Chapter XVI: Closing Scenes (2)

‘Byron had _by this time_ been persuaded by Thomas Moore, and some of
his other friends in London, that the projected magazine, about which
he had been very anxious at first, would be injurious to his fame and
interests; and Shelley _now_’ (‘by this time’ and ‘now,’ as though
Byron now for the first time showed his distaste for the project, in
which he was constrained to embark by the two confederates)--‘found
him so desirous of making any possible retreat from his engagements,
that, had he not feared he might damage his friend’s interests, he
would have quarrelled outright with the noble poet. He was very much
out of spirits when he left; and that was the last interview they ever
had.’

In saying that Shelley parted in dejection from Byron, Lady Shelley is scarcely in accord with the best authorities touching the result of his action in Hunt’s behalf. Hopeful that Hunt and Byron would work together harmoniously for any considerable term, he could not well be, and certainly was not. But Mrs. Shelley’s words may be taken as conclusive evidence, that her husband was pleased with the immediate consequence of his mediation between the poet, who would fain have shipt the Hunts back to England, and the poet who had come to Italy with the purpose of planting himself on Byron. Speaking of her husband’s exertions to put the two partners at least in transient accord, Mrs. Shelley, in her August letter to Mrs. Gisborne, says:--

‘Shelley had past most of the time at Pisa--arranging the affairs of
the Hunts--and skrewing L. B.’s mind to the sticking place about the
journal. He had found this a difficult task at first, but at length he
had succeeded to his heart’s content with both points. Mrs. Mason said
that she saw him in better health and spirits than she had ever known
him, when he took leave of her on Sunday, July 7th, his face burnt by
the sun and his heart light that he had succeeded in rendering the
Hunts tolerably comfortable.’

This would of itself dispose of Lady Shelley’s assertion that Shelley retired in depression from his final negotiations of Byron. On Thursday, 4th July, Shelley had written of the Hunts and of Byron’s obligation to take them at least for a brief while altogether on his hands, ‘Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at present, as I cannot; but he seems inclined to depart without the necessary explanations and arrangements due to such a situation as Hunt’s. These, in spite of delicacy, I must procure.’ Three days later (Sunday, 7th August) he is in high spirits at having brought Byron into better humour with the Hunts, and made the Hunts fairly comfortable. With Byron he has ‘succeeded’ to his heart’s content; and in respect to the Hunts he is positively ‘light-hearted.’ Confirmed by several contemporary writings, Mrs. Shelley’s testimony respecting her husband’s satisfaction with and consequent elation at his arrangements for the Hunts, represents the view of Captain Roberts, Trelawny, Lady Mountcashel, the Hunts themselves, indeed of everyone of Shelley’s friends, who saw him in the last days of his existence at Pisa or Leghorn. The unquestionable success of his negotiations with Byron cannot have failed to gratify him. Yet Lady Shelley requires us to believe that he retired from those negotiations ‘very much out of spirits.’

On finding in July how he had been kept in ignorance of Hunt’s retirement from the _Examiner_, Byron might reasonably and honourably have used the concealment as a sufficient reason for breaking at once with the crafty practitioner. He had invited Hunt, _as_ the Editor of the _Examiner_, to co-operate with him; he had furnished rooms in his house for the Hunts, on the understanding that Leigh Hunt had at least a sufficient income for the payment of his weekly bills; and now, through Hunt’s wary concealment of the real state of his affairs, he found himself with a numerous and absolutely destitute family in his house,--found himself, also, required by Shelley to take the maintenance of this penniless family altogether on his own hands--at least for a time. Byron had reason for resentment on finding himself over-reached and imposed upon in this unscrupulous and impudent manner. But what could he do? Mrs. Hunt was alarmingly ill, her children were guiltless of wilful complicity in the father’s extortionate manœuvre. He could not turn the sick woman and her babes out-of-doors. He could not even turn the wily operator on the pockets of his acquaintances out-of-doors. The clever, dextrous, irresistibly charming fellow had not a crown in his purse. For the moment Shelley could not relieve the necessities of the family, whom he had brought out from England and thrown upon Byron’s hands in so comical a manner. Shelley stated the situation precisely to his wife on the 4th of July, when he wrote, ‘Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at present, as I cannot.’ One must needs smile at the thought of the three prime actors in the droll affair:--at the thrifty Byron’s dismay on being suddenly called upon to provide board and pocket-money, as well as bed and house-room, for the impecunious family; at the free-handed Shelley’s clear perception of Byron’s duty to these equally charming and shiftless Micawbers; at Hunt’s chagrin at the coldness with which he was welcomed to the Palazzo Lanfranchi. It is to Byron’s credit that he did all that honour and humanity required of him under the circumstances; and at the same time to his discredit that he did it ungraciously. Finding he ‘was in for it,’ without any easy and congenial way of escape, he started the _Liberal_; carried the Hunts in his train to Genoa; and, without causing Leigh Hunt more misery than he deserved, did divers things he should for his own dignity’s sake have left undone. It is not surprising that, after dropping a good deal of money and credit on the _Liberal_ in a faint-hearted way, he declined to sacrifice himself yet further, for the advantage of his unsatisfactory partner.

After spending seven days between Leghorn and Pisa, Shelley set sail for Lerici in his little schooner with Edward Williams, who was longing to get back to his wife at the Casa Magni, and Charles Vivian, the young sailor who was the only regular nautical ‘hand’ on board the swift but unsteady craft. Contradicting one another even to the latest point of Shelley’s career, the authorities are at variance respecting the frame of mind in which he started on his brief voyage to death. On the one hand it is declared that he left Leghorn in dejection, and on the other that he went out of port in the highest elation. On seeking information from those who bade him farewell as he stept into his boat, Mrs. Shelley was assured that he went off ‘in one of those extravagant fits of good spirits in which’ he was ‘sometimes seen.’ The truth seems to be that, though dispirited for a few minutes by a despondent letter from Mary, he speedily recovered the jubilant air that had distinguished him on the previous day at Pisa, and in his satisfaction at the latest arrangements for the Hunts started in the happiest temper. He did not, however, glide out of the harbour without forewarning of the gale that was rising for his destruction. The day had been intensely hot, and a violent thunderstorm had broken over the gulf in the forenoon. Captain Roberts had even hinted that the voyagers should wait for more settled weather on the morrow:--an ominous hint from the ‘Don Juan’s’ builder. But though Shelley was faintly disposed to take the captain’s advice, Edward Williams, in his eagerness for his wife’s society, would hear of no delay, insisting with the wind then blowing they should be home in seven hours. Even as the ‘Don Juan’ slipt out of the harbour the Genoese mate of Byron’s yacht, ‘Bolivar,’ remarked to his captain, Trelawny, in reference to the dark clouds, rolling up from the south-west in threatening masses, that ‘the devil was brewing mischief.’ Three hours later the devil of this nautical prediction had for a brief while his own way with the gulf. It was about three p.m. when the small schooner scudded away from the Leghorn mole, from whose extremity Captain Roberts watched her performance till she passed beyond the range of his unaided vision at the rate of some seven knots an hour. At 6.30 Trelawny, who had gone to his cabin on board the ‘Bolivar,’ was roused from his afternoon’s slumber by noises, familiar to his nautical ear. Going on board he found the sky darkened by fog to almost nocturnal gloom, and learnt from the disturbances of the air and the commotion of the shipping in the harbour, that a mighty storm was on the point of breaking over the sea. A few minutes later the din and hubbub and shrill pipings of countless mariners were silenced by the thunder and wind and rattling rain of a wild and overpowering squall. The storm spent its fiercest fury in twenty minutes,--the brief passage of time during which the ‘Don Juan,’ that perfect plaything for the summer, foundered and sunk beneath the tumult of the angry billows.

Knowing from the force of the rising wind, even before she had passed from his view whilst he stood at the mole’s end, that the ‘Don Juan’ was in for a stiff breeze and hard weather, Captain Roberts went from the mole to the authorities, who could give him leave to ascend the lighthouse tower. On getting their permission to do so he climbed the Leghorn lighthouse, from whose summit he succeeded in sighting the toy-schooner with a glass, when she was some ten miles out at sea, off Via Reggio. The vessel was in view long enough for the captain to observe that her crew were in the act of taking in the top-sails. But it was only a glimpse he got of the boat before the sea-fog stole it from his sight. The circuit of the sea, covered by the captain’s glass, was alive with shipping, driven wildly by the mighty tempest; but when the sky and view cleared, though the gazer from the lighthouse saw again every other vessel he had held in sight before the transient obscuration, he looked in vain for the one vessel, in which he was personally interested.

On her recovery from a depth of from ten to fifteen fathoms of water in the following September, it was discovered that the ‘Don Juan’ had not capsized. She had gone under, swamped by an overwhelming sea or overborne by a felucca that ran her down. The large hole in her stern, and other signs of violence countenancing the latter conjecture, gave rise to the suspicion that she had been struck by a felucca in a piratical attempt to seize her, in the hope of getting possession of the dollars she was supposed to have on board. At this distance of time there is no need to examine the unsatisfactory evidence that favours this hideous hypothesis. That the ‘Don Juan’ was followed from Leghorn Harbour by pirates, set on making prize of the money she was believed to carry, is not unlikely. She may have been chased and even run down by pirates, set on plundering her in the open sea; but even in that case it is more probable that the immediate cause of her submergence was accidental collision, than that her piratical pursuers selected a moment for striking so slight a vessel, when the violence of the storm and the tumult of the waters rendered it impossible for them to board her. But at this date it matters little why and how she foundered.

It is more interesting to know that, sudden as it was, the catastrophe might have come more suddenly:--that the poet and his comrades had at least a brief minute or two, in which to prepare for the fate that did not overtake them altogether unawares. That they were taking in their topsails off Via Reggio is a sufficient indication that they were alive to the peril of their position before they passed from Captain Roberts’s view. That on its recovery Edward Williams’s corpse was found almost without clothing shows that before the little schooner went down he had time to realize the imminence of the danger, and to prepare for an attempt to save himself by swimming. On the other hand, the submerged boat and the remains of the three drowned bodies were found too near the point, at which Captain Roberts sighted and lost sight of them, for any difference of opinion respecting the hour or even the approximate minute of the catastrophe. At the most, they had only a few minutes to live when they busied themselves in hauling in their top-sails. A minute or two after passing from the view of the watcher on the lighthouse they were themselves face to face with death. In September, 1822, the vessel was discovered off Via Reggio; and on the 22nd of the previous July, just a fortnight after the fatal storm, the remains of Shelley’s corpse, and the remains of Edward Williams’s body, were found on shore,--those of Shelley being found near Via Reggio, on the Tuscan coast, whilst all that remained of Edward Williams’s manly form and presence had been carried to a point, some three miles distant, at the Bocca Lericcio, hard by the Migliarino tower. Three weeks later Charles Vivian’s skeleton was brought to shore by the waves, at a distance of some four miles from the spot to which Edward Williams’s corpse had been carried.

How Shelley and Williams acted, as the schooner was already sinking beneath them, one may infer confidently from the characters and mutual affection of the two men; from the notable difference in respect to the clothing of what was recovered of their disfigured bodies; and from what we know of Shelley’s demeanour on previous occasions (notably and especially on the occasion of the squall off St. Gingoux in the summer of 1816), when he was in danger of death from drowning. It cannot be doubted that, whilst hastily stripping himself of his raiment, Williams proposed to do his best to save his friend as well as himself. To this proposal it is certain that the poet (who on the former occasion had firmly refused the help of so expert a swimmer as Byron) answered calmly that he was ready for death, was even glad to embrace the fate so mercifully offered to him; and that, after so refusing to diminish his comrade’s chance of escape, and after enjoining him to bear his love to Mary and Jane and Claire at the Casa Magni, he anticipated without dismay or vain regret, on the contrary, welcomed with mingled complacence and curiosity, the moment when he should pass through the veil that divides the here from the hereafter,--the moment that would give him the knowledge for which he had so long hungered and thirsted.

Possibly in that last minute or two, his mind was visited momentarily by tender and subduing thoughts of old joys and interests, former sorrows and ambitions, exhausted enmities and profitless contentions, disappointed hopes and unachieved aspirations. I conceive that thoughts of the old home and parents, from whose love he had severed himself, of Eton and poor old Keate, of Oxford and Hogg, of scenes about Keswick and Killarney, together with thoughts of more recent friends and less distant places, flitted across his brain, ever so quick and imaginative, now so abnormally active, and in a trice to be still for ever. Doubtless he thought of his little boy at San Terenzo, his other boy whom he had buried at Rome; possibly also of his children in England, and of the lovely girl who had given birth to them,--the sweet, bright, radiant girl who died in the water of the cold Serpentine, even as he would now die in the water of the angry sea. As he sate calmly on the sinking boat, and studied the successive visions of his own life’s panorama, he may be conceived to have remembered things he had done, and things he had left undone, to his regret. In his doubt and curiosity he may also be conceived to have hoped that, should death prove the gateway to another life for him, it would be a life, in which the ways of duty and righteousness are more clearly marked and more easily discovered, than the ways of righteousness and duty in this darksome, and troublous, and perplexing existence. Thus, as he sate a-thinking in the foundering boat, Shelley sunk beneath the turbulent and cruel waves, so remorseless for the woe they work, so heedless of the lives they devour.

To tell all that needs yet to be told requires few words. All the world knows how Shelley’s torn, and wasted, and disfigured corpse was reduced to ashes, and a few fragments of bone (with the exception of the heart that would _not_ be burnt) on the pyre, that was piled and lit for its cremation, on the sands of the seashore, to which the relenting waves carried him all too late. Again and again it has been told how, under the fierce light of a southern sky and sun, at the marge of the whispering sea, and within view of the remote Apennines, this revival of a classic rite was performed with precise care for classic requirements, in the presence of Byron, Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, and a guard of soldiers. Who needs to be told again, how the copy of Keats’s last book (found in Shelley’s pocket, doubled back at the _Eve of St. Agnes_, as though he had been perusing it, till death’s summons made him put it aside hurriedly) was thrown upon the blazing pyre? What reader of Mr. Rossetti’s description of the burning of the great poet’s body has not heard the cries of the curlew, that wheeling close about the pyre, and screaming miserably, refused to be driven away? It is the story of every household, where poetry is prized and genius is honoured, that Shelley’s ashes were conveyed to Rome, and there deposited in the new Protestant Cemetery (_not_ the _old_ burial-ground, that holds the dust of Keats and Mary Godwin’s first-born son), at a spot planted by Trelawny, with laurels and cypresses, and marked by the stone of this record:--

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Cor Cordium
Natus iv Aug. MDCCXCII
Obiit viii Jul. MDCCCXXII

Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.