Part 43

Among the poor of the town the remembrance of his benevolence and unassuming kindness had still chroniclers; but from the other classes little could be learned, and that not what the memory of such a man deserves. One old shopkeeper, not far from his house, remembered him, and "hoped his children did not take after him." "Why?" "Oh! he was a very bad man!" "Indeed! what bad actions did he do?" "Oh! I beg your pardon! he did no bad actions that I ever heard of, but, on the contrary, he was uncommonly good to the poor; but then--" "But then, what?" "Why, he did not believe in the devil!" Such are the fruits of bigot teaching. Christ says, "By their _fruits_ shall ye know" men; but those calling themselves his followers say, "No;" no matter what good fruits men produce, they are all doomed to perdition if they cast a single aspersion on that very favorite personage, Satan. I begged the poor man, of whom I found Shelley bought no groceries, to at least leave Shelley to the judgment of his God and of Christ, who came to seek and to save all that were lost; and to believe those great assurances of the Gospel, that the prodigal, when he had committed all kind of crimes, found not only a pacified, but a fond father; that he that hath not charity is as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and that he that loveth intensely, though he may think very erroneously, will stand a very fair chance with the Father of love himself.

"But, pray, what has become of this Mr. Shelley, then?" asked the man's wife, who had come from an inner room. "He was drowned," I replied. "Oh! that's just what one might have expected. Drowned! Lud-a-mercy! ay, just what we might ha' said he'd come to. He was always on the water, always boating, boating--never easy but when he was in that boat. Do you know what a trick was played him by some wag?" "No." "He called his boat '_Vaga_,' and one morning he found the name lengthened by a piece of chalk with the word '_bond_'--_Vagabond_. There are clever fellows here as well as in London, mind you. But Mr. Shelley was not offended. He only laughed; for, you see, he did not believe in a devil, and so he thought there could be nothing wrong. He used to say, when he heard of any wickedness, 'Ah, poor people! it's only ignorance; if they knew better, they'd do better!' Oh! what darkness and heathenry! to excuse sin, and feel no godly jealousy against wickedness!" I found that the crabbed creedsman had been there too long before me. My hint about charity was thrown away, and I moved off, lest both myself and Jesus Christ, who would not condemn even the adulteress at the desire of the vengeful and the sensual, should be found wanting in holy indignation too.

It was in vain that I inquired among the class of little gentry in the place for information about Shelley; they knew nothing of any such person. At length, after much research, and the running to and fro of waiters from the inn, I was directed to an ancient surgeon, who had attended almost every body for the last half century. I found him an old man of nearly ninety. He recollected Shelley; had attended him, but knew little about him. He was a very unsocial man, he said; kept no company but Mr. Peacock's, and that of his boat, and was never seen in the town but he had a book in his hand, and was reading as he went along. The old gentleman, however, kindly sent his servant to point out Shelley's house to me, and as I returned up the street, I saw him standing bare-headed on the pavement before his door, in active discourse with various neighbors. My inquiries had evidently aroused the Marlowean curiosity. On coming up, the old gentleman inquired eagerly if I wanted to learn more yet about Mr. Shelley--I had learned little or nothing. I replied that I should be very happy. "Then," said he, "come in, sir, for I have sent for a gentleman who knows all about him." I entered, and found a tall, well-dressed man, with a very solemn aspect. "It is the squire of the place," said I to myself. With a very solemn bow he arose, and with very solemn bows we sat down opposite to each other. "I am happy to hear," said I, "that you knew Mr. Shelley, and can give me some particulars regarding his residence here." "I can, sir," he replied, with another solemn bow. I waited to hear news, but I waited in vain. That Mr. Shelley had lived there, and that he had long left there, and that his house was down the street, and that he was a very extraordinary man, he knew, and I knew; but that was all: not a word of his doings or his sayings at Marlowe came out of the solemn brain of that large, solemn man. But at length a degree of interest appeared to gather in his cheeks and brighten in his eyes. "Thank God!" I exclaimed, inwardly. "The man is slow, but it is coming now." His mouth opened, and he said, "But pray, sir, what became of that Mr. Shelley?"

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "What! did you never hear? Did it never reach Marlowe--but thirty miles from London--that sad story of his death, which created a sensation throughout the civilized world?" No, the thing had never penetrated into the Boeotian denseness of that place! I rose up, and now bowed solemnly too. "And, pray, what family might he leave?" asked the solemn personage, as I was hasting away. "You will learn that," I said, still going away, "in the Baronetage, if such a book ever reaches Marlowe."

I hastened to the inn, where my chaise was standing ready for my departure, and was just in the act of entering it, when I heard a sort of outcry, perceived a sort of bustle behind me, and, turning my head, saw the tall and solemn man hasting with huge and anxious strides after me.

"You'll excuse me, sir--you'll excuse me, I think; but I _could_ relate to you a fact, and I think I _will_ venture to relate to you a fact connected with the late Mr. Shelley." "Do," said I. "I think I _will_," replied the tall, stout man, heaving a deep sigh, and erecting himself to his full height, far above my head, and casting a most awful glance at the sky; "I _think_ I will--I _think_ I may venture." "It is certainly something very sad and agonizing," I said to myself; "but I wish he would only bring it out." "Well, then," continued he, with another heave of his capacious chest, and another great glance at the distant horizon, "I certainly will mention it. It was this: When Mr. Shelley left Marlowe, he ordered all his bills to be paid, most honorably, certainly most honorably; and they were paid--all--except--mine! There, sir! it is out; excuse it--excuse it; but I am glad it is out."

"What! a bill!" I exclaimed, in profoundest astonishment; "a bill! was that all?"

"All, sir! all! every thing of the sort; every shilling, I assure you, has been paid but my little account; and it was my fault; I don't know how in the world I forgot to send it in."

"What!" said I, "are you not the squire here? What are you?"

"Oh, Lord! no, sir! I am no squire here! I am a tradesman! I am--in the general way!"

"Drive on!" I said, springing into the carriage; "drive like the Dragon of Wantley out of this place: Shelley is remembered in Marlowe because there was one bill left unpaid!"

There again is fame. It would be a curious thing if the man who deems himself most thoroughly and universally famous, and walks about in the comfortable persuasion of it, could see his fame mapped upon the country. What an odd figure it would make! A few feeble rays shooting here and there, but all around what vast patches of unvisited country, what unilluminated regions, what deserts of oblivion of his name! Shelley lived, and suffered, and spent himself for mankind; and, in the place where he last lived in England, within thirty miles of the great metropolis of genius and knowledge, he is only remembered by a bad joke on his boat, by his disbelief of the devil, and by a forgotten bill. Were it not forgotten, he had been so! _Eheu! jam satis._

On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England once more. He was never to return. His own fate and that of Byron were wonderfully alike. The two greatest, most original, most powerful, and influential poets of the age were driven into exile by the public feeling of their country. They could not bring themselves to think on political questions with a large party, nor on religious ones with a still larger; and every species of vituperation and insult was let loose upon them. As if charity and forbearance had been heathen qualities, and wrath and calumny Christian virtues, the British public most loftily resolved not to do as Christ required them--to love those who hated them and despitefully used them--but to hate those who loved them, and had noble virtues, though they had their errors. Their errors should have been lamented, and their doctrines refuted as much as possible; but there is no law, human or divine, that can release us from the law of love, and the command of seventy times seven forgiveness of injuries. Both these great men died in their exile of hatred; the world had its will for the time, and the spirits of these dead outcasts must now have their will, in their deathless volumes, to the end of time.

If any one would know what sort of a man this moral monster, Shelley, was, let him read the eloquent account of him and his life at Oxford in the New Monthly Magazine for 1832, written by one who was his friend and companion, and who, Mrs. Shelley says, has described him most faithfully. There we find him full of zeal for learning; most zealous in accumulating knowledge; overflowing in kindness; indignant against all oppression to man or to animals. Never failing to rush in on witnessing any cruelty or hearing of any calamity, to stop the one and alleviate the other. Full of gayety and fun as a child, sailing his paper boats on every pool and stream, or rambling far and wide over the country in earnest talk and deep love of all nature. He was ready to caress children, to smile on even gipsies and beggars, to run for refreshment for starving people by the way side, pledging even his favorite microscope, his daily means of recreation, to assist a poor old man. Such was the dreadful creature that must be expelled from colleges, have his children torn from him to prevent the contamination of his virtues, and to be hooted out of his native land. Yet, amid all the anguish that this inflicted on him, he was ever ready still to do a sublime good, or enter with the most boyish relish into the merest joke. Nothing can convey a more vivid idea of the latter disposition--which is not that of a man systematically malicious, which is the true spirit of wickedness--than to quote a joke related to him by the writer of these articles, and see the manner in which it was enjoyed.

"I was walking one afternoon, in the summer, on the western side of that short street leading from Long Acre to Covent Garden, where the passenger is earnestly invited, as a personal favor to the demandant, to proceed straightway to Highgate or Kentish Town, and which is called, I think, James-street. I was about to enter Covent Garden, when an Irish laborer, whom I met bearing an empty hod, accosted me somewhat roughly, and asked why I had run against him. I told him briefly that he was mistaken. Whether somebody had actually pushed the man, or he only sought to quarrel, and although he, doubtless, attended a weekly row regularly, and the week was already drawing to a close, he was unable to wait till Sunday for a broken head, I know not, but he discoursed for some time with the vehemence of a man who considers himself injured or insulted, and he concluded, being emboldened by my long silence, with a cordial invitation just to push him again. Several persons, not very unlike in costume, had gathered round him, and appeared to regard him with sympathy. When he paused, I addressed him slowly and quietly, and it should seem with great gravity, these words, as nearly as I can recollect them: 'I have put my hand into the hamper; I have looked upon the sacred barley; I have eaten out of the drum! I have drunk, and was well pleased; I have said, [Greek: konx ompax], and it is finished!' 'Have you, sir?' inquired the astonished Irishman; and his ragged friends instantly pressed round him with, 'Where is the hamper, Paddy?' 'What barley? and the like. And ladies from his own country, that is to say, the basket-women, suddenly began to interrogate him; 'Now, I say, Pat, where have you been drinking? What have you had?' I turned, therefore, to the right, leaving the astounded neophyte, whom I had thus planted, to expound the mystic words of initiation as he could to his inquisitive companions. As I walked slowly under the piazzas, and through the streets and courts toward the West, I marveled at the ingenuity of Orpheus--if he were, indeed, the inventor of the Eleusinian mysteries; that he was able to devise words that, imperfectly as I had repeated them, and in the tattered fragment that has reached us, were able to soothe people so savage and barbarous as those to whom I had addressed them, and which, as the apologists for those venerable rites affirm, were manifestly well adapted to incite persons who hear them for the first time, however rude they may be, to ask questions. Words that can awaken curiosity even in the sluggish intellect of a wild man, and can open the inlet of knowledge!"

"_Konx ompax_; and it is finished!" exclaimed Shelley, crowing with enthusiastic delight at my whimsical adventure. A thousand times, as he strode about the house, and in his rambles out of doors, he would stop and repeat the mystic words of initiation, but always with an energy of manner, and a vehemence of tone and gesture, that would have prevented the ready acceptance which a calm, passionless delivery had once procured for them. How often would he throw down his book, clasp his hands, and, starting from his seat, cry suddenly, with a thrilling voice, "I have said _Konx ompax_; and it is finished!"

This child-like, this great, and greatly kind, and if men would have let him, this light-hearted man, thus then quitted England. Like Byron, he sought a home in Italy. He lived in various cities, and wrote there his very finest works; among them, Prometheus Unbound; The Cenci; Hellas; part of Rosalind and Helen; his Ode to Liberty, perhaps the very finest ode in the language, and certainly, in its description of Athens, never excelled in any piece of description in any language; Adonais, an elegy on the death of Keats, and those very melancholy verses written in the Bay of Naples. He was drowned, as is well known, by the sinking of his boat in a squall, in the Gulf of Spezia, in the summer of 1822, at the age of thirty.

Shelley must have enjoyed this portion of his life beyond all others, had he been in health and spirits. He was united to a woman worthy of him, and who could partake of all his intellectual pleasures. Children were growing around him, and he was living in that beautiful country, surrounded by the remains of former art and history, and under that fine sky, pouring out from heart and brain, glorious, and impassioned, and immortal works. But his health failed him, and the darts of calumny were rankling in his bosom, depressing his spirits, and sapping his constitution. I can only allow myself a few passing glances at his homes in Italy, of which Mrs. Shelley has given us such delightful sketches in the notes to her edition of her husband's poems.

They went direct to Milan, and visited the Lake of Como; then proceeding to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back to Rome for the winter. There he chiefly wrote his Prometheus. In 1818 they were at the Baths of Lucca, where Shelley finished Rosalind and Helen. Thence he visited Venice, and occupied a house lent him by Lord Byron at Este. "I Capucini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses. It was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill, at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, or pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here, also, as he mentioned in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo. A slight ravine, with a wood in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient Castle of Este, whose dark, massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ivied crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines; while to the east, the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode."

Here they lost a little girl, and quitting the neighborhood of Venice, they proceeded southward. Shelley was delighted beyond expression with the scenery and antiquities of Italy. "The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its majestic streams; the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the noble, marble-built cities, enchanted him. The first entrance to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of ancient grandeur that far surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy."

The winter was spent at Naples, where they lived in utter solitude, yet greatly enjoyed their excursions along its sunny sea or into its beautiful environs. From Naples they returned to Rome, where they arrived in March, 1819. Here they had the old MS. account of the story of the Cenci put into their hands, and visited the Doria and Colonna palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found. Her beauty cast the reflection of its grace over her appalling story, and Shelley conceived the subject of his masterly drama. In Rome they lost their eldest child, a very lovely and engaging boy, and, quitting the Eternal City, took the villa Valsovano, between Leghorn and Monte Nero, where they resided during the summer. "Our villa," says Mrs. Shelley, "was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heat of a very hot season; and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the progress of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed among the myrtle hedges; nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.

"At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed, but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day, showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean. Sometimes the dark, lurid clouds dipped toward the waves, and became water-spouts, that churned up the waters beneath as they were chased onward, and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of the Cenci."

They spent part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed several hours dayly in the Gallery, studying the works of art, and making notes. The summer of 1820 was spent chiefly at the Baths of Guiliano, near Pisa, where Shelley made a solitary journey on foot during some of the hottest weather of the season to the summit of Monte San Pelegrino, a mountain on which stands a pilgrimage chapel, much frequented; and during this expedition he conceived the idea of The Witch of Atlas, and immediately on his return sat down and wrote it in three days. An overflowing of the Serchio inundated the house, and caused them to quit San Guiliano: they returned to Pisa.

In 1821, the Spanish Revolution excited throughout Italy a similar spirit. In Naples, Genoa, Piedmont, almost every where, the spirit of revolt showed itself; and Shelley, still at Pisa, sympathized enthusiastically with these movements. Then came the news of the Greek insurrection, and the battle of Navarino, which put the climax to his joy; and in this exultation he wrote Hellas. These circumstances seem to have given a new life to him. He had now his new boat, and was sailing it on the Arno. It was a pleasant summer, says Mrs. Shelley, bright in all but Shelley's health; yet he enjoyed himself greatly. He was in high anticipation of the arrival of Leigh Hunt; and at this juncture, the now happy poet and his family made their last remove. Let us give the deeply interesting picture of Shelley's last home in the words of his gifted wife.

"The Bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and is divided by a rocky promontory into a larger and a smaller one. The town of Lerici is situated on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay, which bears the name of this town, is the village of Sant Arenzo. Our house, Casa Magni, was close to this village; the sea came up to the door, a steep hill sheltered it behind. The proprietor of the estate was insane; he had begun to erect a large house at the summit of the hill behind, but his malady prevented its being finished, and it was falling into ruin. He had, and this, to the Italians, seemed a glaring symptom of decided madness, rooted up the olives on the hill-side, and planted forest trees. These were mostly young; but the plantation was more in English taste than I ever saw elsewhere in Italy. Some fine walnut and ilex trees intermingled their dark, massy foliage, and formed groups which still haunt my memory, as then they satiated the eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was, indeed, of unimaginable beauty; the blue extent of waters, the almost land-locked bay, the near Castle of Lerici, shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to the west; the various forms of precipitous rocks that bound in the beach, near which there was only a winding, rugged path toward Lerici, and none on the other side; the tideless sea, leaving no sands nor shingle, formed a picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine vanished when the sirocco raged--the ponente, the wind was called on that shore. The gales and squalls that hailed our first arrival surrounded the bay with foam; the howling wind swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly, so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. At other times sunshine and calm invested sea and sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven bathed the scene in bright and ever-varying hues.

"The natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbors, of Sant Arenzo, were more like savages than any people I ever before lived among. Many a night they passed on the beach, singing, or, rather, howling; the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their feet, the men leaning against the rocks, and joining in their loud, wild chorus. We could get no provisions nearer than Sarzana, at a distance of three miles and a half off, with the torrent of the Margra between; and even there the supply was deficient. Had we been wrecked on an island of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves further from civilization and comfort; but where the sun shines, the latter becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among ourselves. Yet, I confess, housekeeping became rather a toilsome task, especially as I was suffering in my health, and could not exert myself actively."