Midnight at the Villa Diodati

I said nothing, lightly squeezing my beloved husband's hand, smiling, for strange foreigner though he was, I loved him with a passion that still surprised me as it had surprised my father when he had acquiesced to the foreign ambassador Amherst's importunate request on Sylvester's behalf.

"Daughter's are worthless," the Emperor had said at the time. I had knelt behind my father listening silently when they had discussed the strange request, praying that Sylvester's request would be approved, my face pressed to the floor of the audience room for the Emperor had wished to see this girl whom the foreigner desired. "She is nothing special and it will cost us nothing to give this girl of yours to the foreigner as a gesture."

So easily had my fate been sealed and my heart had indeed been joyous, barbarian though Sylvester was and the Emperor himself had spoken words to my father that were meant for my ears. "Your youngest daughter's fate is strange indeed," the Emperor had said. "To travel to the land of these barbarians across the seas. Never will you see your daughter again, but for your sacrifice, your family has the Emperor's blessings."

My father had also a large payment from the Treasury, which went some way to further improving my family's fortunes. The Treasury also provided me with a dowry that had startled my husband for it was a substantial shipment of tea destined for this London from whence Sylvester came and fortunate it was that another ship had been carrying that tea. Also, I had detailed instructions on recording everything I saw and noticed and on how to make arrangements for these communications to be sent at regular intervals to China and I had been religious in recording my observations.

"We are here,, Milord." The footman opened the door of the carriage, Sylvester clambered out and I followed. "The Villa Diodati."

"Sylvester, welcome, welcome to the corsair of the orient and his princess bride." A flamboyantly disheveled black-haired young man whom I judged to be in his late twenties greeted us at the steps. "And this blushing maiden is your beautiful bride, rescued no doubt from the lair of some oriental despot. Welcome, fair princess of far Cathay."

"My dear, may I present to you George, Lord Byron," my husband said. "George old chap, allow me to introduce my wife, the former Princess Wong Li-hua, now Lady Li-hua Baskerville, don't you know."

"Welcome, Lady Baskerville, to my humble abode." A flash of lightning lit the night, gusts of wind bending the trees as thunder crashed over the mountains. "But do come inside, the rain will be on us shortly. My man here will look after everything."

Enter we did, hastily, for already raindrops were falling and before we had even been shown to the room on the upper floor which was to be ours, the rain was lashing at the windows, wind rattling the glass and I was grateful we had arrived and were not still within that carriage.

A tap at the door.

"Come," Sylvester called.

"Your luggage, sir, ma'am." Bolton entered, Weitang behind him bearing my swords and the pistol case together with my small valise of knives and other assorted weapons. Not that I did not have more on my person, for I never went unarmed.

"Let me assist you with your bath, mistress," Weitang murmured. "Bolton tells me you will want to change for dinner."

"George old chap, good of you to invite us," Sylvester's voice boomed out through the saloon as we entered, I on my dearest Sylvester's arm. "Percy! By god it's good to see you again, old chap. Making a real name for yourself these days. You and George both."

"Sylvester." George was there, smiling, taking my hand in his, bowing. "Lady Li-hua. May I present you to my friends.

"May I present Mary," Percy said, taking her hand. "Claire Clairmont, John Polidori, Auden James and his sister, Cecilia and of course Lord Ruthven."

"Ruthven?" Sylvester said. "I don't know you but your younger brother and I were up at Oxford together. Freddie used to say you had a punishing left? Do you still box?"

Ruthven laughed and there was something cold and chilling in that laugh. "No, no, now I save myself for less brutal sport," and his eyes flickered towards Cecilia but perhaps that was my imagination for no-one else saw that glance and gay chatter broke out once more.

The evening sparkled with the conversation. Outside the wind howled and the rain drummed against the windows. Inside a warm fire burned in the grate, candles lit the room, wine sparkled in wine-glasses and over dinner I learnt more of our fellow guests.

"Oh no, we're not married," Percy said, quite openly in answer to something I had, in all innocence said. "Mary and I are believers in free love, we left England to be together for I was already married but my spirit yearned for true love and it was with Mary that I found out what it is to be truly in love and yet to be free, to travel across Europe with my Mary and here we find ourselves, free and uninhibited, as man should be."

"And woman," Claire said, and now she was perched on George's lap, one arm around his neck, feeding him grapes.

"Indeed, and women," golden-haired Cecilia giggled and blushed.

"Not married?" I whispered to Sylvester later. "How can this be?"

"They eloped together when Mary was sixteen," Sylvester whispered back. "Hell of a scandal, been together ever since. Claire's Mary's half-sister and she went with them. Never asked what the story with her is but the gossip back home, well, I'm not repeating it..."

"Auden?" Percy said to me a little later that evening and Sylvester had quietly explained to me what this free love was and it sounded remarkably foolish to me. A woman's only asset was her beauty and her body, and without marriage, what assurance did a woman have that a man would care for her. "Auden was at Oxford with Percy and I, always thought himself a poet, wants to be as famous as Byron of course but he never will be. He's a hack. Knows his writers, well-read, the sort of chap that makes a good critic but with over-inflated ideas of his own abilities if you ask me."

"Why would they invite him?"

"Look." Sylvester indicated with his eyes, and I did look. Cecilia was perched on Ruthven's lap, his arm around her waist, gazing into his eyes as if mesmerized. "No idea what Ruthven's doing here though."

"He was passing through Geneva on his way to Germany and I invited him." Polidori's voice came from behind us so that I jumped for I had no heard him approach. "He was good to my older brother Aubrey, took him under his wing when Aubrey fell ill in Rome when he was doing the Grand Tour. Brought him home and married my older sister."

"Where's your sister?" I asked, curious.

"Died shortly after the wedding," Polidori said. "Poor old Ruthven was heartbroken. Good to see him getting his spirits up."

He was and from the way Cecilia wriggled on his lap, it was more than his spirits that were up.

Dinner was as entertaining as the conversation in the saloon had been and I did enjoy the food of these French barbarians, for the cook was a Frenchman and the talk turned to food.

"Sylvester enjoys chinese food," I said in response to a question. I believe it was from George. "It's very different from your european cooking." I smiled. "How I wish Sylvester and I had brought a cook with us from China."

"How the devil did you two meet?" Percy asked, draining his glass. "I'm damned curious. Can't be the thing for a chinese Princess to marry an Englishman, handsome as Sylvester is." He grinned. "How on earth did you end up in China, old chap?"

"I was with Amherst's mission to Peking, dear fellow," my husband said, raising his own wine glass to his lips. "Cousin, don't you know. Pater called in a few favors, got me onto the Mission staff and a jolly good time I had, what. I say, damn good wine, this. Can't say I expected something as excellent as this in the wilds of these godforsaken Swiss mountains." He smiled, reached out and lifted my hand, delicately kissed my fingers.

"Met my dear Li-hua when we first arrived. Love at first sight, don't you know. Her father was the chinese official negotiating with us and dear Li-hua was with him."

"I was curious about you barbarians," I said, kissing my husband's fingers. "It was love at first sight. My father was a little shocked."

"Shocked? He was horrified," my Sylvester chuckled. "But in the end, love had its way."

"As it always does," Ruthven said, kissing Cecilia's fingers so that her eyes met mine and she blushed pinkly and Ruthven's eyes drank in that pink flushing of her pale cheeks as if he had glimpsed a pool of clear fresh water in a drought.

"But what on earth are you doing here, George?" Sylvester asked. "Received your letter when I returned home from China and that was a surprise, I tell you. Wouldn't have dreamt of coming to a place like this myself."

"Ahhh, Sylvester," George said. "I breathe freely in the neighbourhood of this lake. The ground upon which we here tread has been subdued from the earliest ages. Here is the bust of Rousseau. Here is a house with an inscription denoting that the Genevan philosopher first drew breath under its roof. There, a little out of Geneva is Ferney, the residence of Voltaire, where that sage received, like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims, not only from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries of Europe. Pilgrims such as our guest here, a Princess of far Cathay come to these far shores to drink in the beauty and wisdom of the ages."

He noticed not my raised eyebrow, for the wisdom of the sages of these barbaric tribes was as nothing beside the words of the Great Sage, Master Kǒng, or Kǒng Fūzǐ as I was more used to thinking of him. This Voltaire, what was he but some pissant peasant when placed beside the likes of even the Four Sages themselves, Yan Hui, Zeng Shen, Kong Ji of Master Meng? But this I did not say for George was lost in his reverie, sipping his laudanum laced wine and the others drank with him, even those two girls, even my Sylvester and I took his hand in mine as he listened.

George's voice was almost hypnotic and his words now held everyone at that table. Percy, Mary, Polidori, Sylvester, Claire, Auden, Cecilia. All buth Ruthven and myself and Ruthven's eyes caught mine and he smiled as George continued and I liked not that smile beneath those hooded eyes but by then Ruthven's eyes were on golden-haired Cecilia.

"You will find in Geneva, a short walk from your inn, the house of that astonishing woman, Madame de Stael: perhaps the first of her sex who has really proved an equality with the nobler sex, man. We have before had women who have written interesting novels and poems. Women in which their tact at observing drawing-room characters has availed them; but never since the days of Heloise have those faculties which are peculiar to man been developed as the possible inheritance of woman. Though even here, as in the case of Heloise, our sex have not been backward in alleging the existence of an Abeilard in the person of Monsieur Schlegel as the inspirer of her works."

"Not so, Gorge," Mary intervened. "What of our english women authors, amongst them my own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft...."

But George paid no attention to her interruption. "... upon the other side of the lake, Gibbon, Bonnivard, Bradshaw and others mark, as it were, the stages for our progress; whilst upon this side there this house in which we now sit, built by Diodati, the friend of Milton, which contains within its walls we poets and writers who, on being swept by nature's impulses shall vibrate as before and we will be placed by posterity in the first rank of our English Poets. You, Percy, and I." He smiled, one hand caressing Mary's shoulder. "And you too, my dearest Mary."

"Yes, yes," Polidori spoke up, draining his glass, holding it out as George took the wine bottle and refilled it whilst Percy took the small jog of laudanum and poured a generous amount into the wine.

"I sit here in awe, for it was here in this very room, my dear Princess of Cathay, that Byron here did write much of Childe Harold and I tread these hallowed floors with the same feelings of awe and respect as I did those of Shakespeare's dwelling at Stratford. I sit here in this chair knowing I am in the presence of genius. I stand on the balcony outside the saloon of this house and I imagine that it must have been that balcony from which Lord Byron contemplated the storm so magnificently described in the Third Canto and I fancy him standing looking out over the lake, standing like a scathed pine, whilst all around is sunk to repose..."

And so that first evening passed in conversation and all centered around Byron, for even Percy looked up to him and Claire, Auden, Polidori, they revered him. Ruthen looked on sardonically but his conversation was all politeness, while Cecilia seemed enthralled by Ruthven and I saw not what she saw in him.

At last that night drew to an end, Sylvester and I found our bedchamber and sported in our bed and from the sounds, Byron was sporting in his bedchamber and I had glimpsed Claire slipping from her room into his.

"Enjoying themselves," Sylvester had chuckled sleepily as a crescendo of cries announced Claire climaxing.

"I'm surprised at her and Mary," I murmured. "It seems not the accepted thing in your country."

"Or in yours, my dear," Sylvester said, a little drily. "Shall we sleep now or would you...?"

"Let's sleep," I murmured. "I want you eager and invigorated in the morning."

Days passed, and strange indeed was our host and as strange were his friends. George. Poet and author, and I struggled through his "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," but it made little sense to me. Or to Sylvester.

"Overrated nonsense," he grumbled, listening to me reading aloud. "The man's mad."

"Not as mad as Percy," I said, for Percy was at times a raving lunatic.

"Too much laudanum in his wine," Sylvester said that night as Percy backed up against a wall in the hallway, raving maniacally about seeing demon's eyes where Mary's nipples should be and it was with interest that, many, fifteen odd years later, I would read words written by Mary about that time and place and her recollections differed only a little from mine, although there was no mention by name of Sylvester or I, or of Ruthven.

"It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Sitting around a log fire in Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that "each of us write a ghost story. Unable to think of a story, I became anxious: During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", I noted, "galvanism had given token of such things".

I do remember talking of galvinism, for such experiments had also been conducted by chinese medical practitioners in China long ago and I remember how we discussed those. How we talked about the strange powers of electricity and how it might be harnessed. It was after midnight before we retired on that night, and unable to sleep, Mary became possessed by her imagination (and the laudanum she had drunk with her wine) as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story, the story that would become known as Frankenstein and I was there that night and the next morning, where Mary related that story to us over breakfast.

"Now that," Sylvester had said approvingly. "That is a damn fine tale, Mary."

"Start writing," Percy had said. And she had.

But that was not the purpose of this tale, for others have written much of Mary Shelley and her husband, Percy and that summer with Lord Byron on Lake Geneva and of the writing of Frankenstein. No, my purpose is to tell you of that other event, one that you will find no mention of in the histories or in the letters and memoirs of Mary Shelley. The closest you will come is by reading John Polidori's novel, "The Vampyre."

Yes. "The Vampyre."

Before Brad Stoker, before Anne Rice, before Laurell K. Hamilton, before Dracula, before LeStat de Lioncourt, before Jean-Claude, there was another. There was Ruthven and that first vampire novel. "The Vampyre." Polidori wrote it as fiction but alas, I was there when Ruthven met his end, and his end was at my hands and Ruthven was indeed a vampyre. Fortunate indeed is history that I was there on that night, because without me, all those writers that were there in the Villa Diodati on that evening would have died a grim death and in the end, it was only Byron that knew the truth.

Byron and I, and I will tell you now what I have told no other.

That last evening at the Villa Diodati, the wine had flowed freely. The laudanum had, as always, flowed just as freely and, as always, I did not partake in any quantity, although Sylvester did and after we left this place, I would make sure he consumed it not, for laudanum is as addictive as the opium from which it is derived and I had seen first hand the evils of opium addiction.

As always on that evening, Ruthven had had eyes only for beautiful pale-skinned, golden-haired Cecilia and she had side close beside him, her hand in his and his eyes were filled with desire as he looked at her. Shelley was intoxicated, Claire not far behind and perched on his lap. Auden was reeling. Polidori and Sylvester were outside on the balcony, deep in conversation with Mary and I, I listened to Byron's voice as he read to me from his notes, and it was only long afterwards that I realized I had been privileged indeed on that night, for he had read to me from his early draft of Don Juan.

His words flowed through my mind, his eyes held me, bright, hypnotic and I sipped that laudanum-laced wine as he spoke and one verse held me.

Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;

And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE

'Twere better to have TWO of five and twenty..."

"Two," I remember giggling. "One's enough for me," and I glanced out the open doors, to see my Sylvester with his arm around Mary's waist and their heads together and Polidori was no longer with them, he was seated in an armchair on the patio, his head back, snoring and I remembered that discussion Sylvester and I had has last night about the free love that was practiced in this house.

"Sylvester, dearest," I had said, after we had made love. "In China, a man may have many wives and concubines and satisfy himself also with flower girls. It is not a wife's place to be jealous of such things, for a wife has her place in her husband's life and a wife is secure in that knowledge. Should you wish to enjoy this free love that is on offer, it is not your wife's place to object."

"Oh?" Sylvester had said, rather blankly.

"If you want to bed one of them, bed then my dearest," I had said.

"But you..."

"I am your wife, my dearest," I had said. "This free love is not for me but you may enjoy yourself with your wife's blessings." I'd giggled. "You can tell me if they were as good as me afterwards."

"I would never..." he had said, but now he was and with my blessings, but now I was unaccountably jealous.

"Well..." I said, and now I was tempted just a little.

"Are you sure?" Byron said, standing, taking my hand in his and as if mesmerized, I stood with him and Sylvester was kissing Mary, her arms around his neck and of a sudden, I felt an urge to experiment with this free love of which Byron and Percy and Mary and Claire spoke so often. Not only did they speak, they practiced, for already Percy and Claire had adjourned, hand in hand with their intentions obvious.