The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume Ii Part 3

But several motives induce me, when the day has gone down, and all is silent around me, steeped in sleep, to pen, as occasion wills, my reflections and feelings. First, I have no friend. For eight years I communicated, with unlimited freedom, with one whose genius, far transcending mine, awakened and guided my thoughts. I conversed with him, rectified my errors of judgment; obtained new lights from him; and my mind was satisfied. Now I am alone--oh, how alone! The stars may behold my tears, and the wind drink my sighs, but my thoughts are a sealed treasure which I can confide to none. But can I express all I feel? Can I give words to thoughts and feelings that, as a tempest, hurry me along? Is this the sand that the ever-flowing sea of thought would impress indelibly? Alas! I am alone. No eye answers mine; my voice can with none a.s.sume its natural modulation. What a change! O my beloved Sh.e.l.ley! how often during those happy days--happy, though chequered--I thought how superiorly gifted I had been in being united to one to whom I could unveil myself, and who could understand me!

Well, then, now I am reduced to these white pages, which I am to blot with dark imagery. As I write, let me think what he would have said if, speaking thus to him, he could have answered me. Yes, my own heart, I would fain know what to think of my desolate state; what you think I ought to do, what to think. I guess you would answer thus: "Seek to know your own heart, and, learning what it best loves, try to enjoy that." Well, I cast my eyes around, and, looking forward to the bounded prospect in view, I ask myself what pleases me there. My child;--so many feelings arise when I think of him, that I turn aside to think no more. Those I most loved are gone for ever; those who held the second rank are absent; and among those near me as yet, I trust to the disinterested kindness of one alone. Beneath all this, my imagination never flags. Literary labours, the improvement of my mind, and the enlargement of my ideas, are the only occupations that elevate me from my lethargy: all events seem to lead me to that one point, and the courses of destiny having dragged me to that single resting-place, have left me. Father, mother, friend, husband, children--all made, as it were, the team which conducted me here, and now all, except you, my poor boy (and you are necessary to the continuance of my life), all are gone, and I am left to fulfil my task. So be it.

_October 5._--Well, they are come;[4] and it is all as I said. I awoke as from sleep, and thought how I had vegetated these last days; for feeling leaves little trace on the memory if it be, like mine, unvaried. I have felt for, and with myself alone, and I awake now to take a part in life. As far as others are concerned, my sensations have been most painful. I must work hard amidst the vexations that I perceive are preparing for me, to preserve my peace and tranquillity of mind. I must preserve some, if I am to live; for, since I bear at the bottom of my heart a fathomless well of bitter waters, the workings of which my philosophy is ever at work to repress, what will be my fate if the petty vexations of life are added to this sense of eternal and infinite misery?

Oh, my child! what is your fate to be? You alone reach me; you are the only chain that links me to time; but for you, I should be free. And yet I cannot be destined to live long. Well, I shall commence my task, commemorate the virtues of the only creature worth loving or living for, and then, may be, I may join him. Moonshine may be united to her planet, and wander no more, a sad reflection of all she loved on earth.

_October 7._--I have received my desk to-day, and have been reading my letters to mine own Sh.e.l.ley during his absences at Marlow. What a scene to recur to! My William, Clara, Allegra, are all talked of. They lived then, they breathed this air, and their voices struck on my sense; their feet trod the earth beside me, and their hands were warm with blood and life when clasped in mine, where are they all? This is too great an agony to be written about. I may express my despair, but my thoughts can find no words.

I would endeavour to consider myself a faint continuation of his being, and, as far as possible, the revelation to the earth of what he was, yet, to become this, I must change much, and, above all, I must acquire that knowledge and drink at those fountains of wisdom and virtue from which he quenched his thirst. Hitherto I have done nothing; yet I have not been discontented with myself. I speak of the period of my residence here. For, although unoccupied by those studies which I have marked out for myself, my mind has been so active that its activity, and not its indolence, has made me neglectful. But now the society of others causes this perpetual working of my ideas somewhat to pause; and I must take advantage of this to turn my mind towards its immediate duties, and to determine with firmness to commence the life I have planned. You will be with me in all my studies, dearest love! your voice will no longer applaud me, but in spirit you will visit and encourage me: I know you will. What were I, if I did not believe that you still exist? It is not with you as with another, I believe that we all live hereafter; but you, my only one, were a spirit caged, an elemental being, enshrined in a frail image, now shattered. Do they not all with one voice a.s.sert the same?

Trelawny, Hunt, and many others. And so at last you quitted this painful prison, and you are free, my Sh.e.l.ley; while I, your poor chosen one, am left to live as I may.

What a strange life mine has been! Love, youth, fear, and fearlessness led me early from the regular routine of life, and I united myself to this being, who, not one of _us_, though like to us, was pursued by numberless miseries and annoyances, in all of which I shared. And then I was the mother of beautiful children, but these stayed not by me.

Still he was there; and though, in truth, after my William's death this world seemed only a quicksand, sinking beneath my feet, yet beside me was this bank of refuge--so tempest-worn and frail, that methought its very weakness was strength, and, since Nature had written destruction on its brow, so the Power that rules human affairs had determined, in spite of Nature, that it should endure. But that is gone. His voice can no longer be heard; the earth no longer receives the shadow of his form; annihilation has come over the earthly appearance of the most gentle creature that ever yet breathed this air; and I am still here--still thinking, existing, all but hoping.

Well, I close my book. To-morrow I must begin this new life of mine.

_October 19._--How painful all change becomes to one, who, entirely and despotically engrossed by [his] own feelings leads, as it were, an _internal_ life, quite different from the outward and apparent one!

Whilst my life continues its monotonous course within sterile banks, an under-current disturbs the smooth face of the waters, distorts all objects reflected in it, and the mind is no longer a mirror in which outward events may reflect themselves, but becomes itself the painter and creator. If this perpetual activity has power to vary with endless change the everyday occurrences of a most monotonous life, it appears to be animated with the spirit of tempest and hurricane when any real occurrence diversifies the scene. Thus, to-night, a few bars of a known air seemed to be as a wind to rouse from its depths every deep-seated emotion of my mind. I would have given worlds to have sat, my eyes closed, and listened to them for years. The restraint I was under caused these feelings to vary with rapidity; but the words of the conversation, uninteresting as they might be, seemed all to convey two senses to me, and, touching a chord within me, to form a music of which the speaker was little aware. I do not think that any person's voice has the same power of awakening melancholy in me as Albe's. I have been accustomed, when hearing it, to listen and to speak little; another voice, not mine, ever replied--a voice whose strings are broken. When Albe ceases to speak, I expect to hear _that other_ voice, and when I hear another instead, it jars strangely with every a.s.sociation. I have seen so little of Albe since our residence in Switzerland, and, having seen him there every day, his voice--a peculiar one--is engraved on my memory with other sounds and objects from which it can never disunite itself. I have heard Hunt in company and in conversation with many, when my own one was not there.

Trelawny, perhaps, is a.s.sociated in my mind with Edward more than with Sh.e.l.ley. Even our older friends, Peac.o.c.k and Hogg, might talk together, or with others, and their voices suggest no change to me.

But, since incapacity and timidity always prevented my mingling in the nightly conversations of Diodati, they were, as it were, entirely _tete-a-tete_ between my Sh.e.l.ley and Albe; and thus, as I have said, when Albe speaks and Sh.e.l.ley does not answer, it is as thunder without rain,--the form of the sun without light or heat,--as any familiar object might be shorn of its best attributes; and I listen with an unspeakable melancholy that yet is not all pain.

The above explains that which would otherwise be an enigma--why Albe, by his mere presence and voice, has the power of exciting such deep and shifting emotions within me. For my feelings have no a.n.a.logy either with my opinion of him, or the subject of his conversation.

With another I might talk, and not for the moment think of Sh.e.l.ley--at least not think of him with the same vividness as if I were alone; but, when in company with Albe, I can never cease for a second to have Sh.e.l.ley in my heart and brain with a clearness that mocks reality--interfering even by its force with the functions of life--until, if tears do not relieve me, the hysterical feeling, a.n.a.logous to that which the murmur of the sea gives me, presses painfully upon me.

Well, for the first time for about a month, I have been in company with Albe for two hours, and, coming home, I write this, so necessary is it for me to express in words the force of my feelings. Sh.e.l.ley, beloved! I look at the stars and at all nature, and it speaks to me of you in the clearest accents. Why cannot you answer me, my own one? Is the instrument so utterly destroyed? I would endure ages of pain to hear one tone of your voice strike on my ear!

For nearly a year--not a happy one--Mary lived with the Hunts. A bruised and bleeding heart exposed to the cuffs and blows of everyday life, a nervous temperament--too recently strained to its utmost pitch of endurance--liable to constant, unavoidable irritation, a nature sensitive and reserved, accustomed to much seclusion and much independence, thrown into the midst of a large, noisy, and disorderly family,--these conditions could hardly result in happiness. Leigh Hunt was nervous, delicate, overworked, and variable in mood: his wife an invalid, condemned by the doctors on her arrival in Italy, now expecting her confinement in the ensuing summer, an event which she was told would be, for good or evil, the crisis of her fate. Six children they had already had, who were allowed--on principle--to do exactly as they chose, "until such time as they were of an age to be reasoned with."

The opening for activity and usefulness would, at another time, have been beneficial to Mary, and, to some extent, was so now; but it was too early, the change from her former state was too violent; she was not fit yet for such severe bracing. She met her trials bravely; but it was another case where buoyancy of spirits was indispensable to real success, and buoyancy of spirits she had not, nor was likely to acquire in her present surroundings.

There was another person to whom these surroundings were even more supremely distasteful than to her, and this was Byron. Small sympathy had he for domestic life or sentiment even in their best aspects, and this virtuous, slipshod, c.o.c.kney Bohemianism had no attraction for him whatever. The poor man must have suffered many things while the Hunts were in possession of his _pian terreno_ at Pisa; he was rid of them now, but the very sight of them was too much for him.

LORD BYRON TO MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

_6th October 1822._

The sofa--which I regret is _not_ of your furniture--it was purchased by me at Pisa since you left it.

It is convenient for my room, though of little value (about 12 pauls), and I offered to send another (now sent) in its stead. I preferred retaining the purchased furniture, but always intended that you should have as good or better in its place. I have a particular dislike to anything of Sh.e.l.ley's being within the same walls with Mrs. Hunt's children. They are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos. What they can't destroy with their filth they will with their fingers. I presume you received ninety and odd crowns from the wreck of the _Don Juan_, and also the price of the boat purchased by Captain R., if not, you will have _both_. Hunt has these in hand.

With regard to any difficulties about money, I can only repeat that I will be your banker till this state of things is cleared up, and you can see what is to be done; so there is little to hinder you on that score. I was confined for four days to my bed at Lerici. Poor Hunt, with his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned back once--was there ever such a _kraal_ out of the Hottentot country before?

N. B.

Among those of their former acquaintance who now surrounded Mary, the one who by his presence ministered most to the needs of her fainting moral nature was Trelawny. Leigh Hunt, when not disagreeing from her, was affectionate, nay, gushing, and he had truly loved Sh.e.l.ley, but he was a feeble, facetious, f.e.c.kless creature,--a hypochondriac,--unable to do much to help himself, still less another. Byron was by no means ill-disposed, especially just now, but he was egotistic and indolent, and too capricious,--as the event proved,--to be depended on.

Trelawny's fresh vigorous personality, his bright originality and rugged independence, and his unbounded admiration for Sh.e.l.ley, made him wonderfully reviving to Mary; he had the effect on her of a gust of fresh air in a close crowded room. He was unconventional and outspoken, and by no means always complimentary, but he had a just appreciation of Mary's real mental and moral superiority to the people around her, and a frank liking for herself. Their friendship was to extend over many years, during which Mary had ample opportunity of repaying the debt of obligation she always felt she owed him for his kindness to her and Mrs. Williams at the time of their great misery.

The letters which follow were among the earliest of a long and varied correspondence.

MARY Sh.e.l.lEY TO TRELAWNY.

_November 1822._

MY DEAR TRELAWNY--I called on you yesterday, but was too late for you.

I was much pained to see you out of spirits the other night. I can in no way make you better, I fear, but I should be glad to see you. Will you dine with me Monday after your ride? If Hunt rides, as he threatens, with Lord Byron, he will also dine late and make one of our party. Remember, you will also do Hunt good by this, who pines in this solitude. You say that I know so little of the world that I am afraid I may be mistaken in imagining that you have a friendship for me, especially after what you said of Jane the other night; but besides the many other causes I have to esteem you, I can never remember without the liveliest grat.i.tude all you said that night of agony when you returned to Lerici. Your praises of my lost Sh.e.l.ley were the only balm I could endure, and he always joined with me in liking you from the first moment we saw you. Adieu.--Your attached friend,

M. W. S.

Have you got my books on sh.o.r.e from the _Bolivar_? If you have, pray let me have them, for many are odd volumes, and I wish to see if they are too much destroyed to rank with those I have.

TRELAWNY TO MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

_November 1822._

DEAR MARY--I will gladly dine on Monday with you. As to melancholy, I refer you to the good Antonio in Shylock. "Alas! I know now why I am so sad. It is time, I think." You are not so learned in human dealings as Iago, but you cannot so sadly err as to doubt the extent or truth of my friendship. As to gain esteem, I do not think it a word applicable to such a lawless character. Ruled by impulse, not by reason, I am satisfied you should like me upon my own terms--impulse.

As to grat.i.tude for uttering my thoughts of him I so loved and admired, it was a tribute that all who knew him have paid to his memory. "But weeping never could restore the dead," and if it could, hope would prevent our tears. You may remember I always in preference selected as my companion Edward, not Jane, and that I always dissented from your general voice of her being perfection. I am still of the same opinion; nothing more. But I have and ever shall feel deeply interested, and would do much to serve her, and if thinking on those trifles which diminish her l.u.s.tre in my eyes makes me flag, Edward's memory and my perfect friendship for him is sufficient excitement to spur me on to anything. It is impossible to dislike Jane; but to have an unqualified liking, such as I had for Edward, no--no--no! Talking of grat.i.tude, I really am and ought to be so to you, for bearing on, untired, with my spleen, humours, and violence; it is a proof of real liking, particularly as you are not of the sect who profess or practise meekness, humility, and patience in common.

T.

Mary had not as yet been successful in getting possession of the half-finished portrait of Sh.e.l.ley. Her letters had followed Miss Curran to Paris, whence, in October, a reply at last arrived.

"I am sorry," Miss Curran wrote, "I am not at Rome to execute your melancholy commission. I mean to return in spring, but it may be then too late. I am sure Mr. Brunelli would be happy to oblige you or me, but you may have left Pisa before this, so I know not what to propose.

Your picture and Clare's I left with him to give you when you should be at Rome, as I expected, before you returned to England. The one you now write for I thought was not to be inquired for; it was so ill done, and I was on the point of burning it with others before I left Italy. I luckily saved it just as the fire was scorching, and it is packed up with my other pictures at Rome; and I have not yet decided where they can be sent to, as there are serious difficulties in the way I had not adverted to. I am very sorry indeed, dear Mary, but you shall have it as soon as I possibly can."...

This was the early history of that portrait, which was recovered a year or two later, and which has pa.s.sed, and pa.s.ses still, for Sh.e.l.ley's likeness, and which, bad or good, is the only authentic one in existence.

Mary now began to feel it a matter of duty as well as of expediency to resume literary work, but she found it hard at first.

"I am quite well, but very nervous," she wrote to Mrs. Gisborne; "my excessive nervousness (how new a disorder for me--my illness in the summer is the foundation of it) is the cause I do not write."

She made a beginning with an article for the _Liberal_. Sh.e.l.ley's _Defence of Poetry_ was, also, to be published in the forthcoming number, and the MS. of this had to be got from England. She had reason to believe, too, that Ollier, the publisher, had in his keeping other MSS. of Sh.e.l.ley's, and she was restlessly desirous to get possession of all these, feeling convinced that among them there was nothing perfect, nothing ready for publication exactly as it stood. In her over-anxiety she wrote to several people on this subject, thereby incurring the censure of her father, whom she had also consulted about her literary plans. His criticisms on his daughter's style were not unsound; she had not been trained in a school of terseness, and, like many young authors, she was apt to err on the side of length, and not to see that she did so.

G.o.dWIN 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 Hogg and Mrs. Williams, and to-day Peac.o.c.k 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.

Peac.o.c.k has got Ollier's promise to deliver all Sh.e.l.ley's ma.n.u.scripts, and as earnest, he has received _Peter Bell_ and _A 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 ma.n.u.scripts from Ollier, you commissioned Peac.o.c.k, and, I believe, Mrs. Gisborne. This puts us all in an awkward situation. I heard of Peac.o.c.k's applying just in time to prevent me from looking like a fool. Peac.o.c.k 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 a.s.siduous. 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 respecting _Castruccio_, 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: _Manfred_ is a subject that n.o.body interests himself about; the interest, therefore, must be made, and no bookseller understands anything about that contingency. A book about Italy as it 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.