“Oh, Shelley!” exclaimed Claire. “Let me be the one to make myself known to him! I have heard so much about him – and not just gossip, Mary – I can hardly contain my desire to meet him. Do you know where his London residence is, Shelley?”
“I do,” he said. “By all means be our ambassador, my dear Claire, if you wish.”
Later, Shelley watched Claire from the window of the lodgings as she set off on her quest to conquer Lord Byron. “I will wager that she succeeds,” he muttered. “Byron will be charmed, poor devil.”
“He would not like to be described so, to be sure!” I observed.
I did not add that knowing Claire as I did, I assumed her intentions towards Lord Byron included becoming his lover, notwithstanding the estranged wife and alleged mistress. She would make the same assault on him as she had made on Shelley. The difference was, of course, that I was not there to prick her conscience and, from what I had heard, Byron had no conscience at all.
Hours later, Claire returned. “Imagine, Mary!” she instructed me breathlessly. “Lord Byron – he allowed me to call him George, and is very, very charming – devoted the entire afternoon to me! And he intends to spend the summer in Switzerland! I believe it is only a matter of time before we receive an invitation to join him there! How splendid it will be!”
I was not so certain. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, Mary…”
“Does he truly want the whole troop of us to invade his household?”
She stamped her foot impatiently. “You always used to accuse me of not being romantic enough! Why, it was the thing I loved about you, the way you pursued love and freedom, and never cared what people thought! Do you not remember how you stood up to Papa that day in the drawing-room, when I brought Shelley’s letter? Where has your courage gone?”
Her words stung me. I did not know where my courage had gone. “Please, consider Lord Byron’s –”
“Oh, do call him George!” she urged. “He is the dearest, sweetest, most amiable man. When you meet him you will fall in love with him just as I have done. But mind he does not fall in love with you!”
Ignoring the coy look which accompanied this, I persisted. “Claire, I beg you to consider. Do you not understand that ‘George’ is simply not interested in me, or you? It is Shelley he wants.”
“Shelley? Shelley?” she repeated, with the sort of frown she used to give me when I suggested going for a walk on a rainy day, or eating no bonbons after dinner. It meant “You are mad and I pity you”.
“What nonsense you talk, Mary! Why should he care about Shelley?”
“Because Shelley is a sought-after poet these days, and poets always seek each other’s society.”
“Ach!” she exclaimed impatiently, tossing her head in exact imitation of her mother.
“And furthermore,” I continued, unflinching, “Lord Byron is doubtless attracted by Shelley’s style of living and political beliefs, which are similar to his own. If he invites us at all, he will do so in order to welcome Shelley to his villa, and display him, not us, to his influential guests.”
If Claire had not been Claire, she would have received this message clearly. But she was incapable of this degree of understanding: in her world, only she was attractive, only she was irresistible.
“But the invitation will be to me, Mary,” she insisted. “Have you not listened to anything I have said?”
I sighed. It was no use. “Will you help me fold William’s napkins?” I asked. “The nurse has toothache and I have sent her to bed.”
Our party in Switzerland consisted of Shelley, Claire, myself and baby William. The nurse remained in England with her toothache. George had rented the Villa Diodati, the most impressive villa on Lake Geneva, positioned to command the most arresting prospect. And as I had predicted, we did not receive an invitation to stay with him there.
The less grand house Shelley had taken for us, however, was to my mind more charming. Unlike George’s villa it had no fluted pillars or marble floors. But it had pleasant south-facing rooms, with long windows overlooking gardens where William could play safely.
“How exciting!” Claire giggled as we unpacked. “George will come tomorrow!”
Claire’s capacity for self-delusion had already propelled her into a reckless affair with an unscrupulous man. I was strongly convinced that Lord Byron did not return my sister’s affection, but, inspired by his fast and furious poetry and his equally fast and furious way of life, she could not resist her fantasy.
At last I understood what she had meant when she had outlined our future life of merriment and ease, and new dresses. She had grown tired of her role as the superfluous member of a two-woman-one-man triangle. Defeated in her attempts to prise Shelley from my side, she had been plotting for many months a strategy for getting her own poet, her own aristocrat. And most important of all she wanted her own source of scandal and notoriety, greater even than Shelley could boast.
George duly arrived in a carriage and six with one guest and a large retinue of servants, and set up house in the Villa Diodati. But he did not call.
“Does he expect us to call on him?” I asked Shelley. “I am not sure of the etiquette.”
“Etiquette be damned,” declared Shelley.
“But he is our social superior, is he not?”
“Social superior be damned,” said Shelley. “Let him come when he likes.”
Claire could scarcely contain herself. I was reminded of the feverish days between my meeting with Shelley in the bookshop and his first afternoon call, when I had gazed perpetually out of the front windows, elated and despairing by turns. Claire sat on the balcony outside her room, from where she could see the roof and some of the windows of the Villa Diodati, all day for several days, until impatience overcame her and she dashed off a letter to George.
I did not see its contents, but I could imagine her pleadings. Her chance to parade her conquest before the world, which his scandalous style of living did not allow at home in London, was too precious to miss. And the summer was passing.
Then, when more than a week had gone by and Claire had stopped sitting on the balcony, he appeared. It was the early evening of a scorching day. Shelley was outside by the lake when Claire and I, who were preparing supper, heard a commotion and an aristocratic English voice. I gathered William into my arms and followed Claire’s shrieking, fluttering figure down the front steps to the beach.
We stared at the unexpected sight that met us. Her lover and mine were splashing barefoot in the shallows, hauling in a rowing boat and shouting instructions to each other like fishermen. George, who had jumped out of the boat when he saw Shelley on the shore, was soaked to his waist, and wore his shirt tied up, more like a Swiss peasant than a member of the English ruling class. Shelley, helpless with laughter, lost his footing, sat down hard on the pebbles and laughed louder.
“Have you never handled a boat before, man?” roared George. “And you call yourself an Englishman?”
“An Englishman would arrive on a proper sailing boat with a proper crew!” called Claire, advancing down the beach. “Not row himself like any common oarsman!”
Shelley tugged the boat with all his strength, and at last he and George succeeded in beaching it. George collapsed at Claire’s feet and caught the hem of her skirt in his teeth. Shelley lay beside him, holding his stomach and groaning.
“What are you doing, George? Are you being a dog? Is this a game?” asked poor Claire.
George released her dress and growled. Shelley groaned louder. Their combined noise was louder and more childish than anything William could produce.
“Let the dog kiss his mistress!” exclaimed George, and before Claire knew what was happening he had pulled her down on her back, put one leg over both hers, wet breeches and all, and bestowed a passionate kiss on her lips. Understandably, as soon as she could breathe she began to scream.
If I picture George now as he was when I first saw him, my impression is of something not
entirely human. Not devilish, exactly, but otherworldly, as if he were merely borrowing time on earth, and must return to some immortal abode. Physically, he was tall like Shelley, but burlier, and older than I had expected. He had a slight limp from a malformed foot, but his air of eager charm was so engaging, this deficiency went almost unnoticed. He might have been eighteen, like Claire and me.
The pretty Swiss nursemaid we had engaged came out of the house, shading her eyes against the lowering sun.
“Elise!” I called, and she approached, holding out her arms for the child. “Will you take William to bed?”
George had got up. “My dear Mrs Shelley, what a delightful domestic scene!”
He looked very tall, with the evening light stretching his shadow along the beach. Hauling Claire to her feet, he advanced towards me with one arm around her shoulders and the other in a mock salute. “And Master Shelley too!” he exclaimed. “I am a mightily privileged fellow, am I not, to be welcomed by such famous personages!”
I was amused at the heavy-handed irony of “Mrs Shelley”. He knew very well I was not married. “But surely you are the personage whose reputation goes before him, Lord Byron,” I said.
He let Claire go and bent towards Elise and me in an elegant bow. William reached out his dimpled fist and made an exploration of George’s dark, damp hair. As I pulled the child’s hand away, George took my own and kissed it. “I wish I could believe so, madam,” he said gravely. “But Shelley’s star is rising faster than mine.”
Hearing his name, Shelley made his way up the beach. He was no longer laughing, but his face had the abandoned expression it wore when he was at his most delighted with life. I gave William to Elise, who held him up for his father’s kiss. As she took the child into the house, I entwined my arm with Shelley’s, and he rested his cheek against my temple. He smelt as salty and sweaty as, in Claire’s words, a common oarsman.
“I love you,” I said to him matter-of-factly, as if I were indeed addressing a servant. “Never forget how much I love you, whatever happens to us.”
He raised his head and looked down at me. A dazed look came into his beautiful eyes. “But you like George too, do you not?” he asked.
It was still dark. No brilliant Swiss morning outlined the black of the shutters. Even without feeling the mattress beside me I knew I was alone.
“Where are you?” I called.
A candle flickered in the passageway. Shelley stood in the doorway, his gigantic shadow leaping onto the wall. The flame was weak, and threw only enough light under his chin to reveal his neck and shoulders. He looked unearthly, like a being who had rejected life and welcomed the grave. He seemed halfway between here and heaven. His eyes were in shadow; I could not see their expression.
“Are you ill?” I asked, fighting panic.
“No, only sleepless. Go back to sleep.”
“Have you taken anything?” I persisted. He had, I knew.
“No. Do not alarm yourself. I will come back to bed soon. Now leave me alone.”
He reached for the door handle. As he lunged forward I saw his shirt billow in the candlelight, like a sail, his thin body the mast. Then he closed the door, and the room was in darkness once more.
IN THE COMPANY OF SPIRITS
We found that George’s guest was his friend Polidori, a young part-Italian doctor who innocently admired everything he saw, and never succeeded in working out my relationship to either Shelley or Claire. He immediately conceived an infatuation with me, a situation which George found hilarious and did his best to encourage.
The two men, surrounded by luxury and pampered by George’s huge staff, seemed bent on spending as much money as possible in the shortest time possible during their stay. In my heart I disapproved, but the beauty of our surroundings seduced us all.
By day or night, the sky, the lake and the mountains presented an array of changing colours and textures. The air was sweet, the prospect delightful, the company congenial. We went to the Villa Diodati every day, formally dressed at first, then gradually less and less so, bearing picnic baskets and fishing-rods and the box containing William’s clothes and toys. It was pleasant to idle away the time on or off shore, playing and sleeping, drinking from George’s inexhaustible wine cellar, and talking, always talking.
George’s mental facility was extraordinary. I could see why Shelley admired him so. It was his ability to dash from one complex subject to another, without apparently needing time to breathe, which gave the impression of sprite-like powers. His listeners’ ears were bombarded with wit, while their eyes devoured a countenance not quite angelic – that description must always be reserved for Shelley – but certainly heavenly in some more mysterious way.
He and Shelley shared many things. They were both publicly recognized poets, though George’s fame was the greater. Both had incurred the disapproval of their noble families and retreated to Europe to escape scandal. George’s passion for wild mountain scenery was as great as Shelley’s. And it had been clear from their first meeting that boating would become their favourite occupation.
Shelley had often professed to crave the wildness of the sea, but in landlocked Switzerland he seemed willing to forgo it in favour of rowing or sailing up and down Lake Geneva in all weathers. Neither he nor George ever having received much instruction in the art of sailing, they spent many hours adrift, the sails furled, the oars idle, writing, laughing, talking, and talking more.
And during that summer, as we walked and talked and ate and drank together, we discovered another, perhaps less worthy, mutual passion. When Shelley and I told George of our encounter with the story of the mad alchemist, he stopped in the act of trying to get William to swallow a tumbler of wine and stared at us with saucer eyes and an open mouth.
“Madness! Bloody murder! Lonely castles!” he cried. “In my opinion, all novels should contain nothing else!”
“Oh, George, how right you are!” replied Claire, hanging on his arm. “And how I long for a new horror story! I have read The Castle of Otranto five times.” She turned to the company. “Do you think writers are truly aware of the public’s demand for murder and revenge? And abduction? Abduction is my favourite!”
“Of course they are, but they cannot supply such novels quickly enough to satisfy the readers’ bloodlust,” observed Shelley “My dear Claire, why not write one yourself?”
A gleam came into her eyes. She was seeing herself at her writing-desk, a light shawl draped around her shoulders, frowning daintily in concentration over her masterpiece. “I may well do that, Shelley, so do not jest!” she said.
George, whose absorbent brain and tireless enthusiasm were well suited to such ideas, offered his own accounts of experiments he had read of. Shelley, tormented as ever by the question of God’s monopoly on life-creation, sat up late, scribbling remnants of their conversations down so that he could use them in future defence of his atheism.
“George calls the creation of life ‘the place where science meets the supernatural’,” he told me, impressed. “I wish I had thought of such an apt phrase.”
For my part, I was not so much frightened by the alchemist’s ambition as interested. I did not tell Shelley and George about the lonely, feverish dawn I had spent before my daughter’s birth, when the scientific and moral implications of tampering with death had played so forcibly on my mind. But I joined their discussions of the subject very readily. If base metal could be turned to gold – and who was to say the secret of alchemy would never be discovered – why could mankind not dream of restoring a lifeless corpse to animation?
Switzerland’s summer displayed dramatic elements that year. There were many sunny, calm days, but we also saw rain, strong winds, racing skies and shafts of sunlight piercing the grey clouds, glancing off the waters of the lake like daggers. There were beautiful rainbows. Then more rain, more thunder, more electricity in the sky. My letters to Fanny described ferocious storms that whipped the waters of Lake Geneva into fury, blackening the sky and
patterning it with lightning bolts.
One June evening Shelley, Claire and I left William with Elise and set out on our customary after-dinner walk along the shore to the Villa Diodati. It had been a hot, airless day. Claire and I wore no shawls.
“We shall have a mighty storm tonight,” predicted Shelley.
“Good!” Claire was always enthusiastic about storms.
“You only hope for a storm because it will provide you with an excuse to stay the night with George,” I remarked.
“My dear sister, you are mistaken,” said Claire coldly, though we both knew I was not.
“I wonder how Mr Polidori’s ankle fares,” I said.
Three days ago George had encouraged his friend to make the reckless leap from the balcony of the Villa Diodati in order to help me, the object of his unspoken desire, up the steep path to the door.
“I wish it better,” said Shelley. “Temporary insanity must have caused him to sprain his ankle in such circumstances.”
“I have heard love called temporary insanity,” said Claire, with a meaningful look at me.
George and Polidori, who had evidently enjoyed a hearty dinner and a great deal of wine, were sitting in the drawing-room, smoking and attempting to play cards when we arrived. George rose to greet us, but Polidori remained sitting by the empty grate, his heavily bandaged foot propped up on a footstool.
“My friend’s injury still prevents him from walking, as you see,” explained George. “We are prisoners in our castle.” He grasped our hands as warmly as if he had not seen us for years. “I cannot tell you how welcome you all are!”
He patted Polidori on the shoulder. “Come on, man!” he encouraged. “Tell the ladies how your foot is going on. Ladies like nothing better than to hear of ailments.”
Shelley commandeered the cards and dealt anew. Claire and I sat down. The room was shady and very still. A bashful Polidori told, haltingly, of how he could still put no weight on the sprain, and of George’s insistence that they call for a physician the next day.
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