the grounds belonging to our
house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true
compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered. I did
not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an
affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or
wonderful events would ever be my lot; but I was not confined to my own
identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me
at that age, than my own sensations.
    After this my life became busier, and reality stood in place of fiction. My
husband, however, was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself
worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was for ever
inciting me to obtain literary reputation, which even on my own part I cared for
then, though since I have become infinitely indifferent to it. At this time he
desired that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could produce any
thing worthy of notice, but that he might himself judge how far I possessed the
promise of better things hereafter. Still I did nothing. Travelling, and the
cares of a family, occupied my time; and study, in the way of reading, or
improving my ideas in communication with his far more cultivated mind, was all
of literary employment that engaged my attention.
    In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbours of
Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on
its shores; and Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold,
was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought
them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed
to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook
with him.
    But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us
for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German
into French, fell into our hands. There was the History of the Inconstant Lover,
who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found
himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the
tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow
the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they