Yet she had borne with his exactions and scoldings and humours for friendship’s sake, and with full faith in the loyalty and generosity of his heart. A pure and delicate-minded woman, she had not been scandalised by his lawless morals. She had had the courage to withstand him when he was wrong, working for him the while like a devoted slave. Never was a more true and disinterested friendship than hers for him; and he, who knew her better than most people did, was well aware of it.
Where then was the change? Alas! It was in himself. In this revolving world, where “Time that gave doth now his gift confound,” and where “nought may endure but mutability,” the “flourish set on youth” is soon transfixed.
Greek fevers and gunshot wounds told on the “Pirate’s” disposition as well as on his constitution. The habits of mind he had cultivated and been proud of,—combativeness, opposition to all authority as such—finally became his masters; he could not even acquiesce in his own experience. Age and the ravages of Time were to blame for his morbid censoriousness; Time—that “feeds on the rarities of Nature’s truth.” These later recollections are but the distorted images of a blurred mirror. But, none the less, the tale is a sad one. We can but echo Trelawny’s own words to Mary[12]—“Can such things be, and overcome us like a summer cloud, without our especial wonder?”
CHAPTER XXIII
October 1831-October 1839
Trelawny’s book was only one among many things which claimed Mrs. Shelley’s attention during these three years.
In 1830 Godwin published his Thoughts on Man. The relative positions of father and daughter had come to be reversed, and Mary now negotiated with the publishers for the sale of his work, as he had formerly done for her. Godwin himself set a high value, even for him, on this book, and anticipated for it a future and an influence which were not to be realised.
Godwin to Mary.