best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has been only a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavoring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as
The name appears to have been torn off and burnt, but her stockings are marked with the letter G. and on her stays the letters M.W. are visible. She was dressed in a blue-striped skirt with a white body, and a brown pelice, with a fur trimming of a lighter colour, lined with white silk, and a hat of the same. She had a small French gold watch, and appears to be about 23 years of age, with long brown hair, dark complexion, and had a reticule containing a red silk pocket handkerchief, a brown-berry necklace, and a small leather clasped purse, containing a 3s. and 5s. 6d. piece. She told a fellow-passenger that she came to Bath by the mail from London on Tuesday morning, from whence she proceeded to Bristol, and from thence to Swansea by the Cambrian coach, intending to go to Ireland—We hope the description we have given of this unhappy catastrophe will lead to the discovery of the wretched object who has thus prematurely closed her existence.
Fanny,
I keep thinking of how you ended your note with “forgetting that such a creature ever existed as”—and then no ellipses, no period, no other words, nothing, everything fallen away. That cliff of who you were (and yet I didn’t know you) overhanging only empty space. Nothing in the world more silent than your leaving it. Nothing in my brain more silent. (I know you’re no longer alive and still I write to you.) And when I see your words fallen away (the stark blankness beyond them) I know there’s an unsigned in me, something monstrously broken and unnamed. Though you said I was bold XXX you said I was XXX But why did you call yourself a creature? When you began your note you called yourself a being (I almost feel your breath on my cheek as I write this) but you ended it with creature, as if you felt you were no longer human, or … I don’t know, but it chills me. The blank space after “as” chills me … The newspaper account says you burned your name. But if you could have seen the runaway horse as beautiful, or, not beautiful maybe, but as something to be wanted … If you could have XXXX Sometimes Shelley uses such pretty words, I hate that prettiness: “the sweet season of summertide” or “and gentle odors led my steps astray,” “violet buds and bluebells,” “the pale stars of the morn.” But you died in a strange room, told them at the inn you were on your way to Ireland when you knew you never intended to get there, hadn’t even brought the money, so why should I like pretty words? I don’t think you liked them either. But then other times I see on scraps of paper or in notebooks other things he’s scribbled: “In hating such a hateless thing as me,” “You hate me [?were],” “The stream with a [leprous] scum,” “You were injured—& that means memory,” “a people starving on the untilled field,” “chains & chains & chains.” Those words more brutal and more true. Did you feel you were a hated hateless thing? I don’t know why I write unless it seems like speaking to you though I know this is foolish. No hour on the earth is safe. So much of what living is—Concealed—
Your Sister,
Claire
Claire folds the page from The Cambrian in fours, presses it tightly, slips it into a drawer.
Fanny, I’m not well. My mind always keeps my body in a fever. Godwin wouldn’t let any of us go to your funeral or retrieve your body—your grave’s a pauper’s, anonymous. I’m going to have a child. By a man who, were I to float by his window drowned, all he would say would be “Ah, voilà.” If it’s a girl I think I’ll call her Alba—the a’s that begin and end it form a kind of gentle symmetry, a circle. (Then I think of that soft “a” in your name, that maybe something that soft grows too afraid.) But in my mind I feel