THE CAVALIER’ SIRVENTE
During the early days which followed her departure from Venice, Claire
had received news of Allegra fairly often through the Hoppners. The
child suffered from the cold. She had become quiet and grave as a little
old woman. Mr. Hoppner thought it would be better to remove her from
Venice. But it was impossible to have a conversation to any purpose with
her father who was sinking deeper and deeper into debauchery.
Some months went by without any news. Claire, very anxious, wrote letter
after letter to the Hoppners, who did not reply. Then she learnt that a
great change had taken place in Byron’s existence. It had begun by his
being seriously ill and obliged to keep his bed. Hoppner, who came to
chat with him, had told him that his love affairs, far from scandalizing
the Venetians any longer as he believed and hoped, now merely amused the
_conversazioni_ at his expense. He was spoken of as the prey of artful
trollops who stole from him, tricked him, and then made fun of him in
their Venetian dialect. Don Juan fell into a red-hot rage, and instantly
all the priestesses of the Palazzo Mocenigo were turned out of doors,
and sent back, each to her midden.
The moment he was well, he was seen again at the Venetian receptions,
which he had so long forsaken. Thus he met the beauty of the season, a
lovely blonde, seventeen years of age, just married to a noble
greybeard, the Count Guiccioli. The Pilgrim admired the lady’s figure,
her bust and arms in particular. The very first day he slipped into her
hand, as he took leave, a note which she adroitly concealed. It was an
assignation. She came. He who said he adored her was a great Poet,
young, handsome, highly born, and rich. Though surrounded by all that
makes life desirable, she instantly gave herself to him without a
struggle.
A few days later, the Count took his wife to Ravenna, and Teresa begged
Byron to go too. “The charmer forgets that a man may be whistled
anywhere _before_ but that _after_—a journey in an Italian June is a
conscription, and therefore she should have been less liberal in Venice,
or less exigent at Ravenna.” The notion of romantic and constant love
was odious to him. He did not budge, and was rather proud of his
strength of mind.
From Ravenna she wrote again that she was very ill, and, where an appeal
to love had failed, an appeal to pity succeeded. Don Juan set off, but
not without stopping at Ferrara and other towns on the way, to sample
the local beauties. Although making a show of indifference and even of
boredom, he was very glad to join Teresa. Intelligent women such as Lady
Byron or Claire got on his nerves: he had too great a contempt for the
sex to ask from a mistress intellectual companionship. The bakers’ wives
and other wantons of Venice were of a species too far below him. But the
Countess Guiccioli united a restful and affectionate stupidity with the
elegance of a well-born woman. She kept and held without too much
trouble this Everlasting Rover. Don Juan now played the part of a
faithful and devoted sick-nurse. “Were I to lose her,” he wrote, “I
should lose a being who has run great risks for my sake, and whom I have
every reason to love—but I must not think this possible. I do not know
what I _should_ do were she to die, but I ought to blow my brains out,
and I hope that I should.”
When his conquering Conquest had to leave Ravenna for Bologna, he
followed. He had become the classic _cicesbeo_: “But I can’t say I don’t
feel the degradation of it. Better to be an unskilful Planter, an
awkward settler, better to be a hunter, or anything, than a flatterer of
fiddlers and fan carrier of a woman . . . and now I am _cavalier’
sirvente_! By the holy! It’s a strange sensation.”
* * *
Claire was told all this story, and that Byron had sent orders for
Allegra to be brought to Bologna. The idea that her child was to live in
the house of Byron’s new mistress, who would have no reasons for loving
her and possibly some for hating her, terrified Claire. She wrote a
passionate letter asking to have her back. Byron replied:
“I disapprove so completely of the way children are brought up
in the Shelley household that I should think in sending my
daughter to you I was sending her into a hospital. Is it not so?
Have they _reared_ one?—Either she will go to England or I
shall put her into a convent. But the child shall not quit me
again to perish of starvation and green fruit, or be taught to
believe that there is no Deity.”
On receiving this letter, Claire notes in her caustic way: “Letter from
Albé concerning green fruit and God”; but she wept over it too. Allegra
in a convent of Italian nuns, who have no notion of cleanliness and no
love for children, seemed to her a frightful idea. She sent despairful,
violent, almost insolent letters to Byron, who wrote to complain of her
to Shelley, and to inform him that for the future he should refuse all
correspondence with her.
“I have no conception,” Shelley answered, “of what Claire’s
letters to you contain, and but an imperfect one on the subject
of her correspondence with you at all. One or two of her
letters, but not lately, I have indeed seen; but as I thought
them extremely childish and absurd, and requested her not to
send them, and she afterwards told me she had written and sent
others in the place of them, I cannot tell if those which I saw
on that occasion were sent you or not. I wonder, however, at
your being provoked at what Claire writes, though that she
should write what is provoking is very probable. You are
conscious of performing your duty to Allegra, and your refusal
to allow her to visit Claire at this distance you consider to be
part of that duty. That Claire should wish to see her is
natural. That her disappointment should vex her, and her
vexation make her write absurdly, is all in the usual order of
things. But, poor thing, she is very unhappy and in bad health,
and she ought to be treated with as much indulgence as possible.
The weak and the foolish are in this respect the kings—they can
do no wrong.”
* * *
He himself had need of a similar loftiness of soul, to rise above the
women’s quarrels which distracted his household. Mary grew more and more
short-tempered. Godwin overwhelmed her with requests for money, to which
Shelley had decided no longer to reply. He had already given her father
nearly five thousand pounds without any results and had gained, at this
high price, a chastened wisdom and a painful knowledge of Godwin’s ugly
soul. As the bitter reproaches which the Philosopher now showered on
Mary turned her milk, Shelley informed him that for the future he would
intercept and suppress all letters likely to upset her: “Mary has not,
nor ought she to have, the disposal of money. If she had, poor thing,
she would give it all to you. Such a father—I mean a man of such high
genius—can be at no loss to find subjects on which to address such a
daughter. . . . I need not tell you that the neglecting entirely to
write to your daughter from the moment that nothing could be gained by
it, would admit of but one interpretation.”
Mary, worried about her father, Claire, worried about her child, got
terribly on each other’s nerves, and their common admiration for the
only man of the household was far more an obstacle to a good
understanding than a help. Mary did all she knew to make Claire perceive
she was unwanted, and once more Claire as before had to recognize it. An
old lady of the English colony found her a place as governess in
Florence, Shelley took her thither, and left her in the family of
Professor Bojti.
He wrote her long and loving letters, but though these were quite
innocent he did not show them to Mary, and he asked Claire not to
mention them when she wrote to her sister, although such a want of
frankness was little to his taste. His early conception of love had been
of a unity of ideas and actions so perfect that any explanation was
quite uncalled for between lovers. But life had taught him that
perfection is not to be had, and something short of it must be accepted.
There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison. Mary could
not take it except in very diluted doses.