ARIEL AND DON JUAN
Don Juan counted, however, without the energy of Elvira. Claire had made
up her mind to follow him to Switzerland, and this dark-eyed girl was a
flame and a force. She arranged that the Shelleys should chaperon her,
knowing that they, too, would welcome the idea of a change.
Since she left them, they had been living at Bishopsgate, on the border
of Windsor Forest, and beneath the oak-shades of the Great Park Shelley
had composed his first long poem since _Queen Mab_. This was _Alastor,
or the Spirit of Solitude_, an imaginative interpretation of his
spiritual experiences, and a record of the exquisite mountain, river,
and woodland scenery of the past year. The tone differs from that of his
previous works. Melancholy and resignation soften down the confident
assertions of earlier years, and religious and moral theories, if still
serving as a peg, get somewhat pushed into the background.
In the preface he shows the Poet thirsting for love and dying because he
cannot find it. But, says Shelley, it is better to die than to live as
do the comfortable worldlings, “who, deluded by no generous error,
instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no
illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing
no hopes beyond—yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind,
rejoicing neither in human joy, nor mourning with human grief; these and
such as they have their appointed curse. . . . They are morally dead.
They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the
world, nor benefactors of their country . . . they live unfruitful
lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.”
While Shelley had no regrets for his actions, all the same, life in
England had become odious to him. Mary, as an unmarried wife, suffered
from her social ostracism, and thought that if they went abroad, where
their story would be unknown, she would have more chance of making
friends.
She had given birth to a second child in January, 1816, a fine little
boy whom she had named William, after Godwin. The expenses of the
household, with the addition of a nurse, were heavy, the income small.
Life in Switzerland was said to be cheap; Claire, at least, had little
difficulty in persuading her that it was so.
As in the time of their first flight from London the extraordinary trio
crossed France, Burgundy, the Jura, and, reaching Geneva, settled down
at Sécheron, one of its suburbs, in the Hôtel d’Angleterre. The house
was on the edge of the lake, from its windows they saw the sun sparkling
on every wave-crest of the blue water, and in the distance the black
mountain-ridges that seemed to quiver in the sunny atmosphere. Farther
away still, a brilliant and solid-looking white cloud spoke of the snow
peaks of the Alps. The change to this golden climate after English
greyness and London gloom was delicious. They hired a boat, and passed
long days upon the water, reading and sleeping.
* * *
While they lived thus, a band of happy children, with the blue sky above
them, and the blue lake beneath, Childe Harold in the most sumptuous of
travelling carriages was crossing Flanders on his way to join them.
England, in one of those crazy fits of virtue which alternate with
periods of the most amazing licence, had just hounded Byron from her
shores. When he entered a ball-room every woman would leave it, as
though he were the devil in person. He determined to shake for ever from
his shoes the dust of so hypocritical a land.
His departure was accompanied by the most frenzied curiosity. Society,
which punishes cruelly any revolt of the elemental instincts,
nevertheless, in her heart of hearts, admires the rebel and envies him.
At Dover, where the Pilgrim embarked, a double line of spectators stood
on either side of the gangway. Great ladies borrowed the clothes of
their chamber-maids, so as to mix unobserved with the crowd. People
pointed out to one another the enormous packing-cases containing his
sofa, his books, his services of china and glass.
The sea was rough, and Byron reminded his travelling companions that his
grandfather Admiral Byron was nicknamed “Foul-weather Jack” because he
never put to sea without a squall blowing up. He took a certain pleasure
in painting his own portrait against this traditional stormy background.
Unfortunately, he would have his misfortunes transcendent.
* * *
A few days later there was great commotion at the Hôtel d’Angleterre.
Every one was on edge expecting the arrival of the noble lord. Claire
was tremulous in spite of her audacity, Shelley, in the happiest
spirits, was impatient. He was not shocked by the affair between Byron
and Claire. On the contrary he hoped to see the same ties formed between
Byron and his sister-in-law as existed between himself and Mary.
The Shelleys were not disappointed by Byron’s first appearance. His
beauty was extraordinary. To begin with, you were struck by his air of
pride and intellect; next, you noticed the moonlight paleness of his
skin, his splendid dark blue eyes, his black and slightly curling hair,
the perfect line of his eyebrows. The nose and chin were firm and
well-drawn, the mouth full and voluptuous. His only defect appeared in
his walk. “Club-footed” was said of him. “Cloven-footed” he insinuated
of himself, for he preferred to be considered diabolic rather than
infirm. Mary saw that his lameness embarrassed him, for whenever he had
to take a few steps before spectators he made some satanic jest. In the
register-book of the hotel, against the word “age” he wrote “a hundred.”
Byron and Shelley got on well together. Byron was glad to find him a man
of his own class, who in spite of hardships had retained the charming
ease of manner peculiar to the young aristocrat. His cultivation was
astounding. Byron, too, had read enormously, but without Shelley’s
serious application. Shelley had read to know, Byron had read to dazzle,
and Byron was perfectly well aware of the difference. He felt, too, the
instant conviction that Shelley’s will was a force, a bent bow, while
his own floated loose on the current at the mercy of his passions and of
his mistresses.
Shelley, the least vain of men, did not observe this admiration for him,
which Byron took care to hide. While listening to the third canto of
_Childe Harold_ he was moved to enthusiasm and discouragement. In the
superb energy of the poem, which rose and swelled, irresistibly like a
flood, he recognized genius and despaired of ever equalling it.
But if the poet filled him with admiration, the man filled him with
astonishment. He had expected a Titan in revolt, and he found a wounded
aristocrat fully alive to the pleasures and pains of vanity, which
seemed to Shelley so puerile. Byron had outraged convention, but, all
the same, he believed in it. It had stood in the path of his desires,
and he had flung it aside, but with regret. That which Shelley had done
ingenuously, he had done consciously. Banished from society, he valued
nothing so much as social success. A bad husband, it was only to
legitimate love that he paid respect. His mouth overflowed with
cynicism, but it was by way of reprisals, not from conviction. Between
marriage and depravity he recognized no middle path. He had sought to
terrify his compatriots by acting an audacious part, but only because he
had despaired of conquering them by acting a traditional one.
Shelley looked to women as a source of exaltation, Byron as a pretext
for idling. Shelley angelic, too angelic, venerated them. Byron human,
too human, desired them and talked of them in the most contemptuous
fashion. “It is the plague of these women,” said he, “that you cannot
live with them or without them. . . . I cannot make up my mind whether
or not women have souls. My beau-ideal would be a woman with talent
enough to understand and value mine, but not sufficient to be able to
shine herself.”
The upshot of certain of their conversations was surprising. Shelley,
mystical without knowing it, managed to scandalize Byron, a Don Juan in
spite of himself.
This did not prevent them from being excellent company one for the
other. When Shelley, always a great fisher of souls, tried to win over
his friend to a less futile conception of life, Byron defended his point
of view by brilliant paradoxes which delighted Shelley the artist, as
much as they pained Shelley the moralist. Both were passionately fond of
the water. They bought a boat, keeled and clinker-built, in which they
went on the lake every evening with Mary, Claire, and Byron’s medical
attendant, the handsome young Italian, Polidori. Byron and Shelley,
sitting silent, would ship their oars to follow with their gaze fleeting
shapes amidst the moon-lit clouds; Claire would sing, and her warm,
delicious voice carried their thoughts with it over the starry waters in
a voluptuous flight.
One night of strong wind Byron, defying the storm, said he would sing
them an Albanian song. “Now be sentimental and give me all your
attention.” It was a strange wild howl that he gave forth, laughing the
while at their disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody.
From that day onward Mary and Claire named him “the Albaneser,” and
“Albé” for short.
The two poets made a literary pilgrimage round the lake. They visited
the spot where Rousseau has placed his _Nouvelle Héloïse_, “Clarens,
sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love”; and Lausanne and Ferney, full
of memories of Gibbon and Voltaire.
Shelley’s enthusiasm gained Byron, who wrote under its influence some of
his finest lines. Near Meillerie one of the sudden lake-storms nearly
upset the boat. Byron began to strip. Shelley, who could not swim, sat
still with folded arms. His calmness increased Byron’s admiration for
him, although he hid it more carefully than ever. Long afterwards
Shelley, speaking of this storm, said, “I knew that my companion would
try to save me, and it was a humiliating idea.”
Sick of hotel life and the impertinent curiosity of their
fellow-boarders, the Shelleys hired a cottage at Coligny on the edge of
the lake. Byron settled himself at the Villa Diodati, a short distance
away. The two houses were only separated by a vineyard. Here, some
vine-dressers at work in the early morning saw Claire come out of
Byron’s villa and run across to Shelley’s. She lost a slipper on the
way, but ashamed of being seen did not stop to pick it up. The honest
Swiss peasants, chuckling hugely, made haste to carry the slipper of the
English “Miss” to the mayor of the village.
Her love affair did not prosper. She was with child, and Byron was
utterly tired of her. He let her see it. For a moment perhaps he had
admired her voice, and her vivacity, but very soon she bored him. Nor
did he feel himself in any way bound to this young woman who had thrust
herself upon him with such pertinacity. . . .
“‘Carry off’ quotha! and ‘girl.’ I should like to know _who_ has been
carried off except poor dear _me_. I have been more ravished myself than
anybody since the Trojan War. I am accused of being hard on women. It
may be so, but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been
sacrificed _to_ them and _by_ them.”
Shelley went to talk with him of Claire’s future, and of the child’s. As
to Claire’s, Byron was perfectly indifferent. All he wanted was to get
rid of her as soon as possible and never to see her again. Shelley had
nothing to say on this point, but he defended the rights of the unborn
child.
At first Byron had the idea of confiding it to his sister Augusta.
Claire refusing her consent, he then undertook to look after the child
himself as soon as it was a year old, on condition that he should be
absolutely master of it.
It became difficult for the Shelleys to remain in his neighbourhood. Not
that there was any coldness between the two men, for while Shelley had
found the negotiations for Claire painful, they had seemed to him
perfectly natural. But Claire herself suffered, and Mary was often
indignant at Byron’s cynical talk. When he declared that women had no
right to eat at the same table with men, that their proper place was in
the harem or gynæceum, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft trembled with
anger. Once more she was homesick for English scenes. A house beside
some English river now appeared to her, at this distance away, a haven
of peace. Shelley wrote to his friends, Peacock and Hogg, to find
something for them, and the journey home began.
* * *
After they had gone, Byron wrote to his sister:
“Now don’t scold; but what could I do? A foolish girl, in spite
of all I could say or do, would come after me, or rather went
before—for I found her here—and I had all the plague possible
to persuade her to go back again, but at last she went. Now,
dearest, I do most truly tell thee that I could not help this,
that I did all I could to prevent it. I was not in love nor have
any love left for any; but I could not exactly play the Stoic
with a woman, who had scrambled eight hundred miles to
unphilosophize me. . . . And now you know all that I know of the
matter, and it’s over.”
Shelley remained in correspondence with Byron and did not give up hopes
of “saving” him. Mingled with an immense deference for the great poet,
Shelley’s letters show a trace of haughty disapproval of the character
of the man. He opposed to Byron’s constant anxiety concerning his
reputation, his success, and what was said of him in London, a picture
of true glory.
“Is it nothing to create greatness and goodness, destined
perhaps to infinite extensions? Is it nothing to become a source
whence the minds of other men will draw strength and beauty?
. . . What would Humanity be if Homer and Shakespeare had never
written? . . . Not that I advise you to aspire to Fame. Your
work should spring from a purer, simpler source. You should
desire nothing more than to express your own thoughts, and to
address yourself to the sympathy of those who are capable of
thinking as you do. Fame follows those whom she is unworthy to
guide.”
Lord Byron, who was then on his way to Venice, read these lofty counsels
with a weary indifference. Exacting veneration bored him.