by Mary Shelley
28th July.
... I was too late for the post yesterday at Turin, and too early this morning, so as I determined to put this letter in the post myself, I bring it with me to Susa, and now open it to tell you how delighted I am with my morning’s ride — the scenery is so divine. The high, dark Alps, just on this southern side tipt with snow, close in a plain; the meadows are full of clover and flowers, and the woods of ash, elm, and beech descend and spread, and lose themselves in the fields; stately trees, in clumps or singly, arise on each side, and wherever you look you see some spot where you dream of building a home and living for ever. The exquisite beauty of nature, and the cloudless sky of this summer day soothe me, and make this 28th so full of recollections that it is almost pleasurable. Wherever the spirit of beauty dwells, he must be; the rustling of the trees is full of him; the waving of the tall grass, the moving shadows of the vast hills, the blue air that penetrates their ravines and rests upon their heights. I feel him near me when I see that which he best loved. Alas! nine years ago he took to a home in his heart this weak being, whom he has now left for more congenial spirits and happier regions. She lives only in the hope that she may become one day as one of them.
Absolutely, my dear Hunt, I will pass some three summer months in this divine spot, you shall all be with me. There are no gentlemen’s seats at Palazzi, so we will take a cottage, which we will paint and refit, just as this country here is, in which I now write, clean and plain. We will have no servants, only we will give out all the needlework. Marianne shall make puddings and pies, to make up for the vegetables and meat which I shall boil and spoil. Thorny shall sweep the rooms, Mary make the beds, Johnny clean the kettles and pans, and then we will pop him into the many streams hereabouts, and so clean him. Swinny, being so quick, shall be our Mercury, Percy our gardener, Sylvan and Percy Florence our weeders, and Vincent our plaything; and then, to raise us above the vulgar, we will do all our work, keeping time to Hunt’s symphonies; we will perform our sweepings and dustings to the March in Alceste, we will prepare our meats to the tune of the Laughing Trio, and when we are tired we will lie on our turf sofas, while all our voices shall join in chorus in Notte e giorno faticar. You see my paper is quite out, so I must say, for the last time, Adieu! God bless you.
Mary W. S.
Tuesday, 5th August.
I have your letter, and your excuses, and all. I thank you most sincerely for it: at the same time I do entreat you to take care of yourself with regard to writing; although your letters are worth infinite pleasure to me, yet that pleasure cannot be worth pain to you; and remember, if you must write, the good, hackneyed maxim of multum in parvo, and, when your temples throb, distil the essence of three pages into three lines, and my “fictitious adventure” will enable me to open them out and fill up intervals. Not but what three pages are best, but “you can understand me.” And now let me tell you that I fear you do not rise early, since you doubt my ore mattutine. Be it known to you, then, that on the journey I always rise before 3 o’clock, that I never once made the vetturino wait, and, moreover, that there was no discontent in our jogging on on either side, so that I half expect to be a Santa with him. He indeed got a little out of his element when he got into France, — his good humour did not leave him, but his self-possession. He could not speak French, and he walked about as if treading on eggs.
When at Paris I will tell you more what I think of the French. They still seem miracles of quietness in comparison with Marianne’s noisy friends. And the women’s dresses afford the drollest contrast with those in fashion when I first set foot in Paris in 1814. Then their waists were between their shoulders, and, as Hogg observed, they were rather curtains than gowns; their hair, too, dragged to the top of the head, and then lifted to its height, appeared as if each female wished to be a Tower of Babel in herself. Now their waists are long (not so long, however, as the Genoese), and their hair flat at the top, with quantities of curls on the temples. I remember, in 1814, a Frenchman’s pathetic horror at Clare’s and my appearance in the streets of Paris in “Oldenburgh” (as they were called) hats; now they all wear machines of that shape, and a high bonnet would of course be as far out of the right road as if the earth were to take a flying leap to another system.
After you receive this letter, you must direct to me at my Father’s (pray put William Godwin, Esq., since the want of that etiquette annoys him. I remember Shelley’s unspeakable astonishment when the author of Political Justice asked him, half reproachfully, why he addressed him Mr. Godwin), 195 Strand.
On the 25th of August Mary met her father once more. At his house in the Strand she spent her first ten days in England. Consideration for others, and the old habit of repressing all show of feeling before Godwin helped to steel her nerves and heart to bear the stings and aches of this strange, mournful reunion.
And now again, too, she saw her friend Jane. But fondly as Mary ever clung to her, she must have been sensible of the difference between them. Mrs. Williams’ situation was forlorn indeed; in some respects even more so than Mrs. Shelley’s. But, though she had grieved bitterly, as well she might, for Edward’s loss, her nature was not impressible, and the catastrophe which had fallen upon her had left her unaltered. Jane was unhappy, but she was not inconsolable; her grief was becoming to her, and lent her a certain interest which enhanced her attractions. And to men in general she was very attractive. Godwin himself was somewhat fascinated by the “picturesque little woman” who had called on him on her first arrival; who “did not drop one tear” and occasionally smiled. As for Hogg, he lost his heart to her at once.
All this Mary must have seen. But Jane was an attaching creature, and Mary loved her as the greater nature loves the lesser; she lavished on her a wealth of pent-up tenderness, content to get what crumbs she could in return. For herself a curious surprise was in store, which entertained, if it did not cheer her.
Just at the time of its author’s return to England, Frankenstein, in a dramatised form, was having a considerable “run” at the English Opera House.
Mrs. Shelley to Leigh Hunt.
9th September 1823.
My dear Hunt — Bessy promised me to relieve you from any inquietude you might suffer from not hearing from me, so I indulged myself with not writing to you until I was quietly settled in lodgings of my own. Want of time is not my excuse; I had plenty, but, until I saw all quiet around me, I had not the spirit to write a line. I thought of you all — how much? and often longed to write, yet would not till I called myself free to turn southward; to imagine you all, to put myself in the midst of you, would have destroyed all my philosophy. But now I do so. I am in little neat lodgings, my boy in bed, I quiet, and I will now talk to you, tell you what I have seen and heard, and with as little repining as I can, try (by making the best of what I have, the certainty of your friendship and kindness) to rest half content that I am not in the “Paradise of Exiles.” Well, first I will tell you, journalwise, the history of my sixteen days in London.
I arrived Monday, the 25th of August. My Father and William came for me to the wharf. I had an excellent passage of eleven hours and a half, a glassy sea, and a contrary wind. The smoke of our fire was wafted right aft, and streamed out behind us; but wind was of little consequence; the tide was with us, and though the engine gave a “short uneasy motion” to the vessel, the water was so smooth that no one on board was sick, and Persino played about the deck in high glee. I had a very kind reception in the Strand, and all was done that could be done to make me comfortable. I exerted myself to keep up my spirits. The house, though rather dismal, is infinitely better than the Skinner Street one. I resolved not to think of certain things, to take all as a matter of course, and thus contrive to keep myself out of the gulf of melancholy, on the edge of which I was and am continually peeping.
But lo and behold! I found myself famous. Frankenstein had prodigious success as a drama, and was about to be repeated, for the twenty-third night, at the English Opera House. The play-bill am
used me extremely, for, in the list of dramatis personæ, came “ —— , by Mr. T. Cooke.” This nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good.
On Friday, 29th August, Jane, my Father, William, and I went to the theatre to see it. Wallack looked very well as Frankenstein. He is at the beginning full of hope and expectation. At the end of the first act the stage represents a room with a staircase leading to Frankenstein’s workshop; he goes to it, and you see his light at a small window, through which a frightened servant peeps, who runs off in terror when Frankenstein exclaims “It lives!” Presently Frankenstein himself rushes in horror and trepidation from the room, and, while still expressing his agony and terror, “ — —” throws down the door of the laboratory, leaps the staircase, and presents his unearthly and monstrous person on the stage. The story is not well managed, but Cooke played — —’s part extremely well; his seeking, as it were, for support; his trying to grasp at the sounds he heard; all, indeed, he does was well imagined and executed. I was much amused, and it appeared to excite a breathless eagerness in the audience. It was a third piece, a scanty pit filled at half-price, and all stayed till it was over. They continue to play it even now.
On Saturday, 30th August, I went with Jane to the Gisbornes. I know not why, but seeing them seemed more than anything else to remind me of Italy. Evening came on drearily, the rain splashed on the pavement, nor star nor moon deigned to appear. I looked upward to seek an image of Italy, but a blotted sky told me only of my change. I tried to collect my thoughts, and then, again, dared not think, for I am a ruin where owls and bats live only, and I lost my last singing bird when I left Albaro. It was my birthday, and it pleased me to tell the people so; to recollect and feel that time flies, and what is to arrive is nearer, and my home not so far off as it was a year ago. This same evening, on my return to the Strand, I saw Lamb, who was very entertaining and amiable, though a little deaf. One of the first questions he asked me was, whether they made puns in Italy: I said, “Yes, now Hunt is there.” He said that Burney made a pun in Otaheite, the first that was ever made in that country. At first the natives could not make out what he meant, but all at once they discovered the pun, and danced round him in transports of joy....
... On the strength of the drama, my Father had published for my benefit a new edition of Frankenstein, for he despaired utterly of my doing anything with Sir Timothy Shelley. I wrote to him, however, to tell him of my arrival, and on the following Wednesday had a note from Whitton, where he invited me, if I wished for an explanation of Sir T. Shelley’s intentions concerning my boy, to call on him. I went with my Father. Whitton was very polite, though long-winded: his great wish seemed to be to prevent my applying again to Sir T. Shelley, whom he represented as old, infirm, and irritable. However, he advanced me £100 for my immediate expenses, told me that he could not speak positively until he had seen Sir T. Shelley, but that he doubted not but that I should receive the same annually for my child, and, with a little time and patience, I should get an allowance for myself. This, you see, relieved me from a load of anxieties.
Having secured neat cheap lodgings, we removed hither last night. Such, dear Hunt, is the outline of your poor exile’s history. After two days of rain, the weather has been uncommonly fine, cioè, without rain, and cloudless, I believe, though I trusted to other eyes for that fact, since the white-washed sky is anything but blue to any but the perceptions of the natives themselves. It is so cold, however, that the fire I am now sitting by is not the first that has been lighted, for my Father had one two days ago. The wind is east and piercing, but I comfort myself with the hope that softer gales are now fanning your not throbbing temples, that the climate of Florence will prove kindly to you, and that your health and spirits will return to you. Why am I not there? This is quite a foreign country to me, the names of the places sound strangely, the voices of the people are new and grating, the vulgar English they speak particularly displeasing. But for my Father, I should be with you next spring, but his heart and soul are set on my stay, and in this world it always seems one’s duty to sacrifice one’s own desires, and that claim ever appears the strongest which claims such a sacrifice.
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It is difficult to imagine Frankenstein on the stage; it must, at least, lose very much in dramatic representation. Like its modern successor, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, — that remarkable story which bears a certain affinity to Frankenstein, — its subtle allegorical significance would be overweighted, if not lost, by the effect of the grosser and more material incidents which are all that could be played, and which, as described, must have bordered on the ludicrous. Still the charm of life imparted by a human impersonation to any portion, even, of one’s own idea, is singularly powerful; and so Mary felt it. She would have liked to repeat the experience. Her situation, looked at in the face, was unenviable. She was unprovided for, young, delicate, and with a child dependent on her. Her rich connections would have nothing to do with her, and her boy did not possess in their eyes the importance which would have attached to him had he been heir to the baronetcy. She had talent, and it had been cultivated, but with her sorely-tried health and spirits, the prospect of self-support by the compulsory production of imaginative work must, at the time, have seemed unpromising enough.
Two sheet-anchors of hope she had, and by these she lived. They were, her child — so friendless but for her — and the thought of Shelley’s fame. The collecting and editing of his MSS., this was her work; no one else should do it. It seemed as though her brief life with him had had for its purpose to educate her for this one object.
Those who now, in naming Shelley, feel they name a part of everything beautiful, ethereal, and spiritual — that his words are so inextricably interwoven with certain phases of love and beauty as to be indistinguishable from the very thing itself — may well find it hard to realise how little he was known at the time when he died.
With other poets their work is the blossom and fruit of their lives, but Shelley’s poetry resembles rather the perfume of the flower, that subtle quality pertaining to the bloom which can be neither described, nor pourtrayed, nor transmitted; an essence of immortality.
Not many months after this the news of Byron’s early death struck a kind of remorseful grief into the hearts of his countrymen. A letter of Miss Welsh’s (Mrs. Carlyle) gives an idea of the general feeling —
“I was told it,” she says, “in a room full of people. Had I heard that the sun and moon had fallen out of their spheres it could not have conveyed to me the feeling of a more awful blank than did the simple words, ‘Byron is dead.’”
How many, it may be asked, were conscious of any blank when the news reached them that Shelley had been “accidentally drowned”? Their numbers might be counted by tens.
The sale, in every instance, of Mr. Shelley’s works has been very confined,
was his publishers’ report to his widow. One newspaper dismissed his memory by the passing remark, “He will now find out whether there is a Hell or not.”
The small number of those who recognised his genius did not even include all his personal friends.
“Mine is a life of failures;” so he summed it up to Trelawny and Edward Williams. “Peacock says my poetry is composed of day-dreams and nightmares, and Leigh Hunt does not think it good enough for the Examiner. Jefferson Hogg says all poetry is inverted sense, and consequently nonsense....
“I wrote, and the critics denounced me as a mischievous visionary, and my friends said that I had mistaken my vocation, that my poetry was mere rhapsody of words....”
Leigh Hunt, indeed, thought his own poetry more than equal to Shelley’s or Byron’s. Byron knew Shelley’s power well enough, but cared little for the subjects of his sympathy. Trelawny was more appreciative, but his admiration for the poetry was quite secondary to his enthusiasm for the man. In Hogg’s case, affection for the man may be said to have excused the poetry. All this Mary knew, but she knew too — what she was soon to find out by experi
ence — that among his immediate associates he had created too warm an interest for him to escape posthumous discussion and criticism. And he had been familiar with some of those regarding whom the world’s curiosity was insatiable, concerning whom any shred of information, true or false, was eagerly snapped up. His name would inevitably figure in anecdotes and gossip. His fame was Mary’s to guard. During the years she lived at Albaro she had been employed in collecting and transcribing his scattered MSS., and at the end of this year, 1823, the volume of Posthumous Poems came out.
One would imagine that publishers would have bid against each other for the possession of such a treasure. Far from it. Among the little band of “true believers” three came forward to guarantee the expenses of publication. They were, the poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Procter, and T. F. Kelsall.
The appearance of this book was a melancholy satisfaction to Mary, though, as will soon be seen, she was not long allowed to enjoy it.
Mrs. Shelley to Mrs. Hunt.
London, 27th November 1823.
My dearest Polly — Are you not a naughty girl? How could you copy a letter to that “agreeable, unaffected woman, Mrs. Shelley,” without saying a word from yourself to your loving...? My dear Polly, a line from you forms a better picture for me of what you are about than — alas! I was going to say three pages, but I check myself — the rare one page of Hunt. Do not think that I forget you — even Percy does not, and he often tells me to bid the Signor Enrico and you to get in a carriage and then into a boat, and to come to questo paese with Baby nuovo, Henry, Swinburne, e tutti. But that will not be, nor shall I see you at Mariano; this is a dreary exile for me. During a long month of cloud and fog, how often have I sighed for my beloved Italy, and more than ever this day when I have come to a conclusion with Sir Timothy Shelley as to my affairs, and I find the miserable pittance I am to have. Nearly sufficient in Italy, here it will not go half-way. It is £100 per annum. Nor is this all, for I foresee a thousand troubles; yet, in truth, as far as regards mere money matters and worldly prospects, I keep up my philosophy with excellent success. Others wonder at this, but I do not, nor is there any philosophy in it. After having witnessed the mortal agonies of my two darling children, after that journey from and to Lerici, I feel all these as pictures and trifles as long as I am kept out of contact with the unholy. I was upset to-day by being obliged to see Whitton, and the prospect of seeing others of his tribe. I can earn a sufficiency, I doubt not. In Italy I should be content: here I will not bemoan. Indeed I never do, and Mrs. Godwin makes large eyes at the quiet way in which I take it all. It is England alone that annoys me, yet sometimes I get among friends and almost forget its fogs. I go to Shacklewell rarely, and sometimes see the Novellos elsewhere. He is my especial favourite, and his music always transports me to the seventh heaven.... I see the Lambs rather often, she ever amiable, and Lamb witty and delightful. I must tell you one thing and make Hunt laugh. Lamb’s new house at Islington is close to the New River, and George Dyer, after having paid them a visit, on going away at 12 at noonday, walked deliberately into the water, taking it for the high road. “But,” as he said afterwards to Procter, “I soon found that I was in the water, sir.” So Miss Lamb and the servant had to fish him out.... I must tell Hunt also a good saying of Lamb’s, — talking of some one, he said, “Now some men who are very veracious are called matter-of-fact men, but such a one I should call a matter-of-lie man.”