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Title: Mathilda
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Release date: March 2, 2005 [eBook #15238]
Most recently updated: September 25, 2022
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHILDA ***
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
CHAPTER III
It was on my sixteenth birthday that my aunt received a letter from my
father. I cannot describe the tumult of emotions that arose within me
as I read it. It was dated from London; he had returned![15] I could
only relieve my transports by tears, tears of unmingled joy. He had
returned, and he wrote to know whether my aunt would come to London or
whether he should visit her in Scotland. How delicious to me were the
words of his letter that concerned me: “I cannot tell you,” it said,
“how ardently I desire to see my Mathilda. I look on her as the
creature who will form the happiness of my future life: she is all
that exists on earth that interests me. I can hardly prevent myself
from hastening immediately to you but I am necessarily detained a week
and I write because if you come here I may see you somewhat sooner.” I
read these words with devouring eyes; I kissed them, wept over them
and exclaimed, “He will love me!”--
My aunt would not undertake so long a journey, and in a fortnight we
had another letter from my father, it was dated Edinburgh: he wrote
that he should be with us in three days. “As he approached his desire
of seeing me,” he said, “became more and more ardent, and he felt that
the moment when he should first clasp me in his arms would be the
happiest of his life.”
How irksome were these three days to me! All sleep and appetite fled
from me; I could only read and re-read his letter, and in the solitude
of the woods imagine the moment of our meeting. On the eve of the
third day I retired early to my room; I could not sleep but paced all
night about my chamber and, as you may in Scotland at midsummer,
watched the crimson track of the sun as it almost skirted the northern
horizon. At day break I hastened to the woods; the hours past on while
I indulged in wild dreams that gave wings to the slothful steps of
time, and beguiled my eager impatience. My father was expected at noon
but when I wished to return to me[e]t him I found that I had lost my
way: it seemed that in every attempt to find it I only became more
involved in the intracacies of the woods, and the trees hid all trace
by which I might be guided.[16] I grew impatient, I wept; [_sic_] and
wrung my hands but still I could not discover my path.
It was past two o’clock when by a sudden turn I found myself close to
the lake near a cove where a little skiff was moored--It was not far
from our house and I saw my father and aunt walking on the lawn. I
jumped into the boat, and well accustomed to such feats, I pushed it
from shore, and exerted all my strength to row swiftly across. As I
came, dressed in white, covered only by my tartan _rachan_, my hair
streaming on my shoulders, and shooting across with greater speed that
it could be supposed I could give to my boat, my father has often told
me that I looked more like a spirit than a human maid. I approached
the shore, my father held the boat, I leapt lightly out, and in a
moment was in his arms.
And now I began to live. All around me was changed from a dull
uniformity to the brightest scene of joy and delight. The happiness I
enjoyed in the company of my father far exceeded my sanguine
expectations. We were for ever together; and the subjects of our
conversations were inexhaustible. He had passed the sixteen years of
absence among nations nearly unknown to Europe; he had wandered
through Persia, Arabia and the north of India and had penetrated among
the habitations of the natives with a freedom permitted to few
Europeans. His relations of their manners, his anecdotes and
descriptions of scenery whiled away delicious hours, when we were
tired of talking of our own plans of future life.
The voice of affection was so new to me that I hung with delight upon
his words when he told me what he had felt concerning me during these
long years of apparent forgetfulness. “At first”--said he, “I could
not bear to think of my poor little girl; but afterwards as grief wore
off and hope again revisited me I could only turn to her, and amidst
cities and desarts her little fairy form, such as I imagined it, for
ever flitted before me. The northern breeze as it refreshed me was
sweeter and more balmy for it seemed to carry some of your spirit
along with it. I often thought that I would instantly return and take
you along with me to some fertile island where we should live at peace
for ever. As I returned my fervent hopes were dashed by so many fears;
my impatience became in the highest degree painful. I dared not think
that the sun should shine and the moon rise not on your living form
but on your grave. But, no, it is not so; I have my Mathilda, my
consolation, and my hope.”--
My father was very little changed from what he described himself to be
before his misfortunes. It is intercourse with civilized society; it
is the disappointment of cherished hopes, the falsehood of friends, or
the perpetual clash of mean passions that changes the heart and damps
the ardour of youthful feelings; lonly wanderings in a wild country
among people of simple or savage manners may inure the body but will
not tame the soul, or extinguish the ardour and freshness of feeling
incident to youth. The burning sun of India, and the freedom from all
restraint had rather encreased the energy of his character: before he
bowed under, now he was impatient of any censure except that of his
own mind. He had seen so many customs and witnessed so great a variety
of moral creeds that he had been obliged to form an independant one
for himself which had no relation to the peculiar notions of any one
country: his early prejudices of course influenced his judgement in
the formation of his principles, and some raw colledge ideas were
strangely mingled with the deepest deductions of his penetrating mind.
The vacuity his heart endured of any deep interest in life during his
long absence from his native country had had a singular effect upon
his ideas. There was a curious feeling of unreality attached by him to
his foreign life in comparison with the years of his youth. All the
time he had passed out of England was as a dream, and all the interest
of his soul[,] all his affections belonged to events which had
happened and persons who had existed sixteen years before. It was
strange when you heard him talk to see how he passed over this lapse
of time as a night of visions; while the remembrances of his youth
standing seperate as they did from his after life had lost none of
their vigour. He talked of my Mother as if she had lived but a few
weeks before; not that he expressed poignant grief, but his
discription of her person, and his relation of all anecdotes connected
with her was thus fervent and vivid.
In all this there was a strangeness that attracted and enchanted me.
He was, as it were, now awakened from his long, visionary sleep, and
he felt some what like one of the seven sleepers, or like
Nourjahad,[17] in that sweet imitation of an eastern tale: Diana was
gone; his friends were changed or dead, and now on his awakening I was
all that he had to love on earth.
How dear to me were the waters, and mountains, and woods of Loch
Lomond now that I had so beloved a companion for my rambles. I visited
with my father every delightful spot, either on the islands, or by the
side of the tree-sheltered waterfalls; every shady path, or dingle
entangled with underwood and fern. My ideas were enlarged by his
conversation. I felt as if I were recreated and had about me all the
freshness and life of a new being: I was, as it were, transported
since his arrival from a narrow spot of earth into a universe
boundless to the imagination and the understanding. My life had been
before as a pleasing country rill, never destined to leave its native
fields, but when its task was fulfilled quietly to be absorbed, and
leave no trace. Now it seemed to me to be as a various river flowing
through a fertile and lovely lanscape, ever changing and ever
beautiful. Alas! I knew not the desart it was about to reach; the
rocks that would tear its waters, and the hideous scene that would be
reflected in a more distorted manner in its waves. Life was then
brilliant; I began to learn to hope and what brings a more bitter
despair to the heart than hope destroyed?
Is it not strange[18] that grief should quickly follow so divine a
happiness? I drank of an enchanted cup but gall was at the bottom of
its long drawn sweetness. My heart was full of deep affection, but it
was calm from its very depth and fulness. I had no idea that misery
could arise from love, and this lesson that all at last must learn was
taught me in a manner few are obliged to receive it. I lament now, I
must ever lament, those few short months of Paradisaical bliss; I
disobeyed no command, I ate no apple, and yet I was ruthlessly driven
from it. Alas! my companion did, and I was precipitated in his
fall.[19] But I wander from my relation--let woe come at its appointed
time; I may at this stage of my story still talk of happiness.
Three months passed away in this delightful intercourse, when my aunt
fell ill. I passed a whole month in her chamber nursing her, but her
disease was mortal and she died, leaving me for some time
inconsolable, Death is so dreadful to the living;[20] the chains of
habit are so strong even when affection does not link them that the
heart must be agonized when they break. But my father was beside me to
console me and to drive away bitter memories by bright hopes:
methought that it was sweet to grieve that he might dry my tears.
Then again he distracted my thoughts from my sorrow by comparing it
with his despair when he lost my mother. Even at that time I shuddered
at the picture he drew of his passions: he had the imagination of a
poet, and when he described the whirlwind that then tore his feelings
he gave his words the impress of life so vividly that I believed while
I trembled. I wondered how he could ever again have entered into the
offices of life after his wild thoughts seemed to have given him
affinity with the unearthly; while he spoke so tremendous were the
ideas which he conveyed that it appeared as if the human heart were
far too bounded for their conception. His feelings seemed better
fitted for a spirit whose habitation is the earthquake and the volcano
than for one confined to a mortal body and human lineaments. But these
were merely memories; he was changed since then. He was now all love,
all softness; and when I raised my eyes in wonder at him as he spoke
the smile on his lips told me that his heart was possessed by the
gentlest passions.
Two months after my aunt’s death we removed to London where I was led
by my father to attend to deeper studies than had before occupied me.
My improvement was his delight; he was with me during all my studies
and assisted or joined with me in every lesson. We saw a great deal of
society, and no day passed that my father did not endeavour to
embellish by some new enjoyment. The tender attachment that he bore
me, and the love and veneration with which I returned it cast a charm
over every moment. The hours were slow for each minute was employed;
we lived more in one week than many do in the course of several months
and the variety and novelty of our pleasures gave zest to each.
We perpetually made excursions together. And whether it were to visit
beautiful scenery, or to see fine pictures, or sometimes for no object
but to seek amusement as it might chance to arise, I was always happy
when near my father. It was a subject of regret to me whenever we were
joined by a third person, yet if I turned with a disturbed look
towards my father, his eyes fixed on me and beaming with tenderness
instantly restored joy to my heart. O, hours of intense delight! Short
as ye were ye are made as long to me as a whole life when looked back
upon through the mist of grief that rose immediately after as if to
shut ye from my view. Alas! ye were the last of happiness that I ever
enjoyed; a few, a very few weeks and all was destroyed. Like
Psyche[21] I lived for awhile in an enchanted palace, amidst odours,
and music, and every luxurious delight; when suddenly I was left on a
barren rock; a wide ocean of despair rolled around me: above all was
black, and my eyes closed while I still inhabited a universal death.
Still I would not hurry on; I would pause for ever on the
recollections of these happy weeks; I would repeat every word, and how
many do I remember, record every enchantment of the faery habitation.
But, no, my tale must not pause; it must be as rapid as was my
fate,--I can only describe in short although strong expressions my
precipitate and irremediable change from happiness to despair.[22]
CHAPTER IV
Among our most assiduous visitors was a young man of rank, well
informed, and agreable in his person. After we had spent a few weeks
in London his attentions towards me became marked and his visits more
frequent. I was too much taken up by my own occupations and feelings
to attend much to this, and then indeed I hardly noticed more than the
bare surface of events as they passed around me; but I now remember
that my father was restless and uneasy whenever this person visited
us, and when we talked together watched us with the greatest apparent
anxiety although he himself maintained a profound silence. At length
these obnoxious visits suddenly ceased altogether, but from that
moment I must date the change of my father: a change that to remember
makes me shudder and then filled me with the deepest grief. There were
no degrees which could break my fall from happiness to misery; it was
as the stroke of lightning--sudden and entire.[23] Alas! I now met
frowns where before I had been welcomed only with smiles: he, my
beloved father, shunned me, and either treated me with harshness or a
more heart-breaking coldness. We took no more sweet counsel together;
and when I tried to win him again to me, his anger, and the terrible
emotions that he exhibited drove me to silence and tears.
And this was sudden. The day before we had passed alone together in
the country; I remember we had talked of future travels that we should
undertake together--. There was an eager delight in our tones and
gestures that could only spring from deep & mutual love joined to the
most unrestrained confidence[;] and now the next day, the next hour, I
saw his brows contracted, his eyes fixed in sullen fierceness on the
ground, and his voice so gentle and so dear made me shiver when he
addressed me. Often, when my wandering fancy brought by its various
images now consolation and now aggravation of grief to my heart,[24] I
have compared myself to Proserpine who was gaily and heedlessly
gathering flowers on the sweet plain of Enna, when the King of Hell
snatched her away to the abodes of death and misery. Alas! I who so
lately knew of nought but the joy of life; who had slept only to
dream sweet dreams and awoke to incomparable happiness, I now passed
my days and nights in tears. I who sought and had found joy in the
love-breathing countenance of my father now when I dared fix on him a
supplicating look it was ever answered by an angry frown. I dared not
speak to him; and when sometimes I had worked up courage to meet him
and to ask an explanation one glance at his face where a chaos of
mighty passion seemed for ever struggling made me tremble and shrink
to silence. I was dashed down from heaven to earth as a silly sparrow
when pounced on by a hawk; my eyes swam and my head was bewildered by
the sudden apparition of grief. Day after day[25] passed marked only
by my complaints and my tears; often I lifted my soul in vain prayer
for a softer descent from joy to woe, or if that were denied me that I
might be allowed to die, and fade for ever under the cruel blast that
swept over me,
------ for what should I do here,
Like a decaying flower, still withering
Under his bitter words, whose kindly heat
Should give my poor heart life?[C]
Sometimes I said to myself, this is an enchantment, and I must strive
against it. My father is blinded by some malignant vision which I must
remove. And then, like David, I would try music to win the evil spirit
from him; and once while singing I lifted my eyes towards him and saw
his fixed on me and filled with tears; all his muscles seemed relaxed
to softness. I sprung towards him with a cry of joy and would have
thrown myself into his arms, but he pushed me roughly from him and
left me. And even from this slight incident he contracted fresh gloom
and an additional severity of manner.
There are many incidents that I might relate which shewed the diseased
yet incomprehensible state of his mind; but I will mention one that
occurred while we were in company with several other persons. On this
occasion I chanced to say that I thought Myrrha the best of Alfieri’s
tragedies; as I said this I chanced to cast my eyes on my father and
met his: for the first time the expression of those beloved eyes
displeased me, and I saw with affright that his whole frame shook with
some concealed emotion that in spite of his efforts half conquered
him: as this tempest faded from his soul he became melancholy and
silent. Every day some new scene occured and displayed in him a mind
working as [it] were with an unknown horror that now he could master
but which at times threatened to overturn his reason, and to throw the
bright seat of his intelligence into a perpetual chaos.
I will not dwell longer than I need on these disastrous
circumstances.[26] I might waste days in describing how anxiously I
watched every change of fleeting circumstance that promised better
days, and with what despair I found that each effort of mine
aggravated his seeming madness. To tell all my grief I might as well
attempt to count the tears that have fallen from these eyes, or every
sign that has torn my heart. I will be brief for there is in all this
a horror that will not bear many words, and I sink almost a second
time to death while I recall these sad scenes to my memory. Oh, my
beloved father! Indeed you made me miserable beyond all words, but how
truly did I even then forgive you, and how entirely did you possess my
whole heart while I endeavoured, as a rainbow gleams upon a
cataract,[D][27] to soften thy tremendous sorrows.
Thus did this change come about. I seem perhaps to have dashed too
suddenly into the description, but thus suddenly did it happen. In one
sentence I have passed from the idea of unspeakable happiness to that
of unspeakable grief but they were thus closely linked together. We
had remained five months in London three of joy and two of sorrow. My
father and I were now seldom alone or if we were he generally kept
silence with his eyes fixed on the ground--the dark full orbs in which
before I delighted to read all sweet and gentle feeling shadowed from
my sight by their lids and the long lashes that fringed them. When we
were in company he affected gaiety but I wept to hear his hollow
laugh--begun by an empty smile and often ending in a bitter sneer such
as never before this fatal period had wrinkled his lips. When others
were there he often spoke to me and his eyes perpetually followed my
slightest motion. His accents whenever he addressed me were cold and
constrained although his voice would tremble when he perceived that my
full heart choked the answer to words proffered with a mien yet new to
me.
But days of peaceful melancholy were of rare occurence[:] they were
often broken in upon by gusts of passion that drove me as a weak boat
on a stormy sea to seek a cove for shelter; but the winds blew from my
native harbour and I was cast far, far out untill shattered I perished
when the tempest had passed and the sea was apparently calm. I do not
know that I can describe his emotions: sometimes he only betrayed them
by a word or gesture, and then retired to his chamber and I crept as
near it as I dared and listened with fear to every sound, yet still
more dreading a sudden silence--dreading I knew not what, but ever
full of fear.
It was after one tremendous day when his eyes had glared on me like
lightning--and his voice sharp and broken seemed unable to express the
extent of his emotion that in the evening when I was alone he joined
me with a calm countenance, and not noticing my tears which I quickly
dried when he approached, told me that in three days that [_sic_] he
intended to remove with me to his estate in Yorkshire, and bidding me
prepare left me hastily as if afraid of being questioned.
This determination on his part indeed surprised me. This estate was
that which he had inhabited in childhood and near which my mother
resided while a girl; this was the scene of their youthful loves and
where they had lived after their marriage; in happier days my father
had often told me that however he might appear weaned from his widow
sorrow, and free from bitter recollections elsewhere, yet he would
never dare visit the spot where he had enjoyed her society or trust
himself to see the rooms that so many years ago they had inhabited
together; her favourite walks and the gardens the flowers of which she
had delighted to cultivate. And now while he suffered intense misery
he determined to plunge into still more intense, and strove for
greater emotion than that which already tore him. I was perplexed, and
most anxious to know what this portended; ah, what could it po[r]tend
but ruin!
I saw little of my father during this interval, but he appeared calmer
although not less unhappy than before. On the morning of the third day
he informed me that he had determined to go to Yorkshire first alone,
and that I should follow him in a fortnight unless I heard any thing
from him in the mean time that should contradict this command. He
departed the same day, and four days afterwards I received a letter
from his steward telling me in his name to join him with as little
delay as possible. After travelling day and night I arrived with an
anxious, yet a hoping heart, for why should he send for me if it were
only to avoid me and to treat me with the apparent aversion that he
had in London. I met him at the distance of thirty miles from our
mansion. His demeanour was sad; for a moment he appeared glad to see
me and then he checked himself as if unwilling to betray his feelings.
He was silent during our ride, yet his manner was kinder than before
and I thought I beheld a softness in his eyes that gave me hope.
When we arrived, after a little rest, he led me over the house and
pointed out to me the rooms which my mother had inhabited. Although
more than sixteen years had passed since her death nothing had been
changed; her work box, her writing desk were still there and in her
room a book lay open on the table as she had left it. My father
pointed out these circumstances with a serious and unaltered mien,
only now and then fixing his deep and liquid eyes upon me; there was
something strange and awful in his look that overcame me, and in spite
of myself I wept, nor did he attempt to console me, but I saw his lips
quiver and the muscles of his countenance seemed convulsed.
We walked together in the gardens and in the evening when I would have
retired he asked me to stay and read to him; and first said, “When I
was last here your mother read Dante to me; you shall go on where she
left off.” And then in a moment he said, “No, that must not be; you
must not read Dante. Do you choose a book.” I took up Spencer and read
the descent of Sir Guyon to the halls of Avarice;[28] while he
listened his eyes fixed on me in sad profound silence.
I heard the next morning from the steward that upon his arrival he had
been in a most terrible state of mind: he had passed the first night
in the garden lying on the damp grass; he did not sleep but groaned
perpetually. “Alas!” said the old man[,] who gave me this account with
tears in his eyes, “it wrings my heart to see my lord in this state:
when I heard that he was coming down here with you, my young lady, I
thought we should have the happy days over again that we enjoyed
during the short life of my lady your mother--But that would be too
much happiness for us poor creatures born to tears--and that was why
she was taken from us so soon; [s]he was too beautiful and good for
us[.] It was a happy day as we all thought it when my lord married
her: I knew her when she was a child and many a good turn has she done
for me in my old lady’s time--You are like her although there is more
of my lord in you--But has he been thus ever since his return? All my
joy turned to sorrow when I first beheld him with that melancholy
countenance enter these doors as it were the day after my lady’s
funeral--He seemed to recover himself a little after he had bidden me
write to you--but still it is a woful thing to see him so
unhappy.”[29] These were the feelings of an old, faithful servant:
what must be those of an affectionate daughter. Alas! Even then my
heart was almost broken.
We spent two months together in this house. My father spent the
greater part of his time with me; he accompanied me in my walks,
listened to my music, and leant over me as I read or painted. When he
conversed with me his manner was cold and constrained; his eyes only
seemed to speak, and as he turned their black, full lustre towards me
they expressed a living sadness. There was somthing in those dark deep
orbs so liquid, and intense that even in happiness I could never meet
their full gaze that mine did not overflow. Yet it was with sweet
tears; now there was a depth of affliction in their gentle appeal that
rent my heart with sympathy; they seemed to desire peace for me; for
himself a heart patient to suffer; a craving for sympathy, yet a
perpetual self denial. It was only when he was absent from me that his
passion subdued him,--that he clinched his hands--knit his brows--and
with haggard looks called for death to his despair, raving wildly,
untill exhausted he sank down nor was revived untill I joined him.
While we were in London there was a harshness and sulleness in his
sorrow which had now entirely disappeared. There I shrunk and fled
from him, now I only wished to be with him that I might soothe him to
peace. When he was silent I tried to divert him, and when sometimes I
stole to him during the energy of his passion I wept but did not
desire to leave him. Yet he suffered fearful agony; during the day he
was more calm, but at night when I could not be with him he seemed to
give the reins to his grief: he often passed his nights either on the
floor in my mother’s room, or in the garden; and when in the morning
he saw me view with poignant grief his exhausted frame, and his person
languid almost to death with watching he wept; but during all this
time he spoke no word by which I might guess the cause of his
unhappiness[.] If I ventured to enquire he would either leave me or
press his finger on his lips, and with a deprecating look that I could
not resist, turn away. If I wept he would gaze on me in silence but he
was no longer harsh and although he repulsed every caress yet it was
with gentleness.
He seemed to cherish a mild grief and softer emotions although sad as
a relief from despair--He contrived in many ways to nurse his
melancholy as an antidote to wilder passion[.] He perpetually
frequented the walks that had been favourites with him when he and my
mother wandered together talking of love and happiness; he collected
every relick that remained of her and always sat opposite her picture
which hung in the room fixing on it a look of sad despair--and all
this was done in a mystic and awful silence. If his passion subdued
him he locked himself in his room; and at night when he wandered
restlessly about the house, it was when every other creature slept.
It may easily be imagined that I wearied myself with conjecture to
guess the cause of his sorrow. The solution that seemed to me the most
probable was that during his residence in London he had fallen in love
with some unworthy person, and that his passion mastered him although
he would not gratify it: he loved me too well to sacrifise me to this
inclination, and that he had now visited this house that by reviving
the memory of my mother whom he so passionately adored he might weaken
the present impression. This was possible; but it was a mere
conjecture unfounded on any fact. Could there be guilt in it? He was
too upright and noble to _do_ aught that his conscience would not
approve; I did not yet know of the crime there may be in involuntary
feeling and therefore ascribed his tumultuous starts and gloomy looks
wholly to the struggles of his mind and not any as they were partly
due to the worst fiend of all--Remorse.[30]
But still do I flatter myself that this would have passed away. His
paroxisms of passion were terrific but his soul bore him through them
triumphant, though almost destroyed by victory; but the day would
finally have been won had not I, foolish and presumtuous wretch!
hurried him on untill there was no recall, no hope. My rashness gave
the victory in this dreadful fight to the enemy who triumphed over him
as he lay fallen and vanquished. I! I alone was the cause of his
defeat and justly did I pay the fearful penalty. I said to myself, let
him receive sympathy and these struggles will cease. Let him confide
his misery to another heart and half the weight of it will be
lightened. I will win him to me; he shall not deny his grief to me and
when I know his secret then will I pour a balm into his soul and again
I shall enjoy the ravishing delight of beholding his smile, and of
again seeing his eyes beam if not with pleasure at least with gentle
love and thankfulness. This will I do, I said. Half I accomplished; I
gained his secret and we were both lost for ever.
[C] Fletcher’s comedy of the Captain.
[D] Lord Byron
CHAPTER V
Nearly a year had past since my father’s return, and the seasons had
almost finished their round--It was now the end of May; the woods were
clothed in their freshest verdure, and the sweet smell of the new mown
grass was in the fields. I thought that the balmy air and the lovely
face of Nature might aid me in inspiring him with mild sensations, and
give him gentle feelings of peace and love preparatory to the
confidence I determined to win from him.
I chose therefore the evening of one of these days for my attempt. I
invited him to walk with me, and led him to a neighbouring wood of
beech trees whose light shade shielded us from the slant and dazzling
beams of the descending sun--After walking for some time in silence I
seated my self with him on a mossy hillock--It is strange but even now
I seem to see the spot--the slim and smooth trunks were many of them
wound round by ivy whose shining leaves of the darkest green
contrasted with the white bark and the light leaves of the young
sprouts of beech that grew from their parent trunks--the short grass
was mingled with moss and was partly covered by the dead leaves of the
last autumn that driven by the winds had here and there collected in
little hillocks--there were a few moss grown stumps about--The leaves
were gently moved by the breeze and through their green canopy you
could see the bright blue sky--As evening came on the distant trunks
were reddened by the sun and the wind died entirely away while a few
birds flew past us to their evening rest.
Well it was here we sat together, and when you hear all that past--all
that of terrible tore our souls even in this placid spot, which but
for strange passions might have been a paradise to us, you will not
wonder that I remember it as I looked on it that its calm might give
me calm, and inspire me not only with courage but with persuasive
words. I saw all these things and in a vacant manner noted them in my
mind[31] while I endeavoured to arrange my thoughts in fitting order
for my attempt. My heart beat fast as I worked myself up to speak to
him, for I was determined not to be repulsed but I trembled to imagine
what effect my words might have on him; at length, with much
hesitation I began:[32]
“Your kindness to me, my dearest father, and the affection--the
excessive affection--that you had for me when you first returned will
I hope excuse me in your eyes that I dare speak to you, although with
the tender affection of a daughter, yet also with the freedom of a
friend and equal. But pardon me, I entreat you and listen to me: do
not turn away from me; do not be impatient; you may easily intimidate
me into silence, but my heart is bursting, nor can I willingly consent
to endure for one moment longer the agony of uncertitude which for the
last four months has been my portion.
“Listen to me, dearest friend, and permit me to gain your confidence.
Are the happy days of mutual love which have passed to be to me as a
dream never to return? Alas! You have a secret grief that destroys us
both: but you must permit me to win this secret from you. Tell me, can
I do nothing? You well know that on the whole earth there is no
sacrifise that I would not make, no labour that I would not undergo
with the mere hope that I might bring you ease. But if no endeavour on
my part can contribute to your happiness, let me at least know your
sorrow, and surely my earnest love and deep sympathy must soothe your
despair.
“I fear that I speak in a constrained manner: my heart is overflowing
with the ardent desire I have of bringing calm once more to your
thoughts and looks; but I fear to aggravate your grief, or to raise
that in you which is death to me, anger and distaste. Do not then
continue to fix your eyes on the earth; raise them on me for I can
read your soul in them: speak to me to me [_sic_], and pardon my
presumption. Alas! I am a most unhappy creature!”
I was breathless with emotion, and I paused fixing my earnest eyes on
my father, after I had dashed away the intrusive tears that dimmed
them. He did not raise his, but after a short silence he replied to me
in a low voice: “You are indeed presumptuous, Mathilda, presumptuous
and very rash. In the heart of one like me there are secret thoughts
working, and secret tortures which you ought not to seek to discover.
I cannot tell you how it adds to my grief to know that I am the cause
of uneasiness to you; but this will pass away, and I hope that soon we
shall be as we were a few months ago. Restrain your impatience or you
may mar what you attempt to alleviate. Do not again speak to me in
this strain; but wait in submissive patience the event of what is
passing around you.”
“Oh, yes!” I passionately replied, “I will be very patient; I will
not be rash or presumptuous: I will see the agonies, and tears, and
despair of my father, my only friend, my hope, my shelter, I will see
it all with folded arms and downcast eyes. You do not treat me with
candour; it is not true what you say; this will not soon pass away, it
will last forever if you deign not to speak to me; to admit my
consolations.
“Dearest, dearest father, pity me and pardon me: I entreat you do not
drive me to despair; indeed I must not be repulsed; there is one thing
that which [_sic_] although it may torture me to know, yet that you
must tell me. I demand, and most solemnly I demand if in any way I am
the cause of your unhappiness. Do you not see my tears which I in vain
strive against--You hear unmoved my voice broken by sobs--Feel how my
hand trembles: my whole heart is in the words I speak and you must not
endeavour to silence me by mere words barren of meaning: the agony of
my doubt hurries me on, and you must reply. I beseech you; by your
former love for me now lost, I adjure you to answer that one question.
Am I the cause of your grief?”
He raised his eyes from the ground, but still turning them away from
me, said: “Besought by that plea I will answer your rash question.
Yes, you are the sole, the agonizing cause of all I suffer, of all I
must suffer untill I die. Now, beware! Be silent! Do not urge me to
your destruction. I am struck by the storm, rooted up, laid waste: but
you can stand against it; you are young and your passions are at
peace. One word I might speak and then you would be implicated in my
destruction; yet that word is hovering on my lips. Oh! There is a
fearful chasm; but I adjure you to beware!”
“Ah, dearest friend!” I cried, “do not fear! Speak that word; it will
bring peace, not death. If there is a chasm our mutual love will give
us wings to pass it, and we shall find flowers, and verdure, and
delight on the other side.” I threw myself at his feet, and took his
hand, “Yes, speak, and we shall be happy; there will no longer be
doubt, no dreadful uncertainty; trust me, my affection will soothe
your sorrow; speak that word and all danger will be past, and we shall
love each other as before, and for ever.”
He snatched his hand from me, and rose in violent disorder: “What do
you mean? You know not what you mean. Why do you bring me out, and
torture me, and tempt me, and kill me--Much happier would [it] be for
you and for me if in your frantic curiosity you tore my heart from my
breast and tried to read its secrets in it as its life’s blood was
dropping from it. Thus you may console me by reducing me to
nothing--but your words I cannot bear; soon they will make me mad,
quite mad, and then I shall utter strange words, and you will believe
them, and we shall be both lost for ever. I tell you I am on the very
verge of insanity; why, cruel girl, do you drive me on: you will
repent and I shall die.”
When I repeat his words I wonder at my pertinacious folly; I hardly
know what feelings resis[t]lessly impelled me. I believe it was that
coming out with a determination not to be repulsed I went right
forward to my object without well weighing his replies: I was led by
passion and drew him with frantic heedlessness into the abyss that he
so fearfully avoided--I replied to his terrific words: “You fill me
with affright it is true, dearest father, but you only confirm my
resolution to put an end to this state of doubt. I will not be put off
thus: do you think that I can live thus fearfully from day to day--the
sword in my bosom yet kept from its mortal wound by a hair--a word!--I
demand that dreadful word; though it be as a flash of lightning to
destroy me, speak it.
“Alas! Alas! What am I become? But a few months have elapsed since I
believed that I was all the world to you; and that there was no
happiness or grief for you on earth unshared by your Mathilda--your
child: that happy time is no longer, and what I most dreaded in this
world is come upon me. In the despair of my heart I see what you
cannot conceal: you no longer love me. I adjure you, my father, has
not an unnatural passion seized upon your heart? Am I not the most
miserable worm that crawls? Do I not embrace your knees, and you most
cruelly repulse me? I know it--I see it--you hate me!”
I was transported by violent emotion, and rising from his feet, at
which I had thrown myself, I leant against a tree, wildly raising my
eyes to heaven. He began to answer with violence: “Yes, yes, I hate
you! You are my bane, my poison, my disgust! Oh! No[!]” And then his
manner changed, and fixing his eyes on me with an expression that
convulsed every nerve and member of my frame--“you are none of all
these; you are my light, my only one, my life.--My daughter, I love
you!” The last words died away in a hoarse whisper, but I heard them
and sunk on the ground, covering my face and almost dead with excess
of sickness and fear: a cold perspiration covered my forehead and I
shivered in every limb--But he continued, clasping his hands with a
frantic gesture:
“Now I have dashed from the top of the rock to the bottom! Now I have
precipitated myself down the fearful chasm! The danger is over; she is
alive! Oh, Mathilda, lift up those dear eyes in the light of which I
live. Let me hear the sweet tones of your beloved voice in peace and
calm. Monster as I am, you are still, as you ever were, lovely,
beautiful beyond expression. What I have become since this last moment
I know not; perhaps I am changed in mien as the fallen archangel. I do
believe I am for I have surely a new soul within me, and my blood
riots through my veins: I am burnt up with fever. But these are
precious moments; devil as I am become, yet that is my Mathilda before
me whom I love as one was never before loved: and she knows it now;
she listens to these words which I thought, fool as I was, would blast
her to death. Come, come, the worst is past: no more grief, tears or
despair; were not those the words you uttered?--We have leapt the
chasm I told you of, and now, mark me, Mathilda, we are to find
flowers, and verdure and delight, or is it hell, and fire, and
tortures? Oh! Beloved One, I am borne away; I can no longer sustain
myself; surely this is death that is coming. Let me lay my head near
your heart; let me die in your arms!”--He sunk to the earth fainting,
while I, nearly as lifeless, gazed on him in despair.
Yes it was despair I felt; for the first time that phantom seized me;
the first and only time for it has never since left me--After the
first moments of speechless agony I felt her fangs on my heart: I tore
my hair; I raved aloud; at one moment in pity for his sufferings I
would have clasped my father in my arms; and then starting back with
horror I spurned him with my foot; I felt as if stung by a serpent,
as if scourged by a whip of scorpions which drove me--Ah!
Whither--Whither?
Well, this could not last. One idea rushed on my mind; never, never
may I speak to him again. As this terrible conviction came upon _him_
[_me_?] it melted my soul to tenderness and love--I gazed on him as to
take my last farewell--he lay insensible--his eyes closed as [_and_?]
his cheeks deathly pale. Above, the leaves of the beech wood cast a
flickering shadow on his face, and waved in mournful melody over
him--I saw all these things and said, “Aye, this is his grave!” And
then I wept aloud, and raised my eyes to heaven to entreat for a
respite to my despair and an alleviation for his unnatural
suffering--the tears that gushed in a warm & healing stream from my
eyes relieved the burthen that oppressed my heart almost to madness. I
wept for a long time untill I saw him about to revive, when horror and
misery again recurred, and the tide of my sensations rolled back to
their former channel: with a terror I could not restrain--I sprung up
and fled, with winged speed, along the paths of the wood and across
the fields untill nearly dead I reached our house and just ordering
the servants to seek my father at the spot I indicated, I shut myself
up in my own room[.][33]
CHAPTER VI
My chamber was in a retired part of the house, and looked upon the
garden so that no sound of the other inhabitants could reach it; and
here in perfect solitude I wept for several hours. When a servant came
to ask me if I would take food I learnt from him that my father had
returned, and was apparently well and this relieved me from a load of
anxiety, yet I did not cease to weep bitterly. As [_At_] first, as the
memory of former happiness contrasted to my present despair came
across me, I gave relief to the oppression of heart that I felt by
words, and groans, and heart rending sighs: but nature became wearied,
and this more violent grief gave place to a passionate but mute flood
of tears: my whole soul seemed to dissolve [in] them. I did not wring
my hands, or tear my hair, or utter wild exclamations, but as Boccacio
describes the intense and quiet grief [of] Sigismunda over the heart
of Guiscardo,[34] I sat with my hands folded, silently letting fall a
perpetual stream from my eyes. Such was the depth of my emotion that I
had no feeling of what caused my distress, my thoughts even wandered
to many indifferent objects; but still neither moving limb or feature
my tears fell untill, as if the fountains were exhausted, they
gradually subsided, and I awoke to life as from a dream.
When I had ceased to weep reason and memory returned upon me, and I
began to reflect with greater calmness on what had happened, and how
it became me to act--A few hours only had passed but a mighty
revolution had taken place with regard to me--the natural work of
years had been transacted since the morning: my father was as dead to
me, and I felt for a moment as if he with white hairs were laid in his
coffin and I--youth vanished in approaching age, were weeping at his
timely dissolution. But it was not so, I was yet young, Oh! far too
young, nor was he dead to others; but I, most miserable, must never
see or speak to him again. I must fly from him with more earnestness
than from my greatest enemy: in solitude or in cities I must never
more behold him. That consideration made me breathless with anguish,
and impressing itself on my imagination I was unable for a time to
follow up any train of ideas. Ever after this, I thought, I would
live in the most dreary seclusion. I would retire to the Continent and
become a nun; not for religion’s sake, for I was not a Catholic, but
that I might be for ever shut out from the world. I should there find
solitude where I might weep, and the voices of life might never reach
me.
But my father; my beloved and most wretched father? Would he die?
Would he never overcome the fierce passion that now held pityless
dominion over him? Might he not many, many years hence, when age had
quenched the burning sensations that he now experienced, might he not
then be again a father to me? This reflection unwrinkled my brow, and
I could feel (and I wept to feel it) a half melancholy smile draw from
my lips their expression of suffering: I dared indulge better hopes
for my future life; years must pass but they would speed lightly away
winged by hope, or if they passed heavily, still they would pass and I
had not lost my father for ever. Let him spend another sixteen years
of desolate wandering: let him once more utter his wild complaints to
the vast woods and the tremendous cataracts of another clime: let him
again undergo fearful danger and soul-quelling hardships: let the hot
sun of the south again burn his passion worn cheeks and the cold night
rains fall on him and chill his blood.
To this life, miserable father, I devote thee!--Go!--Be thy days
passed with savages, and thy nights under the cope of heaven! Be thy
limbs worn and thy heart chilled, and all youth be dead within thee!
Let thy hairs be as snow; thy walk trembling and thy voice have lost
its mellow tones! Let the liquid lustre of thine eyes be quenched; and
then return to me, return to thy Mathilda, thy child, who may then be
clasped in thy loved arms, while thy heart beats with sinless emotion.
Go, Devoted One, and return thus!--This is my curse, a daughter’s
curse: go, and return pure to thy child, who will never love aught but
thee.
These were my thoughts; and with trembling hands I prepared to begin a
letter to my unhappy parent. I had now spent many hours in tears and
mournful meditation; it was past twelve o’clock; all was at peace in
the house, and the gentle air that stole in at my window did not
rustle the leaves of the twining plants that shadowed it. I felt the
entire tranquillity of the hour when my own breath and involuntary
sobs were all the sounds that struck upon the air. On a sudden I heard
a gentle step ascending the stairs; I paused breathless, and as it
approached glided into an obscure corner of the room; the steps paused
at my door, but after a few moments they again receeded[,] descended
the stairs and I heard no more.
This slight incident gave rise in me to the most painful reflections;
nor do I now dare express the emotions I felt. That he should be
restless I understood; that he should wander as an unlaid ghost and
find no quiet from the burning hell that consumed his heart. But why
approach my chamber? Was not that sacred? I felt almost ready to faint
while he had stood there, but I had not betrayed my wakefulness by the
slightest motion, although I had heard my own heart beat with violent
fear. He had withdrawn. Oh, never, never, may I see him again!
Tomorrow night the same roof may not cover us; he or I must depart.
The mutual link of our destinies is broken; we must be divided by
seas--by land. The stars and the sun must not rise at the same period
to us: he must not say, looking at the setting crescent of the moon,
“Mathilda now watches its fall.”--No, all must be changed. Be it light
with him when it is darkness with me! Let him feel the sun of summer
while I am chilled by the snows of winter! Let there be the distance
of the antipodes between us!
At length the east began to brighten, and the comfortable light of
morning streamed into my room. I was weary with watching and for some
time I had combated with the heavy sleep that weighed down my eyelids:
but now, no longer fearful, I threw myself on my bed. I sought for
repose although I did not hope for forgetfulness; I knew I should be
pursued by dreams, but did not dread the frightful one that I really
had. I thought that I had risen and went to seek my father to inform
him of my determination to seperate myself from him. I sought him in
the house, in the park, and then in the fields and the woods, but I
could not find him. At length I saw him at some distance, seated under
a tree, and when he perceived me he waved his hand several times,
beckoning me to approach; there was something unearthly in his mien
that awed and chilled me, but I drew near. When at [a] short distance
from him I saw that he was deadlily [_sic_] pale, and clothed in
flowing garments of white. Suddenly he started up and fled from me; I
pursued him: we sped over the fields, and by the skirts of woods, and
on the banks of rivers; he flew fast and I followed. We came at last,
methought, to the brow of a huge cliff that over hung the sea which,
troubled by the winds, dashed against its base at a distance. I heard
the roar of the waters: he held his course right on towards the brink
and I became breathless with fear lest he should plunge down the
dreadful precipice; I tried to augment my speed, but my knees failed
beneath me, yet I had just reached him; just caught a part of his
flowing robe, when he leapt down and I awoke with a violent scream. I
was trembling and my pillow was wet with my tears; for a few moments
my heart beat hard, but the bright beams of the sun and the chirping
of the birds quickly restored me to myself, and I rose with a languid
spirit, yet wondering what events the day would bring forth. Some time
passed before I summoned courage to ring the bell for my servant, and
when she came I still dared not utter my father’s name. I ordered her
to bring my breakfast to my room, and was again left alone--yet still
I could make no resolve, but only thought that I might write a note to
my father to beg his permission to pay a visit to a relation who lived
about thirty miles off, and who had before invited me to her house,
but I had refused for then I could not quit my suffering father. When
the servant came back she gave me a letter.
“From whom is this letter[?]” I asked trembling.
“Your father left it, madam, with his servant, to be given to you when
you should rise.”
“My father left it! Where is he? Is he not here?”
“No; he quitted the house before four this morning.”
“Good God! He is gone! But tell how this was; speak quick!”
Her relation was short. He had gone in the carriage to the nearest
town where he took a post chaise and horses with orders for the London
road. He dismissed his servants there, only telling them that he had a
sudden call of business and that they were to obey me as their
mistress untill his return.
CHAPTER VII
With a beating heart and fearful, I knew not why, I dismissed the
servant and locking my door, sat down to read my father’s letter.
These are the words that it contained.
“My dear Child
“I have betrayed your confidence; I have endeavoured to pollute your
mind, and have made your innocent heart acquainted with the looks and
language of unlawful and monstrous passion. I must expiate these
crimes, and must endeavour in some degree to proportionate my
punishment to my guilt. You are I doubt not prepared for what I am
about to announce; we must seperate and be divided for ever.
“I deprive you of your parent and only friend. You are cast out
shelterless on the world: your hopes are blasted; the peace and
security of your pure mind destroyed; memory will bring to you
frightful images of guilt, and the anguish of innocent love betrayed.
Yet I who draw down all this misery upon you; I who cast you forth and
remorselessly have set the seal of distrust and agony on the heart and
brow of my own child, who with devilish levity have endeavoured to
steal away her loveliness to place in its stead the foul deformity of
sin; I, in the overflowing anguish of my heart, supplicate you to
forgive me.
“I do not ask your pity; you must and do abhor me: but pardon me,
Mathilda, and let not your thoughts follow me in my banishment with
unrelenting anger. I must never more behold you; never more hear your
voice; but the soft whisperings of your forgiveness will reach me and
cool the burning of my disordered brain and heart; I am sure I should
feel it even in my grave. And I dare enforce this request by relating
how miserably I was betrayed into this net of fiery anguish and all my
struggles to release myself: indeed if your soul were less pure and
bright I would not attempt to exculpate myself to you; I should fear
that if I led you to regard me with less abhorrence you might hate
vice less: but in addressing you I feel as if I appealed to an angelic
judge. I cannot depart without your forgiveness and I must endeavour
to gain it, or I must despair.[35] I conjure you therefore to listen
to my words, and if with the good guilt may be in any degree
extenuated by sharp agony, and remorse that rends the brain as madness
perhaps you may think, though I dare not, that I have some claim to
your compassion.
“I entreat you to call to your remembrance our first happy life on the
shores of Loch Lomond. I had arrived from a weary wandering of sixteen
years, during which, although I had gone through many dangers and
misfortunes, my affections had been an entire blank. If I grieved it
was for your mother, if I loved it was your image; these sole emotions
filled my heart in quietness. The human creatures around me excited in
me no sympathy and I thought that the mighty change that the death of
your mother had wrought within me had rendered me callous to any
future impression. I saw the lovely and I did not love, I imagined
therefore that all warmth was extinguished in my heart except that
which led me ever to dwell on your then infantine image.
“It is a strange link in my fate that without having seen you I should
passionately love you. During my wanderings I never slept without
first calling down gentle dreams on your head. If I saw a lovely
woman, I thought, does my Mathilda resemble her? All delightful
things, sublime scenery, soft breezes, exquisite music seemed to me
associated with you and only through you to be pleasant to me. At
length I saw you. You appeared as the deity of a lovely region, the
ministering Angel of a Paradise to which of all human kind you
admitted only me. I dared hardly consider you as my daughter; your
beauty, artlessness and untaught wisdom seemed to belong to a higher
order of beings; your voice breathed forth only words of love: if
there was aught of earthly in you it was only what you derived from
the beauty of the world; you seemed to have gained a grace from the
mountain breezes--the waterfalls and the lake; and this was all of
earthly except your affections that you had; there was no dross, no
bad feeling in the composition. You yet even have not seen enough[36]
of the world to know the stupendous difference that exists between the
women we meet in dayly life and a nymph of the woods such as you were,
in whose eyes alone mankind may study for centuries & grow wiser &
purer. Those divine lights which shone on me as did those of Beatrice
upon Dante, and well might I say with him yet with what different
feelings
E quasi mi perdei gli occhi chini.
Can you wonder, Mathilda, that I dwelt on your looks, your words, your
motions, & drank in unmixed delight?
[“]But I am afraid that I wander from my purpose. I must be more brief
for night draws on apace and all my hours in this house are counted.
Well, we removed to London, and still I felt only the peace of sinless
passion. You were ever with me, and I desired no more than to gaze on
your countenance, and to know that I was all the world to you; I was
lapped in a fool’s paradise of enjoyment and security. Was my love
blamable? If it was I was ignorant of it; I desired only that which I
possessed, and if I enjoyed from your looks, and words, and most
innocent caresses a rapture usually excluded from the feelings of a
parent towards his child, yet no uneasiness, no wish, no casual idea
awoke me to a sense of guilt. I loved you as a human father might be
supposed to love a daughter borne to him by a heavenly mother; as
Anchises might have regarded the child of Venus if the sex had been
changed; love mingled with respect and adoration. Perhaps also my
passion was lulled to content by the deep and exclusive affection you
felt for me.
“But when I saw you become the object of another’s love; when I
imagined that you might be loved otherwise than as a sacred type and
image of loveliness and excellence; or that you might love another
with a more ardent affection than that which you bore to me, then the
fiend awoke within me; I dismissed your lover; and from that moment I
have known no peace. I have sought in vain for sleep and rest; my lids
refused to close, and my blood was for ever in a tumult. I awoke to a
new life as one who dies in hope might wake in Hell. I will not sully
your imagination by recounting my combats, my self-anger and my
despair. Let a veil be drawn over the unimaginable sensations of a
guilty father; the secrets of so agonized a heart may not be made
vulgar. All was uproar, crime, remorse and hate, yet still the
tenderest love; and what first awoke me to the firm resolve of
conquering my passion and of restoring her father to my child was the
sight of your bitter and sympathizing sorrows. It was this that led me
here: I thought that if I could again awaken in my heart the grief I
had felt at the loss of your mother, and the many associations with
her memory which had been laid to sleep for seventeen years, that all
love for her child would become extinct. In a fit of heroism I
determined to go alone; to quit you, the life of my life, and not to
see you again untill I might guiltlessly. But it would not do: I rated
my fortitude too high, or my love too low. I should certainly have
died if you had not hastened to me. Would that I had been indeed
extinguished!
“And now, Mathilda I must make you my last confession. I have been
miserably mistaken in imagining that I could conquer my love for you;
I never can. The sight of this house, these fields and woods which my
first love inhabited seems to have encreased it: in my madness I dared
say to myself--Diana died to give her birth; her mother’s spirit was
transferred into her frame, and she ought to be as Diana to me.[37]
With every effort to cast it off, this love clings closer, this guilty
love more unnatural than hate, that withers your hopes and destroys me
for ever.
Better have loved despair, & safer kissed her.
No time or space can tear from my soul that which makes a part of it.
Since my arrival here I have not for a moment ceased to feel the hell
of passion which has been implanted in me to burn untill all be cold,
and stiff, and dead. Yet I will not die; alas! how dare I go where I
may meet Diana, when I have disobeyed her last request; her last words
said in a faint voice when all feeling but love, which survives all
things else was already dead, she then bade me make her child happy:
that thought alone gives a double sting to death. I will wander away
from you, away from all life--in the solitude I shall seek I alone
shall breathe of human kind. I must endure life; and as it is my duty
so I shall untill the grave dreaded yet desired, receive me free from
pain: for while I feel it will be pain that must make up the whole sum
of my sensations. Is not this a fearful curse that I labour under? Do
I not look forward to a miserable future? My child, if after this life
I am permitted to see you again, if pain can purify the heart, mine
will be pure: if remorse may expiate guilt, I shall be guiltless.
* * * * *
[“]I have been at the door of your chamber: every thing is silent. You
sleep. Do you indeed sleep, Mathilda? Spirits of Good, behold the
tears of my earnest prayer! Bless my child! Protect her from the
selfish among her fellow creatures: protect her from the agonies of
passion, and the despair of disappointment! Peace, Hope and Love be
thy guardians, oh, thou soul of my soul: thou in whom I breathe!
* * * * *
[“]I dare not read my letter over for I have no time to write another,
and yet I fear that some expressions in it might displease me. Since I
last saw you I have been constantly employed in writing letters, and
have several more to write; for I do not intend that any one shall
hear of me after I depart. I need not conjure you to look upon me as
one of whom all links that once existed between us are broken. Your
own delicacy will not allow you, I am convinced, to attempt to trace
me. It is far better for your peace that you should be ignorant of my
destination. You will not follow me, for when I bannish myself would
you nourish guilt by obtruding yourself upon me? You will not do this,
I know you will not. You must forget me and all the evil that I have
taught you. Cast off the only gift that I have bestowed upon you, your
grief, and rise from under my blighting influence as no flower so
sweet ever did rise from beneath so much evil.
“You will never hear from me again: receive these then as the last
words of mine that will ever reach you; and although I have forfeited
your filial love, yet regard them I conjure you as a father’s command.
Resolutely shake of[f] the wretchedness that this first misfortune in
early life must occasion you. Bear boldly up against the storm:
continue wise and mild, but believe it, and indeed it is, your duty to
be happy. You are very young; let not this check for more than a
moment retard your glorious course; hold on, beloved one. The sun of
youth is not set for you; it will restore vigour and life to you; do
not resist with obstinate grief its beneficent influence, oh, my
child! bless me with the hope that I have not utterly destroyed you.
“Farewell, Mathilda. I go with the belief that I have your pardon.
Your gentle nature would not permit you to hate your greatest enemy
and though I be he, although I have rent happiness from your
grasp;[38] though I have passed over your young love and hopes as the
angel of destruction, finding beauty and joy, and leaving blight and
despair, yet you will forgive me, and with eyes overflowing with
tears I thank you; my beloved one, I accept your pardon with a
gratitude that will never die, and that will, indeed it will, outlive
guilt and remorse.
“Farewell for ever!”
The moment I finished this letter I ordered the carriage and prepared
to follow my father. The words of his letter by which he had dissuaded
me from this step were those that determined me. Why did he write
them? He must know that if I believed that his intention was merely to
absent himself from me that instead of opposing him it would be that
which I should myself require--or if he thought that any lurking
feeling, yet he could not think that, should lead me to him would he
endeavour to overthrow the only hope he could have of ever seeing me
again; a lover, there was madness in the thought, yet he was my lover,
would not act thus. No, he had determined to die, and he wished to
spare me the misery of knowing it. The few ineffectual words he had
said concerning his duty were to me a further proof--and the more I
studied the letter the more did I perceive a thousand slight
expressions that could only indicate a knowledge that life was now
over for him. He was about to die! My blood froze at the thought: a
sickening feeling of horror came over me that allowed not of tears. As
I waited for the carriage I walked up and down with a quick pace; then
kneeling and passionately clasping my hands I tried to pray but my
voice was choked by convulsive sobs--Oh the sun shone[,] the air was
balmy--he must yet live for if he were dead all would surely be black
as night to me![39]
The motion of the carriage knowing that it carried me towards him and
that I might perhaps find him alive somewhat revived my courage: yet I
had a dreadful ride. Hope only supported me, the hope that I should
not be too late[.] I did not weep, but I wiped the perspiration from
my brow, and tried to still my brain and heart beating almost to
madness. Oh! I must not be mad when I see him; or perhaps it were as
well that I should be, my distraction might calm his, and recall him
to the endurance of life. Yet untill I find him I must force reason to
keep her seat, and I pressed my forehead hard with my hands--Oh do not
leave me; or I shall forget what I am about--instead of driving on as
we ought with the speed of lightning they will attend to me, and we
shall be too late. Oh! God help me! Let him be alive! It is all dark;
in my abject misery I demand no more: no hope, no good: only passion,
and guilt, and horror; but alive! Alive! My sensations choked me--No
tears fell yet I sobbed, and breathed short and hard; one only thought
possessed me, and I could only utter one word, that half screaming was
perpetually on my lips; Alive! Alive!--
I had taken the steward[40] with me for he, much better than I[,]
could make the requisite enquiries--the poor old man could not
restrain his tears as he saw my deep distress and knew the cause--he
sometimes uttered a few broken words of consolation: in moments like
these the mistress and servant become in a manner equals and when I
saw his old dim eyes wet with sympathizing tears; his gray hair thinly
scattered on an age-wrinkled brow I thought oh if my father were as he
is--decrepid & hoary--then I should be spared this pain--
When I had arrived at the nearest town I took post horses and followed
the road my father had taken. At every inn where we changed horses we
heard of him, and I was possessed by alternate hope and fear. A length
I found that he had altered his route; at first he had followed the
London road; but now he changed it, and upon enquiry I found that the
one which he now pursued led _towards the sea_. My dream recurred to
my thoughts; I was not usually superstitious but in wretchedness every
one is so. The sea was fifty miles off, yet it was towards it that he
fled. The idea was terrible to my half crazed imagination, and almost
over-turned the little self possession that still remained to me. I
journied all day; every moment my misery encreased and the fever of my
blood became intolerable. The summer sun shone in an unclouded sky;
the air was close but all was cool to me except my own scorching skin.
Towards evening dark thunder clouds arose above the horrizon and I
heard its distant roll--after sunset they darkened the whole sky and
it began to rain[,] the lightning lighted up the whole country and the
thunder drowned the noise of our carriage. At the next inn my father
had not taken horses; he had left a box there saying he would return,
and had