William A. Madocks—The Tremadoc Embankment—Shelley’s Zeal for the People of Tremadoc—His big Subscription to the Embankment Fund—Tanyrallt Lodge—Shelley in London—Sussex Selfishness—The Reconciliation with Hogg—Miss Hitchener in Disgrace—She is banished from ‘Percy’s Little Circle’—Brown Demon and Hermaphroditical Beast—Shelley in Skinner Street—Claire and Mary—Fanny Imlay’s Intercourse with Shelley—The Worth and Worthlessness of Claire’s Evidence—Shelley’s Prodigality—Back at Tanyrallt—At Work onQueen Mab—At War with Neighbours—Embankment Annoyances—Livelier Delight in Harriett—Wheedling Letter to the Duke of Norfolk—Diet and Dyspepsia—The Hunts in trouble—Shelley’s Contribution for their Relief—The odious Leeson—Daniel Hill’s liberation from Prison—His Arrival at Tanyrallt Lodge—The Tanyrallt Mystery—Shelley’s marvellous and conflicting Stories—Exhibition of the Evidence—Inquisition and Verdict—Shelley’s ignominious Position—His virtuous Indignation at the World’s Villany—His undiminished Concern for Liberty and Virtue—His Withdrawal from Wales to Ireland—He hastens from Dublin to Killarney—Hogg in Dublin—The Shelleys back in London.
William A. Madocks—The Tremadoc Embankment—Shelley’s Zeal for the People of Tremadoc—His big Subscription to the Embankment Fund—Tanyrallt Lodge—Shelley in London—Sussex Selfishness—The Reconciliation with Hogg—Miss Hitchener in Disgrace—She is banished from ‘Percy’s Little Circle’—Brown Demon and Hermaphroditical Beast—Shelley in Skinner Street—Claire and Mary—Fanny Imlay’s Intercourse with Shelley—The Worth and Worthlessness of Claire’s Evidence—Shelley’s Prodigality—Back at Tanyrallt—At Work onQueen Mab—At War with Neighbours—Embankment Annoyances—Livelier Delight in Harriett—Wheedling Letter to the Duke of Norfolk—Diet and Dyspepsia—The Hunts in trouble—Shelley’s Contribution for their Relief—The odious Leeson—Daniel Hill’s liberation from Prison—His Arrival at Tanyrallt Lodge—The Tanyrallt Mystery—Shelley’s marvellous and conflicting Stories—Exhibition of the Evidence—Inquisition and Verdict—Shelley’s ignominious Position—His virtuous Indignation at the World’s Villany—His undiminished Concern for Liberty and Virtue—His Withdrawal from Wales to Ireland—He hastens from Dublin to Killarney—Hogg in Dublin—The Shelleys back in London.
(4.)—Tanyrallt, Carnarvonshire, N.W.
In default of data, by which their course could be traced precisely, the historian can only say of the movements of the four adventurers between Ilfracombe and Tremadoc, that they appear to have arrived at the latter place without greatly exceeding the time that would be usually spent by tourists in a trip from North Devon, across the Bristol Channel, and onwards from Cardiff to Carnarvon. Readers will not be far wrong in assuming that on the day of William Godwin’s arrival at Lynmouth (18th September, 1812), his young friend had been two or three days at Tremadoc. Either from the moment of his arrival at Tremadoc, or from a quickly following day, Shelley was for some time in a scene of excitement that diverted his mind from the painful circumstances of his flight from Lynton. In September, 1812, an unusually high tide swept away portions of the breakwater and embankment, that had been raised a few years earlier by a considerable landownerof the neighbourhood (William A. Madocks, Esq., Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, and Member of Parliament) for the preservation of lands, which he was set on reclaiming from the sea. The immediate consequence of the injury to the insufficient works was a flood that, sweeping across the imperfectly reclaimed lands, inflicted much suffering and loss on humble tillers and other occupants of the soil. Whether the flood preceded, or followed Shelley’s arrival at Tremadoc by a few days, or was precisely coincident with it, does not appear; but it is certain that he was deeply stirred by the results of the calamity.
Commiserating the poor people, driven from their tenements by the sea, he sympathized also with the wealthier sufferers. Approaching Mr. Madocks, seignior of Tremadoc, and Mr. Williams, the great man’s agent, with appropriate expressions of concern for the trouble that had befallen them and their dependents, Shelley explained to themmore suo, that he was the eldest son of Mr. Timothy Shelley, of Field Place, in the county of Sussex, and eventual inheritor of the baronetcy and broad acres of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley. At present a minor, with his hands tied as the hands of minors ever are, he was in the twenty-first year of his minority; but next August, on attaining his majority, he should be in a position to contribute handsomely to the fund that must be raised to restore Tremadoc to prosperity. In fact, he spoke to the gentlemen of Tremadoc just such brave words of himself, as a few months since had caused honest Jack Lawless to write of him as the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes of England, and a young gentleman who would do great things for the benefit of Ireland.
It is not wonderful that the Tremadoc gentry were caught by these promises of assistance. A man of politics and affairs, a Fellow of All Souls, and a student of human nature, Mr. Madocks saw the young man’s enthusiasm was sincere, and knew just enough of his history to have no hesitation in taking the young gentleman, at his own valuation. It was not for Mr. Madocks to cross-examine the young gentleman who spoke so frankly of his parentage and prospects. In truth, there was nothing in Shelley’s talk to move either Mr. Madocks, or his local agent (Mr. Williams), to suspicion. Young gentlemen often come into easy circumstances on coming of age, even though they must wait for their father’s estates. Sir ByssheShelley had the reputation of being the wealthiest commoner of his county. The whole House of Commons knew the Member for New Shoreham would, in the usual course of things, succeed to great wealth. What more natural than for the eldest son of so considerable a squire, the grandson of so wealthy a baronet, to step into money on the attainment of his majority?
By the elders of Tremadoc a scheme, that showed excellently on paper, was devised for the future security and welfare of the town. The old breakwater and embankment having proved ineffectual for the protection of the imperfectly reclaimed five thousand acres of land, it was determined to build a stronger and more imposing embankment, and make on its top a coach-road, that, uniting two Welsh counties, would be advantageous to England and Ireland, as well as Wales, by shortening the journey from Dublin to Bath and London. There being no question with the projectors respecting the fertility of the land, if it could be duly guarded from the salt-water, it was estimated that the four or five thousand acres of reclaimable soil would soon yield a rental of from 8000l.to 10,000l.a-year. These advantages would result from an embankment, made at an estimated cost of 20,000l.
To practical critics it may appear that, unless this scheme were not based on misconception, the owners of the reclaimable land must have been strangely neglectful of their interests. To the same critics it may seem that, as the embankment would yield a revenue of from 8000l.to 10,000l.a-year to the owners of the land, they were the persons to provide the 20,000l.To the Tremadoc elders, however, it appeared only reasonable that the capital, to be so expended for the enrichment of these landowners, should be provided by all persons of the general public, wishing well to Tremadoc and the United Kingdom, of which Tremadoc was part. It does not appear what interest, or whether any interest, was to be paid for money advanced by subscribers. From the way in which she commends Shelley for the largeness of his subscription, it is obvious Lady Shelley regards the moneys proffered by subscribers as differing in no respect from moneys given to a benevolent enterprise.
Shelley thought that the landowners, who would be so greatly benefited by the embankment, should be invited to subscribe liberally. Acting on this view, the impetuous minor assailed several of the neighbouring gentry with personalentreaties for money, for the good cause;—entreaties he could make with a good grace, since, to set richer folk a good example, he had headed the subscription list ‘with a donation’ (says Lady Shelley) ‘of 500l., though his means, as the reader has seen, were small.’ It was, doubtless, understood by Messrs. Madocks and Williams, that the young gentleman should not be asked to pay anything for this spirited stroke of his pen, until he should have entered on the financial plenitude, that would follow the attainment of his majority. At the same time the enthusiastic youth undertook to gather subscriptions in his native county, and more especially from his friend, the Duke of Norfolk.
Seeing how set Shelley was on furthering the interests of Tremadoc, it was only natural for Mr. Madocks to have pleasure in letting his young friend a certain furnished cottage at Tanyrallt. Called a cottage, Tanyrallt Lodge differed greatly from the tenement in which the adventurers had been lodging at Lynton. A cottage of gentility, with a billiard-room and circumambient lawns, this lodge almost justified Shelley in writing of it to Hogg, as ‘a cottage extensive and tasty enough for the villa of an Italian Prince.’ Good taste, of course, forbade the Lord of Tremadoc to name a rent beneath the dignity of a tenant who, besides being a gentleman of quality, would soon be in easy circumstances. Even Shelley thought the rent ‘large, but,’ as he wrote with winning candour to Hogg, ‘it is an object with us that they allow it to remain unpaid till I am of age.’ The place was worth the deferred rent; and the landlord lived with his tenant on the friendliest terms; speaking to him confidentially of the descent of Madockses, of Tremadoc, from Prince Madoc, and doubtless listening with proper interest to his youthful tenant’s stories of the Shelleys of olden time, and the ancient snake of the Field Place gardens. At the same time Mrs. Madocks and Miss Westbrook became fast friends, after the wont of gentlewomen, who conceive it is to their interest to be very intimate with one another.
Shelley had done well for himself and his attendant gentlewomen in migrating from North Devon to Carnarvonshire, and throwing himself so impetuously into the embankment business. At Tanyrallt he and they lived (pleasantly for awhile) with the best people of the neighbourhood; and enjoyed the change ofscene and society all the more, because in pre-railway days Tremadoc was too far a call from Lynton, for them to fear the talk of the Lynmouth tattlers would come to the ears of the quality round about Tanyrallt. But an altogether wrong view is taken of the position by readers, who question the genuineness of Shelley’s affection for Tremadoc, or suspect him of entertaining his new friends with hopes he intended to disappoint. For the moment he was quite as earnest for the new breakwater as a few months before he had been for Catholic Emancipation. He had been for so long a time looking to the attainment of his majority as a point of his existence, when he should be able to make better terms with his father, or raise money at a comparatively easy rate on his expectations, that he was quite honest in speaking of his coming of age, as a time when he should be able to give 500l.to the Tremadoc embankment, and pay the deferred rent for Tanyrallt Lodge. The impetuous and imaginative young man had fairly talked himself into conceiving, that to raise a handsome sum for the embankment fund he had only to carry the subscription list to the Duke of Norfolk and his other friends in Sussex.
(5.)—London: St. James’s Coffee-house.
Soon (say ten days or a fortnight) after taking possession of the Tanyrallt Lodge, Shelley went to London with the ladies of his party. The authorities are at variance respecting the objects, incidents, or duration of this visit. Hogg, who knew nothing of Shelley’s frequent visits to Godwin during this period, seems to have been under the impression that Shelley’s first act, after coming to town, was to seek him out; whereas the interview of reconciliation did not take place till the poet had been at least four weeks in town. Working on Hogg’s misconception, and his own erroneous assumption that Shelley must have left London for Tanyrallt on Thursday, 12th November, because, on the previous Saturday, he intended doing so, Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy concludes that Shelley’s ‘brief visit’ to town ‘lasted little more than a week,’ and that Hogg dined with the Shelleys only on one occasion during the visit; whereas the visit exceeded six weeks by a single day, and Hogg dined twice with the Shelleys at the St. James’s Coffee-house. With respect to the length of the stay in London, Mr. Kegan Paul is wrong only by a single day. Lady Shelley, of course, makes severalmistakes about the business. (1) Speaking of Shelley’s exertions for the Tremadoc embankment, she says, ‘But he did not allow his zeal to stop even here; for, accompanied by his wife, he hurried up to London to obtain further succour.’ He was accompanied by Miss Hitchener and Miss Westbrook, as well as his wife; and he went to town on other matters besides the Tremadoc embankment. (2) Speaking of the poet’s intercourse with the author ofPolitical Justice, Lady Shelley says, ‘During his visit to London, Shelley made the personal acquaintance of Godwin, with whom he lived for a time;’ whereas it is certain that, though calling frequently on Godwin and becoming very intimate with the Skinner Street family, Shelley slept at the St. James’s Coffee-house. (3) Speaking of Shelley’s intercourse with Fanny Imlay, Lady Shelley calls her Fanny Godwin, says she was ‘the philosopher’s daughter,’ and adds in a note that ‘Fanny Godwin was the only sister of Shelley’s second wife;’ whereas Mary Wollstonecraft’s illegitimate daughter, by Gilbert Imlay, had no right to Godwin’s surname, wasnotthe philosopher’s daughter, and was only the illegitimate uterine sister of Shelley’s second wife. It is curious to observe how, whilst pushing poor Claire out of all sisterly relation to Shelley’s second wife, whose sister-by-affinity she unquestionably was, Lady Shelley affiliates Mary Wollstonecraft’s illegitimate child on William Godwin, and promotes her to the dignity of being whole-sister of Shelley’s second wife. (4) Speaking of Fanny’s death, Lady Shelley says the poor girl ‘died early in 1815.’ Lady Shelley is doubly wrong in these few words; for Fanny did not die in 1815, nor did she die early in any year. She killed herself on 9th October, 1816.
Hurrying up to London (to use Lady Shelley’s expression) Shelley took rooms at the St. James’s Coffee-house, and whilst in town accomplished several objects that had quite as much to do with his trip to the capital, as his avowed purpose of winning subscribers to the Tremadoc embankment. He left Lynton with the intention of being in London in a fortnight. Set on making Godwin’s personal acquaintance, he also wished for reconcilement to Hogg. From the fact that he was a month in town before seeking him out, it may not be inferred that the poet’s desire for intercourse with his college friend was a feeble inclination. Shelley knew enough of the lawyers and their haunts to be aware that he should be only wasting his time in hunting forHogg, before the barristers and students of the Four Inns had returned to town for Michaelmas Term. He had good reason to think that Hogg, a man of rural birth and nurture, would be slaughtering pheasants till the end of the Long Vacation. Arriving in London on Sunday, 4th October, 1812, Shelley lost no time in going to Skinner Street, because he knew Godwin would be there. Whilst going, almost daily for several weeks, to Skinner Street, he kept away from the Inns of Court, till he could hope to find Hogg in one of them. On the opening of the Michaelmas Term he hastened to the Inns, discovered his old friend’s lodgings, and rushed in upon him at night, in the manner already set forth in these pages. As Hogg ‘returned from the country at the end of October, 1812’ (videHogg’sLife, Vol. ii., p. 165), Shelley might have found his old friend a day or too earlier; but he was right in thinking he would waste his time and pains in hunting for him much sooner.
For any good he could do the projectors of the embankment Shelley might as well have stayed at Tanyrallt. In promising to do much for them he had ‘talked too fast,’—a fault of which youthful and impetuous persons of both sexes are often guilty; and in due course he was punished for his fasttalkby the annoyance that came to him from the pressure, put upon him todosomething in fulfilment of his brave words. From one of his letters it seems that he made some faint attempts to get subscribers to the embankment fund in Sussex. Possibly he wrote to his uncle Pilfold and Mr. Medwin on the subject; but it is certain he received neither from them nor any one else in the county any assistance for the great scheme. ‘I see,’ he wrote to Mr. Williams of Tremadoc from the St. James’s Coffee-house on 7th November, 1812, ‘no hope of effecting, on my part, any grand or decisive scheme until the expiration of my minority,’—words comically indicative of the grand and decisive things he had promised to do for Tremadoc, as soon as he should come of age. In Sussex he met with no encouragement. The cold and unsympathetic animals of his native shire cared only for eating, drinking, and sleeping. But his fervid hopes, ardent desires, and unremitting personal exertions, were all engaged for the great cause of the Tremadoc embankment, ‘which he would desert but with his life’:—a declaration not unworthy of Mr. Micawber in his happiest moments.
At the date of this letter Shelley had not seen, nor does heappear to have written to, his particular friend, the Duke of Norfolk, on the enterprise for benefiting owners of property in and near Tremadoc; for he says in the epistle, ‘The Duke of Norfolk has just returned to London. I shall call upon him this morning, and shall spare no pains in engaging his interest, or perhaps his better feelings, in our and our country’s cause.’ If Shelley talked to the Duke of the Tremadoc embankment in the style in which he wrote about it to the Welsh agent, his Grace of Norfolk must have found it difficult to refrain from laughing outright at the youngster.
Though it is questionable whether Shelley journeyed from Tanyrallt to London with a clear purpose of dismissing Miss Hitchener from his little circle, before he should return to the Principality, there are grounds for a strong opinion that he did not travel with Portia from Lynton to Tremadoc, without discovering she was by no means the angelic person he had formerly imagined her. At Lynton, where she was mistaken for a foreigner, whilst climbing the cliffs with her Percy, this tall, thin, rather bony, somewhat masculine, slightly bearded, perceptibly moustached, all too swarthy, far too loquacious young woman had for some time retained her power over Shelley, and even given promise of drawing Harriett under her sway:—facts that did not soften Miss Westbrook to the brown-eyed and brown-skinned intruder. Before they stole away from Lynton, Portia and Eliza were at war, more often open than covert, with one another. Touring under the most favourable circumstances is necessarily attended with conditions likely to try the tempers of imperfectly congenial fellow-travellers; and the journey of the four adventurers from North Devon to North Wales cannot have disposed the ladies-at-war to think less bitterly of each other. Whilst the schoolmistress thought Eliza no worthy member of ‘Percy’s little circle,’ the gentlewoman, whose papa belonged to the highest grade of licensed victuallers, thought any circle too good for the talkative woman, whose father kept a common ale-house. It is not strange, therefore, that in London, if not at Tanyrallt, Shelley decided to banish Portia from his little circle for ever.
On receiving this sentence of extrusion, Portia turned upon her poet with a demand for pecuniary compensation. Wanting, though it must be declared, in the delicacy and highmindedness, appropriate to an incomparable Portia, this demand by aprovincial innkeeper’s daughter was not unreasonable. The demandant’s case was this:—‘When you crossed my path I had the respect of my neighbours, and a school by which I made a decent livelihood, both of which valuable things I surrendered at your earnest entreaty that I would come to you and live with youfor ever. I did not force myself on you. On the contrary, I declined your pressing invitations to come to you in Ireland. Instead of hastening to you in Wales, I asked you to come to me at Hurstpierpoint. I should not have joined you in North Devon, had you not persuaded me you could never be happy without me. A few months of it have sufficed to make you weary of my company; and now you have had all the amusement I am capable of affording you, you tell me to be off. At least, you should help me to place myself in as good a position as the one I surrendered at your request and for your pleasure.’ Shelley could not deny there was justice in the demand. To be quit of her without further quarrelling, he promised to make her an allowance. What he engaged to give in quarterly payments does not appear; but he may be assumed to have promised her forty or fifty pounds a-year. This matter having been settled, it was arranged that Miss Hitchener should spend Sunday, 15th November, 1812, with the trio—dining with them at the St. James’s Coffee-house, and bidding them farewell for ever, at the close of the evening.
Calling on the morning of that same Sunday at the St. James’s Coffee-house to see his friends, Hogg was pressed to be the fifth person at the farewell dinner. Shelley being precluded from walking with him by some special engagement, and Harriett being a sufferer from headache, that made her other than the bright and blooming Harriett with whom he had dined at the same hotel a few days earlier, Hogg was on this occasion induced to attend Eliza and Portia for a promenade in the parks before dinner. Nothing droller can be found in Hogg’s book than his account of his walk in the parks with the brown demon (Miss Hitchener) on his right arm, and the black diamond (Miss Westbrook) on his left. Moving between the belligerent women, Hogg had reason to admire the tone of haughty contempt with which the Black Diamond tossed her insults at the Brown Demon, and the meek contumacy with which Miss Hitchener returned her enemy’s fire. For awhile the fighting was sharp; but in little more than half-an-hourthe victory was with the Brown Demon, whose galling meekness and poisonous malice fairly silenced her insolent foe. The Black Diamond turning sulky and silent, Hogg gave his ear for the rest of the walk to the Brown Demon, who poured from her bearded lips the stream of gentle eloquence that afforded him new views on the rights of women.
On their return from this pleasant ‘airing’ in the parks, as they were crossing the threshold of the St. James’s Coffee-house, Miss Eliza Westbrook said viciously to Hogg, ‘How could you talk to that nasty creature so much? How could you permit her to prate so long to you? Why did you encourage her? Harriett will be seriously displeased with you, I assure you; she will be very angry!’
True to her mission, Portia strove to illuminate Percy’s little circle to the last moment of her connexion with it. Hogg happening to refer to the rights of the gentler sex, Miss Hitchener reopened her parable after tea and discoursed eloquently on the high theme, even to the moment of the arrival of the hackney-coach, which had been summoned to remove her from her auditors for ever. Whilst the lady was delivering this final oration, Percy quitted his chair, and taking up a position before her drank-in the musical utterances of her wisdom with a comical show of approval.
If Shelley softened to Portia at the moment of parting, the weakness was transient; for he soon learnt to speak as well as think of her with a resentment that might almost be styled ferocious. As the hour approached for the first of the quarterly payments he rose to rage at the mere thought of the hateful creature.
‘The Brown Demon,’ he wrote to Hogg from Tanyrallt on 3rd December, 1812, ‘as we call our late tormentor and schoolmistress, must receive her stipend.... She is an artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste, was never so great, as after living four months with her as an inmate. What would Hell be, were such a woman in Heaven?’
‘The Brown Demon,’ he wrote to Hogg from Tanyrallt on 3rd December, 1812, ‘as we call our late tormentor and schoolmistress, must receive her stipend.... She is an artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste, was never so great, as after living four months with her as an inmate. What would Hell be, were such a woman in Heaven?’
‘Hermaphroditical beast of a woman!’ Surely these are strangely strong words for a chivalric gentleman to apply to a woman, whatever her failings may have been!
Whatever disappointments Shelley encountered during this sojourn in London, none of them can have come to him from histreatment in Skinner Street. Welcomed by Godwin with open arms, Shelley entered at once on personal relations with the philosopher, that accorded in every particular with the relations they had maintained towards one another by written words. Coming to the eminent man of letters for sympathy, counsel, and instruction, Shelley received what he sought. So much pitifully snobbish stuff has been written about the intercourse of William Godwin and Shelley, as though the author ofPolitical Justicewas greatly honoured and his dwelling glorified by the visits of the heir to a Sussex baronetcy, that it is necessary to remind the reader of the relation which Godwin condescended to hold towards Shelley, and of the relation in which Shelley was reasonably proud to stand in towards Godwin. The position of Godwin towards Shelley was that of a teacher, patron, benefactor. The position of Shelley towards Godwin was that of a pupil and worshiper. And it is to the credit of both that each of the scholars occupied his respective position gracefully, till one of them was guilty of perhaps the wildest extravagance of domestic treason recorded in the annals of men of letters. Whilst Godwin’s condescension and kindness to his youthfulprotégéhad no tincture of arrogance, Shelley’s acknowledgments of his teacher’s kindness were rendered in terms of generous homage and grateful devotion.
At the same time Godwin’s house was open at all hours to Shelley. Let it be observed (for the servility of certain writers requires the clear statement of a matter about which good taste would rather be silent) that, though the Godwins were far from prosperous, the Skinner-Street household was a family no man of culture and sensibility could enter without feeling himself in the home of gentle people. If Godwin looked like a Dissenting minister, and showed signs of his lowly origin, to look into his eyes and to listen to his speech was to recognize a man of unusual intellect. A woman of gentle birth and literary achievements, Mrs. Godwin, somewhat too stout for elegance but none too massive for matronly dignity, was a bright, clever, vivacious, charming woman in society, though she had a faulty temper. Possessing no facial beauty apart from the agreeable expression of her countenance, the eldest daughter of the house (Fanny Imlay) had the voice, carriage, and air of an agreeable and well-mannered young gentlewoman. Charles Clairmont was at Edinburgh when Shelley made the personal acquaintance of theSkinner-Street Godwins; but had the old Charterhouse boy, of comely face and quick brain, been at home in the October and November of 1812, Shelley would have met a young man, qualified by nature and training for an honourable career. Godwin’s son by his second wife was a promising little fellow. The fifteen-years-old damsels, Claire and Mary, were already coming into possession of the wit and personal attractiveness that distinguished them a few years later. Mainly dependent though they were for their food and raiment and pleasures on the shop, over which they had their home, the members of this curiously composed family might be rated with thebourgeoisiefrom one point of view; but in manner, taste, tone, intellectual interests and aspirations, they were as much gentle people as Shelley’s more fortunate relatives.
Beyond thinking them a pair of bright and winsome children, Shelley in the autumn of 1812 does not seem to have taken much notice of Claire and Mary; but the evidence is abundant that he was no less strongly than agreeably interested in Fanny Imlay. Being thus interested in her, it was a matter of course with Shelley to press her to correspond with him, in order that he might know her more intimately, and contribute to the development of her intellectual and moral nature. Probably he invited her to a correspondence, in the hope that her letters would prove a sufficient substitute for the diverting letters he had for so many months received from the Brown Demon, whose longest epistles for the future would be a mere acknowledgment of her quarterly stipend, should it ever be paid to her. Instead of accepting this invitation with alacrity, Fanny Imlay demurred to the proposal on considerations of propriety. She would have accepted such an invitation from Harriett with glee, but hesitated to enter on a sentimental correspondence with Harriett’s husband; the hesitation being due to scruples, that would not have troubled her, had she been educated in accordance with the theories and proposals of her mother’sRights of Woman. These scruples were not the less influential with Fanny in December of 1812, because she had good reason to think that Shelley and Mrs. Shelley, after enjoying the free run of the Skinner-Street house during their stay in town, showed her father and mother scant courtesy in returning to Wales, without bidding them good-bye.
Notwithstanding his practice of asking young women tocorrespond with him, Shelley would scarcely have asked Fanny to write to him, without feeling an interest in her. Nor is it probable that he made the request, without thinking he had rendered himself an object of her friendly regard. Instead of indicating indifference, the hesitancy she displayed in acceding to his entreaty may be regarded as evidence, that she was conscious of feeling too warmly for the young man, who after throwing himself on her family for sympathy and social diversion, had gone away from them so lightly. Her resentment of his neglect to render her family the courtesy of a formal adieu, may also be taken as evidence that she was interested in him.
It is no new story that just four years after Shelley made her acquaintance, Fanny killed herself at Swansea. It is no new story that Claire was of opinion that Fanny so destroyed herself, from love of Shelley. Field Place is sure that Claire never really believed any such thing, but was only fibbing in her usual wicked way, when she uttered the story. It is curious to observe, how in the opinion of Field Place, Claire is by turns a liar and a witness of the highest credibility. When she says anything that fits-in with the biographical romance, which is to be substituted for Shelley’s true history, she is a virtuous witness; but when she utters anything at discord with the fictitious narrative, she becomes a miracle of mendacity. When she writes, or seems to have written, that she took Shelley and Mary against their will from London to Geneva; took them there without letting them know she was Byron’s mistress; and, living with them there, in the capacity of Byron’s mistress, managed matters so cleverly that they had no suspicion of her intimacy with Byron—statements so preposterous that they are not to be believed on any conceivable evidence—she is declared a witness of the highest credibility; and Mr. Froude is told-off to declare the preposterous statements must be true, because Claire made them in a withheld document. On the other hand, when this exemplary witness makes the quite credible statement, that Fanny committed suicide for love of Shelley, she is declared a mendacious witness, and Mr. Kegan Paul is instructed to write inWilliam Godwin; his Friends and Contemporaries:
‘The theory, which owes its origin to Miss Clairmont, that Fanny was in love with Shelley, and that his flight with her sister prompted self-destruction, is one above all others absolutely groundless. ToShelley, as to Mary, she was an attached sister; she was never in love with him, either before or after her sister’s flight.’
‘The theory, which owes its origin to Miss Clairmont, that Fanny was in love with Shelley, and that his flight with her sister prompted self-destruction, is one above all others absolutely groundless. ToShelley, as to Mary, she was an attached sister; she was never in love with him, either before or after her sister’s flight.’
How can Mr. Kegan Paul be justified in making this sweeping statement? He does not offer evidence, and can have no sufficient evidence, in support of the comprehensive assertion. At best his statement can be nothing more than Mrs. Shelley’s confident opinion, that her sister was never in love with Shelley. Which of the two, Mary or Claire, was the more likely to know the truth? Mary, who, after her flight with Shelley, saw but little of her sister Fanny; or Claire, who between the elopement in July 1814 and the spring of 1816, saw a great deal of Fanny? Mary, from whom Fanny, if she loved Shelley, would be careful to conceal the cause of her deepening melancholy; or Claire, to whom Fanny may have confided or unconsciously revealed the secret of her wretchedness?
‘The theory’ (as Mr. Kegan Paul calls it) certainly was not ‘absolutely groundless.’ (1) By inviting her to correspond with him, Shelley showed a strong interest in Fanny, and paid her a compliment which would be likely to make her take an interest in him, if she had felt none in him before, or to deepen any concern, she had already entertained for him. (2) Their intercourse in the ensuing year was of a nature to stimulate and feed her interest in him. (3) From the date of her sister’s flight with Shelley, her natural disposition to melancholy steadily deepened:—a fact accordant with the notion that she loved Shelley.
On the other hand, it must be remembered, that the increase of her melancholy may be otherwise accounted for. The affectionate girl may well have fretted about the shame coming to the whole Godwin household from her sister’s elopement with another woman’s husband. She may also have made herself greatly miserable about the circumstances of her mother’s story, which most likely came to her shortly before her sister’s flight. Still, the steady increase of her gloom from the end of July 1814, to the 9th October, 1816, is a ground for regarding Claire’s view of the case respectfully.
Unlike Field Place (to whom Claire is a sufficient witness to prove anything they wish people to believe), I cannot, having regard to her unquestionable faculty for fibbing, deem her unsupported testimony adequate for the settlement of any nicely perplexing question. Having regard, however, to Claire’sbetter means of observation, and several matters giving at least a colour of probability to her view, I would on this matter rather rely on Claire, who sometimes told fibs, than on the Mary Godwin, who sometimes said things that were the reverse of fact. In the absence of sufficient evidence for a confident conclusion, I hold my judgment in suspense with respect to the question, whether Fanny’s death resulted from the cause to which Claire attributed it. And I advise the reader to do likewise.
(6.)—Tanyrallt.
Returning to Tanyrallt in the middle of November, 1812, Shelley remained there till some day following closely on 26th February, 1813, and left Carnarvonshire for Dublin on 6th March, 1813. Beginning somewhere about the middle of September 1812, the whole term of his domestication in the county of Carnarvon (including the six weeks’ stay in London) was something less than six months. Before the trip to town he had on his hands his wife, Miss Westbrook, and Miss Hitchener. Whilst he and Harriett stayed at the St. James’ Coffee-house, Miss Westbrook probably stayed chiefly at her father’s house, so as not to increase greatly the charges her brother-in-law was at in the hotel. Miss Hitchener also may be presumed to have visited her friends in Sussex, or elsewhere, whilst Shelley was enjoying the society of the Godwins, so that he was at a smaller expense for her than he would have been, had she stayed the whole six weeks at the West-End hotel. Still the cost to Shelley of the locomotion of so large a party from Tanyrallt to London, and of so long a sojourn in town, must have been greatly in excess of his narrow means.
After the return to Wales, till the end of February 1813, he lived at Tanyrallt Lodge (for which he had engaged to pay a ‘large rent’) with his wife, sister-in-law, and three female servants. At the same time he bought expensive books of or through Mr. Hookham of Bond Street, incurred a considerable debt for the printing ofQueen Mab, and put himself under an obligation to pay Miss Hitchener a quarterly stipend. These items of expenditure being taken into account, it may be computed that, from the middle of September 1812, to the beginning of March 1813, he lived, at the least, at the rate of 1000l.a-year; no account being taken of the 500l.which he had promised to give to the Tremadoc Embankment when he should come of age. This sum being added to the total of his expenditureduring less than six calendar months, it follows that the young gentleman, with only 400l.a-year, was for the same term living at the rate of 2000l.a-year,—was in fact living beyond his sufficient income by 400 per cent. It is certain therefore that the letter, in which Godwin warned his young friend against the inconveniences of financial extravagance, was no untimely intrusion of needless advice. Following so closely on the admonitory letter, and the epistle in which he declared his freedom from the weakness imputed to him, this outbreak of prodigality shows how cautious the poet’s biographers should be in assuming that his actions corresponded closely with his words.
Whilst living so much beyond his means, Shelley experienced several annoyances in the lovely neighbourhood where he had, for a brief moment, hoped to be happy for ever. Having by the end of the year exhausted the excitement of figuring before the people of Tremadoc as a benefactor, who would never desert them nor grow indifferent to their interests, he discovered in his neighbours the usual qualities of countryfolk, whether they live on the Welsh coast, or in North Devon, or in the Rapes of Sussex. By no means devoid of intellectual narrowness, they were animated with religious bigotry. Believing in Christianity, they mistrusted and disliked those who scoffed at it. Whilst the gentry were proud and grasping, the peasantry were poor and cringing. The farmers were ignorant fools, the squires were (in Shelley’s opinion) insufferably dull fellows. ‘The society in Wales,’ he wrote from Tanyrallt to Hogg, even as early as 3rd December, 1812, ‘is very stupid. They are all aristocrats and saints; but that, I tell you, I do not mind in the least; the unpleasant part of the business is, that they hunt people to death who are not so likewise.’
The result, or rather the fruitlessness, of Shelley’s excursion to London was, of course, a great disappointment to the Tremadoc populace, and to others of the gentry, besides Mr. Madocks and Mr. Williams. Instead of returning with a handsome list of subscribers, headed by his particular friend the Duke of Norfolk, he was constrained to acknowledge he had not found a single subscriber in London or Sussex. It was clear to the Welshmen that the young gentleman had been talking too fast, and that they had been taken-in by his plausible speech. Angry with themselves for being such simpletons, some of them were disposed to punish him for their own folly. In his annoyance at feeling that his Tremadoc friends had discovered the value of his grandtalk, Shelley wrote bitterly, from Tanyrallt on 7th February, 1813, to Hogg of ‘the variety of discomfitures’ coming to him from ‘the embankment affairs, in which he had thoughtlessly engaged!’
Indications are not wanting that for a brief while after coming to Tremadoc, Shelley was less loquacious than he had been for some years about those of his views on politics and religion, that could not fail to be as offensive to the people of Carnarvonshire as they had proved to persons of other counties. But it was not in his nature to be so discreet for many weeks together. Hence it came to pass that before leaving Wales he was superlatively distasteful to several of his Tanyrallt neighbours on account of his infidelity and ultra-radicalism. By some means or other one of his Irish pamphlets fell into the hands of a certain Mr. Leeson, who, discovering treason in the essay, sent it up to the Government, and then went about the neighbourhood, saying the author of the pamphlet was a pestilent Republican, who ought to be driven out of the country. Shelley and Harriett tried to persuade themselves that Mr. Leeson’s animosity against them was due to their firmness in refusing to receive him within their doors, because they knew him to be ‘malignant and cruel to the greatest degree,’—a view of the case that, on coming to Mr. Leeson’s ears, cannot have rendered him less desirous of ridding the neighbourhood of those pestilent Shelleys.
In one of the earlier weeks (probably towards the end of the second week) of November, 1812, whilst the Shelleys were still at the St. James’s Coffee-house, Hogg appears to have urged his friend for pecuniary ends to make overtures for a reconciliation with his father, and to appeal to the Duke of Norfolk for his good offices in rendering the overtures successful. It being obvious to Hogg that the Shelleys were living greatly beyond their means, he may well have pressed this scheme upon them as the only plan of preserving them from a scandalous exposure of their financial troubles. The advice thus given in the first instance by word of mouth, was renewed by words of the pen, to which Shelley (more truth-loving, be it remembered, than most men) replied from Tanyrallt, on 3rd December, 1812, in a letter, containing these remarkable words:—‘Iwill, this instant, sit down and do penance for my involuntary crime by writing a long wheedling letter to his Grace, and you shallbe informed of the success of the experiment.’ At the same time, whilst avowing his despair of influencing his father by any but selfish considerations, Shelley declared his intention of approaching old Killjoy with an air of good humour and a conciliatory countenance, and essaying to conquer his austerity with civil speeches. ‘When I see him,’ he remarks, ‘though I shall say the civilest things imaginable, yet I shall not look as if I liked him, because I do not like him.’
To wheedle, is to entice, coax, cajole with flattering and false words for the attainment of an end. To write a wheedling letter is to write false and flattering words for the attainment of an end. Such a letter Shelley coolly declares his intention of writing to his father’s patron, in order to get money by doing so. At the same time he coolly declares his intention to say ‘the civilest imaginable things’ to his father (whilst hating him cordially), in order to get money out of his pocket.
An incident of English public affairs to stir Shelley greatly during his residence at Tanyrallt was the punishment of the Hunts for libelling the Prince Regent in theExaminernewspaper, the sentence on each of the brothers being a fine of 500l.with imprisonment for two years. Though the facts of the case have been strangely misrepresented (the virulent libel on the Prince Regent in his private character having been minimized into a saucy reference to his age and corpulence), there is no need to set them forth precisely in this chapter. Whether the libel was well deserved (as Mr. Rossetti avers, whilst admitting with his usual honesty the extreme virulence of the attack) is a question beside the main question, viz., whether the ministers responsible for the efficient government of the country would have been justified in allowing clever and resolute journalists to use such violent and scurrilous language, in order to inflame the public against the individual who was theipso factosovereign. On this question no opinion is here offered. It is enough to record that the poet (by this time slightly acquainted with Leigh Hunt) felt that the Hunts had been punished with excessive severity, and should be relieved of the pecuniary part of their punishment. Acting on this sentiment Shelley wrote, on some day of February, 1813, from Tanyrallt, to Mr. Hookham of Old Bond Street,—‘I am rather poor at present, but I have 20l.which is not immediately wanted. Pray begin a subscription for the Hunts; put myname down for that sum, and, when I hear that you have complied with my request, I will send it to you.... P S.—... On second thoughts I enclose the 20l.’
Applauding Shelley for subscribing 500l.for the Tremadoc embankment, Lady Shelley applauds him for coming forward with 20l.‘to vindicate and support an oppressed fellow-struggler for liberty and justice.’ A matter, to be mentioned in connexion with the gift to the Hunts, is that Shelley was in debt to divers of the petty tradesmen of his neighbourhood, who, in the opinion of some readers, may have had a stronger claim to the money so gallantly sent off to the journalists in trouble; his debts to small tradesmen being the more worthy of notice, because they did not give him their goods on the understanding that they should wait for payment till he came of age.
Shelley’s letters from Tanyrallt show that he was reading history and philosophy in the last month of 1812 and the opening months of 1813. The books sent him in this period by his London bookseller comprise works by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Spinoza, and Kant, it being worthy of notice that, whilst ordering Greek classics, he requires editions having ‘Latin or English translations printed opposite.’
At the same time he is at work onQueen Mab. In a former chapter reference was made to metrical compositions, that were in course of time expanded and worked intoQueen Mab. But though there are grounds for a confident opinion, that it comprised a considerable quantity of his earlier verse, the first of Shelley’s compositions to be mentioned amongst the fruits of his poetical genius, was the production of 1812 and the opening months of 1813.Queen Mabwas unquestionably the work of which he wrote on 18th August, 1812, from Lynton to Mr. Thomas Hookham: ‘I conceive I have matter for six more cantos.... Indeed, a poem is safe; the iron-souled Attorney-General would scarcely dare to attack.’ Writing of the same poem from Tanyrallt to Hogg on 7th February, 1813, he says, ‘Mabhas gone on but slowly, although she is nearly finished.’ On a later day of the same month he wrote to Mr. Hookham, ‘Queen Mabis finished and transcribed.’ The use made of old material does not touch the fact that the poem was mainly written in his twenty-first year, instead of his nineteenth year. When he wrote (June, 1821) in theExaminerthe words, ‘apoem, entitledQueen Mab, was written by me at the age of eighteen—I dare say in a sufficiently intemperate spirit,’ he was guilty of an error to be grouped with his misstatements to Godwin, respecting the time when he wroteZastrozziandSt. Irvyne. After announcing the completion of the poem to Hookham, the poet adds, ‘I am now preparing the notes, which shall be long and philosophical.’ It is worthy of remark that he was working upon the notes when he was at a distance from Godwin, who, on no evidence whatever, has been declared personally accountable for the note touching love and marriage,—a note comprising sentiments which Godwin had promulgated when Shelley was playing with his corals, and abandoned before the close of the last century.
The most agreeable aspect of Shelley’s life at Tanyrallt affords a view of his intercourse with his wife. As she gave birth to Shelley’s eldest child, Ianthe Eliza, in London, on 28th June, 1813, Harriett, at the turn of the year 1812-13, had for some time been in a state of health, to animate Shelley with a renewal of tenderness for her, and to quicken their mutual affection. Stirred with the hope of becoming a father in the ensuing summer, the poet who had longed at Dublin and Nantgwillt for the delights of conversation with his philosophical school-mistress, now found in his wife the sufficient mate she had not been to him either in Ireland or at Keswick. Possibly his discovery of a Brown Demon in the whilom angelical Miss Hitchener was, in some degree, accountable for his contentment with the wife who promised soon to give him an heir. Anyhow there can be no question that the moderate satisfaction with which he may be said to have regarded his bride for several months after the subsidence of the first excitements of the honeymoon, was now replaced by a state of feeling that caused him to write of her with mingled pride and gladness. The letter in which, whilst defending her from the imputation of being ‘a fine lady,’ he spoke admiringly of ‘the uncalculating connexion of her thoughts and speech,’ was dated to Fanny Imlay on 10th December, 1812. In a letter of later date, referring to his unconcern whether he came to terms with his father, he associates Harriett’s happiness with his own contentment;—‘Harriett is very happy as we are, and I am very happy.’ Though he writes complainingly in a yet later letter (7th February, 1813) of vexation coming to him from ‘the embankmentaffair,’ he speaks of his home as a place where he forgets the annoyance, and knows nought but joy in Harriett’s society;—‘for when I come home to Harriett I am the happiest of the happy.’ Whilst reading Greek classics with the help of ‘cribs,’ he is teaching Harriett Latin so as to give her a general notion of Horace’sOdesand Ovid’sMetamorphoses. ‘Harriett,’ he writes to Hogg on the 7th February, 1813, ‘has a bold scheme of writing you a Latin letter. If you have an Ovid’sMetamorphoses, she will thank you to bring it.’
Whilst Hogg (who had promised to stay with his friends at Tanyrallt in the next month) is thus invited to take part and interest in her higher education, Harriett is corresponding with the man who (according to the Shelleyan idolaters) was guilty of trying to seduce her some sixteen months since. Even to these idolaters it must appear that Shelley’s confidence in his wife’s goodness was perfect, when he encouraged her to live in affectionate intimacy with the man whom he still (according to the idolaters) thought guilty of having so recently essayed to seduce her. By them also it must be admitted that this confidence in her goodness was at Tanyrallt associated in Shelley’s breast with lively affection for her. The happy state of feeling was in its brightest season and tenderest hour when Shelley produced the famous dedicatory lines ofQueen Mab.
‘To Harriet* * * * *‘Whose is the love that, gleaming through the world,Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?Whose is the warm and partial praise,Virtue’s most sweet reward?Beneath whose looks did my reviving soulRiper in truth and virtuous daring grow?Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,And loved mankind the more?Harriet! on thine:—thou wert my purer mind;Thou wert the inspiration of my song;Thine are these early wilding flowers,Though garlanded by me.Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;And know, though time may change and years may roll,Each floweret gathered in my heartIt consecrates to thine.’
In representing that these verses were written in 1810, and addressed in the first instance to Harriett Grove, Medwin committed the most ludicrous blunder of his unreliable book;—the mistake, moreover, that, of all his multitudinous blunders about Shelley, is most easily shown to be a mistake. (1) The critical reader has only to compare these verses with the puerile sets of rhymes inSt. Irvyneto be satisfied that in 1810 Shelley could not have written them, to save his own life or compass his father’s death. (2) The first two stanzas are so completely out of harmony with the certain facts of Shelley’s pursuit of his cousin’s affection, as to prove conclusively that she was not in his mind when he wrote the verses. Instead of ‘gleaming through the world,’ Harriett Grove’s love of her cousin was less than apparent even to his own sister. Instead of warding off the poisonous arrow of the world’s scorn, the world had no sooner displayed a disposition to speak scornfully of him, than Harriett Grove told him to go about his business. Instead of speaking of him with ‘warm and partial praise,’ Harriett Grove never discovered anything to commend in him. Shelley and Harriett Grove had parted company for ever, months before he had endured the disgrace, from whose withering effects he describes himself as recovering under the sympathetic looks of the Harriett to whom the poem is addressed. (3) On the other hand, the descriptive lines are appropriate to the circumstances under which he won Harriett’s love, and she gave him her heart, whilst social disgrace was new to him. (4) In June, 1821, though forgetful of the exact year of his life in whichQueen Mabwas written, Shelley remembered so clearly having dedicated the poem to his first wife that he wrote from Italy to Mr. Ollier in that month:—