The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 18

MY BEST MARY--I found at Mount Selica a favourable opportunity for going to Venice, when I shall try to make some arrangement for you and little Ca to come for some days, and shall meet you, if I do not write anything in the meantime, at Padua on Thursday morning. Clare says she is obliged to come to see the Medico, whom we missed this morning, and who has appointed as the only hour at which he can be at leisure, 8 o'clock in the morning. You must, therefore, arrange matters so that you should come to the Stella d'Oro a little before that hour, a thing only to be accomplished by setting out at half-past 3 in the morning.

You will by this means arrive at Venice very early in the day, and avoid the heat, which might be bad for the babe, and take the time when she would at least sleep great part of the time. Clare will return with the return carriage, and I shall meet you, or send to you, at Padua. Meanwhile, remember _Charles the First_, and do you be prepared to bring at least some of _Mirra_ translated; bring the book also with you, and the sheets of _Prometheus Unbound_, which you will find numbered from 1 to 26 on the table of the Pavilion. My poor little Clara; how is she to-day? Indeed, I am somewhat uneasy about her; and though I feel secure there is no danger, it would be very comfortable to have some reasonable person's opinion about her. The Medico at Padua is certainly a man in great practice; but I confess he does not satisfy me. Am I not like a wild swan, to be gone so suddenly? But, in fact, to set off alone to Venice required an exertion. I felt myself capable of making it, and I knew that you desired it.... Adieu, my dearest love. Remember, remember _Charles the First_ and _Mirra_. I have been already imagining how you will conduct some scenes. The second volume of _St. Leon_ begins with this proud and true sentiment--

"There is nothing which the human mind can conceive which it may not execute." Shakespeare was only a human being. Adieu till Thursday.--Your ever affectionate,

P. B. S.

His next letter, however, announced yet another revolution in Clare's plans. Her heart failed her at the idea of remaining to endure her suspense all alone in a strange place; and so, braving the possible consequences of Byron's discovering her move before he was informed of it, she went on with Sh.e.l.ley to Venice, and, the morning after their arrival, proceeded to Mr. Hoppner's house. Here she was kindly welcomed by him and his wife, a pretty Swiss woman, with a sympathetic motherly heart, who knew all about her and Allegra. They insisted, too, on Sh.e.l.ley's staying with them, and he was nothing loth to accept the offer, for Byron's circle would not have suited him at all.

He was pleased with his hostess, something in whose appearance reminded him of Mary. "She has hazel eyes and sweet looks, rather Maryish," he wrote. And in another letter he described her as

So good, so beautiful, so angelically mild that, were she wise too, she would be quite a Mary. But she is not very accomplished. Her eyes are like a reflection of yours; her manners are like yours when you know and like a person.

He could enjoy no pleasure without longing for Mary to share it, and from the moment he reached Venice he was planning impatiently for her to follow him, to experience with him the strange emotions aroused by the first sight of the wonderful city, and to make acquaintance with his new friends.

He lost no time in calling on Byron, who gave him a very friendly reception. Sh.e.l.ley's intention on leaving Lucca was to go with his family to Florence, and the plan he urged on Byron was that Allegra should come to spend some time there with her mother. To this Byron objected, as likely to raise comment, and as a reopening of the whole question. He was, however, in an affable mood, and not indisposed to meet Sh.e.l.ley halfway.

He had heard of Clare's being at Padua, but nothing of her subsequent change of plan; and, a.s.suming that the whole party were staying there, he offered to send Allegra as far as that, on a week's visit. Finding that things were not as he supposed, and that Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley was likely to come presently to Venice, he proposed to lend them for some time a villa which he rented at Este, and to let Allegra stay with them. The offer was promptly and gratefully accepted by Sh.e.l.ley. The fact of Clare's presence in Venice had, perforce, to be kept dark; for that there was no help; the great thing was to get her and Allegra away as soon as possible. He sent directions to Mary to pack up at once and travel with the least possible delay to Este. There he would meet her with Clare, Allegra, and Elise, who were to be established, with Mary's little ones, at Byron's villa, Casa Cappucini, while she and he proceeded to Venice.

When the letter came, Mary had the Gisbornes staying with her on a visit.

For that reason, and on account of little Clara's indisposition, the summons to depart so suddenly can hardly have been welcome; she obeyed it, however, and left the Bagni di Lucca on the 31st of August. Owing to delays about the pa.s.sport, her journey took rather longer than they had expected. The intense heat of the weather, added to the fatigue of travelling and probably change of diet, seriously affected the poor baby, who, by the time they got to Este on 5th September, was dangerously ill.

Sh.e.l.ley, who had been waiting for them impatiently, was also far from well, and their visit to Venice had to be deferred for more than a fortnight, during which Mary had time to hear enough of Venetian society to horrify and disgust her.

_Journal, Sat.u.r.day, September 5._--Arrive at Este. Poor Clara is dangerously ill. Sh.e.l.ley is very unwell, from taking poison in Italian cakes. He writes his drama of _Prometheus_. Read seven cantos of Dante. Begin to translate _A Cajo Graccho_ of Monti, and _Measure for Measure_.

_Wednesday, September 16._--Read the _Filippo_ of Alfieri. Sh.e.l.ley and Clare go to Padua. He is very ill from the effects of his poison.

To Mrs. Gisborne she wrote as follows--

_September 1818._

MY DEAR MRS. GISBORNE--I hasten to write to you to say that we have arrived safe, and yet I can hardly call it safe, since the fatigue has given my poor _Ca_ an attack of dysentery; and although she is now somewhat recovered from that disorder, she is still in a frightful state of weakness and fever, and is reduced to be so thin in this short time that you would hardly know her again.

The physician of Este is a stupid fellow; but there is one come from Padua, and who appears clever; so I hope under his care she will soon get well, although we are still in great anxiety concerning her. I found Mr. Sh.e.l.ley very anxious for our non-arrival, for, besides other delays, we were detained a whole day at Florence for a signature to our pa.s.sport. The house at Este is exceedingly pleasant, with a large garden and quant.i.ties of excellent fruit. I have not yet been to Venice, and know not when I shall, since it depends upon the state of Clara's health. I hope Mr. Reveley is quite recovered from his illness, and I am sure the baths did him a great deal of good. So now I suppose all your talk is how you will get to England. Sh.e.l.ley agrees with me that you could live very well for your 200 per annum in Marlow or some such town; and I am sure you would be much happier than in Italy. How all the English dislike it! The Hoppners speak with the greatest acrimony of the Italians, and Mr. Hoppner says that he was actually driven from Italian society by the young men continually asking him for money. Everything is saleable in Venice, even the wives of the gentry, if you pay well. It appears indeed a most frightful system of society. Well! when shall we see you again? Soon, I daresay.

I am so much hurried that you will be kind enough to excuse the abruptness of this letter. I will write soon again, and in the meantime write to me. Sh.e.l.ley and Clare desire the kindest remembrances.--My dear Mrs. Gisborne, affectionately yours,

MARY W. S.

Casa Capuccini, Este.

Send our letters to this direction.

No more of the journal was written till the 24th, and in the meantime great trouble had fallen on the writers. Sh.e.l.ley was impatient for Clara to be within reach of better medical advice, and anxious to get Mary to Venice. He went forward himself on the 22d, returning next day as far as Padua to meet Mary and Clara, with Clare, who, however, only came over to Padua to see the Medico. The baby was very ill, and was getting worse every hour, but they judged it best to press on. In their hurry they had forgotten their pa.s.sport, and had some difficulty in getting past the _dogana_ in consequence. Sh.e.l.ley's impetuosity carried all obstacles before it, and the soldiers on duty had to give way. On reaching Venice Mary went straight with her sick child to the inn, while Sh.e.l.ley hurried for the doctor. It was too late. When he got back (without the medical man) he found Mary well-nigh beside herself with distress. Another doctor had already been summoned, but little Clara was dying, and in an hour all was over.

This blow reduced Mary to "a kind of despair";--the expression is Sh.e.l.ley's. Mr. Hoppner, on hearing what had happened, insisted on taking them away at once from the inn to his house. Four days she spent in Venice after that, the first of which was a blank; of the second she merely records--

An idle day. Go to the Lido and see Albe there.

After that she roused herself. There was Sh.e.l.ley to be comforted and supported, there was Byron to be interviewed. One of her objects in coming had been to try and persuade him after all to let Allegra stay. So she nerved herself to pay this visit, and to go about and see something of Venice with Sh.e.l.ley.

_Sunday, September 27._--Read fourth canto of _Childe Harold_. It rains. Go to the Doge's Palace, Ponte dei Sospiri, etc. Go to the Academy with Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, and see some fine pictures. Call at Lord Byron's and see the _Farmaretta_.

_Monday, September 28._--Go with Mrs. Hoppner and Cavaliere Mengaldo to the Library. Shopping. In the evening Lord Byron calls.

_Tuesday, September 29._--Leave Venice, and arrive at Este at night.

Clare is gone with the children to Padua.

_Wednesday, September 30._--The chicks return. Transcribe _Mazeppa_.

Go to the opera in the evening.

A quiet, sad fortnight at Este followed. An idle one it was not, for Sh.e.l.ley not only wrote _Julian and Maddalo_, but worked on portions of his drama of _Prometheus Unbound_, the idea of which had haunted him ever since he came to Italy. Clare, for the time, was happy with her child.

Mary read several plays of Shakespeare and the lives of Alfieri and Ta.s.so in Italian.

On the 12th of October she arrived once more at Venice with Sh.e.l.ley. She pa.s.sed the greater part of her time there with the Hoppners, who were exceedingly friendly. Sh.e.l.ley visited Byron several times, probably trying to get an extension of leave for Allegra. In this, however, he must have failed, as on the 24th he went to Este to fetch her, returning with her on the 29th. Having restored the poor little girl to the Hoppners' care, he and Mary went once more to Este, but this time only to prepare for departure. On the 5th of November the whole party, including Elise (who was not retained for Allegra's service), left the Villa Capuccini and travelled by slow stages to Rome.

No further allusion to her recent bereavement is to be found in Mary's journal. She attempted to behave like the Stoic her father had wished her to be.[33] She had written to him of her affliction, and received the following answer from the philosopher--

SKINNER STREET, _27th October 1818_.

MY DEAR MARY--I sincerely sympathise with you in the affliction which forms the subject of your letter, and which I may consider as the first severe trial of your constancy and the firmness of your temper that has occurred to you in the course of your life; you should, however, recollect that it is only persons of a very ordinary sort, and of a pusillanimous disposition, that sink long under a calamity of this nature. I a.s.sure you such a recollection will be of great use to you. We seldom indulge long in depression and mourning except when we think secretly that there is something very refined in it, and that it does us honour.

Such a homily, at such a time, must have made Mary feel like a person of a very ordinary sort indeed. But she strove, only too hard, to carry out her father's principles; for, by doing violence to her sensitive nature, she might crush but could not kill it. The pa.s.sionate impulses of her mother were curiously mated in her with her father's reflective temperament; and the n.o.ble courage which she inherited from Mary Wollstonecraft went hand in hand with somewhat of G.o.dwin's const.i.tutional shrinking from any manifestation of emotion. And the effect of determinate, excessive self-restraint on a heart like hers was to render the crushed feelings morbid in their acuteness, and to throw on her spirits a load of endurance which was borne, indeed, but at ruinous cost, and operated largely, among other causes, to make her seem cold when she was really suffering.

At such times it was not altogether well for her that she was Sh.e.l.ley's companion. For, when his health and spirits were good, he craved and demanded companionship,--personal, intellectual, playful,--companionship of all sorts; but when they ebbed, when his vitality was low, when the simultaneous exaltation of conception and labour of realisation--a tremendous expenditure of force--was over, and left him shattered, shaken, surprised at himself like one who in a dream falls from a height and awakens with the shock,--tired, and yet dull,--then the one panacea for him was animal spirits in some congenial acquaintance; whether a friend or a previous stranger mattered little, provided the personality was congenial and the spirits buoyant. Mary did her best, bravely and n.o.bly.

But the loss of a child was one thing to Sh.e.l.ley, another thing to her.

She strove to overcome the low spirits from which she suffered. But endurance, though more heroic than spontaneous cheerfulness, is not to be compared with it in its benign effect on other people; nay, it may even have a depressing effect when a yielding to emotion "of the ordinary sort"

may not. All these truths, however, do not become evident at once; like other life-experience they have to be spelled out by slow and painful degrees.

To seek for respite from grief or care in intellectual culture and the acquisition of knowledge was instinctive and habitual both in Sh.e.l.ley and in Mary. They visited Ferrara and Bologna, then travelled by a winding road among the Apennines to Terni, where they saw the celebrated waterfall--

It put me in mind of Sappho leaping from a rock, and her form vanishing as in the shape of a swan in the distance.

_Friday, November 20._--We travel all day the Campagna di Roma--a perfect solitude, yet picturesque, and relieved by shady dells. We see an immense hawk sailing in the air for prey. Enter Rome. A rainy evening. Doganas and cheating innkeepers. We at length get settled in a comfortable hotel.

After one week in Rome, during which they visited as many of the wonders of the Eternal City as the time allowed, they journeyed on to Naples, reading Montaigne by the way.

At Naples they remained for three months. Of their life there Mary's journal gives no account; she confines herself almost entirely to noting down the books they read, and one or two excursions. They lived in very great seclusion, greater than was good for them, but Sh.e.l.ley suffered much from ill-health, and not a little from its treatment by an unskilful physician. They read incessantly,--Livy, Dante, Sismondi, Winkelmann, the Georgics and Plutarch's _Lives_, _Gil Blas_, and _Corinne_. They left no beautiful or interesting scene unvisited; they ascended Vesuvius, and made excursions to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Paestum.

On the 8th of December Mary records--

Go on the sea with Sh.e.l.ley. Visit Capo Miseno, the Elysian Fields, Avernus, Solfatara. The Bay of Baiae is beautiful, but we are disappointed by the various places we visit.

The impression of the scene, however, remained after the temporary disappointment had been forgotten, and she sketched it from memory many years later in the fanciful introduction to her romance of _The Last Man_, the story of which purports to be a tale deciphered from sibylline leaves, picked up in the caverns.

Sh.e.l.ley, however, suffered from extreme depression, which, out of solicitous consideration for Mary, he disguised as much as possible under a mask of cheerfulness, insomuch that she never fully realised what he endured at this time until she read the mournful poems written at Naples, after he who wrote them had pa.s.sed for ever out of sight.

She blamed herself then for what seemed to her her blindness,--for having perhaps let slip opportunities of cheering him which she would have sold her soul to recall when it was too late. That _he_, at the time, felt in her no such want of sympathy or help is shown by his concluding words in the advertis.e.m.e.nt of _Rosalind and Helen_, and _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, dated Naples, 20th December, where he says of certain lines "which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those delightful mountains," that, if they were not erased, it was "at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness."

Much of this sadness was due to physical suffering, but external causes of anxiety and vexation were not wanting. One was the discovery of grave misconduct on the part of their Italian servant, Paolo. An engagement had been talked of between him and the Swiss nurse Elise, but the Sh.e.l.leys, who thought highly of Elise and by no means highly of Paolo, tried to dissuade her from the idea. An illness of Elise's revealed the fact that an illicit connection had been formed. The Sh.e.l.leys, greatly distressed, took the view that it would not do to throw Elise on the world without in some degree binding Paolo to do his duty towards her, and they had them married. How far this step was well-judged may be a matter of opinion.

Elise was already a mother when she entered the Sh.e.l.leys service. Whether a woman already a mother was likely to do better for being bound for life to a man whom they "knew to be a rascal" may reasonably be doubted even by those who hold the marriage-tie, as such, in higher honour than the Sh.e.l.leys did. But whether the action was mistaken or not, it was prompted by the sincerest solicitude for Elise's welfare, a solicitude to be repaid, at no distant date, by the basest ingrat.i.tude. Meanwhile Mary lost her nurse, and, it may be a.s.sumed, a valuable one; for any one who studies the history of this and the preceding years must see all three of the poor doomed children throve as long as Elise was in charge of them.

Clare was ailing, and anxious too; how could it be otherwise? Just before Allegra's third birthday, Mary received a letter from Mrs. Hoppner which was anything but rea.s.suring. It gave an unsatisfactory account of the child, who did not thrive in the climate of Venice, and a still more unsatisfactory account of Byron.