NORTH DEVON.
Mr. Eton’s Cottage near Tintern Abbey--Shelley’s reason for not taking
the Cottage--His Letter to Mr. Eton--Godwin’s expostulatory
Epistle--His Grounds for thinking Shelley prodigal--Reasonableness of
Godwin’s admonitions--Hogg and MacCarthy at fault--Shelley’s Letters
from Lynton to Godwin--Miss Hitchener at Lynton--Porcia _alias_
Portia--_Letter_ to Lord Ellenborough--Printed at Barnstaple--Mr.
Chanter’s _Sketches of the Literary History of Barnstaple_--Fifty
copies of the _Letter_ sent to London--Shelley’s Measures for the
political Enlightenment of North Devon Peasants--His Irish Servant,
Daniel Hill--Commotion at Barnstaple--Daniel Hill’s Arrest and
Imprisonment--Mr. Syle’s Alarm--Shelley’s humiliating and perilous
Position--His Flight from North Devon to Wales--William Godwin’s Trip
from London to Lynton--His Surprise and Disappointment--His ‘Good
News’ of the Fugitives.
(3.)--LYNTON, NEAR LYNMOUTH, NORTH DEVON.
Hogg having erroneously inferred from certain letters of the
Shelley-Godwin correspondence, which he failed to read with lawyer-like
care, that Shelley went from the neighbourhood of Rhayader to Lynmouth, in
North Devon, in order to settle himself in a cottage belonging to a
certain Mr. Eton, at the last-named place, he has been followed in one of
the several errors of his book by Mr. MacCarthy, and other biographers,
who are scarcely more clever in discovering mistakes in those pages of the
lawyer’s narrative, that are altogether accurate, than ready to rely on
those of his statements that are seriously inexact. Instead of lying in
Lynmouth, Mr. Eton’s cottage lay in the neighbourhood of Tintern Abbey, as
Hogg might have discovered from the letter in which William Godwin
expressed his surprise and regret to Shelley that, after looking at the
little house, he should have declined to take it on account of its
smallness.
Mrs. William Godwin had suggested that the Shelleys should settle for a
time in Mr. Eton’s cottage near Tintern Abbey, and ‘all the females’ (to
use Godwin’s expression) of the Skinner-Street household ‘were on the
tiptoe to know,’ whether the Shelleys would act on the suggestion, when
the postman laid on William Godwin’s shop-counter a letter, addressed by
Shelley’s hand to Mr. Eton. As there could be no secrets from them,
between Shelley and their friend, the curious and excited people in
Skinner Street opened the epistle and read it, before passing it on to Mr.
Eton. To Godwin’s slight surprise, and to his wife’s slight
disappointment, the epistle announced that Shelley declined to take the
cottage, because it was too small for his purpose. The consequence was
that Godwin, whilst stating how the letter’s purport came to his knowledge
sooner than to Mr. Eton’s cognizance, wrote to Shelley these words:--
‘I am a little astonished, however, with the expression in your
letter, that “the insufficiency of house-room is a vital objection.”
This would sound well to Mr. Eton from the eldest son of a gentleman
of Sussex, with an ample fortune. But to me, I own, it a little alarms
me.... But you, my dear Shelley, have special motives for wariness in
this matter, you are at variance with your father, and I think you say
in one of your letters that he allows you only 200_l._ a-year. If by
unnecessary and unconscientious expense you heap up embarrassments at
present, how much do you think that will embitter your days and
shackle your powers hereafter?... Prudence, too, a just and virtuous
prudence, in this most essential point, the dispensation of property,
will do much to make you and your father friends: and why should you
not be friends?’
The letter, from which these passages have been transcribed, is given in
Hogg’s book without date or address; but whilst the contents show it to
have been written before Godwin had heard either of Shelley’s arrival at
Lynton, or of his intention to journey thither, the evidence is conclusive
that it was addressed to Shelley at Chepstow;--a fact to be held in
remembrance by the critical reader of the absurd passage of Mr. Denis
Florence MacCarthy’s very absurd book, in which it is suggested that the
sharpness of Godwin’s reflections (in the undated letter), on Shelley’s
manifest inclination to live beyond his means, was due to the
philosopher’s petty pique at the terms in which Shelley wrote to him, from
Lynmouth, on 5th July, 1812, about Miss Hitchener’s virtues and services
to humanity.
Though he seldom says anything, that is comparable for absurdity with Mr.
MacCarthy’s wilder notes on Shelleyan questions, Hogg provokes ridicule by
his animadversions on Godwin’s undated letter. Insisting that it was for
Shelley to decide whether the cottage was large enough for his purpose,
he smiles disdainfully at the impertinent busy-bodyism of Godwin’s
admonitory epistle, and insinuates that it would not have been written,
had not the philosopher’s temper been curiously ruffled by his young
friend’s audacity, in presuming to decline the modest mansion, which Mrs.
Godwin had advised him to hire of one of her friends. On perusing the
letter and reviewing all the circumstances that resulted in its
composition, the discreet and impartial reader fails to discover the
writer’s ill-temper, or the grounds for charging him with exceeding the
limits of the position, into which he had been drawn by his
correspondent’s repeated solicitations for parental counsel and guidance.
Had Godwin no grounds for thinking Shelley was disposed to live beyond his
means? Shelley had himself told Godwin, that his allowance from his father
was no more than 200_l._; and the veteran of letters may at that time have
had no reason for supposing that his young friend received any allowance
from his father-in-law, or had any means in addition to the money from his
father. At the most Shelley’s precarious income was only 400_l._ a-year;
and though Godwin probably thought it so much, he cannot have thought it
more, and may have thought it less than that amount by one half.
Immediately on coming to Nantgwillt, Shelley had invited the whole Godwin
family (six persons, viz., Godwin, Mrs. Godwin, Fanny, Mary, Claire, and
the small boy William) to visit him at Nantgwillt House. At the same time,
Godwin had been informed by Shelley of his intention to invite another
dear friend to stay with him at Nantgwillt during their sojourn with him.
Godwin had no reason to suppose that he and his people and the one other
dear friend (viz. Miss Hitchener) were all the persons, whom Shelley
designed to entertain during the summer. On the contrary, he had reason to
assume Shelley was no less hospitably disposed to old Oxford friends, and
half-a-hundred other people, than to persons whom he had not yet seen.
Some few weeks after receiving the invitation to Nantgwillt, Godwin is
informed by Shelley that the smallness of Mr. Eton’s cottage was a
sufficient reason why he should not take it, the rooms being too few for
the requirements of his family and friends. Godwin may well, under these
circumstances, have come to the conclusion that his young friend--a minor,
with certainly no more than 400_l._ a-year, set on taking a large house
and filling it with company--was disposed to outrun the constable. At the
same time, it is conceivable that Godwin suspected the suddenness of
Shelley’s withdrawal from Nantgwillt House was due to financial distress.
For (as I remarked in the last chapter) the sage of Skinner Street, with
no information respecting the farm and its recent change of occupiers, may
well have drawn the inference and entertained the suspicion, which Mr.
Denis Florence MacCarthy (with better means of information) had no excuse
for drawing and entertaining.
With these grounds for conceiving that Shelley was disposed to live beyond
his means, it was creditable in Godwin that, at the risk of offending the
young gentleman, he warned him to avoid the hurtful inconveniences of
financial extravagance. In giving the advice, that was so needful, Godwin
used no needlessly irritating language. Doubtless Godwin’s marital
sensitiveness would have been gratified, had Shelley decided to act on
Mrs. Godwin’s suggestion. Perhaps he was pained by Shelley’s off-hand way
of declining to act upon the lady’s advice. But no passage of the epistle
countenances the suggestion that the writer would have written otherwise,
had he not been piqued by what he thought disrespectful to his wife’s
judgment. Neither impertinent in substance nor pettish in tone, the letter
was in every respect a suitable epistle for Godwin to write to the young
man, who, with every appearance of sincerity, had entreated the
philosopher to enlighten his intellect and form his character. It is also
to Godwin’s honour that, whilst writing in a quasi-parental capacity to
his singular correspondent, he reminded the young man that one of his
first objects should be the recovery of his father’s favour and affection.
Leaving the neighbourhood of Rhayader in the middle of June, 1812, the
Shelleys journeyed to Tintern and Chepstow, and after looking at Mr.
Eton’s cottage between Tintern Abbey and Piercefield, proceeded to
Lynmouth, North Devon. During their sojourn of nine weeks and three days
in this locality, the trio lodged in a house, that standing in Lynton, on
the hill above the fishing-village, was within a few hundred yards of the
Valley of Bocks. In a letter, dated from ‘Lynmouth, Valley of Stones,
Sept. 19th, 1812,’ Godwin wrote to his wife in London: ‘Since writing the
above, I have been to the house where Shelley lodged, and I bring good
news. I saw the woman of the house, and I was delighted with her. She is a
good creature, and quite loved the Shelleys. They lived here nine weeks
and three days;’--words that, giving us the length of the poet’s sojourn
in the loveliest part of North Devon, point to the day on which the trio
came to the charming spot, either by water from the Mouth of the Severn,
or by land along the ridge of the Somerset coast. Speaking possibly from
documentary evidence (though her ‘authentic sources’ of information are
too often sources of error) Lady Shelley says, that the poet, with his
attendant womankind, left Lynmouth on 31st August, 1812. If Lady Shelley
is right on this point (and even Lady Shelley is right sometimes), Godwin
was wrong by two days in writing on the 19th of September, ‘My Dear Love.
The Shelleys are gone! Have been gone these three weeks.’ The philosopher
may of course have thrown nineteen days into the round number of weeks;
but I am slow to think this of the narrator who, with his customary
exactness in small matters, is careful to record the precise number of
days, by which Shelley’s stay in the lodgings, exceeded nine weeks.
When the trio had settled down in the lodging-house (situated in Lynton,
though Shelley dated his letters from Lynmouth, which he spelt in
accordance with local pronunciation), correspondence was renewed between
Godwin and his young friend. Dating from North Devon on 5th July, 1812,
before the philosopher’s expostulatory letter had come to his hands,
Shelley wrote to the sage of Skinner Street:--
‘We were all so much prepossessed in favour of Mr. Eton’s house that
nothing but the invincible objection of scarcity of room would have
induced us, after seeing it, to resign the predetermination we had
formed of taking it.... The expenses incurred by the failure of our
attempt, in settling at Nantgwillt, have rendered it necessary for us
to settle for a time in some cheap residence, in order to recover our
pecuniary independence. I still hope that you and your estimable
family will, before much time has elapsed, become inmates of our
house.... As soon as we recover our financial liberty, we mean to come
to London.’
Two days later (7th July, 1812), when the expostulatory letter (forwarded
from Chepstow) had been some twenty-four hours in his hands, Shelley again
refers to the considerations which determined him to decline Mr. Eton’s
house near Tintern Abbey, and ‘to seek an inexpensive retirement,’ in
another part of the country. ‘It is a singular coincidence,’ he remarks,
in the _second_ of his letters from Lynmouth, to Godwin, ‘that in my last
letter I entered into details respecting my mode of life, and unfolded to
you the reasons by which I was induced, on being disappointed in Mr.
Eton’s house, to seek an inexpensive retirement;’--words that, even in the
absence of other evidence to the point, should have preserved Hogg from
putting Mr. Eton’s cottage in Lynmouth. In the same epistle Shelley says,
‘My letter, dated on the 5th,’ (_i.e._ the day before the day on which he
received the expostulatory letter) ‘will prove to you that it is not to
live in splendour, which I hate,--_not_ to accumulate indulgences, which I
despise, that my present conduct was adopted.’ From this letter of the 7th
July, it is obvious that Shelley did not regard Godwin as having overstept
the privileges of his position, in expostulating with him on his pecuniary
imprudence in the undated letter, which reached him only on the 6th, when
his letter of the 5th was well on its way to Skinner Street. ‘I feel my
heart,’ Shelley says on the 7th July, in reference to his previous letter
of the 5th instant, ‘throb exultingly when, as I read the misgivings in
your mind concerning my rectitude, I reflect that I have to a certain
degree refuted them by anticipation.’ It never occurred to Shelley to take
offence at the freedom of Godwin’s expostulatory letter. It was enough for
him, on the 7th of July, to exult in knowing that he had on the 5th
answered by anticipation the principal matters of the epistle, before
opening it on the 6th. The undated expostulatory letter, which thus
travelled from London to Lynmouth, _viâ_ Chepstow, and came to Shelley’s
hands at Lynmouth on the 6th July, cannot have left London later than the
2nd instant. It is more probable that Godwin wrote the epistle on one of
the concluding days of June, than on the 1st or 2nd of July. Yet Mr. Denis
Florence MacCarthy and other gentlemen, claiming as Shelleyan specialists
a peculiar right to dogmatize on Shelleyan questions, insist that this
particular epistle, which _cannot_ have been posted later than the 2nd of
July, would never have been written by Godwin, had not his vanity been
acutely piqued by the passage of the letter, dated to him by Shelley on
the 5th of July, in which he spoke with extravagant eulogy of the
Hurstpierpoint schoolmistress, as a Deist and Republican, who openly
instructed her little pupils in her religious and political views, and
seemed to have formed her mind by the precepts of _Political Justice_,
before it was her good fortune to peruse the pages of that immortal work.
Shelley was urgent in the same letter that Fanny Imlay, _alias_
Wollstonecraft, _alias_ Godwin, might be allowed to journey from London to
Devonshire in Miss Hitchener’s company, and stay with him and Harriett at
Lynton till the autumn, when they would bring her back to Skinner Street.
As Godwin had not educated the young lady, or any of the girls of his
curiously composed family, in religious Free Thought, it is not surprising
that Mary Wollstonecraft’s illegitimate daughter was not allowed to travel
from London to Lynmouth in the company of the Deistical schoolmistress,
who joined the trio in North Devon some time about the middle of July.
Though there is no conclusive evidence to the point, it has been no less
reasonably than generally assumed, that this exemplary young
schoolmistress brought with her to the Lynton cottage the large box of
inflammatory literature, that had been opened at Holyhead, under
circumstances and with consequences already set forth. Anyhow, it is
certain that soon after her arrival at Lynton, Shelley had in his keeping
at Lynton many copies of the printed compositions that were found in the
big box by the Holyhead officials.
For some days Shelley may be presumed to have greatly enjoyed the society
of the incomparable Por_t_ia (in Percy’s little circle the Shakespearian
spelling of the name seems to have been preferred to Porcia) who had at
length broken away from Hurstpierpoint, and joined the little circle in
which he could now be hopeful of finding happiness for ever. Readers may
be left to imagine how the elated Percy escorted his dear Portia to the
Valley of Rocks, and other especially picturesque scenes of the delightful
region; how he discoursed with her on human perfectibility and other lofty
themes in language very much beyond Harriett’s comprehension; and how
Portia hung on his words with philosophic acquiescence, that was something
too adorative and manifestly acceptable to her husband for Mrs. Shelley to
be altogether pleased by it, though she did her very best to think it all
right and reasonable, and to regard Percy’s incomparable female worshiper
as a superlatively clever and good and charming woman. Readers may also be
left to imagine how Miss Westbrook scrutinized her dearest Portia, studied
her voice and manner, watched her movements, and took note of her
philosophic utterances, whilst, even from the first day of their personal
intercourse, she laid her plans for ejecting the dark-eyed and
foreign-looking intruder from the little circle, which she entered for the
gratification of only one of the three persons, who had joined in begging
her to come to them. In those days of his unutterable felicity, far was
Shelley from imagining how cordially he would, in a few months, hate the
young woman, who had come all the way from Sussex to make him happy for
ever. Miss Westbrook, however, would have been less cheerful and
complaisant to Portia in the earlier weeks of their association, had she
not been reasonably hopeful in July, that before the end of November Percy
would have seen quite enough of his incomparable Miss Hitchener.
Memorable in the story of Shelley’s life, as the place where he welcomed
Portia to his domestic circle, Lynton is also memorable as the place where
he busied himself with a literary enterprise, not unworthy of the young
gentleman who had failed to regenerate Ireland with two pamphlets and a
revolutionary broadside, and to demolish Christianity with a little
syllabus. He had not been many days in North Devon before it occurred to
the youthful enthusiast, that he could employ his leisure serviceably by
sowing the seeds of revolutionary sentiment in Lynmouth and Barnstaple,
and the several villages lying between the fishing-village whence he dated
his letters, and the tranquil little borough whose inhabitants are pleased
to style it ‘the metropolis of North Devon.’
For some weeks he had been contemplating with disgustful abhorrence the
circumstances, under which a man named Eaton had been tried and punished
by Lord Ellenborough for printing and publishing the Third Part of Tom
Paine’s _Age of Reason_. This daring violator of law, with which as a
printer and publisher he was quite familiar, had been indicted, tried,
convicted, and sentenced in the ordinary way to undergo the severe
punishment, to which he had rendered himself liable. Lord Ellenborough’s
connexion with the affair was, that it devolved on him, as Lord Chief
Justice, to try the prisoner in the ordinary way of his official duty, and
after the culprit’s conviction to pass sentence upon him. Doubtless the
Chief Justice was at pains to secure a conviction, because the evidence
was conclusive, and the case a serious case; at least, in the opinion of
the Chief Justice and the overwhelming majority of educated Englishmen.
Doubtless, also, he passed a severe sentence, as he would none the less
have been bound to do, even had he secretly questioned the wisdom of the
law he was required to administer. There is, of course, room for
difference of opinion on the question whether the law, under which this
person, Eaton, suffered a severe punishment, was politic, salutary, and
therefore humane. But even in these days of general disapproval of laws
for the restraint of religious opinion, there can be no question that Lord
Ellenborough was bound to administer the law. To Shelley it appeared
otherwise. Had the Chief Justice been at less pains to secure a
conviction, and passed a somewhat lighter sentence on the culprit, Shelley
would perhaps have been less stormily indignant; but he would have been no
less certain that the judge had ‘wantonly and unlawfully infringed the
rights of humanity’ in merely discharging a function of his office. It was
not in Shelley’s power to see that the main question of the case was not,
whether Eaton had been guilty of an offence against natural morality; but
whether he had been guilty of an offence against the law of the land.
Discovering nothing to condemn, but, on the contrary, much to approve, in
the publisher’s action, on the score of natural morality, Shelley spoke
and thought of Eaton as a wholly guiltless person. It followed by
Shelley’s logic that the judge who passed sentence on this guiltless
person was a judge to be denounced as a ruthless persecutor of the
innocent.
Taking this view of the matter, Shelley, on the eve of his withdrawal from
Radnorshire (_vide_ his letter of 11th June, 1812, to Godwin) was planning
an Address to the public on the wickedness of the prosecution, and the
iniquity of the judge.
The outline of the essay, begun in Radnorshire, was filled in as the
writer made his leisurely progress to North Devon, where he put the last
touches to the Letter to _Lord Ellenborough, occasioned by the Sentence
which he passed on Mr. D. I. Eaton, as Publisher of the Third Part of
Paine’s Age of Reason_,--an essay which in respect to literary style, is a
great advance on the author’s previous prose writings, without containing
a single passage to justify the praise lavished by the poet’s idolaters on
the perverse performance. The epistle having been touched in to his
satisfaction, and most likely read to Portia (I adhere to Harriett’s way
of spelling the name), Shelley took the manuscript to Barnstaple and
requested Mr. Syle, the principal bookseller and printer of the borough,
to put it in type and furnish him with a thousand copies. The matter,
which the bookseller was thus commissioned to make into a printed
pamphlet, was a strenuous and pungent libel on the Lord Chief Justice.
Whilst the pamphlet was passing through the press, it appears from Mr.
Chanter’s _Sketches of the Literary History of Barnstaple_, that Shelley
came from time to time to Mr. Syle’s place of business, for the purpose of
correcting proofs and revises. That Shelley journeyed to and fro between
Lynton and Barnstaple for this purpose, there is no doubt in the mind of
the present writer, who knows too much of his good friend, Mr. John
Roberts Chanter, to be capable of questioning the accuracy of his written
statements. The work, that was intended to cover Lord Ellenborough with
historical infamy, seems to have been corrected for press to the last
point as early as 16th August, 1812. Anyhow, on the 18th of that month the
author dispatched from Lynmouth fifty copies of the _Letter_ to his friend
Mr. Hookham, of London, the Old-Bond-Street bookseller; saying with his
pen, ‘I enclose also two pamphlets which I printed and distributed whilst
in Ireland some months ago (no bookseller daring to publish them). They
were on that account attended with only partial success, and I request
your opinion as to the probable result of publishing them with the annexed
suggestions in one pamphlet, with an explanatory preface in London.’ Had
Shelley been so much more truth-loving than other men, as his idolaters
declare him, he would have told Mr. Hookham that the failure of the two
Irish pamphlets had been complete, instead of representing they had
achieved a partial success. The statement that the pamphlets had been in
some degree successful was a petty untruth, which is more than slightly
offensive, from being told to the bookseller who was asked to reprint the
two failures. The Shelley, who wrote on this matter of business to Mr.
Hookham, was the same Shelley who planted the _Victor-and-Cazire_ piracies
on Mr. Stockdale.
Before Mr. Hookham received the fifty copies of the _Letter to Lord
Ellenborough_, much had taken place at Barnstaple. There was commotion in
the ‘metropolis of North Devon,’ the fishing village beneath Lynton, and
the petty townlets of the intervening seventeen miles. On a previous page
a doubt was expressed whether Daniel Hill (_alias_ Healey) attended the
trio from Dublin to Holyhead. Whether the Irish lout accompanied the trio
to Radnorshire, waited upon them at Nantgwillt House, and travelled at
their heels to North Devon _viâ_ Chepstow, is questionable; but he
certainly was in Shelley’s service at Lynton soon after the three
wanderers settled there. Certain also it is that Daniel Hill was employed
by Shelley to distribute in North Devon the various literary performances,
by which he hoped to revolutionize quietly the down-trodden, and
far-too-contented peasants of that charming part of England, viz.:--(1)
The comparatively innocuous _Proposals for an Association_, which had been
composed for revolutionary use in England as well as Ireland; (2) _The
Devil’s Walk_, the poetical broadside (printed perhaps in Dublin) designed
to bring the Prince Regent and his sycophants into universal contempt; and
(3) the _Declaration of Rights_ broadside, demonstrating sententiously
that everyone has a plenitude of rights, with the exception of the
Government, which is declared in the first four words of the _Declaration_
to have no rights whatever.
Whilst the _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_ was in Mr. Syle’s hands, Daniel
Hill found his chief occupation in distributing copies of these three
publications. At the same time Daniel Hill, in the faithful execution of
Shelley’s orders, posted some of the broadsides on convenient walls and
hoardings. It was Shelley’s intention that Daniel Hill should in like
manner distribute copies of the _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_. But it is
not for every man to accomplish his intentions. Before he had been
entrusted with copies of the libel on Lord Ellenborough, the Barnstaple
magistrates laid Daniel Hill by the heels in the borough gaol on the 19th
of August, whilst the fifty copies of the _Letter_ were on the way to Mr.
Hookham’s shop in Old Bond Street.
It being Shelley’s practice to be abundantly communicative respecting his
birth, parentage, education, and quality, to all persons showing any
curiosity in his proceedings, he had not been a fortnight in North Devon,
before it was generally known in Lynmouth and Barnstaple that he was young
Mr. Shelley, son of Mr. Timothy Shelley, M.P. for New Shoreham, and
immediate heir (as honest Jack Lawless put the case) to one of the first
fortunes of England. The proceedings of a young gentleman of such superior
quality were of course fruitful of much gossip in the parishes visited by
Daniel Hill, whose pamphlets and broadsides were the more interesting to
mechanics, farmers, and justices of the peace, because he was known to be
the young gentleman’s servant. Whilst gossips clacked to one another about
the young gentleman’s _Declaration of Rights_ and _The Devil’s Walk_, he
was known to be in communication with Mr. Syle, of Barnstaple, and to have
commissioned that enterprising bookseller to print something even more
racy than those piquant broadsides. Compositors at press, in a small
provincial town, who seldom work at ‘copy’ more diverting than
auctioneers’ catalogues or tradesmen’s lists of prices, are apt to grow
excited and loquacious when they are employed to put in type a smart
electioneering squib, or a pamphlet for the discomfiture of a local
dignitary. It was not in the nature of Mr. Syle’s provincial journeymen
and apprentices to be silent to their neighbours about the stinging letter
to the Lord Chief Justice, which they were ‘setting up.’ Before the author
had seen a first proof, the _Letter_ was talked about in the parlours of
the two contiguous taverns, where the political leaders of the borough met
every evening of the week to confer on matters of Imperial or local
politics. At the Whig tavern, feeling went in some degree with the
youthful author of the daring essay; but at the adjoining house, where
Tories held council, it was urged and agreed that measures should be taken
promptly for the maintenance of social order, and the timely stay of
seditious practices. By the chiefs of both parties it was agreed that
young Mr. Shelley, even though he were the son of half-a-dozen Members of
Parliament and heir to half-a-hundred baronetcies, should not be allowed
to break the law in North Devon with impunity. Hence the arrest of the
young gentleman’s Irish servant.
From evidence preserved at _The Record Office_, it appears that the
Barnstaple authorities acted in this business under guidance and
instructions from the Solicitor to the Treasury. The publications being
seditious, it was of course competent for the Ministry to proceed against
Shelley, as the author and actual promulgator of the writings. That he was
not proceeded against in his own name and person may have been due, in
some degree, to regard for his father’s feelings and respectability.
Consideration also for the offender’s youthfulness may have determined the
powers to forbear from prosecuting the erratic stripling. But other
considerations doubtless operated with the legal advisers of the Crown. It
might be difficult to produce _legal_ proof that Shelley was the author of
the writings, or even that he was their publisher. If it could not be
proved to a jury that he was the actual instigator and director of his
servant’s political activity, the proceedings against him would result in
miscarriage, discreditable to those who instituted them. Moreover, if his
conviction could be secured, to prosecute him would magnify him into a
martyr and make far too much of his puerile sauciness. To act as though
the reputation of the Lord Chief Justice could be affected by a
schoolboy’s pen would not tend to stimulate the general reverence for the
majesty of the law. Under these circumstances it was thought best to
proceed only against the servant; but, whilst affecting to take no notice
of the culprit in the background, to deal with the servant in such a
manner that his youthful master should be punished.
Some of the seditious compositions, posted or otherwise dispersed by
Daniel Hill, bore no printer’s name; and it was provided by 39 George III.
c. 79, section xxvii. that ‘... every person, who shall publish or
disperse, or assist in publishing or dispersing, either _gratis_ or for
money, any printed Paper or Book, which shall have been printed after the
passing of this Act, and on which the name and place of abode of the
person printing the same shall not be printed as aforesaid, shall, for
every copy of such paper so published or dispersed by him, forfeit and pay
the sum of twenty pounds.’ By the same statute it was further provided
that every person convicted under it, who should neither pay the penalties
nor be possessed of goods on which they could be levied, should forthwith
be sent to prison ‘for any time not exceeding six calendar months, nor
less than three calendar months.’ Hence it was possible to punish Daniel
Hill, and through him to punish his master, without making too much of the
dangerous character of the writings. Convicted in the Mayor’s Court at
Barnstaple, of publishing and dispersing Printed Papers in violation of 39
George III. c. 79, the Irish servant was sentenced to pay fines amounting
to 200_l._ or go to prison for six months.
‘Daniel Hill,’ the town-clerk of Barnstaple wrote to Lord Sidmouth,
when the case had been dealt with in this manner, ‘has been convicted
by the Mayor in ten penalties of 20_l._ each, for publishing and
dispersing Printed Papers, 39 George III. c. 79, and is now committed
to the common gaol of this Borough for not paying the penalties, and
having no goods on which they could be levied.’
When the servant was fined thus heavily, the Mayor and other acting
magistrates assumed that the penalties would be paid by Shelley,--at once
and on the spot, if he had so much money in hand; or in a few days should
it be necessary for him to communicate with his father or lawyer, in order
to put his servant at large. At the trial, Daniel Hill’s defence was that
he had meant no harm in posting the bills in accordance with the
directions of ‘the gentleman,’ who had given him the broadsides for that
purpose, and paid him 2_s._ 6_d._ for the job. Everyone in court, of
course, smiled at the poor fellow’s attempt to make the magistrates
believe, that the ‘gentleman’ was a stranger whom he had come upon
accidentally between Lynton and Barnstaple, and that the day’s work which
had brought him to trouble was a solitary ‘job’ of casual employment; it
being known alike to the Justices on the bench and the public in the body
of the court, that the gentleman, who had set Daniel Hill to disperse the
seditious bills, was Mr. Shelley, the Lynton lodger.
That young Mr. Shelley could not pay so large a fine at a moment’s notice
can have caused the borough magistrates no surprise. That Daniel Hill
should pass a few days under penal discipline, whilst his master should be
getting the money needful for his liberation, was probably desired by the
municipal authorities, to whom it may well have appeared no less salutary
than reasonable that, instead of going from the dock scot-free, he should
endure for a week or so the wholesome rigour of offended justice. But for
a few days, neither to the powers of the bench nor to the multitude living
under their sway, did it appear probable that the servant would remain in
durance for six calendar months, whilst the gentleman who had brought him
to trouble escaped with perfect impunity. In bare justice to all that was
generous in his faulty nature, it should be taken for certain that could
he have paid them, either at once or by drawing money for the purpose from
any source at his command, Shelley would have paid the cumulated fines as
quickly as possible, even though they had amounted to 2000_l._ But he was
no more able to lift Lynton in his palm and pitch it down upon Lynmouth,
than to open the gate of Barnstaple’s common gaol to his Irish varlet.
What could he do for such a purpose? Instead of having 200_l._ at his
command he could not just then have laid his hand on as many shillings,
even though Harriett and Eliza, and the incomparable Portia, had given him
the contents of all their several pockets, to the last sixpence. Next
quarter-day, when he hoped to ‘recover his financial liberty’ (his own
elegant Micawberism), the young gentleman, of enterprises so
disproportionate to his means, would come into possession of 100_l._
_minus_ what he should have spent in the interim on his necessities.
Already in debt to Mr. Syle of Barnstaple for printing the _Letter to Lord
Ellenborough_, he was for the moment in such a stringent state of
financial bondage, that he must either withdraw from the Lynton
lodging-house at the end of the current week, or run in his landlady’s
debt for room-rent, bread, butter, milk, and vegetables. Over and beyond
the several sums to be paid to the most urgent of his local creditors,
should he linger in North Devon till Michaelmas, enough might remain to
him of his next quarterly hundred pounds, to cover the charges of
travelling to London and living till Christmas 1812. This was the extent
of the ‘financial liberty’ for which he was longing. To whom could he
apply for the money wherewith to pay the 200_l._ and costs? To his
father?--his father’s solicitor? He could not write for help to Hogg, whom
he suspected, or at least had recently believed guilty, of trying to
seduce Harriett. For failing to do what was completely out of his power,
he is less to be blamed than commiserated. The poet’s historian wishes he
could record that in his inability to protect his servant with his purse,
he stood by him manfully, declaring that the ignorant fellow had only
obeyed his employer’s order, and avowing himself the actual culprit; but
this chivalric course was not taken by Shelley. He cannot be imagined to
have found much enjoyment at Lynton, whilst Daniel Hill was undergoing
punishment. On the contrary, regard being had to his sensibility and his
mode of dealing with certain of its consequences, it may be assumed that
he suffered from mental and bodily distress, which had an effect on the
petty-cash receipts of the nearest dealer in laudanum.
When it appeared that the young gentleman, who had brought the ignorant
Irishman into trouble, would altogether escape punishment, local sentiment
passed to warmer indignation against the misdemeanant of superior social
condition. Unmindful of his sentimental distress, ‘society’ came to the
very wrong conclusion that he suffered nothing at all. Whilst Daniel Hill
lived in the popular imagination as a poor fellow undergoing the rigour of
prison discipline, the young gentleman was supposed to be enjoying
himself at Lynton. It was whispered that the magistrates had not acted
rightly in dealing so hardly with the poor and ignorant man, whilst they
allowed the rich and educated one to go scot-free. Though they had acted
with the best intentions and under the best advice, the magistrates felt
there had been a serious miscarriage of justice. To some of them it was
consolatory to reflect that measures could still be taken for the
punishment of the youthful libeller of the Lord Chief Justice.
That it was in contemplation to proceed against the author and printer of
the _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_, or at least that the talk of Barnstaple
turned on proceedings for their punishment, may be inferred from Mr.
Syle’s alarm and vain endeavours to recover the fifty copies of the
_Letter_, delivered to Shelley a day or two before Daniel Hill’s arrest.
Alarmed by the arrest, Mr. Syle was quick to destroy all copies of the
pamphlet lying in his office; the _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_ being the
third (possibly, the fourth) of Shelley’s juvenile productions to be
suppressed by a panic-struck printer.
My good friend, Mr. Chanter, of Barnstaple, is certain that Mr. Syle had
several interviews with Shelley, in order to recover the fifty copies of
the _Letter_ which had been sent to London. It is needless to say that
these ‘several interviews’ were unsatisfactory to Mr. Syle. It may be
assumed that to account for his refusal to surrender the printed copies,
Shelley declared his inability to restore them, as they had already passed
from his keeping. As the printer would have thought it worth his while to
be at much pains and cost to follow the fifty copies or any one of them,
it may be assumed that he asked Shelley, whither they had gone,--to whom
and by whom they had been distributed. Having a strong opinion that they
had not been distributed by Daniel Hill, on whose person none of the
_Letters_ had been found, Mr. Syle had good reason for thinking that, if
they had really passed from Shelley’s hands, they must have been dispersed
either by the writer himself or the ladies of his party. We may,
therefore, be sure that Shelley was pressed strongly to give or procure
precise information respecting the circumstances of their distribution.
With equal confidence it may be assumed that Shelley withheld from the
printer, that the fifty copies had been sent to Mr. Hookham. Writing from
information, that came to him directly or indirectly from persons
concerned in printing the libellous writing, Mr. Chanter says, ‘He’
(_i.e._ Mr. Syle) ‘at once suppressed and destroyed the remaining sheets,
and had several interviews with Shelley to endeavour to get back the ones
previously delivered, but unsuccessfully, as they had been mostly
distributed’:--words implying a gradual distribution in the neighbourhood.
Had Shelley told the printer what had been done with the pamphlets, it
would scarcely have lived in local tradition, that they had been dispersed
in the manner indicated by Mr. Chanter’s words. Moreover, on discovering
what trouble might come to him from the affair, Shelley (a capital keeper
of a secret he was interested in keeping) had a good reason for
withholding from the Barnstaple tradesman a piece of information, which he
might under pressure and for his own safety communicate to the magistrates
of the borough, with consequences inconvenient to Mr. Hookham and Mr.
Hookham’s correspondent.
The evidence that Shelley’s withdrawal from North Devon was connected with
the stir and ferment occasioned by the publication of seditious
literature, is only circumstantial; but it is such strong evidence of its
weak kind that few readers will think it insufficient for the conclusion,
to which it has brought the present writer. Settled at Lynton, with the
purpose of remaining there till by economical living he should have
recovered his ‘financial liberty’--_i.e._ till next quarter-day--Shelley
likes his lodgings and his landlady, and in various ways seems confirmed
in his resolve to stay there for several weeks; when within twelve days or
a fortnight he moves hurriedly into another county, lying well away from
Devon. Making this migration soon after his servant’s arrest, he makes it
at a moment when people are saying he ought to be sent to Barnstaple Gaol
to keep Daniel Hill company, and the Barnstaple bookseller is fearful of
being prosecuted for _publishing_ what his customer has _written_.
The prosecution of which Mr. Syle was fearful would have been a
prosecution in which he, as publisher, would have been associated in the
dock with Shelley, as author. Had Mr. Syle’s alarm been justified by the
event, he and Shelley would have been tried together. All that Mr. Syle
feared for himself, Shelley had reason to fear for himself. Is it to be
supposed that, whilst the bookseller was agitated with terror, Shelley,--a
youthful, nervous, excitable laudanum-drinker,--was free from fear? At
this moment of terror, and real or imaginary peril, Shelley runs along the
coast from Lynton to Ilfracombe, and crossing the water with his three
female companions gets into Wales. This flight is made at a moment when
there are stringent pecuniary reasons why they should remain at Lynton.
Surely here is a body of circumstantial evidence strong enough to justify
something more than a strong suspicion that in running from North Devon to
Wales, Shelley was impelled by apprehension of the same legal proceedings,
which poor Mr. Syle was anticipating with terror! In North Devon he was
liable to arrest at any moment. In South Wales he would be secure from
immediate seizure. Hidden in a secluded corner of Carmarthenshire, he
would not be easily tracked and discovered.
The flight had been made something less than three weeks, when William
Godwin, relying on his young friend’s frequent and pressing invitations,
determined to pay him a visit at Lynton. Mounting coach in London, the
philosopher travelled smoothly enough to Bristol, whence he passed over
stormy waters to Lynmouth, enduring discomforts (scarcely to be imagined
in these luxurious days) during the trip, so humorously touched upon by
Hogg, and so graphically described by the voyager himself. After
recovering from sea-sickness the disappointed traveller gave his wife some
particulars, which he was pleased to call ‘good news,’ respecting the
erratic people, whom he had hoped to find near the Valley of Rocks. He had
seen the worthy woman, in whose house the Shelleys had lodged for nine
weeks and three days. Leaving Lynton precipitately, the Shelleys had gone
off in debt to their landlady and two other people: in debt to her for
room-rent and necessaries, and for 29_s._ of borrowed money, besides
3_l._, which she had induced a neighbour to lend them. Godwin erred in
thinking the fugitives had been constrained to borrow this 4_l._ 9_s._,
because they could not get change at Lynmouth for the two halves of a
bank-note; for at the moment of running off, they had not received the
second half of the divided note. It delighted Godwin to observe the
affectionate warmth with which the landlady spoke of her late lodgers; and
he was pleased at learning from her, that they would be in London in a
fortnight.
In their desire to get away from Lynton as quickly as possible, the four
friends left Lynton in debt, and could not have left it so soon, had they
not induced two of the villagers to lend them four pounds and nine
shillings. One of the adventurers (probably Shelley) was in possession of
the one half of a bank-note, the second half of the divided paper having
not yet come to hand. From what source this note came does not appear. It
looks as though Shelley had written to some friend for a small loan to
enable him to escape quickly from a perilous position, and that the
half-note in hand was the first half of a consequent remittance. Anyhow it
points to the precipitateness of the departure, that the fugitives did not
like to wait till the post should bring the second half of the negotiable
paper. Hastening off with the half-note and borrowed money the adventurers
went to Ilfracombe, whence they returned the four pounds and nine
shillings to the two several lenders,--3_l._ to Mrs. Hooper’s friend, and
29_s._ to the landlady herself, to whom they had given ‘a draft upon the
Honourable Mr. Lawleys, brother to Lord Cloncurry,’ for the full payment
of the amount in which they were indebted to her. There is no doubt that
the gentleman so strangely misdescribed was ‘honest Jack,’ who was nothing
more than a distant relation to Lord Cloncurry. The draft is not in
evidence to show whether honest Jack was so suspiciously misdescribed on
the document itself; but it cannot be questioned that the simple
lodginghouse-keeper had been talked into believing that the order for
payment, instead of being addressed to a penniless _littérateur_, was
drawn upon a personage of social importance.
I wish I could think honest Jack had not been so misdescribed to this
simple soul of a North Devon village, in order that she should the more
readily be induced to accept the dubious draft in payment of her little
account. Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy remarks jocosely on this business,
‘We trust that the good Mrs. Hooper of Lynmonth was not kept out of her
money until the “enormous profits” which Shelley so sanguinely expected
from the publication of _The History of Ireland_ were realized.’ Even at
this remoteness from the end of the poor woman’s earthly cares the reader
of this page may well repeat seriously what Mr. MacCarthy says jestingly;
for many a poor widow has been brought to the workhouse by her simplicity
in taking a worthless cheque from a lodger, who ought to have paid what he
promised to give her--ready money.
For the present enough has been said of Shelley’s reasons for wishing to
leave North Devon, and of the manner of his flight. Enough has been said
to show how far Lady Shelley is justified in ascribing the poet’s abrupt
withdrawal from Lynton to Tanyrallt, altogether to ‘the restlessness of
his disposition.’