by Mary Shelley
What you tell me of the state of family resources has naturally depressed my spirits. Will the future never cease unrolling new shapes of misery? Stair above stair of wretchedness is all we know; the present, bad as it is, is always better than what comes after. Of all the crowd of eager inquirers at the Delphic shrine was there ever found one who thanked, or had any reason to thank, the Pythia for what she disclosed to him? For me, I have long abandoned hope and the future, and am now diligently pursuing and retracing the past, going the back way as it were to eternity in order to avoid the disappointments and perplexities of an unknown course. But I must beg pardon for my cowardice and disagreeableness, and leave it, or else I shall be recollected with as much reluctance as the Pythia.
I wish I could give you any idea of the beauty of Nice. So long as I can walk about beside the sounding sea, beneath its ambient heaven, and gaze upon the far hills enshrined in purple light, I catch such pleasure from their loveliness that I am happy without happiness; but when I come home, then it seems to me as if all the phantasmagoria of hell danced before my eyes.
Mrs. K. has arrived and in no very amiable humour. The only conversation I hear is, first, the numberless perfections of herself, husband, and child; this, as it is true, would be well enough, but still upon repetition it tires; second, the infinite superiority of Russia over all other countries, since it is an established truth that liberty and civilisation are the most dreadful of all evils. I, to avoid ill-temper, assent to all they say; then in company, when opposed in their doctrines, they drag me forward, and the tacit consent I have given, as an argument in favour of their way of thinking, and I am at once set down by everybody either as a fawning creature or an utter fool. However, I am glad she has come, as the responsibility of Natalie’s health was too much. For heaven’s sake excuse me to dear Jane that I have not written. My first moment shall be given to do so.
I think of England and my friends all day long. Entreat everybody to write to me. Do pray do so yourself. My love to my Mother and Papa, and William and everybody. How happy was I that Percy was well. — In haste, ever yours,
C. Clairmont.
Mrs. Shelley’s mind was much occupied during 1831 by the serious question of sending her son to a public school. She wished to give him the best possible education, and she wished, too, to give it him in such a form as would place him at no disadvantage among other young men when he took his place in English society.
Shelley (she mentions in one of her letters) had expressed himself in favour of a public school, but Shelley’s family had also to be consulted, and she seems to have had reason to hope they would help in the matter.
They quite concurred in her views for Percy, only putting a veto on Eton, where legends of his father’s school-days might still be lingering about. Nothing was better than that she should send him to a public school — if she could. These last words were implied, not expressed. But a public school education in England is not to be given on a very limited income. Funds had to be found; and Mrs. Shelley made, through the lawyer, a direct request to Sir Timothy for assistance.
She received the following answer —
Mr. Whitton to Mrs. Shelley.
Stone Hall, 6th November 1831.
Dear Madam — I have been, from the time I received your last favour to the present, in correspondence with Sir Timothy Shelley as to your wishes of an advance upon the £300 per annum he now makes to you, and I recommended him to consult his friend and solicitor, Mr. Steadman, of Horsham, thereon, and which he did.
You have not perhaps well put together and estimated on the great amount of the charges upon the estate by the late Mr. Shelley, and on the legacies given by his will; but looking at all these, and the very limited interest of the estate now vested in you, Sir Timothy has paused in his consideration thereof, and in the result has brought his mind, that, having regard to the other provisions he is bound to make for his other children, he ought not to increase the allowance to you, and upon that ground he declines so doing; and therefore feels the necessity of your making such arrangements as you may find necessary to make the £300 per annum answer the purposes for yourself and for your son, and he has this morning stated to me his fixed determination to abide thereby; and I lose not a moment, after I receive this communication from him, to make it known to you, and I trust and hope you will find it practicable to give him a good education out of the £300 a year. — I remain, Madam, your very obedient servant,
Wm. Whitton.
The seeming brutality of the concluding sentence must in fairness be ascribed to the writer and not to those he represented.
To Mrs. Shelley, knowing the impossibility of carrying out the public school plan on her own income, the wishes and hopes must have sounded a mockery. It had to be done, however, if it was the best thing for the boy. The money must be earned, and she worked on.
One day she received from her father a new kind of petition, which, showing the effect on him of advancing years, must have struck a pang to her heart. She was accustomed to his requests for money, but now he wrote to her for an idea.
Godwin to Mrs. Shelley.
13th April 1832.
My dear Mary — You desire me to write to you, if I have anything particular to say.
I write, then, to say that I am still in the same dismaying predicament in which I have been for weeks past — at a loss for materials to make up my third volume. This is by no means what I expected.
I knew, and I know, that incidents of hair-breadth escapes and adventures are innumerable, and that without having fixed on any one of them, I took for granted they would come when I called for them. Such is the mischievous effect, the anxious expectation, that is produced by past success.
I believe that when I came to push with all my force against the barriers that seemed to shut me in they would give way, and place all the treasures of invention before me.
Meanwhile, it unfortunately happens that I cannot lay my present disappointment to the charge of advancing age.
I find all my faculties and all my strength in full bloom about me. My disappointment has put that to a sharp trial. I thought that the severe stretch of my faculties would cause them to yield, and subside into feebleness and torpor. No such thing. Day after day, week after week, I apply to this one question, without remission and with discernment. But I cannot please myself. If I make the round of all my thoughts, and come home empty-handed, it would seem that in the flower and vigour of my youth I should have done the same.
Meanwhile, my situation is deplorable. I am not free to choose the thing I would do. I have written two volumes and a quarter, and have received five-sixths of the price of my work.
I am afraid you will think I am useless, by teasing you with “conceptions only proper to myself.” But it is not altogether so. A bystander may see a point of game which a player overlooks. Though I cannot furnish myself with satisfactory incidents I have disciplined my mind into a tone that would enable me to improve them, if offered to me.
My mind is like a train of gunpowder, and a single spark, now happily communicated, might set the whole in motion and activity.
Do not tease yourself about my calamity; but give it one serious thought. Who knows what such a thought may produce? — Your affectionate Father,
William Godwin.
In the spring of 1832 the cholera appeared in London. Clare, at a distance, was torn to pieces between real apprehension for the safety of her friends, and distracting fears lest the disease should select among them for its victim some one on whose life depended the realisation of Shelley’s will. For Percy especially she was solicitous. Mary must take him away at once, to the seaside — anywhere: if money was an obstacle she, Clare, was ready to help to defray the cost out of her salary.
Mrs. Shelley did leave London, although, it may safely be asserted, at no one’s expense but her own. She stayed for a month at Southend, and afterwards for a longer time at Sandgate.
Besides contributing tales and o
ccasionally verses to the Keepsake, she was employed now and during the next two or three years in preparing and writing the Italian and Spanish Lives of Literary Men for Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædia. These included, among the Italians — Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bojardo, Macchiavelli, Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, etc.; among the Spanish and Portuguese — Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Camoens, and a host of others, besides notices of the Troubadours, the “Romances Moriscos,” and the early poets of Portugal.
Clare, too, tried her hand at a story, to which she begged Mary to be a kind of godmother.
I have written a tale, which I think will do for the Keepsake. I shall send it home for your perusal. Will you correct it? Do write and let me know where I may send it, so as to be sure to find you. Will you be angry with me if I beg you to write the last scene of it? I am now so unwell I can’t.
My only time for writing is after 10 at night; the rest of the tale was composed at that hour, after having been scolding and talking and giving lessons from 7 in the morning.
It was very near its end when I got so ill, I gave it up. If you cannot do anything with it you can at least make curl-papers of it, and that is always something. Do not mention it to anybody; should it be printed one can speak of it, and if you judge it not worthy, then it is no use mortifying my vanity.
The truth, is I should never think of writing, knowing well my incapacity for it, but I want to gain money. What would one not do for that, since it is the only key of freedom? One is even impudent enough to ask a great authoress to finish one’s tale for one. I think, in your hands, it might get into the Keepsake, for it is about a Pole, and that is the topic of the day.
If it should get any money, half will naturally belong to you. Should you have the kindness to arrange it, Julia would perhaps also be so kind as to copy it out for me, that the alterations in your hand may not be seen. I wish it to be signed “Mont Obscur.”...
Mary did what was asked of her. Trelawny, now in England again, had influence in some literary quarters, and, at her request, willingly consented to exert it on Clare’s behalf.
Meanwhile he requested her to receive his eldest daughter on a visit of considerable length.
Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.
17th July 1832.
My dear Mary — I am awaiting an occasion of sending —— to Italy, my friend, Lady D., undertaking the charge of her.
It may be a month before she leaves England. At the end of this month Mrs. B. leaves London, and you will do me a great service if you will permit my daughter to reside with you till I can make the necessary arrangements for going abroad; she has been reared in a rough school, like her father. I wish her to live and do as you do, and that you will not put yourself to the slightest inconvenience on her account.
As we are poor, the rich are our inheritance, and we are justified on all and every occasion to rob and use them.
But we must be honest and just amongst ourselves, therefore —— must to the last fraction pay her own expenses, and neither put you to expense nor inconvenience. For the rest, I should like —— to learn to lean upon herself alone — to see the practical part of life: to learn housekeeping on trifling means, and to benefit by her intercourse with a woman like you; but I am ill at compliments.
If you will permit —— to come to you, I will send or bring her to you about the 25th of this month. I should like you and —— to know each other before she leaves England, and thus I have selected you to take charge of her in preference to any other person; but say if it chimes in with your wishes.
Adieu, dear Mary. — Your attached friend,
Edward Trelawny.
By the bye, tell me where the Sandgate coach starts from, its time of leaving London, and its time of arrival at Sandgate, and where you are, and if they will give you another bedroom in the house you are lodging in; and if you have any intention of leaving Sandgate soon.
Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.
27th July 1832.
My dear Mary — You told me in your letter that it would be more convenient for you to receive —— on the last of the month, so I made my arrangements accordingly. I now find it will suit me better to come to you on Wednesday, so that you may expect —— on the evening of that day by the coach you mention. I shall of course put up at the inn.
As to your style of lodging or living, —— is not such a fool as to let that have any weight with her; if you were in a cobbler’s stall she would be satisfied; and as to the dulness of the place, why, that must mainly depend on ourselves. Brompton is not so very gay, and the reason of my removing —— to Italy is that Mrs. B. was about sending her to reside with strangers at Lincoln; besides —— is acting entirely by her own free choice, and she gladly preferred Sandgate to Lincoln. At all events, come we shall; and if you, by barricading or otherwise, oppose our entrance, why I shall do to you, not as I would have others do unto me, but as I do unto others, — make an onslaught on your dwelling, carry your tenement by assault, and give the place up to plunder.
So on Wednesday evening (at 5, by your account) you must be prepared to quietly yield up possession or take the consequences. So as you shall deport yourself, you will find me your friend or foe,
Trelawny.
Mary’s guest stayed with her over a month. During this time she was saddened by the sudden death of her friendly acquaintance, Lord Dillon. She was anxious, too, about her father, whose equable spirits had failed him this year. No assistance seemed to avail much to ease his circumstances; he was not far from his eightieth year, and still his hopes were anchored in a yet-to-be-written novel.
“I feel myself able and willing to do everything, and to do it well,” so he wrote, “and nobody disposed to give me the requisite encouragement. If I can agree with these tyrants” (his publishers) “for £300, £400, or £500 for a novel, and to be subsisted by them while I write it, I probably shall not starve for a twelvemonth to come ... but this dancing attendance wears my spirits and destroys my tranquillity. ‘Hands have I, but I handle not; I have feet, but I walk not; neither is there any breath in my nostrils.’
“Meanwhile my life wears away, and ‘there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither I go.’ But, indeed, I am wrong in talking of that, for I write now, not for marble to be placed over my remains, but for bread to put into my mouth.”
Mary tried in the summer to tempt him down to Sandgate for a change. But the weather was very cold, and he declined.
28th August 1832.
Dear Mary —
See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train —
Vapours, and clouds, and storms.
I am shivering over a little fire at the bottom of my grate, and have small inclination to tempt the sea-breezes and the waves; we must therefore defer our meeting till it comes within the walls of London.
········
Au revoir! To what am I reserved? I know not.
The wide (no not) the unbounded prospect lies before me,
But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
A new shadow was now to fall upon the poor old man, in the death from cholera of his only son, Mary’s half-brother, William. This son in his early youth had given some trouble and caused some anxiety, but his character, as he grew up, had become steadier and more settled. He was happily married, and seemed likely to be a source of real comfort and satisfaction to his parents in their old age. By profession he was a reporter, but he had his hereditary share of literary ability and of talent “turned for the relation of fictitious adventures,” and left in MS. a novel called Transfusion, published by his father after his death, with the motto —
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,
May yet conjecture what I might have been.
Although inevitably somewhat hardened against misfortune of the heart by his self-centred habits of mind and anxiety about money, Godwin was much saddened by this loss,
and to Mrs. Godwin it was a very great and bitter grief indeed.
Clare saw at once in this the beginning of fresh troubles; the realisation of all the gloomy forebodings in which she had indulged. She wrote to Jane Hogg —
That nasty year, 1832, could not go over without imitating in some respects 1822, and bringing death and misfortune to us. From the time it came in till it went out I trembled, expecting at every moment to hear the most gloomy tidings.
William’s death came, and fulfilled my anticipations; misfortune as it was, it was not such a heavy one to me as the loss of others might have been. I, however, was fond of him, because I did not view his faults in that desponding light which his other relations did. I have seen more of the world, and, comparing him with other young men, his frugality, his industry, his attachment to his wife, and his talents, raised him, in my opinion, considerably above the common par.
But in our family, if you cannot write an epic poem or novel that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature, not worth acknowledging. What would they have done or said had their children been fond of dress, fond of cards, drunken, profligate, as most people’s children are?
To Mary she wrote in a somewhat different tone, assuming that she, Clare, was the victim on whom all misfortune really fell, and wondering at Mary’s incredible temerity in allowing her boy, that all-important heir-apparent, to face the perils of a public school.
And then, losing sight for a moment of her own feverish anxiety, she gives a vivid sketch of Mrs. Mason’s family.
Miss Clairmont to Mrs. Shelley.
Pisa, 26th October 1832.
My dear Mary — Though your last letter was on so melancholy a subject, yet I am so destitute of all happiness that to receive it was one to me.