The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume Ii Part 21

I know the subject is a disagreeable one, and that you do not like disagreeable subjects. I know nothing of business or whether there exists any means of averting this blow; perhaps a representation to the translator of the evils that would follow would be sufficient; but as I have no means of trying this, I am reduced to suggest the subject to your attention, with the firm hope that you will find some method of warding off the threatened mischief.

What you tell me of the state of family resources has naturally depressed my spirits. Will the future never cease unrolling new shapes of misery? Stair above stair of wretchedness is all we know; the present, bad as it is, is always better than what comes after. Of all the crowd of eager inquirers at the Delphic shrine was there ever found one who thanked, or had any reason to thank, the Pythia for what she disclosed to him? For me, I have long abandoned hope and the future, and am now diligently pursuing and retracing the past, going the back way as it were to eternity in order to avoid the disappointments and perplexities of an unknown course. But I must beg pardon for my cowardice and disagreeableness, and leave it, or else I shall be recollected with as much reluctance as the Pythia.

I wish I could give you any idea of the beauty of Nice. So long as I can walk about beside the sounding sea, beneath its ambient heaven, and gaze upon the far hills enshrined in purple light, I catch such pleasure from their loveliness that I am happy without happiness; but when I come home, then it seems to me as if all the phantasmagoria of h.e.l.l danced before my eyes.

Mrs. K. has arrived and in no very amiable humour. The only conversation I hear is, first, the numberless perfections of herself, husband, and child; this, as it is true, would be well enough, but still upon repet.i.tion it tires; second, the infinite superiority of Russia over all other countries, since it is an established truth that liberty and civilisation are the most dreadful of all evils. I, to avoid ill-temper, a.s.sent to all they say; then in company, when opposed in their doctrines, they drag me forward, and the tacit consent I have given, as an argument in favour of their way of thinking, and I am at once set down by everybody either as a fawning creature or an utter fool. However, I am glad she has come, as the responsibility of Natalie's health was too much. For heaven's sake excuse me to dear Jane that I have not written. My first moment shall be given to do so.

I think of England and my friends all day long. Entreat everybody to write to me. Do pray do so yourself. My love to my Mother and Papa, and William and everybody. How happy was I that Percy was well.--In haste, ever yours,

C. CLAIRMONT.

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's mind was much occupied during 1831 by the serious question of sending her son to a public school. She wished to give him the best possible education, and she wished, too, to give it him in such a form as would place him at no disadvantage among other young men when he took his place in English society.

Sh.e.l.ley (she mentions in one of her letters) had expressed himself in favour of a public school, but Sh.e.l.ley's family had also to be consulted, and she seems to have had reason to hope they would help in the matter.

They quite concurred in her views for Percy, only putting a veto on Eton, where legends of his father's school-days might still be lingering about.

Nothing was better than that she should send him to a public school--_if she could_. These last words were implied, not expressed. But a public school education in England is not to be given on a very limited income.

Funds had to be found; and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley made, through the lawyer, a direct request to Sir Timothy for a.s.sistance.

She received the following answer--

MR. WHITTON TO MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

STONE HALL, _6th November 1831_.

DEAR MADAM--I have been, from the time I received your last favour to the present, in correspondence with Sir Timothy Sh.e.l.ley as to your wishes of an advance upon the 300 per annum he now makes to you, and I recommended him to consult his friend and solicitor, Mr. Steadman, of Horsham, thereon, and which he did.

You have not perhaps well put together and estimated on the great amount of the charges upon the estate by the late Mr. Sh.e.l.ley, and on the legacies given by his will; but looking at all these, and the very limited interest of the estate now vested in you, Sir Timothy has paused in his consideration thereof, and in the result has brought his mind, that, having regard to the other provisions he is bound to make for his other children, he ought not to increase the allowance to you, and upon that ground he declines so doing; and therefore feels the necessity of your making such arrangements as you may find necessary to make the 300 per annum answer the purposes for yourself and for your son, and he has this morning stated to me his fixed determination to abide thereby; and I lose not a moment, after I receive this communication from him, to make it known to you, and I trust and hope you will find it practicable to give him a good education out of the 300 a year.--I remain, Madam, your very obedient servant,

WM. WHITTON.

The seeming brutality of the concluding sentence must in fairness be ascribed to the writer and not to those he represented.

To Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, knowing the impossibility of carrying out the public school plan on her own income, the wishes and hopes must have sounded a mockery. It had to be done, however, if it was the best thing for the boy.

The money must be earned, and she worked on.

One day she received from her father a new kind of pet.i.tion, which, showing the effect on him of advancing years, must have struck a pang to her heart. She was accustomed to his requests for money, but now he wrote to her for _an idea_.

G.o.dWIN TO MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

_13th April 1832._

MY DEAR MARY--You desire me to write to you, if I have anything particular to say.

I write, then, to say that I am still in the same dismaying predicament in which I have been for weeks past--at a loss for materials to make up my third volume. This is by no means what I expected.

I knew, and I know, that incidents of hair-breadth escapes and adventures are innumerable, and that without having fixed on any one of them, I took for granted they would come when I called for them.

Such is the mischievous effect, the anxious expectation, that is produced by past success.

I believe that when I came to push with all my force against the barriers that seemed to shut me in they would give way, and place all the treasures of invention before me.

Meanwhile, it unfortunately happens that I cannot lay my present disappointment to the charge of advancing age.

I find all my faculties and all my strength in full bloom about me. My disappointment has put that to a sharp trial. I thought that the severe stretch of my faculties would cause them to yield, and subside into feebleness and torpor. No such thing. Day after day, week after week, I apply to this one question, without remission and with discernment. But I cannot please myself. If I make the round of all my thoughts, and come home empty-handed, it would seem that in the flower and vigour of my youth I should have done the same.

Meanwhile, my situation is deplorable. I am not free to choose the thing I would do. I have written two volumes and a quarter, and have received five-sixths of the price of my work.

I am afraid you will think I am useless, by teasing you with "conceptions only proper to myself." But it is not altogether so. A bystander may see a point of game which a player overlooks. Though I cannot furnish myself with satisfactory incidents I have disciplined my mind into a tone that would enable me to improve them, if offered to me.

My mind is like a train of gunpowder, and a single spark, now happily communicated, might set the whole in motion and activity.

Do not tease yourself about my calamity; but give it one serious thought. Who knows what such a thought may produce?--Your affectionate Father,

WILLIAM G.o.dWIN.

In the spring of 1832 the cholera appeared in London. Clare, at a distance, was torn to pieces between real apprehension for the safety of her friends, and distracting fears lest the disease should select among them for its victim some one on whose life depended the realisation of Sh.e.l.ley's will. For Percy especially she was solicitous. Mary must take him away at once, to the seaside--anywhere: if money was an obstacle she, Clare, was ready to help to defray the cost out of her salary.

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley did leave London, although, it may safely be a.s.serted, at no one's expense but her own. She stayed for a month at Southend, and afterwards for a longer time at Sandgate.

Besides contributing tales and occasionally verses to the _Keepsake_, she was employed now and during the next two or three years in preparing and writing the Italian and Spanish Lives of Literary Men for Lardner's _Cabinet Cyclopaedia_. These included, among the Italians--Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bojardo, Macchiavelli, Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, etc.; among the Spanish and Portuguese--Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Camoens, and a host of others, besides notices of the Troubadours, the "Romances Moriscos," and the early poets of Portugal.

Clare, too, tried her hand at a story, to which she begged Mary to be a kind of G.o.dmother.

I have written a tale, which I think will do for the _Keepsake_. I shall send it home for your perusal. Will you correct it? Do write and let me know where I may send it, so as to be sure to find you. Will you be angry with me if I beg you to write the last scene of it? I am now so unwell I can't.

My only time for writing is after 10 at night; the rest of the tale was composed at that hour, after having been scolding and talking and giving lessons from 7 in the morning.

It was very near its end when I got so ill, I gave it up. If you cannot do anything with it you can at least make curl-papers of it, and that is always something. Do not mention it to anybody; should it be printed one can speak of it, and if you judge it not worthy, then it is no use mortifying my vanity.

The truth, is I should never think of writing, knowing well my incapacity for it, but I want to gain money. What would one not do for that, since it is the only key of freedom? One is even impudent enough to ask a great auth.o.r.ess to finish one's tale for one. I think, in your hands, it might get into the _Keepsake_, for it is about a Pole, and that is the topic of the day.

If it should get any money, half will naturally belong to you. Should you have the kindness to arrange it, Julia would perhaps also be so kind as to copy it out for me, that the alterations in your hand may not be seen. I wish it to be signed "Mont Obscur."...

Mary did what was asked of her. Trelawny, now in England again, had influence in some literary quarters, and, at her request, willingly consented to exert it on Clare's behalf.

Meanwhile he requested her to receive his eldest daughter on a visit of considerable length.

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

_17th July 1832._

MY DEAR MARY--I am awaiting an occasion of sending ---- to Italy, my friend, Lady D., undertaking the charge of her.

It may be a month before she leaves England. At the end of this month Mrs. B. leaves London, and you will do me a great service if you will permit my daughter to reside with you till I can make the necessary arrangements for going abroad; she has been reared in a rough school, like her father. I wish her to live and do as you do, and that you will not put yourself to the slightest inconvenience on her account.

As we are poor, the rich are our inheritance, and we are justified on all and every occasion to rob and use them.

But we must be honest and just amongst ourselves, therefore ---- must to the last fraction pay her own expenses, and neither put you to expense nor inconvenience. For the rest, I should like ---- to learn to lean upon herself alone--to see the practical part of life: to learn housekeeping on trifling means, and to benefit by her intercourse with a woman like you; but I am ill at compliments.