CHAPTER XIV.

‘In the personal conduct of my Hero and Heroine, there is one circumstance whichwasintended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. Itwasmy object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavored to strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actionswhich are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices,that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alonewhich are benevolent or malevolent, are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak, was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own, has a tendency to promote.Nothing indeed can be more mischievous, than many actions innocent in themselves, which might bring down upon individuals the bigotted contempt and rage of the multitude.’

To this last sentence of the preface toLaon and Cythna, Shelley (obviously by an after-thought, and in consequence of the pressure put upon him by some friend or friends) appended this foot-note—‘The sentiments connected with and characteristic of this circumstance have no personal reference to the writer’!!!

The last paragraph of the preface toLaon and Cythnais preceded by these words, ‘Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.’ Having regard to the abrupt transition from the present to the past tense, the significant difference (in style) of the last paragraph from the preceding paragraph, and the known conflict that occurred between the author and publisher before the poem had passed the press, few critical readers will decline to think with me that the last paragraph, instead of being part of the preface when it left Shelley’s pen, was an after-thought, written to meet Ollier’s objections to the incestuous relation of Laon and Cythna. Nor will it, I think, be questioned, that the astounding note was an after-thoughttothe after-thought, and was put at the foot of the last paragraph, because Ollier, or Hunt, or Peacock, pointed out to the author that the poem, commending the incest of brother and sister, would expose him to the most hideous of imputations.

But what do the statements of the last paragraph amount to? (1) That in making Laon and Cythna live like a married couple, the poet merely aimed at startling his readers out of the trance of ordinary life.—(2) That in so startling his readers he wished to enable them to break away from the notion, that there was something inherently vicious in a brother’s connubial association with his own sister.—(3) That Shelley rated such incest as a mere crime of convention, to be placed in the same category with offences against the game-laws, the excise-laws, or a custom’s tariff.—(4) That feelings should not be judged bytheir results, but by their effect on the disposition of the person entertaining them.—(5) That in so startling his readers out of an antiquated repugnance to the particular kind of incest, he hoped to render them tolerant of, and charitable towards, persons committing the mere offence against conventional morality.—(6) That though, in his opinion, no rule of natural morals forbade a man to marry his own sister, the poet thought his readers had better refrain from such incest, since, thoughinnocent in itself, the perpetration of it would be likely to infuriate the bigoted multitude. This from the man who, according to his most fervid idolaters, would have redeemed the world from sin and wretchedness, had he worked for its regeneration under auspicious circumstances.

Is the incest of brother and sister a mere crime of convention? The science of morals, of course, is progressive. What is virtue in a rude state of society becomes crime in a high state of civilization. Some countries, lying well within the wide and vague boundaries of civilization, are behind other countries in the science of morals. What is crime in England may be honesty in Thibet. There are offences about which we may hesitate to say off-hand, whether they are offences against natural morals or mere crimes of convention. But surely action that is maleficent to the mental and physical welfare of mankind, wherever it may be practised, is not action about which there can be any uncertainty. Permitted in the country, where (by his own confession in prose) he commended it to tolerance and charitable consideration, the license commended by Shelley would poison the springs of domestic virtue, whilst producing its universal results on the bodily shape, nervous force, and moral health of the people. Permitted amongst the settlers on a barbarous coast, it would in a few generations be fruitful of such physical infirmity and debasement, as are ever accompanied with moral depravation. Action so universally maleficent is universally wicked. Though it may be less mischievous in its consequences, the conduct recommended inLaon and Cythnais no less essentially wicked, in a small and thinly populated island, than in a great city.

The poem having been written to the last line, Shelley sent it to Messrs. C. and J. Ollier, of Welbeck Street, whom he had selected for his publishers, at the request of their friend Leigh Hunt. As the book was to be produced at Shelley’s cost, thepublishers of course wished to publish it. But these gentlemen looked for money, instead of disaster, from business with their client. On finding that the poem was an apology for incest, they took counsel with one another, and probably with their lawyer. The result was that, when the poem was nearly, if not altogether printed, one of the Messrs. Ollier wrote to Shelley, stating they could not venture to produce a work, so certain to put them in an ignominious position. Instead of feeling for the men of business, and shrinking from the thought of injuring them, Shelley urged them to go on in the road to ruin. But the publishers were less manageable than Shelley hoped to find them. They repeated their wish to be quit of so dangerous a book. Whereupon, dating from Marlow, on 11th December, 1817, Shelley wrotetheMr. Ollier (who was attending to the matter) a letter that contained these words,—

‘There is one compromise you might make, though that would still be injurious to me. Sherwood and Neely wished to be the principal publishers. Call on them, and say that it was through a mistake that you undertook the principal direction of the book, as it was my wish that it should be theirs, and that I have written to you to that effect. This, if it would be advantageous to you, would be detrimental to, but not utterly destructive of, my views. To withdraw your name entirely, would be to inflict on me a bitter and undeserved injury.’ (VideShelley Memorials.)

To see the nature of this advice, readers must remember how usual it was in former time for several different firms of booksellers to be concerned in the publication of the same work. The principal publisher in these joint-enterprises,—i.e.the publisher in negotiation with the author, and to whom the author looked ashispublisher—had the direction of, and chief responsibility in, the business. His name, or the name of his house, appeared on the title-page before the names of the other publishers. Thus holding a place of honour, he held also the post of greatest danger; for in case of proceedings against the author and publisher of an unlawful publication, it was the way of the law to hold the first and principal publisher as more responsible than the other associated booksellers, and even in some cases to regard the latter as being in no degree morally accountable for the contents of the work. In accordance with this trade-usage, Messrs. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, of Paternoster Row, were associated in 1817, as second and subordinate publishers with Messrs. C. and J. Ollier, of Welbeck Street.

Shelley’s suggestion was that, as the Olliers were frightened, they should slip out of the more dangerous position, by inducing Sherwood, Neely, and Jones to step into it by misrepresentation. The Olliers were instructed by Shelley to tell the other set of publishers an untruth, that was a rather complicated untruth. They were instructed to keep their alarm to themselves, and say to their comrades in the trade, ‘We took the principal direction of the bookthrough a mistake’ (a sheer untruth), ‘as it was Mr. Shelley’s wish for you to be his principal publishers’ (another sheer untruth), ‘and therefore as Mr. Shelley has written us to that effect’ (a third untruth on a point of fact) ‘we think even at this late stage of the business you had better figure as principal publishers’ (a false suggestion of motive). That the Olliers did as Shelley thus instructed them, may be inferred from the fact that, on the title-page (the 1818 title-page) ofLaon and Cythna, Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, figure as principal publishers.

Laon and Cythnawas published, in so far that a few copies (threecopies, according to some writers on the subject, but probably a larger number) passed into circulation; one of them being the copy, that afforded theQuarterlyReviewer an opportunity for making his memorable onslaught on the book. But this had barely been accomplished, when the poem was an addition to the considerable list of the works, written by Shelley and speedily suppressed. What was the immediate cause of the renewal of their alarm does not appear; but the book was no sooner out, than the Messrs. Ollier decided that not another copy should be issued with their name on the title-page. Probably they acted on their lawyer’s urgent representation, that, unless it were promptly suppressed, so scandalous a book would certainly result in their prosecution. It has been repeatedly averred that their alarm proceeded chiefly from the freedom with which the poem dealt with matters of religion and politics. But the changes which convertedLaon and CythnaintoThe Revolt of Islam, show that this was not the case. Some of the changes, no doubt, modified the terms relating to the Almighty; but the prime purpose of the alterations was to relieve the poem of its incestuous sentiment. Unquestionably the publishers were alarmed by the book’s blasphemy and political extravagance; but their most serious apprehension was fear of such an outcry against the poem’s indecency, as would put them on trial forissuing an obscene book. On reconsideration the publishers saw that in case of such a prosecution, it would avail them nothing that their name appeared after ‘Sherwood, Neely, and Jones,’ on the title-page of the book, of which they would be proved to have been the principal publishers. No wonder they were firm. No wonder also that Shelley was in the highest state of excitement for his own interests,—and of indignation at his publisher’s cowardice. What the Olliers felt was, of course, felt by the other publishers.

Matters were in this position, when it occurred to some ingenious student of the suppressed poem, that it would be easy to relieve the work of its incestuous quality and some of its most objectionable passages touching religion, by cancelling a few leaves and replacing them with leaves, that would change the character and complexion of the whole performance. By dropping the final paragraph (with its note) from the Preface, producing a new title-page, and altering fifty-five lines of the body of the book, it would be easy to manipulate, at a trifling cost, the printed sheets out of their egregious offensiveness into comparative innocence. Who was the originator of this ingenious suggestion does not appear; but the editorial ingenuity of the proposal inclines one to attribute it to Leigh Hunt. Anyhow, the suggestion was carried out by a council, consisting of one of the Messrs. Ollier, the author, Peacock, and some other of the author’s personal friends (Leigh Hunt and Hogg being, no doubt, of the number). Never perhaps was stranger work done by a literary committee at successive meetings. At the sittings of the council, Shelley (says Peacock) ‘contested the proposed alterations step by step; in the end, sometimes adopting, more frequently modifying, never originating, and always insisting that his poem was spoiled.’ No wonder he fought his friends point by point. The poem had been written to demonstrate the purity and loveliness of the extremest kind of Free Love. By changing Cythna from Laon’s sister, to a mere orphan, living under the protection of his parents, the alterations deprived the poem of the prime doctrine it was intended to inculcate. The poem that should have proclaimed the beauty and holiness of incestuous Love was manipulated into a mere poetic apology for Lawless Love of an ordinary and less interesting kind. So castrated, the Poem of Incest could no longer generate the sentiment, whose activity was needful, inShelley’s opinion, for the attainment of ‘a happier condition of moral and political society.’ As any reader may learn from a careful study of the poem, enough mischief was left inThe Revolt of Islamto satisfy an ordinary enthusiast for lawless love; but Shelley was an ‘extra’-ordinary enthusiast for wedlock without restrictions. It is imputed to him for righteousness by his idolaters, that he persisted to the last in the pure and unqualified doctrine of the unaltered poem. In reference to Lady Shelley’s quite inaccurate statement that the poet (in 1817-18) was ‘convinced of the propriety of making’ the ‘alterations,’ which convertedLaon and CythnaintoThe Revolt of Islam, Mr. Buxton Forman remarks proudly of the teacher, who might have been the Saviour of the World, ‘There is nothing in his subsequent history to countenance the idea that he regardedLaon and Cythnaas in any way offensive.’

But before the superlatively offensive poem had been manipulated into a comparatively inoffensive one, some copies ofLaon and Cythnahad passed from the publisher’s hands to the world. Whether these copies were no more, or several more, than three, does not matter. If they were only three, they were enough to darken the poet’s fame and cloud his happiness for the rest of his days. Three hundred copies in circulation could not have been more disastrous to his social credit than thosethree, one of which was lent to theQuarterlyReviewer.

Is it wonderful that Shelley, during the few years still remaining to him of a brief existence, lived under the world’s ban, and though producing works of incomparable art in quick succession, produced them only to stir the wrath of critics, and aggravate the pain he endured from the world’s neglect of his genius? It was known, and could not be gainsaid, in every coterie of men of letters, how abruptly he had left his first childish wife; how, on breaking with so young and lovely a creature, he told her to ‘do as other women did’; how within a few weeks of breaking with this girl, he had carried off his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter; and how in language of matchless beauty and vigour, he had used all the powers of his poetic genius, not only to deride marriage, but to teach his readers that the most repulsive and blighting of all the several kinds of incestuous love was wholesome, innocent, and beautiful. Is it surprising that in less than a year and four months from the publication ofLaon and Cythna, he wrotefrom Rome to Peacock, ‘I am regarded by all who know or hear of me, except, I think, on the whole, five individuals, as a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look even might infect?’ Is it surprising that, critics, fully cognizant of the power and many excellences of his poetry, forbore to extol his genius, from a conscientious repugnance to his social philosophy, and a fear that by applauding the poet they should strengthen the hands of the social innovator? Is it surprising that, whilst temperate and judicious men of letters were silent about what they secretly admired, but could not venture to openly commend, less discerning critics in their abhorrence of the social innovator, wrote wild nonsense about the stupid trash, the drivel and buffoonery of his finest productions?

Of course, these less discerning critics had better have imitated the more temperate and discreet men of letters, and held their peace. But critics are human; and when men speak under the influence of strong resentment, they are apt to say wild things. To point to the angry things written to Shelley’s discredit, when the passions he had stirred were at their fiercest rage, as evidence of a singular and unaccountable blindness to the excellences of fine poetry, is to misread the signs of a former time. Like Byron, the author ofLaon and Cythnaprovoked a storm he was not permitted to survive; though he would have survived it, had he lived to middle age and continued to write in the vein ofPrometheus UnboundandAdonais. It is not wonderful that violent things were said of the man, who had done violence to society’s finest sensibilities. What occurred to his annoyance more than sixty years since would occur now-a-days to a similar offender,—say, to a novelist of high culture and singular aptitude for his department of literary art, guilty of producing a novel whose hero and heroine, born of the same parents, and reared in the same home, should live and love like Laon and Cythna; the whole romance being cunningly devised and skilfully worked out, for the purpose of luring readers to the opinion that brothers and sisters ought to be allowed to marry one another. After all that has been done during the last fifty years to make people tolerant of the Free Contract, what would happen if such a story came to us one fine day from the pen of a young and remarkably able writer (ætat.25), together with his assurance that the work was ‘an experiment on the temper of the public mind,’ and an attempt to bringabout ‘happier conditions of moral and political society?’ Would critics be mealy-mouthed and weigh their words precisely in declaring the experiment an outrage, and the attempt a monstrous scandal? Would they be less outspoken on discovering that the young writer, at so early a stage of his existence, had put away his first wife, seduced his intimate friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, written strongly on previous occasions against chastity and conjugal constancy, and been declared by the Lord Chancellor a person whoseconductproved him unfit to have the charge of his children?

One is often asked to explain what is meant by ‘the irony of fate.’ It is easier to explain a term by an example than by words. It was fate’s irony that, whilst the poet, who exhibited a brother’s incestuous intercourse with his sister as sinless and beautiful, escaped the imputation he may be said to have invited by the personal note at the end of the Preface, the world was induced to charge the crime passionately on another poet, who had only written of such incest vaguely as an enormity of wickedness, or mockingly as the familiar arrangement of a remote period. Another example of fate’s irony is found in the fact that, when Byron was suffering in posthumous fame from the Beecher-Stowe calumny, the more fervid of the Shelleyan enthusiasts and the more fervid of the Shelleyan socialists combined to decry him as a prodigy of wickedness for practising the form of Lawless Love, which Shelley had declared compatible with virtue. Fate also was set upon another exploit in irony, when she determined that the poem, which a committee of men of the world declared unfit for circulation during the profligate Regency, should be producedverbatimfor the moral edification of the men, and women, and young people of Victorian England.

FROM MARLOW TO ITALY.

The Hunts and the Shelleys—Their Intimacy—Pecuniary Difficulties—Dealings with Money-lenders—Leigh Hunt relieves Shelley of £1400—His Testimony to Shelley’s virtuous Manners—Shelley’s Benevolence at Marlow—At the Opera—Departure for Italy—The fated Children—Shelley’s literary Work and studious Life in Italy—Milan—Allegra sent to her Father—Elise the Swiss Nurse—Her Knowledge and Suspicions—Claire and her ‘Sister’—Their Affectionate Intercourse and Occasional Quarrels—Shelley’s Affection for Claire—Vagrants in Italy—Pisa—Leghorn—Maria Gisborne—Her Husband and Son—Claire and Shelley at Venice—Trick played on Byron—His Civilities to the Shelleys—Little Clara’s Death—Paolo the Knave—He falls in Love with Elise—Their Marriage—Paolo’s Wrath and Vengeance—Emilia Viviani—Shelley’s Adoration of Her—The three-cornered Flirtation—Mrs. Shelley’s Attitude and Action—Shelley’s Fault in the Affair—His subsequent Shame at the Business—The imaginary Assault at the Pisan Post Office.

It has been already noticed how the Shelleyan apologists deal with the evidence that, in December, 1816, when Harriett’s suicide held the attention of the literary coteries, Shelley’s conduct towards her had the approval of his friend Leigh Hunt and two other unbiased judges,—his bookseller and his attorney (the same attorney who treated the poet so scurvily in the spring of 1821). Whilst using Leigh Hunt as a witness to the excellence of Shelley’s conduct to his wife, the Shelleyan apologists imply that, in the December of 1816, the two poets had long been intimate friends. It is, however, certain that, till the end of the autumn of 1816, the two ‘friends’ knew so little of one another that they were nothing more than slight acquaintances. How little Hunt cared about the author ofAlastorat any time prior to Harriett’s suicide, appears from his confession that, on receiving certain sets of verses from the still youthful literary aspirant, he neither printed them in theExaminernor returned them to their author, but after ‘unfortunately mislaying them,’ forgot all about them,—i.e.tossed them disdainfully to the waste-paper basket. Something (weeks or months) later, on seeing reason to render theamende honorableto the young author whom he had treated so contemptuously, Hunt put intheExaminer(December, 1816) an article that, referring to Shelley as one of ‘three young writers, who appeared to promise a considerable addition of strength to the new school,’ and also spoke of him as ‘the author of a poetical work entitledAlastor, or the Spirit of Solitude;’ no line of which poem had been seen by the poetical editor, when he alluded to it thus cautiously in the apologetic note. ‘We shall,’ Hunt says of the poet, of whose writings he had seen nothing but the ‘one or two specimens,’ so lightly pitched into the wicker-basket, after a hasty glance at their contents, ‘procure what he has published, and if the rest answer to what we have seen, we shall have no hesitation in announcing him for a very striking and original thinker.’ That these words of Hunt’s pen appeared in theExaminer, so late as 1st December, 1816, is conclusive evidence of how little he caredfor, and knewof, Shelley up to the very moment of Harriett’s death. Yet in these latest years of grace, we have been required to believe there can have been nothing very reprehensible in Shelley’s conduct to his wife, since it had the approval of so precise a moralist as Leigh Hunt, who, by reason of his long-standing intimacy with Shelley, must have known all about it.[4]

But if Hunt was tardy in responding to Shelley’s repeated overtures for friendship, he atoned for previous negligence by his subsequent pains to plant himself in the affection of the young man, whom he had treated with scant courtesy. The editor of theExaminerwas too sincere a man to admire aught till he had found it admirable. But on seeing Shelley’s titles to his homage, he promptly acknowledged them, and on discovering his virtues, declared his generous admiration of them in no uncertain voice. The Hermit of Marlow and the poet of Hampstead’s ‘Vale of Health’ became close friends. Whilst Marianne (Mrs. Hunt) discovered her dearest and ever-loving familiar in Mrs. Shelley, their husbands had all thoughts and things (money not excluded) in common. Admiring one another’s writings, the poets backed each other’s bills. Circumstances constraining him to fly from Lisson Grove, or the ‘Vale of Health,’ and seek a place of retirement from creditors, Hunt found the needful seclusion at Marlow, where he stayed, on one occasion, for nearly three months. On the other hand, towards the close of 1817, when tradesmen were troubling him sorely to pay certain bills for necessaries, supplied to the late Mrs. Shelley, the author ofAlastormade quick march from Bisham Wood to Hampstead Heath, and found hospitality with concealment in the ‘Vale of Health,’ where he delighted his host’s children by playing with them in an equally amiable and frolicsome manner.

It was during this sojourn with the Hunts that Shelley came, one winterly afternoon, on the poor woman, lying in a fit upon the heath, with a little boy by her side, and was so greatly incensed by the reluctance of the nearest householders to open their doors and arms to her. Why Shelley, who eventually carried the sufferer to Hunt’s quarters (which were near at hand), did not carry her there in the first instance, does not appear. It is, however, on the record that, he deferred taking so obvious and reasonable a course till he had vainly tried to get her admitted to nearer houses, whose occupants declined to act charitably in the matter,—possibly, because they thought he might as well take hisprotégéeto the place where he was himself staying. One of the individuals, to whose benevolence he vainly appealed in this emergency, being a gentleman who was stepping out of his carriage at the door of his own goodly mansion, the indignant poet is said to have told the selfish householderroundly, that he might expect to have his house burnt over his head in the quickly-coming revolution, when the poor would settle accounts summarily with the rich. As it is told, the story redounds to Shelley’s honour and the rich householder’s shame. But as some of the story’s truth may be on its unrecorded side, judicious readers will decline to condemn the householder. It is, however, to the poet’s credit that, seeing a poor woman in need of help, he eventually helped her in the best way, by taking her to his own place of abode, and sending for the nearest doctor.

Fruitful of the pleasures, that usually result from the close and affectionate intercourse of congenial friends, the intimacy of the two poets was fruitful also to the elder poet of advantages which he may not have been base enough to compass deliberately, but was unquestionably base enough to accept. Towards the close of 1817, Shelley was raising money, in some cases, by post-obits, and, in other cases, by loans charged on his eventual estate. How much he raised by these processes in the later months of 1817 and the earlier months of 1818, does not appear; but probably the greater part of the heavy debt he put on his estate, between his coming of age and his death, was created by pecuniary transactions of this particular period. Of the terms at which he procured ready money, enough for the reader’s purpose appears from a letter, in which he is seen raising money at the rate of 2000l.in future repayment, for every 1000l.put into his hands. At a rough computation from this transaction, he may be presumed to have received a clear sum of 11,000l.for the 22,000l., with which he charged his estate before his death. In addition to the money raised by loans charged on the estate, he also borrowed largely on post-obits, that were, of course, never paid, as he pre-deceased his father. Whether they passed through his hands to tradesmen for value received, or to needy friends, the sums so raised were paid to, and spent by, him; and it is obvious from what has been said of the estates to which he was entitled in remainder, that, had Shelley survived his father (who died 1844), and continued to live as prodigally from 1822 to 1844, he would have found himself, on the cessation of his allowance of 1000l.a-year, a quite poor, if not an absolutely penniless, man at his father’s death.

Raising money on these ruinous terms, towards the end of1817, and in the opening weeks of the following year, Shelley raised it with the cognizance of Leigh Hunt. The money came to the younger poet’s hands whilst he was living in closest intimacy with the gentleman who, whenever money was passing about, never failed to see why he should not have some of it, without working for it. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that, whilst arranging his own affairs, Shelley was induced to think he might as well arrange Hunt’s affairs also. Nor is it surprising that Hunt took the same view of the case. The entire amount sucked from Shelley by Hunt at this period may have been exaggerated. Miss Mitford may have been repeating an inaccurate story, when she wrote how the brokers swept off the younger poet’s chairs, tables, and bedding for the satisfaction of one of Hunt’s numerous creditors. But it is certain that Shelley (ætat.25) gave Hunt (ætat.33) 1400l.in one gift, and that this was not the only sum of money to pass in some way or other from the younger poet to the man of letters who, besides being eight years Shelley’s senior, was editor and joint-proprietor of a flourishing newspaper. Hunt himself confesses to have taken this 1400l.in one lump from his young friend. In judging this affair, readers should not lose sight of the difference of the two men in respect to age,—Shelley being only twenty-five years old, and much younger than his years in character and worldly experience, whilst Hunt was a man of middle-age, who had been trained in poverty to be keenly mindful of his own interest, though affecting to be wholly regardless of it. Familiar with all the particulars of Shelley’s by no means prosperous circumstances, cognizant of the means by which Shelley had obtained the money, aware that the gift of 1400l.signified a withdrawal of twice as much from the not ample estate, which would be Shelley’s only provision for himself and family after his father’s death, this mature man of the world took this young man’s money,—not in payment for work done, but as a gift. The affair is all the more discreditable to Hunt, because he was the editor of a powerful journal, whilst Shelley was a literary aspirant, who, in making his senior so enormous a gift, may be supposed to have been actuated, in some degree, by regard for the editor’s power to serve him or injure him on the press. To think of Shelley pressing the notes for 1400l.on his friend, and of Hunt taking them with much effusion after a graceful show of reluctance, is to remember how Shelley, in hisOxford days, wrote about ‘pouching the villains,’ who had it in their power to praise his novel.

Some two years after his sojourn of many weeks at Marlow, Hunt, to clear his friend’s reputation from some of the charges poured upon him by theQuarterlyReviewer, produced in theExaminer(10th October, 1819) a vindicatory article, that contains the following account of Shelley’s manner of living at Marlow:—

TheReviewer, says Hunt in this article, ‘asserts that he’ [i.e.Shelley] ‘is shamefully dissolute in his conduct! We heard of similar assertions when we resided in the same house with Mr. Shelley for nearly three months; and how was he living all that time? As much like Plato himself, as all his theories resemble Plato—or rather, still more like a Pythagorean. This was the round of his daily life,—he was up early; breakfasted sparingly; wrote thisRevolt of Islamall the morning; went out in his boat, or into the woods with some Greek author or the Bible in his hands; came home to a dinner of vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine); visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless, whom others gave Bibles to and no help; wrote or studied again, or read to his wife and friends the whole evening; took a crust of bread, or a glass of whey, for his supper; and went early to bed. This is literally the whole of the life he led, or that we believe he now leads in Italy; nor have we ever known him, in spite of the malignant and ludicrous exaggerations on this point, deviate, notwithstanding his theories, even into a single action which those who differ with him might think blameable. We do not say that he would always square his conduct by their opinions as a matter of principle; we only say that he acted just as if he did so square it. We forbear, out of regard for the very bloom of their beauty, to touch upon numberless other charities and generosities which we have known him exercise; but this we must say, in general, that we never lived with a man who gave so complete an idea of an ardent and principled aspirant in Philosophy as Percy Shelley, and that we believe him, from the bottom of our hearts, to be one of the noblest hearts as well as heads which the world has seen for a long time. We never met, in short, with a being who came nearer, perhaps so near, to that height of humanity mentioned in the conclusion of an essay of Lord Bacon’s, where he speaks of excess of charity, and of its not being in the power of “man or angel to come in danger by it.”’

This evidence from a witness who had received 1400l.in a lump from the subject of his eulogy, might be dismissed with a smile, were it not that it has recently been produced as a valid and conclusive testimony to Shelley’s moral worth, by a writer who knew everything about him. The defence having been so dealt with, it is well for readers to recall the character of theeulogist, and the circumstances of his brief, though close, association with the man, of whose life he wrote so authoritatively. It should be remembered that the witness, affecting to have formed his opinion of Shelley’s character from a long acquaintance, was the editor who, at the beginning of December, 1816, had not read a line ofAlastor, and in his unconcern for the young poet, had recently ‘chucked’ his verses into the waste-paper basket. In writing that, to his knowledge, Shelley had never committed a single action to be reprehended by moralists differing from him on matters of opinion, Leigh Hunt showed either how little he knew of Shelley, or how little he cared for the truth or falsehood of what he wrote in his friend’s behalf. If Hunt really believed that Shelley’s conduct towards William Godwin covered no single blameworthy action, he had been strangely misinformed respecting a chief and recent episode of his friend’s story. On the other hand, if he wrote the vindicatory article with a sufficient knowledge of that passage of Shelley’s career, he wrote it mendaciously. It is not surprising that, after gushing over Shelley’s goodness to the poor at Marlow, the vindicator of slandered virtue forbore, ‘out of regard for the very bloom of their beauty,’ to touch upon ‘the poet’s numberless other charities and generosities.’ The moral effect of the vindication would not have been heightened by either a precise declaration or a general acknowledgment of the extent to which the writer had himself profited by such exhibitions of virtue.

But though the testimony to character is necessarily affected by our knowledge of the witness’s peculiar obligations to the giver of great gifts, it is only fair to Hunt to record that the truthfulness of his viewy account of Shelley’s manner of living at Marlow is placed beyond question by the evidence of contemporary letters, and the more precise statements of witnesses in no degree open to suspicion. Without adhering rigidly to the diet, which writers imperfectly acquainted with the philosopher’s doctrine and discipline are wont to style Pythagorean, Shelley refrained from meat and wine during the greater part of his Marlow time. Once and again during that period he lapsed suddenly or by degrees from the rules of the vegetarians, but only to return to them with a stronger opinion that his health required him to abstain from flesh and fermented drinks. It was not possible for a man so sympathetic and observant ofhuman life about him to live anywhere without compassionating the unfortunate of his own species; and there is a superabundance of evidence that, living at Marlow during a season of insufficient employment and keen distress for struggling people, he did all and more than he could afford for the relief of the poor of his immediate neighbourhood. Giving money to several families, whom he placed on the list of his regular weekly pensioners, he visited the recipients of his bounty in their comfortless cottages, and in other ways showed himself mindful of the first duty of the rich to their extremely indigent neighbours. Ministering to the necessities of the poor in this deliberate manner, he at the same time relieved them fitfully, in obedience to sudden impulses of pity and benevolence. On the other hand, whilst acting towards the poor of Marlow precisely as he had acted towards the poor of Tremadoc, he was in some instances less than duly mindful of another, and no less sacred, obligation. It would be more pleasant to remember how the Hermit of Marlow entered a neighbour’s garden without the shoes, which a minute earlier he had taken from his feet and given to a poor beggar-woman, were not the story of this rather fantastic act of benevolence associated with less agreeable stories of unpaid bills. The poet, who gave Leigh Hunt 1400l.in a single donation, should not have cleared away from Marlow without paying his doctor’s charges for medical service.

Shelley’s last evening in London (the evening of 10th March, 1818) he passed pleasantly at the Opera-house, on the occasion of the first performance in England of Rossini’sBarbiere di Siviglia, the part of Count Almaviva being performed by Garcia, who on the same occasion made his first appearance in an English house. The first night of the new opera and the new singer—a singer of Garcia’s celebrity, and an opera of theBarber’senduring popularity—still remains a memorable night of our operatic annals; and it is pleasant to remember that Peacock (a fine connoisseur of music), Shelley (ever sensitive to music, without being a nice or scientific critic of its composers), Claire (a musical enthusiast), and Mrs. Shelley, were at the opera on so interesting an occasion, and after the performance supped together, after the wont of play-goers seventy years since.

Early the next morning, Shelley’s carriage (possibly the same carriage in which poor Harriett paid visits something lessthan four years since) rolled slowly from the capital, to which he never returned. Stacked high and freighted heavily with luggage, the carriage held a numerous family-party,—Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, Claire, and their Swiss maid, Elise, besides the three children,viz., (1) Willie, two years and a few weeks of age, (2) Allegra, just a year and two months old, and (3) little six-months-old Clara. Two of the children, Willie and the wee Clara (named after her aunt Claire) had been christened on the previous Monday (9th March, 1816), when Allegra was probably also admitted to the Church militant here on earth. What a group of babes, journeying, each and all, to early death in the land of the foreigner! Baby Clara went out of England to die a few months later at Venice; Willie found his last bed at Rome in the following year; Allegra perished of fever at the Bagna Cavallo convent in the April of 1822, only a few months before the poet, who had nursed her in her earliest infancy, was swept from life by the wild hurricane. To think of the early deaths of these children, followed thus speedily by the poet, who took them out with him to Italy, is to imagine Fate and Death attending the heavily-laden coach as it moved slowly seaward along the Dover Road,—the same road along which Claire and Mary had sped with Harriett’s husband, on quicker wheels, little more than three years and six months since.

Starting for Italy on 11th March, 1818, Shelley was within four years and four months of his death when he left the country of his birth for ever:—the four years and four months during which he wroteJulian and Maddalo(1818),Lines written among the Euganean Hills(1818),Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples(1818),Prometheus Unbound(1818-19),The Cenci(1819),Ode to Heaven(1819),An Exhortation(1819),Ode to the West Wind(1819),An Ode to the Assertors of Liberty(1819),The Mask of Anarchy(1819),Peter Bell the Third(1819),The Sensitive Plant(1820),A Vision of the Sea(1820),The Cloud(1820),To a Skylark(1820),Ode to Liberty(1820),Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant(1820),Letter to Maria Gisborne(1820),The Witch of Atlas(1820),Epipsychidion(1820-21),Autumn: A Dirge(1820),Adonais(1821),Hellas(1821), the unfinishedCharles the First(1821-22), and the commencement ofThe Triumph of Life(1822). To take a general view of Shelley’s industry during this closing and brightest term of a genius that, after moving slowly to perfectdevelopment, was still in the fulness of its power and promise when it passed abruptly from the world, readers must recall the strong stream of minor poems that flowed from his pen during these latest years of his existence. Remembrance must also be had of the Translations (from Homer, Euripides, Plato, Bion, Moschus, Virgil, Dante, Calderon), the Notes on the Roman and Florentine sculptures, the perfect part of the unfinishedDefence of Poetry, theEssay on Christianity, and the other multifarious prose writings, including the Italian letters, whose publication would by themselves have made a reputation for an ordinarylittérateur. Such exuberant productiveness in different departments of the higher literature is comparable only with the profuse and versatile fecundity of Byron’s genius during the same period. To suggest any other comparison of the work accomplished by Byron and Shelley, during their concurrent years of voluntary exile, would be foreign to the purpose of the present writer, who, in dealing successively with the lives of the two poets, has studiously and jealously resisted every temptation to be the critic of either.

It lies, however, well within his province to remark that in the comparison of their lives in Italy, Shelley, from one point of view, has greatly the advantage of the poet with whom he will ever be associated. Perhaps no modern English poet of the highest class (pardon me, Mr. Swinburne) was ever more devoid than Byron of scholarly enthusiasm. Relying in his earlier time on Hobhouse for archæology and history, the author ofChilde Haroldnever made a nearer approach to severe study than when he helped the Venetian monks of St. Lazarus to produce their English-Armenian grammar. Denied his poetical genius, he would have thought a daily newspaper and theGentleman’s Magazinesufficient literature for any reasonable English peer. With it, he was usually content with the intellectual food and excitement, afforded by good magazines and the best of the currentbelles lettres. Shelley, on the other hand, had a natural taste and turn for scholarly labour. Under no conceivable circumstances could he have justified Mr. Buxton Forman’s high opinion, and become the Saviour of the World; but stript of his faculty of song, he might, under several different sets of conceivable conditions, have developed into a great and famous scholar. Never a severe student (in the severest and technical sense of the term) he was from hisboyhood a fitful, and sometimes a no less laborious than curious, reader of literature, seldom attractive to those who lack the studious disposition. Delighting in old Greek authors at Bishopgate, he became in Italy a strenuous, habitual, and sympathetic reader of authors, who are mere names to the semi-educated rabble. Rising with the bird he glorified, whilst Byron was turning from his first into his second sleep, he went to books for happiness. To show he caught the spirit of the authors he perused, one needs only to point to the series of his free-handed and sympathetic Translations. Reading indoors in foul weather, he read in the sunshine when the skies were cloudless. If he was not thinking or writing, he was poring over printed or written pages. On starting for walk or ride, his last thought on crossing the threshold was to make sure he had the book of the moment in his pocket; and, so wide was the range of his studious interests, the book might be Greek or Latin, German or Spanish, or an Arabic manuscript which he was tackling with Medwin’s scarcely adequate assistance. Whilst Byron was a superb poet and mere man of the world, Shelley was a keen student as well as a superb poet. These are matters to be remembered by those who would know the Real Shelley, as he lived out the latest of his few years in Italy.

Taking his carriage, together with his women, babes, and baggage, across the Channel, Shelley travelled leisurely from Calais through France, by the way of Rheims, Langres, and Lyons (whence he wrote to Leigh Hunt on 22nd March, 1818), Les Echelles, and crossing the Alps, entered Milan on an early day in April, 1818, from which last-named city Allegra was sent to Byron (at Venice), who, whilst expressing his readiness and wish to have care of the child, declined to receive the child’s mother. Baby Allegra was therefore sent to her father’s palazzo on the Grand Canal under the charge of the female servant, described by Moore in hisLife of Byronas ‘a Swiss nurse, a young girl not above nineteen or twenty years of age, and in every respect unfit to have the charge of such an infant, without the superintendence of some more experienced person.’ The nurse, described thus slightingly by Moore, was Elise, who, on receiving instructions to convey the child to the palazzo, understood that she would return to her mistress at Milan, after seeing Allegra settled in her new home. As Mrs. Shelley had no wish to part with the girl, who, under maternalsurveillance, had proved a sufficient nurse for Willie and Clara, she had no intention to be without Elise’s services for many days. In the absence, however, of a nurse, suitable or otherwise, for Allegra at Byron’s palazzo, Mrs. Shelley consented that Elise should remain in charge of Claire’s child at Venice, till another arrangement could be made for her care. Hence it came to pass that Mrs. Shelley was deprived of her proper nurse till the following August, when Elise returned to her mistress at Este.

It would be unreasonable to assume that the nurse who brought the child to the Palazzo Moçenijo had grounds for regarding Byron as the child’s father. Servants are required all the world over to do what they are told, without asking why or wherefore. Moreover, it is usual with employers to be at some pains to prevent their servants from discovering the why and wherefore of orders they are told to execute, for the furtherance of affairs of secresy. Some twenty months before Elise took Allegra to Venice, she (a young Swiss girl) had been hired at Geneva by Mrs. Shelley to act as her little boy’s nurse. Living with the Shelleys at Geneva, whilst the city was bubbling with hideous scandal about them, it is not to be imagined that Elise went to England without having heard something of the Genevese gossip to her employers’ discredit. Who was more likely to be waylaid and questioned by the scores of Genevese tattlers, bent on gathering evidence to the truth of stories, that had already passed from Switzerland to England? Coming to the girl’s ears, the gossip could not fail to make her suspicious respecting her master’s intimacy with the young lady, whom he styled his sister. If she had heard nothing of the gossip, she, anyhow, soon became an observer of facts that must have awakened her curiosity and suspicion.

Accompanying the Shelleys and Claire to England, she served them as nursemaid at Bath and Marlow. At Bath the quick-witted girl observed signs that Claire would soon be a mother. Soon it devolved on her to look after Claire’s infant as well as Mrs. Shelley’s little boy. Elise must have known that Allegra was Claire’s offspring; but the facts coming under the servant’s observation afforded her no information respecting the child’s paternity. On that point she was doubtless left to inference and conjecture. Though they could not help takingher in some degree into their confidence—at least, could not prevent her from seeing what went on under her own eyes, and drawing her own inferences from what she saw—it is not likely that Mary and Claire told their Swiss maid who was Allegra’s father. Several considerations must have disposed them to be silent to her on that point. Honour and prudence forbade them to confide so delicate a secret to the young nurse, who would be almost sure to let it out to her fellow-servants and the Marlow gossip-mongers, and write about it in her next letter to her friends at Geneva,—a secret which, if it were blabbed at Marlow, would soon be talked about in London, and travel to the ears of William Godwin and Mrs. Godwin, from whom both sisters were especially desirous to withhold the fact of Allegra’s birth. Moreover, whilst keenly alive to the reasons for withholding the secret from Elise, the sisters must have felt they could gain nothing by confiding it to her. Knowing that Elise would naturally receive with suspicion any story they might tell her about Allegra’s paternity, they knew that of all stories the truth was the story she was least likely to believe. The natural course for two ladies in so embarassing a position to take towards their young female servant, would be to tell her a more or less romantic fib, that would not greatly aggravate their trouble if she blabbed it to her familiars.

Probably Elise was told that her mistress’s sister was married under circumstances, that compelled her for the present to keep her marriage a profound secret. At the same time Elise was entreated, with tears and pathetic assurances of eternal gratitude for her fidelity, to guard the secret thus confided to her honour. Claire (a clever hand at fibbing, when fibs might serve her purpose) was just the girl to trick out such a story in the prettiest style, and Elise was just the quick-witted damsel to receive the confidence with a proper show of credulity, and laugh in her sleeve at it as mere fiction.

In the meantime Elise saw what she saw, and (though only a poor Swiss nursemaid) had a right to draw inferences from what she saw. It did not escape the smart girl’s notice that, whilst living affectionately with Claire, Shelley seemed to care for her little girl, quite as much as he cared for Mrs. Shelley’s little boy,—that he nursed little Allegra, and sung to her, for the half-hour at a time, just as though she were his own infant.Is it not told inJulian and Maddaloby Shelley himself, how he delighted in his sister Claire’s babe, and

‘nursedHer fine and feeble limbs when she came firstTo this bleak world;’

and in the ‘lovely toy’s’ infancy made himself ‘her antient play-fellow?’ Under these circumstances, Elise may well have come to the conclusion that Allegra’s ‘antient play-fellow’ was also her young father. Elise’s disposition to take this view of the case would not have been less strong, had she known how Shelley had provided for Claire and her child by his will. Though I am dealing conjecturally with mere inferences from admitted facts, I have little doubt that Elise took this view of Allegra’s paternity at Marlow, that she went with the child to Italy under the same impression, and that she held to the same opinion on delivering the little girl into Byron’s custody at Venice. To show by documentary evidence that, before starting from Milan with Allegra in her charge, Elise had been expressly informed of the child’s relation to Byron, would take nothing from the strength of my suspicion that, in conveying Allegra to her father, Elise imagined herself to be conveying Shelley’s child to the famous Lord Byron, in order that he should make arrangements for the child’s future education:—it having been determined (for reasons obvious to Elise’s imagination) that her master had better not figure as principal in arrangements, so likely to fix the little girl’s paternity on him. Readers who concur with the present writer in this suspicion (which, in the absence of evidence sufficient for transmuting suspicion to conviction, is offered as nothing more than a reasonable hypothesis), will concur with him also in regarding Elise’s misconception and the circumstances of Allegra’s transference from the Shelleys’ care to her father’s keeping, as the source of the subsequent story (believed by the Hoppners, who had it in some shape or other from Elise and her husband) that Claire had given birth to a child by Shelley, which he had sent to a Foundling Hospital.

Of one thing there must now be an end in Shelleyan biography,—the practice of writing about Claire, as though she were a sort of fallen woman, to whom the Shelleys in their magnanimity showed great kindness, though she had scarcelyany claim upon them for protection. As the family coach (so heavily laden with babies, and baggage, and womankind) rolled through France, Claire (so recently acknowledged as their sister by Shelley and Mary in theirSix Weeks’ Tour)—Claire, to whom Shelley had assigned in his will no less than 12,000l.of his scarcely ample estate—never thought of herself as aught else than Mrs. Shelley’s sister. On the other hand, though these children of the same home were only sisters-by-affinity, Mary Shelley had no disposition to think herself anything else than Shelley’s wife and Claire’s sister. If blood is thicker than water, habit is stronger than either; and the two girls (still only quite young girls) had been habituated from childhood to think of one another as sisters. Taught from the same books and by the same governess, playing with the same toys, placed for punishment in opposite corners of the same room, whipt with the same rod, kissed every night by the same ‘papa,’ these children of different parents, but the same home, had been trained to think of one another as sisters, and nothing else than sisters. Of course they had their tiffs and quarrels. Without blood, they were far more sisters to one another, than those sisters of the whole blood, Eliza and Harriett Westbrook. Nor may Claire be regarded as a sister who, like the too vehemently maligned Eliza, fixed herself on a younger sister and her husband, and would not allow them to throw her off. Claire and Mary (as Mr. Kegan Paul shows by the evidences which he contradicts in his text) were girls of about the same age, though Claire was probably some months older. Shelley never came to dislike Claire. There were moments when he admired her, delighted in her, loved her; but never an hour in which he regarded her with aversion, though the vivacious girl was given to rally, flout, mock, cross him till he fairly lost his temper. In the last month of his life (18th June, 1822), Shelley (videForman’s edition ofShelley’s Prose Works) wrote from Lerici of this wayward, piquant, charming creature, ‘She is vivacious and talkative; and though she teases me sometimes, I like her.’ How greatly he cared for her is shown by the munificence with which he provided for her and her child by his will.

Going with them to Italy as their sister, Claire (one or two flying trips excepted) was incessantly with Shelley and her sister for the first twenty months of their life in Italy. During the last two years and a half of the term,—when she had takento giving music and language lessons in Florence, and was in that capital the animating spirit of the little circle of admirers whom she drew about her by her riant beauty and brilliant style, her wit and accomplishments, her gaiety and irresistible sprightliness,—she looked to ‘the Shelleys’ (whether they were living in a villa or on a flat) as her home. No doubt she received great kindness from the Shelleys; but no less certain is it that she repaid them in kind. If she was unhappy, raging against Byron, dismally wretched (as the too vehemently happy often are in the intervals between periods of elation), she made a rush for ‘home,’ On the other hand, when the Shelleys were languishing and in trouble, their first thought was to signal for Claire, to fly over to them and brighten them. When Mary was sickening for the illness, that resulted, at the Casa Magni, in her miscarriage shortly before the fatal boat accident, Claire was by her side. It was ill for Mary Godwin’s fame, when Mr. Froude the other day published a few scraps of ineffectual writing, in evidence that she cordially disliked the sister, with whom she was merely having a tiff. Far worse will it be for Mary Shelley’s reputation for sincerity and feminine loyalty, should it ever appear from scraps of her writing that, whilst living with every show of affection for her sister, she was thinking unamiably of her, and putting notes to her discredit in a secret record.

Of course, on leaving England for the last time, Mrs. Shelley had no wish to have Claire perpetually with her, nor any expectation that she and her husband would have Allegra’s mother on their hands, in a certain sense, for more than four years. On the failure of the negotiations with Byron, it was, of course, Mrs. Shelley’s hope that her lovely sister, after reconciling herself to Byron’s aversion of her, would win the love of some more stedfast admirer, and pass from girlish lightness to matronly honour. In case Claire should not marry, it was doubtless hoped alike by Shelley and his wife that, after seeing the world for awhile under their protection, and completing her education, she would strike out a career for herself. That the two young (quiteyoung) women had their disagreements of opinion and conflicts of temper in Italy, even as they had bickered and clashed (whilst loving one another abundantly) in former time, was a matter of course with two girls, so self-dependent and fervid, so sensitive and quick-tempered. Butone needs only to look at published letters for a superabundance of evidence that Claire’s intercourse with the Shelleys from the spring of 1818 to the Midsummer of 1822, though ruffled now and again by gusts of impetuosity and passages of superficial discord, was the intercourse of near relations, held together by the usual forces of mutual liking and genuine attachment.

Writing from Bagni di Lucca on 17th August, 1818, to Mrs. Gisborne, immediately after Shelley and Claire had started for Venice to see Byron, Mrs. Shelley (videShelley Memorials) says, ‘Shelley and C[laire] are gone; they went to-day to Venice on important business’ (how cautiously the writer refers to the business!); ‘and I am left to take care of the house. Now, if all of you, or any of you, would come and cheer my solitude, it would be exceedingly kind.’ At the Bagni di Lucca, Shelley and his wife had taken horse-exercise almost every evening, having Claire for their companion in their rides, till she hurt her knee in falling from her horse:—an accident that for a time incapacitated her for exercise in the saddle.

Mrs. Shelley and Claire went together to theconversazione, where they were so vastly amused by the whimsical braggart,—an Englishman who, speaking Italian fluently with his national accent and intonation, told the sisters how at Lisbon he, fighting on foot with the brace of pistols, that never missed fire or aim, put to flight thirty well-armed and well-mounted robbers. Whilst Mrs. Shelley was listening with outward civility and secret amusement to this man of valour and brave speech, Claire’s dark eyes overflowed with fun and piquant gaiety, as she whispered a saucy speech in her sister’s ear.

In November and December, 1819, Shelley and the sisters were staying at Florence in thepension, whence Mrs. Shelley wrote one of her most amusing letters to Mrs. Gisborne.

In the letter she wrote for Mrs. Hoppner’s eyes (the letter, some of whose passages were copied and dressed not long since by Mr. Froude for the readers of theNineteenth Century) for the exculpation of Shelley and Claire, from the revolting charge that came to his ears at Ravenna in the August of 1821, Mrs. Shelley blazed into sisterly wrath at the suggestion that Claire was capable of the wickedness with which she was charged:—

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