That Shelley had no intention in the middle of July of returning to England straight from Switzerland, but was possessed by a project of descending the Danube in a boat, visiting Constantinople and Athens, Rome and the Tuscan cities, and returning by Southern France, appears from a letter he wrote from Geneva to Peacock on 17th July, 1816, in the interval between the Tour of the Lake and the Trip to Chamouni,—a letter containing this remarkable passage,—‘On the motives and consequences of this journey, I reserve much explanation for some future winter walk or summer expedition!’ How about these words, that refer not to the ‘Eastern scheme which has just seized on our imaginations,’ but to the trip from London to Geneva?
Had he believed himself to have told the truth at Bishopgate, in intimating that he was about to leave England in order to escape his father and uncle, he would have seen neither need nor occasion for saying more about the motives for the journey. May the words be taken as an admission, that the Bishopgate fictions were fictions, and that Peacock had still to learn the full and true story of the motives and purpose of the trip to Geneva?
Whilst the Genevese coteries were saying evil things of Shelley and Byron, each of the poets knew the worst of the many bad things said about them in those cliques. Whether Mary and Claire participated fully in this knowledge is uncertain. Byron and Shelley may have withheld from the sisters some of the things said of them in Genevese society. From some motive of delicacy or considerateness, the two young men may have kept from the girls all they knew of what was tattled to their shame in the salons of the city; though one does not see clearly why they should have been so uncommunicative to the eighteen-years-old girls, whom Shelley had carried through The Empire of the Nairs, and had introduced to all the reasons for agreeing with the anti-matrimonial note to Queen Mab. Enthusiasts in the new social philosophy, the sisters were prepared for the misrepresentation and calumny, ever poured upon social reformers by the slaves of prejudice and ignorance. It is, however, no question that the story, which Byron a few years later (March, 1820) charged Southey with circulating (and possibly inventing) in order ‘to blast the character of the daughter’ of the woman he had formerly loved, was a story well known to the author of Childe Harold in August, 1816. If, on returning to England from his Swiss trip, Southey reported (as Byron averred in March, 1820) that Byron and Shelley were living in promiscuous intercourse with Mary and Claire, the author of Thalaba only repeated a story, generally told and believed in Geneva, alike by tourists and residents, whilst he was living at the Villa Diodati.
Whilst living in retirement from circles which had shown a reluctance to make his acquaintance, the recluse of Diodati—ever, in his morbid egotism, no less eager for the gossip that lashed him to fury, than for the gossip that tickled his self-love—was kept au courant with the talk of the Genevese tables, by persons who had no difficulty in gathering it. What with Polidori (acceptable in salons, where his employer would not have been welcome), Hentsch the banker (cognizant of everything that went on in Geneva), Madame de Staël at Coppet (overflowing with almost maternal solicitude for Lady Noel’s naughty son-in-law), and Fletcher (cleverest of valets at gathering the gossip of couriers and lady’s-maids, and ever privileged to pour it with more than a valet’s freedom into his master’s ear), Byron was in no want of sure informants about Geneva’s opinions of himself and his doings. And what he learnt of the current talk about his affairs, the exile from Newstead passed over to his brother in poetry and domestic trouble. As soon as Shelley and the girls had left for England, Byron was no less communicative to the friend, who, on coming to the Château Diodati (a week or so after the departure of the trio), had not been many hours in the villa, without hearing all about the scandal, that was largely influential in determining Byron to break with Claire. So early as 9th September, 1816, the recipient of Byron’s piquant chatter wrote to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, of the Genevese curiosity and gossip about her brother: ‘There was, indeed, until a fortnight ago, a neighbouring gentleman who had two ladies living in his house under the Château Diodati, and, as you may suppose, both and each of these womankind, as Mr. Oldbuck calls them in the Antiquary, were most literally assigned to the person who was accustomed to consider the cases of such kind of appurtenances, when superfluous or neglected by their lawful owners.’
It may be assumed that, in alluding thus lightly to one-half of the current scandal, the tattler plied his pen (not only in Byron’s interest, but also with the poet’s sanction), in order to anticipate rumour, with an explanation of the report, which would be sure to come to his correspondent’s ears sooner or later.
Withholding, as he was bound to do, the names of the gentleman and two ladies, and all particulars touching the peculiar nature of their real intimacy, the writer of the words (here printed in italics) shows how fully and precisely he was informed, immediately on his coming to Diodati, of the rumour, which, affecting the reputation of either poet so injuriously during his life, and influencing in peculiar and different ways the poetical labours of both authors, had for its echo the hideous story given to the world by Mrs. Beecher Stowe. How the scandal stirred Byron’s imagination may be seen in Manfred and Cain. How it affected Shelley’s fancy and spurred him to the most extravagant of his conclusions respecting the intercourse of the sexes appears in Laon and Cythna. Had it not been for the Genevese scandal, Laon and Cythna would not have been brother and sister of the same parents, and Byron would not have written the poems that vexed poor Lady Byron’s troubled mind in her later time. But for that scandal both poets would have escaped the still darker suspicions it generated long afterwards in the minds of men. But for that scandal, Claire would never have been suspected of the wickedness imputed to her by later calumny, and the Hon. Mrs. Leigh would never have been charged with crime of which she was absolutely incapable. Reverberating far and wide through time, slander is repeated variously by near and distant echoes. The scandal, that agitated Shelley so profoundly at Ravenna in 1821, was a revival and development of one-half of the slander that came to his ears at Geneva in 1816. The scandal, that preyed for a while on Mrs. Leigh’s reputation till the present writer killed it, was the distorted outgrowth of the old vile Genevese tattle about her brother’s intimacy with the two sisters at Diodati. The base story, that came to Shelley’s ears at Ravenna, was the near echo, the vile story of Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s book was the distant echo, of the same slanderous report.
It is not surprising that Byron put an end to his liaison with Claire soon after hearing what the world said about it. No Free Lover (had he been one, the favourers of the Free Contract would have dealt less harshly with his reputation), but a man holding conventional (not to say fashionable) notions on libertinism, and old-fashioned notions respecting the matrimonial law, Byron held to the old, hard and fast, line between wives and mistresses. To him, of course, Claire was never aught more than his mistress, in the ordinary sense of the term; a mistress whom at the outset of his fleeting passion he regarded with a romantic tenderness that seventy years since seldom qualified a young nobleman’s sentimental condescension to a girl in Claire’s position; a mistress with whom he wished to live with a secresy which would prevent the affair from coming to the knowledge of Lady Byron. Regarding Claire in this light and capacity, precisely as in later time he regarded Marianna Segati and Teresa Guiccioli, he was hoping for a speedy restoration to his wife’s favour, and (under Madame De Stäel’s counsel) was actually making overtures for reconcilement to her, even whilst the trio nestled in the pretty cottage at the verge of his Swiss tree-garden. The rejection of the overtures, and the intelligence of the scandal coming to him closely upon one another, it would under any circumstances have been natural for Byron to attribute the disdainful reply in some degree to the injurious rumours. But he had other reasons for thinking Lady Byron would have been less steady in her unforgivingness, had she not heard of the liaison. Not incapable of resenting a misadventure on its innocent cause, he was likely to conceive a sudden distaste for an arrangement to which he assigned his discomfiture, and a simultaneous distaste for his partner in the hurtful arrangement. Other influences (one of them being Claire’s vehement temper) may also have concurred in disposing him to retreat from the association as speedily as possible. But in seeking for the sufficient motive of his capricious treatment of the too-fervid brunette, readers need look no further than his disgust at the rumours arising from his intimacy with her, and his conviction, that but for her bright eyes and racy speech, he would have been starting for Kirkby Mallory, instead of making his arrangements for an Italian tour. Anyhow, without letting her see how completely she had fallen from his favour, or losing the worshipful regard of either Shelley or Mary (if their words may be trusted), Byron bade Claire farewell at Geneva. Returning to England with Shelley and her sister-by-affinity, Claire gave birth in the following January to Allegra—the girl who, dying in her sixth year at Bagna Cavallo, lived long enough to survive her mother’s romantic hope, that through her child’s influence she would recover something of her poet’s love.
By the writers, who insist that Shelley and Mary went to Geneva in ignorance that Claire and Byron had arranged to meet there, and almost to the end of their sojourn in Switzerland, remained in their guileless ignorance of the Byron-Claire liaison, it is, of course, maintained that Shelley and Mary were greatly surprised on learning, towards the end of August, that Claire was in the way to become a mother. Possibly, the evidence of Claire’s delusive letter accords with the evidence of other no less illusory writings. But no letters, however precise and authentic, by Claire or any other writer, can annul or weaken the conclusive testimony of the certain and indisputable facts and circumstances of the Genevese episode.
Returning to London on 7th September, 1816, Shelley passed through town to Marlow, and stayed a fortnight with Peacock, before going to Bath, where he and the sisters determined to remain whilst the house, which he had taken in the Buckinghamshire village for twenty-one years, was being painted, furnished, and fitted, for their habitation. It was on an early day of his sojourn at the favourite resort of fashionable valetudinarians, that Shelley, dating from 5 Abbey Church Yard, 2nd October, 1816, wrote to Mr. Murray about the proofs of the third canto of Childe Harold, which he had undertaken to see through the press,—a service the younger poet was well pleased and not a little proud to render his famous friend.
Exactly a week later, on the evening of Wednesday, 9th October, 1816, Mary Godwin received the ‘very alarming letter’ which caused Shelley to start immediately for Bristol, only to return to Bath at 2 p.m. ‘with no particular news’ (vide Mr. Kegan Paul’s William Godwin). On Thursday, the 10th, Shelley went again to Bristol. On Friday, 11th, he was at Swansea. After posting this letter at Bristol, Fanny Imlay, alias Wollstonecraft, alias Godwin, caught the Cambrian coach and made her way to the Mackworth Arms Inn, of Swansea, where, soon after her arrival at a late hour, she went to her bedroom for the long rest that was her last rest. On the morrow morning (Wednesday, 10th October) she was found lying dead, the nature of her death being declared by the laudanum bottle on her table, and the paper on which she had written:—