Lady Caroline Lamb. Mrs. Shelley
It is impossible to comprehend the Byronic craze which swept cool-headed
England off her feet during the regency. _Childe Harold_ was the
fashion, and many a hero of romance, even down to the time of
_Pendennis_, aped his fashions. Disraeli and Bulwer were among his
disciples. Bulwer's early novels, _Falkland_ and _Pelham_, were
influenced by him; and _Vivian Grey_ and _Venetia_ might have been the
offspring of Byron's prose brain, so completely was Disraeli under his
influence at the time.
The poorest of the novels of this class, but the one which gives the
most intimate picture of Byron, is _Glenarvon_, by Lady Caroline Lamb.
Its hero is Byron. The plot follows the outlines of her own life, and
all the characters were counterparts of living people whom she knew.
Calantha, the heroine, representing Lady Caroline, is married to Lord
Avondale, or William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, at one time
Premier of England. Lord and Lady Avondale are very happy, until
Glenarvon, "the spirit of evil," appears and dazzles Calantha. Twice
she is about to elope with him, but the thought of her husband and
children keeps her back. They part, and for a time tender _billets-doux_
pass between them, until Calantha receives a cruel letter from
Glenarvon, in which he bids her leave him in peace. Other well-known
people appeared in the book. Lord Holland was the Great Nabob, Lady
Holland was the Princess of Madagascar, and Samuel Rogers was the Yellow
Hyena or the Pale Poet. The novel had also a moral purpose; it was
intended to show the danger of a life devoted to pleasure and fashion.
Of course the book made a sensation. Lady Caroline Lamb, the daughter of
Earl Bessborough, the granddaughter of Earl Spencer, related to nearly
all the great houses of England, had all her life followed every impulse
of a too susceptible imagination. Her infatuation for Lord Byron had
long been a theme for gossip throughout London. She invited him
constantly to her home; went to assemblies in his carriage; and, if he
were invited to parties to which she was not, walked the streets to meet
him; she confided to every chance acquaintance that she was dying of
love for him. Yet, as one reads of this affair, one suspects that this
devotion was nothing more than the infatuation of a high-strung nature
for the hero of a romance. In writing to a friend about her husband,
she says, "He was privy to my affair with Lord Byron and laughed at it."
On her death-bed she said of her husband, "But remember, the only noble
fellow I ever met with was William Lamb."
A month after her death, Lord Melbourne wrote a sketch of her life for
the _Literary Gazette_. In this he said:
"Her character it is difficult to analyse, because, owing to the extreme
susceptibility of her imagination, and the unhesitating and rapid manner
in which she followed its impulses, her conduct was one perpetual
kaleidoscope of changes.... To the poor she was invariably
charitable--she was more: in spite of her ordinary thoughtlessness of
self, for them she had consideration as well as generosity, and delicacy
no less than relief. For her friends she had a ready and active love;
for her enemies no hatred: never perhaps was there a human being who had
less malevolence; as all her errors hurt only herself, so against
herself only were levelled her accusation and reproach."
How far Byron was in earnest in this tragicomedy is more difficult to
determine. In one letter to her he writes: "I was and am yours, freely
and entirely, to obey, to honour, to love, and fly with you, where,
when, and how yourself might and may determine." That Byron was piqued
when he read the book, his letter to Moore proves: "By the way, I
suppose you have seen _Glenarvon_. It seems to me if the authoress had
written the truth--the whole truth--the romance would not only have been
more romantic, but more entertaining. As for the likeness, the picture
can't be good; I did not sit long enough." It was not pleasing to Lord
Byron's vanity to appear in her book as the spirit of evil, beside her
husband, a high-minded gentleman, ready to sacrifice for his friends
everything "but his honour and integrity."
Notwithstanding the humorous elements in the connection of Lord Byron
and Lady Caroline Lamb, the story is pathetic. His poetic personality
attracted her as the light does the poor moth. Disraeli caricatured her
in the character of Mrs. Felix Lorraine in _Vivian Grey_, and introduced
her into _Venetia_ under the title of Lady Monteagle, where he made much
of her love for the poet Cadurcis, otherwise Lord Byron.
Lady Caroline Lamb wrote two other novels, but they are of no value. In
her third, _Ada Reis_, considered her best, she introduced Bulwer as the
good spirit.
The little poem written by Lady Caroline Lamb on the day fixed for her
departure from Brocket Hall, after it had been decided that she was to
live in retirement away from her husband and son, shows tenderness and
poetic feeling:
They dance--they sing--they bless the day,
I weep the while--and well I may:
Husband, nor child, to greet me come,
Without a friend--without a home:
I sit beneath my favourite tree,
Sing then, my little birds, to me,
In music, love, and liberty.
At the time that the British public was smiling graciously, even if a
little humorously, upon Lady Caroline Lamb, and was lionising Lord
Byron, it spurned from its presence with the greatest disdain Percy and
Mary Shelley. Even after the death of Shelley, when Mary returned to
London with herself and son to support, it received her as the prodigal
daughter for whom the crumbs from the rich man's table must suffice.
Mary Shelley had inherited from her mother the world's frown. Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin had been, the greater part of her life, at
variance with society. She was the author, as has been said, of the
_Vindication of the Rights of Woman_, and had for a long time been an
opponent of marriage, chiefly because the civil laws pertaining to it
deprived both husband and wife of their proper liberty. Her bitter
experience with Imlay had, however, so modified her views on this
latter subject that she became the wife of William Godwin a short time
before the birth of their daughter Mary, who in after years became Mrs.
Shelley. Although her mother died at her birth, Mary Godwin was deeply
imbued with her theories of life. She had read her books, and had often
heard her father express the same views concerning the bondage of
marriage and its uselessness. Her elopement with Shelley while his wife
Harriet was still living gains a certain sanction from the fact that she
plighted her troth to him at her mother's grave. After the sad death of
Harriet, however, Shelley and Mary Godwin conceded to the world's
opinion, and were legally married. But the anger of society was not
appeased, and, even after both had become famous, it continued to ignore
the poet Shelley and his gifted wife.
At the age of nineteen Mrs. Shelley was led to write her first novel.
Mr. and Mrs. Shelley and Byron were spending the summer of 1816 in the
mountains of Switzerland. Continuous rain kept them in-doors, where they
passed the time in reading ghost stories. At the suggestion of Byron,
each one agreed to write a blood-curdling tale. It is one of the strange
freaks of invention that this young girl succeeded where Shelley and
Byron failed. Byron wrote a fragment of a story which was printed with
_Mazeppa_. Shelley also began a story, but when he had reduced his
characters to a most pitiable condition, he wearied of them and could
devise no way to bring the tale to a fitting conclusion. After listening
to a conversation between the two poets upon the possibilities of
science discovering the secrets of life, the story known as
_Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus_ shaped itself in Mary's mind.
_Frankenstein_ is one of those novels that defy the critic. Everyone
recognises that the letters written by Captain Walton to his sister in
which he tells of his meeting with Frankenstein, and repeats to her the
story he has just heard from his guest, makes an awkward introduction to
the real narrative. Yet all this part about Captain Walton and his crew
was added at the suggestion of Shelley after the rest of the story had
been written. But the narrative of Frankenstein is so powerful, so real,
that, once read, it can never be forgotten. Mrs. Shelley wrote in the
introduction of the edition of 1839 that, before writing it, she was
trying to think of a story, "one that would speak to the mysterious
fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror--one to make the reader
dread to look round, to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the
heart." That she has done this the experience of every reader will
prove.
But the story has a greater hold on the imagination than this alone
would give it. The monster created by Frankenstein is closely related to
our own human nature. "My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love
and sympathy," he says, "and, when wrenched by misery to vice and
hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture,
such as you cannot even imagine." There is a wonderful blending of good
and evil in this demon, and, while the magnitude of his crimes makes us
shudder, his wrongs and his loneliness awaken our pity. "The fallen
angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had
friends and associates in his desolation; I am quite alone," the monster
complains to his creator. Who can forget the scene where he watches
Frankenstein at work making for him the companion that he had promised?
Perhaps sadder than the story of the monster is that of Frankenstein,
who, led by a desire to widen human knowledge, finds that the fulfilment
of his lofty ambition has brought only a curse to mankind.
In 1823, Mary Shelley published a second novel, _Valperga_, so named
from a castle and small independent territory near Lucca. Castruccio
Castracani, whose life Machiavelli has told, is the hero of the story.
The greatest soldier and satirist of his times, the man of the novel is
considered inferior to the man of history. Mrs. Shelley had read
broadly before beginning the book, and she has described minutely the
customs of the age about which she is writing. Shelley pronounced it "a
living and moving picture of an age almost forgotten."
The interest centres in the two heroines, Euthanasia, Countess of
Valperga, and Beatrice, Prophetess of Ferrara. Strong, intellectual, and
passionate, not until the time of George Eliot did women of this type
become prominent in fiction. Euthanasia, a Guelph and a Florentine, with
a soul "adapted for the reception of all good," was betrothed to the
youth Castruccio, whom she at that time loved. Later, when his character
deteriorated under the influence of selfish ambition, she ceased to love
him, and said, "He cast off humanity, honesty, honourable feeling, all
that I prize." Castruccio belonged to the Ghibelines, so that the story
of their love is intertwined with the struggle between these two parties
in Italy.
But more beautiful than the intellectual character of Euthanasia, is the
spiritual one of Beatrice, the adopted daughter of the bishop of
Ferrara, who is regarded with feelings of reverence by her countrymen,
because of her prophetic powers. Pure and deeply religious, she accepted
all the suggestions of her mind as a message from God. When Castruccio
came to Ferrara and was entertained by the bishop as the prince and
liberator of his country, she believed that together they could
accomplish much for her beloved country: "She prayed to the Virgin to
inspire her; and, again giving herself up to reverie, she wove a subtle
web, whose materials she believed heavenly, but which were indeed stolen
from the glowing wings of love." No wonder she believed the dictates of
her own heart, she whose words the superstition of the age had so often
declared miraculous. She was barely seventeen and she loved for the
first time. How pathetic is her disillusionment when Castruccio bade her
farewell for a season, as he was about to leave Ferrara. She had
believed that the Holy Spirit had brought Castruccio to her that by the
union of his manly qualities and her divine attributes some great work
might be fulfilled. But as he left her, he spoke only of earthly
happiness:
"It was her heart, her whole soul she had given; her understanding, her
prophetic powers, all the little universe that with her ardent spirit
she grasped and possessed, she had surrendered, fully, and without
reserve; but, alas! the most worthless part alone had been accepted, and
the rest cast as dust upon the winds."
Afterwards, when she wandered forth a beggar, and was rescued by
Euthanasia, she exclaimed to her:
"You either worship a useless shadow, or a fiend in the clothing of a
God."
The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft could fully sympathise with
Beatrice. In the grief, almost madness, with which Beatrice realises her
self-deception, there are traces of Frankenstein. Perhaps no problem
plucked from the tree of good and evil was so ever-present to Mary
Shelley as why misery so often follows an obedience to the highest
dictates of the soul. Both her father and mother had experienced this;
and she and Shelley had tasted of the same bitter fruit. In the analysis
of Beatrice's emotions Mrs. Shelley shows herself akin to Charlotte
Bronte.
Three years after the death of Shelley, she published _The Last Man_. It
relates to England in the year 2073 when, the king having abdicated his
throne, England had become a republic. Soon after this, however a
pestilence fell upon the people, which drove them upon the continent,
where they travelled southward, until only one man remained. The plot is
clumsy; the characters are abstractions.
But the feelings of the author, written in clear letters on every page,
are a valuable addition to the history of the poet Shelley and his wife.
Besides her fresh sorrow for her husband, Byron had died only the year
before. Her mind was brooding on the days the three had spent together.
Her grief was too recent to be shaken from her mind or lost sight of in
her imaginative work. Shelley, and the scenes she had looked on with
him, the conversations between him and his friends, creep in on every
page. Lionel Verney, the Last Man, is the supposed narrator of the
story. He thus describes Adrian, the son of the king: "A tall, slim,
fair boy, with a physiognomy expressive of the excess of sensibility and
refinement, stood before me; the morning sunbeams tinged with gold his
silken hair, and spread light and glory over his beaming countenance ...
he seemed like an inspired musician, who struck, with unerring skill,
the 'lyre of mind,' and produced thence divinest harmony.... His slight
frame was over informed by the soul that dwelt within.... He was gay as
a lark carrolling from its skiey tower.... The young and inexperienced
did not understand the lofty severity of his moral views, and disliked
him as a being different from themselves." Shelley, of course, was the
original of this picture. Lord Byron suggested the character of Lord
Raymond: "The earth was spread out as a highway for him; the heavens
built up as a canopy for him." "Every trait spoke predominate self-will;
his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often curled his lips--lips
which to female eyes were the very throne of beauty and love.... Thus
full of contradictions, unbending yet haughty, gentle yet fierce,
tender and again neglectful, he by some strange art found easy entrance
to the admiration and affection of women; now caressing and now
tyrannising over them according to his mood, but in every change a
despot."
A large part of the three volumes is taken up with a characterisation of
Adrian and Lord Raymond, the latter of whom falls when fighting for the
Greeks. How impossible it was for her to rid her mind of her own sorrow
is shown at the end of the third volume, where Adrian is drowned, and
Lionel Verney is left alone. He thus says of his friend:
"All I had possessed of this world's goods, of happiness, knowledge, or
virtue--I owed to him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and rare
qualities, given a glory to my life, which without him it had never
known. Beyond all other beings he had taught me that goodness, pure and
simple, can be an attribute of man."
Mrs. Shelley made the great mistake of writing this novel in the first
person. _The Last Man_, who is telling the story, although he has the
name of Lionel, is most assuredly of the female sex. The friendship
between him and Adrian is not the friendship of man for man, but rather
the love of man and woman.
Mrs. Shelley's next novel, _Lodore_, written in 1835, thirteen years
after the death of her husband, had a better outlined plot and more
definite characters. But again it echoes the past. Lord Byron's unhappy
married relations and Shelley's troubles with Harriet are blended in the
story, Lord Byron furnishing the character in some respects of Lord
Lodore, while his wife, Cornelia Santerre, resembles both Harriet and
Lady Byron. Lady Santerre, the mother of Cornelia, augments the trouble
between Lord and Lady Lodore, and, contrary to the evident intentions of
the writer, the reader's sympathies are largely with Cornelia and Lady
Santerre. When Lodore wishes Cornelia to go to America to save him from
disgrace, Lady Santerre objects to her daughter's accompanying him:
"He will soon grow tired of playing the tragic hero on a stage
surrounded by no spectators; he will discover the folly of his conduct;
he will return, and plead for forgiveness, and feel that he is too
fortunate in a wife who has preserved her own conduct free from censure
and remark while he has made himself a laughing-stock to all."
These words strangely bring to mind Lord Byron as having evoked them.
Again Lady Lodore's letter to her husband at the time of his departure
to America reminds one of Lady Byron:
"If heaven have blessings for the coldly egotistical, the unfeeling
despot, may those blessings be yours; but do not dare to interfere with
emotions too pure, too disinterested for you ever to understand. Give me
my child, and fear neither my interference nor resentment."
Lady Lodore's character changes in the book, and becomes more like that
of Harriet Shelley. As Mrs. Shelley wrote, fragments of the past
evidently came into her mind and influenced her pen, and her original
conception of the characters was forgotten. Clorinda, the beautiful,
eloquent, and passionate Neapolitan, was drawn from Emilia Viviani, who
had suggested to Shelley his poem _Epipsychidion_, while both Horatio
Saville, who had "no thought but for the nobler creations of the soul,
and the discernment of the sublime laws of God and nature," and his
cousin Villiers, also an enthusiastic worshipper of nature, possessed
many of Shelley's qualities.
Besides two other novels of no value, _Perkin Warbeck_ and _Falkner_,
Mrs. Shelley wrote numerous short stories for the annuals, at that time
so much in vogue. In 1891, these were collected and edited with an
appreciative criticism by Sir Richard Garnett. Many of them have the
intensity and sustained interest of Frankenstein.
After the death of her husband, grief and trouble dimmed Mrs. Shelley's
imagination. But the pale student Frankenstein, the monster he created,
and the beautiful priestess, Beatrice, three strong conceptions, testify
to the genius of Mary Shelley.