Chapter XXIII: October 1831-October 1839 (3)

To be serious, it is better than being idle, and one certainly learns
languages, knowledge of the world, and good manners. Perhaps I may
send my son, some seventeen years hence, if my brother is then a
minister, into that career. But it will depend on his prospects. Are
you sure that you can get an attacheship? It requires a good deal of
interest, and there are plenty of candidates among young men of rank,
and, I fear, claims more pressing and urging than the memory of
genius. I could not procure that place for a most intimate friend of
mine a little time ago. I will take my chance some evening, but I fear
not Thursday; in fact, I am so occupied just at present that till
after Easter I have scarcely a moment to myself, and at Easter I must
go to Lincoln.--Yours ever,

E. L. BULWER.

Mrs. Norton interested herself in the matter. She could not effect much, but she was sympathetic and kind.

"You have your troubles," she wrote, "struggling for one who, I trust,
will hereafter repay you for every weary hour and years of
self-denial, and I shall be glad to hear from you now and then how all
goes on with you and him, so do not forget me when you have a spare
half hour, and if ever I have any good news to send, do not doubt my
then writing by the first post, for I think my happiest moments now
are when, in the strange mixture of helplessness and power which has
made the warp and woof of my destiny, I can accidentally serve some
one who has had more of the world's buffets than its good fortune."

Some scraps of journal belonging to 1839 afford a little insight into Mrs. Shelley's difficulties while editing her husband's MSS.

_Journal, February 12_ (1839).--I almost think that my present
occupation will end in a fit of illness. I am editing Shelley's Poems,
and writing notes for them. I desire to do Shelley honour in the notes
to the best of my knowledge and ability; for the rest, they are or are
not well written; it little matters to me which. Would that I had more
literary vanity, or vanity of any kind; I were happier. As it is, I am
torn to pieces by memory. Would that all were mute in the grave!

I _much_ disliked the leaving out any of _Queen Mab_. I dislike it
still more than I can express, and I even wish I had resisted to the
last; but when I was told that certain portions would injure the
copyright of all the volumes to the publisher, I yielded. I had
consulted Hunt, Hogg, and Peacock; they all said I had a right to do
as I liked, and offered no one objection. Trelawny sent back the
volume to Moxon in a rage at seeing parts left out....

Hogg has written me an insulting letter because I left out the
dedication to Harriet....

Little does Jefferson, how little does any one, know me! When Clarke's
edition of _Queen Mab_ came to us at the Baths of Pisa, Shelley
expressed great pleasure that these verses were omitted. This
recollection caused me to do the same. It was to do him honour. What
could it be to me? There are other verses I should well like to
obliterate for ever, but they will be printed; and any to her could in
no way tend to my discomfort, or gratify one ungenerous feeling. They
shall be restored, though I do not feel easy as to the good I do
Shelley. I may have been mistaken. Jefferson might mistake me and be
angry; that were nothing. He has done far more, and done his best to
give another poke to the poisonous dagger which has long rankled in my
heart. I cannot forgive any man that insults any woman. She cannot
call him out,--she disdains words of retort; she must endure, but it
is never to be forgiven; not, "indeed, cherished as matter of
enmity"--that I never feel,--but of caution to shield oneself from the
like again.

In so arduous a task, others might ask for encouragement and kindness
from their friends,--I know mine better. I am unstable, sometimes
melancholy, and have been called on some occasions imperious; but I
never did an ungenerous act in my life. I sympathise warmly with
others, and have wasted my heart in their love and service.

All this together is making me feel very ill, and my holiday at
Woodlay only did me good while it lasted.

_March._ ... Illness did ensue. What an illness! driving me to the
verge of insanity. Often I felt the cord would snap, and I should no
longer be able to rule my thoughts; with fearful struggles, miserable
relapses, after long repose I became somewhat better.

_October 5, 1839._--Twice in my life I have believed myself to be
dying, and my soul being alive, though the bodily functions were faint
and perishing, I had opportunity to look Death in the face, and I did
not fear it--far from it. My feelings, especially in the first and
most perilous instance, was, I go to no new creation. I enter under no
new laws. The God that made this beautiful world (and I was then at
Lerici, surrounded by the most beautiful manifestation of the visible
creation) made that into which I go; as there is beauty and love here,
such is there, and I feel as if my spirit would when it left my frame
be received and sustained by a beneficent and gentle Power.

I had no fear, rather, though I had no active wish but a passive
satisfaction in death. Whether the nature of my illness--debility from
loss of blood, without pain--caused this tranquillity of soul, I
cannot tell; but so it was, and it had this blessed effect, that I
have never since anticipated death with terror, and even if a violent
death (which is the most repugnant to human nature) menaced me, I
think I could, after the first shock, turn to the memory of that hour,
and renew its emotion of perfect resignation.

The darkest moment is that which precedes the dawn. These unhappy years were like the series of "clearing showers" which often concludes a stormy day. The clouds were lifting, and though Mary Shelley could never be other than what sorrow and endurance had made her, the remaining years of her life were to bring alleviations to her lot,--slanting rays of afternoon sunshine, powerless, indeed, to warm into life the tender buds of morning, but which illumined the landscape and lightened her path, and shed over her a mild radiance which she reflected back on others, affording to them the brightness she herself could know no more, and diffusing around her that sensation of peace which she was to know now, perhaps, for the first time.