by Robert Reed
and fair . The land was ploughed, the slender blades of wheat broke
through the dark soil, the fruit trees were covered with buds, the
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1078
husbandman was abroad in the fields, the milk-maid tripped home
with well-filled pails, the swallows and martins struck the sunny
pools with their long, pointed wings, the new dropped lambs re-
posed on the young grass, the tender growth of leaves—
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
A silent space with ever sprouting green.12
Man himself seemed to regenerate, and feel the frost of winter
yield to an elastic and warm renewal of life—reason told us that care
and sorrow would grow with the opening year—but how to believe
the ominous voice breathed up with pestiferous vapours from fear’s
dim cavern, while nature, laughing and scattering from her green lap
flowers, and fruits, and sparkling waters, invited us to join the gay
masque of young life she led upon the scene?
Where was the plague? “Here—every where!” one voice of hor-
ror and dismay exclaimed, when in the pleasant days of a sunny
May the Destroyer of man brooded again over the earth, forcing the
spirit to leave its organic chrysalis, and to enter upon an untried life .
With one mighty sweep of its potent weapon, all caution, all care,
all prudence were levelled low: death sat at the tables of the great,
stretched itself on the cottager’s pallet, seized the dastard who fled,
quelled the brave man who resisted: despondency entered every
heart, sorrow dimmed every eye .
Sights of woe now became familiar to me, and were I to tell all
of anguish and pain that I witnessed, of the despairing moans of age,
and the more terrible smiles of infancy in the bosom of horror, my
reader, his limbs quivering and his hair on end, would wonder how
I did not, seized with sudden frenzy, dash myself from some preci-
pice, and so close my eyes for ever on the sad end of the world . But
the powers of love, poetry, and creative fancy will dwell even beside
the sick of the plague, with the squalid, and with the dying . A feeling
of devotion, of duty, of a high and steady purpose, elevated me; a
strange joy filled my heart. In the midst of saddest grief I seemed
12 Keats .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1079
to tread air, while the spirit of good shed round me an ambrosial
atmosphere, which blunted the sting of sympathy, and purified the
air of sighs. If my wearied soul flagged in its career, I thought of my
loved home, of the casket that contained my treasures, of the kiss of
love and the filial caress, while my eyes were moistened by purest
dew, and my heart was at once softened and refreshed by thrilling
tenderness .
Maternal affection had not rendered Idris selfish; at the begin-
ning of our calamity she had, with thoughtless enthusiasm, devoted
herself to the care of the sick and helpless . I checked her; and she
submitted to my rule . I told her how the fear of her danger palsied
my exertions, how the knowledge of her safety strung my nerves to
endurance . I shewed her the dangers which her children incurred
during her absence; and she at length agreed not to go beyond the in-
closure of the forest . Indeed, within the walls of the Castle we had a
colony of the unhappy, deserted by their relatives, and in themselves
helpless, sufficient to occupy her time and attention, while cease-
less anxiety for my welfare and the health of her children, however
she strove to curb or conceal it, absorbed all her thoughts, and un-
dermined the vital principle . After watching over and providing for
their safety, her second care was to hide from me her anguish and
tears . Each night I returned to the Castle, and found there repose and
love awaiting me . Often I waited beside the bed of death till mid-
night, and through the obscurity of rainy, cloudy nights rode many
miles, sustained by one circumstance only, the safety and sheltered
repose of those I loved . If some scene of tremendous agony shook
my frame and fevered my brow, I would lay my head on the lap of
Idris, and the tumultuous pulses subsided into a temperate flow —
her smile could raise me from hopelessness, her embrace bathe my
sorrowing heart in calm peace . Summer advanced, and, crowned
with the sun’s potent rays, plague shot her unerring shafts over the
earth. The nations beneath their influence bowed their heads, and
died . The corn that sprung up in plenty, lay in autumn rotting on the
ground, while the melancholy wretch who had gone out to gather
bread for his children, lay stiff and plague-struck in the furrow . The
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1080
green woods waved their boughs majestically, while the dying were
spread beneath their shade, answering the solemn melody with in-
harmonious cries. The painted birds flitted through the shades; the
careless deer reposed unhurt upon the fern—the oxen and the horses
strayed from their unguarded stables, and grazed among the wheat,
for death fell on man alone .
With summer and mortality grew our fears . My poor love and
I looked at each other, and our babes .—“We will save them, Id-
ris,” I said, “I will save them . Years hence we shall recount to them
our fears, then passed away with their occasion . Though they only
should remain on the earth, still they shall live, nor shall their cheeks
become pale nor their sweet voices languish .” Our eldest in some
degree understood the scenes passing around, and at times, he with
serious looks questioned me concerning the reason of so vast a deso-
lation . But he was only ten years old; and the hilarity of youth soon
chased unreasonable care from his brow . Evelyn, a laughing cherub,
a gamesome infant, without idea of pain or sorrow, would, shaking
back his light curls from his eyes, make the halls re-echo with his
merriment, and in a thousand artless ways attract our attention to his
play . Clara, our lovely gentle Clara, was our stay, our solace, our
delight . She made it her task to attend the sick, comfort the sorrow-
ing, assist the aged, and partake the sports and awaken the gaiety
of the young. She flitted through the rooms, like a good spirit, dis-
patched from the celestial kingdom, to illumine our dark hour with
alien splendour . Gratitude and praise marked where her footsteps
had been . Yet, when she stood in unassuming simplicity before us,
playing with our children, or with girlish assiduity performing little
kind offices for Idris, one wondered in what fair lineament of her
pure loveliness, in what soft tone of her thrilling voice, so much of
heroism, sagacity and active goodness resided .
The summer passed tediously, for we trusted that winter would at
least check the disease . That it would vanish altogether was an hope
too dear— too heartfelt, to be expressed . When such a thought was
heedlessly uttered, the hearers, with a gush of tears and passionate
sobs, bore witness how deep their fears were, how small the
ir hopes .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1081
For my own part, my exertions for the public good permitted me
to observe more closely than most others, the virulence and exten-
sive ravages of our sightless enemy . A short month has destroyed
a village, and where in May the first person sickened, in June the
paths were deformed by unburied corpses—the houses tenantless,
no smoke arising from the chimneys; and the housewife’s clock
marked only the hour when death had been triumphant . From such
scenes I have sometimes saved a deserted infant—sometimes led a
young and grieving mother from the lifeless image of her first born,
or drawn the sturdy labourer from childish weeping over his extinct
family .
July is gone . August must pass, and by the middle of September
we may hope . Each day was eagerly counted; and the inhabitants
of towns, desirous to leap this dangerous interval, plunged into dis-
sipation, and strove, by riot, and what they wished to imagine to
be pleasure, to banish thought and opiate despair . None but Adrian
could have tamed the motley population of London, which, like a
troop of unbitted steeds rushing to their pastures, had thrown aside
all minor fears, through the operation of the fear paramount . Even
Adrian was obliged in part to yield, that he might be able, if not to
guide, at least to set bounds to the license of the times . The theatres
were kept open; every place of public resort was frequented; though
he endeavoured so to modify them, as might best quiet the agita-
tion of the spectators, and at the same time prevent a reaction of
misery when the excitement was over . Tragedies deep and dire were
the chief favourites . Comedy brought with it too great a contrast to
the inner despair: when such were attempted, it was not unfrequent
for a comedian, in the midst of the laughter occasioned by his dis-
porportioned buffoonery, to find a word or thought in his part that
jarred with his own sense of wretchedness, and burst from mimic
merriment into sobs and tears, while the spectators, seized with ir-
resistible sympathy, wept, and the pantomimic revelry was changed
to a real exhibition of tragic passion .
It was not in my nature to derive consolation from such scenes;
from theatres, whose buffoon laughter and discordant mirth
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1082
awakened distempered sympathy, or where fictitious tears and wail-
ings mocked the heart-felt grief within; from festival or crowded
meeting, where hilarity sprung from the worst feelings of our nature,
or such enthralment of the better ones, as impressed it with garish
and false varnish; from assemblies of mourners in the guise of revel-
lers . Once however I witnessed a scene of singular interest at one
of the theatres, where nature overpowered art, as an overflowing
cataract will tear away the puny manufacture of a mock cascade,
which had before been fed by a small portion of its waters .
I had come to London to see Adrian . He was not at the palace;
and, though the attendants did not know whither he had gone, they
did not expect him till late at night . It was between six and seven
o’clock, a fine summer afternoon, and I spent my leisure hours in a
ramble through the empty streets of London; now turning to avoid
an approaching funeral, now urged by curiosity to observe the state
of a particular spot; my wanderings were instinct with pain, for si-
lence and desertion characterized every place I visited, and the few
beings I met were so pale and woe-begone, so marked with care and
depressed by fear, that weary of encountering only signs of misery,
I began to retread my steps towards home .
I was now in Holborn, and passed by a public house filled with
uproarious companions, whose songs, laughter, and shouts were
more sorrowful than the pale looks and silence of the mourner . Such
an one was near, hovering round this house . The sorry plight of her
dress displayed her poverty, she was ghastly pale, and continued
approaching, first the window and then the door of the house, as
if fearful, yet longing to enter . A sudden burst of song and merri-
ment seemed to sting her to the heart; she murmured, “Can he have
the heart?” and then mustering her courage, she stepped within the
threshold . The landlady met her in the passage; the poor creature
asked, “Is my husband here? Can I see George?”
“See him,” cried the woman, “yes, if you go to him; last night he
was taken with the plague, and we sent him to the hospital .”
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1083
The unfortunate inquirer staggered against a wall, a faint cry es-
caped her —“O! were you cruel enough,” she exclaimed, “to send
him there?”
The landlady meanwhile hurried away; but a more compassion-
ate bar-maid gave her a detailed account, the sum of which was, that
her husband had been taken ill, after a night of riot, and sent by his
boon companions with all expedition to St . Bartholomew’s Hospital .
I had watched this scene, for there was a gentleness about the poor
woman that interested me; she now tottered away from the door,
walking as well as she could down Holborn Hill; but her strength
soon failed her; she leaned against a wall, and her head sunk on her
bosom, while her pallid cheek became still more white . I went up
to her and offered my services . She hardly looked up—“You can do
me no good,” she replied; “I must go to the hospital; if I do not die
before I get there .”
There were still a few hackney-coaches accustomed to stand
about the streets, more truly from habit than for use . I put her in one
of these, and entered with her that I might secure her entrance into
the hospital . Our way was short, and she said little; except inter-
rupted ejaculations of reproach that he had left her, exclamations on
the unkindness of some of his friends, and hope that she would find
him alive . There was a simple, natural earnestness about her that
interested me in her fate, especially when she assured me that her
husband was the best of men,—had been so, till want of business
during these unhappy times had thrown him into bad company . “He
could not bear to come home,” she said, “only to see our children
die . A man cannot have the patience a mother has, with her own
flesh and blood.”
We were set down at St . Bartholomew’s, and entered the wretch-
ed precincts of the house of disease . The poor creature clung closer
to me, as she saw with what heartless haste they bore the dead from
the wards, and took them into a room, whose half-opened door dis-
played a number of corpses, horrible to behold by one unaccustomed
to such scenes . We were directed to the ward where her husband had
been first taken, and still was, the nurse said, if alive. My companion
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1084
looked eagerly from one bed to the other, till at the end of the ward
she espied, on a wretched bed, a squalid, haggard creatur
e, writhing
under the torture of disease . She rushed towards him, she embraced
him, blessing God for his preservation .
The enthusiasm that inspired her with this strange joy, blinded
her to the horrors about her; but they were intolerably agonizing
to me. The ward was filled with an effluvia that caused my heart to
heave with painful qualms . The dead were carried out, and the sick
brought in, with like indifference; some were screaming with pain,
others laughing from the influence of more terrible delirium; some
were attended by weeping, despairing relations, others called aloud
with thrilling tenderness or reproach on the friends who had deserted
them, while the nurses went from bed to bed, incarnate images of
despair, neglect, and death . I gave gold to my luckless companion;
I recommended her to the care of the attendants; I then hastened
away; while the tormentor, the imagination, busied itself in pictur-
ing my own loved ones, stretched on such beds, attended thus . The
country afforded no such mass of horrors; solitary wretches died
in the open fields; and I have found a survivor in a vacant village,
contending at once with famine and disease; but the assembly of
pestilence, the banqueting hall of death, was spread only in London .
I rambled on, oppressed, distracted by painful emotions—sud-
denly I found myself before Drury Lane Theatre . The play was
Macbeth—the first actor of the age was there to exert his powers to
drug with irreflection the auditors; such a medicine I yearned for, so
I entered. The theatre was tolerably well filled. Shakspeare, whose
popularity was established by the approval of four centuries, had not
lost his influence even at this dread period; but was still “Ut magus,”
the wizard to rule our hearts and govern our imaginations . I came in
during the interval between the third and fourth act . I looked round
on the audience; the females were mostly of the lower classes, but
the men were of all ranks, come hither to forget awhile the pro-
tracted scenes of wretchedness, which awaited them at their miser-
able homes . The curtain drew up, and the stage presented the scene
of the witches’ cave . The wildness and supernatural machinery of
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1085
Macbeth, was a pledge that it could contain little directly connected