My dear Mary—My brain is already dizzy with business and writing. I am transformed from the listless being you knew me to one of all energy and fire. Not content with the Camp, I must needs be a great diplomatist, I am again, dear Mary, in my element, and playing no second part in Greece. If I live, the outcast Reginald will cut his name out on the Grecian hills, or set on its plains. I have had the merit of discovering and bringing out a noble fellow, a gallant soldier, and a man of most wonderful mind, with as little bigotry as Shelley, and nearly as much imagination; he is a glorious being. I have lived with him—he calls me brother—wants to connect me with his family. We have been inseparable now for eight months—fought side by side. But I am sick at heart with losing my friend,[8]—for still I call him so, you know, with all his weakness, you know I loved him. I cannot live with men for years without feeling—it is weak, it is want of judgment, of philosophy,—but this is my weakness. Dear Mary, if you love me,—write—write—write, for my heart yearns after you. I certainly must have you and Jane out. I am serious.
This is the place after my own heart, and I am certain of our good cause triumphing. Believe nothing you hear; Gamba will tell you everything about me—about Lord Byron, but he knows nothing of Greece—nothing; nor does it appear any one else does by what I see published. Colonel Stanhope is here; he is a good fellow, and does much good. The loan is achieved, and that sets the business at rest, but it is badly done—the Commissioners are bad. A word as to your wooden god, Mavrocordato. He is a miserable Jew, and I hope, ere long, to see his head removed from his worthless and heartless body. He is a mere shuffling soldier, an aristocratic brute—wants Kings and Congresses; a poor, weak, shuffling, intriguing, cowardly fellow; so no more about him. Dear Mary, dear Jane, I am serious, turn you thoughts this way. No more a nameless being, I am now a Greek Chieftain, willing and able to shelter and protect you; and thus I will continue, or follow our friends to wander over some other planet, for I have nearly exhausted this.—Your attached
Trelawny.
Care of John Hunt, Esq., Examiner Office,
Catherine Street, London.
Tell me of Clare, do write me of her! This is written with the other in desperate haste. I have received a letter from you, one from Jane, and none from Hunt.
This letter reached Mary at about the same time as the fatal news. Trelawny also sent her his narrative of the facts (now so well known to every one) of Byron’s death. It had been intended for Hobhouse, but the writer changed his mind and entrusted it to Mrs. Shelley instead, adding, “Hunt may pick something at it if he please.”
Trelawny had been Byron’s friend, and clearly as he saw the Pilgrim’s faults and deficiencies, there would seem no doubt that he genuinely admired him, in spite of all. But his mercurial, impulsive temperament, ever in extremes, was liable to the most sudden revulsions of feeling, and retrospect hardened his feeling as much as it softened Mary Shelley’s towards the great man who was gone. Only four months later he was writing again, from Livadia—
I have much to say to you, Mary, both as regards myself and the part I am enacting here. I would give much that I could, as in times dead, look in on you in the evening of every day and consult with you on its occurrences, as I used to do in Italy. It is curious, but, considering our characters, natural enough, that Byron and I took the diametrically opposite roads in Greece—I in Eastern, he in Western. He took part with, and became the paltry tool of the weak, imbecile, cowardly being calling himself Prince Mavrocordato. Five months he dozed away. By the gods! the lies that are said in his praise urge one to speak the truth. It is well for his name, and better for Greece, that he is dead. With the aid of his name, his fame, his talents, and his fortune, he might have been a tower of strength to Greece, instead of which the little he did was in favour of the aristocrats, to destroy the republic, and smooth the road for a foreign King. But he is dead, and I now feel my face burn with shame that so weak and ignoble a soul could so long have influenced me. It is a degrading reflection, and ever will be. I wish he had lived a little longer, that he might have witnessed how I would have soared above him here, how I would have triumphed over his mean spirit. I would do much to see and talk to you, but as I am now too much irritated to disclose the real state of things, I will not mislead you by false statements.
With this fine flourish was enclosed a “Description of the Cavern Fortress of Mount Parnassus,” which he was commanding (and of which a full account is given in his Recollections), and then followed a P.S. to this effect—
Dear Mary—Will you make an article of this, as Leigh Hunt calls it, and request his brother to publish it in the Examiner, which will very much oblige me.