Doomed to Fail - Ep 23 - Part 1: Our Lady of the Night - Mary Shelley

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

🎧 Ready to venture into the eerie realms of gothic literature? 🕯️ This week, we explore the haunting life and legacy of Mary Shelley, the mastermind behind Frankenstein! Discover the dark inspirations and chilling experiences that shaped her iconic tale of creation and monstrosity. Tune in for a spine-tingling journey through the shadowy corridors of her mind! 💀📖#MaryShelley #Frankenstein #GothicHorror #PodcastEpisode #CreepyTales #LiteraryLegends #DarkRomantics #HistoryPodcast #HauntingStories #LiteraryGenius Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Taylor from Dime to Fail. We're a podcast that brings you history and true crimes, most notorious disasters and epic fails. And we are re-releasing our first 26 episodes. They were two stories per episode, but we're making them into smaller bite-sized pieces. Well, it's still going to be like 30 minutes of one story at a time. And we're almost done re-releasing. So you can almost hear every story on its own. Today, let's do episode 23, part one, the story of Mary and Percy Shelley. You know Mary Shelley because she wrote Frank Einstein. And fun fact that we learned later is she wrote it during the year without a summer, which is after the eruption of a volcano in 1815, I think, in 1816, it was really, really gloomy

in Geneva. And that's when she started writing her scary stories with her husband and Lord Byron and some friends. So fun, spooky story. Percy Shelley died very, very young. And Mary Shelley would travel all over Europe, writing and kind of fighting with her family and all sorts of things. So a super interesting life, super glad that we have her work still passed down to us. If you have any questions or anything, feel free to reach out to us at doom to philipod at gmail.com and doomed to philipod on all the socials. In the matter of the people of state of California versus Horthall James Simpson, case number B-A-0-9. And so, my fellow Americans.

Ask not. What your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. After this, there was the kids baseball game or softball game that she... Tea ball, yep, the last tea ball game of the season. And then she has a piano recital to get to. And then a lot of wine to hopefully drink later tonight when the kids are asleep. A hundred percent.

Yeah. It's also my... It's my birthday weekend. Do you know my birthday's on Monday? No, Facebook didn't tell me. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, like, on the day. Okay, that's not helpful. What do you have planned besides all this stuff that you're doing with the kids?

I know, exactly. I was going to ask if I could take a nap tomorrow, like most of the day. Solid present. It's all the gift together you're giving yourself. I love it. Yeah. I was trying to game plan out our Halloween activities, because we got a sort of thing about this, like, now. And I was going to message you and Jay and ask if there's any interest in going to Halloween

Horror Nights in Orlando this year. I just made a Florida face. I know, but the one in the one in Orlando is so much better than the one in L.A. I know. I'll think about it. Yeah. I'll message, I'll message about it too. Yeah, sounds fun. It sounds fun, but it's like, part of me is like, they got a wedding like the next month, like, where they really going to want to, like, travel, you know, on like one weekend that they don't have to. So, TPD. But yeah, we can go ahead,

and kick things off and Taylor you know I had a night last night I don't remember who goes first with the I think I do you go first okay so I need to tell you a drink and I don't have a drink so we're gonna have to brainstorm this together in real time together what did you drink last night I had bourbon but I only have like one glass of bourbon and then I drank red wine what would happen if you mix red wine with bourbon would that be good I've had cocktails that have like a splash of wine in them but There's not like a mixing them together.

I feel like someone would have done that if it was good. I did. I was thinking about yesterday because of, I don't know why. As a sushi restaurant, someone was doing sake bombs and that reminded me of you. We've never done a sake bomb, but I was like, I don't know. I was thinking maybe because of the, the one thing with the Guinness and the Sambuca on top. That is a weird synchronicity because I was looking at a place called Texas Saki bar to go to this weekend because it looks kind of fun and kind of cool.

Nice. Fine, do sake. I'll do sake. Yeah. Great. Yeah, that's my drink. I'll have sake in the fridge. Perfect.

Wow, you're really prepared. Yeah, well, at the restaurant we have, like, your second bottle, like, little bottles of of sake is half off, and then I just like take it home. Okay. Yeah, that's fun. That's fun. So, yeah, I'll do sake for my drink, which has nothing to do with location or the events I'm going to be discussing, but that'll be my drink.

Cool. Love it. So for my drink, we're drinking absent. And have you ever had absinth? Oh, yeah. I don't know why I bothered that. Not because it was a drink that was drunk during this time, because my story is in the late 1700s,

and Absinth actually came to France around 1840. So they didn't drink absinth in the story, but we're drinking it because it's green. Have you had Absinth? Yes. Okay. It's fun. It's like a ritual.

It's like a fun thing to make. Yeah, yeah. I like licoricey things too. So, yeah. So actually, I think it tastes terrible, but I think it's fun. that have because you like have the cube the sugar cube and lighted and like yeah it's just it's just fun it's like a fun little ritual yeah i've been drinking moscow which is like tastes terrible but also

i like it's weird yeah i just had a messcal marguerite i was like mescal is fine on it you don't you don't need sugarie mescal it makes it worse yeah totally um anyway we're drinking green absinth because we're talking about the mother of the monster and her free loving poet of a husband Mary and Percy Shelley. Yes. Nice. Yeah. So I, my main source was a book, the book Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour. It took me like a month to listen to it, but I listened to the whole thing. And it was very good. And then, you know, Wikipedia and chat GPT and all of that.

But I want to lay out our red flags. I don't think you're going to miss them. But here's what they are. They eloped when she was 16, but he was already married and his wife was pregnant. And he also, he also wanted her to. sleep with all of his friends and he wanted to sleep with her friends and he definitely slept with her sister so um wow that's that's an accomplished man yeah yeah no not not not great so yeah so those are the red flags we'll we'll get into them as we go um so so much of this story is taken from mary's letters and journals and percy's letters and claire her sister's letters so you have to kind of take their writing and know that it's edited. So you could like literally burn things and

no one would ever see it again. You know, it's like a real disposable time. So it's really like what they wanted us to know. And also I think I've said this before, but like imagine if someone write your life story off of your journals and emails, you could isolate times in your life and make a great fucking story. So I want to, so I was thinking like, for example, my senior year of high school was wild. I had a punk rock boyfriend who was a drummer. Then I had some like friends that like we were like potentially like hooked up it was weird then i went on a date with a dude in a boy band and we didn't hit it off so it introduced me to another boy band member and we dated for a while then i went to germany and made a guitar player who was who i very recently found a picture

of him and looked up up on instagram and within five minutes sending him a message he sent me back a picture of us from then which was super cute and then also b i wrote a b in germany i was camping with my friends in the woods and like this dude was just like in the woods and he was Dennis and he was like I have the same dreams as you and it was like I don't know I was an idiot but it was like but we were like super excited and I was like this is crazy and then I and then I went home and my boy band boyfriend was still there and then also then I went to college I'm just like Jesus Christ you can make any of that in two an hour and a half long movie and I think it'd be really good yeah you accomplished like a lot of boy band people huh yeah

pleasure thing I mean when is it not anyone's thing yeah I did buy a guitar at one point and I learn how to play Oasis underwall for like three minutes and I was like this is the way you get girls and it didn't work. I've already warned Florence I'm like Florence the first boy that picks up a guitar and sings brown-eyed girl to you you're in trouble yeah there you yeah so anyway there's fun so this is just like excerpts from her life but I feel like it tells the whole story but also just like you could tell a full story out of like any time in your life You could write a full story about our time at NationBuilder, you know, and like end it. And it ended at death, you know, like, that's been cool.

You could have made that a good story. Anyway, so I also, oh, recently threw away all my journals from high school because they were like just really stupid, but also like, could they have been a gothic romance? And then I wrote, they weren't because it was the 90s. So it was not got to romance. So anyway, Mary Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Shelley was born on August 30th, 1797 in London. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died 11 days after she was born. And you know how she died?

This is so gross. Sepsis. I mean, I don't know exactly what sepice says, but she died of an infection that she got because the doctor's hands were dirty. So gross. So gross. This is so horrifying and gross and awful. So Mary never met her mother. Her mother was actually a famous writer on her own. So her mother, Mary, Mary Wollstonecraft, was considered,

one of the founding voices of modern feminism. She wrote about women's education, marriage, and status. She wanted more of like a free love situation. So do whatever you want, which was a lot for the 1700s. She also was, you know, she had a baby out of wedlock.

She's kind of like, you know, just doing whatever she wanted to do. And also just to put in like timeframes. This is the late 1700s. So we're in like Capham the Great Time, Mutiny in the Bounty Time. Oscar Wilde kind of ends up in the story much later.

he's the neighbor of Mary's and Percy's son. So it's like where we are in history. So some of the notable works of Mary's mother, Mary, she were a vindication of the rights of women, which said that women should have the same rights as men, which were still fighting that fight, and that was in 1792. Taylor, is your version of feminism considered not okay anymore?

What's my version of feminism? You know when you told me how like you like to wear makeup and pretty dresses and these other women were like, you're not a good feminist because you should like shave your head and wear flannel or something. I forgot what it was. But it was like, I like it. They're being real bitchy. My version of feminism is do whatever the fuck you want and be able to have opportunity.

But is that considered okay still? I don't know. It's so hard to keep up with what is something now. I know. I have no idea. Sorry to do you go. Yeah. No, good question.

I'm not sure. But Mary Wilsoncraft continued to influence future generations of feminists. And this is what Mary Shelley was kind of like living up to. So you don't know your mother, but you have these books that she wrote that were published. You have her journals. You have her letters. So, like, who do you think your mother was and how do you live up to that? So that's a big part of Mary Shelley's story.

Her father was William Godwin. He was a little bit of a bumble butt. So he was a philosopher, a novelist, a political theorist. He wrote books about political justice. He owned a bookstore in London. And he was literally always in debt. Like, he never made enough money to keep his family secure. He was always, like, chasing the next pound or whatever.

Like, he just was never, never secured. He was an eccentric who, like, really was, like, into these, like, kind of, like, liberal political ideas. Aaron Burr, do you know what Aaron Burr is? Yeah, yeah, he shot, um. Hamilton? Yeah, Hamilton. So after all that happened, he kind of, like, escaped to Europe, and he stayed with

with them for a while. So, yeah, which is weird. So he, like, there's, like, some famous people that kind of come in and out in her life in a weird way. I didn't write this down, but later, like, much later, like, one of her girlfriends, like, hooks up with Lafayette when he's old. So, like, I've talked about him before. So, like, that, you know, that happens. So William Godwin, her, Mary Shelley's father, married a woman named Mary Jane Claremont later after his wife died.

So the household was William and Mary Jane, the parents. Fannie Imlay was Mary Wilsoncraft's illegitimate daughter with an American businessman that she met before Godwin. So Mary had his older half-sister who her father was out in the picture and her. her mom was dead. So Fannie, but they adopted Fannie into the family. Then there's Mary. And then Mary Jane brought in two children from her first marriage, Claire and Charles, and then they had a baby William. So it's kind of like the Brady Bunch. Right. Mary and Claire are very, very close in age, and they have a really insane relationship that we'll get to. So that's her, her step-sister. So now for Percy, Percy Bish Shelley was born on August 4th, 1792, which makes him five years older than

Mary. His father, Sir Timothy Shelley, was a member of gentry and he was a squire. He had some Shelley family estates. So they were like pretty well off the Shelley's. He was known for his conservative and traditional values. And so I wrote, AKA, he was unamused by his son's shenanigans. So. Yeah. What is conservative back then? God, must be like insane. Yeah. So. Yeah. So Percy's mother, Elizabeth Pelfod Shelley, was also very fancy. So Percy's like a bit of a dandy. Their lifestyle is like kind of confusing and like kind of bizarre. So they're in a constant state like Percy and Mary and Mary's family are in a constant state of we're poor. Like we don't have any money. But they're moving from like furnished house to furnished house. You know, they're like living in like these like big houses in Italy. and in Florence and in Paris and in London. So they keep, like, moving around, but they're never, like, homeless. And they also always have servants.

So, like, she never cooked or cleaned. So it's, like, we're super poor, but could you imagine not having servants? You know, like, okay. I mean, I kind of reminded when I was in Ireland and you have all these castles that are still owned by the same families that were, like, bequeathed them from, like, generations ago. But, like, yeah, you have a castle, but you can't afford it. So you have to open it up to the public and have them pay it. admission fee to like be able to leave the lights on and turn the heat on so like maybe it was one of those like house poor things yeah totally so well they didn't like own houses like rented houses

around anyway percy is even in he comes into the story because he wants to be a writer and so he goes to william godwin's bookstore and says i will be your benefactor if you teach me like some of your skills i will give you money and spoiler alert he never fucking does So, like, for the rest of his life and the rest of William Godwin's life, he's like, give me money, especially after you stole my children. And Percy is like, no, and he never does. Percy is married to a woman named Harriet Westbrook. They got married in 1811. They eloped when Harriet was only 16 years old pattern, and they had two children together.

She was pregnant with a second children child when he left her from Mary. So he's always, like, never, Percy's never been, like, a faithful dude. His Wikipedia says he was in an intense platonial. relationship with someone else which is hilarious and you know so he's like but he's like he thinks of himself as like a romantic guy you know like he's super into like he's into mary wilson craft's like free love stuff he's like you know let's all just like be happy and whatever so another question I have for you is are you are you are you a poetry person I'm laughing I wrote I feel like no but like I don't know maybe you have a secret like for poetry it's it's all

almost like we've never met. I know. Well, I thought I would just see, make sure. Okay, I'm going to read you a little bit of Percy's poems. So you can get an idea of what this Jude is like. This is an excerpt from Ode to the West Wind. O wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being, thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,

are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, yellow and black and pale and hectic red. Pestil and stricken multitudes, It's, oh, thou, who chariotest us to the dark, dark wintry bed, the winged seeds where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse, so that it's grave, until thine as your sister of spring shall blow. That's, so, you know, it's flowery. Yeah, I guess I would describe it that way. How else would you describe it, though? It just, it's like, it sounds luxurious, like somebody who has never had to, like, worry very much about anything in life.

Exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, like the internet was like, you know, emotional intensity, divit imagery, blah, blah, whatever. It's not the coal miner's daughter, you know, like it is like, it hits a note, but not like one that I love. Yes. So Mary, so now it's like 1810, 1812ish. Percy is in the Godwin's shop. They met in 1814 when he came over there. So she probably didn't know that he had a pregnant wife. But even if she did know, from this, from the poem and from this, I know exactly what kind of guy Percy was. I'm sure he was like, oh, my wife is the worst and you're so pretty and blah, blah, blah, writing her poems, blah, blah.

So in 1814, they run away to France. They take Claire with them, which will always be a problem. Claire is the worst. I'm team Mary 100%. So Claire's her step-sister. Yeah. So they're doing like weird, rich, poor. I read a while ago, I read a book where, like, there was, in this time, you would, like, bring a letter of introduction to a place.

So I bring a letter that be like, oh, well, not me because I'm a woman. I couldn't get a lot of credit. But a man would, like, bring a letter and be, you know, Fars is, you know, vouches for me. Here's a letter from Fars. And then someone would, like, credit me money when I went to a different place. So you have to, like, kind of like. Yeah, but, like, very manual. So that's what they're doing.

I go to France. Mary is already pregnant. So she's 16. She's already pregnant. Percy's still married to Harriet, who's also pregnant. Just to say this now, Mary gets pregnant five times and four of the babies die young, which is awful. They have one son lived to be about four or five, but then he died.

And their fifth child, a son is the only one who lived to adulthood. So they only had one child survive all the way, which is terrible. She doesn't sound like a great mom if all your kids are dying and there's no congenital defect. That's not her fault. All her kids are dying. It's the 1700s. Her mom died because the dirty doctor hands. Yeah, I guess that's true. Like 75% is like a lot. It's a lot of kids to die. Yes. It's awful. It's higher than than average. If 75% of the dogs I owned died like with like it in three years, like you got to stop doing me dogs. Well, yes. That's that's definitely fair. But it's also just like, I think it's of the time, but I think it's high. But she was like, I don't know,

there's a lot of disease. I don't know. You're defending. It's fine. It's not her fault. She didn't kill her babies. Yeah, it's a terrible thing to happen. I'm not 20 to much. She didn't kill her babies. That's right. It's terrible. So Percy wants to have a commune literally. And like, he has her flirt with one of his friends. And he's like, you should talk up with that guy. You know, he wants to have like a lot of lovers and like all live together. They live in Italy for a while. They climb up Vesuvius, which is hilarious because I've also climbed up Vesuvius. And it's stupid. It's just like a trail around and there's like nothing and it's boring. The son William, like he speaks Italian before anything else. Already Percy and Claire are 100% sleeping with each

other. But like maybe already doing it. But as soon as, you know, Mary starts like getting pregnant and he's, she's definitely sleeping with Claire too. And Mary does not like Claire. She hates her. She does not want her around. She's like, how can we get rid of her? I'm just tired of her for following us. And Percy's always like, oh, no, let her stay. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. She's just like as a such a hangar on her, it's crazy. So in 1816, they travel to Geneva to meet with Lord Byron, who's another poet. Have you watched the show Ghosts? No, but Lord Barton is a pretty big name. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. So in the show, ghosts, yeah. It's, there's a British version and American version, but I've watched the British one, but there's like a poet, and he's always like,

oh, Byron, but he's like, he's exactly this kind of guy. The ghost is like exactly this kind of poet, you know. But let me read to you a little bit of a Lord Byron poem. Okay. This one's called She Walks in Beauty. She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes, thus mellowed to that tender light, which heaven to goddy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace,

which waves in every raven tress or softly lightens over her face, where thoughts serenely sweet express, how pure, how dear. their dwelling place. God, they're so infatuated with women, but like, man, they really don't want them to have rights. Like, it's weird. They just want to, like, have women around, but they don't, like, why would you bother? Yeah.

No, you're right. That was very pretty, but yeah. It's very pretty. So it's much longer. That was an excerpt of an excerpt, but very pretty, very romantic. So this is the big trip. This is the life-changing trip with a go to Geneva. One thing that happens is that Claire and Laura.

Byron hook up and she gets pregnant. So now, Claire is pregnant from Lord Byron. I imagine it was a ploy by Percy to get them all to live together because he wanted to live with Lord Byron too. Sure, like, that's super romantic. They just like kind of like live in Geneva and could hang out. But they don't. They ended up like, they never really together.

Lord Byron just got her pregnant. Their daughter, Allegra, was eventually taken by Byron. And he ended up putting the Allegra in foster care, even though Claire wanted her back. and Claire was really poor as she was a nanny around Europe and Allegra died when she was four of malaria and that was like Lord Byron could have just given her to her mom and to have taken care of her.

So that sucks. But so the other thing that happens on the trip to Geneva is that Mary starts writing a story which is a super popular story. So it's a historical fact that it was a gloomy-ass summer. Like there was no sun. It was like rainy. And everybody, you know, they're all writers here.

Including Claire, he was like not very great. But Frankenstein didn't come out of nowhere. So there are many, many versions of it. She didn't just, like, write it in one day. She came up with the story on this trip, but then she, then she, you know, worked on it for a long time. So it's called officially Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. And you know how that joke is like, Frankenstein is like the monster or whatever.

I got it wrong. But you know what I mean? No, Frankenstein is the doctor. Yes. So Frankstein is the doctor. So the title is, Frankenstein. the modern Prometheus. So Frankenstein, the doctor, is the modern Prometheus in which he's giving society a technology that society does not know how to handle. And that's like we saw with the curies,

too, because Prometheus, he stole fire from the gods and brought it to humans because being like, this could help you, but didn't see the unintended consequences of doing it. So giving humans fire gave them a choice to use it for good or evil. So that's what she had in her mind, like Dr. Frankenstein. Einstein giving the world this ability to reanimate and do you use it for good or to use it for evil. Is that the actual title? Yes. Wow, that's weird. I never knew that.

I know. Cool. I know. So it's a wild time to be alive, like I've said. So there's a couple of things happening also in the world. Like, there's a thing called galvanism, which is using electricity to stimulate muscle contractions. So people were like electrocuting dead frogs and like showing them jump.

That had to be fun. That really had to be fun. Yeah. So that was like a thing in the world. There's also a lot of like, just like things happening in science and philosophy that are new. There's also the beginning of the industrial revolution. So this is where we like, you know, really seeing like machines like becoming. So she knows that's happening.

And also it's a really sad story. So there's also some like experiences of loss and grief and in Frankenstein as well. So Frankicine is published anonymously in 1818. She's only 20 years old when she, when she published. That's crazy. Yeah. So 200 year spoiler alert. let me tell you what friccicine is about because it's not like the movies and also incidentally she never got any money from any of the plays or acting out of that people did from the book which is lame well yeah because patent laws don't protect content but that's all that's that old no no even in her time there wasn't it wasn't a thing so it starts of a story of a man writing letters from the arctic so he's a like a man is in the arctic and he's a man in the arctic and he

He is writing letters to his wife. He's on an expedition. And he sees in the distance a sled with someone like a huge person on it, like going really fast. And then he sees another sled or whatever coming after it with an old man who is Dr. Frankenstein, who is Victor Frankenstein. And he's like, I'm trying to find this creation and chase after this, this monster that I made. So he tells the story to the man on the boat. So when we go back and he's telling his story, Victor Frankenstein is in college. He starts to think about bringing something back.

to life. And he does. He just like right away. So he finds like the dead body, brings it back to life. And he's horrified by it because it's like big and ugly and not what he expected. And he find the dead body, right? He found bodies and he piece Frankenstein together. I think so. I'm 100% sure. Okay. But but it does get, but it gets alive really fast. Then it escapes. Then it kills Victor Frankenstein's little brother. And then the monster like spends some time outside of like a family home and he like listens to the family talking he's like outside their windows and he's like I think I could be a part of his family like he's really really lonely and then when he meets them in like he like says hello to them they're super scared like scream

and run away and he burns their house down because he's like no one will ever love me I'm so ugly and then he asks he goes back to dr. Frankenstein and says I need a I need a partner I need someone who's just like me and I can get my life with because I'm lonely and he says Dr. Frankenstein says, okay, I will make you like a girlfriend, essentially. But he doesn't. Instead, he destroys all of his, all of his papers. And the monster sees him doing that and goes back and murders Victor's wife on their wedding night. And then he escapes. So that's where he's going out into the Arctic just to be alone. Victor's running after him. Eventually, Victor dies on the boat and the monster comes back and takes his body and mourns over him. So he didn't kill that little girl?

like all that's all the movie stuff of like he finds a little girl and he like the front monster finds a little girl and kills her by hugging her too much or whatever like wanting her to be with him like that none of that that happened no no none of the it's alive I don't even think there's is there's an Igor in it I don't know yeah

there is yeah his helper the hunchback no no I'm saying in the book there's so many versions of the story is what I'm saying like she wrote several versions of it and then like the world took it because it's a great fucking story and wrote a million versions of it. I just watched Young Frankenstein again with my sister. It's so good. So good. I mean, Robert De Niro played Frankenstein's monster at one point. Like, it's been done to death at this point. Exactly. Exactly. So, but the point is, once you invent something, you can't go back. So that's, that, that's like the, the lesson of the, of the story.

Now, there's a little bit more money around. They're trying to find patrons. They're writing poetry. There's some babies around. Lord Byron left. He never intended to stay. Mary his dad still wants money from Shelley. He's never going to give it to him. And then after a couple like random weird things happen, like after one of her babies dies, Percy tries to get another baby in Italy for them, which like isn't weird. During this time, like there were just like tons of Italian orphans you could like buy. It was like a totally normal thing there's cool. But they think that it was actually Percy's kid from like an affair. Yes. And so, but they ended up not keeping that baby and then also some other tragedies happen mary's older what do you mean they ended up not

they just gave it back yeah they just gave it to like the baby box i don't know it's like a very free baby time oh it's so easy going yeah and then some other tragic things happen mary's older sister fanny dies by suicide but their their mother mary wilson craft definitely had like severe depression and both girls have it so mary's super depressed and so was her sister her sister's a little bit like i'm out of this loop i'm not really a part part of this family. I don't really have anyone. So she goes and she dies by suicide and they can't get her body back because suicide is a crime. So if they like say that they know her, they'll have to like pay a fine. So they have to leave her body where she was found. Which is terrible.

It doesn't make any sense. And then Percy's wife Harriet also dies by suicide, which is terrible because she, Percy tried to like frame her as like a terrible wife and all these things. But like she was just fine and he just didn't want to be married. You know. So she does my suicide, too, which is awful. So now they're trying to, they're going around Europe. Mary's still trying to get rid of Claire. Eventually she gets her a nanny job and gets rid of her. Claire's trying to get her daughter back, but she doesn't get it back.

So in this time, you know, rich poor, I can imagine Shelley being like, we don't have any money. I have to write poems. You know, just like being the worst, you know, seeing him like that. On July 1st, 1822, a few weeks after Mary had another miscarriage. So I think that they have their son Percy and then she has like her final miscarriage. And Percy got on a boat that was his boat. And he meant to meet with Lord Byron and some other people to talk about a new publication called The Liberal.

So they were going to make like a pamphlet or whatever. And on the way back, the boat was overmasked. And that means it had like the wrong, what is it called? Sales. The wrong sales. And the crew was inexperienced and everyone drowned. So Percy died when he was 29. So him and Mary were only together for like eight years.

there was a delay in knowing if they were dead because of like the time period they were like well did he get to his destination and like no one knew and they had to like find someone like travel around and finally figured out that they hadn't made it ten days later their bodies washed up on shore and he was cremated on the beach mary and another like a person who was like a friend of theirs took percy shelley's heart out of his body and put it in a jar with like liquor to keep it and then mary eventually got it and like burned it so she had ashes of his heart and she kept him with her until her death she always had his heart with her that's kind of romantic but mostly grotesque mostly gross mostly gross so now mary is a widow and she's still doing the same thing she's traveling around but she's a great friend the ton of stories of her like giving people money and like supporting young artists and all of these other things that she doesn't you know she she never accumulates her own wealth because she's always like kind of giving it away. She's writing up more books. She writes poetry. She writes some biographies of

like different people just to sell those. One thing that she does that I think is fun is she's friends with a trans man who known, who was named Isabel Robinson. And the story goes, she had a friend who was like, I have to leave England because I am pregnant out of wedlock. How do I get out of here? and how do I like keep my like reputation and then she had another friend who's like I want to I am a man I want to dress like a man like I want to be a man so Mary got them fake papers and had them get married so that they were able to escape and they lived together as man and wife for like a very long time it's pretty cool and Mary was like super supportive of that she was like whatever that's fine I think unfortunately the the trans man friend ended up dying in a poor house and like bad things happened later but so it's a cool story yeah so so she's doing that. She's writing some books. She wrote more books that I've never read and I really would like to. She wrote a novel called Velperga, one called The Last Man. Her last one was called Falkner. She also spent a lot of time editing Percy's papers and trying to figure out who was going to write a biography about him. So it was like a kind of a perpetual fight between like his family and her

family, like who was going to actually be the one to like kind of capitalize off of his life and his poems she did she published like an edited version of his poems people hated it like they just like which is weird because like how do you edit poems differently whatever so she was doing a little bit of that his dad so percy shelley's dad he gave her an allowance but he never met her he was like giving her money to as his son's widow but they never met and when he finally died he left her and her son a house but the house was like in shambles it took all the furniture and there were like people living on the land who had to pay a rent but like the um crops were bad it was just like not a good situation like it sounded like good and cool but it was not cool and yeah and then she

is also editing a lot of his stuff to be a little bit less truthful because england is getting more Victorian during this time like more conservative more like what we know as like classic Victorian so she's not so she says like we were married when we ran away like they definitely weren't you know and she like leaves out the stuff that he wanted her to sleep with all his friends so She kind of edited it's a little bit depending on the time. So their son Percy is kind of a dud, unfortunately. She tries to get him to run for office, but no one votes for him. He, like, fiddles around school.

He's, like, not that smart. Eventually, he does get married to a woman named Jane. And Jane and Mary become really good friends. So Jane, her daughter-in-law, is one of the people who, you know, really helps Mary organize her papers and, like, start to put stuff together for her own story. And later, Jane is, like, one of the people who's in charge of her biography. and she definitely like idolizes Mary and talks about her in like a really like romantic way like she's the best and eventually uh percy and jane they run like a playhouse they write plays percy like does like the costume design and paints the backdrops and writes the plays and people like it's like very amusing so he does fine they live a couple they built a house and they called their house like shelly house of shelly and then oscar wild named his house house of something else to make fun of them like down the street so that's okay that comes back. Mary's father passes away in 1844, so she's like feeling super lonely and awful. She's really

sad. She kind of reconciled with her dad and she's super sad when he's gone. Then she starts to have in her 40s. So they're like, she was 40 and like still walking around. You're like, oh my gosh, she was 40. She's not like 100, but you know, whatever of the time. She started to get this weird headaches. You just started to kind of get like not feel good. She had to rest a lot. She spent some time traveling with like to get the sea air and do things like that. And it ended up that she died in 1851 at the age of 53, and when they did her autopsy, she definitely had brain cancer. So she had like a large tumor in her brain that she had been living with for like a really long time. And that was the thing that ended up, ended up killing her. And then after that,

you know, it's a kind of a mess of people trying to capitalize off of them, trying to sell their stories. It's kind of Frankenstein having really a life of its own, you know, becoming like one most famous stories ever but in you know really she was a very so smart so talented and so lonely woman who was really kind of like abandoned by her mom abandoned by her husband trying to just like live her creative life and that's it you imagine being 20 and writing the most influential thing in the history of the world no i'm like 38 and i barely influence like a single person much less the rest of the world i know i know it's a lot it's a lot to live up to.

They kind of sound like a fun group, though. They sound like a San Francisco like tech bro community of like they just rewheeling, doing whatever they want. I mean, I love the idea of like, oh, let's move into this like potentially really dusty, like really big house in Europe together and then like take all of the sheets off all the furniture and you just like write homes there for a couple months

and then you move somewhere else, you know? And like, you're like, oh, we're so poor. also servant make me dinner I love it I feel like that would that's good for you but not so good for me if someone's like far as you have to sit in a room and write poetry I'd be like fucking tell me

I'm not doing that. I'm not going to write poetry but I would like to sit in a room and read for like a month you know you remember when you told me that like your biggest hope for Flo is that she doesn't become like a poet yes oh yeah no it would be terrible

to a child who was a poet because you'd have to listen to all of their bad poems and their good ones so we're on the same page yeah no that'd be terrible like imagine oh my god like if Miles was like hold on if I did like hey mom and on that cheek and over that brow

so soft so calm yet eloquent the smile that win the tints that glow but tell of day is in goodness spent a mind at peace all below a heart whose love is innocent I'd be like good job that rhymes like you gotta

go do something different like this is not worth your time Here, learn how to code JavaScript. Yeah. I mean, not really. Yeah. So that's it. It's he, I think Percy really just like,

had these women following him around, you know? Yeah, it's not hard when you like are a poet. When you walk up to every woman and you're like, I need to paint you in words. Like it's just like, you know what I mean? Like, how easy is that? Like I do that right now. 100%. Even if it sounds like shit, I can do it.

Yeah, 100%. No, whatever. tell you that your poems were bad they would just be like far as write a poem about me he's so mysterious he's like this this dark mysterious guy like it must be a cultural thing it's like no he's he just like knows how to manipulate you that's exactly right it's very very very very manipulative okay wait hold on write a poem a short poem about a mysterious man named tafaras oh my god oh okay ready

yes this is way too long okay this is way too long this is way too long chat gpt okay i'm gonna read a little bit of it in shadow deep where secrets lie there walks of man far as by and by mysterious he with eyes so keen

a veil of enigma his silent scene in moonlight nights he treads the streets his presence felt where darkness meets whispers follow his elusive trace a figure cloaked and mystic grace with every step he stirs intrigue his words like riddles make minds fatigue. In cryptic language, his tales unfold, a tapestry woven of stories untold. Who is far as his enigmatic soul? A wanderer, a sage, beyond control. His wisdom deep

has passed unknown, a man of secrets yet to be known. He dances with shadows through twilight's haze, a master of secrets of mysterious ways, with every glance, a glimpse of his heart, a puzzle unsolved, a puzzle to start. And whispered rumors his legend grows, and an enigma wrapped in mysteries throws, far as the man of the veiled unknown. Intrig follows wherever he's throne. So let us wonder, let us stream. In far as his world where mysteries gleam, for in his presence we find delight in the riddles he weaves in the depths of night. Dude, that is awesome. Hey, can you slag me that. I'm going to put part of that on my, on my dating profile. Your resume. That was real good.

That was awesome. And it totally encapsulates me as a person. I am mysterious, and my riddles, I do produce riddles of mine. Oh my gosh, so funny. Well, now it's easy to write poetry. Thank you.