Shelley: The Pursuit

by Richard Holmes

  Once they had settled at the Casa Frassi, Shelley made a quick visit to the Gisbornes at Livorno on his own, partly to see the latest developments of the steam-boat, and partly to explain why he had settled on Pisa rather than at Villa Valsovano again. He returned on 2 February, and from this time dates the growing intimacy with the Masons, which gradually surplanted the influence of the Gisbornes and calderonizing.

  Mrs Mason, of the Casa Silva, was not in fact Mrs Mason at all, but the Countess, Lady Margaret Mountcashell. She had grown up on extensive family estates in Ireland, and during adolescence, her governess had been Mary Wollstonecraft. The effect of this was lasting. She became a correspondent of Godwin’s, an ardent republican and one of the few feminist members of the United Irishmen movement. She had been marginally involved in the uprisings of the nineties, and had attended in London the famous trial for treason of the working-men’s leaders Hardy, Home Tooke and Thelwall. Later she had published political pamphlets and books in Godwin’s Juvenile Library. During the Napoleonic wars she had abandoned Earl Mountcashell, and gone to live in Pisa under the name of Mason with a talented expatriate agronomist of similar political sympathies, George William Tighe.

  Tighe was universally liked by the Shelleys and affectionately known as ‘Tatty’ because of his scientific interest in agriculture. Tatty’s advanced knowledge of the chemistry of soil compounds and organic growth both amused and delighted Shelley, who kept extensive notes in the back of the same notebook in which he had drafted the last stanzas of the ‘Ode to the West Wind’, and the unfinished ‘Ballad’ of the starving mother.

  Shelley’s agricultural notes included a list of the forty-seven known chemical elements, descriptions of the action of electrolysis, capillary attraction and the use of acid as a fertilizer. There are references to magnesium, silica and ‘hexagonal cells’; remarks on the ‘dairy system’, human food consumption and elementary statistics on the productivity of land per acre in comparative terms of potatoes, milk and butter. It is also clear from these notes that Tatty Tighe had encouraged Shelley to read Davy’s lectures on agriculture, and to consider the problems set by Malthusian social theory in terms of population figures and food production. It is very characteristic of Shelley that he did not feel the need to separate this scientific information from his poetry by starting another notebook.7

  When the friendship with the Masons commenced in 1820, they had two daughters, Laurette aged 10½, and Nerina aged 4½. Claire was very kind and friendly towards these two little girls, and Mrs Mason in turn, came to look on Claire as something of a grown-up daughter. She developed both social and intellectual ambitions for Claire, and Claire came to call Mrs Mason her ‘Minerva’. Lady Mountcashell was at this time a tall, gaunt, rather brusque and distinctly Celtic woman in her mid-forties, a great raconteuse, of considerable charm and with much force of character.8

  During the early part of February, she deluged the Shelley household with pamphlets about Ireland. At the Casa Silva there were long, lively discussions about the Irish Rebellion and the horror of Castlereagh’s influence both in Ireland and in England. After one of these powerful discussions, Claire recorded that she had a ‘horrid dream about Skinner Street & apoplectic fits’.9 A letter from Mary to Marianne Hunt also showed the Mountcashell influence since it was almost entirely filled by a long Jeremiad against ‘King Cant’, and those ‘Castlereaghish men’, who were detested by all radicals.10 Visits between the Casa Frassi and the Casa Silva became a daily feature of the life at Pisa, and the Shelleys and the Masons soon began to dine frequently in one another’s company.

  Mary took up riding, and Shelley was visited by Vaccà. The astute doctor, who spoke fluent English, observed Shelley closely and examined and questioned him on his symptoms. His diagnosis was simple: that Shelley should refrain from special medicines, take plenty of exercise and take care of himself — all would then be well. In the season he recommended the pleasant advantages of the bagni, either at Lucca or locally. He seemed at once very simpàtico both to Mary and to Shelley: ‘a great republican & no Christian’.11 In passing, he also diagnosed an indisposition of Claire’s, much to her disgust: ‘Vaccà says I am scrofulous and I say he is ridiculous.’12 But actually he was perfectly right, and she had to have treatment in Florence a year later. A friendship with Vaccà gradually grew up, and the Shelleys sometimes met him socially with other doctors at the Casa Silva. They had thus gained an entrée into the circle of the university by the autumn of 1820.

  The Pisan Carnival, which ended on the day after St Valentine’s day, gave them an early chance to see the city take to the streets in festive mood. The place filled with ‘scamps, raffs etc.’ with tousled hair and torn shirts, many of them apparently university students. There were bargees, and beggars, and galley slaves cheerfully dressed in yellow and red cloth over their chains. The Italian notables showed a weakness for pink silk hats, large whiskers, twirling canes and white satin shoes, with party-coloured ribands in their buttonholes, which Mary perceived were symbols of nobility.13 She found it all singularly garish, but Claire took a carriage and rode down the Lung’ Arno with the Mason children, all of them shrieking with delight behind paper masks.14

  After the excitement of the Carnival, Shelley and Mary settled down at the Casa Frassi. The new servant arrived on the 28th, and Claire kept full diary entries which record the discussions which became a regular feature of the Shelley-Mason households. The subjects were highly varied. On one day the interest centred around Locke’s remark about the social persecution of intellectual dissenters: ‘And where is the man to be found that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of Whimsical, Sceptical, or Atheist which he is sure to meet with who does in the least scruple any of the Common opinions?’ On another occasion Mrs Mason and Professor Vaccà discussed the powers of the human nose. On a third, they talked of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the legendary republican Irish aristocrat who had been executed for plotting a mass assassination attempt against the English ministers in Dublin in 1798. In the light of subsequent news from England, this was an odd coincidence.15

  The spell of fine weather broke, and during the last week of February Shelley was unwell again, despite the attentions of Vaccà. For Mary it was ‘days of idleness and nursing’.16 That this illness was entirely the effect of the Pisan climate seems unlikely. On 3 March, when he had recovered, Shelley immediately rode over to Livorno, where he stayed until the 6th, and having returned, wrote the following short letter to John and Maria Gisborne: ‘My dear friends, I have written at a venture the letters which it seems to me are requisite. — I have ordered my Florence Banker to send you all that remains in his hands; you will receive it in a day or two & tell me the amount, & I will make up the deficiency from Pisa. — I enclose an outside calculation of the expenses at Naples calculated in ducats — I think it as well to put into the hands of Del Rosso or whoever engages to do the business 150 ducats. — or more, as you see occasion. — but on this you will favour me so far as to allow your judgement to regulate mine.’17 Shelley’s trip to Livorno had concerned the baby Elena, who was now 14 months old. For some reason it had now become necessary to administer further money in her connection, and Shelley had decided to take the Gisbornes into his confidence. That Mary was not told of these latest developments is shown by Shelley’s next letter of 19 March, in which he refers to the use of a pseudonym to maintain secrecy: ‘If it is necessary to write again on the subject of Del Rosso, address not Medwin, nor Shelley, but simply “Mr Jones”.’18

  Shelley’s application for the services of a lawyer suggests that some complication had arisen in Naples, and it seems likely that this was connected with Elise Foggi’s presence in Florence during January. Obviously more money was required for the support of the child: Shelley’s letter makes it quite clear that the money was to be paid by the lawyer, (not to him, for any legal service) on account of — possibly disputed — ‘expenses at Naples’. Despite the precautions for secrecy, there is no indica
tion that either Elise or her husband were at this point engaged in anything approaching blackmail; yet from this time on Shelley’s sense of responsibility towards the child seems to have become an increasing burden. Possibly one part of del Rosso’s commission was to find new foster parents for Elena in Naples, or else confirm that those at No. 45 Vico Canale were satisfactory. This might also explain the subject of Shelley’s other letters ‘written at a venture’; but there is no definite evidence.

  Why should Shelley have involved the Gisbornes in this business, while taking great precautions to keep it secret from Mary? Since the child was inextricably linked with Mary’s miseries in Naples and Rome, it is not difficult to understand why he should want to keep further thought of it from her. He also wanted peace in his own household. His later decision to keep her own father’s correspondence from her shows a similar kind of motive. The Gisbornes on the other hand, with their knowledge of Italy and their independence of mind, were in an extremely practical position to help him. Shelley would not have had much misgiving about their ‘social prejudices’ concerning an illegitimate offspring, considering as he did that Maria was both ‘atheistic’ and ‘democratic’. In completely discounting social prejudice, Shelley may have been in the long run over-optimistic. But immediate practical aid and advice the Gisbornes did provide, and arrangements seemed to be running smoothly in March and April; Shelley after all was supporting the steam-boat.

  Mary seemed blissfully unaware of these developments. She wrote to Maria Gisborne only of darning needles, arrowroot tea and little Percy’s mild attack of measles. While she organized domestic affairs — the new servant, the cooking and the clothes at the Casa Frassi — Shelley and Claire were more frequently out roving through Pisa together. They had a brush with the ubiquitous Colonel Calicot Finch, who had now appeared in Tuscany. Shelley and Claire had spotted a long-legged gentleman with an umbrella pursuing a little dirty blacksmith’s boy through the streets calling ‘thief!’ When he caught up with him, the gentleman shook the child by the collar, and roared at him ‘with the greatest vehemence’. Shelley decided to intervene; but the umbrella man swung round and roared in turn at Shelley in Italian that it was none of his business. Mary continued the little scenario with evident amusement: ‘A crowd collected — Claire twitched Shelley & remonstrated — Don Quixote did not like to leave the boy in thrawl but deafened by the tall strider’s vociferations & overcome by Claire’s importunities he departed — & then Claire out of breath with terror as you may well suppose said “for mercy’s sake have nothing to do with those people it’s the reverend Colonel Calicot Finch” so they escaped the attack.’19 Subsequently Calicot Finch was ‘impudent’ to one of the university doctor’s wives and was given his congé.20 But on the whole life at Pisa suited them all, and by the end of the month they had moved to new and even more ‘lightsome & spacious’ rooms at the very top of the Casa Frassi overlooking the vista of the Arno. Mary wrote to Sophia Stacey in Rome, ‘we shall remain here stationary until the end of May, when Mr.S is ordered to the Baths of Lucca, where we shall accordingly pass the summer — I am afraid that it does not accord with your plans, bella Sofia, to pass it there likewise: will not you also be one of the swallows to return to see his new most excellent and most gracious majesty [George IV] crowned?’ Shelley added a poem: ‘On a Dead Violet’ and a postscript which countermanded Mary’s tacit refusal of an invitation: ‘When you come to Pisa continue to see us — Casa Frassi, Lung’Arno.’21

  Apart from news of George IV’s forthcoming coronation, letters and papers from England brought one highly dramatic story: the Cato Street conspiracy. Thistlewood and his four fellow-conspirators had been arrested on 23 February, on the very eve of their plot to assassinate Lord Liverpool’s ministry in London. At the Casa Silva this provoked animated discussion for several days, the talk turning to the fate of conspirators in general. Madame Mason told a story of the Irish conspirator Jackson who ‘swallowed a strong poison and expired in torture before his judges’ rather than endanger his fellow-prisoners by an escape attempt. Then she mentioned a particular kind of poison — her knowledge originating from Tatty — which was both deadly and painless. Claire recorded: ‘Talk with Madame M. of the Prussic Acid distilled from Laurel leaves which kills without pain in a few minutes.’22 Shelley listened to this with great interest, and put it at the back of his mind.

  Shelley’s considered reaction to the Cato Street affair was anything but enthusiastic. He saw it as a victory for useless extremism which would only put the political initiative even further into the hands of the government. It was the final act of that tragedy which had begun with Peterloo — Thistlewood had publicly stated that revenge for the deaths at Peterloo was one of his objectives — and Shelley now saw the hopes for any immediate degree of democratic reform receding into an uncertain future. To Peacock he wrote: ‘I see with deep regret in today’s Papers the attempt to assassinate the Ministry. Every thing seems to conspire against Reform. — How Cobbett must laugh at the “resumption of gold payments”. I long to see him. I have a motto on a ring in Italian — “Il buon tempo verra” — There is a tide both in public & in private affairs, which awaits both men & nations.’23 For the rest of his life Shelley wore that ring, which promised the good times to come.

  When Shelley wrote to Ollier to ask once more about The Cenci he made half-mocking inquiries. ‘I hope you are not implicated in the late plot. — Not having heard from Hunt, I am afraid that he at least has something to do with it. — It is well known since the time of Jaffier that a conspirator has no time — to think about his friends.’ It was a slightly bitter jest — that Hunt, who would not even publish political poems, might have involved himself in a political conspiracy was not exactly likely.24

  It was only at the beginning of April that Shelley finally received letters from Hunt and Bessy Kent explaining that the silence of three months’ duration was due to financial ‘torments’. But this still did not explain or excuse Hunt’s total failure to react to Shelley’s stream of contributions during the autumn and winter, and Shelley asked pointedly after The Cenci, adding: ‘I don’t remember if I acknowledged the receipt of [your] “Robin Hood” — no more did you of “Peter Bell”. There’s tit for tat! . . . Then on my side is the letter to Carlile, in which I must tell you I was considerably interested.’25

  Shelley was no longer talking of coming to England; instead he returned to the old invitation for Hunt to come to Italy. Two weeks later, on 20 April, he also issued an invitation to Hogg with whom he had not corresponded for over a year. He wanted Hogg to come for the summer and to stay until the beginning of the law term in November. He was obviously serious, discussing the best mode of travel which was by coach to Marseilles, and then by boat to Livorno. He nostalgically recalled old friends. ‘Do you ever see the Boinvilles now? Or Newton? If so, tell them, especially Mrs Boinville, that I have not forgotten them. I wonder none of them stray to this Elysian climate, and, like the sailors of Ulysses, eat the lotus and remain as I have done.’26 When Hogg eventually replied from Garden Court, it was to say that the coronation prevented such a visit for that year, ‘though I should like to see Percy Shelley the younger, and to steal behind some laurel bush where you are singing shrilly like a king; but that cannot be’.27

  A third invitation sent in April, and the only one that bore fruit, was a repetition of Shelley’s demand that Tom Medwin should move south from Geneva. He had now heard that Medwin was living with a brother-officer, Edward Williams, who like him was retired from the army in India on half pay. Shelley extended the invitation to Williams, and to his beautiful wife Jane with faintly ribald good humour. ‘I hope, if they come to Italy, I may see the lovely lady & your friend. — Though I have never had the ague, I have found these sort of beings, especially the former, of infinite service in the maladies to which I am subject . . . . Forgive me joking on what all poets ought to consider a sacred subject.’ But even Medwin and the Williamses did not come for several m
onths.

  In the new spacious apartments at the Casa Frassi, Shelley had at last established a completely private study for himself, which he had been missing ever since he left the airy sunlit cell at Villa Valsovano. He already had on hand the outline of his ‘octavo on reform’, and a scattered collection of political lyrics left over from the autumn. The news of Cato Street had been balanced at the beginning of April by unexpected good tidings of a successful insurrection of republicans in Madrid, and the proclamation of the liberal constitution of 1812 throughout the Spanish peninsula. The motto on his ring seemed true, and Shelley half thought of going to Madrid for the winter.28 Mary eagerly expressed both their feelings: ‘The inquisition is abolished — The dungeons opened & the Patriots pouring out — This is good. I should like to be in Madrid now.’29 The talk was animated at Casa Silva.

  The political news helped to steady his attention. What little writing Shelley had already produced at Pisa during March and April was spoilt by diffuseness and marked by an extreme but aimless violence of language and metaphor. Partly this was a reaction from the intense creative period of the previous three months. His powers now seemed to be turning over too fast, without properly engaging with solid or deeply felt subject-matter. The language seemed to expend energies of disgust and hatred on itself until it was performing an almost purgative, therapeutic function. In ‘The Sensitive Plant’, a poem traditionally associated with Shelley’s first impressions of Lady Mountcashell, the autumnal and winter imagery reaches a peculiar pitch of ugliness and horror.

  And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,

  Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,

  Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,