The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume Ii Part 27

Little does Jefferson, how little does any one, know me! When Clarke's edition of _Queen Mab_ came to us at the Baths of Pisa, Sh.e.l.ley expressed great pleasure that these verses were omitted. This recollection caused me to do the same. It was to do him honour. What could it be to me? There are other verses I should well like to obliterate for ever, but they will be printed; and any to her could in no way tend to my discomfort, or gratify one ungenerous feeling. They shall be restored, though I do not feel easy as to the good I do Sh.e.l.ley. I may have been mistaken. Jefferson might mistake me and be angry; that were nothing. He has done far more, and done his best to give another poke to the poisonous dagger which has long rankled in my heart. I cannot forgive any man that insults any woman. She cannot call him out,--she disdains words of retort; she must endure, but it is never to be forgiven; not, "indeed, cherished as matter of enmity"--that I never feel,--but of caution to s.h.i.+eld oneself from the like again.

In so arduous a task, others might ask for encouragement and kindness from their friends,--I know mine better. I am unstable, sometimes melancholy, and have been called on some occasions imperious; but I never did an ungenerous act in my life. I sympathise warmly with others, and have wasted my heart in their love and service.

All this together is making me feel very ill, and my holiday at Woodlay only did me good while it lasted.

_March._ ... Illness did ensue. What an illness! driving me to the verge of insanity. Often I felt the cord would snap, and I should no longer be able to rule my thoughts; with fearful struggles, miserable relapses, after long repose I became somewhat better.

_October 5, 1839._--Twice in my life I have believed myself to be dying, and my soul being alive, though the bodily functions were faint and peris.h.i.+ng, I had opportunity to look Death in the face, and I did not fear it--far from it. My feelings, especially in the first and most perilous instance, was, I go to no new creation. I enter under no new laws. The G.o.d that made this beautiful world (and I was then at Lerici, surrounded by the most beautiful manifestation of the visible creation) made that into which I go; as there is beauty and love here, such is there, and I feel as if my spirit would when it left my frame be received and sustained by a beneficent and gentle Power.

I had no fear, rather, though I had no active wish but a pa.s.sive satisfaction in death. Whether the nature of my illness--debility from loss of blood, without pain--caused this tranquillity of soul, I cannot tell; but so it was, and it had this blessed effect, that I have never since antic.i.p.ated death with terror, and even if a violent death (which is the most repugnant to human nature) menaced me, I think I could, after the first shock, turn to the memory of that hour, and renew its emotion of perfect resignation.

The darkest moment is that which precedes the dawn. These unhappy years were like the series of "clearing showers" which often concludes a stormy day. The clouds were lifting, and though Mary Sh.e.l.ley could never be other than what sorrow and endurance had made her, the remaining years of her life were to bring alleviations to her lot,--slanting rays of afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, powerless, indeed, to warm into life the tender buds of morning, but which illumined the landscape and lightened her path, and shed over her a mild radiance which she reflected back on others, affording to them the brightness she herself could know no more, and diffusing around her that sensation of peace which she was to know now, perhaps, for the first time.

CHAPTER XXIV

OCTOBER 1839-FEBRUARY 1851

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's annotated edition of Sh.e.l.ley's works was completed by the appearance, in 1840, of the collected prose writings; along with which was republished the _Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour_ (a joint composition) and her own two letters from Geneva, reprinted in the present work.

Mary's correspondence with Carlyle on the subject of a motto for her book was the occasion of the following note--

5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, _3d December 1839_.

DEAR MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY--There does some indistinct remembrance of a sentence like the one you mention hover in my head; but I cannot anywhere lay hand on it. Indeed, I rather think it was to this effect: "Treat men as what they should be, and you help to make them so."

Further, is it not rather one of Wilhelm's kind speeches than of the Uncle's or the Fair Saint's? James Fraser shall this day send you a copy of the work; you, with your own clear eyes, shall look for yourself.

I have no horse now; the mud forced me to send it into the country till dry weather came again. Layton House is so much the farther off.

_Tant pis pour moi._--Yours always truly,

T. CARLYLE.

The words ultimately prefixed to the collection are the following, from Carlyle--

That thou, O my Brother, impart to me truly how it stands with thee in that inner heart of thine; what lively images of things past thy memory has painted there; what hopes, what thoughts, affections, knowledge, do now dwell there. For this and no other object that I can see was the gift of hearing and speech bestowed on us two.

The proceeds of this work were such as to set her for some time at comparative ease on the score of money; the G.o.dwin quicksand was no longer there to engulf them.

_Journal, June 1, 1840_ (Brighton).--I must mark this evening, tired as I am, for it is one among few--soothing and balmy. Long oppressed by care, disappointment, and ill health, which all combined to depress and irritate me, I felt almost to have lost the spring of happy reverie. On such a night it returns--the calm sea, the soft breeze, the silver bow new bent in the western heaven--Nature in her sweetest mood, raised one's thoughts to G.o.d and imparted peace.

Indeed I have many, many blessings, and ought to be grateful, as I am, though the poison lurks among them; for it is my strange fate that all my friends are sufferers--ill health or adversity bears heavily on them, and I can do little good, and lately ill health and extreme depression have even marred the little I could do. If I could restore health, administer balm to the wounded heart, and banish care from those I love, I were in myself happy, while I am loved, and Percy continues the blessing that he is. Still, who on such a night must not feel the weight of sorrow lessened? For myself, I repose in gentle and grateful reverie, and hope for others. I am content for myself. Years have--how much!--cooled the ardent and swift spirit that at such hours bore me freely along. Yet, though I no longer soar, I repose. Though I no longer deem all things attainable, I enjoy what is; and while I feel that whatever I have lost of youth and hope, I have acquired the enduring affection of a n.o.ble heart, and Percy shows such excellent dispositions that I feel that I am much the gainer in life.

Fate does indeed visit some too heavily--poor R. for instance, G.o.d restore him! G.o.d and good angels guard us! surely this world, stored outwardly with shapes and influences of beauty and good, is peopled in its intellectual life by myriads of loving spirits that mould our thoughts to good, influence beneficially the course of events, and minister to the destiny of man. Whether the beloved dead make a portion of this company I dare not guess, but that such exist I feel--far off, when we are worldly, evil, selfish; drawing near and imparting joy and sympathy when we rise to n.o.ble thoughts and disinterested action. Such surely gather round one on such an evening, and make part of that atmosphere of love, so hushed, so soft, on which the soul reposes and is blest.

These serene lines were written by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley within a few days of leaving England on the first of those tours described by her in the series of letters published as _Rambles in Germany and Italy_. It had been arranged that her son and two college friends, both of whom, like him, were studying for their degree, should go abroad for the Long Vacation, and that Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley should form one of the reading party. Paris was to be the general rendezvous. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, who was staying at Brighton, intended travelling _via_ Dieppe, but her health was so far from strong that she shrank from the long crossing, and started from Dover instead.

She was now accompanied by a lady's-maid, a circ.u.mstance which relieved her from some of the fatigue incidental to a journey. They travelled by diligence; a new experience to her, as, in her former wanderings with Sh.e.l.ley, they had had their own carriage (save indeed on the first tour of all, when they set off to walk through France with a donkey); and in more recent years she had travelled, in England, by the newly-introduced railroads--

"To which, whatever their faults may be, I feel eternally grateful,"

she says; adding afterwards, "a pleasant day it will be when there is one from Calais to Paris."

So recent a time, and yet how remote it seems! Mary had never been a good traveller, but she found now, to her surprise and satisfaction, that in spite of her nervous suffering she was better able than formerly to stand the fatigue of a journey. She had painful sensations, but

the fatigue I endured seemed to take away weariness instead of occasioning it. I felt light of limb and in good spirits. On the sh.o.r.es of France I shook the dust of acc.u.mulated cares from off me: I forgot disappointment and banished sorrow: weariness of body replaced beneficially weariness of soul--so much heavier, so much harder to bear.

Change, in short, did her more good than travelling did her harm.

"I feel a good deal of the gipsy coming upon me," she wrote a few days later, "now that I am leaving Paris. I bid adieu to all acquaintances, and set out to wander in new lands, surrounded by companions fresh to the world, unacquainted with its sorrows, and who enjoy with zest every pa.s.sing amus.e.m.e.nt. I myself, apt to be too serious, but easily awakened to sympathy, forget the past and the future, and am ready to be amused by all I see as much or even more than they."

From Paris they journeyed to Metz and Treves, down the Moselle and the Rhine, by Schaffhausen and Zurich, over the Splugen Pa.s.s to Cadenabbia on the Lake of Como. Here they established themselves for two months. Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley occupied herself in the study of Italian literature, while the young men were busy with their Cambridge work. Her son's friends were devoted to her, and no wonder. Indeed, her amiability and sweetness, her enjoyment of travelling, her wide culture and great store of knowledge, her acuteness of observation, and the keen interest she took in all she saw, must have made her a most fascinating companion. On leaving Como they visited Milan, and, on their way home, pa.s.sing through Genoa, Mary looked again on the Villa Diodati, and the little Maison Chapuis nestling below, where she had begun to write _Frankenstein_. All unaltered; but in her, what a change! Sh.e.l.ley, Byron, the blue-eyed William, where were they?

Where was f.a.n.n.y, whose long letters had kept them informed of English affairs? Mary herself, and Clare, were they the same people as the two girls, one fair, one dark, who had excited so much idle and impertinent speculation in the tourists from whose curiosity Byron had fled?

But where are the snows of yester-year?

In autumn Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley and her son returned to England; but the next year they again went abroad, and this time for a longer sojourn.

They were now better off than they had ever been, for, after Percy had attained his majority and taken his degree, his grandfather made him an allowance of 400 a year; a free gift, not subject to the condition of repayment. This welcome relief from care came not a day too soon. Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley's strength was much shaken, her attacks of nervous illness were more frequent, and, had she had to resume her life of unvaried toil, the results might have been serious.

It is probably to this event that Mrs. Norton refers in the following note of congratulation--

MRS. NORTON TO MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

DEAR MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY--I cannot tell you how sincerely glad I was to get a note so cheerful, and cheerful on such good grounds as your last. I hope it is the _dawn_, that your day of struggling is over, and nothing to come but gradually increasing comfort. With tolerable prudence, and abroad, I should hope Percy would find his allowance quite sufficient, and I think it will be a relief that may lift your mind and do your health good to see him properly provided for.

I am too ill to leave the sofa or I should (by rights) be at Lord Palmerston's this evening, but, when I see any one likely to support the very modest request made to Lord P., I will speak about it to them; I have little doubt that, since they are not asked for a paid attaches.h.i.+p, you will succeed.

... In three weeks I am to set up the magnificence of a "one 'orse chay" myself, and then Fulham and the various streets of London where friends and foes live will become attainable; at present I have never stirred over the threshold since I came up from Brighton.--Ever yours very truly,

CAR. NORTON.

They began their second tour by a residence at Kissingen, where Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley had been advised to take the waters for her health. The "Cur" over (by which she benefited a good deal), they proceeded to Gotha, Weimar, Leipzig, Berlin, and Dresden--all perfectly new ground to Mary. Dresden and its treasures of art were a delight to her, only marred by the overwhelming heat of the summer.

Through Saxon Switzerland they travelled to Prague, and Mary was roused to enthusiasm by the intense romantic interest of the Bohemian capital, as she was afterwards by the magnificent scenery of the approach to Linz (of which she gives in her letters a vivid description), and of Salzburg and the Salzkammergut.

Through the Tyrol, over the Brenner Pa.s.s, by the Lake of Garda, they came to Verona, and finally to Venice--another place fraught to Mary with a.s.sociations unspeakable.

Many a scene which I have since visited and admired has faded in my mind, as a painting in a diorama melts away, and another struggles into the changing canva.s.s; but this road was as distinct in my mind as if traversed yesterday. I will not here dwell on the sad circ.u.mstances that clouded my first visit to Venice. Death hovered over the scene.

Gathered into myself, with my "mind's eye" I saw those before me long departed, and I was agitated again by emotions, by pa.s.sions--and those the deepest a woman's heart can harbour--a dread to see her child even at that instant expire, which then occupied me. It is a strange, but, to any person who has suffered, a familiar circ.u.mstance, that those who are enduring mental or corporeal agony are strangely alive to immediate external objects, and their imagination even exercises its wild power over them.... I have experienced it; and the particular shape of a room, the progress of shadows on a wall, the peculiar flickering of trees, the exact succession of objects on a journey, have been indelibly engraved in my memory, as marked in and a.s.sociated with hours and minutes when the nerves were strung to their utmost tension by endurance of pain, or the far severer infliction of mental anguish. Thus the banks of the Brenta presented to me a moving scene; not a palace, not a tree of which I did not recognise, as marked and recorded, at a moment when life and death hung upon our speedy arrival at Venice.

And at Fusina, as then, I now beheld the domes and towers of the Queen of Ocean arise from the waves with a majesty unrivalled upon earth.

They spent the winter at Florence, and by April were in Rome. This indeed was the Holy Land of Mary Sh.e.l.ley's pilgrimage. There was the spot where William lay; there the tomb which held the heart of Sh.e.l.ley. Mary may well have felt as if standing by her own graveside. Was not her heart of hearts buried with them? And there, too, was the empty grave where now Trelawny lies; the touching witness to that undying devotion of his to Sh.e.l.ley's memory which Mary never forgot.

None of this is touched upon--it could not be--in the published letters.