Chapter XV: Pisan Acquaintances (2)

‘Believe me, yours most faithfully and sincerely,
‘P. B. SHELLEY.’

Written to support Hunt’s direct application to Byron for a remittance, Shelley’s affectionate concern for the whole of the Hunt party puts it beyond question, that this epistle was written sincerely in the interest of the unfortunate man of letters, and without a notion of the injury it would do him in Byron’s esteem. It was Shelley’s way of saying, ‘Do lend the poor fellow the money on _my_ personal security;’ and to readers bearing in mind the delicacy and tension that had succeeded the previous friendly relations of the two poets, it cannot be surprising that Shelley found himself unable to make such a request of Byron, without saying at the same time that he had done his utmost for his friend’s relief. All the same, the letter gave a view of Hunt’s character and dealings, that lowered him in the regard of the poet, who with generous incaution had fitted up rooms for the necessitous family in the Palazzo Lanfranchi. Opening Byron’s eyes to several matters, it informed him, that Hunt had for some time been sponging on the slender resources of his too yielding friend; that Hunt had for some time been pressing Shelley to apply to the Palazzo Lanfranchi for money; that Hunt’s direct application to the lord of that palazzo had not been made till the petitioner had done his utmost to force Shelley to prefer the request for him; that the applicant for a remittance had constrained Shelley to join in the request he had refused to make by himself. The letter must have caused Byron to suspect that Hunt had in former years bled Shelley copiously, and have shown him how powerless Shelley was to hold his own against the cool and clever practitioner of the art of getting money, without either earning it or stealing it. Byron’s comment on Shelley’s letter must have been to this effect: ‘So that is Mr. Hunt’s way of handling Shelley, is it? He won’t handle me so easily.’

Byron’s treatment of the Hunts in Italy displayed some of his least amiable traits. He should not have failed in courtesy to Mrs. Hunt, who was a _woman_ and an invalid. He might have been more gracious, without being less firm, to the _man_. It was paltry of him, in his reasonable annoyance with the equally elegant and unscrupulous adventurer, to give an untrue account of the circumstances that determined him to start the _Liberal_. But on learning, at the end of June, from Hunt’s lips, that he had ceased to be editor of the _Examiner_, and was for the moment without a crown in his pocket, or without any means whatsoever for paying the weekly bills of his numerous family in the lower rooms of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, the author of _Don Juan_ had good reason for feeling that, besides being on his guard against pecuniary imposition, he had better let Hunt see clearly, and at once, that he (the author of _Don Juan_) would not submit tamely to exaction.

No less ignorant than Byron of the desperate state of his friend’s pecuniary affairs,--a state amounting to absolute destitution so far as the term is applicable to a clever man of letters,--till he spoke with Hunt at Leghorn, Shelley must have felt himself in a peculiarly delicate and painful position in regard to Byron, on hearing that their partner in the _Liberal_ was alike without income and any prospect of income, apart from the literary project, which was still only a project. For months he had been aware of the degree in which Byron was influenced by the advisers, who were entreating him to withdraw even at the last moment from his entanglement with the Hunts. For months he had been aware in how great a degree Byron had lost confidence in the literary venture, and how gladly he would have discovered a way of withdrawing honourably, and at no excessive cost, from an enterprise which he deemed foredoomed to failure. For months he had, in Hunt’s interest, maintained a hollow show of his former admiration for, and of his former attachment to, Byron, encouraging him to recover his former confidence in their joint enterprise, and to be assured that, on the arrival of the _Examiner’s_ editor, his anticipations of catastrophe would be speedily followed by the triumph of the undertaking, in which they would be comrades. All this Shelley had endured and done for Hunt’s sake, in the hope of keeping the poet of overpowering popularity and sufficient purse in humour with the project, which under auspicious conditions would make Hunt prosperous for life. Byron’s repeated expressions of distrust in Hunt’s adequacy for his part in the undertaking had been met by Shelley with repetitions of the statement that ‘Hunt was editor of the _Examiner_.’ When Hunt at length appeared on the scene, he was _not_ editor of the _Examiner_.

Entering his Pisan home on the 1st November, 1821, Byron took up his abode in the stately house at a time when his relations with Shelley were altogether cordial, and Shelley’s admiration of him was at its highest extravagance. Delighted with his reception and treatment at Ravenna in the previous August, Shelley had now spent more than two months in emotions of generous and romantic worship of Byron’s greatness; and it was his fortune, perhaps his good fortune, to regard Byron with the same idolatrous enthusiasm for something more than another two months, before his admiration of so angelic a being was qualified by painful suspicions that he had rated his idol somewhat too highly,--suspicions followed at a brief interval by the differences which, but for his concern for Hunt’s interests, would, perhaps, have caused ‘the worm’ to turn and writhe in open mutiny against ‘the God.’

Fascinated at Ravenna by the great poet’s courtesies and flattering manifestations of confidence, Shelley exulted for a brief while in the prospect of figuring before the world as the great Byron’s peculiar and most influential friend. Whilst it is curious to observe in his letters from Ravenna to his wife, and in some of his subsequent epistles to Horace Smith, Peacock, and Gisborne, how greatly he was impressed by the pomp and grandeur of his ‘noble friend’s’ domestic arrangements, it is even more interesting to contemplate in the same letters the boyish simplicity and exultation, with which Shelley spoke of the great Byron’s regard for him, and of the advantages that would accrue to him from familiar association with so superlative a personage. Possessing the great poet’s ear, he enjoyed his confidence. Byron was moving to Pisa in compliance with his advice. It was he (and no other man) who had taken the finest palace on the Lung’Arno of Pisa for the great Byron’s sufficient accommodation.

To read attentively certain of the published letters that passed between Shelley and his wife whilst he was at Ravenna, is to see how they frightened one another through the post into imagining themselves the victims of a conspiracy that aimed at rendering their lives miserable and insecure;--to see also how, for several days after their reunion, they continued to nurse the wild and terrifying fancy that, to protect themselves against fanatical enemies, working for their destruction, to guard themselves and their child from death by poison or the knife, it was needful for them to surround themselves with powerful friends.

That Mary might not resist his purpose of staying another winter and spring in the city, where he would have Byron for his neighbour and most familiar associate, Shelley instructed her to rate at their proper worth the security and protection she and her husband would derive from Byron’s countenance:--security and protection they might sorely need at Florence or any other Italian capital, now that they had been selected for exemplary persecution by the fanatical enemies of Free Thought. That they had provoked the animosity of implacable adversaries was manifest from what had come to his ears at Ravenna. Instructing his wife that the current calumnies about himself should be regarded as preliminary measures for their destruction, taken by subtle and resolute foes, who would be satisfied with nothing less than his and her ruin, Shelley wished her to realize the perils of their position and determine what course they had better adopt for the preservation of life, liberty, happiness. Though attractive to them for divers considerations, Florence, for reasons darkly hinted at in the correspondence, would now abound with dangers to which they had better not expose themselves. For himself he would like nothing better than to retire with his Mary and her child to an island inhabited by no one but themselves, and there devote either to oblivion, or to future generations, the overflowings of a mind which, timely withdrawn from the contagion, would be kept fit for no baser object. If they determined on settling on a desert island, they should have the courage to go to it in no company but their own. There should be no compromise in the matter, no concession to weaknesses, begotten of long intercourse with the human race. If they took two or three chosen companions with them, the devil would be sure to appear amongst them. No, should they decide to emigrate to a desolate island, they must make the voyage by themselves. In brief, they should build a boat and shut upon their retreat the flood-gates of the world. On second and saner thoughts, however, he was of opinion they had better not build a boat and retreat behind the flood-gates.

The proposal for emigration to a solitary island having been dismissed as an impracticable project, Shelley begged Mary to consider another plan for defeating the enemies, banded together for their destruction. Instead of retiring to a desolate island, or offering their breasts to the assassin’s dagger at Florence, they might remain at Pisa under conditions that would render existence at the same time safer and more agreeable than heretofore. Instead of traversing the treacherous sea in an open boat to a tenantless island, it would surely be better for her and himself to stay where they were, to surround themselves with a few congenial people, even though the devil should be one of them, and in short to do their best to make themselves happy at Pisa, and the neighbouring Baths, for another twelve months. The Williamses would remain at Pisa, if she and he decided to remain there. The Hunts also would be at Pisa at least for the winter, should Leigh Hunt determine on migrating to Italy. Lord Byron and his Italian friends would be there also; and though the Gambas and Teresa Guiccioli might not be desirable acquaintances from every point of view, Byron’s friendship would be invaluable. What had occurred to account for so quick a change of sentiment respecting Florence and the plan of wintering there? Positively nothing besides Byron’s determination to settle at Pisa for a few months or years.

As the choice of alternatives lay between emigration to a solitary island and another term of residence at Pisa, it is not surprising that Mrs. Shelley decided in favour of the latter. Whilst few women were less qualified for seclusion, few had a keener appetite for society, than William Godwin’s clever and brilliant daughter. The woman, who fretted at the isolation and monotony of her existence at Naples and Rome, would have died of _ennui_ or gone mad in a month in the severe seclusion of a sea-girt paradise, with no companions but her husband and her little boy. It had not been her intention to stay another year at Pisa. For several reasons she would have preferred wintering at Florence with the Horace Smiths. She had seen enough of Pisa, and more than enough of some of her ‘dirty enough’ Pisan acquaintances. But weeks before Byron, with his bodyguard of liveried lacqueys and his menagerie of domesticated animals, took possession of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, she was well pleased with the notion of staying longer at Pisa.

So the circle was formed towards the close of 1821 under favourable auspices:--the circle whose life was described so fully in _The Real Lord Byron_, that its doings need only be alluded to cursorily in the present chapter. It was the circle of Teresa Guiccioli and the Gambas (Teresa’s father and brother, with whom she lived at a short distance from the Lanfranchi palace); the Williamses, of whose social endowments mention has been made on a previous page; pleasant Tom Medwin, whose books afford only faint indications of the elegant taste and generous qualities that endeared him to the author of _Adonais_; handsome, shrewd, adventurous, high-hearted Trelawny, who joined the party at the opening of the year 1822; and Taafe, the blundering rider and writer, whose clumsy horsemanship occasioned the fracas with the serjeant-major and the guard at the city, that eventually resulted in Byron’s migration to Genoa,--the circle of charming and diversely memorable men and women, that had Byron for its planet and Shelley for its chief subordinate luminary. Had the Hunts fulfilled the hopes of their especial friends, and entered Leghorn Harbour in time to keep Christmas at Pisa, the Shelleys would have been, at least for a time, altogether satisfied and delighted with this circle of new and old acquaintances, who had gathered about _them_ rather than about the poet of brighter and wider celebrity, whom they had drawn to what may be called their own coterie:--a circle which, though keeping its virtues as far as possible to itself, and having little or nothing to do with the general society of Pisa, or any other set of Pisan visitors, contributed not a little to the enlivenment of the usually tranquil, not to say rather torpid, little town.

The excess of Shelley’s enthusiasm for Byron pointed, however, to an inevitable revulsion of feeling, in which the worshiper would probably think as much too lightly, as he had in former time thought far too worshipfully, of his hero. The younger poet’s idolatry was, to use a familiar expression, too strong to last. No man of sensibility and self-respect can persist for any great length of time in regarding himself as a worm and his fellow-man and daily companion as a god. To regard one’s next-door neighbour as divine to-day, is to regard him as altogether, and in some respects meanly, human six months hence. There were other considerations, to satisfy any clear-sighted and judicial observer of the intercourse of the two poets at Ravenna, and of their regard for one another, that it was not in the nature of things for the man of rank and high celebrity, and the man of very inferior rank and no celebrity, to live together for twelve months without friction and disagreement. In truth, they were never wholly at ease with one another.

Elevated slightly, but only by one or two generations of ancestral dignity, above people of the middle way of life, Shelley possessed precisely the degree of aristocratic quality to render him sensitive for his dignity in his relations with a man of Byron’s superior rank; far more sensitive than he would have been had he, like Tom Moore, stept, by right of genius, from a wine-shop to the salons of ‘the great.’ At the same time, the uneasiness of his attitude towards Byron, whilst chiefly referable to their difference of social degree, was increased by his sense of Byron’s superiority in fame and wealth. How this uneasiness affected Shelley, even when he felt most cordially and idolatrously towards his ‘noble friend,’ appears from the letter he dated on 10th August, 1821, from Ravenna (_vide_ Moore’s _Life_) to Mrs. Shelley, where he speaks of his inability to ask money of Byron for Hunt’s benefit. ‘Lord Byron and I,’ he wrote, ‘are excellent friends, and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no claims to an higher station than I possess,--or did I possess an higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case. The demon of mistrust and pride lurks between two persons in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse.’

Though he did not go to Ravenna _in order_ to confer with Byron on Hunt’s affairs, Shelley journeyed thither _with the purpose_ of interesting Byron in them. For some time Shelley had been troubled in his mind by the thought of his friend’s financial difficulties; and he had not been many hours in the Palazzo Guiccioli, before he found occasion to speak sympathetically of Hunt’s pecuniary distress. On hearing how Byron had given the _Memoirs_ to Tom Moore, and how Moore had sold them to Murray for 2000_l._, Shelley grudged Moore the gift that would have been so serviceable to the author of _Rimini_. ‘I wish,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘I had been in time to have interceded for a part of it for poor Hunt.’ Though the _Liberal_ was altogether Byron’s project, it was at Shelley’s instance that the projector of the luckless magazine selected Hunt for the position of editorial coadjutor; and whilst making this selection _in_ his own interest, though at Shelley’s instance, Byron, no doubt, had pleasure in feeling that the arrangement, which promised advantage to himself, would be beneficial to a struggling man of letters. This fact alone gave the faint colouring of truth to Byron’s subsequent mis-statements, respecting the benevolent motives and humane purpose that determined him to start the _Liberal_. At Ravenna (where he carefully refrained from asking Byron to advance money for Hunt’s travelling expenses) Shelley could congratulate himself on Byron’s offer to take Hunt for his _collaborateur_, without regarding it as a favour done to himself, or thinking of it as a proposal for an arrangement that could, under any contingency, compromise his own independence of, and freedom from, obligation to the poet of exalted rank. The case was altered a few months later, when Byron’s vacillation put Shelley under the necessity of doing his utmost to hold him to his engagement with Hunt. On exerting himself for this end, it was natural for the sensitive Shelley to feel that he might be suspected of speaking in his own, no less than in Hunt’s, interest; to feel that after all he was asking a pecuniary favour of Byron. In this sensitiveness for his independence, and jealous care to avoid every appearance of seeking or accepting material advantage from his social superior, readers may see the explanation of Shelley’s resolve to share neither in the profits nor the _éclat_ of the literary enterprise.

Under these circumstances, it would have been passing strange had Shelley persisted in his reverential regard for Byron. In any case, his idolatry of so imperfect a hero would have perished more or less abruptly under the conditions of close intimacy and daily intercourse for a considerable period; but the annoyance, resulting to the younger poet from a state of things which compelled him to combat Byron’s irresolution with words, that might expose him to ungenerous suspicion, accelerated the moment for the inevitable revulsion of feeling. The differences which, but for Shelley’s devotion to Hunt’s interest, would perhaps have developed rapidly into open rupture, were capable of adjustment; but they necessarily resulted in a permanent change in Shelley’s feeling for Byron. The differences admitted of adjustment. For a season they were adjusted. None the less they changed the younger poet’s regard for his noble friend. The transient revival of Shelley’s hope that, after all, the _Liberal_ would enrich Hunt, was attended with no renewal of his old enthusiasm for the author of _Don Juan_, about whom he soon began to write and chatter as much too disparagingly as he had formerly written and talked too worshipfully. Instead of flaming into frank rage, he concealed his irritation from his former idol, whilst venting it from time to time in bitter words whispered to Mary’s ear, and bitter words written to correspondents, who were not likely to report them to Byron.

The old story of unreasonable hope, ending in unreasonable disappointment, was told yet again,--the story told so often in Shelley’s troublous record! Shelley idolized his eldest sister only to discover in a brief while how unworthy she was of his good opinion. The first period of his extravagant admiration of Hogg was followed abruptly by a period in which he detested him. After mistaking Eliza Hitchener for an angel, he soon mistook her for a brown she-devil. Delighting in Eliza Westbrook for a season, he quickly learnt to loathe her. Vowing to love Harriett Westbrook for ever, he found life intolerable with her in less than three nuptial years. Vowing to worship his second wife above all other women, he, in due course, discovered her inferiority to Emilia Viviani and Jane Williams. Meaning to be happy with Hogg for ever, he soon flitted from York, to get out of his way. Throwing himself on Byron in August, 1821, with the intention of delighting in him for ever, he quickly began to vapour about fighting him. Either Shelley lacked steadfastness of affection, or was singularly unfortunate in selecting his objects of affection. In this respect he resembled Byron, whom he also resembled in his unamiable and undignified practice of writing bitterly of people whom he had ceased to love.

On passing from affection for his sister Elizabeth, he wrote in angry disparagement of her. On coming to uneasy terms with his mother, he wrote disdainfully of her mental narrowness. On ceasing to delight in Eliza Hitchener, he wrote of her that she was a brown demon and an hermaphrodite. After idolizing Mrs. Boinville, he wrote about her insincerity. After quarrelling with Eliza Westbrook, he wrote of her that she was a loathsome worm. Writing thus of women with whom he was out of humour, he dealt in the same way with men he no longer liked. Having loved his father in his childhood, he was only at manhood’s threshold when he began to write monstrous untruths to his discredit. In the interval between the first period and the second period of his affection for Hogg, he wrote of him that he was a treacherous friend, a libertine, and a seducer. Whilst living in friendship with Thomas Love Peacock, he wrote of him as though he was attached to a free-handed benefactor by considerations of self-interest. Soon after worshiping Byron as a god, he wrote of him (on 2nd March, 1822, to Leigh Hunt) that certain dispositions of his character, rendered him intolerable as an intimate associate, and (on 18th June, 1822, to John Gisborne) that he was ‘the nucleus of all that is hateful and tiresome’ in society. It is thus Shelley wrote of his former friends after falling out with them. Whilst reflecting with reasonable severity on Byron’s readiness to ‘libel his friends all round,’ the Shelleyan apologists say nothing of Shelley’s exhibitions of the same ungenerous propensity.

Whilst Byron vacillated between hope and despair for the success of the _Liberal_, between a cordial disposition to persist in the enterprise and a fainthearted inclination to drop it, Shelley (for Hunt’s sake) and Hunt (for his own sake) were determined to hold their unsteady partner to his compact with them. If Byron suspected Shelley and Hunt of a design to use him for their own ends, the suspicion certainly was not groundless. Shelley and Hunt became in a certain sense confederates against their partner, in having an understanding and mutual confidence from which he was excluded. Shelley’s chief, though _not_ sole, interest in the affair was his concern for Hunt (his senior by eight years). Had he been acting only for himself, Shelley, on discerning the faintest disposition on Byron’s part to withdraw from the venture, would have said, ‘If your heart is not in the enterprise, let it be dropt like so many other designs, as a mere project not to be acted upon.’ But Shelley was acting in the interest of a friend, to whom he was in the highest degree desirous of rendering substantial service; a friend whom he wished to have near him in Italy (a powerful consideration, that largely qualified the disinterestedness of his otherwise unselfish action); a friend who (_vide_ Shelley’s letter of 2nd March, 1822--in Forman’s edition of the poet’s _Prose Works_) had committed to him ‘the task of keeping Byron in heart with the project until his arrival.’ Consequently, when Byron showed a wish to retire from the enterprise, Shelley said, ‘You are bound for poor Hunt’s sake to go on with it.’

Long before Hunt left England, Shelley knew Byron would fain have withdrawn from the project for starting the _Liberal_, but in his absent friend’s interest pressed Byron to persist in the enterprise. Long before he left England, Hunt himself knew that Byron had repented of inviting him to Italy, and would have dropt the project of the magazine, had it not been for Shelley. On sailing from England in May, Hunt knew he was setting out to fix himself on a man who, but for Shelley, would have told him to remain at home,--a fact not to be overlooked in the estimate of Hunt’s conduct, in going out to Italy with concealment of the main feature of his financial trouble. From the moment when they combined to hold Byron to an arrangement from which he wished to retire, Shelley and Hunt (acting together in the manner described by Shelley’s own pen) were confederates against him, in being set on using him for their own ends against his own will.

One would like to know how far Byron was cognizant of the irritation he caused Shelley by his vacillations about the literary project. Yet more one would like to know to what extent he was aware of Shelley’s permanent change of feeling for him. It is difficult to conceive that so sensitive a man failed to detect the change of sentiment. But Byron’s egotism may have blinded him to what his sensibility would otherwise have discovered. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, in his loyalty to the absent Hunt, and in his keen desire to nurse Byron’s favour and influence for Hunt’s benefit, Shelley was at great pains to conceal from his former idol the deep-seated alteration of his regard for him. It is conceivable that, notwithstanding the February ‘differences,’ Byron never knew how completely he had fallen from Shelley’s heart and homage. Anyhow, the two poets remained in daily intercourse with one another, and maintained a show of undiminished friendliness. Playing billiards with Byron, and contending with him in pistol-practice, Shelley often figured in the Byronic riding-parties, and appeared at the weekly dinner-parties of the Palazzo Lanfranchi. At the same time Mrs. Shelley lived sociably with Teresa Guiccioli.