alternate abstemiousness and self-indulgence in food. Resembling Byron in
habitual abstinence and indifference to the quality of the fare that
sustained him, Shelley also resembled Byron in occasional acts of feasting
that might almost be called excesses of greediness. Hogg gives a piquant
account of a meal Shelley made off eggs and bacon, in the parlour of a
humble inn on Hounslow Heath, at a time subsequent to his union with
William Godwin's daughter, when, as a vegetarian, he had for a
considerable period regarded pork with abhorrence. Entering the modest
tavern, at a moment when Hogg was about to assail a goodly dish of the
gross and abominable meat, the hungry poet eyed the bacon with disgust,
looked at it with curiosity, sniffed its alluring savour, regarded it
longingly, just as he had in former time regarded Mrs. Southey's
tea-cakes. 'So this is bacon,' he observed daintily, taking a morsel of
the meat on the end of a fork, and putting it into his mouth. Having
tasted fat, he fell from the purity of abstinence to the uncleanness of
carnal enjoyment. Having consumed a liberal portion of his friend's dish,
he ordered another dish on his own account, and devoured it voraciously.
Sharpened with what it fed upon, his appetite caused him to cry aloud,
'Bring more bacon;' an order that was speedily followed by the appearance
of a third dish. After despatching this third dish, the poet demanded a
fourth, when to his lively annoyance he learnt there was no more bacon in
the house. It was debated whether the landlady should not be sent to
Staines for more bacon; but Hogg prevailed on his friend to put a bridle
on fleshly appetite, and set forth for his cottage at Bishopgate and
Mary's well-furnished tea-table. On coming to that tea-table, Shelley
astonished his wife by exclaiming eagerly, 'We have been eating bacon
together on Hounslow Heath, and do you know it was very nice? Cannot we
have bacon here, Mary?' On hearing he could not have bacon till the
morrow, but must for the present be content with tea and bread and butter,
the poet replied plaintively, 'I would rather have some more bacon.' When
a worthy book shall be written on the Feasts of the Poets, it will not
fail to tell how Byron, after long spells of fasting, used to devour huge
messes of broken potato and stale fish, drenched with vinegar. Nor will it
omit to record how Shelley ate poor Mrs. Southey out of buttered
tea-cakes, and gorged himself with fried bacon at a pot-house on Hounslow
Heath.
Whilst they dispose me to think the famous feast on tea-cakes cannot have
preceded the hour when Shelley fell asleep under Southey's poem,
circumstances also incline me to think the acrimonious disputations on
Irish affairs must have followed the first day of Shelley's entertainment
at Greta Bank. Anyhow, it is certain that the Shelleys and Southeys were
on friendly terms, when the former took up their abode in Mr. Calvert's
house. The garden at Greta Bank was the 'pretty garden' of the piquant
story known to every reader of De Quincey's curiously inaccurate paper
about Shelley. It was to a question, put to her by one of the Southey
party, then calling upon her in her new quarters, that Mrs. Shelley
replied, with winning childishness, 'Oh, no, the garden is not ours; but
then, you know, the people let us run about in it, whenever Percy and I
are tired of sitting in the house;' an utterance that, coming from the
girlish wife, may well have amused the married ladies to whom it was made.
Nor is it conceivable that Southey and Shelley had exchanged hot and
disdainful words on questions of Irish politics, when the younger poet,
overflowing with pitiful speech on subjects about which he should not have
uttered a syllable to so slight an acquaintance, told Southey the story of
Harriett's conversion to Atheism, and the still more revolting tale of
Hogg's attempt to seduce her. By the first of these excesses of
communicativeness, Southey was informed how Shelley had busied himself in
making proselytes in Mrs. Fenning's boarding-school; how Harriett
Westbrook was expelled the school for accepting his doctrine and aiding
him in his purpose; and how he had married her, in order to render her the
_amende honorable_ for the disgrace and trouble he had brought upon her.
The second of the amazing stories was, that on their journey from
Edinburgh to York Hogg had attempted to debauch his friend's bride, so
soon after her marriage. Telling these things to his wife's discredit and
Hogg's infamy, Shelley spoke frankly of his disapproval of marriage. About
the same time, either from Shelley's own lips, or from the lips of some
other informant, it came to Southey's knowledge that, since coming to
Keswick, Shelley had told his wife expressly, that he regarded the
marriage-rite as a ceremony of no binding force, and that he should leave
her on ceasing to love her. Having no doubt the statements thus made to
Harriett _at_ Keswick were a mere repetition of statements made to her by
Shelley _before_ their marriage, Southey had reasons in 1820 for declining
to believe that, after deciding to wed one another by lawful form, either
she or Shelley had entered the compact on the Free Love understanding that
they should be at liberty to separate on ceasing to like one another. One
could wish Southey had stated more precisely how much of his knowledge of
Shelley's nuptial and pre-nuptial relations to Harriett came to him from
Shelley's own lips, and how much from other informants. It is, however,
certain that Southey received from Shelley's own tongue, his information,
or misinformation, touching the circumstances of Harriett's alleged
expulsion from school, touching Shelley's alleged motive for marrying her,
and touching the attempt said to have been made by Hogg on her honour.
Whether the allegation to Hogg's infamy should be deemed good evidence
against the law-student is a question to be considered in a subsequent
chapter. For the present, it is enough to observe that Shelley spoke to
Southey at Keswick on divers delicate personal matters, about which even
he would scarcely have opened mind and heart to so recent an acquaintance
had they already squabbled fiercely on Irish affairs.
Because Shelley introduced a virtuous Irishman into the later part of _St.
Irvyne_, and published in the _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_
some metrical trash about a banshee's moan, and a white courser,
bestridden by a shadow sprite, Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy would have us
believe, that Shelley did not leave Oxford without seriously interesting
himself in the history and legends of Ireland, and entertaining a purpose
to redress the wrongs of her miserable people. Here are Mr. Denis Florence
MacCarthy's own words:--
'One of them' (_i.e._ the poems of the _Posthumous Fragments_) '_The
Spectral Horseman_, is interesting as showing that at this early
period, Shelley had begun to take that interest in the history and
legends of Ireland, which led to such extraordinary results two years
later. We have here "The Banshee's moan on the storm;" "A white
courser," like that of O'Donoghue, "bears the shadowy sprite;" "The
whirlwinds howl in the caves of Innisfallen,"--
"Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns
To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,
Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight."
_Fragments, page 25._
'Extravagant as all these passages are,--they show Shelley's
sympathies for Ireland had already been awakened, and that his
practical efforts for her benefit at a later period were not the
result of any sudden or passing caprice.'
What evidence that a youngster--living in the times of Moore, and Maturin,
and Sydney Morgan; in times when the popularity of the 'Irish Melodies'
had called into existence a score imitators of their author; in times when
romantic Irish ballads and patriotic Irish ballads lay on every
drawing-room table; in times when to humour the prevailing taste for
fiction about Ireland, and to profit by the demand for Irish tales at
circulating libraries, Lady Morgan christened one of her stories _The Wild
Irish Girl_, though no such girl played a part in the narrative,--was a
serious student of Irish history and legends, and had entered on a course
of inquiry and thought, that naturally resulted in a resolve to visit
Ireland, for the purpose of striking the manacles from the bruised and
bleeding limbs of Fair Erin! Thus is it that Shelley's story has been told
by his fanciful idolaters.
The instruction given (November 26th, 1811) to Mr. Medwin, the Horsham
lawyer, to find a Sussex cottage for the poet's habitation, is a
sufficient proof that Shelley at that time designed to settle ere long in
his native county. When a man speaks to his lawyer on such a matter, he
may be assumed to mean what he says. Shelley's written words to the man of
business were: 'We do not intend to take up our abode here for a
perpetuity, but should wish to have a house in Sussex. Let it be in some
picturesque, retired place--St. Leonard's Forest, for instance. Let it not
be nearer to London than Horsham, nor near any _populous_ manufacturing
town. We do not covet either a propinquity to _barracks_.' The young man
who wrote with this amplitude and precision must have meant what he said.
He could not afford to hire a house and let it stand empty. With no
purpose of staying a long time at Keswick, he wished for a house in Sussex
to retire to, in the company of his wife and sister-in-law, when he should
withdraw from the lakes. This was his plan when he entered Keswick; and
when he had been there some weeks.
What made him relinquish this scheme for a home? Probably he relinquished
it at the advice and with the approval of his wife and her sister, and
also in accordance with his own judgment, immediately after the visit to
Greystoke Castle, and Mr. Calvert's offer to take them into his house.
When they had been received at the Castle--not for a mere formal dinner,
not for a brief three nights' stay, but for a visit of several (eight or
nine) days--the prospect of living for a considerable time at Keswick must
have been acceptable to both the sisters; to the gentle and lovable
Harriett, who had several reasons for thinking such a residence would be
for her husband's advantage,--and to the scheming and ambitious Eliza,
who, in some degree sincerely desirous for Harriett's and Percy's welfare,
was chiefly ambitious of taking rank with gentlewomen. Exulting in her
reception at Greystoke Castle,--a reception that qualified her to speak of
the Duchess of Norfolk as her friend, and gave her the castle-mark of
gentility in the eyes of the 'highest quality' of and near Keswick--Miss
Westbrook, we may be sure, was in no hurry to withdraw from the
neighbourhood, that was the scene of her sweetest social triumph; from the
town that necessarily rated her one of the Greystoke circle. It was
manifest to the prudent and ambitious Miss Westbrook, that nothing could
be more favourable to her own hopes, and aims, and interest, than such a
residence at Keswick as would plant her amongst the local 'quality,' and
result in future invitations to the Castle,--nothing more certain to
please her money-grubbing and upward-looking father; nothing more likely
to conciliate Percy's wrathful father; no course more likely to end in her
own admission to Field Place during the life of Percy's mother.
At the same time it was no less manifest to Miss Westbrook that a better
place of residence than Keswick could not be found for her youthful and
erratic brother-in-law during the next two or three years. Living in
Sussex he would be a perpetual irritant to his irritable father. Living in
Cumberland he would be out of his father's way, and under the fewest
temptations to exasperate him to fiercer anger. Not only would he be out
of his father's way in Cumberland, but living there, in a certain sense,
under the Duke of Norfolk's patronage, he would be passing his time under
conditions most likely to confirm the Duke in his friendly disposition
towards him, and therefore most likely to result in the reconciliation of
the father and son. At Keswick her brother-in-law would have literary
society, form literary friendships, and have access to the libraries of
his literary friends. On hearing her brother-in-law enjoyed the Duke of
Norfolk's favour, and meant to remain for a considerable time at Greta
Bank, Miss Westbrook was hopeful that Mr. De Quincey would soon call upon
him. On their return to the lakes, Mr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mr.
John Wilson would make his acquaintance. Mr. Wordsworth might hold aloof
from the new-comers for a time, but in some way or other he would extend
the hand of good-fellowship to them, soon after Coleridge's reappearance
in his favourite haunts. Living with such friends, Percy would read many
books, and write a wonderful poem, that, raising him yet higher in the
omnipotent Duke's good opinion, would restore him to his father's favour,
and open the doors of Field Place to his wife and her sister. These were
Miss Westbrook's views of the position and prospect. No one can say they
were unreasonable views. Had they been so, Harriett would have accepted
them out of her usual submissiveness to so incomparable a sister. But
there was no need for Miss Westbrook to force her views of these matters
on her sister, who, without guidance or instruction of any kind, had come
to the same conclusions. Harriett and Eliza had seldom been of different
opinions on anything up to this point of their story. At least for once,
the concurrence of their sentiments was in no degree due to the elder
sister's authority.
Whilst Harriett and Miss Westbrook both liked the notion of living at
Keswick for a considerable period, Shelley also favoured it. One
consequence of Shelley's enthusiasm and nervous vehemence was that, whilst
he was the most changeable of mortals in some matters, he seldom did a
thing once without at the same time intending to do it 'for ever.' A
restless vagrant from his manhood's threshold to his death, he seldom
entered a picturesque place without declaring he would live in it 'for
ever.' He was perpetually doing things 'for ever,' and undoing them a few
days or weeks later. He never made a friendship with man or woman without
vowing the league should be perpetual. He went to York with the intention
of living there 'for ever.' He declared he would love Hogg 'for ever.' He
vowed he would live 'for ever' in friendship with Miss Hitchener, of
Hurstpierpoint, and no long time afterwards vowed just as passionately and
sincerely to hate her 'for ever.' It mattered not to him in periods of
passionate excitement, that in his opinion love and all other sentimental
preferences were mere consequences of perception and wholly independent of
volition. It mattered not that 'Love was free,' and that in his judgment
'To promise for ever to love the same woman was not less absurd than to
promise to believe the same creed,' because such a vow excluded its maker
from inquiries he might be constrained to make, and from new judgments he
might be compelled to form, and was therefore by the nature of things
powerless to bind its utterer when the mental perceptions required him to
disregard it. All the same, he never desired human affection without
praying for it, in order that he might enjoy it 'for ever,'--never wished
vehemently for anything without hoping, in his emotional intensity, to get
happiness from it 'for ever.' He promised to love Harriett Westbrook 'for
ever,' whilst believing himself to be so constituted that at no distant
time he might be powerless to love her at all. In the same spirit, with
the same fervour, and the same perception of love's fickleness and
instability, he carried off Mary Godwin with avowals that he would love
her 'for ever.' When Claire, in the 'Six weeks' tour,' exclaimed with
delight at each new scene of loveliness, 'Let us live here,' the lively
and humorous girl was laughing in her sleeve at Shelley's practice of
declaring he would 'live for ever' in any place, that pleased him greatly
at first sight. Allowance must be made for Shelley's vehement emotionality
and extravagance of diction by readers who would not be misled by his use
of 'ever' and 'never' in matters of his own personal story.
In the absence of positive evidence to the point, I have little doubt that
Shelley entered the rooms assigned to him in Mr. Calvert's house with a
declaration that he would inhabit them 'for ever,' and that the sisters
who had him in their keeping entered the same rooms with a strong opinion
that he would do well to inhabit them for a considerable time. He would
scarcely have remained in them for seven weeks had he not taken possession
of them with the intention of occupying them for as many years. How was it
then that he withdrew so soon from so eligible an abode? Certainly the
cause was neither a sudden dislike of Keswick, nor a diminution of his
affectionate regard for Mr. and Mrs. Calvert. There exists testimony in
his own handwriting that he left Keswick with regret, and the Calverts
with a hope to see more of them. 'I hope,' he wrote to a friend from
Whitehaven on 3rd February, 1812, as he was on the point of sailing for
Ireland, 'some day to show you Mrs. Calvert; I shall not forget her, but
will preserve her memory as another flower to compose a garland which I
intend to present to you.' How came he then to tear himself away at the
beginning of February, 1812, from a place he liked, and from friends in
whom he delighted? How was it that, on tearing himself from this place and
these friends, he went off to Ireland,--an expedition he certainly cannot
have thought of making when, on 26th November, 1811, he wrote to Mr.
Medwin, of Horsham, about a house in Sussex? How are we to account for the
change of purpose that sent him on a mission to Ireland for the Repeal of
the Union and the Emancipation of the Catholics? Successive writers have
either declared their inability to answer this question, or have answered
it in the wrong way.
Confessing his inability to answer the question, Hogg conjectures that
some Irish frequenter of the Mount Street coffee-house, or some Hibernian
Hampden, encountered by Shelley on the hills of Cumberland, may have
inspired Shelley with an ambition to settle all the Irish questions, and
put a period to all the Irish grievances, by making the voyage to Dublin,
and speaking words of wisdom to its inhabitants. Mr. Denis Florence
MacCarthy is certain that this new project for the pacification of Ireland
was the natural result of Shelley's Oxonian study of Irish history and
legends; that the poet went to Ireland of his own mere motion, after
coming slowly and dispassionately to a strong and reasonable opinion that
he would do Ireland good service, by visiting her capital, and in the
course of a few weeks converting her children to moderation, temperance,
industry, orderliness, and universal political amenity. The present writer
is no less certain that Shelley's Oxonian concern for Irish literature had
nothing to do with his marvellous scheme for settling Irish difficulties;
that his premature departure from Keswick was mainly due to his dislike of
Southey; and that his Irish mission was the outcome of sentiments arising
from his acrimonious disputations with the same poet on questions of Irish
politics.
It is not surprising that the man of letters and his young friend
exchanged their views on questions that engaged the attention of all
persons interested in the politics of the United Kingdom. It would have
been strange had the _Quarterly_ Reviewer and the literary aspirant--the
mature Tory, who spoke disdainfully of his former republicanism as mere
boyish effervescence, and the youthful enthusiast of the revolutionary
school--differed amicably on matters, so calculated to stir the temper of
either disputant. Whilst they were alike fervid and intolerant, each had a
manner peculiarly irritating to the other, as soon as their pulses
quickened under verbal contention. Overbearing and contemptuous, even to
those who agreed with him, Southey soon grew insufferably dogmatic and
disdainful to the boy who had the presumption to contradict him. Never
remarkable for a reverential and conciliatory demeanour to those of his
elders who ventured to teach him what he did not wish to be taught,
Shelley soon ceased to show his opponent the respect due from him to a
man, so greatly his superior by age, experience, and achievement.
Southey's attempts to snub his young friend into submissiveness, and
lecture him into sensible views, only stirred and stung Shelley to declare
in shriller notes his repugnance to the views that were forced upon him in
so dictatorial a manner. On finding that in Southey's study and presence
he was expected to hold silence and take instruction, the young gentleman
(_ætat._ 19), who deemed himself qualified 'to hold the argument
everywhere,' became furious. Of course, everything Southey said in this
insolent style, against the Irish, only made Shelley think, or confirmed
him in thinking, the reverse. The more insultingly he was told that all
Ireland needed was firm government and the steady maintenance of existing
laws, the more clear was it to Shelley that Ireland's chief need was the
gentle rule of new and humane laws. Southey's assertions that reasoning
was wasted on the Irish, for whose government the bayonet was the best
instrument, only made Shelley more positive that the Irish were a gentle,
generous, and reasonable people, who could be reasoned into virtuous
behaviour, and be cured by sympathetic and persuasive speech of their
faults and failings,--faults and failings chiefly, if not altogether, due
to the tyranny under which they had groaned so long.
To show that he was altogether right, and the exasperating Southey
altogether wrong, about Ireland and the Irish, Shelley set to work with
his pen on the production of _An Address to the Irish People_, that,
written at Keswick in the last month of 1811 and the first month of 1812,
was printed and published at Dublin in February, 1812. As the words of
this curious and delightfully boyish composition fell to the paper, it
struck the author that it would be well for him to visit Ireland, and
enforce with his persuasive tongue the wholesome admonitions of his
pen,--and very pleasant for him, and Harriett, and Eliza, to observe in
the streets of Dublin the first signs of that conversion of the Irish
people to thrift, industry, temperance, and tolerance, which could not
fail to be the immediate consequence of the publication of so excellent an
essay. This notion of going to Ireland, for the purpose of contributing
to, and witnessing the success of, his pamphlet, was the more agreeable to
Shelley because he was eager to get away from the odious Southey, and
because, in going to Ireland (of all places of the earth's surface) to get
out of the renegade's way, he would exhibit, in a singularly telling and
emphatic manner, his contempt for all that had been urged to the discredit
of the dear Irish people by the malignant apostate from pantisocratic and
other republican principles. Under these circumstances, is it wonderful
that the later slips of the _Address_ were written in the midst of
arrangements for the author's expedition to the land, that would be so
speedily recovered from rancour and wretchedness to contentment and
prosperity?
Whilst writing the _Address to the Irish People_ at Greta Bank, Shelley
found other employment for his pen, in producing verses to Robert Emmett's
glorification, with other additions to the collection of poems which he
designed to publish in Dublin; and in throwing off letters to Miss Eliza
Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, near Brighton, and to a certain famous
author and struggling bookseller, who must have experienced emotions of
amusement and self-complacence on perusing the first of the letters, in
which the author of the _Necessity of Atheism_, approached William Godwin
with expressions of profoundest reverence, several months before he was
permitted to gaze on the altogether human lineaments of the divine
philosopher.
In the first of these letters (a letter dated from Keswick on 3rd January,
1812, though it is one of the many blunders of Mr. Kegan Paul's book about
Godwin to insist that it was written from Keswick ten months before
Shelley set foot in the place) Shelley assures the addressee of the
epistle that 'the name of Godwin has been used to excite in him feelings
of reverence and admiration;' that he has been 'accustomed to consider'
the sublime Godwin as 'a luminary too dazzling for the darkness which
surrounds him;' and that after long regarding the sublime Godwin
regretfully as one of 'the honourable dead,' as a personage 'the glory of
whose being had passed from this earth of ours,' he has learned with
'inconceivable emotions' that so great a benefactor of his species still
has an earthly existence and an earthly habitation in Skinner Street, in
the City of London. 'It is not so,' ejaculates the writer of the adulatory
epistle; 'you still live, and, I firmly believe, are still planning the
welfare of human kind.' It was in this strain of extravagant and
obsequious reverence that Shelley approached, in January, 1812, the man
whose house he entered some months later, whose hospitality he accepted
freely as it was proffered, and whose sixteen-years-old daughter he lured
into Free Love two and a half years later. It is also well for the reader
to know and remember, that at the time of writing this characteristic
epistle, the singularly truth-loving Shelley had not recently discovered
with inconceivable emotion that Godwin was still living and following his
trade in Skinner Street. The evidences are clear that the sentimental
words about the writer's regret for the death of the too dazzling luminary
were untrue words.
The dazzling luminary, who would perhaps have left the letter unanswered,
had not its adulation tickled his self-complacence agreeably, replied in
terms that caused the young enthusiast to produce an autobiographic
fragment for his correspondent's enlightenment. Writing from Keswick on
10th January, 1812, to the philosopher of Skinner Street, Shelley (after
the customary announcement of his filial relation to 'a man of fortune in
Sussex') remarks that his habits of thinking never coincided with his
father's habits of thinking; that it was his misfortune in childhood to be
'required to love, because it was his duty to love' his father, a system
of coercion which, of course, rendered it impossible for him to love his
father; and that he published his two novels (_St. Irvyne_ and
_Zastrozzi_) before he was seventeen years of age,--a statement not a
little wide of historic truth. Instead of publishing these books when he
was at Eton, and only sixteen years of age, he was seventeen years and ten
months old when he published the earlier story, and eighteen years and
four months old when he published the later tale, both romances having
appeared whilst he was a member of University College, Oxford. These
inaccuracies are followed in the letter by a more remarkable example of
the writer's inaccuracy in statements touching his personal affairs.
Representing that he read Godwin's _Political Justice_, and adopted its
views, whilst he was at Eton, he adds, 'No sooner had I formed the
principles which I now profess than I was anxious to disseminate their
benefits. This was done without the slightest caution. I was twice
expelled, but recalled by the interference of my father.' All this is
represented to have taken place at Eton before he 'went to Oxford;' yet it
is certain that he never published anything controversial on the questions
raised in the _Political Justice_ whilst he was at Eton, and no less
certain that he was not twice expelled from the school for doing so.
Though he left Eton prematurely, and with a bad name, his dismissal from
the school differed so widely from expulsion, that he would not have been
justified in speaking of himself as having been expelled once.
In the same letter (of 10th January, 1812, to Godwin) Shelley says of the
circumstances of his expulsion from Oxford,
'I printed a pamphlet, avowing my opinions and its occasion.... Mr.
----, at Oxford, among others, had the pamphlet; he showed it to the
Master and the Fellows of University College, and I was sent for. I
was informed that in case I denied the publication, no more would be
said. I refused and was expelled.'
It is scarcely needful for me to remind the readers of this work, that the
collegiate authorities never told him he could escape punishment by
disclaiming the publication; never urged him to deny the publication;
never expelled him for refusing to deny it. The whole statement is untrue
in every particular. What made him pen these untruths, with or without
cognizance of their absolute untruthfulness? Ever taking the most
charitable view of his friend's most perplexing infirmity, Hogg maintains
that Shelley had no intention of misstating the case when he misstated it
so egregiously.
'This is incorrect,' says Hogg; 'no such offer was made, no such
information was given; but musing on the affair, as he was wont, he
dreamed that the proposal had been declined by him, and thus he had
the gratification of believing that he was more of a martyr than he
really was.'
Yet further Shelley writes in the same delusive style in the same
epistle:--
'It will be necessary, in order to elucidate this part of my history,
to inform you that I am heir by entail to an estate of £6000 per
annum.... My father has ever regarded me as a blot, a defilement of
his honour. He wished to induce me by poverty to accept of some
commission in a distant regiment, and in the interim of my absence to
prosecute the pamphlet, that a process of outlawry might make the
estate on his death devolve to my younger brother. These are the
leading points of the history of the man before you.... I am married
to a woman whose views are similar to my own. To you, as the regulator
and former of my mind, I must ever look with real respect and
veneration.'
Readers should notice and remember each of the several untruthful
statements of this extract. (1) It was untrue that the Squire of Field
Place had 'ever regarded' his son 'as a blot and defilement of his
honour.' (2) It was untrue that the Squire had endeavoured to force his
son to accept a commission in a distant regiment in order that, during his
absence on military service, he might deprive him by legal process of his
birthright to the advantage of his younger brother. (3) It was untrue that
the Squire had put pressure on his son to enter the army, though it has
been suggested by one of the poet's several friendly biographers that,
soon after his expulsion from Oxford, it may perhaps have been suggested
to the unruly boy that he should adopt the military profession, like his
cousin Tom Medwin, who went from the University into a cavalry regiment.
(4) The father who had dealt so leniently and tenderly with his son on
first hearing of his academic disgrace, never for an instant entertained a
thought of compassing the prosecution of the author and printer of the
scandalous tract. Of the malicious purpose and scheme, attributed to the
kindly though irascible Squire of Field Place by the boy to whom he had
been a considerate and good father, Hogg says justly:--
'It is only in a dream that the prosecution, outlawry, and devolution
of the estate could find place. The narration of such proceedings
would have been too strong and strange for a German romance; it would
have been too large a requisition upon the reader's credulity to ask
him to credit them in the father of _Zastrozzi_....'
One may well smile at such egregious ignorance of law and affairs in the
self-confident youth, who was preparing to visit Ireland in order to
Emancipate the Catholics, Repeal the Union, and instruct the whole Irish
people in political science. It is, however, no matter for smiling that
this young scatterbrain, whom his adulators compare with the Saviour of
the World, penned these egregious inventions to his father's discredit in
a letter to a person, with whom he had no domestic connexion,--to a
stranger, of whom he knew nothing, save that he was a writer of
entertaining and clever books.
Readers must settle for themselves whether the untruthful statements were
sheer and wilful untruths, or the fruits of misconception scarcely
compatible with mental sanity, or products of a state of mind that would
justify the critic in adopting Peacock's term, and speaking of them as
results of 'semi-delusion.' On these points there may be room for
differences of opinion; but it must be obvious to all judicious readers
that in putting the erroneous statements on paper, the generous and
chivalric Shelley was actuated by a desire to exhibit his father as an
unnatural and treacherous parent to the man of letters, to whom the
epistle was addressed. Had the Squire of Field Place been the bad father
Shelley declared him, it was not for Shelley to say so in a letter to a
stranger. Even to his nearest and dearest friend--even to so familiar a
comrade as Hogg, in the time of their most affectionate intimacy--Shelley
would have been silent on so painful and shameful a subject, had he been
the loyal and chivalrous being his idolaters would have us think him.
Readers may also reflect on the different strain in which Shelley, only a
few weeks earlier, wrote of his father to the Duke of Norfolk. Godwin, the
stranger, is informed by Shelley that his father regards him as a blot
and defilement; that his father had striven to force him out of the
country into distant military service; that his father had designed to
institute legal proceedings against him for writing _The Necessity of
Atheism_; that his father had desired to despoil him of his birthright,
and place his younger brother next in succession to the family estate.
These statements are made to the stranger, who is not likely to know the
real causes of his correspondent's estrangement from his father. But in
Shelley's letter to the Duke of Norfolk, who knows all about the domestic
question and the Squire's treatment of his son, it is not suggested by
Shelley that 'the pamphlet' had anything to do with his father's anger. On
the contrary, his father's extreme displeasure with him is attributed to
the real cause--his marriage, and the circumstances of the _mésalliance_.
Why this difference? To those who answer that, whereas Shelley was in his
right mind when writing to the Duke of Norfolk, and labouring under
delusions when writing to William Godwin, it must appear curiously
significant and suggestive of another conclusion--that he wrote truthfully
of his affairs to the correspondent who (to his knowledge) knew the truth
of them, and altogether untruthfully about his affairs to the person whom
he had reason to think ignorant of them.
Godwin's answer to the letter containing these inaccurate statements is
not extant; but it is on the evidences that the philosopher's reply
indicated surprise at, and disapproval of, the terms in which his youthful
correspondent had spoken of his father. Finding he had exhibited himself
in an unfavourable light to the author of _Political Justice_, Shelley
hastened to retrieve the false step, and recover his correspondent's good
opinion by writing (14th January, 1812), in his third letter from Keswick
to Skinner Street:--
'You mistake me if you think that I am angry with my father. I have
ever been desirous of a reconciliation with him, but the price which
he demands for it is a renunciation of my opinions, or, at least a
subjection to conditions which should bind me to act in opposition to
their very spirit. It is probable that my father has acted for my
welfare....'
Neither misconception nor semi-delusion can be pleaded for Shelley's
statement that he was not angry with his father. It was not true that he
had 'ever been desirous of a reconciliation with his father.' The two
statements were untruths, told by Shelley in order to set himself right
with his correspondent. For the same purpose he now admits that his father
(charged in the previous letter with an execrable design for depriving him
of his birthright) may have acted for his welfare. Other words of the
extract should have the reader's thoughtful consideration. One of the
charges against the Squire of Field Place being that, after banishing his
son from his boyhood's home at the instigation of religious intolerance,
he required his son's renunciation of his sincere opinions as the
condition for their reconcilement, it is well for readers of the poet's
story to take especial notice of his admission that, instead of being
required to renounce his opinions, he was only required to 'submit to
conditions which should bind him to act in opposition to their very
spirit,' words of qualification which, coming from Shelley, are sufficient
evidence to the moderation and reasonableness of the conditions. There is
a wide difference between a demand for the renunciation of opinions and a
demand for abstinence from noisy and aggressive assertion of them; and the
father who requires a youngster in his nonage to hold his pen and tongue
on certain subjects of difficult and perilous controversy is guilty of no
despotic excess of paternal authority. The forbearance which Mr. Timothy
Shelley had required of his son was in truth nothing more than the
forbearance which William Godwin was already urging the youngster to
exercise for his own advantage. 'I will not again,' Shelley writes to his
newly selected Mentor, 'crudely obtrude my peculiar opinions or my doubts
on the world;' a promise which he, of course, had no intention of keeping;
a promise he was, even at the moment of making it, on the point of
breaking in the imbecile _Address to the Irish People_. Had he made the
same promise to his father and kept it, there would have been peace
between them,--at least on mere matters of opinion.
Writing to William Godwin, on 16th January, 1812, a letter that affords
some curious examples of the obsequious adulation with which he approached
the man of letters, whose friendship he was desirous of winning, Shelley
remarked:--
'I have known no tutor or adviser (_not excepting my father_) from
whose lessons and suggestions I have not recoiled with disgust. The
knowledge which I have, whatever it may be (putting out of the
question the age of grammar and the horn-book), has been acquired by
my unassisted efforts. I have before given you a slight sketch of my
earlier habits and feelings--my present are, in my opinion, infinitely
superior--they are elevated and disinterested; such as they are, you
have principally produced them.'
'I have known no tutor or adviser (_not excepting my father_) from whose
lessons and suggestions I have not recoiled with disgust.' This language
is no less comprehensive than precise. Including all his schoolmasters and
other official teachers, it includes all his advisers and social
monitors--includes even his own father. How about Dr. Lind?--the wise, the
humane, the gentle and large-minded Dr. Lind? the physician who trained
him in science and philosophy, and carried him through brain-fever at
Field Place? the benign hermit of _Laon and Cythna_, the persuasive
teacher of _Prince Athanase_? Readers cannot need to be reminded of all
Shelley told Hogg and his second wife about the wise physician's influence
on his mental and moral development; of the poetic egotisms of _Laon and
Cythna_ and _Prince Athanase_, that glorified the doctor for having been
the beneficent illuminator of his pupil's young mind; the poetic egotisms
which Mrs. Shelley accepted, and the present Lady Shelley regards, as
severely accurate autobiographic evidence. Taking them _au pied de la
lettre_ Lady Shelley argues from these scraps of egotistic verse as though
they were historic _data_ of unimpeachable authority. Lady Shelley is
confident that Dr. Lind ('the erudite scholar and amiable old man,' as she
styles him) was one of Shelley's Eton tutors,--a tutor in whom he
delighted at school, and remembered in after-life with love and
veneration. Yet Shelley assures us that up to January, 1812, he never had
tutor or adviser of any kind from whose lessons and suggestions he had not
recoiled with disgust. Did Shelley really recoil with disgust from the
hard-swearing doctor who taught him to curse his father?--from the
enlightened physician who guided his 'scientific studies?' Or had he clean
forgotten the doctor and all his virtuous ways when he was writing from
Keswick to William Godwin? To those who answer this last question in the
affirmative, it must seem strange that Dr. Lind, with all his virtue and
wisdom, was so completely forgotten by the young gentleman, whom he had
influenced so strongly and agreeably so few years since. If Dr. Lind was
so great a power in the poet's education as trustful readers of his poetry
imagine, it is passing strange that Shelley never remembered him when he
was recalling his teachers and their services in the first month of 1812.
By those who attribute the frequent inaccuracies of his personal
statements to a fertile fancy, an innocent and unconscious inventiveness,
it must be considered that Shelley's unruly and too vigorous imagination
was suspiciously associated with an unreliable (though often strongly
retentive) memory,--that whilst curiously apt to imagine things had taken
place which had never occurred, he was also at times strangely forgetful
of matters that he might well have been thought certain to remember.
On learning from this same Keswick letter of 16th January, 1812, that
Shelley had made up his mind to go shortly to Dublin, with his wife and
sister-in-law, for the purpose of furthering, to the utmost of their joint
powers, the cause of Catholic Emancipation, Godwin (who seems to have been
vastly delighted with the letters from Keswick, whilst seeing much to
disapprove in them) sent his youthful and enthusiastic correspondent a
letter of introduction to Curran, the Irish Master of the Rolls. In the
letter which acknowledged the note of introduction as 'a great and
essential service,' Shelley (28th January, 1812) referred apologetically
to the lawfulness of his union with Harriett Westbrook, as a concession he
made to despotic usage from 'considerations of the unequally weighty
burden of disgrace and hatred, which a resistance to this system' (_i.e._
of lawful wedlock) 'would entail upon his companion' in connubial
felicity. Yet further in defence of his politic 'submission to the
ceremonies of the Church,' and in reference to the uneven consequences of
the other and in some respects better course, he remarked, 'a man in such
a case, is a man of gallantry and spirit--a woman loses all claim to
respect and politeness. She has lost modesty, which is the female
criterion of virtue, and those, whose virtues extend no further than
modesty, regard her with hatred and contempt.'
Unaware how completely Godwin had abandoned certain of his earlier views
respecting wedlock (_i.e._ (1) that in the existing state of English
society the existence of mutual love was a sufficient sanction of the
conjugal association of a man and woman; (2) that where such love existed
it was better for spouses to live together in the liberty of Free Love
than in the bondage of lawful marriage; and (3) that the institution of
lawful matrimony was a demoralizing interference with the liberty of
individuals), Shelley regarded his marriage as a domestic incident, from
which he would suffer in the philosopher's esteem, unless he were duly
informed of the considerations which had determined Harriett's husband to
accommodate his conjugal arrangements to the prejudices of society. But
though he wrote thus apologetically of his marriage, in order to place
himself higher in the philosopher's favour, Shelley wrote honestly. From
his Eton days he had been a favourer of Free Love. But for Hogg, he would
have taken Harriett to his embrace without marrying her. He did not
relinquish his purpose of uniting himself to her in the loose and easy
fashion, until Hogg had made him see the enormity of the disadvantages
that would ensue to him and her from the arrangement. The principal
reasons he gave in January, 1812, for having married her were the same
reasons he gave in the previous August for determining to marry her.
Another thing to be noticed in this statement to Godwin is its evidence
how precisely he saw, and how fully he realized, the shameful character of
the position held by a woman living conjugally with a man not her lawful
husband,--the position in which he, ere long, placed his intimate friend's
sixteen-years-old daughter. Whilst the male partner of such an association
merely acquired a reputation for gallantry and spirit, the female lost all
title to social respect. Whilst he became the gallant keeper of a
mistress, she became nothing less contemptible than a kept mistress. The
youngster of birth and breeding, who saw this in the January of 1812, saw
it no less clearly in the summer of 1814, when he determined to become the
gallant keeper of a mistress, and, in violation of one of the most sacred
laws of hospitality, prevailed on his intimate friend's sixteen-years-old
daughter to accept the position of a mistress.
Shelley did not leave Keswick without a plan for making away with time
agreeably in the ensuing summer, when he should have emancipated the Irish
Catholics, repealed the Act of Union, and withdrawn from the land he had
endowed with perpetual felicity. On 16th January, 1812, he wrote to
Godwin: 'In the summer we shall be in the north of Wales. Dare I hope that
you will come to see us? Perhaps this would be an unfeasible neglect of
your avocations. I shall hope it until you forbid me.' Twelve days later
(28th January, 1812), whilst referring lightly to this project for a
meeting in Wales, Shelley ventured to express his hope that in the ensuing
summer he and Harriett would entertain Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, and their
children, in the same romantic spot, where it was their purpose to receive
another 'most dear friend.' This 'most dear friend' was Miss Eliza
Hitchener of Hurstpierpoint in Sussex, whose acquaintance Shelley had
formed whilst staying under his Uncle Pilford's roof at Cuckfield.
Philosopher, Deist, and Republican, Miss Eliza Hitchener kept a school for
little girls at Hurstpierpoint, and seems to have enjoyed, in her
particular parish of Sussex, a larger measure of social respect than was
accorded to her father, the keeper of a public-house in the same
neighbourhood, who had been in some way or other concerned in the
contraband trade of the Sussex coast, before he changed his name from
Yorke to Tichener and joined the noble army of licensed victuallers. Thus
much was discovered about Miss Hitchener and her father from the letter,
written by Joint-Postmaster-General, the Earl of Chichester, to the
Secretary of the General Post Office on 5th April, 1812:--'Miss Hichener,'
the Earl wrote, 'of Hurstpierpoint, keeps a school there, and is well
spoken of; her Father keeps a Publick House in the neighbourhood; he was
originally a smugler, and changed his name from Yorke to Tichener, before
he took the Publick House.' The statesman, who spelt smuggler with a
single 'g,' and described Mrs. Shelley as 'a servant, or some person of
very low birth,' cannot be said to merit unqualified confidence for the
accuracy of his spelling and personal intelligence; but he may have been
right in representing that the whilom 'smugler' and his daughter assumed
different surnames. As an instructress of children, Miss Hitchener may
have had a professional motive for getting away from her papa's assumed
surname, even as he had a sound prudential motive for getting away from a
proper name, disagreeably familiar to the 'smuglers' of the Sussex coast.
Anyhow, the lady figures as Miss Eliza Hitchener in Shelleyan annals.
Opinions differ respecting Miss Hitchener's character and conduct. Shelley
had not known her long before he thought much ill of her. But there are
sufficient grounds for a confident opinion that she was neither the
angelic creature he imagined her, whilst cherishing her with platonic
affection, nor the superlatively evil being he imagined her when he came
to denounce her, in shrillest notes of abhorrence, for being a brown demon
and an hermaphrodite.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SHELLEY'S QUARREL WITH HOGG.
Shelley's Suspicion of Hogg--His Conviction of Hogg's Guilt--Did Hogg
make the Attempt--The Manipulated Letter--Hogg's Object in publishing
it--His Purpose in altering it--The Great Discovery--Evidence of
Hogg's Guilt--Sources of the Evidence--Shelley's Correspondence with
Miss Hitchener--His Letters from Keswick to Hogg--Their vehement
Affectionateness--Eliza Westbrook in Office--Shelley under
Training--Sisters in Council--Shelley's Conferences with
Harriett--Proofs of Hogg's Innocence--_Primâ Facie_ Improbability--Why
Hogg was not charged at York--His Arraignment at Keswick--Condemned in
his Absence--The Reconciliation--Divine Forgiveness--Hogg's
Restoration to Intimacy with Harriett--Shelley's subsequent Intimacy
with Hogg--Hogg's Intimacy with Mary Godwin--Shelley's Acknowledgment
of Delusion--He begs Pardon of Hogg--Hogg's Denials of the
Charge--Hypothetical Letters--Concluding Estimate of Harriett's
Evidence--If Hogg should be proved Guilty--Consequences to Shelley's
Reputation.
Whilst telling William Godwin of his benevolent purpose towards Ireland,
Shelley was silent on the subject to the incomparable Hogg. How was this?
Hogg had fallen out of Shelley's favour. Incomparable till circumstances
caused Miss Eliza Westbrook to regard him with enmity, Hogg became
incomparably evil in Shelley's eyes before the trio bade the Calverts
farewell with tearful emotion, and set their faces for Whitehaven. What
evil had the alternately ductile and unmanageable Shelley been educated
into thinking of his no longer incomparable friend?
There is no need to answer the question, readers having been already
informed that Shelley did not leave Keswick, without coming to the
conviction that Hogg had attempted to seduce Harriett, either on the
journey from Edinburgh to York, or in the last-named city. Shelley did not
charge Hogg with seducing Harriett, but only with _attempting_ to seduce.
Had he charged Hogg with the larger offence, he would have preferred
against his familiar friend the accusation that, even when it is supported
by considerable _primâ facie_ evidence, is so often found on enquiry to
have proceeded from unreasonable marital jealousy. In charging him with
the mere attempt, Shelley charged his friend with an offence which, though
no less flagitious, is by no means so easily proved as the more
comprehensive crime. There are crimes, whose preliminary circumstances are
necessarily too manifest and unequivocal to admit of any doubt of the
culprit's purpose. But seduction is one of the secret and insidious
offences, that are seldom preceded by circumstances affording evidence of
clear and unmistakable attempt to perpetrate them. No doubt cases arise
from time to time, where a seducer's measures for the accomplishment of
his purpose may be fairly described as a manifest attempt to commit the
crime. But these cases are rare. In most cases, where a man is charged
with attempting to seduce, the accusation rests altogether on
circumstances that, admitting of another construction, are compatible with
the innocence of the accused person.
To Field Place, animated by bitter memories of the biographer's 'two
volumes;' to the Shelleyan enthusiasts, quick to think evil of the
personal historian, who, refusing to write the poet's life into harmony
with the straight-nosed pictures, gave them a faulty instead of a
faultless Shelley; and to the Free Lovers, who, disliking Hogg for his
ridicule of their substitute for lawful marriage, see, in his alleged
attempt on Harriett's virtue, a way of accounting creditably for the
instability of the poet's devotion to his first wife,--Shelley's
conviction is a sufficient proof of Hogg's guilt. Years since, it was
enough for Hogg's enemies to hint vaguely that his intimacy with Harriett
was in no slight degree accountable for the briefness of Shelley's
affection for her. Of late, they have spoken of Hogg's iniquity with
greater freedom and boldness. No long while since, an _Edinburgh_ Reviewer
declared roundly that Hogg essayed to seduce Harriett within a few weeks
of her wedding. At the present time it is the fashion of the Shelleyan
specialists to speak of Hogg's egregious and revolting turpitude, as a
matter admitting of no doubt. To readers, however, who, whilst delighting
in Shelley's verse, are neither Shelleyan zealots, nor Free Lovers, nor
Field Place partisans, it may appear well to make some enquiries
respecting the nature and quality of the evidence that Hogg was so
monstrous an example of perfidy and uncleanness. If Hogg (who, from
certain points of view, was a typical English gentleman) can be proved
innocent of the flagrant iniquity, with which he has been charged, it is
desirable for the credit of his nation and race, that his innocence should
be established. Even by his most vehement admirers it is admitted that,
during his brief stay at Keswick, Shelley suffered from hallucination on
another matter:--that he imagined he suffered from a violent assault, when
no violence had been done him. According to one of his letters (26th
January, 1812) Shelley, only a day or so earlier, was assailed by a
robber, from whose felonious hands he escaped by falling fortunately
_into_ Mr. Calvert's house. No robbery had been attempted on the poet's
person: no robber had assaulted him. He was the victim of hallucination,
in thinking himself attacked by a robber under the very eaves of his
dwelling-place, and in imagining he escaped his assailant, by dropping
within the bounds of his own temporary home. The whole affair was the mere
whimsey of his own freakish imagination. If the fancy originated in
nervous derangement caused by opium, it was none the less a delusion. This
affair happened closely upon the time when Shelley came to think so ill of
Hogg. Even by the most cautious readers it will be admitted that the young
man, who experienced an imaginary attack on his person, was a likely young
man to experience a no less imaginary attack on his honour. The evidence
is superabundant that Shelley suffered at times from grotesque delusions.
This is admitted by his more discreet apologists, who use the mental
infirmity to account for circumstances that, but for the infirmity, would
prove him superlatively untruthful. To show, therefore, that Shelley was
deluded in thinking Hogg an incomparable villain, is only to exhibit him
as suffering from mental disorder, to which he was certainly liable.
Moreover, it is my purpose to show that my view of the circumstances,
resulting in the transient severance of the two friends, is not more
favourable to Hogg's reputation, than needful for Shelley's honour.
What is the evidence that Hogg made _the attempt_? At this distance from
1811, the evidence must be sought for in MSS. or printed pages,
exhibiting,--(1), words written by Shelley, or credibly reported to have
been spoken by him; (2), words written by Hogg, or credibly reported to
have been spoken by him; (3), words written by Harriett, or credibly
reported to have been spoken by her; (4), words written by persons, who
(like Southey at Keswick, or Miss Hitchener at Hurstpierpoint) derived
their information directly or indirectly from Shelley, Hogg, or Harriett,
or from more than one of them, or credibly reported to have been spoken by
persons, so informed directly or indirectly by Shelley, Hogg, or Harriett;
(5), words proceeding from persons who, without being known, may be
reasonably assumed to have derived their information from Hogg, Shelley,
or Harriett. Of statements made by unreliable diarists, letter-writers,
and other literary tattlers, who merely recorded gossip that came to them
from uncertain sources, no account should be taken. There exists no small
mass of matters (written or printed), to be placed in one or another of
these five classes of evidential statements. It is in the nature of things
that the information gained from such sources should be more or less
unsatisfactory. No one of the givers of information can be cross-examined
respecting his or her testimony; much need though there is for such
cross-examination, in order to render the evidence fairly reliable. For
the production of a credit-worthy account of the most puzzling business of
Shelley's perplexing story, all one can do is to pick out from a mass of
matters the apparently credit-worthy statements, and deal cautiously,
whilst dealing inferentially, with them.
Were evidence weighty in proportion to the number of the sources, from
which it is gathered, the evidence of Hogg's guilt would not be light. But
the testimony of a single scrap of paper may countervail and even
annihilate the testimony of a hundred different documents. One fact in
this affair of manifold uncertainties is, however, indisputable:--that for
several months from some date of his residence at Keswick, Shelley
believed Hogg to have made an attempt on Harriett's honour. Shelley spoke
and wrote too freely of Hogg's iniquity for there to be any room for doubt
whether he really thought so ill of his friend. And it cannot be
questioned, that, had Shelley been constituted like most other young
Englishmen of his social degree,--had he been as discreet in judgment, as
accurate in statement, as unlikely to be carried away from common-sense by
the forces of a lawless imagination, as exempt from proneness to delusion,
as most young English gentlemen,--his bare utterance of his deliberate
conviction, that Hogg had essayed to compass Harriett's dishonour, would
be strong _primâ facie_ evidence that the conviction was no less
reasonable than dismal. But Shelley was not constituted like other young
men. Instead of being evenly balanced, his mind was often swayed by
delusive fancies. He was habitually inaccurate in his statements. At the
very time of thinking so ill of his friend, he suffered from hallucination
on another subject. Instead of being an accurate observer of facts, he
could believe himself assailed by a robber, when no one attacked him. The
young man who thought Hogg capable of trying to seduce his wife, was the
young man who thought his father was set on locking him up in a lunatic
asylum. To see how far Shelley's conviction about Hogg was reasonable or
unreasonable, it is needful to know the facts that determined his judgment
in the matter. My view of those facts will soon be given. But before it is
submitted to readers of this chapter, it is well for them to be reminded
that the original mere facts, pointing to Hogg's infamy, can, in the first
instance, have been known to no one but Hogg, Harriett, and Shelley. It is
inconceivable that Hogg attempted to seduce Harriett under the very eyes
of her sister. Whatever he _did_ to provoke the hideous charge must have
been done at some time prior to Miss Eliza Westbrook's arrival at York;
and her knowledge of the criminatory facts must have been derived from one
or more of the three. As Hogg cannot be imagined to have given her any
evidence against himself, she must have gained her knowledge of the
criminatory facts from Shelley or her sister, or from both. Shelley's
knowledge of _facts_, which he came to regard as evidential of his
friend's guilt, may have resulted altogether from his own personal
observation; but he may be presumed to have gathered the knowledge from
his wife's words, no less than from personal observation. Hogg certainly
was not likely to tell his friend, or any other person, anything that
could fairly be construed into evidence that he was a villain. As the
criminatory _facts_ (_i.e._ of Hogg's conduct) cannot have been known in
the first instance to anyone but Shelley, Hogg, and Harriett, all our
knowledge of those facts (in whatever forms and through whatever channels
it has reached us) must have proceeded originally from Hogg, Shelley, or
Harriett. It is not to be supposed that Hogg either confessed having made
the attempt, or admitted to anyone that he had done aught incompatible
with his innocence of so serious an offence. It follows, therefore, that
our knowledge of facts, in any degree evidential of Hogg's guilt, is
referable, in some way or other, to the _ex-parte_ statements of the
husband or wife, or both of them.
That Shelley went from York to Cumberland without thinking that Hogg had
made an attempt on Harriett's virtue, appears,--(1), from the passionate
affectionateness with which he wrote to Hogg from Keswick; (2), from the
fact that, for some time, Hogg was permitted to write letters to Harriett
at Keswick; (3), from the fact that Harriett was permitted and encouraged
by her husband to answer the letters she received at Keswick from Hogg. It
is inconceivable that Shelley would have allowed his young bride to
correspond with the man who, to his belief, had only a few weeks since
tried to seduce her; that he would himself have continued to write
letters, overflowing with protestations of friendship and love, to the man
whom he regarded as having essayed to compass her ruin and her husband's
dishonour. Is it suggested that Shelley's peculiar notions, touching the
intercourse of the sexes, qualified him to live in amity with a man so
lately desirous of seducing his wife? There is conclusive evidence that he
was not a man to consent thus tamely to his own dishonour. On coming to
the conviction that Hogg had been guilty of _the attempt_, Shelley broke
with him promptly, and ceasing to correspond with him denounced him for a
villain. It was thus Shelley acted towards Hogg, after he had been fully
educated into thinking Hogg had not only admired Harriett with
embarrassing and dangerous fervour, but had actually tried to seduce her.
Here, surely, is sufficient proof that, had he thought so ill of Hogg on
leaving York, he could not have written affectionately to him from
Keswick, and at the same time have encouraged Harriett to correspond with
him.
Whilst requiring Hogg to keep away from Harriett, till his admiration of
her should have survived an enthusiasm too passionate for her ease and his
safety, Shelley wrote to him from Keswick, 'Think not I am otherwise than
your friend:--a friend to you now more fervent, more devoted than ever,
for misery endears to us those whom we love. You are, you shall be, my
bosom friend:'--words to be found in the heart of the long and remarkable
epistle, which Hogg published in the second volume of the unfinished
_Life_ (_vide_ pp. 490-497), describing it as a 'Fragment of a Novel,' and
saying of it lightly--'This epistle from Albert to Werter is forcibly
written, with great power and energy; but it wants the warmth, the
tenderness, of Goethe and Rousseau.' The more effectually to disguise the
real nature of the composition from his ordinary readers, the biographer
substituted 'Charlotte' for 'Harriett' in his printed copy of the epistle.
What was the object of this mystification? Why did Hogg thus misdescribe
the letter, and substitute Charlotte for Harriett? These questions are
answered in two very different ways,--by the wildest of the Shelleyan
idolaters, who believe that the biographer (unquestionably guilty of
declining to write Shelley's story into harmony with the delusive
portraits) must have been an unutterably wicked person; and by those of
the poet's discreet admirers, who, whilst recognizing in Hogg's _Life_
many inaccuracies and a considerable element of untruthfulness, believe
the book to have been written on the whole with a sincere design of giving
the world a fair view of the poet's life and nature.
By the wildest of the Shelleyan idolaters it is maintained that Hogg had
scarcely set eyes on his friend's girlish bride, when he tried to lure her
from the ways of wifely goodness; that entertaining this infamous design
on the young lady, who but for him would not have been married at all,
Hogg set about seducing her either at Edinburgh, or on the road from
Edinburgh to York, or in the dingy dwelling of the dingy milliners; that
Shelley withdrew her precipitately from York, in order to remove her from
the baneful influence of his false friend; and that, after vainly
combating Hogg's wicked passion with affectionate expostulations, Shelley
broke with the man who had proved himself so unworthy of his regard, and
ceasing to answer his letters, held no intercourse with him for a
considerable period. To those, who take this view of Hogg's character and
of the incidents that unquestionably resulted in a temporary estrangement
of the two friends, it appears obvious that the misdescription and
misleading alterations of the letter proceeded from Hogg's desire to
conceal the shameful circumstances that caused it to be written.
On the other hand, to those who can admire Shelley's poetry without
shutting their eyes to his various infirmities, and who on more than
sufficient grounds hold a strong opinion that Hogg never entertained evil
designs on his friend's wife, and that Shelley was under an equally absurd
and monstrous hallucination in thinking his familiar comrade capable of
such wickedness, it is no less obvious that the mystification Hogg
practised in his way of dealing with the epistle, instead of resulting
from care for his own honour, proceeded altogether from delicate concern
for the poet's reputation.
In the absence of positive evidence to the point, I do not hesitate to
assume, as a matter of course, that whilst writing his friend's history
Hogg was aware of the gravest and most revolting suspicions entertained of
him by Shelley. It may be just conceivable, but it is in the highest
degree improbable, that Hogg survived Shelley without discovering the
worst of the several evil things the poet thought, said, and wrote of him,
towards the close of 1811 and in the earlier months of 1812. But even if
it could be proved that, whilst discharging the functions of his friend's
biographer, Hogg was in this most improbable ignorance, it would be none
the less certain that he was aware Shelley had deemed him an unsuitable
companion for Harriett; had, in consequence of the monstrous notion,
ceased for several months to correspond with him; and had moreover been
deplorably communicative to certain of his acquaintance respecting his
reasons, for breaking in so singular a manner with so particular a friend.
Aware that he had for a time been the victim of Shelley's marital
jealousy, and that the disturbance of their friendship was known in the
esoteric Shelleyan coteries to have resulted from this jealousy, the
biographer reasonably determined (for his honour's sake no less than for
the sake of his friend's honour) to exhibit to those coteries a document,
so largely and precisely eloquent of the feelings and considerations that
occasioned the breach. At the same time it was no less natural for the
personal historian to shrink from calling universal attention to a matter,
so little calculated to win respect and sympathy for the poet in whose
honour the history was being written.
Wishing to deal frankly with the coteries, and less than frankly with the
multitude, Hogg bethought himself how he could enlighten the coteries on a
matter about which they had a claim to information, without offering
Shelley to the whole world's amusement in the equally ludicrous and
ignoble character of an unreasonably jealous husband. Hence the
biographer's determination to misdescribe and manipulate the document, so
that, whilst accepted in the coteries for what it was (viz. the poet's
confidential letter on matters of the nicest indelicacy), it should be
read by the multitude, as what it was not,--a mere scrap of romantic
fiction.
Several years have now passed since the Shelleyan enthusiasts, with much
clucking over their own critical sagacity, discovered that the 'fragment
of a novel' was a manipulated letter, and that Mr. Hogg was an
inordinately deceitful person in dressing the letter so delusively. From
every point of view the affair is one of the broadest comedy. The
discoverers of the real letter under the false label were comically
jubilant over their cleverness in discovering what was put under their
noses,--jubilant like children, crying with delight at finding what was
hidden from them only that they might have the pleasure of finding it. It
was droll to see how, in their eagerness to expose the biographer's
dishonesty, these discoverers revealed to the irreverent multitude what
the biographer hoped the enthusiasts of the coteries would keep to
themselves, out of tenderness for the poet's reputation. It was very droll
to observe how Hogg was denounced for tampering fraudulently with the
document, which he published thus cautiously for the enlightenment of the
initiated Shelleyans,--could have safely withheld, as it was his own
property; and would not have published even in so guarded a way, had he
not desired to afford sufficient information, on a matter respecting which
he had not the hardihood to be fully communicative.
It being certain that sooner or later the world will be authoritatively
assured of the sufficiency of Shelley's reasons for thinking Hogg designed
and tried to seduce the girlish bride; and that the allegations to this
effect will be made with the two-fold object of destroying the
biographer's credit and raising suspicions of Harriett's discretion and
modesty, even from the very commencement of her association with the poet,
it is right that readers should be forewarned and fore-armed against such
preposterous assertions, by a further exhibition of the influences that
caused Shelley to think so ill of his heretofore closest friend, and by an
adequate exposition of the superabundant reasons for declaring Hogg wholly
and absolutely innocent of the wickedness, which has long been charged
against him.
Enough has been said in a previous chapter of the incidents and
influences, that caused Shelley to regard his wife's intimacy with his
friend as an association which, already fruitful of embarrassment to the
former, threatened to become no less fruitful of moral injury to the
latter. There is no need to remind readers of the train of circumstances
closing with the flight from York to Keswick, or of the abundant
documentary evidence that Shelley arrived at Keswick with undiminished
confidence in his friend's loyalty and honour, though with a lower respect
for his discretion, considerateness, and moral robustness. Had he on
entering Keswick imagined that Hogg had deliberately contemplated to lure
Harriett from the ways of wifely dutifulness, and even taken steps to
compass her seduction, Shelley could not have written to him from Keswick
with the passionate affectionateness, that animates each and all of the
several extant letters he sent his friend at York during the earlier weeks
of the residence at Keswick.
The _Fragment of a Novel_, which I regard as the last of the extant series
of undated epistles from Keswick, affords abundant evidence that, almost
up to the moment of the cessation of his correspondence with Hogg, Shelley
accused his friend of nothing worse than indiscretion, weakness,
insincerity, imbecility:--_i.e._ _indiscretion_, in allowing so much of
passionate fervour to qualify his admiration of Harriett; _weakness_, in
prolonging the intimacy that was causing him perilous excitement;
_insincerity_, in trying to disguise from himself the nature of the
feelings into which he had been betrayed; and _imbecility_, surpassing
mere weakness, in declining to combat the feelings whose indulgence tended
to wickedness. The force of some of the writer's expressions, no doubt,
exceeds the force of anything in his earlier expostulations with
Harriett's too frank and impulsive admirer; the greater energy of the
language showing that Shelley was fast nearing the time, when he passed
suddenly from the state of mind in which he accused Hogg of nothing worse
than indiscretion, weakness, insincerity, and imbecility, to the state of
mind in which he charged him with villany.
But even in this far more cogent and strenuous epistle one comes upon
expressions that expressly acquit Hogg of the wickedness of wishing to
seduce a simple girl, who had been his friend's wife for only a few weeks.
In answer to language, by which Hogg appears to have repelled an
ungenerous suspicion, Shelley says in the letter, 'I admit the distinction
which you make between mistake and crime. I acquit you heartily of the
latter.' Whilst penning them, the writer of these words could not have
imagined Hogg guilty of a design on Harriett's virtue. In reply to other
words, by which Hogg seems to have attempted to disperse certain of his
correspondent's absurd fancies, Shelley says, 'I hope I have shown you
that I do not regard you as a smooth-tongued traitor; could I choose such
for a friend? could I still love him with affection unabated, perhaps
increased?' Curious and abnormal creature though he was, Shelley could not
have written thus, whilst believing his correspondent guilty of the
darkest treason.
After speaking of a letter Harriett has received from Hogg, Shelley says,
'Harriett will write to you to-morrow.' Could Shelley have in this manner
sanctioned his wife's correspondence with a man whom he believed guilty of
trying to seduce her? Shelley's idolaters answer this question in the
affirmative. They are welcome to their opinion; but they must not ask me
to insult him by holding it.
Within a few days of writing thus strenuously to Hogg, that he loved him
as deeply and passionately as ever, and that his wife would write to him
on the morrow, Shelley assured Miss Hitchener of Hurstpierpoint, that this
same Hogg had attempted to seduce Mrs. Shelley. Taking possession of
Shelley's mind, at Keswick, towards the close of 1811, this morbid fancy
held it for several months. The poet's correspondence with the
Hurstpierpoint schoolmistress affords conclusive testimony that, instead
of being a quickly transient delusion, arising from an overdose of opium,
and perishing with the nervous disturbance caused by the drug, this
ghastly hallucination occupied the future poet's brain, at least, from the
middle of his sojourn at Keswick till the close of the ensuing spring.
It is in the nature of things for Platonic friendships to be mistaken by
ordinary observers for less amiable and orderly attachments. When a young
gentleman is seen sauntering about sylvan glades and rural lanes with a
pretty milliner on his arm, or is known to be corresponding through the
post with a publican's daughter, the world is slow to think the intimacy
of the young people, wholly independent of the motives and considerations
that are usually more or less operative, when a young man of gentle rank
lavishes attention on a young woman of plebeian quality. On the contrary,
judging from appearances, with no excessive care for exceptional
idiosyncrasies, the world is apt to refer the unequal association to
certain of the most familiar affections. Though the avowal may move some
readers to smile at my simplicity, I have little doubt Shelley's liking
for Miss Eliza Hitchener was from first to last a purely Platonic
preference. It would, however, have been strange, had the people in and
about Cuckfield and Hurstpierpoint taken this charitable view of an
intimacy, that, causing no little gossip in and around those parishes,
moved local tattlers to declare Miss Hitchener no better than she ought to
be. Readers may not suppose that this view of Miss Hitchener's character
and relations with the poet was confined to the haunters of her father's
tavern. Having for some time regarded her nephew's civility to the
schoolmistress with suspicion, Mrs. Pilfold held a strong opinion in the
spring of 1812, that the continuance of the intimacy, now he had married
Harriett Westbrook, would be simply scandalous. Whether the lady wrote to
her nephew on the subject does not appear. Anyhow, he learnt through some
channel enough of his aunt's unfavourable opinion of the curious
friendship, to hold her chiefly accountable for certain Cuckfield gossip
that, moving him to indignation in April, 1812, caused him, on the 29th of
that month, to write from Nantgwilt to his friend at Hurstpierpoint, 'I
unfaithful to my Harriett! You a female Hogg! Common sense would laugh
such an idea to scorn, if indignation would wait till it could be looked
upon!'--words of evidence that at least to the end of April in 1812, the
writer was held firmly by the fancy that caused him to break with Hogg
towards the close of the previous year.
Eliza Westbrook was chiefly accountable for Shelley's passage from the
state of mind, in which he regarded Hogg as nothing worse than Harriett's
inconveniently emotional but loyal admirer, to the state of mind, in which
he regarded him as a treacherous libertine, set on seducing her. Even as
she had been at York the influence to carry Shelley from a condition of
unqualified confidence in his friend's discretion and moral robustness
into a condition of feverish apprehension for the consequences of his
tempestuous sentimentality, Eliza Westbrook became at Keswick the baneful
tutor, who educated him into thinking Hogg an egregious villain.
From the moment of her arrival at Keswick, to the moment when she could
congratulate herself on having effected her purpose, the woman whom Hogg
had hoped and tried to separate from her sister and brother-in-law, found
her chief occupation in bringing Shelley to the conviction that Hogg was a
black-hearted knave. In justice to the woman who accomplished this evil
work, it should be remembered that she had received no ordinary
provocation. She may have imagined she was rendering good service to her
childish and inexperienced sister. Though she was a person of some culture
and more than average cleverness, it is not to be supposed that John
Westbrook's elder daughter had, together with the superficial refinement,
acquired the delicate sensibility of a gentlewoman. Whilst there is
nothing to countenance an opinion that Miss Westbrook was remarkable for
mental purity and elevation, there is abundant evidence that in feeling
and temper she resembled the average womankind of the London
_bourgeoisie_. Born in a tavern, reared from infancy to girlhood's later
term in a bar-parlour, and shaping her course in accordance with Miss
Warne's canons of feminine propriety, she held on numerous questions the
views and notions, generally favoured, by people of the decent but
unrefined class, in which she had found her earliest teachers. It was
natural for her to think no young man could approach her beautiful sister
without regarding her passionately, and seizing the earliest occasion for
the gratification of his desire. Taking this view of Hogg and his peculiar
intimacy with Harriett, it is conceivable that Miss Westbrook was at times
less mindful of her strictly personal reasons for disliking the young
gentleman, than of the dangers from which she desired to save her sister.
It is not surprising that she resolved to put an end to an intimacy so
likely to tarnish Harriett's reputation, and even make her a faithless
wife.
Nor is it surprising that Miss Westbrook accomplished at Keswick the
purpose she formed at York,--the purpose she could scarcely have
accomplished at York, or anywhere else, so long as Shelley was in daily
personal intercourse with his incomparable friend. At York, with his
radiant smiles and racy humour, his cordial looks and sympathetic hints,
Hogg was more than a match for the enemy who, so long as he was on the
spot to answer precise charges of wickedness, could only hint that her
dear Harriett was embarrassed by his extravagant gallantry. But at Keswick
Shelley was altogether at the mercy of the quick-witted spinster, who,
recalling to his memory countless trivial incidents, knew well how to
give them a suspicious colour, and manipulate them into evidence that,
instead of being Harriett's chivalric admirer, Hogg had been her wicked
pursuer.
Resembling Byron in being easily governed by any woman with whom he was
thrown, so long as he was pleased with her, Shelley went to Keswick in the
best of humours with his wife's sister. Grateful to her for favouring his
pursuit of Harriett, and cheering him in sisterly fashion at a moment of
many troubles, he magnified her considerable cleverness into marvellous
sagacity, and discovered angelic sweetness in her transient complaisance.
At Keswick, and for several weeks after leaving Keswick, the youngster,
who had found a tyrant in his kindly father and rebelled against his
mother's mild control, surrendered himself to the government of his wife's
sister with comical submissiveness. When a freakish and petulant man
consents to petticoat rule, he usually reserves his freedom of action in
regard to a few matters of minor importance. But for awhile no spirit of
petty mannishness put a limit to Miss Westbrook's authority over her
brother-in-law. Pleased to be managed by her in great things, such as his
attitude towards Hogg, he was no less pleased to be governed by so
wonderful a woman in the smallest things. So long as he delighted in his
marvellous sister-in-law, Shelley was content to go about with empty
pockets, and take his sixpences from the diplomatic Eliza as he wanted
them. 'Eliza,' he wrote meekly from Dublin to Miss Hitchener, 'keeps our
common stock of money for safety in some nook or corner of her dress, but
we are not dependent on her, although she gives it out as we want it.'
Of course the lady, who gave money to her two children as they wanted it,
was aware that, to control them for any considerable period, she must be
mindful of their humours and govern them with gentleness; that to retain
her power over them she must drive with a light rein and seldom crack the
whip. Having opened Shelley's eyes to Hogg's iniquity, she was clever
enough to see and say what he saw and said on questions of poetry and
social science. To reward her brother-in-law for banishing the perfidious
Hogg from his breast, she promised to receive Miss Hitchener to her heart
in the ensuing summer, when the Sussex schoolmistress should come to them
in North Wales. In his altercations with Southey she was, of course,
altogether on her brother-in-law's side. If she doubted whether _The
Address_ would do all the author hoped of it, for the good of the Irish
people, she kept the doubt to herself. It may also be assumed confidently
that, on entering Dublin with Harriett's husband, she had never expressed
in his hearing any misgiving of his ability to emancipate the Catholics
and cancel the Act of Union. Miss Westbrook did not govern her erratic
brother-in-law for any long period; but her control over him would have
been less enduring by several months, had she not known that to rule a
freakish and wayward man on matters of moment a woman must agree with him
on matters about which she is indifferent.
How far in her measures for Hogg's humiliation Miss Westbrook was aided by
Shelley's bride; how far the assistance Harriett gave her sister to this
end was given with a clear knowledge of the object for which the latter
was working; and how far Mrs. Shelley was in her sister's confidence, are
questions for differences of opinion. It cannot, however, be questioned
that, either with malice aforethought, or in the heedlessness of girlish
simplicity, Harriett contributed to the matters of testimony which brought
the future poet to the amazing conclusion that Hogg, at some time or times
before the flight from York, had wished and essayed to seduce her. It is
conceivable that from first to last in this unsavoury business the sisters
were in perfect mutual confidence; but I cannot believe that so young a
girl as Mrs. Shelley deliberately conspired with her sister at York to
trump up so monstrous a charge against her husband's closest friend. I
can, however, imagine that in her amazement at the view taken by Shelley
of some of her admissions respecting Hogg's demeanour to her, she may have
lacked the courage to protest against the misconstruction put on innocent
occurrences, and may have been betrayed by such weakness at Keswick into
acquiescing in a hideous story which she knew to be untrue. I can imagine
that _after_ her arrival at Keswick she was schooled and terrorized by her
elder sister into conspiring with her to impose the vile romance on her
husband. After practising alternately on Harriett's imagination and
Shelley's imagination, Miss Westbrook may, by sheer force of will, have
constrained Harriett to think that, to preserve her husband's confidence,
it was necessary for her to affect to think what he thought of Hogg,--that
by speaking in Hogg's defence she would cause Shelley to suspect her of
having connived at his wicked design. Miss Westbrook may even have talked
Harriett at Keswick into thinking Hogg had tried to make her a faithless
wife. It must be remembered how young and inexperienced Harriett was,--and
how greatly under her sister's influence.
But I think it more probable that Harriett was never admitted fully into
her sister's confidence,--was never permitted either by Miss Westbrook or
Shelley to know all the evil they thought of Hogg. Perplexed by the
conditions of her recent association with Hogg, it was natural in the
young wife at York to wish to escape for awhile from an intimacy that,
during her husband's absence, had exposed her to the suspicion of the
prying milliners. On Miss Westbrook's arrival at the lodging-house, it was
natural for the girlish bride to speak to her sister of the uneasiness and
the mingled feelings of irritation and shame she had experienced. On
Shelley's reappearance it was no less natural for her to speak to him on
the same subjects. She may have felt that her position would have been
less trying if Mr. Hogg had been something less attentive to her; that he
would have shown greater delicacy in either withdrawing from the lodgings,
or spending his evenings elsewhere so long as Shelley was away. Feeling
this, she may have said so to Shelley as well as to her sister. It cannot
be questioned that she joined her sister in urging Shelley to withdraw
hurriedly from York; but in doing so Harriett may not have been actuated,
like her sister, by a desire to offer Mr. Hogg a great affront. She may
have been told by Miss Westbrook that Hogg was aware what would take place
during his absence. Anyhow it is certain that Harriett left York without
thinking Hogg guilty of harbouring infamous designs on her honour, and
also without conceiving her sister and Shelley suspected him of such
wickedness. Had she thought either the one or the other, it is
inconceivable that she would have written friendly letters to him from
Cumberland.
At Keswick, during the earlier weeks of November, Shelley and Harriett had
several conversations about Hogg and his behaviour to her; conversations
in which they reviewed all the circumstances of his sojourn with them at
Edinburgh and at York; conversations in which Shelley questioned and
cross-questioned her respecting the incidents of her life in the dingy
lodging-house, whilst he was absent from the cathedral town; conversations
in which they examined critically the letters Hogg had sent her from York
since her arrival at Keswick. Whilst there is good reason to believe
Harriett spoke freely with her husband in these Cumberland conferences,
there is no reason to think she spoke otherwise than honestly. But it is
in the nature of such conferences (where the memory of one speaker feeds
the curiosity of another) to magnify words and deeds of no moment into
matters of the highest moment, and to play strange tricks with the colour
and quality of remembered circumstances. Unconscious inventiveness is ever
at hand to help the memory. If Harriett's recollections were severely
historic, and wholly free from the delusive effects of mental excitement,
she was a strangely cold and unsympathetic young woman. Instead of being
offered to a listener of sober intellect and judicial temper, her
recollections were offered to a young man of quick fancy, impetuous
spirit, vehement emotionality. Given to such a mind, the recollections
were necessarily fruitful of false impressions.
In these conversations Harriett unquestionably played into the hands of
Miss Westbrook, and greatly furthered her elder sister's machinations for
Hogg's chastisement; but I have a strong (though possibly erroneous)
opinion that this aid was rendered by Mrs. Shelley in ignorance of all her
sister's purpose. She certainly had no strong liking for Hogg. She
disliked him to the extent of wishing to be relieved of an embarrassing
intimacy with him, and may even have desired her husband to regard him
coldly. In proportion as she is young and foolish, a bride is apt to
regard her husband's closest male friend with jealousy and antagonism.
Harriett was a mere girl, and no wiser than most girls of her age. Of her
own mere motion she would have been sure to think Hogg was overvalued by
her husband. Living so much under Eliza's influence she necessarily wished
him to stand lower in her husband's favour. But I cannot think she did or
said anything for the purpose of causing Shelley to imagine Hogg had made
an attempt on her virtue.
Whilst these conversations (having for their avowed object the discovery
of the degree in which Hogg's admiration of Mrs. Shelley had exceeded the
limits of conventional propriety and virtuous behaviour) gave an unhealthy
direction to the thoughts of the girlish bride, they worked the nervous
and emotional Shelley into states of excitement favourable to Miss
Westbrook's designs. Each of his conversations with Harriett may be
presumed to have been followed by confidential talk with Eliza, in which
Shelley gave her the particulars of Harriett's latest admissions, and she
(in Harriett's absence) taught Shelley what views to take of those
admissions, what inferences he should draw from them. The preciseness with
which Shelley wrote to Miss Hitchener about Hogg's iniquity justifies a
strong suspicion that Miss Westbrook's operations on her brother-in-law's
jealousy and credulity closed with some definite statement to Hogg's
infamy. It is difficult to imagine that even Shelley could have been
brought to the final conviction by mere hints and inferential suggestions.
On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive any statement, likely to
have been made by Miss Westbrook for her brother-in-law's conviction of
Hogg's guilt, that would not have rudely shaken his confidence in the
virtue of his wife, who had herself written to Hogg from Keswick in
friendly terms. It is enough that the moment came when Shelley wrote of
Hogg to the Hurstpierpoint schoolmistress, 'He attempted to seduce my
wife.'
Chivalry being the last quality I should think of attributing to Shelley,
it is not for me to show how his action in writing thus grossly on so
delicate a subject is compatible with the chivalric delicacy and
generosity for which he is so extravagantly applauded by his idolaters. It
is for them to explain how so chivalric a creature wrote thus coarsely to
the Sussex schoolmistress, whom he had known for only a few months.
Chivalry influences a man's demeanour to men as well as to women,--to his
enemies and friends of the sterner sex as well as to the women whom he
reverences, and the women whom he holds in disesteem. It is also a
self-respecting quality, disposing a man to be thoughtful for his own
honour. People's notions differ, of course, about chivalry, as well as
everything else; but most readers will concur with the present writer in
thinking that, on discovering in his familiar friend such guilt and
baseness as Shelley imagined himself to have discovered in Hogg, a
chivalric man would punish the traitor in accordance with prevailing laws
of honour, or decide to leave him to the punishment of his own conscience,
and then be silent for ever of him and his infamy. Living in the days of
duelling, it was open to Shelley, if not incumbent on him, to do his best
to slay the man, whom he believed to have meditated and essayed his wife's
seduction. It was open to him to refrain from this vindictive course on
conscientious grounds; but it was _not_ open to him, as a man of honour
and chivalry, to tattle and gossip of such an affair to any sempstress of
his acquaintance. Whether he fought Hogg, or left him to go his own way to
perdition, he should, out of tragic regard for their former friendship,
and sublime pity for the once-loved friend, have committed the ghastly
business to _altum silentium_. Had he been a chivalrous man, he could not
have written about a matter, implicating his wife's honour and delicacy in
so hideous a way, to a young woman of Miss Hitchener's social degree.
Writing to Miss Hitchener letters on this subject, about which he should
have told her nothing, Shelley, of course, wrote to other persons, on the
same unsavoury business. As the monstrous story came to Southey's ears
from Shelley's own lips, whilst 'the trio' were at Keswick, it is not
unfair to assume that Harriett's husband was no less communicative on the
revolting topic, by word of mouth, to divers persons, who, knowing little
of him, had no personal knowledge whatever of Hogg. There is rumour in the
air that other letters by Shelley, in addition to those he is known to
have sent Miss Hitchener, will be produced, sooner or later, in evidence
of Hogg's criminality. But instead of being evidence that Hogg felt and
acted vilely, such letters will only be so much additional evidence that
Shelley thought unjustly and ignobly of his old college-friend, who at no
point of his career was any more guilty of trying to seduce his friend's
wife, than the Squire of Field Place was guilty of wishing to lock his son
up in a madhouse. At the most, such letters, even though numbering several
hundreds, can only afford additional evidence respecting the strength of
Shelley's unreasonable conviction, and the number of the persons to whom
he wrote about the unreasonable conviction.
Why is it so certain that in thinking thus ill of Hogg, Shelley was only
labouring under an hallucination,--the wildest and most grotesque, though
not the most obstinate, of the several hallucinations that possessed him
at different times of his career?
(1.) Though the _primâ facie_ improbable often happens in this strange
world, the charge against Hogg is discredited by its egregious
improbability. No one has ever questioned the force and sincerity of
Hogg's affection for Shelley up to the time of the poet's first marriage.
Nothing has ever been proved against Hogg to countenance even a suspicion
that he had in early life any strong propensity for vicious ways,--unless
freedom in philosophic speculation is to be designated a vice. A young
gentleman by birth and culture, he had the tastes and habits of a
gentleman. His moral influence over Shelley had been in some particulars
distinctly beneficial. It was due to him that, instead of making Harriett
a mere mistress, Shelley made her his wife. There was a vein of poetry, a
strong vein of romance, in Hogg's comparatively cold nature. In 1811, he
and Shelley were both at a time of life when well-born and well-bred
youngsters are influenced most strongly by generous sentiments. They had
been close friends at College; and it is no exaggeration to say, that the
mutual affection of two such college friends surpasses the love of
brothers. Their romantic love of one another having continued without
abatement until the September of 1811, Shelley married a charming
girl,--marrying her lawfully (instead of taking her without a
marriage-rite), only because Hogg argued him into doing so. Hastening to
Edinburgh to rejoice in his friend's happiness, Hogg there sees his
friend's wife for the first time, almost, if not actually, on the morrow
of her marriage. He is charged with pursuing her wickedly from so early a
date of their acquaintance; that he (_ætat._ 19) tried to seduce her
before he had known her more than eight weeks. Is it probable that he did
any such thing?
(2.) Only eight weeks elapsed between Hogg's first introduction to
Harriett, at Edinburgh, and her departure from York. It is curious that
the persons who insist most strongly on the truth of the accusation are
the persons who insist most strongly that, instead of passing all this
short time in Hogg's society, Harriett spent some ten days of it in
journeying with her husband fro and to, between York and Sussex. The
story, which Southey heard, was that the attempt on Mrs. Shelley's virtue
was made during the journey from Scotland. But let no deduction be made
from the eight weeks. Is it conceivable that in so short a time Hogg did
that of which he is accused?
(3.) Certainly nothing took place either at Edinburgh or York under
Shelley's observation, to induce him at either of those places to believe
his friend so wicked. This is proved by the fact that he wrote to Hogg
from Keswick a series of vehemently affectionate letters,--letters he
could not have written whilst believing Hogg guilty of the most revolting
offence a man can commit against his friend. It is certain that before she
left York nothing had occurred to make Harriett imagine herself so injured
and outraged as the accusation represents her to have been. For otherwise,
it is inconceivable she would at Keswick have corresponded with him
through the post. No less certain is it that nothing occurred at York
under her observation, which Miss Westbrook could venture to report to
Shelley, as certain evidence of the crime charged against Hogg a few weeks
later; for had any such thing occurred, she would not have failed to
report it to Shelley at once, and forthwith put his guilt beyond question.
(4.) It follows that Shelley's conviction of Hogg's guilt cannot have
resulted immediately from observations, made either by him or by Harriett,
before they left York. At best it was due to his recollections of matters
which at Keswick he imagined to have taken place several weeks since at
Edinburgh or York, or between the two places; to similar recollections by
Harriett; to Miss Westbrook's statements, and to Shelley's inferences from
those recollections and statements. Hogg during his absence was, in fact,
arraigned and tried at Keswick for flagrant treason against his friend,
and his friend's wife, in a court where Shelley sat as judge and acted at
the same time as witness; where Miss Westbrook acted in the threefold
capacity of accuser, judicial-assessor, and witness; and where Harriett
was a witness,--perhaps, only a subordinate witness. Shelley's evidence
for the prosecution consisted of his recollections of matters that, at the
time of their occurrence, cannot have made him think Hogg seriously at
fault. Mrs. Shelley's evidence consisted of her recollections of matters,
that did not prevent her from corresponding with Hogg after her arrival at
Keswick. Miss Westbrook's statements consisted in equal parts of
recollection and invention, and of inference from her own recollections
and inventions, and from the recollections of the other two witnesses. No
defence was offered for the absent Hogg. What was the evidential value of
Shelley's recollection,--the reminiscences of the man who could not at any
time of his life be trusted to give an accurate account of any business in
which he was strongly interested? What was the evidential value of Mrs.
Shelley's recollections,--the recollections of the sixteen-years-old
girl, who wrote friendly letters from Keswick to the man, soon to be
declared guilty of having attempted to seduce her before she left York?
What evidential value may be assigned to Miss Westbrook's statements? How
about the judicial faculty of the judge? What witnesses! What evidence!
What a tribunal!
(5.) But the strongest evidence that Shelley's conviction of his friend's
guilt was mere hallucination remains to be stated. In a few months,
certainly less than twelve months, he had got the better of the morbid
fancy that caused him to break for a while with Hogg, and, having come out
of the delusion and returned to his right mind, he at once declared in the
most impressive manner that he had thought and spoken of Hogg with
injustice. And having so declared in the most impressive manner his own
error and his friend's innocence, Shelley held steadily to this
declaration to his last hour. How was the declaration made? By deeds as
well as by words.
(6.) Migrating from York to London, when he had passed twelve months in
the chambers of his first legal instructor, Hogg became a Middle Temple
law-student in the late spring, or early summer, of 1812. Eating his
dinners in the hall of his Inn, and spending his days in the chambers of
the Special Pleader with whom he was reading, the hard-working student
usually passed his evenings in rooms he occupied in a lodging-house, at
some distance from the Inns of Court. Having recently returned from the
country, at the close of the Long Vacation of 1812, Hogg was sitting in
his quiet lodgings late one evening at the beginning of November, with a
book under his eyes and a tea-pot near at hand, when he heard a violent
knocking at the street-door. Another minute and some one ran furiously
upstairs. Another instant, and Percy Bysshe Shelley rushed into the
student's room. Certainly for more than nine months, possibly for eleven
months, Hogg had received no letter from his friend, had heard nothing of
his movements. For so long a period--a long period in the life of the
young--there had been a total severance of the two friends. How much Hogg
knew then of Shelley's reasons for ceasing to write to him does not
appear. But he knew Shelley was deeply offended with him, and knew the
displeasure was connected with his attentions to Harriett. Though, from
concern for his friend's honour, he could not tell the ludicrous and
painful story outright in pages designed to commemorate the poet's finer
and nobler qualities, Hogg indicates thus much in the _Life_ with
sufficient clearness to all readers capable of reading 'between the lines'
of a printed record. For more than nine months, possibly for eleven
months, the friends had lived asunder; and now they were together again,
by the act of the one who had caused the severance. Having got the better
of his hallucination, and come to London in his right mind, Shelley had
hunted for Hogg at Lincoln's Inn; hunted for him at the Temple; discovered
the chambers where he was a student; declined to wait till the morning for
the much-desired interview with his old college chum; constrained 'the
clerk at chambers' to give him Hogg's address; and gone off impetuously in
quest of the incomparable Hogg at his lodgings, though it was already near
the hour when quiet lodging-houses were usually closed for the night. Thus
it was that Shelley returned to the friend whom he had charged with trying
to seduce his wife. Surely, this return to friendly relations with the man
whom he had imagined capable of such iniquity should be regarded as a
declaration of Hogg's innocence, as an avowal by Shelley that he had
misjudged his friend, and in consequence of monstrous misconception had
calumniated him.
(7.) Shelley's merciless, slanderous idolaters say otherwise. These
'friends' (may heaven preserve all future poets from such friends!) insist
that, when he thus threw himself into his friend's arms, Shelley still
believed Hogg had tried to seduce his wife; still believed him capable of
trying to seduce her, and was only showing his superhuman generosity and
his divine faculty of forgiving, when he thus _forgave_ the man who,
twelve months since, had tried to perpetrate so foul and revolting a
crime. Not by the men who are mindful of his human infirmities, but by the
men who declare his virtuous nature had no alloy of evil, is it asserted
that Shelley rushed into Hogg's arms with these words on his lips: 'It is
true you strove to corrupt my bride twelve months since; but I forgive you
that little error; so let by-gones be by-gones, and once again let us be
"friends for ever!"' Superhuman generosity! divine faculty of forgiveness!
If this is divine forgiveness, I can only say that, so far as I am
concerned, divine beings are welcome to their monopoly of so vicious a
virtue. It is a matter for congratulation that human nature is seldom
capable of such generosity. I am alive to Shelley's failings, but I
decline to join with his idolaters in crediting him with so peculiar a
generosity--a generosity only to be possessed by the meanest of mankind.
(8.) Having thus returned at a late hour of the evening to Hogg's heart,
Shelley insisted the next day on taking him to an hotel near St. James'
Palace, in order that he should there be re-introduced to Harriett, and
once again brought into close and affectionate intimacy with her. Can I be
wrong in saying that, in thus re-introducing Hogg to his wife, Shelley
declared his previous conviction of his friend's guilty purpose to have
been pure misconception?--that Shelley could not have been so careless of
his wife's honour, her virtue, his own honour, as to have thus restored
Hogg in the November of 1812 to his previous intimacy with Mrs. Shelley,
whilst still believing he tried to seduce her in the October of 1811? The
Shelleyan zealots declare me altogether wrong. They maintain that in the
November of 1812 Shelley still believed Hogg made an attempt on Harriett's
virtue in October, 1811, still believed him capable of so dark a crime.
They admit it was strange and remarkable that, under these circumstances,
Shelley should have again invited Hogg to live, and made him live, in
close intimacy with Harriett--still in her eighteenth year. But they
insist that a sufficient explanation of conduct so strange and remarkable
is afforded by Shelley's superhuman generosity and divine faculty of
forgiving.
(9.) Having thus returned to friendship with Hogg, Shelley lived in
friendship with him to the last;--so living in friendship with him (the
Shelleyan zealots insist) whilst he all the while believed him to have
tried to seduce Harriett within eight weeks of her marriage.
(10.) After breaking with Harriett, and joining hands in Free Love with
Mary Godwin, Shelley took an early occasion for inviting Hogg to live as
intimately with Mary, as he had in former time lived with Harriett. Is it
conceivable that Shelley would have invited to this intimacy with his
second spouse the man whom he still believed guilty of trying to corrupt
his first spouse?
(11.) By his will (dated 18th February, 1817, when he, Hogg, and Mary
Godwin were living in affectionate intimacy: and proved more than
twenty-two years after his death, _i.e._ on 1st November, 1844), Shelley
left Hogg a legacy of 2000_l._--a substantial proof of the affectionate
regard in which Shelley to his last hour held his old college friend. It
is unusual for a testator to bequeath 2000_l._ to a man whom he believes
to have tried to seduce his wife.
(12.) Declaring by acts, and by steady persistence in the friendship never
again to be broken or shaken, that he had misjudged Hogg and quarrelled
with him through misconception, Shelley by his pen put it upon record that
he had wronged his early friend in thinking him vile and treacherous. Of
all the egotisms of _Laon and Cythna_, few are of greater biographic value
than the stanzas in which the author, speaking of himself in the character
of Laon, records how in his youth he was so far misled by envious and
deceitful tongues as to bewail the falsehood of his heart's dearest
friend, and in due course discovered that, instead of having been really
found false, his comrade had only seemed so. In the second canto of the
poem it is written:--
'Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth
Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,
Did Laon and his friend on one grey plinth,
Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,
Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:
And that his friend was false, may now be said
Calmly--that he like other men could weep
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.'
It is not till he has been torn from Cythna, confined on the column's
dizzy height, freed from bondage, cured of madness, and despatched to lead
the revolutionary patriots of the Golden City, that Laon encounters again
the friend from whom he parted in grief and misconception, and discovers
how wrong he was to think evil of him. Recounting in the poem's fifth
canto the incidents of his first night and morning in the patriots' camp,
Laon says:--
'And now the Power of Good held victory,
So, thro' the labyrinth of many a tent,
Among the silent millions who did lie
In innocent sleep, exultingly I went;
The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent
From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed
An armèd youth--over his spear he bent
His downward face.--"A friend!" I cried aloud;
And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.
I sate beside him while the morning beam
Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him
Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!
Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:
And all the while, methought, his voice did swim,
As if it drownèd in remembrance were
Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:
At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the air,
He looked on me, and cried in wonder--"Thou art here!"
Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
_Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded_;
The truth now came upon me, on the ground
Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,
Fell fast, and o'er its peace our mingled spirits brooded.'
Thus it was that, in the poem written during the six brightest months of
1817 (_i.e._ of the summer following the execution of his will), Shelley
gave a penitential account of his quarrel _with_, and transient severance
_from_, his heart's best friend, taking all the error and shame of the
miserable affair to himself; acknowledging he did his friend black
injustice in thinking him false, confessing his weak submissiveness to the
false and envious tongues that misled him; declaring himself altogether
_deluded_, and Hogg altogether innocent of the offences charged against
him--altogether blameless in the whole wretched business, unless it was
that he had been silent from a proud sense of injury, when by free and
candid speech he might have utterly discredited the 'envious tongues,' and
dispelled the misconceptions and delusions resulting from their slanderous
activity. In the way of poetry, what fuller acquittal, what larger
acknowledgment of the wrong done him, could Hogg require than the single
line: 'Whilst _he_ was innocent and I deluded?'
(13.) Some readers may think the acknowledgment would have been more
effective in simple prose,--may think the avowal suffers in force from the
artificiality of its terms,--may think it a pity Shelley did not say in
less artful language what he put so gracefully in verse. One may be sure
the impetuous Shelley poured the same confession in half a hundred forms
of vehement speech into Hogg's private ear. Moreover, he did not pass
from the world without putting the same pathetic confession and prayer in
less than forty words of strenuous prose. When Hogg, some thirty-five long
years after the poet's death, came for the first time on the MS. of _An
Essay on Friendship_--the essay mentioned in a previous chapter of this
work--he found these dedicatory words on the paper: 'I once had a friend,
whom an inextricable multitude of circumstances has forced me to treat
with apparent neglect. To him I dedicate this essay. If he finds my own
words condemn me, will he not forgive?' In Shelley's hand-writing, these
words may well have affected Hogg acutely and profoundly! Penned for his
eye, they penetrated his heart! No writer (that I am aware of) has
ventured to deny boldly and honestly that this dedicatory note was meant
for Hogg, or even to question seriously whether it was not intended for
some one else; but petty scribblers by the score have sneered at Hogg's
egotism and impudence in taking to himself the dedicatory note, that
certainly was meant for no one else.
What more can readers require in the way of evidence that, in respect to
the morbid notion which caused his transient quarrel with Hogg, Shelley
was the victim of monstrous hallucination? Those who require more evidence
on this point, are persons to whom The Real Shelley will never be known.
In arguing this case, I have striven to argue evenly on both sides, as
though I were retained by both plaintiff and defendant to discover the
truth. I have kept cautiously within my evidences. Possibly, evidences
touching the matter have not come under my notice. But I do not think I
have missed any writing likely to affect my arguments or conclusions
materially. All reliable information respecting the affair must come to us
in some way or other from Shelley, Harriett, or Hogg. Any additional
statement from Shelley to Hogg's disadvantage would be the mere statement
of a sufferer from delusion. Possibly, papers exist, in which Harriett,
whilst stating precisely that Hogg attempted to seduce her, gives minute
particulars of the alleged attempt. Let us assume that, in her
correspondence with Miss Hitchener, and other persons, she was thus
communicative, and that Field Place is in a position to produce a bundle
of letters, in each of which she accuses Hogg of trying to seduce her, and
describes minutely the means by which he tried to achieve his purpose.
Such letters, however numerous and precise, would be the mere statements,
in chief, of a witness, whom it is impossible to cross-examine,--a witness
whose veracity is not unimpeachable; a witness who has been freely charged
by Shelleyan apologists with untruth, in respect to several of her
numerous statements to her husband's discredit; a witness, moreover, who,
to use Mr. William Rossetti's words, was, in her seventeenth year,
philosophized by Shelley himself out of the ordinary standard of feminine
propriety. It is no uncommon thing for a young woman to imagine an attempt
has been made on her honour, when no such attempt has been made. Women
have been known to imagine themselves the victims of seduction when no one
has seduced them. A case occurred no long while since in one of our law
courts, where evidence of a woman's criminal intercourse with her alleged
seducer was afforded by notes, made in her own hand-writing, in her
private diary, and yet it was proved conclusively that her own written
confessions of guilt were romantic and purely imaginative records of
incidents that had never really taken place. Some women have a curious
aptitude for suspecting men of wishing to seduce them; and it would not be
unfair to suggest that the sixteen-years-old school-girl, to whose
thoughts Shelley had given an unwholesome direction, was capable of
entertaining such a suspicion groundlessly. Moreover, the discovery of
such letters should neither occasion surprise, nor dispose the judicial
reader to regard them as conclusively evidential of Hogg's guilt; because,
if she wrote about the matter at all in her letters, the girl who, from
terror or motives of policy, or from imaginative influences, certainly
acquiesced in the charge against Hogg, even if she did not deliberately
conspire with her sister to trump it up, would naturally write in
accordance with the accusation, to which she was a party.
How about Hogg,--the third of the sources of information? He denied the
charge. His way of dealing with the Keswick letters was a denial of the
charge,--as clear, precise, and strenuous a denial as he could give to the
accusation, respecting which he could not, for Shelley's honour's sake,
speak precisely to the whole world. He denied the charge again by the way
in which he took to himself the dedicatory note to the _Essay on
Friendship_. He could not have denied the charge more precisely to the
coteries, and every individual cognizant of the vile slander, without
exhibiting the poet to the whole world's derision.
What if evidence should even yet be produced that Hogg actually made the
attempt? For argument's sake, let us conceive what is in the highest
degree improbable, and suppose that letters, written by Hogg himself to
Shelley and Harriett, are, even now, put before the world by Field Place,
to the conclusive demonstration of the writer's guilt,--letters placing it
beyond question that he really made the attempt. What then? The result
would comprise the absolute destruction of Shelley's right to be rated
with men of honour, or even with men of common decency. Such letters would
prove that, within a few days of an attempt on his wife's virtue, and in
sure cognizance of the attempt and the maker of it, Shelley wrote in terms
of passionate affectionateness to the culprit. They would prove that,
knowing Hogg had, only a few weeks since, tried to debauch his bride,
Shelley wrote to him, 'You are my bosom friend.' They would prove that in
less than fourteen months from the attempt, Shelley survived his faint
annoyance at the affair so completely as to be capable of throwing himself
into Hogg's arms, saying to him, 'Let us think no more of that unlucky
business,' and forthwith inviting him to renew his intimacy with the girl,
whom he had tried to seduce. What is the only construction to be put on
the conduct of the husband, who brings again into familiar intercourse
with his wife the very man whom he knows to have recently tried to seduce
her? It cannot be urged that Shelley acted thus on sufficient proof that
Hogg was an altered man; for there had been no intercourse between them,
by letter or otherwise, since Shelley left Keswick. Yet more,--such
evidence of Hogg's guilt would prove that, in introducing him to Mary
Godwin, Shelley brought into close intimacy with his second spouse, the
man whom he knew to have tried to seduce his first wife within a few weeks
of her wedding. Such evidence would, of course, cover Hogg with dark
disgrace. But it would, at the same time, cover Shelley with blackest
infamy. The Shelleyan enthusiasts would have been less eager to prove Hogg
guilty of _the attempt_, had not animosity against Hogg blinded them to
what would ensue to Shelley's reputation, should they succeed in proving
the charge.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
Printed by STRANGEWAYS & SONS, Tower Street, Upper St. Martin's Lane.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This extract from Charles Grove's letter is taken from the printed
copy of the epistle in Hogg's second volume; and the reader should give
his attention to the words between brackets which are no part of the
letter, but one of the explanatory notes, which the biographer
indiscreetly put into the body of his transcripts of original documents,
instead of printing them as foot-notes. It was his rule to bracket such
editorial notes, and insert his initials after the second bracket. But the
careless scribe, and still more careless proof-corrector, sometimes forgot
to insert his initials, sometimes forgetting also to insert the brackets.
Hence the so-called 'interpolations' of original evidences, for which he
has been unfairly reproached by his detractors.
[2] The right name of this seat seems to have been Hill Place. In the
_Beauties of England and Wales_ (1813), _Sussex_, p. 97, it is written,
'In the same direction on the right of the road, is an old seat called
Hill Place, formerly the property of the late Viscountess Irwin, but now
belonging to the Duke of Norfolk.' 'Lady Irwen's Hill Place' would be
naturally abbreviated after her death into 'Irwen's Hill,' which again
would be corrupted into 'Irving's Hill,' the familiar designation of the
place in Shelley's boyhood.
[3] Shelley, as we shall see, was in London, and in urgent need of more
money, in October, 1811.
[4] Hogg describes Shelley's rooms as 'being in the corner next the hall
of the principal quadrangle of the University College.' 'They are,' he
continues, 'on the first floor, and on the right of the entrance, but by
reason of the turn in the stairs, when you reach them, they will be upon
your left hand.'--HOGG'S _Life_, v. 1, p. 67.
[5] The first Reader in Mineralogy of the University of Oxford, with a
Grant from the Crown, was William Buckland, B.D., subsequently the famous
Dean of Westminster. From the Oxford University Calendar, it appears that
a Crown Grant was assigned to this famous Professor for lecturing on
Mineralogy in 1813. Probably the same lecturer gave lectures in the same
department of science before receiving the grant, and was the gentleman
whose 'dullness' was so afflicting to Mr. Bysshe Shelley.
[6] Biographers differ in spelling Harriett in the case of Miss Westbrook,
and also in the case of Miss Grove. Hogg says Harriett Westbrook signed
herself 'Harriet,' though Shelley instructed Mr. Medwin the elder to give
the name a second _t_. Like Mr. Rossetti, I comply with Shelley's wish.
Miss Grove's Christian name is spelt with a second _t_ in the Grove
genealogy of Burke's _Landed Gentry_, a record corrected by the
representative of the family.
[7] There has been uncertainty about this lady's name. Styled 'Emily' in
at least one of Shelley's letters, she is usually styled Eliza in
Shelleyan biography. But her real Christian name was Elizabeth. In her
affidavit of 10th January, 1817, preserved at the Record Office, the name
is so spelt. It has already been remarked in this work that, though usage
has made the two several and different names, 'Eliza,' 'Elizabeth,'
Isabel, and Isabella, are various forms of the same name, Iza.