Jane Austen Unmasked: A Visit to Shelley by Diana Birchall

Note to readers:  I have been using a working title of The Darcys in Venice for this continuing story, but now so much of it has accumulated that we are only a few  installments away from The End, and I plan to publish it in book form.  I wanted a better title, and thought Jane Austen Unmasked would be intriguing, because of the Venice setting, and several masked scenes.  What do you think?  It is true this is a Jane Austen variation story, not about Austen herself, so I hope Jane Austen Unmasked is not too misleading; but as Austen herself said (about her niece Anna’s novel Enthusiasm),  it “was something so very superior,”  that my common title must appear to disadvantage”!

It is sultry in Venice in August. The Darcys were in the garden, drinking an iced Sorrento lemon drink with assorted biscotti, including fish-shaped baicoli, and Esse biscuits shaped like the Grand Canal. They were hoping for a breeze. Their children were occupied relatively quietly, playing with a kitten and a knitted toy, while Elizabeth read some of Shelley’s poetry to her husband. Lord Byron, their neighbor at the Palazzo Mocenigo, had sent them some volumes of his friend’s work as a compliment, as they were to meet him on his visit to Venice.

“I do like his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” Darcy observed, “though mostly for the title, which to my mind celebrates the qualities of my wife.” His eyes twinkled at her, and she blushed.

“So that is what you take from this lovely work, conveniently turning it to a compliment to me? Very pretty, Mr. Darcy.”

“I do,” he replied seriously. “‘That messenger of sympathies/ that wax and wane in lovers’ eyes.’ That is your quality, my dear.”

“Very fine. As long as you do not do as the poet says here – ‘Sudden, thy shadow fell upon me/ I shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy.’ That is far too melodramatic!”

He smiled, and returned, ‘No, such a passage would not be to your taste. How about this, then? ‘I vowed that I would dedicate my powers/ To thee and thine.’ Have I not kept my vow?”

“Indeed you have,” she assured him, “and that is much better. But I confess I prefer his Ozymandias as a poem. I have hardly ever read any thing more magnificent.”

“It is,” he agreed, “‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’ But I must say, Elizabeth, I have some apprehensions about meeting Shelley. To be sure it is an honor to meet a man of such ability, nay genius; but he has a moral reputation worse that our friend Byron in some ways. An atheist, a free thinker, shockingly irregular in his treatment of young women. I cannot approve of him as a man.”

“Why, Darcy, it is not like you to judge a man by mere hearsay and gossip.”

“It is not gossip, but fact, that he eloped with a girl of sixteen, left her for another, and that his poor wife has lately taken her own life. This is what his brand of free thinking, this new fashioned free love, leads to.”

“We are not to judge,” Elizabeth reminded him, “and in any case he will not be likely to offend us in the course of one dinner. If you will listen to hearsay again, they do say he is more of a gentleman than Byron.”

“Perhaps. In any event, our own principles will not be shaken so easily by two such sinners, clever as they are. And there may be considerable diversion as well as edification, in hearing their conversation. Their discussion of their work and process, and their observations of the world, will be something.”

“And then, when the meeting is over, it will pay rich dividends in enlivening our own further conversation for ever. We can wile away much time in deciding which of the two is wickedest.”

“Oh, that I have decided already. Shelley is the worse. Byron is at least a Christian in name, if not a practicing one. But you can see Shelley’s principles in everything he writes. In this Intellectual Beauty, you see he extols, celebrates the imagination as the gateway to truth, instead of faith.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Alfred Clint, in 1819, about the time of this story.

“Very true,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully. Then her eye caught the figure of Lydia, passing through the garden moving swiftly toward the gates, without pausing to acknowledge them. She was clasping her child in her arms, and Elizabeth noted with annoyance that she was wearing a diaphanous clinging morning gown of her own.

“Lydia! Where are you going? I hope you are not thinking of disturbing Lord Byron?” Elizabeth questioned somewhat peremptorily, since Lydia had tried this before. “He has company you know – Mr. Shelley, with whom we are to dine. He will not welcome an intruder.”

“I am not going to see Lord Byron, Lizzy. Just a little walk, to try to cool off the babe. It is hotter than Hades here,” she replied impatiently.

“Very well.” She exchanged a glance with her husband as Lydia scurried out of the gates, in the direction of Byron’s apartments. “I know she is going over there.”

“There is nowhere else she could be going, that pathway goes only to his side of the house,” said Darcy, crunching philosophically an almond-filled Cantucci biscuit.

“You seem unperturbed. Do you not realize that it has been Lydia’s intention all along to present Lord Byron with her child, as his own?”

“Of course.  What else?  She has voiced that declaration multiple times a day ever since it was born. I would have had to stop up my ears or leave Mocenigo in order not to hear it.  Would that I could. But if Lord Byron is given to putting it about as much as all that, he must expect to reap what he deserves.”

Seeing Elizabeth’s round-eyed, slightly horrified expression, he apologized, “I am sorry, my dear, to indulge in such a coarse expression. But you see what it is, how easily we catch our manners and morals from our neighbours.”

“I am sure Lord Byron himself is not given to such expressions, with ladies,” she said , eyebrows raised in arch reproach.

“No; perhaps not in mixed company. To ladies he gives other parts of himself. But enough of this, Elizabeth. Why don’t you read to me from the English broadsheets that have come, and clear our minds of poetic morals for a bit? We shall see them in action at dinner, soon enough.”

“And shall we do nothing to stop Lydia? It is true that her conduct with Byron is not our affair, but exposing him to my sister’s forwardness and vulgarity is not neighborly.”

He sighed, frustrated. “By what means do you suggest? In my view, there is nothing to be done, short of tying her down.”

“There you are, then. After all, two geniuses ought to be able to deal with one Lydia.”

Venetian nobles eating biscotti. By Pietro Longhi, 1775,