In 1820 the
Shelleys were living in Pisa, where Mary began writing Valperga around March 6. She was doing lots of research, including
Machiavelli’s La vita di Castruccio
Castracani da Lucca, where she learned more about Castruccio. But she also
read Robinson Crusoe and Boswell’s Life of Johnson and some novels by Sir
Walter Scott, including Ivanhoe, and
her father’s fine novel Caleb Williams.
(Ivanhoe, a novel my mother taught in the
1950s to her students at Emerson Junior High School; Enid, Oklahoma; Ivanhoe, a 1952 movie I loved with
Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor; Ivanhoe,
a story I read repeatedly as a lad in Classics Illustrated comic book form; Ivanhoe, a novel I finally got around
to reading myself in 2014, my seventieth year to heaven.)
Oh, and Mary
was also reading Cicero (in Latin) and studying Greek.
Sometimes,
reading about Mary Shelley, reading her letters and journals (not all of which
survive—some very interesting pages are
missing, no doubt destroyed by her, perhaps by her son, later, to protect her
already fragile (if not fractured) reputation), reading her novels and other
work, I feel … lazy. By comparison.
I am not
reading Roman authors in Latin. Nor am I studying Greek. I’m not researching and
writing a thick novel about a medieval Italian. Last night, in fact (December
15, 2015), I read some of a Longmire
mystery, watched an episode of Broadchurch,
and had the light off before 9:30 (my custom, by the way).
But Mary
Shelley was serious about an
intellectual life (I am, too, I like to think—but her routines and
accomplishments are a tad intimidating)—and later, after her husband had
drowned, she wrote about how it was study
that kept her sane. She would lose herself in books, in her writing. And … for
a while … she would (kind of) forget.
She had
taken to heart that line Macbeth sort of casually tosses off to Macduff, who’s
just arrived at the castle—where there’s been some … bloodshed: Macbeth has
just slain the sleeping king—but must pretend nothing is amiss.
The labour we delight in physics [medicates]
pain. Doing work you love can alleviate your suffering. This was what Mary
had learned from her numerous personal tragedies. It was a strategy she would employ
for the rest of her life—following the advice of a murderer!
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