Chapter 3
), with a break between the account of her girlhood in Scotland and the brief description of her father after his return. Finally there are four pages of a new opening, which was used in _Mathilda_. This is an extremely rough draft: punctuation is largely confined to the dash, and there are many corrections and alterations. The Shelley-Rolls fragments, twenty-five sheets or slips of paper, usually represent additions to or revisions of _The Fields of Fancy_: many of them are numbered, and some are keyed into the manuscript in Lord Abinger’s notebook. Most of the changes were incorporated in _Mathilda_.
The second Abinger notebook contains the complete and final draft of _Mathilda_, 226 pages. It is for the most part a fair copy. The text is punctuated and there are relatively few corrections, most of them, apparently the result of a final rereading, made to avoid the repetition of words. A few additions are written in the margins. On several pages slips of paper containing evident revisions (quite possibly originally among the Shelley-Rolls fragments) have been pasted over the corresponding lines of the text. An occasional passage is scored out and some words and phrases are crossed out to make way for a revision. Following page 216, four sheets containing the conclusion of the story are cut out of the notebook. They appear, the pages numbered 217 to 223, among the Shelley-Rolls fragments. A revised version, pages 217 to 226, follows the cut.[iv]
The mode of telling the story in the final draft differs radically from that in the rough draft. In _The Fields of Fancy_ Mathilda’s history is set in a fanciful framework. The author is transported by the fairy Fantasia to the Elysian Fields, where she listens to the discourse of Diotima and meets Mathilda. Mathilda tells her story, which closes with her death. In the final draft this unrealistic and largely irrelevant framework is discarded: Mathilda, whose death is approaching, writes out for her friend Woodville the full details of her tragic history which she had never had the courage to tell him in person.
The title of the rough draft, _The Fields of Fancy_, and the setting and framework undoubtedly stem from Mary Wollstonecraft’s unfinished tale, _The Cave of Fancy_, in which one of the souls confined in the center of the earth to purify themselves from the dross of their earthly existence tells to Sagesta (who may be compared with Diotima) the story of her ill-fated love for a man whom she hopes to rejoin after her purgation is completed.[v] Mary was completely familiar with her mother’s works. This title was, of course, abandoned when the framework was abandoned, and the name of the heroine was substituted. Though it is worth noticing that Mary chose a name with the same initial letter as her own, it was probably taken from Dante. There are several references in the story to the cantos of the _Purgatorio_ in which Mathilda appears. Mathilda’s father is never named, nor is Mathilda’s surname given. The name of the poet went through several changes: Welford, Lovel, Herbert, and finally Woodville.
The evidence for dating _Mathilda_ in the late summer and autumn of 1819 comes partly from the manuscript, partly from Mary’s journal. On the pages succeeding the portions of _The Fields of Fancy_ in the Bodleian notebook are some of Shelley’s drafts of verse and prose, including parts of _Prometheus Unbound_ and of _Epipsychidion_, both in Italian, and of the preface to the latter in English, some prose fragments, and extended portions of the _Defence of Poetry_. Written from the other end of the book are the _Ode to Naples_ and _The Witch of Atlas_. Since these all belong to the years 1819, 1820, and 1821, it is probable that Mary finished her rough draft some time in 1819, and that when she had copied her story, Shelley took over the notebook.