THE GENEVESE EPISODE.
Shelley’s Arrival at Geneva—Byron and Polidori—At the Sécheron Hotel—Union of the two Parties—Tattle of the Coteries—The Genevese Scandal—Its Fruit in Manfred and Cain—Its Fruit in Laon and Cythna—The Shelleys’ Return to England—Their Stay at Bath—Their Choice of a House at Great Marlow—Fanny Imlay’s Suicide—Her Pitiable Story—Harriett’s Suicide—Review of Shelley’s Treatment of her—His Responsibility for her Depravation and Ruin—Witnesses to Character and Conduct—Shelley’s Grief for Harriett—His wild Speech about her—His Marriage with Mary Godwin—Birth of Allegra.
There is a conflict of evidences respecting the dates of the journey from England to Geneva. Whilst the Edinburgh ‘Shelley and Mary’ Reviewer exhibits the travellers in Paris on 6th May, and at Geneva on the 13th of the same month, Mary Godwin’s letter (published in the supplementary matter of the Six Weeks’ Tour) assigns the arrival in Paris to the 8th, and the arrival at Geneva to 15th inst. I am disposed to think the Edinburgh Reviewer right, because Shelley’s letter of the 15th inst. to Peacock implies that the writer had been long enough at Geneva to turn himself about.
Anyhow, leaving England on an early day of May with Mary, her infant, the babe’s nurse and Claire, Shelley was in Paris on the 6th or 8th, and at Geneva on the 13th or 15th of May (something earlier than the time at which the tourists are represented by successive biographers as reaching their destination). Dating from the Hotel Sécheron, Geneva, Shelley wrote to Peacock on the 15th inst.:—
‘We are now at Geneva, where, or in the neighbourhood, we shall remain probably until the autumn. I may return in a fortnight or three weeks, to attend to the last exertions which Longdill is to make for the settlement of my affairs.’
When these words were put on paper, ten days had still to elapse before Byron’s carriages drew up at the door of the hotel. Thus soon after his arrival, and thus long before Byron’s appearance at Geneva, is Shelley resolved on staying there till autumn,—the time fixed for the ending of Byron’s sojourn at the same place. Does Mr. Froude insist that Shelley, on the 15th, was still kept by Claire in ignorance, that Byron would soon be with them? If so, even Mr. Froude must admit it was a very strange coincidence that Shelley had determined to stay at Geneva just as long as Byron designed to linger there. If Mr. Froude concedes that Shelley knew all about Byron’s movements on the 15th, he might as well have said less of the younger poet’s ignorance of Claire’s pre-arrangement with her lover.
On Byron’s deliberate arrival, some twelve days after Shelley had come in hot haste to the hotel, the two sets of tourists forthwith acted as though they had met there by appointment. Joining their forces, the two sets of tourists became one party. When Byron and Polidori left the hotel, Shelley and the sisters left the hotel. When Byron and Polidori moved into the Villa Belle Rive, Shelley moved with the two girls into a little house near at hand. When Byron and Polidori migrated to the Villa Diodati, the sisters with Shelley migrated to the pretty cottage lying at the foot, and under the trees, of Diodati. As the inmates of the cottage repeatedly passed the whole night at Byron’s mansion, it is, of course, obvious that Mr. Froude was justified in saying Claire could not easily have been alone with Byron for a minute! From the day of Byron’s arrival at the Hotel Sécheron, the two inseparable parties were regarded as one party, by the visitors in the hotel, the gossip-mongers of every Genevese coterie, the idlers who, during Byron’s brief stay at the Sécheron, thronged and buzzed about the poets and their ladies, whenever they went (by daylight, or twilight, or at night) from the hotel down to the lake, or back from their boat to the hotel. Whispering that Mary (though styled Mrs. Shelley) was only the younger poet’s mistress, and that Claire was Mary’s sister in the fullest sense of the term, these idlers told one another, that Byron had found in the bright-eyed and brilliant brunette an agreeable substitute for his unforgiving wife. This was the tattle of the hotel, whilst the poets, Polidori, and the girls remained there. It is in the nature of such tattle, that, starting from imperfect truth, it passes quickly to egregious falsehood. Far worse things were soon said of the four young people by the Genevese gossip-mongers, than that Mary was Shelley’s goddess, and that Claire was Byron’s spouse in Free Love.
So much has been written, and is universally known of the Genevese episode of Byron’s career, that Shelley’s biographer may pass lightly over the particulars of the poet’s sojourn with Claire and Mary on the marge of Leman. Every one knows how, to escape from the intrusive inmates of the Sécheron, Byron with Polidori moved to the Villa Belle Rive, whilst Shelley with the girls took possession of the not distant Campagne Chapuis (whence Mary dated the letter of 1st June, published in the supplement to the Six Weeks’ Tour), and how, to escape the telescopes of the Sécheron windows, which covered the garden and balcony of the Villa Belle Rive, the author of Childe Harold, with his young physician, migrated to the umbrageous grounds of the Château Diodati, whilst the author of Queen Mab, with Mary and Claire, went into the Campagne Mont Alègre (which gave Claire’s child a familiar name), lying within the leafy entourage of their patron’s mansion. There is no need to tell again how, leaving the two sisters to amuse themselves with letter-writing, and novel-reading, and graver studies, Byron and Shelley (starting for the expedition on 23rd June, 1816) made the well-remembered Eight Days’ Tour of the lake, in the course of which Shelley so narrowly escaped the fate that befell him six years later. It is in every one’s recollection how, in the squall that so nearly upset their boat off St. Gingoux, the younger poet’s chief fear was that, in attempting to save a comparatively insignificant creature, the superb Byron would sacrifice his own existence, so valuable to mankind. Every reader recalls the words of the younger poet’s narrative:—
‘My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine.’
Readers no less clearly remember how, just upon a month after the Eight Days’ Tour of the Lake, Shelley and the girls, leaving Byron for just the same length of time to his own devices, made the Eight Days’ Trip to Chamouni, returning to Mont Alègre and Diodati towards the close of July. Is it not in the whole world’s memory how, when the rain held them prisoners in Byron’s villa, the poets and the sisters, in the excitement of reading ghost stories, terrified one another with ghastly tales of their own invention;—a tournament of wit and terrifying fancy, that bore enduring fruit in Mary Godwin’s Frankenstein? It is enough to remind readers of this page how, on the 18th of June, after hearing Byron recite the Christabel verses on the witch’s breast, Shelley shrieked in horror at his own vivid imagination of a woman with eyes instead of nipples; and how in the ensuing August, when Monk Lewis had joined the group at Diodati, Byron, and Mary, and Shelley, and Claire, drew about the terrifying relater and beset him with their intensely excited faces, whilst he poured forth strange stories of hideous fancy and grim humour.