CHAPTER X.

THE GENEVESE EPISODE.

Shelley’s Arrival at Geneva--Byron and Polidori--At the Sécheron Hotel--Union of the two Parties--Tattle of the Coteries--The Genevese Scandal--Its Fruit in _Manfred_ and _Cain_--Its Fruit in _Laon and Cythna_--The Shelleys’ Return to England--Their Stay at Bath--Their Choice of a House at Great Marlow--Fanny Imlay’s Suicide--Her Pitiable Story--Harriett’s Suicide--Review of Shelley’s Treatment of her--His Responsibility for her Depravation and Ruin--Witnesses to Character and Conduct--Shelley’s Grief for Harriett--His wild Speech about her--His Marriage with Mary Godwin--Birth of Allegra.

There is a conflict of evidences respecting the dates of the journey from England to Geneva. Whilst the _Edinburgh_ ‘Shelley and Mary’ Reviewer exhibits the travellers in Paris on 6th May, and at Geneva on the 13th of the same month, Mary Godwin’s letter (published in the supplementary matter of the _Six Weeks’ Tour_) assigns the arrival in Paris to the 8th, and the arrival at Geneva to 15th inst. I am disposed to think the _Edinburgh_ Reviewer right, because Shelley’s letter of the 15th inst. to Peacock implies that the writer had been long enough at Geneva to turn himself about.

Anyhow, leaving England on an early day of May with Mary, her infant, the babe’s nurse and Claire, Shelley was in Paris on the 6th or 8th, and at Geneva on the 13th or 15th of May (something earlier than the time at which the tourists are represented by successive biographers as reaching their destination). Dating from the Hotel Sécheron, Geneva, Shelley wrote to Peacock on the 15th inst.:--

‘We are now at Geneva, where, or in the neighbourhood, we shall remain probably until the autumn. I may return in a fortnight or three weeks, to attend to the last exertions which Longdill is to make for the settlement of my affairs.’

When these words were put on paper, ten days had still to elapse before Byron’s carriages drew up at the door of the hotel. Thus soon after his arrival, and thus long before Byron’s appearance at Geneva, is Shelley resolved on staying there till autumn,--the time fixed for the ending of Byron’s sojourn at the same place. Does Mr. Froude insist that Shelley, on the 15th, was still kept by Claire in ignorance, that Byron would soon be with them? If so, even Mr. Froude must admit it was a very strange coincidence that Shelley had determined to stay at Geneva just as long as Byron designed to linger there. If Mr. Froude concedes that Shelley knew all about Byron’s movements on the 15th, he might as well have said less of the younger poet’s ignorance of Claire’s pre-arrangement with her lover.

On Byron’s deliberate arrival, some twelve days after Shelley had come in hot haste to the hotel, the two sets of tourists forthwith acted as though they had met there by appointment. Joining their forces, the two sets of tourists became one party. When Byron and Polidori left the hotel, Shelley and the sisters left the hotel. When Byron and Polidori moved into the Villa Belle Rive, Shelley moved with the two girls into a little house near at hand. When Byron and Polidori migrated to the Villa Diodati, the sisters with Shelley migrated to the pretty cottage lying at the foot, and under the trees, of Diodati. As the inmates of the cottage repeatedly passed the whole night at Byron’s mansion, it is, of course, obvious that Mr. Froude was justified in saying Claire could not easily have been alone with Byron for a minute! From the day of Byron’s arrival at the Hotel Sécheron, the two inseparable parties were regarded as one party, by the visitors in the hotel, the gossip-mongers of every Genevese coterie, the idlers who, during Byron’s brief stay at the Sécheron, thronged and buzzed about the poets and their ladies, whenever they went (by daylight, or twilight, or at night) from the hotel down to the lake, or back from their boat to the hotel. Whispering that Mary (though styled Mrs. Shelley) was only the younger poet’s mistress, and that Claire was Mary’s sister in the fullest sense of the term, these idlers told one another, that Byron had found in the bright-eyed and brilliant brunette an agreeable substitute for his unforgiving wife. This was the tattle of the hotel, whilst the poets, Polidori, and the girls remained there. It is in the nature of such tattle, that, starting from imperfect truth, it passes quickly to egregious falsehood. Far worse things were soon said of the four young people by the Genevese gossip-mongers, than that Mary was Shelley’s goddess, and that Claire was Byron’s spouse in Free Love.

So much has been written, and is universally known of the Genevese episode of Byron’s career, that Shelley’s biographer may pass lightly over the particulars of the poet’s sojourn with Claire and Mary on the marge of Leman. Every one knows how, to escape from the intrusive inmates of the Sécheron, Byron with Polidori moved to the Villa Belle Rive, whilst Shelley with the girls took possession of the not distant Campagne Chapuis (whence Mary dated the letter of 1st June, published in the supplement to the _Six Weeks’ Tour_), and how, to escape the telescopes of the Sécheron windows, which covered the garden and balcony of the Villa Belle Rive, the author of _Childe Harold_, with his young physician, migrated to the umbrageous grounds of the Château Diodati, whilst the author of _Queen Mab_, with Mary and Claire, went into the Campagne Mont Alègre (which gave Claire’s child a familiar name), lying within the leafy _entourage_ of their patron’s mansion. There is no need to tell again how, leaving the two sisters to amuse themselves with letter-writing, and novel-reading, and graver studies, Byron and Shelley (starting for the expedition on 23rd June, 1816) made the well-remembered _Eight Days’ Tour_ of the lake, in the course of which Shelley so narrowly escaped the fate that befell him six years later. It is in every one’s recollection how, in the squall that so nearly upset their boat off St. Gingoux, the younger poet’s chief fear was that, in attempting to save a comparatively insignificant creature, the superb Byron would sacrifice his own existence, so valuable to mankind. Every reader recalls the words of the younger poet’s narrative:--

‘My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine.’

Readers no less clearly remember how, just upon a month after the _Eight Days’ Tour of the Lake_, Shelley and the girls, leaving Byron for just the same length of time to his own devices, made the _Eight Days’ Trip to Chamouni_, returning to Mont Alègre and Diodati towards the close of July. Is it not in the whole world’s memory how, when the rain held them prisoners in Byron’s villa, the poets and the sisters, in the excitement of reading ghost stories, terrified one another with ghastly tales of their own invention;--a tournament of wit and terrifying fancy, that bore enduring fruit in Mary Godwin’s _Frankenstein_? It is enough to remind readers of this page how, on the 18th of June, after hearing Byron recite the _Christabel_ verses on the witch’s breast, Shelley shrieked in horror at his own vivid imagination of a woman with eyes instead of nipples; and how in the ensuing August, when Monk Lewis had joined the group at Diodati, Byron, and Mary, and Shelley, and Claire, drew about the terrifying relater and beset him with their intensely excited faces, whilst he poured forth strange stories of hideous fancy and grim humour.

That Shelley had no intention in the middle of July of returning to England straight from Switzerland, but was possessed by a project of descending the Danube in a boat, visiting Constantinople and Athens, Rome and the Tuscan cities, and returning by Southern France, appears from a letter he wrote from Geneva to Peacock on 17th July, 1816, in the interval between the _Tour of the Lake_ and the _Trip to Chamouni_,--a letter containing this remarkable passage,--‘On the motives and consequences of this journey, I reserve much explanation for some future winter walk or summer expedition!’ How about these words, that refer _not_ to the ‘Eastern scheme which has just seized on our imaginations,’ _but_ to the trip from London to Geneva?

Had he believed himself to have told the truth at Bishopgate, in intimating that he was about to leave England in order to escape his father and uncle, he would have seen neither need nor occasion for saying more about the motives for the journey. May the words be taken as an admission, that the Bishopgate fictions were fictions, and that Peacock had still to learn the full and true story of the motives and purpose of the trip to Geneva?

Whilst the Genevese coteries were saying evil things of Shelley and Byron, _each_ of the poets knew the worst of the many bad things said about them in those cliques. Whether Mary and Claire participated fully in this knowledge is uncertain. Byron and Shelley may have withheld from the sisters some of the things said of them in Genevese society. From some motive of delicacy or considerateness, the two young men may have kept from the girls all they knew of what was tattled to their shame in the _salons_ of the city; though one does not see clearly why they should have been so uncommunicative to the eighteen-years-old girls, whom Shelley had carried through _The Empire of the Nairs_, and had introduced to all the reasons for agreeing with the anti-matrimonial note to _Queen Mab_. Enthusiasts in the new social philosophy, the sisters were prepared for the misrepresentation and calumny, ever poured upon social reformers by the slaves of prejudice and ignorance. It is, however, no question that the story, which Byron a few years later (March, 1820) charged Southey with circulating (and possibly inventing) in order ‘to blast the character of the daughter’ of the woman he had formerly loved, was a story well known to the author of _Childe Harold_ in August, 1816. If, on returning to England from his Swiss trip, Southey reported (as Byron averred in March, 1820) that Byron and Shelley were living in promiscuous intercourse with Mary and Claire, the author of _Thalaba_ only repeated a story, generally told and believed in Geneva, alike by tourists and residents, whilst he was living at the Villa Diodati.

Whilst living in retirement from circles which had shown a reluctance to make his acquaintance, the recluse of Diodati--ever, in his morbid egotism, no less eager for the gossip that lashed him to fury, than for the gossip that tickled his self-love--was kept _au courant_ with the talk of the Genevese tables, by persons who had no difficulty in gathering it. What with Polidori (acceptable in _salons_, where his employer would not have been welcome), Hentsch the banker (cognizant of everything that went on in Geneva), Madame de Staël at Coppet (overflowing with almost maternal solicitude for Lady Noel’s naughty son-in-law), and Fletcher (cleverest of valets at gathering the gossip of couriers and lady’s-maids, and ever privileged to pour it with more than a valet’s freedom into his master’s ear), Byron was in no want of sure informants about Geneva’s opinions of himself and his doings. And what he learnt of the current talk about his affairs, the exile from Newstead passed over to his brother in poetry and domestic trouble. As soon as Shelley and the girls had left for England, Byron was no less communicative to the friend, who, on coming to the Château Diodati (a week or so after the departure of the trio), had not been many hours in the villa, without hearing all about the scandal, that was largely influential in determining Byron to break with Claire. So early as 9th September, 1816, the recipient of Byron’s piquant chatter wrote to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, of the Genevese curiosity and gossip about her brother: ‘There was, indeed, until a fortnight ago, a neighbouring gentleman who had two ladies living in his house under the Château Diodati, and, as you may suppose, _both and each of these womankind_, as Mr. Oldbuck calls them in the _Antiquary_, were most literally assigned to the person who was accustomed to consider the cases of such kind of appurtenances, when superfluous or neglected by their lawful owners.’

It may be assumed that, in alluding thus lightly to one-half of the current scandal, the tattler plied his pen (not only in Byron’s interest, but also with the poet’s sanction), in order to anticipate rumour, with an explanation of the report, which would be sure to come to his correspondent’s ears sooner or later.

Withholding, as he was bound to do, the names of the gentleman and two ladies, and all particulars touching the peculiar nature of their real intimacy, the writer of the words (here printed in italics) shows how fully and precisely he was informed, immediately on his coming to Diodati, of the rumour, which, affecting the reputation of either poet so injuriously during his life, and influencing in peculiar and different ways the poetical labours of both authors, had for its echo the hideous story given to the world by Mrs. Beecher Stowe. How the scandal stirred Byron’s imagination may be seen in _Manfred_ and _Cain_. How it affected Shelley’s fancy and spurred him to the most extravagant of his conclusions respecting the intercourse of the sexes appears in _Laon and Cythna_. Had it not been for the Genevese scandal, _Laon and Cythna_ would not have been brother and sister of the same parents, and Byron would not have written the poems that vexed poor Lady Byron’s troubled mind in her later time. But for that scandal both poets would have escaped the still darker suspicions it generated long afterwards in the minds of men. But for that scandal, Claire would never have been suspected of the wickedness imputed to her by later calumny, and the Hon. Mrs. Leigh would never have been charged with crime of which she was absolutely incapable. Reverberating far and wide through time, slander is repeated variously by near and distant echoes. The scandal, that agitated Shelley so profoundly at Ravenna in 1821, was a revival and development of one-half of the slander that came to his ears at Geneva in 1816. The scandal, that preyed for a while on Mrs. Leigh’s reputation till the present writer killed it, was the distorted outgrowth of the old vile Genevese tattle about her brother’s intimacy with the two sisters at Diodati. The base story, that came to Shelley’s ears at Ravenna, was the near echo, the vile story of Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s book was the distant echo, of the same slanderous report.

It is not surprising that Byron put an end to his _liaison_ with Claire soon after hearing what the world said about it. No Free Lover (had he been one, the favourers of the Free Contract would have dealt less harshly with his reputation), but a man holding conventional (not to say fashionable) notions on libertinism, and old-fashioned notions respecting the matrimonial law, Byron held to the old, hard and fast, line between wives and mistresses. To him, of course, Claire was never aught more than his mistress, in the ordinary sense of the term; a mistress whom at the outset of his fleeting passion he regarded with a romantic tenderness that seventy years since seldom qualified a young nobleman’s sentimental condescension to a girl in Claire’s position; a mistress with whom he wished to live with a secresy which would prevent the affair from coming to the knowledge of Lady Byron. Regarding Claire in this light and capacity, precisely as in later time he regarded Marianna Segati and Teresa Guiccioli, he was hoping for a speedy restoration to his wife’s favour, and (under Madame De Stäel’s counsel) was actually making overtures for reconcilement to her, even whilst the trio nestled in the pretty cottage at the verge of his Swiss tree-garden. The rejection of the overtures, and the intelligence of the scandal coming to him closely upon one another, it would under any circumstances have been natural for Byron to attribute the disdainful reply in some degree to the injurious rumours. But he had other reasons for thinking Lady Byron would have been less steady in her unforgivingness, had she not heard of the _liaison_. Not incapable of resenting a misadventure on its innocent cause, he was likely to conceive a sudden distaste for an arrangement to which he assigned his discomfiture, and a simultaneous distaste for his partner in the hurtful arrangement. Other influences (one of them being Claire’s vehement temper) may also have concurred in disposing him to retreat from the association as speedily as possible. But in seeking for the sufficient motive of his capricious treatment of the too-fervid brunette, readers need look no further than his disgust at the rumours arising from his intimacy with her, and his conviction, that but for her bright eyes and racy speech, he would have been starting for Kirkby Mallory, instead of making his arrangements for an Italian tour. Anyhow, without letting her see how completely she had fallen from his favour, or losing the worshipful regard of either Shelley or Mary (if their words may be trusted), Byron bade Claire farewell at Geneva. Returning to England with Shelley and her sister-by-affinity, Claire gave birth in the following January to Allegra--the girl who, dying in her sixth year at Bagna Cavallo, lived long enough to survive her mother’s romantic hope, that through her child’s influence she would recover something of her poet’s love.

By the writers, who insist that Shelley and Mary went to Geneva in ignorance that Claire and Byron had arranged to meet there, and almost to the end of their sojourn in Switzerland, remained in their guileless ignorance of the Byron-Claire _liaison_, it is, of course, maintained that Shelley and Mary were greatly surprised on learning, towards the end of August, that Claire was in the way to become a mother. Possibly, the evidence of Claire’s delusive letter accords with the evidence of other no less illusory writings. But no letters, however precise and authentic, by Claire or any other writer, can annul or weaken the conclusive testimony of the certain and indisputable facts and circumstances of the Genevese episode.

Returning to London on 7th September, 1816, Shelley passed through town to Marlow, and stayed a fortnight with Peacock, before going to Bath, where he and the sisters determined to remain whilst the house, which he had taken in the Buckinghamshire village for twenty-one years, was being painted, furnished, and fitted, for their habitation. It was on an early day of his sojourn at the favourite resort of fashionable valetudinarians, that Shelley, dating from 5 Abbey Church Yard, 2nd October, 1816, wrote to Mr. Murray about the proofs of the third canto of _Childe Harold_, which he had undertaken to see through the press,--a service the younger poet was well pleased and not a little proud to render his famous friend.

Exactly a week later, on the evening of Wednesday, 9th October, 1816, Mary Godwin received the ‘very alarming letter’ which caused Shelley to start immediately for Bristol, only to return to Bath at 2 p.m. ‘with no particular news’ (_vide_ Mr. Kegan Paul’s _William Godwin_). On Thursday, the 10th, Shelley went again to Bristol. On Friday, 11th, he was at Swansea. After posting this letter at Bristol, Fanny Imlay, _alias_ Wollstonecraft, _alias_ Godwin, caught the Cambrian coach and made her way to the Mackworth Arms Inn, of Swansea, where, soon after her arrival at a late hour, she went to her bedroom for the long rest that was her last rest. On the morrow morning (Wednesday, 10th October) she was found lying dead, the nature of her death being declared by the laudanum bottle on her table, and the paper on which she had written:--

‘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, and whose life has only been a series of pains to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring 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 was an inquest, with the verdict ‘Found dead.’ This was the end of Fanny, who, after leaving London on the 7th instant, for a visit to her aunts, Mrs. Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft, perished by her own act at the Swansea tavern. A good, gentle, interesting girl, Fanny inherited all her mother’s early affectionateness and generosity, without acquiring from the same source the vehemence and asperity that were amongst the chief faults of her mother’s temper. But, together with exemption from the fervour and fierceness of her mother’s nature, Fanny was not so fortunate as to enjoy exemption from its morbid sensibility. Together with a full share of the Wollstonecraft sensitiveness, she derived from the Wollstonecrafts the disposition to melancholy, that qualified her to do in mild resoluteness what her mother essayed in tempestuous rage.

To account for this desperate act, the reviewer of the poor girl’s career is not driven to adopt Claire’s explanation of the tragedy. Several circumstances, distinct from her regard for Shelley, had combined to trouble her profoundly during the closing term of her existence. It was natural for her to brood over the melancholy facts of her mother’s story, which came to her knowledge, directly or indirectly, through the same channel that made them known to Mary and Claire. Her half-sister’s flight with Shelley would, under any circumstances, have caused her the keenest mental torture; but the anguish it caused her heart and soul was the sharper to so loving and sympathetic a creature, because of the grief, coming in different ways and degrees, to William Godwin (whom she loved) and his wife (with whom she lived harmoniously) from the date of the event which, violently wrenching asunder so many domestic ties, had broken up the home in Skinner Street,--though the mere shell of the old home, from which familiar joy had been driven for ever, was still maintained under conditions of deepening gloom and anxiety. No wonder the poor girl found the sorrows of her existence too heavy for endurance. Let it not, however, be imagined that she yielded to despair without brave efforts to conquer it. Whilst so many writers have used their ingenuity and skill in colouring Mary Godwin into a heroine, and varnishing her submission to Shelley’s suit into a romantic love-story, how little has been said in honour of poor Fanny--the true heroine!--who, hiding her sorrow as she best could from the old man (who had been a good father to her), and from the woman (who had been a good mother to her) strove to comfort their grief and shame, whilst the heart in her own breast was slowly breaking.

Nothing nobler and more lovely, in the way of genuine domestic devotion and unrecognized heroism, can be conceived than the life of this gentle girl during the considerable interval between Mary’s flight in July, 1814, and her own death in October, 1816. Never disdainful of those homely labours of the kitchen and store-room, which Mary has been commended for shirking, Fanny, during this long interval of her growing despair, was her step-mother’s busy housekeeper and cheerful companion. Active in the kitchen and busy with the needle, she was at the same time her step-father’s cheery ‘right-hand’ and ministrant,--ever ready to ply her pen in his service, and ever quick at his call, with bonnet on her head and smiles on her face, to accompany him in his walks. At last the brave heart broke, and the grave covered her. Is the world too virtuous to be incapable of generous compassion for the doer of her own death?

In a former page I have declared my inability to offer an opinion whether love of Shelley was in any degree accountable for poor Fanny’s fatal desperation. It has already been said that Claire (a true witness, in the esteem of the Shelleyan zealots, whenever she supports them with a fib; a liar, in their esteem, whenever she traverses their misstatements with a word of truth) gave it as her opinion that her sister Fanny died from love of Shelley, who was moved to write this elegy on the poor girl’s fate:--

‘Her voice did quiver as we parted, Yet knew I not that heart was broken, From which it came, and I departed, Heeding not the words then spoken. Misery--oh, Misery! This world is all too wide for thee.’

Of course, it would be absurd to torture this utterance of emotion into evidence on either side of the question. The words would have been appropriate to the tragedy had he known himself in no way accountable for it. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the verses accord with Claire’s view of the case. Mr. Kegan Paul says roundly that, though an attached sister to Shelley, Fanny ‘was never in love with him, either before or after her sister’s flight.’ How can any writer be justified in uttering so stout a negative? If Fanny loved Shelley, she was not the girl to tell him so, till he extorted the admission from her by an avowal of a corresponding passion. Nor was she the girl to make the admission to her sixteen-years-old sister, before Shelley had made her an offer of marriage. To suppose her capable of making any such confession to Mary after the flight would be to suppose Fanny alike devoid of feminine delicacy and womanly pride. It follows that, if she loved Shelley, her lips were necessarily sealed to him, and also to Mary, on the subject. Consequently, any statements (to the point of Mr. Kegan Paul’s negative) left by Shelley and Mary can, at the most, amount to mere evidence that they knew nothing of the matter, about which they were not likely to know anything. Many conceivable circumstances might have qualified either Shelley or Mary to reply in the affirmative to the question, whether Fanny ever loved him. But known facts render it more than difficult to conceive the circumstances which would have qualified them to answer the question in the negative.

Other doleful news came to Shelley and the girls before they returned from the West country and settled themselves at Marlow. They were still at Bath when they received intelligence that Mrs. Shelley’s body had been picked out of the Serpentine on 10th December, 1816, and carried to her father’s house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. Some uncertainty covers poor Harriett’s story during the last and downward stage of her lamentable career, which thus ended by her own act, in the twenty-second year of her age; and finding enough for my purpose in facts that have been placed beyond dispute, I have been at no pains to search for other details of the closing term of the unhappy girl’s depravation. It is said that, towards the end of her passage to the grave, she left her father’s house to associate herself with a partner in Free Love? It may be so. It would be strange, had she (a married woman, discarded for reasons more or less light or grave by a husband, who went straight from her arms to another charmer) hesitated to place herself under the protection of a man who, inspiring her with affection, caused her to believe that in fidelity he would not prove inferior to the young poet, who one fine morning left her with a babe in her arms.

It is said that she took to drinking as her desolated life tapered into eternity,--drinking, in fact, so deeply that the once bright and lovely girl became a sot and drunkard. It may be so. Foolish people, and by no means altogether foolish people, when they sink into sorrow, are apt to drink for the sake of drowning care, and Heaven knows that poor Harriett (only twenty-one years old) had care enough to excuse her for trying to drown it--even in so futile and disgusting a manner. If Harriett drowned her pain of body and mind with wine and brandy, Shelley drowned his pain of body and mind with laudanum.

Of late years it has been the fashion of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to refer to Harriett’s depravation, as though it gave a certain colouring of justification to the poet’s withdrawal from her. My view of the matter is, that Shelley alone is to be blamed for the offences, committed by Harriett either _during_ their association, or after their separation; and that human compassion for the poor girl’s errors should be larger and warmer in proportion to their number and magnitude. Let the reader who hesitates to take this view of Mrs. Shelley’s case ask himself these questions,--Who caught Harriett as a child on the door-step of her schoolroom? Who illuminated her when she was just sixteen years old out of the Christian religion? Who taught her that the matrimonial rite was a piece of antiquated mummery? Who taught her that the promises made at marriage were not obligatory? Who taught her to think conjugal constancy a vitiating sentiment, and chastity a monkish superstition? Who encouraged her in the habit of talking of suicide as the death that would probably close her career at an early date? Who, by talking of suicide as the possible termination of his own days in this world, at least, confirmed her in the habit of looking to suicide as a convenient and innocent way of escaping from this life’s wretchedness? All these questions must be answered by one name.

From previous pages readers have learnt that Shelley’s desertion of his first wife was not so complete as people at one time had reason to suppose; that after a brief term the actual abandonment merged into a peculiar kind of separation by mutual agreement, and that, after she had consented (at least from a lawyer’s way of viewing such matters) to the separation, he was for some time mindful for her comfort and pecuniary interests. It has been told how he sent her money from Paris in 1814, after having probably given her a considerable sum of money immediately before he left England. On coming into his 1000_l._ a-year he certainly set aside a portion of the income for her maintenance. No credit, of course, is due to him for doing what Harriett could have compelled him to do by process of law. Nor was the allowance he made so ample as to entitle him to any praise for free-handedness in the matter. What it was at the outset I do not know. But as it only rose to a fifth of his clear income, after it had been raised to the highest point to which it attained, the allowance never exceeded the sum he was bound in morals and honour to give her. Possessing a clear income of a thousand a-year, whilst he also possessed the power (which he exercised freely for his own convenience) of raising money on his interest in estates A and B, he should never have thought of allowing her less than 200_l._ a-year, after his final arrangement with his father. Had he not known that Mr. Westbrook was able to take care of his child and her children, Shelley would probably have arranged to give her more. But in doing his duty by his wife and children, he should have had no consideration of Mr. Westbrook’s ability to do it for him. In the review of his treatment of his wife, remembrance should also be had of his desire to live in neighbourliness with her, and his transient disposition to receive her as a regular inmate into his own house.

The fact, however, still remains that for some months before her death she had passed from his sight. He had promised solemnly to cherish her (a promise certainly within his power of accomplishing in some degree); and it remains a fact that, instead of keeping his eye on her (as he intended for a time to do) he suffered her to slip from his cognizance. Regard being had to her age and the way in which he had uprooted her moral and religious principles, few persons will hesitate in saying, that he was under peculiar obligations to ‘look after her,’ and be ready at any moment to come to her aid, however bad her conduct either before or after their separation. He is not to be judged in this business as one would judge an ordinary man, whose wife plunges into immorality of her own free will, and in obedience to influences and circumstances in no degree referable to his action. Shelley’s exceptional treatment of his wife placed him under exceptional obligations to stand by her and befriend her throughout life. Had he been the superlatively chivalrous and virtuous man his eulogists declare him, he would have felt this and acted steadily in accordance with the feeling.

Though most of the ascertained facts touching Mrs. Shelley’s suicide have been withheld from the public, we are assured by Shelleyan apologists that the fatal incident was not directly consequent on any action by the husband, who had for some months lost sight of her. But to relieve Shelley of the obloquy of being the immediate, is not to relieve him of the shame of being the indirect, cause of his wife’s death. Following in the steps of previous writers, Mr. Froude does Shelley the disservice of insisting that he did not blame himself for his wife’s death. ‘Nor,’ Mr. Froude adds, ‘did the family lawyers blame him, who knew the facts of the story;’ ‘the family lawyers,’ thus produced as witnesses to character, being the one lawyer Longdill (Shelley’s attorney, _not_ the attorney of the family). By the _Edinburgh_ ‘Shelley-and-Mary’ reviewer, attention is called to the fact, that at this dismal moment of his story, Shelley’s ‘friends, Hookham, Longdill, and Leigh Hunt supported him by their approval.’ What supporters, at such a crisis, for the author of _Alastor_, the man of superb genius, soon to be the author of _Prometheus Unbound_!--a bookseller, an attorney, and a parasite!--the bookseller, who was making much, and hoped to make more money out of him; the attorney, who knew nothing of the matter but what his not invariably accurate client had been pleased to tell him; and the parasite, who, after sucking thousands from Shelley during his life, sponged on his representatives after his death! What witnesses and what testimony!

Readers need not think so ill of Shelley as Mr. Froude does. It is certain that Shelley did reproach himself bitterly for his conduct towards Harriett. The biographical evidence is superabundant that he endured the keen remorse that is ever attended with self-reproach. How could it be otherwise? When the lifeless body was fished out of the Serpentine, six years had not fully passed since Shelley paid his first visit to Harriett’s home, bearing his sister’s gift for her favourite school-fellow; only five years and two or three months had passed since he carried her off, bright and winsome, in her untarnished virginal loveliness. How could he think of the thing he had made her without torture? He may well have been appalled at the moment, and in the after-time been agonized by the consequences of his boyish heedlessness. That he was capable, not long after her death, of calling her ‘a frantic idiot,’ is no evidence that he escaped the anguish that is the inevitable punishment of wrong done in mere thoughtlessness, no less than of wrong resulting from heartlessness. The bitterness of the indecent speech was the mere mask of decent and keen regret.

There is, however, no evidence that he suffered aught more than a man of sensibility would inevitably suffer from so ghastly an incident. The story (believed by the _Quarterly_ Reviewer of October, 1861) that dismay at Harriett’s death and grief for her, whose lot he had taken so peculiarly into his own hands, rendered him ‘actually insane’ for a time, was a pure fiction. During the brief interval between the recovery of Harriett’s corpse from the Serpentine and his marriage to Mary he was in constant correspondence with Peacock through the post; and the letters Peacock received from him and Mary at that time were conclusive proof, that remorse did not so completely overpower him before his second marriage. The first to tell Peacock of Harriett’s death, Shelley at the same time asked his (at that time) closest male friend, whether propriety required him to defer for any considerable period his formal marriage with Mary,--an inquiry that caused Peacock to advise him to marry her promptly. Three full weeks had not passed since Harriett’s corpse was fished out of the water when (on 30th December, 1816) Shelley was married privately to Mary Godwin at St. Mildred’s Church, Bread Street, in the presence of her father and step-mother. On visiting Peacock shortly after the marriage, Shelley (though no doubt suffering secretly from the events so closely preceding his second marriage) showed conclusively by his demeanour, that he was not overpowered by regretful recollections of his first wife. Reasonably incensed at the knavish gardener, who had lopt the fine old wide-spreading holly-tree of the Marlow Garden to a bare pole, Shelley displayed strong emotion at nothing else. ‘Shelley,’ says Peacock, ‘stayed with me two or three days. I never saw him more calm and self-possessed. Nothing disturbed his serenity, but the unfortunate holly.’ That Shelley never in later time went out of his mind from horror at Harriett’s fate is certain.

There has been much vain and wholly needless conjecture, as to the considerations and the individuals that determined Shelley to marry Mary Godwin. It has been said that Byron advised him to make her his wife. It has been averred, Godwin constrained him to make Mary an honest woman. If Shelley spoke to him with any show of reluctance to celebrate the marriage, Godwin no doubt told him roundly that all intercourse was at an end between them for ever, should he delay to make Mary his wife. But there is no reason to suppose Godwin was tempted to speak thus plainly and threateningly. Nor is there good ground for thinking that Byron’s counsel determined Shelley’s course. How the matter came about is sufficiently obvious. Shelley’s disapproval of marriage as a vain and depraving institution, was attended with a clear perception of the several reasons why, in an evil state of society, a man should consent to prevailing superstition and prejudice, so far as to put a bridal ring with the usual ceremony on the finger of the woman, with whom he intended to live for a considerable period. By marrying Mary he would qualify any son hereafter born to him by her, to succeed to the Castle Goring baronetcy, in case poor Harriett’s son should die without male issue. By marrying Mary he would confer on her something of the social respectability he wished her to have, alike from considerations of pride and affection. By marrying Mary he would inflict another annoyance on his father. On the other hand, by refusing to marry Mary, or even shilly-shallying about the question, he would incense her father and, worse still, provoke her anger and disdain. Under these circumstances how could he hesitate to marry Mary, as he had previously married Harriett? As to the sacrifice of personal liberty involved in the act of marriage, experience had taught him that to a man of his views the _vinculum matrimonii_ was no galling restraint on individual freedom.

To suppose that Shelley (a few months hence to write _Laon and Cythna_ and _Rosalind and Helen_) went to St. Mildred’s Church from any respect for the religious rite would be absurd. I cannot doubt that he went to the Church because Mary (who at this time had him well in hand) meant him to marry her, and because he was under a promise to her to do so at the earliest opportunity. It is improbable that he asked any of his friends whether or no he should make Mary his lawful wife. Of all his friends Peacock was the man to whom he would be most likely to put the question; but on speaking to him so soon after Harriett’s death, Shelley spoke of the marriage as a step on which he was resolved, and merely asked whether he might with decency take the step without delay. ‘He was,’ says Peacock (at that time in almost daily intercourse with him), ‘the first to tell me of Harriett’s death, asking whether I thought it would become him to interpose any delay before marrying Mary.’ The announcement and the question were simultaneous.

It was thus that Shelley married Mary Godwin within a fortnight of the day on which Claire gave birth to Allegra, who was born on 12th January, 1816.