Only the heart refused to burn, though in the hottest of the flame. Tre snatched it forth, and burnt his hand so doing. When all was done, and the pyre burnt out, he gathered the ashes together, put them in an oaken box, paid his soldiers, and went off to Rome with his parcel.
A chapter of his life had come to an end. The little group dispersed, Byron remained to quarrel on with the Hunts, the widows went to England. Tre had been a staunch and helpful friend, and Mary Shelley never forgot the debt. She could write later that Trelawny’s conduct “impressed us all with an affectionate regard and a perfect faith in the unalterable goodness of his heart.” She knew that it was good to have a friend. The Gentleman’s Magazine, on hearing of the drowning, had remarked, “Mr. Percy Shelley is a fitter subject for the penitentiary dying speech than a lauding elegy, for a muse of the rope rather than that of the cypress.”
Italy in the autumn, and an empty world. Tre lingered on a year, and found diversion in riding about the countryside. An American-born negro followed him as a groom; the peasants stared at the strange pair galloping by.
Then came a letter from Byron, and life began again with adventure and war.
IV
The Greeks had risen against their Turkish masters, a committee of enthusiastic lovers of liberty had been formed in London to advance the cause, and this committee had persuaded Byron to act as their agent in Greece. From the point of view of what the cant of the day calls publicity, the choice was an excellent one; considered with a harsh and practical eye, it was absurd. This nervous, temperamental artist with the habits and posing mannerisms of a regency beau, this traveller who scarce could walk a hundred yards on his shrunken and deformed feet, yet hid his pain and weakness in a cloak of attitudes,—surely here was no man to manage a horde of wily Levantines all trying to advance their own fortunes, and snatch what they could for themselves of the English subsidy.
Having accepted the task, Byron turned at once to the practical friend. “My dear T,” he wrote, “you must have heard that I am going to Greece. Why do you not come to me? I want your aid, and am exceedingly anxious to see you.”
War and adventure! Trelawny wasted no time in exchanging the vineyards of Italy for Grecian mountain slopes and olive trees. Then came a mistake. He abandoned Byron, and went off to adventure by himself.
Tre had never really liked the noble lord, perhaps because Byron, being a man of the world, had a clearer understanding than Shelley of Trelawny the man and his place in life. A stray letter of Claire Clairmont’s, Byron’s sometime mistress, suggests that Tre secretly cherished resentment for some sharp remark. Whatever the explanation may be of Tre’s hidden attitude, the practical man had no intention of wasting his time with the poet, but left him to his fate. He seems to have forgotten that he had come to Greece with Byron and at Byron’s invitation and suggestion.
“I well knew that once on shore, Byron would fall back on his old routine of dawdling habits, plotting, planning, shilly-shallying and doing nothing,” he complained. And again, “Could I then longer waste my life in union with such imbecility, amid such scenes as there are here, when there is excitement enough to move the dead?”