Shelley: The Pursuit

by Richard Holmes

  On the eve of his departure, Shelley completed a long letter to Mary, in which he reviewed the prospects and consequences of Byron coming to Pisa, and debated whether they themselves should remain there during the winter months, or move to Florence with Horace Smith. ‘. . . With Lord Byron & the people we know at Pisa we should have a security & protection which seems to be more questionable in Florence.’ But he left the ultimate decision to Mary: ‘ — judge (I know you like the job).’

  He then embarked on a long soliloquy on the need to choose a more definite form of social life. He saw two alternatives ahead of him: either complete retirement and obscurity with Mary and his child; or else the development of the larger community of friends, with a wider general purpose. This was the first revelation to Mary of the problem that had occupied his own mind during the summer. To an extent, the terms of the choice were a mature echo of those in the letter to Hogg, long ago in 1814, when he described the implications of the choice between Harriet — his then legal wife — and Mary Godwin (and Claire) the interlopers.52 The result, in both cases, was a foregone conclusion by the time he came to express it on paper. But he wanted Mary to know and understand the way his mind had been working, and he was honest enough to admit to Mary that even if he had chosen the first alternative his ‘imagination’ would probably still have strayed:

  My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society. I would retire with you & our child to a solitary island in the sea, would build a boat, & shut upon my retreat the floodgates of the world. — I would read no reviews & talk with no authors. — If I dared trust my imagination it would tell me that there were two or three chosen companions besides yourself whom I should desire. — But to this I would not listen. — Where two or three are gathered together the devil is among them, and good far more than evil impulses — love far more than hatred — has been to me, except as you have been its object, the source of all sorts of mischief. So on this plan I would be alone & would devote either to oblivion or to future generations the overflowings of [my] mind. . . . But this it does not appear that we shall do.

  It was not in the end a realistic possibility for Shelley. One suspects too, that the Wollstonecraft blood would have rebelled against this retreat from ‘all human society’ just as much as Shelley’s imagination. As for the devil, Shelley’s relations with Him had always been particularly productive.

  On the other hand lay the broader and preferable choice:

  The other side of the alternative (for a medium ought not to be adopted) — is to form for ourselves a society of our own class, as much as possible, in intellect or in feeling; & to connect ourselves with the interests of that society. — Our roots were never struck so deeply as at Pisa & the transplanted tree flourishes not. — People who lead the lives which we led until last winter are like a family of Wahabee Arabs pitching their tent in the midst of London. We must do one thing or the other: for yourself, for our child, for our existence. . . .53

  Shelley underwrote this second alternative by pointing out that within a society of their own at Pisa, they would be far less vulnerable to the kind of calumnies and blackmail attempts which had plagued them since 1820. As Shelley described the ‘society of our own class in intellect and feeling’, there was no mention of a wider social purpose or ‘utility’ as there would have been in the old Godwinian days. Yet his actions on returning to Pisa soon showed that political and literary projects were very much at the front of his mind.

  Having assured La Guiccioli that Milord’s removal from Ravenna was now inevitable, Shelley departed from the Circean Palace on 17 August. Farewells were made with great cordiality, though it emerged that Shelley had not passed his time without undergoing a bestial transmogrification — like the other inmates. He had become the Snake, and is referred to as such in Byron’s letters and recorded talk from this time on. Byron later explained that it was a ‘buffoonery’ of his: ‘Goethe’s Mephistopheles calls the Serpent who tempted Eve “my aunt the renowned Snake” and I always insist that Shelley is nothing but one of her Nephews walking about on the tip of his tail.’54 But Byron omitted to mention that he had been given this joke by Shelley. In the finale to his amusing atheistic ‘Essay on the Devil’, Shelley had blithely described the outcome of the successful temptation in the Garden of Eden:

  God on this occasion, it is said, assigned a punishment to the Serpent that its motion should be as it now is along the ground upon its belly. We are given to suppose that, before this misconduct, it hopped along on its tail, a mode of progression which, if I was a serpent, I should think the severer punishment of the two. The Christians have turned this Serpent into their Devil. . . .55

  There is also one fine fragment of Shelley’s poetry which seems to refer to the magical associations of the name:

  Wake the serpent not — lest he

  Should not know the way to go, —

  Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping

  Through the deep grass of the meadow!

  Not a bee shall hear him creeping,

  Not a may-fly shall awaken

  From its cradling blue-bell shaken,

  Not the starlight as he’s sliding

  Through the grass with silent gliding.56

  Shelley arrived back in Pisa, full of the news of his capture of Lord Byron, on 20 August. He found Claire staying peacefully at San Giuliano, and Edward Williams completing a large portrait of Mary. Mary’s clean-copying of Valperga was advancing rapidly, and she was in good humour. Shelley’s news was greeted with much enthusiasm. Claire entered wonderingly in her diary, ‘Very unexpected news of Albe’s near arrival.’57 Within two days, he was busily negotiating for the lease of Palazzo Lanfranchi on the Lung’Arno, a splendid marble palace of the sixteenth century, with its own landing steps down to the Arno. Notes in courtly Italian flew to La Guiccioli in Florence, keeping her posted of developments. On the 26th he wrote to Byron that the lease was secured at 400 crowns a year, and that he was looking for extra stables in the proximity. He asked firmly for explicit instructions concerning furnishings.58

  With this first stage of his plan put in motion, Shelley now wrote a momentous letter to Leigh Hunt in London, the first for several months. After the failure of Shelley’s writings of 1819 and 1820 to reach their public, Hunt had become less important to Shelley in his literary capacity, and most of their dwindling correspondence had discussed domestic matters, particularly Hunt’s ill-health and now chronic state of debt. To this had been added the expenses of trying to educate no less than six very lively and intelligent children. But Hunt had never been far from Shelley’s mind, and he now burst upon Hampstead the second part of the plan which had taken shape at Ravenna. It was to be a major publishing venture, based on the English colony now about to form at Pisa.

  Shelley put the plan in its pristine shape: ‘My dearest friend, Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. . . . He proposes that you should come and go shares with him and me, in a periodical work [The Liberal], to be conducted here; in which each of the contracting parties should publish all their original compositions, and share the profits. . . . There can be no doubt that the profits of any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, must, from various yet co-operating reasons, be very great. As to myself, I am, for the present, only a sort of link between you and him, until you can know each other and effectuate the arrangement; since (to entrust you with a secret which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord Byron), nothing would induce me to share in the profits, and still less in the borrowed splendour of such a partnership. . . .’ As far as paying off Hunt’s inescapable debts, and financing the actual journey to Italy, Shelley suggested that he would ‘make up an impudent face’ and ask Horace Smith when he arrived in Florence during September. He preferred not to turn to the most obvious, and presumably most willing and able source, Lord Byron, because ‘there are men, however excellent, from whom we would never receive an obligation, in the worldly sense of the word’.59<
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  Hunt took a little time to absorb the full implications of this proposal, and his first reply from Hampstead was non-committal. But what Shelley had said about the inevitable pulling power of such a partnership in terms of readership, and the resulting profits, was perfectly realistic. A combination of the most capable and most widely disliked liberal editor of the decade, with the most celebrated and most notorious poet of his generation in England — if not in Europe — was, in terms of literary and political publicity, a virtually foregone success. The only two real problems were the organization and administration of a sufficient capital sum to launch the project (Shelley was probably thinking of Horace Smith handling Byron’s money); and the setting up in the somewhat unlikely backwater of Pisa, means of printing and distributing a sufficiently rapid and regular flow of copy to the capitals of France and England. A third, less definable difficulty was the human relations between the three principals, all of whom were as prospective business partners highly explosive and unreliable material.

  But Hunt soon came to see the project in a more favourable light, after weighing these factors against the possible prize, and having had realistic talks with his brother and fellow-editor John Hunt about financial affairs. He saw, very quickly, the value of his own experience in the day-to-day business of organizing such a periodical; though he also realized, no less clearly, the human problem. Shelley’s own excessive modesty, and his apparently high-minded wish to remain anonymous and receive no profits, was itself — Hunt grasped at once — a divisive rather than a unifying factor.

  Hunt wrote to Pisa, accepting the plan in principle, at the end of September. He commented: ‘I agree to [Byron’s] proposal with less scruple because I have had a good deal of experience in periodical writing, and know what the getting up of the machine requires, as well as the soul of it. You see I am not so modest as you are by a great deal, and do not mean to let you be so either. What! are there not three of us? And ought we not to have as much strength and variety as possible? We will divide the world between us, like the Triumvirate, and you shall be the sleeping partner, if you will; only it shall be with a Cleopatra, and your dreams shall be worth the giving of kingdoms.’ Leaving the subject as if settled by this doubtful specimen of the Hunt Pun, he turned to discuss travelling methods and Mary’s novel, which he awaited anxiously. Shelley was deeply pleased by the success of his strategy.60

  Feeling in this commanding mood, Shelley addressed himself to Ollier on 25 September. The main subject of his letter was Mary’s Valperga or, Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, for which Mary wanted a single commission on the first edition, irrespective of sales. Shelley was very specific and firm about the matter: he wanted an advance of one-third of the agreed sum by Christmas 1821, and the remaining two-thirds paid at twelve — and eighteen-monthly intervals according to a signed contract. Moreover he wanted the proofs sent to Italy by overland post for Mary’s personal correction before final printing. The sum which Mary was asking seems to have been in the region of £500, and she intended to make over all profits to the assistance of her father Godwin.61 Shelley also briskly inquired after his own works: was there any chance of a second edition of The Revolt of Islam, for he ‘could materially improve that poem on revision’? And what was happening to the Pisan edition of Adonais, which Shelley considered ‘the least imperfect of my compositions’? And when did Ollier require Part II of his Defence of Poetry? — as for Part 1, Ollier could do what he liked with it. These questions never received satisfactory answers. Shelley mentioned his progress on the long-projected drama ‘Charles the First’: ‘Unless I am sure of making something good, the play will not be written.’ Still, he was ‘full of great plans; and, if I should tell you them, I should only add to the list of riddles.’ He added in a postscript that Valperga had ‘not the smallest tincture of any peculiar theories in politics or religion’.62[6]

  During the rest of September and early October Shelley’s time was largely taken in organizing Byron’s palace-moving, and linking up the affairs of his other prospective Pisans. To Hunt he fired off advice about travel routes, cutlery and linen. The best itinerary for autumn travel, with its westerly winds, was to embark at the Port of London and sail directly through the Mediterranean to Livorno. But this could not be left until too late in the season. The passage should take between twelve days and three weeks. But if Hunt came by Paris and Marseilles, he should still ship ‘your beds, your piano etc but not tables chairs etc — because freightage is not payed by weight but by room’. Shelley had a last throw at another old friend: ‘Hogg will be inconsolable at your departure. I wish you could bring him with you — he will say that I am like Lucifer who has seduced the third part of the starry flock.’ He had recently used the simile of Dante’s circle of poets.63

  To Byron he wrote of eight wagons dispatched from Florence to carry his Lordship’s hand luggage (it had nearly been made sixteen by an oversight) and kept him in good humour by a dexterous employment of interesting subjects. ‘My convent friend [Emilia Viviani], after a great deal of tumult, &c., is at length married, and is watched by her brother-in-law with great assiduity. . . . They have made a great fuss at Pisa about my intimacy with this lady. Pray do not mention anything of what I told you; as the whole truth is not known and Mary might be very much annoyed at it. “Don Juan” Cantos 3, 4 and 5,1 see are just published in Paris. . . . “Don Juan” is your great victory over the alleged inflexibility of your powers; and interest must be made to take an embargo off such precious merchandise. I have seen the Countess [Guiccioli] frequently, and I pronounce you secure against any of my female friends here. I will trust you with Mrs Williams. Have you formed any plan for Allegra here?. . .’64 Byron was expected any time from the beginning of October, but his Lordship had a penchant for late entries on any important social occasion.

  The only setback to Shelley’s plan at this stage was the disappointing news that Horace Smith’s wife had been taken ill with dysentery and fever at Paris, brought on by the unaccustomed heat, and could on no account be persuaded to move further south than the suburbs of Versailles that season. Smith was obviously bitterly disappointed himself, as his ambition to visit Florence had been lifelong, and he had also quickly realized that the presence of Byron at Pisa would ‘doubtless impart a little more life to the humdrumosity of that dull & learned City’.65 Both Shelley and Mary much regretted Smith’s decision, and Shelley was inclined to tempt him over Mrs Smith’s head with visions of an especially lovely house on the Arno. He did not entirely give him up. In the meantime Shelley asked him the favour of purchasing three books which were to have a significant bearing on the writing of the coming winter and spring: a complete edition of Calderón, a French translation of Kant and a German Faust.66

  In this bustle of arrangements, time was still found for a peaceful seaside expedition of four days duration to the Gulf of Spezia. Shelley’s only companions were Mary and Claire, and on the road out, they picnicked under the olive trees, as in the old days. At Spezia they spent one afternoon sailing, and another riding; while on their leisurely return journey they visited the marble mines of Carrara, gazing up with awe at their towering cliffs of white and ochre, and walking quietly under the large autumnal moon.67 One consequence of this little holiday was the firm tactical decision for Shelley and Mary to make their winter home at Pisa, while Claire should return alone for Christmas to Florence. For the first time ever in Italy they decided to furnish their own house, and on their return, Claire was dispatched back to Livorno with instructions to vary her German exercises with shopping expeditions for suitable chairs and beds and tables.68

  While the Shelleys, and the Williams and La Guiccioli and most of the rest of Pisan society impatiently awaited the appearance of the Byronic carriage on the road from Florence, Shelley suddenly and rather unexpectedly found himself engaged in another long poem. Since Prince Mavrocordato’s departure in the summer, news of the Grecian struggle had been filtering back into Italy. The Tuscan cities in parti
cular found themselves the centre of the latest reports and rumours, since Livorno like Marseilles, had become one of the Philhellenes’ regular ports of embarkation. The Tuscan government fed and quartered Greek patriots returning from the Wallachian struggle via the Mediterranean to the Morea. Prince Argyropoli, Mavrocordato’s cousin, had remained in Pisa, and was a hot source of Greek news, while Edward Williams shared and encouraged Shelley’s passionate identification with this new focus of the revolutionary struggle.69 These circumstances combined to inspire Shelley in the composition of a verse drama on the Greek war, based on The Persians of Aeschylus, and later christened by Williams, Hellas.

  Hellas seems to have been begun at Livorno. Shelley unexpectedly appeared at Claire’s lodgings on the evening of 5 October, after having sent her the upsetting news that Byron would not be bringing Allegra with him to Pisa.70 Shelley stayed alone with Claire for the next few days, and began writing his drama. Claire’s own entry states that they read Schiller’s play Joan of Arc together in German — Claire tutoring Shelley. On the 6th there was ‘Thunder & Lightning all Night’, and on the 8th she and Shelley drank tea with some Italian friends. On the 9th Shelley helped Claire pack up her belongings, and that evening they arrived at San Giuliano at 8 o’clock.

  Shelley announced Hellas to Ollier, two days after he had returned to the Bagni on 11 October, saying that its subject was ‘in a certain degree transitory’, and that it should be immediately advertised since it would ‘soon be ready’.71 The drama was actually posted to Ollier a month later, on 11 November, for ‘immediate publication’.