GODWIN AND SHELLEY
In a letter written in 1811 Shelley records how he suddenly heard with
"inconceivable emotion" that Godwin was still alive. He "had enrolled
his name on the list of the honourable dead." Godwin, to quote Hazlitt's
rather cruel phrase, had "sunk below the horizon," in his later years,
and enjoyed "the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality." Serene
unfortunately it was not. With a lonely home and two little girls to
care for, Godwin thought once more of marriage. Twice his wooing was
unsuccessful, and the philosopher who believed that reason was
omnipotent, tried in vain in long, elaborate letters to argue two ladies
into love. His second wife came unsought. As he sat one day at his
window in the Polygon, a handsome widow spoke to him from the
neighbouring balcony, with these arresting words, "Is it possible that I
behold the immortal Godwin?" They were married before the close of the
year (1801).
Mrs. Clairmont was a strange successor to Mary Wollstonecraft. She was a
vulgar and worldly woman, thoroughly feminine, and rather inclined to
boast of her total ignorance of philosophy. A kindly and loyal wife she
may have been, but she was jealous of Godwin's friends, and would tell
petty lies to keep them apart from him. She brought with her two
children of a former marriage--Charles (who was unhappy in this strange
home and went early abroad) and Jane. On this clever, pretty and
mercurial daughter all her partiality was lavished; and the unhappy
girl, pampered by a philistine mother in a revolutionary atmosphere, was
at the age of seventeen seduced by Byron, and became the mother of the
fairy child, Allegra. The second Mrs. Godwin was the stepmother of
convention, and treated both Fanny Imlay and Mary Godwin with consistent
unkindness. It was the fate of the gentle, melancholy and lovable Fanny
to take her own life at the age of twenty-two (1816). The destiny of
these children, all gifted with what the age called sensibility, has
served as the text of many a sermon against "the new philosophy." No
one, however, can read the documents which this strange household left
behind, without feeling that the parent of the disaster in their lives
was not their philosophic father, but this commonplace "womanly woman,"
who flattered, intrigued, and lied. In 1803, there was born of this
second marriage, a son, William, who inherited something of his father's
ability. He became a journalist, and died at the early age of
twenty-nine, after publishing a novel of some promise, _Transfusion_,
steeped in the same romantic fancies which colour Mary Shelley's more
famous _Frankenstein_.
With the cares of this family on his shoulders Godwin began to form the
habit of applying to his wealthy friends for aid. In judging this part
of his conduct, one must bear in mind both his own doctrine about
property, and the practice of the age. Godwin was a communist, and so,
in some degree, were most of his friends. When he applied to Wedgwood,
the philosophic potter of Etruria, or to Ritson, the vegetarian, or in
later years to Shelley for money, he was simply giving virtue its
occasion, and assisting property to find its level. He practised what he
preached, and he would himself give with a generosity which seemed
prodigal, to his own relatives, to promising young men, and even to
total strangers. He supported one disciple at Cambridge, as he had
educated Cooper in his younger days. It was the prevailing theory of
the age that men of genius have the right to call on society in the
persons of its wealthier members for support. Helvetius, himself a rich
man, had maintained this view. Southey and Coleridge acted on it. Dr.
Priestley, universally respected both for his character and his talents,
received large gifts from friends, admirers, members of his congregation
and aristocratic patrons. To Godwin, profoundly individualistic as he
was, a post in the civil service, or even a professorship, would have
seemed a more degrading form of charity than this private benevolence.
Partly to mend his fortunes, partly to furnish himself with an
occupation when his mind refused original work, Godwin in 1805 turned
publisher. It was a disastrous inspiration, due apparently to his wife,
who believed herself to possess a talent for business. The firm was
established in Skinner Street, Holborn, and specialised in school books
and children's tales. They were well-printed, and well-illustrated, and
Godwin, writing under the pseudonym of Edward Baldwin, to avoid the
odium which had now overtaken his own name, compiled a series of
histories with his usual industry and conscientious finish. Through
years darkened with misfortune and clouded by failing health, he worked
hard at the business of publishing. His capital was never adequate,
though his friends and admirers twice came to his aid with public
subscriptions. In 1822 he was evicted for arrears of rent, and in 1825
the unlucky venture came to an end.
These years were crowded with literary work, for neither "Baldwin" nor
Godwin allowed their common pen to idle. Two elaborate historical works
enjoyed and deserved a great reputation in their day, though subsequent
research has rendered them obsolete--a _Life of Geoffrey Chaucer_ (1803)
and a _History of the Commonwealth of England from its Commencement to
the Restoration of Charles II._ (1824-8). It is not easy for modern
taste to do justice to Godwin's novels; but on them his contemporary
fame chiefly rested, and publishers paid for them high though
diminishing prices. They all belong to the romantic movement; some have
a supernatural basis, and most of them discover a too obvious didactic
purpose. _St. Leon_ (1799), almost as popular in its day as _Caleb
Williams_, mingles a romance of the elixir of life and the philosopher's
stone with an ardent recommendation of those family affections which
_Political Justice_ had depreciated. _Fleetwood_ (1805) makes war on
debauchery with sincere and impressive dulness. _Mandeville_ (1817),
_Cloudesley_ (1830) and _Deloraine_ (1833) are dead beyond the reach of
curiosity, yet the Radical critics of his day, including Hazlitt, tried
hard to convince themselves that Godwin was a greater novelist than the
Tory, Scott. It remains to mention Godwin's two attempts to conquer the
theatre with _Antonio_ (1800) and _Faulkener_ (1807). Neither play
lived, and _Antonio_, written in a sort of journalese, cut up into blank
verse lines, was too frigid to survive the first night. Godwin's
disappointment would be comical if it were not painful. He regarded
these deplorable tragedies as the flower of his genius.
Through these years of misfortune and eclipse, the friendships which
Godwin could still retain were his chief consolation. The published
letters of Coleridge and Lamb make a charming record of their intimacy.
Whimsical and affectionate in their tone, they are an unconscious
tribute as much to the man who received them as to the men who wrote
them. Conservative critics have talked of Godwin's "coldness" because he
could reason. But the abiding and generous regard of such a nature as
Charles Lamb's is answer enough to these summary valuations. But
Godwin's most characteristic relationship was with the young men who
sought him out as an inspiration. He would write them long letters of
advice, encouragement, and criticism, and despite his own poverty, would
often relieve their distresses. The most interesting of them was an
adventurous young Scot named Arnot who travelled on foot through the
greater part of Europe during the Napoleonic wars. The tragedy which
seemed always to pursue Godwin's intimates drove another of them,
Patrickson, to suicide while an undergraduate at Cambridge. Bulwer
Lytton, the last of these admiring young men, left a note on Godwin's
conversational powers in his extreme old age, which assures us that he
was "well worth hearing," even amid the brilliance of Lamb, Hunt, and
Hazlitt, and could display "a grim jocularity of sarcasm."
One of these relationships has become historical, and has coloured the
whole modern judgment of Godwin. It would be no exaggeration to say that
Godwin formed Shelley's mind, and that _Prometheus Unbound_ and _Hellas_
were the greatest of Godwin's works. That debt is too often forgotten,
while literary gossip loves to remind us that it was repaid in cheques
and _post-obits_. The intellectual relationship will be discussed in a
later chapter; the bare facts of the personal connection must be told
here. _Political Justice_ took Shelley's mind captive while he was still
at Eton, much as it had obsessed Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. The
influence with him was permanent; and _Queen Mab_ is nothing but Godwin
in verse, with prose notes which quote or summarise him. A
correspondence began in 1811, and the pupil met the master late in 1812,
and again in 1813. They talked as usual of virtue and human
perfectibility; and as the intimacy grew, Shelley, whose chief
employment at this time was to discover and relieve genius in distress,
began to place his present resources and future prospects at Godwin's
disposal. It was not an unnatural relationship to arise between a
grateful disciple, heir to a great fortune, and a philosopher, aged,
neglected, and sinking under the burden of debt.
Shelley's romantic runaway match with Harriet Westbrook had meanwhile
entered on the period of misery and disillusion. She had lost her early
love of books and ideas, had taken to hats and ostentation, and had
become so harsh to him that he welcomed absence. It is certain that he
believed her to be also in the vulgar sense of the word unfaithful. At
this crisis, when the separation seemed already morally complete, he met
Mary Godwin, who had been absent from home during most of his earlier
visits. She was a young girl of seventeen, eager for knowledge and
experience, and as her father described her, "singularly bold, somewhat
imperious and active of mind," and "very pretty." They rapidly fell in
love. Godwin's conduct was all that the most conventional morality could
have required of him. His theoretical views of marriage were still
unorthodox; he held at least that "the institution might with advantage
admit of certain modifications." But nine years before in the preface to
_Fleetwood_ he had protested that he was "the last man to recommend a
pitiful attempt by scattered examples to renovate the face of society."
He seems, indeed, to have forgotten his own happy experiment with Mary
Wollstonecraft, and protests with a vigour hardly to be expected from so
stout an individualist against the idea, that "each man for himself
should supersede and trample upon the institutions of the country in
which he lives. A thousand things might be found excellent and salutary
if brought into general practice, which would in some cases appear
ridiculous and in others attended with tragical consequences if
prematurely acted upon by a solitary individual."
On this view he acted. He forbade Shelley his house, and tried to make a
reconciliation between him and Harriet. On July 28, 1814, Mary secretly
left her father's house, joined her lover, and began with him her life
of ideal intimacy and devotion. Godwin felt and expressed the utmost
disapproval, and for two years refused to meet Shelley, until at the
close of 1816, after the suicide of the unhappy Harriet, he stood at his
daughter's side as a witness to her marriage. His public conduct was
correct. In private he continued to accept money from the erring
disciple whom he refused to meet, and salved his elderly conscience by
insisting that the cheques should be drawn in another name. There Godwin
touched the lowest depths of his moral degeneration. Let us remember,
however, that even Shelley, who saw the worst of Godwin, would never
speak of him with total condemnation. "Added years," he wrote near the
end of his life, "only add to my admiration of his intellectual powers,
and even the moral resources of his character." In the poetical epistle
to Maria Gisborne, he wrote of
"That which was Godwin--greater none than he
Though fallen, and fallen on evil times, to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land
Before the dread tribunal of To-come
The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb."
The end came to the old man amid comparative peace and serenity. He
accepted a sinecure from the Whigs, and became a Yeoman Usher of the
Exchequer, with a small stipend and chambers in New Palace Yard. It was
a tribute as much to his harmlessness as to his merit. The work of his
last years shows little decay in his intellectual powers. _His Thoughts
on Man_ (1831) collects his fugitive essays. They are varied in subject,
suave, easy and conversational in manner, more polished in style than
those of the _Enquirer_, if a good deal thinner in matter. They avoid
political themes, but the idea of human perfectibility none the less
pervades the book with an unaggressive presence, a cold and wintry sun.
One curious trait of his more cautious and conservative later mind is
worth noting. When he wrote _Political Justice_, the horizons of science
were unlimited, the vistas of discovery endless. Now he questions even
the mathematical data of astronomy, talks of the limitations of our
faculties, and applauds a positive attitude that refrains from
conjecture. His last years were spent in writing a book in which he
ventured at length to state his views upon religion. Like Helvetius he
perceived the advantages which an unpopular philosopher may derive from
posthumous publication. Freed at last from the vulgar worries of debt
and the tragical burden of personal ties, the fighting ended which had
never brought him the joy of combat, the material struggle over which
had issued in defeat, he became again the thing that was himself, a
luminous intelligence, a humane thinker.
With eighty years of life behind him, and doubting whether the curtain
of death concealed a secret, Godwin tranquilly faced extinction in
April, 1836.
* * * * *
"To do my part to free the human mind from slavery," that in his own
words was the main object of Godwin's life. The task was not fully
discharged with the writing of _Political Justice_. He could never
forget the terror and gloom of his own early years, and, like all the
thinkers of the revolution, he coupled superstition with despotism and
priests with kings as the arch-enemies of human liberty. The terrors of
eternal punishment, the firmly riveted chains of Calvinistic logic, had
fettered his own growing mind in youth; and to the end he thought of
traditional religion as the chief of those factitious things which
prevent mankind from reaching the full stature to which nature destined
it. Paine had attempted this work from a similar standpoint, but Godwin,
with his trained speculative mind, and his ideal of courtesy and
persuasiveness in argument, thought meanly (as a private letter shows)
of his friend's polemics. It was an unlucky timidity which caused Mrs.
Shelley to suppress her father's religious essays when the manuscript
was bequeathed to her for publication on his death. When, at length,
they appeared in 1873 (_Essays never before Published_), the work which
they sought to accomplish had been done by other pens. They possess none
the less an historical interest; some fine pages will always be worth
reading for their humane impulse and their manly eloquence; they help us
to understand the influence which Godwin's ideas, conveyed in personal
intercourse, exerted on the author of _Prometheus Unbound_. There is
little in them which a candid believer would resent to-day. Most of the
dogmas which Godwin assailed have long since crumbled away through the
sapping of a humaner morality and a more historical interpretation of
the Bible.
The book opens with a protest against the theory and practice of
salutary delusions; and Godwin once more pours his scorn upon those who
would cherish their own private freedom, while preserving popular
superstitions, "that the lower ranks may be kept in order." The
foundation of all improvement is that "the whole community should run
the generous race for intellectual and moral superiority." Godwin would
preserve some portion of the religious sense, for we can reach sobriety
and humility only by realising "how frail and insignificant a part we
constitute of the great whole." But the fundamental tenets of dogmatic
Christianity are far, he argues, from being salutary delusions. At the
basis alike of Protestantism and Catholicism, he sees the doctrine of
eternal punishment; and with an iteration that was not superfluous in
his own day, he denounces its cruel and demoralising effects. It saps
the character where it is really believed, and renders the mind which
receives it servile and pusillanimous. The case is no better when it is
neither sincerely believed nor boldly rejected. Such an attitude, which
is, he thinks, that of most professing believers, makes for
insincerity, and for an indifference to all honest thought and
speculation. The man who dare neither believe nor disbelieve is debarred
from thinking at all.
Worst of all, this doctrine of endless torment and arbitrary election
involves a blasphemous denial of the goodness of God. "To say all, then,
in a word, since it must finally be told, the God of the Christians is a
tyrant." He quotes the delightfully naive reflection of Plutarch, who
held that it was better to deny God than to calumniate Him, "for I had
rather it should be said of me, that there was never such a man as
Plutarch, than that it should be said that Plutarch was ill-natured,
arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and inexorable." A survey of Church
History brings out what Godwin calls "the mixed character of
Christianity, its horrors and its graces." In much of what has come down
to us from the Old Testament he sees the inevitable effects of
anthropomorphism, when the religion of a barbarous age is reduced to
writing, and handed down as the effect of inspiration. He cannot
sufficiently admire the beauty of Christ's teaching of a perfect
disinterestedness and self-denial--a doctrine in his own terminology of
"universal benevolence." But the disciples lived in a preternatural
atmosphere, continually busied with the four Last Things, death,
judgment, heaven, and hell; and they distorted the beauty of the
Christian morality by introducing an other-worldliness, to which the
ancients had been strangers. From this came the despotism of the Church
based on the everlasting burnings and the keys, and something of the
spirit of St. Dominic and the Inquisition can be traced, he thinks, even
to the earliest period of Christianity. The Gospel sermons do not always
realise the Godwinian ideal of rational persuasion.
Godwin's own view is in the main what we should call agnostic: "I do not
consider my faculties adequate to pronouncing upon the cause of all
things. I am contented to take the phenomena as I behold them, without
pretending to erect an hypothesis under the idea of making all things
easy. I do not rest my globe of earth upon an elephant [a reference to
the Indian myth], and the elephant upon a tortoise. I am content to take
my globe of earth simply, in other words to observe the objects which
present themselves to my senses, without undertaking to find out a cause
why they are what they are."
With cautious steps, he will, however, go a little further than this.
He regards with reverence and awe "that principle, whatever it is, which
acts everywhere around me." But he will not slide into anthropomorphism,
nor give to this Supreme Thing, which recalls Shelley's Demogorgon, the
shape of a man. "The principle is not intellect; its ways are not our
ways." If there is no particular Providence, there is none the less a
tendency in nature which seconds our strivings, guarantees the work of
reason, and "in the vast sum of instances, works for good, and operates
beneficially for us." The position reminds us of Matthew Arnold's
definition of God as "the stream of tendency by which all things strive
to fulfil the law of their being." "We have here," writes Godwin, "a
secure alliance, a friend that so far as the system of things extends
will never desert us, unhearing, inaccessible to importunity,
uncapricious, without passions, without favour, affection, or
partiality, that maketh its sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
its rain to descend on the just and the unjust."
Amid the dim but rosy mist of this vague faith the old man went out to
explore the unknown. A bolder and more rebellious thought was his real
legacy to his age. It is the central impulse of the whole revolutionary
school: "We know what we are: we know not what we might have been. But
surely we should have been greater than we are but for this disadvantage
[dogmatic religion, and particularly the doctrine of eternal
punishment]. It is as if we took some minute poison with everything that
was intended to nourish us. It is, we will suppose, of so mitigated a
quality as never to have had the power to kill. But it may nevertheless
stunt our growth, infuse a palsy into every one of our articulations,
and insensibly change us from giants of mind which we might have been
into a people of dwarfs."
Let us write Godwin's epitaph in his own Roman language. He stood erect
and independent. He spoke what he deemed to be truth. He did his part to
purge the veins of men of the subtle poisons which dwarf them.