Hervey would not have wished for the consolation of Scripture at that moment. He returned the kindness with a thankful smile.
Shelley reached into his pocket for a second notebook. ‘You have read Goethe, so you will know the legend of Prometheus?’
‘That is to make of my erudition what it is not,’ warned Hervey, frowning. ‘But yes, I know the legend.’
‘You were reading last night of defying power which seems omnipotent.’
Hervey nodded. ‘And convincing it sounded.’
‘I write of Promethean resistance to the Furies, the ministers of pain and fear, disappointment, mistrust and hate. I write of the terrible alternative of giving way to Jupiter’s tyranny.’
Hervey saw a lofty analogy, yet was not dismayed, for Shelley’s was a wholly honest candour. ‘When you are ready to read it, I would listen.’
Shelley grasped his arm again. ‘My dear friend, the eagle tore at Prometheus’ vitals by day, and by night those vitals were restored, so that the evisceration could begin anew in the morning.’
Shelley’s warning, perhaps for its intensity, startled him. ‘Do you tell me the pain must endure, then? Is that how your verse shall end?’
‘No,’ said Shelley, shaking his head decidedly. ‘Jupiter shall be dethroned and Prometheus unbound, though I own I am undecided yet by what means. But until that day, Prometheus shall defy the Furies, or else it can never come. Here, let me read a little, rough-hewn as it still is.’
Shelley read him fragments, turning many pages at a time to find what he thought was most apt or diverting.
Hervey sat spellbound.
‘And this is how I conclude; perhaps you might recognize, now, of what it is I speak:
‘To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
‘To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
‘To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
‘To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
‘From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
‘Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
‘This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
‘Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
‘This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.’
Hervey did not know by what providence he had come to trust this man, so different in every doctrine and practice was Shelley to himself, but for the first time since Henrietta’s passing he wanted to speak his heart freely. And it seemed that here he might find the means to do so.
CHAPTER THREE
HEARTS OF OAK
Two weeks later
Elizabeth Hervey kept her journal indefatigably, certain that no one in her lifetime should read it but mindful that God knew her heart and, consequently, the truth of her entries. She took pleasure in her writing, and pride, too, for it allowed her the exercise of free thought as well as literary enterprise. However, the discovery that Shelley’s wife was an author, with work already published, had at first shaken her confidence. She felt somehow intimidated that not ten minutes’ walk from the Hervey lodgings sat a woman younger than her with far greater accomplishments. But Mary Shelley was a sick woman – of that, Elizabeth was certain. They had formed an attachment at once, rather as her brother had with Mary’s husband, but women’s matters perforce drew women into greater intimacy, and more quickly, than men. Elizabeth knew about sickness. She had seen a lifetime’s fill of it in the Warminster workhouse and, against her father’s will, in the hovels of the fencing crib that was Warminster Common. And she knew that Mary’s sickness was as much of the spirit as of the body. Mary had lost children (Elizabeth was not sure whether one or two), her infant son was far from well, and her husband had treated her with such indifference on occasions that Elizabeth wondered what love there might truly be between them. And then yesterday, while Shelley and Hervey rambled once more about the Terme and their womenfolk took tea together, Mary had told Elizabeth she was pregnant, that she had been so since February and had not yet told her husband.
This morning, after a breakfast of oranges and very sweet chocolate, Elizabeth sat at the open window of her sitting room, with its pleasant aspect on the garden slopes of the Pincio, and made her longest journal entry in a month. After recording her fears for Mary’s condition, she gave her opinion that her husband was, nevertheless,
a very engaging man whose manners belie all that I had previously read or supposed, and whose regard for Matthew in his bereavement is evident and genuine, for they share something in this respect, I believe, though Matthew’s is infinitely more noble. Matthew for his part takes strength in their fellowship, and it is notable how freely he discourses on all manner of things that are novel and radical, for Mr Shelley is as eloquent in his speech in radical affairs as he is on the page, and he is very practised in the latter as we have known these several past years. It is a strange twist of fate that the two should meet and become intimates, and it could not have happened in England, where our relative positions would first have precluded it and then disallowed it. Perhaps it is one of the benefits of foreign travel, as is often said there are many, that one is propelled into intercourse with those whose society would otherwise be denied. Yet Matthew is far still from wholly sloughing off the melancholy, and I do so fear that our coming here will ultimately be to no purpose other than as a temporary amelioration.
Hervey knocked at the door. Elizabeth rose and went to it. ‘Ah, brother! Have you changed your mind? Are you not meeting Mr Shelley, then?’
‘Yes, but later. I came to see how you were. We hardly had an opportunity to speak yesterday.’
‘I am very well. You know it. Mary Shelley is engaging company.’
‘So you do not mind my spending so little time with you at present?’
‘I had not accounted it, Matthew. We are here on indefinite vacation, as you have said. Allow me to address these letters I wrote last evening, and then I shall be all attention.’
Hervey sat and contemplated his sister as she attended to her familial duties. Her defiant good spirits had been his support for so many years, unsung, unrecognized even, that he marvelled at her constancy. And not only that. Henrietta had been her companion long before she had been his. Elizabeth’s only companion. Her society since then had been the aged, the sick, the poor and the infirm. He, her brother, had shown scant regard for her bereavement. She held herself ready to assume whatever duties he asked of her in respect of his infant daughter, or indeed of himself. A brother had no right to expect such devotion, the more so when it went uncherished. ‘Shall we go to the opera tonight?’
Elizabeth turned. ‘Why, Matthew! You have not once suggested we go to the opera since we came here. I should like nothing more. Are the Shelleys to go too?’
‘I was not intending that we ask them.’
When Elizabeth showed surprise, her eyebrows arched so much that the eyes themselves seemed to grow larger. They had always been kind, but Hervey could also see they were eyes that might attract. And now that she had given up her ringlets, she ought to make men’s heads at least pause, if not quite turn – as indeed he had observed at Signora Dionigi’s conversazione. What suitors she had had in Wiltshire, truly, he was not sure, for in spite of his mother’s lamenting that Elizabeth had willed herself into her unmarried state, there was no objective evidence that there had been any actual proposals. One way or another, he had better have a care of his sister.
‘Matthew?’
‘Oh, I … I beg your pardon. I was quite preoccupied.’
‘I asked what is the opera this evening.’
‘That I don’t remember, save that the composer is Italian.’
Elizabeth frowned. ‘I had not imagined otherwise. But you are very good to me to commit yourself to an entertainment about which you know nothing.’
Hervey nodded. Perhaps he had made a beginning.
‘And now you shall spend the day climbing the ruins of the baths again?’
‘No, not today. I’m meeting
Shelley in an hour, but then I intend visiting the English College. I don’t suppose he will agree to come with me.’
‘I have resolved to move from the Corso,’ Shelley announced.
Hervey sipped more of his cooling white wine, diluted and made frizzante by water from a sulphur spring near the city walls. ‘For what reason? I think your arrangements there are admirable.’
‘They are. But I confess to being out of sorts with the place ever since that business in the post office.’
Hervey sighed, and not without sympathy, although it had been the assault that had effected their introduction. ‘I still turn over in my mind what could so animate a man to strike another without warning. Was it really dislike of your philosophy? Does such a thing move rational men to common assault?’
It was Shelley’s turn to sigh. ‘The magistrate was not inclined to examine his mental state, so we cannot be sure. In England, you know, we were subject to such social hatred as was impossible to bear.’
Hervey shook his head. ‘You know that I dispute every bit of that part of your philosophy, yet I could never harry a man for it. Tolerance is the English virtue, is it not?’
Shelley smiled. ‘You and I are so very far separated, indeed, that I marvel we do sit here peaceably.’
‘I hope it would be so in England, too.’
Shelley’s expression changed to one of grim determination. ‘I shall never go back to England!’
Hervey looked shocked. ‘You must never say that! You cannot have so poor an opinion of your country.’
‘For as long as there’s a crowned head, I shall never set foot there!’
‘But—’
‘Nor a church established!’
‘There is no institution on earth that can claim to be without fault, Shelley!’
‘The Church of England is not so much without fault as without God! And certainly her religion is without Christ!’
Hervey frowned. ‘Now you are being … controversial.’
‘Am I? Am I indeed? You forget I was first at Eton and then at Oxford!’
Hervey prolonged his frown. ‘There is a little more to the world than those places, Shelley!’
‘I speak of institutions, and I count the Church in England no less corrupt than that here in Rome.’
Hervey would not respond. There seemed little point in addressing so vehement an opinion at the present.
‘You are a queer fellow, Hervey. You would call me a godless revolutionary, and yet you choose to hazard your soul in my company.’
‘I would call you more, but only to your face! But if you own to godlessness then the other sins are merely consequential.’
‘Christ alive! I half believe you mean it. What makes you so sure of your religion? You’ve had cause enough for a whole charterhouse to doubt it.’
Shelley touched deep at that moment, and not solely on account of Henrietta. Hervey said nothing.
Then Shelley’s demeanour changed altogether. He gave a shrug. ‘I myself contemplated ordination lately.’
Hervey fixed him with a disapproving look. ‘And what decided you against so outlandish a notion?’
Shelley laughed and clasped his hand on Hervey’s. ‘You are, I think the saying is, “steady under fire”.’
Hervey poured more wine, feigning not to take notice. ‘I have a mind to visit the English College this afternoon. Shall you come?’
‘You surprise me, Hervey,’ replied Shelley, with a distinctly mock expression of it. ‘Why should so unbending a son of the established church want to see the English College?’
‘Why should I not want to see it? It has a claim to great antiquity. It is connected with King Alfred.’
‘Since Rome is nothing but antiquity, how can that be any particular recommendation?’
Hervey was determined not to be drawn. ‘Milton visited there, so I do not see that I may not.’ And – though there was no point in saying it – John Keble had insisted he did.
Shelley looked sceptical. ‘He visited, did he? Sacred Milton?’
‘I am sure of it.’
‘Then it is settled. I owe Milton too much to disregard his example.’
Hervey nodded, though in truth Shelley’s contrariness could exasperate.
‘Do you know his lines on the massacre in Piedmont?’
‘Indeed I do,’ said Hervey, pouring more sulphur water into his glass.
‘I have often wondered in what manner Milton wished God to “avenge His slaughtered saints”.’
Hervey was disinclined to discuss eschatology, however. ‘You know, I can admire your Cromwell for the stand he took in the affair.’
Shelley looked wary, expecting a trick.
‘Did you not know? He wrote to the Emperor and others on behalf of the Protestants, urging all sorts of visitations on the Duke of Savoy if he did not stop persecuting them. And it worked, it seemed.’
‘It is curious to imagine there are any Protestants in Italy. The country is so unsuited to fervour in such matters.’ Shelley took a sip of his wine, guardedly.
‘Well I may tell you that there are, and very proud too, and called Valdensians, though I can’t recall why. There is an Englishman who now ministers to them, who lost a leg at Waterloo. A general. I saw him carried from the field. Elizabeth and I thought we might call upon him on our way home.’
Shelley smiled. ‘You have a very charming way of avoiding the material issue, but not an entirely effective one. I asked how you supposed that Milton wished vengeance to be accomplished?’
Hervey did not hesitate. ‘Perhaps the wrath of God as well as the peace passes all understanding.’
Shelley raised his eyebrows and inclined his head, resigned to the knowledge that he could provoke his friend to no more.
However, Hervey was unsure whether the expression meant that Shelley acknowledged the reasoning, or that it was just the sort of rhetoric he had expected. ‘In any case, you surely cannot lay blame at the door of the English College?’
‘No, but it must have given rise to some very contrary sentiments.’
‘We all live with those!’
Shelley now looked at him intently. ‘Truly, you are a man of very decided certainties – even as regards contrary sentiments. I never had any thoughts of the army, as Coleridge and Southey had, but I think that were I ever to have served I should have wished to do so with an officer like you. Certainty can move mountains.’
‘Ha! I assure you, my dear Shelley, certainty in very senior officers is more often the cause of getting lost in mountains.’
‘Now here indeed is someone who at last speaks his own mind rather than the institution’s!’
‘Shelley, at times you speak absurdities.’
‘Very well, then. Let us speak not of absurdities. Where do we go this evening? I confess I shall be in need of gaiety after all the martyrdom at the English College.’
‘I am taking Elizabeth to the opera.’
‘And you did not ask me to accompany you? I call that dashed uncivil! Have you tired of me?’
Hervey frowned. ‘I have neglected Elizabeth of late.’
Shelley was about to protest further when the Greco’s proprietor approached their table, accompanied by a postal messenger. ‘Signor ’Ervey? Una lettera, molto urgente,’ said the messenger, and there were twenty scudi to pay.
Hervey gave over the money, and a further three for his trouble in searching him out.
When they had gone, Hervey began to examine the envelope.
‘It intrigues me why men tarry so long in contemplating an envelope when a moment’s address with a paper knife would reveal what they puzzle over,’ said Shelley.
But Hervey scarcely noticed. ‘I do believe it to be from a most gallant acquaintance of mine. It is sent from Naples only three days ago.’ He opened it and read the contents quickly. ‘It is indeed from him. And it appears he is made commodore. He says he will be in Naples for a month and more, and would see me in Rome as soon as I am able to recei
ve him.’
‘And who is this gallant commodore? You have not told me of him.’
‘I would need many an evening to do him justice. I sailed to India and home in his frigate. He is uncommonly good company.’
‘An officer of the wooden walls, another high Tory!’
‘In that you suppose wrongly. There’s a radical heart beating in Commodore Peto’s breast – as well as one of oak. And you would not deride the latter, I’m sure?’
‘No, no; I should not deride a brave heart wherever it beat. How did he know you were here?’
Hervey put the letter in his pocket and stood up. ‘I knew his station was the Mediterranean, and so sent word to the embassy in Naples asking that the letter be forwarded when there was intelligence of his ship. I shall go to the post office at once and send him word to come at his pleasure. You will like him.’
‘A radical, you say?’
‘I did not quite say that. He has a radical bent. I would hardly think him a subscriber to the Black Hand, or whatever it is you revolutionaries read.’
‘Dwarf, Hervey, Black Dwarf.’
‘Just so. Shall you come with me to the college then?’
‘No; on second thoughts I’m a little weary. My eyes are aching again. I have not slept well these past nights. And I want to engage someone at once to find other lodgings. You do not forget Signora Dionigi’s party tomorrow evening?’
‘No, indeed.’ Hervey brushed the dust from his hat and placed it on his head a shade more carelessly than usual.
Shelley looked at him quizzically. ‘I perceive a sudden spring to your step – at last.’
Hervey failed to hear more than an easy remark. ‘Very well, then. Do we meet at the same time tomorrow?’
Shelley nodded, and with a wry grin. He had no words. And as he watched Hervey walk from the Caffè Greco, he wondered at the comradeship which black powder so evidently made.
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