FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86  
87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   >>   >|  
men--the bible would call it by its proper name, lust." So wrote Trelawny in 1869 (he had recovered his style) to Claire Clairmont. His letters to her, now published for the first time, compose the largest and liveliest part of the volume. If he cared for one woman more than another, we believe that woman was Claire. She was not good, but she has been more than sufficiently reviled. For Trelawny that she was beautiful sufficed; let it satisfy the vindictiveness of virtue that she suffered horribly. What precisely was the degree of their intimacy is not clear; but, in view of Claire's reputation and certain passages in these letters, it is perhaps not unfair to suppose that at any rate for a short time in the year 1822 she was his mistress. Be that as it may, after Shelley's death they parted, and doubtless it will be said she treated her lover ill. To us it appears that he gave as good as he got. She was mercenary, and he was inconstant. If we read Letter XX aright, when she did offer, after some months of prudent dalliance, to live with him at Florence, he replied that he had but L500 a year, which was not enough for two. An establishment on the confines of respectability was the last thing he desired. Neither ever loved truly; but Trelawny, for a time, felt violent physical passion for the woman whose head and shoulders remind us of what dealers call a Giorgione. Such is the story, so far as we can deduce it from these letters; each, if our conjecture serve, was partially satisfied, for in money matters Trelawny always treated his lady handsomely, though he could not or would not give her what most she wanted--material security. He never lost his taste for Claire; and on the ruins of their bitter and agitated relations was built a kind of friendship, in which expansion and intimacy and malice were all possible, and which is aptly commemorated by these vivid and entertaining letters. As for Mary, her character deteriorated and Trelawny's judgment grew more acute. Her corners grew more brutally protuberant beneath the tissue of glamour cast over them by a name. To her also Trelawny's purse was open; but long before the quarrel over "Queen Mab" his generous spirit had begun to groan under her prim banality, and to express itself in ungenerous backbitings. His final estimate he imparted to Claire when he was seventy-eight years old, and it remains for those who dislike to disprove it: "Mary Shelley's j
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86  
87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Trelawny
 

Claire

 

letters

 

intimacy

 

treated

 
Shelley
 
estimate
 

wanted

 
material
 

security


handsomely

 

relations

 
agitated
 

backbitings

 
bitter
 

matters

 
Giorgione
 
shoulders
 

remind

 

imparted


dealers

 

deduce

 

partially

 

satisfied

 

friendship

 

conjecture

 

malice

 

glamour

 

tissue

 

beneath


brutally

 
protuberant
 

dislike

 

spirit

 

generous

 
quarrel
 

corners

 
commemorated
 

ungenerous

 
entertaining

disprove
 

banality

 
remains
 
judgment
 

deteriorated

 

seventy

 
express
 

character

 
expansion
 

virtue