The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume Ii Part 23

I am very glad you are delighted with Trelawny. My affections are entirely without jealousy; the more those I love love others, and are loved by them, the better pleased am I. I am in a vile humour for writing a letter; you would not wonder at it if you knew how I am plagued. I can say from experience that the wonderful variety there is of miseries in this world is truly astonishing; if some Linnaeus would cla.s.s them as he did flowers, the number of their kinds would far surpa.s.s the boasted infinitude of the vegetable creation. Not a day nor hour pa.s.ses but introduces me to some new pain, and each one contains within itself swarms of smaller ones--animalculae pains which float up and down in it, and compose its existence and their own. What Mademoiselle de L'Espina.s.se was for love, I am for pain,--all my letters are on the same subject, and yet I hope I do not repeat myself, for truly, with such diversity of experience, I ought not.

Our friends here send their best love to you, and are interested in your perilous destiny. I have just received a letter from my Mother, and in obedience to her representations draw my breath as peacefully as I can till the month of January. Will you explain to me one phrase of her letter? Talking of the chances of their getting money, she says: "Then Miss Northcote is not expected to live over the winter,"

and not a word beside. Who in the world is Miss Northcote? and what influence can her death have in bettering their prospects?

Notwithstanding my writing such a beastly letter as this to you, pray do write. I work myself into the most dreadful state of irritation when I am long without letters from some of you. Tell Jane I entreat her to write, and tell my Mother that the bill of lading of the parcel for me is come, but Mrs. Mason sent it off to Leghorn without my seeing it, and was too ill herself to look at the date, so I know not when it was shipped, but as Mr. Routh has the bill, I suppose I shall hear when it has arrived and performed quarantine.

Thank Trelawny for me for his kindness about the article. Pisa is very dull yet. I am told there are seven or eight English families arrived, but I have not seen them.

Farewell, my dear Mary. Be well and happy, and excuse my dulness.--Yours ever affectionately,

C. CLAIRMONT.

One term's experience was enough to convince Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley that she could only afford to continue her son's school education by leaving London herself and settling with him at Harrow for some years.

In January 1833 she wrote an account of her affairs to her old friend, Mrs. Gisborne--

Never was poor body so worried as I have been ever since I last wrote, I think; worries which plague and press on one, and keep one fretting.

Money, of course, is the Alpha and Omega of my tale. Harrow proves so fearfully expensive that I have been sadly put to it to pay Percy's bill for one quarter (60, _soltanto_), and, to achieve it, am hampered for the whole year. My only resource is to live at Harrow, for in every other respect I like the school, and would not take him from it. He will become a home boarder, and school expenses will be very light. I shall take a house, being promised many facilities for furnishing it by a kind friend.

To go and live at pretty Harrow, with my boy, who improves each day and is everything I could wish, is no bad prospect, but I have much to go through, and am so poor that I can hardly turn myself. It is hard on my poor dear Father, and I sometimes think it hard on myself to leave a knot of acquaintances I like; but that is a fiction, for half the times I am asked out I cannot go because of the expense, and I am suffering now for the times when I do go, and so incur debt.

No, Maria mine, G.o.d never intended me to do other than struggle through life, supported by such blessings as make existence more than tolerable, and yet surrounded by such difficulties as make fort.i.tude a necessary virtue, and destroy all idea of great and good luck. I might have been much worse off, and I repeat this to myself ten thousand times a day to console myself for not being better.

My Father's novel is printed, and, I suppose, will come out soon. Poor dear fellow! It is hard work for him.

I am in all the tremor of fearing what I shall get for my novel, which is nearly finished. His and my comfort depend on it. I do not know whether you will like it. I cannot guess whether it will succeed.

There is no writhing interest; nothing wonderful nor tragic--will it be dull? _Chi lo sa?_ We shall see. I shall, of course, be very glad if it succeeds.

Percy went back to Harrow to-day. He likes his school much. Have I any other news for you? Trelawny is gone to America; he is about to cross to Charlestown directly there is a prospect of war--war in America. I am truly sorry. Brothers should not fight for the different and various portions of their inheritance. What is the use of republican principles and liberty if peace is not the offspring? War is the companion and friend of monarchy; if it be the same of freedom, the gain is not much to mankind between a sovereign and president.

Not long after taking up her residence at Harrow, which she did in April 1833, Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley was attacked by influenza, then prevailing in a virulent form. She did not wholly recover from its effects till after the Midsummer holidays, which she spent at Putney for change of air. She found the solitude of her new abode very trying. Her boy had, of course, his school pursuits and interests to occupy him, and, though her literary work served while it lasted to ward off depression, the constant mental strain was attended with an inevitable degree of reaction for which a little genial and sympathetic human intercourse would have been the best--indeed, the only--cure.

As for her father, now she had gone he missed her sadly.

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

_July 1833._

DEAR MARY--I shall certainly not come to you on Monday. It would do neither of us good. I am a good deal of a spoiled child. And were I not so, and could rouse myself, like Diogenes, to be independent of all outward comforts, you would treat me as if I could not, so that it would come to the same thing.

What a while it is since I saw you! The last time was the 10th of May,--towards two months,--we who used to see each other two or three times a week! But for the scale of miles at the bottom of the map, you might as well be at Timbuctoo or in the deserts of Arabia.

Oh, this vile Harrow! Your illness, for its commencement or duration, is owing to that place. At one time I was seriously alarmed for you.

And now that I hope you are better, with what tenaciousness does it cling to you! If I ever see you again I wonder whether I shall know you. I am much tormented by my place, by my book, and hardly suppose I shall ever be tranquil again.

I am disposed to adopt the song of Simeon, and to say, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!" At seventy years of age, what is there worth living for? I have enjoyed existence, been active, strenuous, proud, but my eyes are dim, and my energies forsake me.--Your affectionate Father,

WILLIAM G.o.dWIN.

The next letter is addressed to Trelawny, now in America,

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

HARROW, _7th May 1834_.

DEAR TRELAWNY--I confess I have been sadly remiss in not writing to you. I have written once, however, as you have written once (but once) to me. I wrote in answer to your letter. I am sorry you did not get it, as it contained a great deal of gossip. It was misdirected by a mistake of Jane's.... It was sent at the end of last September to New York. I told you in it of the infidelity of several of your womankind,--how Mrs. R. S. was flirting with Bulwer, to the infinite jealousy of Mrs. Bulwer, and making themselves the talk of the town.... Such and much t.i.ttle-tattle was in that letter, all old news now.... The S.'s (Captain Robert and wife, I mean) went to Paris and were ruined, and are returned under a cloud to rusticate in the country in England.

Bulwer is making the amiable to his own wife, who is worth in beauty all the Mrs. R. S.'s in the world....

Jane has been a good deal indisposed, and has grown very thin. Jeff had an appointment which took him away for several months, and she pined and grew ill on his absence; she is now reviving under the beneficent influence of his presence.

I called on your mother a week or two ago; she always asks after you with _empress.e.m.e.nt_, and is very civil indeed to me. She was looking well, but ---- tells me, in her note enclosing your letter, that she is ill of the same illness as she had two years ago, but not so bad. I think she lives too well.

---- is expecting to be confined in a very few weeks, or even days.

She is very happy with B.... He is a thoroughly good-natured and estimable man; it is a pity he is not younger and handsomer; however, she is a good girl, and contented with her lot; we are very good friends.... I should like much to see your friend, Lady Dorothea, but, though in Europe, I am very far from her. I live on my hill, descending to town now and then. I should go oftener if I were richer.

Percy continues quite well, and enjoys my living at Harrow, which is more than I do, I am sorry to say, but there is no help.

My Father is in good health. Mrs. G.o.dwin has been very ill lately, but is now better.

I thought f.a.n.n.y Kemble was to marry and settle in America: what a singular likeness you have discovered! I never saw her, except on the stage.

So much for news. They say it is a long lane that has no turning. I have travelled the same road for nearly twelve years; adversity, poverty, and loneliness being my companions. I suppose it will change at last, but I have nothing to tell of myself except that Percy is well, which is the beginning and end of my existence.

I am glad you are beginning to respect women's feelings.... You have heard of Sir H.'s death. Mrs. B. (who is great friends with S., now Sir William, an M.P.) says that it is believed that he has left all he could to the Catholic members of his family. Why not come over and marry Let.i.tia, who in consequence will be rich? and, I daresay, still beautiful in your eyes, though thirty-four.

We have had a mild, fine winter, and the weather now is as warm, sunny, and cheering as an Italian May. We have thousands of birds and flowers innumerable, and the trees of spring in the fields.

Jane's children are well. The time will come, I suppose, when we may meet again more (richly) provided by fortune, but youth will have flown, and that in a woman is something....

I have always felt certain that I should never again change my name, and that is a comfort, it is a pretty and a dear one. Adieu, write to me often, and I will behave better, and as soon as I have acc.u.mulated a little news, write again.--Ever yours,

M. W. S.

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

_17th July 1834._

I am satisfied with my plan as regards him (Percy). I like the school, and the affection thus cultivated for me will, I trust, be the blessing of my life.

Still there are many drawbacks; this is a dull, inhospitable place. I came counting on the kindness of a friend who lived here, but she died of the influenza, and I live in a silence and loneliness not possible anywhere except in England, where people are so _islanded_ individually in habits; I often languish for sympathy, and pine for social festivity.

Percy is much, but I think of you and Henry, and shrink from binding up my life in a child who may hereafter divide his fate from mine. But I have no resource; everything earthly fails me but him; except on his account I live but to suffer. Those I loved are false or dead; those I love, absent and suffering; and I, absent and poor, can be of no use to them. Of course, in this picture, I subtract the enjoyment of good health and usually good spirits,--these are blessings; but when driven to think, I feel so desolate, so unprotected, so oppressed and injured, that my heart is ready to break with despair. I came here, as I said, in April 1833, and 9th June was attacked by the influenza, so as to be confined to my bed; nor did I recover the effects for several months.

In September, during Percy's holidays, I went to Putney, and recovered youth and health; Julia Robinson was with me, and we spent days in Richmond Park and on Putney Heath, often walking twelve or fourteen miles, which I did without any sense of fatigue. I sorely regretted returning here. I am too poor to furnish. I have lodgings in the town,--disagreeable ones,--yet often, in spite of care and sorrow, I feel wholly compensated by my boy.... G.o.d help me if anything was to happen to him--I should not survive it a week. Besides his society I have also a good deal of occupation.