Mathilda - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (reading in the dark .TXT) 📗
- Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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A blush spread over the cheek of the lovely girl—Alas, replied she what a tale must I relate what dark & phre[n]zied passions must I unfold—When you Diotima lived on earth your soul seemed to mingle in love only with its own essence & to be unknowing of the various tortures which that heart endures who if it has not sympathized with has been witness of the dreadful struggles of a soul enchained by dark deep passions which were its hell & yet from which it could not escape—Are there in the peaceful language used by the inhabitants of these regions—words burning enough to paint the tortures of the human heart—Can you understand them? or can you in any way sympathize with them—alas though dead I do and my tears flow as when I lived when my memory recalls the dreadful images of the past—
—As the lovely girl spoke my own eyes filled with bitter drops—the spirit of Fantasia seemed to fade from within me and when after placing my hand before my swimming eyes I withdrew it again I found myself under the trees on the banks of the Tiber—The sun was just setting & tinging with crimson the clouds that floated over St. Peters—all was still no human voice was heard—the very air was quiet I rose—& bewildered with the grief that I felt within me the recollection of what I had heard—I hastened to the city that I might see human beings not that I might forget my wandering recollections but that I might impress on my mind what was reality & what was either dream—or at least not of this earth—The Corso of Rome was filled with carriages and as I walked up the Trinita dei' Montes I became disgusted with the crowd that I saw about me & the vacancy & want of beauty not to say deformity of the many beings who meaninglessly buzzed about me—I hastened to my room which overlooked the whole city which as night came on became tranquil—Silent lovely Rome I now gaze on thee—thy domes are illuminated by the moon—and the ghosts of lovely memories float with the night breeze among thy ruins— contemplating thy loveliness which half soothes my miserable heart I record what I have seen—Tomorrow I will again woo Fantasia to lead me to the same walks & invite her to visit me with her visions which I before neglected—Oh let me learn this lesson while yet it may be useful to me that to a mind hopeless & unhappy as mine—a moment of forgetfullness a moment [in] which it can pass out of itself is worth a life of painful recollection.
CHAP. 2The next morning while sitting on the steps of the temple of Aesculapius in the Borghese gardens Fantasia again visited me & smilingly beckoned to me to follow her—My flight was at first heavy but the breezes commanded by the spirit to convoy me grew stronger as I advanced—a pleasing languour seized my senses & when I recovered I found my self by the Elysian fountain near Diotima—The beautiful female who[m] I had left on the point of narrating her earthly history seemed to have waited for my return and as soon as I appeared she spoke thus—[100]
[A] Wordsworth
[B] Dante
[C] Fletcher's comedy of the Captain.
[D] Lord Byron
[E] Coleridge's Fire, Famine and Slaughter.
[F] Spencer's Faery Queen Book 1—Canto [9]
FOOTNOTES TO THE PREFACE:[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.
NOTES TO MATHILDAAbbreviations:
F of F—A The Fields of Fancy, in Lord Abinger's notebook
F of F—B The Fields of Fancy, in the notebook in the Bodleian Library
S-R fr fragments of The Fields of Fancy among the papers of the
late Sir John Shelley-Rolls, now in the Bodleian Library
[1] The name is spelled thus in the MSS of Mathilda and The Fields of Fancy, though in the printed Journal (taken from Shelley and Mary) and in the Letters it is spelled Matilda. In the MS of the journal, however, it is spelled first Matilda, later Mathilda.
[2] Mary has here added detail and contrast to the description in F of F—A, in which the passage "save a few black patches ... on the plain ground" does not appear.
[3] The addition of "I am alone ... withered me" motivates Mathilda's state of mind and her resolve to write her history.
[4] Mathilda too is the unwitting victim in a story of incest. Like Oedipus, she has lost her parent-lover by suicide; like him she leaves the scene of the revelation overwhelmed by a sense of her own guilt, "a sacred horror"; like him, she finds a measure of peace as she is about to die.
[5] The addition of "the precious memorials ... gratitude towards you," by its suggestion of the relationship between Mathilda and Woodville, serves to justify the detailed narration.
[6] At this point two sheets have been removed from the notebook. There is no break in continuity, however.
[7] The descriptions of Mathilda's father and mother and the account of their marriage in the next few pages are greatly expanded from F of F—A, where there is only one brief paragraph. The process of expansion can be followed in S-R fr and in F of F—B. The development of the character of Diana (who represents Mary's own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft) gave Mary the most trouble. For the identifications with Mary's father and mother, see Nitchie, Mary Shelley, pp. 11, 90-93, 96-97.
[8] The passage "There was a gentleman ... school & college vacations" is on a slip of paper pasted on page 11 of the MS. In the margin are two fragments, crossed out, evidently parts of what is supplanted by the substituted passage: "an angelic disposition and a quick, penetrating understanding" and "her visits ... to ... his house were long & frequent & there." In F of F—B Mary wrote of Diana's understanding "that often receives the name of masculine from its firmness and strength." This adjective had often been applied to Mary Wollstonecraft's mind. Mary Shelley's own understanding had been called masculine by Leigh Hunt in 1817 in the Examiner. The word was used also by a reviewer of her last published work, Rambles in Germany and Italy, 1844. (See Nitchie, Mary Shelley, p. 178.)
[9] The account of Diana in Mathilda is much better ordered and more coherent than that in F of F—B.
[10] The description of the effect of Diana's death on her husband is largely new in Mathilda. F of F—B is frankly incomplete; F of F—A contains some of this material; Mathilda puts it in order and fills in the gaps.
[11] This paragraph is an elaboration of the description of her aunt's coldness as found in F of F—B. There is only one sentence in F of F—A.
[12] The description of Mathilda's love of nature and of animals is elaborated from both rough drafts. The effect, like that of the preceding addition (see note 11), is to emphasize Mathilda's loneliness. For the theme of loneliness in Mary Shelley's work, see Nitchie, Mary Shelley, pp. 13-17.
[13] This paragraph is a revision of F of F—B, which is fragmentary. There is nothing in F of F—A and only one scored-out sentence in S-R fr. None of the rough drafts tells of her plans to join her father.
[14] The final paragraph in Chapter II is entirely new.
[15] The account of the return of Mathilda's father is very slightly revised from that in F of F—A. F of F—B has only a few fragmentary sentences, scored out. It resumes with the paragraph beginning, "My father was very little changed."
[16] Symbolic of Mathilda's subsequent life.
[17] Illusion, or the Trances of Nourjahad, a melodrama, was performed at Drury Lane, November 25, 1813. It was anonymous, but it was attributed by
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