The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori

Went to the house beyond Cologny that belonged to Diodati. They ask five-and-twenty louis for it a month. Narrow, not true. The view from his house is very fine; beautiful lake; at the bottom of the crescent is Geneva. Returned. Pictet called, but L[ord] B[yron] said "not at home."

[There were two Genevan Pictets at this date, both public men of some mark. One was Jean Marc Jules Pictet de Sergy, 1768 to 1828; the other, the Chevalier Marc Auguste Pictet, 1752 to 1825. As Polidori speaks farther on of Pictet as being aged about forty-six, the former would appear to be meant. He had been in Napoleon's legislative chamber from 1800 to 1815, and was afterwards a member of the representative council of Geneva.—The Villa Diodati was the house where Milton, in 1639, had visited Dr. John Diodati, a Genevese Professor of Theology. Polidori's compact phrase, "narrow, not true," is by no means clear; perhaps he means that some one had warned him that the Villa Diodati (called also the Villa Belle Rive) was inconveniently narrow, but, on inspecting the premises, he found the statement incorrect.]

May 27.—Got up; went about a boat; got one for 3 fr. a day; rowed to Sécheron. Breakfasted. Got into a carriage. Went to Banker's, who changed our money, and afterwards left his card. To Pictet—not at home. Home, and looked at accounts: bad temper on my side. Went into the boat, rowed across to Diodati; cannot have it for three years; English family. Crossed again; I went; L[ord] B[yron] back. Getting out, L[ord] B[yron] met M[ary] Wollstonecraft Godwin, her sister, and Percy Shelley. I got into the boat into the middle of Leman Lake, and there lay my length, letting the boat go its way.

[Here I find it difficult to understand the phrase—"Cannot have it (Villa Diodati) for three years—English family." It must apparently mean either that an English family were occupying or had bespoken Villa Diodati, and would remain there for three years to come (which is in conflict with the fact that Byron soon afterwards became the tenant); or else that Byron thought of renting it for a term as long as three years, which was barred by the previous claim of some English family. On the whole, the latter supposition seems to me the more feasible; but one is surprised to think that Byron had any—even remote—idea of remaining near Geneva for any such great length of time. This sets one's mind speculating about Miss Clairmont, with whom (as is well known) Byron's amour had begun before he left London, and who had now just arrived to join him at Sécheron; had he at this time any notion of settling down with her in the neighbourhood for three years, more or less? It is a curious point to consider for us who know how rapidly he discarded her, and how harshly he treated her ever afterwards. Miss Clairmont, we see, was now already on the spot, along with Percy and Mary Shelley; in fact, as we learn from other sources, they had arrived at Sécheron, Dejean's Hôtel de l'Angleterre, as far back as May 18, or perhaps May 15—and Byron now for the first time encountered the three. It appears that he must have met Mary Godwin in London, probably only once—not to speak of Clare. Shelley, to the best of our information, he had never till now seen at all. Polidori here terms Clare Clairmont the "sister" of "M. Wollstonecraft Godwin"; and in the entry for May 29 he even applies the name Wollstonecraft Godwin to Clare; and it will be found as we proceed that for some little while he really supposed the two ladies to be sisters in the right sense of the term, both of them bearing the surname of Godwin. In point of fact, there was no blood-relationship—Mary being the daughter of Mr. and the first Mrs. Godwin, and Clare the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clairmont. It may be as well to add that the letters addressed by Miss Clairmont to Byron, before they actually met in London, have now (1904) been published in The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, vol. iii, pp. 429-437; and they certainly exhibit a degree of forwardness and importunity which accounts in some measure for his eventual antipathy to her.]

Found letter from De Roche inviting me to breakfast to-morrow; curious with regard to L[ord] B[yron]. Dined; P[ercy] S[helley], the author of Queen Mab, came; bashful, shy, consumptive; twenty-six; separated from his wife; keeps the two daughters of Godwin, who practise his theories; one L[ord] B[yron]'s.

[This is a very noticeable jotting. Shelley appears to have come in alone on this occasion, and we may infer that some very confidential talk ensued between him and Byron, in the presence of Polidori. He was not at this date really twenty-six years of age, but only twenty-three. "Bashful, shy," is an amusingly simple description of him. As to "consumptive," we know that Shelley left England under the impression that consumption had him in its grip, but this hardly appears to have been truly the case. Polidori, as a medical man, might have been expected to express some doubt on the subject, unless the poet's outward appearance looked consumptive. Next we hear that Shelley "keeps the two daughters of Godwin, who practise his theories"—i.e. set the marriage-laws at defiance, or act upon the principle of free love. One might suppose, from this phrase, that Polidori believed Shelley to be the accepted lover of Miss Clairmont as well as of Mary Godwin; but the addition of those very significant words—"One, Lord Byron's"—tells in the opposite direction. These words can only mean (what was the fact) that one of these ladies, viz. Miss Clairmont, was Lord Byron's mistress. Therefore Polidori, in saying that Shelley "kept the two daughters of Godwin," may presumably have meant that he housed and maintained Clare, while he was the quasi-husband of Mary. Whether Polidori now for the first time learned, from the conversation of Byron and Shelley, what was the relation subsisting between Clare and Byron, or whether Byron had at some earlier date imparted the facts to him, is a question which must remain unsolved. The latter appears to me extremely probable; for Byron had certainly arranged to meet Clare near Geneva, and he may very likely have given the requisite notice beforehand to his travelling physician and daily associate. My aunt Charlotte Polidori was not an adept in Shelleian detail: if she had been, I fear that these sentences would have shocked her sense of propriety, and they would have been left uncopied. They form the only passage in her transcript which bears in any way upon the amour between Lord Byron and Miss Clairmont; to the best of my recollection and belief there was not in the original Diary any other passage pointing in the same direction.—I may observe here that there is nothing in Polidori's Journal to show that the Shelley party were staying in the same Sécheron hotel with Lord Byron. Professor Dowden says that they were—I suppose with some sufficient authority; and I think other biographers in general have assumed the same.]

Into the calèche; horloger's at Geneva; L[ord] B[yron] paid 15 nap. towards a watch; I, 13: repeater and minute-hand; foolish watch.

[This means (as one of Polidori's letters shows) that Byron made him a present of £15 towards the price of the watch.]

Went to see the house of Madame Necker, 100 a half-year; came home, etc.

May 28.—Went to Geneva, to breakfast with Dr. De Roche; acute, sensible, a listener to himself; good clear head. Told me that armies on their march induce a fever (by their accumulation of animal dirt, irregular regimen) of the most malignant typhoid kind; it is epidemic. There was a whole feverish line from Moscow to Metz, and it spread at Geneva the only almost epidemic typhus for many years. He is occupied in the erection of Lancaster schools, which he says succeed well. He is a Louis Bourbonist. He told me my fever was not an uncommon one among travellers. He came home with me, and we had a chat with L[ord] B[yron]; chiefly politics, where of course we differed. He had a system well worked out, but I hope only hypothetical, about liberty of the French being Machiavellianly not desirable by Europe. He pointed out Dumont in the court, the rédacteur of Bentham.

Found a letter from Necker to the hotel-master, asking 100 nap. for three months; and another from Pictet inviting L[ord] B[yron] and any friend to go with him at 8 to Madame Einard, a connection of his. We then, ascending our car, went to see some other houses, none suiting.

When we returned home, Mr. Percy Shelley came in to ask us to dinner; declined; engaged for tomorrow. We walked with him, and got into his boat, though the wind raised a little sea upon the lake. Dined at four. Mr. Hentsch, the banker, came in; very polite; told L[ord] B[yron] that, when he saw him yesterday, he had not an idea that he was speaking to one of the most famous lords of England.

Dressed and went to Pictet's: an oldish man, about forty-six, tall, well-looking, speaks English well. His daughter showed us a picture, by a young female artist, of Madame Lavallière in the chapel; well executed in pencil—good lights and a lusciously grieving expression.

Went to Madame Einard. Introduced to a room where about 8 (afterwards 20), 2 ladies (1 more). L[ord] B[yron]'s name was alone mentioned; mine, like a star in the halo of the moon, invisible. L[ord] B[yron] not speaking French, M. Einard spoke bad Italian. A Signor Rossi came in, who had joined Murat at Bologna. Manly in thought; admired Dante as a poet more than Ariosto, and a discussion about manliness in a language. Told me Geneva women amazingly chaste even in thoughts. Saw the Lavallière artist. A bonny, rosy, seventy-yeared man, called Bonstetten, the beloved of Gray and the correspondent of Mathison.

[I find "40" in the MS.: apparently it ought to be "70," for Bonstetten was born in 1745. He lived on till 1832. Charles Victor de Bonstetten was a Bernese nobleman who had gone through various vicissitudes of opinion and adventure, travelling in England and elsewhere. To Englishmen (as indicated in Polidori's remark) he is best known as a friend of the poet Thomas Gray, whom he met in 1769. He said: "Jamais je n'ai vu personne qui donnât autant que Gray l'idée d'un gentleman accompli." Among the chief writings of Bonstetten are Recherches sur la Nature et les Lois de l'Imagination; Etudes d'Hommes; L'Homme du Midi et l'Homme du Nord.]

Madame Einard made tea, and left all to take sugar with the fingers. Madame Einard showed some historical pieces of her doing in acquerella, really good, a little too French-gracish. Obliged to leave before ten for the gates shut. Came home, went to bed.

Was introduced by Shelley to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, called here Mrs. Shelley. Saw picture by Madame Einard of a cave in the Jura where in winter there is no ice, in summer plenty. No names announced, no ceremony—each speaks to whom he pleases. Saw the bust of Jean Jacques erected upon the spot where the Geneva magistrates were shot. L[ord] B[yron] said it was probably built of some of the stones with which they pelted him.8 The walk is deserted. They are now mending their roads. Formerly they could not, because the municipal money always went to the public box.

May 29.—Went with Mr. Hentsch to see some houses along the valley in which runs the Rhone: nothing. Dined with Mr. and Mrs. Percy Shelley and Wollstonecraft Godwin. Hentsch told us that the English last year exported corn to Italy to a great amount.

May 30.—Got up late. Went to Mr. and Mrs. Shelley; breakfasted with them; rowed out to see a house together. S[helley] went from Lucerne with the two, with merely £26, to England along the Rhine in bateaux. Gone through much misery, thinking he was dying; married a girl for the mere sake of letting her have the jointure that would accrue to her; recovered; found he could not agree; separated; paid Godwin's debts, and seduced his daughter; then wondered that he would not see him. The sister left the father to go with the other. Got a child. All clever, and no meretricious appearance. He is very clever; the more I read his Queen Mab, the more beauties I find. Published at fourteen a novel; got £30 for it; by his second work £100. Mab not published.—Went in calèche with L[ord] B[yron] to see a house; again after dinner to leave cards; then on lake with L[ord] B[yron]. I, Mrs. S[helley], and Miss G[odwin], on to the lake till nine. Drank tea, and came away at 11 after confabbing. The batelier went to Shelley, and asked him as a favour not to tell L[ord] B[yron] what he gave for his boat, as he thought it quite fit that Milord's payment be double; we sent Berger to say we did not wish for the boat.

[The statement that "Shelley went from Lucerne with the two, with merely £26, to England, along the Rhine in bateaux," refers of course to what had taken place in 1814, on the occasion of Shelley's elopement with Mary Godwin, and has no bearing on the transactions of 1816; it must be cited by Polidori as showing how inexpensively three persons could, if so minded, travel from Switzerland to England. The other references to Shelley's domestic affairs etc. are very curious. Except as to his own personal admiration for Queen Mab, Polidori is here evidently putting down (but not in the words of Shelley himself, who would assuredly not have said that he had "seduced" Mary Godwin) such details as the poet imparted to him. They are far from accurate. To some extent, Polidori may have remembered imperfectly what Shelley told him, but I think the latter must have been responsible for most of the fables; and generally it would appear that Shelley gave free rein to his inclination for romancing or for over-stating matters, possibly perceiving that Polidori was credulous, and capable of swallowing whatever he was told, the more eccentric the better. To say that Shelley, before he, at the age of barely 19, married Harriet Westbrook in 1811, thought that he was dying, and that his only practical motive for marrying her was that she might come in for a jointure after his decease, is no doubt highly fallacious, and even absurd. We have other sources of information as to these occurrences, especially the letters of Shelley addressed at the time to Jefferson Hogg, and they tell a very different tale. As to his reason for separating from Harriet, Shelley, we perceive, simply told Polidori that he "found he could not agree" with her; he said nothing as to his knowing or supposing that she had been unfaithful to him. Again, Shelley was not so boyish as 14 when he published a novel—his first novel, the egregious Zastrozzi; the publication took place in 1810, when he was eighteen, or at lowest seventeen. The statement that he got £100 by "his second work" is worth considering. If "his second work" means, as one might naturally suppose in this connexion, the romance of St. Irvyne, the suggestion that he got anything at all by it, except a state of indebtedness, is a novelty. But our mind recurs to that rumoured and apparently really published though wholly untraced work of his, A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. This poem was published, we are told, for the benefit of an Irish agitator or patriot, Peter Finnerty, and it has been elsewhere averred that the publication produced a sum of nearly £100. The mention by Polidori of £100 may be surmised to refer to the same matter, and it tends so far to confirm the idea that the book really existed, and even secured a fair measure of success.—Berger (who is named in connexion with Byron and the hire for the boat) was, as already noted, the Swiss servant of Byron, brought from London.]

May 31.—Breakfasted with Shelley; read Italian with Mrs. S[helley]; dined; went into a boat with Mrs. S[helley], and rowed all night till 9; tea'd together; chatted, etc.

June 1.—Breakfasted with S[helley]; entered a calèche; took Necker's house for 100 louis for 8 or 365 days. Saw several houses for Shelley; one good. Dined; went in the boat; all tea'd together.

[Necker's house, here mentioned, would apparently be the same as the Villa Diodati, or Villa Belle Rive—for that is the house which Byron did in fact rent. "Necker" may be understood as meaning (rather than the famous Minister of Finance in France) his widow, since Necker himself had died a dozen years before. The sum of 100 louis seems to be specified here as the rent for a year, and the phrase about 8 days must indicate that the house could be tenanted for that short space of time—or let us say a week—at a proportionate payment. This rate of rental appears low, and it differs both from what was said under the date of May 26, and from what we shall find noted shortly afterwards, June 6. Thus I feel a little doubt whether "Necker's house" is not in reality something quite different from the Villa Diodati. Byron's proposed tenancy of the former might possibly have been cancelled.]

Rogers the subject: L[or]d B[yron] thinks good poet; malicious. Marquis of Lansdowne being praised by a whole company as a happy man, having all good, R[ogers] said, "But how horridly he carves turbot!" Ward having reviewed his poems in the Quarterly, having a bad heart and being accused of learning his speeches, L[ord] B[yron], upon malignantly hinting to him [Rogers] how he had been carved, heard him say: "I stopped his speaking though by my epigram, which is—

"'Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it;He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.'"

[This must be the Honourable John William Ward, who was created Earl of Dudley in 1827, and died in 1833. Miss Berry, the quasi-adopted daughter of Horace Walpole, told Madame de Staël in 1813 that the latter had "undertaken two miracles—to make Ward poli envers les femmes et pieux envers Dieu."]

On L[ord] B[yron's] writing a poem to his sister wherein he says, "And when friends e'en paused and love," etc., Rogers, going to some one, said: "I don't know what L[ord] B[yron] means by pausing; I called upon him every day." He did this regularly, telling L[ord] B[yron] all the bad news with a malignant grin. When L[ord] B[yron] wrote "Weep, daughter of a royal line," Rogers came to him one day, and, taking up the Courier, said: "I am sure now you're attacked there; now don't mind them"; and began reading, looking every now and then at L[ord] B[yron] with an anxious searching eye, till he came to "that little poet and disagreeable person, Mr. Samuel—" when he tore the paper, and said: "Now this must be that fellow Croker," and wished L[ord] B[yron] to challenge him. He talked of going to Cumberland with L[ord] B[yron], and, asking him how he meant to travel, L[ord] B[yron] said "With four horses." Rogers went to company, and said: "It is strange to hear a man talking of four horses who seals his letters with a tallow candle."

Shelley is another instance of wealth inducing relations to confine for madness, and was only saved by his physician being honest. He was betrothed from a boy to his cousin, for age; another came who had as much as he would have, and she left him "because he was an atheist." When starving, a friend to whom he had given £2000, though he knew it, would not come near him. Heard Mrs. Shelley repeat Coleridge on Pitt, which persuades me he is a poet.

[Here we see that Shelley must have repeated to Polidori that famous story of his about the attempt of his father to consign him, when he was an Eton student, to a madhouse, and about the zealous and ultimately successful effort of Dr. Lind, the Eton physicist, to save him from that disastrous fate. Next comes the statement that Shelley was betrothed from boyhood to his beautiful cousin Miss Harriet Grove—the marriage to take effect when he should attain his majority; an account which we know to be substantially true. The conduct of Miss Grove—or perhaps we should rather say of her parents as dictating her action—is placed in an unfavourable light; for it is plainly suggested that she abandoned Shelley for another bridegroom on the ground of a more immediate advantage in worldly position—the allegation of Percy's atheism being more a pretext than a genuine motive. The passage about a friend to whom Shelley had given £2000 must (I suppose beyond a doubt) refer to Godwin; but it is evident that Shelley, in speaking to Polidori, a comparative stranger, and this in the presence of Mary, had the delicacy to suppress the name. The charge thus alleged against Godwin is not, I conceive, accurate, although it approximated towards accuracy. I am not clear that Shelley, up to the time when he thus spoke in June 1816, had given Godwin money amounting to quite so large a total as £2000; but at any rate he cannot have done so up to the time when he was himself "starving"—or, in milder terms, when he was in very great and harassing straits for money and daily subsistence. That time was late in 1814, and in the first days of 1815. It is true that, even before this date, he had done something to relieve Godwin; but it was only, I think, in April 1816 that he gave the philosopher a really very considerable sum—£1000 in a lump. I say all this for the sake of biographical truth, and not with a view to vindicating Godwin—whose policy of bleeding Shelley in purse while he cut him in person has in some recent years been denounced with increasing vehemence, and it was indeed wholly indefensible. But human nature—and especially the human nature of an abstract speculator like Godwin—is capable of very odd self-deceptions; and I dare say Godwin thought he was equally and strictly right in both his proceedings—right in getting large sums of money out of Shelley, for a reforming sage ought to be subsidized by his neophytes—and right in repudiating and abusing Shelley, for the latter had applied Godwin's own anti-matrimonial theories to that one instance of practice which the philosopher did not at all relish.—To proceed to another point. The lines of Coleridge on Pitt which Polidori heard recited by Mrs. Shelley are to be sought for in his early poem entitled Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. In that poem (need I say it?) those three Infernal Deities are represented as meeting in "a desolated tract in La Vendée"; and on mutual enquiry they learn that one and the same person has sent them thither all three.

"Letters four do form his name"—

the name Pitt. Famine and Slaughter finally agree that the multitude, exasperated by their sufferings, shall turn upon Pitt and rend him—

"They shall tear him limb from limb!"

Fire, who has just come from doing Pitt's errands in Ireland, thinks this ungrateful: she concludes the poem with the memorable words—

"Ninety months he, by my troth,Hath richly catered for you both:And in an hour would you repayAn eight years' work?—Away, away!I alone am faithful—ICling to him everlastingly."

The poem would be well worth quoting here in full, but is somewhat too long for such a purpose.]

A young girl of eighteen, handsome, died within half-an-hour yesterday: buried to-day. Geneva is fortified—legumes growing in the fosses.—Went about linen and plate.

June 2.—Breakfasted with Shelley. Read Tasso with Mrs. Shelley. Took child for vaccination.

[The child in question must seemingly have been the beloved infant William Shelley, born in January of this same year. Polidori does not appear to have vaccinated the boy with his own hand; for I find in a letter of his written to his family towards June 20: "Got a gold chain and a seal as a fee from an Englishman here for having his child inoculated." As Polidori speaks only of "an Englishman here," not naming Shelley, it looks as if he purposely withheld from his family the knowledge that he had come into contact with that wicked and dangerous character. I wish I knew what has become of the "gold chain and seal," the gift of Shelley: but I could not on enquiry find that anything whatever was known about them by my then surviving relatives. I possess a letter on the subject, November 4, 1890, from my sister Christina.]

Found gates shut because of church-service. Went in search of Rossi. Saw a village where lads and lasses, soubrettes and soldiers, were dancing, to a tabor and drum, waltzes, cotillions, etc. Dr. R[ossi] not at home.

Dined with S[helley]; went to the lake with them and L[ord] B[yron]. Saw their house; fine. Coming back, the sunset, the mountains on one side, a dark mass of outline on the other, trees, houses hardly visible, just distinguishable; a white light mist, resting on the hills around, formed the blue into a circular dome bespangled with stars only and lighted by the moon which gilt the lake. The dome of heaven seemed oval. At 10 landed and drank tea. Madness, Grattan, Curran, etc., subjects.