Note 51 — Chapter IX

In F of F—A there are several false starts before this sentence. The name there is Welford; on the next page it becomes Lovel, which is thereafter used throughout The Fields of Fancy and appears twice, probably inadvertently, in Mathilda, where it is crossed out. In a few of the S-R fr it is Herbert. In Mathilda it is at first Herbert, which is used until after the rewritten conclusion (see note 83) but is corrected throughout to Woodville. On the final pages Woodville alone is used. (It is interesting, though not particularly significant, that one of the minor characters in Lamb’s John Woodvil is named Lovel. Such mellifluous names rolled easily from the pens of all the romantic writers.) This, her first portrait of Shelley in fiction, gave Mary considerable trouble: revisions from the rough drafts are numerous. The passage on Woodville’s endowment by fortune, for example, is much more concise and effective than that in S-R fr. Also Mary curbed somewhat the extravagance of her praise of Woodville, omitting such hyperboles as “When he appeared a new sun seemed to rise on the day & he had all the benignity of the dispensor of light,” and “he seemed to come as the God of the world.”