Claire Clairmont
Student Project: Biography of Claire Clairmont. Copyright 2007 Michelle Carlisle.
Claire Clairmont: Daughter of Romance
Clara Jane Clairmont was born in 1798 to Mary Jane Vial Clairmont. It is suspected that her parents were never married, but Mary Jane changed her name to mask the illegitimacy of her children. In 1801, Mary Jane Clairmont married William Godwin, who had been married to Mary Wollstonecraft until her death in 1797. The marriage created a household with 4 children: Fanny, Charles, Mary, and Clara Jane. Fanny was the child of Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay, left in the care of William Godwin. Mary Godwin was the last child of the late Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Charles and Clara Jane were brought into the household by their mother Mary Jane Clairmont, the new Mrs. Godwin. The three girls were raised together, with Charles at boarding school for several years. The girls lived under the late Mary Wollstonecraft a model of what they should aspire to be. They were educated mainly by their father. Despite Wollstonecraft’s strong presence, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin did not strictly adhere to her teachings when raising their three daughters. |
Claire Clairmont: 1798-1879 by Amelia Curran. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
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In 1812, a young and enthusiastic Percy Bysshe Shelley befriended the Godwin girls. He left a few months later only to return in 1814, where he pursued a relationship with the 16-year-old Mary. Mr. and Mrs. Godwin disapproved of the relationship, prompting a pregnant Mary and Percy to depart for France in secret on July 28, 1814. Clara Jane accompanied them. Clara Jane was won over by the couple’s cause of free love, and refused to go home. It was during this time that she dropped her childhood name Jane and became known as Claire. In the spring of 1816, she became infatuated with British poet Lord Byron. Claire told him that she believed in nature and detested marriage; basically offering him guilt-free sexual relations. Her sexual freedom and passion resulted in early pregnancy, a pregnancy that Claire, Mary and Percy Shelley went to great lengths to conceal from her London circle and her family. This secret, among other things, once prevented them from allowing a distressed Fanny Godwin into their house, and shortly thereafter she was found to have committed suicide by overdosing on laudanum. Claire made a habit of writing letters and attempting correspondence with Byron. He later told Claire that only a dreadful girl from a heathen background would have offered him her virginity. Byron was cold and unsupportive; Claire would eventually look back upon herself as the ‘victim’ of ten minutes of happy passion. Their child, Clara Allegra, was born in 1817. Claire felt as though Byron could better care for Allegra, and so delivered her to Byron in Italy one year later. Byron accepted the child but refused to see Claire. To Claire’s regret, he also required that she maintain her distance from the child. Lord Byron discouraged Claire’s intellectual aspirations, and that may be one reason that her work has never been fully acknowledged. He completely dismissed Claire’s novel “The Ideot,” a story about a young adventurous girl isolated from social conditioning. Byron’s ridicule led Claire to shelve her novel, considering it a failed and detestable piece of writing. Claire lived with Mary and Percy Shelley for several years in her young life. Shelley had a close relationship with Claire; her liveliness and sense of adventure balanced well with Mary’s kindness and gentleness. Claire and Mary moved with Shelley from place to place. Throughout their travels, the sisters took it upon themselves to learn Greek and Latin, read history and literature, and practiced much letter-writing and journal-keeping. In 1820 Claire produced two works which were lost for most of history: a satire on her disgruntled lover Byron called “Hints for Don Juan” and “Letters from Italy.” Claire was also a talented musician: her voice inspired poetry from both Byron and Percy Shelley. At times, it seems that Claire and Shelley were too close for the comfort of Mary, and there is lingering speculation as to whether or not they entertained a romantic relationship. Claire refused marriage several times during her young life. She had offers to marry several men, including novelist Thomas Love Peacock, steamship engineer Henry Revelry, and the Cornish adventurer Trelawny. In her vow to remain single, Claire rebelled against the societal oppression of women in marriage. Claire soon left the Shelleys at the grace of Lady Mount Cashell, or Mrs. Mason. She traveled to Florence, where she entered the household of physician Dr. Antonio Boiti. She gained work experience teaching English to Boiti’s German mother-in-law. At this time, Claire once again tried to convince Byron that she was worthy of visiting her daughter, Allegra. Instead, Byron placed the four-year-old girl at a convent in Bangacavallo, intending her to stay there until she was sixteen. Much to Claire’s dismay, Byron ignored her letters and pleas to put Allegra in a different establishment. Claire was haunted by premonitions of Allegra’s death. Soon thereafter, in 1822, Allegra died. Tragically, Percy Shelley drowned in the Bay of Spezia that following July. A despondent Claire departed for Vienna, where she was to teach English alongside her brother, Charles. Unfortunately, she was refused a teaching license and told to leave Austria because of her ties with the radical Shelley and Godwin. Claire grew very thin and frail, and Byron rudely refused Mrs. Mason’s cries for his aid. In need of financial support, Claire moved to Russia in 1822 to become a governess. During her isolation from everything she’d known, she wrote many narratives of sexual surrender, abandonment, and unrequited love. She became a fiercely independent creature, remaking herself out of her deep misfortune. She put Mary Wollstonecraft’s views on education into practice, echoing her desire to help a student learn from her own ability to reason. Yet in 1832, misfortune struck again. Apparently Mrs. Godwin had run into one of Claire’s Russian colleagues who was visiting London. In their conversation, Mrs. Godwin revealed her daughter’s troubled past – including her associations with radicals and her illegitimate child. Claire’s reputation as a teacher in Russia was ruined. Soon after, she returned to Pisa to live with Mrs. Mason, whom she viewed as a second mother. There, she taught the English Bennets and lived with the Tighes with whom she found companionship. Claire wrote many amusing letters throughout her life, 190 of which survive and are published in The Clairmont Correspondence (1995). Mary Shelley thought Claire’s notes to be matchlessly charming. Indeed, Claire’s talent is exposed in her writing. While Claire was very closely tied to famous Romantic figures like her sister Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, she was also an intelligent, independent thinker in her own right; perhaps she has received too little attention for her work and contributions to Romanticism. She lived independently into old age and died in Florence at the age of 81. The inscription on her tombstone reads, “She passed her life in sufferings, expiating not only her faults, but also her virtues.” - by Michelle Carlisle Bibliography |
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