Shelley's Ghost

Godwin’s opinions on fame changed over the years. In 1798 he had published his candid memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft secure in the belief that it could only enhance her reputation, and be an inspiration to others. Later, in this incomplete note left amongst his papers, he recalled his desire to write an account of his own life, and admitted that his feelings on the subject were not what they were. He now doubted his earlier infinite love of ‘ingenuousness’, and intention to be ‘nearly as explicit as Rousseau in the composition of his Confessions’. He was still ‘a lover of fame, honourable fame’, but wished to be judged by his writing, not his life.

At some point this fragment was placed inside a velvet frame. Perhaps Lady Shelley, in her capacity as keeper of the family papers, kept it before her as a kind of guide or credo.

Notes
on the
Biographical Sketch of WG
inserted in
the Monthly Mirror for Jan. & Feb. 1805.

  I once conceived the design of composing the narrative of my own life, & have actually brought it down as far as the twelfth year of my age. But I shall probably never complete it. My feelings on the subject are not what they were. I was always an infinite lover of ingenuousness. I sat down with the intention of being nearly as explicit as Rousseau in the composition of his Confessions. I think I have no wish to be understood by the present age or by posterity, if posterity should care any thing about me, as any thing better than I am.

  But ingenuousness has not always the effect of truth. Truth, practically speaking, arises from the relative character & disposition of two persons or things, the speaker & the hearer, the words uttered, & the temper of him by whom the words are received. To say that I performed such an action, & felt myself prompted to it by such or such a motive, however faithful the statement may be; does by no means necessarily convey a true impression to the mind of the hearer of or reader. I have heard it asserted by an eminent artist, that on full examination it will be found that every portrait-painter \will be found to put/ more of himself, his own/ conceptions & intellectual turn, into his delineations, than of the person who sits to him. The case is parallel in the matter of which I am speaking. The reader no sooner peruses the little section of narration alluded to, than he exclaims according to his own preconceptions, How honourable a proceeding! how arrogant a folly! how glorious a virtue! how odious a vice!

  I am willing to confess of myself that I am a lover of fame, honourable fame,

That last infirmity of noble minds.

I am ready in this respect to adopt the sentiment of Plutarch, & to say, that I had rather posterity should never know that there \had been/ was such a man as Godwin, than that they should believe of me, that Godwin was a being, immoral, degenerate & unjust.

  I am an author. In that character the world has enough of me, upon which to place fasten its misrepresentations & its criticisms. As an individual, I have never been a man of the world. I have seen a portion of human society in most of its various classes; but that is a circumstance which has risen incidentally, & not out of any bustling & obtrusiveness of my own. I am of a retiring, not an intrusive disposition. My sensibilities are too great, & I am too sceptical & diffident as to how I shall acquit myself, & how I shall be received, to be by any means qualified, as the phrase is, to make my way in the world. The earlier half of human life I spent in so for the most \part/ in solitude; & since, I have lived principally in the bosom of my family. My personal transactions have been too insignif\ic/ant to merit the public attention, & too independent for me to wish to expose them to the cavils of the many-headed multitude.

  I am an author. By my works I am content to be judged. I am perhaps as well acquainted as most men with their faults & their follies; but, having [remaining page(s) missing]

William Godwin; (bequest, 1836) Mary Shelley; (bequest, 1851) Sir Percy and Lady Shelley; (bequest, 1889) Lady Shelley; (bequest, 1899) Shelley Scarlett (later 5th Baron Abinger) and/or Robert Scarlett (later 6th Baron Abinger); (bequest, 1917) Robert Scarlett, 6th Baron Abinger; (bequest, 1927) Hugh Scarlett, 7th Baron Abinger; (bequest, 1943) James Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger; (bequest, 2002) James Scarlett, 9th Baron Abinger; (purchase, 2004) Bodleian.