‘I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and, although at present it has passed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be consumption.... In the event of its assuming any decided shape, it would be mydutyto go to Italy without delay; and it is only when that measure becomes an indispensabledutythat,contrary to both Mary’s feelingsand mine, as they regard you, I shall go to Italy.’
‘I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and, although at present it has passed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be consumption.... In the event of its assuming any decided shape, it would be mydutyto go to Italy without delay; and it is only when that measure becomes an indispensabledutythat,contrary to both Mary’s feelingsand mine, as they regard you, I shall go to Italy.’
Had Shelley at this time been under the particular fear of the Lord Chancellor, he would not have failed to name it as a ground for wishing to go abroad; as a reason even stronger than his desire to preserve his health and life, for Mary’s sake and for the sake of her father and her children.
From this letter it is manifest that Shelley’s disposition to go to Italy was, up to 7th December, 1817, opposed by his wife, and also by her father, with whom he was again on friendly, though of course far from cordial terms. It is noteworthy that in this epistle to Godwin he does not venture to suggest that he was thinking of taking his children out of England, in order to keep them under his eye, and at the same time put them beyond the Lord Chancellor’s grip.
At the time of writing in these terms to his father-in-law Shelley had already written (videShelley Memorials) from Hunt’s house thus to his wife:—
‘Now, dearest, let me talk to you. I think we ought to go to Italy. I think my health might receive a renovation there, for want of which perhaps I should never entirely overcome that state of diseased action which is so painful to my beloved. I think Alba ought to be with her father. This is a thing of incredible importance to the happiness perhaps of many human beings. It might be managed without our going there. Yes, but not without an expense which would in fact suffice to settle us comfortably in a spot where I might be regaining that health which you consider so valuable. It is valuable to you, my own dearest. I see too plainly that you will never be quite happy till I am well. Ofmyself I do not speak, for I feel only for you. First, this money. I am sure that if I ask Horace Smith he will lend me 200l.or even 250l.more. I did not like to do it from delicacy, and a wish to take only just enough; but I am quite certain that he would lend me the money.’
‘Now, dearest, let me talk to you. I think we ought to go to Italy. I think my health might receive a renovation there, for want of which perhaps I should never entirely overcome that state of diseased action which is so painful to my beloved. I think Alba ought to be with her father. This is a thing of incredible importance to the happiness perhaps of many human beings. It might be managed without our going there. Yes, but not without an expense which would in fact suffice to settle us comfortably in a spot where I might be regaining that health which you consider so valuable. It is valuable to you, my own dearest. I see too plainly that you will never be quite happy till I am well. Ofmyself I do not speak, for I feel only for you. First, this money. I am sure that if I ask Horace Smith he will lend me 200l.or even 250l.more. I did not like to do it from delicacy, and a wish to take only just enough; but I am quite certain that he would lend me the money.’
Thornton Hunt says that it was a characteristic practice with Shelley to specifyonesufficient motive for any course of action, and to ignore all minor motives; and that he was thus, without any real cause, sometimes regarded as uncandid or reserved. This is the younger Hunt’s ingenious way of palliating the ugly fact, that Shelley often alleged one motive for a course of action, which was really consequent on another motive. But in this letter to Mary, instead of alleging only one reason for wishing to go to Italy, he alleges several reasons,—(a) his concern for his health; (b) his concern for his dearest Mary’s happiness, which will be never complete till he is quite well; (c) his desire to do the best for Allegra; and (d) his care for the ‘many human beings,’ whose happiness may possibly be affected by the arrangements for making Byron take a lively interest in his illegitimate daughter. Here are four motives for determining to go to Italy; but never a word as to the writer’s desire to get his own dear babes by Mary outside the Lord Chancellor’s jurisdiction.
Had he been really actuated by the desire, he would surely have specified it to themotherof the children, as the strongest conceivable argument for bringing her to his mind respecting the migration to Italy.
GREAT MARLOW.
The Misleading Tablet—House and Garden—Claire at Marlow—Shelley’s Delight in Claire’s Voice—To Constantia Singing—Source of the Name—Trips to London—The Marlow Pamphlets—Rosalind and Helen—Other Literary Work at Marlow—Mary’s Treatment and Opinion of Claire—Shelley makes his Will—Date of Probate—The Will’s various Legacies—Significant Legacies to Claire—Object of the Second Legacy of £6000—Did Shelley mean to leave Claire so much as £12,000?—Mr. Froude’s Indiscretion—His Ignorance of the Will.
The Misleading Tablet—House and Garden—Claire at Marlow—Shelley’s Delight in Claire’s Voice—To Constantia Singing—Source of the Name—Trips to London—The Marlow Pamphlets—Rosalind and Helen—Other Literary Work at Marlow—Mary’s Treatment and Opinion of Claire—Shelley makes his Will—Date of Probate—The Will’s various Legacies—Significant Legacies to Claire—Object of the Second Legacy of £6000—Did Shelley mean to leave Claire so much as £12,000?—Mr. Froude’s Indiscretion—His Ignorance of the Will.
Over the wall (towards the high road) of the house, inhabited for about a year by Shelley at Great Marlow, may be seen a tablet bearing this inscription, chiselled at the cost of a gentleman, whose intention to honour the poet was more creditable than his knowledge of the poet’s story:—
This Tablet was Placed A.D. 1867,At the Instance ofSir William Robert Clayton, Bart.,To Perpetuate the Record thatPercy Bysshe ShelleyLived and Worked in this HouseAnd was Here Visited byLord Byron.‘He is Gone where all Things Wise and fairDescend. Oh, Dream not the Amorous DeepWill yet Restore him to the Vital air,Death Feeds on His Mute Voice, and Laughs at Our Despair.’Adonais.
Byron having left England for ever long before Shelley entered the house, it is needless to say that the poets never exchanged words under its roof.
Regarded from the road, this house is, at the present time, a dingy and mean dwelling; but on entering it, the visitor is agreeably surprised by the magnitude of the rooms (one of them,i.e.Shelley’s library, being, in Peacock’s opinion, not in mine, large enough for a ball-room); and the rectangular garden in the rear of the building (a garden, at this present time, divided into four several plots of ground) is twenty-oneyards wide and two hundred and twenty-five yards long. Readers may rely on the exactness of these particulars of the garden’s size, which were given to me for this work by my friend Mr. William Ford Langworthy.
The knavish gardener having lopt the fine holly to a bare pole, Shelley was at considerable cost in planting this garden with shrubs. About the same time the house (taken on lease for twenty-one years) was re-decorated and furnished at no small expense; the library (big enough for a ball-room) being fitted with shelves and books on terms, that were not otherwise than advantageous to the ‘unbiased’ Mr. Hookham, of Bond Street. Without meaning to live in this pleasant house ‘for ever,’ Shelley, no doubt, intended to make it his home, till he should succeed to estates A and B. Mrs. Shelley hoped the place would be her home till she should become Lady Shelley. But human creatures are less the rulers than the sport of circumstances. Little more than a year had passed since their settlement at Marlow when, yielding reluctantly to her husband’s solicitations, Mrs. Shelley went with him to Italy for the remainder of his days.
It has been the fashion of the Shelleyan partisans to speak of the Shelleys’ kindness to Claire as though she were a kind of fallen woman, whom they magnanimously sheltered from social opprobrium. That they were very kind to her when she needed their sympathy and care, is unquestionable; but in estimating their conduct towards Claire, the reader must remember, not only their familiar relationship to her, but also that, in her intimacy with Byron, Claire had done nothing to forfeit their respect. So soon after her marriage with the poet, under whose ‘protection’ she had been living for two years and a half, Mrs. Shelley could scarcely assume an attitude of virtuous superiority and condescension to her sister, who had lived in the same way with another poet for a shorter time. That Mrs. Shelley was altogether pleased to have Claire on her hands, in 1817 and afterwards, is not to be supposed. On the contrary, a letter of her writing shows that, some time elapsed after her return from Switzerland, in September, 1816, before she consented to receive Claire as a permanent inmate of her home. But circumstances constrained her to consent.
It would have been inhuman in the Shelleys to decline to shelter Claire during her accouchement. It is not wonderfulthat they gave her and her child a home at Marlow. It was necessary that Claire’s babe should be born under circumstances most likely to keep the affair from her mother and step-father, who had no knowledge or suspicion of their child’sliaisonwith Byron. In providing Claire with the retreat, in which she gave birth to Allegra with the utmost secresy, and in afterwards providing her with a home, in which to cherish her infant with similar privacy, the Shelleys were actuated by care for themselves, as well as by affection for her. Mrs. Shelley had suffered too severely from her father’s displeasure, not to be very desirous of withholding from him matters which would, on coming to his and Mrs. Godwin’s knowledge, be sure to occasion its renewal. Now that the sisters had been pardoned by Skinner Street, and general harmony been re-established in the family circle, it was obvious that Claire must live for a while either at Marlow or under Godwin’s roof. On leaving her sister’s side, she could not keep away from her mother’s house without giving offence or provoking suspicion. Her return to Skinner Street would be followed quickly by disclosures, certain to result in a fresh outbreak of family dissension. On the other hand, so long as they knew her to be living with the Shelleys at Marlow, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin would not be uneasy or inconveniently curious about her. Out of her mother’s observation, she could nurse her child at Marlow in greater security from detection than anywhere else.
That Shelley found the dark-eyed and charming, though sometimes exasperatingly freakish, girl, upon the whole an agreeable inmate, and was, in some degree, rewarded for his hospitality by the delight coming to him from her faculty of song, may be inferred from Shelley’s poem ‘To Constantia Singing’ (1817), opening with the stanza,—
‘TO CONSTANTIA SINGING.Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,Perchance were death indeed!—Constantia, turn!In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burnBetween thy lips, are laid to sleep;Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour it is yet,And from thy touch like fire doth leap.Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet;Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!’
Shelley left behind him fragments of two other poems, addressed to Claire under the name of Constantia. But why Constantia? Always sagacious in his suggestions respecting the poet, whose story he told with such admirable tenderness and fairness, Mr. Rossetti suggests that Constantia was a fancy-name, taken from Constantia Dudley, the heroine of Brockden Brown’sOrmond,—one of the several novels by a forgotten writer, which Shelley admired so greatly. None the less certain, however, is it, that the heroine of the poem was the Claire in whose singing Shelley delighted in later time, no less than in 1817, and for whose progress in the most effective of her several accomplishments he was thoughtful during their stay at Marlow. Of course, Claire was vastly delighted by her brother-in-law’s approval of her singing, and by the great compliment he rendered her, in giving poetical expression to the approval. The second Mrs. William Godwin’s daughter took strange liberties with her name. Christened Mary Jane (a homely name enough), she usually signed her letters ‘Claire,’ after inventing that agreeable designation for her bright and fascinating individuality; and she also caused herself sometimes to be described, as Clara Mary Constantia Jane Clairmont;—‘Constantia,’ in commemoration of her association with Shelley’s poetical achievements; and ‘Clara’ in commemoration of the fact, that Shelley’s daughter (born at Marlow on 3rd September, 1817) was named after her mother’s sister-by-affinity,—even as Byron’s Ada was in her other Christian name styled after her father’s half-sister. Described as Clara Mary Constantia Jane in a legal instrument, dated long after Shelley’s death, Claire figures as Mary Jane Clairmont in Shelley’s last will and testament.
Covering passages of wretchedness, that came to him from grief for his first wife’s fate, and from his rage against the Lord Chancellor, Shelley’s time at Marlow covered, also, some of the happiest weeks and months of his existence,—weeks and months of exciting literary labour; days spent agreeably with his wife’s father; and days passed, with livelier contentment, in the society of Peacock, Hogg, and the Hunts. Now on the water, and now on foot, he took much exercise in the open air. Sometimes by himself and sometimes with his younger friends, he walked to and fro between Marlow and London. In their pedestrian excursions to London (thirty-two miles distant fromthe Buckinghamshire village), it was usual for Peacock and Shelley to march to town in the day, stay two nights in the capital, and march back on the third day.
Holding little intercourse with his immediate neighbours of his own degree (who, no doubt, gossiped much, and pumped Mr. Furnivall, the surgeon, with small result, about the ladies and babies of the poetical household), he received visitors from a distance, together with two or three of the Marlow residents, and altogether led a more sociable life than at Bishopgate. His time at Marlow was also a time of great literary productiveness. In it he threw off the Marlow Pamphlets, (a)A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom, and (b)An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, and published theHistory of a Six Weeks’ Tour—the book that gave Claire her place in the record of English literature as Shelley’s and Mrs. Shelley’s sister. It was also the period in which he wroteLaon and Cythna, or the Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century.In the Stanza of Spenser; wrote the fragmentaryPrince Athanase, and beganRosalind and Helen, the modern eclogue, which he finished in the summer of the following year (1818) at the baths of Lucca,—the three poems which, telling us so much of the poet’s romantic view of his own character and career, are so rich in the poetical egotisms, which have been so often handled as though they were reliable passages of unimaginative biography.
In studying the last-named of these poems, the reader will not fail to detect Shelley in Lionel (the name under which the poet figures inThe Boat on the Serchio), Claire in Rosalind, and Mrs. Shelley in Helen, who says of her lost Lionel,—
‘To Lionel,Though of great wealth and lineage high,Yet through those dungeon walls there cameThy thrilling light, O liberty!And as the meteor’s midnight flameStartles the dreamer, sun-like truthFlashed on his visionary youth,And filled him, not with love, but faith,And hope, and courage mute in death;For love and life in him were twins,Born at one birth.’
It is thus that Shelley, the scion of a middle-class family,the great-grandson of a Yankee apothecary, boasted of his ‘lineage high,’ to the admiration of eulogists, who speak disdainfully of Byron’s pride in his Norman descent. Of her conjugal union to Lionel—a union effected in accordance with the ways and principles of Free Lovers—Helen says, in terms descriptive of Mary’s bondless marriage with her father’s familiar friend,—
‘And so we loved, and did uniteAll that in us was yet divided:For when he said, that many a rite,By men to bind but once provided,Could not be shared by him and me,Or they would kill him in their glee,I shuddered, and then laughing said—“We will have rites our faith to bind,But our church shall be the starry night,Our altar the grassy earth outspread,And our priest the muttering wind.”’
A very delightful way of being married, no doubt; but in real life, marriages done thus lightly and elegantly, without church or chapel, priest or minister, officer or registrar, sometimes have inconvenient consequences.
Another thing to renderRosalind and Heleninteresting to students of Shelley’s story, is its evidence that Shelley wrote the poem with a hope, that it would tend to draw Mary and Claire still closer together, and weld their hearts into an indissoluble union by the strongest mutual affection. That it was Mary who induced Shelley, at the baths of Lucca in the summer of 1818, to finish the poem which had this obvious purpose, is a part of the evidence that she was then animated by affection for the sister-by-affinity, whom she had so recently styled her ‘sister’ in a published book. Yet we are assured by Mr. Kegan Paul that, in 1818, Mrs. Shelley ‘felt as strongly as Byron that Allegra’s mother was the worst person possible to train the child.’ Had I not on certain occasions caught Mr. Kegan Paul, passing from clear evidences to strangely erroneous conclusions, I should take it for granted that he had sufficient documentary evidence for so strong and startling a statement. But I am slow to believe that Mrs. Shelley thought so ill of Claire, either at Marlow (where she styled Claire her ‘sister’ in a published book), or in any term of 1818, prior to the time when she encouraged Shelley to resume work onRosalind and Helen. Under the circumstances, I can conceive that Mr. Kegan Paul has inferred too much from some words, penned by Mrs. Shelley, in order to induce Byron to take personal charge of Allegra. In 1817 and 1818, the Shelleys put strong pressure on Byron, to rear Allegra under his own roof and eye, and in doing so declared the strongest opinion that he was the fittest person to have charge of the child. But to argue from any expressions of this opinion, that Mrs. Shelley regarded her ‘sister’ as a person from whose deleterious influence the child should be preserved, would be alike unjust to the Shelleys and to Claire; it being certain that Shelley wished Byron to receiveboththe mother and the child; that he did his utmost to bring about an arrangement for Claire to have charge of her offspringunderByron’s roof; and that he strove and hoped to bring about this arrangement, evenafterAllegra’s transference to her father’s house.
I do not say that Mr. Kegan Paul cannot produce evidence to sustain his staggering statement. On the contrary, I have a feeling that he may be able to do so. But I do not hesitate in saying, that to produce any sufficient documentary evidence of Mrs. Shelley’s having written, or thought so ill of Claire in 1817 or 1818, would be to show how little William Godwin knew of his daughter’s real character, and to prove that she was the falsest little minx that ever wore petticoats. If, whilst she was bearing herself to the world with every show of sisterly affection for, and confidence in, hersister(her ‘sister’ of the publishedSix Weeks’ Tour), Mrs. Shelley ever gave anyone to understand that Claire was unfit to discharge the maternal duties to her own child, she was a woman with two faces and a double tongue.
Enough has been said to show that, in 1817 and the earlier months of 1818, Claire had good reason for thinking she possessed her sister’s affection, and that Shelley had reason to believe his wife held Claire in sisterly regard. Enough also has been said to show that throughout this same period Shelley was affectionately disposed to his wife’s sister-by-affinity. My strongest evidence that Shelley was so disposed towards Claire has, however, still to be given.
Shelley was still at Bath when he instructed a London lawyer to make the will, which was in due course executed in London on 18th February, 1817, and proved as the poet’s lasttestament in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 1st November, 1844,—more than two-and-twenty years after his death. Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock were appointed executors of this will. The testator assigned a sum of 6000l.for a provision for his son (Charles Bysshe) by his first wife, another 6000l.for a provision for Ianthe (his daughter by the same wife), and a third 6000l.for a provision for his son (William) by Mary Godwin; the said three sums of 6000l.each being bequeathed to the said Lord Byron and Thomas Love PeacockIn Trustfor the benefit of the said three children. After providing in this manner for his children, the testator (speaking of Claire, under the name of Mary Jane Clairmont) says,—
‘I give and bequeath unto Mary Jane Clairmont (the sister-in-law of my residuary legatee) the sum of six thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain and I also give and bequeath unto the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock their executors administrators and assigns the sum of six thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain upon trust to lay out and invest the same in their names in purchase of an annuity for the term of the natural life of the said Mary Jane Clairmont and the life of such other person as the said Mary Jane Clairmont shall name (if she please to name one) and to stand possessed of the said annuity and the securities to be obtained for the same upon trust that they the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock and the survivor of them and the executors administrators and assigns of such survivor shall and do during the natural life of the said Mary Jane Clairmont when and as the annuity hereinbefore by me directed to be purchased with the aforesaid sum of six thousand pounds shall be received by my said trustees or the trustee for the time being pay the said annuity into the proper hands of her the said Mary Jane Clairmont or unto her order to be signified by some note or writing under her hand from time to time after the quarterly payment of the same annuity for the payment of which such order shall be given shall have actually become due and payable but not otherwise to the intent that the same annuity may be for the sole and separate use of the said Mary Jane Clairmont independently of any husband with whom she may intermarry and to the intent that the said Mary Jane Clairmont may not either covert or sole make any appointment or assignment by way of anticipation of any unaccrued quarterly payment of the said annuity and the receipt or receipts of the said Mary Jane Clairmont or of the person or persons to whom she shall make such order or appointment as aforesaid shall alone be a good and sufficient discharge for the said annuity or for so much thereof as in such receipt or receipts shall be expressed or acknowledged to be received and from and after the decease of the said Mary Jane Clairmont in case the said annuity shall not then have run out mysaid trustees shall then stand possessed thereof in trust for such person or persons as the said Mary Jane Clairmont shall by deed or will appoint to receive the same and in default of appointment in trust for the executors or administrators of the said Mary Jane Clairmont I give and bequeath to Thomas Jefferson Hogg of the Inner Temple London Esquire the sum of two thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain I give and bequeath unto the said George Gordon Lord Byron the sum of two thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain I give and bequeath unto the said Thomas Love Peacock the sum of five hundred pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain I give and bequeath unto the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock their executors administrators and assigns the sum of two thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain upon trust to lay out and invest the same in their names in the purchase of annuity payable quarterly for the term of the natural life of the said Thomas Love Peacock and the life of such other person as the said Thomas Love Peacock shall name (if he please to name one) and to stand possessed of the said annuity and the securities to be obtained for the same upon trust that they the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock and the survivor of them and the executors administrators and assigns of such survivor shall and do during the natural life of the said Thomas Love Peacock when and as the annuity hereinbefore by me directed to be purchased with the aforesaid sum of two thousand pounds shall be received by my said trustees or the trustee for the time being pay the same annuity into the proper hands of the said Thomas Love Peacock or unto his order to be signified by some note or writing under his hand from time to time after the quarterly payment of the same annuity for the payment of which such order shall be given shall have actually become due and payable but not otherwise to the intent that the said Thomas Love Peacock may not make any appointment or assignment by way of anticipation of any unaccrued quarterly payment of the said annuity and from and after the decease of the said Thomas Love Peacock in case the said annuity shall not then have run out my said trustees shall stand possessed thereof in trust for such person or persons as the said Thomas Love Peacock shall by deed or will appoint to receive the same and in default of appointment in trust for the executors or administrators of the said Thomas Love Peacock and I do hereby give devise and bequeath all and singular my manors messuages lands tenements hereditaments and real estate whatsoever and wheresoever situate both freehold and copyhold and whether in possession reversion remainder or expectancy and over which I have any disposing power and also all and singular my monies stocks funds and securities for money mortgages in fee and for years and the lands tenements and hereditaments therein comprised for all my estate and interest therein and all other my goods chattels and personal estate and effects whatsoever and wheresoever (but subject nevertheless and charged and chargeable as well my said real as personalestate with the payment of all my just debts funeral and testamentary expenses and the legacies given by this my Will and also such legacies as I may hereafter give by any Codicil or Codicils thereto) unto and to the use of my wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley her heirs executors administrators and assigns for her and their own absolute use and benefit for ever Provided always and my will is and I do hereby expressly declare that the several legacies hereinbefore by me given shall not be paid or payable until my said wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley her heirs or assigns shall be in the possession of my real estate under the devise to her and them hereinbefore contained and in that case if my said wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley shall regularly pay the interest of the several legacies after she obtains possession of my said real estate such legacies may remain unpaid for any time not exceeding the term of four years at the option of my said wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.’
‘I give and bequeath unto Mary Jane Clairmont (the sister-in-law of my residuary legatee) the sum of six thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain and I also give and bequeath unto the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock their executors administrators and assigns the sum of six thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain upon trust to lay out and invest the same in their names in purchase of an annuity for the term of the natural life of the said Mary Jane Clairmont and the life of such other person as the said Mary Jane Clairmont shall name (if she please to name one) and to stand possessed of the said annuity and the securities to be obtained for the same upon trust that they the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock and the survivor of them and the executors administrators and assigns of such survivor shall and do during the natural life of the said Mary Jane Clairmont when and as the annuity hereinbefore by me directed to be purchased with the aforesaid sum of six thousand pounds shall be received by my said trustees or the trustee for the time being pay the said annuity into the proper hands of her the said Mary Jane Clairmont or unto her order to be signified by some note or writing under her hand from time to time after the quarterly payment of the same annuity for the payment of which such order shall be given shall have actually become due and payable but not otherwise to the intent that the same annuity may be for the sole and separate use of the said Mary Jane Clairmont independently of any husband with whom she may intermarry and to the intent that the said Mary Jane Clairmont may not either covert or sole make any appointment or assignment by way of anticipation of any unaccrued quarterly payment of the said annuity and the receipt or receipts of the said Mary Jane Clairmont or of the person or persons to whom she shall make such order or appointment as aforesaid shall alone be a good and sufficient discharge for the said annuity or for so much thereof as in such receipt or receipts shall be expressed or acknowledged to be received and from and after the decease of the said Mary Jane Clairmont in case the said annuity shall not then have run out mysaid trustees shall then stand possessed thereof in trust for such person or persons as the said Mary Jane Clairmont shall by deed or will appoint to receive the same and in default of appointment in trust for the executors or administrators of the said Mary Jane Clairmont I give and bequeath to Thomas Jefferson Hogg of the Inner Temple London Esquire the sum of two thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain I give and bequeath unto the said George Gordon Lord Byron the sum of two thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain I give and bequeath unto the said Thomas Love Peacock the sum of five hundred pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain I give and bequeath unto the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock their executors administrators and assigns the sum of two thousand pounds of like lawful money of Great Britain upon trust to lay out and invest the same in their names in the purchase of annuity payable quarterly for the term of the natural life of the said Thomas Love Peacock and the life of such other person as the said Thomas Love Peacock shall name (if he please to name one) and to stand possessed of the said annuity and the securities to be obtained for the same upon trust that they the said George Gordon Lord Byron and Thomas Love Peacock and the survivor of them and the executors administrators and assigns of such survivor shall and do during the natural life of the said Thomas Love Peacock when and as the annuity hereinbefore by me directed to be purchased with the aforesaid sum of two thousand pounds shall be received by my said trustees or the trustee for the time being pay the same annuity into the proper hands of the said Thomas Love Peacock or unto his order to be signified by some note or writing under his hand from time to time after the quarterly payment of the same annuity for the payment of which such order shall be given shall have actually become due and payable but not otherwise to the intent that the said Thomas Love Peacock may not make any appointment or assignment by way of anticipation of any unaccrued quarterly payment of the said annuity and from and after the decease of the said Thomas Love Peacock in case the said annuity shall not then have run out my said trustees shall stand possessed thereof in trust for such person or persons as the said Thomas Love Peacock shall by deed or will appoint to receive the same and in default of appointment in trust for the executors or administrators of the said Thomas Love Peacock and I do hereby give devise and bequeath all and singular my manors messuages lands tenements hereditaments and real estate whatsoever and wheresoever situate both freehold and copyhold and whether in possession reversion remainder or expectancy and over which I have any disposing power and also all and singular my monies stocks funds and securities for money mortgages in fee and for years and the lands tenements and hereditaments therein comprised for all my estate and interest therein and all other my goods chattels and personal estate and effects whatsoever and wheresoever (but subject nevertheless and charged and chargeable as well my said real as personalestate with the payment of all my just debts funeral and testamentary expenses and the legacies given by this my Will and also such legacies as I may hereafter give by any Codicil or Codicils thereto) unto and to the use of my wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley her heirs executors administrators and assigns for her and their own absolute use and benefit for ever Provided always and my will is and I do hereby expressly declare that the several legacies hereinbefore by me given shall not be paid or payable until my said wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley her heirs or assigns shall be in the possession of my real estate under the devise to her and them hereinbefore contained and in that case if my said wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley shall regularly pay the interest of the several legacies after she obtains possession of my said real estate such legacies may remain unpaid for any time not exceeding the term of four years at the option of my said wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.’
Shelley assigned 6000l.to each of his three children, living at the time when he made the will; he bequeathed the same sum (6000l.) to Claire, to be paid into her hands for her to deal with according to her pleasure. Had he done nothing more for her by his will, he would have dealt with her in the testament precisely as he dealt with his own children;—a sufficient proof that he felt more than an ordinary brother’s love for her. But in addition to this large legacy, he left her another 6000l., to be invested in an annuity for the term of her natural life, or for the lives of herself and ‘such other person’ as she should name. There is small room for doubt that, in making this direction, Shelley had Allegra in his mind, as the person whom Claire would name as her co-parcener in the annuity. I have no doubt that he wished to provide for her child even as he provided for each of his own children, and saw that to do so directly and openly, with mention of the child’s name, he must use language that would publish to the world one side of the child’s parentage, and, whilst exposing the mother to discredit, would raise a suspicion that he was the child’s father. Anyhow, he left Claire 12,000l.(say, a sixth or seventh of all he had to will away). A father and husband with three living children, and the prospect of having more children, he bequeathed this large sum to his wife’s ‘sister’; and yet we have been asked to believe that, at the time of making this bequest, he disliked Claire!
A good example of the inaccuracy with which Trelawny, in his old age, used to gossip of Shelley and his affairs, is afforded by what he said to Mr. Rossetti of this double legacy to Claire.In hisTalks with Trelawny,videtheAthenæum, 1882, Mr. Rossetti remarked, ‘Trelawny says that Shelley left Miss Clairmont, by will, no less a sum than 12,000l.He had left 6000l.in the body of the will, and then (whether by inadvertence or otherwise) he bequeathed another 6000l.in a codicil.’ There is no codicil to Shelley’s will. Both bequests were made in the body of the will. Inadvertence was in no degree accountable for the two several bequests. Quarrelling bitterly with Claire after her husband’s death on other matters, Mrs. Shelley also quarrelled with her bitterly about these bequests,—maintaining that Shelley never intended to leave her more than 6000l.; insisting that a lawyer’s blunder was the cause of the enormity of the sum bequeathed to Claire; and arguing that Claire was bound in honour to forego the legacy of 6000l.and be content with the annuity,—a view of the case not taken by Claire. No lawyer will think a mistake was made by Shelley’s solicitor, or question that Shelley (a subtle user and reader of words, and a man by no means without aptitude for affairs of business) intended to bequeath both sums. The notion that he was guilty of inadvertence, and slipt in the matter through his lawyer’s blundering, is absurd.
There is, however, reason for thinking that Claire took more by the will than Shelley in his last months intended her to take by his last testament. That Mrs. Shelley had grounds for saying he meant to reduce some of the legacies of the will, and otherwise alter the instrument, I do not question. Believing that he made the second bequest of 6000l.mainly for Allegra’s benefit, I think it probable that, after Allegra’s death, in April, 1822, he intended to revoke the bequest for the purchase of the annuity. But he died without altering his will in any way. Hence, unless he told her of his intention to revoke the second legacy, or left clear evidence of his intention to do so, Claire was entitled in honour no less than in law to both legacies.
Anyhow, it is certain that on 18th February, 1817,—the February next following Allegra’s birth, and her mother’s residence with Byron and the Shelleys in Geneva—Shelley made the will in which he bequeathed to Claire, out of his moderate estate, no less than 12,000l.Is not this strong evidence of his affection and esteem for her? Is it conceivable that he would have left Claire so much money had he and Mary concurred in cordially disliking her? Mr. Froude insiststhat, regarding Claire with disapproval and aversion when they accompanied her to Geneva, they were no less unfavourably disposed to her, when they sheltered her at Bath and gave her bed and board at Marlow. Here are Mr. Froude’s words:—
‘The Shelleys, who had disliked her before, could not have been more favourably disposed to her; but they pitied her misfortunes, and allowed her to continue to reside with them.’
‘The Shelleys, who had disliked her before, could not have been more favourably disposed to her; but they pitied her misfortunes, and allowed her to continue to reside with them.’
It is due to Mr. Froude to say that, when writing these words, he had not seen Shelley’s will; but he had before him my clear account of Shelley’s affectionate regard for Claire. He chose to deviate from my clear account, and to rely on the statements of other persons, and he must take the consequences of his imprudence.
LAON AND CYTHNA.
Origin of the Free-Contract Party—Divorce in Catholic England—Nullification of Marriage—Consequences of the Reformation—Edward the Sixth’s Commissioners for the Amendment of Ecclesiastical Laws—Martin Bucer’sJudgment touching Divorce—John Milton on Freedom of Divorce—Denunciations of Marriage by the Godwinian Radicals—Poetical Fruits of the Genevese Scandal—Byron’s Timidity—Shelley’s Boldness—His most extravagant Conclusions touching Liberty of Affection—Appalling Doctrine ofLaon and Cythna—Shelley’s Purpose in publishing the Poem—Alarm of the Olliers—Shelley’s Instructions to the frightened Publishers—Suppression of the monstrous Poem—Friends in Council—Laon and Cythnamanipulated into theRevolt of Islam—TheQuarterly Reviewon the original Poem—Consequences to Shelley’s Reputation—Irony of Fate.
Origin of the Free-Contract Party—Divorce in Catholic England—Nullification of Marriage—Consequences of the Reformation—Edward the Sixth’s Commissioners for the Amendment of Ecclesiastical Laws—Martin Bucer’sJudgment touching Divorce—John Milton on Freedom of Divorce—Denunciations of Marriage by the Godwinian Radicals—Poetical Fruits of the Genevese Scandal—Byron’s Timidity—Shelley’s Boldness—His most extravagant Conclusions touching Liberty of Affection—Appalling Doctrine ofLaon and Cythna—Shelley’s Purpose in publishing the Poem—Alarm of the Olliers—Shelley’s Instructions to the frightened Publishers—Suppression of the monstrous Poem—Friends in Council—Laon and Cythnamanipulated into theRevolt of Islam—TheQuarterly Reviewon the original Poem—Consequences to Shelley’s Reputation—Irony of Fate.
Enough has been said of the egotisms ofLaon and Cythna; but something must be said of the reasons, why this extraordinary fruit of Shelley’s genius should be withheld from those young people to whom it is now-a-days offered, in fine type and on rich paper, as one of the choicest poems of English literature. It must be stated frankly and fearlessly why, till human nature has changed greatly and till existing human institutions and sentiments have become mere matters of archæology, this poem, with all its exquisite beauties of diction, must appear to all righteous and sober-minded persons a perplexity and a scandal, that may be fruitful of morbid thought and vicious action in young persons of light fancy and loose principles.
Successive writers on Shelleyan questions have regarded the Free Contract movement, in which the poet took so characteristic a part, as one of the consequences of the great revolution which, towards the close of the last century, disposed a considerable proportion of our own people, as well as of the peoples more deeply and violently influenced by novel ideas, to refer all social evils to existing institutions, and, in their impatience of prevailing wrongs and wretchedness, to cry aloud for the quick and total suppression of the social arrangements to which theyattributed so much mischief and misery. But the French Revolution did no more, in this respect, than quicken a discontent and stimulate a movement that had affected English life for generations and centuries. To discover the origin of the Free Contract party in this country the student of social phenomena must go back to the sixteenth century.
In pre-Reformation times, living under the control of a Church that, knowing nothing of the larger divorce (a vinculo matrimonii== from bond of matrimony), and granting only in cases of extreme conjugal infidelity the minor divorce (a mensâ et thoro== from board and bed), subsequently designated ‘judicial separation,’ which afforded no liberty of marrying other spouses to the separated parties, our forefathers in this island enjoyed practically a freedom of divorce, that under ordinary circumstances enabled unhappily mated spouses to make lawful marriage with other persons.
Knowing nothing of the complete divorce, the Church knew a great deal of nullification of matrimony, and in her Courts throughout the country was daily liberating uncongenial spouses, by decreeing that they had never been man and wife. By discovering that they were first, second, or third cousins,—by demonstrating, with the aid of two conveniently pliant witnesses, that, at the time of their wedding, one of them was pre-contracted to a third person,—by showing that on their marriage-day they stood within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, affinity or spiritual affinity,—or by a confession that either of them had, before their union, held wicked intercourse with a near relation of the other,—a husband and wife could procure a judgment which declared they hadnever been married; that they were still bachelor and single woman, and free to contract matrimony in accordance with the rules of Holy Church. To a couple bent on perfect liberation from a hateful union, it was always easy to discover grounds for the nullification of their wedlock, and seldom difficult to render those grounds apparent to an ecclesiastical judge. Two spouses, bent on celebrating their union, often experienced great difficulty in ascertaining that no impediments precluded them from valid intermarriage; but the impediment which made their wedlock a nullity, were always readily discoverable by the husband and wife who had come to hate one another. So long as this state of things lasted, every canonical impediment to matrimony operated like a turnstile gate, that,whilst acting as a barrier to persons entering a building, affords a means of egress to those who wish to leave it.
This state of things, however, came to an end with the Reformation. By sweeping away all the canonical restrictions on matrimony, not ordered by Scripture, the statute, 32 Henry VIII., c. 38, increased greatly the freedom of marriage; but at the same time destroyed the liberty of divorce enjoyed by our ancestors throughout successive centuries. Rendering matrimony easier of entrance, it closed all the many gates, which had hitherto afforded spouses the means of escape from conjugal wretchedness. The chiefs of the Protestant party in Edward the Sixth’s time had, however, no wish to perpetuate the condition of affairs, directly consequent on Henry the Eighth’s mere abrogation of the non-scriptural impediments to marriage. Condemning strongly the excessive liberty of separation, which the ecclesiastical tribunals had for generations afforded to society, they were no less unanimous in condemning the doctrine of the absolute indissolubility of wedlock. If it was wrong on the one hand to allow husbands and wives the liberty of separating on frivolous pretexts, and to provide the fortress of marriage with numerous gates of egress, whose double locks obeyed the pass-keys of perjury and corruption; it was on the other hand no less hurtful to society and impious to God, to constrain a pair of human creatures, in the name of religion, to persevere in an association, that could not accomplish the highest purposes of matrimony, and debarred the ill-assorted couple from the serene and wholesome pleasures of Christian life. These were the views of the Anglican leaders; views that found precise and memorable expression in the famous code of ordinances (theReformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum) prepared for the reformation of our ecclesiastical laws by Edward the Sixth’s thirty-two commissioners for that purpose, who, doing away with the minor divorce (a mensâ et thoro), decided that the divorcea vinculo matrimoniishould be the only kind of matrimonial severance known to English law, and that it should be granted, (1) in cases of extreme conjugal faithlessness; (2) in cases where a husband, not guilty of deserting his wife, had been for several years absent from her, under circumstances which justified her in concluding that he was dead; (3) and in cases of such violent hatred as rendered it in the highest degree improbable, that the husband and wife would survive theiranimosities and again love one another; it being expressly directed that this last provision should not be construed as affecting spouses whose quarrels, though frequent and distressing, were neither incessant nor in the highest degree vehement. Had Edward the Sixth lived only a little longer these ordinances would have become the law of the land;—law which, though suppressed on the accession of Mary Tudor, would have been revived on the rise of Elizabeth, and handed down to the present time.
Of course, the Anglican reformers conceived themselves to be justified in disregarding the limitation, which our version of the Scriptures assigns to liberty of divorce. Whilst some of them were of opinion that this limitation was applicable only to the Jews, others held that, if a wrong rendering of a particular word were replaced by its true English equivalent, Scripture would be found to sanction the dissolution of marriages, whose infelicity was due to nothing more than some serious mental or moral disability. Of course, also, the Commissioners’ recommendations were a compromise between the requirements of bold reformers who wished for a much larger, and of timid reformers, who would have preferred a smaller, measure of freedom of divorce. Had Martin Bucer been on the Commission, as he certainly would have been but for his recent death, it cannot be questioned that the Commissioners would have ordained a far greater liberty of dissolving unhappy marriages. It was Bucer’s opinion (videhisJudgment touching Divorce, addressed to Edward the Sixth) that every marriage should be dissolved in which the husband and wife did not ‘love one another to the height of dearness,’ or the husband could not rightly govern and cherish the wife, or the wife was flagrantly disobedient and unprofitable to her lord, or either party ‘defrauded the other of conjugal benevolence,’—views which commended themselves so cordially to John Milton, that he produced a new edition of Bucer’s tract, in the middle of the seventeenth century.
Whilst showing how cordially he concurred in Martin Bucer’s conclusions, John Milton’s four works on divorce—theDoctrine and Discipline of Divorce, theTetrachordon, theColasterion, and the new edition of Bucer’sJudgment touching Divorce—show also how far he went beyond the sixteenth-century divine, in declaring every man’s right to secede froman uncongenial partner, and to associate himself with an acceptable helpmate. No libertine, for the gratification of vile desire, ever demanded greater license of re-marriage than Milton, in the name of religion, demanded for Christian men, for their spiritual advantage.
The old canon law, which insisted on the indissolubility of true marriages, and, even in cases of adultery, afforded no larger divorce than the separation from board and bed, having been revived at the close of Elizabeth’s reign, our ancestors lived for several generations under a matrimonial law of unprecedented rigour and narrowness, that in its results demonstrated the sagacity and prudence of Edward the Sixth’s Commissioners. Had the Commissioners’ proposals become law, England would have escaped much of the profligacy that, after rendering her seventeenth century proverbial for domestic libertinism, was less remarkable in the eighteenth century, only because the usage of successive ages had rendered society comparatively indifferent to it. Whilst no student of our social history can question that throughout those centuries the English home suffered severely from the excessive stringency of the matrimonial law, every student of literature is cognizant of the stream of written protests against the harshness and unyielding rigour of that law, from Elizabeth to Victoria. That Milton shocked the lighter people of his time by his assaults on the limitations of liberty of divorce is not to be conceived. That he did not by his writings against those restrictions offend the more precise and God-fearing of his contemporaries, appears from the regard in which they held him as a religious poet, after his descent to darkness and evil days. So far as concerns freedom of divorce, the Free Contract party of William Godwin’s epoch required nothing that Milton would not have granted, and urged little that Bucer would have hesitated to approve.
In 1813 (the year in which the anti-matrimonial note ofQueen Mabwas written), Shelley regarded marriage with the eyes and by the lights of eighteenth-century writers, who decried the institution as the source of human misery and depravation. The evils, that caused these writers to distinguish themselves in the long war against wedlock, were no imaginary grievances. On the contrary, they were evils which the Anglican reformers foresaw would result from a too stringent marriage-law, and for which they wished to provide by theirproposals for divorce. They were evils crying aloud for remedy throughout the country. Almost every parish of the land had a miserably mated couple, whose union should have been terminated by the law. For the mischief there was no remedy but the old cumbrous and costly proceedings for obtaining the greater divorce,—i.e.the suit in the first instance in the Ecclesiastical Court for the minor divorce from board and bed, and the subsequent suit for the parliamentary severance of the bond of marriage:—a process that, making divorce the luxury of the rich, denied it altogether to the poor. In the first thirty-seven years of the present century, only seventy suitors (less than two a-year) obtained special parliamentary enactments for their liberation from wretched wedlock. In the last thirty-seven years of the previous century, such divorces were much less frequent. The rich alone could afford to pay for the parliamentary relief. For the poor, and for the people raised only a few degrees above poverty, there was no divorce. Under these circumstances, whilst almost every rural village had a Stephen Blackpool, there necessarily arose vehement discontent not only with the defective marriage-law, but with marriage itself. Nothing was said against the obstacles to entering marriage; but everywhere an outcry was heard against the impossibility of getting out of marriage. Amongst the populace, social sentiment permitted a man in many cases to be the physician of his own trouble, and after deserting his lawful wife, to live with a woman who was not his wife. The general grievance being the difficulty of escape from uncongenial wedlock, the Radical writers dealt with this grievance, and usually forbore to criticise the impediments to marriage, of which no large number of people complained.
Taking his views from these writers, it was natural for the youthful Shelley to think and write chiefly of the evils arising from the law, which forbade a man to leave his wife and straightway attach himself to another woman. In constructing the note toQueen Mab, it was enough for him to put together, with no common smartness and one or two original touches, the remarks of previous writers on the troubles resulting from the permanence of matrimonial obligations. Contemning marriage from his boyhood, after the fashion of his teachers, he was eloquent about the difficulty of escaping from it. Apart from a statement of the grand principle that ‘love was free,’ andthat every person should be at liberty to marry whomsoever he pleased, he does not seem to have troubled himself about the divers impediments to the first entrance into the unendurable bondage, before he went to Geneva. It was otherwise on his return from the residence in Switzerland with Byron.
The startling discovery, that they were believed to be living in incestuous intimacy with the same two women, caused each of the poets to ponder the nature of the crime with which rumour charged them. Stirring and fascinating Byron’s imagination, the scandal bore fruit inManfredandCain. Stimulating and holding Shelley’s fancy, it resulted inLaon and Cythna. It is interesting to observe how differently the two poets dealt with the same repulsive subject. For the timid sceptic and half-hearted innovator, who to the last was (as Shelley put the case to his wife at Pisa) ‘little better than a Christian,’ it was enough to point to the crime inManfred, as one of the hideous possibilities of vicious desire,—as a monstrous and appalling extravagance of wickedness, too hideous to be spoken of precisely; as an offence so loathsome and revolting, that poetry could refer to it only by vague hints and obscure suggestions. InCainhe could refer with cynical mockery to times when, ifGenesiswere true, brothers necessarily mated with their sisters, for the accomplishment of the Creator’s purpose;—mockery, that was not so much a palliation of the iniquity, as an assault on the credibility of the Book which seemed to sanction the wickedness.
Shelley handled the subject in a very different way. It was natural for the thorough and unwavering disbeliever, who had formerly denied and still questioned the existence of the Deity, and no less natural for the fervid political theorist, who regarded all human governments and their subordinate institutions as the mere contrivances of tyranny for the subjugation and debasement of the peoples, to come to the conclusion that the impediments to matrimony had no other foundation, and were in no degree more entitled to the respect of reasonable men, than the impediments to escape from wedlock. Absolutely ignorant of the social conditions from which the hindrances to marriage had arisen, and no less ignorant of the physical and social reasons for regarding most of them as conducive to domestic purity, and some of them as needful for preserving the human species from mental and bodily disease and deterioration,Shelley was only carrying certain of his principles to certain of their extreme logical conclusions, when he closed his consideration of the impediments to marriage, by regarding them as so many capricious and pernicious interferences with natural forces, which, if they were left to take their own course, without let or hindrance from presumptuous, and arrogant, and meddlesome mortals, would in due course bring the whole human race under the dominion of universal love;—a dominion under which all mankind for countless ages would have enjoyed unqualified felicity, had it not been for the disastrous activity of tyrants and priests.
It was not in Shelley to distinguish between the various impediments, and discover grounds for deciding that some of them should be retained, whilst others might be abolished. To Shelley, a man’s right to marry his deceased wife’s sister was not more obvious than a man’s right to marry his own sister. Regarded by the new light, arising from the larger consideration of the matrimonial law, to which he had been incited by the Genevese scandal, the artificial hindrances to egress from matrimony were not more demoralizing than the artificial hindrances to ingress into matrimony. For human happiness marriage must be relieved of the impediments on its one side, no less than of the hindrances on its other side. Love must be restored to Freedom:—to freedom so perfect that a young man would be free to marry his own sister, without the intervention of priest or the control of lawyer; and after wearying of her be free to marry her younger sister under circumstances in no way affecting his freedom in the future. This discovery was the completion of Shelley’s social philosophy in respect to the intercourse of the sexes;—the philosophy that is, in the opinion of some of his admirers, a part of his title to be regarded as a man, who, under auspicious circumstances, ‘might have been the Saviour of the World!’
Having made this important discovery after his return from Geneva, Shelley determined to communicate it to the world in a poem, which should teach its readers that incest was nothing but an imaginary sin; that ceasing to have the show of sin, on being rightly regarded, it was seen to be compatible with the highest virtue; that it was one of the great ‘multitude of artificial vices,’ to whose existence the fewness of ‘real virtues’was referable; that instead of being loathsome, nauseous, hideous, unutterably repulsive and sinful, the conjugal union of a brother and sister under the Free Contract was permissible in the eyes of philosophic moralists, and compatible with moral purity and the finest delicacy in the brother and sister; that besides being altogether permissible, and in no degree reprehensible, this conjugal union was a virtuous relation, in which brothers and sisters would often stand towards one another in a rightly-constituted society. To put this social doctrine before the world, in the form most likely to commend it to the feelings of youthful readers, and induce them to further every movement for a state of things, in which brothers and sisters could so live together without offending their neighbours, Shelley wroteLaon and Cythna: or, The Revolution of the Golden City: a Vision of the Nineteenth Century. In the Stanza of Spenser.
Brother and sister of the same parents, Laon and Cythna, the hero and heroine of the poem, are beings endowed with all the virtues conceivable in perfect human nature, and are still enjoying the scenes of their childhood in Argolis, when they pass from the state of mutual affection, that is desirable in a brother of some sixteen or eighteen summers and a sister (ætat.12), to a state of mutual love that is desirable only between young people who can in the ordinary course of things marry one another. What follows from this state of things is indicated with consummate delicacy by the poet, too wary and artful to shock his readers in the second canto by clear disclosures, that might determine them to refrain from perusing any later canto of a long poem. Laon and Cythna are suddenly torn asunder by the agents of the tyrant, who figures in the poem as a type of European monarchs in the nineteenth century, and soon after their severance Cythna gives birth to the lovely child who owes her life to Laon. In a later passage of the narrative, after he has been released from the cage on the column’s top, and she, after divers painful experiences, has been proclaimed the prophetess and supreme directress of the revolutionists of the Golden City, Laon and Cythna come together under circumstances, which prevent them from recognizing one another in the first hour of their reunion. Laon is still uncertain whether she is really his sister, or only bears a strong resemblance to her, when hehears Cythna harangue the Golden City revolutionists in these words:—
‘My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,The grey sea shore, the forests and the fountains,Are haunts of happiest dwellers;—man and woman,Their common bondage burst, may freely borrowFromlawless lovea solace for their sorrow;For oft we still must weep, since we are human.A stormy night’s serenest morrow,Whose showers are pity’s gentle tears,Whose clouds are smiles of those that dieLike infants without hopes or fears,And whose beams are joys that lieIn blended hearts, now holds dominion;The dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinionBorne, swift as sun-rise, far illumines space,And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!’
Fearful that the words ‘lawless love’ may frighten simple readers, Mr. Buxton Forman (who thinks Shelley ‘might have been the Saviour of the World’), in his most useful edition of Shelley’s works, appends to the alarming words this note:—‘The wordslawless loveseem to be used, not in a conventional sense, but merely to signifyunshackled love.’ True, but ‘unshackled’ from what? Cythna meant that tyrant custom, or tyrant anybody else, having been overthrown and rendered powerless for the moment, her brethren and sisters were free to marry, and changing about to remarry, in perfect liberty of affection—in love liberated fromthe shackles of human law—in matrimony, no less easily entered than easily quitted—in marriage, alike free from legal impediments to ingress, and from legal impediments to egress—love, in fact, so perfectly free from the supervision and control of human law, that it might be rightly styled ‘lawless love.’
Later in the poem’s story, when Cythna has rescued Laon from the tyrant’s soldiers, and carried him off, on the ‘black Tartarian horse of giant frame,’ to a picturesque ruin, the brother and sister, after recognizing one another as whilom playmates in Argolis, pass through emotions, that are set forth in the following stanzas:—
‘The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had madeA natural couch of leaves in that recess,Which seasons none disturb, but in the shadeOf flowering parasites, did Spring love to dressWith their sweet blooms the wintry lonelinessOf those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene’erThe wandering wind her nurslings might caress;Whose intertwining fingers ever there,Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.We know not where we go, or what sweet dreamMay pilot us thro’ caverns strange and fairOf far and pathless passion, while the streamOf life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;Nor should we seek to know, so the devotionOf love and gentle thoughts be heard still thereLouder and louder from the utmost OceanOf universal life, attuning its commotion.To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wraptOur spirits, and the fearful overthrowOf public hope was from our being snapt,Tho’ linkèd years had bound it there; for nowA power, a thirst, a knowledge, which belowAll thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,Came on us, as we sate in silence there,Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air.In silence which doth follow talk that causesThe baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,When wildering passion, swalloweth up the pausesOf inexpressive speech:—the youthful yearsWhich we together past, their hopes and fears,The common blood which ran within our frames,That likeness of the features which endearsThe thoughts expressed by them, our very names,And all the wingèd hours which speechless memory claimsHad found a voice; ...********The meteor shewed the leaves on which we sate,And Cythna’s glowing arms, and the thick tiesOf her soft hair which bent with gathered weightMy neck near hers, her dark and deepening eyes,Which, as twin phantoms of one star that liesO’er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies,Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.The meteor to its far morass returned:The beating of our veins one intervalMade still; and then I felt the blood that burnedWithin her frame, mingle with mine, and fallAround my heart like fire; and over allA mist was spread, the sickness of a deepAnd speechless swoon of joy, as might befallTwo disunited spirits when they leapIn union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep.Was it one moment that confounded thusAll thought, all sense, all feeling, into oneUnutterable power, which shielded usEven from our own cold looks, when we had goneInto a wide and wild oblivionOf tumult and of tenderness? or nowHad ages, such as make the moon and sun,The seasons, and mankind their changes know,Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?I know not. What are kisses whose fire claspsThe failing heart in languishment, or limbTwined within limb? or the quick dying gaspsOf the life meeting, when the faint eyes swimThro’ tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,In one caress? What is the strong controulWhich leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,Where far over the world those vapours rollWhich blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?It is the shadow which doth float unseen,But not unfelt, o’er blind mortality,Whose divine darkness fled not, from that greenAnd lone recess, where lapt in peace did lieOur linkèd frames; till, from the changing sky,That night and still another day had fled;And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,The clouds, as of coming storm, were spreadUnder its orb,—loud winds were gathering overhead.Cythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,And her dark tresses were all loosely strewnO’er her pale bosom:—all within was still,And the sweet peace of joy did almost fillThe depth of her unfathomable look:—And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill,The waves contending in its caverns strook,For they foreknew the storm, and the grey ruin shook.There we unheeding sate, in the communionOf interchangèd vows, which, with a riteOf faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.—Few were the living hearts which could uniteLike ours, or celebrate a bridal nightWith such close sympathies, for to each otherHad high and solemn hopes, the gentle mightOf earliest love, and all the thoughts which smotherCold Evil’s power, now linked a sister and a brother.’
At the poem’s close, in reward for all their good deeds in a naughty world, and all their pains of self-sacrifice for the promotion of human happiness, this brother and sister (after death), together with the charming child, who is the issue of their incestuous embraces, are permitted to enter the boat of hollow pearl, in which they are carried to the islands of the blest, to repose in everlasting felicity near ‘The Temple of the Spirit.’
Lest it should be said that I misrepresent the story in a particular, which, though important, affects in no way the poem’s principal doctrine, let it be observed that to some readers this charming child appears to have been the tyrant’s daughter, instead of Laon’s offspring. Sir John Taylor Coleridge’s memorable article in theQuarterly Reviewshows that, whilst recognizing with repugnance, the incest of Laon’s intercourse with his sister, he regarded the child as the issue of the despot’s passion. But on this point I conceive the reviewer to have erred through the mystifications and ambiguities of the narrative. To me it is clear that Shelley meant to intimate to careful readers of the monstrous story, that Cythna’s child was Laon’s daughter. The question, however, does not touch the poem’s main purpose, as offspring would be the natural sequence of the endearments interchanged by the brother and sister in the picturesque ruin.
The two actors of the poem, in whom it is sought to interest the reader most strongly, and for whose stainless purity and unqualified goodness the author solicits our admiration, are a brother and sister, whose embraces result in the birth of a little girl, no less lovely in person and mind than her parents. The main purpose of the poem, which has numerous subordinate and minor objects, is to plant the incestuous pair in the reader’s affection, and lure him into regarding so exemplary an instanceof conjugal affection with sympathy and approval. By some of the less daring of the Shelleyan zealots it has indeed been urged thatLaon and Cythnashould be regarded as a mere poetic ‘vision’ (as it is described on the title-page), and the pure outgrowth of exuberant fancy, andnotas a serious contribution to social philosophy, intended to influence the judgment and conduct of its readers. To this plea a sufficient answer is found in the pains taken by Shelley to provide the work with a carefully worded prose preface, in which he intimated, that the poem was addressed to persons thirsting ‘for a happier condition of moral and political society;’ that the hurtful institutions and principles assailed in the poem were the hurtful institutions and principles then dominant in European society, and especially of English society; that the doctrines of the poem were offered for the solution of the various religious problems, political problems, and economical problems, then holding the attention and troubling the minds of earnest philanthropists; that, notwithstanding its artistic form and beauty, the poemwasoffered as a serious contribution to political and social philosophy, and had been written with a view to practical results in human conduct.
By others of the less courageous of the Shelleyan zealots, it is urged that, instead of definitely recommending conjugal love between a brother and a sister as a relation to be countenanced, or even tolerated by England in the nineteenth century,Laon and Cythnamerely reminds readers that, instead of violating any principle of natural morals, the connubial intercourse of a brother and sister would be unobjectionable, and might even be positively virtuous, in a country whose laws either encourage or only permit such an association. This apology for the prime doctrine ofLaon and Cythnamay as well be considered in connexion with what the poet says on the subject in the last sentence ofthepreface, which runs thus:—