MATHILDA
By MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Edited by ELIZABETH NITCHIE
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
CHAPEL HILL
Mathilda _is being published
in paper as Extra Series #3
of_ Studies in Philology.
PREFACE
This volume prints for the first time the full text of Mary Shelley’s
novelette _Mathilda_ together with the opening pages of its rough
draft, _The Fields of Fancy_. They are transcribed from the microfilm
of the notebooks belonging to Lord Abinger which is in the library of
Duke University.
The text follows Mary Shelley’s manuscript exactly except for the
omission of mere corrections by the author, most of which are
negligible; those that are significant are included and explained in
the notes. Footnotes indicated by an asterisk are Mrs. Shelley’s own
notes. She was in general a fairly good speller, but certain words,
especially those in which there was a question of doubling or not
doubling a letter, gave her trouble: untill (though occasionally she
deleted the final _l_ or wrote the word correctly), agreable, occured,
confering, buble, meaness, receeded, as well as hopless, lonly,
seperate, extactic, sacrifise, desart, and words ending in -ance or
-ence. These and other mispellings (even those of proper names) are
reproduced without change or comment. The use of _sic_ and of square
brackets is reserved to indicate evident slips of the pen, obviously
incorrect, unclear, or incomplete phrasing and punctuation, and my
conjectures in emending them.
I am very grateful to the library of Duke University and to its
librarian, Dr. Benjamin E. Powell, not only for permission to
transcribe and publish this work by Mary Shelley but also for the many
courtesies shown to me when they welcomed me as a visiting scholar in
1956. To Lord Abinger also my thanks are due for adding his approval
of my undertaking, and to the Curators of the Bodleian Library for
permiting me to use and to quote from the papers in the reserved
Shelley Collection. Other libraries and individuals helped me while I
was editing _Mathilda_: the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore,
whose Literature and Reference Departments went to endless trouble for
me; the Julia Rogers Library of Goucher College and its staff; the
library of the University of Pennsylvania; Miss R. Glynn Grylls (Lady
Mander); Professor Lewis Patton of Duke University; Professor
Frederick L. Jones of the University of Pennsylvania; and many other
persons who did me favors that seemed to them small but that to me
were very great.
I owe much also to previous books by and about the Shelleys. Those to
which I have referred more than once in the introduction and notes are
here given with the abbreviated form which I have used:
Frederick L. Jones, ed. _The Letters of Mary W. Shelley_, 2 vols.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1944 (_Letters_)
---- _Mary Shelley’s Journal_. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1947 (_Journal_)
Roger Ingpen and W.E. Peck, eds. _The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe
Shelley_, Julian Edition, 10 vols. London, 1926-1930 (Julian _Works_)
Newman Ivey White. _Shelley_, 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1940 (White,
_Shelley_)
Elizabeth Nitchie. _Mary Shelley, Author of “Frankenstein.”_ New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953 (Nitchie, _Mary Shelley_)
ELIZABETH NITCHIE
May, 1959
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE iii
INTRODUCTION vii
MATHILDA 1
NOTES TO MATHILDA 81
THE FIELDS OF FANCY 90
NOTES TO THE FIELDS OF FANCY 103
INTRODUCTION
Of all the novels and stories which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley left
in manuscript,[i] only one novelette, _Mathilda_, is complete. It
exists in both rough draft and final copy. In this story, as in all
Mary Shelley’s writing, there is much that is autobiographical: it
would be hard to find a more self-revealing work. For an understanding
of Mary’s character, especially as she saw herself, and of her
attitude toward Shelley and toward Godwin in 1819, this tale is an
important document. Although the main narrative, that of the father’s
incestuous love for his daughter, his suicide, and Mathilda’s
consequent withdrawal from society to a lonely heath, is not in any
real sense autobiographical, many elements in it are drawn from
reality. The three main characters are clearly Mary herself, Godwin,
and Shelley, and their relations can easily be reassorted to
correspond with actuality.
Highly personal as the story was, Mary Shelley hoped that it would be
published, evidently believing that the characters and the situations
were sufficiently disguised. In May of 1820 she sent it to England by
her friends, the Gisbornes, with a request that her father would
arrange for its publication. But _Mathilda_, together with its rough
draft entitled _The Fields of Fancy_, remained unpublished among the
Shelley papers. Although Mary’s references to it in her letters and
journal aroused some curiosity among scholars, it also remained
unexamined until comparatively recently.
This seeming neglect was due partly to the circumstances attending the
distribution of the family papers after the deaths of Sir Percy and
Lady Shelley. One part of them went to the Bodleian Library to become
a reserved collection which, by the terms of Lady Shelley’s will, was
opened to scholars only under definite restrictions. Another part went
to Lady Shelley’s niece and, in turn, to her heirs, who for a time did
not make the manuscripts available for study. A third part went to Sir
John Shelley-Rolls, the poet’s grand-nephew, who released much
important Shelley material, but not all the scattered manuscripts. In
this division, the two notebooks containing the finished draft of
_Mathilda_ and a portion of _The Fields of Fancy_ went to Lord
Abinger, the notebook containing the remainder of the rough draft to
the Bodleian Library, and some loose sheets containing additions and
revisions to Sir John Shelley-Rolls. Happily all the manuscripts are
now accessible to scholars, and it is possible to publish the full
text of _Mathilda_ with such additions from _The Fields of Fancy_ as
are significant.[ii]
The three notebooks are alike in format.[iii] One of Lord Abinger’s
notebooks contains the first part of _The Fields of Fancy_, Chapter 1
through the beginning of Chapter 10, 116 pages. The concluding portion
occupies the first fifty-four pages of the Bodleian notebook. There is
then a blank page, followed by three and a half pages, scored out, of
what seems to be a variant of the end of Chapter 1 and the beginning
of Chapter 2. A revised and expanded version of the first part of
Mathilda’s narrative follows (Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter
3), with a break between the account of her girlhood in Scotland and
the brief description of her father after his return. Finally there
are four pages of a new opening, which was used in _Mathilda_. This is
an extremely rough draft: punctuation is largely confined to the dash,
and there are many corrections and alterations. The Shelley-Rolls
fragments, twenty-five sheets or slips of paper, usually represent
additions to or revisions of _The Fields of Fancy_: many of them are
numbered, and some are keyed into the manuscript in Lord Abinger’s
notebook. Most of the changes were incorporated in _Mathilda_.
The second Abinger notebook contains the complete and final draft of
_Mathilda_, 226 pages. It is for the most part a fair copy. The text
is punctuated and there are relatively few corrections, most of them,
apparently the result of a final rereading, made to avoid the
repetition of words. A few additions are written in the margins. On
several pages slips of paper containing evident revisions (quite
possibly originally among the Shelley-Rolls fragments) have been
pasted over the corresponding lines of the text. An occasional passage
is scored out and some words and phrases are crossed out to make way
for a revision. Following page 216, four sheets containing the
conclusion of the story are cut out of the notebook. They appear, the
pages numbered 217 to 223, among the Shelley-Rolls fragments. A
revised version, pages 217 to 226, follows the cut.[iv]
The mode of telling the story in the final draft differs radically
from that in the rough draft. In _The Fields of Fancy_ Mathilda’s
history is set in a fanciful framework. The author is transported by
the fairy Fantasia to the Elysian Fields, where she listens to the
discourse of Diotima and meets Mathilda. Mathilda tells her story,
which closes with her death. In the final draft this unrealistic and
largely irrelevant framework is discarded: Mathilda, whose death is
approaching, writes out for her friend Woodville the full details of
her tragic history which she had never had the courage to tell him in
person.
The title of the rough draft, _The Fields of Fancy_, and the setting
and framework undoubtedly stem from Mary Wollstonecraft’s unfinished
tale, _The Cave of Fancy_, in which one of the souls confined in the
center of the earth to purify themselves from the dross of their
earthly existence tells to Sagesta (who may be compared with Diotima)
the story of her ill-fated love for a man whom she hopes to rejoin
after her purgation is completed.[v] Mary was completely familiar with
her mother’s works. This title was, of course, abandoned when the
framework was abandoned, and the name of the heroine was substituted.
Though it is worth noticing that Mary chose a name with the same
initial letter as her own, it was probably taken from Dante. There are
several references in the story to the cantos of the _Purgatorio_ in
which Mathilda appears. Mathilda’s father is never named, nor is
Mathilda’s surname given. The name of the poet went through several
changes: Welford, Lovel, Herbert, and finally Woodville.
The evidence for dating _Mathilda_ in the late summer and autumn of
1819 comes partly from the manuscript, partly from Mary’s journal. On
the pages succeeding the portions of _The Fields of Fancy_ in the
Bodleian notebook are some of Shelley’s drafts of verse and prose,
including parts of _Prometheus Unbound_ and of _Epipsychidion_, both
in Italian, and of the preface to the latter in English, some prose
fragments, and extended portions of the _Defence of Poetry_. Written
from the other end of the book are the _Ode to Naples_ and _The Witch
of Atlas_. Since these all belong to the years 1819, 1820, and 1821,
it is probable that Mary finished her rough draft some time in 1819,
and that when she had copied her story, Shelley took over the
notebook. Chapter 1 of _Mathilda_ in Lord Abinger’s notebook is
headed, “Florence Nov. 9th. 1819.” Since the whole of Mathilda’s story
takes place in England and Scotland, the date must be that of the
manuscript. Mary was in Florence at that time.
These dates are supported by entries in Mary’s journal which indicate
that she began writing _Mathilda_, early in August, while the Shelleys
were living in the Villa Valosano, near Leghorn. On August 4, 1819,
after a gap of two months from the time of her little son’s death, she
resumed her diary. Almost every day thereafter for a month she
recorded, “Write,” and by September 4, she was saying, “Copy.” On
September 12 she wrote, “Finish copying my Tale.” The next entry to
indicate literary activity is the one word, “write,” on November 8. On
the 12th Percy Florence was born, and Mary did no more writing until
March, when she was working on _Valperga_. It is probable, therefore,
that Mary wrote and copied _Mathilda_ between August 5 and September
12, 1819, that she did some revision on November 8 and finally dated
the manuscript November 9.
The subsequent history of the manuscript is recorded in letters and
journals. When the Gisbornes went to England on May 2, 1820, they took
_Mathilda_ with them; they read it on the journey and recorded their
admiration of it in their journal.[vi] They were to show it to Godwin
and get his advice about publishing it. Although Medwin heard about
the story when he was with the Shelleys in 1820[vii] and Mary read
it--perhaps from the rough draft--to Edward and Jane Williams in the
summer of 1821,[viii] this manuscript apparently stayed in Godwin’s
hands. He evidently did not share the Gisbornes’ enthusiasm: his
approval was qualified. He thought highly of certain parts of it, less
highly of others; and he regarded the subject as “disgusting and
detestable,” saying that the story would need a preface to prevent
readers “from being tormented by the apprehension ... of the fall of
the heroine,”--that is, if it was ever published.[ix] There is,
however, no record of his having made any attempt to get it into
print. From January 18 through June 2, 1822, Mary repeatedly asked
Mrs. Gisborne to retrieve the manuscript and have it copied for her,
and Mrs. Gisborne invariably reported her failure to do so. The last
references to the story are after Shelley’s death in an unpublished
journal entry and two of Mary’s letters. In her journal for October
27, 1822, she told of the solace for her misery she had once found in
writing _Mathilda_. In one letter to Mrs. Gisborne she compared the
journey of herself and Jane to Pisa and Leghorn to get news of Shelley
and Williams to that of Mathilda in search of her father,
“driving--(like Matilda), towards the _sea_ to learn if we were to be
for ever doomed to misery.”[x] And on May 6, 1823, she wrote, “Matilda
foretells even many small circumstances most truly--and the whole of
it is a monument of what now is.”[xi]
These facts not only date the manuscript but also show Mary’s feeling
of personal involvement in the story. In the events of 1818-1819 it is
possible to find the basis for this morbid tale and consequently to
assess its biographical significance.
On September 24, 1818, the Shelleys’ daughter, Clara Everina, barely a
year old, died at Venice. Mary and her children had gone from Bagni di
Lucca to Este to join Shelley at Byron’s villa. Clara was not well
when they started, and she grew worse on the journey. From Este
Shelley and Mary took her to Venice to consult a physician, a trip
which was beset with delays and difficulties. She died almost as soon
as they arrived. According to Newman Ivey White,[xii] Mary, in the
unreasoning agony of her grief, blamed Shelley for the child’s death
and for a time felt toward him an extreme physical antagonism which
subsided into apathy and spiritual alienation. Mary’s black moods made
her difficult to live with, and Shelley himself fell into deep
dejection. He expressed his sense of their estrangement in some of the
lyrics of 1818--“all my saddest poems.” In one fragment of verse, for
example, he lamented that Mary had left him “in this dreary world
alone.”
Thy form is here indeed--a lovely one--
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode.
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,
Where
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.
Professor White believed that Shelley recorded this estrangement only
“in veiled terms” in _Julian and Maddalo_ or in poems that he did not
show to Mary, and that Mary acknowledged it only after Shelley’s
death, in her poem “The Choice” and in her editorial notes on his
poems of that year. But this unpublished story, written after the
death of their other child William, certainly contains, though also in
veiled terms, Mary’s immediate recognition and remorse. Mary well
knew, I believe, what she was doing to Shelley. In an effort to purge
her own emotions and to acknowledge her fault, she poured out on the
pages of _Mathilda_ the suffering and the loneliness, the bitterness
and the self-recrimination of the past months.
The biographical elements are clear: Mathilda is certainly Mary
herself; Mathilda’s father is Godwin; Woodville is an idealized
Shelley.
Like Mathilda Mary was a woman of strong passions and affections which
she often hid from the world under a placid appearance. Like
Mathilda’s, Mary’s mother had died a few days after giving her birth.
Like Mathilda she spent part of her girlhood in Scotland. Like
Mathilda she met and loved a poet of “exceeding beauty,” and--also
like Mathilda--in that sad year she had treated him ill, having become
“captious and unreasonable” in her sorrow. Mathilda’s loneliness,
grief, and remorse can be paralleled in Mary’s later journal and in
“The Choice.” This story was the outlet for her emotions in 1819.
Woodville, the poet, is virtually perfect, “glorious from his youth,”
like “an angel with winged feet”--all beauty, all goodness, all
gentleness. He is also successful as a poet, his poem written at the
age of twenty-three having been universally acclaimed. Making
allowance for Mary’s exaggeration and wishful thinking, we easily
recognize Shelley: Woodville has his poetic ideals, the charm of his
conversation, his high moral qualities, his sense of dedication and
responsibility to those he loved and to all humanity. He is Mary’s
earliest portrait of her husband, drawn in a year when she was slowly
returning to him from “the hearth of pale despair.”
The early circumstances and education of Godwin and of Mathilda’s
father were different. But they produced similar men, each
extravagant, generous, vain, dogmatic. There is more of Godwin in this
tale than the account of a great man ruined by character and
circumstance. The relationship between father and daughter, before it
was destroyed by the father’s unnatural passion, is like that between
Godwin and Mary. She herself called her love for him “excessive and
romantic.”[xiii] She may well have been recording, in Mathilda’s
sorrow over her alienation from her father and her loss of him by
death, her own grief at a spiritual separation from Godwin through
what could only seem to her his cruel lack of sympathy. He had accused
her of being cowardly and insincere in her grief over Clara’s
death[xiv] and later he belittled her loss of William.[xv] He had also
called Shelley “a disgraceful and flagrant person” because of
Shelley’s refusal to send him more money.[xvi] No wonder if Mary felt
that, like Mathilda, she had lost a beloved but cruel father.
Thus Mary took all the blame for the rift with Shelley upon herself
and transferred the physical alienation to the break in sympathy with
Godwin. That she turned these facts into a story of incest is
undoubtedly due to the interest which she and Shelley felt in the
subject at this time. They regarded it as a dramatic and effective
theme. In August of 1819 Shelley completed _The Cenci_. During its
progress he had talked over with Mary the arrangement of scenes; he
had even suggested at the outset that she write the tragedy herself.
And about a year earlier he had been urging upon her a translation of
Alfieri’s _Myrrha_. Thomas Medwin, indeed, thought that the story
which she was writing in 1819 was specifically based on _Myrrha_. That
she was thinking of that tragedy while writing _Mathilda_ is evident
from her effective use of it at one of the crises in the tale. And
perhaps she was remembering her own handling of the theme when she
wrote the biographical sketch of Alfieri for Lardner’s _Cabinet
Cyclopaedia_ nearly twenty years later. She then spoke of the
difficulties inherent in such a subject, “inequality of age adding to
the unnatural incest. To shed any interest over such an attachment,
the dramatist ought to adorn the father with such youthful attributes
as would be by no means contrary to probability.”[xvii] This she
endeavored to do in _Mathilda_ (aided indeed by the fact that the
situation was the reverse of that in _Myrrha_). Mathilda’s father was
young: he married before he was twenty. When he returned to Mathilda,
he still showed “the ardour and freshness of feeling incident to
youth.” He lived in the past and saw his dead wife reincarnated in his
daughter. Thus Mary attempts to validate the situation and make it “by
no means contrary to probability.”
_Mathilda_ offers a good example of Mary Shelley’s methods of
revision. A study of the manuscript shows that she was a careful
workman, and that in polishing this bizarre story she strove
consistently for greater credibility and realism, more dramatic (if
sometimes melodramatic) presentation of events, better motivation,
conciseness, and exclusion of purple passages. In the revision and
rewriting, many additions were made, so that _Mathilda_ is appreciably
longer than _The Fields of Fancy_. But the additions are usually
improvements: a much fuller account of Mathilda’s father and mother
and of their marriage, which makes of them something more than lay
figures and to a great extent explains the tragedy; development of the
character of the Steward, at first merely the servant who accompanies
Mathilda in her search for her father, into the sympathetic confidant
whose responses help to dramatise the situation; an added word or
short phrase that marks Mary Shelley’s penetration into the motives
and actions of both Mathilda and her father. Therefore _Mathilda_ does
not impress the reader as being longer than _The Fields of Fancy_
because it better sustains his interest. And with all the additions
there are also effective omissions of the obvious, of the
tautological, of the artificially elaborate.[xviii]
The finished draft, _Mathilda_, still shows Mary Shelley’s faults as a
writer: verbosity, loose plotting, somewhat stereotyped and
extravagant characterization. The reader must be tolerant of its
heroine’s overwhelming lamentations. But she is, after all, in the
great tradition of romantic heroines: she compares her own weeping to
that of Boccaccio’s Ghismonda over the heart of Guiscardo. If the
reader can accept Mathilda on her own terms, he will find not only
biographical interest in her story but also intrinsic merits: a
feeling for character and situation and phrasing that is often
vigorous and precise.
Footnotes:
[i] They are listed in Nitchie, _Mary Shelley_, Appendix II, pp.
205-208. To them should be added an unfinished and unpublished novel,
_Cecil_, in Lord Abinger’s collection.
[ii] On the basis of the Bodleian notebook and some information about
the complete story kindly furnished me by Miss R. Glynn Grylls, I
wrote an article, “Mary Shelley’s _Mathilda_, an Unpublished Story and
Its Biographical Significance,” which appeared in _Studies in
Philology_, XL (1943), 447-462. When the other manuscripts became
available, I was able to use them for my book, _Mary Shelley_, and to
draw conclusions more certain and well-founded than the conjectures I
had made ten years earlier.
[iii] A note, probably in Richard Garnett’s hand, enclosed in a MS box
with the two notebooks in Lord Abinger’s collection describes them as
of Italian make with “slanting head bands, inserted through the
covers.” Professor Lewis Patton’s list of the contents of the
microfilms in the Duke University Library (_Library Notes_, No. 27,
April, 1953) describes them as vellum bound, the back cover of the
_Mathilda_ notebook being missing. Lord Abinger’s notebooks are on
Reel 11. The Bodleian notebook is catalogued as MSS. Shelley d. 1, the
Shelley-Rolls fragments as MSS. Shelley adds c. 5.
[iv] See note 83 to _Mathilda_, page 89.
[v] See _Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights
of Woman_ (4 vols., London, 1798), IV, 97-155.
[vi] See _Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams ... Their Journals and
Letters_, ed. by Frederick L. Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, [1951]), p. 27.
[vii] See Thomas Medwin, _The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley_, revised,
with introduction and notes by H. Buxton Forman (London, 1913), p.
252.
[viii] _Journal_, pp. 159, 160.
[ix] _Maria Gisborne, etc._, pp. 43-44.
[x] _Letters_, I, 182.
[xi] _Ibid._, I, 224.
[xii] See White, _Shelley_, II, 40-56.
[xiii] See _Letters_, II, 88, and note 23 to _Mathilda_.
[xiv] See _Shelley and Mary_ (4 vols. Privately printed [for Sir Percy
and Lady Shelley], 1882), II, 338A.
[xv] See Mrs. Julian Marshall, _The Life and Letters of Mary W.
Shelley_ (2 vols. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1889), I, 255.
[xvi] Julian _Works_, X, 69.
[xvii] _Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of
Italy, Spain, and Portugal_ (3 vols., Nos. 63, 71, and 96 of the Rev.
Dionysius Lardner’s _Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, London, 1835-1837), II,
291-292.
[xviii] The most significant revisions are considered in detail in the
notes. The text of the opening of _The Fields of Fancy_, containing
the fanciful framework of the story, later discarded, is printed after
the text of _Mathilda_.
MATHILDA[1]
CHAP. I
Florence. Nov. 9th 1819
It is only four o’clock; but it is winter and the sun has already set:
there are no clouds in the clear, frosty sky to reflect its slant
beams, but the air itself is tinged with a slight roseate colour which
is again reflected on the snow that covers the ground. I live in a
lone cottage on a solitary, wide heath: no voice of life reaches me. I
see the desolate plain covered with white, save a few black patches
that the noonday sun has made at the top of those sharp pointed
hillocks from which the snow, sliding as it fell, lay thinner than on
the plain ground: a few birds are pecking at the hard ice that covers
the pools--for the frost has been of long continuance.[2]
I am in a strange state of mind.[3] I am alone--quite alone--in the
world--the blight of misfortune has passed over me and withered me; I
know that I am about to die and I feel happy--joyous.--I feel my
pulse; it beats fast: I place my thin hand on my cheek; it burns:
there is a slight, quick spirit within me which is now emitting its
last sparks. I shall never see the snows of another winter--I do
believe that I shall never again feel the vivifying warmth of another
summer sun; and it is in this persuasion that I begin to write my
tragic history. Perhaps a history such as mine had better die with me,
but a feeling that I cannot define leads me on and I am too weak both
in body and mind to resist the slightest impulse. While life was
strong within me I thought indeed that there was a sacred horror in my
tale that rendered it unfit for utterance, and now about to die I
pollute its mystic terrors. It is as the wood of the Eumenides none
but the dying may enter; and Oedipus is about to die.[4]
What am I writing?--I must collect my thoughts. I do not know that any
will peruse these pages except you, my friend, who will receive them
at my death. I do not address them to you alone because it will give
me pleasure to dwell upon our friendship in a way that would be
needless if you alone read what I shall write. I shall relate my tale
therefore as if I wrote for strangers. You have often asked me the
cause of my solitary life; my tears; and above all of my impenetrable
and unkind silence. In life I dared not; in death I unveil the
mystery. Others will toss these pages lightly over: to you, Woodville,
kind, affectionate friend, they will be dear--the precious memorials
of a heart-broken girl who, dying, is still warmed by gratitude
towards you:[5] your tears will fall on the words that record my
misfortunes; I know they will--and while I have life I thank you for
your sympathy.
But enough of this. I will begin my tale: it is my last task, and I
hope I have strength sufficient to fulfill it. I record no crimes; my
faults may easily be pardoned; for they proceeded not from evil motive
but from want of judgement; and I believe few would say that they
could, by a different conduct and superior wisdom, have avoided the
misfortunes to which I am the victim. My fate has been governed by
necessity, a hideous necessity. It required hands stronger than mine;
stronger I do believe than any human force to break the thick,
adamantine chain that has bound me, once breathing nothing but joy,
ever possessed by a warm love & delight in goodness,--to misery only
to be ended, and now about to be ended, in death. But I forget myself,
my tale is yet untold. I will pause a few moments, wipe my dim eyes,
and endeavour to lose the present obscure but heavy feeling of
unhappiness in the more acute emotions of the past.[6]
I was born in England. My father was a man of rank:[7] he had lost his
father early, and was educated by a weak mother with all the
indulgence she thought due to a nobleman of wealth. He was sent to
Eton and afterwards to college; & allowed from childhood the free use
of large sums of money; thus enjoying from his earliest youth the
independance which a boy with these advantages, always acquires at a
public school.
Under the influence of these circumstances his passions found a deep
soil wherein they might strike their roots and flourish either as
flowers or weeds as was their nature. By being always allowed to act
for himself his character became strongly and early marked and
exhibited a various surface on which a quick sighted observer might
see the seeds of virtues and of misfortunes. His careless
extravagance, which made him squander immense sums of money to satisfy
passing whims, which from their apparent energy he dignified with the
name of passions, often displayed itself in unbounded generosity. Yet
while he earnestly occupied himself about the wants of others his own
desires were gratified to their fullest extent. He gave his money, but
none of his own wishes were sacrifised to his gifts; he gave his time,
which he did not value, and his affections which he was happy in any
manner to have called into action.
I do not say that if his own desires had been put in competition with
those of others that he would have displayed undue selfishness, but
this trial was never made. He was nurtured in prosperity and attended
by all its advantages; every one loved him and wished to gratify him.
He was ever employed in promoting the pleasures of his companions--but
their pleasures were his; and if he bestowed more attention upon the
feelings of others than is usual with schoolboys it was because his
social temper could never enjoy itself if every brow was not as free
from care as his own.
While at school, emulation and his own natural abilities made him hold
a conspicuous rank in the forms among his equals; at college he
discarded books; he believed that he had other lessons to learn than
those which they could teach him. He was now to enter into life and he
was still young enough to consider study as a school-boy shackle,
employed merely to keep the unruly out of mischief but as having no
real connexion with life--whose wisdom of riding--gaming &c. he
considered with far deeper interest--So he quickly entered into all
college follies although his heart was too well moulded to be
contaminated by them--it might be light but it was never cold. He was
a sincere and sympathizing friend--but he had met with none who
superior or equal to himself could aid him in unfolding his mind, or
make him seek for fresh stores of thought by exhausting the old ones.
He felt himself superior in quickness of judgement to those around
him: his talents, his rank and wealth made him the chief of his party,
and in that station he rested not only contented but glorying,
conceiving it to be the only ambition worthy for him to aim at in the
world.
By a strange narrowness of ideas he viewed all the world in connexion
only as it was or was not related to his little society. He considered
queer and out of fashion all opinions that were exploded by his circle
of intimates, and he became at the same time dogmatic and yet fearful
of not coinciding with the only sentiments he could consider orthodox.
To the generality of spectators he appeared careless of censure, and
with high disdain to throw aside all dependance on public prejudices;
but at the same time that he strode with a triumphant stride over the
rest of the world, he cowered, with self disguised lowliness, to his
own party, and although its [chi]ef never dared express an opinion or
a feeling until he was assured that it would meet with the approbation
of his companions.
Yet he had one secret hidden from these dear friends; a secret he had
nurtured from his earliest years, and although he loved his fellow
collegiates he would not trust it to the delicacy or sympathy of any
one among them. He loved. He feared that the intensity of his passion
might become the subject of their ridicule; and he could not bear that
they should blaspheme it by considering that trivial and transitory
which he felt was the life of his life.
There was a gentleman of small fortune who lived near his family
mansion who had three lovely daughters. The eldest was far the most
beautiful, but her beauty was only an addition to her other
qualities--her understanding was clear & strong and her disposition
angelically gentle. She and my father had been playmates from infancy:
Diana, even in her childhood had been a favourite with his mother;
this partiality encreased with the years of this beautiful and lively
girl and thus during his school & college vacations[8] they were
perpetually together. Novels and all the various methods by which
youth in civilized life are led to a knowledge of the existence of
passions before they really feel them, had produced a strong effect on
him who was so peculiarly susceptible of every impression. At eleven
years of age Diana was his favourite playmate but he already talked
the language of love. Although she was elder than he by nearly two
years the nature of her education made her more childish at least in
the knowledge and expression of feeling; she received his warm
protestations with innocence, and returned them unknowing of what they
meant. She had read no novels and associated only with her younger
sisters, what could she know of the difference between love and
friendship? And when the development of her understanding disclosed
the true nature of this intercourse to her, her affections were
already engaged to her friend, and all she feared was lest other
attractions and fickleness might make him break his infant vows.
But they became every day more ardent and tender. It was a passion
that had grown with his growth; it had become entwined with every
faculty and every sentiment and only to be lost with life. None knew
of their love except their own two hearts; yet although in all things
else, and even in this he dreaded the censure of his companions, for
thus truly loving one inferior to him in fortune, nothing was ever
able for a moment to shake his purpose of uniting himself to her as
soon as he could muster courage sufficient to meet those difficulties
he was determined to surmount.
Diana was fully worthy of his deepest affection. There were few who
could boast of so pure a heart, and so much real humbleness of soul
joined to a firm reliance on her own integrity and a belief in that of
others. She had from her birth lived a retired life. She had lost her
mother when very young, but her father had devoted himself to the care
of her education--He had many peculiar ideas which influenced the
system he had adopted with regard to her--She was well acquainted with
the heroes of Greece and Rome or with those of England who had lived
some hundred years ago, while she was nearly ignorant of the passing
events of the day: she had read few authors who had written during at
least the last fifty years but her reading with this exception was
very extensive. Thus although she appeared to be less initiated in the
mysteries of life and society than he her knowledge was of a deeper
kind and laid on firmer foundations; and if even her beauty and
sweetness had not fascinated him her understanding would ever have
held his in thrall. He looked up to her as his guide, and such was his
adoration that he delighted to augment to his own mind the sense of
inferiority with which she sometimes impressed him.[9]
When he was nineteen his mother died. He left college on this event
and shaking off for a while his old friends he retired to the
neighbourhood of his Diana and received all his consolation from her
sweet voice and dearer caresses. This short seperation from his
companions gave him courage to assert his independance. He had a
feeling that however they might express ridicule of his intended
marriage they would not dare display it when it had taken place;
therefore seeking the consent of his guardian which with some
difficulty he obtained, and of the father of his mistress which was
more easily given, without acquainting any one else of his intention,
by the time he had attained his twentieth birthday he had become the
husband of Diana.
He loved her with passion and her tenderness had a charm for him that
would not permit him to think of aught but her. He invited some of his
college friends to see him but their frivolity disgusted him. Diana
had torn the veil which had before kept him in his boyhood: he was
become a man and he was surprised how he could ever have joined in the
cant words and ideas of his fellow collegiates or how for a moment he
had feared the censure of such as these. He discarded his old
friendships not from fickleness but because they were indeed unworthy
of him. Diana filled up all his heart: he felt as if by his union with
her he had received a new and better soul. She was his monitress as he
learned what were the true ends of life. It was through her beloved
lessons that he cast off his old pursuits and gradually formed himself
to become one among his fellow men; a distinguished member of society,
a Patriot; and an enlightened lover of truth and virtue.--He loved her
for her beauty and for her amiable disposition but he seemed to love
her more for what he considered her superior wisdom. They studied,
they rode together; they were never seperate and seldom admitted a
third to their society.
Thus my father, born in affluence, and always prosperous, clombe
without the difficulty and various disappointments that all human
beings seem destined to encounter, to the very topmost pinacle of
happiness: Around him was sunshine, and clouds whose shapes of beauty
made the prospect divine concealed from him the barren reality which
lay hidden below them. From this dizzy point he was dashed at once as
he unawares congratulated himself on his felicity. Fifteen months
after their marriage I was born, and my mother died a few days after
my birth.
A sister of my father was with him at this period. She was nearly
fifteen years older than he, and was the offspring of a former
marriage of his father. When the latter died this sister was taken by
her maternal relations: they had seldom seen one another, and were
quite unlike in disposition. This aunt, to whose care I was afterwards
consigned, has often related to me the effect that this catastrophe
had on my father’s strong and susceptible character. From the moment
of my mother’s death untill his departure she never heard him utter a
single word: buried in the deepest melancholy he took no notice of any
one; often for hours his eyes streamed tears or a more fearful gloom
overpowered him. All outward things seemed to have lost their
existence relatively to him and only one circumstance could in any
degree recall him from his motionless and mute despair: he would never
see me. He seemed insensible to the presence of any one else, but if,
as a trial to awaken his sensibility, my aunt brought me into the room
he would instantly rush out with every symptom of fury and
distraction. At the end of a month he suddenly quitted his house and,
unatteneded [_sic_] by any servant, departed from that part of the
country without by word or writing informing any one of his
intentions. My aunt was only relieved of her anxiety concerning his
fate by a letter from him dated Hamburgh.
How often have I wept over that letter which untill I was sixteen was
the only relick I had to remind me of my parents. “Pardon me,” it
said, “for the uneasiness I have unavoidably given you: but while in
that unhappy island, where every thing breathes _her_ spirit whom I
have lost for ever, a spell held me. It is broken: I have quitted
England for many years, perhaps for ever. But to convince you that
selfish feeling does not entirely engross me I shall remain in this
town untill you have made by letter every arrangement that you judge
necessary. When I leave this place do not expect to hear from me: I
must break all ties that at present exist. I shall become a wanderer,
a miserable outcast--alone! alone!”--In another part of the letter he
mentioned me--“As for that unhappy little being whom I could not see,
and hardly dare mention, I leave her under your protection. Take care
of her and cherish her: one day I may claim her at your hands; but
futurity is dark, make the present happy to her.”
My father remained three months at Hamburgh; when he quitted it he
changed his name, my aunt could never discover that which he adopted
and only by faint hints, could conjecture that he had taken the road
of Germany and Hungary to Turkey.[10]
Thus this towering spirit who had excited interest and high
expectation in all who knew and could value him became at once, as it
were, extinct. He existed from this moment for himself only. His
friends remembered him as a brilliant vision which would never again
return to them. The memory of what he had been faded away as years
passed; and he who before had been as a part of themselves and of
their hopes was now no longer counted among the living.
CHAPTER II
I now come to my own story. During the early part of my life there is
little to relate, and I will be brief; but I must be allowed to dwell
a little on the years of my childhood that it may be apparent how when
one hope failed all life was to be a blank; and how when the only
affection I was permitted to cherish was blasted my existence was
extinguished with it.
I have said that my aunt was very unlike my father. I believe that
without the slightest tinge of a bad heart she had the coldest that
ever filled a human breast: it was totally incapable of any affection.
She took me under her protection because she considered it her duty;
but she had too long lived alone and undisturbed by the noise and
prattle of children to allow that I should disturb her quiet. She had
never been married; and for the last five years had lived perfectly
alone on an estate, that had descended to her through her mother, on
the shores of Loch Lomond in Scotland. My father had expressed a wish
in his letters that she should reside with me at his family mansion
which was situated in a beautiful country near Richmond in Yorkshire.
She would not consent to this proposition, but as soon as she had
arranged the affairs which her brother’s departure had caused to fall
to her care, she quitted England and took me with her to her scotch
estate.
The care of me while a baby, and afterwards untill I had reached my
eighth year devolved on a servant of my mother’s, who had accompanied
us in our retirement for that purpose. I was placed in a remote part
of the house, and only saw my aunt at stated hours. These occurred
twice a day; once about noon she came to my nursery, and once after
her dinner I was taken to her. She never caressed me, and seemed all
the time I staid in the room to fear that I should annoy her by some
childish freak. My good nurse always schooled me with the greatest
care before she ventured into the parlour--and the awe my aunt’s cold
looks and few constrained words inspired was so great that I seldom
disgraced her lessons or was betrayed from the exemplary stillness
which I was taught to observe during these short visits.[11]
Under my good nurse’s care I ran wild about our park and the
neighbouring fields. The offspring of the deepest love I displayed
from my earliest years the greatest sensibility of disposition. I
cannot say with what passion I loved every thing even the inanimate
objects that surrounded me. I believe that I bore an individual
attachment to every tree in our park; every animal that inhabited it
knew me and I loved them. Their occasional deaths filled my infant
heart with anguish. I cannot number the birds that I have saved during
the long and severe winters of that climate; or the hares and rabbits
that I have defended from the attacks of our dogs, or have nursed when
accidentally wounded.
When I was seven years of age my nurse left me. I now forget the cause
of her departure if indeed I ever knew it. She returned to England,
and the bitter tears she shed at parting were the last I saw flow for
love of me for many years. My grief was terrible: I had no friend but
her in the whole world. By degrees I became reconciled to solitude but
no one supplied her place in my affections. I lived in a desolate
country where
------ there were none to praise
And very few to love.[A]
It is true that I now saw a little more of my aunt, but she was in
every way an unsocial being; and to a timid child she was as a plant
beneath a thick covering of ice; I should cut my hands in endeavouring
to get at it. So I was entirely thrown upon my own resourses. The
neighbouring minister was engaged to give me lessons in reading,
writing and french, but he was without family and his manners even to
me were always perfectly characteristic of the profession in the
exercise of whose functions he chiefly shone, that of a schoolmaster.
I sometimes strove to form friendships with the most attractive of the
girls who inhabited the neighbouring village; but I believe I should
never have succeeded [even] had not my aunt interposed her authority
to prevent all intercourse between me and the peasantry; for she was
fearful lest I should acquire the scotch accent and dialect; a little
of it I had, although great pains was taken that my tongue should not
disgrace my English origin.
As I grew older my liberty encreased with my desires, and my
wanderings extended from our park to the neighbouring country. Our
house was situated on the shores of the lake and the lawn came down to
the water’s edge. I rambled amidst the wild scenery of this lovely
country and became a complete mountaineer: I passed hours on the steep
brow of a mountain that overhung a waterfall or rowed myself in a
little skiff to some one of the islands. I wandered for ever about
these lovely solitudes, gathering flower after flower
Ond’ era pinta tutta la mia via[B]
singing as I might the wild melodies of the country, or occupied by
pleasant day dreams. My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a
serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of
Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven
brought their delights with them. When rocked by the waves of the lake
my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions
of his high fed steed.
But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had
no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other
human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.[12]
Sometimes indeed I wept when my aunt received my caresses with
repulsive coldness, and when I looked round and found none to love;
but I quickly dried my tears. As I grew older books in some degree
supplied the place of human intercourse: the library of my aunt was
very small; Shakespear, Milton, Pope and Cowper were the strangley
[_sic_] assorted poets of her collection; and among the prose authors
a translation of Livy and Rollin’s ancient history were my chief
favourites although as I emerged from childhood I found others highly
interesting which I had before neglected as dull.
When I was twelve years old it occurred to my aunt that I ought to
learn music; she herself played upon the harp. It was with great
hesitation that she persuaded herself to undertake my instruction; yet
believing this accomplishment a necessary part of my education, and
balancing the evils of this measure or of having some one in the house
to instruct me she submitted to the inconvenience. A harp was sent for
that my playing might not interfere with hers, and I began: she found
me a docile and when I had conquered the first rudiments a very apt
scholar. I had acquired in my harp a companion in rainy days; a sweet
soother of my feelings when any untoward accident ruffled them: I
often addressed it as my only friend; I could pour forth to it my
hopes and loves, and I fancied that its sweet accents answered me. I
have now mentioned all my studies.
I was a solitary being, and from my infant years, ever since my dear
nurse left me, I had been a dreamer. I brought Rosalind and Miranda
and the lady of Comus to life to be my companions, or on my isle acted
over their parts imagining myself to be in their situations. Then I
wandered from the fancies of others and formed affections and
intimacies with the aerial creations of my own brain--but still
clinging to reality I gave a name to these conceptions and nursed them
in the hope of realization. I clung to the memory of my parents; my
mother I should never see, she was dead: but the idea of [my] unhappy,
wandering father was the idol of my imagination. I bestowed on him all
my affections; there was a miniature of him that I gazed on
continually; I copied his last letter and read it again and again.
Sometimes it made me weep; and at other [times] I repeated with
transport those words,--“One day I may claim her at your hands.” I was
to be his consoler, his companion in after years. My favourite vision
was that when I grew up I would leave my aunt, whose coldness lulled
my conscience, and disguised like a boy I would seek my father through
the world. My imagination hung upon the scene of recognition; his
miniature, which I should continually wear exposed on my breast, would
be the means and I imaged the moment to my mind a thousand and a
thousand times, perpetually varying the circumstances. Sometimes it
would be in a desart; in a populous city; at a ball; we should perhaps
meet in a vessel; and his first words constantly were, “My daughter, I
love thee”! What extactic moments have I passed in these dreams! How
many tears I have shed; how often have I laughed aloud.[13]
This was my life for sixteen years. At fourteen and fifteen I often
thought that the time was come when I should commence my pilgrimage,
which I had cheated my own mind into believing was my imperious duty:
but a reluctance to quit my Aunt; a remorse for the grief which, I
could not conceal from myself, I should occasion her for ever
withheld me. Sometimes when I had planned the next morning for my
escape a word of more than usual affection from her lips made me
postpone my resolution. I reproached myself bitterly for what I called
a culpable weakness; but this weakness returned upon me whenever the
critical moment approached, and I never found courage to depart.[14]
[A] Wordsworth
[B] Dante