PISAN ACQUAINTANCES.
The Williamses--Shelley at Ravenna--The Shelley-Claire
Scandal--Shelley’s startling Letter to Mrs. Shelley--Examination of
the Letter--Its wild Inaccuracies--Mrs. Shelley’s vindicatory Letter
to Mrs. Hoppner--Demonstration that Byron was authorized by Shelley to
withhold the Letter--Explanation of the Shelley-Claire
Scandal--Shelley’s Visit to Allegra at Bagna-Cavallo--Project for
starting the _Liberal_--Leigh Hunt invited to edit the
_Liberal_--Shelley’s Change of Plans--His Pretexts and Reasons for
changing them--Leigh Hunt’s Way of dealing with his Friends--His
Concealment of his financial Position--Byron at Pisa--Hunt’s
Misadventures on his Outward Voyage--Byron’s Discouragement in respect
to the _Liberal_--Differences between Byron and Shelley--Shelley’s
Position between Byron and Hunt--The Byron-Shelley ‘Set’ at
Pisa--Shelley and Hunt in secret League against Byron--Shelley’s
Change of Feeling towards Byron--Was Byron aware of the Change?
Though leading a life of seclusion and studious industry, Shelley escaped
at Pisa from the social estrangement, almost amounting to social
isolation, which had alternately irritated and depressed him during the
earlier stages of his residence in Italy, and would have affected him
still more painfully, had it not been for Claire’s exhilarating
vivaciousness. If he made no friends in the Tuscan city, Pisa at least
afforded him acquaintances,--Vacca the physician (who wisely treating the
poet as a _malade imaginaire_ told him to confide in nature for the proper
treatment of his maladies); Sgricci the improvisatore, whose peculiar
faculty stirred the poet’s curiosity and admiration; and the dissolute
Professor who introduced him to Emilia Viviani. Receiving his cousin Tom
Medwin in the late autumn of 1820 for a long visit, he made the
acquaintance of Medwin’s especial friends, the Williamses, early in the
following year,--Edward Williams, whilom lieutenant in the 8th Dragoons,
and in still earlier time a midshipman of the Navy, who, boasting a lineal
descent from Oliver Cromwell, and displaying at least an amateur’s
aptitude for literature and the fine arts, possessed various mental and
moral qualities, to render him no less acceptable to Mary than her
husband; and Jane Williams, the last of the several women, fair or
otherwise, to move Shelley to platonic affection. From time to time, also,
at Pisa, Shelley saw something of Lady Mountcashel, whose acquaintance he
had made at Florence,--the gentlewoman of letters, who, whilst
corresponding regularly with her old friend, Claire’s mother, had her
reasons for living abroad under the name and style of Mrs. Mason, together
with her cold and capricious daughter, who ranged herself for a while with
Claire’s admirers. But of all Shelley’s Pisan associates, in the time
preceding Byron’s tenure of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, none is more deserving
of commemoration than the Prince Mavrocordatos, with whom Shelley played
chess and lived for awhile on terms of domestic intimacy, before
dedicating _Hellas_ to him, as ‘an imperfect token’ of the author’s
‘admiration, sympathy, and friendship.’ That Shelley had some other and
less creditable associates at the Tuscan city and the adjacent Baths, may
be inferred from the contemptuous and even disgustful severity with which
Mrs. Shelley spoke of their Pisan acquaintances as a ‘dirty enough’ lot of
people.
In July, 1821, the Shelleys designed to spend the next winter in Florence
with Mr. and Mrs. Horace Smith, whom they had promised to introduce to the
glories of the Uffizi and Pitti galleries; and in accordance with this
purpose Shelley went to Florence at the end of July to choose a suitable
residence. But this scheme for the winter fell through; Mrs. Smith’s ill
health determining Horace Smith to postpone their Italian trip,--an
opportune change of purpose, that liberated the Shelleys from their
engagement to winter at Florence, just as they were wishing for a decent
pretext for throwing the Smiths over, and wintering again at Pisa, where
they would be members of the great Byron’s especial circle.
Five days after writing from Florence to his wife at Bagni di Pisa,
Shelley was writing (6th August, 1821) to her from Bologna, as he was on
the point of starting for Ravenna, to visit Byron at the Palazzo
Guiccioli, which he entered at 10 p.m. of the same date. Crossing at this
late hour his entertainer’s threshold, Shelley was not permitted to retire
to rest, by daylight, until he had heard a piece of scandal that cannot
have disposed him for slumber. The promptitude, with which Byron poured
this piece of tattle into his guest’s ear, will remind readers how at
Diodati he seized the earliest moment to chatter to another friend about
the revolting Genevese scandal. Before Shelley went to bed for the first
time, at five o’clock a.m. at the Palazzo Guiccioli, he had heard that
rumour charged him with being the father by Claire of a child, whom she
had put into a Foundling Hospital. It was of course the easier for Byron
to speak to Shelley of so indelicate a matter, because they had spoken
freely together just five years since on the details of the Genevese
scandal. Going to bed at five or six a.m. it was Byron’s practice to rise
in the afternoon; and the poet, who thus turned night into day, was still
only in his second sleep, when Shelley, at 11 a.m. on the 7th August,
1821, was writing to his wife in these terms,--
‘Lord Byron has told me of a circumstance that shocked me exceedingly,
because it exhibits a degree of desperate and wicked malice, for which
I am at a loss to account. When I hear such things my patience and
philosophy are put to a severe proof, whilst I refrain from seeking
out some obscure hiding-place where the countenance of man may never
meet me more.... It seems that Elise, actuated either by some
inconceivable malice for our dismissing her, or bribed by my enemies,
or making common cause with her husband, has persuaded the Hoppners of
a story, so monstrous and incredible, that they must have been prone
to believe any evil to have believed such assertions upon such
evidence. Mr. Hoppner wrote to Lord Byron, to state this story as a
reason why he declined any further communication with us, and why he
advised him to do the same. Elise says that Claire was my mistress;
that she was brought to bed; that I immediately tore the child from
her and sent it to the Foundling Hospital. I quote Mr. Hoppner’s
words--and this is stated to have taken place in the winter after we
left Este (1819-20).--[_sic_, in the proverbially inaccurate Mr.
Froude’s transcript. The winter of the stay at Naples was the winter
of 1818-19.] In addition she says that both I and Claire treated you
in the most shameful manner; that I neglected and beat you, and that
Claire never let a day pass without offering you insults of the most
violent kind, in which she was abetted by me.--As to what reviews and
the world say I do not care a jot; but when persons who have known me
are capable of conceiving of me, _not that I have fallen into a great
error--as would have been the living with Claire as my mistress_--but
that I have committed such unutterable crimes _as destroying_ or
abandoning a child, and that my own! Imagine my despair of good!
Imagine how it is possible that one of so weak and sensitive a nature
as mine can run the gauntlet further, through this hellish society of
men. _You_ should write to the Hoppners a letter refuting the charge,
in case you believe, and know, and can prove it to be false; stating
the grounds and proof of your belief.... If you will send the letter
to me here, I will forward it to the Hoppners. Lord Byron is not up,
I do not know the Hoppners’ address, and I am anxious not to lose a
post.’
For the italics of the foregoing extract the present transcriber is
responsible.
It is in the memory of some readers of this book, that the afore-given
passage, from Shelley’s letter of 7th August, was a chief feature of the
article, which Mr. Froude wrote for the August-1883 _Nineteenth Century_,
to the discredit of my _Real Lord Byron_, and for Byron’s defamation. It
is therefore in some degree for the defence of my own reputation (a matter
of importance to at least one person), though chiefly for the vindication
of Byron’s honour from the latest of his defamers’ countless calumnies,
and for the fuller exhibition of certain aspects of Shelley’s character,
that I proceed to examine the passage of Shelley’s 7th August-1821 letter
to his wife, certain parts of her reply to it, and the use made by Mr.
Froude of the poet’s letter and Mrs. Shelley’s vindicatory answer.
The shameful conduct, charged against Shelley and Claire, was (according
to Shelley’s letter) alleged to have taken place in the winter of 1818-19,
_i.e._ when they were at Naples. The indictment (according to the same
letter) comprised several counts:--(1) That Shelley had taken Claire for
his mistress under his wife’s roof; (2) That he and Claire had joined in
treating his wife cruelly in other ways; (3) That he had beaten his wife
and neglected her; (4) That he tore from Claire the child to which she had
given birth; (5) That he had sent the child into a Foundling Hospital; (6)
That he had destroyed or abandoned the child,--_i.e._ that, if he had not
put the child into a Foundling Hospital, he had destroyed it. According to
the letter Elise had made these charges, and the Hoppners believed
them,--_i.e._ deemed him guilty of the first five charges, and further
guilty of abandoning or murdering his own offspring. I say, _according to
Shelley’s letter_; for this excited epistle by a man, who in the opinion
of his most intimate friends was absolutely incapable of writing a
precisely accurate account of any agitating passage of his own quite
recent affairs, is our only account of the substance and particulars of
Byron’s speech at or after midnight to the greatly excited and indignant
Shelley. Is it likely that this account is precisely or substantially
accurate?
From Byron’s March-1821 note to Hoppner we _know what_ ill things they
charged against Shelley and Claire. We _know_ they believed that Claire
was Shelley’s mistress, that Claire had given birth to a child, and that
_she_ (_not_ Shelley) had put this child into a Foundling. Byron’s words
to Hoppner are precise. ‘The moral part of this letter,’ he wrote to
Hoppner in March, 1821, about Claire’s epistle, ‘upon the Italians, &c.,
comes with an excellent grace from the writer now living with a _man_ and
his _wife_, and having planted a child in the Foundling.’--They did not
imagine that Shelley had torn the child from Claire’s breast, and sent it
to a Foundling against her will. On the contrary they believed the child
to have been put into the Foundling by Claire. At the worst they believed
Shelley guilty, on this point, of mere acquiescence in _her_ arrangement
for getting rid of the child. They thought that the child was sent to a
Foundling. It never occurred to them to suspect Shelley of having
destroyed the child. One difficulty of the matter is that Byron, to say
the least of it, was not quite, but almost, as untruthful as Shelley. But
it was not in the way of his peculiar untruthfulness, to say in cold blood
that Hoppner believed Shelley to have torn the child from Claire’s breast,
and sent it to a Foundling against her will, _or_ perhaps destroyed it,
when he knew Hoppner thought nothing of the kind. In his hatred of Claire,
Byron hugged the notion that _she_ had planted her child in a Foundling;
and his hatred of her would alone have prevented him from telling a lie,
that would have represented her as innocent of that offence, at least in
Hoppner’s opinion. Yet Shelley (so prone to write with wild inaccuracy
about his personal affairs) wrote to his wife that Byron had told him
certain things (over and above the real communications) which it is
inconceivable Byron told him.
Another remarkable feature of Shelley’s letter is the way in which he
refers to the first count of the indictment. Writing to _his own wife_,
Shelley (the poet, who according to his idolaters might have been the
Saviour of the World) positively tells _her_, that, if he had lived in
adultery with her sister-by-affinity under her own roof, he would have
been guilty of nothing worse than ‘a great error!’ He would not have
committed prodigious immorality, and a revolting outrage of social
decency. He would not have been guilty of loathsome domestic uncleanness.
He would only have fallen into ‘a great error.’ He wrote this of _himself_
to his _own wife_! This fact should be pondered by those, who not long
since were so indignant with Byron for imagining Shelley could have
sinned with Claire in his wife’s house. Here is Shelley, instructing his
own wife that the enormity would have been nothing more heinous than a big
blunder.
Moved by Shelley to write a vehement denial of the slanders, Mrs. Shelley
(best of letter-writers) seized her pen, and produced an epistle that
cannot be commended too highly as an exhibition of womanly feeling. On
some subordinate points it is not free from confusion and inconsistency,
and in one or two passages the writer _seems_ guilty of several material
inaccuracies; but this appearance may be wholly due to the carelessness of
transcribers of the printed copies of Shelley’s letter to her. For
instance, whilst Shelley in the printed passages of his letter merely
says, ‘Elise ... has persuaded the Hoppners,’ and ‘Elise says,’ Mrs.
Shelley in her vindicatory epistle says of her husband’s letter, ‘It tells
me that Elise _wrote to you_’ (_i.e._ to Mrs. Hoppner) ‘relating the most
hideous stories against him,’--words certainly not justified by the
published passages of Shelley’s letter. Dealing thus, in the opening of
her letter, with Elise, as though she were the actual slanderer, Mrs.
Shelley in a later passage seems to hold Paolo altogether accountable for
the calumnies, and to acquit Elise of complicity in his wickedness. Yet,
towards the close of the epistle (addressed to Mrs. Hoppner), reflecting
bitterly on her former nurse, Mrs. Shelley bids Mrs. Hoppner withdraw her
confidence from ‘one so vile as Elise.’ Both in her letter to Mrs. Hoppner
and in the accompanying note to her own husband, Mrs. Shelley refers to
Byron’s disbelief of the slanders; whereas the published passages of
Shelley’s letter afford no grounds for these references to Byron’s
incredulity, and even justify a suspicion that the generous disbelief for
which Mrs. Shelley was so grateful, was merely her presumption. Possibly
the production of the original documents would dispel these apparent
inconsistencies and inaccuracies. As they stand before the world, however,
the published passages of Mrs. Shelley’s letter comprise several
perplexing sentences. On the main points of the slanders, however, Mrs.
Shelley is direct, and admirably strenuous. Nothing of its kind can well
be stronger than this:--
‘But now I come to the accusations, and I must summon all my courage
while I transcribe them, for tears will force their way, and how can
it be otherwise? You knew Shelley. You saw his face, and could you
believe them?--believe them only on the testimony of a girl whom you
despised? I had hoped that such a thing was impossible, and that,
although strangers might believe the calumnies that this man
propagated, none who had ever seen my husband could for a moment
credit them. He says Claire was Shelley’s mistress--that--upon my word
I solemnly assure you that I cannot write the words. I send you a part
of Shelley’s letter, that you may see what I am now about to refute;
but I had rather die than copy anything so vilely, so wickedly false,
so beyond imagination fiendish.--But that you should believe it! That
my beloved Shelley should stand thus slandered in your minds--he, the
gentlest, the most humane of creatures--is more painful to me--oh far
more painful--than words can express. Need I say that the union
between my husband and myself has never been disturbed? Love caused
our first imprudence; love which improved by esteem, a perfect trust
one in the other, a confidence and affection which, visited as we have
been by severe calamities (have we not lost _two_ (_sic_) children?),
has increased daily, and knows no bounds. I will add that Claire has
been separated from us for about a year.... You ought to have paused
before you tried to convince the father of her child of such
unheard-of atrocities on her part. If his generosity and knowledge of
the world had not made him reject the slander with the ridicule it
deserved, what irretrievable mischief you would have occasioned her!
Those who know me will believe my simple word. It is not long ago that
my father said, in a letter to me, that he had never known me utter a
falsehood; but you--easy as you have been to credit evil, you may be
more deaf to truth--to you I swear by all that I hold sacred in Heaven
and Earth, by a vow which I should die to write if I affirmed a
falsehood,--I swear by the life of my child--my blessed, beloved
child--that I know the accusation to be false.’
Addressed to Mrs. Hoppner, this letter was sent to Shelley at Ravenna, for
him to forward it to the lady at Venice; the note which accompanied it to
Shelley’s hands, contained the writer’s earnest request to him, to copy
the epistle, before sending it on. ‘Pray,’ said Mrs. Shelley, ‘get my
letter to Mrs. H. copied, for a thousand reasons,’--meaning, of course, to
keep the copy in evidence of what she had written in the original, that
would go to Mrs. Hoppner. She had previously said in the same letter, ‘If
the task be not too dreadful, pray copy it for me.’ Shelley’s way of
dealing with this natural request is equally curious and significant:--
‘I have not,’ he remarked in a subsequent letter from Ravenna to his
wife, ‘recopied your letter--such a measure would destroy its
authenticity, but have given it to Lord Byron, who has engaged to send
it with his own comments to the Hoppners. People do not hesitate, it
seems, to make themselves panders and accomplices to slander, for the
Hoppners had exacted from Lord Byron that these accusations should be
concealed from _me_. Lord Byron is not a man to keep a secret, good or
bad, but in openly confessing that he has not done so, he must observe
a certain delicacy, and therefore he wished to send the letter
himself, and indeed this adds weight to your representations.’
It is inconceivable that Shelley really thought what he pretended to
think, viz., that his wife wished him to make a fair copy of her letter,
for Mrs. Hoppner’s perusal. He knew right well _why_ Mary told him to copy
the letter. He misconstrued her words wilfully, because he did not wish
her to have a copy of the letter at her hand,--to remind her of the
circumstances that had caused her to write it. Paying proper regard to her
repeated injunction, he would have copied not only her written words, but
also that part of his own letter of the 7th instant, which she had made a
substantive part of her own epistle. This she asked him to do. Instead of
doing what she told him, he pretended to have misunderstood her request,
and at the same time informed her that her vindicatory letter had been
given to Byron, for transmission to Mrs. Hoppner.
This vindicatory letter was _not_ transmitted by Byron to Mrs. Hoppner. On
the contrary, after Byron’s death, it was found amongst his papers, and at
some later time passed to the hands of the present Sir Percy Shelley. With
law and logic resembling his knowledge of the simplest rules of evidence,
Mr. Froude wrote of this letter in his notorious _Nineteenth-Century_
article, ‘It was not addressed to Byron; it therefore never belonged to
Byron; and a property which was not his own could not descend to his
representatives.’ What egregious nonsense! What should be thought of the
readers of the _Nineteenth Century_, who accept such foolishness as sound
literature? What living writer but Mr. Froude could venture to declare it
impossible for a man to acquire property in a letter, _not_ addressed to
him? Were the _dictum_ good law, the trustees of the British Museum would
have no property in any one of their several thousands of ancient letters.
Mr. Alfred Morrison would not have property in any of his thousands of
epistles, _not_ addressed to himself. On coming to Shelley’s hands at
Ravenna, Mrs. Shelley’s vindicatory letter was as much his property as any
ring on his finger. Written by his own wife (who had no property of her
own) on paper bought with his money, the epistle belonged to Shelley. The
legal property of the document was in him and no one else. He had as
perfect legal power to give the epistle to Byron, as to give any other of
his lawful possessions to Byron. There are grounds for the strongest
opinion that Shelley did give the letter to Byron--_not_ to transmit to
Mrs. Hoppner, _but_ to do what he liked with it; and that, therefore, the
letter at his death passed to his representatives.
Shelley himself admits that he gave the letter. ‘I have,’ he writes to his
wife, ‘given it to Lord Byron,’ adding that Byron ‘has engaged to send it
with his own comments, to the Hoppners.’ Apart from these words, there is
no evidence whatever that Byron promised to transmit the letter to the
Hoppners;--words written by a man of such singular mental inexactness,
that his most intimate friends held him absolutely incapable of giving an
accurate account of any matter of his personal affairs;--a man, who wrote
wheedling letters, and deliberately deceitful letters, whenever he was
tempted to do so;--a man, who only the other day had written his wife a
flagrantly inaccurate account of what Byron had told him of the Claire
scandal. Is the bare statement of so inexact a letter-writer to be held
good evidence, that Byron withheld a letter he was bound in honour to pass
on to Mrs. Hoppner? Is it probable that Shelley had authority for writing
to his wife, that Byron had promised to transmit the letter and enclosure?
If he was inaccurate in this statement, Shelley was merely guilty of an
inaccuracy, comparable with scores of similar inaccuracies to be found in
his private epistles. Is it conceivable that Byron promised to transmit to
the Hoppners an epistle, which represented him as having said of them
divers things which he certainly had not said of them?
Shelley’s letter of the 7th instant to his wife was posted to her before
Byron had risen from bed. Dates and the lady’s words show that Mrs.
Shelley answered it immediately,--that her indignant reply was dashed off
_currente calamo_, when she, too, was in a state of excitement
incompatible with mental exactness. Thus written, her epistle was
despatched immediately, so that no time might be lost. In due course the
vindicatory letter, together with the piece of Shelley’s own writing which
had been constituted a part of the vindicatory epistle, came under Byron’s
observation at Ravenna. What ensued forthwith, between the two poets, can
be readily imagined. After perusing the two documents of the reply,
Byron, of course, spoke to Shelley to this effect: ‘My dear Shelley, in
your excitement you gave Mrs. Shelley a strangely inaccurate account of
what passed between us on the night of your arrival. What I told you was,
that the Hoppners had been induced to regard Claire as your mistress, to
think _she_ had given you a child, and to think _she_ had sent the child
to a Foundling. This was what I told you. But you have told your wife a
very different story. The Hoppners never spoke of you as tearing the child
from Claire’s breast; they never accused you of sending the child to a
Foundling against her will; they never hinted to me that, instead of
sending the child to a Foundling, you might have destroyed it. Such
thoughts of you never entered their heads. How came you to conceive they
had such suspicions? They never wronged you in the way you have
represented to Mrs. Shelley. They told me you had made a domestic
arrangement with Claire, which (as you remark to Mrs. Shelley) would have
been no heinous crime, but only “a great error,” had you and she entered
into the arrangement. They told me Claire had given you a child, even as
she gave me one a few years since,--_i.e._ they believed that the
arrangement, which in your opinion would have been no worse than “a great
error,” had been attended with a natural result. Further, they told me
that they believed the offspring of the arrangement had been dealt with as
illegitimate children are often dealt with in this country. To think this
of you is not to believe you tore the child from Claire’s breast, disposed
of it violently and without her consent, abandoned it _or_ perhaps
destroyed it. This letter and enclosure may not be sent to Mrs. Hoppner;
for they imply that I have told you prodigious untruths. As the epistle
touches my honour so acutely, leave it in my hands, and trust to me to
communicate with the Hoppners, so as to disabuse their minds completely of
their erroneous impressions about you. But do let me retain possession of
those sheets of paper, which so strangely misrepresent my confidential
speech to you.’
Byron must necessarily have put the case in this way to Shelley. After
speaking in this way, it is inconceivable that he promised to send the
letter and enclosure to Venice. After being so spoken to by Byron, it is
inconceivable that Shelley wished the documents to be sent to Mrs.
Hoppner, or was otherwise than well pleased to know Byron could be trusted
to keep them from her eyes. It must have been a great relief to him to
think that, instead of sending to Venice the writings which, on coming to
the Hoppners, would have been fruitful of mischief, he had shown them to
Byron. Of course he made no copy of Mary’s letter and enclosure, to remain
in evidence how egregiously he had exaggerated the scandalous report, and
misrepresented a confidential conversation. But it was necessary for him
to acknowledge to Mary his receipt of the documents; to acknowledge them,
moreover, in such a way, that she would not be looking to every post for a
letter from Mrs. Hoppner; that she should feel assured proper measures
were being taken to kill the scandal; that she should not be angry with
him for neglecting to copy the papers; and that she should not lose all
power of ever again relying on his statements of fact. The author of _Laon
and Cythna_ was in a very embarrassing and rather humiliating position.
His way of accounting for his neglect to copy the documents is
sufficiently significant of disingenuousness. It was necessary for him to
conceal from his wife that her epistle, so eloquent of fine and womanly
feeling, would not be sent on to Mrs. Hoppner; it was necessary for him to
allay her impatience for a letter from Mrs. Hoppner, by giving her to
understand that she must not expect the lady’s reply to come quickly; it
was necessary for him to provide against further importunity on her part
for copies of the documents. In submission to these necessities he had
recourse to misrepresentation. Affecting to have mistaken her purpose in
requesting him to take copies of the writings, he informed her he had
given her epistle, with the piece of his own epistle, to Byron,--an
announcement calculated to make her feel she could scarcely repeat her
request for copies without implying distrust of Lord Byron’s discretion
and zeal. At the same time, he assured her that Byron ‘had engaged to send
the letter with his own comments to the Hoppners,’ whilst knowing that
Byron had only engaged to give the substance of certain passages of the
letter, together with his comments on the case.
Whilst this explanation of Byron’s retention of a letter (which on
reflection Shelley can have been no less desirous than Byron to keep from
the Hoppners), acquits him of the egregious villainy of withholding an
epistle he had pledged his honour to forward to Mrs. Hoppner, it only
requires the readers of this work, so far as Shelley is concerned, to
believe that, under the pressure of a rather comical embarrassment, he
practised on his wife the kind of deceit he so often employed in his
dealings with other people. Acquitting Byron of the villainy imputed to
him by Mr. Froude, a villainy very different from the immoralities with
which he is justly chargeable, it merely imputes to Shelley the particular
kind of underhandedness and inaccuracy, of which so many examples may be
found in his dealings with various people. Had Byron sent the letter to
Mrs. Hoppner, it would of course have been accompanied with explanations,
showing that he was not accountable for the exaggerations and staggering
misstatements of Shelley’s letter (of 7th August) to his wife. Knowing
this, Shelley had even a stronger motive than Byron for stopping the
letter. Under these circumstances, it is absurd to argue from the mere
retention of the letter, that it was retained dishonestly by the elder
poet, in breach of a solemn promise.
There is no reason to suppose Byron was wanting in fidelity to Shelley in
any stage of this business. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, he
must be assumed to have kept his promise, to do his utmost to convince the
Hoppners of the untruth of the scandalous story, so far as it affected the
Shelleys. There is at present no evidence that he either failed to keep
this promise, or failed to satisfy the Hoppners of Shelley’s innocence.
Under existing circumstances, the only fair assumption is that he wrote to
the Hoppners on the matter, and made it clear to them that Shelley neither
was nor ever had been the father of a child by Claire. It makes nothing
against the reasonableness of this assumption, that Mrs. Shelley received
no letter from Mrs. Hoppner on the subject, and that the Hoppners never
again had any intercourse with her. Having received no letter from Mrs.
Shelley on the matter, Mrs. Hoppner was under no obligation to write to
her about it. Indeed, under the circumstances, it would have been
something worse than an insulting impertinence, had the Consul-General’s
wife written to Mrs. Shelley on so unsavoury a business. To set the ugly
matter right, it was not necessary for Byron to let Mrs. Hoppner know her
name had been mentioned to the Shelleys in connexion with the scandal; and
the reasons why he should be silent on that point are obvious. That the
Hoppners never again communicated with Mrs. Shelley is no evidence that
they continued to think ill of her. Mrs. Shelley and Mrs. Hoppner had
never corresponded with one another for any considerable time. Mrs.
Shelley’s intercepted letter (of 10th August, 1821) opens with these
words: ‘My dear Mrs. Hoppner, after silence of _nearly two years_, I
address you again,’--words showing conclusively the shortness of the
period, during which the two ladies (who met for the first time no earlier
than the autumn of 1818) were in the habit of writing to one another.
Correspondents only for a single year, they had, in August, 1821, ceased
to correspond for nearly two years. In truth, though the Shelleys, during
their 1818 visits to and sojourn near Venice, received great kindness from
the Hoppners (especially at the moment of little Clara’s death), the two
ladies were casual acquaintances,--slight acquaintances, notwithstanding
their intimacy for a brief period. How common is it for people to live
sociably with persons for a few months, and then see no more of them! Had
Mrs. Shelley in her later time met the Hoppners, she would probably have
been greeted by them in a way to satisfy her, that they had no wish to
avoid her as a discreditable person. But never meeting them after 1818,
she went from 1821 to her grave, imagining they persisted in thinking evil
of her.
Though Byron’s March-1821 note to Hoppner defines the main facts of the
scandalous story, it gives none of the minor details of the slander, that
seems to have originated in Elise’s general knowledge of the Genevese
scandal and her subsequent misconceptions respecting Allegra’s paternity.
Had that note been as ample as it was precise, it would have enabled us to
see how far the slander (credited by Byron and Hoppner) was the pure
outgrowth of Elise’s misconceptions, and in what degree it resulted from
Paolo’s malicious inventiveness,--and also to gauge more precisely the
element of inaccuracy in Shelley’s letter of exaggerations. There is, of
course, a great difference in detail between the story Elise may be
conceived to have told Paolo about Allegra’s birth in England in January,
1817, and the slanderous statement about a second child, alleged to have
been born at Naples in the winter of 1818-1819. But it is in the nature of
scandal to change in its details and colour, no less than in its
magnitude, as it passes from mouth to mouth; and before it reached Mrs.
Shelley at Bagni di Pisa, the scandalous story about Claire had passed
through several hands. Originating with Elise, it had passed from her to
Paolo; through Paolo to Hoppner; through Hoppner to Mrs. Hoppner; from
the Hoppners to Byron; from Byron’s cynical lips to Shelley’s heated
brain; through Shelley’s inaccurate pen to Mrs. Shelley. Elise, Paolo (a
liar of great ability), Hoppner, Mrs. Hoppner, Byron (not remarkable for
accuracy of statement), and Shelley (a prodigy of historical
inventiveness):--all and each of these six persons had worked in some way
or other on the scandal, before it came to Mary at Bagni di Pisa! No
wonder the story was a marvellous and extremely exciting story on coming
to poor Mrs. Shelley.
The liar in the business was, of course, Paolo, the clever, vindictive,
unscrupulous knave, set on avenging himself on the master, who had
declined to be cheated beyond a hundred per cent. Certainly guilty of the
venial offence of indiscreet and disloyal loquacity, Elise was probably
also guilty of encouraging her husband in his purpose to extort more money
from her bountiful employers. Her passionate assertion that she had said
nothing against the Shelleys _to Mrs._ Hoppner (‘_Je vous assure, ma chère
Madame Shelley_,’ she wrote in reply to a letter from her former mistress,
‘_que je n’ai jamais rien dit à Madame Hoppner ni contre vous, ni contre
Mademoiselle, ni contre Monsieur, et de quelque part que cela vienne c’est
un mensonge contre moi_’) does not acquit her of talking freely to her
husband against them. It tells much and suggests more against the smart
Elise that, for months after her husband had put himself (with his wife’s
cognizance) in communication with the Hoppners, she was writing to Mrs.
Shelley for money;--a kind of demand the woman would, of course, have
never made on her former mistress, had she not felt she had a most unusual
claim on her. Only a day or two before Mrs. Shelley perused her husband’s
staggering letter from Ravenna, Mrs. Shelley had received a letter from
Elise, asking for more money. ‘The other day,’ Mrs. Shelley wrote in her
intercepted letter to Mrs. Hoppner, ‘I received a letter from Elise,
entreating, with great professions of love, that I would send her
money’!!! More than two and a half years had passed since she quitted the
Shelleys’ service, and yet Elise was writing for money to her former
mistress. Elise had never said anything _to Mrs. Hoppner_ against either
Mrs. Shelley or Mademoiselle Claire or Shelley; but she had said things
against all three _to Paolo_, who had carried them to _Mr._ Hoppner.
In declaring so indignantly that she had never spoken disparagingly of her
former employers _to Mrs._ Hoppner, Elise was alike true in the letter and
false in the spirit of her words. The person _to whom_ she had spoken was
Paolo, who, carrying her communications to Mr. Hoppner, had modified them,
amended them, expanded them, as he saw the need of doing so, from the
Consul-General’s countenance. On seeing that Monsieur Hoppner made light
of the partly true story about the baby born in England, Paolo was quick
to enlarge his narrative with a story of another baby born in Italy;--the
story, told so cleverly, that the Consul-General and Mrs. Hoppner and
Byron all believed it. This is the reasonable explanation of the monstrous
fiction that Claire had a child by Shelley in Italy.
Before his stay at Ravenna came to an end Shelley rode over to Bagna
Cavallo (rendered _Bagrea Cava_ by Mr. Froude, and _Bazin-carello_ by the
_Edinburgh_ Reviewer) to see Allegra at the convent, where the greedy and
by no means exemplary little damsel had been under discipline for some
months; affectionate concern for Claire being his chief motive for riding
so far (25 miles) in the saddle, to visit the little school-miss, of whose
beauty and costume he wrote so pleasantly to his wife on his return to
Ravenna;--a letter written less for the gratification of Mary, to whom it
was addressed, than for the gratification of Mary’s sister.
Shelley had for some time been exercising his mind to discover some way of
arranging for the child’s nurture, less displeasing to her mother than
this conventual education. Acknowledging that, while Italy was stirred
with revolutionary excitement and the Romagna plotting for a general
insurrection, Byron did well in sending the child to the convent, Shelley
wished her now to be placed at some place where her mind would be less
subject to clerical influence, and her mother could visit her
occasionally, without inconvenience to herself or annoyance to Byron. One
of his notions for Allegra’s advantage was that Mrs. Mason (Lady
Mountcashel, who had written educational books for children, and affected
to be wise about the training of girls) should be moved to take charge of
Claire’s little one. For a moment he thought of the Pisan Convent of St.
Anna (Emilia Viviani’s convent), but only to decide that it was precisely
the place to which Allegra ought _not_ to be sent. Now that the Gambas and
Teresa Guiccioli, banished from the Papal territory, were waiting at
Florence for marching orders from Byron, whose sojourn at Ravenna had for
some time been prolonged only by indecision as to his future movements,
Shelley was urgent that Byron should withdraw the child from the nuns, to
whose custody she had been committed, only till some more eligible home
could be found for her.
It cannot be said that Shelley’s intercourse with Byron at Ravenna was
fruitful of wise decisions. Concluding that the question of Allegra’s
future education might stand over (a conclusion for which the elder poet’s
mental unsteadiness and Shelley’s inability to propose a better plan for
her nurture were equally accountable), Byron, on withdrawing from Ravenna,
at the end of October, 1821, left the child at Bagna Cavallo, to die there
of fever in the ensuing spring,--the last of the three fated children to
perish from the ways of man. In determining to take a Palazzo at Pisa, at
Shelley’s instance, though not altogether out of deference to his judgment
and counsel, Byron decided on a step that in no long time could not be
favourable to the cordial and even idolatrous sentiment, with which the
younger poet regarded him. On its death such enthusiastic and extravagant
hero-worship would necessarily be followed by feeling of an opposite kind;
and for the preservation of the sentiment of condescending respect on the
one side, and the sentiment of affectionate idolatry on the other side, it
was especially needful that the two poets should not be daily associates
for any considerable period. Had they continued to live on different sides
of Italy, Shelley might have idolized Byron to his last hour, and Byron
would never have been irritated by Shelley. In deciding to become
neighbours and almost daily companions at Pisa they resolved on a course
which, even without the annoyances coming to each of the poets from what
may be called the Leigh-Hunt complications, was certain to result in a
diminution of their friendliness for one another. It was also in the
highest degree inauspicious for their mutual good feeling that the two
friends in council agreed in thinking Leigh Hunt the very man who should
be invited to the editorial position which Tom Moore had prudently
declined to accept.
It devolved on Shelley to write the letter, which invited Leigh Hunt to
come out from England and join his correspondent and ‘noble friend’ Lord
Byron, in establishing _The Liberal_; and in his elation at the prospect
of again embracing his equally extortionate and delightful admirer, and at
finding himself in a position to render his charming friend a substantial
service, Shelley (writing to Hunt from Pisa on 26th August, 1821,)
invested the project with the roseate colouring most likely to heighten
its attractiveness to Hunt. He even went so far as to assure Hunt that he
would be Byron’s partner on equal footing and equal terms; that, whilst
taking one-half of the revenue from the magazine, he would contribute,
though in a different manner, no less than Byron to the success of their
joint enterprise. How far was Shelley sincere in such extravagance? There
is, no doubt, such a thing as honest adulation; and it is possible that
for the moment Byron and Leigh Hunt were equals in fame and achievement to
the poet, who, a short while earlier or later, declared himself a mere
earthworm in comparison with the godlike author of _Cain_,--
‘the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.’
Declaring he would participate neither in the profits nor the borrowed
splendour of such a partnership, as should give the world a successful
_Liberal_, Shelley was ready to act as the connecting link between the two
poets, who were in the same degree superior to him in literary eminence
and power. With all his vanity and intellectual arrogance, Hunt had, of
course, enough worldly knowledge and mental sobriety to be aware that he
and Byron were other than equals; but all the same it tickled his
self-complacence to be told that the author of _Rimini_ was no less
considerable a personage than the author of _Childe Harold_. Moreover, the
excessive praise was an agreeable indication to Hunt that, in the distress
and confusion of his affairs, he might look confidently for further
assistance to the young enthusiast (‘Mr. Shelley,’ as Hunt always called
him in a deferential tone), whose pocket he had a few years since
lightened of 1400_l._ in a single sum, to say nothing of smaller sums. At
the same time, whilst accounting for his inability to send him a
remittance for travelling expenses from Byron’s purse, Shelley intimated
that he would obtain from another source the funds needful for his dearest
Hunt’s journey, with his wife and babes to Leghorn.
Since he found shelter from bailiffs at Marlow, and in return afforded the
author of _Alastor_ similar protection from clamorous creditors, things
had gone with Hunt from bad to worse, and from worse to a state of affairs
differing in little but name from actual bankruptcy. Drowning men catch at
straws, and the sinking Hunt was glad to clutch at so substantial a plank
as the proposal from Italy, which, under the smiles of fortune, might
prove a seaworthy craft. Knowing well that the proposal was made not so
much to Leigh Hunt the poet, as to Leigh Hunt the journalist, who was
supposed to be still editor and joint-proprietor of the _Examiner_, and
that the proposal was made to him in consideration, or at least not
without consideration, of his editorial power to commend the new
periodical to public favour, it was of course Hunt’s duty, before he
closed with the offer, to let both projectors know they might no longer
count upon the _Examiner_ as an influence for compassing the success of
the _Liberal_. Had he been actuated by any sentiment of honour, or by bare
commercial honesty, he would not have arranged to leave England without
first writing to both Byron and Shelley, ‘Your offer having been made
under, if not from, a misapprehension respecting my circumstances, I
cannot accept it unless you renew it after learning I have ceased to be
editor of the _Examiner_.’ Instead of treating Byron and Shelley with the
candour, which is a chief element in fair dealing between friends, he
started for Italy without a shilling of his own money in his pocket,
without an income of any kind from any source whatever, and without
letting either of them know he had determined his editorial connexion with
the powerful newspaper. It was a surprise alike to Shelley and Byron to
learn from Hunt, after his arrival at Leghorn, that he was no longer
editor of the _Examiner_. There is no escape from the ugly truth that the
brilliant, scholarly, irresistibly charming Leigh Hunt went to Italy with
the purpose of fixing himself, his wife and children on a nobleman, with
whom he had only the slightest acquaintance, and on a far from prosperous
friend whose purse he had repeatedly laid under heavy requisitions, and
with a clear intention of making them wholly responsible for the
maintenance of himself and family for a considerable period. It is also
certain that he thus went out to Italy without giving Byron and Shelley
any intimation of his purpose, or any grounds for suspecting it.
Under no conceivable circumstances could the three poets have worked
together harmoniously for as many years. They might, however, under
conceivable conditions, have accomplished the immediate purpose of their
partnership and avoided quarrelling, for eighteen months or even a couple
of years, had Hunt been able to get out to Pisa before the end of the
autumn, or at the latest by the end of December. But the winds and waves
combined with Moore and Murray to defeat the enterprise, to which Hunt
looked for preservation from utter financial ruin. It was not his fault
that it was near the end of June, 1822, before he entered Leghorn harbour.
Showing abundant alacrity in his preparations for leaving England, he
would have started for the sunny South at the end of September, had not
the vessel, in which he took berths for himself and his numerous family,
been detained in England till the 16th of November. From that day till the
end of June, his course was a series of vexatious misadventures. Detained
for three weeks by bad weather at Ramsgate, he was beaten up and down
Channel till the 22nd of December, when his ship put in at Dartmouth. Mrs.
Hunt being by that time too ill to proceed, the Hunts migrated to
Stonehouse (Plymouth), where they tarried till 22nd May, 1822, on which
day they set forth again for Leghorn, in another vessel, that was so
fortunate as to reach its destination at the close of June; when nine
months had elapsed since the berths were taken on the first vessel.
In the meantime, persons, who disapproved of Byron’s alliance with Shelley
and Hunt, had been at work to detach him from such dangerous associates,
and put him out of conceit with his new literary project. Entreated for
his reputation’s sake to be less intimate with Shelley, and warned of the
risks he ran in calling Hunt to his confidence, Byron was assured by
Hobhouse and Moore that even his genius and influence could not preserve
from ignominious failure an enterprise, in which he would be discredited
by his coadjutors. Time was in this affair even more prejudicial to Hunt’s
interests than the mischief-makers, who, having Byron’s ear, knew well how
to play on his least generous qualities. Before Hunt made his second
start for Italy, the friendship of the two Pisan exiles had been rudely
shaken by differences.
It is impossible to refrain from smiling at the recollection of the
letter, in which Shelley (who declined Polidori’s challenge at Geneva on
conscientious grounds, and at all stages of his career regarded duelling
with reasonable repugnance) averred that, were it not for considerations
moving him to do nothing of the kind, he would leave Italy forthwith, and
never enter a country inhabited by Byron, unless it were to arrange their
difficulties without words. To write in this vapouring vein to a
sympathetic correspondent is, of course, a very different thing from
sending a message of war at ten paces to so good a shot as the author of
_Don Juan_. Enough also is known of Shelley’s letters to render it
probable that (his brave words to the contrary notwithstanding) he never
for sixty consecutive moments seriously thought of ‘calling Byron out.’
There is no reason to think Shelley an exception to the general rule, that
men who mean fighting keep their purpose to themselves till they act upon
it. But none the less does the laughably valorous epistle point to a state
of discord between the recently harmonious poets, that cannot have tended
to quicken or strengthen Byron’s friendliness for Hunt, whom he had valued
chiefly for being Shelley’s _protégé_, and had selected for his literary
coadjutor at Shelley’s request.
Whilst Hunt necessarily suffered in Byron’s regard from the mere decline
of the last-named poet’s friendliness for Shelley, he suffered in the same
respect also from a singular indiscretion into which Shelley was betrayed
by his desire to serve the author of _Rimini_. Driven to Plymouth by
stress of weather and the state of his wife’s health, Hunt, who had made
the false start for Italy with an insufficiently furnished pocket, soon
found himself under the necessity of begging Shelley to send him money
from Pisa. To the weather-bound adventurer it, of course, appeared that,
as he was bound for Italy at Byron’s invitation to co-operate with him in
an important enterprise, he had a moral right to look to him for a
remittance; and had he, in regard to his financial position, dealt frankly
with the famous and affluent poet, few readers would decline to recognize
Hunt’s title to needful assistance. It was under these circumstances that,
instead of writing straight to Byron on the subject (which would have been
the manlier course), Hunt wrote from England not once, but repeatedly, to
Shelley, to do for his benefit what he should have done for himself, in a
letter addressed to Byron. Explaining the causes of his urgent need of
money, Hunt moved Shelley to ask Byron for it. As it would doubtless have
been less disagreeable to him to increase his more considerable than
burdensome debt to Shelley, than to open his business relations with Byron
by asking for a not trifling loan, it is probable that the request to
Shelley to get the money from Byron was only Hunt’s way of asking Shelley
to supply it from his own pocket. Anyhow, the request caused Shelley to
empty his pocket into Hunt’s hands, rather than apply for money to Byron
(with whom he was still on uneasy terms, though they had recently arranged
their differences) and send Hunt 150_l._--a gift that reduced to less than
40_l._ the donor’s reserve of money for his own current expenses.
In addition to the 150_l._ sent to Hunt, Shelley was ready to give him any
sum for which _Charles the First_ could be sold. In brief, Shelley was
ready to do anything for the relief of his _protégé_, with the exception
of going either to Lord Byron or to the Jews. But all he could do, without
taking either of these steps, was insufficient for Hunt, who, pocketing
the remitted money, wrote back to Pisa that Byron must be pressed for
more. Thus driven, Shelley committed the indiscretion (to which reference
has been made) in writing Byron this remarkable letter:--
‘_Pisa, February 15th, 1822._
‘MY DEAR LORD BYRON,
‘I enclose you a letter from Leigh Hunt, which annoys me on more than
one account. You will observe the postscript, and you know me well
enough to feel how painful the task is set me in commenting upon it.
Hunt had urged me more than once to ask you to lend him this money. My
answer consisted in sending him all I could spare, which I have now
literally done. Your kindness in fitting up a part of your own house
for his accommodation I sensibly felt, and willingly accepted from you
on his part, but, believe me, without the slightest intention of
imposing, or, if I could help it, allowing to be imposed, any heavier
task on your purse. As it has come to this, in spite of my exertions,
I will not conceal from you the low ebb of my own money affairs in the
present moment, that is, my absolute incapacity of assisting Hunt
farther.
‘I do not think poor Hunt’s promise to pay in a given time is worth
very much; but mine is less subject to uncertainty, and I should be
happy to be responsible for any engagement he may have proposed to
you. I am so much annoyed by this subject that I hardly know what to
write, and much less what to say; and I have need of all your
indulgence in judging both my feelings and expressions. I shall see
you by-and-by.
‘Believe me, yours most faithfully and sincerely,
‘P. B. SHELLEY.’
Written to support Hunt’s direct application to Byron for a remittance,
Shelley’s affectionate concern for the whole of the Hunt party puts it
beyond question, that this epistle was written sincerely in the interest
of the unfortunate man of letters, and without a notion of the injury it
would do him in Byron’s esteem. It was Shelley’s way of saying, ‘Do lend
the poor fellow the money on _my_ personal security;’ and to readers
bearing in mind the delicacy and tension that had succeeded the previous
friendly relations of the two poets, it cannot be surprising that Shelley
found himself unable to make such a request of Byron, without saying at
the same time that he had done his utmost for his friend’s relief. All the
same, the letter gave a view of Hunt’s character and dealings, that
lowered him in the regard of the poet, who with generous incaution had
fitted up rooms for the necessitous family in the Palazzo Lanfranchi.
Opening Byron’s eyes to several matters, it informed him, that Hunt had
for some time been sponging on the slender resources of his too yielding
friend; that Hunt had for some time been pressing Shelley to apply to the
Palazzo Lanfranchi for money; that Hunt’s direct application to the lord
of that palazzo had not been made till the petitioner had done his utmost
to force Shelley to prefer the request for him; that the applicant for a
remittance had constrained Shelley to join in the request he had refused
to make by himself. The letter must have caused Byron to suspect that Hunt
had in former years bled Shelley copiously, and have shown him how
powerless Shelley was to hold his own against the cool and clever
practitioner of the art of getting money, without either earning it or
stealing it. Byron’s comment on Shelley’s letter must have been to this
effect: ‘So that is Mr. Hunt’s way of handling Shelley, is it? He won’t
handle me so easily.’
Byron’s treatment of the Hunts in Italy displayed some of his least
amiable traits. He should not have failed in courtesy to Mrs. Hunt, who
was a _woman_ and an invalid. He might have been more gracious, without
being less firm, to the _man_. It was paltry of him, in his reasonable
annoyance with the equally elegant and unscrupulous adventurer, to give an
untrue account of the circumstances that determined him to start the
_Liberal_. But on learning, at the end of June, from Hunt’s lips, that he
had ceased to be editor of the _Examiner_, and was for the moment without
a crown in his pocket, or without any means whatsoever for paying the
weekly bills of his numerous family in the lower rooms of the Palazzo
Lanfranchi, the author of _Don Juan_ had good reason for feeling that,
besides being on his guard against pecuniary imposition, he had better let
Hunt see clearly, and at once, that he (the author of _Don Juan_) would
not submit tamely to exaction.
No less ignorant than Byron of the desperate state of his friend’s
pecuniary affairs,--a state amounting to absolute destitution so far as
the term is applicable to a clever man of letters,--till he spoke with
Hunt at Leghorn, Shelley must have felt himself in a peculiarly delicate
and painful position in regard to Byron, on hearing that their partner in
the _Liberal_ was alike without income and any prospect of income, apart
from the literary project, which was still only a project. For months he
had been aware of the degree in which Byron was influenced by the
advisers, who were entreating him to withdraw even at the last moment from
his entanglement with the Hunts. For months he had been aware in how great
a degree Byron had lost confidence in the literary venture, and how gladly
he would have discovered a way of withdrawing honourably, and at no
excessive cost, from an enterprise which he deemed foredoomed to failure.
For months he had, in Hunt’s interest, maintained a hollow show of his
former admiration for, and of his former attachment to, Byron, encouraging
him to recover his former confidence in their joint enterprise, and to be
assured that, on the arrival of the _Examiner’s_ editor, his anticipations
of catastrophe would be speedily followed by the triumph of the
undertaking, in which they would be comrades. All this Shelley had endured
and done for Hunt’s sake, in the hope of keeping the poet of overpowering
popularity and sufficient purse in humour with the project, which under
auspicious conditions would make Hunt prosperous for life. Byron’s
repeated expressions of distrust in Hunt’s adequacy for his part in the
undertaking had been met by Shelley with repetitions of the statement that
‘Hunt was editor of the _Examiner_.’ When Hunt at length appeared on the
scene, he was _not_ editor of the _Examiner_.
Entering his Pisan home on the 1st November, 1821, Byron took up his abode
in the stately house at a time when his relations with Shelley were
altogether cordial, and Shelley’s admiration of him was at its highest
extravagance. Delighted with his reception and treatment at Ravenna in the
previous August, Shelley had now spent more than two months in emotions of
generous and romantic worship of Byron’s greatness; and it was his
fortune, perhaps his good fortune, to regard Byron with the same
idolatrous enthusiasm for something more than another two months, before
his admiration of so angelic a being was qualified by painful suspicions
that he had rated his idol somewhat too highly,--suspicions followed at a
brief interval by the differences which, but for his concern for Hunt’s
interests, would, perhaps, have caused ‘the worm’ to turn and writhe in
open mutiny against ‘the God.’
Fascinated at Ravenna by the great poet’s courtesies and flattering
manifestations of confidence, Shelley exulted for a brief while in the
prospect of figuring before the world as the great Byron’s peculiar and
most influential friend. Whilst it is curious to observe in his letters
from Ravenna to his wife, and in some of his subsequent epistles to Horace
Smith, Peacock, and Gisborne, how greatly he was impressed by the pomp and
grandeur of his ‘noble friend’s’ domestic arrangements, it is even more
interesting to contemplate in the same letters the boyish simplicity and
exultation, with which Shelley spoke of the great Byron’s regard for him,
and of the advantages that would accrue to him from familiar association
with so superlative a personage. Possessing the great poet’s ear, he
enjoyed his confidence. Byron was moving to Pisa in compliance with his
advice. It was he (and no other man) who had taken the finest palace on
the Lung’Arno of Pisa for the great Byron’s sufficient accommodation.
To read attentively certain of the published letters that passed between
Shelley and his wife whilst he was at Ravenna, is to see how they
frightened one another through the post into imagining themselves the
victims of a conspiracy that aimed at rendering their lives miserable and
insecure;--to see also how, for several days after their reunion, they
continued to nurse the wild and terrifying fancy that, to protect
themselves against fanatical enemies, working for their destruction, to
guard themselves and their child from death by poison or the knife, it was
needful for them to surround themselves with powerful friends.
That Mary might not resist his purpose of staying another winter and
spring in the city, where he would have Byron for his neighbour and most
familiar associate, Shelley instructed her to rate at their proper worth
the security and protection she and her husband would derive from Byron’s
countenance:--security and protection they might sorely need at Florence
or any other Italian capital, now that they had been selected for
exemplary persecution by the fanatical enemies of Free Thought. That they
had provoked the animosity of implacable adversaries was manifest from
what had come to his ears at Ravenna. Instructing his wife that the
current calumnies about himself should be regarded as preliminary measures
for their destruction, taken by subtle and resolute foes, who would be
satisfied with nothing less than his and her ruin, Shelley wished her to
realize the perils of their position and determine what course they had
better adopt for the preservation of life, liberty, happiness. Though
attractive to them for divers considerations, Florence, for reasons darkly
hinted at in the correspondence, would now abound with dangers to which
they had better not expose themselves. For himself he would like nothing
better than to retire with his Mary and her child to an island inhabited
by no one but themselves, and there devote either to oblivion, or to
future generations, the overflowings of a mind which, timely withdrawn
from the contagion, would be kept fit for no baser object. If they
determined on settling on a desert island, they should have the courage to
go to it in no company but their own. There should be no compromise in the
matter, no concession to weaknesses, begotten of long intercourse with the
human race. If they took two or three chosen companions with them, the
devil would be sure to appear amongst them. No, should they decide to
emigrate to a desolate island, they must make the voyage by themselves. In
brief, they should build a boat and shut upon their retreat the
flood-gates of the world. On second and saner thoughts, however, he was of
opinion they had better not build a boat and retreat behind the
flood-gates.
The proposal for emigration to a solitary island having been dismissed as
an impracticable project, Shelley begged Mary to consider another plan
for defeating the enemies, banded together for their destruction. Instead
of retiring to a desolate island, or offering their breasts to the
assassin’s dagger at Florence, they might remain at Pisa under conditions
that would render existence at the same time safer and more agreeable than
heretofore. Instead of traversing the treacherous sea in an open boat to a
tenantless island, it would surely be better for her and himself to stay
where they were, to surround themselves with a few congenial people, even
though the devil should be one of them, and in short to do their best to
make themselves happy at Pisa, and the neighbouring Baths, for another
twelve months. The Williamses would remain at Pisa, if she and he decided
to remain there. The Hunts also would be at Pisa at least for the winter,
should Leigh Hunt determine on migrating to Italy. Lord Byron and his
Italian friends would be there also; and though the Gambas and Teresa
Guiccioli might not be desirable acquaintances from every point of view,
Byron’s friendship would be invaluable. What had occurred to account for
so quick a change of sentiment respecting Florence and the plan of
wintering there? Positively nothing besides Byron’s determination to
settle at Pisa for a few months or years.
As the choice of alternatives lay between emigration to a solitary island
and another term of residence at Pisa, it is not surprising that Mrs.
Shelley decided in favour of the latter. Whilst few women were less
qualified for seclusion, few had a keener appetite for society, than
William Godwin’s clever and brilliant daughter. The woman, who fretted at
the isolation and monotony of her existence at Naples and Rome, would have
died of _ennui_ or gone mad in a month in the severe seclusion of a
sea-girt paradise, with no companions but her husband and her little boy.
It had not been her intention to stay another year at Pisa. For several
reasons she would have preferred wintering at Florence with the Horace
Smiths. She had seen enough of Pisa, and more than enough of some of her
‘dirty enough’ Pisan acquaintances. But weeks before Byron, with his
bodyguard of liveried lacqueys and his menagerie of domesticated animals,
took possession of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, she was well pleased with the
notion of staying longer at Pisa.
So the circle was formed towards the close of 1821 under favourable
auspices:--the circle whose life was described so fully in _The Real Lord
Byron_, that its doings need only be alluded to cursorily in the present
chapter. It was the circle of Teresa Guiccioli and the Gambas (Teresa’s
father and brother, with whom she lived at a short distance from the
Lanfranchi palace); the Williamses, of whose social endowments mention has
been made on a previous page; pleasant Tom Medwin, whose books afford only
faint indications of the elegant taste and generous qualities that
endeared him to the author of _Adonais_; handsome, shrewd, adventurous,
high-hearted Trelawny, who joined the party at the opening of the year
1822; and Taafe, the blundering rider and writer, whose clumsy
horsemanship occasioned the fracas with the serjeant-major and the guard
at the city, that eventually resulted in Byron’s migration to Genoa,--the
circle of charming and diversely memorable men and women, that had Byron
for its planet and Shelley for its chief subordinate luminary. Had the
Hunts fulfilled the hopes of their especial friends, and entered Leghorn
Harbour in time to keep Christmas at Pisa, the Shelleys would have been,
at least for a time, altogether satisfied and delighted with this circle
of new and old acquaintances, who had gathered about _them_ rather than
about the poet of brighter and wider celebrity, whom they had drawn to
what may be called their own coterie:--a circle which, though keeping its
virtues as far as possible to itself, and having little or nothing to do
with the general society of Pisa, or any other set of Pisan visitors,
contributed not a little to the enlivenment of the usually tranquil, not
to say rather torpid, little town.
The excess of Shelley’s enthusiasm for Byron pointed, however, to an
inevitable revulsion of feeling, in which the worshiper would probably
think as much too lightly, as he had in former time thought far too
worshipfully, of his hero. The younger poet’s idolatry was, to use a
familiar expression, too strong to last. No man of sensibility and
self-respect can persist for any great length of time in regarding himself
as a worm and his fellow-man and daily companion as a god. To regard one’s
next-door neighbour as divine to-day, is to regard him as altogether, and
in some respects meanly, human six months hence. There were other
considerations, to satisfy any clear-sighted and judicial observer of the
intercourse of the two poets at Ravenna, and of their regard for one
another, that it was not in the nature of things for the man of rank and
high celebrity, and the man of very inferior rank and no celebrity, to
live together for twelve months without friction and disagreement. In
truth, they were never wholly at ease with one another.
Elevated slightly, but only by one or two generations of ancestral
dignity, above people of the middle way of life, Shelley possessed
precisely the degree of aristocratic quality to render him sensitive for
his dignity in his relations with a man of Byron’s superior rank; far more
sensitive than he would have been had he, like Tom Moore, stept, by right
of genius, from a wine-shop to the salons of ‘the great.’ At the same
time, the uneasiness of his attitude towards Byron, whilst chiefly
referable to their difference of social degree, was increased by his sense
of Byron’s superiority in fame and wealth. How this uneasiness affected
Shelley, even when he felt most cordially and idolatrously towards his
‘noble friend,’ appears from the letter he dated on 10th August, 1821,
from Ravenna (_vide_ Moore’s _Life_) to Mrs. Shelley, where he speaks of
his inability to ask money of Byron for Hunt’s benefit. ‘Lord Byron and
I,’ he wrote, ‘are excellent friends, and were I reduced to poverty, or
were I a writer who had no claims to an higher station than I possess,--or
did I possess an higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things as
such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case. The
demon of mistrust and pride lurks between two persons in our situation,
poisoning the freedom of our intercourse.’
Though he did not go to Ravenna _in order_ to confer with Byron on Hunt’s
affairs, Shelley journeyed thither _with the purpose_ of interesting Byron
in them. For some time Shelley had been troubled in his mind by the
thought of his friend’s financial difficulties; and he had not been many
hours in the Palazzo Guiccioli, before he found occasion to speak
sympathetically of Hunt’s pecuniary distress. On hearing how Byron had
given the _Memoirs_ to Tom Moore, and how Moore had sold them to Murray
for 2000_l._, Shelley grudged Moore the gift that would have been so
serviceable to the author of _Rimini_. ‘I wish,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘I
had been in time to have interceded for a part of it for poor Hunt.’
Though the _Liberal_ was altogether Byron’s project, it was at Shelley’s
instance that the projector of the luckless magazine selected Hunt for the
position of editorial coadjutor; and whilst making this selection _in_ his
own interest, though at Shelley’s instance, Byron, no doubt, had pleasure
in feeling that the arrangement, which promised advantage to himself,
would be beneficial to a struggling man of letters. This fact alone gave
the faint colouring of truth to Byron’s subsequent mis-statements,
respecting the benevolent motives and humane purpose that determined him
to start the _Liberal_. At Ravenna (where he carefully refrained from
asking Byron to advance money for Hunt’s travelling expenses) Shelley
could congratulate himself on Byron’s offer to take Hunt for his
_collaborateur_, without regarding it as a favour done to himself, or
thinking of it as a proposal for an arrangement that could, under any
contingency, compromise his own independence of, and freedom from,
obligation to the poet of exalted rank. The case was altered a few months
later, when Byron’s vacillation put Shelley under the necessity of doing
his utmost to hold him to his engagement with Hunt. On exerting himself
for this end, it was natural for the sensitive Shelley to feel that he
might be suspected of speaking in his own, no less than in Hunt’s,
interest; to feel that after all he was asking a pecuniary favour of
Byron. In this sensitiveness for his independence, and jealous care to
avoid every appearance of seeking or accepting material advantage from his
social superior, readers may see the explanation of Shelley’s resolve to
share neither in the profits nor the _éclat_ of the literary enterprise.
Under these circumstances, it would have been passing strange had Shelley
persisted in his reverential regard for Byron. In any case, his idolatry
of so imperfect a hero would have perished more or less abruptly under the
conditions of close intimacy and daily intercourse for a considerable
period; but the annoyance, resulting to the younger poet from a state of
things which compelled him to combat Byron’s irresolution with words, that
might expose him to ungenerous suspicion, accelerated the moment for the
inevitable revulsion of feeling. The differences which, but for Shelley’s
devotion to Hunt’s interest, would perhaps have developed rapidly into
open rupture, were capable of adjustment; but they necessarily resulted in
a permanent change in Shelley’s feeling for Byron. The differences
admitted of adjustment. For a season they were adjusted. None the less
they changed the younger poet’s regard for his noble friend. The transient
revival of Shelley’s hope that, after all, the _Liberal_ would enrich
Hunt, was attended with no renewal of his old enthusiasm for the author of
_Don Juan_, about whom he soon began to write and chatter as much too
disparagingly as he had formerly written and talked too worshipfully.
Instead of flaming into frank rage, he concealed his irritation from his
former idol, whilst venting it from time to time in bitter words whispered
to Mary’s ear, and bitter words written to correspondents, who were not
likely to report them to Byron.
The old story of unreasonable hope, ending in unreasonable disappointment,
was told yet again,--the story told so often in Shelley’s troublous
record! Shelley idolized his eldest sister only to discover in a brief
while how unworthy she was of his good opinion. The first period of his
extravagant admiration of Hogg was followed abruptly by a period in which
he detested him. After mistaking Eliza Hitchener for an angel, he soon
mistook her for a brown she-devil. Delighting in Eliza Westbrook for a
season, he quickly learnt to loathe her. Vowing to love Harriett Westbrook
for ever, he found life intolerable with her in less than three nuptial
years. Vowing to worship his second wife above all other women, he, in due
course, discovered her inferiority to Emilia Viviani and Jane Williams.
Meaning to be happy with Hogg for ever, he soon flitted from York, to get
out of his way. Throwing himself on Byron in August, 1821, with the
intention of delighting in him for ever, he quickly began to vapour about
fighting him. Either Shelley lacked steadfastness of affection, or was
singularly unfortunate in selecting his objects of affection. In this
respect he resembled Byron, whom he also resembled in his unamiable and
undignified practice of writing bitterly of people whom he had ceased to
love.
On passing from affection for his sister Elizabeth, he wrote in angry
disparagement of her. On coming to uneasy terms with his mother, he wrote
disdainfully of her mental narrowness. On ceasing to delight in Eliza
Hitchener, he wrote of her that she was a brown demon and an
hermaphrodite. After idolizing Mrs. Boinville, he wrote about her
insincerity. After quarrelling with Eliza Westbrook, he wrote of her that
she was a loathsome worm. Writing thus of women with whom he was out of
humour, he dealt in the same way with men he no longer liked. Having loved
his father in his childhood, he was only at manhood’s threshold when he
began to write monstrous untruths to his discredit. In the interval
between the first period and the second period of his affection for Hogg,
he wrote of him that he was a treacherous friend, a libertine, and a
seducer. Whilst living in friendship with Thomas Love Peacock, he wrote of
him as though he was attached to a free-handed benefactor by
considerations of self-interest. Soon after worshiping Byron as a god, he
wrote of him (on 2nd March, 1822, to Leigh Hunt) that certain dispositions
of his character, rendered him intolerable as an intimate associate, and
(on 18th June, 1822, to John Gisborne) that he was ‘the nucleus of all
that is hateful and tiresome’ in society. It is thus Shelley wrote of his
former friends after falling out with them. Whilst reflecting with
reasonable severity on Byron’s readiness to ‘libel his friends all round,’
the Shelleyan apologists say nothing of Shelley’s exhibitions of the same
ungenerous propensity.
Whilst Byron vacillated between hope and despair for the success of the
_Liberal_, between a cordial disposition to persist in the enterprise and
a fainthearted inclination to drop it, Shelley (for Hunt’s sake) and Hunt
(for his own sake) were determined to hold their unsteady partner to his
compact with them. If Byron suspected Shelley and Hunt of a design to use
him for their own ends, the suspicion certainly was not groundless.
Shelley and Hunt became in a certain sense confederates against their
partner, in having an understanding and mutual confidence from which he
was excluded. Shelley’s chief, though _not_ sole, interest in the affair
was his concern for Hunt (his senior by eight years). Had he been acting
only for himself, Shelley, on discerning the faintest disposition on
Byron’s part to withdraw from the venture, would have said, ‘If your heart
is not in the enterprise, let it be dropt like so many other designs, as a
mere project not to be acted upon.’ But Shelley was acting in the interest
of a friend, to whom he was in the highest degree desirous of rendering
substantial service; a friend whom he wished to have near him in Italy (a
powerful consideration, that largely qualified the disinterestedness of
his otherwise unselfish action); a friend who (_vide_ Shelley’s letter of
2nd March, 1822--in Forman’s edition of the poet’s _Prose Works_) had
committed to him ‘the task of keeping Byron in heart with the project
until his arrival.’ Consequently, when Byron showed a wish to retire from
the enterprise, Shelley said, ‘You are bound for poor Hunt’s sake to go on
with it.’
Long before Hunt left England, Shelley knew Byron would fain have
withdrawn from the project for starting the _Liberal_, but in his absent
friend’s interest pressed Byron to persist in the enterprise. Long before
he left England, Hunt himself knew that Byron had repented of inviting him
to Italy, and would have dropt the project of the magazine, had it not
been for Shelley. On sailing from England in May, Hunt knew he was setting
out to fix himself on a man who, but for Shelley, would have told him to
remain at home,--a fact not to be overlooked in the estimate of Hunt’s
conduct, in going out to Italy with concealment of the main feature of his
financial trouble. From the moment when they combined to hold Byron to an
arrangement from which he wished to retire, Shelley and Hunt (acting
together in the manner described by Shelley’s own pen) were confederates
against him, in being set on using him for their own ends against his own
will.
One would like to know how far Byron was cognizant of the irritation he
caused Shelley by his vacillations about the literary project. Yet more
one would like to know to what extent he was aware of Shelley’s permanent
change of feeling for him. It is difficult to conceive that so sensitive a
man failed to detect the change of sentiment. But Byron’s egotism may have
blinded him to what his sensibility would otherwise have discovered. On
the other hand, it must be remembered that, in his loyalty to the absent
Hunt, and in his keen desire to nurse Byron’s favour and influence for
Hunt’s benefit, Shelley was at great pains to conceal from his former idol
the deep-seated alteration of his regard for him. It is conceivable that,
notwithstanding the February ‘differences,’ Byron never knew how
completely he had fallen from Shelley’s heart and homage. Anyhow, the two
poets remained in daily intercourse with one another, and maintained a
show of undiminished friendliness. Playing billiards with Byron, and
contending with him in pistol-practice, Shelley often figured in the
Byronic riding-parties, and appeared at the weekly dinner-parties of the
Palazzo Lanfranchi. At the same time Mrs. Shelley lived sociably with
Teresa Guiccioli.