A SIX WEEKS’ TOUR
The post-chaise was ordered for four o’clock in the morning. Shelley
waited up all night opposite Godwins’ house. At length he saw the stars
and the oil-lamps grow pale. Mary noiselessly opened the hall door. Jane
Clairmont, who at the last moment had decided to go with her sister,
looked after the luggage with zeal.
The long carriage journey greatly tired Mary, but Shelley dared not stop
lest Godwin were pursuing them. At about four in the afternoon they
reached Dover, where after the usual difficulties with custom-house
officials, and sailors, they found a small boat which agreed to take
them over to Calais.
The weather was fine. The white cliffs of Albion slowly faded away. The
fugitives were safe. Presently the wind rose and freshened into a gale.
Mary, very ill, passed the night lying upon Shelley’s knees, who,
himself worn out with fatigue, supported her head on his shoulder. The
moon sunk to a stormy horizon; then, in total darkness, a thunderstorm
struck the sail, and the fast-flashing lightning revealed a dark and
swollen sea. When morning broke the storm passed, the wind changed, and
the sun rose broad, and red, and cloudless, over France.
Mary shook off her somnolence in the streets of Calais; the gay bustle
of the harbour, the picturesque costume of the fisherfolk, the confused
buzz of voices speaking a strange language, revived her. The day was
spent at the inn, as they had to wait for the luggage coming by the
Dover Packet, but when this arrived it brought also Mrs. Godwin and her
green spectacles. The fat lady hoped to persuade Jane, at least, to go
back with her to Skinner Street, but Shelley’s eloquence won the day,
and Mrs. Godwin returned alone. At six o’clock the travellers left
Calais for Boulogne in a cabriolet drawn by three horses running
abreast.
* * *
Their plan was to get to Switzerland, but after a few days in Paris
their purse was empty. Shelley had a letter for a certain Tavernier, a
French man of business, who was to act as banker for them. They invited
him to lunch at the hotel, and put him down as a perfect idiot, for he
seemed to have a difficulty in understanding the absolute necessity of
this journey by two little girls, and a tall and excitable young man.
Shelley had to pawn his watch and chain; he got eight napoleons for
them. This would give them bread and cheese for a fortnight, so with
minds at ease, they began to explore the Boulevards, the Louvre, and
Notre Dame. Later on they preferred to remain in the hotel and re-read
together the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Byron’s poems.
At the end of the week, Tavernier, a good fellow in the main, agreed to
lend them sixty pounds. But, as this was not enough to pay for their
places by diligence, they decided to start on foot, and to buy an ass to
carry the luggage, and each of them ride it by turns.
Shelley went to the cattle-market and came back to the hotel with a very
small donkey. Next morning a hackney-coach took them to the Barrier of
Charenton, the ass trotting behind the carriage.
The roads in France in the year 1814 were not particularly safe. The
armies had just been demobilized, and bands of marauders robbed those
who travelled on them. The peasants working in the fields by the
road-side stared with all their eyes at this extraordinary caravan of
two pretty girls in black silk gowns, a stripling with curly hair, and a
ridiculously small donkey. At the end of a few miles, the last appeared
so tired that Shelley and Jane had to carry him! In the village where
they slept they sold him to a peasant and bought a mule in his place.
The whole of the district had been devastated by the war, the villages
were half-destroyed, the houses mostly roofless with fire-blackened
beams; if they asked a farmer for milk he replied by cursing the
Cossacks who had carried off his cows.
In the wretched inns the beds were so dirty that Mary and Jane dared not
use them. Enormous rats brushed by them in the darkness. They fell into
the habit of sitting up all night in the farm-kitchens. The big stove,
still alight, made the atmosphere heavy, and between sleeping and
waking, the crying of children and the creakings of the old woodwork
were woven into their dreams. Mary thought of her father, and wondered
was he suffering terribly from her flight? Shelley was preoccupied with
the fate of Harriet.
From Troyes he wrote her a long letter, urging her to come out and join
them in Switzerland. She should live near them, and there, at least,
find one firm and constant friend. He gave her news of Mary’s health,
which appeared to him a natural thing to do, and he felt quite sure that
Harriet would very soon be with them. Maybe, the “world” would think
this life in common immoral, but why trouble about “the world’s”
opinion? Was it not better to obey the dictates of love and kindness
than those of absurd prejudices? Harriet made no reply.
Going by Pontarlier and Neufchâtel they reached the Lake of the Four
Cantons. Shelley wished to settle at Brunnen, near the Chapel of William
Tell, the Defender of Liberty. The only empty house in the place was an
old château, deserted, and falling into ruin. They hired two rooms in it
for six months, and bought furniture, beds, chairs, wardrobes, and a
stove. The curé and the village doctor came to call upon the new-comers,
and on the same day Shelley began to write a great novel, _The
Assassins_. They had settled down “for ever.”
But the new stove refused to draw, and Shelley who was not clever with
his fingers, tinkered at it in vain. The room was glacial and filled
with smoke. Outside the rain beat against the windows. The three young
exiles found themselves desperately lonely. They recalled the comfort of
their English houses, English tea, hot and scented, England’s mild sky,
the cool, good-natured Englishmen speaking their language and able to
pronounce their names. Even the English usurers, though of course
rapacious, were always courteous.
Shelley counted up the common purse. There remained just twenty-eight
pounds. The same eager desire rose in all three, which Shelley expressed
by the words “Let’s go home!”
No sooner said than the decision was taken, and their spirits rose.
“Most laughable to think,” writes Jane, “of our going to England the
second day after entering a new house for six months, and all because
the stove don’t suit! As we left Dover, and England’s white cliffs
disappeared, I thought I should never see them again, and now . . .”
Having made up their minds at midnight, the next morning, in driving
rain, they took a boat to Lucerne. Great was the surprise of Brunnen’s
curé when he learnt that they were gone.
From Lucerne they reached Bale by passenger-boat and thence on to
Cologne. The weather was delightful. Beneath the evening stars, the
boatmen chanted love-songs. Shelley worked at _The Assassins_. Mary and
Jane had each started a novel too, and the hills crowned with ruins on
either side gave them a good background for the romantic adventures of
their heroes. Then the Dutch mail-coach carried them through a sleepy
land of comfortable wooden houses, canals, and windmills. When they
reached Rotterdam they were again penniless. After long discussion, a
ship’s captain agreed to take them aboard. The sea was as rough as on
the day of their departure.
Shelley employed his time arguing the question of slavery with one of
the passengers. Mary and Jane backed him up with warmth. They did not
know in the least if they would have anything to eat the next day, but
they did know that Percy was a genius, and that Man is perfectible.