CHAPTER XVII.

(VideMrs. Shelley’sThe Choice, a poem of 159 verses, printed in Volume I of Mr. Buxton Forman’s edition ofShelley’s Works.)

Penitential utterances, such as this pathetic plaint, should of course be construed generously; but Mr. Buxton Forman goesmuch too far beyond the line, that divides generous construction from sentimental misconstruction, when he says,—

‘I cannot regard this passage as indicating anything more than a natural feeling of remorse in the noble heart of a woman who has suddenly lost an idolized husband, and fancies all kinds of deficiencies in her conduct to him.’

An example of the kind of remorseful confession, to which Mr. Forman’s words would be fairly applicable, appears in the prose, employed by Mrs. Shelley on another occasion to exhibit her bitter sense of her own wifely remissness. Speaking of the melancholy that visited her husband at Naples, Mrs. Shelley says:—

‘... then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which he hid from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural bursts of discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable regret and gnawing remorse to such periods; fancying that, had one been more alive to the nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe them, such would not have existed.’

A general confession of a remorseful sense of not having been all that she should have been to her husband, of regret that she had not been more studiousofand considerateforhis feelings, the prose statement is at the most an utterance of sorrowful compunction for shortcomings, that might have been altogether imaginary. Far otherwise is it with the verses ofThe Choice, comprising several distinct statements of fact, which the biographer is bound to consider, without regard to the poetical form, in which they are submitted to his consideration. In them it is asserted by Shelley’s wife, that she was often angry with him, that she made him fully aware of her anger, that she used to atone for her ebullitions of temper by approaching him with tears and appeasing him with caresses, that she persecuted him with sullenness, that even to the last—when anguish at losing him stirred her to sincerity, and swept away the delusions of her vain self-conceit—she was set on making him imagine, and even on persuading herself, that he was something less than lord and master of her whole heart. Are we to suppose that, in respect to each of these positive assertions, Mrs. Shelley was the dupe of her imagination;—that she was never angry with her husband, never made him sensible of her anger, never kissed him into forgiving her exhibitions of petulance, never punished him with sullen andaverted eyes, never pretended that her heart was not wholly in his possession? The Shelleyan vindicators, who never hesitate to take the poet’s wordsau pied de la lettre, whenever the severest and most literal way of construing his poetical egotisms favours their belief in his superhuman goodness, are the last persons who should reduce Mrs. Shelley’s series of positive assertions into a mere show of natural regret, that she was not so good a wife as she might have been. To me and most readers of this page, her statements must remain evidence, on her own confession, that her life with Shelley was fruitful of the bickerings and contentions, the petty pettishnesses and paltry petulances, the divergences of sentiment and conflicts of feeling, that so often qualify the contentment, and only too often end in extinguishing the mutual affection, of mated couples.

And small the blame to William Godwin’s daughter, that she was guilty of all the positive offences with which she charged herself in the criminatory and penitential verses! Had she erred far more grievously, a generous sympathy would stir every large-hearted and impartial judge of her case, to become her advocate at least to the extent of pleading, that she received from the husband, whom she loved, precisely the slights, so sensitive and proud and quick-tempered a woman would necessarily find exasperating and intolerable in the highest degree. In saying that Shelley’s affection for Mrs. Williams was a sentiment, so refined and delicate, so absolutely pure of love’s grosser appetency, that her husband’s ‘genuinely attached friend could without blame both entertain and avow it,’ Mr. Rossetti says no more than the truth. But we cannot concur with him in thinking that Shelley could entertain and avow the sentiment without disloyalty to his own wife. It was not in his power to entertain the sentiment for two women at the same time. The sentiment was the ethereal, finer, higher element of the passion he had formerly felt for Mary; of the love he offered her in 1814, in return for the devotion and sacrifices he required from her; of the love, whose vehement avowal had determined her to commit herself to his keeping, in defiance of social rule and censure. Before he could bestow it on Jane Williams, Shelley had to take from Mary the sentimental regard which, to a woman of her sensibility, pride, imaginativeness and sentimentalism, was so far the larger part of theconsideration, as almost to amount to the whole of the consideration, by which he had acquired possession of her. Endowed with youth, beauty, intellectual address, wit, imagination, taste, tact, the liveliest sensibilities, and literary aptitude bordering on genius, Mrs. Shelley was required to descend from the throne of her husband’s heart, in order that it should be occupied, now by such an ignoble though lovely animal as Emilia Viviani, and now by a lady, whose mental powers and personal attractions were greatly inferior to her own,—a lady whose want of literary culture he lamented; whose highest accomplishment was a faculty of singing simple airs to her guitar. To suggest that Mary loved the Italian girl whom she styled her ‘cara sorella,’ or in the secret chambers of her fervid and sensitive heart, deemed herself aught else than grievously wronged by her husband’s devotion to the lady with the guitar, is to display a startling ignorance of the sentimental forces that animate and control high-hearted and finely sympathetic women.

Though the passionate ferocity which distinguished Shelley’s earlier writings against priests and creeds, and the tyrannies of custom, waned almost to extinction, under the softening and mellowing influences of time, and of his steadily increasing knowledge of human nature, letters, dated by his hand in the closing months of his existence, show how tenacious he was to the last of his principal conclusions on questions of social philosophy; how even to his final hour he declared against all existing governments as iniquitous and cruel, against marriage as a depraving institution, against Christianity as a pernicious delusion. Though he lived to take larger and sympathetic views of Christ’s character and career, the author of theEssay on Christianitywas no less hostile than the poet ofQueen MabandLaon and Cythna, to the Christianity of the churches.

On its arrival at Pisa, the intelligence of Allegra’s death operated like a signal for dispersion to the members of the Byron-Shelleyan coterie, already disposed to move to other places, by the consequences of the recent affair with the mounted trooper and the soldiers at the barrier. Indeed, Byron was already turning his thoughts to villegiatura at Monte-Nero, and Shelley had despatched the Williamses and Claire to Spezia, to reconnoitre the country, in order to discover an eligible summer residence for his party on the coast of the bay. Onhis return from Spezia, Williams saw at a glance that Shelley had trouble at his heart. Appointed to break the calamity to Allegra’s mother, Shelley shrunk from the task. Deciding to defer the performance of the painful duty, till Claire should have been withdrawn from the vicinity of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, he prevailed on her to go back to Spezia on the morrow, in the company of his wife and Trelawny. Though he was no doubt guided chiefly by care for her feelings, the course thus taken by Shelley may also have resulted in some degree from an apprehension that, if the dismal tidings were communicated to her at the Tre Palazzi, she might in the first paroxysms of her mental torture escape his control, hasten to the other side of the Lung’ Arno, and forcing her way into Byron’s presence overwhelm him with reproaches for sending her child to Bagna Cavallo, in contemptuous disregard of her expostulations and predictions of disaster. Anyhow, it was wisely decided that Claire should not make acquaintance with the sharpest grief of her existence till she should be well away from Byron, who, though profoundly disturbed by the loss of his illegitimate daughter, showed no sign of relenting towards his former mistress.

A few days later, the Shelleys, with Claire and the Williamses, were settled in their narrow and comfortless quarters at the Casa Magni (San Terenzo), some three miles from the wretched little town of Sarzana, some four or five minutes (by fast boat) from the equally squalid and picturesque Lerici, and within an hour’s sail of Spezia. It would be an exaggeration to say that even in Italy it would be impossible to discover, amidst scenes of incomparable loveliness, a meaner, dirtier, more poverty-stricken, more repulsive sea-side village than San Terenzo; but one keeps well between the lines of severe historic veracity in saying no English tourists, of the means and social quality of the Shelleys and Williamses, ever made their abode (from choice and for pleasure) in a more unclean and ill-favoured Italian village for a considerable period. No words can commend too highly the peculiar and winning beauties of the surrounding scenery; but the village itself is doleful, unclean, and appallingly hideous. The same may be said of the wretched inhabitants of the village, that contains only a single dwelling, in any degree fit for the habitation of gentle people. Now that it boasts an upper storey (builtsince Shelley’s time) and contains twice as many rooms as it had when it housed the poet and his companions, the Casa Magni is far from an alluring and impressive residence. Sixty years since the massive and unsightly tenement (whilom a Jesuits’ convent) contained on its solitary floor over a cavernous basement no more than four habitable rooms—(1) a large dining-hall, (2) the room in which Mrs. Shelley and Claire used to sleep, (3) the bedroom occupied by the Williamses, and (4) Shelley’s sleeping apartment; the three bedrooms opening into the grand saloon. In these four rooms five people (six, when Claire was of the party) contrived to live in what must have been a superlatively comfortless and ‘pigging’ fashion; the cooking for the family being done in some out-building, where the servants slept and had their meals. Built so close to the sea, that at high-water the waves tumble noisily about the base of the structure, this marine abode has at its rear neither a single olive-tree, nor the space in which to plant one. The one redeeming feature of this unsatisfactory piece of domestic architecture was (in Shelley’s time), and still is, a broad terrace supported by arches of strong masonry, that running along the whole sea-ward front of the edifice, at the level of the floor of the one set of rooms, served the Shelleys in fine weather as a fifth room, when no fierce sun drove its occupants to the backward parts of the house.

The large dining-hall (with the doors of the bed-rooms opening into it) was the grand chamber, through which Shelley passed without a single thread of raiment on his person, to the dismay of his friends of both sexes, when he lost his clothes whilst bathing; it having escaped the poet that, by merely putting his head into the room and summoning Trelawny or Williams to his side, he might have compassed the timely retirement of the ladies, so as to spare their feelings an embarrassing and painful surprise. The large terrace towards the sea was the place, where Shelley delighted to sit for hours together (videShelley’s letter to John Gisborne of 18th of June, 1822) in the summer evenings, listening to the pleasant but comparatively artless music of Jane Williams’s voice and guitar.

It is not surprising that Mrs. Shelley entered this comfortless and altogether unsatisfactory place of abode with drooping spirits, and that every week she spent in it heightened her aversion for the place. Suffering from a state of health, thatpromised the birth of another child towards the close of the year, she would under the most favourable circumstances have found it difficult to control the irritability, and combat the depressing languor, that always afflicted her at such a time of bodily trouble. Placed at the sea-side, when she was pining for green fields and rural quietude; exposed to the glaring and scorching suns of an unusually hot and dry season, when she thirsted for cool rivulets and murmurous trees; told to make herself at home and take life easily in a house singularly deficient in its arrangements, at the extremity of a barbarous village, where she could not get the food for her frugal table without sending for it to Sarzana or Lerici, she may be pardoned for murmuring at the prospect of passing several months in so distasteful and even exasperating a place. Shelley, on the other hand, was for a while in excellent spirits, and finding San Terenzo altogether to his mind was displeased with his wife for disliking what he enjoyed. He even scolded her for being discontented without a cause. ‘No words,’ she wrote in August, 1822 (videForman’s edition ofShelley’s Works) to Mrs. Gisborne, ‘can tell you how I hated our house and the country about it. Shelley reproached me for this—his health was good and the place was quite after his own heart.’ Whether it was chivalric of Shelley to reproach his sick wife for disliking what he enjoyed, is a question that may be left for his extravagant idolaters. For me it is enough to say, that in this respect he acted as men too often act, when they are unusually well and their wives are annoyingly ill. No doubt it was annoying to him. Charmed with the bay of Spezia, when he made a flying visit to it in the previous summer, he had for months been looking forward to a term of residence amidst its beauties. It was hard for him, that Mary could not keep her ailments and discontent to herself. Knowing how he had been counting on the felicity of living near Lerici, how he and Williams had for months been looking forward to the delight of sailing about the bay, and running to and fro between Leghorn and Lerici in the lovely boat, that was being built for them at Genoa, it was Mary’s manifest duty to enjoy what he enjoyed, or at least to pretend that she enjoyed it. No doubt she was in a delicate state of health. But what of that? It is usual for young wives to be so at times.

Brought round from Genoa by Mr. Heslop and two Englishseamen, Shelley’s new boat entered Lerici harbour on 12th May, 1822, and on trial afforded the liveliest gratification both to the poet and Williams (joint-owners of the craft), the latter of whom wrote of her performance in his diary, ‘She fetches whatever she looks at. In short, we have now a perfect plaything for the summer.’ The perfect plaything was a fatal toy. Henceforth Shelley and his friend passed most of their time on the water; Mary sometimes accompanying them in their swift passages over the dancing waves. ‘My only moments of peace,’ she wrote in the middle of August, 1822, to Mrs. Gisborne, ‘were on board that unhappy boat when lying down with my head on his knee I shut my eyes and felt the wind and our swift motion alone.’ But these moments of peace were of no benefit to her health. Threatened with a miscarriage on the 8th of June, she endured another week of extreme discomfort before she was prostrated by the misadventure, that nearly put an end to her life. It was some alleviation of Mary’s misery, that in her illness she had two companions of her own rank and sex,—Jane Williams, the blamelessness of whose behaviour towards Shelley is demonstrated by his wife’s affection for her; and Claire, who, after withdrawing from San Terenzo for a few weeks, was by this time again an inmate of the Casa Magni. But from inexperience and want of nerve, Claire and Jane proved such poor nurses at the most alarming and perilous crisis of their patient’s trouble, that she would have died of hemorrhage had not Shelley (videhis letter of 18th June, 1822, to John Gisborne, and Mrs. Shelley’s letter of the following August to Mrs. Gisborne), with an address and boldness for which his brief medical training may have been accountable, made her sit in ice till the blood ceased to flow.

But if he may be commended for saving her life on this occasion, Shelley retarded his wife’s restoration by alarming her a few days later by exhibitions of nervous derangement, that was chiefly referable to his apprehensions for her safety. At all times liable at any moment to impulses of fancy, resulting in visions whose vividness, even when they lacked the persistency and steadiness of distinct hallucination, was inconsistent with perfect mental sanity, he had in the previous month, whilst enjoying unusually good health, occasioned the Williamses no little concern by his excitement at a mere illusion, which for some time he mistook for an actual occurrence. On theevening of 6th May, 1822, whilst pacing the Casa Magni terrace, he stopt suddenly, grasped Edward Williams violently by the arm, and staring stedfastly at the white surf at their feet, gave signs of acute mental torture. In reply to a question from Williams, he exclaimed excitedly, ‘There it is again—there!’ The cause of his disturbance was his vivid imagination that little Allegra, naked and lovely, rose out of the surf to his view, clapt her hands in joy, and smiled at him. So powerfully was Shelley affected by this apparition of the child, for whom he had provided by his will no less liberally than he provided for his own children, that his friends found it difficult to induce him to regard it as a mere illusion of his fancy. In the excitement coming to him from his wife’s illness, Shelley (to use her words) underwent ‘a return of nervous sensations and visions as bad as in his worst times;’ one of these visitations being a singularly hideous attack of nightmare, attended with a repulsive dream that affected him both at the moment and for some time afterwards, as though it were a real adventure. During the night of Saturday, 22nd June, 1822, Mrs. Shelley was roused from her sleep by a scream. Almost at the same moment Shelley (whose sleeping-room was on the other side of the great dining-hall) rushed into her room, screaming frantically. Under the impression that he was asleep, she tried to waken him by calling loudly to him; but instead of replying to her cries, he continued to scream so violently and alarmingly, that she sprang from her bed in a panic, and hastening from her bedroom ran across the dining-hall into the Williamses’ sleeping chamber, where, in her weakness and fright, she fell to the ground. As Shelley, on being restored to his senses and soothed into something like equanimity, declared he had not screamed, his companions came to the conclusion that he was unconscious during the whole course of his violent emotion;—that in his alarm at a dream he had crossed the hall and burst into his wife’s room in his sleep. The dream’s first vision was that Edward and Jane Williams (with their bodies lacerated and their bones starting through the skin) approached with these words, ‘Get up, Shelley, the sea is flooding the house and it is all coming down;’ words that caused Shelley to imagine he went to his window and saw the sea rushing into the house. The dream’s second vision was that he saw himself in the act of strangling his ownwife. In the morning, whilst talking with Mary about the last night’s disturbance, he told her ‘that he had had many visions lately.’ One of these recent visions (a vision, that is described in two or three different ways by the poet’s biographers) was that a cloaked figure approached his bedside and beckoned him out of the bedroom into the dining-hall, when, lifting the hood of his cloak, the ghostly visitant, after displaying Shelley’s own features to the agitated dreamer, inquired in Spanish ‘Art thou satisfied?’ and vanished. On being thus confronted and tormented by his own wraith, Shelley screamed loud enough to rouse the house, even as he did on the subsequent occasion when he saw his own wraith in the act of strangling his own wife. The appearance and reappearance of his own wraith were distinctly referable to a scene of one of Calderon’s dramas, that had stirred his imagination profoundly and with morbid consequences.

The nervous excitement, that came to Shelley from his wife’s recent illness and consequent debility, was heightened by the knowledge that the beloved Hunts were at Genoa, and by the expectation of hearing at any moment of their arrival at Leghorn. On 19th June, 1822, on the third day from Mary’s imminent danger, he wrote Hunt a letter, in the hope that it would reach him at the former port; a letter in which the writer promised to set sail for Leghorn on hearing his friend had left Genoa. For the fulfilment of this promise, Shelley, on Monday, 1st July, 1822, departed from Lerici for Leghorn, in the company of Captain Roberts, the builder of the boat which had been christened the ‘Don Juan’ in compliment to Byron, and with Edward Williams by his side. It was with no common emotion that Mary parted with him. Twice, if not thrice, he was on the point of leaving her, when the poor lady,—who loved him passionately in spite of their frequent bickerings, and who was possessed by vague previsions of some approaching calamity,—called him back to her arms, to put yet another kiss on his slight and sunburnt face, to win yet another smile from his mobile features, to look once again into his forward-set stag-eyes of deepest azure, to rest her eyes once again on his flowing tresses, whose glossy brownness was darkened rather than whitened or tarnished by their few threads of grey,—to repeat the often uttered declaration that, if he did not come back to her quickly, she would speedily return with their child totheir rooms (still on their hands) at the Tre Palazzi, on the Pisan Lung’ Arno. ‘They went,’ she wrote with the awful pathos of sacred sorrow in the following month, ‘and Jane, Claire, and I remained alone with the children.’ Well, might she weep! For never more was she to press her lips against the slight sun-burnt visage, see herself in those deep-blue eyes, pass her hand over the flowing brown curls, hear the voice which, harsh though it might be to others,—shrill, sharp, strident under impulses of anger, as she knew it to be,—was life’s and love’s own music to her ear and heart. The sense of coming trouble covered and held her. Not that she feared forhim. The apprehension of seeing and hearing him no more never troubled her, nor occurred to her for a single instant. Her fear was that in his absence she might lose their child;—that death would enter the Casa Magni, and bear away the darling boy Percy, even as the ruthless foe of human happiness had with his finger’s point touched her bright, warm boy Willie into cold, unfeeling clay.

Disaster was far from Shelley’s thoughts as his little schooner—his perfect plaything for the summer—cut and danced over the waves on its way to Leghorn, where he would embrace Hunt and Marianne, and kiss their children. From the beginning of the year, his health (never so weakly as he persuaded himself and his friends into thinking it) had been steadily improving. His breast had grown broader, his figure more robust, his limbs less lathy. If it still wanted massiveness, his countenance had relinquished its former slightness and look of almost girlish fragility. Exposure to sea-air and scorching suns had tanned and bronzed the cheeks, that were never wanting in ruddiness. Of late he had allowed his moustaches to grow, and though they were poor, downy, boyish things in Trelawny’s opinion, they gave his aspect a certain degree of manliness which his face had lacked, on the occasion of his introduction to the stalwart Cornishman. Now that he had dismissed dull care and nervous fancies, in the elation of the brief voyage that would bring him to Hunt’s presence, he had the appearance of a man who might enjoy life for many a year, and live ‘to make old bones.’ And, indeed, nothing in the ailments, which he magnified, or in the constitution, which he underrated, forbade the hope that he would maintain his family’s reputation for longevity. Without being altogetherimaginary, his most serious maladies—dyspepsia and a certain amount of renal trouble—were no infirmities to preclude a confident opinion that, in the absence of fatal misadventure, he might survive to green old age. In truth, though so much has been written of his physical delicacy and constant sufferings from serious malady, there was no reason why, with wholesome diet and freedom from excessive mental trouble, Shelley should not have lived to his grandfather’s age. Occasionally, no doubt, he suffered from renal stone, the painful malady that so often attends dyspepsia; but with proper treatment and care for his food he might in a few years have outgrown his disposition to the disorder, which, though afflicting, is by no means necessarily fatal. In deeming himself a sufferer from the malady, which killed the Third Napoleon, he may not have been the mere victim of nervous fancy; but even in that case the operation for his relief would not necessarily have resulted in his death, as he seems to have imagined, whilst penning the well-known lines ofThe Magnetic Lady to her Patient(1822):—

‘What would cure, that would kill me, Jane:And as I must on earth abideAwhile, yet tempt me not to breakMy chain.’

Anyhow, he never seemed in better health, nor was in higher spirits, than when he sprang from his little schooner at Leghorn, and, throwing himself into Leigh Hunt’s embrace, declared himself ‘inexpressibly delighted,’ and ‘inexpressibly happy.’ For the moment Hunt also (though he had landed with his numerous family at Leghorn, with just sixty crowns less than nothing in hand) was unutterably delighted and happy on seeing the pleasant and cordial face of the friend, on whom he would have preyed steadily and largely, had not fate stept between them. For the next few days Shelley was busy with the affairs of hisprotégé, who had come out from England to fix himself on Byron, though knowing well that the author would fain have been liberated from his engagement to start theLiberal. One of Lady Shelley’s most notable departures from biographical fairness (to use no stronger word) appears on p. 195 ofShelley Memorials, where she speaks of Byron’s reluctance in July, 1822, to embark in theLiberal, as though it were a sudden change of purpose that, taking Shelley bysurprise at so late a stage of the preliminary arrangements, would have justified him in breaking at once and for ever with the vacillating poet. For months Shelley had been aware of Byron’s regret at having committed himself to the hazardous enterprise. No doubt (as I have already remarked) the project was Byron’s own design. Though in proposing to take Hunt for his literary coadjutor he was actuated in some degree by benevolent concern for a struggling man of letters, Byron must, of course, be regarded as having been actuated in a higher degree by a selfish concern for his own interests. His subsequent assertion that he was wholly animated in the choice, and even in the project, by benevolence, was a miserable misrepresentation. It cannot be gainsaid that Byron promised to start theLiberaland to take Hunt for one of his partners in the enterprise. It is also indisputable that, when a man gives his word, he should keep it. All these matters being admitted, it remains, however, that Byron’s engagement was one from which he should have been liberated by both Shelley and Hunt, as soon as he showed a wish to be released from it.

The arrangement of three poets, three men, three gentlemen, for co-operation in a literary enterprise, differs from an arrangement of three tradesmen for a purely commercial undertaking. The project for starting theLiberalwas a project from which each of the three adventurers could honourably retire, on giving the others timely notice of his purpose to do so. That Byron’s first intimation of a wish to retreat from the affair was given long before Hunt left England is indisputable. On receiving it both Hunt and Shelley should have disclaimed the disposition to cause him any embarrassment. In honour they were the more bound to do so,—because he was so much the strongest of the three in fame and purse; because in case of success the venture promised to be so much more beneficial to themselves than to him; and because they could not press him to persist in the enterprise against his will, without showing too lively a regard for their own interests. In taking the other course, and conspiring to hold Byron to the arrangement for their own ends, Hunt (for his own advantage) and Shelley (for Hunt’s profit) were guilty at least of sharp practice. From February to the end of June, they had been acting together confidentially against their powerful friend. For months they had known of Byron’s wish to get out of the affair. At thebeginning of July, just four calendar months had passed since Shelley wrote from Pisa to his fellow-conspirator in England (2nd March, 1822),—‘I imagine it will be no very difficult task to execute that which you have assigned me—to keep him in heart with the project until your arrival.’ Yet in her book Lady Shelley, speaking of the affair as it stood on 1st July, 1822, says,—

‘Byron hadby this timebeen persuaded by Thomas Moore, and some of his other friends in London, that the projected magazine, about which he had been very anxious at first, would be injurious to his fame and interests; and Shelleynow’ (‘by this time’ and ‘now,’ as though Byron now for the first time showed his distaste for the project, in which he was constrained to embark by the two confederates)—‘found him so desirous of making any possible retreat from his engagements, that, had he not feared he might damage his friend’s interests, he would have quarrelled outright with the noble poet. He was very much out of spirits when he left; and that was the last interview they ever had.’

In saying that Shelley parted in dejection from Byron, Lady Shelley is scarcely in accord with the best authorities touching the result of his action in Hunt’s behalf. Hopeful that Hunt and Byron would work together harmoniously for any considerable term, he could not well be, and certainly was not. But Mrs. Shelley’s words may be taken as conclusive evidence, that her husband was pleased with the immediate consequence of his mediation between the poet, who would fain have shipt the Hunts back to England, and the poet who had come to Italy with the purpose of planting himself on Byron. Speaking of her husband’s exertions to put the two partners at least in transient accord, Mrs. Shelley, in her August letter to Mrs. Gisborne, says:—

‘Shelley had past most of the time at Pisa—arranging the affairs of the Hunts—and skrewing L. B.’s mind to the sticking place about the journal. He had found this a difficult task at first, but at length he had succeeded to his heart’s content with both points. Mrs. Mason said that she saw him in better health and spirits than she had ever known him, when he took leave of her on Sunday, July 7th, his face burnt by the sun and his heart light that he had succeeded in rendering the Hunts tolerably comfortable.’

This would of itself dispose of Lady Shelley’s assertion that Shelley retired in depression from his final negotiations of Byron. On Thursday, 4th July, Shelley had written of theHunts and of Byron’s obligation to take them at least for a brief while altogether on his hands, ‘Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at present, as I cannot; but he seems inclined to depart without the necessary explanations and arrangements due to such a situation as Hunt’s. These, in spite of delicacy, I must procure.’ Three days later (Sunday, 7th August) he is in high spirits at having brought Byron into better humour with the Hunts, and made the Hunts fairly comfortable. With Byron he has ‘succeeded’ to his heart’s content; and in respect to the Hunts he is positively ‘light-hearted.’ Confirmed by several contemporary writings, Mrs. Shelley’s testimony respecting her husband’s satisfaction with and consequent elation at his arrangements for the Hunts, represents the view of Captain Roberts, Trelawny, Lady Mountcashel, the Hunts themselves, indeed of everyone of Shelley’s friends, who saw him in the last days of his existence at Pisa or Leghorn. The unquestionable success of his negotiations with Byron cannot have failed to gratify him. Yet Lady Shelley requires us to believe that he retired from those negotiations ‘very much out of spirits.’

On finding in July how he had been kept in ignorance of Hunt’s retirement from theExaminer, Byron might reasonably and honourably have used the concealment as a sufficient reason for breaking at once with the crafty practitioner. He had invited Hunt,asthe Editor of theExaminer, to co-operate with him; he had furnished rooms in his house for the Hunts, on the understanding that Leigh Hunt had at least a sufficient income for the payment of his weekly bills; and now, through Hunt’s wary concealment of the real state of his affairs, he found himself with a numerous and absolutely destitute family in his house,—found himself, also, required by Shelley to take the maintenance of this penniless family altogether on his own hands—at least for a time. Byron had reason for resentment on finding himself over-reached and imposed upon in this unscrupulous and impudent manner. But what could he do? Mrs. Hunt was alarmingly ill, her children were guiltless of wilful complicity in the father’s extortionate manœuvre. He could not turn the sick woman and her babes out-of-doors. He could not even turn the wily operator on the pockets of his acquaintances out-of-doors. The clever, dextrous, irresistibly charming fellow had not a crown in his purse. For the momentShelley could not relieve the necessities of the family, whom he had brought out from England and thrown upon Byron’s hands in so comical a manner. Shelley stated the situation precisely to his wife on the 4th of July, when he wrote, ‘Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at present, as I cannot.’ One must needs smile at the thought of the three prime actors in the droll affair:—at the thrifty Byron’s dismay on being suddenly called upon to provide board and pocket-money, as well as bed and house-room, for the impecunious family; at the free-handed Shelley’s clear perception of Byron’s duty to these equally charming and shiftless Micawbers; at Hunt’s chagrin at the coldness with which he was welcomed to the Palazzo Lanfranchi. It is to Byron’s credit that he did all that honour and humanity required of him under the circumstances; and at the same time to his discredit that he did it ungraciously. Finding he ‘was in for it,’ without any easy and congenial way of escape, he started theLiberal; carried the Hunts in his train to Genoa; and, without causing Leigh Hunt more misery than he deserved, did divers things he should for his own dignity’s sake have left undone. It is not surprising that, after dropping a good deal of money and credit on theLiberalin a faint-hearted way, he declined to sacrifice himself yet further, for the advantage of his unsatisfactory partner.

After spending seven days between Leghorn and Pisa, Shelley set sail for Lerici in his little schooner with Edward Williams, who was longing to get back to his wife at the Casa Magni, and Charles Vivian, the young sailor who was the only regular nautical ‘hand’ on board the swift but unsteady craft. Contradicting one another even to the latest point of Shelley’s career, the authorities are at variance respecting the frame of mind in which he started on his brief voyage to death. On the one hand it is declared that he left Leghorn in dejection, and on the other that he went out of port in the highest elation. On seeking information from those who bade him farewell as he stept into his boat, Mrs. Shelley was assured that he went off ‘in one of those extravagant fits of good spirits in which’ he was ‘sometimes seen.’ The truth seems to be that, though dispirited for a few minutes by a despondent letter from Mary, he speedily recovered the jubilant air that had distinguished him on the previous day at Pisa, and in his satisfaction at the latest arrangements for the Hunts started in the happiest temper. He didnot, however, glide out of the harbour without forewarning of the gale that was rising for his destruction. The day had been intensely hot, and a violent thunderstorm had broken over the gulf in the forenoon. Captain Roberts had even hinted that the voyagers should wait for more settled weather on the morrow:—an ominous hint from the ‘Don Juan’s’ builder. But though Shelley was faintly disposed to take the captain’s advice, Edward Williams, in his eagerness for his wife’s society, would hear of no delay, insisting with the wind then blowing they should be home in seven hours. Even as the ‘Don Juan’ slipt out of the harbour the Genoese mate of Byron’s yacht, ‘Bolivar,’ remarked to his captain, Trelawny, in reference to the dark clouds, rolling up from the south-west in threatening masses, that ‘the devil was brewing mischief.’ Three hours later the devil of this nautical prediction had for a brief while his own way with the gulf. It was about three p.m. when the small schooner scudded away from the Leghorn mole, from whose extremity Captain Roberts watched her performance till she passed beyond the range of his unaided vision at the rate of some seven knots an hour. At 6.30 Trelawny, who had gone to his cabin on board the ‘Bolivar,’ was roused from his afternoon’s slumber by noises, familiar to his nautical ear. Going on board he found the sky darkened by fog to almost nocturnal gloom, and learnt from the disturbances of the air and the commotion of the shipping in the harbour, that a mighty storm was on the point of breaking over the sea. A few minutes later the din and hubbub and shrill pipings of countless mariners were silenced by the thunder and wind and rattling rain of a wild and overpowering squall. The storm spent its fiercest fury in twenty minutes,—the brief passage of time during which the ‘Don Juan,’ that perfect plaything for the summer, foundered and sunk beneath the tumult of the angry billows.

Knowing from the force of the rising wind, even before she had passed from his view whilst he stood at the mole’s end, that the ‘Don Juan’ was in for a stiff breeze and hard weather, Captain Roberts went from the mole to the authorities, who could give him leave to ascend the lighthouse tower. On getting their permission to do so he climbed the Leghorn lighthouse, from whose summit he succeeded in sighting the toy-schooner with a glass, when she was some ten miles out at sea, off Via Reggio. The vessel was in view long enough for thecaptain to observe that her crew were in the act of taking in the top-sails. But it was only a glimpse he got of the boat before the sea-fog stole it from his sight. The circuit of the sea, covered by the captain’s glass, was alive with shipping, driven wildly by the mighty tempest; but when the sky and view cleared, though the gazer from the lighthouse saw again every other vessel he had held in sight before the transient obscuration, he looked in vain for the one vessel, in which he was personally interested.

On her recovery from a depth of from ten to fifteen fathoms of water in the following September, it was discovered that the ‘Don Juan’ had not capsized. She had gone under, swamped by an overwhelming sea or overborne by a felucca that ran her down. The large hole in her stern, and other signs of violence countenancing the latter conjecture, gave rise to the suspicion that she had been struck by a felucca in a piratical attempt to seize her, in the hope of getting possession of the dollars she was supposed to have on board. At this distance of time there is no need to examine the unsatisfactory evidence that favours this hideous hypothesis. That the ‘Don Juan’ was followed from Leghorn Harbour by pirates, set on making prize of the money she was believed to carry, is not unlikely. She may have been chased and even run down by pirates, set on plundering her in the open sea; but even in that case it is more probable that the immediate cause of her submergence was accidental collision, than that her piratical pursuers selected a moment for striking so slight a vessel, when the violence of the storm and the tumult of the waters rendered it impossible for them to board her. But at this date it matters little why and how she foundered.

It is more interesting to know that, sudden as it was, the catastrophe might have come more suddenly:—that the poet and his comrades had at least a brief minute or two, in which to prepare for the fate that did not overtake them altogether unawares. That they were taking in their topsails off Via Reggio is a sufficient indication that they were alive to the peril of their position before they passed from Captain Roberts’s view. That on its recovery Edward Williams’s corpse was found almost without clothing shows that before the little schooner went down he had time to realize the imminence of the danger, and to prepare for an attempt to save himself by swimming. On the other hand, the submerged boat and the remains of the three drownedbodies were found too near the point, at which Captain Roberts sighted and lost sight of them, for any difference of opinion respecting the hour or even the approximate minute of the catastrophe. At the most, they had only a few minutes to live when they busied themselves in hauling in their top-sails. A minute or two after passing from the view of the watcher on the lighthouse they were themselves face to face with death. In September, 1822, the vessel was discovered off Via Reggio; and on the 22nd of the previous July, just a fortnight after the fatal storm, the remains of Shelley’s corpse, and the remains of Edward Williams’s body, were found on shore,—those of Shelley being found near Via Reggio, on the Tuscan coast, whilst all that remained of Edward Williams’s manly form and presence had been carried to a point, some three miles distant, at the Bocca Lericcio, hard by the Migliarino tower. Three weeks later Charles Vivian’s skeleton was brought to shore by the waves, at a distance of some four miles from the spot to which Edward Williams’s corpse had been carried.

How Shelley and Williams acted, as the schooner was already sinking beneath them, one may infer confidently from the characters and mutual affection of the two men; from the notable difference in respect to the clothing of what was recovered of their disfigured bodies; and from what we know of Shelley’s demeanour on previous occasions (notably and especially on the occasion of the squall off St. Gingoux in the summer of 1816), when he was in danger of death from drowning. It cannot be doubted that, whilst hastily stripping himself of his raiment, Williams proposed to do his best to save his friend as well as himself. To this proposal it is certain that the poet (who on the former occasion had firmly refused the help of so expert a swimmer as Byron) answered calmly that he was ready for death, was even glad to embrace the fate so mercifully offered to him; and that, after so refusing to diminish his comrade’s chance of escape, and after enjoining him to bear his love to Mary and Jane and Claire at the Casa Magni, he anticipated without dismay or vain regret, on the contrary, welcomed with mingled complacence and curiosity, the moment when he should pass through the veil that divides the here from the hereafter,—the moment that would give him the knowledge for which he had so long hungered and thirsted.

Possibly in that last minute or two, his mind was visitedmomentarily by tender and subduing thoughts of old joys and interests, former sorrows and ambitions, exhausted enmities and profitless contentions, disappointed hopes and unachieved aspirations. I conceive that thoughts of the old home and parents, from whose love he had severed himself, of Eton and poor old Keate, of Oxford and Hogg, of scenes about Keswick and Killarney, together with thoughts of more recent friends and less distant places, flitted across his brain, ever so quick and imaginative, now so abnormally active, and in a trice to be still for ever. Doubtless he thought of his little boy at San Terenzo, his other boy whom he had buried at Rome; possibly also of his children in England, and of the lovely girl who had given birth to them,—the sweet, bright, radiant girl who died in the water of the cold Serpentine, even as he would now die in the water of the angry sea. As he sate calmly on the sinking boat, and studied the successive visions of his own life’s panorama, he may be conceived to have remembered things he had done, and things he had left undone, to his regret. In his doubt and curiosity he may also be conceived to have hoped that, should death prove the gateway to another life for him, it would be a life, in which the ways of duty and righteousness are more clearly marked and more easily discovered, than the ways of righteousness and duty in this darksome, and troublous, and perplexing existence. Thus, as he sate a-thinking in the foundering boat, Shelley sunk beneath the turbulent and cruel waves, so remorseless for the woe they work, so heedless of the lives they devour.

To tell all that needs yet to be told requires few words. All the world knows how Shelley’s torn, and wasted, and disfigured corpse was reduced to ashes, and a few fragments of bone (with the exception of the heart that wouldnotbe burnt) on the pyre, that was piled and lit for its cremation, on the sands of the seashore, to which the relenting waves carried him all too late. Again and again it has been told how, under the fierce light of a southern sky and sun, at the marge of the whispering sea, and within view of the remote Apennines, this revival of a classic rite was performed with precise care for classic requirements, in the presence of Byron, Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, and a guard of soldiers. Who needs to be told again, how the copy of Keats’s last book (found in Shelley’s pocket, doubled back at theEve of St. Agnes, as though he had been perusing it, tilldeath’s summons made him put it aside hurriedly) was thrown upon the blazing pyre? What reader of Mr. Rossetti’s description of the burning of the great poet’s body has not heard the cries of the curlew, that wheeling close about the pyre, and screaming miserably, refused to be driven away? It is the story of every household, where poetry is prized and genius is honoured, that Shelley’s ashes were conveyed to Rome, and there deposited in the new Protestant Cemetery (nottheoldburial-ground, that holds the dust of Keats and Mary Godwin’s first-born son), at a spot planted by Trelawny, with laurels and cypresses, and marked by the stone of this record:—

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYCor CordiumNatus iv Aug.MDCCXCIIObiit viii Jul.MDCCCXXII——Nothing of him that doth fadeBut doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.

SHELLEY’S WIDOW AND HER SISTER-BY-AFFINITY.

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