Read Online Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Stephanie Hemphill - Free Book Online Page A

baggage,
dozens of horses,
and a menagerie of exotic animals.
Claire leaves Pisa
on the day that Byron arrives.
She sees his traveling train
on the road and swears
on her daughter’s life,
it will be the last time
they cross paths.

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    GATHERING A GROUP OF LIKE-MINDED MALE INDIVIDUALS
    Winter 1821–1822
Shelley believes
we can put down
permanent roots in Italy now;
for like ripples in a pond,
a group of expatriates
gathers to form his
community of friends.
With the Williamses,
the Hunts, and Byron
we will be assured good company.
Byron centers the group.
He lives at the Palazzo Lanfranchi,
a cavernous Renaissance building
overlooking the Arno
that frightens his servants
with its creaks and moans
and is said to be haunted by ghosts.
When Edward Williams
meets Byron, the celebrity,
he awes over his grandeur
as one is astounded
by a great blue whale.
Shelley’s cousin, Thomas Medwin,
also arrives to join our group.
Medwin decides he will record
all of Lord Byron’s words
and thoughts. We tease him
for his incessant scribbling
and Byron says more
and more fanciful things
to aid Thomas’s pen.
Byron arranges a schedule
based upon his preference
for rising late. The men—
Shelley, Pietro Gamba (Teresa’s brother),
Medwin, John Taafe, and Edward—
ride out to a farm
to have shooting contests.
All the horses and arrangements
are courtesy of Byron.
Sometimes we ladies
attend the shooting match,
but often I stay back
at the house to care
for Percy and read and write.
Byron generally dines alone
and then calls upon Teresa
as though she were a servant.
Every Wednesday Byron hosts
dinner parties for his new
acquaintances, but these
are male affairs, with heavy
eating and drinking.
Shelley and Edward
lounge around Byron’s palazzo
on days when rain
makes walking unviable,
and they play billiards.
Shelley produces not
as much work as he would like,
but I think as one overwhelmed
by a hurricane
the immense productivity
and character of LB
humbles and intimidates him.
I reduce to picking
flowers and talking morality
with Jane. But I miss being part
of the political and poetical
conversations of the men.

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    MY FATHER’S PRAISE
    Winter 1822
When I sink low or need
a little inspiration for my writing
I remember the words
my father bestowed
upon my first novel,
“the most wonderful work
to have been written
at twenty years of age
that [he] ever heard of.”
His praise buoys me
through deep and rough tides.
I regain energy to swim to shore.

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    MORE SEPARATION
    Winter 1822
Though it chills not outside,
inside our apartments
it often feels icy.
Shelley and I, unlike
Jane and Edward, do not steal
off to find moments alone lately.
We grow like two trees
whose limbs and roots
may be intertwined
but who nevertheless stem
upwardly apart.
Edward Trelawny now
arrives in Pisa. He claims
to know everything relating
to ships, and Edward Williams
and my Shelley set their hearts
on building a boat.
Trelawny, of course,
knows the perfect man
to build them a ship.
Trelawny is like sugar
mixed with butter.
Because of his brooding figure
and tales of fantastical adventure,
I enjoy him immediately
as does everyone in our circle.
Jane and I question
Shelley and Edward’s
designs to construct a boat,
but boys will be boys
and we have little to say about it.
I enter more into Pisan
society, attending balls
and the sort of functions
that bring repulsion to my lover’s eyes.
He refuses my idea to host a party.
I send my novel Valperga
to my father for publication
after Shelley’s editor
refused to look at it.
It pains me that we are
no longer united
even in our literary