Test Bank for McKnight’s Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation, 11/E 11th Edition Darrel Hess

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2
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc.
3) Earth's "life zone" in the atmosphere extends from Earth's surface to an altitude of
approximately ________ kilometers.
A) 5
B) 50
C) 500
D) 5,000
E) 50,000
Answer: A
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.1 Geography and Science
Bloom's Taxonomy: A. Knowledge
Geog Standards: 4. The physical and human characteristics of places
Science Outcomes: 2. Demonstrate the ability to think critically and employ critical thinking
skills.
Learning Outcome: 1.1 Distinguish the key concerns for geographers who study the world.
4) Which of the following is NOT a topic of study in a physical geography course?
A) landforms
B) soil
C) climate
D) plants
E) capital cities
Answer: E
Diff: 2
Bloom's Taxonomy: C. Application
Geog Standards: 7. The physical processes that shape the patterns of earth's surface
skills.
5) Geography is ________.
A) a physical science
B) a social science
C) an art, not a science
D) much the same as geology
E) a combination of physical and social sciences
Answer: E
Diff: 2
Bloom's Taxonomy: D. Analysis
Geog Standards: 3. How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments
Science Outcomes: 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the principles of scientific inquiry.
Learning Outcome: 1.2 Analyze how geographers use science to explain and understand the
natural environment.

3
6) Geography has much to offer to the study of globalization because it ________.
A) is the best discipline
B) ignores science to focus on understanding
C) is not a narrow discipline
D) has a sharp focus on cultural affairs
E) is the most mathematical of disciplines
Answer: C
Diff: 2
Geog Standards: 18. How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future
Science Outcomes: 7. Demonstrate the ability to make connections across Geography.
7) In science, the term "theory" is ________.
A) a first guess
B) an unsupported hunch
C) revolution around Earth
D) not relevant
E) the highest order of understanding
Answer: E
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.1 The Process of Science
Bloom's Taxonomy: B. Comprehension
8) The acceptance of a theory or hypothesis is based on ________.
A) a preponderance of evidence
B) a hunch
C) a belief
D) the pronouncements of authorities
E) the Big Bang
Answer: A
Diff: 2

4
9) Which of the following is out of order in the ideal application of the scientific method?
A) observe a phenomenon that stimulates a question
B) design an experiment
C) observe the outcome of an experiment
D) formulate a rule
E) make a hypothesis
Answer: E
Diff: 3
Bloom's Taxonomy: F. Evaluation
Geog Standards: 3. How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments
10) The ________ is a basic unit of distance in the Système International (metric system).
A) mole
B) kilogram
C) ampere
D) degree Celsius
E) meter
Answer: E
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.1 Numbers and Measurement Systems
Geog Standards: 1. How to use maps
Science Outcomes: 4. Demonstrate the quantitative skills necessary to succeed in Introductory
Geography.
11) The ________ is a basic Système International (metric system) unit of mass.
A) ton
B) gram
C) ampere
D) mole
E) meter
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.1 Numbers and Measurement Systems
Geography.

5
12) The solid, inorganic portion of the Earth system is known as the ________.
A) Earth
B) lithosphere
C) hydrosphere
D) atmosphere
E) biosphere
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.2 Earth's Environmental Spheres
Learning Outcome: 1.3 Identify the four environmental spheres of Earth.
13) Which of the following subsystems includes all living things on Earth?
A) atmosphere
B) biosphere
C) hydrosphere
D) lithosphere
E) stratosphere
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.2 Earth's Environmental Spheres
Geog Standards: 8. The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems and biomes of
Earth's surface
skills.
Learning Outcome: 1.3 Identify the four environmental spheres of Earth.
14) The Sun is a star in the ________ galaxy.
A) Orion
B) Milky Way
C) Proxima Centauri
D) Alpha Centauri
E) Betelgeuse
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.3 The Solar System
Learning Outcome: 1.5 Describe Earth’s relationships within the solar system.

6
15) A nebula is ________.
A) a bright star
B) a black hole
C) a faded star
D) a cloud of gas and dust
E) none of the above
Answer: D
Diff: 1
skills.
16) The surfaces of the inner, terrestrial planets of our solar system are composed of ________.
A) gases
B) frozen water
C) frozen carbon dioxide
D) molten lava
E) mineral matter
Answer: E
Diff: 1
skills.
17) The Earth is one of ________ planets in the solar system.
A) four
B) eight
C) twenty
D) thirty six
E) over one hundred
Answer: B
Diff: 1
skills.

7
18) Pluto is now classified as a ________.
A) comet
B) moon
C) plutoid
D) meteorite
E) protostar
Answer: C
Diff: 1
skills.
19) Earth is ________.
A) one of the biggest planets
B) one of the largest planets
C) the smallest planet
D) one of the inner planets
E) one of the planets having the most gas
Answer: D
Diff: 1
skills.
20) The shape of the Milky Way is similar to a(n) ________.
A) circle
B) sphere
C) spiral-shaped disk
D) pancake
E) oblate spheroid
Answer: C
Diff: 1
skills.

8
21) ________ is considered a dwarf planet.
A) Earth
B) Venus
C) Neptune
D) Mars
E) Pluto
Answer: E
Diff: 1
skills.
22) Pluto was long thought to be a planet. New discoveries in the Kuiper Belt have changed its
official designation to ________.
A) asteroid
B) meteoroid
C) planetesimal
D) nebula
E) plutoid
Answer: E
Diff: 1
skills.
23) The Universe is thought to be on the order of ________ billion years old.
A) .37
B) 3.7
C) 13.7
D) 137
E) 1370
Answer: C
Diff: 2
skills.

9
24) The birth of the solar system occurred ________.
A) about 500 million years ago
B) about 5 billion years ago
C) about 40 billion years ago
D) about 500 billion years ago
E) about 5 million years ago
Answer: B
Diff: 2
skills.
25) The origin of the universe is incompletely understood and is called ________.
A) the "Big Bang"
B) Earth Day
C) the "nebula"
D) primordial solar system
E) the "worm hole"
Answer: A
Diff: 2
skills.
26) The Milky Way is one of, at least, ________ galaxies in the Universe.
A) two thousand
B) two hundred thousand
C) two million
D) two hundred billion
E) two trillion
Answer: D
Diff: 3
Geography.

10
27) The Milky Way is a galaxy some ________ light years in diameter.
A) 10
B) 100
C) 1,000
D) 10,000
E) 100,000
Answer: E
Diff: 3
skills.
28) The solar system's Jovian planets are most likely composed of ________.
A) gas
B) interstellar dust
C) granite
D) basalt
E) water
Answer: A
Diff: 3
29) The Moon is some ________ kilometers distant from Earth.
A) 3.85
B) 385
C) 3,850
D) 385,000
E) 38,500,000
Answer: D
Diff: 3

11
30) The size of the Universe is best described ________.
A) as 100,000 light years across
B) as small
C) in terms of the width of 5 galaxies across
D) as 1 astronomical unit across
E) as vast beyond comprehension
Answer: E
Diff: 3
skills.
31) The Milky Wave is one of over ________ galaxies in the universe.
A) one hundred
B) one thousand
C) one hundred thousand
D) one million
E) many billions
Answer: E
Diff: 3
skills.
32) After it was part of a nebula and before it was the Sun, our Sun was a ________.
A) star
B) galaxy
C) asteroid
D) comet
E) protostar
Answer: E
Diff: 3
skills.

12
33) Earth's diameter is ________ kilometers.
A) 13
B) 130
C) 1,300
D) 13,000
E) 130,000
Answer: D
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.3 The Size and Shape of Earth
Geography.
Learning Outcome: 1.6 Compare the size of Earth with the size of its surface features.
34) The first nearly correct measurement of the Earth's circumference was made by ________.
A) Newton
B) Einstein
C) Eratosthenes
D) Columbus
E) Plato
Answer: C
Diff: 1
35) The response to Earth's rotation is ________.
A) wind
B) polar flattening
C) equatorial flattening
D) Death Valley
E) Mt. Everest
Answer: B
Diff: 1
skills.

13
36) Eratosthenes was the first to accurately measure the Earth's ________.
A) radius
B) polarity
C) circumference
D) crust
E) hemisphere
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Science Outcomes: 5. Demonstrate an understanding of science on society.
37) The best description of the actual shape of the Earth is as a(n) ________.
A) circle
B) sphere
C) spheroid
D) oblate spheroid
E) centroid
Answer: D
Diff: 1
skills.
38) ________ is the deepest spot in the ocean.
A) The Hudson Canyon
B) The Grand Canyon
C) The Mariana Trench
D) The middle of the Atlantic Ocean
E) Just offshore of California
Answer: C
Diff: 1
skills.

14
39) The altitudinal difference (relief) between the top of the tallest mountain and the bottom of
the deepest ocean trench is ________ kilometers.
A) 20
B) 200
C) 2,000
D) 20,000
E) 200,000
Answer: A
Diff: 2
Geog Standards: 15. How physical systems affect human systems
Science Outcomes: 3. Read and interpret graphs and data.
40) A cross section of Earth cut from pole to pole would reveal which shape?
A) circle
B) parabola
C) sine curve
D) ellipse
E) crescent
Answer: D
Diff: 2
skills.
41) Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth and its altitude is CLOSEST to ________
meters.
A) 90
B) 900
C) 9,000
D) 90,000
E) 900,000
Answer: C
Diff: 2
skills.

15
42) The Earth's polar and equatorial diameters vary by ________ percent.
A) 0
B) 0.3
C) 7.5
D) 10
E) 27
Answer: B
Diff: 3
skills.
43) The line connecting the points of maximum flattening on Earth's surface is called the
________.
A) radius
B) Plane of the Ecliptic
C) Equator
D) Arctic Circle
E) axis
Answer: E
Diff: 3
skills.
44) A ________ separates Earth into two hemispheres.
A) solstice
B) great circle
C) small circle
D) perihelion
E) loxodrome
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.4 The Geographic Grid
Learning Outcome: 1.9 Locate a place given the latitude and longitude coordinates.

16
45) Our earthly grid system is also referred to as a ________ and consists of lines of latitude and
longitude.
A) gnomon
B) meridian
C) plane coordinate system
D) graticule
E) great circle system
Answer: D
Diff: 1
Learning Outcome: 1.10 Explain how latitude and longitude together identify a location on
Earth.
46) Of the following, which is a great circle?
A) Tropic of Capricorn
B) Tropic of Cancer
C) Equator
D) Arctic Circle
E) Antarctic Circle
Answer: C
Diff: 2
Learning Outcome: 1.7 Determine the latitude of a location on Earth.
47) Which of the following is also an entire great circle?
A) any line of latitude
B) any parallel
C) the Equator
D) any numbered meridian
E) the Prime Meridian
Answer: C
Diff: 2
skills.

17
48) Which of the following best describes the latitude and longitude of North America?
A) northern and southern hemispheres
B) eastern and western hemispheres
C) northern and eastern hemispheres
D) eastern and southern hemispheres
E) northern and western hemispheres
Answer: E
Diff: 3
49) Near the North Pole, one degree of latitude extends ________ kilometer(s) on the ground.
A) 1
B) 11
C) 111
D) 1,111
E) 11,111
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.4 Latitude
50) The 0° Meridian is the same line as the ________.
A) International Date Line
B) Equator
C) Perihelion
D) Prime Meridian
E) geographic grid
Answer: D
Diff: 1
Geog Standards: 5. That people create regions to interpret Earth's complexity
Learning Outcome: 1.14 Describe how time zones are used to establish actual times around the
world.

18
51) How many degrees of latitude are there between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of
Capricorn?
A) 0
B) 23.5
C) 47
D) 90
E) 180
Answer: C
Diff: 2
52) The highest numbered latitude used in the geographic grid is ________.
A) 90°
B) 100°
C) 180°
D) 360°
E) 365°
Answer: A
Diff: 2
53) In angular measurement, a minute contains ________ seconds.
A) 0
B) 10
C) 60
D) 360
E) 3,600
Answer: C
Diff: 2
Geography.

19
54) Which of the following distances is CLOSEST TO the actual distance associated with one
degree of latitude?
A) 1 km
B) 10 km
C) 100 km
D) 1,000 km
E) 10,000 km
Answer: C
Diff: 3
skills.
55) The Greenwich Meridian is also known as the ________.
A) Perihelion
B) Aphelion
C) Prime Meridian
D) Equator
E) Small Circle
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.4 Longitude
Learning Outcome: 1.13 Explain how time zones were established.
56) At the North Pole, one degree of longitude extends ________ kilometers on the ground.
A) 0
B) 10
C) 100
D) 1,000
E) 10,000
Answer: A
Diff: 1
skills.
Learning Outcome: 1.8 Determine the longitude of a location on Earth.

20
57) The graticule of the Earth is also known as ________.
A) a great circle
B) latitude and longitude
C) the perihelion
D) a standard time zone
E) analemma
Answer: B
Diff: 1
skills.
Earth.
58) The geographic grid line 180 degrees of longitude from the Prime Meridian is the ________.
A) Tropic of Cancer
B) 90th meridian
C) 180th meridian
D) 320th meridian
E) Tropic of Capricorn
Answer: C
Diff: 2
59) One degree of longitude equals 0 miles on the ground at the ________.
B) North Pole
C) Tropic of Cancer
D) Antarctic Circle
E) Arctic Circle
Answer: B
Diff: 2
skills.

21
60) At the Equator, one degree of latitude is approximately equal to ________.
A) one degree of longitude
B) 1,000 kilometers of longitude
C) a great circle
D) the Tropic of Cancer
E) one second of angular arc
Answer: A
Diff: 2
skills.
61) The "natural" baseline which serves as a baseline to measure longitude (such as the Equator,
which is used as a baselines for latitude) ________.
A) is the Prime Meridian
B) is the International Date Line
C) runs near London, England
D) is at the same latitude as the Equator
E) does not exist
Answer: E
Diff: 2
62) Which of the following is NOT contained within Earth's system of latitude and longitude?
A) a longitude of 5°W
B) a longitude of 185°E
C) a latitude of 0°
D) a longitude of 165°W
E) a latitude of 36°N
Answer: B
Diff: 2
skills.
Earth.

22
63) Numbered meridians ________.
A) are semicircles
B) are east-west lines
C) diverge as they near the poles
D) are the same thing as parallels
E) are numbered from 0-100 in three hemispheres
Answer: A
Diff: 3
64) Which of the following is NOT defined by latitude?
A) parallel
B) Arctic Circle
C) Antarctic Circle
D) North Pole
E) meridian
Answer: E
Diff: 3
skills.
65) The speed of Earth's rotation is closest to 1,600 kph at the ________.
A) poles
B) Equator
C) Tropic of Cancer
D) Antarctic Circle
E) middle latitudes
Answer: E
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.5 Earth Movements

23
66) The fact that at any time during the year, the Earth's axis is parallel to its orientation at all
other times is called its parallelism, or ________.
A) revolution
B) rotation
C) polarity
D) aphelion
E) perihelion
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Learning Outcome: 1.11 Summarize the factors that cause the annual change of seasons.
67) The closest position taken by the Earth relative to the Sun is ________ million kilometers.
A) 10
B) 47
C) 147
D) 1,470
E) 14,700
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Learning Outcome: 1.12 Describe the changes in the patterns of sunlight around Earth during
the year.
68) The Earth/Sun aphelion occurs once per year during the month of ________.
A) January
B) March
C) July
D) December
E) September
Answer: C
Diff: 1
the year.

24
69) The constant angle between Earth's axis and the Plane of the Ecliptic is called Earth's
________.
A) polarity
B) Mean Time
C) perihelion
D) aphelion
E) praxis
Answer: A
Diff: 1
70) The most important physical effect of the Earth's rotation is ________.
A) to cause continents to "drift"
B) seasonal change
C) the alternation of sunlight and darkness
D) Daylight Saving Time
E) the blue appearance of clear sky
Answer: C
Diff: 1
skills.
the year.
71) The Earth rotates about its ________.
A) great circle
B) revolution
C) inclination
D) axis
E) Equator
Answer: D
Diff: 1
skills.

25
72) The angular inclination of the Earth's axis with respect to a line perpendicular to the plane of
the ecliptic ________.
A) varies through the year
B) is 0°
C) is 23.5°
D) is 66.5°
E) is 90°
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Geography.
73) The perihelion is during the month of ________.
A) January
B) March
C) July
D) September
E) December
Answer: A
Diff: 1
the year.
74) Rotation of the Earth DOES NOT cause ________.
A) tides
B) Coriolis effect
C) local variations in temperature
D) day and night
E) seasons
Answer: E
Diff: 1
skills.
the year.

26
75) The cause of Earth's seasons is the ________.
A) varying output of the Sun
B) polarity of the axis
C) shape of the Earth
D) varying distance between Earth and Sun
E) cold experienced each wintertime
Answer: B
Diff: 1
skills.
76) The plane of the ecliptic is ________.
A) the same as the plane of the Equator
B) not important in physical geography
C) another way of describing the latitude of the vertical sun
D) the same thing as the Tropic of Cancer
E) at an angle from the plane of the Equator
Answer: E
Diff: 1
skills.
77) The shape of Earth's orbit around the Sun is a(n) ________.
A) ellipse
B) circle
C) spheroid
D) oblate spheroid
E) parabola
Answer: A
Diff: 1

27
78) The ________ is the name of the orbital plane on which the Earth revolves.
A) aphelion
B) perihelion
C) ecliptic
D) prime meridian
E) great circle
Answer: C
Diff: 1
skills.
79) The north end of Earth's axis points towards ________.
A) the Moon
B) Mars
C) Venus
D) Ork
E) Polaris
Answer: E
Diff: 2
80) What would happen to seasons if Earth's axis were to change to perpendicular to the Plane of
the Ecliptic?
A) Each season would become longer.
B) Each season would become shorter.
C) The perihelion would change seasons.
D) The aphelion would change seasons.
E) Seasons would end.
Answer: E
Diff: 2
skills.

28
81) Over how many degrees of latitude does the vertical sun migrate between the aphelion and
the perihelion?
A) 0
B) 23.5
C) 47
D) 94
E) 180
Answer: C
Diff: 2
82) When the circle of illumination just touches the Arctic Circle and the North Pole is dark, the
date is closest to ________.
A) March 23
B) June 21
C) September 23
D) December 21
E) July 4
Answer: D
Diff: 2
83) The distance of 150,000,000 kilometers is CLOSEST to being ________.
A) the aphelion
B) the perihelion
C) the circle of illumination
D) a light year
E) the average Earth/Sun distance
Answer: E
Diff: 2
skills.

29
84) At the time of the aphelion, Earth is ________ million kilometers from the Sun.
A) 5.2
B) 52
C) 152
D) 1,520
E) 15,200
Answer: C
Diff: 2
the year.
85) The amount of time the Earth takes to revolve around the Sun is most properly known as a(n)
________.
A) astronomical unit
B) season
C) tropical year
D) Earth sol
E) great circle period
Answer: C
Diff: 2
skills.
the year.
86) Earth rotates around its rotational axis. A plane at a right angle to and bisecting Earth's axis
is known as the ________.
A) North Pole
B) plane of the Ecliptic
C) plane of the Equator
D) plane of the meridian
E) Arctic Circle
Answer: C
Diff: 2
skills.

30
87) The Earth is 3.3 percent closer to the Sun during the Northern Hemisphere ________ than at
the time when it is farthest away.
A) Spring
B) Summer
C) Fall
D) Winter
E) Aphelion
Answer: D
Diff: 3
skills.
the year.
88) Which of the below takes the LONGEST time?
A) a rotation of the Earth
B) an hour
C) a solar day on Earth
D) a revolution of the Earth
E) They all take approximately the same time.
Answer: D
Diff: 3
skills.
the year.
89) The maximum distance between Earth and Sun occurs in July and is called the ________.
A) Coriolis
B) aphelion
C) sidereal
D) ecliptic
E) perihelion
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Topic/Section: 1.5 The Annual March of the Seasons

31
90) On June 21, the Sun's ray are directly over the ________.
A) Equator
B) Tropic of Cancer
C) Tropic of Capricorn
D) Arctic Circle
E) Plane of the Ecliptic
Answer: B
Diff: 1
skills.
91) When the Sun's rays are directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn, it is ________.
A) March 21
B) June 21
C) September 21
D) December 21
E) October 21
Answer: D
Diff: 1
skills.
92) The Sun's rays are directly overhead at the ________ on or about December 21.
B) Tropic of Cancer
C) Arctic Circle
D) Antarctic Circle
E) North Pole
Answer: A
Diff: 2
skills.

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Englishwoman to this too effusive Italian genius. She thought that
Emilia’s voice was over-loud, that her gestures, if expressive, were
wanting in grace, and that she was most agreeable when she held
her tongue—which was seldom. However, Mary was careful not to let
her real sentiments appear on the surface; on the contrary she
expressed for Emilia the warmest friendship.
Claire, more impressionable than Mary, fell, like Shelley, an
immediate victim to Emilia’s charms. While Mary took the prisoner
little presents, books, a gold chain, Claire, who was poor, offered the
only thing she could give, namely, lessons in English. Emilia accepted
with joy. An endless correspondence began between the convent
and Pisa, and it was nothing but “Dear Sister!” “Adored Mary!”
“Sensible Percy! . . . Caro fratello!” and even, in a mystic sense
needless to say, “Adorato sposo!” Strangely enough, “dear sister
Mary” sometimes showed a slight coldness. “But your husband tells
me that this apparent coldness is only the ashes which cover an
affectionate heart.”
The truth is, that Emilia was beginning to get on dear sister
Mary’s nerves, for Shelley was busy in raising round her one of those
aërial worlds into which he loved to escape. He was writing, in her
honour, a magnificent love-poem, which he intended to make as
mysterious as Dante’s Vita Nuova, or the Sonnets of Shakespeare.

“I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True love in this differs from gold and clay
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light
Imagination! . . .
Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates . . .
One object, and one form.”
He drew a picture of Emilia which was one long pæan to her
beauty:

“Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress
And her loose hair: and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind.”
“The brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June,
Amid the splendour of winged stars, the Moon
Burns inextinguishably beautiful.”
“Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate
Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Beloved! O too soon adored by me!”
“Emily
A ship is floating in the harbour now. . . .”
It was the most impassioned of invitations to set sail for some lovely
and impossible Elysian isle. There
“We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? . . .
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together. . . .
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One heaven, one hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love’s rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire——
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!”
Although Mary consoled herself by repeating that all these fine
phrases were addressed to the divine essence of Emilia and not a

very pretty girl with black eyes and black tresses, yet, at the same
time, it was vexing to see Shelley writing with such enthusiasm.
Happily, he was so engrossed by the ardour of composition that he
had no time to go and see the poem’s heroine. And while her
platonic lover multiplied his aërial metaphors, Emilia received from
the Count, her father, a cynical message. He had found a husband
who would take her without a penny, and he requested her to let
him know whether she accepted. The gentleman in question, a
certain Biondi, was not attractive, and he inhabited a distant castle,
surrounded by swamps. Emilia had never seen him, nor was she to
see him before the wedding-day. Such Turkish customs were
supremely disgusting, yet what could she do? The Elfin king, married
to a very real Mary, could not, evidently, free her from her dungeon.
Were she to marry Biondi, this might be perhaps the beginning of a
happier life. And if she didn’t like the man, she would meet others
she might like, for cavalieri sirventi are to be found even in the midst
of a swamp.
Shelley had not finished his poem before he learnt that Emilia
was married.
⁂
Six months later Mary wrote to a friend:
“Emilia has married Biondi; we hear that she leads him
and his mother—to use a vulgarism—a devil of a life. The
conclusion of our friendship, à la Italiana, puts me in mind
of a nursery rhyme which runs thus:

‘As I was going down Cranbourne Lane,
Cranbourne Lane was dirty,
And there I met a pretty maid
Who dropt to me a curtsy.
I gave her cakes, I gave her wine,
I gave her sugar-candy;
But oh! the little naughty girl,
She asked me for some brandy.’
“Now turn ‘Cranbourne Lane’ into Pisan acquaintances,
which I am sure are dirty enough, and ‘brandy’ into the
wherewithal to buy brandy, and you have the whole story
of Shelley’s Italian Platonics.”
And Shelley added: “I cannot look at my poem! The person
whom it celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno. . . . I think one is
always in love with something or other; the error—and I confess it is
not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it—consists in
seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.”

CHAPTER XXIX
THE CAVALIER’ SIRVENTE
During the early days which followed her departure from Venice,
Claire had received news of Allegra fairly often through the
Hoppners. The child suffered from the cold. She had become quiet
and grave as a little old woman. Mr. Hoppner thought it would be
better to remove her from Venice. But it was impossible to have a
conversation to any purpose with her father who was sinking deeper
and deeper into debauchery.
Some months went by without any news. Claire, very anxious,
wrote letter after letter to the Hoppners, who did not reply. Then she
learnt that a great change had taken place in Byron’s existence. It
had begun by his being seriously ill and obliged to keep his bed.
Hoppner, who came to chat with him, had told him that his love
affairs, far from scandalizing the Venetians any longer as he believed
and hoped, now merely amused the conversazioni at his expense.
He was spoken of as the prey of artful trollops who stole from him,
tricked him, and then made fun of him in their Venetian dialect. Don
Juan fell into a red-hot rage, and instantly all the priestesses of the
Palazzo Mocenigo were turned out of doors, and sent back, each to
her midden.
The moment he was well, he was seen again at the Venetian
receptions, which he had so long forsaken. Thus he met the beauty
of the season, a lovely blonde, seventeen years of age, just married
to a noble greybeard, the Count Guiccioli. The Pilgrim admired the
lady’s figure, her bust and arms in particular. The very first day he
slipped into her hand, as he took leave, a note which she adroitly
concealed. It was an assignation. She came. He who said he adored
her was a great Poet, young, handsome, highly born, and rich.
Though surrounded by all that makes life desirable, she instantly
gave herself to him without a struggle.

A few days later, the Count took his wife to Ravenna, and Teresa
begged Byron to go too. “The charmer forgets that a man may be
whistled anywhere before but that after—a journey in an Italian
June is a conscription, and therefore she should have been less
liberal in Venice, or less exigent at Ravenna.” The notion of romantic
and constant love was odious to him. He did not budge, and was
rather proud of his strength of mind.
From Ravenna she wrote again that she was very ill, and, where
an appeal to love had failed, an appeal to pity succeeded. Don Juan
set off, but not without stopping at Ferrara and other towns on the
way, to sample the local beauties. Although making a show of
indifference and even of boredom, he was very glad to join Teresa.
Intelligent women such as Lady Byron or Claire got on his nerves: he
had too great a contempt for the sex to ask from a mistress
intellectual companionship. The bakers’ wives and other wantons of
Venice were of a species too far below him. But the Countess
Guiccioli united a restful and affectionate stupidity with the elegance
of a well-born woman. She kept and held without too much trouble
this Everlasting Rover. Don Juan now played the part of a faithful
and devoted sick-nurse. “Were I to lose her,” he wrote, “I should lose
a being who has run great risks for my sake, and whom I have every
reason to love—but I must not think this possible. I do not know
what I should do were she to die, but I ought to blow my brains out,
and I hope that I should.”
When his conquering Conquest had to leave Ravenna for
Bologna, he followed. He had become the classic cicesbeo: “But I
can’t say I don’t feel the degradation of it. Better to be an unskilful
Planter, an awkward settler, better to be a hunter, or anything, than
a flatterer of fiddlers and fan carrier of a woman . . . and now I am
cavalier’ sirvente! By the holy! It’s a strange sensation.”
⁂
Claire was told all this story, and that Byron had sent orders for
Allegra to be brought to Bologna. The idea that her child was to live

in the house of Byron’s new mistress, who would have no reasons
for loving her and possibly some for hating her, terrified Claire. She
wrote a passionate letter asking to have her back. Byron replied:
“I disapprove so completely of the way children are
brought up in the Shelley household that I should think in
sending my daughter to you I was sending her into a
hospital. Is it not so? Have they reared one?—Either she
will go to England or I shall put her into a convent. But the
child shall not quit me again to perish of starvation and
green fruit, or be taught to believe that there is no Deity.”
On receiving this letter, Claire notes in her caustic way: “Letter
from Albé concerning green fruit and God”; but she wept over it too.
Allegra in a convent of Italian nuns, who have no notion of
cleanliness and no love for children, seemed to her a frightful idea.
She sent despairful, violent, almost insolent letters to Byron, who
wrote to complain of her to Shelley, and to inform him that for the
future he should refuse all correspondence with her.
“I have no conception,” Shelley answered, “of what
Claire’s letters to you contain, and but an imperfect one on
the subject of her correspondence with you at all. One or
two of her letters, but not lately, I have indeed seen; but as
I thought them extremely childish and absurd, and
requested her not to send them, and she afterwards told
me she had written and sent others in the place of them, I
cannot tell if those which I saw on that occasion were sent
you or not. I wonder, however, at your being provoked at
what Claire writes, though that she should write what is
provoking is very probable. You are conscious of performing
your duty to Allegra, and your refusal to allow her to visit
Claire at this distance you consider to be part of that duty.
That Claire should wish to see her is natural. That her
disappointment should vex her, and her vexation make her
write absurdly, is all in the usual order of things. But, poor

thing, she is very unhappy and in bad health, and she
ought to be treated with as much indulgence as possible.
The weak and the foolish are in this respect the kings—they
can do no wrong.”
⁂
He himself had need of a similar loftiness of soul, to rise above
the women’s quarrels which distracted his household. Mary grew
more and more short-tempered. Godwin overwhelmed her with
requests for money, to which Shelley had decided no longer to reply.
He had already given her father nearly five thousand pounds without
any results and had gained, at this high price, a chastened wisdom
and a painful knowledge of Godwin’s ugly soul. As the bitter
reproaches which the Philosopher now showered on Mary turned her
milk, Shelley informed him that for the future he would intercept and
suppress all letters likely to upset her: “Mary has not, nor ought she
to have, the disposal of money. If she had, poor thing, she would
give it all to you. Such a father—I mean a man of such high genius—
can be at no loss to find subjects on which to address such a
daughter. . . . I need not tell you that the neglecting entirely to write
to your daughter from the moment that nothing could be gained by
it, would admit of but one interpretation.”
Mary, worried about her father, Claire, worried about her child,
got terribly on each other’s nerves, and their common admiration for
the only man of the household was far more an obstacle to a good
understanding than a help. Mary did all she knew to make Claire
perceive she was unwanted, and once more Claire as before had to
recognize it. An old lady of the English colony found her a place as
governess in Florence, Shelley took her thither, and left her in the
family of Professor Bojti.
He wrote her long and loving letters, but though these were
quite innocent he did not show them to Mary, and he asked Claire
not to mention them when she wrote to her sister, although such a
want of frankness was little to his taste. His early conception of love

had been of a unity of ideas and actions so perfect that any
explanation was quite uncalled for between lovers. But life had
taught him that perfection is not to be had, and something short of
it must be accepted. There are certain persons for whom pure Truth
is a poison. Mary could not take it except in very diluted doses.

CHAPTER XXX
A SCANDALOUS LETTER
On the 16th September, 1820, R. B. Hoppner wrote from Venice
to Lord Byron:
“My dear Lord,
“. . . You are surprised, and with reason, at the change
of my opinion respecting Shiloh; it certainly is not that
which I once entertained of him; but if I disclose to you my
fearful secret, I trust, for his unfortunate wife’s sake, if not
out of regard to Mrs. Hoppner and me, that you will not let
the Shelleys know that we are acquainted with it. This
request you will find so reasonable that I am sure you will
comply with it, and I therefore proceed to divulge to you
what indeed on Allegra’s account it is necessary that you
should know, as it will fortify you in the good resolution you
have already taken never to trust her again to her mother’s
care.
“You must know then that at the time the Shelleys were
here Claire was with child by Shelley: you may remember to
have heard that she was constantly unwell, and under the
care of a Physician, and I am uncharitable enough to
believe that the quantity of medicine she then took was not
for the mere purpose of restoring her health. I perceive too
why she preferred remaining alone at Este, notwithstanding
her fear of ghosts and robbers, to being here with the
Shelleys.
“Be this as it may, they proceeded from here to Naples,
where one night Shelley was called up to see Claire who
was very ill. His wife, naturally, thought it very strange that
he should be sent for; but although she was not aware of
the nature of the connection between them she had had

sufficient proof of Shelley’s indifference, and of Claire’s
hatred for her: besides as Shelley desired her to remain
quiet she did not dare to interfere.
“A Mid-wife was sent for, and the worthy pair, who had
made no preparation for the reception of the unfortunate
being she was bringing into the world, bribed the woman to
carry it to the Pieta, where the child was taken half an hour
after its birth, being obliged likewise to purchase the
physician’s silence with a considerable sum. During all the
time of her confinement Mrs. Shelley, who expressed great
anxiety on her account, was not allowed to approach her,
and these beasts, instead of requiting her uneasiness on
Claire’s account by at least a few expressions of kindness,
have since increased in their hatred of her, behaving to her
in the most brutal manner, and Claire doing everything she
can to engage her husband to abandon her.
“Poor Mrs. Shelley, whatever suspicions she may
entertain of the nature of their connection, knows nothing
of their adventure at Naples, and as the knowledge of it
could only add to her misery, ’tis as well that she should
not. This account we had from Elise, who passed here this
summer with an English lady who spoke very highly of her.
She likewise told us that Claire does not scruple to tell Mrs.
Shelley that she wishes her dead, and to say to Shelley in
her presence that she wonders how he can live with such a
creature. . . .
“I think after this account you will no longer wonder
that I have a bad opinion of Shelley. His talents I
acknowledge, but I cannot concur that a man can be as
you say ‘crazy against morality’ and have honour. I have
heard of honour among thieves, but there it means only
interest, and though it may be to Shelley’s interest to cut as
respectable a figure as he can with the opinions he
publickly professes, it is clear to me that honour does not
direct any one of his actions.

“I fear my letter is written in a very incoherent style, but
as I really cannot bring myself to go over this disgusting
subject a second time; hope you will endeavour to
comprehend it as it stands. . . .
“Adieu, my dear Lord, Believe me, Ever your——faithful
Servant,
“R. B. Hoppner.”
Byron to Hoppner.
“My dear Hoppner,
“Your letters and papers came very safely, though
slowly, missing one post. The Shiloh story is true no doubt
though Elise is but a sort of Queen’s evidence. You
remember how eager she was to return to them, and then
she goes away and abuses them. Of the facts, however,
there can be little doubt; it is just like them. You may be
sure that I keep your counsel.
“Yours ever and truly,
“Byron.”

CHAPTER XXXI
LORD BYRON’S SILENCE
Shelley, invited by Lord Byron to come to Ravenna so that they
might discuss important matters, found the Pilgrim in brilliant fettle.
He looked in splendid health; for the reign of the Guiccioli had
rescued him from the degrading libertinage of Venice. Fletcher
himself had grown fatter, as the shadow increases in proportion with
the body which throws it.
The Palazzo Guiccioli was a splendid affair, the household
mounted on a royal scale. On the marble staircase Shelley met with
every kind of animal making himself at home. Eight enormous dogs,
three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a parrot, and a falcon quarrelled
together and made it up as it suited them. There were ten horses in
the stables.
Byron welcomed him with great friendliness, and the night was
passed in reading and discussing Byron’s poems. The new cantos of
Don Juan appeared admirable to Shelley. His contact with Byron’s
genius always reduced him to despair. Beside the solid structure of
Byron’s verse, his own seemed strangely fragile. He told Byron he
ought to write a poem which would be for his time what the Iliad
was for the Greeks. But Byron affected to despise posterity, and to
take no interest in poetry except at a thousand guineas the canto.
Once again Shelley, the Ascetic, was obliged to adapt himself to
the habits and customs of Byron the Magnificent. They got up at
mid-day, they breakfasted at two, and worked until six in the
evening. They rode from six to eight, dined, and spent the night
talking until six o’clock next morning.
Byron did not talk merely of poetry. From the very first day, and
with the most friendly air in the world, he posted Shelley up in the
scandalous stories circulating about him amongst the English in Italy.
In spite of having promised the Hoppners not to give them away, he

showed Shelley the letter containing the calumnies of Elise. He
declared, of course, that he had never given the smallest credence
to the ridiculous tale, but that the Hoppners should have been so
ready to believe it was to Shelley a heart-breaking blow. He wrote
immediately to Mary.
Shelley to Mary Shelley.
“Ravenna, Aug. 7, 1821.
“Lord Byron has told me of a circumstance that shocks
me exceedingly, because it exhibits a degree of desperate
and wicked malice, for which I am at a loss to account.
When I hear such things, my patience and my philosophy
are put to a severe proof, whilst I refrain from seeking out
some obscure hiding place, where the countenance of man
may never meet me more. It seems that Elise, actuated
either by some inconceivable malice for our dismissing her,
or bribed by my enemies, or making common cause with
her infamous husband, has persuaded the Hoppners of a
story so monstrous and incredible that they must have
been prone to believe any evil to have believed such
assertions upon such evidence. Mr. Hoppner wrote to Lord
Byron to state this story as the reason why he declined any
further communications with us, and why he advised him to
do the same. Elise says that Claire was my mistress; that is
very well, and so far there is nothing new; all the world has
heard so much, and people may believe or not believe as
they think good. She then proceeds to say that Claire was
with child by me; that I gave her most violent medicine to
procure abortion; that this not succeeding she was brought
to bed, and that I immediately tore the child from her and
sent it to the Foundling Hospital—I quote Mr. Hoppner’s
words—and this is stated to have taken place in the winter
after we left Este. In addition, she says that I treated you in
the most shameful manner; that I neglected and beat you,
and that Claire never let a day pass without offering you

insults of the most violent kind, in which she was abetted
by me.
“As to what Reviews and the world says, I do not care a
jot, but when persons who have known me are capable of
conceiving of me—not that I have fallen into a great error,
as would have been the living with Claire as my mistress—
but that I have committed such unutterable crimes as
destroying or abandoning a child, and that my own!
Imagine my despair of good!
“Imagine how it is possible that one of so weak and
sensitive a nature can run further the gauntlet through this
hellish society of men! You should write to the Hoppners a
letter refuting the charge, in case you believe, and know,
and can prove that it is false, stating the grounds and
proofs of your belief. I need not dictate what you should
say, nor, I hope, inspire you with warmth to rebut a charge
which you only can effectually rebut. If you will send the
letter to me here, I will forward it to the Hoppners.”
Mary Shelley to Shelley.
“My dear Shelley,
“Shocked beyond measure as I was, I instantly wrote
the enclosed. If the task be not too dreadful, pray copy it
for me. I cannot.
“Read that part of your letter which contains the
accusation. I tried, but I could not write it. I think I could
as soon have died. I send also Elise’s last letter: enclose it
or not as you think best.
“I wrote to you with far different feeling last night,
beloved friend. Our barque is indeed ‘tempest-tost,’ but love
me, as you have ever done, and God preserve my child to
me, and our enemies shall not be too much for us.
“Adieu, dearest! Take care of yourself—all yet is well.
The shock for me is over, and I now despise the slander;

but it must not pass uncontradicted. I sincerely thank Lord
Byron for his kind unbelief.
“P.S. Do not think me imprudent in mentioning Claire’s
illness at Naples. It is well to meet facts. They are as
cunning as wicked. I have read over my letter; it is written
in haste, but it were as well that the first burst of feeling
should be expressed.”
Mary Shelley to Mrs. Hoppner.
“Pisa, Aug. 10, 1821.
“After a silence of nearly two years, I address you again,
and most bitterly do I regret the occasion on which I now
write. . . .
“I write to defend him to whom I have the happiness to
be united, whom I love and esteem beyond all living
creatures, from the foulest calumnies; and to you I write
this, who were so kind, and to Mr. Hoppner, to both of
whom I indulged the pleasing idea that I have every reason
to feel gratitude. This is indeed a painful task. Shelley is at
present on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna, and I received
a letter from him to-day, containing accounts that make my
hand tremble so much that I can hardly hold the pen.
“He says Claire was Shelley’s mistress, that . . . Upon
my word, I solemnly assure you that I cannot write the
words. I send you a part of Shelley’s letter that you may
see what I am now about to refute, but I had rather die
than copy anything so vilely, so wickedly false, so beyond
all imagination fiendish.
“But that you should believe it! That my beloved Shelley
should stand thus slandered in your minds—he, the
gentlest and most humane of creatures—is more painful to
me than words can express. Need I say that the union
between my husband and myself has ever been
undisturbed? Love caused our first imprudence—love

which, improved by esteem, a perfect trust one in the
other, has increased daily and knows no bounds. . . .
“Those who know me well believe my simple word—it is
not long ago that my father said, in a letter to me, that he
had never known me utter a falsehood—but you, easy as
you have been to credit evil, who may be more deaf to
truth—to you I swear by all that I hold sacred upon heaven
and earth, by a vow which I should die to write if I affirmed
a falsehood—I swear by the life of my child, by my blessed
beloved child, that I know the accusation to be false. But I
have said enough to convince you, and you are not
convinced? Repair, I conjure you, the evil you have done by
retracting your confidence in one so vile as Elise, and by
writing to me that you now reject as false every
circumstance of her infamous tale.
“You were kind to us, and I will never forget it; now I
require justice. You must believe me, and do me, I
solemnly entreat you, the justice to confess that you do so.”
Shelley showed this letter to Byron and asked for the address of
Hoppner, but Byron begged to be allowed to send it himself.
“The Hoppners,” he said, “had extracted a promise from me not
to speak to you of this affair; in openly confessing that I have not
kept my promise I must observe some form. That is why I wish to
send the letter myself. My observations, besides, will give more
weight to it.”
Shelley readily consented and gave the letter to his host. Mary
never received an answer.
⁂
The important question that Byron wished to discuss with Shelley
was the fate of Allegra in case he—Byron—should leave Ravenna.
Countess Guiccioli wished to go to Switzerland; Byron, who preferred
Tuscany, begged Shelley to write to the Countess to describe life in

Florence and Pisa in such attractive fashion that she would agree to
go to one or the other.
Shelley had never seen his friend’s mistress, but he was so used
to be asked to intervene in the affairs of his acquaintance that he did
not hesitate to write the letter asked, and it was so vigorous that it
carried the day. It was suddenly decided that Byron and the
Countess should join the Shelleys at Pisa. As to Allegra, Byron
agreed to take her also. Claire not being there, he saw no reason for
not doing so.
Before leaving Ravenna, Shelley went to see the child at the
Convent of Bagna-Cavallo. He found her taller, but also more delicate
and paler. Her lovely black hair fell in curls over her shoulders. She
appeared in the midst of her companions as a being of a finer and
nobler race. A kind of contemplative seriousness seemed to overlie
her former vivacity.
She was shy at first, but Shelley having given her a gold chain
which he brought from Ravenna, she became more friendly. She led
him to the convent garden, running and skipping so quickly that he
could scarcely follow her; she showed him her little bed, her chair.
He asked her what he should say to her mama.
“Che mi manda un baccio e un bel vestituro.”
“E come voi il vestituro sia fatto?”
“Tutte di seta e d’oro.”
And to her father:
“Che venga farmi un visitino e che porta seco la mammina.”
A difficult message to transmit to her noble father.
The dominant trait of the child seemed to Shelley to be vanity.
Her education was defective, but she could recite a great many
prayers by heart, spoke of Paradise, dreamed of it, and knew long
lists of saints. This was the sort of training that Byron desired.

CHAPTER XXXII
MIRANDA
Great excitement such as travelling royalties always arouse
reigned in the Pisan circle at the expected arrival of the Pilgrim.
Mary, at Shelley’s request, had taken for him the Palazzo Lanfranchi,
stateliest on the Lung’ Arno. Helped by the Williamses, she had done
what she could to put this ancient palace in order. The vanguard
arrived in the persons of the Guiccioli and her father, Count Gamba;
the Shelleys gave them a cordial welcome. The Countess was an
agreeable surprise. “She is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent
Italian,” Shelley wrote, “who, if I know anything of human nature
and my Byron, will hereafter have plenty of opportunity to repent
her rashness.”
When Don Juan himself followed, all Pisa was at the windows to
see the English Devil and his menagerie. The procession was well
worth seeing; five carriages, six men-servants, nine horses, dogs,
monkeys, peacocks, and ibises, all in line. The Shelleys were a little
anxious as to what Byron would think of the palazzo, but fortunately
it pleased him. He said he liked these old places dating back to the
Middle Ages. In reality it dated to the sixteenth century, and was
said to have been built from designs by Michael Angelo, but the
noble lord always mixed up hopelessly architectural styles. The dark
and damp cellars in particular delighted him. He spoke of them as
dungeons and subterranean cells, and had cushions taken down so
that he might sleep there.
He became at once the social centre of the Pisan circle, while
Shelley remained its moral centre. Byron was visited from curiosity
and admiration; Shelley from sympathy. Shelley got up early and
read Goethe, Spinoza or Calderon until midday; then he was off to
the pine-woods, where he worked in solitude until evening. Byron
got up at midday and, after a light breakfast, went for a ride, or to

practise pistol-shooting. In the evening he visited the Guiccioli, and
coming home at eleven, would often work until two or three in the
morning. Then in a state of feverish cerebral excitement, he would
go to bed, sleep badly, and remain in bed half the following day.
The English in Pisa made a dead set at him. Even the most
Puritan amongst them could not be severe on an authentic lord who
brought to them on foreign soil so delightful an epitome of London’s
Vanity Fair. The pleasure he took in giving scandal, what was it but a
mark of orthodox respect? If indifference is justly considered an
offence, surely defiance must be accepted as a token of humility?
And was it not patent that he could not exist without going into
society, paying court to women, accepting dinners and returning
them? He met with the greatest indulgence. But when he tried to
win the same for Shelley, the resistance was thoroughly British. In
society Shelley was bored and did not hide it. In questions of
morality it was easy to guess that he put the Spirit before the Letter,
that he believed in Redemption rather than in Original Sin. Faith in
the perfectibility of man is naturally the most heinous of crimes,
since if believed in, it would force one to work for man’s
perfectibility. The mere smell of it makes society fly to arms for its
destruction. All “nice” women treated the Shelleys as pariahs and
outcasts.
Shelley laughed at this, preferring a thousand times the cool
fresh air of night to the hot and smoky atmosphere of card-rooms.
But Mary hankered to go everywhere. There was a certain Mrs.
Beauclerc, gayest of English ladies in Pisa, who gave balls, “being
afflicted,” as Byron said, “with a litter of seven daughters all at the
age when these animals are obliged to waltz for their livelihood.”
Mary’s fixed idea was to be invited to one of these balls. “Everybody
goes to them,” she said. Shelley, distressed, looked up at the sky,
“Everybody! Who is this mythical monster? Have you ever seen it,
Mary?”
To win the favour of “everybody” she even went to Church
Service, but the parson preached against Atheists, and kept looking
at her in such a marked manner that, in spite of her desire to
conform, her dignity as a wife prevented her from ever going again.

All these social worries, balls and dinner parties, seemed to
Shelley of an incredible vulgarity. When he was a boy of twenty, he
had judged fashionable life as criminal, now it appeared to him
contemptible, which was much more serious. To escape from Mary’s
absurd reproaches and regrets, he would take refuge with the
Williamses. There he found anew the harmonious and affectionate
atmosphere that was essential to him. Edward Williams had a gay,
generous nature in which there was nothing petty. Jane’s grace and
sweetness, the gentleness of her movements, the soothing beauty of
her voice, were as reposeful and pleasant as some delightful garden.
Perhaps in his youth she would have pleased Shelley less. Then he
dreamed always of heroic qualities in women, but to-day he asked
from them the gift of forgetfulness rather than courage and
strength.
Jane sang, and her voice carried him momentarily away from his
tragic memories, and the chilly rectitude of his home. Just as
formerly, when Harriet wounded him, and he read in Mary’s eyes all
the consolation they promised him, so now he contemplated in
Jane’s an image of the Antigone whom he had surely known and
loved in a previous existence.
But he no longer considered it necessary to destroy in order to
rebuild, to abandon Mary in order to fly with Jane. She was married
to a good fellow, whose friend he wished loyally to remain, and it
was necessary also to consider the feelings of Mary, poor unhappy
woman. He was in love with Jane, but it was an immaterial love,
without hope, and almost without desire.
She lent herself cleverly to the romantic business, would pass her
hand through his hair, smooth his forehead, try to cure his sadness
by her personal magnetism. She and her husband were as a
marvellous fountain of friendship, at which a poet, weary of
suffering, could cool his fever. Jane and Edward were Ferdinand and
Miranda, the splendid, princely couple, and Shelley was their faithful
Ariel. . . . Round the happy lovers flitted a captive and guardian
Spirit serving their will and doing his spiriting gently.
The Williamses had often spoken to Shelley of one of their
friends, Trelawny, an extraordinary man, corsair and pirate, who at

twenty-eight had already led a life of adventure all the world over,
on land as well as on sea. He now desired ardently to be admitted to
the Pisa circle, and he overwhelmed the Williamses with letters: “If I
come, shall I be able to know Shelley? Above all, shall I be able to
know Byron? Is it possible to approach him?”
Williams, in daily intercourse with the two Poets, no longer held
them in any awe, so he replied with a touch of impatience, “Of
course you will see them. Shelley is the simplest of men. . . . As to
Byron, that will depend entirely on yourself.”
Trelawny reached Pisa late one evening and went at once to the
Tre Palazzi on the Lung’ Arno where the Williamses and the Shelleys
lived on different stories under the same roof. He and the Williamses
were in animated conversation when he perceived in the passage
near the open door a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on his.
Jane going to the doorway laughingly said, “Come in, Shelley, it’s
only our friend Tre just arrived.”
Shelley glided in, blushing like a girl, and holding out his two
hands gave the sailor’s a warm pressure. Trelawny looked at him
with surprise. It was hard to believe that this flushed and artless
face could be that of the genius and rebel, reviled as a monster in
England, and whom the Lord Chancellor had deprived of his rights as
a father. Shelley, on his side, admired Trelawny’s bold, wild face,
raven-black moustache, handsome half-Arab type. Both of them
were so astounded they could find nothing to say. To relieve their
embarrassment Jane asked Shelley what book he had in his hand.
His face brightened and he answered briskly: “Calderon’s Magico
Prodigioso. I am translating some passages in it.”
“Oh, read it to us!”
Immediately Shelley, shoved off from the shore of commonplace
incidents that could not interest him, began to translate from the
open book, in so masterly a manner with such perfection of form
that Trelawny no longer doubted his identity.
A dead silence followed the reading. Trelawny looked up and
seeing no one asked, “Where is he?”
“Who?” said Jane. “Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit
no one knows when or where.”

The next day it was Shelley himself who took Trelawny to call on
Byron. Here the surroundings were very different. A large marble
hall, a giant staircase, powdered footmen and surly dogs. Trelawny,
like every one else, saw in Byron’s external appearance all the traits
with which imagination endows genius, but the great man’s
conversation struck him as commonplace. He seemed too to be
playing a part, and an out-of-date one—that of a rake-hell of the
Regency. He told stories about actors, boxers and hard-drinkers, and
of how he had swum the Hellespont. Of this exploit he was very
proud.
At three the horses were brought round. After riding for a couple
of hours, the party dismounted at a small podere, pistols were sent
for, a cane was stuck into the ground behind the house and a piece
of money placed in a slit at the top of the cane. Byron, Shelley and
Trelawny fired at fifteen paces, and their firing was pretty equal.
Each time the cane or the coin was hit by one or the other. Trelawny
was pleased to see that despite his feminine appearance, Shelley
could hold his own with men.
On the way back they talked poetry, and Trelawny cited a couplet
from Don Juan as an example of felicitous rhyming. Byron, won over,
brought his horse round to trot beside him.
“Confess now,” said he, “you expected to find me a Timon of
Athens or a Timur the Tartar, and you’re surprised to find a man of
the world—never in earnest—laughing at all things mundane?”
Then he muttered as to himself:
“The world is a bundle of hay,
Mankind are the asses who pull.”
⁂
Trelawny returned with Shelley and Mary. “How different Byron is
to anything one expects of him!” said he. “There’s no mystery about
him at all. On the contrary he talks too freely, and says things he

had much better not say. He seems as jealous and impulsive as a
woman, and maybe is more dangerous.”
“Mary,” said Shelley, “Trelawny has found out Byron already. How
stupid we were—how long it took us.”
“The reason is,” said Mary, “that Trelawny lives with the living,
and we live with the dead.”

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DISCIPLES
The sailor who had come to Pisa to admire two great men found
that it was he, on the contrary, who was admired by them. It is true
that when Trelawny was absent, Byron said of him: “If we could get
him to wash his hands and not to tell lies, we might make a
gentleman of him,” but when he was present Byron treated him with
the greatest respect. Like all artists, Byron and Shelley wrote in
order to console themselves for not living, and a man of action
appeared to these two men of dreams as a strange and enviable
phenomenon.
Shelley consulted Trelawny as to nautical terms, and drew with
him, on the sandy shores of the Arno, keels, sails, and sea-charts.
“I’ve missed my vocation,” said he. “I ought to have been a sailor.”
“A man who neither smokes nor swears can never be a sailor,”
Trelawny told him.
Byron, an imaginary corsair, would have liked to learn from a real
corsair the ways and customs of the brotherhood, and did his utmost
in Trelawny’s company to talk in cynical and bravado fashion.
Trelawny, quick to perceive his influence over Byron, tried to make
use of it in the service of Shelley.
“You know,” said he as they rode together one day, “that you
might help Shelley a good deal at small cost by a friendly word or
two in your next work, such as you have given to other writers of
much less merit.”
“All trades have their secrets,” Byron answered. “If we crack up a
popular author, he repays us in the same coin, capital and interest.
But Shelley! A bad investment. . . . Who reads the Snake? . . .
Besides, if he cast off the slough of his mystifying metaphysics, he
would want no puffing.”

“But why do your London friends treat him so cavalierly? They
rarely notice him when they meet him at your place. Yet he is as
well-born and bred as any of them. What are they afraid of?”
Byron smiled and whispered in Trelawny’s ear:
“Shelley is not a Christian.”
“Are they?”
“Ask them.”
“If I met the Devil at your table,” said Trelawny, “I should treat
him as a friend of yours.”
The Pilgrim looked at him keenly to see if there were a double
meaning, then moving his horse up nearer said in a low voice of
admirably acted fear and respect:
“The Devil is a Royal Personage.”
⁂
With the Williamses, Trelawny was more outspoken. The three of
them formed the chorus to the tragedy; knowing they were not
made for the chief parts, they took pleasure in commenting the
acting of those who were.
“One might imagine,” said Trelawny, “that Byron is jealous of
Shelley. Yet Murray is obliged to call on the police to protect his
premises every time he publishes a new canto of Childe Harold,
while poor Shelley hasn’t got ten readers. Byron has high birth,
riches, beauty, glory, love . . .”
“Yes,” Williams interrupted, “but Byron is the slave to his passions
and to any woman who is at all decided. Shelley in his nutshell of a
boat floats in mid-stream on the Arno, and refuses to let it carry him
away. His ideas are well-grounded, he holds a doctrine. Byron is
incapable of holding one for two consecutive hours. He is well aware
of this, and can’t forgive himself for it. You see it in the triumphant
tone in which he speaks of Shelley’s misfortunes.”
“Byron,” said Jane, “is a spoiled child, but neither he nor Shelley
understands men. Shelley loves them too much, and Byron not
enough.”

“What’s so terrible about Shelley,” said Trelawny, “is that he has
not the smallest instinct of self-preservation. . . . The other day
when I was diving in the Arno, he said he so much regretted not
being able to swim. ‘Try,’ said I. ‘Put yourself on your back, and you’ll
float to begin with.’
“He stripped and jumped in without the smallest hesitation. He
sank to the bottom and lay there like a conger-eel, not making the
least movement to save himself. He would have drowned if I had not
instantly fished him out.”
Jane sighed, knowing how much the thought of suicide haunted
Shelley’s mind. He often repeated that nearly every one he had
loved had died in this way.
“Yet he doesn’t seem unhappy?”
“No, because he lives in his dreams. But in real life don’t you
think he suffers from the impossibility of spreading his ideas, from
his books that don’t sell, from his unhappy home life? Death must
often appear to him like the awakening from a nightmare.”
“He believes in a future life,” said Trelawny. “Those who call him
an Atheist don’t know him. He has often told me that he thinks the
French philosophy of the eighteenth century false and pernicious.
Plato and Dante have overcome Diderot for him. All the same he
doesn’t regret his attitude towards established religion. . . . ‘Why,’ I
asked him, ‘do you call yourself an Atheist? It annihilates your
chances in this world.’ ‘It is a word of abuse,’ said he, ‘to stop
discussion, a painted Devil to frighten fools. I used it to express my
abhorrence of superstition. I took it up as a knight takes up a
gauntlet, in defiance of injustice. The delusions of Christianity are
fatal to genius and originality; they limit thought.’ ”
Thus spoke the chorus in unanimity, and did not perhaps
perceive that their adoration of Shelley fed and grew on his
misfortunes. We are more inclined to love that which we can pity
than that which we must admire. Man finds in the spectacle of
unmerited failure flattering arguments which explain his own ill-luck.
The blend of admiration and compassion is one of the surest recipes
for love. It would have needed much humility of mind for Williams

and Trelawny to have the same affection for the brilliant Byron that
they had for poor dear Shelley.
While the disciples discoursed in this fashion, the Master worked
in the pine-woods outside Pisa. There the sea-winds had thrown
down one of the pines, which now hung suspended over a deep pool
of glimmering water. Under the lee of the trunk, and nearly hidden,
sat the Poet like some wild thing, the way to his retreat pointed out
by quantities of scattered papers, covered with the scrawls of
unfinished poems.
When in his day-dreaming he forgot everything, even the dinner
hour, Mary and Trelawny would go off to find him. Tre had
constituted himself cavalier’ sirvente to the forsaken lady, and paid
her court in corsair fashion which she, in her honest woman-way,
found very amusing.
The loose sand and hot sun soon knocked her up. She sat down
under the cool canopy of the pines and Trelawny continued the Poet-
chase alone. He found him at last, but so absorbed by some inner
vision, that to avoid startling him, Trelawny drew his attention first
by the crackling of the pine-needles. He picked up an Æschylus, a
Shakespeare, then a scribbled paper: “To Jane with a guitar”: but he
could only make out the two first lines:
“Ariel to Miranda. Take
This slave of music. . . .”
He hailed him, and Shelley, turning his head, answered faintly,
“Hello! Come in.”
“Is this your study?” Trelawny asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “and these trees are my books—they tell no
lies. In composing, one’s faculties must not be divided: in a house
there is no solitude: a door shutting, a footstep heard, a bell ringing,
a voice, causes an echo in your brain, and dissolves your visions.
“Here you have the river rushing by you, the birds chattering . . .
“The river flows by like Time, and all the sounds of Nature
harmonize. . . . It is only the human animal that is discordant and

disturbs me. Oh, how difficult it is to know why we are here, a
perpetual torment to ourselves and to every living thing!”
Trelawny interrupted to tell him that his wife was waiting for him
at the edge of the wood. He started up, snatched up his scattered
books and papers and thrust them into his hat and jacket pockets,
sighing, “Poor Mary! hers is a sad fate. She can’t bear solitude, nor I
society—the quick coupled with the dead.”
He began to proffer excuses to her, but she, either to hide her
emotions or form a Godwinesque lack of any, began in a bantering
tone: “What a wild goose you are, Percy! If my thoughts have
strayed from my book, it was to the Opera, and my new dress from
Florence, and especially to the ivy wreath so much admired for my
hair, and not to you, you silly fellow! When I left home my satin
slippers had not arrived. These are serious matters. . . .”
But in Mary’s pleasantries there was always a note which rang
false.

CHAPTER XXXIV
II SAMUEL XII. 23
Byron, after promising Shelley to bring Allegra to Pisa, arrived
without her, and Claire, who had come expressly from Florence to
wait about the city in the hopes of seeing the child, was horribly
alarmed on learning she had been left in the convent of Bagna-
Cavallo. Her Italian friends gave her a sinister description of this
convent, set down in the middle of the marshes of the Romagna,
and in the most unhealthy climate. The nuns—Capucins—ignored
hygiene, fed the children disgracefully, and did not warm them at all.
Claire could not see a fire without thinking of her poor little darling
who never saw or felt a cheerful blaze.
This high-spirited young woman was brought, through maternal
anguish, to an abnegation that was sublime. She wrote to Byron that
she would renounce ever seeing Allegra again so long as she lived, if
he would consent to put her in a good English School. “I can no
longer resist,” she said, “the internal inexplicable feeling which
haunts me that I shall never see her any more.”
Byron made no reply. There was some talk amongst Claire’s
friends of rescuing Allegra by stratagem, but Shelley begged her to
have patience. While agreeing with her as to Byron’s cruelty, he
disapproved of thoughtless violence. . . . “Lord Byron is inflexible
and you are in his power. Remember, Claire, when you rejected my
earnest advice, and checked me with that contempt which I had
never merited from you at Milan and how vain is now your regret!
This is the second of my sibylline volumes. If you wait for the third,
it may be sold at a still higher price.”
He called upon Byron to plead Claire’s cause, but the moment
Byron heard her name he gave an impatient shrug of the shoulders.
“Oh, women can’t exist without making scenes!” Shelley told him
what Claire had heard about the unsuitability of the convent. “What

do I know about it?” he said. “I have never been there.” Then, when
Claire’s anguish and her fears were described to him, a smile of
malicious satisfaction passed over his face.
“I had difficulty in restraining myself from knocking him down,”
said Shelley afterwards at Lady Mountcashell’s. “I was furious but I
was wrong. He can no more help being what he is than that door
can help being a door.”
But old Mr. Tighe told him, “You are quite wrong in your fatalism.
If I were to horsewhip that door it would still remain a door, but if
Lord Byron were well horsewhipped my opinion is he would become
as humane as he is now inhumane. It’s the subserviency of his
friends that makes him the insolent tyrant he is.”
On hearing of Shelley’s failure, Claire fell into such despair that
Mary and Shelley would not allow her to return to Florence alone
amongst strangers. They were going to spend the summer at the
sea with the Williamses and they invited her to go with them.
Shelley looked forward with eagerness to this plan. Williams and
he had consulted Trelawny about a boat, and he was having one
built for them at Genoa by Captain Roberts, a friend of his. They had
already christened her the Don Juan in honour of Byron, who had
also commissioned Roberts to build him a schooner with a covered-
in deck; the Bolivar.
Shelley and Williams saw themselves masters of the
Mediterranean. Their wives were less enthusiastic. While the two
young men drew charts of the bay upon the sand, Mary and Jane
walked together, philosophized, and picked violets by the road-side.
“I hate this boat!” said Mary.
“So do I,” Jane agreed. “But it’s no use saying anything, it would
do no good and merely spoil their pleasure.”
So as to put their projects into action, two houses were
necessary at the seaside. They thought of the Bay of Spezzia.
Shelley and Williams hunted for these houses along its shores in
vain. Lord Byron, who wished to join them, must have a palazzo, but
he was obliged to give up the idea at once, since even two
fishermen’s houses were not to be had. Williams and his wife

determined to make one last search; to distract Claire from her
troubles they took her with them.
They had left Pisa but a few hours when Lord Byron wrote to
Shelley that he had received bad news of Allegra. An epidemic of
typhus had broken out in the Romagna. The nuns had taken no
preventative measures. The child, already weak and tired, had
caught the fever. She was dead. “I do not know,” he added, “that I
have anything to reproach in my conduct and certainly nothing in my
feelings and intentions towards the dead. But it is a moment when
we are apt to think that, if this or that had been done such events
might have been prevented—though every day and hour shows us
that they are the most natural and inevitable. I suppose that Time
will do his usual work—Death has done his.”
The Shelleys went to call on him. He was paler than usual, but as
calm as ever.
Two days later the Williamses and Claire came back from their
expedition. Shelley, fearing some act of violence on her part if she
were told of her misfortune while in Byron’s neighbourhood, resolved
to say nothing to her so long as they remained in Pisa.
Williams had not found the two furnished houses he sought.
Along the entire coast there was but one house to let, a big
unfurnished and abandoned building known as the Casa Magni at
Lerici, with a veranda facing the sea and almost over it.
Shelley, who desired above all things to get Claire out of Pisa,
decided to take the Casa Magni. The two households must live
together. Inconvenient? That didn’t matter. No furniture? Furniture
could be sent from Pisa. When Shelley was really determined on a
thing, nothing could resist him. “I go forward,” said he, “until I am
stopped. But nothing ever does stop me.”
The Custom House officials, the boatmen, raised scores of
difficulties. Shelley brushed them aside by the sheer force of a will-
power that takes no notice of the outside world, and in a few days
the two families were settled in at the seaside.
⁂

Casa Magni has been a Jesuit convent. It was a white house
standing almost in the sea, and backing against a forest. A terrace,
supported on arches, overhung the superb Bay of Spezzia. The
ground floor was unpaved and uninhabitable, being reached by the
waves when the sea was rough. It was used simply for storing boat-
gear and fishing tackle. The single storey over this was divided into
a large hall or saloon, and four small bedrooms which opened from
it: two for Shelley and Mary, one for the Williamses and one for
Claire. The accommodation was scanty, and the first evening
depressing. Down below the waves beat against the rocks with a
mournful persistency. The Williamses and Shelleys could think of
nothing but Claire, and she, with no idea of the dreadful truth,
imagined they were annoyed at having her there with them in a
house which was obviously too small. She said so, and offered to go
back to Florence. Every one cried out against this. Jane whispered
something to Mary, and the two withdrew to the Williamses’ room.
Shelley joined them. Claire went towards the room after a moment
or two: she found them in eager conversation which instantly ceased
as they saw her. Then before a single word had been uttered, she
said:
“Allegra is dead?”
The next day she wrote Byron a terrible letter, which he returned
to Shelley complaining of Claire’s harshness towards him, and
begging Shelley to let her know he would allow her to make any
arrangements she liked for the burial of their child.
She replied with a sombre irony that for the future she left
everything to him, and that all she asked was a portrait of Allegra
and a piece of her hair. Byron became surprisingly pliable, sent
almost at once a very pretty miniature and a dark curl. Claire took
leave of her friends at Casa Magni, and went back to Florence to live
amongst strangers, who, knowing nothing of her grief, could do
nothing to revive it.
Byron decided to have his daughter buried in England, in the
church of Harrow-on-the-Hill, where he had been at school, and to

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