The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume Ii Part 22

If you will permit ---- to come to you, I will send or bring her to you about the 25th of this month. I should like you and ---- to know each other before she leaves England, and thus I have selected you to take charge of her in preference to any other person; but say if it chimes in with your wishes.

Adieu, dear Mary.--Your attached friend,

EDWARD TRELAWNY.

By the bye, tell me where the Sandgate coach starts from, its time of leaving London, and its time of arrival at Sandgate, and where you are, and if they will give you another bedroom in the house you are lodging in; and if you have any intention of leaving Sandgate soon.

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

_27th July 1832._

MY DEAR MARY--You told me in your letter that it would be more convenient for you to receive ---- on the last of the month, so I made my arrangements accordingly. I now find it will suit me better to come to you on Wednesday, so that you may expect ---- on the evening of that day by the coach you mention. I shall of course put up at the inn.

As to your style of lodging or living, ---- is not such a fool as to let that have any weight with her; if you were in a cobbler's stall she would be satisfied; and as to the dulness of the place, why, that must mainly depend on ourselves. Brompton is not so very gay, and the reason of my removing ---- to Italy is that Mrs. B. was about sending her to reside with strangers at Lincoln; besides ---- is acting entirely by her own free choice, and she gladly preferred Sandgate to Lincoln. At all events, come we shall; and if you, by barricading or otherwise, oppose our entrance, why I shall do to you, not as I would have others do unto me, but as I do unto others,--make an onslaught on your dwelling, carry your tenement by a.s.sault, and give the place up to plunder.

So on Wednesday evening (at 5, by your account) you must be prepared to quietly yield up possession or take the consequences. So as you shall deport yourself, you will find me your friend or foe,

TRELAWNY.

Mary's guest stayed with her over a month. During this time she was saddened by the sudden death of her friendly acquaintance, Lord Dillon.

She was anxious, too, about her father, whose equable spirits had failed him this year. No a.s.sistance seemed to avail much to ease his circ.u.mstances; he was not far from his eightieth year, and still his hopes were anch.o.r.ed in a yet-to-be-written novel.

"I feel myself able and willing to do everything, and to do it well,"

so he wrote, "and n.o.body disposed to give me the requisite encouragement. If I can agree with these tyrants" (his publishers) "for 300, 400, or 500 for a novel, and to be subsisted by them while I write it, I probably shall not starve for a twelvemonth to come ... but this dancing attendance wears my spirits and destroys my tranquillity. 'Hands have I, but I handle not; I have feet, but I walk not; neither is there any breath in my nostrils.'

"Meanwhile my life wears away, and 'there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither I go.' But, indeed, I am wrong in talking of that, for I write now, not for marble to be placed over my remains, but for bread to put into my mouth."

Mary tried in the summer to tempt him down to Sandgate for a change. But the weather was very cold, and he declined.

_28th August 1832._

DEAR MARY--

See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train-- Vapours, and clouds, and storms.

I am shivering over a little fire at the bottom of my grate, and have small inclination to tempt the sea-breezes and the waves; we must therefore defer our meeting till it comes within the walls of London.

_Au revoir!_ To what am I reserved? I know not.

The wide (no not) the unbounded prospect lies before me, But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.

A new shadow was now to fall upon the poor old man, in the death from cholera of his only son, Mary's half-brother, William. This son in his early youth had given some trouble and caused some anxiety, but his character, as he grew up, had become steadier and more settled. He was happily married, and seemed likely to be a source of real comfort and satisfaction to his parents in their old age. By profession he was a reporter, but he had his hereditary share of literary ability and of talent "turned for the relation of fict.i.tious adventures," and left in MS.

a novel called _Transfusion_, published by his father after his death, with the motto--

Some n.o.ble spirits, judging by themselves, May yet conjecture what I might have been.

Although inevitably somewhat hardened against misfortune of the heart by his self-centred habits of mind and anxiety about money, G.o.dwin was much saddened by this loss, and to Mrs. G.o.dwin it was a very great and bitter grief indeed.

Clare saw at once in this the beginning of fresh troubles; the realisation of all the gloomy forebodings in which she had indulged. She wrote to Jane Hogg--

That nasty year, 1832, could not go over without imitating in some respects 1822, and bringing death and misfortune to us. From the time it came in till it went out I trembled, expecting at every moment to hear the most gloomy tidings.

William's death came, and fulfilled my antic.i.p.ations; misfortune as it was, it was not such a heavy one to me as the loss of others might have been. I, however, was fond of him, because I did not view his faults in that desponding light which his other relations did. I have seen more of the world, and, comparing him with other young men, his frugality, his industry, his attachment to his wife, and his talents, raised him, in my opinion, considerably above the common par.

But in our family, if you cannot write an epic poem or novel that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature, not worth acknowledging. What would they have done or said had their children been fond of dress, fond of cards, drunken, profligate, as most people's children are?

To Mary she wrote in a somewhat different tone, a.s.suming that she, Clare, was the victim on whom all misfortune really fell, and wondering at Mary's incredible temerity in allowing her boy, that all-important heir-apparent, to face the perils of a public school.

And then, losing sight for a moment of her own feverish anxiety, she gives a vivid sketch of Mrs. Mason's family.

MISS CLAIRMONT TO MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

PISA, _26th October 1832_.

MY DEAR MARY--Though your last letter was on so melancholy a subject, yet I am so dest.i.tute of all happiness that to receive it was one to me.

I have not yet got over the shock of William's death; from the moment I heard of it until now I have been in a complete state of annihilation. How long it will last I am sure I cannot tell; I hope not much longer, or perhaps I shall go mad.

A horrible and most inevitable future is the image that torments me, just as it did ten years ago, in this very city. But I won't torment you, who have a thousand enjoyments that veil it from you, and need not feel the blow till it comes. Our fates were always different; mine is to feel the shadow of coming misfortunes, and to sicken beneath it.

There seems to have been great imprudence on William's part: my Mother says he went to Bartholomew Fair the day before he was taken ill; then he did not have medical a.s.sistance so soon as ill, which they say is of the highest importance in the cholera, so altogether I suppose his life was thrown away--a most lucky circ.u.mstance for himself, but G.o.d knows what it will be for the G.o.dwins.

His death changed my plans. I had settled to go to Vienna, but as the cholera is still there, I no longer considered myself free to offer another of my Mother's children to be its victim. Mrs. Mason represented the imprudence of it, considering my weak health, the depressed state of my spirits for the last twelve years, the fatigue of the long journey, and the chilliness of the season of the year, which are all things that predispose excessively to the disease, and I yielded out of regard to my Mother. I thought she would prefer anything to my dying, or else at Vienna, Charles tells me, I could earn more than I am likely to earn here. For the same reason Paris was abandoned. I beg you will tell her this, and hope she will think I have done well.

In the meantime I stay with Mrs. Mason, and have got an engagement as day governess with an English family, which will supply me with money for my own expenses, but nothing more. In the spring they wish to take me entirely, but the pay is not brilliant. When I know more about them I will tell you. Nothing can equal Mrs. Mason's kindness to me. Hers is the only house, except my Mother's, in which all my life I have always felt at home. With her, I am as her child; from the merest trifle to the greatest object, she treats me as if her happiness depended on mine. Then she understands me so completely. I have no need to disguise my sentiments; to barricade myself up in silence, as I do almost with everybody, for fear they should see what pa.s.ses in my mind, and hate me for it, because it does not resemble what pa.s.ses in theirs. This ought to be a great happiness to me, and would, did not her unhappiness and her precarious state of health darken it with the torture of fear. It is too bitter, after a long life pa.s.sed in unbroken misery, to find a good only that you may lose it.

Laurette's marriage is to take place at the end of November. Mrs.

Mason having tried every means to hinder it, and seeing that she cannot, is now impatient it should be over. Their present state is too painful. She cannot disguise her dislike of Galloni; he having nearly killed her with his scenes, and Laurette cannot sympathise with her; being on the point of marrying him, and feeling grateful for his excessive attachment, she wishes to think as well of him as she can.

It is the first time the mother and daughter have ever divided in opinion, and galls both in a way that seems unreasonable to those who live in the world, and are accustomed to meet rebuffs in their dearest feelings at every moment. But our friends live in solitude, and have nursed themselves into a height of romance about everything. They both think their destinies annihilated, because the union of their minds has suffered this interruption. However, no violence mingles with this sentiment and excites displeasure; on the contrary, I wish it did, for it would be easier to heal than the tragic immutable sorrow with which they take it.

While these two dissolve in quiet grief, Nerina, the Italian, agitates herself on the question; she forgets all her own love affairs, and all the sabre slashes and dagger stabs of her own poor heart, to fall into fainting fits and convulsions every time she sees Laurette and her mother fix their eyes mournfully upon each other; then she talks and writes upon the subject incessantly, even till 3 o'clock in the morning. She has a band of young friends of both s.e.xes, and with them, either by word of mouth or by letter, she _sfogares_ herself of her hatred of Galloni, of the unparalleled cruelty of Laurette's fate, and of the terrific grave that is yawning for her mother; her mind is discursive, and she introduces into her lamentations observations upon the faulty manner in which she and her sister have been educated, strictures upon the nature of love, objurgations against the whole race of man, and eloquent appeals to the female s.e.x to prefer patriotism to matrimony.

All the life that is left in the house is now concentrated in Nerina, and I am sure she cannot complain of a dearth of sensations, for she takes good care to feel with everything around her, for if the chair does but knock the table, she shudders and quakes for both, and runs into her own study to write it down in her journal. Into this small study she always hurries me, and pours out her soul, and I am well pleased to listen, for she is full of genius; when the tide has flowed so long, it has spent itself, we generally pause, and then begin to laugh at the ridiculous figures human beings cut in struggling all their might and main against a destiny which forces millions and millions of enormous planets on their way, and against which all struggling is useless.

_8th November._

My letter has been lying by all this time, I not having time to write.

I am afraid this winter I shall scarcely be able to keep up a correspondence at all. I must be out at 9 in the morning, and am not home before 10 at night. I inhabit at Mrs. Mason's a room without a fire, so that when I get home there is no sitting in it without perishing with cold. I cannot sit with the Masons, because they have a set of young men every night to see them, and I do not wish to make their acquaintance. I walk straight into my own room on my return.

Writing either letters or articles will be a matter of great difficulty. The season is very cold here. My health always diminishes in proportion to the cold.

I am very glad to hear that Percy likes Harrow, but I shudder from head to foot when I think of your boldness in sending him there. I think in certain things you are the most daring woman I ever knew.

There are few mothers who, having suffered the misfortunes you have, and having such advantages depending upon the life of an only son, would venture to expose that life to the dangers of a public school.

As for me, it is not for nothing that my fate has been taken out of my own hands and put into those of people who have wantonly torn it into miserable shreds and remnants; having once endured to have my whole happiness sacrificed to the gratification of some of their foolish whims, why I can endure it again, and so my mind is made up and my resolution taken. I confess, I could wish there were another world in which people were to answer for what they do in this! I wish this, because without it I am afraid it will become a law that those who inflict must always go on inflicting, and those who have once suffered must always go on suffering.

I hope nothing will happen to Percy; but the year, the school itself that you have chosen, and the ashes[13] that lie near it, and the hauntings of my own mind, all seem to announce the approach of that consummation which I dread.