The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume Ii Part 9

It is difficult to imagine _Frankenstein_ on the stage; it must, at least, lose very much in dramatic representation. Like its modern successor, _Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_,--that remarkable story which bears a certain affinity to _Frankenstein_,--its subtle allegorical significance would be overweighted, if not lost, by the effect of the grosser and more material incidents which are all that could be _played_, and which, as described, must have bordered on the ludicrous. Still the charm of life imparted by a human impersonation to any portion, even, of one's own idea, is singularly powerful; and so Mary felt it. She would have liked to repeat the experience. Her situation, looked at in the face, was unenviable. She was unprovided for, young, delicate, and with a child dependent on her. Her rich connections would have nothing to do with her, and her boy did not possess in their eyes the importance which would have attached to him had he been heir to the baronetcy. She had talent, and it had been cultivated, but with her sorely-tried health and spirits, the prospect of self-support by the compulsory production of imaginative work must, at the time, have seemed unpromising enough.

Two sheet-anchors of hope she had, and by these she lived. They were, her child--so friendless but for her--and the thought of Sh.e.l.ley's fame. The collecting and editing of his MSS., this was her work; no one else should do it. It seemed as though her brief life with him had had for its purpose to educate her for this one object.

Those who now, in naming Sh.e.l.ley, feel they name a part of everything beautiful, ethereal, and spiritual--that his words are so inextricably interwoven with certain phases of love and beauty as to be indistinguishable from the very thing itself--may well find it hard to realise how little he was known at the time when he died.

With other poets their work is the blossom and fruit of their lives, but Sh.e.l.ley's poetry resembles rather the perfume of the flower, that subtle quality pertaining to the bloom which can be neither described, nor pourtrayed, nor transmitted; an essence of immortality.

Not many months after this the news of Byron's early death struck a kind of remorseful grief into the hearts of his countrymen. A letter of Miss Welsh's (Mrs. Carlyle) gives an idea of the general feeling--

"I was told it," she says, "in a room full of people. Had I heard that the sun and moon had fallen out of their spheres it could not have conveyed to me the feeling of a more awful blank than did the simple words, 'Byron is dead.'"

How many, it may be asked, were conscious of any blank when the news reached them that Sh.e.l.ley had been "accidentally drowned"? Their numbers might be counted by tens.

The sale, in every instance, of Mr. Sh.e.l.ley's works has been very confined,

was his publishers' report to his widow. One newspaper dismissed his memory by the pa.s.sing remark, "He will now find out whether there is a h.e.l.l or not."

The small number of those who recognised his genius did not even include all his personal friends.

"Mine is a life of failures;" so he summed it up to Trelawny and Edward Williams. "Peac.o.c.k says my poetry is composed of day-dreams and nightmares, and Leigh Hunt does not think it good enough for the _Examiner_. Jefferson Hogg says all poetry is inverted sense, and consequently nonsense....

"I wrote, and the critics denounced me as a mischievous visionary, and my friends said that I had mistaken my vocation, that my poetry was mere rhapsody of words...."

Leigh Hunt, indeed, thought his own poetry more than equal to Sh.e.l.ley's or Byron's. Byron knew Sh.e.l.ley's power well enough, but cared little for the subjects of his sympathy. Trelawny was more appreciative, but his admiration for the poetry was quite secondary to his enthusiasm for the man. In Hogg's case, affection for the man may be said to have _excused_ the poetry. All this Mary knew, but she knew too--what she was soon to find out by experience--that among his immediate a.s.sociates he had created too warm an interest for him to escape posthumous discussion and criticism. And he had been familiar with some of those regarding whom the world's curiosity was insatiable, concerning whom any shred of information, true or false, was eagerly snapped up. His name would inevitably figure in anecdotes and gossip. His fame was Mary's to guard.

During the years she lived at Albaro she had been employed in collecting and transcribing his scattered MSS., and at the end of this year, 1823, the volume of Posthumous Poems came out.

One would imagine that publishers would have bid against each other for the possession of such a treasure. Far from it. Among the little band of "true believers" three came forward to guarantee the expenses of publication. They were, the poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Procter, and T. F.

Kelsall.

The appearance of this book was a melancholy satisfaction to Mary, though, as will soon be seen, she was not long allowed to enjoy it.

MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY TO MRS. HUNT.

LONDON, _27th November 1823_.

MY DEAREST POLLY--Are you not a naughty girl? How could you copy a letter to that "agreeable, unaffected woman, Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley," without saying a word from yourself to your loving...? My dear Polly, a line from you forms a better picture for me of what you are about than--alas! I was going to say three pages, but I check myself--the rare one page of Hunt. Do not think that I forget you--even Percy does not, and he often tells me to bid the Signor Enrico and you to get in a carriage and then into a boat, and to come to _questo paese_ with _Baby nuovo_, Henry, Swinburne, _e tutti_. But that will not be, nor shall I see you at Mariano; this is a dreary exile for me. During a long month of cloud and fog, how often have I sighed for my beloved Italy, and more than ever this day when I have come to a conclusion with Sir Timothy Sh.e.l.ley as to my affairs, and I find the miserable pittance I am to have. Nearly sufficient in Italy, here it will not go half-way. It is 100 per annum. Nor is this all, for I foresee a thousand troubles; yet, in truth, as far as regards mere money matters and worldly prospects, I keep up my philosophy with excellent success.

Others wonder at this, but I do not, nor is there any philosophy in it. After having witnessed the mortal agonies of my two darling children, after that journey from and to Lerici, I feel all these as pictures and trifles as long as I am kept out of contact with the unholy. I was upset to-day by being obliged to see Whitton, and the prospect of seeing others of his tribe. I can earn a sufficiency, I doubt not. In Italy I should be content: here I will not bemoan.

Indeed I never do, and Mrs. G.o.dwin makes _large eyes_ at the quiet way in which I take it all. It is England alone that annoys me, yet sometimes I get among friends and almost forget its fogs. I go to Shacklewell rarely, and sometimes see the Novellos elsewhere. He is my especial favourite, and his music always transports me to the seventh heaven.... I see the Lambs rather often, she ever amiable, and Lamb witty and delightful. I must tell you one thing and make Hunt laugh.

Lamb's new house at Islington is close to the New River, and George Dyer, after having paid them a visit, on going away at 12 at noonday, walked deliberately into the water, taking it for the high road.

"But," as he said afterwards to Procter, "I soon found that I was in the water, sir." So Miss Lamb and the servant had to fish him out....

I must tell Hunt also a good saying of Lamb's,--talking of some one, he said, "Now some men who are very veracious are called matter-of-fact men, but such a one I should call a matter-of-lie man."

I have seen also Procter, with his "beautifully formed head" (it is beautifully formed), several times, and I like him. He is an enthusiastic admirer of Sh.e.l.ley, and most zealous in bringing out the volume of his poems; this alone would please me; and he is, moreover, gentle and gentlemanly, and apparently endued with a true poetic feeling. Besides, he is an invalid, and some time ago I told you, in a letter, that I have always a sneaking (for sneaking read open) kindness for men of literary and particularly poetic habits, who have delicate health. I cannot help revering the mind delicately attuned that shatters the material frame, and whose thoughts are strong enough to throw down and dilapidate the walls of sense and dikes of flesh that the unimaginative contrive to keep in such good repair....

After all, I spend a great deal of my time in solitude. I have been hitherto too fully occupied in preparing Sh.e.l.ley's MSS. It is now complete, and the poetry alone will make a large volume. Will you tell Hunt that he need not send any of the MSS. that he has (except the Essay on Devils, and some lines addressed to himself on his arrival in Italy, if he should choose them to be inserted), as I have recopied all the rest? We should be very glad, however, of his notice as quickly as possible, as we wish the book to be out in a month at furthest, and that will not be possible unless he sends it immediately. It would break my heart if the book should appear without it.[6] When he does send a packet over (let it be directed to his brother), will he also be so good as to send me a copy of my "Choice,"

beginning after the line

Entrenched sad lines, or blotted with its might?

Perhaps, dear Marianne, you would have the kindness to copy them for me, and send them soon. I have another favour to ask of you. Miss Curran has a portrait of Sh.e.l.ley, in many things very like, and she has so much talent that I entertain great hopes that she will be able to make a good one; for this purpose I wish her to have all the aids possible, and among the rest a profile from you.[7] If you could not cut another, perhaps you would send her one already cut, and if you sent it with a note requesting her to return it when she had done with it, I will engage that it will be most faithfully returned. At present I am not quite sure where she is, but if she should be there, and you can find her and send her this, I need not tell you how you would oblige me.

I heard from Bessy that Hunt is writing something for the _Examiner_ for me. I _conjecture_ that this may be concerning _Valperga_. I shall be glad, indeed, when that comes, or in lieu of it, anything else.

John Hunt begins to despair.

And now, dear Polly, I think I have done with gossip and business: with words of affection and kindness I should never have done. I am inexpressibly anxious about you all. Percy has had a similar though shorter attack to that at Albaro, but he is now recovered. I have a cold in my head, occasioned, I suppose, by the weather. Ah, Polly! if all the beauties of England were to have only the mirror that Richard III desires, a very short time would be spent at the looking-gla.s.s!

What of Florence and the gallery? I saw the Elgin marbles to-day; to-morrow I am to go to the Museum to look over the prints: that will be a great treat. The Theseus is a divinity, but how very few statues they have! Kiss the children. Ask Thornton for his forgotten and promised P.S., give my love to Hunt, and believe me, my dear Marianne, the exiled, but ever, most affectionately yours,

MARY W. Sh.e.l.lEY.

_Journal, January 18_ (1824).--I have now been nearly four months in England, and if I am to judge of the future by the past and the present, I have small delight in looking forward. I even regret those days and weeks of intense melancholy that composed my life at Genoa.

Yes, solitary and unbeloved as I was there, I enjoyed a more pleasurable state of being than I do here. I was still in Italy, and my heart and imagination were both gratified by that circ.u.mstance. I awoke with the light and beheld the theatre of nature from my window; the trees spread their green beauty before me, the resplendent sky was above me, the mountains were invested with enchanting colours. I had even begun to contemplate painlessly the blue expanse of the tranquil sea, speckled by the snow-white sails, gazed upon by the unclouded stars. There was morning and its balmy air, noon and its exhilarating heat, evening and its wondrous sunset, night and its starry pageant.

Then, my studies; my drawing, which soothed me; my Greek, which I studied with greater complacency as I stole every now and then a look on the scene near me; my metaphysics, that strengthened and elevated my mind. Then my solitary walks and my reveries; they were magnificent, deep, pathetic, wild, and exalted. I sounded the depths of my own nature; I appealed to the nature around me to corroborate the testimony that my own heart bore to its purity. I thought of _him_ with hope; my grief was active, striving, expectant. I was worth something then in the catalogue of beings. I could have written something, been something. Now I am exiled from these beloved scenes; its language is becoming a stranger to mine ears; my child is forgetting it. I am imprisoned in a dreary town; I see neither fields, nor hills, nor trees, nor sky; the exhilaration of enwrapt contemplation is no more felt by me; aspirations agonising, yet grand, from which the soul reposed in peace, have ceased to ascend from the quenched altar of my mind. Writing has become a task; my studies irksome; my life dreary. In this prison it is only in human intercourse that I can pretend to find consolation; and woe, woe, and triple woe to whoever seeks pleasure in human intercourse when that pleasure is not founded on deep and intense affection; as for the rest--

The bubble floats before, The shadow stalks behind.

My Father's situation, his cares and debts, prevent my enjoying his society.

I love Jane better than any other human being, but I am pressed upon by the knowledge that she but slightly returns this affection. I love her, and my purest pleasure is derived from that source--a capacious basin, and but a rill flows into it. I love some one or two more, "with a degree of love," but I see them seldom. I am excited while with them, but the reaction of this feeling is dreadfully painful, but while in London I cannot forego this excitement. I know some clever men, in whose conversation I delight, but this is rare, like angels'

visits. Alas! having lived day by day with one of the wisest, best, and most affectionate of spirits, how void, bare, and drear is the scene of life!

Oh, Sh.e.l.ley, dear, lamented, beloved! help me, raise me, support me; let me not feel ever thus fallen and degraded! my imagination is dead, my genius lost, my energies sleep. Why am I not beneath that weed-grown tower? Seeing Coleridge last night reminded me forcibly of past times; his beautiful descriptions reminded me of Sh.e.l.ley's conversations. Such was the intercourse I once daily enjoyed, added to supreme and active goodness, sympathy, and affection, and a wild, picturesque mode of living that suited my active spirit and satisfied its craving for novelty of impression.

I will go into the country and philosophise; some gleams of past entrancement may visit me there.

Lonely, poor, and dull as she was, these first months were a dreadful trial. She was writing, or trying to write, another novel, _The Last Man_, but it hung heavy; it did not satisfy her. Shrinking from company, yet recoiling still more from the monotony of her own thoughts, she was possessed by the restless wish to write a drama, perhaps with the idea that out of dramatic creations she might (Frankenstein-like) manufacture for herself companions more living than the characters of a novel. It may have been fortunate for her that she did not persevere in the attempt. Her special gifts were hardly of a dramatic order, and she had not the necessary experience for a successful playwright. She consulted her father, however, sending him at the same time some specimens of her work, and got some sound advice from him in return.

G.o.dWIN TO MARY.

NO. 195 STRAND, _27th February 1824_.

MY DEAR MARY--Your appeal to me is a painful one, and the account you give of your spirits and tone of mind is more painful. Your appeal to me is painful, because I by no means regard myself as an infallible judge, and have been myself an unsuccessful adventurer in the same field toward which, in this instance, you have turned your regards. As to what you say of your spirits and tone of mind, your plans, and your views, would not that much more profitably and agreeably be made the subject of a conversation between us? You are aware that such a conversation must be begun by you. So begun, it would be quite a different thing than begun by me. In the former case I should be called in as a friend and adviser, from whom some advantage was hoped for; in the latter I should be an intruder, forcing in free speeches and unwelcome truths, and should appear as if I wanted to dictate to you and direct you, who are well capable of directing yourself. You have able critics within your command--Mr. Procter and Mr. Lamb. You have, however, one advantage in me; I feel a deeper interest in you than they do, and would not mislead you for the world.

As to the specimens you have sent me, it is easy for me to give my opinion. There is one good scene--Manfred and the Two Strangers in the Cottage; and one that has some slight hints in it--the scene where Manfred attempts to stab the Duke. The rest are neither good nor bad; they might be endured, in the character of cement, to fasten good things together, but no more. Am I right? Perhaps not. I state things as they appear to my organs. Thus far, therefore, you afford an example, to be added to Barry Cornwall, how much easier it is to write a detached dramatic scene than to write a tragedy.

Is it not strange that so many people admire and relish Shakespeare, and that n.o.body writes or even attempts to write like him? To read your specimens, I should suppose that you had read no tragedies but such as have been written since the date of your birth. Your personages are mere abstractions--the lines and points of a mathematical diagram--and not men and women. If A crosses B, and C falls upon D, who can weep for that? Your talent is something like mine--it cannot unfold itself without elbow-room. As Gray sings, "Give ample room and verge enough the characters of h.e.l.l to trace." I can do tolerably well if you will allow me to explain as much as I like--if, in the margin of what my personage says, I am permitted to set down and anatomise all that he feels. Dramatic dialogue, in reference to any talent I possess, is the devil. To write nothing more than the very words spoken by the character is a course that withers all the powers of my soul. Even Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist that ever existed, often gives us riddles to guess and enigmas to puzzle over.

Many of his best characters and situations require a volume of commentary to make them perspicuous. And why is this? Because the law of his composition confines him to set down barely words that are to be delivered.

For myself, I am almost glad that you have not (if you have not) a dramatic talent. How many mortifications and heart-aches would that entail on you. Managers are to be consulted; players to be humoured; the best pieces that were ever written negatived, and returned on the author's hands. If these are all got over, then you have to encounter the caprice of a noisy, insolent, and vulgar-minded audience, whose senseless _non fiat_ shall turn the labour of a year in a moment into nothing.

Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What h.e.l.l it is---- To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares, To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

It is laziness, my dear Mary, that makes you wish to be a dramatist.