[Perhaps some readers may need to be reminded who Bonnet was. He was a great physicist, both practical and speculative, Charles Bonnet, author of a Traité d'Insectologie, a Traité de l'usage des Feuilles, Contemplations de la Nature, Palingénésie Philosophique, and other works. Born in Geneva in 1720, he died in 1793.]
We arrived at Sécheron—where Lord Byron, having put his age down as 100, received a letter half-an-hour after from Inn Keeper?—a thing that seems worthy of a novel. It begins again to be the land of the vine. Women, who till the Pays de Vaud were ugly, improving greatly.
May 26.—After breakfast, and having made up the accounts to to-day, and having heard that the voituriers made a claim of drink-money all the way back, we ordered a calèche; but, happening to go into the garden, we saw a boat, into which entering, we pushed out upon the Leman Lake. After rowing some time, happening to come to the ferry, we found the waiter with a direful look to tell us that it was pris pour un monsieur Anglais, who happened to be ——.[[7]] We got another, and went out to bathe. I rode first with L[ord] B[yron] upon the field of Waterloo; walked first to see Churchill's tomb; bathed and rowed first on the Leman Lake.—It did us much good. Dined; entered the calèche; drove through Geneva, where I saw an effect of building that pleased me: it was porticoes from the very roof of the high houses to the bottom.
Went to the house beyond Cologny that belonged to Diodati. They ask five-and-twenty louis for it a month. Narrow, not true. The view from his house is very fine; beautiful lake; at the bottom of the crescent is Geneva. Returned. Pictet called, but L[ord] B[yron] said "not at home."
[There were two Genevan Pictets at this date, both public men of some mark. One was Jean Marc Jules Pictet de Sergy, 1768 to 1828; the other, the Chevalier Marc Auguste Pictet, 1752 to 1825. As Polidori speaks farther on of Pictet as being aged about forty-six, the former would appear to be meant. He had been in Napoleon's legislative chamber from 1800 to 1815, and was afterwards a member of the representative council of Geneva.—The Villa Diodati was the house where Milton, in 1639, had visited Dr. John Diodati, a Genevese Professor of Theology. Polidori's compact phrase, "narrow, not true," is by no means clear; perhaps he means that some one had warned him that the Villa Diodati (called also the Villa Belle Rive) was inconveniently narrow, but, on inspecting the premises, he found the statement incorrect.]
May 27.—Got up; went about a boat; got one for 3 fr. a day; rowed to Sécheron. Breakfasted. Got into a carriage. Went to Banker's, who changed our money, and afterwards left his card. To Pictet—not at home. Home, and looked at accounts: bad temper on my side. Went into the boat, rowed across to Diodati; cannot have it for three years; English family. Crossed again; I went; L[ord] B[yron] back. Getting out, L[ord] B[yron] met M[ary] Wollstonecraft Godwin, her sister, and Percy Shelley. I got into the boat into the middle of Leman Lake, and there lay my length, letting the boat go its way.
[Here I find it difficult to understand the phrase—"Cannot have it (Villa Diodati) for three years—English family." It must apparently mean either that an English family were occupying or had bespoken Villa Diodati, and would remain there for three years to come (which is in conflict with the fact that Byron soon afterwards became the tenant); or else that Byron thought of renting it for a term as long as three years, which was barred by the previous claim of some English family. On the whole, the latter supposition seems to me the more feasible; but one is surprised to think that Byron had any—even remote—idea of remaining near Geneva for any such great length of time. This sets one's mind speculating about Miss Clairmont, with whom (as is well known) Byron's amour had begun before he left London, and who had now just arrived to join him at Sécheron; had he at this time any notion of settling down with her in the neighbourhood for three years, more or less? It is a curious point to consider for us who know how rapidly he discarded her, and how harshly he treated her ever afterwards. Miss Clairmont, we see, was now already on the spot, along with Percy and Mary Shelley; in fact, as we learn from other sources, they had arrived at Sécheron, Dejean's Hôtel de l'Angleterre, as far back as May 18, or perhaps May 15—and Byron now for the first time encountered the three. It appears that he must have met Mary Godwin in London, probably only once—not to speak of Clare. Shelley, to the best of our information, he had never till now seen at all. Polidori here terms Clare Clairmont the "sister" of "M. Wollstonecraft Godwin"; and in the entry for May 29 he even applies the name Wollstonecraft Godwin to Clare; and it will be found as we proceed that for some little while he really supposed the two ladies to be sisters in the right sense of the term, both of them bearing the surname of Godwin. In point of fact, there was no blood-relationship—Mary being the daughter of Mr. and the first Mrs. Godwin, and Clare the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clairmont. It may be as well to add that the letters addressed by Miss Clairmont to Byron, before they actually met in London, have now (1904) been published in The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, vol. iii, pp. 429-437; and they certainly exhibit a degree of forwardness and importunity which accounts in some measure for his eventual antipathy to her.]
Found letter from De Roche inviting me to breakfast to-morrow; curious with regard to L[ord] B[yron]. Dined; P[ercy] S[helley], the author of Queen Mab, came; bashful, shy, consumptive; twenty-six; separated from his wife; keeps the two daughters of Godwin, who practise his theories; one L[ord] B[yron]'s.
[This is a very noticeable jotting. Shelley appears to have come in alone on this occasion, and we may infer that some very confidential talk ensued between him and Byron, in the presence of Polidori. He was not at this date really twenty-six years of age, but only twenty-three. "Bashful, shy," is an amusingly simple description of him. As to "consumptive," we know that Shelley left England under the impression that consumption had him in its grip, but this hardly appears to have been truly the case. Polidori, as a medical man, might have been expected to express some doubt on the subject, unless the poet's outward appearance looked consumptive. Next we hear that Shelley "keeps the two daughters of Godwin, who practise his theories"—i.e. set the marriage-laws at defiance, or act upon the principle of free love. One might suppose, from this phrase, that Polidori believed Shelley to be the accepted lover of Miss Clairmont as well as of Mary Godwin; but the addition of those very significant words—"One, Lord Byron's"—tells in the opposite direction. These words can only mean (what was the fact) that one of these ladies, viz. Miss Clairmont, was Lord Byron's mistress. Therefore Polidori, in saying that Shelley "kept the two daughters of Godwin," may presumably have meant that he housed and maintained Clare, while he was the quasi-husband of Mary. Whether Polidori now for the first time learned, from the conversation of Byron and Shelley, what was the relation subsisting between Clare and Byron, or whether Byron had at some earlier date imparted the facts to him, is a question which must remain unsolved. The latter appears to me extremely probable; for Byron had certainly arranged to meet Clare near Geneva, and he may very likely have given the requisite notice beforehand to his travelling physician and daily associate. My aunt Charlotte Polidori was not an adept in Shelleian detail: if she had been, I fear that these sentences would have shocked her sense of propriety, and they would have been left uncopied. They form the only passage in her transcript which bears in any way upon the amour between Lord Byron and Miss Clairmont; to the best of my recollection and belief there was not in the original Diary any other passage pointing in the same direction.—I may observe here that there is nothing in Polidori's Journal to show that the Shelley party were staying in the same Sécheron hotel with Lord Byron. Professor Dowden says that they were—I suppose with some sufficient authority; and I think other biographers in general have assumed the same.]
Into the calèche; horloger's at Geneva; L[ord] B[yron] paid 15 nap. towards a watch; I, 13: repeater and minute-hand; foolish watch.