The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 17

Apparently Mr. Baxter made some effort to bring Mr. Booth round to his way of thinking. The two pa.s.sed an evening with the Sh.e.l.leys at their lodgings. But it availed nothing, and in the end poor Mr. Baxter was driven himself to write to Sh.e.l.ley, breaking off the acquaintance. The letter was written much against the grain, and contrary to the convictions of the writer, who seems to have been much put to it to account for his action, the true grounds for which he could not bring himself to give.

Sh.e.l.ley, however, was not slow to divine the real instigator in the affair, and wrote back a letter which, by its temperance, simplicity, and dignity, must have p.r.i.c.ked Baxter to the heart. Mary added a playful postscript, showing that she still clung to hope--

MY DEAR SIR--You see I prophesied well three months ago, when you were here. I then said that I was sure Mr. Booth was averse to our intercourse, and would find some means to break it off. I wish I had you by the fire here in my little study, and it might be "double, double, toil and trouble," but I could quickly convince you that your girls are not below me in station, and that, in fact, I am the fittest companion for them in the world, but I postpone the argument until I see you, for I know (pardon me) that _viva voce_ is all in all with you.

Two or three times more Mary wrote to Isabel, but the correspondence dropped and the friends met no more for many years.

The preparations for their migration extended over two or three months more. During January Sh.e.l.ley suffered much from the renewal of an attack of ophthalmia, originally caught while visiting the poor people at Marlow.

The house there was finally sold, and on the 10th of February they quitted it and went up to London. Their final departure from England did not take place until March. They made the most of their time of waiting, seeing as much of their friends and of objects of interest as circ.u.mstances allowed.

_Journal, Thursday, February 12_ (Mary).--Go to the Indian Library and the Panorama of Rome. On Friday, 13th, spend the morning at the British Museum looking at the Elgin marbles. On Sat.u.r.day, 14th, go to Hunt's. Clare and Sh.e.l.ley go to the opera. On Sunday, 15th, Mr.

Bransen, Peac.o.c.k, and Hogg dine with us.

_Wednesday, February 18._--Spend the day at Hunt's. On Thursday, 19th, dine at Horace Smith's, and copy Sh.e.l.ley's Eclogue. On Friday, 20th, copy Sh.e.l.ley's critique on _Rhododaphne_. Go to the Apollonicon with Sh.e.l.ley. On Sat.u.r.day, 21st, copy Sh.e.l.ley's critique, and go to the opera in the evening. Spend Sunday at Hunt's. On Monday, 23d February, finish copying Sh.e.l.ley's critique, and go to the play in the evening--_The Bride of Abydos_. On Tuesday go to the opera--_Figaro_.

On Wednesday Hunt dines with us. Sh.e.l.ley is not well.

_Sunday, March 1._--Read Montaigne. Spend the evening at Hunt's. On Monday, 2d, Sh.e.l.ley calls on Mr. Baxter. Isabel Booth is arrived, but neither comes nor sends. Go to the play in the evening with Hunt and Marianne, and see a new comedy d.a.m.ned. On Thursday, 5th, Papa calls, and Clare visits Mrs. G.o.dwin. On Sunday, 8th, we dine at Hunt's, and meet Mr. Novello. Music.

_Monday, March 9._--Christening the children.

This was doubtless a measure of precaution, lest the omission of any such ceremony might in some future time operate as a civil disadvantage towards the children. They received the names of William, Clara Everina, and Clara Allegra.

_Tuesday, March 10._--Packing. Hunt and Marianne spend the day with us. Mary Lamb calls. Papa in the evening. Our adieus.

_Wednesday, March 11._--Travel to Dover.

_Thursday, March 12._--France. Discussion of whether we should cross.

Our pa.s.sage is rough; a sick lady is frightened and says the Lord's Prayer. We arrive at Calais for the third time.

Mary little thought how long it would be before she saw the English sh.o.r.es again, nor that, when she returned, it would be alone.

CHAPTER XI

MARCH 1818-JUNE 1819

The external events of the four Italian years have been repeatedly told and profusely commented on by Sh.e.l.ley's various biographers. Summed up, they are the history of a long strife between the intellectual and creative stimulus of lovely scenes and immortal works of art on the one hand, and the wearing friction of vexatious outward events and crushing afflictions on the other. For Sh.e.l.ley they were a period of rapid, of exotic, mental growth and development, interspersed with intervals of exhaustion and depression, of restlessness, or unnatural calm. For Mary they were years of courageous effort, of heroic resistance to overpowering odds. She endured, and she overcame; but some victories are obtained at such cost as to be at the time scarcely distinguishable from defeats, and the story of hers survives in no one act or work of her own, but in the _Cenci_, _Prometheus Unbound_, _Epipsychidion_, and _Adonais_.

The travellers proceeded, _via_ Lyons and Chambery, to Milan, whence Sh.e.l.ley and Mary made an expedition to Como in search of a house. After looking at several,--one "beautifully situated, but too small," another "out of repair, with an excellent garden, but full of serpents," a third which seemed promising, but which they failed to get,--they appear to have given up the scheme altogether, and to have returned to Milan. For the next week they were in frequent correspondence with Byron on the subject of Allegra. This had to be carried on entirely by Sh.e.l.ley, as Byron refused all communication with Clare, and undertook to provide for his child on the sole condition that, from the day it left her, its mother entirely relinquished it, and never saw it again.

This appeared to Sh.e.l.ley cruelly and needlessly harsh. His own paternal heart was still bleeding from fresh wounds, and although, as he again pointed out, his interest in the matter was entirely on the opposite side to Clare's, he pleaded her cause with earnestness. He did not touch on the question of Byron's att.i.tude towards Clare herself, he contended only for the mother and child, in letters as remarkable for their simple good sense as for their perfect delicacy and courtesy of expression, and every line of which is inspired with the unselfish ardour of a heart full of love.

Poor Clare herself was dreadfully unhappy. Any illusion she may ever have had about Byron had long been over, but she had possibly not realised before coming to Italy the perfect horror he had of seeing her; an event, as he told his friends the Hoppners, which would make it necessary for him instantly to quit Venice. The reports about his present mode of life, which, even at Milan did not fail to reach them, were, to say the least, not encouraging; and from a later letter of Sh.e.l.ley's it would seem that he warned Clare now, at the last minute, to pause and reflect before she sent Allegra away to such a father. She, however, was determined that till seven years old, at least, the child should be with one or other of its parents, and Byron would only consent to be that one on condition that it grew up in ignorance of its mother. It appears to have been a.s.sumed by all parties that, in refusing to hand Allegra altogether over to her father, they would be sacrificing for her the prospect of a brilliant position and fortune. Even supposing that this had been so, it is impossible to think that such a consideration would have weighed, at any rate with the Sh.e.l.leys, but for the impossibility of keeping Clare's secret if Allegra remained with them, and the constant danger of worse scandal to which her unexplained presence must expose them. Clare, distracted with grief as she was, yet dreaded discovery acutely, and firmly believed she was acting for Allegra's best interests in parting from her.

It ended in the little girl's being sent to Venice on the 28th of April in the care of Elise, the Swiss nurse, with whom Mary Sh.e.l.ley, for Allegra's sake, consented to part, though she valued her very much, but who, not long afterwards, returned to her.

As soon as they had gone, the Sh.e.l.leys and Clare left Milan; and travelling leisurely through Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Pisa (where a letter from Elise reached them), they arrived on the 9th of May at Leghorn. Here they made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. The lady, formerly Mrs. Reveley, had been an intimate friend of Mary Wollstonecraft's (when Mary G.o.dwin), and had been so warmly admired by G.o.dwin before his first marriage as to arouse some jealousy in Mr.

Reveley. Indeed, his admiration had been returned by so warm a feeling of friendship on her part that G.o.dwin was frankly surprised when on his pressing her, shortly after her widowhood, to become his second wife, she refused him point blank, nor, by all his eloquence, was to be persuaded to change her mind. A beautiful girl, and highly accomplished, she had married very young, and had one son of her first marriage, Henry Reveley, a young civil engineer, who was now living in Italy with her and her second husband.

This Mr. Gisborne struck Mary as being the reverse of intelligent, and is described in Sh.e.l.ley's letters in most uncomplimentary terms. His appearance cannot certainly have been in his favour, but that there must have been more in him than met the eye seems also beyond a doubt, as, at a later time, Sh.e.l.ley addressed to him some of his most interesting and most intimate letters.

To Mrs. Gisborne they bore a letter of introduction from G.o.dwin, and it was not long before her acquaintance with Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley ripened into friendship. "Reserved, yet with easy manners;" so Mary described her at their first meeting. On the next day the two had a long conversation about Mary's father and mother. Of her mother, indeed, Mary learned more from Mrs. Gisborne than from any one else. She wrote her father an immediate account of these first interviews, and his answer is unusually demonstrative in expression.

I received last Friday a delightful letter from you. I was extremely gratified by your account of Mrs. Gisborne. I have not seen her, I believe, these twenty years; I think not since she was Mrs. Gisborne; and yet by your description she is still a delightful woman. How inexpressibly pleasing it is to call back the recollection of years long past, and especially when the recollection belongs to a person in whom one deeply interested oneself, as I did in Mrs. Reveley. I can hardly hope for so great a pleasure as it would be to me to see her again.

At the Bagni di Lucca, where they settled themselves for a time, Mary heard from her father of the review of _Frankenstein_ in the _Quarterly_.

Peac.o.c.k had reported it to be unfavourable, so it was probably a relief to find that the reviewers "did not pretend to find anything blasphemous in the story."

They say that the _gentleman_ who has written the book is a _man of talents_, but that he employs his powers in a way disagreeable to them.

All this, however, tended to keep Mary's old ardour alive. She never was more strongly impelled to write than at this time; she felt her powers fresh and strong within her; all she wanted was some motive, some suggestion to guide her in the choice of a subject. While at Leghorn Sh.e.l.ley had come upon a ma.n.u.script account, which Mary transcribed, of that terrible story of the _Cenci_ afterwards dramatised by himself. His first idea was that Mary should take it for the subject of a play. He was convinced that she had dramatic talent as a writer, and that he had none; two erroneous conclusions, as the sequel showed. But such an a.s.surance from such a source could not but be flattering to Mary's ambition, and stimulating to her innate love of literary work. During all the early part of their time in Italy their thoughts were busy with some subject for Mary's tragedy. One proposed and strongly urged by Sh.e.l.ley was _Charles the First_. It was partially carried out by himself before his death, and perhaps occurred to him now in connection with a suggestion of G.o.dwin's for a book very different in scope and character, and far better suited to Mary's genius than the drama. It would have been a series of _Lives of the Commonwealth's Men_; "our calumniated Republicans," as Sh.e.l.ley calls them.

She was immensely attracted by the idea, but was forced to abandon it at the time, for lack of the necessary books of reference. But Sh.e.l.ley, who believed her powers to be of the highest order, was as eager as she herself could be for her to undertake original work of some kind, and was constantly inciting her to effort in this direction.

More than two months were spent at the Bagni di Lucca--reading, writing, riding, and enjoying to the full the balmy Italian skies. Sh.e.l.ley, in whom the creative mood was more or less dormant, and who "despaired of providing anything original," translated the _Symposium_ of Plato, partly as an exercise, partly to "give Mary some idea of the manners and feelings of the Athenians, so different on many subjects from that of any other community that ever existed." Together they studied Italian, and Sh.e.l.ley reported Mary's progress to her father.

Mary has just finished Ariosto with me, and indeed has attained a very competent knowledge of Italian. She is now reading Livy.

She also transcribed his translation of the _Symposium_, and his Eclogue _Rosalind and Helen_, which, begun at Marlow, had been thrown aside till she found it and persuaded him to complete it.

Meanwhile Clare hungered and thirsted for a sight of Allegra, of whom she heard occasionally from Elise, and who was not now under Byron's roof, but living, by his permission, with Mrs. Hoppner, wife of the British Consul at Venice, who had volunteered to take temporary charge of her. Her distress moved Sh.e.l.ley to so much commiseration that he resolved or consented to do what must have been supremely disagreeable to him. He went himself to Venice, hoping by a personal interview to modify in some degree Byron's inexorable resolution. Clare accompanied him, unknown, of course, to Byron. They started on the 17th of August. On that day Mary wrote the following letter to Miss Gisborne--

MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY TO MRS. GISBORNE.

BAGNI DI LUCCA, _17th August 1818_.

MY DEAR MADAM--It gave me great pleasure to receive your letter after so long a silence, when I had begun to conjecture a thousand reasons for it, and among others illness, in which I was half right. Indeed, I am much concerned to hear of Mr. R.'s attacks, and sincerely hope that nothing will r.e.t.a.r.d his speedy recovery. His illness gives me a slight hope that you might now be induced to come to the baths, if it were even to try the effect of the hot baths. You would find the weather cool; for we already feel in this part of the world that the year is declining, by the cold mornings and evenings. I have another selfish reason to wish that you would come, which I have a great mind not to mention, yet I will not omit it, as it might induce you. Sh.e.l.ley and Clare are gone; they went to-day to Venice on important business; and I am left to take care of the house. Now, if all of you, or any of you, would come and cheer my solitude, it would be exceedingly kind. I daresay you would find many of your friends here; among the rest there is the Signora Felichi, whom I believe you knew at Pisa. Sh.e.l.ley and I have ridden almost every evening. Clare did the same at first, but she has been unlucky, and once fell from her horse, and hurt her knee so as to knock her up for some time. It is the fashion here for all the English to ride, and it is very pleasant on these fine evenings, when we set out at sunset and are lighted home by Venus, Jupiter, and Diana, who kindly lend us their light after the sleepy Apollo is gone to bed. The road which we frequent is raised somewhat above, and overlooks the river, affording some very fine points of view amongst these woody mountains.

Still, we know no one; we speak to one or two people at the Casino, and that is all; we live in our studious way, going on with Ta.s.so, whom I like, but who, now I have read more than half his poem, I do not know that I like half so well as Ariosto. Sh.e.l.ley translated the _Symposium_ in ten days. It is a most beautiful piece of writing. I think you will be delighted with it. It is true that in many particulars it shocks our present manners; but no one can be a reader of the works of antiquity unless they can transport themselves from these to other times, and judge, not by our, but their morality.

Sh.e.l.ley is tolerably well in health; the hot weather has done him good. We have been in high debate--nor have we come to any conclusion--concerning the land or sea journey to Naples. We have been thinking that when we want to go, although the equinox will be past, yet the equinoctial winds will hardly have spent themselves; and I cannot express to you how I fear a storm at sea with two such young children as William and Clara. Do you know the periods when the Mediterranean is troubled, and when the wintry halcyon days come?

However, it may be we shall see you before we proceed southward.

We have been reading Eustace's _Tour through Italy_; I do not wonder the Italians reprinted it. Among other select specimens of his way of thinking, he says that the Romans did not derive their arts and learning from the Greeks; that Italian ladies are chaste, and the lazzaroni honest and industrious; and that, as to a.s.sa.s.sination and highway robbery in Italy, it is all a calumny--no such things were ever heard of. Italy was the garden of Eden, and all the Italians Adams and Eves, until the blasts of h.e.l.l (_i.e._ the French--for by that polite name he designates them) came. By the bye, an Italian servant stabbed an English one here--it was thought dangerously at first, but the man is doing better.

I have scribbled a long letter, and I daresay you have long wished to be at the end of it. Well, now you are; so my dear Mrs. Gisborne, with best remembrances, yours, obliged and affectionately,

MARY W. Sh.e.l.lEY.

From Florence, where he arrived on the 20th, Sh.e.l.ley wrote to Mary, telling her that Clare had changed her intention of going in person to Venice, and had decided on the more politic course of remaining herself at Fusina or Padua, while Sh.e.l.ley went on to see Byron.

"Well, my dearest Mary," he went on, "are you very lonely? Tell me truth, my sweetest, do you ever cry? I shall hear from you once at Venice and once on my return here. If you love me, you will keep up your spirits; and at all events tell me truth about it, for I a.s.sure you I am not of a disposition to be flattered by your sorrow, though I should be by your cheerfulness, and above all by seeing such fruits of my absence as was produced when I was at Geneva."

It was during Sh.e.l.ley's absence with Byron on their voyage round the lake of Geneva that Mary had begun to write _Frankenstein_. But on the day when she received this letter she was very uneasy about her little girl, who was seriously unwell from the heat. On writing to Sh.e.l.ley she told him of this; and, from his answer, one may infer that she had suggested the advisability of taking the child to Venice for medical advice.

PADUA, MEZZOGIORNO.