‘I was prepared to make my father every reasonable concession, but I am not so degraded and miserable a slave, as publicly to disavow an opinion which I believe to be true. Every man of common sense must see that a sudden renunciation of sentiments seriously taken up is as unfortunate a test of intellectual uprightness as can possibly be devised. I take the liberty of enclosing my father’s letter for your Grace’s inspection. I repeat what I have said from the commencement of this negociation, in which private communications from my father first induced me to engage, that I am willing to concede anything that is reasonable, anything that does not involve a compromise of that self-esteem without which life would be a burden and a disgrace.’
‘I was prepared to make my father every reasonable concession, but I am not so degraded and miserable a slave, as publicly to disavow an opinion which I believe to be true. Every man of common sense must see that a sudden renunciation of sentiments seriously taken up is as unfortunate a test of intellectual uprightness as can possibly be devised. I take the liberty of enclosing my father’s letter for your Grace’s inspection. I repeat what I have said from the commencement of this negociation, in which private communications from my father first induced me to engage, that I am willing to concede anything that is reasonable, anything that does not involve a compromise of that self-esteem without which life would be a burden and a disgrace.’
Had he written in this strain of the failure of the negotiation to William Godwin or Hogg, or indeed to almost any one but the Duke of Norfolk, cautious readers would hesitate to infer from the epistle that the Member for New Shoreham had made any demand, so extreme as to justify in any degree the poet’s way of referring to it. But in writing to the Duke whom he knew to be cognizant of the terms offered to him by his father, it is scarcely conceivable that Shelley permitted himself to speak of them in a style, that was without even the faintest colour of justification. It does not, however, follow that the Squire had any desire to reduce his son to the position of a ‘degraded and miserable slave,’ or made any demand to which no young man of honour and sensibility could assent, without losing his self-respect.
In the absence of the evidence, which would alone qualify the reader to take a judicial view of the Squire’s requirements, it may be assumed that they comprised some stipulation which, having reference to his son’s religious and political sentiments, and going further than the former request for mere abstinence from public controversy, demanded some action which Percy could regard as public recantation of his published opinions. Possibly the unreasonable requirement was that, recalling to his hands every recoverable copy ofQueen Mab, he should destroy all copies of the book within his reach, and promise never again to put the work, or any similar work, in circulation. Shelleywould not have failed to regard any such condition, as a demand for his ‘sudden renunciation of sentiments seriously taken up.’ The Shelleyan enthusiasts of course take the expressions of the epistle literally, and argue from them that the proposals he declined with so much spirit and generous resoluteness involved some extravagant and humiliating concession, which should not have been demanded of him. One of the strongest reasons for thinking the zealots err on this point, is the certainty that no such extreme and insolent demand would have been sanctioned by the Duke of Norfolk, whose ‘exalted mind’ determined the course taken by Mr. Timothy Shelley in the business. I am prepared for evidence that the terms, so warmly rejected by Shelley, were hard terms. But should sufficient evidence ever appear that, in his growing irritation with a singularly exasperating son, the Squire insisted on terms, that besides being hard were cruel and unreasonable, it would still remain for readers to smile contemptuously at the Pecksniffian style in which Shelley (the writer of wheedling letters, who did not blush to declare to his familiar friend his deliberate intention of having recourse to deception) wrote of himself in this particular epistle, as though he were incapable of deviating by a hair’s breadth from the straight path of truth.
Another point to be noticed in this curious epistle is Shelley’s statement, that the futile negotiation, was a ‘negociation, in which private communications from his father first induced him to engage.’ As Shelley knew it to be within the Duke’s knowledge, whether the overtures for the fruitless negotiation came from him to his father, or from his father to him, he may be assumed to have written accurately respecting the preliminary ‘private communications.’ It may therefore be taken for certain that the Squire (acting doubtless at the Duke of Norfolk’s instance) made the overtures to his son for a friendly settlement of their differences;—a fact indicative of a disposition, rather than of an indisposition, on the Squire’s part, to come to friendly terms with his son. None the less certain, however, is it that Shelley himself (acting on Hogg’s advice) was the person, who for purely selfish ends (to get money) wrote the wheedling letter and made the insincere professions, which moved the Duke of Norfolk to advise the Squire to approach his boy with conciliatory overtures.
Three weeks after the fruitless negotiation, dating fromCooke’s Hotel (though I have but little doubt that he and Harriett were living in Pimlico, within a stone’s-throw of Maimuna’s drawing-room windows), Shelley, in mid-June, asked Mr. Medwin to be his legal adviser, in respect to the difficulties he would encounter on coming of age. ‘I know,’ he wrote to the Horsham Lawyer, ‘that I am heir to large property. Now, are the papers to be seen? Have you the least doubt that I am the sole heir to a large landed property? Have you any certain knowledge on the subject?’
In spite of the decisiveness of the words, ‘I know that I am the heir to large property,’ it is obvious, from the ensuing words, that, as his twenty-first year neared its end, the poet realized vividly how small his knowledge was of the nature and magnitude of the patrimony, about which he had written and spoken so much, with equal looseness and boastfulness. He begs his lawyer to say whether he has any doubt that he is the heir to a large landed property. ‘Have you,’ he asks of the man of business, who was his relative, and had formerly been in some degree cognizant of the affairs of the Shelleys, though he may never have been greatly in the confidence of either Sir Bysshe or Sir Bysshe’s son, ‘Have you any certain knowledge on the subject?’ He would not have asked in this nervous style for his attorney’s ‘certain knowledge on the subject,’ had he not been himself painfully in want of such knowledge. Seventeen months since, he had written confidently to William Godwin, ‘I am heir by entail to an estate of 6000l.per annum;’ and now in mid-June, 1813, he is writing almost with the excitement of panic to the Horsham lawyer, ‘Have you any certain knowledge on the subject?’ It seems as though the nervous creature were possessed by a fear that he might, after all his fine talk, find himself heir to nothing,—the fool of a fool’s paradise,—the dupe of a long, delightful, golden dream, passing away quickly in the chilling dawn of penury. Of course, any such state of alarm was transient. He had sufficient grounds for believing himself the heir (somehow or other) to considerable property. At the same time, he was painfully alive to his need of precise information respecting the property.
Four or five days later (21st June, 1813), after receiving a letter of reassuring information from Mr. Medwin, he wrote to the lawyer, ‘Depend upon it, that no artifice of my father’sshall induce me to take a life-interest in the estate;’—words, seeming to indicate that the lawyer (who had lent him money, and was otherwise interested in encouraging him to surrender nothing of his estate) had already been instructing him to disappoint his grandfather’s and father’s design to compass the re-entailment of the property. ‘I feel with sufficient force,’ the writer continues, in respect to the proposal that he should take a life-interest in the estate, ‘that I should not by such conduct be guilty alone of injustice to myself, but to those who have assisted me by kind offices and advice during my adversity:’—i.e.those who had lent him money during his minority.
Six days after the date of this last-mentioned letter, Harriett gave birth to her first-born child, who was named Ianthe Eliza, the second of the two names indicating that Miss Westbrook continued to hold her sister’s affection, and to have an influence in her brother-in-law’s home, after he had come to regard her with a dislike, that developed rapidly into unqualified aversion. That Hogg was right in thinking the child was born in Pimlico, instead of Dover Street, I have little doubt, though immediately before and after the birth Shelley was dating letters from Cooke’s Hotel.
The question has been raised whether Shelley ever felt any strong affection for Harriett’s daughter, though he spoke and wrote passionately of the barbarous decree of the Court of Chancery, that declared him unfit to have any part in the child’s education. It has also been questioned whether Harriett ever delighted in the little girl, who suffered from a congenital defect of one of her eyes, that was at least in some degree removed by the surgical operation, which afforded Mrs. Shelley an opportunity of displaying her self-control or insensibility, less to the admiration than to the astonishment of the surgeon who, after vainly endeavouring to persuade her to be absent whilst the patient was under the knife, was surprised at the apparent indifference with which she heard the cries and regarded the sufferings of the infant. It would, however, be unjust to draw conclusions unfavourable to Harriett from her demeanour on this occasion; for she may have been moved by maternal solicitude to remain in the room during the operation, and having decided to remain there, she was bound by care for her child’s welfare and the surgeon’s convenience, to keep her feelings under command. Nor should any positive inference toHarriett’s disadvantage be drawn from the fact, that, instead of being suckled by her mother, little Ianthe took her first nourishment from a wet-nurse; for though heraccouchementwas an easy affair, from which she recovered quickly, Harriett may have been compelled to employ a nurse to discharge a duty, which she would have been only too glad to perform personally. Again, though Hogg attributed the weakness to her shame at knowing ‘that one so nearly connected with herself was not perfectly beautiful,’ Harriett’s sensitiveness in respect to her infant’s slight facial deformity,—a sensitiveness that caused her to shrink from showing the child even to so intimate a friend as her husband’s future biographer, may have originated in maternal tenderness, quite as much as in wounded maternal vanity. Still, though no one of them would warrant an unhesitating inference to her disadvantage, and all of them are susceptible of explanation that would relieve her maternal character of the imputation resulting from them, it must be admitted that the morbid sensitiveness, the employment of the wet-nurse, and the extraordinary self-possession or apathy during the operation, are three facts, to justify a suspicion that the young mother was deficient in parental tenderness.
But to prove that her nature was defective in this respect, would raise no presumption that she was characterized by similar coldness towards her husband. The presumption would, indeed, be in the contrary direction; for instances are afforded at every turn to the social observer, of women who, whilst cold to their offspring, are passionately devoted to their husbands. There is no evidence that Harriett ever evinced any extraordinary devotion to her husband, or any love of him surpassing a girl’s ordinary liking for a youthful husband. Having regard to all the circumstances of her married life,—circumstances peculiarly unfavourable to the development of the domestic affections,—most readers of this page will concur with me in holding, that it would have been very strange, had Harriett loved her husband in the highest conceivable degree, or indeed with any fervour surpassing the warmth of ordinary conjugal attachment. Still, in justice to her, it should be borne in mind that a young woman may be at the same time a coldly amiable mother and a passionately loving wife.
It would be more important to ascertain, in what degree Shelley was animated by parental affectionateness. On thispoint the authorities are in conflict. Whilst Hogg thought his friend singularly wanting in parental tenderness and emotionality, so far as Ianthe was concerned, Peacock declares Shelley to have been ‘extremely fond’ of Ianthe when she was an infant-in-arms. To put implicit confidence in Hogg is to believe that Ianthe’s arrival neither ‘afforded’ her father ‘any gratification,’ nor ‘created an interest’ in him. Neverspeakingto Hogg of the infant, Shelley neverwroteto him about her, except in the single letter, dated from Bracknell on 16th March, 1814, where he rails against his sister-in-law as ‘a blind and loathsome worm,’ even as he had formerly in an epistle to the same correspondent railed against the Brown Demon, who, after being worshipt by him for her angelic excellencies, became in a few months ‘the hermaphroditical beast of a woman.’
On the other hand, in support of his opinion that Shelley was ‘extremely fond’ of Ianthe, Peacock tells how the father ‘would walk up and down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it a monotonous melody of his own making.’ Peacock says further, ‘His song was,Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani!It did not please me; but, what was more important, it pleased the child, and lulled it when it was fretful. Shelley was extremely fond of his children. He was pre-eminently an affectionate father.’ To most readers Peacock’s example of the poet’s parental tenderness will fail to prove the large allegation that he ‘was pre-eminently an affectionate father.’ Ordinary humanity and selfishness will account for the pains he took to lull the child, as he could not fly to Maimuna’s drawing-room whenever it raised its sharp, wailing cry. To do what Shelley did, is only to do what is done by almost every young father who, with a babe in his home, has not a good nursery at a convenient distance from the room he inhabits, but must perforce endure its screams or make it leave off screaming.
Fortunately there is another witness to be called, who is in some respects a better witness than either Peacock or Hogg; for, on making his observations, he had come to a period of life entitling him to be credited with more discretion than either of them possessed in 1813. Moreover, in 1822, when, Trelawny knew the poet, Shelley had arrived at a period of life when parental love is invariably stronger than at manhood’s threshold, and in burying his eldest boy by Mary Godwin, had madeacquaintance with the sorrow that never fails to quicken the sufferer’s disposition to love his offspring. On the other hand, it must be admitted, somewhat to his discredit, that this witness opens his evidence with a most erroneous statement. A clever man of the world, and a shrewd student of character, Trelawny came to a confident opinion that Shelley was not the ‘pre-eminently affectionate father’ Peacock declares him. Trelawny’s testimony to this point is weakened by the fact that he prefaced it with a declaration which no student of the poet’s story will hesitate to reject as wrong. On 22nd April, 1872, towards the close of his career, Trelawny reiterated to Mr. Rossetti an opinion, which he had expressed on previous occasions, ‘that Shelley cared nothing for children;’ and in illustration of the poet’s comparative indifference for his own child, told how in his presence ‘Shelley stepped over his own child, Percy, near the threshold of the house, without observing that it was Percy until the nurse told him.’ On this occasion, to Trelawny’s jocular reference to the proverbial saying that a man must be wise to know his own children, the poet remarked, ‘A wise man wouldn’t have any.’
In saying that Shelley cared nothing for children, Trelawny, of course, made a mistake, showing how little the shrewd man of the world knew of the poet; a mistake to be regarded as a rash inference from insufficient data. To remember how Shelley fed the little girl with bread-and-milk at Oxford; to remember how the troop of nakedized children rushed downstairs on hearing his rap at the street-door; to remember how he nursed Allegra in her infancy, rolled the billiard-balls about the table with her at Venice, and raced at her heels along the passages of the Bagna Cavallo convent; to remember all the pleasant stories of his intercourse with little people, is to remember how he resembled Byron in liking to make playmates of children. But, though Shelley certainly cared enough for children to enjoy their prattle, it does not follow that Trelawny (an honest and unimaginative man) is otherwise than a good witness to facts which took place under his eyes. Wrong in the mere matter of opinion, he holds the confidence of his hearers when he speaks to facts. Few readers will hesitate in accepting the Cornish gentleman’s evidence that he saw Shelley step over his little boy, and could remember Shelley did not recognize the minute urchin till the nurse spoke to him. The man, who, onstumbling over the infant, failed to recognize his own two-years-old child (a child ever about the house; a child with whom he had played for hours together in the previous year) cannot have been a father, in whom parental instinct was strongly operative. Such a man may be a conscientious and beneficent parent, but it is impossible for him to be a pre-eminently affectionate father to his children during their tender infancy. To enjoy playing with children is not the same thing as to love them. A kindly man will soothe them when they are fretful, and yet feel for them no sort of tenderness that is akin to parental affection. That Peacock inferred too much from Shelley’s practice of nursing and lulling Ianthe, appears from the fact that at Marlow he acted in the same way to Allegra.
To say that parental affection was not powerful in Shelley is not to raise a question respecting his general elevation of character, for the mere strength and activity of the parental sentiment afford no data for estimating the degree in which a man is endowed with the higher virtues. The mean and selfish often delight in their children, and on the other hand the humane and lofty-natured are sometimes by no means remarkable for solicitude for their own offspring. Why then am I at so much pains to call attention to the evidence that Shelley was not strongly interested in his first-born child, and that in this particular Harriett resembled him? In order that, whilst considering the circumstances which resulted in the poet’s separation from his wife, the reader may remember there is no reason for thinking the youthful couple were strongly influenced by the affection, that so often draws a husband and wife into stronger sympathy, and sometimes counteracts the forces that, but for it, would drive them asunder.
It was probably before Harriett’s accouchement, and whilst her physical condition, without disposing her to keep indoors, rendered bodily exercise more and more trying to her, that Shelley gave his wife the carriage which afforded Hogg the materials for one of his drollest anecdotes. How the carriage was horsed, and in what way the occupant of lodgings procured the servants needful for putting the vehicle on the London pavement, does not appear. Probably the requisite men and animals were provided on credit by the keeper of the livery-yard where the carriage was housed. It is, however, certain that, instead of being ‘jobbed,’ the vehicle was bought by Shelley of acoach-maker, who had not parted with the coach many weeks when he sued his customer for its price, one of the consequences of the tradesman’s efforts to get his money being that Hogg, through the blundering of a brace of bailiffs, was momentarily arrested on the writ issued for his friend’s apprehension. The coach-builder’s action shows clearly that, in selling the carriage to Shelley, he imagined himself selling it to a customer of legal age. It does not, however, follow that Shelley made any misstatement of his years in order to get possession of the vehicle. On buying the carriage, it was, of course, incumbent on him to let the tradesman know he was dealing with a minor; and it is conceivable that Shelley either spoke to the man in terms which should have enlightened him on this point, or had reason for believing the tradesman knew him to be under age. Had Shelley been heir to an estate, into the actual possession of which he would come a few months later, the purchase of the coach would have been no act of egregious imprudence, but as the estate to which he might eventually succeed would not come to him till the death of his father, the poet’s action in setting up his carriage, when he was deeply in debt, and had no income apart from the precarious 400l., may be fairly called a droll extravagance.
9.—Bracknell.
Under the circumstances, no reader will suspect Lady Shelley of wanting evidence to support her statement that, in the summer of 1813, ‘Shelley was in severe pecuniary distress.’ However successful they may be in getting credit and staving off their creditors, people who live showily on just nothing a-year are usually in severe pecuniary distress. What with the cost of producing 250 copies ofQueen Mabon fine paper, the cost of lodgings in so fashionable a thoroughfare as Half-Moon Street, the expenses of Harriett’s carriage, the fees to the taciturn Quaker physician who attended her, and now the wages of Ianthe’s wet-nurse, Shelley certainly lived in London from April to mid-July as extravagantly as he had lived at Tanyrallt. It is, therefore, conceivable that, before ‘going out of town,’ Shelley often found himself sorely in want of a five-pound note, a sovereign, ay, even of half-a-crown.
Conceivable also is it that Shelley imagined he could retrench his expenses at Bracknell, and that therefore Lady Shelley may be in possession of documentary evidence that hespoke of his migration to Bracknell as an economical movement. But writing ‘from authentic sources’ of information, Lady Shelley can scarcely have been justified in writing of her husband’s father that, ‘for the purpose of economy, he retired to a small cottage in Berkshire,’ as though he went to Bracknell solely for cheap rural existence. Shelley went to Bracknell in order to be near Maimuna, who had her country-house there. Lady Shelley, with her ‘authentic sources,’ cannot have been unaware that the youthful poet moved to Bracknell for the enjoyment of gentle and soothing intercourse with Maimuna. It is inconceivable that Lady Shelley never heard of Maimuna, her home at Bracknell, and Shelley’s passion for her. Yet she represents that Shelley’s motive for going to Bracknell was purely economical. There is no reference to Maimuna in the whole of Lady Shelley’s book. It is thus that Shelley’s extravagant admirers produce biography of him from ‘authentic sources.’
Taking a cottage at Bracknell, in order to be near Mrs. Boinville, Shelley, during his tenure of the ‘High Elms,’ lived in a way that, instead of being economical, might almost be styled prodigal. He made a costly trip to Edinburgh and the English lakes, posting in his carriage. He was frequently running from the Berkshire parish up to town, journeying sometimes on foot, but necessarily spending money or running deeper into debt for accommodation at London hotels. At least, on one occasion, he had seven guests staying with him in his Berkshire cottage at the same time, the whole family of the vegetarian Newtons. It is true that Shelley at this period of his career was a vegetarian, and abstained from wine and all spirits, except the spirit that came to him through the neck of the laudanum-bottle; but at times during this term he drank laudanum freely, and laudanum, bought of West-London druggists, is no cheap drink. There was not much economy in this way of living.
There is a conflict between the authorities as to the particular year in which Shelley paid his last visit to Field Place; for whilst Hogg represents the visit to have been made in the early summer of 1814, Lady Shelley is no less certain that it was an affair of the late summer of 1813. Though with all his inaccuracy Hogg is much less inaccurate than Lady Shelley, several circumstances cause me to think the lady right on thispoint, albeit two or three matters dispose me to think she may have been mistaken. The balance of the evidence is, however, so greatly in her favour that (whilst cautioning readers that they may even yet be required to postpone the visit into the following year) I venture to record that, soon after migrating to Bracknell, Shelley started from his cottage on foot for his old home, whither his mother had invited him to come in the absence of his father and the three younger children.
At Field Place the poet was received cordially by his mother and two eldest sisters, and had the society of Mr. Kennedy, a young officer (ætat.16) stationed at Horsham, to whose pen we are indebted for the greater part of what is known of Bysshe’s last visit to his former home. From this chronicler it appears that Bysshe accepted his mother’s invitation on the understanding that his father and the younger children would be away, and that his visit would be withheld from the Squire’s knowledge. There are, however, grounds for suspecting that the Squire on leaving his home for a few days was aware who would visit it in his absence, though Shelley came to Field Place under the impression that, to shield his mother from the wrath that would visit her in case of discovery, he must take care to keep his presence at the house from the cognizance of neighbours.
Some thirty or more years later Captain Kennedy recalled how, before setting out for a walk beyond the limits of the Field Place demesne, he (a sixteen-years-old ensign) and the poet used to exchange their outer garments, so that the disguise of a scarlet uniform should render the Warnham peasants less likely to recognize their Squire’s son. It lived in Captain Kennedy’s recollection how, though he had a small pate, his military cap was so much too large for Percy that it was found needful to pad the lining liberally for his use. But because Shelley saw a necessity for dressing himself out in this fashion, and, doubtless, enjoyed the fun of masquerading about the Warnham lanes in a red coat, it does not follow there was any need for the disguise. That Captain Kennedy resembled the biographer for whose benefit he racked his recollection, and all other persons who try to recall clearly what they can only remember vaguely, in permitting his fancy to aid his memory, appears from one or two passages of his entertaining narrative. Though the exchange of costumes was a matter to live in the memory of either masquerader, it is difficult to believe theCaptain could recollect (some thirty or forty years afterwards) that Shelley wore ‘an old black coat,’ which had been ‘done up, and smartened with metal buttons and a velvet collar.’ To believe all the Captain says about this seedy and re-trimmed garment, is to believe that Shelley (the young gentleman who a few weeks since had set up his carriage) dressed thus meanly because he was too generous ever to have any money in his pocket, and too precisely honourable to run in debt.
A passage from the Captain’s narrative, as it was originally offered to the world in Hogg’s second volume, may be given both as an example of the deponent’s evidence, and as an illustration of the editorial carelessness by which Hogg enabled his enemies to charge him with falsifying documents:—
‘He told me,’ says Captain Kennedy, ‘Sir James was intimate with one to whom, as he said, he owed everything; from whose book,Political Justice, he had derived all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue. He discoursed with eloquence and enthusiasm, but his views seemed to me exquisitely metaphysical, and by no means clear, precise, or decided. He told me he had already read the Bible in Hebrew four times. He was then only twenty-two years of age.Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint.He spoke of the Supreme Being as of infinite mercy and benevolence. He disclosed no fixed views of spiritual things; all seemed wild and fanciful.’
‘He told me,’ says Captain Kennedy, ‘Sir James was intimate with one to whom, as he said, he owed everything; from whose book,Political Justice, he had derived all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue. He discoursed with eloquence and enthusiasm, but his views seemed to me exquisitely metaphysical, and by no means clear, precise, or decided. He told me he had already read the Bible in Hebrew four times. He was then only twenty-two years of age.Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint.He spoke of the Supreme Being as of infinite mercy and benevolence. He disclosed no fixed views of spiritual things; all seemed wild and fanciful.’
Observe the words of the extract which I have printed in italics. To any careful peruser of those words and their context, it is obvious that the words, though printed as a substantial part of the Captain’s narrative, were not penned by him. The words ‘twenty-two years of age,’ that immediately precede them, and the words ‘He spoke of the Supreme Being,’ that follow them immediately, are words of the Captain’s writing. But he cannot be imagined to have written the words, ‘Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint.’ The interpolation is one of Hogg’s editorial notes, which he intended to be printed between brackets and duly ‘initialed.’ Printed thus, ‘(Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint. T. J. H.)’ the interpolation could not have been maliciously declared a falsification of the text.
When Lady Shelley, after staying Hogg’s work midwayand discharging him with public discourtesy, produced her not invariably accurateShelley Memorials, she reproduced Hogg’s portions of Captain Kennedy’s narrative with alterations in amendment, omitting (as she surely had a right to do) Hogg’s editorial interpolation; omitting Captain Kennedy’s words ‘in Hebrew’ (which she surely had no right to do without stating she had the Captain’s authority for doing so), and changing ‘twenty-two years old’ into ‘twenty years’ (an alteration she would have been fully justified in making on the strength of sufficient documentary evidence without consulting Captain Kennedy on the point). One point more in respect to Captain Kennedy’s narrative. As Shelley had no sure belief in the existence of the Supreme Deity at this period of his existence, it must be concluded either that he did not speak of the Supreme Being’s infinite mercy and benevolence in the manner alleged by Captain Kennedy, or that he, in so speaking, was insincere.
In connection with Shelley’s last visit to his home a few words may be here said more appropriately than they would have been said in a previous chapter. In the letter written by Shelley on 26th November, 1811, from Keswick to Mr. Medwin, Sen., appear these words:—
‘Whitton has written to me to state the impropriety of my letter to my mother and sister; this letter I have returned with a passing remark on the back of it. I find that the affair on which those letters spoke is become the general gossip of the idle newsmongers of Horsham—they give me credit for having invented it. They do my invention much honour, but greatly discredit their own penetration.’
‘Whitton has written to me to state the impropriety of my letter to my mother and sister; this letter I have returned with a passing remark on the back of it. I find that the affair on which those letters spoke is become the general gossip of the idle newsmongers of Horsham—they give me credit for having invented it. They do my invention much honour, but greatly discredit their own penetration.’
From these words it is obvious that Shelley, before 26th November, 1811, had written to his mother and sister a letter that appeared to his father an epistle, to be answered by the family solicitor, Mr. Whitton. It is also obvious that the letter, so answered by the family solicitor, and the letter written in reply to it by the same solicitor, related to some affair which, on coming to the knowledge of certain persons of Horsham, had caused them to declare it no true affair, but a thing invented by Shelley. Apart from this information respecting the affair which Horsham people declared a falsehood, I know nothing, except that Medwin (videLife, p. 169, 170) speaks of it thus:—
‘The affair here referred to is little to the purpose; but during Sir Timothy’s absence in London, on his parliamentary duties, Lady Shelleyinvited Shelley to Field Place, where he was received, to use his own words, with muchshew-affection. Some days after he had been there his mother produced a parchment deed which she asked him to sign, to what purport I know not; but he declined so doing, and which he told me he would have signed had he not seen through the false varnish of hypocritical caresses. This anecdote is not idle gossip, but comes from Shelley himself.’
‘The affair here referred to is little to the purpose; but during Sir Timothy’s absence in London, on his parliamentary duties, Lady Shelleyinvited Shelley to Field Place, where he was received, to use his own words, with muchshew-affection. Some days after he had been there his mother produced a parchment deed which she asked him to sign, to what purport I know not; but he declined so doing, and which he told me he would have signed had he not seen through the false varnish of hypocritical caresses. This anecdote is not idle gossip, but comes from Shelley himself.’
If Shelley had the folly in or before his twentieth year to write or say that, when only just nineteen years old or younger, he was at a private conference between them entreated by his mother to sign a legal instrument, which she then and there produced for him to sign, the Horsham gossip-mongers on coming to hear the story may well have burst out laughing and declared it an invention. But till I have better evidence to the point than this statement by Medwin, I must decline to believe that his note describes accurately ‘the affair,’ which occasioned the exchange of letters, though I am quite prepared to find that the correspondence referred to some cock-and-bull story. I cannot, however, refuse to believe that Shelley, on being spoken to about the passage of the Keswick letter, did really give the explanation which Medwin declares he received from Shelley himself. Medwin’s inexactness is proverbial. He is almost as inaccurate as Lady Shelley. But none of his inaccuracies, nor all of them taken together, raise suspicion of his good faith. He was gullible and at times curiously addle-pated; but he was no inventor of untruths. When the errors of his book about Byron raised an outcry, he could produce note-books to show he was an honest collector of gossip, though a credulous and undiscerning one. The wild fictions of theConversationswere not Medwinian falsehoods, but pure Byronic ‘bams.’ Distrustful though I am of Medwin’s statements, I have no mistrust of his honour. When he gives me his word of honour that a certain statement was made to him, I neither doubt that some such statement was made, nor doubt that he reports honestly, though with a greater or less degree of inexactness. I do not question that Shelley spoke to him about the affair, and the passage of the Keswick letter; and I am disposed to think that, on being questioned about the passage of the epistle, Shelley may have imagined it to refer, and said that it referred, to some vaguely remembered matter, which instead of taking place in 1811 was an incident of his last visit to Field Place in 1813.
Be it remembered that two distant cousins and close companions have several points of mental resemblance; one of them being the inexactitude that renders Medwin’s volumes so comparatively worthless, and Shelley’s soberest statements about his personal story so unreliable. It is conceivable that what Shelley said about his mother’s endeavour to lure him into signing a parchment-deed, was his vague and inexact recollection of some incident of his last visit to the old home. Of course, it is not to be imagined she produced a legal instrument and asked him to put his signature forthwith to the writing. But it is conceivable that, feeling with her husband on the question of entailing the estate, and knowing the purport of the memorable October, 1811, codicil of Sir Bysshe’s will (which would require her son to join in the entailment of the estates A and B on pain of forfeiting all interest in his grandsire’s much larger possessions) she undertook to use her influence to win from him a written promise, that he would in due course join in the arrangement, which was desired by his parents even more for his sake than for the sake of ‘the family.’ What more natural than for the lady to say to her husband, ‘Leave me to deal with Bysshe, and I will do my best to persuade him to act rightly’?
In the autumn following this last visit to Field Place (if Lady Shelley is right in assigning the visit to the summer of 1813, which I think her to be), or the autumn preceding the same visit (if Hogg is right in ascribing the visit to the early summer of 1814), Shelley,—moving about for the sake of change, and also perhaps because domestic considerations made him feel it would be well for him to pass a few weeks at a distance from Maimuna’s abode,—made the already mentioned trip to Scotland and the Cumberland lakes, with his wife, Miss Westbrook, and Thomas Love Peacock. At Edinburgh on 21st October, 1813, the tourists were still there on 26th November, 1813, when Shelley wrote Hogg a letter containing six superlatively noteworthy words in this otherwise noteworthy sentence:
‘I am happy to hear that you have returned to London, as I shall shortly have the pleasure of seeing you again.I shall return to London alone.My evenings will often be spent at the N’s, where, I presume, you are no unfrequent visitor.’
‘I am happy to hear that you have returned to London, as I shall shortly have the pleasure of seeing you again.I shall return to London alone.My evenings will often be spent at the N’s, where, I presume, you are no unfrequent visitor.’
Though no critic has hitherto called attention to the general inaccuracy of her misleading book, Lady Shelley had scarcely published herShelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources, whenshe was assailed with unusual severity for the utter wrongness of a particular statement which, had it not been for the context, would have deserved no reprehension. On coming to speak of Shelley’s severance from Harriett, Lady Shelley gives these words in a separate paragraph:—
‘Towards the close of 1813 estrangements, which for some time had been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisis. Separation ensued; and Mrs. Shelley returned to her father’s house. Here she gave birth to her second child—a son, who died in 1826.’
‘Towards the close of 1813 estrangements, which for some time had been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisis. Separation ensued; and Mrs. Shelley returned to her father’s house. Here she gave birth to her second child—a son, who died in 1826.’
Had Mr. Peacock objected to this curious specimen of close writing that, by omitting all reference to the graver estrangements of the earlier months of 1814, Lady Shelley gave her readers the erroneous impression that the estrangements and crisis of 1813 were the immediate and only cause of the separation that took place towards the middle of the ensuing year, he would have had the general concurrence of discreet and critical readers of the Shelleyan story. But Peacock contended that no estrangements had occurred in 1813 between Shelley and Harriett, and that therefore no estrangements between them could have come to a crisis towards the close of that year. ‘Thus,’ says Mr. Peacock, ‘there had been no estrangement to the end of 1812. My own memory sufficiently attests that there was none in 1813,’—strong and notable language from the eminent man of letters, who, accompanying the Shelleys to the Cumberland lakes, Edinburgh, and other places (including Matlock), in October and November, was their close companion till the end of the year; very notable language from the man who was the daily companion of the youthful husband and wife in the northern capital, whence Shelley dated the letter to Hogg containing those six words, ‘I shall return to London alone.’
To apprehend the significance of these six words, readers must remember that in 1813 a journey to Edinburgh was a more laborious and costly affair than a trip to Rome in these days of punctual steamers and fast trains. If a party of four persons,—a young husband with his young wife, sister-in-law, and a male friend,—should start now-a-days from London for a trip to Rome, with the intention of staying there six weeks, and before the expiration of the time the young husband (being no man of affairs, likely to call him suddenly back to England) should write to a familiar friend in London, ‘I shall shortlyhave the pleasure of seeing you again. I shall return to London alone,’ what inference would the receiver of the epistle naturally draw from so startling an announcement? Surely he would conclude that there was discord in the party, that ‘something had gone wrong,’ and that the disagreement affected the young wife’s relations with her husband, who had resolved to return to England by himself, leaving her to follow him.
On reviewing the chief features of the poet’s life at Bracknell in the summer and early autumn, no reader can question that they indicated on Shelley’s part discontent with his home, and on Harriett’s part more or less annoyance at finding herself an insufficient companion for him. In her rural retirement she had even less of his society than when they were in London. Most of the time spent by him at home he spent with a book or pen in hand. As soon as he had done reading and writing, he took his hat and went for a solitary walk that, wherever else his path led him, never failed to take him to Maimuna’s house standing at a considerable distance from Harriett’s cottage:—to the house of the woman whom he regarded and declared ‘the most admirable specimen of a human being he had ever seen.’ Going daily to Mrs. Boinville’s house, he spent hours at a time with her, reading poetry and philosophy with her, communing with her on fine questions touching the perfectibility of the human species, and still more delicate questions about the source, nature, and activity of the emotional energies,—conversations that afforded him daily opportunities, for studying ‘the extreme subtlety and delicacy of Mrs. Boinville’s understanding and affections.’ If he went to her house in the evening it was no uncommon thing for him to stay with her and her friends, talking and drinking strong tea till long after midnight, and to re-enter his cottage at dawn. Consulting Maimuna on the affairs of his highest intellectual interests, he consulted her also on his divers domestic anxieties and mere matters of the house. Is it conceivable that Harriett liked all this?
In her annoyance at Percy’s devotion to his spiritual bride, the whiteness of Maimuna’s tresses afforded Harriett little comfort. To the young wife it was a poor consolation to reflect that the enchantress was old enough to be Percy’s mother, that he valued her chiefly for the subtlety of her intellect and the delicacy of her affections, that he worshiped her platonically. Of given forces, acting under certain conditions, the scientist canpredict the consequences with unerring precision. The chemist does not require evidence of what ensued from the combination of particular elements in stated proportions. In like manner the competent personal historian knows what must have resulted from certain positions. Without direct documentary evidence to their existence, Lady Shelley would have been justified in saying that towards the close of 1813 ‘estrangements had been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley,’ and that the estrangements came at that time toacrisis. But she had documentary evidence for both assertions. Towards the close of 1813 Shelley wrote those six words to Hogg, ‘I shall return to London alone.’
If Peacock knew nothing of these dissensions, it only shows that Shelley and Harriett had the good taste and discretion to keep their discord from his cognizance. It is, however, conceivable that he was aware of the Edinburgh dissensions, without regarding them of sufficient magnitude to be termed estrangements. A subsequent passage of his second Shelleyan paper indicates that this was the case. There are, of course, estrangements and estrangements; and it is usual for conjugal estrangements to have several crises before coming to the extreme crisis—of separation. An estrangement may be nothing more than a serious quarrel, which, though ‘made up,’ results in a weakening of mutual affection; it may be a more or less complete alienation of affection, unattended with personal severance, or even any wish for personal severance; it may be such a state of discord as quickly results in personal severance; it may be the total cessation of all intercourse. Peacock was obviously thinking of one or the other of the two most aggravated kinds of estrangement when he wrote, ‘There was no estrangement; no shadow of a thought of separation, till Shelley became acquainted, not long after the second marriage, with the lady who was subsequently his second wife.’ Peacock may have been right in this opinion, and certainly had fairly good grounds for it, though I question whether they were sufficient. But if he, using the word in one of its extreme senses, was justified in holding his opinion, it would still remain that Lady Shelley, using the word in one of the less vehement senses, was justified in speaking of the estrangements, which came toacrisis before the end of 1813. But even so, Lady Shelley was wrong in writing so as to lead her readers to infer that the crisisof 1813 was the direct and immediate cause of the separation of 1814.
One of the noteworthy facts connected with Shelley’s journey in the autumn of 1813 to the Cumberland lakes, and Edinburgh, is that he made the trip in his own carriage drawn by post horses,—the costliest way of travelling seventy years since. In London he could get horses from a livery-stable on credit; but for post-horses taken for the stage, ‘the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes of England’ must have paid at once. As Peacock was at that time a poor man of letters he cannot be supposed to have contributed anything towards the cost of the journey, though he possibly paid his own hotel-bills. The charges of the trip must have fallen chiefly, if not altogether, on Shelley,—the young gentleman who, at this term of his career, is represented as wearing furbished-up clothes, because he could not afford to buy new ones. Mr. Medwin, of Horsham, could probably have told how his youthful client obtained the money that enabled him to execute this feat of prodigality.
Before the present narrative deals with incidents of 1814 notice should be taken of a trivial literary performance, and a piece of important literary labour, that pertain to the record of the year in which the poet attained his majority. Reprinting the Vegetarian Note toQueen Mab, with a few alterations and additions of no moment, he published it in the form of a tract that was offered for sale by a medical bookseller at eighteen pence a copy; the date of publication being subsequent to the secret issue of the poem. To the later months of the same year may also be attributed the labour of writing theRefutation of Deism, which is believed to have been published (at least in thelegalsense of the term) at the beginning of 1814,—the year given on the title-page.
FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW LOVE.