But a man must live; a man must divert himself. Most especially must a man do so when, as Byron expressed it, his household gods lay shivered around him—when his home was broken up and his child was taken away—when rumours as intangible as abominable were afloat to his dishonour—when the society of which he had been the bright particular star was turning its back on him. Even the love, or what passed for such, of a stage-struck girl of seventeen, could be welcome in such a case, and it would not be difficult to give something which could pass for love in return for it.
That was what happened—and that was all that happened. Miss Clairmont told Mr. Graham, in so many words, that she never loved Byron, but was only “dazzled” by him. It is written in Byron’s letters—from which there shall be quotations in due course—and it is amply demonstrated by his conduct, that he never loved Miss Clairmont, but only accepted favours which she pressed upon him, and suffered her to help him to live at a time when life was difficult.
The credit of having done that for him, however, should be freely given to her. The appointment which she made with him at Geneva touched his flight from England with romance. His reception by the generality of English residents on the Continent was very, very doubtful. It would have been painful to him to travel across Europe, defying opinion in solitude; but he and Shelley and Mary Godwin and Jane Clairmont could defy it in company and laugh; and it was with this confident assurance in his mind that, as Hobhouse writes, “the dear fellow pulled off his cap and waved it” when the Ostend packet glided out of Dover harbour.
CHAPTER XXIII
LIFE AT GENEVA—THE AFFAIR WITH JANE CLAIRMONT
“From Brussels,” as Moore magniloquently puts it, “the noble traveller pursued his course along the Rhine.” At Geneva he joined Shelley and his party who had taken the shorter route across France; and it would seem that he felt the need of all the moral support which their companionship could give him.
Concerning the nature of his reception in Switzerland, indeed, there is a good deal of conflicting testimony; but the balance of the evidence points to its having been unfavourable. His own statement is that he “retired entirely from society,” with the exception of “some occasional intercourse with Coppet at the wish of Madame de Staël”; but there are indications that the retirement was not voluntary, and that, even at Coppet, his welcome was something less than enthusiastic. On the former point we may quote the letters of Lady Westmorland, just published by Lady Rose Weigall:
“Lord Byron has been very coldly received here both by the natives and by the English. No one visited him, though there is much curiosity about him. He has been twice to Coppet.”