Why should we assume, why was it ever assumed, that Shelley was inveigled

and drawn into the association, which was so completely an affair of his

own desire and contrivance? The notion that he _was made_ to do the thing

which he did of his own accord, and in spite of numerous obstacles,

probably originated from regard for the disparity of the Westbrooks and

Shelleys in respect to social station. The disparity, no doubt, was

considerable. Though he was not of aristocratic ancestry as biographers

have so stubbornly declared, the young man who, besides being the son of a

Member of Parliament, stood in the direct line of succession to a good

estate and a hereditary dignity, married greatly beneath him when he took

a licensed victualler's daughter for his wife; and in the majority of the

cases, where a young man marries a girl so greatly his inferior in social

quality, the marriage is found on inquiry to have been brought about by

the artifice and influence of a third person. Shelley's marriage, however,

was one of those unequal marriages that are distinctly referable to other

causes. Having in his boyhood a sentimental repugnance to lawful

matrimony, that had steadily grown in power from the time when he wrote

_Zastrozzi_, the Oxonian Shelley had no sooner been discarded by Harriett

Grove, than he desired a conjugal partner, whom he could attach to himself

by a tie less enduring than the bond of marriage,--a girl, in fact, with

whom he could live in Free Love. He could not hope to find such a partner

in his own social grade. The prejudices against Free Love were stronger in

Shelley's time, even as they are at the present time, in the higher than

in the lower grades of English society. In descending from his own social

grade, to the grade of the prosperous London _bourgeoisie_, he descended

no lower than the highest social grade, in which he could conceive it

possible for him to find a girl of beauty, culture, refinement, and

delicacy, whom he would be allowed to 'philosophise out of the ordinary

standard of propriety,' till she should 'throw herself upon him for

protection.' To win Harriett Westbrook, he descended (at least in the eyes

of fashionable society) no lower, than he descended to win Mary Godwin. Of

course, in being a very considerable man of letters, Godwin (in the

opinion of the present writer) was greatly Mr. Westbrook's superior; but

this superiority was in Shelley's time more obvious to persons of

education moving in the middle way of life, than to people of fashion and

patrician quality. Moreover, Godwin's superiority to Mr. Westbrook in this

particular was attended with circumstances that would render 'society'

more than usually indifferent to it. By birth and familiar associations,

William Godwin and Mr. Westbrook were of the same social degree. They were

also of the same social degree in respect to the avocations, by which the

one had acquired sufficient affluence, and the other maintained his family

in Skinner Street. Whilst the prosperous man of business lived with the

port and bearing of a gentleman in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, the

man of letters was a struggling and needy bookseller in the city. In

eloping with Mary Godwin in 1814, the poet associated himself with a

family no less distinctly beneath people of quality than the family from

which he took his first wife. Yet it has never been suggested that he was

lured and inveigled into his alliance with the Skinner Street family.

The notion that Shelley was 'caught' and 'trapt,' inveigled and drawn

against his will into his first marriage, becomes still more ludicrous,

when regard is had to the personal charms of Harriett Westbrook,--charms

that, had she been of far lowlier origin, would account for the young

man's action in making her his wife. Shapely in figure and graceful in her

movements, she possessed a face of singular loveliness, and the air of

high breeding that is so often wanting in damsels of high birth. It is no

exaggeration to say that she was a rare and faultless example of the

girlish beauty, which was most delightful and charming to Shelley. Her

features were delicate and regular; her light-brown hair was of a colour

peculiarly acceptable to her admirer; no girl ever had a more transparent

complexion, or alluring lips; and in her sunnier moods, her countenance

brightened with looks curiously expressive of intellectual alertness and

childish _naïveté_. At the same time in a laugh, equally spontaneous and

joyous, and a voice so musical, that people delighted in hearing her read

unentertaining books for the hour together, she possessed two natural

endowments that have been known to inspire passion, when they have been

associated with features plain even to ugliness. The air and style of this

lovely girl were such, that fifteen months after their wedding, Shelley

wrote of her and them, 'The ease and simplicity of her habits, the

unassuming plainness of her address, the uncalculated connexion of her

thought and speech, have ever formed, in my eyes, her greatest charms.'

Speaking of the pleasure he experienced in hearing her read aloud, Hogg

says, 'If it was agreeable to listen to her, it was not less agreeable to

look at her; she was always pretty, always bright, always blooming;

without a spot, without a wrinkle, not a hair out of its place.' Peacock

admired the taste and simplicity with which she arranged her light-brown

tresses, and the simple elegance of her costume. Be it also remarked that

for a girl of her period (more than seventy years since) Harriett was well

educated,--writing excellent letters of gracefully fluent penmanship: so

familiar with French, that during her six weeks' stay at Edinburgh, she

found a congenial occupation in translating one of Madame Cottin's novels

into English; fond of reading sound literature by herself, no less than to

attentive auditors; and possessing so much taste and aptitude for study

that Shelley delighted in teaching her Latin, and brought her so quickly

forward in it, that before the end of 1812, she was reading the Horatian

Odes with interest, if not without difficulty.

Such was the Harriett Westbrook of 1811 and 1812. And yet Field Place

cannot account for Shelley's weakness in wedding so lovely and winsome a

creature, without assuming that he was 'caught' and inveigled into the

match by a designing third person,--the artful and scheming Elizabeth

Westbrook.

CHAPTER XVI.

EDINBURGH, YORK, AND KESWICK.

The Scotch Marriage--The Trio at Edinburgh--'Wha's the Deil?'--Posting

from Edinburgh to York--Dingy Lodgings and Dingy Milliners--Shelley's

run South--Did Harriett accompany him?--The Squire stops the

Supplies--The Earl's Description of Harriett Westbrook--The Squire's

Anger at the _Mésalliance_--The Course Shelley could not take--Eliza

Westbrook in Possession--The Ouse at full Flood--One too many--Designs

on Greystoke Castle--Shelley's Appeal to the Duke of Norfolk--The

Codicil to Sir Bysshe's Will--The Flight to Richmond--Miss Westbrook

strikes her Enemy--The Trio at Keswick--Shelley's affectionate Letters

from Keswick to Hogg at York--John Westbrook's Daughters at Greystoke

Castle--Ducal Benignity and Policy--The Calverts of Greta

Bank--Shelley's Means during his first Marriage--How to live on

Three-Hundred-a-year--How not to live on Four-Hundred-a-year.

During the latest stages of their long journey in the London and Edinburgh

mail, Shelley and Harriett had for their travelling companion a young

Scotch advocate, who, on being taken into their confidence, told them the

right and speediest steps to marriage in accordance with the usage of the

land. Hence, on embracing his friend in the handsome front-parlour of a

high and roomy house in George Street, and taking his first view of

Harriett, 'bright, blooming, radiant with youth, health and beauty,' Hogg

was in the presence of husband and wife.

For particulars of the way in which the young people spent the next three

weeks in the Scotch capital, readers must go to Hogg's much-abused book.

For the purpose of the present chapter, it is enough to indicate how life

went there with the trio, who in the dead season of a never too lively

city, laughed over trivial matters with youth's light-heartedness, and

found in themselves all the society they needed. Hogg's only

disappointment was that Harriett's disinclination for exercise denied him

opportunities for the long walks he had hoped to take in the surrounding

country. Otherwise he was abundantly happy in regarding the happiness of

the incomparable Shelley, and in studying the charms, the character, and

endowments of the girl his friend had taken for better or worse. Rising

for an early breakfast, passing the morning in studious or literary

labour (Shelley was busy on his translation of a treatise by Buffon;

Harriett on her translation of Madame Cottin's _Claire d'Albe_), and

dining in the middle of the day, they spent the afternoon in exploring the

high-ways and by-ways, the grand places and the nooks and corners, of the

picturesque town. Having taken tea freely and talked philosophy with equal

freedom, the young men surrendered themselves to the music of their

official reader (Harriett of the clear and mellifluous voice), till the

deepening shades of evening reminded them it was time to admire the stars,

and gaze at the famous comet that gave our grandfathers the wine, whose

flavour lingers on tradition's tongue.

For their higher happiness indebted to the heavens and themselves, these

young people were indebted to Scotch sabbatarianism for some of their

heartiest peals of laughter. With unintentional profanity the future poet

was laughing in his own peculiarly shrill and vehement fashion in Prince's

Street, on the day that is still the saddest of the seven in North

Britain, when he was admonished for his scandalous levity by the austere

wayfarer, who remarked, 'You must not laugh openly in that fashion, young

man: if you do, you'll most certainly be convened;'--a warning that may

have been fruitful of the curiosity, which determined Shelley on a

subsequent Sabbath to go to kirk, for the purpose of hearing the servants

and children catechized on matters touching religion.

The drollery of Hogg's account of this visit to the kirk is due to the

narrator's lively humour, rather than to any unusual absurdity in the

proceedings for instructing an assemblage of servants and children in the

rudiments of theology. From dullness and shyness, the pupils were slow in

catching their catechist's meaning, and still slower in answering the

questions that were shouted to them by a teacher, whose Scotch accent was

the more effective on his auditors from the south, because at moments of

displeasure, his vocal pitch indicated that he was not devoid of Scotch

irritability. In asking his class 'Who is the devil?' this catechist

cannot be said to have travelled beyond the lines of ordinary official

routine; but his vocal peculiarities and the sharpness of his manner gave

the simple question a startling piquancy and grotesqueness, that, sending

Shelley into shrieks of laughter, drove him to the open streets where,

though inopportune, and highly scandalous, such laughter would be less

outrageous than in a place of religious instruction.

Six weeks having slipt away quickly, after the wont of time that passing

agreeably passes without exciting incidents, the morning came, on which

the trio entered a postchaise and began the return-journey to York. Hogg

would have preferred the mail or the slowest stage-coach to the private

chaise,--a mode of travelling scarcely appropriate to the financial

position of the three travellers; the law-student, who had nothing more

than a liberal allowance for a student from his father, and the happy

pair, who had married on the 200_l._ a-year, which they had reason to

apprehend would be withheld from them by the indignant Squire of Field

Place. But Harriett had suffered too much on her northward journey to be

desirous of resuming her seat in the mail, whilst as a matron of only

sixteen summers she wished to travel in a way more befitting a gentlewoman

of quality. So Shelley, who hated restraint of any kind, and Hogg, ever

averse to costly ostentation, consented to the young lady's desire for a

chaise, in which they could converse freely, and she could read one of

Holcroft's novels to them. Whatever the book had been, Hogg would have

enjoyed hearing it read by so charming a reader. But the tale was tedious

to Shelley, who, after sighing in a significant way, vainly entreated

Harriett to skip some of the less entertaining parts of the narrative. The

conflict on so trifling a matter may be noticed as an indication that,

even thus early in their married life, the poet and his bride had trivial

differences, in which she had her own way, and he was constrained to let

her have it. Not that Harriett insisted on reading aloud the whole of the

time from Edinburgh to York. There were moments when, if not glad to give

her throat a rest, she was pleased to enlarge her knowledge of rural

matters by listening to the talk of her travelling companions. How much it

needed enlargement at this point of her career, appears from the

earnestness with which the little Cockney (as Shelley styled her) besought

her husband to teach her how to discriminate between turnips and barley.

Hogg's comfortable lodgings in York having been let 'over his head' during

his absence in Scotland, the trio had no sooner alighted from the last of

their successive post-chaises, than they went forth in the rainy twilight

to look for other rooms. Hogg suggested, was indeed urgent, that they

should pass the night at an inn, and defer the search for lodgings till

the morrow. But Shelley flatly refused to acquiesce in the proposal;--a

refusal that may well have perplexed Hogg at the moment, as the cause of

the future poet's impatience to get into rooms in a private house did not

appear till the following morning. Shelley declaring thus stoutly for an

immediate entrance on lodgings--any lodgings rather than rooms in a tavern

for a single night,--and Harriett of course concurring with her husband,

Hogg was in a minority, and could not decline to join them in the search

for a temporary home, which, in the course of the damp and chilly October

evening, made them the joint-tenants of certain rooms in 'the dingy

dwelling of certain dingy old milliners' (the Misses Dancer of Coney

Street), who, in the course of a week or ten days, were as glad to be quit

of their lodgers, as the lodgers were glad to be quit of the austere and

reasonably suspicious needlewomen.

On the morrow Hogg, who had overrun his leave of absence by a few days,

went early to the chambers of the conveyancer with whom he was reading;

but he did not return thus early to the scene of legal labour and study,

without having heard of Shelley's intention to start for London by the

next night-mail. The future poet's announcement of this intention to run

southward, whilst leaving his bride at York under his friend's care in the

rooms they had occupied for a single night, of course showed Hogg why

Harriett's youthful and erratic husband had been so urgent for an

immediate choice of lodgings,--so averse to tarrying in a tavern for a few

hours. On the journey from Edinburgh to York, Shelley had been secretly

nursing his project for running off to London and Sussex,--to see his

father's attorney (Mr. Whitton), to take counsel with his Uncle Pilfold,

and to come to a financial understanding, either by personal interview or

through the attorney's intervention, with the Squire of Field Place. The

charges of six weeks' residence at Edinburgh, followed by the charges of

the southward journey, had reduced his money in hand to so insignificant a

sum, that, on approaching York, he could not think of taking Harriett with

him on the meditated trip to Middlesex and Sussex. It was manifest to him

that she must remain at York, whilst he went on the expedition for

'raising supplies.' At the same time it was obvious, even to the

harum-scarum Shelley, that he could not with propriety leave his girlish

bride in a York tavern, where she would not fail to become the one

subject of gossip, with the landlady and her chamber-maids, the gentle

folk of the coffee-room, the bagmen of the commercial-room, the tipplers

and loiterers at the public bar. Left to the accidents of life in a

tavern, the lovely school-girl--staying by herself in a provincial hotel,

without husband or lady's maid, without any companion of her own

sex--would be liable to various kinds of insult and annoyance, from which

she would be secure in a quiet lodging-house. Hence Shelley's

determination to lose not an hour in settling his bride in lodgings after

their arrival at York, as he was set on leaving her for a while, in little

more than four-and-twenty hours.

Hogg had several reasons for opposing his friend's resolve to go south so

abruptly. Seeing what mischief might be made by gossips at York, and by

gossips in London and Sussex, of the young husband's voluntary withdrawal

from his childish wife, at a moment when she stood in peculiar need of his

presence,--when nothing short of overpowering necessity should make him

leave her side for an entire day,--and when the very circumstances of

their union required them to be more than ordinarily thoughtful for

appearances and the world's opinion, Hogg saw the impropriety and

insufficiency of the arrangements for her comfort during Shelley's

absence. Whilst he was too much a man of the world to think himself the

fittest guardian for the lovely girl, on the point of being thrown so

completely and unceremoniously on his hands, or to imagine the ladies of

York would think him so, Hogg had grounds for a strong opinion, that his

friend would gain nothing more by interviews with Mr. Whitton and Mr.

Whitton's client than he could gain from them by letters sent through the

post,--that he would, in fact, be wasting on a profitless journey the few

guineas still remaining to him of borrowed money,--the last lingering

guineas, which in a few weeks he might need for bare necessities. Under

these circumstances, it is not strange that the more worldly-wise of the

two youngsters advised his comrade to postpone the journey for a few days.

Even so short a time would have given Hogg opportunities for introducing

the Shelleys to ladies of the northern city; for inducing some of those

ladies to take an interest in Harriett who, wedded woman though she was,

needed a chaperon as much as any recently emancipated school-girl; and for

withdrawing from a domiciliary relation to the young lady that, during

Shelley's absence, was likely to give rise to equally egregious and

undesirable misconceptions in the northern capital. In pleading for delay,

Hogg could not, of course state frankly his reasons for the prayer. The

questions at issue were too delicate for candour. All the north-countryman

could do was to recommend postponement. Of course, the counsel was in

vain.

Holding to his purpose, Shelley went for the south, leaving his bride and

the incomparable Hogg fellow-lodgers in the same dingy dwelling, and

sharers of the same dingy parlour. Surely the circumstances of the case

may be held to justify, or at least to excuse, suspicion on the part of

the two ancient and austere milliners, careful for their own characters

and the reputation of their house in a provincial city, abounding, like

all other provincial towns, with people more curious about their

neighbours' doings than heedful of their own affairs. Here is the case

from a milliner's point of view.--Late one evening, Mr. Hogg (a sprightly

young bachelor of the city) enters the house, in the company of Mr.

Shelley (a very young gentleman, looking no older than his wife) and

Harriett Shelley (looking less than her sixteen summers); the entrance of

the trio being covered with assertions that the sprightly Mr. Hogg's

juvenile friends are husband and wife. Twenty-four hours later, the young

gentleman with the aspect of a schoolboy goes off by the London mail,

leaving the sixteen-years-old girl in the house, under the charge of the

sprightly Mr. Hogg, whose way of saying strange things makes it doubtful

to maiden ladies of mature age and lowly station, whether they should

smile or frown. Who is the young lady? Who the young gentleman who has

gone off to London? Are they really husband and wife? If so, why has the

young gentleman gone off without her? Why has he left her under the care

of the sprightly Mr. Hogg, of all people in the world? Can it be that the

Scotch marriage, instead of making her the very young gentleman's wife,

made her the sprightly Mr. Hogg's wife? The austere and suspicious

milliners may well have asked themselves these and half-a-hundred other

questions.

Whilst Shelley was away, Harriett spent lonely days at York. The weather

was rainy, but there were hours when the sky cleared or its clouds forbore

to spend themselves on the roofs and open spaces of the city. It speaks

for the girl's uneasiness in a position from which she should have been

preserved, and also for her sense of womanly fitness and delicacy, that

during her boyish husband's absence she kept herself within the doors of

the dingy lodging-house,--forbearing to visit the Minster and other sights

of the city, and declining the many invitations Hogg gave her to take

exercise in the open air under his escort. In Edinburgh she took daily

walks, usually with her husband and Hogg, sometimes with no other

companion than her husband's friend; but at York, during her husband's

absence, she remained at home. 'When it was fair,' says Hogg of her

_triste_ and uneventful days at York, 'she did not go out, having

unfortunately transplanted her London notions of propriety to York: she

considered it incorrect to walk in the streets of that quiet city by

herself.' As Shelley was certainly absent from York on one Sunday (20th

October, 1811),--a day on which Mr. Hogg's work at chambers did not

preclude him from walking about the town--it may be fairly assumed that

Harriett's notions of propriety forbade her to walk in the streets with

him no less than by herself. Certainly in her circumspection the

sixteen-years-young gentlewoman gave the grim and vigilant milliners no

grounds for speaking of her with disapproval, apart from the fact that she

continued to share the same parlour with Mr. Hogg. In this matter, how

could the poor child do otherwise? How could she help herself?

Having so much of her own company by day, whilst her fellow-lodger was 'at

chambers,' Harriett may well have enjoyed Hogg's company in the evening,

when they talked together of her husband, and his projects for the

regeneration of human kind, her papa and his affairs, her Clapham

boarding-school and its discipline, her mamma and sister,--the mamma who

looked so ladylike in black satin, and the sister Eliza (in the fulness of

her Christian name, Elizabeth) who had so elegant a figure and so noble a

crop of black hair. When these and other domestic topics did not hold

their attention, Harriett's fellow-lodger used to sit with unqualified

contentment for hours together, whilst she read aloud to him Holcroft's

_Anna St. Ives_, Dr. Robertson's historical works, and other staid and

instructive books. It may be inferred from expressions in Hogg's book

that, though she often read aloud to him at Edinburgh, Harriett read aloud

to him at York, during Shelley's absence from the city, more copiously

than during any other time of their acquaintance. Noteworthy, also, is

it, that (by Hogg's admission), Harriett's audible readings became much

less frequent and lengthy when Miss Westbrook appeared upon the scene,

just four-and-twenty hours before Shelley returned to the city, and that

they ceased almost entirely before the Shelleys went away abruptly to

Keswick. Possibly, Hogg was wrong in attributing this change of Harriett's

conduct altogether to Miss Westbrook's influence. Possibly, also, he was

mistaken in attributing the copiousness of Harriett's audible readings,

during her husband's absence, altogether to her delight in reading aloud.

Harriett read no less clearly than musically. 'Hers,' says Hogg, 'was the

most distinct utterance I ever heard.' It is conceivable that, instead of

reading thus distinctly either for her own pleasure or for Mr. Hogg's

pleasure, Harriett at York read thus audibly for the protection of her own

character, and the edification of hearers listening in the passage outside

the parlour door.

It cannot be doubted that the poor child, left as she should not have been

left, in a position of vexatious and humiliating embarrassment, knew that

she, Hogg and her husband were each and all objects of suspicion to the

austere and dingy milliners. So placed, she was, of course, painfully

jealous for her reputation, and resolute that she would shape her course,

so as to be able to extort evidence to her goodness from the very women

who suspected her of evil. Never leaving the house, she put it beyond the

power of the austere milliners to accuse her of going about the town in

pursuit of pleasure. Never receiving any visitor but her fellow-lodger,

she confined the milliners' suspicions within narrow limits. Whilst she

and her fellow-lodger were together, it was her practice to be incessantly

conversing with him or reading to him in a voice, clearly audible outside

their room,--so that the milliners should have the evidence of their own

ears, that she and her fellow-lodger were no fit objects of suspicion. I

have no direct and conclusive evidence that Harriett talked and read aloud

for this end. But that she talked and read aloud mainly for this end, is a

fair inference from what Hogg says of her talking, reading, and other

behaviour during her husband's absence. Reading Hogg's evidence in this

way, I have no doubt it was to Harriett's relief, if not at her

suggestion, that Miss Westbrook, immediately after her arrival at York,

forbade the readings as exercises too exhausting for her sister's nervous

system.

In passing through London, Shelley made attempts to see Miss Westbrook and

Mr. Whitton, and, probably, saw both of them. If he did not see the

attorney, he communicated with him by letter, saying that he should

quickly return from Sussex to London. If he saw Miss Westbrook, one may be

sure she told him plainly he had done ill in leaving his bride at York

under Hogg's care, at a moment when he was especially bound to be

thoughtful for her comfort and character. It cannot be doubted that, on

coming to Cuckfield, he found his Uncle Pilfold of Miss Westbrook's

opinion on this matter. If the old sailor did not say so in words, we may

be sure the expression of his countenance told his nephew, that he should

not have come to Sussex without his wife; that in leaving her at York he

had given people another reason for talking lightly of her and to his

disadvantage; that he would do well to withhold from the Field Place and

Horsham people a matter they would not fail to report with unfavourable

comments, should it come to their knowledge. Under these circumstances it

was natural for the young gentleman to take measures to make the Field

Place and Horsham people imagine that Harriett had accompanied him to

Sussex. The evidence in his own hand-writing, which has caused some

writers to imagine she accompanied him to Sussex, is only evidence of the

pains taken by Shelley to conceal the indiscretion of which he had been

guilty. Dating from his uncle's house at Cuckfield, on Monday 21st

October, 1811, the future poet wrote Mr. Medwin (the Horsham attorney) a

letter which has been produced in testimony that, instead of being at York

(as Hogg truthfully represented), Harriett was on that day with her

scatterbrain husband under Captain Pilfold's roof.

Instructing the lawyer that Mrs. Shelley spelt her Christian name with a

second t, Shelley further instructed him to prepare a deed of marriage

settlement (assigning 700_l._ a-year for Mrs. Shelley's provision during

her life, in case of her husband's death). Further, Mr. Medwin was

directed to address to his youthful client 'at Mr. Westbrook's, 23 Chapel

Street, Grosvenor Square.' After giving these directions, and announcing

his purpose of remarrying Harriett (by English form) in the course of

three weeks or a month, before which renewal of his nuptials he intended

to execute the settlement, Shelley added: 'We most probably go to London

to-morrow. We shall probably see Whitton, when I shall neither forget your

good advice, nor cease to be grateful for it.'

The instructions by the nineteen-years-old boy for a deed of settlement on

his wife, to be executed by him in a few weeks, are amusing. What induced

him to say she spelt her Christian name with two t's, when she spelt it in

the ordinary manner with only one, is unknown. The main object of the

epistle was the purpose of the two delusive sentences beginning with

'we,'--sentences intended to create an impression, or to confirm Mr.

Medwin in the impression, that Harriett had accompanied the writer from

York. Even in the absence of evidence to the point, the young gentleman

(who ten months earlier 'resorted to deception' in order to escape a

trivial annoyance) might be presumed to have written other letters to make

the Horsham and Field Place gossips imagine his wife was with him in

Sussex and London, when she was at York. Taken by itself the evidence

that, instead of leaving her at York, Shelley took Harriett with him to

London and Sussex is considerable. Indeed, standing by itself, it would

justify the historian in representing that the boyish husband carried her

southward in his company. But the counter evidence that he left her in

York is so much stronger, that I do not hesitate in adopting Hogg's

narrative, and in regarding the contradictory evidence as fallacious

testimony, arising from Shelley's wish to conceal, and his measures for

concealing, the impropriety of which he had been guilty.

Shelley had better have remained at York in submission to Hogg's counsel,

instead of spending the greater part of his few remaining guineas on the

costly journey, from which he got nothing but disappointment. Refusing to

see him, the Squire of Field Place declined for the present to hold any

communication with him except through Mr. Whitton. At the same time the

Squire declined to give his unruly son any more money, till he should

promise to amend his ways and submit himself to his father's authority

with fit expressions of penitence. Acting doubtless at his client's

instance, Mr. Whitton begged he might not be troubled with a call from his

client's son, who could say all that was needful under the circumstances

on a sheet of paper. The attitude of the Squire and the attitude of the

attorney are clearly defined in two notes dated by the latter to Mr.

Percy Bysshe Shelley on the same day (23rd October, 1811); the one note

being addressed to the poet at Cuckfield, the other being directed to him

at the Turk's Coffee-House, Strand.

The young gentleman, who in August chuckled over anticipations of his

father's surprise and fury at his runaway match with an innkeeper's

daughter, had not made his account for his father's steady persistence in

displeasure. The young gentleman who had just travelled southward by mail

from York, to talk matters over and settle them with the 'old boy'

(Shelley's expression), found the 'old buck' (also Shelley's expression)

in no haste to talk matters over, found him resolute to leave matters as

they were till he could rearrange them in his own way. Kept at a distance

in this way by 'old Killjoy' (also one of the son's nicknames for his

sire), Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley was treated with similar insolence by old

'Killjoy's' attorney, who enjoined him to say what he wished to say in

writing. It was Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley's turn to feel surprise and

indignation. Baffled and resentful the young gentleman returned to York

with a heavy heart and a light purse.

At length there was war to the bitter-end between the long-suffering

father who had endured so much, and the son, who had now exhausted his

sire's patience. At length he was excluded from Field Place, _not_ for his

religious opinions, _but_ for his successive extravagances of deceit,

disloyalty, and disobedience to an affectionate father, and for the

_escapade_ by which he sought to introduce a tavern-keeper's daughter to

his mother's drawing-room as the young lady, who in the course of time

would be Lady Shelley of Field Place.

Successive writers have insisted that the poet would never have been drawn

into this disastrous marriage had it not been for the excessive chivalry

of his nature, that placed him at the mercy of the designing, artful,

unscrupulous Eliza Westbrook. A chivalrous boy usually has some care for

the feelings and dignity of the women of his own blood and hearth. If

Shelley really surpassed other boys in chivalry, even as he surpassed them

(according to Lady Shelley) in truthfulness and candour, he would surely

have been more thoughtful for his mother's feelings and his sister's

dignity, than for Miss Westbrook's wishes. It does not appear to have

occurred even for a single moment to this chivalrous youth that, in

choosing a wife, he should not be absolutely without concern for his

mother's sensibility, his sister's honour and social interest. From first

to last he seems to have assumed that his own feelings were the only

sensibilities for which he was required to think. By those who (with the

present writer) think Shelley ran away with Harriett Westbrook because he

was thoroughly in love with her, it may, of course, be urged in his excuse

that love is proverbially selfish, and that in choosing their wives young

men are always more bent on pleasing themselves than on pleasing their

mothers and sisters. But such considerations cannot be urged in the

youngster's behalf by those, who maintain (with Mr. Garnett) that, instead

of marrying the young lady, because he desired her passionately, Shelley

fell with passionless weakness into the _mésalliance_ through Miss Eliza

Westbrook's artful treatment of his sense of chivalry. Moreover, even by

those who believe him to have been honestly in love, it must be conceded

that he was less thoughtful for his mother and sisters, than a generous

and chivalric young man must necessarily be when he is choosing a wife.

Had he thought for a moment how the _mésalliance_ would affect his mother,

he must have seen it would occasion her sorrow and acute mortification.

Had he given a thought for the interests of his sisters, he must have seen

the match would be greatly injurious to them. Had he taken thought for the

honour of the family, which his father and grandfather had raised to the

dignity of a territorial house, he must have seen that the gentlewomen of

many of the neighbouring families would be slow to recognize and visit

John Westbrook's daughter. If he thought with indifference of these sure

consequences of the _mésalliance_, the chivalrous Shelley was strangely

wanting in chivalric care for the women of his nearest kindred. If he did

not think of them at all, his selfishness exceeded the selfishness

permitted to lovers.

When 'society' is invited to consider and pass judgment on a new

_mésalliance_, it is in the nature of things for the unpleasant and

reprehensible features of the affair to be magnified and multiplied by

social sentiment. On hearing that young Shelley of Field Place had

surpassed all his previous offences by running off to Scotland with an

innkeeper's daughter, to his father's unutterable wrath and his mother's

grief and dismay, the Sussex families imagined something far more shocking

than the actual incident. Knowing nothing of Harriett's beauty and

refinement, of her father's respectability, and the care expended on her

education, the people of the county houses thought of what was least

agreeable in inns and innkeepers, and of all that was most disagreeable in

the smart girls usually employed in the inns along the posting roads of

the country; and having thus surrounded themselves with more or less

repulsive recollections of simpering damsels, the Sussex families leapt to

the conclusion that the boy, who was expelled from Oxford last spring, had

thrown himself into the arms of some pert barmaid or saucy chamber-woman.

In the correspondence (preserved at the Record Office) touching the box of

Shelley's pamphlets, that was opened by the Surveyor of Customs at

Holyhead in March, 1812, a letter is preserved, which affords curious

evidence respecting the view taken of Shelley and his marriage by the

great families of the poet's county. Dating from Stanmer, near Brighton,

on 8th April, 1812 (just seven months after the elopement) the Earl of

Chichester--the chief of Sussex Pelhams and Postmaster-General (in

conjunction with ... )--wrote to Mr. Francis Freeling, Secretary of the

Post Office:--

'DEAR FREELING,--I return the pamphlet and declaration. The writer of

the first is son of Mr. Shelley, Member for the Rape of Bramber, and

is by all accounts a most extraordinary man. I hear that he has

married a servant, or some person of very low birth.'

It was thus that the chief of a great Sussex family wrote, and the Sussex

quality spoke, of the lovely girl, whose marriage had raised her to the

honour of being so quaintly and disdainfully misdescribed. For a few weeks

known by report to the county families as an innkeeper's daughter, she was

vaguely remembered by them a few months later as 'a servant, or some

person of very low birth.' A year later the Castle Goring Shelleys were

known in county houses, lying outside the immediate neighbourhood of

Horsham, as people who made low marriages. Such was the kind of discredit

that came to Shelley's kindred from the alliance he had formed in absolute

carelessness for their feelings and interests.

A man of the world (albeit an eccentric one), the Squire of Field Place

was aware of the disrepute that would come to him and his house from his

son's latest escapade. He was also precisely the man to feel acutely the

disrepute, which he had reason to fear would be hurtful to his girls. The

son of the man who had founded a new family, the heir of the old man who

had gathered together enough wealth for the sufficient endowment of

half-a-dozen baronets, the _protégé_ of the Duke of Norfolk, who had for

several years regarded him with growing complaisance, and a Member of

Parliament, who had contrived to persuade himself he was no ordinary

Borough-Member, the honest, kindly, hearty Squire of Field Place, had

hoped that his boy would, under his Grace's favour, pass directly from his

nonage to public life; that his girls (the eldest of them already a

beauty, the three younger ones bearing on their childish faces the promise

of uncommon womanly loveliness,) would marry into the best families of the

county, with whose history his name had been so long associated, though

none of his father's lineal ancestors had ever held place amongst its

aristocracy. Doubtless, the simple, sport-loving, and mildly ambitious

Englishman had cherished the hope that his son, or one of his son's sons,

would wear a coronet. And now all these pleasant and not inordinate hopes

were dissipated by his perverse boy's marriage with the girl, with whom

the county families would decline to associate,--the girl who would be

called the Field Place 'barmaid,'--the girl who, so soon after her

discreditable marriage, lived in the minds of the Sussex grandees as a

servant or other low person.

The Squire's mortification might be deemed his fitting punishment, had he

in pride of purse borne himself insolently to former friends; had he, on

rising to friendship with 'the great,' fawned and cringed to their

grandeur; had he, in his desire for the elevation of his offspring and the

aggrandisement of Castle Goring, attempted to force his son into a

distasteful union, requiring him to marry for more money or higher rank.

But the honest gentleman had committed none of these faults. Addressing

the great without sycophancy, he lived in good-fellowship with all men.

Instead of trying to force his son's affections, he would have been

content to see him marry Harriett Grove,--a girl of no fortune, and of a

family something nearer doubtless, but only something nearer, the

aristocracy than the small squireens and gentle yeomanry from whom he was

himself descended. All he had asked of the boy, who with good conduct

would succeed to a noble fortune, was to marry a gentlewoman, fit to be

his mother's daughter and the sister of his sisters. And what had the boy

done? He had run off with a barmaid!--for, of course, to the Squire, in

his fury, John Westbrook's lovely child was nothing better than a barmaid.

In the autumn of 1811 the Squire of Field Place could not comfort himself

with reflecting that, if he was a much worried father, he was worried by a

marvellously clever boy whom it was an honour to have begotten; for at

that time Shelley had done nothing to indicate he would win a place

amongst men of genius, or even figure amongst men of considerable parts.

His Eton career had been worse than disappointing; his Oxford career had

been eminently disgraceful; his novels were ludicrous performances; _The

Necessity of Atheism_ was not an achievement on which his father could be

expected to think with complaisance. At the worst he had, from his

fifteenth year, been a bad boy; at the best he was a mere scatterbrain.

Having pardoned the boy repeatedly for serious misdemeanours; having again

and again relented towards him and, saying 'let bygones be bygones,' given

him a fresh start, is it wonderful that Mr. Timothy Shelley determined to

make no more bootless concessions, to accept no more imperfect

recognitions of his authority, to have done with half-measures, and to

insist on his son's unqualified submission as the prelude to a renewal of

their intercourse? The father has been charged with enormous severity to

his son, because he required him to behave like other sons, and held

steadily to his determination to keep his son at a distance, until the

youngster had promised to show ordinary consideration for the feelings of

his parents. When Percy said, 'Out of regard to my feelings give me a good

allowance, and let me bring my wife to Field Place,' what was there so

monstrous in the Squire's answer, 'Out of regard to my feelings, your

mother's feelings, your sisters' welfare, forbear from giving expression

to sentiments that offend me, shock her, and bring social disrepute to

your family?' What should the father have done? Hogg was of opinion that

the Squire should have given his son a handsome allowance, and left him at

liberty to say and do what he liked. Bearing in mind that Shelley was

still only nineteen years of age, most readers of this page,--certainly

most fathers with unruly sons still in their nonage,--will see reasons for

differing from Mr. Hogg on this matter.

If Miss Eliza Westbrook was desirous of a good pretext for hastening to

York and taking the young couple under her protection and government, she

found her desire in the singular circumstances under which her sister (a

mere child) had been left at York. Packing her trunks, Miss Westbrook took

the road along which her sister had travelled seven or eight weeks

earlier. She was in possession of her darling, and at war with Hogg in the

dingy lodging-house, whilst Shelley was still on his way back to the

northern city, with a light purse and a heavy heart. On returning to the

dingy house, the boyish husband found both sisters in the dingy parlour.

Having been told by Harriett that her sister was 'beautiful, exquisitely

beautiful,' with an elegant figure, dark bright eyes, and a profusion of

black hair, Hogg was surprised by the indications of age in her

countenance which, instead of being lovely, was chiefly remarkable for

marks of small-pox, and the not translucent pallor common in faces

disfigured by that malady. To Hogg (a prejudiced and strongly biased

witness against the woman he loathed) it appeared that, though dark, Eliza

Westbrook's eyes were dull and meaningless; that, though black and glossy,

her hair was coarse; that her figure was meagre, prim, and graceless; that

her personal charms existed only in her younger sister's imagination.

History has still to discover the year of Miss Westbrook's birth; but it

may be safely assumed she was not so old as Mr. Hogg imagined,--that she

was over five-and-twenty, and under thirty years of age. It may also be

assumed that her appearance was less repulsive to other people than to Mr.

Hogg. If Harriett's fancy erred in one direction, Mr. Hogg's animosity

erred in another. If Harriett's partiality caused her to think too well of

her sister's appearance, Hogg's resentment inspired him to speak too

unfavourably of Miss Westbrook's looks.

Miss Westbrook and Hogg were enemies even before they set eyes on one

another. The lady had travelled to York to encounter the enemy of her

sister's reputation. On hearing she would soon appear in the dingy

lodging-house, Hogg knew that on her arrival he would be face to face with

a foe. At the moment of their first meeting, Shelley's incomparable friend

and Shelley's sister-in-law exchanged glances of aversion. When he bowed

before her, at their introduction to one another in the dingy parlour, the

'barmaid by origin' (to use Hogg's words) scarcely deigned to notice him.

'I thought Bysshe was to have brought you with him,' observed Hogg to the

lady, who, in her haste to shelter her darling, had not waited to travel

with her brother-in-law.

'Oh dear, no!' Miss Westbrook replied, with cold and disdainful

significance.

'Shall I make tea?' Hogg inquired, glancing at the tea-things on the

table; and as he was not forbidden to do so, he brewed the tea, and

brought Miss Westbrook a cup of the beverage, which she regarded

contemptuously when it was placed before her. This was embarrassing to the

gentleman who was joint-tenant of the dingy parlour.

If it was not farce, what followed this meeting of the enemies was very

broad comedy. Miss Westbrook, thinking Hogg in the way, was of opinion he

ought to get out of the way as quickly as possible. Thinking Miss

Westbrook had come where she was not wanted, Hogg was of opinion she ought

to be ordered back to London. On reappearing in the dingy lodging-house

just twenty-four hours after Miss Westbrook's arrival, Shelley found

himself between an incomparable friend who said, 'You must get rid of Miss

Westbrook,' and an incomparable sister-in-law who said, 'You must get quit

of Mr. Hogg.' As Harriett was on her sister's side, the future poet could

not act on Hogg's advice. There was another reason why the youthful

husband could not deal thus summarily with his sister-in-law.

Thinking that Miss Westbrook should be sent back immediately to London,

and seeing that Shelley was scarcely the person to tell her and constrain

her to go home, Hogg was of opinion that his friend ought to put strong

pressure on his bride, to tell her sister she must retire from the scene

where she was unwelcome,--that he should say firmly to Harriett, 'Choose

between me and your sister: I leave York if she doesn't. If you wish me to

remain by your side, you must tell your sister to go and leave us alone.'

Five-and-forty years later, when he reviewed this critical passage of the

poet's career, and all the miserable consequences of Miss Westbrook's

transient power of him, Hogg felt as firmly as ever that Harriett's

husband might have preserved his conjugal contentment for a much longer

period, by saying stoutly to her 'either Eliza goes or I go,' and showing

he would forthwith act on the menace, if the intruder did not at once

retire. The happiness, coming to him from his marriage, might not have

been great and enduring under any circumstances; but by shaking Eliza

from him at York, he would have rid himself of the creature, whose

scheming spirit and false tongue made it so miserably brief and

insufficient. This was Hogg's one-sided and possibly erroneous view of the

case. Holding it honestly, he may well have deplored the weakness that

incapacitated 'the divine Shelley' for casting from him so promptly the

influence which extinguished for ever his confidence and delight in his

young wife, after having placed him for a while at war with the friend,

who induced him to make the lovely child his wife, when he was thinking of

making her his mere mistress.

Thinking Eliza should be dismissed in this fashion, Hogg doubtless told

Shelley so. As Shelley, whilst differing from Byron in being able to keep

a secret, resembled him also in a habit of blabbing to others what he

should have kept to himself, it may be assumed that, if he did not impart

it directly to Miss Westbrook, he communicated Hogg's counsel to his wife,

without requiring her to act upon it. Further, as Harriett's confidence in

her sister was perfect at this point of their curious story, it cannot be

questioned, that whatever Shelley told his wife of Hogg's view of the

position, was speedily communicated by her to Miss Westbrook.

It is not probable that under any circumstances Shelley would just then

have concurred in Hogg's opinion, and decided to act upon it. But even if

he approved the advice on general grounds, circumstances forbade him to

adopt it. Returning to York with an almost empty purse, and no hope that

it would be speedily replenished by his father, Shelley could not afford

to quarrel with his sister-in-law, who had a little money in her pocket,

and was influential with her father, to whom he was already looking for

pecuniary relief. Though he could lend Shelley 10_l._ from time to time,

Hogg (as he tells us) was unable to provide him with enough money for his

own and his wife's maintenance. At that moment, the law-student's store of

money in hand had been reduced to a trifle by the charges of his recent

trip to Scotland. Captain Pilford had already done his utmost for his

nephew's pecuniary relief. Having incurred the Squire's vehement

displeasure by lending Shelley the 25_l._, which enabled him to fly with

Harriett to Edinburgh, Mr. Medwin (the Horsham attorney) was in no mood to

incense his powerful neighbour and relative to fiercer wrath, and to

provoke further censure from the Squire's patron, the Duke of Norfolk, by

lending the young gentleman any more money. Under these circumstances, Mr.

Percy Bysshe Shelley could not afford to quarrel with Miss Westbrook, the

only person to whom he could just then look for the relief of his

immediate necessities,--'the influence' through which he was hoping to get

a regular allowance from his father-in-law.

Seeing that Shelley would not put the needful pressure on his wife, the

brilliant thought occurred to Hogg that, doing what his friend dared not

do, he would indicate the 'necessary course' to Harriett, and urge her

with equal delicacy and firmness to take it. Miss Westbrook spent much

time in brushing the black hair, which Harriett regarded admiringly, and

Mr. Hogg spoke and wrote about with profane flippancy. One day, whilst the

elder sister was brushing her hair, Hogg persuaded Mrs. Shelley to walk

with him to the old Roman bridge, and have a look at the Ouse, which had

just then overflowed its banks, and was in divers ways behaving with

picturesque and sensational extravagance.

'Is it not an interesting, a surprising sight?' remarked Harriett, whilst

viewing 'the floods' from the middle of the bridge.

'Yes,' returned Hogg, 'it is very wonderful. But, dear Harriett, how

nicely that dearest Eliza would spin down the river! How sweetly she would

turn round and round, like that log of wood! And, gracious heaven, what

would Miss Warne say?'--Miss Warne being a maiden lady (daughter of a

London taverner) who held so high a place in Miss Westbrook's affection

and esteem, that the latter, in her ordinary talk on things in general,

was in the habit of referring admiringly to the lady's discretion and

faultless taste.

At this piquant suggestion, that it would be well to pitch Eliza into the

river, and give Miss Warne a fine opportunity for saying something

remarkable, Harriett (says Hogg) 'turned her pretty face away, and

laughed--as a slave laughs, who is beginning to grow weary of an

intolerable yoke.' It speaks much for Hogg's rashness, that he ventured to

speak in this fashion of Miss Westbrook to her younger and admiring

sister;--for his self-sufficiency, that he imagined a few words from him

would put the girl in revolt against her only sister;-for the excessive

familiarity of his bearing to her, that he addressed her as 'dear

Harriett,' as he spoke thus lightly of the 'dearest Eliza,' and her

super-excellent Miss Warne;--for his vanity and ignorance of human nature,

that he imagined Harriett would respect his confidence so far as to keep

his saucy words from her sister. Of course the sixteen-years-old girl did

not deem herself under an obligation of honour to withhold from her only

sister the flippant utterances of so recent an acquaintance. Honour and

loyalty required her to tell Eliza that Hogg wished to separate them,--was

set on compassing their estrangement. On learning that Hogg meant Shelley

and Harriett to discard her, Miss Westbrook resolved that they should

discard him. Whatever may be thought of the means she used for the

achievement of her end, it cannot be denied, that she could plead extreme

provocation in excuse of what was reprehensible in her extreme

measures;--and that it was natural for her to determine her sister and

brother-in-law should banish the man who wanted them to dismiss her. It

was a fight between an angry and unscrupulous young woman and an

overbearing young man. The fight was sharp and short: for the moment, the

victory was with the woman.

In fighting Mr. Hogg,--in taking for his humiliation and discomfiture a

course, which she probably never thought of taking till he struck her, and

possibly would never have thought of taking, had he treated her in a

courteous and conciliatory manner,--it is conceivable that Miss Westbrook

persuaded herself she was actuated by pure concern for her sister's

happiness, and righteous disapproval of masculine wickedness, and in no

degree whatever by personal spite and resentment. The lady was in just the

position to imagine she did altogether for her sister's good what she did

chiefly for the gratification of her own vindictiveness. Travelling

northward to guard her darling from Hogg's indiscretion, she made the

journey in a mood to suspect him of something worse than indiscretion. By

no means wanting in self-esteem, or disposed to underrate her charms, the

lady naturally inferred from Hogg's desire to extrude so fascinating a

person as herself from so small a circle, that her presence was

distasteful to him, because it promised to defeat his insidious designs on

Harriett's honour and happiness. The young man, who would deprive Harriett

of her sister's society and protection, desired to get the dear child into

his power,--to have her at his mercy. For what end did he desire to have

the dear child in his power, at his mercy? The answer to this question

determined Miss Westbrook to preserve the dear child from a villain.

Tractable and docile in the hands of the elder sister, whom she admired

and loved enthusiastically, the dear child in perfect simplicity and

purity of thought provided Miss Westbrook with evidence that Shelley's

incomparable friend was a young man of incomparable wickedness. Here are

the damnatory admissions and confessions of the younger sister. Mr. Hogg

had been extremely attentive to her in Edinburgh, and also (during her

husband's absence) at York. At Edinburgh he had taken her for walks,

unattended by Shelley. He certainly admired her beauty, for he had said so

outright on several occasions. He had paid her extravagant

compliments,--indeed compliments so extravagant, that they caused her

embarrassment. He was very kind and attentive to her; but she had often

wished he would not commend her so immoderately to her face. She had

refused to take walks with him in York during Shelley's absence, but it

cost her no little effort to hold to her decision on this point, so urgent

was he in begging her to walk abroad. When he was not at Chambers, or on

the way to and fro between them and the dingy lodging-house, Hogg had

spent all his time at the house. Taking tea with her every evening, he had

passed the whole of each evening in the dingy parlour with her, till she

retired to rest for the night. It had been very awkward for her, to live

in the same house and share the same parlour with him, during her

husband's absence:-all the more awkward, because he persisted in paying

her such extravagant compliments. The milliners had been disobliging and

suspicious in their bearing to her. Possibly they would have been less so,

had Hogg left her under their protection altogether, or been less

attentive to her in her husband's absence. Such were Harriett's admissions

and confessions to her sister,--admissions and confessions made afterwards

to her husband. Miss Westbrook knew how to manipulate and dress up these

simple admissions into evidence to Shelley, that his friend's gallantry to

Harriett had been excessive, that his admiration of her was embarrassing

to Harriett, that he might have been more thoughtful for the delicate

sensibilities of the simple and innocent child, that they had been too

much together for her contentment and reputation, that the dear child had

been worried and harassed by her admirer, that her husband should put a

distance between them. Care for the dear child's nerves and feelings

required that she should be removed from York as soon as possible.

Committing herself to no statement of fact, in which her sister would not

concur, Miss Westbrook was careful to say nothing that would make Shelley

suspicious of his wife's goodness, or render him wrathful with Hogg. It

was enough for the present to suggest that Harriett's mere beauty had

inspired Hogg with a sentiment of strong admiration, trembling on the

verge of passion;--that, without doing or saying aught to justify Shelley

in quarreling with him outright, Hogg had permitted Harriett to see the

state of feeling which he should have been most careful to conceal from

her; that Harriett was secretly troubled by her sense of Hogg's regard for

her;--a regard for which of course she was in no degree to be blamed, and

he was to be pitied rather than condemned. Of course Miss Westbrook (a

clever woman) knew how the seeds of distrust and jealousy would grow in

the breast to which she was committing them; knew that by charging Hogg at

first with nothing worse than weakness, she would be able to persuade

Harriett's boyish and fanciful husband a few weeks or months later, that

his incomparable friend was a false friend.

Whilst he was being thus educated to regard his friend with distrust and

pity, Shelley was living with his wife and her sister in Mr. Stickland's

(? Strickland's) lodging-house, Blake Street, York;--lodgings to which

they migrated from the dingy dwelling of the austere milliners, within a

day or two of Shelley's return from London. Though certain expressions of

Hogg's second volume would countenance a contrary opinion, it is not

probable that he was permitted to accompany them to this new abode. In the

absence of definite evidence to the point, it may be assumed from divers

circumstances that, whilst the newly constituted trio rested in Mr.

Stickland's house, the fourth member of the party had quarters elsewhere.

If it was so, however, Hogg was a daily visitor on uneasy terms at the

Blake Street lodging-house; talking as freely as heretofore with his

friend and Harriett, but painfully conscious that they spoke less

unreservedly with him, and that forces were in operation to sever him from

them. There seems to have been no distinct rupture between Hogg and his

friend, before the latter went off abruptly for Keswick.

It having been decided by the trio, that they must get away from York and

Hogg, they spoke openly to him of their intention to migrate to Keswick.

He was pressed to go thither with them,--pressed the more cordially

because the trio knew his legal studies and other obligations constrained

him to remain at York. But whilst telling him of their intention to go to

Keswick, and begging him to accompany them, they forbore to tell him their

real reason for selecting Keswick as their next resting place. To the

last, Hogg was under the impression that they were drawn to Keswick by the

picturesqueness and the poetical associations of the district, dwelt in

and beloved by Wordsworth and Southey, Coleridge and De Quincey; and under

the quite erroneous notion that they were pining for the beauties of

Derwentwater and the Lodore Falls, he urged them to postpone their journey

to the lovely region till a season more favourable for the enjoyment of

its scenery. 'If you dislike York,' he urged, 'and the neighbourhood of

York, so much do not remain there--quit it at once; but go to the south,

to a part of the world with which you are acquainted, and where you are

known; to a milder and more genial climate, and where you will be nearer

your supplies? Why expose youselves to the bleak north at this unkindly

season? Why go out of the way of everybody and of everything? Why go out

of the reach of money, and bury yourselves alive amongst rude and

uncivilised barbarians?' The counsel (adds Hogg bitterly and

compassionately) was offered in vain.

To Miss Westbrook the advice was only another reason why she and her young

charges should go farther north. On leaving Mr. Hogg at York, for them to

do the very thing he urged them not to do would be a fit humiliation to

the overbearing gentleman. It would show him how lightly they regarded his

opinion, and make him feel that he was the discarded one. That he might

take this view of their action was another reason with Miss Westbrook, why

he should be kept in ignorance of its chief object. When he told them,

with mingled pomposity and vehemence, that in going to Keswick they would

be going 'out of the way of everybody and everything,--out of the reach of

money,' and into the society of 'rude and uncivilised barbarians,' the

trio smiled in their sleeves at one another. And well might they do so, as

they were set on the journey because they hoped it would bring them to the

house of somebody of no common account, to society in the like of which

their monitor had never moved, and to the money which they so urgently

needed. Thinking the while of Greystoke, and the Duke of Norfolk, and the

exalted people they hoped to meet at 'the Castle,' the sisters could

scarcely keep their smiles in their sleeves, as Mr. Hogg prated of 'rude

and uncivilised barbarians.' Had he known that the march on Keswick was a

march on Greystoke Castle; that the march on the northern potentate had

for its end the conciliation of the southern powers; that instead of going

to Keswick for the pleasure of drinking tea with Southey, the trio were

going thither to fix themselves on the great Duke, who would in ten days

or a fortnight be at his northern seat, Hogg would either have refrained

from opposing the project, or would have opposed it on other grounds. It

shows how completely he had fallen out of favour with the trio, how

completely Eliza and Harriett had extruded him from Shelley's confidence,

that Hogg had no notion why his companions were set on going to the lakes

at a time when the hardiest tourists were leaving them.

From Blake Street, York, without conferring with his incomparable Hogg on

the matter, Shelley on 28th October, 1811, wrote (_vide_ _Notes and

Queries_, second series, Vol. vi., p. 405) to his father's patron, the

Duke of Norfolk, entreating his Grace to use his influence again, even as

he used it in the last spring, to mediate between the writer and his too

indignant father, and induce the same too indignant father to allow his

son a sufficient income. A letter to be looked up by readers, who have the

_Notes and Queries_ volumes on their shelves, this remarkable epistle from

the future poet to his father's patron comprises these extremely

noteworthy words:--

'... As I experienced from you such an undeserved instance of friendly

interposition in the spring, as I am well aware how much my father is

influenced by the mediation of a third person, and as I know none to

whom I could apply with greater hopes of success than to yourself, I

take the liberty of soliciting the interference of your Grace with my

father in my behalf. You have probably heard of my marriage. I am

sorry to say that it has exasperated my father to a great degree,

surely greater than is consistent with justice, for he has not only

withheld the means of subsistence which his former conduct and my

habits of life taught me to expect as reasonable and proper, but has

even refused to render me any the slightest assistance. He referred me

on application to a Mr. Whitton, whose answer to my letter vaguely

complained of the disrespectfulness of mine to my father. These

letters were calculated to make his considerations of my proceedings

less severe. My situation is consequently most unpleasant; under

these circumstances I request your Grace to convince my father of the

severity of his conduct, to persuade him that my offence is not of the

hideous nature he considers it, to induce him to allow me a sufficient

income to live with tolerable comfort. I am also particularly anxious

to defend Mr. Medwin from any accusations of aiding and assisting me,

which my father may bring against him. I am convinced that a statement

of plain truth on this head will remove any prejudice against Mr. M.

from the mind of your Grace. That he did lend me 25_l._ when I left

Field Place is most true. But it is equally true he was ignorant of my

intentions; that he was ignorant of the purposes to which I was about

to apply the money....'

Every sentence of this extract from an important letter should be

carefully weighed by the reader who would apprehend precisely the

relations of Mr. Timothy Shelley and the poet, and observe the pains taken

by the Duke of Norfolk in mediating between the father and son. The letter

shows to whose influence Shelley attributed, and no doubt justly

attributed, the quickness with which his father relented to him in the

spring. In this respect the Squire suffers in some degree from the

testimony of the epistle, which denies him the credit that would otherwise

seem due to his clemency and financial liberality to the son, who had so

recently exasperated him by rebellious extravagances. It does not follow

that left to himself the Squire would not in a somewhat longer time have

subsided from his wrath, and treated his boy with the same generosity. It

must, however, be conceded that the Duke's counsel was accountable for the

quickness with which the Squire dismissed his anger, and offered the terms

which Shelley accepted with exultation, calling the terms 'very good

ones,' when he wrote of them exultingly to Hogg in the middle of May. On

the other hand, by all who would take an impartial view of the father's

treatment of his son, it must be admitted that the Squire's readiness in

deferring to his patron on so delicate a question was creditable to his

moderation, was at least incompatible with the violent and stubborn

wrong-headedness with which he has been unfairly charged. Indicative of a

disposition to do what was right by his boy, this readiness indicates a

conscientious desire to be preserved by judicious counsel from the

vehemence of his own temper, and withheld from errors to which he might be

betrayed by the fervour of his feelings. The evidence is conclusive that

Shelley was not more quick than his father to have recourse to the Duke's

mediation; a fact which must be at least allowed to indicate a desire on

the father's part, that his behaviour to his son should be such as a fair

and high-minded arbitrator would approve. The evidence is no less

conclusive that Mr. Timothy Shelley's treatment of his son had the Duke's

approval; and that his sense of the Duke's approval caused him to look to

his patron as a friend, who would defend his paternal character from

social reprehension.

It is noteworthy that, whilst thanking the Duke for his good services of

the previous spring, Shelley speaks of the pecuniary arrangement resulting

from his Grace's intervention as a 'reasonable and proper' arrangement.

Even more noteworthy is it that, instead of attributing his father's anger

and withdrawal of the allowance to disapproval of his religious and

philosophical views, he attributes them altogether to indignation at his

marriage, and displeasure at his letters. It is not suggested by phrase or

word that the rupture was due in any degree to differences of opinion on

matters of creed. The letter's only complaint against Mr. Timothy Shelley

is that his indignation is 'greater than is consistent with justice'

(words of admission that the writer had given his father cause for

serious, though less extravagant, displeasure): the letter's only prayer

is that the Duke will address himself to the pecuniary consequence of this

displeasure. The Duke is not asked to modify the Squire's religious

intolerance, but to moderate his anger at the _mésalliance_, and induce

him to allow his son 'a sufficient income to live with tolerable comfort.'

There is no suggestion that he was shut out of his 'boyhood's home' on

account of his heterodoxy. On the contrary, the writer speaks of himself

as leaving that home of his own accord to make the match, on which he had

not spoken to his father. Writing to the Duke, who knew the truth of the

case, Shelley could not venture to be otherwise than precisely truthful on

these points. In the letter, therefore, we have Shelley's sincere view of

his relations with his father, and see how he spoke of them to

well-informed persons. By-and-by it will be seen how he wrote of those

relations to William Godwin, who did not know the truth of them.

Just two days before Shelley dated his letter (of 28th October, 1811) from

York to the Duke of Norfolk, old Sir Bysshe Shelley executed a noteworthy

codicil to the will, by which he had directed that all persons entitled to

lands, &c. (designated A in my abstract of the will), whose consent and

co-operation should be needful for the purpose of the testament, should

join in settling the same lands A precisely as the lands, &c. (designated

C) were ordered by the same will to be put in strict settlement. It was

observed in the aforementioned abstract, that the testator's grandson

(Percy Bysshe) was tenant in tail in remainder expectant on the deaths of

his father and grandfather, of two lots of real estate, designated A and

B. By the will he was required to resettle, in accordance with the

testator's purpose, the lands, &c., A; no requirement being made for the

resettlement of lands, &c., B. By the codicil, which old Sir Bysshe

executed on 26th October, 1811, it was directed that any person, being

tenant for life at the same time of A, B, and C, and every person or

persons being tenant in tail of A _and_ B, and at the same time tenant for

life of C, should settle A _and_ B _as_ C, within a year of so becoming

entitled and capable of joining in the resettlement. It was further

provided by this noteworthy codicil that, if any such entitled person or

persons should refuse or neglect to settle A and B as C, then the estates

of such person or persons and their respective issue under the will in

estates C, should be forfeited, and the remainder expectant on such

estates should be accelerated. Yet, further, it was directed by this

remarkable codicil that if, by reason of alienation or charge any person,

at the date of the codicil interested in remainder to any estate in A and

B should not be able to settle A and B _as_ C, there should then be the

same forfeiture of the estate and estates of such person and his issue

under the will, as if he had refused or neglected to settle A and B _as_

C. As this last provision was aimed directly at the future poet, though he

is not mentioned by name in the clause, and as readers of this work should

be under no uncertainty respecting the provision, by which the poet may be

said to have disinherited himself and his issue from participation in his

grandfather's very large property, it is well to put on the present page

the _ipsissima verba_ of the provision, which runs thus:--

'Provided always and I do hereby declare,' says old Sir Bysshe in this

momentous codicil, 'my will and mind to be that, if any person or

persons who is or are now entitled in remainder under or by virtue of

the said Indenture of Appointment of the twentieth day of April, one

thousand seven hundred and ninety-one, and the said Indenture of

Release of the thirtieth day of April, one thousand seven hundred and

eighty-two respectively, to any estate or estates of and in the

hereditaments therein respectively comprised hath or have or shall

alien or charge the same whereby he or they may be prevented from

making or causing to be made the resettlement hereinbefore by me

directed to be made of the said settled estates, then and in such

case, from and after the expiration of the time before limited or

mentioned for making such resettlement, the uses or use estates or

estate by my said will directed to be limited to or for the benefit of

the person or persons who hath or have so aliened or charged or shall

so alien or charge as aforesaid and his or their issue shall,

notwithstanding he or they may be personally willing to make such

resettlement as aforesaid, cease determine and become absolutely void,

and that the manors and other hereditaments by my said will devised

and directed to be settled in trust as aforesaid shall in such case

immediately thereupon go over in the same manner as I have

hereinbefore directed the same to go over in case such person or

persons had refused or neglected to make such resettlement as

aforesaid, and I do hereby expressly declare that my intentions in

respect to the resettlement of the said settled estates shall be

carried into effect by proper clauses and provisoes to be for that

purpose inserted in the settlement in and by said will directed to be

made as aforesaid.'

It is obvious that differences on questions of religion or politics were

in no degree accountable for the codicil, by which the future poet was

required to resettle the real estates, that would devolve on him

absolutely after the lives of his father and grandfather. Himself an

atheist and materialist, it mattered nothing to old Sir Bysshe, whether

his grandson believed in fifty gods or one God, or chose to deny the

existence of a supreme Deity. Himself a man of the people, the son of a

Yankee apothecary by the miller Plum's widow, old Sir Bysshe was not so

strongly prejudiced in favour of aristocratic persons and institutions, as

to be greatly incensed by his grandson's folly in wedding a publican's

pretty daughter. It was a matter of comparative indifference to the aged

cynic, whether the boy held to the Whigs, went over to the Tories, or,

declaring against both political parties, joined the red Republicans. The

one thing he required of his eldest son's eldest son, was that on coming

of age, the youngster should join in a resettlement of the settled

estates, that would make them part and parcel of the big entailed property

of the Castle Goring Shelleys. Let him be compliant on that point, and the

youngster had his grandsire's permission to be as wilful as he pleased on

all other matters. On the other hand, should he prove rebellious and

undutiful in respect to this one requirement, neither he nor his issue

should profit by the grand estate that would be created for the perpetual

dignity of the house, founded by his grandfather. For all the veteran

cared, the youngster might think, say, write, do whatever he pleased,

provided he forbore to cross the purpose of his elders on the one matter

of business. Should he refuse to exchange his larger estate in the settled

lands for a contingent life interest in them, he must be content with that

estate (which, though a comparatively small affair, was sufficient to

maintain a baronet's dignity), and forego all interest for himself and

issue in the lordly revenue, to which he would otherwise succeed in the

course of nature.

Having formed this scheme for the honour of his descendants, at a time

when he never imagined the little Brentford schoolboy might decline to

further it, Sir Bysshe was not the man to relinquish any part of his grand

ambition out of deference to the whim and wildness of an unruly stripling.

From the boy's action in wedding a girl of Harriett Westbrook's condition,

without the consent or knowledge of his parents, it was obvious to the

veteran, that his grandson's regard for the feelings and wishes of his

nearest kindred were not likely to be largely operative in determining him

to concur in the proposed resettlement of family estate. From the

circumstances of the _mésalliance_, the veteran had also reason for

thinking it probable that the youngster would raise money on his future

resources even in his minority; and, unless pressure was put upon him at

the earliest moment to resettle the estates A and B, would be under the

control of money-lenders, soon after the attainment of his majority. Hence

the old man's resolve that the strongest possible appeal should be made at

the earliest moment to the young man's self-interest to put it out of his

power to squander the estates, in which he was interested as tenant in

tail in remainder expectant. The stringent codicil was old Sir Bysshe's

answer to his grandson's mad-cap elopement; and in taking this action on

the boy's latest escapade, the founder of the poet's mushroom 'house' had

no consideration whatever for the young man's religious or political

opinions.

It is uncertain on what day the trio left York. Mr. Denis Florence

MacCarthy is certain they departed on Friday, 29th October, the day next

after the date of the epistle to the Duke of Norfolk, and perhaps the

inaccurate writer does not err on this point. Anyhow it is unquestionable

that they had left York several days, when the Duke's reply (dated 7th

November, 1811) came to Hogg's hands, and was forthwith (on the 9th or

10th of the month) forwarded to Shelley, at Keswick. Moreover, enough is

known of the droll circumstances of the departure, which may indeed be

called a flight, and of the manner in which His Grace the Duke of Norfolk

answered Shelley's judiciously worded letter.

Charles, the eleventh Duke of Norfolk, a keen politician, and methodical

man of affairs, kept a diary; and on 7th November, 1811 (when he was in

his sixty-sixth year) he made this entry in the personal record, 'Wrote to

T. Shelly that I would come to Field Place on the 10th, to confer with him

on the unhappy difference with his son, from whom I have a letter before

me.--To Mr. B. Shelley in answer that I should be glad to interfere, but

fear with little hope of success; fearing that his father, and not he

alone, will see his late conduct in a different point of view from what he

sees it.--That I propose going into the North next week, and will come to

York to see him, provided he will inform me when I may find him there.'

Written to Shelley himself, a letter of this sentiment and tone shows,

even more forcibly than the Earl of Chichester's gossiping note, written

to his official subordinate, what view the great Sussex families took of

the young gentleman's latest _escapade_. To the Duke no less than the

Earl, the marriage with the innkeeper's daughter appeared a discreditable

business; and though in writing to Shelley, he of course made no mention

of her low origin, the Duke told him frankly the marriage was an affair

about which his father had reason to be indignant. In saying the Squire

would not be singular in declining to take Shelley's view of the matter,

the Duke declared, as plainly as courtesy allowed him, that he could not

take that view. Shelley's view, as exhibited in the letter, was a mere

opinion that his father's anger exceeded just and reasonable displeasure;

and from this opinion the Duke dissented. Having in the meanwhile dined

with the angry father at Horsham, the Duke, thirteen days later (23rd

November), wrote Shelley another letter, inviting him, his wife and

sister-in-law, to Greystoke Castle, some twelve miles from Keswick. Of

this invitation, Shelley wrote on 26th November to Mr. Medwin, the Horsham

attorney, 'We dine with the Duke of N. at Graystock this week,' words

implying that this first invitation was only for dinner. On the same day

(26th November), the Duke appears from another entry of his journal to

have sent the trio a second invitation, which enabled Shelley to write on

Saturday (30th November) to the Horsham lawyer, 'We visit the Duke of N.

at Graystock to-morrow. We return to Keswick on Wednesday,' words

indicating an extension of the invitation, and a stronger disposition on

the Duke's part to befriend the young people.

What was there comical in the departure from York? Having gone to chambers

one morning under the impression that the trio would leave York on the

morrow, Hogg was not a little surprised at his dinner-hour to discover

that, whilst he was at work over legal papers, his friends had gone away

in a post-chaise for Richmond. 'When I returned to dinner, such was the

precipitation of the young votaries of the Muses, that the birds were

flown,' says Hogg, in language which, at the first glance, seems to imply

that he lived in the same house as the trio, till the moment of their

departure. But though the evidence is less than conclusive, I have grounds

for thinking that, after retiring from the dingy abode of the dingy

milliners, Shelley and the sisters rested in a tenement which Hogg did not

enter except as their visitor. If I am right on this point, it would seem

that on returning to the lodgings, where he was a daily visitor, he went

there by invitation to a farewell dinner, instead of returning to his

proper place at the common board. Anyhow it is certain that, on going to

the Blake Street lodging-house, he learnt that the friends with whom he

meant to dine had taken their departure. The birds had flown, to Hogg's

surprise and perplexity. Had they at the last moment changed their plans?

or had they gone away in accordance with pre-arrangements, that had been

withheld from him? The blood may well have brightened Hogg's cheek, as he

asked himself these questions. His annoyance was not diminished by the

short note left for him by the fugitives, who merely informed him they

were off to Keswick, and would pass the next night at Richmond, whither he

had better follow them speedily, if he would attend them to the lakes.

As the trio knew he could not leave York, it was impossible for Hogg to

regard their invitation as sincere or flattering. Moreover, he could not

be indifferent to the signal affront they had offered him in running away

without a word of farewell. That the incident was Miss Westbrook's work he

had no doubt; that Mrs. Shelley was an accomplice in her sister's scheme

for his humiliation he may well have suspected. Nor could he acquit

Shelley of being a partner to the insult. It is thus that human schemes

miscarry, and human hopes perish into disappointments. For months Shelley

had looked forward to the pleasure of settling in York, and living there

'for ever,' with his incomparable Hogg and his dearest Harriett. What was

the end of this scheme for perpetual felicity? After so brief a stay in

the ancient city, Shelley was posting to Richmond with his wife and

sister-in-law, in order to get away from the friend whom he had been so

quickly taught to think a dangerous companion for his childish wife.

In the absence of conclusive testimony, the known circumstances of the

flight admit of several different explanations, provoke many curious

conjectures. One may imagine that Shelley, Harriett, and Miss Westbrook,

were confederates on equal terms, and in perfect mutual confidence, for

Hogg's humiliation. Or one may conceive Shelley was not admitted to the

confidence of the ladies, until they had arranged all the particulars of

the departure. Readers are at liberty to imagine no deception was

practised by the trio, or any person of the trio, on Hogg, when he was

informed the departure would be made twenty-four hours later. It is

conceivable the suddenness of the departure was no less real to the

fugitives than apparent to Hogg. Possibly no one of the three was aware

two hours before the departure that they would sleep the next night at

Richmond. Shelley may have been looking for days to the particular hour at

which his chaise eventually rattled out of Blake Street, as the particular

hour at which he would start from York. His taste for making mysteries

about nothing would countenance an opinion that he misled Hogg as to the

pre-appointed day. It makes little for the contrary opinion that, writing

ten days or so later from Keswick, he declared himself to have had no part

in concerting the departure from York, or the later departure from

Richmond. On the other hand, it is conceivable he was carried off at a

moment's notice and in high excitement from York by his clever and

irresistible sister-in-law. There are divers other points of this

business, in respect to which the ingenious reader may be left in the free

exercise of his imagination, and at perfect liberty to think what he

pleases.

My own hypothetical view of the business is, that Shelley was kept almost

to the last moment in ignorance of the time appointed for the departure;

that on this matter he was in the confidence neither of his sister-in-law

nor of his wife during the last days of his sojourn at York; that, in

respect to this affair, Harriett submitted to the judgment and will of her

elder sister, who was for the moment the controlling member of the trio;

and that in thus concealing part of her intentions from Harriett's boyish

husband, Miss Westbrook was actuated partly by malice against Hogg, and

partly by prudent regard for the difficulties she might reasonably

anticipate in tearing the incomparable Hogg and the incomparable Shelley

asunder, when the moment for severance should arrive. Playing her game no

less cautiously than boldly, Miss Westbrook (whilst at York) could not

venture to do more for the severance of the friends, than to hint to

Shelley that Harriett had been placed in a false and embarrassing position

towards Hogg, that one consequence of this false position was Hogg's

inordinate and inconvenient admiration of Harriett, that, without doing

anything distinctly culpable (Harriett's goodness precluding any such

contingency), Hogg had been too demonstrative of a far too affectionate

interest in his friend's wife. The sum of the maiden lady's case against

her 'enemy' at York was, that he had been wanting in discretion and

delicacy and chivalric self-control. At York she could not go much beyond

this in her statements to Hogg's discredit, without inspiring her pupil

with suspicions of his wife's delicacy and discretion; and to urge only

thus much in support of her counsel for prompt withdrawal from Hogg's

society, was to forbear from stirring Shelley to resentments, that would

at once put it out of his friend's power to keep him at York in opposition

to her wish and purpose. Hence, Miss Westbrook had reason to apprehend

Shelley might even at the last hour decline to quit York, unless she

eventually effected her object in his friend's absence, and with an

abruptness for which neither of the young men was prepared. It is

therefore conceivable that four-and-twenty hours before he intended to

leave the city, Shelley was surprised by his sister-in-law with an

announcement that Harriett's nerves required them to clear out of York

instantly. To the execution of such a _coup-de-main_, the aggrieved and

angry lady would also be strongly moved by a desire to inflict sharp

annoyance on her adversary. This hypothesis accords with Shelley's

emphatic assertion that the flight from York was no affair of his

arrangement.

That Shelley did not leave York in any mood of vehement animosity against

Hogg, or with any disposition to accuse him of serious misconduct towards

Harriett, is shown by the affectionate warmth with which he wrote from

Keswick to his incomparable friend. 'You were surprised,' he wrote

immediately after his arrival at Keswick, 'at our sudden departure; I have

no time, however, _now_ either to account for it or enter into an

investigation which we agreed upon.--With real, true interest, I

constantly think of you, believe me, my friend, so sincerely am I attached

to you.'

A few days later Shelley wrote to his friend at York:--'We all greatly

regret that "your own interests, your own real interests," should compel

you to remain at York. But pray, write often; your last letter I have

read, as I would read your soul.... Yours most affectionately, most

unalterably, ...' In another of his undated letters from Keswick to his

friend at York, Shelley writes in this vein of affectionateness:--'If I

thought we were to be long parted, I should be wretchedly miserable,--half

mad!... Cannot you follow us?--why not? But I will dare to be good,--dare

to be virtuous; and I will soon seize once more what I have for a while

relinquished, never, never again to resign it.' In another letter, Shelley

says to his friend at York:--'I did not concert my departure from

Richmond, nor that from York. Why did I leave you? I have never doubted

you,--you, the brother of my soul, the object of my vivid interest; the

theme of my impassioned panegyric.' In another letter he writes to his

friend:--'I do not know that absence will certainly cure love; but this I

know, that it fearfully augments the intensity of friendship.' These

passages from letters which, though undated, were obviously written in the

time between the future poet's first arrival at Keswick and his visit to

Greystoke,--letters affording evidence that, during the earlier weeks of

the residence at Keswick, Hogg was writing to Harriett with her husband's

cognizance and approval, epistles which she submitted to his approval.

Possibly the trio would have tarried a few days longer at York, had they

not felt it would favour their designs on Greystoke Castle that they

should be at Keswick, when the Duke's reply to Shelley's appeal (of

October 28th) should come to their hands. Knowing the Duke would be

journeying to Cumberland in the course of the next month (November, 1811),

the trio had reason for hoping his Grace would propose to see them on his

way through York. On receiving this expression of the ducal pleasure, it

would be well for them to be already at Keswick, so that the meeting

should take place in the neighbourhood of Greystoke, if not _at_ the

Castle itself. Anyhow, they were at Keswick when the Duke's offer (7th

November, 1811) to see Shelley at York came to the hands of the

conspirators, whose reply (dated from Keswick) may be said to have forced

the Squire's patron to invite them to his Cumberland place--barely twelve

miles from that town. That the Duke, on the 23rd of November, invited the

trio to meet him at the Castle appears from his diary; but this first

invitation seems to have been regarded by the adventurers as nothing more

than an invitation to dinner. 'We dine,' Shelley wrote to Mr. Medwin, of

Horsham, on 26th November, 1811, 'with the Duke of N. at Graystock this

week.' A few hours later he received the letter from Greystoke, which

enabled him on the last day of the month to write to the same

correspondent:--'We visit the Duke of N. at Graystock to-morrow. We return

to Keswick on Wednesday.'

Coming to them at a time when they had reason to be thankful for small

mercies, the Duke's second invitation may be supposed to have cheered the

trio, whose spirits had been already raised from the deepest dejection by

another reassuring incident. Influenced possibly by prompt intelligence

that his daughters had been invited to the Duchess of Norfolk's

dinner-table, Mr. Westbrook had sent his son-in-law a few pounds. The gift

may have been accompanied (as Shelley, in his letter of November 30th to

the Horsham attorney, avers it to have been) with an intimation that it

was not to be regarded as the first of a series of similar benefactions;

but, however guarded and qualified it may have been with cautious words,

the remittance was an occasion for thankfulness to the trio, who had for

several days needed money for their immediate necessities. Enabling them

to pay their few debts in Keswick, the gift enabled them to go to

Greystoke, albeit (to use the future poet's words) the visit was paid

almost with their very last guinea.

Going to the Castle on Sunday, 1st December, 1811, for three nights, the

trio stayed there for eight or nine days;--an extension of the visit

which, whilst certainly indicative of the Duke's growing disposition to

befriend the young couple, may also be thought to indicate that he and the

Duchess were favourably impressed by John Westbrook's daughters. Seeing in

her rare beauty a palliation of the youngster's reckless act, the host and

hostess must have been surprised by the charm of Harriett's simplicity,

the music of her voice, the refinement of her tone. At a glance it was

obvious to them she was no saucy barmaid. Before the Sunday dinner was

over, they saw she was one of those girls of lowly origin, who under

auspicious influences may win the confidence and love of the high-born.

Though she lacked her sister's manifold charms, it was no less manifest to

the Duke and Duchess that, instead of being such a young woman as the mere

knowledge of her father's calling had predisposed them to find her, Miss

Westbrook was a person of education and cleverness who might figure

creditably in the drawing-rooms of the subordinate Sussex gentry. And in

their judgment of Shelley's womankind, the Duke and Duchess had the

concurrence of the several other gentle people who were staying in the

Castle,--of Lady Musgrave, of Edenhall and Hartley Castle, Co. Cumberland;

James Brougham, brother of Henry, the future Lord Chancellor; and Mr.

Calvert, of Greta Bank, near Keswick, a Cumberland squire, who, differing

widely from Mr. Timothy Shelley in mental and moral characteristics, seems

to have stood towards the Duke of Norfolk in Cumberland somewhat in the

same relation in which the Sussex Squire stood to his Grace in the

southern county.

Why did the Duke of Norfolk show so much concern and take so much trouble

in the domestic affairs of Field Place? This question should be answered

precisely, as the extravagant notions of the poet's ancestral quality are

mainly referable to misconceptions respecting the nature of the

intercourse of the ducal Howards and the Castle Goring Shelleys. Having

taken Sir Bysshe and the Squire of Field Place under his protection, and

in a certain sense into his familiar friendship, the Duke was doubtless

moved to trouble himself about the Squire's dealings with the future poet,

by a genuine desire for Mr. Timothy Shelley's welfare. Nor can it be

questioned that the powerful noble was influenced at the same time by

affectionate interest in the youth, whose cordial looks and bearing, ever

conciliatory to strangers and slight acquaintances, were none the less

pleasing to the Duke, because the boy's manner towards his father's patron

was gracefully expressive of ingenuous reverence for the age, experience,

and rank of so august a personage. But it would be a mistake to suppose

his Grace's treatment of the Shelleys was chiefly due to these amiable and

altogether disinterested motives. A keen politician, who was charged by

his enemies with sacrificing his religious convictions to his political

interests, the Duke cared for men in proportion as he saw they might be

serviceable to his ambition. Having raised the Shelleys to a higher grade

of local quality, because they could be useful to him, the Duke continued

to cherish them for the same end. The mushroom house, which he had

dignified with the bloody hand, was dear to the Duke as an instrument for

advancing his own greatness, and promoting the grandeur of the Howards. To

such a patron the estate, which at any moment might devolve on the Member

for New Shoreham, represented money and influence that would be employed

by the second baronet at elections for the advantage of the Norfolk

connexion. The estate that might come to-morrow to the Squire of Field

Place was so much social power that, two or three years later, might, by a

gun-accident, a fall in the hunting-field, a violent and fatal illness,

pass from Sir Bysshe's son to the unruly boy, who under the new

circumstances might be no less serviceable to the Howards than his father

promised to be. In Squire Timothy the Duke had a loyal adherent and

thorough Whig partisan; in the Squire's boy, who had come to grief at

Oxford and made a runaway match with an innkeeper's daughter, the Duke saw

a youngster who, after running through the fever of red-republicanism, and

surviving his freakish infidelity, would take sober views of politics and

religion, and settle down into as good a Whig as his father, and on

nearing middle-age be more desirous of ranking with the peers than with

the poets of his country. Hence the pains taken by his Grace last spring

to mediate between the father and son, to induce the former to give his

boy a sufficient allowance, and to talk the latter into a disposition to

live quietly and with due regard for his ultimate interests, until he

should be of an age to enter Parliament and sit there like a sensible

fellow for a pocket-borough. Hence also the Duke's readiness to act again

as mediator between the angry sire and contumacious son. The same view

must be taken of the Duke's condescension,--and, an even more remarkable

fact, the Duchess's condescension,--in asking John Westbrook's daughters

to Greystoke Castle.

As he lived at Greta Bank, less than a mile from the town of Keswick, and

was at home when the trio became his near neighbours, it is not surprising

that Mr. Calvert had made Shelley's acquaintance before meeting him at the

Duke of Norfolk's table. An observant and energetic man, ever vigilant of

the life, and keenly interested in the improvements, of his neighbourhood,

the Squireen of Greta Bank was certain, under any circumstances, to hear

of the arrival of so singular a party of tourists within a fortnight of

their coming to the town, at so inclement a season. It is, however,

probable that the Duke of Norfolk's useful neighbour at Keswick was the

sooner cognizant of the strangers and their proceedings, because he had

been asked by his Grace to be on the look-out for them. Circumstances

indeed warrant something more than a suspicion that Harriett and her

sister were not invited to Greystoke till the Duke had learnt from Mrs.

Calvert that John Westbrook's daughters had the looks and manners of

gentlewomen. Anyhow Shelley and Harriett had encountered Mr. Calvert on

the hills about Keswick before meeting him at the Castle; and on talking

with him at Greystoke it was soon apparent to the future poet that much of

his private affairs had come to the knowledge of his new acquaintance. The

'elderly man,' whose looks impressed Shelley so agreeably, may be presumed

to have gained his surprising knowledge of the youngster's concerns from

the Duke of Norfolk. Other circumstances indicate that, before the

Shelleys came to Greystoke, the Duke and his useful neighbour had

conferred together on what had better be done for the suitable

entertainment of the adventurers from Southern England.

The results of the march on Keswick justified the enterprise from which

Hogg had vainly tried to dissuade the trio. Whilst Harriett's rare beauty

and simple girlishness palliated to her august host and hostess the

_escapade_ that had stirred the Squire of Field Place to natural

indignation, Shelley's speech was no less conciliatory than the tone of

his letter to his father's patron. If she did little to enhance the effect

of her sister's loveliness and her brother-in-law's discreet behaviour,

Miss Westbrook was by no means the combative and offensive person she had

shown herself to Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg at York. The young woman, who

ruled her brother-in-law for many months, was clever enough to appear a

fairly sensible and meritorious person for a few days to the Duchess of

Norfolk and Lady Musgrave. Having consented to receive the trio under his

roof, the Duke could not have declined to befriend them any further, even

if they had offended him. But the prolongation of the visit to the ninth

day is conclusive evidence that the visitors won the favour of their

entertainers. Another and even stronger indication of ducal benignity

appears in the arrangement that was made (certainly with the Duke's

approval, and probably at his instance) for providing the trio with a

comfortable home during their sojourn at Keswick, where they seemed likely

to linger to a time considerably later than the day, on which they

eventually started from Cumberland for Ireland.

Before the visit at Greystoke came to an end, it was settled that the trio

should move from their (second) uncomfortable lodgings in Keswick to rooms

under Mr. Calvert's roof at Greta Bank, to which the Duke's useful

neighbour agreed to welcome them in the twofold character of guests and

lodgers;--as guests receiving Mrs. Calvert's hospitable courtesies, and at

the same time as lodgers rendering their entertainer a payment, that would

enable them to live in his house for a considerable period (for several

months, even for two or three years) without incurring an oppressive sense

of pecuniary obligation. That a gentleman of Mr. Calvert's social position

consented to receive the trio on these terms is of itself a clear

indication, that the domiciliary arrangement was expected to last for more

than a few weeks. It is also conceivable that the Duke approved the

pecuniary arrangement as a compact, that would render it easier for him to

induce Mr. Timothy Shelley to renew the yearly allowance to his son. On

hearing that his son and daughter-in-law had been received on such terms

by one of his patron's friends, the Squire of Field Place would of course

feel it incumbent on his honour to put his son in a position to fulfil his

pecuniary obligations to the Duke's friend. This view of the pecuniary

arrangement, and of the effect it could not fail to have on Mr. Timothy

Shelley, accords with the ungracious terms in which the renewal of the

allowance was soon afterwards announced to Shelley by his father's man of

business. Writing on 28th January, 1812, to William Godwin, Shelley says

of his father's action in this matter, 'A little time since he sent to me

a letter, through his attorney, renewing an allowance of two hundred

pounds per annum, but with this remark "that his sole reason for so doing

was to prevent my cheating strangers."' The strangers thus pointed to in

the lawyer's letters were doubtless the strangers (Mr. and Mrs. Calvert)

who had taken the trio into their house.

The date of this letter, whose needless offensiveness (offensiveness, by

the way, that may have been exaggerated by Shelley) was perhaps referable

to the attorney's ill-breeding rather than the Squire's harshness, is

unknown; but it may be assumed that the allowance was renewed soon after

the arrangement with the Squire of Greta Bank came to Mr. Timothy

Shelley's knowledge, _i.e._ within two months of its withdrawal. The

Squire of Field Place having thus again given his son an income (revocable

at will) of 200_l._ per annum, Mr. Westbrook (no doubt mollified and

flattered by the Duchess of Norfolk's civility to his daughters) appears

to have determined to act with equal liberality to his daughter Harriett

and to raise her husband's annual revenue to 400_l._ It has been

questioned by successive biographers whether John Westbrook acted thus

liberally. Even by Mr. Rossetti (an authority, from whom I never venture

to differ without carefully reviewing the facts) it is doubted whether the

poet had so good an income during his first marriage. But I see no grounds

for thinking his yearly income in that term of his career was less than

400_l._

Shelley had no obvious motive to overstate his means to William Godwin and

Miss Hitchener in 1812. On the contrary, there were considerations that

would dispose him to understate his income to those correspondents. Yet he

assured both of them in that year that he had a yearly allowance of

400_l._ Writing on 14th January, 1812, on information given him by

Shelley, Southey says Mrs. Shelley's father allowed her and her husband

200_l._ a-year. A fortnight later (28th January, 1812) Shelley in the

letter to Godwin, speaks of his father's renewal ('a little time since')

of 'an allowance of two hundred pounds per annum.' On the 14th of the next

month Shelley wrote to Miss Hitchener that he had '400_l._ per annum.'

Five months later (5th July, 1812) he wrote from Lynmouth, North Devon, to

William Godwin, 'I am, as you know, a minor, and as such depend upon a

limited income (400_l._ per annum) allowed me by my relatives.' During

the three first months of his married life (_i.e._ the months preceding

the renewal of his father's 200_l._ a-year and his father-in-law's first

concession of a similar allowance) Shelley received considerably more than

100_l._ from different sources (_i.e._ 25_l._ from Mr. Medwin, spent on

the charges of the elopement; 10_l._ from Hogg; 75_l._ sent to him at

Edinburgh; the money [say 25_l._] provided by Miss Westbrook for expenses

at York and the journey to Keswick; and the 'small sum' [say another

25_l._] sent to him at Keswick towards the end of November by Mr.

Westbrook,--sums amounting to 160_l._) There is no reason to suppose that

Mr. Timothy Shelley withheld the allowance of 200_l._ a-year after its

renewal, or that Mr. Westbrook failed to give the other 200_l._ a-year,

till the poet's rupture with his first wife in the spring of 1814. Surely

then there are good grounds for saying Shelley had at least four hundred

a-year from the date of his first marriage to the time of his quarrel with

Harriett:--an income (equivalent to 600_l._ or 700_l._ a-year at the

present time) that certainly acquits Mr. Timothy Shelley of the charges of

scandalous and hurtful niggardliness to his perplexing and contumacious

son.

Further evidence to the same conclusion is afforded by Shelley's way of

living throughout the period, when he is generally supposed to have

suffered severely from insufficient means. So long as he tarried under Mr.

Calvert's roof he lived well within his average monthly income; but with

the exception of this brief period of about three months, Shelley's way of

living from the September of 1811 to the midsummer of 1814 was a way in

which he could not have persisted on less than 400_l._, even if no regard

is had to the costly extravagances with which he indulged his wife in the

later and inharmonious months of their conjugal association. To subsist on

200_l._ or 300_l._ a-year, it would have been necessary for Shelley and

Harriett to live in one place and in the same small house, practising the

petty domestic economies by which a little money may be made to go a long

way. But instead of living in this manner, they chose a life of restless

vagrancy--a way of living that of all modes of existence is the one most

impoverishing to gentle folk of limited means. Economical in clothing and

parsimonious in diet, they were prodigal in travelling expenses. Wandering

hither and thither, from London to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to York, from

York to Keswick, from Keswick to the Isle of Man, from the Isle of Man to

Dublin, from Dublin to Wales, from Wales back to Ireland, now lingering at

Killarney, and now worshiping Nature in North Wales, they were incessant

tourists at a time when touring (in respect to charges of locomotion) was

far costlier than in these later years of grace. As tourists in Scotland,

Ireland, Wales and England, and in a later stage of their joint-career as

strangers in London, they spent yearly on hotel-keepers and

lodginghouse-keepers twice the sum that would have maintained a cottage

with two servants and a pony carriage in a Sussex village. At the same

time it must be remembered that, though he seldom spent a shilling for

pleasures on which young men of his degree are apt to spend many pounds,

Shelley was by no means a man without 'personal expenses.' Giving much to

beggars and other victims of distress, he was an habitual buyer of books,

and in the execution of his literary enterprises, spent much on printers.

Though he rarely bought wine, he often bought a costlier drink--laudanum,

for his own drinking. How could he live in this way on 400_l._ a-year? Of

course his expenses exceeded 400_l._ a-year. Of course in his wanderings

he resembled the eighteenth-century poet, who dragged at each remove a

lengthening chain of debt. But how could he have met the immediate,

urgent, unavoidable and not-to-be-deferred charges of such incessant

touring on less than four hundred a-year?

CHAPTER XVII.

GRETA BANK.

Shelley wishes for a Sussex Cottage--His Friends at Keswick--Southey

at Home--Poet and Schoolmaster--Southey's Way of handling

Shelley--Shelley caught Napping--Mrs. Southey's Tea-cakes--Eggs and

Bacon on Hounslow Heath--At Home with the Calverts--Shelley's

remarkable Communications to Southey--His Story of Harriett's

Expulsion from School--The Story to Hogg's Infamy--Mr. MacCarthy on

the _Posthumous Fragments_--Miss Westbrook's transient

Contentment--Shelley's _For Ever_ and _Never_--His Interest in

Ireland--Burning Questions--Southey and Shelley at War--The _Address

to the Irish People_--Letters to Skinner Street--Godwin tickled by

them--Shelleyan Conceptions and Misconceptions--Shelley forgets all

about Dr. Lind--Preparations for the Irish Campaign--Letter of

Introduction to Curran--Project for a happy Meeting in Wales--Miss

Eliza Hitchener--Bright Angel and Brown Demon--Shelley's Delight in

her--His Abhorrence of her.

From Shelley's letter of 26th November, 1811, to Mr. Medwin, of Horsham,

it appears that the trio came to Keswick with the purpose of journeying

southward, and settling in some picturesque nook of Sussex, when they

should have succeeded or failed in the main object of their expedition to

the Lake country. The Horsham attorney was instructed to look out for a

cottage, adapted to their means and requirements, near St. Leonard's

forest or in any other part of the county, where they would be at a

distance from soldiers and workshops, and have rural quietude with good

scenery.

It would have been well, perhaps, for Shelley and his chances of domestic

contentment, had they held to this plan, and settling down in a peaceful

Sussex village, avoided the life of comfortless vagrancy, in which he

spent the rest of his life. It would have been better still, perhaps, both

for him and Harriett, had they been content to lead tranquil and studious

days at Greta Bank for two or three years in the society of the Southeys

at Keswick, of De Quincey and Wordsworth at Grasmere, of Coleridge and

John Wilson. But it was not in his nature, nor, perhaps, was it possible

to a young woman of her peculiar temper, to be happy for many months

together, in any place that wanted the charm of novelty. Anyhow, instead

of biding his time at Greta Bank till De Quincey and Wordsworth, Coleridge

and Wilson, had come about them, Shelley surrendered the advantages of the

home, that had been provided for him by ducal favour, and left Cumberland

at the beginning of February without making any acquaintances at Keswick

with the exception of the Calverts from whom he parted regretfully, and

the Southeys from whom he parted in no kindly temper.

Either through the carelessness of the original writer (who may have made

the common mistake of pre-dating the epistle by an entire month), or

through the carelessness of the copyist of the document, a wrong date

(10th October, 1811) is given in Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy's _Shelley's

Early Life_, to the extract from an unpublished letter, in which the

poetical aspirant says of the author of _Thalaba_, 'Southey hates the

Irish; he speaks against Catholic Emancipation. In all these things we

differ. Our differences were the subject of a long conversation.' As

Shelley had not seen Southey on 10th October, 1811, as he made Southey's

acquaintance at Keswick, which he entered for the first time on some day

of the following month (November, 1811), he cannot have talked in the

earlier days of October, 1811, with the celebrated man of letters on

questions touching Catholic Emancipation and the discontents of the Irish

Catholics. The long conversation and differences about those topics may

have been affairs of November, but it is more probable that the famous

poet and the unknown literary aspirant had no angry altercations about

Ireland's wrongs and Robert Emmett's story before the last month of 1811.

It is, however, certain that they differed on these subjects, and that

their differences of opinion were fruitful of overbearing speech on

Southey's part,--and of much vehement and bitter speech from Shelley.

Shelley came to Keswick with a disposition to have the friendliest

relations with the man of letters who two years since had been his

favourite English poet, and whom he regarded as a great man till personal

intercourse extinguished the favourable opinion. And whilst Shelley went

to 'the lakes' in a mood to render homage to Southey's greatness, Southey

was by no means disinclined to receive the homage in those portions of his

laborious time, in which he condescended to have speech with inferior

mortals. But, notwithstanding Shelley's readiness to admire and Southey's

readiness to be admired, no one familiar with their peculiar infirmities

of intellect and temper would have predicted that the two men would prove

congenial companions. In return for his worship and deference, the

vehement and romantic Shelley looked for encouragement and sympathy from

the famous scholar and poet. Hoping for a cordial welcome to the great

man's heart and library, Shelley was reprimanded with a look of mingled

surprise and displeasure for his presumption in taking books from the

great man's shelves. The welcome accorded to him by the man of fame was

attended with limitations and conditions. The house was open to him, but

only at times when the master could see him. The library was open to him

for the perusal of such books as their owner put into his hands, or rather

for such passages of them as were submitted to his consideration. Eager

for approval and acutely sensitive of disrespect, the youngster was quick

to perceive that Southey listened to his words with supercilious curiosity

and amusement, and in replying to them felt himself talking to an

intellectual inferior,--to a mere whimsical scatterbrain singularly devoid

of mental discretion; to a youth whose exuberant speech ran on matters of

which he knew very little. Taking this view of his young friend, Southey

(whose dictatorial air and eloquence had, in his thirty-eighth year,

assumed all the overbearing insolence that distinguished him in later

time) gave his young friend much equally wholesome and unacceptable

admonition, that would have been less ineffectual for good and far less

effectual for harm, had it been given in a less offensive manner.

Whilst he never failed to take something more than his proper share of the

conversation, in whatever company he found himself at this period of his

life, the argumentative Shelley liked to imagine he controlled the minds

of the listeners, who were more often silenced than swayed by his

excessive loquacity. With comical and characteristic self-complacence he

wrote of Mr. Calvert and the Duke of Norfolk's other guests, soon after

the visit to Greystoke Castle, 'We met several people at the Duke's. One

in particular struck me. He was an elderly man, who seemed to know all my

concerns, and the expression of his face, whenever I held the argument,

_which I do everywhere_, was such as I shall not readily forget.' The

young gentleman who, 'holding the argument everywhere,' pursued his

customary course even in the presence of ducal quality, met in Southey's

house with an entertainer, no less fond of holding the argument; with a

host not at all disposed to be overtalked by a boy, barely half his own

age. In Southey, the poet usually went hand-in-hand with the pedagogue;

but in his dealings with Shelley, the poet disappeared in the pedagogue,

the scholar merged in the schoolmaster,--sometimes in the angry

schoolmaster. Instead of withdrawing into silence, Southey met the

youngster's vehement assertions with scornful counterstatements, traversed

his arguments with caustic speech that turned them to ridicule, or raising

his voice poured upon him torrents of invective, that only stung and

lashed the beardless disputant to wilder extravagances of speech.

Some of Southey's donnish ways to the irrepressible lad were superlatively

exasperating. One of the schoolmaster's tricks was to stop the course of

controversy by taking down a book, opening it, and reading a passage in a

tone, which implied that the quotation closed the discussion for all

minds, accessible to reason. At other times, when Shelley had talked

himself purple, this exasperating Southey was content to remark in a tone

of galling pity and tenderness, 'No doubt, no doubt; I thought and spoke

in just the same way when I was your age.' Few forms of dissent are more

irritating to a callow disputant than a suggestion that he thinks what he

thinks and says what he says, merely because he is very young and

inexperienced. Whilst Southey was writing with sublime compassionateness

of the young 'man at Keswick, who acted upon him as his own ghost would,'

Shelley wrote from Greta Bank to a correspondent, whose personal

acquaintance he had still to make:--'Southey, the poet, whose principles

were pure and elevated once, is now the paid champion of every abuse and

absurdity. I have had much conversation with him. He says, "You will think

as I do when you are as old." I do not feel the least disposition to be

Mr. S.'s proselyte.' Recalling how he had dealt and differed with Shelley

in Keswick, Southey (_vide_ _The Correspondence of Robert Southey with

Caroline Bowles_, 1881) wrote to the author of _Laon and Cythna_ in June,

1820:--'Eight years ago you were somewhat displeased when I declined

disputing with you on points which are beyond the reach of the human

intellect,--telling you that the great difference between us was, that

you were then nineteen and I was eight-and-thirty.' Southey's letter about

his own ghost was dated 14th January, 1812; Shelley's letter to Godwin,

about 'the poet, whose principles were pure and elevated once,' was dated

just two days later, 16th January, 1812. Whilst Shelley was nothing more

respectable to Southey than a young simpleton of parts, who might survive

his folly and become a sensible man, Southey was nothing less contemptible

in Shelley's eyes than a literary hireling, who defended every abuse and

absurdity he was ordered to defend.

Few were the words spoken in later time to Southey's advantage, many the

words spoken to his ridicule, by the younger poet, with whom he had

wrangled so hotly on the marge of Derwentwater. One of Shelley's stories,

to his enemy's discredit, was the droll account of the way he was led by

Southey into his little upstairs study, locked into the narrow chamber,

and then 'read' into unconsciousness by his merciless captor; the thing

thus read to the captive's stupefaction being one of the captor's poems in

manuscript. Charmed with the beauties of his own creation, the author read

on slowly and distinctly, till the listener would fain have escaped from

the scene of his punishment; read on till the listener nodded from

drowsiness, instead of approval; read on till the whilom unwilling

listener had ceased to listen; read on till the same whilom listener slipt

from his seat to the floor; and still read on till, on looking up from his

manuscript for something more flattering than silent admiration, he looked

in vain for him who should have given it. The Southey of this comical

anecdote may well have been surprised at the listener's unaccountable

disappearance. How had he escaped?--Not by the door, for it was locked;

nor by the window, for it was barred; nor by the chimney, for it was too

narrow. The poet's wonder at the listener's disappearance was exchanged

for wonder at his insensibility and indifference to what was loveliest in

poetic art, when, on looking under the table, he discovered the whilom

listener, lying at full length on the carpet, and wrapt in profoundest

slumber. It is suggested by the humorous Hogg that, if Shelley had kept

his chair and consciousness, during the reading of the long poem, he would

never have been placed by the naturally indignant bard on the roll of the

Satanic School.

Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy, by the way, discovers cause for virtuous

indignation at Hogg's monstrous untruthfulness, in representing that the

poem, which acted thus soporifically on Shelley, was _The Curse of

Kehama_. The poem of _The Curse_ had been published long before Shelley

set foot in Southey's house. Even whilst he was at Oxford, Shelley had

taken from a printed copy of _The Curse_ four lines to serve as a motto

for the title-page of his own sublime and undiscoverable poem (that

possibly was never written), _On the Existing State of Things_. It is

infinitely absurd to suppose Southey read in manuscript one of his _old_

poems to Shelley at Keswick. In saying Southey was guilty of this offence,

Hogg said what was untrue. It follows that Hogg was a reckless writer,

false biographer, and bad man. The fun of the matter is that Hogg does not

say the poem was The Curse of Kehama. On the contrary, he is at pains to

say he is uncertain whether it was _The Curse_, or some other of the

poet's metrical performances. 'The poem, if I mistake not, was _The Curse

of Kehama_,' are the words of the biographer, who is so rashly assailed

for inaccuracy, though in his mere repetition of Shelley's piquant

anecdote, he is so careful to say the poem of the story may _not_ have

been the _Curse_. It is thus that, in his passion for defaming Hogg, Mr.

Denis Florence MacCarthy pelts him with any stone, or stick, or bit of

dirt that comes to hand.

The incident of the story, if it was a real one, cannot be supposed to

have taken place when Mrs. Southey regaled the stranger from southern

England with the tea-cakes, which he devoured so ravenously, after abusing

them with the vehemence of unqualified prejudice. Had he at that time

offered her husband the affront of going to sleep at the poetical-reading,

the lady would scarcely have pressed Shelley so cordially to partake of

the tea and hot buttered tea-cakes, blushing with currants, or sprinkled

with caraway seed, with which she and her poet were regaling themselves,

at the close of washing-day.

'Why! good God, Southey!' the younger poet is reported to have exclaimed,

with a look of disgust at the unromantic fare, 'I am ashamed of you! It is

awful, horrible, to see such a man as you are, greedily devouring this

nasty stuff.'

'Nasty stuff, indeed!' cried Mrs. Southey. 'How dare you call my tea-cakes

nasty stuff?'

To assuage the lady's wrath, Shelley scanned the cakes, sniffed their

savour, took up a piece of one of them, and ate it. Scent and palate

convincing Shelley that it was an occasion for prompt recantation of a

sentiment formed from the mere appearance of things, he went to work at

the remaining tea-cakes, devouring them even more greedily than Southey.

Another plate of the hot and buttered cakes being brought to the board,

Shelley took something more than his full share of them, and was hoping

for the appearance of yet a third plate, when he learnt that more could

not be had, the whole batch having been eaten to the last fragment and

crumb. Hogg had the story of Mrs. Southey's tea-cakes from Harriett

(Westbrook) Shelley, who added, naïvely, 'We were to have hot tea-cakes

every evening "for ever." I was to make them myself, and Mrs. Southey was

to teach me.'