The other was kind; sought me, was pleased with me. I could talk to him; that was much. He was attached to another, so that I felt at my ease with him. They have disappeared from my horizon. Jane alone remains; if she loved me as well as I do her it would be much; she is all gentleness, and she is my only consolation, yet she does not console me.
I have just completed my twenty-seventh year; at such a time hope and youth are still in their prime, and the pains I feel, therefore, are ever alive and vivid within me. What shall I do? Nothing. I study, that passes the time. I write; at times that pleases me, though double sorrow comes when I feel that Shelley no longer reads and approves of what I write; besides, I have no great faith in my success. Composition is delightful; but if you do not expect the sympathy of your fellow-creatures in what you write, the pleasure of writing is of short duration.
I have my lovely Boy, without him I could not live. I have Jane; in her society I forget time; but the idea of it does not cheer me in my griefful moods. It is strange that the religious feeling that exalted my emotions in happiness, deserts me in my misery. I have little enjoyment, no hope. I have given myself ten years more of life. God grant that they may not be augmented. I should be glad that they were curtailed. Loveless beings surround me; they talk of my personal attractions, of my talents, my manners.
The wisest and best have loved me. The beautiful, and glorious, and noble, have looked on me with the divine expression of love, till death, the reaper, carried to his overstocked barns my lamented harvest.
But now I am not loved! Never, oh, never more shall I love. Synonymous to such words are, never more shall I be happy, never more feel life sit triumphant in my frame. I am a wreck. By what do the fragments cling together? Why do they not part, to be borne away by the tide to the boundless ocean, where those are whom day and night I pray that I may rejoin.
I shall be happier, perhaps, in Italy; yet, when I sometimes think that she is the murderess, I tremble for my boy. We shall see; if no change comes, I shall be unable to support the burthen of time, and no change, if it hurt not his dear head, can be for the worse.
In the month of July Mary had received another request for literary help; this time from Medwin, who wanted her aid in eking out and correcting his notes of conversations with Lord Byron, shortly to be published.
“You must have been, as I was, very much affected with poor Lord Byron’s death,” he wrote to Mary. “All parties seem now writing in his favour, and the papers are full of his praise....
“How do you think I have been employing myself? With writing; and the subject I have chosen has been Memoirs of Lord Byron. Every one here has been disappointed in the extreme by the destruction of his private biography, and have urged me to give the world the little I know of him. I wish I was better qualified for the task. When I was at Pisa I made very copious notes of his conversations, for private reference only, and was surprised to find on reading them (which I have never done till his death, and hearing that his life had been burnt) that they contained so many anecdotes of his life. During many nights that we sat up together he was very confidential, and entered into his history and opinions on most subjects, and from them I have compiled a volume which is, I am told, highly entertaining. Shelley I have made a very prominent feature in the work, and I think you will be pleased with that part, at least, of the Memoir, and all the favourable sentiments of Lord Byron concerning him. But I shall certainly not publish the work till you have seen it, and would give the world to consult you in person about the whole; you might be of the greatest possible use to me, and prevent many errors from creeping in. I have been told it cannot fail of having the greatest success, and have been offered £500 for it—a large and tempting sum—in consequence of what has been said in its praise by Grattan....
“Before deciding finally on the publication there are many things to be thought of. Lady Byron will not be pleased with my account of the marriage and separation; in fact, I shall be assailed on all sides. Now, my dear friend, what do you advise? Let me have your full opinion, for I mean to be guided by it. I hear to-day that Moore is manufacturing five or six volumes out of the burnt materials, for which Longman advanced £2000, and is to pay £2000 more; they will be in a great rage. If I publish, promptitude is everything, so that I know you will answer this soon.”