the wind is in the tree
But they are silent;—still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
If Mary quotes Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner intentionally here, she is ironic, for this is no merciful rain, except for the fact that it brings on the illness which leads to Mathilda’s death, for which she longs. ↩
This quotation from Christabel (which suggests that the preceding echo is intentional) is not in F. of F.—B. ↩
Cf. the description which opens Mathilda. ↩
Among Lord Abinger’s papers, in Mary’s hand, are some comparable (but very bad) fragmentary verses addressed to Mother Earth. ↩
At this point four sheets are cut out of the notebook. They are evidently those with pages numbered 217 to 223 which are among the S.—R. fr. They contain the conclusion of the story, ending, as does F. of F.—B. with Mathilda’s words spoken to Diotima in the Elysian Fields: “I am here, not with my father, but listening to lessons of wisdom, which will one day bring me to him when we shall never part. The End.” Some passages are scored out, but not this final sentence. Tenses are changed from past to future. The name “Herbert” is changed to “Woodville.” The explanation must be that Mary was hurrying to finish the revision (quite drastic on these final pages) and the transcription of her story before her confinement, and that in her haste she copied the pages from F. of F.—B. as they stood. Then, realizing that they did not fit Mathilda, she began to revise them; but to keep her MS. neat, she cut out these pages and wrote the fair copy. There is no break in Mathilda in story or in pagination. This fair copy also shows signs of haste: slips of the pen, repetition of words, a number of unimportant revisions. ↩
Here in F. of F.—B. there is an index number which evidently points to a note at the bottom of the next page. The note is omitted in Mathilda. It reads:
“Dante in his Purgatorio describes a grifon as remaining unchanged but his reflection in the eyes of Beatrice as perpetually varying (Purg. Cant. 31) So nature is ever the same but seen differently by almost every spectator and even by the same at various times. All minds, as mirrors, receive her forms—yet in each mirror the shapes apparently reflected vary and are perpetually changing—”
See note 20. Mary Shelley had suffered this torture when Clara and William died. ↩
See the end of Chapter V. ↩
This sentence is not in F. of F.—B. or in S.—R. fr. ↩
Colophon
Short Fiction
is compiled by stories published between and by
Mary Shelley.
This ebook was produced for
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The cover page is adapted from
The Mirror,
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