Mrs. Shelley Part 6

Sh.e.l.ley is commissioned to buy a seal-skin fur hat for w.i.l.l.y, and to take care that it is a round fashionable shape for a boy. She is surrounded by babies while writing--William, Alba, and little Clara.

Her love is to be given to G.o.dwin when Mrs. G.o.dwin is not there, as she does not love her. _Frankenstein_ is still undisposed of.

The house at Marlow is soon found to be far too cold for a winter residence. Italy or the sea must speedily be settled on. Alba is the great consideration in favour of Italy, Mary feels she will not be safe except with them; Byron is so difficult to fix in any way, and the one hope seems to be to get him to provide for the child. Anxiety for Alba's future ruled their present, so impossible is it to foretell the future, which, read and judged as our past, is easy to be severe upon. This dream of health and rest in Italy was not to be so easily realised. Instead of being there, they were still dispensing charity at Marlow at the end of December, in spite of various negotiations for money in October and November. Horace Smith had lent two hundred pounds, and, Sh.e.l.ley thought, would lend more. Mary continued extremely anxious on Alba's account. If she could only be got to her father! Who could tell how he might change his mind if there be much delay? Might he not "change his mind, or go to Greece, or to the devil; and then what happens?" The lawyers' delays were heavy trials, and they could not go and leave G.o.dwin unprovided for; he was a great anxiety to Mary at this time. It was not till December 7 that Sh.e.l.ley wrote to tell G.o.dwin how he felt bound to go to Italy, as he had been informed that he was in a consumption.

Owing to a visit of Mr. Baxter to them at Marlow, when he wrote a most enthusiastic letter about Sh.e.l.ley and Mary to his daughter Isabel Booth, Mary had hoped for a renewal of the friendship which had afforded her so much pleasure as a girl, and she invited Isabel to accompany them to Italy; but this Mr. Booth would not allow, and, in fact, he appears to have treated his father-in-law, Mr. Baxter, who was six years younger than himself, with much severity, and wished him to stop all intimacy with Sh.e.l.ley. He did not, however, prevent him having a friendly parting with Sh.e.l.ley on March 2, although he would not allow his wife to have any communication with Mary--much to their sorrow. Mary was in constant anxiety about Sh.e.l.ley in the last months of 1817, writing of his suffering and the distress she feels in seeing him in such pain and looking so ill. In January 1818, the month before they left Marlow, his sufferings became very great. But two thousand pounds being borrowed on the promise of four thousand five hundred pounds on his father's death, and the house at Marlow being sold on January 25th, we find the packing and flitting taking place soon after. By February 7, Sh.e.l.ley leaves for London, and on Tuesday 10th Mary follows. G.o.dwin, as usual now, had been beseeching for money, and then, feeling his dignity wounded by the effort, retaliated on the giver with haughtiness and insulting demands. In a biography, unfortunately, characters cannot always be made the consistent beings they frequently become in romances.

One more happy month Mary is to pa.s.s in England with Sh.e.l.ley. We, again, have accounts of visits to the opera, to museums, plays, dinners, and pleasant evenings spent with friends. Keats is again met, and Sh.e.l.ley calls on Mr. Baxter, who is not allowed by his son-in-law to say farewell to Mary Sh.e.l.ley: such a martinet may a Scotch schoolmaster be. Mary Lamb calls, and visits are paid and received till the last evening arrives, when Sh.e.l.ley, exhausted with ill-health, fatigue, and excitement, fell into one of his profound sleeps on the sofa before some of his friends left the lodgings in Great Russell Street, and thus the Hunts were unable to exchange with him their farewells. This small band of literary friends were all to bid Sh.e.l.ley and Mary farewell on his last few days in England. The contrast is indeed marked between that time and this, when Sh.e.l.ley societies are found in various parts of the world, when enthusiasts write from the most remote regions and form friendships in his name, when, churches, including Westminster Abbey, have rung in praise of his ideal yearnings, and when, not least, some have certainly tried to lead pure unselfish lives in memory of the G.o.dlike part of the man in him; but he now left his native sh.o.r.es, never to return, with Claire and Allegra, and his own two little children, and certainly a true wife willing to follow him through weal or woe.

CHAPTER IX.

LIFE IN ITALY.

A third time, on March 11, 1818, Sh.e.l.ley, Mary, and Claire are on the road to Dover, this time with three young lives to care for--Willie, aged two years and two months; Clara, six months; and Allegra, one year and two months. These small beings kept well during their journey, and it is touching to note how Claire Clairmont, in her part of the diary recording their progress, mentions bathing her darling at Dover, and then cancels the pa.s.sage from her diary, as many others where her name is given--surely one of the saddest of things for a mother to fear to mention her child's name! After another stormy pa.s.sage the party again reached Calais, which they found as delightful as ever, and where they stayed at the Grand Cerf Hotel.

Mary continues to note the journey. They took a different route this time--by Douai, La Fere, Rheims, Berri-le-bac, and St. Dizier, the road winding by the Marne. They sleep at Langres, which ramparted town surely ought to have left a pleasant reminiscence; but they had hitherto found the route uninteresting and fatiguing. Mary finds more interest in the country after Langres, and with the help of Schlegel, from whom Sh.e.l.ley read out loud to her, the time pa.s.sed pleasantly; no long weary evenings in hotels; no complaints when a carriage broke down and they were kept three hours at Macon for it to be repaired: they had with them the friends of whom they never tired.

At Lyons they rested three days. Mary much admired the city, and they visited the theatre, where they saw _L'homme gris et le Physionomiste_; and on Wednesday, March 25, they set out towards the mountains whose white tops were seen at a distance.

In crossing the frontier there was a difficulty in getting their books allowed to enter Sardinian territory, until a Canon, who had met Sh.e.l.ley's father at the Duke of Norfolk's, helped to get them through.

After leaving Chambery, where Mary stayed to allow her nurse Elise to see her child, they crossed Mont Cenis and dined on the top. The beauty of the scenery greatly raised Sh.e.l.ley's spirits, causing him to sing with exultation. They stayed one night at Turin, visiting the opera; and after reaching Milan, Sh.e.l.ley and Mary went to Lake Como for a few days, having some idea of spending the summer on its banks; but not being able to suit themselves with a house they returned to Milan on April 12 and rejoined Claire, who had remained with the children. During the stay at Milan till the end of April there had been frequent letters from Claire to Byron. These were evidently far from satisfactory, as we find Sh.e.l.ley writing letters of caution to Claire in 1822, with regard to Byron and Allegra: he mentions having warned her against letting Byron get possession of Allegra in the spring of 1818, but Claire thought it for the interest of the child, whom she undoubtedly loved, to let her go to her father. Walks in the public gardens with the "Chicks" are noted by Claire several times, and the last entry in her diary, before April 28, when Allegra was taken by the nurse Elise to Byron, mentions a walk with the "Chicks"

in the morning and drive in the evening with them, Mary and Sh.e.l.ley.

Mary had sent her own trusted nurse Elise with the little Allegra, feeling that she would remain and in some degree replace the mother; and Claire believed that the child would stay with its father, though certainly this did not seem desirable or likely to last for long.

A change of scene being needed after these trying emotions, Mary, with her husband and two children, and Claire, now left for Pisa and Leghorn. They slept on the way at Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and then pa.s.sed a night at a little inn among the Apennines, the fifth at Barberino, the sixth at La Scala, and on the seventh reached Pisa, where they lodged at Le Tre Donzelle. On this journey Mary was able to enjoy the Italian scenery under the unclouded Italian sky--the vine-festooned trees amid the fields of corn, the hedges full of flowers; all these seen from the carriage convey a lasting impression, and poor Claire remarks that, driving in a long, straight road, she always hopes it will take her to some place where she will be happier.

They pa.s.s through beautiful chestnut woods on the southern side of the Apennines, and along the fertile banks of the Arno to Pisa. After a few days' stay at Pisa, where the cathedral, "loaded with pictures and ornaments," and the leaning tower are visited, and where, perhaps, the quiet Campo Santo, with its chapel covered with the beautiful frescos of Orcagna and Gozzoli, &c., was enjoyed, they proceed to Leghorn; here, after a few days at L'Aquila Nera, they move into apartments.

They meet and see much of Mary's mother's friend, Mrs. Gisborne, who grew much attached to both Sh.e.l.ley and Mary, and who, from her acquaintance with literary people, must have been a pleasant companion to them. They had letters of introduction to the Gisbornes from G.o.dwin. While here Mary made progress with Italian, reading Ariosto with her husband. Leghorn was not a sufficiently interesting place to detain the wandering Sh.e.l.leys long, in spite of the attractions of the Gisbornes. On June 11 Mary, with her two children and Claire, follows Sh.e.l.ley to Bagni di Lucca, where he had taken a house. Here Mary much enjoyed the quiet after noisy Leghorn, as she wrote to Mrs. Gisborne, hoping to attract her to visit them. Mary was in her element in shady woods within the sound of running waters; her only annoyance was the number of English she came in contact with in her walks, where the English nursery-maid flourished, "a kind of animal I by no means like"

she wrote; neither was she pleased by "the dashing, staring Englishwomen, who surprise the Italians (who always are carried about in sedan chairs) by riding on horseback."

Mary and Claire used to visit the Casino with Sh.e.l.ley, and look on at the dancing in which they did not join. Mary, however, did not agree with Sh.e.l.ley in admiring the Italian style of dancing; but those things on which they were ever of the same mind they had in plenty, for their beloved books arrived after being scrutinised by the Church authority; and while Sh.e.l.ley revelled in the delights of Greek literature, Mary shared those of English with him, for who can estimate the advantage of hearing Shakespeare and other poets read by Sh.e.l.ley! It was at the baths of Lucca also that Mary found her husband's unfinished _Rosalind and Helen_, and prevailed on him to complete it, for, as she says in her notes, "Sh.e.l.ley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth." Without doubt, Mary was the ideal wife for Sh.e.l.ley. At this stage in the career of the poet one can but deplore that relentless destiny should only bring Mary to Sh.e.l.ley when a victim had already been sacrificed on the altar of fate; and the more one realises the sympathetic and intellectual nature of Claire, the less possible is it to help wasting a regret that Byron could not have met with the philosopher bookseller's adopted daughter earlier, instead of ruining his nature and his life by the fashionable follies he tampered with. But who would alter the workings of destiny? Does not the finest Lacryma Christi grow on the once devastated slopes of Vesuvius? Life, too, has its earthquakes, and the eruptions of its hidden depths seen through the minds of its poets, though causing at times agony to those who come in contact with them, work surely for the good of the whole. Mary had the years of pleasure, which are inestimable to those who can appreciate them, of contact with a great mind; but few among poets' wives have had the gifts which allow them fully to partic.i.p.ate in such pleasures. Well for Mary that she also inherited much of her father's philosophic nature, which enabled her to endure some of the trials inherent in her position. What Sh.e.l.ley wrote Mary would transcribe--no mere task for her--for did she not, through Sh.e.l.ley, enjoy Plato's _Symposium_, a translation of which he was employed upon at Lucca? How could the fashionable idlers at the Baths find time to drink in inspiration from the poet and his wife? The poet gives the depths of his nature, but it is not he who writes with the fever or the tear of emotion who can stoop to be his own interpreter to the uninitiated, which seems to be a necessity of modern times, with few exceptions. Mary's education, defective though it may have been in some details, made her a fitting companion for some of the greatest of her day, and this quality in a woman could scarcely exist without a refinement of manner and tastes which, at times, might be misleading as to her disposition.

The spirit of wandering now came over Claire, and by the middle of August her desire to see her child again could no longer be suppressed. Accordingly she set out with Sh.e.l.ley on August 19, and reached Florence the next day, when Sh.e.l.ley wrote to Mary the impression the lovely city made on him, begging her, at the same time, not to let little William forget him before his return--little Clara could not remember. Claire thought at one time of remaining at Padua, but on reaching that city could not endure being left alone, and they reached Venice in the middle of the night, during a violent storm, which Sh.e.l.ley did not fail to write an account of to his wife. He also told her how the Hoppners, whom they called on (Mr. Hoppner being the British Consul in Venice), advised them to act with regard to Byron.

By their advice Sh.e.l.ley called alone on him, and Byron proposed to send Allegra to Padua for a week on a visit; he would not like her to remain longer, as the Venetians would think he had grown tired of her.

He afterwards offered them his villa at Este, thinking they were all at Padua. Sh.e.l.ley accepted this proposal, and wrote requesting Mary to join him there with the children, not knowing whether he was acting for good or harm, but looking forward to be scolded if he had done wrong, or kissed if right--the event would prove. The event did prove; but it was out of their power to rule it.

Mary had invited the Gisbornes to stay with her at the Baths. They arrived on August 25, but the circ.u.mstances seemed imperative for Mary to go to Este, and she left on the 31st with a servant, Paolo, as attendant. They were detained a day at Florence, and did not reach Este till poor little Clara was dangerously ill from dysentery, which reduced her to a state of fever and weakness. Mary endured the misery of an incompetent doctor at Este; neither had they confidence in the Paduan physician. Sh.e.l.ley proceeded to Venice to obtain further advice, and prepare for the arrival of his wife and child, writing from there that he felt somewhat uneasy, but trusted there was no cause for real anxiety. This arrangement made, Mary set out with her baby and Claire to meet Sh.e.l.ley at Padua, and then proceeded to Venice, Claire returning to mind William and Allegra at Este; and now Mary had to endure that terrible tension of mind, with her dying child in her arms, driving to Venice, the time remembered by her so well when, on the same route, nearly a quarter of a century later, each turn in the road and the very trees seemed as the most familiar objects of her daily life; for had they not been impressed on her mental vision by the strength of despair? The Austrian soldiers at the frontier could not detain them, though without pa.s.sports, for even they would not prevent a dying child from being conveyed on a forlorn hope. Such grief could scarcely be rendered more or less acute by circ.u.mstances. They arrived at their inn in a gondola, but only for Clara to die in her mother's arms within an hour.

In this trial the Hoppners proved most kind friends, taking Mary to their house, and relieving the first hopelessness of grief by kindness, which it seemed ingrat.i.tude not to respond to. Mary, whatever she may have felt, knew that no expression of her feelings in her diary would nerve her to endure. She went about her daily occupations as usual. One idle day elapsed, after her little Clara had been buried on the Lido; we find her as usual reading, shopping, and seeing Byron, with whom she hoped to make better terms for Claire with regard to Allegra. There is a curious pa.s.sage in a letter from G.o.dwin to his daughter, ill.u.s.trative of his own turn of mind, and not without some general truth:--"We seldom indulge long in depression and mourning except when we think secretly that there is something very refined in it, and that it does us honour."

On September 29, Sh.e.l.ley and Mary return to Este. Claire had taken the children to Padua, but returned the next day to the Villa I Cappuccini. In the evening they went to the Opera. Their house was most beautifully situated. Here Sh.e.l.ley wrote his "Lines among the Euganean Hills," for no intense feeling could come to the poet without the necessity of expressing himself in poetry; and it was during this September month that Sh.e.l.ley wrote the first act of his _Prometheus Unbound_. Mary revisited Venice with her husband, little William, and the nurse Elise, on October 12. The impression then formed of Byron and his surroundings was so painful as to render it a matter of surprise that they could think of returning Allegra to him; but her extreme youth was her safeguard in this respect, and Sh.e.l.ley returned to Este on September 24, to take Allegra a second time from her mother who, with all her love for her "darling," as she always wrote of her in the effaced pa.s.sages of her diary, could not get over the insuperable difficulties of her birth. On January 22 of this same year Claire had entered in her diary the fact of its being Byron's (Albe's) birthday; a note carefully effaced soon after. Sh.e.l.ley and Mary having decided to spend the winter further south, after a few days of preparation they left Este on November 5, and spent the night at Ferrara, where they visited the relics of Ariosto and Ta.s.so, and the dungeon where the latter was incarcerated. Thence to Bologna, where they endured much fatigue in the picture galleries, poor Sh.e.l.ley being obliged to confess he did not pretend to taste. From Bologna, by Faenza and Cesena, they followed the coast from Rimmi to Fano, and pa.s.sed an uncomfortable night at an inn at Fos...o...b..one among the Apennines. Mary was greatly impressed by the beauty and grandeur of Spoleto. The impressive falls at Terni are duly chronicled by her; and November 19 and 20 are spent in winding through the Apennines, and then crossing the solitude of the Roman Campagna, and then Rome is reached.

In Italy, where wonder succeeds wonder, and where no place is a mere repet.i.tion of another, Mary may well have been impressed by her first visit to the Eternal City. Here, in November, she was able to sit and sketch in the Coliseum with her child and her husband, who found the wonderful ruin a source of inspiration. But Rome was now only a resting-place on their road to still sunnier Naples; and on November 27 Sh.e.l.ley set out a day in advance of Mary and her child to secure rooms in Naples, where Mary arrived on December 1. In the best part of the city, facing the royal gardens in front of the marvellous bay, with Sh.e.l.ley for her guide, who himself made use of Madame de Stael's _Corinne_ as a handbook, Livy for the antiquities, and Winckelmann for art, Mary could enjoy the sights of Naples as no ordinary sightseer would. December was devoted to expeditions--Baiae, Vesuvius, and Pompeii. The day at Baiae was perhaps the most delightful, with the return by moonlight in the boat to Naples.

Vesuvius, with its stupendous spectacle as of heaven and h.e.l.l made visible, naturally produced a profound impression, but it was a very tiring expedition, as apparently it was only Claire who had a _chaise a porteurs_ for the ascent of the cone; Mary and Sh.e.l.ley rode on mules as far as they could go, and Claire was carried all the way in a chair--though this seems scarcely possible--from Resina.

How Mary could walk through the cinders up the cone seems incomprehensible. She must have had great strength, as it is a trying task for a man, and no wonder Sh.e.l.ley, in spite of his pedestrian strength, was exhausted when they arrived at the hermitage of San Salvador. The winter at Naples seems to have been a trying one to Mary, in spite of sunshine and the beauties of Nature; for Sh.e.l.ley was in a state of depression, as is exemplified in the "Stanzas written in dejection near Naples." What the immediate cause of this was cannot be said; it seems to be one of the mysteries, or perhaps rather the one mystery, of Sh.e.l.ley's life. He a.s.serted to Medwin that a lady, young, married, and of n.o.ble connections, had become infatuated with him, and declared her love of him on the eve of his departure for the Continent in 1816; that he had gently but firmly repulsed her; that she arrived in Naples on the day he did, and had soon afterwards died. It is suggested that a little girl who was left under his guardianship in Naples, and whom he spoke of as his poor Neapolitan, might possibly be the child of this lady; others doubt the story altogether, which is not to be wondered at, although nothing can be declared impossible in a life where truth is frequently so much stranger than romance.

Mary was also troubled while at Naples by her servants, an unusual subject with her; but Paolo, having gone far beyond the limits of cheating, was detected by Mary, and also obliged by her to marry Elise, whom he had betrayed. They left for Rome, but Paolo declared he would be revenged on the Sh.e.l.leys, and wrote threatening letters, which a lawyer disposed of for a time. This is known to be the origin of later calumnies, which Mr. Jeaffreson has now carefully and finally refuted.

Mary, later, with the regret of love that would be all sufficient, wished that at Naples she had entered more into the cause of the grief, which Sh.e.l.ley had kept from her, in order not to add to the melancholy she was then feeling with regard to her father.

Before leaving Naples they succeeded in visiting the Greek ruins at Paestum, which give still a fresh impression in Italy; and then, on February 28, 1819, Mary takes leave of Naples, never to revisit it with any of her companions of that time.

In Rome they found rooms in the Villa Parigi, but removed from them to the Palazzo Verospi on the Corso, and we soon find them busy exploring the treasures of Rome the inexhaustible. Here they had not to take fatiguing journeys as in Naples to visit the chief points of interest, for they were to be found at every turn. Visits to St. Peter's and the museum of the Vatican are mentioned; walks with Sh.e.l.ley to the Forum, the Capitol, and the Coliseum, which is visited and re-visited.

Frequent visits are paid in the evening to the Signora Marianna Dionigi, and with her they hear Ma.s.s in St. Peter's, where the poor old Pope Pius VII was nearly dying. The Palazzo Doria and its picture gallery are examined, where the landscapes of Claude Lorraine particularly strike them. Then to the baths of Caracalla, where the romantic beauty of the ruins forms one of their chief attractions in Rome. They also take walks and drives in the Borghese Gardens. The statue of Pompey, at the base of which Caesar fell, is not pa.s.sed over--but it would be impossible to tell of all they saw and enjoyed in Rome. Mary made more acquaintances in Rome, nor did the English altogether neglect to call on Sh.e.l.ley. Mary also recommenced lessons in drawing, while Claire had singing lessons, and they met some celebrities at the Signora Dionigi's conversazioni. Altogether this early part of their stay in Rome was happy, but Sh.e.l.ley's health always fluctuating made them contemplate taking a house for the summer at Castellamare, as a doctor recommended this for him. But the days were hurrying towards a fresh calamity, for little William now fell ill, and we find the visits of a physician, Dr. Bell, chronicled, and on June 2nd three visits are noted. Claire helps to her utmost; Sh.e.l.ley does not close his eyes for sixty hours, and Mary, the hopes of whose life were bound up with the child, could only endure, watch the wasting of fever, and see the last of three perish on "Monday, June 7th, at noonday," as Claire enters in her diary. Mary and Sh.e.l.ley were deprived of their gentle, blue-eyed darling, by a stronger hand than that of the Court of Chancery, and little William was buried where Sh.e.l.ley was soon to follow, in the cemetery which "might make one in love with death."

CHAPTER X.

MARY'S DESPONDENCY AND BIRTH OF A SON.

Before the fatal illness of her child Willie, Mary had encountered an old friend in Rome, and had renewed her acquaintance with Miss Curran whom she had formerly known at her father's. Congenial tastes in drawing and painting drew these ladies together, and Miss Curran did or began portraits of Mary, Sh.e.l.ley, and, what was of more importance to them at the time, of little Willie. The portraits of Mary and of Sh.e.l.ley, unfinished, and by an amateur, are by no means satisfactory; certainly not giving in Mary's case an idea of the beauty and charm which are constantly referred to by her friends, and which seem to have endured up to the time when, much later, an attack of small-pox altered her appearance. The portrait of Mary, although not artistic, is interesting as painted from life. Her oval face is here given with the high forehead. The complexion described as delicate and white was not in the gift of Miss Curran, who was not a colourist. To depict the eyes grey, tending to brown near the iris, agrees with Sh.e.l.ley's, "brown" and Trelawny's "grey" eyes, but the beauty of expression is wanting. The mouth, thin and hard, might have caught a pa.s.sing look, but certainly not what an artist would have wished to portray; while a certain stiffness of pose is not what one would expect in the high-strung, sensitive Mary Sh.e.l.ley. The beauty of gold-brown hair was not in the painter's power to catch. Mary was of middle height, tending towards short; her hands were considered very beautiful, and by some she was supposed to be given to displaying them, although concealing them would have been difficult and unnecessary. Her arms and neck were also beautiful. Leigh Hunt refers to her at the opera, _decolletee_, with white, gleaming, sloping shoulders. Her "voice the sweetest ever heard," added to her gifts of conversation, described as resembling her father's with an added softness of manner and charm of description, with elegance and correctness, devoid of reserve or affectation. Cyrus Redding, who much admired and esteemed her, obtained her opinion about Miss Curran's portrait of her husband, for his article in the Galignani edition of Sh.e.l.ley. She considered it by no means a good one, as unfinished, but with some striking points of resemblance. She consented to superintend the engraving from it for Galignani's volume, which was regarded as far more successful. Miss Curran kindly a.s.sisted with advice.

While these portraits were being executed Mary was gaining the sympathy of the painter, a boon soon much needed, for after the death of her third child her courage for a while broke down entirely. In a very delicate state of health at the time, she could not rouse herself to think of anything but her losses. With no other child needing her care, she could only abandon herself to inconsolable grief. Sh.e.l.ley felt that he was out of her life for the first time; that her heart was in Rome in the grave with her child. They revisited the Falls of Terni, but the spirit had fled from the waters. They pa.s.s through bustling Leghorn, and visit the Gisbornes, but the noise is intolerable, and Sh.e.l.ley, ever attentive in such matters, finds a house at a short distance in the country, the Villa Valsovano, down a quiet lane surrounded by a market garden. Olives, fig trees, peach trees, myrtles, alive at night with fire-flies, must have been soothing surroundings to the wounded Mary, to whom nature was ever a kind friend. Nor were they in solitude, for they were within visiting distance of friends at Leghorn.

Two months after her loss she recommences her diary on Sh.e.l.ley's birthday, this time not without a wail. She writes to Mrs. Hunt of the tears she constantly sheds, and confesses she has done little work since coming to Italy. She had read, however, several books of Livy, Antenor, Clarissa, some novels, the Bible, Lucan's Pharsalia, and Dante. Sh.e.l.ley is reading her _Paradise Lost_, and he is writing the _Cenci_, where

That fair, blue-eyed boy, Who was the lodestar of your life,

Mary tells us refers to William. Sh.e.l.ley wrote that their house was a melancholy one, and only cheered by letters from England.

On September 18 Mary wrote to her friend, Miss Curran, that they were about to move, she knew not whither. Then Sh.e.l.ley, with Charles Clairmont, went to Florence and engaged rooms for six months, and at the end of September Sh.e.l.ley returned and took his wife by slow and easy stages to the Tuscan capital, for her health was then in a very delicate state for travelling. There, in the lovely city of Florence, on November 12, 1819, she gave birth to her son Percy Florence, who first broke the spell of unhappiness which had hung for the last five months like a cloud over them; he, as events proved, was to be her one comfort with her memories, when the supreme calamity of her life fell on her, and he was mercifully spared to be the solace of her later years.

CHAPTER XI.

G.o.dWIN AND "VALPERGA."

At this time while political events were absorbing England, and Sh.e.l.ley was weaving them into poetry in Italy during the remainder of his residence in Florence, G.o.dwin's personal difficulties were reaching their climax. When he lost, in an action for the rent of his house, Sh.e.l.ley came to his help, but in some way G.o.dwin expected more than he received, and became very unpleasant in his correspondence, so much so that Sh.e.l.ley had to beg him not to write to Mary on these subjects, as her health was not then, in October 1819, able to bear the strain, and the subject of money was not a fitting one to be pressed on her by him. Mary had not the disposal of money; if she had she would give it all to her father. He a.s.sured G.o.dwin that the four or five thousand pounds already expended on him might have made him comfortable for the remainder of his life. Mrs. G.o.dwin, naturally, would not hear of abandoning the Skinner Street business, as being the only provision for herself when G.o.dwin should die. It is extremely painful at this stage of G.o.dwin's career to witness the lowering effects of his wife's smaller nature upon him, as he certainly allowed himself to be unduly influenced by her excited and not always truthful views, as known since the early days of their married life. We have Mrs. Gisborne's diary showing how Mrs. G.o.dwin could not endure to see anyone in 1820 who had an attachment for Mary, whom (as G.o.dwin told Mrs. Gisborne) she considered her greatest enemy; and although he described his wife as of "the most irritable disposition possible," he listened to, and repeated her conjectures to the disparagement of Sh.e.l.ley and Mary at the time when she did not hesitate to accept with her husband the large sums of money which Sh.e.l.ley with difficulty raised for them. All the facts shown in this diary prove that Mary and f.a.n.n.y must have had a sufficiently trying life at home to account for the result in either case, especially when we consider that Claire and her brother Charles both preferred to leave G.o.dwin's house on the first possible occasion, Charles having left for France immediately after Mary's and Claire's departure with Sh.e.l.ley. William alone remained at home, but four years pa.s.sed in a boarding school at Greenwich, from 1814, must have helped him to endure the discomforts of the time. Before Mrs. Gisborne's return to Italy G.o.dwin gave her a detailed account, in writing, of his money transactions with Sh.e.l.ley, which had become very painful to both. In January, 1820, Florence proving unsuitable for Sh.e.l.ley's health, they left for Pisa, the mild climate of which city made it a favourite resort of the poet during most of the short remainder of his life. Mary, ever hospitable, although, as Sh.e.l.ley said, the bills for printing his poems must be paid for by stinting himself in meat and drink, hoped that Mrs.

Gisborne would have stayed with them during her husband's visit to England in 1820, as they had moved into a pleasant apartment in March.

This idea was not carried out. About this time Mary and Claire, both with their own absorbing anxieties, became again irksome to each other. Mary found relief when Claire was absent, and Claire notes how "the Claire and the Mai find something to fight about every day," a way of putting it which indicates differences, but certainly no grave cause of disturbance. This was after their removal to Leghorn, where they went towards the end of June to be near the lawyer on account of Paolo. At the beginning of August the heat at Leghorn caused the Sh.e.l.leys to migrate to the baths of San Giuliano, where Sh.e.l.ley found a very pleasant house, Casa Prini. The moderate rent suited their slender purse, which had so many outside calls upon it.

In October Claire's departure for Florence, as governess in the family of Professor Bojti, where she went by the advice of her friend Mrs.

Mason, formerly Lady Mountcash.e.l.l, brought an end to her permanent residence with the Sh.e.l.leys, although she was still to look upon their house as her home, and she visited them either for her pleasure or to a.s.sist them. Her absence from her friends gives us the advantage of letters from them, letters full of a certain exaggeration of affection and sympathy from Sh.e.l.ley, who felt more acutely than Mary that Claire might be unhappy under a strange roof. Mary, less anxious on those grounds, writes about the operas she has seen, giving good descriptions of them. One of her letters is full of anxiety as to Allegra, who has been placed in the convent of Bagnacavallo by Byron.

She feels that the child ought, as soon as possible, to be taken out of the hands of so "remorseless and unprincipled a man"; but advises caution and waiting for a favourable opportunity. She hopes that he may be returning to England. "He may be reconciled with his wife." At any rate, Bagnacavallo is high and in a healthy position, quite different from the dirty ca.n.a.ls of Venice, which might injure any child's health. Mary thus tries to console Claire, who is planning, in her imagination, various ways of getting at her child, and corresponding with and seeing Sh.e.l.ley on the subject. Mary dissuades Claire from attempting anything in the spring--their unlucky time. It was in the second spring Claire met L. B., &c.; the third they went to Marlow--no wise thing, at least; the fourth, uncomfortable in London; fifth, their Roman misery; the sixth, Paolo at Pisa; the seventh, a mixture of Emilia and a Chancery suit. Mary acknowledges this superst.i.tious feeling is more in Claire's line than her own, but thinks it worth considering; but this letter to Claire carries us a year in advance.

During the summer of 1820 Mary had some of the delightful times she loved so dearly, of poetic wanderings with Sh.e.l.ley through woods and by the river, one of which she remembers long afterwards, when, making her note to the "Skylark," she recalls how she and Sh.e.l.ley, wandering through the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the firefly, heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems. Precious memories which helped her through many after years devoid of the sympathy she yearned for. At the Baths they had the pleasure of a visit from Medwin, who gave a description of how Sh.e.l.ley, his wife and child, had to escape from the upper windows of their house in a boat when the ca.n.a.l overflowed and inundated the valley. Mary speaks of it as a very picturesque sight, with the herdsmen driving their cattle.

During the short absence of Sh.e.l.ley, when he took Claire to Florence, Mary was occupied planning her novel of _Valperga_, for which she studied Villani's chronicle and Sismondi's history.

On leaving the baths of San Giuliano, after the floods, the Sh.e.l.leys returned to Pisa, where they pa.s.sed the late autumn and winter of 1820 and the spring of 1821. Here they made more acquaintances than heretofore, Professor Pacchiani, called also "Il Diavolo," introducing them to the Prince Mavrocordato, the Princess Aigiropoli, the _improvisatore_ Sgricci, Taafe, and last, not least, to Emilia Viviani. Here Mary continued to write _Valperga_, and pursued her Latin, Spanish, and Greek studies; the latter the Prince Mavrocordato a.s.sisted her with, as Mary writes to Mrs. Gisborne: "Do not you envy me my luck? 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."