sent for suddenly a few minutes ago; I went to the common-room, where
I found our Master and two or three of the Fellows. The Master
produced a copy of the _little syllabus_, and asked me if I were the
author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. I begged
to be informed for what purpose he put the question. No answer was
given; but the Master loudly and angrily repeated, "Are you the author
of this book?" "If I can judge from your manner," I said, "you are
resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it is my work. If
you can prove that it is, produce your evidence; it is neither just
nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such a purpose.
Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men
in a free country." "Do you choose to deny that this is your
composition?" the Master reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.
Shelley (Hogg continues) complained much of his violent and
ungentlemanlike deportment, saying, "I have experienced tyranny and
injustice before, and I well know what vulgar violence is; but I never
met with such unworthy treatment." I told him calmly, but firmly, that
I was determined not to answer any questions respecting the
publication on the table. He immediately repeated his demand; I
persisted in my refusal; and he said furiously, "Then you are
expelled; and I desire you will quit the college early to-morrow
morning at the latest." One of the Fellows took up two papers, and
handed one of them to me; here it is.' He produced a regular sentence
of expulsion, drawn up in due form, under the seal of the college.
Here we have Shelley's account of the affair; or, to speak precisely,
Hogg's report of Shelley's account of the affair. There appears no reason
to question the substantial accuracy of the narrative. Allowance for
prejudice and partiality must, of course, be made by the reader,
especially in respect to those words that relate to the demeanour of the
Master and Fellows. One can believe the authorities were gracious neither
in their looks nor their voices. There was no reason why they should
affect complaisance. If they were rude and harsh in style, Shelley admits
that he was insolent and abusive. It is noteworthy that as soon as the
collegiate powers, to whose 'civility' he had borne witness on a previous
occasion, presumed to exercise authority over him, the undergraduate (of
whose sweet gentleness we have heard so much) flew at them in a manner
that was neither gentle nor sweet. In a moment he became the same
contumacious youngster who had given his Etonian masters so much trouble.
There is no reason to suppose that Hogg misreported Shelley, or that
Shelley was inaccurate in the words, 'One of the fellows took up two
papers and handed one of them to me.' The other paper was doubtless a
similar writ of expulsion that had been prepared for delivery to Hogg. It
follows, therefore, that before Shelley entered the common-room, the
authorities had determined to dismiss both of the undergraduates from the
college, and that Hogg learnt he was under sentence of banishment from
Shelley's lips.
Like a true Durham-and-Yorkshireman, Hogg seized the bull by the horns.
Seeing he would be expelled, was in fact already under sentence of
expulsion, he saw it would be to his advantage to make it appear that he
had been expelled for loyalty to his friend. It would discredit him with
his kindred near Stockton-on-Tees to be expelled for conspiring with
Shelley to teach atheism; on the other hand it would be rather to his
credit with them, and all other robust hearers of the affair, to be
expelled for sticking pluckily to a comrade in trouble. Seeing the politic
course he took it boldly. Instead of going to his own rooms, where he
would either find a written summons or a messenger inviting him to the
conclave of 'dons' in the common-room, this smart young man seized a pen,
and forthwith wrote the Master and Fellows an impudent letter, enjoining
them to reconsider their action towards Shelley, recall their sentence of
expulsion, retrace their steps, and behave better in the future. Never
was an undergraduate, already under sentence of expulsion, guilty of more
extravagant insolence to the authorities of his college. That Hogg was
guilty of this act of cunning effrontery to the Master and Fellows, about
whose insolence and vulgarity he is so indignant, we know from his own
boastful confession.
'I wrote,' he says, 'a short note to the Master and Fellows, in which,
as far as I can remember a very hasty composition after a long
interval, I briefly expressed my sorrow at the treatment my friend had
experienced, and my hope that they would reconsider their sentence,
since, by the same course of proceedings, myself, or any other person,
might be subjected to the same penalty, and to the imputation of equal
guilt. The note was despatched; the conclave was still sitting; and in
an instant the porter came to summon me to attend, bearing in his
countenance a promise of the reception which I was about to find. The
angry and troubled air of men, assembled to commit injustice according
to established forms, was then new to me; but a native instinct told
me, as soon as I entered the room, that it was an affair of party;
that whatever could conciliate the favour of the patrons was to be
done without scruple; and whatever could tend to impede preferment was
to be brushed away without remorse. The glowing Master produced my
poor note. I acknowledged it; and he forthwith put into my hands, not
less abruptly, the little syllabus. "Did you write this?" he asked, as
fiercely as if I alone stood between him and the rich see of Durham. I
attempted, submissively, to point out to him the extreme unfairness of
the question; the injustice of punishing Shelley for refusing to
answer it.... When I was silent, the Master told me to retire, and to
consider whether I was resolved to persist in my refusal.... I had
scarcely passed the door, however, when I was recalled. The Master
again showed me the book, and hastily demanded whether I admitted or
denied that I was the author of it. I answered that I was fully
sensible of the many and great inconveniences of being dismissed with
disgrace from the University, and I specified some of them, and
expressed a humble hope that they would not impose such a mark of
discredit upon me without any cause. I lamented that it was impossible
either to admit or deny the publication,--no man of spirit could
submit to do so;--and that a sense of duty compelled me respectfully
to refuse to answer the question which had been proposed. "Then you
are expelled," said the Master angrily, in a loud, great voice. A
formal sentence, duly signed and sealed, was instantly put into my
hand; in what interval the instrument had been drawn up I cannot
imagine. The alleged offence was a contumacious refusal to disavow the
imputed publication. My eye glanced over it, and observing the word
_contumaciously_, I said, calmly, that I did not think that term was
justified by my behaviour.'
This is the substance of Hogg's prolix account of his own expulsion; an
account at conflict in one important particular with Shelley's narrative
of his expulsion, and affording several grounds for declaring it
untruthful. Two writs--one of them certainly a writ of expulsion, and the
other presumably a writ of expulsion--having been drawn up before Shelley
entered the common-room, and Hogg having been told that whilst the one
writ was given to Shelley the other was reserved by the 'dons,' the
north-countryman had good ground for thinking the writ so reserved was the
writ eventually given to him. If his account of the affair was truthful,
in respect to the brevity of the conference and quickness of the
proceedings, a third writ could not have been made out and sealed during
so short and stormy a conference. There is no reason (apart from certain
words of Hogg's narrative that seems to have been written disingenuously)
for thinking a third writ was substituted for the reserved writ. Hogg
cannot be supposed to have thought a third writ was so substituted. He
must have assumed at the time that the writ, put into his hand, was the
reserved writ of which Shelley had told him. In suggesting that the writ
put into his hand was drawn up during the warm colloquy (_in what
interval_ of it he could not _imagine_), Hogg must be thought to have
written disingenuously, the object of the disingenuous writing being to
cover a misdescription of the instrument itself. The writ having been
penned before Shelley entered the common-room, it cannot have alleged that
the sentence of expulsion was consequent on a 'contumacious refusal to
disavow the imported publication.' Possibly the offence was not specified
in the document. But if it was mentioned the instrument must have declared
the sentence consequent on the atheistical writing. Hogg's motive for
misdescribing the document is obvious. Smarting under the imputation of
atheism, the Church-and-State Tory freethinker to the last represented
himself to society as a sufferer from loyalty to his friend, and he
misdescribed the writ so as to make it harmonize with the creditable view
of his case.
The evidences are conflicting in some particulars and deficient in others,
but the case may be stated thus:--Hogg and Shelley were the joint authors
of the atheistical pamphlet, the former being on the whole the more
culpable. This tract was put in circulation, and announced for sale, in
Oxford. Having obtained proof that the tract was the production of the
two undergraduates, the authorities of University College determined to
expel the joint-authors as soon as the work should be offered for sale
within the academic bounds. Acting on this resolve they sent in the
forenoon of Lady-day for the culprits, summoning Shelley first as the one
who had employed the printer, and been the busier in putting the tract in
circulation. To put himself in a position to say that he had not been
expelled for writing the atheistical tract, but merely for declining on
grounds of principle to say whether he was concerned in the publication,
Shelley refused to answer 'ay' or 'nay' to the Master's questions. For
this contumacy alone the authorities would have been justified in
dismissing him from the college. But using the writ drawn up before the
refusal to answer questions, they expelled him as the joint author and
promulgator of an atheistical work. Hogg was dealt with in like manner,
and for the same reason, although he tried at the time to put his
inevitable punishment on another ground, and subsequently took credit to
himself for standing chivalrously by his friend, when he might (as he
averred) have escaped punishment by a less generous course. That he knew
he was under sentence of expulsion before he wrote the insolent letter to
the 'dons' is sufficient proof that he was actuated by no chivalrous
motive in writing the epistle. To urge that the 'dons' prejudged the case
and acted with indecent precipitation, because they drew up the instrument
of expulsion before sending for the offenders is absurd, because they knew
the delinquents could not clear themselves. Events justified the action of
the 'dons.' The culprits offered no defence, could not offer any, did not
venture to say that they were innocent of the charge. The 'dons' had
traced the offence to its actual doers before dismissing them from the
college. No one who apprehends the legal constitution of the University,
the obligations of the authorities, and the obligations of the
undergraduates, can question that the writers of the tract were properly
dismissed from University College, as persons who were no longer members
of the Church of England, or deny that the Master and Fellows were under
the circumstances bound to tell the pamphleteers to go about their
business.
In his letter, dated 16th February, 1857, from Torquay (a letter already
referred to more than once in these pages), Shelley's cousin, Charles
Henry Grove, says, indeed, of _The Necessity of Atheism_ and its
consequences, 'The pamphlet had not the author's name, but it was
suspected in the University who was the author; and the young friends were
dismissed from Oxford, for contumaciously refusing to deny themselves to
be the authors of the work;' words of evidence that Shelley's attempt to
misrepresent the cause of his dismissal from the University was not
unsuccessful within the lines of his domestic circle; or at least of
evidence that his near relatives liked to attribute his expulsion to
contumacy rather than to atheism.
The account, given by Shelley of his expulsion to Peacock, differed
notably in certain particulars from the substantially accurate account he
gave on the morning of its occurrence to his fellow-collegian. To Thomas
Love Peacock, the poet averred that 'his expulsion was a matter of great
form and solemnity,' and that 'there was a sort of public assembly, before
which he pleaded his own cause in a long oration, in the course of which
he called on the illustrious spirits who had shed glory on those walls, to
look down on their degenerate successors.' Yet further, in confirmation of
this extravagant story, Shelley showed Peacock an Oxford newspaper, or
what appeared to be an Oxford newspaper, containing a full report of these
theatrical proceedings, together with his own oration at great length.
'His oration,' Peacock adds (_vide_ _Fraser's Magazine_, of June,
1858) 'may have been, as some of Cicero's published orations were, a
speech in the potential mood; one which might, could, should, or
would, have been spoken; but how in that case it got into the Oxford
newspaper passes conjecture.'
To the young gentleman, who made the Bishop imagine him a lady, and had
confidential relations with John Munday (the Oxford bookseller and printer
of the _Oxford Herald_), it is no injustice to suggest that, instead of
being a veritable copy of the _Herald_, the paper exhibited to Hogg may
have been a 'bogus' copy of the journal, made up in accordance with Mr.
Percy Bysshe Shelley's instructions, for his private use. No reader,
acquainted with Oxford and the ways in which things are done in the
University (and in 'the city' whose people stand, or used to stand, in
wholesome awe of the academic authorities), can need assurance that the
business of the expulsion was a strictly private affair; that no
proceedings in the case afforded diversion to a public assembly; that Mr.
Percy Bysshe Shelley delivered no grand oration on the degeneracy of
collegiate establishments; and that it is highly improbable any Oxford
printer ventured to offer the readers of any _bonâ fide_ Oxford journal
any 'such speech in the potential mood.'
On the morning following their expulsion (the morning of 26th March,
1811), Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, formerly of
University College, Oxford, made the journey to London on the outside of a
stage-coach. Thus Shelley passed in disgrace from his University at the
close of his second residence-term; an event that may be regarded as the
termination of the first period of his literary career. What a disastrous
period it was! How fruitful of misadventure, ridicule, catastrophe, and
shame! No literary aspirant, destined for imperishable fame, ever made a
more inauspicious beginning. In his first voyages on literary waters,
Byron encountered stormy weather and rough usage. His first book of poetry
resembled Shelley's maiden volume, in being suppressed for fear of
consequences. Ere his first razor had lost its edge, he was assailed by
the _Edinburgh Review_. But having weathered the gale, that almost wrecked
_The Hours of Idleness_, he enjoyed merry seas and favourable breezes. A
notability before starting for Greece, he returned from the 'pilgrimage,'
to spring to the highest pinnacle of fame. On leaving Oxford, Shelley had
produced the _Victor-and-Cazire_ book (suppressed for want of
originality); two of the feeblest and absurdest novels ever written in the
English tongue; the _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_, that,
despite all Hogg says to the contrary, made him the laughing-stock of
Oxford; the advertisements of the _Poetical Essay_ that never saw the
light; and (with Hogg's help) the _little_ syllabus that brought him to
_great_ grief,--to about the greatest disgrace a young man can undergo at
manhood's threshold, without falling in the grip of the criminal law.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1811.
Arrival in Town--The Poland-Street Exiles--The Squire's Correspondence
with Hogg's Father--His gentle Treatment of Shelley--Dinner at
Miller's Hotel--Hogg's Testimony to the Squire's Worth--Shelley's
Nicknames for his Father--Shelley rejects his Father's Terms--Shelley
offers Terms to his Father--The Squire's Indignation--He Relents--He
makes Shelley a Liberal Allowance--Lady Shelley's Misrepresentations--
The Exiles about Town--The Separation of 'The Inseparables'--Shelley's
Intimacy with the Westbrooks--John Westbrook's Calling and Character--
Taking the Sacrament--Harriett Westbrook's Conversion to Atheism--Her
Disgrace at School--Shelley's Measures for illuminating his Sister
Hellen--Tourists in Wales--The Change in Elizabeth Shelley--
Arrangements for a Clandestine Meeting--Mrs. Shelley's Treatment of
her Son--Captain Pilford's Kindness to his Nephew--Harriett
Westbrook's Appeal to Shelley--Her Decision and Indecision--From Wales
to London--Hogg's Influence--The Elopement to Scotland--Hogg starts
for Edinburgh.
Leaving Oxford on 26th March, 1811 (Tuesday), the expelled Oxonians
reached London at the close of the day, and after dining at the
coffee-house near Piccadilly (where they put up for the night) took tea in
Lincoln's Inn Fields with Shelley's cousins, described by Hogg as
'taciturn people, the maxim of whose family appeared to be, that a man
should hold his tongue and save his money.' Though the Groves never wasted
words, it is conceivable that their extreme taciturnity on the present
occasion was in some degree due to Hogg's embarrassing presence. In the
hearing of the stranger, whom they most likely held accountable for the
catastrophe that had befallen their kinsman, they could scarcely talk,
even in their usual guarded manner, of the news the visitors brought with
them from the seat of learning. 'Bysshe,' says Hogg, 'attempted to talk,
but the cousins held their peace, and so conversation remained
cousin-bound.' The position so fruitful of embarrassment cannot have
induced the two comrades in misfortune to prolong the visit to a late
hour; and it may be presumed that before midnight they were at Piccadilly,
in the beds for which the long day on the roof of the stage-coach had
disposed them. The next morning they sallied forth to look for lodgings,
and before dusk they were settled in the Poland Street lodgings, where
they lived together till about 18th April, 1811. Hogg says they 'lived
together nearly a month,' before he went off to North Wales, whence he
journeyed to York, to make the acquaintance of the provincial conveyancer
who had undertaken to introduce him to the mysteries of the law. But as
they did not take possession of the lodgings till 27th March, 1811, and
Shelley's first letter addressed to his absent friend is dated 18th April,
1811, their joint-tenancy of the Poland Street rooms barely exceeded three
weeks.
Mr. Timothy Shelley was not in town when his scapegrace heir alighted from
the coach in Piccadilly; but the news of 'the late occurrence at
University College' was not long in travelling to the Squire of Field
Place, who, putting pen to paper just about the time when the naughty boys
were settling into their temporary quarters in Poland Street, wrote from
Sussex a characteristic note, recalling the invitation Mr. Thomas
Jefferson Hogg had received to visit Field Place in the Easter holidays.
Nine days later (5th April, 1811) the honest and kindly gentleman was in
town, and writing from the House of Commons a no less characteristic and
even more comical letter (_vide_ Hogg's _Life_) to Hogg's father. Thinking
it needful in the highest degree that the Oxonian 'Inseparables' should be
separated, Mr. Timothy Shelley invited Mr. Hogg, senr., to co-operate with
him for that end. 'These youngsters,' the Member for New Shoreham wrote
from the House of Commons, 'must be parted, and the fathers must exert
themselves.' On the same day the Member for New Shoreham (who without
seeing his son had corresponded with him since Lady-day) wrote his 'dear
boy' a kindly, reasonable, and affectionate letter, to be found in Hogg's
book. Alluding briefly to his son's serious disgrace, the father expressed
sympathy with the offender under the shame and trouble he had brought upon
himself by 'criminal opinions and improper acts,'--no harsh words, surely,
for the description of the youngster's misconduct. In this letter (worded
the more cogently because Shelley had already shown his resolve to oppose
his father's wishes) the Squire of Field Place set forth the terms on
which he would forgive his errant child: (1) Shelley was directed 'to go
immediately to Field Place and abstain from all communication with Mr.
Hogg for some considerable time.' (2) The Squire wrote to his son, 'Place
yourself under the care and society of such gentleman as I shall appoint,
and attend to his instructions.' The gentleman, who has been charged with
driving his boy from his boyhood's home for publishing _The Necessity of
Atheism_, only required that the lad (_ætat._ 18) should go straight home,
forego the pleasure of Hogg's society for a time, and pursue his studies
under the direction of a private tutor. Were these terms hard and
unreasonable? After setting them forth, the Squire no doubt wrote a few
big words about his boy's unjustifiable and wicked and diabolical
opinions, in the fashion of fathers of the period. But these were the
father's terms:--Go home, where you will see me next Thursday; keep clear
for awhile of your partner in mischief, and be a good boy with the tutor
who will be found to take charge of you.
On the morrow (6th April, 1811) the honest and troubled gentleman wrote
again (_vide_ Hogg's _Life_) to Mr. Hogg the Elder, urging that their boys
should be parted, instead of being allowed 'to go into professions
together,' as they wished. It was the Squire's intention to use Paley's
arguments for the correction of his dear boy's erroneous views; to make
his young man read Paley's _Natural Theology_; to go through the _Natural
Theology_ with him. 'I shall,' wrote the sorrowful father of Field Place
to the other sorrowful father near Stockton-on-Tees, 'read it with him. A
father so employed must impress his mind more sensibly than a stranger.'
This is droll and comical from one point of view, no doubt. But it is also
pathetic, and very much to Squire Timothy's credit.
Hitherto Mr. Timothy Shelley had not seen his son since 'the late
occurrence at University College;' but on the day following the date of
his second letter to Mr. Hogg, senior--_i.e._ on 7th April, 1811, the
first Sunday of the month--the young men dined with the Member for New
Shoreham, by invitation, at his hotel (Miller's) on the Surrey side of the
river, hard by Westminster Bridge. Leaving Poland Street at an early hour,
the two youngsters prepared themselves for the repast, to which they had
been bidden, with a long walk, during which Shelley read aloud several
passages, to the excessive ridicule of the Jews and their religion, from
some critical work on the Old Testament.
On coming to Miller's Hotel, with faces brightened by exercise in the
spring breezes, and complexions reddened by laughter at their author's
satirical jocosities, they were welcomed with kindness by Mr. Timothy
Shelley, and with cordiality by Mr. Graham, the Squire's 'factotum.' The
reception was courteous, but the genial warmth and courtesy of Mr.
Shelley's manner did not render Mr. Hogg blind to its comical
extravagances. 'He presently,' Hogg remarks of the Squire's demeanour,
'began to talk in an odd, unconnected manner; scolding, crying, swearing,
and then weeping again; no doubt, he went on strangely;'--even as honest
gentlemen of an old school were apt to do under impulses of strong and
conflicting feelings. Glad to see his boy who had offended him, angry with
himself for letting this pleasure appear, and feeling it incumbent on his
parental dignity to affect an air of sternness, Mr. Timothy Shelley was
stirred far too deeply to play the part he wished to play, and 'broke
down' in an absurd and rather ludicrous fashion, scolding a little,
swearing a great deal, and blubbering hysterically in his want of
self-control. Most young men would have been touched by these exhibitions
of feeling, but to Hogg and his friend nothing was more obvious than that
the 'old boy' was going on strangely.
'What do you think of my father?' Shelley inquired in a whisper of Hogg,
whilst the senior was contending with too powerful emotion.
'He is not your father,' Hogg replied slily in reference to the Pater
Omnipotens, of whom they had been reading in the satirical treatise on
their way to the hotel. 'It is the God of the Jews: the Jehovah you have
been reading about!'--an answer that tickled Shelley's never fine sense of
humour so acutely, that he slipt from the edge of his chair, and 'laughing
aloud with a wild, demoniacal burst of laughter,' measured his length on
the floor, to the surprise and alarm of his father, and Mr. Graham, who
hastened to raise him from the ground. If Mr. Shelley the Elder 'went on
strangely,' Mr. Shelley the Younger cannot be said to have behaved in an
orderly and commonplace manner.
Dinner being announced, just as Mr. Timothy Shelley and his factotum had
raised the younger Mr. Shelley to his feet, the party went to the meal,
which passed off agreeably. After dinner (in the absence of Percy Bysshe),
Hogg had some friendly conversation with the Member for New Shoreham,
about his perplexing son.
'You are a very different person, Sir,' said the Squire, 'from what I
expected to find; you are a nice, moderate, reasonable, pleasant
gentleman. Tell me what you think I ought to do with my poor boy. He is
rather wild; is he not?'
'Yes, rather.'
'Then, what am I to do?'
'If he had married his cousin, he would perhaps have been less so; he
would have been steadier.'
'It is very probable that he would.'
'He wants somebody to take care of him--a good wife. What if he were
married?'
'But how can I do that? It is impossible. If I were to tell Bysshe to
marry a girl, he would refuse directly. I am sure he would. I know him so
well.'
'I have no doubt he would refuse, if you were to order him to marry; and I
should not blame him. But if you were to bring him in contact with some
young lady, who, you believed, would make him a suitable wife, without
saying anything about marriage, perhaps he would take a fancy to her; and
if he did not like her, you could try another.'
It has been remarked by Mr. Rossetti that this conversation accords in
some of its particulars with Thornton Hunt's unsatisfactory evidence, that
Shelley indulged at Oxford in dissipation, hurtful to his health. Hogg's
admission that Shelley had been 'rather wild,' followed immediately by
advice that he should be happily married to a young lady qualified to
'take care of him,' would bear this construction; but it may admit of a
different interpretation. Young men may be rather wild without being
rakish; and rakishness is not the only kind of wildness for which early
marriage is often prescribed as a remedy.
Shelley's reappearance (after executing the errand on which his father had
sent him) having put an end to the talk about various young ladies, any
one of whom might be appointed to wean him from wildness, tea was served;
and after tea there was some conversation on matters pertaining to
religion, of which Hogg gives the following example:--
'There is certainly a God,' ejaculated the Squire of Field Place abruptly;
'there can be no doubt of the evidence of a Deity; none whatever.'
No one showing any disposition to question the assertion, the Squire,
turning sharply upon Hogg, inquired, 'You have no doubt on the subject,
sir; have you?'
'None whatever.'
'If you have, I can prove it to you in a moment.'
'I have no doubt.'
'But perhaps you would like to hear my argument?'
'Very much.'
'I will read it to you, then,' exclaimed the Squire, taking out a sheet or
two of letter-paper, on which he had jotted down some familiar arguments
taken from Paley's _Natural Theology_.
'I have heard this argument before,' remarked Shelley in an under-tone to
Hogg.
A minute or two later, whilst the Squire was still delivering from notes
_his_ demonstration of the existence of a Deity, Shelley repeated to Hogg,
'I have heard this argument before.'
'They are Paley's arguments,' said Hogg.
'Yes; you are right, sir,' assented the Squire, as he folded his paper and
restored it to his pocket;--adding with delicious frankness and
self-complacence, 'They are Palley's arguments; I copied them out of
Palley's book this morning myself; but Palley had them originally from me;
almost everything in Palley's book he had from me.'
For a pleasant quarter-of-an-hour readers should refer to Hogg's diffuse
and piquant account of the meeting and talk at Miller's Hotel, but enough
has been taken from the humorous narrative to show how little reason Lady
Shelley had for reprehending the severity, which distinguished the
Squire's treatment of Shelley, immediately after his expulsion from
Oxford.
On Hogg, the born humourist, it is needless to say that Shelley's father
made a most agreeable impression,--none the less agreeable because his
hearty air, grotesque speech, extravagant emotionality, and egregious
self-complacence, afforded so much food and many occasions for merriment.
To the young man from the north country it was manifested his friend's
father was by 'no means a bad fellow!' In later time Hogg used to think
with cynical sadness and humorous regret how differently life might have
gone with Shelley had he only borne himself to his sire as leal and loving
sons are wont to bear themselves to their fathers. Thus thinking, it was
small comfort to the biographer to reflect how impossible it was for a man
of Shelley's brilliant genius and poetic sensibility to pursue the path
of homely filial duty. Small blame to Hogg that he refrained from
reflecting severely on the failings of the son who, instead of gossiping
sociably with his sire over the daily bottle or two of old port, was quick
to show contempt for his understanding, and 'to take umbrage at the poor
man's noise and nonsense.' Loyalty to the former friend forbade the
historian to utter all he knew and felt on this subject. It was enough for
him to intimate lightly that Shelley was no less to blame than his father
for their bitter severance. 'It is,' says Hogg, 'only fair to the poor old
governor to add that he was the kind master of old and attached servants,
and that his surviving children speak of him at this hour with affection.'
It is, however, a matter of reproach to Hogg, that, taking this view of
the elder Mr. Shelley in 1811, he never appears to have urged his friend
to behave with filial loyalty and dutifulness to a substantially good
father; that, on the contrary, he encouraged the son to make a jest of his
sire, to exhibit him to the ridicule of his acquaintance, to write of him
in terms of vulgar flippancy as 'the old boy,' 'the old fellow,' 'the old
buck,' 'old Killjoy,' 'the enemy,' and 'a practitioner of the most
consummate hypocrisy,'--all which expressions are used to the Squire's
discredit in his son's familiar letters to his especial friend, Mr. Thomas
Jefferson Hogg.
Seven days had not passed since the dinner at Miller's Hotel, before the
conflict of the father and son resulted in distinct issues. To the
paternal order that he should 'go immediately to Field Place,' Shelley
replied that for the present it was his intention to stay in Poland
Street. To the requirement that he should 'abstain from all communication
with Mr. Hogg for a considerable time,' Shelley (_ætat._ 18) responded
that he could not for a moment think of foregoing the pleasure of his
friend's society. To the requirement that he should submit to the
government of the tutor to be selected for him, Shelley replied he would
do no such thing. Rejecting his father's requirements, and assuming that
he was the person to offer the terms of reconciliation, Mr. Percy Bysshe
Shelley demanded (1) unrestrained freedom of correspondence with Hogg, and
(2) freedom to choose his own profession, as soon as Hogg should enter one
of the Four Inns of Court, or apply to any other calling. On these terms,
he would consent to visit Field Place and receive his father into favour.
On receiving his son's ultimatum, the Squire of Field Place wrote (14th
April, 1811) in great excitement to Mr. C. (a gentleman who acted for Mr.
Hogg the Elder) a letter of lively animadversion on the presumption of the
two disrespectful, undutiful, 'opinionated youngsters.' To his son's
ultimatum, the Squire of Field Place replied by stopping his pocket-money,
and bidding him keep away from his boyhood's home. There being evidence of
all this, surely there is good evidence that the future poet was not
banished from his home, and denied the society of his mother and sisters,
at the instigation of religious intolerance, _because_ he published _The
Necessity of Atheism_.
How, then, did Mr. Timothy Shelley deal with his son on his expulsion from
Oxford, when the eighteen-years-old boy was lodging in Poland Street? Did
he denounce and discard him? On the contrary, he invited him and his
friend in trouble to dinner. Did this hard-hearted, unnatural father at
once forbid the boy to come into his presence, and order him to keep away
from the home of his infantile years? On the contrary, he bade him go
quickly to his mother and sisters, and resolve to be a better boy under
the private tutor, who would soon be found to take charge of him, than he
had been under his masters at Eton and his tutors at Oxford. Did he speak
of the boy as hopelessly bad and unreasonable? By no means. Taking a
cheery view of the case, he thought the boy could be brought out of his
spiritual disease and mental disorder by a course of 'Palley.' And
believing that the course of 'Palley' would operate more quickly and
efficaciously if the reasonings of the divine were enforced by the
luminous comments of an equally sagacious and affectionate father, the
honest gentleman got down his copy of Paley's _Natural Theology_ and
worked away at it so that he might be ready to be his boy's preceptor. The
absurdity of his proceedings and purpose must be admitted. No doubt, he
went on strangely at Miller's Hotel. His notion that with Paley's help he
could recover his son from infidelity, and bring him back safe and sound
to orthodoxy, is exquisitely droll. But one looks in vain to discover
unnatural harshness and cruelty in his measures for his son's benefit.
Urging that this troubled father should not be utterly condemned for his
action to his son, and speaking of 'some excuse' that may be fairly made
for his conduct, Lady Shelley (writing from those 'authentic sources'
which afford her so little information) says:--'Still, it is to be
regretted that a milder course was not pursued towards one who was
peculiarly open to the teachings of love.' If Mr. Shelley did and said a
few unreasonable things, when his conciliatory action was answered with
unqualified rebellion, it cannot be denied that the line of action he
proposed to take to his boy at the end of March and the beginning of April
was reasonable, moderate, generous, and affectionate. What could be milder
than his requirements, that the eighteen-years-old boy should go home to
his mother and sisters, read with a tutor, and desist from intercourse
with Hogg 'for some considerable time,'--_not for ever_; not for many
years; but for _some considerable time_,--say, till he should come of age
and be master of his own actions?
Was this third requirement preposterous? Mr. Shelley had grounds for
thinking Hogg a hurtful companion for his boy. Whatever his grounds for
it, the opinion was just. Hogg's influence _had been very harmful_ to
Shelley. But for Hogg, it is possible that Shelley would never have been
an atheist. It is certain that if he had gone to atheism without Hogg's
help he would have gone to atheism at slower pace. It is certain that Hogg
was the influence which moved him to the deed that had caused his
expulsion from University College. The two youngsters had got into trouble
and dark disgrace together. What was there harsh in the demand that the
disastrous association, which had been fruitful of so much evil in less
than six months, should be broken for 'some considerable time?' Paternal
authority is an empty name, if a father in Mr. Timothy Shelley's position
may not say to an eighteen-years-old son in the future poet's position,
'Now, my boy, I will do my best for you; but, at least for some time, you
must forbear from intercourse with that young scapegrace who was your
associate in the ugly business which occasioned your expulsion from
Oxford.'
When Lady Shelley speaks of Shelley as 'one who was peculiarly open to the
teachings of love,' she is not writing true biography, but biographical
romance. From the moment, when he comes clearly before us, to the moment
when he sunk beneath the angry waves, Shelley never paid any heed to the
teachings of the love, if they admonished him to do what he could not do,
without sacrifice of his own strongest feelings. Like Byron he had no
care for the feelings of the man or woman with whom he came into conflict.
In his contention with his father it never seems to have occurred to him
that his father had feelings to be considered, rights to be respected. As
he wished to associate with the friend whom he was still set on marrying
to his sister Elizabeth (without consulting her parents on the subject),
he thought it monstrous that he should be required to cease from
associating with him for a considerable time. He would not assent to so
intolerable a demand. Hogg was everything to him,--his father nothing to
him but a dolt, a fool, an ass, a tyrant. It was preposterous that his
father should presume to offer him terms. It was for him to offer terms to
his father. Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley's terms were that his father should
make him a sufficient allowance; that he, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, should
live where he pleased and do what he pleased; and above all, that he
should be free to maintain the closest intercourse with his dear friend,
Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg. This was modest from a young gentleman (_ætat._
18), immediately after his expulsion from his Oxford College!
The ever-choleric Mr. Timothy Shelley was furious for several days, for
some few weeks, at these proposals from the young gentleman whom he had
hoped, with 'Palley's' help, to bring round to religious orthodoxy; and in
his wrath, he said and did foolish things after the wont of extremely
angry fathers. He vowed he would 'stop the supplies,' and so far as his
own pocket was concerned, he did stop them for some few weeks; during
which time the naughty boy lived comfortably enough on money lent him by
Hogg (who was in funds), money sent to him by his sisters, and money given
to him by his uncle, Captain Pilfold. On 18th April, 1811, when his father
was in the purple stage of his fury, Shelley received a present of money
from his mother, which, however, he returned from some scruple of delicacy
or dignity. 'Mr. Pilfold,' he wrote on that day from Poland Street to
Hogg, 'has written a very civil letter; my mother intercepted that--sent
to my father, and wrote to me to come, inclosing the money. I, of course,
returned it.' The 'stopping of the supplies' from the paternal purse made
them flow in all the more plentifully--from irregular sources. The exile
from his home was therefore in easy circumstances so far as money was
concerned. The pictures of the future poet languishing in penury, and
menaced with starvation, whilst his wealthy father fared sumptuously, may
be tossed aside with other biographic fictions.
Whilst he received no money from his father, the exile of 15 Poland Street
was also under order to keep away from Field Place and its inmates,--an
order that may perhaps be referred rather to the Squire's wrath, no less
than to a sincere belief that the youngster's presence there would do his
sisters any serious injury; though, doubtless, Mr. Shelley the Elder
attributed the prohibition to the more creditable motive. It is also
conceivable how the Squire explained the apparent inconsistency of his
conduct in forbidding the boy to do at the end of April, what he had
wished him to do a fortnight earlier. At the beginning of the month, when
he hoped to find his son comparatively docile and tractable after his
humiliating misadventure at Oxford, the Member for New Shoreham doubtless
imagined the scapegrace (out of respect to a paternal injunction to that
effect) would refrain from talking with his sister Elizabeth on religious
questions. His son's defiance of parental authority, in respect to his
intercourse with Hogg, may have caused his father to assume he would be no
less unwilling to respect parental orders touching his intercourse with
his eldest sister,--an assumption that would put Mr. Timothy Shelley in
the way to argue that he was only actuated by care for his daughter, in
forbidding her brother to approach her. If the Squire of Field Place put
the matter thus to his own conscience, he only contrived to deceive
himself as resentful gentlemen are wont to deceive themselves. Anyhow, he
was determined for a few weeks to keep the brother and sister apart.
The order to keep away from Field Place and from his sister, of course,
made Shelley desirous of visiting them. In no hurry to return home, whilst
his father wished him to go there quickly, Shelley had no sooner been
commanded to refrain from entering Field Place than he resolved to go
there.
On hearing that, if he tried to visit his sister at Field Place, she would
be removed from home, the young gentleman declared he would follow her,
whithersoever she should be taken. Jubilant over an assurance that 'the
estate was entailed on him,'--totally out of the power of 'the enemy'
(_i.e._ his father) he declared his intention of entering the enemy's
dominions (_i.e._ Field Place) as soon as he wished to do so. He would
walk into Field Place, whether his father liked or disliked it. And on
this point he was as good as his word: for returning to the place
something sooner than the Squire wished to see him there, he chuckled over
the inefficacy of his father's arrangements for putting restrictions on
his intercourse with his eldest sister.
The quarrel of the father and son was at its fiercest heat when, on 24th
April, 1811, they met one another in the passage of John Grove's house, in
Lincoln's Inn Fields; a scene occurring which (if Shelley reported it
truthfully to Hogg) was creditable to neither of them, but far more
discreditable to the good feeling of the son than to the good sense of the
sire. If the father did ill in returning an inquiry for his health with a
look as black as a thundercloud, the son did worse by answering the look
with a bow, whose extreme lowness rendered the formal show of obeisance a
mere act of insult.
That even in his wrath the Squire of Field Place was not wholly
unreasonable is shown by the shortness of the time that had elapsed since
he 'stopt the supplies,' when he consented to make his son an allowance of
200_l._ a-year. Only five days after the exchange of offensive greetings
in John Grove's passage, the future poet was in high hope that his father
would forthwith allow him 200_l._ a-year.
Sixteen days later (15th May, 1811), the arrangement was made on
conditions that left Shelley free to live and go wherever he liked, so
long as he kept away from York, whither Hogg had gone for twelve months,
to read law and acquire the rudiments of legal draughting in a
conveyancer's chambers. The scapegrace of Field Place had reason to exult
at the liberal terms, for which he was indebted no less to his father's
placability than to the Duke of Norfolk's influence over the Member for
New Shoreham. So soon did the cruel and parsimonious father renew the
current of 'supplies,' after stopping it in a season of fierce anger. No
more than seven weeks and two days had passed since his expulsion from
Oxford, when the future poet was enjoying a sufficient income, granted on
no ignominious conditions.
The smallness of this allowance having been often adduced in evidence of
Mr. Timothy Shelley's niggardliness to his eldest son, readers should
recall what they have already been told respecting the pecuniary
circumstances of the Squire of Field Place up to the date of his father's
death, till which event he was by no means wealthy for his social
position. Dependent on his father, who, loving money more passionately as
his fingers grew more feeble, was incessantly bickering with his
heir-apparent about the excesses of his expenditure, Mr. Timothy Shelley
(with several children on his hands) could not make his son a larger
allowance. Two hundred a-year was a far better bachelor's income seventy
years since than it is now-a-days. Thirty years later it was still
regarded as more than a sufficient allowance for a briefless barrister.
Shelley was still only eighteen years old when it was allotted to him.
Moreover at the time of the arrangement, it was not contemplated that it
would be his only means of subsistence; for it was made in anticipation
that he would be a frequent visitor at his father's house. Had he from
early boyhood lived harmoniously with his father, and been a loving and
dutiful son, Shelley in his nineteenth year could not reasonably have
looked for a larger income from his father during his grandfather's life.
Getting so handsome an allowance from his father so soon after his
expulsion from Oxford, he was treated in money-matters with liberality by
the father, who is generally conceived to have treated him with vindictive
stinginess.
These are the facts of the matter about which Lady Shelley writes in these
words:--
'Exasperated by his son's refusal to conform to the orthodox belief,
he' (_i.e._ Timothy Shelley) 'forbade him to appear at Field Place. On
the sensitive feelings of the young controversialist and poet, this
sentence of exclusion from his boyhood's home inflicted a bitter pang;
yet he was determined to bear it, for the sake of what he believed to
be right and true.'
As Lady Shelley's published book about her husband's father is still
regarded as a work of authority, readers should examine this curious
conglomerate of misrepresentations. (1) Instead of being exasperated by
his son's avowal of atheism, Mr. Timothy Shelley, though naturally shocked
and grieved by the incident, treated the eighteen-years-old youngster with
affectionate consideration and tenderness, in respect to that serious
offence. (2) Instead of excluding him from Field Place for that reason, he
told him to go home quickly, when the boy's Atheism was his only reason
for displeasure. (3) Mr. Timothy Shelley's vehement anger with the
youngster was due to his contumacious refusal to comply with the
reasonable requirement touching his intercourse with Hogg. (4) Lady
Shelley speaks of 'the young controversialist,' as though the profession
of atheism were one of the Liberal professions, and as though Mr. Timothy
Shelley should have been grateful to the boy for embracing so honourable a
vocation. (5) Instead of inflicting a bitter pang on his sensitively
affectionate feelings, the sentence of exclusion from his boyhood's home
merely caused Shelley a little irritation and a vast amount of amusement.
(6) Instead of 'determining to _bear it_, for the sake of what he believed
to be right and true,' Shelley resolved to treat the sentence of exclusion
with contempt; to go to Field Place whenever it should please him to go
there, 'to enter his father's dominions, preserving a quaker-like
carelessness of opposition ... and turning a deaf ear to any declamatory
objections,'--and he was as good as his word. The sentence of exclusion
had been delivered barely a month, when (15th May, 1811) Shelley was back
at Field Place; from which date till the middle of July, 1811, when he
went to stay with his cousins at Radnorshire, he remained in Sussex
staying alternately with his uncle Pilfold at Cuckfield, and with his
mother and sisters in the home of his boyhood, from which he is said to
have been so barbarously excluded. The sentence ceased to be operative as
soon as the exile cared to disregard it. Keeping out of his father's way,
so long as the 'old buck' was in his hottest 'rage' (to use the gentle
Shelley's nice way of talking of his father and his father's displeasure),
the exile of Poland Street went down to Field Place as soon as he thought
life in the country would be pleasanter than life in London. The sentence
of exclusion was from the first a mere _brutum fulmen_. It is absurd to
speak of this exclusion as a real exclusion. At the worst it was nothing
more than such an exclusion from his boyhood's home, as most
undergraduates undergo, when they are 'rusticated' for one or two terms.
It is needful to return to Poland Street, and the time when the exiles
lodged there. Reading divers books, besides _The English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers_, writing letters, and blotting no little paper in the
composition of essays that never found publishers, the expelled students
lived as far as they could in the manner of Oxonians. The cousins Grove
dropt in upon them in the afternoons, and were less taciturn than they had
been in Lincoln's Inn Fields on the evening of March 26th. Sometimes by
themselves, sometimes with a Grove to conduct them by 'the shortest
cuts,' the exiles perambulated the town, and amused themselves after the
manner of young gentlemen from the country, thrown upon the London
pavements seventy years since. One day they dined in the chambers of a
smart Templar (given to talk about duchesses and countesses) on 'steaks
and other Temple messes.' Another day they roamed about Kensington Gardens
to the delight of Shelley, who was charmed with the sylvan aspect of the
timbered lawns. On a third day they walked out to Mrs. Fenning's
boarding-school for young ladies on Clapham Common, where Shelley saw his
little sister Hellen, scampering about with her light locks streaming over
her shoulders. One of their favourite places for lounging was St. James's
Park, where Bysshe, after watching the soldiers at drill, inveighed
against standing armies, as hostile to the liberties of the people. At
least on one occasion Shelley was seen at the British Forum near Covent
Garden, where he harangued the assembled Radicals on the vices of all
governments:--the sentiments of the orator being so acceptable to his
auditors that, when he ceased to scream at them in his shrillest notes,
they rushed upon him to discover who he was and whence he came,--inquiries
to which the apostle of liberty (with a large stock of _aliases_ at
command) replied with a false name and address.
Because the _Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things_ was
advertised in the _Times_ of the 10th April, and 11th April, 1811, and
because Hogg says never a word about that perplexing publication (that in
all probability was never published), Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy
maintains that the poem was on sale during that month in London, and that
(without letting Hogg know aught of the matter), Shelley made daily runs
from Poland Street to Messrs. B. Crosby and Co.'s shop, to inquire how
much the sale of the poem was doing for Mr. Finerty's advantage. It may be
taken for certain that if Shelley made daily calls on the booksellers,
Hogg knew why his friend called on them. It may also be assumed that,
instead of appearing in the _Times_ because the poem was then on sale, the
advertisements appeared in the morning journals because their insertion
had been ordered (with the usual prepayment) from Oxford some three weeks
earlier, when there was, perhaps, an intention to publish the poem, that
probably never was published. But if he never crossed the bookseller's
threshold, Shelley was seen more than once at Mr. Abernethy's anatomical
lectures, and oftener in the dissecting-room of St. Bartholomew's
Hospital, where Charles Henry Grove (nearly two years Shelley's junior)
was at that time a medical student.
Hogg would have us believe that to his people in Durham Co. and Yorkshire,
Mr. Timothy Shelley (known to them by his not uniformly perspicuous
epistles) appeared a 'bore of the first magnitude, and a serious
impediment to carrying into effect any ordinary arrangement.' Facts,
however, make it certain that Mr. Hogg, the Elder of Norton, agreed with
this bore of the first magnitude in thinking their boys must be parted,
and kept from one another, at least for a considerable period. The letter,
in which Mr. Shelley spoke his mind to his afflicted fellow-sufferer,
through the afflicted fellow-sufferer's London agent, was dated 14th of
April, 1811. Four days later (18th April, 1811), Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg
was on the roof of a stage-coach, journeying from London towards North
Wales, where he was allowed to visit a few friends, before going into
pupilage under the conveyancer at York. The dates are eloquent. The joint
rebellion against parental authority, which put Shelley in conflict with
the Squire of Field Place, was fruitful of a paternal command to Mr.
Thomas Jefferson Hogg, that he should pack his traps and move out of
London without delay. Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg did as he was bid, and for
nearly twenty weeks the young men were separated. Thus rudely severed by
domestic tyranny, they cheered one another through the post.
On Hogg's withdrawal from London, Shelley had more time and a stronger
disposition for the society of the Westbrooks, of Chapel Street, Grosvenor
Square. Something has already been said of charming Harriett Westbrook, of
the influences that caused Shelley to be curious of her, of the
circumstances under which he made the young lady's acquaintance, and of
the correspondence he held with her through the post during his second
term of residence at Oxford. But the time has come for further particulars
about the family, of which the poet became a member by marriage. The
family consisted of Mr. John Westbrook (who must have been in the main a
respectable person, as so little has been discovered to his discredit by
the many persons who, at divers times, have hunted for evidence against
him), his wife Mrs. Westbrook ('a nonentity,' as Mr. Rossetti styles her,
so far as the Shelleyan drama is concerned), his daughter Harriett--the
pretty child with whom Shelley fell in love, and her elder sister
Elizabeth,[7] who has the reputation of making up the match, and the
misery between her sister and the poet. The private residence of these
people was in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square,--not far from Mr.
Westbrook's place of business in Mount Street.
Who was John Westbrook?--What was John Westbrook?--What was his place of
business? Mr. Westbrook was a successful taverner, and as he was sometimes
styled 'Jew Westbrook,' though he was Christian, it may be assumed that he
was a taverner who (after the wont of successful tavern-keepers in
London's western quarters, in the earlier decades of the present century)
lent money to those of his modish and more trustworthy customers, who
cared to borrow it of him 'on the usual terms.' The development of modern
club-life has affected in various ways the character and quality of the
taverns in the western quarters of London, and nearly extinguished the
sociable, and, in some degree, confidential relations that sometimes
existed between the keepers and frequenters of those places of
entertainment. Before clubs were numerous, modish gentlemen about town
lived very much at their favourite taverns (or coffee-houses as they were
usually styled), eating and drinking and seeing company at them, using
them in fact very much as a gentleman about town now-a-days uses his club.
Using his coffee-house in this fashion, it was natural for the gentleman
about town, after losing heavily at cards, or emptying his pockets at the
hazard-table, to look to his tavern-keeper for relief from urgent
financial embarrassment. On the other hand, the business of a money-lender
fitted in excellently well with the business of coffeehouse-keeper. Living
sociably with his regular customers, who gossiped _of_ one another as well
as _with_ one another, the tavern-keeper gathered from their gossip no
little information that saved him from losses in the money-lending
department of his business. Mr. Westbrook was a coffeehouse-keeper whose
daughters had heard him spoken of as 'Jew Westbrook.' As he was a
Christian by profession and bore a surname which countenances the
assumption, it may be assumed that he was sometimes spoken of as 'Jew
Westbrook,' not because he was of Israel, nor because he had an
Israelitish look, but because he was known to lend money: 'Jew' being a
familiar designation in the days of our grandfathers for every man of
business who lent small sums of money, for short periods, on personal
security.
Mr. Westbrook's two-fold vocation may not have been in the highest social
favour, but it was followed by many respectable men, and there is evidence
that Mr. Westbrook was one of its most creditable followers. Living with
the fear of God and good society before his eyes, he shaped his ways
discreetly. Whilst his tavern was well spoken of for its wines and
dinners, no evil stories were told of the transactions of the little
parlour in which he counted out his money. With the views and tastes of a
self-respecting and slightly ambitious tradesman, he was not wholly
without the manners and feelings of a gentleman. Mrs. Westbrook (the
nonentity) may have been a cook in early life; if so, she was a good cook,
for Mr. Westbrook was not at all likely to have married a bad one. If he
was a butler before keeping a tavern, we may be sure he was an honest
butler. Without having grown inordinately rich by lawful business, he had
acquired the measure of wealth that is styled a 'comfortable independence'
or 'moderate fortune.' It is to his credit that on rising to easy
affluence he withdrew his wife and daughters from the coffee-house, which
was necessarily at times a rather noisy place, and planted them in a
private house, where they lived as far as possible after the manner of
gentle people. It is to his credit that he was at pains and charges to
rear his daughters as far as possible to be ladies. Miss Elizabeth
Westbrook and Miss Harriett Westbrook were every whit as well educated as
Shelley's sisters, that is to say, in all matters of book-learning and
school-culture.
Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, late of University College, Oxford, had not been
a week in Poland Street without calling at the house, where he made the
acquaintance of the young lady, with whom he had been corresponding for
more than a couple of months. In walking out to Clapham Common he was
moved by a desire to see his sisters' schoolfellow no less than by a
desire to see his sisters. If she was not a weekly boarder at the Clapham
School, Harriett used to visit her father's house in Chapel Street,
Grosvenor Square, during the scholastic terms, and on these trips to town
used to bring the poet money from his sisters. He saw her also during the
Easter holidays.
Having seen something of the Westbrooks, whilst Hogg was staying in Poland
street, Shelley saw more of them when Hogg had left London. Hogg had
scarcely started for North Wales, when Miss Elizabeth Westbrook called
upon the future poet at his lodgings, bringing her sister with her. On the
evening of the 18th of April, 1811, the day of Hogg's departure, Shelley
wrote to his friend, 'Miss Westbrook has this moment called on me with her
sister. It certainly was very kind of her.' Three days later (Sunday, 21st
April, 1811), Shelley 'took the Sacrament' with the lady who had paid him
so acceptable an attention. Another three days later (24th April, 1811),
Shelley wrote to the same correspondent of the elder Miss Westbrook's
kindness, charity, and goodness. In a subsequent letter, recalling words
he had uttered to her discredit, he commended her for cleverness. Thinking
so well of the lady, with whom he had so lately taken the Sacrament, it
was natural for Shelley to think he ought to illuminate her, as well as
her sister, out of the Christian religion. Resolute to kill religious
intolerance by killing creed, and to slay creed by converting people to
his own views, he thought he should deal heavy and crushing blows to
prevalent superstition by withdrawing John Westbrook's daughters from the
faith in which they had been educated. 'The fiend, the wretch,' he wrote
of Christianity to Hogg on 28th April, 1811, 'shall fall! Harriett will do
for one of the crushers, and the eldest, Elizabeth, with some training,
will do too.'
From the date of Hogg's departure from London (18th April) to the middle
of May, when he went into Sussex, Shelley saw much of both sisters. Seeing
Harriett in Chapel Street, he saw her also at the Clapham school, which he
described as the young lady's 'prison-house.' Accompanying Elizabeth in an
excursion to the 'prison-house,' he on one occasion spent two hours,
walking about Clapham Common with the two sisters. On another occasion, he
hastened in the evening (at the elder sister's invitation) to Chapel
Street, where he found Harriett ill and suffering from headache. After
talking for some time with the elder sister, on love and other
interesting subjects, he found himself closeted with Harriett, in the
absence of Elizabeth, who left the boy and girl together: her complaisance
going so far that Shelley sate in private conference with the beauty of
the Clapham boarding-school till past midnight. Shelley, of course,
availed himself of so good an opportunity for enlarging the child's views
of love and religion. By this time, Harriett had learnt a good deal on
these matters from her future husband, and had proved so apt a pupil as to
be in disgrace at Clapham for uttering sentiments of his teaching. The
girls of the school were holding aloof from Harriett, on account of her
awfully wicked opinions: some of them even going so far as to call her 'an
abandoned wretch.' Shelley was under the impression that his little sister
Hellen was the only one of the girls brave enough to hold friendly
intercourse with Harriett, under the odium she had provoked. In his
delight at his little sister's courage, he determined to seize the
earliest opportunity of illuminating her out of the Christian faith.
'There are,' he wrote to Hogg, 'hopes of this dear little girl: she would
be a divine little scion of infidelity. I think my lesson to her must have
taken effect.' Thus he was already taking measures to convert his little
sister (still in her thirteenth year) to atheism. At Keswick (1811-12)
Shelley told Southey (_vide_ _Correspondence of Robert Southey with
Caroline Bowles_, 1881) that he endeavoured to make proselytes to atheism
in Mrs. Fenning's school; that he succeeded in making a proselyte of
Harriett; and that he married her, because she was expelled from the
school for accepting his doctrine, and doing her best to induce her
schoolfellows to accept it. 'One of the girls,' Southey wrote to Shelley
in August, 1820, 'was expelled for the zeal with which she entered into
your views, and you made her the most honourable amends in your power by
marrying her.... I had this from your own lips.' The words thus spoken by
Shelley to Southey must be read with suspicion, like all Shelley's other
statements about himself and his own affairs. There is the more need for
caution in this case, as Shelley certainly suffered from delusions at
Keswick, and made Southey other statements clearly referable to
hallucination. But his statements at Keswick, respecting his measures for
making proselytes at Clapham in the previous spring, are notably confirmed
in some particulars by what he wrote at the time to Hogg, of his measures
for illuminating Harriett Westbrook and his little sister Hellen.
Writing from Field Place to Hogg on 16th June, 1811, Shelley says, 'I
shall see you in July. I am invited to Wales, but I shall go to York; what
shall we do? How I long again for your conversation!' the invitation being
to Cwm Elan, the place of his cousin, Thomas Grove, five miles distant
from Rhayader, Radnorshire, whither he went for three or four weeks,
towards the middle of July; one at least of his motives for the trip to
Wales being that he might stay with the Westbrooks at Aberystwith. Writing
from Field Place on 21st June, 1811, to Hogg, at York, Shelley says, 'I
shall leave Field Place in a fortnight. Old Westbrook has invited me to
accompany him and his daughters to a house they have at Aberystwith, in
Wales. I shall stay about a week with him in town; then I shall come to
see you and get lodgings.' Hence, at the date of this epistle, the
writer's purpose was to leave Field Place somewhere about 5th July, and,
after staying a week under Mr. Westbrook's roof, in Chapel Street,
Grosvenor Square, to go _viâ_ York to Wales, for the visits to Cwm Elan
and Aberystwith. Changing his plans (for reasons to be mentioned in a
later page), he deferred the visit to York, and went by a less circuitous
route to Rhayader in Radnorshire, whence he wrote to Hogg somewhere about
the middle of July, 'Miss Westbrook, Harriett, has advised me to read Mrs.
Opie's _Mother and Daughter_. She has sent it hither, and has desired my
opinion with earnestness.' A few days later he wrote to Hogg, without
dating his letter, 'I shall see the Miss Westbrooks again soon; they were
very well in Condowell, when I heard last; they then proceed to
Aberystwith, where I shall meet them.' Yet some other few days later (also
in an undated epistle), he writes to Hogg, 'Your jokes on Harriett
Westbrook amuse me; it is a common error for people to fancy others in
their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am _not_ in
love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem.'
This disclaimer by Shelley of love for Harriett Westbrook, when he had for
months been in love with her, may well remind readers of the way in which
Byron disclaimed (in his private journal) all love for Miss Milbanke, when
he had for months been loving her. 'I am _not_ in love,' Shelley wrote
from Wales within six weeks of eloping with Harriett Westbrook. 'What an
odd situation and friendship is ours! without one spark of love on either
side!' Byron wrote in his journal of the lady, to whom he had already made
one offer and was still yearning to make his wife.
Including the time spent in journeying to and fro between London and Cwm
Elan, Shelley spent some three weeks and three or four days on the Welsh
trip, which he made in the hope of staying with the Westbrooks at
Aberystwith. Leaving him in Radnorshire readers should return to the
spring of the year, in order to take a view of the future poet's relations
with his sister, his mother and his Uncle Pilfold, from the date of his
expulsion from Oxford to the midsummer of 1811.
Mr. Timothy Shelley's withdrawal of the invitation he had given Hogg to
visit Field Place, and his subsequent conflict with his son, did not cause
the young men to relinquish their hope of becoming brothers-in-law. On the
contrary, the new obstacles to the achievement of their purpose only
quickened their desire for the realization of the romantic project. Whilst
Shelley yearned to call Hogg his brother, the vein of romance, that
mingled with the north-countryman's lively humour and cynicism, caused him
to be enamoured of the young lady, who was known to him only through her
poetical compositions, her letters to her brother, and his report of her
personal, mental, and moral endowments. But the brother, who loved her
passionately so long as she worshipped him without presuming to oppose him
in anything, had not been many days in conflict with his father, before he
was disappointed in his sister, discovered faults in her poetry, suspected
he had thought too highly of her intellect and courage, saw reason to
bewail her mental narrowness, and to fear she was not worthy to be the
wife of his incomparable friend. What caused this change of feeling and
opinion?
On seeing the goal to which her brother's influence and cautious teaching
would carry her, Elizabeth started back in horror. Trustful in his
superior wisdom so long as he only required her to think the legends of
Christianity were in some particulars fabulous, she fell away from her
confidence in the brother who had proclaimed himself an atheist.
Instructed that Hogg's influence had brought her brother to this extreme
point of infidelity, she was of opinion that her father was right in
determining to separate Bysshe from so hurtful a friend. Thinking that in
this determination her father was only showing proper care for his son's
welfare, she thought Bysshe's opposition to his father's will undutiful
and wicked. She was not brave enough to deny the existence of God; she had
the courage to tell her brother he was not behaving like a good son. In
the religious conflict, she was on the side of the Almighty. In the
domestic conflict, she went with her father. No wonder Bysshe was
disappointed by her servility and meanness of spirit. Hogg had barely left
London when he was informed by Shelley of his sister's deflection from the
path of religious freedom and philosophy,--that she was lost to them.
Hogg's reply to this melancholy announcement was to the effect that,
though lost for the moment, she was _not_ lost for ever,--a sentiment
which, on 26th April, 1811, moved the exile of Poland Street, to reply,
'She is _not_ lost for ever? How I hope that may be true! but I fear I can
never ascertain; I can never influence an amelioration, as she does not
any longer permit a _philosopher_ to correspond with her. She talks of
duty to her _Father_. And this is your amiable religion.'
Instead of writing to him in her old vein of enthusiastic and worshipful
admiration, Elizabeth had the presumption to remind him of his and her
duty to their parents; sending him the letters that moved him to charge
her with 'talking cant and twaddle.' Had he not cause to think with sorrow
and bitterness of the 'young female,' who, after asserting for a brief
while her 'claim to an unfettered use of reason,' had returned to the sway
of the bigots. How could he be sanguine of again reclaiming her from the
darkness of mediæval superstition to the clear sunshine of philosophy,
when to do so he must conquer her countless hateful prejudices, teach her
to despise the world's opinion; nerve her to repudiate the doctrines of
'the tremendous Gregory,' and purge her mind of the absurd notion that she
ought to respect her father's wishes. Fretted by her letters, he was
depressed by her subsequent silence. On returning to Field Place in the
middle of May, 1811, it was a relief to him to learn that, instead of
resulting from unconcern for his misery, this silence was due to an attack
of scarlet fever. At times, during her convalescence from this illness, he
could hope faintly that even yet she would show herself worthy of his
former confidence, and not unworthy to be the wife of his incomparable
Hogg. But these passages of flickering hope closed in a renewal of his
conviction, that she was far too weak a creature for the high place and
service to which he had too hastily appointed her. There were moments
when, instead of thinking her changed for the worse, he attributed her
apparent deterioration to his own recently acquired power of perceiving
mental and moral infirmities to which he had been formerly blinded by
fraternal partiality. Possibly the sister, whom he used to adore and extol
to Hogg, had been a creature of his imagination. Obviously it was his duty
to put this view of the case before Hogg, so that so excellent a man
should not be under misconceptions, arising from a friend's
imaginativeness and delusive speech, link himself for life with an
uncongenial and miserably insufficient spouse. To Shelley it was no small
trouble that his pen was powerless to make Hogg believe, either that
Elizabeth was greatly altered, or that she had been greatly misrepresented
to him. Whilst the humorous Hogg laughed secretly at the change of
Shelley's regard for his sister, the romantic Hogg declined to think
either that she had changed for the worse, or that she had been offered in
delusive colours to his fancy. To the humorous and romantic law student,
it was clear that the change in Elizabeth was wholly referable to her
brother's changefulness, and to the lightness and activity of his
imagination. Whilst Hogg refused to be enlightened, Shelley despaired of
showing him by written words, so much less potent than speech, how 'a
change, a great and important change, had taken place in' the girl who had
been offered to him in marriage. Oh, that he could speak with his dear
Hogg face to face! 'Unwilling as I am,' Shelley wrote from Horsham, on
16th June, 1811, 'conviction stares me in the face. _Oh, that you were
here!_'
This wish may have caused Hogg to entertain the notion of making a
clandestine visit to Field Place, to inspect the home of the young lady he
hoped to marry, and to get a furtive view of her personal attractions,
which were still known to him only by her brother's report. Or the wish
may have been followed by a definite proposal from Bysshe that his friend
should come to him. Anyhow, the friends now entertained a project for
seeing one another in Sussex.
The Squire having recalled his invitation to Hogg, and Shelley (in
consideration of his 200_l._ a-year allowance being under bond to hold no
personal communication with his former college-friend), Hogg could not
visit Field Place openly. It was therefore arranged that he should enter
the house secretly, and by night, and that during his clandestine sojourn
in the mansion, he should share Shelley's study and bedroom,--two rooms
never entered by Elizabeth (under the new rules for limiting her
intercourse with her brother), and never entered by any one but Shelley
himself, and the servant who attended to them. Taking his sleep by day, it
was arranged that Hogg should take his exercise by night, when he would be
able to pass through a window into the garden without fear of being
observed. Through the same window, commanding a view of the lawn, he would
be able to get a view of Elizabeth, when she walked in the garden. This
project for a secret meeting of the separated 'Inseparables' at Field
Place was dropt, probably on account of the risks the conspirators would
run in carrying it into effect. But though it was not pursued to a point,
at which the intruder could have been ejected ignominiously from the
Sussex mansion, the boyish scheme came to the Squire's
knowledge,--possibly from the lips of a treacherous servant, in whom the
future poet had confided; but more probably from a letter Shelley had
written and forgotten to post to his especial friend. The project for a
clandestine meeting at Field Place having fallen to the ground, Shelley
(albeit, bound by honour, and the terms of his 200_l._ a-year allowance to
have no personal intercourse with Hogg) bethought himself he would go to
Wales _viá_ York, and pass a few days with his peculiar friend at the
archiepiscopal city. Could he do so without risk of forfeiting his
allowance, he would go there openly _on_ the way to Wales. Should 'old
Killjoy' be too sharp for him he would outwit the 'old buck' by running
from Wales to York under the assumed name of Peyton, in order that his
movements should be less likely to come to the knowledge of the tyrant,
who eventually threatened to stop the allowance, should his son carry out
his purpose of paying Hogg a visit.
Too prudent to take openly a step that might result in a withdrawal of the
allowance, and at the same time too wary to ask for a direct liberation
from his promise to keep away from Hogg, the wily and diplomatic Shelley
bethought himself of alluding to his purpose of visiting York in a letter,
which his father might neglect to answer, or might answer without
referring to the particular project. In either of those cases silence
could be construed as consent; and to any subsequent expressions of
displeasure at his breach of a chief article of their agreement, the son
could reply by pleading that he had not gone to York without giving his
father timely notice of his wish, or without grounds for supposing he had
his father's tacit permission to go there. In thus 'trying it on' with
'the old buck,' at a peculiarly inauspicious moment, Shelley encountered a
rebuff for which he was not unprepared. Instead of overlooking the
announcement, or treating it with indifference, the Squire of Field Place
answered promptly, 'Go to York if you like; but _not_ with my money.'
Finding his father thus resolute in holding him to the terms of their
compact, Shelley deferred his trip to the north, and went straight to
Radnorshire. At the same time he determined that before many weeks had
passed he would go to York under a false name, and breaking his promise do
secretly what he dared not do openly. 'Do not think, however, but that I
shall come to see you long before you come to reside in London; but open
warfare will never do, and Mr. Peyton, which will be my _nom-de-guerre_,
will easily swallow up Mr. Shelley.' In a later letter from Radnorshire,
Shelley says of his motives for deceiving his father in this
business:--'When I come, I will not come under my own name. It were to
irritate my father needlessly; this is entirely a _philautian_ argument,
but without the stream, of which he is the fountain-head, I could not get
on. We must live; that is, we must eat, drink, and sleep, and money is the
necessary procurer of these things!' This from the young gentleman whose
averseness to underhand ways is extolled so cordially by Lady Shelley!
Whilst the future poet was thus at open war and hollow truce with his
father, the evidence is conclusive that he was treated (from the date of
his expulsion from Oxford to the date of his first marriage) with
sympathetic and conciliatory tenderness by his mother, who has been
charged by successive historians with coldness and severity towards her
perplexing and troublesome son. In the letter (of 28th April, 1811), which
declares his disgust at the intolerance of his sister, who 'talks cant and
twaddle,' Shelley speaks of his mother as a woman 'who is mild and
tolerant,' though 'narrow-minded.' On the 15th of May, when the exile has
come to terms with his father, and returned to the home from which he had
been so inhumanly excluded, Shelley writes to Hogg, 'My mother is quite
rational.' She says, 'I think prayer and thanksgiving are of no use. If a
man is a good man, philosopher, or Christian, he will do very well in
whatever future state awaits us. This I call liberality.' It was not in
the nature of the callow philosopher and atheist, who wrote so bitterly of
his sister's 'cant and twaddle,' to bear this evidence to his mother's
liberality, had she vexed him with sorrowful censure or irritated him with
bootless opposition. Between the naturally indignant father and the
unnaturally rebellious son, this anxious and sorely troubled wife and
mother seems to have played a difficult part with exemplary dutifulness
and affectionateness to the husband she honoured and the boy she loved. It
is conceivable, that once and again the Squire of Field Place may have had
grounds for charging her with defective loyalty during the cruel
contention, but the unruly boy certainly had no right to complain of the
imperfect devotion of the mother who, in her desire to hold his affection
and confidence, assured him she was tenderly interested in his friend at
York.
Yet biographers have insisted that Shelley suffered in heart and fortune
from the intolerance and frigid hardness of his mother; the intolerant
mother who spoke to him on their differences of religious opinion with so
much leniency and forbearance and large-hearted sympathy that he was
constrained to extol her liberality: the unsympathetic mother who won so
large a measure of his confidence, that he submitted some of Hogg's
letters to her perusal, and (probably because he had cautiously sounded
her on the subject) was assured she would not use her influence to prevent
the marriage of his sister to his friend.
To complete the view of the future poet's relations with the principal
members of his familiar circle, one must glance at the way in which he was
treated by his Uncle Pilfold, and the characteristic way in which he
repaid the cheery sailor for his good services. Instead of eyeing him
askance, regarding him coldly, holding aloof from him, denouncing him as
an incorrigible young reprobate, this kindly uncle grasped his nephew by
the hand, as though it were a greater honour to be expelled from Oxford
than to win 'the Newdigate.' Welcoming the boy to his house, the old
sailor opened at the same moment his heart and his purse to the youngster
in disgrace. When Mr. Timothy Shelley's wrath at his boy's rebellion had
in ten days or a fortnight scolded off its fiercest heat, Uncle Pilfold
became a mediator between the father and son, inducing the former to let
the boy have intercourse with his sister, and at the same time making the
latter see that he must concede something to his father who, though he had
gone a deuced deal too far in stopping the supplies, was not without
grounds for displeasure. 'I am now with my uncle,' the future poet wrote
from Cuckfield to Hogg, on Sunday, 19th May, 1811; 'he is a very hearty
fellow, and has behaved very nobly to me, in return for which I
illuminated him. A physician, named Dr. J----, dined with us last night,
who is a red-hot saint; the Captain attacked him, warm from _The
Necessity_, and the Doctor went away very much shocked.' Grateful for his
uncle's kindness, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley rewarded him with
characteristic munificence,--by illuminating him out of Christianity.
What reason had Shelley to complain of the way in which he was treated by
his kindred in the season of his heavy disgrace? Expelled from Oxford for
the gravest offence of which an undergraduate could be guilty, he was
enjoined by his father to go home before being placed under a sufficient
tutor. Having refused to obey his father's orders, he was angrily told to
keep away from the home he had declined to visit, when ordered to do so.
Consenting for a few weeks to this barbarous exclusion from his boyhood's
home,--an exclusion which he knew he could terminate at any moment by
simply walking into the house, and which he did terminate by that simple
process,--the exile passed a few weeks very agreeably in London. During
this so-called exclusion and banishment he was in affectionate
communication with his mother, his sisters, his Uncle Pilfold, and his
cousins Grove. On returning to his 'boyhood's home,' within a month or
five weeks of the sentence of exclusion, he was received with a measure of
affectionate indulgence and consideration by his mother, that may well
have surprised him. He was also treated affectionately by his sister
Elizabeth, though she kept away from his study, and instead of assenting
to his sceptical opinions, met them with much exasperating 'cant and
twaddle,' and made him despair of illuminating her into a fit mate for his
incomparable Hogg. At the same time he was treated with substantial
kindness by his father (who, in return for a liberal allowance, only
required him to desist for awhile from personal intercourse with Hogg),
and with a flattering show of sympathetic concern by his father's
patron,--the Duke of Norfolk. Unless Shelley's cousin, Charles Henry
Grove, is in error as to the year, his Grace of Norfolk and the Squire of
Field Place talked (in the spring of 1811) over a plan for bringing the
youngster into Parliament, on the earliest opportunity, as Member for
Horsham. It was thus that the future poet was persecuted by his kindred,
and thus that he endured persecution at their hands in the months ensuing
immediately on his expulsion. There must be an end of the wild nonsense
about the poet's sufferings for truth and conscience at this stage of his
career. Perhaps no youngster was ever treated more tenderly by his nearest
kindred, so soon after earning signal disgrace by extravagant
misbehaviour.
Relinquishing his design to go to York before going to Radnorshire, when
he saw the breach of promise and act of disobedience would be fruitful of
pecuniary inconvenience, Shelley went (as we have seen) direct to Cwm
Elan, Rhayader, in the middle of July, 1811, with the intention of staying
there till the Westbrooks should have arrived at Aberystwith, when it was
his purpose to run over to them, and enjoy the society of the young lady,
with whom he was not at all in love. Had the Westbrooks' movements
accorded with Mr. Bysshe Shelley's anticipations and wishes, there is
reason to think he would have eloped with the sixteen-years-old school
girl from Aberystwith, instead of eloping with her from London. Possibly
on leaving town he had not fully made up his mind to do so. Possibly he
took coach for Radnorshire, with no more definite programme of proceedings
than that in the course of three weeks he should be with the Westbrooks at
Aberystwith; after which event he would, somehow or other, be happy with
Harriett for ever. It is, however, sufficiently manifest from the records,
that he accepted his cousin's invitation to Cwm Elan, because it afforded
him a pretext for going to Wales, which would cover the real purpose of
the journey from his father, and because the neighbourhood of Rhayader
would be a convenient resting-place, whence he could slip away to
Aberystwith, some thirty miles distant. Moreover, it is clear in the
superlative degree that Shelley and Harriett had both set their hearts on
meeting one another at Aberystwith; and that it was an occasion of the
sharpest disappointment to both of them, when, after proceeding towards
Aberystwith, as far as the place, called Condowell in one of Shelley's
letters, Mr. Westbrook suddenly faced about, and returned to London, with
the intention of sending his younger daughter again to boarding-school,
when she imagined herself to have 'left school for good.'
What caused this sudden relinquishment of Mr. Westbrook's plans for his
summer holidays is matter for conjecture. But from matters of indisputable
record, it may be safely inferred that the worthy taverner returned to
town because he thought it better Mr. Bysshe Shelley and his younger
daughter should not come together at Aberystwith; and that he was bent on
sending her again to school, because he thought a regular and professional
schoolmistress better qualified than Miss Elizabeth Westbrook to take good
care of the giddy girl. Possibly Mr. Westbrook had peeped into one of the
several letters which Shelley sent the sisters from Rhayader, and learnt
from it enough to convince him he had better return abruptly with his
daughters to London. Anyhow he decided to do so, alike to Shelley's
annoyance and Miss Harriett's chagrin.
Like Byron, Shelley never brooked aught that thwarted his will, or in any
way threatened to withhold from him a pleasure, on which he had set his
heart. On being told she must go back to London and to school, instead of
onwards to Aberystwith, Miss Harriett Westbrook wrote to Shelley for
advice. On receiving Harriett's shocking intelligence, Shelley overflowed
with indignation at the monstrous cruelty of the father, who could think
of sending his sixteen-years-old daughter to school for another half-year.
Should she, Harriett asked in her letter, submit to her father's tyranny
or resist it? Shelley, of course, answered, 'Resist it.' At the same time
he wrote to Mr. Westbrook a letter which, though it was intended to
mollify the stern and inhuman parent, only confirmed him in his hideous
and revolting purpose. Powerless to subdue by tears and tragic threats the
father, who only fumed and sneered at Percy's mollifying epistle, Harriett
wrote to Shelley that she threw herself on his protection, and would fly
with him anywhere. Shelley was delighted. For weeks and months he had been
nursing the hope that his darling Harriett would rise so far superior to
the dwarfing prejudices, which disposed ordinary women to prefer wedlock
to Free Love, as to commit herself to his custody without regard to the
laws of Priests and the requirements of tyrannic custom. For weeks and
months he had been educating her to see in Love a sufficient sanction of
the union requisite for fulfilment of its desire. And here was the fruit
of his instruction. Snapping the ties of parental tyranny and filial
thraldom, Harriett had thrown herself on him for protection, and would fly
with him anywhere,--to be happy with him for ever. Had he not reason, in
the first and liveliest exultations of his triumph, to write to Hogg,
'Gratitude and admiration, all demand, that I should love her for _ever_?'
How could he be sufficiently grateful to the girl who had thus surrendered
herself to his honour, in her absolute confidence in his goodness? How
could he sufficiently admire the girl, whose magnanimity had enabled her
to say to him, 'Do your will with me; take me on your own terms, so long
as you are good enough to make me yours?' If Shelley went to Wales,
without a project for elopement with Harriett Westbrook, he certainly
returned from Radnorshire to London, with the intention of taking her from
her father at the earliest opportunity.
With the judicial fairness and critical moderation, that are not the only
qualities to distinguish him from the poet's other worshipful biographers,
Mr. Rossetti hesitates in inferring from Shelley's words ('she ... threw
herself upon my protection') that, whilst writing to Shelley at Cwm Elan,
Harriett Westbrook was ready to be his mistress. Reminding his readers
that, instead of being the girl's own words, the phrase is at the utmost
nothing more than Shelley's 'summing up' of her expressions,--Shelley's
way of packing into half-a-dozen words the most momentous of her
passionate communications,--Mr. Rossetti also bids his readers qualify
their censure of her indelicacy with considerations, arising from the
reflection that 'the school-girl of sixteen, hardly more than a child,'
had been 'lately philosophised out of the ordinary standard of propriety'
by Shelley himself.
The biographer who writes with so much conscientious circumspection cannot
be charged with straining words to Harriett's disadvantage. Still I am
disposed to think he goes something too far. More doubtful even than Mr.
Rossetti, I hesitate to accept or reject his inference from the words
which, instead of being the school-girl's own words, are nothing more than
Shelley's summary of them. The inexact Shelley's mere summary of the
written words is no evidence to be accepted with unqualified confidence in
its accuracy. Moreover, could it be shown that the summary was a fair
representation of the purport of her written words, it would still be
conceivable that in her haste and excitement the angry girl put them on
paper without seeing their full force and realizing to what they committed
her. Yet, further, it may be urged in palliation of the child's want of
maidenly decorum that, if she was ready for flight without marriage at the
moment of penning the letter, she changed her mind on coming out of her
anger against her father, and subsiding to a temper that permitted her to
reflect with comparative calmness on all that had passed between herself
and her lover. Instead of finding her ready to fly with him on any terms,
when he saw her in London after his return from Wales, Shelley found her
in a state of indecision. 'My unfortunate friend, Harriett,' he wrote from
London to Hogg at York, on 15th August, 1811, 'is yet undecided, not with
respect to me, but herself.'
But though I am far from confident that Harriett ever threw herself on
Shelley's protection in the sense imagined by Mr. Rossetti, or even gave
Shelley sufficient grounds for saying she had done so, I am in no degree
disposed to suspect Shelley of wilfully misrepresenting the nature of her
confidence in, and appeal to, him. On the contrary, I have no doubt that
Shelley meant to make his friend at York understand the girl was ready to
become his mistress, and that he felt himself justified by the words of
her letter in crediting her with this readiness. I have no doubt that the
future poet wrote to Hogg in perfect good faith, and for the mere purpose
of letting his correspondent see the exact state of the case. The
evidences leave no room for doubt that, after spending weeks and months in
training and educating his sister's schoolmate to take a philosophic view
of marriage, he accepted with equal sincerity and delight the expressions
of her tempestuous letter as a declaration that she was willing to be his
mistress, or (in the language of the Free Lovers) to become his wife
without the intervention of the priest and the sanction of legal
matrimony. Under this impression he wrote to Hogg from Rhayader with
jubilant boyishness,--'We shall have 200_l._ a-year; when we find it run
short, we must live, I suppose, upon love!... We shall see you at York....
I can get lodgings at York, I suppose.' Under the same exhilarating
impression he journeyed from Wales to London, thinking how he and Harriett
would be journeying northwards a week or ten days later, how happy they
would be for ever in lodgings at York, and how furious his tyrannical
father would be on hearing he had carried Harriett away from her
tyrannical father and taken her to the city he was forbidden to enter,--to
the dear, delightful, incomparable Hogg, with whom he was forbidden to
have personal intercourse. But on arriving in town he found Harriett in no
humour for immediate elopement. She was undecided, not in respect to her
choice of a lover, but in respect to the time _at_ which, and the terms on
which, she should commit herself to his custody.
It is, therefore, by no means so manifest to me as it is to Mr. Rossetti,
that had he cared to take advantage of her simplicity and romantic
trustfulness, Shelley could easily have seduced his sister's schoolfellow,
or, rather (I beg pardon of the Free Lovers), could have made her his wife
without marrying her.
'If the calculating habit is still strong upon us,' says Mr. Rossetti,
'we may compute what percentage of faultlessly Christian young heirs
of opulent baronets would have acted like the atheist Shelley, and
married a retired hotel-keeper's daughter offering herself as a
mistress. To deny that the act was foolish would be absurd under any
circumstances, and doubly so when we reflect upon the ultimate issue
of it to Shelley and Harriett themselves; let us then distinctly
recognize that it was foolish, and no less distinctly that it was
noble.'
With all his desire to deal fairly with Harriett Westbrook's reputation,
Mr. Rossetti is less than fair to her in arguing that up to the moment of
her Scotch wedding she was ready to become Shelley's mistress, because she
threw herself on his protection (by letter) three weeks earlier. Ladies
have a proverbial right to change their minds; and if we must concede that
Harriett had a mind to be Shelley's mistress when he was at Rhayader, it
cannot be questioned she had changed her mind on that particular matter
before he came to her again in London. Living in Chapel Street, Grosvenor
Square, under the eye of an elder sister, who, possessing her confidence,
knew how to keep her well in hand, Harriett was not so completely at
Shelley's mercy as Mr. Rossetti would have us think. It is inconceivable
that Shelley would have been allowed to possess himself of the school-girl
on terms which wanted the elder sister's approval; and it is not to be
imagined that Miss Elizabeth Westbrook, favouring Shelley's suit, partly
from romantic affectionateness, and partly from social ambition, would
have consented to an arrangement for making her sister the mere kept
mistress of a gentlemanly scapegrace, who might one day become a baronet.
The elder Miss Westbrook was no person to allow herself to be treated as a
nonentity, or aught less than a very considerable personage, in an affair
touching her dignity and self-respect so delicately and deeply. Under
these circumstances it is in the highest degree improbable that Miss
Westbrook, who facilitated the elopement which promised to make her
younger sister eventually a lady of title and estate, would have permitted
herself to be made the sister of such a person as Harriett would have
become, on passing to Shelley's keeping without marriage.
There are other reasons for questioning whether Shelley should be credited
with nobility of conduct, in forbearing to do what he would not have been
permitted to do. Had he in May or June made Harriett his mistress
_without_ marrying her, he would only have acted in accordance with his
notions of morality. He did no more at the end of August or the beginning
of September when he made her his wife _by_ marriage. If he should be
credited with distinctly noble conduct merely for taking what he thought
the right course in September, he would have been no less distinctly noble
three months earlier for merely taking what he thought the right and moral
course in May and June. Had the future poet, however, made the girl his
mistress in either of those last-named months, Mr. Rossetti would scarcely
have ventured to credit him with distinct nobility of action in doing so,
merely because he conceived himself under a moral obligation to do so. It
should be observed that Shelley's sentiments respecting marriage were
during this period of his career greatly modified by Hogg's arguments
against them; and that, in commending the future poet's conduct in making
Harriett Westbrook a wife instead of a mistress, Mr. Rossetti applauds him
for conduct largely, if not altogether referable to Hogg's influence, and
may, therefore, be said to give Shelley the praise that should rather be
given to his friend.
The evidence of Hogg's beneficial, though only transient, influence on his
friend in this respect is conclusive. The shrewd and humorous
north-countryman, who nursed the hope of marrying his friend's sister
Elizabeth, was, at this stage of his story, a robust and resolute defender
of matrimony and the laws for its protection; and in the many letters
that passed between him and Shelley in the spring and summer of 1811, he
seized every opportunity for combating and correcting what he deemed his
friend's perverse and erroneous views on the usages and ethics of
marriage. It is to Hogg's credit (at least in the opinion of those who
regard marriage with reverential jealousy) that on seeing his friend more
and more strongly set on some kind of domestic association with Harriett
Westbrook, he made the most strenuous efforts to induce him to marry the
girl in a legal way, instead of uniting himself to her in a way that
would, at least in law and social sentiment, render her only his mistress.
Besides being strenuous, these efforts were successful. Having regard to
the miserable consequences of the match, some readers may, perhaps, regret
that Hogg was so busy and successful. Perhaps it would have been better
for both parties to the disastrous union, had Hogg left ill alone. Had the
north-countryman been less energetic, it is conceivable that Mr.
Westbrook's pretty daughter would have escaped the misery of being
Shelley's wife, without falling to the shame of being his mistress. But
Hogg's action was none the less meritorious, because it may have been
hurtful to the friend he wished to serve.
Shelley's stay in Radnorshire did not end before he admitted the force of
his friend's demonstrations of the convenience and beneficence of lawful
marriage. In the very letter that declared his puerile delight in
Harriett's appeal to him for protection from her inhuman father, he says,
'We shall see you at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism,
by which I am now almost convinced.' Some ten days later (15th August,
1811), when he had passed through London, made a flying visit to Horsham
and Cuckfield, and returned to town for stolen interviews with Harriett,
he wrote to his incomparable Hogg at York, stating most precisely that he
had relinquished his purpose of making Harriett his mistress, and had
determined to make her his wife, in pure submission to Hogg's counsel, and
to the force of the arguments with which that counsel was enforced. 'I am
become,' Shelley wrote, 'a perfect convert to matrimony, not from
temporising, but from _your_ arguments.... The one argument, which you
have urged so often with so much energy; the sacrifice made by the woman,
so disproportioned to any which the man can give,--this alone may
exculpate me, were it a fault, from an inquiring submission to your
superior intellect.' Shelley's words respecting himself and his own
affairs must of course be always used with caution and lively suspicion.
But the words written by him _to_ Hogg himself on 15th August, 1811, are
good evidence that, on finding Shelley set on taking Harriett Westbrook to
himself, either as a mistress or as his wife, and strongly disposed to
take her in the former capacity, Hogg used all his power to make him see
that he was bound to marry her.
It does not speak much for Shelley's innate chivalry and generous
tenderness for womankind, of which so much extravagant stuff has been
written by his idolaters, that he could not discover for himself the most
obvious considerations why no man of honour should place a woman of
sensibility and refinement in the ignominious position of a kept mistress;
that he could not without Hogg's assistance see, how much the woman
sacrifices of her social dignity and legal rights, who humours masculine
insolence and selfishness, by sinking to a position, which, giving her all
the trials and responsibilities, withholds from her all the higher
privileges of a wife. On the other hand, it is something to the credit of
the youngster, who could not discover these facts for himself, that he
could see them when they were pointed out to him, and was withheld by the
timely expostulations of sober common-sense from the sin of acting on his
'hasty decision.'
In the letter, from which the last extract is taken, Shelley says, 'I am
now returned to London; direct to me as usual at Graham's. My father is
here; wondering, possibly, at my London business. He will be more
surprised soon, possibly.' At the same moment, on the same sheet of paper,
he chuckles over the surprise his speedy elopement with Harriett Westbrook
will occasion his father, and pretends to think it unlikely he shall soon
be called upon to make a choice between Marriage and Free Love. It was
like Shelley, to contradict himself in this fashion almost in the same
breath.
The particulars of Shelley's movements between the 15th of August and the
end of the month are unknown, with the exception of a few details, which,
in the absence of positive testimony, the imagination would furnish as
matters of course. For the expenses of the elopement, Shelley obtained
25_l._ from Tom Medwin's father (the Horsham attorney), who lent him the
money without knowing or suspecting the purpose for which it was needed; a
slender sum, that seems to have been reduced considerably before the
future poet paid the fares for two inside places in the mail from London
to Edinburgh. There were secret interviews between the lovers; interviews
of which Mr. Westbrook probably knew nothing, and Miss Eliza Westbrook was
doubtless cognizant, even when she was not present at them. Charles Henry
Grove (younger than Shelley by something less than two years) was in his
cousin's confidence during these days of pleasant excitement and romantic
conspiracy, and accompanied the future poet on some of his visits to
Harriett. There were understandings and misunderstandings, decisions and
changes of purpose, arrangements and re-arrangements. Then came the hour
of early morning when Harriett Westbrook, in all the brightness of her
still childish beauty--the lovely girl who, a few years later, escaped
from unendurable shame and wretchedness by self-murder--stept from her
father's house, and entered the hackney-coach, that conveyed her, together
with the two cousins (Shelley and Charles Henry Grove), to the 'Green
Dragon,' in Gracechurch Street, where they remained all day, till the
northern mail was packed and ready to start. Another minute, and the two
childish adventurers were at the outset of their long journey for
Edinburgh, _viâ_ York, whilst the guard's horn sounded cheerily, and
Charley Grove (left standing on the pavement) waved a last farewell to the
departing vehicle.
It is a question whether the elopement was made at the end of August or in
the beginning of September. I have little hesitation in saying Harriett
left her father's house in September; none in saying she was married to
Shelley in Edinburgh in the first week of that month. The girl may have
crossed her father's threshold on the morning of Saturday 31st August, but
it is more probable she did so on Sunday the 1st, or Monday the 2nd of
September. On passing through York at midnight, after spending an entire
night and the following day (allowance made for the usual stoppages) in
the coach, Shelley, with care for the replenishment of his almost empty
purse, wrote a hasty and careless note to Hogg, begging for the loan of
10_l._, and saying that he and Harriett would 'have 75_l._ on Sunday.'
'On Sunday,' of course, meant 'next Sunday.' After answering the brief
note, as soon as it was brought to him on the following morning by a
messenger from the Inn, Hogg packed his portmanteau, and in the afternoon
of the same day 'in the first week of September,' was on the road to
Edinburgh, where he arrived some two or three days before the Sunday, when
Shelley hoped to get the 75_l._ Dating from Field Place on Sunday, 8th
September, 1811, immediately on hearing his son and Hogg were together in
the Scotch capital, Mr. Timothy Shelley wrote from Field Place on 8th
September, 1811, to Mr. John Hogg, of Norton: announcing that Shelley had
'withdrawn himself from' the writer's 'protection, and set off for
Scotland with a young female.'
Hogg is certain that he answered Shelley's note immediately on getting it,
that he started for Edinburgh in the afternoon of the same day, and that
he made the journey to Edinburgh in the first week of September. Mr.
Timothy Shelley's letter makes it certain the young men were together in
Edinburgh in that week. Had the 'on Sunday' of Shelley's note pointed to
Sunday, 1st September; had he written for the 10_l._ for his expenses
_till_ that Sunday, Hogg's run to the Scotch capital would have been made
in the last week of August.
CHAPTER XV.
MOTIVE AND INFLUENCES.
The fatal Marriage--Was Shelley trapt into it?--Mr. Garnett's
Assurances--The Fiction about Claire--Lady Shelley's Use of Hogg's
Evidences--The Prenuptial Intercourse--Was it slight?--Shelley's
Opportunities for knowing all about Harriett--His Use and Abuse of
those Opportunities--Mr. Westbrook's Action towards Shelley--His
endeavour to preserve Harriett from Shelley--Eliza Westbrook's part in
making up the Match--The Tool's Reward--The Etonian Free Lover--The
Social Condition of the Westbrooks and Godwins--Harriett Westbrook's
Beauty--Her Education--Her Knowledge of French--Her quick Progress in
Latin--What Wonder that Shelley fell in love with her?
Thus it was that Shelley carried off Mr. Westbrook's sixteen-years-old
child, and made her his wife, instead of acting on 'the hasty decision,'
from which Hogg dissuaded him. Did he take this momentous step
inconsiderately? On a slight acquaintance with the young lady? Under
circumstances that denied him fair opportunities for observing the temper
and studying the character of the girl whose singular beauty had
fascinated him? Was he lured, drawn, inveigled, into the marriage by
influences, stronger than those that are usually employed by a girl's
nearest relatives for compassing what they think a good match for her? The
enthusiasts, who draw their inspiration on Shelleyan questions from Field
Place, do not hesitate to answer all these questions in the affirmative.
Mr. Garnett (_vide_ his _Shelley in Pall Mall_) assures us that whenever
certain documents, hitherto withheld from the world, shall be made public,
_i.e._ when Field Place shall issue its authoritative biography for the
ending of all controversies on Shelleyan matters, 'it will for the first
time be clearly understood how slight was the acquaintance of Shelley with
Harriet, previous to their marriage; what advantage was taken of his
chivalry of sentiment, and her compliant disposition, and the inexperience
of both; and how little entitled or disposed she felt herself to complain
of his behaviour.' It is certain that before submitting to what she could
not prevent, Harriett complained with passionate vehemence of her
husband's behaviour to her. Let that matter, however, pass for the
present. What are the grounds for saying that unfair advantage was taken
of Shelley's inexperience, and that Shelley, by reason of the slightness
of his acquaintance with her, when he stole her from her father, knew much
less of Harriett than young men usually know of girls they are on the
point of marrying?
Strange things may of course be looked for from the people, who have
recently required the world to believe that, instead of taking Claire from
London to Byron at Geneva, Shelley and Mary Godwin were taken (like two
little children) _by_ Claire to Switzerland,--and so taken there _by_ her,
although they (as the Field Place story goes) disliked her exceedingly,
even to the point of disgustful aversion. But even the authorities of
Field Place will scarcely declare the documents published in Hogg's _Life_
to be spurious documents. They will scarcely declare that Hogg (the writer
with a peculiar style from which he could not liberate himself for an
instant) forged the multitude of letters, published in his book as letters
written to him by Shelley,--the epistles, some of which Lady Shelley
herself used for evidential purposes in writing her _Shelley
Memorials_,--the epistles which are so Shelleyan in thought and diction,
feeling and language, form and style, that no other human being but
Shelley could have written them. Field Place has dared to do strange
things, but its daring will stop short of this extravagance. To produce
documents, drawn by Shelley's hand or at his dictation, in contradiction
of these letters, would not be to discredit the letters, but only to
produce fresh illustration of one of Shelley's most perplexing
infirmities,--fresh evidence that he often made statements contrary to the
truth.
From documentary evidences of unimpeachable genuineness and irresistible
cogency, it is certain that Shelley made Harriett Westbrook's acquaintance
in January, 1811, eight lunar months before his elopement with her; that
he corresponded with her between the day on which he made her acquaintance
and the date of his expulsion from Oxford; that in the spring of 1811 he
saw her repeatedly at her home and elsewhere,--receiving her at least on
one occasion at his lodgings in Poland Street, attending her from her
father's house to her school on Clapham Common, walking about with her on
Clapham Common, and sitting up with her (at least on one occasion) till
past midnight, at Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, in the absence of a
third person; that he corresponded with her from March to September; that
the wooing, which began at Oxford by letter, if not on the occasion of
their first meeting, was strenuously prosecuted by Shelley to the day of
the elopement; that he had opportunities for seeing and influencing her,
which enabled him to illuminate her out of Christianity and (to use Mr.
Rossetti's expression) to 'philosophise her out of the ordinary standard
of propriety'; that he had opportunities, and used them, for making her
think lightly of the matrimonial rite; that he had opportunities, and used
them, for encouraging her in rebellion against her own father; that
instead of being kept in the dark as to the chief, and indeed the only
important defect of her temper--a constitutional proneness to
discontent--he was peculiarly interested in her manifestations of this
significant quality, and sympathized cordially with her groundless
grievances and imaginary sorrows. Though he was uncertain as to the day on
which Shelley determined to win Harriett Westbrook's affections, Hogg had
no doubt his friend had begun to woo the girl before he left Oxford.
'Shelley's epistles show the progress of his courtship,' he says, 'and
that his marriage was not quite so hasty an affair as it is commonly
represented to have been. The wooing continued for half-a-year at least,
and this is a long time in the life,--in the life of love, of such young
persons.' The interval, between Shelley's withdrawal from Oxford and his
marriage at Edinburgh, wanted at least three weeks of an entire half-year.
Yet, Field Place requires us to believe slightness was a principal
characteristic of the prenuptial intercourse of these young people!
How about the charge of inveiglement? No one has ever suggested that Mr.
Westbrook was an accomplice in measures for luring the heir of the heir to
a wealthy Sussex baronetcy into wedlock with his younger daughter. On the
contrary there were reasons why he should regard any such project with
disfavour. If he was not a gentleman, Mr. Westbrook was a man of the
world, who came in contact with gentlemen, and knew something of the ways
of the higher world and fashionable society, from the gossip of the
gentlemen who used his public-house. The west-end taverner, who had risen
to comfortable circumstances by attention to his affairs, was not the man
to be keenly desirous of having for his son-in-law the scatterbrain
youngster who only the other day was expelled from Oxford. He had seen
too many youngsters of quality drop to grief and ruin, not to know that a
young gentleman of Shelley's parentage and expectations and story might
prove a very poor match for a prosperous tradesman's daughter. He knew the
value of his money too well, not to be aware that his pretty daughter, to
whom he could make a good allowance during his life and perhaps leave ten
thousand pounds at his death, might do much better for herself than marry
the harum-scarum son of the Member for New Shoreham. Mr. Westbrook did not
need to be told that, so married, his pretty daughter and her children
might drain his pocket to his last hour. Like a prudent man, he did
nothing to hurry his daughter into the unfortunate marriage.
When Shelley came to Chapel Street with his sister's present and letter of
introduction in his hand, he was received with courtesy at the taverner's
private house. Mr. Westbrook received the youngster with civility in the
ensuing spring: a civility that would have seemed less 'strange' to
Shelley (_vide_ Letter to Hogg, of 28th April, 1811), had he not been
conscious how little he deserved it. Though he writes disdainfully of the
tradesman, whom he calls alternately a coffeehouse-keeper and
ex-coffeehouse-keeper, and charges him with pitiful stinginess to his
daughter, whose disobedience raised her so considerably in the scale of
social dignity, Hogg forbears to accuse Mr. Westbrook of imposing his
younger daughter on the youth of quality, who made her so poor a husband.
According to Hogg, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook made up the match, her father
being guilty of nothing worse than prudent and hypocritical anger at the
event on which he secretly congratulated himself. Perhaps Mr. Westbrook,
after the elopement, made the most of Harriett's unfilial disobedience,
and feigned more displeasure than he felt at her misbehaviour, in order to
have and preserve a good pretext for tightening the string of his purse.
But no one can suspect him of busying himself to bring about the match.
Compelling Harriett to return to her prison on Clapham Common after the
Easter holidays, he did nothing to facilitate their intercourse, before
Shelley, in the middle of May, went from town to Sussex. At the beginning
of August, on finding how matters had been going on with the lovers,
without his consent or suspicion, Mr. Westbrook determined to send
Harriett again to school, returned with his wife and daughters to Chapel
Street, and on Shelley's reappearance in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor
Square, shut his door against him.
Miss Elizabeth Westbrook no doubt had a hand in making up the match. But
what of that? To make matches is the privilege and convenient diversion of
mature woman-kind, and a successful taverner's daughter is not to be
denied the rights and privileges of her sex, because her father is a
licensed victualler. In doing what she did to oblige Shelley in the
matter, she was moved partly by affection for her sister, and partly by a
desire to become, sooner or later, the sister-in-law of a wealthy baronet,
the sister of a lady of quality. Actuated by ambition and sisterly
affection, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook obeyed precisely the same motives that
determine any gentlewoman of high condition to make the heir of a peerage,
or any other highly eligible _parti_, duly sensible of her eldest
daughter's manifold graces and virtues. Standing to Harriett in the
relation of a mother rather than a sister, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook merely
did for her younger sister's advantage and her own gratification, what a
mother bent on marrying her daughter advantageously is permitted to do for
the achievement of her purpose. Shelley besought Miss Westbrook for
opportunities of seeing Harriett, as he was disposed to love her, and Miss
Westbrook gave him what he wanted.
If this is to lure and inveigle a young man into wedlock, the elder Miss
Westbrook was guilty of that offence. But I cannot think her action should
be described by such offensive words. She did not seek Shelley; it was he
who in a very remarkable way sought her and her people out. He was not the
mild and compliant youth to be led into wedlock against his will, because
a rather mature maiden told him it would be good for him. Miss Elizabeth
Westbrook of all women was the least qualified to exercise such control
over him. She was not beautiful, and at the outset of their acquaintance
she was by no means acceptable to Shelley. He thought her affected, and
suspected her of unamiability. He felt for her a dislike that almost
amounted to repulsion, and would soon have quickened into aversion, had
she irritated him by opposing his scheme. Till he had made her clearly
understand he did not visit Chapel Street to talk of love with her, but to
talk of it with her sister, and she had consented to his design, Shelley
saw nothing to approve and much to disapprove in the elder Miss Westbrook.
On changing his mind about her, he found the lady amiable merely because
she acquiesced in his scheme. When a person consents to be the tool of
another, the tool usually has a reward. Sometimes in addition to the
reward agreed upon by both parties, the tool has in view an end unimagined
by the person using the tool. Sometimes also it happens that, turning the
tables, the tool becomes the tyrant of its former employer. It was so in
the present instance. After Shelley's marriage, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook
insisted on the reward of former services, and for a while exacted heavier
payment for them than Shelley was willing to pay. Amiable in his eyes,
whilst she was only his tool, Miss Westbrook soon grew hateful to him when
she had become his tyrant.