‘Those whose youth has been past as their’s (with what success it imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests this visible world, will perhaps find some entertainment in following the author, with her husband and sister, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she visited them,a great Poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature. They will be interested to hear of one who has visited Meillerie, and Clarens, and Chillon, and Vevai,—classic ground,peopledwith tender and glorious imaginations of the present and the past.’
‘Those whose youth has been past as their’s (with what success it imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests this visible world, will perhaps find some entertainment in following the author, with her husband and sister, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she visited them,a great Poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature. They will be interested to hear of one who has visited Meillerie, and Clarens, and Chillon, and Vevai,—classic ground,peopledwith tender and glorious imaginations of the present and the past.’
Thus at a time when, according to Mr. Froude, he secretly revolted from Byron as a libertine and seducer, Shelley extolled him for clothing the beauties of the Rhineland with ‘the freshness of a diviner nature,’ and appointed him an executor and trustee of his will.
(3)—In 1818, in the prefatory note toJulian and Maddalo, Shelley wrote thus of Byron, the original of Count Maddalo:—
‘Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of antient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.’
‘Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of antient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.’
In this strain of adulation Shelley wrote of Byron in 1818. Having put the flattery in clear type and on fine paper, Shelley approached Byron with it in his hand, and, kneeling, laid it at his idol’s feet.
On 23rd August, 1818, Shelley wrote to his wife from Venice with grateful fervour, of Byron’s sympathy with his troubles and friendly concern for his interests:—
‘When we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me. He said, that if he had been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision.’
‘When we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me. He said, that if he had been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision.’
There is something inexpressibly ludicrous in the notion of Byron ‘moving heaven and earth’ to stop Lord Eldon’s mouth. The ‘Childe’ must surely have been laughing in his sleeve when he talked in this style, if, indeed, he said aught so superlatively farcical.
(4)—To the year 1818 or 1819 may be assigned Shelley’sAddress to Byron, the worshipful tone of which composition may be inferred from the only three lines preserved to us:—
‘O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this ageShakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?’
(5)—To the year 1821 may be assigned the Sonnet to Byron, headed with the words, ‘I am afraid these verses will not please you, but,’—
‘If I esteemed you less, Envy would killPleasure, and leave to Wonder and DespairThe ministration of the thoughts that fillThe mind which, like a worm whose life may shareA portion of the unapproachable,Marks your creations rise as fast and fairAs perfect worlds at the Creator’s will.But such is my regard that nor your powerTo soar above the heights where others climb,Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hourCast from the envious future on the time,Move one regret for his unhonoured nameWho dares these words;—the worm beneath the sodMay lift itself in homage of the God.’
Can passionate idolatry of a fellow-creature go further in the direction of abject servility without being lost in it? It is appalling to reflect that Shelley, a man of high intellect and culture, of gentle breeding and imperishable achievement in art, thought of Byron in a way to render it possible for him to utter forth such slavish song. It is asserted by Medwin (no sure authority on such a point), that this outpouring of adulation was never actually offered to the hand and eye of the poet, who could not have contemplated such a tribute of adorative homage without turning in cordial (though undeclared) scorn from its producer. The sonnet is said never to have been seen by Byron. But it remains that Shelley wrote it in Byron’s honour; that he wrote it out (with amendments) on severalslips of paper, and, at least, thought of offering it to the man, whose contempt of his kind needed no such stimulant.
(6)—Written in June, 1821,Adonaiscalls on the world to honour Byron as ‘the Pythian of the age,’ and ‘the Pilgrim of Eternity:’—
‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;The vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true,Who feed where Desolation first has fed,And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,When, like Apollo, from his golden bow,The Pythian of the age one arrow spedAnd smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.********Thus ceased she; and the mountain shepherds came,Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fameOver his living head like Heaven is bent,An early but enduring monument,Came, veiling all the lightnings of his songIn sorrow.’
(7)—In August, 1821, Shelley was so delighted at Byron’s way of living with another man’s wife, and his consequent progress to moral excellence, that he wrote to his own wife (the faultless, stainless, high-souled Mary) from Ravenna, where he was resting as Byron’s guest in the Palazzo Guiccioli:—
‘L[ord] B[yron] is greatly improved in every respect; in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, in happiness. The connexion with la Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about 4000l.a-year, 100l.of which he devotes to purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a virtuous man.’
‘L[ord] B[yron] is greatly improved in every respect; in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, in happiness. The connexion with la Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about 4000l.a-year, 100l.of which he devotes to purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a virtuous man.’
When Mr. Froude wrote so gushingly, almost in the same paragraph, of Shelley’s speckless purity of thought and manners, and Byron’s revolting dissoluteness in living with another man’s wife, he had still to learn that this guileless and angelic Shelley rated Byron’sliaisonwith the Contessa Guiccioli as an eminently virtuous and salutary arrangement.
In the same letter to Mary (mind, Mr. Froude, the letter iswritten to MarynéeGodwin, the writer’s own exemplary wife), Shelley says:—
‘He’ (Byron) ‘has read to me one of the unpublished cantos ofDon Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day,—every word has the stamp of immortality. I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other with whom it is worth contending. This canto is in the style, but totally, and sustained with incredible ease and power, like the end of the second canto.There is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled.It fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached of producing,—something wholly new and relative to the age,and yet surpassingly beautiful.’
‘He’ (Byron) ‘has read to me one of the unpublished cantos ofDon Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day,—every word has the stamp of immortality. I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other with whom it is worth contending. This canto is in the style, but totally, and sustained with incredible ease and power, like the end of the second canto.There is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled.It fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached of producing,—something wholly new and relative to the age,and yet surpassingly beautiful.’
On, or about, the same day, Shelley wrote from Ravenna about this same Canto ofDon Juan, which he commended so highly to Mary, for its unqualified purity and surpassing beauty, to his friend Peacock:—
‘Lord Byron is in excellent cue both of health and spirits. He has got rid of all those melancholy and degrading habits which he indulged at Venice. He lives with one woman, a lady of rank here, to whom he is attached, and who is attached to him, and is in every respect an altered man. He has written three more cantos ofDon Juan. I have yet only heard the fifth, and I think that every word of it is pregnant with immortality. I have not seen his late plays exceptMarino Faliero, which is very well, but not sotranscendently fineas theDon Juan.’
‘Lord Byron is in excellent cue both of health and spirits. He has got rid of all those melancholy and degrading habits which he indulged at Venice. He lives with one woman, a lady of rank here, to whom he is attached, and who is attached to him, and is in every respect an altered man. He has written three more cantos ofDon Juan. I have yet only heard the fifth, and I think that every word of it is pregnant with immortality. I have not seen his late plays exceptMarino Faliero, which is very well, but not sotranscendently fineas theDon Juan.’
Let it be observed that, in the letter to his wife, Shelley alludes to the second Canto ofDon Juan, and more especially to the end of it, as a piece of literature with which she is familiar. To demonstrate the excellence of the unpublished Canto he has just read in manuscript, Shelley assures Mary that, in its style, and the powerful ease with which it is sustained, it resembles the end of the second Canto,—i.e.the part of the poem which describes, with delicate and insidious suggestiveness, the mutual passion of Don Juan and Haidee in the cave. Is it to ‘insult the Shelleys’ (Mr. Froude’s pleasant phrase) to say that Shelley could not have thus referred to some of the sweetest and most voluptuous passages of the amorous poem, without knowing that Mary had perused them with enjoyment and approval? And what is the theme of the unpublished fifth Canto, which Shelley extols to his wife for bearing, in every word, ‘the stamp of immortality,’ and for containing ‘not a word which the mostrigid assertor of the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled?’ One of the wittiest and wickedest of the sixteen Cantos, this highly commended Canto contains the harem scene where Gulbeyaz vainly solicits Don Juan to minister to her lust. I do not wish to ‘insult the Shelleys,’ but I cannot conceive that Shelley would have written so approvingly of the Canto, had he not wished Mary to peruse this vicious and vitiating piece of Byronic devilry, and felt that it would please her to read how, in her desperate effort to conquer Don Juan’s coldness, Gulbeyaz, in an imperial way
‘laidHer hand on his, and bending on him eyes,Which needed not an empire to persuade,Look’d into his for love....... and pausing one chaste moment, threwHerself upon his breast, and there she grew.’
On 14th September, 1821, Shelley wrote from Pisa to Horatio Smith, of Byron’s determination to write a series of dramas:—
‘This seems to me the wrong road; but genius like his is destined to lead and not to follow. He will shake off his shackles as he finds they cramp him. I believe he will produce something very great; and that familiarity with the dramatic forms of human nature, will soon enable him to soften down the severe and unharmonizing tints of hisMarino Faliero.’
‘This seems to me the wrong road; but genius like his is destined to lead and not to follow. He will shake off his shackles as he finds they cramp him. I believe he will produce something very great; and that familiarity with the dramatic forms of human nature, will soon enable him to soften down the severe and unharmonizing tints of hisMarino Faliero.’
On 4th November, 1821, Shelley said to Edward Williams of Lord Byron’sCain, ‘HisCainis second to nothing of the kind.’
(8)—From Pisa, Shelley wrote, in January, 1822, to John Gisborne of the poet, whom he idolized:—
‘What think you of Lord Byron now? Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God, when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body. So I think, let the world envy while it admires, as it may.’
‘What think you of Lord Byron now? Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God, when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body. So I think, let the world envy while it admires, as it may.’
(9)—On 10th April, 1822, when his relations with the great poet had been shaken and ruffled by gusts of discord, Shelley wrote to John Gisborne, ‘What think you of Lord Byron’s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer poetry than has appeared in England since the publication ofParadise Regained.Cainis apocalyptic,—it is a revelation not before communicated to man.’
Of course, Shelley’s idolatry of his hero was not always maintained at this pitch of enthusiasm. There were momentswhen the worm turned against his God, and wrote disparagingly of him. But the foregoing passages from Shelley’s letters and works exhibit his prevailing view of Byron the poet, and his worshipful disposition towards the man Byron. Nor may it be imagined that the worshiper was enabled to think thus reverentially of the idol, because he was unaware of what was most repulsive in the darker stages of Byron’s career. For Shelley is the most strenuous and precise of all the many givers of testimony respecting the Venetian excesses. Writing to Peacock of Byron’s Venetian life, Shelley says, on 22nd December, 1818:—
‘The fact is, that first, the Italian women with whom he associates are perhaps the most contemptible of all who exist under the moon—the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted; countesses [who] smell so strongly of garlic, that an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well, L[ord] B[yron] is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associates with wretches who seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple to avow practices, which are not only not named, but I believe seldom even conceived in England.’
‘The fact is, that first, the Italian women with whom he associates are perhaps the most contemptible of all who exist under the moon—the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted; countesses [who] smell so strongly of garlic, that an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well, L[ord] B[yron] is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associates with wretches who seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple to avow practices, which are not only not named, but I believe seldom even conceived in England.’
None the less able, however, was Shelley to admire the same Byron (of whom Mr. Froude writes disgustfully, for ‘living with another man’s wife’) as a being to be worshipt for his divine excellences and beneficent achievements. None the less could he regard Byron with reverence and delight, as ‘the spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body.’
The winter (styled by Hogg ‘a mere Atticism’) had for its chief domestic incident the birth of Mary’s eldest son, the ‘William’ of his father’s song, and of the early grave at Rome, who was born on 24th January, 1816, on the ninth day after Lady Byron’s withdrawal from Piccadilly Terrace to Kirkby Mallory. Byron’s Ada was only in the seventh week of her life, when Shelley’s boy entered upon his brief existence. Born within six weeks and three days of one another, these infants are curiously associated in literary annals; for whilst Byron gushed for the world’s edification over his Ada in verse, that set the sentimental mothers weeping throughout the country, Shelley’s parental devotion to his ‘delightful child’ broke forth into song that was no less insincere.
Mary Godwin had not risen from her bed, before all England was ringing with strange stories of Byron’s domestic troubles.That Shelley, who had created much scandal in a small world of comparatively obscure people by quarrelling with his wife, some eighteen or twenty months since, was more cheered than shocked by Byron’s rupture with his spouse, is probable. That Byron in his domestic trials and social discredit had a sympathizer and apologist in the younger poet, is certain. To Byron’s idolater, Lady Byron’s inability to live happily with her superb husband was a sufficient proof that she was a faulty woman. That on falling out with his wife, so sublime a creature as Byron could not take another lawful bride, was in Shelley’s view a signal example of the depraving tyranny of matrimonial law,—another argument why Wedlock should be replaced by Free Love.
On this exciting subject, Shelley and Mary were in perfect accord, when Claire ran in upon them, beaming with beauty, radiant with joy, brimming over with affection and happiness. She had rare news for them. Bent on going to Switzerland, she implored them to take her there. Switzerland? Geneva? Why was she so desirous of going thither? Mary had a babe at her breast, and was still only recovering from her accouchement; Shelley was busy at home with his books and writing. What reasons could Claire show why he should leave his study and Mary her home, to escort her to Geneva? Answering their questions, and disposing of any objections they made to her astounding proposal, Claire induced them to take her out viâ Paris to the Sécheron Hotel near Geneva.
There were no steamboats and railways in 1816. No mere jaunt for idlers and invalids, as it is now-a-days; the journey from London to Switzerland (as Shelley, Mary, and Claire knew from experience) was a painful and costly business in 1816. Mary Godwin’s son was still in his third month, when the vivacious and irrepressible Claire came in upon her with these words, ‘I am dying to go to Switzerland; the one desire of my heart is to go to Geneva; and you and Shelley must take me there,—not in August, or July, or June; but at the turn of April. You must pack at once and take me out to Switzerland!’ Is it conceivable that Shelley and Mary yielded to Claire’s vehement entreaty without asking her,whyshe was so eager to be off to Geneva; without satisfying themselves that Claire had an object in view which justified her in asking so much of them, and in putting them to so much trouble and expense? Is it conceivable that Claire would have carried her point with hersister and Shelley, had they not regarded her again with affection, and been of opinion that she had a claim to so large a measure of their sympathy and assistance? Is it conceivable that in the month, whose lap is chilled by lingering winter, Mary Godwin with her babe in her arms would have crossed the Channel, and traversing France made the long and toilsome journey to Geneva, only to gratify the mere whim of a girl she disliked?
All these questions are answered in the affirmative by Mr. Froude, and the other Shelleyan enthusiasts, who require us to believe that Shelley and Mary Godwin accompanied Claire,viâParis, to Geneva, without any knowledge or suspicion—that Byron was journeying thither with his young doctor (Polidori) by the Rhine route; that Claire and Byron had arranged to meet at the Hotel Sécheron; that Claire had for some weeks before leaving England been Byron’s mistress; that her object in getting out to Geneva was to throw herself into Byron’s arms. Successive biographers have represented that the meeting of the two sets of tourists at the Sécheron was accidental. Till I exhibited inThe Real Lord Byronthe reasons for thinking otherwise of this meeting, no biographer had ventured even to hint that the juncture of the two parties might have resulted from pre-arrangement. It is now admitted, even by Mr. Froude, that I was right on this point.
But whilst admitting that the meeting resulted from pre-arrangement, Mr. Froude now insists that Byron and Claire were the only parties to the pre-arrangement, which (according to Field Place) was withheld by Claire from her travelling companions. Further, Mr. Froude maintains that, instead of being taken to Geneva by Shelley and her sister, Claire took them thither on her lap. Yet more:—Mr. Froude and his fellow-workers require us to believe that, when they accompanied her to Switzerland, without knowing or suspectingwhyshe wished to go there, Shelley and Mary Godwin disliked Claire extremely,—disliking her for being a malicious, spiteful, and altogether intolerable girl; regarding her disgustfully on account of her vicious notions respecting the intercourse of the sexes. Touring in pre-railway times with an odious companion was even more vexatious than touring with such a companion now-a-days. Yet Mr. Froude insists that Shelley and Mary Godwin associated themselves for several months of foreign touring, witha girl they disliked extremely, for the pure pleasure of her society. More still:—Mr. Froude wishes us to believe that, almost to the last day of their sojourn with Claire and Byron in Switzerland, neither Shelley nor Mary Godwin had the faintest suspicion that Claire was Byron’s mistress; and that though Byron was at pains to have his mistress brought out to him, under cover of her travelling companions, he never saw her at Geneva, except in the presence of some witness to the propriety of their demeanour to one another. Admitting that Byron talked to Claire on the most delicate subjects—such as the arrangements for her accouchement, and plans for the disposal of her child when it should be born—Mr. Froude insists that, throughout her stay in Switzerland, she could not easily have been alone with Byron, even for the shortest interview. Mr. Froude makes this statement, though it is a matter of sure personal history that, whilst Byron lived in the Villa Diodati, and Shelley (with Mary and Claire) in a cottage at the villa’s foot, the trio of the cottage often slept in Byron’s house after sitting up with him till dawn.
On what grounds does Mr. Froude ask us to believe things, so incredible that it is difficult to imagine any evidence that would justify us in believing them? Mr. Froude has nothing whateverto show; nothing whatever to urge, in support of his extravagant assertions, except talk about a letter, which he may not show, because Sir Percy Shelley thinks it better not to show it. We are not told when this letter was written, under what circumstances it was written, for what purpose it was written. Mr. Froude says the letter was written by Claire. Any statement told by Claire, to the discredit of their curious views of Shelley and his career, is unhesitatingly rejected as a falsehood by the Shelleyan enthusiasts. They do not falter in charging Claire with falsehood in telling the certain truth, that she was the Constantia of Shelley’s verse. They do not falter in charging her with falsehood, in saying that Fanny Imlay,aliasWollstonecraftaliasGodwin, killed herself for love of Shelley. According to the Shelleyan enthusiasts Claire went through life, telling fibs whenever fibs would serve her purpose; and yet a letter, said to have been written by her (a letter withheld from public scrutiny), is enough to satisfy them, that Byron, after causing her (his alreadyenceintemistress) to come out to him in Switzerland, never saw her there except inthe presence of a third party. To believe this is to believe the incredible.
When it shall be produced to the world, it will be time enough to give an opinion whether this marvellous letter was written by Claire to screen Mary from her father’s censure; or at a later time to whitewash her sister Mary in the eyes of Sussex society; or was a fabrication, for which Claire was in no degree accountable. Should it appear that Claire really wrote the letter, it will only be additional evidence of her faculty for fibbing. To support the letter’s manifest untruths, with words written by Mary (who, as we have seen, was often curiously inaccurate in her biographical statements), or with words written by Shelley (who seldom let a month pass without penning something wholly devoid of historic truth about himself or his affairs), would be only to produce evidence of a conspiracy to impose an untruth on human credulity, for some purpose or other.
My way of dealing inferentially with admitted facts is this: On flashing in upon her sister and Shelley at Bishopgate, with joy in her face, Claire told them at once that she had won the great Byron’s heart, and was holding the place, for which Lady Byron had been found unworthy. On learning from her how she and Byron had arranged to journey to Geneva by different routes, in order that public attention should not be called to their movements and purpose, Shelley and Mary Godwin consented readily to her prayer, that they would take her out to her lover. In brief, this is my view of the case. Let readers decide for themselves, whether they should accept the view as reasonable or reject it as the reverse. What motive can Claire have had for concealing her tender and romantic intercourse with Byron from her sister Mary, living in Free Love with Shelley? Why should Claire have hesitated to avow her friendship with Byron to the poet and social reformer, who had taught alike, by precept and practice, that love should be free; that the love which yearned for marriage was the only sanction its marriage needed. The only motives a girl in Claire’s position could have for holding her passion from her sister’s knowledge would be motives of shame and delicacy. Such motives cannot be supposed to have influenced Claire’s action to her sister-by-affinity; the girl with whom she had studiedQueen Mab’sviews about marriage, and the Chevalier Lawrence’sEmpire of the Nairs; the spouse of a man to whom she was notmarried; the mother of a child who in the law’s eye, from one point of view, was no one’s child. What could Shelley discover of evil in Claire’s attachment to Byron? The thing he approved for himself was no thing for Shelley to disapprove in Byron’s case. The course which was virtuous for Mary, could not strike him as vicious for Mary’s sister.
Mr. Froude writes disdainfully of Claire’s probable presumption in ‘perceiving the analogy of Byron’s and Shelley’s situation.’ Mr. Froude remarks also that, ‘so far from Claire’s position being like that of Mary Godwin, it must have appeared to Shelley rather a hideous parody of it.’ Why a hideous parody? The cases were too similar for the resemblance to have escaped any one of the trio. Shelley had quarrelled with his wife and was living with another woman. Byron had differed from his wife and was attached to another woman. Separated from their wives by what is called ‘amicable arrangement,’ both poets were living in Free Contract with girls they could not marry. The similar cases had no doubt their points of dissimilarity. But on the whole these points tell in Byron’s favour. In taking Claire under his protection, he had not seduced a girl no more than sixteen years of age. He had not carried off by stealth the child of his most intimate friend. Nor had he taken such pains to win Claire as Shelley took to capture Mary. It is not certain when and how Byron made Claire’s acquaintance. On this point there are two different stories; one of them representing that he saw her for the first time at a point of Oxford Street, to which he had come at her written request; the other and more reliable story being that their first interview occurred at Drury Lane Theatre, under circumstances set forth inThe Real Lord Byron. Anyhow the poet’s capture of the giddy and clever girl was an easy conquest, whereas Shelley’s triumph over Mary was a very difficult business. In palliation of Claire’s evil behaviour it should be remembered, that she did not act thus lightly until Shelley had educated her out of her early views, and that in becoming Byron’s mistress she followed an example set her by Mary.
Though in myReal Lord ByronI followed previous biographers in saying Shelley and Byron met for the first time at Geneva, I am by no means confident that they had no intercourse in England before setting out for their separate journeys to the same foreign capital. Under the known circumstances itwould be so natural for the poets to have a personal conference in the earlier weeks of April, 1816; that far from causing me surprise, it would only fulfil one of my reasonable expectations, to come upon documentary evidence of their having met in London shortly before Byron sailed for Ostend. For the present, however, readers must be content with the assurance that Shelley and Byron came together at the Sécheron Hotel on the 25th of May, 1816.
Having consented to accompany Claire to Geneva, Shelley, in his preparations for the journey, acted as though he were especially desirous to prevent his most familiar friends from discovering or suspecting the real object of the expedition. Had he felt no need for secrecy he would surely have told so close a friend as Peacock whither he and Mary were going, and the purpose of the trip. He would have said, ‘Mary’s sister, who went abroad with us last July twelve months, is set on going to Geneva, and has persuaded us to take her there.’ But for some reason he withheld the real purpose of the trip, and went abroad under cover of misstatements.
It must have been a day of early April, 1816 (though Peacock calls it a day of ‘early summer’), that witnessed a curious scene in the library of the Bishopgate cottage. Bethinking himself that he would take a mid-day stroll, Peacock (a visitor at the cottage) went for his hat to the hall, where he saw Shelley’s small hat, but looked in vain for his own large hat. As he did not care to walk about the country hatless, Peacock returned to the library, where he was joined by Mary Godwin, who at once gave him the particulars of certain stirring news, brought that very morning to Shelley by Mr. Williams, of Tremadoc; the particulars thus passed on by Mary having just come to her from Shelley’s lips. Instead of showing any excitement at the stirring news, Peacock took Mary’s gossip coolly, and declared frankly he could not believe Mr. Williams had been to the house, or believe Shelley had received the news from the Welsh agent. Slightly astonished, and perhaps slightly nettled at Peacock’s incredulity, Mary Godwin withdrew from the library. A few minutes later, Shelley (with Peacock’s big hat in his hand) entered the room. Now for the scene between the calm, sagacious, stolid Peacock, and the tall, slight, round-shouldered, stag-eyed, fresh-complexioned, boyish Shelley.
For the full enjoyment of the combat between the two poets, readers must go to an article preserved in Peacock’sCollected Works. In answer to a remark by his companion, Peacock admitted his inability to believe the account Mary had given him of Mr. Williams’s brief visit. Insisting on the truth of the story, Shelley declared that he had seen Mr. Williams and walked with him to Egham, adding (in reply to a question by Peacock) that, during the walk to Egham, he wore the hat he still held in his hand. On discovering how far too big the hat was for his small head, Shelley admitted having snatcht it up hastily, and remarked that perhaps, instead of wearing it, he had carried it in his hand the whole way to Egham and back. Peacock may well have smiled; it being, of course, obvious to him, that Shelley had snatched up the wrong hat, only a minute or two since, to put himself into walking costume, and give himself the appearance of having just returned from a walk.
Seeing that the hat-trick had only confirmed Peacock in his disbelief of the story, Shelley pleaded how hard it was for him, a man who had devoted his life to the pursuit of truth, and made great sacrifices and suffered much for the truth, to be treated as a visionary. It was thus that Shelley mistook himself for a martyr, and required his friends to regard him as a martyr for the truth’s sake. How had he proved his devotion to truth? The only sacrifices he had ever made of his interests were made from altogether selfish considerations. He had sacrificed his future interest in his grandfather’s property,in orderto preserve his interest in A and B, on which he could raise money for his immediate use. He had sacrificed a little of his interest in A and B,in orderto get an immediate income of 1000l.a-year. Seeing how little Peacock was affected by the pleain misericordiam, Shelley proposed that on the morrow they should go to London, and call on Mr. Williams. ‘He told me,’ said Shelley, ‘he was stopping at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house in the Strand, and should be there two days.’ Mr. Williams, of course, had told him nothing of the kind. Catching at the suggestion, Peacock declared he would willingly go to Mr. Williams, for proof that the marvellous story was a true story.
In accordance with this arrangement Peacock and Shelley set forth the next morning, to call on Mr. Williams at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house; Shelley (an excellent walker) puttingforth his foot bravely, with the air of a man confident of achieving the purpose of the walk to London. But on getting half-way down Egham Hill, Shelley stayed the march to town by turning suddenly on his companion with a declaration, that after all he did not think they would find Mr. Williams at the Turk’s Head. Peacock declared himself of the same opinion. Still holding to his invention, but altering it in an important particular, Shelley explained that, when declaring his purpose to stay two days at the hotel, Mr. Williams had mentioned a contingency, which might cause him to leave London before night. To this explanation the merciless Peacock replied, that all the same they might, by going up to town, learn at the hotel whether Mr. Williams had been there. The suggestion was not acceptable to Shelley. Shrinking from the proposal to put the truth of his story to the test, he declared he would find some other way of convincing his incredulous friend. He would write to Mr. Williams on the matter. For the present, it would be more agreeable to him to stroll about the forest than walk along the road to London.
Peacock assenting with a scarcely perceptible smile, the walk to London was given up, and the friends passed the day in the forest.
A few days later, nothing having been said in the meantime about Mr. Williams’s visit, the question is reopened by Shelley with an announcement, that he had received from Mr. Williams a letter and a diamond necklace, in token and demonstration that the sender of the letter and necklace had visited Bishopgate in accordance with Shelley’s story. Would Peacock believe the story, if Shelley showed him the necklace? Peacock answering stoutly that the exhibition of the diamond necklace would only prove to him, that somehow or other his friend was in a position to display so costly an ornament, Shelley forbore to show the diamonds, and desisted from his efforts to get the better of his companion’s incredulity.
The matter was then dropt for ever. Shelley never renewed his attempt to impose the absurd fiction on Peacock’s clear and steady mind. Peacock says that he had, on one or two previous occasions, argued with his friend against ‘similar semi-delusions,’ ‘and,’ adds Peacock,
‘I believe if they had always been received with similar scepticism, they would not have been so often repeated.... I call themsemi-delusions, because, for the most part, they had their basis in his firm belief that his father and uncle had designs on his liberty. On this basis his imagination built a fabric of romance, and when he presented it as substantive fact, and it was found to contain more or less of inconsistency, he felt his esteem interested in maintaining it by accumulated circumstances, which severally vanished under the touch of investigation, like Williams’s location at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house.’
‘I believe if they had always been received with similar scepticism, they would not have been so often repeated.... I call themsemi-delusions, because, for the most part, they had their basis in his firm belief that his father and uncle had designs on his liberty. On this basis his imagination built a fabric of romance, and when he presented it as substantive fact, and it was found to contain more or less of inconsistency, he felt his esteem interested in maintaining it by accumulated circumstances, which severally vanished under the touch of investigation, like Williams’s location at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house.’
In other words, according to Peacock’s view, Shelley was in these affairs a victim of delusion at bottom, and a wilful utterer of untruths on the surface. What does the reader think? There is no question that the statements made by Shelley were untrue. His father and uncle were not plotting to put him in a lunatic asylum; Mr. Williams, of Tremadoc, had not been to call on him; Mr. Williams had not given him intelligence of a plot for locking him up; Mr. Williams had not sent him a diamond necklace. Let it be remembered that Shelley was a young man capable of stating on paper his intention to have recourse to deception and then deliberately acting on the intention. He was a writer of wheedling letters to get money. Of all his many spoken or written misstatements, only three or four are misstatements without an apparent object. All the other misstatements had a manifest motive and object, sufficient to account for the employment of untruth. In the present affair his object was to get out of England without letting people know, or giving them occasion to suspect the real purpose of the Continental trip. His motive in saying he must go abroad to escape from his father and uncle, was to hide the fact that he was going to take Claire out to Byron. What does the reader think? My own mind is quite clear. My readers are free to think him in this business the victim of delusions; but I cannot take that view of the case. Anyhow, whether he was insane or untruthful, or (as Peacock insists) semi-mad and semi-false, readers must allow he was a gentleman whose letters and other written statements are not worthy of the credit, to be accorded to the letters and other written statements of persons of average mental sobriety and exactness; that he was a gentleman whose diaries may be suspected of containing a good many inaccuracies and a few wild fictions; that his bare statement is no sufficient reason for believing that his most intimate friend was a villain, or that his first wife was a superlatively wicked woman.
Another thing to be observed is that, as she was cognizant of Peacock’s disbelief of Shelley’s statement respecting Mr. Williams’s alleged visit and news, and was in some degree a witness of the curious conflict of the two friends, Mary Godwin was aware of her husband’s peculiar mental or moral infirmity, at least as early as April, 1816. From the spring of 1816, she knew he sometimes uttered statements too marvellous for one of his closest friends to be capable of believing them. Of course, no woman could live in conjugal confidence with a man occasionally suffering in so remarkable a manner from hallucination or deceptive propensity, and be for any long period unobservant of the peculiarity. It is, however, well to remember from how early a date of their association she was cognizant of the fact that, either from delusion or wilful untruthfulness, he was likely to utter statements at variance with fact.
More than five and something less than six years later (1821-2) Shelley assured the trustful Medwin and the incredulous Byron that, on the night before he left London for Switzerland in 1816, he had a memorable interview with a young, rich, and singularly beautiful woman, who had never before set eyes upon him. A married lady, of noble connexions, this historically nameless gentlewoman knew the poet only by his writings, when, on the eve of his departure for the Continent, she sought his presence in order to declare herself enamoured of the author ofQueen Mab, and desirous of being the mistress of so superlative a being. Offering Shelley her heart, she implored him to respond to her devotion. Mated in Free Contract with Mary Godwin, the poet could only decline the lady’s prayer, and soften his refusal of her suit by explaining that his heart belonged to the woman, whom he had taken in lieu of his wife. Two years and a half later he discovered that, instead of returning to her proper home and lord, the lady, whose flattering preference he was compelled to decline with suitable expressions of gratitude and regret, followed him and Mary and Claire across the channel, tracked them through France, and discovering their Genevese retreat, derived a melancholy satisfaction from regarding their movements. Of course, whilst she lingered on Leman’s marge, worshiping her poet and envying his mate in Free Love, this equally interesting and miserable anonyma took all proper care, that he should neither recognize her nor suspect her proximity. Thus followingand adoring him in 1816, the unseen worshiper of his genius followed and adored him in 1818-19, till she died at Naples, after confessing to him how she had found an inadequate solace for her despair in pursuing him from land to land. Whilst Medwin swallowed this fantastic invention, Byron (laughing doubtless in his sleeve at the whole business) ascribed it to nothing worse than ‘an overwrought imagination.’
It is needless to say the whole story is referable to delusion or falsehood. No lady proffered her heart and person to the poet in May, 1816. No lady followed the trio through France to Switzerland in 1816, and again pursued them through foreign lands in 1818. No lady died at Naples in the winter of 1818-19 in the alleged manner. The whole story was a piece of romance, that may not have engaged the poet’s fancy for any long time before he communicated it to Byron and Medwin; though for reasons, to be indicated in a later chapter, I am disposed to think the fable had its birth during the poet’s sojourn in Naples, in the winter following his last withdrawal from his native country.
THE GENEVESE EPISODE.
Shelley’s Arrival at Geneva—Byron and Polidori—At the Sécheron Hotel—Union of the two Parties—Tattle of the Coteries—The Genevese Scandal—Its Fruit inManfredandCain—Its Fruit inLaon and Cythna—The Shelleys’ Return to England—Their Stay at Bath—Their Choice of a House at Great Marlow—Fanny Imlay’s Suicide—Her Pitiable Story—Harriett’s Suicide—Review of Shelley’s Treatment of her—His Responsibility for her Depravation and Ruin—Witnesses to Character and Conduct—Shelley’s Grief for Harriett—His wild Speech about her—His Marriage with Mary Godwin—Birth of Allegra.
Shelley’s Arrival at Geneva—Byron and Polidori—At the Sécheron Hotel—Union of the two Parties—Tattle of the Coteries—The Genevese Scandal—Its Fruit inManfredandCain—Its Fruit inLaon and Cythna—The Shelleys’ Return to England—Their Stay at Bath—Their Choice of a House at Great Marlow—Fanny Imlay’s Suicide—Her Pitiable Story—Harriett’s Suicide—Review of Shelley’s Treatment of her—His Responsibility for her Depravation and Ruin—Witnesses to Character and Conduct—Shelley’s Grief for Harriett—His wild Speech about her—His Marriage with Mary Godwin—Birth of Allegra.
There is a conflict of evidences respecting the dates of the journey from England to Geneva. Whilst theEdinburgh‘Shelley and Mary’ Reviewer exhibits the travellers in Paris on 6th May, and at Geneva on the 13th of the same month, Mary Godwin’s letter (published in the supplementary matter of theSix Weeks’ Tour) assigns the arrival in Paris to the 8th, and the arrival at Geneva to 15th inst. I am disposed to think theEdinburghReviewer right, because Shelley’s letter of the 15th inst. to Peacock implies that the writer had been long enough at Geneva to turn himself about.
Anyhow, leaving England on an early day of May with Mary, her infant, the babe’s nurse and Claire, Shelley was in Paris on the 6th or 8th, and at Geneva on the 13th or 15th of May (something earlier than the time at which the tourists are represented by successive biographers as reaching their destination). Dating from the Hotel Sécheron, Geneva, Shelley wrote to Peacock on the 15th inst.:—
‘We are now at Geneva, where, or in the neighbourhood, we shall remain probably until the autumn. I may return in a fortnight or three weeks, to attend to the last exertions which Longdill is to make for the settlement of my affairs.’
‘We are now at Geneva, where, or in the neighbourhood, we shall remain probably until the autumn. I may return in a fortnight or three weeks, to attend to the last exertions which Longdill is to make for the settlement of my affairs.’
When these words were put on paper, ten days had still to elapse before Byron’s carriages drew up at the door of the hotel. Thus soon after his arrival, and thus long before Byron’s appearance at Geneva, is Shelley resolved on staying there till autumn,—the time fixed for the ending of Byron’ssojourn at the same place. Does Mr. Froude insist that Shelley, on the 15th, was still kept by Claire in ignorance, that Byron would soon be with them? If so, even Mr. Froude must admit it was a very strange coincidence that Shelley had determined to stay at Geneva just as long as Byron designed to linger there. If Mr. Froude concedes that Shelley knew all about Byron’s movements on the 15th, he might as well have said less of the younger poet’s ignorance of Claire’s pre-arrangement with her lover.
On Byron’s deliberate arrival, some twelve days after Shelley had come in hot haste to the hotel, the two sets of tourists forthwith acted as though they had met there by appointment. Joining their forces, the two sets of tourists became one party. When Byron and Polidori left the hotel, Shelley and the sisters left the hotel. When Byron and Polidori moved into the Villa Belle Rive, Shelley moved with the two girls into a little house near at hand. When Byron and Polidori migrated to the Villa Diodati, the sisters with Shelley migrated to the pretty cottage lying at the foot, and under the trees, of Diodati. As the inmates of the cottage repeatedly passed the whole night at Byron’s mansion, it is, of course, obvious that Mr. Froude was justified in saying Claire could not easily have been alone with Byron for a minute! From the day of Byron’s arrival at the Hotel Sécheron, the two inseparable parties were regarded as one party, by the visitors in the hotel, the gossip-mongers of every Genevese coterie, the idlers who, during Byron’s brief stay at the Sécheron, thronged and buzzed about the poets and their ladies, whenever they went (by daylight, or twilight, or at night) from the hotel down to the lake, or back from their boat to the hotel. Whispering that Mary (though styled Mrs. Shelley) was only the younger poet’s mistress, and that Claire was Mary’s sister in the fullest sense of the term, these idlers told one another, that Byron had found in the bright-eyed and brilliant brunette an agreeable substitute for his unforgiving wife. This was the tattle of the hotel, whilst the poets, Polidori, and the girls remained there. It is in the nature of such tattle, that, starting from imperfect truth, it passes quickly to egregious falsehood. Far worse things were soon said of the four young people by the Genevese gossip-mongers, than that Mary was Shelley’s goddess, and that Claire was Byron’s spouse in Free Love.
So much has been written, and is universally known of the Genevese episode of Byron’s career, that Shelley’s biographer may pass lightly over the particulars of the poet’s sojourn with Claire and Mary on the marge of Leman. Every one knows how, to escape from the intrusive inmates of the Sécheron, Byron with Polidori moved to the Villa Belle Rive, whilst Shelley with the girls took possession of the not distant Campagne Chapuis (whence Mary dated the letter of 1st June, published in the supplement to theSix Weeks’ Tour), and how, to escape the telescopes of the Sécheron windows, which covered the garden and balcony of the Villa Belle Rive, the author ofChilde Harold, with his young physician, migrated to the umbrageous grounds of the Château Diodati, whilst the author ofQueen Mab, with Mary and Claire, went into the Campagne Mont Alègre (which gave Claire’s child a familiar name), lying within the leafyentourageof their patron’s mansion. There is no need to tell again how, leaving the two sisters to amuse themselves with letter-writing, and novel-reading, and graver studies, Byron and Shelley (starting for the expedition on 23rd June, 1816) made the well-rememberedEight Days’ Tourof the lake, in the course of which Shelley so narrowly escaped the fate that befell him six years later. It is in every one’s recollection how, in the squall that so nearly upset their boat off St. Gingoux, the younger poet’s chief fear was that, in attempting to save a comparatively insignificant creature, the superb Byron would sacrifice his own existence, so valuable to mankind. Every reader recalls the words of the younger poet’s narrative:—