Mary disliked hot weather, but it always put Shelley in
spirits, and his best work was done beneath the sultry blue of
Italian skies, floating in a boat on the Serchio or the Arno,
baking in a glazed cage on the roof of a Tuscan villa, or lying
among the ruins of the Coliseum or in the pine-woods near Pisa.
Their Italian wanderings are too intricate to be traced in
detail here. It was a chequered time, darkened by disaster and
cheered by friendships. Both their children died, Clara at
Venice in 1818, and William at home in 1819. It is impossible
not to be amazed at the heedlessness--the long journeys in a
rough foreign land, the absence of ordinary provision against
ailments--which seems to have caused the death of these beloved
little beings. The birth in 1819 of another son, Percy (who
survived to become Sir Percy Shelley), brought some comfort.
Claire's troubles, again, were a constant anxiety. Shelley
worked hard to persuade Byron either to let her have Allegra or
to look after his daughter properly himself; but he was
obdurate, and the child died in a convent near Venice in 1822.
Shelley's association with Byron, of whom, in 'Julian and
Maddalo' (1818), he has drawn a picture with the darker
features left out, brought as much pain as pleasure to all
concerned. No doubt Byron's splenetic cynicism, even his
parade of debauchery, was largely an assumption for the benefit
of the world; but beneath the frankness, the cheerfulness, the
wit of his intimate conversation, beneath his careful
cultivation of the graces of a Regency buck, he was
fundamentally selfish and treacherous. Provided no serious
demands were made upon him, he enjoyed the society of Shelley
and his circle, and the two were much together, both at Venice
and in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa, where, with a menagerie