Shelley: The Pursuit (74 page)

For the very spirit fails,

Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep

That vanishes among the viewless gales!

Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,

Mont Blanc appears, — still, snowy, and serene —

Its subject mountains their unearthly forms

Pile around it, ice and rock . . . .
⁴⁴

Despite its essentially philosophic and sceptic pitch, the poem is not without its monsters and ghosts. Shelley refers to the ‘old Earthquake-daemon’; the glaciers are at one point described as serpents creeping on their prey; and the snowy peaks as ‘A city of death, distinct with many a tower’. In his letter to Peacock, which he subsequently adapted for Mary’s book
A History of a Six Weeks Tour
, Shelley expressed this feeling of the monstrous — closely connected with Mary’s
Frankenstein
— in a memorable image. ‘One would think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and the frozen blood forever circulated through his stony veins.’ Yet the poem ends finally, with its focus neither on the mountain, nor the monster, nor God, but on the poised, unflinching attention of the human mind itself which embraces all, and is in this sense the ultimate power:

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,

If to the human mind’s imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?
⁴⁵

As far as he could press the question in this poem, Mont Blanc proved for Shelley that the natural world held no other intelligent divinity except the mind of man. The effect of this prolonged and intense meditation was to induce in Shelley a feeling of irritable and mocking superiority towards his fellow tourists, and the locals of Chamonix. The Swiss guide, Ducrée, who took him over the glacier of Boisson, he called ‘the only tolerable person I have seen in this country’.
To Peacock he wrote acidly: ‘There is a Cabinet d’Histoire Naturelle at Chamouni, just as at Matlock & Keswick & Clifton; the proprietor of which is the very vilest specimen, of that vile species of quack that together with the whole army of aubergistes & guides & indeed the entire mass of the population subsist on the weakness & credulity of travellers as leeches subsist on the blood of the sick.’ When in September, Byron came to Chamonix, he was more infuriated by the general philistinism of his compatriots, and raged about an English woman who exclaimed how
rural
the mountains looked — ‘as if it was Highgate, or Hampstead, or Brompton, or Hayes’.
⁴⁶

But Shelley was not content with registering merely private indignation. In the hotel register at Chamonix, and in another at Montavert, and possibly in a third on the return journey down the Arve valley, he made a celebrated entry in Greek. Under the ‘Occupation’ column, he inscribed the deliberately provocative tag: ‘Δημoκρατικoς, Φιλáνθρωπoτατoς, κáι’αθες’ — Democrat, Philanthropist and Atheist. Under the destination column, for him and the two girls, he wrote succinctly ‘L’Enfer’.
⁴⁷
Only by considering the reputation Chamonix had among the travelling English at this time, as a natural temple of the Lord and a proof of the Deity by design, is it possible to realize the spirit in which Shelley wrote these entries, and the astounding fury with which they were greeted. Fifty years later, Swinburne noted that the entry in the register previous to Shelley’s was ‘fervid with ghostly grease and rancid religion’.
⁴⁸
Yet when Byron himself came across one of Shelley’s three entries with Hobhouse in September, he immediately felt obliged to cross it out as indelibly as possible for Shelley’s own protection. Byron missed the other registers, and the scandalous annotation was soon a regular notoriety. Thomas Raffles noted it in his
Letters During a Tour
of 1818, together with a retort: ‘If an atheist, a fool — if not, a liar.’ Southey, among others, seized upon it and spread the story, and it played a prominent part in the major newspaper attacks on Shelley in the
Quarterly
of January 1818, and the
London Chronicle
of June 1819. It was the word ’αθεoς which caused the original offence; but in such a context, the word Δημoκρατικoς was mentally read as ‘revolutionary’, and the word
φιλκáνθρωπoς
as ‘pervert’.

On Thursday the 25th, they returned from Montavert, picnicking in an Alpine meadow, among wild rhododendron and mountain roses. Friday was wet, and Shelley spent much time cross-questioning the guide about his work, his pay, Swiss politics and conscription laws. He noted with interest that Ducrée married a girl of 16 when he himself was only 18. Mary and Shelley collected Alpine seeds to plant in the garden of their proposed home at Windsor. The following day they returned down the valley for Lake Leman. ‘Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves among these mountains?’ Shelley closed his letter to Peacock. ‘In the winter they descend into the valleys which the snow occupies
during six months of the year, & devour everything they find outside of the doors. A wolf is more powerful than the fiercest & strongest dog.’
⁴⁹

On Shelley’s return to Montalègre, at the beginning of August, it was soon clear that the summer with Byron was coming to an end. From London the tentacles of his financial affairs were at last closing around him again, and a letter from his solicitor Longdill received on the 2nd convinced him that he would have to return. A cheque for twenty-five pounds was sent off to Peacock to help tidy up bills at Bishopsgate, for the sale of the furniture had realized little. Charles Clairmont had also written from Bordeaux begging Shelley to support his studies, and Shelley contributed ten pounds. But the deciding factor was Claire.

Claire was now three or four months pregnant, and it was obvious that the moment had come to settle the arrangements about the child with Byron. Perhaps he would agree to set up a regular
ménage
with her? She hoped so, desperately; but Shelley was doubtful, already knowing Byron far better than she did. He had never loved her; and now even physical love had become irritating, and Claire’s very presence at the Diodati seemed intolerable. With a good deal of sense, and much kindness, Shelley undertook to negotiate with Byron on Claire’s behalf. Mary was kept out of the discussions and she noted in her journal for 2 August: ‘In the evening Lord Byron and [Shelley] go out in the boat, and after their return, Shelley and Claire go up to Diodati; I do not, for Lord Byron did not seem to wish it.’
⁵⁰
Shelley finally managed to arrange an unhappy, but not altogether unsatisfactory compromise. Byron would recognize the child when it was born, and would bring it up himself in Europe; but meanwhile Claire would treat the pregnancy discreetly, and go to England for the birth. Byron refused to have Claire in his household, but he agreed to allow her to visit the child regularly under the designation of an aunt, once it had been settled under the paternal roof. Exact dates and places remained vague, but there was talk of summer 1817 in Italy.

What gave force to this agreement was Shelley’s determined and courageous offer to look after Claire during the period of her pregnancy and childbirth, and support her as one of his own household. This was an offer which he put forward, fully realizing from his past experience the difficulties with Mary, the Godwins and other outsiders he would encounter. He must also have considered the inevitable rumours of ‘incest’ which would attach to himself. He did not blanch at these in the least, and for once acted both from principle and from experience. It was an act of great personal generosity, and imagination, far more distinctive than many of his philanthropic declarations and wild disbursements of his father’s money. It was also a frank recognition of personal responsibility for Claire. Claire never forgot this. One of the first fruits was that Shelley had now no choice but to leave Switzerland.

Mary says nothing in her journal of her reaction to these events. On 4 August she gave Shelley a telescope which she had bought in Geneva for his 24th birthday, and they celebrated by going out in the boat to launch a fire balloon from the lake. But there was too much wind, and they had to try from the shore. From the lawn in front of Montalègre, the silken balloon inflated, rose unsteadily, caught the wind and burst instantly into flame and was consumed.

The little community was inexorably breaking up. But the arrival of M. G. Lewis on the 18th, with a colourful train of Jamaican servants, whom he treated with genial kindness, temporarily lifted the Byronic gloom at the Diodati, and they all went up in the evening to discuss ghosts again. Shelley, who was now constantly discussing with Mary the plotting of
Frankenstein
, carefully questioned Lewis about ‘the mysteries of his trade’. In the journal he entered a long note on four stories, ‘all grim’, which Lewis told, and Mary years later wrote one of these for her article ‘On Ghosts’ for the
London Magazine
of March 1824. Shelley was curious to find that personally speaking, Lewis was a sceptic with regard to ghosts, and that Byron sided with him in the argument. ‘We talk of Ghosts; neither Lord Byron nor Monk G. Lewis seem to believe in them; and they both agree, in the very face of reason, that none could believe in ghosts without also believing in God. I do not think that all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations really discredit them, or if they do, in daylight, are not admonished by the approach of loneliness and midnight to think more respectably of the world of shadows.’ Shelley took Byron and Lewis out in the boat, during the next few days, and among the subjects discussed was Goethe’s
Faust
. Shelley continued to escort Claire to the Diodati where she was being allowed to fair copy
Childe Harold
. But Byron still refused absolutely to see her alone. Yet he frequently came down from the Diodati, to talk with Shelley at Montalègre, partly to escape Polidori who was constantly getting drunk or involving himself in affrays in Geneva; and partly because he regretted Shelley’s departure. One Saturday evening, they sat on the wall overlooking the little harbour, talking quietly till the light faded and they parted for dinner. More and more rumours were now circulating back to them from Geneva, and five years later, writing to an Italian friend of Byron’s, Shelley recalled:

The natives of Geneva and the English people who were living there did not hesitate to affirm that we were leading the life of the most unbridled libertinism. They said that we had found a pact to outrage all that is regarded as most sacred in human society. Allow me, Madam, to spare you the details. I will only tell you that atheism, incest, and many other things — sometimes ridiculous and sometimes terrible — were imputed to us. The English papers
did not delay to spread the scandal, and the people believed it . . . . The inhabitants on the banks of the lake opposite Lord Byron’s house used telescopes to spy on his movements. One English lady fainted with horror (or pretended to!) on seeing him enter a drawing room . . . . You cannot, Madam, conceive the excessive violence with which a certain class of the English detest those whose conduct and opinions are not precisely modelled on their own. The systems of those ideas forms a superstition, which constantly demands and constantly finds fresh victims. Strong as theological hatred may be, it always yields to social hatred.
⁵¹

Shelley did not, however, choose to recall the hotel registers.

The arrival of Byron’s old friends from London on 26 August, John Cam Hobhouse and Scrope Daves, effectively marked the changing of the guard. Shelley now felt he was
de trop
, and packing and coaching arrangements began. Byron and Polidori came down for farewells, and the two poets took a last sail on the lake in their boat which was thenceforward handed over to the Diodati. A copy of Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ had arrived from London, and Shelley gave it a quiet memorial reading to Mary before going to bed. By the 28th they were packed up, and left on the 9 o’clock coach from Geneva the following morning. The fair copy of
Childe Harold
was locked in Shelley’s portmanteau for personal delivery to Murray’s at Albemarle Street. The Swiss nursemaid, Elise, came with them to look after little William. They glanced back regretfully at the shining lake, as they rose into the Jura, and gazed thoughtfully at the rocks, and the pines and meadows that had been under snow at the time of their arrival long ago in the spring.

The departure was hardest for Claire. There is a brief undated note of hers to Byron, probably written in the last few days of August. It tells everything about that brief liaison. ‘I would have come to you tonight if I thought I could be
any use
to you. If you
want
me or anything of, or belonging to me I am sure Shelley would come and fetch me if you ask him. I am afraid to come dearest for fear of meeting anyone. Can you pretext the copying? Tell me anytime I shall come & I will because you will have then made your arrangements. Every thing is so awkward. We go soon. Dearest pray come and see us pray do.’
⁵²
But Byron had not come.

Yet as the coach rolled slowly through Dijon and Fontainebleau towards Le Havre, Shelley was already looking and planning ahead. The friendship with Byron, though it had brought him responsibilities and had banked up much of his creative impulse, had also given him a matured and confident sense of new purpose. He felt alive again to the wider pattern of events in England, and at the back of his mind a long-buried theme for his writing was beginning to stir. One
of the last books he had read at Montalègre was the
Histoire de la Révolution
, by Rabault.
⁵³
Dispatching a brief letter to Byron, he expressed the idea obliquely, as something for Byron rather than for himself. ‘We passed, not through Paris, but by a shorter route through Versailles, and Fontainebleau, and stayed to visit those famous Palaces, which, as I will hereafter tell you, are well worth visiting as monuments of human power; grand, yet somewhat faded; the latter is the scene of some of the most interesting events of what may be called the master theme of the epoch in which we live — the French Revolution.’
⁵⁴