Hideous Love
Page 3
and trade the mule
in part for a carriage.
So we travel once again
as we began.
Shelley in a whirl of excitement
like one struck by electricity
loses touch with the ground
on which he stands.
I shock to discover that
he writes to Harriet
and invites
her to join us on this journey,
as a friend.
Of course
she would have to travel alone
to meet us and
is five months pregnant.
He asks her to bring
some legal documents.
That Shelley’s letter to her
receives no response
does not surprise me.
The majestic Alps
embrace me like a father.
I gasp in their presence
and will never forget
the power they wield
just by existing.
The Swiss are as clean
and welcoming as the French
were not. Our carriage driver
says it is because they have
no king to fear.
Shelley finds
a friendly banker,
but the bag of coins
he returns with still cannot
completely fund our expedition.
We rent a house
on a six-month lease
at Brunnen, but the old-fashioned
stove that heats
the two rooms nearly suffocates us
when it functions.
Shelley tells me
as we read Tacitus
that our sixty pounds
have dwindled to thirty.
We possess just enough money
to return home to England
if we travel up the Rhine
through Holland.
Jane reads King Lear
and on the first stop
of our journey home,
leaps into the bed
with us as she sees
night visions of the dead.
I call them Jane’s horrors.
Shelley of course consoles her,
and I swear I catch Jane
wink at me
like she plays the fox
outwitting the hound.
I will trap all eyes
upon her now.
I grow weary of this travel
as a threesome.
And I often fall ill
for some reason.
But my lover holds me dear
on my seventeenth birthday
and reads to me
from my mother’s book.
I soon forget my woes.
THE TROUBLE WITH JANE
August 1814
At first I believed
that Jane accompanied
us just to escape
the tyranny of the household.
I thought that she longed to see
the world, expand her mind,
and be liberated from
the society into which we
were so assuredly to enter
and, as women, be forced
into the roles of wife and mother.
Her design may have been
larger than that.
I notice when she eyes
Shelley as though she might
lick his glove.
I do not believe I have ever
wanted to throw
anyone out of a carriage more.
Perhaps we should have
brought my sister Fanny
along instead.
HOMEWARD BOUND
September 1814
Shelley and I religiously record
our journal
of European travel.
We voyage far enough
to see Lake Lucerne
where my father’s book
Fleetwood was set.
Father looked to escape
materialism in his book,
but unfortunately we find
it too expensive to remain.
We continue our practice
of daily reading and writing.
Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
fills us with the same delight
as does a vivid painting.
Shelley writes his novel The Assassins
and I compose my story “Hate,”
while Jane works on “The Ideot.”
When we arrive in
Rotterdam all our money
has been spent.
Shelley persuades the captain
to return us to England
on the condition
that he will be paid
once we arrive.
We have traveled forty-two days
and slept in forty-one different locales.
We reach England
by morning’s cry
nearly drowned
by the storm’s brutal winds,
tossed about like seaweed
on the waves.
When we approach London,
we row up the Thames
in a little boat
while Shelley desperately
attempts to find funds
to pay the captain
for our crossing.
Finally he stops
on Chapel Street
at Harriet’s father’s door.
He emerges
not with his wife
but with finance.
He says, “I told Harriet that
I am united to another.
And that she is no longer my wife.”
He clutches my hand and says,
“I spoke of your courage
and told her you had resigned
all for me.”
And my love is correct.
MY LOVE
September 1814
My love nurtures me
like rain
cultivates a field.
My love astonishes me
like light
amazes a moth.
My love enlightens me
like language
imparts meaning.
My love changes me
like time
transforms a mountain.
My love strengthens me
like a double stitch
reinforces a seam.
My love perfects me
like diligence
rewards its student.
RETURN TO ENGLAND
September 1814
I did not expect
open arms, I suppose.
But when I live
according to my father’s
philosophy of love and friendship,
his idea that it ought be measured singly
by what we know of its worth,
and he refuses to see me,
worse, disallows
my sister and brothers
any contact with me,
I see his patriarchy
somewhat as an attack
on the principles
set forth by my mother.
I cry into my pillow
like I did when I was a child,
sob myself to sleep.
I cannot make sense
of his rejection
of me when I choose
to live my life
in the exact manner
he has written
that one should live.
Father expects
Shelley to support him
financially, as the rich man
should help his poor brethren.
Harriet requires funds, as well,
and yet we starve, change
our lodgings nearly nightly.
I write to my dearest friend,
Isabella Baxter,
and I receive a cold letter
from her husband
who forbids her c
ontact with me.
It appears that to live out
my parents’ ideals
comes at heavy cost.
I am now as notorious
as was my mother
and therefore chastised.
No one comes to call
except for Thomas Love Peacock,
the poet and novelist
who advocates for Harriet,
and Thomas Hookham,
Shelley’s publisher.
Jane nags at me
night and day,
a gnat about my neck.
I touch the small bump
below my waist.
There seems
to be no doubt
at this point
that I am pregnant.
My child will likely be born
while my Shelley
is married to another.
My fear swells
as does my belly.
SUNDAY
October 1814
I tire, sleepy
as an old cat.
Shelley’s creditors
set the bailiffs
on him, and he can no longer
live with me and Jane.
He resides with Thomas Love Peacock
when he can, or at some
flea-infested hotel.
He tries like a gentleman
to arrange further loans
to pay off his debts,
but they often treat him
as a beggar.
He writes letters
to make me sick
with love for him
and lonelier than a bird
without wings.
He says he feels
in my absence degraded
to the level of the vulgar and impure.
I promise my enduring
love and that I will
never vex him.
We steal conversations
on the steps of St. Paul’s,
but the only time I own
with my Shelley
is Sunday,
when the bailiffs
are not allowed to make arrests.
We spend all day in bed,
reading and talking,
scheming his next move.
Sundays I am alive.
SISTERLY LOVE
Autumn 1814
Jane skulks about the house
we can now sometimes share
while Shelley and I
stay in bed
and read and write together—
always
her pouty little complaints
like a child’s smudge
on a pristine canvas.
I do not trouble
Shelley with my every ailment.
But Jane pesters Shelley
with her night traumas.
Her pillow mystically
moves from the bed to the chair.
She acts so terrified
that Shelley is forced to give up
his spot in bed
so that Jane might
have me as companion
while she sleeps.
Shelley loves to scare her
and it sometimes frightens
me how well they get on,
especially when I am too sick
to take a walk
and they gad about town
together
without me.
Jane has now adapted
her first name
and wants to be called
Claire Clairmont,
as she thinks
this makes her sound
more literary.
I fear my stepsister
is not very sisterly to me
where Shelley is concerned.
Shelley assures me
that Claire
has a sincere affection
for me.
I respond that I
“have a very sincere
affection for my own
Shelley.”
OUR CHILD TOGETHER
Autumn 1814
Shelley twists a strand
of my hair around his finger.
“I hope our child
has your fire of intellect
and your fine red hair.”
I smile and slip
under his arm.
“I hope our child
has your generous spirit
and your bold ideology.”
He gathers me up.
“I hope our child
has your manners
and my mayhem.”
I laugh.
“I hope our child
has your passion
and my patience.”
Shelley lays his hands
upon my belly
like a priest.
He whispers,
“Hello little one,
knowst thou
that you are loved,”
a prayer intoned
for the future.
OUR DAILY LIFE
Autumn 1814
We manage
this current threesome,
Claire, Shelley, and I,
by rigorous study and schedule.
In the morning
we read and write separately.
We always find funds
enough for our books.
Shelley is a devout vegetarian
and so now are Claire and I.
After our midday vegetarian meal,
we shop, visit sites of interest,
and perform house chores.
At night we either read together
or attend theater, opera, or a lecture.
Shelley teaches me Greek.
I thought that I would grow
to my greatest capacity
under my father’s tutelage
and amidst his library.
But I realize even greater zeal
for knowledge with Shelley.
For on top of an education
I receive love and admiration,
and in this atmosphere
I run as a racehorse.
I pick up speed around
each new bend.
COMMUNE
Autumn 1814
Shelley talks of liberating
two of his sisters, Elizabeth and Helen,
from boarding school
so that they might
join us as we form
an association of philosophical people.
I wonder if we should not also
rescue my sister Fanny
from Skinner Street, although
it may be that Fanny prefers
a more traditional life.
Shelley writes to his friend
from Oxford,
Thomas Jefferson Hogg,
after years of no communication.
He tells him of our elopement
and of how meeting me
has changed his spirit.
He professes that he
has found contentment.
Hogg might wish to become
part of the group as well.
I grew up in a house
brimming with discussion
where Father hosted
dinners for authors,
intellectuals, and philosophers
of the day.
I would like our life
to be constructed like that.
THE RETURN OF HOGG
November 1814
Hogg supplies us with
much-needed finances
as he is to be a barrister.
And we supply him
with much-needed
intellectual stimulation.
At first I find him dull
as a spoon, but Shelley
entreats me so
to get on with Hogg
that I look to find
something in Thomas’s character
I might admire.
He is for certain persistent,<
br />
and once he sheds his shyness
he holds a conversation.
Thomas seems to have taken to me
and Shelley encourages it
as Shelley’s principle
of free love submits
that constancy has nothing
virtuous in itself.
I try to wrap my arms
around this concept,
but I struggle sometimes when
I hold my Shelley,
and only my Shelley,
so dear.
Apparently Hogg also
found Harriet to be entrancing
and Shelley’s sister Elizabeth,
so I am not first,
just the latest
of Hogg’s infatuations
with women he knows
through Shelley.
I do not harbor
feelings beyond friendship
for Hogg, but to please Shelley
I sometimes pretend to.
Thank goodness
pregnancy keeps
the possibility
of physical intimacy
with Hogg impossible.
FREE LOVE
January 1815
Winter gnarls at the door,
and I struggle to keep warm.
But the late-night talks
about spirit worlds, ghosts,
and forming an association
of philosophical people
allow me to forget
any physical discomforts
this pregnancy brings.
Claire, Hogg,
Shelley, and I
believe an ideal society
can be formed
if we free human behavior
from the restraints
of social expectations.
Shelley wants us to push
at the boundaries of monogamy,
practicing it only if
it reflects our genuine
passions and desires.
We should let loose
restrictive social conventions.
Shelley takes up the mantle
of my father, wants us to practice
what my father philosophized.
We create a small community,
we four, but a good one to build upon.
Or at least that is what Shelley
believes. I question whether
Claire and Hogg serve as worthy
members sometimes.
Hogg sends me a love letter.
Without my knowledge,
Shelley invites Hogg over
and Shelley and Claire depart
so that I might be alone
with Hogg. I try not to act
afraid or upset.
Thomas sits too close to me
as though he wishes to nest
in my lap. The silence screams.
“Thank you for the letter
and the expression of your feelings.”
“I meant every word,”
he says predictably.
“At this time
I cannot fully return
your feelings
for we have known each other
such a brief time.
But I take it in good faith
that our friendship will blossom
until we are happier
than most lovers.”
I rub my belly
because the baby kicks.
“I am not an impatient man.”
Hogg stands up and moves
to a chair so that we face each other.
He softens his voice.
“How are you feeling today?”