“I will sing you an Albanian song,” cried Byron. “Now be sentimental and give me all your attention.”
They expected a melancholy Eastern melody, but, instead, he uttered “a strange, wild howl” admirably suited to the dashing waves with which they were struggling. A few days later the Shelleys moved across to the south side of the lake, and settled down at Campagne Mont-Allègre. Byron stayed at Sécheron, but used often to row over to visit them. Finally, he himself rented the Villa Diodati, which stands a little higher up.
He and Shelley made a tour of the lake and had some exciting experiences. They left Mont-Allègre on June 23 and spent the first night at Nerni, where Byron declared he had not slept in such a bed since he left Greece five years before. At Evian, on the French side, they had trouble with their passports, but, when the Syndic learned Byron’s name and rank, he apologized for their treatment of him and left him in peace. On June 26 they were at Chillon. Off Meillerie they were attacked by what Byron called a squall. Shelley described it in a letter to Thomas Love Peacock:—
“The wind gradually increased in violence, until it blew tremendously; and as it came from the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under water by the hurricane. On discovering his error he let it entirely go and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm; in addition the rudder was so broken as to render the management of it very difficult; one wave fell in, and then another. My companion, an excellent swimmer, took off his coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped. The sail was, however, again held, the boat obeyed the helm, and still in imminent peril from the immensity of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a sheltered port, in the village of Saint-Gingoux.”
Byron, in a letter to John Murray, wrote:—“I ran no risk, being so near the rocks, and a good swimmer; but our party were wet and incommodated a good deal; the wind was strong enough to blow down some trees, as we found at landing.”
He was at this very time engaged in composing the third canto of “Childe Harold.”
MONT BLANC.
On the third of June he had been dazzled by a glimpse of “yonder Alpine snow—Imperishably pure beyond all things below,” and a month later he wrote, “I have this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière in the calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat. The distance of these mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.” In the poem he sings—I believe that is the proper verb!—
“Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,