CHAPTER VIII.
AFTER a long interval, I am again impelled by the
restless spirit within me to continue my narration; but I must alter the
mode which I have hitherto adopted. The details contained in the foregoing
pages, apparently trivial, yet each slightest one weighing like lead in the
depressed scale of human afflictions; this tedious dwelling on the sorrows
of others, while my own were only in apprehension; this slowly laying bare
of my soul's wounds: this journal of death; this long drawn and tortuous
path, leading to the ocean of countless tears, awakens me again to keen
grief. I had used this history as an opiate; while it described my beloved
friends, fresh with life and glowing with hope, active
assistants on the scene, I was soothed; there will be a more melancholy
pleasure in painting the end of all. But the intermediate steps, the
climbing the wall, raised up between what was and is, while I still looked
back nor saw the concealed desert beyond, is a labour past my strength. Time
and experience have placed me on an height from which I can comprehend the
past as a whole; and in this way I must describe it, bringing forward the
leading incidents, and disposing light and shade so as to form [a picture in
whose very darkness there will be harmony](jmartin.htm).
It would be needless to narrate those disastrous occurrences, for which a
parallel might be found in any slighter visitation of our gigantic calamity.
Does the reader wish to hear of the pest-houses, where death is the
comforter--of the mournful passage of the death-cart--of the insensibility
of the worthless, and the anguish of the loving heart--of harrowing shrieks
and silence dire--of the variety of disease, desertion, famine, despair, and death? There are many books which can feed the appetite
craving for these things; let them turn to the accounts of Boccaccio,Boccaccio's
Decameron is a collection of tales
collected ca. 1350, introduced by a frame narrative in which the
plague of 1348 leads a group of aristocratic ladies and gentlemen to
flee the city of Florence for the refuge of country villas, where
they tell the stories of which the collection consists.
For a
full text (including especially the "Induction," which describes the
plague) and a thorough treatment of the contexts, see [The Decameron
Web [external link]](http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/index.php).
[De Foe](defoe.htm), and
[Browne](brown.htm). The vast annihilation that has swallowed all things--the voiceless
solitude of the once busy earth--the lonely state of singleness which hems
me in, has deprived even such details of their stinging reality, and
mellowing the lurid tints of past anguish with poetic hues, I am able to
escape from the mosaic of circumstance, by perceiving and reflecting back
the grouping and combined colouring of the past.
I had returned from London possessed by the idea, with the intimate feeling
that it was my first duty to secure, as well as I was able, the well-being
of my family, and then to return and take my post beside Adrian. The events
that immediately followed on my arrival at Windsor changed this view of
things. The plague"The
plague" refers to an acute virulent disease, usually one reaching or
threatening to reach epidemic proportions, and historically one
caused by a bacterium. The medieval Black Death set much of the tone
and metaphorical conventions still operating in many modern-era
descriptions of plagues.
The Last Man
was written during one such early-nineteenth century outbreak, a
cholera epidemic begun in India ca. 1817 and seen by the 1820s as
posing a threat to Europe.
The history of nineteenth-century
epidemics, and their construction as "the plague," reveals telling
narrative and figurative patterns, all of them relevant to reading
this novel (with its fabric of interwoven political, military,
social, sexual, and medical narratives). As the histories are
explained by Ranger and Slack (pp. 3-4),
Flight from an
infected place was usual, and had to be defended (or attacked)
since it took people away from charitable, neighbourly or
political duties. Carriers of disease were identified and
scapegoats stigmatised: foreigners most often, as in Renaissance
Italy and modern Hawaii, since epidemic disease came from
outside, but also inferiors, carriers of pollution of several
kinds, among whom disease had its local roots--untouchables in
India and ex-slaves in Africa, for example, or Jews at the time
of the Black Death (though less commonly in Europe in later
outbreaks of plague). For their part, the inferiors themselves
thought epidemics the consequence of plots by external enemies,
or governors and elites, to 'poison' the poor. (p. 4)
In our own moment at the end of the twentieth
century, as Susan Sontag has suggested, the very idea of "virus"
itself (rather than any actual bacterial infection) has become the
metaphorical equivalent of "plague." Today a "virus" can infect
computers and cultures (where it takes the form of a "meme") as well
as individuals (p. 157). The very real plague of our time is AIDS, a
syndrome that has most often been figured (at least until very
recently) as a potential pandemic threatening a mass
population.
The comparison of Mary Shelley's fictional
depiction of a world-wide apocalyptic plague to the actual plague of
AIDS has been the subject of works by critics such as Audrey Fisch,
Mary Jacobus, Anne K. Mellor, and Barbara Johnson.
was
not in London alone, it was every where--it came on us, as Ryland had said,
like a thousand packs of wolves, howling through
the winter
night, gaunt and fierce. When once disease was introduced into the rural
districts, its effects appeared more horrible, more exigent, and more
difficult to cure, than in towns. There was a companionship in suffering
there, and, the neighbours keeping constant watch on each other, and
inspired by the active benevolence of Adrian, succour was afforded, and the
path of destruction smoothed. But in the country, among the scattered
farm-houses, in lone cottages, in fields, and barns, tragedies were acted
harrowing to the soul, unseen, unheard, unnoticed. Medical aid was less
easily procured, food was more difficult to obtain, and human beings,
unwithheld by shame, for they were unbeheld of their fellows, ventured on
deeds of greater wickedness, or gave way more readily to their abject
fears.
Deeds of heroism also occurred, whose very mention swells the heart and
brings tears into the eyes. Such is human nature, that beauty and deformity
are often closely linked. In read-ing history we are chiefly
struck by the generosity and self-devotion that follow close on the heels of
crime, veiling with supernal flowers the stain of blood. Such acts were not
wanting to adorn the grim train that waited on the progress of the
plague.
The inhabitants of Berkshire and BucksBerkshire (or "the Berks") and Bucks (Buckinghamshire) are
relatively rural counties in south-central England, lying mostly along
the Thames River valley. Windsor Castle is in the Berks and Eton College
is in Bucks. had been long aware that the plague was in London,
in Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, York, in short, in all the more populous
towns of England. They were not however the less astonished and dismayed
when it appeared among themselves. They were impatient and angry in the
midst of terror. They would do something to throw off the clinging evil,
and, while in action, they fancied that a remedy was applied. The
inhabitants of the smaller towns left their houses, pitched tents in the
fields, wandering separate from each other careless of hunger or the sky's
inclemency, while they imagined that they avoided the death-dealing disease.
The farmers and cottagers, on the contrary, struck with the fear of
solitude, and madly desirous of medical assistance, flocked
into the towns.
But winter was coming, and with winter, hope. In August, the plague had
appeared in the country of England, and during September it made its
ravages. Towards the end of October it dwindled away, and was in some degree
replaced by a typhus, of hardly less virulence. The autumn was warm and
rainy: the infirm and sickly died off--happier they: many young people
flushed with health and prosperity, made pale by wasting malady, became the
inhabitants of the grave. The crop had failed, the bad corn, and want of
foreign wines, added vigour to disease. Before Christmas half England was
under water. The storms of the last winter were renewed; but the diminished
shipping of this year caused us to feel less the tempests of the sea. The
flood and storms did more harm to continental Europe than to us--giving, as
it were, the last blow to the calamities which destroyed it. In ItalyA traditional southern
wintering place for the English, Italy frequently became during the
Romantic period a site of elective exile and refuge, treated as
especially interesting for its sublime layers of history and
civilizations set against a backdrop of "primitive" natural
beauty.
"Italy" was in effect occupied territory and
fragmented kingdoms up through the French Revolutionary period.
After the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), the impetus for
nationalistic identity grew, in the form of the movement known as
the Risorgimento, which ultimate led to unification.
the
rivers were unwatched by the diminished peasantry; and, like
wild beasts from their lair when the hunters and dogs are afar, did Tiber,
Arno, and Po, rush upon and destroy the fertility of the plains. Whole
villages were carried away. Rome, and Florence, and Pisa were overflowed,
and their marble palaces, late mirrored in tranquil streams, had their
foundations shaken by their winter-gifted power. In Germany and Russia the
injury was still more momentous.
But frost would come at last, and with it a renewal of our lease of earth.
Frost would blunt the arrows of pestilence, and enchain the furious
elements; and the land would in spring throw off her garment of snow,
released from her menace of destruction. It was not until February that the
desired signs of winter appeared. For three days the snow fell, ice stopped
the current of the rivers, and the birds flew out from crackling branches of
the frost-whitened trees. On the fourth morning all vanished. A south-west
wind brought up rain--the sun came out, and mocking the usual
laws of nature, seemed even at this early season to burn with solsticial
force. It was no consolation, that with the first winds of March the lanes
were filled with violets, the fruit trees covered with blossoms, that the
corn sprung up, and the leaves came out, forced by the unseasonable heat. We
feared the balmy air--we feared the cloudless sky, the flower-covered earth,
and delightful woods, for we looked on the fabric of the universe no longer
as our dwelling, but our tomb, and the fragrant land smelled to the
apprehension of fear like a wide church-yard.
Pisando la tierra durade continuo el hombre estày cada passo que dàes sobre su sepultura.*Calderón de la Barca.
["Man endlessly walks / On the
earth's hard ground, / And each step he takes / is on his tomb"
(
El príncipe constante
III.7.2517-20; noted and transl. by [Blumberg and Crook](bibliog.htm), p. 211n)]Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages winter was breathing time; and we
exerted ourselves to make the best of it. Plague might not revive with the summer; but if it did, it should find us prepared. It is a part
of man's nature to adapt itself through habit even to pain and sorrow.
Pestilence had become a part of our future, our existence; it was to be
guarded against, like the flooding of rivers, the encroachments of ocean, or
the inclemency of the sky. After long suffering and bitter experience, some
panacea might be discovered; as it was, all that received infection
died--all however were not infected; and it became our part to fix deep the
foundations, and raise high the barrier between contagion and the sane; to
introduce such order as would conduce to the well-being of the survivors,
and as would preserve hope and some portion of happiness to those who were
spectators of the still renewed tragedy. Adrian had introduced systematic
modes of proceeding in the metropolis, which, while they were unable to stop
the progress of death, yet prevented other evils, vice and folly, from
rendering the awful fate of the hour still more tremendous. I
wished to imitate his example, but men are used to
--move all together, if they move at all,*Wordsworth.
[from "Resolution and
Independence"]
and I could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered towns and
villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them not, and veered
with every baffling wind, that might arise from an apparent change of
circumstance.
I adopted another plan. Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace and
happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where each
small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This was the key of
my design. Each village, however small, usually contains a leader, one among
themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and
whose good opinion they chiefly value. I was immediately drawn to make
this observation by occurrences that presented themselves
to my personal experience.
In the village of Little Marlow an old woman ruled the community. She had
lived for some years in an alms-house, and on fine Sundays her threshold was
constantly beset by a crowd, seeking her advice and listening to her
admonitions. She had been a soldier's wife, and had seen the world;
infirmity, induced by fevers caught in unwholesome quarters, had come on her
before its time, and she seldom moved from her little cot. The plague
entered the village; and, while fright and grief deprived the inhabitants of
the little wisdom they possessed, old Martha stepped forward and
said--"Before now I have been in a town where there was the plague."--"And
you escaped?"--"No, but I recovered."--After this Martha was seated more
firmly than ever on the regal seat, elevated by reverence and love. She
entered the cottages of the sick; she relieved their wants with her own
hand; she betrayed no fear, and inspired all who saw her with
some portion of her own native courage. She attended the markets--she
insisted upon being supplied with food for those who were too poor to
purchase it. She shewed them how the well-being of each included the
prosperity of all. She would not permit the gardens to be neglected, nor the
very flowers in the cottage lattices to droop from want of care. Hope, she
said, was better than a doctor's prescription, and every thing that could
sustain and enliven the spirits, of more worth than drugs and mixtures.
It was the sight of Little Marlow, and my conversations with Martha, that led
me to the plan I formed. I had before visited the manor houses and
gentlemen's seats, and often found the inhabitants actuated by the purest
benevolence, ready to lend their utmost aid for the welfare of their
tenants. But this was not enough. The intimate sympathy generated by similar
hopes and fears, similar experience and pursuits, was wanting here. The poor
perceived that the rich possessed other means of preservation
than those which could be partaken of by themselves, seclusion, and, as far
as circumstances permitted, freedom from care. They could not place reliance
on them, but turned with tenfold dependence to the succour and advice of
their equals. I resolved therefore to go from village to village, seeking
out the rustic archon of the place, and by systematizing their exertions,
and enlightening their views, encrease both their power and their use among
their fellow-cottagers. Many changes also now occurred in these spontaneous
regal elections: depositions and abdications were frequent, while, in the
place of the old and prudent, the ardent youth would step forward, eager for
action, regardless of danger. Often too, the voice to which all listened was
suddenly silenced, the helping hand cold, the sympathetic eye closed, and
the villagers feared still more the death that had selected a choice victim,
shivering in dust the heart that had beat for them, reducing to
incommunicable annihilation the mind for ever occupied with
projects for their welfare.
Whoever labours for man must often find ingratitude, watered by vice and
folly, spring from the grain which he has sown. [Death](grain.htm#Death),
which had in our younger days walked the earth like "a thief that comes in
the night,"(I Thessalonians
5:2) now, rising from his subterranean vault, girt with power,
with dark banner floating, came a conqueror. Many saw, seated above his
vice-regal throne, a supreme Providence, who directed his shafts, and guided
his progress, and they bowed their heads in resignation, or at least in
obedience. Others perceived only a passing casualty; they endeavoured to
exchange terror for heedlessness, and plunged into licentiousness, to avoid
the agonizing throes of worst apprehension. Thus, while the wise, the good,
and the prudent were occupied by the labours of benevolence, the truce of
winter produced other effects among the young, the thoughtless, and the
vicious. During the colder months there was a general rush to
London in search of amusement--the ties of public opinion were loosened;
many were rich, heretofore poor--many had lost father and mother, the
guardians of their morals, their mentors and restraints. It would have been
useless to have opposed these impulses by barriers, which would only have
driven those actuated by them to more pernicious indulgencies. The theatres
were open and thronged; dance and midnight festival were frequented--in many
of these decorum was violated, and the evils, which hitherto adhered to an
advanced state of civilization, were doubled. The student left his books,
the artist his study: the occupations of life were gone, but the amusements
remained; enjoyment might be protracted to the verge of the grave. All
factitious colouring disappeared--death rose like night, and, protected by
its murky shadows the blush of modesty, the reserve of pride, the decorum of
prudery were frequently thrown aside as useless veils.
This was not universal. Among better natures, anguish and dread, the fear of
eternal separation, and the awful wonder produced by unprecedented calamity,
drew closer the ties of kindred and friendship. Philosophers opposed their
principles, as barriers to the inundation of profligacy or despair, and the
only ramparts to protect the invaded territory of human life; the religious,
hoping now for their reward, clung fast to their creeds, as the rafts and
planks which over the tempest-vexed sea of suffering, would bear them in
safety to the harbour of the Unknown Continent. The loving heart, obliged to
contract its view, bestowed its overflow of affection in triple portion on
the few that remained. Yet, even among these, the present, as an unalienable
possession, became all of time to which they dared commit the precious
freight of their hopes.
The experience of immemorial time had taught us formerly to count our
enjoyments by years, and extend our prospect of life through a
lengthened period of progression and decay; the long road threaded a vast
labyrinth, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death,(Psalms 23:4) in which it terminated,
was hid by intervening objects. But an earthquake had changed the
scene--under our very feet the earth yawned--deep and precipitous the gulph
below opened to receive us, while the hours charioted us towards the chasm.
But it was winter now, and months must elapse before we are hurled from our
security. We became ephemera, to whom the interval between the rising and
setting sun was as a long drawn year of common time. We should never see our
children ripen into maturity, nor behold their downy cheeks roughen, their
blithe hearts subdued by passion or care; but we had them now--they lived,
and we lived--what more could we desire? With such schooling did my poor
Idris try to hush thronging fears, and in some measure succeeded. It was not
as in summer-time, when each hour might bring the dreaded fate--until
summer, we felt sure; and this certainty, short lived as it
must be, yet for awhile satisfied her maternal tenderness. I know not how to
express or communicate the sense of concentrated, intense, though evanescent
transport, that imparadized us in the present hour. Our joys were dearer
because we saw their end; they were keener because we felt, to its fullest
extent, their value; they were purer because their essence was sympathy--as
a meteor is brighter than a star, did the felicity of this winter contain in
itself the extracted delights of a long, long life.
How lovely is spring! As we looked from Windsor Terrace on the sixteen
fertile counties spread beneath,As pointed out by Blumberg and Crook (p. 214n), probably
"sixteen counties" should read "six counties." For the view from Windsor
Terrace, see the well-known painting by Benjamin West. speckled
by happy cottages and wealthier towns, all looked as in former years,
heart-cheering and fair. The land was ploughed, the slender blades of wheat
broke through the dark soil, the fruit trees were covered with buds, the
husbandman was abroad in the fields, the milk-maid tripped home with
well-filled pails, the swallows and martins struck the sunny pools with
their long, pointed wings, the new dropped lambs reposed on the
young grass, the tender growth of leaves--
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feedsA silent space with ever sprouting green.*Keats.
[from "Sleep and
Poetry"]
Man himself seemed to regenerate, and feel the frost of winter yield to an
elastic and warm renewal of life--reason told us that care and sorrow would
grow with the opening year--but how to believe the ominous voice breathed up
with pestiferous vapours from fear's dim cavern, while nature, laughing and
scattering from her green lap flowers, and fruits, and sparkling waters,
invited us to join the gay masque of young life she led upon the scene?
Where was the plague? "Here--every where!" one voice of horror and dismay
exclaimed, when in the pleasant days of a sunny May the Destroyer of man
brooded again over the earth, forcing the spirit to leave its organic chrysalis, and to enter upon an untried life. With one mighty
sweep of its potent weapon, all caution, all care, all prudence were
levelled low: death sat at the tables of the great, stretched itself on the
cottager's pallet, seized the dastard who fled, quelled the brave man who
resisted: despondency entered every heart, sorrow dimmed every eye.
Sights of woe now became familiar to me, and were I to tell all of anguish
and pain that I witnessed, of the despairing moans of age, and the more
terrible smiles of infancy in the bosom of horror, my reader, his limbs
quivering and his hair on end, would wonder how I did not, seized with
sudden frenzy, dash myself from some precipice, and so close my eyes for
ever on the sad end of the world. But the powers of love, poetry, and
creative fancy will dwell even beside the sick of the plague, with the
squalid, and with the dying. A feeling of devotion, of duty, of a high and
steady purpose, elevated me; a strange joy filled my heart. In the midst of saddest grief I seemed to tread air, while the spirit
of good shed round me an ambrosial atmosphere, which blunted the sting of
sympathy, and purified the air of sighs. If my wearied soul flagged in its
career, I thought of my loved home, of the casket that contained my
treasures, of the kiss of love and the filial caress, while my eyes were
moistened by purest dew, and my heart was at once softened and refreshed by
thrilling tenderness.
Maternal affection had not rendered Idris selfish; at the beginning of our
calamity she had, with thoughtless enthusiasm, devoted herself to the care
of the sick and helpless. I checked her; and she submitted to my rule. I
told her how the fear of her danger palsied my exertions, how the knowledge
of her safety strung my nerves to endurance. I shewed her the dangers which
her children incurred during her absence; and she at length agreed not to go
beyond the inclosure of the forest. Indeed, within the walls of the
CastleStanding on a
cliff above the Thames in Windsor Home Park, Windsor Castle has been the
residence of English rulers since William I. It was rebuilt or
refurbished by a long succession of them, notably in Mary Shelley's day
by George IV. It contains within its walls St. George's Chapel.
we had a colony of the unhappy, deserted by their relatives,
and in themselves helpless, sufficient to occupy her time and attention,
while ceaseless anxiety for my welfare and the health of her children,
however she strove to curb or conceal it, absorbed all her thoughts, and
undermined the vital principle. After watching over and providing for their
safety, her second care was to hide from me her anguish and tears. Each
night I returned to the Castle, and found there repose and love awaiting me.
Often I waited beside the bed of death till midnight, and through the
obscurity of rainy, cloudy nights rode many miles, sustained by one
circumstance only, the safety and sheltered repose of those I loved. If some
scene of tremendous agony shook my frame and fevered my brow, I would lay my
head on the lap of Idris, and the tumultuous pulses subsided into a
temperate flow--her smile could raise me from hopelessness, her embrace
bathe my sorrowing heart in calm peace.
Summer advanced, and, crowned with the sun's potent rays, plague shot her
unerring shafts over the earth. The nations beneath their influence bowed
their heads, and died. The corn that sprung up in plenty, lay in autumn
rotting on the ground, while the melancholy wretch who had gone out to
gather bread for his children, lay stiff and plague-struck in the furrow.
The green woods waved their boughs majestically, while the dying were spread
beneath their shade, answering the solemn melody with inharmonious cries.
The painted birds flitted through the shades; the careless deer reposed
unhurt upon the fern--the oxen and the horses strayed from their unguarded
stables, and grazed among the wheat, for death fell on man alone.
With summer and mortality grew our fears. My poor love and I looked at each
other, and our babes.--"We will save them, Idris," I said, "I will save
them. Years hence we shall recount to them our fears, then passed away with
their occasion. Though they only should remain on the earth,
still they shall live, nor shall their cheeks become pale nor their sweet
voices languish." Our eldest in some degree understood the scenes passing
around, and at times, he with serious looks questioned me concerning the
reason of so vast a desolation. But he was only ten years old; and the
hilarity of youth soon chased unreasonable care from his brow. Evelyn, a
laughing cherub, a gamesome infant, without idea of pain or sorrow, would,
shaking back his light curls from his eyes, make the halls re-echo with his
merriment, and in a thousand artless ways attract our attention to his play.
Clara, our lovely gentle Clara, was our stay, our solace, our delight. She
made it her task to attend the sick, comfort the sorrowing, assist the aged,
and partake the sports and awaken the gaiety of the young. She flitted
through the rooms, like a good spirit, dispatched from the celestial
kingdom, to illumine our dark hour with alien splendour. Gratitude and
praise marked where her footsteps had been. Yet, when she stood
in unassuming simplicity before us, playing with our children, or with
girlish assiduity performing little kind offices for Idris, one wondered in
what fair lineament of her pure loveliness, in what soft tone of her
thrilling voice, so much of heroism, sagacity and active goodness
resided.
The summer passed tediously, for we trusted that winter would at least check
the disease. That it would vanish altogether was an hope too dear--too
heartfelt, to be expressed. When such a thought was heedlessly uttered, the
hearers, with a gush of tears and passionate sobs, bore witness how deep
their fears were, how small their hopes. For my own part, my exertions for
the public good permitted me to observe more closely than most others, the
virulence and extensive ravages of our sightless enemy. A short month has
destroyed a village, and where in May the first person sickened, in June the
paths were deformed by unburied corpses--the houses tenantless, no smoke
arising from the chimneys; and the housewife's clock marked
only the hour when death had been triumphant. From such scenes I have
sometimes saved a deserted infant--sometimes led a young and grieving mother
from the lifeless image of her first born, or drawn the sturdy labourer from
childish weeping over his extinct family.
July is gone. August must pass, and by the middle of September we may hope.
Each day was eagerly counted; and the inhabitants of towns, desirous to leap
this dangerous interval, plunged into dissipation, and strove, by riot, and
what they wished to imagine to be pleasure, to banish thought and opiate
despair. None but Adrian could have tamed the motley population of London,
which, like a troop of unbitted steeds rushing to their pastures, had thrown
aside all minor fears, through the operation of the fear paramount. Even
Adrian was obliged in part to yield, that he might be able, if not to guide,
at least to set bounds to the license of the times. The theatres were kept
open; every place of public resort was frequented; though he
endeavoured so to modify them, as might best quiet the agitation of the
spectators, and at the same time prevent a reaction of misery when the
excitement was over. Tragedies deep and dire were the chief favourites.
Comedy brought with it too great a contrast to the inner despair: when such
were attempted, it was not unfrequent for a comedian, in the midst of the
laughter occasioned by his disporportioned buffoonery, to find a word or
thought in his part that jarred with his own sense of wretchedness, and
burst from mimic merriment into sobs and tears, while the spectators, seized
with irresistible sympathy, wept, and the pantomimic revelry was changed to
a real exhibition of tragic passion.
It was not in my nature to derive consolation from such scenes; from
theatres, whose buffoon laughter and discordant mirth awakened distempered
sympathy, or where fictitious tears and wailings mocked the heart-felt grief
within; from festival or crowded meeting, where hila-rity
sprung from the worst feelings of our nature, or such enthralment of the
better ones, as impressed it with garish and false varnish; from assemblies
of mourners in the guise of revellers. Once however I witnessed a scene of
singular interest at one of the theatres, where nature overpowered art, as
an overflowing cataract will tear away the puny manufacture of a mock
cascade, which had before been fed by a small portion of its waters.
I had come to London to see Adrian. He was not at the palace; and, though the
attendants did not know whither he had gone, they did not expect him till
late at night. It was between six and seven o'clock, a fine summer
afternoon, and I spent my leisure hours in a ramble through the empty
streets of London; now turning to avoid an approaching funeral, now urged by
curiosity to observe the state of a particular spot; my wanderings were
instinct with pain, for silence and desertion characterized every place I
visited, and the few beings I met were so pale and woe-begone,
so marked with care and depressed by fear, that weary of encountering only
signs of misery, I began to retread my steps towards home.
I was now in Holborn, and passed by a public house filled with uproarious
companions, whose songs, laughter, and shouts were more sorrowful than the
pale looks and silence of the mourner. Such an one was near, hovering round
this house. The sorry plight of her dress displayed her poverty, she was
ghastly pale, and continued approaching, first the window and then the door
of the house, as if fearful, yet longing to enter. A sudden burst of song
and merriment seemed to sting her to the heart; she murmured, "Can he have
the heart?" and then mustering her courage, she stepped within the
threshold. The landlady met her in the passage; the poor creature asked, "Is
my husband here? Can I see George?"
"See him," cried the woman, "yes, if you go to him; last night
he was taken with the plague, and we sent him to the hospital."
The unfortunate inquirer staggered against a wall, a faint cry escaped
her--"O! were you cruel enough," she exclaimed, "to send him there?"
The landlady meanwhile hurried away; but a more compassionate bar-maid gave
her a detailed account, the sum of which was, that her husband had been
taken ill, after a night of riot, and sent by his boon companions with all
expedition to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I had watched this scene, for
there was a gentleness about the poor woman that interested me; she now
tottered away from the door, walking as well as she could down Holborn Hill;
but her strength soon failed her; she leaned against a wall, and her head
sunk on her bosom, while her pallid cheek became still more white. I went up
to her and offered my services. She hardly looked up--"You can do me no
good," she replied; "I must go to the hospital; if I do not die
before I get there."
There were still a few hackney-coaches accustomed to stand about the streets,
more truly from habit than for use. I put her in one of these, and entered
with her that I might secure her entrance into the hospital. Our way was
short, and she said little; except interrupted ejaculations of reproach that
he had left her, exclamations on the unkindness of some of his friends, and
hope that she would find him alive. There was a simple, natural earnestness
about her that interested me in her fate, especially when she assured me
that her husband was the best of men,--had been so, till want of business
during these unhappy times had thrown him into bad company. "He could not
bear to come home," she said, "only to see our children die. A man cannot
have the patience a mother has, with her own flesh and blood."
We were set down at St. Bartholomew's, and entered the wretched precincts of
the house of disease. The poor creature clung closer to me, as
she saw with what heartless haste they bore the dead from the wards, and
took them into a room, whose half-opened door displayed a number of corpses,
horrible to behold by one unaccustomed to such scenes. We were directed to
the ward where her husband had been first taken, and still was, the nurse
said, if alive. My companion looked eagerly from one bed to the other, till
at the end of the ward she espied, on a wretched bed, a squalid, haggard
creature, writhing under the torture of disease. She rushed towards him, she
embraced him, blessing God for his preservation.
The enthusiasm that inspired her with this strange joy, blinded her to the
horrors about her; but they were intolerably agonizing to me. The ward was
filled with an effluvia that caused my heart to heave with painful qualms.
The dead were carried out, and the sick brought in, with like indifference;
some were screaming with pain, others laughing from the influence of more terrible delirium; some were attended by weeping,
despairing relations, others called aloud with thrilling tenderness or
reproach on the friends who had deserted them, while the nurses went from
bed to bed, incarnate images of despair, neglect, and death. I gave gold to
my luckless companion; I recommended her to the care of the attendants; I
then hastened away; while the tormentor, the imagination, busied itself in
picturing my own loved ones, stretched on such beds, attended thus. The
country afforded no such mass of horrors; solitary wretches died in the open
fields; and I have found a survivor in a vacant village, contending at once
with famine and disease; but the assembly of pestilence, the banqueting hall
of death, was spread only in London.
I rambled on, oppressed, distracted by painful emotions--suddenly I found
myself before Drury Lane Theatre. The play was Macbeth--the first actor of
the age was there to exert his powers to drug with irreflection the
auditors; such a medicine I yearned for, so I entered. The
theatre was tolerably well filled. Shakspeare, whose popularity was
established by the approval of four centuries, had not lost his influence
even at this dread period; but was still "Ut magus," the wizard to rule our
hearts and govern our imaginations. I came in during the interval between
the third and fourth act. I looked round on the audience; the females were
mostly of the lower classes, but the men were of all ranks, come hither to
forget awhile the protracted scenes of wretchedness, which awaited them at
their miserable homes. The curtain drew up, and the stage presented the
scene of the witches' cave. The wildness and supernatural machinery of
Macbeth, was a pledge that it could contain little directly connected with
our present circumstances. Great pains had been taken in the scenery to give
the semblance of reality to the impossible. The extreme darkness of the
stage, whose only light was received from the fire under the cauldron, joined to a kind of mist that floated about it, rendered the
unearthlyunearthly [1826:
unearthy] shapes of the witches obscure and shadowy. It was not
threethree [1826:
there] decrepid old hags that bent over their pot throwing in the
grim ingredients of the magic charm, but forms frightful, unreal, and
fanciful. The entrance of Hecate, and the wild music that followed, took us
out of this world. The cavern shape the stage assumed, the beetling rocks,
the glare of the fire, the misty shades that crossed the scene at times, the
music in harmony with all witch-like fancies, permitted the imagination to
revel, without fear of contradiction, or reproof from reason or the heart.
The entrance of Macbeth did not destroy the illusion, for he was actuated by
the same feelings that inspired us, and while the work of magic proceeded we
sympathized in his wonder and his daring, and gave ourselves up with our
whole souls to the influence of scenic delusion. I felt the beneficial
result of such excitement, in a renewal of those pleasing flights of fancy
to which I had long been a stranger. The effect of this scene
of incantation communicated a portion of its power to that which followed.
We forgot that Malcolm and Macduff were mere human beings, acted upon by
such simple passions as warmed our own breasts. By slow degrees however we
were drawn to the real interest of the scene. A shudder like the swift
passing of an electric shock ran through the house, when Rosse exclaimed, in
answer to "Stands Scotland where it did?"
Alas, poor country;Almost afraid to know itself! It cannotBe called our mother, but our grave: where nothing,But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air,Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seemsA modern extasy: the dead man's knellIs there scarce asked, for who; and good men's livesExpire before the flowers in their caps,Dying, or ere they sicken.*(Shakespeare,
Macbeth, IV.3.164-73)External link:
the [complete play](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/index.html).
Each word struck the sense, as our life's passing bell; we feared to look at
each other, but bent our gaze on the stage, as if our eyes could fall
innocuous on that alone. The person who played the part of
Rosse, suddenly became aware of the dangerous ground he trod. He was an
inferior actor, but truth now made him excellent; as he went on to announce
to Macduff the slaughter of his family, he was afraid to speak, trembling
from apprehension of a burst of grief from the audience, not from his
fellow-mime. Each word was drawn out with difficulty; real anguish painted
his features; his eyes were now lifted in sudden horror, now fixed in dread
upon the ground. This shew of terror encreased ours, we gasped with him,
each neck was stretched out, each face changed with the actor's changes--at
length while Macduff, who, attending to his part, was unobservant of the
high wrought sympathy of the house, cried with well acted passion:
All my pretty ones?Did you say all?--O hell kite! All?What! all my pretty chickens, and their dam,At one fell swoop!*(Shakespeare,
Macbeth, IV.3.216-19)External link: [the
complete play](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/index.html).
A pang of tameless grief wrenched every heart, a burst of despair was echoed
from every lip.--I had entered into the universal feeling--I
had been absorbed by the terrors of Rosse--I re-echoed the cry of Macduff,
and then rushed out as from an hell of torture, to find calm in the free air
and silent street.
Free the air was not, or the street silent. Oh, how I longed then for the
dear soothings of maternal Nature, as my wounded heart was still further
stung by the roar of heartless merriment from the public-house, by the sight
of the drunkard reeling home, having lost the memory of what he would find
there in oblivious debauch, and by the more appalling salutations of those
melancholy beings to whom the name of home was a mockery. I ran on at my
utmost speed until I found myself I knew not how, close to Westminster
Abbey, and was attracted by the deep and swelling tone of the organ.Mary Shelley's friend, the
musician Vincent Novello, was organist at the Portuguese Embassy
chapel. Shelley frequently went to hear him play there during the
time she was composing
The Last Man;
indeed, his music, particularly his playing on the organ of his own
adaptation of Haydn's [Creation](haydn.htm),
seems to have helped inspire the book.
In fact, [shifting kinds
of music](music.htm)
play a structural role in the narrative action as a
whole.
I entered with soothing awe the lighted chancel, and
listened to the solemn religious chaunt,
Music in
The Last
ManAmong critics of Mary Shelley, Jean de Palacio has
most thoroughly examined the importance of music in the novel,
beginning with the role of Vincent Novello's music organ music in
inspiring its composition.
Within the narrative, Lionel Verney
claims musical inspiration for his own writing (I.10), and
implicitly, therefore, for the narrative we are reading. In
addition, allusions to composers and works form a kind of imaginary
score for the action. As Palacio charts it (p. 329), we move from
simple melodies and songs at Windsor (I.6), to the more
sophisticated operas of Mozart--
Figaro
and Don Giovanni (I.9)--to "solemn
music" at the end of Volume I, the exotic Weber piece, Abou Hassan early in Volume II, and the
sacred organ music in London's Westminster Abbey. Then, after
Verney's "Farewell to music" early in Volume III, there is the final
crucial scene in Switzerland surrounding Haydn's Creation. which spoke peace
and hope to the unhappy. The notes, freighted with man's dearest prayers,
re-echoed through the dim aisles, and the bleeding of the
soul's wounds was staunched by heavenly balm. In spite of the misery I
deprecated, and could not understand; in spite of the cold hearths of wide
London, and the corpse-strewn fields of my native land; in spite of all the
variety of agonizing emotions I had that evening experienced, I thought that
in reply to our melodious adjurations, the Creator looked down in compassion
and promise of relief; the awful peal of the heaven-winged music seemed
fitting voice wherewith to commune with the Supreme; calm was produced by
its sound, and by the sight of many other human creatures offering up
prayers and submission with me. A sentiment approaching happiness followed
the total resignation of one's being to the guardianship of the world's
ruler. Alas! with the failing of this solemn strain, the elevated spirit
sank again to earth. Suddenly one of the choristers died--he was lifted from
his desk, the vaults below were hastily opened--he was consigned
with a few muttered prayers to the darksome cavern, abode of thousands
who had gone before--now wide yawning to receive even all who fulfilled the
funeral rites. In vain I would then have turned from this scene, to darkened
aisle or lofty dome, echoing with melodious praise. In the open air alone I
found relief; among nature's beauteous works, her God reassumed his
attribute of benevolence, and again I could trust that he who built up the
mountains, planted the forests, and poured out the rivers, would erect
another state for lost humanity, where we might awaken again to our
affections, our happiness, and our faith.
Fortunately for me those circumstances were of rare occurrence that obliged
me to visit London,The
action of the early portion of the novel is divided between
Cumberland, Windsor, and London, following to some extent the
traditional rhythm of town and country existence in the nineteenth
century, the sporting, social, and artistic "season," which was tied
to the political calendar. The aristocracy and gentry usually came
into London from country estates in the winter, in anticipation of
the opening of Parliament.
This orderly structure of
existence, reflecting relatively stable relations among the social
classes, is eventually disrupted in the novel, the seasonal
migration back and forth giving way to more extreme
wanderings.
and my duties were confined to the rural
district which our lofty castleStanding on a cliff above the Thames in Windsor Home Park,
Windsor Castle has been the residence of English rulers since William I.
It was rebuilt or refurbished by a long succession of them, notably in
Mary Shelley's day by George IV. It contains within its walls [St.
George's Chapel](sgeorg.htm). overlooked; and here labour stood in the place of pastime, to
occupy such of the country people as were sufficiently exempt from sorrow or
disease. My endeavours were directed towards urging them to
their usual attention to their crops, and to the acting as if pestilence did
not exist. The mower's scythe was at times heard; yet the joyless
haymakershaymakers [1826:
haymakers' (probable printer's error, on false analogy with "mower's"
above)] after they had listlessly turned the grass, forgot to
cart it; the shepherd, when he had sheared his sheep, would let the wool lie
to be scattered by the winds, deeming it useless to provide clothing for
another winter. At times however the spirit of life was awakened by these
employments; the sun, the refreshing breeze, the sweet smell of the hay, the
rustling leaves and prattling rivulets brought repose to the agitated bosom,
and bestowed a feeling akin to happiness on the apprehensive. Nor, strange
to say, was the time without its pleasures. Young couples, who had loved
long and hopelessly, suddenly found every impediment removed, and wealth
pour in from the death of relatives. The very danger drew them closer. The
immediate peril urged them to seize the immediate opportunity; wildly and
passionately they sought to know what delights existence
afforded, before they yielded to death, and
Snatching their pleasures with rough strifeThorough the iron gates of life,*Andrew Marvell.
[from "To His Coy
Mistress"]
they defied the conquering pestilence to destroy what had been, or to erase
even from their death-bed thoughts the sentiment of happiness which had been
theirs.
One instance of this kind came immediately under our notice, where a
high-born girl had in early youth given her heart to one of meaner
extraction. He was a schoolfellow and friend of her brother's, and usually
spent a part of the holidays at the mansion of the duke her father. They had
played together as children, been the confidants of each other's little
secrets, mutual aids and consolers in difficulty and sorrow. Love had crept
in, noiseless, terrorless at first, till each felt their life bound up in
the other, and at the same time knew that they must part. Their
extreme youth, and the purity of their attachment, made them yield with less
resistance to the tyranny of circumstances. The father of the fair Juliet
separated them; but not until the young lover had promised to remain absent
only till he had rendered himself worthy of her, and she had vowed to
preserve her virgin heart, his treasure, till he returned to claim and
possess it.
Plague came, threatening to destroy at once the aim of the ambitious and the
hopes of love. Long the Duke of L ---- derided the idea that there could be
danger while he pursued his plans of cautious seclusion; and he so far
succeeded, that it was not till this second summer, that the destroyer, at
one fell stroke, overthrew his precautions, his security, and his life. Poor
Juliet saw one by one, father, mother, brothers, and sisters, sicken and
die. Most of the servants fled on the first appearance of disease, those who
remained were infected mortally; no neighbour or rustic ventured within the verge of contagion. By a strange fatality Juliet alone
escaped, and she to the last waited on her relatives, and smoothed the
pillow of death. The moment at length came, when the last blow was given to
the last of the house: the youthful survivor of her race sat alone among the
dead. There was no living being near to soothe her, or withdraw her from
this hideous company. With the declining heat of a September night, a
whirlwind of storm, thunder, and hail, rattled round the house, and with
ghastly harmony sung the dirge of her family. She sat upon the ground
absorbed in wordless despair, when through the gusty wind and bickering rain
she thought she heard her name called. Whose could that familiar voice be?
Not one of her relations, for they lay glaring on her with stony eyes. Again
her name was syllabled, and she shuddered as she asked herself, am I
becoming mad, or am I dying, that I hear the voices of the departed? A
second thought passed, swift as an arrow, into her brain; she rushed to the
window; and a flash of lightning shewed to her the expected
vision, her lover in the shrubbery beneath; joy lent her strength to descend
the stairs, to open the door, and then she fainted in his supporting
arms.
A thousand times she reproached herself, as with a crime, that she should
revive to happiness with him. The natural clinging of the human mind to life
and joy was in its full energy in her young heart; she gave herself
impetuously up to the enchantment: they were married; and in their radiant
features I saw incarnate, for the last time, the spirit of love, of
rapturous sympathy, which once had been the life of the world.
I envied them, but felt how impossible it was to imbibe the same feeling, now
that years had multiplied my ties in the world. Above all, the anxious
mother, my own beloved and drooping Idris, claimed my earnest care; I could
not reproach the anxiety that never for a moment slept in her heart, but I
exerted myself to distract her attention from too keen an observation of the truth of things, of the near and nearer approaches of
disease, misery, and death, of the wild look of our attendants as
intelligence of another and yet another death reached us; for to the last
something new occurred that seemed to transcend in horror all that had gone
before. Wretched beings crawled to die under our succouring roof; the
inhabitants of the Castle decreased daily, while the survivors huddled
together in fear, and, as in a famine-struck boat, the sport of the wild,
interminable waves, each looked in the other's face, to guess on whom the
death-lot would next fall. All this I endeavoured to veil, so that it might
least impress my Idris; yet, as I have said, my courage survived even
despair: I might be vanquished, but I would not yield.
One day, it was the ninth of September, seemed devoted to every disaster, to
every harrowing incident. Early in the day, I heard of the arrival of the
aged grandmother of one of our servants at the Castle. This old
woman had reached her hundredth year; her skin was shrivelled, her form was
bent and lost in extreme decrepitude; but as still from year to year she
continued in existence, out-living many younger and stronger, she began to
feel as if she were to live for ever. The plague came, and the inhabitants
of her village died. Clinging, with the dastard feeling of the aged, to the
remnant of her spent life, she had, on hearing that the pestilence had come
into her neighbourhood, barred her door, and closed her casement, refusing
to communicate with any. She would wander out at night to get food, and
returned home, pleased that she had met no one, that she was in no danger
from the plague. As the earth became more desolate, her difficulty in
acquiring sustenance increased; at first, her son, who lived near, had
humoured her by placing articles of food in her way: at last he died. But,
even though threatened by famine, her fear of the plague was paramount; and
her greatest care was to avoid her fellow creatures. She grew
weaker each day, and each day she had further to go. The night before, she
had reached Datchet;A village
in Buckinghamshire, about two miles east of [Windsor](windmap.htm). and, prowling about, had found a baker's shop open and
deserted. Laden with spoil, she hastened to return, and lost her way. The
night was windless, hot, and cloudy; her load became too heavy for her; and
one by one she threw away her loaves, still endeavouring to get along,
though her hobbling fell into lameness, and her weakness at last into
inability to move.
She lay down among the tall corn, and fell asleep. Deep in midnight, she was
awaked by a rustling near her; she would have started up, but her stiff
joints refused to obey her will. A low moan close to her ear followed, and
the rustling increased; she heard a smothered voice breathe out, Water,
Water! several times; and then again a sigh heaved from the heart of the
sufferer. The old woman shuddered, she contrived at length to sit upright;
but her teeth chattered, and her knees knocked together--close, very close,
lay a half-naked figure, just discernible in the gloom, and the
cry for water and the stifled moan were again uttered. Her motions at length
attracted the attention of her unknown companion; her hand was seized with a
convulsive violence that made the grasp feel like iron, the fingers like the
keen teeth of a trap.--"At last you are come!" were the words given
forth--but this exertion was the last effort of the dying--the joints
relaxed, the figure fell prostrate, one low moan, the last, marked the
moment of death. Morning broke; and the old woman saw the corpse, marked
with the fatal disease, close to her; her wrist was livid with the hold
loosened by death. She felt struck by the plague; her aged frame was unable
to bear her away with sufficient speed; and now, believing herself infected,
she no longer dreaded the association of others; but, as swiftly as she
might, came to her grand-daughter, at Windsor Castle, there to lament and
die. The sight was horrible; still she clung to life, and lamented her
mischance with cries and hideous groans; while the swift
advance of the disease shewed, what proved to be the fact, that she could
not survive many hours.
While I was directing that the necessary care should be taken of her, Clara
came in; she was trembling and pale; and, when I anxiously asked her the
cause of her agitation, she threw herself into my arms weeping and
exclaiming--"Uncle, dearest uncle, do not hate me for ever! I must tell you,
for you must know, that Evelyn, poor little Evelyn"--her voice was choked by
sobs. The fear of so mighty a calamity as the loss of our adored infant made
the current of my blood pause with chilly horror; but the remembrance of the
mother restored my presence of mind. I sought the little bed of my darling;
he was oppressed by fever; but I trusted, I fondly and fearfully trusted,
that there were no symptoms of the plague. He was not three years old, and
his illness appeared only one of those attacks incident to infancy. I
watched him long--his heavy half-closed lids, his burning cheeks and restless twining of his small fingers--the fever was violent,
the torpor complete--enough, without the greater fear of pestilence, to
awaken alarm. Idris must not see him in this state. Clara, though only
twelve years old, was rendered, through extreme sensibility, so prudent and
careful, that I felt secure in entrusting the charge of him to her, and it
was my task to prevent Idris from observing their absence. I administered
the fitting remedies, and left my sweet niece to watch beside him, and bring
me notice of any change she should observe.
I then went to Idris, contriving in my way, plausible excuses for remaining
all day in the Castle, and endeavouring to disperse the traces of care from
my brow. Fortunately she was not alone. I found Merrival, the astronomer,
with her. He was far too long sighted in his view of humanity to heed the
casualties of the day, and lived in the midst of contagion unconscious of
its existence. This poor man, learned as La Place,Pierre Simon, marquis de La Place (1749-1827),
French astronomer and mathemetician, who extended Newton's insights in
his best known work, Exposition du système du
monde (1796), formulating a theory of the origin of the
solar system. guileless and unforeseeing as a child, had often been on the point of starvation, he, his pale wife and
numerous offspring, while he neither felt hunger, nor observed distress. His
astronomical theories absorbed him; calculations were scrawled with coal on
the bare walls of his garret: a hard-earned guinea, or an article of dress,
was exchanged for a book without remorse; he neither heard his children cry,
nor observed his companion's emaciated form, and the excess of calamity was
merely to him as the occurrence of a cloudy night, when he would have given
his right hand to observe a celestial phenomenon. His wife was one of those
wondrous beings, to be found only among women, with affections not to be
diminished by misfortune. Her mind was divided between boundless admiration
for her husband, and tender anxiety for her children--she waited on him,
worked for them, and never complained, though care rendered her life one
long-drawn, melancholy dream.
He had introduced himself to Adrian, by a request he made to
observe some planetary motions from his glass. His poverty was easily
detected and relieved. He often thanked us for the books we lent him, and
for the use of our instruments, but never spoke of his altered abode or
change of circumstances. His wife assured us, that he had not observed any
difference, except in the absence of the children from his study, and to her
infinite surprise he complained of this unaccustomed quiet.
He came now to announce to us the completion of his Essay on the Pericyclical
Motions of the Earth's Axis, and the precession of the equinoctial points.
If an old Roman of the period of the Republic had returned to life, and
talked of the impending election of some laurel-crowned consul, or of the
last battle with Mithridates, his ideas would not have been more alien to
the times, than the conversation of Merrival. Man, no longer with an
appetite for sympathy, clothed his thoughts in visible signs; nor were there
any readers left: while each one, having thrown away his sword
with opposing shield alone, awaited the plague, Merrival talked of the state
of mankind six thousand years hence. He might with equal interest to us,
have added a commentary, to describe the unknown and unimaginable lineaments
of the creatures, who would then occupy the vacated dwelling of mankind. We
had not the heart to undeceive the poor old man; and at the moment I came
in, he was reading parts of his book to Idris, asking what answer could be
given to this or that position.
Idris could not refrain from a smile, as she listened; she had already
gathered from him that his family was alive and in health; though not apt to
forget the precipice of time on which she stood, yet I could perceive that
she was amused for a moment, by the contrast between the contracted view we
had so long taken of human life, and the seven league strides with which
Merrival paced a coming eternity. I was glad to see her smile, because it
assured me of her total ignorance of her infant's danger: but I
shuddered to think of the revulsion that would be occasioned by a discovery
of the truth. While Merrival was talking, Clara softly opened a door behind
Idris, and beckoned me to come with a gesture and look of grief. A mirror
betrayed the sign to Idris--she started up. To suspect evil, to perceive
that, Alfred being with us, the danger must regard her youngest darling, to
fly across the long chambers into his apartment, was the work but of a
moment. There she beheld her Evelyn lying fever-stricken and motionless. I
followed her, and strove to inspire more hope than I could myself entertain;
but she shook her head mournfully. Anguish deprived her of presence of mind;
she gave up to me and Clara the physician's and nurse's parts; she sat by
the bed, holding one little burning hand, and, with glazed eyes fixed on her
babe, passed the long day in one unvaried agony. It was not the plague that
visited our little boy so roughly; but she could not listen to my
assurances; apprehension deprived her of judg-ment and
reflection; every slight convulsion of her child's features shook her
frame--if he moved, she dreaded the instant crisis; if he remained still,
she saw death in his torpor, and the cloud on her brow darkened.
The poor little thing's fever encreased towards night. The sensation is most
dreary, to use no stronger term, with which one looks forward to passing the
long hours of night beside a sick bed, especially if the patient be an
infant, who cannot explain its pain, and whose flickering life resembles the
wasting flame of the watch-light,
Whose narrow fireIs shaken by the wind, and on whose edgeDevouring darkness hovers.* The Cenci.
[III.3.9-11]
[External link: [the
complete play](http://www.bartleby.com/18/4/).]
With eagerness one turns toward the east, with angry impatience one marks the
unchequered darkness; the crowing of a cock, that sound of glee during
day-time, comes wailing and untuneable--the creaking of rafters, and
slight stir of invisible insect is heard and felt as the
signal and type of desolation. Clara, overcome by weariness, had seated
herself at the foot of her cousin's bed, and in spite of her efforts slumber
weighed down her lids; twice or thrice she shook it off; but at length she
was conquered and slept. Idris sat at the bedside, holding Evelyn's hand; we
were afraid to speak to each other; I watched the stars--I hung over my
child--I felt his little pulse--I drew near the mother--again I receded. At
the turn of morning a gentle sigh from the patient attracted me, the burning
spot on his cheek faded--his pulse beat softly and regularly--torpor yielded
to sleep. For a long time I dared not hope; but when his unobstructed
breathing and the moisture that suffused his forehead, were tokens no longer
to be mistaken of the departure of mortal malady, I ventured to whisper the
news of the change to Idris, and at length succeeded in persuading her that
I spoke truth.
But neither this assurance, nor the speedy con-valescence of our
child could restore her, even to the portion of peace she before enjoyed.
Her fear had been too deep, too absorbing, too entire, to be changed to
security. She felt as if during her past calm she had dreamed, but was now
awake; she was
As oneIn some lone watch-tower on the deep, awakenedFrom soothing visions of the home he loves,Trembling to hear the wrathful billows roar;*[The Bride's Tragedy](bride.htm#lone), by T.L. Beddoes, Esq.as one who has been cradled by a storm, and awakes to find the vessel
sinking. Before, she had been visited by pangs of fear--now, she never
enjoyed an interval of hope. No smile of the heart ever irradiated her fair
countenance; sometimes she forced one, and then gushing tears would flow,
and the sea of grief close above these wrecks of past happiness. Still while
I was near her, she could not be in utter despair--she fully confided
herself to me--she did not seem to fear my death, or revert to its
possibility; to my guardianship she consigned the full
freight of her anxieties, reposing on my love, as a wind-nipped fawn by the
side of a doe, as a wounded nestling under its mother's wing, as a tiny,
shattered boat, quivering still, beneath some protecting willow-tree. While
I, not proudly as in days of joy, yet tenderly, and with glad consciousness
of the comfort I afforded, drew my trembling girl close to my heart, and
tried to ward every painful thought or rough circumstance from her sensitive
nature.
One other incident occurred at the end of this summer. The Countess of
Windsor, Ex-Queen of England,In more than one particular, but including her origins as royalty of
Austria, the ex-Queen of England resembles the historical figure of
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France at the time of the Revolution.
returned from Germany. She had at the beginning of the season quitted the
vacant city of Vienna; and, unable to tame her haughty mind to anything like
submission, she had delayed at Hamburgh, and, when at last she came to
London, many weeks elapsed before she gave Adrian notice of her arrival. In
spite of her coldness and long absence, he welcomed her with sensibility,
displaying such affection as sought to heal the wounds of pride
and sorrow, and was repulsed only by her total apparent want of sympathy.
Idris heard of her mother's return with pleasure. Her own maternal feelings
were so ardent, that she imagined her parent must now, in this waste world,
have lost pride and harshness, and would receive with delight her filial
attentions. The first check to her duteous demonstrations was a formal
intimation from the fallen majesty of England, that I was in no manner to be
intruded upon her. She consented, she said, to forgive her daughter, and
acknowledge her grandchildren; larger concessions must not be expected.
To me this proceeding appeared (if so light a term may be permitted)
extremely whimsical. Now that the race of man had lost in fact all
distinction of rank, this pride was doubly fatuitous; now that we felt a
kindred, fraternal nature with all who bore the stamp of humanity, this
angry reminiscence of times for ever gone, was worse than foolish. Idris was
too much taken up by her own dreadful fears, to be angry,
hardly grieved; for she judged that insensibility must be the source of this
continued rancour. This was not altogether the fact: but predominant
self-will assumed the arms and masque of callous feeling; and the haughty
lady disdained to exhibit any token of the struggle she endured; while the
slave of pride, she fancied that she sacrificed her happiness to immutable
principle.
False was all this--false all but the affections of our nature, and the links
of sympathy with pleasure or pain. There was but one good and one evil in
the world--life and death. The pomp of rank, the assumption of power, the
possessions of wealth vanished like morning mist. One living beggar had
become of more worth than a national peerage of dead lords--alas the
day!--than of dead heroes, patriots, or men of genius. There was much of
degradation in this: for even vice and virtue had lost their
attributes--life--life--the continuation of our animal mechanism--was [the
Alpha and Omega of the desires, the prayers, the prostrate ambition of human
race](grain.htm).