It was decided that the move to Lucca was impossible and that they would have to stay near del Rosso in Livorno. Shelley had already inquired of the Gisbornes’ servants about making over the Casa Ricci for their use. So, on the 15th, they repacked and moved to Livorno, Claire being sent ahead with the child and the luggage in a calèsse. Percy Florence had diarrhoea, and they were all, according to Mary ‘unhappy and discontented’.70 Shelley moved into Henry’s workshop study where he could be alone.
Two days later, however, del Rosso had reassured them, and things did not look quite so bad. Mary wrote to Maria Gisborne in London, explaining their presence at the Casa Ricci: ‘We could not go to the baths of Lucca and finding it necessary to consult an attorney we thought of Del Rosso & came here — Are you pleased or vexed? — Our old friend Paolo was partly the cause of this — by entering into an infamous conspiracy against us — there were other circumstances which I shall not explain till we meet — That same Paolo is a most superlative rascal — I hope we have done with him but I know not — since as yet we are obliged to guess as to his accomplices.’71 This letter clearly shows that the business with Paolo had expanded to the proportions of blackmail, and that Mary knew at least the basis of it. It would also appear that Paolo had been talking to other English in the Livorno colony.
On top of Paolo Foggi, Shelley was also being worried once more by the effect which Godwin’s insistent demands for money were having on Mary. On 30 June, he wrote to the Gisbornes: ‘Domestic peace I might have — I may have — if I see you, I shall have — but have not, for Mary suffers dreadfully from the state of Godwin’s circumstances. I am very nervous, but better in general health. We have had a most infernal business with Paolo, whom, however, we have succeeded in crushing. I write from Henry’s study, and I send you some verses I wrote the first day I came, which will show you that I struggle with despondency.’72 Shelley was premature in supposing that Paolo, and whoever he had involved among the English, had been crushed. Nor did he yet have confirmation of Elena’s death, though he grimly expected it.
The verse against despondency was his ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’. In it he drew kindly, epigrammatic portraits of his friends in London — Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, even Godwin was included, as a kind of mock-heroic Satan, ‘greater none than he Though fallen — and fallen on evil times’. Shelley imagined the London streets in which they would now be walking about, and the same moon and stars over both of them, ‘beautiful in every land’. But he could not forget other aspects:
But what see you beside? — a shabby stand
Of Hackney coaches — a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics; — or worse —
A wretched woman reeling by . . . .73
The poem is notable for its easy, talking manner, reminiscent of ‘Julian and Maddalo’, and its tight, purposeful grip on the physical details of the room in which Shelley wrote, Henry’s study. He carefully enumerated screws, cones, grooved wooden blocks, machine designs in blue and yellow paint, a heap of rosin, a broken ink-glass, a tea-cup without handle, a paint box, a half-burnt match, a set of logarithm tables and a walnut bowl of mercury.
And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood — I have made to float
A rude idealism of a paper boat: —
A hollow screw with cogs — Henry will know
The thing I mean and laugh at me . . . .74
Also enclosed as part of his letter was a cautious scheme to give Godwin £400, if the Gisbornes could first ascertain from legal papers if the sum would make any real difference to Godwin’s overall situation. This offer was made as much to appease Mary as anything else, and Shelley himself was not very eager that the money should be released by the Gisbornes. He added in a postscript that she did not read: ‘You know my situation; you know Godwin’s implacable exactions, you know his boundless and plausible sophistry. On the other hand, if you can effect this compromise the benefits would be great.’75 Wisely, the Gisbornes interpreted these conflicting directions correctly, and the gift was never made. It would certainly have made no lasting difference to Godwin, and would have deprived Shelley of about half a year’s income. But his patience and generosity over Godwin were still extraordinary.
Consultation with del Rosso, and consideration of Godwin, led Shelley to review his whole financial position during July, a thankless task in which he was firmly encouraged by Mary. One of the first results were instructions to Hogg in his legal capacity to try to settle the large bill outstanding at Marlow. Another letter went to Messrs Baldwin the publishers of Alastor urging them to pay off the printer out of any profits — a piece of business more than four years outstanding.76 Shelley embarked on a course of Lucretius which was taken in daily dosages with Mary.77 But in the evening, he frequently took the chance to walk out from the Casa Ricci into Livorno with Claire.78
The early summer at the Casa Ricci saw a sharp decline in relations between Claire and Mary. On 4 July, some three weeks after their move from Pisa, things had become bad enough for Claire to note in her diary: ‘Heigh-ho the Clare & the Mai/Find something to fight about every day . . .’.79 For Claire and Shelley there had already been much strain earlier in the summer over Allegra. Doubtful reports of the child’s situation had been received, and Claire had written directly to Byron threatening to intervene by going herself to Ravenna. At the end of April, a letter from Byron had been forwarded to Pisa by the Hoppners which was far from sympathetic. ‘About Allegra,’ Byron had written, ‘I can only say to Claire — that I so totally disapprove of the mode of Children’s treatment in their family, that I should look upon the Child as going into a hospital. Is it not so? Have they reared one? . . . I shall either send her to England, or put her in a Convent for education. . . . But the Child shall not quit me again to perish of Starvation, and green fruit, or be taught to believe that there is no Deity. Whenever there is convenience of vicinity and access, her Mother can always have her with her; otherwise no. It was so stipulated at the beginning.’80
Shelley had much difficulty in soothing Claire and keeping his own temper, but as ever, he found his own way of defending her to Byron. ‘[Claire] has consented to give up this journey to Ravenna. . . . When we meet I can explain to you some circumstances of misrepresentation respecting Allegra which, I think, will lead you to find an excuse for Claire’s anxiety. What letters she writes to you I know not; perhaps they are very provoking; but at all events it is better to forgive the weak. I do not say — I do not think — that your solutions are unwise; only express them mildly — and pray don’t quote me.’
Of the attacks upon his own household, he wrote with mild good humour, as he knew Byron would expect of him. ‘I smiled at your protest about what you consider my creed. On the contrary, I think a regard to chastity is quite necessary, as things are, to a young female — that is, to her happiness — and at any time a good habit. As to Christianity — there I am vulnerable; though I should be as little inclined to teach a child disbelief, as belief, as a formal creed. You are misinformed, too, as to our system of physical education . . . .’81
On about 7 July — there is some uncertainty about the exact date of his letter — Shelley finally received the news that he had been dreading and he wrote to the Gisbornes about Elena Shelley’s death, bitterly reproaching Paolo Foggi and the English at Livorno for their hatred and schemes and ‘most prodigious falsehoods’. That evening Claire notes that she walked with Shelley. No further record of their conversation remains. ‘As to us,’ Shelley wrote to the Gisbornes, ‘we are uncertain people who are chased by the spirit of our destiny from purpose to purpose, like clouds by the wind.’82
It is to these days of nagging domestic difficulties and secret gloom that Shelley’s effusive and perhaps understandably sentimental lyrics ‘The Cloud’, and ‘The Skylark’ belong. They reach longingly for t
he idea of escape into a world of immortal and effortless creativity. Mary thought them extremely fine: ‘It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle-hedges were the bowers of the fireflies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems.’ Both lyrics were dispatched to England just in time to be included in the printing of the Prometheus volume, probably on 12 July.83 It is possible that Claire’s acid note on the progress of the del Rosso lawsuit on 13 July contains a reference to ‘The Skylark’; ‘The Italians say to those who threaten to take the law, “Cantate cantate, e poi farete come la Cicala, scoppiarete” which alludes to the Cicada singing louder & louder if his stomach is rubbed until it finally hurts.’84
Shelley now turned to the more carefully controlled work of translating Homer’s long ‘Hymn to Mercury’, and wrote to Peacock: ‘the Libecchio here howls like a chorus of fiends all day, and the weather is just pleasant, — not at all hot, the days being very misty, and the nights divinely serene. I have been reading with much pleasure the Greek romances.’85 There was of course nothing about del Rosso, or Elena, or Claire. But there was a book list — a Greek grammar and exercises for Mary, Godwin’s Answer to Malthus, and optimistically, ‘Six copies of the 2nd edt. of “Cenci”’.86
On the 15th began an odd fortnight of alternate shuttling by Shelley and Claire between Pisa and Livorno. Consultations were going on with the Masons at the Casa Silva, and there was talk of finding Claire a separate position and situation outside the Shelley household, and perhaps outside Italy. In the meantime, Shelley was looking for retired and discreet lodgings where they might pass the heat of the summer, since the Bagni di Lucca, with its large English population, was now out of the question. Shelley visited Pisa on the 15th and returned on the 17th; while Claire stayed at the Casa Silva from the 18th to the 20th, riding over at the end in a calèsse with Mrs Mason and the two children, which then returned the same evening with Shelley, who again stayed until the 25th.87
Shelley explained to the Gisbornes: ‘We are about to take a villa about seven miles from Pisa — at least I think so. — Mary wishes for the mountains. Clare is yet with us, and is reading Latin and Spanish with great resolution. Poor thing! She is an excellent girl, though I don’t think she will ever become a witch. Mary, who, you know, is always wise, has been lately very good. I wish she were as wise now as she will be at 45, or as misfortune has made me. She would then live on very good terms with Clare. — We hear from Paris that Clare’s reception there, as an Englishwoman, is impossible: but our Irish friend [Helen Williams] is exerting herself to the utmost to discover some substitute. . . .’ This was written as a postscript to a letter of Mary’s, but Shelley said specifically that Mary had not read his ‘transverse writing’ — ‘so take no notice of it in any letter intended for her inspection’. He had also enclosed another piece of secret writing, either a poem, or something in connection with del Rosso.88 He still intended to keep Mary only partially informed of his affairs and feelings, and there were many inexplicable things in his correspondence at this time.
The scheme to get Claire away from the household was not abandoned. Various temporary measures were taken in August and September, until finally in October she was sent to Florence. This was to prove a separation as significant between Shelley and Claire, as that insisted upon by Mary in England during the spring of 1815. Shelley, as always, appeared deeply ambiguous towards these arrangements. He recognized that it was necessary for Claire to become independent, and he outwardly agreed and co-operated with Mary and the Masons when such arrangements were made. Yet he always contrived to see Claire at frequent intervals, and sometimes for several days at a time. In the private letters he wrote to her during October and November 1820, it is transparently clear that he missed her greatly, and was continually planning for her return. That a separation was finally brought about after two years together in Italy, was very largely the result of two circumstances: first, the mist of scandal that surrounded the del Rosso lawsuit; and second, the influence of Mrs Mason in her powerful personae as Lady Mountcashell and ‘Minerva’.
During his absences at Pisa, Shelley somehow found time to write to John Keats in London. Sad news had reached him through the Gisbornes of Keats’s first serious lung haemorrhage, which had occurred on the night after their visit to Hampstead of 22 June. He urged Keats to come to Italy to cure himself, and suggested his own household in Pisa or its environs. ‘Mrs Shelley unites with myself in urging the request, that you would take up your residence with us.’89
He also wrote again to Medwin at Geneva. Shelley had heard that Medwin had been touring the Alps with the Williamses, and he repeated his invitation to come south, referring longingly to their freedom of movement which he himself had once enjoyed. ‘How much I envy you, or rather how much I sympathise with your wandering. I have a passion for such expeditions, although partly the capriciousness of my health, and partly the want of the incitement of a companion, keep me at home. I see the mountains, the sky, and the trees from my windows and recollect, as an old man does the mistress of his youth, the raptures of a more familiar intercourse. . . .’90
At the end of July, Shelley succeeded in renting a good set of rooms at the little spa of the Bagni di Pisa, some four miles outside the city walls. On 2 August he returned to the Casa Ricci, bringing with him excitedly the latest news of the recent insurrection in Naples. He told Mary that he was quite happy now to forgo all thoughts of his long-delayed journey to England. ‘I have no thoughts of leaving Italy — the best thing we can do, is to save money, & if things take a decided turn (which I am convinced they will at last — but not perhaps for two or three years) it will be time for me to assert my rights and preserve my annuity . . . . Kiss sweet babe, & kiss yourself for me. I love you affectionately — P.B.S.’91
[1]The growth of a full economic analysis of the forces which were transforming the conditions of the English lower classes was painfully slow at this time. The main landmarks were David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817); James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy (1821) and the radical journal the Westminster Review founded by Bentham, Mill, Brougham and others in 1824. The 1830s brought the on-the-spot Blue Book reports of Sir Edwin Chadwick and Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. These separate analytic traditions combined in the two classics of the late-Chartist period, Frederick Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) and John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848). Both J. S. Mill and Engels acknowledged the profound influence of Shelley in their twenties. For a general survey, see J.L. and B. Hammond, The Skilled Labourer (1919); E. Halevy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (1928) and J.P. Guinn, Shelley’s Political Thought (1969).
[2]A Bill granting equal voting rights to men and women was not put through the English House of Commons until 1928.
[3]Here Shelley was clearly thinking of the recent trials of William Hone, Richard Carlile, Henry Hunt, Sir Francis Burdett and Thomas Wooler of the Black Dwarf; and also no doubt of the failure of his own editor and publisher to appear in the lists.
[4]To obtain an enlightening and sometimes not unamusing comparative estimate of the liveliness and progressiveness of Shelley’s thought, see the useful collection Political Tracts of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, edited by R.J. White, Cambridge University Press, 1953.
[5]The volume eventually appeared as Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama, in 4 Acts, with Other Poems in August 1820. Although accurate figures are unknown, it is reputed not to have sold more than a score of copies. But in June 1820, the name of The Cenci was on many readers’ lips in London, and the prospect looked fair.
[6]These cryptic entries by Mary and Claire are characteristic of the mysterious secrecy that always shrouded the manoeuvres of Paolo Foggi and the fate of Elena in all the extant personal documents of the Shelley household. Mary’s moon symbol could refer equally to Claire herself (though
elsewhere in Mary’s journal she is represented by a sun symbol); to Elise Foggi; or to little Elena (‘moon-child’ — illegitimate child? ‘moon-calf’ — abortion?). But it is impossible to interpret either this — or Claire’s nursery rhymes — with any certainty. Shelley’s correspondence is equally delphic or circumlocutory on these matters; Paolo’s motives, apart from greed, are reminiscent of Iago’s; and the del Rosso papers have never been discovered. However in general there is a clear sense of the nervous tension and extreme irritability brought about by Shelley’s difficulties over the illegitimate baby and what he called Paolo’s ‘infernal business’.
25. The Moons of Pisa: 1820
The road to the Bagni wound out from the northern gate of Pisa, and crossing the flat plain which is marked by occasional farm buildings and broken by the loosely cultivated lines of vines and vegetables, approached the distant curves of the Monte Pisano. On the way it picked up the line of the little canal which connects the Arno at Pisa with the Serchio at Lucca, finally crossing over by a stone bridge, shaded with plane trees, and entering the single half-crescent of stone buildings which form the tiny centre of the village, which was known locally as San Giuliano.
Huddled at the foot of the Monte Pisano, the crescent faced the solid, foursquare eighteenth-century building of the bagni proper, which was surmounted by a large clock flanked with decorative urns. Immediately behind it rose the steep sides of the mountains, covered with wild olives, and terraced on its lower slopes with walkways and pergolas which remained from the time of its original popularity during the period of the Medici. But San Giuliano at the time of Shelley’s arrival in August 1820 was like the rest of Pisa, in a period of decline, and except for local market days and fairs the village was not much frequented even by Italians from Pisa. Sporadically new researches were undertaken by the medical faculty at the university into the supposed curative properties of the waters. Traditionally it had been the resort of the Tuscan Court, but the shortness of the season, which tended to end abruptly in September with torrential flooding from the mountainside, had long since forced it to yield in popularity and elegance to the bagni at Lucca.
Shelley: The Pursuit Page 89