LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE.
It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and analyse
the substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardinal
characteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams and
conventions, which passed too easily into impatient rejection of
established forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold of
squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that then
passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the opposite
pole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsiderate
negation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance,
his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logical
sincerity, combined to make him the Quixotic champion of extreme
opinions. He was too fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend his
judgment, too convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, to
mature his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, he
hoped to take the fortresses of "Anarch Custom" by storm at the first
assault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, Laon or Lionel,
whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of despotism, as the sun
thaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl the
glove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face--to sow the "Necessity of
Atheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his
poetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society must
learn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted with
a touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy,
he strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crust
of dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to have
occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches that
conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away the
weft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imagination
there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, that
behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal City
of the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures were
certain to be equally fortunate.
Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the blended
truths and falsehoods through which the mind of man must gradually win
its way from the obscurity of myths into the clearness of positive
knowledge, for ever toiling and for ever foiled, and forced to content
itself with the increasing consciousness of limitations. Brimming over
with love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with the conditions
under which they actually think and feel. Could he but dethrone the
Anarch Custom, the millennium, he argued, would immediately arrive; nor
did he stop to think how different was the fibre of his own soul from
that of the unnumbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of what
he recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified
experience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a
saving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no place
in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising,
shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuries
of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survived
the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, and
who have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehend
the vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley
in his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital
faith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible--faith
in the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel
of liberty, fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature;
faith in a love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibility of
man; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms; faith
in affection as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. The
man who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word an
Atheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced his hatred
of a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of kings and priests
for the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. As he told his friend
Trelawny, he used the word Atheism "to express his abhorrence of
superstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defiance
of injustice." But Shelley believed too much to be consistently
agnostic. He believed so firmly and intensely in his own religion--a
kind of passionate positivism, a creed which seemed to have no God
because it was all God--that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy
accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break
through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an
Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received
conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of
cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was
an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving
the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless
utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual
heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too
religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied.
The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which attaches
to all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of convention, and
enthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was marred, however,
by extravagance, crudity, and presumption. Much that he would fain have
destroyed because he found it customary, was solid, true, and
beneficial. Much that he thought it desirable to substitute, was
visionary, hollow, and pernicious. He lacked the touchstone of mature
philosophy, whereby to separate the pinchbeck from the gold of social
usage; and in his intense enthusiasm he lost his hold on common sense,
which might have saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm.
The positive side of his creed remains precious, not because it was
logical, or scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal,
fervently felt, and penetrated with the whole life-force of an
incomparable nature. Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon his
path amid the glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. The form the
seal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was not
born to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort.
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza.
These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life,
when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his
confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was
overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without
damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent
speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age,
there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might have
shone that light of aspiration which during his turbid youth burned
somewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the smoke of mere
rebelliousness and contradiction.
Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, soon
after their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: "it reminded
him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom." He was further fascinated by
a gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and grapes, which adorned the
parlour; and vowed that he would stay there for ever. "For ever," was a
word often upon Shelley's lips in the course of his chequered life; and
yet few men have been subject to so many sudden changes through the
buffetings of fortune from without and the inconstancy of their own
purpose, than he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace and
note with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of his
innumerable temporary residences. A month had not elapsed before Hogg
left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelley
abode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, a
bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poetic
imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer."
The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but not
unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy
Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from
the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his
intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him
by his father. For Paley's, or as Mr. Shelley called him "Palley's,"
Evidences he expressed unbounded contempt. The breach between them
gradually widened. Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect of
cutting off supplies; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustained
himself by a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley's
last and best biographer, Mr. W.M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of the
poet's behaviour as a son. Shelley did not treat his father with the
common consideration due from youth to age; and the only instances of
unpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes of
his conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was really
more unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling from
the realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of his
father amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicions
with regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so
just and gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation,
whether by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by a
gradually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insoluble
problem. We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his father
so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on one
occasion, but that, while at Eton he had already become possessed by a
dark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr.
Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expected
monstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman was
nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than once
occurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in his
history, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed
itself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process of
recovery. But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof to
be more than passingly alluded to.
At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buy
food. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to support
him: and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school on
Clapham Common. It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyranny
displayed itself on two occasions. "One day," writes Miss Hellen
Shelley, "his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one of
our throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour. He expressed
great disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sisters
should be so punished. Another time he found me, I think, in an iron
collar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my
opinion. It was not worn as a punishment, but because I POKED; but
Bysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be
discontinued immediately." The acquaintance which he now made with one
of his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most important
results. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January,
1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably
good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful
brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the
daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named
"Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister,
called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant
hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait.
Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a
mother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father,
welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless
for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family's
displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a
baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should
look upon him with disfavour.
Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning's school and
at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he
expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his
theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the
disinterested and the free." At first she seems to have been horrified
at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not
overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an
evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had
the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not
seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the
absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society.
Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious
accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to
rouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the
seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has been
able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was
so irksome that she contemplated suicide.
During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more than usually
erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. In
the month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father.
He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made
him of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was
instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent
some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London,
Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one
flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North
Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw
the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much
preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between his
old affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest in
Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriage
between his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written to
Hogg at this period (volume 1 pages 387-418) are exceedingly important
and interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings
and the almost morbid excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily so
badly edited, whether designedly or by accident, that it would be
dangerous to draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, they
raise injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a proper
assignment of dates and explanation.
Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plunged
him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest
moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer
with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate
juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of
Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet
Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in
their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT in
love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem."
He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before
you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly come
to York, but HARRIET WESTBROOK will decide whether now or in three
weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by
endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice:
resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify
Mr. W. in vain! And in consequence of my advice SHE has thrown herself
upon MY protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a
distinction!--I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have I
said? I declare, quite LUDICROUS. I advised her to resist. She wrote to
say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and
threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200 pounds a year; when
we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Gratitude and
admiration, all demand that I should love her FOR EVER. We shall see you
at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am
now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to
me at Graham's, 18 Sackville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently
published by Mr. W.M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, February 1878),
we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her
preceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms.
It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not deeply in
love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was not
prepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced him to take it; and
fourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having been
ill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful passion, the hatred
of tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions at
defiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidence
called forth his gratitude. Her choice of him for a protector flattered
him: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance a
outrance. There are many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope with
Harriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and
unsophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love.
In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together by
Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once expresses the
utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge of
contracting marriage with a woman whom he did not passionately love, and
who had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing to
observe that even Shelley, fearless and uncompromising as he was in
conduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he so
eloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness was
honourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and in his
tender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon his
generosity. (See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hogg 2 page 63) for
another defence of his conduct. "We agreed," etc.)
"My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date August 15, 1811,
from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his
elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself.
How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. In my leisure moments for
thought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered the
important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of
love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial
souls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of
power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of
impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice
which the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you have
urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that
I suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon to
evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to
matrimony, not from temporizing, but from YOUR arguments; nor, much as I
wish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret the
prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or assertion. No.
The ONE argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the
sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can
give--this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring
submission to your superior intellect."
Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was morally
justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often
haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with
regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to
argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square
with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how,
having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, he
should have gone on denouncing an institution which he recognized in his
own practice. The conclusion seems to be that, though he despised
accepted usage, and would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suit
his heart's desire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practical
good sense were stronger than his theories.
A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C.H. Grove, gives the details of
Harriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with
Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his
companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one
morning--I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been
September--in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch
Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches
start, when they departed in the northern mail for York." From York the
young couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were
married according to the formalities of the Scotch law.
Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father's
eyes--a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were at once cut off
from the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainly
dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. Even
Jew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughter
wedded to the heir of several thousands a year, buttoned up his pockets,
either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent,
or because he was not certain about Shelley's expectations. He
afterwards made the Shelleys an allowance of 200 pounds a year, and
early in 1812 Shelley says that he is in receipt of twice that income.
Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to the
extent of the sum above mentioned.
In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happily
enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined them
early in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity.
Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a fine
voice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed to
read and comment on her favourite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleep
during the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed with
slumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical
paradoxes with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach
Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story by
Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one of
Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one of
Shelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless of
their volume or their cost. These he was wont to leave behind, when the
moment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that,
as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifs
and strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This
quiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's
caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind
is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and
that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much
given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in
sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet.
They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obliged
to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, and
Shelley's programme of life at this period imperatively required the
society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the three
friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's
company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud
novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the
tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune
felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of
lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an
expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some
terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was
anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates,
which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. He
suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of
Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediate
allowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail the
land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley
recognized the truth that property is a trust far more than a
possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour,
such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn
being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among many
instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the bare
necessities of life, for principle.
On his return to York, Shelley found a new inmate established in their
lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his
destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet
believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and
propriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned
her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and
her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the
friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an
elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,--dark, bright eyes;
jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it
merited,--almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so
good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of
this woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley had
afterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. "She was older than I
had expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely face
was seamed with the smallpox, and of a dead white, as faces so much
marked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a mass of boiled
rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes were
dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but
coarse; and there was the admired crop--a long crop, much like the tail
of a horse--a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and
constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt,
in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial
young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew
Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters
of Judah."
This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, in
Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with
merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is
necessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet to
fancy that she was a victim of her nerves, how she checked her favourite
studies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to a
Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" was
as often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb were
in her hands.
The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; but it
is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure
which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811.
One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelley
had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, and
refers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation of
Goethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. McCarthy to have been a letter
from the poet to his friend, in confirmation of his opinion. (McCarthy's
Shelley's Early Life, page 117.) However this may be, the precipitation
with which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving Hogg notice of
their resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his biography.
The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged
lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. Probably
Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men
who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of
its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's
poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if
he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he
was disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making his
acquaintance--a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he
could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than
Southey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does
not seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; and
though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley's
early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. It was not
likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and
the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions,
should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain
"Queen Mab" was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to be
monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of
Norfolk's seat, Greystoke. Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip;
but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days
passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results.
The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring
about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham,
and his rebellious son.
Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letter
to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with
unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in
after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention
from romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter dated
to Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable,
and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreats
Godwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "if
desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference," if
persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and
truth may commend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is not
unworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity
of Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big
generalities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long
contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelley
but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet Godwin may be
pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to
cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about
philanthropy and universal happiness. Shelley's second letter contains
an extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curious
romance, illustrating his tendency to colour facts with the
hallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think,
no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason to
believe the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton for
disseminating the doctrines of "Political Justice", or that his father
wished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant
regiment, in order that he might prosecute the "Necessity of Atheism" in
his absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family
estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with a
tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind; and this
letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange
occurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his want of
love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposed
upon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only from
teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his own
deliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To Godwin he resigns
himself with the implicit confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatly
struck with this letter. Indeed, he must have been "or God or beast,"
like the insensible man in Aristotle's "Ethics", if he could have
resisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured
forth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He
accepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor; and thus began a
connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and
intellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in a
closer personal tie between the two illustrious men.
In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then engaged in
writing "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French
Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, "My plan is that of resolving to
lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness." Godwin sensibly
replied that Shelley was too young to set himself up as a teacher and
apostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (January
16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we set
off to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed to
Keswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We go
principally TO FORWARD AS MUCH AS WE CAN the Catholic Emancipation." In
a fourth letter (January 28, 1812) he informs Godwin that he has already
prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the
dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that his
contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of great
good.
It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his attention to
Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irish
journalist and editor of "The Press" newspaper, who had been sentenced
to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between February 7,
1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh,
roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered,
for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to
nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast,
who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose
heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to
disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting
field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with
the manuscript of his "Address to the Irish People" (It was published in
Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, page 179.), he set sail with Harriet
and Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle
of Man; and after a very stormy passage, which drove them to the north
coast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, the
party reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th.
Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife,"
wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings."
Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about this
period, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime,
ruled the household; "Eliza 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." This master-touch of
unconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domestic
party now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street. Before a week had
passed, the "Address to the Irish People" had been printed. Shelley and
Harriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task of
distribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemed
insufficient. On the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend in
England: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world,
and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundred
yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty public
houses.... Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day to
distribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. His
account corresponds with the multitudes of people who possess them. I
stand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man WHO LOOKS
LIKELY. I throw a book to him."
A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's
point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the
pamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we
pass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it
is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's
hood of a cloak."
The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of
their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal
of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to
teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the
last point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the
inculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute,
rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles
which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the
document is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a
population of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and
overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet
himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of
intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy
of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound
reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully
vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks
it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A
few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in
this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they
throw upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make men
good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of
worshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all other
men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do
not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a
heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if
he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much
a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a
rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime
to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete
charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ
principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient....
Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise
and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he
condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be
terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT
must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts,
which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of
private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses
whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of
animated filth."
The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory
demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he
based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden
ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in
them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays
the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without
appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided
Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy",
he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the
truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to
force.
While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin,
Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of
Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association",
and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast
society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the
recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it
must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been
brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions
he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used
these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be
mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the
Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to
be even more so.
With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a
practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and
compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the
title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the
Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the
country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of
the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the
nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective
opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was
that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their
means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same
method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How
moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved
by the following sentence:--"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I
confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of
public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that
none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in
DIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the
case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown
that Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated.
While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was
announced for the evening of February 28. It was held in Fishamble
Street Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spoke
for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received,
though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman
Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in
conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting
accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the
impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The
dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable
interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an
Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His
youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong
words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to
aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient
agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was
fifteen--four years less than his real age.
In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty
stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a
history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We
also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at
another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself
by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the
room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two
months' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to the
conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of
Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he
hoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarked
with his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the
police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave
Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly
visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he
quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining
copies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recently
printed edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights",
to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead
custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the
Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through
the proper official channels to the government. After some
correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against
Shelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination.
The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint,
who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourable
notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does not
seem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his most
interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly he
entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned
to know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you in
Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with
Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and
join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the
Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a
wife and such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it
is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss
Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into
it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both
obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the
Shelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon."
Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and
Shelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in
close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to
leave.
The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace
the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they
settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales.
Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. Here
Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the
"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was,
as Mr. W.M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends
of government and the rights of man,--framed in imitation of two similar
French Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly in
August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy,
page 324.) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it
afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would
traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also
employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the
Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in
the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for
uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the
"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with the
puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to Lord
Ellenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple.
(Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29.) A printer, named D.J.
Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for
publishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistle
is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the
intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny
which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if
impassioned seriousness.
An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of
handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I
have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:--
"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To
attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is
capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to
this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible
definition of his nature.
"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the
perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities
of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of
corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot
possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable
old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various
passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and
uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are
qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he
disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution
for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers
of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their
fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those
which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors
who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone
act consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in
his name."
Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The
sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season.
Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he
found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving
any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously
described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following
year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established
at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to
Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a
considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with
an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was
always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at
Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his
enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a
heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the
list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he
endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and
even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same
purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal
acquaintance of the Godwin family.
Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion
caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her
Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that
language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him.
There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and
Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears
that at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted to
conquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to apply
myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but
which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as
a mender of antiquated abuses,--I mean, that record of crimes and
miseries--history." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself
to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him
to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated
with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and
when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy
upon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance,
continued with effort, and finally abandoned.
In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which
he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears,
from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on
Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early
age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring
of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first
impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which
Shelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was
pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the
public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication
Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to
"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production
which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it
is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all
that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler
discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more
crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political and
domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from
literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to
serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe;
but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's
criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include
"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation,
in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its
first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of
art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality.
The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious
occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given.
According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the
event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice
attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he
struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken,
and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his
escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his
personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair
was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible
by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a
perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or
whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an
unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of
this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of
no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the
relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne
in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the
parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on
the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the
villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and
confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are
too circumstantial to be lightly set aside.
On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the
subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at
Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape
from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But
no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the
circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks,
concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion.
There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment.
In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher,
who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a
short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to
Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as
unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was
left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the
first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London
marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and
decisive of his future.