MARY
W. SHELLEY
SHELLEY,
beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knowest.
When Spring arrives, leaves that you never saw will shadow the ground,
and
flowers you never beheld will star it, and the grass will be of another
growth.
Thy name is added to the list which makes the earth bold in her age,
and proud
of what has been. Time, with slow, but unwearied feet, guides her to
the goal
that thou hast reached; and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still
nearer the
hour when my earthly dress shall repose near thine, beneath the tomb of
Cestius.
—
"Journal of
Mary
Shelley."
MARY W.
SHELLEY
WHEN
Emerson borrowed from
Wordsworth that fine phrase about plain living and high thinking, no
one was
more astonished than he that Whitman and Thoreau should take him at his
word.
He was decidedly curious about their experiment. But he kept a safe
distance
between himself and the shirt-sleeved Walt; and as for Henry
Thoreau
--bless me! Emerson regarded
him only as a
fine savage, and told him so. Of course, Emerson loved solitude, but it
was the
solitude of a library or an orchard, and not the solitude of plain or
wilderness. Emerson
looked upon
Beautiful Truth as an honored guest. He adored her, but it was with the
adoration of the intellect. He never got her tag in jolly chase of
comradery;
nor did he converse with her, soft and low, when only the moon peeked
out from
behind the silvery clouds, and the nightingale listened. He never laid
himself
open to damages. And when he threw a bit of a bomb into Harvard
Divinity School
it was the shrewdest bid for fame that ever preacher made.
I
said "shrewd" — that’s the word
Emerson had the instincts of Connecticut — that peculiar
development of men who
have eked out existence on a rocky soil, banking their houses against
grim
Winter or grimmer savage foes. With this Yankee shrewdness went a
subtle and
sweeping imagination, and a fine' appreciation of the
excellent things that
men have said and done. But he was never so foolish as to imitate the
heroic —
he simply admired it from afar. He advised others to 'work their poetry
up into
life, but he did not do so himself. He never cast the bantling on the
rocks,
nor caused him to be suckled with the she-wolf's teat. He admired
"abolition" from a distance. When he went away from home it was
always with a return ticket. He has summed up Friendship in an essay as
no
other man ever has, and yet there was a self-protective aloofness in
his
friendship that made icicles gather, as George William Curtis has
explained.
In no
relation of his life
was there a complete abandon. His "Essay on Self-Reliance" is beef,
iron and wine, and "Works and Days" is a tonic for tired men; and yet
I know that, in, spite of all his pretty talk about living near
Nature's heart,
he never ventured into the woods outside of hallooing distance from the
house.
He could neither ride a horse, shoot, nor sail a boat — and
being well aware of
it, never tried. All his farming was done by proxy; and when he writes
to
Carlyle late in life, explaining how he is worth forty thousand
dollars, well
secured by first mortgages, he makes clear one-half of his ambition.
And yet, I
call him master, and will match my admiration for him 'gainst that of
any
other, six nights and days together. But I summon him here only to
contrast his
character with that of another — another who, like himself,
was twice married.
In his
"Essay on
Love" Emerson reveals just an average sophomore insight; and in his
work I
do not find a mention or a trace of influence exercised by either of
the two
women he wedded, nor by any other woman. Shelley was what he was
through the influence
of the two women he married. Shelley wrecked the life of one of these
women.
She found surcease of sorrow in death; and when her body was found in
the
Serpentine he had a premonition that the hungry waves were waiting for
him,
too. But before her death and through her death, she pressed home to
him the
bitterest sorrow that man can ever know: the combined knowledge that he
has
mortally injured a human soul and the sense of helplessness to minister
to its
needs. Harriet Westbrook said to Shelley, drink ye all of it. And could
he
speak now he would say that the bitterness of the potion was a
formative
influence as potent as that of the gentle ministrations of Mary
Wollstonecraft,
who broke over his head the precious vase of her heart's love and wiped
his
feet with the hairs of her head.
In the
poetic sweetness,
gentleness, lovableness and beauty of their natures, Emerson and
Shelley were
very similar. In a like environment they would have done the same
things. A
pioneer ancestry with its struggle for material existence would have
given
Shelley caution; and a noble patronymic, fostered by the State, lax in
its
discipline, would have made Emerson toss discretion to the winds.
Emerson and
Shelley were
both apostles of the good, the true and the beautiful. One of them
rests at
Sleepy Hollow, his grave marked by a great rough-hewn boulder, while
overhead
the winds sigh a requiem through the pines. The ashes of the other were
laid
beneath the moss-grown wall of the Eternal City, and the creeping vines
and flowers,
as if jealous of the white, carven marble, snuggle close over the spot
with
their leaves and petals.
Yet both of
these men
achieved immortality, for their thoughts live again in the thoughts of
the
race, and their hopes and their aspirations mingle and are one with the
men and
women of earth who think and feel and dream.
IT was Mary
Wollstonecraft
Godwin who awoke in Shelley such a burst of song that men yet listen to
its
cadence. It was she who gave his soul wings: her gentle spirit blending
with
his made music that has enriched the world. Without her he was fast
beating out
his life against the bars of unkind condition, but together they worked
and
sang. All his best lines were recited to her, all were weighed in the
critical
balances of her woman's judgment. She it was who first wrote it out,
and then
gave it back. Together they revised; and after he had passed on, she it
was who
collected the scattered leaves, added the final word, and gave us the
book we
call "Shelley's Poems." Perhaps we might call all poetry the child of
parents, but with Shelley's poems this is literally true.
Mary
Shelley delighted in
the name, Wollstonecraft. It was her mother's name; and was not Mary
Wollstonecraft the foremost intellectual woman of her day — a
woman of purpose,
forceful yet gentle, appreciative, kind?
Mary
Wollstonecraft was born
in Seventeen Hundred Fifty Nine; and tiring of the dull
monotony of a country
town went up to London when yet a child and fought the world alone. By
her own
efforts she grew learned; she had all science, all philosophy, all
history at
her fingers' ends. She became able to speak several languages, and by
her pen
an income was secured that was not only sufficient for herself, but
ministered
to the needs of an aged father and mother and sisters as well.
Mary
Wollstonecraft wrote
one great book (which is all any one can write):
"A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman." It sums
up all that has since been written on the subject. Like an essay by
Herbert
Spencer, it views the matter from every side, anticipates every
objection,
exhausts the subject. The literary style of Mary
Wollstonecraft's book is
Johnsonese, but its thought forms the base of all that has come after.
It is
the great-great-grandmother of all woman's clubs and these thousand
efforts
that women are now putting forth along economic, artistic and social
lines. But
we have nearly lost sight of Mary Wollstonecraft. Can you name me,
please, your
father's grandmother? Aye, I thought not; then tell me the name of the
man who
is now Treasurer of the United States!
And so you
see we do not
know much about other people, after all. But Mary Wollstonecraft pushed
the
question of woman's freedom to its farthest limit; I told you that she
exhausted the subject. She prophesied a day when woman would have
economic
freedom — that is, be allowed to work at any craft or trade
for which her
genius fitted her and receive a proper recompense. Woman would also
have social
freedom: the right to come and go alone — the
privilege of walking upon the
street without the company of a man — the right to study and
observe, Next,
woman would have political freedom: the right to record her choice in
matters
of lawmaking. And last, she would yet have sex freedom: the right to
bestow her
love without prying police and blundering law interfering in the
delicate
relations of married life.
To make
herself understood,
Mary Wollstonecraft explained that society was tainted with the thought
that
sex was unclean; but she held high the ideal that this would yet pass
away, and
that the idea of holding one's mate by statute law would become
abhorrent to
all good men and women. She declared that the assumption that law could
join a
man and woman in holy wedlock was preposterous, and that the caging of
one
person by another for a lifetime was essentially barbaric. Only the
love that
is free and spontaneous and that holds its own by the purity, the
sweetness,
the tenderness and the gentleness of its life is divine. And further,
she
declared it her belief that when a man had found his true mate such a
union
would be for life — it could not be otherwise. And the man
holding his mate by
the excellence that was in him, instead of by the aid of the law, would
be
placed, lover-like, on his good behavior, and be a stronger and manlier
being.
Such a union, freed from the petty, spying and tyrannical restraints of
present
usage, must come ere the race could far advance.
Mary
Wollstonecraft's book
created a sensation. It was widely read and hotly denounced. A few
upheld it:
among these was William Godwin. But the air was so full of taunt and
threat
that Miss Wollstonecraft thought best to leave England for a time. She
journeyed to Paris, and there wrote and translated for certain English
publishers. In Paris she met Gilbert Imlay, an American, seemingly of
very much
the same temperament as herself. She was thirty-six, he was somewhat
younger.
They began housekeeping on the ideal basis. In a year a daughter was
born to
them. When this baby was three months old, Imlay disappeared, leaving
Mary penniless
and friendless.
It was a
terrible blow to
this trusting and gentle woman. But after a good cry or two, philosophy
came to
her rescue and she decided that to be deserted by a man who did not
love her
was really not so bad as to be tied to him for life. She earned a
little money
and in a short time started back for England with her babe and scanty
luggage —
sorrowful, yet brave and unsubdued. She might have left her babe
behind, but
she scorned the thought. She would be honest and conceal nothing. Right
must
win.
Now, I am
told that an
unmarried woman with a babe at her breast is not received in England
into the
best society. The tale of Mary's misfortune had preceded her, and
literary
London laughed a hoarse, guttural guffaw, and society tittered to think
how
this woman who had written so smartly had tried some of her own
medicine and
found it bitter. Publishers no longer wanted her work, old friends
failed to
recognize her, and one man to whom she applied for work brought a
rebuke upon
his head, that lasted him for years.
Godwin, philosopher,
idealist, enthusiast and reformer, who made it his
rule to seek out those in trouble, found her and told a needless lie by
declaring he had been commissioned by a certain nameless publisher to
get her
to write certain articles about this and that. Then he emptied his
pockets of
all the small change he had, as an advance payment, and he
hadn’t very much,
and started out to find the publisher who would buy the
prospective "hot
stuff." Fortunately he succeeded.
After
a few weeks, Mr. Godwin, bachelor, aged forty,
found himself very much in love with Mary Wollstonecraft and her baby.
Her
absolute purity of purpose, her frankness, honesty and high ideals
surpassed
anything he had ever dreamed of finding incarnated in woman. He became
her
sincere lover; and she, the discarded, the forsaken,
reciprocated; for it
seems that the tendrils of affection, ruthlessly uprooted, cling to the
first
object that presents itself.
And so they
were married;
yes, these two who had so generously repudiated the marriage-tie were
married
March Twenty-ninth, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-seven, at Old Saint
Pancras
Church, for they had come to the sane conclusion that to affront
society was
not wise.
On August
Thirtieth,
Seventeen Hundred Ninety-seven, was born to them a daughter. Then the
mother
died — died did brave Mary Wollstonecraft, and left behind a
girl baby one week
old. And it was this baby, grown to womanhood, who became Mary
Wollstonecraft
Shelley.
GODWIN
wrote one great book:
"Political Justice." It is a work so high and noble in its outlook
that only a Utopia could ever realize its ideals. When men are
everywhere
willing to give to other men all the rights they demand for themselves,
and
co-operation takes the place of competition, then will Godwin's
philosophy be
not too great and good for daily food. Among the many who read his.
book and
thought they saw in it the portent of a diviner day was one Percy
Bysshe
Shelley.
And so it
came to pass that
about the year Eighteen Hundred, Thirteen, this Percy Bysshe Shelley
called on
Godwin, who was living in a rusty, musty tenement in Somerstown. The
young man
was twenty: tall and slender, with as handsome a face as was ever given
to
mortal. The face was pale as marble: the features almost feminine in
their
delicacy: thin lips, straight nose, good teeth, abundant, curling hair,
and
eyes so dreamy and sorrowful that women on the street would often turn
and
follow the "angel soul garbed in human form."
This man
Shelley was sick at
heart, bereft, perplexed, in sore straits, and to whom should he turn
for
advice in this time of undoing but to Godwin, the philosopher! Besides,
Godwin
had been the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the splendid precepts
of these
two had nourished into being all the latent excellence of the youth.
Yes, he
would go to Godwin, the Plato of England!
And so he
went to Godwin.
Now, this
young man Shelley
was of noble blood. His grandfather was Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart., and
worth
near three hundred thousand pounds, all of which would some day come to
our
pale-faced youth. But the youth was a republican — he
believed in the
brotherhood of man. He longed to benefit his fellows, to lift them out
of the
bondage of fear, and sin, and ignorance. After reading Hume, and
Godwin, and
Wollstonecraft, he had decided that Christianity as defined by
the Church of
England was a failure: it was only an organized fetich, kept in place
by the
State, and devoid of all that thrills to noble thinking and noble doing.
And so
young Shelley at
Oxford
had written a pamphlet to this end, explaining the matter to the world.
A copy
being sent to the
headmaster of the school, young Shelley was hustled off the premises in
short
order and a note sent to his father requesting that the lad be well
flogged and
kept several goodly leagues from Oxford.
Shelley the
elder was
furious that his son should so disgrace the family name, and demanded
he should
write another pamphlet supporting the Church of England and recanting
all the
heresy he had uttered. Young Percy replied that conscience would not
admit of
his doing this. The father said conscience be blanked: and further used
almost
the same words that were used by Professor Jowett some years later to a
certain
skeptical youth.
Professor
Jowett sent for
the youth and said, "Young man, I am told that you say you can not find
God. Is this true?"
"Yes, sir,"
said
the youth.
"Well, you
will please
find Him before eight o'clock tonight or get out of this college."
Shelley was
not allowed to
return home, and moreover his financial allowance was cut off entirely.
And so
he wandered up to London and chewed the cud of bitter fancy, resolved
to starve
before he would abate one jot or tittle of what he thought was truth.
And he
might have starved had not his sisters sent him scanty sums of money
from time
to time. The messenger who carried the money to him was a young girl by
the
name of Harriet Westbrook, round and smooth and pink and sixteen. Percy
was
nineteen. Harriet was the daughter of an innkeeper and did not get
along very
well at home. She told Percy about it, and of course she knew his
troubles, and
so they talked about it over the gate, and mutually condoled with each
other.
Soon after
this Harriet had
a fresh quarrel with her folks; and with the tears yet on her pretty
lashes ran
straight to Shelley's lodging and throwing herself into his arms
proposed that
they cease to fight unkind Fate, and run away together and be happy
ever
afterward.
And so they
ran away.
Shelley's
father instanced
this as another proof of depravity and said, "Let 'em go!" The couple
went to Scotland. In a few months they came back from Scotland, because
no one
can really be happy away from home. Besides they were out of money
— and
neither one had ever earned any money — and as the Westbrooks
were willing to
forgive, even if the Shelleys were not, they came back. But the
Westbrooks were
only willing to forgive in consideration of Percy and Harriet being
properly
married by a clergyman of the Church of England. Now, Shelley had not
wavered in
his Godwin Wollstonecraft theories, but he was chivalrous and
Harriet was
tearful, and so he gracefully waived all private
considerations and they were
duly married. It was a quiet wedding.
In a short
time a baby was
born.
Harriet was
amiable, being
healthy and having very moderate sensibilities. She had no
opinion
on any subject, and in no degree sympathized with
Shelley's wild aspirations. She thought a title would be nice, and
urged that
her husband make peace by renouncing his "infidelity." Literature was
silly business anyway, and folks should do as other folks did. If they
did n't,
lawks-a-daisy! there was trouble!
And so,
with income cut off,
banished from home, from school, out of employment, with a wife who had
no sympathy
with him — who could not
understand him — whose pitiful weakness stung him and wrung
him, he thought of
Godwin, the philosopher: for at the last philosophy is the cure for all
our
ills.
Godwin was
glad to see
Shelley — Godwin was glad to see any one. Godwin was
fifty-five, bald, had a
Socratic forehead, was smooth-cheeked, shabby and genteel.
Yes, Godwin was the
author of "Political Justice" — but that was written quite a
while
before, twenty years!
One of the
girls was sent
out for a quart of half-and-half, and the pale visitor cast his eyes
around
this family room, which served for dining-room, library and parlor.
Godwin had
married again — Shelley had heard that, but he was a bit
shocked to find that
the great Man who was once mate to Mary Wollstonecraft had married a
shrew. The
sound of her high-pitched voice convinced the visitor at once that she
was a
very commonplace person.
There were
three girls and a
boy in the room, busy at sewing or reading. None of them was
introduced, but
the air of the place was Bohemian, and the conversation soon became
general.
All talked except one of the girls: she sat reading, and several times
when the
young man glanced over her way she was looking at him. Shelley stayed
an hour,
spending a very pleasant time, but as he had no opportunity of stating
his case
to the philosopher he made an engagement to call again.
As
he groped his way downstairs and walked
homewards he mused. The widow Clairmont, whom Godwin had married, was a
worldling, that was sure; her daughter Jane was good-looking and
clever, but
both she and Charles, the boy, were the children of their mother
— he had
picked them out intuitively. The little young woman with brown eyes and
merry
ways was Fanny Godwin, the first child of Mary Wollstonecraft and
adopted
daughter of Godwin. The tall slender girl who was so very quiet was the
daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
"Ye gods,
what a
pedigree!" said Shelley.
The young
man called again,
and after explaining his situation was advised to go back home
and make peace
with his wife and father at any cost of personal intellectual qualms.
Philosophy was all right; but life was one thing and philosophy
another. Live
with Harriet as he had vowed to do — love was a good deal
glamour, anyway;
write poetry, Of course, if he felt like it, but keep it to himself.
The world
was not to be moved by enthusiastic youth. Godwin had tried it
— he had been an
enthusiastic youth himself, and that was why he now lived in Somerstown
instead
of Piccadilly. Move in the line of least resistance.
Shelley
went away shocked
and stunned. Going by Old Saint Pancras Church he turned back to step
in a
moment and recover his scattered senses. He walked through the cool,
dim, old
building, out into the churchyard, where toppling moss-covered gray
slabs
marked the resting-places of the sleeping dead. All seemed so cool and
quiet
and calm there! The dead are at rest: they have no vexatious problems.
A few
people were moving
about, carelessly reading the inscriptions. The young man unconsciously
followed their example; he passed slowly along one of the walks,
scanning the
stones. His eye fell upon the word "Wollstonecraft," marked on a
plain little slate slab. He paused and, leaning over, removed his hat
and read,
and then glancing just beyond, saw seated on the grass — the
tall girl. She
held a book in her hands, but she was looking at him very soberly.
Their eyes
met, and they smiled just a little. The young man sat down on the turf
on the
other side of the grave from the girl, and they talked of the woman by
whose dust
they watched: and the young man found that the tall girl was an
Ancestor-Worshiper and a mystic, and moreover had a flight of soul that
held
him in awe. Besides, in form and feature, she was rarely beautiful it
She was
quiet, but she could talk. The next day, as Percy Shelley strolled
through
the churchyard of Old Saint Pancras, the tall girl was there again with
her
book, in the same place.
WHEN
Shelley made that first
call at the Godwins he was twenty. The three girls he met were fifteen,
sixteen
and seventeen, respectively. Mary being the youngest in years, but the
most
mature, she would have easily passed for the oldest. Now, all three of
these
girls were dazzled by the beauty and grace and intellect of the
strange,
pale-faced visitor.
He came to
the house again
and again during the next few months. All the girls loved him
violently, for
that’s the way girls under eighteen often love. Mr. Godwin
discovered the fact
that all his girls loved Shelley. They lost appetite, and were
alternately in
chills of fear and fevers of ecstacy. Mr. Godwin, being a kind man and
a good,
took occasion to explain to them that Mr. Shelley was a married man,
and
although it was true that he did not live on good terms with his wife,
yet she
was his lawful wife, and marriage was a sacred obligation: of course,
pure
philosophy or poetic justice took a different view, but in society the
marriage-tie must not be held lightly. In short, Shelley was married
and that
was all there was about it.
Shelley
still continued to
call, coming via Saint Pancras Church. In a few months, Mary confided
to Jane
that she and Shelley were about to elope, and Jane must make peace and
explain
matters after they were gone.
Jane cried
and declared she
would go, too — she would go or die: she would go as servant,
scullion —
anything, but go she would. Shelley was consulted, and to prevent
tragedy
consented to Jane going as maid to Mary, his well-beloved.
So the
trinity eloped. It
being Shelley's second elopement, he took the matter a little more
coolly than
did the girls, who had never eloped before. Having reached Dover, and
while
waiting at a hotel for the boat, the landlord suddenly appeared and
breathlessly explained to Shelley, "A fat woman has just arrived and
swears that you have run away with her girls!"
It was Mrs.
Godwin.
The party
got out by the
back way and hired a small boat to take them to Calais. They embarked
in a
storm, and after beating about all night, came in sight of France the
next
morning as the sun arose.
Godwin was
very much grieved
and shocked to think that Shelley had broken in upon established order
and done
this thing. But Shelley had read Godwin's book and simply taken the
philosopher
at his word: "The impulses of the human heart are just and right; they
are
greater than law, and must be respected."
The
runaways seemed to have
had a jolly time in France as long as their money lasted. They bought a
mule to
carry their luggage, and walked. Jane's feet blistered, however, and
they
seated her upon the luggage upon the mule, and as the author of "Queen
Mab" led the patient beast, Mary with a switch followed behind. After
some
days Shelley sprained his ankle, and then it was his turn to ride while
Mary
led the mule and Jane trudged after.
Thus they
journeyed for six
weeks, writing poetry, discussing philosophy; loving, wild, free, and
careless,
until they came to Switzerland. One morning they counted their money
and found
they had just enough to take them to England.
Arriving in
London the
Godwins were not inclined to take them back, and society in general
looked upon
them with complete disfavor.
Shelley's
father was now
fully convinced of his son's depravity, but doled out enough
money to prevent
actual starvation. Shelley began to perceive that any man who sets
himself
against the established order — the order that the world has
been thousands of
years in building up-will be ground into the dust. The old world may be
wrong,
but it can not be righted in a day, and so long as a man chooses to
live in
society he must conform, in the main, to society usages. These old ways
that
have done good service all the years can not be replaced by the
instantaneous
process. If changed at all they must change as man changes, and man
must change
first. It is man that must be reformed, not custom.
Shelley and
Mary Godwin were
mates if ever such existed. In a year Mary had developed from a child
into
splendid womanhood — a beautiful, superior, earnest woman. By
her own efforts,
of course aided by Shelley (for they were partners in everything), she
became
versed in the classics and delved deeply into the literature of a time
long
past. Unlike her mother, Mary Shelley could do no great work alone. The
sensitiveness and the delicacy of her nature precluded that
self-reliant egoism
which can create. She wrote one book, "Frankenstein," which in point
of prophetic and allegorical suggestion stamps the work as classic: but
it was
written under the immediate spell of Shelley's presence. Shelley also
could not
work alone, and without her the world's disfavor must have whipped him
into
insanity and death. As it was they sought peace in love and Italy,
living near
Lord Byron in great intimacy, and befriended by him in many ways.
But peace
was not for
Shelley. Calamity was at the door. He could never forget how he had
lifted
Harriet Westbrook into a position for which she was not fitted and then
left
her to flounder alone. And when word came that Harriet had drowned
herself, his
cup of woe was full. Shortly before this, Fanny Godwin had gone away
with great
deliberation, leaving an empty laudanum-bottle to tell the tale.
On December
Thirtieth,
Eighteen Hundred Sixteen, Shelley and Mary Godwin were married at Saint
Mildred's Church, London. Both had now fully concluded with Godwin that
man
owes a duty to the unborn and to society, and that to place one's self
in
opposition to custom is at least very bad policy.
But
although Shelley had
made society tardy amends, society would not forgive; and in a long
legal fight
to obtain possession of his children, Ianthe and Charles, of whom
Harriet was
the mother, the Court of Chancery decided against Shelley, on the
grounds that
he was "an unfit person, being an atheist and a republican."
About this
time was born
little Allegra, "the Dawn," child of Lord Byron and Jane Clairmont.
Then afterwards came bickerings with Byron and threats of a duel and
all that
it Finally there was a struggle between Byron and Miss Clairmont for
the child:
but death solved the issue and the beautiful little girl passed beyond
the
reach of either.
And so we
find Shelley's
heart wrung by the sorrows of others, and by his own; and when Mary and
he laid
away in death their bright boy William and their baby girl Clara, the
Fates
seemed to have done their worst. But man seems to have a certain
capacity for
pain, and beyond this even God can not go.
Shelley
struggled on and
with Mary's help continued to write.
Another
babe was born and
the world grew brighter. They were now on the shores of the
Mediterranean with
a little group of enthusiasts who thought and felt as they did. For the
first
time they realized that, after all, they were a part of the world, and
linked
to the human race — not set off alone, despised, forsaken.
Then to
join their little
community were coming Leigh Hunt and his wife — Leigh Hunt,
who had lain in
prison for the right of free thought and free speech. What a joy to
greet and
welcome such a man to their home!
And so
Shelley, blithe and
joyous, sailed away to meet his friend. But Shelley never came back to
his wife
and baby boy. A few days after, the waves cast his body up on the
beach, and
you know the rest — how the faithful Trelawney and Byron made
the funeral-pyre
and reduced the body to ashes.
Mary was
twenty-six years
old then. She continued to live — to live only in the memory
of her Shelley and
with the firm thought in her mind that they would be united again. She
seemed
to exist but to care for her boy, and to do as best she could the work
that
Shelley had left undone.
The boy
grew into a fine
youth, and was as devoted to his mother as she was to him. The title of
the
estate with all its vast wealth descended to him, and together she
lived out
her days, tenderly cared for to the last, dying in her son's arms, aged
fifty-four.
She has
told us that the
first sixteen years of her life were spent in waiting for her Shelley,
eight
years she lived with him in divinest companionship, and twenty-eight
years she
waited and worked to prepare herself to rejoin him.
SO HERE
ENDETH BOOK
TWO OF
FAMOUS WOMEN, THE SAME BEING
ONE OF THE SERIES OF LITTLE JOURNEYS, AS WRITTEN BY
ELBERT
HUBBARD: THE BORDERS AND INITIALS BEING DESIGNED BY
ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND THE WHOLE DONE INTO A PRINTED VOLUME BY THE
ROYCROFTERS,
AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, IN THE
YEAR
MCMXI
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