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Mrs. Shelley by Lucy M. Rossetti

L >> Lucy M. Rossetti >> Mrs. Shelley




It is easy to see now how perfectly innocent, although Quixotically
generous, Mary Shelley was; but it can also be discerned how difficult
it would have been to stop the flood of social mirth and calumny, had
more of this subject been, made public. Mary, knowing this only too
well, bitterly deplored it, and accused herself of folly in a way that
might even now deceive a passing thinker; but it has been the pleasant
task of the writer to make this subject perfectly clear to herself,
and some others.

It must be added that the letters in question, written by Mrs. Shelley
to Gatteschi, were obtained by a requisition of the French police
under the pretext of political motives: Gatteschi had been known to be
mixed up with an insurrection in Bologna. Mr. Knox, who managed this
affair for Mrs. Shelley, showed the talents of an incipient police
magistrate.

The whole of Mary's correspondence with Claire Clairmont is very
cordial. Mary did her best to help her from time to time in her usual
generous manner, and evidently gave her the best advice in her power.
We find her regretting at times Claire's ill-health, sending her
carriage to her while in Osnaburgh Street, and so on. She strongly
urged her to come to England to settle about the investment of her
money, telling her that one L6,000 she cannot interfere with, as
Shelley had left it for an annuity which could not be lost or disposed
of; but that the other L6,000 she can invest where she likes. At one
time Mary tells her of a good investment she has heard of in an
opera-box, but that she must act for herself, as it is too dangerous a
matter to give advice in.

In 1845 Mary Shelley visited Brighton for her health, her nerves
having been much shaken by the anxiety she had gone through. While
there she mentioned seeing Mr. and Mrs. John Shelley at the Theatre,
but they took no notice of her. When Mrs. Shelley went over Field
Place after Sir Timothy's death, Lady Shelley had expressed herself to
a friend as being much pleased with her, and said she wished she had
known her before: Mary on hearing this exclaimed, "Then why on earth
didn't she?" In 1846 they moved from Putney to Chester Square, and in
the summer Mary went to Baden for her health. From here again she
wrote how glad she was to be away from the mortifications of London,
and that she detested Chester Square. Her health from this time needed
frequent change. In 1847, she moved to Field Place; she found it damp,
but visits to Brighton and elsewhere helped to keep up her gradually
failing health. The next year she had the satisfaction of seeing her
son married to a lady (Mrs. St. John) in every way to her liking. A
letter received by Mrs. Shelley from her daughter-in-law while on her
wedding tour, and enclosed to Claire, shows how she wished the latter
to partake in the joy she felt at the happy marriage of her son. Mary
now had not only a son to love, but a daughter to care for her, and
the pleasant duty was not unwillingly performed, for the lady speaks
of her to this day with emotion.

From this time there is little to record. We find Mary in 1849
inviting Willie Clairmont, Claire's nephew, to see her at Field Place,
where she was living with her son and his wife. In the same year they
rather dissuaded Claire, who was then at Maidstone, from a somewhat
wild project which she entertained, that of going to California. The
ground of dissuasion was still wilder than the project, for it was
just now said the hoped-for gold had turned out to be merely sulphate
of iron. The house in Chester Square had been given up in 1848, and
another was taken at 77, Warwick Square, before the marriage of Sir
Percy, and thence at the end of that year Mary writes of an
improvement in her health, but there was still a tendency to neuralgic
rheumatism. The life-long nerve strain for a time was relaxed, but
without doubt the tension had been too strong, and loving care could
not prevail beyond a certain point. The next year the son and his wife
took the drooping Mary to Nice for her health, and a short respite was
given; but the pressure could not much longer remain. The strong
brain, and tender, if once too impassioned heart, failed on February
21, 1851, and nothing remained but a cherished memory of the devoted
daughter and mother, and the faithful wife of Shelley.

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A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

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