Mathilda Part 8

[26] At this point (f. 56 of the notebook) begins a long pa.s.sage, continuing through Chapter V, in which Mary's emotional disturbance in writing about the change in Mathilda's father (representing both Sh.e.l.ley and G.o.dwin?) 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 l.u.s.t 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 subst.i.tuted for a more conventional and less dramatic pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sociated 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 incert.i.tude" 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 pa.s.sage "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 pa.s.sage "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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage is somewhat more dramatic than that in _F of F--A_, putting what is there merely a descriptive statement into quotation marks.

[43] A stalact.i.te grotto on the island of Antiparos in the Aegean Sea.

[44] A good description of Mary's own behavior in England after Sh.e.l.ley's death, of the surface placidity which concealed stormy emotion. See Nitchie, _Mary Sh.e.l.ley_, 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 pa.s.sage, "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 pa.s.sage that it was "a close nunlike gown of black silk."

[50] Cf. Sh.e.l.ley, _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 p.r.o.noun.

The last page of Chapter VIII shows many corrections, even in the MS of _Mathilda_. It is another pa.s.sage 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 Sh.e.l.ley in fiction, gave Mary considerable trouble: revisions from the rough drafts are numerous. The pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d of the world."

[52] This pa.s.sage beginning "his station was too high" is not in _F of F--A_.

[53] This pa.s.sage 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 Sh.e.l.ley'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 Sh.e.l.ley said, perhaps in conversation with Byron. I have not found it in any of his published writings.

[54] Is this wishful thinking about Sh.e.l.ley's poetry? It is well known that a year later Mary remonstrated with Sh.e.l.ley about _The Witch of Atlas_, desiring, as she said in her 1839 note, "that Sh.e.l.ley 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." Sh.e.l.ley'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 cliches ("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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage, 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--" Sh.e.l.ley had visited G.o.dwin 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 Sh.e.l.ley to call on G.o.dwin. 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 Sh.e.l.ley. 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage "air, & to suffer ... my compa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sage "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_.