‘My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine.’
‘My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine.’
Readers no less clearly remember how, just upon a month after theEight Days’ Tour of the Lake, Shelley and the girls, leaving Byron for just the same length of time to his own devices, made theEight Days’ Trip to Chamouni, returning to Mont Alègre and Diodati towards the close of July. Is it not in the whole world’s memory how, when the rain held them prisoners in Byron’s villa, the poets and the sisters, in the excitement of reading ghost stories, terrified one another with ghastly tales of their own invention;—a tournament of wit andterrifying fancy, that bore enduring fruit in Mary Godwin’sFrankenstein? It is enough to remind readers of this page how, on the 18th of June, after hearing Byron recite theChristabelverses on the witch’s breast, Shelley shrieked in horror at his own vivid imagination of a woman with eyes instead of nipples; and how in the ensuing August, when Monk Lewis had joined the group at Diodati, Byron, and Mary, and Shelley, and Claire, drew about the terrifying relater and beset him with their intensely excited faces, whilst he poured forth strange stories of hideous fancy and grim humour.
That Shelley had no intention in the middle of July of returning to England straight from Switzerland, but was possessed by a project of descending the Danube in a boat, visiting Constantinople and Athens, Rome and the Tuscan cities, and returning by Southern France, appears from a letter he wrote from Geneva to Peacock on 17th July, 1816, in the interval between theTour of the Lakeand theTrip to Chamouni,—a letter containing this remarkable passage,—‘On the motives and consequences of this journey, I reserve much explanation for some future winter walk or summer expedition!’ How about these words, that refernotto the ‘Eastern scheme which has just seized on our imaginations,’butto the trip from London to Geneva?
Had he believed himself to have told the truth at Bishopgate, in intimating that he was about to leave England in order to escape his father and uncle, he would have seen neither need nor occasion for saying more about the motives for the journey. May the words be taken as an admission, that the Bishopgate fictions were fictions, and that Peacock had still to learn the full and true story of the motives and purpose of the trip to Geneva?
Whilst the Genevese coteries were saying evil things of Shelley and Byron,eachof the poets knew the worst of the many bad things said about them in those cliques. Whether Mary and Claire participated fully in this knowledge is uncertain. Byron and Shelley may have withheld from the sisters some of the things said of them in Genevese society. From some motive of delicacy or considerateness, the two young men may have kept from the girls all they knew of what was tattled to their shame in thesalonsof the city; though one does not see clearly why they should have been so uncommunicative to theeighteen-years-old girls, whom Shelley had carried throughThe Empire of the Nairs, and had introduced to all the reasons for agreeing with the anti-matrimonial note toQueen Mab. Enthusiasts in the new social philosophy, the sisters were prepared for the misrepresentation and calumny, ever poured upon social reformers by the slaves of prejudice and ignorance. It is, however, no question that the story, which Byron a few years later (March, 1820) charged Southey with circulating (and possibly inventing) in order ‘to blast the character of the daughter’ of the woman he had formerly loved, was a story well known to the author ofChilde Haroldin August, 1816. If, on returning to England from his Swiss trip, Southey reported (as Byron averred in March, 1820) that Byron and Shelley were living in promiscuous intercourse with Mary and Claire, the author ofThalabaonly repeated a story, generally told and believed in Geneva, alike by tourists and residents, whilst he was living at the Villa Diodati.
Whilst living in retirement from circles which had shown a reluctance to make his acquaintance, the recluse of Diodati—ever, in his morbid egotism, no less eager for the gossip that lashed him to fury, than for the gossip that tickled his self-love—was keptau courantwith the talk of the Genevese tables, by persons who had no difficulty in gathering it. What with Polidori (acceptable insalons, where his employer would not have been welcome), Hentsch the banker (cognizant of everything that went on in Geneva), Madame de Staël at Coppet (overflowing with almost maternal solicitude for Lady Noel’s naughty son-in-law), and Fletcher (cleverest of valets at gathering the gossip of couriers and lady’s-maids, and ever privileged to pour it with more than a valet’s freedom into his master’s ear), Byron was in no want of sure informants about Geneva’s opinions of himself and his doings. And what he learnt of the current talk about his affairs, the exile from Newstead passed over to his brother in poetry and domestic trouble. As soon as Shelley and the girls had left for England, Byron was no less communicative to the friend, who, on coming to the Château Diodati (a week or so after the departure of the trio), had not been many hours in the villa, without hearing all about the scandal, that was largely influential in determining Byron to break with Claire. So early as 9th September, 1816, the recipient of Byron’s piquant chatter wrote to the Hon. Mrs.Leigh, of the Genevese curiosity and gossip about her brother: ‘There was, indeed, until a fortnight ago, a neighbouring gentleman who had two ladies living in his house under the Château Diodati, and, as you may suppose,both and each of these womankind, as Mr. Oldbuck calls them in theAntiquary, were most literally assigned to the person who was accustomed to consider the cases of such kind of appurtenances, when superfluous or neglected by their lawful owners.’
It may be assumed that, in alluding thus lightly to one-half of the current scandal, the tattler plied his pen (not only in Byron’s interest, but also with the poet’s sanction), in order to anticipate rumour, with an explanation of the report, which would be sure to come to his correspondent’s ears sooner or later.
Withholding, as he was bound to do, the names of the gentleman and two ladies, and all particulars touching the peculiar nature of their real intimacy, the writer of the words (here printed in italics) shows how fully and precisely he was informed, immediately on his coming to Diodati, of the rumour, which, affecting the reputation of either poet so injuriously during his life, and influencing in peculiar and different ways the poetical labours of both authors, had for its echo the hideous story given to the world by Mrs. Beecher Stowe. How the scandal stirred Byron’s imagination may be seen inManfredandCain. How it affected Shelley’s fancy and spurred him to the most extravagant of his conclusions respecting the intercourse of the sexes appears inLaon and Cythna. Had it not been for the Genevese scandal,Laon and Cythnawould not have been brother and sister of the same parents, and Byron would not have written the poems that vexed poor Lady Byron’s troubled mind in her later time. But for that scandal both poets would have escaped the still darker suspicions it generated long afterwards in the minds of men. But for that scandal, Claire would never have been suspected of the wickedness imputed to her by later calumny, and the Hon. Mrs. Leigh would never have been charged with crime of which she was absolutely incapable. Reverberating far and wide through time, slander is repeated variously by near and distant echoes. The scandal, that agitated Shelley so profoundly at Ravenna in 1821, was a revival and development of one-half of the slander that came to his ears at Geneva in 1816. The scandal, thatpreyed for a while on Mrs. Leigh’s reputation till the present writer killed it, was the distorted outgrowth of the old vile Genevese tattle about her brother’s intimacy with the two sisters at Diodati. The base story, that came to Shelley’s ears at Ravenna, was the near echo, the vile story of Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s book was the distant echo, of the same slanderous report.
It is not surprising that Byron put an end to hisliaisonwith Claire soon after hearing what the world said about it. No Free Lover (had he been one, the favourers of the Free Contract would have dealt less harshly with his reputation), but a man holding conventional (not to say fashionable) notions on libertinism, and old-fashioned notions respecting the matrimonial law, Byron held to the old, hard and fast, line between wives and mistresses. To him, of course, Claire was never aught more than his mistress, in the ordinary sense of the term; a mistress whom at the outset of his fleeting passion he regarded with a romantic tenderness that seventy years since seldom qualified a young nobleman’s sentimental condescension to a girl in Claire’s position; a mistress with whom he wished to live with a secresy which would prevent the affair from coming to the knowledge of Lady Byron. Regarding Claire in this light and capacity, precisely as in later time he regarded Marianna Segati and Teresa Guiccioli, he was hoping for a speedy restoration to his wife’s favour, and (under Madame De Stäel’s counsel) was actually making overtures for reconcilement to her, even whilst the trio nestled in the pretty cottage at the verge of his Swiss tree-garden. The rejection of the overtures, and the intelligence of the scandal coming to him closely upon one another, it would under any circumstances have been natural for Byron to attribute the disdainful reply in some degree to the injurious rumours. But he had other reasons for thinking Lady Byron would have been less steady in her unforgivingness, had she not heard of theliaison. Not incapable of resenting a misadventure on its innocent cause, he was likely to conceive a sudden distaste for an arrangement to which he assigned his discomfiture, and a simultaneous distaste for his partner in the hurtful arrangement. Other influences (one of them being Claire’s vehement temper) may also have concurred in disposing him to retreat from the association as speedily as possible. But in seeking for the sufficient motive of his capricious treatment ofthe too-fervid brunette, readers need look no further than his disgust at the rumours arising from his intimacy with her, and his conviction, that but for her bright eyes and racy speech, he would have been starting for Kirkby Mallory, instead of making his arrangements for an Italian tour. Anyhow, without letting her see how completely she had fallen from his favour, or losing the worshipful regard of either Shelley or Mary (if their words may be trusted), Byron bade Claire farewell at Geneva. Returning to England with Shelley and her sister-by-affinity, Claire gave birth in the following January to Allegra—the girl who, dying in her sixth year at Bagna Cavallo, lived long enough to survive her mother’s romantic hope, that through her child’s influence she would recover something of her poet’s love.
By the writers, who insist that Shelley and Mary went to Geneva in ignorance that Claire and Byron had arranged to meet there, and almost to the end of their sojourn in Switzerland, remained in their guileless ignorance of the Byron-Claireliaison, it is, of course, maintained that Shelley and Mary were greatly surprised on learning, towards the end of August, that Claire was in the way to become a mother. Possibly, the evidence of Claire’s delusive letter accords with the evidence of other no less illusory writings. But no letters, however precise and authentic, by Claire or any other writer, can annul or weaken the conclusive testimony of the certain and indisputable facts and circumstances of the Genevese episode.
Returning to London on 7th September, 1816, Shelley passed through town to Marlow, and stayed a fortnight with Peacock, before going to Bath, where he and the sisters determined to remain whilst the house, which he had taken in the Buckinghamshire village for twenty-one years, was being painted, furnished, and fitted, for their habitation. It was on an early day of his sojourn at the favourite resort of fashionable valetudinarians, that Shelley, dating from 5 Abbey Church Yard, 2nd October, 1816, wrote to Mr. Murray about the proofs of the third canto ofChilde Harold, which he had undertaken to see through the press,—a service the younger poet was well pleased and not a little proud to render his famous friend.
Exactly a week later, on the evening of Wednesday, 9th October, 1816, Mary Godwin received the ‘very alarming letter’ which caused Shelley to start immediately for Bristol,only to return to Bath at 2 p.m. ‘with no particular news’ (videMr. Kegan Paul’sWilliam Godwin). On Thursday, the 10th, Shelley went again to Bristol. On Friday, 11th, he was at Swansea. After posting this letter at Bristol, Fanny Imlay,aliasWollstonecraft,aliasGodwin, caught the Cambrian coach and made her way to the Mackworth Arms Inn, of Swansea, where, soon after her arrival at a late hour, she went to her bedroom for the long rest that was her last rest. On the morrow morning (Wednesday, 10th October) she was found lying dead, the nature of her death being declared by the laudanum bottle on her table, and the paper on which she had written:—
‘I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pains to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as....’
‘I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pains to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as....’
There was an inquest, with the verdict ‘Found dead.’ This was the end of Fanny, who, after leaving London on the 7th instant, for a visit to her aunts, Mrs. Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft, perished by her own act at the Swansea tavern. A good, gentle, interesting girl, Fanny inherited all her mother’s early affectionateness and generosity, without acquiring from the same source the vehemence and asperity that were amongst the chief faults of her mother’s temper. But, together with exemption from the fervour and fierceness of her mother’s nature, Fanny was not so fortunate as to enjoy exemption from its morbid sensibility. Together with a full share of the Wollstonecraft sensitiveness, she derived from the Wollstonecrafts the disposition to melancholy, that qualified her to do in mild resoluteness what her mother essayed in tempestuous rage.
To account for this desperate act, the reviewer of the poor girl’s career is not driven to adopt Claire’s explanation of the tragedy. Several circumstances, distinct from her regard for Shelley, had combined to trouble her profoundly during the closing term of her existence. It was natural for her to brood over the melancholy facts of her mother’s story, which came to her knowledge, directly or indirectly, through the same channel that made them known to Mary and Claire. Her half-sister’s flight with Shelley would, under any circumstances, have caused her the keenest mental torture; but the anguish it caused herheart and soul was the sharper to so loving and sympathetic a creature, because of the grief, coming in different ways and degrees, to William Godwin (whom she loved) and his wife (with whom she lived harmoniously) from the date of the event which, violently wrenching asunder so many domestic ties, had broken up the home in Skinner Street,—though the mere shell of the old home, from which familiar joy had been driven for ever, was still maintained under conditions of deepening gloom and anxiety. No wonder the poor girl found the sorrows of her existence too heavy for endurance. Let it not, however, be imagined that she yielded to despair without brave efforts to conquer it. Whilst so many writers have used their ingenuity and skill in colouring Mary Godwin into a heroine, and varnishing her submission to Shelley’s suit into a romantic love-story, how little has been said in honour of poor Fanny—the true heroine!—who, hiding her sorrow as she best could from the old man (who had been a good father to her), and from the woman (who had been a good mother to her) strove to comfort their grief and shame, whilst the heart in her own breast was slowly breaking.
Nothing nobler and more lovely, in the way of genuine domestic devotion and unrecognized heroism, can be conceived than the life of this gentle girl during the considerable interval between Mary’s flight in July, 1814, and her own death in October, 1816. Never disdainful of those homely labours of the kitchen and store-room, which Mary has been commended for shirking, Fanny, during this long interval of her growing despair, was her step-mother’s busy housekeeper and cheerful companion. Active in the kitchen and busy with the needle, she was at the same time her step-father’s cheery ‘right-hand’ and ministrant,—ever ready to ply her pen in his service, and ever quick at his call, with bonnet on her head and smiles on her face, to accompany him in his walks. At last the brave heart broke, and the grave covered her. Is the world too virtuous to be incapable of generous compassion for the doer of her own death?
In a former page I have declared my inability to offer an opinion whether love of Shelley was in any degree accountable for poor Fanny’s fatal desperation. It has already been said that Claire (a true witness, in the esteem of the Shelleyan zealots, whenever she supports them with a fib; a liar, in their esteem,whenever she traverses their misstatements with a word of truth) gave it as her opinion that her sister Fanny died from love of Shelley, who was moved to write this elegy on the poor girl’s fate:—
‘Her voice did quiver as we parted,Yet knew I not that heart was broken,From which it came, and I departed,Heeding not the words then spoken.Misery—oh, Misery!This world is all too wide for thee.’
Of course, it would be absurd to torture this utterance of emotion into evidence on either side of the question. The words would have been appropriate to the tragedy had he known himself in no way accountable for it. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the verses accord with Claire’s view of the case. Mr. Kegan Paul says roundly that, though an attached sister to Shelley, Fanny ‘was never in love with him, either before or after her sister’s flight.’ How can any writer be justified in uttering so stout a negative? If Fanny loved Shelley, she was not the girl to tell him so, till he extorted the admission from her by an avowal of a corresponding passion. Nor was she the girl to make the admission to her sixteen-years-old sister, before Shelley had made her an offer of marriage. To suppose her capable of making any such confession to Mary after the flight would be to suppose Fanny alike devoid of feminine delicacy and womanly pride. It follows that, if she loved Shelley, her lips were necessarily sealed to him, and also to Mary, on the subject. Consequently, any statements (to the point of Mr. Kegan Paul’s negative) left by Shelley and Mary can, at the most, amount to mere evidence that they knew nothing of the matter, about which they were not likely to know anything. Many conceivable circumstances might have qualified either Shelley or Mary to reply in the affirmative to the question, whether Fanny ever loved him. But known facts render it more than difficult to conceive the circumstances which would have qualified them to answer the question in the negative.
Other doleful news came to Shelley and the girls before they returned from the West country and settled themselves at Marlow. They were still at Bath when they received intelligence that Mrs. Shelley’s body had been picked out of the Serpentine on 10th December, 1816, and carried to her father’shouse in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. Some uncertainty covers poor Harriett’s story during the last and downward stage of her lamentable career, which thus ended by her own act, in the twenty-second year of her age; and finding enough for my purpose in facts that have been placed beyond dispute, I have been at no pains to search for other details of the closing term of the unhappy girl’s depravation. It is said that, towards the end of her passage to the grave, she left her father’s house to associate herself with a partner in Free Love? It may be so. It would be strange, had she (a married woman, discarded for reasons more or less light or grave by a husband, who went straight from her arms to another charmer) hesitated to place herself under the protection of a man who, inspiring her with affection, caused her to believe that in fidelity he would not prove inferior to the young poet, who one fine morning left her with a babe in her arms.
It is said that she took to drinking as her desolated life tapered into eternity,—drinking, in fact, so deeply that the once bright and lovely girl became a sot and drunkard. It may be so. Foolish people, and by no means altogether foolish people, when they sink into sorrow, are apt to drink for the sake of drowning care, and Heaven knows that poor Harriett (only twenty-one years old) had care enough to excuse her for trying to drown it—even in so futile and disgusting a manner. If Harriett drowned her pain of body and mind with wine and brandy, Shelley drowned his pain of body and mind with laudanum.
Of late years it has been the fashion of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to refer to Harriett’s depravation, as though it gave a certain colouring of justification to the poet’s withdrawal from her. My view of the matter is, that Shelley alone is to be blamed for the offences, committed by Harriett eitherduringtheir association, or after their separation; and that human compassion for the poor girl’s errors should be larger and warmer in proportion to their number and magnitude. Let the reader who hesitates to take this view of Mrs. Shelley’s case ask himself these questions,—Who caught Harriett as a child on the door-step of her schoolroom? Who illuminated her when she was just sixteen years old out of the Christian religion? Who taught her that the matrimonial rite was a piece of antiquated mummery? Who taught her that the promises made atmarriage were not obligatory? Who taught her to think conjugal constancy a vitiating sentiment, and chastity a monkish superstition? Who encouraged her in the habit of talking of suicide as the death that would probably close her career at an early date? Who, by talking of suicide as the possible termination of his own days in this world, at least, confirmed her in the habit of looking to suicide as a convenient and innocent way of escaping from this life’s wretchedness? All these questions must be answered by one name.
From previous pages readers have learnt that Shelley’s desertion of his first wife was not so complete as people at one time had reason to suppose; that after a brief term the actual abandonment merged into a peculiar kind of separation by mutual agreement, and that, after she had consented (at least from a lawyer’s way of viewing such matters) to the separation, he was for some time mindful for her comfort and pecuniary interests. It has been told how he sent her money from Paris in 1814, after having probably given her a considerable sum of money immediately before he left England. On coming into his 1000l.a-year he certainly set aside a portion of the income for her maintenance. No credit, of course, is due to him for doing what Harriett could have compelled him to do by process of law. Nor was the allowance he made so ample as to entitle him to any praise for free-handedness in the matter. What it was at the outset I do not know. But as it only rose to a fifth of his clear income, after it had been raised to the highest point to which it attained, the allowance never exceeded the sum he was bound in morals and honour to give her. Possessing a clear income of a thousand a-year, whilst he also possessed the power (which he exercised freely for his own convenience) of raising money on his interest in estates A and B, he should never have thought of allowing her less than 200l.a-year, after his final arrangement with his father. Had he not known that Mr. Westbrook was able to take care of his child and her children, Shelley would probably have arranged to give her more. But in doing his duty by his wife and children, he should have had no consideration of Mr. Westbrook’s ability to do it for him. In the review of his treatment of his wife, remembrance should also be had of his desire to live in neighbourliness with her, and his transient disposition to receive her as a regular inmate into his own house.
The fact, however, still remains that for some months before her death she had passed from his sight. He had promised solemnly to cherish her (a promise certainly within his power of accomplishing in some degree); and it remains a fact that, instead of keeping his eye on her (as he intended for a time to do) he suffered her to slip from his cognizance. Regard being had to her age and the way in which he had uprooted her moral and religious principles, few persons will hesitate in saying, that he was under peculiar obligations to ‘look after her,’ and be ready at any moment to come to her aid, however bad her conduct either before or after their separation. He is not to be judged in this business as one would judge an ordinary man, whose wife plunges into immorality of her own free will, and in obedience to influences and circumstances in no degree referable to his action. Shelley’s exceptional treatment of his wife placed him under exceptional obligations to stand by her and befriend her throughout life. Had he been the superlatively chivalrous and virtuous man his eulogists declare him, he would have felt this and acted steadily in accordance with the feeling.
Though most of the ascertained facts touching Mrs. Shelley’s suicide have been withheld from the public, we are assured by Shelleyan apologists that the fatal incident was not directly consequent on any action by the husband, who had for some months lost sight of her. But to relieve Shelley of the obloquy of being the immediate, is not to relieve him of the shame of being the indirect, cause of his wife’s death. Following in the steps of previous writers, Mr. Froude does Shelley the disservice of insisting that he did not blame himself for his wife’s death. ‘Nor,’ Mr. Froude adds, ‘did the family lawyers blame him, who knew the facts of the story;’ ‘the family lawyers,’ thus produced as witnesses to character, being the one lawyer Longdill (Shelley’s attorney,notthe attorney of the family). By theEdinburgh‘Shelley-and-Mary’ reviewer, attention is called to the fact, that at this dismal moment of his story, Shelley’s ‘friends, Hookham, Longdill, and Leigh Hunt supported him by their approval.’ What supporters, at such a crisis, for the author ofAlastor, the man of superb genius, soon to be the author ofPrometheus Unbound!—a bookseller, an attorney, and a parasite!—the bookseller, who was making much, and hoped to make more money out of him; the attorney, who knew nothing of the matter but what his not invariably accurate clienthad been pleased to tell him; and the parasite, who, after sucking thousands from Shelley during his life, sponged on his representatives after his death! What witnesses and what testimony!
Readers need not think so ill of Shelley as Mr. Froude does. It is certain that Shelley did reproach himself bitterly for his conduct towards Harriett. The biographical evidence is superabundant that he endured the keen remorse that is ever attended with self-reproach. How could it be otherwise? When the lifeless body was fished out of the Serpentine, six years had not fully passed since Shelley paid his first visit to Harriett’s home, bearing his sister’s gift for her favourite school-fellow; only five years and two or three months had passed since he carried her off, bright and winsome, in her untarnished virginal loveliness. How could he think of the thing he had made her without torture? He may well have been appalled at the moment, and in the after-time been agonized by the consequences of his boyish heedlessness. That he was capable, not long after her death, of calling her ‘a frantic idiot,’ is no evidence that he escaped the anguish that is the inevitable punishment of wrong done in mere thoughtlessness, no less than of wrong resulting from heartlessness. The bitterness of the indecent speech was the mere mask of decent and keen regret.
There is, however, no evidence that he suffered aught more than a man of sensibility would inevitably suffer from so ghastly an incident. The story (believed by theQuarterlyReviewer of October, 1861) that dismay at Harriett’s death and grief for her, whose lot he had taken so peculiarly into his own hands, rendered him ‘actually insane’ for a time, was a pure fiction. During the brief interval between the recovery of Harriett’s corpse from the Serpentine and his marriage to Mary he was in constant correspondence with Peacock through the post; and the letters Peacock received from him and Mary at that time were conclusive proof, that remorse did not so completely overpower him before his second marriage. The first to tell Peacock of Harriett’s death, Shelley at the same time asked his (at that time) closest male friend, whether propriety required him to defer for any considerable period his formal marriage with Mary,—an inquiry that caused Peacock to advise him to marry her promptly. Three full weeks had not passed since Harriett’s corpse was fished out of the water when (on 30th December,1816) Shelley was married privately to Mary Godwin at St. Mildred’s Church, Bread Street, in the presence of her father and step-mother. On visiting Peacock shortly after the marriage, Shelley (though no doubt suffering secretly from the events so closely preceding his second marriage) showed conclusively by his demeanour, that he was not overpowered by regretful recollections of his first wife. Reasonably incensed at the knavish gardener, who had lopt the fine old wide-spreading holly-tree of the Marlow Garden to a bare pole, Shelley displayed strong emotion at nothing else. ‘Shelley,’ says Peacock, ‘stayed with me two or three days. I never saw him more calm and self-possessed. Nothing disturbed his serenity, but the unfortunate holly.’ That Shelley never in later time went out of his mind from horror at Harriett’s fate is certain.
There has been much vain and wholly needless conjecture, as to the considerations and the individuals that determined Shelley to marry Mary Godwin. It has been said that Byron advised him to make her his wife. It has been averred, Godwin constrained him to make Mary an honest woman. If Shelley spoke to him with any show of reluctance to celebrate the marriage, Godwin no doubt told him roundly that all intercourse was at an end between them for ever, should he delay to make Mary his wife. But there is no reason to suppose Godwin was tempted to speak thus plainly and threateningly. Nor is there good ground for thinking that Byron’s counsel determined Shelley’s course. How the matter came about is sufficiently obvious. Shelley’s disapproval of marriage as a vain and depraving institution, was attended with a clear perception of the several reasons why, in an evil state of society, a man should consent to prevailing superstition and prejudice, so far as to put a bridal ring with the usual ceremony on the finger of the woman, with whom he intended to live for a considerable period. By marrying Mary he would qualify any son hereafter born to him by her, to succeed to the Castle Goring baronetcy, in case poor Harriett’s son should die without male issue. By marrying Mary he would confer on her something of the social respectability he wished her to have, alike from considerations of pride and affection. By marrying Mary he would inflict another annoyance on his father. On the other hand, by refusing to marry Mary, or even shilly-shallying about the question, he would incense her father and, worse still, provoke her anger anddisdain. Under these circumstances how could he hesitate to marry Mary, as he had previously married Harriett? As to the sacrifice of personal liberty involved in the act of marriage, experience had taught him that to a man of his views thevinculum matrimoniiwas no galling restraint on individual freedom.
To suppose that Shelley (a few months hence to writeLaon and CythnaandRosalind and Helen) went to St. Mildred’s Church from any respect for the religious rite would be absurd. I cannot doubt that he went to the Church because Mary (who at this time had him well in hand) meant him to marry her, and because he was under a promise to her to do so at the earliest opportunity. It is improbable that he asked any of his friends whether or no he should make Mary his lawful wife. Of all his friends Peacock was the man to whom he would be most likely to put the question; but on speaking to him so soon after Harriett’s death, Shelley spoke of the marriage as a step on which he was resolved, and merely asked whether he might with decency take the step without delay. ‘He was,’ says Peacock (at that time in almost daily intercourse with him), ‘the first to tell me of Harriett’s death, asking whether I thought it would become him to interpose any delay before marrying Mary.’ The announcement and the question were simultaneous.
It was thus that Shelley married Mary Godwin within a fortnight of the day on which Claire gave birth to Allegra, who was born on 12th January, 1816.
THE CHANCERY SUIT.
Mr. Westbrook’s Petition to the Court of Chancery—Date of Hearing—TheEdinburghReviewer’s Strange Misrepresentation—Lord Eldon’s Decree—Arrangements for Harriett’s Children—Lady Shelley’s strange Mistake touching those Arrangements—Lord Eldon’s Justification—Mrs. Shelley’s Regard for Social Opinion—Shelley’s keen Annoyance at the Chancellor’s Decree—Delusive Egotisms ofThe Billows of the Beach—Shelley’s Pretexts for going to Italy—His real Reasons for withdrawing from England.
Mr. Westbrook’s Petition to the Court of Chancery—Date of Hearing—TheEdinburghReviewer’s Strange Misrepresentation—Lord Eldon’s Decree—Arrangements for Harriett’s Children—Lady Shelley’s strange Mistake touching those Arrangements—Lord Eldon’s Justification—Mrs. Shelley’s Regard for Social Opinion—Shelley’s keen Annoyance at the Chancellor’s Decree—Delusive Egotisms ofThe Billows of the Beach—Shelley’s Pretexts for going to Italy—His real Reasons for withdrawing from England.
It has been repeatedly declared that the first Mrs. Shelley committed suicide in desperation, consequent on her elder sister’s cruelty in shutting the door of her old home against her, when she called at the house in Chapel Street, in order to see herdyingfather. That Mr. Westbrook was not dying either in November or December, 1816, appears from the fact that in the following year he appeared in the Court of Chancery, as the petitioner in the suit, that resulted in Lord Eldon’s memorable decree, that Shelley was an unfit person to have the custody and direct the education of his two children by his first wife.
On settling in his new home it was only natural for Shelley to wish to see these two children in its nursery. On the other hand, it was natural for Mr. Westbrook to have a strong opinion, that it would be ill for his daughter’s two children to be given into the hands of a father, who (according to Mr. Westbrook’s not altogether unreasonable view of the case) would educate them to be infidels and Free Lovers. Acting on this opinion, Mr. Westbrook refused to give the children up to Shelley, and followed up the refusal by petitioning the Court of Chancery, to take the children under its protection, and confide them to the care of persons, more fit (in Mr. Westbrook’s opinion) than their father to rear and educate them. Filed in January, 1817, with affidavits and exhibits, this petition came on for hearing in March, 1817, on the 17th day of which month Lord Eldon delivered judgment in favour of the petitioner; the result being that the children were formally placed in the joint-guardianshipof their maternal-grandfather Mr. Westbrook, and their maternal-aunt, Miss Eliza Westbrook, and eventually under the personal care and tuition of Dr. Hume, a clergyman of the Church of England.
There is a curious conflict of the subordinate authorities, respecting the particular day on which the decree was delivered. Medwin says the judgment was delivered on the 17th of March, 1817, and this date is given by several subsequent writers; but Mr. Rossetti (so careful and conscientious a writer that he seldom errs in a statement of fact) represents, on the authority of a date given in Lady Shelley’s curiously inaccurateShelley Memorials, that the day of judgment was on or about the 23rd August, 1817. I can have no doubt that on this rather important point Medwin was right, as the first order, made immediately after the decree, appears in Jacob’sReportsunder the date of 17th March, 1817, and on the record under the date of 17th March, 1816 (i.e.17th March of the legal year, 1816, and 17th March of the historic year, 1817). Medwin being right on this point, Shelley was out of his suspense, touching the event of the suit, on 17th March, and his mind in a better state for working atLaon and Cythnain the summer.
Of this decree theEdinburgh(‘Shelley-and-Mary,’ October, 1882) Reviewer remarks, ‘But, as is well known, the paternal claim of Shelley to his offspring was resisted by their grandfather Westbrook, and rejected by Lord Eldon on petition, on the ground, not of Shelley’s misconduct to his wife, but of the opinions expressed in his writings.’ This statement is precisely contrary to the fact. The claim was rejected,noton account of opinions expressed in Shelley’s writings,buton account of his misconduct to his wife, which on inquiry was found to correspond with rules of action laid down in the anti-matrimonial note toQueen Mab. The misstatement of theEdinburghhas been made in various ways over and over again, and has as often been corrected. Yet again to tell the truth of the matter will have no effect on those of the Shelleyan zealots, who are wont to reply to every correction of any one of their misstatements with a stubborn reiteration of the error. They will only smile, and repeat the misrepresentation more authoritatively. Such stubborn persistence in error has never before been witnessed in literary annals. But for the benefit of persons, who wish to know the truth of Shelley’s story, I repeat yet again that LordEldon’s decree kept Shelley’s conduct steadily in view. Conduct, conduct, conduct, is reiterated throughout the decree, till the reader grows weary of the word. And yet the Shelleyan enthusiasts go on stubbornly asserting that the poet’s conduct had nothing to do with the decision.
Fortunately the Chancellor gave his judgment in writing, and fortunately the decree was printed in Jacob’sReportsfrom a copy, furnished to the editor by Mr. (afterwards Vice-Chancellor) Shadwell, counsel in support of the petition.
Here is the whole judgment, given paragraph by paragraph, with a brief note by the present writer to each paragraph:—
Paragraph No. 1.—‘I have read all the papers left with me, and all the cases cited.’—No word here touching Shelley’s opinions.Paragraph No. 2.—‘With respect to the question of jurisdiction, it is unnecessary for me to add to what I have already stated. After the example of Lord Thurlow, inOrby Hunter’scase, I shall act upon the notion that this Court has such jurisdiction, until the House of Lords shall decide that my predecessors have been unwarranted in the exercise of it.’—No word here about Shelley’s opinions.Paragraph No. 3.—‘I have carefully looked through the answer of the defendant, to see whether it affects the representation made in the affidavits filed in support of the petition, and in the exhibits referred to, of theprinciples and conductof life of the father in this case. I do not perceive that the answer does affect the representation, and no affidavits are filed against the petition.’—Shelley’sprinciplesare here referred to, in connection with hisconduct.Paragraph No. 4.—‘Upon the case as represented in the affidavits, the exhibits and the answer, I have formed my opinion; conceiving myself, according to the practice of the Court, at liberty to form it, in the case of an infant, whether the petition in its allegations and suggestions has or has not accurately presented that case to the court, and having intimated in the course of the hearing before me, that I should so form my judgment.’—No word here about Shelley’s opinions.Paragraph No. 5.—‘There is nothing in evidence before me, sufficient to authorise me in thinking that this gentleman has changed, before he arrived at the age of twenty-five, theprincipleshe avowed at nineteen. I think there is ample evidence in the papers,and in conduct, that no such change has taken place.’—Observe again how the Lord Chancellor keeps Shelley’sconductas well as his avowed and unrecanted principles clearly in view.Paragraph No. 6.—‘I shall studiously forbear in this case, because it is unnecessary, to state in judgment what this Court might or might not be authorised to do in the due exercise of its jurisdiction, upon the ground of the probable effect of a father’s principles, of any nature, whatever upon the education of his children,where such principles have notbeen called into activity or manifested in such conduct in life, as this Court, upon, such an occasion as the present, would be bound to attend to.’—Observe, the Lord Chancellor declares, that the case under his consideration is not a case where he has to consider a father’s principles apart from hisconduct; that the case is one of a father’s principles having been acted upon by him; that the judgment he is about to deliver has been formed on a consideration of Shelley’sconductin connection with his avowed principles.Paragraph No. 7.—‘I may add, that this case differs also, unless I misunderstand it, from any case in which such principles having been called into activity, nevertheless, in the probable range and extent of their operation, did not put to hazard the happiness and welfare of those whose interests are intrusted to the protection of this Court.’—Observe how, in this paragraph, principles and conduct are both kept in view.Paragraph No. 8.—‘This is a case in which, as the matter appears to me, the father’s principles cannot be misunderstood,in which his conduct, which I cannot but consider as highly immoral, has been established in proof, and establishedas the effect of those principles: conductnevertheless, which he represents to himself and others, not asconductto be considered as immoral, but to be recommended and observed in practice, and as worthy of approbation.’—Again in this paragraph the Lord Chancellor declares his judgment to result from the consideration of Shelley’sconduct, following from his avowed and unrecanted principles.Paragraph No. 9.—‘I consider this, therefore, as a case in which the father has demonstrated that he must and does deem it to be a matter of duty which his principles impose upon him, to recommend to those whose opinions and habits he may take upon himself to form,that conductin some of the most important relations of life, as moral and virtuous, which the law calls upon me to consider as immoral and vicious—conductwhich the law animadverts upon as inconsistent with the duties of persons in such relations of life; and which it considers as injuriously affecting both the interests of such persons and those of the community.’—Here again the Lord Chancellor speaks ofconduct; declaring that byconduct, resulting from his avowed and unrecanted principles, Shelley has shown himself a man likely to educate his children to imitate hisconduct.Paragraph No. 10.—‘I cannot, therefore, think that I should be justified in delivering over these children for their education exclusively, to what is called the care, to which Mr. Shelley wishes it to be entrusted.’—No word in this paragraph about either principles or conduct.Paragraph No. 11.—‘If I am wrong in my judgment which I have formed in this painful case, I shall have the consolation to reflect that my judgment is not final.’—No word in this paragraph about either principles or conduct.Paragraph No. 12.—‘Much has been said upon the fact that these children are of tender years. I have already explained, in the course ofthe hearing, the grounds upon which I think that circumstance not so material as to require me to pronounce no order.’—No word here about either principles or conduct.Paragraph No. 13.—‘I add, that the attention which I have been called upon to give to the consideration, how far the pecuniary interests of these children may be affected, has not been called for in vain. I should deeply regret if any act of mine materially affect those interests. But to such interests I cannot sacrifice what I deem to be interests of greater value and higher importance.’—No word in this paragraph about either Shelley’s principles or conduct.Paragraph No. 14.—‘In what degree and to what extent the Court will interfere in the case against parental authority, cannot be finally determined till after the Master’s Report.’Paragraph No. 15.—‘In the meantime I pronounce the following Order:’This Order, forbidding Shelley to take possession of the children or meddle in any way with them, was dated on 17th March, 1817.
Paragraph No. 1.—‘I have read all the papers left with me, and all the cases cited.’—No word here touching Shelley’s opinions.
Paragraph No. 2.—‘With respect to the question of jurisdiction, it is unnecessary for me to add to what I have already stated. After the example of Lord Thurlow, inOrby Hunter’scase, I shall act upon the notion that this Court has such jurisdiction, until the House of Lords shall decide that my predecessors have been unwarranted in the exercise of it.’—No word here about Shelley’s opinions.
Paragraph No. 3.—‘I have carefully looked through the answer of the defendant, to see whether it affects the representation made in the affidavits filed in support of the petition, and in the exhibits referred to, of theprinciples and conductof life of the father in this case. I do not perceive that the answer does affect the representation, and no affidavits are filed against the petition.’—Shelley’sprinciplesare here referred to, in connection with hisconduct.
Paragraph No. 4.—‘Upon the case as represented in the affidavits, the exhibits and the answer, I have formed my opinion; conceiving myself, according to the practice of the Court, at liberty to form it, in the case of an infant, whether the petition in its allegations and suggestions has or has not accurately presented that case to the court, and having intimated in the course of the hearing before me, that I should so form my judgment.’—No word here about Shelley’s opinions.
Paragraph No. 5.—‘There is nothing in evidence before me, sufficient to authorise me in thinking that this gentleman has changed, before he arrived at the age of twenty-five, theprincipleshe avowed at nineteen. I think there is ample evidence in the papers,and in conduct, that no such change has taken place.’—Observe again how the Lord Chancellor keeps Shelley’sconductas well as his avowed and unrecanted principles clearly in view.
Paragraph No. 6.—‘I shall studiously forbear in this case, because it is unnecessary, to state in judgment what this Court might or might not be authorised to do in the due exercise of its jurisdiction, upon the ground of the probable effect of a father’s principles, of any nature, whatever upon the education of his children,where such principles have notbeen called into activity or manifested in such conduct in life, as this Court, upon, such an occasion as the present, would be bound to attend to.’—Observe, the Lord Chancellor declares, that the case under his consideration is not a case where he has to consider a father’s principles apart from hisconduct; that the case is one of a father’s principles having been acted upon by him; that the judgment he is about to deliver has been formed on a consideration of Shelley’sconductin connection with his avowed principles.
Paragraph No. 7.—‘I may add, that this case differs also, unless I misunderstand it, from any case in which such principles having been called into activity, nevertheless, in the probable range and extent of their operation, did not put to hazard the happiness and welfare of those whose interests are intrusted to the protection of this Court.’—Observe how, in this paragraph, principles and conduct are both kept in view.
Paragraph No. 8.—‘This is a case in which, as the matter appears to me, the father’s principles cannot be misunderstood,in which his conduct, which I cannot but consider as highly immoral, has been established in proof, and establishedas the effect of those principles: conductnevertheless, which he represents to himself and others, not asconductto be considered as immoral, but to be recommended and observed in practice, and as worthy of approbation.’—Again in this paragraph the Lord Chancellor declares his judgment to result from the consideration of Shelley’sconduct, following from his avowed and unrecanted principles.
Paragraph No. 9.—‘I consider this, therefore, as a case in which the father has demonstrated that he must and does deem it to be a matter of duty which his principles impose upon him, to recommend to those whose opinions and habits he may take upon himself to form,that conductin some of the most important relations of life, as moral and virtuous, which the law calls upon me to consider as immoral and vicious—conductwhich the law animadverts upon as inconsistent with the duties of persons in such relations of life; and which it considers as injuriously affecting both the interests of such persons and those of the community.’—Here again the Lord Chancellor speaks ofconduct; declaring that byconduct, resulting from his avowed and unrecanted principles, Shelley has shown himself a man likely to educate his children to imitate hisconduct.
Paragraph No. 10.—‘I cannot, therefore, think that I should be justified in delivering over these children for their education exclusively, to what is called the care, to which Mr. Shelley wishes it to be entrusted.’—No word in this paragraph about either principles or conduct.
Paragraph No. 11.—‘If I am wrong in my judgment which I have formed in this painful case, I shall have the consolation to reflect that my judgment is not final.’—No word in this paragraph about either principles or conduct.
Paragraph No. 12.—‘Much has been said upon the fact that these children are of tender years. I have already explained, in the course ofthe hearing, the grounds upon which I think that circumstance not so material as to require me to pronounce no order.’—No word here about either principles or conduct.
Paragraph No. 13.—‘I add, that the attention which I have been called upon to give to the consideration, how far the pecuniary interests of these children may be affected, has not been called for in vain. I should deeply regret if any act of mine materially affect those interests. But to such interests I cannot sacrifice what I deem to be interests of greater value and higher importance.’—No word in this paragraph about either Shelley’s principles or conduct.
Paragraph No. 14.—‘In what degree and to what extent the Court will interfere in the case against parental authority, cannot be finally determined till after the Master’s Report.’
Paragraph No. 15.—‘In the meantime I pronounce the following Order:’
This Order, forbidding Shelley to take possession of the children or meddle in any way with them, was dated on 17th March, 1817.
It appears, therefore, that in no single paragraph does the Lord Chancellor refer to Shelley’s principles, without at the same time referring to theconductreferable to those principles. What was theconductthus steadily kept in view? The answer can be given briefly. The petition set forth the circumstances of Shelley’s marriage, withdrawal from his wife’s society, and cohabitation with Mary Godwin; representing also that in thus withdrawing from his wife and cohabiting with Mary Godwin, he was in 1814, and from that year till his wife’s death, acting on the principles set forth in 1813, in the anti-matrimonial Note toQueen Mab, which was one of the Petitioner’s principal ‘exhibits.’ This wasthe conduct or misconductthe Lord Chancellor kept so steadily in view. Given in a nutshell the Lord Chancellor’s judgment was this, ‘Mr. Shelley inQueen Maband the anti-matrimonial note attached thereto, printed in 1813, declared himself an enemy of lawful marriage; in the summer of 1814, Mr. Shelley acted on his avowed disregard for the obligations of marriage; Mr. Shelley’s action andconducton his avowed disregard for the obligations of marriage, makes me believe he will educate these children to hold his views respecting marriage, if they are committed to his care; taking this view of hisconductto his wife I decree that the two children shall be withheld from his control.’ The judgment was based wholly on consideration of the poet’s conduct to his wife, regarded as the result of his zealous adoption of the views ofthe anti-matrimonial innovators.—Yet theEdinburghReviewer says that Shelley’s paternal claim to his offspring was ‘rejected by Lord Eldon on petition, on the ground not of Shelley’s misconduct to his wife, but of the opinions expressed in his writings.’
From the substance of the petition, the affidavits supporting the allegations, the chief ‘exhibit,’ and the terms of the judgment, it is certain, that the whole suit from petition to decree ‘went’ on what may be called Free Contract considerations,—the evidence that Shelley had avowed himself a vehement enemy of lawful marriage in 1813, and acted on the avowal in 1814 and afterwards:—on the evidence of conduct, in accordance with, and consequent on the views, set forth in the book, printed when he was only twenty years of age.
How came the Lord Chancellor to speak of the principles ofQueen Mabas ‘avowed at nineteen,’ when the book, though doubtless begun in the poet’s twentieth year, was mainly written as well as printed in his twenty-first year? The Lord Chancellor antedated the avowal at least by a fraction of a year, whilst giving Shelley’s full number of years at the delivery of the decree. Was the Lord Chancellor’s slight inaccuracy as to the date ofQueen Mab, a slip for which he was solely accountable? He may have miscalculated the time between the date of the book’s title-page and the day on which he was delivering judgment. Or he may have considered that the author of a work printed in his twenty-first year might be assumed to have held and avowed, in his twentieth year, the opinions set forth in the book. It is however conceivable, and on the whole more probable, that he merely accepted a date given him in Shelley’s reply (written by himself) to the petition. There being no copy of that reply in existence, nor any record of its substance, to speak of its contents is to speak conjecturally. But in such a paper Shelley could hardly have omitted to refer to the time when he wrote the book, of which so much had been urged to his disadvantage by Mr. Westbrook’s counsel; and as he would see his interest in inducing the Lord Chancellor to regard it as a boyish performance, not to be accepted as evidence of his present opinions, it may be reasonably assumed that, in his reference to the important exhibit, Shelley put its composition as far back as possible. At Pisa, towards the close of his career, he wrote of the book as a thing proceeding from his pen when he was onlyeighteen years old. In the Court of Chancery he could scarcely ascribe it to so early a time of his existence as his nineteenth year, but he may be imagined to have assigned its composition to his twentieth year. To discover a copy of the lost reply would probably be to discover evidence, that in 1817, the poet assigned to his twentieth year the poem which in the summer of 1821 he represented himself to have written ‘at the age of eighteen.’
It is certain that the Chancellor was not referring to theNecessity of Atheism, when he referred to principles avowed by Shelley at the age of nineteen. TheNecessity of Atheismwas notoriously published when the poet waseighteen; and it proclaimed no principles, on which he had acted in the particularconduct, set forth in the petition to which the Chancellor referred.
The judgment having been delivered, it was ordered that Shelley should contribute a portion of his income towards the maintenance and education of his children. How much of his income was he required to spend in this way?Primâ faciethis question would seem one which Lady Shelley, with the Field Place Papers about her, could not fail to answer correctly, if she undertook to answer it at all. Lady Shelley answers the question with curious inaccuracy. She says precisely, ‘He was forced, however, to set aside 200l.a-year for their support; and this sum was deducted by Sir Timothy from his son’s annuity.’ What are the facts? (1) Shelley wasnotrequired to contribute 200l.a-year to the education of his children; he contributed only 120l.a-year, in equal quarterly payments. (2) Sir Timothy Shelley didnotdeduct 200l.a-year, or any sum of money whatever from the 250l.which he paid every quarter to his son’s bank-account. The curious part of this achievement in blundering is that Lady Shelley publishes in her book the documents which disprove the statements of her text. The letters that passed between Shelley and Horace Smith, in March and April, 1821 (a body of correspondence published by Lady Shelley herself in herShelley Memorials), show that Sir Timothy paid the 1000l.a-year to Shelley without any deduction; that Dr. Hume, the custodian of the children, received only 120l.for his care of the two children; that instead of looking to Sir Timothy, the Doctor looked to Shelley for the payment of this sum; that the Doctor was empowered to draw on Shelley’s London bankers for30l.a-quarter; and that with the exception of an additional trifle forpostageand other extras, 120l.per annum was the whole sum of Shelley’s contribution to the maintenance of the children. It is thus that Lady Shelley deals with facts from her authentic sources.
It appears, therefore, that these proceedings in the Court of Chancery left Shelley with the clear income of 880l.a-year; a larger revenue by 80l.a-year than the yearly income he had reserved for his own use on raising Harriett’s allowance to its highest sum:—a fact to be borne in mind, since successive writers have spoken of these proceedings, as seriously reducing the income at his command before the first Mrs. Shelley’s death.
From the August of 1817, even to this year of grace, Lord Eldon has been written of bitterly for depriving so bright a genius and so virtuous a citizen as Shelley of the care of his own offspring; and so long as organs of social opinion, so powerful as theEdinburgh Review, continue to misstate the grounds of the Lord Chancellor’s decree, he will continue to be denounced as a prodigy of intolerance. It will be otherwise, if writers bear in mind what were the real grounds of the judgment, for which he has been censured so vehemently.
To say thus much in the Lord Chancellor’s justification is not to say that his reasonable opinion would have been justified by the event, had Shelley contrived to get possession of the two children, and carrying them beyond the limits of the Chancellor’s jurisdiction, educated them in accordance with his notions of parental duty. On the contrary, I have little doubt that, had he taken them to Italy together with Willie and Clara, and lived long enough to form their morals, he would not have educated them in his anti-matrimonial views, but would have trained them for the most part like the majority of English boys and girls, living abroad under the control of liberal-minded Christian parents. I have two reasons for this opinion. Unless I am greatly mistaken, had he lived well into life’s middle term, long before the children had attained the age at which he would have thought of directing their young minds to questions touching the intercourse of the sexes, the author ofLaon and Cythnawould have so far survived his enthusiasm for the Free Contract and his wilder Free Love phantasies, as to have no wish to see his children avoid the bonds of lawful marriage. Had it been otherwise with him, I am confident that Mrs.Shelley would have resisted strenuously and successfully his wish to educate his children to prefer the Free Contract to lawful wedlock. Of the girls, whom he tried for any considerable period to illuminate out of Christianity and conventional respectability, his strong-willed second wife was perhaps his least submissive pupil. The young woman, who made him marry her on the earliest opportunity; who at Great Marlow used to order him about as though he were a child; who had her children christened before taking them out of England in 1818; who used to attend the services of the Anglican Church in Italian cities; who during her residence in Italy hungered for social recognition; and who in her later time was no less mindful of social opinion than for ‘a brief hour of her girlhood she had been reckless and defiant of it,’ was not the woman to allow her children to be educated in disregard for the sanctity of the matrimonial rite. Nurtured within the lines of orthodoxy, and educated for respectability by the step-mother, of whom she lived to speak and write ungenerously, Shelley’s second wife was not a woman to let him train her own daughters (had they lived), or Harriett’s little Ianthe, to follow in the steps of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Much romantic and sensational stuff has been written of the anguish that came to Shelley from Lord Eldon’s barbarity. It has been told again and again how these interesting babes were torn from his breast. As he had left the elder of them of his own accord, when he left her mother, and was content to let them remain in Chapel Street after losing sight of their mother, they can scarcely be said to have beentorn fromhis breast. Such writing (like the story of his going clean mad from grief for Harriett) may go for what it is worth, whilst judicious readers are content to allow, that Shelley must have been acutely mortified and incensed by a judgment affecting his honour so darkly and deeply, and that he probably mistook for torture of wounded affection, what was only sharp chagrin at an humiliating misadventure. Some of the sensational writers give curious reasons for thinking Shelley suffered unimaginable anguish from the violence done to his parental feelings. For instance, Hunt is sure that Shelley suffered inordinately from the loss of the children because, after the subsidence of his first violent agitation at the Chancellor’s cruelty, henever spoke about them. That Byron was no more insincere in gushing to the wholeworld about the Ada be might not look upon, than Shelley was in writingThe Billows on the Beach, is a matter admitting of proof.
This poem ‘To William Shelley’ has been used by successive writers as sure evidence that, in leaving England in 1818 with his family, Shelley was mainly moved by a desire to carry his children beyond the reach of Lord Eldon, whom he suspected of a design to tear them from him. Dealing with this poem, as Lady Shelley deals with the poet’s imaginary reminiscences of his boyhood inLaon and Cythna, what do we learn from it? That the poet carried his son William across the sea, when the sky was black and the wind boisterous; that he carried the boy over the stormy water, in order that the servants of the Court of Chancery should not tear them asunder; that the Court of Chancery had already taken from the boy a brother and sister who were known and dear to him; that Mrs. Shelley and her little girl were companions of this voyage over a wind-swept sea; that little William was alarmed at the rocking of the boat, and the cold spray, and the wild clamour; that the poet and his wife had reason to think the storm, with all its dark and hungry billows, less cruel than the Court of Chancery, and to regard themselves as flying from merciless agents of that Court; that little William was old enough to be likely to hold in remembrance the flight over the stormy sea; that, though perhaps not old enough to apprehend the meaning of the written verses, he was at least old enough to comprehend their sentiment when put in language, adapted to the understanding of a young child. It is, no doubt, very absurd to read a poem in this way, and reduce its figurative expressions into bald statement. But biographers have not hesitated to deal in this way with the imaginary reminiscences ofLaon and CythnaandPrince Athanase.
Now for the facts to set in array beside the statements of the poem. Instead of being old enough to apprehend the meaning of his father’s words, and to be likely to remember the voyage as a dream of long-forgotten days, little William was only two years and two months old when he crossed the Channel. No brother and sister had been taken from him. His father and mother were not flying from the Court of Chancery, when they went abroad. They did not go to Italy to get out of the Lord Chancellor’s grip. They knew that, in respect to William andlittle Clara, they had nothing to fear from the Court. How far did the conditions and incidents of their passage over the water accord with the descriptive touches of the poem? Heaven knows. Heaven also knows that the poem was written months before the voyage was made. The poemTo William Shelleywas written in 1817, the voyage was made in March, 1818. This fact shows how cautious people should be in building up the poet’s personal story out of passages from his poems and letters. Shelley’s accounts of his school-days inLaon and Cythna, or of any other matter of his past history, were as imaginary as his description of his flight across the Channel, or any other matter of his future history.
It may be urged, but evidence forbids it to be conceded, that, whilst writing the imaginary piece of autobiography, Shelley was under the impression that, unless he took his two children by Mary Godwin abroad, the Court of Chancery would wrest them from him. Such a fear might have possessed Shelley before the Chancery suit, but even Shelley could not have entertained so wild a fancyafterthe suit, which had made him a lawyer in respect to the Court’s power to do what he pretended to fear. He knew that the Court would not have listened to Mr. Westbrook’s suit had he not made a provision for the children by settling 2000l.upon them. He knew that till some similar provision, in property of some sort, had been made for William and Clara, no proceedings could be taken in Chancery to remove them from his control. Moreover, he knew that the Court would not think of taking them from their mother.
It would not surprise me to come upon letters, written by Shelley to induce some of his friends to think he suffered from the fear, but they would not affect my strong opinion that he was never troubled by the apprehension between the delivery of the Lord Chancellor’s decree and the departure for Italy, whither he went in 1818 from several motives, any one of which would have been sufficient to account for his action,—(a) from restlessness; (b) from a desire to get away from his creditors, who were troubling him; (c) from a desire to get away from friends who were sponging upon him and draining his resources extortionately; (d) from a desire to be nearer Byron, a strong attraction to him from 1818 to a few months before his death; (e) from a notion that by going out to Italy with Clara and little Allegra, instead of sending the child (just a year and twomonths old) thither under the charge of a servant, he might render his wife’s ‘sister’ good service; (f) from a notion that his health required a southern climate. These are the motives that caused him to go abroad.
In a letter (videShelley Memorials) to William Godwin (dated from Marlow, 7th December, 1817) Shelley rested his determination altogether on the state of his health, in these words:—