by Mary Shelley
“That I am such, this very scene — this very occupation testifies. Once, the slave of head-long impulse; I am now the victim of remorse. I am come to seek death, because I cannot retrieve the past; I long for the moment when the bullet shall pierce my flesh, and the pains of dissolution gather round me. Then I may hope to be, that for which I thirst, free! There is one who loves me. She is pure and kind as a guardian angel — she is as my own child — she implores me to live. With her my days might pass in a peace and innocence that saints might envy; but so heavy are the fetters of memory, so bitter the slavery of my soul, that even she cannot take away the sting from life.
“Death is all I covet. When these pages are read, the hand that traces them will be powerless — the brain that dictates will have lost its functions. This is my last labour — my legacy to my fellow beings. Do not let them disdain the outpourings of a heart which for years has buried its recollections and remorse in silence. The waters were pent up by a dam — now they rush impetuously forth — they roar as if pursued by a thousand torrents — their turmoil deafens heaven; and what though their sound be only conveyed by the little implement that traces these lines — not less headlong than the swelling waves is the spirit that pours itself out in these words.
“I am calmer now — I have been wandering beside the stream — and, despite the lurking foe and deceptive moonbeams, I have ascended the steep mountain’s side — and looked out on the misty sea, and sought to gain from reposing nature some relief to my sense of pain. The hour of midnight is at hand — all is still — I am calm, and with deliberation begin to narrate that train of circumstances, or rather of feelings, that hurried me first to error, then to crime, and lastly, brought me here to die.
“I lost my mother before I can well remember. I have a confused recollection of her crying — and of her caressing me — and I can call to mind seeing her ill in bed, and her blessing me; but these ideas are rather like revelations of an ante-natal life, than belonging to reality. She died when I was four years old. My childhood’s years were stormy and drear. My father, a social, and I believe even a polite man in society, was rough and ill-tempered at home. He had gambled away his own slender younger brother’s fortune and his wife’s portion, and was too idle to attend to a profession, and yet not indolent enough for a life devoid of purpose and pursuit. Our family was a good one; it consisted of two brothers, my father, and my uncle. This latter, favoured of birth and fortune, remained long unmarried; and was in weak health. My father expected him to die. His death and his own consequent inheritance of the family estate, was his constant theme; but the delayed hope irritated him to madness. I knew his humour even as a child, and escaped it as I could. His voice, calling my name, made my blood run cold; his epithets of abuse, so frequently applied, filled me with boiling but ineffectual rage.
“I am not going to dwell on those painful days, when a weak, tiny boy, I felt as if I could contend with the paternal giant; and did contend, till his hand felled me to the ground, or cast me from his threshold with scorn and seeming hate. I dare say he did not hate me; but certainly no touch of natural love warmed his heart.
“One day he received a letter from his brother — I was but ten years old, but rendered old and care-worn by suffering; I remember that I looked on him as he took it and exclaimed, ‘From Uncle John! What have we here?’ with a nervous tremor as to the passions the perusal of it might excite. He chuckled as he broke the seal — he fancied that he called him to his dying bed—’And that well over, you shall go to school, my fine fellow,’ he cried; ‘we shall have no more of your tricks at home.’ He broke the seal, he read the letter. It announced his brother’s marriage, and asked him to the wedding. I let fall the curtain over the scene that ensued: you would have thought that a villanous fraud had been committed, in which I was implicated. He drove me with blows from his door; I foamed with rage, and then I sat down and wept, and crept away to the fields, and wondered why I was born, and longed to kill my uncle, who was the cause to me of so much misery.
“Every thing changed for the worse now. Hitherto my father had lived on hope — now he despaired. He took to drinking, which exalted his passions, and debased his reason. This at times gave me a superiority over him — when tipsy, I could escape his blows — which yet, when sober, fell on me with double severity. But even the respite I gained through his inebriety, afforded me no consolation — I felt at once humbled and indignant at the shame so brought on us. I, child as I was, expostulated with him — I was knocked down, and kicked from the room. Oh, what a world this appeared to me! a war of the weak with the strong — and how I despised every thing except victory.
“Time wore on. My uncle’s wife bore him in succession two girls. This was a respite. My father’s spirits rose — but fallen as he was he could only celebrate his re-awakened hopes by deeper potations and coarse jokes. The next offspring was a boy — he cost my father his life. Habits of drink had inflamed his blood — and his violence of temper made him nearly a maniac. On hearing of the birth of the heir, he drank to drown thought; wine was too slow a medicine, he quaffed deeply of brandy, and fell into a sleep, or rather torpor, from which he never after awoke. It was better so — he had spent every thing — he was deeply in debt — he had lost all power of raising himself from the state of debasement into which he had fallen — the next day would have seen him in prison.
“I was taken in by my uncle. At first the peace and order of the household seemed to me paradise — the comfort and regularity of the meals was a sort of happy and perpetual miracle. My eye was no longer blasted by the sight of frightful excesses, nor my ear wounded by obstreperous shouts. I was no longer reviled — I no longer feared being felled to the ground — I was not any more obliged to obtain food by stratagem, or by expostulations, which always ended by my being the victim of personal violence. The mere calm was balmy, and I fancied myself free, because I was no longer in a state of perpetual terror.
“But soon I felt the cold and rigid atmosphere that, as far as regarded me, ruled this calm. No eye of love ever turned on me, no voice ever spoke a cheering word. I was there on sufferance, and was quickly deemed a troublesome inmate; while the order and regularity required of me, and the law passed that I was never to quit the house alone, became at last more tormenting than the precarious, but wild and precious liberty of my former life. My habits were bad enough; my father’s vices had fostered my evil qualities — I had never learnt to lie or cheat, for such was foreign to my nature, but I was rough, self-willed, lazy, and insolent. I have a feeling, such was my sense of bliss on first entering the circle of order and peace, that a very little kindness would have subdued my temper, and awakened a desire to please. It was not tried. From the very first, I was treated with a coldness to which a child is peculiarly sensitive; the servants, by enforcing the rules of the house, became first my tormentors, and then my enemies. I grew imperious and violent — complaint, reprehension, and punishment, despoiled my paradise of its matin glow — and then I returned at once to my own bad self; I was disobedient and reckless; soon it was decreed that I was utterly intolerable, and I was sent to school.
“This, a boy’s common fate, I had endured without a murmur, had it not been inflicted as a punishment, and I made over to my new tyrants, even in my own hearing, as a little blackguard, quite irreclaimable, and only to be kept in order by brute force. It is impossible to describe the effect of this declaration of my uncle — followed up by the master’s recommendation to the usher to break my spirit, if he could not bend it — had on my heart, which was bursting with a sense of injury, panting for freedom, and resolved not to be daunted by the menaces of the tyrants before me. I declared war with my whole soul against the world; I became all I had been painted; I was sullen, vindictive, desperate. I resolved to run away; I cared not what would befall me — I was nearly fourteen — I was strong, and could work — I could join a gang of gipsies, I could act their life singly, and, subsisting by nightly depredation, spend my
days in liberty.
“It was at an hour when I was meditating flight, that the master sent for me. I believed that some punishment was in preparation. I hesitated whether I should not instantly fly — a moment’s thought told me that that was impossible, and that I must obey. I went with a dogged air, and a determination to resist. I found my tyrant with a letter in his hand. ‘I do not know what to do with you,’ he said; ‘I have a letter here from a relation, asking you to spend the day. You deserve no indulgence; but for this once you may go. Remember, any future permission depends upon your turning over an entirely new leaf. Go, sir; and be grateful to my lenity, if you can. Remember, you are to be home at nine.’ I’ asked no questions — I did not know where I was to go; yet I left him without a word. I was sauntering back to the prison yard, which they called a play-ground, when I was told that there was a pony-chaise at the door, ready to take me. My heart leaped at the word; I fancied that, by means of this conveyance, I could proceed on the first stage of my flight. The pony-carriage was of the humblest description; an old man drove. I got in, and away we trotted, the little cob that drew it going much faster than his looks gave warrant. The driver was deaf — I was sullen — not a word did we exchange. My plan was, that he should take me to the farthest point he intended, and then that I should leap out and take to my heels. As we proceeded, however, my rebel fit somewhat subsided. We quitted the town in which the school was situated, and the dreary dusty roads I was accustomed to perambulate under the superintendence of the ushers. We entered shady lanes and umbrageous groves; we perceived extensive prospects, and saw the winding of romantic streams; a curtain seemed drawn from before the scenes of nature; and my spirits rose as I gazed on new objects, and saw earth spread wide and free around. At first this only animated me to a keener resolve to fly; but as we went on, a vague sentiment possessed my soul. The sky-larks winged up to heaven, and the swallows skimmed the green earth; I felt happy because nature was gay, and all things free and at peace. We turned from a lane redolent with honeysuckle into a little wood, whose short, thick turf was interspersed with moss, and starred with flowers. Just as we emerged, I saw a little railing, a rustic green gate, and a cottage clustered over with woodbine and jessamine, standing secluded among, yet peeping out from the overshadowing trees. A little peasant boy threw open the gate, and we drove up to the cottage door.
“At a low window, which opened on the lawn, in a large arm-chair, sat a lady, evidently marked by ill health, yet with something so gentle and unearthly in her appearance as at once to attract and please. Her complexion had faded into whiteness — her hair was nearly silver, yet not a grisly greyish white, but silken still in its change; her dress was also white — and there was something of a withered look about her — redeemed by a soft, but bright grey eye, and more by the sweetest smile in the world, which she wore, as rising from her chair, she embraced me, exclaiming, ‘I know you from your likeness to your mother — dear, dear Rupert.’
“That name of itself touched a chord which for many years had been mine. My mother had called me by that name; so, indeed, had my father, when any momentary softness of feeling allowed him to give me any other appellation except, ‘You sir!’ ‘You dog, you!’ My uncle, after whom I was also called John, chose to drop what he called a silly, romantic name; and in his house, and in his letters, I was always John. Rupert breathed of a dear home, and my mother’s kiss; and I looked inquiringly oon her who gave it me, when my attention was attracted, riveted by the vision of a lovely girl, who had glided in from another room, and stood near us, radiant in youth and beauty. She was indeed supremely lovely — exuberant in all the charms of girlhood — and her beauty was enhanced by the very contrast to the pale lady by whom she stood — a houri she seemed, standing by a disembodied spirit — black, soft, large eyes, overpowering in their lustre, and yet more so from the soul that dwelt within — a cherub look — a fairy form; with a complexion and shape that spoke of health and joy. What could it mean? Who could she be? And who was she who knew my name? It was an enigma; but one full of promise to me, who had so long been exiled from the charities of life; and who, ‘as the hart panteth for the water brooks,’ panted for love.
CHAPTER X.
After a little explanation, I discovered who my new friends were. The lady and my mother were remotely related; but they had been educated together, and separated only when they married. My mother’s death had prevented my knowing that such a relation existed; far less that she took the warmest interest in the son of her earliest friend. Mrs. Rivers had been the poorer of the two, and for a long time considered that her childhood’s companion was moving in an elevated sphere of life, while she had married a lieutenant in the navy; and while he was away attending the duties of his profession, she lived in retirement and economy, in the rustic, low-roofed, yet picturesque and secluded cottage, whose leaf-shrouded casements and flowery lawn, even now, are before me, and speak of peace. I never call to mind that abode of tranquillity without associating it with the poet’s wish:
‘Mine be a cot beside the hill —
A beehive’s hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.’
To any one who fully understands and appreciates the peculiar beauties of England — who knows how much elegance, content, and knowledge can be sheltered under such a roof, these lines must ever, I think, as to me, have a music of their own, and, unpretending as they are, breathe the very soul of happiness. In this embowered cot, near which a clear stream murmured — which was clustered over by a thousand odoriferous parasites — which stood in the seclusion of a beech wood — there dwelt something more endearing even than all this — and one glance at the only daughter of Mrs. Rivers, served to disclose that an angel dwelt in the paradise.
“Alithea Rivers — there is music, and smiles, and tears — a whole life of happiness — and moments of intensest transport, in the sound. Her beauty was radiant; her dark eastern eye, shaded by the veined and darkly fringed lid, beamed with a soft, but penetrating fire; her face of a perfect oval; and lips, which were wreathed into a thousand smiles, or, softly and silently parted, seemed the home of every tender and poetic expression which one longed to hear them breathe forth; her brow clear as day; her swan throat, and symmetrical and fairy-like form, disclosed a perfection of loveliness, that the youngest and least susceptible must have felt, even if they did not acknowledge.
“She had two qualities which I have never seen equalled separately, but which, united in her, formed a spell no one could resist — the most acute sensitiveness to joy or grief in her own person, and the most lively sympathy with these feelings in others. I have seen her so enter heart and soul into the sentiments of one in whom she was interested, that her whole being took the colour of their mood; and her very features and complexion appeared to alter in unison with theirs. Her temper was never ruffled; she could not be angry; she grieved too deeply for those who did wrong: but she could be glad; and never have I seen joy, the very sunshine of the soul, so cloudlessly expressed as in her countenance. She could subdue the stoniest heart by a look — a word; and were she ever wrong herself, a sincere acknowledgment, an ingenuous shame — grief to have offended, and eagerness to make reparation, turned her very error into a virtue. Her spirits were high, even to wildness; but, at their height, tempered by such thought for others, such inbred feminine softness, that her most exuberant gaiety resembled heart-cheering music, and made each bosom respond. All, every thing loved her; her mother idolized her; each bird of the grove knew her; and I felt sure that the very flowers she tended were conscious of, and rejoiced in, her presence.
“Since my birth — or at least since I had lost my mother in early infancy, my path had been cast upon thorns and brambles — blows and stripes, cold neglect, reprehension, and debasing slavery; to such was I doomed. I had longed for something to love — and in the desire to possess something whose affections were my own, I had secreted
at school a little nest of field mice on which I tended; but human being there was none who marked me, except to revile, and my proud heart rose in indignation against them. Mrs. Rivers had heard a sad story of my obduracy, my indolence, my violence; she had expected to see a savage, but my likeness to my mother won her heart at once, and the affection I met transformed me at once into something worthy of her. I had been told I was a reprobate till I half believed. I felt that there was war between me and my tyrants, and I was desirous to make them suffer even as they made me. I read in books of the charities of life — and the very words seemed only a portion of that vast system of imposture with which the strong oppressed the weak. I did not believe in love or beauty; or if ever my heart opened to it — it was to view it in external nature, and to wonder how all of perceptive and sentient in this wondrous fabric of the universe was instinct with injury and wrong.
“Mrs. Rivers was a woman of feeling and sense. She drew me out — she dived into the secrets of my heart; for my mother’s sake she loved me, and she saw that to implant sentiments of affection was to redeem a character not ungenerous, and far, far from cold — whose evil passions had been fostered as in a hot-bed, and whose better propensities were nipped in the bud. She strove to awaken my susceptibility to kindness, by lavishing a thousand marks of favour. She called me her son — her friend; she taught me to look upon her regard as a possession of which nothing could deprive me — and to consider herself and her daughter as near and dear ties that could not be rent away. She imparted happiness, she awoke gratitude, and made me in my innermost heart swear to deserve her favour.