by Mary Shelley
I think Alba’s remaining here exceedingly dangerous, yet I do not see what is to be done. Your babes are well. Clara already replies to her nurse’s caresses by smiles, and Willy kisses her with great tenderness. — Your affectionate
Mary.
P.S. — I wish you would purchase a gown for Milly, with a little note with it from Marianne, that it may appear to come from her. You can get one, I should think, for 12s. or 14s.; but it must be stout; such a kind of one as we gave to the servant at Bath.
Willy has just said good-night to me; he kisses the paper and says good-night to you. Clara is asleep.
Marlow, Saturday, 18th October 1817.
Mr. Wright has called here to-day, my dearest Shelley, and wished to see you. I can hardly have any doubt that his business is of the same nature as that which made him call last week. You will judge, but it appears to me that an arrest on Monday will follow your arrival on Sunday.
My love, you ought not to come down. A long, long week has passed, and when at length I am allowed to expect you, I am obliged to tell you not to come. This is very cruel. You may easily judge that I am not happy; my spirits sink during this continued absence. Godwin, too, will come down; he will talk as if we meant to stay here; and I must — must I? — tell fifty prevarications or direct lies. When I thought that you would be here also, I knew that your presence would lead to general conversation; but Clare will absent herself. We shall be alone, and he will talk of your private affairs. I am sure that I shall never be able to support it.
And when is this to end? Italy appears to me farther off than ever, and the idea of it never enters my mind but Godwin enters also, and makes it lie heavy at my heart. Had you not better speak? you might relieve me from a heavy burden. Surely he cannot be blind to the many heavy reasons that urge us. Your health, the indispensable one, if every other were away. I assure you that if my Father said, “Yes, you must go; do what you can for me; I know that you will do all you can;” I should, far from writing so melancholy a letter, prepare everything with a light heart; arrange our affairs here; and come up to town, to await patiently the effect of your efforts. I know not whether it is early habit or affection, but the idea of his silent quiet disapprobation makes me weep as it did in the days of my childhood.
I shall not see you to-morrow. God knows when I shall see you! Clare is for ever wearying with her idle and childish complaints. Can you not send me some consolation? — Ever your affectionate
Mary.
The fears of an arrest were not realised. Early in November Shelley came for three days to Marlow, after which Mary went up to stay with him in London.
During this fortnight’s visit the question of renewed intercourse with Isabel Booth was practically decided, and decided against Mary. She had written on the 4th of November to Mr. Baxter inviting Christy to come on a visit. Subsequently a plan was started for Isabel Booth’s accompanying the Shelleys in their Italian trip, — they little dreaming that when they left England it would be for the last time.
Apparently Mr. Baxter made some effort to bring Mr. Booth round to his way of thinking. The two passed an evening with the Shelleys at their lodgings. But it availed nothing, and in the end poor Mr. Baxter was driven himself to write to Shelley, breaking off the acquaintance. The letter was written much against the grain, and contrary to the convictions of the writer, who seems to have been much put to it to account for his action, the true grounds for which he could not bring himself to give. Shelley, however, was not slow to divine the real instigator in the affair, and wrote back a letter which, by its temperance, simplicity, and dignity, must have pricked Baxter to the heart. Mary added a playful postscript, showing that she still clung to hope —
My dear Sir — You see I prophesied well three months ago, when you were here. I then said that I was sure Mr. Booth was averse to our intercourse, and would find some means to break it off. I wish I had you by the fire here in my little study, and it might be “double, double, toil and trouble,” but I could quickly convince you that your girls are not below me in station, and that, in fact, I am the fittest companion for them in the world, but I postpone the argument until I see you, for I know (pardon me) that viva voce is all in all with you.
Two or three times more Mary wrote to Isabel, but the correspondence dropped and the friends met no more for many years.
The preparations for their migration extended over two or three months more. During January Shelley suffered much from the renewal of an attack of ophthalmia, originally caught while visiting the poor people at Marlow. The house there was finally sold, and on the 10th of February they quitted it and went up to London. Their final departure from England did not take place until March. They made the most of their time of waiting, seeing as much of their friends and of objects of interest as circumstances allowed.
Journal, Thursday, February 12 (Mary). — Go to the Indian Library and the Panorama of Rome. On Friday, 13th, spend the morning at the British Museum looking at the Elgin marbles. On Saturday, 14th, go to Hunt’s. Clare and Shelley go to the opera. On Sunday, 15th, Mr. Bransen, Peacock, and Hogg dine with us.
Wednesday, February 18. — Spend the day at Hunt’s. On Thursday, 19th, dine at Horace Smith’s, and copy Shelley’s Eclogue. On Friday, 20th, copy Shelley’s critique on Rhododaphne. Go to the Apollonicon with Shelley. On Saturday, 21st, copy Shelley’s critique, and go to the opera in the evening. Spend Sunday at Hunt’s. On Monday, 23d February, finish copying Shelley’s critique, and go to the play in the evening — The Bride of Abydos. On Tuesday go to the opera — Figaro. On Wednesday Hunt dines with us. Shelley is not well.
Sunday, March 1. — Read Montaigne. Spend the evening at Hunt’s. On Monday, 2d, Shelley calls on Mr. Baxter. Isabel Booth is arrived, but neither comes nor sends. Go to the play in the evening with Hunt and Marianne, and see a new comedy damned. On Thursday, 5th, Papa calls, and Clare visits Mrs. Godwin. On Sunday, 8th, we dine at Hunt’s, and meet Mr. Novello. Music.
Monday, March 9. — Christening the children.
This was doubtless a measure of precaution, lest the omission of any such ceremony might in some future time operate as a civil disadvantage towards the children. They received the names of William, Clara Everina, and Clara Allegra.
Tuesday, March 10. — Packing. Hunt and Marianne spend the day with us. Mary Lamb calls. Papa in the evening. Our adieus.
Wednesday, March 11. — Travel to Dover.
Thursday, March 12. — France. Discussion of whether we should cross. Our passage is rough; a sick lady is frightened and says the Lord’s Prayer. We arrive at Calais for the third time.
Mary little thought how long it would be before she saw the English shores again, nor that, when she returned, it would be alone.
CHAPTER XI
March 1818-June 1819
The external events of the four Italian years have been repeatedly told and profusely commented on by Shelley’s various biographers. Summed up, they are the history of a long strife between the intellectual and creative stimulus of lovely scenes and immortal works of art on the one hand, and the wearing friction of vexatious outward events and crushing afflictions on the other. For Shelley they were a period of rapid, of exotic, mental growth and development, interspersed with intervals of exhaustion and depression, of restlessness, or unnatural calm. For Mary they were years of courageous effort, of heroic resistance to overpowering odds. She endured, and she overcame; but some victories are obtained at such cost as to be at the time scarcely distinguishable from defeats, and the story of hers survives in no one act or work of her own, but in the Cenci, Prometheus Unbound, Epipsychidion, and Adonais.
The travellers proceeded, viâ Lyons and Chambéry, to Milan, whence Shelley and Mary made an expedition to Como in search of a house. After looking at several, — one “beautifully situated, but too small,” another “out of repair, with an excellent garden, but full of serpents,” a third which seemed promising, but which they failed to get, — they appear to have give
n up the scheme altogether, and to have returned to Milan. For the next week they were in frequent correspondence with Byron on the subject of Allegra. This had to be carried on entirely by Shelley, as Byron refused all communication with Clare, and undertook to provide for his child on the sole condition that, from the day it left her, its mother entirely relinquished it, and never saw it again.
This appeared to Shelley cruelly and needlessly harsh. His own paternal heart was still bleeding from fresh wounds, and although, as he again pointed out, his interest in the matter was entirely on the opposite side to Clare’s, he pleaded her cause with earnestness. He did not touch on the question of Byron’s attitude towards Clare herself, he contended only for the mother and child, in letters as remarkable for their simple good sense as for their perfect delicacy and courtesy of expression, and every line of which is inspired with the unselfish ardour of a heart full of love.
Poor Clare herself was dreadfully unhappy. Any illusion she may ever have had about Byron had long been over, but she had possibly not realised before coming to Italy the perfect horror he had of seeing her; an event, as he told his friends the Hoppners, which would make it necessary for him instantly to quit Venice. The reports about his present mode of life, which, even at Milan did not fail to reach them, were, to say the least, not encouraging; and from a later letter of Shelley’s it would seem that he warned Clare now, at the last minute, to pause and reflect before she sent Allegra away to such a father. She, however, was determined that till seven years old, at least, the child should be with one or other of its parents, and Byron would only consent to be that one on condition that it grew up in ignorance of its mother. It appears to have been assumed by all parties that, in refusing to hand Allegra altogether over to her father, they would be sacrificing for her the prospect of a brilliant position and fortune. Even supposing that this had been so, it is impossible to think that such a consideration would have weighed, at any rate with the Shelleys, but for the impossibility of keeping Clare’s secret if Allegra remained with them, and the constant danger of worse scandal to which her unexplained presence must expose them. Clare, distracted with grief as she was, yet dreaded discovery acutely, and firmly believed she was acting for Allegra’s best interests in parting from her.
It ended in the little girl’s being sent to Venice on the 28th of April in the care of Elise, the Swiss nurse, with whom Mary Shelley, for Allegra’s sake, consented to part, though she valued her very much, but who, not long afterwards, returned to her.
As soon as they had gone, the Shelleys and Clare left Milan; and travelling leisurely through Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Pisa (where a letter from Elise reached them), they arrived on the 9th of May at Leghorn. Here they made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. The lady, formerly Mrs. Reveley, had been an intimate friend of Mary Wollstonecraft’s (when Mary Godwin), and had been so warmly admired by Godwin before his first marriage as to arouse some jealousy in Mr. Reveley. Indeed, his admiration had been returned by so warm a feeling of friendship on her part that Godwin was frankly surprised when on his pressing her, shortly after her widowhood, to become his second wife, she refused him point blank, nor, by all his eloquence, was to be persuaded to change her mind. A beautiful girl, and highly accomplished, she had married very young, and had one son of her first marriage, Henry Reveley, a young civil engineer, who was now living in Italy with her and her second husband.
This Mr. Gisborne struck Mary as being the reverse of intelligent, and is described in Shelley’s letters in most uncomplimentary terms. His appearance cannot certainly have been in his favour, but that there must have been more in him than met the eye seems also beyond a doubt, as, at a later time, Shelley addressed to him some of his most interesting and most intimate letters.
To Mrs. Gisborne they bore a letter of introduction from Godwin, and it was not long before her acquaintance with Mrs. Shelley ripened into friendship. “Reserved, yet with easy manners;” so Mary described her at their first meeting. On the next day the two had a long conversation about Mary’s father and mother. Of her mother, indeed, Mary learned more from Mrs. Gisborne than from any one else. She wrote her father an immediate account of these first interviews, and his answer is unusually demonstrative in expression.
I received last Friday a delightful letter from you. I was extremely gratified by your account of Mrs. Gisborne. I have not seen her, I believe, these twenty years; I think not since she was Mrs. Gisborne; and yet by your description she is still a delightful woman. How inexpressibly pleasing it is to call back the recollection of years long past, and especially when the recollection belongs to a person in whom one deeply interested oneself, as I did in Mrs. Reveley. I can hardly hope for so great a pleasure as it would be to me to see her again.
At the Bagni di Lucca, where they settled themselves for a time, Mary heard from her father of the review of Frankenstein in the Quarterly. Peacock had reported it to be unfavourable, so it was probably a relief to find that the reviewers “did not pretend to find anything blasphemous in the story.”
They say that the gentleman who has written the book is a man of talents, but that he employs his powers in a way disagreeable to them.
All this, however, tended to keep Mary’s old ardour alive. She never was more strongly impelled to write than at this time; she felt her powers fresh and strong within her; all she wanted was some motive, some suggestion to guide her in the choice of a subject. While at Leghorn Shelley had come upon a manuscript account, which Mary transcribed, of that terrible story of the Cenci afterwards dramatised by himself. His first idea was that Mary should take it for the subject of a play. He was convinced that she had dramatic talent as a writer, and that he had none; two erroneous conclusions, as the sequel showed. But such an assurance from such a source could not but be flattering to Mary’s ambition, and stimulating to her innate love of literary work. During all the early part of their time in Italy their thoughts were busy with some subject for Mary’s tragedy. One proposed and strongly urged by Shelley was Charles the First. It was partially carried out by himself before his death, and perhaps occurred to him now in connection with a suggestion of Godwin’s for a book very different in scope and character, and far better suited to Mary’s genius than the drama. It would have been a series of Lives of the Commonwealth’s Men; “our calumniated Republicans,” as Shelley calls them.
She was immensely attracted by the idea, but was forced to abandon it at the time, for lack of the necessary books of reference. But Shelley, who believed her powers to be of the highest order, was as eager as she herself could be for her to undertake original work of some kind, and was constantly inciting her to effort in this direction.
More than two months were spent at the Bagni di Lucca — reading, writing, riding, and enjoying to the full the balmy Italian skies. Shelley, in whom the creative mood was more or less dormant, and who “despaired of providing anything original,” translated the Symposium of Plato, partly as an exercise, partly to “give Mary some idea of the manners and feelings of the Athenians, so different on many subjects from that of any other community that ever existed.” Together they studied Italian, and Shelley reported Mary’s progress to her father.
Mary has just finished Ariosto with me, and indeed has attained a very competent knowledge of Italian. She is now reading Livy.
She also transcribed his translation of the Symposium, and his Eclogue Rosalind and Helen, which, begun at Marlow, had been thrown aside till she found it and persuaded him to complete it.
Meanwhile Clare hungered and thirsted for a sight of Allegra, of whom she heard occasionally from Elise, and who was not now under Byron’s roof, but living, by his permission, with Mrs. Hoppner, wife of the British Consul at Venice, who had volunteered to take temporary charge of her. Her distress moved Shelley to so much commiseration that he resolved or consented to do what must have been supremely disagreeable to him. He went himself to Venice, hoping by a personal interview to modify in some degree Byron’s ine
xorable resolution. Clare accompanied him, unknown, of course, to Byron. They started on the 17th of August. On that day Mary wrote the following letter to Miss Gisborne —
Mrs. Shelley to Mrs. Gisborne.
Bagni di Lucca, 17th August 1818.
My dear Madam — It gave me great pleasure to receive your letter after so long a silence, when I had begun to conjecture a thousand reasons for it, and among others illness, in which I was half right. Indeed, I am much concerned to hear of Mr. R.’s attacks, and sincerely hope that nothing will retard his speedy recovery. His illness gives me a slight hope that you might now be induced to come to the baths, if it were even to try the effect of the hot baths. You would find the weather cool; for we already feel in this part of the world that the year is declining, by the cold mornings and evenings. I have another selfish reason to wish that you would come, which I have a great mind not to mention, yet I will not omit it, as it might induce you. Shelley and Clare are gone; they went to-day to Venice on important business; and I am left to take care of the house. Now, if all of you, or any of you, would come and cheer my solitude, it would be exceedingly kind. I daresay you would find many of your friends here; among the rest there is the Signora Felichi, whom I believe you knew at Pisa. Shelley and I have ridden almost every evening. Clare did the same at first, but she has been unlucky, and once fell from her horse, and hurt her knee so as to knock her up for some time. It is the fashion here for all the English to ride, and it is very pleasant on these fine evenings, when we set out at sunset and are lighted home by Venus, Jupiter, and Diana, who kindly lend us their light after the sleepy Apollo is gone to bed. The road which we frequent is raised somewhat above, and overlooks the river, affording some very fine points of view amongst these woody mountains.
Still, we know no one; we speak to one or two people at the Casino, and that is all; we live in our studious way, going on with Tasso, whom I like, but who, now I have read more than half his poem, I do not know that I like half so well as Ariosto. Shelley translated the Symposium in ten days. It is a most beautiful piece of writing. I think you will be delighted with it. It is true that in many particulars it shocks our present manners; but no one can be a reader of the works of antiquity unless they can transport themselves from these to other times, and judge, not by our, but their morality.
