Part 36

In the spring of 1810 Shelley, now in his eighteenth year, entered University College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner. He had already written novels and poems; a poem on the Wandering Jew, in seven or eight cantos, he sent to Campbell, and was told by Campbell, that there were but two good lines in it. He had solicited the correspondence of Mrs. Hemans, then Felicia Browne and unmarried; he had fallen in love with a charming cousin, Harriet Grove. In the autumn of 1810 he found a publisher for his verse; he also found a friend in a very clever and free-minded commoner of his college, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who has admirably described the Shelley of those Oxford days, with his chemistry, his eccentric habits, his charm of look and character, his conversation, his shrill discordant voice. Shelley read incessantly. Hume’s _Essays_ produced a powerful impression on him; his free speculation led him to what his father, and worse still his cousin Harriet, thought “detestable principles”; his cousin and family became estranged from him. He, on his part, became more and more incensed against the “bigotry” and “intolerance” which produced such estrangement. “Here I swear, and as I break my oaths, may Infinity, Eternity, blast me—here I swear that never will I forgive intolerance.” At the beginning of 1811 he prepared and published what he called a “leaflet for letters,” having for its title _The Necessity of Atheism_. He sent copies to all the bishops, to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, and to the heads of houses. On Lady Day he was summoned before the authorities of his College, refused to answer the question whether he had written _The Necessity of Atheism_, told the Master and Fellows that “their proceedings would become a court of inquisitors but not free men in a free country,” and was expelled for contumacy. Hogg wrote a letter of remonstrance to the authorities was in his turn summoned before them and questioned as to his share in the “leaflet,” and, refusing to answer, he also was expelled.

Shelley settled with Hogg in lodgings in London. His father, excusably indignant, was not a wise man and managed his son ill. His plan of recommending Shelley to read Paley’s _Natural Theology_, and of _reading it with him himself_, makes us smile. Shelley, who about this time wrote of his younger sister, then at school at Clapham, “There are some hopes of this dear little girl, she would be a divine little scion of infidelity if I could get hold of her,” was not to have been cured by Paley’s _Natural Theology_ administered through Mr. Timothy Shelley. But by the middle of May Shelley’s father had agreed to allow him two hundred pounds a year. Meanwhile in visiting his sisters at their school in Clapham, Shelley made the acquaintance of a schoolfellow of theirs, Harriet Westbrook. She was a beautiful and lively girl, with a father who had kept a tavern in Mount Street, but had now retired from business, and one sister much older than herself, who encouraged in every possible way the acquaintance of her sister of sixteen with the heir to a baronetcy and a great estate. Soon Shelley heard that Harriet met with cold looks at her school for associating with an atheist; his generosity and his ready indignation against “intolerance” were roused. In the summer Harriet wrote to him that she was persecuted not at school only but at home also, that she was lonely and miserable, and would gladly put an end to her life. Shelley went to see her; she owned her love for him, and he engaged himself to her. He told his cousin Charles Grove that his happiness had been blighted when the other Harriet, Charles’s sister, cast him off; that now the only thing worth living for was self-sacrifice. Harriet’s persecutors became yet more troublesome, and Shelley, at the end of August, went off with her to Edinburgh and they were married. The entry in the register is this:—

“_August 28, 1811._—Percy Bysshe Shelley, farmer, Sussex, and Miss Harriet Westbrook, St. Andrew Church Parish, daughter of Mr. John Westbrook, London.”

After five weeks in Edinburgh the young farmer and his wife came southwards and took lodgings at York, under the shadow of what Shelley calls that “gigantic pile of superstition,” the Minster. But his friend Hogg was in a lawyer’s office in York, and Hogg’s society made the Minster endurable. Mr. Timothy Shelley’s happiness in his son was naturally not increased by the runaway marriage; he stopped his allowance, and Shelley determined to visit “this thoughtless man,” as he calls his parent, and to “try the force of truth” upon him. Nothing could be effected; Shelley’s mother, too, was now against him. He returned to York to find that in his absence his friend Hogg had been making love to Harriet, who had indignantly repulsed him. Shelley was shocked, but after a “terrible day” of explanation from Hogg, he “fully, freely pardoned him,” promised to retain him still as “his friend, his bosom friend,” and “hoped soon to convince him how lovely virtue was.” But for the present it seemed better to separate. In November he and Harriet, with her sister Eliza, took a cottage at Keswick. Shelley was now in great straits for money; the great Sussex neighbor of the Shelleys, the Duke of Norfolk, interposed in his favor, and his father and grandfather seem to have offered him at this time an income of £2000 a year, if he would consent to entail the family estate. Shelley indignantly refused to “forswear his principles,” by accepting “a proposal so insultingly hateful.” But in December his father agreed, though with an ill grace, to grant him his allowance of £200 a year again, and Mr. Westbrook promised to allow a like sum to his daughter. So after four months of marriage the Shelleys began 1812 with an income of £400 a year.

Early in February they left Keswick and proceeded to Dublin, where Shelley, who had prepared an address to the Catholics, meant to “devote himself towards forwarding the great ends of virtue and happiness in Ireland.” Before leaving Keswick he wrote to William Godwin, “the regulator and former of his mind,” making profession of his mental obligations to him, of his respect and veneration, and soliciting Godwin’s friendship. A correspondence followed; Godwin pronounced his young disciple’s plans for “disseminating the doctrines of philanthropy and freedom” in Ireland to be unwise; Shelley bowed to his mentor’s decision and gave up his Irish campaign, quitting Dublin on the 4th of April 1812. He and Harriet wandered first to Nant-Gwillt in South Wales, near the upper Wye, and from thence after a month or two to Lynmouth in North Devon, where he busied himself with his poem of _Queen Mab_, and with sending to sea boxes and bottles containing a _Declaration of Rights_ by him, in the hope that the winds and waves might carry his doctrines where they would do good. But his Irish servant, bearing the prophetic name of Healy, posted the _Declaration_ on the walls of Barnstaple and was taken up; Shelley found himself watched and no longer able to enjoy Lynmouth in peace. He moved in September, 1812, to Tremadoc, in North Wales, where he threw himself ardently into an enterprise for recovering a great stretch of drowned land from the sea. But at the beginning of October he and Harriet visited London, and Shelley grasped Godwin by the hand at last. At once an intimacy arose, but the future Mary Shelley—Godwin’s daughter by his first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft—was absent on a visit in Scotland when the Shelleys arrived in London. They became acquainted, however, with the second Mrs. Godwin, on whom we have Charles Lamb’s friendly comment: “A very disgusting woman, and wears green spectacles!”; with the amiable Fanny, Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter by Imlay, before her marriage with Godwin; and probably also with Jane Clairmont, the second Mrs. Godwin’s daughter by a first marriage, and herself, afterwards the mother of Byron’s Allegra. Complicated relationships, as in the Theban story! and there will be not wanting, presently, something of the Theban horrors. During this visit of six weeks to London Shelley renewed his intimacy with Hogg; in the middle of November he returned to Tremadoc. There he remained until the end of February 1813, perfectly happy with Harriet, reading widely, and working at his _Queen Mab_ and at the notes to that poem. On the 26th of February an attempt was made, or so he fancied, to assassinate him, and in high nervous excitement he hurriedly left Tremadoc and repaired with Harriet to Dublin again. On this visit to Ireland he saw Killarney, but early in April he and Harriet were back again in London.

There in June 1813 their daughter Ianthe was born; at the end of July they moved to Bracknell, in Berkshire. They had for neighbors there a Mrs. Boinville and her married daughter, whom Shelley found to be fascinating women, with a culture which to his wife was altogether wanting. Cornelia Turner, Mrs. Boinville’s daughter, was melancholy, required consolation, and found it, Hogg tells us, in Petrarch’s poetry; “Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest melancholy as every true poet ought.” Peacock, a man of keen and cultivated mind, joined the circle at Bracknell. He and Harriet, not yet eighteen, used sometimes to laugh at the gushing sentiment and enthusiasm of the Bracknell circle; Harriet had also given offense to Shelley by getting a wet-nurse for her child; in Professor Dowden’s words, “the beauty of Harriet’s motherly relation to her babe was marred in Shelley’s eyes by the introduction into his home of a hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother’s tenderest office.” But in September Shelley wrote a sonnet to his child which expresses his deep love for the mother also, to whom in March, 1814, he was remarried in London, lest the Scotch marriage should prove to have been in any point irregular. Harriet’s sister Eliza, however, whom Shelley had at first treated with excessive deference, had now become hateful to him. And in the very month of the London marriage we find him writing to Hogg that he is staying with the Boinvilles, having “escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself.” Cornelia Turner, he adds, whom he once thought cold and reserved, “is the reverse of this, as she is the reverse of everything bad; she inherits all the divinity of her mother.” Then comes a stanza, beginning

“Thy dewy looks sink in my breast, Thy gentle words stir poison there.”

It has no meaning, he says; it is only written in thought. “It is evident from this pathetic letter,” says Professor Dowden, “that Shelley’s happiness in his home had been fatally stricken.” This is a curious way of putting the matter. To me what is evident is rather that Shelley had, to use Professor Dowden’s words again—for in these things of high sentiment I gladly let him speak for me—“a too vivid sense that here (in the society of the Boinville family) were peace and joy and gentleness and love.” In April come some more verses to the Boinvilles, which contain the first good stanza that Shelley wrote. In May comes a poem to Harriet, of which Professor Dowden’s prose analysis is as poetic as the poem itself. “If she has something to endure (from the Boinville attachment), it is not much, and all her husband’s weal hangs upon her loving endurance, for see how pale and wildered anguish has made him!” Harriet, unconvinced, seems to have gone off to Bath in resentment, from whence, however, she kept up a constant correspondence with Shelley, who was now of age, and busy in London raising money on post-obit bonds for his own wants and those of the friend and former of his mind, Godwin.

And now, indeed, it was to become true that if from the inflammable Shelley’s devotion to the Boinville family poor Harriet had had “something to endure,” yet this was “not much” compared with what was to follow. At Godwin’s house Shelley met Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his future wife, then in her seventeenth year. She was a gifted person, but, as Professor Dowden says, she “had breathed during her entire life an atmosphere of free thought.” On the 8th of June Hogg called at Godwin’s with Shelley; Godwin was out, but “a door was partially and softly opened, a thrilling voice called ‘Shelley!’ a thrilling voice answered ‘Mary!’” Shelley’s summoner was “a very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan.” Already they were “Shelley” and “Mary” to one another; “before the close of June they knew and felt,” says Professor Dowden, “that each was to the other inexpressibly dear.” The churchyard of St. Pancras, where her mother was buried, became “a place now doubly sacred to Mary, since on one eventful day Bysshe here poured forth his griefs, his hopes, his love, and she, in sign of everlasting union, placed her hand in his.” In July Shelley gave her a copy of _Queen Mab_, printed but not published, and under the tender dedication to Harriet he wrote: “Count Slobendorf was about to marry a woman who, attracted solely by his fortune, proved her selfishness by deserting him in prison.” Mary added an inscription on her part: “I love the author beyond all powers of expression ... by that love we have promised to each other, although I may not be yours I can never be another’s,”—and a good deal more to the same effect.

Amid these excitements Shelley was for some days without writing to Harriet, who applied to Hookham the publisher to know what had happened. She was expecting her confinement; “I always fancy something dreadful has happened,” she wrote, “if I do not hear from him ... I cannot endure this dreadful state of suspense.” Shelley then wrote to her, begging her to come to London; and when she arrived there, he told her the state of his feelings, and proposed separation. The shock made Harriet ill; and Shelley, says Peacock, “between his old feelings towards Harriet, and his new passion for Mary, showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind ‘suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection.’” Godwin grew uneasy about his daughter, and after a serious talk with her, wrote to Shelley. Under such circumstances, Professor Dowden tells us, “to youth, swift and decisive measures seem the best.” In the early morning of the 28th of July 1814 “Mary Godwin stepped across her father’s threshold into the summer air,” she and Shelley went off together in a post-chaise to Dover, and from thence crossed to the Continent.

On the 14th of August the fugitives were at Troyes on their way to Switzerland. From Troyes Shelley addressed a letter to Harriet, of which the best description I can give is that it is precisely the letter which a man in the writer’s circumstances should not have written.

“MY DEAREST HARRIET (he begins). I write to you from this detestable town; I write to show that I do not forget you; I write to urge you to come to Switzerland, where you will at last find one firm and constant friend to whom your interests will be always dear—by whom your feelings will never wilfully be injured. From none can you expect this but me—all else are either unfeeling or selfish, or have beloved friends of their own.”

Then follows a description of his journey with Mary from Paris, “through a fertile country, neither interesting from the character of its inhabitants nor the beauty of the scenery, with a mule to carry our baggage, as Mary, who has not been sufficiently well to walk, fears the fatigue of walking.” Like St. Paul to Timothy, he ends with commissions:—

“I wish you to bring with you the two deeds which Tahourdin has to prepare for you, as also a copy of the settlement. Do not part with any of your money. But what shall be done about the books? You can consult on the spot. With love to my sweet little Ianthe, ever most affectionately yours, S.

“I write in great haste; we depart directly.”

Professor Dowden’s flow of sentiment is here so agitating, that I relieve myself by resorting to a drier world. Certainly my comment on this letter shall not be his, that it “assures Harriet that her interests were still dear to Shelley, though now their lives had moved apart.” But neither will I call the letter an odious letter, a hideous letter. I prefer to call it, applying an untranslated French word, a _bête_ letter. And it is _bête_ from what is the signal, the disastrous want and weakness of Shelley, with all his fine intellectual gifts—his utter deficiency in humour.

Harriet did not accept Shelley’s invitation to join him and Mary in Switzerland. Money difficulties drove the travellers back to England in September. Godwin would not see Shelley, but he sorely needed, continually demanded and eagerly accepted, pecuniary help from his erring “spiritual son.” Between Godwin’s wants and his own, Shelley was hard pressed. He got from Harriet, who still believed that he would return to her, twenty pounds which remained in her hands. In November she was confined; a son and heir was born to Shelley. He went to see Harriet, but “the interview left husband and wife each embittered against the other.” Friends were severe; “when Mrs. Boinville wrote, her letter seemed cold and even sarcastic,” says Professor Dowden. “Solitude,” he continues, “unharassed by debts and duns, with Mary’s companionship, the society of a few friends, and the delights of study and authorship, would have made these winter months to Shelley months of unusual happiness and calm.” But, alas! creditors were pestering, and even Harriet gave trouble. In January, 1815, Mary had to write in her journal this entry: “Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman. Now we must change our lodgings.”

One day about this time Shelley asked Peacock, “Do you think Wordsworth could have written such poetry if he ever had dealings with money-lenders?” Not only had Shelley dealings with money-lenders, he now had dealings with bailiffs also. But still he continued to read largely. In January, 1815, his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, died. Shelley went down into Sussex; his father would not suffer him to enter the house, but he sat outside the door and read _Comus_, while the reading of his grandfather’s will went on inside. In February was born Mary’s first child, a girl, who lived but a few days. All the spring Shelley was ill and harassed, but by June it was settled that he should have an allowance from his father of £1000 a year, and that his debts (including £1200 promised by him to Godwin) should be paid. He on his part paid Harriet’s debts and allowed her £200 a year. In August he took a house on the borders of Windsor Park, and made a boating excursion up the Thames as far as Lechlade, an excursion which produced his first entire poem of value, the beautiful _Stanza in Lechlade Churchyard_. They were followed, later in the autumn, by _Alastor_. Henceforth, from this winter of 1815 until he was drowned between Leghorn and Spezzia in July, 1822, Shelley’s literary history is sufficiently given in the delightful introductions prefixed by Mrs. Shelley to the poems of each year. Much of the history of his life is there given also; but with some of those “occurrences of his private life” on which Mrs. Shelley forbore to touch, and which are now made known to us in Professor Dowden’s book, we have still to deal.

Mary’s first son, William, was born in January, 1816, and in February we find Shelley declaring himself “strongly urged, by the perpetual experience of neglect or enmity from almost every one but those who are supported by my resources, to desert my native country, hiding myself and Mary from the contempt which we so unjustly endure.” Early in May he left England with Mary and Miss Clairmont; they met Lord Byron at Geneva and passed the summer by the Lake of Geneva in his company. Miss Clairmont had already in London, without the knowledge of the Shelleys, made Byron’s acquaintance and become his mistress. Shelley determined, in the course of the summer, to go back to England, and, after all, “to make that most excellent of nations my perpetual resting-place.” In September he and his ladies returned; Miss Clairmont was then expecting her confinement. Of her being Byron’s mistress the Shelleys were now aware; but “the moral indignation,” says Professor Dowden, “which Byron’s act might justly arouse, seems to have been felt by neither Shelley nor Mary.” If Byron and Claire Clairmont, as she was now called, loved and were happy, all was well.

The eldest daughter of the Godwin household, the amiable Fanny, was unhappy at home and in deep dejection of spirits. Godwin was, as usual, in terrible straits for money. The Shelleys and Miss Clairmont settled themselves at Bath; early in October Fanny Godwin passed through Bath without their knowing it, travelled on to Swansea, took a bedroom at the hotel there, and was found in the morning dead, with a bottle of laudanum on the table beside her and these words in her handwriting:—

“I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate,[45] and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavoring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as ...”

There is no signature.

Footnote 45:

She was Mary Wollstonecraft’s natural daughter by Imlay.

A sterner tragedy followed. On the 9th of November 1816 Harriet Shelley left the house in Brompton where she was then living, and did not return. On the 10th of December her body was found in the Serpentine; she had drowned herself. In one respect Professor Dowden resembles Providence: his ways are inscrutable. His comment on Harriet’s death is: “There is no doubt she wandered from the ways of upright living.” But he adds: “That no act of Shelley’s, during the two years which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause the rash act which brought her life to its close, seems certain.” Shelley had been living with Mary all the time; only that!

On the 30th of December, 1816, Mary Godwin and Shelley were married. I shall pursue “the occurrences of Shelley’s private life” no further. For the five years and a half which remain, Professor Dowden’s book adds to our knowledge of Shelley’s life much that is interesting; but what was chiefly important we knew already. The new and grave matter which we did not know, or knew in the vaguest way only, but which Shelley’s family and Professor Dowden have now thought it well to give us in full, ends with Shelley’s second marriage.