The Determined Heart by Antoinette May

Author:Antoinette May [May, Antoinette]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2015-09-28T19:00:00+00:00

At Maison Chapuis, life was simple and pleasant. While Claire slumbered late into the day, Mary and Bysshe rose early, played with Willmouse, and sailed on the lake. In the afternoon an eager Claire, an ebullient Bysshe, and Mary—curious about everything and everybody—climbed the path to Villa Diodati. Their visits lasted late into the night while theories were expounded, poems recited, politics argued. Claire would leave with Mary and Bysshe, walk down to the house, say an elaborate good night, and then steal back up the hill and into Albe’s bed.

“Isn’t this charade a bit silly?” Mary asked Bysshe one night. “It’s all so obvious.”

Bysshe merely shrugged.

“What about John Polidori? Do you think the three of them sleep together?” she wondered aloud. When Bysshe refused to discuss the subject, she worried that he might be jealous and took pains to see that their own nights were especially pleasurable, exploring his ears with her tongue, his body with her knowing fingers.

Once, returning from Diodati in the early morning hours, Claire slipped and fell, lost her shoe, and ran home without it. Some officious burgher turned it in to the mayor, and before long the whole town had guessed what was going on. Poor, sorry Cinderella, Mary thought. Claire had clearly dreamed of impressing, with an enraptured “bold, bad Byron” dancing attendance. It was not to happen. Albe, instead delighted by his newfound friendship with Bysshe, ignored her much of the time.

Mary was happy, taking pleasure in the growing bond between Bysshe and Lord Byron. It seemed to her a synthesis, the coming together of opposite elements, head and heart. Albe, she knew, saw himself as the center of the universe, a far cry from Bysshe, whose soul was dedicated to the worship of beauty in all forms and who idealized women as a source of exaltation and inspiration. Mary loved Bysshe’s rose-tinted glasses, as long as they were trained on her.

How different was Albe, who viewed women merely as attractive nuisances. “It is the plague of these women that you cannot live with or without them,” he said to Bysshe, not seeming to care a whit that Mary and Claire were present. “I cannot make up my mind whether or not women have souls. My ideal would be a woman with talent enough to understand and value mine, but not sufficient to be able to shine herself.”

Mary thought the struggle to hold her tongue would strangle her, but she remained a silent listener, lest her views spoil Bysshe’s pleasure in his new friend. Seeking to change the subject, Mary turned to John. “Everyone talks about vitalism. Albe and Bysshe argue constantly. You’re the doctor in our midst. What do you think?”

“It was the center of most conversations in Edinburgh,” he said with a shrug. “Some of my professors said there was no soul, but others believed even cats and dogs possess them. The respective merits of Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani were debated often. I myself am drawn to Galvani’s animal electricity theory, but many colleagues are intrigued by the possibilities of the voltaic plates.

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