the end turned out to be a wasted opportunity. After just a few weeks the money had run out and the three supposedly care-free spirits were having to contemplate returning to London, where both Mary’s father and Percy’s wife lay in wait.

On top of that, the worst had happened for a woman who had aspirations to be an independent artist. Mary was pregnant. Yet again, a wild bid for freedom had only led to more constraint and lack of opportunity. Mary knew that a baby would always take her away from her work. She wanted children but not at any cost. And she was deeply anxious about what her father’s reaction would be to the news.