Chapter 11

As I was perpetually haunted by these ideas, you may imagine that the influence of Woodville’s words was very temporary; and that although I did not again accuse him of unkindness, yet I soon became as unhappy as before. Soon after this incident we parted. He heard that his mother was ill, and he hastened to her. He came to take leave of me, and we walked together on the heath for the last time. He promised that he would come and see me again; and bade me take cheer, and to encourage what happy thoughts I could, untill time and fortitude should overcome my misery, and I could again mingle in society.

“Above all other admonition on my part,” he said, “cherish and follow this one: do not despair. That is the most dangerous gulph on which you perpetually totter; but you must reassure your steps, and take hope to guide you.[74] Hope, and your wounds will be already half healed: but if you obstinately despair, there never more will be comfort for you. Believe me, my dearest friend, that there is a joy that the sun and earth and all its beauties can bestow that you will one day feel. The refreshing bliss of Love will again visit your heart, and undo the spell that binds you to woe, untill you wonder how your eyes could be closed in the long night that burthens you. I dare not hope that I have inspired you with sufficient interest that the thought of me, and the affection that I shall ever bear you, will soften your melancholy and decrease the bitterness of your tears. But if my friendship can make you look on life with less disgust, beware how you injure it with suspicion. Love is a delicate sprite[75] and easily hurt by rough jealousy. Guard, I entreat you, a firm persuasion of my sincerity in the inmost recesses of your heart out of the reach of the casual winds that may disturb its surface. Your temper is made unequal by suffering, and the tenor of your mind is, I fear, sometimes shaken by unworthy causes; but let your confidence in my sympathy and love be deeper far, and incapable of being reached by these agitations that come and go, and if they touch not your affections leave you uninjured.”

These were some of Woodville’s last lessons. I wept as I listened to him; and after we had taken an affectionate farewell, I followed him far with my eyes until they saw the last of my earthly comforter. I had insisted on accompanying him across the heath towards the town where he dwelt: the sun was yet high when he left me, and I turned my steps towards my cottage. It was at the latter end of the month of September when the nights have become chill. But the weather was serene, and as I walked on I fell into no unpleasing reveries. I thought of Woodville with gratitude and kindness and did not, I know not why, regret his departure with any bitterness. It seemed that after one great shock all other change was trivial to me; and I walked on wondering when the time would come when we should all four, my dearest father restored to me, meet in some sweet Paradise[.] I pictured to myself a lovely river such as that on whose banks Dante describes Mathilda gathering flowers, which ever flows

---- bruna, bruna, Sotto l’ombra perpetua, che mai Raggiar non lascia sole ivi, nè Luna.[76]

And then I repeated to myself all that lovely passage that relates the entrance of Dante into the terrestrial Paradise; and thought it would be sweet when I wandered on those lovely banks to see the car of light descend with my long lost parent to be restored to me. As I waited there in expectation of that moment, I thought how, of the lovely flowers that grew there, I would wind myself a chaplet and crown myself for joy: I would sing _sul margine d’un rio_,[77] my father’s favourite song, and that my voice gliding through the windless air would announce to him in whatever bower he sat expecting the moment of our union, that his daughter was come. Then the mark of misery would have faded from my brow, and I should raise my eyes fearlessly to meet his, which ever beamed with the soft lustre of innocent love. When I reflected on the magic look of those deep eyes I wept, but gently, lest my sobs should disturb the fairy scene.

I was so entirely wrapt in this reverie that I wandered on, taking no heed of my steps until I actually stooped down to gather a flower for my wreath on that bleak plain where no flower grew, when I awoke from my day dream and found myself I knew not where.

The sun had set and the roseate hue which the clouds had caught from him in his descent had nearly died away. A wind swept across the plain, I looked around me and saw no object that told me where I was; I had lost myself, and in vain attempted to find my path. I wandered on, and the coming darkness made every trace indistinct by which I might be guided. At length all was veiled in the deep obscurity of blackest night; I became weary and knowing that my servant was to sleep that night at the neighbouring village, so that my absence would alarm no one; and that I was safe in this wild spot from every intruder, I resolved to spend the night where I was. Indeed I was too weary to walk further: the air was chill but I was careless of bodily inconvenience, and I thought that I was well inured to the weather during my two years of solitude, when no change of seasons prevented my perpetual wanderings.

I lay upon the grass surrounded by a darkness which not the slightest beam of light penetrated--There was no sound for the deep night had laid to sleep the insects, the only creatures that lived on the lone spot where no tree or shrub could afford shelter to aught else--There was a wondrous silence in the air that calmed my senses yet which enlivened my soul, my mind hurried from image to image and seemed to grasp an eternity. All in my heart was shadowy yet calm, untill my ideas became confused and at length died away in sleep.[78]

When I awoke it rained:[79] I was already quite wet, and my limbs were stiff and my head giddy with the chill of night. It was a drizzling, penetrating shower; as my dank hair clung to my neck and partly covered my face, I had hardly strength to part with my fingers, the long strait locks that fell before my eyes. The darkness was much dissipated and in the east where the clouds were least dense the moon was visible behind the thin grey cloud--

The moon is behind, and at the full And yet she looks both small and dull.[80]

Its presence gave me a hope that by its means I might find my home. But I was languid and many hours passed before I could reach the cottage, dragging as I did my slow steps, and often resting on the wet earth unable to proceed.

I particularly mark this night, for it was that which has hurried on the last scene of my tragedy, which else might have dwindled on through long years of listless sorrow. I was very ill when I arrived and quite incapable of taking off my wet clothes that clung about me. In the morning, on her return, my servant found me almost lifeless, while possessed by a high fever I was lying on the floor of my room.

I was very ill for a long time, and when I recovered from the immediate danger of fever, every symptom of a rapid consumption declared itself. I was for some time ignorant of this and thought that my excessive weakness was the consequence of the fever; [_sic_] But my strength became less and less; as winter came on I had a cough; and my sunken cheek, before pale, burned with a hectic fever. One by one these symptoms struck me; & I became convinced that the moment I had so much desired was about to arrive and that I was dying. I was sitting by my fire, the physician who had attended me ever since my fever had just left me, and I looked over his prescription in which digitalis was the prominent medecine. “Yes,” I said, “I see how this is, and it is strange that I should have deceived myself so long; I am about to die an innocent death, and it will be sweeter even than that which the opium promised.”

I rose and walked slowly to the window; the wide heath was covered by snow which sparkled under the beams of the sun that shone brightly thro’ the pure, frosty air: a few birds were pecking some crumbs under my window.[81] I smiled with quiet joy; and in my thoughts, which through long habit would for ever connect themselves into one train, as if I shaped them into words, I thus addressed the scene before me:

“I salute thee, beautiful Sun, and thou, white Earth, fair and cold! Perhaps I shall never see thee again covered with green, and the sweet flowers of the coming spring will blossom on my grave. I am about to leave thee; soon this living spirit which is ever busy among strange shapes and ideas, which belong not to thee, soon it will have flown to other regions and this emaciated body will rest insensate on thy bosom

“Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course With rocks, and stones, and trees.

“For it will be the same with thee, who art called our Universal Mother,[82] when I am gone. I have loved thee; and in my days both of happiness and sorrow I have peopled your solitudes with wild fancies of my own creation. The woods, and lakes, and mountains which I have loved, have for me a thousand associations; and thou, oh, Sun! hast smiled upon, and borne your part in many imaginations that sprung to life in my soul alone, and which will die with me. Your solitudes, sweet land, your trees and waters will still exist, moved by your winds, or still beneath the eye of noon, though[83] [w]hat I have felt about ye, and all my dreams which have often strangely deformed thee, will die with me. You will exist to reflect other images in other minds, and ever will remain the same, although your reflected semblance vary in a thousand ways, changeable as the hearts of those who view thee. One of these fragile mirrors, that ever doted on thine image, is about to be broken, crumbled to dust. But everteeming Nature will create another and another, and thou wilt loose nought by my destruction.[84]

“Thou wilt ever be the same. Recieve then the grateful farewell of a fleeting shadow who is about to disappear, who joyfully leaves thee, yet with a last look of affectionate thankfulness. Farewell! Sky, and fields and woods; the lovely flowers that grow on thee; thy mountains & thy rivers; to the balmy air and the strong wind of the north, to all, a last farewell. I shall shed no more tears for my task is almost fulfilled, and I am about to be rewarded for long and most burthensome suffering. Bless thy child even even [_sic_] in death, as I bless thee; and let me sleep at peace in my quiet grave.”

I feel death to be near at hand and I am calm. I no longer despair, but look on all around me with placid affection. I find it sweet to watch the progressive decay of my strength, and to repeat to myself, another day and yet another, but again I shall not see the red leaves of autumn; before that time I shall be with my father. I am glad Woodville is not with me for perhaps he would grieve, and I desire to see smiles alone during the last scene of my life; when I last wrote to him I told him of my ill health but not of its mortal tendency, lest he should conceive it to be his duty to come to me for I fear lest the tears of friendship should destroy the blessed calm of my mind. I take pleasure in arranging all the little details which will occur when I shall no longer be. In truth I am in love with death; no maiden ever took more pleasure in the contemplation of her bridal attire than I in fancying my limbs already enwrapt in their shroud: is it not my marriage dress? Alone it will unite me to my father when in an eternal mental union we shall never part.

I will not dwell on the last changes that I feel in the final decay of nature. It is rapid but without pain: I feel a strange pleasure in it. For long years these are the first days of peace that have visited me. I no longer exhaust my miserable heart by bitter tears and frantic complaints; I no longer the [_sic_] reproach the sun, the earth, the air, for pain and wretchedness. I wait in quiet expectation for the closing hours of a life which has been to me most sweet & bitter. I do not die not having enjoyed life; for sixteen years I was happy: during the first months of my father’s return I had enjoyed ages of pleasure: now indeed I am grown old in grief; my steps are feeble like those of age; I have become peevish and unfit for life; so having passed little more than twenty years upon the earth I am more fit for my narrow grave than many are when they reach the natural term of their lives.

Again and again I have passed over in my remembrance the different scenes of my short life: if the world is a stage and I merely an actor on it my part has been strange, and, alas! tragical. Almost from infancy I was deprived of all the testimonies of affection which children generally receive; I was thrown entirely upon my own resources, and I enjoyed what I may almost call unnatural pleasures, for they were dreams and not realities. The earth was to me a magic lantern and I [a] gazer, and a listener but no actor; but then came the transporting and soul-reviving era of my existence: my father returned and I could pour my warm affections on a human heart; there was a new sun and a new earth created to me; the waters of existence sparkled: joy! joy! but, alas! what grief! My bliss was more rapid than the progress of a sunbeam on a mountain, which discloses its glades & woods, and then leaves it dark & blank; to my happiness followed madness and agony, closed by despair.

This was the drama of my life which I have now depicted upon paper. During three months I have been employed in this task. The memory of sorrow has brought tears; the memory of happiness a warm glow the lively shadow of that joy. Now my tears are dried; the glow has faded from my cheeks, and with a few words of farewell to you, Woodville, I close my work: the last that I shall perform.

Farewell, my only living friend; you are the sole tie that binds me to existence, and now I break it[.] It gives me no pain to leave you; nor can our seperation give you much. You never regarded me as one of this world, but rather as a being, who for some penance was sent from the Kingdom of Shadows; and she passed a few days weeping on the earth and longing to return to her native soil. You will weep but they will be tears of gentleness. I would, if I thought that it would lessen your regret, tell you to smile and congratulate me on my departure from the misery you beheld me endure. I would say; Woodville, rejoice with your friend, I triumph now and am most happy. But I check these expressions; these may not be the consolations of the living; they weep for their own misery, and not for that of the being they have lost. No; shed a few natural tears due to my memory: and if you ever visit my grave, pluck from thence a flower, and lay it to your heart; for your heart is the only tomb in which my memory will be enterred.

My death is rapidly approaching and you are not near to watch the flitting and vanishing of my spirit. Do no[t] regret this; for death is a too terrible an [_sic_] object for the living. It is one of those adversities which hurt instead of purifying the heart; for it is so intense a misery that it hardens & dulls the feelings. Dreadful as the time was when I pursued my father towards the ocean, & found their [_sic_] only his lifeless corpse; yet for my own sake I should prefer that to the watching one by one his senses fade; his pulse weaken--and sleeplessly as it were devour his life in gazing. To see life in his limbs & to know that soon life would no longer be there; to see the warm breath issue from his lips and to know they would soon be chill--I will not continue to trace this frightful picture; you suffered this torture once; I never did.[85] And the remembrance fills your heart sometimes with bitter despair when otherwise your feelings would have melted into soft sorrow.

So day by day I become weaker, and life flickers in my wasting form, as a lamp about to loose it vivifying oil. I now behold the glad sun of May. It was May, four years ago, that I first saw my beloved father; it was in May, three years ago that my folly destroyed the only being I was doomed to love. May is returned, and I die. Three days ago, the anniversary of our meeting; and, alas! of our eternal seperation, after a day of killing emotion, I caused myself to be led once more to behold the face of nature. I caused myself to be carried to some meadows some miles distant from my cottage; the grass was being mowed, and there was the scent of hay in the fields; all the earth look[ed] fresh and its inhabitants happy. Evening approached and I beheld the sun set. Three years ago and on that day and hour it shone through the branches and leaves of the beech wood and its beams flickered upon the countenance of him whom I then beheld for the last time.[86] I now saw that divine orb, gilding all the clouds with unwonted splendour, sink behind the horizon; it disappeared from a world where he whom I would seek exists not; it approached a world where he exists not[.] Why do I weep so bitterly? Why my [_sic_] does my heart heave with vain endeavour to cast aside the bitter anguish that covers it “as the waters cover the sea.” I go from this world where he is no longer and soon I shall meet him in another.

Farewell, Woodville, the turf will soon be green on my grave; and the violets will bloom on it. _There_ is my hope and my expectation; your’s are in this world; may they be fulfilled.[87]

NOTES TO _MATHILDA_

Abbreviations:

_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 some reviewers to Byron, a charge which he indignantly denied. See Byron, _Letters and Journals_, ed. by Rowland E. Prothero (6 vols. London: Murray, 1902-1904), II, 288.

[18] This paragraph is in _F of F--B_ but not in _F of F--A_. In the margin of the latter, however, is written: “It was not of the tree of knowledge that I ate for no evil followed--it must be of the tree of life that grows close beside it or--”. Perhaps this was intended to go in the preceding paragraph after “My ideas were enlarged by his conversation.” Then, when this paragraph was added, the figure, noticeably changed, was included here.

[19] Here the MS of _F of F--B_ breaks off to resume only with the meeting of Mathilda and Woodville.

[20] At the end of the story (p. 79) Mathilda says, “Death is too terrible an object for the living.” Mary was thinking of the deaths of her two children.

[21] Mary had read the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius in 1817 and she had made an Italian translation, the MS of which is now in the Library of Congress. See _Journal_, pp. 79, 85-86.

[22] The end of this paragraph gave Mary much trouble. In _F of F--A_ after the words, “my tale must,” she develops an elaborate figure: “go with the stream that hurries on--& now was this stream precipitated by an overwhelming fall from the pleasant vallies through which it wandered--down hideous precipieces to a desart black & hopeless--”. This, the original ending of the chapter, was scored out, and a new, simplified version which, with some deletions and changes, became that used in _Mathilda_ was written in the margins of two pages (ff. 57, 58). This revision is a good example of Mary’s frequent improvement of her style by the omission of purple patches.

[23] In _F of F--A_ there follows a passage which has been scored out and which does not appear in _Mathilda_: “I have tried in somewhat feeble language to describe the excess of what I may almost call my adoration for my father--you may then in some faint manner imagine my despair when I found that he shunned [me] & that all the little arts I used to re-awaken his lost love made him”--. This is a good example of Mary’s frequent revision for the better by the omission of the obvious and expository. But the passage also has intrinsic interest. Mathilda’s “adoration” for her father may be compared to Mary’s feeling for Godwin. In an unpublished letter (1822) to Jane Williams she wrote, “Until I met Shelley I [could?] justly say that he was my God--and I remember many childish instances of the [ex]cess of attachment I bore for him.” See Nitchie, _Mary Shelley_, p. 89, and note 9.

[24] Cf. the account of the services of Fantasia in the opening chapter of _F of F--A_ (see pp. 90-102) together with note 3 to _The Fields of Fancy_.

[25] This passage beginning “Day after day” and closing with the quotation is not in _F of F--A_, but it is in _S-R fr_. The quotation is from _The Captain_ by John Fletcher and a collaborator, possibly Massinger. These lines from Act I, Sc. 3 are part of a speech by Lelia addressed to her lover. Later in the play Lelia attempts to seduce her father--possibly a reason for Mary’s selection of the lines.

[26] At this point (f. 56 of the notebook) begins a long passage, continuing through Chapter V, in which Mary’s emotional disturbance in writing about the change in Mathilda’s father (representing both Shelley and Godwin?) shows itself on the pages of the MS. They look more like the rough draft than the fair copy. There are numerous slips of the pen, corrections in phrasing and sentence structure, dashes instead of other marks of punctuation, a large blot of ink on f. 57, one major deletion (see note 32).

[27] In the margin of _F of F--A_ Mary wrote, “Lord B’s Ch’de Harold.” The reference is to stanzas 71 and 72 of Canto IV. Byron compares the rainbow on the cataract first to “Hope upon a death-bed” and finally

Resembling, ’mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

[28] In _F of F--A_ Mathilda “took up Ariosto & read the story of Isabella.” Mary’s reason for the change is not clear. Perhaps she thought that the fate of Isabella, a tale of love and lust and death (though not of incest), was too close to what was to be Mathilda’s fate. She may have felt--and rightly--that the allusions to Lelia and to Myrrha were ample foreshadowings. The reasons for the choice of the seventh canto of Book II of the _Faerie Queene_ may lie in the allegorical meaning of Guyon, or Temperance, and the “dread and horror” of his experience.

[29] With this speech, which is not in _F of F--A_, Mary begins to develop the character of the Steward, who later accompanies Mathilda on her search for her father. Although he is to a very great extent the stereptyped faithful servant, he does serve to dramatize the situation both here and in the later scene.

[30] This clause is substituted for a more conventional and less dramatic passage in _F of F--A_: “& besides there appeared more of struggle than remorse in his manner although sometimes I thought I saw glim[p]ses of the latter feeling in his tumultuous starts & gloomy look.”

[31] These paragraphs beginning Chapter V are much expanded from _F of F--A_. Some of the details are in the _S-R fr_. This scene is recalled at the end of the story. (See page 80) Cf. what Mary says about places that are associated with former emotions in her _Rambles in Germany and Italy_ (2 vols., London: Moxon, 1844), II, 78-79. She is writing of her approach to Venice, where, twenty-five years before, little Clara had died. “It is a strange, but to any person who has suffered, a familiar circumstance, that those who are enduring mental or corporeal agony are strangely alive to immediate external objects, and their imagination even exercises its wild power over them.... Thus the banks of the Brenta presented to me a moving scene; not a palace, not a tree of which I did not recognize, as marked and recorded, at a moment when life and death hung upon our speedy arrival at Venice.”

[32] The remainder of this chapter, which describes the crucial scene between Mathilda and her father, is the result of much revision from _F of F--A_. Some of the revisions are in _S-R fr_. In general the text of _Mathilda_ is improved in style. Mary adds concrete, specific words and phrases; e.g., at the end of the first paragraph of Mathilda’s speech, the words “of incertitude” appear in _Mathilda_ for the first time. She cancels, even in this final draft, an over-elaborate figure of speech after the words in the father’s reply, “implicated in my destruction”; the cancelled passage is too flowery to be appropriate here: “as if when a vulture is carrying off some hare it is struck by an arrow his helpless victim entangled in the same fate is killed by the defeat of its enemy. One word would do all this.” Furthermore the revised text shows greater understanding and penetration of the feelings of both speakers: the addition of “Am I the cause of your grief?” which brings out more dramatically what Mathilda has said in the first part of this paragraph; the analysis of the reasons for her presistent questioning; the addition of the final paragraph of her plea, “Alas! Alas!... you hate me!” which prepares for the father’s reply.

[33] Almost all the final paragraph of the chapter is added to _F of F--A_. Three brief _S-R fr_ are much revised and simplified.

[34] _Decameron_, 4th day, 1st story. Mary had read the _Decameron_ in May, 1819. See _Journal_, p. 121.

[35] The passage “I should fear ... I must despair” is in _S-R fr_ but not in _F of F--A_. There, in the margin, is the following: “Is it not the prerogative of superior virtue to pardon the erring and to weigh with mercy their offenses?” This sentence does not appear in _Mathilda_. Also in the margin of _F of F--A_ is the number (9), the number of the _S-R fr_.

[36] The passage “enough of the world ... in unmixed delight” is on a slip pasted over the middle of the page. Some of the obscured text is visible in the margin, heavily scored out. Also in the margin is “Canto IV Vers Ult,” referring to the quotation from Dante’s _Paradiso_. This quotation, with the preceding passage beginning “in whose eyes,” appears in _Mathilda_ only.

[37] The reference to Diana, with the father’s rationalization of his love for Mathilda, is in _S-R fr_ but not in _F of F--A_.

[38] In _F of F--A_ this is followed by a series of other gloomy concessive clauses which have been scored out to the advantage of the text.

[39] This paragraph has been greatly improved by the omission of elaborate over-statement; e.g., “to pray for mercy & respite from my fear” (_F of F--A_) becomes merely “to pray.”

[40] This paragraph about the Steward is added in _Mathilda_. In _F of F--A_ he is called a servant and his name is Harry. See note 29.

[41] This sentence, not in _F of F--A_, recalls Mathilda’s dream.

[42] This passage is somewhat more dramatic than that in _F of F--A_, putting what is there merely a descriptive statement into quotation marks.

[43] A stalactite grotto on the island of Antiparos in the Aegean Sea.

[44] A good description of Mary’s own behavior in England after Shelley’s death, of the surface placidity which concealed stormy emotion. See Nitchie, _Mary Shelley_, pp. 8-10.

[45] _Job_, 17: 15-16, slightly misquoted.

[46] Not in _F of F--A_. The quotation should read:

Fam. Whisper it, sister! so and so! In a dark hint, soft and slow.

[47] The mother of Prince Arthur in Shakespeare’s _King John_. In the MS the words “the little Arthur” are written in pencil above the name of Constance.

[48] In _F of F--A_ this account of her plans is addressed to Diotima, and Mathilda’s excuse for not detailing them is that they are too trivial to interest spirits no longer on earth; this is the only intrusion of the framework into Mathilda’s narrative in _The Fields of Fancy_. Mathilda’s refusal to recount her stratagems, though the omission is a welcome one to the reader, may represent the flagging of Mary’s invention. Similarly in _Frankenstein_ she offers excuses for not explaining how the Monster was brought to life. The entire passage, “Alas! I even now ... remain unfinished. I was,” is on a slip of paper pasted on the page.

[49] The comparison to a Hermitess and the wearing of the “fanciful nunlike dress” are appropriate though melodramatic. They appear only in _Mathilda_. Mathilda refers to her “whimsical nunlike habit” again after she meets Woodville (see page 60) and tells us in a deleted passage that it was “a close nunlike gown of black silk.”

[50] Cf. Shelley, _Prometheus Unbound_, I, 48: “the wingless, crawling hours.” This phrase (“my part in submitting ... minutes”) and the remainder of the paragraph are an elaboration of the simple phrase in _F of F--A_, “my part in enduring it--,” with its ambiguous pronoun. The last page of Chapter VIII shows many corrections, even in the MS of _Mathilda_. It is another passage that Mary seems to have written in some agitation of spirit. Cf. note 26.

[51] In _F of F--A_ there are several false starts before this sentence. The name there is Welford; on the next page it becomes Lovel, which is thereafter used throughout _The Fields of Fancy_ and appears twice, probably inadvertently, in _Mathilda_, where it is crossed out. In a few of the _S-R fr_ it is Herbert. In _Mathilda_ it is at first Herbert, which is used until after the rewritten conclusion (see note 83) but is corrected throughout to Woodville. On the final pages Woodville alone is used. (It is interesting, though not particularly significant, that one of the minor characters in Lamb’s _John Woodvil_ is named Lovel. Such mellifluous names rolled easily from the pens of all the romantic writers.) This, her first portrait of Shelley in fiction, gave Mary considerable trouble: revisions from the rough drafts are numerous. The passage on Woodville’s endowment by fortune, for example, is much more concise and effective than that in _S-R fr_. Also Mary curbed somewhat the extravagance of her praise of Woodville, omitting such hyperboles as “When he appeared a new sun seemed to rise on the day & he had all the benignity of the dispensor of light,” and “he seemed to come as the God of the world.”

[52] This passage beginning “his station was too high” is not in _F of F--A_.

[53] This passage beginning “He was a believer in the divinity of genius” is not in _F of F--A_. Cf. the discussion of genius in “Giovanni Villani” (Mary Shelley’s essay in _The Liberal_, No. IV, 1823), including the sentence: “The fixed stars appear to abberate [_sic_]; but it is we that move, not they.” It is tempting to conclude that this is a quotation or echo of something which Shelley said, perhaps in conversation with Byron. I have not found it in any of his published writings.

[54] Is this wishful thinking about Shelley’s poetry? It is well known that a year later Mary remonstrated with Shelley about _The Witch of Atlas_, desiring, as she said in her 1839 note, “that Shelley should increase his popularity.... It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours.... Even now I believe that I was in the right.” Shelley’s response is in the six introductory stanzas of the poem.

[55] The preceding paragraphs about Elinor and Woodville are the result of considerable revision for the better of _F of F--A_ and _S-R fr_. Mary scored out a paragraph describing Elinor, thus getting rid of several clichés (“fortune had smiled on her,” “a favourite of fortune,” “turning tears of misery to those of joy”); she omitted a clause which offered a weak motivation of Elinor’s father’s will (the possibility of her marrying, while hardly more than a child, one of her guardian’s sons); she curtailed the extravagance of a rhapsody on the perfect happiness which Woodville and Elinor would have enjoyed.

[56] The death scene is elaborated from _F of F--A_ and made more melodramatic by the addition of Woodville’s plea and of his vigil by the death-bed.

[57] _F of F--A_ ends here and _F of F--B_ resumes.

[58] A similar passage about Mathilda’s fears is cancelled in _F of F--B_ but it appears in revised form in _S-R fr_. There is also among these fragments a long passage, not used in _Mathilda_, identifying Woodville as someone she had met in London. Mary was wise to discard it for the sake of her story. But the first part of it is interesting for its correspondence with fact: “I knew him when I first went to London with my father he was in the height of his glory & happiness--Elinor was living & in her life he lived--I did not know her but he had been introduced to my father & had once or twice visited us--I had then gazed with wonder on his beauty & listened to him with delight--” Shelley had visited Godwin more than “once or twice” while Harriet was still living, and Mary had seen him. Of course she had seen Harriet too, in 1812, when she came with Shelley to call on Godwin. Elinor and Harriet, however, are completely unlike.

[59] Here and on many succeeding pages, where Mathilda records the words and opinions of Woodville, it is possible to hear the voice of Shelley. This paragraph, which is much expanded from _F of F--B_, may be compared with the discussion of good and evil in _Julian and Maddalo_ and with _Prometheus Unbound_ and _A Defence of Poetry_.

[60] In the revision of this passage Mathilda’s sense of her pollution is intensified; for example, by addition of “infamy and guilt was mingled with my portion.”

[61] Some phrases of self-criticism are added in this paragraph.

[62] In _F of F--B_ this quotation is used in the laudanum scene, just before Level’s (Woodville’s) long speech of dissuasion.

[63] The passage “air, & to suffer ... my compassionate friend” is on a slip of paper pasted across the page.

[64] This phrase sustains the metaphor better than that in _F of F--B_: “puts in a word.”

[65] This entire paragraph is added to _F of F--B_; it is in rough draft in _S-R fr_.

[66] This is changed in the MS of _Mathilda_ from “a violent thunderstorm.” Evidently Mary decided to avoid using another thunderstorm at a crisis in the story.

[67] The passage “It is true ... I will” is on a slip of paper pasted across the page.

[68] In the revision from _F of F--B_ the style of this whole episode becomes more concise and specific.

[69] An improvement over the awkward phrasing in _F of F--B_: “a friend who will not repulse my request that he would accompany me.”

[70] These two paragraphs are not in _F of F--B_; portions of them are in _S-R fr_.

[71] This speech is greatly improved in style over that in _F of F--B_, more concise in expression (though somewhat expanded), more specific. There are no corresponding _S-R fr_ to show the process of revision. With the ideas expressed here cf. Shelley, _Julian and Maddalo_, ll. 182-187, 494-499, and his letter to Claire in November, 1820 (Julian _Works_, X, 226). See also White, _Shelley_, II, 378.

[72] This solecism, copied from _F of F--B_, is not characteristic of Mary Shelley.

[73] This paragraph prepares for the eventual softening of Mathilda’s feeling. The idea is somewhat elaborated from _F of F--B_. Other changes are necessitated by the change in the mode of presenting the story. In _The Fields of Fancy_ Mathilda speaks as one who has already died.

[74] Cf. Shelley’s emphasis on hope and its association with love in all his work. When Mary wrote _Mathilda_ she knew _Queen Mab_ (see