In March poor Clare received with bitter grief the intelligence that her child had been placed by Byron in a convent, at Bagnacavallo, not far from Ravenna, where he now lived. Under the sway of the Countess Guiccioli, whose father and brother were domesticated in his house, he was leading what, in comparison with his Venetian existence, was a life of respectability and virtue. His action with regard to Allegra was considered by the Shelleys as, probably, inevitable in the circumstances, but to Clare it was a terrible blow. She felt more hopelessly separated from her child than ever, and she had seen enough of Italian convent education and its results to convince her that it meant moral and intellectual degradation and death. Her despairing representations to this effect were, of course, unanswered by Byron, who contented himself with a Mephistophelian sneer in showing her letter to the Hoppners.
With the true “malignity of those who turn sweet food into poison, transforming all they touch to the malignity of their own natures,”[39] he had no hesitation in giving credit to the reports about Clare’s life in the Shelleys’ family, nor in openly implying his own belief in their probable truth.
But for this, and for one great alarm caused by the sudden and unaccountable stoppage of Shelley’s income (through a mistake which happily was discovered and speedily rectified by his good friend, Horace Smith), the spring was, for Mary, peaceful and bright. She was assiduous in her Greek studies, and keenly interested in the contemporary European politics of that stirring time; as full of sympathy as Shelley himself could be with the numerous insurrectionary outbreaks in favour of liberty. And when the revolution in Greece broke out, and one bright April morning Prince Mavrocordato rushed in to announce to her the proclamation of Prince Hypsilantes, her elation and joy almost equalled his own.
In companionship with the Williams’, aided and abetted by Henry Reveley, Shelley’s old passion for boating revived. In the little ten-foot long boat procured for him for a few pauls, and then fitted up by Mr. Reveley, they performed many a voyage, on the Arno, on the canal between Pisa and Leghorn, and even on the sea. Their first trip was marked by an accident—Williams contriving to overturn the boat. Nothing daunted, Shelley declared next day that his ducking had added fire to, instead of quenching, the nautical ardour which produced it, and that he considered it a good omen to any enterprise that it began in evil, as making it more likely that it would end in good.
All these events are touched on in the few specimen extracts from Mary’s journal and letters which follow—
Wednesday, January 31.—Read Greek. Call on Emilia Viviani. Shelley reads the Vita Nuova aloud to me in the evening.
Friday, February 2.—Read Greek. Write. Emilia Viviani walks out with Shelley. The Opera, with the Williams’ (Il Matrimonio Segreto).
Tuesday, February 6.—Read Greek. Sit to Williams. Call on Emilia Viviani. Prince Mavrocordato in the evening. A long metaphysical argument.
Wednesday, February 7.—Read Greek. Sit to Williams. In the evening the Williams’, Prince Mavrocordato, and Mr. Taafe.
Monday, February 12.—Read Greek (no lesson). Finish the Vita Nuova. In the afternoon call on Emilia Viviani. Walk. Mr. Taafe calls.