My information respecting the second Mrs. William Godwin’s first husband is slight and shadowy, though I have done my best to make it more substantial. There is reason to believe he was a bookseller; but my evidence on this point is not conclusive. If he was in ‘the trade,’ the fact would account for the second Mrs. Godwin’s knowledge of printing and publishing matters, and of the confidence with which she urged Godwin to become a publisher of books for children. For the main purpose of this paragraph it is enough to say, that his surname is (as I remarked in the _Real Lord Byron_) variously spelt in Byronic and Shelleyan biography, and that one comes upon it in the fashion of Clermont, Claremont, Clairemont, and Charlemont, as well as Clairmont. For sufficient and obvious reasons, in the _Real Lord Byron_ I spelt the name Clermont,--the spelling used in the British Museum Catalogue, for the reference to Claire’s well-known letter to Byron, preserved in the Egerton MSS. For no less sufficient and obvious reasons I spell the name in this chapter ‘Clairmont,’--Godwin’s way of spelling the name. Readers, therefore, must bear in mind that ‘Jane Clairmont’ and ‘Jane Clermont’ signify the same Claire (Mrs. Shelley’s sister-by-affinity), who was Byron’s mistress and the mother of Allegra. By the Shelleyan apologists, who draw their inspiration from Field Place, the first Mrs. William Godwin and the second Mrs. William Godwin have been dealt with differently. It appearing to those apologists that to place Mary Wollstonecraft amongst the angels is to raise a presumption that the daughter of so pure and bright a spirit was also of angelical nature,--a presumption favourable to the poet and his family,--they have tortured the English language to make her into an angel. On the other hand, it appearing to the same apologists that to exhibit the second Mrs. Godwin as a harsh and odious step-mother is to justify Mary Godwin’s desire to get away from so hateful a ruler, and even to palliate the young lady’s conduct in running away to Switzerland with another woman’s husband, they have tortured and strained the English language even more cruelly, to prove that the second Mrs. Godwin was a superlatively disagreeable woman. Being no partisan, the present writer declines either to think the first Mrs. Godwin an angel of grace, or to think the second Mrs. Godwin a very hateful person. Seeing that Mary Wollstonecraft had various faults, he sees that Mary Jane Clairmont had several imperfections. Whilst declining to join with the Shelleyan enthusiasts in glorifying Mary Wollstonecraft because her daughter Mary lived to be Shelley’s second wife, and in decrying the second Mrs. Godwin for the advantage of her step-daughter’s reputation, he is none the less disposed to think favourably of Mrs. Mary Jane (Clairmont) Godwin, because she cordially disapproved of the views about marriage, which Godwin had successively promulgated and abandoned.