by Robert Reed
“It is not from deck,” said the man at the helm, “something has been
thrown from the aft cabin .” A call for the boat to be lowered was
echoed from the deck . I rushed into my sister’s cabin; it was empty .
With sails abaft, the engine stopt, the vessel remained unwillingly
stationary, until, after an hour’s search, my poor Perdita was brought
on board . But no care could re-animate her, no medicine cause her
dear eyes to open, and the blood to flow again from her pulseless
heart . One clenched hand contained a slip of paper, on which was
written, “To Athens .” To ensure her removal thither, and prevent
the irrecoverable loss of her body in the wide sea, she had had the
precaution to fasten a long shawl round her waist, and again to the
staunchions of the cabin window . She had drifted somewhat under
the keel of the vessel, and her being out of sight occasioned the
delay in finding her. And thus the ill-starred girl died a victim to my
senseless rashness . Thus, in early day, she left us for the company of
the dead, and preferred to share the rocky grave of Raymond, before
the animated scene this cheerful earth afforded, and the society of
loving friends . Thus in her twenty-ninth year she died; having en-
joyed some few years of the happiness of paradise, and sustaining
a reverse to which her impatient spirit and affectionate disposition
were unable to submit . As I marked the placid expression that had
settled on her countenance in death, I felt, in spite of the pangs of
remorse, in spite of heart-rending regret, that it was better to die so,
than to drag on long, miserable years of repining and inconsolable
grief . Stress of weather drove us up the Adriatic Gulph; and, our ves-
sel being hardly fitted to weather a storm, we took refuge in the port
of Ancona . Here I met Georgio Palli, the vice-admiral of the Greek
fleet, a former friend and warm partizan of Raymond. I committed
the remains of my lost Perdita to his care, for the purpose of having
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1022
them transported to Hymettus, and placed in the cell her Raymond
already occupied beneath the pyramid . This was all accomplished
even as I wished . She reposed beside her beloved, and the tomb
above was inscribed with the united names of Raymond and Perdita .
I then came to a resolution of pursuing our journey to England
overland . My own heart was racked by regrets and remorse . The
apprehension, that Raymond had departed for ever, that his name,
blended eternally with the past, must be erased from every anticipa-
tion of the future, had come slowly upon me . I had always admired
his talents; his noble aspirations; his grand conceptions of the glory
and majesty of his ambition: his utter want of mean passions; his
fortitude and daring . In Greece I had learnt to love him; his very
waywardness, and self-abandonment to the impulses of superstition,
attached me to him doubly; it might be weakness, but it was the
antipodes of all that was grovelling and selfish. To these pangs were
added the loss of Perdita, lost through my own accursed self-will
and conceit . This dear one, my sole relation; whose progress I had
marked from tender childhood through the varied path of life, and
seen her throughout conspicuous for integrity, devotion, and true
affection; for all that constitutes the peculiar graces of the female
character, and beheld her at last the victim of too much loving,
too constant an attachment to the perishable and lost, she, in her
pride of beauty and life, had thrown aside the pleasant perception
of the apparent world for the unreality of the grave, and had left
poor Clara quite an orphan . I concealed from this beloved child that
her mother’s death was voluntary, and tried every means to awaken
cheerfulness in her sorrow-stricken spirit .
One of my first acts for the recovery even of my own composure,
was to bid farewell to the sea . Its hateful splash renewed again and
again to my sense the death of my sister; its roar was a dirge; in
every dark hull that was tossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a
bier, that would convey to death all who trusted to its treacherous
smiles . Farewell to the sea! Come, my Clara, sit beside me in this
aerial bark; quickly and gently it cleaves the azure serene, and with
soft undulation glides upon the current of the air; or, if storm shake
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1023
its fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we can descend, and
take shelter on the stable continent . Here aloft, the companions of the
swift-winged birds, we skim through the unresisting element, fleetly
and fearlessly . The light boat heaves not, nor is opposed by death-
bearing waves; the ether opens before the prow, and the shadow of
the globe that upholds it, shelters us from the noon-day sun . Beneath
are the plains of Italy, or the vast undulations of the wave-like Apen-
nines: fertility reposes in their many folds, and woods crown the
summits . The free and happy peasant, unshackled by the Austrian,
bears the double harvest to the garner; and the refined citizens rear
without dread the long blighted tree of knowledge in this garden of
the world . We were lifted above the Alpine peaks, and from their
deep and brawling ravines entered the plain of fair France, and after
an airy journey of six days, we landed at Dieppe, furled the feathered
wings, and closed the silken globe of our little pinnace . A heavy rain
made this mode of travelling now incommodious; so we embarked
in a steam-packet, and after a short passage landed at Portsmouth .
A strange story was rife here . A few days before, a tempest-struck
vessel had appeared off the town: the hull was parched-looking and
cracked, the sails rent, and bent in a careless, unseamanlike manner,
the shrouds tangled and broken . She drifted towards the harbour,
and was stranded on the sands at the entrance . In the morning the
custom-house officers, together with a crowd of idlers, visited her.
One only of the crew appeared to have arrived with her . He had
got to shore, and had walked a few paces towards the town, and
then, vanquished by malady and approaching death, had fallen on
the inhospitable beach . He was found stiff, his hands clenched, and
pressed against his breast . His skin, nearly black, his matted hair
and bristly beard, were signs of a long protracted misery . It was
whispered that he had died of the plague . No one ventured on board
the vessel, and strange sights were averred to be seen at night, walk-
ing the deck, and hanging on the masts and shrouds . She soon went
to pieces; I was shewn where she had been, and saw her disjoined
timbers tossed on the waves . The body of the man who had landed,
had been buried deep in the sands; and none could tell more, than
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1024
that the vessel was American built, and that several months before
the Fortunatas had sailed from Philadelphia, of which no tidings
were afterwards received .
CHAPTER IV.
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I RETURNED to my family estate in the autumn of the year
2092 . My heart had long been with them; and I felt sick with the
hope and delight of seeing them again . The district which contained
them appeared the abode of every kindly spirit . Happiness, love and
peace, walked the forest paths, and tempered the atmosphere . After
all the agitation and sorrow I had endured in Greece, I sought Wind-
sor, as the storm-driven bird does the nest in which it may fold its
wings in tranquillity .
How unwise had the wanderers been, who had deserted its shel-
ter, entangled themselves in the web of society, and entered on what
men of the world call “life,”—that labyrinth of evil, that scheme
of mutual torture . To live, according to this sense of the word, we
must not only observe and learn, we must also feel; we must not be
mere spectators of action, we must act; we must not describe, but be
subjects of description . Deep sorrow must have been the inmate of
our bosoms; fraud must have lain in wait for us; the artful must have
deceived us; sickening doubt and false hope must have chequered
our days; hilarity and joy, that lap the soul in ecstasy, must at times
have possessed us . Who that knows what “life” is, would pine for
this feverish species of existence? I have lived . I have spent days
and nights of festivity; I have joined in ambitious hopes, and exulted
in victory: now,—shut the door on the world, and build high the
wall that is to separate me from the troubled scene enacted within
its precincts . Let us live for each other and for happiness; let us seek
peace in our dear home, near the inland murmur of streams, and
the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and
sublime pageantry of the skies . Let us leave “life,” that we may live .
Idris was well content with this resolve of mine . Her native
sprightliness needed no undue excitement, and her placid heart
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1025
reposed contented on my love, the well-being of her children, and
the beauty of surrounding nature . Her pride and blameless ambition
was to create smiles in all around her, and to shed repose on the
fragile existence of her brother . In spite of her tender nursing, the
health of Adrian perceptibly declined . Walking, riding, the common
occupations of life, overcame him: he felt no pain, but seemed to
tremble for ever on the verge of annihilation . Yet, as he had lived
on for months nearly in the same state, he did not inspire us with
any immediate fear; and, though he talked of death as an event most
familiar to his thoughts, he did not cease to exert himself to render
others happy, or to cultivate his own astonishing powers of mind .
Winter passed away; and spring, led by the months, awakened life in
all nature . The forest was dressed in green; the young calves frisked
on the new-sprung grass; the wind-winged shadows of light clouds
sped over the green cornfields; the hermit cuckoo repeated his mo-
notonous all-hail to the season; the nightingale, bird of love and
minion of the evening star, filled the woods with song; while Venus
lingered in the warm sunset, and the young green of the trees lay in
gentle relief along the clear horizon .
Delight awoke in every heart, delight and exultation; for there
was peace through all the world; the temple of Universal Janus was
shut, and man died not that year by the hand of man .
“Let this last but twelve months,” said Adrian; “and earth will
become a Paradise . The energies of man were before directed to the
destruction of his species: they now aim at its liberation and pres-
ervation . Man cannot repose, and his restless aspirations will now
bring forth good instead of evil . The favoured countries of the south
will throw off the iron yoke of servitude; poverty will quit us, and
with that, sickness . What may not the forces, never before united, of
liberty and peace achieve in this dwelling of man?”
“Dreaming, for ever dreaming, Windsor!” said Ryland, the old
adversary of Raymond, and candidate for the Protectorate at the en-
suing election . “Be assured that earth is not, nor ever can be heaven,
while the seeds of hell are natives of her soil . When the seasons have
become equal, when the air breeds no disorders, when its surface is
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1026
no longer liable to blights and droughts, then sickness will cease;
when men’s passions are dead, poverty will depart . When love is no
longer akin to hate, then brotherhood will exist: we are very far from
that state at present .”
“Not so far as you may suppose,” observed a little old astrono-
mer, by name Merrival, “the poles precede slowly, but securely; in
an hundred thousand years—”
“We shall all be underground,” said Ryland .
“The pole of the earth will coincide with the pole of the ecliptic,”
continued the astronomer, “an universal spring will be produced,
and earth become a paradise .”
“And we shall of course enjoy the benefit of the change,” said
Ryland, contemptuously .
“We have strange news here,” I observed . I had the newspaper in
my hand, and, as usual, had turned to the intelligence from Greece .
“It seems that the total destruction of Constantinople, and the sup-
position that winter had purified the air of the fallen city, gave the
Greeks courage to visit its site, and begin to rebuild it . But they
tell us that the curse of God is on the place, for every one who has
ventured within the walls has been tainted by the plague; that this
disease has spread in Thrace and Macedonia; and now, fearing the
virulence of infection during the coming heats, a cordon has been
drawn on the frontiers of Thessaly, and a strict quarantine exacted .”
This intelligence brought us back from the prospect of paradise,
held out after the lapse of an hundred thousand years, to the pain
and misery at present existent upon earth . We talked of the ravages
made last year by pestilence in every quarter of the world; and of the
dreadful consequences of a second visitation . We discussed the best
means of preventing infection, and of preserving health and activity
in a large city thus afflicted—London, for instance. Merrival did not
join in this conversation; drawing near Idris, he proceeded to assure
her that the joyful prospect of an earthly paradise after an hundred
thousand years, was clouded to him by the knowledge that in a cer-
tain period of time after, an earthly hell or purgatory, would occur,
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1027
when the ecliptic and equator would be at right angles .4 Our party at
length broke up; “We are all dreaming this morning,” said Ryland,
“it is as wise to discuss the probability of a visitation of the plague
in our well-governed metropolis, as to calculate the centuries which
must escape before we can grow pine-apples here in the open air .”
But, though it seemed absurd to calculate upon the arrival of the
p
lague in London, I could not reflect without extreme pain on the
desolation this evil would cause in Greece . The English for the most
part talked of Thrace and Macedonia, as they would of a lunar terri-
tory, which, unknown to them, presented no distinct idea or interest
to the minds . I had trod the soil . The faces of many of the inhabitants
were familiar to me; in the towns, plains, hills, and defiles of these
countries, I had enjoyed unspeakable delight, as I journied through
them the year before . Some romantic village, some cottage, or ele-
gant abode there situated, inhabited by the lovely and the good, rose
before my mental sight, and the question haunted me, is the plague
there also?—That same invincible monster, which hovered over and
devoured Constantinople—that fiend more cruel than tempest, less
tame than fire, is, alas, unchained in that beautiful country—these
reflections would not allow me to rest.
The political state of England became agitated as the time drew
near when the new Protector was to be elected . This event excited
the more interest, since it was the current report, that if the popular
candidate (Ryland) should be chosen, the question of the abolition
of hereditary rank, and other feudal relics, would come under the
consideration of parliament . Not a word had been spoken during the
present session on any of these topics . Every thing would depend
upon the choice of a Protector, and the elections of the ensuing year .
Yet this very silence was awful, shewing the deep weight attributed
to the question; the fear of either party to hazard an ill-timed attack,
and the expectation of a furious contention when it should begin .
4
See an ingenious Essay, entitled, “The Mythological As-
tronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated,” by Mackey, a shoemaker,
of Norwich printed in 1822 .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1028
But although St . Stephen’s did not echo with the voice which
filled each heart, the newspapers teemed with nothing else; and in
private companies the conversation however remotely begun, soon
verged towards this central point, while voices were lowered and
chairs drawn closer . The nobles did not hesitate to express their fear;
the other party endeavoured to treat the matter lightly . “Shame on