The latest copy of The Times, dated 13 July 1816, lay open on the dining table of the Villa Diodot, a pleasantly palatial mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva. Mary and Shelley had decided to visit Lord Byron there a few days ago, and had taken the opportunity to do so on a morning of hazy sunlight, having anticipated a long and golden summer at Coligny, in Switzerland.
Having arrived by boat, however, they had since been trapped indoors by continuously pounding rain and electrifying storms. The lake was now simply too tempestuous to attempt to leave the villa safely. Not to mention the fact that it was so dark outside, that they had had to light candles at noon. An all- pervading sense of impending doom now surrounded them and no one in their right minds would venture out on such a day.
‘This weather is appalling and the news no better’ muttered Shelley, picking up the paper which was already two weeks old. ‘Beau Brummell’s lack of funds will surely give us a bad name and the locals will not credit us to pay our way’. He did not mention that Byron too was known to be in a significant amount of debt and that some of the English servants were starting to ask about being paid in advance.
'If that is the case, Brummel will find it nigh on impossible to secure one suitable riding horse, let alone his usual coach and four with matching pairs' observed Byron, his shapely leg thrown over the side of the chaise on which he lounged. He had been secretly delighted at the very public downfall of the icon of fashion and his own sartorial nemesis. It would not be right that he alone should have to flee the ongoing censure of society, while Brummell continued to bask in its reflected glory. Both men had fled England within months of each other, leaving the ton reeling in their absence.
Of the three of them, Mary was probably the most frugal. She suspected that, for all their brilliance, the others believed they could live on air alone. Byron had been on a diet of white wine and dry biscuits for at least a week, and she wondered how his physician, the eminent Dr John Polidori, who had accompanied him, could possibly countenance such a lack of good sustenance in his patient. Perhaps, there was some truth in the rumour she heard whispered that he had been paid to spy on Byron by his publisher, rather than to minister to his good health?
‘The peasants are revolting’, Shelley added ' and in more ways than one!' He looked slyly at Mary to see if she would rise to the bait. She was known to have opinions on all things and the plight of the common man was one of them.
Mary chose to ignore him but knew that the reports of civil unrest were true. She had heard of the red snow falling in Italy, the brown snow in Hungary and the horrific floods across Europe. There was widespread crop devastation in the Americas, where citizens loyal to the Crown blamed it on last year’s decisive defeat of the English in New Orleans. Similarly superstitious Frenchmen talked of Napoleon’s exile to St Helena after Waterloo as having incurred the wrath of the gods. Newspapers that slowly but inevitably followed them across the English Channel were full stories of failed harvests, dwindling livestock and increasing famine on both Continents. It was why there were so few horses, because the early oat harvest had failed and there was nothing to feed them.
Everywhere, the weather since the previous autumn of 1815 had been extraordinary and no one knew why. One scientist in Bologna had not long ago predicted ‘a dark day when the sun would go out’ and, in doing so, had caused riots, suicides and outbreaks of religious fervour. Many were talking of the apocalypse. Looking around her as the candles guttered in the draughts caused by the raging winds outside, she thought ‘Was this it?’ She also wondered if melancholy was contagious, like the plague reputed to be now ravaging a small town in Southern Italy. She knew her imagination tended towards the gothic, but her thoughts kept returning to morbid fantasies now exacerbated by the prevailing gloom.
‘This will not do!’ she said to herself, lifting her chin determinedly. She was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, as she reminded herself, daughter of the leading Radical William Godwin and the feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft. Although but 19 years of age, she had been taught to read widely and well, and had been surrounded by prominent and enlightened thinkers from childhood. She now considered herself almost the intellectual equal of her male peers but even she had to admit that education alone would not provide her with food. As Percy Shelley’s mistress, her position was hardly secure and she reluctantly acknowledged some truth in the fact that marriage might provide where a knowledge of philosophy and the classics did not.
The treatment suffered by the Lady Hamilton in the wake of the Nelson’s death had shocked her and she was somewhat inclined to avoid a similar fate. She had not been so stupid as to let Shelley come to Switzerland alone in the company of one as delightful but as altogether untrustworthy, as Byron. The latter had made no effort to restrain his dalliances, in spite of having left his wife and already having one mistress at his side. Although Shelley too had abandoned his own wife, vowing undying love, she was not prepared to let him out of sight for more than an instant and had every intention of binding him to her in marriage at the earliest opportunity. Her determination had become more fixed since bearing him two children.
On the other side of the dining room, Byron and Shelley were deep in discussion about the meaning of life, its origins and recent scientific experiments being carried out, purportedly, to revive dead frogs. They seemed absorbed by the duality of nature and debated how rapid technological advancement might lead to magical transformation or transmogrification. Mary shuddered at the thought of the darker side of science but found it strangely thrilling at the same time. While tantalised by the idea of seeing her own dead mother and child once more, could mankind really be trusted with such powers over life and death?
Suddenly, Byron stood. ‘Enough!’ he exclaimed ‘I challenge you all to write a ghost story to rival those I have been reading aloud from the Phantasmagoriana! I wager one of us can provide a worthy evening’s entertainment. How about it?’
Polidori, Shelley and Mary looked at one another. There seemed little else to occupy them at present and who knew what would come of it? Picking up her candle, Mary walked to the writing desk in the corner of the room. With the vivid image of a vast, glacial landscape in mind, she sat down and began to write.
Gail Millar
July 2026