by Mary Shelley
How enraged all our mighty rulers are at the quiet revolutions which have taken place; it is said that some one said to the Grand Duke here: “Ma richiedono una constituzione qui?” “Ebene, la darò subito” was the reply; but he is not his own master, and Austria would take care that that should not be the case; they say Austrian troops are coming here, and the Tuscan ones will be sent to Germany. We take in Galignani, and would send them to you if you liked. I do not know what the expense would be, but I should think slight. If you recommence painting, do not forget Beatrice. I wish very much for a copy of that; you would oblige us greatly by making one. Pray let me hear of your health. God knows when we shall be in Rome; circumstances must direct, and they dance about like will-o’-the-wisps, enticing and then deserting us. We must take care not to be left in a bog. Adieu, take care of yourself. Believe in Shelley’s sincere wishes for your health, and in kind remembrances, and in my being ever sincerely yours,
M. W. Shelley.
Clare desires (not remembrances, if they are not pleasant), however she sends a proper message, and says she would be obliged to you, if you let her have her picture, if you could find a mode of conveying it....
Do you know we lose many letters, having spies (not Government ones) about us in plenty; they made a desperate push to do us a desperate mischief lately, but succeeded no further than to blacken us among the English; so if you receive a fresh batch (or green bag) of scandal against us, I assure you it is all a lie. Poor souls! we live innocently, as you well know; if we did not, ten to one God would take pity on us, and we should not be so unfortunate.
Shelley’s absence, though eventful, was, after all, a short one. In about a fortnight he was back again at the Bagni, and for a few weeks life was quiet.
On the 18th of September Mary records —
Picnic on the Pugnano Mountains; music in the evening. Sleep there.
On another occasion, wishing to find some tolerably cool seaside place where they might spend the next summer, they went, — the Shelleys and Clare, — on a two or three days’ expedition of discovery to Spezzia, and were enchanted with the beauty of the bay. Clare had, shortly after, to return to her situation at Florence, but the Shelleys decided to winter at Pisa. They took a top flat in the “Tre Palazzi di Chiesa,” on the Lung’ Arno, and spent part of October in furnishing it. They took possession about the 25th; the Williams’ coming, not many days later, to occupy a lower flat in the same house. At Lord Byron’s request, the Shelleys had taken for him Casa Lanfranchi, the finest palace in the Lung’ Arno, just opposite the house where they themselves were established. This close juxtaposition of abodes was likely to prove somewhat inconvenient, in case of Clare’s occasional presence at Tre Palazzi. Her first visit, however, to which the following characteristic letter refers, was to the Masons at Casa Silva, and it came to an end just before Byron’s arrival in Pisa. Clare had been staying with the Williams’ at Pugnano.
Clare to Mary.
My dear Mary — I arrived last night — won’t you come and see me to-day? The Williams’ wish you to forward them Mr. Webb’s answer, if possible, to reach them by 2 o’clock afternoon to-day. If Mr. Webb says yes (you will open his note), send Dominico with it to them, and he passing by the Baths must order Pancani to be at Pugnano by 5 o’clock in the afternoon. If there comes no letter from Mr. Webb, they will equally come to you, and I wish you could also in that case contrive to get Pancani ordered for them, for we forgot to arrange how that could be done; if not, they will be there expecting, and perhaps get involved for the next month. I wish you to be so good as to send me immediately my large box and the clothes from the Busati, indeed all that you have of mine, for I must arrange my boxes to get them bollate immediately. Don’t delay, and my band-box too. If you could of your great bounty give me a sponge, I should be infinitely obliged to you. Then, when it is dark, and the Williams’ arrived, will you ask Mr. Williams to be so good as to come and knock at Casa Silva, and I will return to spend the evening with you? Shelley won’t do to fetch me, because he looks singular in the streets. But I wish he would come now to give me some money, as I want to write to Livorno and arrange everything. Later will be inconvenient for me. Kiss the chick for me, and believe me, yours affectionately,
Clare.
Journal. — All October is left out, it seems. — We are at the Baths, occupied with furnishing our house, copying my novel, etc. etc.
Mary’s intention was to devote any profits which might proceed from this work to the relief of her father’s necessities, and the hope of being able to help him had stimulated her industry and energy while it eased her heart. She aimed at selling the copyright for £400, and Shelley opened negotiations to this effect with Ollier the publisher. His letter on the subject bears such striking testimony to the estimate he had formed of Mary’s powers, and gives, besides, so complete a sketch of the novel itself, that it cannot be omitted here.
Shelley to Mr. Ollier.
Pisa, 25th September 1822.
Dear Sir — It will give me great pleasure if I can arrange the affair of Mrs. Shelley’s novel with you to her and your satisfaction. She has a specific purpose in the sum which she instructed me to require, and, although this purpose could not be answered without ready money, yet I should find means to answer her wishes in that point if you could make it convenient to pay one-third at Christmas, and give bills for the other two-thirds at twelve and eighteen months. It would give me peculiar satisfaction that you, rather than any other person, should be the publisher of this work; it is the product of no slight labour, and I flatter myself, of no common talent, I doubt not it will give no less credit than it will receive from your names. I trust you know me too well to believe that my judgment deliberately given in testimony of the value of any production is influenced by motives of interest or partiality.
The romance is called Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, and is founded, not upon the novel of Machiavelli under that name, which substitutes a childish fiction for the far more romantic truth of history, but upon the actual story of his life. He was a person who, from an exile and an adventurer, after having served in the wars of England and Flanders in the reign of our Edward the Second, returned to his native city, and liberating it from its tyrants, became himself its tyrant, and died in the full splendour of his dominion, which he had extended over the half of Tuscany. He was a little Napoleon, and with a dukedom instead of an empire for his theatre, brought upon the same all the passions and errors of his antitype. The chief interest of the romance rests upon Euthanasia, his betrothed bride, whose love for him is only equalled by her enthusiasm for the liberty of the Republic of Florence, which is in some sort her country, and for that of Italy, to which Castruccio is a devoted enemy, being an ally of the party of the Emperor. This character is a masterpiece; and the keystone of the drama, which is built up with admirable art, is the conflict between these passions and these principles. Euthanasia, the last survivor of a noble house, is a feudal countess, and her castle is the scene of the exhibition of the knightly manners of the time. The character of Beatrice, the prophetess, can only be done justice to in the very language of the author. I know nothing in Walter Scott’s novels which at all approaches to the beauty and the sublimity of this — creation, I may say, for it is perfectly original; and, although founded upon the ideas and manners of the age which is represented, is wholly without a similitude in any fiction I ever read. Beatrice is in love with Castruccio, and dies; for the romance, although interspersed with much lighter matter, is deeply tragic, and the shades darken and gather as the catastrophe approaches. All the manners, customs of the age, are introduced; the superstitions, the heresies, and the religious persecutions are displayed; the minutest circumstance of Italian manners in that age is not omitted; and the whole seems to me to constitute a living and moving picture of an age almost forgotten. The author visited the scenery which she describes in person; and one or two of the inferior characters are drawn from her own observation of the Italian
s, for the national character shows itself still in certain instances under the same forms as it wore in the time of Dante. The novel consists, as I told you before, of three volumes, each at least equal to one of the Tales of my Landlord, and they will be very soon ready to be sent.
No arrangement, however, was come to at this time, and early in January Mary wrote to her father, offering the work to him, and asking him, if he accepted it, to make a bargain concerning it with a publisher.
Godwin accepted the offer, and undertook the responsibility, in a letter from which the following is an extract —
31st January 1822.
I am much gratified by your letter of the 11th, which reached me on Saturday last; it is truly generous of you to desire that I would make use of the produce of your novel. But what can I say to it? It is against the course of nature, unless, indeed, you were actually in possession of a fortune.
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I said in the preface to Mandeville there were two or three works further that I should be glad to finish before I died. If I make use of the money from you in the way you suggest, that may enable me to complete my present work.
The MS. was, accordingly, despatched to England, but was not published till many months later.
Valperga (as it was afterwards called) was a book of much power and more promise; very remarkable when the author’s age is taken into consideration. Apart from local colouring, the interest of the tale turns on the development of the character — naturally powerful and disposed to good, but spoilt by popularity and success, and unguided by principle — of Castruccio himself; and on the contrast between him and Euthanasia, the noble and beautiful woman who sacrifices her possessions, her hopes, and her affections to the cause of fidelity and patriotism.
Beatrice, the prophetess, is one of those gifted but fated souls, who, under the persuasion that they are supernaturally inspired, mistake the ordinary impulses of human nature for Divine commands, and, finding their mistake, yet encourage themselves in what they know to be delusion till the end, — a tragic end.
There are some remarkable descriptive passages, especially one where the wandering Beatrice comes suddenly upon a house in a dreary landscape which she knows, although she has never seen it before except in a haunting dream; every detail of it is horribly familiar, and she is paralysed by the sense of imminent calamity, which, in fact, bursts upon her directly afterwards.
Euthanasia dies at sea, and the account of the running down and wreck of her ship is a curious, almost prophetic, foreshadowing of the calamity by which, all too soon, Shelley was to lose his life.
The wind changed to a more northerly direction during the night, and the land-breeze of the morning filled their sails, so that, although slowly, they dropt down southward. About noon they met a Pisan vessel, who bade them beware of a Genoese squadron, which was cruising off Corsica; so they bore in nearer to the shore. At sunset that day a fierce sirocco arose, accompanied by thunder and lightning, such as is seldom seen during the winter season. Presently they saw huge dark columns descending from heaven, and meeting the sea, which boiled beneath; they were borne on by the storm, and scattered by the wind. The rain came down in sheets, and the hail clattered, as it fell to its grave in the ocean; the ocean was lashed into such waves that, many miles inland, during the pauses of the wind, the hoarse and constant murmurs of the far-off sea made the well-housed landsman mutter one more prayer for those exposed to its fury.
Such was the storm, as it was seen from shore. Nothing more was ever known of the Sicilian vessel which bore Euthanasia. It never reached its destined port, nor were any of those on board ever after seen. The sentinels who watched near Vado, a town on the sea-beach of the Maremma, found on the following day that the waves had washed on shore some of the wrecks of a vessel; they picked up a few planks and a broken mast, round which, tangled with some of its cordage, was a white silk handkerchief, such a one as had bound the tresses of Euthanasia the night that she had embarked; and in its knot were a few golden hairs.
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To follow the fate of Mary’s novel, it has been necessary somewhat to anticipate the history, which is resumed in the next chapter, with the journal and letters of the latter part of 1821.
CHAPTER XV
November 1821-April 1822
Journal, Thursday, November 1. — Go to Florence. Copy. Ride with the Guiccioli. Albé arrives.
Sunday, November 4. — The Williams’ arrive. Copy. Call on the Guiccioli.
Thursday, November 15. — Copy. Read Caleb Williams to Jane. Ride with the Guiccioli. Shelley goes on translating Spinoza with Edward. Medwin arrives. Taafe calls. Argyropulo calls. Good news from the Greeks.
Tuesday, November 28. — Ride with the Guiccioli. Suffer much with rheumatism in my head.
Wednesday, November 29. — I mark this day because I begin my Greek again, and that is a study that ever delights me. I do not feel the bore of it, as in learning another language, although it be so difficult, it so richly repays one; yet I read little, for I am not well. Shelley and the Williams go to Leghorn; they dine with us afterwards with Medwin. Write to Clare.
Thursday, November 30. — Correct the novel. Read a little Greek. Not well. Ride with the Guiccioli. The Count Pietro (Gamba) in the evening.
Mrs. Shelley to Mrs. Gisborne.
Pisa, 30th November 1821.
My dear Mrs. Gisborne — Although having much to do be a bad excuse for not writing to you, yet you must in some sort admit this plea on my part. Here we are in Pisa, having furnished very nice apartments for ourselves, and what is more, paid for the furniture out of the fruits of two years’ economy, we are at the top of the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa. I daresay you know the house, next door to La Scoto’s house on the north side of Lung’ Arno; but the rooms we inhabit are south, and look over the whole country towards the sea, so that we are entirely out of the bustle and disagreeable puzzi, etc., of the town, and hardly know that we are so enveloped until we descend into the street. The Williams’ have been less lucky, though they have followed our example in furnishing their own house, but, renting it of Mr. Webb, they have been treated scurvily. So here we live, Lord Byron just opposite to us in Casa Lanfranchi (the late Signora Felichi’s house). So Pisa, you see, has become a little nest of singing birds. You will be both surprised and delighted at the work just about to be published by him; his Cain, which is in the highest style of imaginative poetry. It made a great impression upon me, and appears almost a revelation, from its power and beauty. Shelley rides with him; I, of course, see little of him. The lady whom he serves is a nice pretty girl without pretensions, good hearted and amiable; her relations were banished Romagna for Carbonarism.
What do you know of Hunt? About two months ago he wrote to say that on 21st October he should quit England, and we have heard nothing more of him in any way; I expect some day he and six children will drop in from the clouds, trusting that God will temper the wind to the shorn lamb. Pray when you write, tell us everything you know concerning him. Do you get any intelligence of the Greeks? Our worthy countrymen take part against them in every possible way, yet such is the spirit of freedom, and such the hatred of these poor people for their oppressors, that I have the warmest hopes — ¼q½Ä¹ µ4¼¿ ø»É½ ³É½}½. Mavrocordato is there, justly revered for the sacrifice he has made of his whole fortune to the cause, and besides for his firmness and talents. If Greece be free, Shelley and I have vowed to go, perhaps to settle there, in one of those beautiful islands where earth, ocean, and sky form the paradise. You will, I hope, tell us all the news of our friends when you write. I see no one that you know. We live in our usual retired way, with few friends and no acquaintances. Clare is returned to her usual residence, and our tranquillity is unbroken in upon, except by those winds, sirocco or tramontana, which now and then will sweep over the ocean of one’s mind and disturb or cloud its surface. Since this must be a double letter, I save myself the trouble of copying the enclosed, which was a part of
a letter written to you a month ago, but which I did not send. Will you attend to my requests? Every day increases my anxiety concerning the desk. Do have the goodness to pack it off as soon as you can.
Shelley was at your hive yesterday; it is as dirty and busy as ever, so people live in the same narrow circle of space and thought, while time goes on, not as a racehorse, but a “six inside dilly,” and puts them down softly at their journey’s end; while they have slept and ate, and ecco tutto. With this piece of morality, dear Mrs. Gisborne, I end. Shelley begs every remembrance of his to be joined with mine to Mr. Gisborne and Henry. — Ever yours,
Mary W. S.
And now, my dear Mrs. Gisborne, I have a great favour to ask of you. Ollier writes to say that he has placed our two desks in the hands of a merchant of the city, and that they are to come — God knows when! Now, as we sent for them two years ago, and are tired of waiting, will you do us the favour to get them out of his hands, and to send them without delay? If they can be sent without being opened, send them in statu quo; if they must be opened, do not send the smallest but get a key (being a patent lock a key will cost half a guinea) made for the largest and send it, and return the other to Peacock. If you send the desk, will you send with it the following things? — A few copies of all Shelley’s works, particularly of the second edition of the Cenci, my mother’s posthumous works, and Letters from Norway from Peacock, if you can, but do not delay the box for them.
