The romantic, p.12
The Romantic, page 12
While he was in Bordeaux, and also in Geneva, he wrote letters to his mother that made it seem he was still trapped in the unending boredom of cantonment life in India. Before leaving Ooty, he had made an arrangement with Dr Freemantle that he would send him these letters – and that Dr Freemantle, in turn, would then forward them on to Oxford, with the frankings, scribbled annotations and postmarks that these long trajectories accumulated. It could take anything from six to nine months for a letter from India to reach England, after all, if indeed it ever arrived. He made sure that his vicarious, inventive accounts were chatty and bland. There was nothing in these missives that would give rise to any suspicion that he was not still serving with the 5th Madras. He would admit to the subterfuge in the fullness of time, he told himself, knowing it would be more easily forgiven if he had a published book as mollification. As long as Sir Guy and Elspeth thought he was well and thriving in Ooty he could pursue his adventures in Europe with something of a clear conscience.
In the spring of 1822, Cashel found himself tiring of Milan and its environs so he moved first to Florence and then to Pisa. He thought that after a brief sojourn in Pisa he would perhaps travel south to Rome, Naples and Sicily; or, alternatively, westwards, to France and then Iberia – Spain and Portugal.
Florence was abnormally busy, he found, full of chattering, meandering visitors, mainly English, and many Americans also, and so, when he moved to Pisa, he found the city much more congenial. ‘Dull, learned Pisa’, as some disappointed wit had dubbed it, suited him perfectly. The city was stuck in its slow decline, centuries old, cut off from the sea and prosperity by the relentless silting-up of the marshes of the Arno’s estuary. Its glory days may have been gone but, to Cashel’s eyes, its shabby, fading beauty was unimpaired.
He took a small suite of rooms in a tavern called the Albergo Tinto on the southern bank of the Lung’ Arno close by the Ponte Fortenza. His bedroom was separated from the dining–living area by double doors. He could order food from the albergo’s kitchens, his fire was laid each day and his bed linen was changed as requested. After he had explored Pisa and seen its celebrated sights – notably the Piazza del Duomo and the leaning bell tower (‘To which every visitor promptly directs his steps’) – he began to venture beyond the city’s walls, strolling in the Pisan hills and sea-bathing at Il Gombo. He spent two days in Lucca and walked the ramparts by moonlight. From Lucca, he took a two-horse cab to Pistoia for the day.
Despite all this diversion he was beginning to have some doubts about the book he was writing. The vocabulary of sightseeing seemed to him to be limited and repetitive: the ‘impressive cathedral’, the ‘fertile plains’, the ‘agreeable ancient town’, the ‘tolerable trattoria’. He was finding it hard to be original. In Pistoia, reputedly where pistols had been invented, he had a gunsmith overhaul his double-barrelled flintlock while he sauntered aimlessly around the streets. His brain was inert; he could think of no new way of describing the place. Pistoia would appear the same as every other ancient town he had visited on his travels.
Back in Pisa he wondered where to go next – where he might find some inspiration. His thoughts were turning to Spain and Portugal but he had not been to Rome and surely that was the sine qua non of any visit to Italy. He went to the English bank in Pisa, McKay & Hooker, and with his letter of credit drew out enough money to last him for a month. He thought idly of sailing from Genoa to Marseilles, to save time, then making his way along the coast to Barcelona and the Catalan towns and villages around it. The notion of travel, of new vistas and experiences, began to stir him again. Maybe all was not lost.
He was walking along the Via san Martino, returning to the Albergo Tinto, when he heard a woman’s voice cry out in English, ‘Stop, thief!’ And around the corner careered a boy of about fourteen or fifteen, sprinting hard, with something clutched in his right hand.
Cashel instinctively stuck out a leg and the boy went flying, sprawling on the ground. Cashel knelt on his back and, with one hand, grabbed his hair and pushed his face into the paving and, with the other, prised a small beaded reticule from his grasp. He stood up and let the boy struggle shakily to his feet before booting him firmly in the arse and sending him crashing into the wall opposite. The boy yelped in pain, limped away up an alley and disappeared.
Cashel turned and saw two flustered ladies hurrying along to meet him.
‘Got it!’ he said and held out the bag.
‘Thank you, sir! Bless you, sir, for your quick thinking!’ the younger and neater of the two exclaimed. She had an open smiling face marred only by a long, slightly out-of-proportion nose. She took the bag from him gratefully.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ the other woman asked. ‘Your reactions were astonishingly quick.’ She was tall and a little on the heavy side, he saw, and she had one of those wide, stiff, inert faces, noticeably expressionless, displaying no sign of shock or excitement, despite being so recently robbed.
‘I heard your shout – then the rascal appeared. He’s the one who’ll have a few bruises,’ he said. This produced a smile in the tall young woman.
Cashel gave a little bow and introduced himself.
‘I’m Cashel Ross,’ he said.
‘I’m Mrs Williams,’ said the woman whose bag had been stolen. ‘And this is my friend, Mrs Shelley.’
Cashel suggested that he walk them back to their residence in case the urchin should return with accomplices and they were very glad to accept his offer. And, as it turned out, where they lived was very close to the Albergo Tinto, at the eastern end of Pisa close to the city wall. They were renting two floors of a large plain palazzo called Tre Palazzi di Chiesa. Mrs Shelley and her family lived on the top floor; Mrs Williams and hers on the ground floor.
‘Delighted to have been of service,’ Cashel said. ‘Here you are, safe and sound.’
‘Are you from Ireland, sir?’ Mrs Shelley asked. ‘I can hear an Irish tone to your voice.’
‘Yes. I was born and raised in Ireland, indeed. Well, raised there for a while. In County Cork. Now my family lives in Oxford.’
‘Will you dine with us tonight, Mr Ross?’ Mrs Williams asked. ‘It seems the least we can do – to say thank you to our knight in shining armour.’
‘Do please agree,’ Mrs Shelley added.
No, Cashel thought, needing a quick and convincing excuse. Then he said, yes, it would be a pleasure. He could do with some company apart from his own, he realized, and it would be good to experience some society – English society – again.
Cashel had the chambermaid run a smoothing iron over his frock coat and replace a missing button on the fall-front of his tightest pantaloons. There was a patch on the knee but he would pass muster in candlelight. He combed his hair – it was growing long and soon he’d have to tie it back with a ribbon, he thought. He pulled up his collar and plumped out his stock. Yes, he would pass muster, though of course he was beginning to regret his quick acceptance of the invitation. Still, he rebuked himself, there would be plenty of time for solitude later, if he wanted it.
They were dining in the Shelley apartments on the top floor of the palazzo. Many candles burned and he could see as dusk fell that the view south through the wide windows carried as far as the sea. They ate a very good leg of mutton with brown potatoes – he might have been dining in England, Cashel thought.
Mr Shelley turned out to be a tall young man, almost as tall as Cashel, though emaciated and slightly stooped. His thick dark-blonde hair was shot with grey and his face was very freckled and marred with many small lesions from sunburn. He had a curiously reedy, contralto voice and, when he smiled, displayed as crooked a set of teeth as Cashel had seen in a youngish man.
Very quickly it was made clear, by some politely pointed remarks made by Mrs Shelley, that her husband was a literary man, a poet of some renown.
Cashel begged forgiveness for his ignorance.
‘I’ve been away in India,’ he explained. ‘In the army, these last few years. I don’t even know who the King of England is.’
‘George the fourth, if you wish to know, Mr Ross. God bless his obese majesty,’ Mrs Shelley said to general laughter.
Cashel, of course, did know that George IV was now the new King of England, but smiled politely. He suspected that the Shelleys and the Williamses took him for something of a simpleton, not a scholar.
‘The Indian army?’ Mr Williams interjected. He was a handsome, open-featured, smiling man – maybe as much of a simpleton as me, Cashel thought, before going on to explain that he had been a lieutenant in the Madras army. The 5th Madras (European) Light Infantry, he elaborated at Williams’s prompting.
‘And I was in the Eighth Light Dragoons of the Bengal army!’ Williams exclaimed.
After that, everything changed. It was as if he had presented some form of passport to the company. Williams was an Indian army man, and so was Ross, and by definition that made him a good fellow. Cashel was quizzed, with genuine curiosity, about his life abroad and his military experience. And then came the great revelation – Waterloo. Even Mr Shelley stared at him respectfully with his big restless eyes, as if he couldn’t believe he had a Waterloo veteran sitting a few feet away at his very table.
‘Albé has to meet Mr Ross. Has to,’ he said, his voice cracking with emphasis. ‘Without question. But we must surprise him. I need to see his face when he learns you were at Waterloo, Mr Ross.’
There was overwhelming mirthful concurrence at this suggestion.
‘And who is this Albé, pray?’ Cashel asked.
‘Do excuse us,’ Mrs Shelley said. ‘It’s our nickname for Lord Byron. L.B. Hence Albé.’
‘Lord Byron is in Pisa?’ Cashel said, astonished. He had heard of Lord Byron – who hadn’t? He had even read Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, one of the books in Poynter’s bequest.
Shelley pointed to a window in the north wall that looked over the Arno.
‘About one hundred yards away, on the other side of the river,’ he said. ‘The Palazzo Lanfranchi.’
‘Good grief,’ Cashel said. ‘Byron in Pisa. Who’d have thought?’
‘We dine with him every Wednesday,’ Shelley went on, suddenly animated. ‘Do say you’ll join us, Mr Ross. I guarantee you’ll not be disappointed.’
Albergo Tinto
Pisa
21st March 1822
My dear Ben,fn2
Last night I dined with Lord Byron, no less, here in Pisa. I told you in my last missive how by chance I fell in with the Shelley/Williams families. They, of course, know Lord B who has moved to a grand palazzo across the Arno from my taverna and hosts a dinner for the Shelleys and company every Wednesday night. It’s a ten-minute stroll thither. So off we went – Mr & Mrs Williams, Mr & Mrs Shelley and yours truly. As we approached Lord B’s palazzo, Shelley took me by the arm and drew me aside and told me that Lord B was very particular about rank and how he was to be addressed. It was always ‘Lord’ Byron – no simple ‘Byron’ would be tolerated – and he preferred ‘My lord’ and ‘Your lordship’ etc. to ‘Sir’. Fine, says I, ‘Lord Byron’ it shall be.
The palazzo is all white marble with its wide steps and a jetty to the river. Inside it is filled with animals walking free – birds, cats, dogs, apes – even peacocks. We made our way up to the piano nobile where LB greeted us. He is quite short and, not to put too fine a point on it, very plump. His face is plump, his hands are plump, his fingers are plump. Hair receding, also. He introduced us to his mistress, Contessa Guiccioli, very young, 18–20, I’d say, who matches her paramour in plumpness but, however, is very beautiful with it, speaking hardly a word of English but, looking at her very ample figure, let’s say its noticeable prominences, it is not her anglophony that explains her attraction to LB, I would venture.
Anyway, we were plied with as much claret (good) as we could consume and sweetmeats (indifferent) and then led into the dining room. We ate well – three types of fowl – and the conversation ranged widely. Shelley and LB talking mainly of literature whereas Williams and I reminisced further about our army lives in India. He is the most agreeable man and his simple, good spirit casts an unflattering light on the complexities of Shelley’s nature and the vanities of Albé’s (as the party call him behind his back).
Then when Shelley told Byron that I had been at Waterloo, and had even been wounded on the battlefield, his Lordship was suddenly all interest and summoned me to move my chair and sit beside him so we could converse without interruption. He wanted to know all about Waterloo (he had visited the battlefield in 1816, it turned out) and my campaigning in the Kandy war.
What more can I tell you about him? He has a leaning-forward, hurried, curious walk that Shelley told me was an attempt to disguise a deformity to his left foot and the limp that this produces. Beneath the plumpness he is handsome enough, I suppose, and there is a certain sneering dissoluteness to his physiognomy. He is very clever and cutting and very rich, Shelley says, with an income of £4,000 per annum, not counting his book sales. Shelley confessed that he makes do on a humble £1,000 a year, poor fellow. We talked at length about soldiering and firing muskets and skirmishing and what precisely it was like to be wounded by a lance. He almost seemed jealous of my experiences and my wound. He has invited me to his target-shooting party outside the city walls next week – of which more later, when it occurs. He was relaxed and intimate with me at this juncture (we had both consumed a lot of wine) then matters turned a little sour.
ME: Do you have Scottish blood, Lord Byron?
LB: Not a drop. Why do you ask?
ME: I can hear a Scottish lilt in your voice from time to time – a hint of a brogue.
LB: That’s impossible. How could I have a Scottish accent? Absurd!
ME: Ah-ha. You mock me, Lord Byron! I know I have an Irish accent. We Celts can sniff each other out.
LB: You are quite mistaken, Ross. I assure you I am as English as Melbury pie.
Then off he abruptly went in search of his pulchritudinous mistress and I was left alone, conscious I had made some vast social blunder. I told Shelley what had transpired and he winced. It’s true, Shelley said. Byron was born above a shop in Aberdeen. When he inherited his title and came to England to school he was roundly mocked for his Scottish accent and he’s striven to eradicate all traces of it ever since. Shelley admitted that he had noticed the brogue, also, particularly late in the evening when the wine took effect.
So, dear Ben, there was my innocent faux pas. Will LB ever speak to me again? We wandered homeward in merry mood and I related my outcasting to Mrs Shelley who laughed loudly at my misprision. ‘Serves him right,’ she said forcefully. ‘Albé may be the most famous poet in England but he is also the most sensitive to social distinctions. He can talk for hours about dukes and earls and lords and baronets and their various degrees of importance.’ I begin to warm to Mrs Shelley, despite her somewhat stern and coldly observant manner. I was astonished to discover she is barely older than I am – only twenty-four years old. I thought she was the same age as Shelley – who is in his thirtieth year, I now know. When Mary Shelley’s face is animated and she laughs you can see her youth – and her beauty – but in repose her face almost miraculously ages. By the way, it is apparent that all is not harmonious in the Shelley marriage.
Now you know, Ben, how my life is in society in Pisa. Shelley and Williams have invited me to go sailing with them in their little skiff on the Arno and the canals of the Marezza and this very morning a note came from LB reminding me of our shooting party. Clearly I have not been cast beyond the pale. I will write anon when I have more adventures to relate.
I remain yr. affectionate friend,
Cashel Ross
Cashel, Shelley and Williams met at the entrance of Byron’s palazzo. There were two other men present, a Signor Gamba, the brother of Byron’s mistress, and a so-called Count Taaffe. Horses were provided and they all rode off southwards – followed by servants on mules – through the Porto Fiorentina and into the countryside beyond the city. Cashel noticed that Byron had two pistols in his belt and another two holstered by the pommel of his saddle. Eventually they arrived at a farm about an hour’s ride from Pisa where Byron was clearly known. Money was handed over and they made their way to a makeshift firing range in a meadow by a field of young maize. They fired their pistols at a selection of targets – bottles and stones and half-crown pieces hammered into staves of wood.
Byron was a good shot, Cashel saw, and there was a clear competition in marksmanship between him and Shelley. The servants laid out food and drink on blankets on the ground. When his turn came Cashel loosed off a few balls at the positioned bottles but he found the reports of the pistols and the rank smell of gunpowder an unfortunate trigger for his memories – he knew he would be back dreaming of the battle that night.
He stood with Shelley watching Byron and Taaffe load their pistols and wager who would hit the half-crown.
‘Why does Lord Byron shoot at targets? He could shoot at game – ducks and geese, and the like,’ Cashel asked.
‘Byron wants to go to war,’ Shelley said. ‘He wants to be a warrior, a hero – more than anything. These excursions are a form of preparation for when that day comes. But at the moment he’s a warrior without an enemy which, between you and me, Ross, makes his company a little tiresome, sometimes.’
‘What about you, Shelley? Do you want to go to war?’
‘I have no desire to aim at, shoot at, hit, wound or kill a fellow human being,’ he said. ‘But Albé must be …’ He paused. ‘Accommodated.’ He lowered his voice. ‘We’ve plans to start a journal together and we need his investment.’ He smiled wearily. ‘So we go to dine. We come out here and shoot at empty bottles.’
Shelley was more relaxed on the water in his little canvas skiff with its lug-sail. Cashel registered the improvement in his mood when he went out sailing with him and Williams some days later, coasting down the Arno to the wide bay and lunching at the Bagni di Pisa. For all his enthusiasm Shelley was an angular and awkward presence in the little boat and Williams, an expert sailor, often had to order him to sit down and stop moving around, as they were shipping water and there was a risk of capsizing.
