The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 26

To follow the fate of Mary's novel, it has been necessary somewhat to antic.i.p.ate the history, which is resumed in the next chapter, with the journal and letters of the latter part of 1821.

CHAPTER XV

NOVEMBER 1821-APRIL 1822

_Journal, Thursday, November 1._--Go to Florence. Copy. Ride with the Guiccioli. Albe arrives.

_Sunday, November 4._--The Williams' arrive. Copy. Call on the Guiccioli.

_Thursday, November 15._--Copy. Read _Caleb Williams_ to Jane. Ride with the Guiccioli. Sh.e.l.ley goes on translating Spinoza with Edward.

Medwin arrives. Taafe calls. Argyropulo calls. Good news from the Greeks.

_Tuesday, November 28._--Ride with the Guiccioli. Suffer much with rheumatism in my head.

_Wednesday, November 29._--I mark this day because I begin my Greek again, and that is a study that ever delights me. I do not feel the bore of it, as in learning another language, although it be so difficult, it so richly repays one; yet I read little, for I am not well. Sh.e.l.ley and the Williams go to Leghorn; they dine with us afterwards with Medwin. Write to Clare.

_Thursday, November 30._--Correct the novel. Read a little Greek. Not well. Ride with the Guiccioli. The Count Pietro (Gamba) in the evening.

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

PISA, _30th November 1821_.

MY DEAR MRS. GISBORNE--Although having much to do be a bad excuse for not writing to you, yet you must in some sort admit this plea on my part. Here we are in Pisa, having furnished very nice apartments for ourselves, and what is more, paid for the furniture out of the fruits of two years' economy, we are at the top of the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa.

I daresay you know the house, next door to La Scoto's house on the north side of Lung' Arno; but the rooms we inhabit are south, and look over the whole country towards the sea, so that we are entirely out of the bustle and disagreeable _puzzi_, etc., of the town, and hardly know that we are so enveloped until we descend into the street. The Williams' have been less lucky, though they have followed our example in furnishing their own house, but, renting it of Mr. Webb, they have been treated scurvily. So here we live, Lord Byron just opposite to us in Casa Lanfranchi (the late Signora Felichi's house). So Pisa, you see, has become a little nest of singing birds. You will be both surprised and delighted at the work just about to be published by him; his _Cain_, which is in the highest style of imaginative poetry. It made a great impression upon me, and appears almost a revelation, from its power and beauty. Sh.e.l.ley rides with him; I, of course, see little of him. The lady _whom he serves_ is a nice pretty girl without pretensions, good hearted and amiable; her relations were banished Romagna for Carbonarism.

What do you know of Hunt? About two months ago he wrote to say that on 21st October he should quit England, and we have heard nothing more of him in any way; I expect some day he and six children will drop in from the clouds, trusting that G.o.d will temper the wind to the shorn lamb. Pray when you write, tell us everything you know concerning him.

Do you get any intelligence of the Greeks? Our worthy countrymen take part against them in every possible way, yet such is the spirit of freedom, and such the hatred of these poor people for their oppressors, that I have the warmest hopes--[Greek: mantis eim' esthlon agonon]. Mavrocordato is there, justly revered for the sacrifice he has made of his whole fortune to the cause, and besides for his firmness and talents. If Greece be free, Sh.e.l.ley and I have vowed to go, perhaps to settle there, in one of those beautiful islands where earth, ocean, and sky form the paradise. You will, I hope, tell us all the news of our friends when you write. I see no one that you know. We live in our usual retired way, with few friends and no acquaintances.

Clare is returned to her usual residence, and our tranquillity is unbroken in upon, except by those winds, sirocco or tramontana, which now and then will sweep over the ocean of one's mind and disturb or cloud its surface. Since this must be a double letter, I save myself the trouble of copying the enclosed, which was a part of a letter written to you a month ago, but which I did not send. Will you attend to my requests? Every day increases my anxiety concerning the desk. Do have the goodness to pack it off as soon as you can.

Sh.e.l.ley was at your hive yesterday; it is as dirty and busy as ever, so people live in the same narrow circle of s.p.a.ce and thought, while time goes on, not as a racehorse, but a "six inside dilly," and puts them down softly at their journey's end; while they have slept and ate, and _ecco tutto_. With this piece of morality, dear Mrs.

Gisborne, I end. Sh.e.l.ley begs every remembrance of his to be joined with mine to Mr. Gisborne and Henry.--Ever yours,

MARY W. S.

And now, my dear Mrs. Gisborne, I have a great favour to ask of you.

Ollier writes to say that he has placed our two desks in the hands of a merchant of the city, and that they are to come--G.o.d knows when!

Now, as we sent for them two years ago, and are tired of waiting, will you do us the favour to get them out of his hands, and to send them without delay? If they can be sent without being opened, send them _in statu quo_; if they must be opened, do not send the smallest but get a key (being a patent lock a key will cost half a guinea) made for the largest and send it, and return the other to Peac.o.c.k. If you send the desk, will you send with it the following things?--A few copies of all Sh.e.l.ley's works, particularly of the second edition of the _Cenci_, my mother's posthumous works, and _Letters from Norway_ from Peac.o.c.k, if you can, but do not delay the box for them.

_Journal, Sunday, December 2._--Read the _History of Shipwrecks_. Read Herodotus with Sh.e.l.ley. Ride with La Guiccioli. Pietro and her in the evening.

_Monday, December 3._--Write letters. Read Herodotus with Sh.e.l.ley.

Finish _Caleb Williams_ to Jane. Taafe calls. He says that his Turk is a very moral man, for that when he began a scandalous story he interrupted him immediately, saying, "Ah! we must never speak thus of our neighbours!" Taafe would do well to take the hint.

_Thursday, December 6._--Read Homer. Walk with Williams. Spend the evening with them. Call on T. Guiccioli with Jane, while Taafe amuses Sh.e.l.ley and Edward. Read Tacitus. A dismal day.

_Friday, December 7._--Letter from Hunt and Bessy. Walk with Sh.e.l.ley.

Buy furniture for them, etc. Walk with Edward and Jane to the garden, and return with T. Guiccioli in the carriage. Edward reads the _Shipwreck of the Wager_ to us in the evening.

_Sat.u.r.day, December 8._--Get up late and talk with Sh.e.l.ley. The Williams and Medwin to dinner. Walk with Edward and Jane in the garden. Return with T. Guiccioli. T. G. and Pietro in the evening.

Write to Clare. Read Tacitus.

_Sunday, December 9._--Go to church at Dr. Nott's. Walk with Edward and Jane in the garden. In the evening first Pietro and Teresa, afterwards go to the Williams'.

_Monday, December 10._--Out shopping. Walk with the Williams and T.

Guiccioli to the garden. Medwin at tea. Afterwards we are alone, and after reading a little Herodotus, Sh.e.l.ley reads Chaucer's _Flower and the Leaf_, and then Chaucer's _Dream_ to me. A divine, cold, tramontana day.

_Monday, January 14._--Read _Emile_. Call on T. Guiccioli and see Lord Byron. Trelawny arrives.

Edward John Trelawny, whose subsequent history was to be closely bound up with that of Sh.e.l.ley and of Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, was of good Cornish family, and had led a wandering life, full of romantic adventure. He had become acquainted with Williams and Medwin in Switzerland a year before, since which he had been in Paris and London. Tired of a town life and of society, and in order to "maintain the just equilibrium between the body and the brain," he had determined to pa.s.s the next winter hunting and shooting in the wilds of the Maremma, with a Captain Roberts and Lieutenant Williams. For the exercise of his brain, he proposed pa.s.sing the summer with Sh.e.l.ley and Byron, boating in the Mediterranean, as he had heard that they proposed doing. Neither of the poets were as yet personally known to him, but he had lost no time in seeking their acquaintance. On the very evening of his arrival in Pisa he repaired to the Tre Palazzi, where, in the Williams' room, he first saw Sh.e.l.ley, and was struck speechless with astonishment.

Was it possible this mild-looking beardless boy could be the veritable monster at war with all the world? Excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school?

I could not believe it; it must be a hoax.

But presently, when Sh.e.l.ley was led to talk on a theme that interested him--the works of Calderon,--his marvellous powers of mind and command of language held Trelawny spell-bound: "After this touch of his quality," he says, "I no longer doubted his ident.i.ty."

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley appeared soon after, and the visitor looked with lively curiosity at the daughter of William G.o.dwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Such a rare pedigree of genius was enough to interest me in her, irrespective of her own merits as an auth.o.r.ess. The most striking feature in her face was her calm, gray eyes; she was rather under the English standard of woman's height, very fair and light-haired; witty, social, and animated in the society of friends, though mournful in solitude; like Sh.e.l.ley, though in a minor degree, she had the power of expressing her thoughts in varied and appropriate words, derived from familiarity with the works of our vigorous old writers. Neither of them used obsolete or foreign words. This command of our language struck me the more as contrasted with the scanty vocabulary used by ladies in society, in which a score of poor hackneyed phrases suffice to express all that is felt or considered proper to reveal.[45]

Mary's impressions of the new-comer may be gathered from her journal and her subsequent letter to Mrs. Gisborne.

_Journal, Sat.u.r.day, January 19._--Copy. Walk with Jane. The Opera in the evening. Trelawny is extravagant--_un giovane stravagante_,--partly natural, and partly, perhaps, put on, but it suits him well, and if his abrupt but not unpolished manners be a.s.sumed, they are nevertheless in unison with his Moorish face (for he looks Oriental yet not Asiatic), his dark hair, his Herculean form; and then there is an air of extreme good nature which pervades his whole countenance, especially when he smiles, which a.s.sures me that his heart is good. He tells strange stories of himself, horrific ones, so that they harrow one up, while with his emphatic but unmodulated voice, his simple yet strong language, he pourtrays the most frightful situations; then all these adventures took place between the ages of thirteen and twenty.

I believe them now I see the man, and, tired with the everyday sleepiness of human intercourse, I am glad to meet with one who, among other valuable qualities, has the rare merit of interesting my imagination. The _crew_ and Medwin dine with us.

_Sunday, January 27._--Read Homer. Walk. Dine at the Williams'. The Opera in the evening. Ride with T. Guiccioli.

_Monday, January 28._--The Williams breakfast with us. Go down Bocca d'Arno in the boat with Sh.e.l.ley and Jane. Edward and E. Trelawny meet us there; return in the gig; they dine with us; very tired.

_Tuesday, January 29._--Read Homer and Tacitus. Ride with T.

Guiccioli. E. Trelawny and Medwin to dinner. The Baron Lutzerode in the evening.

But as the torrent widens towards the ocean, We ponder deeply on each past emotion.

Read the first volume of the _Pirate_.

_Sunday, February 3._--Read Homer. Walk to the garden with Jane.

Return with Medwin to dinner. Trelawny in the evening. A wild day and night, some clouds in the sky in the morning, but they clear away. A north wind.

_Monday, February 4._--Breakfast with the Williams'. Edward, Jane, and Trelawny go to Leghorn. Walk with Jane. Southey's letter concerning Lord Byron. Write to Clare. In the evening the Gambas and Taafe.