Messages from Lake Geneva, July 29th, 1816…
Mary Shelley’s Journal Entry from July 29th, 1816:
“Monday, July 29. — Write; read Voltaire and Quintus Curtius. A rainy day, with thunder and lightning. Shelley finishes Lucretius, and reads Pliny’s Letters.”
Lord Byron writes his friend, the poet Samuel Rodgers, informing him of his travels and asking about their friends in England:
“July 29th. 1816 —
Diodati — Geneva
Dear Rogers —
Do you recollect a book? Mathison's letters — which you lent me — which I have still — & yet hope to return to your library? — well — I have encountered at Copet and elsewhere Gray's Correspondent (in its’ Appendix) that same Bonstetten - (to whom I lent ye. translation of his Correspondent's epistles for a few days) — but all he could remember of Gray amounts to little — except that he was the most ‘melancholy and gentlemanlike’ of all possible poets. —
Bonstetten himself is a fine & very lively old man - and much esteemed by his Compatriots — he is also a litterateur of good repute — and all his friends have a mania of addressing to him volumes of letters — Mathison — Muller the historian &c. &c. He is a good deal at Copet — where I have met him a few times. — All there are well — except Rocca — who I am sorry to say — looks in a very bad state of health the Duchess seems grown taller — but — as yet — no rounder since her marriage — Schlegel is in high force — and Madame as brilliant as ever. —
I came here by the Netherlands — and the Rhine Route — & Bale — Berne — Morat — & Lausanne — I have circumnavigated the lake — and shall go to Chamouni — with the first fair weather — but really we have had lately such stupid mists — fogs — rains — and perpetual density — that one would think Castlereagh had the foreign affairs of the kingdom of Heaven also — upon his hands. —— I need say nothing to you of these parts - you having traversed them already —— I do not think of Italy before September.
I have read ‘Glenarvon’
‘From furious Sappho scarce a milder fate
—— by her love — or libelled by her hate.’
& have also seen Ben. Constant's Adolphe — and his preface denying the real people — it is a work which leaves an unpleasant impression — but very consistent with the consequences of not being in love — which is perhaps as disagreeable as any thing — except being so — I doubt however whether all such ‘liens’ (as he calls them) terminate so wretchedly as his hero & heroine's. ——
There is a third Canto (a longer than either of the former of Ch[il]de. Har[ol]d. finished — and some smaller things — among them a story on the ‘Chateau de. Chillon’ — I only wait a good opportunity to transmit them to the Grand Murray — who — I hope — flourishes. — Where is Moore? — why an't he out? — my love to him - and my perfect consideration & remembrances to all - particularly to Lord & Lady
Holland - & to your Duchess of Somerst.
ever yrs. very truly
BN
P.S.
I send you a fac simile - a. note of Bonstetten's thinking you might like to see the hand of Gray's Correspondent.”
