Of course, Shelley’s idolatry of his hero was not always maintained at this pitch of enthusiasm. There were moments when the worm turned against his God, and wrote disparagingly of him. But the foregoing passages from Shelley’s letters and works exhibit his prevailing view of Byron the poet, and his worshipful disposition towards the man Byron. Nor may it be imagined that the worshiper was enabled to think thus reverentially of the idol, because he was unaware of what was most repulsive in the darker stages of Byron’s career. For Shelley is the most strenuous and precise of all the many givers of testimony respecting the Venetian excesses. Writing to Peacock of Byron’s Venetian life, Shelley says, on 22nd December, 1818:—
‘The fact is, that first, the Italian women with whom he associates are perhaps the most contemptible of all who exist under the moon—the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted; countesses [who] smell so strongly of garlic, that an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well, L[ord] B[yron] is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associates with wretches who seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple to avow practices, which are not only not named, but I believe seldom even conceived in England.’
None the less able, however, was Shelley to admire the same Byron (of whom Mr. Froude writes disgustfully, for ‘living with another man’s wife’) as a being to be worshipt for his divine excellences and beneficent achievements. None the less could he regard Byron with reverence and delight, as ‘the spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body.’
The winter (styled by Hogg ‘a mere Atticism’) had for its chief domestic incident the birth of Mary’s eldest son, the ‘William’ of his father’s song, and of the early grave at Rome, who was born on 24th January, 1816, on the ninth day after Lady Byron’s withdrawal from Piccadilly Terrace to Kirkby Mallory. Byron’s Ada was only in the seventh week of her life, when Shelley’s boy entered upon his brief existence. Born within six weeks and three days of one another, these infants are curiously associated in literary annals; for whilst Byron gushed for the world’s edification over his Ada in verse, that set the sentimental mothers weeping throughout the country, Shelley’s parental devotion to his ‘delightful child’ broke forth into song that was no less insincere.
Mary Godwin had not risen from her bed, before all England was ringing with strange stories of Byron’s domestic troubles. That Shelley, who had created much scandal in a small world of comparatively obscure people by quarrelling with his wife, some eighteen or twenty months since, was more cheered than shocked by Byron’s rupture with his spouse, is probable. That Byron in his domestic trials and social discredit had a sympathizer and apologist in the younger poet, is certain. To Byron’s idolater, Lady Byron’s inability to live happily with her superb husband was a sufficient proof that she was a faulty woman. That on falling out with his wife, so sublime a creature as Byron could not take another lawful bride, was in Shelley’s view a signal example of the depraving tyranny of matrimonial law,—another argument why Wedlock should be replaced by Free Love.
On this exciting subject, Shelley and Mary were in perfect accord, when Claire ran in upon them, beaming with beauty, radiant with joy, brimming over with affection and happiness. She had rare news for them. Bent on going to Switzerland, she implored them to take her there. Switzerland? Geneva? Why was she so desirous of going thither? Mary had a babe at her breast, and was still only recovering from her accouchement; Shelley was busy at home with his books and writing. What reasons could Claire show why he should leave his study and Mary her home, to escort her to Geneva? Answering their questions, and disposing of any objections they made to her astounding proposal, Claire induced them to take her out viâ Paris to the Sécheron Hotel near Geneva.
There were no steamboats and railways in 1816. No mere jaunt for idlers and invalids, as it is now-a-days; the journey from London to Switzerland (as Shelley, Mary, and Claire knew from experience) was a painful and costly business in 1816. Mary Godwin’s son was still in his third month, when the vivacious and irrepressible Claire came in upon her with these words, ‘I am dying to go to Switzerland; the one desire of my heart is to go to Geneva; and you and Shelley must take me there,—not in August, or July, or June; but at the turn of April. You must pack at once and take me out to Switzerland!’ Is it conceivable that Shelley and Mary yielded to Claire’s vehement entreaty without asking her, why she was so eager to be off to Geneva; without satisfying themselves that Claire had an object in view which justified her in asking so much of them, and in putting them to so much trouble and expense? Is it conceivable that Claire would have carried her point with her sister and Shelley, had they not regarded her again with affection, and been of opinion that she had a claim to so large a measure of their sympathy and assistance? Is it conceivable that in the month, whose lap is chilled by lingering winter, Mary Godwin with her babe in her arms would have crossed the Channel, and traversing France made the long and toilsome journey to Geneva, only to gratify the mere whim of a girl she disliked?
All these questions are answered in the affirmative by Mr. Froude, and the other Shelleyan enthusiasts, who require us to believe that Shelley and Mary Godwin accompanied Claire, viâ Paris, to Geneva, without any knowledge or suspicion—that Byron was journeying thither with his young doctor (Polidori) by the Rhine route; that Claire and Byron had arranged to meet at the Hotel Sécheron; that Claire had for some weeks before leaving England been Byron’s mistress; that her object in getting out to Geneva was to throw herself into Byron’s arms. Successive biographers have represented that the meeting of the two sets of tourists at the Sécheron was accidental. Till I exhibited in The Real Lord Byron the reasons for thinking otherwise of this meeting, no biographer had ventured even to hint that the juncture of the two parties might have resulted from pre-arrangement. It is now admitted, even by Mr. Froude, that I was right on this point.
But whilst admitting that the meeting resulted from pre-arrangement, Mr. Froude now insists that Byron and Claire were the only parties to the pre-arrangement, which (according to Field Place) was withheld by Claire from her travelling companions. Further, Mr. Froude maintains that, instead of being taken to Geneva by Shelley and her sister, Claire took them thither on her lap. Yet more:—Mr. Froude and his fellow-workers require us to believe that, when they accompanied her to Switzerland, without knowing or suspecting why she wished to go there, Shelley and Mary Godwin disliked Claire extremely,—disliking her for being a malicious, spiteful, and altogether intolerable girl; regarding her disgustfully on account of her vicious notions respecting the intercourse of the sexes. Touring in pre-railway times with an odious companion was even more vexatious than touring with such a companion now-a-days. Yet Mr. Froude insists that Shelley and Mary Godwin associated themselves for several months of foreign touring, with a girl they disliked extremely, for the pure pleasure of her society. More still:—Mr. Froude wishes us to believe that, almost to the last day of their sojourn with Claire and Byron in Switzerland, neither Shelley nor Mary Godwin had the faintest suspicion that Claire was Byron’s mistress; and that though Byron was at pains to have his mistress brought out to him, under cover of her travelling companions, he never saw her at Geneva, except in the presence of some witness to the propriety of their demeanour to one another. Admitting that Byron talked to Claire on the most delicate subjects—such as the arrangements for her accouchement, and plans for the disposal of her child when it should be born—Mr. Froude insists that, throughout her stay in Switzerland, she could not easily have been alone with Byron, even for the shortest interview. Mr. Froude makes this statement, though it is a matter of sure personal history that, whilst Byron lived in the Villa Diodati, and Shelley (with Mary and Claire) in a cottage at the villa’s foot, the trio of the cottage often slept in Byron’s house after sitting up with him till dawn.
On what grounds does Mr. Froude ask us to believe things, so incredible that it is difficult to imagine any evidence that would justify us in believing them? Mr. Froude has nothing whatever to show; nothing whatever to urge, in support of his extravagant assertions, except talk about a letter, which he may not show, because Sir Percy Shelley thinks it better not to show it. We are not told when this letter was written, under what circumstances it was written, for what purpose it was written. Mr. Froude says the letter was written by Claire. Any statement told by Claire, to the discredit of their curious views of Shelley and his career, is unhesitatingly rejected as a falsehood by the Shelleyan enthusiasts. They do not falter in charging Claire with falsehood in telling the certain truth, that she was the Constantia of Shelley’s verse. They do not falter in charging her with falsehood, in saying that Fanny Imlay, alias Wollstonecraft alias Godwin, killed herself for love of Shelley. According to the Shelleyan enthusiasts Claire went through life, telling fibs whenever fibs would serve her purpose; and yet a letter, said to have been written by her (a letter withheld from public scrutiny), is enough to satisfy them, that Byron, after causing her (his already enceinte mistress) to come out to him in Switzerland, never saw her there except in the presence of a third party. To believe this is to believe the incredible.