‘reflecting with wonder that they had travelled eight hundred miles for less than thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes, and enjoying the beauteous Rhine, and all the brilliant shows of earth and sky, perhaps more, travelling as they did, in an open boat, than if they had been shut up in a carriage, and passed on the road under the hills.’
‘reflecting with wonder that they had travelled eight hundred miles for less than thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes, and enjoying the beauteous Rhine, and all the brilliant shows of earth and sky, perhaps more, travelling as they did, in an open boat, than if they had been shut up in a carriage, and passed on the road under the hills.’
On the third day after clearing away from Marsluys, they landed at Gravesend on the morning of the 13th of September, cold and miserably exhausted by an unusually rough passage.
Cheap touring now-a-days is more rough than nice. Seventy years since it was unutterably nasty. To realize what Shelley and the girls endured in their cheap and nasty tour, is to see our grandfathers and grandmothers did well to stay at home, when they could not afford to travel luxuriously. Journeying in the easiest carriages, sailing in the least crowded boats, resting at the best hotels, wealthy tourists had to endure no little rough usage and discomfort. But it makes the flesh creep to think how the poet, and Mary, and Claire, fared during the most disagreeable passages of their first Swiss trip. Eating coarse food they were often compelled to eat it in the company of quarrelsome peasants, heavy with drink and stinking of garlic. Even when they were not verminous, the beds offered to their weary limbs were comfortless and unalluring. More than once they remained all night in the open air rather than repose on the squalid couches of their inn’s worst room. At least on one occasion the hostess of a rural tavern told them that if they would go to bed, they must be content to do so in the same chamber as their coachman. At Brunen, on the lake of Lucerne, where they made a brief and feeble effort to settle, the best quarters they could get consisted of two unfurnished rooms in an old, ugly, and dilapidated chateau. The season was cold and rainy; and when they lit a fire in their living room, the bigstove emitted so unwholesome and stifling a warmth, they were forced to throw open the windows to the bleak and penetrating wind.
In compensation for serious and sometimes disgusting discomforts, they experienced those excitements that are enjoyed in the highest degree only by young, hopeful, and imaginative tourists, moving through new scenes of surpassing loveliness. From the Alps and the German vineyards, the Swiss lakes and the glorious Rhine, Shelley returned to England with memories, to which we are indebted for much of the finest poetry ofAlastor. Ever and again, too, in the pages of theSix Weeks’ Tour, the tourists are seen in the enjoyment of pleasures that, instead of being derived from the surrounding scenery, were only heightened by the influence of its beauties. On their passage, in a boat laden with merchandise, from Basle to Mayence, whilst the sun shone pleasantly, Shelley read Mary Wollstonecraft’sLetters from Norwayto the girls, who listened with delight to a book that was new literature to them.
Landing at Gravesend without three halfpence in their pockets, and leaving Gravesend in debt to the captain of the vessel that had brought them from Holland, the trio made their way back to London. It was a doleful return for the two girls, neither of whom had courage or inclination to go to the home, from which they had fled so shamefully less than seven weeks since. As though it were a matter about which his readers might be doubtful, Mr. Kegan Paul is at pains to record, that, ‘Godwin’s irritation and displeasure at the step his daughter had taken were extreme.’ ‘Irritation’ and ‘displeasure’ are no terms to describe the veteran’s indignation at the young man who, after eating his bread and salt, and affecting for successive years to sit meekly at his feet, in the character of an idolizing and grateful disciple, had seduced his only daughter. Let there be an end of the dishonest endeavours to gloss the blackest business of Shelley’s life into a venial indiscretion, to colour and tone it into a pretty piece of domestic romance. Truth and morality require that this spade should be called by no other name.
It is noteworthy that the persons who have displayed the most zeal and ingenuity in glossing and colouring Shelley’s seduction of Mary Godwin into a romantic and innocent love-passage, are the very persons who have been most ostentatiousof their righteous indignation and disgust at Byron’s profligacy. In myReal Lord ByronI gave due prominence (some of my critics thought me guilty of giving excessive prominence) to his successive acts of libertinism. But I know of nothing in the whole record of Byron’s profligacies, that is comparable for deceit and treachery with Shelley’s course of action to his familiar friend’s daughter. Had Byron acted towards the daughter of any one of his intimate friends precisely as Shelley acted to Mary Godwin, what a noise the Shelleyan enthusiasts would have made about his treacherous profligacy!
In dealing with Shelley’s conduct to his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, the Shelleyan Socialists will not touch the questions at issue, by urging that he was unhappy with his wife; by showing that he had good (even the gravest) reasons for dissatisfaction with her; or by arguing that good and wise men have distinguished themselves by benevolence to their species, and laboured with eminent advantage to their fellow-creatures, whilst associating conjugally with women who were not their wives. Every one knows that men of exemplary beneficence, whose services to their species are commemorated in the brightest pages of its history, have lived amiably and usefully in the closest domestic union with women to whom they were not lawfully wedded. The question is not whether or no, after discovering real cause for quarrel with his wife, and finding himself unable to live happily with her, he would, after a considerable lapse of time, have been justified in going to a woman (already in the maturity of intellect and of years) and saying to her, ‘I made, in my boyhood, a miserable marriage, from which I cannot get legal release. You know every particular of my story; nothing of it has been withheld from you. Your age and your experience qualify you to estimate the nature, and magnitude, and consequences of the sacrifice I ask of you. As far as any woman can be in such a position, you are in a position to justify you in ministering to my happiness, in contravention of human laws and social sentiment. My prayer is that you may love me as I love you, and will grant me all that my love requires of you. But in consideration of the enormity of the sacrifice you will make of your interests in yielding to my prayer, I cannot allow you to consent impulsively, but beg you to ponder my proposal with all possible calmness before you answer.’ The question is not raised whetheror no Shelley, some ten or twenty years after his complete separation from Harriett, might have spoken in this way to a woman some thirty years of age.
Nor will the Shelleyan apologists touch the main question by repeating one of their favourite pleas in Shelley’s behalf, viz., that, if he was wrong in stealthily carrying off his friend’s child, he believed himself quite right in doing so. It is curious that the lady, who in her girlhood was thus dealt with by her future husband, should have been the originator of the extraordinary plea. In her note toAlastor, Mrs. Shelley remarks of her husband, that ‘in all he did, he, at the time of doing it, believed himself justified to his own conscience.’ What makes this curious plea especially deserving of notice is its truth. As soon as Shelley wished to do a thing, it was manifest to him that he had a right to do it; and having done the thing (however wrong it might be), he could commend himself for virtue in having done it. Peacock tells a curious story, that may be repeated in illustration of Shelley’s readiness to discover a good motive, to justify anything he had a humour to do. One fine day in the early summer (probably of 1815), the two friends were walking through a village where there was a good vicarage-house, whose front wall was covered with corchorus in full bloom. In his delight at the pleasant house and garden, and the picturesque church near at hand, Shelley remarked seriously, ‘I feel strongly inclined to enter the church.’
‘What,’ said Peacock, ‘to become a clergyman, with your ideas of the faith?’
Instead of admitting that a man of his views would be a miserable impostor to take orders for the sake of a good benefice, Shelley answered, ‘Assent to the supernatural part of it is merely technical. Of the moral doctrines of Christianity I am a more decided example than many of its more ostentatious professors. And consider for a moment how much good a good clergyman can do.... It is an admirable institution that admits the possibility of diffusing such men over the surface of the land. And am I to deprive myself of the advantages of this admirable institution, because there are certain technicalities to which I cannot give my adhesion, but I need not bring prominently forward?’
This notion of entering the church was nothing more than a passing fancy; but with Shelley to entertain the notion wasto discover virtuous reasons for acting on the immoral fancy. All through life Shelley thought of himself and his doings in this self-justificatory fashion. Whatever he said or did was right to be said and done. In a former chapter it has been remarked how Shelley resembled Byron in being a sentimental egotist; and how the egotism of the one poet differed from the egotism of the other. Whilst it delighted Byron to figure as the man of sin, Shelley sided with angels and asked the world to worship him for his celestial qualities. Whilst Byron delighted in painting himself blacker than he was, Shelley never wearied of proclaiming himself a creature of angelic purity and whiteness. Both were actors desirous of being mistaken for the characters they assumed; each of them having selected his part in obedience to his natural disposition; Byron wishing to be thought romantically wicked, because wickedness had a fascination for him, whilst Shelley wished to be thought romantically virtuous, because he had a genuine preference for goodness.
Insincere on the surface, the affectation of either poet had its source in sincerity. In some respects Byron’s affectation was the more piquant, from being so much more unusual than Shelley’s affectation. Whilst Shelley’s affectation was commonplace hypocrisy, expressing itself in the finest figures of poetry, Byron’s hypocrisy was so much out of the ordinary course of things as to be almost unique. Harness designated it ‘hypocrisy reversed.’ It was hypocrisy turned inside out. And anything, from a philosopher’s argument to a fop’s dress suit, on being turned inside out, is for a while more attractive and entertaining than when it is displayed in the usual and proper way. To hear a man credit himself with virtues he does not possess, one has only to stand with open ears at the corner of any market, where people are noisily employed in over-reaching one another. But it is rare, and because rare it is amusing and piquant, to find a man chiefly desirous of persuading his neighbours that he is a very much worse man than he really is. England will hold her own amongst the nations of the earth for several centuries, without producing another great poet so enamoured and ambitious as Byron was of evil fame; but every generation of her past or future story has produced, or will produce, a poet with Shelley’s disposition to think and speak too well of himself. It may, however, be questioned whether England will, inthe coming time, ever produce a poet so supremely great in his art, and at the time so supremely self-righteous as the author ofLaon and Cythna.
It is not surprising that William Godwin could not recognize a possible Saviour of the World in his daughter’s captor. It is not surprising that for some time he refused to speak with Shelley, or to correspond with him, except through a solicitor. The worm turns when it is trodden upon. Even a philosopher may be excused for showing he participates in the infirmities of ‘the slavish multitude,’ when the young man he has cherished affectionately repays his kindness by bringing his only daughter to shame. It is not surprising that, to the hour of the poet’s death, Godwin thought of him bitterly and resentfully as an evil man. Even to his daughter, after he had taken her back to his heart, the poor author and struggling bookseller never disguised from her his low opinion of the man who in undue course became his son-in-law. Writing to her on 9th September, 1819, he said, ‘What is it you want that you have not? You have the husband of your choice, to whom you are unalterably attached, a man of high intellectual attainments,whatever I, and some other persons, may think of his morality, and the defects under this last head, if they be not (as you seem to think) imaginary, at least do not operate as towards you.’ From these words, written to his child about her husband, it may be inferred what Godwin thought of his son-in-law’s morals, and said of them to people less sensitive than Mary for the poet’s honour, and less entitled to the old man’s consideration. So much has been written gushingly about the sweetness of Shelley’s temper, it is well to observe that Godwin (who may be supposed to have known it better than any of the poet’s eulogists) wrote to his wife on 14th May, 1817, ‘I knew that Shelley’s temper was occasionally fiery, resentful and indignant!’
No doubt, Shelley in later time helped Godwin on several occasions with money. It even appears that in the winter of 1814-15, whilst Godwin was holding to his purpose of having no renewal of friendly intercourse with him, Shelley, in the midst of urgent embarrassments, managed to borrow 90l., which was sent to the relief of the old man, who was in financial distress. As the moneys with which he at divers times saved Mary’s father from bankruptcy, were for the most part, if not altogether,obtained from money-lenders on post-obits or on loans at heavy interest, charged on the estates A and B, the amount for which Shelley rendered himself liable for Godwin’s advantage greatly exceeded the sum that came to the veteran from his son-in-law. The smaller of the two sums was, however, a large one. One could wish, for his credit’s sake, that Godwin had never yielded to necessity so far as to take a single guinea from his daughter’s husband. It would be easier to respect the veteran had he surrendered his stock to his creditors, and lived again at the point of pen, rather than take money from the man who led Mary from the way of womanly duty. But Godwin was now growing old; his powers and spirit were failing; and there is nothing so likely as financial distress to deaden a man’s sense of honour. Under that demoralizing distress, poor Godwin deteriorated lamentably. Several considerations may, however, be urged in palliation of the incidents that exposed him to the charge of receiving pecuniary compensation for loss of honour. He had a wife and a young son still upon his hands; the character of his business encouraged him to hope that even yet it would prove more remunerative; and the money he should not have accepted, may well have seemed to him to come not so much from his son-in-law as from his prosperous daughter. He may well have felt that in refusing to be helped by her, he should be reminding her ungenerously of what was shameful in her ability to help him. In considering these pecuniary transactions, readers should make an effort to dismiss Shelley from their minds, and as far as possible think only of the father and daughter.
On returning to London from the six weeks’ tour, Shelley lost no time in calling on his wife, who, by receiving his visit, may be said to have justified Mary Godwin in remarking in her diary, that Harriett was ‘certainly a very odd creature.’ This visit to Harriett is said to have been paid by Shelley on the day following his arrival at Gravesend; and as Harriett was at that time living under her father’s roof in Chapel Street, the fair presumption (in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary) is that the husband and wife saw one another at her father’s house. It is also certain that in several ensuing months Shelley not only displayed a desire to live on a friendly footing with Harriett, but that she consented to his desire so far as to allow him to call upon her, and in divers ways to make arrangementsfor her comfort. Whether Mary Godwin called on Harriett does not appear; but from an entry of her diary, it is obvious she was disposed to do so. It is scarcely conceivable (though strange things are conceivable of the Shelleys) that the project for calling on her would have been seriously entertained until Harriett’s feelings had been, at least, sounded by Shelley, in order to discover whether it would be agreeable to his wife to receive a call from his mistress. If the visit was paid, and, moreover, paid to, and received by, Harriett under her father’s roof, the affair involved a curious position, and showed that the Westbrooks resembled the poet in disregard of conventional propriety. That the intercourse, which certainly took place at this period between Shelley and Harriett, was fruitful of much enjoyment to either of them is not to be imagined. Some of their interviews were by no means agreeable to the sensibilities of the young husband, who on returning from one of them (an interview thatis saidto have taken place on the day following that of the birth of Harriett’s son), complained bitterly to Mary of Harriett’s demeanour to him. Possibly the mother of Shelley’s heir was not without materials for a countercharge of the same nature against the young poet, whom she had just presented with an heir to the Castle Goring baronetcy. Anyhow, excuses may be made for the young wife and mother (still only nineteen years of age), should she be proved to have spoken tartly to the young husband, who had come straight from his mistress’s lodgings to congratulate her on so interesting an occasion. The matter of chief importance about these interviews is, that they were made: that Shelley paid and Harriett received the visits,—a fact fully justifying certain of Shelley’s biographers in averring that she assented to his withdrawal from her bed, and that the separation was an affair of mutual consent. Under these circumstances, as I have already remarked, to produce a regular deed of separation would not be to give a new colour to the arrangement.
There is some uncertainty as to the precise date of Charles Bysshe Shelley’s birth. As the matter is of slight or no importance, I have not been at much pains to ascertain the very day on which Shelley’s son by Harriett was born. Writing from the Field Place MSS., the writer of theEdinburgh, ‘Shelley and Mary’ article, says that the poet’s first-born son was born ‘about December 1st,’—a statement following immediatelyupon the writer’s testimony that, according to Mary Godwin’s diary, Harriett left her father’s house on the 20th of October preceding her accouchement; and that, on so leaving her father’s house, she went to some place alike unknown to both keepers of the joint-diary. Anyhow, there is small reason for doubt that the boy was born in his maternal grandfather’s house in Chapel Street. To this point, Miss Westbrook (in her second affidavit in the memorable proceedings in Chancery, dated 13th January, 1817) speaks precisely. Affidavits are sometimes loosely drawn; but it is in the highest degree improbable that Miss Westbrook would have signed under oath a statement that her nephew was born in her father’s house, and her own home, unless she remembered him to have been born there. It is no less improbable that Miss Westbrook’s memory could have betrayed her on such a point. Consequently,ifHarriett’s boy by Shelley was born about 1st December, 1814 (as the Field Place evidences are said to show), andif(as the same evidences are said to show) Harriett left her father’s house on the previous 20th October, 1814, she must have returned to her old home in Chapel Street on some day before the birth of her son.
Whilst he was rendering scarcely acceptable civilities to his wife, Shelley was not without sentimental embarrassments in the lodgings where he was living with Mary and Claire,—embarrassments arising chiefly from Claire’s inability to concur with him respecting the proper limits of his affectionateness for her. The bright, witty, vivacious girl, who had favoured and furthered his suit to Mary, and, deserting her mother, had decided to share the fortunes of the two Free Lovers, saw much to disapprove, and something to resent, in Shelley’s purpose to treat her merely as a friend who had rendered him sisterly service. It does not appear from the record in what particulars Claire felt herself aggrieved; and in the absence of definite information, readers must be left to imagine her grounds for discontent with Percy’s treatment of her. The lady so recently initiated into the principles of Free Love, may possibly have conceived that its freedom should be limitless. If she was guilty of so great a mistake, it may be pleaded in her excuse that she had been carried somewhat too quickly through a course of reading, not unlikely to fill her young mind with wild and preposterous imaginations. In justice to this girlof seventeen summers, it should be remembered that in the autumn of 1814 she had been for some months drinking deeply and incessantly of a new and perilous philosophy. The sharer of her sister’s training for the higher life, Claire had studiedQueen Mabwith its Notes, perused Mary Wollstonecraft’s delightful letters to Gilbert Imlay, pondered William Godwin’s arguments against marriage, and enlarged her views of life by earnest application to the Chevalier Lawrence’s elegant work onThe Empire of the Nairs. Sure evidence exists that, in the summer and early autumn, all this stimulating and wildly delusive literature was offered to the consideration of the two sisters; and it cannot be doubted that, whenever they needed larger enlightenment and more exact guidance on questions rising from the texts of the various authors, the girls carried their difficulties to a tutor who was only too happy to give them more precise instruction. There is no lack of evidence that Shelley and the girls went together through this disturbing literature. In a few months the girls had learnt why chastity should be deemed a monkish superstition; why conjugal constancy ceases to be virtuous when it ceases to be agreeable; why love should be lawless. Is it strange that the instruction afforded to Claire during her passage through such literature, not only by the books themselves, but also by the more exciting than wholesome conversations arising from them, was fruitful of misconceptions and wild fancies in her ardent brain? Mr. Froude is of opinion that by thus declaring her approval of ‘community of women,’ Claire ‘scandalized even Shelley himself,’ and proved herself a phenomenally impure and vicious girl. To me, on the contrary, the declaration of so repulsive a sentiment only shows how greatly Claire was mentally disturbed and morally injured, at least for the moment, by the literature and vein of thought to which Shelley had introduced her.
Was a young man ever in a stranger complication of sentimental embarrassments than Shelley, living in lodgings with a mistress to whom he was passionately attached, and her sister so incapable of mere friendship, whilst he was paying visits of affectionate courtesy to his young wife on the point of giving birth to his first-born son, or already dandling the little one in her arms? Whatever the uncertainty respecting his feelings for Harriett, the position of affairs at his lodgings is clearly defined. Whilst he would fain cherish Claire with tender and affectionatefriendship, she requires more than friendship of him. On finding that Claire requires more of his consideration and sympathy than fidelity to the girl who has sacrificed her honour for his happiness will allow him to give her, he retires into his sentimental shell, in respect to the girl of southern complexion and Italian fervour, resolving for the future to bear himself towards her with circumspection, reserve, and even coldness. Aware of Claire’s extravagant desire and pretensions, Mary is of course on Shelley’s side and encourages him to persist in the attitude, which, of course, appears to her most favourable to domestic virtue. Being in possession of his heart, she, of course, has no wish to share it with Claire, and resents Claire’s claim for a part of it as unendurable presumption.
Had Mary been in Claire’s place, and Claire in her sister’s position, it is possible Mary would have been guilty of Claire’s egregious misconceptions, and Claire would have been on the side of domestic virtue. But having all she wanted Mary was preserved from the erroneous conclusions, to which new and exciting literature had reduced her sister-by-affinity. Possessing Percy’s undivided love Mary was saved from Claire’s painful misconceptions by a natural selfishness,—the vice that so often renders virtue efficient service. This was the position at Percy’s lodgings,—a position that, promising much sentimental disturbance and successive outbreaks of emotional energy, in due course fulfilled the promise.
BISHOPGATE.
Pecuniary Difficulties and Resources—Choice of a Profession—Shelley walking a Hospital—Dropt by Acquaintances—Birth of Mary Godwin’s first Child—Sir Bysshe Shelley’s Death—Differences and Tiffs between Mary and Claire—Characteristics of the Sisters—Trip to South Devon—At Work onAlastor—Publication of the Poem—Essay on Christianity—Life at Bishopgate—Shelley’s Idolatry of Byron—Birth of Mary Godwin’s first-born Son—Claire and Byron—Second Trip to Switzerland—Shelley’s Pretext for leaving England—Strange Scene between Shelley and Peacock—Semi-Delusions—Another Hallucination.
Pecuniary Difficulties and Resources—Choice of a Profession—Shelley walking a Hospital—Dropt by Acquaintances—Birth of Mary Godwin’s first Child—Sir Bysshe Shelley’s Death—Differences and Tiffs between Mary and Claire—Characteristics of the Sisters—Trip to South Devon—At Work onAlastor—Publication of the Poem—Essay on Christianity—Life at Bishopgate—Shelley’s Idolatry of Byron—Birth of Mary Godwin’s first-born Son—Claire and Byron—Second Trip to Switzerland—Shelley’s Pretext for leaving England—Strange Scene between Shelley and Peacock—Semi-Delusions—Another Hallucination.
So much fantastic stuff has been written about Shelley’s poverty at manhood’s threshold, and the sufferings which came to him from his father’s cruel parsimony, that it is well to observe he never made a close and enduring acquaintance with the penury, which has nursed so many rhymesters into poets of deathless song. Poverty is of course a comparative term. In the story of Shelley’s career it must be construed as little more than a figure of speech. In Poland Street he was supplied bountifully with money by relatives and other friends. From the date of the arrangement, to which the Squire was a party not long after his boy’s expulsion from Oxford, he enjoyed a sufficient and even liberal allowance, till he ran off to Scotland with Harriett; and from the day of the elopement till the moment of his withdrawal from his first wife he had an adequate income, and the means of living far beyond it. Between 28th July and 13th September, 1814, he spent (in ready money) 98l., besides the money with which he journeyed from London to Calais and posted from Calais to Paris. The young man who spent money at this rate, like most other outrunners of the constable, was often without money in hand for the requirements of his wasteful career,—often without a guinea in his pocket. But it is absurd to assign to poverty the immediate results of habitual prodigality. If he ever suffered from what can be fairly styled poverty, the brief experience belonged to the period between his return from the Continent in September, 1814, and the earlymonth of the ensuing year, when by accepting the easy terms offered to him by his father with the Duke of Norfolk’s approval, he stept into a clear revenue of 1000l.a-year. In compliance with the arrangement which afforded him this assured allowance during his father’s life, the poet surrendered only a small portion of his interest in the settled estates, A and B.
At divers times between September, 1814, and the arrangement which afforded him a thousand a-year, Shelley doubtless endured numerous annoyances and humiliations from want of money. Once and again he was tracked by bailiffs; and as often he was constrained to keep away from his lodgings and conceal himself from the emissaries of the law. There were days together during which he and Mary could safely meet one another only by appointment at places away from her abode. But even at these hard times he could raise money for his immediate necessities, albeit at heavy rates of interest. The poet, who in the time of his most urgent need of money could give Mary Godwin 90l.for the mitigation of her father’s pecuniary distress, knew nothing of biting penury, little of vexatious poverty, even when his difficulties were at their worst. Still it cannot be questioned that in the winter of 1814-15, Shelley was so sensibly touched by pecuniary trouble as to awake from the golden dreams which had so long given him a delusive view of his financial position, and to think he should in common prudence qualify himself to earn his living in one of the liberal professions.
By this time his debts were no less considerable than harassing; and he had discovered that no sum he could raise in the money-market on his expectations would satisfy the demands of his numerous creditors, and afford a surplus sufficient for his maintenance in scholarly idleness. In the previous spring a lawyer, whom he had consulted on the state of his affairs, described him in a professional letter as having ‘used the utmost of his endeavours to raise money for the payment of his debts,without success.’ Having vainly tried to raise enough money for the mere payment of his debts, he may well have despaired to raise enough for the satisfaction of his creditors, and his own subsistence to the end of his days. Under these circumstances, it was natural for him to think of choosing a profession. Which of the professions should he enter? The Church? the Bar? or Medicine? The notion of taking holy orders and seeking theneedful morsel of bread in a parsonage, covered with corchorus in full flower, was only a passing fancy. For the law, of which he knew nothing, he had a poet’s natural aversion. The army was out of the question to the sentimentalist, who regarded war with abhorrence, and rated soldiers with murderers. Not because he had any natural aptitude or inclination for the calling, but chiefly because it was less distasteful to him than any other vocation by which he could win his daily bread without disgrace, and in a slight degree because some of his forefathers, and several of his near kindred, had followed, or were following it, Shelley thought of qualifying himself for service in the vocation, by which his great-grandfather had prospered in America before marrying the widow Plum. In this selection of a calling he may also have been influenced by his cousins, the Groves, a family of doctors.
To guard him from a suspicion of being actuated in this matter by purely selfish motives, and to account in an elegant manner for his choice of a profession, which, though sufficiently honourable for persons of undistinguished lineage, is seldom followed by gentlemen of high ancestral dignity, successive biographers have represented that, in deciding to become an apothecary and surgeon, he was moved chiefly by concern for the interests of the poor. Indeed, Lady Shelley insists that her husband’s father was governed wholly in this matter by benevolent considerations. ‘In the winter months at the commencement of this year,’ she says, ‘Shelley walked a hospital for the purpose of acquiring some slight knowledge of surgery, which might enable him to alleviate the sufferings of the poor.’ It makes, however, against this elegant apology for the poet’s condescension to medicine, that on coming into an assured income of 1000l.a-year he ceased to walk his hospital.[3]
Instead of coming to him from poverty, Shelley’s keenest annoyances in the winter of 1814-15 came to him from the coldness of persons who, after courting him in the summer and autumn of 1813, made it clear they no longer wished for hisacquaintance. ‘Some of his few friends,’ says Peacock, ‘of the preceding year had certainly at that time fallen off from him.’ Ladies, who had compared him to a rose drenched with rain, and a bird rejoicing in the sunshine, now thought less favourably of him. Instead of running after him for sweet converse touching the perfectibility of the species, they spoke of him as a very bad young man, who had treated his charming little wife most cruelly and shamefully, and in other ways proved himself a monster. Because it amuses gentlewomen to listen in a drawing-room to a young poet’s eloquent exhibitions of his daring and delightful and original views about society, and the affections, and ‘all that sort of thing,’ it does not follow that they will care to flutter about him and smile upon him, when he has acted on his startling and charming theories. Talk that is piquant and innocent, from the lips of a young gentleman who is living virtuously with a charming little wife, strikes gentle listeners as superlatively shocking and offensive, from a young man who is known to have transferred his affections from the charming little wife to a young lady who isn’t his wife. However much he was pained and astonished by her altered demeanour, Maimuna may be pardoned for declining to call on Miss Mary Godwin. Had she not a daughter and grandchildren (to say nothing of her character in Pimlico) to think for? So Shelley was dropt by the Boinvilles and Newtons, and other no less charming and exemplary people, whilst he lived with Mary and Claire in lodgings, where the trio—shut out from the Skinner-Street house, and avoided by all the members of William Godwin’s ‘set’—seldom had a call from any one but Peacock and Hogg.
One of the incidents of this troublous and vexatious period was the birth of Mary Godwin’s first child,—a seven months’ girl, who drawing her first breath on 20th February, 1815, breathed her last a few days later. The infant’s premature appearance was of course fruitful of scandalous gossip, which in the total absence of justificatory evidence may be dismissed as mere gossip. Mary’s earliest issue was, no doubt, a seven months’ child.
Enough has been said of the will, with its momentous codicil, of Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart., who died on 6th January, 1815, in his eighty-fourth year. Enough also has been said of the way in which the poet disinherited himself and his issue out of thelarge entailed estate created by that will. Henceforth, in regarding the poet’s financial position, readers must think of him as a man with an assured income of 1000l.during his father’s life, and a vested interest in the fee-simple of estates A and B on the extinction of his father’s life-interest in them,minusthe portion of his interest in the same estates, which he surrendered to his father in consideration of the 1000l.a-year assured to him during his father’s life.
It is not to be supposed that after taking Claire and Mary through Miss Wollstonecraft’sLetters to Imlay, and Sir James Lawrence’sEmpire of the Nairs, and showing them why chastity was a mere monkish superstition and conjugal constancy a mere matter of expedience, which on ceasing to be expedient became actually vicious, Shelley was so greatly scandalized, as Mr. Froude imagines, by Claire’s sprightly talk about ‘community of women.’ Nor is it to be imagined that Mary was so profoundly shocked and deeply disgusted as the same historian fancies by her fellow-pupil’s misconceptions respecting a state of human society, that necessarily came under their consideration in the course of study and discussion through which Percy was taking them. In October, 1814, Mary had for several months been undergoing an education, that saved her from all acutely painful emotions of horror and repugnance at her class-mate’s equally erroneous and ridiculous conclusions. Possibly Mary’s diary contains some edifying memoranda, capable of being used as evidence that she regarded Claire as wild, even to wickedness, on one or two subjects that rarely come under the cognizance of English girls or even of English matrons; but such entries of the joint-journal should be read and construed with reference to Mary’s familiarity with such topics, and also with reference to the multifarious incidents and circumstances that had resulted in her enlightenment on matters, about which both girls should have been kept in darkness.
None the less certain, however, is it that on coming in October, 1814, to differences of sentiment on a decidedly unsavoury question, Claire and Mary had a cause of disagreement which, passionately as they had loved one another in former time (transient tiffs notwithstanding), could scarcely fail to engender the friction and heat of lively discord between them. Differing greatly in personal appearance, these sisters of aboutthe same age and the same training, were alike remarkable for intellectual and moral characteristics that, under any circumstances, would have caused them to clash and quarrel at times, even whilst strongly attached to one another in their hearts. In some particulars of outward show, each of these charming and sadly misguided girls had the advantage of the other. Together with an intellectuality of expression, differing from, but in no degree inferior to, the mental expressiveness of Claire’s countenance, Mary the Blonde (albeit with eyes more brown than blue) had a singularly lovely profile, and finely moulded features, that gave her, in respect to facial contour and shapeliness, manifest and unquestionable superiority over her sister-by-affinity. Though not absolutely defective in stature (indeed one of Godwin’s letters describes her as though she were tall), Mary lacked the full height requisite for personal impressiveness; but her figure, good even in girlhood, developed in her maturity into the exuberant loveliness of antique sculpture. On the other hand, Claire the Brown had a tall, lissom figure of matchless elegance; a figure which, though striking beholders at first sight as chiefly remarkable for delicacy and slightness, was seen at a second glance to be in no degree wanting in the developments that are requisite for female attractiveness. Small at the waist and long-necked, Claire had perfectly fashioned shoulders and arms, tiny hands, and feet minute and nimble enough to have won Sir John Suckling’s approval. The worst feature of her face was a nose that resembled Shelley’s in being tip-tilted; but she had the shapely mouth that is never seen apart from cleverness, pink lips, white teeth, and dark eyes that shone soft as sunshine through their long lashes when she was in a good temper, but flashed with a terrifying vehemence when she was whipt to fury by a cruel tongue. Whilst the colour of Mary’s hair accorded with her complexion, Claire had a wealth of darksome tresses. In aspect and air Mary was piquant, lovely, and good; Claire, brilliant, distinguished, and dangerous.
Both girls were hot-tempered, peevish, and resentful, as well as vehemently affectionate; Mary animated with the fervour and captiousness of her mother’s stock, whilst Claire was as impetuous and unruly as any girl of southern blood ripened by southern suns. Both girls were quick-witted, imaginative, and ambitious. Reared during their earlier childhood in SomersTown, discovered by Shelley in the rooms over the Skinner-Street shop, they were both fashioned to make a figure in the world; and even in the nursery, where Shelley may be said to have found them, they conceived the design of making themselves personages of celebrity. Slovens so long as they were poor, they developed a taste for dress and personal display as soon as they were rich enough to wear silk and velvet. Under favourable circumstances (never granted to either of them) Mary would have developed into a good and greatly useful woman; Claire into a generous and powerful, though possibly mischievous, woman. Under such circumstances, Mary would have been precisely conscientious and as truthful as sunshine (which she certainly was not in her later time), but Claire would all the same have been something of a schemer and anintriguante, and have valued propitious fortune chiefly on account of the greater power it afforded her for playing with men and women, as though they were mere cards and counters. Each of these girls, predestined to embittering disappointment by the malicious fate that for a brief hour stirred them both with a sense of dazzling success, numbered amongst their social endowments a degree of colloquial piquancy and conversational address that, in the absence of all her other natural excellencies, would have given her the advantage over ordinary women. Whilst Mary’s sparkling gossip sometimes smiled with humour (according to Thackeray a rare faculty in woman), Claire’s higher raillery smacked of the satire that, under the spur of anger, rolled in torrents of scornful irony from her writhing lips. The time was coming when Byron whitened and trembled under her scathing sarcasm. But Claire’s voice was made for better work than cruel speech. Music was her chief accomplishment; and whilst figuring creditably amongst professional performers as an instrumentalist, she only just missed the vocal excellence that would have enabled her to achieve her ambition to be an operatic singer. That she became so bright and vivid a force in Florentine drawing-rooms during Shelley’s later years, and after his death, was in no small degree owing to his admiration of her noble voice, and the care he took to provide her with good musical instruction whilst she lived with him and Mary at Marlow and in Italy.
It is not surprising that after living together for seven months, Claire and Mary determined to dwell apart. In truththe reasons why they should not cohabit (to use one of Godwin’s favourite words) were so numerous and weighty that nothing but the strength of the mutual affection, underlying their mutual jealousies and emotional discrepancies of sentiment, will account for the long postponement of the outbreak of temper on either side that, in the spring of 1815, severed them for awhile. A young married woman usually likes to have her home to herself and her husband, and though she was not Shelley’s wife it was natural for Mary to rate herself as his wife, and all the more for the peculiarity of her alliance with him to wish for the full measure of the domestic privacy, to which a wife is entitled. Mary was too well acquainted with the troubles arising from Miss Westbrook’s permanent residence with Percy and Harriett, not to fear that similar troubles might ensue to him and herself should Claire be always with them. She was the more desirous for Claire to leave them to themselves, because, though she had no doubt of the strength and completeness of Shelley’s attachment to herself, she could not blind herself to his admiration of and liking for Claire,—an admiration and liking that influenced him to the day of his death, although his affection for her was sometimes sorely tried by Claire’s waywardness and freakish impetuosity. At the same time, though the witty and vivacious girl amused and delighted him even when she was most perverse and unmanageable, Shelley had in former times suffered too much from a sister-in-law’s influence and continual presence at his hearth, not to shrink from the thought of having another sister-in-law incessantly on his hands. Hence it came to pass that, on 11th March, 1815, Mary wrote in her diary,—
‘March 11th, 1815.—Talk about Claire’s going away. Nothing settled. I fear it is hopeless; she will not go to Skinner Street. Thus our house, I see plainly, is the only remaining place—what is to be done?’
‘March 11th, 1815.—Talk about Claire’s going away. Nothing settled. I fear it is hopeless; she will not go to Skinner Street. Thus our house, I see plainly, is the only remaining place—what is to be done?’
Two months later, after numerous tiffs and interchanges of sarcastic speech, the two hot-tempered sisters parted for awhile, not more to the relief and contentment of the one than of the other, Claire taking up her abode in a solitary cottage (presumably on an allowance made by Shelley), whilst her sister and the poet entered on the enjoyment of the furnished house at Bishopgate (the eastern entrance of Windsor Park) thatwas their usual place of abode from the summer of 1815 to the early summer (or, to speak more precisely, the late spring) of 1816. That Mary and Claire separated none too soon appears from the letter in which the latter wrote on 15th May, 1815, to Fanny Imlay (aliasWollstonecraft,aliasGodwin),—
‘I am perfectly happy. After so much discontent, such violent scenes, such a turmoil of passion and hatred, you will hardly believe how enraptured I am with this dear, quiet little spot. I am as happy when I go to bed as when I rise. I am never disappointed, for I know the extent of my pleasures.’
‘I am perfectly happy. After so much discontent, such violent scenes, such a turmoil of passion and hatred, you will hardly believe how enraptured I am with this dear, quiet little spot. I am as happy when I go to bed as when I rise. I am never disappointed, for I know the extent of my pleasures.’
Clearly the sisters-by-affinity had spoken smartly to one another before parting ‘for ever,’—a ‘for ever’ that fell considerably short of twelve months. At sweet seventeen the mutual resentments of two quick-tempered sisters blow over and leave no heart-burnings behind them. It would be ill for our homes were it otherwise. What would become of us were English girls so incapable, as Mr. Froude imagines them to be, of ‘making it up’ and ‘beginning again’ when they have had a smart tiff? It was all in the ordinary course of human nature that in the ensuing spring Claire and Mary were animated by ‘mutual affection, glowing with the impetuosity of girlish romance.’
Much as they delighted in their new home, Shelley and Miss Godwin needed the diversion of visiting scenes, even more alluring to lovers of nature than the glades of Windsor and the rich landscapes of the surrounding country. Besides making a tour along the coast of south Devon, and staying at Clifton during the summer, they went, at the end of August, with Peacock and Charles Clairmont, by the Thames to Lechlade in Gloucestershire, the river-trip mentioned in a previous chapter. Returning in September, 1815, to Bishopgate for the enjoyment of the autumnal colouring of the forest, Shelley may be supposed to have spent the happiest hours of his existence whilst meditatingAlastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, under the oaks of the Great Park,—the poem that was almost as great an advance fromQueen Mabas theQueenwas in advance of his previous poetry. The first of his supremely great works—a poem that, had he lived to produce nothing greater, would, by itself, have given him a place amongst the poets who never die—Alastor, was published in an early (if not the earliest) month of 1816, together with the stanzas to Coleridge, the April-1814 stanzas(from which so many futile efforts have been made to extort evidence touching the causes of his defection from Harriett); the verses on Mutability, the lines on the verse from Ecclesiastes, the Lechlade verses, the sonnet to Wordsworth, the sonnet on the Fall of Bonaparte, the lines taken fromQueen Mabon Religion (styledSuperstitionin the reprint, for security’s sake), the sonnet from Dante’s Italian, the revised fragments ofQueen Mab, styledThe Demon of the World, and the translation from Moschus,—the last-mentioned item of the miscellany being one of the reasons why successive Shelleyan biographers and editors have ante-dated the unfinishedEssay on Christianityby five or six years.
Had it not been for this trifle from Moschus in theAlastorvolume, and the passage in Shelley’s letter (dated to Hogg from ‘Bishopgate, September, 1815’), where he says, ‘I have been engaged lately in the commencement of several literary plans which, if my present temper of mind endures, I shall probably complete in the winter,’ it would probably never have occurred to any editor of Shelleyan MSS. that Shelley produced, in 1815, a composition so foreign to his way of dealing with religious questions at any time, between the publication ofThe Necessity of Atheismand the production ofLaon and Cythna, as the fragmentary treatise on the character and teaching of the Saviour of the World. It is not far to seek how the editorial mind came to commit so strange a mistake. On the discovery amongst Leigh Hunt’s MSS. of the beginning of a translation of Moschus’s third idyll (the elegy on Bion), written by Shelley on the same paper as a missing piece of theEssay on Christianity, it became obvious that theEssaywas written at a time when he was interested in the writings of Moschus. This being manifest the first of the misleading editors argued thus: TheEssay on Christianitywas written near the time when Shelley was working at Moschus; theAlastorvolume which passed through the press soon after the composition of the poem in the autumn and winter of 1815, contains a translation from the Greek of Moschus, showing that somewhere about that time the poet was interested in the Moschian idylls; moreover we have Shelley’s assurance that in September, 1815, he was engaged on several literary enterprises which he hoped to complete in the course of the ensuing winter. Therefore one may safely assign the fragmentaryEssay on Christianityto the year 1815.
It is obvious that to show theEssayis wholly out of accord with Shelley’s temper and views on matters of religion in 1815, and on the other hand to show he was more strongly interested in the Moschian verse at a later period of his career, when his temper and views were in accordance with those of theEssay, is to sweep away the whole of the editorial argument. It is not too much to say that in 1815 Shelley could no more have written theEssay, than he could have composed the music of a great opera. On the other hand, theAdonaisaffords conclusive evidence that the poet was influenced by both Bion and Moschus during the composition of the noble elegy. Besides the translated fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion, by Moschus (written on the same paper as the portion of theEssay on Christianity), Shelley left a translation of Bion’sElegy on the Death of Adonis, both manuscripts being in the style of the poet’s later penmanship. Yet further, the Shelleyan manuscript of the translated fragment of Bion’sElegy on the Death of Adonisexhibits on its back a draft ofPan, Echo, and the Satyr, translated from the Greek of Moschus. Thus, whilst the last-named manuscript shows that Shelley was working about the same time on translations from both Greek poets, and theAdonaisaffords conclusive evidence that its author was influenced in its composition by the same two poets, the manuscript of the translated fragment of theElegy on the Death of Bionshows it to have been produced by Shelley’s pen in the same period as theEssay on Christianity. It follows, therefore, that theEssay on Christianitywas produced at least in the same period as theElegy on John Keats. This abundant evidence that theEssay on Christianityshould be assigned to theAdonaisperiod of Shelley’s literary career is further confirmed by these two important facts: (1) That the temper and reasoning of theEssayare in harmony with Shelley’s views and feeling on religious matters towards the close of his life; and (2) That in conversation with Trelawny, who knew the poet only at the close of his career, Shelley ‘said he had wished to write aLife of Christ, revoking the hasty afterthought’ (expressed in a note toQueen Mab) ‘that Jesus was an ambitious man who aspired to the throne of Judea,’ at the same time adding ‘that he found the materials too deficient for reconstructing aLifehaving some solidity and authority,’—words indicating that at a time no long while anterior to his brief association with Trelawny, the poet hadbeen reconsidering and reshaping his views of the Saviour’s career. Mr. Rossetti justly remarks that theEssay on Christianitymay have been the out-come of this project. Most readers will also think the out-come, instead of being ascribed to a period prior to the composition ofLaon and Cythna, should be assigned to theAdonaisterm of the poet’s story. In truth the discovery of a Shelleyan copy of theEssay, dated 1820 or 1821, would not materially strengthen the evidence that Shelley wrote it in his life’s concluding term.
At Bishopgate, Shelley saw little of his neighbours; the few of them who called upon him being so little to his mind that they were not encouraged to call again. Indeed, the only gentleman of the neighbourhood who seems to have approached the new settler on the verge of Windsor Park, without impressing him unfavourably, was Dr. Pope, the Quaker doctor of Staines, who, visiting the poet in the way of professional service, visited him also for the friendly discussion of religious questions. ‘I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley: I see thee art very deep,’ the doctor remarked on one occasion to the author ofQueen Mab. With the exception of this new acquaintance, who was only an occasional caller, and the two familiar comrades who had held to him staunchly in the previous winter of harassment and neglect, Shelley seems to have received no one at Bishopgate on a footing of sociability, from the middle of September, 1815, to the opening of the next spring. But the time of seclusion passed pleasantly in literary effort and the society of the two friends, with whom he read Greek authors;—Peacock strolling over to him twice or thrice a-week from Marlow, whilst Hogg (though a less frequent visitor at the cottage) seldom let a fortnight pass without walking down from London. Whilst reading Greek literature with the two scholars, Shelley found time to bring Mary forward in Latin. ‘Mary,’ he wrote to Hogg in September, 1815, ‘has finished the fifth book of theÆneid, and her progress in Latin is such as to satisfy my best expectations,’—words reminding one pathetically how, three years earlier, he took a similar interest in Harriett’s Latin studies, and wrote about them with the same satisfaction to the same correspondent.
As the time is nearing for Shelley to achieve his ambition of winning Byron’s friendship, the occasion has arrived for glancing at the regard in which the more famous poet was heldby the author ofAlastor, and also for glancing at the efforts made by certain of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to minimize the idolater’s admiration of the poet they abhor, by insisting that the admiration was qualified with disapproval, and strictly limited to certain of Byron’s more creditable literary productions. Let us see, by Shelley’s own words and acts, how he thought of Byron from 1816, when they made the personal acquaintance of one another, to the opening of the year memorable for the fatal boat accident in the Bay of Spezia.
(1)—Of Shelley’s regard for Byron in that year (1816), it is enough, for the present, to say that, after making Byron’s acquaintance under remarkable circumstances, and spending some weeks in close intimacy with him in Switzerland, Shelley was at much pains from that time till the opening of 1822, to cultivate and preserve his friendship:—a fact which may, at least, be regarded as conclusive evidence that their intercourse on the marge of Lake Leman was not fruitful of disappointment in the younger poet. Admiring the author ofChilde Harold, whilst he was living in Free Love with Mary’s sister-by-affinity, Shelley admired him none the less for dismissing Claire, and in later times worshipt him with a sentiment of idolatry that will ever remain one of the most remarkable examples of hero-worship in literary annals.
(2)—It is no slight indication of Shelley’s esteem for Byron in 1817,—when, according to Mr. Froude, he must have regarded the author ofChilde Haroldwith repugnance, as Claire’s seducer,—that he left Byron a legacy of 2000l.by his will (dated 18th Feb., 1817), and also appointed him to be an executor of the will, and a trustee for the performance of its trusts.
In the same year, 1817, when the discarded mistress had given birth to Allegra, Shelley wrote in the preface to theSix Weeks’ Tourthese words:—