Both Hunt and Trelawny say that Percy is much improved since Maria left me. He is affectionately attached to Sylvan, and very fond of Bimbo nuovo. He kisses him by the hour, and tells me, Come il Signore Enrico ha comprato un Baby nuovo—forse ti darà il Baby vecchio, as he gives away an old toy on the appearance of a new one.
I will not write longer. In conversation, nay, almost in thought, I can, at this most painful moment, force my excited feelings to laugh at themselves, and my spirits, raised by emotion, to seem as if they were light, but the natural current and real hue overflows me and penetrates me when I write, and it would be painful to you, and overthrow all my hopes of retaining my fortitude, if I were to write one word that truly translated the agitation I suffer into language.
I will write again from Lyons, where I suppose I shall be on the 3d of August. Dear Jane, can I render you happier than you are? The idea of that might console me, at least you will see one that truly loves you, and who is for ever your affectionately attached
Mary Shelley.
If there is any talk of my accommodations, pray tell Mrs. Gisborne that I cannot sleep on any but a hard bed. I care not how hard, so that it be a mattress.
And now Mary’s life in Italy was at an end. Her resolution of returning to England had been welcomed by her father in the letter which follows, and it was to his house, and not to Mrs. Gisborne’s that she finally decided to go on first arriving.
Godwin to Mary.
No. 195 Strand, 6th May 1823.
It certainly is, my dear Mary, with great pleasure that I anticipate that we shall once again meet. It is a long, long time now since you have spent one night under my roof. You are grown a woman, have been a wife, a mother, a widow. You have realised talents which I but faintly and doubtfully anticipated. I am grown an old man, and want a child of my own to smile on and console me. I shall then feel less alone than I do at present.
What William will be, I know not; he has sufficient understanding and quickness for the ordinary concerns of life, and something more; and, at any rate, he is no smiler, no consoler.