William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. VII. 1806-1811
Mary Jane Godwin to William Godwin, 30 August 1811
“Your dear balmy letter, brought stump-a-stump
upstairs at ½-past 9, has set my heart at ease. . . . I almost doubt if you can
read this scrawl. My neck aches, my head aches. We are at a cleaning upstairs.
Charles smiled in a most heavenly
manner at your kiss and a half. Fanny
stood quite still; Jane capered. She
looks very poorly, but her spirits are good. Jane and
Willy have been reading in the
Temple Gardens, and brought the umbrella from Lamb’s. God bless you.
“I write from the shop, so the children are not
by to send love.”
Charles Gaulis Clairmont (1795-1850)
The son of Charles Gaulis [Clairmont] and Mary Jane Clairmont [Godwin]; he was
apprenticed to Archibald Constable in Edinburgh (1811) and from 1816 lived mostly on the
Continent, settling in Vienna.
Clara Mary Jane Clairmont (1798-1879)
The illegitimate daughter of the second Mrs. William Godwin; she was part of the Shelley
household in Italy and the mother of Byron's daughter Allegra, afterwards working as a
governess in Russia.
Fanny Imlay Godwin (1794-1816)
The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay; she lived in the Godwin household
and died a suicide.
William Godwin jun. (1803-1832)
The son of William and Mary Jane Godwin; he was a reporter for the
Morning Chronicle who died of cholera.
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
