It was thus that Shelley and Mary wrote of their ‘sister’ Claire,—the sister in whose society Mrs. Shelley seemed to delight, and Shelley certainly delighted; the sister for whose future he had provided by the two legacies of 6000l. each. At the same time the letters, written to the poet and his wife, overflow with evidence that their correspondents regarded Claire as a young gentlewoman, to be rated as a member of Shelley’s domestic circle, and treated with the respect due to his wife’s sister. Yet Lady Shelley would push Claire from the position thus assigned to her by Shelley and his wife, and recognized by all their friends. There must be an end to writing about Claire, as though she were aught else than Mrs. Shelley’s sister. There must be an end of referring to her as a sort of fallen woman, to whom Shelley and his wife were magnanimously beneficent.
In one notable respect Shelley’s life with his second wife in Italy resembled his life with his first wife in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. It was a restless and vagrant existence. Students and men of letters are usually restful and home-loving creatures. But, though something less of a rover towards the end of his Italian time, than he was during his first marriage, Shelley never stayed long in the same place. In 1818 he passed about a month at Milan, three or four days at Pisa, a month or so at Leghorn, between eleven and twelve weeks at Bagni di Lucca, something more than ten weeks at Venice and Este, three weeks at Rome. Passing from Rome to Naples in the later part of December, 1818, he returned to Rome after spending eight or ten weeks in the more southern capital. From Rome he went again (in the summer of 1819) to the neighbourhood of Leghorn, where he rested for something over three months, before migrating to Florence for the winter of 1819-20. In the February of 1820 he was at Pisa, where he remained (now in the city and now at the neighbouring baths) for a longer time than at any of the other places he visited; but even at Pisa, the place in which his roots (to use his own expression) struck deeper than anywhere else in Italy, he was a mere settler for the season. Of the twenty-six months (from the earlier time of February, 1820, to April, 1822), he spent nineteen months at or near Pisa, including the time passed in the trip to Ravenna and other excursions; but he never planted himself there so as to touch the soil beneath the surface. Moving in April, 1822, to Lerici, where he lived less on land than water, he perished three months later.
At Venice, through his intimacy with such Italian ladies as the Countess Albrizzi and the Countess Benzoni (countesses with crowded salons, albeit Shelley may have been justified in saying they smelt of garlic), and his unedifying familiarity with such women as Marianna Segati and Margarita Cogni,—and in later Italian time through his close association with Teresa Guiccioli, the Gambas, and the Romagnese revolutionists,—Byron knew the Italians and studied them closely, though doubtless under conditions that disposed him in the end to think too lowly of them. But to the last Shelley’s knowledge of modern Italy and the modern Italians was no deeper or more accurate than the knowledge to be picked up by an observant holiday-maker in a six weeks’ tour.
After staying a month at Milan—a month broken by a brief trip to Como, whose beauty surpassed everything the poet had ever beheld, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney,—the Shelleys in May, 1818, travelled with a diminished party (Allegra having been taken off their hands, and Elise being detained for awhile at Venice to attend upon her) to Pisa, whence, in a three or four days, they proceeded to Leghorn, where they stayed for something like a month, and made the acquaintance of three individuals, who have their several and very different places in the Shelleyan story,—(1) Mr. Gisborne, the gentleman of liberal views, scholarly attainments, failing affairs, familiarity with opium, and inexpressibly hideous nose, whom Shelley found an oppressive bore, and therefore had the best right to regard with disfavour; (2) the democratic and godless Mrs. Gisborne, who, though he found her ‘the antipodes of enthusiasm,’ became Shelley’s sympathetic tutor in Spanish, and was clever enough to draw from him the poetical epistle To Maria Gisborne, and also to draw from his purse a good deal of money for her boy’s advantage; and (3) Henry Reveley (Mrs. Gisborne’s son by her former husband), a youthful and penniless engineer, for whose benefit the poet was adroitly manipulated into thinking, that the thing above all other things likely to promote the happiness of the human species and bring about the comity of nations, for which all good republicans were praying, was a steamboat that,—built by the young engineer and no other man,—should ply between Leghorn and Marseilles, for the advantage of mankind, and the especial enrichment of the Gisbornes.
Mrs. Shelley and the ‘very amiable, accomplished, and completely unprejudiced’ Mrs. Maria Gisborne formed an enthusiastic friendship; Mary of course regarding with interest the woman of mature age, who had been Mary Wollstonecraft’s friend in the previous century, and might have been Mary Wollstonecraft’s successor in William Godwin’s affections, whilst Maria was quick to see that with management she might use Mrs. Shelley’s influence over her husband for the advantage of the young man, who, had his mother yielded to William Godwin’s scarcely flattering suit, would have been Mrs. Shelley’s brother-by-affinity. There was much talk between the new friends of widely different ages about Mary Wollstonecraft;—talk in which Mrs. Maria Gisborne gave a delightful account of the personal charm and graces, the intellectual address and multifarious virtues, of Gilbert Imlay’s victim. Whilst Mary was delighted, Maria (with proper maternal concern) bethought herself how Mary’s enthusiasm for her mother’s ancient friend might be turned to profit. The friendship was fruitful of much correspondence,—bright, sparkling, superlatively entertaining epistles by Mary, an admirable letter-writer; and no less characteristic, though far less commendable letters by Maria; the attitude Maria assumed to her partner in the friendship being clearly defined in the concluding words of a letter she wrote her dearest Mrs. Shelley in October, 1819,—the words conveying young Henry Reveley’s affectionate remembrances to ‘his good friends, patron and patroness.’
At the Bagni di Lucca—whither the Shelleys moved after tarrying at Leghorn for about a month—Paolo, the clever Italian servant, who could do anything from cooking a dinner to grooming a horse, appears on the Shelleyan record. The one thing this treasure of a servant could not or would not do was to keep his accounts accurately; the financial inaccuracies being always too distinctly to his own advantage, not to rouse suspicions of his honesty, even from the beginning of his connection with the poet. At the Bagni, where Mary and Claire took horse-exercise, and seldom failed to attend the Sunday conversazione, though they declined to dance, Rosalind and Helen was finished at Mrs. Shelley’s request some time before the poet, on 17th August, 1818, started with Claire for Venice, leaving his wife (as her letter of that date to Mrs. Gisborne shows) to take care of the house and her two children;—a letter from which it also appears that, on bidding her husband and sister adieu, Mary (who pressed Mrs. Gisborne to ‘come and cheer her solitude’) expected them both to be away for a considerable time. The next six days, however, were fruitful of change in the plans and prospects of all three. Holding steadily to his resolve not to be drawn into renewal of his former intimacy with Claire, Byron received Shelley with exuberant cordiality, and showed so much consideration for the feelings of his discarded mistress, as to grant her the companionship of her child for a week at Padua, where he imagined Mrs. Shelley to be then staying with her children. How came he to conceive that, instead of being with her babes at the Bagni di Lucca, Mrs. Shelley was at Padua?
There is no need for more precise evidence that the business, to which Mrs. Shelley referred in her letter to Mrs. Gisborne, was Claire’s rather than Shelley’s business:—that in taking Claire from the Bagni di Lucca to Venice, Shelley was actuated by the hope of affecting by personal intercourse with Byron, what he had failed to accomplish by letters. Byron having made it more than clear that, whilst ready to receive Allegra, he had no wish to see the child’s mother, it may seem strange that Shelley could still hope to put matters in train, for Claire’s restoration to her poet’s affectionate regard. But circumstances countenanced the quickly disappointed hope. Byron having taken Allegra to his arms, with a reassuring show of paternal interest in her, information had come to Shelley and the sisters, that the child grew daily in her father’s favour. There had been correspondence between Mrs. Hoppner and the sisters-by-affinity. Happy in the possession of her own lovely little boy (already in his eighth month), the Consul-General’s wife commiserated the young mother who was separated from her lovely little girl. Interested in Byron, who was already consulting her about arrangements for Allegra’s welfare, and probably over-rating her influence over him, Mrs. Hoppner may well have imagined that in compassing his reconcilement with Allegra’s mother, she would use her influence no less beneficially for him, than for Claire and her child. At the same time it was natural for Shelley to conceive that Byron’s growing affection for his daughter would occasion a revival of his tenderness for the child’s mother,—tenderness that, if they were brought together in a happy moment, might result in the reunion of their hearts. It was under these circumstances and with this hope that Shelley and Claire started for Venice.
Making the journey from Padua in a gondola, the voyagers entered their Venetian hotel at midnight of Saturday, 23rd August, 1818. On the morrow (Sunday) they went from their breakfast-table to Mrs. Hoppner’s abode, where Shelley left Claire, on going off at three p.m. to call on Byron. It is told in Julian and Maddalo how Shelley played with Allegra in the billiard-room of the Palazzo Moçenijo, whilst waiting for Byron. In a well-known letter from Shelley to his wife it is told how cordially he was received by the poet of Childe Harold, who, covering his visitor with flattering civilities, seemed ready to oblige him in every respect but one. As Byron had no desire to see Claire, but on the contrary wished her to keep out of his path, it was incumbent on the diplomatic Shelley to account for her appearance at Venice in a way that should not reveal too abruptly one purpose of her long journey. A statement that she had come all the way from the Bagni di Lucca, only to get a peep at her child, was no announcement for Byron to receive without suspicion. It might move him to quick anger. A statement that she had come so far for the mere delight of seeing him would cause him to blaze into wrath. For the moment it was necessary to attribute Claire’s arrival on the Grand Canal to maternal impulse; but it would be imprudent to ascribe the labour and expense of so long a journey to so slight a motive. But on being given to understand that Mrs. Shelley and her family were at Padua, Byron would think it only natural for Claire to run by water from the University town to Venice. Hence the white fib which caused Byron to think Mrs. Shelley at Padua,—the misconception, on which the wily negotiator between Claire and her former admirer hastened to base an entreaty, that she might be allowed to take her child to Padua for a few days:—the misconception that caused Byron to place I Cappucini (the Este villa he had recently taken off Hoppner’s hands) at his friends’ service, and urge Shelley to lose no time in carrying his wife and her babes to the rural retreat, some twenty miles distant from hot and stuffy Padua.
It is not surprising that Byron was thus quick to put I Cappucini at Shelley’s service. It was needful for him to show the Shelleys some hospitable civility, on their coming to his part of Italy. At the same time he could not think of entertaining them at his home on the Grand Canal. The Palazzo Moçenijo was no place for the entertainment of gentlewomen; and even had it been an establishment to which he could have invited gentlewomen with propriety, Byron would not have asked the Shelleys and Claire to stay with him there. To Shelley he would gladly have given bed and board in the Palazzo; but nothing could have induced the poet, ever hankering for reconcilement with his wife, to welcome (under the observation of all Venice) as guests to his house the two ladies, whose presence there would not fail to revive the revolting Genevese scandal. Wishing to pay the Shelleys a full measure of hospitable courtesy, he also wished to keep the ladies at a safe distance from Venice. At I Cappucini (a villa not generally known to be in his tenure) they would be out of his way and concealed from the Venetian scandal-mongers, whilst receiving from him a considerable civility. Hence the offer at which Shelley caught so quickly, that before going to bed for a second time at Venice he wrote off to Mary, ordering her to pack her traps, and come at once to Venice under Paolo’s escort.
Were there no other evidence to the point, the mere fact that for some ten weeks they were Byron’s guests at I Cappucini would of itself show, how little cause the Shelleys saw to resent his treatment of Claire. Indeed, why should they,—how could they, conceive themselves injured in the matter by Byron, who in every stage of the affair had acted precisely in accordance with the rules of the social arrangement, which Shelley commended as a graceful and wholesome substitute for lawful marriage? On coming to regard Lady Byron resentfully and Claire with affection, Byron had only exercised the sacred privilege of a Free-Contract spouse in giving his heart to Claire, to have and hold it until he should be moved to give it to some one else. On ceasing to regard Claire tenderly, he had, in so far as she was concerned, done nothing forbidden by the favourers of the Free Contract. On the contrary, in every step of the business he shaped his course by Free Contract morals. To Claire he had said, ‘Our felicity having perished, in obedience to the forces that cause human beings to love and cease from loving one another, you go your way, whilst I go mine. Leaving me to select another object of affection, do you give your heart to some one who wishes for it. We have been happy together; the time has come for us to seek happiness apart from one another,’ At the same time, still speaking like an honourable Lawless Lover, Byron said, ‘But I cannot allow you to suffer in your purse for your goodness to me. I will take charge of your child, rear it affectionately, provide for it liberally,’ What was there in this for the Shelleys to resent, however sorry they might be for poor Claire, the brevity of whose dominion over Byron’s volatile affections of course disappointed and saddened them? When Mr. Froude wrote, as though Shelley necessarily regarded Byron as Claire’s seducer, he only revealed his absolute ignorance of facts, comprising much of what is most singular and interesting as well as most painful in Shelley’s story.