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Updated: June 1, 2025
During this summer he saw a great deal of the Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne's son by a previous marriage, Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelley conceived a project of helping him build a steamer which should ply between Leghorn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and the pecuniary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family.
At six o'clock on Sunday morning, the 10th, he was obliged to summon Godwin, who had retired for a few hours' sleep, to his wife's bedside. At twenty minutes before eight the same morning, Mary died. H. W. Reveley, son of the Mrs. Reveley who was Godwin's great friend. His account is as follows: "When Mrs.
Reveley says Mary was out of danger was that on which Godwin was asking her for final instructions about her children, so sure were the physicians that her end was near. Mr. Reveley was very young at the time. His observations were not written until he was quite an old man. It would not be unlikely, then, that his memory played him false in this particular.
Godwin was confined of her daughter, the late Mary Shelley, she was very ill; and my mother, then Mrs. Reveley, was constantly visiting her until her death, eight days after her confinement. I was often there with my mother, and I saw Mrs. Godwin the day before her death, when she was considered much better and quite out of danger. Her death was occasioned by a dreadful fright, in this manner.
She had, by her struggles and sufferings, acquired what she calls in her "Rights of Women" a physionomie. Even Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, hard as life had gone with them, had never approached the depth of misery which she had fathomed. The eventful meeting took place in the month of January, 1796, shortly after Mary had returned from her travels in the North.
Reveley, proposed within a month after her husband's death, and begged her to set aside prejudices and cowardly ceremonies and be his. As in the previous case, a second and a third lengthy letter, full of subtle reasoning, were ineffectual, and did not even bring about an interview till December 3rd, when Godwin and Mrs. Reveley met, in company with Mr. Gisborne. To this gentleman Mrs.
He really had at one time thought of making Amelia Alderson his wife, but this, for some unrecorded reason, proving an impossibility, he calmly dismissed the suggestion from his mind and continued the friend he had been before. Had Mrs. Reveley been single he might have allowed himself to love her, as he did later, when he was a widower and she a widow.
Reveley, who had with her the children before the mother's death, continued her care till they returned to the father on the 17th. Mrs. Fenwick, who had been in constant attendance on Mary, then took care of them for a time. Indeed, Mary's fame and character brought forward many willing to care for the motherless infant, whose life was only saved from a dangerous illness by this loving zeal.
The majority of her acquaintances, knowing that her intentions were pure, though her actions were opposed to accepted ideals of purity, were brave enough to regulate their behavior to her by their convictions. Beautiful Mrs. Reveley was as much moved as Mrs. Inchbald when she heard the news of Godwin's marriage, but her friendship was formed in a finer mould. Mrs.
Reveley was afterwards married. We shall meet them both again later on. All this time there is little though affectionate mention of Mary Godwin in her father's diary. Little Fanny, who had always been a favourite, used to accompany Godwin on some of his visits to friends.
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