The Widow in Italy—Her Return to England—Sojourn in the Strand—Life at Kentish Town—Residence at Harrow—She is forbidden to write her Husband’s ‘Life’—‘Moonshine’ and ‘Celestial Mate’—Her closing Years—Claire in her later Time—Trelawny’s inaccurate Talk about Shelley’s Will—Claire’s double Legacy—She becomes a Catholic—Dies in the Catholic Faith.
The Widow in Italy—Her Return to England—Sojourn in the Strand—Life at Kentish Town—Residence at Harrow—She is forbidden to write her Husband’s ‘Life’—‘Moonshine’ and ‘Celestial Mate’—Her closing Years—Claire in her later Time—Trelawny’s inaccurate Talk about Shelley’s Will—Claire’s double Legacy—She becomes a Catholic—Dies in the Catholic Faith.
At the close of this attempt to exhibit the Real Shelley, so unlike the Shelley of biographical romance, a few more words should be said of William Godwin’s daughter and of Claire.
On her husband’s death, Mrs. Shelley was in a pitiable condition. In Italy she had no friends, able and at the same time willing to render her effectual help. The Gisbornes were poor; the Hunts, in losing Shelley, had lost their surest means of subsistence in the foreign land; for several years Claire would have enough to do, to shift for herself; Mrs. Williams was not provided for bountifully; and, apart from them, the poet’s widow knew in Italy scarcely any one whom she could regard as aught more than a mere acquaintance. Trelawny, who (without liking her) befriended her nobly in the crisis of her troubles, she had known for little more than half-a-year. For months her husband’s and her own relations with Byron had been strained almost to rupture. Though he recognized her cleverness, and was not insensible to her beauty, Byron had never delighted in her greatly; and now that Shelley was gone, he had lost his strongest reason for trying to regard her cordially. Fretted by the Hunts, he was on uneasy terms with the woman, who was too closely associated with them, for him not to think of her position as part of the embarrassment arising out of theLiberal. Knowing they had her affection, he was, of course, aware that she gave them her sympathy, and thought he treated them badly. Still he rendered her the civilities to which she was entitled at his hands; and whilst consulting him on her affairs, she confided to him the delicate and difficult task of addressing Sir Timothy Shelley in her behalf.
Whilst the widow’s position in Italy was depressing, her prospect in England was cheerless. Eight years older and poorer than he was on the July morning that saw her flit from his roof, her father could only give her sympathy, invite her to a smaller home, and assure her that, should she be placed in sudden and urgent need of money, he would do his best to send her a small sum. At Field Place she was known only by name, and by circumstances that were necessarily regarded there as circumstances to her discredit. To use Lady Shelley’s expression, the young widow (still only four-and-twenty years of age) was ‘coldly regarded by her husband’s family.’ It would have been strange had the family regarded her affectionately. The persons of all the world, with the exception of her own kindred, who had suffered most from her career, are scarcely to be censured for thinking of her with disapproval. What title had she to the affection of her husband’s father, mother, sisters? She had no doubt a son, who was Sir Timothy Shelley’s grandson? But in 1822 this little boy was not heir-apparent to the Castle Goring baronetcy, Shelley’s son (Charles Bysshe) being the heir-apparent; and it was not till Charles’s death, in 1826, that William Godwin’s daughter could say, ‘If my boy survives his grandfather, he will be Sir Percy Florence Shelley.’ It is not surprising that, whilst recognizing Percy’s claim to his grand-paternal consideration, Sir Timothy could not see what title the little fellow’s mother had to his paternal care. In reply to Byron’s letter, it seemed enough to Sir Timothy Shelley, that he should offer to take charge of Mary’s boy, should she consent to surrender the little fellow unreservedly to his custody and government—a proposal which, stirring William Godwin to indignation, was, of course, declined with disdainful firmness by his daughter.
Returning with her child to England in the autumn of 1823, Mrs. Shelley lived under her father’s roof in the Strand, till she moved into the small house in Kentish Town, from whose window she and Mrs. Williams saw Byron’s hearse pass slowly on its way from London to Nottinghamshire. Some ten years later (1833) she moved to Harrow, where she remained during the period of her boy’s education at the famous school. For some time after her return to England, she and her child lived on the earnings of her pen; but at a later time she received from her father-in-law the allowance, which, towards the endof 1838, he threatened to stop, if she ventured to write and publish her husband’s life. By her friends Sir Timothy Shelley was declared guilty of revolting inhumanity in denying her the solace she would have derived from producing a worthy record of her husband’s virtues. But in forbidding her to write a book, that could scarcely have failed to pain him acutely and torture even more sharply the feelings of his children, Sir Timothy cannot be fairly charged with exceeding the powers pertaining to him as the chief of his family. There are also reasons why every judicious admirer of Shelley’s genius, and all sober worshipers of his memory, should be thankful for the menace that determined Mrs. Shelley to relinquish the work which she began in the vein of fantastic egotism, that caused her to proclaim herself ‘the chosen mate of a celestial spirit’ whom she hoped ‘to join in his native sky,’ and to speak of herself as ‘moonshine’ destined to ‘be united to her planet and wander no more, a sad reflection of all she loved on earth.’
The marvellous piece of egotism on the highest of romantic stilts, from which these scraps are taken, appears at large in the preface to Hogg’sLife, where it is followed by the letter (dated 41 Park Street, Dec. 11, 1838, from Moonshine to her Celestial Spirit’s future biographer) containing these words: ‘Sir Timothy forbids Biography, under a threat of stopping the supplies.’ Certainly the present generation has no reason to regret Sir Timothy’s menace and its consequence. A biography, written in a vein of such affectation, could not have redounded to the poet’s honour. Nor would it have been in any way creditable to Moonshine, who, without ever fulfilling the promise of her first work of fiction, was in her sober and unaffected moods an equally industrious and capable woman of letters. The examples given in previous pages of her ways of dealing with matters of her own, her father’s, and her husband’s history, warrant a confident opinion, that, had she been allowed to go her own way by the stern Sir Timothy, Mrs. Shelley’s biography of the poet would not have been commendable for severe accuracy.
Of Mrs. Shelley’s way of living, from the date of her husband’s to the moment of her own death, no biographer will venture to speak disrespectfully, apart from such slight reprehension as may be fairly awarded to her exhibitions of animosity and vindictiveness against her stepmother and herstepmother’s daughter. Trelawny, who thought her a fretful, trying, jealous wife at Pisa, found fault with her in subsequent years for her nervous sensitiveness of social opinion, and excessive care for the conventional proprieties. Instead of blaming her for the pains she took in her later time to stand well with the world, most readers of this page will probably concur in thinking it to her credit, that she expressed in so natural and appropriate a manner her regret for the indiscretions of her girlhood. A good daughter to her old father in his declining years, an affectionate friend, and a faultless mother, Mary Wollstonecraft’s child had at least a fair share of the womanly virtues, though she was not the phenomenally noble creature people have been required to think her. Surviving her father by about fourteen years and ten months, she died in February, 1851, nearly seven years after her son’s succession to the Castle Goring baronetcy. For the one great error of her life, the error of her girlhood, she rendered ample atonement; and had it not been for the extravagances of her eulogists, her other failings would by this time have passed from human interest and recollection.
How about Mary’s sister-by-affinity? Reference has been made in a previous chapter to the liberality with which Shelley, by his will, provided for the charming and vivacious Claire, in whose brilliant endowments he delighted, whilst pitying her for her misfortunes. Trelawny seems to have been one of those who thought that Claire gained twice as much by the poet’s testament as he meant to bequeath her. ‘Trelawny,’ says Mr. Rossetti, in his equally valuable and entertainingTalks with Trelawny, contributed to theAthenæumin 1882, ‘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. Miss Clairmont, however, did not manage the money prudently—one unfortunate speculation being the purchase of a box or boxes in Lumley’s Italian Opera-house, now burned down. She is still in Florence, Via Valfonda. I asked Trelawny whether he thought I might call on her if I am at Florence this year; but he considers she would not be pleased at my doing so. He and I continued talking about Shelley’s will, which he says was regarded as a remarkable document in a legal sense.’ In a previous chapter it was remarked how little Trelawny knewabout the will, of which he spoke so freely and confidently to Mr. Rossetti:—a will drawn by a lawyer, to which no codicil is attached. Trelawny was, however, right in saying that Claire was neither prudent nor fortunate in her investments. Mrs. Shelley may well have disapproved of her husband’s great, and even excessive, testamentary munificence to her sister-by-affinity; though she was wrong in thinking that the entire bequest exceeded the testator’s purpose, at the date of the will. Of course Claire did not come into the legacy till the settlement of the poet’s affairs after his father’s death, which took place in 1844. Since 29th April, 1873, the date of Mr. Rossetti’s talk with Trelawny about the poet’s will, Claire passed from this world to the majority of the actors of the Byronic-Shelleyan drama. In the time when she used to flash about London after coming into her money, Claire was on friendly terms with more than one of the present writer’s acquaintance. Surviving most of those, who knew her in the days of her girlish waywardness and brightest womanly loveliness, she became a devout member of the Catholic Church (‘a somewhat bigotted Roman Catholic,’ in Trelawny’s opinion), and did not close her old age, without having suffered from straitened circumstances and much painful illness. Possibly affection for her lost child may have been an influence, disposing her to seek spiritual solace from the Church, in whose arms they both died. Anyhow it gives another pathetic touch to her story that Claire lived to embrace the faith, from which she did her utmost to preserve her little Allegra.
LAST WORDS.
A Schedule of significant Matters—Delusion and Semi-Delusion—Certain phenomenal Peculiarities of Shelley’s Mind—The Psychological Problem—The Story that would have opened Southey’s Eyes—How it would be Received by Critical Persons—Misconceptions of Field Place—Bootlessness of publishing the Story—Shelley and Socialistic Literature—Marian Evans’s Great Error—Her Marriage—Mischievous Effects of the Apologies for Shelleyan Socialism—The Homage to which Shelley is entitled—The Homage to which he has no Title.
A Schedule of significant Matters—Delusion and Semi-Delusion—Certain phenomenal Peculiarities of Shelley’s Mind—The Psychological Problem—The Story that would have opened Southey’s Eyes—How it would be Received by Critical Persons—Misconceptions of Field Place—Bootlessness of publishing the Story—Shelley and Socialistic Literature—Marian Evans’s Great Error—Her Marriage—Mischievous Effects of the Apologies for Shelleyan Socialism—The Homage to which Shelley is entitled—The Homage to which he has no Title.
In this concluding chapter of my exhibition of the evidences respecting Shelley’s character and career, it will be well for readers to review, judicially, some of his many statements that, whether they are referable to falsehood, delusion, or ‘semi-delusion,’ were one and all untrue statements, in that they were statements contrary to fact, together with a few other matters which should dispose readers to accept his representations with suspicion and extreme caution.
(1) In or about 1800, little Bysshe Shelley entertained his sisters with an imaginary account of the visit he represented himself as having paid to the ladies (with a delightful garden), whom he had not visited; an incident of the poet’s childhood which, showing he resembled many other children in a particular kind of imaginativeness, points to his constitutional propensity, from an early age, to mistake the impressions of fancy for veritable cognition.
(2) In or about 1804, the Shelley of Sion House, Brentford, gave in to Dr. Greenlaw the two lines from Ovid as verses of his own composition; an incident showing that, instead of being so remarkably truthful in his infancy, as eulogistic biographers have declared him, he was, in his childhood, capable of the petty falsehoods and acts of deceit, of which children are often guilty.
(3) In or about the same year (1804), whilst a pupil at Sion House, Shelley volunteered to do his schoolmate’s (Gellibrand’s) Latin exercise for him; and, instead of keeping his word and doing it in a way to satisfy their master, deliberately did it ina way that could not fail to bring his friend Gellibrand to punishment; an incident showing that, instead of being the generous and loyal child his idolaters delight in imagining him, he was, in his childhood, capable of the little acts of treachery of which children are sometimes guilty. Whilst smiling at the incident and its consequences, the reader must admit that in this matter the child-Shelley broke his word of honour to his comrade.
(4) At Eton, whilst living under the influence of the virtuous Dr. Lind, Shelley became an habitual fabricator of mendacious letters, each of the epistles being made up of false statements, for which the power and activity of his imagination can in no degree be held accountable. The suggestion is not to be entertained that, when luring an ignorant correspondent into displaying his ignorance for the sake of the pleasure of laughing at him, Shelley sincerely imagined himself a genuine searcher after truth; seeking an enlargement of his knowledge from the person he addressed. When he signed himself ‘John Jones,’ Shelley cannot have imagined it was his real name. When he gave a false address for the purpose of concealment, Shelley cannot have imagined it was a real address.
(5) Whilst he was an Etonian, Shelley had, at Field Place, the illness attended with delirium, in which he appears to have been first visited with the monstrous and revolting notion that his father designed to lock him up in a madhouse. Long after this illness, he either suffered from this hallucination, or, with deliberate untruthfulness, slandered his father in declaring him to have entertained so monstrous a purpose. He told this story to his father’s infamy to Hogg at Oxford, to Peacock in later time, and various other persons. He used this story to compass his own selfish ends. It comes to us from Mary Godwin’s pen, that he used this story to stir her compassion for him when he was endeavouring to lure her to live in Free Contract with him, and that he used it to good purpose. Peacock, who knew him well, maintains that Shelley was haunted throughout life by this notion of his father’s enormous wickedness and revolting design to lock him up in a madhouse. Yet the evidence is certain that the kindly Squire of Field Place never entertained any such design against the boy, whose consent would be needful on his coming of age to the resettlement of the family estatesA and B. It is certain that in this matter Shelley slandered his own father throughout successive years, and to various persons, his various utterances and re-utterances of the monstrous slander being one and all referable to deliberate falsehood, delusion, or what Peacock styles semi-delusion.
(6) In the year 1810, Shelley induced a London publisher to publish a collection of verses on the assurance that they were original poetry, and to offer the verses under a title proclaiming their originality, though he cannot have been unaware they were deficient in the alleged originality. Writing from memory, more than sixteen years after the event, the rascally and mendacious Stockdale declared that, on the discovery of the plagiarism, Shelley laid the blame of the fraud on his coadjutor. As Shelley’s coadjutor was his own sister, to believe Stockdale’s unsupported assertion is to take an even more unfavourable view of Shelley’s part in the affair.
(7) In the Christmas holidays of 1810-11, Shelley wrote from Field Place to Hogg at Oxford, that he meant to have recourse to deception to members of his own domestic circle, and having declared this intention, he told untruths to the persons he meant to deceive. For these untruths the power and liveliness of his imagination can be held in no degree accountable.
(8) In 1810, in order to become a member of the University of Oxford, after ceasing to be a Christian, he subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and solemnly declared himself a believer in Christianity.
(9) In 1810 and 1811, during his residence at Oxford, Shelley was a wholesale fabricator of mendacious letters; the letters being written under false pretences of motive and mental temper to the persons whom he lured, or tried to lure, into religious controversy, some of the epistles being signed with a false name, and dated from a false address, and one of them at least representing the writer of it to be a young woman troubled with religious doubts. For the countless falsehoods of these letters, written thus deceptively for purposes of concealment and security, the force and liveliness of the writer’s imagination cannot be held accountable. It is not to be supposed that whilst writing to the Bishop of the Church of England in a feminine style and under a feminine signature, Shelley imagined he was a woman.
(10) In 1811, whilst still at Oxford, Shelley producedThe Necessity of Atheism, with a preface made up of untruths, for which the force of his imagination cannot be held in any degree accountable.
(11) In 1811, after leaving Oxford, Shelley, from complaisance or in mere levity, took the sacrament with Miss Westbrook when he deemed Christianity a delusion, regarded the sacred rite as a piece of mummery, and was (according to his statement to Southey at Keswick) busying himself in making proselytes to Atheism in the Clapham boarding-school, where Harriett Westbrook was a pupil. Participation in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper being an act of solemn declaration that the participator is a believer in Christianity and in communion with the Church, I think few readers will question that in thus taking the sacrament Shelley was guilty of an act of untruth.
(12) In October, 1811, he wrote words for the purpose of inducing people to imagine that, instead of having left Harriett with Hogg at York, he had taken her with him to London and Sussex.
(13) In a letter dated to Mr. Medwin, the Elder, on 26th November, 1811, there is evidence, under Shelley’s own hand, that shortly before that date, he wrote to his mother and sisters respecting some ‘affair’ which, on coming to the ears of some of his old neighbours at Horsham, was regarded by them as no true affair, but a thing of his invention.
(14) During his stay at Keswick (1811-12), Shelley (speaking, as I conceive, under delusion) told Southey that Hogg had attempted to seduce Harriett during the journey back from Scotland to York. That, in thus speaking of his familiar friend to a slight acquaintance, he spoke under misconception, we have Shelley’s assurance in eloquent words and still more impressive acts. Should additional evidence ever show that Hogg really made the attempt, and that Shelley had good grounds for what he said and wrote on that matter to his friend’s infamy, he must be adjudged to have written and acted deceitfully or under egregious misconception, in respect to what he did and wrote in later times for Hogg’s exculpation.
(15) In 1812 Shelley wrote William Godwin a series of letters teeming with inaccuracies, some of which were slanderous statements respecting his father.
(16) In the same year, towards the close of his stay atGreta Bank, Shelley imagined himself to have been assaulted by a robber under the very eaves of Mr. Calvert’s house; an hallucination productive of statements contrary to fact.
(17) In the same year (1812), whilst at Tanyrallt, Shelley undertook to write a long and ‘wheedling letter’ to the Duke of Norfolk in order to induce His Grace to take measures for his pecuniary advantage. Neither laudanum nor imaginativeness can be held accountable for this declaration of a resolve to write a deceptive letter.
(18) The year 1813 was the year of the Tanyrallt Mystery; an affair fruitful of inaccuracies of statement, some of which must be ascribed to untruthfulness on Shelley’s part, though some of them may have been altogether due to delusion.
(19) In the same year (1813), he producedQueen Mabwith a false imprint.
(20) In the same year (1813), he for several weeks laboured under the notion that he was suffering from leprosy; a delusion conclusively evidential of transient mental derangement.
(21) In 1814 he produced a further demonstration ofThe Necessity of Atheism, under the deceptive title ofA Refutation of Deism, and with a Preface made up of untruths. It has been questioned whether this work was ever published in the commercial sense of the term. It is, however, certain that the work was written for circulation, and that it was legally published.
(22) In the same year (1814) he wooed and won Mary Godwin under cover of deceitful practices, on one occasion allaying William Godwin’s suspicions and apprehensions with an explanation, which, as it appeared a sufficient explanation to the anxious father, must have been disingenuous and deceitful. Moreover, we have Mary Godwin Shelley’s evidence that in wooing her he told her the wild fiction about his father’s purpose to shut him up in a lunatic asylum, and of his preservation from such imprisonment through Dr. Lind’s timely intervention.
(23) In or about 1815 Shelley told Peacock that his sentence of expulsion from Oxford had been preceded by his formal arraignment before a numerous assembly on a charge of producing an atheistical work, and that he had defended himself with a formal oration delivered to this numerous assembly. At the same time he showed Peacock a report of this oration in what had the appearance of being a newspaper.
(24) In or about the same year (1815) Shelley, inconversation with Peacock, gave the inaccurate account of the offence that resulted in his dismissal from Eton, saying that he was sent from the school for pinning a boy’s hand to a table with a penknife.
(25) In the year (1816), shortly before he started from England for Switzerland, with Claire and Mary Godwin, he poured upon Peacock a stream of misstatements (referable either to falsehood, delusion, or both) respecting Mr. (Tremadoc) Williams’s alleged visit to Bishopgate and sojourn in London, and the purpose of his father and uncle to lock him up in a lunatic asylum, alleging that his object in going abroad was to get beyond the reach of his father and uncle, who were set on depriving him of his liberty.
(26) In 1817 Shelley instructed the Olliers to tell the complicated untruth under cover of which they could withdraw from the position of principal publishers ofLaon and Cythna, and put Messrs. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones in their place.
(27) In 1818, on coming to Venice, Shelley, for a sufficient object, told Byron that Mrs. Shelley was staying at Padua, though he was at the time well aware she was at Bagni di Lucca with her children.
(28) In the winter of 1818-19 (if reliance may be placed on his statements made to Byron and Medwin at Pisa in 1821-2) he imagined himself the recipient of singular attentions from a married lady of beauty, wealth, and noble connections, who, after proffering him her heart in 1816, and following him in that year from England to Switzerland, followed him, in 1818, from England to Naples, at which place, according to his story, she expired in the winter of 1818-19, under his sympathetic observation.
(29) In 1820, Shelley told Medwin that, in the summer of the same year, he had been felled to the ground in the Post Office of Pisa by a man who preluded the ruffianly blow by exclaiming, ‘What, are you that d——d atheist, Shelley?’ that, on recovering from the stunning effect of the blow, he hastened to tell Mr. Tighe of the assault; and that, after tracking the ruffian to the Tre Donzelle at Pisa, he and Mr. Tighe went to Genoa in futile pursuit of the assailant. Whether, in the summer of 1820, Shelley really imagined himself a sufferer from this imaginary assault, whether he went to Genoa inpursuit of the imaginary assailant, whether he ever spoke to Mr. Tighe about the assault, are matters respecting which there is no sufficient testimony; but the evidence is sufficient that he told Medwin about this assault that was never made upon him. Shelley’s statement about this affair must be referred to falsehood, delusion, or semi-delusion.
(30) In 1821-2 Shelley spoke to Byron and Medwin of the enamoured gentlewoman who, according to his account, followed him, in 1816, from England to Geneva, and, in 1818, from England to Naples; the whole of his narrative of the lady, who worshipt him and died of love for him, being a fiction, referable to falsehood, delusion, or semi-delusion.
(31) In the same year (1821) Shelley wrote from Ravenna to his wife the letter, crammed and crowded with misrepresentations of what had passed in conversation between him and Byron, respecting the scandalous account of his (Shelley’s) intercourse with Claire.
To the careful reader of these volumes it is, of course, apparent that this schedule of significant matters might be greatly extended and expanded. But the list is sufficiently comprehensive to justify the verdict that, from his boyhood to his death, Shelley was apt to utter for truth things contrary to fact; that he sometimes did things which no precisely honest man could do; that his word was not a word to be relied on. To account for his frequent departures from truth, friendly historians of his career have declared him, in respect to his misstatements, not so much an untruthful man as a deluded man. Following in the track of these historians, every reader of this book is left to decide for himself, in respect to each of the poet’s numerous misstatements, whether its inaccuracy should be referred to purely deceptive purpose, sheer misconception, or semi-delusion. In reviewing the many deviations from truth, it is, however, well for readers to bear in mind that delusion is one of three distinctive forms of insanity. To be insane is to suffer from a state of mental disease, attended with incoherence, fatuity, or delusion. The mind that suffers from any one of these kinds of disorder is a deranged and insane mind. However eccentric, or feeble, or otherwise unhealthy, it may be, the mind which displays no one of these three symptoms of derangement is a sane mind. Hallucination differs in magnitude, intensity, and persistence. If Shelley was wholly underhallucination in respect to his father’s purpose of confining him in a madhouse, and if he was (as Peacock says) haunted by this notion throughout life, he was the victim of an extremely revolting and very persistent delusion. There is a certain amount of truth in another poet’s dictum, that great wits to madness sure are near allied. But if Shelley’s alert and subtle mind was so steadily, and for so long a period, held by the notion that his father wished to put him in a madhouse, he was mad in a degree, that to many readers may well appear incompatible with the vigour and grandeur of his faculties. In the estimate of his mental and moral peculiarities to minimize the degree in which he suffered from hallucination, is to maximize the degree in which he was untruthful. In proportion as the final verdict shall acquit him of untruthfulness it must declare him to have suffered from insanity. If he was not contemptibly untruthful, he was (for all his mental force and poetic sensibility) pitiably insane,—far more insane than I can think it possible for a man of his mental power to be. In reviewing his long series of misstatements, careful psychologists must come to the conclusion that when uttering them he was either wilfully untruthful, suffering from delusion, or suffering from what Peacock termed ‘semi-delusion’—the state of mind in which untruthfulness and morbid imaginativeness joined hands.
But whether they proceeded from hallucination or deceptive purpose, or from the co-operation of falsehood with ungovernable fancy, the misstatements had the effect of wilful untruths; and the utterer was a speaker of words not to be relied on. To be kept steadily in mind by the students of Shelley’s story, this fact is to be held especially in view at moments, when the student is considering the evidential value of statements uttered by the poet to the discredit of individuals.
Apart from grounds of which I refrain from speaking fully, there are grounds for believing that Shelley accounted for his rupture with Harriett Westbrook by representations which, had he been constituted like ordinary English gentlemen, would at least beprimâ facieevidence that he had other and stronger reasons for withdrawing from her than any reasons he gave to Peacock. It is not probable that he would have succeeded in withdrawing Mary Godwin from her father’s care, had he not made her believe he had graver causes for dissatisfaction with the ‘noble animal,’ than her inability to feel poetry andunderstand philosophy. Reared as she had been within the lines of religious orthodoxy, and trained to reverence marriage, it is scarcely conceivable that Mary Godwin fled with her lover to the Continent, without having been made to believe that her friend, Harriett Shelley, had by flagrant misconduct forfeited her title to her husband’s consideration. Though Field Place has not shown much discretion in its treatment of Shelleyan questions, it would scarcely have smiled at Peacock for not being in Shelley’s confidence on the subject, had it not been really possessed by the notion, that it knew more than the rest of the world about the poet’s real cause of displeasure with Harriett. Without having a strange story in reserve for the fulfilment of the promise, Field Place would scarcely have promised to produce in due season a statement, certain to change greatly the world’s misguided view of the poet’s treatment of his first wife. I have small doubt that Southey quite misconstrued the words to which he referred, when in his scathing August-1820 letter to Shelley, he wrote:—
‘You might have regulated your domestic arrangements, as you say, quite as conveniently to yourself, if you had descended to the base thoughts of the vulgar. I suppose this means that you might have annulled your marriage as having been contracted during your minority.’—(Southey’s Correspondence with Caroline Bowles, 1881.)
‘You might have regulated your domestic arrangements, as you say, quite as conveniently to yourself, if you had descended to the base thoughts of the vulgar. I suppose this means that you might have annulled your marriage as having been contracted during your minority.’—(Southey’s Correspondence with Caroline Bowles, 1881.)
Southey’s conjecture was wide of the mark. Shelley knew too much of the Scotch marriage law to imagine he could have set aside his marriage on that ground. What he meant to imply must have been, that if he could have descended to the base practice of vulgar folk, wishing for divorce, and rich enough to pay for it in the usual way, he could have obtained a legal separation from his wife, on account of her misconduct. And that he ventured to hint so much to his disdainful correspondent is a sufficiently clear sign that he felt he really had a story (true or fanciful) which, had he condescended to divulge it, would have made Southey open his eyes with astonishment at the sufficiency of the grounds on which the author ofQueen Mabretired from John Westbrook’s daughter. It may therefore be assumed, or at least imagined, that sooner or later the world will be told in a new way,whyShelley left the girl who had tried his temper not a little for some months. Possibly the story will be that the author of the anti-matrimonial note toQueen Mabcaught poor Harriett in the act of lavishing onsome man of mean condition attentions she should have rendered to no one but her husband.
At this date, when poor Harriett’s friends have passed from the scene, it may appear to Shelley’s idolaters alike easy to get credit for such a tale, and difficult to discredit it. But critical persons will be less readily satisfied of the truth of any such story than the Shelleyan enthusiasts imagine. To offer such a tale to critical persons on Shelley’s bare and unsupported assertion will be bootless. They will be sure to say, ‘What more natural than for the man, who (under delusion) slandered his father and Hogg, to put (under delusion) monstrous things on record against his wife, after quarrelling with her?’ At the moment of breaking with his wife, Shelley was very anxious for Peacock’s approval of his action;—so anxious for it as to call him up to London from the country for a conference on the business. Moreover (though Mr. Froude, out of his great knowledge of Shelleyan questions, says the reverse), Shelley all through life was quick to defend himself at the expense of other people. The critical people will say: ‘Why, if this story is true, and not a Shelleyan invention, did not Shelley confide it to Peacock? One can see why the poet (capable of giving two different accounts of the same affair to the well-informed Duke of Norfolk and the uninformed William Godwin) would withhold an untrue story from the well-informed Peacock. But why, if the story were true, did he keep it from Peacock? It can scarcely be suggested that he shrunk from lowering Harriett in Peacock’s esteem.’
At the time of the Chancery Suit, Shelley did his utmost to regain the custody of his children. He knew that, if the decree should be given against him, the decision would be grounded on considerations of his conduct to his first wife. Harriett was no longer in the world to suffer from any evidence to her discredit. The other Westbrooks were so hateful to him, he would gladly have caused them pain by evidence to her discredit. To prove he had left Harriett for a good and sufficient cause, would have been to strengthen his case greatly. Yet he did not venture to embody the facts in an affidavit for the Chancellor’s consideration. Moreover, Field Place bears witness that he never confided the real cause of his withdrawal from Harriett to any of the few men, who were his familiar friends in 1814. Surely the critical people will ask, ‘Why didhe not confide this story to his familiar male friends in 1814? Why did he not venture to produce this story in the Court of Chancery, and swear to its truth in 1817?’ Surely, also, the critical people will answer both these questions in ways, adverse to the credibility of the story. Should it appear that he told the story to Mary shortly before she yielded to his suit, the critical people will say with a significant smile: ‘No doubt; and also to move her to regard him compassionately, he at the same time told her how his cruel father would have locked him up in a madhouse, had it not been for the virtuous Dr. Lind’s intervention,’ It will be asked by critical readers why the statement, which if true should have been given to the world long since, has been withheld so long? Why it was not put forth during the life of Thomas Love Peacock (Harriett’s vindicator, Shelley’s close friend and executor), who, knowing both Shelley and his first wife intimately, maintained stoutly to the last that she was a virtuous and loyal wife? These questions will also be answered in ways unfavourable to the statement.
Given to the world on Shelley’s bare assertion, any such statement will have little effect on critical readers. Nor will it be more effectual on judicial minds for being supported by statements by Mrs. Shelley and other persons, deriving their information from Shelley. Fifty such statements will be nothing more than Shelley’s own statement, uttered by his lips through fifty tubes. A statement, having no evidential value on its first utterance, does not acquire evidential value from mere reiteration. Nor will it be of any avail for any biographer, drawing his information from Field Place, to produce the mere substance of any such remarkable statement, and require critical readers to accept the facts on the bare authority of Shelley’s representatives. Field Place has been too often misled by its authentic evidences to wildly erroneous conclusions respecting Shelley, for critical readers to be in a humour to accept any more of its quite sincere statements of fact without distrust.
Field Place has been induced by its evidences to think the poet a man of aristocratic descent, though his lineal ancestors, from Elizabethan to Georgian time, were at best small landowners, entitled to bear arms.
Field Place has been induced by Clint’s composition to think of the poet’s face as symmetrically beautiful, and havinga straight and delicately-modelled nose; though he really had unsymmetrical features, and a little turn-up nose.
Field Place has been led by its authentic evidences to ascribe the poet’s estrangement from his family wholly to the religious and political differences that at most only embittered the quarrel, which is shown by Sir Bysshe Shelley’s will and codicil, and the certain facts of the poet’s story, to have resulted from causes, having no connexion with questions of religion and politics.
Field Place is under the impression that Mary and Claire were not related in any way whatever to one another.
Though Mary Godwin was not educated, any more than Amelia Opie or Jane Austen, to be a Free Lover, Field Place is under the impression that she was educated to think lightly of the matrimonial rite.
Though Mary Godwin did not give herself to Shelley without enduring a strong conflict of passion and duty, Field Place is under the impression that she suffered from no such conflict.
Though the Lord Chancellor’s decree was given in steady consideration of Shelley’s conduct to his first wife, Field Place is under the impression that in delivering the decree, which denied to Shelley the custody of his children by Harriett Westbrook, the Lord Chancellor had no regard to the poet’s conduct to his first wife.
Holding in its hands the conclusive evidence of Shelley’s great affection for Claire in 1816 and 1817, Field Place is under the impression that Shelley regarded her with disapproval and aversion in those years.
Surely, critical students of Shelley’s story have in these facts sufficient grounds for declining to put implicit confidence in the biographical discretion and exactitude of Field Place:—sufficient reasons for saying ‘as Field Place is under so many erroneous impressions respecting the story of its poet, is it not more than probable that Field Place is under an erroneous impression respecting his reasons for leaving his first wife?’
I do not doubt that Field Place could give us some painful and hitherto undivulged particulars about the poor girl, whom Shelley certainly illuminated out of Christianity when she was still a child, and who, according to Shelley’s words (spoken soon after their marriage, to Southey, at Keswick), was expelled from her Clapham boarding-school for embracing the opinions, whichhe offered to her and her schoolfellows. But what good would come to Shelley’s reputation by the display of any more details of his victim’s eventual debasement? Southey’s words were no less true and just, than scorching, when he wrote (seeRobert Southey’s Correspondence with Caroline Bowles, 1881) in his August-1820 letter to Shelley at Pisa: ‘Be this as it may, ask your own heart, whether you have not been the whole, sole, and direct cause of her destruction. You corrupted her opinions; you robbed her of her moral and religious principles; you debauched her mind. But for you and your lessons, she might have gone through the world innocently and happily.’ As he read these scathing words, Shelley may well have dismissed all hope of good to come to his posthumous fame from the vindicatory story, which, even yet, may be published to his injury. Shelleywasaccountable for Harriett Westbrook’s depravation. To exhibit for the first time any peculiarly revolting feature of that depravation might cause men of honour and sensibility to realize more vividly than before the consequences of Shelley’s action towards the unhappy girl; but to do so could not take a feather’s weight from the heavy burden of his accountability for the ruin to which he brought her. To point to any incident of that depravation as something to justify Shelley in ‘leaving her to slide’ into deeper guilt, would be an extravagance of injustice to the poor girl.
Powerless to palliate at any point his misdeeds to Harriett, the story, which might, perhaps, account more precisely for his withdrawal from her, could neither justify, nor tend by a single hair’s-breadth to justify, Shelley’s action towards Mary Godwin and her father. No injury, done to a man by A, can justify him in doing B a grievous injury. Yet, to hear some of the Shelleyan apologists talk, one would imagine that, to show Harriett did her husband a greater wrong than any she has hitherto been proved to have done him, would be to clear him of all blameworthiness for dealing his familiar friend the most cruel blow, that can be given to a loving father. As no demonstration of her badness would lessen his responsibility for her depravation, or in any degree justify his way of dealing with his intimate friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, it is to be hoped that the world will not be invited by any biographer to consider the story by which Shelley thought he could open Southey’s eyes.
The efforts that have been made during the last twenty-five years to prove Shelley an almost sacred social regenerator, should be considered in connexion with the literature that has created sympathy and admiration for the few noteworthy Englishwomen who have, in recent generations, lived connubially with men to whom they were not married:—the literature (of countless essays and articles) that has celebrated the virtues of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Godwin, and, not content with rating Marian Evans at her high proper worth, as the literary equal of Dickens, Thackeray, and the late Lord Lytton, has dealt with her admirable novels, as though they were a kind of new sacred scripture.
Of those novels I think far too highly to write aught in their disparagement. On other than purely literary grounds, I also think too worshipfully of Marian Evans (let hernom de plumebe dropt as a thing that has served its turn) to wish to take aught from the homage that is her due. It is proverbially difficult to foretell the degree of esteem in which a greatly powerful and popular writer will be held by future generations. But in Marian Evans’s case there is neither difficulty nor fear in predicting her place throughout all time in the history of English literature. She may be surpassed by women of future time. But, come what may, she never can be anything less than by far the first and greatest of the Victorian Englishwomen of Letters. It was my hope that the splendour of her literary fame would be spared the honours of biographical celebration; that the interest of her unique literary personality should pass down to posterity under her universally familiarnom de plume; and that her strictly personal and private story might be lost sight of as far as possible.
Two of my reasons for this hope outweighed all the others. So long as her association with George Henry Lewes should not be brought before the world in clear and permanent record, it would remain a thing of her privacy, a matter of which there would be no need for tongue or pen to say a word, an affair in respect to which good taste and good feeling would dispose every person to be reticent. But on being offered in clear type to the whole world’s consideration, on being laid on every library table and every drawing-room table of the country, for approval or disapproval, ceasing to be an affair on which one might be silent, it would become an affair on which everyeducated person of all the English-speaking peoples would be bound,i.e.constrained by domestic and other social duties, to form an opinion of approval or disapproval, and to declare it. To give publicity to the circumstances of that association, would be to raise for discussion in every family of the English-speaking peoples, the many perilous questions touching the origin, history, uses, and usefulness of lawful marriage;—to raise the whole group of dangerous domestic questions, which Shelley would fain have forced upon universal consideration by the anti-matrimonial doctrine ofQueen MabandLaon and Cythna. I was not thinking only of Marian Evans’s fame, and of the many hard things that would necessarily be said of her in controversies about these social questions, when I hoped that her domestic association with George Henry Lewes would be withheld as long as possible from general knowledge. The story has now been told, to the gratification of the enemies of marriage. I do not blame Mr. Cross for revealing what he may well have deemed himself powerless to keep from universal consideration for any long time. He had, I am sure, the best motives for doing what I hoped he would not do; and it cannot be questioned that, after deciding to give the world a complete biography of the famous woman, with whose story he is so honourably associated, he selected the least objectionable way of accomplishing his purpose.
It needs not many words to show how little the extreme Shelleyan Socialists are justified in pointing to that story, as evidence that Marian Evans concurred in their desire for the substitution of lawless for lawful wedlock. Still a struggling woman of letters, she was living in the circles of Free Thought, when she came to think of marriage in some such way as the pious Martin Bucer thought of it in the sixteenth century, as the devout Milton thought of it in the seventeenth century, as the honest and temperate William Godwin thought of it before his abandonment of Free Contract views. It was an error of judgment (arising partly from defective knowledge of the dangerous forces of human nature, and partly from the co-operation of the egotism and the modesty, which prevented her from seeing how greatly she differed in her mental and moral faculties from other people); but it was certainly in no degree due to any lack of delicacy or moral sensibility, that she conceived all spouses capable of living as virtuously and loyally inFree Contract as she knew herself to be. It was under these circumstances that, whilst regarding certain social questions in some such way as they are regarded by ‘the flower’ of the Free Contract party (men abundantly endowed with learning and mental acuteness, with benevolence and moral rectitude), it devolved upon her to decide, whether she could live righteously in the closest and tenderest intimacy with a man, who had won her heart, without being able to make her his wife.
It is not easy to recall how much she sacrificed of dignity and happiness by her decision, and at the same time to think patiently of the man, for whose sake she made such an enormous sacrifice. Had the lot that came to her in her autumnal age, only befallen her at the perfection of her powers, her life might have been no less fruitful of happiness to herself, than it was beneficent to her species. To think that such a lot might have befallen her, could have scarcely failed to befall her, had she answered the fatal question in another way, is to feel resentfully against the man who, at the instigation of mere masculine selfishness, attached himself to her, and in doing so bemuddled her existence, and shut her out from so many of life’s sweetest joys. Had he acted the part of a gentleman in the matter, she would, at the dawn of her celebrity, have married happily, for she was a woman to inspire love. It is more generally known that she wanted some of the elements of feminine beauty, than that she was in some respects personally charming. Together with the brow of mental power, she had eyes memorably eloquent of genius and sympathy, and a smile that, startling or rather gently surprising the beholder (seeing it for the first time), changed all the character of the countenance, which it brightened into momentary beauty. It is not for printed words to tell, how this ineffably charming smile changed and beautified the face, that, in its expressionless moments, was unattractive. Fortunate in the abundance of her fine rich tresses, she was also fortunate in her musical voice. It was the music of a gentle and lofty nature; for which alone many a man would have loved her.
Enough has been said to indicate how Marian Evans came to hold the views respecting marriage, which made it possible for the woman of lofty nature and fine moral sensibility to consent to Mr. Lewes’s suit. Compassion for him may be held largely accountable for her consent and self-sacrifice. Though he was the cause of his own domestic misfortunes, he was to becommiserated for them. And, in nine cases out of every ten, when a fine-natured woman does what she ought not to do, she takes the wrong step in obedience to a generous impulse. Hence she took the step which she lived to regret profoundly (no careful reader of her novels can questionthat), without, however, surviving her affection for him during his life. Possibly, when she was being drawn into his power, she did not trouble herself to think much of the possible effects of her example. If she thought seriously of that matter, she, thinking as she then did of marriage, may well have concluded that the effects of her example would not be pernicious, since the Free Contract in which she could live virtuously appeared to her an estate, in which the rest of her sex might also live righteously. But the reasons are obvious, why the still comparatively obscure woman of letters may have thought the social influence of her example—the act of a single and comparatively unknown person, hidden from general observation in vast London—was too light a matter for serious consideration. The case was far otherwise a few years later; when in the exercise of her art she had enlarged her knowledge of human nature, had pondered more thoughtfully the several social problems connected with marriage, had realized the evils certain to ensue from the substitution of the Free Contract for lawful wedlock, and had won for herself a place and eminence, necessarily attended, in the case of so conscientious a woman, with a lively and anxious desire to use her influence for good ends, and no other ends. When vast power comes to such a woman, it never fails to create in her a lively, a keen, even at times a torturing, sense of responsibility.
Is it strange that Marian Evans was often sad? that the knowledge of her power over men and women was more fruitful of sorrow than of delight to her? I may be wrong in thinking, but I like to think, that one of the motives, which determined her to accept the love of the man, to whom she gave her hand after Mr. Lewes’s death, was that she might, by the celebration of her marriage, do her best to preserve her name and fame and the story of her former life from being used to discredit an institution and a rite she venerated. Anyhow her marriage was an act, by which she publicly and impressively declared her disapproval of the great purpose of the enemies of marriage, and denied their right to speak of her as one of themselves. The act was thus interpreted by those innovators, who at thetime of the marriage spoke with no little warmth of her miserable abandonment of their cause and principles. And the deed was not misconstrued. She could not have proclaimed more effectually her deliberate opinion that the ordinances of marriage are salutary and sacred, and that it is the duty of women to comply with them. Instead of making for the end desired by the extreme Shelleyan Socialists, the story of the great novelist’s life sets forth nothing more clearly than that she regarded the main condition of her association with Mr. Lewes, regretfully.
Is there any reason to fear that the extreme Shelleyan Socialists will ever see the accomplishment of their desire? None. It is more probable for Shelley’s poetry to be forgotten, than for his social views to be acted upon. The churches of the land are strong enough to guard marriage against its enemies. If the churches were as powerless as fortunately they are powerful for its preservation, the domestic conservatism of the English people—a sentiment no less strong in the homes of English liberals than the homes of their political opponents—could by itself safeguard lawful wedlock from destruction. The women of England are not so unintelligent and powerless, that they are likely to be wheedled by specious phrases out of the dignity and privileges secured to them by matrimony.
There is small reason to fear that the Free Contract of the Shelleyan innovators will be established on the ruins of an institution, rooted in the affections of the people, and hallowed by the practice of centuries. The notion that an institution so venerable and salutary, and all but universally honoured, may perish, because three or four English women of letters in the course of a century have consented to live in Free Contract with lawless spouses, and because a handful of philosophers and half-a-hundred journalists think it would be well to endow every man with the power of changing his wife at pleasure, is a notion, too ridiculous for serious consideration.
But though they are foredoomed to failure, the Shelleyan Socialists have done and are doing no little harm to individuals. People, who delight in literature, without knowing how little its producers differ from the followers of other vocations, are apt to overrate egregiously the wisdom and virtue of the individuals, to whose writings they are most largely indebted for mental refreshment and edification. To a veteran, whose way oflife has afforded him good opportunities for observing the lives and studying the characters of the producers of the higher literature, it may well seem droll that the author of good books should be so generally and confidently assumed to live no less well than he writes. But the disposition of readers to think too highly of their favourite writers should not be overlooked by those who would take a perfect view of the various forces, that, resulting in social opinion, determine the conduct of individuals. Influential in all sorts and conditions of general readers, this disposition is especially influential amongst the sympathetic, the imaginative, and the inexperienced. By the many young men and women of our rural homes—indeed of all homes, lying well away from the literary coteries—who, drawing their liveliest contentment, take their clearest views of life, from currentbelles lettres, the works of supremely powerful poets and novelists are not more prized as sources of diversion, than as sources of intellectual enlightenment and moral guidance; and their delight in the literature they admire, is usually attended with a dangerous readiness to regard with approval whatever they may know of the personal conduct of its producers.
On a considerable proportion of these young readers, what must be the effect of the strenuous and fascinating literature which, now in separate books, now in the pages of popular magazines, and now in the columns of powerful journals, instructs them, that, whilst living in Free Contract, Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay were living innocently in the eyes of God and man; that Mary Godwin should be commended for her generous courage in flying from her father’s roof with another woman’s husband; that Marian Evans acted justifiably in associating herself conjugally with a man who could not marry her; that it is as honourable for a woman to mate in Free Contract as to become a wife; that reverence for lawful and holy matrimony should be rated as a mediæval superstition; that Shelley was only in the smallest degree to blame for carrying off his intimate friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter.
Can it be questioned that the literature which teaches all this must at least tend in many cases to weaken, and in some cases to overpower utterly, the principles and considerations, which in certain seasons of temptation, withhold young men and women from the shortest and quickest road to shame and depravation? Can it be doubted that this elegant and hurtfulliterature is at this moment causing many a young Englishwoman to be saying to herself, as she hesitates at the entrance to this common highway to ruin, ‘Why can it be wrong for me to do what Mary Wollstonecraft is defended for doing ninety years since; what Mary Godwin is commended for doing in an early time of the present century; what the wise and lofty-natured Marian Evans did only a generation since? If it was not wrong for Marian Evans, and Mary Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft to live connubially with men to whom they were not married, it surely cannot be wrong for me to do likewise?’
Can it be doubted that, through the influence of the same elegant and hurtful literature, many a young Englishman is now saying to himself, ‘As Shelley was guilty of nothing very heinous, nothing more reprehensible than “the sin of acting on emotional theories of liberty,” in carrying off his familiar friend’s daughter, when he had no prospect of ever being able to marry her; as he, notwithstanding this emotional indiscretion, is offered to our reverential admiration as a man who, might under auspicious circumstances “have been the Saviour of the World,” it cannot be very wrong for me to take to my arms in free promise a girl whom I have a fair prospect of being able to marry a few years hence, and whom I mean to marry as soon as it shall be convenient for me to do so?’
Had Field Place merely garnished the poet’s pedigree, and varnished his portraits, and dressed the main incidents of his career into a pretty memoir, I should have been silent about the genealogical record and personal narrative, and held my peace about the falsity of the pictures. But Field Place has exceeded its reasonable powers and privileges, in dealing with the story of a remarkable man, whose fame is less the property of his nearest kindred than of the nation, to whose literature his genius gave new lustre. Had the Shelleyan Enthusiasts confined their eulogies to the excellences of their favourite poet’s achievements in his proper art, I should have concurred cordially in their admiration of his poetical services, and been content to smile in my sleeve at their simplicity, in thinking he spoke like a peer, when he was only speaking like a peasant. But it is not enough for the Enthusiasts, that Shelley’s incomparably fine poetry should be valued at its full worth. To satisfy them, we must declare him no less virtuous as a man,than masterly as a songster. And whilst Field Place and the Enthusiasts have committed indiscretions, that provoke remonstrance and demand correction, the extreme Shelleyan Socialists have placed his strongest title to social homage, on his courageous avowal of sentiments, that are unutterably distasteful to the great majority of conscientious and right-minded people.
When a man is taken from the long roll of our mighty poets, and offered to the world’s admiration as a rare example of all the human virtues, it is well for people to examine the grounds of such extraordinary commendation. Now thatQueen Mab, with its anti-matrimonial note, is put into the hands of our boys; now thatLaon and Cythna, with its monstrous doctrine, is seen on our drawing-room tables; now that the author of so reprehensible a book is proclaimed a being of unqualified goodness, who, under auspicious circumstances, ‘might have been the Saviour of the World,’ it is time for the world to be told, that the recent efforts to win for Shelley a kind of regard, to which he is in no degree whatever entitled, are only part of a social movement, that, so far as the extreme Shelleyan Socialists are concerned, is a movement for the Abolition of Marriage,—in accordance with the spirit and purpose of his Social Philosophy.
THE END.
LONDON:Printed byStrangeways and Sons, Tower Street, Upper St. Martin’s Lane.
Footnotes:
[1]The authorities differ respecting these preliminary measures; some saying that she deliberately walked into the low water, whilst others represent that she walked on the Bridge in the rain, in order that her dress should be soaked and weighted with water, before she took the leap to death. Godwin’s account in theMemoirsis:—‘The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down on the Bridge till her clothes were thoroughly drenched and heavy with the wet, which she did for half an hour, without meeting a human being. She then leaped from the top of the Bridge, but still seemed to find a difficulty in sinking, which she endeavoured to counteract by pressing her clothes closely round her;’—an account for which the writer may be assumed to have had Mary Wollstonecraft’s authority.
[2]What construction Jerdan put upon the words of wrath is known from a clause of the scorching passage of the famous article of theLiterary Gazette, in which he set forth the worst of the evil capabilities to be looked for in Shelley’s pupils:—‘A disciple following his tenets would not hesitate to debauch, or, after debauching, to abandon, any woman; to such it would be matter of perfect indifference to rob a confiding father of his daughters, and incestuously to live with all the branches of a family, whose morals were ruined by the damned sophistry of the seducer;to such it would be sport to tell a deserted wife to obtain with her pretty face support by prostitution; and when the unhappy maniac sought refuge in self-destruction, to laugh at the fool while in the arms of associate strumpets.’—VideLiterary Gazette, 19th May, 1821.
[3]It should be borne in mind that had he persevered in his design of following medicine, the expelled Oxonian could not have gained an M.D. degree in England. The member of a medical family, with cousins following medicine under different qualifications, Shelley was of course aware that, though he might take the diplomas of the College of Surgeons and the Apothecaries’ Hall, he could not as a mere London medical student become ‘a physician.’
[4]In his autobiography it is admitted by Hunt, that, before his liberation from prison, on 3rd February, 1815, his personal acquaintance with Shelley was very slight. ‘It was,’ he says, ‘my imprisonment that brought me acquainted with my friend of friends, Shelley. I had seen little of him before; but he wrote to me, making me a princely offer, which at that time I stood in no need of.’ In another place the autobiographer says, ‘I first saw Shelley during the earlier period of theExaminer, before his indictment on account of the Regent, but it was only for a few short visits, which did not produce intimacy.’ Hunt does not seem to have ever visited Shelley at Bishopgate, or, in any fair sense of the term, to have known Shelley whilst the latter lived there. In the summer of 1816, Shelley was in Switzerland. On his return from Switzerland, he went to Bath. There was no intercourse (to be called friendship) between him and Hunt, till the close of 1816. In April, 1818, Shelley went to Italy, where in the last week of his existence he again came face to face with Hunt. Like Trelawny, Hunt made the most of his personal intercourse with Shelley. Readers should bear in mind that the period of the personal intercourse of the two poets,i.e.the period during which they saw much of one another, speaking together face to face, began at the close of 1816, and ended in April, 1818,—a period less than eighteen months. Till he saw his way to suck money out of the youngster’s pocket, Hunt never troubled himself about Shelley. In the short year and half of theirpersonalassociation, the editor of theExaminerfound Shelley a profitable acquaintance.
[5]Mr. Rossetti makes Shelley arrive at Naples on 1st December, 1818, and I am far from saying that the careful writer is wrong on the immaterial point. It is enough to know for certain that the poet made only a short stay (at the most, a sojourn of less than three weeks) at Rome on the occasion of his journey from Northern to Southern Italy.