History does not record - at least my little library does not - if Mary Shelley was afraid of lightning. But in any event she put it to intellectual use. In Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, she has Baron Victor Frankenstein infuse the spark of life into his newly assembled monstrous being.
We are not told exactly how this is accomplished, but in all film versions the creature is made viable by energy extracted from a lightning stroke.
Now, Mary's own circumstances were scarcely less bizarre than those of her protagonist. Her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, had eloped twice - once with 16year-old Harriet Westbrook, whom he subsequently married, and three years later in 1814 with both Mary (17), and her younger sister Jane.
Then, after Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in London in 1816, Percy was able to marry Mary while little Jane looked on.
In 1818, to escape from creditors and social ignominy, they moved abroad, and embarked on a tour of the Continent with a succession of disreputable friends. They settled for a while near Lake Geneva, and there Mary's Frankenstein was born.
Baron Frankenstein is fascinated by the power of thunderstorms. The young idealist undertakes many experiments to discover the nature of electricity, and has several hair-raising experiences in the process - many of them, no doubt, in a very literal sense.
He also likes to watch the real thing: on one occasion, for example, standing by Lake Geneva, "the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. Vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire". Bearing this enthusiasm in mind, it is not unreasonable to assume that this was the energy the baron harnessed when the time came to power his new creation.
Be that as it may, the Shelleys might have lived in that part of the world unhappily ever after, had not Percy drowned in 1822. He had sailed across the Gulf of Genoa in his small schooner Ariel to visit Byron in Livorno, and while returning home he was overtaken by a violent squall; the frail craft floundered, and the body of Percy Bysshe Shelley, aged only 30, was found on the seashore some days later.
They cremated Shelley where they found him, and his ashes were buried in Rome. Meanwhile Mary Wollstone craft Shelley returned to England to live in genteel poverty for the rest of her sad life. She died of a brain tumour just a century and a half ago today, on February 1st, 1851.