‘The theories,’ says Lady Shelley, ‘in which the daughter of the authors ofPolitical Justiceand of theRights of Womanhad been educated, spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection; for she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved—by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate—these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind.’
‘The theories,’ says Lady Shelley, ‘in which the daughter of the authors ofPolitical Justiceand of theRights of Womanhad been educated, spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection; for she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved—by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate—these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind.’
This whole passage is made up of statements that, so far as Mary Godwin is concerned, are absolutely the reverse of historic truth. What? Mary’s education in Free Contract principles ‘spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection?’ Why at one moment she is declaring she can’t be Shelley’s mistress, but will never marry any other man; a few days later she sacrifices her principles and does become his mistress; and yet there was no conflict of duty and affection!
It is in the highest degree improbable that, till Shelley spoke to her of her mother’s views and story, using them as arguments why she should not shrink from becoming his mistress, Mary Godwin had ever heard aught of Mary Wollstonecraft’s dangerous opinions and discreditable career. William Godwin’s daughter was only a few days old when her mother died. Only three years and four months Mary’s senior, Fanny Imlay was too young at her mother’s death to have, in later time, any recollections to impart to Mary about their common parent. Who was at all likely to be at pains to acquaint Mary in her early childhood with her mother’s story? It is not usual for a man, after taking a second wife and having issue by her, to be loquacious about his first wife to her children in theirtender age. The cold, unsentimental, unemotional Godwin was not likely to talk of Mary Wollstonecraft to either of her children. Is it conceivable that whilst they were of tender age, or in later years, when they had become inquisitive girls, he revealed to them the particulars of their mother’s story,—told Fanny that she was of shameful birth; told Mary that her sister was a bastard; unfolded to their inquiring minds the doctrines of Free Contract; informed them that their mother held opinions about marriage which he had himself abandoned as dangerous and pernicious; instructed them out of pious regard to her memory that they should on coming to womanly age think of the matrimonial rite as an idle form? Is it imaginable that the second Mrs. Godwin, intent on holding her curiously constituted family within the lines of conventional respectability, enlightened Fanny, and Claire, and Mary, on the very matters she was especially desirous of keeping from their knowledge?
It is, however, certain that Mary Godwin heard much about her mother from Shelley’s lips in 1814. The subject, in respect to which Godwin had been wisely reticent to his child, Shelley did not hesitate to use for the accomplishment of his purpose. No one knew better than Shelley, that his familiar friend and benefactor had long since ceased to approve the Free Contract. No one knew better than Shelley, how careful his familiar friend had been to withhold from his only daughter those particulars of her mother’s career that, on being communicated to her, might dispose the imaginative, generous, fearless, too self-dependent child to adopt her mother’s earlier views about marriage. At the same time Shelley saw that, to break down the girl’s reverence for marriage and thereby remove the grand obstacle to his designs upon her, his best course was to enlighten the sixteen-years-old girl on those points of her domestic story, which her father was especially desirous to keep from her knowledge. It is needless to say that the young man, who had illuminated, or tried to illuminate, so many girls of tender age out of the views in which they had been educated, was not withheld from illuminating Mary out of her superstitious reverence for marriage by any weak sentiment of loyalty to his familiar friend,—the friend whom he was in the habit of styling his greatest benefactor.
As the Skinner-Street house, notwithstanding the hospitablefreedom accorded to him within its walls, was no place where he could urge his suit to Mary and teach her to approve the Free Contract, it appeared well to Shelley, in his strength, to make appointments for private interviews with Mary at her mother’s grave in Old St. Pancras churchyard, and well to the sixteen-years-old Mary, in her weakness and romantic silliness, to meet him there. Old St. Pancras churchyard was a comparatively secluded place, and Mr. Kegan Paul is careful to record that ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave was shaded by a fine weeping willow.’ I cannot see that the character and magnitude of the tree over Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave ought to affect the reader’s judgment of what took place under it in the warm days of June and July, 1814. But Mr. Kegan Paul seems to think otherwise; and as I wish to handle this matter with a liberal regard for all extenuating circumstances, I beg my readers to bear in mind that Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave was shaded by a fine weeping willow.
Whilst gentle breezes made music in the long leaves of this trysting-tree, Shelley,—withQueen Mab andits notes in his hand, and the writings of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft in his memory,—explained to Mary Godwin why ‘chastity was a monkish and evangelical superstition;’ why her mother had very properly come to the conclusion that she might live conjugally with Gilbert Imlay in Paris, without being married to him; why a few years later her mother had no less virtuously determined to live in Free Contract with William Godwin; and why she, Mary Godwin (the daughter of so exemplary and altogether phenomenal a woman as Mary Wollstonecraft), might with honour and virtue become his wife in the highest sense, although inhuman laws and tyrannic custom precluded him from making her his wife in another and altogether trivial sense. Readers may not forget that Shelley was within a few days of being Mary’s senior by five years; that he was so greatly Mary’s social superior as to figure in her esteem as a sort of young prince; that he was a young man of a singularly pleasant appearance and charming address; that she was only sixteen years old, and living under the dominion of a stern stepmother, who, besides insisting that Mary should darn her stockings, was so unreasonable as to think a girl of her age and social degree should know how to make a beef-steak pudding.
Instead of suffering from no conflict of duty and affection (as Lady Shelley avers), it is certain that poor sixteen-years-old Mary was distracted and cruelly tortured by the conflict of her desire to be good, with her inclination to be very naughty. She was troubled by thoughts of Percy’s wife, her own friend; and by thoughts of the shame and sorrow that would come to her old father, if she did as Percy asked her. She was stung by a feeling that, as Percy was her father’s young friend, and moreover a young friend to whom her father had been very good and kind, he should not ask of her what he was asking. Tears sprung to her eyes as she thought of the disgrace she would bring on her home and people if she yielded. There were moments when she could not see why she could be right in doing what was wrong in her eyes, because her mother was not wrong in doing what seemed right to her. She implored Percy not to ask so much of her. Promising to love him for ever, promising that no other man should ever find a place in her heart, acknowledging that she loved him unutterably, she entreated Percy, as he was good and clever, so bright a poet, and so sweet to her soul, to be satisfied with her confession and vows of perpetual fidelity. But this was not enough for the young gentleman who ‘might have been the Saviour of the World.’ He wanted something more, and was determined to have all he wanted, although Mary was the only daughter of his friend and benefactor. Why are readers indignant against this young man, who was so young and enthusiastic, and only (as Mr. Froude says) acting on emotional theories of liberty?
Whilst he was having stolen interviews with his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter under the willow-tree, he had a remarkable conference with his friend Peacock, who, on coming from the country to London for the meeting, found the author ofQueen Mabin a state of extreme excitement. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled, his dress disordered; and whilst talking with extravagant energy he caught up a bottle of laudanum, saying vehemently as he clutched the vessel of poisonous drink, ‘I never part with this. I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles:—
‘Man’s happiest lot is not to be:And when we tread life’s thorny steep,Most blest are they, who earliest freeDescend to death’s eternal sleep.’
In the ensuing conversation (videPeacock’s collectedWorks) Shelley did not even suggest that Harriett’s behaviour had afforded him any serious cause of dissatisfaction. On the contrary, whilst reflecting on her mental unfitness for the position to which he had so imprudently exalted her, he admitted that she was a noble animal.
‘Every one, who knows me,’ he said, ‘must know that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriett is a noble animal, but she can do neither.’
‘It always appeared to me,’ replied Peacock, ‘that you were very fond of Harriett.’
‘But you did not know how I hated her sister,’ rejoined Shelley; forbearing to say aught in dissent from, or assent to, Peacock’s remark on his former show of fondness for his wife.
To another of his friends Shelley commended Harriett for being ‘a noble animal,’ adding words which seemed to imply that, in her nobleness, she would acquiesce in the transference of his affections from herself to William Godwin’s daughter.
But because he spoke thus fairly of Harriett to persons, who knew she had given him no grave cause of offence, it does not follow that he was not at the same time charging her with serious misconduct to those, who were not so well qualified to judge between her and him. To those who remember in what different strains he wrote of his father to the Duke of Norfolk and William Godwin, it is needless to say that he was capable of speaking justly of a person, with whom he was displeased, to individuals cognizant of the real causes of his displeasure, and no less unjustly to persons of inferior or no information touching the nature of the quarrel.
Whilst Mary Godwin was being illuminated into Free Contract in Old St. Pancras churchyard, and educated in deceit in Skinner Street, the pupil and her teacher had a sympathetic confidante in Claire,—the maiden of bright eyes, olive complexion, Italian features, and southern fervour. It is needless to remind readers that Claire was not older than Mary by so much as Mr. Kegan Paul repeatedly asserts in the very book, which affords evidence that they were nearly of the same age. Elsewhere it has been told how (though they bickered and quarreled smartly once and again in Shelley’s life, and cameafter his death to hate one another cordially) these daughters of one home, who called the same man ‘papa’ and the same woman ‘mamma,’ were living together in 1814 in the fullest mutual confidence, and in affection glowing with the impetuosity of girlish romance. Cognizant of their meetings under the weeping willow, Claire knew why Shelley and her sister-by-affinity met so often at the trysting-tree. In Skinner Street, when Mary, the piquant brown-eyed blonde, wore her disguise, she did not assume ‘the mask of scorn’ to hide her love of Shelley from her sister-by-affinity. Delighting in the sentimental affair, as though it were a mere game played for her amusement in the midsummer holidays, Claire, the impetuous and saucy, was ever at hand to divert the attention of the elders from the proceedings of her two playmates. Had Fanny been at home the game might not have been carried to its calamitousdénoument, for besides being orderly and dutiful, and ever on the side of authority, the eldest of the three sisters had an influence over Shelley which would certainly have been exercised for good, had she detected his evil purpose. It was unfortunate for the two younger girls that Fanny was away from home. It was unfortunate for Mary, that Claire was at hand to aid and encourage her and Shelley. Without Claire’s help Shelley would most likely have failed to accomplish his purpose. But for her sister’s sympathy and assistance, it is scarcely conceivable that Mary (remarkable though she was for self-dependence and resoluteness) would have left her home. It was in no small degree due to Claire’s cleverness, in covering the actions of the lovers, that the first week of July was over before their proceedings caused Godwin uneasiness. What, on so late a day, caused the philosopher to think his young friend too attentive to Mary, does not appear. Possibly neighbours had told him of the meetings under the trysting-tree. Possibly Mrs. Godwin had detected something suspicious in Mary’s countenance, at a moment when she forgot to wear the mask of scorn. Anyhow, on the 8th of July, Godwin spoke to his daughter respecting her demeanour to Shelley, and on the same day wrote Shelley a letter, which was answered in a way that abated the philosopher’s apprehensions without altogether putting an end to his disquiet. Speaking of Shelley’s reply to his benefactor’s epistle, Mr. Kegan Paul says, ‘The explanation was satisfactory.’ The explanation must, therefore, have beendisingenuous, for no honest reply could have been otherwise than most unsatisfactory. The consequence of the explanation was that the two familiar friends continued to meet daily, though the veteran decided that for a brief while Shelley should not dine at Skinner Street. Probably it was due to Godwin that Mrs. Shelley was at length informed of her husband’s place of abode. Anyhow, Harriett came up to town and saw both Godwin and Shelley, the former of whom did his utmost to reconcile the husband and wife, whilst the latter held to his purpose of making Mary his mistress. Almost to the last moment it was uncertain what would be the issue of the fierce conflict between passion and duty in her breast. It is not surprising that eventually she yielded to his entreaties, and his pathetic account of the wrongs he had endured in boyhood from the barbarous father, who would have consigned him for life to a lunatic asylum, had it not been for Dr. Lind’s timely intervention. How was the inexperienced and romantic girl to suspect that the thrilling tale was a tissue of romantic fancies and delusive inventions? Small blame to her for yielding, in comparison with the blame due to the man, who subdued her to his will.
On the evening of 27th July, 1814, William Godwin’s household retired to rest under circumstances which rendered the man of letters, his wife, and his stepson (Charles Clairmont) wholly unsuspicious of the purpose and pre-arrangements of the two girls. On the morrow, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin awoke to learn that Claire and Mary had left the house at daybreak. An examination of their sleeping apartment discovered that the two girls had not quitted their home without making preparations for an absence of some duration, for they had taken enough of their clothing to show that a speedy return was no part of their plan. Thus it was that they left their homes at four o’clock a.m., and hastened to the spot where Shelley awaited them in a carriage. Not content with carrying off his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, Shelley repaid Mrs. Godwin’s hospitality by carrying offhersixteen-years-old (or, perhaps, seventeen-years-old) daughter, in order that he and Mary should have an agreeable travelling companion.
Nothing connected with this miserable business is more strange than that it has been treated by successive writers as though it were a wholesome and delightful love-story, redounding,on the whole, to the credit of both principals. The affair has been handled by these writers so effectually that many a reader will have to liberate himself from their influence by a strenuous effort before seeing that, in thus carrying off his friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, Shelley was guilty of the crime which he professed to hold in the highest repugnance. In carrying off John Westbrook’s sixteen-years-old daughter when he was in a position to marry her, Shelley committed nothing more than an act of elopement. But in carrying off his familiar friend’s child when he could not marry her, and had no prospect of ever being able to marry her, he was guilty of an act of seduction. If regard is had to his intimacy with her father, the deception he practised towards him, and the means he employed to overcome her sense of duty, it cannot be questioned that Shelley’s triumph over his familiar friend’s daughter was a very bad case of domestic treason. That an unlooked-for incident enabled him, something more than two years later, to marry her, and that on the occurrence of this incident he lost no time in making her his wife, are facts in no way affecting the quality of his action towards his friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter in 1814. That he married her as soon as he could is a fact to be remembered to the poet’s credit in the general estimate of his character, and more especially of his affection for the girl. But what he did at the end of 1816 could not affect the legal and moral quality of what he did in the summer of 1814. There must be no misunderstanding on this point. Till the English people shall modify and rearrange the English language into accordance with the crotchets and sensibilities of our favourers of the Free Contract, the man who shall lure a sixteen-years-old girl from her home and parents, and induce her to live with him as a mistress, must be declared guilty of an offence which is deemed odious even by libertines.
Mr. Froude is of opinion that Shelley should be judged leniently for taking to himself this girl because he was young and enthusiastic. Mr. Froude is also of opinion that Mary Godwin should be judged leniently because she was young and enthusiastic. I concur with Mr. Froude in thinking that Mary should not be severely judged. To her my compassion goes as freely as Mr. Froude requires. She was a naughty girl. But who can forbear to make charitable allowance for so young and inexperienced a girl? She was (as Mr. Froude urges)enthusiastic; she was also young, very young,—only sixteen years old.
There are other reasons for being lenient and pitiful to this poor child, reared though she was in honest principles and absolute ignorance of her mother’s perverse views. Who seduced her? She was not led astray by an ordinary tempter, but by a young man of singular comeliness, a poet who clothed his prayers with the images of speech most likely to render them irresistible. She had done nothing in the hope of winning his love, said nothing by lip or look to lure him from loyalty to Harriett, when he came quickly upon her and said ‘You shall be mine!’ She was wooed and won by Shelley! Remember how (thoughhe was Shelley) she contended with him, fought him, prayed to him for mercy; how passionately she declared to him, in spoken words and written words, that, though she loved him wholly, and would never give herself to any other man, she would not, could not, dared not, give herself to him till he could marry her.
Could nothing be urged in palliation of her misconduct, but that she was young and enthusiastic, I should plead less earnestly in her behalf. I cannot concur with Mr. Froude in holding that youth and enthusiasm should of themselves be pronounced considerable extenuations of wrongful action, of which the young and enthusiastic are more likely than other persons to be guilty. On the contrary, Mr. Froude must pardon a white-headed writer for telling him frankly, it is ill for a man of his still greater age to teach (however lightly and elegantly) in a popular magazine, that to act as Shelley and Mary acted in their elopement, is sometimes to be guilty of nothing worse than ‘the sin of acting on emotional theories of liberty.’ Moreover, I decline to regard Shelley’s youth in 1814 as a matter to be urged strongly in mitigation of the sentence to be passed upon him. His youth unquestionably may be pleadedin misericordiamwhen he is under trial for running away with John Westbrook’s daughter. But the offence he committed in 1814 was no mere elopement, and he had long since ceased to be a child. When he posted seaward along the Dover Road, with Mary Godwin by his side, he was within a week of his twenty-third year. Age by the calendar is not the only thing to be considered in estimating a man’s moral responsibility. Regard should also be had to the discipline of circumstances. It wanted now only a month of threeyears since Shelley ran off with John Westbrook’s lovely child. A man who is a father, and has been a husband for nearly three years, is not to be judged as a mere stripling. He was five years older than Mary. Those five years spent in the world gave him greatly the advantage over Mary, and he had used the advantage mercilessly against her. On the threshold of his twenty-third year a young man has lived quite long enough to know that he should not seduce his intimate friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter.
Should Mr. Froude write on this question again, he will do well to drop the plea of youth. Moreover, Mr. Froude, at any sacrifice of feeling, must throw overboard that elegant euphuism about ‘the sin of acting on emotional theories of liberty.’ That Shelley was under the influence of emotion throughout his suit to Mary is certain. It is not unusual for people to be under the influence of emotion when they are in love. But there was nothing emotional in Shelley’s theories respecting the Freedom of Lovers to be off with an old and on with a new love at pleasure. I have wasted much pains in exhibiting the origin of those theories, and tracing their growth through his boyish novels and his letters to Hogg and Godwin, to their development in the anti-matrimonial note toQueen Mab, if it is necessary to remind my readers that Shelley’s views about wedlock—views in which he persisted to the last hour of his life—were embraced in his boyhood long before he formulated them in theQueen Mabnote. Never were theories formed with greater deliberation, brooded over more calmly, acted upon more resolutely by a social innovator. Holding them tenaciously long before he promulgated them in the famous note, he did not act upon them tillQueen Mabhad been in secret circulation for considerably more than a year. In speaking of them as emotional theories, Mr. Froude shows how absolutely ignorant he was of the matters about which he wrote so rashly.
A note in one of William Godwin’s diaries indicates that he regarded the fugitives as having left his house at five o’clock of the early morning. But there are grounds for thinking the flight began an hour earlier. Anyhow, long before London was awake and stirring, Shelley and the two girls were clear of the town and clattering towards the sea. Towards noon the sun bore down upon them with scorching vehemence, and theremainder of the journey on wheels was made in heat so intense and overpowering, that Mary Godwin nearly fainted under it. The journey closed with a serious disappointment to the travellers. On alighting at Dover at about 4 p.m., they found themselves too late for the Calais packet, and no other public boat would start for the French port till the following day. To all three it was of the highest moment that they should cross the Channel as quickly as possible. Mary and Claire were too well acquainted with their mother’s energy to have any doubt, that on discovering their flight she would soon be following them. Had Mary been less than sixteen years of age, Shelley, in case of his arrest on English ground, would have been liable, under the circumstances, to imprisonment for two years; and under a certain contingency, even to five years’ incarceration. But though Mary’s age exempted him from the heavy punishment to which he would have been liable had she been a year younger, he was aware that, if he were overtaken by Mrs. Godwin on this side the Channel, the Mayor of Dover would aid her effectually in regaining possession of her daughter and step-daughter. To secure his prize it was needful that he should cross the water without passing another night on English soil.
As the lovely evening promised a quick and agreeable passage, Shelley hired some seamen to carry him and the two girls (without their boxes) to Calais in an open boat; and as soon as Mary had revived herself with a sea-bath, the trio went on board the frail vessel, hoping to touch the French sands within two hours. But the weather failed to keep its promise. At first their progress was slow from lack of wind; but as the moon rose and night came on, the faint breeze freshened into a gale, attended with signs of a coming storm. Besides being violent the wind soon became contrary; and after working well out to sea the sailors began to despair of reaching Calais, and talked of making for Boulogne. Some hours later, a squall striking the sail nearly capsized the boat, that seemed likely to perish in the thunder-storm, which made the mariners fearful. Fortunately the gale abated, and the wind, changing its course, carried the craft straight for Calais, where the fugitives,—weary, cold, and drenched to the skin,—arrived at sunrise; their plight being the more pitiable, because they had left their boxes at the Dover custom-house, to follow by the next day’s packet.
Regaining their energy and cheerfulness, whilst waiting fortheir luggage, the trio (‘three’ was Shelley’s favourite number for a trip) remained at their Calais hotel till Saturday afternoon (July the 30th), when they started for Paris in a cabriolet, drawn by three horses abreast, under the control of the queer little postillion, who wore a long pig-tail andcraquéedhis whip in a style that delighted the girls. But though they made no long stay at the French port, they tarried there long enough to have cause for congratulating themselves on having crossed the Channel so promptly. The sisters had not overrated their mother’s spirit and alertness. Catching the boat which brought the fugitives their luggage, Mrs. Godwin surprised them with a visit on Saturday morning; her arrival at the hotel being announced to them by the landlord, who hastened to their room with intelligence that a fat English Madame had come to the house, and was bent on seeing her daughters, with whom (according to Madame’s account) Monsieur had run away. How Mrs. Godwin was received by the trio may be imagined. Mary laughed saucily at the step-mother, from whose authority she had escaped. Claire answered her mother’s sharp speech by declaring she should not return to London till she had seen something of the world. If Shelley was not wanting in outward civility to the lady, of whose bread and salt he had partaken so freely, he was at pains to record in the journal which he and Mary had already begun to keep, how disdainfully his friend’s wife had been described by the Calais taverner. In the memoranda of the second day’s entry it is told how the landlord announced that ‘a fat lady had arrived who said that I had run away with her daughter,’ the personal pronoun and whole structure of the phrase showing that the words were a portion of Shelley’s contribution to the entry. For this scrap from Shelley’s diary we are indebted to Mr. Kegan Paul, who wishes the readers ofWilliam Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, to chuckle over the evidence that Mrs. Godwin was fat, that a French innkeeper derided her for being fat, and that Shelley was tickled by what the innkeeper said of the gentlewoman. Had one of Byron’s numerous diaries contained these same words in ridicule of a lady whose hospitality he had abused, what a rout the Shelleyan enthusiasts would have made about the diarist’s ingrained vulgarity!
A few words may here be said of the journal which Shelley and Mary began to keep at this point of their joint-story, andkept conjointly for a considerable period. It has been averred by Shelleyan enthusiasts that this journal was thus kept by the poet and Mary without a single day’s break up to the date of Shelley’s death. This journal has been declared a source of information by which every day, every hour of the poet’s life from the very first day of his association with Mary Godwin, can be accounted for. The journal has been held out by the Field Place scribesin terroremagainst all persons, presuming to question anything uttered by a small ‘ring’ of Shelleyan specialists, as a source of evidence that may at any moment be used to cover such presumptuous persons with discredit. It is therefore well that in a book written by one of the presumptuous personages, prominence should be given to the reasons for questioning whether this joint-journal was kept for so long a period, and in so unbroken a manner as certain writers have declared; and also to the far stronger reasons for thinking the journal may have been altered and ‘doctored’ by Mary Godwin after her husband’s death.
On 26th January, 1819, Shelley wrote from Naples (where he was then stayingwithhis wife) these words, ‘In my accounts of pictures and things I am more pleased to interest you than the many; ... Besides, I keep no journal, and the only records of my voyage will be the letters I send you.’
Observe how Shelley in a confidential letter to one of his closest friends declares that he is not keeping a journal, and that the letters he is sending his friend will be the only record of the part of his career to which the letters refer. If Shelley’s statements about his personal affairs could be relied upon, the words would be sufficient evidence that he was not then keeping a journal, that his letters to Peacock were the only authoritative record of his doings at this particular point of his career, and that, therefore, to the best of his knowledge and belief, his wife was not then keeping a record of his doings. If he was at that time keeping a journal, he wrote to Peacock what was untrue. Unless he had reason for thinking that no record of his life was being kept at that time either by his wife or any other person, he was less than truthful. If Mr. Garnett was right in saying Shelley began a diary in 1814, which accounts for every day of his life, Shelley was wrong in saying he was keeping no record of his life in January, 1819. Mr. Rossetti suggests that the inconsistency between Shelley’swords and Mr. Garnett’s words may be only apparent, as Shelley may ‘sometimes have intermitted his journalizing, and then his wife kept it up.’ But this reasonable suggestion does not dispose of the difficulty. If the suggestion is correct, Mrs. Shelley must have filled in and kept up the journal with her husband’s knowledge, or without it. If she kept the diary with his knowledge and sanction, the journal remained a thing for which he was so far responsible, that it should have precluded him from saying he kept no journal. If he knew Mrs. Shelley was keeping a daily record of his doings, he was untruthful in saying the letters would be the only record of those doings. On the other hand, if Mrs. Shelley kept the journal without his knowledge, the diary during the times of its being so kept was not his journal, but simply Mrs. Shelley’s journal, and Mr. Garnett erred in writing of it as a record for which Shelley was responsible from first to last.
Let me now pass to the reasons why the statements of this journal should be received with caution. The journal was in Mrs. Shelley’s keeping after her husband’s death, some portions of it having been published during his life, whilst other portions are even yet withheld from critical scrutiny. It will be admitted thatprimâ faciethe poet’s widow was far less likely to alter the printed and published portions of the record than to alter the MS. and undivulged entries; since in tampering with the published portions she would be more or less liable to exposure, whereas in altering the unpublished portion she would feel secure from detection. It will also be admitted that to show Mrs. Shelley did, after her husband’s death, tamper with and alter the published portions, for the express purpose of removing an important matter of evidence from them, is to prove her quite capable of tampering with, and altering the unpublished portions, should she be tempted strongly to do so. I charge Mrs. Shelley with having thus tampered with the published portions of the record.
In 1814 Mary and Claire were sisters, ever thinking and speaking of one another as sisters. In 1814 years had still to pass (albeit they often had smart tiffs and differences) before they ceased to think and speak of one another with sisterly love and in sisterly fashion. Hence, at Paris in August, 1814, it was natural for Mary Godwin to write in her journal:—
‘We resolved to walk through France; but as I was too weak for any considerable distance, andmy sistercould not be supposed to walk as far as S*** each day, we determined to purchase an ass to carry our portmanteau and one of us by turns.’
‘We resolved to walk through France; but as I was too weak for any considerable distance, andmy sistercould not be supposed to walk as far as S*** each day, we determined to purchase an ass to carry our portmanteau and one of us by turns.’
To call attention to ‘my sister’ I have printed the two words in italics. In December, 1817, when Claire had been for some time Byron’s mistress, and after being discarded by him had given birth to Allegra, Shelley and Mary published the journal (in which these words occur), together with certain well-known letters and the poem onMont Blanc, under the title ofHistory of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: With letters descriptive of a sail round the Lake of Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni: the book being provided with a preface written by Shelley himself, which contains these words:—
‘Those whose youth has been past as their’s (with what success it imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests the visible world, will perhaps find some entertainment in following the author,with her husband and sister, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she visited them, a great poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature.’
‘Those whose youth has been past as their’s (with what success it imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests the visible world, will perhaps find some entertainment in following the author,with her husband and sister, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she visited them, a great poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature.’
Thus in the journal, which has been dealt with by the Shelleyan specialists as the joint-production of Shelley and Mary, and in the Preface of which Shelley was the sole author, Claire is styled Mary’ssister. This is conclusive evidence of the regard in which Claire was held by Shelley and Mary from 1814 to the end of 1817. Jointly they style her ‘sister.’ Shelley by himself styles Claire his wife’s sister. What does Mrs. Shelley do in 1840, when she has ceased to love Claire, and lived to think of her as a vexatious and discreditable connexion? In the last named year, on producing a new edition of theSix Weeks’ Tour, she does her utmost to obliterate the evidence of her relationship to her old playmate and travelling companion, by substituting the word ‘friend,’ for the word ‘sister,’ in each of the above-given passages. She thus tampers with the text of the journal of which her husband was joint-author, and the text of the Preface, written altogether by her husband, in order to withdraw evidence which he put before the world. Am I wrong in saying that the widow, who dealt thus with her husband’sprinted words, was capable of altering the unpublished entries of diaries kept by herself and her husband?
Posting to Paris, where they stayed for a week, the trio entered the French capital with so little money that Shelley was compelled to sell his watch and chain for eight Napoleons and five francs, a part of which sum he is said to have remitted to Harriett. On the arrival of a remittance from England of 60l., which is noticed in the diary as setting them ‘free’ from a kind of imprisonment which they found very irksome, the travellers made a curious plan for enjoying their financial liberty and acted upon it promptly; in spite of the dissuasive eloquence of their landlady, who assured Mary and Claire, that in traversing a country populous with recently disbanded soldiers, they would expose themselves to insult and to outrage far worse than mere insolence. Mainly from considerations of economy, though in some degree, perhaps, from appetite for novel adventure, they determined to walk through France.
With clothing that could be packed in a single portmanteau and a dear little donkey that, besides carrying the portmanteau, would carry them by turns, Mary and Claire were certain they could journey to Switzerland with keen enjoyment and no excessive fatigue; whilst Shelley (an excellent walker) could, of course, trudge the whole way on foot, bearing a small basket of provisions for their frugal meals. The scheme looked well on paper; and had circumstances been as compliant as the adventurers were imaginative the plan would have worked admirably. The portmanteau would have been none too heavy and the donkey none too weak; every village in which they desired to rest would have afforded them clean beds and sufficient cookery; the weather would never have been too hot, the roads never too stony. But the circumstances were too rigorous and unyielding. It was to their misfortune that, instead of buying a competent ass in the Parisian ass-market, Claire and Shelley selected a diminutive animal, that in less than twenty-four hours proved insufficient for the place. Still it was all merriment at the outset to the girls, who prattled merrily on the way from Paris (which they left at four p.m.) to Charenton, which they entered some six hours later. Dressed in black silk, the sisters (on leaving coach and taking the donkey at the barrier) congratulated themselves on their choice of a costume, the lightness of their portmanteau, the mild intelligence of their dear littledonkey. At the first view of Charenton in the valley watered by the Seine, Claire (in sly raillery at Shelley) ejaculated, ‘Oh! this is beautiful enough: let us live here.’ In the morning, when, on recognizing the donkey’s incompetence they replaced it with a mule (bought for ten Napoleons), the girls may have been troubled with doubts whether ‘black’ was the best ‘colour for standing white dust.’ Soon the temper of the tourists was tested by trials more grievous than fatigue and the dust of hot highways. The fare of thecabaretswas coarse, the company in them not chiefly remarkable for refinement, the bedding neither comfortable nor clean. The peasants might have been something less morose to gentle strangers, in no degree responsible for the excesses of the brutal Cossacks. On nearing Trois Maisons, Shelley sprained his ankle so badly that the girls were compelled to walk an entire day’s journey and let him ride on their mule. At Troyes he could scarcely put his lame foot to the ground; Mary was ‘dead-beat’ with fatigue; Claire could no longer cry out gleefully, ‘I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but let us live here.’ The bright girl’s cheeriest cry just then may well have been ‘Beds,—and let’s sleep here for ever.’
On the morrow, 13th August, 1814 (and maybe in the absence of Mary and Claire, capable of strolling through the town), Shelley, whose lameness kept him a prisoner to the hotel, took pen in hand and wrote his wife a remarkable epistle. Opening with an assurance that it is written, in order that she may realize how he holds her in remembrance, this epistle from Shelley to the wife he has left in England begins with ‘My dearest Harriett,’ and closes with a declaration of enduring affection for her:—a declaration preceded by a message of love to their sweet little Ianthe. ‘I write,’ he says, ‘to urge you to come to Switzerland, where you will, at least, find one firm and constant friend, to whom your interests will be always dear,—by whom your feelings will never be wilfully injured.’ It is scarcely conceivable that in his heart Shelley believed Harriett guilty of any heinous offence against his honour, when he thus begged her to join him in Switzerland. After chatting to her about the scenes and circumstances and incidents of her journey from Paris to the town where he is staying, Shelley enjoins Harriett ‘not to part with any of her money’ (words implying that he knows her to be in possession of a considerable sum), and bids her bring with her to Switzerland the two deeds whichTahourdin has been instructed to prepare for her. The settlement may have been a deed for her pecuniary benefit. The other two deeds may have been duplicates of an instrument, defining the terms of their separation, to which (I think) she may be regarded as having assented (in a legal sense) before Shelley left England. Thus Shelley wrote from Troyes to his wife, whom he hoped soon to have the pleasure of welcoming to some sweet retreat in the Swiss mountains.
By the writer of the well-knownEdinburgh‘Shelley and Mary’ article, it is remarked of this letter,—
‘It is difficult to conceive anything more wild and impracticable—the more so as Shelley himself, travelling with another woman who was not his wife, invites his wife in terms of endearment to join him in Switzerland, which he had not reached, and where he was not going to stay. It is the scheme of a reckless child.’
‘It is difficult to conceive anything more wild and impracticable—the more so as Shelley himself, travelling with another woman who was not his wife, invites his wife in terms of endearment to join him in Switzerland, which he had not reached, and where he was not going to stay. It is the scheme of a reckless child.’
Because this curious, scrambling tour, covered only forty-seven days, is it so certain that Shelley left England without any intention of remaining abroad for a longer period? Because he spent only ten days in Switzerland, does it follow that on the 13th of August he was going thereforno longer time? I venture to differ from theEdinburghwriter. Taken by itself the letter is evidence, that on the 13th of August, Shelley hoped to make a sojourn of several months in Switzerland. Had he at that time intended to scamper into and out of the little Republic, after spending ten days within its bounds, he would scarcely (harum-scarum creature though he was) have entreated Harriett to come out to him. But there is other evidence that he hoped to be away from England for a longer time. TheHistory of a Six Weeks’ Tourabounds with indications that at the outset the tour was meant to cover several months instead of a few weeks. Leaving England with only a little money in his pocket, even Shelley would not have spent it so lavishly in posting from Calais, had he not hoped to find an abundant remittance for him at Paris. Instead of awaiting his arrival at the capital, the remittance did not come till he had waited for it several days, ‘in a kind of imprisonment.’ When it came the trio were disappointed by its smallness. Indicated by the epithet applied to the sum in the diary, this disappointment is revealed yet more fully by the fact that the smallness of the sum caused the trio immediately to alter their plans, and on the spur of the moment devise a scheme for a cheap walking-tour. Had they expectedno more than 60l.they would have laid their plans for the cheap expedition on foot, whilst enduring the ‘kind of imprisonment.’ Between Troyes and Uri they were compelled to spend money much faster than they intended to spend it; a series of small and unforeseen misadventures diminishing the resources, which would otherwise have enabled them to stay longer in the country, where they hoped to make a temporary home. It is clear from the diary, that on the road from Troyes to Switzerland, they looked forward to Neufchatel as a place, where they would possibly find another remittance. Even on the 20th of August, after getting the 38l.in silver from the Neufchatel banker who afforded them relief, so far were they from thinking of a speedy return to England, that they ‘resolved to journey towards the lake of Uri, and seek in that romantic and interesting country some cottage where they might dwell in peace and solitude.’ In their account of the circumstances which compelled them to relinquish this delightful scheme, the diarists say, ‘Such were our dreams, which we should probably have realised, had it not been for the deficiency of that indispensable article—money, which obliged us to return to England.’ Even on the 26th of August, when they determine to run home as quickly and cheaply as possible on their remaining 28l., they are clinging to a hope of money from some uncertain source. ‘The 28l.which we possessed,’ they say, ‘was all the money that we could count uponwith any certaintyuntil the following December.’ Hence there is less reason for astonishment, than theEdinburghReviewer imagined, in the poet’s sufficiently staggering proposal to the ‘noble animal,’ who could neither ‘feel poetry’ nor ‘understand philosophy.’
Shelley having turned lame, Mary having failed from weakness, and Claire having had enough of trudging along hot roads, the remainder of the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour’ was made on wheels or by water. Selling their mule and saddle (at a sacrifice of several Napoleons) at Troyes, where they bought a four-wheeled vehicle for five Napoleons, and making a bad bargain with the impudent peasant, who agreed to convey them and their carriage with his own mule to Neufchatel, they pushed onwards to Switzerland, where they arrived, after a series of exasperating misadventures, to discover that enthusiasts for liberty may be exceedingly uncomfortable, though living within view of William Tell’s Chapel, and to discover at the end often days that, to escape absolute want, they had better hasten back to England. Taking thediligence par eauat Lucerne, they made their way in uncongenial company along the Reuss to Loffenberg, pushed onwards in a leaky canoe to Mumph, and passed through divers discomfortsen routefrom Mumph to Basle. Leaving the Rhine at Bonn, they posted to Cologne, travelled by diligence to Cleves, and posted to Rotterdam. Detained by contrary winds for nearly two days at Marsluys, they had ample time for spending their last guinea at that scarcely genial place, whilst