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 enthusiasms 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. They 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 checquered 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 one of
Shelley’s best biographers, 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 faëry. 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 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 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.[4] 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, 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_l._ 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 brief 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
(vol. i. pp. 387-418), are exceedingly important and interesting,
revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings and the almost
morbid excitement of his mind. Now also appears upon the scene Miss
Hitchener, of whom more will hereafter be recorded. His enthusiasm for
this lady was sudden and extravagant. Shelley’s correspondence with her
offers abundant material for the study of his opinions in early manhood.
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_l._ 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, Feb. 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 and her relatives 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 _à outrance_. There were 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 his tender chivalry for the one woman who had
cast herself upon his generosity.[5]
“My unfortunate friend Harriet,” he writes under date Aug. 15, 1811, from
London, whither 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, his
practical sense was stronger than his theories. In like manner he allowed
his children to be baptized.
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 upon the 28th
of August, according to the formalities of the Scotch law.
Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father’s
eyes--a _mésalliance_. 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_l._ 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 southward, in the fruitless attempt to come to some terms with his
father’s lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Sir Bysshe and Mr. Shelley were anxious to
bind the erratic poet down to a settlement of the estates, which, on their
own death, would pass into the latter’s absolute control. They suggested
numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of Shelley’s residence
in York, it was proposed to make him an immediate allowance of 2000_l._,
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 small-pox, 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 the
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 we
know now that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure which he
made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. It has
recently been proved beyond all doubt that Shelley had good cause to
resent Hogg’s undue familiarity with Harriet; and though he forgave this
faithless friend, he felt the necessity of removing his wife from
inconvenient surroundings. They quitted York without giving Hogg notice of
their projected departure.[6]
The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged lodgings
for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. At Chesnut Cottage
occurred one of those mysterious incidents which perplex Shelley’s
biographers. He declared he had been attacked one night by a man bent on
burglary or murder. 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 something like contempt.
It was not likely that the calm methodical student, the mechanical
versifier, and the political convert, who had outlived all his earlier
illusions, should retain the goodwill 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 (Jan. 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 (Jan. 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 Feb. 7, 1811, and Aug. 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.[7] 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 MS. of his _Address to the Irish
People_,[8] 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 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 preparing 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 moderate 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 Feb. 28. It was held in Fishamble Street
Theatre; and here Shelley made his _début_ 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 4th of April he once more embarked with his family for Holyhead.
In after-days it was hinted 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. Though he had barely
made her personal acquaintance, his correspondence with this lady, still
fortunately extant, was enthusiastic and voluminous. 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 to fame 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.[9] 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.[10] 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 travelled by coach through Bristol and Chepstow 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 100_l._, 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 for 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 _succès 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 Feb. 26, by an armed ruffian, with whom he struggled in a
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 for his
future.