Besides contributing tales and occasionally verses to the Keepsake, she was employed now and during the next two or three years in preparing and writing the Italian and Spanish Lives of Literary Men for Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædia. These included, among the Italians—Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bojardo, Macchiavelli, Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, etc.; among the Spanish and Portuguese—Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Camoens, and a host of others, besides notices of the Troubadours, the “Romances Moriscos,” and the early poets of Portugal.
Clare, too, tried her hand at a story, to which she begged Mary to be a kind of godmother.
I have written a tale, which I think will do for the Keepsake. I shall send it home for your perusal. Will you correct it? Do write and let me know where I may send it, so as to be sure to find you. Will you be angry with me if I beg you to write the last scene of it? I am now so unwell I can’t.
My only time for writing is after 10 at night; the rest of the tale was composed at that hour, after having been scolding and talking and giving lessons from 7 in the morning.
It was very near its end when I got so ill, I gave it up. If you cannot do anything with it you can at least make curl-papers of it, and that is always something. Do not mention it to anybody; should it be printed one can speak of it, and if you judge it not worthy, then it is no use mortifying my vanity.
The truth, is I should never think of writing, knowing well my incapacity for it, but I want to gain money. What would one not do for that, since it is the only key of freedom? One is even impudent enough to ask a great authoress to finish one’s tale for one. I think, in your hands, it might get into the Keepsake, for it is about a Pole, and that is the topic of the day.
If it should get any money, half will naturally belong to you. Should you have the kindness to arrange it, Julia would perhaps also be so kind as to copy it out for me, that the alterations in your hand may not be seen. I wish it to be signed “Mont Obscur.”...
Mary did what was asked of her. Trelawny, now in England again, had influence in some literary quarters, and, at her request, willingly consented to exert it on Clare’s behalf.
Meanwhile he requested her to receive his eldest daughter on a visit of considerable length.
Trelawny to Mrs. Shelley.