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Read Ebook: The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume 2 (of 2) by Marshall Julian Mrs
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Ebook has 968 lines and 140708 words, and 20 pages
L'audacieux Hagene r?pondit en col?re: <
Elle dit: <
L'autre parla encore au guerrier impatient: < < < < L'orgueilleux Hagene s'inclina devant les femmes; il n'en dit pas davantage et demeura silencieux. Il remonta le flot le long de la rive jusqu'? ce qu'il v?t le logis ? l'autre bord. Il se mit ? appeler ? haute voix jusqu'au del? du fleuve: < Le nautonier ?tait si riche qu'il ne lui convenait pas d'?tre aux ordres des gens. Aussi acceptait-il rarement un payement quelconque, et ses serviteurs ?taient aussi tr?s-fiers. Hagene restait toujours de ce c?t?-ci de l'eau. Alors il cria avec tant de force, que tous les ?chos du fleuve retentirent de la puissance de sa voix; car le h?ros ?tait excessivement fort: < Il lui pr?senta, au bout de son ?p?e lev?e en l'air, un bracelet d'or rouge, beau et brillant, afin qu'il le pass?t dans la terre de Gelpfr?t. Le fier nautonier saisit lui-m?me la rame en sa main. Il ?tait d'une humeur tr?s-difficile, ce batelier! Le d?sir d'une grande richesse lui amena une mauvaise fin. Il voulut gagner l'or rouge de Hagene et il re?ut ainsi une mort affreuse par l'?p?e du chevalier. Le nautonier rama vigoureusement jusqu'? l'autre bord. Ayant entendu nommer quelqu'un qu'il ne trouva pas, il entra dans une terrible col?re quand il vit Hagene, et, furieux, il adressa la parole au h?ros: < <<--Non point, par Dieu le tout-pur to arrange some method by which they may know it. I know not what further to add, except that their case is desperate in every respect, and death would be the greatest kindness to us all.--Ever your sincere friend, CLARE. This letter can hardly have been despatched before Trelawny arrived. He had seen the mangled, half-devoured corpses, and had identified them at once. It remained for him now to pronounce sentence of doom, as it were, on the survivors. This is his story, as he tells it-- My reverie was broken by a shriek from the nurse Caterina as, crossing the hall, she saw me in the doorway. After asking her a few questions I went up the stairs, and unannounced entered the room. I neither spoke nor did they question me. Mrs. Shelley's large gray eyes were fixed on my face. I turned away. Unable to bear this horrid silence, with a convulsive effort she exclaimed-- "Is there no hope?" I did not answer, but left the room, and sent the servant with the children to them. The next day I prevailed on them to return with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of the next day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neither describe nor forget. There is no journal or contemporary record of the next three or four weeks; only from a few scattered hints in letters can any idea be gleaned of this dark time, when the first realisation of incredible misfortune was being lived out in detail. Leigh Hunt was almost broken-hearted. "Dearest Mary," he wrote from Casa Lanfranchi on the 20th July, "I trust you will have set out on your return from that dismal place before you receive this. You will also have seen Trelawny. God bless you, and enable us all to be a support for one another. Let us do our best if it is only for that purpose. It is easier for me to say that I will do it than for you: but whatever happens, this I can safely say, that I belong to those whom Shelley loves, and that all which it is possible to me to do for them now and for ever is theirs. I will grieve with them, endure with them, and, if it be necessary, work for them, while I have life.--Your most affectionate friend, LEIGH HUNT. Marianne sends you a thousand loves, and longs with myself to try whether we can say or do one thing that can enable you and Mrs. Williams to bear up a little better. But we rely on your great strength of mind." Mary bore up in a way that surprised those who knew how ill she had been, how weak she still was, and how much she had previously been suffering in her spirits. It was a strange, tense, unnatural endurance. Except to Miss Curran at Rome, she wrote to no one for some time, not even to her father. This, which would naturally have been her first communication, may well have appeared harder to make than any other. Godwin's relations with Shelley had of late been strained, to say the least,--and then, Mary could not but remember his letters to her after Williams' death, and the privilege he had claimed "as a father and a philosopher" of rebuking, nay, of contemptuously deprecating her then excess of grief. How was she to write now in such a tone as to avert an answer of that sort? how write at all? She did accomplish it at last, but before her letter arrived Godwin had heard of the catastrophe through Miss Kent, sister of Mrs. Leigh Hunt. His fatherly feeling of anxiety for his daughter was aroused, and after waiting two days for direct news, he wrote to her as follows-- GODWIN TO MARY. DEAR MARY--I heard only two days ago the most afflicting intelligence to you, and in some measure to all of us, that can be imagined--the death of Shelley on the 8th ultimo. I have had no direct information; the news only comes in a letter from Leigh Hunt to Miss Kent, and, therefore, were it not for the consideration of the writer, I should be authorised to disbelieve it. That you should be so overcome as not to be able to write is perhaps but too natural; but that Jane could not write one line I could never have believed; and the behaviour of the lady at Pisa towards us on the occasion is peculiarly cruel. Leigh Hunt says you bear up under the shock better than could have been imagined; but appearances are not to be relied on. It would have been a great relief to me to have had a few lines from yourself. In a case like this, one lets one's imagination loose among the possibilities of things, and one is apt to rest upon what is most distressing and intolerable. I learned the news on Sunday. I was in hope to have had my doubts and fears removed by a letter from yourself on Monday. I again entertained the same hope to-day, and am again disappointed. I shall hang in hope and fear on every post, knowing that you cannot neglect me for ever. All that I expressed to you about silence and not writing to you again is now put an end to in the most melancholy way. I looked on you as one of the daughters of prosperity, elevated in rank and fortune, and I thought it was criminal to intrude on you for ever the sorrows of an unfortunate old man and a beggar. You are now fallen to my own level; you are surrounded with adversity and with difficulty; and I no longer hold it sacrilege to trouble you with my adversities. We shall now truly sympathise with each other; and whatever misfortune or ruin falls upon me, I shall not now scruple to lay it fully before you. This sorrowful event is, perhaps, calculated to draw us nearer to each other. I am the father of a family, but without children; I and my wife are falling fast into infirmity and helplessness; and in addition to all our other calamities, we seem destined to be left without connections and without aid. Perhaps now we and you shall mutually derive consolation from each other. Poor Jane is, I am afraid, left still more helpless than you are. Common misfortune, I hope, will incite between you the most friendly feelings. Shelley lived, I know, in constant anticipation of the uncertainty of his life, though not in this way, and was anxious in that event to make the most effectual provision for you. I am impatient to hear in what way that has been done; and perhaps you will make me your lawyer in England if any steps are necessary. I am desirous to call on Longdill, but I should call with more effect if I had authority and instructions from you. Mamma desires me to say how truly and deeply she sympathises in your affliction, and I trust you know enough of her to feel that this is the language of her heart. I suppose you will hardly stay in Italy. In that case we shall be near to, and support each other.--Ever and ever affectionately yours, WILLIAM GODWIN. I have received your letter dated since writing the above; it was detained for some hours by being directed to the care of Monro, for which I cannot account. William wrote to you on the 14th of June, and I on the 23d of July. I will call on Peacock and Hogg as you desire. Perhaps Williams' letter, and perhaps others, have been kept from you. Let us now be open and unreserved in all things. This letter was doubtless intended to be kind and sympathetic, even in the persistent prominence given to the business aspect of recent events. Yet it was comical in its solemnity. For when had Godwin held it sacrilege to trouble his daughter with his adversities, or shown the slightest scruple in laying before her any misfortune or ruin that may have fallen on him? and what new prospect was afforded her in the future by his promise of doing so now? No; this privilege of a father and a philosopher had never been neglected by him. Well indeed might he feel anxious as to what provision had been made for his daughter by her husband. In these matters he had long ceased to have a conscience, yet it was impossible he should be unaware that the utmost his son-in-law had been able to effect, and that at the expense of enormous sacrifices on the part of himself and his heirs, and of all the credit he possessed with publishers and the one or two friends who were not also dependents, had been to pay his, Godwin's, perpetual debts, and to keep him, as long as he could be kept, afloat. Small opportunity had Shelley's "dear" friends allowed him as yet to make provision for his family in case of sudden misfortune! Godwin, however, was really anxious about Mary, and his anxiety was perhaps increased by his letter; for in three days he wrote again, with out alluding to money. GODWIN TO MARY. MY DEAR MARY--I am inexpressibly anxious to hear from you, and your present situation renders the reciprocation of letters and answers--implying an interval of a month between each letter I receive from you to the next--intolerable. My poor girl, what do you mean to do with yourself? You surely do not mean to stay in Italy? How glad I should be to be near you, and to endeavour by new expedients each day to endeavour to make up your loss. But you are the best judge. If Italy is a country to which in these few years you are naturalised, and if England is become dull and odious to you, then stay! I should think, however, that now that you have lost your closest friend, your mind would naturally turn homeward, and to your earliest friend. Is it not so? Surely we might be a great support to each other under the trials to which we are reserved. What signify a few outward adversities if we find a friend at home? One thing I would earnestly recommend in our future intercourse, is perfect frankness. I think you are of a frank nature, I am sure I am so. We have now no battle to fight,--no contention to maintain,--that is over now. Above all, let me entreat you to keep up your courage. You have many duties to perform; you must now be the father as well as the mother; and I trust you have energy of character enough to enable you to perform your duties honourably and well.--Ever and ever most affectionately yours, W. GODWIN. The stunning nature of the blow she had endured, the uncertainty and complication of her affairs, and the absence of any one preponderating motive, made it impossible for Mary to settle at once on any scheme for the future. Her first idea was to return to England without delay, so as to avoid any possible risk to her boy from the Italian climate. Her one wish was to possess herself, before leaving, of the portrait of Shelley begun at Rome by Miss Curran, and laid aside in an unfinished state as a failure. In the absence of any other likeness it would be precious, and it might perhaps be improved. It was on this subject that she had written to Miss Curran in the quite early days of her misfortune; no answer had come, and she wrote again, now to request "that favour now nearer my heart than any other thing--the picture of my Shelley." "We leave Italy soon," she continued, "so I am particularly anxious to obtain this treasure, which I am sure you will give me as soon as possible. I have no other likeness of him, and in so utter desolation, how invaluable to me is your picture. Will you not send it? Will you not answer me without delay? Your former kindness bids me hope everything." She was awakening to life again; in other words, to pain: with keen anguish, like that of returning circulation to a limb which has been frozen and numb, her feelings, her forces, her intellect, began to respond to outward calls upon them, with a sensation, at times, of even morbid activity. It was a kind of relief, now, to write to Mrs. Gisborne that letter which contains the most graphic and connected of all accounts of the past tragedy. MRS. SHELLEY TO MRS. GISBORNE. One more circumstance I will mention. As I said, he took leave of Mrs. Mason in high spirits on Sunday. "Never," said she, "did I see him look happier than the last glance I had of his countenance." On Monday he was lost. On Monday night she dreamt that she was somewhere, she knew not where, and he came, looking very pale and fearfully melancholy. She said to him, "You look ill; you are tired; sit down and eat." "No," he replied, "I shall never eat more; I have not a soldo left in the world." "Nonsense," said she, "this is no inn, you need not pay." "Perhaps," he answered, "it is the worse for that." Then she awoke; and, going to sleep again, she dreamt that my Percy was dead; and she awoke crying bitterly--so bitterly, and felt so miserable--that she said to herself, "Why, if the little boy should die, I should not feel it in this manner." She was so struck with these dreams, that she mentioned them to her servant the next day, saying she hoped all was well with us.
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