Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (50 page)

With Hunt abroad, Bess was also able to carve out a place in the group he had previously dominated. She became friendly with Mary, who warmed to her after her return to England, and saw a good deal of the Novellos, whose house acted as a magnetic focus for the surviving members of Hunt’s circle. Mary drew real comfort from evenings spent at the Novellos’ rambling, comfortable, musical house in Shacklewell, a village now completely assimilated into the London boroughs of Hackney and Islington. Hunt gave both Mary and Jane Williams letters of introduction to the Novellos, and they were warmly welcomed into a chaotic and friendly household. Mary found herself the unlikely object of an adolescent crush when she won the undying admiration of thirteen year old Mary Victoria Novello (afterwards Mary Cowden Clarke) by presenting her with an autographed copy of
Frankenstein
and a necklace of coral beads from Italy.

Mary Victoria later wrote a pen-portrait of Mary as she was in 1823, which presents a more vivid impression of its subject than any of the mournful extant pictures of her. It also demonstrates that sorrow and pain had had little impact on Mary’s beauty. Mary Victoria recalled a slightly bowed golden-haired head, marble-white shoulders ‘statuesquely’ rising from a low-cut black velvet dress, thoughtful eyes and a surprisingly decisive expression, as well as ‘exquisitely-formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosy palms, and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and delicate as those in a Vandyk portrait.’
²⁴
Mary could do extraordinary things with her hands, and good-naturedly amused Mary Victoria and her younger sister Clara by bending her fingers back so far that they almost touched her arm. Five year old Clara, who would became one of the most famous singers of her generation, divided her adoration between Mary and Percy. In later life she conceded that her devotion to Mary’s son had been misplaced since he tyrannised her mercilessly, hitting her with his little wooden cart when the two of them were sent out to play with the elder Novello children in the overgrown Shacklewell garden.

Clara and Mary Victoria were not the only Novellos to adore Mary. Their father was equally entranced. ‘I am absolutely in love with her’, he told Hunt, ‘and shall have you to answer for whatever mischievous consequence may occur, for not having purposely cautioned me beforehand . . . I can scarcely believe that the cordial, warm-hearted and kind creature I now see, can be the same Mrs Shelley I recollect formerly, so silent and reserved.’
²⁵

Mary had learnt a bitter lesson during the winter of 1823, when the experience of being ostracised by Hunt made her realise that her natural reserve alienated people, and that keeping her feelings buried away damaged her ability to establish a new life for herself. She made great efforts to demonstrate her affection after her return to England, self-consciously expressing emotions she had previously kept private. However, the fact that she was so relaxed and unreserved during her acquaintance with the Novellos testifies not just to her determination but also to how much she enjoyed spending time in their welcoming home. Indeed, Mary was at least as fond of Novello as he was of her. She called him Vincenzo – especially, Mary Victoria later recalled, when she wanted him to sing for her. In fact, she came dangerously close to falling in love with him. He was talented, creative and kind, and reminded her of all that was good in Shelley. ‘I could talk to him’, she wrote in her diary. For someone as private as Mary, this meant a great deal.  Novello, however, was devoted to his wife, and to Mary, elliptical on the subject even in her private journal, it seemed typical of her misfortune that she should have lost her heart to someone ‘attached to another’.
²⁶

Yet, in spite of the sadness which tinged Mary’s affection for Novello, she was still able to draw inspiration from time spent in his company. ‘I shall begin a Novel’, she told Hunt in 1823. ‘Novello will help it greatly – as I listen to music (especially instrumental) new ideas rise and develop themselves, with greater energy and truth than at any other time.’
²⁷
The resulting work,
The Last Man
, was prompted both by evenings round the piano in Shacklewell and by memories of Shelley and Byron, whose characters provided the basis for the novel’s two heroes. Byron appears in
The Last Man
as Raymond, a flawed, charismatic leader of men, and Shelley as Adrian, a selfless visionary, not quite of this world, who inspires his companions with hope and courage.
The Last Man
was Mary’s first sustained creative work since
Valperga
, and thus marked a further stage in her transition from dependent widow to professional writer, able to earn her own living.

As Mary allowed herself to be inspired by musical evenings in the Novello household, so too did other members of Hunt’s old circle. The Novellos held several such evenings in 1823–4, which in many respects were like those organised by Hunt and Novello in 1817. One particularly elaborate evening, which doubled as a celebration of the absent Hunt’s birthday, took place at Shacklewell on 19 October 1823.  Novello selected and arranged music to be sung by the assembled company – who included Jane Williams, Charles Cowden Clarke, Henry Charles Robertson (an old friend of Hunt’s from the Surrey Gaol days) and Novello’s brother, Frank. Mary was accompanied by her brother William, who was rather overawed by his elder sister’s starry friends. Hunt’s health was drunk, songs were sung, and Mary had so much fun, she shame-facedly confessed to Hunt, she ‘gave way a little to the “
giddy
school
girl
.”’
²⁸
Mary Novello filled the house with flowers in homage to Hunt’s luxurious study-bowers. ‘Your name’, she later told him, ‘ran through the room like a charm . . . an universal spirit of enjoyment broke loose; puns, good and bad – badinage, raillery, compliments; but, above all, music was triumphant.’ But despite all this, it was a poignant evening as well. ‘So closely allied’, she concluded, ‘are pleasure and pain, that several times . . . many tears were shed by friendly eyes . . . I was haunted so constantly with your image during the evening, that I was almost tempted to believe in the theory, that what we earnestly and intently desire becomes realized.’
²⁹
The Shacklewell party was a celebration of friendship, but it was also a reminder of how much had changed since the formation of the bonds which had originally knitted Hunt’s friends together. Its avowed purpose was to celebrate Hunt, but it was more nostalgic than celebratory.  Despite the apparently familiar combination of music, puns, flowers and laughter, the Novellos’ party was a fantasy, a bringing together of people who had little more than memories to unite them.

In his exile in Italy, however, Hunt remained unaware that the community he had created was dissolving. He was delighted by letters describing the festivities held in his honour, and he made repeated attempts to convince his friends to join him in Italy.  ‘Cannot you as well as C[owden] C[larke] come with Novello?’ he asked Mary Novello in January 1824. ‘Bring some of the children with you. Why cannot you all come . . . Mrs Williams, and Mary S., and Miss Kent . . . and every other possible and impossible body’.
³⁰
From a distance, Hunt failed to realise that the ties holding his friends together were stronger in his imagination than they were in reality. The Novellos made Mary and Jane Williams welcome on their return to England, and they were consistently kind and hospitable to Bess, but all led independent lives in different parts of London and none of them had the means for the kind of massed holiday proposed by Hunt.

Hunt’s suggestions, however, were borne out of loneliness of the kind he had never known before and which, at the beginning of 1824, showed no signs of abating.  The bleak farmhouse at Maiano outside Florence in which he established his family had panoramic views of rolling Italian countryside, and, like Casa Negroto in Genoa, was cheap to rent. This was just as well, since inside it was shabbily furnished, uncomfortable and – again like Casa Negroto – freezing cold in winter. Hunt divided his time between his study, where he hung a portrait of Keats and lined the walls with books sent out by Bess, and the subscription libraries in Florence, where he read English periodicals and made the acquaintance of a small group of sympathetic expatriates. Chief among these was Charles Brown, who had moved from Pisa to Florence with his son, Carlino. Brown was a loyal friend to the Hunts, advising Marianne on the details of household economy, and providing companionship and moral support to Hunt.

Such support was highly necessary, as the Hunts’ residence at Maiano was disrupted by a series of personal and professional crises. Marianne had a miscarriage, and her relationship with Hunt suffered from the financial strain they were both under.  Previously, adversity brought Marianne and Hunt closer together, but now it had the opposite effect. Marianne would not join Hunt on his walks – the one part of his day which consistently gave him pleasure. He wrote crossly to Bess that her sister would be improved by exercise, and that her refusal to take any was a character failing.  Marianne was equally miserable and in the autumn of 1823 had begun to spit blood again, which mistakenly convinced both her and her doctors that she was consumptive. ‘No one seems to think I am long for this world’, she told Mary.  ‘Indeed’, she continued dolefully, ‘you have in all probability seen your friend for the last time.’
³¹
The children continued to run wild and little John, who was eleven in 1823, became so unhappy and badly behaved that Charles Brown, who was seriously worried for his welfare, took him off to Rome for the winter. Marianne felt guilty about sending the child away, and wrote apologetically to Mary of the treats he would enjoy in Rome. Hunt, in contrast, decided that his son was incapable of reform, and packed him off to stay with Brown with a sigh of relief.

Domestic problems were compounded by a serious argument with John Hunt about the ownership of
The Examiner
.
The dispute was long and bitter, and it was a major blow to Hunt, since it threatened financial disaster and sparked the disintegration of the fraternal relationship which had underpinned the whole of his career. At John Hunt’s suggestion, Leigh had withdrawn as co-proprietor of
The Examiner
in 1819. He did so in order to ensure the paper’s survival after the government strengthened censorship and libel laws in the wake of Peterloo, and he continued to think of himself as a sleeping partner in the enterprise, still entitled to half
The Examiner
’s profits.

John Hunt saw things differently. His brother no longer bore the legal burden of proprietorship, and John viewed his decision to go to Italy at a time when the newspaper was in trouble and John himself was serving a prison sentence as an abandonment of his editorial responsibilities. After John’s release from Coldbath Fields increasingly tense letters flew back and forth between the brothers until John, galled by Leigh’s tone, informed him that he had no claim on
The Examiner
, and would in future be paid no more than the standard piece-rate of two guineas per article for his contributions. John also offered his younger brother an annuity of £100 a year in recognition of his years of service at the paper.  He was not, however, inclined to be more generous. Over the years Leigh had borrowed vast amounts of money from him – by some accounts, as much as £18,000. (This was far more, for example, than Shelley, on an allowance of £1,000 per annum, had received from his father.)  Given John’s imprisonment and the scale of Leigh’s debts, the fact that the relationship faltered is perhaps less surprising than the fact that John supported his brother for so long.

For Leigh, however, the dispute was financially calamitous and a devastating personal betrayal. He took advice from Charles Brown, who made a detailed study of the various accounts of
The Examiner
’s history and ownership. John, who was also distressed to find himself at odds with the sibling with whom he had worked for many years, suggested that they submit their dispute to a binding arbitration, to be conducted by their friends. Prompted by Mary, Novello agreed to act as an arbitrator, and one of his first actions was to convince Leigh to accept the annuity of £100 a year on a temporary basis, in order to allow him to feed his family. But with such limited resources available, it was impossible for the Hunts to come home, even though they had no way of supporting themselves in Italy. It appeared that they were doomed to perpetual exile, separated for ever from their friends and family by Hunt’s inability to earn money.