ABSTRACT
133The Novellos, after leaving Oxford Street, and residing for a few years at 8, Percy Street, had taken a large, old-fashioned house and garden on Shacklewell Green; and it was here that they made welcome Mrs. Shelley and Mrs. Williams on their return from Italy, two young and beautiful widows, wooing them by gentle degrees into peace-fuller and hopefuller mood of mind after their storm of bereavement abroad. By quiet meetings for home-music; by calmly cheerful and gradually sprightlier converse; by affectionate familiarity and reception into their own family circle of children and friends, Vincent and Mary Sabilla Novello sought to draw these two fair women into reconcilement with life and its still surviving blessings. Very, very fair, both ladies were: Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin Shelley, with her well-shaped, golden-haired head, almost always a little bent and drooping; her marble-white shoulders and arms statuesquely visible in the perfectly plain black velvet dress, which the customs of that time allowed to be cut low, and which her own taste adopted (for neither she nor her sister-in-sorrow ever wore the conventional “widow’s weeds” and “widow’s cap”); her thoughtful, earnest eyes; her short upper lip and intellectually curved mouth, with a certain close-compressed and decisive expression while she listened, and a relaxation into fuller redness and mobility when speaking; her exquisitely-formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosy palms, and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and delicate as those in a Vandyk portrait—all remain palpably present to memory. Another peculiarity in Mrs. Shelley’s hand was its singular flexibility, which permitted her bending the fingers back so as almost to approach the portion of her arm above her wrist. She once did this smilingly and repeatedly, 134to amuse the girl who was noting its whiteness and pliancy, and who now, as an old woman, records its remarkable beauty. Very sweet and very encouraging was Mary Shelley to her young namesake, Mary Victoria, making her proud and happy by giving her a presentation copy of her wonderful book “Frankenstein” (still in treasured preservation, with its autograph gift-words), and pleasing her girlish fancy by the gift of a string of cut-coral, graduated beads from Italy. On such pleasant terms of kindly intimacy was Mrs. Shelley at this period with the Novellos that she and Mrs. Novello interchanged with one another their sweet familiar name of “Mary;” and she gave the Italianized form of his name to Mr. Novello, calling him “Vincenzo” in her most caressing tones, when she wished to win him into indulging her with some of her especially favourite strains of music. Even his brother, Mr. Francis Novello, she would address as “Francesco,” as loving to speak the soft Italian syllables. Her mode of uttering the word “Lerici” dwells upon our memory with peculiarly subdued and lingering intonation, associated as it was with all that was most mournful in connexion with that picturesque spot where she learned she had lost her beloved “Shelley” for ever from this fair earth. She was never tired of asking “Francesco” to sing, in his rich, mellow bass voice, Mozart’s “Qui sdegno,” “Possenti Numi,” “Mentre ti lascio,” “Tuba mirum,” “La Vendetta,” “Non piu andrai,” or “Madamina;” so fond was she of his singing her favourite composer. Greatly she grew to enjoy the “concerted pieces” from “Così fan tutte,” that used to be got up “round the piano.” Henry Robertson’s dramatic spirit and vivacity and his capacity and readiness in taking anything, tenor or counter-tenor—nay, soprano 135if need were—that might chance to be most required, more than made up for the smallness of his voice. His fame for singing Fernando’s part in the opening trio, “La mia Dorabella,” with the true chivalrous zest and fire of his phrase, “fuore la spada!” accompanied by appropriate action, lasted through a long course of years. Henry Robertson was one of the very best amateur singers conceivable: indefatigable, yet never anxious to sing if better tenors than himself chanced to be present; an almost faultless “reader at sight,” always in tune, invariably in good temper, and never failingly “in the humour for music,” qualities that will at once be appreciated by those who know what the majority of amateur singers generally are. Edward Holmes was among the enthusiastic party of enjoyers so often assembling at Shacklewell in those days. His rapturous love of music, his promptly kindled admiration of feminine beauty, caused him to be in a perpetual ecstasy with the Mozart evenings and the charming young-lady widows.
