Until They Talked of
Galvanism
Janet Kuypers
12/30/19, the 1816 day the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
marries his 2nd wife Mary Godwin, the later author of “Frankenstein”
It may seem like a tempestuous life,
but I’m sure it wasn’t her intention,
she just so happened to fall for one
of her father’s followers, a married man
but Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet,
a great one, and she was intrigued
and despite him being married,
he was estranged from his wife
so he felt he had free reign to frolic
with a girl five years younger than him
Mary even left France with him (okay,
with her sister too) to travel Europe
and by the time they returned,
Mary was pregnant with Percy’s baby
yes, his “wife” was still in the picture,
but Mary and Percy didn’t seem to care
and were penniless and ostracized by society,
even through the death of their premature baby
two years later, after getting out of debt,
and giving birth to a baby boy, they
traveled together to Geneva in the summer,
this time to visit the poet Lord Byron
and during their stay, it constantly rained
so they couldn’t enjoy the outdoors
and found themselves forced
to stay days indoors, sitting around
the log fire telling each other
German ghost stories — until
Lord Byron suggested they should all
hold a contest for creating the scariest
story
and they all thought this was a great idea,
and Mary, in the company of great poets,
even told Lord Byron that her name
was Mary Shelly (even though they
weren’t married), but she was mortified
that she might not write something as good
as her poetic company. And some
of them would tell their stories,
and really, they were just poetic verse
that wasn’t actually scary at all,
and they kept asking Mary
what her story was, and she
would say, ‘it’s not ready yet,’
and she would listen to the poets
talk about the issues of the day
and look for inspiration — until
they talked of “galvanism” — the
concept of re-animating a corpse.
And that night, in a waking dream,
she came up with the story
and furtively wrote Frankenstein.
Now, they loved her story,
and shortly after their return
they discovered that Percy Shelly’s
wife Harriet committed suicide
but these dark times led
to their marriage,
as well as the eventual release
of the story of Frankenstein,
the scientist who tried
to re-animate the dead
—
because her mother died just
after she was born, Mary Shelly
was used to seeing death,
so when it was suggested to her
that she should write a scary story,
she’d find a way to bring death
back to life
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