Childish Loves (36 page)

‘I wouldn't be doing what I am doing if it wasn't for him,' she wrote. ‘Probably even you could tell I wasn't very happy at school. But then you come across a teacher like Peter, and you think, Ah, grown-ups! There's a whole world of people like you. You can't imagine what that means to a weird teenage girl. But of course there isn't – I mean, anyone like him. At least I haven't come across anyone yet. He supervised my senior essay on
Frankenstein
. Once every two weeks we met in that little office for an hour during lunch. He treated me like a colleague, he asked
me
questions. I used to look forward to that hour from the minute I woke up in the morning. I worried about what to wear, what to say, the whole thing made me nervous, until I stepped in that room and realized I had nothing at all to be embarrassed about. It was okay, I could talk as much as I wanted about books.'

Maybe it was this exchange that made me go back to Gerschon. I had almost washed my hands of Peter. But something had occurred to me on the drive back from Walden, and I wanted another look at the manuscript pages. Gerschon said he was knocking off early on Friday afternoon and offered to give me the run of his office. I spent the rest of the week re-reading Peter's last story and checking up on the facts.

‘Behold Him Freshman!' follows more or less on the heels of ‘Fair Seed-Time.' ‘A Soldier's Grave' skips ahead almost two decades – a period that includes the years of Byron's fame, his marriage and the separation that pushed him into exile. When the story opens, he's living in Genoa with Teresa Guiccioli, the young wife of an old count from Ravenna. He has spent the past four years with her, ‘confined to the strictest adultery.' The Pope won't give her a divorce, and the scandal of their relationship, besides a few other more political scandals, has forced Byron to take up residence in Genoa, where the government doesn't much mind them. Teresa has brought her brother Pietro and her father (another count) along. The whole family is living together at the Casa Saluzzo, though Byron has his own apartment.

By this point Shelley has been dead for a year. He drowned in a storm in the Bay of Lerici while sailing with a friend. Byron had kept up sporadically intense relations with Shelley since they spent the summer together near Lake Geneva in 1816. (The summer of the ghost stories, when Mary wrote
Frankenstein
.) Before he died, Shelley persuaded him to contribute to a new journal,
The Liberal
, to be edited and published by the Hunt brothers. Byron even invited Leigh Hunt – and his endless family – to Italy to talk over the details; and when Shelley drowned he had to deal with them, and pay for their upkeep, by himself. When Peter's story begins the Hunts have established themselves, at Byron's expense, a few minutes' ride from the Casa Saluzzo. Mary is living with them.

Shelley has left his old friend with one more entanglement: Edward Trelawny. Trelawny was a sort of professional adventurer, who fancied himself the real Byronic hero – the kind of man Byron could only write about. Trelawny eventually published a memoir of his acquaintance with the two poets. Its purpose was to glorify Shelley (also at Byron's expense), and it went some way towards creating the image later made famous by Matthew Arnold: of the ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. Byron comes across as both self-absorbed and unsure of himself; easily deflected from his purpose.

This was one of the books I spent the week looking over – Peter had obviously referred to it while writing ‘A Soldier's Grave.' But what I wanted to check the notebooks for was a date. Lee had said that Peter came to see him about five years ago, which must have been only months before his death. It had occurred to me that the two were related, that the reason Peter wrote the end of his book before the middle had something to do with his visit to Lee Feldman.

I stayed in Gerschon's office till about ten o'clock. There wasn't any window or natural light. Libraries, like casinos, are designed to make you lose track of time – to forget there's a world outside. I started with the letters and notes, the old receipts, before moving on to the manuscript itself, running my finger sentence by sentence across the pages. Peter's handwriting was always bad. It looked like frustration made visible, and probably to relieve it he used to scribble patterns in the margins. There were doodles of boats and suns. Trees and flowers. The zodiac. I had the sense that I was saying goodbye to him, in the air-conditioned quiet of the Houghton library. Surrounded by old books. That this was the reason I was skipping dinner (everyone else had gone home). But I didn't find any dates or anything more suggestive than a complicated little sketch, all gables and dormers, of a rambling old house thinly lined by clapboard.

I am almost ashamed to admit it, but it was Trelawny who gave me, if not the first idea then the final push, which amounts to the same thing. Trelawny, whom I hold in no very high regard, though he is tall and handsome enough and wants only clean hands and trousers to give him the appearance of a gentleman. But he was a friend of Shelley and is valuable to me on that account. Besides, it flatters my vanity to see the hero of Conrad, Lara, Manfred, et al. parading before me in the flesh, though he insists rather too violently on the resemblance and somewhat to the detriment of my own. He had come to the Casa Saluzzo on some business about a boat, which I had ordered to be built and subsequently tired of (my taste for that particular form of amusement considerably abated by Shelley's drowning). I was at this point, for various reasons, in a process of retrenchment; Trelawny offered to see it put up for the winter.

For several weeks he stayed with us but was not much in the way as he spent most of his days at Casa Negroto, where the Hunts were living with their brood of Hottentots – and Mary. I had foolishly given Shelley my word and consigned several innocent poems (and some not so innocent) to Leigh Hunt for a new publication, to be named the Liberal, as he meant to be liberal in it with other people's poems, and purses. Shelley's death left him totally dependent, and Trelawny made himself useful, as a messenger if nothing else, for Mr Hunt is either impudent or obsequious, and nothing between, and I had much rather give him my moneys than my time. Mary was displeased with me because she was displeased with everything, but I did what I could for her, which was very little, as she would not accept it. I was at work on
Don Juan
and gave her the manuscript pages to copy. For this I paid her a little money, which she
did
accept. Once a day, if the weather was fine, I walked in the garden with Teresa; her brother Pietro and their father Count Gamba had the apartment below my own, and kept her company when I would not.

‘This is an odd Cicisbeo sort of existence,' Trelawny remarked to me one day at breakfast. It was my custom to take tea in the garden a little before noon, and sometimes he joined me. There was a fig tree that cast a pleasant shade, and even in October the sun was bright enough to make a few feet of shade desirable. ‘I wonder you can stand it. Do you know what Mary says about you? That you are hen-pecked to your heart's content.'

‘Teresa has a great affection for Mary. I am sorry to find it unreciprocated.' When he said nothing, I went on: ‘But Italians feel everything more strongly. Do you know, that if
her
husband were to die (I mean the Count Guiccioli), Teresa would dress herself in mourning from head to toe and maybe even feel a little sorry for herself. Though he is a savage officious old man, who tore her from the convent at seventeen; and since the Pope will not grant them a divorce, his death would be a great practical relief to us.'

Trelawny can never sit still, unless he is eating; and as there was nothing left to eat, he stood up and looked over the wall, to see who was passing. After a few moments he sat down again and said: ‘You tolerate what no other Englishman of spirit
could
. It is one thing for an Italian to surround himself like this, with women and brothers. But I believe you are not very pleased with yourself, and Shelley might have forced you into a consciousness of it. If you will forgive me for saying so, I think you feel his absence as much as anyone.'

‘You are wrong to think us so very attached to each other. Our friendship began after the age of reason; I have never loved anyone
sensibly
. But you are right to say that I am restless. I mean in the spring to buy an island, in Greece; or a principality, in Peru, and set myself up on a large scale.'

We were presently confined to Genoa, where the government ignored us, but I had a fancy of playing at governments myself. After a few weeks, when he saw no sign of it, Trelawny accepted an invitation to go hunting in the Maremma, and borrowed a horse, and left us. And so we passed the winter, and I wrote four more cantos of
Don Juan
, and saw no one but Teresa, and her brother, and their father. And the Hunts, when I could not avoid it, and Mary, when she could not avoid
me
. She always looked at me as if I had only to open the door, to let Shelley in; as if it was perfectly wilful of me, not to open the door.

*

In March, we had a notable addition to our society. Lady Blessington arrived in Genoa and, claiming a mutual acquaintance in Lady Hardy, I called on her the next day. Besides, I had heard of her portrait by Lawrence, which made a sensation at the Royal Exhibition; she was supposed to be a great beauty – and I found her, at least, beautiful
enough
. We talked for an hour in the gardens of the Albergo della Villa, and the next morning, riding by the Corso Romano, which was only a little out of my way, I met her as she was returning from a ride herself. We stood in the lane at the foot of the Albergo, under the slope of an old Italian wall, with a vine growing up it. There were loose stones in the road, which the horses shifted on.

‘You have been a great disappointment to me,' she said, as soon as I had dismounted. ‘There is none of that scorn, that hatred of human-kind, which I had half feared on making your acquaintance; but which I had partly looked forward to. Do you know, I really believe you are the
least
unhappy of men.'

‘I should hesitate to say as much for myself,' I replied. ‘But then, I know a little more of the general condition of men, of this country or any other, than you perhaps have had the opportunity to observe. Besides, I defy anyone to be
very
miserable in your presence.'

She is a tall striking female, pale in the throat and rosy in the cheek, with fine brown large sympathetic eyes. If she were ten years younger, or if I were – what I was, there might have been some mischief; but she was reasonable enough not to mind much
not
being made love to. Her husband is no fool, though he sometimes appears it; and they maintain, besides the usual appurtenances of an Englishman's retinue, what Lady Blessington calls ‘their voluntary Frenchman', a young count with the name of d'Orsay and the air of a
Cupidon déchaîné
. Her disappointment in me had this advantage, that it gave us a great deal to talk about; and from that day we instituted a regular habit of riding out together when the weather was fine, as far as Sestri.

These rides made Teresa very jealous, as she is no horse–woman and speaks abominable English, so that she always suspects me of a flirtation when I practise my native tongue. (Although it is the least conducive, of any of the languages at my disposal, for that purpose.) We had two small scenes together and one large one, and I managed to console her at last by assuring her that I had much rather fall into the sea than in love any day of the week. Lady Blessington met her once at Lady Hardy's, but Teresa does not show to advantage in English society, as it brings out her airs, which are quite ridiculous in a girl of some twenty years, and encourages her to treat me coolly, which she conceives to be the English manner (she is not far wrong), so that even her affection for me, which is genuine enough, appears in a very clouded light. All of which embarrassed me considerably, though their meeting had at least this good effect – it persuaded Teresa that she had nothing to fear from a woman so old and creased-looking. Lady Blessington is thirty-four. The next afternoon, when we met as usual for one of our rides, I tried to explain myself to her.

‘I am sincerely attached to Madame Guiccioli,' I began. (This is the name by which the custom of Italian society, which cares much more about the word than about the
thing
, requires me to call my
Amante
.) ‘But the truth is my habits are not those requisite to form the happiness of any woman.' We were riding along the Moro, with the sea very dark and troubled-looking though the heavens were clear enough. When we wanted to talk, we stopped; we had stopped now and sat resting on our horses' necks. ‘I am worn out in feelings, for though only thirty-five, I feel sixty in mind, and am less capable than ever of those nameless attentions that all women, but above all Italian women, require. I like solitude, which has become absolutely necessary to me.'

‘And yet every day when it is not raining you ride out with me to the Villa Lomellina, talking all the way.'

‘Oh, I only go out to get a fresh appetite for being alone.'

‘Are you so very much alone? It is an odd kind of solitude, which has room in it for a lover, and her brother, and their father.'

We arrived afterwards at a little square, with a fountain in its middle; there was a boy to take our horses from us and a few tables and chairs beside it, where we sat down.

‘This is one of the virtues of the Italian system,' I said at last. ‘They have a natural respect for adultery, and adulterers – and welcome us into the family. But unless I request their company, they leave me alone. Madame Guiccioli is in the habit of seeing me only once or twice a day; and in the night, according to requirements.'

‘I never know when you are in earnest,' she said. ‘You have the oddest way of attracting sympathy, and as soon as you get it, shocking it away again.'