Mary little thought how long it would be before she saw the English shores again, nor that, when she returned, it would be alone.
CHAPTER XI
March 1818-June 1819
The external events of the four Italian years have been repeatedly told and profusely commented on by Shelley’s various biographers. Summed up, they are the history of a long strife between the intellectual and creative stimulus of lovely scenes and immortal works of art on the one hand, and the wearing friction of vexatious outward events and crushing afflictions on the other. For Shelley they were a period of rapid, of exotic, mental growth and development, interspersed with intervals of exhaustion and depression, of restlessness, or unnatural calm. For Mary they were years of courageous effort, of heroic resistance to overpowering odds. She endured, and she overcame; but some victories are obtained at such cost as to be at the time scarcely distinguishable from defeats, and the story of hers survives in no one act or work of her own, but in the Cenci, Prometheus Unbound, Epipsychidion, and Adonais.
The travellers proceeded, viâ Lyons and Chambéry, to Milan, whence Shelley and Mary made an expedition to Como in search of a house. After looking at several,—one “beautifully situated, but too small,” another “out of repair, with an excellent garden, but full of serpents,” a third which seemed promising, but which they failed to get,—they appear to have given up the scheme altogether, and to have returned to Milan. For the next week they were in frequent correspondence with Byron on the subject of Allegra. This had to be carried on entirely by Shelley, as Byron refused all communication with Clare, and undertook to provide for his child on the sole condition that, from the day it left her, its mother entirely relinquished it, and never saw it again.
This appeared to Shelley cruelly and needlessly harsh. His own paternal heart was still bleeding from fresh wounds, and although, as he again pointed out, his interest in the matter was entirely on the opposite side to Clare’s, he pleaded her cause with earnestness. He did not touch on the question of Byron’s attitude towards Clare herself, he contended only for the mother and child, in letters as remarkable for their simple good sense as for their perfect delicacy and courtesy of expression, and every line of which is inspired with the unselfish ardour of a heart full of love.
Poor Clare herself was dreadfully unhappy. Any illusion she may ever have had about Byron had long been over, but she had possibly not realised before coming to Italy the perfect horror he had of seeing her; an event, as he told his friends the Hoppners, which would make it necessary for him instantly to quit Venice. The reports about his present mode of life, which, even at Milan did not fail to reach them, were, to say the least, not encouraging; and from a later letter of Shelley’s it would seem that he warned Clare now, at the last minute, to pause and reflect before she sent Allegra away to such a father. She, however, was determined that till seven years old, at least, the child should be with one or other of its parents, and Byron would only consent to be that one on condition that it grew up in ignorance of its mother. It appears to have been assumed by all parties that, in refusing to hand Allegra altogether over to her father, they would be sacrificing for her the prospect of a brilliant position and fortune. Even supposing that this had been so, it is impossible to think that such a consideration would have weighed, at any rate with the Shelleys, but for the impossibility of keeping Clare’s secret if Allegra remained with them, and the constant danger of worse scandal to which her unexplained presence must expose them. Clare, distracted with grief as she was, yet dreaded discovery acutely, and firmly believed she was acting for Allegra’s best interests in parting from her.
It ended in the little girl’s being sent to Venice on the 28th of April in the care of Elise, the Swiss nurse, with whom Mary Shelley, for Allegra’s sake, consented to part, though she valued her very much, but who, not long afterwards, returned to her.