A Cambridge graduate has stumbled across an unpublished 19th-century memoir that burns with resentment at Byron and Shelley as "monsters of lying, meanness, cruelty and treachery". Dr Daisy Hay discovered the memoir while she was researching using the New York City Public library's Pforzheimer Collection, one of the world's biggest and most well-respected Shelley archives.
An elderly Miss Clairmont hoped her memoir would be a lesson to others and show "what evil passion free love assured, what tenderness it dissolves; how it abused affections that should be the solace and balm of life, into a destroying scourge."
But as a 17-year-old, Clairmont fully embraced the concept of free love. She had briefly captivated Byron with her wit, intelligence (she spoke 5 languages) and black eyes. She was hungry for social recognition and wanted to capture the attention and affection of the already incredibly famous, sexually self-indulgent, married Lord Byron (his wife Annabella coined the term "Byromania" to refer to the commotion surrounding him - their marriage lasted one year).
Dr Jane Stabler, a reader in Romanticism at the University of St Andrews, states that Bryon, like today's Hollywood star, was preoccupied with his image (he even wore paper curlers in his hair to bed). He requested that reviews from Europe be sent to him and was deeply affected by what was written about him. Stabler said: "He was absolutely fascinated by his own reception and the way he was perceived. He even mingled his poetry with his own self-creation. He pretended not to care about his reader while at the same time making huge efforts to keep track of what his readers thought about him." But he had no long-term interest in relationships.
After the birth of their daughter, Allegra (when Clairmont was 18), Byron ignored Clairmont, asking her to stop writing to him, and refusing her access to Allegra. The poet then sent their daughter to a convent where she died aged five. Clairmont held Byron entirely responsible for the loss of their daughter and hated him for the rest of her life.
The memoir also sheds some light on the odd relationship between Miss Clairmont and Percy and Mary Shelley. Shelley abandoned his 19 year-old pregnant wife and child and ran away to Europe with Mary, then 16, inviting her stepsister Claire Clairmont along "for company". At the age of 19 in 1816, Mary Shelley married Percy Bysshe Shelley. (One year prior to their nuptials, Marry Shelley gave birth to their premature daughter, Clara, who died at birth.)
Mary Shelley wrote the novel "Frankenstein"
Clairmont was in her 70s and a Catholic convert (although she had openly despised the religion earlier in her life) when she wrote her memoir, releasing her bitterness through language that is eloquent but violent, with furious deletions and amendments covering the three-page manuscript.
So We'll Go No More A Roving by Lord Byron
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the hearth must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the days return too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
Love's Philosophy by Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by law divine
In one another's being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?
Beautiful words, don't you agree?
