A Fatal Likeness (2 page)

The butler opens the drawing-room door to let him in, then closes it quietly behind him. It is a blue room, this one, though the blues are not all quite the same tone, as if individual pieces have been bought from different sales. There are not the shelves of books Charles would have expected to find in a house owned by this family, and the cabinets either side of the fireplace are congested instead with ornaments and china figurines, and here and there a porcelain-faced doll. The only books visible in the room are in two glass-fronted cases placed directly beneath a portrait, accorded pride of place between the long windows giving onto the square. Charles takes a pace or two towards it and finds himself face-to-face with the father of the man he has come to see. Or, at least, with his likeness. Framed in over-ornate gold, the painting hangs above a pier-table which along with the books holds an arrangement of wax lilies under a glass dome, and a candle in a silver chamberstick. The candle is lit, even in broad day, and someone had carefully pasted dark blue paper spangled with stars to the back of the book-cases. The overall effect is unsettlingly shrine-like, and far too queasily mawkish for Charles, but he’s drawn to the portrait none the less. He’s seen it before somewhere—no doubt reproduced as a frontispiece—but he looks at it now with a more professional interest. From a purely technical perspective the painting has little to recommend it, but it is the subject, not the style, that will make this one of the century’s most recognised portraits. The dark jacket and the white shirt open at the neck; the unruly curls and the intense gaze; the pen held poised in the long slender fingers. When this man died he was an exile and a pariah, ‘an outcast from human society,’ denounced for his beliefs and reviled for his conduct, his works condemned and largely unread. And yet by the end of the century this image will have become an icon of all it means to be ‘Romantic’—all it means to be a poet, and a genius, and an unacknowledged legislator of the world. An appropriate quotation that, because the man this portrait shows—as the inscription confirms—is none other than

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

4th August 1792–8th July 1822

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,

And that unrest which men miscall delight,

Can touch him not and torture not again.

Charles moves closer, struck by the dates. The poet was not quite thirty then, when he died, and this likeness must have been produced some time before that, but there is all the same an oddly child-like quality to the faint, almost girlish flush, and the pink bud of a mouth. And if he was not quite thirty in 1822, that means (as Charles quickly calculates) his son must be about that age now.

“They all do that.”

Charles swings round, too absorbed in the portrait to have heard the encroaching steps.

“I’m sorry?”

The man before him is stout, rather paunchy, and a good three inches shorter than Charles. He has watery hangdog eyes, a beaky nose, and a sandy nondescript beard that is in need of a good trim.
Nondescript
rather sums him up, in fact, since there is nothing remotely unusual or distinctive about him. So much so, indeed, that Charles initially assumes he must be some or other household retainer—a secretary or steward—but as the man starts talking it becomes obvious how wrong that assumption was.

“The painting. Everyone who comes here looks at it like that. Copy, of course. Real one’s in the mater’s room. But I’m told this ain’t bad. Wouldn’t know myself. Never did have an eye for art.”

He talks in that clipped, tight way so redolent of a public school education, and for all that he looks nearer fifty than thirty there is still something of the overgrown schoolboy about him. Part of it, no doubt, is down to his rather gawky awkwardness—something that most men in his position outgrow long before their majority, and which suggests to Charles that he was not always destined to hold the title his father never lived to inherit, and the money that title brought with it has come to him late, after years of stringency. Which may, now Charles thinks about it, go a long way to explaining the character of this house. Meanwhile, the man in question has wandered over to a table in the centre of the room, and begun to fiddle absent-mindedly with a scale model of a sailing-boat. Charles stares at it, and at him, for a brief dumbfounded moment, for Shelley drowned aboard just such a vessel as that, and in all probability it was the unstable and extravagant design of that boat, and the poet’s failure to recognise it, and make allowances in the rigging of it, that drove him and the two men with him to their deaths. But that being the case, how can his widow and son bear such a reminder, every day, every time they enter this room? But here, yet again, his host wrong-foots him.

“A peach, isn’t she?” he says, gesturing Charles to a chair. “The
Eirene.
Had her namesake built for me at Mallaby’s in Putney in ’47. Took her to Norway that year too. Lovely mover. Takes the wind like a swallow. Mater can’t bear the sight of it. Can’t blame her, I suppose. Always was a worrier. Specially about sailing.”

“Well,” stammers Charles, “I suppose that’s only to be expected.”

“Odd though, ain’t it. That a fellow should enjoy nothing more than pottering about in boats when his pater drowned in one. Never have been able to explain it.”

He sets the boat back on its stand and comes over to the sopha opposite to the one where Charles has taken a seat. He sits down rather heavily and stares at Charles, rubbing his beard. He seems rather ill-at-ease, and keeps glancing at the door as if expecting someone else.

“Look here,” he says eventually. “Maddox, is it? This is rather a rum do, and that’s a fact.”

Charles waits, not knowing exactly what encouragement is required.

“I am quite accustomed,” he ventures, after a moment or two, “to dealing with matters of a sensitive nature. I know that a man in your position—”

Sir Percy waves his hand, “Quite so, quite so. Not that. Not that at all. Thing is—”

And now the door does indeed open, and a woman enters the room with all the briskness of a career housekeeper. She is certainly dressed like one, in a sensible plain dress long past its first wearing and a pair of practical shoes, but Charles has wised up now and deduces—correctly—that this is the lady of the house, even if it is clear to him in an instant that she, too, was not born to the rank she now enjoys. And seeing that, he is on his feet at once, knowing from experience that a woman in such a situation will insist on her due recognition all the more ardently.

“My apologies, Percy,” she says, taking a seat beside her husband. “Dear Madre is rather unwell this morning and couldn’t bear to have me leave her.”

Sir Percy, meanwhile, looks visibly relieved at being released from a task that was clearly giving him a good deal of difficulty, and having made the introductions sinks back into the sopha to take what Charles guesses to be his accustomed secondary position.

“Sir Percy has told you of our predicament?” she begins, looking Charles up and down with no apparent embarrassment. She is sitting as far forward on the sopha as her husband is behind.
Perched
is the word that comes irresistibly to mind, and she does indeed look rather bird-like sitting there. Charles searches for a species and suppresses a superior smile as he settles on a squab. A rather unkind analogy, but undeniably apt for a woman so plump, grey, and pigeon-breasted and who is, to all appearances, bright-eyed without being particularly bright-minded. The look fits, certainly, but whether it will lead our young man to dangerously under-estimate her intelligence, we shall have to wait and see.

“I was just getting to all that, my love,” murmurs her husband, “when you came in.”

“Ah, well,” she says quickly, “in that case, it may save time if I give you these notes I have prepared. They are, needless to say, completely confidential, and not to be divulged or copied without our express permission.”

Charles is taken aback, for the third time already in that house: This is quite definitely the first occasion that a client has ever prepared him a briefing in advance. He takes the papers she is holding out, but she gives him no more than a minute to start reading before speaking again.

“As you see, our dear Madre has been the subject of several previous incidents of the like shameful nature. Rogues and charlatans who have attempted to abuse her gentle nature, and exploit her absolute devotion to the Dear Departed for their own mercenary ends.”

Charles looks up from the paper, struck as much by her portentous tone as by what she says. Evidently both the dead poet and his wife are only to be spoken of in Capital Letters, and Charles knows now whose idea that shrine on the table was, and who—in this house—is both literal and metaphorical keeper of the flame.

He clears his throat. “These notes will be most useful as an
aide-memoire,
Lady Shelley, but perhaps you could start by giving me an account—in your own words—of the predicament you mentioned. If you would be so good?”

Lady Shelley glances at her husband, and then turns to Charles.

“Well,” she commences. “You may know that in the early years of her marriage Madre spent a good deal of time travelling on the Continent, and also lived in a number of different houses in England. It was unfortunate therefore, but perhaps inevitable, that papers would sometimes go astray, or be left behind, and some of these have since fallen into unscrupulous hands.”

Charles nods, perceiving that some reaction is necessary, and she takes a breath and plunges on.

“In recent years, as the reputation of the Dear Departed has grown and the world is finally coming to appreciate the exalted quality of his Genius, certain individuals have come forward claiming to be in possession of those missing papers.”

This is all starting to sound suspiciously like a prepared speech. Charles wonders for a moment how many others of his calling have sat here and heard it.

“Some of these papers,” she continues, “have proved to be genuine, and most of these Madre has purchased. Others have been the most infamous impostures.”

Charles glances down at the notes. “I take it you are referring to the incident mentioned here—concerning George Byron?”

Lady Shelley snorts with disdain. “He
called
himself that and claimed the descent, even if illegitimately, but believe me he is no more Lord Byron’s son than I am”—she looks around, seemingly in need of an even more outrageous and unbelievable comparison—“or
you
are.”

Charles is irrationally piqued by this observation, and there is perhaps just the slightest sharpness in his reply. “Legitimate or not, it appears from these notes that the man did indeed possess some of Mrs Shelley’s papers.”

Lady Shelley lifts her nose, as if troubled by a bad smell. “Some were genuine, yes. We never did discover how that scoundrel laid hands upon them. But most of those he tried to sell poor dear Madre were outright
forgeries.
”

“I see,” says Charles. “And the second case? The memoir?”

There is a sudden rattle as the wind hurls at the window and the candle burning beneath the portrait dips and wavers, throwing ghastly shadows up over the poet’s face. Lady Shelley is on her feet in an instant, rushing to the table and holding her hand close about the flame until it straightens and gathers strength. “The servants are under strict instructions,” she says, as she returns to the sopha. “The candle is never to be allowed to die.”

“You were saying, Lady Shelley? About the memoir?”

Her face darkens, and she purses her thin lips. “That was of a rather different order. A cousin of the Poet’s, one Thomas Medwin, sought to make money from their slight connection when mere boys, by publishing what he impudently termed a ‘Life.’ It was nothing but a base attempt at villainous extortion.”

Charles frowns. “I’m not sure I follow—how could Thomas Medwin use such a memoir to extract money?”

“By offering
not
to publish it, of course!” retorts Lady Shelley, somewhat shrilly. “He told Madre she could prevent it appearing if she paid him two hundred fifty pounds. Which she did not have, and would
not
have paid, even if she had.”

“So he was aware from the start that Mrs Shelley would not want such a memoir to appear?”

“That or any other. Madre has always maintained that if the Poet’s life is to be written she will do so
herself.
But now is not yet the time. The world is not yet ready.”

Charles is willing to wager this is another of Lady Shelley’s prepared speeches, and her cheeks have now gone rather red. And he can understand why. There are aspects of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s life which are far less palatable in 1850 than they would have been in the rather more broad-minded first quarter of the nineteenth century. Indeed, one would be hard put to come up with two notions more utterly repugnant to the strait-laced mid-Victorian bourgeoisie than Atheism and Free Love.

“So your mother-in-law tried to persuade this Medwin to forbear?”

“Quite so—in fact I believe ‘forbearance and reserve’ were exactly her words. But the blackguard took no notice. Poor Madre was nearly frantic with worry wondering what he might write.”

“Complete bounder,” mutters Sir Percy. “Country’s going to the dogs.”

Charles looks from one to the other. “And the memoir itself, did it appear?”

Lady Shelley has regained her composure. “Some three years ago. It was not, as it turned out, quite as detrimental to the fame of the Poet as Madre had feared. But it was still quite deplorably inaccurate on many points of moment, and seemingly written with the sole purpose of endowing the author with a significance in the Poet’s life he most certainly did
not
possess.”

And how could she know that, wonders Charles, since she cannot possibly have ever met him? But he elects to let it pass.

“I believe you said there were other similar instances?”

Sir Percy shifts in his seat. “Well there was that Gatteschi fellow, but that was back in ’45—”