Shelley used to say, that every city or town had its
Devil or its Diavolessa—we have no word in our language for the fiend feminine.
Monk Lewis has shewn us, even when they come in
the shape of the Madonna, how much they are to be dreaded, even by an Ambrosio. Byron thought
the viaggiatory English old maids, who scour the continent, and fix themselves for the time
being in all parts of it, were only incarnations of evil spirits. I am not so ungallant. But of the male devils, Goldoni has given us a specimen in his “Bottega di Caffè,” and Poole in his Paul Pry—two devils who have much in common, and bear a strong family
likeness. Their name is Legion, though they differ from each other as much as Asmodeus does from Mephistophiles. The term seccatura, or drying up of all our faculties, mental and bodily, seems
to offer an abstract idea of the effects they produce. This preamble brings me to the Devil
of Pisa. P——— was about fifty
years of age, somewhat above the common height, with a
figure boney
and angular, and covered with no more superfluous flesh than a prize-fighter. His face was
dark as that of a Moor, his features marked and regular, his eyes black and gloomy. He
always reminded me of one of
Titian’s portraits
(his family had been Venetians,) stepping out of its frame. Had he lived when Venice was
governed by the Tré, he would have made a Loredano, and
might have sate to
Anne Ratcliffe for a Schedoni; but to descend to modern times, during the reign of
Austrian despotism he was admirably calculated for a spy, or
calderaio,—perhaps he might be one. “
Chi lo sa.” Nature certainly never designed him
for a divine. As to his religion, it was about on a par with that of
Il Abbate Casti, (
Casti a non
casto, as
lucus a non
lucendo,) of whom he was afterwards a worthy successor, in his native
city, Florence. But at Pisa,
II Signore
Professore was the title by which he was generally known; a professor,
like many other professors and lecturers, at least in Italy, who had made a
sinecure of his office, that of
Belles Lettres,
and only mounted the Cathedra once, during the many years that he touched his poor
emoluments; for the Transalpine universities are not quite so richly endowed as our own.
Not that this neglect of his duties would have affected his appointment, but as he told me,
he lost it by an irresistible
bon mot. During one of his midnight
orgies, which he was in the habit of celebrating with some of the most dissolute of the
students, he was interrogated in the darkness, by the patrole in the streets of Pisa, as to
who and what he was; to which questioning he gave the following reply:
“Son’ un uomo publico, in una strada publica, con una donna
publica.” This public avowal cost him his chair. But it gave him
eclat, and did not lose him his friends, or exclude him from the
houses where he was the spiritual guide and confessor. There were, it is true, two reasons
why he was tolerated in good society, (which Casti says is to be found
where he places Don Juan, below,)—his pen and his
tongue—the dread of both. His epigrams were
sanglantes, and he gave
soubriquets the most happy for those who offended him; as an instance of which,
he most happily styled a captain of our navy,
il dolce
capitano; a bye-word that stuck to him through life, and always
excited a smile at his expense whenever he appeared. He was a good poet, if one might judge
from the quotations he was in the habit of making from his tragedies, which he continually
talked about, and which
Madame de Staël, who knew
him, used to call his
imaginary ones, for not a line of them
was-ever published—perhaps written. His talent was conversation—a conversation
full of repartee, and sparkling with wit; and his information (he was a man of profound
erudition, vast memory, and first-rate talent,) made him almost oracular.
Shelley, when P——— first
became an
habitué at his house, was charmed with him, and listened
with rapt attention to his eloquence, which he compared to that of
Coleridge. It was a swarm of ideas singularly ex-
ravagant, but which he contrived to weave into his argument with
marvellous embroidery. Now he plunged into abysses but to lighten other abysses; and his
words, like a torrent— for there was no stopping him when fairly rushing
onwards—carried all before them.
It was this gift of eloquence that made him for a time welcome at Shelley’s, where he passed many an evening in the
week—(I think I see him now, dissecting the snipes with his long, boney, snuffy
fingers—for he never in the operation made use of a knife or fork); at first I
say,—for he had in the outset sufficient tact (no one knew mankind better) to keep in
the background the revolting vices which were familiar to him and disfigured his character.
He had a predilection for our compatriotes, with
and without the e, but particularly patronized the Belle Inglese, as he always called English women; and
after the Italian fashion, soon familiarly called Mrs.
Shelley, La Signora
Maria. Wherever “he once got the entrée, he was a sine qua non,
a “
fa tout.” He
had always some poor devil of low origin, to recommend as a master of his language,
receiving under the rose, part of the lesson money. He was never at a loss to find some
Palazzo to be let, getting a monthly
douceur out
of the rent, from the landlord; for a picture fancier, he had always at hand some
mysterious
Marchese, or
Marchesa, ready to
part with a
Carlo Dolce or
Andrea del Sarto, or
Allori—originals of course. He could dilate for hours on the
Venus of the Tribune, the Day and
Night of
Michael Angelo, the
Niobe—knew the history of every painter and painting in the galleries of the Uffizii
and Pitti, better than
Vasari, or his successor
Rosini; in short he was a
Mezzano,
Cicerone,
Conosciatore,
Dilletante, and, I might add,
Ruffiano.
I have perhaps at too great length botched a sketch of the ex Professor,
but as the world is indebted to him for the Epipscychidion, I think myself in gratitude
bound not to pass him over without a record, and if I had Mrs.
Shelley’s
Valperga, I could have spared my
readers my own “
studio studiato” for
he is there drawn to the life.
P—— was amico
di casa and confessor to a noble family, one of the most
distinguished for its antiquity of any at Pisa, where its head then filled a post of great
authority. By his first countess he had two grown-up daughters, and in his old age had the
boldness, the audacity I might say, to take unto himself a wife not much older than either.
This lady, whose beauty did not rival that of the Count’s children, was naturally
jealous of their charms, and deemed them dangerous rivals in the eyes of her Cavaliere; and
exerting all her influence over her infatuated husband, persuaded him, though their
education was completed, to immure them in two convents (pensions, I should say, or as they
are called, conservatorios) in his native city.
The Professor who had known them from infancy, and been their instructor in languages and
polite literature, made the Contessinas frequent subjects of
conversation. He told us that the father was not over rich, owing to
his young wife’s extravagance; that he was avaricious withal, and did not like to
disburse their dowries, which, as fixed by law, must be in proportion to the father’s
fortune, and was waiting till some one would take them off his hands without a
dote. He spoke most enthusiastically of the beauty and
accomplishments of
Emilia, the eldest, adding, that
she had been confined for two years in the convent of St. A——.
“Poverina,” he said, with a deep sigh, “she pines like a
bird in a cage—ardently longs to escape from her prison-house,—pines with
ennui, and wanders about the corridors like an unquiet
spirit; she sees her young days glide on without an aim or purpose. She was made for
love. Yesterday she was watering some flowers in her cell—she has nothing else to
love but her flowers—‘Yes,’ said she, addressing them, ‘you are
born to vegetate, but we thinking beings were made for action—not to be penned up
in a corner, or set at a window to blow and
die.’ A
miserable place is that convent of St. A——,” he added,
“and if you had seen, as I have done, the poor pensionnaires shut up in that
narrow, suffocating street, in the summer, (for it does not possess a garden,) and in
the winter as now, shivering with cold, being allowed nothing to warm them but a few
ashes, which they carry about in an earthen vase,—you would pity them.”
This little story deeply interested Shelley, and P——
proposed that the poet and myself should pay the captive a visit in the parloir.
The next day, accompanied by the priest, we came in sight of the gloomy,
dark convent, whose ruinous and dilapidated condition told too plainly of confiscation and
poverty. It was situate in an unfrequented street in the suburbs, not far from the walls.
After passing through a gloomy portal, that led to a quadrangle, the area of which was
crowded with crosses, memorials of old monastic times, we were soon in the presence of
Emilia. The fair recluse reminded me (and
with her came the remembrance of Mephisto) of Margaret.
Time seemed to her To crawl with shackled feet, and at her window She stands, and watches the heavy clouds on clouds, Passing in multitudes o’er the old town-walls. And all the day, and half the night she sings, “Oh, would I were a Little bird!” At times She’s cheerful,—but the fit endures not long, For she is mostly sad,—then she’ll shed tears,— And after she has wept her sorrows out, She is as quiet as a child. |
Emilia was indeed lovely and interesting. Her profuse black hair, tied
in the most simple knot, after the manner of a Greek Muse in the Florence gallery,
displayed to its full height, her brow, fair as that of the marble of which I speak. She
was also of about the same height as the antique. Her features possessed a rare
faultlessness, and almost Grecian contour, the nose and forehead making a straight
line,—a style of face so rare, that I remember
Bartolini’s telling
Byron that he
had scarcely an instance of such
in the numerous casts of busts which
his studio contained. Her eyes had the sleepy voluptuousness, if not the colour of
Beatrice Cenci. They had indeed no definite
colour, changing with the changing feeling, to dark or light, as the soul animated them.
Her cheek was pale, too, as marble, owing to her confinement and want of air, or perhaps
“to thought.” There was a lark in the
parloir, that had lately been caught. “Poor
prisoner,” said she, looking at it compassionately, “you will die of
grief! How I pity thee! What must thou suffer, when thou hearest in the clouds, the
songs of thy parent birds, or some flocks of thy kind on the wing, in search of other
skies—of new fields—of new delights! But like me, thou wilt be forced to
remain here always—to wear out thy miserable existence here. Why can I not
release thee?”
Might not Shelley have taken from
this pathetic lamentation, his—
Poor captive bird I who from thy narrow cage, Pourest such music as might well assuage |
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to thy sweet melody? |
and the sequel,—
High spirit-winged heart! who dost for ever Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, * * Till thy panting,
wounded breast, Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest. |
Such was the impression of the only visit I paid Emilia; but I saw her some weeks after, at the end of a
Carnival, when she had obtained leave to visit Mrs.
Shelley, companioned by the abbess. In spite of the contessina’s
efforts to assume cheerfulness, one might see she was very, very sad; but she made no
complaint; she had grown use to suffering. It had become her element.
Mrs. Shelley and Shelley frequently went to the convent, to endeavour by their sympathy to
console the unhappy girl. Nor were they her only sympathizers: Lady Charlotte Bury’s daughters visited her also. Her condition was
much aggravated by there being no one within the convent whom she
could make a companion or confidante, for her fellow-prisoners were of a low class, and
such as a nobleman’s daughter could not associate with. Shelley
felt deeply the fate of poor
Emilia, frequently
wrote to her, and received from her in reply, bouquets of flowers, in return for one of
which he sent her the following exquisite
Madrigal.
Madonna! wherefore hast thou sent to me, Sweet basil, and mignionette, Embleming Love and Health, which never yet In the same wreath might be? Alas! and are they wet! Is it with thy kisses or thy tears? For never rain or dew Such fragrance drew From plant or flower—the very doubt endears My sadness ever new— The sighs I breathe—the tears I shed for you. |
In his correspondence, he says, “But Emilia is not merely beautiful, she has cultivated her mind beyond what
I have ever met with in
Italian women.” She was
well-read in the poets of her land, was made for love, had the purest and most sublime
conceptions of the masterpassion, and without having read the
Symposium of
Plato,
wrote the following Apostrophe to Love, which I have attempted to put into our runic
tongue, but which is but a pale reflex of the original.
IL VERO AMORE.
Amore, alma del mondo, amore sorgente di ogni buono, di ogni bello, che
sarebbe l’Universo se ad esso mancasse la tua face creatrice? Un orribile
deserto! allora, lungi da esso, anco la sola ombra è del buono e del bello, e
d’ogni felicità. Di quell’ amore Io, parlo che impossessandose di tutto
il nostro cuore, dell’ intiera volunta nostra, ci sublima, e e’inalza
al di sopra di ogni altro individuo dell’ istessa nostra specie, e tutto
energetico, tutto immenso, tutto puro, tutto divino, non ci ispira se non, se
azioni magnanime, e digne de sequaci di questo soave e omnipotente nume.
L’Amante no, non e confuso con gli uomini, non trascina l’anima sua, ma
la inalza, la spinge, e la corona di luce, all’ sorriso della
Divinita.
Esso doventa un essere sorprendente, e talvolta incomprehensibile.
L’Universo, il vasto Universo, non
piu capace a
racchiudere le sue idie, i suoi affeti, svanisce a suoi occhi. L’anima amante
sdegna essere ristretto, niente può retinerla. Essa si slancia fuori del creato, e
si crea nell’ infinito, un mondo, tutto per essa, diverso assai di questo
oscuro e pauroso Baratro, assorta di continuo in un estace dolcissima, e veramente
beata. Tutto cio che non ha rapporta all’ oggetto di sua tenerezza, tutto cio
che non e quell’ oggetto adorato, comparisce un piccolo punto a suoi occhi.
Ma dove e colui, suscettivole di tale amore? Dove? chi possa inspirarlo. Oh amore!
Io non sono che amore. Io non posso esistere senza amare. La mia anima, il mia
corpo, tutti i miei pensieri ed affetti, tutto cio che Io sono, si trasforma in un
solo sentimento di amore—e questo sentimento durera in eterno. Senza amare,
la vita mi divrebbe insupportabile, il mondo un inospito spaventoso e desolato
deserto, sparso soltanto di spettri, si terribili alla mia vista che per fuggerli,
io mi getterei nella misteriosa ma tranquilla magione di morte. Ah si, io
preferesco le dolce pene dell amore, i continui palpiti che lo accompagnano, il
timore di esso inseperable, ad una, per me stupida calma, ed a tutti i piaceri che
posson recare tutti le altre passioni sodisfatte, tutti i bene (si senza amore puo
essere alcun bene,) cheil mondo apprezza e de quali e avido.
Ma quanto tu seii profanato, O Amore! quali oltraggi fanno i figli della terra
al tuo nome divino. Sovente agli affetti i pui illeciti, alle azzioni le piu
vitu-
perose, al delitto (oh! attentato esecrando)
all’ istesso delitto se da il nome di amore, si osa dire che egli lo ha
cagionato. Ahi impi! sacrileghi! inaudita bestemmia! voi non che risenterlo, non
comprendete neppure cio che la parola amore significhi. Amore vuol di vertu, amore
ispira virtu, ed e la sorgente delle azioni le piu magneanime, della vera felicita.
Amore é un fuoco, che brucciando non distrugge, una mista di piacere e di pena, una
pena che porta piacere un’ Essenza eterna, spirituale, infinita, pura,
celestiale. Questo si e il vero, il solo amore, quell’ sentimento che
soltanto puo reimpire intieramente il vuoto dell’ anima, quell’ vuoto
orribile peggior della morte. Ogni altro sentimento da questo dissimile,
questo’ men puro, non merita il sacro nome di amore, e gli empi che lo
profanoro, e lo denigrano, saranno punite da questo potentissimo nume, et
meriteranno l’eterna perditione. Ove l’anima che e sensibile, che cerca
amore, si trova una volta nell’ abysso della desolazione, e ove il cuore sia
deserto di questo dolce fuoco, o trovi infidele l’oggetto di sua tenerezza,
questo anima miserabile cerchi, (almeno io gli il consiglio) cerchi almeno, il suo
refugio nella tomba, e si pascoli di esso, come dell’ ultima
consolazione!
THE TRUE LOVE.
Love! soul of the world! Love, the source of all that is good, of all that is lovely!
what would the
universe be, failing thy creative flame? A horrible
desert. But far from this, it is the sole shadow of all goodness, of all loveliness,
and of all felicity. Of that love I speak, that possessing itself of all our soul, of
our entire will, sublimes and raises one, above every other individual of the same
species; and all energetic, all pure, all divine, inspires none but actions that are
magnanimous, and worthy of the followers of that sweet and omnipotent deity. The lover!
no! he is not confounded with the herd of men, he does net degrade his soul, but
elevates, drives on, and crowns it with light at the smile of the divinity. He becomes
a supereminent being, and as such altogether incomprehensible. The universe—the
vast universe, no longer capable of bounding his ideas, his affections, vanishes from
before his sight. The soul of him who loves disdains restraint—nothing can
restrain it. It lances itself out of the created, and creates in the infinite a world
for itself, and for itself alone, how different from this obscure and fearful
den!—is in the continued enjoyment of the sweetest extacy, is truly happy. All
that has no relation to the object of its tenderness—all that is not that adored
object, appears an insignificant point to his eyes. But where is he, susceptible of
such love? Where? Who is capable of inspiring it? Oh love! I am all love. I cannot
exist without love! My soul—my mortal frame—all my thoughts and affections,
all that which I am, transfigures itself into
one sole sentiment
of love, and that sentiment will last eternally. Without Love, life would become to me
insupportable—the world an inhospitable and desolate desert, only haunted by
spectres, so terrible to my sight, that to fly from them, I could cast myself into the
mysterious but tranquil abode of death. Ah! yes! I prefer the sweet pains of love, the
continual throbbings that accompany, the fear inseparable from it, to a to me stupid
calm, and to all the pleasures that can supply the gratification of all other passions,
all the goods (if without love there can be any good) which the world prizes and
covets.
But how art thou profaned, O Love! what outrages do not the children of the earth commit
in thy name divine! Often and often to affections the most illicit, to actions the most
vile and degrading, to crime—ah! execrable iniquity! when even to crime itself
they give the name of Love, and dare to tax it with the commission of crime! Alas!
unheard-of blasphemy. Impious and sacrilegious that ye are, you not only feel it not,
but comprehend not even what the word Love signifies. Love has no wish but for
virtue—Love inspires virtue—Love is the source of actions the most
magnanimous, of true felicity—Love is a fire that burns and destroys not, a
mixture of pleasure and of pain a pain that brings pleasure, an essence eternal,
spiritual, infinite, pure, celestial. This is the true, the only Love,—that
sentiment which can alone entirely
fill up the void of the
soul—that horrible void, worse than death. Every other sentiment dissimilar from
this, than this less pure, deserves not the sacred name of Love; and they who impiously
profane and defile it, shall be punished by that most mighty of Divinities, and shall
merit eternal perdition. Where the soul that is feelingly alive seeks for love, and
finds itself in the abyss of desolation, and where the heart is divested of this sweet
fire, or finds faithless the object of its tenderness,—that miserable soul, let
it seek (at least I so counsel it), let it seek, I say, its refuge in the tomb, and
feed upon it as its last consolation.
This admirable piece of eloquence was perhaps the source of the
inspiration of the Epipsychidion,
a poem that combines the pathos of the “Vita
Nuova” of Dante with the enthusiastic
tenderness of Petrarch. The Epipsychidion is the apotheosis of love—Emilia a mere creature of his imagination, in whom he idealised Love in all
its intensity of passion. His feeling towards the Psyche herself, was, as may be seen by Letter LX. of his correspondence, a
purely Platonic one. He calls the Epipsychidion a mystery, and
says,
“as to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not
deal in those articles. Expect nothing human or earthly from me.” &c. His
love for Emilia, if such it can in the general acceptation of the term
be called, was of the kind described in the
Symposium by
Socrates, who defines it
“as a desire of generation in the Beautiful.” What is it but a
comment on the words of Socrates—“When any one
ascending from a correct system of love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he
already touches the consummation of his labour. For such as discipline themselves on
this system, or are conducted by another beginning to ascend through those transitory
objects that are beautiful, towards that which is Beauty itself, proceeding as on
steps, from the love of that form to two, and from that of two to all those forms that
are beautiful, and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits and institutions, and from
institutions to beautiful doctrines, until from the meditation of many doctrines, they
arrive at that which is nothing else than the doctrine of the Supreme Beauty itself
and in the contemplation of which at length they repose—no
longer unworthily and meanly enslaving themselves to the attractions of one form in
love, nor one subject of discipline and science,” &c. We thus better may
comprehend a passage, which taken literally may lead to false constructions.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light, Imagination, that from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sunlike arrow Of its reverberated lightnings. Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. |
And he goes on to say,—
Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good—misery from happiness— The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail from what is clear and must endure. |
In this doctrine he also developes his favourite doctrine of an antenatal
life, of which I have already spoken at some length.
O too late Beloved! O too soon adored by thee, For in the fields of Immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine; Or should have moved beside it on this earth, A shadow of that substance from its birth. |
Coleridge was, as I have said, his precursor in such
ideas, and a teacher of the Εν και ταν, the one and all—the all in one.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,— The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But amid clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. |
In accordance with these ideas, Shelley thought that to pass from one state of existence
to another, was not death, but a new development of life; that we must love as we live,
through all eternity; and that they who have not this persuasion, know nothing of life,
nothing of love; that they who do not make the universe a fountain whence they may
literally draw new life and love, know nothing of one or the other, and are not fated to
know anything of it. The words are not his, but they shadow out what I heard him better
express.
This poem, or
rhapsody, incomprehensible to the general class of readers, from a defect in the common
organ of perception, for the ideas of which it treats, fell dead from the press. I believe
that not a copy of it was sold, not a single review noticed it—One of the many proofs
that the public ear is deaf to the finest accords of the lyre.
But Emilia’s term of bondage
was about to expire; she was affianced to a man whom she had never seen, and who was
incapable of appreciating her talents or her virtues. She was about to be
removed from the scenes of her youth, the place of her birth, her
father on whom she doted, and to be buried in the Mahremma. The day of her wedding was
fixed, but a short respite took place for a reason mentioned in a letter of
Shelley to
Mrs.
Shelley (from Ravenna), where he says, “Have you heard anything of
my poor Emilia? from whom I got a letter the day of my departure,
saying that her marriage was deferred on account of the illness of her
sposo!” and in another letter he
expresses, what in the fragment of
Ginevra, too well typified the fate of that unfortunate lady, the poor
sacrificed Emilia,—his fears as to what she was destined to suffer. The sacrifice was
at length completed, and she was soon as much forgotten as if she had never
existed—though not by Shelley.
I am enabled to detail the consequences of this ill-starred union, to
finish her biography. Some years after, P——, who had several times during his feverish existence, been
reduced to abject poverty and distress, by his reckless
extravagance,
his rage for travelling, though his journies never extended beyond Leghorn on the one hand,
and Florence on the other, and where he used to indulge in all manner of excesses, and
which brought about the same result, the sequestration of his ecclesiastical preferment,
and imprisonment by his creditors till his debts were liquidated—made his appearance
at the capital of Tuscany, where I then was. He found at Florence a wider field for his
operations, and shewed himself a not less active and busy-bodied
Diavolo incarnato. He did not forget our old acquaintanceship at
Shelley’s, and haunted me like an unquiet
spirit. One day, when at my house, he said mysteriously,—“I will introduce
you to an old friend—come with me.” The coachman was ordered to drive
to a part of the city with which I was a stranger, and drew up at a country house in the
suburbs. The villa, which had once boasted considerable pretensions, was in great
disrepair. The court leading to it, overgrown with weeds, proved that it had been
for some years untenanted. An old woman led us through a number of
long passages and rooms, many of the windows in which were broken, and let in the cold
blasts from “the wind-swept Apennine;” and opening at length a door,
ushered us into a chamber, where a small bed and a couple of chairs formed the whole
furniture. The couch was covered with white gauze curtains, to exclude the gnats; behind
them was lying a female form. She immediately recognised me—was probably prepared for
my visit—and extended her thin hand to me in greeting. So changed that recumbent
figure, that I could scarcely recognise a trace of the once beautiful
Emilia. Shelley’s evil augury
had been fulfilled, she had found in her marriage all that he had predicted; for six years
she led a life of purgatory, and had at length broken the chain, with the consent of her
father; who had lent her this long disused and dilapidated
Campagne.
I might fill many a page by speaking of the tears she shed over the memory of
Shelley,—but enough—she did not long enjoy her freedom.
Shortly after this interview, she was confined to her bed; the seeds of malaria, which had
been sown in the Mahremma, combined with that all-irremidable malady, broken-heartedness,
brought on a rapid consumption.
And so she pined, and so she died forlorn. |
The old woman, who had been her nurse, made me a long narration of her last moments,
as she wept bitterly. I wept too, when I thought of
Shelley’s Psyche,
and his
Epipsychidion.