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For the last time: Mary Shelley and Lord Byron were friends. She didn’t hate him. His death was a very painful loss to her. She didn’t write Frankenstein because she was stuck in a house with him and he was an unbearable person. For God’s sake, just read her journals and letters.
Also, Mary Shelley’s journal entry about his death might be one of the saddest things I’ve ever read:
May 15.—This then was the coming event that cast its shadow on my last night’s miserable thoughts. Byron had become one of the people of the grave—that miserable conclave to which the beings I best loved belong. I knew him in the bright days of youth, when neither care nor fear had visited me—before death had made me feel my mortality, and the earth was the scene of my hopes. Can I forget our evening visits to Diodati? our excursions on the lake, when he sang the Tyrolese Hymn, and his voice was harmonised with winds and waves. Can I forget his attentions and consolations to me during my deepest misery?—Never.
Beauty sat on his countenance and power beamed from his eye. His faults being, for the most part, weaknesses, induced one readily to pardon them.
Albé—the dear, capricious, fascinating Albé—has left this desert world! God grant I may die young! A new race is springing about me. At the age of twenty-six I am in the condition of an aged person. All my old friends are gone, I have no wish to form new. I cling to the few remaining; but they slide away, and my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world. “Life is the desert and the solitude—how populous the grave”—and that region—to the dearer and best beloved beings which it has torn from me, now adds that resplendent spirit whose departure leaves the dull earth dark as midnight.
Thank you! God, I see this all the time- people, Mary didn’t hate Byron just because you want her to have! In fact, she was probably one of the very few people he was ever a good person to! He is the one who made sure she got Percy’s heart when Percy’s girlfriend wanted to take it!
Discussion ¬