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124
TRELAWNY'S LETTERS
Allegra was still alive in 1869 :
Clare, you may be well in body ;
"
My dear
but you have
a bee in your bonnet." He suggests raking up
" some plausible cranky old dried-up hangeron
" of fifty-two or so, who " should follow
you about like a feminine Frankenstein," as
he carelessly puts it. He tried to mitigate the
crazy malevolence she cherished for her
earliest lover :
" Your relentless vindictiveness
against Byron is not tolerated by any religion
that I know of " ; while through the rack of
jibes, malisons, and ebullitions of wilfulness
shines steadily his veneration for the great
poet
he loved :
" You say he [Shelley] was womanly in some
things so he was, and we men should all be
much better if we had a touch of their feeling,
sentiment, earnestness, and constancy ; but
in all the best qualities of man he excelled."
Through these letters through
all Tre-
lawny's writings runs a wonderful sense of
power. He was not one to seek out the right
word or prune a sentence ; his strength is
manifest in his laxities. He believed that no
task, intellectual or physical, was beyond him ;
so he wrote as he swam, taking his ease,
glorying in his vitality, secure in a reserve of
strength equal to anything. A sense of
power and a disregard for syntax these