THE IRISH CAMPAIGN, AND THE STAY AT NANTGWILLT.
Opium and Hallucination at Keswick--Migration to Ireland--Shelley’s
Letters to Miss Hitchener--Curran’s Coldness to the
Adventurer--Publication of the _Address to the Irish People_--Measures
for putting the Pamphlet in Circulation--Harriett’s
Amusement--Shelley’s Seriousness--Shelley’s other Irish Tract--Public
Meeting in the Fishamble Street Theatre--Shelley’s Speech to the Sixth
Resolution--Various Accounts of the Speech--Mr. MacCarthy’s bad
Manners--Honest Jack Lawless--His Project for a History of
Ireland--His Way of handling Shelley--William Godwin’s
Alarm--Shelley’s Submission--His Intercourse with Curran--His
Withdrawal from Ireland--Seizure of his Papers at the Holyhead
Custom-House--Harriett’s Letter to Portia--The Shelleys in Wales--Miss
Hitchener’s ‘Divine Suggestion’--Harriett and Eliza don’t think it
‘Divine’--Shelley at Nantgwillt--His Scheme for turning Farmer--His
comprehensive Invitation to the Godwins--His sudden Departure from
Nantgwillt--Cause of the Departure--Mr. MacCarthy again at Fault.
That they may realize the physical condition of the young man who was so
easily educated into thinking prodigious evil of Thomas Jefferson Hogg,
readers should remember that Shelley was taking laudanum whilst he was at
Keswick. The letter which affords evidence of this important fact is
believed by Mr. Rossetti to be the earliest of the numerous writings,
touching the poet’s use of the tincture of opium; but it may not be
inferred that he came to Keswick without having made acquaintance with the
drug, of which he was a free consumer in subsequent stages of his life.
Making acquaintance with opium at a somewhat earlier time of life than
Byron, though probably in the same year of grace as the older poet,
Shelley was so liberal an opium-taker that the drug’s influence on the
nervous system must be borne in mind by those, who would account for his
successive hallucinations, and other exhibitions of nervous disorder. Even
by the medical observer, the effects of laudanum are sometimes mistaken
for manifestations of lunacy. Mr. Rossetti certainly had good grounds for
suggesting that laudanum was at the bottom of the marvellous tale, with
which Shelley thrilled the nerves of Eliza and Harriett in the last week
of his stay at Keswick. The story, told with every show of sincerity by
the victim of hallucination, or perplexing semi-delusion, if he is not to
be regarded as the utterer of a deliberate invention, was that on
returning from a walk to his home, he had been assailed by a robber, with
consequences that might have been tragic, had not the assault been
fortunately made under the very eaves of Mr. Calvert’s roof. By falling
over his own door-step, Shelley had been so fortunate as to fall out of
the bandit’s grasp. Few readers will hesitate in the opinion that if this
wondrous tale was not in some degree an affair of hallucination, it was
altogether untruth.
Shelley would have gone to Ireland with firmer confidence in his measures
for emancipating the Catholics, and Repealing the Union, had he been
attended to the field of philanthropic action by that equally sublime and
swarthy young woman, Miss Eliza Hitchener, schoolmistress of
Hurstpierpoint. Could this young woman, who seized every occasion for
sowing the seeds of Deism and Republicanism in the minds of her infantile
pupils, have been induced to throw up her school and start for Dublin at a
moment’s notice, Shelley’s Irish expedition might have had a different
ending. The need for Miss Hitchener’s presence on the field of moral and
political illumination was felt so strongly by Shelley, that he had
scarcely taken possession of furnished lodgings at No. 7 Sackville Street,
Dublin, when he wrote to her, imploring she would come to him
instantly--and for ever. But Miss Hitchener could not be moved so easily.
Having charge of certain little Americans, a source of income not to be
surrendered recklessly, she wished for time in which to dispose of the
goodwill of her school, ere she flitted to Dublin for the sake of the poor
Irish. Smuggler’s daughter though she was, Miss Hitchener lacked the
spirit to think cheerily of crossing the Irish Channel without any escort.
So Shelley was constrained to do his best for Ireland without her personal
co-operation. It being clear that his reunion with Miss Hitchener must be
deferred till he should have settled the Irish question, saved Ireland,
and retired for ever to some delightful cottage in North Wales, Shelley
wrote from 7 Sackville Street, Dublin, to the incomparable lady on 14th
February, 1812, that he looked forward to the pleasure of meeting her in
Wales, in the following summer. Joining hands once more in Wales, they
would never again part company.
(1) _Dublin: from 12th February, 1812, to 7th April, 1812: just seven
weeks and five days!_--Leaving Whitehaven for the Isle of Man on 3rd
February, 1812, Shelley, with his two travelling companions (Eliza and
Harriett), reached Dublin somewhere during the night of the 12th of the
same month, after enduring manifold discomforts in the course of a journey
that, rough and wretched by land, was yet rougher and more wretched by
sea. After recovering from fatigue of travel, the three adventurers
bestirred themselves for the good of Ireland, and in doing so, took two or
three steps that may at least be declared not wholly and directly at
variance with common sense. To avoid the costlier discomforts of a hotel,
they lost no time in exposing themselves to the cheaper discomforts of a
Sackville Street lodging-house. Having thus planted himself in the capital
of the country he had visited from philanthropic motives, Shelley called
(with Godwin’s letter of introduction in his hand) on the Master of the
Rolls (Curran),--an attention the Master of the Rolls was in no hurry to
repay; though Shelley came to Dublin with a not altogether groundless hope
of being welcomed cordially by the great orator who, having done fairly
well for himself by patriotism, had for several years held the official
place that, whilst lowering his zeal for patriotic agitation, required him
to exercise a certain amount of circumspection in admitting patriots to
his domestic circle. Fortunately for Curran, he was ‘not at home’ on the
occasion of Shelley’s first call; and it is conceivable that, having been
so fortunate in all honesty, the Master of the Rolls decided to be equally
fortunate on subsequent occasions of a visit from the adventurer, until
more satisfactory information respecting William Godwin’s young friend
should come to hand.
After leaving his card on the Master of the Rolls, Shelley took measures
for offering his views on Irish affairs to the people whom he had come to
serve and save. It is said that he tried in vain to find a regular
publisher for his _Address to the Irish People_. For this statement,
though there is other, I know of no better, authority than certain
scarcely reliable words of the letter, written from Lynton by Shelley to
Mr. Hookham, in 1812, just before Daniel Hill’s arrest. Certainly, the
work was not a production with which a prudent bookseller, desirous of
standing well in official circles, would care to connect himself. Nor was
the youthful author (who, whilst numbering no more than nineteen, had the
aspect of only fifteen years) a person to win the confidence of wary
booksellers, who could learn nothing about him besides what he was moved
to say of himself. If Shelley went about Dublin in search of a publisher,
he certainly wasted no long time in the search, for the pamphlet was
printed (in execrably bad type, and on paper of corresponding badness)
before he had been fully twelve days in the Irish capital.
Whilst the pamphlet was passing through the press, Miss Westbrook
bestirred herself for Ireland’s regeneration, by collecting ‘useful
passages’ out of Tom Paine’s works, with a view to their publication. At
the same time, the lady constituted herself keeper of the purse, and made
a red cloak.
Fifteen hundred copies of the _Address_ having been printed and delivered
to the author, he lost no time in offering them to the people he wished to
illuminate. A copy of the work was left at each of the sixty principal
public-houses. An Irishman, named Daniel Hill, was sent about Dublin with
a supply of the pamphlets, and ordered to sell them at five-pence a-piece
to all who would buy, and to use his discretion in giving them to persons
who could not afford to buy them. At the same time, Shelley and Harriett
dropt the pamphlet from the balcony of their windows to passers in
Sackville Street, and never went abroad without copies for distribution.
To Harriett, ‘ready to die with laughter’ at their measures for scattering
the seeds of wholesome principles amongst the Irish people, the whole
affair was a frolic. But what she regarded as comical pastime was the most
serious business to Shelley, whose countenance wore its gravest
expression, when he dropt his little books into the hands of wayfarers
from his Sackville Street balcony, or in his walks about the town
furtively slipt a copy of the _Address_ into the hood of an old woman’s
cloak. Having made away with four hundred copies in this manner, Shelley
congratulated himself on having caused a prodigious sensation, and being
far on the way to a peaceful revolution.
The _Address to the Irish People_, perhaps the weakest and most puerile
piece of political pamphleteering that ever proceeded from the pen of a
youth of Shelley’s years and education, was followed at a brief interval
by another pamphlet of his composition, entitled, _Proposals for an
Association of those Philanthropists who, convinced of the Inadequacy of
the Moral and Political State of Ireland to produce Benefits which are
nevertheless attainable, are willing to unite to accomplish its
Regeneration_; this second tract being followed after a longer interval by
the _Declaration of Rights_, a broadside manifesto of wholesome
revolutionary principles, in thirty-one numbered articles, with a
concluding appeal to all mankind to ‘Awake! Arise! or be for ever fallen!’
The first of the thirty-one articles (plagiarized without acknowledgment,
as Mr. Rossetti has shown, from two documents of the French Revolution,
(_a_) The Declaration by the Constituent Assembly in August, 1789, and
(_b_) the Declaration proposed by Robespierre in April, 1793), announced
to all Irishmen interested in the matter,--‘Government has no rights; it
is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their
own.’
A copy of the _Address_ was sent to Curran, who, of course, took no notice
of the performance. Fretting at Curran’s disdainful indifference to his
efforts for the regeneration of Ireland, Shelley wrote to Miss Hitchener
of his mean opinion of the lawyer who had consented to serve a tyrannical
Government as Master of the Rolls. But in leaving the trio to amuse
themselves at their pleasure, without checking or discouraging them,
Curran gave Shelley only the same cause of offence, as was given him by
all Dublin society during the earlier weeks of his stay in the capital. If
Expectation (to use the expression of one of Shelley’s letters to Miss
Hitchener) was on the tiptoe respecting the purpose of the three lodgers
at 7 Lower Sackville Street, she gave no other sign of interest in their
proceedings. There may have been a little tittering in the highways, in
Trinity College, and in the Four Courts, at the eccentric demeanour of the
young gentleman and two ladies, who went about the town forcing copies of
a foolish tract into the hands of wayfarers; but few people offered to pay
for the literature thus put under their eyes. No one of social influence
sought out the author who, after crossing the Channel for the benefit of
Ireland, found the Irish people much less ready to know him, than he was
ready to make their acquaintance. The trio had been a fortnight in Lower
Sackville Street, when Harriett wrote of the Irish people to Miss
Hitchener, ‘We have seen very little of them as yet; but when Percy is
more known I suppose we shall know more at the same time.’ The ink with
which Harriett wrote these words had been dry for little more than
twenty-four hours, when Shelley was brought face to face with the Irish
people, on the evening of 28th February, 1812, at the ‘Aggregate Meeting
of the Catholics of Ireland,’ held in the Fishamble Street Theatre for the
furtherance of Catholic Emancipation,--a meeting at which O’Connell was
chief orator, and Shelley spoke as seconder of the sixth resolution, ‘That
the grateful thanks of this Meeting are due, and hereby returned to Lord
Glentworth, the Right Hon. Maurice Fitzgerald, and the other distinguished
Protestants who have this day honoured us with their presence.’
To second the sixth resolution at a public meeting is not to take an
important part in its proceedings. Under ordinary circumstances it is to
utter a few words, that are heard by few in the stir and hubbub of the
breaking up of the assembly, and are rated by the reporters for the press
as a mere formality, undeserving commemoration in a separate paragraph.
Shelley’s speech certainly attracted some attention at the moment of its
delivery, and caused some subsequent talk. But it was only one of the
concluding and insignificant incidents of an important demonstration.
Chief-constable Michael Farrell disposed of the eloquence, that commended
the sixth resolution to the aggregate Catholics, in this brief sentence,
‘Lord Glentworth said a few words; a Mr. Bennett spoke, also a Mr.
Shelley, who stated himself to be a native of England.’ In an official
report of an inferior constable, Shelley’s name does not appear; nor does
the report contain any reference to his speech, unless Mr. Manning made
the mistake of attributing to another youthful orator the words that
proceeded from Shelley’s lips. Whilst the constables dealt thus lightly
with Shelley’s oration, the reporters for the press noticed it in
significant paragraphs. The _Freeman’s Journal_ (29th February, 1812)
honoured it with eighty words. The _Dublin Evening Post_ gave it 216
words. The _Patriot_ of the 2nd of March thought it worthy of 345
commemorative words. It is, therefore, well upon the record that Shelley
spoke a piece of his mind to what Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy calls ‘an
immense assembly.’
The speech was certainly made. But there is a curious conflict as to the
length and tenor of the speech, the style in which it was delivered, and
the way in which it was received. Lady Shelley wishes us to believe that,
by an unreasonable display of tolerance for the Irish Protestants,
Shelley provoked savage yells from his Catholic auditors. Mr. Denis
Florence MacCarthy produces half-a-dozen scraps of old newspapers in
evidence, that the young poet’s maiden essay in political oratory charmed
and moved its hearers in a singular degree, causing them to hail him with
delight, ‘whilst joy beamed in every countenance and rapture glistened in
every eye.’ Whilst the circumstances of the case, including the reports of
the newspapers, dispose the discreet reader to think it probable that the
speech held the attention of the meeting for five or ten minutes, persons
who believe Shelley incapable of anything in the way of misstatement are
convinced by a passage in one of his letters to Miss Hitchener that he
spoke for upwards of an hour.
Though it is not to be imagined that the seconder of the sixth resolution
was allowed to talk for more than an hour, there is sufficient evidence
that, after rising on his legs, Shelley took occasion to introduce himself
with unusual particularity to his hearers, and to inform them of the
considerations and purpose that had brought him to Ireland. It is also
certain that his utterances were received with alternate expressions of
approval and dissent; that he was applauded for expressing his abhorrence
of English misrule, and checked with even more emphatic indications of
displeasure, when he spoke of mere differences of religious opinion, as
trivialities that should not be allowed to divide the people of the same
nation. Shelley himself certainly made none too much of the expressions of
dissent when he wrote to Miss Hitchener on 14th March, 1812 (from 17
Grafton Street, to which address he had moved from 7 Lower Sackville
Street), that his speech was misunderstood; that, though he won some
applause by stating the objects of his expedition to Ireland, he was
hissed for his remarks touching religion; and that ‘the newspapers,’ which
gave significant prominence to his speech, ‘only noted that which did not
excite disapprobation.’
With this confession of oratorical misadventure under their eyes, most
readers will think Hogg right in saying:--
‘On one occasion he’ (_i.e._ Shelley) ‘told me that at a
meeting--probably at the meeting of the philanthropists--so much
ill-will was shown to the Protestants that, thereupon, he was provoked
to remark that the Protestants were fellow Christians, fellow
subjects, and as such were entitled to equal rights, to equal
charity, toleration, and the rest. He was forthwith interrupted by
savage yells; a tremendous uproar arose, and he was compelled to be
silent.’
If Shelley showed himself so comically ignorant of Irish politics, as to
assure a meeting of Dublin Catholics that religious equality with the
majority of the Irish nation should at least be accorded to the Protestant
minority, it is not surprising that he was silenced. Hogg may have
exaggerated what Shelley told him with exaggeration, and his way of
writing about ‘the Catholics’ and ‘the philanthropists,’ as though the
terms meant the same thing, is not the only example of reprehensible
looseness in his account of Shelley’s Irish campaign. But in the main the
biographer’s account of the poet’s campaign is by no means too
unfavourable to the youthful adventurer; and Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy
is guilty of bad temper and worse manners, in stigmatizing the author of
the faulty narrative a ‘liar of the first magnitude.’
That Shelley found an opportunity for introducing himself to the Irish
people in Fishamble Street was due to the influence of Mr. John Lawless,
whose acquaintance he had made shortly before the meeting. A keen
politician, who enjoyed in his party the equally flattering and suspicious
designation of ‘honest Jack Lawless,’ and a flighty gentleman of letters,
who produced two years later an absolutely meritless contribution to _The
History of Ireland_, Mr. Lawless was quick to recognize in Shelley a young
gentleman, whom he would do well to befriend. An organizer of the
aggregate meeting, Mr. Lawless used his influence to put the young
gentleman to the fore. Had it not been for honest Jack, the Dublin papers
would have been silent about the points of Shelley’s speech that ‘did not
excite disapprobation,’ and more or less communicative about the points
that occasioned uproar. After affording Shelley an opportunity for
introducing himself to the Dublin public, and nursing him through the
reports of the meeting, ‘honest Jack’ took occasion to introduce the
youthful adventurer, yet more fully to the Irish people, in the article
that appeared in the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_ of ‘March, 1812;’ the
article that was at the same time a personal memoir of the adventurer, and
a critical review of his _Address to the Irish People_; the article that,
after speaking of Shelley as the son of ‘a member of the Imperial
Parliament’ and ‘the _immediate_ heir to one of the _first_ fortunes in
England,’ concluded with a handsome reference to the ‘very beautiful poem’
which he had written for the benefit ‘of our distinguished countryman, Mr.
Finerty.’
At the same time Mr. Lawless took occasion to introduce Mrs. Honest Jack
Lawless to Shelley’s womankind, and to welcome the trio to his hearth,
where he entertained them with the best fruit and vegetables of the Dublin
market, and would have fed them on richer fare, had they not recently
joined the Nineteenth Century Pythagoreans, and as Pythagoreans bound
themselves to abstain from flesh and fermented liquors.
It is not to be imagined that honest Jack showered these civilities on the
Shelleys without a thought for civilities, to be rendered by the Shelleys
in return. One may need money without being an Irishman. It is not to
bring a blush to Erin’s cheek, that honest Jack is mentioned on this page
as an Irish gentleman whose command of gold was insufficient for his
necessities. Though he appeared very much a minor, ‘the _immediate_ heir
to one of the first fortunes of England’ was a person whom honest Jack
regarded as a person who might prove a profitable acquaintance. A man of
the world, more than thirty years old, Mr. Lawless was not so absolutely
undeserving of his peculiar epithet, as to be capable of robbing so young
a gentleman without throwing a show of honesty into the predatory
business. Moreover, Mr. Lawless saw at a glance that his new acquaintance,
who went to Miss Westbrook for sixpences as he wanted them, was no youth
to be plucked at a card-table or plundered on a racecourse. The young
gentleman who lived on milk and vegetables, and seldom had more than
half-a-crown in his pocket, was no young gentleman to be bled and fleeced
in the ordinary way. Mr. Lawless conceived the happy thought of drawing
Shelley into partnership in a great and beneficent literary enterprise.
Himself a man of letters, Mr. Lawless wished to write a _History of
Ireland_, that would exhibit the grandeur and misfortunes of the Irish
people, and educate its readers in the sacred principles of Irish
patriotism. Having already written the opening chapters of such a history,
Mr. Lawless saw in the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes of
England a fit coadjutor in so glorious an enterprise. Men of letters, they
both burned to liberate Ireland. What more beautiful than for two such
friends to co-operate for so sublime a purpose? For their needful
enlightenment, the Irish people required above all things a good _History
of Ireland_. To give Ireland what she most needed, the Irish politician
and the English scholar must work in unison, throwing all their energies
into the undertaking, and deeming no sacrifice too great for so grand an
object. Mr. Lawless felt this and said it. On hearing honest Jack’s
opinion, Shelley concurred in it cordially. To both gentlemen it was
obvious that their enterprise would require money. To both it seemed
preposterous and unendurable, that the Irish people should remain in
ignorance of their country’s story, through the difficulty of raising the
insignificant sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, which would suffice to
put the presses to work. It might, perhaps, be necessary to spend another
hundred pounds or so; but should the first volume have the sale, to be
anticipated for the initial tome of an enthralling narrative, the
ridiculously small sum of 250_l._ (a sum that would, of course, be repaid
again and again by the profits of the publication) would suffice to break
the fetters from Erin’s bruised and wounded limbs, and chase the darkness
of ignorance from a liberated country. Was such a work to be deferred for
the want of a miserable 250_l._, whilst John Lawless was known for his
honesty in every castle and cabin, south of the Giant’s Causeway, and
whilst his young friend was the immediate heir of one of the first
fortunes of England? To obtain the equally trivial and necessary sum,
Shelley seized a pen and wrote (_vide_ Medwin’s _Life of Shelley_) to Mr.
Medwin, the Horsham lawyer,--saying how he was engaged with a literary
friend in producing a voluminous _History of Ireland_, and needed 250_l._
for the execution of the enterprise. Of course, the Horsham lawyer was
assured by his youthful client, that the sale of the _History_ would yield
great profit, and that the 250_l._ would be repaid in eighteen months. It
is more curious and remarkable that, in pressing Mr. Medwin to provide the
needful money for the project, Shelley assured the lawyer that two hundred
and fifty pages of the work were already printed:--a statement for which
the vigour and liveliness of the writer’s imagination may perhaps be held
accountable.
It speaks less for Mr. Lawless’s honesty, than for his cleverness, in
drawing wind to his sails from every passing breeze, that this letter was
written when Shelley had been barely five weeks in Dublin, and possibly
had not known him for a month. How Mr. Medwin answered the letter does
not appear; but it may be assumed confidently that if he provided the
250_l._, he required that the transaction should be withheld from the
knowledge of Shelley’s father. Nor does it appear whether Mr. Lawless drew
money for his literary project out of his young friend’s pocket. But the
known circumstances of their intimacy leave little room for doubt that
Shelley’s purse was accountable for the Irish gentleman’s persistence in
the labours, that resulted in his _Compendium of the History of Ireland,
from the Earliest Period to the Reign of George I._ (1814);--a work on
which he was engaged between the dates of Shelley’s two visits to Ireland.
During his stay in Dublin, Shelley continued to correspond with the
philosopher of Skinner Street, writing him at least three long letters,
dated respectively on 24th February, 8th March, and 18th March; letters to
which Godwin replied on 4th March, 14th March, and 30th March. Resembling
in their adulatory and reverential extravagances his earlier epistles from
Keswick to the same correspondent, Shelley’s letters from Dublin to
William Godwin are chiefly remarkable for evidence that he was looking
yearningly for the pleasures of personal intimacy with the sage, whom he
was pleased to regard and address as his intellectual guide and guardian.
Whilst Shelley addressed him in the most deferential strain, Godwin
abounded with almost parental anxiety for the young man, who appeared to
the literary veteran to have gone to Ireland on a mission, that could not
fail to result in discredit to the adventurer, and might be fruitful of
insurrection and bloodshed. Godwin would have been less apprehensive for
his correspondent’s safety, had he known him personally, and would have
had no fear whatever for the peace of Ireland, had he realized the
indifference (qualified by the slightest sense of amusement) with which
the Dublin police and populace regarded the proceedings of the boyish
agitator.
The substance of Godwin’s admonitions to his youthful correspondent was
just this:--Get out of Ireland promptly, or mischief will ensue to
yourself and others from your madcap expedition; and after leaving
Ireland, get the better of the misconceptions and self-conceit that make
you think yourself competent to settle perplexing questions, that have
proved too much for the wisest statesmen. It is to Shelley’s credit that
he took such advice in good part, and wrote from 17 Grafton Street, on
18th March, 1812, to his Mentor, that, in deference to the expostulations
and counsels of the author of _Political Justice_, he had withdrawn his
Irish pamphlets from circulation, and was making ready to quit Dublin.
Acknowledging the indiscretion, insufficiency, and unseasonableness of his
measures for dealing with the grievances of Ireland, he declared his
intention to leave the Irish, at least for a while, to manage their own
affairs.
It was thus that, at the close of his fifth week in Dublin, and two days
before writing to Mr. Medwin, of Horsham, for 250_l._ to be spent on the
production of a new and voluminous _History of Ireland_, Shelley desisted
from his efforts to force his two pamphlets upon public attention, and
acknowledged the unsoundness of the measures they recommended. It does
not, however, follow that Godwin was so largely accountable for this
change of opinion as he had reason to imagine himself. One of the few
points on which Mr. Hogg and Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy are of the same
mind is, that Godwin’s arguments and expostulations had little or nothing
to do with the speedy extinction of Shelley’s confidence in his own
remedies for Irish grievances; and though the concession is by no means
favourable to Shelley’s reputation for sincerity, it may be conceded that
the point, on which the two biographers are thus unanimous, is also one of
the points in respect to which both biographers are in the right. The fact
is, that Shelley’s enthusiastic concern for the Irish people had played
itself out when the second of Godwin’s expostulatory letters gave him a
convenient pretext for retiring from a position that no longer afforded
him congenial excitement. Hence the letter which moved Godwin to write to
Curran, begging him even yet to pay some attention to the young
enthusiast, who had shown so commendable and engaging a readiness to shape
his course in obedience to the advice of his superiors by age and
experience.
Whilst Godwin overflowed with approval of his young friend’s
submissiveness to reason, Shelley could congratulate himself on the
results of his announcement that, for the present, he should leave the
Irish to manage their own affairs. Raising him in the regard of the
philosopher, whose favour he was especially desirous of winning, the
announcement brought him invitations to Curran’s dinner-table, where he
discovered to his mortification, that a famous patriot may, in his
declining years, love good cheer almost as much as his country, and be
scarcely more distinguished by devotion to liberty than by a taste for
obscene stories.
Enough has been said of Shelley’s ‘Irish campaign’ to show that, so far as
his reputation is concerned, the kindest way of dealing with the farcical
affair is to make fun of its absurdities; and that he suffers less from
biographers who, dealing lightly with the expedition, palliate its
foolishness with kindly reference to the adventurer’s juvenility, than
from the apologists who discover wisdom and political sagacity in the
extravagances of a puerile escapade. To laugh at the droll business is to
be in good humour with the boy, whose self-sufficiency is only brought
into offensive prominence by attempts to justify it. In this particular
the poet’s admirers may well prefer Hogg’s pleasantry to Mr. MacCarthy’s
seriousness. In other ways the later biographer defeats his own purpose.
It is curious, how he produces evidence, supporting the very assertions
whose accuracy he impugns. Maintaining that Shelley’s speech in Fishamble
Street was favourably received, he prints the poet’s confession that he
was checked with angry clamour against utterances, to which the newspapers
made no reference. Indignant with Hogg for saying the poet was mortified
by the miscarriage of his efforts for Ireland, he publishes the very words
in which Shelley acknowledges the failure of his schemes. Maintaining that
Shelley left Dublin ‘at the precise time he had originally arranged to
leave it,’ he sets forth the testimony that, whereas he withdrew from
Ireland on the 7th April, 1812, he had originally designed to stay in
Dublin till ‘the end of April.’ It is thus the author of _Shelley’s Early
Life_ by turns disproves his own charges against Hogg’s accuracy, or shows
himself more inexact than the biographer whom he accuses of falsehood.
Though it was less sudden and hasty than Hogg imagined, Shelley’s
withdrawal from Ireland was made three weeks sooner than the time he
appointed for the departure, when he was still hopeful for the success of
his intervention between the Irish people and their despotic rulers.
Whilst writing his last letter from Ireland to William Godwin (the letter
in which he says nothing of his project for a new _History of Ireland_ to
the philosopher, whom he affects to treat with unqualified confidence),
Shelley had determined to leave Dublin in the first week of the ensuing
month, and was already making arrangements for migrating to Wales. One of
his preliminary measures was to fill a large deal box with the few copies
of his _Address to the Irish People_ still remaining on his hand, the much
larger number of his second Irish pamphlet yet resting in his possession,
and the greater part of the edition of his _Declaration of Rights_,--the
broadsides with which he hoped to rouse the farmers of his native county
to a perception of their political grievances. This large deal box was
addressed to Miss Hitchener, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, and sent on board the
boat for Holyhead, whence Shelley imagined it would pass without
observation to the philosophical schoolmistress. In the absence of any
person, duly authorized by its owner to pass it through the custom-house,
this heavy box was in due course opened, and searched at Holyhead, by Mr.
Pierce Thomas, Surveyor of Customs, who, writing to the Secretary of State
for the Home Office an account of the inflammatory literature discovered
in the chest, also put himself in communication with the Holyhead agent of
the General Post Office. Hence the correspondence (still preserved at the
Record Office) between secretaries of high degree and local officers of
mean estate respecting the big box and its criminatory contents, nothing
of which was more likely to agitate the official mind than the following
letter from Harriett Shelley to her husband’s dear and incomparable friend
Miss Hitchener, who had recently adopted the name of Portia, in lieu of
her rightful Christian name Eliza (a name already appropriated in ‘Percy’s
little circle’ to Miss Westbrook):--
‘_Dublin, March 18th, 1812._
‘MY DEAR PORTIA,--As Percy has sent you such a large box, so full of
inflammable matter, I think I may be allowed to send a little, but not
of such a nature as his. I sent you two letters in a newspaper, which
I hope you received safe from the intrusion of Postmasters. I sent one
of the pamphlets to my Father in a newspaper, which was opened and
charged; but which was very trifling compared with what you and Godwin
paid.
‘I believe I have mentioned a new acquaintance of ours, a Mrs. Nugent,
who is sitting in the room now and talking to Percy about Virtue. You
see how little I stand on ceremony. I have seen her but twice before,
and I find her a very agreeable, sensible woman. She has felt most
severely the miseries of her country, in which she has been a very
active member. She visited all the prisons in the time of the
Rebellion, to exhort the people to have courage and hope. She says it
was a most dreadful task; but it was her duty, and she would not
shrink from the performance of it. This excellent woman, with all her
notions of Philanthropy and justice, is obliged to work for her
subsistence--to work in a shop, which is a furrier’s; there she is
every day confined to her needle. Is it not a thousand pities that
such a woman should be so dependent on others? She has visited us this
evening for about three hours, and is now returned home. The evening
is the only time she can get out in the week; but Sunday is her own,
and then we are to see her. She told Percy that her country was her
only love, when he asked her if she was married. She calls herself
_Mrs._, I suppose, on account of her age, as she looks rather old for
a _Miss_. She has never been out of the country and has no wish to
leave it.
‘This is St. Patrick’s night, and the Irish always get very tipsy on
such a night as this. The Horse Guards are pacing the streets and will
be so all the night, so fearful are they of disturbances, the poor
people being very much that way inclined, as provisions are very
scarce in the southern counties. Poor Irish people, how much I feel
for them! Do you know, such is their ignorance, that when there is a
drawing-room held, they go from some distance to see the people who
keep them starving to get their luxuries; they will crowd round the
state carriages in great glee to see those who have stript them of
their rights, and who wantonly revel in a profusion of ill-gotten
luxury, whilst so many of those harmless people are wanting bread for
their wives and children? What a spectacle! People talk of the fiery
spirit of these distressed creatures, but that spirit is very much
broken and ground down by the oppressors of this poor country. I may
with truth say there are more beggars in this city than any other in
the world. They are so poor they have hardly a rag to cover their
naked limbs, and such is their passion for drink that when you relieve
them one day you see them in the same deplorable condition the next.
Poor creatures! they live more on whiskey than anything, for meat is
so dear they cannot afford to purchase any. If they had the means I do
not know that they would, whiskey being so much cheaper, and to their
palates so much more desirable. Yet how often do we hear people say
that Poverty is no evil. I think if they had experienced it they would
soon alter their tone. To my idea it is the worst of all evils, as the
miseries that flow from it are certainly very great; the many crimes
we hear of daily are the consequences of poverty, and that, to a very
great degree. I think the laws are extremely unjust--they condemn a
person to death for stealing thirteen shillings and fourpence.
‘Disperse the Declarations. Percy says the farmers are very fond of
having something posted upon their walls.
‘Percy has sent you all his Pamphlets with the _Declaration of
Rights_, which you will disperse to advantage. He has not many of his
first Address, having taken pains to circulate them through the city.
‘All thoughts of an association are given up as impracticable. We
shall leave this noisy town on the 7th of April, unless the Habeas
Corpus Act should be suspended, and then we shall be obliged to leave
here as soon as possible. Adieu.’
Though he married for love, Shelley did not live many weeks with Harriett
before he felt the need of another companion. Had his girlish wife been
all the world to him in their honeymoon, and the days immediately
following it, he would not have welcomed Hogg so cordially to the
Edinburgh lodgings, or left her at York, whilst he made the flying trip to
London and Sussex. That he surrendered himself so completely to his
sister-in-law’s control, was due chiefly to the insufficiency of the
pleasure afforded him by Harriett’s society. Had he delighted in the music
of her voice, the charms of her beauty, and the manifestations of her
sensibility, as he would have delighted in them had she been his perfect
mate, there would have been in his breast no yearning for another
companion, whose presence and sympathy would perfect his felicity. At the
moment of setting forth for Ireland, and at the moment of arriving at
Dublin, he entreated Miss Hitchener to come to him and Harriett and Eliza,
so that an imperfectly happy trio might with her co-operation become a
happy party of four. Throughout his sojourn in the Irish capital, he
needed Portia for his contentment; and after Portia’s refusal to come to
him in Ireland, was looking forward to the meeting in Wales or elsewhere,
when the Sussex schoolmistress would make it possible for him and Harriett
and Eliza to be happy for ever. Had he been fitly mated, he would not so
soon after his wedding have desired the society of any woman but his wife.
Had Harriett been to him all that a bride usually is to her mate, Miss
Hitchener would have been no less out of his mind than she was out of his
sight.
As he needed Portia for the completion of his own happiness, the equally
vehement and egotistic Shelley imagined she was no less needful for the
contentment of his companions. Whilst it says much for his egotism, it
speaks no less strongly of his ignorance of feminine nature, that he could
think his wife and her sister especially desirous of associating
themselves closely with the young woman, of whose wisdom and goodness he
was so extravagantly eloquent. It also speaks for his ignorance of womanly
nature, that he imagined the Hurstpierpoint schoolmistress would be eager
to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Shelley and her sister on terms that
would render it difficult for her to get away from them, should she find
them otherwise than congenial companions. That he erred so egregiously on
these points, is the more remarkable, because the ladies displayed no
strong desire for the arrangement on which he was set.
Instead of fixing herself on the trio, as soon as Shelley afforded her an
occasion for doing so, Miss Hitchener more than once displayed a
reasonable reluctance to surrender her independent position at
Hurstpierpoint for the questionable advantages of a perilous connexion
with the sisters whom she had never seen. On the other hand, though they
humoured Shelley in writing cordially to his friend at Hurstpierpoint, it
is obvious, from several matters, that Mrs. Shelley and her sister were no
less doubtful than Miss Hitchener, whether Shelley’s scheme for a happy
domestic circle would be fruitful of felicity to any one of the party.
Entreated, from Keswick, by Shelley to accompany him to Ireland, Miss
Hitchener declined the invitation, on account of her engagements at
Hurstpierpoint. Entreated by Shelley to come to him and his wife at
Dublin, she held to her purpose of remaining in Sussex. To the proposal
that she should come to Wales in the spring, and there make the
acquaintance of her Percy’s wife and sister-in-law, Miss Hitchener
assented; but when spring came, instead of acting on the invitation, she
discovered new reasons for remaining at Hurstpierpoint, and wrote to
Shelley that, instead of requiring her to break up her school, it would be
better for him to bring his wife and sister-in-law to her in Sussex. That
Shelley would have relinquished the notion of a meeting in Wales, and
acted on this proposal for a meeting in Sussex, had he been master of his
own movements, instead of being under the government of two ladies who had
no strong desire to make Miss Hitchener’s acquaintance, appears from the
letter he wrote to the schoolmistress from 17 Grafton Street, Dublin, on
10th March, 1812. ‘Your new suggestion,’ he exclaims gushingly in this
curious epistle, ‘of our joining you at Hurst is divine. It shall be so. I
have not shown Harriett or E. your letter yet; they are walking with a Mr.
Lawless (a valuable man), whilst I write this.’ The words exhibit the
whole position. To Shelley, yearning for reunion with Miss Hitchener, the
proposal for a speedy restoration to her society was so delightful, that
no word less eloquent of felicity than ‘divine’ could express the
gratification he anticipated from the meeting. ‘It shall be so,’ he wrote
bravely, before conferring on the matter with the ladies who owned him.
But when those ladies returned from their walk with the valuable Jack
Lawless, and were invited to join in the assurance that ‘it should be so,’
the enthusiasm of the subject man was checked by their decision that ‘it
should _not_ be so.’
Thinking in their hearts that the meeting with Miss Hitchener could not be
deferred for too long a time, and having obvious and sufficient reasons
for thinking Sussex the particular county in which a close intimacy with
Miss Hitchener would be most hurtful to their interests, Harriett and Miss
Westbrook discovered nothing delightful in the suggestion which had seemed
‘divine’ to Percy. If they must be brought into familiar intercourse with
Percy’s schoolmistress, Mrs. Shelley and her sister would rather live with
her in Wales, or Devonshire, or Scotland, than at a village within a drive
of Field Place, and a stone’s throw of Cuckfield. Hence the firmness with
which they overruled Shelley’s ‘it shall be so.’ They declined to forego
the pleasures of the Welsh trip, to which they had been looking forward so
long, simply because Miss Hitchener could not join them. Of course, the
pleasure of living in Wales would be enhanced to both of the ladies by the
presence of so sympathetic and delightful a woman as Miss Hitchener. But
to give up Wales, and travel all the way to Sussex for her acquaintance,
would be to pay too high a price for the delight of knowing her. They must
go to Wales, hoping that Portia would even yet arrange her affairs so as
to join them before they should withdraw from the Principality. The divine
suggestion was dismissed as an impracticable suggestion. So sagacious a
young woman as Miss Hitchener had no need to ask Shelley why he had, on
second thoughts, changed his mind with respect to the suggestion which had
pleased him so vastly at first view. By those who know aught of human
nature, it will not be questioned that the fight between Miss Westbrook
and Miss Hitchener began some months before the July day on which they
kissed one another for the first time at Lynton, in North Devon.
(2.)--NANTGWILLT, RHAYADER, RADNORSHIRE, SOUTH WALES.
Crossing a rough sea from Dublin to Holyhead, the trio (attended probably
by their Dublin bill distributor, who was certainly in their service in
the ensuing summer) traversed Anglesey, made the passage of the Menai
Straits, and journeying leisurely through North Wales into the southern
shires of the Principality, came, somewhere about 21st April, 1812, to
Nantgwillt, five miles from Rhayader, Co. Radnor, where they resided for
about seven weeks at Nantgwillt House, at that time in the hands of an
insolvent farmer. Delighted with the house, in a familiar part of
Radnorshire, and the thought of having his cousin, Tom Grove, for a
sociable neighbour, Shelley conceived a desire to settle at Nantgwillt for
a considerable time, if not for ever. Here was a bankrupt farmer on the
point of leaving a delightful place. Here was a delightful place, whose
proprietor would, of course, be only too glad to have so eligible a tenant
as the heir of the Castle Goring Shelleys. What, thought Shelley, could be
more agreeable to him than to turn farmer? With a bailiff at his elbow to
look after matters of vulgar business, he could farm to a profit. The
holding comprised a hundred and thirty acres of land under cultivation,
and seventy acres of wood, scrub, briery, and mountain; woods in which he
and Harriett and Eliza could saunter with their friends, when the summer’s
sun should be oppressive; hills they could climb in the colder seasons for
the enjoyment of the invigorating breeze. Whilst the farm would yield them
corn and milk, fruit and vegetables, it would also yield them just the
additional money that was needful for their requirements. Whilst the farm
would afford them prosperity, they would have leisure for their
intellectual pursuits, and larger ability to help their poorer neighbours.
The rent for this alluring farm was positively under a hundred a-year. It
was _only_ 98_l._ a-year; and the lease and stock, including the furniture
of the house, could be had for 700_l._ at the outside price! Even this
small sum need not be paid till he should have come of age; as the
assignees under the bankruptcy would give him credit for eighteen months,
provided he found a sufficient friend to be security for the payment of
the money, a year and half hence. Feeling he should not let such a chance
escape him, Shelley had not been three days at Nantgwillt before he
hurried to Cwm Elan to talk the matter over to Tom Grove. Poor talkers,
the Groves were excellent listeners; and Mr. Thomas Grove listened whilst
Shelley declared his wish to turn Welsh farmer and settle at Nantgwillt.
After hearing the poet’s statement of the case, Mr. Grove, without
offering to supply the needful money, opened his lips to remark that he
should have much pleasure in finding his cousin a suitable person to look
after his interests at the valuation. Duly sensible of his kinsman’s
kindness, Shelley lost no time in writing the characteristic letter
(_vide_ Medwin’s _Life of Shelley_) in which he asked Mr. Medwin, the
Horsham lawyer, to become security for the payment of the 600_l._ or
700_l._
Mr. Medwin may well have perused this letter with a sense of amusement. No
long time had passed since he was entreated to supply 250_l._ for the
literary venture, that could not fail to bring the _littérateur_ money and
fame; and now he was required to become security for the payment of seven
hundred pounds, to put the man of letters into a Welsh farm. Mr. Medwin
had a good practice and money of his own, as well as the command of money
belonging to his clients. He had, moreover, made up his mind to draw his
young kinsman into his hands, both for the sake of making money out of
him, and in order to annoy the Squire of Field Place and old Sir Bysshe,
whom he did not love. But knowing Percy would not be happy at Nantgwillt
for twelve months, there were obvious reasons why he should think twice
before drawing a cheque or signing a bond, to put the youngster into the
farm in the loveliest spot of all Radnorshire.
Writing, on 25th April, 1812, to Sussex for the means of taking the farm,
Shelley wrote on the same day to London for the friends whom he should
need a few months later, for his full enjoyment of the delightful place.
His new home was surrounded by scenes of unutterable beauty. Defended by
rocks and mountains, that shut out the world’s tumult, his chosen valley,
peopled by guileless peasants, would afford him all he needed of earthly
happiness, when he should have the honour and delight of entertaining the
revered William Godwin, together with Mrs. Godwin and all the
Skinner-Street family. The philosophic bookseller was entreated to escape
from the cold hurry of business, and come with his wife and children to
Wales.
How Mr. Medwin, of Horsham, answered Shelley’s letter does not appear; but
he seems from the event to have dissuaded his youthful client from
throwing himself so impulsively into a business of which he knew nothing.
Anyhow, Shelley’s scheme for turning farmer fell through, and on June 11,
1812, he wrote to Skinner Street, explaining that he could no longer look
forward to the pleasure of receiving the Godwins at Nantgwillt House, as
he had already retired from that delightful abode to temporary quarters at
Cwm-Rhayader.
‘We are,’ he wrote to the sage of Skinner Street, ‘unexpectedly
compelled to quit Nantgwillt. I hope, however, before long time has
elapsed, to find a home. These accidents are unavoidable to a minor. I
hope wherever we are, you, Mrs. Godwin, and your children will come to
us this summer.’
Homeless for the moment, the minor deferred the happiness of seeing his
London friends until he had found a home in which to receive them. From
this light and airy announcement of his sudden and enforced withdrawal
from Nantgwillt House, Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy is inclined to infer
that the farmer told the trio to leave his homestead, because he
questioned their ability to pay for their entertainment.
‘Shelley,’ says the author, whose abuse of Hogg determined some of the
Shelleyan enthusiasts to declare him a high authority on the poet’s
‘Early Life,’ ‘resided at Nantgwillt for seven weeks. He changed his
residence, not through any restlessness of disposition, for it is
evident he was reluctant to leave it, _but, perhaps_, owing to the
doubts of the “farmer” as to the security of his rent. Such is the
interpretation I put on the following passage in a letter to Godwin,
dated “Cwm-Rhayader, June 11th, 1812:--“We are unexpectedly compelled
to quit Nantgwillt. I hope, however, before long time has elapsed, to
find a home. These accidents are unavoidable to a minor.”’
Shelley’s letter to Mr. Medwin disposes of the suspicion which should not
have been entertained by the authoritative writer on Shelleyan evidences,
though it may well have occurred to Godwin in June, 1812, as a reasonable
way of accounting for the unexpected change of residence. Coming to
Nantgwillt House at the very moment when the bankrupt farmer was about to
leave the holding, and his assignees were looking out for some one to take
the remainder of his lease, Shelley may be assumed to have retired from
the house at the request of an incoming tenant, who required all the rooms
for his own use. In the failure of his attempt to take the farm, there is
enough to account for Shelley’s way of speaking of his change of abode as
unexpected and involuntary. The incoming tenant’s conceivable reluctance
to entertain lodgers would be another disappointment of the poet’s
expectations. There is no direct evidence that Shelley was just then
suffering from financial distress in a degree to make the Nantgwillt
farmer suspect his solvency. On the contrary, his ability to continue his
southward journey within a few days of his retirement from the farmhouse
points to the opposite conclusion.