The Lady and Her Monsters (17 page)

While Mary, Percy, their child, and Claire prepared for their journey, Byron also made arrangements for his own separate departure. He commissioned a carriage to be built, something as pompous as the one belonging to Napoleon, possessing “a library, a plate-chest, and every apparatus for dining.” He made certain his friends knew where to find him, and he also hired a physician to ride along for the journey, someone who would look after his physical and mental health as he sometimes seemed incapable of doing himself. He gave this impossible and irrational task to the young, naïve, and vain Dr. John William Polidori.

D
r. John William Polidori was a young man of twenty when he was recommended to be Lord Byron's physician. The job could not have come to him at a better time: though a medical doctor in his own right, having attended the prestigious University of Edinburgh Medical School (where he had earned his degree as one of the youngest physicians ever), he had never truly wanted to be a doctor but had become one at the urging of his father, Gaetano Polidori, a domineering man who ruled with a strict hand. The young Polidori had leaned instead to the religious life, as well as the literary one.

This trip with Byron seemed like not only an opportunity too good to pass up but also one that could give him a new calling. The job involved traveling beyond the confines of England and Scotland, but also recognition and attention, and a chance to try his hand at a literary career. He believed, somehow, that by being in Byron's company that could be easily achieved.

Polidori's father was against his son's traveling with Byron. The idea of his son's fraternizing with such an individual struck a note of terror in Gaetano, and he had tried to dissuade Polidori, but he got nowhere. He had heard of Byron's reputation and feared his son would be badly influenced by it. Despite Gaetano's voicing his misgivings, young Polidori refused to listen.

Polidori already came from a literary family, members of which had made, and would continue to make, their marks in the field. His father, originally a lawyer, had been a secretary to the famous and infamous writer Vittorio Alfieri; he had also taught Italian in England and translated many literary and critical works. And one of Polidori's sisters, Frances, would go on to marry another Italian, Gabriele Rossetti. The couple would give birth to a brood of children, one of whom would become known in literary circles as the poetess Christina Rossetti, and another who would make a name as a poet and a painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

When he was recruited for the trip abroad, Polidori also received another cushy assignment: he had been hired by Byron's publisher, John Murray, to keep a diary, a journal of his travels with Byron. In it, Polidori was to catalog details of what they saw and visited as they crossed the various countries, of the changing landscapes and picturesque rides down rivers and valleys, of the people they encountered, of the details of taking care of Byron's health, as well as the changing moods of the poet's capricious nature. Titled “Journal of a Journey Through Flanders,” Polidori's travelogue was to be published upon his return to London. Few knew he was keeping track of his—and Byron's—doings, not even Percy Shelley and his new family, who would become subjects of the journal as well.

The journal has had a very convoluted history. It spanned from April 24, 1816, through December 1816, when Polidori abandoned it. It was, and is, an interesting read because Polidori's diary has remained one of the only written records, albeit in short passages, of the famous ghost story competition that gave birth to
Frankenstein,
or so Mary Shelley said it did. Polidori began his journaling on the day of their departure from London, keeping if not meticulous notes, at least a somewhat scanty log of his doings and his impressions of Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire Clairmont, which were not always positive.

But Polidori's words have to be carefully scrutinized. Upon his death the diary ended up in his sister's hands. Charlotte Lydia Polidori then set it aside for later scrutiny and did not read it until she was an older woman. What she read scandalized her. Many passages—those that spoke of Byron's excessive sexual appetite and of her brother's jaunts to a bordello (which usually ended with a visit from the local police)—she found too “salacious.” They were improper, and she would not have her brother's name associated with them. So she transcribed the diary onto fresh pages, omitting the more raunchy passages. She then handed this new edition over to her nephew William Michael Rossetti and burned the original diary. Rossetti, who eventually edited Polidori's diary, assured readers that “the authority is only a shade less safe than that of the original,” though in reality he could not have been sure of Charlotte's accuracy.

P
roblems between Byron and Polidori arose right away because Polidori believed he was traveling with Byron as a companion, a friend who was on par with Byron, and not as a doctor. In a letter Polidori sent to his sister, this became painfully obvious when he declared proudly, “I am very pleased with Lord Byron. I am with him on the footing of an equal, everything alike . . . He has not shown any passion; though we have had nothing but a series of missteps that have put me out of temper though they have not ruffled his.”

The cold, misty, and ashy-gray weather as they crossed the channel often caused temper tantrums in the group, and Polidori's only description of the other passengers on board was to say they “looked dreary.” He had yet to experience the excitement he had envisioned for the journey.

For Byron, the changes of scenery appeared to be doing wonders already, especially in regard to his sexual nature. “As soon as he reached his room,” Polidori commented, “Lord Byron fell like a thunderbolt upon the chambermaid.”

When they reached Switzerland, Lord Byron learned that a note had been left for him at the local post office. It was from Claire, who was writing to tell him that she, along with Mary and Shelley, had already arrived and were staying in the area. She also seemed disturbed that he was not already there and feared he may have lied about coming to Geneva in the hopes of avoiding her. The impassioned letter, Polidori wrote, was “worthy of a novel.” Lord Byron had not planned on seeing Claire while in Switzerland, and he wasn't pleased that she was there. Though he had initially been charmed by her features, which were bewitching in their exoticism, she was now encumbering him. He was always pestered by English expatriates when he was traveling abroad. It did not matter to him that Claire had been his lover.

The Shelley party had not departed London until May 3, eventually arriving in the Sécheron neighborhood of Geneva nearly two weeks later. They had retraced part of the route they had taken two years earlier, but this time they had a child with them. And as before, Mary was struck by the dullness of the French.

Mary's and Claire's lives now revolved around lovers, affairs, children, all of which distracted them from worrying about their sister Fanny Imlay. Quiet and prudish, she had now reached the age of twenty in the dingy Skinner Street household, under the naughty eye and wagging tongue of Mrs. Godwin. Fanny had no romantic entanglement of her own, nor any real prospects; she did not inspire love, lust, or maddening outbursts or passions, and she knew it. Not an intellectual, she received no stimulation from books or translations, nor was she taken to see the electrical shows and lectures on phantasmagoria.

She existed in a sort of limbo, her life standing as still as a murky pond. Far removed from her sisters' lives on Lake Geneva, she read and reread the letters she received and lived voyeuristically through their adventures, travels, and doings. She often replied to Mary's letters and asked about the people they were with, most especially Lord Byron, whose reputation she, like all of England, had heard of: “Does he come into your house in a careless friendly dropping in manner,” she asked in a July letter. “I wish to know though not from idle curiosity whether he was capable of acting in the manner that the London scandal-mongers say he did?” Still on the topic of Byron, she said: “I cannot think that from his writings that he can be such a detestable being—Do answer me these questions! For were I to love the poet I should like to respect the man.”

There had been talk of Fanny's moving to Ireland with her aunts Everina Wollstonecraft and Eliza Bishop—her mother's sisters—but those two women did not seem willing to take her in. Various reasons were put forth, but the most probable was that they despised William Godwin and did not want to make his life easier, which taking Fanny would have done. But Fanny was the one to suffer. Not that Ireland would have been the perfect situation either: in Dublin, Eliza and Everina ran a school with a strict code of conduct, Eliza teaching the girls and Everina the boys. Fanny's life there would have been just as glum as it was already at Skinner Street.

Fanny occupied a tricky spot in the household—part mediator and part referee between her sisters and the rest of the family—and the attempts to find balance were trying and tiresome. This also gave Mrs. Godwin a chance to show her petty and vengeful side by often gleefully telling Fanny that her sisters were making fun of her. Unfortunately, Fanny came to believe Mrs. Godwin's view that her life was going nowhere. In time, Fanny came to think that indeed she had become an object of their mockery, though in reality nothing of that sort had occurred. It was only a matter of time before Mary Wollstonecraft's melancholy and depression began to show themselves in Fanny.

But Mary, Claire, and Percy did not notice anything wrong with Fanny. Instead, Mary wrote her lengthy letters about the European landscape, and upon arriving at Poligny she included accounts of her pleasant and not-so-pleasant encounters; of cities ablaze with life and grandeur; of lofty and obscure forests populated by the tallest trees ever seen that seemed to guard their own secrets; of a lake so blue that like the tantrums of a child changed its colors at any moment, from cerulean blue, to hazel, to gray, depending on the time of day. “The town is built at the foot of the Jura,” she wrote, “which rises abruptly, from a plain of vast extent. The rocks of the mountains overhang the houses.”

One reason they left England was to find more suitable weather for Shelley, and to their unhappiness, spring had not yet arrived on the lake. The villagers told them the season had dawned unusually cold and rainy, which they soon discovered themselves. “As we ascended the mountains,” Mary wrote to Fanny, “the same clouds which rained on us in the vallies poured forth large flakes of snow thick and fast.” The desolation and coldness of the weather seemed to permeate the village and did nothing to aid Mary's temperament. “Never was a scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and stand in scattered clumps over the white wilderness; the vast expanse of snow was chequered only by those gigantic pines.”

They scoured the lake region for a place to stay and finally settled on Maison Chapuis, a short walk from Villa Diodati. There, Byron had set up residence in a sprawling estate that was too large for his personal party but large enough to contain his reputation.

The weather followed a certain pattern: it moderated during the daylight hours, while the evenings were punctuated by thunderstorms and lightning. The group took advantage of the morning hours and spent them on the lake. The air was perfumed with the scents of newly bloomed flowers and the still-frigid waters matched the crisp air. Mary soon began to revel in her surroundings and a change occurred in her. “You know that we have just escaped from the gloom of winter and London,” she wrote again to her sister, “and coming to this delightful spot during this divine weather, I feel as happy as a new-fledged bird, and hardly care what twig I fly to, so that I may try my new-found wings. A more experienced bird may be more difficult in its choice of a bower; but in my present temper of mind, the budding flowers, the fresh grass of spring, and the happy creatures about me that live and enjoy the pleasures are quite enough to afford me exquisite delight.”

A
s the English expatriates settled on the banks of the lake, a peculiar dichotomy soon arose among them. Byron was drawn to Shelley, and the two poets enjoyed spending time together, touring the lake and the region around it, the scattering of villages on its shores, bantering with each other and discussing philosophical subjects. More often than not, Byron expressed his less-than-praising opinions of his fellow Englishmen. He liked stories that let him shock those with a more delicate disposition. Anyone who knew him knew he liked to be scandalous, but others could be surprised by his candor, particularly when he talked about his own love life and the women he had bedded.

According to Claire Clairmont, who spoke of those months on the lake later in life, Byron often talked of his half sister Augusta, detailing the relationship they had enjoyed and that she had given him two children. Though Claire and Mary were stunned, Shelley had already had the experience of reassuring the women that Byron was out to startle them and nothing more. A good example of this was Bryon's tale of a lover in Constantinople whom he had had killed. As Byron recalled, the young woman had been unfaithful to him and as an act of revenge, he had hired a killer to dispose of her; this hired man had stitched the woman inside a fabric sack, then thrown her into the water and allowed her to drown.

The rest of the group seemed to hover around the two poets. Whenever Polidori tried to inject himself between the two of them—always too eager to have his literary works discussed and to get in Byron's good graces—he was quickly rebuffed. He became increasingly jealous of Shelley, who he believed had stolen away Byron's attention. With time on his hands, Polidori often frequented the bordellos and gambling halls that bordered the lake.

Mary, on the other hand, felt abandoned by Shelley and began to spend her time with Polidori, whom she saw as a younger brother, even though he was older. And Claire found that whenever she tried to see Byron, she was derailed by either Shelley or Polidori, one of whom was always in the way. Claire often snuck away from Maison Chapuis at night to meet Byron but came face-to-face with a vigilant Polidori. She eventually came to despise the doctor and had no qualms about expressing those feelings. She tried to convince Byron to dismiss the young doctor, but Byron seemed to take a certain pleasure in her despair. “Pray if you can send M. Polidori either to write another dictionary or to the lady he loves,” Claire wrote Byron in a moment of heat. “I hope this last might be his pillow & then he will go to sleep; for I cannot come at this hour of the night & be seen by him; it is so extremely suspicious.”