Godwin to Mary.No. 195 Strand,15th November 1822.My dear Mary—I have devoted the last two days to the seeing everybody an interview with whom would best enable me to write you a satisfactory letter. Yesterday I saw Hoggand Mrs. Williams, and to-day Peacock and Hanson junior. From Hogg I had, among other things, to learn Mrs. Williams’ address, for, owing to your neglect, she had been a fortnight in London before I knew of her arrival. She appeared to be in better health and better spirits than I expected; she did not drop one tear; occasionally she smiled. She is a picturesque little woman, and, as far as I could judge from one interview, I like her.Peacock has got Ollier’s promise to deliver all Shelley’s manuscripts, and as earnest, he has receivedPeter BellandA Curse on L.E., which he holds at your disposal. By the way, you should never give one commission but to one person; you commissioned me to recover these manuscripts from Ollier, you commissioned Peacock, and, I believe, Mrs. Gisborne. This puts us all in an awkward situation. I heard of Peacock’s applying just in time to prevent me from looking like a fool. Peacock says he cannot make up a parcel for you till he has been a second time to Marlow on the question, which cannot be till about Christmas. He appears to me, not lukewarm, but assiduous. Mrs. Williams told me she should write to you by this day’s post. She had been inquiring in vain for Miss Curran’s address—you should have referred her to me for it, but you referred her to me for nothing. This, by the way, is another instance of your giving one commission to more than one person. You gave the commission about Miss Curran to Mrs. Williams and to me. I received your letter, inclosing one to Miss Curran, 21st October, which I immediately forwarded to her by a safe hand, through her brother. You have probably heard from her by this time; she is in Paris.... I have a plan upon the house of Longman respectingCastruccio, but that depends upon coincidences, and I must have patience.You ask my opinion of your literary plans. If you expect any price, you must think of something new:Manfredis a subject that nobody interests himself about; the interest, therefore, must be made, and no bookseller understands anything about that contingency. A book about Italy asit is, written with any talent, would be sure to sell; but I am afraid you know very little about the present race of Italians.As to my own affairs, nothing is determined. I expected something material to have happened this week, but as yet I have heard nothing. If the subscription fills, I shall perhaps be safe; if not, I shall be driven to sea on a plank.Perhaps it may be of some use to you if I give you my opinion ofCastruccio. I think there are parts of high genius, and that your two females are exceedingly interesting; but I am not satisfied.Frankensteinwas a fine thing; it was compressed, muscular, and firm; nothing relaxed and weak; no proud flesh.Castrucciois a work of more genius; but it appears, in reading, that the first rule you prescribed to yourself was, I will let it be long. It contains the quantity of four volumes ofWaverley. No hard blow was ever hit with a woolsack! Mamma desires me to remember her to you in the kindest manner, and to say that she feels a deep interest in everything that concerns you. She means to take the earliest opportunity to see Mrs. Williams, both as she feels an earnest sympathy in her calamity, and as she will be likely to learn a hundred particulars respecting the dispositions and prospects of yourself and Jane, which she might in vain desire to learn in any other quarter. You asked Mamma for some present, a remembrance of your mother. She has reserved for you a ring of hers, with Fanny Blood’s hair set round with pearls.You will, of course, rely on it that I will send you the letters you ask for by Peacock’s parcel. Miss Curran’s address is Hotel de Dusseldorf Rue Petits St. Augustin, à Paris.—Believe me, ever your most affectionate Father,William Godwin.My last letter was dated 11th October.Journal, November 10.—I have made my first probation in writing, and it has done me much good, and Iget more calm; the stream begins to take to its new channel, insomuch as to make me fear change. But people must know little of me who think that, abstractedly, I am content with my present mode of life. Activity of spirit is my sphere. But we cannot be active of mind without an object; and I have none. I am allowed to have some talent—that is sufficient, methinks, to cause my irreparable misery; for, if one has genius, what a delight it is to be associated with a superior! Mine own Shelley! the sun knows of none to be likened to you—brave, wise, noble-hearted, full of learning, tolerance, and love. Love! what a word for me to write! yet, my miserable heart, permit me yet to love,—to see him in beauty, to feel him in beauty, to be interpenetrated by the sense of his excellence; and thus to love singly, eternally, ardently, and not fruitlessly; for I am still his—still the chosen one of that blessed spirit—still vowed to him for ever and ever!November 11.—It is better to grieve than not to grieve. Grief at least tells me that I was not always what I am now. I was once selected for happiness; let the memory of that abide by me. You pass by an old ruined house in a desolate lane, and heed it not. But if you hear that that house is haunted by a wild and beautiful spirit, it acquires an interest and beauty of its own.I shall be glad to be more alone again; one ought to see no one, or many; and, confined to one society, I shall lose all energy except that which I possess from my own resources; and I must be alone for those to be put in activity.A cold heart! Have I a cold heart? God knows! But none need envy the icy region this heart encircles; and at least the tears are hot which the emotions of this cold heart forces me to shed. A cold heart! yes, it would be cold enough if all were as I wished it—cold, or burning in the flame for whose sake I forgive this, and would forgive every other imputation—that flame in which your heart, beloved, lay unconsumed. My heart is very full to-night.I shall write his life, and thus occupy myself in the onlymanner from which I can derive consolation. That will be a task that may convey some balm. What though I weep? All is better than inaction and—not forgetfulness—that never is—but an inactivity of remembrance.And you, my own boy! I am about to begin a task which, if you live, will be an invaluable treasure to you in after times. I must collect my materials, and then, in the commemoration of the divine virtues of your Father, I shall fulfil the only act of pleasure there remains for me, and be ready to follow you, if you leave me, my task being fulfilled. I have lived; rapture, exultation, content—all the varied changes of enjoyment—have been mine. It is all gone; but still, the airy paintings of what it has gone through float by, and distance shall not dim them. If I were alone, I had already begun what I had determined to do; but I must have patience, and for those events my memory is brass, my thoughts a never-tired engraver. France—Poverty—A few days of solitude, and some uneasiness—A tranquil residence in a beautiful spot—Switzerland—Bath—Marlow—Milan—the Baths of Lucca—Este—Venice—Rome—Naples—Rome and misery—Leghorn—Florence—Pisa—Solitude—The Williams’—The Baths—Pisa: these are the heads of chapters, and each containing a tale romantic beyond romance.I no longer enjoy, but I love. Death cannot deprive me of that living spark which feeds on all given it, and which is now triumphant in sorrow. I love, and shall enjoy happiness again. I do not doubt that; but when?
Godwin to Mary.
No. 195 Strand,15th November 1822.
My dear Mary—I have devoted the last two days to the seeing everybody an interview with whom would best enable me to write you a satisfactory letter. Yesterday I saw Hoggand Mrs. Williams, and to-day Peacock and Hanson junior. From Hogg I had, among other things, to learn Mrs. Williams’ address, for, owing to your neglect, she had been a fortnight in London before I knew of her arrival. She appeared to be in better health and better spirits than I expected; she did not drop one tear; occasionally she smiled. She is a picturesque little woman, and, as far as I could judge from one interview, I like her.
Peacock has got Ollier’s promise to deliver all Shelley’s manuscripts, and as earnest, he has receivedPeter BellandA Curse on L.E., which he holds at your disposal. By the way, you should never give one commission but to one person; you commissioned me to recover these manuscripts from Ollier, you commissioned Peacock, and, I believe, Mrs. Gisborne. This puts us all in an awkward situation. I heard of Peacock’s applying just in time to prevent me from looking like a fool. Peacock says he cannot make up a parcel for you till he has been a second time to Marlow on the question, which cannot be till about Christmas. He appears to me, not lukewarm, but assiduous. Mrs. Williams told me she should write to you by this day’s post. She had been inquiring in vain for Miss Curran’s address—you should have referred her to me for it, but you referred her to me for nothing. This, by the way, is another instance of your giving one commission to more than one person. You gave the commission about Miss Curran to Mrs. Williams and to me. I received your letter, inclosing one to Miss Curran, 21st October, which I immediately forwarded to her by a safe hand, through her brother. You have probably heard from her by this time; she is in Paris.... I have a plan upon the house of Longman respectingCastruccio, but that depends upon coincidences, and I must have patience.
You ask my opinion of your literary plans. If you expect any price, you must think of something new:Manfredis a subject that nobody interests himself about; the interest, therefore, must be made, and no bookseller understands anything about that contingency. A book about Italy asit is, written with any talent, would be sure to sell; but I am afraid you know very little about the present race of Italians.
As to my own affairs, nothing is determined. I expected something material to have happened this week, but as yet I have heard nothing. If the subscription fills, I shall perhaps be safe; if not, I shall be driven to sea on a plank.
Perhaps it may be of some use to you if I give you my opinion ofCastruccio. I think there are parts of high genius, and that your two females are exceedingly interesting; but I am not satisfied.Frankensteinwas a fine thing; it was compressed, muscular, and firm; nothing relaxed and weak; no proud flesh.Castrucciois a work of more genius; but it appears, in reading, that the first rule you prescribed to yourself was, I will let it be long. It contains the quantity of four volumes ofWaverley. No hard blow was ever hit with a woolsack! Mamma desires me to remember her to you in the kindest manner, and to say that she feels a deep interest in everything that concerns you. She means to take the earliest opportunity to see Mrs. Williams, both as she feels an earnest sympathy in her calamity, and as she will be likely to learn a hundred particulars respecting the dispositions and prospects of yourself and Jane, which she might in vain desire to learn in any other quarter. You asked Mamma for some present, a remembrance of your mother. She has reserved for you a ring of hers, with Fanny Blood’s hair set round with pearls.
You will, of course, rely on it that I will send you the letters you ask for by Peacock’s parcel. Miss Curran’s address is Hotel de Dusseldorf Rue Petits St. Augustin, à Paris.—Believe me, ever your most affectionate Father,
William Godwin.
My last letter was dated 11th October.
Journal, November 10.—I have made my first probation in writing, and it has done me much good, and Iget more calm; the stream begins to take to its new channel, insomuch as to make me fear change. But people must know little of me who think that, abstractedly, I am content with my present mode of life. Activity of spirit is my sphere. But we cannot be active of mind without an object; and I have none. I am allowed to have some talent—that is sufficient, methinks, to cause my irreparable misery; for, if one has genius, what a delight it is to be associated with a superior! Mine own Shelley! the sun knows of none to be likened to you—brave, wise, noble-hearted, full of learning, tolerance, and love. Love! what a word for me to write! yet, my miserable heart, permit me yet to love,—to see him in beauty, to feel him in beauty, to be interpenetrated by the sense of his excellence; and thus to love singly, eternally, ardently, and not fruitlessly; for I am still his—still the chosen one of that blessed spirit—still vowed to him for ever and ever!
November 11.—It is better to grieve than not to grieve. Grief at least tells me that I was not always what I am now. I was once selected for happiness; let the memory of that abide by me. You pass by an old ruined house in a desolate lane, and heed it not. But if you hear that that house is haunted by a wild and beautiful spirit, it acquires an interest and beauty of its own.
I shall be glad to be more alone again; one ought to see no one, or many; and, confined to one society, I shall lose all energy except that which I possess from my own resources; and I must be alone for those to be put in activity.
A cold heart! Have I a cold heart? God knows! But none need envy the icy region this heart encircles; and at least the tears are hot which the emotions of this cold heart forces me to shed. A cold heart! yes, it would be cold enough if all were as I wished it—cold, or burning in the flame for whose sake I forgive this, and would forgive every other imputation—that flame in which your heart, beloved, lay unconsumed. My heart is very full to-night.
I shall write his life, and thus occupy myself in the onlymanner from which I can derive consolation. That will be a task that may convey some balm. What though I weep? All is better than inaction and—not forgetfulness—that never is—but an inactivity of remembrance.
And you, my own boy! I am about to begin a task which, if you live, will be an invaluable treasure to you in after times. I must collect my materials, and then, in the commemoration of the divine virtues of your Father, I shall fulfil the only act of pleasure there remains for me, and be ready to follow you, if you leave me, my task being fulfilled. I have lived; rapture, exultation, content—all the varied changes of enjoyment—have been mine. It is all gone; but still, the airy paintings of what it has gone through float by, and distance shall not dim them. If I were alone, I had already begun what I had determined to do; but I must have patience, and for those events my memory is brass, my thoughts a never-tired engraver. France—Poverty—A few days of solitude, and some uneasiness—A tranquil residence in a beautiful spot—Switzerland—Bath—Marlow—Milan—the Baths of Lucca—Este—Venice—Rome—Naples—Rome and misery—Leghorn—Florence—Pisa—Solitude—The Williams’—The Baths—Pisa: these are the heads of chapters, and each containing a tale romantic beyond romance.
I no longer enjoy, but I love. Death cannot deprive me of that living spark which feeds on all given it, and which is now triumphant in sorrow. I love, and shall enjoy happiness again. I do not doubt that; but when?
These fragments of journal give the course of her inward reflections; her letters sometimes supply the clue to her outward life,au jour le jour.
Mary Shelley to Clare Clairmont.20th December 1822.My dear Clare—I have delayed writing to you so long for two reasons. First, I have every day expected to hearfrom you; and secondly, I wished to hear something decisive from England to communicate to you. But I have waited in vain for both things. You do not write, and I begin to despair of ever hearing from you again. A few words will tell you all that has been done in England. When I wrote to you last, I think that I told you that Lord Byron had written to Hanson, bidding him call upon Whitton. Hanson wrote to Whitton desiring an interview, which Whitton declined, requesting Hanson to make his application by letter, which Hanson has done, and I know no more. This does not look like an absolute refusal, but Sir Timothy is so capricious that we cannot trust to appearances.And now the chapter about myself is finished, for what can I say of my present life? The weather is bitterly cold with a sharp wind, very unlike dear,carissimaPisa; but soft airs and balmy gales are not the attributes of Genoa, which place I daily and duly join Marianne in detesting. There is but one fireplace in the house, and although people have been for a month putting up a stove in my room, it smokes too much to permit of its being lighted. So I am obliged to pass the greater part of my time in Hunt’s sitting-room, which is, as you may guess, the annihilation of study, and even of pleasure to a great degree. For, after all, Hunt does not like me: it is both our faults, and I do not blame him, but so it is. I rise at 9, breakfast, work, read, and if I can at all endure the cold, copy my Shelley’s MSS. in my own room, and if possible walk before dinner. After that I work, read Greek, etc., till 10, when Hunt and Marianne go to bed. Then I am alone. Then the stream of thought, which has struggled against itsargineall through the busy day, makes apiena, and sorrow and memory and imagination, despair, and hope in despair, are the winds and currents that impel it. I am alone, and myself; and then I begin to say, as I ever feel, “How I hate life! What a mockery it is to rise, to walk, to feed, and then go to rest, and in all this a statue might do my part. One thing alone may or can awake me, and that is study; the rest is all nothing.” And so it is! I am silent and serious.Absorbed in my own thoughts, what am I then in this world if my spirit live not to learn and become better? That is the whole of my destiny; I look to nothing else. For I dare not look to my little darling other than as—not the sword of Damocles, that is a wrong simile, or to a wrecked seaman’s plank—true, he stands, and only he, between me and the sea of eternity; but I long for that plunge! No, I fear for him pain, disappointment,—all, all fear.You see how it is, it is near 11, and my good friends repose. This is the hour when I can think, unobtruded upon, and these thoughts,malgré moi, will stain this paper. But then, my dear Clare, I have nothing else except my nothingless self to talk about. You have doubtless heard from Jane, and I have heard from no one else. I see no one. The Guiccioli and Lord Byron once a month. Trelawny seldom, and he is on the eve of his departure for Leghorn....········Marianne suffers during this dreadfully cold weather, but less than I should have supposed. The children are all well. So also is my Percy, poor little darling: they all scold him because he speaks loudà l’Italien. People love to, nay, they seem to exist on, finding fault with others, but I have no right to complain, and this unlucky stove is the sole source of all mydispiacere; if I had that, I should not tease any one, or any one me, or my only one; but after all, these are trifles. I have sent for anotheringeniere, and I hope, before many days are elapsed, to retire as before to my hole.I have again delayed finishing this letter, waiting for letters from England, that I might not send you one so barren of all intelligence. But I have had none. And nothing new has happened except Trelawny’s departure for Leghorn, so that our days are more monotonous than ever. The weather is drearily cold, and an eternal north-east whistles through every crevice. Percy, however, is far better in this cold than in summer; he is warmly clothed, and gets on.Adieu. Pray write. My love to Charles; I am ashamedthat I do not write to him, but I have only an old story to repeat, and this letter tells that.—Affectionately yours,Mary Shelley.Journal, December 31.—So this year comes to an end. Shelley, beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knewest. When spring arrives leaves you never saw will shadow the ground, and flowers you never beheld will star it; the grass will be of another growth, and the birds sing a new song—the aged earth dates with a new number.Sometimes I thought that fortune had relented towards us; that your health would have improved, and that fame and joy would have been yours, for, when well, you extracted from Nature alone an endless delight. The various threads of our existence seemed to be drawing to one point, and there to assume a cheerful hue.Again, I think that your gentle spirit was too much wounded by the sharpness of this world; that your disease was incurable, and that in a happy time you became the partaker of cloudless days, ceaseless hours, and infinite love. Thy name is added to the list which makes the earth bold in her age and proud of what has been. Time, with unwearied but slow feet, guides her to the goal that thou hast reached, and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still nearer the hour when my earthly dress shall repose near thine, beneath the tomb of Cestius.
Mary Shelley to Clare Clairmont.
20th December 1822.
My dear Clare—I have delayed writing to you so long for two reasons. First, I have every day expected to hearfrom you; and secondly, I wished to hear something decisive from England to communicate to you. But I have waited in vain for both things. You do not write, and I begin to despair of ever hearing from you again. A few words will tell you all that has been done in England. When I wrote to you last, I think that I told you that Lord Byron had written to Hanson, bidding him call upon Whitton. Hanson wrote to Whitton desiring an interview, which Whitton declined, requesting Hanson to make his application by letter, which Hanson has done, and I know no more. This does not look like an absolute refusal, but Sir Timothy is so capricious that we cannot trust to appearances.
And now the chapter about myself is finished, for what can I say of my present life? The weather is bitterly cold with a sharp wind, very unlike dear,carissimaPisa; but soft airs and balmy gales are not the attributes of Genoa, which place I daily and duly join Marianne in detesting. There is but one fireplace in the house, and although people have been for a month putting up a stove in my room, it smokes too much to permit of its being lighted. So I am obliged to pass the greater part of my time in Hunt’s sitting-room, which is, as you may guess, the annihilation of study, and even of pleasure to a great degree. For, after all, Hunt does not like me: it is both our faults, and I do not blame him, but so it is. I rise at 9, breakfast, work, read, and if I can at all endure the cold, copy my Shelley’s MSS. in my own room, and if possible walk before dinner. After that I work, read Greek, etc., till 10, when Hunt and Marianne go to bed. Then I am alone. Then the stream of thought, which has struggled against itsargineall through the busy day, makes apiena, and sorrow and memory and imagination, despair, and hope in despair, are the winds and currents that impel it. I am alone, and myself; and then I begin to say, as I ever feel, “How I hate life! What a mockery it is to rise, to walk, to feed, and then go to rest, and in all this a statue might do my part. One thing alone may or can awake me, and that is study; the rest is all nothing.” And so it is! I am silent and serious.Absorbed in my own thoughts, what am I then in this world if my spirit live not to learn and become better? That is the whole of my destiny; I look to nothing else. For I dare not look to my little darling other than as—not the sword of Damocles, that is a wrong simile, or to a wrecked seaman’s plank—true, he stands, and only he, between me and the sea of eternity; but I long for that plunge! No, I fear for him pain, disappointment,—all, all fear.
You see how it is, it is near 11, and my good friends repose. This is the hour when I can think, unobtruded upon, and these thoughts,malgré moi, will stain this paper. But then, my dear Clare, I have nothing else except my nothingless self to talk about. You have doubtless heard from Jane, and I have heard from no one else. I see no one. The Guiccioli and Lord Byron once a month. Trelawny seldom, and he is on the eve of his departure for Leghorn....
········
Marianne suffers during this dreadfully cold weather, but less than I should have supposed. The children are all well. So also is my Percy, poor little darling: they all scold him because he speaks loudà l’Italien. People love to, nay, they seem to exist on, finding fault with others, but I have no right to complain, and this unlucky stove is the sole source of all mydispiacere; if I had that, I should not tease any one, or any one me, or my only one; but after all, these are trifles. I have sent for anotheringeniere, and I hope, before many days are elapsed, to retire as before to my hole.
I have again delayed finishing this letter, waiting for letters from England, that I might not send you one so barren of all intelligence. But I have had none. And nothing new has happened except Trelawny’s departure for Leghorn, so that our days are more monotonous than ever. The weather is drearily cold, and an eternal north-east whistles through every crevice. Percy, however, is far better in this cold than in summer; he is warmly clothed, and gets on.
Adieu. Pray write. My love to Charles; I am ashamedthat I do not write to him, but I have only an old story to repeat, and this letter tells that.—Affectionately yours,
Mary Shelley.
Journal, December 31.—So this year comes to an end. Shelley, beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knewest. When spring arrives leaves you never saw will shadow the ground, and flowers you never beheld will star it; the grass will be of another growth, and the birds sing a new song—the aged earth dates with a new number.
Sometimes I thought that fortune had relented towards us; that your health would have improved, and that fame and joy would have been yours, for, when well, you extracted from Nature alone an endless delight. The various threads of our existence seemed to be drawing to one point, and there to assume a cheerful hue.
Again, I think that your gentle spirit was too much wounded by the sharpness of this world; that your disease was incurable, and that in a happy time you became the partaker of cloudless days, ceaseless hours, and infinite love. Thy name is added to the list which makes the earth bold in her age and proud of what has been. Time, with unwearied but slow feet, guides her to the goal that thou hast reached, and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still nearer the hour when my earthly dress shall repose near thine, beneath the tomb of Cestius.
It must have been at about this time that Mary wrote the sad, retrospective poem entitled “The Choice.”
THE CHOICE.My Choice!—My Choice, alas! was had and goneWith the red gleam of last autumnal sun;Lost in that deep wherein he bathed his head,My choice, my life, my hope together fled:—A wanderer here, no more I seek a home,The sky a vault, and Italy a tomb.Yet as some days a pilgrim I remain,Linked to my orphan child by love’s strong chain;And, since I have a faith that I must earn,By suffering and by patience, a returnOf that companionship and love, which firstUpon my young life’s cloud like sunlight burst,And now has left me, dark, as when its beams,Quenched in the might of dreadful ocean streams,Leave that one cloud, a gloomy speck on high,Beside one star in the else darkened sky;—Since I must live, how would I pass the day,How meet with fewest tears the morning’s ray,How sleep with calmest dreams, how find delights,As fireflies gleam through interlunar nights?First let me call on thee! Lost as thou art,Thy name aye fills my sense, thy love my heart.Oh, gentle Spirit! thou hast often sung,How fallen on evil days thy heart was wrung;Now fierce remorse and unreplying deathWaken a chord within my heart, whose breath,Thrilling and keen, in accents audibleA tale of unrequited love doth tell.It was not anger,—while thy earthly dressEncompassed still thy soul’s rare loveliness,All anger was atoned by many a kindCaress or tear, that spoke the softened mind.—It speaks of cold neglect, averted eyes,That blindly crushed thy soul’s fond sacrifice:—My heart was all thine own,—but yet a shellClosed in its core, which seemed impenetrable,Till sharp-toothed misery tore the husk in twain,Which gaping lies, nor may unite again.Forgive me! let thy love descend in dewOf soft repentance and regret most true;—In a strange guise thou dost descend, or howCould love soothe fell remorse,—as it does now?—By this remorse and love, and by the yearsThrough which we shared our common hopes and fears,By all our best companionship, I dareCall on thy sacred name without a fear;—And thus I pray to thee, my friend, my Heart!That in thy new abode, thou’lt bear a partIn soothing thy poor Mary’s lonely pain,As link by link she weaves her heavy chain!—And thou, strange star! ascendant at my birth,Which rained, they said, kind influence on the earth,So from great parents sprung, I dared to boastFortune my friend, till set, thy beams were lost!And thou, Inscrutable, by whose decreeHas burst this hideous storm of misery!Here let me cling, here to the solitudes,These myrtle-shaded streams and chestnut woods;Tear me not hence—here let me live and die,In my adopted land—my country—Italy.A happy Mother first I saw this sun,Beneath this sky my race of joy was run.First my sweet girl, whose face resembledhis,Slept on bleak Lido, near Venetian seas.Yet still my eldest-born, my loveliest, dearest,Clung to my side, most joyful then when nearest.An English home had given this angel birth,Near those royal towers, where the grass-clad earthIs shadowed o’er by England’s loftiest trees:Then our companion o’er the swift-passed seas,He dwelt beside the Alps, or gently slept,Rocked by the waves, o’er which our vessel swept,Beside his father, nurst upon my breast,While Leman’s waters shook with fierce unrest.His fairest limbs had bathed in Serchio’s stream;His eyes had watched Italian lightnings gleam;His childish voice had, with its loudest call,The echoes waked of Este’s castle wall;Had paced Pompeii’s Roman market-place;Had gazed with infant wonder on the graceOf stone-wrought deities, and pictured saints,In Rome’s high palaces—there were no taintsOf ruin on his cheek—all shadowlessGrim death approached—the boy met his caress,And while his glowing limbs with life’s warmth shone,Around those limbs his icy arms were thrown.His spoils were strewed beneath the soil of Rome,Whose flowers now star the dark earth near his tomb:Its airs and plants received the mortal part,His spirit beats within his mother’s heart.Infant immortal! chosen for the sky!No grief upon thy brow’s young purityEntrenched sad lines, or blotted with its mightThe sunshine of thy smile’s celestial light;—The image shattered, the bright spirit fled,Thou shin’st the evening star among the dead.And thou, his playmate, whose deep lucid eyes,Were a reflection of these bluest skies;Child of our hearts, divided in ill hour,We could not watch the bud’s expanding flower,Now thou art gone, one guileless victim more,To the black death that rules this sunny shore.Companion of my griefs! thy sinking frameHad often drooped, and then erect againWith shows of health had mocked forebodings dark;—Watching the changes of that quivering spark,I feared and hoped, and dared to trust at length,Thy very weakness was my tower of strength.Methought thou wert a spirit from the sky,Which struggled with its chains, but could not die,And that destruction had no power to winFrom out those limbs the soul that burnt within.Tell me, ye ancient walls, and weed-grown towers,Ye Roman airs and brightly painted flowers,Does not his spirit visit that recessWhich built of love enshrines his earthly dress?—No more! no more!—what though that form be fled,My trembling hand shall never write thee—dead—Thou liv’st in Nature, Love, my Memory,With deathless faith for aye adoring thee,The wife of Time no more, I wed Eternity.’Tis thus the Past—on which my spirit leans,Makes dearest to my soul Italian scenes.In Tuscan fields the winds in odours steepedFrom flowers and cypresses, when skies have wept,Shall, like the notes of music once most dear,Which brings the unstrung voice upon my earOf one beloved, to memory displayPast scenes, past hopes, past joys, in long array.Pugnano’s trees, beneath whose shade he stood,The pools reflecting Pisa’s old pine wood,The fireflies beams, the aziola’s cryAll breathe his spirit which can never die.Such memories have linked these hills and caves,These woodland paths, and streams, and knelling wavesPast to each sad pulsation of my breast,And made their melancholy arms the haven of my rest.Here will I live, within a little dell,Which but a month ago I saw full well:—A dream then pictured forth the solitudeDeep in the shelter of a lovely wood;A voice then whispered a strange prophecy,My dearest, widowed friend, that thou and IShould there together pass the weary day,As we before have done in Spezia’s bay,As though long hours we watched the sails that nearedO’er the far sea, their vessel ne’er appeared;One pang of agony, one dying gleamOf hope led us along, beside the ocean stream,But keen-eyed fear, the while all hope departs,Stabbed with a million stings our heart of hearts.The sad revolving year has not allayedThe poison of these bleeding wounds, or madeThe anguish less of that corroding thoughtWhich has with grief each single moment fraught.Edward, thy voice was hushed—thy noble heartWith aspiration heaves no more—a partOf heaven-resumèd past thou art become,Thy spirit waits with his in our far home.
Trelawny had departed for Leghorn and his favourite Maremma,en routefor Rome, where, by his untiring zeal for the fit interment of Shelley’s ashes, he once more earned Mary’s undying gratitude. The ashes, which had been temporarily consigned to the care of Mr. Freeborn, British Consul at Rome, had, before Trelawny arrived, been buried in the Protestant cemetery: the grave was amidst a cluster of others. In a niche—formed by two buttresses—in the old Roman wall, immediately under an ancient pyramid, said to be the tomb of Caius Cestius, Trelawny (having purchased the recess) built two tombs. In one of these the box containing Shelley’s ashes was deposited, and all was covered over with solid stone. The details of the transaction, which extended over several months, are supplied in his letters.
Trelawny to Mary Shelley.Piombino,7thand11th January 1823.Thus far into the bowels of the landHave we marched on without impediment.Dear Mary Shelley—Pardon my tardiness in writing, which from day to day I have postponed, having no other cause to plead than idleness. On my arrival at Leghorn I called on Grant, and was much grieved to find our fears well founded, to wit, that nothing definitely had been done. Grant had not heard from his correspondent at Rome after his first statement of the difficulties; the same letter that was enclosed me and read by you he (Grant) had written, but not received a reply. I then requested Grant to write and say that I would be at Rome in a month or five weeks, and if I found the impediments insurmountable, I would resume possession of the ashes, if on the contrary, to personally fulfil your wishes, and in the meantime to deposit them secure from molestation, so that, without Grant writes to me, I shall say nothing more till I am at Rome, which will be early in February. In the meantime Roberts and myself are sailing along the coast, shooting, and visiting the numerous islands in our track. We have been here some days, living at the miserable hut of a cattle dealer on the marshes, near this wretched town, well situated for sporting. To-morrow we cross over to Elba, thence to Corsica, and so return along the Maremma, up the Tiber in the boat, to Rome....... I like this Maremma, it is lonely and desolate, thinly populated, particularly after Genoa, where human brutes are so abundant that the air is dense with their garlic breath, and it is impossible to fly the nuisance. Here there is solitude enough: there are less of the human form here in midday than at Genoa midnight; besides, this vagabond life has restored my health. Next year I will get a tent, and spend my winter in these marshes....... Dear Mary, of all those that I know of, or you havetold me of, as connected with you, there is not one now living has so tender a friendship for you as I have. I have the far greater claims on you, and I shall consider it as a breach of friendship should you employ any one else in services that I can execute.My purse, my person, my extremest meansLye all unlocked to your occasion.I hope you know my heart so well as to make all professions needless. To serve you will ever be the greatest pleasure I can experience, and nothing could interrupt the almost unmingled pleasure I have received from our first meeting but you concealing your difficulties or wishes from me. With kindest remembrances to my good friends the Hunts, to whom I am sincerely attached, and love and salaam to Lord Byron, I am your very sincereEdward Trelawny.“Indeed, I do believe, my dear Trelawny,” wrote Mary in reply, on the 30th of January 1823, “that you are the best friend I have, and most truly would I rather apply to you in any difficulty than to any one else, for I know your heart, and rely on it. At present I am very well off, having still a considerable residue of the money I brought with me from Pisa, and besides, I have received £33 from theLiberal. Part of this I have been obliged to send to Clare. You will be sorry to hear that the last account she has sent of herself is that she has been seriously ill. The cold of Vienna has doubtless contributed to this,—as it is even a dangerous aggravation of her old complaint. I wait anxiously to hear from her. I sent her fifteen napoleons, and shall send more if necessary and if I can. Lord B. continues kind: he has made frequent offers of money. I do not want it, as you see.”Journal, February 2nd.—On the 21st of January those rites were fulfilled. Shelley! my own beloved! you rest beneath the blue sky of Rome; in that, at least, I am satisfied.What matters it that they cannot find the grave of myWilliam? That spot is sanctified by the presence of his pure earthly vesture, and that is sufficient—at least, it must be. I am too truly miserable to dwell on what at another time might have made me unhappy. He is beneath the tomb of Cestius. I see the spot.February 3.—A storm has come across me; a slight circumstance has disturbed the deceitful calm of which I boasted. I thought I heard my Shelley call me—not my Shelley in heaven, but my Shelley, my companion in my daily tasks. I was reading; I heard a voice say, “Mary!” “It is Shelley,” I thought; the revulsion was of agony. Never more....
Trelawny to Mary Shelley.
Piombino,7thand11th January 1823.
Thus far into the bowels of the landHave we marched on without impediment.
Dear Mary Shelley—Pardon my tardiness in writing, which from day to day I have postponed, having no other cause to plead than idleness. On my arrival at Leghorn I called on Grant, and was much grieved to find our fears well founded, to wit, that nothing definitely had been done. Grant had not heard from his correspondent at Rome after his first statement of the difficulties; the same letter that was enclosed me and read by you he (Grant) had written, but not received a reply. I then requested Grant to write and say that I would be at Rome in a month or five weeks, and if I found the impediments insurmountable, I would resume possession of the ashes, if on the contrary, to personally fulfil your wishes, and in the meantime to deposit them secure from molestation, so that, without Grant writes to me, I shall say nothing more till I am at Rome, which will be early in February. In the meantime Roberts and myself are sailing along the coast, shooting, and visiting the numerous islands in our track. We have been here some days, living at the miserable hut of a cattle dealer on the marshes, near this wretched town, well situated for sporting. To-morrow we cross over to Elba, thence to Corsica, and so return along the Maremma, up the Tiber in the boat, to Rome....
... I like this Maremma, it is lonely and desolate, thinly populated, particularly after Genoa, where human brutes are so abundant that the air is dense with their garlic breath, and it is impossible to fly the nuisance. Here there is solitude enough: there are less of the human form here in midday than at Genoa midnight; besides, this vagabond life has restored my health. Next year I will get a tent, and spend my winter in these marshes....
... Dear Mary, of all those that I know of, or you havetold me of, as connected with you, there is not one now living has so tender a friendship for you as I have. I have the far greater claims on you, and I shall consider it as a breach of friendship should you employ any one else in services that I can execute.
My purse, my person, my extremest meansLye all unlocked to your occasion.
I hope you know my heart so well as to make all professions needless. To serve you will ever be the greatest pleasure I can experience, and nothing could interrupt the almost unmingled pleasure I have received from our first meeting but you concealing your difficulties or wishes from me. With kindest remembrances to my good friends the Hunts, to whom I am sincerely attached, and love and salaam to Lord Byron, I am your very sincere
Edward Trelawny.
“Indeed, I do believe, my dear Trelawny,” wrote Mary in reply, on the 30th of January 1823, “that you are the best friend I have, and most truly would I rather apply to you in any difficulty than to any one else, for I know your heart, and rely on it. At present I am very well off, having still a considerable residue of the money I brought with me from Pisa, and besides, I have received £33 from theLiberal. Part of this I have been obliged to send to Clare. You will be sorry to hear that the last account she has sent of herself is that she has been seriously ill. The cold of Vienna has doubtless contributed to this,—as it is even a dangerous aggravation of her old complaint. I wait anxiously to hear from her. I sent her fifteen napoleons, and shall send more if necessary and if I can. Lord B. continues kind: he has made frequent offers of money. I do not want it, as you see.”
Journal, February 2nd.—On the 21st of January those rites were fulfilled. Shelley! my own beloved! you rest beneath the blue sky of Rome; in that, at least, I am satisfied.
What matters it that they cannot find the grave of myWilliam? That spot is sanctified by the presence of his pure earthly vesture, and that is sufficient—at least, it must be. I am too truly miserable to dwell on what at another time might have made me unhappy. He is beneath the tomb of Cestius. I see the spot.
February 3.—A storm has come across me; a slight circumstance has disturbed the deceitful calm of which I boasted. I thought I heard my Shelley call me—not my Shelley in heaven, but my Shelley, my companion in my daily tasks. I was reading; I heard a voice say, “Mary!” “It is Shelley,” I thought; the revulsion was of agony. Never more....
Mrs. Shelley’s affairs now assumed an aspect which made her foresee the ultimate advisability, if not necessity, of returning to England. Sir Timothy Shelley had declined giving any answer to the application made to him for an allowance for his son’s widow and child; and Lord Byron, as Shelley’s executor, had written to him directly for a decisive answer, which he obtained.
Sir Timothy Shelley to Lord Byron.Field Place,6th February 1823.My Lord—I have received your Lordship’s letter, and my solicitor, Mr. Whitton, has this day shown me copies of certificates of the marriage of Mrs. Shelley and of the baptism of her little boy, and also, a short abstract of my son’s will, as the same have been handed to him by Mr. Hanson.The mind of my son was withdrawn from me and my immediate family by unworthy and interested individuals, when he was about nineteen, and after a while he was led into a new society and forsook his first associates.In this new society he forgot every feeling of duty and respect to me and to Lady Shelley.Mrs. Shelley was, I have been told, the intimate friend of my son in the lifetime of his first wife, and to the time of her death, and in no small degree, as I suspect, estranged my son’s mind from his family, and all his first duties in life; with that impression on my mind, I cannot agree with your Lordship that, though my son was unfortunate, Mrs. Shelley is innocent; on the contrary, I think that her conduct was the very reverse of what it ought to have been, and I must, therefore, decline all interference in matters in which Mrs. Shelley is interested. As to the child, I am inclined to afford the means of a suitable protection and care of him in this country, if he shall be placed with a person I shall approve; but your Lordship will allow me to say that the means I can furnish will be limited, as I have important duties to perform towards others, which I cannot forget.I have thus plainly told your Lordship my determination, in the hope that I may be spared from all further correspondence on a subject so distressing to me and my family.With respect to the will and certificates, I have no observation to make. I have left them with Mr. Whitton, and if anything is necessary to be done with them on my part, he will, I am sure, do it.—I have the honour, my Lord, to be your Lordship’s most obedient humble servant,T. Shelley.
Sir Timothy Shelley to Lord Byron.
Field Place,6th February 1823.
My Lord—I have received your Lordship’s letter, and my solicitor, Mr. Whitton, has this day shown me copies of certificates of the marriage of Mrs. Shelley and of the baptism of her little boy, and also, a short abstract of my son’s will, as the same have been handed to him by Mr. Hanson.
The mind of my son was withdrawn from me and my immediate family by unworthy and interested individuals, when he was about nineteen, and after a while he was led into a new society and forsook his first associates.
In this new society he forgot every feeling of duty and respect to me and to Lady Shelley.
Mrs. Shelley was, I have been told, the intimate friend of my son in the lifetime of his first wife, and to the time of her death, and in no small degree, as I suspect, estranged my son’s mind from his family, and all his first duties in life; with that impression on my mind, I cannot agree with your Lordship that, though my son was unfortunate, Mrs. Shelley is innocent; on the contrary, I think that her conduct was the very reverse of what it ought to have been, and I must, therefore, decline all interference in matters in which Mrs. Shelley is interested. As to the child, I am inclined to afford the means of a suitable protection and care of him in this country, if he shall be placed with a person I shall approve; but your Lordship will allow me to say that the means I can furnish will be limited, as I have important duties to perform towards others, which I cannot forget.
I have thus plainly told your Lordship my determination, in the hope that I may be spared from all further correspondence on a subject so distressing to me and my family.
With respect to the will and certificates, I have no observation to make. I have left them with Mr. Whitton, and if anything is necessary to be done with them on my part, he will, I am sure, do it.—I have the honour, my Lord, to be your Lordship’s most obedient humble servant,
T. Shelley.
Granting the point of view from which it was written, this letter, though hard, was not unnatural. The author ofAdonaiswas, to Sir Timothy, a common reprobate, a prodigal who, having gone into a far country, would have devoured his father’s living—could he have got it—with harlots; but who had come there to well-deserved grief, and for whose widow even husks were too good. To any possible colouring or modification of this view he had resolutely shut his eyes and ears. Nomodification of his conclusions was, therefore, to be looked for.
But neither could it be expected that his point of view should be intelligible to Mary. Nor did it commend itself to Godwin. It would have been as little for his daughter’s interest as for her happiness to surrender the custody of her child.
Mary Shelley to Lord Byron.My dear Lord Byron— ... It appears to me that the mode in which Sir Timothy Shelley expresses himself about my child plainly shows by what mean principles he would be actuated. He does not offer him an asylum in his own house, but a beggarly provision under the care of a stranger.Setting aside that, I would not part with him. Something is due to me. I should not live ten days separated from him. If it were necessary for me to die for his benefit the sacrifice would be easy; but his delicate frame requires all a mother’s solicitude; nor shall he be deprived of my anxious love and assiduous attention to his happiness while I have it in my power to bestow it on him; not to mention that his future respect for his excellent Father and his moral wellbeing greatly depend upon his being away from the immediate influence of his relations.This, perhaps, you will think nonsense, and it is inconceivably painful to me to discuss a point which appears to me as clear as noonday; besides I lose all—all honourable station and name—when I admit that I am not a fitting person to take charge of my infant. The insult is keen; the pretence of heaping it upon me too gross; the advantage to them, if the will came to be contested, would be too immense.As a matter of feeling, I would never consent to it. I am said to have a cold heart; there are feelings, however, so strongly implanted in my nature that, to root them out, life will go with it.—Most truly yours,Mary Shelley.Godwin to Mrs. Shelley.Strand,14th February 1823.My dear Mary—I have this moment received a copy of Sir Timothy Shelley’s letter to Lord Byron, dated 6th February, and which, therefore, you will have seen long before this reaches you. You will easily imagine how anxious I am to hear from you, and to know the state of your feelings under this, which seems like the last, blow of fate.I need not, of course, attempt to assist your judgment upon the proposition of taking the child from you. I am sure your feelings would never allow you to entertain such a proposition.········I requested you to let Lord Byron’s letter to Sir Timothy Shelley pass through my hands, and you did so; but to my great mortification, it reached me sealed with his Lordship’s arms, so that I remained wholly ignorant of its contents. If you could send me a copy, I should be then much better acquainted with your present situation.Your novel is now fully printed and ready for publication. I have taken great liberties with it, and I fear youramour proprewill be proportionately shocked. I need not tell you that all the merit of the book is exclusively your own. Beatrice is the jewel of the book; not but that I greatly admire Euthanasia, and I think the characters of Pepi, Binda, and the witch decisive efforts of original genius. I am promised a character of the work in theMorning Chronicleand theHerald, and was in hopes to have sent you the one or the other by this time. I also sent a copy of the book to theExaminerfor the same purpose.Tuesday, 18th February.Do not, I entreat you, be cast down about your worldly circumstances. You certainly contain within yourself the means of your subsistence. Your talents are truly extraordinary.Frankensteinis universally known, and though it can never bea book for vulgar reading, is everywhere respected. It is the most wonderful work to have been written at twenty years of age that I ever heard of. You are now five and twenty, and, most fortunately, you have pursued a course of reading, and cultivated your mind, in a manner the most admirably adapted to make you a great and successful author. If you cannot be independent, who should be?Your talents, as far as I can at present discern, are turned for the writing of fictitious adventures.If it shall ever happen to you to be placed in sudden and urgent want of a small sum, I entreat you to let me know immediately; we must see what I can do. We must help one another.—Your affectionate Father,William Godwin.
Mary Shelley to Lord Byron.
My dear Lord Byron— ... It appears to me that the mode in which Sir Timothy Shelley expresses himself about my child plainly shows by what mean principles he would be actuated. He does not offer him an asylum in his own house, but a beggarly provision under the care of a stranger.
Setting aside that, I would not part with him. Something is due to me. I should not live ten days separated from him. If it were necessary for me to die for his benefit the sacrifice would be easy; but his delicate frame requires all a mother’s solicitude; nor shall he be deprived of my anxious love and assiduous attention to his happiness while I have it in my power to bestow it on him; not to mention that his future respect for his excellent Father and his moral wellbeing greatly depend upon his being away from the immediate influence of his relations.
This, perhaps, you will think nonsense, and it is inconceivably painful to me to discuss a point which appears to me as clear as noonday; besides I lose all—all honourable station and name—when I admit that I am not a fitting person to take charge of my infant. The insult is keen; the pretence of heaping it upon me too gross; the advantage to them, if the will came to be contested, would be too immense.
As a matter of feeling, I would never consent to it. I am said to have a cold heart; there are feelings, however, so strongly implanted in my nature that, to root them out, life will go with it.—Most truly yours,
Mary Shelley.
Godwin to Mrs. Shelley.
Strand,14th February 1823.
My dear Mary—I have this moment received a copy of Sir Timothy Shelley’s letter to Lord Byron, dated 6th February, and which, therefore, you will have seen long before this reaches you. You will easily imagine how anxious I am to hear from you, and to know the state of your feelings under this, which seems like the last, blow of fate.
I need not, of course, attempt to assist your judgment upon the proposition of taking the child from you. I am sure your feelings would never allow you to entertain such a proposition.
········
I requested you to let Lord Byron’s letter to Sir Timothy Shelley pass through my hands, and you did so; but to my great mortification, it reached me sealed with his Lordship’s arms, so that I remained wholly ignorant of its contents. If you could send me a copy, I should be then much better acquainted with your present situation.
Your novel is now fully printed and ready for publication. I have taken great liberties with it, and I fear youramour proprewill be proportionately shocked. I need not tell you that all the merit of the book is exclusively your own. Beatrice is the jewel of the book; not but that I greatly admire Euthanasia, and I think the characters of Pepi, Binda, and the witch decisive efforts of original genius. I am promised a character of the work in theMorning Chronicleand theHerald, and was in hopes to have sent you the one or the other by this time. I also sent a copy of the book to theExaminerfor the same purpose.
Tuesday, 18th February.
Do not, I entreat you, be cast down about your worldly circumstances. You certainly contain within yourself the means of your subsistence. Your talents are truly extraordinary.Frankensteinis universally known, and though it can never bea book for vulgar reading, is everywhere respected. It is the most wonderful work to have been written at twenty years of age that I ever heard of. You are now five and twenty, and, most fortunately, you have pursued a course of reading, and cultivated your mind, in a manner the most admirably adapted to make you a great and successful author. If you cannot be independent, who should be?
Your talents, as far as I can at present discern, are turned for the writing of fictitious adventures.
If it shall ever happen to you to be placed in sudden and urgent want of a small sum, I entreat you to let me know immediately; we must see what I can do. We must help one another.—Your affectionate Father,
William Godwin.
Mary felt the truth of what her father said, but, wounded and embittered as she was, she had little heart for framing plans.
Journal, February 24.—Evils throng around me, my beloved, and I have indeed lost all in losing thee. Were it not for my child, this would be rather a soothing reflection, and, if starvation were my fate, I should fulfil that fate without a sigh. But our child demands all my care now that you have left us. I must be all to him: the Father, death has deprived him of; the relations, the bad world permits him not to have. What is yet in store for me? Am I to close the eyes of our boy, and then join you?The last weeks have been spent in quiet. Study could not give repose to, but somewhat regulated, my thoughts. I said: “I lead an innocent life, and it may become a useful one. I have talent, I will improve that talent; and if, while meditating on the wisdom of ages, and storing my mind with all that has been recorded of it, any new light bursts upon me, or any discovery occurs that may be useful to my fellows, then the balm of utility may be added to innocence.What is it that moves up and down in my soul, and makesme feel as if my intellect could master all but my fate? I fear it is only youthful ardour—the yet untamed spirit which, wholly withdrawn from the hopes, and almost from the affections of life, indulges itself in the only walk free to it, and, mental exertion being all my thought except regret, would make me place my hopes in that. I am indeed become a recluse in thought and act; and my mind, turned heavenward, would, but for my only tie, lose all commune with what is around me. If I be proud, yet it is with humility that I am so. I am not vain. My heart shakes with its suppressed emotions, and I flag beneath the thoughts that oppress me.Each day, as I have taken my solitary walk, I have felt myself exalted with the idea of occupation, improvement, knowledge, and peace. Looking back to my life as a delicious dream, I steeled myself as well as I could against such severe regrets as should overthrow my calmness. Once or twice, pausing in my walk, I have exclaimed in despair, “Is it even so?” yet, for the most part resigned, I was occupied by reflection—on those ideas you, my beloved, planted in my mind—and meditated on our nature, our source, and our destination. To-day, melancholy would invade me, and I thought the peace I enjoyed was transient. Then that letter came to place its seal on my prognostications. Yet it was not the refusal, or the insult heaped upon me, that stung me to tears. It was their bitter words about our Boy. Why, I live only to keep him from their hands. How dared they dream that I held him not far more precious than all, save the hope of again seeing you, my lost one. But for his smiles, where should I now be?Stars that shine unclouded, ye cannot tell me what will be—yet I can tell you a part. I may have misgivings, weaknesses, and momentary lapses into unworthy despondency, but—save in devotion towards my Boy—fortune has emptied her quiver, and to all her future shafts I oppose courage, hopelessness of aught on this side, with a firm trust in what is beyond the grave.Visit me in my dreams to-night, my beloved Shelley! kind,loving, excellent as thou wert! and the event of this day shall be forgotten.March 19.—As I have until now recurred to this book to discharge into it the overflowings of a mind too full of the bitterest waters of life, so will I to-night, now that I am calm, put down some of my milder reveries; that, when I turn it over, I may not only find a record of the most painful thoughts that ever filled a human heart even to distraction.I am beginning seriously to educate myself; and in another place I have marked the scope of this somewhat tardy education, intellectually considered. In a moral point of view, this education is of some years’ standing, and it only now takes the form of seeking its food in books. I have long accustomed myself to the study of my own heart, and have sought and found in its recesses that which cannot embody itself in words—hardly in feelings. I have found strength in the conception of its faculties; much native force in the understanding of them; and what appears to me not a contemptible penetration in the subtle divisions of good and evil. But I have found less strength of self-support, of resistance to what is vulgarly called temptation; yet I think also that I have found true humility (for surely no one can be less presumptuous than I), an ardent love for the immutable laws of right, much native goodness of emotion, and purity of thought.Enough, if every day I gain a profounder knowledge of my defects, and a more certain method of turning them to a good direction.Study has become to me more necessary than the air I breathe. In the questioning and searching turn it gives to my thoughts, I find some relief to wild reverie; in the self-satisfaction I feel in commanding myself, I find present solace; in the hope that thence arises, that I may become more worthy of my Shelley, I find a consolation that even makes me less wretched than in my most wretched moments.March 30.—I have now finished part of theOdyssey. I mark this. I cannot write. Day after day I suffer the mosttremendous agitation. I cannot write, or read, or think. Whether it be the anxiety for letters that shakes a frame not so strong as hitherto—whether it be my annoyances here—whether it be my regrets, my sorrow, and despair, or all these—I know not; but I am a wreck.
Journal, February 24.—Evils throng around me, my beloved, and I have indeed lost all in losing thee. Were it not for my child, this would be rather a soothing reflection, and, if starvation were my fate, I should fulfil that fate without a sigh. But our child demands all my care now that you have left us. I must be all to him: the Father, death has deprived him of; the relations, the bad world permits him not to have. What is yet in store for me? Am I to close the eyes of our boy, and then join you?
The last weeks have been spent in quiet. Study could not give repose to, but somewhat regulated, my thoughts. I said: “I lead an innocent life, and it may become a useful one. I have talent, I will improve that talent; and if, while meditating on the wisdom of ages, and storing my mind with all that has been recorded of it, any new light bursts upon me, or any discovery occurs that may be useful to my fellows, then the balm of utility may be added to innocence.
What is it that moves up and down in my soul, and makesme feel as if my intellect could master all but my fate? I fear it is only youthful ardour—the yet untamed spirit which, wholly withdrawn from the hopes, and almost from the affections of life, indulges itself in the only walk free to it, and, mental exertion being all my thought except regret, would make me place my hopes in that. I am indeed become a recluse in thought and act; and my mind, turned heavenward, would, but for my only tie, lose all commune with what is around me. If I be proud, yet it is with humility that I am so. I am not vain. My heart shakes with its suppressed emotions, and I flag beneath the thoughts that oppress me.
Each day, as I have taken my solitary walk, I have felt myself exalted with the idea of occupation, improvement, knowledge, and peace. Looking back to my life as a delicious dream, I steeled myself as well as I could against such severe regrets as should overthrow my calmness. Once or twice, pausing in my walk, I have exclaimed in despair, “Is it even so?” yet, for the most part resigned, I was occupied by reflection—on those ideas you, my beloved, planted in my mind—and meditated on our nature, our source, and our destination. To-day, melancholy would invade me, and I thought the peace I enjoyed was transient. Then that letter came to place its seal on my prognostications. Yet it was not the refusal, or the insult heaped upon me, that stung me to tears. It was their bitter words about our Boy. Why, I live only to keep him from their hands. How dared they dream that I held him not far more precious than all, save the hope of again seeing you, my lost one. But for his smiles, where should I now be?
Stars that shine unclouded, ye cannot tell me what will be—yet I can tell you a part. I may have misgivings, weaknesses, and momentary lapses into unworthy despondency, but—save in devotion towards my Boy—fortune has emptied her quiver, and to all her future shafts I oppose courage, hopelessness of aught on this side, with a firm trust in what is beyond the grave.
Visit me in my dreams to-night, my beloved Shelley! kind,loving, excellent as thou wert! and the event of this day shall be forgotten.
March 19.—As I have until now recurred to this book to discharge into it the overflowings of a mind too full of the bitterest waters of life, so will I to-night, now that I am calm, put down some of my milder reveries; that, when I turn it over, I may not only find a record of the most painful thoughts that ever filled a human heart even to distraction.
I am beginning seriously to educate myself; and in another place I have marked the scope of this somewhat tardy education, intellectually considered. In a moral point of view, this education is of some years’ standing, and it only now takes the form of seeking its food in books. I have long accustomed myself to the study of my own heart, and have sought and found in its recesses that which cannot embody itself in words—hardly in feelings. I have found strength in the conception of its faculties; much native force in the understanding of them; and what appears to me not a contemptible penetration in the subtle divisions of good and evil. But I have found less strength of self-support, of resistance to what is vulgarly called temptation; yet I think also that I have found true humility (for surely no one can be less presumptuous than I), an ardent love for the immutable laws of right, much native goodness of emotion, and purity of thought.
Enough, if every day I gain a profounder knowledge of my defects, and a more certain method of turning them to a good direction.
Study has become to me more necessary than the air I breathe. In the questioning and searching turn it gives to my thoughts, I find some relief to wild reverie; in the self-satisfaction I feel in commanding myself, I find present solace; in the hope that thence arises, that I may become more worthy of my Shelley, I find a consolation that even makes me less wretched than in my most wretched moments.
March 30.—I have now finished part of theOdyssey. I mark this. I cannot write. Day after day I suffer the mosttremendous agitation. I cannot write, or read, or think. Whether it be the anxiety for letters that shakes a frame not so strong as hitherto—whether it be my annoyances here—whether it be my regrets, my sorrow, and despair, or all these—I know not; but I am a wreck.
A letter from Trelawny gladdened her heart. It said—
I must confess I am to blame in not having sooner written, particularly as I have received two letters from you here. Nothing particular has happened to me since our parting but a desperate assault of Maremma fever, which had nearly reunited me to my friends, or, as Iago says, removed me. On my arrival here, my first object was to see the grave of the noble Shelley, and I was most indignant at finding him confusedly mingled in a heap with five or six common vagabonds. I instantly set about removing this gross neglect, and selecting the only interesting spot. I enclosed it apart from all possibility of sacrilegious intrusion, and removed his ashes to it, placed a stone over it, am now planting it, and have ordered a granite to be prepared for myself, which I shall place in this beautiful recess (of which the enclosed is a drawing I took), for when I am dead, I have none to do me this service, so shall at least give one instance in my life of proficiency.
In reply Mary wrote informing him of her change of plan, and begging for all minute details about the tomb, which she was not likely, now, to see. Trelawny was expecting soon to rejoin Byron at Genoa, but he wrote at once.
Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.Rome,27th April 1823.Dear Mary—I should have sooner replied to your last, but that I concluded you must have seen Roberts, who is orought to be at Genoa. He will tell you that the ashes are buried in the new enclosed Protestant burying-ground, which is protected by a wall and gates from every possible molestation, and that the ashes are so placed apart, and yet in the centre and most conspicuous spot of the burying-ground. I have just planted six young cypresses and four laurels, in front of the recess you see by the drawing is formed by two projecting parts of the old ruin. My own stone, a plain slab till I can decide on some fitting inscription, is placed on the left hand. I have likewise dug my grave, so that, when I die, there is only to lift up my coverlet and roll me into it. You may lie on the other side, if you like. It is a lovely spot. The only inscription on Shelley’s stone, besides theCor cordiumof Hunt, are the lines I have added from Shakespeare—Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.This quotation, by its double meaning, alludes both to the manner of his death and his genius, and I think the element on which his soul took wing, and the subtle essence of his being mingled, may still retain him in some other shape. The waters may keep the dead, as the earth may, and fire and air. His passionate fondness might have been from some secret sympathy in their natures. Thence the fascination which so forcibly attracted him, without fear or caution, to trust an element almost all others hold in superstitious dread, and venture as cautiously on as they would in a lair of lions. I have just compiled an epitaph for Keats and sent it to Severn, who likes it much better than the one he had designed. He had already designed a lyre with only two of the strings strung, as indicating the unaccomplished maturity and ripening of his genius. He had intended a long inscription about his death having been caused by theneglectof his countrymen, and that, as a mark of his displeasure, he said—thus and then. What I wished to substitute is simply thus—Here lies the spoilsof aYoung English Poet,“Whose master-hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung,”And by whose desire is inscribed,That his name was writ in water.The line quoted, you remember, is in Shelley,Adonais, and the last Keats desired might be engraved on his tomb. Ask Hunt if he thinks it will do, and to think of something to put on my ante-dated grave. I am very anxious to hear how Marianne is getting on, and Hunt. You never mention a word of them or theLiberal.I have been delayed here longer than I had intended, from want of money, having lent and given it away thoughtlessly. However, old Dunn has sent me a supply, so I shall go on to Florence on Monday. I will assuredly see you before you go, and, if my exchequer is not exhausted, go part of the way with you. However, I will write further on this topic at Florence. Do not go to England, to encounter poverty and bitter retrospections. Stay in Italy. I will most gladly share my income with you, and if, under the same circumstances, you would do the same by me, why then you will not hesitate to accept it. I know of nothing would give me half so much pleasure. As you say, in a few years we shall both be better off. Commend me to Marianne and Hunt, and believe me, yours affectionately,E. Trelawny.Poste Restante a Gènes.········You need not tell me that all your thoughts are concentrated on the memory of your loss, for I have observed it, with great regret and some astonishment. You tell me nothing in your letters of how theLiberalis getting on. Why do you not send me a number? How many have come out? Does Hunt stay at Genoa the summer, and what does Lord Byron determine on? I am told theBolivaris lent to some one, and at sea. Where is Jane? and is Mrs. Hunt likely torecover? I shall certainly go on to Switzerland if I can raise the wind.········Mary Shelley to Trelawny.10th May 1823.My dear Trelawny—You appear to have fulfilled my entire wish in all you have done at Rome. Do you remember the day you made that quotation from Shakespeare in our living room at Pisa? Mine own Shelley was delighted with it, and thus it has for me a pleasing association. Some time hence I may visit the spot which, of all others, I desire most to see.········It is not on my own account, my excellent friend, that I go to England. I believe that my child’s interests will be best consulted by my return to that country....Desiring solitude and my books only, together with the consciousness that I have one or two friends who, although absent, still think of me with affection, England of course holds out no inviting prospect to me. But I am sure to be rewarded in doing or suffering for my little darling, so I am resigned to this last act, which seems to snap the sole link which bound the present to the past, and to tear aside the veil which I have endeavoured to draw over the desolations of my situation. Your kindness I shall treasure up to comfort me in future ill. I shall repeat to myself, I have such a friend, and endeavour to deserve it.Do you go to Greece? Lord Byron continues in the same mind. The G—— is an obstacle, and certainly her situation is rather a difficult one. But he does not seem disposed to make a mountain of her resistance, and he is far more able to take a decided than a petty step in contradiction to the wishes of those about him. If you do go, it may hasten your return hither. I remain until Mrs. Hunt’s confinement is over; had it not been for that, the fear of a hot journey would have caused me to go in this month,—but my desire to be useful to her, and my anxiety concerning the event of so momentousa crisis has induced me to stay. You may think with what awe and terror I look forward to the decisive moment, but I hope for the best. She is as well, perhaps better, than we could in any way expect.I had no opportunity to send you a second No. of theLiberal; we only received it a short time ago, and then you were on the wing: the third number has come out, and we had a copy by post. It has little in it we expected, but it is an amusing number, and L. B. is better pleased with it than any other....I trust that I shall see you soon, and then I shall hear all your news. I shall see you—but it will be for so short a time—I fear even that you will not go to Switzerland; but these things I must not dwell upon,—partings and separations, when there is no circumstance to lessen any pang. I must brace my mind, not enervate it, for I know I shall have much to endure.I asked Hunt’s opinion about your epitaph for Keats; he said that the line fromAdonais, though beautiful in itself, might be applied to any poet, in whatever circumstances or whatever age, that died; and that to be in accord with the two-stringed lyre, you ought to select one that alluded to his youth and immature genius. A line to this effect you might find inAdonais.Among the fragments of my lost Shelley, I found the following poetical commentary on the words of Keats,—not that I recommend it for the epitaph, but it may please you to see it.Here lieth one, whose name was writ in water,But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,Death, the immortalising winter, flewAthwart the stream, and time’s mouthless torrent grewA scroll of crystal, emblazoning the nameOf Adonais.I have not heard from Jane lately; she was well when she last wrote, but annoyed by various circumstances, and impatient of her lengthened stay in England. How earnestlydo I hope that Edward’s brother will soon arrive, and show himself worthy of his affinity to the noble and unequalled creature she has lost, by protecting one to whom protection is so necessary, and shielding her from some of the ills to which she is exposed.Adieu, my dear Trelawny. Continue to think kindly of me, and trust in my unalterable friendship.Mary Shelley.Albaro, 10th May.
Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.
Rome,27th April 1823.
Dear Mary—I should have sooner replied to your last, but that I concluded you must have seen Roberts, who is orought to be at Genoa. He will tell you that the ashes are buried in the new enclosed Protestant burying-ground, which is protected by a wall and gates from every possible molestation, and that the ashes are so placed apart, and yet in the centre and most conspicuous spot of the burying-ground. I have just planted six young cypresses and four laurels, in front of the recess you see by the drawing is formed by two projecting parts of the old ruin. My own stone, a plain slab till I can decide on some fitting inscription, is placed on the left hand. I have likewise dug my grave, so that, when I die, there is only to lift up my coverlet and roll me into it. You may lie on the other side, if you like. It is a lovely spot. The only inscription on Shelley’s stone, besides theCor cordiumof Hunt, are the lines I have added from Shakespeare—
Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.
This quotation, by its double meaning, alludes both to the manner of his death and his genius, and I think the element on which his soul took wing, and the subtle essence of his being mingled, may still retain him in some other shape. The waters may keep the dead, as the earth may, and fire and air. His passionate fondness might have been from some secret sympathy in their natures. Thence the fascination which so forcibly attracted him, without fear or caution, to trust an element almost all others hold in superstitious dread, and venture as cautiously on as they would in a lair of lions. I have just compiled an epitaph for Keats and sent it to Severn, who likes it much better than the one he had designed. He had already designed a lyre with only two of the strings strung, as indicating the unaccomplished maturity and ripening of his genius. He had intended a long inscription about his death having been caused by theneglectof his countrymen, and that, as a mark of his displeasure, he said—thus and then. What I wished to substitute is simply thus—
Here lies the spoilsof aYoung English Poet,“Whose master-hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung,”And by whose desire is inscribed,That his name was writ in water.
The line quoted, you remember, is in Shelley,Adonais, and the last Keats desired might be engraved on his tomb. Ask Hunt if he thinks it will do, and to think of something to put on my ante-dated grave. I am very anxious to hear how Marianne is getting on, and Hunt. You never mention a word of them or theLiberal.
I have been delayed here longer than I had intended, from want of money, having lent and given it away thoughtlessly. However, old Dunn has sent me a supply, so I shall go on to Florence on Monday. I will assuredly see you before you go, and, if my exchequer is not exhausted, go part of the way with you. However, I will write further on this topic at Florence. Do not go to England, to encounter poverty and bitter retrospections. Stay in Italy. I will most gladly share my income with you, and if, under the same circumstances, you would do the same by me, why then you will not hesitate to accept it. I know of nothing would give me half so much pleasure. As you say, in a few years we shall both be better off. Commend me to Marianne and Hunt, and believe me, yours affectionately,
E. Trelawny.
Poste Restante a Gènes.
········
You need not tell me that all your thoughts are concentrated on the memory of your loss, for I have observed it, with great regret and some astonishment. You tell me nothing in your letters of how theLiberalis getting on. Why do you not send me a number? How many have come out? Does Hunt stay at Genoa the summer, and what does Lord Byron determine on? I am told theBolivaris lent to some one, and at sea. Where is Jane? and is Mrs. Hunt likely torecover? I shall certainly go on to Switzerland if I can raise the wind.
········
Mary Shelley to Trelawny.
10th May 1823.
My dear Trelawny—You appear to have fulfilled my entire wish in all you have done at Rome. Do you remember the day you made that quotation from Shakespeare in our living room at Pisa? Mine own Shelley was delighted with it, and thus it has for me a pleasing association. Some time hence I may visit the spot which, of all others, I desire most to see.
········
It is not on my own account, my excellent friend, that I go to England. I believe that my child’s interests will be best consulted by my return to that country....
Desiring solitude and my books only, together with the consciousness that I have one or two friends who, although absent, still think of me with affection, England of course holds out no inviting prospect to me. But I am sure to be rewarded in doing or suffering for my little darling, so I am resigned to this last act, which seems to snap the sole link which bound the present to the past, and to tear aside the veil which I have endeavoured to draw over the desolations of my situation. Your kindness I shall treasure up to comfort me in future ill. I shall repeat to myself, I have such a friend, and endeavour to deserve it.
Do you go to Greece? Lord Byron continues in the same mind. The G—— is an obstacle, and certainly her situation is rather a difficult one. But he does not seem disposed to make a mountain of her resistance, and he is far more able to take a decided than a petty step in contradiction to the wishes of those about him. If you do go, it may hasten your return hither. I remain until Mrs. Hunt’s confinement is over; had it not been for that, the fear of a hot journey would have caused me to go in this month,—but my desire to be useful to her, and my anxiety concerning the event of so momentousa crisis has induced me to stay. You may think with what awe and terror I look forward to the decisive moment, but I hope for the best. She is as well, perhaps better, than we could in any way expect.
I had no opportunity to send you a second No. of theLiberal; we only received it a short time ago, and then you were on the wing: the third number has come out, and we had a copy by post. It has little in it we expected, but it is an amusing number, and L. B. is better pleased with it than any other....
I trust that I shall see you soon, and then I shall hear all your news. I shall see you—but it will be for so short a time—I fear even that you will not go to Switzerland; but these things I must not dwell upon,—partings and separations, when there is no circumstance to lessen any pang. I must brace my mind, not enervate it, for I know I shall have much to endure.
I asked Hunt’s opinion about your epitaph for Keats; he said that the line fromAdonais, though beautiful in itself, might be applied to any poet, in whatever circumstances or whatever age, that died; and that to be in accord with the two-stringed lyre, you ought to select one that alluded to his youth and immature genius. A line to this effect you might find inAdonais.
Among the fragments of my lost Shelley, I found the following poetical commentary on the words of Keats,—not that I recommend it for the epitaph, but it may please you to see it.
Here lieth one, whose name was writ in water,But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,Death, the immortalising winter, flewAthwart the stream, and time’s mouthless torrent grewA scroll of crystal, emblazoning the nameOf Adonais.
I have not heard from Jane lately; she was well when she last wrote, but annoyed by various circumstances, and impatient of her lengthened stay in England. How earnestlydo I hope that Edward’s brother will soon arrive, and show himself worthy of his affinity to the noble and unequalled creature she has lost, by protecting one to whom protection is so necessary, and shielding her from some of the ills to which she is exposed.
Adieu, my dear Trelawny. Continue to think kindly of me, and trust in my unalterable friendship.
Mary Shelley.
Albaro, 10th May.
On his journey to Genoa, Trelawny stayed a night at Lerici, and paid a last visit to the Villa Magni. There, “sleeping still on the mud floor,” its mast and oars broken, was Shelley’s little skiff, the “Boat on the Serchio.”
He mounted the “stairs, or rather ladder,” into the dining-room.
As I surveyed its splotchy walls, broken floor, cracked ceiling, and poverty-struck appearance, while I noted the loneliness of the situation, and remembered the fury of the waves that in blowing weather lashed its walls, I did not marvel at Mrs. Shelley’s and Mrs. Williams’ groans on first entering it; nor that it had required all Ned Williams’ persuasive powers to induce them to stop there.
But these things were all far away in the past.
As music and splendourSurvive not the lamp and the lute,The heart’s echoes renderNo song when the spirit is mute.No song but sad dirges,Like the wind through a ruined cell,Or the mournful surgesThat ring the dead seaman’s knell.
At Genoa he found the “Pilgrim” in a state of supreme indecision. He had left him discontented when he departed in December. The new magazine was not a success. Byron had expected that other literary and journalistic advantages, leading to fame and power, would accrue to him from the coalition with Leigh Hunt and Shelley, but in this he was disappointed, and he was left to bear the responsibility of the partnership alone.