CHAPTER XXIX

THE CAVALIER’ SIRVENTE

During the early days which followed her departure from Venice, Claire had received news of Allegra fairly often through the Hoppners. The child suffered from the cold. She had become quiet and grave as a little old woman. Mr. Hoppner thought it would be better to remove her from Venice. But it was impossible to have a conversation to any purpose with her father who was sinking deeper and deeper into debauchery.

Some months went by without any news. Claire, very anxious, wrote letter after letter to the Hoppners, who did not reply. Then she learnt that a great change had taken place in Byron’s existence. It had begun by his being seriously ill and obliged to keep his bed. Hoppner, who came to chat with him, had told him that his love affairs, far from scandalizing the Venetians any longer as he believed and hoped, now merely amused the _conversazioni_ at his expense. He was spoken of as the prey of artful trollops who stole from him, tricked him, and then made fun of him in their Venetian dialect. Don Juan fell into a red-hot rage, and instantly all the priestesses of the Palazzo Mocenigo were turned out of doors, and sent back, each to her midden.

The moment he was well, he was seen again at the Venetian receptions, which he had so long forsaken. Thus he met the beauty of the season, a lovely blonde, seventeen years of age, just married to a noble greybeard, the Count Guiccioli. The Pilgrim admired the lady’s figure, her bust and arms in particular. The very first day he slipped into her hand, as he took leave, a note which she adroitly concealed. It was an assignation. She came. He who said he adored her was a great Poet, young, handsome, highly born, and rich. Though surrounded by all that makes life desirable, she instantly gave herself to him without a struggle.

A few days later, the Count took his wife to Ravenna, and Teresa begged Byron to go too. “The charmer forgets that a man may be whistled anywhere _before_ but that _after_—a journey in an Italian June is a conscription, and therefore she should have been less liberal in Venice, or less exigent at Ravenna.” The notion of romantic and constant love was odious to him. He did not budge, and was rather proud of his strength of mind.

From Ravenna she wrote again that she was very ill, and, where an appeal to love had failed, an appeal to pity succeeded. Don Juan set off, but not without stopping at Ferrara and other towns on the way, to sample the local beauties. Although making a show of indifference and even of boredom, he was very glad to join Teresa. Intelligent women such as Lady Byron or Claire got on his nerves: he had too great a contempt for the sex to ask from a mistress intellectual companionship. The bakers’ wives and other wantons of Venice were of a species too far below him. But the Countess Guiccioli united a restful and affectionate stupidity with the elegance of a well-born woman. She kept and held without too much trouble this Everlasting Rover. Don Juan now played the part of a faithful and devoted sick-nurse. “Were I to lose her,” he wrote, “I should lose a being who has run great risks for my sake, and whom I have every reason to love—but I must not think this possible. I do not know what I _should_ do were she to die, but I ought to blow my brains out, and I hope that I should.”

When his conquering Conquest had to leave Ravenna for Bologna, he followed. He had become the classic _cicesbeo_: “But I can’t say I don’t feel the degradation of it. Better to be an unskilful Planter, an awkward settler, better to be a hunter, or anything, than a flatterer of fiddlers and fan carrier of a woman . . . and now I am _cavalier’ sirvente_! By the holy! It’s a strange sensation.”

* * *

Claire was told all this story, and that Byron had sent orders for Allegra to be brought to Bologna. The idea that her child was to live in the house of Byron’s new mistress, who would have no reasons for loving her and possibly some for hating her, terrified Claire. She wrote a passionate letter asking to have her back. Byron replied:

“I disapprove so completely of the way children are brought up in the Shelley household that I should think in sending my daughter to you I was sending her into a hospital. Is it not so? Have they _reared_ one?—Either she will go to England or I shall put her into a convent. But the child shall not quit me again to perish of starvation and green fruit, or be taught to believe that there is no Deity.”

On receiving this letter, Claire notes in her caustic way: “Letter from Albé concerning green fruit and God”; but she wept over it too. Allegra in a convent of Italian nuns, who have no notion of cleanliness and no love for children, seemed to her a frightful idea. She sent despairful, violent, almost insolent letters to Byron, who wrote to complain of her to Shelley, and to inform him that for the future he should refuse all correspondence with her.

“I have no conception,” Shelley answered, “of what Claire’s letters to you contain, and but an imperfect one on the subject of her correspondence with you at all. One or two of her letters, but not lately, I have indeed seen; but as I thought them extremely childish and absurd, and requested her not to send them, and she afterwards told me she had written and sent others in the place of them, I cannot tell if those which I saw on that occasion were sent you or not. I wonder, however, at your being provoked at what Claire writes, though that she should write what is provoking is very probable. You are conscious of performing your duty to Allegra, and your refusal to allow her to visit Claire at this distance you consider to be part of that duty. That Claire should wish to see her is natural. That her disappointment should vex her, and her vexation make her write absurdly, is all in the usual order of things. But, poor thing, she is very unhappy and in bad health, and she ought to be treated with as much indulgence as possible. The weak and the foolish are in this respect the kings—they can do no wrong.”

* * *

He himself had need of a similar loftiness of soul, to rise above the women’s quarrels which distracted his household. Mary grew more and more short-tempered. Godwin overwhelmed her with requests for money, to which Shelley had decided no longer to reply. He had already given her father nearly five thousand pounds without any results and had gained, at this high price, a chastened wisdom and a painful knowledge of Godwin’s ugly soul. As the bitter reproaches which the Philosopher now showered on Mary turned her milk, Shelley informed him that for the future he would intercept and suppress all letters likely to upset her: “Mary has not, nor ought she to have, the disposal of money. If she had, poor thing, she would give it all to you. Such a father—I mean a man of such high genius—can be at no loss to find subjects on which to address such a daughter. . . . I need not tell you that the neglecting entirely to write to your daughter from the moment that nothing could be gained by it, would admit of but one interpretation.”

Mary, worried about her father, Claire, worried about her child, got terribly on each other’s nerves, and their common admiration for the only man of the household was far more an obstacle to a good understanding than a help. Mary did all she knew to make Claire perceive she was unwanted, and once more Claire as before had to recognize it. An old lady of the English colony found her a place as governess in Florence, Shelley took her thither, and left her in the family of Professor Bojti.

He wrote her long and loving letters, but though these were quite innocent he did not show them to Mary, and he asked Claire not to mention them when she wrote to her sister, although such a want of frankness was little to his taste. His early conception of love had been of a unity of ideas and actions so perfect that any explanation was quite uncalled for between lovers. But life had taught him that perfection is not to be had, and something short of it must be accepted. There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison. Mary could not take it except in very diluted doses.