CHAPTER XIX

A SIX WEEKS’ TOUR

The post-chaise was ordered for four o’clock in the morning. Shelley waited up all night opposite Godwins’ house. At length he saw the stars and the oil-lamps grow pale. Mary noiselessly opened the hall door. Jane Clairmont, who at the last moment had decided to go with her sister, looked after the luggage with zeal.

The long carriage journey greatly tired Mary, but Shelley dared not stop lest Godwin were pursuing them. At about four in the afternoon they reached Dover, where after the usual difficulties with custom-house officials, and sailors, they found a small boat which agreed to take them over to Calais.

The weather was fine. The white cliffs of Albion slowly faded away. The fugitives were safe. Presently the wind rose and freshened into a gale. Mary, very ill, passed the night lying upon Shelley’s knees, who, himself worn out with fatigue, supported her head on his shoulder. The moon sunk to a stormy horizon; then, in total darkness, a thunderstorm struck the sail, and the fast-flashing lightning revealed a dark and swollen sea. When morning broke the storm passed, the wind changed, and the sun rose broad, and red, and cloudless, over France.

Mary shook off her somnolence in the streets of Calais; the gay bustle of the harbour, the picturesque costume of the fisherfolk, the confused buzz of voices speaking a strange language, revived her. The day was spent at the inn, as they had to wait for the luggage coming by the Dover Packet, but when this arrived it brought also Mrs. Godwin and her green spectacles. The fat lady hoped to persuade Jane, at least, to go back with her to Skinner Street, but Shelley’s eloquence won the day, and Mrs. Godwin returned alone. At six o’clock the travellers left Calais for Boulogne in a cabriolet drawn by three horses running abreast.

* * *

Their plan was to get to Switzerland, but after a few days in Paris their purse was empty. Shelley had a letter for a certain Tavernier, a French man of business, who was to act as banker for them. They invited him to lunch at the hotel, and put him down as a perfect idiot, for he seemed to have a difficulty in understanding the absolute necessity of this journey by two little girls, and a tall and excitable young man.

Shelley had to pawn his watch and chain; he got eight napoleons for them. This would give them bread and cheese for a fortnight, so with minds at ease, they began to explore the Boulevards, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Later on they preferred to remain in the hotel and re-read together the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Byron’s poems.

At the end of the week, Tavernier, a good fellow in the main, agreed to lend them sixty pounds. But, as this was not enough to pay for their places by diligence, they decided to start on foot, and to buy an ass to carry the luggage, and each of them ride it by turns.

Shelley went to the cattle-market and came back to the hotel with a very small donkey. Next morning a hackney-coach took them to the Barrier of Charenton, the ass trotting behind the carriage.

The roads in France in the year 1814 were not particularly safe. The armies had just been demobilized, and bands of marauders robbed those who travelled on them. The peasants working in the fields by the road-side stared with all their eyes at this extraordinary caravan of two pretty girls in black silk gowns, a stripling with curly hair, and a ridiculously small donkey. At the end of a few miles, the last appeared so tired that Shelley and Jane had to carry him! In the village where they slept they sold him to a peasant and bought a mule in his place.

The whole of the district had been devastated by the war, the villages were half-destroyed, the houses mostly roofless with fire-blackened beams; if they asked a farmer for milk he replied by cursing the Cossacks who had carried off his cows.

In the wretched inns the beds were so dirty that Mary and Jane dared not use them. Enormous rats brushed by them in the darkness. They fell into the habit of sitting up all night in the farm-kitchens. The big stove, still alight, made the atmosphere heavy, and between sleeping and waking, the crying of children and the creakings of the old woodwork were woven into their dreams. Mary thought of her father, and wondered was he suffering terribly from her flight? Shelley was preoccupied with the fate of Harriet.

From Troyes he wrote her a long letter, urging her to come out and join them in Switzerland. She should live near them, and there, at least, find one firm and constant friend. He gave her news of Mary’s health, which appeared to him a natural thing to do, and he felt quite sure that Harriet would very soon be with them. Maybe, the “world” would think this life in common immoral, but why trouble about “the world’s” opinion? Was it not better to obey the dictates of love and kindness than those of absurd prejudices? Harriet made no reply.

Going by Pontarlier and Neufchâtel they reached the Lake of the Four Cantons. Shelley wished to settle at Brunnen, near the Chapel of William Tell, the Defender of Liberty. The only empty house in the place was an old château, deserted, and falling into ruin. They hired two rooms in it for six months, and bought furniture, beds, chairs, wardrobes, and a stove. The curé and the village doctor came to call upon the new-comers, and on the same day Shelley began to write a great novel, _The Assassins_. They had settled down “for ever.”

But the new stove refused to draw, and Shelley who was not clever with his fingers, tinkered at it in vain. The room was glacial and filled with smoke. Outside the rain beat against the windows. The three young exiles found themselves desperately lonely. They recalled the comfort of their English houses, English tea, hot and scented, England’s mild sky, the cool, good-natured Englishmen speaking their language and able to pronounce their names. Even the English usurers, though of course rapacious, were always courteous.

Shelley counted up the common purse. There remained just twenty-eight pounds. The same eager desire rose in all three, which Shelley expressed by the words “Let’s go home!”

No sooner said than the decision was taken, and their spirits rose. “Most laughable to think,” writes Jane, “of our going to England the second day after entering a new house for six months, and all because the stove don’t suit! As we left Dover, and England’s white cliffs disappeared, I thought I should never see them again, and now . . .” Having made up their minds at midnight, the next morning, in driving rain, they took a boat to Lucerne. Great was the surprise of Brunnen’s curé when he learnt that they were gone.

From Lucerne they reached Bale by passenger-boat and thence on to Cologne. The weather was delightful. Beneath the evening stars, the boatmen chanted love-songs. Shelley worked at _The Assassins_. Mary and Jane had each started a novel too, and the hills crowned with ruins on either side gave them a good background for the romantic adventures of their heroes. Then the Dutch mail-coach carried them through a sleepy land of comfortable wooden houses, canals, and windmills. When they reached Rotterdam they were again penniless. After long discussion, a ship’s captain agreed to take them aboard. The sea was as rough as on the day of their departure.

Shelley employed his time arguing the question of slavery with one of the passengers. Mary and Jane backed him up with warmth. They did not know in the least if they would have anything to eat the next day, but they did know that Percy was a genius, and that Man is perfectible.