Godwin to Mary.No. 195 Strand,27th February 1824.My dear Mary—Your appeal to me is a painful one, and the account you give of your spirits and tone of mind is more painful. Your appeal to me is painful, because I by no means regard myself as an infallible judge, and have been myself an unsuccessful adventurer in the same field toward which, in this instance, you have turned your regards. As to what you say of your spirits and tone of mind, your plans, and your views, would not that much more profitably and agreeably be made the subject of a conversation between us? You are aware that such a conversation must be begun by you. So begun, it would be quite a different thing than begun by me. In the former case I should be called in as a friend and adviser, from whom some advantage was hoped for; in the latter I should be an intruder, forcing in free speeches and unwelcome truths, and should appear as if I wanted to dictate to you and directyou, who are well capable of directing yourself. You have able critics within your command—Mr. Procter and Mr. Lamb. You have, however, one advantage in me; I feel a deeper interest in you than they do, and would not mislead you for the world.As to the specimens you have sent me, it is easy for me to give my opinion. There is one good scene—Manfred and the Two Strangers in the Cottage; and one that has some slight hints in it—the scene where Manfred attempts to stab the Duke. The rest are neither good nor bad; they might be endured, in the character of cement, to fasten good things together, but no more. Am I right? Perhaps not. I state things as they appear to my organs. Thus far, therefore, you afford an example, to be added to Barry Cornwall, how much easier it is to write a detached dramatic scene than to write a tragedy.Is it not strange that so many people admire and relish Shakespeare, and that nobody writes or even attempts to write like him? To read your specimens, I should suppose that you had read no tragedies but such as have been written since the date of your birth. Your personages are mere abstractions—the lines and points of a mathematical diagram—and not men and women. If A crosses B, and C falls upon D, who can weep for that? Your talent is something like mine—it cannot unfold itself without elbow-room. As Gray sings, “Give ample room and verge enough the characters of hell to trace.” I can do tolerably well if you will allow me to explain as much as I like—if, in the margin of what my personage says, I am permitted to set down and anatomise all that he feels. Dramatic dialogue, in reference to any talent I possess, is the devil. To write nothing more than the very words spoken by the character is a course that withers all the powers of my soul. Even Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist that ever existed, often gives us riddles to guess and enigmas to puzzle over. Many of his best characters and situations require a volume of commentary to make them perspicuous. And why is this? Because the law of his composition confines him to set down barely words that are to be delivered.For myself, I am almost glad that you have not (if you have not) a dramatic talent. How many mortifications and heart-aches would that entail on you. Managers are to be consulted; players to be humoured; the best pieces that were ever written negatived, and returned on the author’s hands. If these are all got over, then you have to encounter the caprice of a noisy, insolent, and vulgar-minded audience, whose senselessnon fiatshall turn the labour of a year in a moment into nothing.Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,What hell it is——To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.It is laziness, my dear Mary, that makes you wish to be a dramatist. It seems in prospect a short labour to write a play, and a long one to write a work consisting of volumes; and as much may be gained by the one as by the other. But as there is no royal road to geometry, so there is no idle and self-indulgent activity that leads to literary eminence.As to the idea that you have no literary talent, for God’s sake, do not give way to such diseased imaginations. You have, fortunately, ascertained that at a very early period. What would you have done if you had passed through my ordeal? I did not venture to face the public till I was seven and twenty, and for ten years after that period could not contrive to write anything that anybody would read; yet even I have not wholly miscarried.
Godwin to Mary.
No. 195 Strand,27th February 1824.
My dear Mary—Your appeal to me is a painful one, and the account you give of your spirits and tone of mind is more painful. Your appeal to me is painful, because I by no means regard myself as an infallible judge, and have been myself an unsuccessful adventurer in the same field toward which, in this instance, you have turned your regards. As to what you say of your spirits and tone of mind, your plans, and your views, would not that much more profitably and agreeably be made the subject of a conversation between us? You are aware that such a conversation must be begun by you. So begun, it would be quite a different thing than begun by me. In the former case I should be called in as a friend and adviser, from whom some advantage was hoped for; in the latter I should be an intruder, forcing in free speeches and unwelcome truths, and should appear as if I wanted to dictate to you and directyou, who are well capable of directing yourself. You have able critics within your command—Mr. Procter and Mr. Lamb. You have, however, one advantage in me; I feel a deeper interest in you than they do, and would not mislead you for the world.
As to the specimens you have sent me, it is easy for me to give my opinion. There is one good scene—Manfred and the Two Strangers in the Cottage; and one that has some slight hints in it—the scene where Manfred attempts to stab the Duke. The rest are neither good nor bad; they might be endured, in the character of cement, to fasten good things together, but no more. Am I right? Perhaps not. I state things as they appear to my organs. Thus far, therefore, you afford an example, to be added to Barry Cornwall, how much easier it is to write a detached dramatic scene than to write a tragedy.
Is it not strange that so many people admire and relish Shakespeare, and that nobody writes or even attempts to write like him? To read your specimens, I should suppose that you had read no tragedies but such as have been written since the date of your birth. Your personages are mere abstractions—the lines and points of a mathematical diagram—and not men and women. If A crosses B, and C falls upon D, who can weep for that? Your talent is something like mine—it cannot unfold itself without elbow-room. As Gray sings, “Give ample room and verge enough the characters of hell to trace.” I can do tolerably well if you will allow me to explain as much as I like—if, in the margin of what my personage says, I am permitted to set down and anatomise all that he feels. Dramatic dialogue, in reference to any talent I possess, is the devil. To write nothing more than the very words spoken by the character is a course that withers all the powers of my soul. Even Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist that ever existed, often gives us riddles to guess and enigmas to puzzle over. Many of his best characters and situations require a volume of commentary to make them perspicuous. And why is this? Because the law of his composition confines him to set down barely words that are to be delivered.
For myself, I am almost glad that you have not (if you have not) a dramatic talent. How many mortifications and heart-aches would that entail on you. Managers are to be consulted; players to be humoured; the best pieces that were ever written negatived, and returned on the author’s hands. If these are all got over, then you have to encounter the caprice of a noisy, insolent, and vulgar-minded audience, whose senselessnon fiatshall turn the labour of a year in a moment into nothing.
Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,What hell it is——To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.
It is laziness, my dear Mary, that makes you wish to be a dramatist. It seems in prospect a short labour to write a play, and a long one to write a work consisting of volumes; and as much may be gained by the one as by the other. But as there is no royal road to geometry, so there is no idle and self-indulgent activity that leads to literary eminence.
As to the idea that you have no literary talent, for God’s sake, do not give way to such diseased imaginations. You have, fortunately, ascertained that at a very early period. What would you have done if you had passed through my ordeal? I did not venture to face the public till I was seven and twenty, and for ten years after that period could not contrive to write anything that anybody would read; yet even I have not wholly miscarried.
Much of this was shrewd, and undeniable, but thewishto write for the stage continued to haunt Mary, and recurred two years later when she saw Kean playOthello. To the end of her life she expressed regret that she had not tried her hand at a tragedy.
Meanwhile, besides her own novel, she was at no loss for literary jobs and literary occupation; her friends took care of that. Her pen and her powers were for ever at their service, and they never showed any scruple in working the willing horse. Her disinterested integrity made her an invaluable representative in business transactions. The affairs of theExaminernewspaper, edited in England by Leigh Hunt’s brother John, were in an unsatisfactory condition; and there was much disagreement between the two brothers as to both pecuniary and literary arrangements. Mary had to act as arbiter between the two, softening the harsh and ungracious expressions which, in his annoyance, were used by John; looking after Leigh Hunt’s interests, and doing all she could to make clear to him the complicated details of the concern. In this she was aided by Vincent Novello, the eminent musician, and intimate friend of the Hunts, to whom she had had a letter of introduction on arriving in Italy. The Novellos had a large, old-fashioned house on Shacklewell Green; they were the very soul of hospitality and kindness, and the centre of a large circle of literary and artistic friends, they had made Shelley’s acquaintance in the days when the Leigh Hunts lived at the Vale of Health in Hampstead, and they now welcomed his widow, as well as Mrs. Williams, doing all in their power to shed alittle cheerfulness over these two broken and melancholy lives.
“Very, very fair both ladies were,” writes Mrs. Cowden Clarke, then Mary Victoria Novello, who in her charmingRecollections of Writershas given us a pretty sketch of Mary Shelley as she then appeared to a “damsel approaching towards the age of ‘sweet sixteen,’ privileged to consider herself one of the grown-up people.”
“Always observant as a child,” she writes, “I had now become a greater observer than ever; and large and varied was the pleasure I derived from my observation of the interesting men and women around me at this time of my life. Certainly Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was the central figure of attraction then to my young-girl sight; and I looked upon her with ceaseless admiration,—for her personal graces, as well as for her literary distinction.“The daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the wife of Shelley, the authoress ofFrankenstein, had for me a concentration of charm and interest that perpetually excited and engrossed me while she continued a visitor at my parents’ house.”
“Always observant as a child,” she writes, “I had now become a greater observer than ever; and large and varied was the pleasure I derived from my observation of the interesting men and women around me at this time of my life. Certainly Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was the central figure of attraction then to my young-girl sight; and I looked upon her with ceaseless admiration,—for her personal graces, as well as for her literary distinction.
“The daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the wife of Shelley, the authoress ofFrankenstein, had for me a concentration of charm and interest that perpetually excited and engrossed me while she continued a visitor at my parents’ house.”
Elsewhere she describes
... “Her well-shaped, golden-haired head, almost always a little bent and drooping; her marble-white shoulders and arms statuesquely visible in the perfectly plain black velvet dress, which the customs of that time allowed to be cut low, and which her own taste adopted (for neither she nor her sister-in-sorrow ever wore the conventional ‘widow’s weeds’ and ‘widow’s cap’); her thoughtful, earnest eyes; her short upper lip and intellectually curved mouth, with a certain close-compressed and decisive expression while she listened, and a relaxation into fuller redness and mobility when speaking; herexquisitely formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosy palms, and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and delicate as those in a Vandyke portrait.”
And though it was not in the power of these kind genial people to change Mary’s destiny, or even to modify very sensibly the tenour of her inner life and thought, still their friendship was a solace to her; she was grateful for it, and did her utmost to respond with cheerfulness to their kindly efforts on her behalf. To Leigh Hunt (from whom depression, when it passed into querulousness, met with almost as little quarter as it did from Godwin) she wrote—
I am not always in spirits, but if my friends say that I am good, contrive to fancy that I am so, and so continue to love yours most truly,Mary Shelley.
I am not always in spirits, but if my friends say that I am good, contrive to fancy that I am so, and so continue to love yours most truly,
Mary Shelley.
The news of Lord Byron’s death in Greece, which in May of this year created so profound a sensation in England, fell on Mary’s heart as a fresh calamity. She had small reason, personally, to esteem or regret him. Circumstances had made her only too painfully familiar with his worst side, and she might well have borne him more than one serious grudge. But he was associated in her mind with Shelley, and with early, happy days, and now he, like Shelley, was dead and gone, and his faults faded into distance, while all that was great and might have been noble in him—the hero that should have been rather than the man that was—survived, and stoodout in greater clearness and beauty, surrounded by the tearful halo of memory. The tidings reached her at a time of unusual—it afterwards seemed of prophetic—dejection.
Journal, May 14.—This, then, is my English life; and thus I am to drag on existence; confined in my small room, friendless. Each day I string me to the task. I endeavour to read and write, my ideas stagnate and my understanding refuses to follow the words I read; day after day passes while torrents fall from the dark clouds, and my mind is as gloomy as this odious sky. Without human friends I must attach myself to natural objects; but though I talk of the country, what difference shall I find in this miserable climate. Italy, dear Italy, murderess of those I love and of all my happiness, one word of your soft language coming unawares upon me, has made me shed bitter tears. When shall I hear it again spoken, when see your skies, your trees, your streams? The imprisonment attendant on a succession of rainy days has quite overcome me. God knows I strive to be content, but in vain. Amidst all the depressing circumstances that weigh on me, none sinks deeper than the failure of my intellectual powers; nothing I write pleases me. Whether I am just in this, or whether the want of Shelley’s (oh, my loved Shelley, it is some alleviation only to write your name!) encouragement I can hardly tell, but it seems to me as if the lovely and sublime objects of nature had been my best inspirers, and, wanting them, I am lost. Although so utterly miserable at Genoa, yet what reveries were mine as I looked on the aspect of the ravine, the sunny deep and its boats, the promontories clothed in purple light, the starry heavens, the fireflies, the uprising of spring. Then I could think, and my imagination could invent and combine, and self became absorbed in the grandeur of the universe I created. Now my mind is a blank, a gulf filled with formless mist.The Last Man! Yes, I may well describe that solitary being’sfeelings: I feel myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.And thus has the accumulating sorrow of days and weeks been forced to find a voice, because the wordlucenamet my eyes, and the idea of lost Italy sprang in my mind. What graceful lamps those are, though of base construction and vulgar use; I thought of bringing one with me; I am glad I did not. I will go back only to have alucena.If I told people so they would think me mad, and yet not madder than they seem to be now, when I say that the blue skies and verdure-clad earth of that dear land are necessary to my existence.If there be a kind spirit attendant on me in compensation for these miserable days, let me only dream to-night that I am in Italy! Mine own Shelley, what a horror you had (fully sympathised in by me) of returning to this miserable country! To be here without you is to be doubly exiled, to be away from Italy is to lose you twice. Dearest, why is my spirit thus losing all energy? Indeed, indeed, I must go back, or your poor utterly lost Mary will never dare think herself worthy to visit you beyond the grave.May 15.—This then was the coming event that cast its shadow on my last night’s miserable thoughts. Byron had become one of the people of the grave—that miserable conclave to which the beings I best loved belong. I knew him in the bright days of youth, when neither care nor fear had visited me—before death had made me feel my mortality, and the earth was the scene of my hopes. Can I forget our evening visits to Diodati? our excursions on the lake, when he sang the Tyrolese Hymn, and his voice was harmonised with winds and waves. Can I forget his attentions and consolations to me during my deepest misery?—Never.Beauty sat on his countenance and power beamed from his eye. His faults being, for the most part, weaknesses, induced one readily to pardon them.Albé—the dear, capricious, fascinating Albé—has left thisdesert world! God grant I may die young! A new race is springing about me. At the age of twenty-six I am in the condition of an aged person. All my old friends are gone, I have no wish to form new. I cling to the few remaining; but they slide away, and my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world. “Life is the desert and the solitude—how populous the grave”—and that region—to the dearer and best beloved beings which it has torn from me, now adds that resplendent spirit whose departure leaves the dull earth dark as midnight.June 18.—What a divine night it is! I have just returned from Kentish Town; a calm twilight pervades the clear sky; the lamp-like moon is hung out in heaven, and the bright west retains the dye of sunset. If such weather would continue, I should write again; the lamp of thought is again illumined in my heart, and the fire descends from heaven that kindles it. Such, my loved Shelley, now ten years ago, at this season, did we first meet, and these were the very scenes—that churchyard, with its sacred tomb, was the spot where first love shone in your dear eyes. The stars of heaven are now your country, and your spirit drinks beauty and wisdom in those spheres, and I, beloved, shall one day join you. Nature speaks to me of you. In towns and society I do not feel your presence; but there you are with me, my own, my unalienable!I feel my powers again, and this is, of itself, happiness; the eclipse of winter is passing from my mind. I shall again feel the enthusiastic glow of composition, again, as I pour forth my soul upon paper, feel the winged ideas arise, and enjoy the delight of expressing them. Study and occupation will be a pleasure, and not a task, and this I shall owe to sight and companionship of trees and meadows, flowers and sunshine.England, I charge thee, dress thyself in smiles for my sake! I will celebrate thee, O England! and cast a glory on thy name, if thou wilt for me remove thy veil of clouds, and let me contemplate the country of my Shelley and feel in communion with him!I have been gay in company before, but the inspiritingsentiment of the heart’s peace I have not felt before to-night; and yet, my own, never was I so entirely yours. In sorrow and grief I wish sometimes (how vainly!) for earthly consolation. At a period of pleasing excitement I cling to your memory alone, and you alone receive the overflowing of my heart.Beloved Shelley, good-night. One pang will seize me when I think, but I will only think, that thou art where I shall be, and conclude with my usual prayer,—from the depth of my soul I make it,—May I die young!Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.Missolonghi,30th April 1824.My dear Mary—My brain is already dizzy with business and writing. I am transformed from the listless being you knew me to one of all energy and fire. Not content with the Camp, I must needs be a great diplomatist, I am again, dear Mary, in myelement, and playing nosecondpart in Greece. If I live, the outcast Reginald will cut his name out on the Grecian hills, or set on its plains. I have had the merit of discovering and bringing out a noble fellow, a gallantsoldier, and a man of most wonderful mind, with as little bigotry as Shelley, and nearly as much imagination; he is a glorious being. I have lived with him—he calls me brother—wants to connect me with his family. We have been inseparable now for eight months—fought side by side. But I am sick at heart with losing my friend,[8]—for still I call him so, you know, with all his weakness, you know I loved him. I cannot live with men for years without feeling—it is weak, it is want of judgment, of philosophy,—but this is my weakness. Dear Mary, if you love me,—write—write—write, for my heart yearns after you. I certainly must have you and Jane out. I am serious.This is the place after my own heart, and I am certain of our good cause triumphing. Believe nothing you hear; Gamba will tell you everything about me—about Lord Byron, but he knows nothing of Greece—nothing; nor doesit appear any one else does by what I see published. Colonel Stanhope is here; he is a good fellow, and does much good. The loan is achieved, and that sets the business at rest, but it is badly done—the Commissioners are bad. A word as to your wooden god, Mavrocordato. He is a miserable Jew, and I hope, ere long, to see his head removed from his worthless and heartless body. He is a mere shuffling soldier, an aristocratic brute—wants Kings and Congresses; a poor, weak, shuffling, intriguing, cowardly fellow; so no more about him. Dear Mary, dear Jane, I am serious, turn you thoughts this way. No more a nameless being, I am now a Greek Chieftain, willing and able to shelter and protect you; and thus I will continue, or follow our friends to wander over some other planet, for I have nearly exhausted this.—Your attachedTrelawny.Care of John Hunt, Esq.,ExaminerOffice,Catherine Street, London.Tell me of Clare, do write me of her! This is written with the other in desperate haste. I have received a letter from you, one from Jane, and none from Hunt.
Journal, May 14.—This, then, is my English life; and thus I am to drag on existence; confined in my small room, friendless. Each day I string me to the task. I endeavour to read and write, my ideas stagnate and my understanding refuses to follow the words I read; day after day passes while torrents fall from the dark clouds, and my mind is as gloomy as this odious sky. Without human friends I must attach myself to natural objects; but though I talk of the country, what difference shall I find in this miserable climate. Italy, dear Italy, murderess of those I love and of all my happiness, one word of your soft language coming unawares upon me, has made me shed bitter tears. When shall I hear it again spoken, when see your skies, your trees, your streams? The imprisonment attendant on a succession of rainy days has quite overcome me. God knows I strive to be content, but in vain. Amidst all the depressing circumstances that weigh on me, none sinks deeper than the failure of my intellectual powers; nothing I write pleases me. Whether I am just in this, or whether the want of Shelley’s (oh, my loved Shelley, it is some alleviation only to write your name!) encouragement I can hardly tell, but it seems to me as if the lovely and sublime objects of nature had been my best inspirers, and, wanting them, I am lost. Although so utterly miserable at Genoa, yet what reveries were mine as I looked on the aspect of the ravine, the sunny deep and its boats, the promontories clothed in purple light, the starry heavens, the fireflies, the uprising of spring. Then I could think, and my imagination could invent and combine, and self became absorbed in the grandeur of the universe I created. Now my mind is a blank, a gulf filled with formless mist.
The Last Man! Yes, I may well describe that solitary being’sfeelings: I feel myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.
And thus has the accumulating sorrow of days and weeks been forced to find a voice, because the wordlucenamet my eyes, and the idea of lost Italy sprang in my mind. What graceful lamps those are, though of base construction and vulgar use; I thought of bringing one with me; I am glad I did not. I will go back only to have alucena.
If I told people so they would think me mad, and yet not madder than they seem to be now, when I say that the blue skies and verdure-clad earth of that dear land are necessary to my existence.
If there be a kind spirit attendant on me in compensation for these miserable days, let me only dream to-night that I am in Italy! Mine own Shelley, what a horror you had (fully sympathised in by me) of returning to this miserable country! To be here without you is to be doubly exiled, to be away from Italy is to lose you twice. Dearest, why is my spirit thus losing all energy? Indeed, indeed, I must go back, or your poor utterly lost Mary will never dare think herself worthy to visit you beyond the grave.
May 15.—This then was the coming event that cast its shadow on my last night’s miserable thoughts. Byron had become one of the people of the grave—that miserable conclave to which the beings I best loved belong. I knew him in the bright days of youth, when neither care nor fear had visited me—before death had made me feel my mortality, and the earth was the scene of my hopes. Can I forget our evening visits to Diodati? our excursions on the lake, when he sang the Tyrolese Hymn, and his voice was harmonised with winds and waves. Can I forget his attentions and consolations to me during my deepest misery?—Never.
Beauty sat on his countenance and power beamed from his eye. His faults being, for the most part, weaknesses, induced one readily to pardon them.
Albé—the dear, capricious, fascinating Albé—has left thisdesert world! God grant I may die young! A new race is springing about me. At the age of twenty-six I am in the condition of an aged person. All my old friends are gone, I have no wish to form new. I cling to the few remaining; but they slide away, and my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world. “Life is the desert and the solitude—how populous the grave”—and that region—to the dearer and best beloved beings which it has torn from me, now adds that resplendent spirit whose departure leaves the dull earth dark as midnight.
June 18.—What a divine night it is! I have just returned from Kentish Town; a calm twilight pervades the clear sky; the lamp-like moon is hung out in heaven, and the bright west retains the dye of sunset. If such weather would continue, I should write again; the lamp of thought is again illumined in my heart, and the fire descends from heaven that kindles it. Such, my loved Shelley, now ten years ago, at this season, did we first meet, and these were the very scenes—that churchyard, with its sacred tomb, was the spot where first love shone in your dear eyes. The stars of heaven are now your country, and your spirit drinks beauty and wisdom in those spheres, and I, beloved, shall one day join you. Nature speaks to me of you. In towns and society I do not feel your presence; but there you are with me, my own, my unalienable!
I feel my powers again, and this is, of itself, happiness; the eclipse of winter is passing from my mind. I shall again feel the enthusiastic glow of composition, again, as I pour forth my soul upon paper, feel the winged ideas arise, and enjoy the delight of expressing them. Study and occupation will be a pleasure, and not a task, and this I shall owe to sight and companionship of trees and meadows, flowers and sunshine.
England, I charge thee, dress thyself in smiles for my sake! I will celebrate thee, O England! and cast a glory on thy name, if thou wilt for me remove thy veil of clouds, and let me contemplate the country of my Shelley and feel in communion with him!
I have been gay in company before, but the inspiritingsentiment of the heart’s peace I have not felt before to-night; and yet, my own, never was I so entirely yours. In sorrow and grief I wish sometimes (how vainly!) for earthly consolation. At a period of pleasing excitement I cling to your memory alone, and you alone receive the overflowing of my heart.
Beloved Shelley, good-night. One pang will seize me when I think, but I will only think, that thou art where I shall be, and conclude with my usual prayer,—from the depth of my soul I make it,—May I die young!
Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.
Missolonghi,30th April 1824.
My dear Mary—My brain is already dizzy with business and writing. I am transformed from the listless being you knew me to one of all energy and fire. Not content with the Camp, I must needs be a great diplomatist, I am again, dear Mary, in myelement, and playing nosecondpart in Greece. If I live, the outcast Reginald will cut his name out on the Grecian hills, or set on its plains. I have had the merit of discovering and bringing out a noble fellow, a gallantsoldier, and a man of most wonderful mind, with as little bigotry as Shelley, and nearly as much imagination; he is a glorious being. I have lived with him—he calls me brother—wants to connect me with his family. We have been inseparable now for eight months—fought side by side. But I am sick at heart with losing my friend,[8]—for still I call him so, you know, with all his weakness, you know I loved him. I cannot live with men for years without feeling—it is weak, it is want of judgment, of philosophy,—but this is my weakness. Dear Mary, if you love me,—write—write—write, for my heart yearns after you. I certainly must have you and Jane out. I am serious.
This is the place after my own heart, and I am certain of our good cause triumphing. Believe nothing you hear; Gamba will tell you everything about me—about Lord Byron, but he knows nothing of Greece—nothing; nor doesit appear any one else does by what I see published. Colonel Stanhope is here; he is a good fellow, and does much good. The loan is achieved, and that sets the business at rest, but it is badly done—the Commissioners are bad. A word as to your wooden god, Mavrocordato. He is a miserable Jew, and I hope, ere long, to see his head removed from his worthless and heartless body. He is a mere shuffling soldier, an aristocratic brute—wants Kings and Congresses; a poor, weak, shuffling, intriguing, cowardly fellow; so no more about him. Dear Mary, dear Jane, I am serious, turn you thoughts this way. No more a nameless being, I am now a Greek Chieftain, willing and able to shelter and protect you; and thus I will continue, or follow our friends to wander over some other planet, for I have nearly exhausted this.—Your attached
Trelawny.
Care of John Hunt, Esq.,ExaminerOffice,Catherine Street, London.
Tell me of Clare, do write me of her! This is written with the other in desperate haste. I have received a letter from you, one from Jane, and none from Hunt.
This letter reached Mary at about the same time as the fatal news. Trelawny also sent her his narrative of the facts (now so well known to every one) of Byron’s death. It had been intended for Hobhouse, but the writer changed his mind and entrusted it to Mrs. Shelley instead, adding, “Hunt may pick something at it if he please.”
Trelawny had been Byron’s friend, and clearly as he saw the Pilgrim’s faults and deficiencies, there would seem no doubt that he genuinely admired him, in spite of all. But his mercurial, impulsive temperament, ever in extremes, wasliable to the most sudden revulsions of feeling, and retrospect hardened his feeling as much as it softened Mary Shelley’s towards the great man who was gone. Only four months later he was writing again, from Livadia—
I have much to say to you, Mary, both as regards myself and the part I am enacting here. I would give much that I could, as in times dead, look in on you in the evening of every day and consult with you on its occurrences, as I used to do in Italy. It is curious, but, considering our characters, natural enough, that Byron and I took the diametrically opposite roads in Greece—I in Eastern, he in Western. He took part with, and became the paltry tool of the weak, imbecile, cowardly being calling himself Prince Mavrocordato. Five months he dozed away. By the gods! the lies that are said in his praise urge one to speak the truth. It is well for his name, and better for Greece, that he is dead. With the aid of his name, his fame, his talents, and his fortune, he might have been a tower of strength to Greece, instead of which the little he did was in favour of the aristocrats, to destroy the republic, and smooth the road for a foreign King. But he is dead, and I now feel my face burn with shame that so weak and ignoble a soul could so long have influenced me. It is a degrading reflection, and ever will be. I wish he had lived a little longer, that he might have witnessed how I would have soared above him here, how I would have triumphed over his mean spirit. I would do much to see and talk to you, but as I am now too much irritated to disclose the real state of things, I will not mislead you by false statements.
With this fine flourish was enclosed a “Description of the Cavern Fortress of Mount Parnassus,” which he was commanding (and of which a full account is given in hisRecollections), and then followed a P.S. to this effect—
Dear Mary—Will you make an article of this, as Leigh Hunt calls it, and request his brother to publish it in theExaminer, which will very much oblige me.From Mary Shelley to Trelawny.28th July 1824.So, dear Trelawny, you remember still poor Mary Shelley; thank you for your remembrance, and a thousand times for your kind letter. It is delightful to feel that absence does not diminish your affection, excellent, warm-hearted friend, remnant of our happy days, of my vagabond life in beloved Italy, our companion in prosperity, our comforter in sorrow. You will not wonder that the late loss of Lord Byron makes me cling with greater zeal to those dear friends who remain to me. He could hardly be called a friend, but, connected with him in a thousand ways, admiring his talents, and (with all his faults) feeling affection for him, it went to my heart when, the other day, the hearse that contained his lifeless form—a form of beauty which in life I often delighted to behold—passed my windows going up Highgate Hill on his last journey to the last seat of his ancestors. Your account of his last moments was infinitely interesting to me. Going about a fortnight ago to the house where his remains lay, I found there Fletcher and Lega—Lega looking a most preposterous rogue,—Fletcher I expect to call on me when he returns from Nottingham. From a few words he imprudently let fall, it would seem that his Lord spoke of Clare in his last moments, and of his wish to do something for her, at a time when his mind, vacillating between consciousness and delirium, would not permit him to do anything. Did Fletcher mention this to you? It seems that this doughty Leporello speaks of his Lord to strangers with the highest respect; more than he did a year ago,—the best, the most generous, the most wronged of peers,—the notion of his leading an irregular life,—quite a false one. Lady B. sent for Fletcher; he found her in a fit of passionate grief, but perfectly implacable, and as much resolved never to have united herselfagain to him as she was when she first signed their separation. Mrs. Claremont (the governess) was with her.His death, as you may guess, made a great sensation here, which was not diminished by the destruction of his Memoirs, which he wrote and gave to Moore, and which were burned by Mrs. Leigh and Hobhouse. There was not much in them, I know, for I read them some years ago at Venice, but the world fancied it was to have a confession of the hidden feelings of one concerning whom they were always passionately curious. Moore was by no means pleased: he is now writing a life of him himself, but it is conjectured that, notwithstanding he had the MS. so long in his possession, he never found time to read it. I breakfasted with him about a week ago, and he is anxious to get materials for his work. I showed him your letter on the subject of Lord Byron’s death, and he wishes very much to obtain from you any anecdote or account you would like to send. If you know anything that ought to be known, or feel inclined to detail anything that you may remember worthy of record concerning him, perhaps you will communicate with Moore. You have often said that you wished to keep up our friend’s name in the world, and if you still entertain the same feeling, no way is more obvious than to assist Moore, who asked me to make this request. You can write to him through me or addressed to Longmans....········Here then we are, Jane and I, in Kentish Town.... We live near each other now, and, seeing each other almost daily, for ever dwell on one subject.... The country about here is really pretty; lawny uplands, wooded parks, green lanes, and gentle hills form agreeable and varying combinations. If we had orange sunsets, cloudless noons, fireflies, large halls, etc. etc., I should not find the scenery amiss, and yet I can attach myself to nothing here; neither among the people, though some are good and clever, nor to the places, though they be pretty. Jane is my chosen companion and only friend. I am under a cloud, and cannot form near acquaintances among that class whose manners and modes of life are agreeable tome, and I think myself fortunate in having one or two pleasing acquaintances among literary people, whose society I enjoy without dreaming of friendship. My child is in excellent health; a fine, tall, handsome boy.And then for money and the rest of those necessary annoyances, the means of getting at the necessaries of life; Jane’s affairs are yet unsettled....My prospects are somewhat brighter than they were. I have little doubt but that in the course of a few months I shall have an independent income of £300 or £400 per annum during Sir Timothy’s life, and that with small sacrifice on my part. After his death Shelley’s will secures me an income more than sufficient for my simple habits.One of my first wishes in obtaining the independence I mention, will be to assist in freeing Clare from her present painful mode of life. She is now at Moscow; sufficiently uncomfortable, poor girl, unless some change has taken place: I think it probable that she will soon return to England. Her spirits will have been improved by the information I sent her that his family consider Shelley’s will valid, and that she may rely upon receiving the legacy....
Dear Mary—Will you make an article of this, as Leigh Hunt calls it, and request his brother to publish it in theExaminer, which will very much oblige me.
From Mary Shelley to Trelawny.
28th July 1824.
So, dear Trelawny, you remember still poor Mary Shelley; thank you for your remembrance, and a thousand times for your kind letter. It is delightful to feel that absence does not diminish your affection, excellent, warm-hearted friend, remnant of our happy days, of my vagabond life in beloved Italy, our companion in prosperity, our comforter in sorrow. You will not wonder that the late loss of Lord Byron makes me cling with greater zeal to those dear friends who remain to me. He could hardly be called a friend, but, connected with him in a thousand ways, admiring his talents, and (with all his faults) feeling affection for him, it went to my heart when, the other day, the hearse that contained his lifeless form—a form of beauty which in life I often delighted to behold—passed my windows going up Highgate Hill on his last journey to the last seat of his ancestors. Your account of his last moments was infinitely interesting to me. Going about a fortnight ago to the house where his remains lay, I found there Fletcher and Lega—Lega looking a most preposterous rogue,—Fletcher I expect to call on me when he returns from Nottingham. From a few words he imprudently let fall, it would seem that his Lord spoke of Clare in his last moments, and of his wish to do something for her, at a time when his mind, vacillating between consciousness and delirium, would not permit him to do anything. Did Fletcher mention this to you? It seems that this doughty Leporello speaks of his Lord to strangers with the highest respect; more than he did a year ago,—the best, the most generous, the most wronged of peers,—the notion of his leading an irregular life,—quite a false one. Lady B. sent for Fletcher; he found her in a fit of passionate grief, but perfectly implacable, and as much resolved never to have united herselfagain to him as she was when she first signed their separation. Mrs. Claremont (the governess) was with her.
His death, as you may guess, made a great sensation here, which was not diminished by the destruction of his Memoirs, which he wrote and gave to Moore, and which were burned by Mrs. Leigh and Hobhouse. There was not much in them, I know, for I read them some years ago at Venice, but the world fancied it was to have a confession of the hidden feelings of one concerning whom they were always passionately curious. Moore was by no means pleased: he is now writing a life of him himself, but it is conjectured that, notwithstanding he had the MS. so long in his possession, he never found time to read it. I breakfasted with him about a week ago, and he is anxious to get materials for his work. I showed him your letter on the subject of Lord Byron’s death, and he wishes very much to obtain from you any anecdote or account you would like to send. If you know anything that ought to be known, or feel inclined to detail anything that you may remember worthy of record concerning him, perhaps you will communicate with Moore. You have often said that you wished to keep up our friend’s name in the world, and if you still entertain the same feeling, no way is more obvious than to assist Moore, who asked me to make this request. You can write to him through me or addressed to Longmans....
········
Here then we are, Jane and I, in Kentish Town.... We live near each other now, and, seeing each other almost daily, for ever dwell on one subject.... The country about here is really pretty; lawny uplands, wooded parks, green lanes, and gentle hills form agreeable and varying combinations. If we had orange sunsets, cloudless noons, fireflies, large halls, etc. etc., I should not find the scenery amiss, and yet I can attach myself to nothing here; neither among the people, though some are good and clever, nor to the places, though they be pretty. Jane is my chosen companion and only friend. I am under a cloud, and cannot form near acquaintances among that class whose manners and modes of life are agreeable tome, and I think myself fortunate in having one or two pleasing acquaintances among literary people, whose society I enjoy without dreaming of friendship. My child is in excellent health; a fine, tall, handsome boy.
And then for money and the rest of those necessary annoyances, the means of getting at the necessaries of life; Jane’s affairs are yet unsettled....
My prospects are somewhat brighter than they were. I have little doubt but that in the course of a few months I shall have an independent income of £300 or £400 per annum during Sir Timothy’s life, and that with small sacrifice on my part. After his death Shelley’s will secures me an income more than sufficient for my simple habits.
One of my first wishes in obtaining the independence I mention, will be to assist in freeing Clare from her present painful mode of life. She is now at Moscow; sufficiently uncomfortable, poor girl, unless some change has taken place: I think it probable that she will soon return to England. Her spirits will have been improved by the information I sent her that his family consider Shelley’s will valid, and that she may rely upon receiving the legacy....
But Mary’s hopes of better fortune were again and again deferred, and she now found that any concession on the part of her husband’s family must be purchased by the suppression of his later poems. She was too poor to do other than submit.
Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt.Kentish Town,22d August 1824.... A negotiation has begun between Sir Timothy Shelley and myself, by which, on sacrificing a small part of my future expectations on the will, I shall ensure myself a sufficiency for the present, and not only that, but be able, I hope, to relieveClare from her disagreeable situation at Moscow. I have been obliged, however, as an indispensable preliminary, to suppress the posthumous poems. More than 300 copies had been sold, so this is the less provoking, and I have been obliged to promise not to bring dear Shelley’s name before the public again during Sir Timothy’s life. There is no great harm in this, since he is above seventy; and, from choice, I should not think of writing memoirs now, and the materials for a volume of more works are so scant that I doubted before whether I could publish it. Such is the folly of the world, and so do things seem different from what they are; since, from Whitton’s account, Sir Timothy writhes under the fame of his incomparable son, as if it were the most grievous injury done to him; and so, perhaps, after all it will prove.All this was pending when I wrote last, but until I was certain I did not think it worth while to mention it. The affair is arranged by Peacock, who, though I seldom see him, seems anxious to do me all these kind of services in the best manner that he can.It is long since I saw your brother, nor had he any news for me. I lead a most quiet life, and see hardly any one. The Gliddons are gone to Hastings for a few weeks. Hogg is on Circuit. Now that he is rich he is so very queer, so unamiable, and so strange, that I look forward to his return without any desire of shortening the term of absence.Poor Pierino is now in London,Non fosse male questo paese, he says,se vi vedesse mai il sole. He is full of Greece, to which he is going, and gave us an account of our good friend, Trelawny, which was that he was not at all changed. Trelawny has made a hero of the Greek chief, Ulysses, and declares that there is a great cavern in Attica which he and Ulysses have provisioned for seven years, and to which, if the cause fails, he and this chieftain are to retire; but if the cause is triumphant, he is to build a city in the Negropont, colonise it, and Jane and I are to go out to be queens and chieftainesses of the island. When he first came to Athens he took to a Turkish life, bought twelve or fifteen women,brutti mostri, Pierino says, one aMoor, of all things, and there he lay on his sofa, smoking, these gentle creatures about him, till he got heartily sick of idleness, shut them up in his harem, and joined and combated with Ulysses....········One of my principal reasons for writing just now is that I have just heard Miss Curran’s address (64 Via Sistina, Roma), and I am anxious that Marianne should (if she will be so very good) send one of the profiles already cut to her, of Shelley, since I think that, by the help of that, Miss Curran will be able to correct her portrait of Shelley, and make for us what we so much desire—a good likeness. I am convinced that Miss Curran will return the profile immediately that she has done with it, so that you will not sacrifice it, though you may be the means of our obtaining a good likeness.Journal, September 3.—With what hopes did I come to England? I pictured little of what was pleasurable, the feeling I had could not be called hope; it was expectation. Yet at that time, now a year ago, what should I have said if a prophet had told me that, after the whole revolution of the year, I should be as poor in all estimable treasures as when I arrived.I have only seen two persons from whom I have hoped or wished for friendly feeling. One, a poet, who sought me first, whose voice, laden with sentiment, passed as Shelley’s, and who read with the same deep feeling as he; whose gentle manners were pleasing, and who seemed to a degree pleased; who once or twice listened to my sad plaints, and bent his dark blue eyes upon me. Association, gratitude, esteem, made me take interest in his long, though rare, visits.The other was kind; sought me, was pleased with me. I could talk to him; that was much. He was attached to another, so that I felt at my ease with him. They have disappeared from my horizon. Jane alone remains; if she loved me as well as I do her it would be much; she is all gentleness, and she is my only consolation, yet she does not console me.I have just completed my twenty-seventh year; at such a time hope and youth are still in their prime, and the pains I feel, therefore, are ever alive and vivid within me. What shall I do? Nothing. I study, that passes the time. I write; at times that pleases me, though double sorrow comes when I feel that Shelley no longer reads and approves of what I write; besides, I have no great faith in my success. Composition is delightful; but if you do not expect the sympathy of your fellow-creatures in what you write, the pleasure of writing is of short duration.I have my lovely Boy, without him I could not live. I have Jane; in her society I forget time; but the idea of it does not cheer me in my griefful moods. It is strange that the religious feeling that exalted my emotions in happiness, deserts me in my misery. I have little enjoyment, no hope. I have given myself ten years more of life. God grant that they may not be augmented. I should be glad that they were curtailed. Loveless beings surround me; they talk of my personal attractions, of my talents, my manners.The wisest and best have loved me. The beautiful, and glorious, and noble, have looked on me with the divine expression of love, till death, the reaper, carried to his overstocked barns my lamented harvest.But now I am not loved! Never, oh, never more shall I love. Synonymous to such words are, never more shall I be happy, never more feel life sit triumphant in my frame. I am a wreck. By what do the fragments cling together? Why do they not part, to be borne away by the tide to the boundless ocean, where those are whom day and night I pray that I may rejoin.I shall be happier, perhaps, in Italy; yet, when I sometimes think that she is the murderess, I tremble for my boy. We shall see; if no change comes, I shall be unable to support the burthen of time, and no change, if it hurt not his dear head, can be for the worse.
Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt.
Kentish Town,22d August 1824.
... A negotiation has begun between Sir Timothy Shelley and myself, by which, on sacrificing a small part of my future expectations on the will, I shall ensure myself a sufficiency for the present, and not only that, but be able, I hope, to relieveClare from her disagreeable situation at Moscow. I have been obliged, however, as an indispensable preliminary, to suppress the posthumous poems. More than 300 copies had been sold, so this is the less provoking, and I have been obliged to promise not to bring dear Shelley’s name before the public again during Sir Timothy’s life. There is no great harm in this, since he is above seventy; and, from choice, I should not think of writing memoirs now, and the materials for a volume of more works are so scant that I doubted before whether I could publish it. Such is the folly of the world, and so do things seem different from what they are; since, from Whitton’s account, Sir Timothy writhes under the fame of his incomparable son, as if it were the most grievous injury done to him; and so, perhaps, after all it will prove.
All this was pending when I wrote last, but until I was certain I did not think it worth while to mention it. The affair is arranged by Peacock, who, though I seldom see him, seems anxious to do me all these kind of services in the best manner that he can.
It is long since I saw your brother, nor had he any news for me. I lead a most quiet life, and see hardly any one. The Gliddons are gone to Hastings for a few weeks. Hogg is on Circuit. Now that he is rich he is so very queer, so unamiable, and so strange, that I look forward to his return without any desire of shortening the term of absence.
Poor Pierino is now in London,Non fosse male questo paese, he says,se vi vedesse mai il sole. He is full of Greece, to which he is going, and gave us an account of our good friend, Trelawny, which was that he was not at all changed. Trelawny has made a hero of the Greek chief, Ulysses, and declares that there is a great cavern in Attica which he and Ulysses have provisioned for seven years, and to which, if the cause fails, he and this chieftain are to retire; but if the cause is triumphant, he is to build a city in the Negropont, colonise it, and Jane and I are to go out to be queens and chieftainesses of the island. When he first came to Athens he took to a Turkish life, bought twelve or fifteen women,brutti mostri, Pierino says, one aMoor, of all things, and there he lay on his sofa, smoking, these gentle creatures about him, till he got heartily sick of idleness, shut them up in his harem, and joined and combated with Ulysses....
········
One of my principal reasons for writing just now is that I have just heard Miss Curran’s address (64 Via Sistina, Roma), and I am anxious that Marianne should (if she will be so very good) send one of the profiles already cut to her, of Shelley, since I think that, by the help of that, Miss Curran will be able to correct her portrait of Shelley, and make for us what we so much desire—a good likeness. I am convinced that Miss Curran will return the profile immediately that she has done with it, so that you will not sacrifice it, though you may be the means of our obtaining a good likeness.
Journal, September 3.—With what hopes did I come to England? I pictured little of what was pleasurable, the feeling I had could not be called hope; it was expectation. Yet at that time, now a year ago, what should I have said if a prophet had told me that, after the whole revolution of the year, I should be as poor in all estimable treasures as when I arrived.
I have only seen two persons from whom I have hoped or wished for friendly feeling. One, a poet, who sought me first, whose voice, laden with sentiment, passed as Shelley’s, and who read with the same deep feeling as he; whose gentle manners were pleasing, and who seemed to a degree pleased; who once or twice listened to my sad plaints, and bent his dark blue eyes upon me. Association, gratitude, esteem, made me take interest in his long, though rare, visits.
The other was kind; sought me, was pleased with me. I could talk to him; that was much. He was attached to another, so that I felt at my ease with him. They have disappeared from my horizon. Jane alone remains; if she loved me as well as I do her it would be much; she is all gentleness, and she is my only consolation, yet she does not console me.
I have just completed my twenty-seventh year; at such a time hope and youth are still in their prime, and the pains I feel, therefore, are ever alive and vivid within me. What shall I do? Nothing. I study, that passes the time. I write; at times that pleases me, though double sorrow comes when I feel that Shelley no longer reads and approves of what I write; besides, I have no great faith in my success. Composition is delightful; but if you do not expect the sympathy of your fellow-creatures in what you write, the pleasure of writing is of short duration.
I have my lovely Boy, without him I could not live. I have Jane; in her society I forget time; but the idea of it does not cheer me in my griefful moods. It is strange that the religious feeling that exalted my emotions in happiness, deserts me in my misery. I have little enjoyment, no hope. I have given myself ten years more of life. God grant that they may not be augmented. I should be glad that they were curtailed. Loveless beings surround me; they talk of my personal attractions, of my talents, my manners.
The wisest and best have loved me. The beautiful, and glorious, and noble, have looked on me with the divine expression of love, till death, the reaper, carried to his overstocked barns my lamented harvest.
But now I am not loved! Never, oh, never more shall I love. Synonymous to such words are, never more shall I be happy, never more feel life sit triumphant in my frame. I am a wreck. By what do the fragments cling together? Why do they not part, to be borne away by the tide to the boundless ocean, where those are whom day and night I pray that I may rejoin.
I shall be happier, perhaps, in Italy; yet, when I sometimes think that she is the murderess, I tremble for my boy. We shall see; if no change comes, I shall be unable to support the burthen of time, and no change, if it hurt not his dear head, can be for the worse.
In the month of July Mary had receivedanother request for literary help; this time from Medwin, who wanted her aid in eking out and correcting his notes of conversations with Lord Byron, shortly to be published.
“You must have been, as I was, very much affected with poor Lord Byron’s death,” he wrote to Mary. “All parties seem now writing in his favour, and the papers are full of his praise....“How do you think I have been employing myself? With writing; and the subject I have chosen has been Memoirs of Lord Byron. Every one here has been disappointed in the extreme by the destruction of his private biography, and have urged me to give the world the little I know of him. I wish I was better qualified for the task. When I was at Pisa I made very copious notes of his conversations, for private reference only, and was surprised to find on reading them (which I have never done till his death, and hearing that his life had been burnt) that they contained so many anecdotes of his life. During many nights that we sat up together he was very confidential, and entered into his history and opinions on most subjects, and from them I have compiled a volume which is, I am told, highly entertaining. Shelley I have made a very prominent feature in the work, and I think you will be pleased with that part, at least, of the Memoir, and all the favourable sentiments of Lord Byron concerning him. But I shall certainly not publish the work till you have seen it, and would give the world to consult you in person about the whole; you might be of the greatest possible use to me, and prevent many errors from creeping in. I have been told it cannot fail of having the greatest success, and have been offered £500 for it—a large and tempting sum—in consequence of what has been said in its praise by Grattan....“Before deciding finally on the publication there are many things to be thought of. Lady Byron will not be pleased with my account of the marriage and separation; in fact, I shall beassailed on all sides. Now, my dear friend, what do you advise? Let me have your full opinion, for I mean to be guided by it. I hear to-day that Moore is manufacturing five or six volumes out of theburnt materials, for which Longman advanced £2000, and is to pay £2000 more;theywill be in a great rage. If I publish, promptitude is everything, so that I know you will answer this soon.”
“You must have been, as I was, very much affected with poor Lord Byron’s death,” he wrote to Mary. “All parties seem now writing in his favour, and the papers are full of his praise....
“How do you think I have been employing myself? With writing; and the subject I have chosen has been Memoirs of Lord Byron. Every one here has been disappointed in the extreme by the destruction of his private biography, and have urged me to give the world the little I know of him. I wish I was better qualified for the task. When I was at Pisa I made very copious notes of his conversations, for private reference only, and was surprised to find on reading them (which I have never done till his death, and hearing that his life had been burnt) that they contained so many anecdotes of his life. During many nights that we sat up together he was very confidential, and entered into his history and opinions on most subjects, and from them I have compiled a volume which is, I am told, highly entertaining. Shelley I have made a very prominent feature in the work, and I think you will be pleased with that part, at least, of the Memoir, and all the favourable sentiments of Lord Byron concerning him. But I shall certainly not publish the work till you have seen it, and would give the world to consult you in person about the whole; you might be of the greatest possible use to me, and prevent many errors from creeping in. I have been told it cannot fail of having the greatest success, and have been offered £500 for it—a large and tempting sum—in consequence of what has been said in its praise by Grattan....
“Before deciding finally on the publication there are many things to be thought of. Lady Byron will not be pleased with my account of the marriage and separation; in fact, I shall beassailed on all sides. Now, my dear friend, what do you advise? Let me have your full opinion, for I mean to be guided by it. I hear to-day that Moore is manufacturing five or six volumes out of theburnt materials, for which Longman advanced £2000, and is to pay £2000 more;theywill be in a great rage. If I publish, promptitude is everything, so that I know you will answer this soon.”
The idea of entertaining the world, however highly, at whatever price, with “tit-bits” from the private life and after-dinner talk of her late intimate friends, almost before those friends were cold in their graves, did not find favour with Mrs. Shelley. As an excuse for declining to have any hand in this work, she gave her own desire to avoid publicity or notice. In a later letter Medwin assured her that her name was not even mentioned in the book. He frankly owned that most of his knowledge of Byron had been derived from her and Shelley, but added, by way of excuse—
They tell me it is highly interesting, and there is at this moment a longing after and impatience to know something about the most extraordinary man of the age that must give my book a considerable success.
What Mary felt about this publication can be gathered from her allusion to it in the following letter—
Mrs. Shelley to Mrs. Hunt.Kentish Town,10th October 1824.... I write to you on the most dismal of all days, a rainy Sunday, when dreary church-going faces look still more drearilyfrom under dripping umbrellas, and the poor plebeian dame looks reproachfully at her splashed white stockings,—not her gown,—that has been warily held high up, and the to-be-concealed petticoat has borne all the ill-usage of the mud. Dismal though it is, dismal though I am, I do not wish to write a discontented letter, but in a few words to describe things as they are with me. A weekly visit to the Strand, a monthly visit to Shacklewell (when we are sure to be caught in the rain) forms my catalogue of visits. I have no visitors; if it were not for Jane I should be quite alone. The eternal rain imprisons one in one’s little room, and one’s spirits flag without one exhilarating circumstance. In some things, however, I am better off than last year, for I do not doubt but that in the course of a few months I shall have an independence; and I no longer balance, as I did last winter, between Italy and England. My Father wished me to stay, and, old as he is, and wishing as one does to be of some use somewhere, I thought that I would make the trial, and stay if I could. But the joke has become too serious. I look forward to the coming winter with horror, but itshall bethe last. I have not yet made up my mind to the where in Italy. I shall, if possible, immediately on arriving, push on to Rome. Then we shall see. I read, study, and write; sometimes that takes me out of myself; but to live for no one, to be necessary to none, to know that “Where is now my hope? for my hope, who shall see it? They shall go down to the base of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.” But change of scene and the sun of Italy will restore my energy; the very thought of it smooths my brow. Perhaps I shall seek the heats of Naples, if they do not hurt my darling Percy. And now, what news?...········Hazlitt is abroad; he will be in Italy in the winter; he wrote an article in theEdinburgh Reviewon the volume of poems I published. I do not know whether he meant it to be favourable or not; I do not like it at all; but when I saw him I could not be angry. I never was so shocked in mylife, he has become so thin, his hair scattered, his cheek-bones projecting; but for his voice and smile I should not have known him; his smile brought tears into my eyes, it was like a sunbeam illuminating the most melancholy of ruins, lightning that assured you in a dark night of the identity of a friend’s ruined and deserted abode....Have you, my Polly, sent a profile to Miss Curran in Rome? Now pray do, and pray write; do, my dear girl. Next year by this time I shall, perhaps, be on my way to you; it will go hard but that I contrive to spend a week (that is, if you wish) at Florence, on my way to the Eternal City. God send that this prove not an airy castle; but I own that I put faith in my having money before that; and I know that I could not, if I would, endure the torture of my English life longer than is absolutely necessary. By the bye, I heard that you are keeping your promise to Trelawny, and that in due time he will be blessed with a namesake. How isOcchi Turchini, Thornton the reformed, Johnny the—what Johnny? the good boy? Mary the merry, Irving the sober, Percy the martyr, and dear Sylvan the good?Percy is quite well; tell his friend he goes to school and learns to read and write, being very handy with his hands, perhaps having a pure anticipated cognition of the art of painting in his tiny fingers. Mrs. Williams’ little girl, who calls herself Dina, is his wife. Poor Clare, at Moscow! at least she will be independent one day, and if I am so soon, her situation will be quickly ameliorated.Have you heard of Medwin’s book? Notes of conversations which he had with Lord Byron (when tipsy); every one is to be in it; every one will be angry. He wanted me to have a hand in it, but I declined. Years ago, when a man died, the worms ate him; now a new set of worms feed on the carcase of the scandal he leaves behind him, and grow fat upon the world’s love of tittle-tattle. I will not be numbered among them. Have you received the volume of poems? Give my love to “Very,” and so, dear, very patient, Adieu.—Yours affectionately,Mary Shelley.Journal, October 26.—Time rolls on, and what does it bring? What can I do? How change my destiny? Months change their names, years their cyphers. My brow is sadly trenched, the blossom of youth faded. My mind gathers wrinkles. What will become of me?How long it is since an emotion of joy filled my once exulting heart, or beamed from my once bright eyes. I am young still, though age creeps on apace; but I may not love any but the dead. I think that an emotion of joy would destroy me, so strange would it be to my withered heart. Shelley had said—Lift not the painted veil which men call life.Mine is not painted; dark and enshadowed, it curtains out all happiness, all hope. Tears fill my eyes; well may I weep, solitary girl! The dead know you not; the living heed you not. You sit in your lone room, and the howling wind, gloomy prognostic of winter, gives not forth so despairing a tone as the unheard sighs your ill-fated heart breathes.I was loved once! still let me cling to the memory; but to live for oneself alone, to read, and communicate your reflections to none; to write, and be cheered by none; to weep, and in no bosom; no more on thy bosom, my Shelley, to spend my tears—this is misery!Such is the Alpha and Omega of my tale. I can speak to none. Writing this is useless; it does not even soothe me; on the contrary, it irritates me by showing the pitiful expedient to which I am reduced.I have been a year in England, and, ungentle England, for what have I to thank you? For disappointment, melancholy, and tears; for unkindness, a bleeding heart, and despairing thoughts. I wish, England, to associate but one idea with thee—immeasurable distance and insurmountable barriers, so that I never, never might breathe thine air more.Beloved Italy! you are my country, my hope, my heaven!December 3.—I endeavour to rouse my fortitude and calm my mind by high and philosophic thoughts, and my studies aidthis endeavour. I have pondered for hours on Cicero’s description of that power of virtue in the human mind which render’s man’s frail being superior to fortune.“Eadem ratio habet in re quiddam amplum at que magnificum ad imperandum magis quam ad parendum accommodatum; omnia humana non tolerabilia solum sed etiam levia ducens; altum quiddam et excelsum, nihil temens, nemini cedens, semper invictum.”What should I fear? To whom cede? By whom be conquered?Little truly have I to fear. One only misfortune can touch me. That must be the last, for I should sink under it. At the age of seven and twenty, in the busy metropolis of native England, I find myself alone. The struggle is hard that can give rise to misanthropy in one, like me, attached to my fellow-creatures. Yet now, did not the memory of those matchless lost ones redeem their race, I should learn to hate men, who are strong only to oppress, moral only to insult. Oh ye winged hours that fly fast, that, having first destroyed my happiness, now bear my swift-departing youth with you, bring patience, wisdom, and content! I will not stoop to the world, or become like those who compose it, and be actuated by mean pursuits and petty ends. I will endeavour to remain unconquered by hard and bitter fortune; yet the tears that start in my eyes show pangs she inflicts upon me.So much for philosophising. Shall I ever be a philosopher?
Mrs. Shelley to Mrs. Hunt.
Kentish Town,10th October 1824.
... I write to you on the most dismal of all days, a rainy Sunday, when dreary church-going faces look still more drearilyfrom under dripping umbrellas, and the poor plebeian dame looks reproachfully at her splashed white stockings,—not her gown,—that has been warily held high up, and the to-be-concealed petticoat has borne all the ill-usage of the mud. Dismal though it is, dismal though I am, I do not wish to write a discontented letter, but in a few words to describe things as they are with me. A weekly visit to the Strand, a monthly visit to Shacklewell (when we are sure to be caught in the rain) forms my catalogue of visits. I have no visitors; if it were not for Jane I should be quite alone. The eternal rain imprisons one in one’s little room, and one’s spirits flag without one exhilarating circumstance. In some things, however, I am better off than last year, for I do not doubt but that in the course of a few months I shall have an independence; and I no longer balance, as I did last winter, between Italy and England. My Father wished me to stay, and, old as he is, and wishing as one does to be of some use somewhere, I thought that I would make the trial, and stay if I could. But the joke has become too serious. I look forward to the coming winter with horror, but itshall bethe last. I have not yet made up my mind to the where in Italy. I shall, if possible, immediately on arriving, push on to Rome. Then we shall see. I read, study, and write; sometimes that takes me out of myself; but to live for no one, to be necessary to none, to know that “Where is now my hope? for my hope, who shall see it? They shall go down to the base of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.” But change of scene and the sun of Italy will restore my energy; the very thought of it smooths my brow. Perhaps I shall seek the heats of Naples, if they do not hurt my darling Percy. And now, what news?...
········
Hazlitt is abroad; he will be in Italy in the winter; he wrote an article in theEdinburgh Reviewon the volume of poems I published. I do not know whether he meant it to be favourable or not; I do not like it at all; but when I saw him I could not be angry. I never was so shocked in mylife, he has become so thin, his hair scattered, his cheek-bones projecting; but for his voice and smile I should not have known him; his smile brought tears into my eyes, it was like a sunbeam illuminating the most melancholy of ruins, lightning that assured you in a dark night of the identity of a friend’s ruined and deserted abode....
Have you, my Polly, sent a profile to Miss Curran in Rome? Now pray do, and pray write; do, my dear girl. Next year by this time I shall, perhaps, be on my way to you; it will go hard but that I contrive to spend a week (that is, if you wish) at Florence, on my way to the Eternal City. God send that this prove not an airy castle; but I own that I put faith in my having money before that; and I know that I could not, if I would, endure the torture of my English life longer than is absolutely necessary. By the bye, I heard that you are keeping your promise to Trelawny, and that in due time he will be blessed with a namesake. How isOcchi Turchini, Thornton the reformed, Johnny the—what Johnny? the good boy? Mary the merry, Irving the sober, Percy the martyr, and dear Sylvan the good?
Percy is quite well; tell his friend he goes to school and learns to read and write, being very handy with his hands, perhaps having a pure anticipated cognition of the art of painting in his tiny fingers. Mrs. Williams’ little girl, who calls herself Dina, is his wife. Poor Clare, at Moscow! at least she will be independent one day, and if I am so soon, her situation will be quickly ameliorated.
Have you heard of Medwin’s book? Notes of conversations which he had with Lord Byron (when tipsy); every one is to be in it; every one will be angry. He wanted me to have a hand in it, but I declined. Years ago, when a man died, the worms ate him; now a new set of worms feed on the carcase of the scandal he leaves behind him, and grow fat upon the world’s love of tittle-tattle. I will not be numbered among them. Have you received the volume of poems? Give my love to “Very,” and so, dear, very patient, Adieu.—Yours affectionately,
Mary Shelley.
Journal, October 26.—Time rolls on, and what does it bring? What can I do? How change my destiny? Months change their names, years their cyphers. My brow is sadly trenched, the blossom of youth faded. My mind gathers wrinkles. What will become of me?
How long it is since an emotion of joy filled my once exulting heart, or beamed from my once bright eyes. I am young still, though age creeps on apace; but I may not love any but the dead. I think that an emotion of joy would destroy me, so strange would it be to my withered heart. Shelley had said—
Lift not the painted veil which men call life.
Mine is not painted; dark and enshadowed, it curtains out all happiness, all hope. Tears fill my eyes; well may I weep, solitary girl! The dead know you not; the living heed you not. You sit in your lone room, and the howling wind, gloomy prognostic of winter, gives not forth so despairing a tone as the unheard sighs your ill-fated heart breathes.
I was loved once! still let me cling to the memory; but to live for oneself alone, to read, and communicate your reflections to none; to write, and be cheered by none; to weep, and in no bosom; no more on thy bosom, my Shelley, to spend my tears—this is misery!
Such is the Alpha and Omega of my tale. I can speak to none. Writing this is useless; it does not even soothe me; on the contrary, it irritates me by showing the pitiful expedient to which I am reduced.
I have been a year in England, and, ungentle England, for what have I to thank you? For disappointment, melancholy, and tears; for unkindness, a bleeding heart, and despairing thoughts. I wish, England, to associate but one idea with thee—immeasurable distance and insurmountable barriers, so that I never, never might breathe thine air more.
Beloved Italy! you are my country, my hope, my heaven!
December 3.—I endeavour to rouse my fortitude and calm my mind by high and philosophic thoughts, and my studies aidthis endeavour. I have pondered for hours on Cicero’s description of that power of virtue in the human mind which render’s man’s frail being superior to fortune.
“Eadem ratio habet in re quiddam amplum at que magnificum ad imperandum magis quam ad parendum accommodatum; omnia humana non tolerabilia solum sed etiam levia ducens; altum quiddam et excelsum, nihil temens, nemini cedens, semper invictum.”
What should I fear? To whom cede? By whom be conquered?
Little truly have I to fear. One only misfortune can touch me. That must be the last, for I should sink under it. At the age of seven and twenty, in the busy metropolis of native England, I find myself alone. The struggle is hard that can give rise to misanthropy in one, like me, attached to my fellow-creatures. Yet now, did not the memory of those matchless lost ones redeem their race, I should learn to hate men, who are strong only to oppress, moral only to insult. Oh ye winged hours that fly fast, that, having first destroyed my happiness, now bear my swift-departing youth with you, bring patience, wisdom, and content! I will not stoop to the world, or become like those who compose it, and be actuated by mean pursuits and petty ends. I will endeavour to remain unconquered by hard and bitter fortune; yet the tears that start in my eyes show pangs she inflicts upon me.
So much for philosophising. Shall I ever be a philosopher?
January 1825-July 1827
At the beginning of 1825 Mrs. Shelley’s worldly affairs were looking somewhat more hopeful. The following extract is from a letter to Miss Curran, dated 2d January—