by Robert Reed
It would be needless to narrate those disastrous occurrences, for
which a parallel might be found in any slighter visitation of our
gigantic calamity . Does the reader wish to hear of the pest-houses,
where death is the comforter—of the mournful passage of the death-
cart—of the insensibility of the worthless, and the anguish of the
loving heart—of harrowing shrieks and silence dire—of the variety
9
Coleridge’s Translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1071
of disease, desertion, famine, despair, and death? There are many
books which can feed the appetite craving for these things; let them
turn to the accounts of Boccaccio, De Foe, and Browne . The vast
annihilation that has swallowed all things—the voiceless solitude of
the once busy earth—the lonely state of singleness which hems me
in, has deprived even such details of their stinging reality, and mel-
lowing the lurid tints of past anguish with poetic hues, I am able to
escape from the mosaic of circumstance, by perceiving and reflect-
ing back the grouping and combined colouring of the past .
I had returned from London possessed by the idea, with the in-
timate feeling that it was my first duty to secure, as well as I was
able, the well-being of my family, and then to return and take my
post beside Adrian . The events that immediately followed on my
arrival at Windsor changed this view of things . The plague was not
in London alone, it was every where—it came on us, as Ryland had
said, like a thousand packs of wolves, howling through the winter
night, gaunt and fierce. When once disease was introduced into the
rural districts, its effects appeared more horrible, more exigent, and
more difficult to cure, than in towns. There was a companionship
in suffering there, and, the neighbours keeping constant watch on
each other, and inspired by the active benevolence of Adrian, suc-
cour was afforded, and the path of destruction smoothed . But in the
country, among the scattered farm-houses, in lone cottages, in fields,
and barns, tragedies were acted harrowing to the soul, unseen, un-
heard, unnoticed . Medical aid was less easily procured, food was
more difficult to obtain, and human beings, unwithheld by shame,
for they were unbeheld of their fellows, ventured on deeds of greater
wickedness, or gave way more readily to their abject fears .
Deeds of heroism also occurred, whose very mention swells
the heart and brings tears into the eyes . Such is human nature, that
beauty and deformity are often closely linked . In reading history we
are chiefly struck by the generosity and self-devotion that follow
close on the heels of crime, veiling with supernal flowers the stain
of blood . Such acts were not wanting to adorn the grim train that
waited on the progress of the plague .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1072
The inhabitants of Berkshire and Bucks had been long aware that
the plague was in London, in Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, York,
in short, in all the more populous towns of England . They were not
however the less astonished and dismayed when it appeared among
themselves . They were impatient and angry in the midst of terror .
They would do something to throw off the clinging evil, and, while
in action, they fancied that a remedy was applied . The inhabitants of
the smaller towns left their houses, pitched tents in the fields, wan-
dering separate from each other careless of hunger or the sky’s in-
clemency, while they imagined that they avoided the death-dealing
disease . The farmers and cottagers, on the contrary, struck with the
fear of solitude, and madly desirous of medical assistance, flocked
into the towns .
But winter was coming, and with winter, hope . In August, the
plague had appeared in the country of England, and during Sep-
tember it made its ravages . Towards the end of October it dwindled
away, and was in some degree replaced by a typhus, of hardly less
virulence. The autumn was warm and rainy: the infirm and sickly
died off—happier they: many young people flushed with health and
prosperity, made pale by wasting malady, became the inhabitants
of the grave . The crop had failed, the bad corn, and want of foreign
wines, added vigour to disease . Before Christmas half England was
under water . The storms of the last winter were renewed; but the di-
minished shipping of this year caused us to feel less the tempests of
the sea. The flood and storms did more harm to continental Europe
than to us—giving, as it were, the last blow to the calamities which
destroyed it . In Italy the rivers were unwatched by the diminished
peasantry; and, like wild beasts from their lair when the hunters and
dogs are afar, did Tiber, Arno, and Po, rush upon and destroy the
fertility of the plains . Whole villages were carried away . Rome, and
Florence, and Pisa were overflowed, and their marble palaces, late
mirrored in tranquil streams, had their foundations shaken by their
winter-gifted power . In Germany and Russia the injury was still
more momentous .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1073
But frost would come at last, and with it a renewal of our lease
of earth . Frost would blunt the arrows of pestilence, and enchain the
furious elements; and the land would in spring throw off her gar-
ment of snow, released from her menace of destruction . It was not
until February that the desired signs of winter appeared . For three
days the snow fell, ice stopped the current of the rivers, and the birds
flew out from crackling branches of the frost-whitened trees. On the
fourth morning all vanished . A south-west wind brought up rain—the
sun came out, and mocking the usual laws of nature, seemed even at
this early season to burn with solsticial force . It was no consolation,
that with the first winds of March the lanes were filled with violets,
the fruit trees covered with blossoms, that the corn sprung up, and
the leaves came out, forced by the unseasonable heat . We feared the
balmy air—we feared the cloudless sky, the flower-covered earth,
and delightful woods, for we looked on the fabric of the universe no
longer as our dwelling, but our tomb, and the fragrant land smelled
to the apprehension of fear like a wide church-yard .
Pisando la tierra dura de continuo el hombre esta y cada
passo que da es sobre su sepultura.10
Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages winter was breathing
time; and we exerted ourselves to make the best of it . Plague might
not revive with the summer; but if it did, it should find us prepared.
It is a part of man’s nature to adapt itself through habit even to pain
and sorrow . Pestilence had become a part of our future, our exis-
tence; it was to be guarded against, like the flooding of rivers, the
encroachments of ocean, or the inclemency of the sky . After long
suffering and bitter experience, some panacea might be discovered;
as it was, all that received infection died— all however were not
in
fected; and it became our part to fix deep the foundations, and
raise high the barrier between contagion and the sane; to introduce
such order as would conduce to the well-being of the survivors, and
as would preserve hope and some portion of happiness to those who
10
Calderon de la Barca .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1074
were spectators of the still renewed tragedy . Adrian had introduced
systematic modes of proceeding in the metropolis, which, while they
were unable to stop the progress of death, yet prevented other evils,
vice and folly, from rendering the awful fate of the hour still more
tremendous . I wished to imitate his example, but men are used to
—move all together, if they move at all,11
and I could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered
towns and villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them
not, and veered with every baffling wind, that might arise from an
apparent change of circumstance .
I adopted another plan . Those writers who have imagined a reign
of peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural
country, where each small township was directed by the elders and
wise men . This was the key of my design . Each village, however
small, usually contains a leader, one among themselves whom they
venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and whose good
opinion they chiefly value. I was immediately drawn to make this
observation by occurrences that presented themselves to my per-
sonal experience .
In the village of Little Marlow an old woman ruled the com-
munity. She had lived for some years in an alms-house, and on fine
Sundays her threshold was constantly beset by a crowd, seeking her
advice and listening to her admonitions . She had been a soldier’s
wife, and had seen the world; infirmity, induced by fevers caught in
unwholesome quarters, had come on her before its time, and she sel-
dom moved from her little cot . The plague entered the village; and,
while fright and grief deprived the inhabitants of the little wisdom
they possessed, old Martha stepped forward and said— “Before
now I have been in a town where there was the plague .”—“And you
escaped?”—“No, but I recovered .”—After this Martha was seated
more firmly than ever on the regal seat, elevated by reverence and
love . She entered the cottages of the sick; she relieved their wants
11 Wordsworth .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1075
with her own hand; she betrayed no fear, and inspired all who saw
her with some portion of her own native courage . She attended the
markets—she insisted upon being supplied with food for those who
were too poor to purchase it . She shewed them how the well-being
of each included the prosperity of all . She would not permit the gar-
dens to be neglected, nor the very flowers in the cottage lattices to
droop from want of care . Hope, she said, was better than a doctor’s
prescription, and every thing that could sustain and enliven the spir-
its, of more worth than drugs and mixtures .
It was the sight of Little Marlow, and my conversations with
Martha, that led me to the plan I formed . I had before visited the
manor houses and gentlemen’s seats, and often found the inhabitants
actuated by the purest benevolence, ready to lend their utmost aid for
the welfare of their tenants . But this was not enough . The intimate
sympathy generated by similar hopes and fears, similar experience
and pursuits, was wanting here . The poor perceived that the rich
possessed other means of preservation than those which could be
partaken of by themselves, seclusion, and, as far as circumstances
permitted, freedom from care . They could not place reliance on
them, but turned with tenfold dependence to the succour and advice
of their equals . I resolved therefore to go from village to village,
seeking out the rustic archon of the place, and by systematizing their
exertions, and enlightening their views, encrease both their power
and their use among their fellow-cottagers . Many changes also now
occurred in these spontaneous regal elections: depositions and ab-
dications were frequent, while, in the place of the old and prudent,
the ardent youth would step forward, eager for action, regardless
of danger . Often too, the voice to which all listened was suddenly
silenced, the helping hand cold, the sympathetic eye closed, and
the villagers feared still more the death that had selected a choice
victim, shivering in dust the heart that had beat for them, reducing
to incommunicable annihilation the mind for ever occupied with
projects for their welfare .
Whoever labours for man must often find ingratitude, watered
by vice and folly, spring from the grain which he has sown . Death,
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1076
which had in our younger days walked the earth like “a thief that
comes in the night,” now, rising from his subterranean vault, girt
with power, with dark banner floating, came a conqueror. Many
saw, seated above his vice-regal throne, a supreme Providence, who
directed his shafts, and guided his progress, and they bowed their
heads in resignation, or at least in obedience . Others perceived only
a passing casualty; they endeavoured to exchange terror for heed-
lessness, and plunged into licentiousness, to avoid the agonizing
throes of worst apprehension . Thus, while the wise, the good, and
the prudent were occupied by the labours of benevolence, the truce
of winter produced other effects among the young, the thought-
less, and the vicious . During the colder months there was a general
rush to London in search of amusement—the ties of public opinion
were loosened; many were rich, heretofore poor—many had lost
father and mother, the guardians of their morals, their mentors and
restraints . It would have been useless to have opposed these im-
pulses by barriers, which would only have driven those actuated by
them to more pernicious indulgencies . The theatres were open and
thronged; dance and midnight festival were frequented—in many of
these decorum was violated, and the evils, which hitherto adhered to
an advanced state of civilization, were doubled . The student left his
books, the artist his study: the occupations of life were gone, but the
amusements remained; enjoyment might be protracted to the verge
of the grave . All factitious colouring disappeared—death rose like
night, and, protected by its murky shadows the blush of modesty,
the reserve of pride, the decorum of prudery were frequently thrown
aside as useless veils . This was not universal . Among better natures,
anguish and dread, the fear of eternal separation, and the awful
wonder produced by unprecedented calamity, drew closer the ties
of kindred and friendship . Philosophers opposed their principles,
as barriers to the inundation of profligacy or despair, and the only
ramparts to protect the invaded territory of human life; the religious,
hoping now for t
heir reward, clung fast to their creeds, as the rafts
and planks which over the tempest-vexed sea of suffering, would
bear them in safety to the harbour of the Unknown Continent . The
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1077
loving heart, obliged to contract its view, bestowed its overflow of
affection in triple portion on the few that remained . Yet, even among
these, the present, as an unalienable possession, became all of time
to which they dared commit the precious freight of their hopes .
The experience of immemorial time had taught us formerly to
count our enjoyments by years, and extend our prospect of life
through a lengthened period of progression and decay; the long
road threaded a vast labyrinth, and the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, in which it terminated, was hid by intervening objects . But
an earthquake had changed the scene—under our very feet the earth
yawned—deep and precipitous the gulph below opened to receive
us, while the hours charioted us towards the chasm . But it was
winter now, and months must elapse before we are hurled from our
security . We became ephemera, to whom the interval between the
rising and setting sun was as a long drawn year of common time . We
should never see our children ripen into maturity, nor behold their
downy cheeks roughen, their blithe hearts subdued by passion or
care; but we had them now—they lived, and we lived—what more
could we desire? With such schooling did my poor Idris try to hush
thronging fears, and in some measure succeeded . It was not as in
summer-time, when each hour might bring the dreaded fate—until
summer, we felt sure; and this certainty, short lived as it must be,
yet for awhile satisfied her maternal tenderness. I know not how to
express or communicate the sense of concentrated, intense, though
evanescent transport, that imparadized us in the present hour . Our
joys were dearer because we saw their end; they were keener be-
cause we felt, to its fullest extent, their value; they were purer be-
cause their essence was sympathy— as a meteor is brighter than
a star, did the felicity of this winter contain in itself the extracted
delights of a long, long life .
How lovely is spring! As we looked from Windsor Terrace on the
sixteen fertile counties spread beneath, speckled by happy cottages
and wealthier towns, all looked as in former years, heart-cheering