CHAPTER III. THE SECOND MRS. WILLIAM GODWIN 60

The Blighted Being--Miss Jones’s Disappointment--The Blighted Being goes to Bath--He proposes to Miss Harriet Lee--Is rejected by Mrs. Reveley--Is accepted by Mary Jane Clairmont--Who was she?--Her Children by her first Marriage--Their Ages in 1801--Points of Resemblance in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Jane Clairmont--The Blighted Being marries Mary Jane Clairmont--Mr. Kegan Paul’s serious Misrepresentations of Claire’s Age--The Use made of this Misrepresentation--Mr. Kegan Paul convicted by his own Evidences--Charles Clairmont’s Boyhood--Godwin’s Regard for his second Wife--Misrepresentations touching the second Mrs. Godwin--Childhood of Mary and Claire--Education of Godwin’s Children and Step-children--Charles Clairmont’s Introduction to Free Thought--Godwin’s Care to withhold Mary from Free Thought--She is reared in Ignorance of her Mother’s Story-- The Book-shop in Hanway Street--The Godwins of The Polygon-- Their Migration to the City--The Godwins of Skinner Street.