by Lona Manning
“Oh, no doubt I said that, and much more,” the man said, suddenly reassuming his original cheerfulness. “So, did you find another writer?”
Ordinarily, Mary would have answered that her affairs were no business of his, especially since he had declined her generous offer so peremptorily, but the setting and the devil-may-care attitude of her companion led her to reply, “No, I abandoned the scheme. At least for now.”
“I see. Well, I might entertain myself by arguing you back into it, just to test my powers of persuasion,” answered the man. “How extraordinary it is, that we should happen to meet again! I am no mathematician, but this cannot be mere chance. What can this signify?”
He took a step closer and peered at her in a near-sighted way, and although they were alone in the woods, Mary did not feel in the least alarmed. He was not intimidating, even though she could not have vouched for his complete sanity; he seemed as harmless as a child. He was tall but slight of build. His features were graceful, almost feminine; his brow was clear and open, his lips were full and pink and he had the downy complexion of a school boy. In London, she had been surprised at his youthful appearance, given his undeniable abilities with his pen. But now, even though he still possessed that same high-pitched voice that she recalled, and his tall, lithe form moved with the graceful ease of a youth, she saw the laugh lines at the corner of his eyes, and there were a few streaks of grey in his hair.
He silently studied her, just as she studied him, unhurriedly, taking in her slender figure, her lively dark eye, and her clear brown complexion. Finally he stepped back, and with a graceful gesture, indicated a large, flat-topped, smooth, boulder under the dappled shade of the chestnut trees, on which they could both sit.
The circumstance of their first encounter and their re-introduction was indeed, rather remarkable, so that Mary was not at all unwilling to review all the details. In the early months of last year, during the cold and dismal English winter, she had gone to Gray’s Inn to consult an attorney on some points of law, and while waiting in his office, she picked up a pamphlet from a side table, something to do with reforms to the system of elections—
“A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom,” prompted her listener, evidently expecting that the title of the pamphlet, once seen, should be engraved upon her memory.
“I thought to myself that the writer of the pamphlet—you, that is— might be able to undertake the work of re-writing my husband’s sermons. Your prose was so direct, yet so passionate, and as well, you published anonymously. I thought you might not object to having your words printed under another man’s name.”
“Had I published the pamphlet under my own name, madam, I should have gone to prison for sedition. I distributed copies only to a few of my closest friends and associates. Mr. Longdill was very careless in leaving it about, even in his office.” The man began to laugh again. “He wanted a copy of everything I had written so that—in his words—’he might know the worst.’“
“You were imprudent to have published the work without the protection of someone powerful in the government. What is your name?” Mary suddenly thought to ask. “I think we never learnt each other’s names. I asked Mr. Longdill if he knew the author of the pamphlet, and he said, in fact, you were in the adjoining room!”
“Yes, I recall,” exclaimed the man. “I lived in Marlow at the time--hence, my pen name, ‘The Hermit of Marlow’-- I was in town that day, revising my reply to the Courts of Chancery, and Longdill came in and said a lady wanted to meet me, on a matter of some delicacy. You never told me your name, either.”
“True. What a difference it makes to be sitting upon an hillside in Tuscany, rather than in a solicitor’s office in the heart of London! There, I should not have told you my name for the world, not unless you had accepted my proposition. But what does it signify now.” And Mary gave her name of ‘Mary Crawford.’
“Mary!” exclaimed the man, shaking his head. “No, I cannot think of you as Mary. I always bestow special names on all my friends. If I am a faun, you must be a nymph. What say you to Egregia? Or Arethusa?”
“‘Mrs. Crawford’ will be perfectly adequate, I think.”
The man nodded agreeably, as though he had not noticed the rebuke in her voice. “My name is Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
“How do you do, Mr. Shelley.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Crawford.”
“Percy Shelley... now, I recollect, I have seen your name before,” mused Mary. “In Chamonix. Mount Blanc. We—that is, my husband and I—came across your signature in the guest register.”
“And your husband, being the learned, pious, divine that he is, read the Greek inscription I added?”
Mary nodded. “I asked him what it meant, and he said, ‘Percy Bysshe Shelley, Democrat, Lover of Mankind, Atheist.’ He said he had heard of you before, and that you had a fine disregard for public opinion, and must therefore have inured yourself to the consequences.”
Shelley brightened. “He had heard of me? From that insulting notice in the Quarterly Review or had he actually read something of my work?”
“Indeed, I did not ask him.”
Shelley’s smile faded again. “It matters not. I am beyond caring what the world says of me.”
He stirred in his seat and began ripping the heads off a patch of wild grass which grew at his side. “This much I do not seek to conceal from myself—I am an outcast from human society, my name is execrated by the powerful, and they have prejudiced the very beings I sought to help, against me.”
“Oh....” was all Mary could say. She had been on the point of laughing at him for his self-importance, then realised, with astonishment, that she had been thinking exactly the same thoughts about herself, hardly a moment before. She, too, was an outcast, unjustly shut out from the world.
Her strange companion came out of his brief reverie, shook his head and exclaimed, “—but, again, how extraordinary it is that we should first meet at old Longdill’s office, then you should follow me across the Channel—”
“I? Follow you? I think not,” protested Mary, but Shelley did not hear her.
“—and trace my wandering steps to Switzerland, along the same road, staying at the same lodgings, and now, here in this quiet village, to meet again? Am I your lodestar? Are we in the hands of Fate? Did I, in refusing to assist you, temporarily thwart an inescapable destiny?”
“You are presumptuous, Mr. Shelley!” Mary began, then reconsidered. “Well, that would certainly be the conventional, the properest thing, for me to say. Since you profess indifference to the opinion of the world, my remonstrances will count for little. I think it is not so very extraordinary that our paths should cross. It should not be a matter of astonishment that Englishmen abroad will be found in Paris, or at Mount Blanc and Lake Como. Even in this little village I have seen a number of familiar faces, travellers I recognise from Pisa and Florence.”
Shelley laughed. “Your countenance tells me you silently add— ‘though, thank heaven, I was under no necessity of acknowledging the acquaintance!’ You know, Mrs. Crawford, I first ventured across France when the ashes were still cooling from the late war. Nowadays, you cannot take ten steps in Europe without encountering an Englishman, can you? And the most ignorant, tiresome, venal, insufferable specimens of Englishmen—I can see you agree with me entirely!”
“To be sure. And what is worse, they all presume the privilege of acquaintanceship by virtue of being English! Persons to whom one would never speak, back in London.”
“Oh, as to what the world calls rank, I am perfectly indifferent. True nobility is one of shared understanding, shared sentiment,” Shelley replied with a little wave of his hand. “But, madam—” and this was accompanied by a graceful half-bow— “I am honoured to re-encounter you here, in this place, and I apologise for my perverse behaviour in London, which prevented us from becoming good friends, as Destiny clearly intends for us to do.”
“Do not suppose I
am on the point of giving you a sermon, Mr. Shelley, but in Chamonix, as you know, everyone was in raptures over Mount Blanc. But you, sir, in the very shadow of that mountain, proclaimed yourself to be an atheist. I only wish to understand—how can you believe in Destiny? What is Destiny, and what form does it take? You believe my footsteps have been guided here somehow. How can that be, if there is no divine hand to guide them?”
Shelley rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Ah! My dear Mrs. Crawford, you have made me so happy. To meet a clever, talking, Englishwoman!”
“You were not so taken with me at our first meeting, Mr. Shelley.”
“Ah, but if you only knew the agonies I was in, at that time! Both physical and mental. I might have appeared to be uncivil to you.”
“Uncivil! You only laughed in my face and told me to take my money and give it to the Devil!”
“And yet now, we meet again as old friends. Promise me you will spend the day with me. Let us dine together, let us talk for hours, and watch the sun set together. Nothing else will satisfy me. Pray permit me to walk back into town beside you—where are you staying? Is it comfortable? You must give me every moment that you can. I could talk with you forever.”
And after so exclaiming, Shelley leapt to his feet and with great agility climbed back up to his boulder-pulpit, and retrieved his shoes, stockings, book and hat.
Mary did not object to abandoning her plans for an interval of solitude in favour of passing the day in this strange man’s company. She fascinated him, and should he cease to interest her, she could always dismiss him. She was, after all, free to do as she pleased. Edmund had told her so.
* * * * * * *
Mary passed through many different states of mind during that day spent in Percy Shelley’s company. At first, her interest in him almost gave way to irritation. She could hardly credit his sincerity—surely no adult man was so mercurial in his moods, so very sensibly affected by all that he saw, heard and thought. His ideas tumbled out like the waterfall he had chosen for his outdoor study room: when he spoke of England and its rulers, he grew vehemently angry; when relating an anecdote of his days in Oxford, he laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks, when stopping to question a little beggar child by the road, he was the picture of solicitude, and while listening to her, expressions of delight, even veneration, lit up his countenance. He was intensely alive, intensely attuned to every fleeting moment, unlike any other person she had ever encountered. Some might have thought him feminine in his manners, certainly there was a captivating gentleness, but the vitality of his air, the intensity of his expressions, were so stimulating as to be rather unsettling.
How could a man feel so acutely, and be the captive of every passing thought and emotion? The sensibilities that resided in so fragile a frame would surely overwhelm and destroy its host, as a strong fever consumes an invalid.
Perhaps this explained why Mr. Shelley had aged several years in the brief span of time between their first encounter and today. He had been ill as well, he told her. Something was amiss with his liver—something, he remarked with cheerful resignation, which would kill him one day.
As her guest was so slender of build that he appeared in danger of being blown down the hillside by the next puff of wind, Mary resolved to provide him with an ample dinner. But Shelley ignored Madame Ciampi’s chicken in wine and dined only on bread, pulling pieces from a fresh-baked loaf, waving the bits about enthusiastically as he discoursed on a dizzying multitude of topics, including the reality of ghosts, the hardships and poverty of English lace-makers, and his frustrated poetical career.
“Do you have a work in progress, Mr. Shelley?”
“Alas. My Muse is silent. I moved heaven and earth to come to Italy so that I could write, and—nothing. I have nothing.”
“What were you reading, when I came upon you? One of your own compositions?”
“I was looking at my friend Peacock’s new poem. Have you read anything of his?” He went on before she could answer, “but mostly I have been studying Plato. They did not teach him in Oxford. The private habits of the Greeks, you know—not considered proper reading matter for undergraduates.”
“My husband attended Oxford as well.”
“Your husband? The clergyman with the deficient writing style? What is he—is he a hail-fellow-well-met, fond of hunting and shooting, an obliging guest at any stately home, grateful for a good dinner and a bottle of claret?”
“Indeed, that is the common sketch of the country clergyman but no, my husband claims he entered upon the profession willingly. But he does enjoy hunting.”
Mary offered her guest some cheese. He took a piece and placed it carefully on his plate.
“Claims to have? You do not know his true sentiments? Does he believe in the Thirty-Nine Articles—the Virgin Birth—Lazarus being raised from the dead? Can he be a true disciple of Christ if he derives pleasure from blood sports? If, for his own amusement, he torments the gentle trout with his barbed hook, and brings the beautiful pheasant down from the sky, weltering in its own blood? Does he chase the poor, exhausted fox to a terrified death in the jaws of his hunting dogs?”
Mary enjoyed fox-hunting herself, and she looked particularly fetching on horseback in her red jacket and top hat, so she protested: “These pursuits—well, save for the fox-hunting of course—provide meat for the table. But I observe, Mr. Shelley, you have not partaken of anything but bread and raisins.”
Shelley was expounding on the moral necessity of an all-vegetable diet when the church bell chimed the hour, and her strange guest broke off and exclaimed— “is it really three o’clock already? I was supposed to meet my new landlord at one o’clock—I quite forgot. My dear Mrs. Crawford, pray allow me to call on you tomorrow.”
And he left—without offering to settle the bill for the meal, as any gentleman might have.
* * * * * * *
On the following day, Mary and her new companion began by admiring the fine prospects afforded by their walk along the Lima river, and the growth of this or that handsome tree. But Shelley’s mind habitually soared above the clouds, in the highest levels of the firmament. What the world calls polite small talk made no part of his conversation.
Peculiar, self-centred and childlike though he was, Shelley was entirely engaging. He talked, in fact, better than most people could write. They had visited many of the same cities in Italy, admired the same ruins, traipsed through the same cathedrals, viewed the same paintings. But his recollections were so well-expressed, his taste so discriminating, his observations so interesting, so as to make her feel she had looked without seeing half of what she saw. And like her late brother, he bestowed his entire attention upon her, as though she were the only woman in the world, and he was privileged to listen to her. When she said she did not really care for Byron’s poetry, he cheerfully disputed her, but seemed especially delighted when she would not yield in her disapprobation.
They were sitting together on a low stone wall, overlooking a stand of chestnuts, and he asked for her life story, and she found herself relating it all to him; in fact, she confided in him as she had never unburdened herself to anyone since her brother Henry’s death.
She told him the story of how she had lost Henry, of how her own husband Edmund had challenged him to a duel.
Shelley was transfixed by Mary’s relation of the tragedy, and when she described the duplicity of Fanny Price, he exclaimed. “If she had not misled your husband, then your husband would not have challenged your brother and he would not have died in an accident on his way to the duelling grounds. What a chain of events—truly, it unfolds like a Greek tragedy! If only I were a better dramatist, I should be unable to resist proclaiming your wrongs to the world.
“Except,” he added, in a calmer tone, “except that ‘Fanny’ is no very good name for the villainess. All the Fannys I have known were exceptionally sweet-tempered.”
Mary had to brush away some awkward feelings here, for in describing the
events leading to her brother’s death, she had excused his errors, softening down everything that was selfish, deceitful and reckless in his behaviour, and she had thrown the greatest possible opprobrium upon the actions and motives of the others.
She protested, “I cannot condemn my husband entirely.” Shelley exclaimed over her saintly nature, as Mary added that Edmund was a good man, a well-principled man, but unfortunately very cold-tempered. He could not properly understand her, a creature of deep feeling.
Shelley’s countenance lit up with exquisite sympathy. He appeared to share her sorrows with every particle of his being. To her surprise, Mary found herself weeping in his arms.
“It is like being trapped in ice, is it not?” he exclaimed softly, his breath brushing her ear. “Waiting, hoping, longing for some smile of warmth, some humanity. Two souls bound together in the most intimate ties, yet separated by a wall of reserve, of reproach, the living coupled with the dead.”
Mary was pleased to be so well understood, at last! And she realized that she knew nothing at all of the man who was now embracing her. She pulled back, Shelley released her instantly. She asked him to tell her of himself. Shelley drew his knees close to his chest and gently rocked back and forth on top of the wall as he recounted why he was at Mr. Longdill’s office on that January day a year and a half ago.
When he was not even nineteen years old, a beautiful young school-girl grew enamoured of him. She became his eager disciple. As he swept away the cobwebs of superstition from her mind, she fell passionately in love with him. “So, neither of us being of age, we eloped to Scotland.”
He leaned forward and picked up some large pebbles scattered about the ground at their feet, and began to idly throw them into the river.
“But after several years of marriage, the inequality of her understanding and the limitations of her temperament made our life together unendurable.” He looked at Mary in a pleading fashion. “Everyone who knows me must know that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriet could do neither. We parted, although I was resolved to always be her firm friend and protector. But she became the mistress of another—or so I heard.