A Call to Arms mh-4

by Allan Mallinson

  The sky was without a cloud, and the sun was already hot. He found it uncomfortable to walk any faster than a stroll, and he resolved to press his tailor to finish the two linen coats he had ordered a few days before. If he and Elizabeth were to stay here through July, he would need at least two more, and it was as well to know the cutter’s capabilities as soon as possible. And Elizabeth, too, would need new clothes. He wondered if he would be able to persuade her of it. As he made his way along the Corso, he saw one exquisite female after another going in and out of the palazzi. He knew he simply had to persuade her.

  When he reached the post office he was at first afraid that it might be closed (innumerable saints’ days could catch out even the romani), for there was no press at its doors, only a mandolinplayer with whom an official was noisily remonstrating. Hervey edged past them carefully (it was all too easy to be hailed as witness by one or other parties in a Roman dispute) to enter the cool, marbled hall. There, he was cheered further to see only a dozen or so people waiting, and he took up his place where he judged the queue to end, deciding there was little need to open his volume of Goethe to help the time pass.

  Indeed, not many minutes passed before his attention was arrested by a tall, powerfully built man in a military cloak who suddenly turned to the man beside him at the counter and said very loudly, in English, ‘What! Are you that damned atheist Shelley?’ The man to whom the charge was directed turned to face his challenger, and in that instant was struck by him with such force that he fell to the floor, stunned.

  Hervey sprang forward at once, seizing the assailant’s cane with his right hand. He jabbed his left fist into the man’s face so hard that both nose and upper lip split bloodily. But still the attacker struggled violently to wrest the cane free, until Hervey drove his knee into the man’s groin and followed through with his right fist to nose and lip again. The man reeled, brought both hands up to his face and dropped the cane. Hervey snatched it up and grabbed him by the collar, threatening to bring the cane down on his head if he resisted more. The man yielded, and Hervey pushed him to his knees.

  Others in the post office had remained bystanders, but someone had sent for help, and two gendarmi now arrived. A Swiss gentleman helped the victim of the assault to his feet, and Hervey, cursing himself for being so out of breath, was pleased to surrender custody of the assailant to the agents of the law. Wiping the blood from his hand, and concealing the stinging pain in his knuckles, he turned to the innocent party. ‘Are you well, sir?’ he asked, with more composure than the native bystanders could believe.

  ‘I thank you, sir. I am quite well enough.’ The man brushed the curl from off his forehead, dusted down the arms of his coat, and bowed briskly. ‘Shelley, sir. At your service.’

  Hervey returned the bow. ‘Hervey, sir. May I enquire as to what induced that assault?’

  ‘You did not hear?’

  ‘I am afraid I did not.’

  ‘I stood accused of the infamous crime of atheism.’ Shelley’s face was white, there was blood about his lips and tears in his eyes. ‘I have been knocked down before, but never with so little forewarning. I wish I’d my pistols.’

  ‘They would have done you no good before the blow, and might have caused you trouble afterwards,’ replied Hervey, stooping to pick up Shelley’s hat.

  ‘I thank you again, sir. It is the very devil of a business when an Englishman is assaulted by another in a foreign place.’

  The gendarmi were trying to tell them something, without success until the official from the altercation with the mandolinplayer intervened. ‘Signori, the gendarmi wish you to accompany them to the office of the questura. There are papers which must be signed.’

  Shelley dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief and then at his eyes. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said to Hervey. ‘I am not given to such emotion, but the blow stung horribly.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘Think nothing of it, sir. It was a brutal assault. I shall be glad to give what evidence I can.’

  It took an hour and more for the questura to complete the investigation. When it was done, the two men left together. Shelley seemed recovered. ‘You will permit me to give you a glass of wine, sir?’

  ‘I should like that, yes,’ said Hervey. At least he did not have to go back to the post office, for the official had obligingly brought his letters to the questura. They set off back along the Corso.

  ‘You went at that wretch like a tiger, Hervey.’

  Hervey raised his eyebrows. ‘It is the only way if one is forced to fight, I assure you. There is little profit in dancing about.’

  ‘You evidently have considerable experience in the matter, and yet you have not the look of a pug.’

  Hervey nodded, obliged. ‘You are very kind, sir.’

  ‘You are a very soldierly man, for all your sensibility.’

  Hervey was startled by the intimacy of his companion’s knowledge. He did not reply.

  Shelley frowned. ‘Come, sir. I am reliably informed that you are one of the Duke of Wellington’s men, yet I saw you lately in the Caffè Greco with a volume of Goethe.’

  Hervey nodded very slightly again, as if taking the measure of what he had heard. ‘You should not be so reliant on your informants. I am no longer in the King’s service.’

  ‘As you wish,’ sighed Shelley indulgently.

  ‘And you, sir? You have served of late?’

  ‘I have not.’ Shelley said it with what might have passed for disdain of the notion. ‘But ought I then to think meanly of myself for never having been a soldier?’

  ‘I cannot say what you should think. Your time has in all likelihood been spent honourably.’

  ‘The wretch who assailed me would not share that view.’

  ‘Perhaps he does not know you so well?’

  ‘He does not know me at all, Hervey. And I know even littler of him.’

  Hervey was wholly mystified. ‘But he objected to you most strongly — by your account as well as the evidence of my own eyes!’

  ‘He had evidently formed an opinion of me at a remove.’

  Only very slowly did it begin to dawn on Hervey who his new companion might be. The man himself had given no clues, save for the implication that he had a reputation beyond his range of acquaintances. Hervey knew that reputation only a little, and largely through his late wife. He had not himself read any of the work. ‘Forgive me, sir. Are you the poet Shelley?’

  Shelley smiled for the first time. His face was transformed. ‘You have the soldier’s directness, Hervey. What is there to forgive? I am indeed that atheist poet Shelley.’

  Hervey felt the warmth of both smile and words. ‘And you have the candour of your reputation, sir.’

  ‘Ah, my reputation! Are we not all prisoners to what we would have the world think of us?’

  ‘It was my understanding, sir, that your reputation was for not caring what the world thought!’

  Shelley smiled again, though not so full. ‘And your opinion of me will have been formed by the organs of Crown and Church, and you will not have read a word of what I have written.’

  ‘I confess I have not. But neither has my opinion been so formed as to tend to anything.’ Hervey might have explained that his sister had read his poetry, and Henrietta, but such confidences were not possible in ten times this intimacy.

  They talked of the city for the rest of the way to the Caffè Greco. They passed any number of places in which they might have taken wine, but the Greco was familiar to Shelley, and the familiar was comforting. Giuseppe looked surprised by Shelley’s reappearance, and in the company of the man who only an hour or two before had been a professed stranger. The inglesi were a strange people — always polite, but cool, even cold in their manner. Except Signor Shelley: he was a gentiluomo like the others, certainly, but Signor Shelley was also … simpatico.

  Shelley called for a bottle of his favoured rosso from the Castelli Romani. ‘Come,’ he said conspiratorially to Hervey. ‘Let us sit in the seclusion of
one of these arches. I would know a little more of what brings you to Rome. You may learn of my reasons from any number of people, I dare say.’

  They took up seats beneath a particularly vivid depiction of the rape of the Sabine women. Hervey sipped the thin red wine, which they drank chilled, and eyed his companion carefully. There was nothing he feared, but he was not inclined to vouchsafe anything either, no matter how inconsequential, to someone who might use it frivolously. ‘I am here on indefinite vacation.’

  ‘Good! A promising beginning. And do you find Goethe informative regarding the eternal city? Where is your book, by the way?’

  Hervey looked surprised, and frowned. ‘I recall that I have left it at the questura.’

  ‘Never mind. We can go there tomorrow to retrieve it. But first tell me of it.’

  Hervey was again surprised at Shelley’s presumption of intimacy, though that was not to say he found it unwelcome. ‘I find it a very faithful guide.’

  ‘Then you have a keen understanding of German. I would that there were a passable translation.’

  Hervey was now conscious that his conversation lacked the spontaneity of his companion’s, and, unusually, it troubled him.

  ‘And you, sir. What do you do here?’ he tried, though sensing at once its inadequacy.

  Shelley put down his glass and swept a hand about the room. ‘I delve for the glory that was Rome, and seek in it inspiration!’

  The words seemed entirely unaffected on Shelley’s lips. Hervey searched for something by way of return. ‘And are you here in company?’ was all that the muse could summon.

  ‘A wife and child. And you?’

  ‘My sister.’

  Shelley nodded. ‘You were at Waterloo, were you not? That is my understanding.’

  ‘I cannot think how you might know, sir, for I have not spoken of it since leaving England.’

  ‘I should very much like to hear account of it. I have not met with any who was there.’

  Hervey gave a sort of sigh to indicate the difficulty of obliging him. ‘It was a very long day, and the field was enormous.’

  But Shelley was not put off. He thought for a moment or two and then asked, ‘Would you join us this evening? We shall be a small party, but an attentive one.’

  It was the first invitation Hervey had received since arriving in the city ten days before, but he was still not greatly inclined to accept. ‘I think I must decline, sir. As I told you, I am accompanied by my sister and she—’

  ‘Then it would be doubly delightful, and not only for me, but for my other companions of her sex.’

  Hervey was severely discomfited. He had no desire of excessive female company.

  ‘Shall we say nine o’clock? Our lodgings are at the Palazzo Verospi on the Corso, number 300 — near the post office, I’m afraid.’

  The mention of the post office engendered just the degree of sympathy necessary for Hervey to conclude that his declining would be an unkindness. ‘I am much obliged. I can answer for my sister since we have no fixed engagements. We shall come at nine.’

  ‘Good! So let us take a little more of this wine then — for our stomachs’ sake, as St Paul would have us believe.’

  Hervey frowned, even though he surmised the show of scepticism was for his benefit. But he took another glass, and there they stayed a full hour speaking of Rome and her glories.

  Later, in his lodgings in Via del Babuino, il ghetto inglese, Hervey reflected on the morning’s turn of events. He had befriended — was it not too strong a word? — an atheist, revolutionary and libertine. Elizabeth had lost no time in reminding him of the history of Mr Shelley and his elopements (half-remembered from Henrietta’s teasing accounts), and the rest he had pieced together for himself, recalling the usual tattlers during the years that his attention had been distracted by those who would destroy the kingdom by the sword rather than by the pen. Shelley had by all accounts brought to bed two if not three or even four women — girls, indeed — so that there was issue out of wedlock, unacknowledged perhaps. And this the poet would defend as a right way of living — would propagate it, even! Who knew, therefore, what were Shelley’s arrangements at present, and what dissipation he — Hervey — and Elizabeth might soon be a prey to? He could only ponder on what a journey he had made these past months, from honourable rank in His Majesty’s light dragoons (some would say a primmish captain) to supper companion of a dangerous and amoral poetaster. Was he prepared to pay any price to put Elizabeth and himself an evening’s distance from painful memories? He shrugged. He wished he had at least read some of Shelley’s poetry. It would surely tell him more of the man than mere gossip could. But his own tastes in that direction had advanced only slowly, so that hitherto he had remained devoted above all to the Milton of his schoolroom. Through Henrietta he had read Coleridge, and with her Keats, but Shelley had not so far engaged him.

  Elizabeth had not objected to suppering with the Shelleys, however. Elizabeth’s pleasure was her journal, and it had often been her lament that its pages were full of things that no one could have the least interest in but herself. Not that she harboured literary ambitions; rather was she occasionally in despair of being, at no longer five and twenty, without anything more to record than domestic trifles. If only she could write of her time at the workhouse, or in the hovels of Warminster Common, her memoir might stand as something of real consequence. But good works were one thing. To itemize the meanness and dissipation of rural life in a lady’s journal was quite another. Italy had seen her able to write infinitely more interesting pages already, but of the countryside and art; of people, her entries were as yet restricted. Save in the case of her brother, whose progress she noted with anxious attention — and of Henrietta, whom she missed so much more than any but her journal knew, sometimes through tear marks rather than ink.

  At nine o’clock they took a carriage to Shelley’s lodgings, for although it was not far, Elizabeth had been at pains to dress and Hervey had no wish to take the edge off her success by chancing to their feet. When they arrived at number 300 Via del Corso they found their host agitated. ‘I am very glad to meet you, Miss Hervey,’ Shelley replied, after Hervey’s introduction. ‘But my wife is unwell, I’m afraid, and makes her regrets. We shall go instead to Signora Dionigi’s. She holds a conversazione this evening. It will be very diverting.’

  Now Hervey was troubled. ‘But we do not know Signora Dionigi.’

  ‘That will not matter in the least. The signora likes nothing more than to meet new people.’

  Elizabeth, whose face was suffused by a colour far from her usual, assured their host that they would be delighted to go to the signora’s. ‘For in truth, Mr Shelley, we have not been much in company these past months.’

  Hervey did not care for the idea of this conversazione, which sounded like nothing so much as the flummery of some ageing widow’s salon. Even the black humour which could descend on him of an evening might be preferable. But he could not deny his sister her diversion, even if he himself had no inclination for festive company.

  Signora Marianna Dionigi was no dilettante, however. Ageing she might be, but she was also a painter of some distinction, an antiquary of impressive learning, and therefore unlikely to be seduced by worthless flattery. She was tall, upright. Her face, to Hervey’s mind, was a little too farded, but her features were very fine. Her dress was distinctly Italian rather than French. Above all she had kind eyes. She took Elizabeth’s arm and introduced her to the room, first in French, then in English. Elizabeth’s shot silk was perhaps a little out of place among the dresses of the foreign ladies, but it did not matter greatly, for Hervey observed that she was as handsome in essentials as any in the room, and with expert assistance might outshine at least half of them.

  For a quarter of an hour before supper began, Shelley tried in vain to engage Hervey in conversation, to draw from him some response to a question of fact, or some opinion on this or that. Perhaps, he thought, it was that Hervey watched too keenly
for his sister, or that the liveliness of the company made it difficult for him to be at ease. At any rate, Shelley saw enough not to persist, and, with the utmost politeness, left him to himself as they made for the dining room. There, Hervey was relieved to find a table from which the guests helped themselves, so that he was able to slip unnoticed into the library. He had no appetite, and he could pass an hour or so pleasurably there now Elizabeth was at her ease and engaged in conversation.

  But he was not long allowed his solitude, for Signora Dionigi was an attentive hostess, and she sought him out after a while. ‘May I bring you some wine, Mr Hervey?’ she asked, in French.

  Hervey had in his hand a book of engravings of Roman antiquities. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, signora. I did not wish to appear—’

  The signora smiled the more. ‘Mr Hervey, we do not follow a formula at these gatherings. I had rather you took your pleasure in a book if it were not to be had elsewhere.’

  ‘You are very kind, signora. I am not averse to company as a rule, but …’

  ‘It is your business alone, Mr Hervey. We Romans are not nearly so constrained by obligation.’

  Now Hervey smiled, gratified by her discernment. ‘Thank you, signora. And yes, I should like a little wine, if I may.’

  The signora despatched her attendant. ‘Have you known Mr Shelley long?’ she asked, now in English.

  ‘We met only this morning, signora.’

  ‘But you admire his poetry.’

  He hesitated. ‘I am very much afraid that I have never read any of it.’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  He had expected a tone of surprise, of disapproval even. The signora was indeed the most considerate of hostesses, as well as attentive. ‘I would of course, madam.’ So obliging had been her reply that he could not have said otherwise.

  She took a small volume from the drawer of a writing desk. ‘Here, Mr Hervey. You will see what a great poet is our friend Mr Shelley. Do not hurry: he will repay proper study. Join us only if you feel inclined. That should be the way with conversazione.’