by Robert Reed
orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have cost neither
my imagination nor understanding an effort .
My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification
of the power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of
man’s life . With regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance .
My father was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to
prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his
bark of life to be impelled by these winds, without adding reason
as the rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage . His extrac-
tion was obscure; but circumstances brought him early into public
notice, and his small paternal property was soon dissipated in the
splendid scene of fashion and luxury in which he was an actor . Dur-
ing the short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-
bred triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sovereign, who
escaped from the intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of kingly
business, to find never-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit
in his society . My father’s impulses, never under his own controul,
perpetually led him into difficulties from which his ingenuity alone
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 823
could extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour
and of trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was sup-
ported by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his
company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies of the rich,
that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself received
with intoxicating flattery.
This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and the
difficulties of every kind with which he had to contend, increased
in a frightful ratio compared with his small means of extricating
himself . At such times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would
come to his relief, and then kindly take his friend to task; my father
gave the best promises for amendment, but his social disposition, his
craving for the usual diet of admiration, and more than all, the fiend
of gambling, which fully possessed him, made his good resolutions
transient, his promises vain . With the quick sensibility peculiar to
his temperament, he perceived his power in the brilliant circle to be
on the wane . The king married; and the haughty princess of Austria,
who became, as queen of England, the head of fashion, looked with
harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her
royal husband entertained for him . My father felt that his fall was
near; but so far from profiting by this last calm before the storm to
save himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making still
greater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter
of his destiny .
The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but easily led,
had now become a willing disciple of his imperious consort . He was
induced to look with extreme disapprobation, and at last with dis-
taste, on my father’s imprudence and follies . It is true that his pres-
ence dissipated these clouds; his warm-hearted frankness, brilliant
sallies, and confiding demeanour were irresistible: it was only when
at a distance, while still renewed tales of his errors were poured
into his royal friend’s ear, that he lost his influence. The queen’s
dextrous management was employed to prolong these absences, and
gather together accusations . At length the king was brought to see
in him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing that he should pay
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 824
for the short-lived pleasure of his society by tedious homilies, and
more painful narrations of excesses, the truth of which he could not
disprove . The result was, that he would make one more attempt to
reclaim him, and in case of ill success, cast him off for ever .
Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and high-
wrought passion . A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness which
had heretofore made him meek, and now lofty in his admonitions,
with alternate entreaty and reproof, besought his friend to attend to
his real interests, resolutely to avoid those fascinations which in fact
were fast deserting him, and to spend his great powers on a worthy
field, in which he, his sovereign, would be his prop, his stay, and
his pioneer . My father felt this kindness; for a moment ambitious
dreams floated before him; and he thought that it would be well
to exchange his present pursuits for nobler duties . With sincerity
and fervour he gave the required promise: as a pledge of continued
favour, he received from his royal master a sum of money to defray
pressing debts, and enable him to enter under good auspices his new
career . That very night, while yet full of gratitude and good resolves,
this whole sum, and its amount doubled, was lost at the gaming-
table. In his desire to repair his first losses, my father risked double
stakes, and thus incurred a debt of honour he was wholly unable to
pay . Ashamed to apply again to the king, he turned his back upon
London, its false delights and clinging miseries; and, with poverty
for his sole companion, buried himself in solitude among the hills
and lakes of Cumberland . His wit, his bon mots, the record of his
personal attractions, fascinating manners, and social talents, were
long remembered and repeated from mouth to mouth . Ask where
now was this favourite of fashion, this companion of the noble, this
excelling beam, which gilt with alien splendour the assemblies of
the courtly and the gay—you heard that he was under a cloud, a lost
man; not one thought it belonged to him to repay pleasure by real
services, or that his long reign of brilliant wit deserved a pension
on retiring . The king lamented his absence; he loved to repeat his
sayings, relate the adventures they had had together, and exalt his
talents—but here ended his reminiscence .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 825
Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget . He repined for
the loss of what was more necessary to him than air or food—the
excitements of pleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious
and polished living of the great . A nervous fever was the conse-
quence; during which he was nursed by the daughter of a poor
cottager, under whose roof he lodged . She was lovely, gentle, and,
above all, kind to him; nor can it afford astonishment, that the late
idol of high-bred beauty should, even in a fallen state, appear a be-
ing of an elevated and wondrous nature to the lowly cottage-girl .
The attachment between them led to the ill-fated marriage, of which
I was the offspring . Notwithstanding the tenderness and sweetness
of my mother, her husband still deplored his degraded state . Unac-
customed to industry, he knew not in what way to contribute to the
support of his increasing family . Sometimes he thought of applying
to the king; pride and shame for a while withheld him; and, before
his necessities becam
e so imperious as to compel him to some kind
of exertion, he died . For one brief interval before this catastrophe,
he looked forward to the future, and contemplated with anguish the
desolate situation in which his wife and children would be left . His
last effort was a letter to the king, full of touching eloquence, and of
occasional flashes of that brilliant spirit which was an integral part
of him . He bequeathed his widow and orphans to the friendship of
his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by this means, their prosper-
ity was better assured in his death than in his life . This letter was
enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did not doubt, would
perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the king’s
own hand .
He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately
by his creditors . My mother, pennyless and burthened with two
children, waited week after week, and month after month, in sicken-
ing expectation of a reply, which never came . She had no experi-
ence beyond her father’s cottage; and the mansion of the lord of
the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive .
During my father’s life, she had been made familiar with the name
of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according with
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 826
her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who gave
substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical . If, under any
circumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage to ad-
dress the noble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of
his own application caused her to banish the idea . She saw therefore
no escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the
loss of the wondrous being, whom she continued to contemplate
with ardent admiration, hard labour, and naturally delicate health,
at length released her from the sad continuity of want and misery .
The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate . Her
own father had been an emigrant from another part of the country,
and had died long since: they had no one relation to take them by the
hand; they were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to whom the
most scanty pittance was a matter of favour, and who were treated
merely as children of peasants, yet poorer than the poorest, who, dy-
ing, had left them, a thankless bequest, to the close-handed charity
of the land .
I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother died. A
remembrance of the discourses of my parents, and the communica-
tions which my mother endeavoured to impress upon me concerning
my father’s friends, in slight hope that I might one day derive benefit
from the knowledge, floated like an indistinct dream through my
brain . I conceived that I was different and superior to my protectors
and companions, but I knew not how or wherefore . The sense of
injury, associated with the name of king and noble, clung to me; but
I could draw no conclusions from such feelings, to serve as a guide
to action. My first real knowledge of myself was as an unprotected
orphan among the valleys and fells of Cumberland . I was in the
service of a farmer; and with crook in hand, my dog at my side,
I shepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I cannot say
much in praise of such a life; and its pains far exceeded its pleasures .
There was freedom in it, a companionship with nature, and a reck-
less loneliness; but these, romantic as they were, did not accord with
the love of action and desire of human sympathy, characteristic of
youth. Neither the care of my flock, nor the change of seasons, were
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 827
sufficient to tame my eager spirit; my out-door life and unemployed
time were the temptations that led me early into lawless habits . I
associated with others friendless like myself; I formed them into a
band, I was their chief and captain . All shepherd-boys alike, while
our flocks were spread over the pastures, we schemed and executed
many a mischievous prank, which drew on us the anger and revenge
of the rustics . I was the leader and protector of my comrades, and
as I became distinguished among them, their misdeeds were usu-
ally visited upon me . But while I endured punishment and pain in
their defence with the spirit of an hero, I claimed as my reward their
praise and obedience .
In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The
appetite for admiration and small capacity for self-controul which I
inherited from my father, nursed by adversity, made me daring and
reckless . I was rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals
I tended. I often compared myself to them, and finding that my chief
superiority consisted in power, I soon persuaded myself that it was
in power only that I was inferior to the chiefest potentates of the
earth. Thus untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a restless
feeling of degradation from my true station in society, I wandered
among the hills of civilized England as uncouth a savage as the
wolf-bred founder of old Rome . I owned but one law, it was that of
the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to submit .
Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed on
myself . My mother, when dying, had, in addition to her other half-
forgotten and misapplied lessons, committed, with solemn exhorta-
tion, her other child to my fraternal guardianship; and this one duty
I performed to the best of my ability, with all the zeal and affection
of which my nature was capable . My sister was three years younger
than myself; I had nursed her as an infant, and when the difference
of our sexes, by giving us various occupations, in a great measure
divided us, yet she continued to be the object of my careful love .
Orphans, in the fullest sense of the term, we were poorest among
the poor, and despised among the unhonoured . If my daring and
courage obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her youth and
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 828
sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by proving her to be weak,
were the causes of numberless mortifications to her; and her own
disposition was not so constituted as to diminish the evil effects of
her lowly station .
She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the
peculiar disposition of our father . Her countenance was all expres-
sion; her eyes were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to
discover space after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that
the soul which was their soul, comprehended an universe of thought
in its ken . She was pale and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her
temples, contrasting its rich hue with the living marble beneath . Her
coarse peasant-dress, little consonant apparently with the refinement
of feeling which her face expressed, yet in a strange manner ac-
corded with it . She was like one of Guido’s saints, with heaven in
her heart and in her look, so that when you saw h
er you only thought
of that within, and costume and even feature were secondary to the
mind that beamed in her countenance .
Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for
this was the fanciful name my sister had received from her dying
parent), was not altogether saintly in her disposition . Her manners
were cold and repulsive . If she had been nurtured by those who
had regarded her with affection, she might have been different; but
unloved and neglected, she repaid want of kindness with distrust
and silence . She was submissive to those who held authority over
her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as if she
expected enmity from every one who approached her, and her ac-
tions were instigated by the same feeling . All the time she could
command she spent in solitude . She would ramble to the most unfre-
quented places, and scale dangerous heights, that in those unvisited
spots she might wrap herself in loneliness . Often she passed whole
hours walking up and down the paths of the woods; she wove gar-
lands of flowers and ivy, or watched the flickering of the shadows
and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat beside a stream, and
as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles into the waters,
watching how those swam and these sank; or she would set afloat
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 829
boats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for a sail, and
intensely watch the navigation of her craft among the rapids and
shallows of the brook . Meanwhile her active fancy wove a thou-
sand combinations; she dreamt “of moving accidents by flood and
field”—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings,
and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life .
Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was
good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of
affection . She had not even the same advantage as I in the recollec-
tion of her parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her only friend,
but her alliance with me completed the distaste that her protectors
felt for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes. If
she had been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance the
delicate framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would