Shelley: The Pursuit

by Richard Holmes

  It was to this study, ‘this science’, of the intermediary sphere, and to the recognition of Love and the other daemons ‘many and various’, some good and some evil, that Shelley was to direct much of the more obscure and private parts of his thought and writing in Italy. This Platonic passage provided the occult key. The Symposium as a whole, made especially his own through this brilliant summer translation of 1818, formed for Shelley a symbolic guide to the perplexities and paradoxes of his own mental processes. Given the sceptical cast of Shelley’s mind, Plato remained for him, over the next four years, the nearest thing to his Bible. In times of distress — and there were to be many — Plato was never far from his thoughts.

  [1] This letter is also important evidence of Shelley’s general attitude to the responsibilities of a father, and the rights of a mother, in the case of an illegitimate child. It was to have an application in other circumstances during the winter of the year. The phrase, ‘if she has no feeling, she has no claim’ is particularly relevant.

  [2] Murray published Beppo in February 1818; Shelley was asked to bring a copy to Lord Byron in his book box, but he forgot it.

  [3] The Tre Donzelle still stands there, virtually unchanged in appearance, the left corner building of what is now the Piazza Garibaldi. Its ground floor has been metamorphosed into an English tea-room. See plate 27.

  [4] Philoctetes, the great Athenian bowman, was marooned on an island by the Greek expedition who sailed to destroy Troy, because of the demoralization caused by the appalling wound in his foot. He lived in solitude for nearly ten years, a prey to hallucinations and recurring spasms of terrible pain when the abscess burst. Finally he was rescued by Odysseus and the young Neoptolemus, because an oracle had warned the Greeks that Troy would not fall without Philoctetes and his Bow. Sophocles’s drama turns on the terrible effect that solitude has had on Philoctetes’s mind, and the difficulty with which he is persuaded to accept the inevitability of past injustice and the necessity of returning to a society which had once persecuted him but now desperately needs him. The divine intervention of Herakles is eventually required to persuade him to return.

  [5] Here for example are their respective opening sentences, as Apollodorus begins his account of how the banquet came to be held. Jowett: ‘Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed, I believe that I am not ill-prepared to answer,’ which sounds irretrievably donnish. W.D. Rouse has more the air of a schoolboy in a police court: ‘I think I am pretty well word-perfect in what you are inquiring about.’ While Shelley simply gives the impression of one gentleman stopped by another while strolling across a sunlit piazza: ‘I think that the subject of your enquiries is still fresh in my memory,’ which is perfect.

  [6] Mary wrote to Hunt in October 1839, ‘You said: “Do as Mills, who has just phrased it so that the common reader will think common love is meant — the learned alone will know what is meant.” Accordingly I read [Mill’s] Phaedrus & found less of a veil even than I expected — thus I was emboldened to leave it so that our sort of civilized love should be understood — Now you change all back into friendship — which makes the difficulty as great as ever . . . I have left some & not others — where you seemed very vehement . . . but I could not bring myself to leave the word love out entirely from a treatise on Love . . . It is puzzling — that’s a fact as the Americans say.’

  [7] The curiously overemphasized stress on venereal disease, which recurs in later works, suggests possibly that Shelley had some contact with a prostitute earlier in life. There is a further fragmentary note in the MS Notebook which contains the ‘Discourse’: ‘Loathsome diseases the cause of modern obscenity exceeding the worst of antiquity in hideousness and horrors . . . .’ Bod. MS Shelley Adds. e. 2, p. 73 rev.

  [8] Shelley normally keeps the sexual distinction quite candid in his text, as for example: ‘But the attendant on the other, the Uranian, whose nature is entirely masculine, is the Love who inspires us with affection towards men . . . .’ In fact Shelley very rarely altered or even softened the text out of considerations of sexual propriety; but in more than a score of places he added a single word or phrase to extend its meaning philosophically. Occasionally he relied on Ficino to help him over a technically difficult passage.

  17. An Evening with Count Maddalo: Venice

  Theoretical discussion and meditation on the subject of love under the chestnut trees of the Lima, and in the laurel bower of Casa Bertini, suddenly gave way, in the middle of August 1818, to pressing practical demands. With the departure of Allegra to Venice in April, the old closeness between Shelley and Claire had been partly reconstituted. Shelley’s almost paternal sympathy with Claire’s depression and anxieties about the child had encouraged him to identify with her circumstances as much as with Mary’s. News from Venice was scarce, and Claire’s health and spirits had been steadily recovering. But now two urgent letters from Elise arrived in rapid succession, on Friday the 14th, and Sunday the 16th, which threw Claire once again into a desperate panic about the welfare of her child.1 She began to insist that they must go at once to Venice. Parts of Elise’s letters were impossible to decipher, according to Claire, and this only made things worse.2 It was of doubtful value to let Claire lay siege to Byron again, and besides, Venice was over 200 miles away and would require a long and expensive journey. Yet surprisingly, Shelley agreed at once that Claire should go. Moreover, he decided to accompany her. Allowing barely time to pack their bags, Shelley and Claire hired a one-horse cabriolet without springs and set out at dawn on Monday the 17th, to drive the first stage of the journey eastwards, to Florence. A capable Italian servant called Paolo Foggi, whom Mary had employed at Casa Bertini since June, went with them on the first leg of their journey. Mary was left rather forlornly to write to the Gisbornes, asking them to come and ‘cheer her solitude’ in a house empty except for the servants and the two babies.

  But for Shelley and Claire, it was quite like the old days. The journey took in all the best part of the week, though they drove hard sometimes sixty miles a day. Shelley was, judging by his letters, in admirably good form throughout. The sudden relief of leaving the pastoral hermitage of Casa Bertini, the prospect of seeing Byron, and no doubt the anxious but excited company of Claire on the open road all filled him with a sense of freedom and exhilaration. His first sight of Florence, the elegant Lung’ Arno, the bridges, the sails on the river, the haze of ‘bright villas . . . Domes & steeples on all sides’ delighted them both. They swept into the Austrian Minister’s office to demand passports, which they got in the space of four hours, and gorged themselves on figs and peaches like ‘Paradise flowers’ while waiting. Paolo’s theatrical bargaining secured a vetturino for Padua, to leave at about midday on Tuesday, ‘a comfortable carriage & two mules’. Shelley then sent Paolo back to Bagni di Lucca and posted a letter to Mary. He sent his love to Willmouse and little Ca, as the babies were now known, and told Mary breezily, ‘I assure you I am not of a disposition to be flattered by your sorrow though I should be by your cheerfullness, & above all by seeing such fruits of my absence as were produced when we were at Geneva.’ Perhaps she could manage another Frankenstein?

  Meanwhile he and Claire eagerly discussed various plans to cope with Byron, which underwent ‘a good deal of modification’, as Shelley gradually persuaded her to abandon the idea of a personal confrontation. By letter he informed Mary that Claire would be dropped off to await events at Padua or Fucina, but whether this was ever really intended seems doubtful. At any rate, when they reached Padua on Friday, 21 August, the badness of the beds, full of ‘those insects inexpressible by Italian delicacy’, as Shelley gaily explained, and Claire’s unwillingness to part from him ‘in the strangeness & solitude of the place’, led to yet another change of plan.

  So it was they sailed into Venice together in a black gondola, late on Saturday night. They huddled in the cabin on the soft, inviting couches and grey carpets, while rain lashed the windows and lightning flashed across the laguna. The sea
foam broke around, sparkling like stars, and ‘Venice now hidden & now disclosed by the driving rain shone dimly with its lights’. Inside they were warm and comfortable, ‘except that Claire was now & then a little frightened in our cabin’, as Shelley always liked her to be. For some reason Shelley was fascinated by the construction of the gondola’s windows, and pulling the strings to show Claire, he demonstrated how they could have ‘at will either Venetian plate glass flowered, or Venetian blinds or blinds of black cloth to shut out the light’.3 They reached their inn at Venice at midnight.

  The next day, Sunday, was a critical one which Shelley, by a combination of stealth and candour, managed to bring off successfully. From the moment of their entry into Venice, talk of Byron’s scandalous exploits was to be heard continuously on the lips of both gondoliers and innkeepers. Shelley realized the need to proceed with extreme tact. Elise’s letters had informed Claire that Allegra was, for the time being, in the care of the English consul-general’s wife, Mrs Richard Belgrave Hoppner, at the consular building. Starting immediately after breakfast, when he knew Byron would still be asleep at the Palazzo Mocenigo, he hired a gondola and went at once with Claire to the Hoppners. Claire was then sent into the consular building on her own, to make inquiries about the child, and to sound out the Hoppners’ sympathies. Shrewdly realizing that his presence at this point could only complicate matters, Shelley remained discreetly in the cabin of the gondola, examining the window glass. After a few minutes, much to his surprise, a servant came down to the mooring steps to ask for Mr Shelley. All was well. Claire had found Mrs Hoppner to be immediately ‘agreeable and admirable’, and full of sympathetic interest in their journey and their worries. Introductions were made, Elise was summoned to bring little Allegra, who appeared looking pale and slightly subdued, Shelley thought, but ‘as beautiful as ever’, and mother and child were happily reunited. An invitation to dine was extended, and Mr Hoppner took Shelley aside in a friendly way. ‘We discussed a long time the mode in which I had better proceed with [Byron], & at length determined that Claire’s being here should be concealed, as Mr H. says that he often expresses his extreme horror at her arrival, & the necessity which it would impose on him of instantly quitting Venice.’4 The Hoppners entered into the arrangements for this concealment ‘as if it were their own dearest concern’, and explained with a certain relish some of the more outlandish features of Byron’s household. Shelley was inclined to feel that there was ‘doubtless some exaggeration’.

  After dinner Shelley embarked on the second stage of the plan: his unannounced visit to Palazzo Mocenigo. This too went unexpectedly well, though not quite as he had intended. Shelley had himself announced at three in the afternoon, when he calculated that Byron would have disembarrassed himself of any lady guests, and would have had time to complete his traditionally extended toilet and his sparse breakfast. Fletcher showed him in. Byron was delighted and surprised, sat Shelley down, and good-humouredly quizzed him on the subject of his visit. Shelley explained in his frankest and most measured manner that he had recently toured with Mary and Claire and the children as far as Padua. Since Claire was rather worried about her child’s health and anxious to see her again if it should now be convenient, Shelley had thought to come on alone to Venice, and to have the pleasure of renewing his acquaintance with Lord Byron while discussing this matter privately between themselves.

  Byron remained good-humoured. He was genuinely pleased and relieved to see Shelley again. He relished the prospect of renewing the Diodati style of speculative talk. He even began to excuse himself for not having Allegra sent to Florence: he feared, apparently, that ‘the Venetians will think he has grown tired of her & dismissed her, & he has already the reputation of caprice’. Shelley later told Mary how the conversation went on: ‘But if you like she shall go to Clare at Padua for a week (when he said this he supposed that you & the family were there). And in fact said he after all I have no right over the child. If Clare likes to take it — let her take it — I do not say what most people would in that situation that I will refuse to provide for it, or abandon it, if she does this; but she must surely be aware herself how very imprudent such a measure would be.’5 Shelley found the anxiety which Byron showed to satisfy him and Claire most unexpected, and he was relieved at the spirit in which Byron dealt with the whole matter, and the conversation began to run more easily. With one of his abrupt and generous decisions, Byron suddenly suggested that Shelley should bring Mary and Claire and the children across from Padua to a country villa which he had taken at Este. Este was a decaying medieval fortress town in the Euganean hills, known locally for its pottery, some forty miles southwest of Venice. Byron had leased the largest house there, a summer villa known as ‘I Capuccini’ because it was built on the ruins of a Capuchin monastery; he had intended it as a possible retreat if life at the Palazzo Mocenigo with the Fornarina should become too hectic. Now, with a rapid gesture he dismissed the problem of Claire and Allegra by putting I Capuccini entirely at Shelley’s service for the remainder of the summer, making it clear that while Allegra might visit Este, he should stay in Venice untroubled by Claire’s solicitations.

  By this time the conversation had moved from Byron’s parlour in the Palazzo, to a gondola on the grand canal; and from the gondola across the laguna to the sandy reaches of the Venetian Lido, where Byron had horses waiting for his regular afternoon ride. They mounted up and ‘rode along the sands of the sea talking’. The subject of Claire gave way to more personal matters: Harriet Shelley, Byron’s sister Augusta, the composition of the new fourth canto of Childe Harold, Hunt and the attacks of the Quarterly. Byron was in a mood for confessions and confidences. ‘Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, & questions as to my affairs, & great professions of friendship & regard for me. He said that if he had been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved Heaven & Earth to have prevented such a decision.’6 Once Byron was in such a mood, and Shelley was in correspondingly good spirits, there was little that could stop them. The interview which had begun rather tentatively at 3 in the afternoon concluded at 5 a.m. the next morning, after a session of fourteen hours of non-stop talk. This included Byron reciting Childe Harold with abandoned energy. The fact that Claire had been waiting anxiously since dinner the previous day at the Hoppners’ for news had become irrelevant. After all, she was meant to be at Padua. So, even more disconcertingly, were Mary and the children.

  However, Shelley was not in the mood to be deterred by time or space. Arriving back at his inn as the first grey light broke over the canal, he seized pen and paper and dashed off an enormous letter to Mary, explaining everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and demanding her immediate presence in Este to bring his plan for Claire into fruition. The final success of this, he wrote, ‘is still doubtful’, and everything depended on Mary making his story about Padua appear true, and Byron not learning about Claire’s presence in Venice. It was a matter of speed. ‘Pray come instantly to Este, where I shall be waiting with Claire & Elise in the utmost anxiety for your arrival. You can pack up directly you get this letter & employ the next day in that. The day after get up at four o’clock, & go post to Lucca where you will arrive at 6. Then take Vetturino for Florence to arrive the same evening. From Florence to Este is three days . . . . Este is a little place & the house found without difficulty. I shall count 4 days for this letter 1 day for packing 4 for coming here — On the ninth or tenth day we shall meet.’7

  That these arrangements, the packing, the pre-dawn departure, and the five days of hard travelling in the blazing August weather, with the children, would be very hard for Mary did not really occur to Shelley. He thought, perhaps rightly, that Claire’s happiness was at stake, and on such an occasion Mary must defer to it. His gentle excuses were not altogether serious: ‘I have done for the best & my own beloved Mary you must soon come & scold me if I have done wrong & kiss me if I have done right — for I am sure I do not know which
— & it is only the event can shew.’ This did not soften the timetable.

  The letter broke off as a gondola arrived to take Shelley to the bank to obtain an order of fifty pounds for Mary’s travelling expenses. Later at the bank he scrawled a P.S.: ‘Kiss the blue darlings for me & don’t let William forget me — Ca cant recollect me.’ He missed the post, but the letter went express. Later perhaps, he woke Claire with the good news.

  On the 25th or 26th they quietly departed from Venice for Este with Elise and Allegra and the good wishes of the Hoppners. They did not know, because in the situation there was no way of knowing, that at the Bagni di Lucca little Clara was ill, slightly feverish and unable to take food, and Mary was intensely anxious about her. For ten days Shelley and Claire basked in the sun at the Villa Capuccini, awaiting Mary’s arrival. They found the house cheerful and full of the radiant Italian light, set on the brow of one of the rolling foothills of the Euganean range, and commanding a view southwards over the plain of Lombardy. In the mornings, to westwards, before the heat of the day had filled the air with a blue haze, they could make out the distant line of the Apennines. Once again Shelley spent many hours observing the rising and setting of the sun and moon and evening star, and studying the slow architectural developments of ‘the golden magnificence of autumnal clouds’. ‘Behind us here’, he wrote to Peacock, ‘are the Euganean hills, not so beautiful as those of Bagni di Lucca, with Arqua where Petrarch’s house and tomb are religiously preserved & visited. At the end of our garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the habitation of owls and bats, where the Medici family resided before they came to Florence.’8 Shelley found that, at night, when the moon ‘sunk behind the black and heavy battlements’, he could call up the owls, and obtain a satisfactory echo from the massive looming wall of the crumbling fortress.9