A difficult message to transmit to her noble father.
The dominant trait of the child seemed to Shelley to be vanity. Her education was defective, but she could recite a great many prayers by heart, spoke of Paradise, dreamed of it, and knew long lists of saints. This was the sort of training that Byron desired.
CHAPTER XXXII
MIRANDA
Great excitement such as travelling royalties always arouse reigned in the Pisan circle at the expected arrival of the Pilgrim. Mary, at Shelley’s request, had taken for him the Palazzo Lanfranchi, stateliest on the Lung’ Arno. Helped by the Williamses, she had done what she could to put this ancient palace in order. The vanguard arrived in the persons of the Guiccioli and her father, Count Gamba; the Shelleys gave them a cordial welcome. The Countess was an agreeable surprise. “She is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian,” Shelley wrote, “who, if I know anything of human nature and my Byron, will hereafter have plenty of opportunity to repent her rashness.”
When Don Juan himself followed, all Pisa was at the windows to see the English Devil and his menagerie. The procession was well worth seeing; five carriages, six men-servants, nine horses, dogs, monkeys, peacocks, and ibises, all in line. The Shelleys were a little anxious as to what Byron would think of the palazzo, but fortunately it pleased him. He said he liked these old places dating back to the Middle Ages. In reality it dated to the sixteenth century, and was said to have been built from designs by Michael Angelo, but the noble lord always mixed up hopelessly architectural styles. The dark and damp cellars in particular delighted him. He spoke of them as dungeons and subterranean cells, and had cushions taken down so that he might sleep there.
He became at once the social centre of the Pisan circle, while Shelley remained its moral centre. Byron was visited from curiosity and admiration; Shelley from sympathy. Shelley got up early and read Goethe, Spinoza or Calderon until midday; then he was off to the pine-woods, where he worked in solitude until evening. Byron got up at midday and, after a light breakfast, went for a ride, or to practise pistol-shooting. In the evening he visited the Guiccioli, and coming home at eleven, would often work until two or three in the morning. Then in a state of feverish cerebral excitement, he would go to bed, sleep badly, and remain in bed half the following day.
The English in Pisa made a dead set at him. Even the most Puritan amongst them could not be severe on an authentic lord who brought to them on foreign soil so delightful an epitome of London’s Vanity Fair. The pleasure he took in giving scandal, what was it but a mark of orthodox respect? If indifference is justly considered an offence, surely defiance must be accepted as a token of humility? And was it not patent that he could not exist without going into society, paying court to women, accepting dinners and returning them? He met with the greatest indulgence. But when he tried to win the same for Shelley, the resistance was thoroughly British. In society Shelley was bored and did not hide it. In questions of morality it was easy to guess that he put the Spirit before the Letter, that he believed in Redemption rather than in Original Sin. Faith in the perfectibility of man is naturally the most heinous of crimes, since if believed in, it would force one to work for man’s perfectibility. The mere smell of it makes society fly to arms for its destruction. All “nice” women treated the Shelleys as pariahs and outcasts.
Shelley laughed at this, preferring a thousand times the cool fresh air of night to the hot and smoky atmosphere of card-rooms. But Mary hankered to go everywhere. There was a certain Mrs. Beauclerc, gayest of English ladies in Pisa, who gave balls, “being afflicted,” as Byron said, “with a litter of seven daughters all at the age when these animals are obliged to waltz for their livelihood.” Mary’s fixed idea was to be invited to one of these balls. “Everybody goes to them,” she said. Shelley, distressed, looked up at the sky, “Everybody! Who is this mythical monster? Have you ever seen it, Mary?”
To win the favour of “everybody” she even went to Church Service, but the parson preached against Atheists, and kept looking at her in such a marked manner that, in spite of her desire to conform, her dignity as a wife prevented her from ever going again.
All these social worries, balls and dinner parties, seemed to Shelley of an incredible vulgarity. When he was a boy of twenty, he had judged fashionable life as criminal, now it appeared to him contemptible, which was much more serious. To escape from Mary’s absurd reproaches and regrets, he would take refuge with the Williamses. There he found anew the harmonious and affectionate atmosphere that was essential to him. Edward Williams had a gay, generous nature in which there was nothing petty. Jane’s grace and sweetness, the gentleness of her movements, the soothing beauty of her voice, were as reposeful and pleasant as some delightful garden. Perhaps in his youth she would have pleased Shelley less. Then he dreamed always of heroic qualities in women, but to-day he asked from them the gift of forgetfulness rather than courage and strength.