Chapter XVIII: September 1822-July 1823 (1)

An eminent contemporary writer, speaking of Trelawny's writings, has remarked: "So long as he dwells on Shelley, he is, like the visitants to the _Witch of Atlas_, 'imparadised.'" This was true, in fact not as to the writings, but the natures, of all who had friendly or intimate relations with Shelley. His personality was like a clear, deep lake, wherein the sky and the surrounding objects were reflected. Now and again a breeze, or even a storm, might sweep across the "watery glass," playing strange, grotesque pranks with the distorted reflections. But in general those who surrounded it saw themselves, and saw each other, not as they were, but as they appeared,--transfigured, idealised, glorified, by the impalpable, fluid, medium. And like a tree that overhangs the water's edge, whose branches dip and play in the clear ripples, nodding and beckoning to their own living likeness there, so Mary had grown up by the side of this, her own image in him,--herself indeed, but "imparadised" in the immortal unreality of the magic mirror.

Now the eternal frost had fallen: black ice and dreary snow had extinguished that reflection for ever, and the solitary tree was left to weather all storms in a wintry world, where no magic mirror was to be hers any more.

Mary Shelley's diary, now she was alone, altered its character. In her husband's lifetime it had been a record of the passing facts of every day; almost as concise in statement as that of her father. Now and then, in travelling, she would stereotype an impression of beautiful scenery by an elaborate description; sometimes, but very rarely, she had indulged (as at Pisa) on reflections on people or things in general.

The case was now exactly reversed. Alone with her child, with no one else to live for; having no companion-mind with which to exchange ideas, and having never known what it was to be without one before, her diary became her familiar,--or rather her shadow, for it took its sombre colouring from her and could give nothing back. The thoughts too monotonously sad, too harrowing in their eloquent self-pity to be communicated to other people, but which filled her heart, the more that heart was thrown back on itself, found here an outlet, inadequate enough, but still the only one they had. In thus recording her emotions for her own benefit, she had little idea that these melancholy self-communings would ever be gathered up and published for the satisfaction of the "reading world"; a world that loves nothing so well as personal details, and would rather have the object of its interest misrepresented than not represented at all. Outwardly uneventful as Mrs. Shelley's subsequent life was, its few occurrences are, as a rule, not even alluded to in her journal. Such things for the most part lost their intrinsic importance to her when Shelley disappeared; it was only in the world of abstractions that she felt or could imagine his companionship. Her journal, in reality, records her first essay in living alone. It was, to an almost incredible degree, a beginning.

Her existence, from its outset, had been offered up at the shrine of one man. To animate his solitude, to foster his genius, to help--as far as possible--his labours, to companion him in a world that did not understand him,--this had been her life-work, which lay now as a dream behind her, while she awakened to find herself alone with the solitude, the work, the cold unfriendly world, and without Shelley.

Could any woman be as lonely? All who share an abnormal lot must needs be isolated when cut adrift from the other life which has been their _raison d'etre_; and Mary had begun so early, that she had grown, as it were, to this state of double solitude. She had not been unconscious of the slight hold they had on actualities.

"Mary," observed Shelley one day at Pisa, when Trelawny was present,
"Trelawny has found out Byron already. How stupid we were; how long it
took us!"

"That," she observed, "is because he lives with the living and we with
the dead."

And as a fact, Shelley lived with the immortals; finite things were outside his world; in his contemporaries it was what he would have considered their immortal side that he cared for. There are conjurors who can be tied by no knot from which they cannot escape, and so the limitations of practical convention, those "ideas and feelings which are but for a day," had no power to hold Shelley.

And Mary knew no world but his. Now, young,--only twenty-five,--yet with the past experience of eight years of chequered married life, and of a simultaneous intellectual development almost perilously rapid, she stood, an utter novice, on the threshold of ordinary existence.

_Journal, October 2._--On the 8th of July I finished my journal. This
is a curious coincidence. The date still remains--the fatal 8th--a
monument to show that all ended then. And I begin again? Oh, never!
But several motives induce me, when the day has gone down, and all is
silent around me, steeped in sleep, to pen, as occasion wills, my
reflections and feelings. First, I have no friend. For eight years I
communicated, with unlimited freedom, with one whose genius, far
transcending mine, awakened and guided my thoughts. I conversed with
him, rectified my errors of judgment; obtained new lights from him;
and my mind was satisfied. Now I am alone--oh, how alone! The stars
may behold my tears, and the wind drink my sighs, but my thoughts are
a sealed treasure which I can confide to none. But can I express all I
feel? Can I give words to thoughts and feelings that, as a tempest,
hurry me along? Is this the sand that the ever-flowing sea of thought
would impress indelibly? Alas! I am alone. No eye answers mine; my
voice can with none assume its natural modulation. What a change! O my
beloved Shelley! how often during those happy days--happy, though
chequered--I thought how superiorly gifted I had been in being united
to one to whom I could unveil myself, and who could understand me!
Well, then, now I am reduced to these white pages, which I am to blot
with dark imagery. As I write, let me think what he would have said
if, speaking thus to him, he could have answered me. Yes, my own
heart, I would fain know what to think of my desolate state; what you
think I ought to do, what to think. I guess you would answer thus:
"Seek to know your own heart, and, learning what it best loves, try to
enjoy that." Well, I cast my eyes around, and, looking forward to the
bounded prospect in view, I ask myself what pleases me there. My
child;--so many feelings arise when I think of him, that I turn aside
to think no more. Those I most loved are gone for ever; those who held
the second rank are absent; and among those near me as yet, I trust to
the disinterested kindness of one alone. Beneath all this, my
imagination never flags. Literary labours, the improvement of my mind,
and the enlargement of my ideas, are the only occupations that elevate
me from my lethargy: all events seem to lead me to that one point, and
the courses of destiny having dragged me to that single resting-place,
have left me. Father, mother, friend, husband, children--all made, as
it were, the team which conducted me here, and now all, except you, my
poor boy (and you are necessary to the continuance of my life), all
are gone, and I am left to fulfil my task. So be it.

_October 5._--Well, they are come;[4] and it is all as I said. I awoke
as from sleep, and thought how I had vegetated these last days; for
feeling leaves little trace on the memory if it be, like mine,
unvaried. I have felt for, and with myself alone, and I awake now to
take a part in life. As far as others are concerned, my sensations
have been most painful. I must work hard amidst the vexations that I
perceive are preparing for me, to preserve my peace and tranquillity
of mind. I must preserve some, if I am to live; for, since I bear at
the bottom of my heart a fathomless well of bitter waters, the
workings of which my philosophy is ever at work to repress, what will
be my fate if the petty vexations of life are added to this sense of
eternal and infinite misery?

Oh, my child! what is your fate to be? You alone reach me; you are the
only chain that links me to time; but for you, I should be free. And
yet I cannot be destined to live long. Well, I shall commence my task,
commemorate the virtues of the only creature worth loving or living
for, and then, may be, I may join him. Moonshine may be united to her
planet, and wander no more, a sad reflection of all she loved on
earth.

_October 7._--I have received my desk to-day, and have been reading my
letters to mine own Shelley during his absences at Marlow. What a
scene to recur to! My William, Clara, Allegra, are all talked of. They
lived then, they breathed this air, and their voices struck on my
sense; their feet trod the earth beside me, and their hands were warm
with blood and life when clasped in mine, where are they all? This is
too great an agony to be written about. I may express my despair, but
my thoughts can find no words.

* * * * *

I would endeavour to consider myself a faint continuation of his
being, and, as far as possible, the revelation to the earth of what he
was, yet, to become this, I must change much, and, above all, I must
acquire that knowledge and drink at those fountains of wisdom and
virtue from which he quenched his thirst. Hitherto I have done
nothing; yet I have not been discontented with myself. I speak of the
period of my residence here. For, although unoccupied by those studies
which I have marked out for myself, my mind has been so active that
its activity, and not its indolence, has made me neglectful. But now
the society of others causes this perpetual working of my ideas
somewhat to pause; and I must take advantage of this to turn my mind
towards its immediate duties, and to determine with firmness to
commence the life I have planned. You will be with me in all my
studies, dearest love! your voice will no longer applaud me, but in
spirit you will visit and encourage me: I know you will. What were I,
if I did not believe that you still exist? It is not with you as with
another, I believe that we all live hereafter; but you, my only one,
were a spirit caged, an elemental being, enshrined in a frail image,
now shattered. Do they not all with one voice assert the same?
Trelawny, Hunt, and many others. And so at last you quitted this
painful prison, and you are free, my Shelley; while I, your poor
chosen one, am left to live as I may.

What a strange life mine has been! Love, youth, fear, and fearlessness
led me early from the regular routine of life, and I united myself to
this being, who, not one of _us_, though like to us, was pursued by
numberless miseries and annoyances, in all of which I shared. And then
I was the mother of beautiful children, but these stayed not by me.
Still he was there; and though, in truth, after my William's death
this world seemed only a quicksand, sinking beneath my feet, yet
beside me was this bank of refuge--so tempest-worn and frail, that
methought its very weakness was strength, and, since Nature had
written destruction on its brow, so the Power that rules human affairs
had determined, in spite of Nature, that it should endure. But that is
gone. His voice can no longer be heard; the earth no longer receives
the shadow of his form; annihilation has come over the earthly
appearance of the most gentle creature that ever yet breathed this
air; and I am still here--still thinking, existing, all but hoping.
Well, I close my book. To-morrow I must begin this new life of mine.

_October 19._--How painful all change becomes to one, who, entirely
and despotically engrossed by [his] own feelings leads, as it were, an
_internal_ life, quite different from the outward and apparent one!
Whilst my life continues its monotonous course within sterile banks,
an under-current disturbs the smooth face of the waters, distorts all
objects reflected in it, and the mind is no longer a mirror in which
outward events may reflect themselves, but becomes itself the painter
and creator. If this perpetual activity has power to vary with endless
change the everyday occurrences of a most monotonous life, it appears
to be animated with the spirit of tempest and hurricane when any real
occurrence diversifies the scene. Thus, to-night, a few bars of a
known air seemed to be as a wind to rouse from its depths every
deep-seated emotion of my mind. I would have given worlds to have sat,
my eyes closed, and listened to them for years. The restraint I was
under caused these feelings to vary with rapidity; but the words of
the conversation, uninteresting as they might be, seemed all to convey
two senses to me, and, touching a chord within me, to form a music of
which the speaker was little aware. I do not think that any person's
voice has the same power of awakening melancholy in me as Albe's. I
have been accustomed, when hearing it, to listen and to speak little;
another voice, not mine, ever replied--a voice whose strings are
broken. When Albe ceases to speak, I expect to hear _that other_
voice, and when I hear another instead, it jars strangely with every
association. I have seen so little of Albe since our residence in
Switzerland, and, having seen him there every day, his voice--a
peculiar one--is engraved on my memory with other sounds and objects
from which it can never disunite itself. I have heard Hunt in company
and in conversation with many, when my own one was not there.
Trelawny, perhaps, is associated in my mind with Edward more than with
Shelley. Even our older friends, Peacock and Hogg, might talk
together, or with others, and their voices suggest no change to me.
But, since incapacity and timidity always prevented my mingling in the
nightly conversations of Diodati, they were, as it were, entirely
_tete-a-tete_ between my Shelley and Albe; and thus, as I have said,
when Albe speaks and Shelley does not answer, it is as thunder without
rain,--the form of the sun without light or heat,--as any familiar
object might be shorn of its best attributes; and I listen with an
unspeakable melancholy that yet is not all pain.

The above explains that which would otherwise be an enigma--why Albe,
by his mere presence and voice, has the power of exciting such deep
and shifting emotions within me. For my feelings have no analogy
either with my opinion of him, or the subject of his conversation.
With another I might talk, and not for the moment think of Shelley--at
least not think of him with the same vividness as if I were alone;
but, when in company with Albe, I can never cease for a second to have
Shelley in my heart and brain with a clearness that mocks
reality--interfering even by its force with the functions of
life--until, if tears do not relieve me, the hysterical feeling,
analogous to that which the murmur of the sea gives me, presses
painfully upon me.

Well, for the first time for about a month, I have been in company
with Albe for two hours, and, coming home, I write this, so necessary
is it for me to express in words the force of my feelings. Shelley,
beloved! I look at the stars and at all nature, and it speaks to me of
you in the clearest accents. Why cannot you answer me, my own one? Is
the instrument so utterly destroyed? I would endure ages of pain to
hear one tone of your voice strike on my ear!

For nearly a year--not a happy one--Mary lived with the Hunts. A bruised and bleeding heart exposed to the cuffs and blows of everyday life, a nervous temperament--too recently strained to its utmost pitch of endurance--liable to constant, unavoidable irritation, a nature sensitive and reserved, accustomed to much seclusion and much independence, thrown into the midst of a large, noisy, and disorderly family,--these conditions could hardly result in happiness. Leigh Hunt was nervous, delicate, overworked, and variable in mood: his wife an invalid, condemned by the doctors on her arrival in Italy, now expecting her confinement in the ensuing summer, an event which she was told would be, for good or evil, the crisis of her fate. Six children they had already had, who were allowed--on principle--to do exactly as they chose, "until such time as they were of an age to be reasoned with."

The opening for activity and usefulness would, at another time, have been beneficial to Mary, and, to some extent, was so now; but it was too early, the change from her former state was too violent; she was not fit yet for such severe bracing. She met her trials bravely; but it was another case where buoyancy of spirits was indispensable to real success, and buoyancy of spirits she had not, nor was likely to acquire in her present surroundings.

There was another person to whom these surroundings were even more supremely distasteful than to her, and this was Byron. Small sympathy had he for domestic life or sentiment even in their best aspects, and this virtuous, slipshod, cockney Bohemianism had no attraction for him whatever. The poor man must have suffered many things while the Hunts were in possession of his _pian terreno_ at Pisa; he was rid of them now, but the very sight of them was too much for him.

LORD BYRON TO MRS. SHELLEY.

_6th October 1822._

The sofa--which I regret is _not_ of your furniture--it was purchased
by me at Pisa since you left it.

It is convenient for my room, though of little value (about 12 pauls),
and I offered to send another (now sent) in its stead. I preferred
retaining the purchased furniture, but always intended that you should
have as good or better in its place. I have a particular dislike to
anything of Shelley's being within the same walls with Mrs. Hunt's
children. They are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos. What they
can't destroy with their filth they will with their fingers. I presume
you received ninety and odd crowns from the wreck of the _Don Juan_,
and also the price of the boat purchased by Captain R., if not, you
will have _both_. Hunt has these in hand.

With regard to any difficulties about money, I can only repeat that I
will be your banker till this state of things is cleared up, and you
can see what is to be done; so there is little to hinder you on that
score. I was confined for four days to my bed at Lerici. Poor Hunt,
with his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he
turned back once--was there ever such a _kraal_ out of the Hottentot
country before?

N. B.

Among those of their former acquaintance who now surrounded Mary, the one who by his presence ministered most to the needs of her fainting moral nature was Trelawny. Leigh Hunt, when not disagreeing from her, was affectionate, nay, gushing, and he had truly loved Shelley, but he was a feeble, facetious, feckless creature,--a hypochondriac,--unable to do much to help himself, still less another. Byron was by no means ill-disposed, especially just now, but he was egotistic and indolent, and too capricious,--as the event proved,--to be depended on.

Trelawny's fresh vigorous personality, his bright originality and rugged independence, and his unbounded admiration for Shelley, made him wonderfully reviving to Mary; he had the effect on her of a gust of fresh air in a close crowded room. He was unconventional and outspoken, and by no means always complimentary, but he had a just appreciation of Mary's real mental and moral superiority to the people around her, and a frank liking for herself. Their friendship was to extend over many years, during which Mary had ample opportunity of repaying the debt of obligation she always felt she owed him for his kindness to her and Mrs. Williams at the time of their great misery.

The letters which follow were among the earliest of a long and varied correspondence.

MARY SHELLEY TO TRELAWNY.

_November 1822._

MY DEAR TRELAWNY--I called on you yesterday, but was too late for you.
I was much pained to see you out of spirits the other night. I can in
no way make you better, I fear, but I should be glad to see you. Will
you dine with me Monday after your ride? If Hunt rides, as he
threatens, with Lord Byron, he will also dine late and make one of
our party. Remember, you will also do Hunt good by this, who pines in
this solitude. You say that I know so little of the world that I am
afraid I may be mistaken in imagining that you have a friendship for
me, especially after what you said of Jane the other night; but
besides the many other causes I have to esteem you, I can never
remember without the liveliest gratitude all you said that night of
agony when you returned to Lerici. Your praises of my lost Shelley
were the only balm I could endure, and he always joined with me in
liking you from the first moment we saw you. Adieu.--Your attached
friend,

M. W. S.

Have you got my books on shore from the _Bolivar_? If you have, pray
let me have them, for many are odd volumes, and I wish to see if they
are too much destroyed to rank with those I have.

TRELAWNY TO MRS. SHELLEY.

_November 1822._

DEAR MARY--I will gladly dine on Monday with you. As to melancholy, I
refer you to the good Antonio in Shylock. "Alas! I know now why I am
so sad. It is time, I think." You are not so learned in human dealings
as Iago, but you cannot so sadly err as to doubt the extent or truth
of my friendship. As to gain esteem, I do not think it a word
applicable to such a lawless character. Ruled by impulse, not by
reason, I am satisfied you should like me upon my own terms--impulse.
As to gratitude for uttering my thoughts of him I so loved and
admired, it was a tribute that all who knew him have paid to his
memory. "But weeping never could restore the dead," and if it could,
hope would prevent our tears. You may remember I always in preference
selected as my companion Edward, not Jane, and that I always dissented
from your general voice of her being perfection. I am still of the
same opinion; nothing more. But I have and ever shall feel deeply
interested, and would do much to serve her, and if thinking on those
trifles which diminish her lustre in my eyes makes me flag, Edward's
memory and my perfect friendship for him is sufficient excitement to
spur me on to anything. It is impossible to dislike Jane; but to have
an unqualified liking, such as I had for Edward, no--no--no! Talking
of gratitude, I really am and ought to be so to you, for bearing on,
untired, with my spleen, humours, and violence; it is a proof of real
liking, particularly as you are not of the sect who profess or
practise meekness, humility, and patience in common.

T.

Mary had not as yet been successful in getting possession of the half-finished portrait of Shelley. Her letters had followed Miss Curran to Paris, whence, in October, a reply at last arrived.

"I am sorry," Miss Curran wrote, "I am not at Rome to execute your
melancholy commission. I mean to return in spring, but it may be then
too late. I am sure Mr. Brunelli would be happy to oblige you or me,
but you may have left Pisa before this, so I know not what to propose.
Your picture and Clare's I left with him to give you when you should
be at Rome, as I expected, before you returned to England. The one you
now write for I thought was not to be inquired for; it was so ill
done, and I was on the point of burning it with others before I left
Italy. I luckily saved it just as the fire was scorching, and it is
packed up with my other pictures at Rome; and I have not yet decided
where they can be sent to, as there are serious difficulties in the
way I had not adverted to. I am very sorry indeed, dear Mary, but you
shall have it as soon as I possibly can."...

This was the early history of that portrait, which was recovered a year or two later, and which has passed, and passes still, for Shelley's likeness, and which, bad or good, is the only authentic one in existence.

Mary now began to feel it a matter of duty as well as of expediency to resume literary work, but she found it hard at first.

"I am quite well, but very nervous," she wrote to Mrs. Gisborne; "my
excessive nervousness (how new a disorder for me--my illness in the
summer is the foundation of it) is the cause I do not write."

She made a beginning with an article for the _Liberal_. Shelley's _Defence of Poetry_ was, also, to be published in the forthcoming number, and the MS. of this had to be got from England. She had reason to believe, too, that Ollier, the publisher, had in his keeping other MSS. of Shelley's, and she was restlessly desirous to get possession of all these, feeling convinced that among them there was nothing perfect, nothing ready for publication exactly as it stood. In her over-anxiety she wrote to several people on this subject, thereby incurring the censure of her father, whom she had also consulted about her literary plans. His criticisms on his daughter's style were not unsound; she had not been trained in a school of terseness, and, like many young authors, she was apt to err on the side of length, and not to see that she did so.

GODWIN TO MARY.

NO. 195 STRAND, _15th November 1822_.

MY DEAR MARY--I have devoted the last two days to the seeing everybody
an interview with whom would best enable me to write you a
satisfactory letter. Yesterday I saw Hogg and Mrs. Williams, and
to-day Peacock and Hanson junior. From Hogg I had, among other things,
to learn Mrs. Williams' address, for, owing to your neglect, she had
been a fortnight in London before I knew of her arrival. She appeared
to be in better health and better spirits than I expected; she did not
drop one tear; occasionally she smiled. She is a picturesque little
woman, and, as far as I could judge from one interview, I like her.

Peacock has got Ollier's promise to deliver all Shelley's manuscripts,
and as earnest, he has received _Peter Bell_ and _A Curse on L.E._,
which he holds at your disposal. By the way, you should never give one
commission but to one person; you commissioned me to recover these
manuscripts from Ollier, you commissioned Peacock, and, I believe,
Mrs. Gisborne. This puts us all in an awkward situation. I heard of
Peacock's applying just in time to prevent me from looking like a
fool. Peacock says he cannot make up a parcel for you till he has been
a second time to Marlow on the question, which cannot be till about
Christmas. He appears to me, not lukewarm, but assiduous. Mrs.
Williams told me she should write to you by this day's post. She had
been inquiring in vain for Miss Curran's address--you should have
referred her to me for it, but you referred her to me for nothing.
This, by the way, is another instance of your giving one commission to
more than one person. You gave the commission about Miss Curran to
Mrs. Williams and to me. I received your letter, inclosing one to Miss
Curran, 21st October, which I immediately forwarded to her by a safe
hand, through her brother. You have probably heard from her by this
time; she is in Paris.... I have a plan upon the house of Longman
respecting _Castruccio_, but that depends upon coincidences, and I
must have patience.

You ask my opinion of your literary plans. If you expect any price,
you must think of something new: _Manfred_ is a subject that nobody
interests himself about; the interest, therefore, must be made, and no
bookseller understands anything about that contingency. A book about
Italy as it is, written with any talent, would be sure to sell; but
I am afraid you know very little about the present race of Italians.

As to my own affairs, nothing is determined. I expected something
material to have happened this week, but as yet I have heard nothing.
If the subscription fills, I shall perhaps be safe; if not, I shall be
driven to sea on a plank.

Perhaps it may be of some use to you if I give you my opinion of
_Castruccio_. I think there are parts of high genius, and that your
two females are exceedingly interesting; but I am not satisfied.
_Frankenstein_ was a fine thing; it was compressed, muscular, and
firm; nothing relaxed and weak; no proud flesh. _Castruccio_ is a work
of more genius; but it appears, in reading, that the first rule you
prescribed to yourself was, I will let it be long. It contains the
quantity of four volumes of _Waverley_. No hard blow was ever hit with
a woolsack! Mamma desires me to remember her to you in the kindest
manner, and to say that she feels a deep interest in everything that
concerns you. She means to take the earliest opportunity to see Mrs.
Williams, both as she feels an earnest sympathy in her calamity, and
as she will be likely to learn a hundred particulars respecting the
dispositions and prospects of yourself and Jane, which she might in
vain desire to learn in any other quarter. You asked Mamma for some
present, a remembrance of your mother. She has reserved for you a ring
of hers, with Fanny Blood's hair set round with pearls.

You will, of course, rely on it that I will send you the letters you
ask for by Peacock's parcel. Miss Curran's address is Hotel de
Dusseldorf Rue Petits St. Augustin, a Paris.--Believe me, ever your
most affectionate Father,

WILLIAM GODWIN.

My last letter was dated 11th October.

_Journal, November 10._--I have made my first probation in writing,
and it has done me much good, and I get more calm; the stream begins
to take to its new channel, insomuch as to make me fear change. But
people must know little of me who think that, abstractedly, I am
content with my present mode of life. Activity of spirit is my sphere.
But we cannot be active of mind without an object; and I have none. I
am allowed to have some talent--that is sufficient, methinks, to cause
my irreparable misery; for, if one has genius, what a delight it is to
be associated with a superior! Mine own Shelley! the sun knows of none
to be likened to you--brave, wise, noble-hearted, full of learning,
tolerance, and love. Love! what a word for me to write! yet, my
miserable heart, permit me yet to love,--to see him in beauty, to feel
him in beauty, to be interpenetrated by the sense of his excellence;
and thus to love singly, eternally, ardently, and not fruitlessly; for
I am still his--still the chosen one of that blessed spirit--still
vowed to him for ever and ever!

_November 11._--It is better to grieve than not to grieve. Grief at
least tells me that I was not always what I am now. I was once
selected for happiness; let the memory of that abide by me. You pass
by an old ruined house in a desolate lane, and heed it not. But if you
hear that that house is haunted by a wild and beautiful spirit, it
acquires an interest and beauty of its own.

I shall be glad to be more alone again; one ought to see no one, or
many; and, confined to one society, I shall lose all energy except
that which I possess from my own resources; and I must be alone for
those to be put in activity.

A cold heart! Have I a cold heart? God knows! But none need envy the
icy region this heart encircles; and at least the tears are hot which
the emotions of this cold heart forces me to shed. A cold heart! yes,
it would be cold enough if all were as I wished it--cold, or burning
in the flame for whose sake I forgive this, and would forgive every
other imputation--that flame in which your heart, beloved, lay
unconsumed. My heart is very full to-night.

I shall write his life, and thus occupy myself in the only manner
from which I can derive consolation. That will be a task that may
convey some balm. What though I weep? All is better than inaction
and--not forgetfulness--that never is--but an inactivity of
remembrance.

And you, my own boy! I am about to begin a task which, if you live,
will be an invaluable treasure to you in after times. I must collect
my materials, and then, in the commemoration of the divine virtues of
your Father, I shall fulfil the only act of pleasure there remains for
me, and be ready to follow you, if you leave me, my task being
fulfilled. I have lived; rapture, exultation, content--all the varied
changes of enjoyment--have been mine. It is all gone; but still, the
airy paintings of what it has gone through float by, and distance
shall not dim them. If I were alone, I had already begun what I had
determined to do; but I must have patience, and for those events my
memory is brass, my thoughts a never-tired engraver.
France--Poverty--A few days of solitude, and some uneasiness--A
tranquil residence in a beautiful
spot--Switzerland--Bath--Marlow--Milan--the Baths of
Lucca--Este--Venice--Rome--Naples--Rome and
misery--Leghorn--Florence--Pisa--Solitude--The Williams'--The
Baths--Pisa: these are the heads of chapters, and each containing a
tale romantic beyond romance.

I no longer enjoy, but I love. Death cannot deprive me of that living
spark which feeds on all given it, and which is now triumphant in
sorrow. I love, and shall enjoy happiness again. I do not doubt that;
but when?

These fragments of journal give the course of her inward reflections; her letters sometimes supply the clue to her outward life, _au jour le jour_.

MARY SHELLEY TO CLARE CLAIRMONT.

_20th December 1822._

MY DEAR CLARE--I have delayed writing to you so long for two reasons.
First, I have every day expected to hear from you; and secondly, I
wished to hear something decisive from England to communicate to you.
But I have waited in vain for both things. You do not write, and I
begin to despair of ever hearing from you again. A few words will tell
you all that has been done in England. When I wrote to you last, I
think that I told you that Lord Byron had written to Hanson, bidding
him call upon Whitton. Hanson wrote to Whitton desiring an interview,
which Whitton declined, requesting Hanson to make his application by
letter, which Hanson has done, and I know no more. This does not look
like an absolute refusal, but Sir Timothy is so capricious that we
cannot trust to appearances.

And now the chapter about myself is finished, for what can I say of my
present life? The weather is bitterly cold with a sharp wind, very
unlike dear, _carissima_ Pisa; but soft airs and balmy gales are not
the attributes of Genoa, which place I daily and duly join Marianne in
detesting. There is but one fireplace in the house, and although
people have been for a month putting up a stove in my room, it smokes
too much to permit of its being lighted. So I am obliged to pass the
greater part of my time in Hunt's sitting-room, which is, as you may
guess, the annihilation of study, and even of pleasure to a great
degree. For, after all, Hunt does not like me: it is both our faults,
and I do not blame him, but so it is. I rise at 9, breakfast, work,
read, and if I can at all endure the cold, copy my Shelley's MSS. in
my own room, and if possible walk before dinner. After that I work,
read Greek, etc., till 10, when Hunt and Marianne go to bed. Then I am
alone. Then the stream of thought, which has struggled against its
_argine_ all through the busy day, makes a _piena_, and sorrow and
memory and imagination, despair, and hope in despair, are the winds
and currents that impel it. I am alone, and myself; and then I begin
to say, as I ever feel, "How I hate life! What a mockery it is to
rise, to walk, to feed, and then go to rest, and in all this a statue
might do my part. One thing alone may or can awake me, and that is
study; the rest is all nothing." And so it is! I am silent and
serious. Absorbed in my own thoughts, what am I then in this world if
my spirit live not to learn and become better? That is the whole of my
destiny; I look to nothing else. For I dare not look to my little
darling other than as--not the sword of Damocles, that is a wrong
simile, or to a wrecked seaman's plank--true, he stands, and only he,
between me and the sea of eternity; but I long for that plunge! No, I
fear for him pain, disappointment,--all, all fear.

You see how it is, it is near 11, and my good friends repose. This is
the hour when I can think, unobtruded upon, and these thoughts,
_malgre moi_, will stain this paper. But then, my dear Clare, I have
nothing else except my nothingless self to talk about. You have
doubtless heard from Jane, and I have heard from no one else. I see no
one. The Guiccioli and Lord Byron once a month. Trelawny seldom, and
he is on the eve of his departure for Leghorn....

* * * * *

Marianne suffers during this dreadfully cold weather, but less than I
should have supposed. The children are all well. So also is my Percy,
poor little darling: they all scold him because he speaks loud _a
l'Italien_. People love to, nay, they seem to exist on, finding fault
with others, but I have no right to complain, and this unlucky stove
is the sole source of all my _dispiacere_; if I had that, I should not
tease any one, or any one me, or my only one; but after all, these are
trifles. I have sent for another _ingeniere_, and I hope, before many
days are elapsed, to retire as before to my hole.

I have again delayed finishing this letter, waiting for letters from
England, that I might not send you one so barren of all intelligence.
But I have had none. And nothing new has happened except Trelawny's
departure for Leghorn, so that our days are more monotonous than ever.
The weather is drearily cold, and an eternal north-east whistles
through every crevice. Percy, however, is far better in this cold than
in summer; he is warmly clothed, and gets on.

Adieu. Pray write. My love to Charles; I am ashamed that I do not
write to him, but I have only an old story to repeat, and this letter
tells that.--Affectionately yours,

MARY SHELLEY.

_Journal, December 31._--So this year comes to an end. Shelley,
beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knewest. When spring
arrives leaves you never saw will shadow the ground, and flowers you
never beheld will star it; the grass will be of another growth, and
the birds sing a new song--the aged earth dates with a new number.

Sometimes I thought that fortune had relented towards us; that your
health would have improved, and that fame and joy would have been
yours, for, when well, you extracted from Nature alone an endless
delight. The various threads of our existence seemed to be drawing to
one point, and there to assume a cheerful hue.

Again, I think that your gentle spirit was too much wounded by the
sharpness of this world; that your disease was incurable, and that in
a happy time you became the partaker of cloudless days, ceaseless
hours, and infinite love. Thy name is added to the list which makes
the earth bold in her age and proud of what has been. Time, with
unwearied but slow feet, guides her to the goal that thou hast
reached, and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still nearer the hour
when my earthly dress shall repose near thine, beneath the tomb of
Cestius.

It must have been at about this time that Mary wrote the sad, retrospective poem entitled "The Choice."

THE CHOICE.

My Choice!--My Choice, alas! was had and gone
With the red gleam of last autumnal sun;
Lost in that deep wherein he bathed his head,
My choice, my life, my hope together fled:--
A wanderer here, no more I seek a home,
The sky a vault, and Italy a tomb.
Yet as some days a pilgrim I remain,
Linked to my orphan child by love's strong chain;
And, since I have a faith that I must earn,
By suffering and by patience, a return
Of that companionship and love, which first
Upon my young life's cloud like sunlight burst,
And now has left me, dark, as when its beams,
Quenched in the might of dreadful ocean streams,
Leave that one cloud, a gloomy speck on high,
Beside one star in the else darkened sky;--
Since I must live, how would I pass the day,
How meet with fewest tears the morning's ray,
How sleep with calmest dreams, how find delights,
As fireflies gleam through interlunar nights?

First let me call on thee! Lost as thou art,
Thy name aye fills my sense, thy love my heart.
Oh, gentle Spirit! thou hast often sung,
How fallen on evil days thy heart was wrung;
Now fierce remorse and unreplying death
Waken a chord within my heart, whose breath,
Thrilling and keen, in accents audible
A tale of unrequited love doth tell.
It was not anger,--while thy earthly dress
Encompassed still thy soul's rare loveliness,
All anger was atoned by many a kind
Caress or tear, that spoke the softened mind.--
It speaks of cold neglect, averted eyes,
That blindly crushed thy soul's fond sacrifice:--
My heart was all thine own,--but yet a shell
Closed in its core, which seemed impenetrable,
Till sharp-toothed misery tore the husk in twain,
Which gaping lies, nor may unite again.
Forgive me! let thy love descend in dew
Of soft repentance and regret most true;--
In a strange guise thou dost descend, or how
Could love soothe fell remorse,--as it does now?--
By this remorse and love, and by the years
Through which we shared our common hopes and fears,
By all our best companionship, I dare
Call on thy sacred name without a fear;--
And thus I pray to thee, my friend, my Heart!
That in thy new abode, thou'lt bear a part
In soothing thy poor Mary's lonely pain,
As link by link she weaves her heavy chain!--
And thou, strange star! ascendant at my birth,
Which rained, they said, kind influence on the earth,
So from great parents sprung, I dared to boast
Fortune my friend, till set, thy beams were lost!
And thou, Inscrutable, by whose decree
Has burst this hideous storm of misery!
Here let me cling, here to the solitudes,
These myrtle-shaded streams and chestnut woods;
Tear me not hence--here let me live and die,
In my adopted land--my country--Italy.

A happy Mother first I saw this sun,
Beneath this sky my race of joy was run.
First my sweet girl, whose face resembled _his_,
Slept on bleak Lido, near Venetian seas.
Yet still my eldest-born, my loveliest, dearest,
Clung to my side, most joyful then when nearest.
An English home had given this angel birth,
Near those royal towers, where the grass-clad earth
Is shadowed o'er by England's loftiest trees:
Then our companion o'er the swift-passed seas,
He dwelt beside the Alps, or gently slept,
Rocked by the waves, o'er which our vessel swept,
Beside his father, nurst upon my breast,
While Leman's waters shook with fierce unrest.
His fairest limbs had bathed in Serchio's stream;
His eyes had watched Italian lightnings gleam;
His childish voice had, with its loudest call,
The echoes waked of Este's castle wall;
Had paced Pompeii's Roman market-place;
Had gazed with infant wonder on the grace
Of stone-wrought deities, and pictured saints,
In Rome's high palaces--there were no taints
Of ruin on his cheek--all shadowless
Grim death approached--the boy met his caress,
And while his glowing limbs with life's warmth shone,
Around those limbs his icy arms were thrown.
His spoils were strewed beneath the soil of Rome,
Whose flowers now star the dark earth near his tomb:
Its airs and plants received the mortal part,
His spirit beats within his mother's heart.
Infant immortal! chosen for the sky!
No grief upon thy brow's young purity
Entrenched sad lines, or blotted with its might
The sunshine of thy smile's celestial light;--
The image shattered, the bright spirit fled,
Thou shin'st the evening star among the dead.
And thou, his playmate, whose deep lucid eyes,
Were a reflection of these bluest skies;
Child of our hearts, divided in ill hour,
We could not watch the bud's expanding flower,
Now thou art gone, one guileless victim more,
To the black death that rules this sunny shore.

Companion of my griefs! thy sinking frame
Had often drooped, and then erect again
With shows of health had mocked forebodings dark;--
Watching the changes of that quivering spark,
I feared and hoped, and dared to trust at length,
Thy very weakness was my tower of strength.
Methought thou wert a spirit from the sky,
Which struggled with its chains, but could not die,
And that destruction had no power to win
From out those limbs the soul that burnt within.

Tell me, ye ancient walls, and weed-grown towers,
Ye Roman airs and brightly painted flowers,
Does not his spirit visit that recess
Which built of love enshrines his earthly dress?--
No more! no more!--what though that form be fled,
My trembling hand shall never write thee--dead--
Thou liv'st in Nature, Love, my Memory,
With deathless faith for aye adoring thee,
The wife of Time no more, I wed Eternity.

'Tis thus the Past--on which my spirit leans,
Makes dearest to my soul Italian scenes.
In Tuscan fields the winds in odours steeped
From flowers and cypresses, when skies have wept,
Shall, like the notes of music once most dear,
Which brings the unstrung voice upon my ear
Of one beloved, to memory display
Past scenes, past hopes, past joys, in long array.
Pugnano's trees, beneath whose shade he stood,
The pools reflecting Pisa's old pine wood,
The fireflies beams, the aziola's cry
All breathe his spirit which can never die.
Such memories have linked these hills and caves,
These woodland paths, and streams, and knelling waves
Past to each sad pulsation of my breast,
And made their melancholy arms the haven of my rest.

Here will I live, within a little dell,
Which but a month ago I saw full well:--
A dream then pictured forth the solitude
Deep in the shelter of a lovely wood;
A voice then whispered a strange prophecy,
My dearest, widowed friend, that thou and I
Should there together pass the weary day,
As we before have done in Spezia's bay,
As though long hours we watched the sails that neared
O'er the far sea, their vessel ne'er appeared;
One pang of agony, one dying gleam
Of hope led us along, beside the ocean stream,
But keen-eyed fear, the while all hope departs,
Stabbed with a million stings our heart of hearts.
The sad revolving year has not allayed
The poison of these bleeding wounds, or made
The anguish less of that corroding thought
Which has with grief each single moment fraught.
Edward, thy voice was hushed--thy noble heart
With aspiration heaves no more--a part
Of heaven-resumed past thou art become,
Thy spirit waits with his in our far home.

Trelawny had departed for Leghorn and his favourite Maremma, _en route_ for Rome, where, by his untiring zeal for the fit interment of Shelley's ashes, he once more earned Mary's undying gratitude. The ashes, which had been temporarily consigned to the care of Mr. Freeborn, British Consul at Rome, had, before Trelawny arrived, been buried in the Protestant cemetery: the grave was amidst a cluster of others. In a niche--formed by two buttresses--in the old Roman wall, immediately under an ancient pyramid, said to be the tomb of Caius Cestius, Trelawny (having purchased the recess) built two tombs. In one of these the box containing Shelley's ashes was deposited, and all was covered over with solid stone. The details of the transaction, which extended over several months, are supplied in his letters.

TRELAWNY TO MARY SHELLEY.

PIOMBINO, _7th_ and _11th January 1823_.

Thus far into the bowels of the land
Have we marched on without impediment.

DEAR MARY SHELLEY--Pardon my tardiness in writing, which from day to
day I have postponed, having no other cause to plead than idleness. On
my arrival at Leghorn I called on Grant, and was much grieved to find
our fears well founded, to wit, that nothing definitely had been done.
Grant had not heard from his correspondent at Rome after his first
statement of the difficulties; the same letter that was enclosed me
and read by you he (Grant) had written, but not received a reply. I
then requested Grant to write and say that I would be at Rome in a
month or five weeks, and if I found the impediments insurmountable, I
would resume possession of the ashes, if on the contrary, to
personally fulfil your wishes, and in the meantime to deposit them
secure from molestation, so that, without Grant writes to me, I shall
say nothing more till I am at Rome, which will be early in February.
In the meantime Roberts and myself are sailing along the coast,
shooting, and visiting the numerous islands in our track. We have been
here some days, living at the miserable hut of a cattle dealer on the
marshes, near this wretched town, well situated for sporting.
To-morrow we cross over to Elba, thence to Corsica, and so return
along the Maremma, up the Tiber in the boat, to Rome....

... I like this Maremma, it is lonely and desolate, thinly populated,
particularly after Genoa, where human brutes are so abundant that the
air is dense with their garlic breath, and it is impossible to fly the
nuisance. Here there is solitude enough: there are less of the human
form here in midday than at Genoa midnight; besides, this vagabond
life has restored my health. Next year I will get a tent, and spend my
winter in these marshes....

... Dear Mary, of all those that I know of, or you have told me of,
as connected with you, there is not one now living has so tender a
friendship for you as I have. I have the far greater claims on you,
and I shall consider it as a breach of friendship should you employ
any one else in services that I can execute.

My purse, my person, my extremest means
Lye all unlocked to your occasion.

I hope you know my heart so well as to make all professions needless.
To serve you will ever be the greatest pleasure I can experience, and
nothing could interrupt the almost unmingled pleasure I have received
from our first meeting but you concealing your difficulties or wishes
from me. With kindest remembrances to my good friends the Hunts, to
whom I am sincerely attached, and love and salaam to Lord Byron, I am
your very sincere

EDWARD TRELAWNY.