SEPTEMBER 1820-AUGUST 1821
The baths were of great use to Shelley in allaying his nervous
irritability. Such an improvement in him could not be without a
corresponding beneficial effect on Mary. In the study of Greek, which she
had begun with him at Leghorn, she found a new and wellnigh inexhaustible
fund of intellectual pleasure. Their life, though very quiet, was somewhat
more varied than it had been at Leghorn, partly owing to their being
within easy reach of Pisa and of their friends at Casa Silva.
The Gisbornes had returned from England, and, during a short absence of
Clare's, Mary tried, but ineffectually, to persuade Mrs. Gisborne to come
and occupy her room for a time. Some circumstance had arisen which led
shortly after to a misunderstanding between the two families, soon over,
but painful while it lasted. It was probably connected with the
abandonment of the projected steamboat; Henry Reveley, while in England,
having changed his mind and reconsidered his future plans.
In October a curiously wet season set in.
_Journal, Wednesday, October 18._--Rain till 1 o'clock. At sunset the
arch of cloud over the west clears away; a few black islands float in
the serene; the moon rises; the clouds spot the sky, but the depth of
heaven is clear. The nights are uncommonly warm. Write. Shelley reads
_Hyperion_ aloud. Read Greek.
My thoughts arise and fade in solitude;
The verse that would invest them melts away
Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day.
How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,
Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl.
_Friday, October 20._--Shelley goes to Florence. Write. Read Greek.
Wind N.W., but more cloudy than yesterday, yet sometimes the sun
shines out; the wind high. Read Villani.
_Saturday, October 21._--Rain in the night and morning; very cloudy;
not an air stirring; the leaves of the trees quite still. After a
showery morning it clears up somewhat, and the sun shines. Read
Villani, and ride to Pisa.
_Sunday, October 22._--Rainy night and rainy morning; as bad weather
as is possible in Italy. A little patience and we shall have St.
Martin's summer. At sunset the arch of clear sky appears where it
sets, becoming larger and larger, until at 7 o'clock the dark clouds
are alone over Monte Nero; Venus shines bright in the clear azure, and
the trunks of the trees are tinged with the silvery light of the
rising moon. Write, and read Villani. Shelley returns with Medwin.
Read _Sismondi_.
Of Tom Medwin, Shelley's cousin and great admirer, who now for the first
time appeared on the scene, they were to see, if anything, more than they
wished.
He was a lieutenant on half-pay, late of the 8th Dragoons; much addicted
to literature, and with no mean opinion of his own powers in that line.
_Journal, Tuesday, October 24._--Rainy night and morning; it does not
rain in the afternoon. Shelley and Medwin go to Pisa. Walk; write.
_Wednesday, October 25._--Rain all night. The banks of the Serchio
break, and by dark all the baths are overflowed. Water four feet deep
in our house. "The weather fine."
This flood brought their stay at the Baths to a sudden end. As soon as
they could get lodgings they returned to Pisa. Here, not long after,
Medwin fell ill, and was six weeks invalided in their house. They showed
him the greatest kindness; Shelley nursing him like a brother. His society
was, for a time, a tolerably pleasant change; he knew Spanish, and read
with Shelley a great deal in that language, but he had no depth or breadth
of mind, and his literary vanity and egotism made him at last what Mary
Shelley described as a _seccatura_, for which the nearest English
equivalent is, a bore.
_Journal, Sunday, November 12._--Percy's birthday. A divine day; sunny
and cloudless; somewhat cold in the evening. It would be pleasant
enough living in Pisa if one had a carriage and could escape from
one's house to the country without mingling with the inhabitants, but
the Pisans and the Scolari, in short, the whole population, are such
that it would sound strange to an English person if I attempted to
express what I feel concerning them--crawling and crab-like through
their sapping streets. Read _Corinne_. Write.
_Monday, November 13._--Finish _Corinne_. Write. My eyes keep me from
all study; this is very provoking.
_Tuesday, November 14._--Write. Read Homer, Targione, and Spanish. A
rainy day. Shelley reads Calderon.
_Thursday, November 23._--Write. Read Greek and Spanish. Medwin ill.
Play at chess.
_Friday, November 24._--Read Greek, Villani, and Spanish with M....
Pacchiani in the evening. A rainy and cloudy day.
_Friday, December 1._--Read Greek, _Don Quixote_, Calderon, and
Villani. Pacchiani comes in the evening. Visit La Viviani. Walk.
Sgricci is introduced. Go to a _funzione_ on the death of a student.
_Saturday, December 2._--Write an Italian letter to Hunt. Read
_Oedipus_, _Don Quixote_, and Calderon. Pacchiani and a Greek prince
call--Prince Mavrocordato.
In these few entries occur four new and remarkable names. Pacchiani, who
had been, if he was not still, a university professor, but who was none
the less an adventurer and an impostor; in orders, moreover, which only
served as a cloak for his hypocrisy; clever withal, and eloquent; well
knowing where, and how, to ingratiate himself. He amused, but did not
please the Shelleys. He was, however, one of those people who know
everybody, and through him they made several acquaintances; among them the
celebrated Improvisatore, Sgricci, and the young Greek statesman and
patriot, Prince Alexander Mavrocordato. With the improvisations of
Sgricci, his eloquence, his _entrain_, both Mary and Clare were fairly
carried away with excitement. Older, experienced folk looked with a more
critical eye on his performances, but to these English girls the
exhibition was an absolute novelty, and seemed inspired. Sgricci was
during this winter a frequent visitor at "Casa Galetti."
Prince Mavrocordato proved deeply interesting, both to Mary and Shelley.
He "was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his country
which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen," and in the revolution
which, shortly afterwards, broke out there, he was to play an important
part, as one of the foremost of modern Greek statesmen. To him, at a
somewhat later date, was dedicated Shelley's lyrical drama of _Hellas_;
"as an imperfect token of admiration, sympathy, and friendship."
This new acquaintance came to Mary just when her interest in the Greek
language and literature was most keen. Before long the prince had
volunteered to help her in her studies, and came often to give her Greek
lessons, receiving instruction in English in return.
"Do you not envy my luck," she wrote to Mrs. Gisborne, "that having
begun Greek, an amiable, young, agreeable, and learned Greek prince
comes every morning to give me a lesson of an hour and a half. This is
the result of an acquaintance with Pacchiani. So you see, even the
Devil has his use."
The acquaintance with Pacchiani had already had another and a yet more
memorable result, which affected Mary none the less that it did so
indirectly. Through him they had come to know Emilia Viviani, the noble
and beautiful Italian girl, immured by her father in a convent at Pisa
until such time as a husband could be found for her who would take a wife
without a dowry. Shelley's acquaintance with Emilia was an episode, which
at one time looked like an era, in his existence. An era in his poetry it
undoubtedly was, since it is to her that the _Epipsychidion_ is addressed.
Mary and Clare were the first to see the lovely captive, and were struck
with astonishment and admiration. But on Shelley the impression she made
was overwhelming, and took possession of his whole nature. Her
extraordinary beauty and grace, her powers of mind and conversation,
warmed by that glow of genius so exclusively southern, another variety of
which had captivated them all in Sgricci, and which to northern minds
seems something phenomenal and inspired,--these were enough to subdue any
man, and, when added to the halo of interest shed around her by her
misfortunes and her misery, made her, to Shelley, irresistible.
All his sentiments, when aroused, were passions; he pitied, he
sympathised, he admired and venerated passionately; he scorned, hated, and
condemned passionately too. But he never was swayed by any love that did
not excite his imagination: his attachments were ever in proportion to
the power of idealisation evoked in him by their objects. And never,
surely, was there a subject for idealisation like Emilia; the Spirit of
Intellectual Beauty in the form of a goddess; the captive maiden waiting
for her Deliverer; the perfect embodiment of immortal Truth and
Loveliness, held in chains by the powers of cruelty, tyranny, and
hypocrisy.
She was no goddess, poor Emilia, as indeed he soon found out; only a
lovely young creature of vivid intelligence and a temperament in which
Italian ardour was mingled with Italian subtlety; every germ of sentiment
magnified and intensified in outward effect by fervour of manner and
natural eloquence; the very reverse of human nature in the north, where
depth of feeling is apt to be in proportion to its inveterate dislike of
discovery, where warmth can rarely shake off self-consciousness, and where
many of the best men and women are so much afraid of seeming a whit better
than they really are, that they take pains to appear worse. Rightly
balanced, the whole sum of Emilia's gifts and graces would have weighed
little against Mary's nobleness of heart and unselfish devotion; her
talents might not even have borne serious comparison with Clare's
vivacious intellect. But to Shelley, haunted by a vision of perfection,
and ever apt to recognise in a mortal image "the likeness of that which
is, perhaps, eternal,"[38] she seemed a revelation, and, like all
revelations, supreme, unique, superseding for the time every other
possibility. It was a brief madness, a trance of inspiration, and its
duration was counted only by days. They met for the first time early in
December. By the 10th she was corresponding with him as her _diletto
fratello_. Before the month was over _Epipsychidion_ had been written.
Before the middle of January he could write of her--
My conception of Emilia's talents augments every day. Her moral nature
is fine, but not above circumstances; yet I think her tender and true,
which is always something. How many are only one of these things at a
time!...
There is no reason that you should fear any admixture of that which
you call _love_....
This was written to Clare. She had very quickly become intimate and
confidential with Emilia, and estimated her to a nicety at her real worth,
admiring her without idealising her or caring to do so. She knew Shelley
pretty intimately too, and, being personally unconcerned in the matter,
could afford at once to be sympathetic and to speak her mind fearlessly;
the consequence being that Shelley was unconstrained in communication with
her.
That _Mary_ should be his most sympathetic confidant at this juncture was
not in the nature of things. She, too, had begun by idealising Emilia,
but her affection and enthusiastic admiration were soon outdone and might
well have been quenched by Shelley's rapt devotion. She did not
misunderstand him, she knew him too well for that, but the better she
understood him the less it was possible for her to feel with him; nor
could it have been otherwise unless she had been really as cold as she
sometimes appeared. Loyal herself, she never doubted Shelley's loyalty,
but she suffered, though she did not choose to show it: her love, like a
woman's,--perhaps even more than most women's--was exclusive; Shelley's,
like a man's,--like many of the best of men's,--inclusive.
She did not allow her feelings to interfere with her actions. She
continued to show all possible sympathy and kindness to Emilia, who in
return would style her her dearest, loveliest friend and sister. No
wonder, however, if at times Mary could not quite overcome a slight
constraint of manner, or if this was increased when her dearest sister,
with sweet unconsciousness, would openly probe the wound her pride would
fain have hidden from herself; when Emilia, for instance, wrote to
Shelley--
Mary does not write to me. Is it possible that she loves me less than
the others do? I should indeed be inconsolable at that.
Or to be informed in a letter to herself that this constraint of manner
had been talked over by Emilia with Shelley, who had assured her that
Mary's apparent coldness was only "the ash which covered an affectionate
heart."
He was right, indeed, and his words were the faithful echo of his own true
heart. He might have added, of himself, that his transient enthusiasms
resembled the soaring blaze of sparks struck by a hammer from a glowing
mass of molten metal.
But, in everyday prose, the situation was a trying one for Mary, and
surely no wife of two and twenty could have met it more bravely and simply
than she did.
"It is grievous," she wrote to Leigh Hunt, "to see this beautiful girl
wearing out the best years of her life in an odious convent, where
both mind and body are sick from want of the appropriate exercise for
each. I think she has great talent, if not genius; or if not an
internal fountain, how could she have acquired the mastery she has of
her own language, which she writes so beautifully, or those ideas
which lift her so far above the rest of the Italians? She has not
studied much, and now, hopeless from a five years' confinement,
everything disgusts her, and she looks with hatred and distaste even
on the alleviations of her situation. Her only hope is in a marriage
which her parents tell her is concluded, although she has never seen
the person intended for her. Nor do I think the change of situation
will be much for the better, for he is a younger brother, and will
live in the house with his mother, who they say is _molto seccante_.
Yet she may then have the free use of her limbs; she may then be able
to walk out among the fields, vineyards, and woods of her country,
and see the mountains and the sky, and not as now, a dozen steps to
the right, and then back to the left another dozen, which is the
longest walk her convent garden affords, and that, you may be sure,
she is very seldom tempted to take."
By the middle of February Shelley was sending his poem for publication,
speaking of it as the production of "a part of himself already dead." He
continued, however, to take an almost painful interest in Emilia's fate;
she, poor girl, though not the sublime creature he had thought her, was
infinitely to be pitied. Before their acquaintance ended, she was turning
it to practical account, after the fashion of most of Shelley's friends,
by begging for and obtaining considerable sums of money.
If Mary then indulged in a little retrospective sarcasm to her friend,
Mrs. Gisborne, it is hardly wonderful. Indeed, later allusions are not
wanting to show that this time was felt by her to be one of annoyance and
bitterness.
Two circumstances were in her favour. She was well, and, therefore,
physically able to look at things in their true light; and, during a great
part of the time, Clare was away. In the previous October, during their
stay at the Baths, she had at last resolved on trying to make out some
sort of life for herself, and had taken a situation as governess in a
Florentine family. She had come back to the Shelleys for the month of
December (when it was that she became acquainted with Emilia Vivani), but
had returned to Florence at Christmas.
She had been persuaded to this step by the judicious Mrs. Mason, who had
soon perceived the strained relations existing between Mary and Clare, and
had seen, too, that the disunion was only the natural and inevitable
result of circumstances. It was not only that the two girls were of
opposite and jarring temperament; there was also the fact that half the
suspicious mistrust with Shelley was regarded by those who did not
personally know him, and the shadow of which rested on Mary too, was
caused by Clare's continued presence among them. As things were now, it
might have passed without remark, but for the scandalous reports which
dated back to the Marlow days, and which had recently been revived by the
slanders of Paolo, although the extent of these slanders had not yet
transpired. Shelley had been alive enough to the danger at one time, but
had now got accustomed and indifferent to it. He had a great affection and
a great compassion for Clare; her vivacity enlivened him; he said himself
that he liked her although she teased him, and he certainly missed her
teasing when she was away. But Mary, to whom Clare's perpetual society was
neither a solace nor a change, and who, as the mother of children, could
no longer look at things from a purely egotistic point of view, must have
felt it positively unjust and wrong to allow their father's reputation to
be sacrificed--to say nothing of her own--to what was in no wise a
necessity. Shelley loved solitude--a mitigated solitude that is;--he
certainly did not pine for general society. Yet many of his letters bear
unmistakable evidence to the pain and resentment he felt at being
universally shunned by his own countrymen, as if he were an enemy of the
human race. But Mary, a woman, and only twenty-two, must have been
self-sufficient indeed if, with all her mental resources, she had not
required the renovation of change and contrast and varied intercourse, to
keep her mind and spirit fresh and bright, and to fit her for being a
companion and a resource to Shelley. That she and he were condemned to
protracted isolation was partly due to Clare, and when Mary was weak and
dejected, her consciousness of this became painful, and her feeling
towards the sprightly, restless Miss Clairmont was touched with positive
antipathy. Shelley, considering Clare the weaker party, supported her, in
the main, and certainly showed no desire to have her away. He might have
seen that to impose her presence on Mary in such circumstances was, in
fact, as great a piece of tyranny as he had suffered from when Eliza
Westbrook was imposed on him. But of this he was, and he remained,
perfectly unconscious. Clare ought to have retired from the field, but her
dependent condition, and her wretched anxiety about Allegra, were her
excuse for clinging to the only friends she had.
All this was evident to Mrs. Mason, and it was soon shown that she had
judged rightly, as the relations between Mary and Clare became cordial and
natural once they were relieved from the intolerable friction of daily
companionship.
During this time of excitement and unrest one new acquaintance had,
however, begun, which circumstances were to develop into a close and
intimate companionship.
In January there had arrived at Pisa a young couple of the name of
Williams; mainly attracted by the desire to see and to know Shelley, of
whose gifts and virtues and sufferings they had heard much from Tom
Medwin, their neighbour in Switzerland the year before. Lieutenant Edward
Elliker Williams had been, first, in the Navy, then in the Army; had met
his wife in India, and, returning with her to England, had sold his
commission and retired on half-pay. He was young, of a frank
straightforward disposition and most amiable temper, modest and
unpretentious, with some literary taste, and no strong prejudices. Jane
Williams was young and pretty, gentle and graceful, neither very
cultivated nor particularly clever, but with a comfortable absence of
angles in her disposition, and an abundance of that feminine tact which
prevents intellectual shortcomings from being painfully felt, and which
is, in its way, a manifestation of genius. Not an uncommon type of woman,
but quite new in the Shelleys' experience. At first they thought her
rather wanting in animation, and Shelley was conscious of her lack of
literary refinement, but these were more and more compensated for, as time
went on, by her natural grace and her taste for music. "Ned" was something
of an artist, and Mary Shelley sat more than once to him for her portrait.
There was, in short, no lack of subjects in common, and the two young
couples found a mutual pleasure in each other's society which increased in
measure as they became better acquainted.
In March poor Clare received with bitter grief the intelligence that her
child had been placed by Byron in a convent, at Bagnacavallo, not far from
Ravenna, where he now lived. Under the sway of the Countess Guiccioli,
whose father and brother were domesticated in his house, he was leading
what, in comparison with his Venetian existence, was a life of
respectability and virtue. His action with regard to Allegra was
considered by the Shelleys as, probably, inevitable in the circumstances,
but to Clare it was a terrible blow. She felt more hopelessly separated
from her child than ever, and she had seen enough of Italian convent
education and its results to convince her that it meant moral and
intellectual degradation and death. Her despairing representations to this
effect were, of course, unanswered by Byron, who contented himself with a
Mephistophelian sneer in showing her letter to the Hoppners.
With the true "malignity of those who turn sweet food into poison,
transforming all they touch to the malignity of their own natures,"[39] he
had no hesitation in giving credit to the reports about Clare's life in
the Shelleys' family, nor in openly implying his own belief in their
probable truth.
But for this, and for one great alarm caused by the sudden and
unaccountable stoppage of Shelley's income (through a mistake which
happily was discovered and speedily rectified by his good friend, Horace
Smith), the spring was, for Mary, peaceful and bright. She was assiduous
in her Greek studies, and keenly interested in the contemporary European
politics of that stirring time; as full of sympathy as Shelley himself
could be with the numerous insurrectionary outbreaks in favour of liberty.
And when the revolution in Greece broke out, and one bright April morning
Prince Mavrocordato rushed in to announce to her the proclamation of
Prince Hypsilantes, her elation and joy almost equalled his own.
In companionship with the Williams', aided and abetted by Henry Reveley,
Shelley's old passion for boating revived. In the little ten-foot long
boat procured for him for a few pauls, and then fitted up by Mr. Reveley,
they performed many a voyage, on the Arno, on the canal between Pisa and
Leghorn, and even on the sea. Their first trip was marked by an
accident--Williams contriving to overturn the boat. Nothing daunted,
Shelley declared next day that his ducking had added fire to, instead of
quenching, the nautical ardour which produced it, and that he considered
it a good omen to any enterprise that it began in evil, as making it more
likely that it would end in good.
All these events are touched on in the few specimen extracts from Mary's
journal and letters which follow--
_Wednesday, January 31._--Read Greek. Call on Emilia Viviani. Shelley
reads the _Vita Nuova_ aloud to me in the evening.
_Friday, February 2._--Read Greek. Write. Emilia Viviani walks out
with Shelley. The Opera, with the Williams' (_Il Matrimonio Segreto_).
_Tuesday, February 6._--Read Greek. Sit to Williams. Call on Emilia
Viviani. Prince Mavrocordato in the evening. A long metaphysical
argument.
_Wednesday, February 7._--Read Greek. Sit to Williams. In the evening
the Williams', Prince Mavrocordato, and Mr. Taafe.
_Monday, February 12._--Read Greek (no lesson). Finish the _Vita
Nuova_. In the afternoon call on Emilia Viviani. Walk. Mr. Taafe
calls.
_Thursday, February 27._--Read Greek. The Williams to dine with us.
Walk with them. Il Diavolo Pacchiani calls. Shelley reads "The Ancient
Mariner" aloud.
_Saturday, March 4._--Read Greek (no lesson). Walk with the Williams'.
Read Horace with Shelley in the evening. A delightful day.
_Sunday, March 5._--Read Greek. Write letters. The Williams' to dine
with us. Walk with them. Williams relates his history. They spend the
evening with us, with Prince Mavrocordato and Mr. Taafe.
_Thursday, March 8._--Read Greek (no lesson). Call on Emilia Viviani.
E. Williams calls. Shelley reads _The Case is Altered_ of Ben Jonson
aloud in the evening. A mizzling day and rainy night.... March winds
and rains are begun, the last puff of winter's breath,--the eldest
tears of a coming spring; she ever comes in weeping and goes out
smiling.
_Monday, March 12._--Read Greek (no lesson). Finish the _Defence of
Poetry_. Copy for Shelley; he reads to me the _Tale of a Tub_. A
delightful day after a misty morning.
_Wednesday, March 14._--Read Greek (no lesson). Copy for Shelley. Walk
with Williams. Prince Mavrocordato in the evening. I have an
interesting conversation with him concerning Greece. The second
bulletin of the Austrians published. A sirocco, but a pleasant
evening,
_Friday, March 16._--Read Greek. Copy for Shelley. Walk with Williams.
Mrs. Williams confined. News of the Revolution of Piedmont, and the
taking of the citadel of Candia by the Greeks. A beautiful day, but
not hot.
_Sunday, March 18._--Read Greek. Copy for Shelley. A sirocco and
mizzle. Bad news from Naples. Walk with Williams. Prince Mavrocordato
in the evening.
_Monday, March 26._--Read Greek. Alex. Mavrocordato. Finish the
_Antigone_. A mizzling day. Spend the evening at the Williams'.
_Wednesday, March 28._--Read Greek. Alex. Mavrocordato. Call on Emilia
Viviani. Walk with Williams. Mr. Taafe in the evening. A fine day,
though changeful as to clouds and wind. The State of Massa declares
the Constitution. The Piedmontese troops are at Sarzana.
_Sunday, April 1._--Read Greek. Alex. Mavrocordato calls with news
about Greece. He is as gay as a caged eagle just free. Call on Emilia
Viviani. Walk with Williams; he spends the evening with us.
_Monday, April 2._--Read Greek. Alex. Mavrocordato calls with the
proclamation of Ipsilanti. Write to him. Ride with Shelley into the
Cascini. A divine day, with a north-west wind. The theatre in the
evening. Tachinardi.
_Wednesday, April 11._--Read Greek, and _Osservatore Fiorentino_. A
letter that overturns us.[40] Walk with Shelley. In the evening
Williams and Alex. Mavrocordato.
_Friday, April 13._--Read Greek. Alex. Mavrocordato calls.
_Osservatore Fiorentino_. Walk with the Williams'. Shelley at Casa
Silva in the evening. An explanation of our difficulty.
_Monday, April 16._--Write. Targioni. Read Greek. Mrs. Williams to
dinner. In the evening Mr. Taafe. A wet morning: in the afternoon a
fierce maestrale. Shelley, Williams, and Henry Reveley try to come up
the canal to Pisa; miss their way, are capsized, and sleep at a
contadino's.
_Tuesday, April 24._--Read Greek. Alex. Mavrocordato. Hume. Villani.
Walk with the Williams'. Alex. M. calls in the evening, with good news
from Greece. The Morea free.
They now migrated once more to the beautiful neighbourhood of the Baths of
San Giuliano di Pisa; the Williams' established themselves at Pugnano,
only four miles off: the canal fed by the Serchio ran between the two
places, and the little boat was in constant requisition.
Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
The helm sways idly, hither and thither;
Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,
And the oars, and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.[41]
The canal which, fed by the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a full
and picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered
by trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day,
multitudes of ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the
fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the _cicale_, at
noonday, kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It
was a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley's health and
inconstant spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more
and more attached to the part of the country where chance appeared to
cast us. Sometimes he projected taking a farm, situated on the height
of one of the near hills, surrounded by chestnut and pine woods and
overlooking a wide extent of country; or of settling still further in
the maritime Apennines, at Massa. Several of his slighter and
unfinished poems were inspired by these scenes, and by the companions
around us. It is the nature of that poetry, however, which overflows
from the soul, oftener to express sorrow and regret than joy; for it
is when oppressed by the weight of life and away from those he loves,
that the poet has recourse to the solace of expression in verse.[42]
_Journal, Thursday, May 3._--Read Villani. Go out in boat; call on
Emilia Viviani. Walk with Shelley. In the evening Alex. Mavrocordato,
Henry Reveley, Dancelli, and Mr. Taafe.
_Friday, May 4._--Read Greek. (Alex. M.) Read Villani. Shelley goes to
Leghorn by sea with Henry Reveley.
_Tuesday, May 8._--Packing. Read Greek (Alex. Mavrocordato). Shelley
goes to Leghorn. In the evening walk with Alex. M. to Pugnano. See the
Williams; return to the Baths. Shelley and Henry Reveley come. The
weather quite April; rain and sunshine, and by no means warm.
_Saturday, June 23._--Abominably cold weather--rain, wind, and
cloud--quite an Italian November or a Scotch May. Shelley and Williams
go to Leghorn. Write. Read and finish Malthus. Begin the answer.[43]
Jane (Williams) spends the day here, and Edward returns in the
evening. Read Greek.
_Sunday, June 24._--Write. Read the _Answer to Malthus_. Finish it.
Shelley at Leghorn.
_Monday, June 25._--Little babe not well. Shelley returns. The
Williams call. Read old plays. Vacca calls.
_Tuesday, June 26._--Babe well. Write. Read Greek. Shelley not well.
Mr. Taafe and Granger dine with us. Walk with Shelley. Vacca calls.
Alex. Mavrocordato sails.
_Thursday, June 28._--Write. Read Greek. Read Mackenzie's works. Go to
Pugnano in the boat. The warmest day this month. Fireflies in the
evening.
They were near enough to Pisa to go over there from time to time to see
Emilia and other friends, and for Prince Mavrocordato to come frequently
and give them the latest political news: the Greek lessons had been
voluntarily abjured by Mary when it seemed probable that the Prince might
be summoned at any moment to play an active part in the affairs of his
country, as actually happened in June. Shelley was still tormented by the
pain in his side, but his health and spirits were insensibly improving, as
he himself afterwards admitted. He was occupied in writing _Hellas_; his
elegy on Keats's death, _Adonais_ also belongs to this time. Ned Williams,
infected by the surrounding atmosphere of literature, had tried his
'prentice hand on a drama. In the words of his own journal--
Went in the summer to Pugnano--passed the first three months in
writing a play entitled _The Promise, or a year, a month, and a day_.
S. tells me if they accept it he has great hopes of its success before
an audience, and his hopes always enliven mine.
Mary was straining every nerve to finish _Valperga_, in the hope of being
able to send it to England by the Gisbornes, who were preparing to leave
Italy,--a hope, however, which was not fulfilled.
MARY TO MRS. GISBORNE.
BATHS OF S. GIULIANO,
_30th June 1821_.
MY DEAR MRS. GISBORNE--Well, how do you get on? Mr. Gisborne says
nothing of that in the note which he wrote yesterday, and it is that
in which I am most interested.
I pity you exceedingly in all the disagreeable details to which you
are obliged to sacrifice your time and attention. I can conceive no
employment more tedious; but now I hope it is nearly over, and that as
the fruit of its conclusion you will soon come to see us. Shelley is
far from well; he suffers from his side and nervous irritation. The
day on which he returned from Leghorn he found little Percy ill of a
fever produced by teething. He got well the next day, but it was so
strong while it lasted that it frightened us greatly. You know how
much reason we have to fear the deceitful appearance of perfect
health. You see that this, your last summer in Italy, is manufactured
on purpose to accustom you to the English seasons.
It is warmer now, but we still enjoy the delight of cloudy skies. The
"Creator" has not yet made himself heard. I get on with my occupation,
and hope to finish the rough transcript this month. I shall then give
about a month to corrections, and then I shall transcribe it. It has
indeed been a child of mighty slow growth since I first thought of it
in our library at Marlow. I then wanted the body in which I might
embody my spirit. The materials for this I found at Naples, but I
wanted other books. Nor did I begin it till a year afterwards at Pisa;
it was again suspended during our stay at your house, and continued
again at the Baths. All the winter I did not touch it, but now it is
in a state of great forwardness, since I am at page 71 of the third
volume. It has indeed been a work of some labour, since I have read
and consulted a great many books. I shall be very glad to read the
first volume to you, that you may give me your opinion as to the
conduct and interest of the story. June is now at its last gasp. You
talked of going in August, I hope therefore that we may soon expect
you. Have you heard anything concerning the inhabitants of Skinner
Street? It is now many months since I received a letter, and I begin
to grow alarmed. Adieu.--Ever sincerely yours,
MARY W. S.
On the 26th of July the Gisbornes came to pay their friends a short
farewell visit; on the 29th they started for England; Shelley going with
them as far as Florence, where he and Mary thought again of settling for
the winter, and where he wished to make inquiries about houses. During his
few days' absence the Williams' were almost constantly with Mary. Edward
Williams was busy painting a portrait of her in miniature, intended by
her as a surprise for Shelley on his birthday, the 4th of August. But when
that day arrived Shelley was unavoidably absent. On his return to the
Baths he had found a letter from Lord Byron, with a pressing invitation to
visit him at Ravenna, whence Byron was on the point of departing to join
Countess Guiccioli and her family, who had been exiled from the Roman
States for Carbonarism, and who, for the present, had taken refuge at
Florence.
Shelley's thoughts turned at once, as they could not but do, to poor
little Allegra, in her convent of Bagnacavallo. What was to become of her?
Where would or could she be sent? or was she to be conveniently forgotten
and left behind? He was off next day, the 3d; paid a flying visit to
Clare, who was staying for her health at Leghorn, and arrived at Ravenna
on the 6th.
The miniature was finished and ready for him on his birthday. Mary, alone
on that anniversary, was fain to look back over the past eventful seven
years,--their joys, their sorrows, their many changes. Not long before,
she had said, in a letter to Clare, "One is not gay, at least I am not,
but peaceful, and at peace with all the world." The same tone
characterises the entry in her journal for 4th August.
Shelley's birthday. Seven years are now gone; what changes! what a
life! We now appear tranquil, yet who knows what wind----but I will
not prognosticate evil; we have had enough of it. When Shelley came to
Italy I said, all is well, if it were permanent; it was more passing
than an Italian twilight. I now say the same. May it be a Polar day,
yet that, too, has an end.