sixteen-years-old daughter under the willow-tree, he had a remarkable
conference with his friend Peacock, who, on coming from the country to
London for the meeting, found the author of _Queen Mab_ in a state of
extreme excitement. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled, his
dress disordered; and whilst talking with extravagant energy he caught up
a bottle of laudanum, saying vehemently as he clutched the vessel of
poisonous drink, ‘I never part with this. I am always repeating to myself
your lines from Sophocles:--
‘Man’s happiest lot is not to be:
And when we tread life’s thorny steep,
Most blest are they, who earliest free
Descend to death’s eternal sleep.’
In the ensuing conversation (_vide_ Peacock’s collected _Works_) Shelley
did not even suggest that Harriett’s behaviour had afforded him any
serious cause of dissatisfaction. On the contrary, whilst reflecting on
her mental unfitness for the position to which he had so imprudently
exalted her, he admitted that she was a noble animal.
‘Every one, who knows me,’ he said, ‘must know that the partner of my life
should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriett is a
noble animal, but she can do neither.’
‘It always appeared to me,’ replied Peacock, ‘that you were very fond of
Harriett.’
‘But you did not know how I hated her sister,’ rejoined Shelley;
forbearing to say aught in dissent from, or assent to, Peacock’s remark on
his former show of fondness for his wife.
To another of his friends Shelley commended Harriett for being ‘a noble
animal,’ adding words which seemed to imply that, in her nobleness, she
would acquiesce in the transference of his affections from herself to
William Godwin’s daughter.
But because he spoke thus fairly of Harriett to persons, who knew she had
given him no grave cause of offence, it does not follow that he was not at
the same time charging her with serious misconduct to those, who were not
so well qualified to judge between her and him. To those who remember in
what different strains he wrote of his father to the Duke of Norfolk and
William Godwin, it is needless to say that he was capable of speaking
justly of a person, with whom he was displeased, to individuals cognizant
of the real causes of his displeasure, and no less unjustly to persons of
inferior or no information touching the nature of the quarrel.
Whilst Mary Godwin was being illuminated into Free Contract in Old St.
Pancras churchyard, and educated in deceit in Skinner Street, the pupil
and her teacher had a sympathetic confidante in Claire,--the maiden of
bright eyes, olive complexion, Italian features, and southern fervour. It
is needless to remind readers that Claire was not older than Mary by so
much as Mr. Kegan Paul repeatedly asserts in the very book, which affords
evidence that they were nearly of the same age. Elsewhere it has been told
how (though they bickered and quarreled smartly once and again in
Shelley’s life, and came after his death to hate one another cordially)
these daughters of one home, who called the same man ‘papa’ and the same
woman ‘mamma,’ were living together in 1814 in the fullest mutual
confidence, and in affection glowing with the impetuosity of girlish
romance. Cognizant of their meetings under the weeping willow, Claire knew
why Shelley and her sister-by-affinity met so often at the trysting-tree.
In Skinner Street, when Mary, the piquant brown-eyed blonde, wore her
disguise, she did not assume ‘the mask of scorn’ to hide her love of
Shelley from her sister-by-affinity. Delighting in the sentimental affair,
as though it were a mere game played for her amusement in the midsummer
holidays, Claire, the impetuous and saucy, was ever at hand to divert the
attention of the elders from the proceedings of her two playmates. Had
Fanny been at home the game might not have been carried to its calamitous
_dénoument_, for besides being orderly and dutiful, and ever on the side
of authority, the eldest of the three sisters had an influence over
Shelley which would certainly have been exercised for good, had she
detected his evil purpose. It was unfortunate for the two younger girls
that Fanny was away from home. It was unfortunate for Mary, that Claire
was at hand to aid and encourage her and Shelley. Without Claire’s help
Shelley would most likely have failed to accomplish his purpose. But for
her sister’s sympathy and assistance, it is scarcely conceivable that Mary
(remarkable though she was for self-dependence and resoluteness) would
have left her home. It was in no small degree due to Claire’s cleverness,
in covering the actions of the lovers, that the first week of July was
over before their proceedings caused Godwin uneasiness. What, on so late a
day, caused the philosopher to think his young friend too attentive to
Mary, does not appear. Possibly neighbours had told him of the meetings
under the trysting-tree. Possibly Mrs. Godwin had detected something
suspicious in Mary’s countenance, at a moment when she forgot to wear the
mask of scorn. Anyhow, on the 8th of July, Godwin spoke to his daughter
respecting her demeanour to Shelley, and on the same day wrote Shelley a
letter, which was answered in a way that abated the philosopher’s
apprehensions without altogether putting an end to his disquiet. Speaking
of Shelley’s reply to his benefactor’s epistle, Mr. Kegan Paul says, ‘The
explanation was satisfactory.’ The explanation must, therefore, have been
disingenuous, for no honest reply could have been otherwise than most
unsatisfactory. The consequence of the explanation was that the two
familiar friends continued to meet daily, though the veteran decided that
for a brief while Shelley should not dine at Skinner Street. Probably it
was due to Godwin that Mrs. Shelley was at length informed of her
husband’s place of abode. Anyhow, Harriett came up to town and saw both
Godwin and Shelley, the former of whom did his utmost to reconcile the
husband and wife, whilst the latter held to his purpose of making Mary his
mistress. Almost to the last moment it was uncertain what would be the
issue of the fierce conflict between passion and duty in her breast. It is
not surprising that eventually she yielded to his entreaties, and his
pathetic account of the wrongs he had endured in boyhood from the
barbarous father, who would have consigned him for life to a lunatic
asylum, had it not been for Dr. Lind’s timely intervention. How was the
inexperienced and romantic girl to suspect that the thrilling tale was a
tissue of romantic fancies and delusive inventions? Small blame to her for
yielding, in comparison with the blame due to the man, who subdued her to
his will.
On the evening of 27th July, 1814, William Godwin’s household retired to
rest under circumstances which rendered the man of letters, his wife, and
his stepson (Charles Clairmont) wholly unsuspicious of the purpose and
pre-arrangements of the two girls. On the morrow, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin
awoke to learn that Claire and Mary had left the house at daybreak. An
examination of their sleeping apartment discovered that the two girls had
not quitted their home without making preparations for an absence of some
duration, for they had taken enough of their clothing to show that a
speedy return was no part of their plan. Thus it was that they left their
homes at four o’clock a.m., and hastened to the spot where Shelley awaited
them in a carriage. Not content with carrying off his familiar friend’s
sixteen-years-old daughter, Shelley repaid Mrs. Godwin’s hospitality by
carrying off _her_ sixteen-years-old (or, perhaps, seventeen-years-old)
daughter, in order that he and Mary should have an agreeable travelling
companion.
Nothing connected with this miserable business is more strange than that
it has been treated by successive writers as though it were a wholesome
and delightful love-story, redounding, on the whole, to the credit of
both principals. The affair has been handled by these writers so
effectually that many a reader will have to liberate himself from their
influence by a strenuous effort before seeing that, in thus carrying off
his friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, Shelley was guilty of the crime
which he professed to hold in the highest repugnance. In carrying off John
Westbrook’s sixteen-years-old daughter when he was in a position to marry
her, Shelley committed nothing more than an act of elopement. But in
carrying off his familiar friend’s child when he could not marry her, and
had no prospect of ever being able to marry her, he was guilty of an act
of seduction. If regard is had to his intimacy with her father, the
deception he practised towards him, and the means he employed to overcome
her sense of duty, it cannot be questioned that Shelley’s triumph over his
familiar friend’s daughter was a very bad case of domestic treason. That
an unlooked-for incident enabled him, something more than two years later,
to marry her, and that on the occurrence of this incident he lost no time
in making her his wife, are facts in no way affecting the quality of his
action towards his friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter in 1814. That he
married her as soon as he could is a fact to be remembered to the poet’s
credit in the general estimate of his character, and more especially of
his affection for the girl. But what he did at the end of 1816 could not
affect the legal and moral quality of what he did in the summer of 1814.
There must be no misunderstanding on this point. Till the English people
shall modify and rearrange the English language into accordance with the
crotchets and sensibilities of our favourers of the Free Contract, the man
who shall lure a sixteen-years-old girl from her home and parents, and
induce her to live with him as a mistress, must be declared guilty of an
offence which is deemed odious even by libertines.
Mr. Froude is of opinion that Shelley should be judged leniently for
taking to himself this girl because he was young and enthusiastic. Mr.
Froude is also of opinion that Mary Godwin should be judged leniently
because she was young and enthusiastic. I concur with Mr. Froude in
thinking that Mary should not be severely judged. To her my compassion
goes as freely as Mr. Froude requires. She was a naughty girl. But who can
forbear to make charitable allowance for so young and inexperienced a
girl? She was (as Mr. Froude urges) enthusiastic; she was also young,
very young,--only sixteen years old.
There are other reasons for being lenient and pitiful to this poor child,
reared though she was in honest principles and absolute ignorance of her
mother’s perverse views. Who seduced her? She was not led astray by an
ordinary tempter, but by a young man of singular comeliness, a poet who
clothed his prayers with the images of speech most likely to render them
irresistible. She had done nothing in the hope of winning his love, said
nothing by lip or look to lure him from loyalty to Harriett, when he came
quickly upon her and said ‘You shall be mine!’ She was wooed and won by
Shelley! Remember how (_though_ he was Shelley) she contended with him,
fought him, prayed to him for mercy; how passionately she declared to him,
in spoken words and written words, that, though she loved him wholly, and
would never give herself to any other man, she would not, could not, dared
not, give herself to him till he could marry her.
Could nothing be urged in palliation of her misconduct, but that she was
young and enthusiastic, I should plead less earnestly in her behalf. I
cannot concur with Mr. Froude in holding that youth and enthusiasm should
of themselves be pronounced considerable extenuations of wrongful action,
of which the young and enthusiastic are more likely than other persons to
be guilty. On the contrary, Mr. Froude must pardon a white-headed writer
for telling him frankly, it is ill for a man of his still greater age to
teach (however lightly and elegantly) in a popular magazine, that to act
as Shelley and Mary acted in their elopement, is sometimes to be guilty of
nothing worse than ‘the sin of acting on emotional theories of liberty.’
Moreover, I decline to regard Shelley’s youth in 1814 as a matter to be
urged strongly in mitigation of the sentence to be passed upon him. His
youth unquestionably may be pleaded _in misericordiam_ when he is under
trial for running away with John Westbrook’s daughter. But the offence he
committed in 1814 was no mere elopement, and he had long since ceased to
be a child. When he posted seaward along the Dover Road, with Mary Godwin
by his side, he was within a week of his twenty-third year. Age by the
calendar is not the only thing to be considered in estimating a man’s
moral responsibility. Regard should also be had to the discipline of
circumstances. It wanted now only a month of three years since Shelley
ran off with John Westbrook’s lovely child. A man who is a father, and has
been a husband for nearly three years, is not to be judged as a mere
stripling. He was five years older than Mary. Those five years spent in
the world gave him greatly the advantage over Mary, and he had used the
advantage mercilessly against her. On the threshold of his twenty-third
year a young man has lived quite long enough to know that he should not
seduce his intimate friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter.
Should Mr. Froude write on this question again, he will do well to drop
the plea of youth. Moreover, Mr. Froude, at any sacrifice of feeling, must
throw overboard that elegant euphuism about ‘the sin of acting on
emotional theories of liberty.’ That Shelley was under the influence of
emotion throughout his suit to Mary is certain. It is not unusual for
people to be under the influence of emotion when they are in love. But
there was nothing emotional in Shelley’s theories respecting the Freedom
of Lovers to be off with an old and on with a new love at pleasure. I have
wasted much pains in exhibiting the origin of those theories, and tracing
their growth through his boyish novels and his letters to Hogg and Godwin,
to their development in the anti-matrimonial note to _Queen Mab_, if it is
necessary to remind my readers that Shelley’s views about wedlock--views
in which he persisted to the last hour of his life--were embraced in his
boyhood long before he formulated them in the _Queen Mab_ note. Never were
theories formed with greater deliberation, brooded over more calmly, acted
upon more resolutely by a social innovator. Holding them tenaciously long
before he promulgated them in the famous note, he did not act upon them
till _Queen Mab_ had been in secret circulation for considerably more than
a year. In speaking of them as emotional theories, Mr. Froude shows how
absolutely ignorant he was of the matters about which he wrote so rashly.
A note in one of William Godwin’s diaries indicates that he regarded the
fugitives as having left his house at five o’clock of the early morning.
But there are grounds for thinking the flight began an hour earlier.
Anyhow, long before London was awake and stirring, Shelley and the two
girls were clear of the town and clattering towards the sea. Towards noon
the sun bore down upon them with scorching vehemence, and the remainder
of the journey on wheels was made in heat so intense and overpowering,
that Mary Godwin nearly fainted under it. The journey closed with a
serious disappointment to the travellers. On alighting at Dover at about 4
p.m., they found themselves too late for the Calais packet, and no other
public boat would start for the French port till the following day. To all
three it was of the highest moment that they should cross the Channel as
quickly as possible. Mary and Claire were too well acquainted with their
mother’s energy to have any doubt, that on discovering their flight she
would soon be following them. Had Mary been less than sixteen years of
age, Shelley, in case of his arrest on English ground, would have been
liable, under the circumstances, to imprisonment for two years; and under
a certain contingency, even to five years’ incarceration. But though
Mary’s age exempted him from the heavy punishment to which he would have
been liable had she been a year younger, he was aware that, if he were
overtaken by Mrs. Godwin on this side the Channel, the Mayor of Dover
would aid her effectually in regaining possession of her daughter and
step-daughter. To secure his prize it was needful that he should cross the
water without passing another night on English soil.
As the lovely evening promised a quick and agreeable passage, Shelley
hired some seamen to carry him and the two girls (without their boxes) to
Calais in an open boat; and as soon as Mary had revived herself with a
sea-bath, the trio went on board the frail vessel, hoping to touch the
French sands within two hours. But the weather failed to keep its promise.
At first their progress was slow from lack of wind; but as the moon rose
and night came on, the faint breeze freshened into a gale, attended with
signs of a coming storm. Besides being violent the wind soon became
contrary; and after working well out to sea the sailors began to despair
of reaching Calais, and talked of making for Boulogne. Some hours later, a
squall striking the sail nearly capsized the boat, that seemed likely to
perish in the thunder-storm, which made the mariners fearful. Fortunately
the gale abated, and the wind, changing its course, carried the craft
straight for Calais, where the fugitives,--weary, cold, and drenched to
the skin,--arrived at sunrise; their plight being the more pitiable,
because they had left their boxes at the Dover custom-house, to follow by
the next day’s packet.
Regaining their energy and cheerfulness, whilst waiting for their
luggage, the trio (‘three’ was Shelley’s favourite number for a trip)
remained at their Calais hotel till Saturday afternoon (July the 30th),
when they started for Paris in a cabriolet, drawn by three horses abreast,
under the control of the queer little postillion, who wore a long pig-tail
and _craquéed_ his whip in a style that delighted the girls. But though
they made no long stay at the French port, they tarried there long enough
to have cause for congratulating themselves on having crossed the Channel
so promptly. The sisters had not overrated their mother’s spirit and
alertness. Catching the boat which brought the fugitives their luggage,
Mrs. Godwin surprised them with a visit on Saturday morning; her arrival
at the hotel being announced to them by the landlord, who hastened to
their room with intelligence that a fat English Madame had come to the
house, and was bent on seeing her daughters, with whom (according to
Madame’s account) Monsieur had run away. How Mrs. Godwin was received by
the trio may be imagined. Mary laughed saucily at the step-mother, from
whose authority she had escaped. Claire answered her mother’s sharp speech
by declaring she should not return to London till she had seen something
of the world. If Shelley was not wanting in outward civility to the lady,
of whose bread and salt he had partaken so freely, he was at pains to
record in the journal which he and Mary had already begun to keep, how
disdainfully his friend’s wife had been described by the Calais taverner.
In the memoranda of the second day’s entry it is told how the landlord
announced that ‘a fat lady had arrived who said that I had run away with
her daughter,’ the personal pronoun and whole structure of the phrase
showing that the words were a portion of Shelley’s contribution to the
entry. For this scrap from Shelley’s diary we are indebted to Mr. Kegan
Paul, who wishes the readers of _William Godwin: His Friends and
Contemporaries_, to chuckle over the evidence that Mrs. Godwin was fat,
that a French innkeeper derided her for being fat, and that Shelley was
tickled by what the innkeeper said of the gentlewoman. Had one of Byron’s
numerous diaries contained these same words in ridicule of a lady whose
hospitality he had abused, what a rout the Shelleyan enthusiasts would
have made about the diarist’s ingrained vulgarity!
A few words may here be said of the journal which Shelley and Mary began
to keep at this point of their joint-story, and kept conjointly for a
considerable period. It has been averred by Shelleyan enthusiasts that
this journal was thus kept by the poet and Mary without a single day’s
break up to the date of Shelley’s death. This journal has been declared a
source of information by which every day, every hour of the poet’s life
from the very first day of his association with Mary Godwin, can be
accounted for. The journal has been held out by the Field Place scribes
_in terrorem_ against all persons, presuming to question anything uttered
by a small ‘ring’ of Shelleyan specialists, as a source of evidence that
may at any moment be used to cover such presumptuous persons with
discredit. It is therefore well that in a book written by one of the
presumptuous personages, prominence should be given to the reasons for
questioning whether this joint-journal was kept for so long a period, and
in so unbroken a manner as certain writers have declared; and also to the
far stronger reasons for thinking the journal may have been altered and
‘doctored’ by Mary Godwin after her husband’s death.
On 26th January, 1819, Shelley wrote from Naples (where he was then
staying _with_ his wife) these words, ‘In my accounts of pictures and
things I am more pleased to interest you than the many; ... Besides, I
keep no journal, and the only records of my voyage will be the letters I
send you.’
Observe how Shelley in a confidential letter to one of his closest friends
declares that he is not keeping a journal, and that the letters he is
sending his friend will be the only record of the part of his career to
which the letters refer. If Shelley’s statements about his personal
affairs could be relied upon, the words would be sufficient evidence that
he was not then keeping a journal, that his letters to Peacock were the
only authoritative record of his doings at this particular point of his
career, and that, therefore, to the best of his knowledge and belief, his
wife was not then keeping a record of his doings. If he was at that time
keeping a journal, he wrote to Peacock what was untrue. Unless he had
reason for thinking that no record of his life was being kept at that time
either by his wife or any other person, he was less than truthful. If Mr.
Garnett was right in saying Shelley began a diary in 1814, which accounts
for every day of his life, Shelley was wrong in saying he was keeping no
record of his life in January, 1819. Mr. Rossetti suggests that the
inconsistency between Shelley’s words and Mr. Garnett’s words may be only
apparent, as Shelley may ‘sometimes have intermitted his journalizing, and
then his wife kept it up.’ But this reasonable suggestion does not dispose
of the difficulty. If the suggestion is correct, Mrs. Shelley must have
filled in and kept up the journal with her husband’s knowledge, or without
it. If she kept the diary with his knowledge and sanction, the journal
remained a thing for which he was so far responsible, that it should have
precluded him from saying he kept no journal. If he knew Mrs. Shelley was
keeping a daily record of his doings, he was untruthful in saying the
letters would be the only record of those doings. On the other hand, if
Mrs. Shelley kept the journal without his knowledge, the diary during the
times of its being so kept was not his journal, but simply Mrs. Shelley’s
journal, and Mr. Garnett erred in writing of it as a record for which
Shelley was responsible from first to last.
Let me now pass to the reasons why the statements of this journal should
be received with caution. The journal was in Mrs. Shelley’s keeping after
her husband’s death, some portions of it having been published during his
life, whilst other portions are even yet withheld from critical scrutiny.
It will be admitted that _primâ facie_ the poet’s widow was far less
likely to alter the printed and published portions of the record than to
alter the MS. and undivulged entries; since in tampering with the
published portions she would be more or less liable to exposure, whereas
in altering the unpublished portion she would feel secure from detection.
It will also be admitted that to show Mrs. Shelley did, after her
husband’s death, tamper with and alter the published portions, for the
express purpose of removing an important matter of evidence from them, is
to prove her quite capable of tampering with, and altering the unpublished
portions, should she be tempted strongly to do so. I charge Mrs. Shelley
with having thus tampered with the published portions of the record.
In 1814 Mary and Claire were sisters, ever thinking and speaking of one
another as sisters. In 1814 years had still to pass (albeit they often had
smart tiffs and differences) before they ceased to think and speak of one
another with sisterly love and in sisterly fashion. Hence, at Paris in
August, 1814, it was natural for Mary Godwin to write in her journal:--
‘We resolved to walk through France; but as I was too weak for any
considerable distance, and _my sister_ could not be supposed to walk
as far as S*** each day, we determined to purchase an ass to carry our
portmanteau and one of us by turns.’
To call attention to ‘my sister’ I have printed the two words in italics.
In December, 1817, when Claire had been for some time Byron’s mistress,
and after being discarded by him had given birth to Allegra, Shelley and
Mary published the journal (in which these words occur), together with
certain well-known letters and the poem on _Mont Blanc_, under the title
of _History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland,
Germany, and Holland: With letters descriptive of a sail round the Lake of
Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni_: the book being provided with a
preface written by Shelley himself, which contains these words:--
‘Those whose youth has been past as their’s (with what success it
imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of
delight and beauty which invests the visible world, will perhaps find
some entertainment in following the author, _with her husband and
sister_, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in
sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in
themselves, but which, since she visited them, a great poet has
clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature.’
Thus in the journal, which has been dealt with by the Shelleyan
specialists as the joint-production of Shelley and Mary, and in the
Preface of which Shelley was the sole author, Claire is styled Mary’s
_sister_. This is conclusive evidence of the regard in which Claire was
held by Shelley and Mary from 1814 to the end of 1817. Jointly they style
her ‘sister.’ Shelley by himself styles Claire his wife’s sister. What
does Mrs. Shelley do in 1840, when she has ceased to love Claire, and
lived to think of her as a vexatious and discreditable connexion? In the
last named year, on producing a new edition of the _Six Weeks’ Tour_, she
does her utmost to obliterate the evidence of her relationship to her old
playmate and travelling companion, by substituting the word ‘friend,’ for
the word ‘sister,’ in each of the above-given passages. She thus tampers
with the text of the journal of which her husband was joint-author, and
the text of the Preface, written altogether by her husband, in order to
withdraw evidence which he put before the world. Am I wrong in saying that
the widow, who dealt thus with her husband’s printed words, was capable
of altering the unpublished entries of diaries kept by herself and her
husband?
Posting to Paris, where they stayed for a week, the trio entered the
French capital with so little money that Shelley was compelled to sell his
watch and chain for eight Napoleons and five francs, a part of which sum
he is said to have remitted to Harriett. On the arrival of a remittance
from England of 60_l._, which is noticed in the diary as setting them
‘free’ from a kind of imprisonment which they found very irksome, the
travellers made a curious plan for enjoying their financial liberty and
acted upon it promptly; in spite of the dissuasive eloquence of their
landlady, who assured Mary and Claire, that in traversing a country
populous with recently disbanded soldiers, they would expose themselves to
insult and to outrage far worse than mere insolence. Mainly from
considerations of economy, though in some degree, perhaps, from appetite
for novel adventure, they determined to walk through France.
With clothing that could be packed in a single portmanteau and a dear
little donkey that, besides carrying the portmanteau, would carry them by
turns, Mary and Claire were certain they could journey to Switzerland with
keen enjoyment and no excessive fatigue; whilst Shelley (an excellent
walker) could, of course, trudge the whole way on foot, bearing a small
basket of provisions for their frugal meals. The scheme looked well on
paper; and had circumstances been as compliant as the adventurers were
imaginative the plan would have worked admirably. The portmanteau would
have been none too heavy and the donkey none too weak; every village in
which they desired to rest would have afforded them clean beds and
sufficient cookery; the weather would never have been too hot, the roads
never too stony. But the circumstances were too rigorous and unyielding.
It was to their misfortune that, instead of buying a competent ass in the
Parisian ass-market, Claire and Shelley selected a diminutive animal, that
in less than twenty-four hours proved insufficient for the place. Still it
was all merriment at the outset to the girls, who prattled merrily on the
way from Paris (which they left at four p.m.) to Charenton, which they
entered some six hours later. Dressed in black silk, the sisters (on
leaving coach and taking the donkey at the barrier) congratulated
themselves on their choice of a costume, the lightness of their
portmanteau, the mild intelligence of their dear little donkey. At the
first view of Charenton in the valley watered by the Seine, Claire (in sly
raillery at Shelley) ejaculated, ‘Oh! this is beautiful enough: let us
live here.’ In the morning, when, on recognizing the donkey’s incompetence
they replaced it with a mule (bought for ten Napoleons), the girls may
have been troubled with doubts whether ‘black’ was the best ‘colour for
standing white dust.’ Soon the temper of the tourists was tested by trials
more grievous than fatigue and the dust of hot highways. The fare of the
_cabarets_ was coarse, the company in them not chiefly remarkable for
refinement, the bedding neither comfortable nor clean. The peasants might
have been something less morose to gentle strangers, in no degree
responsible for the excesses of the brutal Cossacks. On nearing Trois
Maisons, Shelley sprained his ankle so badly that the girls were compelled
to walk an entire day’s journey and let him ride on their mule. At Troyes
he could scarcely put his lame foot to the ground; Mary was ‘dead-beat’
with fatigue; Claire could no longer cry out gleefully, ‘I am glad we did
not stay at Charenton, but let us live here.’ The bright girl’s cheeriest
cry just then may well have been ‘Beds,--and let’s sleep here for ever.’
On the morrow, 13th August, 1814 (and maybe in the absence of Mary and
Claire, capable of strolling through the town), Shelley, whose lameness
kept him a prisoner to the hotel, took pen in hand and wrote his wife a
remarkable epistle. Opening with an assurance that it is written, in order
that she may realize how he holds her in remembrance, this epistle from
Shelley to the wife he has left in England begins with ‘My dearest
Harriett,’ and closes with a declaration of enduring affection for her:--a
declaration preceded by a message of love to their sweet little Ianthe. ‘I
write,’ he says, ‘to urge you to come to Switzerland, where you will, at
least, find one firm and constant friend, to whom your interests will be
always dear,--by whom your feelings will never be wilfully injured.’ It is
scarcely conceivable that in his heart Shelley believed Harriett guilty of
any heinous offence against his honour, when he thus begged her to join
him in Switzerland. After chatting to her about the scenes and
circumstances and incidents of her journey from Paris to the town where he
is staying, Shelley enjoins Harriett ‘not to part with any of her money’
(words implying that he knows her to be in possession of a considerable
sum), and bids her bring with her to Switzerland the two deeds which
Tahourdin has been instructed to prepare for her. The settlement may have
been a deed for her pecuniary benefit. The other two deeds may have been
duplicates of an instrument, defining the terms of their separation, to
which (I think) she may be regarded as having assented (in a legal sense)
before Shelley left England. Thus Shelley wrote from Troyes to his wife,
whom he hoped soon to have the pleasure of welcoming to some sweet retreat
in the Swiss mountains.
By the writer of the well-known _Edinburgh_ ‘Shelley and Mary’ article, it
is remarked of this letter,--
‘It is difficult to conceive anything more wild and impracticable--the
more so as Shelley himself, travelling with another woman who was not
his wife, invites his wife in terms of endearment to join him in
Switzerland, which he had not reached, and where he was not going to
stay. It is the scheme of a reckless child.’
Because this curious, scrambling tour, covered only forty-seven days, is
it so certain that Shelley left England without any intention of remaining
abroad for a longer period? Because he spent only ten days in Switzerland,
does it follow that on the 13th of August he was going there _for_ no
longer time? I venture to differ from the _Edinburgh_ writer. Taken by
itself the letter is evidence, that on the 13th of August, Shelley hoped
to make a sojourn of several months in Switzerland. Had he at that time
intended to scamper into and out of the little Republic, after spending
ten days within its bounds, he would scarcely (harum-scarum creature
though he was) have entreated Harriett to come out to him. But there is
other evidence that he hoped to be away from England for a longer time.
The _History of a Six Weeks’ Tour_ abounds with indications that at the
outset the tour was meant to cover several months instead of a few weeks.
Leaving England with only a little money in his pocket, even Shelley would
not have spent it so lavishly in posting from Calais, had he not hoped to
find an abundant remittance for him at Paris. Instead of awaiting his
arrival at the capital, the remittance did not come till he had waited for
it several days, ‘in a kind of imprisonment.’ When it came the trio were
disappointed by its smallness. Indicated by the epithet applied to the sum
in the diary, this disappointment is revealed yet more fully by the fact
that the smallness of the sum caused the trio immediately to alter their
plans, and on the spur of the moment devise a scheme for a cheap
walking-tour. Had they expected no more than 60_l._ they would have laid
their plans for the cheap expedition on foot, whilst enduring the ‘kind of
imprisonment.’ Between Troyes and Uri they were compelled to spend money
much faster than they intended to spend it; a series of small and
unforeseen misadventures diminishing the resources, which would otherwise
have enabled them to stay longer in the country, where they hoped to make
a temporary home. It is clear from the diary, that on the road from Troyes
to Switzerland, they looked forward to Neufchatel as a place, where they
would possibly find another remittance. Even on the 20th of August, after
getting the 38_l._ in silver from the Neufchatel banker who afforded them
relief, so far were they from thinking of a speedy return to England, that
they ‘resolved to journey towards the lake of Uri, and seek in that
romantic and interesting country some cottage where they might dwell in
peace and solitude.’ In their account of the circumstances which compelled
them to relinquish this delightful scheme, the diarists say, ‘Such were
our dreams, which we should probably have realised, had it not been for
the deficiency of that indispensable article--money, which obliged us to
return to England.’ Even on the 26th of August, when they determine to run
home as quickly and cheaply as possible on their remaining 28_l._, they
are clinging to a hope of money from some uncertain source. ‘The 28_l._
which we possessed,’ they say, ‘was all the money that we could count upon
_with any certainty_ until the following December.’ Hence there is less
reason for astonishment, than the _Edinburgh_ Reviewer imagined, in the
poet’s sufficiently staggering proposal to the ‘noble animal,’ who could
neither ‘feel poetry’ nor ‘understand philosophy.’
Shelley having turned lame, Mary having failed from weakness, and Claire
having had enough of trudging along hot roads, the remainder of the ‘Six
Weeks’ Tour’ was made on wheels or by water. Selling their mule and saddle
(at a sacrifice of several Napoleons) at Troyes, where they bought a
four-wheeled vehicle for five Napoleons, and making a bad bargain with the
impudent peasant, who agreed to convey them and their carriage with his
own mule to Neufchatel, they pushed onwards to Switzerland, where they
arrived, after a series of exasperating misadventures, to discover that
enthusiasts for liberty may be exceedingly uncomfortable, though living
within view of William Tell’s Chapel, and to discover at the end of ten
days that, to escape absolute want, they had better hasten back to
England. Taking the _diligence par eau_ at Lucerne, they made their way in
uncongenial company along the Reuss to Loffenberg, pushed onwards in a
leaky canoe to Mumph, and passed through divers discomforts _en route_
from Mumph to Basle. Leaving the Rhine at Bonn, they posted to Cologne,
travelled by diligence to Cleves, and posted to Rotterdam. Detained by
contrary winds for nearly two days at Marsluys, they had ample time for
spending their last guinea at that scarcely genial place, whilst
‘reflecting with wonder that they had travelled eight hundred miles
for less than thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes, and
enjoying the beauteous Rhine, and all the brilliant shows of earth and
sky, perhaps more, travelling as they did, in an open boat, than if
they had been shut up in a carriage, and passed on the road under the
hills.’
On the third day after clearing away from Marsluys, they landed at
Gravesend on the morning of the 13th of September, cold and miserably
exhausted by an unusually rough passage.
Cheap touring now-a-days is more rough than nice. Seventy years since it
was unutterably nasty. To realize what Shelley and the girls endured in
their cheap and nasty tour, is to see our grandfathers and grandmothers
did well to stay at home, when they could not afford to travel
luxuriously. Journeying in the easiest carriages, sailing in the least
crowded boats, resting at the best hotels, wealthy tourists had to endure
no little rough usage and discomfort. But it makes the flesh creep to
think how the poet, and Mary, and Claire, fared during the most
disagreeable passages of their first Swiss trip. Eating coarse food they
were often compelled to eat it in the company of quarrelsome peasants,
heavy with drink and stinking of garlic. Even when they were not
verminous, the beds offered to their weary limbs were comfortless and
unalluring. More than once they remained all night in the open air rather
than repose on the squalid couches of their inn’s worst room. At least on
one occasion the hostess of a rural tavern told them that if they would go
to bed, they must be content to do so in the same chamber as their
coachman. At Brunen, on the lake of Lucerne, where they made a brief and
feeble effort to settle, the best quarters they could get consisted of two
unfurnished rooms in an old, ugly, and dilapidated chateau. The season was
cold and rainy; and when they lit a fire in their living room, the big
stove emitted so unwholesome and stifling a warmth, they were forced to
throw open the windows to the bleak and penetrating wind.
In compensation for serious and sometimes disgusting discomforts, they
experienced those excitements that are enjoyed in the highest degree only
by young, hopeful, and imaginative tourists, moving through new scenes of
surpassing loveliness. From the Alps and the German vineyards, the Swiss
lakes and the glorious Rhine, Shelley returned to England with memories,
to which we are indebted for much of the finest poetry of _Alastor_. Ever
and again, too, in the pages of the _Six Weeks’ Tour_, the tourists are
seen in the enjoyment of pleasures that, instead of being derived from the
surrounding scenery, were only heightened by the influence of its
beauties. On their passage, in a boat laden with merchandise, from Basle
to Mayence, whilst the sun shone pleasantly, Shelley read Mary
Wollstonecraft’s _Letters from Norway_ to the girls, who listened with
delight to a book that was new literature to them.
Landing at Gravesend without three halfpence in their pockets, and leaving
Gravesend in debt to the captain of the vessel that had brought them from
Holland, the trio made their way back to London. It was a doleful return
for the two girls, neither of whom had courage or inclination to go to the
home, from which they had fled so shamefully less than seven weeks since.
As though it were a matter about which his readers might be doubtful, Mr.
Kegan Paul is at pains to record, that, ‘Godwin’s irritation and
displeasure at the step his daughter had taken were extreme.’ ‘Irritation’
and ‘displeasure’ are no terms to describe the veteran’s indignation at
the young man who, after eating his bread and salt, and affecting for
successive years to sit meekly at his feet, in the character of an
idolizing and grateful disciple, had seduced his only daughter. Let there
be an end of the dishonest endeavours to gloss the blackest business of
Shelley’s life into a venial indiscretion, to colour and tone it into a
pretty piece of domestic romance. Truth and morality require that this
spade should be called by no other name.
It is noteworthy that the persons who have displayed the most zeal and
ingenuity in glossing and colouring Shelley’s seduction of Mary Godwin
into a romantic and innocent love-passage, are the very persons who have
been most ostentatious of their righteous indignation and disgust at
Byron’s profligacy. In my _Real Lord Byron_ I gave due prominence (some of
my critics thought me guilty of giving excessive prominence) to his
successive acts of libertinism. But I know of nothing in the whole record
of Byron’s profligacies, that is comparable for deceit and treachery with
Shelley’s course of action to his familiar friend’s daughter. Had Byron
acted towards the daughter of any one of his intimate friends precisely as
Shelley acted to Mary Godwin, what a noise the Shelleyan enthusiasts would
have made about his treacherous profligacy!
In dealing with Shelley’s conduct to his familiar friend’s
sixteen-years-old daughter, the Shelleyan Socialists will not touch the
questions at issue, by urging that he was unhappy with his wife; by
showing that he had good (_even the gravest_) reasons for dissatisfaction
with her; or by arguing that good and wise men have distinguished
themselves by benevolence to their species, and laboured with eminent
advantage to their fellow-creatures, whilst associating conjugally with
women who were not their wives. Every one knows that men of exemplary
beneficence, whose services to their species are commemorated in the
brightest pages of its history, have lived amiably and usefully in the
closest domestic union with women to whom they were not lawfully wedded.
The question is not whether or no, after discovering real cause for
quarrel with his wife, and finding himself unable to live happily with
her, he would, after a considerable lapse of time, have been justified in
going to a woman (already in the maturity of intellect and of years) and
saying to her, ‘I made, in my boyhood, a miserable marriage, from which I
cannot get legal release. You know every particular of my story; nothing
of it has been withheld from you. Your age and your experience qualify you
to estimate the nature, and magnitude, and consequences of the sacrifice I
ask of you. As far as any woman can be in such a position, you are in a
position to justify you in ministering to my happiness, in contravention
of human laws and social sentiment. My prayer is that you may love me as I
love you, and will grant me all that my love requires of you. But in
consideration of the enormity of the sacrifice you will make of your
interests in yielding to my prayer, I cannot allow you to consent
impulsively, but beg you to ponder my proposal with all possible calmness
before you answer.’ The question is not raised whether or no Shelley,
some ten or twenty years after his complete separation from Harriett,
might have spoken in this way to a woman some thirty years of age.
Nor will the Shelleyan apologists touch the main question by repeating one
of their favourite pleas in Shelley’s behalf, viz., that, if he was wrong
in stealthily carrying off his friend’s child, he believed himself quite
right in doing so. It is curious that the lady, who in her girlhood was
thus dealt with by her future husband, should have been the originator of
the extraordinary plea. In her note to _Alastor_, Mrs. Shelley remarks of
her husband, that ‘in all he did, he, at the time of doing it, believed
himself justified to his own conscience.’ What makes this curious plea
especially deserving of notice is its truth. As soon as Shelley wished to
do a thing, it was manifest to him that he had a right to do it; and
having done the thing (however wrong it might be), he could commend
himself for virtue in having done it. Peacock tells a curious story, that
may be repeated in illustration of Shelley’s readiness to discover a good
motive, to justify anything he had a humour to do. One fine day in the
early summer (probably of 1815), the two friends were walking through a
village where there was a good vicarage-house, whose front wall was
covered with corchorus in full bloom. In his delight at the pleasant house
and garden, and the picturesque church near at hand, Shelley remarked
seriously, ‘I feel strongly inclined to enter the church.’
‘What,’ said Peacock, ‘to become a clergyman, with your ideas of the
faith?’
Instead of admitting that a man of his views would be a miserable impostor
to take orders for the sake of a good benefice, Shelley answered, ‘Assent
to the supernatural part of it is merely technical. Of the moral doctrines
of Christianity I am a more decided example than many of its more
ostentatious professors. And consider for a moment how much good a good
clergyman can do.... It is an admirable institution that admits the
possibility of diffusing such men over the surface of the land. And am I
to deprive myself of the advantages of this admirable institution, because
there are certain technicalities to which I cannot give my adhesion, but I
need not bring prominently forward?’
This notion of entering the church was nothing more than a passing fancy;
but with Shelley to entertain the notion was to discover virtuous reasons
for acting on the immoral fancy. All through life Shelley thought of
himself and his doings in this self-justificatory fashion. Whatever he
said or did was right to be said and done. In a former chapter it has been
remarked how Shelley resembled Byron in being a sentimental egotist; and
how the egotism of the one poet differed from the egotism of the other.
Whilst it delighted Byron to figure as the man of sin, Shelley sided with
angels and asked the world to worship him for his celestial qualities.
Whilst Byron delighted in painting himself blacker than he was, Shelley
never wearied of proclaiming himself a creature of angelic purity and
whiteness. Both were actors desirous of being mistaken for the characters
they assumed; each of them having selected his part in obedience to his
natural disposition; Byron wishing to be thought romantically wicked,
because wickedness had a fascination for him, whilst Shelley wished to be
thought romantically virtuous, because he had a genuine preference for
goodness.
Insincere on the surface, the affectation of either poet had its source in
sincerity. In some respects Byron’s affectation was the more piquant, from
being so much more unusual than Shelley’s affectation. Whilst Shelley’s
affectation was commonplace hypocrisy, expressing itself in the finest
figures of poetry, Byron’s hypocrisy was so much out of the ordinary
course of things as to be almost unique. Harness designated it ‘hypocrisy
reversed.’ It was hypocrisy turned inside out. And anything, from a
philosopher’s argument to a fop’s dress suit, on being turned inside out,
is for a while more attractive and entertaining than when it is displayed
in the usual and proper way. To hear a man credit himself with virtues he
does not possess, one has only to stand with open ears at the corner of
any market, where people are noisily employed in over-reaching one
another. But it is rare, and because rare it is amusing and piquant, to
find a man chiefly desirous of persuading his neighbours that he is a very
much worse man than he really is. England will hold her own amongst the
nations of the earth for several centuries, without producing another
great poet so enamoured and ambitious as Byron was of evil fame; but every
generation of her past or future story has produced, or will produce, a
poet with Shelley’s disposition to think and speak too well of himself. It
may, however, be questioned whether England will, in the coming time,
ever produce a poet so supremely great in his art, and at the time so
supremely self-righteous as the author of _Laon and Cythna_.
It is not surprising that William Godwin could not recognize a possible
Saviour of the World in his daughter’s captor. It is not surprising that
for some time he refused to speak with Shelley, or to correspond with him,
except through a solicitor. The worm turns when it is trodden upon. Even a
philosopher may be excused for showing he participates in the infirmities
of ‘the slavish multitude,’ when the young man he has cherished
affectionately repays his kindness by bringing his only daughter to shame.
It is not surprising that, to the hour of the poet’s death, Godwin thought
of him bitterly and resentfully as an evil man. Even to his daughter,
after he had taken her back to his heart, the poor author and struggling
bookseller never disguised from her his low opinion of the man who in
undue course became his son-in-law. Writing to her on 9th September, 1819,
he said, ‘What is it you want that you have not? You have the husband of
your choice, to whom you are unalterably attached, a man of high
intellectual attainments, _whatever I, and some other persons_, may think
of his morality, and the defects under this last head, if they be not (as
you seem to think) imaginary, at least do not operate as towards you.’
From these words, written to his child about her husband, it may be
inferred what Godwin thought of his son-in-law’s morals, and said of them
to people less sensitive than Mary for the poet’s honour, and less
entitled to the old man’s consideration. So much has been written
gushingly about the sweetness of Shelley’s temper, it is well to observe
that Godwin (who may be supposed to have known it better than any of the
poet’s eulogists) wrote to his wife on 14th May, 1817, ‘I knew that
Shelley’s temper was occasionally fiery, resentful and indignant!’
No doubt, Shelley in later time helped Godwin on several occasions with
money. It even appears that in the winter of 1814-15, whilst Godwin was
holding to his purpose of having no renewal of friendly intercourse with
him, Shelley, in the midst of urgent embarrassments, managed to borrow
90_l._, which was sent to the relief of the old man, who was in financial
distress. As the moneys with which he at divers times saved Mary’s father
from bankruptcy, were for the most part, if not altogether, obtained from
money-lenders on post-obits or on loans at heavy interest, charged on the
estates A and B, the amount for which Shelley rendered himself liable for
Godwin’s advantage greatly exceeded the sum that came to the veteran from
his son-in-law. The smaller of the two sums was, however, a large one. One
could wish, for his credit’s sake, that Godwin had never yielded to
necessity so far as to take a single guinea from his daughter’s husband.
It would be easier to respect the veteran had he surrendered his stock to
his creditors, and lived again at the point of pen, rather than take money
from the man who led Mary from the way of womanly duty. But Godwin was now
growing old; his powers and spirit were failing; and there is nothing so
likely as financial distress to deaden a man’s sense of honour. Under that
demoralizing distress, poor Godwin deteriorated lamentably. Several
considerations may, however, be urged in palliation of the incidents that
exposed him to the charge of receiving pecuniary compensation for loss of
honour. He had a wife and a young son still upon his hands; the character
of his business encouraged him to hope that even yet it would prove more
remunerative; and the money he should not have accepted, may well have
seemed to him to come not so much from his son-in-law as from his
prosperous daughter. He may well have felt that in refusing to be helped
by her, he should be reminding her ungenerously of what was shameful in
her ability to help him. In considering these pecuniary transactions,
readers should make an effort to dismiss Shelley from their minds, and as
far as possible think only of the father and daughter.
On returning to London from the six weeks’ tour, Shelley lost no time in
calling on his wife, who, by receiving his visit, may be said to have
justified Mary Godwin in remarking in her diary, that Harriett was
‘certainly a very odd creature.’ This visit to Harriett is said to have
been paid by Shelley on the day following his arrival at Gravesend; and as
Harriett was at that time living under her father’s roof in Chapel Street,
the fair presumption (in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary)
is that the husband and wife saw one another at her father’s house. It is
also certain that in several ensuing months Shelley not only displayed a
desire to live on a friendly footing with Harriett, but that she consented
to his desire so far as to allow him to call upon her, and in divers ways
to make arrangements for her comfort. Whether Mary Godwin called on
Harriett does not appear; but from an entry of her diary, it is obvious
she was disposed to do so. It is scarcely conceivable (though strange
things are conceivable of the Shelleys) that the project for calling on
her would have been seriously entertained until Harriett’s feelings had
been, at least, sounded by Shelley, in order to discover whether it would
be agreeable to his wife to receive a call from his mistress. If the visit
was paid, and, moreover, paid to, and received by, Harriett under her
father’s roof, the affair involved a curious position, and showed that the
Westbrooks resembled the poet in disregard of conventional propriety. That
the intercourse, which certainly took place at this period between Shelley
and Harriett, was fruitful of much enjoyment to either of them is not to
be imagined. Some of their interviews were by no means agreeable to the
sensibilities of the young husband, who on returning from one of them (an
interview that _is said_ to have taken place on the day following that of
the birth of Harriett’s son), complained bitterly to Mary of Harriett’s
demeanour to him. Possibly the mother of Shelley’s heir was not without
materials for a countercharge of the same nature against the young poet,
whom she had just presented with an heir to the Castle Goring baronetcy.
Anyhow, excuses may be made for the young wife and mother (still only
nineteen years of age), should she be proved to have spoken tartly to the
young husband, who had come straight from his mistress’s lodgings to
congratulate her on so interesting an occasion. The matter of chief
importance about these interviews is, that they were made: that Shelley
paid and Harriett received the visits,--a fact fully justifying certain of
Shelley’s biographers in averring that she assented to his withdrawal from
her bed, and that the separation was an affair of mutual consent. Under
these circumstances, as I have already remarked, to produce a regular deed
of separation would not be to give a new colour to the arrangement.
There is some uncertainty as to the precise date of Charles Bysshe
Shelley’s birth. As the matter is of slight or no importance, I have not
been at much pains to ascertain the very day on which Shelley’s son by
Harriett was born. Writing from the Field Place MSS., the writer of the
_Edinburgh_, ‘Shelley and Mary’ article, says that the poet’s first-born
son was born ‘about December 1st,’--a statement following immediately
upon the writer’s testimony that, according to Mary Godwin’s diary,
Harriett left her father’s house on the 20th of October preceding her
accouchement; and that, on so leaving her father’s house, she went to some
place alike unknown to both keepers of the joint-diary. Anyhow, there is
small reason for doubt that the boy was born in his maternal grandfather’s
house in Chapel Street. To this point, Miss Westbrook (in her second
affidavit in the memorable proceedings in Chancery, dated 13th January,
1817) speaks precisely. Affidavits are sometimes loosely drawn; but it is
in the highest degree improbable that Miss Westbrook would have signed
under oath a statement that her nephew was born in her father’s house, and
her own home, unless she remembered him to have been born there. It is no
less improbable that Miss Westbrook’s memory could have betrayed her on
such a point. Consequently, _if_ Harriett’s boy by Shelley was born about
1st December, 1814 (as the Field Place evidences are said to show), and
_if_ (as the same evidences are said to show) Harriett left her father’s
house on the previous 20th October, 1814, she must have returned to her
old home in Chapel Street on some day before the birth of her son.
Whilst he was rendering scarcely acceptable civilities to his wife,
Shelley was not without sentimental embarrassments in the lodgings where
he was living with Mary and Claire,--embarrassments arising chiefly from
Claire’s inability to concur with him respecting the proper limits of his
affectionateness for her. The bright, witty, vivacious girl, who had
favoured and furthered his suit to Mary, and, deserting her mother, had
decided to share the fortunes of the two Free Lovers, saw much to
disapprove, and something to resent, in Shelley’s purpose to treat her
merely as a friend who had rendered him sisterly service. It does not
appear from the record in what particulars Claire felt herself aggrieved;
and in the absence of definite information, readers must be left to
imagine her grounds for discontent with Percy’s treatment of her. The lady
so recently initiated into the principles of Free Love, may possibly have
conceived that its freedom should be limitless. If she was guilty of so
great a mistake, it may be pleaded in her excuse that she had been carried
somewhat too quickly through a course of reading, not unlikely to fill her
young mind with wild and preposterous imaginations. In justice to this
girl of seventeen summers, it should be remembered that in the autumn of
1814 she had been for some months drinking deeply and incessantly of a new
and perilous philosophy. The sharer of her sister’s training for the
higher life, Claire had studied _Queen Mab_ with its Notes, perused Mary
Wollstonecraft’s delightful letters to Gilbert Imlay, pondered William
Godwin’s arguments against marriage, and enlarged her views of life by
earnest application to the Chevalier Lawrence’s elegant work on _The
Empire of the Nairs_. Sure evidence exists that, in the summer and early
autumn, all this stimulating and wildly delusive literature was offered to
the consideration of the two sisters; and it cannot be doubted that,
whenever they needed larger enlightenment and more exact guidance on
questions rising from the texts of the various authors, the girls carried
their difficulties to a tutor who was only too happy to give them more
precise instruction. There is no lack of evidence that Shelley and the
girls went together through this disturbing literature. In a few months
the girls had learnt why chastity should be deemed a monkish superstition;
why conjugal constancy ceases to be virtuous when it ceases to be
agreeable; why love should be lawless. Is it strange that the instruction
afforded to Claire during her passage through such literature, not only by
the books themselves, but also by the more exciting than wholesome
conversations arising from them, was fruitful of misconceptions and wild
fancies in her ardent brain? Mr. Froude is of opinion that by thus
declaring her approval of ‘community of women,’ Claire ‘scandalized even
Shelley himself,’ and proved herself a phenomenally impure and vicious
girl. To me, on the contrary, the declaration of so repulsive a sentiment
only shows how greatly Claire was mentally disturbed and morally injured,
at least for the moment, by the literature and vein of thought to which
Shelley had introduced her.
Was a young man ever in a stranger complication of sentimental
embarrassments than Shelley, living in lodgings with a mistress to whom he
was passionately attached, and her sister so incapable of mere friendship,
whilst he was paying visits of affectionate courtesy to his young wife on
the point of giving birth to his first-born son, or already dandling the
little one in her arms? Whatever the uncertainty respecting his feelings
for Harriett, the position of affairs at his lodgings is clearly defined.
Whilst he would fain cherish Claire with tender and affectionate
friendship, she requires more than friendship of him. On finding that
Claire requires more of his consideration and sympathy than fidelity to
the girl who has sacrificed her honour for his happiness will allow him to
give her, he retires into his sentimental shell, in respect to the girl of
southern complexion and Italian fervour, resolving for the future to bear
himself towards her with circumspection, reserve, and even coldness. Aware
of Claire’s extravagant desire and pretensions, Mary is of course on
Shelley’s side and encourages him to persist in the attitude, which, of
course, appears to her most favourable to domestic virtue. Being in
possession of his heart, she, of course, has no wish to share it with
Claire, and resents Claire’s claim for a part of it as unendurable
presumption.
Had Mary been in Claire’s place, and Claire in her sister’s position, it
is possible Mary would have been guilty of Claire’s egregious
misconceptions, and Claire would have been on the side of domestic virtue.
But having all she wanted Mary was preserved from the erroneous
conclusions, to which new and exciting literature had reduced her
sister-by-affinity. Possessing Percy’s undivided love Mary was saved from
Claire’s painful misconceptions by a natural selfishness,--the vice that
so often renders virtue efficient service. This was the position at
Percy’s lodgings,--a position that, promising much sentimental disturbance
and successive outbreaks of emotional energy, in due course fulfilled the
promise.