III



Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει

Everything flows, nothing remains the same.

–Heraclitus

…a clock ticking off a continuous succession of present mo-

ments…now…now…now: what will be, what is, what was…

….time as Kronos: only the present moment exists, an impossible to dis-

tinguish series of ‘nows’ within which everything happens–all being and
becoming, all birth and growth, all death and decay…

…the past as a succession of presents that have passed, leaving increas-

ingly diffuse traces as the moments drift backward by the second, hour,
day, year…

…only intensities persist in time, retentions continuously transformed by

the present as they are ceaselessly borne backwards into the past; the
past determining future presents that will come to pass…

…time passing: the present moment like the prow of a boat knifing
through the infinite ocean of future time; past moments the wake reced-
ing an spreading behind: the pattern always the same, always different,
as the vessel moves forward towards its unknown destination…

…the cycles of existence: the rising and setting of the sun, moon, and
stars; the ebb and flow of the tides; the falling rain gathered in streams,
rivers, lakes, and oceans, then taken up again into the clouds; the arri-
val and departure of the seasons, the changing quality of the light
throughout the year; the rhythms of life–awaking and sleeping, activity
and repose, action and reaction, the flux and reflux of emotion, affect,
thought…

…time as a river flowing: a plunge into the river of being, wavering be-
tween the strong central current that threaten to drown us, and the mo-
ments of loitering along the unattainable banks in a futile attempt to for-
get the flow of time as we try to linger in the shallows–the quotidian time
of schedules and newspapers, small-talk and dinner parties…like leaves

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tranquilly spinning in an eddy, giving the illusion that the river doesn’t
flow…

…every moment contains a being and a becoming inextricably linked:

the actuality of what is, the emerging potentiality of what will be…

…time as Kairos: erupting unexpectedly in the midst of Kronos–an

opening in the flow of time whereby the potential becomes possible, and
the possible becomes actual…

…the emergence of a space of freedom–dizziness, ripened fruit suddenly

falling from a tree, freedom as a burst of potentiality become actuality…

…to choose, or to choose differently…the time of crisis demanding an

answer from us, demanding that we act…

…the fleeting moment to be seized: “dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas:

carpe diem”…

…when we can say, “au moment voulu”: when we find what we need,
when we arrive at our destination, when the awaited moment has ar-
rived…

…when we can say to the moment “remain, thou art beautiful”–a trem-
bling moment irreducible to any other…

…and yet nothing will make the moment remain: time rushes forward
inexorably, and, as with music, we gather the receding moments as trac-
es of memory forming a web from within which the newly arriving mo-
ment is born…

…we dance to the music of time: whirling around and around from in-
fancy to old age until death sweeps over us in his chariot, catching us
unaware…

“…the aperture through which the sand runs is so tiny that at first sight
it seems as if the level in the upper glass never changes. To our eyes it
appears that the sand runs out only…only at the end…and till it does,
it’s not worth thinking about. Till the last moment when there’s no more
time…when there’s no more time to think about it…”

…to bear witness to time and its passing: the singularity of is, the irrev-
ocability of was…

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 

The reflections of the ochre, sienna, and gray riverfront facades quiver
on the surface of the jade-green water of the Arno. They walk down the
Lungarno alla Pacinotti, only stopping for a moment to lean on the river
wall, gazing at the smoothly flowing river. Crossing the road leading
onto the Ponte di Mezzo, they continue down the Lungarno Mediceo un-
til they reach the white marble facade of a palazzo. It has a plaque on the
left corner above the ground-floor window.
“…so this is it–Byron’s Palazzo Lanfranchi: ‘Giorgio Gordon Noel
Byron qui dimorro dall’ autunno del 1821 all’ estate del 1822 e scrisse
sei canti del “Don Giovanni”’–‘George Gordon Noel Byron resided
here from the autumn of 1821 to the summer of 1822 and wrote six can-
tos of Don Juan’…”
“…it seems to be a state archive now–look, there, above the door…”
“…that’s good–perhaps we can take a peak inside tomorrow morning,
given it’s a public building…”
“…I hope so…”
“…so from here, looking across the river down there by the Ponte
della Fortezza…yes, that must be the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa there, next
to that gap in the riverfront…”
“…it looks partially ruined…”
“…it must have been bombed, too, during the war. They were proba-
bly aiming at the bridge–that’s a modern bridge, so they must have hit it.
The bombs leveled the building next to it where the gap is, and also
where that new building is standing…”
“…let’s go take a closer look…”
“…ok…”
They walk along the river towards the Ponte della Fortezza. The
modern bridge with its aluminum barred railing crosses the river directly
in front of the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa. The four-storey palazzos are all of
slightly different heights, the facades of the center and rightmost palaces
recently restored with red brick and dark green shutters, the leftmost
palazzo, with its original stonework facade and its windows bricked up,
is jaggedly cleft–the top floor entirely missing, the central floor half
missing, and the bottom two floors one third missing, their top surfaces
covered with dense foliage. They pause halfway across the bridge.
“…I wonder which one of the buildings they lived in?”
“…all I know is that they had the whole top floor, and it overlooked
the Ponte Fortezza and the Giardino Scotto, but that could be any of

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them, really: there’s the garden, and those walls there are part of the for-
tress…”
“…I hope it wasn’t the floor that’s missing in the left one...”
“…I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. The Williams took the bottom
floor of whichever one it was…”
“…it must have been very nice for them here–in town, but right on the
edge of the gardens…”
“…Shelley probably used that very landing, there, to launch his boat.
Byron used to observe Shelley and Williams on the river from that bal-
cony on his palace. Sometimes they were rather foolhardy, sailing in
rough weather: Byron once wrote to someone, having just observed
them on a windy day, ‘He, alone, in this age of humbug, dares stem the
current, as he did today the flooded Arno in his skiff, although I could
not observe he made any progress. The attempt is better than being
swept along as all the rest are, with the filthy garbage scoured from its
banks’…”
“…sounds like Byron. It’s hard to imagine the river raging, seeing it
now–it’s so tranquil…”
“…yes–I see what Shelley meant when he wrote,

Within the surface of the fleeting river

The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and forever
It trembles, but it never fades away…

…an image of time–and eternity…”

“…shall we look around the back?”
“…let’s save that for tomorrow–I’m getting hungry…”
“…I hoped you would say that…”
“…so, on to Cagliostro?”
“…yes, I’m hungry too. You can tell me about life when Byron was
here as we walk…”
“…it began with Shelley formally going to greet Byron and welcome
him to Pisa on November 2nd, 1821. It didn’t take long before certain
rituals were established within their community: when the weather was
good, they would ride an hour or so out of the city–that way, I think–for
target-shooting expeditions at a local farm, and when the weather was
bad, there would often be billiards and conversations late into the night
at the Palazzo Lanfranchi. On Wednesdays there would be a formal din-
ner, which often devolved into a drinking party that went on late into the
night…”
“…were the women there as well?”
“…Teresa Guiccioli, Jane Williams, and Mary certainly went along in
a coach for the afternoon rides, and I believe they may have initially
been there for the Wednesday dinner parties, but the billiard games and
late night drinking routs were attended by the men only–the group Mary

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was soon referring to, in her journal, as the ‘crew.’ In the early days,
aside from Byron and Shelley, it would have been Edward Williams,
Pietro Gamba–Teresa Guiccioli’s brother, and, at a certain point, Tom
Medwin, who returned from Florence apparently attracted by the lure of
Byron’s celebrity. Then there was John Taafe as well, and hovering
about the usual servants: Fletcher, of course, and Tita–Byron’s Venetian
servant. What brought things to a kind of critical mass was the arrival of
Edward Trelawny, in mid-January…”
“…the one who later didn’t wear any socks?”
“…that’s the one. He’s an ambivalent figure, historically: he’s been
referred to as ‘the man who killed Shelley and Byron’…”
“…why is that?”
“…most directly because the idea of building the boats was his, plus
he undoubtedly prodded Byron to go to Greece. Trelawny was a catalyst
for both poets: he had been attracted to them because of their poetry and
what he had heard about their revolutionary lifestyles–especially what
he heard about Byron. In my mind he was a bit of a ‘groupie’…”
“…what’s that?”
“…someone who hangs around others who are famous in order to
bask in their reflected light, hopefully gaining fame by association. The
strange thing is that usually groupies don’t have much influence on
those they are idolizing, but Trelawny, who had received his initial idea
of the romantic temperament from Byron’s poetry, attempted to live up
to that idea and to perfect it in a way that even Byron himself had failed
to do…”
“…by imitating him?”
“…Byron himself noted that Trelawny could have played the part of
the Corsair in Byron’s poem of the same title. Trelawny was full of en-
ergy and enthusiasm, whereas Byron was actually lacking in both: By-
ron tended to fall into lethargy and lassitude, and he actually made fun
of the word enthusiasm, mispronouncing it, after the German word en-
thusiamus, as ‘Entusasmusy’. Almost every significant event that oc-
curred in their lives during that six month period was in some way at-
tached to Trelawny’s ‘Entusasmusy,’ which provoked both Byron and
Shelley to rise to the occasion. Of course, the most significant bout of
enthusiasm came with Trelawny’s idea to have the boats built, which
seems to have occurred almost as soon as he arrived. Mary later copied
down part of Edward Williams’ journal showing the precise date as Jan-
uary 15, so you can see how quickly Trelawny got them to settle upon
the plan, and I’m sure he was instrumental in the decision about what
kind of boats they should be–Shelley’s with too much sail and too much
weight in the keel for an undecked boat…”
“…Trelawny seems a kind of cog in the mechanism of the myth of the
late romantic poets…”
“…certainly he was that, although I think there’s more to him than
just that: I do appreciate other aspects of his entry into their lives; for

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example, Trelawny’s writings give us a glimpse into the late period of
their lives that we might not otherwise have, and despite his tendency to
idealize and even mythologize his subjects, he recorded a good deal of
important information, such as descriptions of all the principal actors. I
can show you what he wrote–we’re almost at the restaurant, so when
we’re seated, with a glass of wine, I’ll read some of them to you…”
The head waiter greets them cordially, asks if they want the same ta-
ble they had the night before, and seats them there. They order a bottle
of Frescobaldi Pomino Bianco, mineral water and two insalata grigliata
as appetizers. The wine is brought immediately, tasted and poured.
“…cin cin…”
“…cin cin…hmmm, tastes a bit like like vanilla…”
“…yes, you’re right…”
“…so read me the descriptions…”
“…ok, but first I’ll read a description of Trelawny from Mary’s jour-
nal:

Trelawny is extravagant–un giovane Stravagante (though

not as the Venetian Gondolier meant) partly natural &
partly perhaps put on–but it suits him well–& if his ab-
rupt, but not unpolished manners be assumed, they are
nevertheless in unison with his Moorish face (for he looks
Oriental yet not Asiatic) his dark hair his Herculean form.
And then there is an air of extreme good nature which
pervades his whole countenance, especially when he
smiles, which assures me that his heart is good. He tells
strange stories of himself–horrific ones–so that they har-
row one up, while with his emphatic but unmodulated
voice–his simple yet strong language–he portrays the
most frightful situations–then all these adventures took
place between the ages of 13 & 20–I believe them now I
see the man–& tired with the everyday sleepiness of hu-
man intercourse I am glad to meet with one who among
other valuable qualities has the rare merit of interesting
my imagination.

…so, you can see that she was evidently quite taken with him…”
“…and what did Trelawny think of her?”
“…he was neutral, initially–this is how he first described her in his
Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author: ‘The most striking feature in
her face was her calm, grey eyes; she was rather under the English
standard of woman’s height, very fair and light-haired, witty, social, and
animated in the society of friends, though mournful in solitude….’ That
was the best he had to say about her, but as time wore on, he saw into
the breakdown of her relationship with Shelley, as he records here:

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 Mrs. Shelley had a variety of amiable qualities, but she
was possessed of the green-eyed monster, jealousy…That
was an insurmountable impediment to confidential inter-
course with her husband. Whenever the Poet wrote on the
subject of love, however abstract or ideal, she miscon-
strued this, and considered it treason to herself. She was
mournful and desponding in solitude, and panting for so-
ciety. She used every effort to make Shelley convention-
al, and to get him to do as others did, her moaning and
complaining grieved him, and her society was no solace.

…and he added this even more damning material about her in the ap-
pendix, which created quite a stir when he published his book, years af-
ter her death:

Mrs. Shelley was of a soft, lymphatic temperament, the

exact opposite to Shelley in everything; she was moping
and miserable when alone, and yearning for socie-
ty…Whilst overshadowed by Shelley’s greatness her fac-
ulties expanded; but when she had lost him they shrank
into their natural littleness…Mrs. Shelley was a firm be-
liever, and had little or no sympathy with her husband’s
theories; she could not but admire the great capacity and
learning of her husband, but she had no faith in his views,
and she grieved that he was so stubborn and inflexible.

…but that was already at the end of their story–a great deal happened in
between…”
“…and did he describe Claire, too?”
“…actually not only did he not describe her, but she’s conspicuous by
her very absence in his writings…”
“…why–was he angry at her?”
“…not at all–quite the opposite. She had asked not to be mentioned–
not even as the mother of Byron’s daughter. Trelawny was fond enough
of her to oblige her–and he kept to his word. She had been furious when
William Michael Rossetti wrote Shelley’s biography and mentioned her
as Allegra’s mother a few years before Trelawny’s book. She didn’t
want it all stirred up again–which is not to say Trelawny didn’t try to
persuade her…”
“…did Trelawny know about her and Shelley?”
“…that’s a difficult question. Certainly neither Shelley nor Claire told
him anything directly, for they had learned the lesson of imperceptibility
by then. Also, Trelawny didn’t see Claire until she came to Pisa for a
visit in March for a few days, and then not for any sustained length of
time until she arrived to stay with them at the end of May. My guess is
that he might have heard some innuendo–through his friend Medwin or

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perhaps Byron, but I suspect the ‘public secret’ of Allegra’s parentage
would have acted as a kind of ‘screen secret’ to any deeper secrets. I
think he suspected it, and for me what confirms it is how he pushed her
in later years to write something about Shelley; however, I strongly
doubt he ever spoke to Shelley or Claire directly about it…”
“…did she like his book?”
“…yes, very much. She wrote a letter to him–I have an excerpt, here:

Your portraiture of Shelley is full of truth–it is himself in

all his unaffectedness, in his simple tastes so fond of
woods, seas, lakes mountains; of birds and of music.
There was in his manner and way of speaking, a touch of
the woman, even of the girl, and that appears vividly in
your description and is attractive.

…so she thought his portrayal was truthful…”

“…‘a touch of the girl’?”
“…Trelawny himself was a ‘manly man,’ so anything less, or differ-
ent, would have appeared effeminate to him–he at times played up the
ethereal, passive side of Shelley for the effect. Here’s how he describes
his first sight of him:

Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall thin stripling

held out both his hands; and although I could hardly be-
lieve as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and artless face
that it could be the Poet, I returned his warm pressure.
After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down
and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it pos-
sible this mild-looking beardless boy could be the verita-
ble monster at war with the world?

…Trelawny certainly overdid it here in order to emphasize precisely

Shelley’s unearthly qualities–in contrast to his readership’s Victorian
view of Shelley as some sort of monster of immorality. Trelawny ends
the scene with Shelley having gone out again suddenly, without a word,
and Jane Williams answering his query by saying, ‘Who? Shelley! Oh,
he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where’–
emphasizing his ethereal aspect…”
“…but Claire said it was accurate…”
“…yes, but Trelawny wanted to accentuate his passivity in his first
description of Shelley to heighten the contrast with his later descriptions
of Shelley’s strength–listen to this, for example: ‘I often saw him in a
state of nudity, and he always reminded me of a young Indian, strong-
limbed and vigorous, and there were few men who would walk on bro-
ken ground at the pace he kept up; he beat us all in walking….’ What

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Trelawny finally emphasized the most was Shelley’s lack of selfishness
and vanity–the opposite of Byron:

There was a marked individuality in Shelley. In habits,

manners, and all ordinary occurrences of life, he never
changed. He took no notice of what other people did;
brave, frank, and outspoken, like a well-conditioned boy,
well-bred and considerate of others, because he was total-
ly devoid of selfishness and vanity. He did not laugh or
even smile, he was always earnest. He had observed that
people laughed at the misadventures of others, and there-
fore thought it cruel; but his eyes and face were so ex-
pressive that you could see all the workings within his
mind in joy or sorrow.

…and he connects this consideration for others with Shelley’s careless-

ness concerning his own welfare:

Shelley loved everything better than himself. Self-

preservation is, they say, the first law of nature, with him
it was the last; and the only pain her ever gave his friends
from the utter indifference with which he treated every-
thing concerning himself.

…he tells anecdotes about how Shelley would only eat when he was
hungry–a piece of fruit or bread here and there, and at times he would
forget to eat anything at all. Trelawny once went to Livorno for some
errands in the morning, leaving Shelley standing, deep in thought with
his book propped on the mantel, and returned to find him there in the
evening in the same position, with his uneaten dinner untouched and un-
noticed by his side…”
“…speaking of dinner, here comes our salads–do you know what you
want as a main course?”
“…I think I’m going to be a bit decadent today, and have both a primi
and secondi piatti. What are you having?”
“…what’s struzzo?”
“…ostrich…”
“…no thanks! Isn’t Branzino the fish they made the ravioli from yes-
terday?”
“…yes–I’m having it as my second course…”
“…I thought you didn’t like the bones?”
“…I feel up to dealing with them today…”
“…so I’ll have it too…”
“…and for my first course the tagliolini tartuffo…”
The waitress places their salads before them, offers them freshly-
ground pepper, takes their orders, and pours them each more wine.

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 “…dobrou chuť…”
“…bon appétit…anyway, Trelawny emphasized how Shelley was en-
tirely taken up by his own thoughts:

The fact was his excessive mental labour impeded, if it

did not paralyze, his bodily functions. When his mind
was fixed on a subject, his mental powers were strained
to the utmost. If not writing or sleeping, he was reading;
he read whilst eating, walking, or traveling–the last thing
at night, and the first thing in the morning…

…I do think there’s some truth in his description, although he’s prone to

embellishment…”
“…and his description of Byron?”
“…if he tended to embellish his account of Shelley, I would say he
tended towards the opposite with Byron, playing up his selfishness and
pride, although, in general, I think he captured his general character
quite well. Here’s his physical description…

In external appearance Byron realized that ideal standard

with which imagination adorns genius. He was in the
prime of life, thirty-four; of middle height, five feet eight
and a half inches; regular features, without a stain or fur-
row on his pallid skin, his shoulders broad, chest open,
body and limbs finely proportioned. His small highly-
finished head and curly hair had an airy and graceful ap-
pearance from the massiveness and length of his throat:
you saw his genius in his eyes and lips. In short, Nature
could do little more than she had done for him, both in
outward form and in the inward spirit she had given to
animate it. But all these rare gifts to his jaundiced imagi-
nation only served to make his one personal defect
(lameness) the more apparent…His lameness certainly
helped to make him skeptical, cynical, and savage.

…I think that captures him perfectly, and hints at the kind of deformity
of sensitivity that was his chief fault, and how it fed into his genius.
Shelley was, as always, seized with a mixture of admiration, envy, and
chagrin–you can see it in the draft of a poem he must have written to
Byron during these months, probably in response to Byron’s having
tossed off, seemingly effortlessly, the verse dramas Cain and Sardana-
palus. They were prefaced with a note that read ‘I am afraid these verses
will not please you, but…’–although I don’t know of any evidence that
shows he actually gave the poem to Byron:

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 If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill
Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair
The ministration of the thoughts that fill
The mind which, like a worm whose life may share
A portion of the unapproachable,
Marks your creations rise as fast and fair
As perfect worlds at the Creator’s will.
But such is my regard that nor your power
To soar above the heights where others climb,
Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour
Cast from the envious future on the time,
Move one regret for his unhonoured name
Who dares these words:—the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.

…on January 12th he wrote to Gisborne, ‘What think you of Lord Byron
now? Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God, when
he grew weary of vacancy, than I at the late works of this spirit of an
angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body.’ Shelley himself
couldn’t write during this period, although he wasn’t yet ready to see
that the proximity of Byron was the cause; however, there were indica-
tions of the coming disenchantment: on January 25th, he wrote to Horace
Smith that ‘Our party at Pisa is the same as when I wrote last–Lord By-
ron unites us at a weekly dinner where my nerves are generally shaken
to pieces by sitting up, contemplating the rest making themselves vats of
claret &c. till 3 o’clock in the morning’…”
“…what’s ‘claret’?”
“…he may have been using it as a general name for red wine, but
usually the English used the word to apply to Bordeaux…”
“…wasn’t he exaggerating a bit?”
“…perhaps, but Trelawny confirmed part of it–especially when there
were visitors from the Empire. Byron would invite Shelley, Shelley
would dutifully go, but according to Trelawny he wasn’t very happy.
Listen to this:

He always, on these occasions, got Shelley if he could,

but to him it was exceedingly distasteful, as there was
never any topic of the slightest interest to him–deaths,
elopements, marriages, scandal, etc. etc.—but Shelley
had in perfection the power of closing his senses of hear-
ing and seeing, and taking refuge within his own mind.
He often left the company without exchanging a word
with the guest he had been invited to meet; the instant
there was an opening, like a wild animal he was off, and
rushed along the Lung’Arno to his den.

437
…Shelley was certainly shy and detested society, but it probably wasn’t
always so bad…”
“…still, it would have been fascinating to have been at one of those
dinners...”
“...Medwin kept a record of them: according to Medwin, Shelley
would always defer to Byron’s class status, addressing him as ‘my dear
Lord Byron,’ while Byron deferred to Shelley’s greater learning and lit-
erary knowledge; after all, Shelley, for example, was at that time trans-
lating Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus from the Latin, and
Goethe’s Faust from the German–with Claire’s help, of course. Medwin
described Shelley’s contribution to the discussions as being sincere to
the point of earnestness, and yet pronounced with a passionate rhetoric.
Byron’s contributions typically involved his sardonic wit and a love of
circumlocution and mystery–Medwin could never tell when he was seri-
ous or ironic…and, apparently, Byron also tended to fall into a certain
indelicacy, which created a negative effect on Shelley–clearly intention-
ally on Byron’s part. You can imagine the clash in how they viewed the
world–Byron with his unethical moralism, Shelley with his ethical
amoralism. Their friendship might have lasted longer if they had only
seen each other the way they did previously–for short bursts of time with
long intervals in between. The whole thing began to wear on Shelley–
there’s an unfinished poem from this period entitled ‘The Zucca,’ which
shows how discontent he was in that period:

Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,

And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring
More in this world than any understand,
Wept o’er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
Of my lorn heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.

Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep

The instability of all but weeping;
And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
From unremembered dreams, shalt ... see
No death divide thy immortality.

I loved—oh, no, I mean not one of ye,

Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
As human heart to human heart may be;—
I loved, I know not what—but this low sphere

438
 And all that it contains, contains not thee,
Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.
From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,
Veiled art thou, like a ... star.

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,

Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
When for a moment thou art not forbidden
To live within the life which thou bestowest;
And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,

In music and the sweet unconscious tone
Of animals, and voices which are human,
Meant to express some feelings of their own;
In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

And thus I went lamenting, when I saw

A plant upon the river’s margin lie
Like one who loved beyond his nature’s law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw
Had blighted; like a heart which hatred’s eye
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth

Had crushed it on her maternal breast
...

…this stanza is broken off…he continues…

I bore it to my chamber, and I planted

It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
Fell through the window-panes, disrobed of cold,
Upon its leaves and flowers; the stars which panted
In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled
Over the horizon’s wave, with looks of light
Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.

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 The mitigated influences of air
And light revived the plant, and from it grew
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew,
O’erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
Of vital warmth enfolded it anew,
And every impulse sent to every part
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.

Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,

Even if the air and sun had smiled not on it;
For one wept o’er it all the winter long
Tears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it
Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.

Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers
On which he wept, the while the savage storm
Waked by the darkest of December’s hours
Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;
The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,
The fish were frozen in the pools, the form
Of every summer plant was dead
Whilst this....

…he breaks it off there. Harold Bloom sees it as a kind of reversal of the
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, as that poem celebrates the presence of a
spirit that infuses things, whereas this poem mourns the absence of that
spirit, which somehow infuses reality but then cannot be here, except in
momentary manifestations–such as the spirit that brings the zucca plant
back to life. I think that’s a fair reading, but I would go further, seeing
the poem also as a kind of projection of Shelley’s own being onto the
plant…”
“…as he did in The Sensitive Plant…”
“…yes, and he must have said as much to Claire, for she wrote a letter
to him in December, referring to Shelley, again, as the ‘Exotic’…”
“…how was Claire?”
“…she was heading for a crisis, but in the early months of Byron’s
visit it was really Shelley who was complaining the most–look at this
letter from December 11th:

My dearest friend,

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 I should be very glad to receive a confidential letter
from you–one totally the reverse of those I write to you;
detailing all your present occupations & intimacies, &
giving me some insight into your future plans. Do not
think that my affection & anxiety for you ever cease, or
that I ever love you less although that love has been &
still must be a source of disquietude to me–
The Exotic as you please to call me droops in this frost–
a frost both moral & physical–a solitude of the heart–
These late days I have been unable to ride–the cold to-
wards sunset is so excessive & my side reminding me
that I am mortal…

…he then continues the metaphor, relating his feeling of being out of
place in the company of Byron and the others, and goes on describing
his state of mind…

I am employed in nothing–I read–but have no spirits

for serious composition–I have no confidence and to
write in solitude or put forth thoughts without sympathy
is unprofitable vanity.–
Tell me what you mean to do, & if it should give you
pleasure come & live with us. The William’s always
speak of you with praise & affection, & regret very much
that you did not spend this winter with them but neither
their regret nor their affection equal mine–

…”
“…it’s a remarkable letter–I’m surprised it wasn’t destroyed, given it
was certainly one of the ‘secret’ letters. For example, this part–here, let
me see…there, where he writes that his love ‘still must be a source of
disquietude for me…’–how can evidence of their intimacy be clearer
than that?”
“…and yet critics still roundly deny their relationship, and, as I told
you, even Holmes later backtracked on his initial theory and suggested it
was only a ‘loving friendship’…”
“…‘loving friendship’ a ‘source of disquietude’? That doesn’t make
emotional sense…”
“…I agree…”
“…and what about the part where he says ‘if it should give you pleas-
ure come & live with us’–was he serious? After everything they had de-
cided upon in the summer, why the sudden change?”
“…yes, it’s strange. He was undoubtedly worrying about what was
going on in Claire’s mind, as it’s clear from what letters we do have that
she was starting to reconsider her position. Look at this paragraph from
a letter he wrote to her on the last day of December:

441
 You do not tell me, my dearest Claire, anything of your
plans, although you bid me be secret with respect to
them. Assure yourself, my best friend, that anything you
seriously enjoin me, that may be necessary for your hap-
piness will be strictly observed by me. Write to me ex-
plicitly your projects and expectations. You know in
some respects my sentiments both with regard to them
and you.

…so perhaps he sensed she was reacting badly to the situation, especial-
ly given they were now in such close proximity to Byron. Still, the crisis
wouldn’t break until March…”
“…it’s surprising, because in both letters he seems to be leaving it up
to her–I wonder what Mary thought about it…”
“…I doubt she even knew about it. Remember the part in his letter
where he says ‘the Exotic as you please to call me droops in this frost’?
According to accounts given by Williams and Trelawny, there had been
a further breakdown in his relations to Mary during that period. Both
described their relations as very cold and strained, which is borne out by
a poem Shelley sent to Williams at the end of January, ‘The Serpent is
Shut Out from Paradise.’ He told Williams that he should keep it private,
only reading it to Jane…”
“…do you have it?”
“…yes, I can read it:

The serpent is shut out from Paradise.

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
Fled in the April hour.
I too must seldom seek again
Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

Of hatred I am proud,—with scorn content;

Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
Itself indifferent;
But, not to speak of love, pity alone
Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one
Turns the mind’s poison into food,—
Its medicine is tears,—its evil good.

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,

Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only fly

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 Your looks, because they stir
Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die:
The very comfort that they minister
I scarce can bear, yet I,
So deeply is the arrow gone,
Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.

When I return to my cold home, you ask

Why I am not as I have ever been.
YOU spoil me for the task
Of acting a forced part in life’s dull scene,—
Of wearing on my brow the idle mask
Of author, great or mean,
In the world’s carnival. I sought
Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.

Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot

With various flowers, and every one still said,
‘She loves me—loves me not.’
And if this meant a vision long since fled—
If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought—
If it meant,—but I dread
To speak what you may know too well:
Still there was truth in the sad oracle.

The crane o’er seas and forests seeks her home;

No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,
When it no more would roam;
The sleepless billows on the ocean’s breast
Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,
And thus at length find rest:
Doubtless there is a place of peace
Where MY weak heart and all its throbs will cease.

I asked her, yesterday, if she believed

That I had resolution. One who HAD
Would ne’er have thus relieved
His heart with words,—but what his judgement bade
Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.
These verses are too sad
To send to you, but that I know,
Happy yourself, you feel another’s woe.

…it’s a rather ambiguous poem, to say the least! I’m still not certain
about the references of the pronouns–the ‘you’ at the end is clearly the

443
‘dear friend’–I assume Jane, although it’s slippery as well, as he slides
from ‘friends’ to an emphasized ‘FRIEND’…”
“…but that opens the question as to whether the earlier ‘you’ is refer-
ring to Jane or to Mary, as even the reference to returning ‘home’ could
refer to either woman, given they were living in the same building…”
“…that’s right. I agree with several critics who maintain that the am-
biguity is deliberate, as if he were trying to write in a way that was plau-
sibly deniable–what do you make of it?”
“…it’s clearly about the negative turn in his situation with Mary, but
what I find hardest to understand is his attitude and motivation towards
his audience–presumably Edward and Jane, There’s something else go-
ing on in the poem…it’s as if he was asking for a certain kind of atten-
tion by way of asking not to receive pity…”
“…yes, I think that hits the nail on the head: the poem is about his sit-
uation, but it’s also appealing, in a covert manner, to the very feelings of
pity that his situation was evoking in his friends…”
“…and more specifically his ‘friend,’ singular, which it seems to me,
must be Jane…”
“…I agree. We have the benefit of hindsight because we know what
poems came after, so it’s clear that the poem is, in a muted way, an ap-
peal to the emotions of concern that Jane had shown him, and therefore
an intimation of a growing bond–but done in broad daylight, in that he
had to write in a way that Edward could read it to without suspicion…”
“…so it was a kind of disguised appeal to Jane…”
“…perhaps something even more preliminary than that–a testing of
the waters. There’s no doubt some of the ambiguity was based on his
own ambivalence, for whatever he intended, he certainly wasn’t looking
for anything like what we today would designate an ‘affair’…”
“…then what was it?”
“…here, look at this poem–probably written a bit later given the ref-
erence to the first signs of spring–which is unambiguous about his feel-
ings towards Mary:

When passion’s trance is overpast,

If tenderness and truth could last,
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep!

It were enough to feel, to see,

Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest—and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been,

After the slumber of the year

444
 The woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move
And form all others, life and love.

…it’s a lament about the loss of passion, which was certainly the case in
his relationship with Mary; however, I think what was truly bothering
him was the loss of inspiration…”
“…and Jane became his new inspiration–another Emilia?”
“…if you will…still, there’s quite a bit of ambiguity about the nature
of their relationship. Look at this poem–I’m convinced it must have been
written with Jane in mind:

One word is too often profaned

For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,

But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

…he writes quite explicitly that what he desires is the ‘devotion to

something afar’–I think he quite deliberately sought a muse as a com-
pensation for Mary’s coldness and Claire’s distance, and he wanted that
muse to be safe…”
“…for him or from him?”
“…I think Shelley had learned his lesson–more than once! He was
long disabused of the notion that some ‘perfect love’ could finally be
attained–even the kind of idealized love he sought in Emilia. By that
time he seems to have realized that what he needed was inspiration…”
“…are you sure about that?”
“…well, almost…Jane seems to have had a calming effect upon him:
he described her in a letter to Gisborne as ‘a spirit of embodied peace in
our circle of tempests,’ and the lyrics he wrote to her in this period con-
firm that, although there are certainly other possibilities lurking within
them. On February 2nd Jane, Mary, and Shelley went for a walk in the

445
Cascine pine forest by the sea about ten kilometers from Pisa. I think he
must have taken them to a place that Trelawny referred to as his ‘study’–
a small clearing in the pines where the Arno had made several pools. He
immediately wrote the poem ‘The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa,’
which he later split into two parts entitled ‘To Jane: The Invitation,’ and
‘To Jane: The Recollection.’ To me, they seem to be about the kind of
inspiration he was seeking, for nothing happens–or rather the ‘event’ of
the poem is the nothing itself, which is its something…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…when he split the poem into two parts, he did it in such a way that
the poem is built around a moment that’s anticipated as a wish in the
first poem, and recollected as a memory in the second: there’s never a
presentness to the moment, which is a purely intensive event…”
“…I suppose it would have to be that way, given Mary’s presence…”
“…perhaps, but I think it’s more than that: I think the sort of intensive
union the poem celebrates is precisely what he sought in his life then: a
relationship that would hover on the border between desire and its ful-
fillment, so that the libidinal energy that was generated would become
fuel for his inspiration. The first poem opens as a conventional carpe
diem poem, inviting her to come with him out into the early spring
morning. It begins this way:

Best and brightest, come away!

Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn
To hoar February born,
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth…

…then he develops a connection between her presence and the inspira-

tion he senses she is bringing him….

It kissed the forehead of the Earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear…

446
 …and, in fact, it was true, for he had been totally stifled in his literary
output by Byron, and the majority of poems he was able to complete
during that period were the lyrics inspired by and written to Jane. In the
next section of the poem he implies what he hopes for from Jane: he
leaves an imaginary note on his door, suggesting that there are certain
feelings he does not want to take into the forest with him: it includes, on
the one hand, any real concerns, worries or cares, and, on the other, any
real expectations or hopes about what will happen there:

I leave this notice on my door

For each accustomed visitor:—
‘I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields;—
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.—
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,—
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,—
I will pay you in the grave,—
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough;
Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment’s good
After long pain—with all your love,
This you never told me of’…

…so he clearly wants the day to exist unto itself, with no thoughts for
the implications of this imaginary union with her…

Radiant Sister of the Day,

Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be,
And the sandhills of the sea;—
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,

447
 Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.

…and that’s how the first poem ends. So, whatever did happen, hap-
pened in the temporal space between the two poems. He sought to cap-
ture in memory the moment which has ‘fled’ in the next poem, which
begins this way:

Now the last day of many days,

All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up,—to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,—
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.

…he then recounts what happened, and how they came upon that mo-
ment:

We wandered to the Pine Forest

That skirts the Ocean’s foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

We paused amid the pines that stood

The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced;
And, soothed by every azure breath,
That under Heaven is blown,

448
 To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own,
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

…and this brings him to the pregnant moment where he felt some sort of
communion with her in the silence. He uses the metaphor of reflected
perfection in the pools in a similar way to how he used reflections in
‘Evening: Ponte al Mare, Pisa’–where the reflected world is the perfect
world of eternity:

How calm it was!—the silence there

By such a chain was bound
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,—
A spirit interfused around
A thrilling, silent life,—
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there
Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.

We paused beside the pools that lie

Under the forest bough,—
Each seemed as ’twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day—
In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue

449
 Than any spreading there…

…it’s understated, but, still, ‘thrilling silent life’ says everything about
this stolen moment: he’s implicitly connecting the capacity of the water
to reflect things lovingly with Jane’s capacity to reflect his interior life
in a silent communion. The reflective capacity of the water is disturbed
by a sudden ‘envious wind,’ which suggests Mary, or his projected
thoughts of her:

Until an envious wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind,
Than calm in waters, seen.

…actually, when he presented the poem to her, he left the name blank
for her to fill in…”
“…but what was her response to all of this attention? I can’t imagine
it, as, after all, she was living right there in the same house with Mary
and Edward–she couldn’t have welcomed it, did she?”
“…there’s a poem Shelley wrote that may give some clue to her reac-
tion–it’s called ‘The Magnetic Lady to Her Patient,’ and Medwin men-
tioned it as having been written after he had left Pisa again: that was
March 9th, so it places the poem during that period. Shelley had been
mesmerized several times by both Mary and Jane for his various pains,
so that sets the context for the poem…”
“…hypnotized?”
“…no, mesmerized. It involves the laying on of hands, and what they
called, then, ‘animal magnetism’–apparently it works a bit like hypno-
tism, in that the suggestibility of the patient is a key aspect to it. Shelley,
of course, was highly sensitive, so it seems to have given him some re-
lief. What’s interesting about the poem is that in the first four stanzas he
places the words in the mouth of Jane who was doing the mesmerizing,
so we can guess her feelings at that time, which suggests a great deal of
sympathy for Shelley–but it stopped short of love. Here, I’ll read it:

‘Sleep, sleep on! forget thy pain;

My hand is on thy brow,
My spirit on thy brain;
My pity on thy heart, poor friend;
And from my fingers flow
The powers of life, and like a sign,
Seal thee from thine hour of woe;

450
 And brood on thee, but may not blend
With thine.

‘Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not;

But when I think that he
Who made and makes my lot
As full of flowers as thine of weeds,
Might have been lost like thee;
And that a hand which was not mine
Might then have charmed his agony
As I another’s—my heart bleeds
For thine.

‘Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of

The dead and the unborn
Forget thy life and love;
Forget that thou must wake forever;
Forget the world’s dull scorn;
Forget lost health, and the divine
Feelings which died in youth’s brief morn;
And forget me, for I can never
Be thine.

‘Like a cloud big with a May shower,

My soul weeps healing rain
On thee, thou withered flower!
It breathes mute music on thy sleep
Its odour calms thy brain!
Its light within thy gloomy breast
Spreads like a second youth again.
By mine thy being is to its deep
Possessed.

…so, you can see that she’s shown to be resisting him–even imploring
him to forget her, while at the same time her sympathy cures him…”
“…it’s as if Shelley were playing both parts in the drama…”
“…in a way, I guess he was…the poem then ends with Shelley awak-
ening from the trance:

‘The spell is done. How feel you now?’

‘Better—Quite well,’ replied
The sleeper.—‘What would do
You good when suffering and awake?
What cure your head and side?—’
‘What would cure, that would kill me, Jane:
And as I must on earth abide

451
 Awhile, yet tempt me not to break
My chain.’

…as with all of these poems, there’s a certain ambiguity–some critics

have argued that the line ‘tempt me not to break my chain’ refers to his
marriage vow to Mary, but that seems to be over-reading, to say the
least, given the rest of the poem. Medwin thought it referred to an opera-
tion he would need to remove stones from his bladder that could con-
ceivably kill him, but that seems problematic as well…”
“…yes, it doesn’t explain the word ‘temptation’ and why it’s referring
to Jane…”
“…unless the temptation he has her offering is his suicide–in the ‘for-
getting’ she suggests…”
“…for me the strangest thing is how, with all of these poems, Shelley
seems to be playing a kind of game with Jane, for I keep thinking about
how I would feel to receive such poems…”
“…so how would you feel if you were Jane?”
“…I think I would take it as an overt call for sympathy, with an un-
dertone of something else. Shelley suggests a choice between his death
if nothing is done, or his suicide if he chooses to end his pain, or…it’s
hard to call it a seduction, because he turns it around, making her the
temptress when in fact it seems as if he were the tempter–so it’s an in-
verted seduction…”
“…and all written in a way that’s plausibly deniable…”
“…that’s what is so manipulative, in a way, because you can turn
down a direct offer, but this is something else. I still don’t quite see what
he was doing with Jane…”
“…his relationship to Jane still perplexes all the biographers: at this
point at least–spring 1822–it seems it was a kind of ‘courtly love’ or flir-
tation. As I said before, he needed someone whose attention could be-
come the source and inspiration for his poetry: for example, there’s an-
other poem written in the same period that he gave her along with a
beautiful Spanish guitar. Originally he had asked Horace Smith to buy a
pedal harp in Paris for him to give to her–that was already in January. It
never arrived, so he bought her a guitar instead, and gave it to her with a
poem where he poses himself as Ariel to Jane’s Miranda–as her willing
and loving servant, not as a suitor. See, it opens with these lines:

Ariel to Miranda:—Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee,
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain;

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 For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who,
From life to life, must still pursue
Your happiness;—for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.

…and later, here, he also emphasizes his only desire is to be able to love
and serve her:

Many changes have been run

Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps, and served your will;
Now, in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned, for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave;—
From you he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile today, a song tomorrow.

…of course Shelley’s usual ambiguity enters in, because he compares

how the guitar acts as a servant to her with his own acting as a servant:
he makes an implicit comparison between how the guitar was wrought
from the wood of a tree, and how he, Ariel, was also imprisoned within
a tree. In both cases it takes Jane to make them capable of playing mu-
sic. There’s a long passage recounting the kinds of melodies that can be
brought about this way, and then this final passage, where the compari-
son is made explicit:

All this it knows, but will not tell

To those who cannot question well
The Spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day:
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our beloved Jane alone.

453
…again he positions her as a muse–her conversation and questions draw
him out, especially in regard to ‘secrets of an elder day’…”
“…about Mary and Claire?”
“…I doubt it was about Claire, but certainly it was about Mary: I
think Jane became a place where he could safely complain about the
breach in his relations with Mary…”
“…did Edward sense that this intimacy was developing?”
“…I think he both knew and didn’t want to know: for example, ap-
parently after the gift of the guitar Edward sent Shelley a note, ‘I feel
that I must parade you at 10 paces if you go on thus–If you will call
yourself or send your second we will point out the ground,’ but it seems
it was a friendly joke…”
“…or one of those half-jokes…”
“…perhaps, but I suspect Edward actually may have been a bit flat-
tered that Shelley showed interest in his wife. In any case, Shelley was
very imperceptible in his relations with her: like Ariel, he was a being
who spends a good amount his time in a state of imperceptibility.
There’s a sense in which he was ‘hiding in plain sight’: it was an interi-
or, Platonic relationship–at least at that point. Edward was more of a
‘man’s man’–not as much as Trelawny, but certainly he tended to leave
the women to themselves, and was far more enthusiastic about shooting,
riding, sailing, and male camaraderie than Shelley ever was. The result
was this loving, sympathetic friendship that Shelley formed with Jane.
One thing is for certain: Shelley’s relations with Mary were emotionally
distant, and his relations with Claire were physically distant. He needed
Jane as a replacement for the inspiration and support they had previously
given him…”
“…but what finally happened between Shelley and Jane–did she re-
main only a muse?”
“…to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure–I’m hoping we can think
is through on our trip to San Terenzo…”
“…what do the biographers say?”
“…everything and nothing. My favorite biographer, Holmes, seems to
deliberately sidestep the issue–perhaps he thought his thesis about Claire
was already pressing against the accepted limits of what a biography
might speculate about…”
“…so he doesn’t have an opinion?”
“…he acknowledges that Shelley turned to Jane as a muse due to the
breakdown in his relations with Mary, but he refuses to speculate any
further…”
“…does anyone think that their relationship became intimate?”
“…well, to give you a sense of just how ambiguous the situation was,
G.W. Matthews and Donald Reiman–the editors, respectively, of the
British and American editions of Shelley’s complete works–were dia-
metrically opposed in their positions regarding Jane Williams: Matthews

454
believed, using both biographical and poetical evidence, that they be-
came lovers in late June in San Terenzo, producing a terrible crisis for
Shelley; Reiman thinks the evidence doesn’t hold up, and he concluded
that what evidence there is only indicates their relationship was Platonic.
Another older critic, Walter Peck, claims he once saw an unpublished
letter from Shelley to Byron claiming that he had made love to Jane
once in San Terenzo, but there’s no evidence the letter exists, and it
seems unlikely to me that Shelley would have written about such a po-
tentially scandalous event to a man he had come to have extreme reser-
vations about–especially given Byron was such a gossip…”
“…yes, it seems unlikely to me, too–but why would he even claim
such a thing?”
“…I don’t know–perhaps in order to tip the evidence in that direction;
but, whatever the case, it shows that there’s real ambiguity surrounding
the whole issue…”
“…and do you have a feeling about it?”
“…in truth, I don’t know what to think, which is why I want to go
there first, and think it through with you–perhaps both our intuitions can
come up with something…”
The waitress takes away their salad plates, pours them both more
wine, and immediately brings a plate of pasta, which she places before
him.
“…it’s delicious–here, try some…”
“…yes, I‘d like to…that’s a strange taste–what is it?”
“…that’s the ‘tartuffo’–in English, ‘truffle’…do you know it? It’s a
fungus–kind of like a mushroom, but it grows under the ground. They
use pigs to locate them…”
“…oh, yes–now I know–‘lanýž’ in Czech…”
“…it’s very pungent, and not to everyone’s taste. They’re very expen-
sive–I doubt they had them under communism…”
“…only mushrooms–actually Czechs are inveterate Sunday mush-
room hunters…hmmm…the taste stays with you–I think it would take
some getting used to…”
“…yes, they’re definitely an acquired taste…”
“…so, if we have to wait for San Terenzo to consider Jane, then let’s
skip to Claire–what was she doing all this time?”
“…that’s the next crucial element of the story, for a crisis concerning
her broke out in mid-March…”
“…I’m surprised she waited even that long…”
“…it had been building up, of course, because she must have been
acutely aware of the proximity of Byron and Shelley, but the real cata-
lyst was when Elise showed up in Florence, met Claire, and told her
about the Hoppner scandal–she put wrote in her journal for February
10th, ‘E’s report of Naples and me.’ That she was deeply upset is obvi-
ous, for she wrote on February 11th, ‘Spend a very unhappy day,’ and

455
she continued writing similar things almost every day for more than a
week…”
“…was she upset because she thought the scandal had affected By-
ron’s treatment of her, or was she upset at Shelley for not telling her–or
both?”
“…there’s is no indication in her diary of what Elise actually told her,
but whichever version of events was disclosed by Elise, what must have
hit Claire very hard was how the whole scandal played into Byron’s atti-
tude towards her, and how that affected his behavior in regard to Alle-
gra…”
“…and at that point she wouldn’t have known that Shelley had al-
ready discussed it with Byron, or about Mary’s letter denying it all…”
“…yes, so she must have thought the whole situation was hopeless in
regard to Byron’s ever allowing her to see Allegra again, and given that
she hadn’t been told about any of it, she may have felt there was a con-
spiracy of silence towards her–that they were all enjoying themselves in
her absence, and that all along she had been simply appeased by them
all: the whole thing was unendurable, and she simply wanted to run
away. She apparently had received a letter from her brother Charles in
Vienna about the same time, and so she immediately seized that as her
destination: she sent a letter to Shelley about her plans, and she sent a
devastating letter to Byron–there’s a draft of it extant…”
“…that I would like to hear–what did she write?”
“…I’ll read it–it was written February 18th:

I am extremely glad to hear that by your succession to a

large fortune, your affairs have become more prosperous
than ever. I wish and pray that you may have health to en-
joy yourself many long years with every other accordant
circumstance that can combine to make a person happy.
You will perhaps not believe that I sincerely wish this for
your sake’s, and therefore I shall venture to wish it for
Allegra’s–I do not say that I write now upon her account,
but on the contrary solely upon my own. I assure you I no
longer resist the internal inexplicable feeling which
haunts me that I shall never see her any more. I entreat
you to destroy this feeling by allowing me to see her. I
waited two months in the Autumn, expecting from all you
professed to see her every week and when on the sudden
you would no longer allow it to be a melancholy fearful-
ness came over me which has never since passed away.
This was owing to the cruel disappointment I felt and
which may perhaps mis-lead my judgment, but to what
besides a determined hatred can I attribute your conduct?
I have often entreated Shelley to intercede for me and he
invariably answers–that it is utterly useless. I am not

456
wanting in feelings of Pride but every thing yields to the
extent of my present unhappiness which grows daily to-
wards Despair, and induces me to address you in hopes of
an alleviation of my misery. If I could only flatter myself
that you would not harden your heart against me I might
indulge the hope that you would grant what I ask.
I shall shortly leave Italy, for a new country to enter
upon a disagreeable and precarious course of life; I yield
in this not to my own wishes, but to the advice of a friend
whose head is wiser than mine–I leave my friends with
regret but indeed I cannot go without having first seen
and embraced Allegra–Do not I entreat you refuse me this
little, but only consolation. If instead of this friendly of-
fice I request, you resolve to humiliate me by a refusal,
success in what I attempt will be impossible for I know
not where I shall gather even the spirit to begin it. I have
experienced that I can conquer every feeling but those of
Nature; these grave themselves on the breast with thorns,
and while Life lasts, they make the sharpness felt. I am
sensible how little this letter is calculated to persuade; but
it is one of my unhappinesses that I cannot write to you
with the deepness which I feel; because I know how
much you are prejudiced against me and the constraint
which this inspires, weakens and confuses all I would ex-
press. But if you refuse me where shall I hope for any-
thing?
The weather is fine, the passage of the Appenines
quite free and safe. The when and where of our meeting
shall be entirely according to your pleasure and with eve-
ry restriction and delicacy that you may think necessary
for Allegra’s sake. I shall abandon myself to despair if
you refuse: but indeed if your reason, my dear Friend
cannot be persuaded to alter the line of conduct, you have
hitherto pursued towards me in all that regards Allegra, it
were better that I were dead. So should I escape all the
sufferings which your harshness causes me. But Hope in
the present state of my spirits is necessary to me and I
will believe that you will kindly consent to my wish. How
inexpressibly dearly will I not cherish your name and
recollection, as the author of my happiness in the far off
place to which I am obliged to go, and amidst the
strangers who will surround me. My dear Friend, I con-
jure you do not make the world dark to me, as if my Al-
legra were dead. In the happiness her sight will cause me
I shall gain restoration and strength to enable me to bear
the mortifications and displeasures to which a poor and

457
 unhappy person is exposed in the world. I wish you every
happiness.
Your Claire

…you can see how frantic she was–she seems to be threatening sui-
cide…”
“…I can’t blame her–I don’t know what I would have done in her
place: it must have felt like such a betrayal to have found out about the
scandal only then, and from Elise of all people…”
“…she wrote to her brother the next day, then a second letter to Byron
which is lost–and to Mrs. Mason, and to Mary…”
“…what was Mary’s reaction?”
“…she and Shelley saw that they needed to speak to her immediately:
Mary wrote her this letter on February 20th, so the letters were simply
flying back and forth:

My dear Claire,
I have at this moment received your letter, which both
surprises and grieves me greatly. Come here directly. I
will return with you to Florence; but in every way it is
best that you come here; take your place and come tomor-
row morning. You ought and must see Mrs. Mason before
you leave Italy, if you do. I think in every way it would
make you happier to come here, –and when here, other
views may arise,–at least discuss your plans in the midst
of your friends before you go. This letter you will have, I
hope, by express tonight.
Yours affectionately,
Mary

…so Claire left immediately for Pisa, and for several days spoke with
Mary, Shelley, and Mrs. Mason about the situation…”
“…do we know what they spoke about?”
“…only the outcome, which is that she decided against Vienna. Mrs.
Mason thought she should go to Vienna; and, of course, Mary probably
did as well, as you can tell from her letter; but I am sure that Shelley
prevailed in the end. I would guess that Mary and Shelley told her the
key details concerning the Hoppner scandal, or at least the fact that Shel-
ley had already spoken to Byron about it–that he had seen the letter
Mary had written to Mrs. Hoppner. That, at least, would have set her
mind at ease a bit–she wouldn’t fear that Byron thought the scandal was
true…”
“…and do you think she found out about the existence of Elena?”
“…it’s possible, but, in my opinion, it seems more likely that they fo-
cused on what Byron had been told by Elise, and she found out about
Elena only after she returned to Florence. She visited Elise, or Elise vis-

458
ited her, almost every day upon her return, and it seems that part of the
reason for such visits was to co-compose a letter from Elise to Madame
Hoppner, denying the rumors she had spread. That was when the full
story must have come out, as, on March 10th, there’s this very mysteri-
ous entry that Claire tried to obliterate: ‘Give the Naples commission to
her husband’: Elise and her husband Paolo had long split up by then, so
it can’t have been something she was doing at that time, so the ‘commis-
sion’ must have been a code word for Elena…”
“…she was probably flustered, and put the tense wrong…”
“…the fact she was flustered is itself telling: something seems to have
happened to disturb her even more, then, as she continued to write ‘mis-
erable spirits’ in her journal every day, and, based on her next move, she
clearly wasn’t satisfied with whatever conclusion had been arrived at in
Pisa with Mary and Shelley, for her crisis escalated…”
“…I can imagine her shock–to suddenly find out that Shelley had
been involved with someone, and had kept from her the fact that he had
gotten himself into such a mess…”
“…a ‘scrape,’ as she later called it…”
“…so what did she do?”
“…she obviously saw the need to take the initiative in regard to Alle-
gra: she realized that she wouldn’t ever see her again if it was up to By-
ron, so she came up with a scheme to kidnap her, and wrote Mary and
Shelley about it on March 19th…”
“…was she serious?”
“…it seems so–as you can imagine, Mary and Shelley were flabber-
gasted, and sent her a letter immediately…”
“…does it exist?”
“…yes, I can read it to you…”
“…please…”
“…here it is–it was on March 20th: it begins as a letter from Mary, and
continues as a letter from Shelley. First, the part by Mary:

My Dear Claire,
Shelley and I have been consulting seriously about your
letter received this morning, and I wish in as orderly a
manner as possible to give you the result of our reflec-
tions. First…

…she goes on a bit about their not coming to Florence–which they prob-
ably had discussed earlier, and then it continues with Mary trying to al-
leviate Claire’s fears. Actually, given what was to happen, it’s bitterly
ironic:

Your anxiety for Allegra’s health is to a great degree un-

founded; Venice, its stinking canals & dirty streets, is
enough to kill any child; but you ought to know, & any

459
 one will tell you so, that the towns of Romagna situated
where Bagnacavallo is, enjoy the best air in Italy–Imola &
the neighbouring paese are famous. Bagnacavallo espe-
cially, being 15 miles from the sea & situated on an emi-
nence is peculiarly salutary. Considering the affair reason-
ably Allegra is well taken care of there, she is in good
health, & in all probability will continue so. No one can
more entirely agree with you than I thinking that as soon
as possible Allegra ought to be taken out of the hands of
one as remorseless as he is unprincipled. But at the same
time it appears to me that the present moment is exactly
the one in which this is the most difficult–time cannot add
to these difficulties for they can never be greater. Allow
me to enumerate some of those which are peculiar to the
present instant. Allegra is in a convent, where it is next to
impossible to get her out; high walls and bolted doors en-
close her–& more than all the regular habits of a convent,
which never permits her to get outside its gates & would
cause her to be missed directly. But you may have a plan
for this and I pass to other objections. At your desire Shel-
ley urged her removal to Lord Byron and this appears in
the highest to have exasperated him–he vowed that if you
annoyed him he would place Allegra in some secret con-
vent, he declared that you should have nothing to do with
her & that he would move heaven and earth to prevent
your interference. Lord Byron is at present a man of 12 or
15 thousand a year, he is on the spot, a man reckless of the
ill he does others, obstinate to desperation in the pursuance
of his plans or his revenge. What then would you do hav-
ing Allegra on the outside of the convent walls? Would
you go to America? The money we have not, nor does this
seem to be your idea. You probably wish to secret your-
self. But Lord Byron would use any means to find you
out–& the story he might make up–a man stared at by the
Grand Duke–with money at command–& above all on the
spot to put energy into every pursuit, would he not find
you? If he did not he comes upon Shelley–he taxes him;
Shelley must either own it or tell a lie, in either case he is
open to be called upon by Lord Byron to answer for his
conduct–and a duel–I need not enter upon that topic, your
own imagination may fill up the picture. On the contrary a
little time, may alter much of this….

…she argues that things may change–that Byron may go to England and
want Allegra off his hands, and then she continues her arguments…

460
 Nothing remains constant, something may happen–things
cannot be worse. Another thing I mention which though
sufficiently ridiculous may have some weight with you.
Spring is our unlucky season. No spring has passed for us
without some piece of ill luck. Remember the first spring
at Mrs. Harbottles…

…that’s when Mary’s first child died a few days after birth, in 1815…

The second when you became acquainted with Lord By-

ron; the third we went to Marlow–no wise thing at least.
The fourth our uncomfortable residence in London–the
fifth our Roman misery…

…that was in 1819, when William died…

…the sixth Paolo at Pisa–the seventh a mixture of Emilia

& a Chancery suit…

…it’s surprising she could write so frankly about Emilia. The chancery
suit reference is to the financial crisis when Shelley’s allowance was
stopped…

Now the aspect of the Autumnal Heavens has on the con-

trary been with few exceptions favorable to us–What think
you of this? It is in your own style, but it has often struck
me. Would it not be better therefore to wait, & to under-
take no plan until circumstances bend a little more to us.
Then we are drearily behind hand with money at present–
Hunt & our furniture has swallowed up more than our sav-
ings. You say great sacrifices will be required of us. I
would make many to extricate all belonging to me from
the hands of Lord Byron, whose hypocrisy & cruelty rouse
one’s soul from its depth. We are of course in great uncer-
tainty as to our summer residence–we have calculated the
great expense of moving our furniture for a few months as
far as Spezia, & it appears to us a bad plan–to get a fur-
nished house we must go nearer Genoa, probably nearer
Lord Byron which is contrary to our most earnest wishes.
We have thought of Naples…

…then there is Shelley’s postscript:

I have little to add to Mary’s letter, my poor dear friend,–

and all that I shall do is suspend my journey to take a
house until your answer: –Of course, if you do not spend

461
 the summer near us I shall come to Florence and see and
talk to you. But it seems to me far better on every account
that you should resolve on this, and tranquillize yourself
among your friends. I shall certainly take our house far
from Lord Byron’s, although it may be impossible sudden-
ly to put an end to his detested intimacy…Mary tells you
that Lord Byron is obstinate and awake about Allegra. My
great object has been to lull him into security until circum-
stances might call him to England. But the idea of con-
tending with him in Italy, and defended by his enormous
fortune, is vain. I was endeavouring to induce him to place
Allegra in the institute at Lucca, but his jealousy of my re-
gard for your interests will, since a conversation I had with
him the other day, render him inaccessible to my sugges-
tions. It seems to me that you have no other resource but
time and chance and change. Heaven knows, whatever
sacrifices I could make, how gladly I should make them if
they could promote your desires about her: it tears my
heart to think that all sacrifices are now vain. Mary partic-
ipates in my feelings, but I cannot write. My spirits com-
pletely overcome me.

Your ever faithful and affectionate

S

…so, as you can see, they were quite alarmed by her plan…”
“…had things really gotten that bad between them and Byron?”
“…that’s another thread I’ll need to pick up–there are so many it’s
difficult to keep them straight…”
“…here comes the fish, so take a moment to rest and manage that for
now…”
The waitress and headwaiter carry a serving cart across the grass, with
a platter for the fish, two plates, empty plates, and two more closed serv-
ing dishes on it. She fillets the fish for them, opens the serving dishes,
dishes out grilled vegetables, and places the plates before them.
“…it’s so delicate–not like the carp or trout we eat in the Czech Re-
public…”
“…it helps to be right near the sea, where the fish is fresh…”
“…I could eat it every day…”
“…we could if we move to a Greek island, as Shelley increasingly
wanted to do…”
“…I’m ready to go…”
“…there’s one little problem–how do we paying for it?”
“…yes, there’s always a catch, isn’t there? I know, we could open a
taverna…”
“…do you know how to cook Greek food? I don’t…”

462
 “…so we hire a Greek cook…”
“…it’s a bit like Claire’s Vienna plan: it seems sensible at first sight,
but, upon further consideration, there are quite a few obstacles…”
“…so, getting back to Claire’s crisis, do you think Byron really would
have challenged Shelley to a duel, as they feared?”
“…I think that’s an exaggeration, but certainly Shelley was not the
type of man to simply allow the kidnapping to happen: they were right
that it would have caused far more problems than it solved–not the least
of which would have been Byron’s spreading far and wide the worst
possible rumors about them all…”
“…so I assume Claire was talked out of her plan…”
“…no, actually: we don’t have her letter, but clearly Shelley’s re-
sponse to her, written on March 24th, reveals that she was still moving
forward with her plans, and had probably tried to counter every point
Shelley and Mary had made in their letter. Listen to this–I think it’s one
of the most vehement letters Shelley ever wrote to her, and the fact he’s
even willing to positively entertain the idea of her going to Vienna
shows just how exasperated and alarmed he really was:

My dear Claire

I know not what to think of the state of your mind, or what

to fear for you.—Your late plan about Allegra seems to
me in its present form pregnant with irremediable infamy
to all the actors in it except yourself; in any form wherein I
must actively cooperate, with inevitable destruction…I
could not refuse Lord Byron’s challenge; though that
however to be deprecated would be the least in the series
of mischiefs consequent upon my intervention in such a
plan…I say this because I am shocked at the thoughtless
violence of your designs, and I wish to put my sense of
their madness in the strongest light. –I may console myself
however with the reflection that the attempt even is im-
possible; as I have no money…You think of going to Vi-
enna. The change might have a favourable effect upon
your mind, & the occupation & exertions of a new state of
life wean you from counsels so desperate as those to
which you have been lately led. I must try to manage the
money for your journey, if so you have decided. You
know how different my own ideas are of life. I also have
been struck by the heaviest inflictions almost, which a
high spirit & a feeling heart ever endured. Some of yours
& of my evils are in common, & I am therefore in a cer-
tain degree a judge. If you would take my advice you
would give up this idle pursuit after shadows, & temper
yourself to the season; seek in the daily & affectionate in-

463
 tercourse of friends a respite from these perpetual and irri-
tating projects. Live from day to day, attend to your
health, cultivate literature & liberal ideas to a certain ex-
tent, & expect from time & change which no exertion of
your own can give you. Serious and calm reflection has
convinced me that you can never obtain Allegra by such
means as you have lately devised, or by any means to be
devised; Lord Byron is inflexible. And he has her in his
power.—Remember Clare when you rejected my earnest
advice [& treated me with contempt which I have never
merited from you], & how at Milan, & how vain is now
your regret! –This is the second of my Sybilline volumes;
if you wait for the third, it may be sold at still a higher
price. –If you think well, this summer, go to Vienna; but
wherever you go or stay let the past be the past. –
I expect soon to write you on another subject respecting
which, however, all is as you already know. –Farewell–
Your affectionate S

…you can see how much Shelley had changed–recommending her to

‘expect from time & change which no exertion of your own can give
you’…”
“…he’s quite hard on her…”
“…she was rightfully angry and frantic, but they had to throw some
water on her plans…”
“…what was the other ‘subject’ he was going to write about?”
“…I can only speculate, but an educated guess combined with a con-
sideration of the outcome–the fact Claire came to live with them quite
soon afterwards, seems to suggest she also utilized the situation to lever-
age her way back to them...”
“…I understand her–after all, she did have a lot to complain about…”
“…indeed–there was Byron’s treatment of Allegra and their complici-
ty with it by their living near him, their failure to inform her of the Elena
matter and the Hoppner scandal–she had every right to complain…”
“…are there any letters?”
“…Shelley wrote one of his secret letters to her on March 31st, and it
was more or less a reiteration of the one I read. Here it is:

My dearest friend–
Address me at the Post Office–not Hodgson (for that
name is liable to mistakes, but) Joe James, and I will take
care to procure the letter.
I wish you could in some degree tranquillize yourself,
and fix upon some quiet plan of thought and action. The
best would probably be to think and act without a plan,
and let the world pass. No exertions of yours can obtain

464
 Allegra, and believe me that the plans you have lately
dreamed, would, were they attempted only, plunge you
and all that is connected with you in incredible ruin. –But I
dare say you are by this time convinced of it.

…he then goes on to ask about her health, and tells her the details of the
Masi incident: that was an incident that happened on March 26th which
ultimately led to the break-up of their Pisan community, or at least ac-
celerated the process–I’ll speak about it later. Otherwise, Claire men-
tions a letter he had written to her on April 4th, and there’s another letter
without a date which might be from this time–here, I’ll read it:

It is of vital importance both to me and yourself, to Alle-

gra even, that I should put a period to my intimacy with L
B, and that without éclat. No sentiments of honour or jus-
tice restrain him (as I strongly suspect) from the basest in-
sinuations, and the only mode in which I could effectually
silence him I am reluctant (even if I had proof) to employ
during my father’s life. But for your immediate feelings I
would suddenly and irrevocably leave this country which
he inhabits, nor ever enter it but as an enemy to determine
our differences without words. But at all events I shall
soon see you, and then we will weight both your plans and
mine. Write by next post.

…I suppose the ‘basest insinuations’ concerned Shelley and Claire.

There’s a letter Claire wrote to Mary on April 9th that really shows the
tension that was building, and also refers to these insinuations–here:

My dear Mary,

I suppose you are angry with me because you do not

write, for there are many things you know I am interested
about such as what answer Lady Byron has returned,
whether there is any likelihood of his going to England;
and I am truly uneasy for it seems to me some time since I
have heard any news from Allegra. I fear she is sick…

…that was astonishingly prescient of her, as Allegra did come down

with her fatal fever at that time: four days after that we know she was
bled three times in a day. She continues:

Pray answer this last immediately–I should be infinitely

obliged to you if you would keep an account of the day,
the letter relating to her ought to arrive for I am convinced

465
 it is long since past. I cannot do it because I am not on the
spot.
In a late letter either you or Shelley said–that it would
not do to speak concerning a visit to the convent because
you wished to keep me as much out of Lord Byron’s mind
as possible, that he might not mention me to the people by
whom he is surrounded. Has he any new acquaintance and
who are they, for you yourself told me he had said every-
thing infamous of me to Mr. Trelawny and Mrs. Hay. I
would much wish to have this point cleared up. You say
the principles which make me talk of your intimacy with
the Guiccioli are perfectly right, but that with a little more
prudence they might have been just as effectual and not
too public as they are. Lord Byron has broken the most
solemn promises towards me on the most solemn points
and has no other motive but revenge and hatred nor can I
imagine what you see in me that should tempt you to de-
grade me so far as to put me on the same list with him. I
am truly obliged to you for all the kindness you have done
to me; but all appears little to a person who has lost every-
thing…

…she then discusses the Masi affair, and queries them about her com-
ing, and the timing of it. At the end of the letter she appends a note about
the whole Elise and Hoppner affair:

…I wish you would write me back what you wish Elise to

say to you and what she is to say to Madame Hoppner. I
have tried in vain to compose it…

…then Shelley wrote her the next day, and her coming was settled:

Mary has not shown me her letter to you, and I therefore

snatch an instant to write a few lines. Come, my best girl,
if you think fit, and assure yourself that everyone–I need
not speak for myself–will be most happy to see you…Do
not lose yourself in distant and unreal plans; but systema-
tise and simplify your motions, at least for the pre-
sent….Resolve to stay with us this summer, and remain
where you are till we are ready to set off:–no one need
know of where you are; the Williams’s are serene people,
and we are alone.

…there was another quick exchange of letters between them–

presumably to set up the details, and then Claire left for Pisa on April
15th, after making one more visit to Elise, probably to finish composing

466
the letter. Claire was in Pisa for a week–from April 15th through the 23rd.
Allegra actually died during that week, on April 20th: Shelley and Mary
found out from Byron the following week…”
“…how did he tell them?”
“…it’s typical: he sent a letter across the river…”
“…do you have it?”
“...yes, but be ready to be angry…”
“…I’m ready…”
“…so, here it is, written on April 23rd:

The blow was stunning and unexpected; for I thought the

danger over, by the long interval between her stated ame-
lioration and the arrival of the express. But I have borne
up against it as I best can, and so far successfully, that I
can go about the usual business of life with the same ap-
pearance of composure, and even greater. There is noth-
ing to prevent your coming to-morrow; but, perhaps, to-
day, and yester-evening, it was better not to have met. I
do not know that I have any thing to reproach in my con-
duct, and certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions
towards the dead. But it is a moment when we are apt to
think that, if this or that had been done, such event might
have been prevented, though every day and hour shows
us that they are the most natural and inevitable. I suppose
that Time will do his usual work - Death has done his.
Yours ever,
NB

…”
“…what a bastard! ‘I have borne up against it as I best can’! ‘I do not
know that I have any thing to reproach in my conduct’…? ‘Natural and
inevitable’!...was he out of his mind!?! What did Claire think?”
“…fortunately, Claire had left with Jane and Edward Williams to look
for houses near La Spezia, so I doubt she ever saw the letter, and mean-
while Shelley and Mary had time to consider what to do…”
“…she would have killed Byron if she was there–I assume he didn’t
even know she was in Pisa?”
“…they didn’t dare tell him, and they feared so much her reaction
they decided to move as soon as possible, and not to tell Claire until af-
ter the move when she was away from Pisa–and that’s what happened:
Claire returned to Pisa the 25th, and they all departed the next day. They
told her a week later…”
“…he was lucky–if I were her, I would have…actually, I don’t know
what I would have done, but certainly I would have tried to confront him
…”

467
 “…Shelley and Mary were aware of that, so what they did was proba-
bly the right thing–taking her out of his orbit before telling her…”
“…I hope that they finally broke with Byron after it happened…”
“…that was building up for a long time–I’ll wait to tell you about it
tomorrow when we visit the Palazzo Lanfranchi, if you don’t mind…”
“…no, I can wait. The fish was good–just enough for me…”
“…will you have some dessert?”
“…and you–a cigar and cognac?”
“…yes, of course…”
“…so yes–I’ll have the zabaione again…”
He asks for a menu, and chooses a Dartigalongue Armagnac served
with a Cohiba Lanceros. The waitress takes their order, returns with the
cigar and Armagnac, and five minutes later with the zabaione.
“…is it good?”
“…delicious…and your cigar and Armagnac?”
“…perfect!”
“…I wanted to go back to something–to Jane Williams, but not to
what happened, as I know we’ll get to that in San Terenzo: I’m interest-
ed in the question of her being a muse–like Emilia Viviani. I know the
standard description of a muse, but I’ve never been satisfied with it, as it
never addresses why a poet needs a muse…”
“…actually, a self-description of Shelley’s isn’t a bad place to start–
he wrote the following words to Gisborne a few weeks before his death
in a message accompanying a copy of Epipsychidion: ‘I think one is al-
ways in love with something or other; the error…consists in seeking in a
mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal.’ He understood in-
spiration was a sublimated drive, and he understood that he was dealing
with an image, and not a reality…”
“…but he always came dangerously close to enacting the reality…”
“…yes, that’s true–that danger is always there. In regard to explaining
the muse, I think one might start with Jung and Freud–different interpre-
tations, each with its own virtues. For Jung, it involves a man’s anima–
the split-off part of his own femininity. He saw a man developing via
different stages in relation to his anima: in the first stage, which he calls
the ‘Eve stage,’ a man is closely connected to a personal image of a
woman–usually his mother, which he then, if he’s unconscious about it,
projects onto his female partner…”
“…I think there are many men who never get beyond that stage…”
“…that’s true enough. Then, the next stage is the ‘Helen stage,’ where
he takes up and embraces the image of women in the collective uncon-
sciousness–another stage men get stuck on quite often, when they allow
the current norm for beauty to determine their desires. The third stage is
what he calls the ‘Mary stage,’ which connects to the capacity to form
lasting bonds with a woman–reaching maturity and giving over to nature
and our limitations. Then, finally, the fourth stage he terms the ‘Sophia
stage,’ which is the attainment of a knowledge of the anima so that it’s

468
no longer split off, but rather plays an active, conscious part in a man’s
psychic life, in a conversation between the conscious and unconscious
mind. For Jung, that’s the role of the muse in the artist’s life, as it in-
volves giving a voice to the unconscious aspect of the self. He sees it as
the acme of a man’s maturity…”
“…but does it always work that way? If he projects it onto an actual,
living woman, isn’t there a danger of it slipping, somehow, into every-
day sexuality?”
“…the poet Robert Graves talks about that–a muse stops being a muse
when she is possessed and domesticated. He wrote a whole book on the
muse–The White Goddess, although I have some reservations about it, as
in my opinion he mixes up the means with the end: he argues that all
true poetry is an invocation of the ‘White Goddess’–his vision of the
muse. Where I think he makes an error is that he sees poetry as primarily
about the invocation itself, rather than as a way of integrating aspects of
the unconsciousness, as Jung sees it. On the other hand, Jung is a little
too hopeful in thinking we somehow arrive at that stage and the conflict
is over: Graves shows the dangers connected with the conflict, and it
seems the only ‘end’ is the synthesis that comes out of writing poetry; in
that regard, for me a more Freudian or Lacanian approach makes more
sense than either Jung or Graves…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…I think that libidinal energy is a key to it–when sexual energy is
diffused, rather than channeled into sexuality. I think yearning has some-
thing to do with it: the kind of inspiration which works best is when the
object of love is either unobtainable, like Dante’s Beatrice, Yeats’ Maud
Gonne, or T.S. Eliot’s Emily Hale…or, yet-to-be-obtained…”
“…like Shelley’s Jane Williams?”
“…yes…I think the mature creative artist recognizes the value of the
‘never-to-be’ or ‘yet-to-be,’ and uses that longing as a kind of creative
fuel–I’m thinking of Jacques Rivette’s film La Belle Noiseuse, where the
Balzac story ‘The Unknown Masterpiece’ is used to explore the relation
between the artist, Frenhofer, and his muse. It’s clear there’s a libidinal
dimension between the Picasso-like artist and his muse–in this case a
younger artist’s girlfriend, played by Emmanuelle Béart. There’s no
consummation; in fact, it’s suggested that what they shared was far more
intense and intimate than sex, and that’s the point, really–that the libidi-
nal cannot be subordinated to the aesthetic, and the aesthetic cannot be
subordinated to the libidinal…”
“…so inspiration ends when the artist possesses the muse, as he either
just ends up making love rather than art, or his art becomes merely eroti-
cism…”
“…right–eroticism is fine if that’s what one intended, but not if one
was intending art…”
“…so what would be the best way to maintain inspiration–to worship
from afar, like Dante?”

469
 “…yes, he became one of Shelley’s models–in the case of both Emilia
and Jane, he chose women who weren’t unattainable, but whose attaina-
bility would come at a very steep price…”
“…he almost paid it with Emilia…”
“…certainly Mary thought so, given what she wrote in her letter to
Claire, but in the end he managed it…”
“…but Jane was somewhat more attainable than Emilia, wasn’t she?”
“…yes and no: she wasn’t in a convent, but she was Edward Wil-
liams’ wife–that must have been a significant disincentive…”
“…but isn’t what happened with Emilia proof that it can’t be main-
tained?”
“…I do think there’s a limit: it’s not only that one faces the danger of
possessing one’s muse and therefore losing her as a muse, but also
there’s another danger in prolonging the build-up of libidinal energy: if
it’s not discharged rapidly enough in the creation of art, or if it builds up
too much despite the creation of art, I think there’s a danger of some
kind of disintegration of identity…”
“…for the same reasons you said that lyricism, improvisation, and
experimentation are dangerous?”
“…they’re all definitely related, although inspiration has something to
do with the gathering and amplifying of libidinal energies, while acts of
creation involve their discharge and expenditure…”
“…so you’re right–it’s a bit like fuel…”
“…yes, but it’s not so easy to find a source for it, or to govern and
direct its combustion when you do find it. There’s a tendency for it all to
be consumed in one fatal flash of energy…”
“…pushing the relationship to a consummation…”
“…well…yes–if that urge weren’t there on some level, I doubt there
would be very much inspiration yielded by the relation…”
“…so you admit that the urge must have been there in regard to Shel-
ley and Emilia, or Shelley and Jane Williams...”
“…the urge, yes–but that doesn’t mean he would necessarily have
acted upon it…”
“…he seems to have come close with Emilia, and with Jane it’s still
not clear to me. I suppose it’s all just a more cultured version of the gen-
eral male urge to…”
“…what?”
“…how to put it? To spread their seed in all directions!”
“…before you entirely condemn males, you must admit that there’s a
complementary biological urge in females that can be just as ugly at its
extremes…”
“…such as?”
“…of course you can valorize it, only looking at the positive aspects–
fidelity, nurturance, tenderness, and so on, but that avoids looking at the
negative aspects: at its worst, a conservative territoriality, possessive-

470
ness, neediness–plus, you can also look at the positive side of the male
urge to ‘spread seed’…”
“…is there one?”
“…I grant you that the male impulse to ‘spread’ probably has led to
most of the serious conflicts in human history, but the same drive has led
the human race out of the cave…”
“…and on to the battlefield…”
“…has discovered new worlds…”
“…and slaughtered and enslaved their inhabitants…”
“…cured disease…”
“…and created bio-warfare weapons…”
“…ok, ok…you’re right on every count, but, then, so am I! In any
case, I don’t think it’s black and white between males and females–
there’s a considerable overlap of socialized behaviors, and in terms of
their worst, atavistic tendencies, I think they’re different, but equally
insufferable…”
“…I agree with you–it’s a pity that we can’t live up to our more en-
lightened selves…”
“…in his late work Kant advanced the idea that we should live on the
planet as if we were preparing it for a race of beings that hasn’t arrived
yet: it’s like an early very of Nietzsche’s superman, or Mallarmé’s idea
of writing for a ‘people to come’…”
“…I don’t think many people have taken him up on it…”
“…no, I don’t either…”
“…well, at least Shelley tried…”
“…yes, I think that’s true, Shelley certainly tried…”

471
 

Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer,

sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in
der Gegenwart lebt.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration

but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who
live in the present.
–Ludwig Wittgenstein

…eternity is neither a beyond following the end of time, nor merely

the infinite sum of every moment that has passed and will pass: it is
here, now, always already immanently present…

…our consciousness can never fully coincide with the flux of time: the
moments pass in these interstices, and the flow of moments is impossible
to truly discern or grasp…and yet it is happening interminably, right
here and now, beyond the periphery of our vision…

…our consciousness can never fully coincide with eternity: eternity sub-
sists outside of time, and yet coincides with every moment inside of
time…

…eternity may be sensed in moments of timelessness: intense moments

of grief and suffering, ecstatic moments of bliss and rapture, calm mo-
ments of tranquility and serenity…

…such moments are either about to happen or they have already hap-
pened–they are never happening…they occur beyond the threshold of
time…such moments happen, but we are never conscious when they
happen, for they rupture the very foundation of consciousness…

…time as Aion: each moment is simultaneously more minute than the

briefest interstice of Kronos, and vaster than the longest temporal span
our minds can conceive…each moment simultaneously faces towards an
infinite past and an infinite future, casting a moving shadow on a “prox-
imate past and imminent future”… (Deleuze)

…the a priori pure past and a priori virtual future subsist eternally: eve-
ry moment contains both directions, and who we are–our identities–can
never be present in the moment before it has already passed… (Bergson)

472
…our identities are the collocation of past moments–memory traces
drawn incessantly forward towards the present…until there are no more
presents…

…every moment is not within eternity, every moment is eternity…

(Blake)

…the experience of timelessness: Hölderlin in Bordeaux, Shelley in the

Cascine forest, Nietzsche near Surlej, Virginia Woolf at St. Ives, Rilke
at Duino, Eliot at Burnt Norton, Bataille in the Marly Forest, Blanchot
against the wall of the chateau in Quain…

…“I” becomes other: transmigrating, merging, gliding through a multi-

tude of lives and psyches, composing and recomposing differing facets
of being and becoming, arriving and departing–living, dying and living
once again… (Klossowski)

…during a moment like any other, a sudden change in the quality of the
light: a veiled brilliance, doubling reality, overcomes the senses…a
stillness…one becomes wave, not particle…drifting across an endless
afternoon, the world like a de Chirico painting–forms dissolved into el-
emental structures, divested identities in stone and shadow…

…at the still center of the wheel of time: the passing present brought to a
halt…desubjectified, divested of our identities, the dancer becomes the
dance in a time that is now and always: “…at the still point of the turn-
ing world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the
still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do
not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the
still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance…”
(T. S. Eliot)

“…time cannot vanish without a trace, for it is a subjective, spiritual

category. The time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience
placed within time”… ( Tarkovsky)

“…a life that is here and now is timeless. That is the universal I am
seeking: to embody that in a work of art, a new world that is always re-
al...” (William Carlos Williams)

…in timeless moments eternity breaks upon us like a wave sweeping

over us from out of a noontide sky…



473
 After a cappuccino, orange juice, and cornetto at a café under the
arches of the Piazza Garibaldi, they walk down the Lungarno Mediceo
to the Palazzo Lanfranchi. One of the tall oak doors is open, and they
enter the large entry hall. They stop to read the notice board with the
opening hours of the archive and notices of upcoming events. On both
sides of the hall are long oak benches. There are solid oak doors on the
left, and open glass doors to the right, through which can be seen a
stairway with ten broad, shallow marble steps leading up to a landing.
They walk up the landing, turn left, and continue up a long staircase to
another landing which doubles back and leads them up to the door to the
archive. They knock, and the door is opened by a tall, attractive Italian
woman with waist-length, glossy black hair, wearing a loose-fitting,
pale-yellow linen pant suit. They indicate what they want in Italian, but
the woman switches to fluent English. They are shown the archive,
which is well-lighted and lined with bookcases containing ledgers, regis-
ters, file-boxes, and books, and then they are shown what had been the
bedroom of Byron–now an office, furnished with modern office furni-
ture looking incongruous in the high-ceiled space with its ornate mould-
ings and fixtures. The balcony doors are open so they are able to look at
the view of the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa diagonally to their left across the
river. After they take a few photos, they thank her and depart. Down-
stairs, they pause for a moment, sitting on the bench opposite the glass
doors.
“…so these are the very stairs Mary and Jane staggered up that des-
perate midnight when they first suspected Shelley and Williams had
been drowned. They were met by Teresa Guiccioli, and then Byron
came and told the two women that they had heard nothing from the
men–only that they had sailed from Livorno. Byron later said Mary was
barely able to speak, and was as white as a ghost…”
“…and it was right here on this very spot…it’s so strange to imagine
it…”
“…and here on the ground floor–through these doors behind us–was
where Leigh Hunt and his family were staying when they arrived in Ita-
ly. His wife was sick, and his five children were running around, getting
into everything…”
“…I would guess Byron wasn’t too happy about it…”
“…no–once again Shelley was needed to be the social lubricant be-
tween them to save the situation: that’s why he and Edward made the
trip…”
“…shall we go over to the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa?”
“…yes, we can sit in the Giardino Scotto while I tell you about the
rest of their time here…”
“…fine–it’s a beautiful morning…”

474
 “…the tourists are idiots just to come see the tower, take a picture,
and then leave again–but at least that’s good for us!”
“…yes, I can live without them for a while…”
“…I guess we can go through those gates there…”
They walk into the park, taking a look at ruined, rear sections of the
Tre Palazzi di Chiesa, take a few pictures, and then sit down on a shaded
park bench with a view of the building through the trees. There are only
a few old women sitting on the other benches, and a woman sitting with
a stroller parked next to her.
“…so, where were we in the story?”
“…you left it at the point where Claire had moved to Pisa–after the
Masi incident, but before they moved. You were going to explain what
was happening between Shelley and Byron…”
“…oh, that’s right. So, the warning signs had been there from the be-
ginning of Byron’s residence in Pisa, and it started to get much worse by
February. Shelley wrote, in a letter to Leigh Hunt, ‘Many circumstances
have occurred between myself & Lord B. which make the intercourse
painful to me, & this last discussion about money particularly so’…”
“…money? What was that about?”
“…by winter, 1822, the only one yet to appear to make their circle
complete was Leigh Hunt: he was supposed to arrive in the autumn, but
he and his family were forced to abort their voyage due to the severe au-
tumn storms, and they didn’t arrive until the following summer. He was
to come to help edit a new literary journal with Byron and Shelley, The
Liberal–one of the great ‘could-have-beens’ of literary history. If it had
come off it might have set forth a new direction for Romanticism–but
that’s a moot point, as it seems that what did happen in some way had to
happen…”
“…or, in any case, it did happen…”
“…yes. The Hunts were forced to raise money for the journey again,
as Hunt typically hadn’t put enough aside to cover the expenses, and this
became another issue between Byron and Shelley...”
“…why? Byron didn’t want to help?”
“…no, Byron was generous enough initially, and as we just saw, he
even offered them the bottom floor of the Lanfranchi. The problem was
that Hunt had assumed that the sales of the new journal would in itself
support his family–as it undoubtedly would have done if it had ever got-
ten off the ground; however, he had no other funds in reserve. Shelley
couldn’t afford to help Hunt beyond the initial help with the trip, and by
the time it became clear Hunt needed further financial assistance Shelley
no longer wanted to be beholden to Byron, and so he was caught be-
tween Hunt’s need for help and his own reluctance to ask for more help.
In the end he asked for and received two hundred and fifty pounds for
Hunt from Byron, so he was able to settle that matter in his mind well
enough, but he hinted at the real nature of the issue between himself and
Byron in a letter to Hunt he wrote on March 2nd:

475
 My last two or three letters have I fear given you some
uneasiness, or at least inflicted that portion of it which I
felt in writing them.—The aspect of affairs has somewhat
changed since the date of that in which I expressed a re-
pugnance to a continuance of intimacy with Lord Byron
so close as that which now exists–at least it has changed
as far as regards you & the intended journal. He expresses
again the greatest eagerness to undertake it & proceed
with it, as well as the greatest confidence in you as his as-
sociate…Meanwhile let my last letters, as far as they re-
gard Lord Byron–be as if they had not been written.—
Particular circumstances, –or rather I should say, particu-
lar dispositions in Lord B’s character render the close &
exclusive intimacy with him in which I find myself, in-
tolerable to me; thus much my best friend I will confess
& confide to you…Indeed I have written nothing for this
last two months; a slight circumstance gave a new train to
my ideas & shattered the fragile edifice when half built.
—What motives have I to write. —I had motives—and I
thank god of my own heart they were totally different
from those of the other apes of humanity who make
mouths in the glass of the time—but what are those mo-
tives now?

…he backtracked a bit in this letter, written on April 10th, but he also
detailed what some of the problems were…

I said what I thought with regard to Lord Byron, nor

would I have breathed a syllable of my feelings in any
ears but yours, but with you, I would, and I may think
aloud. Perhaps time has corrected me, and I am become,
like those whom I formerly condemned, misanthropical
and suspicious. If so do you cure me; nor should I won-
der, for if friendship is the medicine of such diseases I
may well say that mine have been long neglected–and
how deep the wounds have been, you partly know and
partly can conjecture. Certain it is, that Lord Byron has
made me bitterly feel the inferiority which the world has
presumed to place between us and which subsists no-
where in reality but in our own talents, which are not our
own but Nature’s–or, in our rank, which are not our own
but Fortune’s.

…you can see Byron’s haughtiness was a major problem–his holding to

his class status, his fortune and the power it gave him. Then, there were

476
the ‘insinuations’ Shelley mentions, which were undoubtedly about
Claire–Byron seems to have been unable to keep his mouth shut about
his own affairs and the affairs of others–even when it might have been to
his advantage…”
“…I think Byron must have been jealous of Shelley–jealous of his
capacity to love. He must have guessed at Shelley and Claire’s real rela-
tions–not just the fact of the love, but its quality: that Shelley could love
non-possessively, could love in more than one direction–and not the
selfish, oedipal love of a couple possessing each other in the same way a
child thinks it possesses the mother. Byron probably couldn’t stand it:
perhaps he was even jealous towards Shelley himself–he may have
wanted Shelley’s love for himself like some kind of overgrown child,
and couldn’t stand facing the evidence that Shelley could and did love
others, and was loved by others...”
“…I think you’re right. Shelley admitted in a letter to Claire that By-
ron was jealous of his concern for her fate, and in the letter I just read,
where Shelley suggests that certain ‘dispositions’ of Byron’s character
made their intimacy intolerable to him, there’s some evidence that the
strain Shelley felt in this close proximity to Byron was more than simply
a response to his over-bearing personality…”
“...you mean homosexual dispositions?”
“...well, not in the sense one usually understands the word as a specif-
ic sexual preference that becomes a mode of identity–that’s all a con-
struct of our own particular socio-historical moment. Holmes wrote that
there was a ‘romantic intensity’ in connection with how their physical
proximity affected one another. Byron’s sexuality, like everyone’s sexu-
ality, is tied up with his affective and emotional intensities; in other
words, in today’s mindset we would categorize him as gay or bisexual,
pressing his preferences upon Shelley in some subliminal or not-so-
subliminal way. However, I believe Byron’s appetites were based in his
own sense of superiority–he consumed and dominated others in a way
that refused autonomy to the other, regardless of gender. Granted, his
personality had a powerful charismatic element which drew others to
him–he was like a vortex; and, because Shelley was one of the few be-
ings who could resist that spell, and who, in a different manner, had just
as powerful a spell as Byron, Byron seems to have been unable to re-
strain himself from his ‘insinuations,’ ‘dispositions,’ and competitive-
ness. Shelley could love, Byron could not. Shelley opened himself and
his life to others, letting them be, while Byron dominated and controlled
the others in his life. They were both extraordinary beings, but that’s the
vital difference–and look at the result: Byron lived his life surrounded
by others but always in a kind of sovereign solitude. The others were
mostly retainers–there was really no one with creativity in their own
right. In contrast, Shelley was open to others, and enabled them to be
open and creative on their own terms: despite everything that happened,
both Mary and Claire were writing journals and pursuing active lives–

477
Mary writing novels the whole time of their relationship, Claire working
on her singing and languages. As for the others, Peacock and Hogg
wrote novels, Medwin and Trelawny wrote memoirs about Shelley and
his circle–even Williams kept a journal, and tried his hand at writing a
play, while Jane was encouraged to play the guitar and sing…”
“…and as you said, Byron stifled Shelley’s creativity…”
“…that, in the end, was the worst effect of his over-bearing presence.
It’s truly regrettable, because Shelley might have written so much more
in the time left to him. Byron was always prolific, but seemingly doubly
so in Shelley’s presence, while Shelley’s output dwindled whenever he
was in the presence of Byron…”
“…the ‘vortex’ effect…”
“…you can see the effect during these final months when Shelley was
only able to write a few secret lyrics to Jane Williams, but otherwise his
primary project–the play Charles the First–collapsed. Only when they
moved to San Terenzo, beyond the reach of Byron’s gravity, was he able
to begin work on a longer poem–The Triumph of Life…”
“…do you think the duel Shelley mentioned to Claire would have
happened if he and Byron had remained in proximity?”
“…no–I think the break was inevitable. Certainly after Allegra died
Shelley was unable to remain friends–at best, they could only be distant
colleagues. If the Masi affair hadn’t happened, something else would
have inevitably happened: it came just in time to give an external excuse
for the break-up of the community, before the internal tensions caused
perhaps an even worse blow-up…”
“…so tell me what happened…”
“…it happened on March 24th following one of their shooting expedi-
tions, and was brought about by idiotic masculine camaraderie and com-
petitiveness. Mary’s account was the most objective, and as she was rid-
ing in a coach behind the action, she was well-placed to see it all. I’m
guessing it took place right over there on the other side of the riverbank
where that row of Poplars are, as Mary mentions the Porta della
Piaggia, and see, look here on the map, that’s where the gate would
have been, and right over there along the river is the Viale della Piagge.
Here’s what she wrote about it to Mrs. Gisborne two weeks later:

Two Sundays ago Lord Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, Cap-

tain Hay, Count Gamba, and Taafe were returning from
their usual evening ride, when near the Porta della
Piaggia, they were passed by a soldier, who galloped
through the midst of them, knocking up against Taafe–
This wise little gentleman exclaimed, ‘Shall we endure
this man’s insolence?’–Lord Byron replied, ‘No! we will
bring him to an account’–And Shelley (whose blood al-
ways boils at any insolence offered by a soldier) added,
‘As you please!’ So they put spurs to their horses, (i.e. all

478
but Taafe, who remained quietly behind) followed and
stopped the man, and fancying that he was an Officer,
demanded his name, and address, and gave their Cards–
The man, who, I believe, was half drunk, replied only by
saying, ‘If I liked, I could draw my saber and cut you all
to pieces, but as it is, I only arrest you, and he called out
to the guards at the gate, ‘arrestateli’–Lord Byron laughed
at this, and saying, ‘arrestateci pure,’ gave spurs to his
horse, and rode towards the gate, followed by the rest–
Lord Byron–and Gamba passed, but before the others
could get through, the soldier got under the gateway,
called on the guard to stop them, and, drawing his saber,
began to cut at them– It happened that I, and the Countess
Guiccioli were in a carriage close behind, and saw it all,
and you may guess how frightened we were, when we
saw our Cavaliers being so confined, they got close under
the man, and were able to arrest his arm–Captain Hay
was, however, wounded in the face, and Shelley thrown
from his horse. I cannot tell you how it all ended, but af-
ter cutting and slashing a little, the man sheathed his
sword and rode off, while the others got from their horses
to assist poor Hay, who was faint from loss of blood–
Lord Byron–when he had passed the gate, rode to his own
house, got a sword-stick from one of his servants, and
was returning to the gate Lung’Arno, when he met this
man, who held out his hand, saying ‘siete contento?’ Lord
Byron replied, ‘No!’ I must know your name, that I may
require satisfaction of you–the Soldier said, ‘Il mio nome
é Masi, sono sargente maggiore’ and etc. etc.—while they
were talking, a servant of Lord Byron–came, and took
hold of the bridle of the sergeant’s horse–Lord Byron or-
dered him to let it go, and immediately the man put his
horse to a gallop, but, passing Casa Lanfranchi, one of
Lord Byron’s servants thought that he had killed his mas-
ter, and was running away, determining that he should not
go scot-free, he ran at him with a pitchfork, and wounded
him–the man rode on a few paces, cried out, ‘sono
ammazzato,’ and fell, was carried to the hospital, the
misericordia bell ringing– We were all assembled at Casa
Lanfranchi, nursing our wounded men, and poor Teresa,
from the excess of her fright, was worse than any, when,
what was our consternation, when we heard that the
man’s wound was considered mortal–Luckily none but
ourselves knew who had given the wound; it was said by
the wise Pisani to have been one of Lord Byron’s serv-
ants, set on by his padrone, and they pitched upon a poor

479
 fellow, merely because, ‘aveva lo sguardo fiero,’ quanto
un’assassino…

…the whole problem can be seen there: Byron’s rising to the bait of
Taafe’s provocation, Shelley’s feeling compelled to answer him through
action–it makes me want to shake him! Claire evidently felt the same
way, as he tried to defend himself against her chastisement…”
“…and was it defensible?”
“…no–the whole thing seems idiotic to me, like some college prank
gone wrong…”
“…so what happened? Did Masi die?”
“…they thought he would at first, but in the end he recovered. They
were all forced to spend hours giving depositions, and three of Byron’s
servants were put in jail for a while–it was even in the French and Eng-
lish newspapers! It was not exactly what they needed–the opposite of
imperceptibility. Taafe made matters worse by lying in his deposition–
pretending he had nothing to do with it when he was the instigating fac-
tor; from that time forward he became known among them as ‘False-
Taafe.’ The aftermath dragged on into May, with suits and countersuits–
a total mess. As I said, the only good that came out of the incident is that
it gave an external reason for the break-up of the community, and it
came at precisely the right time, as it gave a cover for Shelley to make a
retreat from Byron’s presence…”
“…but he continued to see Byron, didn’t he?”
“…well, to correspond with him at least: there were issues regarding
the Masi incident, there were the arrangements regarding Allegra, and
finally the arrival of Leigh Hunt–but, otherwise, San Terenzo was far
enough out of the way that his only visit to Byron before the end was his
trip to welcome Hunt…”
“…did Byron know about his intention to place distance between
them?”
“…no–it would have been too dangerous, for Byron could easily have
taken revenge through spreading further rumors. I think his plan was ra-
ther to allow distance to do its work…”
“…so Shelley started to write more when he was away from Byron?”
“…yes–in May and June he wrote what we have of The Triumph of
Life. I think what prepared him to write it were his translations of Goe-
the and Calderón–he became quite obsessed with Faust during that
spring…”
“…Faust? Why–did Shelley think he had sold his soul?”
“…there certainly had been a switch from Prometheus–stealing fire
for humanity and being tortured for it–to Faust, whose temptations lead
to tragedy and destruction; however, I think there’s another aspect of
Faust he found more important, which is its pessimistic outlook on hu-
manity’s chances for enlightenment, and even more personally, its rep-
resentation of how Faust’s quest for knowledge leads to the destruction

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of the innocent Gretchen. You can see the effect it had on him from this
passage from a letter he wrote to Gisborne on April 10th:

I have been reading over & over again Faust, & always
with sensations which no other composition excites. It
deepens the gloom & augments the rapidity of the ideas,
& would therefore seem to be an unfit study for any per-
son who is prey to the reproaches of memory, & the delu-
sions of an imagination not to be restrained.—And yet the
pleasure of sympathizing with emotions known only to a
few, although they derive their sole charm from despair &
a scorn of the narrow good we can attain in our present
state, seems more than to cure the pain which belongs to
them.

…aside from the thematic reasons he was interested in Faust, I think

Shelley associated Byron with Mephistopheles–Holmes noted that even
the demon’s style of speaking is reminiscent of Byron’s, as Shelley had
connected Faust with Byron ever since the Byron summer of 1816 when
Monk Lewis had visited and acquainted both of them with its plot. Faust
was on both their minds that spring, as Shelley was translating the intro-
ductory and Walpurgisnacht scenes; actually, some critics feel his trans-
lations are the best available in English–it’s a pity he didn’t finish it.
Meanwhile, Byron was borrowing from Faust ideas for his poem, The
Deformed Transformed–Byron’s habit of calling Shelley the ‘Snake’
started then, as Shelley was reading him a scene from the play where
Mephistopheles refers to the snake that tempted Eve as ‘My Aunt–the
renowned snake,’ and Byron retorted to Shelley, ‘Then you are her
nephew.’ So Shelley returned the favor by translating the speech of
Mephistopheles into Byron’s urbane, profane wit…”
“…did Byron know he was doing it?”
“…I doubt he noticed. Actually, an interesting historical footnote to
their shared interest came in the second part of Faust, published in 1825
when both Shelley and Byron were already dead: Goethe had Faust and
Helen of Troy give birth to Euphorion, the spirit of lyrical poetry: that
character was based on Byron. The youth wants to fly, and so bounds up
the cliffs and throws himself off to his death, thinking he can fly–for
Goethe, a symbol of the striving, lyrical poet…”
“…Goethe read Byron?”
“…oh yes–he was a big fan of Byron, and even sent him a poem
which Byron received just as he left for Greece. When Byron had dedi-
cated his Sardanapulus to Goethe, Goethe was delighted. Still, Goethe
questioned Byron’s actions in going to Greece, and felt there was some-
thing ‘impure’ about them. In a way, Shelley might have been an even
better model for Euphorion: he certainly understood Goethe far better

481
than Byron, and understood German Romanticism and Idealism signifi-
cantly better…”
“…and he’s a better model for the striving poet who plunges to his
death…”
“…certainly…”
“…I forget–what precisely is the plot of Faust? It was mentioned at
school, but we didn’t actually read it…”
“…neither did we in the United States, and for what I guess is a simi-
lar reason: a prejudice against German literary culture, fostered during
the two world wars and never really overturned later. It’s a pity, because
the more I read of Goethe, and all the German romantics, the more im-
pressed I am with the period, and I keep going back for more. Anyway,
Faust is a strange play, and somewhat fragmented because it was written
over such a long period of time. A critic named M.H. Abrams called it a
‘secularization of the Christian supernatural,’ which is true enough but
quite polite, as another critic, Harold Bloom, claimed that ‘as a sexual
nightmare or erotic fantasy, it has no rival’…”
“…I never realized it was erotic…”
“…oh but it is! Especially in Part Two, which Shelley never saw, and
even in Part One there’s a scene where Mephistopheles comes upon
Faust masturbating in a cave, or at least it’s suggested…”
“…really? Maybe that’s another reason why my teachers avoided it:
they were quite puritanical…”
“…I think the strangest thing about the play is that there’s no point of
identification for the reader: every scene is like a vision through a differ-
ent facet of a crystal, and it’s difficult to know how to take it all in. One
critic, Erich Heller, even went so far as to say that the poem’s perspec-
tivism is a precursor of Nietzsche’s nihilism…”
“…tell me the plot…”
“…the play begins in heaven, with the Lord and Mephistopheles mak-
ing a wager as to whether or not Faust can be led astray, like in the Book
of Job. Then, it shifts its scene to Faust’s study, where Faust is lament-
ing that he has wasted years studying various subjects and hasn’t gained
any real knowledge of the workings of the universe. He uses a magic
book to summon an Earth Spirit who is a bit like Shelley’s Demogorgon,
telling Faust that he can never comprehend these secrets, and Faust is
totally bowled over by it–so much so that by the end of the scene he sees
a flask of poison on his shelf and contemplates suicide. There’s a beauti-
ful line that goes something like, ‘I will journey forth to heaven’s end, to
pure activity in a new sphere!’ It reminds me of that section of Rim-
baud’s Illuminations where he writes, ‘Assez vu, assez eu, assez connu–
Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!’–‘Seen enough, had enough,
known enough–Departure into new affection and sound’: feelings like
that must have been in Shelley’s mind when he was reading Faust, as he
wrote to Trelawny requesting a vial of Prussic acid–cyanide…”
“…when did he do that?”

482
 “…on June 18th–here’s the passage of the letter where he mentions it:

…should you meet with any scientific person capable of

preparing the Prussic Acid, or essential oil of bitter al-
monds I should regard it as a great kindness if you could
procure me a small quantity. It requires the greatest cau-
tion in preparation & ought to be highly concentrated; I
would give any price for this medicine. You remember we
talked of it the other night, & we both expressed a wish to
possess it; my wish was serious, and sprung from the de-
sire of avoiding needless suffering. I need not tell you I
have no intention of suicide at present,–but I confess it
would be a comfort for me to hold in my possession that
golden key to the chamber of perpetual rest.

…this is followed by some scrawled out lines that begin ‘Let this
rest…’–I assume ‘rest between us’…”
“…so he was really serious about it…”
“…suicide was certainly on his mind during this period–at least as a
possibility. He was reaching an impasse, and that’s what attracted him to
Faust. The Faust character doesn’t commit suicide, though: his reverie
about suicide is interrupted by the sounds of the Easter celebration; he
and his student Wagner go out into the countryside to watch them, and
that’s when Mephistopheles appears–in the form of a black poodle that
follows them back to town…”
“…a black poodle!”
“…yes I know–it’s one of the many elements that make Faust so
strange. In Faust’s study, after various attempts to trip each other up,
Mephistopheles and Faust come to an agreement: Mephistopheles will
be Faust’s servant in the world and reveal to him things that no human
has ever seen before, and Faust will become Mephistopheles’ servant in
the afterlife if ever Faust is brought to a point where he is satisfied, stops
striving, and desires a moment to remain forever. I think it’s intriguing
that on the same day Shelley wrote Trelawny requesting the Prussic ac-
id, he wrote to Gisborne about moments he experienced while sailing
with Edward and Jane that he compares to that Faustian moment–listen
to this:

Williams is captain, and we drive along this delightful bay

in the evening wind, under the summer moon, until earth
appears another world. Jane brings her guitar, and if the
past and the future could be obliterated, the present would
content me so well that I could say with Faust to the pass-
ing moment, ‘Remain, thou, thou art so beautiful’…

483
…I don’t know if Shelley consciously realized that by comparing the
moment to Goethe’s moment he was actually willing the act that, in
Faust’s terms, would spell his self-destruction–a kind of death drive in
wanting all striving to cease…”
“…and by the way, isn’t Faust’s agreement the opposite of willing the
eternal return?”
“…yes, if you consider that Nietzsche wrote, ‘If we say yes to a single
moment, this means we have said yes not only to ourselves, but to all
existence.’ Shelley cites Goethe, but his meaning seems closer to Nie-
tzsche’s. It’s not clear, however, precisely what Goethe’s position was:
there’s a certain ambivalence in Goethe’s attitude towards Faust’s char-
acter. On the one hand, Faust’s striving and incapacity to be satisfied is
seen as destructive because much of the rest of Part One of the play–the
part Shelley knew–follows his desire and seduction of the Gretchen
character, which ends in terrible tragedy: her mother is killed by a sleep-
ing potion they give her, her brother is killed by Faust when he chal-
lenges him to a duel, and Gretchen becomes pregnant; when Faust aban-
dons her, she goes insane, kills her newborn child, and is sentenced to
death. Faust’s striving means that he’s too busy seeking new knowledge
to pay attention to her plight and do anything about it. On the other
hand, Faust never suffers the torments of hell: at the moment in Part
Two when Faust finally anticipates the possibility of a fleeting moment
of happiness, dies, and is about to be taken to hell with Mephisto, some
angels carry his soul to heaven with various recognizable figures ac-
companying him, such as Gretchen herself, even though she cursed him
in Part One…”
“…why did he deserve that?”
“…the play, despite its overt critique of western man, upholds the
ideal of a life of striving: it precludes the possibility of ever being con-
tent, of relaxing, of accepting the moment, and, in a way, I think reveals
the Protestant and specifically Pietist underpinnings of Goethe’s ideolo-
gy…”
“…Pietism?”
“…probably the closest to it in the Czechlands is Comenius–it
stressed faith and the Christian life one lived rather than doctrine…”
“…but I thought Goethe wasn’t a Christian…”
“…no he wasn’t, but the milieu he grew up within was Pietist. On the
other hand, Nietzsche’s philosophy is evidence that the striving that was
nurtured in a Protestant environment doesn’t have to go against the will-
ing of the eternal return of a moment–maybe that’s what makes Nie-
tzsche the next step beyond Goethe and his age…”
“…and Shelley–what was he willing when he wanted to stop the mo-
ment: his death, or his ‘highest tonality of being’?”
“…my intuition tells me that he was between Goethe and Nietzsche:
partially death drive, partially a desire to fully affirm those moments–to
will them eternally. Perhaps the answer lies in his final long poem, The

484
Triumph of Life, which also must have been influenced by Goethe’s
play–especially the Walpurgisnacht scene, which shows a vision of life
as a frenzied danse macabre. Some lines seem directly echoed in Shel-
ley; for example, Goethe wrote, ‘the blind million rush impetuously to
meet the evil ones,’ and Shelley wrote, ‘the million with fierce song and
maniac dance raging around’…”
“…that’s very close…”
“…certainly Goethe was a crucial influence on the poem, but there
were other influences: for example, Petrarch’s Trionfi, and, as I said yes-
terday, the fresco we saw–the Triumph of Death, which is really a better
title for the real thrust of Shelley’s poem, or, as Harold Bloom put it, the
‘triumph of Death-in-Life’; also, Bloom and several other critics claim
that Shelley was writing the poem partially with Wordsworth’s Intima-
tions ode in mind, as an antithesis to Wordsworth’s hopefulness about
eternity; however, perhaps the strongest influence was Dante’s Purgato-
rio: his poem bears certain resemblances to the section at the summit of
Purgatory when Dante first meets Matilda and then Beatrice–albeit in a
semi-inverted form, as the visions he has are profane rather than sa-
cred…”
“…you’ll have to explain that…”
“…in the Purgatorio, Dante reached a point in his journey where his
guide, Virgil, leaves him and he continues on his own. He enters the for-
est of Earthly Paradise, and approaches a beautiful stream where he sees
Matilda picking flowers and singing across the river–he can barely stand
to look at her, as she emanates such beauty. She is the highest point that
women can attain before entering the spiritual realm. He asks her how
the streams come to exist there, and she tells him there are two streams
flowing from a fountain created by God–Lethe, which brings about for-
getfulness of one’s previous life and sins, and Eunoe, which brings
about recollection of one’s good deeds. They continue to walk down the
banks of the stream on either side, and then a light suddenly comes
across the forest and he has a vision of a procession, much of its imagery
borrowed from Ezekiel and Revelations, but the difference is the chariot
carries Beatrice and not the enthroned image of God. Dante experiences
a series of symbolic tableaus, and finally ascends to Paradise with Be-
atrice. The Triumph of Life might be seen as an inversion of this episode
in Dante, with details and setting transformed into a vision not of tran-
scendental spiritual life, but of immanence. The earthly paradise where
the poem begins is in San Terenzo, with the poet sitting against a tree
where he has a vision that is heralded by an intense light, just as in Dan-
te. Then, like Dante, a procession comes across the horizon, but in this
case rather than figures of spirituality, there’s the whole panoply of hu-
man life surrounding the cart, which contains a mysterious shape. The
poet calls out a question about what he is seeing, and the answer comes
from a figure that emerges out of the hillside next to him, which he first
had mistaken for the gnarled root of a tree: it turns out to be Jean-

485
Jacques Rousseau. So again, like Dante, there is a guide, but whereas
Dante was guided by Virgil, then Matilda, and finally Beatrice, reveal-
ing increasingly higher levels of spirituality, here the guide is a failed
figure from the Enlightenment, whose answer to the poet’s question is
the narration of how he, Rousseau, came to have a vision identical to
that of the narrator. It’s a kind of Chinese box effect…”
“…what effect?”
“…oh, let me see–you’d call it a matryoshka effect–those Russian
dolls, enclosing another doll, and another, and another…philosophers
call it a mise-en-abîme. Even the way the vision occurs to the Rousseau
character is like in Dante, for a figure comes to him from across a stream
that has similarities to the Matilda and Beatrice figures, although in
Shelley’s poem she is more like the mythological figure of Iris. She of-
fers Rousseau a cup to drink from, which dissolves his consciousness the
same way Dante’s drinking from the river Lethe causes him to forget his
past life; however, the real difference lies in the result: for Dante this is
all a preparation for his ascent to Paradise, while for Shelley the vision
that occurs at that point is of the same procession the narrator saw,
which evokes from Rousseau the same answerless questions. The poem
breaks off before there are any answers–we’ll never know for certain
how he actually intended to complete it…”
“…when did he begin writing it?”
“…he appears to have been at least thinking about it all that spring,
but it was written in San Terenzo–he probably started it at the end of
May or beginning of June. He varied his writing between the boat and
his study–a fact Jacques Derrida emphasized in his essay on the poem,
as it was on the border between sea and land, just as Shelley was writing
on the border between life and death. The critic Paul de Man empha-
sized this indeterminacy as well, as the figures within the poem exist in a
state between forgetting and remembering, between sleeping and wak-
ing. He sees the poem as built thematically and stylistically around ef-
facement and disfiguration–words he takes in their literal and metaphor-
ical meaning…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…literally he is referring to the fact that Rousseau’s face is disfig-
ured in the poem; metaphorically, de Man refers to how the meanings of
the poem dissolve–how the poem shows this disfiguration itself, with the
emphasis on the word ‘figuration’ and ‘figure’ as figure of speech or
trop–but it would be easier to explain by looking at the poem itself…”
“…let’s look at it now–we won’t get ahead of ourselves, will we?”
“…sure, we can look at it now: its whole mood sets the tone of every-
thing that happened, and it evokes the strangeness of it all–but I warn
you, it’s a long poem…”
“…I’m warned…”
“…the opening of the poem gives us the poet on the threshold of his
vision–some critics have seen this part as the most personal, and

486
Mathews cites it as evidence that some crisis had taken place in Shel-
ley’s life, which he saw as Shelley’s involvement with Jane Williams. I
don’t know if it need be posited as something as specific as that, but,
knowing Shelley, the poem does represent whatever was happening to
him then, although the poem is strangely distanced compared to his
shorter lyrics, as well as longer poems like Epipsychidion: it’s as if he
were speaking from a vast distance. Here, I’ll read the opening:

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task

Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.

The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light, the Ocean’s orison arose

To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,

Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent

Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And, in succession due, did Continent,

Isle, Ocean, and all things that in them wear

The form and character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil, which he of old

Took as his own, and then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem

The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem

Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep

Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head

487
 When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread

Was so transparent, that the scene came through

As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,

Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there

The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my brain was rolled. . . .

…this is the part of the poem that critics describe as being a reference to
Wordsworth–nature described as if it were a church; but the difference is
that Wordsworth’s intimations were of an eternal world we once inhab-
ited, while Shelley had no such intimations; in fact, the beauties of the
landscape are blotted out by the very beings that can perceive and appre-
ciate its beauties: Shelley rejects the ‘natural religion’ of Wordsworth or
Rousseau, and that’s certainly one significant step beyond Romanti-
cism…”
“…what about the ‘thoughts which must remain untold’?”
“…aside from whatever it was that was happening with Jane then, we
do know he was having a general crisis in his life: the deterioration of
his relationship with Mary, the death of Allegra and its effect on Claire,
his alienation from Byron and the inopportune coming of Leigh Hunt–all
of these things, and more, were making his life a misery, with only brief
moments of respite when he was with Jane or Edward…”
“…and do you think he actually had some kind of vision, then?”
“…it’s entirely possible–visions tend to come at precisely such mo-
ments of extremity: Nietzsche had his vision of the eternal return in Sils-
Maria in the midst of a flurry of moving when he couldn’t feel settled
anywhere; Rilke had his vision in Duino when he had lost his place to
live in Paris and his wife was suing him for divorce; Bataille had his vi-
sions in the aftermath of the death of his lover, Laure…”
“…so Shelley’s situation made him ripe for such visions…”
“…yes–in San Terenzo he actually had momentary visions in the
presence of others which they later attested to, so he was certainly in a
state to experience what he refers in the poem as a ‘trance.’ This is how
the vision begins:

488
 As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenour of my waking dream.
Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream

Of people there was hurrying to and fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know

Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, yet so

Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky

One of the million leaves of summer’s bier. —
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,

Some flying from the thing they feared and some
Seeking the object of another’s fear,

And others, as with steps towards the tomb

Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked, and called it death…

And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.

But more with motions which each other crossed

Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew;

And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells forever burst

Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, and wood lawns interspersed

With overarching elms and caverns cold

And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old…

…so that sets up the essential vision: the road of life, the throng who are
so caught up in their own frenzy that they are largely oblivious to the

489
forest, fountain and refreshing breezes. It’s the first time where the cru-
cial question is asked–here indirectly: ‘yet none seemed to know whither
he went, or whence he came, or why.’ Then, a strange cold light appears,
just as in Dante’s work, and the chariot arrives, within which sits the
shape that in the poem is simply called ‘Life’:

And as I gazed methought that in the way

The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.—

And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,

But icy cold, obscured with . . . light
The Sun, as he the stars. Like the young Moon

When on the sunlit limits of the night

Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear

The ghost of its dead Mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair,

So came a chariot on the silent storm

Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within as one whom years deform

Beneath a dusky hood and double cape

Crouching within the shadow of a tomb
And o’er what seemed the head a cloud like crape

Was bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom

Tempering the light; upon the chariot’s beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume

The guidance of that wonder-winged team.

The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost: I heard alone on the air’s soft stream

The music of their ever moving wings.

All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded … little profit brings

Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,

Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that these banded eyes could pierce the sphere

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 Of all that is, has been, or will be done. ––
So ill was the car guided, but it passed
With solemn speed majestically on . . .

…the Janus-faced figure represents the past and the future, and the four-
faces of the charioteer and the winged figures are taken straight from
Ezekiel–it’s a nice touch that because they are moving so swiftly and the
figures’ eyes are blinded the whole contraption isn’t guided very well, a
fact which inverts Ezekiel’s divine vision where everything seems intri-
cately in control…”
“…so fate or chance guides it, rather than God?”
“…that seems possible, as Shelley’s poem works to replace a figura-
tion of Divinity with–as de Man calls it–a ‘disfiguration’ that keeps re-
vealing only the unrepresentable or unknowable. The chariot seems to
affect the people like a fore-knowledge of impending death, and in the
next passage the people fall into a frenzy–it’s like what Heidegger
speaks about in his chapters on angst in Sein und Zeit: the majority are,
in his terms, ‘inauthentic’ because they’ve been unable to face the fact
of their own mortality:

The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,

Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast

The million with fierce song and maniac dance

Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror’s advance

Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea

From senatehouse and prison and theatre
When Freedom left those who upon the free

Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.

Nor wanted here the true similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where’er

The chariot rolled a captive multitude

Was driven; all those who had grown old in power
Or misery,—all who had their age subdued,

By action or by suffering, and whose hour

Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;

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 All those whose fame or infamy must grow
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of this green earth with them forever low—

All but the sacred few who could not tame

Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame

Fled back like eagles to their native noon,

Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one

Were there; for they of Athens or Jerusalem

Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them

Or fled before…

…it’s interesting that Shelley has those ‘who had grown old in power
and misery’ chained to the chariot: it’s a reference to those who became
famous, or as Rousseau will tell the narrator later, ‘the great, the unfor-
gotten’…”
“…but why are they chained to the car?”
“…the car seems to be crossing the threshold of the present moment,
so that those chained to it, who are already ‘dead’ as physical beings, are
those beings whose renown is still being judged by the living–actually, it
reminds me of Kafka’s The Trial…”
“…The Trial?”
“…there’s that key section when the court painter, Titorelli, explains
to Josef K the possible verdicts he may expect–do you remember them?”
“…yes, first there’s actual acquittal, where the accused man is de-
clared innocent and the trial is over–but Titorelli doesn’t recall a single
instance of it happening…”
“…in Shelley’s poem that would be equivalent to the ‘sacred few’
who die young, or those who were capable of total self-sacrifice: in re-
gard to the latter he makes reference to ‘Athens or Jerusalem’–obviously
Socrates and Jesus, who are two of the rare figures who receive such an
absolute acquittal, and, among those who died young and ‘fled back like
eagles to their native noon,’ I would guess Shelley would have had in
mind first of all Keats, and perhaps Chatterton…”
“…Chatterton?”
“…Chatterton was a pre-romantic poet who forged a series of medie-
val poems reputedly by a 15th Century monk named Thomas Rowley.
He tried to survive as a writer in London, failed, and poisoned himself at
age 17. The romantics were quite obsessed with him: Keats dedicated
Endymion to his memory, and Shelley refers to him in a stanza of Ado-

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nais about poets who died young–he also mentions Sir Philip Sydney
and the Roman poet Lucan…”
“…and Shelley himself…”
“…in the end, yes…”
“…and those chained to the chariot received the equivalent of what
Titorelli called–what was the word–‘apparent acquittal’?”
“…yes, or ‘ostensible acquittal’–where the defendant relies on the tes-
timony of his connections to influence the judges behind the scenes and
receive an acquittal that is only ostensible: at any given moment some-
one can look into the file again and open up the trial. That’s how I see
those chained to the chariot: chained to time as it flows, and being con-
tinuously judged and re-judged by each passing age, so in a certain sense
never allowed to rest in peace…”
“…but if only a few receive absolute acquittal, it seems the only other
option for anyone of any historical importance is either to be dragged
along with the chariot as history continuously assesses them, or to final-
ly be forgotten…”
“…that’s about it…otherwise, for the rest of us there’s the third pos-
sibility Titorelli offers…”
“…indefinite postponement, wasn’t it–where the trial is prevented
from even starting?”
“…yes, but of course there are two catches: for the trial not to begin,
one has to avoid drawing any attention to oneself. It’s clear in Kafka that
Josef K. is an up-and-coming banker–that’s what attracts attention to
him and provokes the trial, not to mention all the people waiting around
the law courts are described as being well-dressed and of the upper clas-
ses…”
“…so one avoids the trial even beginning by being of little im-
portance…”
“…remember the character Bloch?”
“…yes, I remember him kissing the lawyer’s hand…”
“…the lawyer tells him that the signal for his trial hasn’t even been
given yet–it devastates him!”
“…and what’s the other catch?”
“…Titorelli tells Josef K. that it involves keeping in constant personal
contact with the court. My interpretation is that it means one must main-
tain normative social behavior: given norms change gradually but con-
tinuously, it means trying to move with the times, but not so quickly that
one gets ahead of one’s times, or not so slowly that one gets behind the
times. In other words, not drawing any undue attention to oneself: dress-
ing ‘normally,’ even though something as silly as the width of men’s ties
changes with each season, or the color or cut of clothes, or the way one
wears one’s hair. It reminds me of my childhood in American suburbia:
everyone mowing their lawn, doing the same types of things, and being
ostracized if they don’t. I remember when our neighbors painted their
house black, and that was enough to raise eyebrows…”

493
 “…it sounds as bad as under communism…”
“…not that bad, but certainly bad enough! Still, it doesn’t make the
lot of those seeking ‘indefinite postponement’ any better, except that
they aren’t tormented after death…”
“…they just torment themselves during life…”
“…that’s true–look how Shelley continues the poem, describing the
unchained people; it looks like the Walpurgisnacht section of Faust:

…Swift, fierce and obscene

The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,

Outspeed the chariot, and without repose

Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music. . . . Wilder as it grows,

They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,

Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure

Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,

Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair,
And in their dance round her who dims the Sun

Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air

As their feet twinkle; now recede and now
Bending within each other’s atmosphere

Kindle invisibly; and as they glow

Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to new bright destruction come and go:

Till like two clouds into one vale impelled

That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain—the fiery band which held

Their natures, snaps. . . the shock still may tingle—

One falls and then another in the path
Senseless, nor is the desolation single,

Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath

Past over them; nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the Ocean’s wrath

Is spent upon the desert shore.—Behind,

Old men and women foully disarrayed

494
 Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,

Limp in the dance and strain with limbs decayed

To reach the car of light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.

But not the less with impotence of will

They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfill

Their work and to the dust whence they rose

Sink and corruption veils them as they lie
And frost in these performs what fire in those.

…he’s especially hard on love and desire–the lines ‘as they glow like
moths by light attracted and repelled, oft to new bright destruction come
and go,’ must have reflected his own situation by then, as he realized
that if he were to cross the threshold from emotional to physical intima-
cy with Jane he would have been embracing his own destruction. It’s a
figure that we’ll see him taking up again in his ‘Lines Written in the Bay
of Lerici,’ where the same idea is expressed with a different metaphor:
he likens passion and its destructive elements to the spear fisherman in
San Terenzo who used lamps to attract fish to their destruction when
they came to ‘worship the delusive flame’…”
“…I like how he describes that destruction…here: ‘till like two clouds
into one vale impelled that shake the mountains when their lightnings
mingle and die in rain’–the merging, the Sturm und Drang, and then the
use of rain as a figure of their tears…”
“…and then all that’s left afterwards is ‘foam after the ocean’s
wrath’–that’s actually quite depressing…”
“…the description of the old people is worse–‘the corruption veiling
them’ after they chase after the chariot, seeking their youth? I prefer the
lovers’ ‘fire’ to their ‘frost’…”
“…I do too. All of this brings the narrator of the poem to a crisis, too,
and now the ‘what?’ and ‘why?’ questions are asked explicitly for the
first time, and the answer is given by the figure who will become for the
narrator what Virgil was for Dante: Rousseau. Listen to this:

Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,

Half to myself I said, ‘And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? & why’—

I would have added—‘is all here amiss?’

But a voice answered . . ‘Life!’ . . . I turned and knew
(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness!)

495
 That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of those deluded crew,

And that the grass, which methought hung so wide

And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes he vainly sought to hide

Were or had been eyes:—‘If thou canst forbear

To join the dance, which I had well forborne,”
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,

‘I will now tell that which to this deep scorn

Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn.

‘If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,

Follow it even to the night, but I
Am weary.’. . . Then like one who with the weight

Of his own words is staggered, wearily

He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
‘First, who art thou?’. . . ‘Before thy memory

‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, and died,

And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Earth had with purer nutriment supplied

‘Corruption would not now thus much inherit

Of what was once Rousseau—nor this disguise
Stain that within which still disdains to wear it. —

‘If I have been extinguished, yet there rise

A thousand beacons from the spark I bore.’—

…the critic Paul de Man takes Rousseau’s disfigurement as a metaphor

for the operation of the whole poem: thematically in the way everything
in life is ultimately dissolved and destroyed, but also on the level of lan-
guage itself, in terms of how any solid meaning in the poem is also dis-
solved…”
“…why did Shelley chose Rousseau–was he that important for him?”
“…I think he probably was the most important influence in terms of
what he represented for Shelley: he admired Plato and Lucretius, but
they were figures of another age, while figures like Spinoza, Hume and
Kant were too abstract, and didn’t have enough of a connection to reali-
ty. Rousseau was a key figure for Shelley, as he was for Kant, in both

496
positive and negative ways. Shelley admired Rousseau both macro-
politically and micro-politically: macro-politically, he admired, for ex-
ample, his critiques of society in the Second Discourse and his defense
of civil liberty in The Social Contract; micro-politically, he admired, in
Julie, his vision of a more sincere and open discourse between people–
especially between men and women; and, in Émile, where he suggests
we should be both individuals and members of society, respecting socie-
ty up to a point but seeing ourselves as primarily members of humanity.
He certainly recognized that Rousseau’s work was an essential impetus
for the French Revolution–that ‘there rise a thousand beacons from the
spark I bore’; but he also realized the significant dangers and mistakes in
Rousseau’s thought, and saw in his own early work and actions the same
kind of mistakes. He saw that there was something fundamentally wrong
with the more naïve aspects of Rousseau’s thinking–that social trans-
formation was much more difficult than Rousseau thought–and not least
of all due to something that was perhaps inexplicable, something Shelley
had come to recognize within humanity that would not be led by ration-
ality…”
“…what is that?”
“…he refers to it in the next section as the ‘mutiny within,’ and this
phrase seems very much like a forerunner of Freud’s idea of the uncon-
scious mind and the drives, as Rousseau explains that the reason the fig-
ures are chained to the chariot is something that was ultimately caused
by their own lack of self-knowledge:

‘And who are those chained to the car?’—‘The Wise,

‘The great, the unforgotten: they who wore

Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,
Signs of thought’s empire over thought: their lore

‘Taught them not this—to know themselves; their might

Could not repress the mutiny within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night

‘Caught them ere evening.’ ‘Who is he with chin

Upon his breast and hands crossed on his chain?’
‘The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win

‘The world, and lost all that it did contain

Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than Virtue’s self can gain

‘Without the opportunity which bore

Him on its eagle’s pinions to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before

497
 ‘Fallen, as Napoleon fell.’—I felt my cheek
Alter to see the shadow pass away
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak

That every pigmy kicked it as it lay—

And much I grieved to think how power and will
In opposition rule our mortal day—

And why God made irreconcilable

Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eyes’ desire to fill

With the spent vision of the times that were

And scarce have ceased to be… ‘Dost thou behold,’
Said then my guide, ‘those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,

‘Frederic, and Kant, Catherine, and Leopold,

Chained hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage
Whose name the fresh world thinks already old––

‘For in the battle Life and they did wage

She remained conqueror—I was overcome
By my own heart alone, which neither age

‘Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb

Could temper to its object.’

…I’m not sure Kant really deserves to be there, although I don’t judge
Shelley too harshly for it, as it was simply too early for his work to be
evaluated; after all, in a certain sense one can see the whole arc of Ger-
man philosophy after Kant–from Schelling to Hegel to Schopenhau-
er…and even to Nietzsche and Heidegger–as a working through of Kant.
If the Germans took that long to work through it, the English-speaking
world wouldn’t have done it any sooner! I think Shelley’s assessment of
Rousseau is quite adequate, as I do think there was something within
Rousseau’s own personality that was the real problem: so much ambiva-
lence and ambiguity, so many sudden divergences–such as his joining
with Diderot and the Encyclopedists and then just as suddenly turning
against them, or his trip to Great Britain to join Hume, and just as sud-
denly recoiling from him. He was volatile and often paranoid, and cer-
tainly Shelley saw in his own early behavior the same kind of volatility
and paranoia–but had matured enough to condemn it. That he had given
up his revolutionary illusions is clear from the next passage, where he
responds to what he has seen:

498
 —‘Let them pass,’
I cried—‘the world and its mysterious doom

‘Is not so much more glorious than it was

That I desire to worship those who drew
New figures on its false and fragile glass

‘As the old faded.’—‘Figures ever new

Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may;
We have but thrown, as those before us threw,

‘Our shadows on it as it past away.

…the panoply of great men continues, through Plato, Aristotle, Alexan-

der, Bacon–and Rousseau admits that his own words were the ‘seeds of
misery’:

But mark how chained to the triumphal chair

The mighty phantoms of an elder day—

‘All that is mortal of great Plato there

Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not;
The star that ruled his doom was far too fair—

‘And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,

Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not. —

‘And near . . . . . walk the . . . . . twain.

The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain. —

‘The world was darkened beneath either pinion

Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;

‘The other long outlived both woes and wars,

Throned in new thoughts of men,’ and still had kept
The jealous key of truth’s eternal doors

‘If Bacon’s spirit . . . . . had not leapt

Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
The Proteus shape of Nature’s as it slept

499
 ‘To wake and to unbar the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign. —
See the great bards of old who inly quelled

‘The passions which they sung, as by their strain

May well be known: their living melody
Tempers its own contagion to the vein

‘Of those who are infected with it—I

Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!

‘And so my words have seeds of misery—

Even as the deeds of others,’ —‘Not as theirs,’
I said—he pointed to a company

In which I recognized amid the heirs

Of Caesar’s crime from him to Constantine
The Anarchs old whose force and murderous snares

Had founded many a sceptre bearing line

And spread the plague of blood and gold abroad,
And Gregory and John and men divine

Who rose like shadows between Man and god

Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
Was worshipped by the world o’er which they strode

For the true Sun it quenched—‘Their power was given

But to destroy,’ replied the leader—‘I
Am one of those who have created, even

‘If it be but a world of agony.’—

…so at least he sees he wasn’t a power-monger, a destroyer–he created,

but it seems cold comfort to him…”
“…do you think that Shelley felt the same way about his own work?”
“…no–for the very simple reason that Rousseau’s work spread like
wildfire in regard to its popular reception, while Shelley’s work was
largely neglected and ignored. Certainly Shelley was deeply questioning,
at that time, the value of his own work, and wondering if the drawing of
‘new figures’ on the ‘false and fragile glass’ of reality by anyone was
ultimately worth anything. He was on the verge of nihilism, and I think
the asking of ‘why’ in the poem was truly happening to him at that time.
For example, I have no doubt that these next words of the narrator were
Shelley’s sentiments, then:

500
 ‘Whence camest thou and whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin?’ I said, ‘and why?

‘Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow

Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought.—
Speak’…

…and Rousseau’s answer is another box within a box–a mise-en-abîme

of broken-off attempts at meaning…

—‘Whence I came, partly I seem to know,

‘And how and by what paths I have been brought

To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
Why this should be my mind can compass not—

‘Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.

But follow thou, and from spectator turn
Actor or victim in this wretchedness

‘And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn

From thee. — Now listen. . . In the April prime
When all the forest tops began to burn

‘With kindling green, touched by the azure clime

Of the young year, I found myself asleep
Under a mountain, which from unknown time

‘Had yawned into a cavern high and deep,

And from it came a gentle rivulet
Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep

‘Bent the soft grass and kept for ever wet

The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sounds, which all who hear must needs forget

‘All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,

Which they had known before that hour of rest:
A sleeping mother there would dream not of

‘The only child who died upon her breast

At eventide, a king would mourn no more
The crown of which his brows were dispossest

501
 ‘When the sun lingered o’er his Ocean floor
To gild his rival’s new prosperity. —
Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore

‘Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,

The thought of which no other sleep will quell,
Nor other music blot from memory—

‘So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell. —

Whether life had been before that sleep
The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell

‘Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,

I know not. I arose, and for a space
The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,

‘Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace

Of light diviner than the common Sun
Sheds on the common earth, and all the place

‘Was filled with many sounds woven into one

Oblivious melody, confusing sense
Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun…

…the mountain, the grove, the stream, the sounds which make the hearer
forget: all of it is an echo of the scene when Dante reaches the earthly
paradise on the summit of the Mount of Purgatory. He experiences the
same strange light that is brighter than day, but in Rousseau’s case it’s
Iris who appears with her strange movements, gliding over the ground–I
think it’s interesting that Shelley chose Iris for this role, both because
she’s always a messenger God for the Greeks, and because her symbol is
the rainbow, which fits in with all the imagery of light in the poem–her
evanescence makes her the symbol of becoming, transience, ephemerali-
ty:

‘And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence

Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
And the Sun’s image radiantly intense

‘Burned on the waters of the well that glowed

Like gold, and threaded all the forest’s maze
With winding paths of emerald fire—there stood

‘Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze

Of his own glory, on the vibrating
Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,

502
 ‘A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing

‘A silver music on the mossy lawn.

And still before her on the dusky grass,
Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn. —

‘In her right hand she bore a crystal glass

Mantling with bright Nepenthe; —the fierce splendour
Fell from her as she moved under the mass

‘Of the deep cavern, and with palms so tender

Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her

‘Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow

Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
That whispered with delight to be their pillow. —

‘As one enamoured is upborne in dream

O’er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem

‘Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist

The dancing foam, partly to glide along
The airs which roughened the moist amethyst,

‘Or the slant morning beams that fell among

The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
And her feet ever to the ceaseless song

‘Of leaves and winds and waves and birds and bees
And falling drops moved in a measure new
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze,

‘Up from the lake a shape of golden dew

Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
Dances i’ the wind where eagle never flew. —

‘And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune

To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
The thoughts of him who gazed on them, and soon

503
 ‘All that was seemed as if it had been not—
As if the gazer’s mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers, and she, thought by thought,

‘Trampled its fires into the dust of death,

As Day upon the threshold of the east
Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath

‘Of darkness reillumines even the least

Of heaven’s living eyes—like day she came,
Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased

‘To move, as one between desire and shame

Suspended, I said—“If, as it doth seem,
Thou comest from the realm without a name

‘ “Into this valley of perpetual dream,

Show whence I came, and where I am, and why—
Pass not away upon the passing stream.”

…so again we encounter this question that the narrator had first asked–
it’s the essential, unanswerable question. The Iris figure’s answer is to
hold out to him the crystal glass of nepenthe–the result of his drinking it
being this extraordinary passage where his consciousness dissolves,
scattering like sand, and he recounts his having fallen into the same vi-
sion that the narrator first had, with the same strange light followed by
the advent of the Chariot…”
“…so a vision within the vision…”
“…yes, that’s right…

‘ “Arise and quench thy thirst,” was her reply.

And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning’s vital alchemy,

‘I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,

Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand

‘Where the first wave had more than half erased

The track of deer on desert Labrador,
Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed

‘Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore

Until the second bursts—so on my sight
Burst a new Vision, never seen before, —

504
 ‘And the fair shape waned in the coming light
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite

‘Of sunrise, ere it strike the mountain tops—

And as the presence of that fairest planet
Although unseen is felt by one who hopes

‘That his day’s path may end as he began it

In that star’s smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,

‘Or the soft note in which his dear lament

The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content. —

‘So knew I in that light’s severe excess

The presence of that shape which on the stream
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,

‘More dimly than a day-appearing dream,

The host of a forgotten form of sleep,
A light from heaven whose half extinguished beam

‘Through the sick day in which we wake to weep

Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost. —
So did that shape its obscure tenour keep

‘Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;

But the new Vision, and the cold bright car,
With savage music, stunning music, crost

‘The forest, and as if from some dread war

Triumphantly returning, the loud million
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star. —

‘A moving arch of victory, the vermilion

And green and azure plumes of Iris had
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,

‘And underneath aethereal glory clad

The wilderness, and far before her flew
The tempest of the splendour, which forbade

‘Shadow to fall from leaf and stone…

505
…the Iris figure becomes the rainbow here, forming an arch for the ap-
proach of the Chariot. Shelley again plays with the ideas from Words-
worth’s Intimations of Immortality ode, but in this case the intimation of
an eternal life that existed before birth and after death is ‘forever sought,
forever lost’: he refuses Wordsworth’s consoling vision, and Rousseau
describes the same kind of Walpurgisnacht scene that the narrator saw–
although this time in considerably more detail, describing every possible
form of the evasion of mortality. It’s harrowing:

—the crew
Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance
Within a sunbeam;—some upon the new

‘Embroidery of flowers that did enhance

The grassy vesture of the desert, played,
Forgetful of the chariot’s swift advance;

‘Others stood gazing till within the shade

Of the great mountain its light left them dim. —
Others outspeeded it; and others made

‘Circles around it, like the clouds that swim

Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
And more did follow, with exulting hymn,

‘The chariot and the captives fettered there,

But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
Fell into the same track at last and were

‘Borne onward.—I among the multitude

Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
Me not the shadow nor the solitude,

‘Me not that falling stream’s Lethean song,

Me, not the phantom of that early form
Which moved upon its motion—but among

‘The thickest billows of that living storm

I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform. —

‘Before the chariot had begun to climb

The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme

506
 ‘Of him who from the lowest depths of Hell
Through every Paradise and through all glory
Love led serene, and who returned to tell

‘In words of hate and awe the wondrous story

How all things are transfigured, except Love;
For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary,

‘The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers—
A wonder worthy of his rhyme—the grove

‘Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,

The earth was gray with phantoms, and the air
Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers

‘A flock of vampire-bats before the glare

Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening
Strange night upon some Indian isle;—thus were

‘Phantoms diffused around, and some did fling

Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
Behind them; some like eaglets on the wing

‘Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves

Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;

‘And others sate chattering like restless apes

On vulgar hands and voluble like fire.
Some made a cradle of the ermined capes

‘Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar

Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
Within the crown which girt with empire

‘A baby’s or an idiot’s brow, and made

Their nests in it; the old anatomies
Sate hatching their base broods under the shade

‘Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes

To reassume the delegated power,
Arrayed in which those worms did monarchize,

507
 ‘Who made this earth their charnel. —Others more
Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar,

‘Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist

On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
Of lawyer, statesman, priest and theorist,

‘And others like discoloured flakes of snow

On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow

‘Which they extinguished: for like tears, they were

A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
In drops of sorrow…

…it reads like one of Heidegger’s catalogues of forms of inauthenticity

in Sein und Zeit–all the possible ways of evading the acceptance of the
truth of one’s mortality. I suppose trying to ‘outspeed’ death in today’s
terms might mean getting on the treadmill of the cult of the ‘forever
youthful’–from the fitness cult to facelifts; or ‘following with exulting
hymn’ would be today as it was then–the religious fanatics…”
“…or ‘playing forgetful’ would be the people who simply put it en-
tirely out of mind…”
“…yes, and I think the ‘circling’ as well. Shelley even uses a figure
similar to one of Heidegger’s when he writes ‘but all like bubbles on an
eddying flood fell into the same track at last’: remember we discussed
‘eddying’–what’s the Czech for it?”
“…oh yes, I remember–there’s no precise word I know of in Czech
for that–I would use the word ‘vír’ and the plural ‘víry’…”
“…then the rest of the section continues with a catalogue of possible
stances and positions that reveal the sheer vanity of human life. He men-
tions a possible form of salvation: Dante’s realization, as he enters para-
dise, that the only thing that’s not transfigured is love; but even then
Rousseau says that the ‘world can hear not the sweet notes that move the
sphere whose light is melody to lovers’…”
“…and the image of the snowflakes melting into a veil of tears
doesn’t speak well of the result of love…”
“…it doesn’t get better: the final stanzas recount how life cuts down
all of these figures, and the manuscript that exists ends in mid-sentence,
right after Rousseau has uttered the same cry as the narrator did before:

—I became aware

508
 ‘Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
The track in which we moved; after brief space
From every form the beauty slowly waned,

‘From every firmest limb and fairest face

The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace

‘Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft

With care, and in those eyes where once hope shone
Desire, like a lioness bereft

‘Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one

Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown

‘In autumn evening from a poplar tree—

Each, like himself and like each other were,
At first, but some distorted seemed to be

‘Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air,

And of this stuff the car’s creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there

‘As the sun shapes the clouds—thus, on the way

Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all, and long before the day

‘Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven’s glance

The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died.
And some grew weary of the ghastly dance

‘And fell, as I have fallen, by the way side,

Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past
And least of strength and beauty did abide.” —

‘Then, what is Life?’ I said. . . the cripple cast

His eye upon the car which now had rolled
Onward, as if that look must be the last,

And answered. . . . ‘Happy those for whom the fold

Of…

…and there it ends abruptly in mid-sentence: as the critic Paul de Man

suggested, it’s as if you can hear the dead body of Shelley hitting the
page with a thud. In a way his death completes the poem, but it’s a

509
strange completion because it represents the intrusion of what’s outside
the text, and, in this case, outside all language–the non-meaning beyond
meaning. I think de Man was right when he suggested that it’s crucial
‘how one disposes of Shelley’s body’; in other words, how one deals
with the fragmentation of the poem and what it says about Shelley’s en-
tire œuvre, and ultimately about Romanticism, literature, and language
itself…”
“…the relation between language and reality?”
“…yes, and specifically how we posit our interpretations–as either
closed and purely formal, or open to only the socio-historical, or finally
opening out to what is beyond language. Language is always seeking,
never reaching, and The Triumph of Life reveals this incompletion the-
matically, figuratively, and, ultimately, literally, in bridging the chasm
between his writing and his life, and then opening to the outside of lan-
guage, and even life. The mise-en-abîme of The Triumph of Life acts out
the truth about language and life itself, and Shelley’s death punctuated
that lesson as a final trap door opening onto the abyss…”
“…but wasn’t it merely by chance?”
“…especially because it was by chance: actually, I can’t imagine it
having happened in a more significant way. Consider other writers at
their deaths, and the state of their work when they died. There are those
who seem to prepare for it by writing in advance what is clearly a last
work: I think of Shakespeare’s The Tempest; D.H. Lawrence’s poem
‘The Ship of Death’; Nabokov’s last novel, Look at the Harlequins; or
even Sylvia Plath’s last poem, ‘Edge.’ Then, there are those who die in
the midst of their work, like Kafka, Robert Musil, or Ingeborg Bach-
mann. Kafka inscribed a certain interminability in his works, so one gets
the feeling that they could have just kept going on and on, and, in a way,
so did Musil with his unfinished novel: one critic suggested that if Musil
had finished Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, he would have mirrored the
first chapter, ‘A Sort of Introduction,’ with a final chapter entitled ‘A
Sort of Conclusion’–which perhaps would have been the same as leav-
ing it incomplete. Ingeborg Bachmann’s trilogy of novels, Todesarten or
Death Styles, were not completed, although, in a certain way they pre-
figured her death, as she was portraying the deaths of three female pro-
tagonists and then died herself. Jean-Luc Nancy, writing about the work
of Georges Bataille, coined the term ‘exscription’ to describe a certain
aspect of these writers…”
“…what did he mean?”
“…in-scription obviously refers to when you ask someone to write in
something–usually to sign their own work: when someone inscribes
something they place there a sign of their living presence, which is why
signed editions are worth so much. Ex-scription therefore suggests the
opposite: rather than a living presence in-scribing the work, the work is
written with such intensity that we feel the living presence emerging
from out of the text. Of course all works have some aspect of exscrip-

510
tion–of a ‘finitude exposing itself to another finitude,’ as Nancy puts it,
but some texts reveal more of the sense of the lived presence of an au-
thor than others. In Bataille it’s often the moments of the breakdown of
communication that give the most vivid sense of Bataille’s presence:
those places where he suddenly breaks off communication at the point of
extremity and fills the page with ellipses, or perhaps what the American
poet Galway Kinnell meant when he referred to ‘broken-off, choked,
parrot-incoherences’…”
“…nice description…”
“…but it’s not just the intensity of writers like Bataille, Artaud, Rim-
baud, or Nerval, or the confessional intimacy of writers like Plath, Nin,
or Duras that reveal this nakedness: Blanchot, for example, is neither
intense nor intimate in any standard way, and yet his narrative récits like
La folie du jour and L’Arrêt de Mort also carry a vivid sense of pres-
ence. When he began the latter with the line ‘These things happened to
me in 1938,’ there’s something about the way the rest of the text reads
which exscribes his enigmatic presence. Nancy wrote about Bataille,
‘this is Bataille himself, dead,’ but the strange thing is that his death
points to his having been alive–his immanence. Nancy ends his piece
quoting Blanchot’s tribute to Bataille in L’Amitié: ‘Books themselves
refer to an existence.’ I feel the same thing happening in The Triumph of
Life: that this is Shelley–his absent presence and his present absence
simultaneously, and the mysterious paradox is that it’s his actual death
during the writing of the poem, that ‘thud’ of the dead body, which
makes his having-been-present on earth appear even more intensely…”
“…but just as Dante crossed the threshold from Purgatory to Heaven,
is it possible that Shelley might have intended for the narrator to cross a
threshold and arrive at some new stage as well?”
“…that’s the question, really, and I can only speculate about the an-
swer. Shelley had certainly reached an impasse in his life, but in a cer-
tain sense I think the impasse he reached was not only an individual im-
passe, but represented the impasse that Romanticism as a whole had
reached. If you look at the periodization of literary historians, Romanti-
cism ends at some point in the mid-19th Century, but I think that’s large-
ly because they didn’t really have a name for the mishmash of things
that came after it, not to mention the ‘late’ Romanticisms of countries
like France and Russia, or the Romantic nationalisms of the central Eu-
ropean countries. If you consider a survey of the romantics in 1822, the
year Shelley died, you find, among those most fully associated with the
movement, nothing really substantial being written after Byron’s death
in 1824. Keats was already dead; Blake died in 1827 but had reached his
apogee by 1820; Coleridge was living on his memories until 1834; Sou-
they wrote nothing worth anything as Poet Laureate and died in 1843;
Wordsworth, having written nothing of any real value since The Excur-
sion, in 1814, became Poet Laureate after Southey and died in 1850…”
“…and the German Romantics?”

511
 “…they didn’t fare any better: Novalis, Schiller, and Kleist were al-
ready dead; Hölderlin was insane and living in his tower until 1843; the
Schlegel brothers had become reactionary Catholics and were dining
with Metternich; and Goethe, who would have cringed at the label ‘Ro-
mantic,’ had already completed his poetic output, was writing his mem-
oirs, and died in 1832. Romanticism didn’t end overnight; rather, it
slowly evolved into something else, and it took most of the 19th Century
for that evolution to cross the threshold to Modernism. It wasn’t a
straightforward, clear-cut evolution by any means. One thread led
through figures of decadence like Nerval, Poe, Baudelaire, and Rim-
baud, who were to Romanticism what the Baroque was to the Renais-
sance–a garish mutation of sorts, and in their case a mutation towards
something merging the lyrical sensibility of Romanticism with cynicism
and Realism; then, there was another thread, Aestheticism, branching off
from the Decadents in figures like Mallarmé, Pater, Wilde, and Stefan
George; and yet another thread in the cynical realism and naturalism of
Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg, and James. These currents
may seem opposed–and they were opposed in many ways, but I think
they shared something that Shelley anticipated, which has something to
do with questioning the reality humans have created for themselves, and
working through the implications of a social universe where we have
such autonomy…”
“…so you are saying that they were all dealing with the same issues
represented by Shelley’s impasse?”
“…yes, although it’s complicated: in a way, I think it all begins with
Kant. Hannah Arendt said that he had ‘shattered the unity of thought and
Being’–the idea that our representations of reality could be absolutely
accurate. Even Kant hadn’t fully realized what he had done at first, and
spent the rest of his life trying to back away from the abyss he had
opened, for with his questioning of what we can know for certain he not
only questioned the certainty of the religious world-view that preceded
him, but also of the truths available to philosophy and even to science,
which he relegated to the realm of phenomenal ‘appearances.’ We’re
still digesting it, and in a way everything that came after Kant might be
seen as an attempt to deal with that loss of certainty. The romantics and
the German philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel tried to deal
with it either by trying to work his ideas through to their logical conclu-
sion by completing or critiquing them, or advancing some sort of alter-
nate ideal in the face of the abyss he opened, but still the abyss yawned
open, as Schopenhauer realized, and it was inevitable that what Nie-
tzsche termed the ‘uncanniest of guests’–nihilism–would appear. I be-
lieve Shelley’s The Triumph of Life is the enactment of that appearance,
an anticipation of the next stage facing humanity…”
“…so Shelley’s impasse was the impasse of European culture as a
whole…”
“…I believe so…”

512
 “…did he realize it?”
“…not fully…he was truly an agent of variability–far ahead of his
time, so he would have felt it as something primarily concerning him-
self; however, if you look at the history of thought, you see Schopen-
hauer at roughly the same moment also stumbling over something that is
on the threshold of nihilism, although his pessimism doesn’t quite go
that far…”
“…but what exactly do you mean by ‘nihilism’? I have this idea of it
from Russian literature–Turgenev’s Bazarov, Dostoyevsky’s Raskolni-
kov: in their works it seems a sort of intellectual anarchism…”
“… Nietzsche saw nihilism as something broader–not as a philosophy
or anti-philosophy to be adopted, but as a kind of malaise or Zeitgeist
affecting all of European civilization. Nietzsche was the first to explicit-
ly analyze it: he saw the cause of European nihilism as the result of the
collapse of a metaphysical and moral interpretation of the world; in fact,
he saw a direct correlation between the aspiration of a given value sys-
tem towards an ideal and how far it fell into nihilism when it collapsed.
He believed neither the Enlightenment nor Romanticism were able to
replace that lost world view with an alternative: the philosopher, the art-
ist, the scientist–all had failed to regain the throne lost by Christianity on
the level of values…”
“…was he really so critical of Romanticism? I thought Goethe was
one of his heroes?”
“…Nietzsche did appreciate Goethe very much, and as a boy his fa-
vorite poet was Hölderlin–he was even a fan of Byron’s Manfred! How-
ever, in his later life he felt that Romanticism valued extreme states in
themselves–something he referred to as a ‘cult of passion,’ plus he dis-
trusted their advocation of the ideals of Rousseau. In short, he felt that
they still held to an idealized world view, and hadn’t reached the point
of questioning the truth of all eternal values…”
“…so nihilism was a necessary stage?”
“…yes. There’s a section in Nietzsche’s late notebooks where he
tracks the evolution of nihilism, examining it as a psycho-social state
and associating it with what happens when someone who had believed
in something loses their belief, and consequently loses courage–falling
into depression and despair. Such a situation certainly occurred with the
loss of Christian faith, but Nietzsche even found dangers lurking within
the conceptual attempts of philosophers from Kant through Hegel to
come to terms with the loss of metaphysical views of the world through
the use of reason. He wrote, ‘belief in the categories of reason is the
cause of nihilism’–because such categories refer to a ‘purely invented
world’…”
“…but I thought Kant was skeptical towards knowledge…”
“…he didn’t disagree with Kant’s first gesture of positing a critical
delimitation to human knowledge, but disagreed vehemently with Kant’s
attempt to bridge that abyss, or back away from it, by continuing to

513
speak of the existence of something that exists beyond reason–the nou-
menal realm, or the whole belief in ‘the moral law within’…”
“…so, in Nietzsche’s terms, the nihilism in The Triumph of Life
would actually be a reaction to the loss of belief in an ultimate truth–in
Shelley’s case, the Enlightenment belief in revolution?”
“…Nietzsche wrote that in a nihilistic outlook, ‘the goal is lacking, an
answer to the “Why?” is lacking’: that’s precisely what occurs in The
Triumph of Life with its repetition of the unanswered ‘Why?’ For Shel-
ley, the very edge of nihilism was reached because his belief in the En-
lightenment projects of revolution and his attempts at forging an alterna-
tive mode of life had been severely damaged, and he was too early, his-
torically, to sense the next stage looming on the horizon–in either liter-
ary, philosophical, or socio-political terms. Actually, when I think about
it in terms of the kind of affirmative skepticism that Shelley was at-
tempting to develop, Nietzsche is really the next historical figure I can
think of who combined an attitude that was deeply skeptical of human
knowledge while at the same time holding to a position that was essen-
tially affirmative, and, in a way, I see Nietzsche’s life as a working
through of precisely the impasse that Shelley had reached. Certainly
others were also reacting to the impasse and seeking a way through, but
it really was Nietzsche who was the first to break through nihilism and
suggest a way for thinkers, writers and artists to move beyond it…”
“…but how was he able to maintain an affirmative stance in the ab-
sence of any certain truths or values?”
“…Nietzsche wasn’t entirely against nihilism: he distinguished be-
tween passive and active nihilism. Passive nihilism was a pathological,
weary, exhausted nihilism that completely gave in to meaninglessness;
active nihilism maintained an active stance of destruction towards false
values–those which made the mistake of attributing an absolute truth to
human beliefs. He characterized passive nihilism as the position held by
what he termed ‘the last man’: as a result of living in a world without
value, the last man simply gives up, and allows himself to perish. Then,
there is the ‘new man’ of active nihilism, who actively seeks his own
destruction: he is the bridge across from man to the overman, as he seeks
that link to what is yet to come. He saw active nihilism as an intermedi-
ate state, because the forces necessary to move beyond it hadn’t been
gathered yet to enact the transition to a new condition of existence–what
he termed, finally, a ‘transvaluation of all values’…”
“…and what would you consider Shelley–the ‘last man’ or the ‘new
man’?”
“…I’m not sure…The Triumph of Life certainly is pessimistic! At
least in terms of the situation he reached just before his death, it could
look like Shelley had simply given up…but…”
“…but?”
“…there are too many indications of his seeking either active destruc-
tion–such as the vial of cyanide he requested from Trelawny, or, indi-

514
rectly, some way through his impasse: after all, he was in the middle of a
long poem when he died, and the writing of it, itself, indicates some kind
of affirmation, or so it seems to me. Blanchot wrote that when one is un-
happy and sits down to a table to write ‘I am unhappy,’ there is a trans-
mutation of forces, an affirmation: being unhappy is an exhaustion of
force, while its expression is an increase in force. He was writing about
Kafka at the time, but it might also apply to Shelley. In regard to Shelley
I’m still uncertain as to whether or not he had arrived at the bridge or an
impasse, but he was on a track that Nietzsche would also follow: a sig-
nificant aspect of Nietzsche’s work was this kind of active nihilism, but
he certainly was seeking a way through and beyond, and his concept of
the eternal return was a major step. His idea of the eternal return, of ‘im-
printing upon becoming the character of being,’ was a way of doing
away with seeking truth in the depth of things, or in some beyond, but
accepting the flux of becoming in the present moment–‘to welcome tri-
umphantly every moment of existence,’ which involves, as he put it,
‘standing one’s ground’: enduring the worst onslaughts of men, the
worst blows of fate, and facing the truth of no inherent meaningfulness
in reality save what we bestow upon it through our own will…”
“…once before you said it was ‘wresting affirmation from…’–what
was it?”
“…‘the maw of negativity’…”
“…but I have trouble seeing what that ‘yes’ looks like in practice; I
mean, is it more stoical or more Dionysian?”
“…it’s not entirely clear–there’s a mixture of both. He gives a list of
what he terms the ‘Yes-saying affects’ in his last notebooks, most of
which I agree with–joy, health, reverence, beautiful gestures, discipline,
strong will, gratitude towards life, the love of the sexes, generosity–
bestowing gifts upon life, and immortalizing it. There’s really only a
couple of things on his list that I have reservations about–enmity and
war, although I suppose the kind of active energies he’s speaking of
cannot exist without creating a certain antagonism; and, anyway, he
wrote in Ecce Homo that his ‘practice in warfare’ was only to attack
causes that were already victorious, to attack only where he would have
no allies in his cause, and never to attack individuals but only what they
stood for: in other words, never to allow personal differences to motivate
his attacks…”
“…what strikes me about the list is that people don’t usually associate
Nietzsche with generosity…”
“…certainly most people don’t associate Nietzsche with the term
‘giving,’ and perhaps even less with the word ‘love,’ but he wrote, in his
last notebooks, ‘I have never desecrated the holy name of love.’ One of
the parables Nietzsche relied on to explain the difference between nega-
tion and affirmation is a love story–that of the triangle of Ariadne, The-
seus, and Dionysus: for most commentators it has seemed merely evi-
dence of his madness, because in one of his final letters he wrote to Co-

515
sima Wagner, ‘Ariadne, I love you, Dionysus’; Gilles Deleuze, however,
took it much more seriously, seeing it as a parable explaining the over-
coming of nihilism by affirmation. You know the myth of Ariadne,
right…?”
“…she gave Theseus the thread he needed to find his way out of the
labyrinth after he killed the Minotaur, and then he took her away with
him as his wife–after that, I don’t know…”
“…the myth diverges after Theseus takes her away from Crete: in one
version of the myth she hangs herself after he abandons her, in another
she dies giving birth to Theseus’ child, and in another she is approached
by Dionysus, who then takes her as his wife–it’s this last version that
concerned Nietzsche. He sees Theseus as the ‘sublime man’–a model for
the highest man can achieve within the realm of traditional values: he
endures, undertakes tasks, bears a burden, but still always remains with-
in the realm of reactive being, rather than affirmative becoming. Diony-
sus represents the affirmative overturning of reactive being, but there is
a step yet to be taken, for Dionysus is shown as initially fearing the
thought of the eternal return: he fears that not only does it bring back
active energies, but also it results in the return of reactive energies as
well. So there’s a need for a double affirmation–an affirmation of affir-
mation, or, as Nietzsche wrote, ‘Eternal affirmation of being, eternally I
am your affirmation.’ Dionysus needs Ariadne to affirm him, and what
her affirmation brings is the realization that only active forces return; the
double affirmation she introduces leads the thought of the eternal return
towards a selective process–throwing off reactivity and negative imma-
nence…”
“…so in Nietzschean terms, would you consider Shelley still a The-
seus, or a Dionysus?”
“…Shelley’s natural inclinations were towards affirmation, but any
affirmation must come from how we face and affirm what actually is
here and now–the pure flux of becoming. At the very least Shelley was
very close to realizing it: perhaps he did come to realize it as his avowal
of the present moment and desire to have it ‘remain’ shows, but it was
too late for him to enact it; nonetheless, he was hovering on the verge of
it, and I think The Triumph of Life and the fact it wasn’t finished indi-
cates precisely that hovering…”
“…and if he had crossed over the threshold, can you imagine how he
would have finished the poem?”
“…my guess would be affirmatively–but not the vacuous affirmation
and positivism you see in Hollywood films, but an affirmation derived
from negativity. Actually, there’s a beautiful scene in Bergman’s film,
Fanny and Alexander, which might serve as a good example of an af-
firmative take using similar figures as Shelley’s poem: the grove, the
stream, the road…”
“…oh, I know it–the story Uncle Isak tells the children when they es-
cape their evil stepfather?”

516
 “…yes–I have it here, in my notebook…”
“…why?”
“…I’ve always made a connection between it and The Triumph of
Life, so one day I sat down and transcribed the subtitles from the film…”
“…read it to me…”
“…let me see…here it is:

A young man journeys down an endless road in the

company of many others. The road leads across a rocky
plain where nothing grows. The sun’s fire burns from
morning to evening. They can’t find shade or coolness
anywhere. A harrowing wind stirs up huge dust clouds.
The youth is driven forward by an incomprehensible
anxiety and tormented by a scorching thirst. Sometimes
he asks himself or one of his traveling companions about
the goal of their pilgrimage. But the answer is uncertain
and tentative. He himself has forgotten why he ever set
out on his journey. He has also forgotten his native land
and the journey’s final destination. Suddenly, one even-
ing he finds himself standing in a forest. Dusk sets in and
all is quiet. Perhaps the evening wind soughs through the
tall trees. He stands amazed…but also anxious and sus-
picious. He’s all alone…and he discovers his hearing and
sight are weak, since his eyes and ears are inflamed from
the day’s merciless glare. His mouth and throat are
parched from the long pilgrimage. His lips are cracked,
pressed together around curses and harsh words.
So he doesn’t hear the ripple of flowing water, and
doesn’t notice its reflection in the dusk. He stands deaf
and blind at the edge of the spring unaware of its exist-
ence. Like a sleepwalker he wanders unaware between
the sparkling pools. His blind skill is remarkable, and
soon he’s back onto the road in the burning, shadowless
light. One night by the camp fire he’s seated near an old
man who’s telling some children about the forests and
springs. The youth recalls what he’s been through, but
faintly and indistinctly, as in a dream.
He turns to the old man, skeptical yet courteous, and
asks, ‘Where does all this water come from?’
‘It comes from a mountain whose peak is covered by a
mighty cloud.’
‘What kind of cloud?’ the youth asks.
The old man answers: ‘Every man bears within him
hopes, fears, longings. Every man cries his despair aloud,
or bears it in his mind. Some pray to a particular god,
others address their cries to the void. This despair, this

517
 hope, this dream of deliverance, all these cries, are gath-
ered over thousands and thousands of years and con-
dense into an immeasurable cloud around a high moun-
tain. Out of the cloud rain flows down the mountain,
forming the streams and rivers that flow through the
great forests. That’s how the springs are formed where
you can quench your thirst, where you can bathe your
burnt face, where you can cool your blistered feet. Eve-
ryone has at some time heard of the mountain, the cloud
and the springs, but most people anxiously remain on the
road in the blazing light.’
‘Why do they stay?’ asks the youth in great astonish-
ment.
‘I certainly don’t know,’ replies the old man. ‘Perhaps
they’ve convinced themselves and each other that they’ll
reach their unknown destination by evening.’
‘What unknown destination?’ asks the youth.
The old man shrugs his shoulders. ‘In all probability
the destination does not exist. It’s deception or imagina-
tion. I myself am on my way to the forests and the
springs. I was there once when I was young and now I’m
trying to find my way back. It’s not easy, let me tell
you.’
The next morning the youth set out with the old man to
seek the mountain, the cloud, the forests, and the rippling
springs...

…and then, if you remember, after the story is told Alexander imagines
seeing the road of life. There’s no chariot, but otherwise it’s very similar
to The Triumph of Life–with a throng of people on the road, many of
whom are caught up in religious frenzy, scourging themselves. Three
women appear: the first is the neurotic maid of the Pastor, showing the
bleeding stigmata she’s given herself; then a beautiful woman who ap-
proaches and strokes Alexander; and finally his mother, offering him a
bowl to drink from…”
“…what’s the source of the parable–I remember Uncle Isak said it
was in Hebrew, didn’t he?”
“…yes, but I don’t know the source. Whatever it was, I suspect it was
close to Bergman’s heart, as I saw an interview he gave in 1970 where
he was asked about his religious feelings: he spoke of his absolute disbe-
lief in a God outside of us, but suggested within us we have a holiness
that he saw as a product of generations of men–composed of their hopes,
fears, desires, and prayers, all existing immanently within us. The water
in the springs that can slake our thirst is caused by the condensation of
these human existences, which includes hopes as well as fears, prayers
and poems–but, of course, it reveals the problem: how to shade the glare

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from one’s eyes in order to see the springs around one, and the difficulty
of that…”
“…it seems that the association with childhood is important–when we
hadn’t yet been blinded by the false beliefs of men…”
“…yes, Nietzsche also utilized the figure of a child for affirmation in
the ‘Three Metamorphoses’ chapter of Zarathustra. First, there’s the
stage of the camel–the reactive man who takes on the task of values as a
burden, following society’s orders; and then the stage of the lion–the
active nihilism which kills the dragon bearing the scales with ‘Thou
shalt!’–finding ‘illusion and caprice’ in even the highest values; then,
finally, there’s the stage of the child, which, as Nietzsche writes, is ‘in-
nocence and forgetfulness,’ a ‘new beginning,’ a ‘self-propelling wheel,’
a ‘sacred Yes’…”
“…but what would affirming affirmation mean actually?”
“…abstractly, it would mean affirming the affirmation of pure be-
coming: acknowledging that everything is contingent, with no intrinsic
meaning; and imprinting ‘being upon becoming’ in a way that is always
provisional–and yet affirming it despite its provisionality…”
“…so to live knowing that our truths, meanings, and values are only
constructions–but to affirm them anyway?”
“…yes–to affirm our beings, intensely, in the midst of becoming…”
“…and what would that mean concretely?”
“…that’s difficult to say…we can see what a concrete application
would be in Shelley’s case in terms of Enlightenment concepts: he tried
to apply a range of concepts from Spinoza’s immanent ethics to Hume’s
skepticism, from Rousseau’s socio-political rationalism to Kantian au-
tonomy, from the philosophical anarchism and socialist utilitarianism of
Godwin to the feminism and relational politics of Mary Wollstonecraft.
The equivalent in the post-Enlightenment period is difficult to see, as I
would say much of what we do in postmodern, post-industrial society is
a form of ‘achieved nihilism,’ as Jean-Luc Nancy calls it, rather than
affirmation…”
“…so we’re in the realm of Theseus…”
“…that’s right, although certainly there have been concrete attempts
to affirm affirmation. In the United States in the 60s and early 70s there
was an attempt to move beyond the conservative, community-based
ethos of society in the 50s, replacing the ethos centered on family,
church, and country with a progressive ethos of civil rights, equal oppor-
tunity, liberal values, and individual freedom. I was only a child then,
but I remember the rapidity of change was breathtaking…and, regretta-
bly, the rapidity with which things ultimately broke down and fell apart,
or were distorted, discredited, or domesticated afterwards. Now I see
most of what happened then as not exactly the start of something new,
but as the final stage of a process which began in the Enlightenment: a
considerably watered-down version of Kantian autonomy, which, after
1975, was taken up cautiously and reactively by society as a whole, in a

519
‘made-safe-for-consumption’ manner that diluted its real contents. I
wouldn’t call the postmodern pastiche of modes of living that emerged
afterwards a full realization of what Kant had in mind as self-
determination and autonomy, by any means…”
“…so you think nothing was achieved then?”
“…I didn’t say that! A watered-down version of autonomy is better
than nothing at all. It’s just that looking at what happened from a dis-
tance–both historically and culturally–I can see that the gains were not
as significant as people believed at the time. For example, on the one
hand people today can wear their hair long, short, spiked, dread-locked,
dyed or shaved and not face any real social pressure to conform to a
norm, but on the other hand college students in the 90s are certainly no-
where near as adventurous or experimental compared to students in the
late 60s and early 70s…”
“…the majority of young Americans actually seem hyper-normative
to me, whether it’s about appearance, behavior, opinions, interests: they
seem frightened to death of veering away from the norm…”
“…that’s true, but that may also be because you have seen only the
ones who go abroad: suburban kids are some of the most normative,
even when they are trying to be anti-normative! I think it has to do with
how capitalism co-opted the ‘do-your-own-thing’ ethos into a variety of
marketing ploys, scripted by the media-apparatus. There’s an apparent
autonomy in the way people are now allowed access to a range of ‘life-
styles,’ but those lifestyle choices are like a repertoire of pre-determined
choices mediated by society. It’s difficult to choose a mode of life the
system doesn’t first anticipate or orchestrate for you: for example, in
western countries I can choose, to a certain degree, the color and cut of
my pants, but I cannot choose to wear a caftan or even a cape without
facing dire social consequences…”
“…and would you if you could?”
“…on a day as hot as today, I would!”
“…seen from the Czech Republic, where everything is so culturally
homogenous, the USA looks so much freer, but I know what you mean:
whether white, black, Hispanic, or Asian-American, there’s a definite
Americanism that always shows through, despite their belief in their own
individuality. It’s as if they all see themselves as stars of their own pri-
vate Hollywood movie, but it’s always a variant of the same script!”
“…yes, I know what you mean. After a few years abroad I came to
realize that even when you consider two Americans from opposite ends
of the ideological spectrum, there’s a similarity to their essential mode
of being that makes them much closer to one another than to their ideo-
logical counterparts in other countries…”
“…you mean the point about treating their lives like a car they are
driving?”

520
 “…yes, among other characteristics: for example, my fellow Ameri-
cans now seem to me far more influenced by media than people from
other cultures…”
“...do you mean movies and television?”
“…and also print culture: the ‘mainstream’ in the USA is far more
rigidly-constructed than I’ve seen elsewhere, and far more naïve about
it. They’re almost gullible, but of course that insight is nothing new:
Tocqueville noticed it already in the 1830s, and rightly saw the media
apparatus in the USA as a device for transforming cultural heterogeneity
into homogeneity–the infamous ‘melting pot.’ What seems strange to
me, now, is how even what posits itself as progressive or counter-
cultural there belies a certain homogeneity of outlook…”
“…and what do you see as its most characteristic feature?”
“…it seems to me that the common denominator is what might be
termed a certain positivism: I don’t mean what’s usually meant by the
term–Comte’s positivism or the logical positivism of Carnap, but rather
something closer to the use of the word ‘positivistic’ in the critique of
Enlightenment found in Adorno and Horkheimer, where they use it to
describe the kind of scientific attitude that thinks it will eventually ex-
plain everything. The American approach to knowledge is steeped in
empiricism and pragmatism and tends to shy away from the kind of
speculative thought Kant termed the ‘synthetic a priori,’ with the result
being a naïvely realistic, ‘things are pretty much as they seem’ outlook
combined with a ‘one day we will solve that problem’ approach. There’s
very little doubt or self-questioning. Problems are dealt with technically
or scientifically rather than on a deeper level–such as giving kids pills
for hyper-activity or depression, or putting up metal detectors in schools,
rather than addressing the underlying social problems that cause the
symptoms. When you combine that with a belief in happy or just end-
ings; a belief that reality can always be ‘fixed’ or made better; a repres-
sion of history; a denial of death, grief and the darker emotions; a youth-
based culture that refuses psychological adulthood along with its refusal
to accept aging; and a culture based on material values camouflaged by
religious belief; well, you end up with the American ideology as it exists
in the postwar era until the present…”
“…I know what you mean: the whole attitude–the smiling, ‘let’s have
fun!’ way of life, which always seems to be hiding some malaise or des-
peration; but, still, there are exceptions…”
“…of course, but they only prove the rule…”
“…based on what you said the other day about the system and varia-
bility, isn’t it true that what you’re describing–this ‘watering down’ of
ideals when they are applied to reality–is inevitable?”
“…that’s true, and I also admit that probably what’s worse than this
dilution is when someone harbors a belief in the opposite: that some sort
of perfection or a certain ‘next stage’ can be attained. It always results in
some sort of totalitarianism, whether of the religious or nationalist right,

521
or the utopian left. That’s why I think it’s important to see the sys-
tem/variability distinction of Luhmann as ‘horizontal’ rather than ‘verti-
cal’: increasing variability not as a Nietzschean ‘superman’ or evolu-
tionary progression up a ladder, but rather as increasingly complex
forms of adaptability to the environment…”
“…so there’s no progression in evolution?”
“…Luhmann didn’t think so, although I admit his view is rather too
cynical for me, and I find myself preferring Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas
of an affirmative deterritorialization; however, even they became more
cautious over time…”
“…so you believe in some progress?”
“…I believe in progress as a regulative idea, much as I accept Kant’s
categorical imperative and Nietzsche’s eternal return as regulative ideas,
even though they are the opposite of each other in certain ways: none of
them apply all of the time, and to push any one of them to its logical
limit would result in absurdity, if not something more dangerous. As I
said before, even Nietzsche realized you can’t go around willing the
eternal return at every moment, and Kant thought that one ought not to
apply universalizable maxims to everything one does–a handful of max-
ims is enough. It helps me to live when I assume there is human pro-
gress, but a pessimistic adage like Nietzsche’s ‘the thought of suicide
gets one through many a bad night’ also helps me live. While I hope
there’s true progress, I can’t close my eyes to the fact of Auschwitz,
Rwanda, Srebrenica and the whole host of other atavisms that litter the
20th Century…”
“…so perhaps ‘affirming affirmation’ might be seen as the affirma-
tion of the enacting of these regulative ideas…”
“…you could say that…in the end, I think the reason it’s so difficult
to pin down what ‘affirming affirmation’ would be is that it represents
what hasn’t arrived yet: the potential, the unformed, the open, the out-
side, the beyond–or whatever other terms one might use to describe it.
Who knows what the human race will have to adapt to in the future? As
Luhmann writes, even when something is planned, there are all kinds of
unintended, unpredictable consequences. There will always be a tension
between the structures and forms that already exist, and those that are
coming into existence. As I said before, it’s part of the testing process of
these new forms…”
“…it seems more of a crushing process than a testing process when I
think of Shelley, Claire, and Mary! Based on the world today, Byron’s
cynicism seems to have passed the test of time more than Shelley’s cos-
mopolitanism, belief in Enlightenment ideas, and experiments in living
and free love…”
“…yes, but you can also see Shelley and Byron as different inflec-
tions of the same self-reflexivity and self-determination: Byron was a
cynical, elitist misanthrope, but his mode of being involved an ironic
self-consciousness that was quite new for his times; Shelley was an af-

522
firmative, equalitarian philanthrope, whose mode of being involved an
extremely refined, acutely sensitive self-consciousness that would seem
to have had nothing in common with Byron. What they share is the in-
tensity of their self-reflexivity, and the self-determination that both re-
sults from and augments it. In short, they are both practitioners of a
Kantian autonomy that was quite new then, and which has continued to
evolve until this day, despite the diluted forms it takes…”
“…perhaps Byron’s self-conscious cynicism and irony represents the
atavistic side of self-determination, while the more enlightened form is
closer to the affirmation that Shelley sought…”
“…I think that’s probably right, although the only evidence I have for
saying affirmation is on the forward side of evolution is that it was de-
veloped as a process in Nietzsche, and then taken up in turn by post-
modern thinkers such as Foucault, Klossowski, and Deleuze. So, even if
it’s watered-down, it’s still theoretically as alive as we are–perhaps even
more alive, as these concepts have been evolving for two centuries or so,
and in comparison we’ve only been alive briefly…”
“…the more I sense these currents of thought as ‘non-organic life
forms’ or ‘immanent energies,’ the more tenuous our lives seem to be.
It’s not only the immaterial aspect of these evolving energies: to think
that Shelley, Mary and Jane and Edward Williams once lived right here
in this building; or that somewhere on that embankment over there the
Masi incident happened; or that Claire once visited here while Byron
was living over there across the river–he aware of the death of Allegra,
she unaware; or even that one fine day in 1944 American flyboys saw fit
to bomb it here, leaving that gash in the building and causing who
knows what havoc in the lives of the people then living here…”
“…not to mention Ugolino, Galileo, James, Pound, and the countless
others whose times intersected momentarily with this place…”
“…and now we, too–for only a few brief hours, really…”
“…but they were hours that we willed…”
“…that’s true, and it seems to me that part of what made them so
meaningful is that we’ve come into such a close proximity to their inten-
sities…”
“…intensities persist, as if they had their own gravitational field, or
like a strange attractor in chaos theory: immanence directs and shapes
the time flowing around it like islands within the stream of time…”
“…or as you said about the ‘virtual cone’ of the future, they create
contracted states of anticipation or probability…”
“…and we are in the midst of all that, swept by the endless flux and
reflux of energies, eventually coalescing into immanence ourselves, so
that what will remain of us will be like those mysterious shadows
emerging from around the corners of deserted piazzas in de Chirico’s
paintings–caught between the fleetingness of those shadow tracings and
the eternity of those spectral statues…”

523
 “…and in his paintings there’s almost always a clock, with a train
waiting in the distance…”
“…as there will be a train waiting for us…”
“…in the paintings it always seems timeless…”
“…perhaps he’s right…”

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 

Gesetzt, wir sagen Ja zu einem einzigen Augenblick, so

haben wir damit nicht nur zu uns selbst, sondern zu allem
Dasein Ja gesagt. Denn es steht nichts für sich, weder in
uns selbst, noch in den Dingen: und wenn nur ein
einziges Mal unsere Seele wie eine Saite vor Glück
gezittert und getönt hat, so waren alle ewigkeiten nöthig,
um dies Eine Geschehen zu bedingen – und alle Ewigkeit
war in diesem einzigen Augenblick unseres Jasagens
gutgeheißen, erlöst, gerechtfertigt und bejaht.

If we say Yes to a single moment, this means we have said

Yes not only to ourselves, but to all existence. For nothing
stands alone, either in us ourselves or in things: and if
just once our soul has quivered and resounded with hap-
piness like a harpstring, then all eternity was needed to
condition that one event – and in that one moment of our
saying Yes, all eternity was welcomed, redeemed, justified
and affirmed.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

…time as the Eternal Return: the dwarf telling Zarathustra that time is a
road stretching backwards and forwards without an end, a gateway
named ‘moment’ appearing every instant of our lives–from our births to
our deaths…

…our lives are the sum of all the moments allotted to us, marking a cae-
sura in infinite time: only moments that are willed eternally, that affirm
a moment absolutely, leave traces of their passage…

…to affirm a moment is to affirm eternity, for all of eternity was needed
to produce that moment, and is therefore contained in that moment…

…to will the eternal return of even a single moment conditions all of the
other moments of our lives: the affirmed moment becomes the index of
intensity against which all our other moments are measured…

525
…the intensity of a single moment of full affirmation seeps into all our
other moments, drawing them towards the highest thresholds of our be-
ing…

…to will the eternal return of a moment is not only to affirm that mo-
ment, but to affirm every moment: the highs and the lows, the joys and
the sufferings, the triumphs and the tragedies…

…to affirm the eternal return of a moment is to affirm all chance and all
necessity, all contingency and all determination, all accident and all
fate…

…amor fati: we must learn to love our fates, for not only do we will a
moment eternally, we will all the consequences which follow from that
moment…

…‘being’ (as final achievement, accomplishment, attainment) is a simu-

lacrum; ‘becoming’ (as an endless play of forces: transition and trans-
formation, growth and decay, lightening and darkening) is the only real-
ity: acceptance of this fact yields “a Dionysian saying Yes to the world
as it is, to the point of wishing for its absolute recurrence and eterni-
ty”… (Nietzsche)

“…as for me, I have not been the unfortunate messenger of a thought
stronger than I, nor its plaything, nor its victim, because that thought, if
it has conquered me, has only conquered through me, and in the end has
always been equal to me. I have loved and I have loved only it, and eve-
rything that happened I wanted to happen, and having had regard only
for it, wherever it was or wherever I might have been, in absence, in un-
happiness, in the inevitability of dead things, in the necessity of living
things, in the fatigue of work, in the faces born of my curiosity, in my
false words, in my deceitful vows, in silence and in the night, I gave it all
my strength and it gave me all its strength, so that this strength is too
great, it is incapable of being ruined by anything, and condemns us,
perhaps, to immeasurable unhappiness, but if that is so, I take this un-
happiness on myself and I am immeasurably glad of it and to that
thought I say eternally, ‘Come,’ and eternally it is there.” (Blanchot)

…to will the eternal return of this person beside us, this place, this ac-
tion, this ‘highest tonality’ of being, is not to cause the actual, physical
return of any of these–for nothing returns, and we live only once…rather
it is to will an intensity of being within the midst of becoming–“to im-
print upon becoming the character of being” so that the traces resonate
across time…and perhaps through eternity…

526
 

The city bus lurches forward from its stop by the palm-shaded park
fronting the port of La Spezia, rounds the block and turns on to the Viale
Italia. After a few blocks, it veers right, following the line of docks and
warehouses along the Ligurian coastline towards Lerici. After a few kil-
ometers they pass Muggiano, and the bus turns onto a local route, head-
ing down a hillside through the environs of San Terenzo and finally
turning left and stopping at the Piazza della Libertá on the seafront.
They maneuver their luggage off the bus and pause to survey the sandy
cove, fronted by ochre, umber, pink, and white buildings separated from
the shore by a roadway, parking, and a raised white carrara marble
walkway bordering the beachfront. Fishing boats clutter the right half of
the cove under the shadow of a bluff capped by an old stone fort; the left
extremity is bordered by a tree-lined peninsula, the Lerici castle looming
across the gulf in the distance. A breakwater encloses two-thirds of the
cove: several clusters of swimmers bask in the lazy swell stirred by an
occasional boat departing the small harbor.
“…this must be the place–look! There’s ‘Bar Shelley’!”
“…I don’t’ believe it–a bar named after him! Well, it seems more of a
refreshment stand…we’ll have to try it later…this whole body of water
over to Lerici is known as the Golfo dei Poeti, so I suppose we’ll see a
lot of restaurants and hotels named after Byron and Shelley…”
“…Byron I understand, but Shelley?”
“…I’m surprised too: it seems strange to see a bar named after a poet
very few people read any more in the English-speaking world, let alone
Italy!”
“…so where’s the Casa Magni?”
“…if I’m not mistaken…yes, that’s certainly it: the white villa over
there with the arched terrace and the green shutters…”
“…I think I see a plaque on it…”
“…I can’t wait to take a look–but we should find our pensione first
and store our things–it’s ‘Albergo Pensione Trieste’: it should be here on
the seafront, somewhere…”
“…should we ask someone?”
“…these people are mostly tourists…”
“…you’re a typical male, afraid to ask directions! I’ll ask at Bar Shel-
ley…”
“…ok, I’ll wait here with the luggage…”
She crosses the street to the bar, enters, and emerges a few moments
later with a woman who gestures in the direction of the Casa Magni. Af-
ter thanking her, she crosses back over, hands him the paper with the
hotel name on it, and takes her luggage.

527
 “…we’re in luck! She said it’s the pensione right next to ‘la casa
bianca’–there’s a pizzeria in front of it…”
“…great–we’re right next to it…”
They pull their bags down the white marble walkway, and cross at a
zebra-striped crossing just beyond the pensione in front of the Casa
Magni. They pause for a moment to read the plaque on the front façade.
“…it’s rather poetic–or at least it’s trying to be! It’s something like
‘by this door which was struck by the shadow of an ancient oak’–no, no,
that’s not exactly it, let me look it up…that’s it–‘the shadow of an an-
cient ilex’…‘In July, 1822, Mary Shelley and Jane Williams’…‘awaited
with anxious tears Percy Bysshe Shelley who from Livorno in a fragile
wooden sailboat’…I don’t know–I guess it’s ‘landed by unforeseen
chance in the silence of an Elysian island’…”
“…what?”
“…it’s from the ancient Greek ‘Elysium’–sort of a heaven…then
there’s something about ‘blessed beach, the love of liberty and dreams
not to have chains’…well, you get the idea…”
“…let’s put our luggage in our rooms, and we can come back…”
“…I guess we enter via the restaurant…”
They enter the albergo and check in, pay for their stay, and carry their
luggage up to their room on the second floor. It is furnished simply, with
a large bed, sink, dressing table, and wardrobe. They open the window
shutters and admire the view–the terrace of the Casa Magni below them.
After a quick shower they change their clothes and go downstairs to the
restaurant, taking a seat in the corner of the glassed-in terrace nearest the
Casa Magni. They order acqua minerale, a carafe of house white wine,
a plate of olives, rucola salads and a pizza to share.
“…the Casa Magni is really beautiful. It seems to be a private resi-
dence…”
“…probably, and owned by someone wealthy: I think it’s the only
villa along this seafront–everything else seems to be restaurants, bars,
and hotels…”
“…it would be wonderful to have a look inside…”
“…that would be amazing, but it would be a bit different than Este–
here the villa is in use, and probably by the kind of people who don’t
want visitors…I think we’ll have to gather our courage…”
“…do we dare?”
“…let’s wait and see–perhaps we can find something out about who
lives there. I would really love to see it, because the floor plan isn’t en-
tirely clear to me…”
“…it’s not even clear to me how many floors there actually are:
there’s the ground floor there, and the first floor there, but what about
those little windows at the top?”
“…supposedly the ground floor was unusable as anything but a large
storage room. The casa apparently had been used as a boathouse, and
from what I read the ground floor was covered with sand and old

528
equipment. Look, I have a copy of a photo of the house taken at the end
of the 19th Century–see, it was truly right on the sea then, and the sea
must have washed up to the door when there were high tides and storms,
as there was no breakwater back then…the road and walkway weren’t
there, nor were those rocks there…”
“…it was quite isolated–this albergo wasn’t here, nor the pensione
and hotel on the other side…”
“…I’ve seen artist’s renditions of the town during the time Shelley
was here, and it seems that there wasn’t anything between the casa and
the little cupola church we saw, and that’s…what? I’d say one hundred
fifty meters or so from here–they were quite cut off from everything.
There were the people from the village, although Mary described them
as ‘wild & hateful’: that’s an exaggeration, as she wasn’t too happy be-
ing so isolated, having gotten used to the social life of Pisa…”
“…and I suppose Shelley loved it?”
“…of course! Anyway, they lived on the main floor–let me draw it for
you based on Mary’s description in a letter she wrote later: there was a
main room in the middle, here, and here’s the terrace, so, facing the sea,
this right front room on the terrace was Shelley’s room, while Mary’s
room was on the front left. Then, Edward and Jane Williams shared this
room behind Shelley’s room–back there. Initially they had planned to
find a separate house, but they looked throughout the area and couldn’t
find anything, so this was a temporary arrangement…”
“…that would leave a room behind Mary’s room: was that Claire’s?”
“…no…according to Mary, that was what she termed a ‘private stair-
case’–which seems odd because there ought to be a grand staircase lead-
ing up to the main room, here…”
“…so where was Claire sleeping?”
“…that’s my question, too; of course, if you calculate the time she
spent there, it was considerably less than the others, as she had to return
to Florence to pack her things and was gone for a couple of weeks. I
don’t know where she was sleeping–perhaps in the main room. In
Claire’s first letter to Jane after Shelley’s death, Claire mentioned how
she missed the times spent ‘in our den,’ which suggests she may have
been sharing their room with them, but maybe she was referring to the
whole house…”
“…but if this is the main floor plan, what’s in that wing behind the
main part of the building?”
“…quarters for the servants and the three children…”
“…how many servants did they have, then?”
“…I don’t know, but I would guess a cook and a governess for each
of the families, and then, when the boat arrived, Shelley retained a boat
boy named Charles Vivian…otherwise, Byron’s servant Tita arrived, as
he had to wait for Byron to move from Pisa to rejoin him…”
“…so it was quite a full house…”

529
 “…yes, and apparently it created a good deal of tension, especially
between the servants–Mary wrote that they quarreled ‘like cats and
dogs’…in the end, her servants finally returned to Pisa…”
“…how long did they intend to stay here?”
“…Shelley wanted to stay at least the summer–they took the house on
a six month lease…”
“…they arrived at the beginning of May, right?”
“…April 30th…”
“…and Shelley died on July 8th–that means they were here just over
two months…”
“…that’s right–although it seems longer, given everything that was
happening, as if time had dilated somehow…”
“…it’s hard to believe it was such a short time…so, where were we in
the over-all story? They were moving in order to get Claire away from
Pisa before they told her of Allegra’s death…”
“…yes–they hurriedly packed everything onto two ships, sent
Trelawny, Claire, Mary, and little Percy ahead with the coach on April
26th, and Williams and Shelley departed with the boats the next day. For
a few days Mary was in San Terenzo negotiating for the house while
Shelley was trying to deal with the customs people–they wanted him to
pay £300–a small fortune back then, but they were able to get out of it
by declaring the Casa Magni a depot, as if it weren’t attached to the
mainland! I suppose there’s some truth to that, given how isolated they
were here…then after that things moved quickly, and they were installed
here by the 1st of May: they finished putting things away by four o’clock
in the afternoon, and as Edward Williams put it in his journal, they
‘passed the evening in talking over our folly and our troubles’…”
“…when did they tell Claire about Allegra?”
“…the next evening–on May 2nd. Claire had been talking about going
back to Florence–I don’t know if it was temporarily or to get her things,
and Shelley thought they ought to tell her, so they had a private confer-
ence in Jane’s room, and Claire overheard the name ‘Bagnacavallo’ and
‘Byron’: she came in and asked right off if Allegra was dead–Shelley
stood up and said ‘yes,’ and you can imagine the rest…”
“…she must have gone mad with grief…”
“…she was beside herself: Shelley reported what happened in a letter
to Byron the next day …

My Dear Lord Byron,

I have been compelled by circumstances to tell Claire
the real state of the case. I will not describe her grief to
you; you have already suffered too much; and, indeed, the
only object of this letter is to convey her last requests to
you, which, melancholy as one of them is, I could not re-
fuse to ask, and I am sure you will readily grant. She
wishes to see the coffin before it is sent to England, and I

530
 have ventured to assure her this consolation, since she
thinks it such, will not be denied her. It had better be at
Leghorn than at Pisa, on many accounts; you can tell me
exactly on what day the funeral will be there, and thus
save an hour of unnecessary delay in our journey, during
which I shall suffer scarcely less than Clare. She also
wishes you would give her a portrait of Allegra, and if you
have it, a lock of hair, however small. May I ask you, if
you think fit to do this, to send the portrait and the hair by
the bearer of this letter; anything, however slight, might
be at once the food and diversion of grief so excessive as
she suffers. If you have only one portrait, and desire to re-
tain the original, I will engage to obtain a copy of it, and
to return it to the former.
This letter will, I fear, infect you, as it has been infect-
ed, with the melancholy that reigns here. But Nature is
here as vivid and joyous as we are dismal, and we have
built, as Faust says, ‘our little world in the great world of
all’ as a contrast rather than a copy of that divine exam-
ple…

…Faust again…he goes on to talk about some other things, and then,
here, he comes back to Claire: ‘Poor Clare begins to get very ill with the
excessive and unintermitted suffering she sustains; although what I
chiefly dreaded is spared, as she retains her senses’…”
“…did Byron do as Shelley requested?”
“…yes–look, here, the next letter to Byron, written on May 9th, refers
to it:

My dear Lord Byron

I have succeeded in dissuading Clare from the melan-
choly design of visiting the coffin at Leghorn, much to the
profit of my own shattered health & spirits, which would
have suffered much in accompanying her on such a jour-
ney–She is much better–she has indeed altogether suffered
in a manner less terrible than I expected, after the first
shock, during which of course she wrote the letter you en-
close. I had no idea that her letter was written in that tem-
per,–and I think I need not assure you, that whatever mine
or Mary’s ideas might have been respecting the system of
education you intended to adopt, we sympathize too much
in your loss, & appreciate too well your feelings, to have
allowed such a letter to be sent to you had we suspected
its contents–
The portrait and the hair arrived safe–I gave them to
Clare, & made her acquainted with your concession to her

531
 requests.—She now seems bewildered; & whether she de-
signs to avail herself further of your permission to regu-
late the funeral, I know not. In fact, I am so exhausted
with the scenes through which I have passed, that I do not
dare to ask.—I think she will be persuaded not to inter-
fere, as I am convinced that her putting herself forward in
any manner would be as injurious to herself, as it would
be painful to me, & probably to you. She has no objection
(thus much she has said) to the interment taking place in
England.

…the letter from Claire he mentions no longer exists, but you can imag-
ine what it contained–Mrs. Mason once referred to it as ‘furious’: of
course it blamed Byron for having put her in the convent, and she was
right. Byron’s handling of Allegra was the single greatest mistake he
ever made: putting such a small girl–she was only five years and three
months old when she died–in a convent was truly a terrible decision…”
“…and was Allegra buried in England?”
“…in a letter written on May 16, Shelley wrote, ‘I have not however
renewed any conversation on the subject of my last letter: I think you
ought to consider yourself free from any interference of hers in the dis-
posal of the remains,’ and he added, in a postscript, ‘I can only suggest,
on the subject of Clare, the propriety of her being made acquainted
through me of the destination of the remains’…”
“…did Byron agree?”
“…I don’t think so…all I found was a reference that for over half of
Claire’s long life she did not know where Allegra was buried…it seems
typical of Byron that he wouldn’t tell her…”
“…very…but where was she buried?”
“…again, his egocentricity reigned: he had been happy as a boy near
Harrow, so he chose a church in Harrow. He wanted a tablet with the
inscription, ‘In Memory of Allegra, Daughter of G.G. Lord Byron, who
died at Bagna Cavallo, in Italy, April 20th, 1822, aged five years and
three months. “I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me”’–this last
from The Book of Samuel. The church authorities denied his request be-
cause she was illegitimate, and buried her outside the entrance of the
church in an unmarked grave–her grave is unmarked to this day…”
“…that’s terrible! Someone ought to do something…”
“…for Byron fans, Allegra is only a disturbing footnote in his history;
and there are probably too few admirers of Shelley to make a differ-
ence…”
“…so we should do it–for Claire…”
“…if they would let us do it–few churches like acknowledging a mis-
take…”
“…we could try…”
“…I could write a letter when we return to Prague…”

532
 “…I know it seems crazy to do something when everyone has been
dead for so long, but it feels like some part of them still continues to ex-
ist in time…”
“…I agree–it won’t make up for anything, but it ought to exist as evi-
dence of human error and stupidity, as people always focus on the ‘ro-
mantic’ side of Byron’s life, and leave out the really terrible things…”
“…but how did Claire deal with the loss, in the end?”
“…she was prostrate for a week, but she surprised all of them by how
quickly she seemed to come out of the worst of it. Shelley wrote to By-
ron on May 16th, ‘Clare is much better: after the first shock she has sus-
tained her loss with more fortitude than I had dared to hope’–and, on the
same day to Trelawny–‘Poor Clare has borne her loss with great forti-
tude, after the first shock; & I am persuaded that she will be happier af-
ter than ever she could have been during the existence of a perpetual
source of anxiety & suspense.’ Mary wrote these words to Mrs. Gis-
borne about what had happened in the beginning of June:

After the first day or two, Claire insisted on returning to

Florence–so S–was obliged to disclose the truth-You may
judge of what was her first burst of grief, and despair–
however she reconciled herself to her fate, sooner than we
expected; and although of course, until she form new ties,
she will always grieve, yet she is now tranquil–more tran-
quil than, when prophesying her disaster, she was forming
plans for getting her child from a place she judged, but too
truly, would be fatal to her. She has now returned to Flor-
ence, and I do not know whether she will join us again.

…Claire later reflected that it was an act of will on her part that brought
about the change–a decision that fate could not do any worse for her
than it already had…”
“…she must have been prepared for it: she hadn’t seen her for over
three years, so in a way she had probably already mourned her loss–it
must have been easier to grieve for her when Allegra was dead than
when she knew she was somewhere on the planet…”
“...and she handled grief differently from Mary: her journal was blank
for five months afterwards, and she grieved over the loss of Allegra for
the rest of her life…but Mary withdrew into herself after her losses,
which was part of the reason for her emotional estrangement from Shel-
ley. Claire seems not to have closed in upon herself as much. Shelley
was affected, too, of course, by Allegra’s death…he had a hysterical vi-
sion on May 6th that Edward witnessed and recorded in his journal:

After tea walking with Shelley on the terrace, and observ-

ing the effect of moonshine on the waters, he complained
of being unusually nervous, and stopping short, he

533
 grasped me violently by the arm, and stared stedfastly on
the white surf that broke upon the beach under our feet.
Observing him sensibly affected, I demanded of him if he
were in pain? But be only answered, by saying, ‘There it
is again—there!’ He recovered after some time, and de-
clared that he saw, as plainly as he then saw me, a naked
child, (the child of a friend who had lately died,) rise from
the sea, and clap its hands as in joy, smiling at him. This
was a trance that it required some reasoning and philoso-
phy entirely to awaken him from, so forcibly had the vi-
sion operated on his mind. Our conversation, which had
been at first rather melancholy, led to this; and my con-
firming his sensations, by confessing that I had felt the
same, gave greater activity to his ever-wandering and live-
ly imagination.

…it was the first of several strange visions and dreams he would have at
San Terenzo, so you can see how hypersensitive his psyche was at the
time he was conceiving The Triumph of Life…”
“…did he feel guilty about Allegra? After all, he had been suggesting
to Claire that she let time do its work rather than enacting any of her
plans…”
“…I think he was guilty about not having sided with her more than he
did, but it was difficult, for he knew that Byron could gossip and bring
further scandal down upon them…”
“…but he gossiped anyway!”
“…that’s true, but it could have been even worse…”
“…poor Claire–her position was vindicated–but at what a price! What
did she do? Mary’s letter mentioned her possibly not coming back from
Florence…”
“…that may have been wishful thinking on Mary’s part, but it’s true
that there was some question about it. Mrs. Mason was once again in-
truding, and she wrote Shelley concerning Claire…let’s see…here it is:

I wish Claire had some determined project, but her plans

seem unsettled as ever, and she does not see half the rea-
sons for separating herself from your society that really
exist. I regret Mary’s loss of good health and spirits, but
hope it is only the consequence of her present situation,
and therefore merely temporary, but I dread Claire’s being
in the same house for a month or two…

…Mrs. Mason was always a meddler, and her attitudes influenced but
didn’t always match Claire’s…”
“…so Claire returned, I take it?”

534
 “…it took Shelley a bit of persuasion. In this letter, from May 28th,
you can see he dismisses Mrs. Mason’s opinion out of hand:

My Dear Clare
Tell me when we are to expect you, and the precise hour
and day at which you arrive at Viareggio. –I do not expect
that you will have found any motives at Florence for alter-
ing your intentions with respect to this summer,–and
think that at least for the present you would be happier
here than anywhere else. I have heard from Mrs. Mason.
Mary still continues to suffer terribly from languor and
hysterical affections; and things in every respect remain as
they were when you left us.

…here he speaks about the boat having arrived, and…ok, here it is:

I sit within the whole morning and in the evening we sail

about. –I write a little–I read and enjoy for the first time
these ten years something like health. –I find however that
I must neither think or feel, or the pain returns to its old
nest. Williams seems happy and content, and we enjoy
each other’s society–Jane is by no means acquiescent in
the system of things, and she pines after her own house
and saucepans to which no one can have a claim except
herself. –It is a pity that anyone so pretty and amicable
should be so selfish.—But don’t tell her this–and come so
on yourself, I hope my best Clare, with tranquillized spir-
its and a settled mind to your ever constant and
Affectionate friend
P.B.S.

…and then he wrote again on May 30th. In this one he’s actually impor-
tuning her to return:

My dear Clare,
I am vexed to hear you are so ill, although the state of
your spirits does not surprise me. I do not think there is
any chance of your experiencing annoyance of whatever
kind at Lerici, as I suspect between me and the only object
from which it could spring (i.e. Byron) there is a great
gulph fixed, which by the nature of things must daily be-
come wider. –I hear nothing of Hunt, nor have we any let-
ter from England except those you are acquainted with,
and one from Mr. Gisborne. –I think you would be happi-
er here; and indeed always with or near me,–but on this
subject your own feelings and judgment must guide you.

535
 My health is much better this summer than it has been for
many years; but the occupation of a few mornings in
composition has somewhat shaken my nerves.

…obviously he been writing The Triumph of Life. Following that there’s

a discussion about Godwin’s having been kicked out of his house at
Skinner Street and wanting money from Shelley, and how Shelley fears
he will have to discuss the matter with Mary…”
“…so Claire returned?”
“…yes, on June 7th. I believe, along with Holmes, that Shelley’s poem
‘We meet not as we parted’ is about her return. I originally thought, as
many critics did, that it was one of the lyrics dedicated to Jane, but it
doesn’t make sense taken that way, for what it refers to seems something
that is in the past. It’s in what’s called the ‘Huntingdon Notebook,’ and
clearly some of the other poems there are about Claire too. The poem
looks back to how a certain key meeting changed everything between
them–look at the first stanza:

We meet not as we parted,

We feel more than all may see;
My bosom is heavy-hearted,
And thine full of doubt for me:—
One moment has bound the free.

…so, that the relationship is secret would mean either Claire or Jane, but
that they meet again after parting can only be Claire. The rest of the po-
em concentrates on that ‘moment’–presumably when their relations be-
came intimate:

That moment is gone for ever,

Like lightning that flashed and died—
Like a snowflake upon the river—
Like a sunbeam upon the tide,
Which the dark shadows hide.

That moment from time was singled

As the first of a life of pain;
The cup of its joy was mingled
—Delusion too sweet though vain!
Too sweet to be mine again.

…‘as the first of a life of pain’ places the moment in a distant past, so
that discounts Jane as the addressee of the poem: the poem clearly refers
to a long-standing, fully intimate relationship. He goes on:

536
 Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden
That its life was crushed by you,
Ye would not have then forbidden
The death which a heart so true
Sought in your briny dew.

…this is a rather strange stanza–I’m not sure what to make of it. He

seems to be saying that if his heart could have hidden how deeply it was
‘crushed’ by her, then she would not have forbidden…what? What does
‘your briny dew’ suggest to you?”
“…well, to be frank, it suggests to me a metaphor for orgasm…”
“…yes, that’s what I think, but then what would it mean as a whole?
Why would hiding how his heart was crushed have led her to allow him
access?”
“…so how does it end–maybe that will tell something…”
“…the next stanza is unfinished–only the last two lines were writ-
ten…

Methinks too little cost

For a moment so found, so lost!

…the lines add to my feeling the poem is about how at one moment they
were lovers, and then later, they ceased being lovers, but had to face the
consequences ever after…”
“…yes, I agree, but I sense something else: there’s regret there, cer-
tainly, for all the damage that happened, but I don’t quite believe his
‘too sweet to be mine again’: it’s like the lyrics for Jane we looked at–
there’s a reverse psychology at work–he’s leaving an opening…”
“…perhaps you’re right–his attitude is clearly revealed in the line
from his letter where he writes, ‘I think you would be happier here; and
indeed always with or near me,–but on this subject your own feelings
and judgment must guide you’: he’s making a suggestion, a proposition,
but realizes that he must leave it to her decision. She had a certain power
in the relationship now, as she had her independent life in Florence. You
can see her new attitude reflected in Shelley’s description of her to Gis-
borne, written in June about ten days after she returned:

Clare is with us, and the death of her child seems to have
restored her to tranquility. Her character is somewhat al-
tered. She is vivacious and talkative, and though she teas-
es me sometimes, I like her. Mary is not, for the present,
much discontented with her visit, which is merely tempo-
rary, and which the circumstances of the case rendered in-
dispensable.

537
…in another letter he wrote at that time he referred to her as ‘la fille aux
mille projets’–‘the girl of a thousand projects’: apparently the death of
Allegra, as terrible as it was, also freed her somewhat from an intolera-
ble situation, and she was reconsidering the direction of her life…”
“…Shelley mentions that her living with them was temporary…”
“…that was probably only a cover, and, anyway, nothing had really
been decided…”
“…and was it really as he said with Mary?”
“…in the same letter to Gisborne, Shelley wrote this about Mary:

As to me, Italy is more and more delightful to me…I only

feel the want of those who can feel, and understand me.
Whether from proximity and the continuity of domestic
intercourse, Mary does not. The necessity of concealing
from her thoughts that would pain her, necessitates this,
perhaps, perhaps. It is the curse of Tantalus, that a person
possessing such excellent powers and so pure a mind as
hers, should not excite the sympathy indispensable to their
application to domestic life.

…and look what he wrote to his banker, Horace Smith, at the end of
June–it shows the contrast between how much he enjoyed the place and
Mary’s attitude:

I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish dramas, and

sailing and listening to the most enchanting music. We
have some friends on a visit to us, and my only regret is
that the summer must ever pass, or that Mary has not the
same predilection for this place that I have, which would
induce me never to shift my quarters.

…so you can see that, as he saw it, his primary problem was Mary: here
at the Casa Magni everything was brought to a crisis point. The circum-
stances magnified the already existing problems: the rapidity of the
move and the fact the Williams were forced to live with them exacerbat-
ed things terribly. Mary was two months pregnant when they arrived,
and increasingly ill–both physically and mentally. It was made worse by
the extremes in weather: when they first arrived there were dramatic
lightning storms and the sea was rough and pounding on the threshold of
the house, and there was a sweltering heat wave from mid-June which
kept up through July–the kind of heat we felt the other day in Este: each
day it would break with a fierce electrical storm, but no relief came from
the storm. At the mouth of the harbor there were electrical sheets of
lightning forming like curtains–it all seemed unearthly. Williams wrote
in his journal that ‘We all feel as if we were on board ship—and the
roaring of the sea brings this idea to us even in our beds.’ Mary, who of

538
course preferred the genteel life of the city, seems to have had an in-
stinctive antipathy to the place, which was too isolated for her. Look
what she wrote to Mrs. Gisborne about San Terenzo later:

I was not well in body or mind. My nerves were wound up

to the utmost irritation, and the sense of misfortune hung
over my spirits. Shelley reproached me for this–his health
was good & the place was quite after his own heart––
What could I answer––that the people were wild and hate-
ful, that though the country was beautiful yet I liked a
more countrified place, that there was a great difficulty in
living––that all our Tuscans would leave us, & that the
very jargon of these Genovese was disgusting––This was
all I had to say but no words could describe my feelings–
the beauty of the woods made me weep & shudder––so
vehement was my feeling of dislike that I used to rejoice
when the winds & waves permitted me to go out in the
boat so that I was not obliged to take my usual walk
among tree shaded paths, allies of vine festooned trees––
all that before I doted on–& that now weighed on me. My
only moments of peace were on board that unhappy boat,
when lying down with my head on his knee I shut my eyes
& felt the wind & our swift motion alone. My ill health
might account for much of this…

…Shelley, of course, loved San Terenzo–perhaps more than any other

place he had ever lived, and so the fact that she hated it must have been
a significant source of friction between them, and a primary cause for
his words to Gisborne. Shelley enjoyed the isolation–with the sea so
close in front and the cliffs backing it, it felt like being on his ideal is-
land. Holmes mentions that it was typical of Shelley’s residences to have
a vista in front, and some sort of hill or enclosure behind: he connected
it to his theme of ‘the pursuit’–as if Shelley were finding the best defen-
sive position against an imaginary foe…”
“…so he found his ‘island’ in the end…”
“…in a way, yes–he even wrote a brief lyric about it, entitled ‘The
Isle’: shall I read it?”
“…yes, please…”
“…let me see…oh, here it is:

There was a little lawny islet

By anemone and violet,
Like mosaic, paven:
And its roof was flowers and leaves
Which the summer’s breath enweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze

539
 Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
Each a gem engraven;—
Girt by many an azure wave
With which the clouds and mountains pave
A lake’s blue chasm.

…that’s it, a pure idyll–for him at least. When his boat arrived, it com-
pleted the feeling of their being on an island, and, as Mary wrote, gave
her a few moments of peace…”
“…when was that?”
“…May 12th–Williams wrote about it in his journal:

Cloudy and threatening weather. Wrote during the morn-

ing. Mr. Maglian, (harbour-master at Lerici), called after
dinner, and while walking with him on the terrace, we dis-
covered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto
Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley's boat. She
had left Genoa on Thursday, but had been driven back by
prevailing bad winds. A Mr. Heslop, and two English
seamen brought her round, and they speak most highly of
her performances. She does, indeed, excite my surprise
and admiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, and made
a stretch off the land to try her, and I find she fetches
whatever she looks at. In short, we have now a perfect
plaything for the summer.

…there’s some confusion as to the precise description of the boat, espe-

cially concerning whether it was decked or not. It was twenty-four feet
from stem to stern...”
“…wait, what is that in metric?”
“…a little over seven meters, so it was a fair sized boat. The trouble
was that they had taken as its model an American schooner, scaling it
down from the more usual twelve meters…”
“…I’m from a land-locked country, so know nothing about boats–
what’s a schooner?”
“…it’s a twin-masted sailing boat–I’ll draw it for you: the main mast
is towards the middle, although in their case it was a bit further back,
like this…the smaller mast was near the front…now, the sails go verti-
cally up the masts and are connected by spars like this, rather than being
connected horizontally across the yardarms as you see in larger boats–
essentially it’s a large sailboat…”
“…so why was it a problem?”
“…it’s a lot of sail for a small boat to carry, because each mast has
sails in the front and back; then, there were three jibs–triangular sails–
connected from the front mast to the bowsprit, here, like this…see?
What made it worse is that all that sail meant the boat had to be ballasted

540
with two tons of iron–and still, that was not enough! They wanted it to
go even faster, so Captain Roberts agreed at the end of June to add top-
masts to extend the masts and gaff topsails–the little triangular sails they
placed up here at the top of the masts, and he also added an extended
prow and bowsprit, a false stern, and shelves for Shelley’s books inside
the gunwales. All of these modifications added further weight to the
boat: a boat that heavy should have been fully decked, but it seems that
it was, at best, only partially decked, although there’s quite a bit of con-
fusion over the precise configuration, with different eyewitnesses saying
different things. I’ve examined all the conflicting evidence, and although
I can’t be certain, it seems that it may have been decked behind the
mainmast–perhaps about a fourth or fifth of its length, as the mast was
further back. Trelawny wrote the forepart was also ‘decked for storage,’
but whatever the precise facts, it certainly was only partially decked,
and, therefore, a disaster just waiting to happen–one large wave could
make it founder and sink straight to the bottom…”
“…as it did…”
“…yes…actually, I think a good deal of the confusion surrounding
the accounts of their final voyage was due to both Captain Roberts and
Trelawny trying to cover up their negligence in the boat’s design–some
commentators have even accused them of criminal negligence…”
“…why Trelawny?”
“…the whole idea of the boat originated with him, and he had over-
seen a great deal of the construction. I think it would have been in char-
acter for him to have goaded them to make the boat even faster; actually,
it was probably Trelawny who was largely responsible for another as-
pect of the boat that Shelley hated…”
“…what was that?”
“…the name ‘Don Juan’ was painted on the mainsail in bold, black
letters–the title of Byron’s greatest work. According to a letter that Mary
wrote, this name had originally been suggested by Trelawny when the
boat scheme had been first hatched as a joint project between Shelley,
Williams, and Trelawny, but then Shelley decided to pay for every-
thing…”
“…could he afford it?”
“…no, especially given it ended up costing almost a half of his year’s
allowance. He mentioned in a letter to Gisborne that he had wished to
‘escape’ Trelawny–probably he simply didn’t trust him, because he was
too close to Byron’s camp: Trelawny had insinuated himself into becom-
ing the captain of Byron’s boat, the Bolivar, and, in the end, he did ac-
company Byron to Greece–although not as a captain, and not on the Bol-
ivar, which Byron sold…”
“…and what did Shelley want his boat called?”
“…he wanted it to be called Ariel. I would guess that Trelawny, per-
haps in collusion with Byron, had the sail painted with the name Don
Juan as a not especially well-thought-out gibe at Shelley’s expense.

541
Shelley hated it, and he told Trelawny in a letter he wrote to him on May
16th: there he seems to blame only Byron, but I think his letter was a
roundabout way to show his disapproval without directly blaming
Trelawny–in the first part of the letter he seems to take it as a joke:

The Don Juan is arrived, & nothing can exceed the admi-
ration she has excited, for we must suppose the name to
have been given her during the equivocation of sex which
her godfather suffered in the Harem.

…but later there’s a part which was heavily scratched-over: the editor of
the letters thinks it was by Trelawny–which makes sense, as he didn’t
want history to see him as the kind of person who would have done such
a thing:

I see Don Juan is written on the mainsail. This was due to

my noble friend, carrying the joke rather too far; much I
suspect to the scandal of Roberts, & even of yourself…

…this next part is the scratched out part, given in a footnote–it’s partly
conjectural…

…Williams and Mary are grieved about it & swear they

never saw anything like it, except in a Collier near Mar-
gate, Eng. However not much harm was done. I am sure
the letters can be removed…

…and then this part was legible:

Though I must repeat that I think the joke was carried too
far; but do not mention this to Roberts, who of course
could do nothing else than acquiesce in Lord Byron’s re-
quest. Does he mean to write the Bolivar on his own
mainsail?

…Mary mentions that Shelley and Williams tried for three weeks to re-
move the name with turpentine and other methods, all to no avail. Final-
ly they settled on cutting it out, and putting reefs there. The irony is that
even when the name was removed, the name stuck…”
“…poor Shelley–after everything he had done to escape Byron!”
“…he wasn’t pleased, but his delight with the boat made up for any
bitterness. He was sailing practically every day–most of the time with
Williams and Charles Vivian, the boat-boy he hired when the boat ar-
rived, but also with Mary and Jane. Williams’ kept track of their voyag-
es in his journal. On May 14th they sailed to La Spezia, then on the next
day with Mary and Jane to Portovenere–that’s the tip of the peninsula

542
we saw over there directly across the gulf from Lerici; and, in the even-
ing of that same day, they went with Jane to the tip of the opposite pen-
insula, that direction past Lerici, where the Magra river runs to the sea;
then, on the 18th, out past the Isola Palmaria into the open sea…”
“…wasn’t that a bit dangerous?”
“…it was very dangerous, given Shelley was a novice and Williams
was out of practice. Trelawny wrote a rather mocking portrait of them in
his Recollections showing Shelley holding the tiller in one hand, a book
in his other, and making all kinds of mistakes, although as I said before,
Trelawny’s account cannot entirely be trusted, as he wished to avoid
blame. He claims he suggested they take on another seasoned sailor
from Genoa, but it hurt Williams’ pride. Listen to Williams’ entry for
June 6th, when they sailed to Viareggio to try to meet Claire–it shows
just how precarious it could be:

Left Villa Magni, at five, on our way to Via Reggio. At

eight the wind sprung up, baffling in all directions but the
right one. At eleven we could steer our course; but at one
it fell calm, and left us like a log on the water, but four
miles to windward of Massa. We remained there till six;
the thunder-clouds gathering on the mountains around,
and threatening to burst in squalls; heat excessive. At sev-
en rowed into Massa beach…

…they didn’t manage to meet Claire, but they did make it back the next
day by two…or, another example of the dangers can be seen on June
12th: they took Jane out, became becalmed in a heavy swell, Jane got
seasick, and they finally landed her ‘little better than dead’–apparently
the whole town was watching this escapade!”
“…you mentioned before Shelley writing about their evening sails
with Jane calmly playing her guitar: when did those moments happen?”
“…certainly there must have been moments like that, as Mary refers
to them too; actually, that letter was written about a week after this epi-
sode. Still, Jane had her reservations about it all: for example, the Don
Juan drew too much water to actually land on the beach, so Williams
constructed a dinghy out of reeds and tarred canvas that they could stow
on deck, and during its construction Jane told him that he was ‘making
his coffin’–actually, the dinghy was one of the few items on the Don
Juan to wash up on the beach, later. Trelawny told a story, perhaps
apocryphal, about Shelley one evening offering to take Jane and her
children out into the bay here in front of the house in the dinghy. Jane
thought he was only going to float right in the cove here where the water
is quite shallow, but he rowed out over there, beyond that point below
the castle where the water deepens very quickly, and she became very
frightened, as they were out of sight of the town, and any little wave or
false move would have dumped them in the sea to drown. According to

543
Trelawny, when she asked him to row back Shelley is supposed to have
exclaimed, ‘Now let us together solve the great mystery.’ Her answer to
this was to politely but firmly refuse, and to say that the children were
hungry and needed their dinner. Supposedly, upon reaching shore about
the same time as Trelawny and Williams in the Don Juan, she ambled
ashore with the children and said that she would never sail alone with
Shelley ever again…”
“…I take it you don’t believe the story?”
“…no, I think it’s an embellished ‘Trelawnyism’: a ‘tall-tale’ told in
retrospect. There may have been a bit of truth in it, but I strongly suspect
there was quite a bit more humor in the incident than Trelawny express-
es, and joking in Jane’s and even Shelley’s words–if they even said them
at all…”
“…speaking of Jane, isn’t it time to tell me the rest of her story?”
“…yes I can, but let me go up to the room so I can get the notes I
need, and we’ll take a walk along the seafront over to that point under
the castle where Jane thought they would drown–do you want anything
else?”
“…not here–maybe we can get an ice cream on the way back from
our walk…”
“…fine…”
She gazes at the people walking along the sea front. He returns in a
few minutes, they pay, go out, and cross the street to the marble walk-
way fronting the beach, now clogged with strollers on their passagiato.
There is a steady roar of cars, scooters and mopeds driving through the
town on their way to Lerici, but they leave the noise behind as they
reach the western side of the little bay, walk through a little park studded
with stone pine trees and cluttered with parti-colored fishing boats lined
up in rows. They follow the walkway up an incline under the ramparts of
the castle, and around the point, where it is bordered by the cliff face
under the castle ramparts on one side and by huge boulders placed as a
breakwater on the other. There are several sports fishermen out on the
rocks, casting their lines into the deeper water. Fewer strollers continue
around the point, the path now curving back into a sandy cove under
vertical rocky cliffs until it becomes a rocky path closely following the
cliff face. When the path becomes precarious, they turn around, walk
back to the low wall bordering the first point, and sit facing the sea,
watching the remaining fishermen.
“…the beach there in the cove is so secluded–let’s have a swim there
tomorrow: it would feel better than having all the townspeople staring at
us…”
“…ok. See how deep the water gets here, and back then there was no
breakwater there, so it would have been easy to get into trouble…”
“…look at the Casa Magni: it really stands out among the other build-
ings along the seafront…”

544
 “…I can imagine their summer evenings on the terrace, or gliding
along the bay–Jane playing her guitar…”
“…so tell me about Jane: you told me that during the early spring
Shelley was keeping their relationship on the border between desire and
its realization as a way to fuel his inspiration. What about in May and
June–did he continue to write her poems?”
“…yes, he did–there were a couple of poems which are less equivocal
than what I’ve already shown you. We know for certain that he sent her
‘The keen stars were twinkling’ on June 18th, because he attached this
note:

I sat down to write some words for an arietta which might

be profane; but it was in vain to struggle with the ruling
spirit, who compelled me to speak of things sacred to
yours and to Wilhelm Meister’s indulgence. I commit
them to your secrecy and your mercy, and will try to do
better another time.

…it speaks of one of those moments when they were together, Jane
playing her guitar:

The keen stars were twinkling,

And the fair moon was rising among them,
Dear Jane!
The guitar was tinkling,
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again.

As the moon’s soft splendour

O’er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
Is thrown,
So your voice most tender
To the strings without soul had then given
Its own.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later,
To-night;
No leaf will be shaken
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,

545
 Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

…the last stanza reminds me of that Faustian moment he spoke about,

but, otherwise, it’s rather negligible…”
“…it doesn’t really seem any more revealing than the poem he gave
her with the guitar–what about the other lyric?”
“…that’s the most significant one, and it’s a very nice poem–‘Lines
Written in the Bay of Lerici’: if anything did happen between them,
that’s the closest thing we have as a record of it…”
“…so here we are in the bay of Lerici, read it for me…”
“…it actually begins with a stanza that wasn’t printed in the original
editions, but which later critics realized was a revised opening to the po-
em:

Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven,

To whom alone it has been given
To change and be adored forever….
Envy not this dim world, for never
But once within its shadow grew
One fair as thou, but far more true.

…the next line is the one the poem traditionally opened with, and, for
me, it’s a far better opening:

She left me at the silent time

When the moon had ceased to climb
The azure dome of Heaven’s steep,
And like an albatross asleep,
Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovered in the purple night,
Ere she sought her Ocean nest
In the chambers of the west.––
She left me, and I staid alone
Thinking over every tone,
Which, though silent to the ear
The enchanted heart could hear
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;
And feeling ever—O, too much—
The soft vibration of her touch
As if her gentle hand even now
Lightly trembled on my brow;
And thus although she absent were
Memory gave me all of her
That even Fancy dares to claim:—

546
 Her presence had made weak and tame
All passions, and I lived alone
In the time which is our own;
The past and future were forgot,
As they had been, and would be, not.––
But soon, the guardian angel gone,
The demon reassumed his throne
In my faint heart…I dare not speak
My thoughts; but thus disturbed and weak
I sate and watched the vessels glide
Along the ocean bright and wide,
Like spirit-winged chariots sent
O’er some serenest element
For ministrations strange and far;
As if to some Elysian star
They sailed for drink to medicine
Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.
And the wind that winged their flight
From the land came fresh and light,
And the scent of winged flowers
And the coolness of the hours
Of dew, and the sweet warmth of day,
Was scattered o’er the twinkling bay.
And the fisher with his lamp
And spear, about the low rocks damp
Crept, and struck the fish who came
To worship the delusive flame:
Too happy, they whose pleasure sought
Extinguishes all sense and thought
Of the regret that pleasure…
Destroying life alone, not peace.

…there’s a strange split in the first part of the poem between what hap-
pened when she actually was with him and what happened after ‘the
guardian angel’ departed–when ‘memory’ gave ‘all of her’ to him, and
the ‘demon reassumed his throne’ in his heart, making his thoughts ‘dis-
turbed and weak’…”
“…it almost sounds as if after experiencing a moment of erotic stimu-
lation with her, she left, and he–you’ll think me silly to say this–
masturbated…”
“…that’s not so silly–I thought the same thing. I don’t know what else
to think, as it’s very ambiguous, and I think it’s meant to represent pre-
cisely such ambiguity. The final figure of the fisherman is really star-
tling, although there’s some ambiguity there, too, as Shelley had crossed
out ‘destroying’ and had written a little bit below ‘seeking’: critics have
argued ever since about which is more appropriate…”

547
 “…but if he crossed out ‘destroying,’ it must be ‘seeking’–why do
they argue against it?”
“…the word ‘seeking’ was far enough below the final line that it
could well have been the beginning of an unfinished stanza–at least with
‘destroying’ they knew he had considered the word once…also, most
editors place the word ‘leaves’ in the line ‘the regret that pleasure
leaves,’ even though the rhyme is not quite right: in any case, it’s a
fierce image–a warning about the precipitous consummation of a pas-
sion: the fish is drawn towards a beautiful flame which is its own de-
struction, as was obviously the case for Shelley in regard to Jane. It’s as
if Shelley were in the midst of deciding whether to take the position of
caution in order to avoid destroying his life, or the position of seeking
enhanced life through casting his fate to the wind as a way to shake eve-
rything up…”
“…so what have you concluded about their relationship? It seems to
me that if he hadn’t consummated his passion with Jane by that time, he
was strongly tempted to, and was giving himself arguments against it...”
“…I see him at that point hovering on the brink: the poem is precisely
about thinking through the consequences before acting. For Shelley, act-
ing would have been a conflagration. But I can understand him: his rela-
tionship with Mary had reached a stalemate, Claire had been distant, and
at that time in the throes of her agony over Allegra. Jane Williams was
right there in front of him, listening to him, showing him emotional
sympathy and warmth. It’s a short step between emotional warmth and
physical warmth, and while he seems to have been very much holding to
the idea of her as inspiration, and of himself as a special friend–an Ariel
to Edward Williams’ Ferdinand, the temptation was certainly there. But
consider what would have been the consequences if he were to act on his
desire? If they were discovered, it would’ve exploded their circle: Mary
most certainly would have gone back to England, taking Percy with her;
his friendship with Edward would probably have ended, and then Jane
might have been forced to choose between the father of her two children
and Shelley…”
“…and I suppose she would choose Edward rather than risk losing her
children…”
“…true, but I don’t discount the lure of fame–there’s more than one
woman who chose the connection to fame or greatness over their chil-
dren–Frieda Lawrence, for example. It’s unlikely, but still possible…”
“…but, she would have been miserable…”
“…yes, I think it’s more likely that she would have chosen Edward:
she loved him dearly…”
“…and that would have left Claire…”
“…she probably would have stayed with Shelley, but it would have
been a very different relationship–they had already been through so
much…”

548
 “…but Shelley was capable of very risky actions–the fact he ran off
with Mary and Claire is proof of that…”
“…that’s true, but, finally, what happened is what happened: he had
reached an impasse. I think Jane and Shelley were very, very close to
having a love affair. In the same June 18th letter to Gisborne where he
mentioned desiring the moment to stop, he wrote about this feeling of
being on the brink:

I feel too little certainty of the future, and too little satis-
faction in regard to the past, to undertake any subject seri-
ously and deeply. I stand, as it were, upon a precipice,
which I have ascended with great, and cannot descend
without greater, peril, and I am content if the heaven
above me is calm for the passing moment.

…there it is again–this desire for things to remain unchanging, perched

high on the precipice. He seems to have realized that movement in any
direction would lead to…”
“…to what? His destruction?”
“…in one way or another…”
“…and there was no hope with Mary?”
“…I think it was Trelawny who reported later that Shelley felt he
couldn’t break with Mary due to what happened with Harriet–although
Trelawny may have been speculating, there’s a certain ring of truth
about it. He couldn’t stay where he was either–Mary and he disagreed
about too much: what made him happiest made her miserable, and what
she enjoyed most–socializing–was something he intensely disliked…”
“…it’s no wonder he felt himself on a precipice…”
“…and no wonder he wanted to say to the present moment, ‘remain,
thou art beautiful,’ freezing his desire for Jane like a figure on Keats’
Grecian urn…”
“…is there any other important evidence?”
“…there’s one more rather ambiguous piece of evidence, which
would be important if it could be confirmed. It was found in the manu-
script of The Triumph of Life: there’s a crossed-out note in the margins
that for a long time critics thought said, ‘Alas, I kiss you Jane.’ If it were
for certain, it would confirm Shelley’s love for her, and might also sug-
gest that it had begun to drift over that precarious threshold; however,
Donald Reiman argues that the obliterated note reads ‘Julie,’ not ‘Jane,’
and that it was probably connected to the part of the poem dealing with
Rousseau, given he wrote a novel named Julie–although why Rousseau
would be kissing a fictional character of his, I don’t know! To be honest,
I don’t really accept his reading of it as ‘Julie’ given the rest of the po-
em, but the fact the note was difficult to decipher makes the ‘Jane’ read-
ing somewhat questionable as well–though in my opinion a bit more
likely…”

549
 “…so you think nothing happened, in the end?”
“…I don’t believe so, but the intensity may have been turned up a
notch or two before the end–they were very much on a threshold, but my
intuition tells me they didn’t cross it. Who knows what would have hap-
pened if Shelley had lived? As I said, he sensed the impasse, and while I
don’t think he was actively suicidal, he felt the pull of death under his
life–even in ‘Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici’ you can sense it; for
example, look at these innocuous lines: ‘As if to some Elysian star They
sailed for drink to medicine Such sweet and bitter pain as mine’: to me
that’s clearly a reference to ships trading in opium which was the key
element of Shelley’s laudanum, or even the ‘essential oil of bitter al-
monds’ that he had requested from Trelawny. Whatever it was that was
hovering around him, Jane was certainly aware of also, because she
claimed she saw Shelley’s double on the terrace, and she was terri-
fied…”
“…what do you mean?”
“…it’s recounted in the letter Mary wrote to Mrs. Gisborne later–here
it is:

Now Jane though a woman of sensibility, has not much

imagination & is not the slightest degree nervous–neither
in dreams or otherwise. She was standing one day, the day
before I was taken ill, at a window that looked on the Ter-
race with Trelawny–it was day–she saw as she thought
Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without
a coat or jacket–he passed again–now as he passed both
times the same way–and as from the side towards which
he went each time there was no way to get back except
past the window again (except over a wall twenty feet
from the ground) she was struck at seeing him pass twice
thus & looked out & seeing him no more she cried–‘Good
God can Shelley have leapt from the wall? Where can he
be gone?’ Shelley, said Trelawny–‘No Shelley has
passed–What do you mean?’ Trelawny says she trembled
exceedingly when she heard this & it proved indeed that
Shelley had never been on the terrace & was far off at the
time she saw him.

…you can see the height of the terrace, and back then there wasn’t any
road so it was even higher: there’s no way Shelley could have jumped
from the terrace, and while it’s probably more proof of psychological
than supernatural phenomena–given Jane saw it and Trelawny did not,
it’s rather mysterious, and at least shows the intensity of their bond…”
“…that gives me shivers…”
“…even stranger was when Shelley saw his own double: he told Mary
that he had seen himself walking on the terrace, and his double actually

550
addressed him, asking him ‘How long do you mean to be con-
tent?’…again, it was probably psychological rather than supernatural,
but what a vision! It’s very similar to the famous line from Faust…”
“…what part of Faust?”
“…the scene that takes place in the cave in the forest: Faust is alone in
the cave, immersed in a reverie where he addresses a monologue to the
‘sublime spirit,’ showing his appreciation that it had allowed him the
power to look into the depths of life and his own soul, but bemoaning
the fact that his guide, Mephistopheles, ruins visions by seducing him
into being overtaken by merely physical passions, such as his seduction
of Margaret. Then, Mephistopheles appears, and asks him essentially the
question Shelley’s double asked: ‘How long do you mean to be con-
tent?’ and he turns it around on Faust, arguing that although Faust was
allowed to see into the deepest heart of things, feeling himself practical-
ly becoming one with creation, he simply allowed himself to be drawn
into what he suggests is merely mental masturbation, a mere spilling of
seed, and, of course, as far as the first part of Faust is concerned, that’s
indeed what happens: as I described it before, Faust allows his libido to
get the better of him, unleashing a conflagration that ends with Marga-
ret’s destruction. Given his infatuation with Jane was verging on the
edge of passion, and he realized it could have had similar disastrous
consequences, he was reminded of Faust…”
“…so what was this apparition–just his unconscious playing tricks on
him?”
“…perhaps–but, to echo Holmes again, it connects to his history of
writing about the ‘fiend’ that was pursuing him. He wrote also, in Pro-
metheus Unbound, about Zoroaster seeing his double: in Zoroastrianism,
there’s a belief that everyone has a double in the world, and that when
you meet up with this other it indicates you are going to die; but there’s
also a more modern literature of such doubles…”
“…the doppelgänger?”
“…yes, but not only in fiction–there apparently have been quite a few
cases of seeing doubles reported in real life as well: Maupassant appar-
ently saw a double when he was near death, and even Goethe reported
seeing his double! He was riding his horse, and coming towards him he
saw a man exactly like himself, but dressed in a different cloak. Appar-
ently, eight years later, he was traveling down the same road the oppo-
site direction and suddenly remembered the first experience, and was
startled to notice that he now had the same cloak that he saw on the
stranger when he was younger!”
“…but do you think there’s any reality to any of it? I mean beyond
psychological reality…”
“…who knows? It happens enough, apparently, that psychologists
have devised a scientific name for it–‘autoscopy,’ and they have even
done studies of people who claim to have had the experience, but with
no conclusive results. It’s been posited that some type of brain dysfunc-

551
tion, epileptic fit, or psychological disturbance is connected to these vi-
sions, which doesn’t say anything, because it simply declares the chick-
en came before the egg…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…scientific explanations for human behavior often rely on conjec-
tures about causality that seem spurious. I read a study that concluded
that a statistically high number of poets were manic depressives, and
which concluded poetry was a result of mental disease! In my opinion,
they have the causation reversed: as I said before, the ‘disease’ is caused
by the intensity of lyrical outpourings, or by reaching the limits of lan-
guage, but, of course, there’s no way for science to make such specula-
tions, or at least in an empirical way. In any case, even if stress had
some relation to his visions it doesn’t take anything away from the un-
canniness of the visions…”
“…yes, it’s all very mysterious–and a bit frightening…”
“…and certainly it’s clear that Shelley’s stress did have some relation
to the visions, for some of his worst visions came after one of the most
stressful events during that period–Mary’s miscarriage…”
“…when did that happen?”
“…June 16th–it was quite traumatic, to say the least: listen to these
descriptions Mary and Shelley gave later–the first is from Mary’s ac-
count to Mrs. Gisborne:

…on the 8th of June (I think it was) I was threatened with

a miscarriage, & after a week of great ill health on Sun-
day the 16th this took place at eight in the morning. I was
so ill that for seven hours I lay nearly lifeless––kept from
fainting by brandy, vinegar eau de Cologne &c–at length
ice was brought to our solitude––it came before the doc-
tor so Claire & Jane were afraid of using it but Shelley
overruled them & by an unsparing application of it I was
restored. They all thought & so did I at one time that I
was about to die––I hardly wish that I had, my own Shel-
ley could never have lived without me, the sense of eter-
nal misfortune would have pressed too heavily upon him,
& what would have become of poor babe?

…and here is Shelley’s account, written about two days later in a letter
to Mr. Gisborne:

Mary will write soon; at present she suffers greatly from

excess of weakness, produced by a severe miscarriage,
from which she is now slowly recovering. Her situation
for some hours was alarming, and as she was totally des-
titute of medical assistance, I took the most decisive res-
olutions, by dint of making her sit in ice, I succeeded in

552
 checking the hemorrhage and the fainting fits, so that
when the physician arrived all danger was over, and he
had nothing to do but to applaud me for my boldness.
She is now doing well, and the sea-baths will soon re-
store her.

…it’s difficult to imagine: he’s in a totally isolated village in a foreign

country with no decent medical help, Mary has a miscarriage and starts
bleeding to death right in front of his eyes, and yet he has the presence
of mind to find ice–and in 1822 during the middle of a June heat wave,
no less!”
“…and then to plunge someone you love who may well be dying into
the ice when others are counseling you not to? That takes presence of
mind, and a good deal of courage!”
“…the stress from the event clearly triggered his next vision, about a
week later. We know it was probably in the early morning of June 23rd
because Edward wrote in his journal, ‘Shelley sees spirits and alarms the
whole house’…”
“…what happened?”
“…the best account of it is again in Mary’s August letter to Mrs. Gis-
borne:

…Shelley was at first in perfect health but having over-

fatigued himself one day, & then the fright my illness
gave him caused a return of nervous sensations & visions
as bad as in his worst times. I think it was the Saturday af-
ter my illness while yet unable to walk I was confined to
my bed–in the middle of the night I was awoke by hearing
him scream & come rushing into my room; I was sure that
he was asleep & tried to waken him by calling on him, but
he continued to scream which inspired me with such a
panic that I jumped out of bed & ran across the hall to
Mrs. W’s room where I fell through weakness, though I
was so frightened that I got up again immediately––she let
me in & Williams went to S. who had been wakened by
my getting out of bed––he said that he had not been asleep
& that it was a vision that he saw that had frightened him–
–But as he declared that he had not screamed it was cer-
tainly a dream & no waking vision––What had frightened
him was this––He dreamt that lying as he did in bed Ed-
ward and Jane came into him, they were in the most horri-
ble condition, their bodies lacerated––their bones starting
through their skin, the faces pale yet stained with blood,
they could hardly walk, but Edward was the weakest &
Jane was supporting him––Edward said––‘Get up, Shel-
ley, the sea is flooding the house & it is all coming down.’

553
 S. got up, he thought, & went to his window that looked
on the terrace & the sea & thought he saw the sea rushing
in. Suddenly his vision changed & he saw the figure of
himself strangling me, that had made him rush into my
room, yet fearful of frightening me he dared not approach
the bed, when my jumping out awoke him, or as he
phrased it caused his vision to vanish.

…it’s difficult to know what to say about it…”

“…it’s horrifying…”
“…Holmes’ reading of it is quite astute, I think: he sees it as the cul-
mination of all the various stresses on Shelley that had reached a kind of
breaking point. He sees the dream not as a premonition of the wreck, but
rather as symbolic of the situation itself: the house as a kind of boat, or
perhaps the island refuge Shelley had always dreamt of–but everything
was fated to be swept away unless Shelley awakened and faced the reali-
ty. The tensions were at a breaking point: the tensions between the con-
trary visions of happiness of Shelley and Mary, the tensions with Jane
and perhaps Claire, the tensions between Shelley and Byron which the
arrival of Hunt was bound to exacerbate, the financial tensions caused
by the purchase of the boat, as well as the situation with Godwin…”
“…what was happening with Godwin?”
“…a lawsuit had gone against him: he was financially ruined and
evicted from his house. He had pressed Shelley for money that Shelley
didn’t have to give, and he had also written a letter to Mary…”
“…I thought Shelley was hiding his letters to her?”
“…he must have felt this one was too important. She typically over-
reacted, referring in a letter to her father’s situation as ‘the summit and
crown of our spring misfortunes’–as if it were worse than everything
else…”
“…I can see why he had been hiding the letters from her…”
“…that situation, too, would have placed pressure upon his relation-
ship with Mary, as Mary would have wanted to do anything to help
Godwin, while Shelley had vowed not to help him any more after all the
previous problems. In any case, there wouldn’t have been any way he
could have helped him in his current situation. He wrote a request of
help on his behalf to Horace Smith, which I think in advance he knew
would be turned down…”
“…it all gets worse and worse…”
“…yes, and in the midst of all of this turmoil Hunt arrived in Genoa
on June 15th with five children and a consumptive wife, destitute and
expecting Shelley to help him financially. Shelley wrote to him on the
19th in his typically optimistic way:

A thousand welcomes my best friend to this divine coun-

try–many mountains & seas no longer divide those whose

554
 affections are united.––We have much to think of & talk
of when we meet at Leghorn––but the final result of our
plans will be peace to you, & to me a greater degree of
consolation than has been permitted me since we met.

…high hopes indeed! Then, in a letter written on June 24th, he told Hunt
that he had been on the verge of sailing up to meet him in Genoa when
‘poor Mary suffered a relapse, which though in issue not serious was
sufficient to warn me of the necessity of remaining with her for the pre-
sent’…”
“…what does he mean by ‘relapse’?”
“…it was only a week beyond the miscarriage: she was still very
weak and confined to the sofa, but my guess is that perhaps she simply
didn’t want him to stray too far at that point, and so forbade him to go.
In any case, it seems a rather rash idea to put a family of seven and all of
their luggage in a small boat. In the end, they were forced to postpone
sailing until July 1st. Shelley’s optimism really only extended to seeing
his good friend again: he harbored no illusions about the journal project,
and although he didn’t let Hunt know of his reservations, as that would
have been too cruel to a man who had traveled across Europe for the
sake of the project, in a letter of June 29th he let Horace Smith in on his
true feelings:

I have just received a letter from Hunt who has arrived at

Genoa. As soon as I hear that he has sailed, I shall weigh
anchor in my little schooner & give him chase to Leghorn,
where I must occupy myself in some arrangements for
him with Lord Byron––Between ourselves I greatly fear
that this alliance will not succeed, for I, who could never
have been regarded as more than the link between two
thunderbolts, cannot now consent to be even that,––&
how long the alliance between the wren & the eagle may
continue I will not prophesy. Pray do not hint my doubts
on the subject to any one as they might do harm to Hunt,
& they may be groundless.

…and without his more direct involvement, Shelley had every reason to
harbor doubts…”
“…what exactly was the project intended to be?”
“…ostensibly it was to be a journal called The Liberal that would
have tried to reinvigorate the romantic movement with a new political
spirit in the wake of the defeats of liberalism in Great Britain and Eu-
rope; in truth, I think it was a way for Shelley to gather around him the
community he had always wanted…”
“…and did it collapse immediately?”

555
 “…after Shelley’s death they produced about four numbers before it
broke up: those issues were more a tribute to Shelley than a new direc-
tion for literature and politics, and even if Shelley had lived, the initial
impulse that had spawned the journal, based upon the renewed friend-
ship of Byron and Shelley in Pisa, had already dissolved. I’m not even
sure the political impulse towards reform that was behind it lasted, as
Shelley had reached a bit of an impasse in his political thinking as well.
He became skeptical about what politics can accomplish by way of revo-
lutionary thinking, but some of what he was thinking, then, looks as if he
was anticipating the pragmatic reality of labor movements, or even
something closer to a late 20th Century politics of resistance. Look at this
passage from the same letter to Horace Smith: he shows more pessimism
than optimism, although admittedly there’s still a spark of the old radi-
calism–you get a real sense of what Shelley could be when he was excit-
ed:

It seems to me that things have now arrived at such a cri-

sis as requires every man plainly to utter his sentiments on
the inefficiency of the existing religions no less than polit-
ical systems for restraining & guiding mankind. Let us see
the truth whatever that may be. ––The destiny of man can
scarcely be so degraded that he was born only to die: and
if such should be the case, delusions, especially the gross
& preposterous ones of the existing religion, can scarcely
be supposed to exalt it. ––if every man said what he
thought, it could not subsist a day. But all, more or less,
subdue themselves to the element that surrounds them, &
contribute to the evils they lament by the hypocrisy that
springs from them. ––England appears to be in a desperate
condition, Ireland still worse, & no class of those who
subsist on the public labour will be persuaded that their
claims on it must be diminished. But the government must
content itself with less in taxes, the landholder must sub-
mit to receive less rent, & the fundholder a diminished in-
terest, ––or they will all get nothing, or something worse
than nothing. ––I once thought to study these affairs &
write or act in them––I am glad that my good genius said
refrain. I see little public virtue, & I foresee that the con-
test will be one of blood & gold two elements, which
however much to my taste in my pockets & my veins, I
have an objection to out of them.

…you can see that he considers himself as having withdrawn from the
fray, although, on the other hand, there’s some prescience in his state-
ment that unless there be reform, the people will simply take from the
owners what they themselves won’t give: a shift of power began to oc-

556
cur with the Reform Act of 1832, which tripled the electorate and essen-
tially handed over power to the middle classes, although it would take
until 1885 to enfranchise the laboring classes, and until 1917 to enact
universal suffrage for men over 21 and women over 30…”
“…and when was it equalized between men and women there?”
“…in 1928…”
“…so it took over a century to reach full democracy…”
“…or at least its simulacrum! I don’t want to discount the advances of
parliamentary democracy, but I don’t think Shelley could have envis-
aged the role electronic mass media would play in democracy, or the
actual shape and substance of mass society as a whole…”
“…I wonder what Shelley would think of Tony Blair?”
“…I think the biggest shock for Shelley would have been getting used
to the idea that simply having power in the hands of labor is not enough
to bring about justice and equality within a society. Let’s face it, while
he was certainly avant-garde in his thought and a good deal of what he
believed has come to pass, much of what he believed and tried to enact
is still utopian today. Feminists occasionally critique him due to the fail-
ure of his relations to Mary, but I feel their criticism is misplaced, con-
fusing the conflicts of temperament, belief, and action between Shelley
and Mary with gender issues. I believe he’s still ahead of his time in re-
gard to his relations with women: he affirmed and supported Mary’s
writing, Claire’s singing and facility with foreign languages, and even
Jane’s musical abilities. While certainly women have changed a great
deal since his time–they’re voting, choosing careers as doctors, lawyers,
and politicians, and so on–have men caught up with Shelley’s example?”
“…not in the Czech Republic, that’s for certain…”
“…nor in the U.S.A., despite all the lip-service given to equality:
there, equality is interpreted as women’s right to behave as men tradi-
tionally do, but not men extending their behavioral repertoire in the oth-
er direction–or at least not beyond a minuscule minority…”
“…which is why some American women often seem so pushy to
Czechs–even those following traditional roles…”
“…and as for men enacting aspects of behavior traditionally defined
as ‘feminine’? Most men are afraid of seeming effeminate or gay. Shel-
ley is still ahead of his time in regard to autonomy and self-
determination: his refusal of pre-given social norms; his insistence on
creating his own life, refusing the pre-given conceptions of his time–of
family, class, community and nation; his searching for and enacting of
his own, alternative conceptions. If you look at other figures roughly
contemporary to Shelley, you find only isolated instances of individuals
who dared to challenge the normative conventions with such audacity:
as we’ve seen, most who attempted to enact such ideas retreated from or
retracted their positions, or fell by the wayside like Rousseau in The Tri-
umph of Life…”

557
 “…do you think it’s become any easier to enact an autonomous life
today?”
“…in spite of all the incremental changes in the past two centuries,
no, not really. Certainly there have been many more explorations of
what it might mean to live a life of self-determination: thinkers who
tried to explore theoretical aspects of autonomy such as Nietzsche,
Bergson, Heidegger, Sartre, or Bataille; or, the many writers whose
works explored autonomy through the portrayal of the conflict between
self and society–Stendhal, Melville, Dostoyevsky, James, Lawrence,
Joyce, and Kafka. All of their works helped greatly, and certainly in
many ways human society has progressed along the road of autonomy,
but…”
“…but?”
“…one has to look at ‘progress’ with a cold eye, as it seems that for
every step forward towards autonomy the gravitational pull of the col-
lective grows proportionally, as if trying to keep up: how else can one
explain the fact that in the occident, where autonomy had its birthplace,
totalitarianisms of right, left, and center only increased in the 20th Centu-
ry? It’s perhaps easier, now, to embark upon an autonomous life, as the
concept has been developed as a sort of a ‘template,’ but to actually per-
severe with it, to endure it–that’s at least as difficult as it’s always
been…”
“…I suppose you’re right, because for all the difficulties Shelley
faced in England and during his exile, they were surpassed by what seri-
ous writers had to endure under communism or fascism. I keep wonder-
ing what does it mean, though, for those who aren’t superhuman beings?
I think the average person looks at the difficulties and just follows the
norms in order to be safe–the ‘indefinite postponement’ of The Trial…”
“…yes, I think that mostly people do just follow the norms. Remem-
ber what I said about systems and variability: agents of variability face
the risks, and much of what they endure seems a kind of evolutionary
selection–a testing of their variability to see whether or not it’s useful for
the survivability of the society. Those behaviors that pass the test aren’t
assimilated by the system overnight. Speaking of Kantian autonomy, the
first generations faced considerable difficulties: a century later was just
as difficult for those living truly autonomous lives, but a whole milieu
was developing in cities like New York and Paris where the risk was
considerably smaller, proportionally–there was an effect of ‘safety in
numbers.’ Finally it spread, becoming a youth culture in the 60s: the
‘do-your-own-thing’ experimental ethos of the 60s can be seen as a con-
siderably diluted variation of Kantian autonomy and self-
determination…”
“…which is perhaps why it wasn’t all that successful in the end in its
attempt to change society…”
“…I have the feeling that 60s youth culture was more about freedom
from than freedom for: the discarding of old maxims was more success-

558
ful than the creation of new ones. As I said yesterday, I was only a child
then, so I took it all for granted, but I remember this feeling of society
opening out at the same time it was spiraling out of control. The revolu-
tionary fervor of the late 60s collapsed into the selfishness, self-
indulgence, and alienation of the 70s. It’s difficult to explain just how
alienating and bizarre it was to live in the 70s, when everyone disap-
peared down the wormhole of their own narcissism like some kind of
Robert Altman film brought to life. Still, even the retreat from the 60s
that has occurred since then represents to me a further processing of au-
tonomy–simultaneously a broadening and a dilution, as certain aspects
of the ‘do your own thing ethos’ were disseminated into the society at
large. It became so attenuated, so lacking in self-reflection, and so much
a mass process that it ended up by becoming its opposite, which I sup-
pose is what happens when any form of variability is assimilated by the
social system…”
“…if the Czech Republic is any indication, it seems to have broad-
ened and diluted autonomy into merely the freedom to choose different
things to buy: forget self-reflection, forget any form of active free-
dom…”
“…Czechs aren’t alone: they’re quite moderate in comparison to
Americans. I was reading somewhere that if you look at European socie-
ty as a whole in comparison to the United States, Europeans clearly
place a higher value on free time than on owning things, while Ameri-
cans are the opposite: for example, Americans get an average of two
weeks paid vacation plus something like ten days of holiday a year,
while Europeans get more like forty or fifty paid days off, if you count
vacations and holidays–over seventy for the French…”
“…Czechs have an official month off plus another ten holidays, but
unofficially, of course, if you count days taken off during Christmas and
summer, plus sick days, it’s probably sixty days off, or more, in total.
However, it’s not the same trade-off as in western Europe: Czechs seem
to want both the time off and to buy things, and fail to realize that you
can’t have it both ways…”
“…they had better be careful, or they’ll act out the parable of the fish-
erman’s wife, who wanted everything and ended up receiving nothing! I
fear it’s the same in most post-communist countries, who feel they were
overlooked by history, and especially by consumerism, and who are now
trying to acquire things with a vengeance. Meanwhile, the freedom so
many fought for metamorphoses into new cars, suburban houses, golf
courses, and shopping malls…”
“…is there anyone still writing about new modes of freedom and au-
tonomy today?”
“…Deleuze and Guattari’s book, Mille Plateaux, seems to me a kind
of ‘tool-box’ of techniques of self-determination, for example…”
“…you mentioned their ‘three virtues’ the other day–but I only re-
member imperceptibility…”

559
 “…the others are ‘indiscernibility’ and ‘impersonality’–those are
harder to describe, but to start with imperceptibility, certainly it’s obvi-
ous by now what it means in regard to Shelley’s life: he learned the hard
way that to be perceptible is a double-edged sword, for it means that the
more one’s message is disseminated, the more one’s life is put under
public scrutiny, and ultimately that means a process of testing that any
agent of variability must face. The difficult thing is that we are somehow
programmed to desire fame and importance: we are driven almost like
moths to the flame of the limelight, and then our wings are burned. You
know the result in Shelley’s life, beginning with his being kicked out of
Oxford and extending all the way to the Hoppner scandal and beyond:
each was a learning experience in regard to imperceptibility and the
need to live clandestinely–perhaps in direct proportion to the subver-
siveness of one’s message…”
“…but isn’t the opposite danger that of sinking into anonymity?”
“…certainly. The question anyone in Shelley’s position needs to re-
flect upon is what kind of effect one wants to obtain: the greater the lon-
gevity of the effect of variability, the less likely it will occur immediate-
ly. It has something to do with the nature of the work involved, and the
complexity of the transformation of consciousness that would be neces-
sary for the system to assimilate it: in most cases, the more variable the
work–the more complex, difficult, and divergent, the more likely its ac-
ceptance will take longer. It might not even happen in one’s lifetime…”
“…and I assume the opposite is the case as well: the more immediate-
ly famous one’s work is in one’s own lifetime, the less likely one’s work
will last into posterity. It’s as if there’s a trade-off between fame and
lasting greatness–what you call immanence…”
“…Nietzsche and Robert Musil after him used the designation ‘post-
humous people’ to describe the kind of figures whose work isn’t reach-
ing a contemporary audience, but which will reach an audience after
their deaths…”
“…certainly they were both posthumous people!”
“…the rule holds in almost every case: there are really only a few fig-
ures whose greatness was acknowledged during their own lives, and in
those cases, when it did happen, it was often a combination of the long
life of the figure and the indisputable power and revolutionary novelty
of their work. I can only think of figures like Shakespeare, Rousseau,
Goethe, Beethoven, Picasso, and Joyce as figures who combined fame
and greatness during their lives, and even with them there were often
qualifications: Shakespeare’s plays were considered vulgarities in his
day, Rousseau was considered a crackpot, Joyce felt himself alone even
when he was being feted in Paris. On one side they shade off into those
figures of greatness who only saw the first glimmer of their future re-
nown during their lives, like Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, and, on the
other side, those figures who received contemporary fame because their
works captured the Zeitgeist–like Byron and Victor Hugo…”

560
 “…it makes your point about variability: the deeper the impact a work
will have, the longer it takes to be accepted, while works that only catch
the moment are only remembered for the moment…”
“…books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Les Misérables were written for
mass audiences, and one can’t argue with the immediate results they
achieved. It’s a real choice one must make when deciding on what one
wants to do with one’s writing, but of course the effect can never be
counted upon: look at Byron and Shelley. Byron sold very well and be-
came very famous during his lifetime: I admit that his works show a cer-
tain genius, but I hesitate to put his works in the same category as Shel-
ley or Hölderlin, because I believe what has lasted, in his case, is more
the immanence of what might be called the ‘Byronic attitude’ than the
works themselves. I believe his greatness lies in the figure he cut, which
combined the solitary existence of a sensitive ego with a sardonic dis-
dain for those who cannot attain the same kind of sovereignty. He was,
in a sense, a precursor to the kind of individualization that would ulti-
mately become that of figures as diverse as the characters in Hemingway
or the characters played by James Dean…”
“…but Shelley also wanted to affect his contemporaries…”
“…Shelley’s political convictions drew him initially towards wanting
to make an immediate effect, while his actual aesthetic practice led to
the kind of work that was not understood by his contemporaries. It must
have driven him crazy, at times, that Byron could command such a large
audience. Byron’s political views only went so far as to sneer and cri-
tique, not to affirm a new vision, while Shelley had a vision, but no au-
dience, as his actual work placed him much closer to the kind of revolu-
tionary hermeticism of William Blake. The truth is that the works that
bring about any kind of immediate social or political effect have to be
diluted for the understanding of the masses. Marx knew this, publishing
a difficult theoretical work like Das Kapital, then the much easier Com-
munist Manifesto, and finally the very easy pamphlets like Wages, Price,
and Profit that could be digested by the working man. Still, considering
both Mary’s work and their whole story as part of the Shelley phenome-
na, on the side of fame he didn’t do too badly–he was reviled and de-
monized, but he was also observed, and at times rather closely…”
“…but not read…”
“…not by his contemporaries, regrettably. He was most definitely a
‘posthumous person,’ but the good news is that his story and the drama
around it meant he was taken up almost immediately as a ‘figure’; it’s
terribly ironic, but in a way his death by drowning at a young age was
one of the best things that ever happened to him! They were able to
compile quite a popular canon of his shorter works already in the 19th
century, but, like Blake, his longer works would have to wait until the
second half of the 20th century to get the attention they deserved…”
“…but which really is better–the immediate fame that gets noticed
and disseminated quickly, or the long-term greatness that needs decades

561
or even centuries to be acknowledged? Many people wouldn’t see the
point in the posthumous fame, for one isn’t around to enjoy it…”
“…there’s no real answer to that, but I must admit I came down on
the side of the posthumous, because their works are the most likely to
inspire variability in others, and to endure. Actually, I would offer a new
definition of ‘greatness’: it consists not only of how much variability a
writer or thinker produces, but also of how much variability they incite
or inspire in others. I don’t mean merely imitators and disciples, but
people who have set out on their own course of variability; for example,
James Joyce directly inspired Samuel Beckett, whose minimalism di-
verged from Joyce’s ‘maximalism’; or Picasso inspired Duchamp,
whose conceptual art diverged from the forms of expressive abstraction
of Picasso…”
“…given your new definition, who would you say Shelley inspired?”
“…Shelley has been, since his death, a poet’s poet in the same way
that Spinoza is considered a philosopher’s philosopher, and, just like
Spinoza, it’s taken a good long while for his work to receive an adequate
hearing. As I said, the ‘myth of Shelley’–Shelley as a symbolic figure,
took off almost immediately upon his death, beginning with the ‘too
good for this world’ myth that Mary and Lady Jane Shelley propagated,
and progressing rapidly to the ‘ineffectual angel’ myth of the Victorians,
perhaps best represented by Edward Dowden’s biography and Mathew
Arnold’s response to it–Arnold being one of Shelley’s strongest detrac-
tors. Shelley’s writing did deeply influence 19th Century poets like Al-
fred Tennyson, the Brownings, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Swin-
burne, and Thomas Hardy, but in the 20th century, his direct influence
split into two primary branches: there were those who were deeply in-
fluenced by his mode of searching, poetic self-expression–like William
Butler Yeats, who claimed Shelley had ‘shaped his life,’ and Wallace
Stevens, who valued him very much; and then there were those more
formally experimental poets, like T.S. Eliot, who called Shelley ‘an af-
fair of adolescence,’ and who rejected and reacted against his self-
exploration. In my view, once the age of rhyming poetry ended, the real
point of variability in Shelley that was distilled and carried further was
precisely his use of poetry as self-expression, self-discovery, and self-
creation: the genealogical line extending from Shelley includes poets
like Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Syl-
via Plath, Anne Sexton, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Denise
Levertov, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Galway Kin-
nell, Adrienne Rich, Jack Spicer–and that’s just to mention poetry. In
regard to prose, I already mentioned the Shelley passage Joyce quotes in
Ulysses, and the whole opening of fiction to its sources in the self also
has roots in Shelley: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Henry Miller,
Djuna Barnes, Thomas Wolfe, Malcolm Lowry, Lawrence Durrell, up
through Kathy Acker…”

562
 “…I never thought about that–was Shelley the first to reflect his own
self in literature?”
“…I believe the ‘grandfather’ of such self-expression was probably
Rousseau with his Confessions and Reveries, and then Goethe and
Wordsworth, but I would argue that in the case of Rousseau it hadn’t yet
been combined with literature, and with Goethe and Wordsworth there’s
still quite a bit of hide-and-seek going on, despite all. Then there’s Frie-
drich Schlegel’s novel Lucinde, which is quite revealing, although he
later disowned it and refused to have it published with his complete
works. As far as I know, it’s really Shelley’s writing where the raw, un-
adulterated self first emerges in literature, and after Shelley it doesn’t
fully emerge again with the same rawness in English until D.H. Law-
rence’s Sons and Lovers and Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man…”
“…those are works from a century later! Surely there must be others
before then…”
“…Whitman, I suppose, although sometimes his universality is more
about human selves, rather than his own self…”
“…and what about in other languages?”
“…in French there’s Gérard de Nerval and Baudelaire of course, and
perhaps the real equivalent of Shelley in French literature was Arthur
Rimbaud. After him you have to jump all the way forward to Proust to
find the same amount of self-disclosure. In German…well, it’s strange
when I think about it, but in regard to the kind of self-expression I’m
talking about, there’s really very little after Goethe, Novalis and Hölder-
lin that I am aware of for a long, long time–in the 19th Century perhaps
only Heinrich Heine, but it’s not quite the same with him. There’s cer-
tainly a transformation of self into fiction in Musil, Mann, and Hesse,
and if you look a bit harder, in Rilke and Kafka, but for the kind of raw-
ness I’m speaking of, you need to go all the way forward to the postwar
period, with writers like Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, and
Elfriede Jelinek. I don’t mean to value self-expression solely, I’m just
trying to track one aspect of Shelley’s variability. There are other as-
pects to consider; for example, his political beliefs: it’s been said that
Shelley’s work was known by heart in the Chartist movement, and also
was known by Marx and Engels! George Bernard Shaw valued the so-
cial side of his work as well, and, among other thinkers, George Santa-
yana was deeply influenced by Shelley. In the end, though, his greatest
influence has probably been iconic or indexical, like Byron: as much as
Byron has come to stand for an imperious, cynical sovereignty, Shelley
has come to stand for something like the opposite–for the compassion-
ate, idealistic aspect of the human spirit that strives and hopes–as his
ring was inscribed, ‘Il buon tempo verrà’–‘The good times will
come’…”
“…although he was cut off in the midst of that hope and striving…”
“…inevitably for him, it seems…”

563
 “…but to bring it back to the issue of imperceptibility, it seems to me
that today the idea of working in an imperceptible manner, of giving
oneself over to the task of the work and ignoring what others think, has
largely disappeared as a value. All I see is a parade of fame-seekers
wanting their fifteen minutes…”
“…especially Americans: it’s really strange, because on the one hand
the United States is ostensibly about ‘equality of opportunity,’ a ‘level
playing field,’ and the belief that ‘everyone is special,’ but it becomes
twisted and distorted into everyone dreaming of ‘becoming famous’ and
being raised above the masses! The result is hordes of people who want
to become writers, artists, and filmmakers–not because they have some-
thing especially significant or new to say, but because they want their
name up in lights…”
“…that’s essentially what happened under communism in a somewhat
different way: the more equal society became, the more envy was gener-
ated among people. The big difference between communism and Ameri-
can democracy, in that regard, is that Americans seem to want to act it
all out in a public way, while under communism any differences were
hidden away from public view. I don’t know any Czech who would even
dare say they want to become famous…at least publicly…”
“…I suppose the concern with fame is part of the whole leveling ef-
fect of democratization, and when it’s combined with capitalism, mass
media, and the publicity apparatus connected to it, the effect on art, writ-
ing, and thought–on any form of variability–can be disastrous. Certainly
it existed during Shelley’s time–for example, in connection to Byron,
who was something like the Elvis Presley of his day, but there was a
greater distance between the performer and his audience. No doubt By-
ron played up to his audience, but the existence of a Shelley or Keats
showed that creation existed very well outside the mass market, whereas
now, if one does not bow to the market, one may very well be over-
looked entirely…”
“…it’s difficult to imagine a time when poetry could appeal to the
masses, but opera once appealed to the masses too, and one day we’ll
probably be saying the same about the novel…”
“…art forms, genres and styles seem to have life cycles. If you con-
sider poetry, you can see that it reached a high point in its European re-
ception with Wordsworth and Byron. Walter Benjamin suggested that
Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal was the last book of poems to reach a
really European-wide audience…”
“….and now the novel seems to be over its golden age…”
“…if ‘golden age’ is defined as a mixture of excellence and audience
reception, then for the occidental novel it was during the first decades of
the 20th Century with Proust, Joyce, Musil and Woolf, which places its
apogee right at the period when you have the advent of cinema, its ap-
parent successor…”

564
 “…and after a form reaches such a highpoint, do you think it neces-
sarily dies out?”
“…no, it persists, but in a much more specialized, attenuated form:
people still write poetry and novels, but the high point of reception is
over, and, as the audience reception wanes, the pool of creators utilizing
the genre or form wanes as well, reducing the instances of excellence. At
the moment it’s film that is the art form that combines the highest degree
of variability with the widest reception, but there are those, such as Jean-
Luc Godard, who think its golden age is already over. Susan Sontag has
written that cinema is in an ‘ignominious, irreversible decline’–and per-
haps she’s right, if you consider films today…”
“…but what’s taking over? I don’t see any contenders on the hori-
zon…”
“…I don’t know–perhaps nothing yet, or at least nothing clearly visi-
ble. There are lulls in human existence–dry periods, when little major
culture is produced: I know a few people who think we’re in a neon-lit
dark age in regard to culture and civilization, and perhaps they’re right,
and variability has temporarily evaporated; or, conversely, perhaps the
new media is in the midst of its preparation. When James Joyce invested
in one of the first cinemas in Ireland in 1909, film was seen as a mere
entertainment: he couldn’t have even guessed that it would supplant the
novel by the 30s and emerge as a real art form by the 40s. Maybe we’re
in the same moment: the digitalization of media is in its infancy, so we
see it used for computer games and special effects in blockbuster mov-
ies, but what if a first-rate artistic intelligence were to connect up with
it–then who knows? History has shown that people can live right in the
midst of a total transformation and not have a clue as to what’s going on.
Certainly the digitalization of all forms of media is and will be one of
the greatest transformations in human history, but, as with anything, it
will take time before the expertise is developed, and the impact felt. Cer-
tainly I would be afraid to speculate, and I think it could go in either di-
rection, or perhaps both directions at once! It’s so difficult to know and
evaluate one’s own epoch, as Foucault pointed out…”
“…I’m afraid I’m probably on the side of those who believe it’s a
‘neon-lit dark age’: I just can’t see anything really meaningful emerging
now…”
“…in the end, there’s a lot to be said for blaming postmodern capital-
ism, but I suspect that the issue is even wider than that: I think Niklas
Luhmann was on the right track when he argued that the advancement of
functional differentiation in society is one of the crucial features of our
modernity: as the social systems become increasingly complex, they
spin off sub-systems, and if you look at art, you can see the effect. As art
becomes more complex and abstract it generates its own discourse, and
its own sub-systems of critics, university studies, and art markets, while
increasingly losing contact with wider audiences. While a café proprie-
tor in 1920s Paris might not understand Picasso, he would at least know

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the name: how many postmodern artists can the average person outside
of those circles name today? They are known only if they do something
spectacular, like Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstag this summer…”
“…but isn’t the loss of contact with a wider audience the opposite of
what you were saying about the effect of mass media?”
“…no, I think they go hand in hand: the market takes up that which
can be easily disseminated, while a whole complex system surrounds
serious art and literature, making them increasingly esoteric and only
fully available to specialists trained to understand them. Luhmann had
strong doubts as to the results, and while he discussed literature only in
passing, I think something like the same thing happens: there’s a popular
literary culture of the mass-market bestseller, and an academic enclave
which studies and systemizes the reception of serious literature: the two
become ever more divergent. Who reads Alain Robbe-Grillet, Thomas
Pynchon, or Ingeborg Bachmann outside the academy? Undoubtedly
some people do, but there’s an increasingly wider gap…”
“…I can see what the difference would be with Byron–widely-read
during his own period, but only read in universities today–but Shelley?
He was barely read in his own time, and barely read in ours–but that
seems an unintentional imperceptibility!”
“…yes, it’s true that Shelley suffered from a lack of readership then
and now; although between the time he died and, say, the mid-20th Cen-
tury, prior to the emergence of academic hyper-specialization, he did
have, if not a wide, at least an eclectic readership…”
“…the list you gave of people influenced by him attests to that…”
“…but now he is truly relegated to the academy…”
“…that’s true of all historical authors, isn’t it?”
“…true, but even whoever is today’s equivalent of Shelley will be
largely read only at the university–they won’t even have a chance for a
wider readership. Deleuze said something about it–that future Beckett’s
and Kafkas might not even find a publisher…”
“…does it have to be that way?”
“…I believe the ideal would be to practice simultaneously a type of
imperceptibility that would avoid the attention of the mass media and
the lure of fame while at the same time allowing for exposure to a recep-
tive, supportive audience. Universities are necessary, markets are proba-
bly inevitable, but it seems there needs to be something else created in-
between: movements, schools, institutes, societies, and circles–both for
writers and readers, artists and audiences. History shows that when
something variable comes along, it will eventually be stabilized and sys-
tematized, or it will auto-destruct: the Shelley circle, the Athenaeum, the
Surrealists, Blast, the Acéphale group, the Black Mountain School, Ou-
LiPo–all outlived their variability, or self-destructed…”
“…but they had their moments…”
“…magnificent moments! However, it may be harder today precisely
because the moment the media apparatus catches hold of something, the

566
process of stabilization and systematization begins before it has a chance
to really develop, and mass electronic media makes that far more like-
ly…”
“…so what can be done?”
“…it seems to me there ought to be a voluntary refusal of the market
and media apparatus of reception that currently exists, and a search for
alternatives–self-publishing, publishing by small presses, publishing on
the internet; forming circles, schools, and institutes that accept in ad-
vance that their days are numbered, and which refuse to make a church
or party out of themselves. It’s already occurring…”
“…but is that realistic–how many writers would voluntarily reduce
their audience or chances for immediate success?”
“…I admit it’s not very realistic, and that’s probably why things are in
their current state–the path of least resistance is always the easiest to fol-
low, and in the case of writers, it’s almost always the ego that paves that
way…”
“…and with the media today, I see little else but ego…”
“…that’s what gives imperceptibility its power: as Adorno once
wrote, in a world where the market is everywhere, the only way out may
be to refuse to offer anything for sale–to simply turn away…”
“…but that’s also what’s difficult about it: in today’s world the volun-
tary suppression of ego is rare…”
“…almost non-existent, I’m afraid…”
“…and beyond imperceptibility, what do the other two ‘virtues’ of
Deleuze and Guattari refer to–‘impersonality’ and…what was it?”
“…‘indiscernibility’–they’re both related to imperceptibility. If im-
perceptibility has to do with the extensive side of socialization and its
evasion, indiscernibility has to do with the intensive side–the determina-
tion of meaning or signification–and making oneself indiscernible to the
system through a refusal of its significations; and impersonality has to
do with subjectification, and a refusal of the forms of subjectivity a giv-
en social system foists upon us–which can tilt towards both the exten-
sive and intensive…”
“…in plain English, please…”
“…it’s about how insidious socialization can be, even creating a kind
of false autonomy that deludes people into believing their choices have
been freely made, when in reality they were deeply determined. ‘Indis-
cernibility’ suggests a strategy of the deliberate avoidance or disruption
of the discernible: society channels our language, our meanings, into its
own discernible forms. For example, consider something as seemingly
innocuous as the evening news on television. The average person-in-the-
street easily falls into the habit of accepting the reading of the news as
practically an oracular pronouncement–not only in terms of the content,
but also in terms of its form, so that the fact so many minutes are devot-
ed to business, sports, and whatever else is taken as a given, when clear-
ly it’s not the case. I read a statistical study that showed that in the

567
U.S.A. between the 60s and the 90s the amount of time given to world
events had been dramatically reduced, while the time given over to the
relative trivia of sports and business news had increased just as propor-
tionally. The reason, of course, is the increasing capitalization and cor-
poratization of the news media, but the average citizen fails to notice the
incremental shifts, and simply takes whatever is offered as being
‘newsworthy.’ What’s left out is simply deemed unimportant, and if you
really think about it, what’s left out is vast: what is now considered
‘news’ is almost entirely in the realm of extensive phenomena–the what,
when, where and who of what happened, but never the why. As Nie-
tzsche would say, the question shouldn’t focus on what the correct inter-
pretation of reality should be, but on who interprets: who is discerning
the appropriate meanings that we live by?”
“…so becoming indiscernible is what–questioning those meanings,
refusing those meanings, or is it something more radical, like the Dada-
ists entirely disrupting meanings?”
“…it’s refusing to become trapped within a set of pre-given significa-
tions, which certainly means a variety of strategies, including all of
those you’ve mentioned. There are a variety of methodologies–Derrida’s
deconstruction, Foucault’s genealogy, Deleuze and Guattari’s schizo-
analysis, Judith Butler’s analysis of gender performativity, and so on.
Jean-Luc Nancy uses the phrase ‘interrupting myth’ to describe the pro-
cess by which we question and disrupt myths of immanence within soci-
ety…”
“…but I thought immanence was good…”
“…it generally is, but as Nancy explains it, when a society tries to
sublate its own finitude through attempting to attain immanence here
and now, the results are disastrous…”
“…you’re losing me again…”
“…it’s sort of political-left Heideggerianism: remember that with
Heidegger, authenticity and inauthenticity are associated with one’s ca-
pacity to confront and accept one’s own mortality. The ‘they’ is always
drawing us away from authentic existence, and, according to Nancy, one
of the more organized ways it does so is by creating myths about how
our immortality will derive from our merging with our nation, religion,
ethnicity, or group–its continued existence becoming our continued ex-
istence. He maintains that any society that attempts to do so will become
a society driven by death–the extreme form of it being the Nazis…”
“…so it’s not immanence that’s the problem, but the desire to attain it
in a communal manner?”
“…that’s it, and so its disruption subverts the logic of the myth, dis-
rupting the majoritarian discourse; however, being indiscernible also
means escaping that discourse through forming one’s own minoritarian
discourse: for Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka would be an exemplar of
that–how his writing speaks from out of what they term a ‘minor’ or
marginal cultural positionality against the majoritarian culture…”

568
 “…and how does all this connect to the third ‘virtue’–
‘impersonality’?
“…it has to do with refusing the forms of subjectivity that the social
system pushes upon us: for example, post-industrial, capitalist society
pushes on us a consumerist subjectivity, channeling our desires into an
object-driven materialism. I remember in the 70s when the first major
shopping mall opened near my home, and I went to work in one of those
chain-bookstores there. Suddenly to go to an individual store to meet a
clear need was replaced by this palace dedicated to consumption, and the
social concept of ‘shopping’ was born…”
“…what do you mean?”
“…it’s only just beginning in the Czech Republic with the arrival of
the first malls: there people still go to stores in order to shop for some-
thing specific. What I mean is a whole new form of social behavior,
where one goes to a mall with credit cards or cash to burn, and simply
wanders around ‘shopping,’ which is taken as an intransitive verb: one is
not shopping for something particular, one is just ‘shopping’–allowing
desires and their manipulation by advertisers to triumph over actual
needs. I was a teenager, then, and so susceptible to it: I remember the
feeling of being in the midst of all this stuff to buy, with really no reason
to buy it beyond the fact it was there, and was the ‘in’ thing to buy. I
didn’t really grasp how much the consumerist subjectivity had become
an ingrained aspect of my subjectivity until I came to Prague, and un-
plugged from American media: now, the idea of ‘shopping’ seems ab-
surd to me. If I need something, I go and buy it, but otherwise I have no
desire to spend time in stores, caught in a fog of socially-manipulated
desire…”
“…but what would it mean to become ‘impersonal’–can one strip off
all the layers of socialization?”
“…it’s an ideal, of course: there’s the direction we’ve come from in
evolution, and the direction we’re going–the formed and the unformed.
The process of escaping social determinations and mutating toward new
forms happens simultaneously–one never completely escapes the old,
nor fully reaches the new in some sort of revolutionary way. Think of
what we’ve discussed about variability already: for example, on the evo-
lutionary level, a polar bear has white fur in order to adapt to its envi-
ronment, so at some point the genetic code for white fur was stabilized
within the evolutionary process through natural selection. In regard to its
fur, the variability entered into the species as it drifted northwards, and
those mutations that had the white fur survived, just as no doubt the
brown bears would win the survivability race if the icecaps melted. You
need the stabilization of the traits that enhance survivability, but also the
variability to allow mutation when the environment changes again. A
fortunate mutation in a species or social system is one which enhances
survivability, while too extreme a mutation threatens the very existence
of the organism and species: on the one hand, a system that refuses to

569
mutate when the environment changes may die out, but an uncontrolled
mutation is a cancerous mutation…”
“…looked at from a historical perspective these mutations seem obvi-
ous changes for the better, but when you focus on the lived experience
of those who were the bringers of change–what you call the ‘agents of
variability,’ aren’t they perceived by society as exactly that–mutants?”
“…certainly–some of my best ‘dead friends’ were mutants in their
time, and were seen exactly as such by their contemporaries: Shelley and
Blake were mutants, as were Hölderlin, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud,
Dickenson, Nietzsche, Kafka, Djuna Barnes, and so on. As I mentioned
before, one of my favorite writers, Marguerite Duras, even saw herself
as such a mutant–in Détruire dit-elle, one of her mutant characters,
Stein, was reputedly based on Maurice Blanchot, who, to me, is one of
the few real mutants alive today that I know: he’s totally reclusive, liv-
ing in Saint-Denis, north of Paris; in fact, I’ve been told he lives on the
Place des Pensées, the ‘Place of Thought’! In regard to the question of
indiscernibility, impersonality, and imperceptibility, he’s probably gone
further than anyone I can think of alive today. For me, he’s the Kafka of
our age in regard to his mutation, and, of course, the average French per-
son has never heard of him. He marks an outer limit–a point beyond
what we know as ‘human’: a maximalization of imperceptibility, indis-
cernibility, and impersonality–among other names, he calls it the ‘neu-
ter’…”
“…but is it possible to live that way, so far beyond the reach of the
norms–not to mention all the dangers and risks involved?”
“…Deleuze and Guattari wrote that you have to retain small portions
of socialized subjectivity and modes of signification in order ‘to get up
the next morning’: to not only know how to respond to the dominant re-
ality, but also to avoid disintegrating like Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Artaud,
or Ingborg Bachmann…and yet, I’d happily trade the forty years of Höl-
derlin’s madness for ten years of lucidity and beautiful poetry…”
“…or the same trade with Shelley and his early death?”
“…yes, but the problem is that it’s always unpredictable–by defini-
tion, a mutation is a singular process, and there’s no predicting what di-
rection it will go. If one’s work is ahead of its time in regard to variabil-
ity, there’s no guarantee you will ever even be noticed–especially with
all the noise and interference in our world today; or, even worse than
that is to be noticed too much! For example, the problem with all the
youth cultures in the U.S.A. since the 50s is that they are self-identifying
and predicated on exhibiting their difference from the norm: the long
hair of hippies, the purple Mohawks of punks, and so on. Today the
problem is not only that, but how quickly the variable is processed by
the system into a new fashion: clothes companies actually send ‘agents’
out on the streets to see what new styles are emerging, and then copy
them! Put that together with a media apparatus that encourages everyone

570
to demand their fifteen minutes of fame, and any variability is nipped in
the bud by being stabilized immediately…”
“…but then how do you explain the dynamism there–all the new
trends and fashions that come out of the U.S.A.?”
“…that’s the paradox–that there’s so much variability and normativity
there at the same time! It’s not so difficult to explain, though, if you
compare it with Europe. The ‘old world’ holds faster to its norms and
traditions, and even when it diverges from them, it can always look back
to them as a sort of ‘placeholder’ to retain its stability as it progresses
forward towards new forms of variability; conversely, the U.S.A. saw
itself as a radical ‘break’ with tradition, but in its forward movement to-
wards variability it needed to find another way to stabilize itself. There’s
a wildness, dynamism, and violence connected to the uncontrolled ener-
gy of variability: as America cut itself off from certain elements of its
old world past, it needed to find other means for stabilizing the new
forms of variability more rapidly, and I think the result is a certain ri-
gidity. Look at all the strange new religious sects and cults which either
emerged or found fertile ground there–the Quakers, the Shakers, the
Mormons, all the way to Scientology: all have a certain rigidity despite
their outlook, and I think it has to do with the need for stabilization. A
puritanical rigidity is always overtaking variability in the U.S.A. rather
rapidly. For example, I came from a Unitarian family: in the U.S.A. Uni-
tarians were seemingly very much a counter worldview to Puritanism:
indeed, if you look at most Unitarian fellowships today, they hold to a
liberal outlook that is often opposite to that held by Protestant religions
with a genealogy closer to Puritanism or Calvinism. When I was a small
boy and actually still attending the fellowship, I remember that most
members were ‘ex-’ something: there were ex-Catholics, ex-
Episcopalians, ex-Presbyterians–even ex-Jews and Hindus! They were
essentially decent, broad-minded people with liberal views–quite often
‘do-gooders’ in spirit. In Seattle, when I went to graduate school in the
80s, it was always the Unitarians who were going against the govern-
ment, such as giving aid to refugees from El Salvador who were fleeing
the death squads of the right-wing junta that Reagan’s administration
supported. So from that brief description you would assume they are the
opposite of Puritan, right? In the content of their views they are very dif-
ferent, but not entirely in the form those views take–how the views are
held. I forget where I heard it, but I once heard Unitarianism referred to
as ‘Puritanism without the metaphysics.’ My mother is a perfect exam-
ple: her mother was of Irish Catholic roots, and her father was of Lithu-
anian Jewish origin: they married, and both converted to Unitarianism–
apparently the thing to do, then. My mother saw herself as holding es-
sentially socially liberal views, but there was a sort of ‘crypto-
Puritanism’ still lurking there under the surface…”
“…what form did it take?”

571
 “…there was a rigidity in her pseudo-liberal morality, and in her own
behavioral or affective repertoire: she was rather a cold woman, who
was afraid of letting go. I really think that there’s a correlation between
how Unitarianism, on the one hand, was able to simply let go of crucial
tenets of Christianity like the divinity of Jesus, and yet on the other hand
somehow felt compelled to ‘pay for it’ by an excessive moralism, almost
as if they were afraid of being branded heathens or pagans. I think that
the same type of pattern is quite common in the U.S.A.: it’s not only the
ideological right that is guilty of moralistic rigidity, but the left can be
just as moralistic, and even the secular center ends up applying a strange
kind of Puritanism to pursuits like health or diet fads, or in its approach
to almost any problem. After all, the U.S.A. is the land that brought the
world Prohibition and Alcoholics Anonymous on the one hand, and the
‘three-martini lunch’ and the cocktail party on the other…”
“…all of it mystifies Europeans! The over-all pattern of always fre-
netically running away from tradition and towards something else re-
minds me of that line you cited the other day from Fitzgerald–what was
it?”
“…oh, the one about ‘running with arms outstretched towards the or-
gastic future that year by year recedes before us’…?”
“…yes, that’s it–it’s as if Americans, in their headlong rush away
from past tradition and towards the future, were caught in a trap, because
the faster they run towards variability and the freshness and newness it
promises, the more quickly the system absorbs and stabilizes it, turning
it into rigidity…”
“…that seems right to me. I simply wanted off that treadmill, and es-
pecially given the priorities are all confused there: you’re supposed to
feel guilty for having a glass of wine with lunch there, but not guilty for
driving a huge car! I was simply tired of all those normative prescrip-
tions…”
“…but Czechs have normative prescriptions too…”
“…yes, but as I said before, they are often a kind of placeholder for
the sake of appearance: under the surface of public life, Czechs are sur-
prisingly non-normative. I always laugh when I think about how strong-
ly Czechs extol a certain normative prescription about the family, and
everywhere I lived, once I got to know the families around me, there
was hardly a single one that truly maintained the norms…and, anyway,
as a foreigner I’m not held to the same norms…”
“…that’s because you are already ‘guilty’ a priori simply because you
are a foreigner!”
“…yes, that’s probably true to a certain extent, and at times I am des-
pised because of it. As Alastair Reid wrote, I’m not ‘in possession’
there–of language, of social position, of anything beyond my own interi-
ority; but, when I find myself banging my head against a wall, I try to
remember that my state of dispossession is the underlying reality of all
human existence: we’re all ‘renting’–nobody owns. I embrace the state

572
of dispossession willingly–otherwise, I’d be doomed. Of course, Shelley
was doomed anyway…”
“…I think I’d rather be doomed here like Shelley, than doomed in
Prague…”
“…it’s better not to be doomed at all, but I suppose if one has to be
doomed, this is as beautiful a place as any to be doomed: I can imagine
Shelley and Edward drifting along here, listening to Jane singing and
playing the guitar, and saying ‘remain’ to the moment…”
“…yes, it’s a beautiful evening…”
“…tomorrow morning we can take a look around the seafront, and
then go for a swim. Before lunch we can see about visiting the Casa
Magni, if we dare…”
“…do we dare?”
“…certainly! I think as long as we’re here, we really ought to: the
worst that can happen is that they say ‘no’…”
“…to see the inside of it would be amazing…maybe we should bring
something–a bottle of wine, perhaps?”
“…that’s a good idea–remind me tomorrow, and we’ll see what we
can find…”
“…I will…”
“…then, in the afternoon, we can take the train down to Viareggio,
see the place where Shelley was cremated, perhaps go for a swim, and
be back in time for dinner…”
“…that suits me…”
“…so, should we return to the hotel?”
“…I wanted to say ‘remain thou, thou art so beautiful’ to this mo-
ment…but I suppose it can’t remain…”
“…but it will remain–in our memories, at least…”

573
 

L’amour, c’est l’espace et le temps rendus sensibles au

cœur.

Love is space and time rendered perceptible to the heart.

–Marcel Proust

…love, time, memory: love renders time visible via human memory–not
memory as stimulus and response, but memory as recording and reflec-
tion…

…memory and self-reflectivity are what constitute human conscious-

ness: our identity is our memory–our self-reflective awareness of our
existence through time…

…human subjectivity is contingent upon memory, and human subjectivi-

ty in turn generates memory through the creation of history: from per-
sonal and familial history through the history of community, nation, or
species...

…human consciousness can reflect upon its own existence in time, and
consequently its own delimitation by time–its finitude: as a consequence,
only human consciousness can take up its own existence as a self-
reflective, self-determined project to be fulfilled across a lifetime, and
beyond… (Heidegger)

…only human consciousness can project itself temporally; animals fol-

low the neutral temporal flow of instincts and lifecycles: “A dog believes
his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come
the day after tomorrow?” (Wittgenstein)

…human consciousness, aware of its own finitude, is able to reflect upon

loss: we exist within a frail web of mutual witnessing–our parents give
to us our birth and the world that existed before our advent; we witness
the deaths of our parents and the births of our children, giving to our
children the world that existed before their births; our children witness
our deaths, and carry us forward in time in their memories… (Jean-Luc
Nancy)

574
…love reflects upon our finitude and is aware of eventual loss–of the
other, of the self: “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more
strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long”… (Shake-
speare)

…when we love, we hold the other in space and time, and by memory
across space and time. Love always leaves its trace in time, no matter
how tenuous the love, or even if the love has been transformed into hate.
Love renders time visible through these traces: “So love, when it has
gone, taking time with it, leaves a memory of its weight”… (Djuna
Barnes)

…when we fall in love we gaze into a house of mirrors, rapt with our
own reflection in the gaze of the other. It is only when this house of mir-
rors is shattered, over time, that real love emerges, and thought of the
other takes precedence over thought of the self: “The richest love is that
which submits to the arbitration of time”… (Lawrence Durrell)

…at the beginning of relation only the present moment matters, and eve-
rything depends upon the rapture of that merging. Love emerges when
we gradually acquire a past and a future, are submerged in time, and
recognize the inevitability of loss: “Love is most nearly itself when here
and now cease to matter”… (T.S. Eliot)

…the most intense love resonates across time, leaving waves of imma-
nence in its wake and casting itself into futurity by means of those who
take it up as an inspiration. Love renders eternity visible through these
waves of immanence: “Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death
shall have no dominion”… (Dylan Thomas)

…love is the most intense form of immanence, its light spreading out in
all directions of time and space like a powerful beacon: “…all things
are transfigured except Love…” (Shelley)

575
 

At a bus stop across the road from the white façade of the Casa Magni
they linger a few minutes, the woman consulting an Italian phrasebook,
the man taking dictation in a small notebook. He reads what he has writ-
ten out loud several times, then they cross the road, walk through a
green iron gate, and press a button on the intercom. A voice answers,
and he reads what’s written into the speaker; there is a brief pause, and
they are asked to wait. After a minute the front door opens and an Afri-
can maid appears: she leads them through a front foyer to a wide stone
square staircase which ascends by way of two landings into a large liv-
ing room with a high ceiling: the shutters are closed, but light enters
from the small windows high in the front wall. They are met by a
blonde, well-dressed, Italian woman about fifty years of age, to whom
they give the bottle of wine, and explain, in broken Italian and gestures,
the reason for their visit. There are several children sitting in an adjoin-
ing kitchen who look inquisitively at the visitors. The blonde woman
says that they are visiting from Naples for the holidays, and she allows
them to take a look around the villa. The main room has a marble floor
with a beige and mauve circular design, creamy white walls, cream-
colored drapes on the high windows, and a large ebony fireplace with an
antique clock on the mantle. Arrayed around the fireplace are a large
couch, a small sofa, an easy chair, and a round oak coffee table, all in
Italian Empire style. They view the two front rooms on either side of the
large hall: one room is being used as a dining room with a long oak table
and oak caned chairs, a white marble fireplace with a painting of a path
through the woods hanging over it; the room on the other side is used as
a bedroom. Finally, they go out on the red-tiled terrace that fronts the
house, and take a look at the view of the seafront, and take a few photos.
They then thank the woman and her family, are shown out, and walk a
block down the seafront to the Ristorante La Luna, where they order
some wine, mineral water, and, as their main dish, grilled Orata.
“…so we did it! Here, I propose a toast to us, for having accom-
plished it: na zdraví…”
“…na zdraví! It’s very nice how they remodeled it: I wonder what it
was like back in Shelley’s time…”
“…it’s larger than I expected. Aside from the floor–it was probably
wood, then; and some furnishings, I think it must have looked quite like
it does now, although without electricity or running water, and without
the kitchen…”
“…it helps me to imagine the scenes that happened there–the meeting
to tell Claire what happened to Allegra, Jane’s vision, the evenings on
the terrace…”

576
 “…and having seen it will help you imagine the scenes I will tell you
about…”
“…there weren’t that many more scenes, were there?”
“…for Shelley, no…”
“…I think we were at the beginning of July, a week before he died…”
“…yes…they set sail from here to Livorno to meet Hunt on July 1st.
The most matter-of-fact account of their journey is in Williams’ diary:

Calm and clear. Rose at 4 to get the top-sails altered. At

12 a fine breeze from the westward tempted us to weigh
for Leghorn. At 2 stretched across to Lerici to pick up
Roberts; and at half-past found ourselves in the offing,
with a side wind. At half-past 9 arrived at Leghorn—a run
of forty-five to fifty miles in seven hours and a half. An-
chored astern the Bolivar, from which we procured cush-
ions and made up for ourselves a bed on board, not being
able to get on shore after sunset on account of the health
office being shut at that hour.

…Mary’s account of the day was rather different, to say the least. This is
what she wrote in her August 15th letter to Mrs. Gisborne:

Having heard from Hunt that he had sailed from Genoa,

on Monday July 1st S., Edward & Captain Roberts (the
Gent. Who built our boat) departed in our boat for Leg-
horn to receive him––I was then just better, and had begun
to crawl from my bedroom to the terrace; but bad spirits
succeeded to ill health, and this departure of Shelley’s
seemed to add insufferably to my misery. I could not en-
dure that he should go–I called him back two or three
times, & told him that if I did not see him soon I would go
to Pisa with the child––I cried bitterly when he went
away. They went & Jane, Claire & I remained alone with
the children––I could not walk out, & though I gradually
gathered strength it was slowly & my ill spirits increased;
in my letters to him I entreated him to return––‘the feeling
that some misfortune would happen,’ I said, ‘haunted me’:
I feared for the child, for the idea of danger connected
with him never struck me––When Jane & Claire took their
evening walk I used to patrol the terrace, oppressed with
wretchedness, yet gazing on the most beautiful scene in
the world…

…and here’s what she wrote in her preface to the collected poems,
which of course was written much later…

577
 On the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill
darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when
they went. During the whole of our stay at Lerici, an in-
tense presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind,
and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with
the shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with
these emotions–they seemed accounted for by my illness;
but at this hour of separation they recurred with renewed
violence. I did not anticipate danger for them, but a vague
expectation of evil shook me to agony, and I could scarce-
ly bring myself to let them go...

…as you can see, she was close to being hysterical, and apparently she
sent Shelley three letters during this week alone, as Williams witnessed
him reading two of them, describing one as ‘most gloomy.’ Hunt men-
tioned observing the ‘pain’ Shelley exhibited while reading another…”
“…I take it that the letters from Mary no longer exist…”
“…no, but we have some idea: there still exists a letter she wrote to
Hunt that Shelley gave him, and we can tell something from the last let-
ter Shelley wrote to her on July 4th. This is the letter to Hunt, written the
day before Shelley departed:

My dear Friend–

I know that Shelley has some idea of persuading you to

come here. I am too ill to write the reasonings only let me
entreat you let no persuasions induce you to come. Selfish
feelings you may be sure do not dictate–but it would be
complete madness to come–
I wish I could write more–I wish I were with you to as-
sist you–I wish I could break my chains & leave this dun-
geon–adieu–I shall hear about you & Marianne’s health
from Shelley–

Your friend,

…it gives a good picture of her hysteria…”

“…but was Shelley thinking of inviting Hunt?”
“…you know Shelley–he felt responsible for having brought Hunt to
Italy, so it isn’t entirely out of the question that he would have consid-
ered inviting him to come; but, in the end, I doubt it, as it would have
stretched all of them to the limit, given all of Hunt’s children…”
“…‘dungeon’ is rather a severe word–did she really hate it so much
here?”

578
 “…she hated it enough that she was pushing Shelley to find a house in
some place like Pugnano as quickly as possible–his last letter to her re-
fers to it…”
“…so what did he write?”
“…his letter is a good introduction to the situation, as it covers a great
deal of what was happening. Poor Shelley! He was the person wedged
between all the egos and conflicting demands of the various parties, and
the letter shows it all:

My dearest Mary,

I have received both your letters, & shall attend to the

instructions they convey. I did not think of buying the
Bolivar; Lord B. wishes to sell her, but I imagine would
prefer ready money. I have as yet made no inquiries about
houses near Pugnano—I have no moment of time to spare
from Hunt’s affairs; I am detained unwillingly here, and
you will probably see Williams in the boat before me,—
but that will be decided tomorrow.
Things are in the worst possible situation with respect
to poor Hunt. I find Marianne in a desperate state of
health, and on our arrival at Pisa sent for Vaccà. He de-
cides that her case is hopeless, and that although it will be
lingering, must inevitably end fatally. This decision he
thought proper to communicate to Hunt, indicating at the
same time, with great judgment and precision, the treat-
ment necessary to be observed for availing himself of the
chance of his being deceived. This intelligence has extin-
guished the last spark of poor Hunt’s spirits, low enough
before. The children are well and much improved.
Lord Byron is at this moment on the point of leaving
Tuscany. The Gambas have been exiled, and he declares
his intention of following their fortunes. His first idea was
to sail to America, which was changed to Switzerland,
then to Genoa, and last to Lucca. Everybody is in despair,
& everything in confusion. Trelawny was on the point of
sailing to Genoa for the purpose of transporting the Boli-
var overland to the lake of Geneva, and had already whis-
pered in my ear his desire that I should not influence Lord
Byron against this terrestrial navigation. He next received
orders to weigh anchor and set sail for Lerici. He is now
without instructions, moody and disappointed. But it is the
worst for poor Hunt, unless the present storm should blow
over. He places his whole dependence upon the scheme of
a journal, for which every arrangement has been made.
Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at

579
 present, as I cannot; but he seems inclined to depart with-
out the necessary explanations and arrangements due to
such a situation as Hunt’s. These, in spite of delicacy, I
must procure; he offers him the copyright of the Vision of
Judgment for the first number. This offer, if sincere, is
more than enough to set up the journal and, if sincere, will
set everything right.
How are you, my best Mary? Write especially how is
your health, and how your spirits are, and whether you are
not more reconciled to staying at Lerici, at least during the
summer.
You have no idea how I am hurried and occupied; I have
not a moment's leisure, but will write by next post.

Ever, dearest Mary,

Yours affectionately,

S.

…the sentence that strikes me the most is, ‘everybody is in despair, &
everything in confusion’…”
“…and Shelley at the center of it all…”
“…pulled between Hunt’s needs and Byron’s reluctance, between
needing to stay to remedy the situation and wanting to return to Wil-
liams waiting in Leghorn, and Mary, Claire, and Jane waiting in Leri-
ci…”
“…what was the situation with Byron?”
“…listen to Williams’ journal entry for July 2nd:

We heard this morning that the Bolivar was about to sail

for Genoa, and that Lord Byron was quitting Tuscany, on
account of Count Gamba’s family having again been ex-
iled thence. This, on reaching the shore, I found really to
be the case; for they had just left the police-office, having
there received the order. Met Lord Byron at Dunn’s, and
took leave of him. Was introduced to Mr. Leigh Hunt, and
called on Mrs. Hunt.

…the Gambas were supposed to leave Tuscany by July 4th because of

the Masi affair, and Byron was considering leaving immediately with
them. That would have ruined the plans for The Liberal, stranding Hunt
and his family and bringing about just the situation Mary feared, so it
was left to Shelley to do something about it…”
“…what did he do?”
“…as much as he could. He meet Hunt on the 2nd at his hotel, and,
according to Hunt’s son Thornton, who was twelve at the time, Shelley

580
ran to embrace Hunt, exclaiming over and over again how ‘inexpressibly
delighted’ he was to see him. The picture Thornton and Hunt give of
Shelley at that time is interesting, because they hadn’t seen him in four
years and so could better gauge the changes. Their picture confirms the
claim that Shelley was in good health during his stay at San Terenzo:
Thornton mentioned that Shelley was more self-confident and his chest
was bigger, and Hunt mentioned that he was suntanned and his face far
more matured: more wrinkled, his hair more gray, and–this is an inter-
esting point–Hunt said that it seemed as if his temples had been ‘beaten
in’…”
“…what would have caused that?”
“…long term anxiety perhaps, or perhaps Shelley’s ‘non-diet’…”
“…or maybe just a receding hair-line…”
“…that’s possible too…”
“…go on…”
“…it’s difficult to give a direct chronology of events, but it seems
Hunt took Shelley back to the boat he arrived in for some reason, and
Shelley took out a piece of paper and put a dot on it, saying that the dot
represented the ‘experience of mankind.’ When Hunt asked if the paper
was ‘our inexperience,’ Shelley replied that with all the paper in the
world, ‘the dot is history’–everything else is outside of history. It gives a
good image of his skepticism, then, and the impasse he had reached. Ev-
idently they also went to see Byron at the Villa Depuy in Montenero,
where Pietro, Teresa’s brother, had just been stabbed, right before their
arrival, while intervening in a fight between the servants…”
“…it’s crazy–as if they were all going mad!”
“…perhaps they were…the next day Shelley helped Hunt move to the
ground floor of the Palazzo Lanfranchi; there, Byron cut Hunt by failing
to notice his wife Marianne, which totally unsettled Hunt, who had just
heard Vaccà’s diagnosis…”
“…was she really terminally ill?”
“…she was quite ill at that point and remained confined most of the
time, but she lived several decades longer and gave birth to four more
children, so she was hardly terminal! Despite everything, Shelley was
actually able to achieve an agreement with Byron–Trelawny described it
in his memoirs:

Byron, at first, had been more eager than Shelley for

Leigh Hunt’s arrival in Italy to edit and contribute to the
proposed new Review, and so continued until his English
correspondents had worked on his fears. They did not op-
pose, for they knew his temper too well, but artificially in-
sinuated that he was jeopardizing his fame and fortune,
etc., etc., etc. Shelley found Byron irritable whilst talking
with him on the fulfillment of his promises with regard to
Leigh Hunt. This was doomed to be their last meeting.

581
…that makes it sound all bad, but Shelley was able to achieve some im-
portant things: he borrowed fifty pounds to help tide himself over for the
purchase of the boat and his advance to Hunt, he convinced Byron to
remain part of the journal, and he even got Byron to pledge to hand over
the copyright of The Vision of Judgment to Hunt, which ensured at least
the initial success of the journal…”
“…and what about Byron’s plans? What had he decided?”
“…as Shelley’s letter indicates, Switzerland, Genoa, Lucca, and even
America had been proposed, and on July 8th the Bolivar was apparently
supposed to sail to Lerici, but didn’t get harbor clearance in time: if that
was so, probably Lucca was his destination, as Lerici would have been
the closest port, and a letter Williams wrote to Jane confirms it. Shelley
actually wanted to get back to Livorno and Williams as soon as possible,
as he had been waiting there the whole time. We have Williams’ last let-
ter to Jane, which she received the day he sailed:

I have just left the quay, my dearest girl, and the wind
blows right across to Spezia, which adds to the vexation
I feel at being unable to leave this place–For my own
part I should have been with you, in all probability on
Wednesday evening, but have been kept day after day
waiting for Shelley’s definitive arrangements with Lord
Byron relative to poor Hunt, whom in my opinion he has
treated vilely–A letter from Mary of the most gloomy
kind reached Shelley yesterday and this mood of hers
aggravates my uneasiness to see you; for I am proud,
dear girl, beyond words to express in the conviction that
whatever we may be together you would be cheerful and
contented,––Would I could take the present gale by the
wings and reach you tonight, hard as it blows I would
venture across for such a reward––! However, tomorrow
something decisive shall take place, and if Shelley is still
detained I shall depart in a Felucca and leave the boat to
be brought round in company with Trelawny in the Boli-
var, who talks of visiting Spezia again in a few days.
I am tired of waiting. This is our longest separation,
and seems a year to me–absence alone is enough to make
me anxious, and, indeed, unhappy, but I think if I had left
you in our house–in solitude, I should feel it less than I do
now. What can I do? Poor Shelley desires that I should re-
turn to you, but I know secretly wishes me not to leave
him in the lurch. He, too, by his manner, is as anxious to
see you almost as I could be, but the interests of poor Hunt
keep him here–in fact with Lord B. it appears they cannot
do anything–who actually has said as much as that he did

582
 not wish his name to be attached to the work and of course
to them. Hunt I think you would like–but do not imagine
that he is like his picture–She is like no one you know–not
handsome–not pretty–not passable even–I speak of per-
son–in higher qualities perhaps she would pass anywhere–
the children are fine and handsome.
In Lord B’s family all is confusion–The cutthroats he is
so desirous to have about him have involved him in a sec-
ond affair, and although the present banishment of the
Gamba’s from Tuscany is attributed to the first affair of
the Dragoon, the continued disturbances among his and
their servants is I am sure a principal cause for its being
carried into immediate effect. Four days, (commencing
from the day of our arrival at Leghorn) were only given
them to find another retreat–and as Lord B considers this a
personal tho’ tacit attack upon himself he chooses to fol-
low their fortunes in another country–Genoa was first se-
lected, but of that Government they could have no hope–
Geneva was then proposed and this proved as bad, if not
worse. Lucca is now the choice and Trelawny was dis-
patched last night to feel their way with the Governor to
whom he carried letters. All this time Hunt is shuffled off
from day to day; and now Heaven only knows how or
when it will end–Lord B’s reception of Mrs. Hunt was, as
Shelley tells me, most shameful–She came into his house
sick and exhausted, and he scarcely deigned to even notice
her–was silent and scarcely bowed–This conduct cut H. to
the soul–but the way in which he received our friend Rob-
erts, at Dunn’s door, shall be described when we meet–it
must be acted–
How I long to see you…I had written when, but I will
make no promises for I too well know how distressing it is
to both of us to break them–Tuesday Evening at furthest
unless I am kept by the weather I will say. Ah Jane, how
fervently I press you and our little ones to my heart.
Adieu, take body and soul for you are at once my Heaven
and Earth–that is, all I ask of both–

E. Elk. W––

P.S. Shelley is at Pisa and will write tonight to me.

…what’s surprising to me is his reference to Shelley–‘he, too, by his

manner, is as anxious to see you almost as I could be’: it indicates, at the
very least, that he was aware of Shelley’s feelings–at least as something

583
like a courtly lover, if not more. Then, Shelley’s letter to her on July 4th
also reveals a great deal about the nature of their intimacy by that time:

You will probably see Williams before I can disentan-

gle myself from the affairs with which I am now sur-
rounded––I return to Leghorn to-night, & shall urge him
to sail with the first fair wind without expecting me. I
have thus the pleasure of contributing to your happiness
when deprived of every other––and of leaving you no oth-
er subject of regret, but the absence of one scarcely worth
regretting.––I fear you are solitary & melancholy at Villa
Magni––& in the intervals of the greater & more serious
distress in which I am compelled to sympathize here, I
figure to myself the countenance which had been the
source of such consolation to me, shadowed by a veil of
sorrow––
How soon those hours past, & how slowly they return
to pass so soon again, & perhaps forever, in which we
have lived together so intimately so happily!––Adieu, my
dearest friend––I only write these lines for the pleasure of
tracing what will meet your eyes.––Mary will tell you all
the news.
S.––

…there’s the typical positioning of himself as an object of her pity, but it

still seems to me that they were hovering on a threshold–‘my dearest
friend’…”
“…did she answer it?”
“…actually she did, but Shelley never received the answer because
they had already departed. Apparently she hadn’t yet received Edward’s
letter…here, I’ll read it:

My dearest friend,

Your few melancholy lines have indeed cast your own

visionary veil over a countenance that was animated with
the hope of seeing you return with far different tidings.
We heard yesterday that you had left Leghorn, in compa-
ny with the Bolivar and would assuredly be here in the
morning; at five o’clock therefore I got up; and from the
terrace saw (or dreamt it) the Bolivar opposite in the of-
fing–she hoisted more sail, and went thro’ the straits; what
can this mean? Hope, and uncertainty, have made such a
chaos in my mind, that I know not what to think; my own
Neddino does not deign to lighten my darkness by a single
word; surely I shall see him tonight! perhaps you too are

584
 with him; well pazienza! Mary I am happy to tell you goes
on well; she talks of going to Pisa and indeed your poor
friends seem to require all her assistance–for me, alas I
can only offer sympathy and my fervent wishes that a
brighter cloud may soon dispel the present gloom. I hope
much from the air of Pisa for Mrs. Hunt.
Lord Byron’s departure gives me pleasure; for whatever
may be the present difficulties and disappointments, they
are small, to what you would have suffered had he re-
mained with you. This I say in the spirit of prophecy so
gather consolation from it. I only have time enough to
scrawl a hasty adieu and am
Affectionately Your
J.W.

P.S. Why do you talk of never enjoying minutes like the

past, are you going to join your friend Plato or do you ex-
pect I shall do so soon?

…the lighter tone indicates that she was still playing the role of lady in a
drama of courtly love, but the fact the letter was even written says a
great deal…”
“…her postscript is interesting: she picks up on his use of the word
‘forever’: it’s rather chilling, given what happened…”
“…it’s hard to tell whether he was simply referring to his realization
that their living arrangements would soon come to an end due to Mary’s
demands, or if it were a sort of premonition: remember, his letter to
Trelawny asking about the Prussic acid was written on June 18th, only
two weeks before this letter…”
“…so do you think it was a kind of suicide?”
“…that’s the question, really–it’s kept biographers busy ever since,
and I’m not really sure it can be answered; in fact, I’m certain it can’t be
with any real certainty…”
“…but we can speculate…”
“…yes, so let me first lay it all out for you, There’s still Sunday, July
7th: Shelley spent most of the day in the company of Hunt, showing him
around Pisa. According to Hunt, they walked arm-in-arm, Shelley ‘never
looking better.’ They went to see the sites: the leaning tower, the Duo-
mo, and the Camposanto, where they saw ‘The Triumph of Death’…”
“…death again–it’s eerie…”
“…and the series of premonitions continued: when Shelley went to
say goodbye to Hunt’s wife, Marianne, he is said to have told her, ‘If I
die tomorrow I have lived to be older than my father, I am 90 years of
age’–a statement somewhat like Baudelaire’s claim to have lived three
seconds for every normal man’s one second. He also visited Mrs. Ma-
son, and she, too, reported he had never been in better spirits; however,

585
she recorded that the next night she had two dreams about Shelley: in
one dream Shelley was poor and outcast, looked pale and melancholy,
and refused her offer of food; in the other, Percy Florence had died. It’s
hard to know whether such accounts were embellished after the fact or
not, but even if they were, they’re uncanny in any case. Not much more
happened before the actual voyage: Hunt lent Shelley the volume of
Keats poems that would be found in his pocket after his body washed
up–Shelley had evidently misplaced his own copy. All we know about
the rest of that day is that Shelley bid Hunt goodbye, and took a coach to
Livorno that evening. In the morning of July 8th he went to his banker to
cash the fifty pound note Byron had given him, and then it seems there
was some conflict between Trelawny and Shelley, although we don’t
know anything precisely, as Trelawny covered his tracks quite well. My
guess is it was about Byron’s plans…”
“…the Geneva idea?”
“…yes. Shelley, despite wanting to be out of range of Byron, knew
that the journal would have a greater chance of success if Byron were in
Italy than in Switzerland, and so he was undoubtedly instrumental in
persuading Byron to go to Lucca for Hunt’s sake, which was far more
important than Trelawny’s desire to ship the Bolivar overland for the
novelty of sailing her on Lake Geneva. Shelley would have been the one
to tell Trelawny: he certainly must have been disappointed, and may
have even blamed Shelley. There were purportedly also some words
with Captain Roberts, who felt they ought to wait a day to ensure the
weather was settled: there had been a thunderstorm in the morning that
cleared up by noon, but the weather was still sultry and unsettled; in
fact, although it hasn’t been fully corroborated and it contradicts his oth-
er statements, Roberts claimed that he embarked with them on the Don
Juan but returned on another boat after they left the harbor…”
“…why?”
“…if he actually did it, it may have been because he judged the seas
too treacherous–as he couldn’t swim. Perhaps he didn’t want his lack of
courage at the last moment connected to the legend–especially given he
was the boat designer! Certainly his other accounts reveal him to be a
consummate liar, for he later revised his story and claimed not to have
been on the boat at all, so one of the versions is a lie. Sifting through all
the myriad of facts and counter-facts as best as I could work them out,
this is what happened: they departed between 12:00 and 12:30 loaded
down with supplies for the Casa Magni. That departure time should
have brought them to San Terenzo by about 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening.
The Bolivar was supposed to have accompanied them as far as Lerici,
but at the last minute, after already weighing anchor, the Bolivar was
stopped because it lacked harbor clearance, and had to remain behind…”
“…if it had gone, they probably would have been saved…”
“…yes. It takes so many seemingly insignificant factors to add up to a
single, fatal conclusion. Trelawny says he went below deck to take a

586
nap, while Roberts claimed that he had climbed the lighthouse, watching
them until he saw them enveloped in the haze of an approaching storm
‘some ten miles out’: I suppose it’s possible–if he had a spyglass at the
top of the lighthouse. At 3:00 he noticed a temporale wind coming up
from the south which rapidly developed into a storm by 3:30: in Livorno
the storm lasted all of twenty minutes. All of the fishing boats returned
to the harbor as it blew in, but there was no sign of the Don Juan. There
were many stories about what happened, but the one I’m most inclined
to believe is the initial account that Roberts wrote to Byron on July 20th:
a felucca had seen the Don Juan around the time the storm unleashed
itself. Someone, probably Charles Vivian, was seen on the masthead
lowering the sails in the high swell, and the next moment the boat was
gone, presumably having foundered: with two or three tons of iron bal-
last, it would have sunk like a stone. The fishing boat claimed they
couldn’t get any closer, which is probably true if the waves were so
high. They later pinpointed the spot as about four to five miles west of
Viareggio, which was corroborated when they later found and salvaged
the wreck. It’s my opinion that all later claims about the incident were
embellishment–primarily by Trelawny and Captain Roberts, who wanted
to hide their culpability in the boat’s poor design, and John Taafe, who
probably wanted to connect himself to the legend…”
“…what were the stories?”
“…the stories kept changing over the years as the myth grew. John
Taafe claimed the Italian captain told him that he had spoken to them
with a speaking trumpet, offering to take them on board: they refused,
and the Italian captain hollered if they wouldn’t come on board, they
should at least reef their sails. Supposedly one of the men began to do
so, and the other, answering to the description of Shelley, pulled at his
arm as if to prevent him from doing so. It sounds either like Taafe trying
to embellish the romantic myth, or perhaps the captain justifying why
they didn’t succeed in rescuing them–probably a bit of both. The really
amazing fabulation was the one concocted by Roberts and reported by
Trelawny…”
“…what was that?”
“…obviously Roberts was positioned as the real target of blame for
what happened, because as a ship builder he should never have built a
partially decked boat with so much sail–and he certainly shouldn’t have
helped modify her to have even more sails, as he did. So, he concocted a
story that the Don Juan had been rammed…”
“…rammed? By whom?”
“…by the boat that reported the sighting of the Don Juan…”
“…and why?”
“…he argued that they thought the boat was Byron’s, and they wanted
to steal the money and cover up the crime…”
“…but what evidence did he have to say that?”

587
 “…it was based on what they found when they finally raised the
wreck of the Don Juan. It was discovered fifteen meters deep–its masts
broken off at the deckline, false stern destroyed, rudder missing, and
stern timbers staved in: Roberts concluded that it had been rammed, but
the damage could just as easily have been done when the false stern was
ripped off when the boat hit bottom, or when they were dragging for and
raising the boat. Then, Trelawny rather conveniently claimed years later
that he had heard that the Italian captain had confessed on his deathbed
to what had happened, but no one corroborated it. The biggest problem
with his story is that most of the contents of the Don Juan were still on
board, including Williams’ trunk with 245 Tuscan crowns–a good deal
of money. I don’t believe any of it, and I think they both were simply
trying to cover their negligence. To return to what actually did happen,
what gave rise to these stories and all the various ambiguities about what
caused the wreck is that there was undoubtedly a mixture of causes,
none sufficient nor necessary unto themselves: certainly the storm and
the poor design of the boat were the largest contributing factors, but
there was also their rush to get home and consequent misjudgment of the
weather; then, there was their limited sailing ability…”
“…and limited swimming ability…”
“…yes, and, finally, some part must have been played by Shelley’s
generally melancholy frame of mind…”
“…you wouldn’t go so far as to say suicidal frame of mind?”
“…some critics and biographers have gone so far, but despite all the
references to sinking boats in his poetry, and despite his having recently
asked Trelawny for Prussic acid, I don’t think he would have knowingly
endangered the lives of Williams and Vivian. If I were to use a single
word, I would describe him as ‘reckless’…”
“…so you see it as purely an accident?”
“…no, I wouldn’t go fully in that direction either. I think everything
that happened and was happening culminated in that wreck: if you draw
circles of causation around the wreck, each circle representing a differ-
ent density of causation in terms of directness and indirectness, the
storm and the poor boat design go in the innermost circle; their hurry to
leave, misjudgment of the weather, and Shelley’s recklessness go in the
next circle out; the reasons behind that hurry–Byron’s fickleness and the
amount of time needed to persuade him to support the journal, Mary’s
letters complaining about the situation, Williams’ rush to be with Jane–
in the next circle; then, further out, all the facts surrounding why Shelley
chose San Terenzo and why Byron had to move to Montenero, and so
on…there’s really no point where you can easily draw a final line, and
also, I think, the more abstract things we’ve been speaking about played
a role too: the late romantics, in general, and Shelley, specifically, hit-
ting a wall or impasse–unable to retreat into realism, unable to advance
into modernity; the socio-political situation as their age advanced into

588
the repressive values of the Victorian period, and so on…in their own
way, those factors played a role as well…”
“…when did the others realize something had happened?”
“…of course communications then weren’t what they are now. Mary,
Jane, and Claire expected them any day, but not on any specific day, and
especially not on Monday, as in San Terenzo it had been stormy all day
long. It rained all day Tuesday, so they had no expectation they would
come then, but when a felucca arrived Wednesday and the crew told
them the Don Juan had sailed Monday, they began to be worried. On
Thursday, Jane decided to leave for Livorno the next day, but the weath-
er had worsened and so she had to wait. At noon on Friday they received
a letter Hunt had written the day after the Don Juan had departed, asking
Shelley to write back as soon as possible, for they were fearing for their
safety due to the storm. Jane exclaimed ‘Then it is all over!’ but Mary
refused to believe it…”
“…what did they do?”
“…they decided to take the postal coach to Livorno, leaving Claire to
stay behind with the three children. They crossed the bay to Lerici,
where no one had heard of any wrecks, and then hurried on to Pisa, fran-
tic for some word. They entered Pisa at midnight and decided to ask
Hunt what had happened, thinking Byron was in Montenero. Mary sud-
denly realized that she would be seeing Hunt for the first time in four
years, and the thought of the question she would ask–if they had heard
anything–so seized her that she almost went into convulsions…”
“…is that when they went up the stairs we saw yesterday at the
Palazzo Lanfranchi to meet Teresa Guiccioli and Byron?”
“…yes–they said she looked as white as a ghost. I have a passage here
where Lady Blessington recalled Byron’s recollections of the evening–
they draw the scene quite movingly:

I never can forget the night this poor wife rushed into my
room at Pisa, with a face as pale as marble, and terror im-
pressed on her brow, demanding, with all the tragic im-
petuosity of grief and alarm, where was her husband! Vain
were all our attempts to calm her; a desperate sort of cour-
age seemed to give her energy to confront the horrible
truth that awaited her; it was the courage of despair. I have
seen nothing in tragedy on the stage so powerful, or so af-
fecting, as her appearance, and it often presents itself to
my memory. I knew nothing then of the catastrophe, but
the vividness of her terror communicated itself to me, and
I feared the worst, which fears were, alas! too soon fully
realised.

…with a last burst of energy, she asked whether they had heard anything
about the boat or not. Trelawny had already come to Pisa to ask about

589
any letters from the Casa Magni, so Byron was aware something might
be amiss, but he knew as little as they did. They left immediately for Li-
vorno, arriving at 2:00 in the morning, but they were brought to the
wrong inn and could find neither Roberts nor Trelawny, so they waited
sleeplessly until 6:00, when they ventured out and finally found Roberts,
who related to them what he knew: only the events up until the time that
he lost sight of them. After sending a courier to check at each of the
towers along the coast, the two women set out again for Lerici at 9:00
that morning, stopping in Pisa only long enough to deliver a letter from
Roberts to Byron asking for permission to use the Bolivar to search the
coast…”
“…didn’t they rest? They were traveling non-stop…”
“…Mary wrote that to rest would have meant ‘surrendering to their
despair’: as long as they still had no confirmation, there was hope. They
were joined by Trelawny, and when they got as far as Viareggio they
received the first concrete confirmation that something terrible had hap-
pened: a cask of water and the small dingy Williams had made for the
boat were found washed up on the shore, and yet they still clung to the
faint hope that these had been thrown or washed overboard in the storm.
They reached the Magra River by 10:30 that evening: Mary wrote later
that while fording the river she was once again seized with hysteria as
she looked down the river to where it entered the sea, and suddenly real-
ized that it was their grave. They crossed the bay to San Terenzo, where
they awaited word for another six excruciating days. There was a festi-
val going on, and Mary recorded that the village people would pass on
the beach in the middle of the night singing and dancing in the sirocco
wind. Trelawny left for Livorno on July 18th to continue the search; after
he left, a letter arrived from Roberts. Claire intercepted it and did not
allow the others to see it, as she found a report from Roberts that some
bodies had washed up: identification wasn’t certain yet. Claire wrote to
Hunt on the 19th asking his help both to confirm it and to aide her in
breaking the news–here’s the letter:

My Dear Sir,
Mr. Trelawny went for Livorno last night–there came
this afternoon a letter to him from Captain Roberts–he had
left orders with Mary that she might open it; I did not al-
low her to see it–he writes there is no hope but they are
lost and their bodies found 3 miles from Via Reggio; this
letter is dated July 15th, and says he had heard this news
July 14th. Outside the letter he has added–and I am now on
my way to Via Reggio to ascertain the facts or no facts
contained in my letter. This then implies he has doubts as
I also doubt the report because we had a letter from the
Captain of the Port of Via Reggio July 15th later than
when Mr. Roberts writes to say nothing has been found;

590
 for this reason I have not shewn his letter either to Mary
or Mrs. Williams–how can I? even if it were true?
I pray you answer this by return messenger. I assure
you I cannot break it to them, nor is my spirit, weakened
as it is from constant suffering capable of giving them
consolation, or protecting them from the first burst of their
despair. I entreat you, to give me some counsel, or to ar-
range some method by which they should know it. I know
not what further to add except that their case is desperate
in every respect, and Death would be the greatest kindness
to us all.
Ever your sincere friend
Claire

…I can’t blame her for not wanting to be the bearer of such a mes-
sage…”
“…I can imagine her position: coming so soon after the death of Alle-
gra, the news must have been unbearable. I think she must have meant
the last line, at least for herself at that time–what was left for her? Mary
and Jane had their children, Claire had nothing but memories…so how
did they find out, in the end?”
“…first of all, it had to be confirmed. What they later confirmed was
Williams’ body washed up on the 17th near the mouth of the Serchio
near the hamlet of Migliarino, but when Hunt, Byron, and Roberts ar-
rived the next day, the body was already buried by health officers who
refused to allow them to disinter it for identification. Shelley’s body
washed ashore near Viareggio on the 18th at roughly the same place
where the dinghy was found. Trelawny arrived just in time to identify it
before it was buried in the sand–he wrote about it in his Recollections:

The face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by
the dress, were fleshless. The tall slight figure, the jacket,
the volume of Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keats’s po-
ems in the other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the act
of reading, had hastily thrust it away, were all too familiar
to me to leave a doubt on my mind that this mutilated
corpse was any other than Shelley’s.

…elsewhere he mentioned he also recognized Shelley’s nankeen trou-

sers and white silk socks…”
“…‘nankeen trousers’?”
“…pants made from a fabric like rough linen: they were woven in
China, were yellowish or cream-colored, and were favored by sailors, as
they were usually loose enough to allow a good deal of mobility. They
became a style in the 19th Century, as they’re mentioned in Stendhal,
Dumas, Dickens, and other writers…”

591
 “…with silk socks! That juxtaposition certainly sounds like Shel-
ley…”
“…yes, the outfit of the Tory radical. Even the description I’ve just
read is most likely embellished with a ‘Trelawnyism’: while I have little
doubt the volume of Keats was found in his pocket, the volume of Aes-
chylus found in his other pocket sounds too good to be true–as if Shel-
ley, the author of Prometheus Unbound, was linked in death to the au-
thor of Prometheus Bound! Actually, someone–I can’t remember who–
went even further by suggesting that Shelley still had the Aeschylus
grasped in his hands when they found him, clutching it after ten days at
sea! Whatever it was that Trelawny was showing people as the volume
of Aeschylus found in Shelley’s pocket for years after, I’m sure it wasn’t
what it was purported as being–Trelawny probably took a volume and
thrust it in a pail of seawater for a day or two…”
“…but you have to admit the Keats coincidence is rather mysterious,
given what Shelley wrote in his poem Adonais about the ‘soul of Ado-
nais’…”
“…yes, it’s uncanny given what happened–the boat, the storm, his
death; and the fact they were eventually buried in the Protestant Ceme-
tery in Rome multiplies the mystery–even Trelawny couldn’t have
cooked that all up…”
“…is there any significance in the poem the book was claimed to be
opened to…”
“…it’s been variously claimed that it was The Eve of St. Agnes, La-
mia, and Hyperion: but the truth is that when they dug up the body
again, all that was left was the cover of the book. It’s hard to know what
Shelley would have been thinking as he reread Keats’ final volume–
perhaps he had become more capable of suspending his own ego and
appreciating the volume for its real beauties. Certainly the Odes ought to
have resonated for him more than ever: the frozen moment of desire in
Ode on a Grecian Urn, the ‘I have been half in love with easeful death’
of Ode to a Nightingale. I can’t think of anything quite like it in the his-
tory of literature–I mean how Keats’ death links to Shelley’s poems, and
Shelley’s death links to Keats’ poems…”
“…yes, it’s uncanny…”
“…Charles Vivian, the boat-boy, washed up the same day as Shelley,
but about ten miles further north near Massa. Trelawny proceeded on to
San Terenzo, arriving there 7:30 in the evening of July 19th with his ter-
rible confirmation of their worst fears. His Recollections dramatize the
scene, but I think they seem close enough to what actually happened to
be worth reading:

I mounted my horse, and rode to the Gulf of Spezia, put

up my horse and walked until I caught sight of the lone
house on the sea-shore in which Shelley and Williams
had dwelt, and where their widows still lived. Hitherto in

592
 my frequent visits–in the absence of direct evidence to
the contrary–I had buoyed up their spirits by maintaining
that it was not impossible but that the friends still lived;
now I had to extinguish the last hope of these forlorn
women. I had ridden fast, to prevent any ruder messen-
ger from bursting in upon them. As I stood on the
threshold of their house, the bearer, or rather confirmer,
of news which would rack every fibre of their quivering
frames to the utmost, I paused, and, looking at the sea,
my memory reverted to our joyous parting only a few
days before.
The two families, then, had all been in the verandah,
overhanging a sea so clear and calm that every star was
reflected on the water, as if it had been a mirror; the
young mothers singing some merry tune, with the ac-
companiment of a guitar. Shelley’s shrill laugh–I heard it
still–rang in my ears, with Williams’s friendly hail, the
general buona notte of all the joyous party, and the ear-
nest entreaty to me to return as soon as possible, and not
to forget the commissions they had severally given me. I
was in a small boat beneath them, slowly rowing myself
on board the ‘Bolivar,’ at anchor in the bay, loath to part
from what I verily believed to have been at that time the
most united, and happiest, set of human beings in the
whole world. And now by the blow of an idle puff of
wind the scene had changed. Such is human happiness.
My reverie was broken by a shriek from the nurse Ca-
terina, as, crossing the hall, she saw me in the doorway.
After asking her a few questions, I went up the stairs,
and unannounced, entered the room. I neither spoke, nor
did they question me. Mrs. Shelley’s large grey eyes
were fixed on my face. I turned away. Unable to bear
this horrid silence, with a convulsive effort she ex-
claimed–
‘Is there no hope?’
I did not answer, but left the room, and sent the serv-
ant with the children to them. The next day I prevailed
upon them to return with me to Pisa. The misery of that
night and the journey of the next day, and of many days
and nights that followed, I can neither describe nor for-
get.

…this account is one of the few places where I think Trelawny was un-
derstating rather than overstating–and to very good effect. Mary wrote a
letter to Mrs. Gisborne at the end of August where she singled out for
praise his behavior on that night…here it is:

593
 …what I most thank him for is this. When on that night
of agony, that Friday he returned to announce that hope
was dead for us–when he had told me that his earthly
frame being found, his spirit was no longer to be my
guide, protector & companion in this dark world–he
didn’t attempt to console me, that would have been too
cruelly useless; but he launched forth into as it were an
overflowing & eloquent praise of my divine Shelley–
until I almost was happy that I was that unhappy to be
fed by the praise of him, and to dwell on the eulogy that
his loss thus drew from his friend.

…the next day they packed–it was too much to stay here near the sea
that had taken their men–and they left for Pisa, where they lived together
in the old rooms at the Tre Palazzi until September…”
“…and when were the bodies cremated?”
“…I’ll tell you about it when we get to Viareggio…”
“…how far is it from here?”
“…a bus ride back to La Spezia, and then forty-five minutes by train I
suppose, give or take a little…”
“…when should we go?”
“…let’s have a coffee, and then we can go to our room and get our
things…”
“…fine…tell me again how long they stayed here…”
“…eleven weeks–only a short time, really…”
“…but it’s like what you said about the eternal return–about the inten-
sity of those events that return: they’re marked forever in time…”
“…yes, the story has been told and retold time and again. We’ll never
arrive at some ‘definitive’ way to tell it, but certainly the myths and lies
can be partially identified: ‘Shelley the mad poet’; ‘Shelley the tragico-
heroic personification of Romanticism,’ ‘Shelley the ineffectual angel’;
‘Shelley and Mary, the ideal literary couple’; or, today, ‘Shelley the
male chauvinist,’ and so on: all these myths contain serious distortions,
just as my view of Shelley undoubtedly contains certain distortions as
well, due to my own focus and subjectivity, but I hope time can provide
a kind of objectivity…”
“…so what would be the key aspects you would like to see retold dif-
ferently–Shelley’s relations to Mary and Claire?”
“…certainly: I’ll never believe that Shelley didn’t have an intimate
relationship with Claire at least during some of the periods of their lives
together, and simply wishing it away in the face of evidence such as
their secret letters, as certain biographers and editors have done, doesn’t
serve the truth. It’s important not to be afraid of the truth–to hold it as
the highest value even if it isn’t fully attainable…”
“…and what other aspects?”

594
 “…the story should be told within a larger socio-historical and intel-
lectual context. I dislike the way Shelley has been claimed by English
departments as sort of an aesthetic fetish object, especially by formalist
critics: that he became an exile was a fundamental fact of his being, and
yet it’s a common practice to teach lyrics like Ode to the West Wind or
the Dejection ode as if they were isolated, self-contained lyrics. I think if
I had only been introduced to the standard Shelley lyrics in isolation, as
most students are, I would have had only a passing interest in him…”
“…so what would satisfy you?”
“…I spoke about the problem of biography the other day–it’s not so
much that I believe so-called ‘definitive biographies’ are wrong, but
they are a specialty of the Anglo-American positivistic mind-set: the
form, as it exists now, tends to draw a circle around its subject, with
phenomenal ‘facts’ being how the circle is gradually filled in; in my
view, there’s room for the kind of work that expands beyond that circle,
opening out speculatively to other dimensions that gradually shade off
into the noumenal…”
“…and what about film as a medium–couldn’t images, and the sound-
track, help evoke the point where the unknown is reached?”
“…it could be told if it were something like a mini-series–a quality
mini-series like Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, or Brideshead Re-
visited...”
“…what are they?”
“…they were two excellent mini-series made in the early 80s–it seems
to have been a golden age for that genre. I would love to see a well-
researched, well-acted, twelve or fifteen hour dramatization of Shelley’s
Italian years as accurately as it could be done without dodging the unsa-
vory aspects of Shelley’s life, and without over-embellishing or roman-
ticizing other aspects of his life…”
“…I have this feeling that when filmmakers attempt a portrait of the
romantics they feel they have to be overly dramatic in order to live up to
the modern sense of the word ‘romantic’…”
“…that’s true. The story is dramatic enough in itself, so dramatizing it
further always goes too far…here are our cappuccinos…grazie…”
“…do you know what never ceases to amaze me? Their ages–they
were mostly in their 20s that summer, right?”
“…let’s see, in that summer of 1822 Shelley was a month from his
30th birthday, Mary was…25, which makes Claire 24. Trelawny was 29,
Byron was 34, and Hunt was the ‘old man’ among them–at 37!”
“…but I understand why Shelley said he felt like a man of 90…”
“…one doesn’t get any older than that…”
“…no, one doesn’t…”
They call for and pay their bill, and return to their hotel room to get
what they need for the trip. They take a taxi to the train station in La
Spezia, and board an Interregio to Viareggio. The train passes railway
storage yards with huge blocks of marble cut from the Carrara cliffs

595
gleaming snow white and pink above them. They arrive at the Viareggio
station and walk several blocks to where the seafront begins at the har-
bor, bordered by a wide boulevard lined with palm trees. There are res-
taurants and tourist shops on the beach side, hotels mostly dating from
the late 19th century on the other. They walk down to the beach near the
water, where signs declare a five meter access corridor in front of the sea
of parti-colored umbrellas that stretch into the distance.
“…look at all the people! It reminds me of my childhood visits to the
Black Sea…”
“…I knew it was already a beach resort by the late 19th Century, but I
didn’t expect it to be so crowded. I read that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke
came here in 1898, and it was already a big resort then…”
“…Rilke? What was he doing here?”
“…recovering from a devastating meeting with one of his heroes,
Stefan George. He had been visiting Florence and met George by chance
in the Boboli Gardens. He was probably expecting praise of his work,
but instead George rebuked him, telling him that he shouldn’t publish so
much so young. Rilke fled Florence in shame and consternation, coming
here to symbolically wash away the experience…”
“…did he know Shelley had been cremated here?”
“…it’s a nice thought, but I doubt it…”
“…I wonder if anyone among all these umbrellas knows it! Where do
you think it actually happened?”
“…it’s supposedly about a kilometer from the center of town, alt-
hough I’ve also seen two kilometers mentioned as well. I guess we can
measure from that canal over there, which goes right through the center.
There’s obviously not going to be a marker in the midst of all this…let’s
see, we’re about two hundred meters from the canal here, so if we take
eight hundred steps, I guess that would be close enough to where one of
the great scenes of the ‘Age of Romanticism’ took place…ready?”
“…ready…”
They walk down the beach just above the waterline past the rows and
rows of lounges and umbrellas, counting their steps as they go. When
they reach the final step, it’s no different from any other part of the
beach: rows of sun chairs and umbrellas. They spread out a large beach
towel between the waterline and where the private beach begins, but no
sooner have they done so then a beach attendant comes and tells them
that the path along the beach is only for passage, and the rest of the
beach reserved for patrons of the hotel. They protest, explaining as best
they can in Italian how far they have come just to sit on the part of the
beach where Shelley was cremated. The attendant pauses, smiles, and
takes a more polite attitude, and explains that Shelley was not burned
there, but at a place which is now in the town itself, two blocks inland
from the beach and closer to the town, where there is now a monument
and a piazza named after him. He explains that the coastline has ad-
vanced several hundred meters since Shelley’s time, and points to a

596
lighthouse near the harbor from the late 19th Century, explaining that it
is now inland when it used to be right at the shore. They shake hands,
thank him, and set off for the piazza.
“…Shelley would turn over in his grave if he could see this place to-
day–the whole beach privatized, the crowds of people…”
“…we can’t always be so lucky to find somewhere lovely like Este,
San Guiliano or San Terenzo…”
“…yes, and, anyway, we were very lucky we found someone so
knowledgeable about the town’s history: I would have been so disap-
pointed if the only thing we found were rows of beach umbrellas…”
“…so we’ve gone two blocks, now we turn right…”
“…yes, now it should be on the left in a blocks or two…”
They walk until they come to a small park with palm trees, small plots
of grass within white stone walkways, and in the center a white marble
pedestal with a black bust of Shelley.
“…there it is! Let’s see what it says: it translates as ‘1894, for P.B.
Shelley,’ then the obligatory ‘cor cordium’ followed by ‘in 1822
drowned in this sea, cremated on this shore,’ then something I’m not
sure of–something like, ‘along which he meditated on the promise of
liberty,’ then something about ‘a page in posterity’ I think, then I can’t
read the last part–it’s too washed out, then something about a ‘genera-
tion’ marking ‘the struggle, the tears, the redemption’–that’s the best I
can do…”
“…there’s a modern sign in Italian and English: ‘P.B. Shelley, A
work of Urbano Lucchesi unveiled the 30th of September 1894. This
monument was erected on this square near the place where, in the sum-
mer of 1822, was cremated the corpse of the great English poet drowned
in a shipwreck. The epigraph is by Giovanni Bovio’…”
“…so it was put up at the height of the ‘gay 90s’ when Viareggio real-
ly became a full-fledged resort, and most of the more beautiful hotels
here were built. Rilke could have seen it…”
“…these days probably not so many tourists notice it now that it’s so
far from the beachfront…shall we go have something cool to drink at
Cafè Shelley, over there, and a bite to eat?”
“…oh, I didn’t notice it–yes, and then you can tell me what really
happened here–not the myth…”
They cross the side street bordering the piazza to a small café with
sidewalk tables set apart from the sidewalk by rhododendron planters. A
chair blocks entry to the terrace.
“…no, wait, they look closed–probably they’re only open during the
evenings…”
“…go sit in the shade there and commune with Shelley, and I’ll go
around the corner to the grocery we saw–what do you want?”
“…for me just a beer, a baguette, and some cheese would be fine–oh,
and a piece of fruit–a peach or something like that…”
“…ok, I’ll be right back…”

597
 He goes to sit on a concrete bench in the shade of a palm tree to the
side of the statue, pulling from his bag a notebook and two books. In
five minutes she returns with a plastic shopping bag, sits next to him,
and pulls out two beers, baguettes, slices of Emmental cheese wrapped
in waxed paper, a plastic container of black olives, and two peaches.
“…I got some olives too. May I have your Swiss army knife to cut
open the baguettes?”
“…yes, here it is–I’ll just open the beers…there you go…”
“…thanks…so, tell me…”
“…well, first imagine this as a sandy wilderness not too far up above
the waterline, and the sea just over there–no buildings, no bathers, no
umbrellas, no noise but the wind and the surf. Trelawny’s account of the
cremation is the standard one, and as he had taken charge of the whole
thing and understood its historical and ultimately mythic significance, he
made sure it was dramatic and that it was well-recorded–although of
course I’m sure he made himself look good compared to the others…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…Byron doesn’t come off looking terribly well in the proceedings,
although I’m sure that there’s some truth in Trelawny’s account of his
behavior. In any case, Trelawny was certainly the man of the hour dur-
ing these days and weeks, and the women were always grateful for it.
Trelawny had to deal with the petty bureaucratic matters brought up by
both the Tuscan and Lucchese authorities, as the bodies had washed up
in both territories–I’m sure it wasn’t easy. For example, having first
commissioned lead and oak coffins to be made, he discovered the offi-
cials wouldn’t let the bodies be transported: they demanded they be
burned on the spot. Shelley’s coffin had already been made before he
found out, and Mary was left with the bill. He arranged for the creation
of what was variously described by different witnesses as a ‘furnace,’ an
‘oven,’ and a ‘cauldron,’ but what actually seems to have resembled a
grill for roasting–a platform of iron bars a little under two meters long
by sixty centimeters wide, on a base roughly sixty centimeters high…”
“…that sounds terrible…”
“…there may have been some sheet metal covering it, as Trelawny
writes of ‘uncovering the ashes’ when it was over. He tried to lessen the
dreadfulness of it by making it a ritual burning; so, following what he
maintained was Greek custom, he bought incense, wine, salt, sugar, and
honey to burn with the bodies, and it must have worked, as everyone
there mentioned the strange beauty of the flames. He arrived in the Boli-
var at Migliarino, south of here, on the evening of August 14th, but be-
cause it was too late to begin the cremation he stayed at an inn and wrote
to Byron to come the next day at noon…”
“…the women weren’t there?”
“…no. Mary had visited the grave at some point–and perhaps Jane did
too, but the women didn’t go to the cremations as is sometimes depicted
in drawings and films by those wanting to make of the scene a crucifix-

598
ion or Pietà. It’s good that they didn’t go, because the scene was grue-
some and quite different from the romanticized accounts of the crema-
tion. In the morning Trelawny went to the first site with Captain Shenley
of the Bolivar and a health officer, and they were met by Hunt and By-
ron, who had arrived by carriage, and had brought with them more sol-
diers and officials–the presence of the soldiers was helpful, as they
rounded up fuel for the furnace and opened the grave with shovels, mat-
tocks, tongs, and various other implements. I warn you, the account is
rather grisly:

The first indication of their having found the body was

the appearance of a black silk handkerchief–I grubbed
this out with a stick, for we were not allowed to touch an-
ything with our hands–then some shreds of linen were
met with, and a boot with the bone of the leg and the foot
in it. On the removal of a layer of brushwood, all that
now remained of my lost friend was exposed–a shapeless
mass of bones and flesh. The limbs separated from the
trunk on being touched.
‘Is that a human body?’ exclaimed Byron; ‘why, it’s
more like the carcass of a sheep, or any other animal, than
a man: this is a satire on our pride and folly.’
I pointed to the letters E.E.W. on the black silk hand-
kerchief.
Byron looking on, muttered, ‘The entrails of a worm
hold together longer than the potter’s clay of which man
is made. Hold! Let me see the jaw,’ he added, as they
were removing the skull, ‘I can recognize any one by the
teeth, with whom I have talked. I always watch the lips
and the mouth: they tell me what the tongue and eyes try
to conceal.’
I had a boot of Williams’s with me; it exactly corre-
sponded with the one found in the grave. The remains
were removed piecemeal into the furnace.
‘Don’t repeat this with me,’ said Byron; ‘let my carcass
rot where it falls.’
The funereal pyre was now ready; I applied the fire, and
the materials being dry and resinous the pine-wood burnt
furiously, and drove us back. It was hot enough before,
there was no breath of air, and the loose sand scorched
our feet. As soon as the flames became clear, and allowed
us to approach, we threw frankincense and salt into the
furnace, and poured a flask of wine and oil over the body.
The Greek oration was omitted, for we had lost our Hel-
lenic bard. It was now so insufferably hot that the officers
and soldiers were all seeking shade.

599
…they decided to go for a swim to cool off–Byron got sick, and Captain
Shenley had cramps. They went back to the pyre at 4:00 P.M., and noth-
ing was left but ashes, so they cooled the grill in the sea, and gathered
the ashes in a small, oak box with an inscribed brass plate on it. Then,
Byron and Hunt returned to Pisa, and Trelawny returned to the inn. They
met again the next morning, August 16th–Trelawny taking a boat up the
coast to where we are right now, Byron and Hunt arriving by carriage
again. They had to dig a trench thirty meters long to finally locate the
body, and when they did, they found it so close to the surf line that salt-
water had seeped into the grave. Trelawny gave another detailed account
of the event, and it seems that he was the only English witness, as Byron
went off on a three hour swim and Hunt stayed inside the carriage, peep-
ing out from time to time. Trelawny rewrote his original account into
one not quite as grisly for publication–although it’s still grisly enough.
In his final version of the Recollections, he placed the original account
in the appendix, so there doesn’t seem to have been any reason to sup-
press it after all…”
“…maybe because of the women?”
“…I thought that too, but he didn’t have much respect for Mary by
then, and both Claire and Jane were alive when the final, 1878 version
was published. Maybe he did it just for the sake of posterity, to have as
many of the facts available as possible, as he also published translations
of the documents of the Italian officials in the appendix. I’ll read the
published version, and insert some of the missing details from the sup-
pressed account. I’ll start with his rather embellished description of the
scene:

The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so ex-

actly harmonized with Shelley’s genius, that I could im-
agine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the islands
of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us…

…already I have doubts–the closest island, Gorgona, is fifty kilometers

to the southwest, and the others a hundred kilometers away:

…old battlemented watch-towers stretched along the

coast, backed by the marble-created Apennines glistening
in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and
not a human dwelling was in sight…

…”
“…‘not a human dwelling’–things have really changed since then!”
“…and the fact this spot was close to the surf–what is it now? It must
be three hundred meters or more…so, to continue:

600
 As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of
loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no
better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in
tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure
yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to
the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I
power to check the sacrilege–the work went on silently
in the deep and unresisting sand, not a word was spoken,
for the Italians have a touch of sentiment, and their feel-
ings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron was silent
and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a
dull hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock;
the iron had struck a skull, and the body was soon uncov-
ered. Lime had been strewn on it; this, or decomposition,
had the effect of staining it of a dark and ghastly indigo
colour. Byron asked me to preserve the skull for him; but
remembering that he had formerly used one as a drinking
cup, I was determined Shelley’s should not be so pro-
faned. The limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the
case of Williams’ body, so that the corpse was removed
entire into the furnace.

…here he diverges from his private account for the sake of the myth, for
his earlier description he has the body in several pieces–listen to this:

Both the legs were separated at the knee-joints–the thigh

bones bared and the flesh hanging loosely about them–the
hands were off and the arm bones protruding–the skull
black and no flesh or features of the face remaining. The
clothes had in some degree protected the body–the flesh
was of a dingy blue.

…now, back to the published account:

I had taken the precaution of having more and larger

pieces of timber, in consequence of my experience of the
day before of the difficulty of consuming a corpse in the
open air with our apparatus. After the fire was well kin-
dled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and
more wine was poured over Shelley’s dead body than he
had consumed during his life. This with the oil and the
salt made the yellow flames glisten and quiver. The heat
from the sun and fire was so intense that the atmosphere
was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and the
heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where it

601
 had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the
back of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the
furnace, the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled
as in a cauldron, for a very long time…

…”
“…and that’s supposed to be the less grisly version? It’s terrible…”
“…yes, they thought so too–Trelawny said the soldiers watching had
to resort to brandy to be able to stand it. Trelawny continues:

The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the

iron, and to reduce its content to grey ashes. The only
portions that were not consumed were some fragments of
bones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all
was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic
from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and
had any one seen me do the act I should have been put in-
to quarantine.

…he described the heart in his uncensored account as having an ‘oily

fluid’ burning with an intense blue flame, and that it was ‘unusually
small,’ something Hunt later changed to ‘unusually large’…”
“…is it true that Trelawny took the heart?”
“…yes it is–here’s Byron’s brief account that he wrote to his friend
Thomas More:

…we have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Wil-

liams on the sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and
regular interment. You can have no idea what an extraor-
dinary effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate shore,
with mountains in the back-ground and the sea before,
and the singular appearance the salt and frankincense
gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed, except
his heart, which would not take the flame, and is now
preserved in spirits of wine…

…his account was rather brief because he wasn’t actually there for most
of it–actually, Byron’s swim ended up causing him a terrible sunburn,
and he described his skin peeling of in large pieces like a snake–at least
one critic noted that there may have been an unintentional, sympathetic
identification with Shelley, who he called the ‘Snake’…”
“…and what about the heart–what did they do with it?”
“…that’s a story in itself! Apparently Hunt begged for it, so Trelawny
gave it to him and he put it in what Byron calls ‘spirits of wine,’ but
what we know by the name of grappa–essentially a grape-based
schnapps or slivovitz. When Mary found out, she asked Hunt for it and

602
he refused to give it to her, and it became an object of considerable con-
flict between them. Hunt claimed that his love for Shelley precluded any
other claim, but Byron supported Mary’s claim and said something nasty
about Hunt only wanting it to keep in a glass case in order to ‘write son-
nets to it’! After a week of ridiculous squabbling, Jane was able to talk
Hunt into giving it up by suggesting Shelley would have been dismayed
about the irony of his heart being a source of contention between those
he had loved…”
“…to say the least!”
“…although that’s what happened anyway, figuratively speaking;
however, speaking of things literally, Mary regained possession of the
heart and took it back with her to England, and they found it enfolded in
some pages of the poem Adonais in her desk after she died. It was final-
ly buried in the same tomb as their son, Percy Florence–I suppose they
didn’t know what else to do with it. Actually, I remember reading
somewhere that a pathologist claimed that if it hadn’t burned, as
Trelawny testified, it was probably calcified due to his laudanum use,
or…it might even have been his calcified liver, all shriveled up due to
the heat!”
“…it’s not as poetic, but probably more appropriate. The whole thing
was so bizarre–fighting over body parts: I’d like to see that portrayed in
a mini-series!”
“…death seems to bring on hysterical behavior in people–Hunt wrote
the following about the carriage ride back to Pisa:

Lord Byron had not shone that day, even in his cups,
which usually brought out his best qualities. As to myself,
I had bordered upon emotions which I have never suf-
fered myself to indulge, and which, foolishly as well as
impatiently, rendered calamity, as somebody termed it,
‘an affront, and not a misfortune’. The barouche drove
rapidly through the forest of Pisa. We sang, we laughed,
we shouted. I even felt a gaiety the more shocking, be-
cause it was real and a relief. What the coachman thought
of us, God knows, but he helped to make up a ghastly
trio…I wish to have no such waking dream again.

…it was clearly some kind of hysterical mourning process, as was the
fight over the heart…”
“…it’s as if they had fallen into a collective insanity…”
“…Shelley had been the center of their solar system, and when his
light burned out, they were left spinning and drifting in the blackness
and emptiness of space–as Trelawny wrote, ‘left to our own devices, we
degenerated apace.’ There was a brief period of intense togetherness–
especially among the three women, but by September all of them would
head in different directions, with only a core group remaining: Mary,

603
Byron, and Hunt in Genoa, and that group only lasted a year before they
went their separate ways. However, Shelley–or rather his immanence–
continued to have a hold on all of them; in fact, much more than when
he was living…but this is where I’ll falter a bit, as I don’t know really
how to tell the story coherently–it has so many different threads…”
“…start by telling me what the immediate reaction to Shelley’s death
was in England…”
“…it’s quite depressing, really, but I suppose it was to be expected.
The first notice was on August 4th in the Examiner, which I think was
just an announcement, and then the conservative journals started in on
him the next day: the Courier wrote, ‘Shelley, the writer of some infidel
poetry, has been drowned; now he knows whether there is a God or no.’
It became steadily worse from that point on, with an exception every
now and then–for example Horace Smith, Shelley’s former banker,
wrote a very nice eulogy to Shelley in Paris. Godwin, of course, saw it
as a chance to get his hands on Shelley’s estate, and when he found out,
he immediately began to suggest he should be appointed Mary’s lawyer,
and that she should return to England immediately…”
“…and Shelley’s family?”
“…we only know how his father, Timothy Shelley, reacted: he said
‘God’s will be done!’ and found the whole thing an embarrassment.
Medwin said that the lack of any real feeling in Shelley’s family dis-
gusted him. Timothy Shelley refused to allow Mary to publish anything
written by or about Shelley under the threat of being entirely disinherit-
ed. She was consequently in a very bad position, as she had hoped to
raise money by publishing Shelley’s works…”
“…what an old bastard!”
“…yes, but his reward for his asinine behavior is that he’s gone down
in the annals of ‘family members of great writers and thinkers who real-
ly screwed them over’–along with the mothers of Hölderlin and Balzac,
the sisters of Nietzsche and Rimbaud, the brothers of Marguerite Duras,
the fathers of Kafka and Djuna Barnes…”
“…it’s as if variability causes something like negative immanence in
its shadow…”
“…I think it does, but, to be fair, also positive immanence–the broth-
ers of Van Gogh or James Joyce, the daughters of Galileo and Milton,
and so on. In any case, Timothy Shelley will always be a symbol for pa-
ternal intransigence, parochialism, and parsimoniousness…”
“…so there is a kind of justice in the end…”
“…I’m convinced of it, but like Kafka’s adage, ‘there is hope, but not
for us’: Shelley didn’t live long enough to see it, but we who come later
can see it. That’s why biographies that end with the death of their sub-
jects miss the chance of recording justice as it slowly arrives, not to
mention exploring the nature of human immanence–how a being can
continue to live on as a disembodied energy…”
“…how do you mean?”

604
 “…for example, look at the case of Byron. At the time of Shelley’s
death his life was in disarray–he didn’t know whether he was coming or
going, and he might as well have settled upon South America as upon
Greece. Shelley’s death affected him deeply, and in his mourning there
was a sympathetic identification with Shelley. He wrote to his publisher,
Murray, ‘You are all brutally mistaken about Shelley who was without
exception–the best and least selfish man I ever knew.—I never knew one
who was not a beast in comparison’…and, to his friend Thomas Moore,
‘There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-
naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him
justice now, when he can be no better for it.’ In the weeks after the
wreck he was supportive to the women from a distance, and for almost a
year afterwards he was supportive of Mary, to whom he offered finan-
cial aid in many forms. But I think there was an even deeper change in
Byron than mere charity: aside from his decision to support the journal, I
think his ultimate decision to fight for the independence of the Greeks
was his way of trying to live up to Shelley’s spirit–to finally do some-
thing…”
“…do you think he knew it would be so dangerous?”
“…yes I do, although his eventual death of swamp fever was certainly
not the glorious death he imagined…”
“…and was his writing in any way affected by Shelley’s death?”
“…if you mean did he write any direct tributes to Shelley, then no:
Byron remained fatally egoistic, especially in regard to his contemporar-
ies. In a later canto of Don Juan where he listed the great poets of the
age, Shelley was conspicuous by his absence, and Keats was ridiculed.
Mary, who had been copying out the canto, hinted at the omission in a
note, but he didn’t take the hint. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t influenced
by Shelley; indeed, at some time during the months following his death
Byron wrote what one critic has called his most ‘Shelleyan’ poem, enti-
tled ‘The Island’; it’s based loosely on the story of the mutiny on the
Bounty…”
“…I thought that happened later–when did the mutiny actually oc-
cur?”
“…April 28th, 1789: the same year as the French Revolution; in fact,
the first violent event that led to the meeting of the Estates-General–the
rioting of workers at Reveillon’s factory, occurred the very same day as
the mutiny. I’m not saying there’s a connection, but revolution was in
the air in that period, and even though Fletcher Christian and his fellow
mutineers were looking more for personal liberty than revolution per se,
it’s an interesting point that the reason for the original voyage was to
collect breadfruit–a sweet, melon-like sort of thing–to grow as a cheap
food source for the slaves on British plantations in the West Indies, so
the over-all effect of the mutiny was a temporary disruption of that little
scheme. The ultimate irony is that when the breadfruit was finally deliv-
ered, later, the slaves found it disgusting and refused to eat it…”

605
 “…and how did Byron adapt the story in his poem?”
“…what is surprising, and Shelleyan, is that the poem explores the
possibility of a kind of paradise being found, and seems to borrow its
inspiration from Shelley’s idea of removing himself and those he loves
to an island, as he projected imaginatively at the end of Epipsychidion.
Byron contrasts the fate of Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers
with that of his character Torquil, based on a real man named George
Stewart who married a Tahitian woman. Christian is an egoist like By-
ron; indeed, he’s very much a Byronic hero. Whereas Christian seems
only to see liberty in terms of an abstract freedom from restraint, Torquil
sees liberty as freedom for–freedom to choose and create a different
kind of life. What is crucial is that this new freedom is associated with
his merging into his new environment, rather than standing apart from it
as Christian does; Torquil’s love for his wife, Neuha, is the motivation
and facilitator of that merging, letting go, and giving over. Look at this
passage, describing his environment–it could have been written by Shel-
ley:

And sweetly now those untaught melodies

Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,
The sweet siesta of a summer day,
The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,
When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,
And the first breath began to stir the palm,
The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave
All gently to refresh the thirsty cave,
Where sat the Songstress with the stranger boy,
Who taught her Passion’s desolating joy,
Too powerful over every heart, but most
O’er those who know not how it may be lost;
O’er those who, burning in the new-born fire,
Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstasy,
That Life knows no such rapture as to die:
And die they do; for earthly life has nought
Matched with that burst of Nature, even in thought;
And all our dreams of better life above
But close in one eternal gush of Love.

…in fact, in a certain way Byron goes even further than Shelley, whose
characters always hit the wall of reality, failing to cross over into their
projected paradises or utopias–or, like Prometheus, they must undergo
‘eons of pain’ first. Torquil and Neuha actually attain it, through Neuha
drawing Torquil towards a regeneration or rebirth symbolized by the
sea-cave they withdraw to in order to escape their pursuers: it’s like a
womb where Torquil can be reborn, and his rebirth is into a realm of

606
timelessness as a being very like Shelley, capable of love and merging.
Listen to this:

Here, in this grotto of the wave-worn shore,

They passed the Tropic’s red meridian o’er;
Nor long the hours–they never paused o’er time,
Unbroken by the clock’s funereal chime,
Which deals the daily pittance of our span,
And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.
What deemed they of the future or the past?
The present, like a tyrant, held them fast:
Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide,
Like her smooth billow, saw their moments glide;
Their clock the Sun, in his unbounded tower;
They reckoned not, whose day was but an hour;
The nightingale, their only vesper-bell,
Sung sweetly to the rose the day’s farewell;
The broad Sun set, but not with lingering sweep,
As in the North he mellows o’er the deep;
But fiery, full, and fierce, as if he left
The World for ever, earth of light bereft,
Plunged with red forehead down along the wave,
As dives a hero headlong to his grave.
Then rose they, looking first along the skies,
And then for light into each other’s eyes,
Wondering that Summer showed so brief a sun,
And asking if indeed the day were done.

…it’s strange, because Torquil must escape the influence of Christian

before this can happen in the same way Shelley needed to escape from
Byron’s influence in his final year…”
“…do you think Byron consciously realized that?”
“…no, not consciously, but I think he sensed his own way of living
had hit a wall, and that now it was time for something else. Certainly
Shelley’s death led him to realize it. I can’t help seeing these lines, here,
as concerning Shelley–becoming purified, eternal, immanent:

…are the Waves

Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves
Without a feeling in their silent tears?
No, no;–they woo and clasp us to their spheres,
Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before
Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
Strip off this fond and false identity!–
Who thinks of self when gazing on the sky?
And who, though gazing lower, ever thought,

607
 In the young moments ere the heart is taught
Time’s lesson, of Man’s baseness or his own?
All Nature is his realm; and Love his throne.

…of course Byron lacked the capacity to become a being like Shelley;
instead, he connected himself to what seemed a worthy endeavor–Greek
independence…”
“…it’s remarkable how like one of Shelley’s poems it is–to think of
Byron writing about a utopia of love is incredible! He must have been
more affected by Shelley’s death than he let on publicly: Byron must
have looked at his life and realized that if it suddenly ended as Shelley’s
had, rather than high tragedy it would have looked like a farce…”
“…yes–with the echoes of the Masi incident hanging over him forcing
him to move from the area, his indecision about where to go and what to
do, his work devolving into the bedroom antics of the later cantos of
Don Juan. Shelley’s death was like a black hole: its absolute density
transformed all of their lives into a different register of being: where
there had been hesitancy, uncertainty, and incompletion–as with all
lives, there was suddenly a stark finality rippling through time…”
“…so tell me how it affected Mary and Claire…”
“…that’s more difficult to explain, as it’s revealed in how they lived
out the rest of their lives: remember, both were only 25 when Shelley
died! Mary lived another 29 years; Claire lived another 57 years–in
Mary’s case over half of her life still remained, and Claire had another
two-thirds left of her life…”
“…how long did they actually remain together after his death?”
“…as I mentioned, Trelawny wrote they ‘degenerated apace’: the
three women remained together from July 20th until they departed–some
biographers mention they were at the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa, but
Trelawny sent a note to Claire at some point addressed to the Casa Aula,
so more likely it was there. Jane and Mary left for Genoa on September
11th; Jane departed for London via Geneva on September 15th; Claire
departed for Florence on September 19th and left for Vienna the day af-
ter. They were together about seven weeks, all told–but in that short time
you can already see the lineaments of what was to come for them all.
Mary was already positioning herself as the ‘official widow’ of Shelley.
You can see it in this letter she wrote to Maria Gisborne in late August:

And so here I am! I continue to exist–to see one day suc-

ceed the other; to dread night, but more to dread morning
& hail another cheerless day. My boy too is alas! No con-
solation; when I think how He loved him, the plans we
had for his education, his sweet & childish voice strikes
me to the heart. Why should he live in this world of pain
and anguish? And if he went I should go too & we should
all sleep in peace. At times I feel an energy within me to

608
 combat with my destiny–but again I sink–I have but one
hope for which I live–to render myself worthy to join
him–such a feeling sustains one during moments of en-
thusiasm, but darkness & misery soon overwhelms the
mind when all near objects bring agony alone with them.
People used to call me lucky in my star. You see now
how true such a prophecy is–I was fortunate in having
fearlessly placed by destiny in the hands of one, who a
superior being among men, a bright planetary spirit en-
shrined in an earthly temple, raised me to the height of
happiness–so far am I now happy that I would not change
my situation as His widow with that of the most prosper-
ous woman in the world–and surely the time will at
length come when I shall be at peace & my brain & my
heart be no longer alive with unutterable anguish.

…this is her speaking from her grief, when doubts hadn’t yet crept in
about Shelley’s feelings towards her in the final months...”
“…when did she start to doubt?”
“…I think quite soon, and they built increasingly during her year in
Genoa–mostly with the help of Leigh Hunt, who had heard about the
negative turn in their relations from Shelley himself during their brief
few days together, and from Trelawny and Jane Williams. Hunt would
confront her with it in late spring of 1823, but she only underlined her
position as ‘official widow’ even more: whatever deficits she had had in
life as Shelley’s wife, she was going to repent and atone for after his
death, and ensure what she felt to be her proper position, despite the fact
that Hunt, Jane, and Trelawny felt that if Shelley would have lived, he
wouldn’t have remained with her…”
“…and what happened to the others in those weeks?”
“…I don’t know if it was part of Mary’s plan, but she sent Jane to
England with an introductory letter to Hogg, directing him to ‘take care
of her’…”
“…and he did?”
“…yes, to say the least! Mary was quite upset when she discovered
they had become a couple, so it may well have been unconscious, or
perhaps, knowing Mary, she was just naïve. Clearly their relationship
existed as a kind of homage to Shelley combined, no doubt, with the
‘vulture effect’ we’ve already discussed…”
“…and Claire?”
“…while Mary lived out the interior side of Shelley, Claire lived out
the exterior side of Shelley–the openness to others and to the world. It
immediately came in the form of Trelawny making advances towards
her–advances that may have culminated in some sort of a consummation
in early September…”
“…really? I wouldn’t have expected it…”

609
 “…I don’t think Claire expected it either, and that’s why she was so
vulnerable to it, and withdrew in the end–it’s an interesting story, and I
don’t think it has ever been fully told: Holmes neglects to even mention
it, and others have mentioned it only in passing. I obtained a copy of
Trelawny’s letters to have a look…”
“…of the two, that’s the story that seems most intriguing, but given
we’re going to Florence, tell me Mary’s story first…”
“…ok…in any case, I suppose the best way to tell it is to narrate
Mary’s story until she left Genoa the following year, and then go back to
Claire’s story, as the Trelawny part also comes largely to an end for the
same reason–that Byron and Trelawny were departing for Greece to-
gether. First of all, I should point out there was quite a bit of difference
in their expectations from the estate of Shelley. Claire knew there was a
bequest for her in Shelley’s will, but that it would only be settled when
Timothy Shelley died, so she had no immediate hope for any funds from
anywhere, which played a key role in her decision to go to her brother in
Vienna. Mary, on the other hand, while facing the same uncertainty to-
wards the future estate, expected Shelley’s annual allowance to contin-
ue, which it did for the rest of 1822. She knew the allowance would last
longer in Italy, and that was one reason she decided to stay at least for
another year; plus, she hoped to make some money from editing The
Liberal, but in the end she received only £36 as a result of her work. By-
ron helped out by paying her to transcribe the new cantos of Don Juan
into fair copy; he also bought some of their furniture, and, when the Don
Juan was raised, Mary split the money found on board with Jane, even
though it was technically Byron’s, because it was the money he had lent
Shelley. Godwin tried to talk Mary into coming back to England, but
aside from the economic issue, she was in mourning and needed to stay
in Italy for the time being for psychological reasons, not to mention that
she knew that success of The Liberal depended upon her, as Byron and
Hunt loathed each other and they needed a go-between…”
“…why did they choose Genoa?”
“…I’m not sure why Byron chose Genoa, but certainly Hunt and
Mary chose it because of Byron. Byron tried to talk Hunt into staying in
Pisa or going back to England, but Hunt rightly realized that the only
chance The Liberal had was for him to be on the spot, and Mary simply
went along with the whole plan. Mary, Percy, and Jane left first–on Sep-
tember 11th, as I said, and Jane left them for England a few days later.
Mary found a villa called the Casa Negroto in Albaro–the same neigh-
borhood as the Casa Saluzzo, taken by Byron. They were in a neighbor-
hood that was then a bit outside the eastern part of the town–up on a
hillside above the sea. She chose it partially for its proximity to Byron,
partially because the villa was large enough to easily house the Hunts as
well–Trelawny had prevailed upon her to live with them for the sake of
her security, and to save expenses through shared housekeeping. After
Jane left she was alone for a while with Percy before the rest arrived,

610
and she spent the time walking, sketching the view, and reflecting on her
life–she started her journal again on October 2nd with the words ‘The
Journal of Sorrow–Begun 1822 But for my Child it could not End too
soon. Genoa,’ written on one page, and then this entry:

On the eighth of July I finished my journal. This is a

curious coincidence–The date still remains, the fatal 8th–a
monument to show that all ended then. And I begin
again?—oh, never! But several motives induce me, when
the day has gone down, and all is silent around me,
steeped in sleep, to pen, as occasion wills, my reflections
and feelings. First; I have now no friend. For eight years I
communicated with unlimited freedom with one whose
genius, far transcending mine, awakened & guided my
thoughts; I conversed with him; rectified my errors of
judgment, obtained new lights from him, & my mind was
satisfied. Now I am alone! Oh, how alone! The stars may
behold my tears, & the winds drink my sighs–but my
thoughts are a sealed treasure which I can confide to
none. White paper–wilt thou be my confident? I will trust
thee fully, for none shall see what I write. But can I ex-
press all I feel? Have I the talent to give words to
thoughts & feelings that as a tempest hurry me along? –Is
this the sand that the ever flowing sea of thought would
impress indelibly? –Alas! I am alone–no eye answers
mine–my voice can with none assume its natural modula-
tion, all is show & I but a shadow–What a change! Oh my
beloved Shelley–It is not true that this heart was cold to
thee. Tell me, for now you know all things–did I not in
the deepest solitude of thought repeat to myself my good
fortune in possessing you? How often during those happy
days, happy though chequered, I thought how superiorly
gifted I had been in being united to one to whom I could
unveil myself, & who could understand me. Well then, I
am now reduced to these white pages which I am to blot
with dark imagery. As I write let me think what He would
have said, if speaking thus to him, he could have an-
swered me. Yes, my own Heart, I would fain know what
you think of my desolate state–what you think I ought to
do–what to think. I guess you would answer thus:–‘Seek
to know your own heart & learning what it best loves–try
to enjoy that.’–Well, I cast my eye around, & looking
forward to the bounded prospect in view, I ask myself
what pleases me there. When I meditate or dream on my
future life, one idea alone animates me–I think of friends
& human intercourse–if I do not say, ‘how flat & unprof-

611
 itable!’–I weep to think how unstable all that is. Those
whom I most loved are gone forever. Those who held the
second rank are absent, & among those near me–as yet I
trust to the disinterested affection of one alone; and per-
verse circumstances will–I fear–spoil our intercourse. My
child;–so many feelings arise when I think of him, that I
turn aside to think no more. Beneath all this, my imagina-
tion even flags.—Literary labours, the improvement of
my mind, & the enlargement of my ideas are the only oc-
cupations that elevate me from my lethargy. Methinks I
was born to that end alone, since all events seem to lead
me to that one point–& the coursers of destiny having
dragged me to that single resting place, have left me. Fa-
ther, Mother, friend, husband, children–all made–as it
were–the team that conducted me here, & now all except
you, my poor boy, & you are necessary to the continu-
ance of my life, all are gone, and I am left to fulfill my
task. So be it!—My heart would not permit me to seek
another; but I have an intimate persuasion, that if the elas-
tic feelings of youth, which have not yet deserted me,
should ever lead me to form other prospects, they would
be blighted as these brightest have been, & I should be
dragged back to the same necessity, of seeking for the
food of life in my intellect alone.
Well, good night, Good Book, Book dedicated to Si-
lence–Night & Shelley. Goodnight, a tear consecrates
your use–& a full heart pone argine alle sue acque silen-
ziale, until I open you again.––––

…the Italian means ‘damns up its silent waters’…”

“…she seems to be aware of Shelley’s complaint of her coldness–do
you think someone told her what Shelley had been feeling?”
“…no, I doubt it: Trelawny or Byron wouldn’t have dared, and Hunt
and Jane’s true feelings didn’t emerge until later. I think she must have
been reading his poems and notebooks in her solitude there at Albaro.
Many of his poems she had never seen before–especially the occasional
lyrics: as we’ve seen, there are plenty of short lyrics that referred to the
rift between them…”
“…they must have been hard for her to read, although I can’t imagine
she didn’t sense something was wrong with her relationship to Shelley
until then…”
“…she had been seeing things like Shelley’s desire to stay in San Ter-
enzo only from the point of view of how it affected her–how it removed
her from the life she preferred; suddenly, when Shelley was gone, she
could see things from his point of view–see herself from his point of
view. In the weeks, months, and years after Shelley’s death, Mary had

612
ample opportunity to consider their relationship, and she was increasing-
ly able to assess certain negative aspects of herself–especially the charge
of coldness. Her self-recognition developed during her solitude…”
“…so Mary was alone there with Percy for what–a week or two?”
“…Byron and Trelawny arrived October 3rd–two and a half weeks
later. They had been delayed for four days in Lerici because Byron was
ill after a swimming match with Trelawny…”
“…they were such boys…”
“…yes, it’s rather ridiculous. Mary mentioned their arrival in Albaro
in her journal, and there you get the first hint that it wasn’t going to be
so easy for her:

Well they are come–& it is all as I said. I awoke as

from sleep & thought how I had vegetated these last days;
–for feeling, leaves little trace on the memory if it be like
mine, unvaried. I had felt for & with myself alone & I
awoke now to take a part in life. As far as others are con-
cerned–my sensations have been most painful. Selfish-
ness, insensibility & worse. I must work hard amidst the
vexations that I perceive are preparing for me, to preserve
any peace and tranquility of mind. I must preserve some
if I am to live, for since I bear at the bottom of my heart a
fathomless well of bitter waters, the workings of which
my philosophy is ever at work to repress, what will be my
fate if the petty vexations of fate are added to this sense
of eternal & infinite misery?—Yet so it will be; I know it
& feel it; here or in England I must suffer many humilia-
tions & horrors–I almost think that my English miseries
would have been preferable, but then they might have
caused me to be burthensome to others–Here, God
knows, my tears are of little value to any but myself.

…actually, I suppose she only saw Trelawny then, as a note from Byron
three days later seems to indicate that they hadn’t met yet, and it also
suggests that it took Hunt three further days to arrive…listen to this:

…I have a particular dislike to anything of Shelley’s

being within the same walls with Mrs. Hunt’s children.
They are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos.
What they can’t destroy with their filth they will with
their fingers. I presume you received ninety and odd
crowns from the wreck of the Don Juan, and also the
price of the boat purchased by Captain R., if not, you will
have both. Hunt has these in hand.
With regard to any difficulties about money, I can on-
ly repeat that I will be your banker till this state of things

613
 is cleared up, and you can see what is to be done; so there
is little to hinder you on that score. I was confined for
four days to my bed at Lerici. Poor Hunt, with his six lit-
tle blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned
back once – was there ever such a kraal out of the Hotten-
tot country.

…apparently he also brought the writing desk which she had asked Ma-
ria Gisborne to send from England a year previously; Byron apparently
took the liberty of reading its contents, which contained some negative
references to him, but fortunately his works were also praised. She
wasn’t too concerned about it, but reading the letters from Shelley in the
desk was very upsetting for her:

I have received my desk today & have been reading

my letters to mine own Shelley during his absences at
Marlow. What a scene to recur to! My William, Clara,
Allegra are all talked of–They lived then–They breathed
this air & their voices struck on my sense, their feet trod
the earth beside me–and their hands were warm with
blood & life when clasped in mine. Where are they all?
This is too great an agony to be written about. I may ex-
press my despair but my thoughts can find no words–
Where are ye all?

–––‘Tis falsely said

That there was ever intercourse
Between the living and the dead!

But they live–Tell me truth, Beloved, where are you?

And when shall I join you? They are all gone & I live–if
it be life to be as I am. But it is not–I am in the valley of
the shadow of death & soon shall be a clod.
That diamond cross! Given as the pledge of his safety–
now a memorial of his loss. But I cannot write–I dare not
think. Despair is in my heart–when, oh when shall I die?–

…”
“…it’s heart-rending–in moments like these it’s all brought back to
me just how much loss she endured. What’s the diamond cross she men-
tions?”
“…it was a kind of talisman he had given her in Marlowe, which was
hidden in some secret panel of the desk. The kind of abject despair
shown here occurred often in the months following his death. What’s
especially interesting to me is how she processes her memories, espe-
cially in the face of the truths that emerge, and in regard to how Shelley

614
lives on for her–perhaps even more intensely than when he was alive.
Look at this journal entry from October 19th: she had had her first long
talk with Byron since he arrived in Genoa, and she was surprised to dis-
cover that Shelley was somehow re-embodied in their conversation, as if
hearing Byron’s voice released Shelley’s immanence:

I do not think that any person’s voice has the same power
of awakening melancholy in me as Albe’s–I have been
accustomed when hearing it to listen & to speak little–
another voice, not mine, ever replied, a voice whose
strings are broken; when Albè ceases to speak I expect to
hear that other voice, & when I hear another instead, it
jars strangely with every association. I have seen so little
of Albe since our residence in Switzerland, & having
seen him there every day his voice, a peculiar one, is en-
graved on my memory with other sounds and objects
from which it can never disunite itself…since incapacity
& timidity always prevented my mingling in the nightly
conversations of Diodati–they were as it were entirely
tête-a-tête between my Shelley & Albe & thus as I have
said–when Albe speaks & Shelley does not answer, it is
as thunder without rain, The form of the sun without heat
or light, as any familiar object might be shorn of its dear-
est & best attribute–& I listen with an unspeakable mel-
ancholy–that yet is not all pain. –
The above explains that which should otherwise be an
enigma, why Albe has the power by his mere presence &
voice of exciting such deep & shifting emotions within
me. For my feelings have no analogy either with my
opinion of him, or the subject of the conversation–With
another I might talk (as I have talked when he was here)
& not for the moment think of Shelley, at least not think
of him with the same vividness as if I were alone–But
when in company with Albe, I can never cease for a sec-
ond to have him (Shelley) in my heart & brain with a
clearness that mocks reality, interfering even by its force
with the functions of life–until if tears do not relieve me,
the hysterical feeling, analogous to that which the mur-
mer of the sea gives me, presses painfully upon me.
Well for the first time in about a month I have been in
company with Albe for two hours & coming home I write
this…

…but of course the circumstances provoked it as well: the English in

Genoa wouldn’t receive her due to her ‘scandalous’ past; Leigh Hunt
was very cold to her after their fight over Shelley’s heart, and because

615
what he knew about the late stages of their relationship; Byron was dis-
tant at best; Trelawny was only there from time to time and was other-
wise preoccupied by a married mistress he had in Genoa. That left only
her son, and her memories of Shelley–and there’s a price to be paid for
living so intensely with Shelley’s immanence: with memory alone one
can cling to one’s idealization, but Mary wanted Shelley’s immanence
with her as a presence, and where there is a need to experience imma-
nence so intensely, I think it’s inevitable that the truth emerges. At that
time, October 1822, she was reading Shelley’s papers with the idea of
editing his works and writing a biography of him: there’s a passage from
her journal where she responds to the charge of her having had a ‘cold
heart.’ The editor of the journal insists this was in response to something
Hunt had said, but we know Hunt withheld what he really felt until the
following spring. I believe she must have read some of the poems where
Shelley himself writes about her coldness, and she was forced to re-
spond. Listen to this:

A cold heart! Have I a cold heart? God knows! But none

need envy the icy region this heart encircles–And at least
the tears are hot which the motions of this cold heart
forces me to shed. A cold heart! Yes! It would be cold
enough if all were as I wished it–cold, or burning in that
flame for whose sake I forgive this & would forgive eve-
ry other imputation–That flame in which your heart, Be-
loved one, lay unconsumed!

…she wasn’t ready yet to accept the charges of coldness–that would

take several months to arrive, so after her initial confrontation with the
truth she retreated into herself again for the rest of the winter. On De-
cember 31st, she knew she was reaching a threshold by leaving behind
the year when the events had happened. She wrote, ‘Shelley–beloved–
the year has a new name from any thou knewest–When Spring arrives,
leaves you never saw will shadow the ground–flowers you never beheld
will star it–the grass will be of another growth–& the birds sing a new
song,’ and her 1823 journal began with the word, ‘The year following
1822.’ A letter to Jane from January shows how alienated she felt then:

…the feeling of alienation which seems to possess the

very few human beings I see, causes a kind of humiliating
depression that weighs like a fog about me. Yet I ought
not to complain. God knows that except yourself & now
& then Trelawny I wish to see none but those I do see.
And those are three. LB is all kindness–but there I more
manner than heart….Hunt…does not like me–I feel &
know this; he has never forgiven my resistance to his in-

616
 tolerable claims at Pisa–He avoids walking with me, nor
does he refrain at times from saying bitter things.

…she wrote to Trelawny that she hated Albaro, claiming that one of the
reasons she was staying for the time being was that Marianne Hunt was
pregnant, and needed her help to deliver the child. She also needed to
see that Shelley was buried: on January 31st Mary received word, via
Severn, Keats’ friend, about the first burial of Shelley in Rome…”
“…where were his remains all that time?”
“…his ashes had been sent on September 7th to the British Consul in
Rome with the request that he be buried near William. As the Consul
didn’t reside in Rome proper, he sent it to his agent–a wine merchant
living on the Via Condotti, who received it December 7th and had the urn
stored in his wine cellar! He was left in the cellar until Severn arranged
for his burial, which took place on January 21st. They had tried to move
William to Shelley’s grave, but when they lifted the stone, they found
the skeleton of an adult, so they gave up the search. Mary was deeply
disturbed by the news, and she wrote the following in her journal on
February 2nd:

My heart is too full to write tonight. I have wished to ex-

amine that heart–to judge of its capacities & situation.
But I am not in a fitting mood for that or any other task.
My whole frame is convulsed by miserable reflections; I
feel as if life over wrought would burst away and leave
the prison that confines it. But no–I am destined to live
day after day. My own adored & only Beloved you rest
beneath the blue sky of Rome. In that I am satisfied.
What matters it if they cannot find the grave of my Wil-
liam; that spot is sanctified by the presence of his pure
earthly vesture & that is sufficient–at least it must be–I
am too truly miserable to dwell on what at another time
might have made me unhappy. He is beneath the Tomb of
Cestius–I see the spot…

…thus began a new period of intensified grief. She actually heard Shel-
ley’s voice speaking to her at one point, two weeks later–she mentioned
it in her journal entry for February 17th:

A storm has come across me–a slight circumstance has

disturbed the deceitful calm of which I boasted–I thought
I heard my Shelley call me–Not my Shelley in Heaven–
but My Shelley–my companion in my daily tasks–I was
reading–I heard a voice say ‘Mary’–‘It is Shelley’ I
thought–the revulsion was of agony–Never more shall I
hear his beloved voice–Never more shall my name––

617
 Oh, no more! He is gone–the sun of my existence–the
animating spark of my life–The companion–friend–
lover–husband–And I am deserted–A frightful vista of
long drawn out years is before me–how often have I
looked through that vista with deceived eyes–&, with
him, imagined our future life.
No! No–I shall not live. I feel that my thread is short. I
know not, yet I fear, what more I may have to suffer…

…it was one of several disturbing reveries she had: in another, she
thought she saw their boat on the horizon. She wrote to Jane: ‘I saw the
other day a white sail at a distance, and with a kind of madness of decep-
tion, I thought–there they are! I will take a boat & go out to them.’ She
also mentioned having had a dream where she spoke to the fisherman
who saw their boat for the last time: ‘I asked Ned if the men in the fish-
ing boat could not have saved them–he replied no–for though they ap-
peared near, the high waves rendered it impossible for them to ap-
proach’…it’s strange, as it’s the version of what happened that’s proba-
bly closest to the truth…”
“…it’s like the dreams I used to have of my dead parents in the
months after each died: they were so vivid they were more like visita-
tions than dreams…definitely real, but not autonomous beings with wills
of their own…”
“…I know what you mean–a bit like those holograms you see in sci-fi
films, where what you’re seeing is a three dimensional reality, but rec-
orded…”
“…yes, that’s it exactly…”
“…immanence is like an energy trace: unlike how we conceive of en-
tities like ghosts, it’s inside of us; but, unlike mere memories, it’s some-
thing which can combine actively with our interiorities…”
“…so does it will us, or do we will it?”
“…like the eternal return, it can be willed; but also like the will to
power, it can inhabit us…”
“…from without or within?”
“…it can be both–for example, Mary’s suddenly sensing Shelley
when she spoke to Byron: they each contained their own set of memory
traces of Shelley, which became something more than merely internal-
ized memory when they were together, sharing and combining those in-
tensive traces…”
“…it would account for a great deal, it seems to me: the supernatural,
psychic phenomena, religious experience…”
“…it’s a possible alternative explanation for those things, certainly,
although perhaps just as speculative…”
“…and did she continue to have such visions?”
“…not with the same vividness; however, such intensive experiences
weren’t the only thing disturbing Mary. On January 7th, Byron had writ-

618
ten to Timothy Shelley to try to secure an allowance for Mary and Percy,
and on February 24th she had heard his response through Byron: Timo-
thy refused to support Mary, claiming she was not innocent because she
had embarked on a relationship with Shelley when she knew he was
married to someone else–as he put it, ‘her conduct was the very reverse
of what it ought to have been.’ Even worse, he said that he would only
support Percy if he were removed from Mary and placed with a guardian
of his choice. A letter she wrote to Jane recorded her reaction: ‘What!
Shall I proclaim myself unworthy to have the care of my boy?—Never–
Even if I could live & do it I would not–& if I were persuaded that I
ought, then I should die.’ What was even worse was that in March By-
ron suggested that he thought it might actually be better if she did what
Timothy said…”
“…was he out of his mind?”
“…her entry of March 17th shows her feeling of betrayal:

I am now shewn that he who has been called my protector

& who at first seemed willing to become so, has resigned
that office: that, to me, confiding & somewhat sanguine,
has been a bitter blow–It comes along with (if it be not
the consequence) a denial of all means of support where I
thought I had some claim–Another of my friends has––––
––––…Shall I go to England? I hope others will decide
this question for me. I think I ought–& I am less unwill-
ing than I was–since the life with which I am threatened
would even cloud the sun of Italy.
Shelley! You have left me deserted and alone! My be-
loved, I want you–I have need of you! Come–there is the
element for which you left me–there sky your home–you
must be near–listen–
This is madness–my brain whirls–I must not write, or
scream–I must hush–hush the dreadful feelings that work
within me–silence, oh silence!

…this event contributed to her sense of the precariousness of her posi-

tion in Italy, and precipitated a decision-making process that would last
until the summer, when she finally decided to return to England. It was a
matter of weighing the lesser of two evils; for example, on the one hand
she thought she might be able to plead her case to Timothy better in per-
son, but she also feared Percy might be taken away from her by force…”
“…by force? How could they?”
“…if it ever went to court they might have given him to Timothy or
appointed a guardian, based on a combination of her supposed inability
to care for them and perhaps some proof of so-called immorality: a con-
servative court could have trumped up the evidence rather easily, if it
wished…”

619
 “…so it wasn’t an easy decision…”
“…no. She queried her friends as to their opinions: both Mrs. Gis-
borne and Trelawny urged her to remain in Italy; Mrs. Mason and God-
win thought she ought to return to England but not give up the child–for
Godwin the reasoning being only that Percy was her one claim to the
estate; Hogg and Jane believed she should stay in Italy, but I think one
of their motivations was so that Mary would not see the bond they were
forming…”
“…and what brought her to her decision–the fact Byron could no
longer be counted upon?”
“…actually, by April she had changed her mind yet again about By-
ron–albeit temporarily–because of his offer to help pay her way to Eng-
land. She was cautious, though, as you can see by this letter to Jane
where she wrote, ‘I am grateful to him for his kindness to me and if he
continues as he promises my gratitude will prevent my being angry with
him. I shall see when I depart if his actions are on par with his profes-
sions.’ Certainly Byron’s decision, arrived at in April, to go to Greece to
fight for its independence was a major factor, but there were many pros
and cons: she could live more cheaply in Italy, more independently, and
of course there was the pull of Shelley, who she would always associate
with Italy. If she remained, she seems to have been thinking about Flor-
ence–she even asked Jane if she would join her there…”
“…did she consider Rome, given Shelley’s grave was there?”
“…she would have wanted to live in Rome more than anywhere else,
but she was afraid to live there with her son because of what happened
to William; in fact, it was her thoughts about what would be best for him
that finally motivated her to decide for England–you can see it in this
journal entry for April 26th:

The time is drawing near when I am to quit this country.

It is true that in the situation I now am Italy is but the
corpse of the Enchantress that she was a few months ago.
But perhaps she is better fitted to me. Besides if I had
staid here the state of things would have been altered. The
idea of our Child’s advantage alone enables me to keep
fixed resolution to return. It is better for him–& I go.
God knows what will happen there. I ask but for quiet
but I have small hope of that. I am oppressed by melan-
choly–and no circumstance that I can foresee can allevi-
ate this; if I am spared sudden emotions & acute disap-
pointment I shall be satisfied. Methinks I have traced my
Beloved Heart’s influence in smoothing one difficulty for
me.
Here I am stung by gnats–tormented by teasing in-
sects–that should not continue. But I fear I go to worse.

620
 Italy! Beloved Country!—Your Alps are high, but
alas! They cannot hold me in–Your seas–that has made
me the wretch I am.
I have fortitude to bear up against some evils–against
others I am weaker than a broken reed. I look upon these
barren hills–upon the olive woods–vineyards & flowers–
they are Italian–When shall I revisit them. My only love–
how deeply do I envy your fate–but that must not be. And
yet I have a presentiment (a dear one) that I shall not live
many years–My imagination hovers on the threshold of
what is about to be–but it seems as if a chasm swallowed
up the rest–Ah! How the hope of a speedy release invig-
orates my heart. That I am separated from him forever I
will never, never believe.

…on that same day Trelawny had written to her from Rome with a pre-
cise description of his re-burial of Shelley’s ashes which he had just car-
ried out: once again he had made himself indispensable. He had written
earlier in April mentioning it, and Mary had written to him asking for
details, as she didn’t see how she would be able to visit Rome any time
soon, not wishing to place little Percy in any danger. In early May she
wrote to Maria Gisborne about it:

I had a letter today from Trelawny at Rome concern-

ing the disposition of the earthly dress of my lost one. He
is in the Protestant burying ground at that place, which is
beside, & not before, the tomb of Cestius. The old wall
with an Ancient tower bounds it on one side & beneath
this tower, a weed grown & picturesque ruin, the excava-
tion has been made. T––y has sent me a drawing of it–&
he thus writes,––‘is placed apart, yet in the centre, & the
most conspicuous spot in the burying Ground. I have just
planted six young cypresses & 4 laurels, in the front of
the recess, which you see in the drawing, which is caused
by the projecting part of the old ruin. My own stone’–(T–
–y you know, one of the best & most generous of crea-
tures, is eccentric in his way) ‘a plain slab, till I can de-
cide upon some fitting inscription, is placed on the left
hand–I have likewise dug my grave–so that when I die,
there is only to lift up the coverlet, & roll me into it…’

…”
“…what? Did he really do that?!”
“…yes! It’s a bit much–he was trying to make permanent his ‘Roman-
tic fellow-traveler’ status by having himself buried with Shelley…”

621
 “…and didn’t you mention before that he had written something on
his grave about their ‘undividable friendship’…”
“…it’s quite embarrassing: he finally had written, ‘These are two
friends whose lives were undivided so let their memory be now they
have glided under the grave let not their bones be parted, for their two
hearts in life were single hearted’–it’s not only dishonest, given they
knew each other only six months and Shelley was already beginning to
tire of him, but it’s also bad poetry and mawkish sentiment…”
“…that’s unbelievable…and what about Mary? Didn’t he consider
she might have wanted to be buried next to Shelley?”
“…look what he wrote next: ‘You may lay on the other side, or I will
share my narrow bed with you, if you like. It is a lovely spot…’”
“…he dared to flirt with her in that context?”
“…not to mention that there was no ‘other side’ to that gravesite!
Trelawny was over-stepping himself quite a bit. Still, Mary seems to
have taken it in her stride, and, actually, she did like his new inscription,
which he mentions next in his letter:

…the only inscription on S. stone, besides the cor cordi-

um of Hunt, are three lines I have added, from Shake-
speare

–‘Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange’

This quotation by its double meaning alludes both to the

manner of his d––h & his genius. And I think the element
on which his soul took wing, & the subtle essence of his
being mingled, may still retain him in some other
shape…This quotation is pleasing to me also, because a
year ago, T––y came one afternoon in high spirits with
news concerning the building of the boat––saying––oh––
we must all embark––all live aboard–‘We will all suffer a
sea-change,’ and dearest Shelley was delighted with the
quotation––saying that he would have it for the motto of
his boat…

…it is a suitable inscription–it comes from Shakespeare’s last play, The

Tempest, which had already inspired Shelley’s name for his boat, Ariel,
and, of course, the poem he wrote to Jane and gave her with the guitar.
Otherwise, Trelawny was simply piggy-backing off of Shelley’s imma-
nence–a vulture, pure and simple. He could have at least moved little
William’s grave stone next to Shelley, even if they couldn’t find his re-
mains; when Mary finally did visit, twenty years later, she couldn’t even
find William’s grave…”

622
 “…so Mary didn’t even consider being buried next to Shelley?”
“…I don’t know, but whether she did or not, I think by the time she
died things were under the control of her son and daughter-in-law, who
wanted her in England closer to them, and that’s where she would end–
in the family vault, with Godwin and her mother. I suppose it fits her
oedipal conservatism, just as Shelley’s grave represents his nature as a
rebel, exile, and poet; and Claire’s grave represents her spirit as an inde-
pendent woman. I think their graves are just right–just as Joyce’s grave
in Zurich seems perfect to me; or D.H. Lawrence’s grave in Taos; or
Yeats’ grave in Sligo; or Virginia Woolf’s grave at Monk’s House in
Rodmell, Sussex, where she committed suicide; or Kafka’s grave in Pra-
gue; or Bataille’s grave in Vézelay…”
“…but are there cases of graves not being ‘just right’?”
“…I think so–Rimbaud, for example: his grave is in his detested
hometown of Charleville, and although it was his family that decided to
bury him there, he’s at fault for allowing himself to be placed back in
their clutches–he returned to France with his leg tumor and his bags of
gold: better he should have disappeared in Abyssinia! He’s not the only
one to be re-territorialized by his family–poor Nietzsche, too, ended up
buried in Röcken at his family gravesite! It’s a travesty, as if he had
been semi-lucid, he surely would have had his ashes scattered at Sils-
Maria or any of the other beautiful places he loved so well. Another ex-
ample is the American expatriate author Paul Bowles, who, after spend-
ing his life in Tangiers, was buried in his family plot in upstate New
York: perhaps that’s what he wanted, but I really can’t see him as having
asked for it in his will. The grave of his wife, Jane Bowles, seems much
more appropriate–at least given her life: she‘s buried in Malaga Spain,
across the straits from Tangiers. She could never commit herself as fully
as Paul to Morocco, and so it seems appropriate that she’s buried near
where she had her final, alcoholic breakdown on the European side. It all
makes me want to be certain that my remains are clearly dealt with in
my will…”
“…and what do you want done with them?”
“…I think I’d just like my ashes dumped off the Charles Bridge; in
fact, I even know where I’d like it dumped: I was smoking a cigar one
spring day after I had just lectured on Kant–specifically the idea that
even our conceptions of space and time were merely cognitive ‘filters,’
preventing us from ever seeing the real truth of things. My back was to
the bridge, and I was standing by the statue of St. Francis–one of the
first statues over the water to your right when you cross from the Mala
straná side. When I reached back to tip the ash off of my cigar into the
river, I felt something sip: my gold watch–you know, the one with the
moon phases–had, at that moment, slipped off and fallen into the river!
It struck me that I had just been lecturing on the illusoriness of time, I
was having a brief, timeless moment on the bridge, and at that precise

623
moment I lost my watch–lost time…so, I think it’s an appropriate spot to
have my ashes scattered when I really ‘lose’ time…”
“…you’ve really thought about it!”
“…you haven’t?”
“…no, not really…”
“…I don’t suppose you want to be taken back to your little town in
Silesia when you die?”
“…definitely not!”
“…so be careful–when you’re dead, there’s no telling what the ‘well-
meaning people’ will do to you if you don’t specify it further…”
“…but does it matter so much? After all, once you’re dead, you’re
dead…”
“…I see it as connected to the eternal return: one lives once, one dies
once, but whereas one has no choice about one’s birth, one might have
at least some say over the details of one’s death, even if where and how
one dies is left to chance. In any case, the important part is to be doing
what one wants to be doing as much as possible in every moment, so
that any moment could be emblematic of your life–as was the case with
Shelley, Claire, and even Byron, in the end…”
“…and Mary?”
“…you be the judge, after I tell you her whole story…”
“…so let’s return to it–she was deciding to leave Italy…”
“…clearly she had regrets, as she associated Italy with Shelley, as you
can see in this entry from May 31st, where everything that had dis-
pleased her before about Italy suddenly strikes her now with its beauty,
as if she were now viewing it with Shelley’s eyes:

The lanes are filled with fireflies; they dart between the
trunks of the trees and people the land with Earth stars–I
walked among them tonight & descended towards the
sea; I passed through the ruined church & stood on the
platform that overlooks the beach–the black rocks were
stretched out amidst the blue waters, which dashed with
no impetuous motion against them–the dark boats with
their white sails glided gently over its scarcely ruffled
surface & the star enlightened promontories closed in the
bay–below amid the crags I heard the monotonous but
harmonious voices of the fishermen–How beautiful these
shores & this sea are–such is the scene–such the waves
within which my sole beloved vanished from mortality–
But he is still there. He claims his unalienable right to his
share in the loveliness of the scenes he worshipped–he
still listens to the rippling of the waves–he stills the col-
ours & lights of these skies–& freed from the heavy
chain, his fate upon earth, enjoys with unalloyed delight
the rapturous sensations that an intimate sympathy with

624
 Nature affords. Are you not conscious, my loved Shelley,
of my existence and love, when looking on what was
your chief enjoyment on earth, I am filled with your idea–
filled–until the sensation becomes painful from its inten-
sity–Alas! I neither hope nor expect pleasure from aught
except that which rivets the memory of your past being
still more firmly in my heart–All else is dreary & bitterly
disappointing except solitude & you.

…a letter to Jane written around this time made it clear that despite eve-
rything, she had made her decision. There were still two crises for her to
face before she departed in July. The first was in early June, when there
was a confrontation between Mary and Hunt: Hunt evidently mentioned
what Shelley had told him about the stalemate in their relationship and
her coldness towards Shelley–perhaps he even blamed her for having
written the complaining letter that made Shelley so avid to return to San
Terenzo…”
“…which would have amounted to blaming her for Shelley’s
death…”
“…yes. Apparently Mary had been outwardly so cool in Genoa that
Hunt hadn’t realized that Mary actually worshipped Shelley: she told
him that people had judged her outward behavior towards Shelley, but
hadn’t seen the ‘amends’ and ‘requests for pardon’ she had made in pri-
vate…”
“…did Hunt believe her?”
“…yes he did. Look what he wrote to his composer friend, Vincent
Novello:

She is a torrent of fire under a Hecla snow; but I believe,

as Mr. Trelawny a friend of his tells me he believed, even
when most uneasy with her, that she had excuses of suf-
fering little known to anybody but herself; these ought
now to be more readily granted on her account of the
touching remorse she confesses for ever having treated
him with unkindness.

…he blamed Jane Williams for leading him astray in his feelings to-
wards Mary. Actually, Jane caught wind of this blame a while later, and
in 1824 she wrote to him directly about it–she didn’t ‘buy’ his reassess-
ment. Here’s the main part of the letter:

If I recollect rightly our discussions concerning Mary

arose from her conduct on a certain occasion (which I
need not mention) to which you were a witness as well as
myself: and if that sad circumstance had not called it
forth, I imagine the discussion would never have been en-

625
 tered into, at all events I did not conceive I was speaking
to a stranger who would receive impressions from what I
said: on the contrary I had always heard you spoken of by
Mary as her most intimate friend; as one who had known
her long, and had lived for some time under her roof–
Now it is utterly impossible to do this, and do not know
whether a person’s temper be good or bad, you I imag-
ined as well as myself had seen that the intercourse be-
tween Shelley and Mary was not as happy as it should
have been and I remember you telling me that our Shelley
mentioned several circumstances on that subject that dis-
tressed you during the short week you were together and
that you witnessed the pain he suffered on receiving a let-
ter from Mary at that period.

…I think she’s closer to the truth than Hunt, but of course neither Hunt
nor Jane were in the best position to judge, as they were simply too close
to both parties. What surprised Hunt, as the passage from his letter
makes clear, is the passion underneath Mary’s reserve. He seems to see,
for the first time, how much Mary worshipped Shelley and was remorse-
ful for what happened, and it impressed him. On her side, it was also a
revelation–one of those confrontations with the truth I mentioned. She
suddenly received, full force, a view of herself as seen through Hunt’s
eyes of how Shelley felt about the relationship–at least during that cru-
cial week. She recorded her real shock about it in her journal entry of
June 3rd:

Alas! What are sighs, that would wrap an eternity of

wretchedness in their breath?–what are tears–that flowing
from the inmost fountains of the soul, endeavour to give
passage to the piena of sorrow that sits so heavily upon
it?—what prayers, which seek for communication with
the passed?—My Shelley–But for one instant of Sympa-
thy!—ah, my beloved one!—didst thou when leaving me
for ever–think of me–did you think of the faults, the
coldness & weaknesses of your unhappy Mary–or did
you think of the tears she shed during her parting em-
brace, of the love that deeply dwelt in her heart–of her
sufferings–her Anguish?

…you can see how the realization affected her. Certain critics have felt
embarrassment at her effusion of grief and self-chastisement, dwelling
on the flaws of Shelley to counter-balance her reaction, but for me, hers
is an understandable reaction–it’s more than simply an emotional mea
culpa, it’s part of the whole grief process itself, which was intensified by

626
the way Mary had encased herself in a protective shell after the losses
she had already endured…”
“…she was closed inside herself, but from what I have seen she
closed Shelley out emotionally, she had been instrumental in banishing
Claire from their immediate circle, and in an indirect way her letters to
Shelley in Livorno partially caused his rush to return. There was a good
deal she needed to atone for…”
“…and she did: at some point in that summer of 1823, during what
she then knew were her final weeks in Italy, she began writing a long
poem called The Choice about her remorse…”
“…do you have it? Read it to me…”
“…it’s rather long, and not all that good–I’ll read the interesting
parts…here it is, she begins:

My choice! My choice - alas was had & gone

With the red gleam of the last summer’s sun-
Lost in the deep in which he bathed his head,
My choice, my life, my hope together fled:-
A wanderer - here, no more I seek a home
The sky a vault - & Italy a tomb!

…then she speaks of needing to earn a return of his companionship, as if

she needed to make herself worthy through her atonement. She admits
that his death has awakened her to her love, and now she tries to explain
just what had happened that had enclosed her inside of herself:

It was not anger - while thy earthly dress

Encompassed still thy soul’s rare loveliness,
All anger was atoned by many a kind
Caress or tear that spoke the softened mind:-
It speaks of cold neglect, averted eyes
That blindly crushed thy heart’s fond sacrifice:-
Mine heart was all thy own - but yet a shell
Closed in its core, which seemed impenetrable,
Till sharp-toothed misery tore the husk in twain
Which gaping lies nor may unite again-
Forgive me! let thy love descend in dew
Of soft repentance and regret most true;-

…she goes on about her remorse, hoping that his spirit will soothe it
somehow, and next she describes her worst miseries–the loss of Clara
and William. It’s quite poignant:

A happy Mother first I saw its sun-

Beneath her sky my race of joy was run-
First my sweet girl - whose face resembled His,
Slept on bleak Lido, near Venetian seas.-

627
 Yet still my eldest born, my loveliest, dearest-
Clung to my side - most joyful when nearest -
An English home had given this angel birth-
Near those royal towers - where the grass-clad earth
Is shadowed o’er my England’s loftiest trees:-
Then our companion o’er the swift-passed seas
Had dwelt beside the Alps - or gently slept,
Rocked by the waves, o’ver which our vessel swept,
Beside his father - nurst upon my breast,
While Leman’s waters shook with fierce unrest
His fairest limbs had bathed in Serchio’s stream;
His eyes had watched Italian lightnings gleam;
His childish voice had with it’s loudest call,
The echoes waked of Este’s Castle wall;
Had paced Pompeii’s roman market Place
Had gazed with infant wonder on the grace
Of stone wrought deities and pictured saints
In Rome’s high palaces - there were no taints
Of ruin on his cheek - all shadowless
Grim death approached - the boy met his caress-
And while his glowing limbs with life’s warmth shone,
Around those limbs his icy arms were thrown-
His spoils were strewed beneath the land of Rome
Whose flowers now star the dark earth near his tomb-
Its airs & plants received the mortal part,
His spirit bears within his Mother’s heart!

…she then describes Shelley himself, beginning with a discussion of

how his own health had wavered over time, and how she had taken for
granted his strength, and goes on to describe the scenes from the past
involving Shelley:

‘Tis thus the past on which my spirit leans,

Makes dearest to my soul Italian scenes.-
In Tuscan fields, the winds in odours steeped
From flowers and cypresses - when skies have wept,
Shall like the notes of music - once most dear,
Which brings the unstrung voice upon my ear
Of one beloved, to memory display
Past scenes - past joys - past hopes, in long array.
The Serchio’s stream upon which whose banks he stood-
The pools reflecting Pisa’s old pine wood,
The fire-flies beam - the aziolo’s cry-
All breathe his spirit, which shall never die.-
Such memories have linked these hills and caves,
These woodland paths, & streams - & knelling waves

628
 Fast to each sad pulsation of my breast
And made their melancholy arms the haven of my rest…

…finally, she ends the poem with a ‘prophecy’ or vision she had: that
Jane would come live with her in Italy–something she seems to have re-
ally hoped for, but the picture she paints is of entwined grief:

A voice then whispered a strange prophecy,

My dearest widowed friend, that thou and I
Should there together pass the livelong day,
As we have done before in Spezia’s bay,
As through long hours we watched the sails that neared
O’er the far sea, their vessel ne’er appeared;
One pang of agony, one dying gleam
Of hope led us along, beside the ocean stream,
But keen-eyes fear, the while all hope departs,
Stabbed with a million stings our heart of hearts.
The sad revolving year has not allayed
The poison of these bleeding wounds, or made
The anguish less of that corroding thought
Which had with grief each single moment fraught...

…she of course didn’t realize that Jane was already becoming involved
with Hogg, so she could still entertain the idea of their living togeth-
er…”
“…but she had decided to leave, hadn’t she?”
“…yes, but she was wavering; in fact, it drove Byron up a wall so
much that it precipitated the second of the crises I mentioned…”
“…what happened?”
“…Marianne Hunt gave birth on June 9th, and Mary told Byron the
day after that she was ready to leave, apparently asking him for the
money he had promised. I don’t know the details, but it seems that,
while not saying no, his attitude was somewhat grudging, plus perhaps
he made some typically pointed remark about Mary’s indecision. The
upshot of it was she took offense, and then they both made the mistake
of making Hunt the middleman in their argument, for Hunt simply exac-
erbated the whole issue: while Byron was ready and willing to help,
Hunt poured fuel on the fire by saying something to Byron that upset
him so much that he resigned as the executor of Shelley’s estate and re-
fused the £2,000 Shelley had left him in his will…”
“…what do you think it was?”
“…part of it was reminding Byron of the £1,000 debt he owed from
the bet with Shelley on their estates, but I would guess he may have also
told Byron what Shelley had really felt about him in the end. Hunt then
proceeded to tell Mary some of the things Byron had said about Shelley

629
in response, including that he had lowered himself ‘down to the level of
the democrats’ by being associated with Shelley!”
“…what was Mary’s reaction?”
“…she refused Byron’s offer of assistance and raised the money from
Trelawny and Mrs. Mason. I blame Hunt for blowing the whole thing
out of proportion, and anyway, he was real leech…”
“…leech?”
“…those worms that suck your blood…”
“…aha…”
“…for example, he took monetary advantage of their conflict: do you
know what he did? Byron wanted to fulfill his commitment to pay
Mary’s way in any case, but wanted to hide from Mary that he was giv-
ing it to her, lest she refuse it again, so he told Hunt to give it to her as if
it were from Hunt…”
“…so, let me guess: Hunt kept it without telling her?”
“…exactly…”
“…what a jerk!”
“…it’s even worse: Mary never found out about it, so Hunt got away
with it scot-free…”
“…pardon?”
“…oh, sorry, it’s an idiom: it literally comes from not having to pay a
‘scot’–a tax, so it means simply to do something wrong without being
punished. Actually, when Mary came into her estate, she even settled on
Hunt an annuity of £120 a year, but there was some justice during
Hunt’s lifetime: Charles Dickens, who had at one point helped raise
money for Hunt, later caricatured him in his novel Bleak House as the
character Harold Skimpole. Although Dickens initially denied the re-
semblance, he later claimed it was one of the most accurate descriptions
he had ever penned, and certainly the resemblance was not lost on any-
one who knew Hunt…”
“…how was he portrayed?”
“…as a loathsome character: Skimpole gushes on and on about how
all he wants is for society to ‘let him live’–that he is a ‘child’ and should
be ‘as free as the butterflies,’ and, what’s worse, he claims that he
doesn’t need to feel gratitude to those who support him–that rather they
should feel gratitude to him because he enables them to feel the ‘luxury
of generosity’! He’s portrayed as a professional house-guest and an ama-
teur at everything else, who takes no responsibility for doing any work
or bringing up his children: it’s really a damning portrait, and apparently
Dickens even lifted certain mannerisms and ways of speaking directly
from Hunt…”
“…he got what he deserved…”
“…meanwhile, aside from the money he pocketed from Byron, Hunt
also got Byron to finance his family’s move to Florence, to forgive an-
other debt of £250, and to pay a £130 debt of his brother’s! Those were
not small amounts…”

630
 “…why did Byron do it?”
“…by then Byron just wanted to wash his hands of them all–but in the
best terms possible, as he didn’t want bad press. Actually, to that end he
even insisted upon paying Trelawny back when he heard that Mary had
gone to Trelawny for help. Mary also wanted to make amends, and she
sent word through Teresa that she was sorry for the fight. Byron re-
sponded, just before he left, with a note that said he ‘bore her no enmi-
ty,’ and he asked her to come and comfort Teresa after his departure.
However, Mary was still angry at him–look at this letter to Jane Wil-
liams, written just before she herself departed for England on July 25th:
‘I have at length fixed with the Vetturino; I depart on the 25th My best
girl’…”
“…‘My best girl’ sounds like Shelley!”
“…I think there was some unconscious transference, and until the
break between them a few years later when Mary finally got wind of
Jane’s real thoughts about her, I think on some level she did fall a little
in love with Jane. She goes on…

…I leave Italy–and I return to the dreariest reality after

having dreamt away a year in this blessed and beloved
country. Lord Byron, Trelawny Pierino Gamba &c sailed
for Greece on the 17th Ult. I did not see the former. His
unconquerable avarice prevented his supplying me with
money, & a remnant of shame caused him to avoid me.
But I have a world of things to tell you on that score
when I see you. If he were mean Trelawny more than
balanced the moral account. His whole conduct during his
last short stay here has impressed us all with an affection-
ate regard and a perfect faith in the unalterable goodness
of his heart. They sailed together: LB with £10,000
Trelawny with £50–and LB cowering before his eyes for
reasons you shall here soon. The Guiccioli is gone to
Bologna–e poi cosa fara? Chi lo sa? Cosa vuol che la di-
co?...

…the last part means ‘And then what will she do? Who knows? What
can I say?’ She then described her proposed journey–through Lyons,
Paris, and after spending some time in Paris, she arrived in London on
August 25th, finding herself famous: there had been a dramatization of
Frankenstein playing, and her name was on everyone’s lips: it was the
contrary of anything Shelley had ever experienced in regard to audience
reception…”
“…do you think Shelley’s death had anything to do with its populari-
ty?”
“…I think people must have associated the destruction of the ‘modern
Prometheus,’ Viktor Frankenstein, with the destruction of the poet who

631
had written Prometheus Unbound–not that anybody had read the poem,
of course…”
“…so the myths really did begin almost immediately…”
“…oh yes–the story was too compelling to go untold. Initially it was
told as a cautionary tale; then, after Byron’s death twenty-one months
later, it began to take on mythic proportions–the ‘doomed poets,’ who
had ‘over-reached their visions’…”
“…there’s a grain of truth there…”
“…more than just a grain…”
“…and right here is where the myth began–so much has changed
since then that it’s hard to imagine it: this little park enclosed by build-
ings and streets, no sand or sea in sight. …”
“…and where there is sea and sand, there are rows upon rows of
chaise lounges and umbrellas…”
“…back then it was a barren strip of beach, bordered by a thick line of
umbrella pines, the only sign of life–aside from the principals, the sol-
diers, and a few spectators at a distance under the trees–was a single
seabird hovering above them and calling out…”
“…everything has changed so much over time–and we will change
too: we’re here this moment, then gone…”
“…‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is
rounded with a sleep’…”
“…Shakespeare?”
“…The Tempest…”
“…but something persists…not the scene, not the people, but some-
thing…”
“…intensities…”
“…love, for example…”
“…yes…as Proust wrote, ‘L’amour, c’est l’espace et le temps rendus
sensibles au cœur’–‘Love is space and time made perceptible to the
heart’…”

632
 

On dira de la pure immanence qu’elle est une vie, et rien

d’autre. Elle n’est pas immanence à la vie, mais
l’immanente qui n’est en rien est elle-même une vie. Une
vie est l’immanence de l’immanence, l’immanence abso-
lue : elle est puissance, béatitude complètes.

We will say of pure immanence that it is a life, and noth-

ing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanent that
is in nothing is itself a life. A life is the immanence of im-
manence, absolute immanence: it is complete power,
complete bliss.
–Gilles Deleuze

…if eternity is present in the moment, any moment may be a gateway to

eternity: not only our last moment, which removes us from the flow of
time, but any moment in the succession of our days may open out to
timelessness, to the nunc stans. These gateways rarely open at our be-
hest: we encounter them by chance, finding they have crept up upon us
unawares like storm clouds on a hot summer day…then, reality doubles
like a dream, splitting into the day, and the outside which infiltrates it…

…the presence of eternity here and now entails immanence: the irrup-
tion of the outside hovers at the threshold of the moment. We never com-
pletely coincide with immanence during our lives: the gateway of the
moment only opens briefly before we are drawn back inside the quotidi-
an…and yet an awareness of immanence always remains just beyond the
hovering threshold of our consciousness. Anything might prompt the
plunge into immanence: the song of a thrush outside one’s window in
early spring, a full moon rising above an expanse of tableland, a musi-
cal phrase evoking a memory heretofore unremembered…

…immanence is the intensity of life in its purest form: beyond our specif-
ic identities, it is life itself, which is both in us and beyond us. Our lives
are simultaneously bounded by our subjectivities, and open to the pure
immanence that is life. We are closest to this intensity in infancy and
when we draw near to death, but there are other unbidden moments
when the shell of time cracks open…

633
…immanence may be most clearly seen in what persists when a loved-
one dies: it is not merely the traces of memory that we sense, but an en-
during presence held within the threads of connection drawn out across
time. These presences are not autonomous spirits haunting us or angelic
beings watching over us, but glimpses of the timeless from the vantage
point of time…

…when, at the moment of death, we enter the timeless, “we” are no

longer there to enter it: we have ceased being actors in time, although
our lives and all of our intensive and extensive actions persist as traces
in time that continues to resonate, even if only faintly like the beating of
a butterfly’s wings. The more intense our lives, the more enduring this
resonance; the more intense the immanence, the greater the likelihood
traces of a life will continue to be taken up by the living: we see this in
the paintings of Vermeer, Manet, or Rothko; the poetry of Hölderlin,
Rimbaud, or Lorca; the novels of Balzac, Dostoyevsky, or Woolf; the
thought of Spinoza, Kant, or Wittgenstein; the acts of, St. Francis, Gan-
dhi, or Martin Luther King…but for the mass of humanity, immanence
is primarily the consequence of love…

…immanence is life: it is existence giving generously of itself; therefore,

immanence is most resonant when it propagates and perpetuates life.
The meaning of life is…life: the eternal affirmation of existence…

“At the moment which is not of action or inaction you can receive this:
‘on whatever sphere of being the mind of a man may be intent at the
time of death’—that is the one action (and the time of death is every
moment) which shall fructify in the lives of others.” (T.S. Eliot)

“…although we do not remember that we existed before the body, yet we

feel that our mind, in so far as it involves the essence of the body, under
the form of eternity, is eternal, and that thus its existence cannot be de-
fined in terms of time, or explained through duration...” (Spinoza)

“…immanence is life sub specie aeternitatis…”

634
 

The Via dei Guicciardini opens out onto the broad, gently sloping
square of the piazza that fronts the Palazzo Pitti. The sandstone palace
glows warmly in the morning sun, and behind it the Boboli gardens rise
on the terraced hillside behind the palace. The throng of tourists around
them continue on up the curving driveway to the museum or through the
arched loggia to the gardens, while they pause on the street a moment to
orient themselves.
“…so that’s the Palazzo Pitti there, of course, and when Claire first
came to Florence in October, 1820, she was living here somewhere…it
must be there, in one of those houses opposite…”
“…do you know which one?”
“…no…”
“…I see an English tea room there, so maybe this part of Florence
was traditionally inhabited by the English?”
“…at a certain point it seems that much of Florence was inhabited by
the English!”
“…it’s a beautiful area–with this wide open space, and just a couple
of blocks from the Ponte Vecchio…”
“…and behind the palace, up there on the hillside, is the Giardino di
Boboli–the Boboli Gardens, where Claire loved to stroll…”
“…is that where she sat and wrote in her journal by the statue of
Ceres when she first came to Florence alone?”
“…yes–it’s at the top of the hill…”
“…let’s go look!”
“…I’d like to first take a look down there a bit further–this street be-
comes the Via Romana right there on the other side of the piazza, and
somewhere there is the house where Claire retired after all of her adven-
tures on the continent…”
“...the house where Silsbee met her?”
“…yes…”
“…and where is her grave?”
“…it’s out of town a ways, in a village called Antella–we’ll have to
find a way to take a bus out there later…”
“…why was she buried there?”
“…I don’t know–maybe it’s the cemetery that serves the southeast
part of Florence…”
“…we can have lunch there…”
“…and we can escape all these tourists for a while…”
They cross the square and continue down the Via Romana for several
blocks until the road begins to veer left just past a small park. Diagonal-
ly across from the park is number 73: a three-storey townhouse with

635
aged white paint and green shutters. He takes several pictures of it from
across the street, and then they walk back to the Palazzo Pitti and
through the loggia to the gardens behind. They pass the Forcone Basin,
and ascend the steps of the terraced, sculptured gardens until they reach
the top, where they sit on the plinth of the statue in the shade of an oak
tree.
“…so this is the statue of Ceres where Claire sat when she arrived in
Florence?”
“…the guide says it’s actually not Ceres, but ‘Abundance’–although I
suppose it amounts to the same thing…”
“…it looks like Ceres, with its sheaf of wheat…some water?”
“…yes please…”
“…tell me about Claire, now that we’re here…”
“…Claire’s journal ended with her finding out about Allegra’s death
in early June and didn’t resume again until September 6th: on that day
she simply put the date itself, nothing more…”
“…do we know why?”
“…we know because she refers to its significance in her journal ex-
actly three years later, when she wrote this account:

Lovely weather. I think a great deal of past times to-day

and above all of this day three years ago, but the senti-
ments of that time are most likely long ago, vanished into
air. This is life. So live to nothing but toil and trouble–all
its sweets are like the day whose anniversary this is–more
transitory than a shade–yet it had been otherwise if In-
walert had been different and I might have been happy as
I am now wretched.

…of course ‘Inwalert’ is obviously Trelawny backwards, so that was the

day Trelawny either declared his love, or actually made love to her…”
“…there’s a big difference between the two…”
“…yes…we know Claire met Trelawny on the 6th somewhere on the
banks of the Arno, and something happened. At some point, probably
soon after this meeting and before she left Pisa, Trelawny sent her this
note:

‘A gnarled tree may bear good fruit, and a harsh na-

ture may give good counsel,’––
Why should I alone extract poison, from the flowers
fortune strews in my path–from which all others could
gather sweets? Let us be firm and staunch friends–we
both want friends–you have lost in Shelley one worthy to
be called so–I cannot fill his place–as who can?—but you
will not find me altogether unworthy of the office. Linked
thus together we may defy the fate that separates us for a

636
 time–with united hearts what can separate us?—Oh, no,–
fear not even…

…here the editor says four lines have been scratched out. It then goes on
like this…

…we shall meet again.–

In solitude, silence, or absence, I think of your words–
and can even make sacrifices to reason–…
Your Edward
I am a horseback 9 o’clock.
Ask Mary to lend me her horsewhip.

…I like the last part: even though he’s probably being serious, it re-
minds me of Nietzsche’s, ‘Going to see a woman? Take your whip!’”
“…very funny…”
“…I’m joking…anyway, Trelawny at the very least made a proposal,
but based on later letters I believe something physical happened as
well…”
“…the proposal seems to have been rebuffed. By the way, where was
Trelawny going?”
“…the answer to that probably has something to do with why Claire
wrote the part about ‘if Trelawny had been different’: Trelawny was off
to Genoa: he had a mistress there–a married woman named Gabrielle
Wright…”
“…a married mistress?”
“…the astounding part is that he told Claire! I think it was Trelawny’s
interpretation of ‘free love’…Trelawny wasn’t Shelley by any means,
and he certainly didn’t truly know Shelley after a mere six months, de-
spite what he had had written on his tombstone. A consequence of that
ignorance is that he seems to have interpreted ‘free love’ as never tying
oneself down to a single woman–or women. I think he lacked the inner
strength to commit himself to a single woman. Every time he came
close, he engineered some way out of it–consciously or unconsciously;
and that, in fact, is what kept happening with Claire. They would circle
around each other, but each time something would happen that prevent-
ed their coming together–in most cases engineered by Trelawny. I can
only speculate about what happened before she left, but at the very least
he declared his love for her on the 6th, and for whatever reason he left
for Genoa, not expecting her to leave before his return. Whatever did
happen, it didn’t change Claire’s mind about departing for Vienna…”
“…or perhaps she was fleeing the scene…”
“…here’s the letter she wrote to Mary on September 12th, the day
Mary departed for Genoa–it’s clear she was still intending to depart, and
she mentions nothing about Trelawny:

637
My Dear Mary–
You have only been gone a few hours–I have been in-
expressibly low-spirited–I hope dear Jane will be with
you when this arrives. Nothing new has happened–what
should–to me there seems nothing new under the Sun,
except the old tale of misery, misery. I find you have
among the Books my German Dictionary, German &
English called Habendorff’s–I beg you will send it by
Gagino, as I cannot go on without it. I thought I had it
among mine, but find I lent it to dear Shelley at Lerici
and that it came with yours & has not been since in my
possession. If you can Mary, pray pay attention to this.
Thursday. I am to begin my Journey to Vienna on
Monday. Mrs. Mason will make me go & the conse-
quence is that it will be double as much as I am to go
alone–imagine all the lonely inns–the weary long miles–if
I do observe whatever befalls in life–the heaviest part, the
very dregs of the misfortune fall upon me…I believe my
Minerva is right, for I might wait to all Eternity for a par-
ty. You may remember what Lord Byron said about pay-
ing for the translation–now he has mumbled & grumbled
and demurred and does not know whether it is worth it
and will only give forty crowns so that I am afraid I shall
not be overstocked when I arrive in Vienna, unless indeed
God shall spread a table for me in the wilderness. I mean
to chew rhubarb the whole way as the only diversion I
can think of at all suited to my present state of feeling,
and if I should write you scolding letters, you will excuse
them knowing that with the Psalmist ‘Out of the bitter-
ness of my mouth have I spoken.’
I hope you will find all your goods right–I have been
much occupied with them, although perhaps you may
think I had little to do. I go to Livorno this afternoon, but
only for two days–I think I believe I shall infallibly part
for Vienna Monday, but address your letters to me at Pi-
sa, as Mrs. Mason will forward them. But I will write just
before going, and then address I pray you to Monsieur
Clairmont. 1175 Auf der Biber Bastei Wien. Remember
to send the dictionary, for if it does not come before I go
Mrs. Mason will give me hers, and keep mine instead. I
think I have nothing more to say. Kiss the dear little Per-
cy for me and if Jane is with you, tell her how much I
thought of her, and that her image will always float across
my mind, shining in my dark history like a ray of light
across a cave. Kiss her children also with a grandmoth-

638
 er’s love. Accept my best wishes for your happiness. Dio
ti da Maria ventura

Your affectionate
Clari

…the Italian means ‘God give you good fortune, Mary’…”

“…she saw herself in almost Biblical terms–as going forth into the
wilderness…”
“…in a way, she was…”
“…and Trelawny?”
“…he wrote to her on September 19th and 20th in response to a letter
she sent him–it’s lost so we can only infer its contents, but it must have
announced her decision to depart for Vienna, because he rushed from
Genoa to Livorno on September 16th to intercept her. They must have
crossed paths, as she was departing from Livorno to Florence just as he
arrived in Livorno…”
“…typical Trelawny–always just missing out…what did his letter
say?”
“…it was full of ‘romantic’ effusions–listen to this:

You will observe by the conclusion of my first letter–

that overpowered by the intense feelings yours had set in
motion and finding it totally impossible to convey to you
any idea of what I felt by writing–impulse impelling I
hastily embarked in the middle of Monday night during a
very heavy squall which blew for Leghorn in the fond
hope–that the swiftness of a tempest would convey me to
you–I thought you would linger till you heard from me
particularly as there was a probability of my return–and
when everyone at Genoa counseled me to stay and avoid
the danger of putting to Sea on such a night–I repeated to
myself–and hardened my resolution in Ovid’s words–

‘Nor adverse winds nor raging seas

Can ever make him stay,
Whom Love commands’–

If I felt at Genoa on perusing your Dear letters the in-

sufficiency of words weakened by the delay of days be-
fore they reached you in answer–and that it was then nec-
essary to meet you that I might at least have some chance
of doing justice to what I felt–by baring my bosom and
relieving my overflowing heart by pouring its pure and
fresh effusions in all their strength before you–If I then
threw down my pen in despair,–how hopeless, vain, and

639
 imbecile is it, to now resume the task!—now that the bit-
ter feelings of disappointment after having tortured me
almost into convulsions have left me gelid, morbid, and
broken hearted? Oh dearest how less than nothing are
words–Would you had been with me–since I left Genoa
in search of you–unseen yourself to be all-seeing–to have
watched the varied and mingled emotions portrayed on
my dark brow and sunken eye–the changing colour of my
cheek and lips from white to black–and the contrast–
when my hopes and fears ended in the sad and agonizing
certainty, that you were gone–and that too without having
one parting word from him–who–I know not what–are
these the sensations, the acts of Love, sweet Clare? For
on my soul I know not–I thought and think it friendship,
passion, impulse, but my mind has been so long lulled in-
to indifference and selfishness, that I cannot credit I am
thus on the instant–filled with the rekindled fire of my
youth–and this against my own inclining–nay I have and
still do struggle to suppress if not extinguish–the flame
which is consuming me…

…here there are some words crossed out…

…and now I am mad that you listened to me–Oh sweet

dearest friend for still will I address you by that title–why
have you thus plunged me into excruciating misery–by
deserting him that would–but bleed on in silence my
heart–let not cold and heartless mock thee with their tri-
umphs at thy weakness, thou has never yet found sympa-
thy when thou teemed with love and sought it–and canst
thou expect it now,–that time, change and disappointment
have so transformed thee–that thou hast scarce any feel-
ings or sensations in common with thy kind?

…here there’s a passage that Claire must have obliterated–it was proba-
bly about their tryst. In the next section, written a day later, in a section I
can hardly believe, he actually tells her about Gabrielle, his mistress. My
intuition is that his pride was wounded by her departure, and after emot-
ing all over the paper the day before, he decided to play it more coolly:

Thursday the 20th. I passed yesterday eve with Hob-

house and Lord B.—the latter from the badness of the
road to Genoa embarks with me on board the ‘Bolivar’ on
Monday and I return to Genoa. –Gabrielle’s reception of
me was a scene of affectionate greeting and, poor girl,
she has given such proofs of affection and devotion that I

640
 must credit the strength and sincerity of her Love. She
confessed to Wright that she was consumed by the most
ardent passion that whatever might be the consequence
she must abide by them; he raged and expostulated–but
finding nothing could move her he talked of separation–
but as he really is not jealous and of a most liberal mind
together with the conviction that she had never before
given him cause of disgust–and having two children, he
forgave her–only appealing to her sense of honour and
better feelings to induce her to promise she would resist
her inclinations in my favour as a sacrifice, and not
doubting her honour forgave her–and now writes her
most sympathizing and affectionate letters:–he returns to
Genoa in about a month. –
I address this to Post Restante having left your address
at Genoa. I wrote Mrs. Mason a note which at another
time I will send you with her answer as they partake of
the characters of their writers. –Your letters, sweet friend,
will be awaited by me with racking impatience–had I
been successful in meeting you here we should not have
been separated by so many weary leagues–it is painful to
think true hearts are thus ever torn apart by some strange
fatality over which they seem to have little or no control–
why should we not rise up and oppose such decrees–and
control our own fate–at least as far as it is permitted? And
yet without a struggle we have resigned ourselves to our
misery. Write, dear, relieve some portion of the weight
which oppresses my bosom, for I am sick of heart–
melancholy and discontented: write, reassure me of all
you have said and all you feel. I am selfish and would en-
gross all your time, your affection, your friendship, your
love–and you have left me without a farewell word! Yet I
doubt not you are no less miserable than I am…

…then here he discusses some letters from Jane and Mrs. Mason, and he
ends with ‘I shall be most unhappy till I hear from you–remember we
are to meet again in the Spring–this let nothing put aside,’ followed by a
postscript with news about Mary and Jane. The purple passages are a bit
too much–it’s funny how the ‘real Romantics’ like Shelley would never
have written a letter quite as gushing as that…”
“…it’s a bit easier to write a letter like that when you know the person
has already departed for distant lands…”
“…Trelawny was a specialist in that kind of–what to call it?–
‘flirtation,’ I suppose…”
“…and when did Claire finally depart?”

641
 “…she left September 19th for Florence, and left Florence September
20th. Here’s her September 20th journal entry–it would be her last entry
until she was in Moscow, in May, 1825:

Get up at five. Pack. Breakfast. It pours with rain. The

carriage comes at ten with a Russian gentleman and a fat
Bolognese woman who looks to be a Jewess–and
Guiseppe and Francesco Vetturini. We set out for Bolo-
gna. During the first part of the road I was too occupied
with my own thoughts to attend to the scenery. I remem-
bered how hopelessly I had lingered on Italian soil for
five years, waiting ever for a favorable change instead of
which I am now leaving it, after having buried every
thing that I loved. We stopped to dine at Tagliaferro,
where we rested two hours and then again set forward.
Notwithstanding the rain which came by fits very heavy,
I walked up the steep hills, hoping by fatigue of body to
dull the painful activity of mind with which I found my-
self troubled…

…after that is a description of the scenery; actually, a letter to Jane from

October 24th gives a better sense of the trip, once she could reflect upon
it from a certain distance. It’s the only complete letter we have by Claire
until 1824, when she was in Moscow:

My dear Jane–
I only received the letter you wrote me before quitting
Genoa on my arrival at Vienna–I set out almost immedi-
ately after you had left Pisa–My journey was safe quiet
and melancholy–I cannot express the feeling with which I
quitted Italy, that fatal country and entered the beautiful
vales of Illyria–quite peaceful valleys running one out of
the other, divided by mountain streams and shut in by
heights whose slopes are covered by the most beautiful
verdant woods of every species of tree, and whose tints
varied at every step from the brown and red of the au-
tumn touched foliage of the elm and the birch and the lin-
den to the deep green of the oak the pine and the fir. In
these seclusions one laments the loss of dear friends–one
thinks they could have been happy and therefore are to be
regretted, but that is soon changed into the opposite feel-
ing when one is hurried, born on by an uncontrollable fate
to the tumult and life-consuming sounds of a city. In Vi-
enna I envy all who are sleeping their last, or rather let
me say their first sleep. I was received by Mad. Henick-
stein with the greatest kindness, and am staying with her

642
until I find a suitable situation–I have made numerous ac-
quaintances, all rich & fashionable and have been re-
ceived with the greatest politeness and hospitality–I am
perpetually in company–at the theatre, the Corso or din-
ner parties–all things which destroy me–I have lost my
dear den that I had with you where I soothed and recov-
ered my spirits by songs and thoughts which approached
or drew me towards the world of imagination, so different
from the real round substantial globe we inhabit.
You will imagine, my dear Jane how anxiously I long to
hear from you, for I fear it will be impossible that you
should go on much longer without having some severe
illness. And my dear pretty grandchildren whom I love so
much–surely it must be a balm to press them to your heart
and gaze upon their beautiful and cordial smiles. I thank
you for all the expressions of kindness you feel for me
and believe them because I find them only the response
of my own towards you–for so much do I value youth and
your dear Edward that could I restore him to you by the
sacrifice of my own life, how willingly would I not lay it
down…I beg, dearest, you will say as little as possible
even to people who should ask after me, because it is of
such consequence tattling on my account should not go
forward. My Brother also is friendship itself–he is so qui-
et, good, and mild, that we quite suit one another; and
then he allows me to be as wild, and extravagant, as I
please, in my theories. Vienna is extremely cold and
windy–the town very clean and neat–the people devoted
only to pleasure–if you would have a really good idea of
the state of society here, you only have to turn to the
Spectator for it is there verified as if sketched from all I
see and hear. The women are beautiful as far as outside is
concerned but their faces have only one expression: that
of good-nature––one does not see those delightful coun-
tenances which seem only like a thin veil before the
mind, so thin that its most delicate variations may be seen
through. You will guess, then, dear Jane, this place is
very little suited to make me happy––
I have heard little or nothing from Mary since she left
Pisa–therefore have not an idea how her affairs are going
on. For the present it seems I am stationary in Vienna,
and therefore there is little chance of my seeing you, even
if you do come to Paris. Nor does it seem to me very
clear that ever we shall meet again–Every chance is cer-
tainly against it but Life thank God, we must finish–it is
the only consolation the wretched have to know they are

643
 not eternal. Pray my dear Jane write to me as soon as you
can and tell me how you find yourself, and how the chil-
dren are, both of whom pray kiss most affectionately for
me and what are you likely to do? You must excuse my
writing so shortly to you–But I have never literally one
moment to myself–as I have five people in this house, all
anxious to learn English and am perpetually engaged ei-
ther in giving them lessons or in society. Farewell my
dearest Jane–I can only send you my most ardent prayers
for your well-being.
Your affectionate friend
Claire

…and then she lists the address of the Henickstein’s as the Kärtnerstras-
se–you know it: the main pedestrian street running from Stephansplatz
down to the opera–one of the best addresses in Vienna, then and now…”
“…Claire lived there? It changes my whole sense of that street…”
“…yes, it’s strange how having a ‘dead friend’ around can do that! To
continue, the last part about wanting to avoid gossip shows she already
sensed the dangers that would be facing her: after all, she was in the cap-
ital city of the paranoid Austrian Empire under the reactionary Emperor
Francis the 1st and Metternich, who had been chancellor of the Austrian
Empire since 1821…”
“…but she was a nobody–why would they care about her?”
“…Metternich was viciously anti-liberal and reactionary, and he cre-
ated the first modern spy network to root out any form of democratic or
liberal ideas. The Carlsbad Decrees had been instituted at the end of
1819, monitoring university classes and what books were checked out of
libraries, censoring those books deemed radical, and removing teachers
who had what they considered ‘dangerous’ views. The social reaction to
it all was the advent of the Biedermeier period–quite the opposite of the
Romantic period: whereas Romanticism stressed the individual self out
in nature, or exile, or rebelling against social norms and political tyran-
ny, the Biedermeier period in Austria stressed a life of middle class con-
formity, turned inward towards one’s family and trusted friends–what
Claire noted in her letter as a life where the people were ‘devoted only to
pleasure.’ Essentially, there was an unspoken deal between the people
and the ruling powers: ‘You avoid making demands for reform, and we
will leave you to your private life’…”
“…it sounds like the same pact made during the period of ‘Normali-
zation’ under communism, when Czechoslovakia had to learn to live
with the Soviet occupation…”
“…same deal, different ideology. Aside from being politically reac-
tionary, Claire would have been in Vienna at the same time that Schu-
bert was in a Viennese hospital getting his syphilis treated and writing
his song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, and Beethoven was finishing the 9th

644
Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the Diabelli Variations. She would
have found Fidelio being played regularly at the Vienna Opera, although
it would have been competing with Rossini, much to Beethoven’s cha-
grin–he even threatened premiering works in Berlin, due to what he saw
as the frivolity of the Viennese…”
“…so was Claire in any real danger?”
“…yes, actually. Anyone who had been connected to Godwin, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Shelley or Byron was more than suspect–they were the
enemy…”
“…and they found out about Claire?”
“…yes…”
“…how?! That’s incredible: I’d expect Shelley, Byron, and even
Mary to be found out, but Claire?”
“…I know, I know–but it’s true! Actually, some literary sleuthing by
Marion Kingston Stocking revealed that the Austrian authorities opened
a file on Claire’s brother Charles that was ninety pages long! It seems
that when he arrived he was told to apply for a residence permit of some
sort, which he did, and then to wait. He waited, nothing happened, and
his Viennese friends told him he had better just be quiet, rather than
drawing attention to himself…”
“…it sounds like what some of your friends do in Prague…”
“…it’s not quite the same: they’re allowed in for ninety days on a
tourist visa, so they just keep leaving the country every ninety days! I
can’t blame them, though, given the bureaucracy…”
“…‘the more things change’…”
“…‘the more they stay the same’…true enough! So, when Claire ar-
rived, it prompted another look at his file, and queries were sent out.
Apparently the authorities were tipped off by an anonymous note: the
note mentioned he was the son of the authoress of A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, his father had been prosecuted for sedition, his sister
had married Shelley, the ‘author of Queen Mab, and a deist’ and ‘the
intimate of Lord Byron’–a jumble of facts and errors, but it’s still
astounding that they had all of that…”
“…they must have been listening at doors!”
“…I always wondered if that was why the doors are padded in public
institutions in Prague?”
“…of course!”
“…how bizarre…”
“…so what happened to Claire and her brother?”
“…the fiasco took three months–from November through February,
and was a bureaucratic nightmare. After a totally Kafkaesque series of
meetings with some supercilious clerks, he was forced to get a group of
aristocrats to vouch for him–in the end two Counts, a Countess, a Prin-
cess, three Barons, and two Chevaliers! Even by February he wasn’t
sure whether he would receive the necessary clearance. He summed it all
up, writing, ‘As for myself, I believe I have only to add that this Police

645
adventure has totally disgusted me with Vienna, and indeed with all that
is Austrian. I believe it is the only civilized country in the world where
foreigners have no legal protector’…”
“…that could be said about the Czech Republic today!”
“…you are my protector!”
“…but not, unfortunately, your ‘legal’ protector. So how did Claire
manage it?”
“…for Claire it was one of a series of disasters that occurred during
her five month stay in Vienna. She discovered it was against the rules
for Viennese families to take a foreign governess, as such posts were
reserved for the daughters of the military. Then, the house where she
was staying temporarily in return for English lessons experienced, in the
same period, the death of the mother as well as the sister-in-law of the
lady of the house, Mrs. Henickstein, while one of her daughters was ill
and the other was abandoned by her fiancée! Poor Claire was quite ill
herself: later she would write of that period, ‘I nearly died at Vienna
when I was four-and-twenty–I grew skeleton thin–I had constant low
fever–I could not eat–and this for months.’ It must have been partially
caused by her mourning, plus she was obviously concerned that the in-
vestigation sparked by her presence might ruin her brother’s prospects.
So, in the midst of all that, she received a series of Trelawny’s letters,
chastising her for having run away from him…”
“…do we have the letters?”
“…we have many of his letters to her, but not hers to him–but we can
guess what they said from his response. Look at this–here’s the October
7th section of a multi-part letter that he wrote: we can guess the contents
of a letter she sent September 22nd–she was in Ferrara by then. It’s clear
she was angry at him:

Have I not suffered?—did I not take every step to see

you?—did you not fly me–and by leaving me in igno-
rance of your movements mar my wishes?—what could I
do but write to Vienna–and having left your address–
direct Post Restante?—My letters as far as words can will
be proof that you have done me wrong. –Proud, peevish,
sullen, domineering, self-willed, revengeful, unrelenting,
and ascetic, are all of them terms, which–if charged
against me–some actions of my life would warrant;–and
therefore I must be content to bear with them;–but hypoc-
risy, deceit, baseness, cowardice, or want of generosity or
heart–what action have you seen or heard of my commit-
ting that warrants your accusation that I am guilty of this
baseness? –how can you, Claire, that know me, accuse
me of being a cold-blooded, selfish, heartless, villain? –
for such your letters imply me to be; but grief, has blind-
ed your judgment…

646
…then he discusses her brother’s letter to Mary, and brings it back to
any possible future plans between them:

As to my intentions, they are as usually–not yet me-

thodically arranged.—I purport to staying here some
months; and during that we can talk over what will be the
most agreeable and advisable plan:–till then go on as if
you had never seen me–I should like to come to Vienna
in the Spring…

…but, then, look at his postscript–he discusses his mistress again:

Gabrielle intends writing you herself and introducing you

to some of her particular friends–She is a simple, well-
meaning, good-hearted Girl–and very anxious to know
you whom she has heard me talk so much about.

…I think that says it all–my guess is that the real reason she was angry
was because she couldn’t believe that he would declare love to her at the
same time he had a married mistress in Genoa…”
“…I can’t believe it either! As far as I can see, this Gabrielle was just
his mistress–his…what would you call it?”
“…his fuck…”
“…ok, his ‘fuck’–and seemingly nothing more, right?”
“…right…”
“…then why did he even need to mention her? Do you think it was
because he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide it from her, given Mary
was there in Genoa also?”
“…I don’t think it would have occurred to Trelawny to hide it in any
case, but I think it functioned for him–consciously or unconsciously–as
an escape route or safety valve. He seems to have been what they call a
‘dance-away lover’: he came on strong, but when it seemed too likely
that a commitment was in the offing, he found a way to escape. In this
case, to tell Claire about Gabrielle was his way to signal to her that he
wasn’t about to settle down with her in strict monogamy. See here, he
does it again in his letter of November 22nd–he tells her that he plans to
go to Vienna that summer, but he also complains about missing his mis-
tress because her husband returned:

My life here is more dull, disagreeable, and heavy than

heretofore. I am cold, weary, and utterly comfortless–
without society or friends, robbed of my Lady compan-
ion–which deprives me of everything, as here she was all
to me.

647
…I think finally Claire did react–finally did tell him, as he immediately
wrote two more letters on December 4th and 10th that show him defend-
ing himself against what were clearly even more pointed accusations,
and they must have hit the mark, for look what he writes:

You! You! torture me Claire,––your cold, cruel heartless

letter has driven me mad––it is ungenerous under the
mask of love–to enact the part of a demon–I who in the
sincerity and honesty of my affection write unhesitating-
ly, unreflectingly–my vaguest wildest thoughts, all that
my heart felt or head surmised–who considered your
bosom faithful as my most secret tablets…

…I think the words he italicizes there speak to the point: she must have
called him on the fact he was declaring love to her while being involved
with Gabrielle, and here, further on, he defends himself again against the
word ‘hypocrisy,’ which leads me to surmise that she charged him with
hypocrisy to be declaring love to two women at once:

By the power of what I considered mutual and fervent af-

fection you bared my heart, and gathered, my crudest,
idlest most entangled surmises–you then sum them up to-
gether in a cold unfeeling arithmetical manner–and not
only cast me off and upbraid me, but cover me with
shame and reproaches–for being already deeply in your
debt! I am hurt to the very soul, I am shamed and sick to
death to be thus trampled on and despised, my heart is
bruised…

…et cetera, et cetera–of course his only recourse was to combat any
jealousy in her by declaring his love for her ‘the true and only love,’
which he does next:

…and when in absence I was obliged to reflect on that,

which, overwhelmed all other thoughts (my Love for
you)–finding that all my hopes of peace (of happiness I
had none, believing it to be an ideal shadow) were cen-
tered in you–I wished to wipe from you every stain
whether real, or imaginary–which the jealous and Lynx
eyes of a Lover disquiet themselves with–I fearlessly
opened my heart, confessed my weaknesses, poured out
all my disjointed thoughts–entreated your counsel, aid,
judgment, looked to you as my destiny–considered you
bound to me by ties nothing could tear asunder–would
have broken through all others to do you service–I tell
you, Clare, and my word is sufficient at this era,–that

648
 whether you shake me from you or not–that you–that you
use me unjustly!–that I have, and do love you with the
warmest and most fervent and unalterable affection, that
every sentiment and sensation that the purest Love has
awakened in my heart are all exclusively concentrated in
you…

…note the word ‘exclusively’! But here, at the height of his declaration,
he shifts his discourse into an ambivalent key in a move that I think was
equally designed to provoke her and to keep a plausibly deniable dis-
tance:

I think you are right in withdrawing your fate from mine–

my nature has been perverted by neglect and disappoint-
ment in those I loved–my disposition is unamiable; I am
sullen, savage, suspicious & discontented–I can’t help it–
you have sealed me so–nevertheless I repeat to you I am
deeply interested in your fate–I would sacrifice myself to
give you content and peace of mind–time will convince
you of this–you have made me hopelessly wretched.

…so he ends with some self-pity…”

“…and all that was in the same letter?”
“…believe it or not…”
“…what a jerk!”
“…it gets worse: by December 10th he had clearly decided to back
further away–the letter is a strange mixture of defensiveness, reaction,
guilty admission and attempts at explanation:

My Dear Clare, And can you be angry with one that so

truly loves you–did I not tell you that before we linked
ourselves closer together we had better try on the touch-
stone of time the strength and proof of our attachment;
did I not tell you that I was unfitted for calm and domes-
ticities–that I had been abused and dishonoured by the
‘ignoble chains of love,’ that they had left me galled with
rankling and uncurable wounds–and still tortured with
their remembrance, and suffering deeply from their ef-
fects?—have I not a right to curse the cause,–the false
cause of my misery?—and that is Love!—on my part pure
sincere disinterested love.—Can I then approach the con-
fines of that passion without struggling against his pow-
er?—

…despite the use he is putting his explanation to, I think he touches on

the actual truth there, which is that for whatever reason–perhaps the fail-

649
ure of his first marriage, he was deeply wounded and vulnerable, and
therefore incapable of creating a committed bond…”
“…then why did he declare his love to her?”
“…I guess it was partially because he didn’t fully realize how wound-
ed he actually was, and partially because he had this crazy idea about
free love and thought Claire would be willing. He wasn’t very stable in
his affections, to say the least! Look at what he does next in the letter:
it’s as if he is blaming her for her having failed to heed his fair warning!

…did I not say such feelings would end in pain?—have

you not dishonoured me–by basest suspicions–in so early
doubting my honesty?–have not your letters been filled
with rebukes and undeserved censures, fears, jealousy,
contumelies? – yes, you have covered me with wrongs
and shames; but whilst I thought you loved me–and that
your very doubts and accusations might naturally arise
from its excess, so long I bore them uncomplainingly–
nay, loved you the better!

…so he seems to be blaming her for having torn it…”

“…so he’s turned the whole thing around on her–nice!”
“…and in the next part comes the sentence that is the closest we’ll get
to a hint of what happened back in Pisa–it was considered too scandal-
ous even to print in the 1910 edition of his letters, and therefore cen-
sored: ‘Well, I have suffered real and solid pain enough for the few mo-
ments of pleasure you granted me…’”
“...‘few moments’?” It sounds like–what do you call it? When it’s very
quick?”
“…a ‘quickie’…yes, it doesn’t necessarily have to be full sexual in-
tercourse, but it certainly appears that something happened there on the
banks of the Arno! Then, exactly a month later–January 10th, there’s a
calm resignation in his letter, and a deliberate effort to summarize what
happened in the cool light of recollection, re-writing his passionate dec-
larations and apparently disreputable suggestions in a way where it
seems he was merely offering friendly help to a ‘sister’…”
“…‘sister’!? Who was he trying to fool?”
“…it’s typical Trelawny–listen to this:

Dear Friend,
I am worn to death with ideal visions of Love and friend-
ship–continual disappointment has cooled my ardour in
the pursuit–my body has grown old–not with years–but
care and grief! And my mind diseased with brooding
schemes of happiness–ever ending in pains–and now I am
on the verge of despair…Dunn has forwarded your letter
to me here, and it has calmed me–but my mind is of a

650
 stuff so hard that it is difficult to erase impressions once
graven on it; and this continued doubting and distrust-
ing,–a heart too fearless and passionate to play the hypo-
crite–only serves to harden it! –
Be assured when I profess–I feel; and what I vow I ex-
ecute!—at least both, in as far as in me lies. The resem-
blance in our outcast fortunes induced me in sympathy to
claim you as a sister–we both appeared to be without
ties–and naturally formed them for each other–self-love,
or secondary motives, there could be none–which I
thought a foundation for our friendship not easily to be
shaken–my fancied security made me so incautious that I
spoke and wrote to you–as I commune with ‘my own
conscious mind,’ little apprehending its consequences;
my probity of friendship for you was so true that I was
fearless.—It was in an hour of bitterness, in one of my
splenetic moods with bitter retrospection of the past viv-
idly glowing ‘in my mind’s eye’…Clara, you have
wronged me,–your friend,–your true and sincere friend…

…should I stop?”
“…no, why?’
“…you look like you’re going to be sick…”
“…it makes me sick, but no, continue…”

…and for a misapplied,–or misconceived word–would

have shaken me from you–degradingly repaying the fer-
vour of my affection with stony indifference–worse than
scorn or hate. But pardon me in thus again transgressing
by uttering my thoughts!—I will henceforth be more cir-
cumspect; remember, if my letters are less frequent or
colder, that it does not arise from coldness of heart–
nothing, not even time, can diminish the unalterable de-
sire I have to contribute to your peace and happi-
ness…Dear Clara, do I pray use me–give me proof of
your belief in my entire friendship by freely using me in
your service it will give me real pleasure!...Write to me
often, Dear Clare–your letters are my greatest consola-
tion–write on if you love me, write!

…so here he’s taking the position of the injured party who withdraws to
protect himself…”
“…I can’t believe it…”
“…and in a letter from February 8th, 1823, he seems to back out even
more, explaining why it never would have worked between them:

651
 For had I a friend that loved me that would follow my Pa-
riah’s life–with untired affection and cheerfulness–I
Should rejoice–and would treasure her as my only com-
fort and riches in life–but then she would be miserable–
for I am become so restless, bad-tempered, and over-
bearing–that no disposition could bear with mine–and the
continual reproaches of my own heart–for thus wantonly
trampling on the affections of those I love–drives me
mad.—And you that are as proud, independent, and tena-
cious as myself–however deep and fervent our attach-
ment–oh, no Clare–conscious of the superiority of your
Mind and judgment–though Love would make you capa-
ble of very great sacrifices–you could not submit to the
degradation of becoming its victim.

…of course there’s quite a bit of bad faith there: he was playing the
‘aloof’ game in order to see where it would get him; but, before any
benefits could be gained, she had made her decision to go to Russia as a
governess…”
“…and a good decision it was, if it helped get her away from him!”
“…he was an ass, for sure, but not totally without her interests at
heart: he tried to forestall her decision, and I think he was right to do so;
in fact, he even suggested he could send her money to help get her back
to Italy. This time I truly think he was acting from somewhat pure mo-
tives–he was capable of it from time to time. He followed it up with a
letter written on March 29th, where he still tried to get her to accept his
offer without any strings attached, and to worry about the consequences
later:

I must candidly confess I wish you near me–and you say

you prefer Italy–do not reason too closely–or pry too nar-
rowly into the future–(We outcasts from happiness must
not be too fastidious)–or be over scrupulous as to conse-
quences–but I will not influence–my friendship and Af-
fection for you is as sincere as it is unalterable, and you
may depend on me–in that regards your fate…

…but apparently she did have scruples about his offer, and felt that it
would compromise her independence…”
“…so she went to Russia anyway…”
“…yes, she had already left by March 22nd, too late to have received
his letter–but I don’t think it would have changed anything. She must
have written to him about her objections–the lack of clarity of the situa-
tion or his real intentions, the question of proprieties–for his response,
on April 11th, shows him being a bit defensive, and protesting the inno-
cence of his motivations:

652
 …my first object was without loss of time to remove you
from present evils, and I therefore entreated you to return
to Italy–not to become a sacrifice by entangling your des-
tiny with mine, but to return to Florence and live there as
you did before Shelley’s death. I knew that when we are
at the height of wretchedness–any change is a welcome
one; as to me, I would have divested myself of selfishness
and readily complied with your wishes–whatever they
might be! For I am intolerably indifferent as to myself,
having lived long enough to be satisfied that I am not of a
nature to be happy, or content, or to make others so!—I
do most certainly–most ardently wish you to be near me,–
for of late I have been, more than hitherto in my life,
lonely and wretched,–without a friend or companion;
without anything to love–all my better and softer feelings
lying torpid–to me there is something very miserable in
this state of existence,–for although I have never attained
any one object that could satisfy my eager and ardent
mind,–I have not all my life pursued vain shadows,–but
have tasted both of the pleasures of love and friendship. –
But death, or absence–like death, has totally robbed me of
those blessings–and left me friendless and outcast; and
your perverse determination–not alone to decline return-
ing to the South, but to put barriers of eternal ice and
snow between us…

…well, here he goes on into some emotive gibberish, which culminates

in three lines that she crossed out, so once again he must have referred to
what they once shared together, but in a letter written on April 20th, he’s
back in a position of denial–pretending he hadn’t really offered her any-
thing so specific as living together:

Dear Clare,
There are some things in your last letter that I may justly
cavil at–you say ‘do not write angrily to me, for nothing
can alter my determination’–how can you reconcile this
with true Love–which only seeks the happiness of its ob-
ject–I do not marvel at your saying ‘you could not be
happy with me’; the question is would you be less com-
paratively miserable than you are now–or does the bread
of strangers please you better?—But, dear Clare, you
mistook my meaning–I never intended you staying with
me–such probably would have been the consequences of
our again meeting–what I wished was first–that you
should not increase the distance between us by going far-

653
 ther North–and foreseeing it possible you might not be
inclined to reside at Vienna–I to provide against that ad-
vised your returning to Italy–and then to consult your
own inclination as to what other step would be most con-
ducive to your advantage…

…then he talks about money and friendship for a while, and there’s a
reference to what happened in Pisa, which the 1910 editor suppressed:

…remember, you have no cause to despair–for you have

one faithful bosom that if his lot is equally wretched–or
otherwise–will receive you, and press you to his bosom
with the same undiminished ardor he did when he first
pressed you there–confess your belief and trust in this–
and faithfully promise me–you would not hesitate to put
me to the proof–this is the Creed of my Friendship–my
love–‘lies too deep for words’–and its intensity–is phrase-
less. –Trust me, Dear friend…

…the part that was suppressed was the part about pressing her ‘to his
bosom with the same undiminished ardor’–not exactly evidence of im-
propriety, but I suppose those were different times…”
“…but it shows something did happen…”
“…something, yes: I think it’s the word ‘ardor’ that moved the 1910
editor to censor it–you can’t press women to your bosom with ‘ardor’
and be considered genteel by the standards of Edwardian society…”
“…it’s absurd!”
“…keep that in mind when we look at what happened to Claire in the
decades which followed, because she became exactly prudish like
that…anyway, to continue, it’s typical of Trelawny in the same letter to
mention Gabrielle writing him ‘frenzied letters of her despair–but she
has other claims on her affections–which lessens my regrets’…”
“…he never learned, did he?”
“…his obtuseness about those things is quite amazing, but Claire also
let herself in for it, for just as it seemed his ardor had cooled, she must
have queried him seriously about the ‘Italian plan,’ because a letter he
wrote in mid-May from Florence shows him responding to what must
have been her questions about his finances–a pragmatic question, con-
sidering the circumstances:

Now to proceed to your most urgent questions, which I

have hitherto avoided. As to my fortune–my income is
reduced to about £500 a year–the woman I married hav-
ing bankrupted me in fortune as well as in happiness. If I
outlive two or three relations–I shall, however, retrieve in
some measure my fortunes–so you see, dear Claire how

654
 thoughtless and vain was my idea of our living togeth-
er…my expenses are within even the limits of my beggar-
ly means–but who can have gone through such varieties
of life as I have–and not have formed a variety of ties
with the poor and unfortunate;–I am so shackled with
these that I do not think I have even a right to form a
connection which would affect them–what abject slaves
are us poor of fortune–enough of this hateful topic.

…pathetic, isn’t it? ‘I love you, let’s live together and I will protect you–
well, I would if I had the money’…”
“…totally pathetic…”
“…then in early June he had received an additional two letters from
her, and he wrote to her again about his financial incapacity–clearly
there was a significant time-lag in their communications, made worse by
her going to Russia. Note how he refers again to their tryst–‘our sweets’:
‘sweets’ are always a code word in the Shelley circle for sexual conduct
of some sort–on the banks of the Arno:

It was foolish not being thus explicit at first–for open and

entire confidence without reserve is the surest basis to es-
tablish a friendship upon…I was so wholly taken up with
my feelings and expressions of Love–that I could not find
time to croak tidings which mar our bliss.–I was deter-
mined not to mingle bitter with our sweets–nor do I regret
it–for those rapid moments of unqualified pleasure have
stamped more pleasing images on my mind than the like
space in any previous portion of my existence–too genu-
ine to be of long duration, those hours are always fresh
and green in my memory–and I recur to them when I
would drive the blue-devils from my bosom. When shall
such moments come over again? I do not despair–we are
neither of us such changelings or of such light and frivo-
lous natures–as to be subject to the changes of the times–
the wrongs and malice of the world cannot affect us: we
have given proof in the various acts of our lives–that we
stand aloof–fearless and unchangeable!

…so now his strategy seems to be to freeze their love as a sort of virtual
memory–perhaps good for masturbatory fantasies, but little else…”
“…it’s maddening how he always slips away–coming forward and
retreating when she shows any signs of meeting him…”
“…he’s not unlike many men at age thirty–running headlong from
commitment at the same time he wanted to ‘get his ashes hauled,’ as one
of my old professors put it…”
“…what?!”

655
 “…while lecturing on T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru-
frock,’ no less…”
“…so that’s how men see it!”
“…some men…”
“…most men…”
“…but not all…”
“…Shelley was an ideal man in comparison: at least he was there, de-
spite everything…”
“…it speaks to the fundamental difference between Shelley actually
having been a Romantic poet, and ‘being romantic’–Trelawny’s ideal-
ized, diluted, and vulgarized version of it: better to call him a ‘romanti-
cizer’–in fact there’s a biography of Trelawny called Trelawny, the In-
curable Romancer! He was narcissistically in love with a certain image
of himself, not with the real, flesh-and-blood woman he was address-
ing…”
“…did it end there?”
“…no, but there was a hiatus in their correspondence: on his side, the
two letters he received in early June would be the last letters of hers to
reach him until October, 1825, when his Greek adventure was winding
down–plus he finally received two older letters from her. Of course all
of them are lost, as apparently Trelawny didn’t hold on to their corre-
spondence. She would not hear from Trelawny again until May, 1825,
when she received a letter from Mary that contained Trelawny’s letter
from September, 1824. Trelawny had written two more letters to her be-
fore he departed with Byron for Greece, both complaining about not
having heard from her. On June 26th, 1823, he finally wrote her about
the Greece plan, which was, of course, a touchy issue, as he was going
off on an adventure with the one person that she loathed more than any
other…”
“…was he aware that it was a sensitive issue with her, or was he his
usual, thick-headed self?”
“…he was aware of it, but also emotionally thick-headed, as usual.
Listen to how he sheepishly broaches the topic:

How shall I tell you, dearest, or do you know it–that–

that–I am actually now on my road–to Embark for
Greece?—and that I am to accompany a man that you
disesteem?—forgive me–extend to me your utmost
stretch of toleration–and remember that you have in some
degree driven me to this course–forced me into an active
and perilous life–to get rid of the pain and weariness of
my lonely existence;–had you been with me–or here–but
how can I live or rather exist as I have been for some
time–My ardent love of freedom spurs me on to assist in
the struggle for freedom.

656
…I like the double ‘that’!”
“…and ‘ardent love of freedom’!”
“…the truth was that he smelled either Byron’s glory or his defeat,
and saw another opportunity to piggy-back off the fame of others…”
“…and he dared to blame her for it! The nerve of the man…”
“…that’s not all–look at how he tries to manipulate her into approv-
ing his actions:

…I am sure you will approve the principle I am acting

on–though you may regret I am not accompanied by such
a being as Shelley–but alas? that noble breed is extinct–I
never meet any one like him–and all others are nearly
alike indifferent to me…

…and then he ends it with this little sting: ‘this is merely to inform you
of –further separation’–italicizing ‘further’ as if to underline the separa-
tion they had already undergone, which he had just blamed her for…”
“…and you said he wrote her another letter?”
“…he wrote it the day before they departed, July 22nd, 1823. Here it
is:

Dear Clara,
Nothing can increase the anxiety I feel on your account–
not having heard a word from you for nearly three
months–nor has Mary or Mrs. Mason–why is this dear
Clare?—what is the cause?—sickness–sorrow–distance–
mistake–or what?–for as to our affection–it is too strong-
ly based to admit a doubt of its stability–everything–or
anything may have caused this painful silence–but want
of Love–in that point I feel secure–judging of you as I
have a right from our mutual acts–from my own feelings–
I feel a perfect and entire security which nothing can
shake.

…of course he was worried precisely about her silence being from an-
ger. He then told her about his preparations and more about his reasons
for going–he had to leave evidence of his good intentions…and then he
left, and they lost contact for several years…”
“…and that was it–nothing more happened between them?”
“…oh, you will see–there were letters, and a few more half-hearted
advances and retreats over the years, but they led to nothing. I think
Claire understood, in the end, precisely the kind of man he was, and
where they were temperamentally different. Look what she wrote about
him to Mary in this letter written in 1830, well after the point where the
smoke had cleared:

657
 Of Trelawny I know little. He wrote to me describing
where he was living and what kind of life he was leading.
I have not yet answered him although I make a sacred
promise every day not to let it go over my head without
so doing. But there is a certain want of sympathy between
us which makes writing to him extremely disagreeable to
me. I admire esteem and love him; some excellent quali-
ties he possesses in a degree that is unsurpassed but then
it is exactly in another direction from my centre and my
impetus. He likes a turbid and troubled life; I a quiet one;
he is full of fine feelings and has no principles; I am full
of fine principles but never had a feeling (in my life). He
receives (every) all his impressions through his heart; I
through my head. Che voule? Le moyen de se rencontrer
when one is bound for the North Pole and the other for
the South.

…she’s a bit disingenuous in the part where she says she ‘never had a
feeling in my life,’ but you get the point: she meant Trelawny’s hyped
up, romanticized, ‘fine feelings.’ Here’s another excerpt from a letter to
Mary that same year where she made an additional comparison between
Trelawny and herself, which gives examples of his ‘fine feelings’:

It must seem to you that I am strangely neglectful of my

friends, or perhaps you think since I am so near Trelawny
that I have been taking a lesson from him in the Art of
cultivating one’s friendships, but neither of these is the
case; my silence is quite on another principle than his: I
am not desperately in love nor just risen from my bed at
four in the afternoon in order to write my millionth love
letter; nor am I indifferent to those whom Time and the
malice of Fortune have yet spared to me, but simply I
have been too busy.

…she came to understand their essential incompatibility, although she

didn’t entirely give up hope…”
“…yes, what about the ‘advances and retreats’ you mentioned?”
“…yes, I don’t want to get ahead of myself: now that I’ve brought the
story up to the point where Byron and Trelawny left for Greece, Mary
left for England, and Claire left Vienna for Russia, from this point on the
telling becomes a bit difficult to accomplish with any kind of continui-
ty…”
“…so you can start with Claire, as we go to her grave in Antella
next…”

658
 “…yes, and for me she’s central anyway. Her life is the central core
of the narrative, and the events in the lives of the others can be threaded
in and out of her narrative; otherwise, there’d be too much repetition…”
“…so what now?”
“…let’s go down, find the bus station, go to Antella, buy lunch
somewhere, find the cemetery, and we can eat on a bench somewhere in
the shade…”
“…fine, let’s go…”
After a thirty minute ride the bus drops them at the end of the Piazza
Ubaldino Peruzzi in Antella–a long, wedge-shaped municipal plaza.
They walk to a supermercato just around the corner, where they buy
pecorino cheese, bread, prociutto Toscano, black olives, mineral water,
and a chilled bottle of Vermentino di Bolgheri. They walk back to the
square and down the Via di Montisoni, following a sign indicating the
Cimitero Monumentale della Misericordia di Santa Maria all’Antella.
After following the road for three hundred meters past some houses,
tennis courts, and a sports field, the road veers to the right onto the shad-
ed drive of the cemetery. They enter through an iron gate, walking past
rows of tombs fronting a wide loggia. The building is constructed
around the cloister-like loggia with tombs built into the walls, and with
names etched into the black and white marble floor tiles. He begins to
examine the floor.
“…we’re looking for a floor tile…”
“…a floor tile?”
“…I read in a footnote to the Clairmont letters that when they built
these hallways, they dug up sections of the cemetery and reburied people
here: apparently Claire was one of those relocated, so she ought to be on
some floor tile…”
“…the original marker was lost?”
“…I think so, or perhaps they have them stacked somewhere in a cor-
ner–but I doubt it. Also, I doubt she’s buried right where the tile is–I
think the tiles are merely commemorative, and the bodies are probably
stacked ten bodies deep down under here somewhere…”
“…what did the original tomb say?”
“…it listed her name, plus those she chose to be baptized under:
‘Claire Maria Constantia Jane Clairmont’…”
“…Maria for Mary, or for Mary, Mother of God?”
“…your guess is as good as mine–but I think for Mary. Constantia, of
course, is the name Shelley had given her in the poem he wrote for her.
Otherwise, aside from her dates, the only other thing on the tomb was
the sentence, ‘She passed her life in sufferings, expiating not only her
faults but also her virtues’…”
“…what does that mean?”
“…you’ll understand it after I tell you the story of her life after Shel-
ley; but, in short, I take it as a grudging recognition that she had proba-

659
bly gone too far in covering over the real story for the sake of Victorian
conceptions of propriety…”
“…you’ll have to explain that as well…”
“…I will–don’t worry…”
“…so we’ve covered this area, what about over there?”
“… let’s see…”
“…there’s not too much they can write on these tiles–they’re quite
small. Here, you check those, and I’ll check these over here…”
“…ok…”
“…wait–I’ve found it!”
“…let me look, yes, that’s it: ‘Jane Clairmont/Clara Mary/Di anni
81/M Il Marzio 1879’…”
“…it’s a pity there’s just a black floor tile…”
“…so I suppose somewhere under all of this is her oak coffin, with
Shelley’s shawl in it beside her–or maybe not…”
“…so let’s sit out on one of the benches under the trees in front–do
you think it’s ok if we eat there?”
“…why not? We’re alive, they’re dead: we’re not disturbing anyone!”
“…I meant the caretakers…”
“…they’re off having their siesta…”
“…so which bench looks best–I guess that one…”
“…that’s fine with me…”
“…give me your pocket-knife–I’ll prepare the food…”
“…let me open the wine first…here you are…”
“…thanks…so, where were we?”
“…I said I would make Claire the main core of the story, but actually
in the first year or so of her Russian sojourn, there’s very little evidence
to go on. We know she met a Countess Zotoff in Vienna who was the
wife of a minister at the court of Czar Alexander: she had two daughters
aged fourteen and sixteen. Claire agreed to become their governess, and
she departed for St. Petersburg on March 22nd, 1823; nothing was heard
from her until April, 1824, over a year later…”
“…it must have taken all her energy merely to adapt to Russia…”
“…yes, but there was also a degree of willfulness in her silence: she
wrote in her journal, much later, ‘I went to Russia that I might forget the
visitings of my dark and wayward fate, the disastrous hauntings that
seemed inseparable with my name’–it’s a bit romanticized, but, then
again, her Vienna experience had been a debacle, almost costing her
brother his job, so the idea of disappearing in a vast, unknown country
must have had its appeal. Actually, what she did was remarkable by any
standards: she was a woman alone, making her way in a relatively
backward, foreign country, where she had to converse and teach in yet a
third language…”
“…French?”
“…yes…”
“…and what did she think of Russia–and the Russians?”

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 “…you have to place her reactions in context, because even though
she had already been abroad five years, it had always been within an ex-
patriate circle: now, for the first time, she was truly a foreigner, and my
own experience of that tells me that one goes through a series of stages–
I spoke about it before, remember?”
“…about culture shock?”
“…yes–in the initial years culture shock is experienced as an affront
against one’s sensibility by the host culture. One makes endless compar-
isons to one’s own culture–with the host culture receiving the unfavora-
ble judgments. It’s only later, when one stays abroad long enough, that
one begins to realize the limitations of one’s own culture: a visit to one’s
homeland usually accelerates the process, because one can then compare
one’s idealizations with the reality. As we will see, that’s exactly what
would happen to Claire later: in time she would come to judge England
harshly and see the positive side of the continent, but as her sojourn in
Russia coincided with her early, difficult years as a foreigner, she al-
ways associated it with her mood during those years, which was bad, to
say the least…”
“…so I take it she had a negative reaction…”
“…absolutely…”
“…perhaps she was right, and her experiences reflected Russia as it
truly was–and is…”
“…I have no doubt there was truth in many of her perceptions–I’m
just saying that they were amplified by her own sense of cultural dislo-
cation. Certainly many of the reasons for her aversion to Russia were
based in fact: she found the landed class she worked for crude, tasteless,
frivolous, pleasure-seeking, and apolitical–or, rather, deliberately blind
to politics; however, she liked them better than the Viennese, as she
found, that the Russians had more ‘vivacity, more softness, no formali-
ty,’ and were ‘much less stupid.’ Of course even their ‘vivacity’ could
grate on the nerves: in many letters she discussed how the households
she worked for often were erupting into quarrels over the slightest thing;
but one has to weigh that judgment against the relative coldness of her
British upbringing. Otherwise, the long, cold winters were bad for her
health; the hot, continental summers uncomfortable in the extreme, and
she complained, at times, of infestations of insects, among other
things…”
“…and what about the family she worked for?”
“…she worked for several families during her time there: some were
terrible, some a bit better. She disagreed with Russian methods of child-
care, and especially the treatment of girls–who were ‘to be seen but not
heard.’ She later wrote of her time as a governess that, ‘I think I can
with certainty affirm all the pupils I have ever had will be violent de-
fenders of the Rights of Women. I have taken great pains to sow the
seeds of that doctrine wherever I could’: that, of course, was a bit of an
exaggeration, but I have no doubt she steered them as best she could in

661
that direction. Apparently she was quite good as a governess, for she
mentioned several times in letters that her students showed marked signs
of improvement in comparison to other girls. I think she enjoyed it be-
cause it filled some of the space left by the loss of Allegra: she befriend-
ed the eldest daughter of the Zotoff’s, Betsy, and would become quite
attached to several of her other wards as well…”
“…was she in contact with Mary and the others?”
“…in February 1824, Mary wrote this:

…no one has heard from Claire since last July–this is

very cruel of her, since she must be aware that we all
must be very anxious about her. I strive to think that her
silence is occasioned only by her love of mystery or some
other caprice–but I am made very uncomfortable about
it…

…part of the silence was because of the cultural adjustments she was
undergoing, part of it probably due to lost letters…”
“…and there were no journal entries, then?”
“…not in 1824, but we can be sure of one thing without having any
evidence at all: a key event of Spring, 1824 for Claire was hearing about
Byron’s death…”
“…tell me what exactly happened to Byron: I know that he arrived in
Greece and died of fever soon afterwards, but I don’t know the de-
tails…”
“…as I said before, Byron probably was acting out his own grief over
Shelley’s death through his decision to go ‘do’ something to help the
situation in Greece, as before Shelley’s death he was vacillating and to-
tally lacking in any firm motivation. When he finally decided, it was a
bit of a lark–look at how he casually mentions it in a letter to Trelawny:

Dear T. you may have heard that I am going to Greece.

Why do you not come with me? …they all say that I can
be of use in Greece. I do not know how, nor do they; but
at all events let us go.

…remember they sold the Bolivar, and had more or less a kind of sailing
barge called the Hercules. On August 2nd, 1823, it entered the harbor of
Argostoli in Kefalonia in the Ionian islands–it’s about one hundred kil-
ometers south of Corfu. He lingered there quite a while, even acting a bit
like a tourist. He conferred, by letter, with the various Greek chieftains,
who all courted him for his military and financial aid: Mavrocordato,
Mary’s old friend, Colocotrones, Metaxa–the one the Greek cognac is
named after, and Odysseus Androutses. Trelawny was bored after they
had been there a month without even fully disembarking. In the flurry of
diplomacy, I think he must have realized that what was being negotiated

662
was where Byron would place his greatest attribute–his fame: with that,
Trelawny could not compete, and he must have felt a bit eclipsed. So,
wanting to go where the action was, he departed as an envoy to the
western coast of the Peloponnese on September 6th. He claims that the
last words he ever heard Byron say were these: ‘Let me hear from you
often,–come back soon. If things are farcical, they will do for Don Juan;
if heroical, you have another canto of Childe Harold.’ It sounds a bit
like a post-facto Trelawnyism, but we’ll never know for sure. Trelawny
met with Colocotrones in Tripolis, and then decided, from Hydra, to
pass the winter with the chieftain Odysseus Androutses, who he joined
in November. Byron, meanwhile, continued to dither, finally arriving in
Missolonghi on the mainland in January, 1824. He began training and
drilling the five or six hundred men who had been attracted to his camp,
and fell into his usual pattern of shooting and riding. In March the Greek
leaders held a conference at Salona, and Trelawny was dispatched to
Missolonghi to bring Byron to the conference. When Trelawny was a
few miles short of the town, he saw a group of soldiers who seemed de-
spondent: he asked them what the news was, and discovered that Byron
was dead…”
“…late again…”
“…for someone so much wanting to be in the center of things,
Trelawny seems to have had an amazing tendency to just miss out…”
“…how did Byron die–it was some sort of fever, wasn’t it?”
“…yes, he had been ashore for fifteen weeks in Missolonghi, which
was a marshy bog, and contracted some sort of swamp fever. The time
was long enough to have taken a Greek boy as a manservant…”
“…you mean concubine…”
“…possibly–and he had adopted a nine year old Turkish girl whose
ship had run aground nearby…”
“…you mean concubine…”
“…no, I don’t think so…well, perhaps…it’s terrible, but certainly no
one in the camp would have cared what happened to a Turkish girl
then…still, it’s possible he had good motives–perhaps she reminded him
of Allegra. Aside from the training and drilling, nothing much happened,
as it had been raining quite steadily. On February 15th, he had his first fit
of illness after drinking a glass of cold water mixed with cider–it was
something like an epileptic seizure. He recovered, and was preparing to
attend the conference, but the rains had swollen the rivers, making them
impassable, so he was waiting for them to subside. On April 9th he went
out riding, got soaked, and that brought on his final fever, which he suc-
cumbed to on April 19th after the doctors had let his blood several times,
probably weakening him further…”
“…and what was that about his last words?”
“…Fletcher told Mary later that they were about Claire, but the irony
is that if true and he did speak about ‘Claire,’ they were almost certainly
about his school friend Lord Clare, not Claire Clairmont, and, anyway,

663
what he reputedly said as his final words were simply, ‘Now I shall go
to sleep, Good Night’–then he fell into a coma…”
“…how soon would Claire have found out about his death?”
“…almost immediately, I’m sure: Byron was truly a global media fig-
ure–that’s why he could so readily influence Pushkin, Mácha, and Mic-
kiewicz. We don’t know Claire’s immediate response–the journal had
been suspended and there were no letters from that period, but by the
following September, she wrote Jane this about what she had heard of
Byron’s funeral:

Pray think of the modest funeral of our Shelley, and then

of the one given to Lord Byron, and ask yourself, if any-
one with a soul can condescend to interest themselves in
human affairs–you who have witnesses the mode of life
of the latter, and know how utterly a being of sense he
was, and have seen him by the side of Shelley, who was
all fire, all genius, whose enthusiasm never left him an
instant the prey to vulgar or material emotions, can form
a tolerably accurate judgment of the folly of human suf-
ferings.

…as you can see, she’s as bitter as ever about him. Her situation as a
whole was even more isolated than Mary’s was: in the same letter to
Jane, she wrote, ‘I remain as fond of solitude as ever, and if ever mis-
tress of myself, will never let anyone but you and Mary into my
room…’”
“…where was she?”
“…at that time she was in Moscow, acting as a governess for a five
year old girl named Sophie, who they called Dunia. We have more
knowledge of her activities after May, 1825, because she began writing
in her journal again, and she began writing more letters. In April she had
time to write both Mary and Jane: in her letter to Jane, she compared her
situation to theirs, and it gives some idea how she saw herself:

My situation, with regard to your’s and Mary’s, has, on

the first view, many evident disadvantages, one ad-
vantage, however, over your’s, it has–I see much more of
the world, and cannot therefore deny to myself, that
wretchedness is the common lot of all. I see so many un-
happy people, that I cannot complain of the singularity of
my fate. You, in the meanwhile, have the happiness of a
little independence, and the smiles of your children, and
perhaps of one or two friends–These are unknown to me,
and will possibly, if they continue strangers to my heart
much longer, finish by perverting my nature.–Such pov-
erty of the affections as I live in, renders me dreadfully

664
 selfish, and cold-hearted. Yet I have nothing here to love–
I complain of this to you, yet I sometimes think the only
happiness I enjoy is from the perfect indifference I feel to
everything in the world. I feel so calm when I remember
that everything will shortly finish, and that nothing of
mine will be left behind to suffer…

…it’s very sad, and to some degree she was right about how it would
affect her. She seems resigned to simply live in her memories, and espe-
cially her memory of Shelley. In the same month she wrote to Mary,
asking her if she could have a copy made of a portrait of Shelley: ‘Do
tell me if there is any portrait to be had of the ever dear, and ever la-
mented Shelley–I want to save up money to send you, to have a copy of
it, if there is one–it would be a great consolation to me…’”
“…that was courageous of her…”
“…what could she lose? They never spoke directly about Shelley, but
she became bolder over time…”
“…did she ever come out fully and admit her intimacy with Shelley in
her journals?”
“…not in so many words, but I’ll present some evidence, and you be
the judge. In the same year she asked for the portrait she remembered
Shelley’s death day, July 8th, and wrote ‘anniversary 3 yrs of our dear
friend’s death,’ and later that autumn wrote, ‘I thought much of Shelley
today, & thought one might very well apply to him what Cicero said of
Rome: Ungrateful England shall not possess my bones’–clearly she was
thinking of Byron, and making a comparison to what had happened to
both. At other points in her journal, the comparison is outright–for ex-
ample, here: ‘When I was in bed, I wept a great deal because my reading
of to-day had brought back Shelley vividly to my mind. It is cruel to
think how his merit was lost upon the world, how that imposter Byron
was admired for his imposture.’ For me, the passage that speaks the
most about her relations to Shelley is in some leaflets that are appended
to her journals: they are rough draft descriptions of people and events,
and they seem to suggest she finally wanted to come to terms with the
truth. In the same leaflet Claire had written, ‘I have trodden life alone
without a guide and without a companion and before I depart for ever I
would willingly leave with another, what my tongue has never yet ven-
tured to tell. I would willingly think that my memory may not be lost in
oblivion as my life has been,’ so perhaps these entries were where she
set out to do this. The rough descriptions of Shelley and Mary are still
intact, but unfortunately there’s a fourteen page gap in the manuscript,
where clearly the pages have been cut away: someone clearly wanted to
destroy the evidence…”
“…who would have done that?”
“…given the next entry following the gap is about the time Claire was
in San Terenzo after hearing about the death of Allegra, we can assume

665
the fourteen pages gap was her version of events up until then. Also, on
other parts of the manuscript still intact there are penciled notes in the
handwriting of Edward Dowden, and you can see some of the handwrit-
ing on the page edges were the sheets were cut away…”
“…so you think he did it?”
“…no, not at all, and here’s the reason why: in 1885 he was allowed
one day’s access to Boscombe Manor, where Percy Bysshe Shelley and
his wife Lady Jane Shelley had moved and had created a Shelley shrine–
they arranged a parlor as a ‘Sanctum’–painting the ceiling blue with
stars, the display cases decked in apricot-colored satin: in the cases were
the shriveled remains of Shelley’s heart in an urn, locks of all their hair,
the copy of Sophocles that had been supposedly found in Shelley’s
pocket when he drowned–obtained from Trelawny, and manuscripts and
other memorabilia. They were already satisfied with the biography they
had commissioned to whitewash their lives by Richard Garnett, so they
granted only minimal access to Dowden. Dowden was shocked by the
obvious destruction of evidence–the torn out pages and blacked-out sec-
tions of journals and letters. It’s clear he wouldn’t have destroyed any
evidence…”
“…then maybe he was trying to save them from Lady Jane: perhaps
she stepped out of the room, and he quickly cut out the sections with a
penknife…”
“…no, the leaflets were from a different archive, and, anyway, he
would have been sure to cut them evenly; whoever did it, cut it raggedly,
clearly with the intent of destroying evidence. It must have been some-
one after Dowden who worked with the archive, but it would have to be
someone who worked with them before Marion Kingston Stocking did–
she was the editor of the Journals who mentioned the missing pages.
That leaves a window roughly between 1886 and 1968. The list of sus-
pects would be from among those who were interested in the circle, and
Claire particularly, during this period. One suspect, but I have no final
evidence, might be a certain Rosalie Glynn Grylls, who wrote a book
entitled Claire Clairmont: Mother of Byron’s Allegra that was published
in 1939. She was a radical atheist, and married a radical midlands indus-
trialist, becoming Lady Rosalie Mander…”
“…isn’t ‘radical industrialist’ an oxymoron?”
“…one would think so, but they existed, then. He was one of the last
of that breed, for sure…”
“…but if she was a radical, why would she have wanted to suppress
evidence about Shelley and Claire?”
“…consider the title of her book: she was focusing on the scandal of
Allegra, which was only just being revealed then. I think she was more
of a worshipper than someone casting aspersions, so I think she may
have thought one scandal was enough, and wanted to suppress the scan-
dal of Shelley and Claire: after all, if Kingston Stocking and other critics
have chosen to play down the Shelley and Claire connection in the sec-

666
ond half of the 20th Century, you can imagine that it was even more
scandalous in the first half…”
“…but to destroy evidence?”
“…as I said, I have no firm proof she did it, but her book shows her to
be even more convinced than Dowden–the biographer appointed by La-
dy Shelley–that Shelley and Claire had nothing to do with each other!
Maybe someday, someone looking through the Mander family archives
will come upon the missing pages…”
“…so what about the passage that does exist?”
“…interestingly, it comes in a section of the first leaflet just under a
point where the lines that Claire wanted written on her tomb were men-
tioned: ‘Leave me to expiate my virtues in misery.’ Perhaps she felt her
relationship with Shelley was one of her ‘virtues’ to be expiated. Here’s
what she wrote:

S– was beautiful that kind of beauty which Bacon says is

the best–‘that which a picture cannot express.’ It dwelt
upon his countenance, it enshrined his person, and
seemed to be a perpetual emanation from himself, rather
than any union of exquisite proportions in form and fig-
ure. The beholder saw that he was beautiful but could not
discover in what it consisted. Other men had fair open
and commanding foreheads and as dark and luxuriant
brown hair to shade them, eyes as full of poetic fire and
lips as expressive of gentle serenity, but they wanted that
nameless something which touched the heart at every
glance subdued it to silent homage…

…here it breaks off, but she continues on about him in the second leaf-
let, which was written later at some point:

P.B.S. His whole existence was visionary, and there

breathed in his actions in his looks and in his manners
that high and superhuman tone which we can only con-
ceive to belong to a superior being to whom any moment
of weakness or change is unknown. His life was a pic-
tured dream, his existence visionary, his thoughts lofty
supreme and powerful, and his actions dropped balm and
peace every where like the wings of an angel. Through all
his beauty and splendour, and even through that gay air of
careless loveliness which was his usual presence, there
peeped slight traces of melancholy and dejection, as if
almost unconsciously he were longing for a brighter
home than earth could afford him. His virtue never
flagged a moment, his undying spirit, the contempt of
pain and death, his carelessness of riches, harmony of his

667
 actions with his words, the calm majesty of a constant
communion with high thoughts spread over all his being,
sometimes won me to think him immortal had not a cer-
tain delicacy of complexion, a fragility of form and shape
a certain grace of imperfection in his outward nature re-
called the man was human. You felt there was a silent
agency in his presence, which opened a new world of no-
bleness and wisdom to one’s gaze.

…it breaks off there, and after this is the fourteen page gap–of course it
doesn’t speak directly to their relations, but it attests quite eloquently to
the love that she felt towards him. She also touches on him in an earlier
section where she was describing Mary–you can see her anger at Mary
for having taken Shelley for granted, and even her jealousy:

Others still cling around the image and memory of Shel-

ley–his exalted being, his simplicity and enthusiasm are
the sole thought of their being, but she has forsaken even
their memory for the pitiful pleasure of trifling with tri-
flers, and has exchanged the sole thought of his being for
a share in the corruptions of society. Would to God she
could perish without note or remembrance, so the bright-
ness of his name might not be darkened by the corruption
she sheds upon it. What low ambition is that, that seeks
for tinsel and gaudiness when the reality of all that is no-
ble and worthy has passed away. The only palliation I
have to offer these meanesses of conduct and heart, is the
surpassing beauty of her mind; every sentiment of hers is
so glowing and beautiful, it is worth the actions of anoth-
er person.

…you can see she’s quite savage with Mary…”

“…especially when she speaks of the ‘corruption’ Mary sheds on
Shelley’s name, but it’s not entirely negative: she still compliments her
intelligence at the end. What I don’t understand is what she was thinking
about when she said Mary was ‘trifling with triflers’…”
“…her anger must have largely been based on the fact that Mary did
not break completely with Byron, and had spent the time in Genoa with
him after the death of Allegra, as the passage is followed by Claire com-
paring Mary’s association with Byron as being like someone who has
watched a child being executed, and afterwards ‘went up and claimed
acquaintance with the executioner and shook hands with him.’ Other-
wise, perhaps she heard about Mary from Jane, who wrote to Claire
more during that period than Mary did, and who may have mentioned
Payne or others. The closest Claire ever came to broaching the topic of
Shelley with Mary was an interesting passage in a letter she wrote much

668
later, in 1834. She was responding to Mary’s complaints about being
betrayed by Jane, and she codes her message so that it is plausibly deni-
able as far as it’s being about Shelley; however, even in its indirectness
it’s giving Mary a lesson about loving someone despite their faults. Let
me find it…ok, here it is:

I had once a friend whom I love entirely and who certain-

ly loved me much; yet immense were the lies he told me.
I regard this not–he was great and above all pure minded
and I love him still as if he had never spoken ill of me: to
be sure he told me himself in his calm voice and with the
gentlest looks that it was absolutely necessary he should
traduce me and that he expected I should submit without
a murmur to it–and I do with the greatest cheerfulness. So
much frankness and honour would redeem any calumny
let it take what root it may–and besides one feels enno-
bled in being the victim of necessity.

…I have to read this as if it’s about Shelley: it couldn’t be about Byron,

because she wouldn’t speak about his having ‘loved me much’ nor about
‘still’ loving him; it couldn’t be about Trelawny, because although
Trelawny often lied to her, I strongly doubt she could speak of him as
‘pure-minded’ or as being ‘frank’ and ‘honorable,’ plus there would be
no reason to speak in the past tense; it couldn’t be about Hermann
Gambs, because he never lied to her…”
“…who is Hermann Gambs?”
“…I’ll come back to him in a moment. There’s simply no other per-
son in her life, aside from Shelley, that the passage could refer to…”
“…but lie to her?…and what does ‘traduce’ mean?”
“…it means ‘to criticize.’ I think it must be Shelley, because he did
have to lie about her to practically everyone, and he told her to her face
that it was ‘out of necessity.’ As far as ‘speaking ill’ of her goes, on any
number of occasions he criticized her–both to her face, when he was
chastising her, and to others, such as when he was forced to explain her
actions to Byron. Remember when they were in Pisa, and Claire started
to go crazy? Shelley was always speaking to her about how it all was
necessary, how he wanted to get closer to Byron and gain his confidence
before he did something about Allegra, and that, of course, meant that he
had to speak of Claire’s faults–I’ve quoted letters to you where he does
exactly that, but it was always for a purpose, was always connected to
doing what he thought was best, and he certainly told her about it. In ret-
rospect, Claire must have realized the rightness of at least some of what
he had said and done. In a way, by putting this in a letter in such a circu-
itous way, she was indirectly suggesting to Mary that she should start
telling the truth to herself, as Claire had always been forced to do…”
“…telling the truth?”

669
 “…to herself. Claire had learned to enact imperceptibility to the outer
world as her second nature. Mary repressed things, ‘not knowing what
she knew,’ Claire suppressed things publicly, very much continuing to
know what she pretended not to know. An example is when she wrote to
Jane in 1826, discussing fulfilled versus unfulfilled passions as a re-
sponse to something Jane had discussed with her concerning Hogg. She
wrote that unfulfilled passions were better, for there was always some-
thing to expect, while fulfilled passions had ‘their ends written upon
them.’ She went on to write,

You will allow me to talk to you upon this subject for I

am unhappily the victim of a happy passion; I had one
like all things perfect in its kind, it was fleeting and mine
only lasted ten minutes but these ten minutes discom-
posed the rest of my life; the passion God knows for what
cause, from no fault of mine however disappeared leaving
no trace whatever behind it except my heart wasted and
ruined as if it had been scorched by a thousand lightnings.

…the editor of her letters thinks it’s obviously Byron, and there’s a lot to
be said for that possibility, if what she meant was a few moments of
sexual passion followed by the torture of the aftermath–the uncertainty
followed by the loss of Allegra. But I see something like the same pro-
cess that occurred in The Last Man, where traits were parceled out for
the sake of camouflage. Her audience for this letter was Jane, and given
Jane wouldn’t have known about Shelley and Claire, and Claire
wouldn’t have wanted her to know, she would have a reason to be
vague…”
“…I know what you mean: it’s difficult for me to believe that Claire
would have ever described her passion with Byron as ‘happy’ or ‘per-
fect’…”
“…and the only aspect that left her permanently ruined was the loss of
Allegra, not the loss of Byron–not to mention that Jane did know about
Allegra, and if it were meant to clearly be Byron, why wouldn’t Claire
have stated who she meant directly, or have prefaced her remarks with
an ‘as you know…’?”
“…what about the short period in Pisa with Trelawny?”
“…‘ten minutes of passion’ fits, but not the aftermath: Claire was
perhaps disappointed that it never went anywhere, but she certainly
wasn’t devastated by it…”
“…so you think it’s Shelley?”
“…it could apply to him, given the happy, passionate phase was rela-
tively short-lived, and after his death her heart was ‘wasted’ and ‘ru-
ined’–but, as I said, I think it’s a combination of all of them, and Claire
was making a more general point about short-lived happinesses that see
their ends right from the start…”

670
 “…and regarding ‘unfilled passions,’ Shelley could fit into that cate-
gory as well, as after a brief period or two of fulfillment, there was a
long period of unfulfillment where the possibility always remained open
that it would change…”
“…that’s right…certainly Byron was closer to being a fulfilled pas-
sion that ends and leaves a waste, Trelawny was closer to the unfulfilled
passion that always carries promise, but Shelley was both at different
times…”
“….but you mentioned someone else–what was the name?”
“…Hermann Gambs–that’s a very interesting story. At the end of
May, 1825, the family where Claire was governess went to spend their
summer on a large estate at Islavsky, about thirty kilometers to the west
of Moscow. Claire made much of the fact that all the rooms had balco-
nies where she could sit and gaze at the night sky–she even wrote that
‘every gust of wind recalls Lerici,’ and she compared it to San Terenzo
several times…”
“…so her life wasn’t all that bad…”
“…we know she was reading Kant, Schiller, and Goethe’s Wilhelm
Meister that summer, was playing the piano and singing, and helping to
put on amateur theatricals; in fact, I think she befriended Gambs, who
was a tutor to the boys in the family, during the preparation of one of the
theatricals…”
“…and who was he?”
“…his full name was Chrétien-Hermann Gambs. He was the son of a
Protestant clergyman from an upper-middle class Alsatian family from
Strasbourg, whose chief virtue for Claire was that he was cultured in the
midst of what she considered a cultural wasteland. She wrote the follow-
ing to Jane about him, which speaks to that point:

…I have lately made the acquaintance with a German

Gentleman he is a great resource to me; in such a country
as Russia, where nothing but the vulgarest people are to
be met, a cultivated mind is the greatest treasure; his so-
ciety recalls our former circle, for he is well-versed in an-
cient & modern literature and has the same noble en-
larged way of thinking. You may imagine how delighted
he was to find me, so different from every thing around
him and capable of understanding what had been sealed
up so long in his mind as treasures too precious to be
wasted on the course Russian soil. I talk to you freely
about him because I know you will not believe that I am
in love, or that I have any other feeling but that of a most
sincere and steady friendship for him. What you felt for
Shelley, I feel for him. I feel it also my duty to tell you I
have a real friend, because in case of sickness or death
happening to me you would at least feel the consolation

671
 of knowing that I had not died in the hands of strangers. I
talk to him very often of you, & of Mary until his desire
to see you becomes quite a passion; he is like all Germans
very sentimental, a very sweet temper & uncommonly
generous. His attachment to me is extreme, but I have
taken the very greatest care to explain to him that I cannot
return it in the same degree; this does not make him un-
happy and therefore our friendship is of the utmost im-
portance to both. I hope my dear Jane that you will one
day see him, and that both you & Mary may find such an
agreeable friend in him as I have done.

…so she finally had someone to confide in, and, if she was speaking
about Mary and Jane, then I assume she was speaking about Shelley as
well, for among other things, they read The Revolt of Islam together.
Gambs was of the same political position as Claire, and he was also a
poet: on her name day he gave her a poem that began, ‘Quand elle règne
sur ma vie Ton nom peut vivre dans mon coeur,’ and in August she
found a dove along with the following poem:

Truly, with the indulgence

Of friendship receive the vows
It speaks in the innocence
Of a heart sincere, affectionate.
I am far from the frivolous project
Of worshipping you like an idol,
A profane error of the senses;
I follow the cult of Urania;
While she reigns over my life
Your name can live in my heart.

I wish to engrave there your image;

Your eye veiled with memories.
Your soul igniting your face
With hatred of vain pleasures.
That soul still compassionate
For a suffering creature
Sharing anguish and evil;
And to combat injustice,
Ready to share the torture
Of Laon delivered to the executioners.

After the furies of the storm

On a lake, the scattered Swans
Finally leave the shore,
Eager to reunite.

672
 After the painful alarms
You too can enjoy the charms
Of happiness allied to virtue.
And in the Hesperian fields
Devote the days of your life
To the sweet leisures of Friendship.

…it shows he was quite devoted, although hidden there might be another
reason, aside from Claire’s reluctance, for their avoidance of any roman-
tic involvement: he refers to himself as following the ‘cult of Urania,’
which could mean merely the muse of astronomy, but there’s also a Pla-
tonic meaning: in the Symposium Pausanias speaks of the two births of
Aphrodite–in one version she is born of Uranus, and in this birth females
had no part, so it stands for the noble love for male youths. In the 19th
Century the term ‘Uranian’ was developed to stand for ‘sexual inver-
sion’–or what we know as homosexuality, although that was a while af-
ter this poem was written…still, it’s possible. In any case, Jane jumped
at the opportunity to assume there was passion where there was none…”
“…I can see why she would: when Claire wrote, ‘what you felt for
Shelley, I feel for him,’ she wrote it innocently, but Jane probably ap-
plied her own situation and feelings to Claire…”
“…that makes sense. Claire made it clear there wasn’t any passion,
writing in the same letter where she spoke of ‘happy and unhappy pas-
sions’ that she was not in love with Gambs:

…I am not in love as you suspected with my German

friend Hermann. He went away last spring for five years
to the country. I have a great friendship for him because
he has the most ardent love for all that is good and beauti-
ful of anyone I know; I feel interested for his happiness
and welfare but he is not the being who could make life
feel less a burden to me than it does.

…he may not have been a lover, but he was exactly what she needed at
that point…”
“…where did he go ?”
“…I forget–I think somewhere in the Crimea…”
“…did she ever hear from him again?”
“…there are no letters extant, but Claire wrote to Mary in 1830, ask-
ing if she had any literary friends in Paris who might be interested in
publishing his poem Moïse. Here’s the strange part: he published three
books of poems in France–in 1834, Œuvres poétiques, in 1836, Moïse,
epopee en 12 chants, and, in 1838, Poésies fugitives. The first two were
published in Paris, the third in Strasbourg–and, listen to this: all three
were published under the pseudonym ‘C. Clairmont’…”
“…have you read any of them?”

673
 “…I only know what the editor of her poems and journals provided:
she mentions that in one poem, there’s a character called ‘Clara la
Fauvette’ or ‘Clara the warbler’…”
“…that’s cute…”
“…and she quoted one stanza from a poem entitled, Vladimir et Zara,
ou les Kirguises, which she thought might also refer to Claire…”
“…can you read it?”
“…yes–first the French original:

Je n’ose vous nommer du fond de ma retraite.

Mon cœur est plein de vous, mais ma bouche est muette ;
Vous-même, par ma voix vous n’apprendrez jamais
Que pour toujours ma muse a revêtu vous traits.

…and now the English translation:

From the depths of my retreat I dare not speak of you.

My heart is full of you, but my lips are silent;
You will never learn from my voice
That my muse has forever donned your features.

…she suggests it refers to the fact that he wrote under her name, but it
might just as well be pure poetry, with no reference at all…”
“…to publish the poems under her name is really touching…”
“…I’m sure it was a tribute, but don’t forget that he was also a Re-
publican from a conservative country, in a conservative epoch, working
in an even more conservative foreign country, which might be another
reason to take a pseudonym. After all, Claire was in Russia during the
Decembrist uprisings that occurred in December, 1825, and the family
she worked for had connections in the circles of the Decembrists–it was
all a little dangerous…”
“…that was the attempt at a liberal revolution, wasn’t it? My teachers
didn’t focus on either Russian history or liberal revolutions for obvious
reasons…”
“…no, I guess they wouldn’t! I’m sure before the succession crisis in
Russia there were already democratic movements afoot, but what
brought it to a head was when Czar Alexander died: he was childless so
he left his throne to his reactionary younger brother, Nicholas, rather
than to his elder brother Constantine, because Constantine had married a
Polish Catholic woman who was below his rank. Three thousand liberal
officers gathered in a square in St. Petersburg demanding the succession
go to Constantine and that a constitutional monarchy be introduced, but
the revolution was crushed, the leaders executed, and an intensified pe-
riod of repression began. Claire wrote about it in a letter:

674
 Our political horizon has been very stormy; there has
been no end to the panic terror which has now reigned for
six months. Arrests and imprisonments innumerable and
all among the flower of the Russian youth; everything
bad has remained, all there was of talent and rising merit
has been mown. For what reason I cannot tell. I dare say
you know more of the matter than I do, for no one here
dares mention the subject.

…she was in Moscow, of course, so quite distant in an age of strictly-

controlled print media, but it’s striking how little she knew…”
“…I thought Pushkin was somehow involved with the uprising: did
she meet him, or know about him?”
“…I checked that because I wondered the same thing myself. I dis-
covered that he had been banished to his mother’s estate in Pskov, six
hundred kilometers from Moscow, from 1824 to 1826, so she couldn’t
have met him at that time. Claire did know about him, and her piano
teacher, the quite famous Joseph Genischta, had set Pushkin’s poem
‘The Black Shawl’ to music: she sent a translation of the poem from
Russian to French by Gambs to Mary. After the uprising, although the
new Czar pardoned him due to his popularity, they monitored his
movements and his publications were controlled. While I assume Claire
would have agreed with his politics–he wrote an “Ode to Liberty’ just as
Shelley did–I doubt she would have gotten along with him, given that
one of the chief influences on his poetry was Byron…”
“…maybe Pushkin could have benefited from hearing about a differ-
ent side of his hero…”
“…undoubtedly…”
“…and what about Claire? If the Viennese had found out about her,
wasn’t she in even more danger from the Russian government?”
“…she certainly felt the danger–listen to what she wrote in the same
leaflet where she had described Shelley:

I belonged to an outcast race; our name was one of utter

reprobation; it lived in my heart, but was never in these
many years pronounced by my lips. The most unworthy
conduct, the most unworthy principles were attributed to
the beings whom I belonged to, and whom I looked upon
as sacred; the principles that I looked upon as sacred were
objects of execration to the rest of mankind; the persons
whom I cherished and revered were the objects of scorn
and blame whenever they were mentioned…

…in 1824 she was already writing, ‘How often do people here touch up-
on the brink of all my history, and all I do not wish, in any degree, to
become an object of curiosity.’ Several times Byron became a matter of

675
discussion, and she had to simply listen quietly. The danger she faced
was ultimately not so much from the government, but from her prospec-
tive employers: many of those wealthy enough to afford a governess
would not have wanted a free-thinking Republican feminist conducting
the education of their children!”
“…so did anyone find out?”
“…yes, but not from Claire: she wrote to Jane Williams that a certain
Miss Trewin that she knew in Moscow went to London, spoke to her
mother, found out about her, and brought the information back to Mos-
cow. When it became known, a British Professor who had previously
been well-disposed to Claire, and who had opened the doors to a posi-
tion in a good family, suddenly had those doors closed to her. She wrote,

You may imagine this man’s horror when he heard who I

was, that the charming Miss Clairmont, the model of
good sense, accomplishments and good taste was brought
up, issued from the very den of freethinkers…he cannot
explain to himself how I can be so extremely delightful
and yet so detestable.

…after what happened in Vienna, and now this, she rightfully felt all of
her positions could be threatened through this knowledge, so she took on
a cloak of full imperceptibility from that time forward, writing to Jane:
‘If you ask me what I shall do, I can only answer you as did the Princess
Montemiletto when buried under the ruins of her villa by an earthquake.
“I await my fate in silence”…’”
“…and what was her fate?”
“…in the short term quite tragic. She was quite devastated because of
three events that occurred that autumn. The worst was that her ward,
Dunia, died at roughly the same age as Allegra…”
“…oh no! How did it happen?”
“…a fever much like the one that had struck Clara, Allegra, and Wil-
liam. Even her descriptions of the scene bear resemblance to Shelley’s
description of the death of William, which Claire had attended. On Oc-
tober 4th she wrote in her journal:

After dinner we are alarmed at Dunia’s state, one of per-

petual restlessness. No consciousness yet perpetually
tossing from side to side. I went to her at 8 o’clock & did
not leave her until five the next morning when she ex-
pired….A thousand wounds bled afresh from my heart.

…it hit her very hard–her grief combined with the grief she had sup-
pressed at the time of Allegra’s death. A few days later she was able to
recount her grief:

676
 Half the night I sat up–the windows were open. I sat at
one & looked out upon the night–all beyond the window
was utterly dark & no sound was heard but the rustling of
the trees which although so near were hidden by the
gloom. Thus it is with the heart when it sees the object of
its affections lying in death; a sudden gloom falls upon all
the senses, the universe once so animated becomes black
& dark like a hollow precipice; life yawns before one like
a dark abyss.

…but at least it happened and then was quickly over, as the second event
was much more drawn out, heightening her anxiety. In late August,
when she was at Islavsky, she was reading the newspaper after dinner
when she came across an article that spoke of a duel between Trelawny
and another Englishman. She wrote in her journal, ‘In a moment my
whole peace is destroyed. They say he is dangerously wounded, but I
must hope–what else have I left to choose, but to despair or hope, and
hope I must, but I know despair will come.’ This state of total ignorance
to his fate lasted for a month, and affected her very deeply. She wrote in
her journal, ‘I dreamt this night that I saw Inwalert–He was masked but
spoke not. My spirits are very low’; but at the end of September she fi-
nally received the news she had been waiting for:

I saw my dear friend’s name; I did not dare to read, yet

notwithstanding with a horrible feeling of dread & yet
hope–I read–that he was well and still in his cavern. Who
shall describe the happiness I felt. This sudden relief from
horrible inquietude and to all the sweet certainty of his
being well. I went then instantly into the garden and sat
myself on the balcony to enjoy all the fullness of my hap-
piness.

…but she was still worried a month later when she wrote to Jane for
news of him: ‘…you cannot think how uneasy I am at not hearing from
him, I am not afraid of his friendship growing cold for me, for I am sure
he is unchangeable on that point, but I am afraid for his happiness &
safety.’ Only gradually did it emerge what had happened…”
“…which was?”
“…should I digress and give you a brief account?”
“…if you would…”
“…so, Trelawny: we left him typically returning to Missolonghi a day
or so too late for Byron’s death. Also, typically, Trelawny backed the
wrong chieftain–a man called Odysseus Androutses, whose actions were
rather questionable…”

677
 “…he probably backed him for the romantic associations of his
name!”
“…I don’t doubt it! In the weeks after Byron died, there were weap-
ons shipments arriving from England, and Trelawny schemed to get
some of it diverted to Odysseus–this is important because it incensed
Mavrocordato, and an Englishmen attached to Mavrocordato’s retinue
would be involved in the so-called ‘duel’ with Trelawny. Trelawny then
absconded to the ‘Mavre Troupa’–a cave about two hundred fifty meters
up some cliffs on Mount Parnassus, another romantic association
Trelawny must have cherished. Among others things he did while he
was there was to marry Odysseus’ thirteen-year-old half-sister…”
“…what!?”
“…yes, and what’s more, I read in one source that she turned thirteen
in July, but she was already three months pregnant with Trelawny’s
child!”
“…I know there were different morals then, but wasn’t that consid-
ered rather young?”
“…by the English standards certainly, but evidently not by a Greek
chieftain…”
“…I don’t blame the Greek chieftain, but certainly Trelawny ought to
have known better…”
“…it was just another one of his ill-conceived adventures…”
“…and what did he tell Mary and Claire about it?”
“…at that time nothing at all; in fact, he was still writing love letters
to both of them–and Jane!”
“…while getting his child-bride pregnant?!”
“…it was going to his head quite a bit–look at this letter he wrote to
Mary and Jane: ‘Dear Mary, if you love me,–write–write–write, for my
heart yearns after you. I certainly must have you and Jane out. I am seri-
ous,’ and a bit later, ‘Dear Mary, dear Jane, I am serious, turn your
thoughts this way. No more a nameless being, I am now a Greek Chief-
tain, willing and able to shelter and protect you…’”
“…was he serious? He sounds like a megalomaniac!”
“…he was always a bit of that–and yes, he was serious. His fame
complex glows like a beacon: ‘No more a nameless being’? He felt he
had finally emerged out from under the shadows of Byron and Shelley,
but he must have had some self-doubts, for he continued to allow the
time with Shelley to be the defining moment of his existence. A few
months later he wrote to Jane, ‘…our Pisa circle is one not to be forgot-
ten–there was no such other in this wide world–such hearts as ours unit-
ed under the sunny clime of Italy–such scenes and events no time can
fade,’ then a little later:

Byron is gone to join them–there is now but three of us

left–three are gone–we are held here by ties we cannot
sunder–we must play our parts–fulfill our destiny–and

678
 then hope to rejoin them–nothing more–there are but
three of us–and we should have remained together–for we
are united by many ties…

…note how he conveniently counts Claire among the three that are gone
when writing to Jane, but a few months later he was writing another one
of his pining letters to Claire:

My Dear Claire, nothing can induce me for a moment to

believe your long and unaccountable silence proceeds
from indifference–I know your heart too well–and do you
the justice to believe it proceeds from the very reverse.
But it is painful in the extreme to me–for I set a high
price on your love and friendship–I anticipated real hap-
piness from its enjoyments. Have my sullen and peevish
letters, written often in moments of anguish, sickness, and
discontent–disgusted you–or is this only a trial of my
firmness?…my heart is filled–at this period–with the
same tenderness and deep affection–which filled it to
bursting at our melancholy parting on the banks of the
Arno–what can I say more?–indeed dear Claire I feel too
much to say much–our parting was in silence–words are
poor conductors to express the power of feeling hearts.–
Dear friend, you drove me to wander again–for deprived
of you Italy lost its beauties. I should have given up to my
natural inclination for friendship and solitude had you
consented to my wishes…Dearest of friends, give me as-
surances of your undiminished affection; and I shall have
some inducement to live and not wantonly throw away an
otherwise burthensome existence.

…so there he is again, playing it up to the hilt, suggesting that he might

have settled down with her…”
“…when he’s so far away from her there’s not even a chance of it
happening! Did she answer his letter?”
“…no, the correspondence lapsed because of their respective situa-
tions–she in post-Decembrist Moscow, he in a cave during the Greek
war for independence. He mentioned receiving two letters from her in
two years, and even then they were both a year late. What little she knew
of him she read in the newspapers…”
“…so what happened to him?”
“…the plot against him was hatched by two Philhellenes in
Mavrocordato’s camp: a Scotsman, J.W. Fenton, and an American,
George Jarvis. It’s almost as if within the warring Greek factions there
was a sub-faction of Anglo-American Philhellenes warring against each
other! I’m not even sure Mavrocordato knew of their plot to kill

679
Trelawny, seize the cave, and thereby cripple one of Mavrocordato’s
enemies. In fact, they needn’t have bothered, as Odysseus invalidated
himself: Odysseus cut a deal with the Turks against the other Greek
chieftains, and on April 19th, 1825, he was forced to surrender, leave the
cave, and was imprisoned. Claire read about it wonderingly, knowing
this was the chieftain Trelawny had supported, and writing in her jour-
nal: ‘What this means I cannot make out–I cannot believe that the chief
Edward has chosen is one capable of betraying his country’; but it was
true, alas…”
“…but if Odysseus was taken away, why did they still go after
Trelawny?”
“…Trelawny still didn’t give up the cave–which doesn’t make much
sense, because once Odysseus was gone, there was no reason to hold on
to it, as it couldn’t possibly have had any strategic or political im-
portance. Maybe he thought Odysseus would escape from the prison. So
what happened, then, was the cave was besieged–Trelawny was attacked
once when he had wandered a little way out of the entrance to the cave.
By that time Fenton had already arrived and was holed up with
Trelawny and the few remaining Odysseus retainers in the cave, but he
just bided his time. Then, in June, another young man, William Whit-
combe, arrived, and Fenton talked him into joining his plot against
Trelawny. On June 11, they decided to strike: the three men ate lunch
together and were sitting at the mouth of the cave when they decided to
have a shooting competition: Trelawny shot, then while reloading with
his back turned, Fenton fired twice at him, but his gun wasn’t loaded.
Then Whitcombe fired and hit him in the back–the balls entered between
his shoulder blades, one lodging there after breaking it, the other exiting
his mouth, having broken his jaw bone and knocking out a few molars.
Fenton called out that Whitcombe had shot Trelawny, and then a Hun-
garian who had witnessed the scene aimed at Fenton, shot, and killed
him. Whitcombe lowered himself down to the ladder to the cave and es-
caped, but he was brought back by Trelawny’s men. They kept him there
for a month, but ultimately let him go: Trelawny realized that he was
just a confused young man who had been duped by Fenton. It took
Trelawny months to fully recover from his wounds–he was another two
months in the cave, but as Odysseus had been found at the bottom of his
prison tower dead on June 17th, there was really no reason to hold the
cave, so Trelawny left the cave the first week of August, 1826…”
“…was it the August Claire found out about the duel?”
“…yes, so you can see how slowly the news traveled. On September
12th a British boat dropped Trelawny at Argostoli on Kefalonia where
Byron had been, and it was there that his Greek bride, Tersitza, gave
birth to their child, named Zella. Then later he moved to Zante–
Zakynthos–for another year…”
“…a whole year! What was he doing?”

680
 “…partly he was recuperating, but the real reason is that he had to
wait out a ten month law suit involving his divorce from his wife…”
“…he was divorcing her?”
“…no, she was divorcing him…”
“…on what grounds?”
“…prepare yourself for a really disgusting story…”
“…I’m prepared…”
“…I doubt it. She left him after they had a fight: she had appeared one
day in a Parisian gown rather than her usual Grecian dress, and he was
so angry that he cut off all her hair. She was so upset that she left him
and entered a convent…”
“…what an idiot…”
“…wait, I’m not at the disgusting part yet: at the convent, she gave
birth to a second child. She sent it to him, he gave it to the care of a wet
nurse, and it died. He then put the dead baby in a box, and sent it back to
her at the convent, where it remained unopened until it began to decom-
pose and smell, and then they opened it…”
“…you’re right, that’s disgusting–what a bastard!”
“…and this is the man who claims on his tomb to have been ‘undivid-
ed’ in life from Shelley! At the very same moment he was writing the
following to Mary:

…you say you have formed no new attachments–and that

I hold a place in your affections–you know Mary that I
always loved you impetuously and sincerely–and time
proves its durability–we are both somewhat self-willed
and cross-grained–and choose to love in our own fash-
ions,–but still where is there a truer friendship than that
which cements together Mary S. and E. T.? If I lose you I
should be poor indeed.

...she was, of course, unaware of what had happened, and none of the
Shelley circle ever found out about it…”
“…if they had found out, they would never have spoken to him
again…”
“…he made sure that they didn’t. He returned to England, finally, in
June, 1828, at the same time as Claire’s first visit back to England…”
“…so what was she doing meanwhile–it was autumn of 1825, wasn’t
it? There was a third tragedy you mentioned…”
“…it didn’t directly concern her, but its implications must have deep-
ly unsettled her. She had a female friend–an English governess like her,
who went to Odessa hoping to start a boarding house. The plan failed,
and she wrote to Claire that she would return to Moscow. She didn’t ar-
rive as planned, and the next thing Claire heard was that she had com-
mitted suicide. Claire wrote to Jane, ‘I who knew her thoughts have no

681
doubt the horror of entering again as governess, made her resolve upon
this as the only means to escape it…’”
“…was the life of a governess so bad?”
“…it could be, depending upon the employers, and Claire’s next em-
ployer after Dunia died, a Princess Galitzin, was apparently quite horri-
ble, and kept her very busy–so busy that she didn’t write in her journal
almost the whole of 1826. She had a chance to write to Mary about it in
May, 1826, after Mary had written to her and mentioned the legacy she
could expect when Sir Timothy finally died–because Charles Shelley
had died, leaving Percy Florence the heir to the Baronetcy:

Your letter revived a little hope that I might one day be

free from the servitude I now suffer. I can call it by no
other name for I am a complete slave. This letter will be
written by piece meal for I have never one single half
hour to myself except Sundays and then I am full of
work….nothing can be more dismal than to think all the
best years of my life are being sacrificed here and that in-
dependence will only be given when servitude shall have
debased my mind and long suffering deadened every sen-
sibility and thus render me unfit for enjoying it. I struggle
as hard as I can against the inroads of deterioration but I
feel already as if I were grown a vile common creature;
all my faculties are annihilated–my reason points to me
what road to take but I am too overcome with the sense of
my position to be able to follow it.

…and she ends by writing that she thinks she might be able to visit Eng-
land in five years. She was in a terrible mood that year, but it changed
for the better when her employment changed: in January, 1827, she be-
gan working at the home of a Mrs. Kaissaroff as governess to her
twelve-year-old daughter Natalie, a situation somewhat more congenial
to her; but still, she was feeling terribly isolated–here’s a journal entry
from January 30th, 1827:

The world is closed in silence to me. It is four years that I

have lived among strangers. The voices that spoke to my
youth, the faces that were then around me, are almost
forgotten; and not to be able to remember them augments
what I feel. The last consolation is torn away…

…and in May, 1828, she wrote to Jane, ‘My life is all a blank. It re-
ceives nothing and can therefore give nothing.’ Right after that she went
with her Russian family to Teplitz–or Teplice, as you know it…”
“…Claire was in Teplice? What did she think of it?”

682
 “…she told Mary that she became so upset with her employers that
she disembarked at Travemünde, and found her way to Teplice alone.
She took the baths, and found it a ‘charming place.’ She invited Mary to
join her in Dresden, which she also found charming, and then return
with her to England, but Mary didn’t have the money: in fact, Claire had
to lend her some at one point. Claire decided–due to the relative proxim-
ity of England plus the fact that her brother Charles was then visiting
England with his wife and two daughters, Pauline, aged three, and her
namesake Clari, aged two–to take a year’s leave from the Kaissaroffs
and travel to England, so she booked a sea-passage from Hamburg, trav-
eling with another woman. Claire arrived in October, while Trelawny
had been there since June: it was the first time all the survivors were in
the same country since Shelley died…”
“…now you have to bring me up to date on Mary…”
“…I will, but let’s stop for now–I feel a bit strange speaking of Mary
here…”
“…afraid we’ll wake the dead?”
“…something like that…”
“…ok…are you done with these olives?”
“…yes, go ahead and finish them if you want…”
“…I will…what do you need?”
“…my lighter–it’s in here…somewhere…”
“…here’s mine…”
“…thanks…hmmm, it’s so nice here–so peaceful…”
“…especially after all the tourists in the center…”
“…Rome will be better–everything’s more spread out…”
“…the tourists will be diluted?”
“…exactly! Well, not around the Spanish Steps, or the Forum…”
“…what time do you want to go in the morning?”
“…I think we can take our time: we don’t want to arrive too early–we
can’t check into the hotel until noon. The train takes less than two hours,
so we can leave at nine or ten…”
“…and do you know where we’ll stay?”
“…I decided that in advance, so we have reservations. I didn’t want
somewhere noisy…”
“…is it possible to have it quiet in Rome?”
“…I found a place–it’s on the south side of the Aventine hill in a quiet
neighborhood, only five hundred meters from the Protestant Cemetery.
It’s called the Hotel Villa San Pio–it should be nice…”
“…nice and expensive?”
“…nice and worth the money: it’s reasonably priced for what it is. I
wanted to end our trip with something peaceful and relaxing–it’s only
for two nights…”
“…it sounds nice…”
“…I hope it is…”
“…shall we go back to the center?”

683
 “…sure–we can see what the line looks like at the Uffizi, and if the
wait’s too long, we can wander around the town…”
“…one more visit to Claire’s…‘tile’?”
“…I suppose she’s somewhere here under all of this, and her tile is as
good a place as any to do homage to her…”
“…I feel very close to her–much closer to her than to Mary…”
“…she certainly went through more! What I admire about her is that
she remained a self-imposed exile, a foreigner, by choice: Vienna, Rus-
sia, Paris, and finally Florence–she chose all of them…”
“…and as a woman alone…”
“…as far as I can see, her sojourns in England were a mostly matter
of expediency: she went back to see Charles and his children, or to see
about her inheritance, or to help her ailing mother, and, in her final,
longest sojourn, she seems to have done it deliberately to aide Willi,
Clari, and Pauline–no matter how it actually turned out, and even then
for five or six of those years she stayed on the coast, facing the conti-
nent…”
“…I wonder if at the end she had any inkling that the times would
change and a renewed interest in their circle would happen…”
“…I think she lived to see the beginning of it–with Silsbee, Rossetti,
and others showing keen interest. She instructed Pauline and Georgina
in her will to keep hold of the letters because she sensed they would be
worth much, much more one day…”
“…I’d like to know whether she thought it would ever come out about
her and Shelley–she used the excuse of Pauline and Georgina to not tell
the truth, but did she imagine there would be a time when the truth could
be revealed?”
“…or a time when two travelers like us would come to her gravesite,
speculating about her secret life?”
“…yes, for example…”
“…I’d like to think she’d be delighted about it: delighted that the
times have changed so that Shelley is now seen as a ‘poet’s poet’; that
those who had denigrated Shelley have been proven wrong and have
been thrown on the scrapheap of history; that Mary’s creation–
Frankenstein–is almost an archetype of modern culture; that aspects of
Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminism and Godwin’s socialism have been
vindicated and adopted; and delighted that a few people like us admire
Claire’s independence and free-spiritedness...”
“…I sense a ‘but’ coming…”
“…but the actual Claire who lived here in Florence on the Via Roma-
na and who arranged for her own burial in this place, had suffered too
long in difficult circumstances, and as a consequence had become too
much a person of ‘ressentiment’–in the Nietzschean sense of reactive
and petty, to have been able to affirm everything I’ve just listed…”
“…not at all?”

684
 “…I do believe there was a core inside her that held to what mat-
tered…”
“…Shelley?”
“…Shelley for himself and Shelley as a symbol of it all…”
“…I think of her clutching her shawl at the end, determined to be bur-
ied with it–everything concentrated on that one symbol that she held fast
to…”
“…I believe if we could speak to her in the final years she would not
have been able to affirm what it all meant except in fragments, and much
would have been brushed aside–like what she said about the importance
of Shelley-the-poet: how Shelley-the-man’s imperfections were not
worth speaking of…but I don’t blame her…”
“…nor do I–not after everything she had been through…”
“…I think it’s wrong to judge Claire or anyone from the perspective
of their final years, especially when they die at an advanced age. Let me
draw an analogy: I’ve noticed there’s a misguided tendency to see an
oeuvre as a necessarily teleological progression to ever more advanced
works: of course there is often a progression based in the acquisition of
experience and knowledge, and there are certain figures who do produce
increasingly interesting works–Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investiga-
tions necessarily followed the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Joyce’s
Finnegans Wake necessarily followed Ulysses; Bergman’s Fanny and
Alexander was a clear culminations of his earlier work; and Van Gogh’s,
Klee’s, or Hopper’s last works do seem absolute consummations of their
respective oeuvres…but, for every case I mention, I could mention cases
where later works are not necessarily advances: Melville, Faulkner, and
Hemingway had arguably completed their greatest works by their thir-
ties; Fellini, Antonioni, and Resnais all created their best work in the late
50s’ and 60s; I’m not convinced Picasso’s very latest works were as in-
teresting as works from his early or middle periods, and Wordsworth
and Coleridge we’ve discussed already…it’s necessary to judge artists
by their entire oeuvres; for example, we can take an artist like Marcel
Duchamp and imagine his over-all perspective as including Nude De-
scending Staircase, the urinal he entered into the art show, the Mona Li-
sa with a moustache, the large glass, the ready-mades, the kinetic sculp-
tures, his performative antics as Rrose Sélevy, his little boxes of minia-
ture reproductions of his own works, Etant donnés, and even his period
when he seemed to have quit art altogether to work out chess problems–
all of that was Duchamp at different stages, and it all needs to be consid-
ered in any assessment of his importance to art history…”
“…and the analogy with Claire?”
“…I’m just saying that in the same way we ought not to fall into the
temptation of judging the oeuvre of artists from their final work or
works, we oughtn’t to judge Claire’s final position from her final mo-
ments of consciousness…”

685
 “…but to imagine her earlier–at age twenty, thirty, or forty would also
be limited…”
“…I agree, which is why I think we should take into account not only
the different stages of her life, but also how her life interpenetrates and
is interpenetrated by the flow of history. Think of a movie camera–the
more we pull the focus back, the closer we aspire to see her within histo-
ry, and finally sub specie aeternitatis–‘under the aspect of eternity’…”
“…but can we ever arrive at that place?”
“…no–Spinoza took it as a given that it’s impossible, but we can have
intuitive glimpses of it. In terms of what I am talking about, we can cer-
tainly see much more clearly how Romanticism fits into the flow of oc-
cidental history–as an extension of and reaction to Enlightenment and
the French Revolution, and we can see how despite its many failures and
delusions there are aspects of it which have been subsumed by moderni-
ty and modernism, postmodernity and postmodernism–even if it’s been
critiqued and at times rejected…”
“…you mean we can see beyond her own personal experience to how
her experience represents the flow of history…”
“…yes–among other currents, the history of women’s autonomy and
how it fits within the history of human autonomy. She may have en-
countered significant difficulties being slapped down by a culture in the
throes of a post-revolutionary restoration, but much of what she was
slapped down for now passes without comment, or is even celebrated.
What I’m saying is that we can imagine her perspective based on what
we do know of her entire life, place that life within the context of histo-
ry, and, hopefully grasp a few frail threads of her immanence…”
“…more than a few! I sense her with us now–not as a ghost, but as the
kind of disembodied energy you mentioned before…in us, between
us…”
“…‘where two or three are gathered together…there am I in the midst
of them’…”
“…Jesus?”
“…older, actually–Jesus was citing Deuteronomy. It’s true generally,
though: the more you dwell on someone the more you evoke their ener-
gies…”
“…that calls for a piece of bread and a last drink of wine–even if it is
only white wine…”
“…and a bit warm at that…”
“…it will have to do…”
“…so here’s to Claire…”
“…to Claire…”
“…shall we go pay our last respects?”
“…respects, yes, but they won’t be the last…”

686
IV
 

“…away from here, away from here, always away from here…” (Kafka)

“…at last to leave behind all that confusion: the things of ours that nev-
er quite belonged although, like water in a well, they served to reflect
ourselves (it trembled: we were gone)…but where? Into uncertainty,
looking to find some distant, unfamiliar, temperate land to be the setting
that our actions need (the courtyard, or the garden, as required); to take
our leave: but why? Because we’re driven; because of what we are, our
dispositions; because of urgent premonitions; because of darkness and
our lack of vision: To make this whole attempt; perhaps in vain let go of
what we hold; perhaps to die uncomprehendingly, perhaps alone–How
else can we discover a new life?” (Rilke)

“…a clean break is something that you cannot come back from, that is
irretrievable because it makes the past cease to exist…” (Fitzgerald)

“…I will set forth here on a new journey to the heaven’s ends, to pure
activity in a new sphere…”(Goethe)

“…come, my friends. ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world…for my

purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western
stars, until I die…” (Tennyson)

“…now I am full of farewell. I have not wept for a long time. But when I
decided to leave my country, perhaps for ever, then I wept, and bitterly.
For what do I have in the world that is dearer to me? But they don’t
need me…” (Hölderlin)

“…Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays

now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and
friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it…” (Joyce)

“…we have journeyed towards the spring that has been hastening to
meet us from the south; and though our weather was at first abominable,
we have now warm sunny days, and soft winds, and a sky of deep azure,
the most serene I ever saw…” (Shelley)

“…shall I tell you about myself? How I am always on the road, two
hours before the sun comes over the mountains, and especially in the
long shadows of the afternoon and the evening? How I have thought
about many things and feel so rich in myself, now that this year has at
last allowed me to lift away the old moss of daily compulsion to teach
and think?” (Nietzsche)

688
“…fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging; you are not those
who saw the harbour receding, or those who will disembark…” (T.S.
Eliot)

“…the past drifts away as you change; and it wouldn’t do so if that fel-
low you left behind had been all that flawless…” (Musil)

“…seen enough. The vision was encountered in all airs. Had enough.
The din of cities, evening, in the sun, and forever. Known enough. The
interruptions of life. Oh Rumors and Visions! Departure into new affec-
tions and sounds!” (Rimbaud)

689
 

They finish their breakfast of cappuccinos, cornettos, and mineral wa-

ter at the Caffe’ le Rose on the Piazza Dell’Unità Italiana across from
Santa Maria Novella basilica, and walk briskly around the corner to the
station, rolling their luggage behind them. The Eurostar is at the plat-
form when they arrive, passengers already boarding.
“…don’t worry, we have reservations–and in 1st Class…”
“…1st Class? That’s extravagant…”
“…Florence to Rome in the summer? I’d rather avoid the hoards of
my young compatriots with backpacks–plus in 1st Class we can have two
seats together, alone…”
“…put that way, I agree…”
“…so here we are…let me help you with that…our seats are seven-
teen and eighteen…we can stow the luggage here…”
“…it will be safe?”
“…the big one will be–no one’s going to run off with a suitcase full of
books!”
“…I suppose not…”
“…so here–you can have the window…give me your bag, I’ll put it
above…”
“…ok, fine–so here we are, right on time…”
“…that was easy…”
“…it will only be ninety minutes–this is a fast one…”
“…that’s quick! What’s our itinerary?”
“…we’ll check into the hotel, and take a quick preliminary look at the
Protestant Cemetery. Afterwards, we can eat lunch in Testaccio…”
“…where’s that?”
“…it’s right there near the cemetery–it’s the district around the Monte
Testaccio: it’s a huge hill composed entirely of broken amphorae from
ancient Rome…”
“…what?!”
“…it’s true–it’s about a thousand meters around the base, and almost
fifty meters high!”
“…just broken pottery?”
“…yes–most of it came from Spain. There was a port on the river near
there, and for whatever reason that’s where they threw the empties. The
hill was used for bacchanalia at one point, and later as a Via Crucis for
re-enactments of the passion of Christ...”
“...can we go there?”
“...you mean on top of it? I don’t think so–it’s an archeaological site,
but we can walk around it: there’s a bunch of little winebars around the

690
outer perimeter of it–they store wine in caves dug into the base of the
hill...”
“...and that’s near the Protestant Cemetery?”
“...just behind it and across the street. There’s apparently lots of good
restaurants in the area now–I’ve looked a few up in advance. Then, after
lunch, we can take a walk–I hope you’re ready for some long walks!”
“...we’ve been walking quite a bit already on this trip...”
“...not on the scale of Rome. We’ll walk back over the Aventine to the
Circus Maximus, across to the Palentine, then down to the Colosseum
and then the Forum, up the Capitoline hill, down again to the Corso and
over to the Spanish Steps, where we’ll have dinner somewhere in the
little streets around there...”
“...that’s quite an itinerary...”
“...it’s not over! Then we can walk back past the Trevi–it’s best at
night–and grab a taxi back to the hotel, where we can collapse...”
“...and tomorrow?”
“...the Baths of Caracalla in the morning, then lunch, and back to the
Protestant Cemetery in the afternoon, where I want to look around
closer, and spend some time soaking up the ambience...”
“...that’s fine with me...”
“...so back to the story?”
“...if you think we have time...”
“...we’ve over an hour–enough to bring you up to date about Mary…”
“…go ahead…”
“…compared to Claire in Russia, there’s much more written evidence
available regarding Mary during the period when she was re-acclimating
herself to England…”
“…when did she arrive back?”
“…in late August, 1823. She was initially pleased, as she found that
she had acquired a certain fame due to a theatricalization of Franken-
stein that was playing in London. She wrote to Hunt in early September,
‘But lo & behold! I found myself famous!–Frankenstein had prodigious
success as a drama & was about to be repeated for the 23rd night at the
English opera house.’ It was the first indication of how enduring a cul-
tural myth it would become…”
“…it’s like a continuation of the Golem myth…”
“…there are certain similarities–they both go out of control, but
Frankenstein is an Enlightened Golem, as the monster has a brain and
can be educated…”
“…so she was famous?”
“…but it was momentary–the initial glow soon wore off as she began
to face the harsh realities of her financial situation. She and Godwin vis-
ited William Whitton, Timothy Shelley’s lawyer, to find out what her
fate was to be: the good news was that he didn’t cut her off entirely, and
settled on her a sum of £200 a year–about $20,000 in today’s terms–or
500,000 Czech crowns. The bad news was that while the sum was quite

691
adequate in Italy, it was barely enough to make ends meet in London;
furthermore, it was expected that it would be paid back with interest to
the estate at the time of Sir Timothy’s death, and she would receive the
allowance only as long as she remained in England and made no attempt
to bring Shelley’s name into the public eye–that meant not publishing
his work, or mentioning his name in her own work. This was a blow, as
she had hoped to make some money through the publishing of Shelley’s
works. She was approached by the poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes about
publishing a collection of Shelley’s poems, entitled Posthumous Poems.
When it did come out in June, 1824, in a print run of five hundred cop-
ies, three hundred copies were sold, but then Timothy Shelley demanded
it be withdrawn two months after publication, warning her he would cut
off her allowance if she did not, so that ended that!”
“…who was Beddoes?”
“…he’s a very interesting character–he’s someone who might better
fit into the category, along with Trelawny, of being a ‘romanticizer,’
‘romancer,’ or ‘neo-romantic,’ although, unlike Trelawny, he did write
poetry. He was only twenty when he met Mary, and he revered Shelley
higher than any other poet; in fact, he had written an embarrassingly ef-
fusive poem to him the year before, entitled ‘Lines Written in a Blank
Leaf of Prometheus Unbound,’ where he called him a ‘spirit of the sun.’
He left for Göttingen, Germany, in 1825 to study medicine, and espe-
cially anatomy…”
“…anatomy?”
“…yes. His interest in anatomy was apparently inculcated by his fa-
ther, who was an experimental scientist who liked to astound his chil-
dren with tales of his dissections of unusual cases, and who, it seems,
brought his work home with him…”
“…dead bodies?”
“…I imagine it was more likely diseased body parts pickled in jars!
Beddoes’ own interest in anatomy seems to have been more romantic
than scientific: mortality, immortality, the site of the soul, revivifica-
tion–the stuff of Frankenstein. It was an age of science, but science
hadn’t yet entirely demarcated its domain. During the course of his stud-
ies he wrote his most famous poetical play, Death’s Jest Book…”
“…have you read it?”
“…yes, it’s fascinating, and very morbid. The strange thing about it is
that it takes the form of a Jacobean revenge tragedy, but it’s filled with
his obsession with mortality: imagine if Hamlet were written almost en-
tirely of scenes like the grave-digging scene! He shows the various ways
humanity deceives itself when it is dealing with mortality–a sort of
dramatized Heideggerianism, but without Eigentlichkeit and Entsch-
lossenheit–authenticity and resoluteness. I think he had been taken with
the Romantic search for the transcendental, but he came to realize the
futility of the search: if Shelley ‘hit the wall’ at the end of his life, then
Beddoes represents a ‘post-hitting-the-wall’ state, and his poetry and life

692
represent, in a way, that ‘slough of despond’ that represents a post-
Romantic state–the negative nihilism Nietzsche critiqued…”
“…what happened to him?”
“…it’s quite interesting, actually, and I take it as a cautionary tale of
the dangers of exile. He made the mistake of sending Death’s Jest Book
back to England to his friends for their opinion…”
“…why was it a mistake?”
“…his sensibility was somewhere else than they were by then, and his
writing indicated that: the friends he left behind wouldn’t have followed
or understood his journey, not having undertaken it themselves–not to
mention they may have held it against him that he left. They apparently
wrote him very negative reviews of it, saying that it was in no state to be
published: their reaction precipitated a crisis that led to his first suicide
attempt…”
“…with friends like that, who needs enemies?”
“..it’s all the more ironic given that the work of his friends never
amounted to anything, while most critics today agree that the first ver-
sion of Death’s Jest Book is much better than the version left after his
death, which had incorporated his friends’ suggestions. Due to the sui-
cide attempt, and some drunken revels that probably resulted from his
depression, he was expelled from the university, and went to the univer-
sity in Würzberg next…”
“…he was studying in German, yes?”
“…yes–when he later returned to England for a couple of brief visits,
he complained about speaking German better than English. He involved
himself with some radical groups, and even wrote poems in German for
them that were quite popular–he once joked that he was better known as
a ‘German poet’ than an English one! He was expelled from Würzberg
as well for his radical politics, and then went to Switzerland. When he
returned to England for a brief visit after nineteen years abroad, he
found it totally foreign–he found the English pretentious, their conven-
tions entirely empty, as I suppose all conventions finally seem when
seen from a distance. He was so unhappy with ‘Englishness’ that he fled
abroad again, and for good…”
“…what happened to him?”
“…that’s where the ‘cautionary tale’ aspect enters into it: he became
what Mallarmé called a ‘shipwreck,’ or George Oppen termed ‘the
shipwreck of the singular’: he was despondent, and cut an artery in his
leg in 1848 in a suicide attempt. The attempt failed, but he used a dirty
scalpel, so the wound became gangrenous and his leg had to be amputat-
ed…”
“…poor man!”
“…a while later, in Basel, he corrected his first attempt by taking poi-
son and finishing the job. The revised Death’s Jest Book was published
the following year…”
“…are you ever afraid of that happening to you?”

693
 “…losing my English, being better known abroad, or becoming a
shipwreck?”
“…all three…”
“…in regard to language, being abroad certainly has changed my
English: you lose idioms–especially the slang or jargon of the moment,
and I find you acquire verb tenses you didn’t use before. I don’t mourn
either, as American idioms can be inane–do you realize how many
American idioms are connected to sports, and especially American
sports–baseball, basketball, and football? I didn’t realize until I began to
encounter blank looks in Prague from people who didn’t share my cul-
tural context…”
“…give me some examples…”
“…for example, baseball: when you want to briefly get in contact
with someone, you are ‘touching base,’ or when someone is trying to
sell an idea, it’s called making a ‘pitch’; then basketball–when some-
thing is easy to do, it’s a ‘slam, dunk,’ or when someone is in a position
to decide, they are ‘calling the shots’; and from football: when you are
advancing or progressing, you are ‘gaining ground,’ or when you are
accomplishing something through evasion, you are doing an ‘end run.’ I
discovered how unconscious it all was only in my first few years
abroad–I don’t even like sports, and my language was full of sports idi-
oms! Over time you purify your language of idioms, and in other ways
as well…”
“…and what about the second part–about being better known
abroad?”
“…if one is even known at all! For every Shelley or Rimbaud who
goes into exile, there are a hundred more that simply disappear–Beddoes
was almost one of them. We discussed it before: nations are very unfor-
giving of those who depart–who refuse to be a part of the ‘we’: look at
the Czechs, with Kupka and Kundera, or the Americans with figures like
Paul Bowles of Gustaf Sobin–all insiders who became outsiders…”
“…and then there are the ‘outsiders’ living among the ‘insiders’…”
“…yes, I’m always amazed at how Czechs seem to have amnesia in
regard to the former German-speaking population who were born in the
Czechlands or lived there for a time: Kafka and Freud are known by
everyone of course, but then there are figures like Rilke or Musil, who
only a few educated people know about, and other significant figures
who only a very rare few know about: Mach, Husserl, Mahler, Ko-
koschka, or Sacher-Masoch…”
“…who’s that?”
“…you know, the one we get the term ‘masochism’ from…”
“…really? I didn’t know that–what’s his connection to the Czech-
lands?”
“…his family moved to Prague from Galicia in 1848 when he was
twelve, and he attended Charles University, afterwards going to teach
history in Graz: he must have been in Prague a decade or so…”

694
 “…I suppose because of the ‘melting pot’ principle the same situation
of unacknowledged foreigners doesn’t happen as much in the U.S.A.?”
“…it’s only been during my lifetime that the critical establishment
accepted works by African-Americans, Native-Americans, Asian-
Americans, or Jewish-Americans beyond the best-selling writers–or
even women, for that matter, beyond the obvious ones like Emily Dick-
inson, Edith Wharton, and Sylvia Plath! As far as foreigners living there,
I doubt very many Americans have heard of all the famous German-
speaking exiles who came to the U.S.A…”
“…certainly they knew about Einstein or Thomas Mann?”
“…yes, and intellectuals knew of such obvious figures as Hannah Ar-
endt, Fritz Lang, and Bertolt Brecht, but how many people knew that
Klaus and Erika Mann, Hermann Broch, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch,
George Grosz, or Alfred Döblin were living in the U.S.A.? Not many, I
would guess–and that’s just the German speakers. What about Lorca and
Camus in New York, or Marguerite Yourcenar in Maine, or Renoir in
Hollywood, or Duchamp…”
“…and what about the third part…”
“…oh–about shipwrecks?”
“…yes…”
“…I’ve often feared becoming a shipwreck, I must admit…yes, Bed-
does’ amputation and suicide is really extreme–truly a shipwreck, and
when I look at another writer whose leg was amputated, Rimbaud, it’s
hard for me not to see their amputations as symbolic…”
“…of what?”
“…of having their legs ‘cut out from under them’: I sense that they
both were at fault–they somehow lost nerve…that’s really the key to it, I
believe: I think Fitzgerald got it right in his essay ‘The Crack-Up,’ when
he wrote that those who had survived had made some sort of ‘clean
break’…a clean break was something from which you could not return,
because ‘it makes the past cease to exist.’ Rimbaud had been hoarding
gold–actually one biographer I read suggests the weight of the gold, kept
in a money belt around his waist, might have been the partial cause of
the tumor in his knee that caused his leg to be amputated…”
“…why was he hoarding it?”
“…apparently with the idea of returning to France and building a
house–or at least that’s what he wrote to his mother towards the end, but
perhaps that idea came after he became sick and weakened. I don’t know
what the case was with Beddoes, but certainly what started the series of
suicide attempts was what his ‘friends’ thought ‘back home’…”
“…so they hadn’t made the ‘clean break’ with their pasts…”
“…they went very far, but they hesitated…”
“…but can a person really cut off their past?”
“…I don’t think it’s a matter of cutting off the past–the past is real,
and always will be: as Faulkner wrote, ‘The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even

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past’…it’s a matter of not living in a way where you’re constantly
turned towards your culture of origin–as I said about expatriates…”
“…so it’s what you said about choosing to be a foreigner as a positive
state…”
“…yes, that’s it. It’s difficult. I know that moments of weakness or
sickness are the times when a foreigner might begin to have doubts and
fears: we can all identify with feeling alienated, and there’s something
about the threat of illness or death that makes one want to return to the
origin–ultimately even to the mother’s womb, of which the ‘motherland’
becomes a symbol. My idea of having my ashes dumped off the Charles
Bridge isn’t merely a ‘notion,’ but it’s precisely so that I stave off that
risk: if I think in advance about it, and will it by putting it into a will,
then I’m hoping that when illness strikes, I’ll be ready for it, and won’t
collapse into the womb again, wanting to ‘go home to mommy’ literally,
as Kerouac did, or symbolically, as Rimbaud went back to France…but
getting back to what I was saying, when you really consider it, it’s hard-
er to name a writer or thinker who wasn’t a shipwreck than to find those
that were: Kafka, Woolf, Baudelaire, Nerval, Hölderlin, Novalis, Hem-
ingway, Fitzgerald, Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and on and on–
all shipwrecks. Even if you consider those writers at the very top of the
pantheon, you can’t get away from it: Ovid? An exile. Virgil? He died
without finishing his greatest work. Dante? An exile. Shakespeare? His
life wasn’t exactly trouble-free. Rousseau? He’s in the Pantheon, but he
doesn’t rest quite easily there. Hermann Melville? Hardly. James Joyce?
An exile…”
“…but I suppose you could say we’re all shipwrecks…”
“…I suppose we all are…in any case, from time to time I worry about
it, like anyone, but I try to buoy myself by reminding myself I’m in good
company…but where were we?”
“…we were heading towards another shipwreck–Byron’s death…”
“…yes–we’re talking about the time between Mary’s return in sum-
mer of 1823, and his death in April 1824. The excitement of finding her-
self ‘famous’ soon wore off, and she quite quickly began to see the
negative side of England. She rather hastily moved out of Godwin’s
place…”
“…strange, given she hadn’t seen him in years…”
“…I think their relationship was always fraught with difficulties, and
she deluded herself about them. She was already lodged with Percy in
Brunswick Square by September 8th. Old friends of Shelley steered clear
of her–Jane and Hogg because of their accelerating romance which they
wanted to hide, Peacock was too busy with his new family; Medwin
came only for a brief dinner. Most of Mary’s socializing was done with
new friends–Leigh Hunt had given her an introduction to the composer
Vincent Novello who held many social evenings she was invited to, and
whose large family she would visit often. Still, she realized that her hap-
piest moments in England were not as good as her worst days in Italy-

696
even in Genoa when she was in her immediate mourning period. Listen
to what she wrote in her journal in January, 1824:

I have now been nearly four months in England and if I

am to judge of the future by the past and present, I have
small delight in looking forward. I even regret those days
and weeks of intense melancholy that composed my life
at Genoa–Yes–solitary and unbeloved as I was there, I
enjoyed a more pleasurable state of being than I do here. I
was still in Italy, & my heart and imagination were both
gratified by that circumstance. I arose with the light and
beheld the theatre of Nature from my windows…Now I
am exiled from those beloved scenes; its language is be-
coming a stranger to my ears–my child is forgetting it–I
am imprisoned in a dreary town–I see neither fields, nor
hills, nor trees, nor sky…

…by March, 1824, she was able to analyze her feelings a bit more pre-
cisely when she wrote this to Trelawny:

…I only know that as I am, I am miserable. The eight

years that I passed with our lost Shelley does not appear a
dream, for my present existence is more like that–surely
his state is not more changed than mine. When I first
came to England, change of scene, the seeing old friends
and the excitement with which the uncertainty of my situ-
ation inspired me, made me, though not happy, yet pass
the day unrepining. But now each hour seems to add a
load of intolerable melancholy. While alone I can hardly
support the weight–when with others, it is almost worse. I
think of my converse with Shelley, his incomparable su-
periority, and besides that he was mine and loved me; I
think of Edward; of his virtues and pure friendship, till
my heart sinks–The greatest pleasure I have is in compa-
ny with Jane–When we talk over old times for hours–My
other friends are good and kind, but they are so perfectly
unlike all that I have been accustomed to, that I enter a
new world when I see them–It is to Jane only that I ever
mentioned Shelley–Do you remember, dear friend, our
talks over the fire-side at Genoa?–God knows how
wretched I was there; and yet it seems a happy time in
comparison to the present…

…and as much as she missed Italy, she had the returned expatriate’s
syndrome of finally and fully seeing England not from the fog of

697
memory, but how it was–look at what she wrote to Hunt, who was still
in Italy:

Why am I not there? This is quite a foreign country to

me; the names of the places sound strangely–the voices of
the people are new & grating–the Vulgar English they
speak particularly displeasing–but for my father, I should
be with you next spring–but his heart & soul are set on
my staying, and in this world it always seems one’s duty
to sacrifice one’s own desires, & that claim ever appears
the strongest which claims such a sacrifice…

…the past was the index by which the present was measured, and noth-
ing could ever equal it, so from the very first entry in her journal, there
was a tendency to dwell on her life with Shelley:

O Witch Memory–call up the past, & my lost One–I had

him once; once he was mine–days were accomplished by
him–I lived in Italy; climbed the hills, was rocked by the
waters, & breathed its winds cheered by his love–
sheltered by his care & uncovered now, the evil men will
throng round me…

…in fact, Italy and the past had such a pull that she continued to harbor
the hope that she and Jane would return, at times even imagining that
Claire would join them there!”
“…was she serious?”
“…perhaps too serious, for she raised Jane up as her chief object of
love, and it was a love so intense that a few modern critics have even
speculated about a sexual component to it…”
“…do you think that’s possible?”
“…it’s not impossible, in the sense that, as we will see a bit later,
there would be a woman or two around Mary who were identifiable ‘in-
verts’–the name for homosexuals during that period, but I think it im-
probable, for many reasons…”
“…what do they base their speculation on?”
“…aside from a veiled reference to a woman’s sex organ in one of
their letters to one another–which I doubt means anything, for if that
were a criterion then every woman alive would be a lesbian–the primary
evidence is the almost gushingly romantic feelings Mary had for Jane.
Even that doesn’t prove anything, because it’s clear quite early on after
her return that there was a lack of reciprocity between them. Look at this
journal entry, from January, 1824:

I love Jane better than any other human being–but I am

pressed upon by the knowledge that she but slightly re-

698
 turns this affection. I love her and my purest pleasure is
derived from that source–a capacious basin & but a small
rill flows into it–I love some one or two more ‘with a de-
gree of love’–but I see them seldom–I am excited while
with them; but the reaction of this feeling is dreadfully
painful…

…or a bit later, in September, she wrote, ‘Jane alone remains–If she
loved me as well as I do her it would be much–I would not complain–
she is all gentleness & she is my only consolation–yet she does not con-
sole me’: does that sound like a woman whose love is being reciprocat-
ed? Jane’s attention was on Hogg, and the intensity of Mary’s love for
her was, I believe, a kind of unconscious displacement of her love for
Shelley…”
“…because they had both suffered losses in the same accident?”
“…that must be part of it–a kind of co-mourning: part of Jane’s rea-
son for keeping her affair with Hogg quiet must have been she realized
that the shift in her affections to Hogg had come too quickly to be seem-
ly, and she realized that Mary would have been offended–not just for
her, but for the memory of Edward as well. The other, more subtle rea-
son might have been a veiled awareness that Jane had been the object of
Shelley’s attention in the final weeks and months, and this unconscious
positioning of herself in the track of his desire may have somehow
caused her to form an identification with his desire…”
“…but why did Jane shift to Hogg so quickly–was her love for Ed-
ward, or Shelley, deficient, or was she doing the same thing as Mary,
forming an attachment with a friend of Shelley’s as a kind of replace-
ment?”
“…in both their cases the relatively sudden attachment of their desire
to someone else–Hogg for Jane, Jane for Mary, was part of the grieving
process: when suddenly an unexpected and tragic loss like that happens,
it’s as if there’s a recoil, and the psyche needs somewhere to re-invest
that deposit of love. That Jane chose Hogg was a result of the same need
that made Mary choose Jane: it was not because Jane was incapable of
deep grieving, or somehow was deficient in her love for Edward or Shel-
ley. Mary was not beyond considering the attentions of others either. In
this journal entry, again from January, she writes that she could never
find someone like Shelley–beyond it being evidence of Mary’s truer
love for Shelley, I think that even the fact the question was in her mind
indicated she was thinking about the possibility of others:

Another Companion!–where shall I find one–superior to

myself in understanding, & at least equal in goodness, far
above me in the conduct of life–one whose opinions I
should respect, whose qualities I should admire & whose
person I should love–he gone–this is a chimera and it

699
 mere insanity to dream concerning it–My Shelley (dear
dear name–how seldom do I form thy characters–oh my
Shelley–Shelley)–was unequalled–will he not be unri-
valled?

…and of course, he went unrivalled in the end…”

“…were there any real prospects?”
“…she was still young, and there would be a number of men interest-
ed in her over time; after all, there had already been some flirtation with
Byron, but he failed in the area of ‘goodness.’ At the time she wrote this,
a young man named John Howard Payne fell deeply in love with her. He
was a companion, but I don’t think he was a real possibility. Later, there
would be some real possibilities, but for the time being, Mary was feel-
ing lonely, isolated, and abandoned by Jane, who was ill that winter.
What would really hit her, making her feel entirely isolated, was the
death of Byron on April 19th…”
“…she found out right away?”
“…on May 15th–it’s interesting to note that she had feelings that she
identified as a premonition the day before finding out: she wrote this in
her journal, on May 14th:

Although so utterly miserable in Genoa, yet what reveries

were mine as I walked on the road and looked on the
changing aspect of the ravine–the sunny deep & its
boats–the promontories clothed in purple light–the starry
heavens–the fireflies–the uprising of spring–then I could
think–and my imagination could invent & combine, and
self become absorbed in the grandeur of the universe I
created–Now my mind is a blank–a gulph filled with
formless mist–
The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary be-
ing’s feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved
race, my companions extinct before me…I do not re-
member ever having been so completely miserable as I
am tonight…

…and that was the day before she found out about Byron’s death, which
would only amplify her feelings…”
“…had she started writing The Last Man?”
“…she had started it in February–of course, Byron’s death gave it a
whole new impetus. Look what she wrote the next day, after she found
out about his death:

This then was the ‘coming event’ that cast its shadow on
my last night’s miserable thoughts. Byron has become
one of the people in the grave–that innumerable conclave

700
 to which the beings I best loved belong. I knew him in the
bright days of youth, when neither care or fear had visited
me: before death had made me feel my mortality and the
earth was the scene of my hopes–Can I forget our even-
ing visits to Diodati–our excursions on the lake when he
sang the Tyrolese hymn–and his voice was harmonized
with winds and waves?–Can I forget his attentions &
consolations to me during my deepest misery? Never.
Beauty sat on his countenance and power beamed from
his eye–his faults being for the most part weaknesses in-
duced one readily to pardon them. Albe–the dear capri-
cious fascinating Albe has left this desert world. What do
I do here? Why am I doomed to live on seeing all expire
before me? God grant I may die young–A new race is
springing about me–At the age of 26 I am in the condition
of an aged person–all my old friends are gone–I have no
wish to form new–I cling to the few remaining–but they
slide away & my heart fails when I think by how few ties
I hold to the world–Albe, dearest Albe, was knit by long
associations–Each day I repeat with bitterer feelings ‘Life
is the desert and the solitude–how populous the grave’…

…you can see her sense of solitude–of literally having had her ‘race’ die
out before her…”
“…I doubt Claire would have tolerated hearing about his ‘fascination’
and his faults being merely ‘weaknesses’…”
“…she would later criticize Mary exactly for her tendency to overlook
what she didn’t want to see in regard to the past, and, in the case of By-
ron, her tendency to put clearly Byronic heroes in her novels…”
“…was there a character based on him in The Last Man?”
“…yes–Lord Raymond; and another based on Shelley–Adrian, Earl of
Windsor: they’re the two characters who are most identifiable as real
people, even though their characters are altered quite a bit. Keep in mind
that Mary was forbidden to write anything close to an accurate represen-
tation of their story–not even a fictionalized one. Sir Timothy was keep-
ing close watch over her: it was on June 23rd of that year–in the immedi-
ate aftermath of Byron’s death and right before his body was brought
back to England–that she would learn that the allowance would be cut
off unless she immediately stopped the publication of the Beddoes vol-
ume of the Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and promise not
to publish any more of Shelley’s writings in Sir Timothy’s lifetime. That
was a real threat, and it occurred right at the moment when she had re-
ceived a real impetus to press ahead with The Last Man…”
“…so her problem was how to write about Shelley, Byron and her
feelings of loss without actually portraying them in a recognizable man-
ner…”

701
 “…yes, and that’s obviously no easy matter; in any case, it was too
early for her even to be able to give something like a fair assessment of
them all…”
“…I wonder if it wouldn’t always be too early for her to do that…”
“…at that time she was entirely idealizing, as she hadn’t yet read
through all the material left by Shelley and the crisis with Jane hadn’t
occurred. When the real truth did begin to seep in fully, it was during the
preparation of the biographical notes for the 1839 edition of Shelley’s
works, and it depressed her deeply–so deeply she had to omit not merely
the obvious, but large swathes of their lives. So, in 1824 she was in no
way ready to produce anything like a truthful portrait: what the novel
could be was a working through of her feelings of loss, with a camou-
flaged attempt to evoke what had been lost. The journal entry I read be-
fore speaks more eloquently than I could ever do about her feeling: she
felt like the last survivor of a race, ‘the last man,’ as she put it. Actually,
it’s a nice little trick she accomplishes, for in having the tale told by the
‘last man,’ Lionel Verney, looking back from the year 2100, she seems
to make the story a kind of dystopian science fiction while at the same
time evoking the feelings she had at that time…”
“…you mentioned the other day that both Nietzsche and Blanchot
would come to evoke the idea of ‘the last man’ in different ways, but
what about before Mary–did she invent the idea?”
“…not at all–apocalyptic visions were actually quite common then–
don’t forget Shelley’s own The Triumph of Life, or Byron’s poem
‘Darkness.’ Thomas Campbell had published a poem entitled ‘The Last
Man’ in 1823, and Beddoes himself had projected a verse drama on the
same theme which he never completed, but certainly Mary would have
known about it…”
“…why was the theme so popular then?”
“…I think it was a reaction to the state of Europe in the post-
Napoleonic period: the Congress of Vienna sounded the death knell to
revolutionary projects in Europe for half a century. This was the decade
before the Reform Bill of 1832, so there was little progress, and little
reason to be utopian; in fact, whereas many of the apocalyptic writers
linked the apocalypse with a millennial fervor, such as Shelley’s Prome-
theus Unbound, Mary’s novel is in many ways distinctly un-millennial–a
pervading sense of loss is the deepest undercurrent of the novel, but she
was able to camouflage it with other socio-political and psychological
concerns, all of which exist within a ‘what if’ or future conditional
mode. She never intended it to be a roman à clef, where the audience
would be guessing which character stood for which real life character;
for example, the Shelley-based character, Adrian, Earl of Windsor, son
of the last King of England: I read one critic who made much of her
characterization of him, pointing out how he is incapable of sustaining a
relationship with a woman, how his ideals turn out to be ineffectual, and
so on, and they concluded Mary is using the book to critique and over-

702
turn the Romantic ethos of her husband. It’s true that her description of
him is very close to Shelley–listen to this:

His enthusiasm for good which did not exist; his con-
tempt for the sacredness of authority; his ardour and im-
prudence were all at the antipodes of the usual routine of
life; the worldly feared him; the young and inexperienced
did not understand the lofty severity of his moral views,
and disliked him as a being different from themselves.
Evadne entered but coldly into his systems. She thought
he did well to assert his own will, but she wished that will
to have been more intelligible to the multitude. She had
none of the spirit of a martyr, and did not incline to share
the shame and defeat of a fallen patriot. She was aware of
the purity of his motives, the generosity of his disposi-
tion, his true and ardent attachment to her; and she enter-
tained a great affection for him. He repaid this spirit of
kindness with the fondest gratitude, and made her the
treasure-house of all his hopes.

…you can see Shelley is clearly recognizable as a character, but when

you consider the whole novel, it’s by no means a ‘complete’ Shelley; it’s
the Shelley of her positive idealization, mixed with the Shelley of her
frustrations and disappointments…”
“…and Mary is Evadne?”
“…ah, well, that’s where the real problems of attribution come in–the
female characters. Adrian may be only a partial reflection of Shelley,
and the character of Lord Raymond only a partial reflection of Byron,
but in the case of the female characters it’s not a matter of idealization or
reduction, but rather of a fragmentation, parceling out, and mixing of
attributes–plus an idealization! The three primary female characters cer-
tainly combine attributes of Mary, Claire and Jane, but also, I think, bits
and pieces of Harriet, Teresa Guiccioli, Emilia Viviani, and perhaps oth-
ers. Furthermore, a part of Mary is also obviously found in the male nar-
rator, Lionel Verney, who includes certain attributes of Trelawny and
Hogg as well: it’s a real mishmash…”
“…all so she could disguise the truth?”
“…yes, but as I said, also because she couldn’t entirely face the truth:
Mary not only didn’t stop her psychic strategy of unconsciously ‘know-
ing but not knowing,’ but also I think she actually amplified it. So, to
return to the story, the primary characters are as follows: Lionel Verney
is the narrator and sole survivor of a plague that wipes out human life on
earth, so he is the ‘last man’ of the title; then there’s his sister, Perdita,
who marries Lord Raymond, hero of the Greek-Turkish war; Adrian, the
Shelley character; Adrian's sister, Princess Idris, who goes against the
will of their mother, the Countess of Windsor, by marrying Verney; and

703
Evadne, a Greek princess, who is loved by Adrian, but rejects him in
favor of Raymond. Even from that brief description you can see that it’s
difficult to assign characters to real people. For example, Raymond fall-
ing in love with the Greek Princess Evadne is a bit of Byron and Teresa,
a bit of Trelawny and his Greek bride, and certainly a bit of Claire, in
that Claire was loved by Shelley but went and had an affair with Byron.
However, Perdita is also a bit of Claire, in that she is abandoned by
Raymond with a female child named Clara, who is modeled on Allegra–
but even this is changed, as the child this time stays with Perdita, and
survives the plague almost until the end. You can see the multiplied
‘what ifs?’–what if Allegra had stayed with them? What if Clara or Al-
legra had lived? And yet these alternate futures are also dashed in the
end…”
“…by the plague?”
“…not, entirely: the plague comes later in the book, while the dying
starts much sooner. The first to die are those grouped around the Byron
character, Lord Raymond. He’s volatile, inconstant, and prey to the im-
pulses of the moment, so that when he leaves Perdita for Evadne, it’s not
with any firmness, and consequently all three suffer. Listen to this de-
scription of him, which is quite accurate:

The selected passion of the soul of Raymond was ambi-

tion. Readiness of talent, a capacity of entering into, and
leading the dispositions of men; earnest desire of distinc-
tion were the awakeners and nurses of his ambition. But
other ingredients mingled with these, and prevented him
from becoming the calculating, determined character,
which alone forms a successful hero. He was obstinate,
but not firm; benevolent in his first movements; harsh and
reckless when provoked. Above all, he was remorseless
and unyielding in the pursuit of any object of desire,
however lawless. Love of pleasure, and the softer sensi-
bilities of our nature, made a prominent part of his char-
acter, conquering the conqueror; holding him in at the
moment of acquisition; sweeping away ambition's web;
making him forget the toil of weeks, for the sake of one
moment's indulgence of the new and actual object of his
wishes.

…but the character is not entirely Byron, for Byron was able to leave
without looking back–Lady Caroline Lamb, his wife Annabella, Claire,
and even Teresa, in the end. It’s actually quite fascinating how Mary
carries over her object-splitting in real life into the novel, for Adrian is
the ‘good’ side of Shelley, and is shown to have, if anything, quite ethe-
real attachments to women, while the other side of Shelley she didn’t
want to acknowledge–the side that had attachments to other women–was

704
projected onto Lord Raymond, who she utilized to work through her
doubts and suspicions in quite a comprehensive way…”
“…but do you think she was consciously unconscious, or uncon-
sciously conscious of what she was doing?”
“…I think she was ‘unconsciously conscious’–what Freud meant by
repression: ‘to not know that we know’ something. As we’ve seen,
Mary certainly was unconsciously conscious of Claire, or she wouldn’t
have been so nervous when she was around–and the same for Emilia as
well. Look at the following passage–it’s not based on Byron, for he
wouldn’t even worry about these nuances of feeling in others. Clearly
she’s working through her idea of what Shelley must have faced–at least
with Harriet, if not with her:

Time went on. Raymond, stopping mid-way in his wild

career, paused suddenly to think of consequences. Two
results presented themselves in the view he took of the
future. That his intercourse with Evadne should continue
a secret to, or that finally it should be discovered by Per-
dita. The destitute condition, and highly wrought feelings
of his friend prevented him from adverting to the possi-
bility of exiling himself from her. In the first event he had
bidden an eternal farewell to open-hearted converse, and
entire sympathy with the companion of his life. The veil
must be thicker than that invented by Turkish jealousy;
the wall higher than the unscaleable tower of Vathek,
which should conceal from her the workings of his heart,
and hide from her view the secret of his actions. This idea
was intolerably painful to him.

…it’s Shelley who inspired those lines, and, as far as it goes, the pain
and anxiety the situation would have caused did match what Shelley felt,
given he could write to Claire what he did in that secret letter I read the
other day: ‘Do not think that my affection & anxiety for you ever cease,
or that I ever love you less although that love has been & still must be a
source of disquietude to me’…”
“…and do you really think she could both write about it and at the
same time choose not to fully acknowledge it?”
“…certainly! That’s precisely what Freud meant by repression: to un-
consciously know something and not to know it at the same time. For
example, Mary was conscious enough to set out a critique of Shelley’s
idea of ‘free love’ in the novel, but I don’t think she could think about
the particulars of Shelley’s life. Remember what Shelley wrote in
Epipsychidion–‘True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to
divide is not to take away’? Mary must have finally read it after his
death, for the following passage seems a direct argument against it–it

705
has to do with Raymond considering the possibility of sharing his affec-
tions with Perdita and Evadne:

The affection and amity of a Raymond might be inesti-

mable; but, beyond that affection, embosomed deeper
than friendship, was the indivisible treasure of love. Take
the sum in its completeness, and no arithmetic can calcu-
late its price; take from it the smallest portion, give it but
the name of parts, separate it into degrees and sections,
and like the magician's coin, the valueless gold of the
mine, is turned to vilest substance. There is a meaning in
the eye of love; a cadence in its voice, an irradiation in its
smile, the talisman of whose enchantments one only can
possess; its spirit is elemental, its essence single, its di-
vinity an unit.

…her argument precisely counters his! To have been able to write an

argument against his, she must have thought through the ramifications of
both sides…”
“…and who was right?”
“…both…”
“…I thought you would say that…”
“…of course…you simply need to look at Byron and Shelley: Byron
was an egoist, a narcissist, and so his love was always about possession,
and therefore atavistic; Shelley was an idealist, and so he strived for
something more, even if it was impossible in the end. Justice, equality,
freedom, peace, and truth are impossible too, but where would we be if
we didn’t have them as regulative ideas?”
“…but Mary wasn’t convinced…”
“…she wasn’t entirely convinced, but on the other hand, she always
believed in Shelley’s goodness…”
“…and saw its limitations as well…”
“…yes, but we have to filter her sense of his limitations through her
limitations: after all, she was in certain ways the most limited of their
whole circle…”
“…but she lost the most…”
“…there’s no doubt about that–as I said, the book is a long litany of
her losses. Certainly it was her losses that propelled her into her reactivi-
ty, and who can blame her?”
“…but getting back to the question, how can they both be right?
“…it has to do with what I said a few days ago–about complementari-
ty and supplementarity. The description I just read, which I assume is
Mary’s own view, describes complementarity, which is impossible: we
do not fuse with other human beings in a perfect union. Shelley de-
scribes supplementarity, but supplementarity is not infinite either–
there’s obviously only so much time in the day to share with others, and

706
each ‘other’ takes away from that time. I’m sure there are many people
who haven’t enough love available for even one person, let alone more!
Kindness, sympathy, care, concern, and even desire–yes…but love?
Look at what happens with sibling rivalry: I think it quite clearly indi-
cates that the parent’s love is limited, and the more limited, the more
sibling rivalry there is. I lived exactly that limitation in my family: my
brother, sisters, and I were fiercely competitive in a strangely unspoken
way, and one day I realized that we had the ferocity of hungry pigeons
fighting over a crust of bread! The crust of bread was my mother’s lim-
ited capacity to love–she was a thwarted woman, and reminds me of the
mother in Robert Musil’s story The Blackbird, described as ‘always ve-
hement and on edge’ because she combined a ‘passionate nature with
limited horizons’…”
“...you memorized that passage–it must have affected you…”
“…the description fit my mother like a glove…”
“…it’s true what you say about sibling rivalry, for even with only two
daughters, there’s rivalry–my sister and I used to torment each other ter-
ribly…”
“…‘used to’?”
“…ok, we still do…but back to the point: you’re saying that comple-
mentarity doesn’t exist at all, and whatever supplementarity is possible
is limited?
“…the word itself says it all, but it doesn’t make me a pessimist: like
Shelley, I do think it’s possible to love more than one person, but I have
the benefit of hindsight in regard to his life, and can see the limitations.
It’s also connected to what I said before about atavism versus enlight-
enment: our enlightened, higher nature can extend itself to feel love in
more than one direction, but there’s always the danger that our atavistic
side creates problems during a moment of weakness, and anxiety, fear,
jealousy, possessiveness, and territoriality begin to take over. In any
case, I believe it possible in the same way I believe it possible for a par-
ent to love more than one child, but that it’s also very difficult and de-
mands patience, sensitivity, and even a kind of vigilance against atavism
on both sides. It isn’t accomplished with a blanket-love that treats eve-
ryone the same, as that would be complementarity; rather, you connect
to each loved-other in a very particular way, unique to each individual,
with also a different aspect of your own uniqueness…”
“…it still sounds utopian…”
“…all love is utopian…”
“…I think you’re right about that–but that also makes it prone to al-
most inevitable failure…”
“…yes, but still the fact there was love, even if only for a limited
time, is what matters: as we have seen and will see with both Claire and
Mary, the fact of it persists, even long after the source has disap-
peared…”

707
 “…so, if I understand you correctly, you are implying that love is
immanence…”
“…it isn’t identical with it because there are other forms immanence
can take, but certainly it is one of the most intense forms of imma-
nence…”
“…that makes sense: the more intense, the more enduring…”
“…certainly that’s what makes great love stories great–Romeo and
Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Catherine and Heathcliff: it’s always a mixture
of an intensity that tries to cross the threshold of death…”
“…but getting back to The Last Man…”
“…yes, speaking of death: the first to die is Evadne. After Raymond’s
vacillation between her and Perdita, both women realize that their rela-
tions have been damaged, and there’s no way for either of them to return
to an idealized relation. In the case of Evadne, she decides to withdraw,
but then in order not to entirely lose Raymond, she remains in the same
field of action as he, although clandestinely–the ‘field’ is the battlefield
between Greece and Turkey, which is where she dies. Raymond, who
had become a libertine, also dies in the war soon after, when the city of
Constantinople is blown up around him. The next to die is Perdita,
who’s response to Raymond’s infidelity had been ‘deep resentment’ and
‘an unfading sense of injury’: so much so that, like Claire, she preferred
Raymond’s name not even to be mentioned. As I said, she’s closest to
Claire, and there are scenes when she visits Verney and Idris that are
very much like the times in Marlowe when Claire and Allegra were liv-
ing with them. She’s even shown to be very good at music! Even though
she’s been so devastated by Raymond, when he dies she wants to build a
cottage near the site and never return to England. Verney talks her into
returning, but she instead commits suicide, leaving a note that her body
is to be taken back to Constantinople and buried there, and–listen to
this–to be sure her body isn’t lost at sea, she ties a long shawl around her
waist and attaches it to the boat…”
“…did Mary know that Claire had the shawl from Shelley?”
“…I think she must have known–on some level…”
“…strange…”
“…for me, even stranger is that she describes the deaths of the chil-
dren of Idris in quite precise detail–it’s as if she needed to re-enact them,
as if she were unraveling all her collected grief…”
“…they die from the plague?”
“…eventually, but from the very first there’s a sense of foreboding; in
fact, the first time we even hear that Lionel Verney and his wife Idris
even have children, it’s connected to her fears, because one of the chil-
dren has already died, as was the case with Mary’s first child–and, like
that child, it’s nameless:

We had had three children; one, the second in age, died

while I was in Greece. This had dashed the triumphant

708
 and rapturous emotions of maternity with grief and fear.
Before this event, the little beings, sprung from herself,
the young heirs of her transient life, seemed to have a
sure lease of existence; now she dreaded that the pitiless
destroyer might snatch her remaining darlings, as it had
snatched their brother.

…then, there’s a scene where the youngest child, Evelyn, comes down
with a fever, and they have to watch him at night, very like what had
happened with William. What’s hard for me to understand is that alt-
hough he comes very close to death, he recovers from the fever, only to
die later in the book…”
“…he dies later of the plague?”
“…yes, although by that time his mother is already dead…”
“…I see what you mean about the novel being somehow a working
through of her grief–that’s the only way I can account for it…”
“…me too, for she doesn’t shrink away from describing the later
deaths in detail. Alfred, the older boy, is the next to go, and he dies by
plague also. Listen to this description–it seems to subtly echo what hap-
pened with their child Clara when Shelley went off to seek help as they
arrived in Venice and only came back to Mary as the child was dying in
her arms. In this case, Verney has been gone and is unaware what is
happening, and Idris has gone off to seek him, the boy left with Clara,
the orphan of Perdita and Raymond. He returns to find Idris gone and
the child dead:

A dim light shewed me Alfred on a couch; Clara trem-

bling, and paler than whitest snow, had raised him on her
arm, holding a cup of water to his lips. I saw full well that
no spark of life existed in that ruined form, his features
were rigid, his eyes glazed, his head had fallen back. I
took him from her, I laid him softly down, kissed his cold
little mouth, and turned to speak in a vain whisper, when
loudest sound of thunderlike cannon could not have
reached him in his immaterial abode.

…after this, Idris wastes away, and eventually dies too, leaving, from
the main characters, only Verney, Adrian, Clara, and Evelyn–the last of
the group of survivors who had decided to go south to the warmth of Ita-
ly…”
“…like Mary’s idea that she would return to Italy with Claire and
Jane…”
“…yes, although rather than three women, she’s obliquely resurrected
her family with Shelley–if you take a certain aspect of the narrator, Ver-
ney, as being Mary. However, not even this is to last in the book. The
four decide to stay at the Villa Pliniana at Lake Como, where they had

709
stayed when they had first arrived in Italy, in 1818. Evelyn finally does
die of plague there. The description is not brief, like Alfred, but very de-
tailed: the passage narrates the excruciating agony of those watching
over him–it’s as if the previous passages of people dying, and the ac-
count of his first fever, were merely rehearsals for this final death scene:

For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the

poor child, as his life declined under the ravages of a vir-
ulent typhus. His little form and tiny lineaments encaged
the embryo of the world-spanning mind of man. Man’s
nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have
had a home in that little heart, whose swift pulsations hur-
ried towards their close. His small hand’s fine mecha-
nism, now flaccid and unbent, would in the growth of
sinew and muscle, have achieved works of beauty or of
strength. His tender rosy feet would have trod in firm
manhood the bowers and glades of earth–these reflections
were now of little use: he lay, thought and strength sus-
pended, waiting unresisting the final blow…

…and skipping ahead a bit, here’s how his fever affected those who
were witnessing it:

We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever

was on him, we neither spoke nor looked at each other,
marking only his obstructed breath and the mortal glow
that tinged his sunken cheek, the heavy death that
weighed on his eyelids. It is a trite evasion to say, that
words could not express our long drawn agony; yet how
can words image sensations, whose tormenting keenness
throw us back, as it were, on the deep roots and hidden
foundations of our nature, which shake our being with
earthquake-throe, so that we leave to confide in accus-
tomed feelings which like mother-earth support us, and
cling to some vain imagination or deceitful hope, which
will soon be buried in the ruins occasioned by the final
shock. I have called that period a fortnight, which we
passed watching the changes of the sweet child’s mala-
dy–and such it might have been–at night, we wondered to
find another day gone, while each particular hour seemed
endless. Day and night were exchanged for one another
uncounted; we slept hardly at all, nor did we even quit his
room, except when a pang of grief seized us, and we re-
tired from each other for a short period to conceal our
sobs and tears. We endeavoured in vain to abstract Clara
from this deplorable scene. She sat, hour after hour, look-

710
 ing at him, now softly arranging his pillow, and, while he
had power to swallow, administered his drink. At length
the moment of his death came: the blood paused in its
flow–his eyes opened, and then closed again: without
convulsion or sigh, the frail tenement was left vacant of
its spiritual inhabitant.

…here it is Clara watching: in Rome it had been Claire. There’s an al-

most obsessive precision in this account, and because we have some idea
of what happened in Rome, we can clearly see that Mary was reenacting
the scene from memory…”
“…it must have been terrible for her to write…”
“…but also necessary: forcing herself to recollect the scene may seem
masochistic, but it’s also a way to fix something in memory–and
memory, as opposed to repression, is the only way we can work through
the grieving process, turning melancholia to mourning, as Freud wrote.
Although Mary didn’t witness Shelley’s drowning, of course, her de-
scription of the drowning of Adrian and Clara is even more detailed: it’s
as if she’s forcing herself to vividly imagine the scene…”
“…why are they in a boat?”
“…Clara wants to go to her parents’ graves in Greece, so they embark
for there, a storm hits, and only Verney survives. Shall I read it?”
“…please…”
“…it’s quite long, so I’ll start in the middle somewhere:

Dark night mixed everything; we hardly discerned the

white crests of the murderous surges, except when light-
ning made brief noon, and drank the darkness, showing
us our danger, and restoring us to double night. We were
all silent, except when Adrian, as steersman, made an en-
couraging observation. Our little shell obeyed the rudder
miraculously well, and ran along on the top of the waves,
as if she had been an offspring of the sea, and the angry
mother sheltered her endangered child. I sat at the prow,
watching our course; when suddenly I heard the waters
break with redoubled fury. We were certainly near the
shore–at the same time I cried, “About there!” and a
broad lightning filling the concave, showed us for one
moment the level beach a-head, disclosing even the
sands, and stunted, ooze-sprinkled beds of reeds, that
grew at high water mark. Again it was dark, and we drew
in our breath with such content as one may, who, while
fragments of volcano-hurled rock darken the air, sees a
vast mass ploughing the ground immediately at his feet.
What to do we knew not–the breakers here, there, every-
where, encompassed us–they roared, and dashed, and

711
flung their hated spray in our faces. With considerable
difficulty and danger we succeeded at length in altering
our course, and stretched out from shore. I urged my
companions to prepare for the wreck of our little skiff,
and to bind themselves to some oar or spar which might
suffice to float them. I was myself an excellent swimmer–
the very sight of the sea was wont to raise in me such
sensations, as a huntsman experiences, when he hears a
pack of hounds in full cry; I loved to feel the waves wrap
me and strive to overpower me; while I, lord of myself,
moved this way or that, in spite of their angry buffetings.
Adrian also could swim–but the weakness of his frame
prevented him from feeling pleasure in the exercise, or
acquiring any great expertness. But what power could the
strongest swimmer oppose to the overpowering violence
of ocean in its fury? My efforts to prepare my compan-
ions were rendered nearly futile–for the roaring breakers
prevented our hearing one another speak, and the waves,
that broke continually over our boat, obliged me to exert
all my strength in lading the water out, as fast as it came
in. The while darkness, palpable and rayless, hemmed us
round, dissipated only by the lightning; sometimes we
beheld thunderbolts, fiery red, fall into the sea, and at in-
tervals vast spouts stooped from the clouds, churning the
wild ocean, which rose to meet them; while the fierce
gale bore the rack onwards, and they were lost in the cha-
otic mingling of sky and sea. Our gunwales had been torn
away, our single sail had been rent to ribbands, and borne
down the stream of the wind. We had cut away our mast,
and lightened the boat of all she contained–Clara at-
tempted to assist me in heaving the water from the hold,
and, as she turned her eyes to look on the lightning, I
could discern by that momentary gleam, that resignation
had conquered every fear. We have a power given us in
any worst extremity, which props the else feeble mind of
man, and enables us to endure the most savage tortures
with a stillness of soul which in hours of happiness we
could not have imagined. A calm, more dreadful in truth
than the tempest, allayed the wild beatings of my heart–a
calm like that of the gamester, the suicide, and the mur-
derer, when the last die is on the point of being cast–
while the poisoned cup is at the lips,–as the death-blow is
about to be given. Hours passed thus–hours which might
write old age on the face of beardless youth, and grizzle
the silky hair of infancy–hours, while the chaotic uproar
continued, while each dread gust transcended in fury the

712
 one before, and our skiff hung on the breaking wave, and
then rushed into the valley below, and trembled and spun
between the watery precipices that seemed most to meet
above her. For a moment the gale paused, and ocean sank
to comparative silence–it was a breathless interval; the
wind which, as a practised leaper, had gathered itself up
before it sprung, now with terrific roar rushed over the
sea, and the waves struck our stern. Adrian exclaimed
that the rudder was gone;–“We are lost,” cried Clara,
“Save yourselves–O save yourselves!” The lightning
showed me the poor girl half buried in the water at the
bottom of the boat; as she was sinking in it Adrian caught
her up, and sustained her in his arms. We were without a
rudder–we rushed prow foremost into the vast billows
piled up a-head–they broke over and filled the tiny skiff;
one scream I heard–one cry that we were gone, I uttered;
I found myself in the waters; darkness was around. When
the light of the tempest flashed, I saw the keel of our up-
set boat close to me–I clung to this, grasping it with
clenched hand and nails, while I endeavoured during each
flash to discover any appearance of my companions. I
thought I saw Adrian at no great distance from me, cling-
ing to an oar; I sprung from my hold, and with energy be-
yond my human strength, I dashed aside the waters as I
strove to lay hold of him. As that hope failed, instinctive
love of life animated me, and feelings of contention, as if
a hostile will combated with mine. I breasted the surges,
and flung them from me, as I would the opposing front
and sharpened claws of a lion about to enfang my bosom.
When I had been beaten down by one wave, I rose on an-
other, while I felt bitter pride curl my lip.

…at that point he loses sight of them, and follows Verney’s struggles
until he makes it to land, loses consciousness, then later awakes to the
truth. The grief he expresses when he realizes the full force of his loss in
a sense is this book–Mary’s loss, but not only her loss, for as he express-
es what the still living Adrian and Clara meant to him, we can sense
what Mary might have said about the survivors of her own, personal
‘wreck’–Percy Florence, Jane, Trelawny, and even Claire:

These two wondrously endowed beings had been spared

from the universal wreck, to be my companions during
the last year of solitude. I had felt, while they were with
me, all their worth. I was conscious that every other sen-
timent, regret, or passion had by degrees merged into a
yearning, clinging affection for them. I had not forgotten

713
 the sweet partner of my youth, mother of my children, my
adored Idris; but I saw at least a part of her spirit alive
again in her brother; and after, that by Evelyn’s death I
had lost what most dearly recalled her to me; I enshrined
her memory in Adrian’s form, and endeavoured to con-
found the two dear ideas. I sound the depths of my heart,
and try in vain to draw thence the expressions that can
typify my love for these remnants of my race. If regret
and sorrow came athwart me, as well it might in our soli-
tary and uncertain state, the clear tones of Adrian’s voice,
and his fervent look, dissipated the gloom; or I was
cheered unaware by the mild content and sweet resigna-
tion Clara’s cloudless brow and deep blue eyes expressed.
They were all to me–the suns of my benighted soul–
repose in my weariness–slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill,
most ill, with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I ex-
pressed the feeling with which I clung to them. I would
have wound myself like ivy inextricably round them, so
that the same blow might destroy us. I would have en-
tered and been a part of them–so that if the dull substance
of my flesh were thought, even now I had accompanied
them to their new and incommunicable abode. Never
shall I see them more. I am bereft of their dear converse–
bereft of sight of them. I am a tree rent by lightning; nev-
er will the bark close over the bared fibres–never will
their quivering life, torn by the winds, receive the opiate
of a moment’s balm. I am alone in the world–but that ex-
pression as yet was less pregnant with misery, than that
Adrian and Clara are dead.

…the ending of the novel is overwhelmingly bleak…”

“…but the narrative is being written by Verney, and he’s still writing,
still leaving an account, so there must be some hope of an audience…”
“…as there was for Mary too, and that’s why she continued to write,
even if she felt that her ‘race’ was becoming extinct. Still, the end is am-
bivalent: Verney casts off from Rome–perhaps partially in the faint hope
of finding another survivor somewhere, combined with a bit of the spirit
of Ulysses casting off again in Tennyson’s poem–‘seeking a newer
world,’ ‘sailing beyond the sunset,’ but also–and this is an interesting
point–to escape the ‘monotonous,’ ‘intolerable’ present. Listen to how
the novel ends:

I have chosen my boat, and laid in my scant stores. I have

selected a few books; the principal are Homer and Shake-
speare–But the libraries of the world are thrown open to
me–and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no ex-

714
 pectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous
present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my
pilots–restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me
on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to
have some task, however slight or voluntary, for each
day’s fulfillment. I shall witness all the variety of appear-
ance, that the elements can assume—I shall read fair au-
gury in the rainbow—menace in the cloud—some lesson
or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the
shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the
moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and
the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny
bark, freighted with Verney–the LAST MAN.

…and it ends like that…”

“…how did contemporary audiences react to it?”
“…not particularly favorably, to say the least! It was actually too
well-disguised to be taken by its audience as having anything to do with
the life of Mary Shelley: as Trelawny’s books would show later, if it had
been more clearly about Shelley and Byron, it would have sold very
well, but the need for camouflage prevented that…”
“…people knew it was by Mary Shelley, didn’t they?”
“…she had to publish the book as being ‘By the Author of Franken-
stein’–but certainly the reviewers knew, and mentioned, who she
was…”
“…and what did they write about it?”
“…like the majority of critics and reviewers of any time period, they
revealed more about themselves than about the book. They were often
stupid, and in some cases savage: most took the book entirely as a sci-
ence fiction novel, and harped on the fact that her version of the future
wasn’t ‘realistic’ enough…”
“…‘realistic’ enough?! For their reality or the future?”
“…they either complained that there were too many elements of the
present day in it, or, when there was something different, such as people
using balloon-like apparatuses to get around rather than carriages, they
scoffed at it as unrealistic…”
“…so she lost either way…”
“…yes, but what it really revealed was the block-headed literal-
mindedness of the reviewers: certainly science fiction speculates about
the future, but the majority of science fiction is using the genre as a ve-
hicle for making commentary about some aspect of the present. The re-
viewers of her time saw no other message than what one termed a ‘mon-
strous fable,’ or ‘a sickening repetition of horrors,’ that were the ‘off-
spring of a diseased imagination, and of a most polluted taste.’ The only
critic who came anywhere near the truth did so unintentionally, when he
wrote the following:

715
 She seems herself to belong to a sphere different from
that with which we are conversant. Her imagination ap-
pears to delight in inventions which have no foundation
in ordinary occurrences, and no charm for the common
sympathies of mankind.

…that was precisely the point, but not as the reviewer intended it: she
was of a different ‘sphere,’ and it indeed had little in common with pro-
saically dull, vacuous reality emerging in the Victorian period…”
“…and what about modern critics–do they understand it any better?”
“…I believe they are starting to, but let it first be said that we tend to
judge works based on a combination of their aesthetic merit and their
socio-historical importance, both of which are on a shifting, temporally-
imbued scale–generally but not always becoming more objective in an
‘as-if’ sort of way as time passes…”
“…‘as-if’?”
“…I’m invoking Kant’s sense of an unattainable universal–we can
have strong intuitions regarding aesthetic judgments, but we can never
prove them. For example, Frankenstein: while critics may argue for ages
over the actual aesthetic merit of the novel, what is less arguable is its
importance in the cultural history of the occident, even if what Mary
Shelley intended to illustrate has little to do with the latest cinematic
representations of it. It’s like a surfer ‘catching a wave’–another sports
metaphor, I know! Frankenstein caught a very long-lasting wave, as it
still resonates now–for example with genetic technology. On the other
hand, it wasn’t a huge wave, such as that caught by Goethe’s Werther, or
Byron’s Childe Harold–I deliberately am choosing works that truly
caught on, and yet which are of a questionable aesthetic merit–at least in
comparison to the importance of author works by the same authors…”
“…so are you saying that The Last Man didn’t ‘catch the wave’ the
way Frankenstein did?”
“…part of the problem with works that catch the wave is that they can
be deep–but not too deep; ahead of their time–but not too ahead of their
time; innovative–but not too innovative, the other part of the problem is
that whichever wave they do catch, the public must want it to be caught.
So, while Frankenstein showed, briefly put, the dangers of science and
of Enlightenment–a message people were ready to hear, The Last Man,
if it had any general message, it was not about plague, dystopia, and
apocalypse, but about how the drab and dreary dullness of what might
be seen as a European-wide ‘restoration’ felt to the last of those Enlight-
enment and Romantic idealists who had dreamed of something else: no
one wanted to hear that message, and so there was no chance of it catch-
ing…”
“…and now?”

716
 “…certainly the novel is read more now than it ever has been before
for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the increasing emphasis
placed on the history of women writers, as well as the socio-historical
dimension of literature. There have been a variety of interesting readings
of the novel, some more convincing, some less; as for the latter, for ex-
ample, I mentioned before how one critic argued that the novel was
Mary’s turning against Shelley’s view of reality, and towards a kind of
safer norm of heterosexual love and marriage: in my mind, that says
more about what the critic accepts as a norm than what Mary Shelley
accepts as a norm. Many readings stress the ‘grief-work’ aspect of the
novel, which I feel is significant as well, but as a sub-text to this other
dimension I mentioned above–about how Mary Shelley saw the wide-
open hopes and ideals of the world she had come from socio-politically,
versus the diminished world she was living in…”
“…I suppose the Czech equivalent, in a way, would be Kundera’s
Kniha smíchu a zapomnění or Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí–The Book of
Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being: both
are about the disillusionment following the Prague Spring, the Soviet
invasion, Normalization, and the difficulties of self-imposed exile…”
“…but with laughter, at least–Mary’s book has little to laugh about!
When I think about it, Mary’s novel was a bit like samizdat for her time
and place–not just the fact she had to camouflage the story for Timothy
Shelley, but how she camouflaged her opinions generally by setting
them in the future. Kundera was writing from outside the country and
although he critiqued the west as well, there was a ‘somewhere else’ to
the dismal reality of Normalization in Czechoslovakia. For Mary, and
for her narrator, the present moment becomes intolerable in its monoto-
ny, and just as he seeks to escape it by projecting a future in time, and a
‘somewhere else’ in his voyages, by writing the novel Mary was project-
ing a ‘somewhere else’ as well, an escape from her own epoch…”
“…but it’s not much of a ‘somewhere else’–the end of the novel
seems the exact opposite of Shelley’s, ‘remain, thou art beautiful’…”
“…compatible human company is needed for such moments, as oth-
erwise there’s nothing but the empty present: Mary must have felt her-
self in precisely such an empty present, and given the events that coin-
cided with its writing, it was a devastatingly solitary period for her…”
“…when did she complete the novel?”
“…she was writing it throughout 1824 and 1825, probably finishing a
first draft by February, 1825, so she wrote fast. Byron’s death really
spurred her on, as well as the big to-do over his funeral in England that
summer…”
“…when was that?”
“…his body was returned to England in July. Mary visited his coffin
at a home in Great George Street–that’s when she met Fletcher, and then
a few days later Mary saw Byron’s funeral cortege go past her new lodg-

717
ings in Kentish Town on its way north to Newstead. By October she was
feeling totally isolated–look what she wrote in her journal:

Fortune! I must upbraid you–Why is the companion of

Shelley companionless–the centre of a loved circle de-
serted by all? Why cannot I tame the spirit of youth and
be content with my books by my fireside, my boy? Why
is not all different from what it is?...Lift not the painted
veil which men call life–mine is not painted–dark &
enshadowed it curtains out all happiness–all of hope–
tears fill my eyes–well may I weep–solitary girl!…I can
speak to none–writing this is useless–it does not even
soothe me–on the contrary it irritates me by showing the
pitiful expedient to which I am reduced. I wonder why
England should be called my country. I have not a friend
in it…

…so you can see that she really identified with Verney in her isolation;
in fact, in 1825 she was so depressed that she really did mimic Verney in
her loss of discourse: she wrote only one journal entry for the entire
year, and that was at the beginning of the year:

I know now why I am an outcast–So be it!–I would not

for worlds do other than I do, & yet–I make not her hap-
piness–she is happy now–has been so all day–while I in
disgrace ‘with fortune & men’s eyes I all alone beweep
my outcast state’–I suffer a penalty of a sacrifice & do no
good by it–never mind–

…you can see her tangible sense of abandonment…”

“…did she know that Jane was with Hogg yet?”
“…it’s unclear, but she had an endless capacity for self-delusion: a
year later she was writing to Claire about Hogg teasing Jane, so it would
seem she didn’t, unless she was hiding it from Jane–but I see no reason
for it. I think she simply must have felt abandoned; after all, she had
moved to Kentish Town to be nearer to Jane, and Jane wasn’t seeing her
very much at all. Look at how the entry goes on–she seems to have felt
universally abandoned: ‘I am a fool–poverty-stricken–deformed squint-
ing lame–bald–all everything–it is quite just that I should be ejected
from the sight of man–what a pity that they don’t put an end to me at
once,’ and she concludes, pathetically, by writing ‘I should like to see
Shelley just for one half hour….’” That’s how it breaks off, then there’s
the false start of another entry in summer, and a copy of her poem ‘The
Choice,’ which had been sent from Genoa…”
“…so what happened to make her feel better in summer?”

718
 “…probably the most important thing was she spent more time with
Jane because Hogg had left on a long trip to Germany and Italy as a kind
of test of their relationship: they decided that if they endured the absence
without changed feelings, they would begin living together openly after
he returned…”
“…how long was he gone?”
“…for about seven months, starting in August. When he was in Rome
he met Teresa Guiccioli, and was surprised that he was shown around as
‘the Englishman who was going to marry Mrs. W.’ Hogg went to Pisa,
Lerici, and Pugnano, meeting also Vacca, the Masons, and Medwin as
he went. He visited Shelley’s grave, recounting, ‘I stood there for a long
time, alone, with tears in my eyes, and with my hat in my hand; some
daisies were flowering there, and the cypresses, which had been planted,
were growing so straight and well, they will, in time, serve to conceal
and to point out this spot’…”
“…he should have begged Shelley for forgiveness for having stolen
another one of Shelley’s loves! So, did they ‘pass the test’?”
“…yes–he wrote her on the way back, ‘You will find me again in
your arms, more faithful, more attached than ever.’ When he was gone
all that time it was like an opening for Mary: she and Jane were together
much, much more, and they even went to Windsor together for ten days
where they were constant companions. Mary wrote to Leigh Hunt,
‘…the hope & consolation of my life is the society of Mrs. Williams. To
her, for better or worse, I am wedded…’”
“…that’s a strange turn of phrase…”
“…yes–some critics have pounced upon it, but I think whatever kind
of love it was, it wasn’t requited by Jane with the same fervor. Perhaps
another reason she was feeling better about things is that she had re-
ceived a marriage proposal from the American actor and playwright,
John Howard Payne…”
“…who was he?”
“…his only claim to fame was that he wrote the saccharinely sweet
song Home Sweet Home–have you ever heard it?”
“…no, I don’t think…”
“…it’s rather pathetic–actually it’s a little bit like Kde domov můj, but
without the nationalism. They were written around the same time–it was
obviously a period of sappy sentimentalism…”
“…sing it for me…”
“…I only remember a few bars:

‘Mid pleasures and palaces

Though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble,
There's no place like home.

…excuse my voice–see, it’s sappy…”

719
 “…I think I recall hearing the melody…”
“…there was a time when you could find those lines done in cross-
stitch on the wall of almost every home in the U.S.A. Now that I think
about it, it strikes me that much of American identity is about how great
it is to be there and not somewhere else–like in the ‘national epic,’ The
Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy finds out that the secret words that will
transport her back to Kansas are, ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no
place like home’…”
“…I don’t think there’s any chance of you saying those words…”
“…no–I’ve already answered the redneck’s plea to ‘love America or
leave it’…”
“…but Czechs aren’t immune to such sentiment either…”
“…yes, but they can be forgiven because they were occupied for sev-
eral centuries, and for much of the 20th Century! What’s the excuse of
the Americans?”
“…I’ll take that as a rhetorical question. So I’m guessing that Mary
wasn’t interested in–what was his name?”
“…John Howard Payne…no, he wasn’t quite made of the same metal
as Shelley, but there is some evidence that she was interested in another
American who was a bit more famous–Washington Irving…”
“…who’s that? Should I know him?”
“…no, not really. Americans make much of him because, along with
James Fenimore Cooper, he was one of the first writers of an identifiable
American literature. His two most famous tales were the Legend of
Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle…”
“…oh, yes–I know those stories…”
“…he was quite popular in Europe, and he actually stayed there for
seventeen years before returning to the U.S.A.–they never mention that
in literature classes! Mary was introduced to him by Tom Moore in ex-
change for her helping him with his biography of Byron, and she asked
Payne also to arrange another casual meeting with him, but instead
Payne gave Irving two letters Mary had written Payne where she men-
tioned wanting to meet Irving, Irving balked, Mary pulled back also, and
nothing came of it…”
“…he wasn’t exactly the right person to be the go-between given she
had rejected him…”
“…no, but I’m sure Payne’s marriage proposal also helped improve
her mood a bit, and I’m not sure how serious she was about Irving in any
case. Then in summer, 1826, Mary spent all of August together with
Jane in Brighton, which also improved her mood temporarily. For Mary
it was bliss, although she was aware that Jane felt differently about it, as
you can see in Mary’s journal entry afterwards on September 5th:

A month of peace–a whole month of happiness I enjoyed

with my dearest friend at Brighton–& I have lived to hear
her thank god it is over. Yet at that I would not altogether

720
 repine–for her circumstance are far different from mine–
and many feelings in which of course I do not sympathize
led her to dislike our life at Brighton…I need companion-
ship & sympathy only–& the only one I love can afford
me so little…

…in Autumn her only solace was when the portrait of Shelley Amelia
Curren had painted in Rome arrived, but even that comfort was on the
way to being shattered–although she didn’t know why yet. She felt it as
a kind of premonition, which she wrote about in a letter to Trelawny on
March14th: ‘…there is a change at hand–I cannot guess whether for good
or bad as far as regards me…I feel sure the year will end differently
from the beginning…’”
“…was it when she realized Jane betrayed her?”
“…yes, but there was a build up to it–that wouldn’t happen until the
following July. What was happening in early 1827 were the changes in
Jane’s situation: Jane gave birth in November, so she would have been
pregnant as early as February. Hogg had returned, and as they ‘passed
the test,’ he and Jane moved to a house at Maida Vale in April. Even if
Mary had already known about their relationship, these changes would
have taken it to a new stage…”
“…I think it must have been the pregnancy that affected her most, as
she came to see Jane’s relation with Hogg as irrevocable…”
“…I agree. Then, the betrayal came in the summer when she discov-
ered, from her new friend Isabel Robinson, that Jane had been spreading
stories about her. She was deeply wounded, as you can see from this
journal entry from July 13th:

My friend has proved false & treacherous! Miserable dis-

covery–for four years I was devoted to her– & I earned
only ingratitude…Not for worlds would I attempt to
transfer the deathly blackness of my meditations to these
pages–let no trace remain–save the deep–bleeding, hid-
den wound of my lost heart–of such a tale of horror &
despair…

…it’s difficult to know if she was hurt more by what Jane had said about
her, or the fact that she said it in the first place…”
“…and what do you think Jane said about her–was it about Shelley’s
unhappiness with Mary?”
“…in Lerici Jane saw Mary at her worst, and concluded that if Shel-
ley had lived, he wouldn’t have stayed with her: that’s what I think she
must have told Isabel. Everyone who was there and witnessed her be-
havior in Lerici–Hunt, Trelawny, Williams–attested to how horrible she
treated Shelley then…”
“…did Claire?”

721
 “…I think it’s an interesting point that she didn’t: Claire, of course,
was caught up in her own grieving for Allegra and so wasn’t noticing
much at all, but on the other hand, she was an ‘insider’–she had seen
Mary at her worst, so Mary’s behavior in Lerici, which was undoubtedly
horrid, would have been just another episode; however, for those who
had not been insiders, her behavior would have seemed especially atro-
cious. Think about our worst arguments, what they meant to us, and
what others on the outside would have thought if they had witnessed
them…”
“…they would have thought we hated each other…”
“…and how does it feel from the inside?”
“…in retrospect, almost as if it were some kind of a biochemical state
we went through–somehow necessary, but totally irrational…”
“…Mary was undoubtedly in a terrible mood in Lerici: they had just
gone through the move, they were crushed together in the Casa Magni,
Mary had just learned that her father was evicted from his house, their
prospects were not particularly good, it was terribly hot, she just had had
this terrible brush with death with her miscarriage…and yet, all of them,
even Mary, looked back to Lerici, before the deaths of Shelley and Wil-
liams, as a special time, and could remember certain magical moments
to which they wished that they could say ‘remain, thou art beautiful’–
even Mary recalled being in the boat, sitting at Shelley’s feet, feeling the
wind in her hair…”
“…so you’re saying that Jane couldn’t see past Mary’s terrible moods
and their affect on Shelley…”
“…yes–I’m not letting her off the hook, mind you: she was cold and
emotionally withdrawn, and in her worst moments terribly shrewish and
intolerant. What Jane and Hunt spoke of witnessing in Lerici must have
been something quite nasty, but Hunt forgave her when he had a chance
to speak to her about it, and Mary certainly regretted, already, the worst
of it…as far as Jane and Mary are concerned, it was unfair of Jane to tell
others, given she saw Mary as a friend…”
“…did she confront Jane about it?”
“…she avoided confrontation for quite a while–perhaps because Jane
was pregnant. She was clearly distant, and Jane noticed: in a letter in
July, she chatted about her desire to live in the country; in a couple of
letters in August, she’s again merely chatty, and that Autumn she was
involved in a scheme that took her away from Jane–I’ll get to it in a
moment. Apparently Jane did feel cut somehow, and confronted Mary
about it the following February, reproaching Mary for ‘not loving her
enough.’ That was the last straw, and Mary spilled it–both in person and
in a letter…”
“…can you read the letter?”
“…yes, here it is:

722
 Could any but yourself have destroyed such an engross-
ing & passionate love? −And what are the consequences
of the change? −When I first heard that you did not love
me, every hope of my life deserted me−the depression I
sunk under, and to which I am now a prey, undermines
my health−How many many hours this dreary winter, I
have paced my solitary room, driven nearly to madness as
I could not expel from my mind the memories of harrow-
ing import that one after another intruded themselves. It
was not long ago that eagerly desiring death−tho’ death
should only be oblivion, I thought that how to purchase
oblivion of what was revealed to me last July, a torturous
death would be a bed of roses. At least, most lovely one,
my love for you was not unworthy of its object−I have
committed many faults−the remorse of love haunts me
often & brings bitter tears to my eyes−but for four years I
committed not one fault towards you−In larger, in minute
things your pleasure and satisfaction were my objects, &
I gave up everything that is all the very little I could give
up to them−I make no boast, heaven knows had you
loved me you were worth all−more than all the idolatry
with which my heart so fondly regarded you.

…she then writes that she won’t repeat what she had heard from Isabel,
and that Jane should write to Isabel herself if she wants to know. She
writes that she can hardly believe Jane’s protestations of love, that the
‘veil is torn now,’ and that ‘I have known no peace since July−I never
expect to know it again.’ She ends the letter quite harshly, writing,
‘…more than ever I can only be an object of distaste for you, is it not
best than that you forget the Unhappy MS’…”
“…did she mean it?”
“…she played the ‘withdrawal card,’ which is a serious card to play,
given it would have cut Jane off from the posthumous fame of Shelley,
Byron, and the rest of their circle. Jane was clearly importuning her
about it, for Mary wrote her in June, ‘I am very sorry you brood so pain-
fully over the past–I wish I could see any possibility of bringing back a
state of things gone forever,’ and she went on to write that Jane had dis-
liked her from the start, and if she held to an image of Mary, it was just
an image–reality would overwhelm it. She relented a bit too, for she
wrote, ‘we shall see,’ but she warns her that she will not make confi-
dences to her after what had happened. Her ambivalence can be seen in
her closing:

Dearest Jane accept a sentiment of admiration, of tender-

ness–of a love which clings to you thro’ every thing, try
not I conjure you, to force, but to lead me back–Do not I

723
 earnestly pray you, allude to the past, or the change
which cannot be unchanged–let us begin again; –let me
love you for all you are–& where find any thing more
worthy to be loved?

…so you can see that she leaves an opening, and even more so in a letter
she wrote at the end of that month:

I am very sorry that I hurt you, yet glad I confess, that I

awakened your pride–I cannot tell why, but we seem to
stand more equally now. It is painful to go over old
grounds–I go only on what you have allowed; long you
gave ear to every idle & evil tale against me–& repeated
them–not glossed over–nor can I–tho’ I allow myself
changed, admit as just the sweeping sentence you pass
over my early years–the past is dear to me–& I feel that
tho’ now more just to myself I was then as just to others
as now. What can I say? My devotion to you was entire;
the discovery caused so deep a wound, that my health
sank under it–from the hour it was disclosed till my re-
covery from this odious illness I never knew health–You
ask what good has been done–I must feel the truth a
good–You speak of beings to whom I link myself–speak,
I pray you, in the singular number–if Isabel has not an-
swered your letter, she will–but the misery to which she
is a victim is so dreadful and merciless, that she shrinks
like a wounded person from every pang–and you must
excuse her on the score of her matchless sufferings.

…so, the relationship had changed due to the crisis–Mary is no longer

doting on Jane, but sees their position as equalized…”
“…and what about this Isabel?”
“…that refers to the other key series of events happening in this peri-
od. When Mary withdrew from Jane, she was spending a great deal of
time helping with a very curious plot that involved her friend Isabel
Robinson. In that period Isabel had given birth to an illegitimate child
after an affair with an American journalist: her daughter had been secret-
ly born some time in late 1826 or early 1827, and the baby farmed out to
a secret address. I believe part of Mary’s reason for helping Isabel is the
similarity to her own mother’s situation–as I mentioned before, Mary
Wollstonecraft had also had an affair with the American author, Gilbert
Imlay, who had abandoned her after she was pregnant. The July that
Mary had found out about Jane’s gossip, she was living with Percy, Isa-
bel, and her illegitimate child in Sompting near Brighton, and then in
Arundel in September. The plot they were hatching involved a woman
named Mary Diana Dods–called ‘Doddy’ for short, who would pose as a

724
man named Sholto Douglas, and go to the continent to live with Isabel
posing as her husband…”
“…is that true?–it’s crazy!”
“…I was amazed too when I first read about it…”
“…so who was she–this ‘Doddy’?”
“…she was the illegitimate daughter of an eccentric Scottish Earl who
had given her a small stipend on the agreement that she would not men-
tion her paternity to anyone. She made her living by writing–often under
the pseudonym ‘David Lyndsay.’ She was a bit of a toad-like creature,
described as ‘grotesque’ by one witness from the period, as ‘deformed’
by others. Mary helped them by arranging to get the passports they
needed from John Howard Payne, and in the late summer and early au-
tumn they were awaiting the passports and making preparations. In her
journal entry for September 26th she wrote, ‘…how utterly I have shaken
off the dead calm of my life–interesting myself deeply for one whose
destiny is so strange,’ and went on to write,

…my desire is so innocent–Why may I not hover a good

genius round my lovely friend’s path?–it is my destiny, it
would seem, to form rather the ties of friendship than
love–the grand evil that results from this is–that while the
power of mutual love is in itself a mighty destiny–
friendship, though true, yields to the adverse gale–and the
vessels are divided far which ought never to part compa-
ny–How dark–how very dark the future seems…

“…it sounds like she was in love…”

“…she was, or perhaps transferring the love she had for Jane to Isa-
bel, who she nursed through an illness in that period. There are some
critics and biographers who make a bit too much of these letters, seeing
a possible lesbianism in Mary Shelley, but I think it’s pressing it a bit
too far, and anachronistically projecting social categories on to the past
that were only just being articulated then. That Mary had been in love
with Jane I don’t doubt, and that she may also have been in love for a
period with Isabel I don’t doubt either, but one biographer goes a bit too
far, speculating that she had a relationship with Doddy–she even won-
ders if the passage of her journal I just read applies to Dods: that seems
patent nonsense to me. Dods could never have been described as ‘love-
ly’–she was most often described as squat, deformed, and peculiar look-
ing. It’s clearly Isabel who enchanted Mary, and her interest continued
to be Isabel…”
“…but that could be a form of lesbianism, couldn’t it?”
“…certainly, but we forget that our current obsession with the physi-
cal side of sexuality is quite recent, particularly in regard to identity
politics and the acting out of sexual positions publicly. I don’t see Mary
engaging in a wildly passionate sexual relationship with either men or

725
women: the ethos of the Romantics was a spiritualized sexuality, even if
they didn’t live up to it. If her relationships with Jane or Isabel did verge
over into physical manifestations, it would have been a tender blurring
of the margins between the emotional and physical. What I object to is
the sort of ‘Aha!’ attitude that assumes the evidence is hiding some sort
of alternative, anachronistic reality blatantly at odds with the discursive
sensibilities of these people. I’m always trying to question myself about
it as well, precisely because of the danger of projecting my sensibility
backwards, and I admit from the start that it’s almost inevitable: better to
begin with a self-questioning that admits it will never reach the truth,
then to treat reality the way Sherlock Holmes does, as a ‘truth’ that ‘will
out’…”
“…but that won’t stop you from speculating?”
“…and questioning my speculations–it’s the lack of self-questioning
in some critics that I object to…”
“…lesbianism or not, it’s still an amazing story–what happened to the
couple in the end?”
“…in October, Mary showed her solidarity by accompanying the cou-
ple to Dieppe for a few weeks, and then they went on to live in Paris,
and Mary and Percy went back to London. For her, because of the Jane
saga, it had been a very bad year. On December 5th she wrote in her
journal, ‘I am alone in London–& very unhappy–I have lost one friend
& am divided from another–I weep much & cannot be consoled,’ and on
December 31st, ‘Now ends this year–One excepted the most awful of my
life–in which I have suffered most.’ In April, 1828, Mary went to Paris
to visit the ‘Douglases’: soon after arriving, she contracted smallpox,
and was bedridden for two weeks…”
“…smallpox is the disease that leaves scars, isn’t it?”
“…yes–it comes on fast, and there are countless pustules that can
leave very disfiguring scars if they are not cared for well. After she was
able to get up from bed, Mary did see visitors, but behind a dark veil:
she met some very famous people–General Lafayette, Prosper Mérimée,
and Benjamin Constant. I should mention that Mérimée thought Isabel
was unworthy of Mary’s friendship, because he noted that she fawned
on Mary when she was around, but spoke ill of her behind her back, but
Mary didn’t realize it yet. What she did realize from her visit to Paris
was that the ‘marriage’ wasn’t working, and she wrote to Jane, later,
‘What D. now is, I will not describe in a letter—one only trusts that the
diseased body acts on the diseased mind, & that both may be at rest ere
long’–that came right after what I read before about Isabel and her ‘mis-
eries’…”
“…but what was the matter?”
“…I can only speculate, but unlike the critics who are championing
this as one of the first gay marriages, I am guessing that as it was origi-
nally planned, it was a true ‘marriage of convenience,’ allowing both
Isabel and Dods to escape bad situations in London, and doing so posing

726
as a couple for the sake of their security–so neither would be a woman
alone on the continent. Isabel, who from all accounts was not what
would soon be called an ‘invert,’ merely saw the expediency of the situ-
ation, but it seems that Dods may have fallen in love with her, and made
her life miserable through her possessiveness. The ‘marriage’ broke off
at some point, and I think Dods died–presumably of complications of a
long-term disease that, as Mary intimates, may have affected her mind
as much as her physiognomy…”
“…and what happened to Isabel?”
“…I’m not sure, but when Mary eventually learned about Isabel’s hy-
pocrisy, she pulled away from her as well: two years later she would
come to write in her journal,

Good heavens–is this the being I adored–she was ever

false yet enchanting–now she has lost her fascinations–
probably, because I can no longer serve her she takes no
more trouble to please me–but also she is surely not the
being she once was…

…that ended that story, but back to the present, or her present rather,
Mary returned to England from Paris in May, 1828, but decided to re-
main first in Dover, and then in Hastings until July, hoping the proximi-
ty to the sea would help heal her scars, not to mention hiding a while
before anybody saw her. She invited Trelawny to come see her when he
arrived back in England, but he probably avoided her exactly because of
her scars. In August she visited the other Robinson sisters in Paddington,
and remained with them until December. It was in October, at Godwin’s,
that she met Claire again, and she wrote in her journal in November,
‘Trelawny has come back–& Claire has arrived–’: all of the survivors
were in England for the first time since 1822…”
“…so finally we have them all together at the same place…”
“…and at the same time…”
“…the train’s slowing–I think we’re arriving…yes, ‘Roma Termi-
ni’…”
“…so here we are in the ‘eternal city’…”

727
 

Hölderlin in Tübingen: “…for when the heavens quarrel over humans

and moons proceed in force, the sea speaks out and the rivers must find
their way…now I only understand man when I am far away from him
and living in solitude…but temple and image are a stumbling block like
scars at Ephesus. Things of the mind suffer too, the presence of heaven
ignites like fire, at last, it is drunkenness, a kind of its own, when the
gods are there and the spirit thinks of a grave for itself, but wisely with
spirits too–for a prayer will always hold up the god–they suffer too,
whenever earth touches him…we must present myth everywhere in a
more demonstrable form…because knowledge, once it has broken
through its bounds excites itself to know more than it can bear or com-
prehend…if you care about life, refrain from asking questions…I have
had what pleasure there was for me on earth. The youthful years have
long since passed, long since. April and May and June are in the dis-
tance. I am nothing now, I no longer like my life…for the day’s marks
are good when something of heaven has hurt our souls with contradic-
tions…man chooses his life, his own deciding…if a man looks into a
mirror and sees his image therein, as if painted, it is his likeness. Man’s
image has eyes, but the moon has light. King Oedipus has perhaps one
eye too many. The sufferings of this man seem indescribable, inexpressi-
ble, unspeakable…”

Nietzsche in Turin: “…is not this precisely what we are again coming
back to, we daredevils of the spirit who have climbed the highest and
most dangerous peak of present thought and looked around from up
there–we who have looked down from there?…I will not conceal it from
you, I am in a bad way. It is night all around me again; I feel as if the
lightning had flashed–I was for a short time completely in my element
and in my light. And now it has passed. I think I shall inevitably go to
pieces, unless something happens–I have no idea what. Perhaps some-
one will drag me out of Europe…the world is transfigured and all the
heavens rejoice…once you discovered me, it was no great feat to find
me: the difficulty now is to lose me…that was a little joke on account of
which I condone my boredom at having created a world…I, together
with Ariadne, have only to be the golden balance of all things, every-
where we have such beings who are above us…the unpleasant thing, and
one that nags my modesty, is that at root every name in history is I…this
Autumn, as lightly clad as possible, I twice attended my funeral, first as
Count Robilant (no, he is my son, insofar as I am Carlo Alberto, my na-
ture below), but I was Antonelli myself…tomorrow my son Umberto is
coming with charming Margherita whom I receive, however, here too in

728
my shirt sleeves…the rest is for Frau Cosima…Ariadne…from time to
time we practice magic…”

Ingeborg Bachmann in Rome: “…I want nothing more for myself. I want
to go under. Under—that means to the sea, for there I will find Bohemia
again. Earthbound, I awaken calmly. From the ground up I know now,
and I am not lost…my relationship with ‘today’ is so bad that many
people often mistake extreme attentiveness for an absent-minded
gaze…in fact, today is a word which only suicides ought to be allowed to
use; it has no meaning for other people…I am just afraid ‘today’ is too
small for me, too gripping, too boundless, and that this pathological agi-
tation will be a part of my ‘today’ until its final hour…now and then I
lose my voice. Nevertheless I have permitted myself to live. Sometimes
my voice returns and can be heard by all: I am living, I will live, I claim
my right to live…she no longer saw any way out of the alien landscape,
consisting only of willows, wind and water…the willows whispered more
and more, they laughed, they screamed and sighed…she buried her head
in her arms to escape the howling…She could neither move forward nor
backward, she could merely choose between the water and the overpow-
ering willows…although no other human lived, and she had lost her ori-
entation…it was as if everything had swirled into motion, waves of wil-
low wands, the torrents took their own course…an uneasiness she had
never felt before was inside her and weighed heavily upon her heart…I
can’t say anything, since I have to escape my father and get over the
marble wall, but in another language I say Ne! Ne! And in many lan-
guages: No! No! Non! Non! Nyet! Nyet! No! Ném! Nein! No! For in our
language, too, I can only say no, I can’t find any other word in any lan-
guage…and with a handful of sand that is my knowledge, I cross the wa-
ter, and my father cannot follow me…I really do believe in something,
and I call it ‘A Day Will Come.’ And one day it will come. Well, proba-
bly it won’t come, because it’s been destroyed for us so many times, for
thousands of years it’s been destroyed. It won’t come, but I believe in it
nonetheless. For if I weren’t able to believe in it, then I couldn’t write
any more...I am a dead man who wanders, registered nowhere…I who
cannot live among people…oh how it grows dark…I am a Slav, and
Slavs are other...with unrelieved sobbing with despair (and I despair in
the face of despair)…I don’t neglect my writing, only myself…my part, it
shall be lost…”

729
 

After unpacking, showering, and changing, they leave the hotel and
walk around the corner and on to the Via di Santa Melania, continuing
down the south side of the Aventine hill several blocks through a tree-
shaded avenue of villas ending at the Via Marmorata. They cross the
busy intersection, walking past a small city park to the walls of the
Protestant Cemetery just beyond. They walk down the Via Ciao Cestio
to the gate, entering the hushed quiet of the sanctum and crossing the
cemetery to the base of a crumbling red stone tower built into the an-
cient wall that forms an outer perimeter of the cemetery. They stop be-
fore the graves of Shelley and Trelawny.
“…so here we are, and here they are…”
“…hello, Shelley!”
“…it’s hard to believe we’re finally here…”
“…I didn’t expect it to be so…calm…it’s like a–what do you call a
secret place in the forest?”
“…a small cluster of trees is a grove, while a small clearing in a forest
is a glade–this is closer to a grove: with these cypresses and walls it’s a
bit like Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead, or The Sacred Grove…”
“…yes, it’s like an island in the middle of the bustle of Rome…and
all these cats! They act as if they own the place…”
“…not a bad life, really…”
“…they’re a bit skinny…”
“…it’s so peaceful–listen to what Henry James wrote of this place:
‘Nothing could be more impenetrably tranquil than this little corner in
the bend of the protecting rampart, where a cluster of modern ashes is
held tenderly in the rugged hand of the Past’…”
“…‘Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into
something rich and strange’–at least Trelawny did something right…”
“…yes, he chose a perfect place…at least some of these trees must be
those he planted…”
“…it’s so strange: Mary stood right here with her son, and Henry
James stood here, and…”
“…countless others known and unknown to us…”
“…do you want to see Keats’ grave now?”
“…no, I just wanted a quick visit to Shelley for now–I’m famished.
We’ll come back after lunch…”
“…you said you had an idea where to go to eat?”
“…yes–it’s that way three of four blocks, on the Piazza Testaccio…”
“…can we see the hill made of pottery on the way?”
“…Monte Testaccio? Let me check the map…yes, we can walk to the
other end of the Via Ciao Cestio, cross the Via Nicola Zabaglia to the

730
Via di Monte Testaccio here, then walk around the bottom clock-wise
until we reach the inter-section between the Via Galvani and the Via Ni-
cola Zabaglia here, then over to the Piazza Testaccio…”
“…where we’ll collapse from hunger…”
“…perhaps…”
“…shall we go?”
“…let’s…”
They walk out the gate onto the Via Ciao Cestia, following the tree-
lined street along the perimeter wall of the cemetery to the busy avenue
beyond, where they cross and walk past the wine bars, restaurants, and
workshops that are built into the base of the Monte Testaccio. They con-
tinue on down the tree-lined Via Galvani, turning left for three blocks
until they reach the Piazza Testaccio. The piazza is dominated by a busy
market selling produce, fish, and handicrafts. They sit across from the
piazza in the sidewalk eating area of the Il Cantinone trattoria, ordering
carpaccio di pesce bianco and polpo griglia as antipasti, ravioli di
spinaci as primi, and trancio di Pescespada as secondi, with acqua
minerale and a bottle of Antinori Conte Della Vipera.
“…there goes the boy to get our swordfish…”
“…where?”
“…just you watch him–he’ll be back in a few minutes with a bag:
they get their fish straight from the market…”
“…really?”
“…sure…here comes our wine and water–do you want to taste it?”
“…no, you do it…”
“…ok…sì, grazie…ottimo…”
“…salute!...ummm, that’s good!”
“…salute…see, look! There he is with our fish…”
“…now we know it’s fresh…”
“…I hope the antipasti comes soon…”
“…carry on with the narrative from where we left it and it will come
soon enough–where were we?”
“…we left it off in Autumn, 1828, when all the remaining members of
the Pisan set had arrived in England…”
“…you mentioned Trelawny’s reluctance to see Mary…”
“…yes, that’s right–I believe he saw her once, but there’s no record of
the meeting. Actually, I think his reluctance went further than that, alt-
hough it’s difficult to discern precisely what was happening at that time.
It may have been his usual approach-avoidance pattern, but his biog-
rapher felt he was deliberately distancing himself from the women be-
cause he was finally emerging as his own being, and no longer merely a
‘hanger-on’: there may be some truth to that, but I would add that to a
man who would dare pose as being the ‘inseparable’ friend of Shelley,
the women also represented an impediment to his version of affairs that
was particularly problematic then, because he began to write his mem-
oirs, re-shaping their history around his. He wrote to Mary asking her

731
permission and help, stating directly that ‘if you in the least dislike it,
say so, and there is an end of it…’
“…and her response?”
“…judge for yourself–she wrote:

Could you write my husband’s life, without naming me it

were something—but even then I should be terrified at
rousing the slumbering voice of the public—each cri-
tique, each mention of your work, might drag me for-
ward—Nor indeed is it possible to write Shelley’s life in
that way. Many men have his opinions—none fearlessly
and conscientiously act on them, as he did—it is his act
that marks him—and that—you know me—or you do not,
in which case I will tell you what I am—a silly goose—
who far from wishing to stand forward to assert myself in
any way, now that I am alone in the world, have but the
desire to wrap night and the obscurity of insignificance
around me…Shelley’s life must be written—I hope one
day to do it myself, but it must not be published now…

…I would take that as an adamant ‘no,’ wouldn’t you?”

“…and he didn’t?”
“…I think he was surprised and angered by her refusal–there was
never the same warmth in their letters after that, and as far as there being
‘an end to it,’ he made an appearance of compromise by writing his pre-
Shelley memoirs first: that took him a few years to see into publication,
but of course in the end he went ahead and wrote about the period with
Shelley anyway, although as you know, he agreed to leave Claire out of
it, and, all things considered, he mentioned Mary minimally…”
“…I thought he wrote very negatively about her?”
“…no, that was in a later book…”
“…did he avoid seeing Claire as well?”
“…Claire was in London from October, 1828, through September,
1829, while Trelawny was there from June, 1828, through February,
1829, so they overlapped only by about four months…here’s the anti-
pasti…”
“…it looks deliciozo…”
“…enjoy it!”
“…you too…”
“…obviously the stakes were higher for Claire than for Mary: Claire
had had a tryst with Trelawny, so their meeting had more expectations
built around it, and Trelawny fueled those expectations with his letters.
On July 30th, he wrote:

Reproach me not with my long silence–you will pardon it

when I orally explain the cause of it–you will wrong me

732
 if you think my affection for you is diminished; I am un-
changed dear–at least in heart–and nothing could touch
me so near as to find there was a falling off on your
side…Write, sweet friend, and tell me your movements–
say you are unaltered–and that it will give you pleasure
our meeting.

…I believe they met sometime in November–it was the first time they
saw each other since their tryst on the banks of the Arno in Pisa, six
years previously…”
“…and how did their meeting go?”
“…we only know from the aftereffects, but they indicate that it was a
rather uncomfortable meeting–which I suppose was to be expected. He
wrote her a letter on November 19th that seems an immediate response to
the meeting, and it gives some sense of the problem–at least from his
point of view:

…shake off, Dear Claire,–that dreadful murky gloom–

which is o’ermastering your strong mind–arouse your-
self–you have duties to fulfill–many love you, and you
owe us your love–if we are to fall–let it not be without a
struggle–our cause is good, and let that give us hope–that
we are not to live in vain. Write to me–my sweet Claire–
good night Dear–and remember that I at least am
Your Dear friend, J.E.T.

…if you take this passage at face value from his point of view it would
seem that she was deeply depressed with her life, had recounted her
troubles to him hoping for a sympathetic ear, and he had tried to raise
her spirits, but from a letter of January 1st, 1829, it seems that she hadn’t
responded to him since the meeting, and a different view of their meet-
ing emerges:

Dear Claire, Why will you not dedicate one spare hour to
me?–nothing gives me so much pleasure as your letters–I
prefer them infinitely to oral communion–particularly as
you are becoming so horridly prudish–and sister-like in-
sensible. I consider you very fish-like–bloodless–and in-
sensible–you are the counterpart of Werther–a sort of
bread and butter and worsted stockings–like Charlotte for
‘suckling fools and chronicling small beer.’

…he signed it, ‘Adieu old Aunt, J. Edward Trelawny’: beyond the fact
of her depression the issue seems to have been her coldness to him…”
“…‘prudish’? What did he want–another tryst?”

733
 “…knowing Trelawny, yes: he probably expected their meeting to re-
ignite the fireworks of their passion, completely oblivious to what she
had been through the previous six years or so. Partly it goes back to the
quote I mentioned the other day about his having ‘fine feelings’ and no
principles, her having ‘fine principles’ but no feelings: they weren’t
temperamentally suited to one another, but I think also it was because he
simply lacked the capacity Shelley had to empathize with others, and so
he felt uncomfortable about her depression. She did write him a letter in
answer to his that attempted to give some explanation for her coolness of
behavior, but as we only have a version copied in his handwriting, I am
not quit convinced of its total authenticity: as we’ve seen, Trelawny was
not above embellishing the facts, and while I think it is largely authentic,
there are places I have my doubts about…”
“…can you read it?”
“...yes, here it is:

Is it that you find me so very uncommunicative in

conversation, that you wish to see if my heart will open
itself more freely upon paper? You have guessed very
rightly. It might have been centuries before I should have
been able to express by word what I shall now tell you by
paper. I have many times endeavoured to discover the
reason why my heart shuts up–at everybody’s approach,
and the only answer I find, is that in its former days when
full to overflowing with kindness to all, it was so misun-
derstood suspected and slandered, that it has taken a ref-
uge in a proud solitude of silence, and there it wears
away, in such a deep gloom that its very being becomes
doubted.
Do not think the melancholy you see sometimes upon
me, is the sign of hopeless wretchedness, I am happy—it
is only the shadow of former days, which throws its deep
gloom over my mind, which is not yet passed away. How
should I not be happy, when I possess so many good
friends, and see you–restored as by a miracle from out of
the thousand perils–which fate has encompassed you. Of
all the band which accompanied you in your wild cru-
sade—you return—and return alone. I find you improved,
your character has lost much of its original fierceness and
wildness. You are softened into something like thought-
fulness–and your passions have died away, and your
strong intellect, unclouded by them, lives in wisdom.

…as you probably can guess, those last sentences are where I begin to
have my doubts, especially the word ‘wisdom.’ Then, this next section I
have very strong suspicions about as well: she urges him to marry, and it

734
seems to me simply psychologically wrong: wrong if she meant it, as
there’s still a good possibility she was being ironic. It continues:

I wish very much Dear friend to see you married—and I

am sure if you were to a beautiful and young woman you
would be happy and make her so.
You are fond of beauty–therefore she must be beauti-
ful, and as civilization is so much advanced, to these she
may easily add great instruction & much natural talent,
this in the circle you frequent is not difficult to find,–only
you must give yourself the trouble to look for it, and that
you do not do. I wish you to be settled–and happy. The
strongest mind cannot keep out despondency–which con-
stant inconstancy will let in. Judging of you by myself
and abhorring any thing that is new, I wish you to marry,
that you may rest in a safe Harbour.

…see what I mean?”

“…yes–for me the give-away line word is ‘young’: I don’t see her
wishing someone young on Trelawny! If she did write it, I can only
think that the whole section is an ironic response to his having found her
an ‘old Aunt’–without vivacity and vitality, in which case she was sug-
gesting to him the opposite kind of woman he ought to have instead…”
“…it’s a standard gambit in the mating game–‘if I’m not good
enough, go find someone else’…”
“…but, if he actually wrote or re-wrote it, by having her approve of
youth it’s as if he were giving himself an alibi for posterity for having
married his Greek maiden–unless she knew about his real Greek maid-
en…?”
“…no, I think it’s clear that he hadn’t told Claire or Mary the story
yet. I agree it could have been an alibi, but the Greek maiden may not
have been the only ‘young maiden’ on his mind–the following section
seems equally questionable:

What have you done these rainy days dear friend, is

your mind so occupied with the image of Medora that
you are insensible to the elements; I envy the elasticity of
your nature that can still cling to a hope, or believe in any
thing, a great hurricane has passed over my hopes—and
washed away everything, and I have no mind to gather
the fragments and begin again—and construct another
fortress for my heart—out of the ruins of that devasta-
tion?—How happy must you be to whom pleasure is
pleasure—whilst to me it is only pain—But I have prom-
ised not to be gloomy—what must I talk about?

735
…I don’t see Claire as being quite so calm and resigned, especially
when referring to Trelawny’s ‘Medora’…”
“…who was that?”
“…if it were truly written by Claire, it’s a continuation of the irony
connected to the ‘old Aunt’ thing, and simply refers to a young woman:
the Corsair in Byron’s poem marries a young bride named Medora, and
the poem was well-enough known–especially by those who knew and
read Byron–that it could have been used as a standard attribution. If he
did change it, then it was to continue her supposed ‘blessing’ on his
choice of young women, giving him his alibi. Actually the editor pointed
out that there’s a hint of a chance it could have referred to the real
Medora: Byron’s child with Augusta. She was fourteen then, and as
we’ve seen, not only would that not stop Trelawny, we know that it
wouldn’t have stopped her, as she got pregnant around that same time by
her sister’s husband, Henry Trevanion…”
“…really? But did Trelawny know her?”
“…yes he did, and as I imagine he would have wanted to cash in on
his knowledge of Byron’s final months, he probably had himself intro-
duced to their circle soon after his return to England. As to whether or
not he was interested in Medora, I don’t know, but certainly if he was
and had indicated it to Claire, I doubt she would take the tone that she
did about it, as it would strike her as Byron-worshipping. No, I think if
she did write it, it was an ironic symbol of youth, especially relevant be-
cause when Trelawny first appeared in Pisa everyone remarked how
much he seemed liked Byron’s Corsair. The letter continues in a way
that seems to be a mixture of Claire’s tone and interests with a degree of
‘Trelawnification’:

Must I tell you how much England displeases me; how

much I trace everywhere the want of a great moral revo-
lution; the old system is in all the grey and hoary fright-
fulness of decay–and all will be hideous till the new one
springs up–Shelley’s book is very clever and above all
new. It is so markedly the author’s individuality that no
other man could have written a line of it, and the compo-
sition of his mind is so mingled–that it would be a charm-
ing puzzle for Miss Edgeworth or any of those famous
milliner tailor-like cutter’s out of human nature into cer-
tain patterns, by given rules of Education, to find out
what way one must cultivate a child who should write the
counterpart of his works–unthinking people may say he is
incomprehensible,–& so he is–to those who think not–
others may judge him made up of mystery–and inexpli-
cable–imaginings. But the strong minded discover that
this belongs to the wide range he has allowed his

736
 thoughts and mind to take—so that like the universe he is
no one thing because he is everything.

…some of the manners of speaking are clearly his, but I imagine she
gave the general outline to the letter. Authentic or not, for some reason
she cut him after that, because by April, when he had already returned to
Italy, he was writing her imploring letters, like this one on April 7th:

Dearest Claire,
Why will you not write to me?–hitherto you have al-
ways been better than your word; to correspond with you
is to me a source of almost unmingled pleasure; and eve-
ry year I find my pleasures diminish and my discontent
augment;–do not let your inconstancy add to the latter,–
let us make our offering in the temple of friendship–as
the incense we burnt on the altar of Love has been scat-
tered in the air–and arose not to Heaven! Will you refuse
me your friendship dear Claire? I do not believe it–your
gentle and amiable nature is my surety and hope that we
may live and die firm and constant friends;–write to me
then, dear–and assure me I am not mistaken.

…so it seems he got the message, and was offering friendship, not love,
but Trelawny seems to have had an almost congenital incapacity to ease
off his ideas about free love, and so, after telling her about his plan to
write his memoirs, he adds this invitation in his postscript:

…perhaps the climate and your desolate situation op-

presses your heart–if so dear Girl come away–to the clear
sky of Italy–and be sure of this–that what I have is thine–
and whilst I have a house to shelter you it is yours–a
heart–all unworthy as it is–is yours–an arm–it shall de-
fend you;–unhappy myself, I cannot make you happy–but
I may lighten your sorrows by participating those you
must bear and shielding you from those to come,–so
come away, Dear Girl–and doubt not my truth–and doubt
not me; for whatever I am–I am never anything but your
true friend…

…that was in April–I think that at some point between the January letter
and June she must have found out about his Greek bride and child.
Knowing Trelawny, it isn’t out of the question that he told her himself,
but it probably came through the rumor mill. Whatever the case, she
wrote him what must have been a very angry letter, based on his July 3rd
response to it, but the letter he was responding to doesn’t exist…”

737
 “…he probably destroyed it because it didn’t reflect well on him–do
you have his response?”
“…yes, he begins the letter by trying to deflect her anger through
evoking her pity for him…”
“…pity!? For what?”
“…for anything and everything:

Dearest Claire
I have been traveling about the northern part of Italy
these two months–to try and lessen the sorrow which
preys upon my heart;–you smile at this–doubting the real-
ity, and think yourself alone wretched and others must
needs be happy; for when with you, I talked and smiled,
instead of inflicting your feeling heart by unburthening
the load which oppresses mine. I am neither a worldling
as Jane denounces me–or selfish and devoid of feeling as
perhaps you think me,–the world is full of slander–and
why should I make wry faces–because my cup is embit-
tered by poison?–How can I rush naked amongst the
world who are all armed in proof–escape the venomed ar-
rows which are flying in all directions?–but I’ll say no
more–you may have some cause to be angry at me; I
should have been more serious and candid with you–I
confess I have been much to blame,–I wished to be so
(not to blame but that I could have been candid)–but
mingled considerations tied my tongue and kept me si-
lent–I don’t think misery is lessened by disclosure–like
the owl it loves solitude and darkness–and hates the sun’s
light–joy, on the contrary, is not joy, till it is shared by
those we love,–even the light I am now letting in on my
griefs is painful to me. I am here in Ancona awaiting ar-
rival of my little girl Zella–whom I expect hourly from
the Ionian Islands–with her I shall return to Florence.

…given he speaks of something he had failed to disclose and then refers

openly to Zella, I have to assume that her anger is at having finally
found out about his Greek bride–perhaps Jane was the culprit, because
he speaks of her ‘denouncing’ him…”
“…‘may have some cause to be angry at me’? Is he joking? I suppose
not–it’s hard to believe the…how do you say it?”
“…‘the nerve of the man’…”
“…the nerve of the man…”
“…in the same letter he also wrote, ‘I never write a line or pass a day
without wishing you by my side. You may gainsay that if you please–
but nevertheless it is true,’ so he was still trying to string her along, as
usual…”

738
 “…and was she strung along?”
“…she wasn’t writing–I don’t know if it was because of anger or be-
cause she was incommunicado: in September Claire left England and
arrived at Carlsbad on the 18th, rejoining the Kaisaroff family. By De-
cember, 1829, he tried again with his strategy of evoking pity, this time
from a more concrete cause: his first wife, Caroline, had died in 1827,
and then in April the step-father of his two daughters, Julia and Elisa,
became insolvent and couldn’t care for the children any more. Julia went
to stay with his mother, and Elisa was supposed to go to him in Italy, but
before she could be sent she died from an illness. Although I don’t doubt
the death affected him, he had effectively abandoned the children in
1819 and hadn’t seen them since; but, as you’ll see, this didn’t stop him
from evoking her memory as warmly as if she had been a beloved child
living with him since birth:

Dearest Claire,
I have been wandering about in the North of Italy and
other places to alleviate if possible the pain and sorrow
my child’s death gave me. She was the only creature, the
only being, the only tie–from which I expected nothing
but sweet remembrances–perfect love–in my love to oth-
ers, however sincere or ardent, there is, and always has
been–something or other annexed–which has embittered
it–and which it seems is inseparable from all human ties–
had Elisa lived it might have been so with her–and by her
death fortune has expended her utmost malice on me.–
Fortune never gave me anything–and those few good
things wrested from her by desperately adventuring she
had most revengefully taken from me–when I thought I
was the most secure from her malice reaching me.
–Dear Claire, why don’t you write to me?–I wrote to
you as you directed me when on the Apennines–perhaps
your movements have been delayed or changed–or, as has
often been the case with us, letters may have miscarried;
at any rate I shall write on.
I am now living in a large Villa two miles from Flor-
ence within a stone’s throw of where Galileo once lived–
it is on the top of a mountain–and I am in as perfect soli-
tude as you could wish me.–Oh that you were here to
share it–my little Zella, who is now near her fourth year,
is my only consolation–in Florence I could not cure her
of her intermittent fever which she has had since her
birth–but which now seems to have entirely left her. I
have an excellent woman who has the care of her and a
contadino and his wife as servants–which is my only es-
tablishment–my occupation is in writing…

739
…he goes on to discuss his memoirs and to enlist her aide in writing
about Shelley…”
“…was he consciously using Zella to evoke a response from her?”
“…I wouldn’t put it past him…”
“…and did she respond?”
“…no…she had caught on to how his mind worked by then and was
quite immune to it. Look at the scathing irony she uses when she wrote
to Jane about Trelawny in this letter from Dresden, in February, 1830:

Do pray write to him…dear Jane, and to use his own fa-

vorite expression, ‘pour oil and balm into his wounds.’
To hear him calling out so often for this as he does, it
would be natural to judge it did him good. I however
must confess I never saw any other effect follow the ap-
plication besides a hissing sound returned by his volcanic
heart as the drops fell; then a smouldering pause of con-
sideration, and when cooled it hardened into the most ir-
revocable lava. With Trelawny once parched is always
parched, and rather than allow his irritated affections to
bloom again, he would sooner turn into stone and give
himself, like Vesuvius to the neighbouring town, to be
made into pavement. But this I hope will not cause you to
hesitate. If you do not succeed in softening him, it will
still be a consolation to remember you did all in your
power to hinder petrifaction from taking place.

…and then a little later, she has more to say about his self-
romanticization:

His present retirement and the ardour he puts to the writ-

ing of his life, look to me so like preparations, that I can-
not help inferring the catastrophe is not far off. When
everything is accomplished, he will retire to some desert
place; there he will pile up and set fire to a pyre of wood;
into this he will rush headlong and nothing shall be seen
of him beyond a wreath of smoke ascending from his
burning tomb into the quiet blue sky. Would this not be a
characteristic end? At least it is picturesque enough to be
in keeping with other passages of his life…

…so, as you can see, she saw through him to his essential narcissism;
however, she wasn’t so upset with him that she didn’t allow the lure of
his ‘oh that you were here to share it’ to hook her one last time…”
“…she took it seriously?”

740
 “…I think there were several reasons she would agree to it: I think the
draw of taking care of Zella was even more important than being with
Trelawny, and perhaps also the possibility of escaping her servitude to
her Russian family. At some point later that year she wrote to him with a
plan where she would come and help raise Zella; he destroyed or lost the
letter, of course, so we have no direct evidence, but in his response to
her on January 4th, 1831, you can see the same old Trelawny backing
away from any commitment–either to her or to his child:

Dear Claire, my affection and friendship for you is not

nor ever can be diminished. I really know of nothing
which could give me such entire satisfaction as realizing
the plan you have laid; and I acknowledge with gratitude
for your considerate kindness in proposing it, that all the
benefits which would accrue would fall to my share–your
society would be to me a never failing source of comfort;
and to my child it would be an inestimable advantage; but
as I have often said we are the slaves of circumstances. I
have struggled all my life to break the chains with which
fate has manacled me–but it is in vain–this letter will give
you no less pain in reading than it has me in writing. I
cannot in the ferment of my mind write clearly or express
myself better–I beseech you to think of me as favourably
as you can–and to believe me when I say–that my heart
bleeds when thinking of all you have endured and the
present unhappy state of your mind–and I abhor profes-
sions and protestations as much as you can. You are hap-
pier than I am–for in despite of the past you can yet hope
for the future–whilst I utterly despair. Still believe me
your sincerely attached,

Edward J. Trelawny

P.S. I am thinking of sending Zella to a friend in England,

and resuming my Arab life.

…so clearly Claire had made some sort of commitment, and just as
clearly he rebuffed her…”
“…his ‘heart bleeds’!?...‘you are happier than I’!? Who does he
think he was fooling? I hope she finally learned her lesson…”
“…yes, but it came with a price. There’s little evidence left from the
period about her response to this rebuff, but we know directly from
Trelawny how it affected her physically when he met her in Florence in
Spring of 1831…”
“…what was she doing there? I thought she was in Dresden, or Rus-
sia?”

741
 “…I have to backtrack a bit to show you fully the thinking that would
bring her to propose the ‘Italian plan’ to Trelawny. When Claire left
England again in September, 1829, to return to the Kaissaroff family, it
wasn’t out of some sense of duty to the family: it was because there was
nothing in England to hold her. The previous July Mary had written to
Trelawny describing her situation this way: ‘…surrounded by needy and
in some cases unamiable relatives–she finds here not one of the neces-
sary comforts of life–she began to vegetate, and to be content with vege-
tation.’ As far as ‘unamiable’ relatives go, I think the main reference is
to her mother, who was difficult at best. Her ‘amiable’ relatives–her
brother Charles, his wife, and two children–had been forced to return to
Vienna because he was unable to obtain a position at a university in
England…”
“…why? I would think he would be qualified for any number of posi-
tions…”
“…indeed, but part of it must have been that he was probably too Eu-
ropeanized–the English, especially, don’t like that: it rubs their national
chauvinism the wrong away; otherwise, he had been away too long, and
so hadn’t any connections. Claire, meanwhile, was beginning to realize
that England offered nothing for her any more as well, because she also
had become too Europeanized, but she would have to go there more than
once to fully realize it. In March, 1830, she wrote to Mary, ‘Nothing but
Sir Tim’s death can now bring me to England, and that is an horizon
which retreats as one advances.’ When Mary speaks euphemistically
about the ‘necessary comforts of life,’ I would suggest she’s speaking of
all of the positive aspects of living on the continent, ranging from the
fact that even though Claire was little more than a servant, she shared in
the life of leisure of her employers, who apparently had the wealth to
spend years at a time away from Russia. Despite her complaints of their
lack of culture, that didn’t mean there wasn’t culture in the places that
they visited; after all, when Claire was visiting places like Teplice and
Carlsbad and Dresden, many of the most illustrious names of the period
were visiting there as well. She wrote about Dresden, ‘I never yet was in
a place where I meet so much to please me and so little to shock me. In
vain I endeavor to recollect anything I could wish otherwise; not a fault
presents itself.’ That doesn’t mean she was enjoying herself overwhelm-
ingly–she continued to see herself as having lost her way; for example,
in the same letter of February, 1830 where she had been so scathing to
Trelawny, she wrote this assessment of her mood:

You see I go on in my old way fancying the most dismal

images out of clouds which veil the future. But do not
think I pride myself on this foreboding disposition of
mind. On the contrary. How often do I attempt to put
down by reason this miserable infatuation which drives
me to inflict new wounds on myself, because I am al-

742
 ready marked with one deep scar. And if I were called
upon to relate our several histories I should do so as fol-
lows. I should suppose that we were travelers who had
lost our way; my companions after a time ceased to tease
themselves about our mischance and console themselves
by admiring the night, which though dark was calm, and
the many stars shining at intervals through its deep beau-
ty; but I reject these tranquillizing influences, and be-
cause once in my life I had heard a peal of thunder persist
in marring their delight by affirming that I hear the low
and solemn mutter of a second in the distance. Such is my
case. Because the past had ghosts, I people the present
and the future with the same limbless shadowy race. Hav-
ing once heard a sound of wailing I keep my ear constant-
ly on the prick to catch the first accent of a Sorrow that is
not only unborn, but for which any thing I know it is for-
bidden to the womb of Time even to conceive. If you are
tired of my seriousness, and wish to laugh, you need only
recollect how whimsical as well as rude is the folly that
possesses me, and there will be full cope for your mirth. I
wander about disconsolately until I find a blank tomb-
stone; upon this I scratch the name of a dear friend and
then fall to weeping because I have stumbled unexpected-
ly upon his grave. The bigotry of sorrow teaches the same
rude and disrespectful doctrine that other bigotries do:
that of anticipating the mortal hour of our fellow beings,
and dispatching them in imagination to the shades below.

…so she admits the role of her own disposition in her moods, which is
far more than Mary was capable of doing, but then she lacked Mary’s
capacity to reach a kind of negative affirmation by sublimating it
through her writing. On the other hand, I’m not so certain that she’s tru-
ly citing a fault in her nature, as in a backhanded kind of way I think she
is affirming an existence where the past is not past–what I would term a
kind of immanence. The opposite extreme, of course, would be
Trelawny’s ‘get-on-with-it,’ ‘don’t despair’ brand of positivism, the
dangers of which we’ve discussed: no memory, no grieving–no mean-
ing. I’m not saying that all despair is affirmative, but the white Anglo-
Saxon Protestant tradition’s refusal of despair leads to frivolity and an
empty ‘pursuit of happiness’–witness my compatriots. Of course there
are dangers of too much despair, and certainly at times Claire almost
succumbed to it. By April, 1830, she came close again to that extreme
when she wrote Jane the following letter:

What drives me to despair and fills me with a hatred that

is worse than all despair, is the firm and intimate convic-

743
 tion that I feel that it will be ever thus. Vain are any
hopes of a port or a haven or calm weather; still vainer
the hope of retreat. Once embarked we must drive on
through an ever-lasting ocean of Pain and through an ev-
erlasting storm which no one guides.

…but she still held out against it, so that by the time the Kaissaroffs
went to Nice, in December, 1830, she felt an awakening. In her journal
she wrote, ‘The whole earth seems tingling with pleasure and joy. I look
upon the sun and the moon and the stars as if they were new to me,’ and
she wrote to Mary at roughly the same time, ‘I wish I could give you any
idea of the beauty of Nice. So long as I can walk beside the sounding
sea, beneath its ambient heaven and gaze upon the far hills enshrined in
purple light, I catch such pleasure from their loveliness that I am happy
without happiness’…here comes our first course–here, let me give you
this last piece of octopus…”
“…thanks! The ravioli looks great…”
“…let me pour you some more wine and water…”
“…grazie…”
“…prego…as I was saying, it was Claire’s descriptions of places like
Dresden and Nice which prompted Mary to go there as well when she
later took her trips to the continent with Percy, although Mary seems not
to have reveled in these places as much as Claire did, being too English
in temperament. It was from Nice that she had written her proposal to
Trelawny, and it was from Nice that she departed, in April, 1831, for
Genoa, Florence, and Naples with the Kaisaroffs: unfortunately, she
found that the contrast between the general ambience of the Russian
family and the scenery of Italy was too great, veiling her enjoyment of
the place. She wrote this to Mary:

You envy me Italy even with Russians–you are mistak-

en–I see neither its sky nor mountains, nor seas, nor any
of its thousand minute blooms; I am shrouded in a Night
which shuts them as much out, as if I lived beneath the
midnight of the Arctic Pole.

…it was partly because of this, and partly because she was recovering
from the blow of Trelawny’s rebuff, that she was in such a state when
she saw Trelawny in Florence that spring. He recounted the general out-
line of their meeting in a letter to Mary in June:

Claire only remained in Florence about ten days; some

sudden death of a relative of the family she resides with
recalled them to Russia. I saw her three or four times. She
was very miserable, and looked so pale, thin, and hag-
gard. The people she lived with were bigots, and treated

744
 her badly. I wished to serve her, but had no means. Poor
lady, I pity her; her life has been one of continued misery.
I hope on Sir Timothy’s death it will be bettered; her spir-
its are broken, and she looks fifty; I have not heard of her
since her departure.

…you have to take anything Trelawny writes with a grain of salt–he

would never admit his own negative influence on her state, but it gives
some idea of how her life was going at that time. In July he wrote to her
about her despair, of course not taking any blame for it:

I confess few have suffered more undeservedly than you

have done, and there is no justice in the dispensation of
good and evil; pain and pleasure seem scattered promis-
cuously into the crowd of the world–the foremost and
most grasping and impudent and worthless of the rabble
thrust themselves foremost in seizing the good–whilst the
evils of life fall to the share of the weak, the worthy, and
the unobtrusive…

…but she was soon to come to her own decision about her situation. In
October they were in Naples, and a sudden death in the family demand-
ed that they return to Russia. Claire decided that it was enough: she
jumped ship, they departed, and she was left alone in Naples…”
“…what happened to her?”
“…what she did there no one knows–there’s a two month gap in her
life at that point before she resurfaced in Pisa; but before I jump to that
period, I better fill you in on Mary, who was the new object of
Trelawny’s attentions…”
“…but I thought they broke over his book?”
“…he was certainly angry, but she made it up to him by seeing his
Adventures of a Younger Son to press by agreeing to edit it for him. She
was then living, lonely and isolated, in Portman Square–her isolation
made worse after the trouble with Jane, the end of the Isabel saga, and
Claire’s departure for the continent. She wrote about her feelings of iso-
lation in her journal entry of December 18, 1830:

I have felt my solitude more entirely but never more pain-

fully than now. I seem deserted–alone in the world–cast
off–the victim of poverty & neglect–thus it is–to be poor
& so cut off from society–to pass my days in seclusion–
how well I could bear it had I one hope to cheer me–one
joy to shed its brightness over my darkling lot–how many
years I cherished the expectation of seeing one whom I
might love–who could protect & guard me–Fate has writ-
ten that this is never to be…

745
…so you can see she was open to the possibility of love, but there was
nothing on her horizon at that time…”
“…but Trelawny?”
“…she flirted mildly with him, but I don’t think she ever took it as
seriously as Claire had done. There was an exchange between them that
had begun roughly during the same period that Trelawny was throwing
water on Claire’s plans to come to him, but it was mostly on the level of
mere repartee. It began in January, 1831, when Mary wrote the follow-
ing to Trelawny:

If Claire and I were either to die or marry you would be

left without a Dulcinea at all, with the exception of the
six score new objects for idolatry you may have found
among the pretty girls of Florence. Take courage, howev-
er; I am scarcely a Dulcinea, being your friend and not
the Lady of your love, but such as I am, I do not think
that I shall either die or marry this year, whatever may
happen the next; as it is only spring you have some time
before you.

…he had evidently written a response telling her not to marry, and per-
haps also hinting that she should marry him, as in June she wrote him
this:

You tell me not to marry–but I will–any one who will

take me out of my present desolate & uncomfortable po-
sition–Any one–& with all this do you think that I should
marry?–Never–neither you nor any body else–Mary Shel-
ley shall be written on my tomb–and why? I cannot tell–
except that it is so pretty a name that tho’ I were to preach
to myself for years, I should never have the heart to get
rid of it…

…he wrote her back in the same bantering, semi-flirtatious manner:

I was more delighted with your resolve not to change

your name than with any other portion of your letter.
Trelawny, too, is a good name, and sounds as well as
Shelley; it fills the mouth as well and will soon raise a
spirit.

…but she suddenly turned serious in response, cutting off the banter
quite abruptly:

746
 My name will never be Trelawny. I am not so young as I
was when you first knew me, but I am as proud. I must
have the entire affection, devotion, and, above all, the so-
licitous protection of any one who would win me. You
belong to womankind in general, and Mary Shelley will
never be yours.

…so you can see she was quite adamant about it…”
“…did he get the message?”
“…I think so–and if he didn’t, then he did after he returned to Eng-
land in 1832. That summer Mary and Percy spent three months at the
seaside town of Sandgate, to the west of Dover, and Trelawny and his
daughter Julia–from his first wife, joined them there for a few weeks…”
“…what did Claire think of that?”
“…the only indication was a letter she wrote the following November
in response to a letter from Mary, where she wrote this:

I am very glad you are delighted with Trelawny. My af-

fections are entirely without jealousy; the more those I
love love others and are loved by them, the better pleased
I am. I am in a vile humour for writing a letter…

…I think the sudden mood change speaks volumes: Trelawny had only
pulled back from her latest plan regarding Zella at the beginning of the
same year, so it must have hurt her considerably at the time to see him
vacationing with Mary when he had only spent a few hours in conversa-
tion with her. She needn’t have worried, because for Mary and Trelawny
it was the end, not the beginning…”
“…what happened?”
“…among other things, it seems he goaded her to be more liberal, and
she resisted: whatever else happened, it ended any real closeness be-
tween them. Mary assessed him perfectly in her journal afterwards, writ-
ing, ‘He is a strange yet wonderful being–endued with genius–great
force of character & power of feeling–but destroyed by being nothing–
destroyed by envy & internal dissatisfaction.’ Of course, he understood
her weaknesses too, writing to Claire a few years later after his return
from the United States, ‘Mary I have not seen–her disease grows upon
her with years–I mean her pining after distinction and the distinguished
of fortune.’ Unfortunately, they were both right about each other: Mary
always was a social climber, and Trelawny continued to be plagued by
the suspicion that he was what he indeed was: merely someone who pig-
gy-backed off the fame of others. In fact, his jaunt to the United States
was another attempt to live off his former exploits, and perhaps try to
add a few more exploits to his name…”
“…and did he?”

747
 “…the most dramatic exploit was swimming across the Niagara be-
low the falls–he wrote an account of it later, and added it to his list of
stories. Otherwise, in the two and a half years he was there it seems he
lived off of his fame and connections, visiting all twenty-four of the ex-
isting states, but unfortunately not leaving any real records of it…”
“…he gave no account of it?”
“…oh, there are details here and there spread throughout his letters:
he found Americans hyper-normative, which was and still is true; he
found New Englanders icy in temperament; he sought out some of the
utopian communities, and was largely disappointed by them…”
“…and women?”
“…he found them attractive, but he didn’t like their voices–look here:

In Yankeeland there is nothing that can interest me–but

the absurd woman-kind they are well enough–and would
be better if they had human voices–teach them music–ye
gods–what blasphemy…

…I can assent to that judgment as well…”

“…but where was Zella all the time he was in America?”
“…soon after he backed away from the ‘Claire plan’ he arranged to
have Zella taken care of by a lady friend in Lucca–an arrangement that
ultimately failed; it was Claire who had to go and pick up the pieces…”
“…what happened? We left her in Pisa, didn’t we?”
“…yes, she arrived there in December, 1831, although it was a while
before she communicated her whereabouts to others. She was initially
with a French family, who worked her very hard so that she only had
time to herself after ten in the evening. When the family moved to Vien-
na, she decided not to stay with them–perhaps partly due to her prior ex-
perience, but also because cholera had broken out there: it was the be-
ginning of a pandemic in Europe. She then took a position as a day gov-
erness with a British family, the Bennets, who had two girls, Gertrude
and Charlotte, aged ten and fourteen. She had a bit more freedom then,
but it still wasn’t an ideal life. She wrote to Mary:

From morning till night, month after month and year after
year never to see a person one cares a pin to see; to be the
prey of every species of suffering; to be ever surrounded
by demons who torment you without ceasing; to have
one’s soul ever full of rage and despair. What a life! Has
Hell any thing worse to offer?

…and then there was Pisa, which she found very dull: she wrote to Jane,
‘Pisa is as dull as ever–Was there ever such a dull town–it provokes me
beyond patience…’”

748
 “…but how was it for her to be back in a city where there were so
many ghosts?”
“…I’m sure she had moments of reminiscence, but she hadn’t been in
Pisa for any of the significant events. For her, the best aspect of Pisa was
that she was in the same city as Mrs. Mason. She wrote to Mary about it:

Nothing can equal Mrs. Mason’s kindness to me. Hers is

the only house except my mother’s, in which in all my
life I have ever felt at home. With her I am as her child–
from the merest trifle to the greatest object she treats me
as if her happiness depended on mine–then she under-
stands me so completely–I have no need to disguise my
sentiments, to barricade myself up in silence as I do al-
most with every body for fear they should see what pass-
es in my mind and hate me for it because it does not re-
semble what passes in theirs.

…I understand what she’s saying when she says she felt ‘at home,’ but I
also have to wonder about her comparison with her mother, for all the
evidence I know about it suggests she was uncomfortable around her
mother: on almost every visit to England she intended to stay with her
mother, but ended up moving out because she couldn’t take it…”
“…why?”
“…she never wrote about it directly, but something Trelawny wrote to
her once gives some idea of the problem–listen to this:

Your mother hates me because I persist in calling you by

that name–and moreover will not understand her when
she uses that of Jane. Jane by compulsion–you are Clara
by choice–with what tenacity our dams cling to the shad-
ow of their former power!

…everything I’ve read about her mother makes her into a meddling bus-
ybody, so I take her fond words about her and her ‘home’ with a grain of
salt, just as I take her various assertions about her homeland equally
lightly…”
“…how do you mean? I thought she was anti-English…”
“…it depends upon who she was talking to; actually, it was during
that period that I think a real change occurred on many levels of her life–
something of a ‘mid-life crisis’–oh, here comes the swordfish…”
“…I won’t be able to walk after this…”
“…yes you will: we’re going to walk it all off!”
“…I suppose so, after climbing the Aventine and Capitoline hills…”
“…and don’t forget the Spanish Steps!”
“…how could I…so, Claire’s crisis?”

749
 “…she was in her mid-thirties in that period and it affected her on
several levels, including her attitude towards her status as a foreigner
and her homeland. In the beginning of this period, 1832, you could still
find her defending Englishness: when she was in Dresden, she knew a
Russian scholar who came to dine with the family, and the editor of her
letters tracked down some letters where he described her as quite defen-
sive about the English. Here’s one thing he wrote:

At dinner we usually quarrel. Miss Clairmont imagines

that the English are more intelligent and better than any
other nationality in the world, thinks that we are still go-
ing to school, and gets furious because I don’t believe
this.

…and look at this letter to Mary written in March, 1832: she writes, ‘I
pine after all that is English. Only English people seem to me good; the
English language only sweet.’ However, her ambivalence can be seen in
the very next sentence, when she writes, ‘Don’t speak to me about set-
tling in London to give lessons or to write. It is impossible for me with
my small pecuniary resources to embark in so uncertain an undertaking,’
and, of course, by the time she did have the financial resources, she
didn’t return. The change came during that period: by 1835, she was
complaining in her letters about the ‘fastidiousness’ of the English, used
pejoratively, and of the ‘Dreadful immorality which the English pretend
to discover in a dusty table.’ She mentions that English expatriates re-
fuse to acclimatize to Italy, and continue to insist on eating ‘huge pieces
of meat’ even though the climate makes such a diet unhealthy…”
“…and it was probably boiled meat…”
“…probably! Anyway, by 1837, at the end of this period of change,
she goes beyond critiquing the English to extolling the continent: she
compared continental Europeans with the English to the advantage of
the former, claiming that they form firm attachments, and that their
friendship remains if you do not do them a personal injury; however,
with the English, the ‘slightest trifle’ is cause for a break. It became
even more damning: she wrote of the English, ‘I always hated them
from a child–long before I could define why–I loathed them,’ and by
1859, when she had long been on the continent, she wrote,

In England there is no escape–the streets and buildings

are all modern–all like one another, when you have seen
one you have seen all–it is the same with the people, they
have all the same character and the same costume and
this dreary monotony throws one completely back upon
oneself and makes one the complete captive of one’s fate.

750
…so you can see the transformation that occurred, from critiquing the
continental Europeans and extolling the English, to critiquing the Eng-
lish and extolling the continental Europeans…”
“…but what brought it about–just the amount of time she spent
abroad?”
“…certainly there’s that, plus the trips back and forth so she could
make her comparisons in both directions, but, as with all mid-life crises,
the real cause was a growing sense of her own mortality, brought about
partly by her own aging body, and also because of the deaths occurring
around her…”
“…but she was no stranger to death…”
“…but she was old enough now to really feel her own mortality, plus
she endured several key deaths in this period…”
“…who?”
“…William Godwin, Jr., her half-brother, died in 1832, Mrs. Mason
died in 1835, and William Godwin and both of the Gisbornes died in
1836…”
“…who was William Godwin, Jr.?”
“…he was the son of Claire’s mother and Godwin. He was a lesser
light in the family, and had tried careers at engineering, business, and
architecture before settling on journalism, although he had aspirations as
a literary critic and as a writer. Claire felt that he had suffered a bit of
neglect in the family–she told Silsbee that Mary would not see him be-
cause he was vulgar, and Claire may have identified with him a little.
Look what she wrote to Jane:

I however was fond of him because I did not view his

faults in that desponding light which his other relations
did. I have seen more of the world and comparing him
with other young men, his frugality, his industry, his at-
tachment to his wife and his talents, raised him consider-
ably in my opinion above the common par. But in our
family if you cannot write an epic poem or a novel that
by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you
are a despicable creature not worth acknowledging. What
would they have done or said had their children been
fond of dress, fond of cards, drunken profligate, as most
people’s children are?

…you can sense her bitterness…”

“…how did he die?”
“…he died of cholera in September–the same age as Shelley when he
died. Claire was quit in shock–she wrote this to Mary:

I have not yet got over the shock of William’s death–

from the moment I heard of it until now I have been in

751
 complete annihilation–how long it will last I am sure I
cannot tell–I hope not much longer or perhaps I shall go
mad. A horrible and most inevitable future is the image
that torments me–just as it did ten years ago, in this very
city.

…Claire had already been deeply worried about the cholera–not just for
herself, but for others as well: she actually sent money to Mary the pre-
vious March so that she could leave London with Percy during the
summer months, and after William died she had Percy’s life insured for
one thousand pounds. A year later it was an epidemic of influenza in
London which worried her, and she wrote to Mary,

How shall I describe all I should feel were you to die. I

pass all my life surrounded by enemies…few are the per-
sons who express or show an atom of interest in my wel-
fare and you it appears to me are one of the few–conceive
what I should feel were I to lose you.

…so even before the really significant deaths of Mrs. Mason and God-
win later on, Claire was living in a veritable thrall of death. It was then
that, for the last time, she turned her hand to writing, and, as far as I
know, aside from letters, she would never attempt to write anything
again after that…”
“…what did she write?”
“…she wrote a short story called ‘The Pole’–and do you know what is
quite strange about it? She wrote almost the entire story, but at the very
end she couldn’t bring herself to finish it, indicating a real block. She
sent it to Mary, asking her to finish it and publish it, and especially how
she asked is very interesting–she wrote…

Will you be angry with me if I beg you to write the last

scene of it. I am now so unwell I can’t…It was very near
its end when I got so ill I gave it up…The truth is I never
should think of writing knowing well my incapacity for
it, but I want to gain money…One is even impudent
enough to ask a great authoress to finish one’s tale for
one…I wish it to be signed Mont. Obscur.

…the fact she was ‘ill’ at the end says everything, and her pseudonym
also says a great deal…”
“…but why do you think she had the block–the competition with
Mary?
“…certainly that must have played a major role: as she wrote to Jane
about William, it must have been very hard, with real luminaries like
Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Mary in the family…”

752
 “…not to mention Shelley and Byron…”
“…yes. So in the same way that period saw the last gasp of her Eng-
lishness, her failure to complete the story represents her last attempt to
live up to a certain version of literary success…”
“…what was the story about–is it any good?”
“…compared to whom? If Balzac, then no. I think it could easily pass
for a Mary Shelley story, and indeed it did, as it was accidentally pub-
lished as being ‘By the Author of Frankenstein’; but, then again, I’m not
overly fond of Mary Shelley’s short stories and tales: they are interesting
but tend to be overly melodramatic. What’s most interesting to me is the
simple fact Claire wrote it and what it reveals about her sensibility. It’s
set in Italy, opening near Gaeta, between Rome and Naples, where a car-
riage breaks down and discharges a character named Ladislas, the ‘Pole’
of the title, who bears a striking resemblance to Shelley. He repairs to an
inn, and then goes outside in the evening to view the scene. He hears an
unseen woman’s voice emerging from a garden, singing in Polish: it is
Marietta–the Claire figure in the story. He’s entranced by her singing,
but suddenly she’s screaming, and when he goes to see, there’s a man,
Giorgio, trying to drag her away…”
“…the Byron figure?”
“…of course, and even Byron’s incest is alluded to when it turns out
that she’s his sister, and he’s trying to drag her away from the opera she
travels with because in the past they had some sort of illicit relationship.
In any case, Ladislas saves her, and she rewards him by spending the
evening in his room, singing to him. The next day he continues his jour-
ney to Naples, where he goes to meet a Russian, the Princess Dashkoff,
who has some influence over the fate of his brother in Saint Petersburg.
As they discuss the situation, she walks with him toward a small temple,
they enter, and sitting there is Idalie, the character based upon Mary.
The Princess begs her to paint Ladislas, departs, and of course while she
is painting his portrait they fall in love. It turns out she is the half sister
to Marietta and Giorgio. The next day, Idalie is painting near some gar-
dens and hears two voices: one is her long-lost sister Marietta, who she
urges to stay with her, the other Ladislas. Marietta refuses, claiming she
wants her freedom, and she immediately can see the love between Ladis-
las and Idalie. Idalie invites her to stay again, but Marietta explains how
she’d rather tour than live near Giorgio, who is caught up in some web
of criminal activity with the Princess. She explains how hard her life has
been, and how at times when Giorgio is in the audience fixing his eyes
upon her she must run out of the theater, spending her nights out of
doors to avoid him. Ladislas takes pity on her, giving her the money to
relieve her of her contract…”
“…as Claire was hoping to be relieved from her contract by Shelley’s
legacy?”
“…that’s right…so, having been freed, all three go to Idalie’s little
pavilion house on the Bay of Baia, where they begin to live an idyllic

753
life–something like the life they once lived with Shelley for short peri-
ods, such as at the Bagni di Lucca, each doing what suited them: Idalie
paints, Ladislas sitting with her, telling her about his struggle to free Po-
land, while Marietta goes down to the beach to dance with the fisher
boys on the beach…”
“…didn’t they all three visit Baia when they were in Naples?”
“…yes, that was one of their sightseeing periods–remember, that’s
where they went to see the cave of the Sibyl. It’s interesting that both
Claire and Mary, when they tried to write a literary tribute to their lives
with Shelley, chose to center it on Baia…”
“...what did Mary write?”
“…I forgot to mention that The Last Man begins with Verney’s ac-
count being found in the cave of the Sibyl as ‘sibylline leaves’ predict-
ing the future: that was the device she used to avoid the problem of our
reading the account of the last man on earth. For Claire’s characters,
Baia is where the three have a single afternoon of utopian pleasure, right
before disaster strikes, because when Ladislas and Idalie return from
their trip, Marietta is gone, leaving a note that there’s a plot afoot to
murder Ladislas, and that he should leave Naples immediate-
ly…interesting, given what happened in Naples: they both knew, in ret-
rospect, that Shelley had been in torment in Naples. Remember those
lines I read to you which Mary wrote for her introductions to the 1839
version of his poems, when she wishes she had been ‘more alive to the
nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe them’? Certainly
both women realized later how much they didn’t know, and also realized
how quickly utopia can turn into agony. Claire spent half a page on the
agony of Idalie as she realizes the danger that Ladislas is in. Marietta has
explained, in a letter, that Giorgio is at the center of the plot, and that she
has gone to find out if the plot is real or not. Ladislas cannot believe that
his encounter with Giorgio could drive him to want to assassinate him,
and so he tries to talk Idalie out of her fears. They spend the night out-
side the pavilion they are locked out of, and in the morning they realize
they are expected to go on an excursion with the Princess and her retinue
to Paestum, so given they have no other plan, until they find out more
they assume it will be safest to be in the company of a large group of
people. They are just leaving to go to the embarkation point when Mari-
etta arrives, breathlessly, and again warns them of the plot. She had gone
to the lair of her brother in some catacombs, and, hiding herself, heard
that the Russian Czar had sent a message to the Polish Viceroy that, if
made public, could launch Europe into a war: Ladislas had intercepted
these papers, and now was making his way to Paris to publish them, but
he had been forced to make a detour to Naples. Princess Dashkoff had
been ordered to obtain these papers, and Ladislas’ assassination decided
upon as the best way to obtain them. They create a counterplot whereby
they will leave Naples in a steam boat they charter, but then discover it
is the same boat being used for the excursion, so they decide to go on the

754
excursion, and after it is over and everyone disembarks, they will remain
on board, having arranged their flight beforehand. Having fixed the plan,
he suddenly realizes that they have forgotten Marietta: they speak to her,
and she assures them that she will soon follow them to Paris, for, as she
says, ‘how can I exist apart from my sister?’ When the plan gets under-
way, Claire wrote, believe it or not, that Idalie could not have done it
‘without her sister’s help,’ and that she was like ‘the guardian angel of
the lovers’…”
“…it sounds like Claire was trying to rewrite their history: it’s quite a
difference from absentiae Clairae!”
“…and Marietta’s understanding of the threat of Giorgio represents
Claire’s understanding of the threat of Byron; implicit, of course, is a
critique of Mary and Shelley, who in Claire’s opinion also failed to un-
derstand his threat. I think on some level Claire believed that if they had
avoided him, Shelley’s death wouldn’t have happened. So, to continue,
Marietta arranges the marriage of the lovers…”
“…that’s certainly a fiction!”
“…and then they embark on the steamboat to Paestum with the Prin-
cess and her retinue. Ladislas and Idalie avoid each other, but soon he
needs to speak to her, and passes her a note: the Princess notices it, asks
what it is, and Ladislas says it is a Polish song he wishes her to sing. She
demurs, and he meanwhile draws the Princess away so Idalie can read it.
She does, and endeavoring to get rid of it, she’s about to throw it down
into the hold when she sees, in the dark, the face of Giorgio, and she re-
alizes they are in more danger than they thought. As they disembark at
Paestum she is able to whisper to Ladislas ‘Beware!’ They wander
through the ruins, and then the party eats dinner at the Archbishop’s Pal-
ace. During the meal Idalie notices that Ladislas is not there; he mean-
while has been wandering among the ruins. She goes out to find him,
arriving just to see a form stalking him, and to intercede in the blow that
is about to fall, receiving a small knife wound in the process. He strug-
gles with Giorgio, stabs him, and together they flee to the steam boat,
leaving the party behind. Meanwhile the party, noticing their absence
goes outside in search of them, comes across the dying Giorgio: in his
dying breath he says that they have escaped, and that the plot of the
Princess has failed. The final sentence explains that they made it to Par-
is, and Marietta joined them soon after, after tying up some loose
ends…”
“…and which part did Mary write?”
“…the last, violent scene until the end. It’s a patch-up job, and shows
a minimal amount of effort on her part. I think it speaks very poorly of
Mary…”
“…perhaps she wasn’t happy about Claire’s revisionist history…”
“…what about her own? I think Claire was right in what she wrote
about William having suffered being ‘normal’ in that family, but it’s not
just that: it’s the jealousy of sibling rivalry and competition. Claire was

755
always happy to defer to what she saw as Mary’s greater powers of mind
and literary ability. Mary ought to have encouraged her: Claire’s story
wasn’t great, but any section of it was comparable to the writing of a
section of The Last Man or Mary’s other tales. You know, I hate how
certain critics make of Mary the poor, put-upon woman in the Shelley-
Mary couple, forgetting that Shelley was far more enabling than any
other partner in literary history I can think of, male or female, and for-
getting that Mary almost automatically put down Claire’s efforts…”
“…did Claire ever tell her so?”
“…never directly, but part of her mid-life crisis was that she began to
take her to task for other things in an increasingly direct manner. Here,
look at this passage of Claire’s letter to Mary of December, 1832: she
critiques humanity, and then critiques herself, but of course this leaves
open an implicit critique of Mary:

…from my experience in society I have not gathered

from it anything beyond the following couple of conclu-
sions: that people of the world, disguise themselves as
they may, possess but two qualities: a great want of un-
derstanding, and a vast pretension to sentiment. From this
duplexity arises the duplicity with which they are so often
charged and no wonder, for with hearts so heavy and
heads so light, how is it possible to keep anything like a
straightforward course. In alleviation of this, I must con-
fess, that wherever I went, I carried about with me my
own identity; (that unhappy identity which has cost me so
dear and of which with all my pains I have never been
able to lose a particle of) and contemplated the people I
judge, through the medium of its rusty atoms.

…by 1834, we begin to see a re-assessment of her relationships in her

letters which are considerably more direct–this is from another letter to
Mary:

To return to Jane: I have a great attachment for her and

am perfectly disinterested–she does not love me–partly
from her being so absorbed by her affection to Edward’s
memory no other thing can obtain place in her heart: and
partly because she has but a very imperfect notion of my
character and sentiments. She has seen too little of me to
be well acquainted with me. You, she, and Trelawny are
all in error in your opinion of me: I confess to loving you
all three beyond any thing else except Mrs. Mason and
Percy, and I confess that it is a great blot upon my charac-
ter that I have given myself but little pains to change your
ideas on my account…

756
…but then Mrs. Mason died suddenly in January, 1835, when Claire was
away in Florence with the Bennets, and so she became a live-in gover-
ness with them there. She was thirty-seven then, and now the person she
admired the most was dead. It was then that she began a real reckoning,
identifying with the straight-forwardness of Mrs. Mason, and calling
everyone to account. First there was silence for several months, and in
June, 1835, she broke her silence and wrote to Mary–already beginning
with a mild rebuke as she explains why she hasn’t written, and then she
turned in memory to the first significant break between Mary, Claire and
Shelley, when Claire was forced to remove herself to Devon after the
death of Mary’s first child:

This letter will I fear be but a melancholy one, for I can-

not write otherwise. Knowing how you hate melancholy
is the reason I have been so long without writing to you–
many times have I taken up the pen resolving to com-
mand my dejection whilst I should write, and as many
times thrown it down again, finding the attempt useless. I
have not recovered my spirits from the loss of Lady
M…The more now I seek to fly the recollection of the
loss I have sustained, the more it haunts me. The return of
the day, its close, every hour that strikes, every ordinary
circumstance of life that before from its familiarity excit-
ed no emotion and passed unheeded, never now recurs
without impressing upon my mind the sad warning that
she is no more. All that composes existence is turned her-
ald to that afflicting truth. Mortals have no defence
against grief any more than against Death. Reason which
they say is all powerful only tells me that the only conso-
lation I can find is in regret. Yes–you say truly when you
say what a long and hopeless life is yours! I have known
this long–how long. Hatred and persecution let loose their
destroying hounds upon me in the very dawn of life: but a
mere child I was driven from all I loved into a solitary
spot, without a friend to soothe my affliction, without
even an acquaintance with whom to exchange a word,
day after day I sat companionless upon that unfrequented
sea-shore, mentally exclaiming, a life of sixteen is al-
ready too much for me to bear. God knows I have never
had reason to retract my thought, nor ever shall.

…it’s extraordinary when you consider that what she is actually doing is
placing before Mary the bare fact of how that time affected her: certainly
what happened to Mary was terrible, and no one can really be held to
account as to their actions after a child dies, but in her despair she be-

757
came monstrously self-centered, not considering what it must have been
like for Claire to be banished to Devon. Then the letter shifts and she
makes a pronouncement: ‘I have determined not to return to England.’
She explained it partly because she didn’t want to be a burden on her
parents, and also because of her own ill health–she sensed she had a
heart problem, but I cannot help seeing those issues as screens for her
general disappointment with life there. Clearly her grief was making her
aware of her own mortality, as she was worried enough about her own
health to request that Mary look into the possibility of her somehow sell-
ing her share of the inheritance so that she could obtain a smaller sum
directly, and in that way, in case she did die, she could leave it to her
brother Charles, to help him with his family…”
“…but she didn’t do it, did she?”
“…no, but she had been losing her patience. In 1833, when Sir Tim
had recovered from illness, Claire could still make a joke about it:

…I laughed ready to kill myself. Oh! That undying, un-

dyable Sir Tim! His jumps towards the grave and then his
quick returns to life are too comical. Life and death are
playing at Bob cherry with him poor man. You say he has
lived long enough to ruin you. I am sure he has me and I
give him permission now to live to all Eternity.

…but after the death of Mrs. Mason, she lost her sense of humor– you
can sense the desperation in her letter:

If Sir Tim as he promises lives as long as his father only

or a little longer as you suppose, there are still ten years
and more for me to pass in unexampled misery. But I
shall not live them–I cannot–Any one that should re-
proach me with want of fortitude for speaking thus,
would show an utter ignorance of my circumstances or
else the most unfeeling coarse mind. I once had my liber-
ty–I was free–I had two friends…

…I assume that referred to Shelley and Mary…

…I loved and was loved, my amusements were the fine

arts poetry music philosophy all that is most refined in
thought were familiar to me–and now I have fallen from
all this to poverty, to an isolation complete from all the
refinements of social life. I must not be judged as one that
was bred to the state in which I am now in. Do you think
that any philosophy could reconcile one who was accus-
tomed to share the thoughts to admire the pursuits of a
Shelley to be banished to the society of children and their

758
 vulgar nurses? Had I been shut up in a dungeon for the
last thirteen years there would have been no end to the
commiseration I should have inspired, to the invectives
against the injustice of such a fate; but because there are
no bars to my prison and my gaolers wear fine instead of
coarse clothing, people refuse to see the resemblance and
deny me help. Excuse my talking so much of myself. I
came to the conclusion that it was right–it struck me that
the indifference to my sufferings that has been shown
might proceed from my silence causing it to be imagined
that I was such a beast I could not and did not feel, all
that has been inflicted on me…

…by September, she was writing again, this time venting her spleen
about Byron. There’s a missing letter or two from Mary, but clearly she
had tried to lessen Byron’s fault by saying that no one was to blame for
Allegra’s death, for Claire expounded at length upon his culpability in
placing her in the convent despite what she claimed everyone knew
about the dangers of such a place, and went on to essentially lay at his
door almost every suffering she and Mary had endured:

How bitterly have I regretted, and shall ever regret that

Shelley did not break with Lord Byron as I so earnestly
incessantly entreated him to do…Shelley too amiable too
unsuspecting of evil in others thought he might lead Lord
Byron to good works and good ways–he might as well
have attempted to convert Caligula or Nero. From the
continuation of that intimacy has arisen all we have suf-
fered since and ah! How much it is! What years of pov-
erty and humiliation, of exile from all that is dear to us–
What a career of hardship and suffering without a tie
without even a friend to cheer–the world rejoicing at our
misfortunes as a punishment we merited and pointing us
out as a warning to their children–his genius extinct, the
greatest that ever was known and the noble system he
would have established therewith fallen for many ages to
the dust. All this for his ill-advised gentleness. After such
an overthrow it is time for us to depart the scene for ever.

…of course the unspoken of the letter, which we saw from her descrip-
tion of Mary before, is that she blamed Mary for continuing to know By-
ron after all the disasters were over, and of course she was right: it was a
serious moral failing of Mary, even if Claire’s sense of causation was
rather overblown. She dealt with the issue in March the next year when
she held Mary directly to task for always having a Byronic hero in her
novels, which was true:

759
 Good God to think a person of your genius, whose moral
tact ought to be proportionally exalted, should think it a
task befitting its powers to gild and embellish and pass
off as beautiful what was the merest compound of Vanity,
folly, and every miserable weakness that ever met togeth-
er in one human being…I shall be curious to see if the he-
ro of your new novel will be another Beautiful Byron.

…so you can see she was starting to blame Mary directly, prodding and
provoking her to see what response she would get…”
“…wasn’t that a bit dangerous?”
“…yes, but I think Claire was at that state of her crisis where she was
testing the friendships and bonds that she did have for their strength and
truth: it’s a very dangerous moment, for we all have a tendency to delude
ourselves about how many friends we have, the depths of those friend-
ships, and the permanence of our bonds. Not everyone can face the truth
easily, and so most don’t pursue it as directly as Claire, for the results
can be devastating. Look what she wrote in this letter from November,
1835: ‘A false God, a false fortune and false friends have so shown the
falsity of all, I have no more trust in anything.’ She was provoking Mary
to respond…”
“…and how did Mary respond?”
“…it’s clear that during this period when Claire was writing her long,
truth-telling letters, Mary was barely keeping up, and when she did an-
swer, she refused to respond to anything directly. Look what Claire
wrote to her in that same letter, which indicates what her response had
been:

Your letters to me are very curious–they always seem

written as if mine to you have never been received and
you had not an idea of what was passing in my thoughts,
and besides this I observe you are careful never to ex-
press an opinion to me. Any one who did not know you,
and should read them would say this writer has not evi-
dently one opinion on any subject in the world.

…she then goes on to speak of her own letters, which were stuffed full
of opinions: ‘I jabber away as if I were talking to myself and had no fear
of shocking the principles of any listener.’ Mary did write her a longer
letter in response, but Claire’s reaction seems tinged with irony to me
when she wrote, ‘That you should but rarely write such letters I can well
imagine; the flowers and fruit of a great author’s mind must necessarily
be absorbed in his works; the dregs or what he or she judges to be dregs,
they let run off in their letters or conversation.’ Apparently Mary had
also written with some feeble suggestion about how to help Claire, and

760
this was blasted with a barrage, as if Claire had been lying in wait to fi-
nally tell her everything:

No exertion of your intellect however fertile and power-

ful it may be, can undo the past. You cannot suppose that
any scheme can remedy the injury done to me by the last
fourteen years of my life; in which I have toiled every
day beyond my strength already shattered and incapable
of effort, forced to do what to others would have been
heavy, but to me were Herculean tasks, and all this long
time abandoned by every body, by relations, by friends,
without a single helper or the feeblest protection of any
kind, without even having a kind word from any body,
nothing but the voice of blame or the voice of command,
no joys, not one pleasurable sensation has ever visited my
heart during this long period, nothing but toil and hard-
ship, and disgust and hatred of my situation. Human Na-
ture is not made to sustain a trial of this unpitying kind–
all would sink beneath it as I have sunk, and once inflict-
ed, once suffered, Death is the only liberator.

…it’s as if the dam burst, and all of her years of loneliness and frustra-
tion came bursting out at once. Mary was unable to respond directly to
Claire, but she could indirectly respond to her through Trelawny. She
wrote to him in May, 1836, about this series of letters:

Claire always harps on my desertion of her–as if I could

desert one I never clung to–we were never friends–Now,
I would not go to Paradise, with her as a companion–she
poisoned my life when young–that is over now–but as we
never loved each other, why these cruel complaints of
me. I respect her now much–& pity her deeply–but years
ago my idea of Heaven was a world without Claire–of
course these feelings are altered–but she still has the fac-
ulty of making me more uncomfortable than any human
being–a faculty she, unconsciously perhaps, never fails to
exert when I see her.

…it’s very harsh, and yet Claire’s capacity of making her ‘more uncom-
fortable than any human being’ is very telling: Claire was the conscious
one, Mary the unconscious one, and it was what Mary wanted to remain
unconscious about which had the capacity to disturb…”
“…it’s sad: they were the survivors of a very special time and group
of people, and still they couldn’t get along…”
“…but, on the other hand, they continued to write to each other regu-
larly, and even visit each other when Claire went to England, or Mary

761
went to Paris: there was a deep emotional bond between them that al-
ways existed even though they couldn’t get along, and Mary even began
to depend upon receiving Claire’s letters, and would later complain
when she wasn’t receiving enough of them! Most intimate relationships
are this way–love and hate together, if we’re honest about them…”
“…but it just seems so needless: Shelley was long-gone, and there
was no point in continuing to let it come between them…”
“…but Claire acted as a kind of conscience to Mary, always, and
Mary knew it: look here–Mary had obviously written to Claire to ask her
if Trelawny had said anything bad about her, and Claire simply wrote
her matter of factly about it: ‘In Trelawny’s letter to me there was no
abuse of you–he only said Mary S–– is well and of fond of the world as
ever–this is no abuse.’ It is a simple statement that both plays it down
but also tells the truth: of course Claire knew it would drive Mary up the
wall, but she deserved it…”
“…speaking of Trelawny, can you tell me now what happened with
his Zella?”
“…we left it at the point where he was thinking of placing her with
some friends in England. By 1831, this changed to Lucca–Trelawny had
written, ‘My child Zella is growing up very pretty, and with a soul of
fire. She is living with friends of mine near Lucca.’ The friends were an
Englishwoman named Jane Bocella and her Italian husband who were
living near Lucca. By summer of 1833, Claire spent the summer with
them at the Villa Lucchesini in the hills above Lucca, finding the seven
year old Zella sulky, petulant, and tyrannical. By December Trelawny
was writing Claire a letter from America about it, which he began in his
inimitable, Trelawny manner by assuming her forgiveness of his last
withdrawal:

Dearest Friend, I have ever found you loving and forgiv-

ing–had you been otherwise you could not have held on
with me so long–I will not say untired–for you must grow
weary of one wayward and worthless–I wonder if there is
anyone who really understands me–I sometimes think
you must begin to loathe me–and yet I will not think so–
the loss of you would leave a dreary void in my affections
that could never be filled up.

…he goes on to discuss the problem with Zella, describing a letter he

had received from Jane Bocella: ‘her account of Zella’s temper has
vexed me–what can be done–can you not devise anything?–you are on
the spot….’ He then goes on to describe at great length his swimming
across Niagara…”
“…as if Claire cared in the least about it–why do men always assume
women care about their athletic prowess and exploits? He’s abandoned
his daughter and expects her to care about his swimming feats!”

762
 “…Trelawny was especially dense that way. In any case, he let the
problem simmer another year or so, until finally it boiled over, but of
course Trelawny wasn’t there to deal with it. Claire wrote this to Mary
in June, 1835:

Jane Bocella is wearied to death of Zella–only living for

the moment she can get rid of her–She asked my advice
about putting her to an English school at Leghorn. I threw
cold water upon the idea. I judged of Trelawny’s by my
own feelings yet perhaps I ought not to do so for he acts
towards her as I would not act. He declares all his hopes
for the future concenter in that child upon which he plac-
es her with an almost stranger and runs off to America–
but he is a man and that quality solves all enigmas and
reconciles all incongruities.

…so finally, Claire decided that she must go away from Jane Bocella,
and she devised a plan to board her in a school in Florence until the
moment came when she could be sent or taken to England. In Novem-
ber, 1835, she wrote to Mary:

I suppose you know all about Zella. Mr. Kirkup has tried
to find someone to take her to Paris in vain–I have written
to Trelawny proposing she shall be boarded and lodged
here till some opportunity occurs of the kind we desire. I
will do all I can to make her stay here gay and comforta-
ble. I think her further stay with Madame Bocella unad-
visable for both…

…as you can imagine, any plan would have suited Trelawny, as long as
it didn’t involve him having to lift a finger. He replied immediately to
Claire:

Thanks for you kind and most interesting letter–as my ob-

ject is to relieve Madam Bocella from the burthen of tak-
ing care of Zella–immediately!–and it’s not possible to
send her to me–why I think your plan will do,–must do. I
use these words because I detest everything that has a re-
semblance to a school–however, its horrors will be miti-
gated by your standing by the dear child.

…but the plan didn’t work, because Zella wasn’t adaptable to school, so
Claire discovered a way to send her, and wrote to tell Trelawny…”
“…I’m sure that she engineered it to turn out that way, believing the
daughter ought to be with her father…”

763
 “…that’s probably true. He acquiesced, and wrote her this in March,
1836:

…I have only today got your letters of February 21 and

March 7–they tell me Zella is ill and that she is mending
and moreover that you have hit upon a chance of sending
her to me. As she has an antipathy to learning–which cer-
tainly is natural–it is no use her remaining at school in
Florence…I am ready to undertake the pilotage–difficult
tho’ it be–come when she may–so let her appear with the
swallows–she is mine and shall be welcome.

…it seems Mary thought about adopting her, but Claire wrote her the
same month to dissuade her:

I believe she will shortly come to England. You cannot

think of adopting her. She has fine dispositions, but a
perverse cross in them which requires unremitting atten-
tion to make her become good or clever. To let her run
the ordinary course of children is to devote her to ruin
and who would like to lend their hand to this and yet who
but a mother, and one of no uncommon kind, can be ex-
pected to give up her whole existence to a child.
Trelawny does not seem to me to know much about edu-
cation: or he would proceed quite otherwise than he does:
he thinks wishing one’s child to be perfect will effect it
spite of bad example and the most pernicious circum-
stances.

…it may seem she was being territorial, but I believe that in writing this
Claire was right: all in all, she had far more experience educating chil-
dren than Mary, and as we’ll see with Percy, Mary didn’t do a very ad-
mirable job of it…”
“…so what happened to Zella?”
“…she lived with Trelawny’s mother, at times visiting Trelawny in
Usk. She married a certain Mr. Olguin, and went to live in Argentina,
returning at some specified time later to live in London on Hinde Street,
where she saw her father for the last time, characteristically having a
servant show him to the door when he cast aspersions on her husband’s
wine cellar after being offered a glass of wine–perhaps it was a misun-
derstanding, as Trelawny, by then, drank very little, but it seems typical
of the man–getting his comeuppance by his own progeny…”
“…I’m sure it didn’t make him lose any sleep…”
“…no, I’m sure also…”
“…you haven’t mentioned Percy for a while–how was he doing?”

764
 “…I’ll give you a basic run-down of his school years. Mary, of
course, was a doting, over-protective mother, and I think it’s really a
shame what she managed to make of him, given he was Shelley’s son,
but it happens all too often with literary figures. By age nine Percy was
fat, disliked poetry, and, as even Mary admitted, ‘had a want of sensibil-
ity.’ Claire hoped he would become a poet and philosopher, and she al-
ways showed a keen interest in him, tending to delude herself about his
prospects; Mary, on the contrary, wanted him to be a classical scholar
and a gentleman. There’s an anecdote, told by Mathew Arnold, that
when the actress Fanny Kemble told Mary she should send Percy to a
school where he would learn to think for himself, her reply was, ‘Teach
him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like
other people!’ When it was time to send him to school he didn’t have
what it would take to send him to any of the better schools, so she sent
him to Harrow, where Byron had gone to school. He started there in
September, 1832…”
“…I guess Claire wasn’t too thrilled about that…”
“…she was horrified, but she made it sound like it was more because
of the health dangers than anything else. I think she tried to frighten
Mary a bit about it–listen to this:

I am very glad to hear that Percy likes Harrow, but I

shudder from head to foot when I think of your boldness
in sending him there. I think in certain things you are the
most daring woman I ever knew. There are few mothers
who having suffered the misfortunes you have, and hav-
ing such advantages depending upon the life of an only
son, would venture to expose that life to the dangers of a
public school…I hope nothing will happen to Percy–but
the year, the school itself that you have chosen and the
ashes that lie near it, and the hauntings of my own mind,
all seem to announce the approach of that consummation
which I dread.

...but aside from her fears, which seem extreme, I would guess Claire
was also unhappy about the fact Byron went there, and saw this as more
of Mary’s Byron worshipping…”
“…it was a boarding school, right?”
“…yes, but Mary, ever the protective mother, moved herself to Har-
row the next year so Percy could live with her and attend school by day.
When Percy asked her if he could be a full-time boarder the next year,
she wrote in her journal:

My heart & soul are bound up in Percy–my race is run–I

hope absolutely nothing except that when he shall be old-

765
 er & I a little richer to leave a solitude, very unnatural to
any one, & peculiarly disagreeable to me…

…and goes on to acknowledge that Percy would rather be with his

friends, ‘and I who have bartered my very existence for his good–have I
done him good?’ She had at least some self-awareness, as a few years
after he entered Cambridge, in 1837, she wrote a devastating assessment
of him in her journal:

…he will never follow up to any real study–there is no

aim–no exertion–no ambition. I spent more than I ought
trying to form a society in which he might improve him-
self…and when he did go into society he put on an air of
stupidity anything but attractive.

…it’s such a waste of human life–probably largely the fault of her over-
protectiveness, but I suppose it takes having a familial situation as diffi-
cult as Shelley’s to create a real writer. Timothy Shelley was a brick
wall, and the betrayal of Shelley’s mother and sisters must have been
devastating for him, propelling him into an existential void beyond the
holds of his family of origin and nation–the two chief bonds people usu-
ally cling to. Mary softened all the edges for Percy, and sought an entry
for him into the very class that Shelley had rebelled against: I shudder to
think what an imaginary meeting between an adult Percy Florence and
Shelley would be like…”
“…it would probably confirm all of his worst suspicions and feelings
about Mary…but I suppose her over-protectiveness was inevitable, giv-
en what happened to all her other children–and, anyway, how often are
children as illustrious as their famous fathers or mothers? Aside from
Mary Shelley herself and both her parents, I can only think of Re-
noir…and Tarkovsky…”
“…there are all of Bach’s children, but certainly none even came
close to their father, and Johann Strauss the elder, whose son did exceed
him…”
“…but writers?”
“…there’s Klaus and Erika Mann, for example: they were amazing
people, and I think Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto, as a single work, is as
good as anything his father wrote–and certainly much better than any of
Thomas Mann’s attempts to come to terms with Nazism…still, it’s true
he suffered under the shadow of his father. Otherwise, as far as writers
and thinkers go, I can’t come up with anyone else–perhaps it’s because
so few writers and thinkers even have any children, and when they do, it
must be very hard to deal with, especially when fame is involved: look
at Goethe’s son, who was a nobody and died young, or Picasso’s son
Claude, who became his chauffer, or the children of Hemingway or
Joyce…”

766
 “…so Mary may not be entirely to blame…”
“…no, but she certainly had a large influence on what happened to
him…”
“…was she really as solitary as she paints herself?”
“…she was still hurt by Jane’s betrayal in 1833. Look at this journal
entry in November, which follows a section recounting her re-reading
and copying Shelley’s letters:

Life is not ill until we wish to forget–Jane first inspired

me with that miserable feeling, staining past years as she
did–taking the sweetness from memory, & giving it in-
stead a serpents tooth– & now–O that I could forget!

…but I think the real thing bothering her during this period was a ro-
mantic interest that went wrong…”
“…what was that?”
“…his name was Aubrey Beauclerk: he was five years younger than
Mary, and already the father of two illegitimate children–one with Lady
Charlotte Bury: remember her, the mother of Eliza, Shelley’s mystery
woman?”
“…the novelist?”
“…yes–he was twenty-six years younger than her!”
“…did Mary know about it?”
“…it’s difficult to tell what Mary knew and didn’t know. He was
elected to parliament as an Independent in 1832. Mary wrote to Jane
about him in May, 1833, and she seemed to have high hopes for a pro-
posal from him:

It is a great addition to happiness to know that there is af-

fection & care for one in one heart, joined to some degree
of power to make those things of avail–I hope things will
turn out well–I trust they will–that is all I know.

…but by August she was nearly suicidal with grief, probably over Au-
brey’s decision to marry a mutual acquaintance, Ida Goring. The day he
married her, February 14th, 1834, Mary’s journal simply said ‘Farewell,’
and three days later she wrote:

I felt once before and I cannot remember whether at any

other time, that to the first gush of sorrow after an over-
whelming blow, a calm succeeds–so undisturbed so per-
fect, that we do not believe we have suffered any disas-
ter–thus it is now…

767
…and she would write, a year later, ‘An anniversary strange and sad–&
bitter.’ She fell into a deep depression–see what she wrote to Maria Gis-
borne on June 11, 1835:

…every feeling I have is blighted—I have no ambition—

no care for fame—Loneliness has made a wreck of me.—
I was always a dependent thing—wanting fosterage &
support—I am left to myself—crushed by fortune—And I
am nothing…

…this was in answer to why she wasn’t writing more, but in fact she had
just published, the previous April, a novel called Lodore…”
“…what was that about?”
“…it was a pure money maker, but it had some autobiographical ele-
ments: the protagonist survives losing a love who marries a woman of a
higher class, and she dedicates herself to her child. However, it wasn’t
enough to sublimate her sadness: by that summer her depression had be-
come a physical illness, and in August she would forgive Jane and write
to her, asking her to ‘Come to me immediately as you love me…Come,
My only Friend, Come—to the deserted one—I am too ill to write
more’…”
“…and did she come?”
“…yes, she actually went to Harrow and nursed Mary for several
weeks. Their friendship was never the same, but it became a bit closer
after that…”
“…what had happened to Jane in those years?”
“…I mentioned the child she had with Hogg–Mary Prudentia Hogg:
she died as a toddler, in 1829. In 1831 they moved to Maida Place, and
the woman Hogg had been addressing as his ‘Fairy’ in his letters be-
came, rather disgustingly, ‘Dearest Mama’: that about says it all for the
rest of their lives together–oedipal bliss. Hogg became increasingly self-
ish, dull, and sarcastic, and as time went on, he became embittered due
to his discontent with his life. Mary referred to him once as ‘that lump of
self-concentrated flesh’…”
“…did they have any more children?”
“…Jane became pregnant again in 1835, giving birth in February,
1836, to Prudentia Sarah Hogg, who they would come to call Dina.
Mary was her Godmother, so it shows they had patched things up a bit,
but throughout 1836 Mary continued to be ill–I think partly as a reaction
to a series of deaths: both the Gisbornes died early that year, but the
death that really affected Mary, of course, was the death of her father, on
April 7th…”
“…what had he been doing all that time?”
“…trying to survive, mostly. He did do some very good work: he
wrote a History of the Commonwealth, which was published in four vol-
umes between 1824 and 1828, and a kind of compendium of his late

768
thoughts entitled Thoughts on Man, his Nature, Productions, and Dis-
coveries, in 1831. He had become enough of a cultural fixture to be giv-
en a sinecure as a fire warden for the Houses of Parliament in 1834, and,
given he was an anti-government anarchist, it’s rather ironic and funny
that during his ‘watch,’ on October 16th, 1834, the Houses of Parliament
burnt down: although his books couldn’t accomplish the over-throw of
the government, his negligence partially did! You may know the famous
Turner painting of the event…”
“…Godwin was responsible for that!?”
“…well, he wasn’t immediately responsible: some workmen had been
burning tallies formerly used in the Court of Exchequer: they wanted to
quit work early, and so they threw too many at a time into the furnace
and it overheated the chimney flues, which came into contact with some
dry timber, and that was that…”
“…where was Godwin?”
“…he had gone to the theater to see a production of Richard III! I
think it’s hilarious that a man who wanted to get rid of government
should be connected to the burning of Westminster…”
“…I guess the government didn’t think it was so funny…”
“…no one held him responsible, as the job wasn’t a real job; I don’t
think anyone really cared all that much about him anymore–at his funer-
al there were only Mary, Percy, Trelawny, and four others! He left his
manuscripts and letters to Mary, hoping she would edit them, and stipu-
lated that any proceeds from the publications would go to Mrs. God-
win…”
“…did she do it?”
“…I think she had planned to do a biography about him, but then she
gave it up in the end–as you can imagine, she had lived her life under the
shadow of Godwin, and now he was gone. She was quite broken up
about it, as you can see from this journal entry from June 7th:

O my God–what a lot is mine–marked by tragedy &

death–tracked by disappointments & unutterable wretch-
edness–blow after blow–my heart dies within me–I say
‘would I might die.’ That is wicked–but life is a struggle
& a burden beyond my strength. My health is irremedia-
bly shattered–my hopes entirely low–day after day–& if a
joy come it is so inextricably & above all so closely
linked with misery–that I feel it only to know that it is
gone–I have lost my dear darling Father–What I then
went through–watching alone his dying hours!

…she somatized her feelings, became ill, and ended up convalescing in

Brighton from October, 1836, through February, 1837. When she re-
turned she was somewhat better in body, but scarcely better in spirit,
writing in her journal, ‘Today I have arrived from Brighton–somewhat

769
recovered–I come to a comfortless home–is that bodily pain? No–it is
mortification, desolation & loneliness, that eats into the soul.’ She felt
increasingly isolated, and in a long journal entry in October, 1838, she
assessed her entire life, trying to look at her faults and virtues in a bal-
anced way. Apparently it had been partly spurred by Trelawny, as she
wrote ‘the universal abuse of Trelawny always dispirits me,’ and several
sections of her self-assessment seem to be a defense against his criti-
cisms…”
“…about what?”
“…for one thing, her politics–or rather her refusal to take a position.
He kept goading her to put her talents to the use of the radical, liberal,
and even feminist causes…”
“…feminist? Trelawny?”
“…yes, he actually wrote a pamphlet on the rights of women…”
“…while meanwhile exploiting them at every opportunity!”
“…I wouldn’t put promiscuity, carelessness, negligence, fickleness,
and congenital infidelity in the same category as exploitation…”
“…perhaps not, but still…”
“…anyway, he also goaded her about not embarking quickly enough
on the Godwin biography project, and, as always, for her social preten-
sions and the company she kept…”
“…why was that–because she wouldn’t be seduced by him?”
“…perhaps that’s part of it, but also because she didn’t help him with
the Shelley project he had in mind, and, more recently, because her
newest and final novel, Falkner, published in 1837, had a clear carica-
ture of him which wasn’t very positive…”
“…what was it about?”
“…it’s a melodrama, of course–a mélange of the lives of Byron and
Trelawny, but in keeping with Mary’s increasing conservatism: 1837
was, after all, the year that Queen Victoria came to power and the Victo-
rian age officially commenced. The novel portrays the ‘dangers of de-
racination’: the protagonist, Falkner, is abused in childhood and takes
refuge in the company of a Mrs. Rivers and her daughter Alithea, with
whom he falls in love. Her father refuses the marriage, and a series of
events leads him to India as a cavalryman in the East India Company–
like Medwin and Edward Williams. Instead of subscribing to the enter-
prise, he embraces intercultural hybridity, in that he begins to embrace
aspects of Indian sensibility, and to reject aspects of his Britishness, alt-
hough he also tries to inculcate the best of Europe in some of the na-
tives. After ten years he comes into his inheritance, and returns to Eng-
land only to find Alithea married to another man. He feels her husband
is unworthy, and he tries to talk her into leaving him, but she refuses, so
he abducts her, and she drowns trying to escape him. He considers sui-
cide, but instead he travels to a small village in Cornwall. There, once
again, he considers suicide, but his gun is knocked out of his hand at the
last moment by a girl–an orphan named Elizabeth. He adopts her as his

770
daughter, and together they escape to the continent, where they wander
until he parks her in one of the Ionian islands, and goes off to fight the
Greek war of independence, just as Trelawny did. During this time he
longs for his adoptive daughter to grow up and become his lover, but
Elizabeth recognizes that her relationship with him has been abnormally
close. She still wants to help him, and it falls to her to re-acculturate him
after they return to England. He is arrested for the murder of Alithea,
imprisoned, and faces public scrutiny of his actions during the trial, but
he is found innocent of her murder and released, and then must live with
his guilt from that point on…”
“…she certainly got her revenge on him! But was the point of the
novel–that the kind of life Trelawny lived couldn’t be sustained?”
“…that such a person must be humbled, must submit and be reinte-
grated into society through acceptance of its normative judgments–not
exactly a Shelleyean, Byronic or Nietzschean position…”
“…I suppose Trelawny was not too happy about it…”
“…certainly not, for it implicitly critiqued his marriage to his Greek
child-bride, his relations with Zella, and, perhaps most of all, what he
was currently up to with one of Mary’s friends…”
“…who was that?”
“…her friend Augusta Goring: she was the estranged wife of an MP,
and in the summer of 1838 Trelawny ran off with her to live in Putney.
In 1839, he had an illegitimate child with her, and they eventually
moved to Usk, in Wales, where he had two more children with her, and
eventually married her in 1847. Apparently Mary cut her off when she
ran off with Trelawny, and Trelawny couldn’t forgive her for it…”
“…it’s a bit hypocritical of her, given her history…”
“…more than a bit…getting back to her self-assessment: as always, it
had elements of truth to it, but also serious distortions. She was capable
of some self-critique, and admitted that if she couldn’t put herself for-
ward in the world, it was because she lacked the capacity, plus she ad-
mitted her general moodiness and irritability–listen to this:

Irritability of disposition is indeed my great fault. In the

hour of struggle & action it disappears–but in inaction &
solitude it frets me unworthily. Want of animal spirits of
liveliness and strength to talk and amuse has been my
great drawback in life both in society & alone…

…and a bit further down, she ends the passage…

If I write the above it is that those who love me hereafter

know that I am not all to blame–nor merit the heavy ac-
cusations cast on me for not putting myself forward–I
cannot do that–it is against my nature–as well cast me
from a precipice & rail at me for not flying.

771
…she was quite close to certain truths about herself, but there were still
significant areas that would never fully emerge into consciousness; in
fact, she became sick from bringing herself back into the truth’s proxim-
ity during this period, because it was in August, 1838, that Sir Timothy
finally gave his approval for her to publish Shelley’s poems, provided
there was no biography attached to them…”
“…his poems are his biography…”
“…yes, and there was no way of getting around that, so Mary decided
to append biographical notes to the end of each of the years spent with
Shelley, and that was what really brought her back deeply into her
memories, opening her up to her grief. She wrote Hunt:

Time may flow on—but it only adds to the keenness &

vividness with which I view the past—adds, how much:
for when tragedies & most bitter dramas were in the
course of acting I did not feel their meaning & their con-
sequences as poignantly as I now do—I cannot write or
speak of Shelley to any purpose according to my views
without taking a seal from a fountain, that I cannot bring
myself yet to let flow.

…and it also brought her into the proximity of some cruel truths, and
some difficult choices, which deepened her depression and threatened to
make her ill. Look at this journal entry written after she had completed
her task:

Illness did ensue–what an illness–driving me to the verge

of insanity–Often I felt the cord would snap & I should
no longer be able to rule my thoughts with fearful strug-
gles–miserable relapses. After long repose, I became
somewhat better.

…part of the reason was that she had been attacked by all sides for many
of her editorial choices…”
“…the changes of titles you mentioned before?”
“…among other things. In the first edition she didn’t publish certain
stanzas of Queen Mab, which Trelawny took her to task for, and she
suppressed the dedication to Harriet, which Hogg took her to task for.
She was not entirely wrong about these things: when she did put the
stanzas back in the 1841 edition the publisher was sued for blasphemous
libel–the last case in English history on those grounds…”
“…did it succeed?”
“…no, the case failed. As far as the dedication was concerned, she
defended herself by stating that Shelley himself had been against the
dedication in subsequent editions. Here in the journal she wrote, ‘Poor

772
Harriet to whose sad fate I attribute so many of my own heavy sorrows
as the atonement claimed by fate for her death’–a passage that was
scratched out, probably by Lady Jane Shelley, and she goes on to write,

There are other verses I should well like to obliterate for-

ever–but they will be printed–& any to her could in no
way tend to my discomfort; or gratify one ungenerous
feeling. They shall be restored; though I do not feel easy
as to the good I do S–I may have been mistaken…

…the ‘her’ she refers to may have been Harriet, but given she was able
to write Harriet’s name in the passage before, it’s more likely it was
Claire or Jane…”
“…and do you think she deliberately omitted the names in the titles,
or put her own name rather than someone else?”
“…in some cases, yes, but in most cases it was due to repression–
that’s why I think she became increasingly ill: suppression and repres-
sion recoil on us, especially when it takes an effort to accomplish them.
You can sense the toll that the editing took on her in the notes them-
selves–a creeping sense of paralysis gradually sets in the closer you get
to Shelley’s death. It begins with the notes from the poems of 1821:

My task becomes inexpressibly painful as the year draws

near that which sealed our earthly fate, and each poem,
and each event it records, has a real or mysterious con-
nection with the fatal catastrophe. I feel that I am incapa-
ble of putting on paper the history of those times.

…and finally, with the notes to the poems of 1822, she admits to a total
breakdown:

With this last year of the life of Shelley these Notes end.
They are not what I intended them to be. I began with en-
ergy, and a burning desire to impart to the world, in wor-
thy language, the sense I have of the virtues and genius of
the beloved and the lost; my strength has failed under the
task. Recurrence to the past, full of its own deep and un-
forgotten joys and sorrows, contrasted with succeeding
years of painful and solitary struggle, has shaken my
health. Days of great suffering have followed my at-
tempts to write, and these again produced a weakness and
languor that spread their sinister influence over these
notes. I dislike speaking of myself, but cannot help apol-
ogizing to the dead, and to the public, for not having exe-
cuted in the manner I desired the history I engaged to
give of Shelley’s writings.

773
…all in all, the process of editing the poems was a cross she had to bear,
but a cross under whose weight she was crushed. It practically destroyed
her faith in her friends. Look what she wrote in the same journal entry,
after she dealt with the various accusations:

In so arduous a task others might hope for encouragement

& kindness from their friends–I knew mine better–I am in
their eyes undeserving even of the common courtesies of
life–God knows what will be the end! I hate myself in the
midst of all–yet do not half think that I deserve my own
hatred or that of others. I am instable–sometimes melan-
choly & have been called on occasion imperious–but I
never did an ungenerous act in my life–I sympathize
warmly with others; I have wasted my heart in their love
and their service.

…by the time she was vacationing in Brighton in May, 1840, the worst
had passed, but you can sense from this journal entry that she was
changed, forever:

My health impaired by a thousand mental sufferings has

cast chains on my spirit–yet though I no longer soar,–I
repose–though I no longer deem all things attainable–I
enjoy what is–& while I feel that I have, whatever I have
lost of youth and hope–acquired the enduring affection of
a noble heart–& Percy shows such excellent disposition I
feel that I am much the gainer in life…

…I had first thought she had become involved with someone, but then I
realized she was talking about Percy…”
“…it seems somewhat oedipal…”
“…it was entirely oedipal: oedipal struggles should not be won by the
parents! To give you some idea how bad it was, she was to write to
Claire a few years later that she was ‘married to Percy’…”
“…oh no!”
“…now that Godwin was dead, Mary was replicating the same oedi-
pal closeness–but I’ll come back to Percy in a while, for that would be
getting ahead of myself…”
“…yes, we can take a break for now: let’s have a cappuccino and then
take a walk–we will have to go back the way we came, yes?”
“…do you want to stop by the hotel?”
“…just for a moment–if we’re going that way…”
“…we go right past it, and continue on up the hill to the Circus Max-
imus and the Palatine Hill, then over to the Colosseum and across to the
Forum…”

774
 “…there’s the waiter…”
“…due cappuccini per favore…”
“…that was delicious…”
“…we’ll have to come here again…”
“…maybe after the Baths of Caracalla tomorrow, for lunch…”
“…that suits me…”
“…these ancient ruins make Shelley’s life seem like it was only yes-
terday…”
“…in a way, it was–I realize it more and more as I get older. Look at
it this way: when I was twenty, it took eight of my lifetimes to reach
back to Shelley’s life; even though I’m thirty-five and fifteen years more
have passed between since I was twenty, now it takes only five of my
lifetimes to reach back to Shelley’s life; when another fifteen years
passes, and I am fifty, less than four of my lifetimes will be between us;
at sixty-five, about three…”
“…I never thought of it that way before…”
“…it comes when you reach age thirty-five!”
“…I’m in no rush to get there…”
“…it will come sooner than you think…”
“…I know…”
“…the one-hundred-seventy-five years’ difference between us and
Shelley is dwarfed by the ruins we’re about to see–compared to the age
of the Colosseum, we’re like shadows appearing just for a fleeting in-
stant–and Mary, sitting there with little William oblivious to the danger,
was only here yesterday…”
“…I was thinking of that–it’s as if it were all in layers, but still pre-
sent…”
“…but even empires are fleeting–in a few minutes on the Palatine
we’ll see the ruins of the Circus Maximus constructed by the Etruscan
emperors, Augustus’ house, Domitian’s palace, the Baths of Septimius
Severus and Maxentius, the temple of Elagabulus, and then all the Chris-
tian shrines grafted on to them…”
“…for me, the mountain of broken pottery over there somehow makes
it seem more real than even than imperial ruins…”
“…I know what you mean–it’s just a garbage dump, but it speaks of
daily life…”
“…so shall we go search among the ruins?”
“…shadows searching for shadows…”

775
 

“…and then one day many years later, one realized that one’s past had
entirely detached itself from the flow of one’s present: it had become an
island existing only in one’s memory like a distant, unreachable dream
landscape from out of a painting by de Chirico. This landscape came to
haunt one inescapably like the landscapes from one’s childhood: the re-
ality they embodied no longer existed…this sense of loss became espe-
cially poignant upon one’s return, many years later, to the origin, and
the unsettling discovery that what one had taken as an unshakeable
permanence was as ephemeral and fleeting as a summer’s day…”

“…a sign we are, without meaning, without pain, and we have nearly
lost our language in foreign lands…” (Hölderlin)

“…there is no there there…” (Gertrude Stein)

“…suddenly, walking down a street, be it real or be it a dream, one re-

alizes for the first time that the years have flown, that all this has passed
forever and will live on only in memory; and then memory turns inward
with a strange, clutching brilliance and one goes over these scenes and
incidents perpetually, in dream and reverie, while walking a street,
while lying with a woman, while reading a book, while talking to a
stranger…suddenly, but always with terrific insistence and terrific accu-
racy, these memories intrude, rise up like ghosts and permeate every
fiber of one’s being…” (Henry Miller)

…at the same time, the foreign landscape one has come to inhabit pos-
sesses one with a different kind of intensity from one’s place of origin: it
is an intensity of estrangement and heightened awareness. A foreign
landscape remains vividly present, not falling into the half-conscious
sedimentation of the landscape of origin; consequently, the one who has
departed remains irrevocably ungrounded, as if one had pushed away
from the shallows into the deep channel of the river of time, swept far
beyond the illusion of immobility…

“…in a foreign country, the pattern of days is less predictable–each one

has its character, and is easier to remember. So, too, the weather; and
so, too, the shape and feel of newspapers, the sound of bells, the taste of
beer and bread. It is all rather like waking up and not knowing who or
where one is. If, instead of simple recognition, one can go through a
proper realization, then quite ordinary things take on an edge; one

776
keeps discovering oneself miraculously alive. So, the strangeness of a
place propels one into life. The foreigner cannot afford to take anything
for granted…” (Alastair Reid)

…one lives in the impossible present between the immutable past and
the unrealized future, and yet cannot coincide with the passing moment
which always takes place in the blink of an eye; however, one can attain
the moment that has passed, finding it again outside of time, in moments
of timelessness…

“…the truth was that the being within me who was enjoying this impres-
sion, was enjoying it because of something shared between a day in the
past and the present moment, something extra-temporal, and this being
appeared only when, through one of these moments of identity between
the present and the past, it was able to find itself in the only milieu in
which it could live and enjoy the essence of things, that is to say outside
of time…” (Proust)

“…I was the hour which is to make me pure…” (Mallarmé)

…one finally is one is neither here nor there: divested of space and re-
leased into time, where one has disappeared–one’s presence become an
absence, and absence, a presence…

777
 

Ascending the steps to the doorway of the Trinità dei Monti, they lean
against the white marble balustrade and gaze at the vista of Rome
stretching across the horizon in the dusk–a band of deep orange shading
quickly into indigo, against which are set the dark silhouettes of the twin
domes of the Santa Maria dei Miracoli and the Santa Maria in Mon-
tesanto, the dome of Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso, with the dome of
St. Peter’s in the distance behind. After a few minutes, they descend and
take a photograph of the house at the end of the wedge formed by the
Via Sestina and the Via Gregoriana, then threading their way down the
tourist-thronged Spanish Steps to the swamped marble boat of the Fon-
tana della Barcaccia at the bottom. After a few more photographs of the
steps and the Keats-Shelley House on the corner, they walk down the
Piazza di Spagna past the Columna de la Inmaculada and on to the
small Piazza Mignanelli, where they take a seat at the outside terrace of
the Ristorante alla Rampa. They order Prosciutto Crudo di Parma con
Melon as an appetizer, Ravioli fatti in casa al pesce fresco as a first
course, Sogliola ala mugnaia and Calimari ai ferri as second courses,
and acqua minerale and a bottle of Falanghina Ripa Bianca Galluccio
wine.
“…I think the waiter must think we’re crazy–having fish ravioli fol-
lowed by fish in the second course…”
“…he’s not from a land-locked country–this trip will be our last
chance to get fresh fish for a long time. Anyway, you’re having the fish;,
I’m having a mollusk…”
“…don’t get technical…”
“…how are your feet?”
“…they feel like we’ve done some real walking…”
“…we have…”
“…so what did you think of the Keats-Shelley house?”
“…not much, really: I’m not such a big Keats fan, and I think they
pay too little attention to Shelley–the girl wasn’t even able to confirm
Shelley’s house on the Via Sestina…”
“…she was just a girl, not an expert…”
“…I know…”
“…you’re not sure the one we saw was it?”
“…I think it was, but I’m not one-hundred-percent certain…”
“…but one of those houses up there was…”
“…unless the Hotel Hassler was built on top of it! What I remember
is that it’s supposed to be the last house on the Via Sestina before the
church, so, if it’s on the far side, we took pictures of the right house, but,
if it’s on the other side, then the hotel was probably built on top of it…”

778
 “…at least we know where Shelley lived on the Corso because of the
plaque…”
“…yes, and also James Joyce: strange that both buildings are now
banks…”
“…it’s a good address…”
“…yes, they both always had good addresses–I envy them that…”
“…you haven’t done too bad…”
“…but to walk in the Forum, Colosseum and Baths of Caracalla daily,
as Shelley did–that’s living!”
“…and to walk through Staroměstské náměsti, the Charles Bridge,
and the Malá Strana every day, as you do?”
“…you’re right, and probably Shelley became just as blasé about
Rome as Joyce became blasé about Paris–and as I have become blasé
about Prague…”
“…that’s what happens when you live anywhere a long time…”
“…but there are moments when I suddenly stop, and fully realize just
how beautiful and amazing it all really is…”
“…and what amazed you the most here today–aside from the
Protestant Cemetery, of course…?
“…oh, it all amazed me–but it would amaze me more with about
ninety percent fewer tourists…”
“…I think for me it was the Colosseum–I’ve seen it in photos a thou-
sand times, but I still found it very impressive…”
“…yes–it’s impressive…”
“…Baroque Rome doesn’t impress me so much–we have enough of
the Baroque in Prague…”
“…I agree…I was also impressed to see where that scene from Tar-
kovsky’s Nostalghia took place on the Capitoline Hill–the Cordonata
and the other stairway, the Piazza del Campidoglio, and the equestrian
statue of Marcus Aurelius where the madman, Domenico, played by Er-
land Josephson, immolates himself…”
“…I never knew the scene was set in so central a place…”
“…neither did I…”
“…here comes our melon and prosciutto…”
“…just what I needed…”
“…and where is the spa that’s in the film?”
“…that’s the Bagno Vignoni–it’s about one-hundred-forty kilometers
north of here…”
“…it’s a pity it’s so far–I would have liked to have seen it…oh, that’s
delicious!”
“…and we forgot to toast–salute!”
“…chin chin…”
“…so we were speaking about Claire–she had returned to London…”
“…yes, she had returned to London with the Bennets, and she was
determined to take care of her mother after Godwin died…”
“…and did she?”

779
 “…not at first: Trelawny had sensed that it would not be a good idea
to live under the same roof as her mother, so he threw cold water on the
idea in a letter he wrote her on May 14, 1836, as he continued his habit
of flirting with her:

As to your housekeeping plan–the most feasible thing in

that line that I know of is your being house-keeper to my
house-less self if the graphic portraiture you sent me of
yourself is true,–as to your mother, you couldn’t live with
her–you know that icebergs like Godwin or myself any-
body may get on with; but you are made of different met-
tle;–now that Godwin is gone–I am the only calm and
dispassionate one left for you and Mary to repose on.

…I’m not sure what portrait he’s talking about–I only know the one by
Amelia Curran that was done at the top of the stairs here, and certainly,
if it was a copy of that, Trelawny would realize that was Claire at a
much younger age…”
“…perhaps he was flattering her…”
“…that’s possible…in any case, she must have taken his advice as she
continued to live with the Bennets in Mayfair through 1836 and most of
1837. There was some kind of break with them, as she wrote to Mary in
April, 1838, ‘I am so certain that every endeavour will be used to pre-
vent my seeing the girls, that I do not wish to attempt it, till Charlotte is
one and twenty and then I know she will assert her rights and allow no
one to meddle between us.’ She wrote to Percy that the Bennet girls had
been shut away from society as if they were ‘in prison,’ so I guess that
Claire had made a stand for their rights and was dismissed. She changed
jobs in December, 1837, and moved to Winkfield, near Windsor, to be-
come governess to Horatia Sanford, about whom Claire wrote ‘she is so
disagreeable one’s heart fails within one.’ That didn’t last long, and by
March, 1838, she had decided to quit this job and move in with her
mother because, by that time, she really did need someone to look after
her. It meant that she had to support both of them, and she was racing
around London doing various teaching jobs in order to make ends meet.
In October, 1840, she had written to Mary, who had complained to Jane
that ‘I never see Claire,’ about her typical day in London:

…this is now my life–I go by nine to Mrs. Kitchener’s

where I give lessons till one–then I rush to the top of Wil-
ton Place and get a Richmond omnibus and go to Rich-
mond to give a lesson to the Cohen’s–their daughter is
going to be married to a Genoese and must have an Ital-
ian lesson every day that she may speak Italian when she
gets with her husband to Genoa. That vile omnibus takes
two hours to get to Richmond and the same to come back

780
 and so with giving my lessons I am never home before
seven–I get no dinner–nothing within my lips from eight
in the morning till seven at night–then the rain and fog
and cold of this month–I am nearly done for…

…so she was rather busy with her life in London…”

“…to say the least! Sounds like one of my days…”
“…in the midst of all this at one point Trelawny jokingly invited her
to come live in Putney with him and Augusta in a ménage à trois:

Well then will you come live at Putney–and to qualify

your absolute contentment–instill knowledge into Zella–
or will you kick off your harness entirely and scamper
off–free as the winds i.e. live with Mrs. Goring if in ei-
ther of these plans you could find contentment, they can
be realized–executed in the completest manner–my
judgment is good when unmixt with passion–and I would
not inconsiderately act where your interests are concerned
or advise you to act–of course I have not uttered a word
to any of your people.–Mary is the blab of blabs–she lives
on hogs wash–what utter failures most people are.

…it was all put in his usual half-mocking way, so I’m sure it wasn’t
meant seriously…”
“…he never stopped, did he? Even when he knew it wasn’t work-
ing…”
“…no, but she did go visit him once in Putney–there’s no record of
what happened. Otherwise, her life was mostly drudgery from 1838
through 1841, when her mother died on June 17th. Unlike Mary, who
seems to have begun to waste away after her father’s death, Claire
sprang into action after her mother died. I don’t know exactly how it
happened, but Claire somehow managed to arrange an annuity from the
inheritance she expected from Shelley. That, and a £100 gift from Mary,
allowed her to set up an apartment in Paris, on the Rue Caumartin…”
“…Paris?”
“…she was there five years, and it seems she was happy. She wrote to
Mary in November of that year,

At last, after a wretched state of affairs of doubt and dis-

may, I have decided; that is to say I have allowed my
feelings to decide for me, my understanding, poor thing,
being literally in the last stage of feebleness from the tor-
tures inflicted upon it by perpetual scruples. I am happy
in Paris; I never was happy before in my life; and I think
therefore it is madness to go from here, unless absolutely
compelled.

781
…it seems to have been a plan that was undertaken suddenly, because
she didn’t discuss it with Mary, telling her after it was a fait accompli.
Right after the passage I just read there’s a very interesting passage:

If one only dared to be frank, in this world, and tell all

one feels–and all that rarely, so rarely, but yet sometime
is, how clear and comprehensible would one become both
in action and thought to others, but you know, that with-
out meaning to have mysteries, yet one is often obliged to
conceal one’s affairs, or one’s feelings from the very per-
son one would most like to disclose them to. More I can-
not say; but I am sure your mind, which is all intuition,
will guess my meaning, and be glad that I am happy, and
think that I am right in even forcing circumstances and
fate to contribute to the continuation of my contentment.

…her biographer thought that this was a reference to some unknown

lover that she had briefly in Paris, but my intuition tells me there’s less
than meets the eye in her words: she’s merely referring to the fact that
she took her decision, acted precipitously, and didn’t mention it to Mary
until the plan was well under way. In March, 1842, Claire had bought a
lease on the upper storey of an apartment building on Rue Neuve de Cli-
chy, on the borders of Montmartre. For a period of time her life was a bit
boring, but also free from cares, as she wrote to Mary in July:

I ought to have written you before, but I cannot bear to

write a letter. The friendless solitary life I lead here quite
deadens my intellect and spirits. I lead the most quiet life,
almost always alone; always alone at home I may say…I
am afraid if I stay any longer at home, I shall cut my
throat. One good thing is I am free from all care–I really
have none–and this is a great blessing and my health is
greatly improved by it.

…but really she was just suffering Paris in the summer: she didn’t know
anyone well enough yet to be invited somewhere out of the city, so the
city was quite empty. Over time her circle would expand greatly, includ-
ing her former employer, Mrs. Kaisaroff, who came to Paris after her
husband died with her daughter Natalie. She would also eventually meet
Austrians who knew her brother Charles, and as he was teaching in the
highest circles of Viennese society, this meant some well-connected
people. However, the upper class French, Russians, and Austrians were
the heart of the restoration mentality: she was a bit naïve when she later
wrote to Mary about how, in the ‘Clichy set’ salons, she was attacked
whenever she spoke about something political, and that the liberals she

782
met were only ‘pseudo-liberals.’ She wrote Mary, ‘I am proud to say,
not one of them can keep pace with me in liberality–I leave them all five
hundred miles behind me’–but of course Mary no longer considered her-
self a liberal either, so Claire’s words fell on deaf ears. She had a chance
to act on her liberality almost immediately, as in July, Jane wrote to
Claire asking her to take in her daughter Dina and her illegitimate child
by Leigh Hunt’s son Henry–we know about it because, despite the fact
Jane Williams implored Claire to ‘make a religion’ out of burning her
letters, Claire held on to them…”
“…why did Jane want Dina in Paris?”
“…Jane didn’t approve of Henry Hunt: he didn’t have very good ca-
reer prospects, and he was having an affair with some other woman…”
“…that doesn’t sound too promising…”
“…not everything is as it seems. I suppose he did have financial prob-
lems, and probably did have an affair with someone–young men being
what they are, but Claire would come to believe that Henry and Dina
were quite genuinely in love, and it turned out she was right. Jane didn’t
want to believe this, so she separated the lovers, and when the baby was
born on June 11th she planned to have Dina wean it quickly and give it to
a nurse so Dina could be shipped off to Paris and out of the way. As it
happened, the baby died after a few weeks, but still Dina was sent to
Paris, arriving August 28th. Claire expressed her position towards the
situation in a letter to Percy:

How long she will stay will depend I suppose upon how
she finds her spirits, and how she bears absence from
Henry. He will very likely look upon me as a fiend that
for no reason in the world, torments him for the pure love
of tormenting–but I shall never speak one word against
him to Dina and I never have–but leave her as hitherto to
the working of her own mind.

…in the event, Dina departed Paris by September and eloped with Henry
Hunt. Claire wrote to Mary that she found the couple was very much in
love, and Henry’s intentions honorable, based on letters that she read…”
“…was she right?”
“…she was right about their love for one another–they remained mar-
ried and had seven children together. Unfortunately, Jane was right
about his prospects: he was often in debt. Jane was furious about what
happened, and wrote this to Claire:

I have spent my health, my strength, my fortune in their

service. I have met nothing in return but treachery and
baseness–I am the only person to be pitied–their victim
once but now no longer. Him I can never see again–nor
will I ever see her when she is his wife…When her time

783
 comes to feel his villainy (and come it will) she will re-
gret having lost the best of mothers for his sake.

…and not only that, Jane held what had happened against Claire, pro-
voking many years of estrangement between them. Claire wrote to
Mary, ‘Could I do what is just, I would have a board stuck up before
Mrs. Hogg’s door, warning who cared for their happiness to have noth-
ing to do with her’…”
“…Claire was writing to Mary quite often then…”
“…yes, and there were quite a few visits by Mary to Paris. One was
during one of her ‘rambles’ on the continent with Percy and his
friends…”
“…rambles?”
“…that’s the word she used for it as the title of the book she would
eventually write giving an account of her trips–Rambles in Germany and
Italy: it means a walk or journey for pleasure, usually without a fixed
itinerary. I think in Mary’s case it had a fixed itinerary, and she had a
model in mind: the last work of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had
been her Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway,
and Denmark. That was a journey she had undertaken to help her Amer-
ican lover, Gilbert Imlay, locate a boat and its cargo that had been stolen
from him. He had already practically abandoned her, pregnant, in revo-
lutionary France, and then had sent for her to come to London to help
him out of some financial crisis. When she arrived, he was already in-
volved with another woman–an actress…”
“…what a bastard!”
“…oh, he was quite a shady character all round. She tried to commit
suicide and somehow he saved her. Then, in an effort to win him back,
she agreed to go on this journey for him to find his boat. During the
journey, which she took with her infant child, Fanny, and a maid, it
slowly dawned on her that the relationship was over. One critic de-
scribed the work as ‘one long suicide note to Imlay,’ as her sense of loss
is tangible in the work. When she returned, she found he was living with
the actress. She offered to live with them both in a ménage à trois, but
he refused, so she tried to commit suicide a second time: she let her
clothes get sodden wet in the rain, and then she jumped into the Thames,
but again someone saved her…”
“…her daughter Fanny is the same who committed suicide when
Shelley, Claire, and Mary were in Bath, right?”
“…right…”
“…so now I see things a bit more clearly–in a way, she may have
been destined for suicide…”
“…or at least predisposed…”
“…so what happened to Imlay?”
“…we don’t know–his life is darkness after that, but we do know he
died in 1828, at age seventy-four, on the Isle of Jersey…”

784
 “…I hope after living the rest of his life in real suffering!”
“…certainly it was in obscurity. So Mary Wollstonecraft’s book was
the model of a subjective travel journal that was a mirror of her
thoughts; in Mary Shelley’s case, the travels were with her son and his
friends, and the subjective aspect would be the grief evoked as she trav-
eled to places she associated with Shelley and her dead children…”
“…where did they go?”
“…their first trip began on June 5th, 1840, when Percy was nineteen:
he, she, and two of his friends traveled down the Rhine and Moselle,
crossed the Alps and spent July and August in Cadenabbia on Lake Co-
mo, a little town across from Bellagio–it was the first time she had been
back to Italy…”
“…how did she feel about it?”
“…I have some passages from her book…let’s see…here it is:

Can it, indeed, be true that I am about to revisit Italy?

How many years are gone since I quitted that country!
There I left the mortal remains of those beloved—my
husband and my children, whose loss changed my whole
existence, substituting, for happy peace and the inter-
change of deep-rooted affections, years of deep-rooted
solitude, and a hard struggle with the world; which only
now, as my son is growing up, is brightening into a better
day. The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.
The hope of seeing it again recalls vividly to my memory
that time, when misfortune seemed an empty word, and
my habitation on earth a secure abode, which no evil
could shake. Graves have opened in my path since then;
and instead of the cheerfulness of the living, I have dwelt
among the early tombs of those I loved.

…but she was probably more disturbed by the present, because Percy
had taken up sailing, and wanted to go sailing on the lake every day. A
love of sailing was probably the only thing Shelley and Percy shared…”
“…do you think he knew how much it would frighten his mother?”
“…yes, actually–I think it was probably his passive aggressive form
of rebellion against her over-protectiveness…”
“…it seems closer to active aggression, given how Shelley died…”
“…I think it disturbed Claire even more, when she found out. But her
trip wasn’t always gloomy, because she was harboring a new hope: Au-
brey Beauclerk’s wife had died in 1838, and that reawakened the possi-
bility of their romance rekindling. Here’s what she wrote in her journal
on November 27th, 1839:

Another hope–Can I have another hope? A friendship se-

cure helpful–enduring–a union with a generous heart–&

785
 yet a suffering one whom I may comfort & bless–if it be
so I am happy indeed–but I am no longer able to confide
in fate. I can indeed confide in A’s inalterable gentleness
& true affection but will not events place us asunder–&
prevent me from being a comfort to him–he from being
the prop on which I may lean–we shall see–if I can give
any pleasure to his now blighted existence, & revivify it
through the force of sincere & disinterested attachment–I
shall be happy–We shall see!

…I’m not sure what actually happened, but in Como she was still think-
ing about him, as she wrote this in her journal when they were there:
‘And then when I thought of A–his sorrows–his passionate love–his
struggles–& how hemmed in & impotent are our power of sympathy &
communication–tears rushed into my eyes…’”
“…it sounds like there was something blocking their relationship…”
“…there was, but at that point she must have thought it was some
deep grief or secret problem that could be solved when they got togeth-
er; actually, it was something that would be considerably more devastat-
ing to her: Claire unintentionally let her in on the secret…”
“…what? He already had another woman?”
“…not only just another woman, but someone very close to Mary–
Rosa Robinson: we don’t know for sure, but it appears that Rosa was
even living with Mary at the time Mary would have been seeing some of
him again, so he may have formed the union right at the time when she
thought she was his chosen one. Look, here, at how Claire told her,
oblivious to what it really meant to her–it’s from the same letter where
Claire was complaining about her busy days:

The Robinsons sent for me to Kew and told me Rosa was

to marry Mr. Beauclerk. It is a strange match–most un-
happy for Rosa in all respects, except fortune–he is not a
young man–he is at least five & forty and he is incapable
of love, he has already suffered so much in life–he now
cares for nothing but his children, and Rosa’s good health
and sweet temper he considers will be a valuable acquisi-
tion to his little children. This is what I have been able to
make out–it is good for Rosa, as she is so poor, and it is a
great load off your shoulders. All your acquaintances are
glad that you will no longer have to maintain anybody but
yourself and Percy, though they honour you for the gen-
erosity with which you have ever acted towards them.

…so Claire just walked into it without realizing the wound she was in-
flicting…”

786
 “…are you sure about that? It’s not that I think Claire was deliberate-
ly trying to hurt her–quite the opposite, but it sounds to me like Claire
may have been trying to let her know about it, without letting on that she
knew, in order to save Mary some embarrassment; after all, she goes to
considerable length to criticize him…”
“…you may be right–I didn’t think of that…”
“…and what was Mary’s reaction?”
“…she was still on the continent when she heard about it, and when
she returned to London in January, 1841, she poured out her feelings in
her journal, in Italian to make it imperceptible…”
“…Italian?!”
“…it was a humiliation: the man had apparently considered another
woman over her not once, but twice. Here’s the translation of what she
wrote:

I have lost every friend–surrounded by wretched people–

uncertain about what will happen to my son–hoping for
nothing–unhappy–betrayed, alone! My God–I pray–save
my son–make him worthy of his father–and more happy.
Grant that I may return to Italy–and never more shall see
again this country of ungrateful, wretched traitors. Or
make me die–oh my god I suffer too much–I am scorned
too much, bewildered–desperate…this new year has be-
gun in tears, sorrows, betrayal, and poverty–how will it
ever finish!

…then, a month later, comes her last journal entry–ever…”

“…why? I thought she died ten years later, wasn’t it?”
“…yes…I think the last entry gives some clue: as you’ll see, she’s
entered what she called her ‘crisis’–the same mid-life crisis as Claire,
but because Claire felt herself entirely abandoned long before, it came
years earlier. With Mary, her love of society allowed her to delude her-
self about her friends. After practically every person she considered a
friend betrayed her, she was left in a wasteland–look at how she puts it
in this last entry from February 26th, 1841:

My mind slumbers & my heart is dull–Is life quite over?

Have the storms & wrecks of the last years destroyed my
intellect, my imagination, my capacity of invention–what
am I to become? This is a moment of crisis–my visit to
the lake of Como has awakened in all its pristine fervour
my love for a sunnier clime…

…she then speaks of wishing to be in Italy–imagining its enchantments

and comparing it to London, and finally realizing that while London af-
forded considerably greater access to ‘society,’ that she had no society.

787
She imagines wandering away to Italy with Percy and his friends and
settling there:

Then I might live–hoping–loving–aspiring enjoying–O be

it so–I pray! Here–here–I am placid now, & the days go
by–I am happy in Percy’s society & health–but no ad-
juncts are at hand to gild the quiet hours & dullness
creeps over my intellect–Well that is not the worst–as
long as I am not on earth. I injured my health–I gave
thought, passion, care, toil–I gave all the treasure of my
heart; all was accepted readily–& more & more asked–&
when more I could not give–behold me betrayed, desert-
ed; fearfully betrayed so that I would rather die than any
of them more…

…and the last thing wrote was a slightly modified quote from Cole-
ridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Alone–alone–all-all alone
Upon the wide, wide sea–
And God will not take pity on
My soul in agony!

…what she wrote about abandoning society wasn’t quite true–or at least
not yet, but her crisis certainly brought her to a new phase in her life…”
“…how so?”
“…she had considerably lowered expectations of life. When such a
crisis is full-fledged it brings about a death of the narcissistic ego–you
feel your youthful self die, and the result is like a rebirth: it must be like
awakening after some catastrophe to find yourself alive. The journal had
been a site for her narcissistic ego to complain about its lot: ‘What have
I done to deserve this? Aren’t I a special human being who deserves
much better? Oh, pity poor me,’ etcetera, etcetera. I believe that when
one reaches such a crisis, one either abandons one’s journal because the
narcissistic ego has died, as Mary and Claire did, or you continue it as a
form of witnessing. You can see it happening in many journals: for ex-
ample, in Anaïs Nin’s diary she reaches a point where all of her obses-
sively narcissistic self-reflection tails off and what’s left is observation
of others. I’m not saying that Mary didn’t continue to suffer, but she be-
gan to settle within a horizon of diminished expectations, allowing her to
accept and affirm more of what did come along in her life. I think that’s
why she chose to return to the continent again so soon, and to stay much
longer: this time for fourteen months–she left in June, 1842, and re-
turned in September, 1843…”
“…with Percy again?”

788
 “…yes. Percy had graduated from Cambridge the year before and his
allowance had been increased by Sir Timothy; plus, in the spring of
1842 he had turned twenty-one and he had actually visited Field Place,
making a good impression. I think this gave them the confidence they
needed to go abroad for so long, but still, they were strapped for cash,
not least because Mary decided to take a young man name Alexander
Knox along, and had to pay his way…”
“…was he a friend of Percy’s?”
“…the evidence suggests that they didn’t know much of each other
before the trip, and that the idea of bringing him was actually Mary’s…”
“…Mary’s? Why?”
“…at the very least because he was a charming young man and a poet,
and he would be delightful company–some critics speculate that Mary
hoped some of his charms would rub off on Percy…”
“…and at most?”
“…there’s a more suspicious school of thought that had it that he was
a lover of Mary’s, or would become one later: Claire certainly suspected
it herself, based on how Mary mentioned ‘dear Knox’ in some letters she
wrote later…”
“…what do you think?”
“…it’s not impossible there was an intimacy of some sort, but wheth-
er or not it was sexual I think we’ll never know, given she had ended her
journal…”
“…on the other hand, they were together for over a year…”
“…that’s true, so you never know: perhaps it gave Mary a chance to
redirect and play out her feelings for Percy, but, then again, he would be
the biggest obstacle against it happening, as he was there all the time…”
“…so where did they go this time?”
“…they started in Germany, focusing on Weimar, Leipzig, Berlin and
Dresden. There was a heat wave, and that may have been one of the rea-
sons Mary could not see the charms of Dresden as Claire had, but I also
think it says something about Mary’s limitations, in comparison. They
went through Teplice and Prague on their way south…”
“…did she write about it?”
“…I don’t know–they haven’t reissued the book, and as you know I
don’t have access to any decent English libraries in Prague. They went
to Munich, cut over to Linz, and perhaps went through Vienna–but I’m
not sure about it, as different sources say different things; then they went
south through Bolzano, over to Riva, and through Padua to Venice, fol-
lowing the same way she and Shelley had gone when they were taking
the sick Clara to Venice…”
“…do you know if she mentioned the past in the book?”
“…from what I know, she did, but in an extremely general way. Cer-
tainly she felt it keenly–I read somewhere that she tried to find Clara’s
burial place on the Lido. Here’s what she wrote to Claire about it: ‘You
are right saying Venice might make me melancholy–it did excessively at

789
first–but I have so much to think of to keep my companions comfortable
that the impression is worn off–& my great endeavor is to be in good
spirits.’ When she came here to Rome she stayed from March though
May, and of course visited the Protestant Cemetery: it’s hard to imagine
what she felt when she went to the Protestant Cemetery, and saw Shel-
ley’s tomb…”
“…and William’s…”
“…no, she couldn’t find it for some reason–that’s one reason I want
to look for it…”
“…that would’ve been even worse…”
“…we’ll see if we can find it–maybe they discarded the marker
somewhere during one of the reconstructions of the graveyard…”
“…did Claire ever visit Shelley’s tomb?”
“…it’s highly likely, because she was in Naples when she quit the
Kaisaroffs and would have had to go through Rome at some point, but
she left no record of it. Mary invited her to come join them for a visit–or
at least at Florence, but she thought it a waste of time to go to Italy only
for a ‘mere’ six weeks, and instead hoped that Mary and Percy would
stop to visit her in Paris on the way home from the trip…”
“…and did they?”
“…Percy went back ahead back to London early, claiming that he was
tired of seeing the paintings and statues of Florence…”
“…what a bore!”
“…yes, he was…Mary claimed that he was lazy and dull ‘from not
being in love,’ to which Claire responded, ‘His heart wishes for love–let
it be the first business of his life to seek it–and that immediately–and if
he has that idea that England will be favourable to his wishes in this
point of view–he ought to fly there,’ and so he did. Mary did go, alt-
hough her plans wavered so much beforehand that Claire berated her for
her incertitude. They almost missed each other, for Claire suggested
Mary meet her in Geneva, as Mary had indicated some disliking for Par-
is, and was just about to set out when Mary actually arrived in Paris. In
the end, Mary stayed for two weeks from July 23rd through the end of
August, cutting the trip short for some unknown reason–probably she
was nervous about Percy, because she returned for a month in December
when it had been arranged for Percy to stay for a month with his half-
sister Ianthe…”
“…Claire and Mary were seeing a great deal of each other…”
“…there were other enticements in Paris as well: in the summer
Claire had introduced Mary into a circle of Italian political exiles. One
in particular caught her attention: a certain Ferdinando Luigi Gatteschi–a
handsome young nobleman who had fought as a Carbonari. Mary was
so taken by his case that she borrowed money from Claire to lend to
him: this was the relatively innocuous beginning of what would develop
into a full–blown crisis for Mary…”
“…here’s the ravioli…”

790
 “…ah–finally! they were a little slow…”
“…they’re very busy tonight…”
“…I think it’s every night in summer–they’re situated well to capture
the tourists…”
“…it’s good, though…”
“…here, have some more wine…”
“…thank you…so, continue…”
“…so back to the crisis: to begin with, Mary was simply naïve about
people because she hadn’t experienced the same difficulties as Claire.
Mary tended to think Claire was too paranoid; for example, Claire had
written to Mary about a Russian woman who had stayed with her as a
lodger for a while: she suspected she had been spying on her, and also
poisoning her acquaintance with other Russian expatriates. It sounds like
paranoia, but she was probably right, as Paris continued to be a hotbed
for radicals of various sorts, and Austria, Russia, and Italy all had rea-
sons to keep watch on their expatriate communities. I remember all the
spies watching the events in Prague in 1989, and when I later mentioned
it to people in the U.S.A., they invariably called me paranoid; but people
who haven’t lived abroad are all naïve–they think spies all look like Ma-
ta Hari or James Bond! There were so many young spies in Prague then
that we used to call them the ‘boys from Brown,’ since so many were
from Brown University, a key CIA recruiting center…”
“…are they still there?”
“…the Cold War is over–they’ve moved on: I guess they’re all down
in former Yugoslavia now…”
“…but what was Claire suspicious about–what was his name?”
“…Gatteschi. The difference between Claire and Mary was that Claire
was never naive, except about financial matters; as far as the Italians
were concerned, she reserved her judgment and was cautious. Look at
the opening to this letter she wrote to Mary in late January, 1844, after
Mary had returned to England:

I cried all the day after your departure my house felt so

terrible to me without you: and I have been in dreadful
spirits ever since. The thing that inflicts me the most is
the want of confidence I feel in all those by whom I am
surrounded–I except from this Guittera and Gatteschi for
I know them too little, and my intimacy is too slight to al-
low for suspicion–but I have suffered so much from per-
fidy (or perhaps I ought to say the appearances of perfidy
for I cannot be sure about the perfidy) since I have been
in Paris, that now I have no entire confidence in any one
but you. What misfortune can equal that of falling into
the hands of wicked people who whilst they caress you,
plot your ruin.

791
…she was always ready for the worst, while Mary would, in these
months, be pushing forward to help Gatteschi–writing up his political
concerns in the Rambles, helping a friend of his to sell what was, un-
known to her, possibly a fake Titian to raise money for the cause, and,
worst of all, writing increasingly intimate letters to him…”
“...intimate? Did she have an affair?”
“…I doubt they had a physical affair, for they weren’t in the same
place at the same time long enough for that, but it’s possible she might
have told him some details of her past life she didn’t want widely
known, or perhaps she was flirting with him: whatever they did contain,
it was enough to blackmail her…”
“…and he did?”
“…at the beginning it was the indirect blackmail of being charming,
handsome, and impoverished, because Mary wasn’t exactly someone he
could hope to squeeze large sums out of, but then something occurred to
change all that: Sir Timothy finally died, on April 24, 1844…”
“…finally!”
“…finally is right! He had lived so long and had come close to death
so many times that he was starting to become a running joke between
them. As recently as the previous month Claire had joked about it in a
letter to Mary:

It is so very tiresome and hurtful Sir Tim’s living so im-

mensely long. To me it is now nothing–but to you it is
destruction. Having a bilious attack at ninety years of age
and getting over it, is an unprecedented thing in the histo-
ry of human Nature and I do not believe it is the real Sir
Tim who does this–He died long ago, and they concealed
it, and have got some man of sixty to live there and play
the Sir Tim of ninety, in order that they may still keep
their revenues and their state and defraud you.

…although she was joking, she punctuated this with an admonition to

Mary to be cautious that she ought to have heeded: ‘All our happiness in
life, depends upon falling into the hands of good people–this I hope is
clear to you, illustrated as it is, by all that happened to you, since you
were thrown into Lady Shelley’s power’…”
“…so after receiving the inheritance now she could be blackmailed
for real…”
“…I’ll come to that eventually–it wasn’t as simple as Mary and Percy
coming into an estate overnight and having vast sums at their disposal.
Sir Timothy had only given Percy what the law of entail stipulated: the
estate itself, and the monies that were derived from it. Although it was
almost £5,000 pounds a year, it wasn’t so easy: a drought in 1844 and a
flood in 1845 would destroy the crops and reduce the income to £1,500
during those years. Field Place itself was barely habitable, partly be-

792
cause Lady Shelley had made sure to remove everything that could be
removed, leaving them essentially with walls and a roof. Then there
were the debts: Shelley’s generosity meant that Ianthe was to receive
£6,000, Claire £12,000, Leigh Hunt £2,000, and even Peacock and Hogg
a considerable sum, not to mention incidental debts; plus, Mary had to
pay back from the estate all the money she had used since Shelley had
died, which was another £13,000!”
“…how did they manage it?”
“…they decided to continue living in Putney–which suited Percy, be-
cause they were on the river and he bought a boat to sail on it; therefore,
they could rent Field Place, but even so, when they rented it out they re-
ceived only £60 a year, plus the new tenant charged them for the repairs
and reconstruction. Then they mortgaged the estate, as well as selling an
estate Shelley’s grandfather had built in Worthing: Castle Goring…”
“…a castle?”
“…a folly, rather. It was a huge country house with the façade of a
medieval castle on one side, a classical Greek façade on the other. His
eccentric grandfather had put £90,000 into its construction, and they
could only sell it for £11,000. So, things were not great, but slowly they
were able to pay off their debts, and there was a rising tide of fortune…”
“…and how soon did Claire see her money?”
“…Claire was in St. Germain-en-Laye: that’s where Georges Bataille
would live with his lover, Laure, in the 1930s. Claire was enjoying the
country air when she received the news. Her traveling companions had
left her in the lurch, so she was quite alone, and wrote ‘I sit in the forest
all day alone’–it’s strange to think she was sitting in the same forest
where Bataille would hold the meetings of his secret society, Acéphale,
ninety-three years later! She received the news with disbelief:

It is certainly a strange inexplicable feeling to receive a

letter saying Sir Tim is dead–it is but a common bit of
news, and analogous to what happens every day, yet my
first emotion was utter disbelief–the most hard unyielding
disbelief. The idea of the man has been my companion so
long, it seems tearing half my mind out, to convince me
that I have no occasion to think of him any longer.

…I don’t think this was mere rhetoric, for she was ill for three months
following this news: she wrote Mary that ‘I could scarcely eat, sleep or
walk,’ and that the only relief was when Mrs. Kaisseroff’s doctor gave
her ‘large dose of acetate of morphine’!”
“…how long had she been waiting for this news?”
“…twenty-two years! I can understand why the news would have
bowled her over, and then the problem was facing the reality of it: while
it was on the one hand an amount far vaster than anything she had ever
had before and it would change her life, once she had calmed down she

793
realized that if she invested it, the interest on the amount would yield her
only a modest living. Initially she thought it would all be very easy and
she didn’t even think she would have to go to England, but she was soon
disabused of that notion, as there were several months before it was even
clear if she would have direct access to the money. For a while it seemed
that the sum would have to be covered by a trusteeship and deposited in
a secure place with very little interest. It was finally decided that £6,000
was to be placed somewhere safe, and the second £6,000 turned directly
over to her: she received it, finally, in April, 1845. Then, when the mon-
ey was available, there was the problem of investing it safely, which
caused her a tremendous amount of anxiety–both in the immediate pre-
sent, and for the next few decades…”
“…I can imagine she was disturbed: changes in one’s situation for the
worse and for the better are especially hard to deal with…”
“…yes…still, it was good news, so she allowed herself the pleasure of
taking a holiday in August and September, 1844, when she went to Di-
eppe for sea-bathing in the company of Mrs. Kaissaroff and her daughter
Natalie–well, not exactly ‘pleasure’ because, as it turned out, the weath-
er was bad, but it did seem to help her. She wrote, ‘we have boisterous
weather–we can scarce keep our legs against the waves–but when they
beat against my breast and dash wildly over my head I feel well and
strong’…”
“…was it normal to bathe in cold seas?”
“…it was considered a cure…”
“…for what?”
“…one’s general health, I suppose. In Claire’s case, after several
weeks she suddenly came down with an illness, and a doctor needed to
be called in to administer what she termed ‘calmants’–undoubtedly more
morphine. She remained at Dieppe through October, returning to Paris in
November, where she was sure she was dying:

I have been taking a great many remedies with no suc-

cess–there are intervals in my indisposition but they seem
to occur capriciously. What does me most good is the ab-
sence of all emotion–then I vegetate–but when I must
think there is a turmoil and revulsion and struggle of the
brain that seems as if it would put an end very shortly to
my existence. The doctors say I shall be better after a
time–but I don’t think it. It is so many years I have been
ill and my strength always with slow but sure steps de-
creasing that I feel pretty sure it is life descending to the
grave.

…in retrospect we can see she was a bit of a hypochondriac, given she
lived into her 80s! The fact the doctors thought she would be better after
a while is suspicious: even Mary figured it out sooner than Claire, writ-

794
ing, ‘I believe when once the turn of life is over you will get strong &
well’…”
“…aha–so it was menopause…”
“…probably–after all, she was forty-six years old. From that point on
she described herself as an ‘aged lady,’ and was prone to these ‘serious’
ailments, although the truth is she only was truly sick towards the end of
her life. In January, 1845, she finally visited Mary in Putney, for there
was no putting off a visit to England to wrap up her financial affairs. She
brought her French maid with her, and apparently the maid acted so
‘odiously’ that Mary forbid French maids from coming there ever af-
ter…”
“…what was that about?”
“…who knows? Maybe the maid tried to seduce Mary’s darling Per-
cy! In any case, aside from that Claire enjoyed an extended stay through
April, when she signed for and finally received her money. She later
wrote to Mary that ‘I was so truly happy there.’ It was during that time
that Claire embarked on her plan to buy an opera box: Mary introduced
her to the idea when she discovered a friend had invested £3,500 in one
with an expected return of £350 a year, which would have been a very
good investment indeed. In the beginning, Mary was planning to buy
one with Claire, but she backed out when she thought better of it, so
Claire decided to buy an entire box herself, and broke her own rule
about trying to get too high a return on her investment. It turned out to
cost more than she expected–£4,000–and yield less than she expected:
an initial £300 pound per annum that eventually dwindled to £150 when
another theater opened and competed for the audience. By 1858 the
theater closed entirely, so she never did see a full return on her invest-
ment. But for the moment she felt relatively secure, her health improved,
and she wrote Mary a whole series of chatty letters that spring and
summer, hosting her brother Charles in Paris in August. He noticed the
change in her appearance in a letter to Mary, but discounted it, writing:

…I must fairly own that except in the first few minutes, I

did not remark much alteration in Claire; as soon as I had
been a quarter of an hour in her company, the same tones
of voice, the same play of features brought back all the
old recollections, and she was quite herself again.

...but all of this has been digression, for at the same time they were deal-
ing with their financial matters, a storm was brewing for many
months…”
“…the blackmail?”
“…yes. As I said, Mary had been sending money to this Italian exile,
Gatteschi, while meanwhile Claire, on-the-spot in Paris, was beginning
to have suspicions a year before the crisis broke. In June, 1844, Claire
had mentioned to Mary that the Italians had ‘pretty nearly cut me,’ and

795
Mary dismissed her, answering, ‘I am a good deal surprised at the sort of
insinuation contained in your letter with regard to your Italian friends,’
and went on to say that Claire was imagining their neglect. Claire per-
sisted in her ‘insinuations,’ writing in August, 1844:

How Guitera and Gatteschi live is to me a wonder. They

have neither of them had a lesson for more than a year–all
they have is Guitera’s hundred and fifty francs a month–
yet they never try either of them to get lessons–nor do
they seek situations…

…but by then Gatteschi had gone to England, was living with Alexander
Knox, was charming Mary, who continued to fail to heed Claire’s warn-
ings, writing ‘I grieve very much you do not get on better with him for
the more I see of him the more I esteem his character.’ In the autumn of
1844, Gatteschi was back in Paris, and Claire noted that the Italians had
fully cut her off in favor of Lady Sussex Lennox, writing:

I am glad the Italians have acted well to you. They have

acted excessively ill to me. I have now what I think is
good proof that they have done all they could to poison
Lady Sussex’s mind against me to endeavor to make a
break with me.

…but in response Mary had apparently written again to dismiss Claire’s

suspicions, as Claire wrote back to her on December 28, 1844, a letter
meant to lay out the truth about Gatteschi to Mary. She wrote:

I wish to remark upon an expression of your letter which

is unjust. You say ‘I am of a suspicious nature,’ though
the accusation is so unfounded as to be in fact excessively
ridiculous…any one who could think me of a suspicious
nature who knows how at every moment I have been be-
trayed by others and been a victim of my faith in their
goodness, must be themselves of a suspicious nature. I do
not blame you for this–perhaps you have had false friends
who have made you so–but I am sorry you do not know
me…

…and then going on to tell the news, which was that Lady Sussex Len-
nox had taken Gatteschi as a lover, and mentioning that she had told him
that if Mary were to come to Paris, she would expect him to ‘renounce’
Mary…”
“…how did Mary respond to that–did she believe her?”
“…I don’t know: Claire went to England for the first three months of
1845, so they must have talked about it during that time, but given

796
Claire’s letters to Mary after her return to Paris no longer mentioned the
Italians, Mary may have asked her to stop gossiping about them. The
next we hear of him is mid-September, when he made an attempt,
through Guitera, to extort money from her…”
“…I still don’t see what he could have blackmailed her with…”
“…the little we know comes from a letter Mary wrote to Alexander
Knox: ‘Certainly it looks as if they would make no great use of my let-
ters–but who can tell? They were written with an open heart–& contain
details with regard to my past history, which it would destroy me forever
if they saw light.’ Claire told Silsbee, when it was too far in the past to
matter any more, that she had asked once what these secrets might be,
and Silsbee scrawled down on one of his little notes, ‘C. often asked her
Mrs. S. put her off.’ Unless it refers to one of her post-Shelley flirta-
tions, it’s difficult to see what she could have told him that would be so
devastating: she couldn’t tell herself the truth about Claire and Shelley,
so I doubt it was anything about that; so, unless it was some dark secret–
such as having made love to Byron in Genoa–I can’t think what it could
have been. On the other hand, it was the Victorian epoch, so perhaps
something as simple as her having eloped with Shelley and the conse-
quences it had for Harriet might have been the cause; after all, she was
blackmailed again in February, 1846, by a man claiming to be an illegit-
imate son of Lord Byron! He had claimed to have letters written by
Shelley concerning Harriet: she paid him a modest amount for the let-
ters, and then had him threatened with an injunction against publishing
anything from them…”
“…and how did she manage the Gatteschi affair?”
“…she rallied all her forces, getting Trelawny to contact some friends
in politics in order to get the necessary letter she needed to request the
French police to act, and then appointing Alexander Knox as her point
man in Paris, and sending him off there with £250–a lot of money given
her straitened circumstances, both for his support, and to pay or bribe, as
necessary, the French officials, or even the blackmailers if necessary. As
she wrote: ‘My letters must be got somehow–either by seizure or pur-
chase.’ Knox was more effective than she expected–perhaps partly be-
cause the French officials were not too happy about the revolutionaries
in their midst: he enlisted the willing help of Gabriel Delessert, Prefect
of Police, who had the homes of Gatteschi and Guitera searched, and the
letters seized: they were given to Knox and he destroyed them. Mary
wrote to Claire with a qualified exultance:

My dear Claire–Is it not all wonderful? Knox’s firm &

admirable conduct–his success–the authorities consenting
to so desperate a step–all–all is wonderful–& the more I
hear the more I admire & am grateful–tho’ too humiliated
by the part I played, & by being the cause of so much
disagreeable labour to exult.

797
…and she invited her to come to London until any gossip was quelled:
‘…I sincerely hope you will not be worried–if you are, you must come
over till the storm passes’; of course, she had to swallow her pride and
beg her for forgiveness, now that she realized that Claire’s suspicions
had been right all along…”
“…did Claire go?”
“…she wanted to, because after having complained of a lack of socie-
ty in her first year in Paris, she now was complaining about too much
society, writing to Mary in December, 1845:

It is not only impossible to lead a quiet life in Paris, but

also impossible to have one day in which you have not
twice as much to do as you can possibly get through…No
one has struggled harder than I have–but in vain; I am
whisked along with the torrent. How I long to get to Eng-
land for a little quiet. There every one lives like an oyster,
each shut up in his shell.

…then, she was ill again, and for the first months of 1846 was living on
the ‘calmants and tonics’ prescribed by her doctor…”
“…do you think she was addicted?”
“…it’s certainly possible, given that back then opiate-based remedies
were readily available. It’s probably just as well that Claire didn’t go to
visit Mary then, because Mary had moved to her new house on 24 Ches-
ter Square, Pimlico, and when she had completed the move in March,
she had a total nervous and physical breakdown. Part of what may have
disturbed her was a third attempt at blackmail, this time by someone she
knew: Thomas Medwin…”
“…Medwin?!”
“…he told her he was writing a biography of Shelley, and asked for
her help; her response was that the time was not ripe for such a biog-
raphy. He was determined to finish it anyway, so he told her that unless
she gave him £250 not to publish it, he would pursue it. Mary refused to
pay him, and asked Hunt to use his power over the reviews to keep them
silent about the book. When the book was published, there were wide
reviews anyway, but Medwin had not been as revealing as he had threat-
ened: he did not mention such things as the fact that Harriet Shelley was
pregnant when Mary and Shelley met…”
“…I can still understand why she had been upset–how long did it take
her to get over her breakdown?”
“…Mary and Percy went to Cowes so that she could recuperate from
her breakdown, and they returned in June just in time to meet Claire,
who came to stay in their new townhouse in July and August, but had to
return to Paris when Mary went to Baden for a rest cure because they

798
couldn’t leave the house open for her. It must have been an issue be-
tween them, because Mary wrote her an apologetic letter about it:

I fear I worded my letter about shutting up my house un-

kindly for you seem hurt–& I am so, so sorry–God knows
I am the last person who ought to inflict the smallest pain
on you–I to whom you have ever been so kind–forgive
me if it is so–I entreat you–When I wrote I was very ill…

…this period was a revolutionary turning point for Europe, but also for
Claire, because she decided to move from Paris back to London, and for
Mary, because Percy would be married by Spring, 1848. Claire had ac-
complished her move by March, 1847, when she took a house in Re-
gent’s park. Due to the fact both women were in London there were no
letters between them, and so there is much less evidence about either
Mary or Claire during that period. For the rest of 1847 we do know that
Claire and Mary spent August together in Brighton, and that at some
point Mary interfered with a relationship of her son’s on the grounds that
the woman was too young…”
“…interfered?”
“…as we’ve seen, Mary was the archetypical oedipal mother, worry-
ing about Percy’s prospects when there were none on the horizon, com-
plaining about them when there were, and, when she ‘allowed’ her son
to finally wed, she made sure the wife was a smaller version of herself
so that she could continue controlling him through the wife. Mary found
that person in Jill St. John, who would perversely admit to a biographer,
later, that she had lost her heart to Mary, not to Percy…”
“…you’re joking!”
“…sadly, no. She was also a good catch because she was quite
wealthy, but in the end, Mary would be ‘hoisted by her own petard,’ in
that there would be no children from this union–one might speculate as
to whether it came from Percy’s psychic castration by Mary, or by his
wife’s frigidity, for she was ill much of the time…”
“…when were they married?”
“…on June 22nd, and they moved into Field Place in August. During
that period Mary was staying by the sea at Sandgate with Alexander
Knox…”
“…are you sure nothing was going on between them?”
“…I’m not sure of anything: Claire noticed that he was staying so of-
ten with Mary that she concluded they must be lovers: whether it was
true or not, this conclusion would have dire consequences the following
year…”
“…and what do you think?”
“…I think it was an affectionate friendship: as I said before, he was
the cultured, surrogate ‘Shelleyean’ son she ‘adopted’ to make up for
Percy’s lack of culture or imagination. To give you an idea of how ‘un-

799
Shelleyean’ Percy was, had had instructed his tenant farmers to vote To-
ry!”
“…Shelley must have been turning in his grave!”
“…by then Mary was so conservative that she stood against the Chart-
ists and other revolutionary movements happening then, and because she
was a landowner she even imagined escaping to Australia with Percy
and his wife if the events took a bad turn…”
“…and what about Claire?”
“…Claire became conservative in her habits, of course, but she con-
tinued to think of herself as a liberal and freethinker, and her brother,
Charles, also remained a liberal, even though at that time he was teach-
ing English to the mother of Franz Joseph, and was invited by her to stay
with the Imperial Court when they were exiled in Olomouc…”
“…did he go?”
“…yes…”
“…but he was a liberal!”
“…in the Austro-Hungarian Empire it was quite normal to have dem-
ocratic sympathies and still feel fond of the Emperor, desiring some kind
of constitutional monarchy…”
“…yes, that’s right: even Masaryk at one point preferred a federal,
constitutional monarchy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire rather
than Czech nationhood…”
“…actually, Charles’ son Willy was rather upset with him for being
so close to the Emperor’s entourage, because, as a student, he had been
on the barricades and he remembered the humiliation of having to give
up his sword to the Emperor’s troops! In any case, while the disturb-
ances were quite violent in Vienna–Charles heard the cannons firing ten
kilometers away from the center of Vienna in Weidling, in England it
passed without any serious incidents. As Claire wrote to Mary the next
year, ‘What a state the rest of Europe is in! How grateful ought we to be
in England for the calm we enjoy.’ All we really know about the later
part of the year was that Claire was staying in Brighton from late Octo-
ber through January, and Mary visited her in November, becoming ill as
a result: in the early part of 1849 she was too ill to join in family discus-
sions, and on February 5th she wrote Claire: ‘I walk very well–but must
not use my head–or strange feelings come on,’ symptoms that indicate
that the brain tumor she died of two years later had already started to
produce its effects…”
“…she had only two more years to live? How old was she?”
“…she was fifty-two. It’s a pity, because during the next crisis Mary
was in no position to see things clearly, and there was no time to recover
from its consequences…”
“…what kind of crisis?”
“…I suppose it was inevitable: it was a crisis between Claire and
Mary’s household–I deliberately say her ‘household,’ because I think it
was all part of Lady Jane’s strategy to divide and conquer, and she used

800
the weapons at hand: Mary’s weakness from her illness, and Claire’s
impetuosity. The circumstances were these: Claire had already helped
Charles’ son Willi come to England to study at an agricultural college in
Kent–indeed, she had gone with him there to live. Now, Charles’ daugh-
ter Clara, named after Claire, was to arrive in England in late April–also
in order to attend some college: she was to live with Claire, who would
act as her guardian. Mary wanted to see the children, and so a visit was
arranged. You can already see a vague outline of the problem in this let-
ter Claire wrote to Mary from Kent on April 11th:

…I can not imagine what you want to see these two chil-
dren for? And I am so afraid of their not pleasing and in-
curring the criticisms of your super-fine set. And poor
dears–they have to earn their livelihood–and are such
well disposed young people and it would be a pity to turn
them from the right path and make them miserable for
Life; which often happens, when poor people frequent the
society of the rich.

…right or wrong, Claire was already on her guard…”

“…but why?”
“…many things. Certainly it was due to Claire’s opinion of Lady
Jane: the two women didn’t like each other from the very start. It was
also about Claire’s self-pity–her opera box had not been doing as well as
expected, and she sensed Mary was living in wealth…”
“…was she?”
“…after Lady Jane joined the family, bringing her own fortune, they
were doing better, but the crops had failed in 1848, and the estate had
taken a momentary downturn. The most important thing was that Claire
felt perhaps too grave a responsibility for Charles’ children. What hap-
pened was made possible by the fact that as the visit came closer, Willi
was taken ill, and Claire felt she should stay with him longer: Clari, as
she was called, went ahead for the visit alone, and Claire was to join her
later. Then, add to this the fact that Alexander Knox was there at that
time moping around from a broken engagement, and the fact Mary was
already a bit out of it due to her chronic illness, and the stage was set for
the crisis: within three weeks of her visit, Clari and Knox had eloped and
were married–on June 16th…”
“…how could that happen–did Mary know about it?”
“…I think Mary was largely out of it due to the advancing illness. In
my opinion, it was facilitated by Lady Jane who deliberately manipulat-
ed the situation to her own advantage, knowing fully the consequences.
The editor of Claire’s letters quotes an account that Lady Jane gave half
a century later–it’s of course totally self-serving, but reveals more than it
conceals:

801
 Oh, she married and in a rather curious way. A friend
came to stay with us who was in an unhappy frame of
mind. He had some serious love trouble, and he used to
walk about the house looking disconsolate and wretched.
One day he came to me and said, ‘I am miserable, and
that poor girl seems unhappy too. Life does not hold
much pleasure at present for either of us; why should I
not marry her and try at least to make some one a bit hap-
pier? I shall be doing something then.’ I was rather
amused, but since he was a thoroughly nice man, and tal-
ented too, I fully agreed with him that the plan would not
be a bad one, if he felt they could make each other fairly
happy. When I told Mary she was much troubled, and
said, ‘Don’t allow it, dear, don’t allow it; they don’t love
each other, and the Clairmont blood always brings mis-
ery.’ They did marry, nevertheless, and on the whole
were happy and got on well, I believe.

…while I don’t doubt that something like that happened, it’s clear that
Mary was kept out of awareness of it by Lady Jane until it was practical-
ly a fait accompli. I have strong doubts that Mary objected for those rea-
sons: she would have been well aware how Claire would have taken
it…”
“…I assume Claire was furious…”
“…she was upset, of course, but the scene described by Lady Jane and
the one described by Claire are so different that they may well have been
alternate realities! Lady Jane makes it sound as if Claire just suddenly
burst in on them and threw a fit, saying such ‘horrid things’ that they
had to lead Mary away and put her behind a locked door, and that they
were forced to call a doctor to administer sedatives to Claire. Claire’s
version, which she wrote to Charles’ wife Antonia, shows that she was
there at Field Place much longer–more like a week, and that while Claire
thought their union happened far too quickly, what she really was upset
by was how her niece had turned against her:

The moment your daughter declared she would marry Mr.

Knox, she altered completely to me; every moment of the
day that she had to spare from Knox, was devoted to
showing towards me an excess of coarse insolence that no
lady ever practices, under whatever provocations…she
gave herself no time for repentance, or duty to her par-
ents, or consideration for the feelings of others, of defer-
ence for the common decencies of life; she had Knox all
day long by her side, I never opposed or offered the least
hindrance to their intercourse; she did just what she liked;
notwithstanding these gratifications to her wishes; she

802
 seemed to think Heaven knows what–that she must marry
him then and there, after a weeks courtship directly, that
very day, and that very hour. And she put on her bonnet
and walked off to marry Knox just as if she had been go-
ing shopping. She returned home and Knox informed me
they were married. I still was forbearing–I made them no
reproaches–I considered them both insane; that it would
be better to let their insanity evaporate–and I said noth-
ing–but still hoped in a month or so that they would re-
turn to reason.

…and she ascribed this behavior to Lady Jane Shelley:

…one day struck by the violent manner of her hostility,

the hatred that was expressed in her countenance; con-
scious that I had done nothing to merit dislike, having
been as tender and indulgent to her as if she had been my
child, struck by her very extraordinary uncalled for be-
haviour, it suddenly flashed into my mind, ‘this girl’s
mind has been poisoned against me–she could never hate
me with this fury, I having been all kindness to her, un-
less someone has set her against me. So after a moment’s
silence I said–Clary has some one been speaking ill of me
to you–was it Mrs. Shelley–No, she said–Mrs. Shelley
never said any ill of you–was it Lady Shelley I then en-
quired–Yes she said Lady Shelley spoke ill of you. The
entrance of Knox interrupted the conversation and she
married the day after so I never had any opportunity of
renewing it…

…and she goes on to say that what truly disturbed her was how Clari
treated her, and her refusal to apologize…”
“…so you believe Claire’s account?”
“…I certainly give it far more credence than Lady Jane’s account,
given their records, but of course she had her reasons for distorting the
truth as well. In regard to Lady Shelley, one thing I feel certain about is
that whatever happened, she provided the fuel and the match to ignite it,
and her motivation was as always: to be the one absolutely in control.
With Mary incapacitated, she was well on her way, because Percy was
an impotent pushover–a castrated male if I ever saw one! Claire was
clearly a force to be reckoned with because she had so much influence
on Mary; and, if Lady Jane could at the same time marry off Knox–a
draw on Mary’s attentions and a possible source of scandal, it would
have been a veritable coup. I think she knew exactly what she was do-
ing: Mary was clearly incapacitated, and so Lady Jane, at the very least,
looked the other way when Knox and Clari were courting, or perhaps

803
even actively promoted their union. Certainly when the confrontation
came she took advantage of it, and had Claire evicted from their cir-
cle…”
“…that’s terrible!”
“…Claire regretted it all the rest of her life. As for Claire, I don’t sup-
port her story in all of its details, by any means. As I said, I think she
may have taken her role as chaperon a bit too seriously: given what hap-
pened later between Claire and her niece Pauline, I’m not convinced
Claire would have made the best of mothers, especially with a child who
had very high spirits…”
“…I think you’re right: I’ve wondered what it would have been like if
Allegra had lived–could Claire have managed her, or would they be at
each other all the time?”
“…and if you add Claire’s inflated sense of her own importance as
chaperon together with what she suspected about Alexander Knox, an
over-reaction was inevitable…”
“…the suspicion that he had been Mary’s lover?”
“…I think she always suspected he was Mary’s lover, based on the
letters Mary wrote to Claire, where Mary referred to him as ‘my Knox’–
and then there were the vacations at the sea together. For Claire it was
the case of a very young girl falling into the clutches of a predatory
male. One thing I sense in her letters to Charles and later to his wife An-
tonia is self-justification–as if she felt she might be blamed for what
happened…”
“…it’s understandable–I would feel the same…”
“…the real problem, though, was that Claire went too far, becoming
deeply reactive and unable to let it go: the situation disturbed her so
much that she demanded everyone support her side of the argument un-
conditionally. Willi, for example, wrote to his parents that Claire had
forced him to decide between her and his sister in the matter, and be-
cause his education was in Claire’s hands, he was forced initially to do
just that. He wrote this of Claire:

It cannot be denied that Aunt Claire is of an extremely

imperious and despotic disposition, this frequently gives
arise to little disputes the worst of which is that A.C. sees
everywhere some secret plot or intention, and if you give
your real cause she only says that she has been very much
in this world, knows human nature thoroughly, has an eye
as sharp as an eagle, and that you are much too young to
deceive her.

…and he goes on to mention how Claire went to all her acquaintances

with an attitude of ‘you are with me or against me’ to share her account
and gain their support. I think the word ‘imperious’ is the essential word

804
here, for from this point onwards, Claire became an imperious old bid-
dy…”
“…‘biddy’?”
“…an old woman who is usually in a bad mood, gossiping and push-
ing herself into other people’s business–the kind of old lady who repri-
mands your child for something innocuous, just for the spite of it…”
“…like a ‘bitch’?”
“…not quite as strong…”
“…I can’t think of a precise word for it in Czech…”
“…but you must have something: say you’re walking your dog, and
some old lady puts her head out the window and says, ‘You be sure to
clean it up!’ What would you say to yourself as you walked away?”
“…if I didn’t use something even more vulgar, I’d probably say ‘stará
kráva’–‘old cow’…”
“…so Claire increasingly became an imperious old cow…”
“…and what was Mary’s attitude about the whole situation?”
“…I don’t think Mary was strong enough at that point to significantly
alter the situation: events were largely controlled by those around her–on
the one side Lady Jane Shelley, who would have wanted the ban against
Claire to be permanent; and on the other side Claire, who demanded
everyone acknowledge she had been in the right. I think Lady Shelley
was even preventing Mary’s mail from reaching her, because at one
point Charles wrote to her about the situation and Mary never wrote
back: we know they received it at Field Place because Knox answered
the letter, so Lady Shelley probably simply gave it to him without letting
Mary see it, for Mary had always answered Charles in the past, and if
she had received such a letter asking about the situation, would not like-
ly have turned down the opportunity to give her opinion. Claire blamed
‘the Shelleys’ for what happened, and not Mary personally: indeed, she
became increasingly suspicious of Mary’s silence, and I believe that was
one reason she tolerated Willi staying with his sister and Alexander
Knox–so that he could spy for her. When Charles’ daughter Pauline ar-
rived to stay with Claire in 1850, we know that Claire asked Pauline di-
rectly to ask her sister Clari about Mary, the result being she began to be
suspicious about Mary’s real condition…”
“…but if Mary hadn’t been involved, why didn’t she contact Claire
herself?”
“…there was no time, and she was increasingly ill. Lady Jane swept
Mary off to the south of France and Lake Como for nine months for her
health, but also, no doubt, to remove her from the scene; so there was no
time for any reconciliation during those months. Then, when they re-
turned in 1850, Lady Jane bought Boscombe Manor in Bournemouth,
and Mary was moved to the Chester Square address, where, by the end
of 1850, she was confined to bed. On January 23rd, 1851, she lapsed into
a coma after a series of fits, and on February 1st, she died at her Chester

805
Square home. She and Claire had never spoken again since that day
when the scene took place twenty months before…”
“…Claire must have felt terrible…”
“…when she realized how ill Mary had been and that she would never
speak to her again, she knew exactly who to blame for their estrange-
ment: she said of Lady Shelley later that she ‘had torn the old friend of
my youth from me after forty years that we had stood together’…wait,
here’s our secondi…i calamari è per me, e la sogliola è per la
signora…grazie…”
“…you said that very well…”
“…I’ve been practicing when you weren’t looking!”
“…it sounded fine…”
“…if I only have to speak a sentence at a time, I’m ok…”
“…so, back to the crisis…”
“…let me go back to the immediate aftermath of the scene: Claire was
made ill by the events, but not so ill, Willi noted in a letter to his father,
that she didn’t visit everyone she knew in London to tell them about
what had happened in order to garner their support. Claire tried to make
Willi a go-between and a spy, making him write letters to his sister and
the Shelleys; consequently, Charles wisely decided that Willi ought to
study agriculture in Germany. Claire was such an old cow that she with-
drew her prior commitment to help him financially once he was out of
her reach…”
“…she really took a ‘me or them’ attitude…”
“…it’s really sad she became so reactive and resentful. Willi had been
very careful with her and had mostly done as she asked; then, as a result
of her actions, she pushed him into the opposite camp: it was Alexander
Knox who helped him financially with his studies in Germany. Her
brother Charles had been very careful, all that time, to be as judicious as
he could be, and his letters to Claire and his actions are all very correct,
accepting her story while at the same time clearly trying to calm her and
minimize the damage, but then he died of a sudden stroke on February
3rd, 1850, and this unloosened another screw in Claire’s head. Apparent-
ly Charles had been so close to the imperial household that there were
reportedly tears shed by the archdukes he had taught there when he died,
but their grief didn’t go so far as helping the family of the dead man:
Charles had died without a will, so his modest estate went to his children
while his wife Antonia received half the house. It actually turned out
that he had been clandestinely supporting another woman in Vienna, and
Antonia had never known!”
“…I thought he was the dull and reliable type…”
“…yes, but he had his liberal side. I think it’s funny that after all of
Shelley’s poetic proclamations about free love and the difficulties he
faced with Mary and Claire, meanwhile Charles had quietly lived out the
rest of his life with two women absolutely discretely…”
“…I suppose that’s the only way how to do it…”

806
 “…but Antonia was not too happy about it when she found out…”
“…I can imagine, but he was beyond her reach by then…”
“…fortunately…Claire offered to support the whole family in Eng-
land, but Antonia reminded her that she had already backed away from
her promise to Willi; however, because Antonia was in dire straits, she
was forced to allow her daughter Pauline to go to England where she
arrived in April, 1850, and Claire immediately appointed her a new dep-
uty in the matter…”
“…you mean spy…”
“…yes…Claire kept goading Antonia not to have any connection to
the Shelleys, and Antonia kept reminding her that Knox had helped Wil-
li to study in Germany, and that the marriage was a fait accompli and
therefore ought to be accepted. Claire had even persuaded Pauline to
write a letter to Mary, the result of which was Clari and Pauline began to
quarrel…”
“…did Claire ever let it go?”
“…you would think she would have let it go when Mary died, but
look at this note to Percy that she wrote–it wavers between grief and re-
gret, condolence and recrimination:

My dear Percy,
I have heard today that your Mother is dead. I have no
wish to add anything to your affliction, but indeed it was
unkind of you never to let me know she was ill. Most un-
kind. Now I can never see her more! Many times last
winter I made Willy ask of Mrs. Knox her health, and he
always brought back word that Mrs. Knox refused posi-
tively to satisfy my wish. After the contemptuous way in
which I had been treated in your house, I could not apply
personally. Though I am no toady…

…”
“…‘toady’?”
“…someone who bows down, acting in an ingratiating manner…”
“…‘patolízal’…”
“…that’s a nice word–nicer than ‘toady’! It continues:

…though I am no toady and resent insult, though I am

poor and will not put up with indignity from the rich–yet
I have as much feeling as others and the loss of an old
friend has afflicted me most sensibly. I wish when you
are calm to hear all of her last moments–when her illness
began and what her illness was–what she said if she knew
she would die–if she regretted Life–but oh! No that she
could not do. Who that breathes cares for Life? No one
can like eternal sorrow and eternal wickedness. You were

807
 a good son to her and she felt it and it made her happy
and that you will find an ineffable consolation in the pre-
sent moment. She always said–she always wrote–My
Percy is the best and dearest of Beings!

…if she had stopped there, the letter might have been just barely passa-
ble, aside from her various remonstrances, but she was full of resent-
ment and self-pity, and she just couldn’t hold it back:

The dreadful treatment I met with from Mrs. Knox, her

duplicity her ingratitude broke my heart. I hoped for hap-
piness from the members of my family–I love them well–
I found the bitterest misery. Because I am myself dying I
will speak my mind to you. How could you, so good a
son, how could you…

…”
“…when the ‘how-could-you’s’ begin, you know it’s trouble…”
“…that’s for sure…

…how could you encourage a daughter to every species

of undutifulness to her parents–how could you urge her to
treat them as if they were the dirt under her feet. If you
knew what my poor brother wrote of the despair that hard
girl’s conduct inspired him with. And what he felt when
you gave a ball for her wedding and she went to it–at the
very time she had plunged a dagger in all our hearts. I
saw you born–I nursed you as my own Child–I ever loved
you as my Child–and I ever shall–but indeed as truth is
truth your want of consideration for my feelings and for
my poor Brothers has given me a deadly blow from
which I shall never recover. The subject makes me so un-
happy–it is such irremediable misery–we cannot alter
Mrs. Knox’s disposition–we cannot bring back the dead–
It is better therefore to join them.

…she simply couldn’t let go of it, and that was her undoing…”
“…I don’t suppose he answered her?”
“…Percy? He would never have had the independence of mind to do
that: Lady Shelley had divided and conquered, and she would never give
up any ground. What symbolizes it all best is what they did when Mary
died, which was totally repulsive…”
“…what?”
“…Mary was initially buried in the St. Pancras churchyard, but then
she was moved, along with her parents, to the churchyard at St. Peters,
Bournemouth, leaving behind his second wife, Mrs. Clairmont, and the

808
despised Aunt Everina, both of whom were later dug up with the rest of
the graves to make way for the St. Pancras railway station in 1868…”
“…so it wasn’t enough for Lady Shelley to divide and conquer in
life–she had to do so in death as well!”
“…it was a disgusting act…even Willi, who had escaped his depend-
ency upon Claire’s beneficence and was by then more objective, thought
it was terrible, writing to Claire:

What you say of Percy’s proceeding after her death is re-

ally horrifying–I should not have believed it unless it was
you who told it to me. I wonder whether they did that ac-
cording to Mrs. Shelley’s will or whether it was their own
idea? Do you know? If there be no other circumstances
with which I am not acquainted, and which possibly
might soften the case, it is indeed an outrage at which
barbarians in the time of paganism would have shud-
dered; it is sacrilege–a violation of the most sacred laws–I
cannot conceive how for the sake of their own name they
could dare do such a thing for it is so atrocious a deed
that it cannot escape the notice of the public–I wonder
what they would say in their defence did you make any
reply after having received the news by your lawyer? I
should never have believed that the daring impudence of
those people should go so far. Pray do tell me in your
next, what has happened since, and whether you intend to
undertake anything against them.

…Claire must have taken this as a sign that he would ride into battle
with her, for a year later he wrote to her, ‘you request me to write to
Percy and remonstrate with him on the pain he allowed his wife to inflict
on you and us all,’ but he refused, arguing that it was futile; and, of
course, he was right…”
“…she just couldn’t let it go, could she?”
“…the long letter that she wrote to Antonia I cited explaining the sto-
ry from her point of view was written in 1853, four years later! I think
the wind was knocked out of her sails about it only when Clari died of
consumption in 1855. As I said, Claire became a reactive old woman
from that point on. After Mary’s death, Jane Williams approached her
again to try to make amends for the Dina affair…”
“…again?”
“…she had tried once already, in 1843: after she had spoken to Mary
about what had happened, she begged Claire for forgiveness, telling her,
‘Whatever I may have thought about your actions with regard to my
child, I have never for a single moment doubted the entire kindness &
affection for her, that prompted them.’ It didn’t work, as this letter
Claire wrote to Mary in June, 1845, indicates:

809
 The best thing with Jane is to make her clearly under-
stand that you are her enemy as I do–then she ceases her
monstrous pretensions on you–she keeps them for those
who are weak enough to feel some friendship for her. She
is a complete decoy duck–she attracts your regard by ele-
gant phrases and manners, and accomplishments and then
she tries to devour you with her selfishness.

…Jane then approached her again in June, 1852, perhaps sensing that in
the wake of Mary’s death Claire might want to reconcile. Her motives
weren’t entirely honest, because Henry Hunt and Dina were having fi-
nancial difficulties and she asked Claire if she could borrow £200 for the
couple…”
“…did Claire lend it to her?”
“…she didn’t answer immediately. Jane wrote again in July, explain-
ing, from her point of view, why their friendship had disintegrated:

I withdrew myself from your society, because it seemed

to me that mine was no longer pleasurable to you. You
did not seem to understand me and your constant de-
meanor towards me was such as to make me feel that you
disliked me…

…and then on August 12th she tried again, writing that she regretted
their estrangement, ‘which is for many reasons unavoidable at present–
but believe me my heart clings to the memory of the long past–and from
that, it will never be estranged.’ Claire’s answer was a letter directly to
Leigh Hunt where she refused the money, saying that she was in strait-
ened circumstances now that she was responsible for the six children left
by her brother…”
“…so she cut Jane completely?”
“…she had never been close to Jane, having only known her for the
summer of 1822; but no, she didn’t completely cut her: Jane visited
Claire at her home in Ramsgate in 1854–Claire had moved there on the
cliffs above the sea in Kent in 1852, but there’s little other connection
between them but a passing interest, on Claire’s part, in one of the ‘sur-
vivors’ of their group. When Hogg died in 1862 Claire wrote to Dina,
enquiring about Jane and her financial situation–old people seem to get
obsessed about legacies and inheritances–and Jane wrote her with the
details about how Hogg had provided a mere £160 per annum for her,
the rest going to the children. You can see she still had her grudge
against the Shelleys in the postscript to that letter, when she wrote, with
subtly mordant wit,

810
 Do tell me if Percy Shelley is well–if you ever see him
and he lives always at Boscombe–I saw some friends of
his here two years ago, and they said, he never felt or
thought for himself, but only thro’ his wife–what a nice
Husband. His Mother always said his character would
depend entirely on the wife he took.

…otherwise, it seems they lost touch, as years later Claire asked

Trelawny for her address, and more than once about how Jane was do-
ing…”
“…and how was she doing?”
“…I read the one biography of Jane available, and I can attest that she
was right not to cut herself off from Mary and the rest of the circle, be-
cause her only claim to fame are those months with Shelley: the time
between her marrying Hogg and when she died, with the exception of
the Dina crisis, was conspicuous for being inconspicuous. The only oth-
er real event that occurred was when her former husband tried to black-
mail her, but otherwise, her life was unremarkable…”
“…but she did go against the norms to live with Edward and have
children with him outside of marriage, and then again, for a while, with
Hogg; and she was Shelley’s muse; and she had to survive after Ed-
ward’s death with two children–it wasn’t a boring life…”
“…that’s true–in comparison to most Victorian women she was ad-
venturous. I suppose I’m a bit unfair when I compare her to Mary and
Claire–she pales in comparison…”
“…and to think she was the face and voice that lightened Shelley’s
final days…”
“…especially given she was the only one of Shelley’s women to have
survived to reach the age of photography: there’s one photo I’ve seen of
her in her latter years that doesn’t give the slightest hint of her supposed
former beauty–she’s an ugly, misshapen crone with a bulbous nose…”
“…how long did she live?”
“…she died in 1884, outliving Claire by three years…”
“…very few women look good at that age…”
“…but some at least have a beautiful mode of being that shines
through: Jane was hardly the radiant woman Shelley once described…”
“…neither was Mary or Claire at the end…”
“…Claire still had life left in her–Silsbee described her as having the
‘dark, subtle, treacherous woman’s nature,’ and as being quite mercurial
and Byronic in temperament…”
“…it’s sad to see how they all ended up: they became so Victorian…”
“…I agree…”
“…I hate to change the subject, but do you want some dessert?”
“…yes, I saw something before–Briciolata alla panna con Zabaione e
cioccolato: it’s something–whatever ‘briciolata’ is–with zabaglione and
chocolate…”

811
 “…I’ll have the Sorbetto al limone with the vodka…”
“…I’ll flag the waiter…”
“…he saw you…”
“…here he comes…una Briciolata alla panna con Zabaione e
cioccolato, e uno Sorbetto al limone con Wodka, per favore…”
“…I’m impressed–you even used the right articles…”
“…I’m trying…”
“…back to what we were saying–it’s like what you said the other day
about the eternal return and time: that only those moments lived intense-
ly persist…”
“…whether we attain immanence or not depends on the intensity,
form, unity, and beauty of those moments we have willed…”
“…do the petty, reactive or negative moments take away from the in-
tense and beautiful moments?”
“…it’s inevitable, I’m afraid…who knows what Shelley might have
been or done if he had lived: in fact, perhaps he wouldn’t be the Shelley
that we recognize, or maybe he would be a different Shelley altogether!
If he had a full-blown affair with Jane, and broke with Edward and left
Mary as a consequence, or if he had returned to England when his father
died and had grown old and reactive, or if he had left for Greece with
Byron–it would be a different story, a different immanence…”
“…but he’s Shelley exactly because he didn’t do any of that…”
“…look at Wordsworth again: if he had died in, say, 1800, we would
consider the best of his poetry, the best of his life, without everything
that came after–his immanence would probably resonate like Keats and
Shelley…”
“…so is dying young the key?”
“…not necessarily: for Wordsworth it would have helped, for exam-
ple, but not for William Blake or Goethe. If Goethe had died at thirty, or
even forty–before his Italian journey, he’d have been a ‘sensation’ due
to Werther, but not much more–there’d be no Faust, no Dichtung und
Wahrheit. Maybe if Shelley had lived to a ripe old age he would have
deepened and mellowed like a vintage Bordeaux–like Goethe writing
novels, plays, and finally memoirs…or maybe he would have become a
crusty curmudgeon like Wordsworth in old age, henpecked by
Mary…but in either case, he wouldn’t be ‘Shelley’ as we know him, and
I wonder if we’d even be here right now…”
“…that’s a sad thought…”
“…but as you said, he was Shelley, and now that he’s dead there’s no
chance he’ll ever be anything else, and all of our ‘what-ifs’ are meaning-
less now. With all of them–Jane, Mary, and Claire–we have to take the
totality of their lives into consideration, including what they became in
old age…”
“…the totality as we know it–as you said about Kafka’s The Trial and
ostensible judgment, the judgment can change as we know more or less
about them…”

812
 “…true, just as their immanence can be affected by the times: in
communist Czechoslovakia the Shelley circle would have been consid-
ered decadent bourgeois parasites…”
“…if anybody even heard of them…”
“…in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, they would be considered infi-
dels…”
“…if anybody even heard of them…”
“…in the consumerist, corporate, ahistorical U.S.A., if they are con-
sidered at all, it is as a commodified, cultural ‘McNugget’…”
“…if anybody even heard of them…”
“…true…”
“…but is it totally relative? If the world became entirely communist,
Muslim, or capitalist, would they disappear forever?”
“…if I believed that I would take a long walk off a short pier! I be-
lieve something between Kant and Nietzsche…”
“…but I thought they were diametrically opposite?”
“…Kant argued that moral judgments ought to be universalizable–
‘Act as if the maxim of your action were to become, through your will, a
maxim of universal law’; but Kant also felt we could never be cer-
tain…with aesthetic judgments especially, we feel as if they ought to be
universal, but we can’t ever prove that they are: there’s always signifi-
cant doubt with Kant that we mere humans can ever ‘see through’ time
and reach Spinoza’s sub specie aeternitatus…nonetheless, Kant believes
it is there, beyond our reach…”
“…and Nietzsche?”
“…he thought Kant was an ‘old cow’ and not really worth discussing:
he saw this ‘noumenal’ reality as a hidden metaphysics and not worth
considering. As we’ve seen, he turned the categorical imperative on its
head when he came up with the eternal return, which is an existential
imperative based on the particular rather than the universal: ‘Act as if
your particular actions would return eternally’–even if you can never be
certain. Nonetheless, that part of Nietzsche that believed in the persis-
tence in time of intensities, like Kant, posited an ‘outside of time’–what
Spinoza called ‘eternity,’ and what Bergson called the a priori pure past.
We can only have glimpses of that ‘outside’ in experiences of timeless-
ness, or in the shadow tracing of what Deleuze calls ‘immanence’…”
“…so immanence is like the shadow of eternity–like those shadows in
de Chirico paintings you mentioned…”
“…the more intense the life, the less petty, negative immanence it
contains, and the deeper the shadows…”
“…but what about for the average person?”
“…immanence occurs for a reason, and the lack of it occurs for a rea-
son too–smallness, pettiness, reactivity, fear. Not everyone can or should
be Shakespeare, Beethoven or Woolf, but everyone can strive to give an
integrity, shape, and coherence to their lives–can be a favorite uncle, or
good friend, or loving sister, or memorable teacher…or, like Claire, can

813
be a fascinating partner, an adventurous, free-thinking and free-acting
woman, and even a subtle and mercurial old woman…”
“…so immanence is–how to say it?–not ‘in itself’ but always in rela-
tion to the present moment, to the person who remembers, or who uses it
somehow…”
“…Deleuze uses the phrase somewhere ‘disembodied life forms’: I
would compare immanence to the case of matter, where all energy is
potential energy, not usable as energy until it is transformed somehow–
through photosynthesis, digestion, combustion, fission. Some materials
harbor more energy than others: the lives of some people harbor more
immanence than others. All immanence is virtual energy, waiting to be
instantiated, and the more intense the immanence the more powerful the
instantiation when it occurs…”
“…as we are instantiating Shelley, Mary, and Claire…”
“…yes…but now I want to connect with a different kind of imma-
nence: we’re a few blocks from the Trevi Fountain, where the famous
scene from La Dolce Vita occurred–it’s best to see it by night …”
“…really? Let’s pay and go look!”
“…but don’t expect anything like Marcello Mastroianni and Anita
Ekberg! Now it’s filled with tourists, crowded into a surprisingly small
square…”
“…but I think they will be there anyway: they will always be there
now…”

814
 

…to live within pure time in the extra-temporality of the task, no longer
held by the concerns of the day except as intrusions and distractions to
that faint murmuring one tries to grasp hold of and transcribe…one
lives this task day in and day out, while the world keeps spinning
through its seasons…but from where does one receive encouragement to
carry on when around one there is only indifference: not merely indif-
ference to oneself, but indifference to even the idea of the task itself?

“…my Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I

shall send it…as to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but abuse;
and this is not hearty or sincere enough to amuse me…I believe, my dear
P that you wish us to come back to England. How is it possible? Health,
competence, tranquility–all these Italy permits, and England takes away.
I am regarded by all who know or hear of me, except, I think, on the
whole, five individuals, as a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose
look even might infect. This is a large computation, and I don’t think I
could mention more than three. Such is the spirit of the English abroad
as well as at home. Few compensate, indeed, for all the rest, and if I
were alone I should laugh; or if I were rich enough to do all things,
which I shall never be…” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

“…very recently I spent a veritable day of consecration reading Prome-

theus Unbound. If the poet is not a real genius, I do not know what a ge-
nius is; it is all wonderful, and I feel as if I have confronted in it myself,
but myself made supreme and celestial. I bow down to the man who
could experience and express such things…” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

“…but where are the friends? Where Bellarmine and his companion?
Many a man is shy of going to the source”…“after many shocks and dis-
turbances of my mind it was necessary for me to settle down for a while,
and for the time being I am staying in my home town…please write me
soon. I need pure tones. Psyche among friends, the generation of
thought in conversation and letters is necessary for artists…Otherwise
we have no thought for ourselves; but it belongs to the holy image which
we are shaping…” (Hölderlin)

“…courage is the life-feeling of the man who surrenders himself to dan-

ger, so that in his death he expands that danger into a danger for the
world and at the same time overcomes it. The greatness of the danger
arises in the courageous person–for only in striking him, in his total

815
submission to it, does it strike the world. In his death, however, it is
overcome; it has reached the world, which it no longer threatens. In it is
liberation and at the same time stabilization of the immense forces
which every day, in the form of bounded things, surround the body. In
death these forces that threatened the courageous person as danger
have already abruptly changed, are calmed in it.” (Walter Benjamin on
Hölderlin)

“…at least I will ask forgiveness for having fed on lies. Let us go now.
But not a friendly hand! Where can I find help? Yes, at least the new
hour is very harsh. For I can say that victory is mine: the gnashing of
teeth, the hissing of fire, the reeking sighs abate. All filthy memories
fade out. My last regrets scamper off…I must hold what has been
gained…this is a vigil. Let us welcome all the influxes of vigor and real
tenderness. And, at dawn, armed with ardent patience, we will enter
magnificent cities. What was I saying about a friendly hand? One fine
advantage is that I can laugh at old lying loves and strike with shame
those lying couples–I saw the hell of women down there–and I shall be
free to possess truth in one body and soul...” (Rimbaud)

“…the artist who willingly exposes himself to the risks of the experience
which is his does not feel free of the world, but, rather, deprived of it; he
does not feel that he is master of himself, but rather that he is absent
from himself and exposed to demands which, casting him out of life and
of living, open him to that moment at which he cannot do anything and
is no longer himself. It is then that Rimbaud flees into the desert from
the responsibilities of the poetic decision. He buries his imagination and
his glory. He says ‘adieu’ to the ‘impossible’…he does not come back to
the world; he takes refuge in it…the violence of his disavowal, the re-
fusal to remember himself shows the terror which he still felt and the
force of the upheaval which he could not undergo to the limit. He is re-
proached with having sold out and deserted, but the reproach is easy for
those who have not run the risk…” (Blanchot)

“…courage, then, is the virtue which manifests itself through endurance

in the impossible. This is not simply a matter of a momentary encounter
with the impossible: that would be heroism, not courage. Heroism has
always been represented not as a virtue but as a posture: as the moment
when one turns to meet the impossible face to face. The virtue of cour-
age constructs itself through endurance within the impossible; time is its
raw material. What takes courage is to operate in terms of a different
durée to that imposed by the law of the world. The point we are seeking
must be one that can connect to another order of time…” (Alain Badiou)

816
 

The broken brickwork abutments and arches, shattered vaults, and

crumbling walls of the Baths of Caracalla glow warmly pink in the
morning sun against the cloudless blue sky. Walking among the debris,
grass, and broken mosaics that were once the floor of the baths, they feel
dwarfed by the heights of the ruins rising thirty meters above them like
the walls of a canyon. After examining the grounds for an hour, they exit
the south side and walk to a shaded park bench on the landscaped
grounds.
“…here, have some water…”
“…thanks–it’s hotter today…”
“…it is…”
“…it’s too bad they won’t let us climb on the ruins–Shelley was
lucky…”
“…I think I’d be afraid to without any guard rails–it’s quite a fall…”
“…how did he get up there?”
“…either on that destroyed staircase we saw–it was probably less de-
stroyed in Shelley’s time–or in one of those cordoned off entrances there
must be a circular stairway…”
“…I didn’t expect it to be so high…”
“…neither did I…”
“…so he wrote Prometheus Unbound here…”
“…part of it, anyway…”
“…I can see why: with these dimensions, it’s like the Gods were
here…”
“…it’s more impressive than the Colosseum–or at least the effect of
the ruins is more impressive…”
“…I can see now that it’s not just individuals that have immanence:
entire civilizations can have it…”
“…especially when they leave ruins like these–it really gives a sense
of who the late Romans were…”
“…and what happened to them–who was it that cut the water supply–
the Goths?”
“…the Vandals, right before they sacked Rome in 455: the western
Roman Empire fell soon after…”
“…and where were they from?”
“…from about 120 A.D. they lived in Silesia, actually…”
“…really?”
“…yes–there’s a reason the word vandalism comes from the Vandals:
not so much for what they did in Rome, which was mostly pillage, but
they totally destroyed France, or Gaul as it was known, then…”
“…to be known for what you destroyed rather than what you created–
that’s terrible…”

817
 “…but unfortunately all too prevalent: the Nazis left practically no
monuments but concrete blocks…”
“…but at least it’s mostly gone! The communists left all sorts of ugli-
ness that’s still there…”
“…at least in Prague they had the sense to blow up the statue of Sta-
lin: I was appalled in Jena when I saw that they had taken that beautiful
little hill-bound town, cradle of Romanticism and Idealism, and erected
a thirty storey tower in its center: the inhabitants call it the ‘Phallus
Jenensis’!”
“…or the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw–what a monstrosi-
ty!”
“…but the worst communist remnants in Prague are all the concrete
apartment blocks–the paneláky, but at least they’re not in the center…”
“…I wonder what would be left if the American empire ever crum-
bles–skyscrapers?”
“…there are a few nice ones, like the Chrysler Building, but most are
just glass and steel boxes…”
“…but in a thousand years, will they be left standing?”
“…I don’t know, but look at this place–it’s only brick and stone, and
see how much is left of it…they say reinforced concrete can last pretty
long–perhaps thousands of years–if there are no serious wars, or plane-
tary disasters…”
“…that’s a sad thought–that we’ll be stuck with this mess…”
“…they’re building more every day. I’m never surprised by human
destructiveness, so the idea of an urban desert in a millennium’s time, or
even sooner–sort of an American version of the Mayan cities in the
Mexican jungles–wouldn’t surprise me. Empires become decadent: it’s
inevitable, it seems, and they are replaced by other empires…”
“…and how long do you think the American empire will last?”
“…if history is any indication, not long, because the reign of empires
is increasingly brief: the Roman Empire lasted from Augustus through
the sack of Rome, so about five hundred years; the British Empire half
as long; the Soviet Empire seventy years: at that rate of decrease, I give
the American empire another twenty-five years…”
“…that’s not very long…”
“…I won’t be sad to see it go: empires always spell trouble…”
“…and what will it become?”
“…who knows? Either it will return to being another large country
among others, or it will be part of the global transformation into some-
thing else–some sort of global system: it’s already happening–it’s sur-
prising how many wealthy Americans have their money invested off-
shore…”
“…so maybe your expatriation is just part of that process…”
“…it’s possible: if you look at Shelley, of course his reason for going
abroad was different from someone like Peacock, who had joined the
British Empire, but Shelley still benefited from the economic differential

818
between the British Empire and the continent, just as American expatri-
ates in the 20s and 30s benefitted economically in post-First World War
Paris, and again in post-Cold War Prague: to be honest with myself, I’ve
benefited a great deal from the economic differential, at least at first…”
“…until you started living off the local economy…”
“…that’s true: it used to be I benefited from both sides–low prices in
Prague and an American bank account; now I’m pinched from both
sides–by high prices and a salary at the low level of the local econo-
my…”
“…but you still have far more time to write than you had in the
U.S.A…”
“…that’s true: the U.S.A. winds everyone up to maximum productivi-
ty, only giving two weeks off a year on average, while in continental
Europe it’s closer to two months off…”
“…one month officially in the Czech Republic…”
“…plus holidays, plus the Christmas and summer slow-downs, plus
sick days that are not due to sicknesses…”
“…well, yes…”
“…but I think it’s more–what’s the best word?–‘human,’ perhaps. I
really couldn’t stand the Anglo-American work ethic: it’s really just a
mask for capitalist hyper-productivity, and from what I can tell, it gets
worse and worse. It seems to me that in the U.S.A. the ‘machine’ hunts
down leisure, rest and relaxation in every last nook and cranny…”
“…but you work a great deal compared to anyone I know…”
“…I admit it’s a vestige of my father’s workaholism, but at least I
work for myself rather than the system: he gave everything for a compa-
ny that chewed him up and spit him out with a ‘golden handshake’…”
“…what’s that?”
“…it’s when they realize it’s costing the company too much to keep
on old blood, so they appear to be doing you a favor by offering an early
retirement package at full pay until retirement age is reached: it’s a cam-
ouflaged kiss-off. My father pretended it was an honor, but I could see
how crushed he was when it happened…and then, after he stopped
working, he was simply at a loss as to what to do with himself, and he
just wasted away for a decade before succumbing to cancer…”
“…but in the end, the whole system that crushed your father will in-
evitably come to an end–just like the Roman Empire is now only these
ruins, just like communism is receding into history…”
“…it’s a sobering thought…”
“…so, shall we continue with the story–or do you want to wait until
lunch?”
“…there’s only a little left to tell: I can tell you some of it now–it’s
pleasant to sit here. Then we can walk to Testaccio and eat lunch–it’s
about a kilometer and a half that way…”
“…ok. So Claire was still in England…”

819
 “…Claire remained in England until 1859: the 1850s was, for her,
mostly an aftermath–the aftermath of the crisis involving her niece,
Mary’s death, Charles’ death. Much of her time was spent worrying
about his children, and the majority of the letters she wrote during this
decade were to Charles’ wife Antonia concerning them. Willi and Paul-
ine had left for Australia in 1852, while Charles, Jr., who they called
Charley, left for Scotland to study agriculture in 1854. By 1856, Antonia
was begging Claire for help: in quick succession her daughter Sidonia
died of cholera in January, aged nineteen; then, Emily, who was twenty-
three, died of typhus in March; and then Charley, who had returned from
Scotland, died in May at twenty-one. Claire sent money to her the whole
period, and together they plotted to bring Willi and Pauline back from
Australia…”
“…what were they doing there?”
“…Willi and two partners bought a sheep station with 14,000 sheep in
Armidale, although the market collapsed within a year and the whole
thing fell apart. Pauline went to work for four years as a governess for
the Suttor family in Brucedale. Although she was twenty-eight, she had
an affair with their eighteen-year-old boy, Willie Suttor: she didn’t real-
ize it then, but she would remember the romance as her one taste of real
love. She later wrote:

…the realization of my youthful dreams of love have I

found nowhere but in the land of sun and the hot desert
under the Wattle trees, on the shores of the Wimburndale
creek–Sleep, sleep ye memories of past days–I have re-
turned to the mire the corruption of Europe–let me culti-
vate the only plant that thrives here–Vanity.

…she was forced to leave the family when she flirted with another
guest, so I guess she was spirited. This is how Willie described her later:

I could never throughout unravel her character. She was a

short dark woman with jet black silky hair, dark brown
eyes and very pretty hands and arms with a certain spice
of deviltry in her…I think she left us in 1857 having just
taught me what it was to feel what a love of a woman was
like.

…it reminds me of that short Renoir film–the one with Georges Ba-
taille’s wife, Sylvia, playing the city daughter who has the fling during
the picnic in the country, and at the end both she and her lover happen
by chance to return to the same spot years later, and you find out it was
the high point of love for both of them…”
“…oh yes, what was that called–Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe?”

820
 “…no, although there is a picnic on the grass in it: it’s called Partie
de Campagne–A Day in the Country…”
“…now I remember…”
“…Claire put herself in league with Antonia to try to get Willi and
Pauline back from Australia, and she seized upon his business failure as
the moment to launch their campaign:

I am grieved dear Willy should be disappointed in his

speculation; for he deserved success; but altogether I
hope his disappointment will prove a gain; as I trust it
will be the means of bringing him back to Europe. I in-
tend to write him in this sense, and to urge upon his con-
sideration, the necessity of returning as soon as possible. I
shall point out to him that many roads are open to him in
Europe; if you think he can get a good situation in Austria
and wish he should take one, he can take it–if you prefer
his taking a farm in Wales (where the air is pure, provi-
sions cheap, and life simple) he can take one and we can
all live there.

…Claire was writing almost weekly all summer to Antonia, then to Willi
and Pauline, and then back to Antonia, as if it were entirely her business.
The letters are difficult to read, for she sounds increasingly like a self-
important, meddling old crone, punctuating her letters with references to
‘our Heavenly Home,’ ‘God’s will,’ and the necessity of suffering…”
“…when did she become religious?”
“…I think it was when Mary died: what drove her into becoming reli-
gious in a ‘we’ll all meet in Heaven’ sense was the fact that there was no
resolution in their relationship, and, as she felt it, no justice regarding
the Clari crisis. There’s a certain kind of religious feeling that is charged
with resentment: the feeling that life has been unjust to one, and that it
will all be made up for in Heaven, when the sinners will be punished,
and the just rewarded–the precise opposite of the eternal return, for it’s
all about what is to come later, rather than accepting what is here,
now…”
“…that’s sad–I thought Claire would have held out against it…”
“…yes, but actually it was worst in these letters to Antonia: Antonia
was a devote Catholic, and, while I believe Claire did become religious,
she may have been laying it on a little thick because of her audience–
there’s an element of manipulation in it…”
“…but to what end?”
“…at the very least, as Samuel Beckett put it, to have ‘company,’ but
I also think that we never give up our will-to-power: company is never
enough. There’s always some sort of struggle. Claire justified it, always,
by the way she had been treated and had suffered, even arguing that her
suffering in the past gave her the right to dispense advice. She had ad-

821
vice about where Willi should marry–in England, of course; advice how
Antonia ought not hire a certain poor, pretty serving girl, as she would
trap Willi–listen to this: ‘…in the name of all that is sacred dear Tonie–
avoid Miss F’; advice about where he should settle–she thought Hungary
was too dangerous and backwards; advice about what Pauline ought to
be eating, and she even wrote: ‘And I think they should be furnished
with the rule about the colour of their stools, by which they may guide
themselves infallibly’…”
“…what’s that!?”
“…examining one’s excrement–she wrote almost a whole page on it!
I had always thought it was a peculiarly Austro-Hungarian thing, be-
cause you still find, from time to time, these old toilets in Prague where
there’s a little platform exactly for such scatological self-analysis of the
texture, color, odor; but here we find Claire, in London–she was living
in Portman Square by then–lecturing to Antonia in Vienna, rather than
the other way around…”
“…maybe Claire’s the reason it started in Austria–she started a
trend!”
“…I think the British probably invented it, but it takes the peculiar
temperament of an Austrian to raise it into an art form and build a toilet
especially designed for it–but enough scatology for today! Claire re-
minds me of my grandmother, sometimes: perhaps that’s why I find the
late letters so difficult to read. She’s always yammering on about how
‘youth must be guided by age’! Listen to this:

Those young people who succeed have either openly, or

covertly some grey head whom they obey. I made the
most terrible mistakes so long as I was with the S’s–they
were young and I was young…

…and even worse, this:

My family has suffered so much from the romantic desti-

ny decreed to them, that could I do as I wish, I would
never let a niece or nephew of mine, come within a thou-
sand miles of any one, or any circumstance that possessed
any appearances at all out of the every day hum-drum of
life.

…it’s so painful to hear her writing that, but part of it must have been
the fact she had found so willing an audience for it–one old lady bab-
bling to another! In the end, even Antonia got tired of it: Claire had kept
going on about her scheme to get Willi married to a girl with some mon-
ey–money was the main thing. Listen to this–her machinations are abso-
lutely transparent:

822
 I want Willy to marry–and I think if he staid with me
some time, there is a good opening for him in the matri-
monial line. I want him to marry a girl with money; and
besides, she is handsome, and so sensible and good. I do
not want Willy to make a tearing raving love match…

…Antonia finally put a stop to it, writing her a letter that in no uncertain
terms told her to cease and to desist with her matchmaking and med-
dling:

…for God’s sake what can make you so desirous of get-

ting poor W’s promise of marriage to person he does not
know, not even by name, and will not see for a year to
come at least.

…Antonia wrote that not only did she not make Willy promise to con-
sider the proposal, she actually made him promise not to consider it.
Claire was not amused, to say the least, to be so directly contradicted,
and wrote back:

I am not displeased at your not liking the marriage I pro-

posed for Willy. We English are accustomed to allow
every Individual the use of their Judgment. But I certainly
am much hurt at the tone in which you express your dis-
approval. I cannot think that if you had confidence in my
understanding, or confidence in my Affection for my re-
lations, you could have written me the letter you have
written. Therefore, of course, it wounds me to be distrust-
ed, feeling as I do, that I do not merit distrust.

…she went on and defended herself, and ended the letter writing ‘I am
very content to withdraw’–but she did not only withdraw from the
match-making, she also ended the decade long series of letters between
them–it’s typical of the kind of reactive old bitch she had become…”
“…and what happened with Willi and Pauline?”
“…Willi remained in Australia until the end of 1860 as a sheep man-
ager. Pauline left Australia, arriving in England on August 6th, 1857, in-
tending to stay in England with Claire. It seems she may have stayed
with Claire in London a year, but after Claire’s break with Antonia she
may have returned to Vienna. Her mother suggested that she consider
returning to Australia, but in 1859 she became the governess for the five
children of Countess Amelie Karoly at Rakičan in what’s now Slovenia.
In September, 1859, she received an invitation to join Claire in Florence,
where she had moved…”
“…why did Claire move there?”

823
 “…there’s no evidence about why she made her decision, but I imag-
ine that England felt very lonely to Claire after she broke with Antonia:
there are almost no letters extant for the entire decade of the 1860s, so
she had really alienated almost everybody around her. I’m sure it was
also because she could stretch her money much further there…”
“…did Pauline go to visit her?”
“…initially she went only for a brief period–from December, 1859,
through April, 1860, when she was thirty-five. I think Claire must have
frightened her away, as she mentioned the possibility of settling there as
a companion but it wouldn’t happen for a whole decade–she still had too
much life in her. Her journals, which are unpublished–some were lost
during the war, because they were stored in Vienna–show her having
one lover after another as she traveled with her mother in Baden, Dres-
den, London, and Paris between 1860 through 1863. Like Trelawny, she
wanted to out-romanticize the Romantics: she was also fond of smoking,
drinking and literature, and she had aspirations to become a writer…”
“…what did she read?”
“…Longfellow, Thackeray, Melville, and especially her favor-
ite…Byron!”
“…Byron? I’m sure Claire wasn’t happy about that! Did she know
that Claire had been Byron’s lover?”
“…she found out at some point, but Claire probably avoided the topic,
thinking she was protecting her morals! The ironic thing is that during
this period of travel Pauline had become pregnant after an affair with
someone named ‘Adolphe L’: she had gone to live with her brother Willi
in 1863, who had come back from Australia by then and bought a farm
in Bobda, Hungary–it’s now part of the Romanian Banat, near to
Timişoara. She gave birth to an illegitimate daughter on January 29th,
1864, and named her Johanna Maria Georgina Hanghegyi–the last name
being a translation of Clairmont into Hungarian. She gave the daughter
to the Countess Karoly in Rakičan to raise, while she went off to Baden
to care for her mother until her mother’s death in 1868. She visited her
daughter twice a year, and after one of these visits she complained about
how ‘English’ her daughter had become, but it’s clear it was the upper-
class upbringing that was what was most affecting her. She wrote:

I should like to see her flying about the house with ruddy
cheeks her hair all loose, more wild more wilfull more
daring but she has the English blood in her–slow of de-
velopment. She is so primly dressed, with neat little stays
& cuffs & little buttons, & keeps all her linen neatly tied
up with little red bows. She speaks in a soft & low voice
almost a whisper, & all her little wishes are modest &
gentle. How unlike my wild gypsy nature!

824
…I think Pauline was teaching in the years between the death of her
mother and when she came to live with Claire in 1870, but there’s little
evidence…”
“…why did she change her mind and go live with Claire?”
“…initially it was because she connected Claire’s house with free-
dom, but over time her options became increasingly limited: she was
forty-five-years-old in 1870. Claire had moved to the Palazzo Orsini on
the Via Valfonda in October, 1868: it was a building that had been right
near the train station–next to where the Shelleys had lived with her be-
fore. She had a view of the station…”
“…also destroyed by American bombers?”
“…yes…she shared with two young ladies–a German named Miss
Müller, an Englishwoman named Miss Moulson, and a housekeeper.
The biographer Richard Garnett sought out the former, who claimed she
told him that ‘Claire had the remains of great beauty,’ and that ‘she used
to speak of Shelley with affection, but accused him of instability; she
never, or rarely, mentioned Byron.’ He also wrote that ‘Miss Müller
feels sure that her love affair with the latter was the only one she had’;
however, I don’t think Claire would have told anyone about Shelley, and
even if she had Garnett wouldn’t have repeated it because he was a Vic-
torian Shelley-worshipper in league with Lady Jane Shelley. In the late
1860s Claire’s one contact with her family was with Willi, who had his
reasons for contacting her. Willi had married Ottilie von Pilcher in 1866,
and was farming at a place written as Mirkovetz: on maps I could only
find a Mirkovec in Croatia, north of Zagreb, and a Mirkovci, in the east
of Croatia. He visited Claire in Florence in December, 1869, which must
have been part of a campaign to get her on his side, for he had sold his
farm and asked Claire for £1,000 to buy another…”
“…did she give it to him?”
“…it took some time to find a suitable farm, but yes: in August, 1871,
Claire decided to buy a farm Willi found near Maribor, buying it out-
right herself for £2,000: Claire was to receive 5% of the profits while
Willi ran it…”
“…I’m surprised she trusted him: did it work out?”
“…Claire evidently forgot something she wrote to Mary back in 1844,
when she described her unlucky star–especially with money:

…I am morally convinced the farm I buy with the house

on it will be shot up in the air by a subterranean volcano–
or carried away by a torrent or be turned into a lake any
thing in short so that my possession shall disappear from
the face of the earth…

…in 1872 the farm prospects declined considerably and no profits were
made, and by June, 1873 they had decided to sell the farm. I’m not sure
how much of her money she recovered, if any…”

825
 “…poor Claire…”
“…yes, but she was still doing all right, all things considered. Pauline
was finally escorted to Claire’s house by Willi’s wife Ottilie von Pichler
and her twenty-four-year-old sister, Alma, in April, 1870. Alma left a
detailed account of her visit–written in a letter to Willy:

We went slowly along to 83 Via Valfonda towards one

o’clock, having left our visiting cards there, together with
Willy’s letter, early that morning. In Palazzo Orsini up a
small bright staircase we reached Aunt Claire’s nice little
flat…We were shown into the drawing room with a view
towards the station. It was simply but nicely furnished
with small chintz-covered furniture. There we waited for
Aunt Claire who soon appeared bidding us a most friend-
ly welcome. She is a small, distinguished, very English
lady with small white curls. She led us into a small bed-
room and asked us to leave our coats there as she ex-
pected us to stay for lunch. After we had seated ourselves
in her drawing-room she blew up the fire and enquired
most anxiously after her relations. She said she was very
cross with Plin…

…that’s what she called Pauline…

…for hesitating so long in rejoining her, which made her

wish to go and see you since you were so silly as to fall ill
again and again. At half past one we had our lunch. We
were welcomed by Mrs. Jones and soon after Mrs. Moul-
son appeared, an elegant, sweet and typical little Eng-
lishwoman, her long fair curls tied with a blue ribbon,
and wearing an elegant black dress with a train. She gave
us a most friendly welcome and we were seated in the
following order: Aunt Claire between Mrs. Jones and
Miss Moulson, and we facing her. We had rice soup,
chicken with cauliflower, potatoes and pork, pastry,
stewed fruit and biscuits, oranges and apples. Miss Moul-
son’s conversation was pleasant and lively. Aunt Claire
quietly gave us good advice while Mrs. Jones did the
honours. After lunch Aunt Claire showed us Plin’s friend-
ly-looking little room and lastly led us to Miss Moulson’s
nice boudoir where hung several good pictures in oil
painted by her, and where she entertained us by playing
on the piano. She is a delightful and talented creature.
Aunt Claire and mother withdrew. Miss Moulson showed
me several of her studies, and about four o’clock we
strolled with Mrs. Jones through the city to the Giardino

826
 Pubblico, saw Princess Humbert and explored the large
garden with beautiful views.

…it’s a remarkably perceptive account, and the poignant thing is that

Alma von Pichler committed suicide by drowning less than three weeks
after she wrote this letter…”
“…what!? Why?”
“…who knows? It seems strange to me that she could take the time to
write such a detailed letter about what was really a very banal visit with
an old Aunt-in-law and then get herself into such a passion that she
would commit suicide twenty days later. She was undoubtedly chaper-
oned the whole time by her mother, so she couldn’t have gotten into any
trouble…”
“…maybe having seen Claire and the other spinsters, and then seeing
her sister-in-law Pauline being dropped off there, unmarried, at the age
of forty-five…maybe it was all too much…”
“…anything’s possible: her aunt, Caroline von Pilcher, was a quite
famous writer of historical novels who ran one of the most celebrated
salons in Vienna, so she had much to live up to…and meanwhile her sis-
ter Ottilie was living on a farm in Croatia, so maybe she expected the
worst for herself, too…”
“…or maybe the opposite: perhaps she suddenly discovered she was
three months’ pregnant from someone back home…”
“…anything’s possible…we’ll never know…”
“…it’s strange how when you look at certain lives closely, as we’re
looking at the lives of Shelley, Claire, and Mary, you get these brief
glimpses of the lives of others around them which were just as tragic and
interesting in their own way…it’s like the sudden glimpse of a beautiful
and strange fish rising to the surface of a dark sea…”
“…or it’s as if there were patches of light which illuminate certain
areas, but not others: I suppose immanence is that light, because we
wouldn’t know about this Alma, let alone Pauline, Willi, Charles, Claire,
and perhaps even Mary if it hadn’t been the decision of a young poet to
live intensely and try to transcribe that existence into his writing…”
“…and Jane must have realized it: she was totally vain, but at a cer-
tain point she must have realized that she wouldn’t rise out of the dark-
ness based on her own intrinsic value…any illumination would come
through Shelley and her connection to his circle, which is why she mar-
ried Hogg and why she was so desperate to make amends with Mary,
and then with Claire. It’s a difficult realization to come to, because for
her it meant swallowing her pride…”
“…perhaps even more difficult for us in the 20th Century: as Warhol
said, everyone feels entitled to their fifteen minutes of fame…”
“…or they act as if they were on a film set with cameras on them all
the time…”

827
 “…my American students walk around with personal stereos on their
heads as if their lives had a soundtrack, and they the stars of the film:
Lawrence noticed that about Americans as early as the 20s, when he
went to the U.S.A. and wrote about how the cowboys in Texas all acted
as if they were being filmed…”
“…I’ve noticed that especially about Americans: there’s this weird
paradox that things aren’t ‘real’ unless they come through the media, so
they wander in Prague at a loss about how to respond to things that ha-
ven’t been mediated for them…”
“…it’s all part of the strange ‘bubble’ of mediated reality that comes
with postindustrial, postmodern democracy: of course while ‘reality tel-
evision’ is making everyone feel unique, the truth is that we’re now here
with six-billion-plus other beings and more than ever likely to live out
our existence in the dark water, away from any illumination. Today’s
media is designed to allay those feelings, and make us feel ‘special’ and
‘unique’ without our having to do anything truly special or unique…but
it’s all a ruse …”
“…so that’s what Nietzsche meant when he said the only punishment
for not living the eternal return is one would not live eternally…”
“…it’s not as bad a punishment as the fires of hell or being reborn as
an anteater, but you have to admit that slipping into an un-illuminated
darkness is a frightening prospect, so people prefer swimming towards
the light…”
“…even if it’s only someone else’s immanence?”
“…take a look around: do people flock to the famous?”
“…yes…”
“…so there you are! People even flock to the people who were merely
associated with the famous, once they’re dead–Claire being a perfect
example. Even though she kept her association with Shelley and Byron
secret and can in no way be charged with courting fame, there were still
people attracted to her–William Michael Rossetti would come, Silsbee
would come: if Claire had let her association with Byron, especially, be-
come generally known, she would have had visitors every day in Flor-
ence in the same way Trelawny lived off of Byron’s immanence at the
salons and clubs of London…”
“…but those in her immediate circle knew about Byron–you said Mrs.
Moulson spoke to Garnett about it later…”
“…yes, of course people knew, but she also told him that Claire re-
fused to say much of Byron, and from what she said about Shelley, she
assumed he had not been her lover: what does that tell you?”
“…that she was careful…”
“…and she became more careful with Pauline and then Georgina
around, for she saw herself as protecting them from the malign influ-
ences that had ‘blighted’ her own life…”
“…when did Georgina come?”

828
 “…Pauline told Claire about her in Spring, 1871, so it was a year into
her stay:

She received the news with some show of feeling &

whatever the motive may have been she said–You will
bring the child here, & I will adopt her. I remember day
and place as well as possible when she said these words I
felt as if a sudden spring had been touched in my soul & a
powerful voice in me cried–No–No–I said nothing and
only some time afterwards that she found out my quiet
but firm resistance.

…Pauline didn’t know, at that point, about Allegra, because if she had
known she would have guessed Claire’s motive: Georgina was six when
Claire first heard about her–precisely the age Allegra was when Claire
lost her, and clearly Claire saw Georgina as a surrogate daughter–
someone she would bring up herself, and ‘correctly’ this time! Pauline
sensed it intuitively, as you can see…”
“…did she ever find out about Allegra?”
“…she must have found out: look at this journal entry written in 1874:

I am the one on whom Aunt concentrates all her hatred–

& strange to say–the very instrument she hoped to torture
me with–à la Byron–escapes her–because the good little
thing loves me–& obeys me for every feeling & sentiment
& idea.

…actually, Pauline continued that comparison between Claire and By-

ron, telling Silsbee, once, that Claire increasingly resembled him psy-
chologically, as she was ‘capricious, willful, stingy, mercenary etc.’
Pauline also found out about Shelley, or at least his general connection
to Claire, because in March, 1872, she took Georgina with her on a tour
to San Terenzo to see the Casa Magni and other sites associated with
Shelley, and wrote in her journal: ‘How silly & weak-minded are those
who dare not enjoy life’…”
“…it’s strange how Claire was becoming increasingly ‘unromantic’
while her niece was trying as hard as she could to be romantic–
seemingly taking Claire’s younger life as her model!”
“…with Georgina in between them being pulled both ways…”
“…so there was already a tug-of-war going on?”
“…all the way until the end. Claire tried to hold on to her even when
it may not have been in the child’s interest: in 1873, when the Countess
who had taken care of Georgina offered to take her back and put her in
school, Claire refused. According to Pauline’s journal, when Claire died
Pauline forgave everything except the fact that Claire had ‘tried to make
poor G. as unhappy as she could’–undoubtedly due to her attempts at

829
‘correct upbringing.’ Claire left the principal of her estate to Georgina
when she died–Pauline was only allowed to touch the interest during her
life; apparently they had fought for too long, and it was Claire’s way of
punishing her…”
“…I hate people who try to settle scores with their wills…”
“…then get ready to hate a lot of people! It’s quite common among
petty people who haven’t willed the eternal return during their lives, and
so in bad faith they try to do so after their lives are over as a way to ‘get
even.’ Actually, according to a letter that Pauline wrote after Claire’s
death, Claire had left two wills: one of them she left out in the open gave
Pauline the interest on the principal, as I said, while a second, hidden
will gave Willi the bulk of the estate, with Pauline receiving one fifth:
she was obviously waiting until the very end to see if her niece behaved
herself. Claire had mentioned in her will that she had appointed a lawyer
because she feared ‘no respect would be paid her after her death,’ and
she told Pauline directly that she feared ‘she would be kicked into a
ditch like a dog.’ I suppose it’s an expatriate’s nightmare–dying in a for-
eign country and just being tossed somewhere into a pauper’s grave…”
“…you just want to be ‘tossed off” the Charles Bridge…”
“…that’s different–I chose the site, and I hope it will be by those who
care something for me!”
“…it’s sad that having made the preparations to have all of her chosen
names recorded, when they moved her at Antella they shortened her
name to ‘Jane Clairmont’–the names she liked the least…”
“…but they also put “Clara Mary’ after it, which is nicely symbolic,
suggesting the symbiotic love-hate relationship she had with Mary. It’s
not exactly like being kicked in a ditch…”
“…it’s close–they should have honored her inscription…”
“…I agree, but to the Italians she was just ‘some foreigner’…”
“…and do you fear being treated as just ‘some foreigner’?”
“…it happens all the time…”
“…I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen…”
“…only if I die first, otherwise it’s in the ditch ‘like a dog’–like Josef
K at the end of The Trial…”
“…don’t joke about it! So what happened to Pauline?”
“…I won’t give away the Silsbee story before we get there, but all I
can tell you is that she didn’t forsake her ‘romantic’ view of life, be-
cause she died while climbing on the Sonnenberg in the Italian Alps at
age sixty-six!”
“…you’re right–another Trelawny…”
“…in her own modest way…”
“…and Georgina?”
“…she didn’t live to see the estate passed on to her…”
“…what happened to her?”
“…I don’t know, except that she died at age 21 six years after Claire,
and six years before Pauline. I searched but couldn’t find a clue as to

830
what happened to her–she’s another fish appearing for a moment, and
then disappearing into the darkness…”
“…and speaking of Trelawny–what was he up to during these years?”
“…in 1869 he burst into Claire’s life again with a series of letters. He
had moved to Usk in Wales with Augusta Goring, and after a period of
time they bought a large estate called Cefn Ila, and Trelawny built him-
self a huge house. He more or less lived the life of a country gentleman:
shooting, fishing, planting trees, growing vegetables, and assuming
some local duties. They had three children together–Edgar, Frank and
Letitia, and at that time they were still hosting visits by Zella from Lon-
don. In 1857 he began writing his Recollections of the Last Days of Shel-
ley and Byron, and somehow this reminded him of his past life, so he
took a mistress–a certain ‘Miss B.’ He had her move in, which scandal-
ized the people of the town and apparently his wife as well, for the next
thing we know he had broken with Augusta, sold the house and estate,
and had moved to southwest England. Later he bought an apartment in
London at 7, Pelham Crescent, and it was here where he would meet vis-
itors and spin his yarns. He had portraits of Claire and Mary on the
walls, the last couch that Shelley had slept on, and a piece of his jaw-
bone and brow. He attended The Savage Club where he met the next
generation of writers, including Walter Swinburne, and William Michael
Rossetti–he would later give Rossetti the piece of the brow, the couch,
and numerous manuscripts, including a copy of Queen Mab. He kept a
young mistress, Miss Taylor, and his daughter, Letitia, came to visit him
quite regularly: these two would share his estate when he died. His two
sons, who hated him, never saw him again, and died long before him.
Later he also bought a house in Sompting on the south coast, where he
spent his time when he was not in London chopping his own wood and
taking daily cold swims in the sea. They re-engaged their correspond-
ence in September, 1869:

What a gap in our correspondence–nearly half a century:

you seem to take no note of time; our friendship had a vi-
olent commencement and then, lured by fancy or driven
by fate, we wandered by different paths–people never al-
ter–we are still the same–almost the last of the band that
clustered round and worshipped the lorn and outraged
Poet–his slanders are forgotten and his genius and excel-
lence acknowledged–in my love for Shelley and so rarely
speaking to anyone that knew him, everything else van-
ishes from my mind.–Clare, you have a ready pen–gratify
me by writing to me about Percy–any of his sayings and
doings–you and Jane are the last links–and us three must
soon ‘glide under the graves.’

831
…her response, which seems to have led him to suspect she had gone
insane, was to ask him for confirmation about Allegra’s death, because
she had started to think that she hadn’t died. In answer, Trelawny’s letter
of October 18th, 1869, began:

My Dear Clare, You may be well in body; but you have a

bee in your bonnet–an insane idea has got into your brain
regarding Allegra–Byron certainly wished the child to
live and talked of how he should have her educated and
marrying into one of the old Italian families…

…even worse is that in answer to Trelawny’s query about Percy, she had
apparently written to him about Percy Florence! Listen to his reaction:

Another thing in your letter amazed me–I asked you to

write me some recollections of Percy Shelley–of course
meaning our drowned poet–and you write me an account
of his….son….Moral and physical maladies are heredi-
tary but not genius–the breed of our P.B. Shelley is ex-
tinct–and everything respecting him is to me and others
deeply interesting.–In my last to you I remarked that you
and Jane and I were the only three left that knew him–that
must have shown whom I meant. Jane wears very well
but–is….painful to behold…

…the ellipses are all the censoring of H. Buxton Forman, the editor of
his letters in 1910–there hasn’t been a new edition since then. The fact
Claire thought it was Percy Florence he was asking about shows how
constricted her thought patterns had become, nursing her old wounds…”
“…did she finally answer him and send him any accounts of Shel-
ley?”
“…she sent two letters, but as Trelawny never kept anything we don’t
have them–only his response, written on November 27th:

Your last letters were exceedingly interesting to me: eve-

rything regarding S–is so–for I loved him from the first–
on the death of his son, the present Percy, the family will
be extinct–his three sisters are living; two unmarried–the
third married, but no children…her name is Mary Trevor.
Anything and everything regarding the Poet will be most
welcome and your comments and recollections–you may
be certain that nothing will ever be published by me that
will tarnish his name–some of the events of his youth I
have heard from Medwin–Medwin died this year at the
age of eighty-two or three, I saw him shortly before he
took his departure–he was always honest and consistent

832
 in his love of the poet–and a corrected life of Shelley he
has left in the press and will be published this autumn. By
the bye, have you any letters of S? his familiar notes are
admirable, much better than his printed prose…

…and then he goads Claire a bit, as she apparently didn’t talk about
what Trelawny had been fishing for:

The Poet was a thorough Mormon–why did he not de-

clare himself and anticipate the sect? I would have joined
him and founded a settlement–it would not hold together
without a superstition–for men all over the world are su-
perstitious–it’s the nature of the animal–your mother was
a simpleton to have never heard of a man being in love
with two women; when we are young we are in love with
all women…

…Claire seems to have passed over his prodding without a word. Her
next few letters, of which we only have fragmented copies, were an ex-
tended account of her dealings with Byron. Trelawny answered her on
January 5th, 1870, again trying to provoke her:

…so I look back–and the Shelleyan episode in my life is

the most interesting–the present and the future is noth-
ing–so I look back–by the bye why did not he project a
sect on the Mormon plan? I would have gladly joined him
and founded a settlement–as Man is everywhere and at all
periods ingrained with superstition, we must have ours–
the heathen mythology would have done with adaptation
to our present state: the poet should have had his fifty
wives–five would have done for me…

…here he stops and asks her if she has seen Hogg’s life of Shelley, tell-
ing her the story of how Hogg was stopped writing it half-way
through…”
“…why?”
“…Lady Shelley had brought together Trelawny, Hogg and Peacock
to discuss the writing of Shelley’s biography in 1857: the task went to
Hogg, but Hogg’s first two volumes were written more as a book about
‘my life with my friend Shelley,’ and Lady Shelley was horrified, and
asked Peacock to write a correction. In the end she appointed her own
biographer, Richard Garnett–the man I mentioned before–to write a bi-
ography which would clean up the story. They put an injunction against
Hogg to prevent him from writing anything more, and he wrote to a
friend that he thought she was insane. Hunt would write of Hogg’s book:
‘This foolish book of an imbecile pretender, whose misdirected absurdi-

833
ties have made me in my old age speak of a fellow-creature in a manner
to which I had thought I had bidden a long adieu, and for whom those
three human words, old age, and imbecile, may after all furnish an ex-
cuse, which I have not sufficiently borne in mind…’”
“…and what did Trelawny think of it?”
“…for the most part he liked it, but he didn’t like everything; for ex-
ample, Trelawny wrote to Claire about the fact that Hogg wrote Shelley
couldn’t distinguish truth from falsehood:

…I found the poet always truthful–his vivid imagination

might occasionally delude him as it does others–for in-
stance his account of the parson assaulting him at the post
office–I doubted; but it may have been–in all the ordinary
occurrences of life he was truthful. You say he was wom-
anly in some things–so he was, and we men should all be
much better if we had a touch of their feeling, sentiment,
earnestness, and constancy; but in all of the best qualities
of men he excelled–the best qualities of the sexes he had–
not exactly all–he was inconstant in Love as men of ve-
hement temperament are apt to be–his spirit hunting after
new fancies; nothing real can equal the ideal. Poets and
men of ardent imagination should not marry–marriage is
only suitable to stupid people.

…but Claire would not rise to his provocation, and the next few letters
they exchanged were almost entirely about Byron–Trelawny confirming
the story of his relationship with his half-sister, but urging Claire to
leave off her hatred of Byron, writing ‘he lived an unhappy life and died
a miserable death–bad and selfish as he was, there are millions
worse’…”
“…I guess Claire didn’t like that!”
“…of course not–she replied, ‘But never, never neither here nor in
Eternity can I, nor will I, forgive the injuries he inflicted upon my de-
fenceless Child,’ and went on in considerable detail about Byron’s cul-
pability. Trelawny responded in his letter of April 3rd:

It is well observed that we should not be vexed that we

can’t make other people what we wish them to be–for we
can’t make ourselves what we wish to be–so we must
each follow our own path–until death’s hounds drive us
into our burrows.–Mary Shelley’s jealousy must have
sorely vexed Shelley–indeed she was not a suitable com-
panion for the poet–his first wife Harriet must have been
more suitable–Mary was the most conventional slave I
ever met–she even affected the pious dodge, such was her
yearning for society–she was devoid of imagination and

834
 Poetry–she felt compunction when she lost him–she did
not understand or appreciate him…”

…he followed this letter up with one written on June 18th where he tried
to change the subject to Shelley:

Now let us have some of your memories of the Poet, his

way of life from day to day, his talk, his acts–his opin-
ions, any and everything regarding him is to me deeply
interesting.–Byron and Shelley, what a contrast–the one
the incarnation of rank selfishness–the other of a bounti-
ful and loving nature; everything that came in contact
with Percy, especially women, loved him at sight–women
retain and are governed by their impulses and instincts–
ours are blurred if not obliterated by what we are pleased
to call our reason–and that is a blind faculty and so we go
on blundering–and filling the world with wrongs and
wretchedness.

…but apparently she had been offended by the aspersions he had cast on
Mary, and didn’t respond to either of these letters until December; and,
when she did, she defended Mary’s religious convictions, then stated her
own quite directly–as well as the self-pity that was the cause of her reli-
gious feelings:

My own firm conviction after years and years of reflec-

tion is that our Home is beyond the Stars, not beneath
them. Life is only the prologue to an Eternal Drama as a
Cathedral is the vestibule of Heaven…My life has been
most desolate; no one cared for me no one helped me.

…he readily responded on January 17th, 1871, writing her, ‘Dissatisfied

with this world, you have faith in another–I have not–I am content to be
restored to the earth and elements of which we are a part–your authori-
ties are nothing,’ and he defended his own opinion of Mary:

As to Mary Shelley, you are welcome to her: she was noth-

ing but the weakest of her sex–she was the Poet’s wife and
as bad a one he could have found–her aim and object was
fashionable society; she was conventional in everything
and tormented him by jealousy and would have made him
like Tom Moore if she could–she had not capacity to com-
prehend him or his poetry. Shakespeare had a wife, so had
Milton; who cares to know anything about them?–we know
only they tormented their husbands. I am solely interested

835
 about Shelley; and you are of the few left that knew and
could appreciate him…

…again, I’m not sure what or if she answered him because we only have
fragmented copies, but she did write him long letters about how Mary
and Shelley met, and how it was they got married. Trelawny wrote back
on May 9th:

It is more than half a century from the time of our meet-

ing first at Pisa–our lives are far behind us–we are ossify-
ing and mineralizing–soon to be absorbed by the ele-
ments and there is the end of it…I have known men as
worthy as Shelley, but never with such an active brain
and mind; yet he was but a man and failed as all such re-
fined minds must fail in finding what they seek.

…he then goes on to disparage most of the people around Shelley, ex-
cept for Jane and Edward Williams:

…Jane and Edward I forgot–they were the most suitable

companions he ever had, and did him good–do write me
your recollections of him–any trifling particulars–I loved
him. Edward Williams too was an excellent playmate ex-
actly suited to the Poet, simple, refined, and free from
vice–Jane a fitting companion for both of them–we
should have been a happy family–but for the club-footed
Poet–the Hunts did not suit–they would have ruined any-
one they got hold of. Mary S–jealousy, frivolity, and
hankering after frivolous society, not appreciating the
value of what she had until she lost it–such is life–no
wonder the poet was weary of it. You, Jane, and I are the
only survivors–and we shall soon follow.

…again, he presses her to write to him about Shelley…”

“…I notice he automatically includes Claire in this ‘happy family’: I
realize that he couldn’t very well do otherwise given he’s writing her,
but he so readily includes her among those closest to the poet, and that
goes together with his assumption that she actually does have something
to write about Shelley...”
“…you’re saying that he must have guessed her relation to Shelley?”
“…yes, and so much so that he simply assumes it without saying it–
that’s why he keeps cajoling her to tell something about Shelley, as if he
wanted her to finally confess it…”
“…given he saw himself as being on the ‘inside’ of this little family,
it must have been maddening to suspect there was someone in an even
closer circle…”

836
 “…he had ejected everyone else from the inner circle–including
Mary, and he had conveniently forgotten Edward and Jane: that left
Claire and himself. He increasingly became this idolator like Silsbee:
like Mary in The Last Man, he saw himself as part of a race that was be-
coming extinct. Look how he ends his letter to Claire of June 26th, 1871:
‘We are all fools! And there an end of it–nothing amazes me so much as
the labyrinth of follies I have wandered in all my life–so fare thee well–
all the Poets of our day are thrown aside and almost forgotten’…or, the
next year in April when he wrote:

Shelley is no more abused, and more read, but not popu-

lar: he is too metaphysical, imaginative, and abstract to be
comprehended by any but such as have a touch of his
quality–nothing that has been published regarding him
has paid expenses–my book was a loss–all the Poets of
his day are ignored and a feeble race of ballad mongers
such as Tennyson have taken their places–such is the va-
garies of fashion…

…he was of course right about that–and still is, although there have been
several generations of appraisal, and Shelley has been extolled by some
very important writers and critics: still, as I said a few days ago, he
simply wasn’t taught at the university in the 80s, except at Yale where
the ‘Yale Critics’ were about to bring him back into vogue–Harold
Bloom, and especially the long piece Derrida wrote on Shelley and
Blanchot, and another written by Paul de Man. My professors had been
taught by the New Critics–formalists who revered T.S. Eliot, and Eliot
had laid the ban against Shelley, of course, because he didn’t like all that
emotional self-disclosure…”
“…and now, in the 90s?”
“…it’s quiet again, but I think in the background there’s a good deal
of slow and steady progress on him: as Nietzsche said about himself, a
century or more needs to pass before he’s understood…”
“…it must have felt very isolated to be Claire or Trelawny: inextrica-
bly linked to the memory of someone long gone…”
“…or, in the case of Trelawny, linked himself like a cart to a horse!”
“…and to see the memory of that person dwindle away–it must have
been hard…”
“…it was, but with a figure like Shelley there’s always an aficionado–
someone who his writing speaks to. Already there was a younger gen-
eration interested–William Michael Rossetti, for example: he was pri-
marily a critic, but through the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which he
was a founding member, others in the circle, including his siblings Dan-
te and Christina, were deeply influenced by Shelley…”
“…and was Trelawny right about assessing his own period?”

837
 “…surprisingly so–he didn’t see the importance of certain people, but
with others he did: for example, he saw immediately the value of George
Eliot’s novel Middlemarch. Unlike Claire, who had become more of a
fusty old ‘anti-Romantic’ in her old age, Trelawny never gave up his
radical and anti-clerical opinions, and especially his veneration of Shel-
ley, although he did begin to question his earlier life a bit…”
“…Trelawny?”
“…yes–look at what he wrote to Claire on November 9th, 1872:

…I am amazed at the vanity and folly of my past life–

there is hardly an act I approve of–my first impulses were
often good; but I seldom acted on them–I seldom saw
things as they were–vanity and imagination deluded me–
we are a world of fools and mad people, and I shan’t re-
gret leaving it. Men vaunt of their reason but act as blind
passion prompts; they are envious and malignant; and
women are jealous and vindictive–this is the result of my
experience! What is yours?

…a fairly negative assessment…”

“…did she answer him, or did she take it as a rhetorical question?”
“…first there was a period of silence, and he wrote again on April 7th,
1873 asking, ‘You have made a great rent in our correspondence: are
you ill or farming in Austria?’ When she did answer, she told him she
had been bed-ridden because of a dislocated ankle, and she complained
about her financial situation: I think she was exaggerating, but she told
him she was now getting by on £120 a year. She had already queried
him about selling her Shelley letters–the famous ‘Aspern papers,’ and
had sent him copies: he had himself offered her £50, but she turned him
down, writing, ‘neither the bodily anguish I am suffering, nor the mental
anxiety caused by pecuniary difficulties, would induce me to sell my
Shelley papers for a small sum…’”
“…how much would that be in today’s terms?”
“…it’s so hard to figure monetary value from time to time, place to
place, but I would guess something like $4,000. When he wrote her next,
on May 1st, he opened by writing, ‘you must have managed badly to
have but £120 per annum–out of £12,000’–and he was right, as almost
everything had been poorly invested. He then went on about the letters,
and her health:

If you will state the particular of what you have I will do

my best to sell them to the greatest advantage. I had no
notion you were so reduced: as to your accident, you will
soon get over that, and you need not talk of your great
age–I am older–and quite well, and so is Jane–so cheer up

838
 and rest assured you have one friend that will do his best
to help you.

…of course the letters did not sell, as they went on to become the
‘Aspern papers.’ Claire was hurting for money, no doubt, but she had
taken in her two lodgers, and she could still afford a housekeeper, so it
wasn’t anything like abject poverty; it was her health that preoccupied
her–as you know, Claire began thinking she was ‘dying’ from her mid-
30s, and continued to do so until the end of her life. Of course her health
got worse as time wore on, but she retained her faculties, and ought not
to have complained so much: Trelawny, for one, made fun of her ten-
dency to drag their correspondence towards their respective ills, and
humored her with a kind of teasing that made light of life, but she was
not one for such humor. Look here–on June 2nd, 1874, he half-jokingly
wrote, ‘…we are all spellbound–time hurries us along and death clutches
us and so ends the dream which we call life,’ and ended the letter writ-
ing, ‘old folks should back out of the crowd and let it pass; we are not
wanted.’ Claire must have reacted sharply to it, for the following Janu-
ary he was writing her this:

I said in age we should stand aside and let the throng

pass–and you construe it that I meant indifference to eve-
rything and that I cease to interest myself about Shelley
or Byron–in age our lives are behind us and we look back
and not forward. I am interested with all concerning Shel-
ley and regretted you said so little about the Man as he
was.

…this, of course, was another foray in his decades-long campaign to get

her to speak. In March he came at her again, this time shaming and be-
rating her:

This is not an age of poesy but science of all sorts; never-

theless you might have made a very readable book–you
have had fifty years to do it–even now it’s not too late–
it’s impossible for anyone else–detached fragments
would be cast aside and puzzle, if not damage him that
you desire to honour. There is time for you to do it but
not time to shilly shally; get someone to write, and dic-
tate–hitherto you have done nothing but prate: string the
divers letters together by a simple narration–the unwilling
have many excuses–they are always composed of lies!!! I
must end my sermon.

…this time the goading worked, for she at least agreed to try, but she
also made excuses based on her health, and she once again, as always,

839
danced away from the point, arguing that Shelley’s greatness was in his
poetry, not his private life:

I will endeavor to connect the letters of Shelley by a short

clear narrative. For many reasons I am afraid it will be a
failure; 1st my health is so bad, it is only at intervals of
long standing–that I can write even a common letter. Eve-
ry now and then after a long repose from all thinking my
intellect brightens up for a day or two, and my ideas take
a wide circuit and I feel vividly, I can write a little–then
returns a cloud of dense, inactive stupidity over my brain,
and if my life depended on it, in this state, I cannot call
up a thought, or a recollection or a feeling. In what I call
my lucid intervals I generally write to you. However I
will try–notwithstanding the conviction that weighs upon
me that to write even a simple narrative about Shelley,
requires far superior intellectual faculties to any I ever
possessed. On one point I wish to have your opinion: In
all that Mrs. Shelley…

…note the ‘Mrs. Shelley’ she’s using now–even with Trelawny…

…wrote concerning her husband, there is an ideality, a

tender refinement of sentiment which was worthy of the
subject she treated; therefore it is useless for me to tread
in her steps–what remains for my pen would be triviali-
ties, anecdotes of his private life, and manner of living
etc. etc.–is it desirable to bring these matters before the
public–in my opinion it would be much better that they
should be buried in silence. He was a wonderful Poet–
perhaps in his transcendentalism, greater than any Poet
that has ever lived–but when he laid aside his pen and
ceased imagining and creating, he became purely and
simply a man, generous, tender hearted etc. etc.–but full
of weaknesses that were not in keeping with his great in-
tellect. Do you think I ought to lay this side of the ques-
tion before the public. Tell me.

…you can see how the Victorian Age had done its work on her…”
“…I suppose that’s what is meant by ‘expiating her virtues’…did she
actually write about Shelley?”
“…I’m coming to that…”
“…so she didn’t…”
“…she did write something, but she had resistances. Two months af-
ter this last message–May, 1875–she wrote to Trelawny about William
Michael Rossetti’s book on Shelley which had finally come out. A

840
friend had brought it to her, because, she wrote, ‘I myself should never
have sought out any book that treated of the Shelleys–for they ever
brought so much misfortune on me that I avoid and have ever since 1822
avoided any literature that could recall them to my mind’–an outright lie,
both to Trelawny and to herself! Claire always loved Shelley, and she
felt very close to Mary and Percy Florence until Lady Shelley entered
their lives, and the ‘Clari catastrophe’ happened. Her real reason for
avoiding the books on the circle was that she was afraid of what she
would find written about herself, and she happened to choose, as her
first book on those years, a book which mentioned her…”
“…and she was upset?”
“…you won’t believe about what! She was angriest about the fact that
Rossetti had given her age as being four years older than it actually was:
he wrote that she was twenty when they eloped to the continent the first
time, when she was actually sixteen! She urged Trelawny three times to
demand a correction from Rossetti…”
“…woman’s vanity–and to think she was…how old?”
“…seventy eight…otherwise, she strongly disapproved of being men-
tioned. Here’s what she wrote–she’s incredibly disingenuous:

I disapprove Mr. Rossetti’s mentioning me at all in his

Life of Shelley–my actions have nothing to do with the
poet–and the mention of them could in no way illustrate
any necessary information concerning Shelley. Mr. Ros-
setti should have remembered an individual’s private his-
tory is their own property, whom no one has a right to
publish–if my history was published before (it may have
been, for I never read or even saw, any of the lives writ-
ten on Shelley) it was an insult and an offence–which Mr.
Rossetti out of respect to the laws of delicacy and honour
should not have repeated. Mr. Rossetti may have thought
(and perhaps very justly) that as I am so old and have so
little time to live, the publishing gossiping scandals about
me, could do me little harm. But he should and ought to
have recollected my niece and nephew, who have their
livelihoods to earn…

…and further on she gets even worse…

…can I forget the bitter experience that I learned during

the years between 1818 and 1822; that a woman without
rank, without riches, without male relatives to protect her,
is looked upon by men as a thing only fit to have her feel-
ings and her rights trampled on. This is the lesson I learnt
from both Shelley and Byron. Therefore my only hope is
in you. Do not think of me–but think of my niece who

841
 may at any moment be turned away from her employ-
ments, for living with such a disgraced woman as me.

…talk about ‘rewriting history’! I particularly object to her mentioning

Shelley and Byron in one breath–but she was losing her mind and
health, and anyway, in calmer moments all the way to the end she
revered Shelley…”
“…it’s so painful to hear–as if she had nothing to do with the fact she
ran off with Shelley or threw herself at Byron. She probably should have
died when Mary did…”
“…and the part about it damaging her niece–as if anyone really cared,
then, aside from precisely people like Silsbee and Rossetti! Pauline was
fifty years old, and in no danger of losing any little employment she may
have had aside from being her Aunt Claire’s companion and keeper;
and, if she were covertly referring to Georgina, she was an illegitimate
child, so how could anything that happened to her great Aunt fifty years
before cause a scandal to her?”
“…but was what Rossetti wrote a scandal?”
“…I was only able to obtain the corrected edition from 1886, but I can
tell, from the way everything else was handled, that it couldn’t have
been much at all–perhaps the mere mention of Allegra’s parentage.
Trelawny answered her on May 31st, 1875, exclaiming that no one really
cared about any of it any more:

Mrs. Elliot can’t get her book about Byron published: two
generations have passed, and he is almost forgotten, as
are all the writers of that day–the eternal hunger is for
something new.–The past is the past, and at last the pre-
sent can be but the past!–we are past–and soon shall be
Earth to Earth–we have both lingered beyond our time–
we should make room for others–we have played out our
little game and have had enough of it–life is but a Donkey
sweepstakes, so good bye…

…it sounds final, but then there must have been one final goading, alt-
hough there’s some confusion about the dates. When Trelawny had re-
instigated their correspondence in 1869, he made it sound as if decades
had passed, but there’s a letter he wrote supposedly in July, 1857, but
with no response from Claire. I believe that letter was actually from July
10, 1875, because Trelawny wrote, ‘when you write tell me about Shel-
ley’s idiosyncrasies, his follies’: Claire’s letter of August and Septem-
ber, 1875 claims she is answering his letter of July 10th, and goes on to
say, ‘You beg me to write about Shelley’s follies–yet in another letter
you say, “those who have lived in intimacy with a person and disclose
their follies are despised by everyone.” This was also my own opinion’–
so I think this must be the correct sequence. She goes on to say that there

842
are only two justifiable reasons to write about someone’s private life:
when ‘it redounds to the credit of the person one reports about; when it
can elevate the mind of the reader, and incite him to honourable action,’
or when someone is forced to do it ‘to justify his own reputation.’ She
then writes, ‘I do not wish to lay before you the follies of Shelley; they
were…’–that’s where it breaks off…”
“…is that what you mentioned before, where there’s…how many
pages missing?”
“…four pages are missing, and it continues on a page where she is
recounting what her journal contained about some events in 1814, and
then she stops because, she wrote, ‘my eyes seem bursting out of my
head.’ Actually, in the postscript she writes that she forgot to give an
account of Harriet Shelley–another indication of the sequencing of the
letters, because Trelawny had explicitly asked about Harriet in the 1857
letter; so, whatever was in those four pages, it didn’t include the material
on Harriet. Trelawny’s reply on November 15th gives some indication of
their contents:

Your other longer epistle interested me: it’s such as I

should expect of the ardent and passionate nature of the
man and I see nothing wrong in it: I should have done
and have done much worse–we blunder thro’ life goaded
on by passion–reason is like the walking gentleman in a
comedy uttering moral sentiments that everyone laughs
at–shams, cant, and hypocrisy prevail; therefore no one
can speak truly, nor do they. Shelley as compared with
his fellow men was excellent; but I would not say any-
thing that could be misinterpreted by his enemies–no one
is infallible but your Pope.

…my guess is that she may have written about Emilia Viviani, and per-
haps about Eliza Maria Campbell and the Naples incident, as she was
also willing to speak guardedly to Silsbee about it. I don’t think she
knew about Jane, and I don’t think anything would bring her to speak
about herself and Shelley–or if she had, she certainly wouldn’t have
risked writing it in a letter after she saw what had happened to Mary in
the Gatteschi affair. As you can see here by his response, she clearly
asked him to return her letters:

I say, don’t go on harping about your letters–I burn all

that should be oblivious–so if you doubt my honour or
prudence don’t write. I never asked anyone to return let-
ters–nor has anyone but you ever asked me to return
theirs, nor will I, so there is an end of it!

843
…but whatever she wrote, it was enough for someone to destroy the evi-
dence…”
“…who do you think did it?”
“…I don’t know–one of the ‘right-thinking people’ again…”
“…Lady Shelley?”
“…not likely–she had no access to their correspondence: it’s more
likely it was some hero-worshipping critic or biographer who wanted to
suppress the evidence, maintaining Shelley as an angelic or Christ-like
being…”
“…or the same for Claire…”
“…perhaps...I’ll never understand it, but I guess that’s what happens
when you are born into the Romantic Age and live into the Victorian
Age…”
“…Trelawny seems to have known they outlived their time…”
“…yes–I wish Claire had had the same kind of self-reflection about it,
rather than recanting it all…”
“…did they continue writing to each other?”
“…they were both getting old, and this brief flurry of re-connection
largely came to an end. The last extant letter is from Claire to Trelawny
via Emma Taylor…”
“…who was she…”
“…they told everyone she was his ‘niece,’ but she was a combination
of nursemaid, housekeeper, and companion…”
“…and, knowing Trelawny, mistress too…”
“…undoubtedly. In the closing years of his life he lived with her and
his daughter, Letitia, at Sompting at the South Downs, continuing to take
his daily baths in the sea and walking his two black-and-tan terriers on
the Downs every day. Claire’s letter was written in March 1877, and it
mostly complained about how hard it was for her to write, her poverty,
and her ailments, including cataracts:

After writing three or four lines (the number varies occa-

sionally according as the eyes are better or worse) every-
thing turns black, a dark black I am completely blind and
have to leave off. This causes me despondency and makes
me dread to take up my pen.

…so that was that, there was nothing further between them…”
“…and what happened to Trelawny in the end?”
“…Trelawny died two years after Claire, in 1881, aged 89. Miss Tay-
lor sent a telegram to Rossetti, and his body was arranged to be cremated
in Germany…”
“…why Germany?”
“…I don’t know–probably something to do with what could or could
not be transported to the continent. Actually it was Emma who carried
his ashes from Germany to Italy and deposited them here in his grave…”

844
 “…so she was definitely more than a housekeeper! I wonder what it
felt like for her to be here…and what did she do, where did she go?”
“…she’s another one of these fish that rise to the surface and then dis-
appear. I’ve always wondered if the girl portrayed in Millais’ painting
The Northwest Passage, which Trelawny modeled for, was his daughter
Letitia, or Emma–she’s posed at his feet, reading to him while holding
his hand. I suppose it could be either…”
“…and now there he rests, next to Shelley, bathing in the glow of his
immanence…”
“…yes…”
“…that leaves only Claire…”
“…and there’s not much left to tell–just the Silsbee story, and her
death…”
“…that’s sad…it seems so…final…”
“…every story has an ending…”
“…so, you’ll tell me over lunch?”
“…yes, shall we go?”
“…let’s, we have a way to go yet…”

845
 

…one must take one’s mortality in one’s hands–keeping it before one‘s

eyes always, deriving from it the source of one’s meaning, sovereignty,
and strength…

“…if I do not save myself in some work, I am lost. Do I know this dis-
tinctly enough? I do not hide from men because I want to live peacefully,
but because I want to perish peacefully…” (Kafka)

“…it is vain to want to remain oneself above and beyond one’s disap-
pearance, vain to desire immutable stability in a work which would
dominate time. This is vain and, moreover, the opposite of what one
wants, which is not to subsist in the leisurely eternity of idols, but to
change, to disappear in order to cooperate in the universal transfor-
mation: to act anonymously and not to be a pure, idle name. From this
perspective, creators’ dreams of living on through their works appear
not only small-minded but mistaken, and any true action, accomplished
anonymously in the world and for the sake of the world’s ultimate per-
fection, seems to affirm a triumph over death that is more rigorous,
more certain. At least such action is free of the wretched regret that one
cannot be oneself for longer. These dreams, which are so strong and
which are linked to a transformation of art at a time when art is not yet
present to itself–at a time when man, who believes he is the master of
art, wants to make himself present, wants to be the one who creates and
by creating escapes destruction even if only just barely–these dreams,
then, are striking in this: they show ‘creators’ engaged in a profound
relation with death. And this relation, despite appearances, is the one
Kafka pursued also. Both he and they want death to be possible: he in
order to grasp it, they in order to hold it at a distance. The differences
are negligible. They are set in one perspective, which is the determina-
tion to establish with death a relation of freedom…” (Blanchot)

“…O Lord, grant to each his own death, the dying which truly evolves
from this life in which he found love, meaning and distress…” (Rilke)

“…the task of forming our death leaves us to guess: it seems that we are
to do something which, however, we cannot do, which does not depend
upon us, but we upon it, upon which we do not even depend, for it es-
capes us and we escape it. To say that Rilke affirms the immanence of
death in life is no doubt to speak correctly, but it is also to construe only
one side of his thought. This immanence is not given; it is to be

846
achieved. It is our task and such a task consists not only in humanizing
or in mastering the foreignness of our death by a patient act, but in re-
specting its ‘transcendence.’ We must understand in it the absolutely
foreign, obey what exceeds us, and be faithful to what excludes us. What
must one do to die without betraying this high power, death? There is,
then, a double task: I must die a death which does not betray me, and I
myself must die without betraying the truth and the essence of death…”
(Blanchot)

“…when, a few days ago, I was with André Masson in this kitchen,
seated, a glass of wine in my hand, he suddenly talked of his own death
and the death of his family, his eyes fixed, suffering, almost screaming
that it was necessary for it to become a tender and passionate death,
screaming his hatred for a world that weighs down even on death with
its employee’s paw–and I was no longer able to doubt that the lot and
the infinite tumult of human life were open to those who could no longer
exist as empty eye sockets, but as seers swept away by an overwhelming
dream they could not own…” (Bataille)

“…writing, reading, I exscribe the ‘thing itself’–‘existence,’ the ‘real’–

which is only when it is exscribed, and whose being alone is what is at
stake in inscription. By inscribing significations, we exscribe the pres-
ence of what withdraws from all significations, being itself (life, passion,
matter…). The being of existence is not unpresentable: it presents itself
exscribed. Bataille’s cry is neither masked nor stifled: it makes itself
heard as the cry that is not heard…in one sense, Bataille is necessarily
present to us, with a presence that holds signification off but is still
communication. Not an assembled body of work made communicable,
interpretable…but the stumbling insistence, now completed, of an in-
scription of finitude. Here is discharged an infinite jouissance, a pain
and a pleasure so real that touching them (reading them exscripted)
immediately convinces us of the absolute meaning of their non-
signification. In still another sense, this is Bataille himself, dead. In oth-
er words, it is the exasperation of reading: every moment brings the cer-
tainty that the man who wrote this did once exist, as well as the con-
founding evidence that the meaning of his work and the meaning of his
life are this same nakedness, this same denuding of meaning that dis-
tances a work from a life…” (Jean-Luc Nancy)

“…now it is autumn and the failing fruit and the long journey towards
oblivion. The apples falling like great drops of dew to bruise themselves
and exit from themselves. And it is time to go, to bid farewell to one’s
own self, and find an exit from the fallen self…Oh build your ship of
death. Oh build it! For you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion
awaits you…” (D.H. Lawrence)

847
 

The flurry of activity on the Piazza Testaccio winds down after a brisk
morning’s business. The pair watch as the kitchen boy from the restau-
rant runs across the street to the piazza to purchase their fish from the
market while the waiter brings them a bottle of acqua minerale and Pom-
ino Bianco, opens it for tasting, and pours them each a glass of the
green-gold wine. They toast each other, and take long draughts of the
mineral water. A few minutes later the waiter returns and places before
them their antipasti: a plate of Fiori di zucchine fritti ripieni di mozzarel-
la.
“…it’s really fried zucchini flowers!”
“…sure, what did you think it was when we ordered it?”
“…I don’t know–I thought it was just a way of cutting the zucchini to
look like a flower…”
“…it’s really the flowers–it must be cooked the same day the flower
is picked…”
“…they’re really good…it’s so delicate–the taste of the batter, the
mozzarella, the flower…”
“…sort of a sophisticated smažený sýr…”
“…I’m not sure I would make that comparison…”
“…perhaps not, but I’ve had some ‘gourmet’ fried cheese in Prague
from time to time, but it usually results in some sort of gastro-intestinal
catastrophe…”
“…I don’t think these will result in any catastrophe…”
“…no…delicious…”
“…so, let’s finish the story before we go back to the cemetery: can we
start by your telling me exactly who Silsbee was…”
“…Edward Augustus Silsbee was born in, of all places, Salem, Mas-
sachusetts, in 1826…”
“…of the Salem of the witch trials?”
“…yes, and The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. He
acknowledged that his background in such a Puritan place didn’t suit
him, writing in a note, ‘I was born utterly out of place, thwarted thru life
by an uncongenial unsympathetic family which if I had been early sepa-
rated from I might have amounted to something’…”
“…that says a great deal already…”
“…his father was in the shipping business, so Silsbee became sailor
very young–even becoming a captain, but then he retired from the sea
when he was 27, realizing his calling had been wrong from the start. He
then became an art student and lecturer, and was especially fanatical
about Shelley, whose verse he memorized, and about whom he collected
notes for forty years, never developing them into a book. Look here in

848
this appendix to Claire’s letters…one witness wrote of him that he
would ‘come and sit gloomily in an armchair, looking like some deep-
sea monster on a Bernini fountain, staring at the carpet and quoting his
favorite author with a trumpet-like twang quite without relevance to the
conversation…’”
“…another vulture…”
“…I often wonder why it is that authors so often attract their oppo-
sites; for example, I sometimes think that nothing can be more boring
and un-Joyce-like than some ‘Joyceans’: ‘dull, dull, deadly dull,’ as
Shelley might have said…”
“…it seems strange to me that someone would dedicate an entire ca-
reer to a single writer…”
“…it seems strange to me also: it’s the result of the hyper-
specialization of academia–everyone demarcating and protecting their
own little intellectual turf, and the turf keeps getting smaller and smaller.
A friend of mine told me about an Emily Dickinson specialist that came
to his university department to give a talk: they had a faculty lunch to
welcome the person, he made a reference to Proust, to which she said,
‘…he’s that, uh…French writer, isn’t he?’”
“…you’re joking!”
“…it’s the truth–very few people can see the forest for the trees any
more: they’re so focused on their one little figure or their own national
literature that they lack any larger sense of how it fits across history or
across cultures…”
“…yes, in the Czech Republic everything is seen only from the Czech
perspective, and even when they do acknowledge a writer from some-
where else, it’s always related to how ‘we’ were influenced by that fig-
ure…”
“…the ‘little nation’ syndrome: Witold Gombrowicz rails against the
same thing happening in Poland in his diaries. As I said before, the dif-
ference between little nations and larger nations is that at least with little
nations it’s obvious it’s happening, and therefore somewhat excusable: a
Czech doesn’t even have to leave their own borders to encounter major
writers from another language group, such as Kafka, Rilke, or Musil…”
“…and they only have to reach their borders to find out how patheti-
cally small their perspective actually is in comparison to the rest of the
world…”
“…but larger nations are worse: as Kundera wrote, medium-to-large
nations like Germany or France have produced enough culture on their
own to get away with treating their perspective as if it were the same as
the world’s…”
“…which amounts to reducing the world to their own perspective…”
“…right…the French, for example, can flaunt the fact they have a few
significant figures in every major period of European history: Rabelais,
Racine, Molière, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Nerval, Hugo, Balzac,
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Zola, Proust, Breton, Sartre…and so

849
their cultural arrogance camouflages their actually quite delimited, very
‘French’ perspective. Then, there are empires like the former British
Empire–or the U.S.A. now, which teach literature as if it were entirely
the result of the English-speaking world! The standard anthologies of
American literature are now two huge volumes long–covering first, sec-
ond, and even third-rate American writers: English departments in the
U.S.A. will teach any or all of these writers rather than teach any but a
smattering of world literature, which is left to foreign language and
comparative literature departments…”
“…they should at least teach one course to give some cultural and his-
torical perspective…”
“…most programs would claim they do: they have undergraduates
take a ‘great books’ sequence–a small smattering of ‘great books’ across
time–Homer, Dante, Voltaire, and so on, often taught as if they were an-
cient relics encased in airless glass boxes, or, on the other hand, made
hopelessly contemporary, so that the history is discarded. Such sequenc-
es imply that what’s ‘happening’ currently is happening only there in
America–as if the whole long European tradition led inevitably to the
‘American Century’! I grew up in that atmosphere, which was as perva-
sive as it was unspoken. The French may be arrogant about their tradi-
tion, and the Czechs somewhat negligent about the traditions of others,
but what’s even worse than such arrogance or negligence is a cultural
tradition that doesn’t even recognize its own exceptionalism…”
“…to return to Silsbee: was he just an amateur in Romanticism, or an
‘expert’?”
“…he was, I suppose, an ‘enthusiastic’ amateur. I suppose I do appre-
ciate one thing about him: he had passion for his subject, and that’s
something one rarely finds today…”
“…so when did he first arrive in Florence?”
“…he first arrived in October, 1872, when Claire was seventy-five,
and Pauline was a forty-seven-year-old spinster, although Claire still
treated her as a girl whose honor had to be protected. In the early months
he made a number of afternoon visits, and Claire apparently basked in
his attention. To give you some idea of it, on February 27th, 1873, Paul-
ine wrote in her journal, ‘Mr. Silsbee is with Aunt & she is quite happy
& delighted I am not there to watch her funny ways with men–when she
plays the Gurli, or the imbecile which she does to perfection.’ We don’t
know how long he stayed in Florence, but by July, 1875, he was visiting
again, and we have another record of his visit from Pauline’s journal:

I cannot help wondering at the longevity of Envy & Jeal-

ousy in the human heart–There is Aunt at 77 so jealous
that no man dare come into the house but must be exclu-
sively occupied with her–This morning Mr. Silsbee came
at 11:30, she talked with him till dinner as soon as that
was over she talked again till 4.

850
…it’s hard to tell whether the jealousy was more Claire’s, or hers…”
“…it was most likely both…”
“…I think so too…in any case, Silsbee filled seven memorandum
books with notes from these visits. It’s a terrible pity that he never wrote
any kind of essay or book from them, because most of his remarks are
hastily scrawled and quite cryptic. Claire probably opened up more to
him than she ever did to Trelawny, and one of her rewards to him for the
attention was that when he lent her the two-volume set of Shelley’s
works edited by Rossetti, she gave him the book back inscribed in a way
that I find quite shocking, given Silsbee’s real nature:

To my friend, E.A. Silsbee, who from his great metaphys-

ical power, his poetic soul, and his Benevolence would
have been (had they lived at the same period) chosen by
the Poet Shelley as his dear Friend, and Sharer of all his
aspirations.

…Claire was in his thrall, and, as Pauline said, ‘playing the girlie’: I
think James got many things right when he imagined their relationship
in The Aspern Papers…”
“…here comes the first course…”
“…it looks good–let’s see, you had the Linguini con cozze e carciofi,
and I had the Tagliolini Mare e Monti…”
“…‘mare e monti’–that’s ‘sea and mountains,’ isn’t it?”
“…yes…when I was a child growing up in New Jersey, middle-class
restaurants often offered a combination of the two most expensive things
on the menu–filet mignon and lobster, calling it ‘surf and turf’: it was
supposed to be ostentatiously luxurious, but it was really just vulgar…”
“…did you ever order it?”
“…of course–every birthday! My father was a gourmand, and with
food he always let us have what we wanted. It was kind of a bond be-
tween us, made stronger because my mother was such a terrible cook:
like the cook in Strindberg’s A Dream Play, who sucks the nourishment
out of the food!”
“…that bad? I do remember you telling me how she made you peanut-
butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch–that’s a ‘meal’ a European could
never understand…”
“…that was in the 60s–you wouldn’t believe the image of the subur-
ban housewife they were pushing then! Actually, I must admit that in
certain ways the post-1989 Czech Republic reminds me a bit of that
time: the post-communist re-creation of the middle class in Prague re-
minds me a good deal of the early to mid-60s–how people are picking
up golf, eating out, driving ever more cars, and moving to houses in the
suburbs…”
“…being mindless and materialistic…”

851
 “…yes, and also being xenophobically nationalistic…”
“…I wonder if the human race will ever get beyond nationalism…”
“…I think nationality operates the same way family does: it’s difficult
to get beyond one’s family oedipal dynamics, even if one has very good
reasons for doing so. On the positive side, there’s that sense of belong-
ing somewhere–the world is a cold, hard place, and there are few places
within it where one is accepted warts and all; on the negative side, there
are all those family ghosts and skeletons, quirks and idiosyncrasies, and
oedipal problems–between parents and children, between siblings. It
seems to me the psychically healthy attitude towards family is, if possi-
ble, to try to hold on to the positive aspects while transcending the nega-
tive…and, if that’s not possible, to make a clean break. It’s the same
with nationality: it gives a sense of recognition and belonging, but there
are all the negative aspects as well–ghosts and skeletons, quirks and idi-
osyncrasies, and even the oedipal problems, written on the level of the
social…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…look at the Czech Republic and the ‘two Vaclavs,’ President
Vaclav Havel and Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus: both are points of iden-
tity for Czechs, like totemic animals, and I think it’s curious that at the
moment when Czechoslovakia emerged from Soviet occupation, it chose
two men with the same name as the country’s patron Saint. Their battle
with one another is something like a battle between brothers in a family:
the idealistic brother, who tries to do the right thing ethically; and the
pragmatic brother, driven by material success. Czechs don’t just watch
the conflict from a distance, their very identities are connected to the
struggle. It’s doubly oedipal given what happened with the Slovaks in
the ‘Velvet Divorce’: Slovaks were like the little brother who always
received the ‘hand-me-downs’ for Christmas; the Czechs were like the
older sibling who refused to see or accept his complaints. Although the
little brother was truly a bit of a pain, there was some injustice in the
older brother’s treatment of him, so he picked up his toys, and went
away to form his own family–for better or worse. I’m not saying that
what happened was the best thing to do in the situation, but sometimes it
is. I suppose the ideal would be for each nation to preserve certain as-
pects of its national identity, but not to the point of nationalism; other-
wise, to try and transcend the negative aspects of nationality, and, if
that’s not possible–if the ‘family’ is too dysfunctional, to walk away…”
“…but I rarely see people walking away on either the familial or na-
tional levels…”
“…it mostly happens when things get too bad–like the Czechs who
emigrated in 1948, 1968, and after…”
“…some returned…”
“…it will always be a proportionally small number that departs: it’s a
form of variability, and variability rarely happens en masse. When it
does, it’s either due to an external compulsion such as the Warsaw Pact

852
invasion, or due to some opportunity, such as the rush of Americans tak-
ing advantage of favorable exchange rates in Paris between the wars…”
“…or in Prague after 1989…”
“…in Prague you can see what happened: as soon as the exchange
rate became less favorable, the numbers went down considerably…”
“…you stayed…”
“…yes, I stayed…I had my reasons, as you know…”
“…how does it feel to live in a foreign country?”
“…there’s nowhere I feel at home…there are places I really don’t
want to be, and then there are cities and certain landscapes I adore, but I
suppose if I’m at home anywhere, I’m most at home in time…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…as I said before: in Prague I feel at home among Kafka and his
world, and all the other history that happened there…”
“…you mean your ‘dead friends’…”
“…yes…take Paris, for example, earlier in this century when it was
home to Picasso and Duchamp, Rilke and Rodin, Proust and Gide, Hem-
ingway and Fitzgerald, Joyce and Beckett, Djuna Barnes and Nathalie
Barney, Miller and Nin, Sartre and de Beauvoir, Bataille and Duras, or
Truffaut and Godard…to live where Nerval hung himself here, where
Joyce and his family had dinner almost every night over there, Proust
schmoozed with the upper crust in there, Duras cooked Vietnamese food
for Bataille and Blanchot up there, Bud Powell and Lester Young played
down there, Paul Celan jumped into the Seine there…that’s what feels
like home to me…”
“…so why not live in Paris?”
“…it’s possible, but sometimes I think Paris is a little too noisy histor-
ically, plus I’m not sure that Paris is ‘the place’ at the moment: it’s mys-
terious, but the ‘light’ migrates from place to place; for example, I don’t
think I could possibly live in New York City at this point in history, but
there were periods when it was absolutely new and vital–such as the
postwar period, which gave birth to abstract expressionism, bebop, the
Beats, and so on, and when writers like Brecht, Camus, Simenon, Cal-
vino were visiting. One can keep these times and places in the mind as
virtual landscapes, without actually living there…”
“…so where would you live if you had the choice?”
“…I think it would have to be at least two places: a transalpine Euro-
pean city like Prague works for me as a ‘home town’–it has a real histo-
ry, but it’s not totally over-populated with dead friends; otherwise, I’d
like to live part of the time in some sparsely populated cisalpine coun-
try–for example, that vista we saw once just beyond that ridge north of
Matala, in Crete…I really felt I could live somewhere there–at least for
several months a year…”
“…so you’ll live out Shelley’s dream of going to live on a Greek is-
land?”

853
 “…if we can manage it somehow…I suppose what I’m saying is that I
want to live in a certain vision I have of ‘Europe’…”
“…you are living in Europe–at least geographically…”
“…my vision of it is wider than the geographical reality…”
“…do you mean the political reality–for example the Czech Republic
becoming part of the European Union?”
“…that seems inevitable…no, it’s more than that: European countries
now are torn between a parochial sense of their own national identity,
the vast and anonymous bureaucracy of the EU, and the forces of eco-
nomic globalization that issued primarily from the United States. What
has been squeezed out is a sense of a common European cultural identity
uniting all European countries…I sometimes wonder if culturally I’m
not more ‘European’ than most Europeans, because I take Shelley and
Hölderlin, Musil and Joyce, Manet and Munch, Antonioni and Godard,
as all sharing in a pan-European cultural identity, but apparently I’m in a
minority these days, along with a few others like Kundera and Go-
dard…”
“…but isn’t ‘Europe’ itself just an enlargement of national identity?”
“…true–it’s a continent-wide cultural identity, certainly, but it’s a rich
and diverse one, opening out to the world in all kinds of different direc-
tions, east and west, north and south, and is a stepping stone on the way
to a fully realized world-without-borders…”
“…but isn’t that the goal of globalism?”
“…the globalism that exists today is a delimited form of global-
capitalism linked with a new form of primarily American form of eco-
nomic colonization, camouflaging itself under the false flags of sup-
posed freedom, free trade, and democracy. It’s really quite parochial: it’s
about putting a McBurger or McCoffee in every town, along with multi-
plexes showing predominantly American films, television stations show-
ing dubbed American television shows–all, of course, exporting Ameri-
can identity, and as Edward Said wrote, ‘imperialism is the export of
identity.’ It’s about hegemony, rather than heteronomy. The globalism
I’m imagining is something else–a global eclecticism combining the ab-
solute particularity of specific places with something like an ‘ecumeni-
cal cosmopolitanism’–by that I mean a kind of ‘as-if’ Kantian universal-
ism that knows its limitations, and accepts the unknowable infinity be-
yond those limitations…”
“…I wish you good luck while waiting for it to come into being…”
“…I know…unfortunately, there’s only minimal variability in the
world, and it’s a huge leap to make…you know, a few weeks ago I
found myself trying to come up with a list of writers of any nationality
who had cross-national, cross-cultural, or cross-ethnic sustained rela-
tionships: you would think writers on the whole are a very variable
group, and so there would be many of them, but it’s almost easier for me
to come up with writers who fit into the category of ‘non-relational’ than
the categories I just mentioned…”

854
 “…‘non-relational’?”
“…solitaries–those writers and thinkers who didn’t have or couldn’t
have sustained intimate relationships. It’s a long list: Spinoza, Kant,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman,
James, Proust, Pessoa, Djuna Barnes, Blanchot, Patricia Highsmith…”
“…you forgot about Kafka…”
“…perhaps–but there was hope at the end with Dora Diamant…”
“…if he had lived…”
“…yes…in any case, when I tried to make a list of cross-cultural re-
lationships, I came up with Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval. Rimbaud’s
Abyssinian lover–although the latter can hardly be considered a sus-
tained relationship; the French-Belgian Marguerite Yourcenar and her
American partner Grace Frick; Elizabeth Bishop and her Brazilian part-
ner Lota de Macedo Soares–although Soares committed suicide in Bish-
op’s New York apartment after their relationship broke down; Paul
Bowles and Mohamed Mrabet; oh, there’s Bachmann and Frisch, alt-
hough Austrian and Swiss are quite close…”
“…what about Djuna Barnes–I thought Félix was based on a German
lover she had…”
“…yes he was–‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl, but he broke with her very quick-
ly because he wanted a ‘solid German wife’: he later ended up working
for Hitler’s Foreign Relations Office, then changed sides and worked
against him–a rather bizarre character…”
“…there’s D.H. Lawrence and Frida…”
“…oh, of course! They’re a good example of a sustained inter-cultural
relationship…there’s H.D. and Bryher, but I don’t really consider Amer-
ican and British fully cross-cultural…”
“…and didn’t Beckett have a French partner?”
“…yes–that’s right, her name was Suzanne–I forget her last name;
and speaking of French partners, Lawrence Durrell had two French
wives–first Claude, and then Ghislaine; Aldous Huxley had a Belgian
wife…oh, and André Breton had a Chilean wife…”
“…what do you consider Anaïs Nin…French?”
“…French born, but of Spanish and Danish descent, and then Ameri-
can citizenship–certainly she counts; and that reminds me of Karen
Blixen–Isak Dinesen, who married a Swede, and carried on her love af-
fair with an Englishman…then there’s Balzac and his Polish wife, alt-
hough he died a few months after the wedding; and Strindberg married
an Austrian–but that only lasted two years…Joseph Conrad stayed mar-
ried to his English wife, but I can’t think of any more–but there must be
others, especially among contemporary writers; still, you can see my
point about how few there actually are in sustained relationships–of
those I’ve mentioned, it was only Yourcenar, Lawrence, Beckett, Hux-
ley, and Conrad, of those I remember…”
“…that’s not a lot when you consider writers are usually quite open–
what does it say about the human race as a whole?”

855
 “…what do you think it says?”
“…that people embrace the familiar, and reject what is strange to
them…”
“…to say the least…”
“…will it ever change?”
“…it’s already changing, but a resistance to change is seemingly built
into us–remember what Luhmann said about systems: there’s a mecha-
nism that clings to what already exists for the sake of stability…”
“…but he also wrote about variability…”
“…it’s limited, and often accidental to the point of being ‘improba-
ble’–one of his favorite terms. He may be right, but I can’t entirely agree
with Luhmann’s attitude towards variability, and the possibility of En-
lightenment…”
“…so you still believe in Enlightenment?”
“…not in the Godwinian sense of the perfectibility of the human spe-
cies, nor even the more moderate progressive belief in the inevitability
of human progress–the history of the 20th Century has put that to rest…”
“…so what…intermittent evolution?”
“…yes, evolution, not revolution…I think human evolution as a series
of adaptive moves in the struggle towards survival that are not to be con-
fused with progress…I would characterize it as a kind of blind, highly
contingent, sometimes retrograde progress in complexity…”
“…and complexity is good in itself?”
“…certainly not always, but generally it is: take the example of our
fish–which are coming right now…”
“…which is which?”
“…Rospo? Per me…grazie…”
“…grazie…”
“…so, as I was saying: your Rombo alla Griglia–grilled Turbot–is a
standard flatfish, which ‘decided’ at some point in it’s evolution that
lurking on the bottom, camouflaged, was safer than swimming about
above the bottom and being eaten by bigger fish. So, it started swim-
ming along the bottom on its side, and even buried itself in the sand: that
made one eye useless, so the eye migrated around to the other side, as
you can see. I’ve heard that Turbot have developed the sharpest vision
of any fish species, which presumably arose from the fact that because
they were stationary, they had to be on the lookout for food, and for any-
thing that they might need to suddenly swim away from…”
“…so one day they just decided, ‘let’s swim on our sides’?”
“…the side-swimming was the variability–probably merely an acci-
dental mutation…the ‘testing,’ if you will, was merely the statistical fact
that those who did swim on their sides survived, while the rest were eat-
en, or mutated into something else; and the ‘system’ is the genetic repli-
cation of the trait that survived. For all we know the fish that started
swimming on their sides had faulty swim bladders, but it ended up by
working for their survivability…”

856
 “…and your fish?”
“…what I’m about to eat–Coda di Rospo al vino bianco, or Anglerfish
in white wine sauce, is also a bottom fish that tends to like to live deeper
in the sea. First of all they need to attract food, so they created the little
‘fishing rod’ thing that attracts the other fish they eat. The species that
live very deep even have a light attached to help the other little fishies
find the bait, but that’s not the adaptation that I find the most interesting
aspect about it…what is most interesting is that because they live so
deep, anglerfish would find it hard to find a mate–actually, scientists for
a very long time were puzzled because they never found any male an-
glerfish! What they discovered is that the males very quickly use their
acute sense of smell to locate a female, and then they attach themselves
to her like parasites, becoming one with the female to the point that their
bodies atrophy, and all that is left is a pair of testicles that reacts to the
ovulation of the female fish, providing it sperm when needed…”
“…I think I know some men like that: a pair of castrated testicles to-
tally absorbed by their women!”
“…it’s a bit different: in the case of the fish, the testicles are all that’s
left, in the case of the men, the testicles are missing! In any case, it
shows that evolution in nature is absolutely bizarre, and that an increase
in complexity in most cases helps the survivability of the species…”
“…but it didn’t help these two! Mine is delicious–how’s yours?”
“…excellent…unfortunately, natural genetic complexity cannot keep
up with Dawkins’ idea of the memetic complexity of humans: despite
the evolutionary prowess of these fish, they’re ‘lunch’…”
“…what about Shelley’s survivability as a meme?”
“…the Romantics were rather successful as memes. They evolved in a
series of memetic clusters…here, let me draw you a diagram of Shel-
ley’s cluster. If this is Shelley in the center, here, immediately around
him, are the living people he actually knew and lived with: Byron, Mary,
Claire, Godwin, Hunt, Peacock, Hogg, Medwin and Trelawny; in the
next circle out are those from that period that he personally knew, but
knew from a greater distance–Keats, Coleridge, and Southey, for exam-
ple; then there are those contemporary or near-contemporary authors
that he read seriously, but didn’t know personally, like Wordsworth,
Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, for example…the next circle would include
popular contemporary or near-contemporary writers–especially gothic
novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth, Charles Maturin, Monk
Lewis, and Charles Brockden Brown…in the circle beyond that are
those European and British authors and thinkers Shelley would have
read from the period within fifty years prior to his birth: Rousseau,
Wollstonecraft, Paine, Hume, Kant, Schiller, Wieland, Schlegel; then, in
the circle beyond that are those contemporaries Shelley didn’t know
about, but somehow they were ‘there’ in the Zeitgeist, as they inhabited
Europe at some point during his life: William Blake, Novalis, Hölderlin,
Kleist, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer. I haven’t even mentioned the

857
painters and composers Shelley would have been aware of, or the writers
and thinkers from the more distant past. Shelley would have taken all of
these figures as the environment he emerged from, just as each of the
figures mentioned would also have taken him as a part of their environ-
ment. All of these figures were part of the process of evolution that was
going on in that epoch–part of the variability, testing, selection and sta-
bilization of new memes, and of course for every one we know about,
there were a hundred others who we don’t know…”
“…the fish slipping into the darkness…”
“…yes, and of course the ‘slush’ would be the general environment
that gave rise to these forms of variability: the whole historical flow of
those times–the vox populi of the man on the street and what they
thought about their world, the past continuing to exert its hold on the
present, as well as what Shelley called ‘the gigantic shadows which fu-
turity casts upon the present’…all arising from those memes we select
and preserve…”
“…and bend, warp, twist, and distort…”
“…certainly–Christianity or Marxism give clear examples of memetic
drifting, mutation and distortion, but for every million dogmatic Chris-
tians there’s a St. Augustine, a Sir Thomas More, or a Martin Luther
King, Jr.; and for every million communists collaborating with a totali-
tarian communist regime there’s an Antonio Gramsci, a Bertolt Brecht,
or a Jean-Paul Sartre…”
“…so how would you assess our post-Enlightenment ‘slush’?”
“…it’s far more difficult to judge our own age: Michael Foucault
wrote that you couldn’t judge the épistémè of your own age…I’ll give an
example of the difficulty of judging from my own experience: when I
was a young graduate student in the early 80s, it seem liked the ‘next big
step’ after literary modernism was self-reflexive postmodernism: it was
termed ‘meta-fiction’ by some, ‘self-reflective fiction’ by others, or,
what I called it in my thesis, ‘involuted fiction.’ It involved all kinds of
labyrinths and self-referential narrative puzzles and games with the
reader, and was perhaps best exemplified by writers like Robert Coover,
John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Federman, and Gilbert Sorren-
tino, although writers like Nabokov, Borges, and Pynchon were associ-
ated with it. Because I was young and American, I was caught up in the
belief that the newer and the more experimental the literature, the more
evolved and important it was, and I universalized what were actually
only the parochial preferences of my own generation…”
“…and how do you see it now?”
“…now, while I still appreciate some of those writers–especially
those orbiting at the periphery, like Borges, Nabokov, and perhaps Pyn-
chon, I see that self-reflexivity as a trait very specific to one time and
place–the United States in the postwar period. My current pantheon of
postmodern narrative writers, for example, contains names I hadn’t even
heard of back then. I’d like to think I’ve grown and expanded my hori-

858
zons, but how can I be sure what’s representative of the present? Most of
my favorites are hermetic, rarefied, and relatively unknown; plus, I have
strong suspicion about the present as far as writing goes: I don’t find
myself even wanting to keep up with much of what’s happening now
save for a handful or writers…”
“…but you keep up with the theory…”
“…yes, what I can say about our period is based on what I see hap-
pening theoretically–I already spoke about it when I talked about post-
Enlightenment thought the other day…and yet still, I get this feeling that
despite the advances in theory, the period from 1980 until at least now
will come to be seen as a period of ‘restoration,’ in the worst sense of
that word…”
“…restoration of what?”
“…in the past it usually meant the restoration of the monarchy–now it
seems to be the restoration of, well…a world of bought privilege and
false certainty, but without the culture or decorum of the 19th Century
privileged classes; a supposed ‘realism’ and pragmatism based on the
positivism of the Anglo-American model of global capitalism…yes,
that’s it–it’s finally the lack of self-questioning that I find the worst as-
pect of our current neon-lit dark ages…”
“…maybe after all the turmoil of the first half of the 20th Century it’s
what people sense they need–I know many Czechs feel that way after
forty years of communism…”
“…I don’t doubt that, and I certainly don’t begrudge the Czechs and
other post-communist countries their prosperity and peace, but when
there’s a lack of self-questioning, it becomes dangerously delusional…”
“…you are questioning it…”
“…oh, there are a great many people questioning it–the problem is
that somehow the global economic system that’s emerging is insulating
people from that questioning through its control of the media…”
“…but aren’t the people doing the questioning insulating themselves
as well?”
“…true…much of the theoretical evolution that’s bringing us to a
post-Enlightenment sensibility is only disseminated at universities,
which are increasingly specialized, on the one hand, and corporatized,
on the other, so that there’s fewer doors between academia and wider
society. I’m not saying that such doors should be programmatically
opened–I agree with Santayana that the intellectual life should also be
about something other than merely producing the leaders of society, but
now it seems that the doors are wedged shut from the side of business
and politics, and there’s no cross-talk between the spheres. In Europe
there’s still a slight chance that someone in politics will be informed by
ideas coming from the university, or even come from the university it-
self–but in the United States? Politicians go to law school or schools of
business administration, but I see little communication at all between

859
academia and government, because everything is so compartmental-
ized…”
“…but Shelley had a problem reaching out too–most of his works
were either unpublished in his lifetime, or published in very small num-
bers…”
“…but he also had more popular pieces: Queen Mab became a kind of
anthem for the working classes of England even during his brief life-
time, and as I said before, the Chartists knew of it, as did Marx and En-
gels. It’s true that it’s an early, ‘easier’ Shelley without the subtlety and
nuance of the later work, but at least it’s a door: those who want to pur-
sue his poetry further have a way in…”
“…but how do you avoid limiting your readership when the thought is
complex?”
“…perhaps to take it out of the university, as Kierkegaard and Nie-
tzsche did, but also thinkers like George Santayana, who put his thought
in his novel The Last Puritan, or Bataille, whose writings are always lo-
cated somewhere between philosophy and literature, or Sartre and Ca-
mus, who wrote plays and novels…but I’m not saying the university is
all bad: in fact, I wonder if there would be any serious literature or phi-
losophy read at all if it wasn’t happening in the university…it’s just the
university has evolved into something that’s not especially conducive to
the wider dissemination of thought. Anyone could wander into the lec-
tures of Kant, Fichte, Schelling or Hegel in their epoch, and certain ‘an-
yones’ often did: Novalis, Hölderlin, Kierkegaard all attended their lec-
tures…few thinkers since then were able to reach so many others: per-
haps Jacques Lacan or Michael Foucault, but precisely because they
gave their lectures outside of the university context–Deleuze and Guat-
tari attended, as did Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,
Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Žižek, and many others…”
“…here’s the waiter–do you want some coffee?”
“…yes, and you?”
“…yes…”
“…due cappucini, per favore…”
“…do you mind if I have a cigar, as we’re dining al fresco?”
“…it’s fine with me…so, to return to our story–where were we with
Silsbee?”
“…the scene changed in 1876: that’s when Claire moved to the Via
Romana address that we visited the other day. In March and April of that
year Silsbee was back, and I believe actually staying there with them:
that’s probably when Pauline fell in love with him and decided that she
wanted to marry him; however, even then she wasn’t without criticism
of him–listen to this:

He is sometimes so charming so tender so charitable

Christlike that one would like Magdalen sink down at his
feet–& admire him like a spirit soaring high above human

860
 imperfections–& at other times so commonplace so ordi-
nary not to say vulgar, so spiteful, that I don’t wonder at
Miss Trelawny’s behavior to him…It is true he is of a
cold nation–Saxon, Anglo-American puritan become
Unitarian–what human love can there be left?

…exactly–what human love can there be left? Otherwise, I’m not sure
what the reference to ‘Miss Trelawny’ refers to: perhaps Trelawny had
his daughter toss him out when he visited, as I can’t imagine the two
getting along…”
“…probably because they were too much alike!”
“…Silsbee was Trelawny without the exploits and recklessness. In
any case, I think Claire must have detected Pauline’s burgeoning interest
in Silsbee, because in July, 1876, Pauline–‘Plin’ as Claire called her–
took a job outside of Palazzo Cruciato, and she was gone for a year. In a
journal entry in October Pauline wrote, ‘Aunt said to me this day 2nd of
October 77 that she had never sent me away from her & that she had
consulted Dr. Tarugi & he had said–She has a monomania on her, let her
have a change of scene’…it seems crazy…”
“…Claire probably discovered her infatuation with Silsbee, became
jealous, and found a reason for her to go somewhere else so that she
alone could dominate Silsbee’s attention…”
“…that’s what I was thinking…whatever the case, by September,
1877, she had returned to the house and they had struck a bargain that
Pauline could stay for free–if she did the housekeeping. Claire had had
Silsbee to herself when he visited in February, 1877, and Silsbee re-
turned in November when Pauline was there again. At some point in
1878 Silsbee even helped them financially–perhaps in return for his be-
ing a lodger: in 1879 Claire had written Willi, ‘Mr. Silsbee helped us
almost thro’ last year–one cannot expect he shall do so this year.’ I don’t
doubt Silsbee acted for self-interested reasons, as he was trying to obtain
the letters and manuscripts Claire still had in her possession. Meanwhile,
Claire was fading in that period: Pauline wrote to Emma Taylor about
Claire’s drifting back to the period when Shelley was alive:

…sometimes she so longs to go back to England & her

mind wanders back to sweet English Country Scenes–&
then to Pisa & Leghorn in the year 1822 when the dread-
ful catastrophe of Shelley’s death happened–then I feel
glad that I came to stay with her & nurse her for who
would take any interest in events half a century ago!

…it’s quite poignant…”

“…despite her attempts to censor that part of her life, that’s all that
mattered in the end…”
“…it’s ironic–Pauline asking ‘who would take any interest?’…”

861
 “…even after all the visits by Rossetti and Silsbee?”
“…Claire seems never to have told Plin the whole story…”
“…but she must have guessed…”
“…perhaps in the end: in 1879, as Claire began to recognize the inevi-
table approach of death, she was anxious that she should be buried with
the shawl Shelley had given her. Pauline mentioned it when she finally
died on March 19th:

This morning poor Aunt died at about 10–calmly without

agony without consciousness–as she had predicted her-
self–she went out like a candle snuff–As I closed her eyes
I thought to myself that I pardoned her all the mischief
the trouble the grief she caused me from my heart–I bear
her no rancour–except that she tried to make poor G. as
unhappy as she could. But it is past–let the dead rest in
peace if they can. Let there be peace.

…and she then added: ‘She was buried as she desired with Shelley’s lit-
tle shawl at the Cemetery of the Antella.’ You know the rest–that she
left Georgina the principal of her estate, and Pauline could only use the
interest…”
“…but when Georgina died six years later didn’t Pauline inherit the
estate?”
“…I assume so, but I don’t know–the editor of the letters doesn’t
mention it…”
“…and Silsbee–where was he all this time?”
“…that’s when he really started to act like a vulture. When Claire
died, Pauline wrote to him and he immediately arranged to come to
Florence to try to obtain any letters and manuscripts she had; however,
another critic, Henry Buxton Forman, had also appointed an agent on his
behalf to try to obtain the letters, so the race was on. Silsbee did not
have enough money to purchase them, so it appears that he became
Pauline’s lover, and may have even promised to marry her. Stocking
cites in her appendix to Claire’s letters an account given by someone
almost fifty years later:

I knew Silsbee well. He was an amusing chap in his way,

but an utter cad in some of his actions. I remember one
summer morning in 1885 or 1886 when he lunched with
me and Buxton Forman at Sweetings, at the top of
Cheapside. He recounted to us with glee how he cheated
Paola Clairmont out of the Manuscript. He thought we
should admire his ‘smartness’, whereas he simply filled
us with disgust. I can hear now an echo of Forman’s
words as he & I strolled over to his office after parting
with Silsbee,–‘How can God have made such a man?’

862
 His conduct–in his dealing with Paola–was not that of an
American gentleman. One might suppose that to seduce a
woman under the promise of marriage was about the most
blackguarding thing a man could indulge in. To obtain
valuable property from a woman under a promise of mar-
riage is to fall nearly as low in the moral scale. Silsbee, I
believe, never once visited, or communicated with, the
poor old maid after he had obtained her MS., & failed to
obtain her letters!

…however, contrary to this account, someone else claims that Silsbee

was told by Pauline that the price of the letters was marriage and he re-
fused, which is closer to the version in The Aspern Papers. Stocking
wrote that Pauline made no mention of this episode in the journals she
was allowed to examine, and she suggests that perhaps Silsbee had fab-
ricated the seduction part: she claims after Silsbee refused to marry her,
they had a brief love affair. What’s the truth of the matter? Who knows?
Probably something in between…”
“…I suppose if Pauline wanted to marry Silsbee and he didn’t want to
marry her, then from one perspective it could look like she was trying to
extort marriage from him, and from another, that he was trying to extort
the letters from her–so maybe both are true at the same time…”
“…it must be something like that. Henry James zeroed in on the story
quickly–it seems to have been a local legend among expatriates in Flor-
ence in the 1880s when he first heard about it. James wrote the The
Aspern Papers in April and May, 1887, less than a decade later, which is
why he had to set it in Venice and changed Shelley into an American
poet–otherwise he might have faced a libel suit. By the way, there’s a
very intriguing story connected to the writing of The Aspern Papers in-
volving a woman named Constance Fenimore Woolson–she’s also bur-
ied in the Protestant Cemetery…”
“…really?”
“…do you remember James’ story ‘The Beast in the Jungle’?”
“…about the man who is certain something special is going to happen
to him in his life, and he’s waiting for it, isn’t it?”
“…yes, that’s it. It seems it was based on James’ relationship to
Woolson, and the Protestant Cemetery here is where he probably had a
similar experience to the one portrayed in the book…”
“…tell me about it…”
“…when we’re there…”
“…so, shall we go?”
“…I’m ready, but we still have to pay…”
They hail the waiter, ask for the check, pay, and walk back to the en-
trance of the Protestant Cemetery. They turn left walk to the Parte Anti-
ca–an expanse of lawn closest to the Pyramid of Cestius, planted with
cypress, cedar, oak, and plane trees which filter the sunlight into varie-

863
gated patches of sunlight and shade. Compared to the other sections of
the cemetery the lawn is sparsely populated with tombs, among which
several scrawny cats are lounging. One calico cat follows them as they
walk slowly around the outer path to the grave of Keats. They pause in
front of the marble-bordered patch of brown earth with two white mar-
ble rounded tombstones–one with a bas-relief of a lyre, the other with
artist’s palette and brushes.
“…here’s Keats…”
“…it’s unmarked…”
“…he wanted it that way:

This Grave
contains all that was Mortal,
of a
YOUNG ENGLISH POET,
Who,
on his Death Bed,
in the Bitterness of his Heart,
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies,
Desired
these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone
“Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water.”
Feb 24th 1821

…see? Friends always botch it…”

“…what do you mean?”
“…Keats wanted only the last two lines written on the grave, but his
friend, there, next to him–Joseph Severn–decided to add the other lines.
They make his motives seem resentful, when in fact Keats was long past
caring what the critics thought. Severn lived to regret his addition, but
the words were never removed…”
“…poor Keats…”
“…still, Severn did choose a very nice place for him…”
“…yes, it’s beautiful…so quiet and peaceful…what you said yester-
day–like on an island…”
“…let me see…here are the lines describing it from Adonaïs:

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time

Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
The refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,

864
 Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

…and here it all is…”

“…the pyramid is bright ‘like flame’ in the sun–let’s take a closer
look…”
“…we can just follow the path around there: check the names as we
go–supposedly William was buried somewhere around here…”
“…here it says they found three bodies during an excavation…oh,
look over here! I think it’s William’s grave…”
“…really? Yes, that’s it:

WILLIAM SHELLEY
BORN JANUARY XXIV MDCCCXVI
DIED JUNE VII MDCCCXIX
SON OF PERCY AND MARY
WOLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY

…I wonder why Mary couldn’t find it–it’s right here out in the open just
where Shelley said it was at the foot of the Pyramid of Cestius…”
“...it’s level with the ground–maybe the grass had grown over it…”
“…that’s possible…”
“…but you said William’s body isn’t there, right?”
“…when Shelley’s body was sent to Rome, Joseph Severn was put in
charge of seeing to the burial: he was instructed to disinter William and
bury him with his father, but they couldn’t find his skeleton…”
“…I wonder why they didn’t at least put the stone over by Shelley…”
“…maybe he didn’t even bother with it at all, and said he did–who
would check it? Or perhaps when he couldn’t find the skeleton, he
thought it better to leave the stone closest to the place where it had
been…”
“…it’s sad…”
“…little lost William…shall I re-read the poem Shelley wrote?”
“…yes…”
“…here it is:

But beneath this pyramid

Thou art not–if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother’s grief and mine.

Where art thou, my gentle child?

Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds
Among these tombs and ruins wild;–
Let me think that through low seeds

865
 Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
Into their hues and scents may pass
A portion—

…and to finish it with the line from Adonaïs: ‘of thy loveliness which
once he made more lovely’…”
“…it’s strange that they’re all here–Keats, William, and Shelley. Shall
we go see Shelley now?”
“…yes…can we go that way?”
“…I see an opening…oh, look at that!”
“…what?”
“…there…that tomb with the angel drooped over it…‘Emelyn Sto-
ry’…”
“…oh yes–that’s the ‘Angel of Grief’–I knew the original was here:
it’s a sculpture that William Wetmore Story did for his wife when she
died:

EMELYN STORY
BORN
BOSTON
U.S.A
OCT 1820
DIED
ROMA
JAN 7 1895
THIS MONUMENT
THE LAST WORK OF W.W.STORY.
EXECUTED IN MEMORY OF HIS BELOVED WIFE
ROMA 1895
HE DIED AT VALLOMBROSA OCTOBER 7TH 1895
AGED 78 YEARS

…Henry James knew him; in fact, James was commissioned by his son
to write a biography about him after he died. He quoted Story as saying
about this statue that it represented ‘the angel of Grief in utter abandon-
ment, throwing herself with drooping wings and hidden face over a fu-
neral altar’…”
“…it’s quite moving–was he an important sculptor?”
“…no, not really–this is probably his most beautiful work. James
thought he was a bit of a bore and didn’t want to take the commission,
but he had been friends of the family, and evidently the money was quite
good. In the end, the work was entitled William Wetmore Story and His
Friends, and the ‘and his friends’ aspect was the focus because James
really couldn’t find anything much of interest to write about him; how-
ever, the other story connected to this tomb is really interesting–the one

866
about Constance Fenimore Woolson. Her grave must be somewhere
around here–you check there, and I’ll check in this row…”
“…Tannenbaum…Cruttwell…Scholl…yes, here it is: ‘Constance
Fenimore Woolson 1894’…”
“…here, let’s sit on this bench and I can tell you about it…”
“…ok…”
“…so, from the beginning: Constance Fenimore Woolson was the
great-niece of the American writer James Fenimore Cooper–author of
The Last of the Mohicans. She was an expatriate writer herself–she spent
the last fifteen years of her life in Europe, but, unlike James, she always
fully identified herself as an American writer. When she first came to
London in 1879 she sought him out but failed in her attempt, so it began
as an epistolary acquaintance: she told him how much she admired his
writings and how much they voiced her own feelings. She didn’t push
the fact she was a writer on him, writing ‘I do not come as a literary
woman at all, but as a sort of admiring aunt’…”
“…was she older?”
“…yes, but only by about three years. Their literary interests and what
they called a shared ‘divination’ of people became the foundation of
their bond. She apparently followed him to Florence, where for a few
weeks in April and May, 1880, they shared each other’s company…”
“…did she hope for a romantic involvement?”
“…she was forty then–quite old for an unmarried woman in that peri-
od, so I think at a certain level her interest in romance had already
peaked and she was primarily looking for company. She may have har-
bored hopes for an intimate friendship, but she was partially deaf with a
tendency towards depression, so there wasn’t that much she could hope
for beyond friendship. James, who confessed everything to his brother
William, wrote him that she was ‘old-maidish, deaf and intense; but a
good little woman and a perfect lady.’ Any further meetings were mo-
mentarily curtailed by the fact that the death of James’ mother called
him back to the United States. After an eighteen month lapse he finally
wrote to her about his mother in 1881, and she commiserated with him,
having lost both of her parents. During the next two years they circled
each other on the continent, never meeting up: she wrote him gently ca-
joling letters but respected his boundaries, and when in October, 1883
they were finally in London at the same time, she wrote to their mutual
friend, the writer William Dean Howells, that they saw each other at
‘discreet intervals,’ going to the theater together, but not too often, as
apparently James didn’t want any rumors surfacing about their becom-
ing an ‘item’…”
“…was he that worried?”
“…he understood the role others could play in a relationship: if the
people around them started expecting to see them together, then there
would be pressure to be together. He would never have stood for that…”
“…and did she realize it?”

867
 “…yes, I think she did. On the one hand it didn’t stop her from com-
ing to London to try to be with him more often, but on the other hand
she suffered from the British climate, and so she moved to Florence in
early 1886 to escape it…”
“…maybe she was trying to repeat the past and draw him out…”
“…perhaps…when James went to Florence the following December,
it was partly to visit her, but his diffidence can be seen in a letter he
wrote to a friend: ‘our good Fenimore must also be worked in–but I shall
be equal even to that…’”
“…he makes her sound like an old Aunt you have to visit because you
can’t afford to have her find out you’ve been in her hometown without
seeing her…”
“…it wasn’t quite that bad: I think James was also deceiving himself a
bit about how much he enjoyed her company. After all, she worshipped
his writing, and she was one of the few people to truly understand what
he was getting at. That counted for a great deal–so much so, that when
he arrived in Florence in December, 1886, he agreed to sublet the apart-
ment she had rented in the Villa Brichieri in Bellosguardo. She was in a
nearby villa, five minutes away, and hadn’t wanted to move to the new
apartment until January, so James took the lease for December. For three
weeks they lived in close proximity, seeing each other daily and often
eating dinner together. Apparently it was congenial enough for him that
in April, after he spent some time in Venice, he returned for another
month–this time staying in rooms on the ground floor below her apart-
ment…”
“…I’m surprised he could stand the proximity…”
“…I am too. He withheld the fact he was staying with her from all his
correspondents–and especially his sister and brother, so you can see he
was still afraid of the social implications…”
“…still afraid of her, you mean…”
“…yes…it was in that period that he wrote The Aspern Papers…”
“…I wonder if they spoke about Claire and Shelley: to discuss clan-
destine love when they were being so clandestine themselves would be
rather daring…”
“…there are certainly elements of Henry James in the character of
Aspern that would connect him to the clandestine element, but I think
that if James identified a bit with anyone in the story, it was rather with
the Silsbee character…”
“…why?”
“…as much as James would have loathed Silsbee, the one aspect that
would have linked them is the fact that the character based on Silsbee
runs away when the Pauline character suggests marriage in trade for the
letters: whatever other reasons there may have been, one of the reasons
why James wrote the novella at that time was to portray a man who
shared a literary legacy with a woman, but even the depth of his love for
that legacy was not enough to bring him to marry her…”

868
 “…it was something of a warning to her, then…”
“…yes, and as if to seal that contract of an ‘intimacy-that-would-go-
no-deeper,’ James sent her the Dowden two volume biography of Shel-
ley the following Christmas, and then later an inscribed copy of The
Aspern Papers commemorating their time together…”
“…and when did they see each other again?”
“…as you can imagine, it wouldn’t have been soon after such close-
ness: it was the Autumn of 1888 when he gave her the edition–probably
the first time she saw the complete work…”
“…and so the message was ‘don’t stand too close to me’…”
“…yes, and that was clearly already written into their hotel arrange-
ments: they met clandestinely in Geneva, staying in hotels across the
lake from one another. They met for dinner every evening, and did some
sightseeing together…”
“…maybe they went to the Villa Diodati…”
“…it’s likely: the Shelley and Claire story seems to be what bound
them together during their first period together, so perhaps they decided
to see each other in Geneva based on that…”
“…so they were literary travelers like us…”
“…not exactly like us…”
“…you know what I mean…and no one knew they were there?”
“…he created quite an elaborate ruse around it, but still his sister
caught wind of it for she wrote William, ‘Henry is somewhere on the
continent flirting with Constance’…”
“…they were checking up on him?! It’s no wonder he was so asexu-
al…”
“…yes, his disposition had a great deal to do with his family. Alice,
the youngest of five children, was deeply neurotic, and always having
nervous attacks of one sort or another. She was oedipally clinging, like
Wordsworth’s sister, and wouldn’t have approved of Constance…”
“…so when did they meet again?”
“…Constance moved to London in May, 1890, to be close to James,
so for the next three years she saw him not as intensively as their times
together in Italy and Geneva, but frequently enough–attending the thea-
ter and concerts together, and dining out. Evidently it wasn’t frequent
enough to keep her there, as in April, 1893, she decided to return to Ita-
ly, writing to a friend ‘I am giving up being near my kind friend Mr.
James’…”
“…‘giving up’? That says a good deal…”
“…when she arrived in Venice in May, 1893, she was depressed. I
think she chose Venice as a kind of temptation for him to come and visit
and then she got caught in her own web, for when he wrote to her about
finding him a place to stay for a visit, there was a miscommunication–
she assumed he was coming there to live…”
“…she heard what she wanted to hear…”

869
 “…she thought he would be arriving in Autumn, 1893, but he kept
putting off his visit. She moved to the Casa Semitecolo in September
and fell into one of her habitual depressions as Autumn turned to Winter
and James still hadn’t shown up. She fell ill with flu in January, hired a
nurse, and made a will that she was to be buried here in Rome. She
asked the doctor on January 23rd for something strong to help her sleep,
and it seems she tried to poison herself with it. When it didn’t work, she
sent the nurse away, and around midnight jumped out of the third-storey
window onto the paving stones below…”
“…Pane Bože!”
“…her sister in the United States cabled James in London on January
25th: he was bowled over by it–he wrote a friend, ‘It is all–I mean my
fear that she was alone, unfriended at the last–too miserable to talk
about’…”
“…you can hear his guilt…”
“…and it became worse: when he discovered it had been a suicide, he
cancelled his plans to attend the funeral, writing that he was ‘too utterly
sickened to move.’ He had to move eventually, because the relatives
were coming from the United States to deal with her things and he want-
ed to be there when they did; so, in March, he went to meet them in
Genoa. They first went south to Florence. He wrote about his return to
the Villa Brichieri–‘the whole place is now such a perfect cemetery of
ghosts that there is little joy left in it for me.’ They arrived in Venice in
April, and James stayed in Woolson’s older apartment while the rela-
tives–her sister and her mother, I believe–stayed at the Casa Semitecolo.
He helped them sort through her things for the next two weeks: most
likely he burned his letters to her–the reason he wanted to be there when
they opened the unsealed apartment…”
“…but why?”
“…they certainly weren’t the ‘Aspern papers,’ as there was no clan-
destine intimacy between them; nonetheless, they were too intimate not
to become the source of rumors, and, anyway, I think the real reason for
his carefulness was not the love they would expose, but his lack of love
and how it may have been a reason for her suicide. Whatever the case,
there are no letters to Constance Fenimore Woolson in his collected let-
ters, and the Edel edition is four volumes, each over eight hundred pages
long!”
“…he erased her…”
“…it seems so–at least as an aspect of his non-fictional life…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…I’ll explain in a moment–there are still some interesting aspects of
his reaction to her suicide I want to mention. There’s one story that’s
especially fascinating, all things considered: apparently Constance Fen-
imore Woolson had many possessions, so much of what they had to deal
with was deciding what to take and what to get rid of. Among these pos-
sessions were a great quantity of black dresses–she apparently had many

870
of them, and James decided to take it upon himself to get rid of them by
dumping them in the lagoon in Venice, so he hired a gondola to take him
out into the lagoon where he threw them overboard…”
“…really? That’s crazy!”
“…yes, but listen to this: they didn’t sink, but instead ballooned up all
around the gondola like big black jellyfish, so James and the gondolier
had to push down these horrid black things with their oars!”
“…it’s such a perfect metaphor for his attempt to suppress her and her
refusal to be suppressed–especially given they were black…”
“…yes, it symbolizes everything about his relationship with her: be-
cause of his guilt he didn’t want to admit to himself that she had truly
chosen to commit suicide, so in his letters to others he spoke of her
‘brain fever’ that caused the fatal leap, or that her life was already on a
suicidal course before she even met him. When he saw her apartment, he
felt it was proof of her madness: he wrote to a friend, ‘The sight of the
scene of her horrible act is sufficient to establish her utter madness at the
time. A place more mad for her couldn’t be imagined’…”
“…did he ever admit it to himself?”
“…her suicide, or his complicity?”
“…both–one leads to the other…”
“…over time he confronted the truth in his writing–it’s the primary
way he processed reality. The odd thing is that James is associated with
the idea that there’s little connection between a writer’s life and his art–
his story The Private Life illustrates it: it’s based on his experience of
Robert Browning. Browning lived in Florence down the road from
Claire, and James noted the discrepancy between his ‘esoteric’ sensibil-
ity as a writer and his ‘exoteric’ sensibility in ‘real life,’ which James
found quite vulgarly bourgeois. But his stance seems to have been all a
red herring…”
“…a what?”
“…oh, sorry–it means a false trail, although why it means that I ha-
ven’t a clue. My point is that writers like James or T.S. Eliot who make
claims about literature having nothing to do with life are often camou-
flaging just how much their own writing reflects their lives! Eliot made
some of the most sweeping claims about such a divergence between art
and life, and yet there are aspects of his personal life reflected in The
Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, sections of The Wasteland, and, accord-
ing to one biographer, even in sections from Four Quartets. James and
Eliot are right that the sublimation of life into art makes ‘real life’ un-
necessary and at times even an impediment to the understanding of the
literary work, but there must be something there to sublimate in the first
place…”
“…but what if the life of the artist is one where very little happened–
which I thought was the case of James?”
“…little extensively happened, but a great deal happened intensively.
It’s true that James’ own life was rather lacking in external incidents that

871
could be brought into fiction; consequently, he was vampirizing the ex-
perience of others he came across, but even such vampirism revealed
more of his sensibility than it concealed, and there were any number of
novels and tales he wrote that were directly related to events in his life.
What happened with Constance Fenimore Woolson contributed to a
number of his works as a psychological processing of what had hap-
pened and what it meant to him, but it was a process that took years. He
first came here to visit her grave in May, 1894, just after his trip to Ven-
ice to dispose of her things. The emotional reality was evidently far too
raw for him, so he needed to distance himself temporally from the event
before he could write about it. The following September he deliberately
sought out the rooms where she had stayed in Oxford, stayed in them for
a month, and wrote the first of his stories working through what had
happened, The Altar of the Dead…”
“…what is it about?”
“…you know it–it was made into a film by François Truffaut: La
Chambre Verte–The Green Room…”
“…oh, the one you showed me–about the man who keeps an altar
where he remembers his dead friends…”
“…that’s the one…”
“…I remember there was a woman–no wait, the character Truffaut
played had been married to a woman that died, right?”
“…in the film, yes, but in the story he had only been engaged to a
woman who died. I’ll tell you the James story first, and how Truffaut
changed it…”
“…ok…”
“…in the story the character is named Stransom, and he’s described as
‘held’ by the day his fiancée died. One day he wanders into a church,
and notices there is a darkened, disused chapel: even though he is shown
not to be Christian, he arranges to use the chapel for his own memorials
to his dead friends, lighting a candle for each. Then he notices that an-
other mourner uses his chapel regularly–a woman always dressed in
black. He meets her at a concert and walks with her afterwards. The next
day when he finds himself anticipating seeing her at the altar again he
senses that he has adulterated his motives for going there, so he decides
to stay away for a couple of weeks. When he next goes to the chapel, she
isn’t there; in fact, she doesn’t return for an entire year–everything hap-
pens very slowly in the story. When he does see her finally, he waits for
her outside the chapel, and accompanies her part of the way to her home,
stopping at her street: this becomes a regular habit, but when either of
them comes too close to saying something of an intimate nature, the oth-
er brings up the dead they are commemorating, and this is enough to
stave off any further intimacy. This continues for a long time, and he
even tells her that when he dies, she can light a candle for him…”
“…I remember in the film she asks, ‘But who will light a candle for
me?’”

872
 “…that’s right. Over time he finds out she is a writer working for
some obscure magazine, and that the ‘dead’ she commemorates is only
one person, not many. He’s away a while, and when he returns he notes
she is grieving: he surmises the aunt she lives with has died. On their
walk she invites him to the house and tells him he can come whenever
he wants. She invites him into her room and he discovers the portrait of
Acton Hague, a former friend of his, and he realizes he is her ‘dead one.’
He explains that he was betrayed by Hague, and she takes his hand and
tells him that she was also betrayed by him, but has forgiven him. He
claims to have forgiven him as well, but he doesn’t put a candle for him
on his altar because, he says, the candles are only for those who were
‘possessed’ by him when they died. She realizes that he hasn’t truly for-
given him, and she tells him farewell–that the ‘spell is broken,’ as his
altar contains all the candles except the one candle that matters to her.
He senses his own jealousy, realizing that if someone neutral had sug-
gested he forgive Hague he might have been able to do it, but because
she requests this of him, he cannot. He begins to be obsessed with the
need for ‘one more candle,’ becoming ill. He seeks her at her house, and
then goes to the altar, which he has abandoned during their separation.
She’s there, and she admits she has returned because she no longer has a
need for the one candle, and has come for all of them; this forgiveness
brings him to offer her the one more candle that she wanted, but rather
than it being for Hague, he collapses into a fatal swoon, so the candle
will obviously be for him…and that’s how it ends…”
“…I remember that in the film she lights the candle…”
“…the film had to be more visual, and so there are photographs as
well as candles, plus the film adds certain elements from his stories The
Friends of the Friends and from The Beast in the Jungle: it’s much
clearer that she has fallen in love with him. It was a very personal film
for Truffaut…”
“…why?”
“…he had had an affair with Françoise Dorléac, and she died in Nice
in 1967. Then he had a relationship with her sister, Catherine Deneuve,
and she broke with him in 1970, devastating him. It was afterwards that
he began reading Henry James and came upon his story, The Altar of the
Dead. The photos on the wall were all figures who mattered to him, and
included photos of Jeanne Moreau and Oskar Werner, as well as literary
figures like Proust, Oscar Wilde, and even Henry James, whose portrait
he singles out, saying ‘this man had taught him about love, loss and
death’…”
“…how is the story processing his grief? Is Constance represented
more in the woman who died, or the woman who teaches him to for-
give?”
“…it was still too close to the time when it had all happened for him
to face it directly, so Constance seems to have been parceled out into the
wife who had died, and the woman who was offering herself to him,

873
while his feelings of guilt over having betrayed her were parceled out
partially to the Acton Hague character, and some of it to the narrator
who was too blocked to live his own life. …”
“…but it’s the man who dies, not the woman…”
“…I believe he wasn’t ready to confront her death or his guilt too di-
rectly, so he reversed it in the story. The month after he wrote The Altar
of the Dead he fleshed out the basic plot of his novel The Wings of the
Dove, but it wasn’t completed and published until 1902: I’m guessing
that his second visit here, in 1899, affected his writing of that book, and
also inspired The Beast in the Jungle, which he published a year after
The Wings of the Dove…”
“…the American woman in The Wings of the Dove was younger than
Constance, wasn’t she?”
“…yes, the American heiress, Milly Theale, was based more on Min-
ny Temple–a cousin of James’ who died at age 24; however, I still think
there are connections with Woolson, because he came up with the idea
so soon after Woolson’s death. Actually, I believe Story’s statue over
there, the Angel of Grief, is what gave him the idea for the title of the
novel…the statue wasn’t here the first time James came to visit Wool-
son, but it was here in 1899 and he must have noticed it, given he knew
both the sculptor and his wife…”
“…it’s hard to miss…”
“…I know an angel is not a dove, but the way the wings are spread
and cover the tomb…? I believe James must have had it in mind, as the
idea of Milly’s ‘wings’ covering Kate and Densher from beyond the
grave is stated directly. It’s an entirely different story of course, but
there are marked resemblances to James’ situation: the ‘death in Ven-
ice,’ the fact that Densher doesn’t truly fall in love with Milly until after
she dies, and the way her death ‘covers’ him so powerfully with its
‘wings’–certainly the power of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s imma-
nence in James’ life is echoed by Milly’s legacy…”
“…yes, I can imagine him standing in front of her tomb there and see-
ing the Angel of Grief behind it–the wings of grief covering him…”
“…but it’s really The Beast in the Jungle, written a year later, where
he finally confronted the truth…”
“…now that I know about James’ relationship with Woolson, the sto-
ry has another dimension…”
“…it’s not precisely the same, of course: the relationship between
John Marcher and May Bartram lasts as long, but it seems to have more
continuity and regularity than between James and Constance Fenimore
Woolson. James was capable of avoiding Constance for months and
even years at a time, plus, of course, her suicide was entirely unex-
pected…”
“…but that’s what so strange to me: before I thought Marcher was too
much–that no one could be as blocked as he was, but James seems, if
anything, even worse than Marcher…”

874
 “…in a certain way he was, but I suspect he was more suspicious of
Woolson’s motives than Marcher–Marcher seems especially obtuse. I
don’t know if you remember, but when May Bartram first comes upon
him at the country estate, she indicates she knows about his sense of his
special ‘fate’ from a decade before, while he can’t even remember hav-
ing told her about it!”
“…I remember that she keeps saying things that are obvious clues to
what’s really happening, but he simply fails to pick up on them…”
“…actually, the clearest clue happens very early in the story, when, in
response to his description of the ‘beast in the jungle’ he is awaiting–the
event that will devastate his consciousness, she tells him it sounds like
‘falling in love’…”
“…she does? I don’t remember that…”
“…it comes so early in the story that the whole set-up isn’t clear yet,
and, anyway, he dismisses it out of hand, telling her that his experience
of love until that point hadn’t been so devastating…”
“…suggesting that it wasn’t love…”
“…yes, and soon after that he comes again quite close to the crux of
the matter when he ponders the possibility that the ‘real form’ their liai-
son ought to take is marriage, but he dismisses it precisely because he
feels it would be like inviting a lady on a ‘tiger-hunt’…”
“…but he invites her anyway–and she comes…”
“…and they even grow old together! There’s some kind of emotional
disconnect in him caused by his vast selfishness, for he’s always on the
verge of grasping the obvious and then just misses it. He finds it won-
derful that she has made his secret hers as well, and he even speculates
about how, for him, she operates as a kind of screen, giving the impres-
sion of a normal life when something else lurks underneath the sur-
face…”
“…I remember that–and doesn’t he then ask her about his role in her
life–as if she were in it only to wait for this extraordinary thing to hap-
pen?”
“…yes, but she keeps trying to clue him in: she asks him whether or
not he’s ‘afraid’ having lived in such close proximity to the beast for so
long–clearly hinting at their intimacy…and they are intimate: they at-
tend the opera a dozen times a month, and he often ‘finishes off the
evening’ with her by having supper afterwards…”
“…so there’s everything but the actual declaration of love, the sexual
intimacy, and the social form of marriage…”
“…and still Marcher doesn’t get it…”
“…but as I remember it, he begins to suspect something…”
“…over time he suspects, and she confirms, that she knows what the
‘beast’ is, and when she begins to fall ill he’s upset for the selfish reason
that he fears he may never know: her illness is a bit like Milly’s in The
Wings of the Dove–it’s indistinct, and seems partially to be caused by
her wasting away from a lack of love…”

875
 “…I remember there’s that crucial scene where she’s very close to
telling him, to reaching out to him, but he doesn’t get it…”
“…she tells him ‘it’s never too late’ and she stands near to him, even
though it’s hard for her to even rise from her chair. He can see from her
posture that there’s something else offered: her face is described as
‘shining’ and there’s this intensity of her proximity that’s unbearable–
but it has to be him to reach out, or it means nothing…”
“…and he doesn’t…”
“…no, he doesn’t…immediately afterwards, her verb tense changes,
and she speaks of the beast as having already sprung: he didn’t get it,
and now it is something behind him…”
“…that’s the last scene before the cemetery, isn’t it?”
“…no, there’s one more: there’s a final interview, where she tells him
that he has nothing left to wait for–that ‘it’ has happened, and that the
‘strangeness in the strangeness’ of it was that he wasn’t even aware of it.
She dies, and he’s left alone in the world: he’s described as backtracking
over his trails in the jungle, but it’s empty now–there’s no beast waiting
to spring upon him. He goes on a year-long trip abroad, but that only
confirms that what matters is in the few square meters of empty tomb,
for that is where he locates the awareness of his ‘specialness,’ so he
comes up with the idea of periodically visiting the tomb…”
“…as James periodically visited here…”
“…yes…and that’s where the final scene takes place, as you know…”
“…he sees the face of the other man ravaged by grief, and he realizes
that she had offered him her love, but he missed it…then, he falls on the
tomb…”
“…in the story the tomb was somewhere in London, but if James truly
did have any realization, it was right here. The main difference between
the story and his life is that in the story she wasted away slowly and the
realization came in a flash, whereas in real life she died suddenly and he
came to his realization over a period of time…”
“…you said he came here again in–when was it?”
“…1907…I have a quote here from a letter James wrote to her sister,
Clare Woolson Benedict–she’s buried here too:

…the most beautiful thing in Italy, almost, seemed to me

in May and June last, the exquisite luxuriance and perfect
tendance of that spot, I mean, of course, that very particu-
lar spot, below the great grey wall, the cypresses and the
time silvered pyramid. It is tremendously, inexhaustibly
touching–its effect never fails to overwhelm.

…and after that he wrote yet another story that was probably partly in-
spired by Constance–The Jolly Corner…”
“…that’s the one you mentioned a few days ago…”

876
 “…yes. If The Altar of the Dead is about remembrance and The Beast
in the Jungle about realization, The Jolly Corner is the story of ‘what
if’–the what if he had realized his feelings for Constance in time, filtered
through the what if he hadn’t gone abroad at all. It’s less about the rela-
tionship between the male and female protagonists–Spencer Brydon and
Alice Staverton–than it is about James considering the life he might
have led if he had remained in the United States. Alice Staverton plays
the interlocutor and auditor to his interior drama–and it is an interior
drama, not a ‘ghost story’ as most critics claim it to be. Most critics ha-
ven’t left their homeland for twenty-three years before returning. James
wasn’t Maupassant–his ‘ghosts’ are virtual, not actual, and are always
connected to psycho-sexual reality…”
“…did he ever speak with Constance about his life in Europe versus
his life in the United States?”
“…I’m sure it came up–as it inevitably does for all expatriates and
self-imposed exiles. The story gives very little information about his
protagonist’s European life, although there’s a nice passage that de-
scribes it from the point of view of an average New England sensibility:
he senses that Americans find him ‘barely decent,’ having ‘followed
strange paths and worshipped strange gods.’ Although he doesn’t speci-
fy in the story so much what Spencer Brydon has been up to in Europe
aside from the fact he ‘loved it,’ what he does write about is what the
Americans are doing that is so different, and it always revolves around
money. At one point he mentions his reasons for leaving at age twenty-
three, and while he admits he wasn’t clear with himself about the rea-
sons for departing, he’s clear that the most important reason on the side
of staying would have been ‘dollars’–and he then suggests that in the
United States, it is only a matter of dollars. When he tries to imagine
what would have happened to him, he even finds himself trying to think
beyond what he calls the ‘money passion’ to what he would have be-
come, so clearly money is a crucial aspect of it all…”
“…what does he discover?”
“…the whole story is about his struggle to imagine what this alter ego
who remained in America would have been like, and in that sense what
he’s really up to is a sort of psychic conjuring trick, trying to imagine
what could be called an ‘alternative immanence’: every clue in the story
indicates that his attempt to momentarily summon into existence this
alternate virtual reality is psychic, not supernatural, so I really don’t un-
derstand the critics who insist on labeling the story a ‘ghost story.’ I
have to assume they simply don’t want to face what the story has to
tell…”
“…which is what–that America is materialistic? It’s no great secret–
the whole world knows it, and has known it for quite a while now…”
“…yes, but every country creates alibis for itself, for no one wants to
admit the unspoken: the fact James had to be so circuitous in his story
indicates he understood the dangers of being too overt about it…”

877
 “…so what does he conjure up?
“…he tries to imagine what New York, what the U.S.A., would have
‘made of him’ if he had remained, and there are hints already dropped at
the beginning of the story when Brydon explains how much he likes
working with the contractors, workers and financial matters connected to
his other property where they are building the apartment building. When
he finally succeeds in conjuring his virtual reality, it’s written as if he
were hunting down an actual ghost at his ‘Jolly Corner’ address, and the
revelation comes in three stages. In the first, he merely senses the alter
ego, and what he senses is that the other has suffered too, but for other
reasons–in fact he feels such pity that he breaks off trying to consciously
summon him, but on his way down and out of the house, the other takes
the initiative and confronts Brydon: he is described as magnificently
dressed…”
“…money, again…”
“…and he is described as having ‘achieved’ and ‘enjoyed’ a ‘trium-
phant life’–when James uses the ‘T’ word, one ought to be on one’s
guard…”
“…that’s what Osmond says to Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady,
isn’t it, when he declares his love–that she should go off on her journey
and ‘be triumphant’?”
“…even Isabel sees that it means something vain, selfish, and empty,
but somehow this ‘triumph’ of Brydon’s alter ego cannot be faced–the
specter has his hands over his face, and two of his fingers are missing,
described as if they had been ‘accidentally shot off’…”
“…what’s that about?”
“…some critics have seen it as a symbol of castration and have con-
nected it to James’ ‘obscure hurt’–some supposed injury to his groin in
his youth, but that doesn’t explain why the alter ego should carry the
symbol–after all, he has lived the life of action…”
“…so how do you read it?”
“…as an indication of a mutilated life: in the third moment of this
drama the figure uncovers his face and Brydon is shocked by what he
sees…critics have dwelled upon the forcefulness of the figure, and how
he overpowers Brydon with his ‘rage of personality,’ but they neglect
the fact that he’s also described as ‘blatant,’ ‘odious’ and ‘vulgar.’ Bry-
don passes out and awakens in Alice Staverton’s lap, and while he fo-
cuses on the difference in strength between himself and the alter ego,
she, who has seen him too in her own vision, says she pities the alter ego
because he was ‘unhappy’ and ‘ravaged.’ Brydon responds that he him-
self is also ravaged, but she describes the other as ‘grim and worn’ and
lacking ‘charm.’ The clincher is in the final lines: Brydon realizes that
his alter ego might have ‘a million a year,’ but he doesn’t have Alice–
that Alice wouldn’t have been with him if he were the other man…”
“…perhaps the critics couldn’t face the fact that James was suggesting
Americans were vulgar and without charm…”

878
 “…bold, brash, and materialistic…there’s some truth to it, to be sure,
but if it’s Henry James himself we’re considering, I don’t think he ever
would have become a real estate developer if he had stayed in the
U.S.A., or the literary equivalent–a ‘best-selling author’! I don’t think
James would have succumbed to that kind of crass materialism; rather, I
imagine him, if he had remained in New York, as being somewhat less
concerned with the interior side of life and more concerned with the ex-
terior side–like his contemporaries William Dean Howells, early Steph-
an Crane, or Frank Norris. Whatever the case, he certainly wouldn’t
have been the ‘Henry James’ we know…”
“…have you thought about who you would have become if you had
remained in America?”
“…I haven’t been away as long, so the inevitability of it hasn’t hit me
as hard as it probably hit James after thirty years–but yes, I’ve wondered
about it. I think James is right when he shows in The Jolly Corner that it
does take a degree of conjuration to imagine it. It’s easy for me to list
those characteristics that I dislike about the U.S.A.: I dislike the concern
with hyper-productivity that gives Americans the least time off of any
country in the world; I dislike the absolute worship of spectator
sports…”
“…Europe has its fair share of that!”
“…yes, but not to the extent where a four-day national holiday like
Thanksgiving is given over almost entirely to college football…”
“…but there’s the world cup mania in Europe…”
“…only once every four years…”
“…true…continue…”
“…I dislike the violence, criminality, and school-shootings that go
along with the absurdity of the legal ownership of handguns; I dislike
the ‘gulag’ of over two million people behind bars that results from it; I
dislike the absence of any real social safety net; I dislike the material-
ism, consumerism, and commercialism that is rampant there–and the
shopping mall culture and credit industry that has sprung up to serve it; I
dislike the vulgarity, brashness, and general lack of respect for others
there, amplified by an entertainment industry caught in a vicious circle
of chasing profits and ‘dumbing down’ in order to make even more; I
dislike the anti-intellectual and anti-cultural attitudes that go along with
massification and pseudo-democratization…”
“…why ‘pseudo’?”
“…because of how money corrupts politics there…”
“…it does that everywhere…”
“…but there’s much more money there, so much more corruption–as
Gore Vidal writes, it takes so much money to win an election, it’s a
monied-class oligarchy, not a true democracy…”
“…what I dislike is how long the election season is there, and what a
circus it is…”

879
 “…there’s that too…I also dislike the knee-jerk patriotism, national-
ism, and American exceptionalism; I dislike the hyper-normativity of
right, left, and center, which has as its root cause white Anglo-Saxon
Protestant sensibility, and as its consequence a whiff of moralism that
seeps into everything…”
“…yes, I’ve noticed how even things like drinking are treated in a
moralistic way: to drink a glass of wine at lunch causes raised eye-
brows…”
“…and yet the kind of binge-drinking on weekends there surpasses
anything I’ve seen in continental Europe–the paradox of suppression and
excess. It reminds me of the strange way puritanism and prurience seem
to go almost hand in hand there…”
“…‘prurience’?”
“…it means too great a curiosity or interest in matters pertaining to
sex: it’s totally schizoid how the same country can be so puritanical that
the sight of a breast or buttock is not allowed on network television, and
at the same time I read somewhere that Americans spend more money
on pornography than on all other forms of media combined…”
“…what seems even more perverse to us foreigners is that violence is
glorified there as much as sexuality is repressed…”
“…there’s that, too…finally, to sum it all up, I dislike the American
cultural sensibility of positivism, phenomenalism, pragmatism, and en-
forced naïve realism that supports and justifies everything I’ve just men-
tioned–and the way the media functions to make it all possible…”
“…I understand what you mean by all those words but ‘phenomenal-
ism’…”
“…I mean ‘phenomena’ as the opposite of Kantian ‘noumena,’ or an
unknown deeper reality. I mean the commonsensical everydayness there
that eschews ambivalence, ambiguity, complexity, enigma, mystery…I
think it must be why there are so many conspiracy theories there: people
sense a greater complexity lurking beneath appearances, and assume
there’s an explanation buried somewhere that will appear obvious if it
could just come to light, rather than accepting that reality is complex,
and there are never easy answers, if any answers at all. Anyway, there
ought to be a new word to describe the way media flattens and simplifies
everything there–something like ‘mediocracy,’ which combines ‘medi-
ocrity’ and ‘media’…the U.S.A. is a mediocracy, not a democracy…”
“…I like the sound of that, and it describes what’s happening in the
Czech Republic as well…so is there anything more on your list?”
“…those were just the concrete things about the U.S.A. I dislike…”
“…it was quite a long list…”
“…but those are things one can quite easily see, and divorce oneself
from…what’s more difficult to express, and escape from, are those sub-
tle characteristics of social determination that I didn’t even notice until
years after I left, and would never have noticed if I had remained
there…”

880
 “…such as?”
“…for example, the relation to time and history there: Fitzgerald’s
‘orgastic’ running towards the future. It’s not only the knocking down of
old buildings and the putting up of shopping malls, although that’s part
of it…I remember that a significant aspect of my attitude towards histo-
ry in graduate school was based on the belief that the latest trend in theo-
ry, art, and literature somehow seemed to deserve the most interest, and
with it went an attitude towards history that was more than a bit dis-
missive of the past. Then I had this feeling that one had to be a reaction-
ary if one studied writers from the past, and that one was progressive
only if you followed the new and different. I can see now that some of
my attitude was due simply to my being in my early twenties, when eve-
ryone is primarily concerned with the here-and-now because it’s all so
exciting and new: I followed an absurd line of thought that maintained
that if Joyce was great, then Nabokov or Pynchon were even greater, and
that the something even greater was right around the corner! I can see
now that such an attitude came from a combination of the American atti-
tude towards history, and the consumer society marketing of ‘newness,’
applied to culture…”
“…what strikes me even more peculiarly American is the making of
hierarchized lists, which seems especially strange when it comes to
things like literature…”
“…you’re right: when I was younger I used to do that all the time–
that’s American positivism again: synthetic a posteriori judgments of
fact are emphasized over synthetic a priori judgments of value, to the
extent that value judgments are dismissed out of hand, if not rejected
entirely: the phrase ‘value judgment’ itself is seen as pejorative there, as
if to make one was the height of vulgarity! I remember teaching under-
grads there–‘valley girl’ types…”
“…‘valley girl’?”
“…spoiled suburban princesses primarily found in shopping malls–
you can tell them by how they speak, as they’re always putting the
words ‘like’ and ‘so’ in front of every sentence instead of ‘very’ or
‘quite’: ‘Virginia Woolf is, like, so boring’…”
“…oh, I think I know the type…”
“…anyway, they’re the first to argue against a complex argument that
they lack the intelligence to refute by saying, ‘that’s like, such a value
judgment’–as if the world of pure empirical fact were the only realm of
truth! It’s a grotesquely exaggerated aspect of the positivism of the cul-
ture as a whole, which of course fails to grasp that we cannot get by
without such synthetic a priori value judgments, even if they can only
be a matter of arguments that are more or less compelling, better or
worse, but not right or wrong, as in mathematics. The result is the ten-
dency to use arguments of facts where arguments of value ought to be
used–a Kantian category mistake. You can judge baseball batting aver-

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ages empirically, but you can’t treat art, literature, or thought that way,
by ‘keeping score’…”
“…but I interrupted you before–you were going to say something
about history…”
“…I just wanted to say that whereas before I saw a progressive, ‘up-
wards and onwards’ approach to art and literature, I now realize that, on
the one hand, many figures from the past–Hölderlin, Blake, or Musil, for
example, are still far ahead of us in certain ways, and many figures from
the present are not the giants I thought they were, not to mention the fact
that the contemporary figures important for me now I hadn’t even heard
of ten years ago! I see myself, if I had remained there, chasing trends,
hyper-specialized, believing myself avant-garde when in fact I was en-
tirely oblivious to a great deal…”
“…but like Alice Staverton says in The Jolly Corner, isn’t the point
that you didn’t remain? You said before that in retrospect you could see
all along something was propelling you to leave…”
“…something was propelling me ‘away-from-there’–to paraphrase
Kafka’s parable, and it just so happened that in my lost teenage years,
when my family moved to the shopping mall and mass-produced subur-
ban wasteland of Colorado, the books that spoke to me were written by
Europeans– Kafka, Beckett, Camus, Sartre–I sensed it as a matter of
survival…”
“…but was there anything you liked in America?”
“…there’s much that I liked, and even loved, and continue to love: as
I’ve said before, certain landscapes–especially in the west, southwest
and northwest; certain moments in its cultural history–from Native
American culture to jazz to film noir to the Black Mountain poets; cer-
tain cultural figures who emerged from the whole roiling mess–Melville
and James, Dickinson and Whitman, Djuna Barnes and Henry Miller,
Edward Hopper and Rothko, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, Orson
Welles and Robert Altman, Patricia Highsmith and Jim Thompson,
Marguerite Young and Thomas Pynchon, David Lynch and Terrence
Malick…”
“…but almost everything you are mentioning is in the margins some-
how: the landscape was there before the Pilgrims arrived, the Native
American and jazz culture were produced by minorities, much of film
noir by European exiles, and most of the figures you mentioned were
critical if not oppositional: is there anything intrinsic you like about it?”
“…if I try to look at the history of the United States from a great dis-
tance the way I might look at the ancient Greeks or Romans, distilling its
best traits and filtering out its worst, what I personally find most worthy
about it is its attitude of wanting to ‘do the right thing’ in terms of equal-
ity and justice, combined with the experimental attitude of being open to
try something new and different: I admit that one has to filter out vast
tracts of hypocrisy–from the genocide of Native Americans to slavery,
colonialism, imperialism, and so on…but, if you could crystallize that

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essence, that’s what I believe is worth keeping as a form of American
immanence. I realize that any virtue has its dark under-side, and in this
case the underside is the whole ‘Quiet American’ thing about doing ter-
rible things for all the ‘right’ reasons…”
“…what do you mean?”
“…I’m referring to the Graham Greene novel, where the British nar-
rator in Vietnam during the 50s says of the soft-spoken American CIA
agent who thinks he’s trying to ‘do the right thing,’ ‘I never knew a man
who had better motives for all the trouble he caused’–that single line
sums up much of American foreign policy in the 20th Century…”
“…there was a film called Do the Right Thing, wasn’t there?”
“…I showed it to you–remember? It’s Spike Lee’s film–the one about
the hot summer day in Brooklyn…”
“...oh yes, that was a great film…”
“…everything is right there in the film–the whole mess of multi-
ethnic America, and at the same time the film itself exemplifies what’s
best about the place…it’s a nice touch that the character Spike Lee plays
is the one who receives the message ‘always do the right thing,’ but he’s
the one who starts the riot! Remember, the film ends ambiguously with
the photos of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, representing the mili-
tant and pacifist approaches to rebellion…”
“…both were shot…”
“…yes–and the Kennedys, Lincoln, Sitting Bull, and Harvey Milk,
among others…”
“…Harvey Milk?”
“…he was a gay rights activist who was a city supervisor in San Fran-
cisco–they made a very moving documentary about him called The
Times of Harvey Milk…”
“…that’s something I truly admire about American culture–that you
even have such films: homosexuality in the Czech Republic is still ta-
boo, and I doubt they will ever make a documentary about it…”
“...in my childhood during the 60s homosexuality was totally taboo,
so it wasn’t always that way…”
“…that reminds me, I wanted to ask you if you thought Henry James
was possibly gay?”
“…there’s a good deal of recent talk about whether he was a latent
homosexual or not–the question of ‘gay Henry,’ but from what I’ve
read, James was primarily a-sexual: there’s one account where a homo-
sexual writer tried to seduce him and reputedly James said, ‘I can’t, I
can’t!’ I’m not sure if it’s apocryphal or not–and if it isn’t, how much
was due to his ‘obscure hurt’ and how much to his psychology will nev-
er be known. I think we fail to realize how much the social symbolic is
determined by history, and that prior to a discourse existing to name and
characterize something, the sensibility connected to it doesn’t exist…”
“…how do you mean?”

883
 “…I don’t mean that people didn’t form same-sex liaisons–they have
done that throughout human history: but how, with whom, and even the
reasons why have changed over time…”
“…‘why’?”
“…the discourse around it…wait, let me see…”
“…what are you looking for?”
“…I read that he should be around here somewhere…yes, here he is:

JOHANNES ADDINGTON SYMONDS

LEAD THOU ME, GOD, LAW, REASON, MOTION, LIFE:
ALL NAMES FOR THEE ALIKE ARE IN VAIN HOLLOW;
LEAD ME, FOR I WILL FOLLOW WITHOUT STRIFE, OR, IF I
STRIVE, STILL MUST I BLINDLY FOLLOW.

…John Addington Symonds…”

“…who’s that?”
“…Henry James knew him casually, and even based a story on him.
Remember when I mentioned Claire’s German poet friend, Hermann
Gambs, referring to himself as being in the ‘cult of Urania’?”
“…yes…”
“…in England Symonds was one of the first to take up the term to ap-
ply to homosexuals–he also referred to it as ‘l'amour de l'impossible.’
Symonds had been brought up in the British public school system which
was rife with homosexuality, and while he seems to have resisted his
own impulses for a time–even informing on another boy who had had a
sexual relationship with a teacher, eventually, when he became a teacher
himself, he was named in some scandal, had a nervous breakdown, and
fled to Switzerland. He met a British woman there: they married, had
four daughters, and eventually settled in Clifton, England, where he was
a teacher at a local college. There he fell in love with a male student, and
had an affair with him that was apparently deeply erotic but not entirely
sexual…”
“…how do you mean?”
“…Symonds undressed him, ‘feasted his eyes on him,’ petted him,
but apparently that was all: it was all highly idealized, and justified via
the Greeks. Symonds became ill–or made himself ill from his own psy-
chic conflicts, and took a cure in Davos, and decided he needed to re-
main there. He insisted that it was the place where he needed to live…”
“…with or without his family?”
“…with–it became a kind of staging ground for his forays into Italy,
which he felt as a plunge into decadence; afterwards, he needed to scur-
ry away back to Davos. It seems he actually had affairs with young men
in Italy, but needed to recuperate from them in his isolated sanctuary
where he wrote his books–the History of the Renaissance, his biog-
raphies of Shelley and Michelangelo, and his private pamphlets where
he defended homosexuality…”

884
 “…I understand his interest in Michelangelo, but why Shelley?”
“…partly it was because of Shelley’s translation of Plato’s Symposi-
um, which is still one of the best translations into English. Shelley was
too intellectually honest to mask the homosexual aspects of the Sympo-
sium, which was quite daring for his time. Anyway, Symond’s wife nev-
er saw the pamphlets, but she knew about his proclivities–that’s what
gave James the idea for his story based on Symonds, The Author of Bel-
traffio…”
“…what is it about?”
“…briefly, it’s about a young author visiting an older author who has
written a work entitled Beltraffio: the younger man considers it a mas-
terpiece. He arrives at the estate ready to pay homage to his hero, but
begins to notice that the older writer and his wife seem to be in an un-
spoken battle over their young son. The boy becomes ill, and the young
writer witnesses the wife refuse to summon a doctor: she sacrifices her
son rather than let her husband have influence over him. What is obvi-
ous in the story is the battle being fought through the son; what’s less
obvious–the Jamesian twist–is the unspoken they are fighting about…”
“…and did anything like that happen in real life?”
“…I know that Symonds and his wife were at odds, and that he was
very close to his daughters. One of his daughters became a lesbian, an-
other married a classicist, so he did influence them. James read his pam-
phlet on homosexuality, Problems in Modern Ethics, and applauded him
as the leader of a movement, but his comments were made as if spoken
from the sidelines, and not as if they directly concerned him…”
“…but even that shows a great deal of liberality…”
“…especially during that period…”
“…and he just happens to be buried here? All these connections–it’s
so strange…”
“…there’s more–the young man James fell in love with late in his life
is buried here as well…”
“…James had a homosexual relationship?”
“…not exactly…from what I’ve read, the closest James ever came to
a homosexual affair was with this Norwegian sculptor thirty years his
junior–Hendrik Anderson: Anderson was apparently quite handsome,
and James sent him affectionate, covertly homoerotic letters and hosted
him at his house a couple of times. He bought a sculpted bust from him
and installed it in his house in Rye, and wrote Anderson that he
‘couldn’t keep his eyes off of it,’ which was probably how James felt
about Anderson. I doubt they had sex, or, rather, the ‘lusty pat on the
back’ and hugs James bestowed on him were at the very limit of James’
thresholds and were probably the equivalent of sex for him. Anderson
made bombastically large sculptures and believed in an idealized ‘world
city’–something James couldn’t share with him at all…”

885
 “…so both Constance–the woman James would not have, and Hen-
drik, the man James dare not have, are here, and all of these others con-
nected in some way or other with Shelley, here…”
“…well, part of Shelley anyway…”
“…that’s right–where did you say Shelley’s heart ended up?”
“…buried with Mary in Bournemouth–not exactly symbolic of what
he would have wanted…”
“…did his son Percy ever come to this grave later–after Mary died?”
“…yes, Percy and Lady Jane made a final pilgrimage: they spent a
night in the Casa Magni, and then later visited here…”
“…it was probably her decision to come…”
“…by then, yes: he had become the caricature of the stuffy, conserva-
tive, eccentric English gentleman–more like Timothy Shelley than Shel-
ley…”
“…and when did they die?”
“…Percy died in 1889, and she died a decade later in 1899, right at
the end of the Victorian period…”
“…they had no heirs, I assume…”
“…none–the estate was sold off: as far as property, material posses-
sions and the baronetcy, that was the end of that…”
“…so the world Timothy Shelley was trying to protect entirely disap-
peared, while the world Shelley was trying to bring into being has, in
certain ways, come about–or at least people are still dreaming about
it…”
“…it’s ironic–Timothy Shelley thought he was ‘protecting the family
name’ from his son who was ‘ruining’ it, when in fact Shelley, if any-
thing, made the family name for centuries to come with his imma-
nence…”
“…so Shelley ‘won,’ even though he’ll never be aware of it…”
“…a stodgy, reactionary conservatism like Sir Timothy’s can never
win–it belies the laws of change and transformation…”
“…and Mary and Claire–did they ‘win’?”
“…certainly Mary has her share of immanence, and because of
Frankenstein, an even wider and farther-reaching immanence than Shel-
ley; however, while Frankenstein is now a classic, I think Mary’s real
lastingness is symbolized by how her name evokes Godwin, Wollstone-
craft, and Shelley–that whole, crucial constellation of memes and every-
thing they stand for…I cannot think of another family in human history
that produced so much long-lasting immanence…”
“…and then there’s Claire–she seems to have been left out of it…”
“…that’s partly due to her choice to be imperceptible and the circum-
stances surrounding that choice, but her immanence has been reawak-
ened: first there was the journal, and now the letters…as I’ve said, in
many ways she’s a much better model of an independent woman than
Mary, and as times change, that will be acknowledged…”

886
 “…if times change in the direction Shelley hoped for and not in the
opposite direction…”
“…there have been serious ups and downs, but the general direction
has been towards the world Shelley envisioned, albeit in a very diluted
form…”
“…but there’s no guarantee it will continue that way…”
“…there never is: Shelley wasn’t a Marxist, believing in inevitable
change–especially at the end of his life, when he had been chastened
considerably by experience. Still, I don’t believe he ever gave up the
general thrust of his vision, he just saw it as far more difficult to reach.
Even if The Triumph of Life was a poem with quite a bleak vision of
human progress, if Shelley fully subscribed to that bleak vision he
wouldn’t have bothered himself trying to secure the existence of The
Liberal at the end…”
“…if you had to reduce Shelley’s life and message to the single point
you find most important, what would it be?”
“…that’s difficult to say, but if I were pressed on it, it would have to
be something like Rimbaud’s ‘l’amour est à réinventer, on le
sait’…‘love has to be reinvented, one knows it’…perhaps I would add
‘continually reinvented’…”
“…Shelley certainly tried…”
“…if there was anything he willed the eternal return of, it was the re-
invention of love…”
“…and here we are one-hundred-seventy-five years later, still try-
ing…”
“…I suppose they’ll still be trying in another hundred-and-seventy-
five years…”
“…I wonder who will be standing here then, and how they will see
the vista of time between Shelley’s epoch, ours, and theirs…”
“…it’s like ripples from a stone on the smooth surface of an infinite
sea…Shelley is like a stone, and the traces of his plunge are ripples of
immanence–spreading ever outward, but becoming ever more diffuse as
time passes…”
“…his immanence isn’t diffuse for us–it’s been very intense…”
“…we willed its eternal return during our journey…”
“…I sense the meaning of the eternal return very powerfully right
now: as Shelley said, I somehow want to say to this moment, ‘remain,
thou art beautiful’…at the same time knowing it cannot remain…”
“…the moment cannot remain…we cannot remain…but if lived in-
tensely enough, immanence remains…”

887
 

“…to me…it seems that everything is far too valuable to be so fleeting:

I seek an eternity for everything – ought one to pour the costliest balms
and wines into the sea? – and my consolation is that everything which
has been is eternal: the sea washes it up again…” (Nietzsche)

“…go, and fear nothing. Everything recurs. And what’s to come already
is completed…” (Hölderlin)

“…we dream of voyaging across the universe. Isn’t the universe, then, in
us? We do not know the depths of our mind. Toward the interior goes
the mysterious road. Eternity with its worlds, past and future, is in us…”
(Novalis)

“…it is found again! What? Eternity. It is the sea mixed with the sun…”
(Rimbaud)

“…life, like a dome of many-coloured glass stains the white radiance of

eternity…” (Shelley)

“…eternity is in love with the productions of time…” (Blake)

“…believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or,

more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately, being inde-
structible, or, more accurately, being…” (Kafka)

“…just once, everything only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,
once. And never again. But this having been once, though only once,
having been once on earth–can it ever be cancelled?” (Rilke)

“…all things are transfigured except Love…” (Shelley)

–Prague, 1996-2008

888