Emerson had the instincts of Connecticut--that peculiar development of men
who have eked out existence on a rocky soil, banking their houses against
grim Winter or grimmer savage foes. With this Yankee shrewdness went a
subtle and sweeping imagination, and a fine appreciation of the excellent
things that men have said and done. But he was never so foolish as to
imitate the heroic--he, simply admired it from afar. He advised others to
work their poetry up into life, but he did not do so himself. He never
cast the bantling on the rocks, nor caused him to be suckled with the
she-wolf's teat. He admired "abolition" from a distance. When he went away
from home it was always with a return ticket. He has summed up Friendship
in an essay as no other man ever has, and yet there was a self-protective
aloofness in his friendship that made icicles gather, as George William
Curtis has explained.
In no relation of his life was there a complete abandon. His "Essay on
Self-Reliance" is beef, iron and wine, and "Works and Days" is a tonic for
tired men; and yet I know that, in spite of all his pretty talk about
living near Nature's heart, he never ventured into the woods outside of
hallooing distance from the house. He could neither ride a horse, shoot,
nor sail a boat--and being well aware of it, never tried. All his farming
was done by proxy; and when he writes to Carlyle late in life, explaining
how he is worth forty thousand dollars, well secured by first mortgages,
he makes clear one-half of his ambition.
And yet, I call him master, and will match my admiration for him 'gainst
that of any other, six nights and days together. But I summon him here
only to contrast his character with that of another--another who, like
himself, was twice married.
In his "Essay on Love" Emerson reveals just an average sophomore insight;
and in his work I do not find a mention or a trace of influence exercised
by either of the two women he wedded, nor by any other woman. Shelley was
what he was through the influence of the two women he married.
Shelley wrecked the life of one of these women. She found surcease of
sorrow in death; and when her body was found in the Serpentine he had a
premonition that the hungry waves were waiting for him, too. But before
her death and through her death, she pressed home to him the bitterest
sorrow that man can ever know: the combined knowledge that he has mortally
injured a human soul and the sense of helplessness to minister to its
needs. Harriet Westbrook said to Shelley, drink ye all of it. And could he
speak now he would say that the bitterness of the potion was a formative
influence as potent as that of the gentle ministrations of Mary
Wollstonecraft, who broke over his head the precious vase of her heart's
love and wiped his feet with the hairs of her head.
In the poetic sweetness, gentleness, lovableness and beauty of their
natures, Emerson and Shelley were very similar. In a like environment they
would have done the same things. A pioneer ancestry with its struggle for
material existence would have given Shelley caution; and a noble
patronymic, fostered by the State, lax in its discipline, would have made
Emerson toss discretion to the winds.
Emerson and Shelley were both apostles of the good, the true and the
beautiful. One of them rests at Sleepy Hollow, his grave marked by a great
rough-hewn boulder, while overhead the winds sigh a requiem through the
pines. The ashes of the other were laid beneath the moss-grown wall of the
Eternal City, and the creeping vines and flowers, as if jealous of the
white, carven marble, snuggle close over the spot with their leaves and
petals.
Yet both of these men achieved immortality, for their thoughts live again
in the thoughts of the race, and their hopes and their aspirations mingle
and are one with the men and women of earth who think and feel and dream.
* * * * *
It was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who awoke in Shelley such a burst of
song that men yet listen to its cadence. It was she who gave his soul
wings: her gentle spirit blending with his made music that has enriched
the world. Without her he was fast beating out his life against the bars
of unkind condition, but together they worked and sang. All his lines were
recited to her, all were weighed in the critical balances of her woman's
judgment. She it was who first wrote it out, and then gave it back.
Together they revised; and after he had passed on, she it was who
collected the scattered leaves, added the final word, and gave us the book
we call "Shelley's Poems." Perhaps we might call all poetry the child of
parents, but with Shelley's poems this is literally true. Mary Shelley
delighted in the name Wollstonecraft. It was her mother's name; and was
not Mary Wollstonecraft the foremost intellectual woman of her day--a
woman of purpose, forceful yet gentle, appreciative, kind?
Mary Wollstonecraft was born in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine; and tiring
of the dull monotony of a country town went up to London when yet a child
and fought the world alone. By her own efforts she grew learned; she had
all science, all philosophy, all history at her fingers' ends. She became
able to speak several languages, and by her pen an income was secured that
was not only sufficient for herself, but ministered to the needs of an
aged father and mother and sisters as well.
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote one great book (which is all any one can write):
"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." It sums up all that has since been
written on the subject. Like an essay by Herbert Spencer, it views the
matter from every side, anticipates every objection--exhausts the subject.
The literary style of Mary Wollstonecraft's book is Johnsonese, but its
thought forms the base of all that has come after. It is the
great-great-grandmother of all woman's clubs and these thousand efforts
that women are now putting forth along economic, artistic and social
lines. But we have nearly lost sight of Mary Wollstonecraft. Can you name
me, please, your father's grandmother? Aye, I thought not; then tell me
the name of the man who is now Treasurer of the United States!
And so you see we do not know much about other people, after all. But Mary
Wollstonecraft pushed the question of woman's freedom to its farthest
limit; I told you that she exhausted the subject. She prophesied a day
when woman would have economic freedom--that is, be allowed to work at any
craft or trade for which her genius fitted her and receive a proper
recompense. Woman would also have social freedom: the right to come and go
alone--the privilege of walking upon the street without the company of a
man--the right to study and observe. Next, woman would have political
freedom: the right to record her choice in matters of lawmaking. And
last, she would yet have sex freedom: the right to bestow her love without
prying police and blundering law interfering in the delicate relations of
married life.
To make herself understood. Mary Wollstonecraft explained that society was
tainted with the thought that sex was unclean; but she held high the ideal
that this would yet pass away, and that the idea of holding one's mate by
statute law would become abhorrent to all good men and women. She declared
that the assumption that law could join a man and a woman in holy wedlock
was preposterous, and that the caging of one person by another for a
lifetime was essentially barbaric. Only the love that is free and
spontaneous and that holds its own by the purity, the sweetness, the
tenderness and the gentleness of its life is divine. And further, she
declared it her belief that when a man had found his true mate such a
union would be for life--it could not be otherwise. And the man holding
his mate by the excellence that was in him, instead of by the aid of the
law, would be placed, loverlike, on his good behavior, and be a stronger
and manlier being. Such a union, freed from the petty, spying and
tyrannical restraints of present usage, must come ere the race could far
advance.
Mary Wollstonecraft's book created a sensation. It was widely read and
hotly denounced. A few upheld it: among these was William Godwin. But the
air was so full of taunt and threat that Miss Wollstonecraft thought best
to leave England for a time. She journeyed to Paris, and there wrote and
translated for certain English publishers. In Paris she met Gilbert Imlay,
an American, seemingly of very much the same temperament as herself. She
was thirty-six, he was somewhat younger. They began housekeeping on the
ideal basis. In a year a daughter was born to them. When this baby was
three months old, Imlay disappeared, leaving Mary penniless and
friendless.
It was a terrible blow to this trusting and gentle woman. But after a good
cry or two, philosophy came to her rescue and she decided that to be
deserted by a man who did not love her was really not so bad as to be tied
to him for life. She earned a little money and in a short time started
back for England with her babe and scanty luggage--sorrowful, yet brave
and unsubdued. She might have left her babe behind, but she scorned the
thought. She would be honest and conceal nothing. Right must win.
Now, I am told that an unmarried woman with a babe at her breast is not
received in England into the best society. The tale of Mary's misfortune
had preceded her, and literary London laughed a hoarse, guttural guffaw,
and society tittered to think how this woman who had written so smartly
had tried some of her own medicine and found it bitter. Publishers no
longer wanted her work, old friends failed to recognize her, and one man
to whom she applied for work brought a rebuke upon his head, that lasted
him for years.
Godwin, philosopher, idealist, enthusiast and reformer, who made it his
rule to seek out those in trouble, found her and told a needless lie by
declaring he had been commissioned by a certain nameless publisher to get
her to write certain articles about this and that. Then he emptied his
pockets of all the small change he had, as an advance payment, and he
hadn't very much, and started out to find the publisher who would buy the
prospective "hot stuff." Fortunately he succeeded.
After a few weeks, Mr. Godwin, bachelor, aged forty, found himself very
much in love with Mary Wollstonecraft and her baby. Her absolute purity of
purpose, her frankness, honesty and high ideals surpassed anything he had
ever dreamed of finding incarnated in woman. He became her sincere lover;
and she, the discarded, the forsaken, reciprocated; for it seems that the
tendrils of affection, ruthlessly uprooted, cling to the first object that
presents itself.
And so they were married; yes, these two who had so generously repudiated
the marriage-tie were married March Twenty-ninth, Seventeen Hundred
Ninety-seven, at Old Saint Pancras Church, for they had come to the sane
conclusion that to affront society was not wise.
On August Thirtieth, in the year Seventeen Hundred Ninety-seven, was born
to them a daughter. Then the mother died--died did brave Mary
Wollstonecraft, and left behind a girl baby one week old. And it was this
baby, grown to womanhood, who became Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
* * * * *
William Godwin wrote one great book: "Political Justice." It is a work so
high and noble in its outlook that only a Utopia could ever realize its
ideals. When men are everywhere willing to give to other men all the
rights they demand for themselves, and co-operation takes the place of
competition, then will Godwin's philosophy be not too great and good for
daily food. Among the many who read his book and thought they saw in it
the portent of a diviner day was one Percy Bysshe Shelley.
And so it came to pass that about the year Eighteen Hundred Thirteen, this
Percy Bysshe Shelley called on Godwin, who was living in a rusty, musty
tenement in Somerstown. The young man was twenty: tall and slender, with
as handsome a face as was ever given to mortal. The face was pale as
marble: the features almost feminine in their delicacy: thin lips,
straight nose, good teeth, abundant, curling hair, and eyes so dreamy and
sorrowful that women on the street would often turn and follow the "angel
soul garbed in human form."
This man Shelley was sick at heart, bereft, perplexed, in sore straits,
and to whom should he turn for advice in this time of undoing but to
Godwin, the philosopher! Besides, Godwin had been the husband of Mary
Wollstonecraft, and the splendid precepts of these two had nourished into
being all the latent excellence of the youth. Yes, he would go to Godwin,
the Plato of England!
And so he went to Godwin.
Now, this young man Shelley was of noble blood. His grandfather was Sir
Bysshe Shelley, Bart., and worth near three hundred thousand pounds, all
of which would some day come to our pale-faced youth. But the youth was a
republican--he believed in the brotherhood of man. He longed to benefit
his fellows, to lift them out of the bondage of fear, and sin, and
ignorance. After reading Hume, and Godwin, and Wollstonecraft, he had
decided that Christianity as defined by the Church of England was a
failure: it was only an organized fetish, kept in place by the State, and
devoid of all that thrills to noble thinking and noble doing.
And so young Shelley at Oxford had written a pamphlet to this end,
explaining the matter to the world.
A copy being sent to the headmaster of the school, young Shelley was
hustled off the premises in short order, and a note was sent to his father
requesting that the lad be well flogged and kept several goodly leagues
from Oxford.
Shelley the elder was furious that his son should so disgrace the family
name, and demanded he should write another pamphlet supporting the Church
of England and recanting all the heresy he had uttered. Young Percy
replied that conscience would not admit of his doing this. The father said
conscience be blanked: and further used almost the same words that were
used by Professor Jowett some years later to a certain skeptical youth.
Professor Jowett sent for the youth and said, "Young man, I am told that
you say you can not find God. Is this true?"
"Yes, sir," said the youth.
"Well, you will please find Him before eight o'clock tonight or get out of
this college."
Shelley was not allowed to return home, and moreover his financial
allowance was cut off entirely.
And so he wandered up to London and chewed the cud of bitter fancy,
resolved to starve before he would abate one jot or tittle of what he
thought was truth. And he might have starved had not his sisters sent him
scanty sums of money from time to time. The messenger who carried the
money to him was a young girl by the name of Harriet Westbrook, round and
smooth and pink and sixteen. Percy was nineteen. Harriet was the daughter
of an innkeeper and did not get along very well at home. She told Percy
about it, and of course she knew his troubles, and so they talked about it
over the gate, and mutually condoled with each other.
Soon after this Harriet had a fresh quarrel with her folks; and with the
tears yet on her pretty lashes ran straight to Shelley's lodging and
throwing herself into his arms proposed that they cease to fight unkind
Fate, and run away together and be happy ever afterward.
And so they ran away.
Shelley's father instanced this as another proof of depravity and said,
"Let 'em go!" The couple went to Scotland. In a few months they came back
from Scotland, because no one can really be happy away from home. Besides
they were out of money--and neither one had ever earned any money--and as
the Westbrooks were willing to forgive, even if the Shelleys were not,
they came back. But the Westbrooks were only willing to forgive in
consideration of Percy and Harriet being properly married by a clergyman
of the Church of England. Now, Shelley had not wavered in his
Godwin-Wollstonecraft theories, but he was chivalrous and Harriet was
tearful, and so he gracefully waived all private considerations and they
were duly married. It was a quiet wedding.
In a short time a baby was born.
Harriet was amiable, being healthy and having very moderate sensibilities.
She had no opinion on any subject, and in no degree sympathized with
Shelley's wild aspirations. She thought a title would be nice, and urged
that her husband make peace by renouncing his "infidelity." Literature was
silly business anyway, and folks should do as other folks did. If they
didn't, lawks-a-daisy! there was trouble!!
And so, with income cut off, banished from home, from school, out of
employment, with a wife who had no sympathy with him--who could not
understand him--whose pitiful weakness stung him and wrung him, he thought
of Godwin, the philosopher: for at the last philosophy is the cure for all
our ills.
Godwin was glad to see Shelley--Godwin was glad to see any one. Godwin was
fifty-five, bald, had a Socratic forehead, was smooth-cheeked, shabby and
genteel. Yes, Godwin was the author of "Political Justice"--but that was
written quite a while before, twenty years!
One of the girls was sent out for a quart of half-and-half, and the pale
visitor cast his eyes around this family room, which served for
dining-room, library and parlor. Godwin had married again--Shelley had
heard that, but he was a bit shocked to find that the great man who was
once mate to Mary Wollstonecraft had married a shrew. The sound of her
high-pitched voice convinced the visitor at once that she was a very
commonplace person.
There were three girls and a boy in the room, busy at sewing or reading.
None of them was introduced, but the air of the place was Bohemian, and
the conversation soon became general. All talked except one of the girls:
she sat reading, and several times when the young man glanced over her way
she was looking at him. Shelley stayed an hour, spending a very pleasant
time, but as he had no opportunity of stating his case to the philosopher
he made an engagement to call again.
As he groped his way downstairs and walked homewards he mused. The widow
Clairmont, whom Godwin had married, was a worldling, that was sure; her
daughter Jane was good-looking and clever, but both she and Charles, the
boy, were the children of their mother--he had picked them out
intuitively. The little young woman with brown eyes and merry ways was
Fanny Godwin, the first child of Mary Wollstonecraft and adopted daughter
of Godwin. The tall slender girl who was so very quiet was the daughter of
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
"Ye gods, what a pedigree!" said Shelley.
The young man called again, and after explaining his situation was advised
to go back home and make peace with his wife and father at any cost of
personal intellectual qualms. Philosophy was all right; but life was one
thing and philosophy another. Live with Harriet as he had vowed to
do--love was a good deal glamour, anyway; write poetry, of course, if he
felt like it, but keep it to himself. The world was not to be moved by
enthusiastic youth. Godwin had tried it--he had been an enthusiastic youth
himself, and that was why he now lived in Somerstown instead of
Piccadilly. Move in the line of least resistance.
Shelley went away shocked and stunned. Going by Old Saint Pancras Church
he turned back to step in a moment and recover his scattered senses. He
walked through the cool, dim, old building, out into the churchyard, where
toppling moss-covered gray slabs marked the resting-places of the sleeping
dead. All seemed so cool and quiet and calm there! The dead are at rest:
they have no vexatious problems.
A few people were moving about, carelessly reading the inscriptions. The
young man unconsciously followed their example; he passed slowly along one
of the walks, scanning the stones. His eye fell upon the word
"Wollstonecraft," marked on a plain little slate slab. He paused and,
leaning over removed his hat and read, and then glancing just beyond, saw
seated on the grass--the tall girl. She held a book in her hands, but she
was looking at him very soberly. Their eyes met, and they smiled just a
little. The young man sat down on the turf on the other side of the grave
from the girl, and they talked of the woman by whose dust they watched:
and the young man found that the tall girl was an Ancestor-Worshiper and a
mystic, and moreover had a flight of soul that held him in awe. Besides,
in form and feature, she was rarely beautiful. She was quiet, but she
could talk.
The next day, as Percy Shelley strolled through the churchyard of Old
Saint Pancras, the tall girl was there again with her book, in the same
place.
* * * * *
When Shelley made that first call at the Godwins he was twenty. The three
girls he met were fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, respectively. Mary being
the youngest in years, but the most mature, she would have easily passed
for the oldest. Now, all three of these girls were dazzled by the beauty
and grace and intellect of the strange, pale-faced visitor.
He came to the house again and again during the next few months. All the
girls loved him violently, for that's the way girls under eighteen often
love. Mr. Godwin soon discovered the fact that all his girls loved
Shelley. They lost appetite, and were alternately in chills of fear and
fevers of ecstacy. Mr. Godwin, being a kind man and a good, took occasion
to explain to them that Mr. Shelley was a married man, and although it was
true he did not live on good terms with his wife, yet she was his lawful
wife, and marriage was a sacred obligation: of course, pure philosophy or
poetic justice took a different view, but in society the marriage-tie must
not be held lightly. In short, Shelley was married and that was all there
was about it.
Shelley still continued to call, coming via Saint Pancras Church. In a few
months, Mary confided to Jane that she and Shelley were about to elope,
and Jane must make peace and explain matters after they were gone.
Jane cried and declared she would go, too--she would go or die: she would
go as servant, scullion--anything, but go she would. Shelley was
consulted, and to prevent tragedy consented to Jane going as maid to Mary,
his well-beloved.
So the trinity eloped. It being Shelley's second elopement, he took the
matter a little more coolly than did the girls, who had never eloped
before. Having reached Dover, and while waiting at a hotel for the boat,
the landlord suddenly appeared and breathlessly explained to Shelley, "A
fat woman has just arrived and swears that you have run away with her
girls!"
It was Mrs. Godwin.
The party got out by the back way and hired a small boat to take them to
Calais. They embarked in a storm, and after beating about all night, came
in sight of France the next morning as the sun arose.
Godwin was very much grieved and shocked to think that Shelley had broken
in upon established order and done this thing. But Shelley had read
Godwin's book and simply taken the philosopher at his word: "The impulses
of the human heart are just and right; they are greater than law, and must
be respected."
The runaways seemed to have had a jolly time in France as long as their
money lasted. They bought a mule to carry their luggage, and walked.
Jane's feet blistered, however, and they seated her upon the luggage upon
the mule, and as the author of "Queen Mab" led the patient beast, Mary
with a switch followed behind. After some days Shelley sprained his ankle,
and then it was his turn to ride while Mary led the mule and Jane trudged
after.
Thus they journeyed for six weeks, writing poetry, discussing philosophy;
loving, wild, free and careless, until they came to Switzerland. One
morning they counted their money and found they had just enough to take
them to England.
Arriving in London the Godwins were not inclined to take them back, and
society in general looked upon them with complete disfavor.
Shelley's father was now fully convinced of his son's depravity, but doled
out enough money to prevent actual starvation. Shelley began to perceive
that any man who sets himself against the established order--the order
that the world has been thousands of years in building up--will be ground
into the dust. The old world may be wrong, but it can not be righted in a
day, and so long as a man chooses to live in society he must conform, in
the main, to society usages. These old ways that have done good service
all the years can not be replaced by the instantaneous process. If changed
at all they must change as man changes, and man must change first. It is
man that must be reformed, not custom.
Shelley and Mary Godwin were mates if ever such existed. In a year Mary
had developed from a child into splendid womanhood--a beautiful, superior,
earnest woman. By her own efforts, of course aided by Shelley (for they
were partners in everything), she became versed in the classics and delved
deeply into the literature of a time long past. Unlike her mother, Mary
Shelley could do no great work alone. The sensitiveness and the delicacy
of her nature precluded that self-reliant egoism which can create. She
wrote one book, "Frankenstein," which in point of prophetic and
allegorical suggestion stamps the work as classic: but it was written
under the immediate spell of Shelley's presence. Shelley also could not
work alone, and without her the world's disfavor must have whipped him
into insanity and death.
As it was they sought peace in love and Italy, living near Lord Byron in
great intimacy, and befriended by him in many ways.
But peace was not for Shelley. Calamity was at the door. He could never
forget how he had lifted Harriet Westbrook into a position for which she
was not fitted and then left her to flounder alone. And when word came
that Harriet had drowned herself, his cup of woe was full. Shortly before
this, Fanny Godwin had gone away with great deliberation, leaving an empty
laudanum-bottle to tell the tale.
On December Thirtieth, Eighteen Hundred Sixteen, Shelley and Mary Godwin
were married at Saint Mildred's Church, London. Both had now fully
concluded with Godwin that man owes a duty to the unborn and to society,
and that to place one's self in opposition to custom is at least very bad
policy. But although Shelley had made society tardy amends, society would
not forgive; and in a long legal fight to obtain possession of his
children, Ianthe and Charles, of whom Harriet was the mother, the Court of
Chancery decided against Shelley, on the grounds that he was "an unfit
person, being an atheist and a republican."
About this time was born little Allegra, "the Dawn," child of Lord Byron
and Jane Clairmont. Then afterwards came bickerings with Byron and threats
of a duel and all that.
Finally there was a struggle between Byron and Miss Clairmont for the
child: but death solved the issue and the beautiful little girl passed
beyond the reach of either.
And so we find Shelley's heart wrung by the sorrows of others and by his
own; and when Mary and he laid away in death their bright boy William and
their baby girl Clara, the Fates seemed to have done their worst. But man
seems to have a certain capacity for pain, and beyond this even God can
not go.
Shelley struggled on and with Mary's help continued to write.
Another babe was born and the world grew brighter. They were now on the
shores of the Mediterranean with a little group of enthusiasts who thought
and felt as they did. For the first time they realized that, after all,
they were a part of the world, and linked to the human race--not set off
alone, despised, forsaken.
Then to join their little community were coming Leigh Hunt and his
wife--Leigh Hunt, who had lain in prison for the right of free thought and
free speech. What a joy to greet and welcome such a man to their home!
And so Shelley, blithe and joyous, sailed away to meet his friend. But
Shelley never came back to his wife and baby boy. A few days after, the
waves cast his body up on the beach, and you know the rest--how the
faithful Trelawney and Byron made the funeral-pyre and reduced the body to
ashes.
Mary was twenty-six years old then. She continued to live--to
live only in the memory of her Shelley and with the firm thought in her
mind that they would be united again. She seemed to exist but to care for
her boy, and to do as best she could the work that Shelley had left
undone.
The boy grew into a fine youth, and was as devoted to his mother as she
was to him. The title of the estate with all its vast wealth descended to
him, and together she lived out her days, tenderly cared for to the last,
dying in her son's arms, aged fifty-four.
She has told us that the first sixteen years of her life were spent in
waiting for her Shelley, eight years she lived with him in divinest
companionship, and twenty-eight years she waited and worked to prepare
herself to rejoin him.
* * * * *
SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF FAMOUS WOMEN," BEING
VOLUME TWO OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND
ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS AND
PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,
ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII