Allan Mallinson - A Call to Arms

Shelley smiled again, though not so full. ‘And your opinion of me will have been formed by the organs of Crown and Church, and you will not have read a word of what I have written.’

‘I confess I have not. But neither has my opinion been so formed as to tend to anything.’ Hervey might have explained that his sister had read his poetry, and Henrietta, but such confidences were not possible in ten times this intimacy.

They talked of the city for the rest of the way to the Caffè Greco. They passed any number of places in which they might have taken wine, but the Greco was familiar to Shelley, and the familiar was comforting. Giuseppe looked surprised by Shelley’s reappearance, and in the company of the man who only an hour or two before had been a professed stranger. The inglesi were a strange people — always polite, but cool, even cold in their manner. Except Signor Shelley: he was a gentiluomo like the others, certainly, but Signor Shelley was also … simpatico .

Shelley called for a bottle of his favoured rosso from the Castelli Romani. ‘Come,’ he said conspiratorially to Hervey. ‘Let us sit in the seclusion of one of these arches. I would know a little more of what brings you to Rome. You may learn of my reasons from any number of people, I dare say.’

They took up seats beneath a particularly vivid depiction of the rape of the Sabine women. Hervey sipped the thin red wine, which they drank chilled, and eyed his companion carefully. There was nothing he feared, but he was not inclined to vouchsafe anything either, no matter how inconsequential, to someone who might use it frivolously. ‘I am here on indefinite vacation.’

‘Good! A promising beginning. And do you find Goethe informative regarding the eternal city? Where is your book, by the way?’

Hervey looked surprised, and frowned. ‘I recall that I have left it at the questura .’

‘Never mind. We can go there tomorrow to retrieve it. But first tell me of it.’

Hervey was again surprised at Shelley’s presumption of intimacy, though that was not to say he found it unwelcome. ‘I find it a very faithful guide.’

‘Then you have a keen understanding of German. I would that there were a passable translation.’

Hervey was now conscious that his conversation lacked the spontaneity of his companion’s, and, unusually, it troubled him.

‘And you, sir. What do you do here?’ he tried, though sensing at once its inadequacy.

Shelley put down his glass and swept a hand about the room. ‘I delve for the glory that was Rome, and seek in it inspiration!’

The words seemed entirely unaffected on Shelley’s lips. Hervey searched for something by way of return. ‘And are you here in company?’ was all that the muse could summon.

‘A wife and child. And you?’

‘My sister.’

Shelley nodded. ‘You were at Waterloo, were you not? That is my understanding.’

‘I cannot think how you might know, sir, for I have not spoken of it since leaving England.’

‘I should very much like to hear account of it. I have not met with any who was there.’

Hervey gave a sort of sigh to indicate the difficulty of obliging him. ‘It was a very long day, and the field was enormous.’

But Shelley was not put off. He thought for a moment or two and then asked, ‘Would you join us this evening? We shall be a small party, but an attentive one.’

It was the first invitation Hervey had received since arriving in the city ten days before, but he was still not greatly inclined to accept. ‘I think I must decline, sir. As I told you, I am accompanied by my sister and she—’

‘Then it would be doubly delightful, and not only for me, but for my other companions of her sex.’

Hervey was severely discomfited. He had no desire of excessive female company.

‘Shall we say nine o’clock? Our lodgings are at the Palazzo Verospi on the Corso, number 300 — near the post office, I’m afraid.’

The mention of the post office engendered just the degree of sympathy necessary for Hervey to conclude that his declining would be an unkindness. ‘I am much obliged. I can answer for my sister since we have no fixed engagements. We shall come at nine.’

‘Good! So let us take a little more of this wine then — for our stomachs’ sake, as St Paul would have us believe.’

Hervey frowned, even though he surmised the show of scepticism was for his benefit. But he took another glass, and there they stayed a full hour speaking of Rome and her glories.

Later, in his lodgings in Via del Babuino, il ghetto inglese , Hervey reflected on the morning’s turn of events. He had befriended — was it not too strong a word? — an atheist, revolutionary and libertine. Elizabeth had lost no time in reminding him of the history of Mr Shelley and his elopements (half-remembered from Henrietta’s teasing accounts), and the rest he had pieced together for himself, recalling the usual tattlers during the years that his attention had been distracted by those who would destroy the kingdom by the sword rather than by the pen. Shelley had by all accounts brought to bed two if not three or even four women — girls, indeed — so that there was issue out of wedlock, unacknowledged perhaps. And this the poet would defend as a right way of living — would propagate it, even! Who knew, therefore, what were Shelley’s arrangements at present, and what dissipation he — Hervey — and Elizabeth might soon be a prey to? He could only ponder on what a journey he had made these past months, from honourable rank in His Majesty’s light dragoons (some would say a primmish captain) to supper companion of a dangerous and amoral poetaster. Was he prepared to pay any price to put Elizabeth and himself an evening’s distance from painful memories? He shrugged. He wished he had at least read some of Shelley’s poetry. It would surely tell him more of the man than mere gossip could. But his own tastes in that direction had advanced only slowly, so that hitherto he had remained devoted above all to the Milton of his schoolroom. Through Henrietta he had read Coleridge, and with her Keats, but Shelley had not so far engaged him.

Elizabeth had not objected to suppering with the Shelleys, however. Elizabeth’s pleasure was her journal, and it had often been her lament that its pages were full of things that no one could have the least interest in but herself. Not that she harboured literary ambitions; rather was she occasionally in despair of being, at no longer five and twenty, without anything more to record than domestic trifles. If only she could write of her time at the workhouse, or in the hovels of Warminster Common, her memoir might stand as something of real consequence. But good works were one thing. To itemize the meanness and dissipation of rural life in a lady’s journal was quite another. Italy had seen her able to write infinitely more interesting pages already, but of the countryside and art; of people, her entries were as yet restricted. Save in the case of her brother, whose progress she noted with anxious attention — and of Henrietta, whom she missed so much more than any but her journal knew, sometimes through tear marks rather than ink.

At nine o’clock they took a carriage to Shelley’s lodgings, for although it was not far, Elizabeth had been at pains to dress and Hervey had no wish to take the edge off her success by chancing to their feet. When they arrived at number 300 Via del Corso they found their host agitated. ‘I am very glad to meet you, Miss Hervey,’ Shelley replied, after Hervey’s introduction. ‘But my wife is unwell, I’m afraid, and makes her regrets. We shall go instead to Signora Dionigi’s. She holds a conversazione this evening. It will be very diverting.’