To spend years thus and be rewarded,
As thou, sweet love, requited me
When none were near.
... thy lips did meet
Mine tremblingly;...
“Gentle and good and mild thou art,
Nor can I live if thou appear
Aught but thyself.”...
And so on. “Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and
Shelley that each was inexpressibly dear to the other.” Yes, Shelley had
found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in
the graveyard. But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her
nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children.
However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her
masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. If she had occupied
the only kind and gentle Harriet's place in March it would have been a
thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the
riot act. That holiday of Shelley's would have been of short duration,
and Cornelia's hair would have been as gray as her mother's when the
services were over.
Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner Street with Shelley on
that 8th of June. They passed through Godwin's little debt-factory of a
book-shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor. Nobody there.
Shelley strode about the room impatiently, making its crazy floor quake
under him. Then a door “was partially and softly opened. A thrilling
voice called 'Shelley!' A thrilling voice answered, 'Mary!' And he
darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting
King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with
a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London
at that time, had called him out of the room.”
This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg. The thrill of the voices
shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a
fortnight old; therefore it had been born within the month of May--born
while Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think. I
must not be asked how I know so much about that thrill; it is my secret.
The biographer and I have private ways of finding out things when it is
necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail.
Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days. The biographer
conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It would
be just like him. To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two
women at once. He was more in love with Miss Hitchener when he married
Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple and
unostentatious candor. He was more in love with Cornelia than he was
with Harriet in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814, yet he
supplied both of them with love poems of an equal temperature meantime;
he loved Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting ready to run off
with the one, it is conjectured that he put in his odd time trying to
get reconciled to the other; by-and-by, while still in love with Mary,
he will make love to her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the
visitation of God, through the medium of clandestine letters, and she
will answer with letters that are for no eye but his own.
When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin he was looking around for another
paradise. He had tastes of his own, and there were features about
the Godwin establishment that strongly recommended it. Godwin was an
advanced thinker and an able writer. One of his romances is still read,
but his philosophical works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue now;
their authority was already declining when Shelley made his acquaintance
--that is, it was declining with the public, but not with Shelley. They
had been his moral and political Bible, and they were that yet. Shelley
the infidel would himself have claimed to be less a work of God than a
work of Godwin. Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind and interwoven
themselves into it and become a part of its texture; he regarded himself
as Godwin's spiritual son. Godwin was not without self-appreciation;
indeed, it may be conjectured that from his point of view the last
syllable of his name was surplusage. He lived serene in his lofty world
of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men,
and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms
to pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him. Several of
his principles were out of the ordinary. For example, he was opposed to
marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but
theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to
live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working
model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the
principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising
aspect then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in
Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of the sense of humor. This
episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's attention.
But we have said enough about the head of the new paradise. Mrs. Godwin
is described as being in several ways a terror; and even when her soul
was in repose she wore green spectacles. But I suspect that her main
unattractiveness was born of the fact that she wrote the letters that
are out in the appendix-basket in the back yard--letters which are an
outrage and wholly untrustworthy, for they say some kind things about
poor Harriet and tell some disagreeable truths about her husband; and
these things make the fabulist grit his teeth a good deal.
Next we have Fanny Godwin--a Godwin by courtesy only; she was Mrs.
Godwin's natural daughter by a former friend. She was a sweet and
winning girl, but she presently wearied of the Godwin paradise, and
poisoned herself.
Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she preferred to call herself)
Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was very
young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what
she could to make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off with her
part-sister Mary, she became the guest of the pair, and contributed a
natural child to their nursery--Allegra. Lord Byron was the father.
We have named the several members and advantages of the new paradise
in Skinner Street, with its crazy book-shop underneath. Shelley was all
right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway,
and more different kinds of fragrance. One could turn out poetry here
without any trouble at all.
The way the new love-match came about was this:
Shelley told Mary all his aggravations and sorrows and griefs, and about
the wet-nurse and the bonnetshop and the surgeon and the carriage, and
the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and
her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making
so much of him; and how he had deserted Harriet and then Harriet had
deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet
getting her poem by heart; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied
him, for she had had trouble herself. But I am not satisfied with this.
It reads too much like statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and is
too earthy and business-like. It has the sordid look of a trades-union
procession out on strike. That is not the right form for it. The book
does it better; we will fall back on the book and have a cake-walk:
“It was easy to divine that some restless grief possessed him;
Mary herself was not unlearned in the lore of pain. His
generous zeal in her father's behalf, his spiritual sonship to
Godwin, his reverence for her mother's memory, were guarantees
with Mary of his excellence.--[What she was after was
guarantees of his excellence. That he stood ready to desert
his wife and child was one of them, apparently.]--The new
friends could not lack subjects of discourse, and underneath
their words about Mary's mother, and 'Political Justice,' and
'Rights of Woman,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards
the other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direction of
the other. The desire to assuage the suffering of one whose
happiness has grown precious to us may become a hunger of the
spirit as keen as any other, and this hunger now possessed
Mary's heart; when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was
with a look full of the ardor of a 'soothing pity.'”
Yes, that is better and has more composure. That is just the way it
happened. He told her about the wet-nurse, she told him about political
justice; he told her about the deadly sister-in-law, she told him about
her mother; he told her about the bonnet-shop, she murmured back about
the rights of woman; then he assuaged her, then she assuaged him; then
he assuaged her some more, next she assuaged him some more; then they
both assuaged one another simultaneously; and so they went on by the
hour assuaging and assuaging and assuaging, until at last what was the
result? They were in love. It will happen so every time.
“He had married a woman who, as he now persuaded himself, had
never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank,
and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery.”
I think that that is not quite fair to Harriet. We have no certainty
that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house. He went back to
Cornelia, and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her
as ever. Still, it was judicious to begin to lay on the whitewash,
for Shelley is going to need many a coat of it now, and the sooner the
reader becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get
reconciled to it and stop fretting about it.
After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Harriet at Bath--8th of June to
18th--“it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth
join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner.”
Nothing could be handier than this; things will swim along now.
“Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded
union with Harriet was a thing of the past, he had not ceased
to regard her with affectionate consideration; he wrote to her
frequently, and kept her informed of his whereabouts.”
We must not get impatient over these curious inharmoniousnesses
and irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character. You can see by the
biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable
about them. Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young
creatures happy: he was regarding the one with affectionate
consideration by mail, and he was assuaging the other one at home.
“Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps never desired
that the breach between herself and her husband should be
irreparable and complete.”
I find no fault with that sentence except that the “perhaps” is not
strictly warranted. It should have been left out. In support--or
shall we say extenuation?--of this opinion I submit that there is not
sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies. The
only “evidence” offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out
against a reconciliation is a poem--the poem in which Shelley beseeches
her to “bid the remorseless feeling flee” and “pity” if she “cannot
love.” We have just that as “evidence,” and out of its meagre materials
the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum;
conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to
fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.
Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence, but we know well that
they are “good for this day and train only.” We are able to believe that
they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience
that they could not be depended on to speak it the next. The very
supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so
suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin
that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy
person could have gotten to the bank with it.
Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness--these may sometimes
reside in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged
against Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right
to insert them into her character on such shadowy “evidence” as that.
Peacock knew Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look,
as painted by him:
“Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such
manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once
in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her
husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in
retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed
the change of scene.”
“Perhaps” she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable
and complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any
breach at all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went
before the altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and
cherish each other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of
reconciliation itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet
went away, and the sister-in-law removed herself from her society. That
was in April. Shelley wrote his “appeal” in May, but the corresponding
went right along afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject
of it was a “reconciliation,” or that Harriet had any suspicion that she
needed to be reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade
her to it--as the biographer has sought to make us believe, with his
Coliseum of conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry. For we
have “evidence” now--not poetry and conjecture. When Shelley had been
dining daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing
the love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days
earlier, he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the
next. During four days Harriet got no letter from him. Then her fright
and anxiety rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley's
publisher which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her
had been the customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had
carried no appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to:
“BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).
“MY DEAR SIR,--You will greatly oblige me by giving the
enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, but it is
now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an
age. Will you write by return of post and tell me what has
become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has
happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is
well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you
or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful
state of suspense. You are his friend and you can feel for me.
“I remain yours truly,
“H. S.”
Even without Peacock's testimony that “her whole aspect and demeanor
were manifest emanations of a pure and truthful nature,” we should hold
this to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter; it
bears those marks; I think it is also the letter of a person accustomed
to receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have
been of a welcome and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back--ever
since the solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely.
The biographer follows Harriet's letter with a conjecture. He
conjectures that she “would now gladly have retraced her steps.” Which
means that it is proven that she had steps to retrace--proven by the
poem. Well, if the poem is better evidence than the letter, we must let
it stand at that.
Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shelley's honor--by authority of
random and unverified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose
very names make a person shudder: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her
part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron; Godwin, the philosophical
tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow--that is to say, from
a person whom he shirks out of naming. Yet the biographer dignifies this
sorry rubbish with the name of “evidence.”
Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person
professing to know is offered among this precious “evidence.”