The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 19

Il faut esperer qu'elle se changera pour son mieux quand il ne sera plus si froid; mais je crois toujours que c'est tres malheureux que Miss Clairmont oblige cette enfant de vivre a Venise, dont le climat est nuisible en tout au physique de la pet.i.te, et vraiment, pour ce que fera son pere, je le trouve un peu triste d'y sacrifier l'enfant.

My Lord continue de vivre dans une debauche affreuse qui tot ou tard le menera a sa ruine....

Quant a moi, je voudrois faire tout ce qui est en mon pouvoir pour cette enfant, que je voudrois bien volontiers rendre aussi heureuse que possible le temps qu'elle restera avec nous; car je crains qu'apres elle devra toujours vivre avec des etrangers, indifferents a son sort. My Lord bien certainement ne la rendra jamais plus a sa mere; ainsi il n'y a rien de bon a esperer pour cette chere pet.i.te.

This letter, if she saw it, may well have made Clare curse the day when she let Allegra go.

Still, after they returned to Rome at the beginning of March, a brighter time set in.

_Journal, Friday, March 5._--After pa.s.sing over the beautiful hills of Albano, and traversing the Campagna, we arrive at the Holy City again, and see the Coliseum again.

All that Athens ever brought forth wise, All that Afric ever brought forth strange, All that which Asia ever had of prize, Was here to see. Oh, marvellous great change!

Rome living was the world's sole ornament; And dead, is now the world's sole monument.

_Sunday, March 7._--Move to our lodgings. A rainy day. Visit the Coliseum. Read the Bible.

_Monday, March 8._--Visit the Museum of the Vatican. Read the Bible.

_Tuesday, March 9._--Sh.e.l.ley and I go to the Villa Borghese. Drive about Rome. Visit the Pantheon. Visit it again by moonlight, and see the yellow rays fall through the roof upon the floor of the temple.

Visit the Coliseum.

_Wednesday, March 10._--Visit the Capitol, and see the most divine statues.

Not one of the party but was revived and invigorated by the beauty and overpowering interest of the surrounding scenes, and the delight of a lovely Italian spring. To Sh.e.l.ley it was life itself.

"The charm of the Roman climate," says Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn before. And as he wandered among the ruins, made one with nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself."

The visionary drama of _Prometheus Unbound_, which had haunted, yet eluded him so long, suddenly took life and shape, and stood before him, a vivid reality. During his first month at Rome he completed it in its original three-act form. The fourth act was an afterthought, and was added at a later date.

For a short, enchanted time--his health renewed, the deadening years forgotten, his susceptibilities sharpened, not paralysed, by recent grief--he gave himself up to the vision of the realisation of his life-dream; the disappearance of evil from the earth.

"He believed," wrote Mary Sh.e.l.ley, "that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none.... That man should be so perfectionised as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on, was the image of one warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all, even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity. A victim full of fort.i.tude and hope, and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of good."

"This poem," he himself says, "was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowers, glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama."[34]

And while he wrought and wove the radiant web of his poem, Mary, excited to greatest enthusiasm by the treasures of sculpture at Rome, and infected by the atmosphere of art around her, took up again her favourite pursuit of drawing, which she had discontinued since going to Marlow, and worked at it many hours a day, sometimes all day. She was writing, too; a thoroughly congenial occupation, at once soothing and stimulating to her.

She studied the Bible, with the keen fresh interest of one who comes new to it, and she read Livy and Montaigne.

Little William was thriving, and growing more interesting every day. His beauty and promise and angelic sweetness made him the pet and darling of all who knew him, while to his parents he was a perpetual source of ever fresh and increasing delight. And his mother looked forward to the birth in autumn of another little one who might, in some measure, fill the place of her lost Clara.

Clare, who, also, was in better health, was not behindhand in energy or industry. Music was her favourite pursuit; she took singing-lessons from a good master and worked hard.

They led a somewhat less secluded life than at Naples, and at the house of Signora Dionizi, a Roman painter and auth.o.r.ess (described by Mary Sh.e.l.ley as "very old, very miserly, and very mean"), Mary and Clare, at any rate, saw a little of Italian society. For this, however, Sh.e.l.ley did not care, nor was he attracted by any of the few English with whom he came in contact. Yet he felt his solitude. In April, when the strain of his work was over, his spirits drooped, as usual; and he longed then for some _congenial distraction_, some human help to bear the burden of life till the moment of weakness should have pa.s.sed. But the fount of inspiration, the source of temporary elation and strength, had not been exhausted by _Prometheus_.

On the 22d of April Mary notes--

Visit the Palazzo Corunna, and see the picture of Beatrice Cenci.

The interest in the old idea was revived in him; he became engrossed in the subject, and soon after his "lyrical drama" was done, he transferred himself to this other, completely different work. There was no talk, now, of pa.s.sing it on to Mary, and indeed she may well have recoiled from the unmitigated horrors of the tale. But, though he dealt with it himself, Sh.e.l.ley still felt on unfamiliar ground, and, as he proceeded, he submitted what he wrote to Mary for her judgment and criticism; the only occasion on which he consulted her about any work of his during its progress towards completion.

Late in April they made the acquaintance of one English (or rather, Irish) lady, who will always be gratefully remembered in connection with the Sh.e.l.leys.

This was Miss Curran, a daughter of the late Irish orator, who had been a friend of G.o.dwin's, and to whose death Mary refers in one of her letters from Marlow.[35]

Mary may, perhaps, have met her in Skinner Street; in any case, the old a.s.sociation was one link between them, and another was afforded by similarity in their present interests and occupations. Mary was very keen about her drawing and painting. Miss Curran had taste, and some skill, and was vigorously prosecuting her art-studies in Rome. Portrait painting was her especial line, and each of the Sh.e.l.ley party, at different times, sat to her; so that during the month of May they met almost daily, and became well acquainted.

This new interest, together with the unwillingness to bring to an end a time at once so peaceful and so fruitful, caused them once and again to postpone their departure, originally fixed for the beginning of May. They stayed on longer than it is safe for English people to remain in Rome. Ah!

why could no presentiment warn them of impending calamity? Could they, like the Scottish witch in the ballad, have seen the fatal winding-sheet creeping and clinging ever higher and higher round the wraith of their doomed child, they would have fled from the face of Death. But they had no such foreboding.

Not a fortnight after his portrait had been taken by Miss Curran, William showed signs of illness. How it was that, knowing him to be so delicate,--having learned by bitterest experience the danger of southern heat to an English-born infant,--having, as early as April, suspected the Roman air of causing "weakness and depression, and even fever" to Sh.e.l.ley himself, how, after all this, they risked staying in Rome through May is hard to imagine.

They were to pay for their delay with the best part of their lives.

William sickened on the 25th, but had so far recovered by the 30th that his parents, though they saw they ought to leave Rome as soon as he was fit to travel, were in no immediate anxiety about him, and were making their summer plans quite in a leisurely way; Mary writing to ask Mrs.

Gisborne to help them with some domestic arrangements, begging her to inquire about houses at Lucca or the Baths of Pisa, and to engage a servant for her.

The journal for this and the following days runs--

_Sunday, May 30._--Read Livy, and _Persiles and Sigismunda_. Draw.

Spend the evening at Miss Curran's.

_Monday, May 31._--Read Livy, and _Persiles and Sigismunda_. Draw.

Walk in the evening.

_Tuesday, June 1._--Drawing lesson. Read Livy. Walk by the Tiber.

Spend the evening with Miss Curran.

_Wednesday, June 2._--See Mr. Vogel's pictures. William becomes very ill in the evening.

_Thursday, June 3._--William is very ill, but gets better towards the evening. Miss Curran calls.

Mary took this opportunity of begging her friend to write for her to Mrs.

Gisborne, telling her of the inevitable delay in their journey.

ROME, _Thursday, 3d June 1819_.

DEAR MRS. GISBORNE--Mary tells me to write for her, for she is very unwell, and also afflicted. Our poor little William is at present very ill, and it will be impossible to quit Rome so soon as we intended. She begs you, therefore, to forward the letters here, and still to look for a servant for her, as she certainly intends coming to Pisa. She will write to you a day or two before we set out.

William has a complaint of the stomach; but fortunately he is attended by Mr. Bell, who is reckoned even in London one of the first English surgeons.

I know you will be glad to hear that both Mary and Mr. Sh.e.l.ley would be well in health were it not for the dreadful anxiety they now suffer.

EMELIA CURRAN.

Two days after, Mary herself wrote a few lines to Mrs. Gisborne.

_5th June 1819._

William is in the greatest danger. We do not quite despair, yet we have the least possible reason to hope.