Vulgar History - Mary Shelley's Scandalous Stepsister, Claire Clairmont

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is 0.73

00:00:15.020 Anne Foster and this week's episode was a long time coming when you think about it.

00:00:19.760 So we're talking today about my girl, Claire Claremont, who is best known as the kind of

00:00:26.520 third wheel stepsister of Mary Shelley. And she's been mentioned on this podcast twice before. So

00:00:32.760 when I did the Mary Shelley episode, Claire Claremont kind of like stormed on the scene

00:00:36.800 and kind of stole my heart. And then also I did an interview a bit ago with Heather Redmond,

00:00:42.700 who wrote a book called Death and the Sisters, which is about Mary Shelley and Claire Claremont

00:00:47.520 solving a murder mystery. And then for people who are paid members of the Patreon, I've also in the

00:00:52.880 past done a so this asshole episode about one of Claire's paramours, but we'll talk more about that

00:00:59.180 in a second. Anyway, there's so much more to her story than just she was Mary Shelley's stepsister 0.61

00:01:04.300 and she was there that summer in Geneva when Frankenstein was written. And I lost my mind

00:01:09.600 when I saw, this was like six months ago when I first heard, just saw the title that Leslie

00:01:15.600 McDowell was writing a book called Claremont. And I thought to myself, oh, wouldn't it be great if

00:01:19.580 that's about Claire Claremont, but I was also like mitigating expectations. Like I'm sure it's not,

00:01:23.940 I'm sure it's just a book called that. I'm sure that's the name of a street or something,

00:01:27.240 but no, it is a book about Claire Claremont. It's, I think the first novel, just telling

00:01:35.080 Claire's story and really examining who she is as a person. And Leslie McDowell, I invited her

00:01:41.220 on the podcast again. I'm going to say like six months ago, I was like, hi, you've written this

00:01:44.880 book about Claire Claremont. I love her. Please come be on my podcast when your book is published

00:01:48.400 a really long time from now. And she's like, of course. So anyway, finally, the time is here.

00:01:52.860 The book has just come out in the UK. It is called Claremont and you should be able to get

00:01:58.400 this wherever you are in the UK. If you're not in the UK, from what I can tell, you can pre-order it

00:02:04.300 to get it in North America and other places as well. I think it's coming out maybe in the fall,

00:02:09.080 but there are ways if you're in North America that you can order books from the UK if you

00:02:15.000 poke around a little bit. Anyway, this book exists. I'm so happy that Claire is finally

00:02:20.440 the main character for once. And so for this podcast, Leslie joined me just to talk about

00:02:27.220 Claire and how she came to write this book. And we like, this is a true vulgar history episode.

00:02:32.460 Like we're going from beginning to end of the whole story of Claire Claremont. There's so much

00:02:36.140 I didn't know until I started prepping for this. Cause again, it's just kind of, one gets the

00:02:40.620 impression that she ran away with Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley. And she was there that summer

00:02:45.600 in Geneva. She had a baby. And then it's kind of like she, I don't know, like I didn't know until

00:02:50.320 getting ready for this episode slash reading Leslie's novel that I learned all the cool

00:02:54.440 stuff that Claire did and how she really was an icon for a kind of independent woman living on

00:03:00.920 her own that I think was very unusual for the like Regions era when she lived. It's still unusual

00:03:06.540 today. Anyway, I'm so happy to present to you this interview with Leslie McDowell about the

00:03:13.760 one, the only, Claire Claremont. Oh, and also, trigger warning, Lord Byron.

00:03:25.100 So I'm joined today by Leslie McDowell, author of the new book,

00:03:29.680 Claremont, which is about Claire Claremont. Leslie, my first question, well, first of all,

00:03:35.480 welcome. Thank you. And my first question for you is when did you first become interested in

00:03:43.300 Clare Claremont? Do you remember? Oh gosh, yes. It goes back about 25 years ago. I think I was

00:03:52.740 reviewing a book for a Glasgow newspaper based in Glasgow in Scotland. It was a newspaper called

00:03:59.320 The Herald. I was reviewing this new publication that was out, which was newly found or newly

00:04:05.460 discovered story by mary shelley called maurice or the fisher's caught and the introduction was

00:04:12.760 quite lengthy by a woman called claire tomlin a biographer in the uk and she talks about

00:04:19.980 mary obviously in the shelley's and also about claire now i knew about claire vaguely from

00:04:27.580 when i was a student studying shelley and byron and stuff you know you sort of pass her as you

00:04:33.160 go through all these the literary stuff but for some reason and I knew she'd had Byron's child

00:04:37.400 but I for some reason I just thought she'd toddled off and died you know afterwards in the way that 1.00

00:04:42.860 women do I think it's that thing of you know if you're used to like 19th century literature like 1.00

00:04:47.800 you know Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina you know women who transgress in some way usually 0.66

00:04:54.040 sexual transgressions usually you know end up dead and she didn't there was this afterlife she

00:05:00.320 went to Russia to become a governess and she lived in Paris and I thought oh this is really

00:05:03.400 interesting and it was just one of those things you start to I started to look a little bit more

00:05:07.680 I found out that she had journals I found there were volumes of letters it just got more and more

00:05:13.180 interesting when I read the biography the last biography was written in 1992 and I read that

00:05:18.880 and that was just that it was just mind-blowing I just thought how do I not know more about this

00:05:22.600 woman she's amazing so that was when I first had the idea about writing about her in fiction but I

00:05:27.560 just didn't know how to do it. I wasn't experienced enough at all, really. So that was my first

00:05:33.620 attempt. No, what you just said, it really resonates with me because I think I was the

00:05:38.240 same when I was even reading about Mary Shelley. Like if that was the first thing I was researching

00:05:42.100 for this podcast and you come across Claire and I'm just like, oh wow, what a fascinating,

00:05:46.280 interesting person. But because it's focused on Mary Shelley, I never really read about what

00:05:50.220 Claire did next. And I think like you, I just kind of assumed like, well, that was it. She had

00:05:55.320 this sort of exciting few years when she was a teenager and then, but her life continues on.

00:06:01.500 And so I'm excited to talk to you. So what we're going to do is we're going to just kind of

00:06:06.340 talk through her life. And I just wanted to say, I have your book here with me.

00:06:10.600 So the dedication of the book is for every Claire Claremont who fears her story will be forgotten.

00:06:18.420 And I found that so moving because I think that's part of what really strikes me about her story is

00:06:23.640 that she was there her name comes up almost as a footnote and all these other people's stories but

00:06:29.320 to her she was the main character and she deserves to be the main character yeah I think one of the

00:06:36.140 things that's quite disturbing I think about about that notion being forgotten is that she

00:06:40.780 she had to kind of do it herself while she was alive she wanted to you know have a career she

00:06:46.600 wanted to teach she wanted to earn her own money but people could know that she was connected with

00:06:51.720 the Shelley's and Byron because it was just too scandalous so when after Byron's death in

00:06:57.080 particular in 1824 when people started producing memoirs and biographies of Byron

00:07:01.840 Mary and Claire together both had to do quite a lot of work to say to mainly their friends who

00:07:08.000 were writing these books and say to them please just leave Claire out of it you can't you can't

00:07:12.500 include Claire so to a certain extent she was actually forced into colluding in her own forgetting

00:07:17.960 as it were which I which she really struggled with and she she had a terrible time over it

00:07:23.380 because it's obviously it's a double-edged thing you know having to sit there and read these

00:07:27.520 accounts of people you were with and they're not they're not accurate and there's nothing you can

00:07:32.960 say you can't you can't say anything about it at all I think I think she really struggled with that

00:07:37.780 for a long time right up right up until her death really I mean she meets a couple of biographers

00:07:44.380 later in Florence when she's living in Florence towards the end of her life the late 70s

00:07:49.180 and she she starts to kind of tell them some things and and unburden herself to them but of

00:07:56.320 course by then she's she's also playing some games I think a little bit and she's thinking very much

00:08:00.660 about what she wants the world to know about her if anyone is going to know anything just lost the

00:08:08.200 train of thought of what you originally asked me I'm wittering on this is fine that's what the

00:08:12.100 podcast is like but so we're gonna look at at claire's life beginning to end um and i will say

00:08:17.820 like your your novel i don't think this is going to be first of all this is not going to be spoilers

00:08:22.220 for your book because it's a fact that anybody can find and your book really plays around with

00:08:27.800 time and place and what so we're just going to kind of like hit the facts because people

00:08:32.580 like me and like you initially are just kind of like well she was there that summer mary shelley

00:08:37.240 wrote Frankenstein and that's kind of it. So, yeah, but, and we could spend the whole podcast

00:08:43.000 talking about this. Can you explain her parental and step parents situation? Her, where did she

00:08:51.940 come from and what was her family? It's so complicated. Yeah. It's really interesting

00:08:56.400 because some details we've only just discovered in the last few years. So her mother was a woman

00:09:00.600 called Mary Jane Vile, who already had an illegitimate child by someone, we don't know

00:09:08.560 who, a little boy called Charles, when she becomes pregnant with Claire. And this Claire is born in

00:09:16.220 1798. Like I said, we only found out recently who her real father was. Claire throughout her life

00:09:23.220 believed her father to be some kind of possibly Swiss gentleman. She liked the idea that he was

00:09:29.680 European and her mother I think probably told her a variety of stories but the truth is her father

00:09:36.020 was a man called Sir John Lethbridge who I think was a baron or the son of a baron and Mary Jade

00:09:42.860 Vile kind of ran her own pub and when she gets pregnant with Claire she's not like a child she's

00:09:50.900 in her late 20s I think she's pushing 30 when she gives birth to Claire and she actually spends some 0.99

00:09:56.180 time just after Claire's birth in a debtor's prison as well. So presumably through the pregnancy

00:10:02.480 stuff she wasn't able to work and there was no financial support and that's how she ends up in

00:10:07.160 debtor's prison. So it looks as though we don't have any definite information about this but it

00:10:11.140 looks as though Claire started life really in debtor's prison. Mary Jane Vallott gets out of

00:10:15.960 debtor's prison and on behalf of a local curate takes on her case and together they write to Sir

00:10:23.960 John Lethbridge. And Sir John Lethbridge actually does give financial support on a monthly basis

00:10:31.760 to Mary Jane for Clare's upkeep. That is something we knew nothing about. I don't think Clare knew

00:10:39.060 anything about it either. So fast forward six months, six months after Mary Jane gets out of

00:10:44.520 prison, she winds up in London and she just happens to be living a couple of doors along

00:10:48.640 from William Godwin. William Godwin, famous radical philosopher whose wife Mary Wollstonecraft

00:10:55.760 has recently passed away. It's only about I think 18 months to two years after her death when she

00:11:04.240 was giving birth to her daughter Mary Godwin. William Godwin is left then with two small

00:11:11.400 children. He has Mary Wollstonecraft's first daughter, Fanny Emily, who she had with Gilbert

00:11:18.340 Emily, and his own child with Mary Wollstonecraft, little Mary Godwin. So he's got two daughters to

00:11:25.060 look after. And I think probably he needed a wife and Mary Jane Vile needed a husband. So the two

00:11:33.140 households came together. They got married. To all intents and purposes, it was a good marriage.

00:11:38.700 they have a little boy called William. I just wanted to point out so just now that William is

00:11:43.340 on the scene as well so it's a household of five children? Yes. And each of them has different

00:11:50.640 parents? Yes. Combination? Yes. And we think that that's quite I think unusual and remarkable and

00:11:57.940 all this but actually probably it wasn't that unusual given the high rates of women's deaths

00:12:04.820 in childbirth. There were a lot of mixed households, really, I think. So yeah, so Claire

00:12:10.440 and Mary basically grow up together. When Mary's about 14, she's sent north to Scotland.

00:12:16.860 It looks as though she's not getting on with her stepmother, Mary Jane. Mary Jane was clearly

00:12:21.460 quite a force of nature because at this point, Mary Jane is also running a children's bookshop

00:12:26.920 and she's publishing children's books as well. And she is the only bookseller and publisher

00:12:31.540 in London who is a woman at this time so she's she's quite clearly um quite quite a quite figure 0.91

00:12:38.560 they don't get on so so Mary sent north to live with the Baxters in Scotland and I did write um 0.84

00:12:45.020 a novel back in 2013 about Isabel Baxter who Mary befriends when she's she's living up there in

00:12:54.740 in Dundee in Broughty Ferry so Claire's in the household just with with Fanny and William

00:13:00.380 and Charles until Mary comes back when she's 16 now by this point Shelley young radical poet

00:13:09.300 who thinks Godwin is wonderful has been visiting the household I think Claire and Shelley actually

00:13:14.560 meet first so when Mary returns Shelley comes to visit and it's pretty much instant the chemistry

00:13:23.480 between them. Shelley is married, of course, though, to a woman called Harriet. So you fast

00:13:29.140 forward, not very long after this, Mary and Shelley decide to run off to the continent

00:13:36.120 and they take Claire with them because Claire's got a real facility for languages and also

00:13:41.540 Shelley's quite keen on her. Can we talk about Claire's, sorry, just the, in terms of the

00:13:46.700 facility for languages, just when I was reading a bit about Claire to prepare to talk to you about

00:13:50.520 this? Because she was given a level of education that I think Mary wasn't. Claire was taught in 0.95

00:13:57.520 a different, a better school or something like that. Their education is slightly different. Yes.

00:14:02.700 Like I said, Mary sent north and Claire remains in London. But I think also, I think Claire just

00:14:12.320 has a natural facility for languages anyway. It's not something that Mary's quite so interested in.

00:14:19.280 So, yes, I think there's probably I think there's probably a lot of homeschooling going on as well, because it was all so much of it was probably, I think, directed by Godwin because he believed girls and boys like Wilson Craft did should have an equal education.

00:14:35.640 oh and speaking of the um godwin's beliefs can we talk about free love for a minute because that

00:14:43.740 really affects both mary and claire's decisions throughout their lives the way that they were

00:14:49.340 raised in this radical household yeah i mean i think the the free love influence i think more

00:14:54.340 comes from shelly than anything i mean certainly with them claire i think really imbibes mary

00:15:02.080 Wollstonecraft's philosophies about women's independence and women working for themselves

00:15:08.460 and earning their own money and you shouldn't have to be married in order to be you know

00:15:12.820 financially secure and all of this kind of stuff um Shelley of course takes it all a step further

00:15:19.020 Shelley's really the proponent of free love as in we should all have multiple partners if we want

00:15:25.120 and nobody sticks to one person and all that kind of thing and that's really kind of when later when

00:15:31.380 they come back from the continent and he's kind of pushing mary towards his friend hog he wants

00:15:36.860 her to sleep with him so that there's no there's no possession there's no nobody's clinging on to

00:15:42.360 one other person the problem you have with shelley is a lot of his philosophies are quite contradictory

00:15:48.080 you know on the one hand he he was also at this time trying to disinherit himself because he's

00:15:54.340 the son of a baronet sir timothy shelley and he doesn't want to he doesn't believe in inherited

00:15:58.840 wealth. So he's trying legally to disinherit himself so he doesn't inherit the house

00:16:03.760 from his father. But at the same time, he depends on his father's money to be able to pay for things

00:16:11.880 because Shelley isn't going to get a job, is he? He's got no interest in doing that.

00:16:17.080 So you've got the same thing, I think, with the sort of free love philosophy as well, where,

00:16:22.000 you know, they run off to the continent, Shelley, Mary and Clare. Then they come back after a few

00:16:27.360 months and when he lands when they land back at Dover they've got no money to get back to London

00:16:33.320 so he writes to Harriet and asks Harriet his wife the wife he has abandoned to pay for them to come

00:16:40.520 back which she does thinking that Shelley is coming back to her only when Shelley meets her he

00:16:47.000 says no that's not what I'm thinking at all I'm thinking a lovely big commune where we all live

00:16:51.840 together it'll all be lovely and and Harriet's just like are you kidding me Harriet's pregnant

00:16:56.800 with her second child by Shelley. So it's, and now Mary, of course, is pregnant too. So it's, 0.73

00:17:03.020 yeah, free love indeed, which turns out to be rather expensive.

00:17:08.580 Good point. Great point. So there is sort of this trio, actually just side note. I don't know if you

00:17:15.920 saw the Mary Shelley movie from a few years ago where Elle Fanning was playing Mary Shelley.

00:17:21.960 Yeah. So the two recently, like within the last couple of months, the actress Belle Powley,

00:17:26.640 who played Claire and the actor Douglas Booth who played Shelley they just got married in real life

00:17:31.100 they met on that movie and fell in love I was like actually this is beautiful I know

00:17:35.760 it's amazing isn't it yeah they're in and they're a lovely couple they are they seem like a lovely

00:17:42.740 couple and I mentioned that to my friend and she saw the movie as well and she's like yeah those

00:17:46.360 two had real chemistry in that movie it was almost distracting but the Claire Shelley Mary so you

00:17:54.480 you talk about this in your book, which is again, a novel, but Claire and Mary are so similar in age

00:18:00.000 and they're raised together and they've quite opposite personalities, but then they're both,

00:18:04.800 it's like the three of them, Mary, Claire and Shelley are together. And it's always been a

00:18:09.580 sort of like, what was that situation? What was Claire's role in this relationship? And I don't

00:18:16.000 know how much we could ever really know, but it sort of taints both of the girls really by having

00:18:22.160 run off with this man as teenagers, does it? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's you're talking about this is

00:18:26.580 the Regency era. This is, you know, Jane Austen. You know, they run off the year after the publication

00:18:33.220 of Pride and Prejudice. I mean, they are both doing Lydia Bennett. When they're doing this,

00:18:38.940 they're ruining the reputations. And it's interesting that it's Claire's mother, Mary

00:18:42.860 Jane, who runs after them. I mean, she, she, you know, William Godwin, the father is at home just

00:18:48.240 going oh my god what are we going to do mary jane actually gets in a coach goes to the coast and

00:18:53.980 then gets a boat across to france herself and chases after him and she does get hold of claire

00:18:59.460 and tries to persuade her to come back but you know claire's 16 and having the time of her life

00:19:03.960 she's just like no i'm having a huge adventure absolutely not and so when you sort of fast

00:19:09.400 forward two years later when claire's 18 or 17 just before she meets byron she and shelly and

00:19:17.440 mary have been living together on and off uh sometimes it breaks down when mary and claire

00:19:23.800 fall out and mary's like i've had enough she needs to leave me alone and and also of course this is

00:19:29.240 the period when mary goes through the loss of her first child as well and there's a sense that

00:19:35.320 perhaps claire doesn't quite understand or or certainly a sense from mary of needing i think

00:19:42.640 probably quiet and calm and peace around her and Shelley doesn't really know quite how to handle it

00:19:48.420 so he finds it easier to just you know let's go off for a big walk with Claire and leave Mary to

00:19:53.000 it so there's a kind of there's lots of tensions going on I think between all three of them at this

00:19:59.300 point just before Claire meets meets Byron and Claire does go off and live for a while and in

00:20:07.380 lionmouth she goes off on sort of little jaunts just when when mary's really had enough so byron

00:20:14.220 enters the story how did they meet each other well as far as we know and and there's there's

00:20:21.820 lots of different um stories about this but as far as we can tell it comes through claire writing

00:20:29.760 to byron and asking for an audition and because he's one of the directors on the drury lane

00:20:35.980 theatre and she wants to come and audition for him because she has a she does have a remarkable

00:20:40.920 singing voice he just ignores the first couple of letters but she's quite persistent and she

00:20:45.520 keeps writing and all we know is that eventually he says yes and ta-da it seems to have happened

00:20:53.660 from there the question mark over it and you see this in biographies really from oh I would say

00:21:00.920 about the the 1990s onwards in particular this sense of Claire being the one who came up with

00:21:09.780 this idea and really ran with it and really pushed it and you'll see lots and lots of phrases in lots

00:21:16.280 of biographies about her you know laying siege to Byron and you know all these kind of battle

00:21:23.040 metaphors and stuff and really kind of blaming her as well it's a way I think of later on when

00:21:29.660 subsequent things when they don't work out it's like it's her own fault she pushed for this she

00:21:34.060 pushed for this and it's interesting because William Graham who is a young journalist who

00:21:39.420 goes to visit Claire towards the ends of her life in Florence records that Claire told him that it

00:21:48.280 was Shelley's idea that she write to Byron in the first place because Shelley wanted to meet Byron

00:21:53.140 that Shelley was Byron mad and Shelley's biographer Richard Holmes is probably written I think one of

00:21:59.480 the best biographies ever written, Shelley, The Pursuit. It's astonishing. The amount of detail

00:22:03.980 he gets hold of is incredible. He also thinks that it's a bit of a put up job that Shelley

00:22:11.260 encourages Claire. It's Shelley's idea and he encourages Claire to write to Byron to try and

00:22:16.780 hook him. So she's, I mean, he's really kind of using Claire as bait to try and hook this,

00:22:22.040 this poet. And we know also that Mary knew about it as well, because Claire takes Mary to meet

00:22:28.260 Byron after the first couple of meetings. So it kind of complicates the picture. It means that

00:22:33.320 it's not quite so clear that it was Claire who was chasing Byron, but she was kind of pushed

00:22:38.700 towards him. That's the kind of version that I've kind of gone with, I think, in the novel.

00:22:43.780 Not to absolve Claire of Blame, but just, I think, to balance it out a little bit better.

00:22:50.980 Yeah, because I think I've come across the interpretation that she saw Shelley,

00:22:56.300 like mary was with shelly so she wanted to be also with a great celebrity a great literary

00:23:02.820 figure as well and so she just harassed byron into meeting with her but it's more nuanced than

00:23:09.460 just that even if that maybe was like part unconsciously what she was thinking yeah there's

00:23:15.080 this this idea that she um she wanted um to outdo mary she wanted to to get someone even more

00:23:21.600 glamorous and and it still seems quite odd though because Byron was such a star at this time he was

00:23:29.060 such a literary star um and she's nobody she she has you know no connections the the thing that

00:23:36.440 probably would have interested him the most is her connection to William Godwin because Byron was a

00:23:40.620 big fan of of Godwin's but yeah it is it is all quite strange it is all quite shrouded in sort of

00:23:47.560 claim and and counterclaim and it depends on who you kind of want to go with I think and certainly

00:23:53.740 for for fans of Byron I think Claire is is always going to be a sticking point for them because of

00:24:02.600 how he treats her and I think it kind of absolves Byron a lot if you can blame Claire for it in the

00:24:10.580 first place if you can say well look and that's what Byron says Byron's Byron's clearly trying

00:24:15.480 to absolve himself much later on because that's what he says oh you know this this girl who comes

00:24:21.100 you know traipsing after me traveling all these hundreds of miles you know to unphilosophize me

00:24:26.880 he says he doesn't want to be blamed for what's happening either. So how do they all get to

00:24:33.460 Geneva for that famous summer? Well of course Byron has separated from his wife Lady Annabella

00:24:42.220 And it's quite shocking because, of course, this is an age when divorce isn't supposed to happen.

00:24:47.740 And there's all sorts of rumours about exactly why his wife is separating from him from him.

00:24:54.780 They have a little girl.

00:24:56.560 And then there's the rumours of sodomy and all sorts of things coming out.

00:25:01.200 And Byron is really forced into exile.

00:25:03.520 He has to leave the country because they're really gunning for him.

00:25:07.660 So he's very angry and he's leaving in a big huff.

00:25:10.120 Shelley has been talking for quite some time about you know whether should he should he go

00:25:15.280 and live in Europe should he stay in England he can't decide what to do because he's getting

00:25:19.040 annoyed by creditors he's also um he's lost some chancery suit as well he's constantly preoccupied

00:25:25.900 with money and money situations and so he's in a bad temper as well and I think in the midst of all

00:25:31.900 of this just before Byron leaves this seems to have been when well we know this is when Claire

00:25:37.940 spends the night with Byron we don't know how often it happens we don't know how many

00:25:42.120 times they they see each other but we know that obviously this is this is when she

00:25:46.960 conceives she doesn't know that necessarily so Byron goes off to Geneva in May and Claire decides

00:25:56.780 or says to him you know we'll come with you we're going to come to we're going to come to and she

00:26:00.640 suggests it to to Mary and Shelley who are all for it they're just like yes let's let's do that

00:26:05.620 let's go and so they actually I think they actually reach Geneva before Byron does and

00:26:12.400 they take one house and Byron takes the other Byron takes the bigger house of course and then

00:26:17.440 the Shelleys move again and they have this little cottage that's nearer Villa Diodati because Byron

00:26:22.840 has all this money Byron is so rich this is the other thing he's not just a literary star he's a

00:26:27.560 rich handsome you know dreadful man who's doing very very well in one respect and so they have

00:26:37.540 this little cottage sort of down by the down by the water and it's Claire who introduces Byron

00:26:43.160 and Shelley which I always think is quite a fascinating thing really that that she's and I

00:26:49.680 and I have this in the novel quite a few times about her being positioned between them because

00:26:53.220 she is the one who brings them together on the pier at the edge of the lake. And that's the first

00:26:58.800 time that they meet each other. And I do think that's partly, it's not just the fact that it's

00:27:04.640 a few nights later, the storms are happening because of the volcano in Indonesia, causing

00:27:10.420 all sorts of upset with the weather in the Villa Diodati, the whole group of them telling ghost

00:27:15.680 stories, all of this kind of stuff. It's not just because of Frankenstein that that summer matters,

00:27:21.180 But it's been blown up so much because, of course, Byron Shelley, these two genius poets coming together and meeting and discussing things.

00:27:30.540 And that's really what kind of pushes Claire out of the picture in terms of literary biography, because she isn't a literary genius.

00:27:40.320 Mary and Byron and Shelley are the literary geniuses and Claire isn't.

00:27:44.780 for all her for all her talents for all her intelligence and her education she isn't one of

00:27:51.320 them isn't there a quote I'm not gonna ask you to recite the quote but I'm sure you've come across it

00:27:57.080 where she said something about you know what why don't you write also Claire and she was like in

00:28:01.640 my family you either need to be a genius or don't even bother because it's not just like Mary and

00:28:08.140 Shelly and Byron who she's spending her time with but also her father and then also Mary's mother

00:28:12.540 And then her mother, Mary Jane, is this publisher.

00:28:15.360 Like there's such a high level of achievement.

00:28:17.260 So I can see that that would be very daunting.

00:28:20.240 Yeah, but I think she was also quite,

00:28:22.100 she was quite a bold person anyway. 0.58

00:28:25.300 And I think she did have,

00:28:27.080 she had that early confidence

00:28:28.380 that you have at that age at 18.

00:28:31.120 You know, she's been surrounded by genius her whole life,

00:28:34.080 as you see, brought up in the household of William Godwin,

00:28:38.040 Mary Wilson crafts, you know,

00:28:40.080 words all around her kind of thing.

00:28:41.680 So I don't think she's intimidated by genius necessarily.

00:28:45.860 And she's very supportive of it as well.

00:28:47.380 And she's always supportive of Mary's genius throughout her life.

00:28:49.920 And she refers to it as genius, which we know is a word that's nearly always applied to men.

00:28:55.400 And, you know, it's the old, you know, men have genius, women have talent kind of thing.

00:28:59.660 And she's very forceful about Mary's genius.

00:29:03.140 So I don't think she was necessarily intimidated by it.

00:29:05.800 yes that there is that quote of her saying you know if you can't think of something you know

00:29:09.920 that by its nature is the most original thing ever then just don't bother but she was she was

00:29:16.240 clever and she could appreciate literature properly and she could hold her own I think

00:29:22.060 in conversations there's never any sense that she doesn't really kind of know what to say or that 0.97

00:29:28.820 she's saying something stupid or foolish I don't think yeah and I think that's also sort of an 0.89

00:29:34.940 impression that one might get about Claire Claremont just from the way she's often talked 0.98

00:29:40.240 about just a little bit or she's kind of a small role documentaries or films or things like that

00:29:45.320 she's just kind of Mary's like silly sister it's kind of like Lydia Bennett put into

00:29:49.240 this summer in Geneva where it's like no she actually is like very intelligent and like you

00:29:54.100 said she has this facility for languages and stuff like she can yeah she can keep up yeah and she I

00:29:59.680 mean she wrote she tried to write as well she wrote um a short story called the pole and she 0.70

00:30:04.800 she was starting work on on a short story called the idiot which we don't really have

00:30:09.300 i don't think we've got anything left of that so she was thinking about writing too but primarily

00:30:14.940 she was kind of in training to be a teacher she wanted to teach and and teach music so she was

00:30:21.860 thinking in in terms of a of a career she wasn't trying to ensnare byron and she didn't want to

00:30:29.360 get married. All of that was very genuine. She really took on a lot of Shelley and principles

00:30:35.580 early on that she really didn't abandon. She stuck with them, which I think is really interesting

00:30:41.620 because that's really kind of what sees her through, I think, the tragedies to come as things

00:30:46.900 just kind of implode, really. Well, let's talk about that implosion, which part of that is what

00:30:55.160 happens with her child, with Byron. And actually, sorry, pause. I want to talk about names for a

00:31:01.300 second because we've been calling her Claire all along, but her name was Jane. And then she chose

00:31:05.580 to change her name to Claire, which one of her middle names is Clara. So it didn't come out of

00:31:09.860 nowhere. And her surname was Claremont, but that was a surname her mother, Mary Jane had invented

00:31:17.540 because. Yes. Right. Yeah. So there's just a lot of name. And in your book, you play around with

00:31:23.700 this what she's called at different times so I just wanted to talk about that for a second

00:31:26.900 yeah I think I think the naming thing is really interesting because yeah she she lives by the

00:31:32.960 name Claire Claremont by this point and both those names are invented her her first name is an

00:31:39.680 invention and so is her surname although she doesn't know her surname is an invention she

00:31:44.060 thinks claremont is a real man who fathered her um so i i do think the the question of names is

00:31:53.960 is really interesting particularly for women because they lose their names on on marrying

00:32:00.920 because then she has a child the shot she has with byron is a daughter who initially

00:32:06.300 she calls Elba which is a play on her nickname that so Lord Byron is LB and people call him

00:32:15.220 LB like LB for a Lord Byron so then she calls the daughter Elba presumably is kind of an ode to him

00:32:21.580 and he's like no let's change this child's name to Allegra actually so names are just changing

00:32:28.460 names are changing and there's a lot of status in a name as well I mean it's interesting that

00:32:34.580 Byron chooses the name Allegra which is much more classical those kinds of classical names have more

00:32:40.120 status because one thing he does do he does he does acknowledge Allegra as his own he doesn't

00:32:45.660 try and pretend I mean apart from that there is that quote where he says you know is the brat

00:32:50.800 mine he writes to to one of his friends and he just says well you know I I know it is and it's

00:32:56.180 so much as one can know these things but he does he does take on board that the child is this little

00:33:02.140 girl is his so he is very conscious of himself as a Byron and that his daughter is a Byron as well

00:33:09.820 she is Allegra Byron he doesn't he doesn't deny her his name and I know I mean these days we

00:33:16.820 sort of think well that's how big of them that was great but uh in those days I think that was

00:33:21.680 probably quite important and but it does feed into why Claire is ready and willing to hand her

00:33:28.880 daughter over to this man. I have had a couple of people ask me when she finds out that she's

00:33:34.920 pregnant to Byron, why is she so willing to give her child up? Especially when you think that her 1.00

00:33:41.180 mother managed with two children. She wasn't married, although her mother did end up in 1.00

00:33:47.060 debtors prison, so maybe didn't manage quite so well. It wasn't easy. She's 18 years old and she

00:33:51.980 has nothing. She really has nothing. The best contact in the world she has is William Godwin, 0.84

00:33:56.680 her stepfather, who is broke. He is perpetually broke. So there's no money at her back. The only

00:34:02.680 kind of support she's got is from Shelley. Shelley, at this point, is currently supporting two women, 0.99

00:34:08.180 Mary and Harriet. His two children by Harriet. He's got a child with Mary. He's supporting Claire

00:34:13.800 as well. And his big fear, if Claire kept the child, was that his father would hear about this

00:34:22.500 And everybody would just assume that Claire's child was Shelley's by Claire, that this would be the final straw and his father really would cut off all financial support.

00:34:34.020 That would be it.

00:34:35.680 So even though he like wanted to be cut off from his father, he didn't want to be cut off from his father's money.

00:34:42.040 Yeah. Like I said, this is the contradiction with him, you know, wanting to be disinherited.

00:34:46.760 I don't want to inherit the title. I don't want to inherit this grand mansion field place, blah, blah, blah. But yes, could you please still give me my money so that I, like I said, so I don't have to get a job. So it's, he's still got quite a lot of money. I mean, it's not like he's impoverished or anything like that, but it would, it would cause problems.

00:35:08.020 there's also it's interesting much later on a few years down the line when I don't mean to jump

00:35:14.320 ahead I'm hoping I'm not doing that too much but when Claire is begging Byron to let her see her

00:35:20.980 child and she says she comes up with this scheme to Shelly and saying look why don't we rescue her

00:35:26.500 she's in a convent why don't we go and rescue her and Shelly's horrified she's like no what if

00:35:31.140 Byron challenges me to a duel I might die and you're just kind of like you know Byron's too

00:35:40.260 too big and strong and and rich and and even Mary Mary says the same thing she says is this what you

00:35:46.640 want you seriously Claire do you want Shelley to to fight Byron and and he'll die and in any case

00:35:55.200 Byron she said would like he has all the money all these resources he would just hunt down you 0.90

00:35:59.680 and your child and take her back anyway so there's no point so yes it's she has nothing she is not in

00:36:06.120 a position of power and she's she goes very quickly I think from being in a position of

00:36:11.800 she's an 18 year old girl with all these plus points you know she's attractive she's intelligent

00:36:17.400 she's mixing with these sort of literary geniuses and then suddenly it's really kind of all taken 0.94

00:36:23.560 away because she's, the truth of the matter is that she's a penniless 18 year old single mother

00:36:29.880 and you have nothing. You really do have nothing. Yeah. And that's the thing. That's where I kind

00:36:36.360 of, one might understand why her mother went to try and bring her home age 16, because what her

00:36:43.440 mother went through being the, being the single mother, being a debtor's person, she could,

00:36:47.680 she could see a long view of where Claire was headed. Whereas Claire was just in the moment, 0.92

00:36:53.280 having so much fun I know and I do think it's such a shame that her mother didn't tell her the truth

00:36:59.580 about her origins and tell the truth about her past because she might have been able to advise

00:37:04.800 her daughter Claire didn't tell her mother about the child that she had with with Byron and you

00:37:12.040 just kind of think her mother would have been a good person to have had by her side and to have 0.64

00:37:17.540 fought for her now she might not have I mean Mary Jane Vile might have taken the opposite line she

00:37:22.420 might have said yeah absolutely you have to give your child over to Byron there's no point in even

00:37:26.980 fighting it just do it and don't think twice about it but you you can't help feeling she kind of

00:37:33.660 she actually kind of needed a stronger support I think behind her certainly if she was going to

00:37:39.600 take on on somebody like Byron and she did that's a remarkable thing she actually did take him on

00:37:45.980 I mean her letters to him after she's handed Allegra over to him are are astonishing you know

00:37:52.980 she she really fights for her well I was just thinking you know if she had someone she had

00:37:57.360 that own strength in herself to be fighting for her daughter but if she had someone in her corner

00:38:00.960 besides these like though it just you know re taking the story and putting the emphasis on

00:38:07.200 Claire in the background Shelly and Mary are just kind of these flakes like they don't know any

00:38:11.700 better than she does what to do like they're all just kind of 20 year old doing the best they can

00:38:17.000 but they don't know what they're doing they have skills but their skills are not to live life well

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00:41:11.960 No, I think particularly, Shelley, it's funny.

00:41:15.120 when I when I first started to write about Claire was back in 1998 and I mean I still think Shelley

00:41:23.400 is is the greatest poet that that England ever produced I think he's astonishing and I think at

00:41:28.540 that age you're kind of you kind of fall for Shelley I think I was probably in love with

00:41:32.920 Shelley as well as as you would be at that age because he's so radical and revolutionary and

00:41:38.500 he's kind of sexy Byron is just not so much I mean he's he is mad bad and dangerous to know but

00:41:43.960 he just doesn't come across I think as as well as Shelly does it's not until you're older

00:41:48.300 I think and you look back writing this again I just thought yes Byron is is you know you

00:41:57.260 really lock up your daughters you don't want your young 18 year old girl anywhere near that man

00:42:02.760 but Shelly is actually the really dangerous one to me to my mind because well you only have to

00:42:08.520 look at. I mean, this is a man, when he dies in 1822, when he drowns, he leaves a trail of death

00:42:16.260 behind him. You know, there's Fanny Emily. There's his first wife, Harriet Shelley, who

00:42:22.480 walks into the Serpentine and drowns herself. There are all the children, the children who

00:42:28.600 have died, William and Clara. It's just a lack of care and consideration for other people. He's

00:42:36.500 just not able to do it and you can say well yes he's a literary genius and he's a great poet and

00:42:42.060 he is but he wasn't good he wasn't good for women and children is really what I mean and I think if

00:42:48.660 he hadn't died young I'm not sure Mary would have survived many more years with him didn't he make

00:42:56.320 everybody do this demented vegetarian diet where they only ate potatoes or something like that

00:43:02.460 there's quite a lot of stories like that about him I don't know how much of them

00:43:07.080 are true I think certainly he liked he was certainly someone who liked fads and he would

00:43:13.400 take up with things and then discard them quickly but yeah but he he did he did stay a vegetarian

00:43:19.440 throughout his life and he was also you know he supported the abolition of slavery he he refused

00:43:25.480 to have sugar for example in his tea he would sweeten his tea with raisins he wouldn't use

00:43:29.440 he wouldn't use sugar oh wow yeah but also good for him but also oh yeah exactly you would just

00:43:35.080 do without the the races really but um yeah so he he was he had principles but some of the 0.99

00:43:42.260 principles weren't the right ones and I think one of the things I have Claire say in the novel

00:43:47.640 is about you know the the famous defense of poetry that that he writes where he talks about

00:43:54.060 you know a poet is a nightingale it sits I think it sits in its own solitude sings its own song

00:43:59.380 and cheers itself in its own solitude type of thing and then you look at his life and he just

00:44:03.580 had to constantly have women around him he just had to have this harem of women constantly and

00:44:08.100 he was constantly having crushes on other women I mean Mary just had to put up with him constantly

00:44:12.100 writing poems to this woman writing poems to that woman and oh she he's in love with this woman now

00:44:17.940 and in love with that woman and yes you can see well that's he's you know holding true to his

00:44:22.220 principles of free love and no possessions but you just kind of think by this point this woman

00:44:27.160 has given birth you know four or five times to your children you've got obligations there are

00:44:34.300 things that you need to start standing up for and they're not having crushes it's actually

00:44:41.040 trying to just you get your children to adulthood without dying first can you do that and I think

00:44:47.520 when Allegra when the news comes through of Allegra dying in 1822 in the spring of 1822

00:44:55.280 and he talks about having this nightmare

00:44:58.700 of seeing this naked female child

00:45:01.360 rising up out of the sea and accusing him

00:45:04.760 and he is fighting with Mary all the time

00:45:09.640 they're just quarrelling

00:45:10.440 and of course Mary's had a miscarriage

00:45:12.600 and he rushes off to the village at one point

00:45:15.760 to try and buy prussic acid

00:45:17.180 which is a classic suicide poison

00:45:20.460 I do think when he then goes sailing off to meet Byron 0.75

00:45:25.160 and he leaves the witch and goes up to Livorno

00:45:27.560 to see Byron with Edward Williams. 0.50

00:45:30.700 I think, I do think on the sail back,

00:45:33.040 he was sailing into what he knew would be absolute disaster

00:45:37.560 because the day that they sail out,

00:45:40.300 there's a terrible storm coming

00:45:41.720 and no other boats are going out that day.

00:45:43.740 Nobody else is sailing and he insists on still going out.

00:45:48.680 And I think by that point, I think,

00:45:51.120 I think there's an element he just couldn't live with himself

00:45:53.880 anymore and you can you can kind of see there's just there's only so much tragedy you can deal

00:45:59.340 with and I do think Allegra was I think Allegra was last year I think he was devastated by Allegra's

00:46:04.820 death so yeah Mary Shelley she had one surviving child like who grew into adulthood right the

00:46:13.160 others were died as infants of various diseases or she miscarried Allegra died of very young age

00:46:19.960 five, I think of typhus or something like that in the convent. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're just saying

00:46:25.460 the string of deaths behind him. So if we, this is kind of where we often leave Claire. So I'm

00:46:31.840 excited to get into the next era, which is Allegra has died. Shelley has died. Mary kind of devotes

00:46:39.460 herself to memorializing Shelley and, you know, publishing his work and advocating for him.

00:46:43.680 and what does claire do next well first of all claire had a plan even before shelly's death

00:46:51.000 what she was going to do was go to vienna where her brother charles was working as a professor

00:46:56.740 and to teach there she's going to teach music and singing so she does she goes to vienna it all goes

00:47:04.460 kind of horribly wrong well before she goes to vienna sorry there's how many times have you said

00:47:10.060 that sorry no it's fine like it's her life it's not your words but everything just constantly

00:47:17.940 keeps going horribly wrong for her yeah it does really well she has a little sort of romantic

00:47:22.720 interlude after the death of shelly um there's the there's a man called um edward trelawney who

00:47:29.200 who appears and he's he's befriended byron and shelly just before shelly's death and he's he's

00:47:35.620 kind of like a big sort of byronic figure and she has a bit of a fling with him but it's not

00:47:40.040 enough to make her think oh I'll just hang around with him so she sticks to her plan she goes to

00:47:45.500 Vienna she gets very ill I think she probably really has a breakdown the equivalent of a

00:47:50.340 breakdown she's physically ill she says later on in life that she almost died when she was in Vienna

00:47:54.740 she got so ill and there's also the secret police are on to both Charles and Claire because they've

00:48:03.500 gotten wind of connections with godwin and shelly and so she kind of she kind of has to leave vienna

00:48:10.760 so she's not in vienna for very long so instead of going west though or going back to england she

00:48:15.900 decides to go further east she goes to russia i do think it's partly getting away from the name

00:48:22.580 she's obviously hoping the further away she goes the better chance she has of being anonymous and

00:48:28.560 not being connected with godwin and shelly and so on so yeah she she gets employed as a governess

00:48:35.740 with with really with one rich russian family after another english governesses were really

00:48:42.560 popular and in demand in russia at this time the russian the the richest russian families the

00:48:48.540 the nobles they all spoke french they didn't speak russian they spoke french so that suited

00:48:53.560 clear perfectly because she can she was fluent but she could also read and obviously speak

00:48:59.440 English in other languages and it was a very kind of um it's quite a sort of different setup from

00:49:05.520 we think of governesses in England in a very kind of Jane Eyre type way you know it's quite grim

00:49:11.560 and austere and you're in your little governess's bedroom and it's all you know quite horrible or

00:49:18.700 you're exploited by your employer in some horrible way in russia it was her letters her letters that

00:49:25.640 she writes about um life in russia as a as a governess are just incredible they're just so 0.70

00:49:31.240 full of life and they're so vibrant and it is crazy it is absolutely crazy in russian families

00:49:36.480 the governess was part of the family like a cousin or an aunt or whatever so you were expected to 0.85

00:49:42.240 partake in all the family events and all the rest of it and you ate with the family you didn't eat

00:49:47.020 with the servants in the kitchen you eat with the family and I have her being quite cheeky to

00:49:52.600 her employer because she is she is quite she she describes parties and all sorts of events and

00:49:59.780 everything going on so it was very it was a it was in one sense it was freer because I think it was

00:50:06.140 socially much more freer intellectually it wasn't because they had to be careful the year that I have

00:50:13.200 picked 1825

00:50:14.980 so it's three years after the death of Shelley

00:50:17.420 and Allegra and she's in Russia

00:50:19.500 you know at the end of 1825

00:50:21.460 there will be an assassination 0.99

00:50:23.260 of the Tsar by the Decembrists 1.00

00:50:25.840 because it's in

00:50:27.420 December of 1825

00:50:28.680 and then the forces of conservatism really do

00:50:31.420 take over so it's already

00:50:33.260 a place where you have to

00:50:35.400 be careful politically what you say

00:50:37.300 and it gets much worse after

00:50:38.860 1825 so she

00:50:41.200 she's got lots to say about

00:50:43.200 life there. But I think, you know, even if, and this is, I think, where Claire really comes into

00:50:48.100 her own, because even if she didn't know the Shelleys, even if she hadn't met Byron, if she

00:50:54.280 had gone to Russia, and we had these two volumes of amazing letters and journals just on their own,

00:51:01.320 what an amazing account we would have of this woman who lived independently until she was 79

00:51:07.460 in various parts of Europe. It's just extraordinary. And to write about it all so well.

00:51:13.200 And didn't Mary Shelley, I think she wrote in a letter as well, she just, she complimented. She

00:51:17.960 said, Claire writes the best letters of anyone she knows. Yes. And, and they are, they're so

00:51:22.280 detailed. They're so full of life. She's also very, I think she really connects with a modern

00:51:28.560 audience, particularly because she's so emotionally frank in her letters. And we're used to

00:51:33.900 particularly, particularly male literary figures in their letters. They can be quite formal. They,

00:51:39.480 they like to employ lots of rhetorical devices because they've all had a classical education

00:51:44.300 so they're all playing clever tricks in their letters claire hasn't had that kind of education

00:51:50.020 she just goes right to the heart of the matter she's very direct in her letters and

00:51:53.760 i mean she writes beautifully but she also writes really honestly and really clearly and it's the

00:51:59.980 kind of writing i think that we tend to value now much more than the sort of rhetorical fanciness we

00:52:05.980 don't really appreciate that in the same way. Well, it's so much more, I mean, to me and just

00:52:10.860 to the average person, I would say it's so much more easy to read. It's more relatable. Like I

00:52:17.320 don't know all the illusions that someone with that education are making where they're writing

00:52:21.180 to impress other intellectuals, but she's just writing to explain what she's doing. And I think

00:52:26.360 that's so much more appealing. I think quite often the male literary figures are often writing

00:52:32.840 deliberately to obscure meaning they're they're they're trying to keep things as obscure as

00:52:38.880 possible almost they don't want to reveal too much of themselves and she's the exact opposite

00:52:42.660 she's she wants to get things off her chest she's saying exactly how she feels about certain things

00:52:47.960 in a certain situation and so she I mean she continues living on as an independent woman

00:52:55.120 which I think is impressive and also speaks to the influence of Mary Wollstonecraft's

00:53:02.340 writings when she was growing up but then also kind of the Shelley stuff like she really it

00:53:08.520 clearly was important to her to remain independent she could have probably married someone at some

00:53:14.580 point but she chose to never do that oh yeah she had she had quite a few marriage proposals 0.94

00:53:19.880 over the years and there's there's one moment where a female friend of hers mrs mason from

00:53:25.360 Italy, who was Lady Mount Cashel, another woman living in sin. She says, I think later on to

00:53:34.480 Mary, oh, it's a shame that Claire didn't accept Thomas Love Peacock's proposal. Thomas Love

00:53:40.440 Peacock really liked her. He's a writer and he has a big manor house in England. And I just,

00:53:47.660 I always thought whenever I read that bit, I just thought, which would you rather have?

00:53:52.040 By the way, Thomas Love Peacock, Claire found him a deadly, dull boar and used to hide when he came to the house.

00:53:59.960 And he was much older than she was as well.

00:54:03.000 And I just thought, yes, would you rather be living in some dull old manor with Mr. Boring hidden away somewhere in England?

00:54:11.340 Or would you rather have your own apartment in Paris and be living independently?

00:54:15.500 Yes, not a difficult choice to make.

00:54:17.900 she's I think very honest again about about that too because she doesn't need that status she's 0.74

00:54:23.380 not chasing marital status or anything like that it frees her up to to do these extraordinary

00:54:29.740 things I mean after she she's in Russia for quite a long time almost a decade and then she comes

00:54:35.840 back to England for a while and she helps nurse her mother as well when her mother's dying and

00:54:41.340 it's just immediately her mother dies that she decided to go to Paris and and live and work

00:54:47.640 there and she spends most of the 1840s in Paris as well all of this like everything you just said

00:54:53.620 about her would you rather like you live in this house with this boring man or like have the 0.99

00:54:58.940 apartment in Paris I'm like of course the apartment in Paris but it's just so rare that a woman in

00:55:04.140 this time period in this era is able to make that choice because often because of financial reasons

00:55:10.120 entirely because of financial reasons people end up having to marry the boring man 1.00

00:55:15.780 but she always wanted to have have her own money so like she was teaching she was a governess like

00:55:22.100 she always found a way and that wasn't a means to an end to go off and happily or not happily but

00:55:27.740 just to marry somebody and live that conventional life I just find it so impressive because it's

00:55:32.880 rare even today culturally I'm sure it's the same in Scotland as it is where I'm in Canada

00:55:38.620 or in the United States like there's such a pervasive pressure on young women to get married

00:55:46.000 have children and it's strange like to me as an unmarried person like I've felt this pressure

00:55:54.140 and I'm just like why why does everyone care so I can't even imagine the pressure that Claire was

00:55:59.520 up against in the 1800s oh yeah I remember when I first went I went to buy my first flat

00:56:06.260 and it was in 1996 and i went to the bank to see about mortgage that was when i got my first like

00:56:11.440 proper grown-up job when i i got a lecturing job at the university of st andrews thought right i'm

00:56:18.020 going to buy a flat and i remember going to various banks you know to see what mortgage

00:56:23.780 um deals they had to offer and you're just surrounded by posters of couples heterosexual

00:56:30.120 couples um because that's who they're selling their mortgage deals to because that's the ideal

00:56:35.800 family unit and I think it's it's really interesting that we as a society particularly

00:56:43.580 just now are so in love with the Jane Austen ideal of marriage and even even though she was

00:56:53.020 satirizing the marriage market she she never suggested an alternative to marriage it was

00:56:59.840 always you had to get a good marriage and it's almost like that's we're still in love with that

00:57:03.800 idea of it that's still the romantic ideal but also the practical and the financial ideal

00:57:08.540 so yes to have someone like Claire I'm sure that's partly actually why I liked her story so much

00:57:15.340 because I was single I was working for myself I was living on my own and here's this woman

00:57:21.580 doing it you know 200 years before as well and it's not easy because nothing's set up society

00:57:29.840 isn't set up it's not encouraging you to do this it doesn't like you to do this it doesn't like 0.74

00:57:33.920 women to do this on their own so you're battling all the time and that's what she was doing she 0.99

00:57:39.300 was constantly having to you know go from job to job she never stayed too long in one particular 1.00

00:57:46.580 place it is a difficult life it's not it's not easy she's she's living all over the place but

00:57:51.880 it's also a life of incident and adventure and and love there's a lot of there's a lot of passion

00:58:00.080 there's a lot of you know she does she was someone who was still I think sexually active when she was

00:58:09.260 in middle age and even when she was an old lady her niece Paula when these two young well one's

00:58:16.920 younger than the other William Graham and Edward Sillsby the two journalists who come to well one's

00:58:21.300 a journalist and the others collector of letters and they they you know wine and diner to to try

00:58:26.540 and get her bower and shelly letters access to bower and shelly letters her niece paula talks

00:58:31.580 about you know her aunt flirting with them and being all coy and and all this kind of stuff

00:58:36.680 yeah she she was like that she was a sexually a sexual being and that's something else we tend

00:58:45.780 to kind of want to crush especially as women get older and she didn't she was she was living

00:58:51.220 in Paris and I'm quite sure I can't I don't want to give away spoilers either about the man she

00:58:57.620 is with in Paris and I don't have proof as I say in the the afterword for of the novel I don't have

00:59:03.680 proof that this is who she had the affair with but she was having an affair in Paris and I do

00:59:10.300 feel very strongly that it was this man this particular individual which of course had I think

00:59:17.760 it come out at that particular time would have been extremely shocking i love i'm just trying

00:59:25.620 to i can't i can't think of someone else to compare her to who is this maybe samantha and

00:59:31.660 sex in the city or something just somebody who's like a woman aged 40 plus who is just like 0.69

00:59:38.220 independent and a sexual being and just enjoying her life and is not hewing to those conventional

00:59:45.620 I don't know I love I love that she never gave up and was like fine I'll just marry someone I'll

00:59:50.720 just become conservative and boring like that's just not who she was and again as somebody who

00:59:57.000 just didn't know anything she did after the summer in Geneva I'm just like this is better than I

01:00:01.800 could have ever imagined for her that she just continued being herself yeah yes absolutely I

01:00:07.860 mean it I think towards the end she did convert to Catholicism um in the last couple of years of

01:00:14.960 her life and certainly we also now have a fragment of what looks like a memoir where she she calls

01:00:22.080 both Byron and Shelley monsters of um free love and and and you know selfish beings and and all

01:00:30.340 this kind of stuff so it does look like she's going back on some of her attitudes when she

01:00:35.420 was younger which wouldn't be terribly surprising she's very elderly and at this point she's been

01:00:40.300 living in italy a catholic country for a long time and i also think the conversion to catholicism

01:00:46.740 is because she had money and she wanted a proper headstone in a proper cemetery and she was she

01:00:54.520 wanted some kind of you know not quite a massive tomb but she wanted some kind of recognition about 0.99

01:01:01.940 about who she was in death because that's her final thing about you know she doesn't want to

01:01:07.960 you know end her life in oblivion or you know for her story to be lost in oblivion as her life has

01:01:13.120 been and so i was just double checking the dates so mary shelley died about 20 years ish 25 years

01:01:19.360 before claire did yes so even that where the two of them are so parallel like they were so they're

01:01:26.420 just a few months apart in age and then they grew up together sisters they're sort of two side and

01:01:30.320 you play with this in your book quite a few times you know the kind of two have two you know they're

01:01:35.280 parallels the yin and yang and so claire is of everyone who is at that in geneva that summer

01:01:44.000 like she's the last one standing i think yeah yeah and for quite a long time because

01:01:50.300 for you know up until 1853 i think it is when mary dies it's just her and mary who's who are left

01:01:58.640 because Polidori has killed himself.

01:02:01.460 Byron has died, you know, fighting the Turks.

01:02:06.400 So he didn't actually do any fighting and Shelley has drowned.

01:02:09.820 So it's just the two of them.

01:02:11.540 And then after 1853, it's just clear she's the only one left

01:02:16.640 and she does live for quite a long time after that.

01:02:19.880 And I think her life in Florence is kind of presented.

01:02:26.800 it if you read um the aspen papers by henry james which is a sort of novelization or in a novella of

01:02:33.900 her last moments or her her last days in florence it it looks very pitiful and it looks very kind of

01:02:41.900 she comes across as basically just living with ghosts she has ghosts all around her she has the

01:02:46.480 shrine to shelly and all the rest of it i i think i don't believe that either i mean henry i love

01:02:53.500 Henry James. He's one of my favourite writers, but he does have a man killing off Claire in the

01:02:59.400 Aspern papers. And I'm sorry, but no man killed Claire. She survived them all. And even her last

01:03:07.560 two letters are to the man I think she was involved with in Paris. So there was still

01:03:14.260 stuff going on. I mean, even in old age, she was still a formidable presence. And I don't think

01:03:21.840 she was just living with ghosts I think she was somebody who lived very much in the present as

01:03:27.000 well because I don't think you can live the kind of life that she lived and not have to deal with

01:03:33.020 the present constantly and I saw I think this is on your Instagram you had a picture of her

01:03:39.240 her memorial which is in Florence is that where yeah so can you describe where that is and what

01:03:46.760 what that is all it is I went this summer or last summer and she's she's buried in the cemetery

01:03:55.780 Antella which is just in the hills above Florence so you can just get a bus from the center Florence

01:04:01.900 up there and it's this beautiful cemetery it's lovely arches and these lovely black and white

01:04:08.140 tiles on the ground and she had paid for and bought a big tombstone and an inscription and

01:04:14.640 all the rest of it and then in the 1920s I don't know for what reason it was but anyway a lot of

01:04:20.000 the the tombs of the graves were dug up and the bones of people there were mixed together just

01:04:26.980 shoved under the this this ground under one of the the stretches of the arches and tiled over

01:04:33.240 so that's what she has now she's just her bones are just mixed in with other people's and she has

01:04:38.880 a tile one tile saying her name and her her date of birth and it's you just think yeah that's what

01:04:46.940 happens to women when they don't toe the line no exactly so I forgot to tell you about this before

01:04:54.780 but you've listened to my podcast before so you know at the end of these sorts of discussions I

01:04:59.260 like to to score everybody in four different categories so I will go over the categories

01:05:04.360 with you and I'm really intrigued to see where Claire is going to land and then afterwards you

01:05:09.920 can see where does she compare to Mary Shelley so the first category is scandalousness so how

01:05:15.740 scandalous and I mean and this is very much like in the time and place where she lived how scandalous

01:05:21.640 was she seen as being and she lived a long time and she lived in various places but if we just

01:05:26.880 think overall or what was the highest peak of scandalousness I think this is going to be a high

01:05:31.680 number oh yeah I think I think it would be hard to be more scandalous than Claire I would say

01:05:38.120 nine out of ten only because she didn't actually shoot a man with a gun I think if she'd done that

01:05:43.700 that would be that's the one thing she didn't actually do yeah yeah and maybe you know if they

01:05:49.600 had gone through with a kidnap attempt on Allegra it would have turned into that but we didn't get

01:05:53.420 to that shootout moment for her yeah yeah sadly I think in in every way just in general even just

01:06:01.220 not being a married woman i think was scandalous living on her own was scandalous but the fact

01:06:04.920 she had the child with byron that she was traveling in this thruple really yes yeah it totally is

01:06:13.340 isn't it it really is a thruple yeah okay so nine the next category is scheminess and so this is both

01:06:19.940 like literal schemes um but also just kind of how she got by her plans like did she come up with

01:06:27.740 plans does she actually so this is you know you kind of debunked the fact that her she had a

01:06:31.960 scheme to snare Byron that was not necessarily a scheme of hers but I think just in terms of

01:06:39.500 I think the fact that she was able to continue to find work to find employment like I think she

01:06:45.220 always had a plan if we define schemes in that way yes I think I think she she had that one focus

01:06:52.520 I think that one thing of always you know support yourself and that was her one sort of guiding

01:06:59.960 light so when there were I mean schemes plans fell by the wayside constantly and they were

01:07:04.880 constantly falling apart and all sorts of crazy things and she I mean a good example for example

01:07:12.140 is when she did inherit some money when Shelley left her some money and and Mary said we should

01:07:18.280 invest this in an opera box you get really good returns you buy an opera box you get really

01:07:22.480 you rent it out you get really good returns on it and then the last minute mary pulls out and

01:07:26.920 said no i don't think this is sensible at all actually i don't think we should do this and

01:07:30.400 claire goes no i really like this idea i'm going to keep going with it and she loses all her money

01:07:34.180 so i mean from a from a sort of practical point of view i think she was hopeless at plans and

01:07:40.640 schemes yeah but she had that inner strength i think she had that inner that core that was able

01:07:47.520 to just kind of plow on through no matter what so that might if we balance the two things out 0.98

01:07:52.860 that might be something like a five where like she was bad at schemes but she was good at kind

01:07:57.980 of yeah five or six five six let's say 5.5 okay okay the next one I'm really interested what

01:08:05.140 you'll think about this it's the significance and so this is where her significance I mean

01:08:12.200 she has been largely forgotten but what was her significance you know she met all these important

01:08:18.480 people she was part of this important family dynasty she did live this singular life but

01:08:25.460 overall like the fact that her grave is now a tile like she's not remembered for her significance

01:08:31.880 which doesn't mean she doesn't have any yeah I mean it is that thing because I mean her as I was

01:08:39.220 saying before her significance is the life that she led and the the written account that she has 0.97

01:08:44.620 left us in letters and diaries and we know because women largely didn't participate in public life

01:08:52.720 as much they these are private forms these are private art forms letters and diaries and so

01:08:57.960 they're not valued as much they're not considered as important they don't have the same status

01:09:02.880 so what is hugely valuable about her to us as a sort of literary record but also socially as

01:09:11.220 as a record of a woman who was you know managing on her own is hugely important I mean I don't

01:09:18.440 think it can possibly be underestimated but it's being suppressed and it's suppressed because

01:09:24.600 that's a story that even now still society doesn't really want to embrace and celebrate

01:09:31.620 not really so I don't know how to answer that question in terms of I think her I think her

01:09:37.660 significance for women is 10 out of 10 significance in terms of how a patriarchal society assesses

01:09:48.200 women and their achievements would be next to nothing but patriarchal society is wrong

01:09:54.540 I'm going to well I'll just let you know the next category I think could make up for any 0.73

01:10:00.420 deficits in this category if that affects our score because the next category is the sexism

01:10:05.520 bonus how much did the patriarchy and sexism hold her back so what if we say for significance what

01:10:11.820 if we do another like five because she is significant but she's not remembered as

01:10:17.300 significant but then for sexism I feel like that's a 10 out of 10 like I think that she

01:10:23.860 her legacy is forgotten because of sexism her life was extra challenging well all those things 0.98

01:10:31.140 like she had to suppress the fact that she was the mother of Byron's child like because that could 0.64

01:10:37.240 get in the way for finding employment like so much of what she was doing was twice as hard

01:10:43.320 because she had to always be making up for it yes I think it's I think it's interesting the way that

01:10:48.620 society culture literature embraces mary it because mary's i think slightly safer she's a

01:10:57.000 kind of safer option she's she's a mother and she you know held up shelly's legacy and she worked 0.54

01:11:04.860 to that end but she's also she's kind of non-threatening in the way that claire is by 0.94

01:11:11.820 Claire's issuing of marriage, just refusing it. So yeah, I think it's good that she gets 10 out of

01:11:21.920 10 for sexism and a lower score perhaps than significance because she shouldn't be significant

01:11:28.720 in a patriarchal judgment. She should be less because patriarchy cannot value someone like

01:11:39.740 Claire it's not capable of valuing her because it doesn't understand her it only understands her

01:11:46.580 to crush her well and like you were saying earlier on about how the way that her relationship with

01:11:52.380 Byron was portrayed in order for Byron fans to understand how cruel he was to her they have to

01:12:01.000 make it be her fault so that I think that ties into that as well like we need to think of her 0.98

01:12:06.800 is this just kind of bimbo who is just hanging out there with all these brilliant people. 1.00

01:12:12.160 Because if we see her as a person, then we have to reckon with Byron was terrible, 1.00

01:12:17.580 which Byron was terrible, but apparently there's people who don't want to think that.

01:12:20.580 Yeah. I mean, I still see her being described as clueless, a groupie. Even now I see that on

01:12:27.800 Twitter. If you've ever watched Ken Russell's film Gothic, you'll see her being portrayed as

01:12:33.920 a sort of nymphomaniac, crazy woman with who's barely capable of stringing two words together.

01:12:42.220 It's really interesting how we have to kind of box these women in so quickly. And she is in the box 0.73

01:12:49.840 marked, you know, crazy chick who's just, you know, we don't have to pay any attention to her 1.00

01:12:56.480 because she's just nuts, but in a kind of sexy way. So that's okay. 0.99

01:12:59.880 it's funny though too because the like in your book again like you do mention a lot like Claire

01:13:04.540 herself because it's her point of view you know seeing herself and as another half of Mary and

01:13:09.520 kind of how they are different from each other but I think in a very facile way perhaps movie

01:13:14.400 makers or other people say okay Claire and Mary have to be very different from each other and if

01:13:18.740 Mary is the heroine then we need to make Claire this like nymphomaniac groupie weirdo like there's

01:13:26.000 other ways to make two people be different than each other but that seems to be the fallback yeah 0.98

01:13:31.100 and also there's always a stress on how much they fell out and actually there was a lot of support

01:13:36.280 on both sides even as they got older um I mean yes they they're I mean the the novel is really

01:13:44.080 bookended by this terrible row that that Claire and Mary have and it's the last time that that

01:13:50.000 they ever see each other um but they did support each other actually throughout their lives

01:13:55.180 particularly after the death of Shelly you know they there was harmony there um sometimes there

01:14:03.800 was sisterly support but um but yes it's uh it is it's almost as though portraying them on the

01:14:14.120 screen they have to be reduced and I and I I get that that happens to to men too I mean Byron is 0.97

01:14:20.920 always portrayed on screen as just this sort of you know like handsome idiot really 0.82

01:14:26.740 um and Shelley is is a bit mad and eccentric but and obviously they're they're more than that but 0.90

01:14:34.820 yeah I think particularly the uh the sort of one-dimensional views of Claire are particularly

01:14:40.380 harmful and and and it almost feels political as though it is trying to give a message over

01:14:45.900 to women of you don't you dare do this because you know it'll all end up bad for you and yeah

01:14:53.320 and not no and she's she's living proof that you know she survived them all and and she actually

01:14:59.880 had a good life that's the that's the thing in spite of the tragedy in spite of that early

01:15:04.540 tragedy could have finished her and it didn't I want to I need to tell you the the score that

01:15:11.400 she landed on is 29.5. Mary Shelley, 29. Yay. So at least in this scale, Claire, Claire wins this

01:15:25.140 round. Yes. I think it's the scandal. I think, I think Mary Shelley was scandalous, but I think

01:15:32.500 Claire was seen as, because she never got married, you know, Mary Shelley ran away unmarried as a

01:15:38.300 teenager but then she was quite conventional for the rest of her life really or she was seen to be

01:15:43.300 yeah yeah she really was and and Claire really was the the rebellious one I I've said this before

01:15:49.720 I wrote a blog piece about about Claire's letters many many years ago and I said to me she is Mary

01:15:55.920 Wollstonecraft's natural daughter more so than than than Mary Shelley was I think she's the real

01:16:02.620 goth girl she is yeah Claire actually that's such a good point and Mary Wollstonecraft also spent

01:16:08.820 time in Paris traveling around it's yeah yes absolutely so your book I want to tell the

01:16:17.140 listeners as well that this um interview has been a long time coming because I feel it was like six

01:16:22.640 months ago or something I saw that there was a book called Claremont and I thought part of me

01:16:27.840 was like oh my gosh maybe it's a book about Claire Claremont but the rest of me was like no it's no

01:16:31.860 of course it's not going to be a book about Claire Claremont it's just and then I looked

01:16:34.720 and I'm like it is a book about Claire Claremont and I messaged you and I was just like please

01:16:39.880 come on my podcast and I know your book isn't published for six or nine months or however long

01:16:44.640 ago this was but it was so important to me to bring you on as someone who can actually speak

01:16:49.280 to this woman who's so fascinated me for so long and I'm so happy that she's the main character

01:16:55.220 for once in your book well thank you so much for for asking me because it's just I think the thing

01:17:01.620 I want more than anything is I just want people to know about her I just want people to know

01:17:06.000 about her life and who she was and that she mattered and the whole thing that she was

01:17:12.160 so exercised about that you know that this whole thing about you know my life will pass in oblivion

01:17:19.080 and my story will disappear she knew herself that she had an important story she wasn't just

01:17:26.220 an important counter I think to all the biographies that were coming out about Byron and

01:17:30.780 the sort of things that they were saying about him but i think also she's she's a corrective to

01:17:35.680 the austin regency marriage conventional setup she is someone saying no it's perfectly possible

01:17:44.300 to have a very different kind of life and live it well i'm not saying that she she necessarily

01:17:50.700 consciously was was living in a certain way and and saying to women around her oh you know look

01:17:57.980 at me look at me but I think she I think she was aware that she was doing things differently and

01:18:04.480 that that was important and that it was important for that to be seen because she had nieces who

01:18:10.020 I think did look up to her Clary and Paula both interestingly you know Paula her niece has an

01:18:18.080 illegitimate daughter a little girl called um Georgette I think it is so yeah she she I think

01:18:24.360 she was aware that she had a strong story. Well, and thank you so much, your book,

01:18:29.960 Claremont. When this interview airs, people should be able to pick up a copy of that. And I

01:18:35.940 strongly encourage everybody to. Oh, thank you very much. And thank you so much for asking me

01:18:40.420 because it's just lovely to talk about Claremont. Thank you for your lovely questions as well.

01:18:46.000 Thank you so much. Thank you.

01:18:54.360 so during the interview you may have noticed the part in which leslie referred to claire

01:19:03.380 as the true um i think she said the real goth queen or the true goth queen and that got me

01:19:08.740 thinking about the classic vulgar history design we have the mary shelley one um it's designed by

01:19:13.460 karen moynahan friend of the podcast it says goth queen mom friend which is about mary shelley and

01:19:18.920 I have decided I couldn't not. So anyway, Karen, again, has fabulously taken her original design

01:19:25.380 and kind of defaced it. She's kind of vandalized it to change it from goth queen mum friend to

01:19:30.820 the real goth queen superstar. And so it's a Claire and it says on it also like Claire was

01:19:36.780 here. So it's a Claire Claremont merch design that you can now get at the various merch stores that

01:19:42.560 we have for Vulgar History. You can go to vulgarhistory.com slash store. That's got the

01:19:48.560 best shipping for people in the U.S. or if you're outside the U.S. go to vulgarhistory.redbubble.com

01:19:54.240 and both of these have the Claire Claremont design or you can get the Claire Claremont and also the

01:20:00.040 Mary Shelley design. No one has to choose just one. You can you can stand both of them. I mean

01:20:05.700 they're both such iconic people. It's just that Claire really has gone so underappreciated for so

01:20:12.040 long for all the reasons we talked about in this episode. And oh yeah I wanted to let you know that

01:20:17.060 I'm on Substack. I've got a little newsletter thing. So every week I've been putting,

01:20:22.320 it's like written stuff. So I feel like where I'm most comfortable putting content in the world is

01:20:27.480 talking, but also writing. That's where I really feel comfortable. That's where I kind of started

01:20:32.940 out from. And so I've been resharing some of the essays that I've written through the years on my

01:20:37.400 Substack at the moment, based on the people who are following it already. I asked a poll,

01:20:42.220 what would you want to hear? Which sorts of essays do you want to see? And we're doing

01:20:45.140 the wives of henry the eighth which is something i don't know if i'd ever do on the podcast but i

01:20:49.600 did a lot of research about them back in the day and so it's a series called tutor i hardly knew

01:20:54.440 her and um yeah we're just kind of going wife by wife through all the wives a lot of them have more

01:21:00.080 than one part because they're there's a lot to say about people like catherine of aragon and anne

01:21:04.200 for instance anyway so it's vulgarhistory.substack.com or if you're on there you can you can

01:21:09.680 follow along it's totally free um and it's just sort of like uh another branch of the vulgar

01:21:14.760 history tree i guess you can also support this podcast on patreon at patreon.com and foster

01:21:20.820 writer where for one dollar a month you get early ad free access to all the episodes as well as

01:21:26.120 free access to the episodes that have already been on so just you can hook that up with wherever

01:21:32.360 you listen to your podcast if it's on spotify or apple podcasts or whatever you can like get that

01:21:36.440 feed on there so you can just always listen to always ad free episodes if you pledge at least

01:21:40.820 five dollars or more a month you get access to the bonus episodes of vulgar peace theater most

01:21:45.040 recently bill and head's excellent adventure is the movie that we talk about the next one we're

01:21:51.600 going to be doing is brotherhood of the wolf but we've also done other movies before we've done

01:21:55.540 like ned kelly the movie that's called literally ned kelly starring heath ledger the woman king

01:22:01.300 we did chevalier and also if you well actually okay so if you pledge the five dollars a month

01:22:07.160 you get access to all those episodes as well which again you can listen to in your like regular

01:22:10.780 podcast listening app um you also get access to the discord which is the vulgar history salon

01:22:16.380 international where i hang out there a lot um and yeah it's just a place for tits of brigade to like

01:22:21.160 hang out and talk and share pictures of our cats and like i put some spoilers about upcoming

01:22:25.100 episodes and it's just it's just a group chat basically so to join that discord you need to

01:22:29.860 be at that five dollars or more a level and also yeah if you just want to listen to the bill and

01:22:36.220 Head's Excellent Adventure episode of Velcro Peace Theater, for instance, or other specific

01:22:39.880 of these patron-only episodes, I've started putting them for sale, basically. So instead

01:22:44.440 of subscribing for $5 a month, for $5, you can just buy that episode so you can listen to it.

01:22:49.360 So that's all available at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter. And I also want to mention

01:22:55.220 our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry. So Common Era Jewelry is like, it's the most natural brand

01:23:02.300 partnership in the world like i think it was actually some of you some tips of breaking

01:23:06.080 memories you started seeing her ads on instagram and you're like oh my god this made me think of

01:23:09.540 you and i was like oh my god this is me so what common ear jewelry does is she makes jewelry

01:23:13.500 inspired by women from um the classical world basically so all the way from like the classical

01:23:20.240 muses of like ancient rome ancient greece um to classical figures like cleopatra

01:23:27.920 Boudicca, like people we've talked about. Agrippina, I think, has one on there as well.

01:23:32.480 She also branched out a little bit from the classic era. There's an Anne Boleyn necklace

01:23:38.460 as well. Anyway, I have the Medusa pendant. I have the Anne Boleyn pendant. I'm like,

01:23:44.320 apparently starting my own collection of these. Her most recent collection is called the Difficult

01:23:48.600 Women, which is basically women who through history have been seen as difficult. And that

01:23:53.040 includes real people like Anne Boleyn but also mythological figures like Pandora and anyway it's 0.75

01:23:58.200 just like the vibe is such the vulgar history vibe the tits out vibe I'm really happy that this

01:24:02.400 is who I'm working with and so her pieces are available in solid gold as well as in the more

01:24:07.120 affordable gold vermeil and you can get she also has oh I wanted to mention because everyone's

01:24:11.700 wearing like bows and now she's got these really beautiful like hair clips and bows and things as

01:24:16.180 Well, anyway, you can always get 15% off of anything from Common Era using code VULGAR

01:24:23.380 at checkout or by going to commonera.com slash VULGAR.

01:24:26.840 So that's commonera.com slash VULGAR or using code VULGAR at checkout.

01:24:32.360 And so many reminders, but you know, I like talking.

01:24:36.340 So you can get in touch with me using the form at vulgarhistory.com or emailing me at

01:24:41.580 vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

01:24:43.660 I'm also on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod.

01:24:47.240 And finally, transcripts of recent episodes are available at vulgarhistory.com.

01:24:50.940 Thank you so much to Aveline Malek for providing these transcripts.

01:24:54.900 And I did announce on the Instagram a bit ago, but it's going official.

01:25:00.880 Well, it is official.

01:25:01.700 Anyway, next week on the show, I'm going to be having Flora Carr on, who is the author

01:25:06.080 of the novel, The Tower, which is the next upcoming Vulgar History book club discussion.

01:25:13.500 So yeah, so check out the Instagram.

01:25:15.120 I've got some more information there

01:25:16.260 about the book club, et cetera.

01:25:18.140 Or you can go to vulgarhistory.com

01:25:19.660 and click on book club

01:25:20.400 for more information about that.

01:25:21.680 That's all coming up.

01:25:22.920 But until next time,

01:25:24.660 all my friends, 1.00

01:25:25.920 keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

01:25:30.040 Vulgar History is hosted, 1.00

01:25:31.420 written and researched by Anne Foster

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01:26:38.440 Do you ever watch a TV show set in a historical time period and think,

01:26:45.460 how accurate is this really?

01:26:47.620 But also, does it matter if it's accurate or not?

01:26:50.860 NeferTV is a new podcast about shows set in ancient times.

01:26:56.960 This season, we're recapping every episode of the show Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

01:27:02.080 I'm Anne Foster, and I have never seen this show before.

01:27:05.780 And I'm Gina Berry, and I have watched this show maybe too many times.

01:27:10.220 Join us every other Monday on the NeferTV podcast

01:27:13.300 as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, blood, and sand.

01:27:17.340 Follow NeferTV, that's N-E-F-E-R-T-V, wherever you get your podcasts.

01:27:25.640 Hi, I'm Whitney.

01:27:27.160 And I'm Katie.

01:27:28.160 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

01:27:30.820 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

01:27:34.320 We get right to the story.

01:27:35.820 We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, 0.99

01:27:38.360 it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.98

01:27:42.220 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.98

01:27:44.860 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

01:27:48.980 BTK and his awful poetry.

01:27:51.120 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

01:27:54.580 We look for the stranger-than-fiction stories, like the case of Patty James,

01:27:58.600 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.

01:28:01.640 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry

01:28:04.560 who convinced his town he'd won the lottery,

01:28:07.060 fleeced local businesses out of thousands,

01:28:09.260 and then became a romance scammer.

01:28:11.360 We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of. 0.97

01:28:14.060 Cults, scammers, killers.

01:28:15.920 So come find your next great binge. 0.90

01:28:18.040 Listen to True Crime Campfire on Apple Podcasts,

01:28:20.740 Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:28:23.060 New episodes every Friday.

Vulgar History - February 28, 2024

Mary Shelley's Scandalous Stepsister, Claire Clairmont

Episode Stats

Transcript