The Pilgrims E-Book

Mary Shelley

• Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 157

Beschreibung

In the title story, a knight living alone in his isolated mountain fortress shows hospitality toward two pilgrims who appear from the mountains seeking shelter. Entreated to tell them of his sorrow, the knight unburdens himself and relates a tragic tale of love and loss. Resigned to the bitter fate that life has dealt him, the knight is unaware of the true nature of the two young people's pilgrimage, until a revelation transforms his understanding of his past and reveals the possibility of a new future. Four other short stories by Shelley are also included: "The Dream," "The False Rhyme," "The Invisible Girl," and "The Mourner."

Leseprobe

The Pilgrims

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Foreword byKamila Shamsie

Hesperus Classics

Published by Hesperus Press Limited

167-169 Great Portland Street

W1W 5PF, London

First published in Keepsake, 1829–37

This collection first published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2008

This ebook edition first published by Hesperus Press limited, 2024

Foreword © Kamila Shamsie, 2008

Designed and typeset by Fraser Muggeridge studio

Printed in Jordan by Jordan National Press

ISBN: 978-1-84391-166-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-84391-630-7

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents

Foreword

The Pilgrims

The Pilgrims

The Dream

The False Rhyme

The Invisible Girl

The Mourner

Biographical note

Foreword

If you are near a fire, gather a group of listeners, and huddle round it with this book. Here are stories that are meant to be read, but also to be shared, filled as they are with storytellers and their audience. But be prepared for something in your life to change: storytelling, in each of these five tales, is not merely idle past-time, a way of filling empty hours. It is something more profound – a medium for revealing the most intimate details of character, the key component to affecting reconciliation, or a means of confirming deep loss.

And yet, perhaps such grandiose claims for the tales’ transformative quality are merely the work of a mind still buried so deep within them that it has taken on their extravagance of spirit. (For I have started to write this only within minutes of finishing the stories, as if – allow me to claim this – one possessed.) Surely, you might say, for us twenty-first century readers there can be no connection between our listening ears, our reading eyes and the tales contained within the bindings of this book? Within each story, listeners and tellers are closely linked, yet in the world of fact we are entirely aware that however compelling each story is, it belongs to the world of fiction: its language and tone separating it by centuries from our contemporary lives. This does not impair our ability to appreciate the tightly constructed stories of love, mystery, suspense – but it is much too fanciful to suggest that our relationship with the storyteller should be anything other than that of listeners enjoying wondrous tales.

And yet, the further we plunge into these five stories, the more their overlapping echoes suggest some other – dare I say, über – story at work, trying to reveal certain truths in the guise of fiction. If we set aside the shortest of the tales – ‘The False Rhyme’ – the other four stories share certain recurring motifs. Moreover, there is enough variation and excitement within each, that the motifs don’t come across as lazy plotting or dull repetition, but as something more insistent.

The first of the motifs is that of the father as widower, raising a daughter he dearly loves. In ‘The Pilgrims’ and ‘The Mourner’, the widower-father is presented straightforwardly enough. In ‘The Invisible Girl’, though he is father to a son, it is his relationship to the girl he raises as his ward in which he seems more emotionally invested, and which is crucial to the story. And in ‘The Dream’ the story opens with the daughter mourning her father (the mother is not even mentioned, leaving us to surmise she died before her daughter was old enough to know her).

The second motif is that of the fraught triangle of father-daughter-lover. In ‘The Pilgrims’ the daughter’s choice of husband causes her father to disown her. In ‘The Invisible Girl’ the father banishes his beloved ward from his house when he discovers who she has fallen in love with. And in both ‘The Mourner’ and ‘The Dream’ something about the circumstances of the father’s death makes the daughter turn away from the man she loves.

The third of the motifs is that of a perilous sea. In ‘The Mourner’ there is death at sea; in ‘The Invisible Girl’ there are rumours of death at sea; in ‘The Dream’ a watery grave is narrowly averted. Only ‘The Pilgrims’ is without the threat or reality of drowning.

Even for those of us resistant to the notion of seeking a writer’s biography in her works, these motifs make it almost impossible to stop from turning our gazes back to the one storyteller of all these tales: Mary Shelley. In her own lifetime, as now, the stories of her life were well-known: the mother dead when Mary was days old; the father who adored her; the married poet she eloped with, causing a terrible rift with her father; her husband’s early death at sea. All these elements of Mary Shelley’s life play themselves out in differing ways through the stories in this collection. And there is one other motif – most explicit in ‘The False Rhyme’, but evident in each story – the constancy of woman’s love. Often this constancy is the very thing that causes her misery. She cannot stop loving either father or lover, not even when those two loves pull in opposite directions.

It is testimony to Shelley’s skill as a teller of tales that the stories are never reduced to portraits of the author’s psyche – anymore than Frankenstein is merely a portrait of anxiety about pregnancy or miscarriage, as some have suggested. But the adroitness with which Shelley uses stories within stories certainly gestures to the possibility that we should read her own story within those that she writes.

But ignore all this if you want. Forget everything you know about Mary Shelley and the circumstances of her personal life; there is still enough here to terrify and entertain. What might be failings elsewhere, here become strengths; so that when tales shared among strangers serve to unveil a bond between them, it doesn’t feel like unbelievable coincidence, but an expression of fate. We are in the world of story, after all, with its own immutable logic that can only be undermined by the storyteller’s hesitation – a hesitation entirely absent from Mary Shelley’s work.

And so, ‘The Pilgrims’ delights with its interweaving structure, one story giving way to another just when you expect you’re coming to a conclusion. ‘The Invisible Girl’ has a wonderful eeriness. ‘The Mourner’ is a deeply moving story, revealing the Gothic as a fine vehicle for tales of individuals suffering from profound depression, and the impact it has on those around them. ‘The False Rhyme’ is a masterclass in concision; and ‘The Dream’ has such a haunting quality to it that its presence lingers long after the tale has come to an end. I can feel its effect even now...

– Kamila Shamsie, 2008

The Pilgrims

The Pilgrims

The twilight of one of those burning days of summer whose unclouded sky seems to speak to man of happier realms, had already flung its broad shadows over the valley of Unspunnen; whilst the departing rays of a gorgeous sunset continued to glitter on the summits of the surrounding hills. Gradually, however, the glowing tints deepened, then grew darker and darker, until they finally yielded to the still more sober hues of night.

Beneath an avenue of lime trees, which, from their size and luxuriance, appeared almost coeval with the soil in which they grew, Burkhardt of Unspunnen wandered to and fro with uneasy step, as if some recent sorrow occupied his troubled mind. At times, he stood with his eyes steadfastly fixed on the earth, as if he expected to see the object of his contemplation start forth from its bosom; at other times, he would raise his eyes to the summits of the trees, whose branches, now gently agitated by the night breeze, seemed to breathe sighs of compassion in remembrance of those happy hours which had once been passed beneath their welcome shade. When, however, advancing from beneath them, he beheld the deep blue heavens with the bright host of stars, hope sprang up within him at the thoughts of that glory to which those heavens and those stars, lovely and beauteous as they seem, are but the faint heralds; and for a time dissipated the grief which had so long weighed heavily upon his heart.

From these reflections, which, from the intensity of his feelings, shut him out, as it were, from the busy world and its many paths, he was suddenly aroused by the tones of a manly voice addressing him.

Burkhardt advancing, beheld, standing in the light of the moon, two Pilgrims, clothed in the usual coarse and sombre garb, with their broad hats drawn over their brows.

‘Praise be to God!’ said the Pilgrim who had just before awakened Burkhardt’s attention, and who, from his height and manner, appeared to be the elder of the two. His words were echoed by a voice whose gentle and faltering accents showed the speaker to be still but of tender years.

‘Whither are you going, friends? What seek you here, at this late hour?’ said Burkhardt. ‘If you wish to rest you after your journey, enter and, with God’s blessing, and my hearty welcome, recruit yourselves.’

‘Noble sir, you have more than anticipated our petition,’ replied the elder Pilgrim. ‘Our duty has led us far from our native land, being bound on a pilgrimage to fulfil the vow of a beloved parent. We have been forced during the heat of the day to climb the steep mountain paths; and the strength of my brother, whose youth but ill befits him for such fatigues, began to fail, when the sight of your castle’s towers, which the moon’s clear beams discovered to us, revived our hopes. We resolved to beg a night’s lodging under your hospitable roof, that we might be enabled, on tomorrow’s dawn, to pursue our weary way.’

‘Follow me, my friends,’ said Burkhardt, as he, with quickened step, preceded them, that he might give some orders for their entertainment. The Pilgrims, rejoicing in so kind a reception, followed the knight in silence into a high-vaulted saloon, over which the tapers, that were placed in branches against the walls, cast a solemn but pleasing light, well in accordance with the present feelings of the parties.

The knight then discerned two countenances of great beauty, the pleasing impression of which was considerably heightened by the modest yet easy manner with which the youthful pair received their host’s kind attentions. Much struck with their appearance and demeanour, Burkhardt was involuntarily led back into the train of thoughts from which their approach had aroused him; and the scenes of former days flitted before him as he recollected that, in this hall, his beloved child was ever wont to greet him with her welcome smile on his return from the battle or the chase – brief scenes of happiness, which had been followed by events that had cankered his heart, and rendered memory but an instrument of bitterness and chastisement.

Supper was soon after served, and the Pilgrims were supplied with the greatest attention, yet conversation wholly languished, for his melancholy reflections occupied Burkhardt, and respect, or perhaps a more kindly feeling, towards their host and benefactor, seemed to have sealed the lips of his youthful guests. After supper, however, a flask of the baron’s old wine cheered his flagging spirits, and emboldened the elder Pilgrim to break through the spell which had chained them.

‘Pardon me, noble sir,’ said he, ‘for I feel that it must seem intrusive in me to presume to seek the cause of that sorrow which thus severely oppresses you, and renders you so sad a spectator of the bounty and happiness which you liberally bestow upon others. Believe me, it is not the impulse of a mere idle curiosity that makes me express my wonder that you can thus dwell alone in this spacious and noble mansion, the prey to so deeply rooted a sorrow. Would that it were in our power, even in the slightest degree, to alleviate the cares of one who with such bounteous hand relieves the wants of his poorer brethren!’

‘I thank you for your sympathy, good Pilgrim,’ said the old noble, ‘but what can it avail you to know the story of those griefs which have made this earth a desert, and which are, with rapid pace, conducting me where alone I can expect to find rest? Spare me, then, the pain of recalling scenes which I would fain bury in oblivion. As yet, you are in the spring of life, when no sad remembrance gives a discordant echo of past follies, or of joys irrecoverably lost. Seek not to darken the sunshine of your, I trust, unsullied youth, with a knowledge of those fierce, guilty beings who, in listening to the fiend-like suggestions of their passions, are led astray from the paths of rectitude, and tear asunder ties which nature, by the holiest bonds, had seemed to unite to their very souls.’

Burkhardt thus sought to avoid the entreaty of the Pilgrim. But the request was still urged with such earnest though delicate persuasion, and the rich tones of the stranger’s voice awoke within him so many thoughts of days long, long past, that the knight felt himself almost irresistibly impelled to unburden his long-closed heart to one who seemed to enter into its feelings with a sincere cordiality.

‘Your artless sympathy has won my confidence, my young friends,’ said he, ‘and you shall learn the cause of that sorrow which gnaws my heart.

‘You see me now, indeed, here, lonely and forsaken, like a tree shaken by the tempest’s violence. But fortune once looked upon me with her blandest smiles; and I felt myself rich in the consciousness of my prosperity, and the gifts which bounteous Heaven had bestowed. My powerful vassals made me a terror to those enemies which the protection, that I as ever ready to afford to the oppressed and helpless, brought against me. My rich and fertile possessions not only supplied my family with profusion, but enabled me, with liberal hand, to relieve the wants of the poor; and to exercise the rights of hospitality in a manner justly becoming my state and my name. But of all the gifts which Heaven had showered upon me, that which I most prized was a wife, whose virtues had made her the idol of both the rich and the poor. But she who was already an angel, and unfitted for this grosser world, was too soon, alas, claimed by her kindred spirits. One brief year alone had beheld our happiness.

‘My grief and anguish were most bitter, and would soon have laid me in the same grave with her, but that she had left me a daughter, for whose dear sake I struggled earnestly against my affliction. In her were now entered all my cares, all my hopes, all my happiness. As she grew in years, so did her likeness to her sainted mother increase, and every look and gesture reminded me of my Agnes. With her mother’s beauty I had, with fond presumption, dared to cherish the hope that Ida would inherit her mother’s virtues.

‘Greatly did I feel the sad void that my irreparable loss had occasioned me, but the very thought of marrying again would have seemed to me a profanation to the memory of my Agnes. If, however, even for a single instant, I had entertained this disposition, one look at her child would have crushed it, and made me cling with still fonder hope to her, in the fond confidence that she would reward me for every sacrifice that I could make. Alas, my friends, this hope was built on an unsure foundation, and my heart is even now tortured when I think on those delusive dreams.

‘Ida, with the fondest caresses, would dispel each care from my brow; in sickness and in health she watched me with the tenderest solicitude; her whole endeavour seemed to be to anticipate my wishes. But, alas, like the serpent, which only fascinates to destroy, she lavished these caresses and attentions to blind me, and wrap me in a fatal security.

‘Many and deep were the affronts, revenged indeed, but not forgotten, which had long since caused (with shame, I avow it) a deadly hatred between myself and Rupert, Lord of Wädischwyl, which the slightest occasion seemed to increase to a degree of madness. As he dared no longer throw down the gauntlet, I having always in single combat come off the victor, he found means, much harder than steel or iron, to glut his revenge upon me.

‘Duke Berchtold of Zähringen, one of those wealthy and powerful tyrants who are the very pests of that society of whose rights they ought to be the ready guardians, had made a sudden irruption on the peaceful inhabitants of the mountains, seizing their herds and flocks, and insulting their wives and daughters. Though possessed of great courage, yet being not much used to warfare, these unhappy men found it impossible to resist the tyrant, and hastened to entreat my instant succour. Without a moment’s delay, I assembled my brave vassals, and marched against the spoiler. After a long and severe struggle, God blessed our cause, and our victory was complete.

‘On the morning, that I was about to depart on my return to my castle, one of my followers announced to me that the duke had arrived in my camp, and wished an immediate interview with me. I instantly went forth to meet him, and Berchtold, hastening towards me with a smile, offered me his hand in token of reconciliation. I frankly accepted it, not suspecting that falsehood could lurk beneath so open and friendly an aspect.

‘“My friend,” said he, “for such I must call you, your valour in this contest having won my esteem, although I could at once convince you that I have just cause of quarrel with the insolent mountaineers. But, in spite of your victory in this unjust strife, into which doubtless you were induced to enter by the misrepresentations of those villains, yet as my nature abhors to prolong dissensions, I would willingly cease to think that we are enemies, and commence a friendship which, on my part, at least, shall not be broken. In token, therefore, that you do not mistrust a fellow soldier, return with me to my castle, that we may there drown all remembrance of our past disunion.”

‘During a long time, I resisted his importunity, for I had now been more than a year absent from my home; and was doubly impatient to return, as I fondly imagined that my delay would occasion much anxiety to my daughter. But the duke, with such apparent kindness and in such a courteous manner, renewed and urged his solicitations, that I could resist no longer.

‘His highness entertained me with the greatest hospitality and unremitted attention. But I soon perceived that an honest