9. Mary lost all but one of her children. These deaths provoked a pre-existing propensity towards depression.
In all, Mary and Shelley had four children. Sadly, they lost all but the youngest, Percy Florence at a young age. Although each new birth rallied Mary’s spirits, each death pushed her further into despair. By the time of Percy Florence’s birth in November 1819, the Shelley’s had lost not only their first, unnamed daughter but William, who died aged three from a malarial fever which he contracted in Rome. Clara, their second daughter, had died two years earlier, of dysentery just after her first birthday.
After the death of William in 1819, Mary appears to have cut herself off entirely from the world, seeking refuge in her own mind. “After my Williams death, ‘ Mary wrote, “This world seemed only a quicksand beneath my feet.” She was later to tell a friend in Rome, the artist Amelia Curran that “everything on earth has lost its interest to me.” Although he grieved too, Mary’s withdrawal perplexed Shelley. Shortly after William’s death, he wrote the following bewildered poem in response to his wife’s condition:
“My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
They form is here indeed- a lovely on
But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road.”
Mary’s response to so much loss was a natural one. However, it may have been exacerbated by a family propensity towards depression. Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft had exhibited symptoms of the disease and even tried to take her own life when her lover, Gilbert Imlay, deserted her. Mary Wollstonecraft was saved in time, but nothing could save her daughter, Mary’s half-sister Fanny who in November 1816, took her life in a Welsh inn after suffering in silence from melancholia.
Although Mary was never tempted to go down this road, she recognized she tended towards depression. Towards the end of her life, she admitted in a letter to Claire Clairmont that she had ” been pursued all my life by a lowness of spirits which superinduces a certain irritability which often spoils me as a companion.