In declaring so indignantly that she had never spoken disparagingly of her former employers to Mrs. Hoppner, Elise was alike true in the letter and false in the spirit of her words. The person to whom she had spoken was Paolo, who, carrying her communications to Mr. Hoppner, had modified them, amended them, expanded them, as he saw the need of doing so, from the Consul-General’s countenance. On seeing that Monsieur Hoppner made light of the partly true story about the baby born in England, Paolo was quick to enlarge his narrative with a story of another baby born in Italy;—the story, told so cleverly, that the Consul-General and Mrs. Hoppner and Byron all believed it. This is the reasonable explanation of the monstrous fiction that Claire had a child by Shelley in Italy.
Before his stay at Ravenna came to an end Shelley rode over to Bagna Cavallo (rendered Bagrea Cava by Mr. Froude, and Bazin-carello by the Edinburgh Reviewer) to see Allegra at the convent, where the greedy and by no means exemplary little damsel had been under discipline for some months; affectionate concern for Claire being his chief motive for riding so far (25 miles) in the saddle, to visit the little school-miss, of whose beauty and costume he wrote so pleasantly to his wife on his return to Ravenna;—a letter written less for the gratification of Mary, to whom it was addressed, than for the gratification of Mary’s sister.
Shelley had for some time been exercising his mind to discover some way of arranging for the child’s nurture, less displeasing to her mother than this conventual education. Acknowledging that, while Italy was stirred with revolutionary excitement and the Romagna plotting for a general insurrection, Byron did well in sending the child to the convent, Shelley wished her now to be placed at some place where her mind would be less subject to clerical influence, and her mother could visit her occasionally, without inconvenience to herself or annoyance to Byron. One of his notions for Allegra’s advantage was that Mrs. Mason (Lady Mountcashel, who had written educational books for children, and affected to be wise about the training of girls) should be moved to take charge of Claire’s little one. For a moment he thought of the Pisan Convent of St. Anna (Emilia Viviani’s convent), but only to decide that it was precisely the place to which Allegra ought not to be sent. Now that the Gambas and Teresa Guiccioli, banished from the Papal territory, were waiting at Florence for marching orders from Byron, whose sojourn at Ravenna had for some time been prolonged only by indecision as to his future movements, Shelley was urgent that Byron should withdraw the child from the nuns, to whose custody she had been committed, only till some more eligible home could be found for her.
It cannot be said that Shelley’s intercourse with Byron at Ravenna was fruitful of wise decisions. Concluding that the question of Allegra’s future education might stand over (a conclusion for which the elder poet’s mental unsteadiness and Shelley’s inability to propose a better plan for her nurture were equally accountable), Byron, on withdrawing from Ravenna, at the end of October, 1821, left the child at Bagna Cavallo, to die there of fever in the ensuing spring,—the last of the three fated children to perish from the ways of man. In determining to take a Palazzo at Pisa, at Shelley’s instance, though not altogether out of deference to his judgment and counsel, Byron decided on a step that in no long time could not be favourable to the cordial and even idolatrous sentiment, with which the younger poet regarded him. On its death such enthusiastic and extravagant hero-worship would necessarily be followed by feeling of an opposite kind; and for the preservation of the sentiment of condescending respect on the one side, and the sentiment of affectionate idolatry on the other side, it was especially needful that the two poets should not be daily associates for any considerable period. Had they continued to live on different sides of Italy, Shelley might have idolized Byron to his last hour, and Byron would never have been irritated by Shelley. In deciding to become neighbours and almost daily companions at Pisa they resolved on a course which, even without the annoyances coming to each of the poets from what may be called the Leigh-Hunt complications, was certain to result in a diminution of their friendliness for one another. It was also in the highest degree inauspicious for their mutual good feeling that the two friends in council agreed in thinking Leigh Hunt the very man who should be invited to the editorial position which Tom Moore had prudently declined to accept.
It devolved on Shelley to write the letter, which invited Leigh Hunt to come out from England and join his correspondent and ‘noble friend’ Lord Byron, in establishing The Liberal; and in his elation at the prospect of again embracing his equally extortionate and delightful admirer, and at finding himself in a position to render his charming friend a substantial service, Shelley (writing to Hunt from Pisa on 26th August, 1821,) invested the project with the roseate colouring most likely to heighten its attractiveness to Hunt. He even went so far as to assure Hunt that he would be Byron’s partner on equal footing and equal terms; that, whilst taking one-half of the revenue from the magazine, he would contribute, though in a different manner, no less than Byron to the success of their joint enterprise. How far was Shelley sincere in such extravagance? There is, no doubt, such a thing as honest adulation; and it is possible that for the moment Byron and Leigh Hunt were equals in fame and achievement to the poet, who, a short while earlier or later, declared himself a mere earthworm in comparison with the godlike author of Cain,—
‘the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.’
Declaring he would participate neither in the profits nor the borrowed splendour of such a partnership, as should give the world a successful Liberal, Shelley was ready to act as the connecting link between the two poets, who were in the same degree superior to him in literary eminence and power. With all his vanity and intellectual arrogance, Hunt had, of course, enough worldly knowledge and mental sobriety to be aware that he and Byron were other than equals; but all the same it tickled his self-complacence to be told that the author of Rimini was no less considerable a personage than the author of Childe Harold. Moreover, the excessive praise was an agreeable indication to Hunt that, in the distress and confusion of his affairs, he might look confidently for further assistance to the young enthusiast (‘Mr. Shelley,’ as Hunt always called him in a deferential tone), whose pocket he had a few years since lightened of 1400l. in a single sum, to say nothing of smaller sums. At the same time, whilst accounting for his inability to send him a remittance for travelling expenses from Byron’s purse, Shelley intimated that he would obtain from another source the funds needful for his dearest Hunt’s journey, with his wife and babes to Leghorn.
Since he found shelter from bailiffs at Marlow, and in return afforded the author of Alastor similar protection from clamorous creditors, things had gone with Hunt from bad to worse, and from worse to a state of affairs differing in little but name from actual bankruptcy. Drowning men catch at straws, and the sinking Hunt was glad to clutch at so substantial a plank as the proposal from Italy, which, under the smiles of fortune, might prove a seaworthy craft. Knowing well that the proposal was made not so much to Leigh Hunt the poet, as to Leigh Hunt the journalist, who was supposed to be still editor and joint-proprietor of the Examiner, and that the proposal was made to him in consideration, or at least not without consideration, of his editorial power to commend the new periodical to public favour, it was of course Hunt’s duty, before he closed with the offer, to let both projectors know they might no longer count upon the Examiner as an influence for compassing the success of the Liberal. Had he been actuated by any sentiment of honour, or by bare commercial honesty, he would not have arranged to leave England without first writing to both Byron and Shelley, ‘Your offer having been made under, if not from, a misapprehension respecting my circumstances, I cannot accept it unless you renew it after learning I have ceased to be editor of the Examiner.’ Instead of treating Byron and Shelley with the candour, which is a chief element in fair dealing between friends, he started for Italy without a shilling of his own money in his pocket, without an income of any kind from any source whatever, and without letting either of them know he had determined his editorial connexion with the powerful newspaper. It was a surprise alike to Shelley and Byron to learn from Hunt, after his arrival at Leghorn, that he was no longer editor of the Examiner. There is no escape from the ugly truth that the brilliant, scholarly, irresistibly charming Leigh Hunt went to Italy with the purpose of fixing himself, his wife and children on a nobleman, with whom he had only the slightest acquaintance, and on a far from prosperous friend whose purse he had repeatedly laid under heavy requisitions, and with a clear intention of making them wholly responsible for the maintenance of himself and family for a considerable period. It is also certain that he thus went out to Italy without giving Byron and Shelley any intimation of his purpose, or any grounds for suspecting it.
Under no conceivable circumstances could the three poets have worked together harmoniously for as many years. They might, however, under conceivable conditions, have accomplished the immediate purpose of their partnership and avoided quarrelling, for eighteen months or even a couple of years, had Hunt been able to get out to Pisa before the end of the autumn, or at the latest by the end of December. But the winds and waves combined with Moore and Murray to defeat the enterprise, to which Hunt looked for preservation from utter financial ruin. It was not his fault that it was near the end of June, 1822, before he entered Leghorn harbour. Showing abundant alacrity in his preparations for leaving England, he would have started for the sunny South at the end of September, had not the vessel, in which he took berths for himself and his numerous family, been detained in England till the 16th of November. From that day till the end of June, his course was a series of vexatious misadventures. Detained for three weeks by bad weather at Ramsgate, he was beaten up and down Channel till the 22nd of December, when his ship put in at Dartmouth. Mrs. Hunt being by that time too ill to proceed, the Hunts migrated to Stonehouse (Plymouth), where they tarried till 22nd May, 1822, on which day they set forth again for Leghorn, in another vessel, that was so fortunate as to reach its destination at the close of June; when nine months had elapsed since the berths were taken on the first vessel.
In the meantime, persons, who disapproved of Byron’s alliance with Shelley and Hunt, had been at work to detach him from such dangerous associates, and put him out of conceit with his new literary project. Entreated for his reputation’s sake to be less intimate with Shelley, and warned of the risks he ran in calling Hunt to his confidence, Byron was assured by Hobhouse and Moore that even his genius and influence could not preserve from ignominious failure an enterprise, in which he would be discredited by his coadjutors. Time was in this affair even more prejudicial to Hunt’s interests than the mischief-makers, who, having Byron’s ear, knew well how to play on his least generous qualities. Before Hunt made his second start for Italy, the friendship of the two Pisan exiles had been rudely shaken by differences.