Mrs. Shelley by Lucy M. Rossetti

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While crossing the bay they saw San Terenzio illuminated for a festa,
while despair was in their hearts. The days passed, a week ever
counted as two by Mary, and then, when she was very ill, Trelawny, who
had been long expected from his search, returned, and now they knew
that all was over, for the bodies had been cast on shore. One was a
tall, slight figure, with Sophocles in one pocket of the jacket, and
Keats's last poems in the other; the poetry he loved remained; his
body a mere mutilated corpse, which for a while had enshrined such
divine intellect. Williams's corpse, also, was found some miles
distant, still more unrecognisable, save for the black silk
handkerchief tied sailor-fashion round his neck; and after some ten
days a third body was found, a mere skeleton., supposed to be the
sailor-boy, Charles Vivian.

"Is there no hope?" Mary asked, when Trelawny reappeared on July 19.
He could not answer, but left the room, and sent the servant to take
the children to their widowed mothers. He then, on the 20th, took them
from the sound of the cruel waves to the Hunts at Pisa.

Naught remained now but to perform the last funeral rites. Mary
decided that Shelley should rest with his dearly-loved son in the
English cemetery in Rome. With some little difficulty, Trelawny
obtained permission, with the kind assistance of the English Charge
d'Affaires at Florence, Mr. Dawkins, to have the bodies burned on the
shore, according to the custom of bodies cast up from the sea, so that
the ashes could be removed without fear of infection. The iron furnace
was made at Leghorn, of the dimensions of a human body, according to
Trelawny's orders; and on August 15 the body of Lieutenant Williams
was disinterred from the sand where it had been buried when cast up.
Byron recognised him by his clothes and his teeth. The funeral rites
were performed by Trelawny by throwing incense, salt, and wine on the
pyre, according to classic custom; and when nothing remained but some
black ashes and small pieces of white bone, these were placed by
Trelawny in one of the oaken boxes he had provided for the purpose,
and then consigned to Byron and Hunt. The next day another pyre was
raised, and again the soldiers had to dig for the body, buried in
lime. When placed in the furnace it was three hours before the
consuming body showed the still unconsumed heart, which Trelawny saved
from the furnace, snatching it out with his hand; and there, amidst
the Italian beauty, on the Italian shore, was consumed the body of the
poet who held out immortal hope to his kind, who, in advance of the
scientists, held it as a noble fact that humanity was progressive;
who, more for this than for his unfortunate first marriage and its
unhappy sequel, was banished by his countrymen, and held as nothing by
his generation. But, as Claire wrote later in her diary, "It might be
said of him, as Cicero said of Rome, 'Ungrateful England shall not
possess my bones.'"

The ashes of the body were placed in the oaken box; those of the
heart, handed by Trelawny to Hunt, were afterwards given into the
possession of Mary, who jealously guarded them during her life, in a
place where they were found at her death, in a silken case, in which
was kept a Pisan copy of the _Adonais_. The ashes of Shelley's
body were finally buried in the cemetery in Rome, where the grave of
the English poet is now one of the strongest links between the present
and the past world; and there beside him rest now the ashes of his
faithful friend, Trelawny, who survived him nearly sixty years.

CHAPTER XIII.

WIDOWHOOD.

The last ceremony was over, hope, fear, despair, were past, and Mary
Shelley had to recommence her life, or death in life, her one solace
her little son, her one resource for many years her work. Fortunately
for her, her education and her studious habits were a shield against
the cold world which she had to encounter, and her accustomed personal
economy, which had fitted her to be the worthy companion to her
generous husband, whom she had encouraged rather than thwarted in his
constantly recurring acts of philanthropy, would help her in her
present struggle; and one friend was ready to assist with advice and
out of his then slender means, Mr. Trelawny. But from England no help
was forthcoming. Godwin's affairs having reached the climax of
bankruptcy already referred to, were not likely to settle down easily
now that the ever-ready supply was suddenly cut short.

Sir Timothy Shelley was not inclined to continue the terms he made
with his son, nor was anything to be arranged but on conditions which
Mrs. Shelley could never consent to. Of her despondent state of misery
we can judge in her letters of 1822 to Claire, as when she writes from
Genoa, September 15, "This hateful Genoa"; and, describing her misery
on her husband's death, she exclaims: "Well, I shall have his books
and his MSS., and in these I shall live, and from the study of these I
do expect some instants of content.... some seconds of exaltation that
may render me both happier here, and more worthy of him hereafter."
Then, "There is nothing but unhappiness to me, if indeed I except
Trelawny, who appears so truly generous and kind.... Nothing but the
horror of being a burden to my family prevents my accompanying Jane
(to England). If I had any fixed income, I should go at least to
Paris, and I shall go the moment I have one." And again in December of
the same year she writes to Claire, addressing her as Mdlle. de
Clairmont, _chez_ Mdme. de Hennistein, Vienna. She mentions an
approach to Sir Timothy, through lawyers, abortive as yet; how she
detests Genoa; "Hunt does not like me." Her daily routine is copying
Shelley's manuscripts and reading Greek; in her despair, study is her
only relief. She sees no one but Lord Byron, and the Guiccioli once a
mouth, Trelawny seldom, and he is on the eve of his departure for
Leghorn.

Thus we find Mary Shelley going on from day to day, too poor to travel
so far as Paris, as yet her child and her work of love on her
husband's MS. filling up her time, till in February she had to undergo
the mortification of her father-in-law proposing that she should give
her son up entirely to him, and in return receive a settled income.
But Mary was not of those who can be either bought or sold, and,
having the means of subsistence in herself, she could be independent;
a letter from her father shows how they were at one on this important
subject, and it must have been a great encouragement to her in her
loneliness, as she was always diffident of her own powers. However,
now her work lay in arranging and copying her husband's MSS., and
saving treasures which but for her loving care might have been lost.
In the spring of this year, 1823, Trelawny was in Rome arranging
Shelley's grave, which he bought with the adjoining ground for
himself, and he had the massive slab of stone placed there which still
tells of the "_Cor cordium_" In the autumn of the same year Mary
found means for leaving the hated Genoa, and, travelling through
France; she stayed for a time at Versailles with her father's old
friends, the Kennys, and of this visit one of the daughters, now Mrs.
Cox, then a child of about six years, retains a lively and pleasing
recollection. Brought up in France and imbued with the idea and
pictures of the Madonna and child, the little girl, on seeing Mrs.
Shelley arrive with her small son, became impressed with the idea that
the pale, sweet, oval-laced lady was the Madonna come to visit them;
and this idea was not dispelled by the gentle manner and kind way that
she had with the children, reminding one who had been punished by
mistake that the next time she was naughty she would have had her
punishment in advance. This visit was followed later by the intimacy
and friendship of the two families. In London (as we learn from a
letter to Miss Holcroft, Mrs. Kenny's daughter, by her previous
marriage with Holcroft) Mrs. Shelley was settled at 14, Sheldhurst
Street, Brunswick Square. She was then hoping that her father-in-law
would make her an allowance sufficient for her to live comfortably in
dear Italy; and, at all events, she had received "a present supply, so
that much good at least has been accomplished by my journey." She felt
quite lost in London, and Percy had not yet learnt English. She had
seen Lamb, but he did not remark on her being altered. She would then
have returned to Italy, but her father did not like the idea.

Among other work at this time Mary Shelley attempted a drama, but in
this her father did not encourage her, as he writes to her in February
1824 that her personages are mere abstractions, not men and women.
Godwin does not regret that she has not dramatic talent, as the want
of it will save her much trouble and mortification.

This disappointment did not discourage Mary, for in the next year she
published, with Henry Colburn of New Burlington Street, her novel
_The Last Man_, of which a second edition appeared in the
succeeding year. This must have been a great help to Mary's limited
means: she had received four hundred pounds for her previous romance.

During this year we find Mrs. Shelley living in Kentish Town, as she
writes from that address to Trelawny in July 1824. She is much cheered
by finding her old friend still remembers her. She speaks of him as
her warm-hearted friend, the remnant of the happy days of her vagabond
life in beloved Italy, and now, shortly before writing, she had seen
another link in her past life disappear; for the hearse containing the
body of Lord Byron had passed her window going up Highgate Hill, on
his last journey to the seat of his ancestors. Mary had been much
interested in the account Trelawny had sent her of Byron's latest
moments. She had been to see the poet's remains at the house where
they lay in London. She saw his valet, Fletcher, and "from a few words
he imprudently let fall, it would seem that his Lordship spoke of
C----- in his last moments, and of his wish to do something for her,
at a time when his mind, vacillating between consciousness and
delirium, would not permit him to do anything." She describes how
Fletcher found Lady Byron in great grief, but inexorable, and how
Byron's memoirs had been destroyed by Mrs. Leigh and Hobhouse, but
adds: "There was not much in them, I know, for I read them some years
ago at Venice; but the world fancied that it was to have a confession
of the hidden feelings of one concerning whom they were always
passionately curious." She says that Moore was much disgusted. He was
writing a life of Byron, but it was considered that although he had
had the MSS. so long in his hands, he had not found time to read them.
She asks Trelawny to help Moore with any facts or details. Mary thanks
Trelawny for his wish that she and Jane Williams, who see each other
and little else every day, should join him in Greece. That is
impossible, but she looks for him to come in the winter to England.
She speaks of July as fatal to her for good and ill. "On this very
very day"--she is writing July 28--"I went to France with my Shelley.
How young, heedless, and happy and poor we were then, and now my
sleeping boy is all that is left to me of that time--my boy and a
thousand recollections which never sleep." She describes the pretty
country lanes round Kentish Town. If only there were cloudless skies
and orange sunsets, she would not mind the scenery; but she can attach
herself to no one. She and Jane live alone; her child is in excellent
health, a tall, fine, handsome boy. She is still in hopes that she
will get an income of three or four hundred a year from Sir Timothy in
a few months; one of her chief wishes in being independent would be to
help Claire, who is in Russia. Of this time Claire wrote a good
account in her diary.

These letters to Trelawny give much insight into the present life of
Mary Shelley, and refer to much of interest in her past. On February
25 she tells how she had been with Jane, her father, and Count Gamba
to see Kean in Othello, but she adds: "Yet, my dear friend, I wish we
had seen it represented as was talked of at Pisa. Iago would never
have found a better representative than that strange and wondrous
creature whom one regrets daily more; for who can equal him?" Trelawny
adds a note that in 1822 Byron had contemplated that he, Trelawny,
Williams, Medwin, Mary Shelley, and Mrs. Williams were to take the
several parts:--Byron, Iago; Trelawny, Othello; Mary, Desdemona.
Trelawny adds that Byron recited a great portion of his part with
great gusto, and looked it too. Byron said that all Pisa were to be
the audience. Letters from Trelawny from Zante in 1826, carry on the
correspondence. He regrets that poverty keeps them apart; speaks of
the difficulty of travelling without money; he rejoices that he still
holds a place in her affections, and says, "You know, Mary, that I
always loved you impetuously and sincerely." In 1827, still writing
from Kentish Town, on Easter Sunday, but saying that in future her
address will be at her father's, 44, Gower Place, Bedford Square, we
have another of her charming letters to her friend, full of good
reflections. In this letter she tells how Jane Williams has united her
life with that of Shelley's early friend, Mr. Jefferson Hogg. He had
loved her devotedly since her arrival in England five years earlier,
but till now she had been too constant to Williams's memory to accept
him. Claire was still in Russia. Mary writes:--"I wrote to you last
while I entertained the hope that my money cares were diminishing, but
shabby as the best of these shabby people was, I am not to arrive at
that best without due waiting and anxiety. Nor do I yet see the end of
this worse than tedious uncertainty." Mary was to see Shelley's
younger brother, who was just married, but she had small hope of
reaping any good from his visit. She adds, "Adieu, my ever dear
friend; while hearts such as yours beat, I will not wholly despond."
Mary refers with great kindness to Hunt, and is most anxious as to his
future. She also notices with high satisfaction that the Whigs with
Canning are in the ascendant, and that they may be favourable to
Greece. While Mary Shelley was residing in Kentish Town, before she
joined her father in Gower Place after the winding up of his affairs,
a letter from Godwin to his wife at the sea-side shows that the latter
considered he did not need her society as Mrs. Shelley was with him;
he explains that he sees her about twice a week, but is feeling lonely
every day.

After Mary removed to Gower Place in 1827, among other work, she was
occupied by her _Lives of Eminent Literary Men_, for _Lardner's
Cyclopaedia_. About the same year Godwin writes to his daughter who
is evidently in very low spirits, wishing that she resembled him in
temperament rather than the Wollstonecrafts, but explains that his
present good spirits may be owing to his work on Cromwell. A little
later we find Godwin writing to Mary, himself in depression. He is
troubled by publishers who will not decide to take a novel. "Three,
four, or five hundred pounds, and to be subsisted by them while I
write it," is what he hoped to get. Mrs. Shelley was at Southend for
change of air, and wishing her father to join her; but this he could
not decide on. Every day lost is taking away from his means of
subsistence; for he is writing now, not for marble to be placed over
his remains, but for bread to be put into his mouth.

In April 1829, Mrs. Shelley, writing still from her father's address,
44, Grower Street, complains to Trelawny in a truly English way, as
she says, of the weather. She rejoices that her friend has taken to
work, and hopes that his friends will keep him to recording his own
adventures; but she strongly dissuades him from writing a life of
Shelley, for how could that be done without bringing her into
publicity? which she shrinks from fearfully, though she is forced by
her hard situation to meet it in a thousand ways; or as she expresses
it, "I will tell you what I am, a silly goose, who, far from wishing
to stand forward to assert myself in any way, now that I am alone in
the world have but the desire to wrap night and the obscurity of
insignificance around me. This is weakness, but I cannot help it."
Neither does Mary consider that the time has come to write Shelley's
life, though she her-self hopes to do so some day.

Towards the end of 1830 we find Mary in Somerset Street, Portman
Square, from which place she writes to Trelawny on the subject of his
MS. of _The Adventures of a Younger Son,_ which he had consigned
to her hands to place with a publisher, make the best terms for that
she could, and see through the press; a task distasteful to Trelawny
to the last. Mrs. Shelley much admired the work, considering it full
of passion and interest. But she does not hesitate to point out the
blemishes, certain coarsenesses, which she begs him to allow her to
deal with, as she would have dealt with parts of Lord Byron's _Don
Juan_. She is sure that without this she will have great difficulty
in disposing of the book.

Mary finds the absorbing politics of the day a great hindrance to
publishing, and says: "God knows how it will all end, but it looks as
if the aristocrats would have the good sense to make the necessary
sacrifices to a starving population."

The worry of awaiting the decision of the publisher was felt by Mrs.
Shelley more for Trelawny than for herself; she finds it difficult to
make the terms she wishes for him, and, writing to her friend on March
22 of the next year, she regrets that she cannot make Colburn, the
best publisher she knows of, give five hundred pounds as she wishes,
but trusts to get three hundred pounds for first edition and two
hundred pounds for second; but times have changed since she first
returned to England, neither she nor her father can command the same
prices which they did then. At that time "publishers came to seek me,"
she writes; "now money is scarcer and readers fewer than ever."

Three days later she is able to add the news that she has received
"the ultimatum of these great people," three hundred pounds down and
one hundred pounds on second edition, she thinks, for 1,000 copies.
She advises acceptance, but will try other publishers if he wish it.

Mary again regrets that it is impossible for her to go to Italy. She
expresses herself as wretched in England, and in spite of her sanguine
disposition and capacity to endure, which have borne her up hitherto,
she feels sinking at last; situated as she is, it is impossible for
her not to be wretched.

Mary does not give way long to despondency, she goes on to tell news
as to Medwin, Hogg, Jane, &c.; she can even tease Trelawny about the
different ladies who believe themselves the sole object of his
affection, and tells him she is having a certain letter of his about
"Caroline" lithographed, and thinks of dispensing 100 copies among
"the many hapless fair."

A third letter on the subject of the hook, on June 14, 1831, tells
Trelawny how his work is in progress, and Horace Smith, who much
admires it, has promised to revise it. Again, in July of the same
year, she writes that the third volume is in print, and his book will
soon be published; but that as his mother talks openly of his memoirs
in society, he must not hope for secrecy. In this letter, also, we
have a fact which redounds to the credit of both Mary Shelley and
Trelawny, as she clearly tells him she cannot marry him; but remains
in "all gratitude and friendship" his M. S. Trelawny had evidently
made her an offer of marriage, moved perhaps by gratitude for her
help, as well as probably, in his case, a passing love; for she writes
to him: "My name will never be Trelawny. I am not so young as I was
when you first knew me, but I am as proud. I must have the entire
affection, devotion, and, above all, the solicitous protection of any
one who would win me. You belong to womenkind in general, and Mary S.
will _never_ be yours. I write in haste," &c. &c.

Trelawny would never have offered his name thus to a woman he could
not respect, and perhaps few know better than those of his reckless
class who are most worthy of respect. Mary Shelley, who dreaded men's
looks or words, by her own knowledge and her intimate friends'
accounts had no fear of him; he had the instincts of a gentleman for a
true lady, who may be found in any class.

Four years later, we have Mary again writing to Mr. Trelawny with
regard to his book, a second edition being called for, when, to her
confusion, she finds that through her not having read over the
agreement, and having taken for granted that the proposal of three
hundred pounds on first edition with one hundred pounds more on second
was inserted, she had signed the contract; but now it turned out that
what was proposed by letter was not inserted by Oilier in the
agreement, and she knew not what to do. In a second letter a few days
later from Harrow, where she lived for a while to be near her son at
school, she wrote in answer to Trelawny, proposing Peacock as umpire,
because, she writes, "he would not lean to the strongest side, which
Jefferson, as a lawyer, is inclined, I think, to do." Oilier, she
writes, devoutly wished she had read the agreement, as the clause
ought to have been in it.

Again, a few months later, on April 7, 1836, there is another letter
asking Trelawny if he would like to attend her father's funeral, and
if he would go with the undertaker to choose the spot nearest to her
mother's, in St. Pancras Churchyard, and, if he could do this, to
write to Mrs. Godwin, at the Exchequer, to tell her so. The last few
years of Godwin's life had not ended, as he had so bitterly
apprehended, in penury; as his friends in power had obtained for him
the post of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, with residence in New
Palace Yard, in 1833. The office was in fact a sinecure, and was soon
abolished; but it was arranged that no change should be made in the
old philosopher's position. His old friends had died, but his work had
its reward for him, as well as its place in the thought of the world,
for such people as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Melbourne had used
their influence for him. Mary had been his constant devoted daughter
to the last. In 1834 he writes to his wife of Mrs. Shelley, as he
always called his daughter to Mrs. Godwin, of various meetings and
dinners with each other, though he cannot attend her evenings as he
would wish, since the walk across the park to reach Somerset Street,
where she then lived, was by no means pleasant after dark: and now we
find Mary honouring Trelawny with the last service for her father,
apologising, but adding, "Are you not the best and most constant of
friends?"

Godwin's last grief was the loss of his son. William in 1832; he had
been settled in a literary career and left a widow. One of Mary's
first acts of generosity later on was to settle a pension on her.

CHAPTER XIV.

LITERARY WORK.

Having traced Mary's life, as far as space will allow, to the death of
her father, we must now retrace our steps to show the work she did,
which gives the _raison-d'etre_ for this biography. It has
already been shown that her second book, _Valperga_, much admired
by Shelley, was written to assist her father in his distress before
his bankruptcy. After her husband's death, while arranging his MSS.,
and noting facts in connection with them, she planned and wrote her
third romance, _The Last Man_.

This highly imaginative work of Mary Shelley's twenty-sixth year
contains some of the author's most powerful ideas; but is marred in
the commencement by some of her most stilted writing.

The account of the events recorded professes to be found in the cave
of the Cumsean Sibyl, near Naples, where they had remained for
centuries, outlasting the changes of nature and, when found, being
still two hundred and fifty years in advance of the time foretold. The
accounts are all written on the sibylline leaves; they are in all
languages, ancient and modern; and those concerning this story are in
English.

We find ourselves in England, in 2073, in the midst of a Republic, the
last king of England having abdicated at the quietly expressed wish of
his subjects. This book, like all Mrs. Shelley's, is full of
biographical reminiscences; the introduction gives the date of her own
visit to Naples with Shelley, in 1818; the places they visited are
there indicated; the poetry, romance, the pleasures and pains of her
own existence, are worked into her subjects; while her imagination
carries her out of her own surroundings. We clearly recognise in the
ideal character of the son of the abdicated king an imaginary portrait
of Shelley as Mary would have him known, not as she knew him as a
living person. To give an adequate idea of genius with all its charm,
and yet with its human imperfections, was beyond Mary's power. Adrian,
the son of kings, the aristocratic republican, is the weakest part,
and one cannot help being struck by Mary Shelley's preference for the
aristocrat over the plebeian. In fact, Mary's idea of a republic still
needed kings' sons by their good manners to grace it, while, at the
same time, the king's son had to be transmuted into an ideal Shelley.
This strange confusion of ideas allowed for, and the fact that over
half a century of perhaps the earth's most rapid period of progress
has passed, the imaginative qualities are still remarkable in Mary.
Balloons, then dreamed of, were attained; but naturally the
steam-engine and other wonders of science, now achieved, were unknown
to Marv. When the-pi ague breaks out she has scope for her fancy, and
she certainly adds vivid pictures of horror and pathos to a subject
which has been handled by masters of thought at different periods. In
this time of horror it is amusing to note how the people's candidate,
Ryland, represented as a vulgar specimen of humanity, succumbs to
abject fear. The description of the deserted towns and grass-grown
streets of London is impressive. The fortunes of the family, to whom
the last man, Lionel Verney, belongs, are traced through their varying
phases, as one by one the dire plague assails them, and Verney, the
only man who recovers from the disease, becomes the leader of the
remnant of the English nation. This small handful of humanity leaves
England, and wanders through France on its way to the favoured
southern countries where human aid, now so scarce, was less needed. On
this journey Mrs. Shelley avails herself of reminiscences of her own
travelling with Shelley some few years before; and we pass the places
noted in her diary; but strange grotesque figures cross the path of
the few wanderers, who are decimated each day. At one moment a dying
acrobat, deserted by his companions, is seen bounding in the air
behind a hedge in the dusk of evening. At another, a black figure
mounted on a horse, which only shows itself after dark, to cause
apprehensions soon calmed by the death of the poor wanderer, who
wished only for distant companionship through dread of contagion.
Dijon is reached and passed, and here the old Countess of Windsor, the
ex-Queen of England, dies: she had only been reconciled to her changed
position by the destruction of humanity. Once, near Geneva, they come
upon the sound of divine music in a church, and find a dying girl
playing to her blind father to keep up the delusion to the last. The
small party, reduced by this time to five, reach Chamouni, and the
grand scenes so familiar to Mary contrast with the final tragedy of
the human race; yet one more dies, and only four of one family remain;
they bury the dead man in an ice cavern, and with this last victim
find the pestilence has ended, after a seven years' reign over the
earth. A weight is lifted from the atmosphere, and the world is before
them; but now alone they must visit her ruins; and the beauty of the
earth and the love of each other, bear them up till none but the last
man remains to complete the Cumsaean Sibyl's prophecy.

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