by Robert Reed
every idle whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could
behold the passage of the hours without dismay . We loitered along
the lovely Vale of Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which,
crossing the ravine of Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed
depths, and the snowy mountains that wall it in . We rambled through
romantic Switzerland; till, fear of coming winter leading us forward,
the first days of October found us in the valley of La Maurienne,
which leads to Cenis . I cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leav-
ing this land of mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps
as boundaries between our former and our future state of existence,
and so clung fondly to what of old we had loved . Perhaps, because
we had now so few impulses urging to a choice between two modes
of action, we were pleased to preserve the existence of one, and
preferred the prospect of what we were to do, to the recollection of
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1227
what had been done . We felt that for this year danger was past; and
we believed that, for some months, we were secured to each other .
There was a thrilling, agonizing delight in the thought—it filled the
eyes with misty tears, it tore the heart with tumultuous heavings;
frailer than the “snow fall in the river,” were we each and all—but
we strove to give life and individuality to the meteoric course of
our several existences, and to feel that no moment escaped us unen-
joyed . Thus tottering on the dizzy brink, we were happy . Yes! as we
sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside the waterfalls, near
—Forests, ancient as the hills,
And folding sunny spots of greenery, where the chamois grazed,
and the timid squirrel laid up its hoard—descanting on the charms
of nature, drinking in the while her unalienable beauties—we were,
in an empty world, happy .
Yet, O days of joy—days, when eye spoke to eye, and voices,
sweeter than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or
rivulet’s gentle murmur, answered mine—yet, O days replete with
beatitude, days of loved society—days unutterably dear to me for-
lorn—pass, O pass before me, making me in your memory forget
what I am . Behold, how my streaming eyes blot this senseless pa-
per—behold, how my features are convulsed by agonizing throes,
at your mere recollection, now that, alone, my tears flow, my lips
quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen, unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet,
days of delight! let me dwell on your long-drawn hours!
As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and descended
into Italy . At the uprising of morn, we sat at our repast, and cheated
our regrets by gay sallies or learned disquisitions . The live-long day
we sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our journey, but
careless of the hour of its completion . As the evening star shone
out, and the orange sunset, far in the west, marked the position of
the dear land we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made
the hours fly—O that we had lived thus for ever and for ever! Of
what consequence was it to our four hearts, that they alone were
the fountains of life in the wide world? As far as mere individual
sentiment was concerned, we had rather be left thus united together,
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1228
than if, each alone in a populous desert of unknown men, we had
wandered truly companionless till life’s last term . In this manner, we
endeavoured to console each other; in this manner, true philosophy
taught us to reason .
It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on Clara, naming
her the little queen of the world, ourselves her humblest servitors .
When we arrived at a town, our first care was to select for her its
most choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic remained
of its former inhabitants; to seek food for her, and minister to her
wants with assiduous tenderness . Clara entered into our scheme
with childish gaiety . Her chief business was to attend on Evelyn; but
it was her sport to array herself in splendid robes, adorn herself with
sunny gems, and ape a princely state . Her religion, deep and pure,
did not teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of regret; her
youthful vivacity made her enter, heart and soul, into these strange
masquerades .
We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, as
being a large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes .
We had descended the Alps, and left far behind their vast forests
and mighty crags . We entered smiling Italy . Mingled grass and corn
grew in her plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches
around the elms . The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or
hung purple, or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves .
The ears of standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift
winds; the fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the
dusky olive, now spotted with its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to
which the squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet, alas!
all poverty, painted in wondrous hues and fantastic groupings this
land of beauty . In the towns, in the voiceless towns, we visited the
churches, adorned by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries of
statues—while in this genial clime the animals, in new found liberty,
rambled through the gorgeous palaces, and hardly feared our forgot-
ten aspect . The dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and
paced slowly by; a startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet,
would start up in some chamber, formerly dedicated to the repose
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1229
of beauty, and rush, huddling past us, down the marble staircase
into the street, and again in at the first open door, taking unrebuked
possession of hallowed sanctuary, or kingly council-chamber . We
no longer started at these occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of
change—when the palace had become a mere tomb, pregnant with
fetid stench, strewn with the dead; and we could perceive how pes-
tilence and fear had played strange antics, chasing the luxurious
dame to the dank fields and bare cottage; gathering, among carpets
of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough peasant, or the deformed
half-human shape of the wretched beggar .
We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy’s
palace. Here we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fix-
ing distinct occupations for each hour . In the morning we rode in
the adjoining country, or wandered through the palaces, in search
of pictures or antiquities . In the evening we assembled to read or
to converse . There were few books that we dared read; few, that
did not cruelly deface the painting we bestowed on our solitude, by
recalling combinations and emotions never more to be experienced
by us. Metaphysical disquisition; fiction, which wandering from all
reality, lost itself in self-created errors; poets of times so far gone by,
that to re
ad of them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as
referred to nature only, and the workings of one particular mind; but
most of all, talk, varied and ever new, beguiled our hours .
While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time
held on its accustomed course . Still and for ever did the earth roll
on, enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the
invisible coursers of never-erring necessity . And now, this dew-drop
in the sky, this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves,
passing from the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram,
entered the radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins . There, fanned
by vernal airs, the Spirit of Beauty sprung from her cold repose;
and, with winnowing wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle of
verdure around the earth, sporting among the violets, hiding within
the springing foliage of the trees, tripping lightly down the radiant
streams into the sunny deep . “For lo! winter is past, the rain is over
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1230
and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig
tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape,
give a good smell .”26 Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal
poet; thus was it now .
Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this delightful
season? We hoped indeed that death did not now as heretofore walk
in its shadow; yet, left as we were alone to each other, we looked in
each other’s faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust
to our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine which would be
the hapless survivor to the other three . We were to pass the summer
at the lake of Como, and thither we removed as soon as spring grew
to her maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops . Ten
miles from Como, under the steep heights of the eastern mountains,
by the margin of the lake, was a villa called the Pliniana, from its
being built on the site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow
is described by the younger Pliny in his letters . The house had near-
ly fallen into ruin, till in the year 2090, an English nobleman had
bought it, and fitted it up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung
with splendid tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side
of a court, of whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark
lake, and the other was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony
side gushed, with roar and splash, the celebrated fountain . Above,
underwood of myrtle and tufts of odorous plants crowned the rock,
while the star-pointing giant cypresses reared themselves in the blue
air, and the recesses of the hills were adorned with the luxuriant
growth of chestnut-trees. Here we fixed our summer residence. We
had a lovely skiff, in which we sailed, now stemming the midmost
waves, now coasting the over-hanging and craggy banks, thick sown
with evergreens, which dipped their shining leaves in the waters, and
were mirrored in many a little bay and creek of waters of translu-
cent darkness . Here orange plants bloomed, here birds poured forth
melodious hymns; and here, during spring, the cold snake emerged
from the clefts, and basked on the sunny terraces of rock .
26
Solomon’s Song .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1231
Were we not happy in this paradisiacal retreat? If some kind spirit
had whispered forgetfulness to us, methinks we should have been
happy here, where the precipitous mountains, nearly pathless, shut
from our view the far fields of desolate earth, and with small exer-
tion of the imagination, we might fancy that the cities were still
resonant with popular hum, and the peasant still guided his plough
through the furrow, and that we, the world’s free denizens, enjoyed
a voluntary exile, and not a remediless cutting off from our extinct
species .
Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so much
as Clara . Before we quitted Milan, a change had taken place in her
habits and manners . She lost her gaiety, she laid aside her sports,
and assumed an almost vestal plainness of attire . She shunned us,
retiring with Evelyn to some distant chamber or silent nook; nor did
she enter into his pastimes with the same zest as she was wont, but
would sit and watch him with sadly tender smiles, and eyes bright
with tears, yet without a word of complaint . She approached us
timidly, avoided our caresses, nor shook off her embarrassment till
some serious discussion or lofty theme called her for awhile out of
herself . Her beauty grew as a rose, which, opening to the summer
wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense aches with its excess
of loveliness . A slight and variable colour tinged her cheeks, and
her motions seemed attuned by some hidden harmony of surpassing
sweetness . We redoubled our tenderness and earnest attentions . She
received them with grateful smiles, that fled swift as sunny beam
from a glittering wave on an April day .
Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her, appeared
to be Evelyn . This dear little fellow was a comforter and delight to
us beyond all words . His buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance
of our vast calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings
were over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative
sorrow . To cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of
all . Clara, who felt towards him in some degree like a young mother,
gratefully acknowledged our kindness towards him . To me, O! to
me, who saw the clear brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1232
heart, my lost and ever dear Idris, re-born in his gentle face, to me
he was dear even to pain; if I pressed him to my heart, methought I
clasped a real and living part of her, who had lain there through long
years of youthful happiness .
It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each day in our
skiff to forage in the adjacent country . In these expeditions we were
seldom accompanied by Clara or her little charge, but our return
was an hour of hilarity . Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish
eagerness, and we always brought some new found gift for our
fair companion . Then too we made discoveries of lovely scenes or
gay palaces, whither in the evening we all proceeded . Our sailing
expeditions were most divine, and with a fair wind or transverse
course we cut the liquid waves; and, if talk failed under the pressure
of thought, I had my clarionet with me, which awoke the echoes,
and gave the change to our careful minds . Clara at such times often
returned to her former habits of free converse and gay sally; and
though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those four hearts
were happy .
One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat,
we expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and
we were somewhat surprised to
see the beach vacant . I, as my nature
prompted, would not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as
a mere casual incident . Not so Adrian . He was seized with sudden
trembling and apprehension, and he called to me with vehemence
to steer quickly for land, and, when near, leapt from the boat, half
falling into the water; and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened
along the narrow strip of garden, the only level space between the
lake and the mountain . I followed without delay; the garden and
inner court were empty, so was the house, whose every room we vis-
ited . Adrian called loudly upon Clara’s name, and was about to rush
up the near mountain-path, when the door of a summer-house at the
end of the garden slowly opened, and Clara appeared, not advanc-
ing towards us, but leaning against a column of the building with
blanched cheeks, in a posture of utter despondency . Adrian sprang
towards her with a cry of joy, and folded her delightedly in his arms .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1233
She withdrew from his embrace, and, without a word, again entered
the summer-house . Her quivering lips, her despairing heart refused
to afford her voice to express our misfortune . Poor little Evelyn had,
while playing with her, been seized with sudden fever, and now lay
torpid and speechless on a little couch in the summer-house .
For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the poor
child, as his life declined under the ravages of a virulent typhus . His
little form and tiny lineaments encaged the embryo of the world-
spanning mind of man . Man’s nature, brimful of passions and affec-
tions, would have had an home in that little heart, whose swift pulsa-
tions hurried towards their close. His small hand’s fine mechanism,
now flaccid and unbent, would in the growth of sinew and muscle,
have achieved works of beauty or of strength . His tender rosy feet
would have trod in firm manhood the bowers and glades of earth—
these reflections were now of little use: he lay, thought and strength
suspended, waiting unresisting the final blow.
We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever was on
him, we neither spoke nor looked at each other, marking only his
obstructed breath and the mortal glow that tinged his sunken cheek,
the heavy death that weighed on his eyelids . It is a trite evasion to