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CHAPTER 13.
EXILE.
1816.
The destination of the party was Switzerland. France was closed to Byron on account of his political views, so they had to travel through Belgium and along the Rhine Valley.
During their stay in Brussels, they visited Waterloo. It was perhaps here that the Spirit of the Muse came upon Byron again, and that he decided to continue the story of Childe Harold’s pilgrimage:
Almost at once in this Third Canto we find those incomparable stanzas on Waterloo.
Childe Harold moves down the Rhine. The scenery awakens the deepest feelings of his heart:
No poet has ever excelled Byron in the power of describing intensely and forcefully the picturesque and prominent features of the scenes which passed before his eyes. The landscapes of the beautiful valley, through which he passes, move his heart to the depths, and his mind is turned to Augusta, whose fidelity is his happiest memory. He takes up his pen and writes:
Byron arrived in Switzerland on May 25, 1816. At Dejean’s Hotel at Secheron, where he stayed, he met the Shelleys, and soon became very intimate with them. Clare Clairmont was one of the Shelley party. Byron had met her before in London. She was one of the many who came under his spell, and had undertaken the journey to Switzerland in order to be with him.
Shelley soon became an enthusiastic admirer of Byron —in fact, he was so overwhelmed by his genius as a poet that he became disheartened with his own productions. He describes him as follows in Julian and Maddalo: “He is a person of the most consummate genius . . . . But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably 'greater than those of other men . . . . In social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication and men are held by it as by a spell.”
Their talks together, chiefly on literature, were very often prolonged into the early hours of the morning.
After a few weeks, Byron and the Shelleys left the hotel, and took up their residence on the other side of the lake—the Shelleys in a small cottage, and Byron in the beautiful Villa Diodati not far away.
The two poets spent most of their time together. Their tastes were much alike and each appreciated the company of the other. They hired a boat and rowed on the lake. They went long walks over the hills, and visited many places of historical interest. It was after a visit to Bonivard’s dungeon, the scene of the most inhuman cruelties, that Byron wrote in a single night The Prisoner of Chillon.
Undoubtedly he was tremendously affected by his surroundings. The peaceful lake and the majestic hills inspired his mind. In the quiet and solitude of nature there seemed to come to him a vision he had never seen before.
This new vision might seem to have enabled him to forget the inner tragedy of his life. Had he indeed found peace at last? Was he at last free from the pain of his early disappointment? Annesley and His Morning Star! Before he was aware of it, they rose upon his memory like a dream.
The dream ended in agony and tears, which could neither be suppressed nor dried up on his awakening.
Clare Clairmont was a frequent visitor at Diodati. She did some work for him, copying The Prisoner of Chillon and the new stanzas of Childe Harold, but she thrust herself upon him in a most shameless way. Byron was irritated and bored by her company, and did not hesitate to show it. He was very relieved when she went away with the Shelleys on August 29. About this time Hobhouse and Scrope Davies, his two friends, visited him. He was very delighted to have them with him, for “in spite of his love of solitude, he had a strong strain of sociability in his nature.”
His friends were charmed with everything, and it was not a little gratifying to them to find that the outrageous reports of his conduct abroad, which were being circulated in England by his enemies, had no foundation whatever. Shortly after their arrival, Hobhouse wrote to Augusta to let her know that “her excellent relative” was living a perfectly normal life, “far from all offence either to God, or man, or woman.”
Towards the end of September the Trinity trio, accompanied by Polidori, set off for the Bernese Alps. Byron was particularly impressed by the magnificence of the scenery. The rushing torrents and falling avalanches, the green pastures and the more peaceful scenes of the valley—all were an inspiration to him. "It is like a dream,” he said to Hobhouse, “something too brilliant and wild for reality.” His inspiration found expression in Manfred, but he wrote to Augusta “neither the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight of my heart.”
Byron was still being assailed by his enemies, and news reached him from time to time of the wicked cal
umnies which were abroad in England. He learned that exaggerated stories of his extravagance and vice were not only circulated, but believed. His fury was aroused—it knew no bounds. What right had anyone to break in upon his retirement? He was living a perfectly normal life at Diodati—according to Hobhouse “with the strictest regard to decorum”—yet all sorts of crime and dissipation were imputed to him.
If the people of England said and believed that he was a rake, then a rake he would be. They should not say and believe these things without a cause. In a towering rage he left Switzerland and went to Venice, where he carried out his threat, and plunged immediately into all sorts of excesses.