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Dina Šimunić
Ivica Pavić
Standards and
Innovations in
Information
Technology and
Communications
Standards and Innovations in Information
Technology and Communications
Dina Šimunić • Ivica Pavić
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
This book is important, because we believe that the reader will get better insight into
the processes of standardization and innovation, as well as in their interaction and
mutual interdependence.
We have been teaching the subject on technical standardization for more than 10
years at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing,
Croatia. We received positive feedbacks from our former students once they became
young engineers. This is the reason why we are so enthusiastic about this book, hop-
ing that it will shine more light to the topic of standardization and innovation for
the reader.
Thank you so much for reading!
v
About the Book
This book is written in eight chapters, discussing various aspects of innovations and
standards.
Chapter 1 is the introduction.
Chapter 2 gives an overview of innovation and standards geography, discussing
innovation types and pillars and geographical connection to standards. It also shows
sustainability of an ecosystem consisting of the technical standardization process,
technical standards, and technical deployment of the overall country progress and of
the innovation.
Chapter 3 discusses innovation and standardization stakeholders, starting with
the four stakeholders in the innovation process. It also discusses introduction of the
fifth stakeholder in the innovation process that avoids efforts in relation to the cru-
cial standardization deliverable and prevents the so-called island solutions that are
always an issue for the users.
Chapter 4 gives an overview of innovation and technical standardization docu-
ments with explanation of their mutual support and interactions.
Chapter 5 discusses innovation and technical standards life cycles and their orga-
nizations and perpetual interconnections in the time domain: when one process is
coming to its end, the other process starts.
Chapter 6 introduces global innovation and standards circles or as they are
named here global innovation circle (GIC) and global standard circle (GSC), which
are discussed with all their elements and configurations. It also discusses three big-
gest and most recognized global standardization organizations: International
Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC), and International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Chapter 7 presents further overview of supranational innovation and standards
circles with their main stakeholders and configurations. It also discusses and pres-
ents, in relation to the supranational standards bodies on the European level, three
European Standards Organizations (ESOs), i.e., European Committee for
Standardization (CEN), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization
(CENELEC), and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
vii
viii About the Book
Chapter 8 gives insight into usual and possible national innovation and standards
circles with the stakeholders and the most important configuration types.
The book finishes with this chapter, hoping that the reader will get a flavor and
clear idea into the complexity and interactions of the world of innovations and
standards.
Contents
1 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1
1.1 Introduction to the Innovations and Standards
in the ICT Domain������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 2
2 Innovation and Standards Geography���������������������������������������������������� 3
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations �������������������������� 3
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 13
3 Innovation and Standardization Stakeholders���������������������������������������� 15
3.1 Innovation Stakeholders���������������������������������������������������������������������� 15
3.2 Standardization Stakeholders�������������������������������������������������������������� 17
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 28
4 Innovation and Technical Standardization Documents�������������������������� 31
4.1 Innovation Documents������������������������������������������������������������������������ 31
4.2 Technical Standardization Documents������������������������������������������������ 36
4.2.1 Normative Documents������������������������������������������������������������ 38
4.2.2 Function of Standards ������������������������������������������������������������ 41
4.2.3 Standard Types������������������������������������������������������������������������ 42
4.2.4 Contents of Normative Documents���������������������������������������� 43
4.2.5 Structure of Normative Documents���������������������������������������� 44
4.2.6 Implementation of Normative Documents������������������������������ 44
4.2.7 References to Standards in Regulations���������������������������������� 45
4.2.8 Global (International) Normative Documents������������������������ 45
4.2.9 Supranational Normative Documents ������������������������������������ 48
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 51
ix
x Contents
Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 187
Chapter 1
Introduction
It is quite incredible how the human society is, based on the technology, developing
in the last 150 years. As a matter of fact, it corresponds to the development of the
technical standardization in general. Therefore, it is not complex to conclude that
the technical progress, which is based on the technical innovations, has the solid
foundations and pillars in the technical standardization. This is an especial case for
the development of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that
finally brought the human society to a completely unpredictable (we can say: almost
science fiction) future in a very short time period of cca 50 years.
Throughout this book, we will try to discover the connection, if any, between the
innovation process and the technical standardization process.
Technical standards are voluntary documents, which help facilitate the trade
between countries, create new markets, cut compliance costs, and support the devel-
opment of national, supranational, and global markets. They enable much faster
development of the innovations in the ICT sector, due to the spreading and interact-
ing of the technical knowledge on the global level. Exactly the globally developed
and accepted standards enabled a fast development and interoperability of ICT
innovations and technologies steered by it. The winning case was the development
of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) [1]. GSM is the second gen-
eration digital cell phone technology that was the first effort of mobile technology
environment to create a transnational mobile system with the idea of seamless com-
munications anywhere and anytime. GSM is developed as a set of ETSI specifica-
tions, becoming “de facto standard,” that will be later explained in Chap. 3. This fact
enabled GSM to spread all over the globe, and furthermore, it contributed to the
global interoperability. After GSM, the world tried to develop the third-generation
system (3G) of mobile telephony: Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS) that was supposed to enable user to travel around the globe with only one
cell phone and without experiencing any kind of poor communication. However,
this was not successful till now (even with the enrollment of 4G), but the world is
getting closer and closer there. The next chance is 5G, where big changes of the
society will appear in the relation to the society organization. 5G communications
will enable platforms for vertical development of the society that never existed
before. Therefore, we can expect frog leap and explosion of new approaches related
to the concept: anything, anywhere, and anytime and in unlimited amounts.
Autonomous traffic, energy grid, factories of the future, smart agriculture, and qual-
ity of human life, including personal health monitoring and treatment as well as
environmental health monitoring, are only the most promising near-future use cases
of 5G deployment in the smart city. Complexity of the smart city cannot be over-
come without enough computational power in terms of artificial intelligence that is
organized via wireless and wired communications, i.e., mighty variant of ICT. The
5G requires definition of clearly developed interfaces between 5G and all the older
technologies than 5G (starting from 2G to 4G). All the mentioned goals are achiev-
able only by global standards development that will be valid and applicable all over
the globe.
The next successful global ICT story is the one of the Bluetooth [2]. Bluetooth
was created and developed by few individuals within company Ericsson, with the
simple idea for wireless connection of computers with printers. Instead of staying
with the proprietary standard, the inventors decide to go for a global standard [3].
Nowadays, Bluetooth is applied for all kinds of connections, and it develops con-
tinuously all over the Earth.
Only the two presented examples can already indicate that there is a defined con-
nection between standards and innovations. Standards are firing the innovations –
innovations are integrated into standards. This is a perpetual life cycle that we tried
to explain in the book, especially for the domain of information and communication
technologies.
Bibliography
1. Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM, 3rd Generation Partnership Project,
Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network, GSM/EDGE Physical layer on the radio
path, General description, (Release 15), 2018
2. IEEE 802.15.1-2005, IEEE Standard for Information technology, Local and metropolitan area
networks, Specific requirements, Part 15.1a: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and
Physical Layer (PHY) specifications for Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN), 2005
3. “Standardization and Innovation”, Speech 2.1, Bringing radical innovations to the market-
place, Lars Montelius, Director General, International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory
(INL), Professor of Nanotechnology at the Sweden Nanometer Structure Consortium at Lund
University, ISO innovation, ISO-CERN conference proceedings, 13–14 Nov 2014
Chapter 2
Innovation and Standards Geography
Fig. 2.1 Perception of the interaction between standards and innovations. Current perception
shows no interaction at all between standards and innovations
society
well-being
value
“killing” creation. The other reason is that sometimes the innovative and creative
people are introduced to rather old existing standards, being locked to the legacy
systems. Thus, they conclude that the population of the “standard” planet generates
the results that are of no interest for them. Furthermore, they withdraw from any
interaction with the inhabitants of the non-exciting “standard” planet and also of
their results. Another possibility is that if an average innovator bumps into the very
new standards, she/he is so much challenged in terms of a possible not-yet-existing
infrastructure that she/he loses interest in creating a new product according to the
very new standard. Therefore, albeit without knowledge about it, the “standard”
planet is defined as “boring,” and, according to them, it should not be visited too
often. Although the innovators are very creative, and, on the top, quite knowledge-
able persons, the interaction and, what is even worse, the communication between
the “innovator” and “standard” planets stop there.
In the other world of the “standard” planet, inhabitants use its own separate and
completely different language and logic. On this planet, inhabitants hardly under-
stand the life on other, much less organized, planets, especially on the “innovation”
planet without the strict administrative rules.
Therefore, even though it is self-evident that the world of innovations and the
world of standards makes a perfect match for an eternal happy life, the two worlds
seldom talk to each other. Most probably, it is the consequence of two different
cultures speaking in two different languages on two different planets, as depicted in
Fig. 2.3.
Therefore, we can compare the innovation and standard planets to the stars. One
planet can be the Sun, the other one the Moon. Most of us on the planet Earth are
oriented toward the Sun. However, it is evident that the life on the Earth is not sus-
tainable without a continuous change of the Sun and the Moon.
It is a fact presented later in this book that the first technological, and especially,
electricity progress started exactly with the creation of standardization activities
and bodies. To be even more precise, in the case of the electricity progress, the first
two international standardization organizations that were established more than 150
6 2 Innovation and Standards Geography
and 100 years ago still exist (International Telecommunication Union (ITU) [3];
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) [4]).
Everyone involved in any kind of technology standardization knows that there is
a lot of knowledge and global coordination involved in each and every of the pub-
lished standards, being on the global (international), transnational, or national level
(Chaps. 6, 7, and 8 of the book, respectively). The most important characteristic of
the standards is that they are, in principle, not a subject to intellectual property
rights. This allows anybody, either in a private arrangement or in a small (or big)
company to buy the standard and its contained knowledge for a relatively low price.
Low price of a standard is enabled by the voluntary work of all the experts involved
in its writing, as well as by the fact that the work is done by the nonprofit organiza-
tions (e.g., in the EU these are the European Committee for Standardization (CEN)
[5] and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC)
[6] and the national standardizations organizations). The operational way of the
standardization organizations ensures building in of all the existing technology
knowledge from all the experts, independently of whether they are coming from
small or big companies, from universities, or it they are independent researchers.
The most significant property of the standard is that it is built by consensus, not only
within the committee that develops the standard but also within various committees.
For example, CEN has the agreement with International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) [7] (so-called Vienna Agreement, 1991), CENELEC with the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) [4] (so-called Dresden Agreement,
1996, and Frankfurt Agreement, 2016), and the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) [8] with the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) [3] (Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, 2000 and 2012). This means that
all the relevant European Standards Organizations (ESOs) with a mandate from the
European Commission (only three CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI) are coordinated
with the global standardization. Furthermore, this means that ESOs are completely
harmonized with the actions in the global standardization arena. This coordination
saves a lot of effort and unnecessary additional work and time. On the other hand, it
also ensures that any European standard contains global knowledge and is of global
importance. Therefore, anybody who fetches any European standard is completely
sure that it contains up-to-date global knowledge and that it is completely compat-
ible and compliant on the global level.
The next factor contributing to the enormously important relationship between
innovation and standards is a high dependence of the country’s overall and,
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations 7
Fig. 2.4 Sustainable ecosystem consisting of technical standardization process, technical stan-
dards, technology deployment, overall country progress, and innovation
specifically, technological progress on the total knowledge in the country. One can
specify a direct linear relationship between the overall state-of-the-art knowledge
and its application in the country and the overall country progress [9].
Figure 2.4 depicts the whole closed self-reproductive ecosystem of the technical
standardization process, technical standards, technology deployment, overall coun-
try progress, and innovation. The visible clear link between technical standards and
overall country progress results in the innovation that again starts the process of
technical standardization and technology deployment without an end. If this is
applied to the whole region, or to the whole international arena, it means that the
innovation takes place overall.
Thus, it can be easily concluded that use of standards is a “cheap-and-easy” way
toward economic development of the country. This is since the variety of products
can be introduced to the market. Also, the standardization process enables much
quicker and broader (the speed and degree) adoption of new products and services.
This places all national and, especially, international standardization organizations
at the very specific location that enlightens continuous economic growth simply by
taking care of sustainable dissemination of all the standards and especially of all the
emerging technological standards on the national and international level. European
Union is a special case related to the international scene, since it encompasses 27
different European countries, which follow the same legislation and standardization
processes. It means that all the European countries follow also the same standards.
Only if a certain national standard is of no interest to other European countries, it
stays only as a national standard. Otherwise, it is in a definite timescale converted
or transformed to a European standard. European standards are being developed in
8 2 Innovation and Standards Geography
United Nations’ (UN) System of National Accounts (SNA) [12] provides a glob-
ally adopted framework for measuring the economic activities of production, con-
sumption, and accumulation. SNA defines concepts of income and wealth. This
framework permits an integration of innovation data with other SNA consistent sta-
tistical sources. Therefore, SNA is considered as the best measuring innovation plat-
form, and its terminology should be consistently followed.
SNA defines four major relevant economic sectors for an innovation, relevant for
performing innovation measurements in institutional units with the legal responsi-
bility of their actions:
–– Business enterprise [13]/corporate sectors are corporations/business entities
whose main products are physical products, processes, and services.
–– General government units redistribute income and wealth with the nonprofit
institutions included. Their main products are physical products and services,
usually on a nonmarket basis.
–– Households units are in reality one or more individuals. Their role is to provide
labor and consumption of good and services and to produce market products,
processes, and services, as entrepreneurs.
–– Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISHs) do not produce market
services, because their main mode of operation is voluntary. NPISHs can be a
part of a business enterprise or, equally well, of a general government sector.
It must be noted that in SNA the product can be a good or a service. It results
from production activities for a final consumption, for further exchange or as a
beginning of the new production or for investment. Goods are objects with estab-
lished ownership rights (that are easily transferable from one owner to another) and
with existing current or potential demand. Service affects user conditions or facili-
tates the exchange of products (e.g., in financial sector). Examples of changes of
user conditions are changes in the condition of users goods (e.g., materials from one
company are transported to another company which makes a certain product), in the
physical condition of a person (e.g., producer provides accommodation, transfer,
medical or physiotherapy treatments), and in the psychological condition of a per-
son (e.g., producer provides education, advice, and entertainment service; these are
often digitally delivered services).
One of the logical measures is an innovation project. It is a logical measurable
unit in large companies, as a result of internal policies, processes, and procedures
(examples are research and development engineering, design and other creative
activities; marketing and brand equity activities, Intellectual Property (IP)-related
activities, employee training activities, software development and database activi-
ties, activities related to the acquisition or lease of tangible assets, and innovation
management activities). However, the situation is not the same for a small start-up
company that invests full resources to a single innovation, not even considering call-
ing it an innovation project.
The innovation measurement can be performed at the household level, because
of the recently developed required changes in terms of users’ behavior in recycling
and sustainability. The measurement can also be performed in a certain geographic
area for data collection with defined measurement strategies.
10 2 Innovation and Standards Geography
Knowledge is the obvious, the most important, and the obligatory pillar for any
innovation. An especial aspect of knowledge is that it can be gathered by own exper-
imental and research work or by a knowledge transfer in a direct or indirect way. In
any case, the knowledge is apprehended and gathered by cognitive processes, mean-
ing that it requires initiation of certain learning processes in the recipient. Knowledge
was very exclusive in the past, where only the certain layers of the societies had
exclusive access to it. The increase of the global interconnection, enabled by the
ICT systems, showed the need for a transparency of all aspects and layers of the
modern complex societies, driving the further dynamic progress of the planet.
Consequently, many societies concluded that the exclusive rights, like Intellectual
Property Right (IPR) that previously served to protect from rivalry, presents a cer-
tain degree of inhibition of innovation in the field of technology. Not only that, it
was concluded that the society and the economic growth could feel the conse-
quences of the inhibition. Therefore, the current strategy of the European
Commission is the promotion of an open society, founded on an open-source soft-
ware and open scientific publications [16]. This policy motivation enables such a
society to make wide available knowledge overflow for the creation of new knowl-
edge and, thus, the new innovative and yet unknown social and economic values.
However, the first and necessary condition for this is a digitalization of the society,
of all the systems in the country and, e.g., in the European Union, opening all the
new possibilities for the citizens. Only after proper digitalization, an information
can be accessed and organized, opening the way to any entity of the society to be
able to achieve the desired level of knowledge to generate an innovation. As stated
earlier in this chapter, standards contain a lot of knowledge as a result of internation-
ally driven and coordinated consensus. Thus, we are free to conclude that the stan-
dards with their inherent knowledge represent the main pillar of the innovation.
Novelty of a product, process, or service is characterized by its use, primarily by
the comparison with already existing products, processes, or services on the market.
Novelty can be assessed or measured either in terms of physical technical measures,
like material properties (e.g., weight), electrical properties (e.g., dissipated power,
heating), or communication properties (e.g., velocity of communication, through-
put), or in terms of user experience measures, like usability of the service, etc. The
user experience measures are much more difficult for a cold and objective data
gathering and their organization, since different users respect more of some than of
other qualities (e.g., easy use in relation to data processing).
Implementation is the very next important pillar of innovation, because the defi-
nition of an innovation is related to it. If there is no implementation, an innovation
is not the innovation, but it remains an idea, an invention, or maybe a prototype.
Therefore, an implementation must be carefully planned after a clear definition and
understanding of the innovation’s novelty. Implementation usually requires a lot of
work related to understanding user’s needs and wishes, as well as current technol-
ogy level for all the aspects of the innovation, being a product, a process, or a ser-
vice. Finally, it means that the group of experts dealing with the implementation
needs to take care of following it and redesigning it when necessary.
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12 2 Innovation and Standards Geography
Value creation is the fourth pillar, related to the economic or social growth. It can
be assessed only after some period of implementation, because various stakeholders
can benefit with various values. The value creation, especially for government pol-
icy makers, is not only about economic profitability, but rather as a measure of the
sustainable society progress in total.
In the modern world, it is crucial to understand the potential of digitalization, as
a means not only for the business transformation but also for the society and the
economy in general.
The digital service has the unique property of a rapid obsolescence and a replace-
ment that was never present before to such an extent in the human society. Exactly
this property is the basis for an incredible growth of innovation, connecting the
whole globe to a huge single innovation process, and to the growth of transparency,
happiness, and economic growth, leading to an overall well-being. The innovation
processes are initiated for digitalization itself but also as a key driver for all other
economic and societal growth.
Examples of such innovation processes in digitalization are:
–– Information gathering, a core business of companies selling and developing
information content
–– Data development activities, a core business for companies working on improve-
ment of business decision process in relation to innovations
–– Data management knowledge, a core business of companies performing surveys
and trying to assess innovation probability based on the data management and
advanced technology development and use
–– Knowledge flows, a core business of companies that analyze innovation process,
relevant to digitized world and its decentralized collaboration model
–– External factors, a core business of companies studying influence of, e.g., digital
platforms and users’ trust used by other entities, in order to produce another
innovation-based product
–– Measurement activities, a core business of companies collecting information on
an innovation outside business sector
–– Measurement activities for a visualization and analysis of innovation activities
–– Measurement activities of identifying the key business/innovation partner
–– Measurement activities of implementing more secure and easier electronic col-
lecting methods
–– Measurement activities of using statistical data on innovation and business
In order to be able to perform all the measurement activities in innovation by
means of digital technologies, it is necessary to define user needs and to understand
drivers and factors of innovation in various countries, communities, industries, and
individuals. According to the Oslo Manual [11], three stakeholders are very much
interested in usage of innovation data: academics, managers, and policy makers or
policy analysts.
Bibliography 13
Bibliography
Any of the four stakeholders can be an intellectual property owner. In the recent
history, Fig. 3.1 is expanded by another stakeholder: this is the Standards Developing
Organization (SDO). SDO becomes an innovation stakeholder (Fig. 3.2) to avoid
wasting duplicating effort on the elaboration of a standardization deliverable that
could subsequently have serious problems with issuing or maybe that could be even
blocked by the existing essential Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Another reason
for the SDO to become one of the innovation stakeholders is to enable another inno-
vation stakeholder and very important societal stakeholder (a user) to overcome the
so-called island solutions. “Island solutions” are based on a single technology, and
it is impossible or almost impossible to combine them with any other already exist-
ing products. If the IPR is incorporated to the standard, users (consumers) will have
all interoperable products in action from the start of the system operation.
Another set of stakeholders is involved in innovation measurement activities by
means of digital technologies. The measurements are a necessity due to the required
definition of user needs and due to the necessity to understand drivers and factors of
3.2 Standardization Stakeholders 17
Shelley to Godwin.
Godwin to Shelley.
Shelley to Godwin.
The cold contempt of this letter did not discourage the borrower.
CHAPTER XXII
Mary’s Journal.
⁂
Claire, exiled to the country, enjoyed after such storm and stress
her first days of profound peace. But she was not the girl to put up
for long with rural solitude. She must have a reason for living—and
she did not fail to find one.
When people are in love they always imagine, quite wrongly, that
it is because they have come across an exceptional being who has
inspired them with the passion. The truth is that love, existing
already in the soul, seeks out a suitable object, and if it does not
find one, then creates it. But if, in an ordinary girl, this love-seeking
is unconscious, it was otherwise with the brilliant and hot-blooded
Claire. Realizing the impossibility of taking Shelley from her sister, or
even of sharing him with her, she deliberately looked round for some
other hero on whom to expend her unemployed affection. Some
women in such case send letters to great writers, or soldiers, or
actors. But Claire, who was poetical, desired a poet.
She found none more worthy of her than George Gordon, Lord
Byron, the man the most worshipped and the most hated in the
whole of England. She knew his poems by heart, Shelley had so
often read them to her with enthusiasm. She knew the stories of
vice and wit, of diabolical charm and infernal cruelty which were
woven round his name.
His extraordinary beauty, his title, his genius as a writer, the
boldness of his ideas, the scandals of his love affairs, all contributed
to make of him the perfect hero. He had had mistresses among the
highest in the land, the Countess of Oxford, Lady Frances Webster,
and the unfortunate Lady Caroline Lamb, who the first day that she
met him wrote in her journal: “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”:
and then underneath, “But this pale handsome face holds my
destiny.”
He had married, and all London repeated the tale that, when he
got into the carriage after the ceremony, he said to Lady Byron: “You
are now my wife, and that is enough for me to hate you. Were you
some one else’s wife, I might perhaps care about you.” He had
treated her with such contempt that she had been driven to ask for
a separation from him at the end of the first year.
Claire, who sought only for difficult adventures, and had supreme
confidence in herself, found out Byron’s address and decided to
chance her luck.
Claire to Byron.
Don Juan made no reply. This unknown writer of ornate style was
small game for him. But there is no one more tenacious than a
woman tired of her virtue. Claire returned to the attack a second
time. “Sunday Morning. Lord Byron is requested to state whether
seven o’clock this evening will be convenient to him to receive a lady
to communicate with him on business of peculiar importance. She
desires to be admitted alone and with the utmost privacy.”
Lord Byron sent out word by the servant that he had left town.
Then Claire wrote in her own name that, wanting to go on the
stage, and knowing that Lord Byron was interested in Drury Lane
Theatre, she would like to ask his advice. Byron’s reply was to
recommend her to call on the stage manager. Undeterred, she
made, at once, a skilful change of front. It was not a theatrical
career but the literary life which she now desired. She had written
half a novel and would so very much like to submit it to Byron’s
judgment. As he continued to keep silence, or to send evasive
replies, she risked offering him the only thing which a man with any
self-respect seldom refuses.
“I may appear to you imprudent, vicious, but one thing at least
time shall show you, that I love gently and with affection, that I am
incapable of anything approaching to the feeling of revenge or
malice. I do assure you your future shall be mine.
“Have you any objection to the following plan? On Thursday
evening we may go out of town together by some stage or mail
about the distance of ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and
unknown; we can return early the following morning. I have
arranged everything here so that the slightest suspicion may not be
excited. Pray do so with your people.
“Will you admit me for two moments to settle with you where?
Indeed, I will not stay an instant after you tell me to go. . . . Do
what you will or go where you will, refuse to see me and behave
unkindly, I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and
the wild originality of your countenance.”
It was then that Don Juan, trapped and tired by the long pursuit,
decided to accept his defeat. He had already decided to leave
England and fix himself in Switzerland or Italy, and the prospect of a
speedy departure set welcome limits to this unwelcome amour.
CHAPTER XXIII
⁂
While they lived thus, a band of happy children, with the blue sky
above them, and the blue lake beneath, Childe Harold in the most
sumptuous of travelling carriages was crossing Flanders on his way
to join them. England, in one of those crazy fits of virtue which
alternate with periods of the most amazing licence, had just
hounded Byron from her shores. When he entered a ball-room every
woman would leave it, as though he were the devil in person. He
determined to shake for ever from his shoes the dust of so
hypocritical a land.
His departure was accompanied by the most frenzied curiosity.
Society, which punishes cruelly any revolt of the elemental instincts,
nevertheless, in her heart of hearts, admires the rebel and envies
him. At Dover, where the Pilgrim embarked, a double line of
spectators stood on either side of the gangway. Great ladies
borrowed the clothes of their chamber-maids, so as to mix
unobserved with the crowd. People pointed out to one another the
enormous packing-cases containing his sofa, his books, his services
of china and glass.
The sea was rough, and Byron reminded his travelling
companions that his grandfather Admiral Byron was nicknamed
“Foul-weather Jack” because he never put to sea without a squall
blowing up. He took a certain pleasure in painting his own portrait
against this traditional stormy background. Unfortunately, he would
have his misfortunes transcendent.
⁂
A few days later there was great commotion at the Hôtel
d’Angleterre. Every one was on edge expecting the arrival of the
noble lord. Claire was tremulous in spite of her audacity, Shelley, in
the happiest spirits, was impatient. He was not shocked by the affair
between Byron and Claire. On the contrary he hoped to see the
same ties formed between Byron and his sister-in-law as existed
between himself and Mary.
The Shelleys were not disappointed by Byron’s first appearance.
His beauty was extraordinary. To begin with, you were struck by his
air of pride and intellect; next, you noticed the moonlight paleness
of his skin, his splendid dark blue eyes, his black and slightly curling
hair, the perfect line of his eyebrows. The nose and chin were firm
and well-drawn, the mouth full and voluptuous. His only defect
appeared in his walk. “Club-footed” was said of him. “Cloven-footed”
he insinuated of himself, for he preferred to be considered diabolic
rather than infirm. Mary saw that his lameness embarrassed him, for
whenever he had to take a few steps before spectators he made
some satanic jest. In the register-book of the hotel, against the word
“age” he wrote “a hundred.”
Byron and Shelley got on well together. Byron was glad to find
him a man of his own class, who in spite of hardships had retained
the charming ease of manner peculiar to the young aristocrat. His
cultivation was astounding. Byron, too, had read enormously, but
without Shelley’s serious application. Shelley had read to know,
Byron had read to dazzle, and Byron was perfectly well aware of the
difference. He felt, too, the instant conviction that Shelley’s will was
a force, a bent bow, while his own floated loose on the current at
the mercy of his passions and of his mistresses.
Shelley, the least vain of men, did not observe this admiration for
him, which Byron took care to hide. While listening to the third canto
of Childe Harold he was moved to enthusiasm and discouragement.
In the superb energy of the poem, which rose and swelled,
irresistibly like a flood, he recognized genius and despaired of ever
equalling it.
But if the poet filled him with admiration, the man filled him with
astonishment. He had expected a Titan in revolt, and he found a
wounded aristocrat fully alive to the pleasures and pains of vanity,
which seemed to Shelley so puerile. Byron had outraged convention,
but, all the same, he believed in it. It had stood in the path of his
desires, and he had flung it aside, but with regret. That which
Shelley had done ingenuously, he had done consciously. Banished
from society, he valued nothing so much as social success. A bad
husband, it was only to legitimate love that he paid respect. His
mouth overflowed with cynicism, but it was by way of reprisals, not
from conviction. Between marriage and depravity he recognized no
middle path. He had sought to terrify his compatriots by acting an
audacious part, but only because he had despaired of conquering
them by acting a traditional one.
Shelley looked to women as a source of exaltation, Byron as a
pretext for idling. Shelley angelic, too angelic, venerated them.
Byron human, too human, desired them and talked of them in the
most contemptuous fashion. “It is the plague of these women,” said
he, “that you cannot live with them or without them. . . . I cannot
make up my mind whether or not women have souls. My beau-ideal
would be a woman with talent enough to understand and value
mine, but not sufficient to be able to shine herself.”
The upshot of certain of their conversations was surprising.
Shelley, mystical without knowing it, managed to scandalize Byron, a
Don Juan in spite of himself.
This did not prevent them from being excellent company one for
the other. When Shelley, always a great fisher of souls, tried to win
over his friend to a less futile conception of life, Byron defended his
point of view by brilliant paradoxes which delighted Shelley the
artist, as much as they pained Shelley the moralist. Both were
passionately fond of the water. They bought a boat, keeled and
clinker-built, in which they went on the lake every evening with
Mary, Claire, and Byron’s medical attendant, the handsome young
Italian, Polidori. Byron and Shelley, sitting silent, would ship their
oars to follow with their gaze fleeting shapes amidst the moon-lit
clouds; Claire would sing, and her warm, delicious voice carried their
thoughts with it over the starry waters in a voluptuous flight.
One night of strong wind Byron, defying the storm, said he would
sing them an Albanian song. “Now be sentimental and give me all
your attention.” It was a strange wild howl that he gave forth,
laughing the while at their disappointment, who had expected a wild
Eastern melody. From that day onward Mary and Claire named him
“the Albaneser,” and “Albé” for short.
The two poets made a literary pilgrimage round the lake. They
visited the spot where Rousseau has placed his Nouvelle Héloïse,
“Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love”; and Lausanne and
Ferney, full of memories of Gibbon and Voltaire.
Shelley’s enthusiasm gained Byron, who wrote under its influence
some of his finest lines. Near Meillerie one of the sudden lake-storms
nearly upset the boat. Byron began to strip. Shelley, who could not
swim, sat still with folded arms. His calmness increased Byron’s
admiration for him, although he hid it more carefully than ever. Long
afterwards Shelley, speaking of this storm, said, “I knew that my
companion would try to save me, and it was a humiliating idea.”
Sick of hotel life and the impertinent curiosity of their fellow-
boarders, the Shelleys hired a cottage at Coligny on the edge of the
lake. Byron settled himself at the Villa Diodati, a short distance away.
The two houses were only separated by a vineyard. Here, some
vine-dressers at work in the early morning saw Claire come out of
Byron’s villa and run across to Shelley’s. She lost a slipper on the
way, but ashamed of being seen did not stop to pick it up. The
honest Swiss peasants, chuckling hugely, made haste to carry the
slipper of the English “Miss” to the mayor of the village.
Her love affair did not prosper. She was with child, and Byron
was utterly tired of her. He let her see it. For a moment perhaps he
had admired her voice, and her vivacity, but very soon she bored
him. Nor did he feel himself in any way bound to this young woman
who had thrust herself upon him with such pertinacity. . . .
“ ‘Carry off’ quotha! and ‘girl.’ I should like to know who has been
carried off except poor dear me. I have been more ravished myself
than anybody since the Trojan War. I am accused of being hard on
women. It may be so, but I have been their martyr. My whole life
has been sacrificed to them and by them.”
Shelley went to talk with him of Claire’s future, and of the child’s.
As to Claire’s, Byron was perfectly indifferent. All he wanted was to
get rid of her as soon as possible and never to see her again. Shelley
had nothing to say on this point, but he defended the rights of the
unborn child.
At first Byron had the idea of confiding it to his sister Augusta.
Claire refusing her consent, he then undertook to look after the child
himself as soon as it was a year old, on condition that he should be
absolutely master of it.
It became difficult for the Shelleys to remain in his
neighbourhood. Not that there was any coldness between the two
men, for while Shelley had found the negotiations for Claire painful,
they had seemed to him perfectly natural. But Claire herself
suffered, and Mary was often indignant at Byron’s cynical talk. When
he declared that women had no right to eat at the same table with
men, that their proper place was in the harem or gynæceum, the
daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft trembled with anger. Once more
she was homesick for English scenes. A house beside some English
river now appeared to her, at this distance away, a haven of peace.
Shelley wrote to his friends, Peacock and Hogg, to find something
for them, and the journey home began.
⁂
After they had gone, Byron wrote to his sister:
Lord Byron, who was then on his way to Venice, read these lofty
counsels with a weary indifference. Exacting veneration bored him.
CHAPTER XXIV
⁂
Nevertheless, it was but right that the news of so splendid a
marriage should be sent to every Godwin in the land. The
Philosopher wrote to Hull Godwin:
“Dear Brother,
“Were it not that you have a family of your own, and
can see by them how little shrubs grow into tall trees, you
would hardly imagine that my boy, born the other day, is
now fourteen, and that my daughter is between nineteen
and twenty. The piece of news I have to tell, however, is
that I went to church with this tall girl some little time ago
to be married. Her husband is the eldest son of Sir Timothy
Shelley, of Field Place, in the county of Sussex, Baronet. So
that according to the vulgar ideas of the world she is well
married, and I have great hopes that the young man will
make her a good husband. You will wonder, I daresay, how
a girl without a penny of fortune should make so good a
match. But such are the ups and downs of the world. For
my part, I care but little comparatively about wealth, so
that it should be her destiny in life to be respectable,
virtuous, and contented.”
The letter closes with a word of cool thanks for a ham and a
turkey sent to the Skinner Street household at Christmas.
But the formal marriage brought about one real advantage. The
“concubinage” argument, advanced by those who wished to deprive
Shelley of his children, fell to the ground. The Westbrooks, however,
did not give in. By the voice of the retired publican, the young
Ianthe aged three, and Charles aged two, addressed a petition to
the Lord Chancellor in which they said: “Our father avows himself to
be an Atheist, and has written and published a certain work called
Queen Mab with notes, and other works, wherein he blasphemously
denies the existence of God as the Creator of the Universe, the
sanctity of marriage, and all the most sacred principles of morality.”
For which reasons these precocious and virtuous infants prayed that
their persons and fortunes might not be placed in the power of an
unworthy father, but under the protection of persons of the highest
morality, such as their maternal grandfather and their kind Aunt
Eliza.
Shelley’s counsel took care to say nothing in defence of Queen
Mab: there was nothing to be said at that time, and in that place,
the Court of Chancery. He confined himself to denying the
importance of a work written by a boy of nineteen.
“Notwithstanding Mr. Shelley’s violent philippics against marriage,
Mr. Shelley marries twice before he is twenty-five! He is no sooner
liberated from the despotic chains which he speaks of with so much
horror and contempt, than he forges a new set, and becomes again
a willing victim of this horrid despotism! It is hoped that a
consideration of this marked difference between his opinions and his
actions will induce the Lord Chancellor not to think very seriously of
this boyish and silly publication.” As to the proposal of placing the
children with their mother’s family: “We think it right to say that Mr.
Westbrook formerly kept a coffee-house, and is certainly in no
respect qualified to be the guardian of Mr. Shelley’s children. To Miss
Westbrook there are more decided objections: she is illiterate and
vulgar, and it was by her advice, with her active concurrence, and it
may be said by her management, that Mr. Shelley, when of the age
of nineteen, ran away with Miss Harriet Westbrook, then of the age
of seventeen, and married her in Scotland. Miss Westbrook, the
proposed guardian, was then nearly thirty, and, if she had acted as
she ought to have done as the guardian and friend of her younger
sister, all this misery and disgrace to both families would have been
avoided.”
His counsel’s ingenious notion of winning his client’s case by
renouncing in that client’s name the opinions of his youth, seemed
to Shelley a piece of disgusting hypocrisy. He, therefore, drew up for
the Lord Chancellor a statement in which he set forth that his ideas
on marriage had not changed, and that if he had made his conduct
conform to the customs of society, he in no way had renounced the
liberty to criticize those customs.
The Lord Chancellor in his judgment remarks: “This is a case in
which a father has demonstrated that he must and does deem it to
be a matter of duty to recommend to those whose opinions and
habits he may take upon himself to form conduct as moral and
virtuous, which the law calls upon me to consider as immoral and
vicious. . . . I cannot, therefore, in these conditions, entrust him with
the guardianship of these children.”
But the Lord Chancellor refused to confide them to the odious
Westbrooks. He put them under the care of an Army doctor, named
Hume, of Brent End Lodge, Hanwell, who would place the boy, when
seven years old, at a good private school under the superintendence
of an orthodox clergyman. As to the little Ianthe, she would be
brought up at home by Mrs. Hume, who would see that she said her
morning prayers, and asked a blessing on her food. Mrs. Hume
would also put into her hands improving books, and, to a certain
extent would encourage the reading of poetry, Shakespeare for
instance, if carefully Bowdlerized. The whole cost, one hundred a
year for each child. Mr. Shelley might visit them twelve times a year,
but in the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Hume. Mr. John Westbrook might
see them the same number of times, but, if he wished it, he might
see them without the Humes being present.
This sentence was very bitter to Shelley. It sanctioned officially so
to say, and in reasonable and moderate formulas, his exile from the
community of civilized men. It was like a brevet of incurable folly.
⁂
While the case was being fought out, he had bought a house in
the pleasant little country town of Great Marlow. Ariel at last
consented to have a home like other people. One room, big enough
for a village ball-room, was fitted up as a library, and decorated with
casts of Venus and Apollo. There was a very big garden: in this
during the spring and summer of 1817 might be seen two babies,
William and Clara Shelley, and a third child of unusual beauty, Alba,
daughter of Lord Byron and Claire. Her father was said to be leading
a wild life at Venice. Claire received no news from him.
Shelley’s recent trials had left their traces on his countenance. He
was thinner, more hectic, and stooped more than ever. A violent pain
in his side prevented him from sleeping, and the doctors, unable to
cure it, said it was “a nervous disorder.”
His state of mind was despondent. Life had brought him so much
suffering, his good intentions had been repaid by such evil results,
that he had taken a horror of every sort of action. He felt an intense
but undefined desire to withdraw from the perilous throngs of men,
men whose reactions cannot be predicted, and who are swayed by
such terrible gusts of passion. The regeneration of the real world
now appeared to him so unrealizable that he no longer sought
satisfaction therein for his loves and hatreds, but looked for it in the
more docile and malleable world of the imagination. Subjects for
poems, vague and shadow-like, floated round him, which feeding on
his sorrowful thoughts, gradually took form at the expense of his
powers of action.
The aërial edifices, the crystalline palaces, which with their filmy
vapours had so long hidden from him the actual world, seemed to
detach themselves from earth and to float up as though drawn by an
invisible force. They did not melt away, but swaying with a gentle
movement rose in all their translucent glory to the high realms of
pure Poetry. In the place which they had occupied, Shelley now saw
the world as it is, the brown earth arduous to cultivate, the harsh
faces of men, women full of nerves and hysteria, the cruel and
obstructive society from which he longed to escape.
The poem which occupied his thoughts the oftenest was the
story of an ideal Revolution. He did not want the scenes of
bloodshed which ruined for him the otherwise inspiring story of the
French Revolution. He wanted his Revolution to be the work of a pair
of lovers. His personal experience had taught him that only the love
of a woman can inspire a sublime courage.
Laon and Cythna, two ideal anarchists, were to be the
transfigured portraits of himself and Mary. He would make them die
at the stake, for their ideas, as he would have liked to die himself,
exchanging a last kiss in the midst of the flames, a kiss so delicious
that the agony would become a sort of voluptuous refinement of
ecstasy. For him love did not attain its maximum unless he could
associate it with thoughts and sufferings shared in common. Now
that he and Mary, married and fairly well off, seemed about to begin
an easier life, he desired to escape from this somewhat
commonplace happiness, and to live in imagination the magnificent
and perilous destiny which might have been his in other lands and
other ages.
He passed his time among the little islands of the Thames where
the swans build their nests. Lying at the bottom of his boat
completely hidden by the high grasses, he sought his inspiration in
gazing up at the changing skies. The study of fleeting, interweaving
colour and form had always given him immense pleasure, and every
day he felt more strongly that his real mission in life was to seize the
most transitory shades of beauty, and to fix them for ever in words
buoyant and beautiful as themselves.
The entire summer was given to this entrancing work. Then he
was obliged to go up to London. Money was getting scarce; he had
so many mouths to feed. Besides Mary and the children, Claire and
Allegra were dependent on him, and very often the entire Godwin
household. His new friend, Leigh Hunt, with a wife and five children,
needed help. He had promised Peacock a hundred a year so that he
might go on writing his fine novels. Charles Clairmont, who was
nothing to him, had fallen in love when in France with an ugly
woman several years older than himself and of course penniless; it
was Shelley who provided the means for marriage. Just as formerly,
he had to go to the money-lenders in order to satisfy these endless
claims. “You’re a thoroughbred,” Godwin once told him, “whom the
horse-flies prevent from taking your spring.”
Happily for him, Mary managed to bring him back to earth, and
he forgave her, seeing her now only as the Cythna of his poem. But
she, an over-anxious hostess, did not care for their too assiduous
visitors, such as Peacock, who dropped in every evening “without
being asked,” and drank up a whole bottle of wine. She wanted
Shelley to find a purchaser for the Marlow House which they had
bought too hastily. She saw he suffered from cold, and wished to
take him away to a warmer climate, perhaps to Italy.
“Dearest love,” she wrote to him in London. . . . “Pray in your
letters do be more explicit! You have advertised the house, but have
you given Madocks any orders about how to answer applicants? And
have you settled yet for Italy or the sea? And do you know how to