EXTRACT FROM THE WICKED LORD BYRON: “The death of Shelley.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.   

I verily believe that nor you, nor any man of poetical temperament, can avoid a strong passion of some kind.  It is the poetry of life. 

The disaster, when it comes, does not affect us alone.  Imagine the thing from poor Leigh Hunt’s point of view.  He arrives - Mrs. Hunt and the six little Hunts in tow - after months of trying to get through from England in appalling weather.  And all so that he may begin work on our new magazine. 

A disturbingly piratical fellow called Mr. Trelawny greets him at the dock.  Nervously, the family accept a coach ride from this dangerous-looking giant to Montenero.  Thinking that at last their troubles are over, the hapless Hunts arrive at the Villa Dupuy to find a sort of warfare in progress outside the Byron-Gamba residence.  Our  coachman has quarrelled with the Gamba’s cook; an Italian fight, knives are drawn, soon a battle between the two factions of servants is taking place beneath our  window.  And damn it, disturbing our scribbling.

We points a couple of loaded pistols out of the window at the crowd, threatening to shoot the next man who moves, fire a couple of balls into the thick of ‘em, best Othello-style performance, never failed to calm the natives down yet.  Italians for once too hot to give a curse about the English milorde:  a question of honour is involved, the fight does not abate.  The luckless Pietro Gamba is stabbed in the arm trying to restrain one of his own servants from using his knife on one of ours.

Deciding that perhaps it would be inconvenient to shoot servants, we amiably washes our hands of the affair and gives in to Teresa’s suggestion to call the police.  Anything, so we can get back to our scribbling.  Meanwhile the accidental Pietro-stabber, in panic, is holding the household at bay, patrolling outside with a dagger, threatening to kill the first person to come through the door.  Of course, the other fellows have all run like fun at the first real sight of blood. 

Up rolls Mr. and Mrs. Hunt and family at precisely this point, sitting aghast and frightened in the coach while Trelawny, on top, roars with laughter at the definitive Italian scene.

In the besieged house we have decided that OUR honour is involved. It is the infallible hour for our evening ride.  At our insistence the riding party come out of the house, with us wondering if we can extract a pistol from our pocket in time should the fellow try to make a rush of it.  The fellow breaks down, then, crying, begging that Lord Byron kiss and forgive.   LB declines the kiss, but is inclined to forgive so long as it does not get in the way of our evening ride, and gives the fellow a small hug.  The dagger-wielder is just shaking hands with the stabbed Pietro as our entourage canter out of the yard.  We call a friendly welcome, doffing our blue velvet cap at the bemused Hunts as we jog past. 

Then the police arrive.  They are Italian, too.  They begin at once interrogating the Hunts, the only foreigners in sight. 

Shelley arrives  the next day - a somewhat pessimistic Shelley, hair already threaded with grey - in his twenties! - an increasingly-worried Hunt thinks.  But Shelley is kind and encouraging to the impecunious Hunts  - and at last  Hunt’s little world begins to take shape, his domestic arrangements are being looked to, and Mrs. Hunt stops nagging.  But what a hellhole it is, this hot and dusty Italy that the others love!

Shelley explains that this is not really our main house, where the Hunts are supposed to take up residence, but the house where Teresa is staying with her family with LB in attendance.  That day Shelley takes the Hunts, in his dangerously undecked launch, from Leghorn to Pisa where he puts them into the groundfloor of Palazzo Lanfranchi. Shelley calls in the local surgeon to attend to Mrs. Hunt, who is again prostrate with sea-sickness after the little trip across the bay.  Helpfully, the quack pronounces that there is no hope for Mrs. Hunt, who will infallibly perish.  With their mother indisposed, the six little Hunt children give no little trouble to all concerned.

Shelley and Edward Williams stay in Pisa a few days.  Shelley organises money, furniture (putting it on our account), food and beds for the little Hunts, and pays a visit to his own bankers.  Meanwhile Mrs. Hunt recovers from what, after all, is only  seasickness.  It is understood that Shelley will sail back to his own household at Lerici as soon as the Hunts are installed properly - there is no particular hurry, perhaps he will stay in town a few days,  Shelley tells Hunt, who is beginning at last to relax.  So Shelley stays in the town to look after the Hunts, and all grows calmer.  

Then a letter arrives from Jane Williams, the lady whose love Shelley and Edward Williams share, dear Edward, dear Jane, dear Shiloh, and the letter is rather puzzling, expressing as it does a distress which puts Shelley in a frenzy to explain everything to her yet again, and at once. 

Why, the lady demands, has her dear Shiloh written in his last of “never enjoying moments like the past”?  Is he planning to join his friend Plato in death, or is it that he expects her to?  Or is it simply that he wishes not to see her any more? 

Shelley is abruptly in an agony to return to Lerici, to talk out this crisis in his love for his friend’s wife.  To explain his explanation by means of his peculiar science: that death need be no permanent barrier to love, and so forth....

Williams, silent, shy as ever, is also eager to be back near his young wife, the  freethinking woman who is the flame to his moth.  He can forgive Shelley anything, even his love for his Jane, which strikes him as the most natural thing in the world. 

To the poor radical bourgeois Leigh Hunt, the eccentric life-patterns of his fellow-artists seem verging on madness.  All his life Hunt will remember the unease of those sticky days at Leghorn, waiting for a break in the oppressive sunshine.  Those tedious hopeful days living in Lord Byron’s splendid apartments of golden marble, under the protective aegis of Mr. Shelley, whose silver tongue paints the rosy future unfolding in front of them, as Shiloh flits in and out like a ghost. 

It was all going so well, Hunt will always think, until Jane’s letter came.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE.

Like Sylla - I have always believed that all things depend upon Fortune & nothing upon ourselves.

Look at the disaster, on the other hand, from Trelawny’s point of view.  Trelawny was not confused like Hunt.  There he is on our sturdy new yacht, the Bolivar, master of his first command.  In the absence of our interest the boat is Trelawny’s toy. 

He has been detailed by us to keep an eye on Shiloh’s little skiff, to accompany the Ariel (or Don Juan as we  asked the Shelleys to call it) on its voyage across the bay.  Down on the quay, processions of black clothed priests and local religionists are chanting and dancing to try and bring on the weather, sweet rain for their withering crops, begging Heaven for a storm at any price.

“In the ancient of days, they would have sacrificed a goat, or something worse,” thinks Trelawny, muttering curses about the damned lot of foreign fools. 

He escorts Shiloh to his bank, to serve as bodyguard to this fragile friend with a pocketful of cash.   He follows Shelley round the town where the poet makes a few purchases to take back to both his waiting ladies.   In the village square Trelawny runs into a young English seaman he knows, an unlucky young man whose name is thus immortalised - Charles Vivian.  Giving way to a strange feeling of unease, Trelawny hires the sailor to go with the incompetent lubbers Shelley and Williams, just in case... Vivian is a seaman, Trelawny can see, but for some reason he remains uneasy.

The two boats are cruising side by side out of the little harbour when an Italian guardboat comes up and grapples the Bolivar.  Are these not, remarks the officer of the port, the radical foreigners who demand the right to sail freely around these sensitive coasts?  The disreputable foreigners who had the police out to settle a stabbing incident only last week?  Where does Trelawny think he is going without official clearance to leave the harbour?  Damn your foreign yellow eyes, responds Trelawny predictably, and, predictably, Italian tempers ruffle.  The Bolivar is ordered to stay in harbour until the papers are ready.

Cursing, furious, Trelawny hardly notices as Shelley and Williams call out that they are going, Jane and Mary will be worried if they do not show up as promised, etc.  “We will tell Albé where you are.”  Trelawny waves to them negligently from the deck of the taller craft.  “They ought to be safe enough with Vivian”, he thinks irritably.  “This damned hot weather will never break”.

He watches idly as the little boat disappears in the heat-mist blurring the distance.  His anger fading, Trelawny begins to feel drowsy in the humid air, and goes below to doze in the cool of the dark gently-rocking cabin while the clearance papers are prepared.  After a period of sweaty sleep, grating noises sound in Trelawny’s ears and he awakens.  They are hauling up the anchor, he thinks.  The damned papers must have arrived. 

Reluctantly he sits up and consults the ship’s clock.  It is half-past six on a midsummer’s day. 

Coming topside, he is astonished and vaguely alarmed to find that the sky is as dark and gloomy as twilight in midwinter.  The sea, he thinks, leaning over the rail, is exactly the colour of lead, and boiling dully as if covered with an oily scum.  Wind sweeps the surface, but does not ruffle it: raindrops falling on the surface rebound as if off a sheet of glass.  He notes with mounting alarm a general exodus of Italian boats out of the bay, rushing into the harbour so hurriedly that they are fouling each other’s way.  The angry yells of the colliding fishermen are drowned out by the crashing of the thunder-squall that bursts like an enormous firework over Trelawny’s head.

Instantly drenched in the deluge he runs for the sheltering doorway of his little cabin, and stands looking up anxiously at an alien sky belching water and fire.  He can hear nothing over the sound of the great storm - not even the alarmed cries of his own sailors - and see nothing beyond the edge of the ship’s rail.  A series of enormous waves begin to strike the hull, rocking the still-anchored Bolivar so that it is all Trelawny can do to keep his feet on the streaming deck.

In twenty minutes the vicious squall has gone as if it has never been, a vortex of boiling cloud rolling on into the land.  The town behind it is refreshed in the clear cooled air.  The little fishing smacks are sailing gaily out of the harbour, the crews laughing noisily at the fickle weather, and the religious lunatics on the dock are hugging themselves at having broken the drought.

His heart thumping in his ribs, Trelawny climbs his own mast with a glass to see if he can descry a sail on the horizon.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR.

There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken.  It will, perhaps, do him justice now, when he can be no better for it.

The storm howls toward its crescendo. Shelley is supposed to be manning the tiller, but as the gale blows his cloak and long wet hair about him he holds out both arms to embrace the elements. 

At the other end of the boat Williams and Vivian are struggling with the sail and cords as they flap madly off the masthead.  Seeing the careless helmsman with the floating hair and rapt expression Williams staggers across the deck to Shelley.  Shelley is looking away from him lost in some ecstasy of his own.  Williams grasps Shelley’s shoulder and shakes it hard.  He has to scream to be heard:  “Shiloh!  Shiloh!  Shiloh!”

Shelley turns to him with a wild smile of delight:  “The power in the heart of the storm!  I wish I could swim like Albé and Tre - to sport in waves such as THESE!”

Williams screams, shaking his beloved by the collar:  “For God’s sake Shiloh!  We can scarce hold the sheet still enough to reef her - and the wind is rising yet!”

At the other end of the boat Vivian loses control of the flapping sail.  He shouts desperately:  “Mr. Williams!  Mr. Williams!”  Williams staggers back to help Vivian.  Behind them Shelley stands laughing in joy as a maddened sky boils past, the cloud, the rain, and the broken sea mingling all together.

The next flash of lightning reveals the vague shadowy mass of a larger boat looming over Shelley’s head.  Italian voices scream Italian words, nonsensical to Williams and Vivian, who cannot speak the language. 

Williams leaves Vivian to his fate and rushes over to scream at Shelley.  “Shiloh!  Shiloh!  Over there - it is the Italian fishing boat that was near us when the storm broke!  Can you see her Shiloh?  What are they saying?”

The fishing smack almost lurches against them.  The Italians are urging them to abandon ship and come aboard the fishing-smack.  Williams, faced with the laughing Shelley, grows desperate.  “What did he say?  You know I can never understand their damned lingo!  Tell him we need taking off, for pity’s sake - we will never ride out a storm like this in an undecked boat!”

Shelley, holding the tiller, makes as if to throw his arm around Williams, who backs off.  “Courage, Edward!  We are yet afloat!  Look!”  Letting go of the tiller he points over the side into the churning water.  “Do you not see the horses?  White horses in the foam!”

The Italians sound more and more imploring.  Williams is almost tearing his hair but cannot think of a word of Italian in his terror.  “Tell him to take us aboard before we are swamped!”  He shakes Shelley, points at the struggling Vivian.  “Think of that poor boy!  Do you want him to die?”

Shelley is no longer listening.  “They want us to ride them!  Do you not see them Edward?  Look - there is one!  And there!  And there!”

The Italians have finally found a man who can shout a little broken English at the foreign madmen.  “Helloa....inglese....do you want us to assistance you?”

Shelley shouts back indignantly in Italian:  “No, signori, stand away there!  Stand off!  Leave us!  We ride the horses of the sea!”

The fishingboat fades back into the boiling mist, as if shrugging its shoulders.  Williams is beside himself. “What did you tell him?  He is going, in Christ his name!  What did you tell him?  Shiloh!”

The luminous creature turns and hugs Williams affectionately, letting go of the tiller completely.  He drags the smaller man to the side of the boat and points down into the water, as the other sobs out his grief for the life he will never live to see:  “Look, Edward!  Did you see that one?  The horses!  There!  And there!” 

The white rush of a wave roars over them all.

The storm blows away inland.  Trelawny, peering from high up the mast of the anchored Bolivar through the clearing air, is unable to make out a sail above the water.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.

You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the back-ground and the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and frankincense give to the flame.  All of Shelley was consumed, except his heart, which would not take the flame, and is now preserved in spirits of wine.

The deep bass voice rolling up the beach, singing some nameless dirge that sounds like Greek, which Trelawny is actually making up as he goes along.  The  giant bearded figure stoops, not ceasing his chant, and lights the bottom of the pyre.  The heaped driftwood and flotsam has been sprinkled with oil and spirits, and in seconds the flames are licking hungrily upward at the steel cage that contains the gruesome remains of a poet. 

Fifty yards away the waves roll in gently from an indifferent sea.

Leigh Hunt, stricken with grief, will not get out of the carriage.  Mary and Teresa and Jane  could not bear to come.  We ourself are standing a little way off from Trelawny, between the  burning corpse of our friend and the crowd of soldiers, officials, and spectators, mostly ladies, who have come to witness the curious sight.  The local regulations maintain that any washed-up bodies must be burned upon the beach in case of plague.  Trelawny has determined to make the best of this circumstance and give his friend a Homeric send-off.  He is peering down into the casket, stirring something with a poker as he chants, pouring wine, herbs, olive oil and salt over the body. 

We cannot but help think how Shelley himself would have appreciated the sight of the pagan ceremony.  We come over to the fire to stare down at the gruesome sight.  “Dear God, is THAT what we must come to?  THAT a human body?  It is more like the carcase of a sheep.  O Tre, my friend, poor Shiloh is taken from us.  We shall not see his like again.”

Trelawny grins his wolfish grin, but can put no heart into it.  Somewhere inside his gigantic pose the man’s heart is weeping.  “The flame,” says Trelawny softly, “will purify him, as it did for the men of Homer’s time.”

“Aye, Tre, Shiloh loved to read his Homer.  Strange thing, in a nature so unwarlike - to love Homer.  As the bard says, may the fire purge the flesh from your bones and leave them snowy and pure, my friend.”

Trelawny starts to poke into the casket with his iron crow, and turns over a lump of something.  “See, Albé - the heart will not burn.” 

The brains of the Great Dreamer are cupped in the broken skull, boiling.  We shudder at the sight.  “I never knew, Tre, you were so much the pagan.  You do it very well.”  Trelawny nods, continues chanting and pouring oil, wine, herbs, salt,.

“The top of the skull has crumbled, but the brains are cupped in the broken cranium.  They are literally seething, boiling, bubbling - will they never burn?”  Our voice sounds to us as if it were a long way off.  Swallowing hard to smother an urge to vomit, we stagger away down the beach, tearing off our jacket.

“Albé?  Do you not want to see the last of Shiloh?”

“My stomach is quite turned.  I shall strip and swim out to my ship.”

Trelawny poking at something in the flames.  “His heart, Albé, his heart will not burn!  He  would have taken that little boat to Greece!  His heart would not have failed him!”

We do not rise to this taunt; it is not the occasion.  “If the skull is gone, Tre, pray save me the heart!”  We strip to our breeches, ignoring the crowd of onlookers, and plunge into the water, feeling the scorching heat of the sun on our back and head.  “Aye,” we think bitterly, “we have burned Patroclus the healer.  Hector must be made to pay.” 

As we plough through the soft calm water that has killed our friend, we are a little uneasy at the flaming heat falling on our shoulders and back.  But what can a little sunburn matter NOW?  Often enough we have felt the anger of an Achilles.  Now and again we must feel the pain.  And still Trelawny shouts relentlessly after us as we swim out to sea. 

“The heart, Albé!  The heart will not burn!”