Mrs. Shelley Part 2

The professional lectures chiefly in vogue, on divinity, geometry, and history, were not the most to his liking--history in particular seemed ever to him a terrible record of misery and crime--but in his own chambers he could study poetry, natural philosophy, and metaphysics.

The outcome of these studies, advanced speculative thought, was not, however, to be tolerated within the University precincts, and, unfortunately for Sh.e.l.ley, his favourite subjects of conversation were tabooed, had it not been for one light-hearted and amusing friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a gentleman whose acquaintance Sh.e.l.ley made shortly after his settling in Oxford in the Michaelmas term of 1810.

This friendship, like all that Sh.e.l.ley entered on, was intended to endure "for ever," and, as usual, Sh.e.l.ley impulsively for a time threw so much of his own personality into his idea of the character of his friend as to prepare the way for future disappointment.

Hogg was decidedly intellectual, but with a strong conservative tendency, making him quite content with the existing state of things so long as he could take life easily and be amused. His intellect, however, was clear enough to make him perceive that it is the poet who raises life from the apathy which a.s.sails even the most worldly-minded and contented, so that he in his turn was able to love Sh.e.l.ley with the love which is not afraid of a laugh, without the possibility of which no friendship, it has been said, can be genuine. Many are the charming stories giving a living presence to Sh.e.l.ley while at Oxford, preserved by this friend; here we meet with him taking an infant from its mother's arms while crossing the bridge with Hogg, and questioning it as to its previous existence, which surely the babe had not had time to forget if it would but speak--but alas, the mother declared she had never heard it speak, nor any other child of its age; here comes also the charming incident of the torn coat, and Sh.e.l.ley's ecstasy on its having been fine drawn. These and such-like amusing anecdotes show the genuine and unpedantic side of Sh.e.l.ley's character, the delightfully natural and loveable personality which is ever allied to genius. With the fun and humour were mixed long readings and discussions on the most serious and solemn subjects. Plato was naturally a great delight to him; he had a decided antipathy to Euclid and mathematical reasoning, and was consequently unable to pursue scientific researches on a system; but his love of chemistry and his imaginative faculty led him to wish in antic.i.p.ation for the forces of nature to be utilised for human labour, &c. Sh.e.l.ley's reading and reading powers were enormous. He was seldom without a pocket edition of one of his favourite great authors, whose works he read with as much ease as the modern languages.

This delightful time of study and ease was not to endure. Sh.e.l.ley's nature was impelled onwards as irresistibly as the mountain torrent, and as with it all obstacles had to yield. He could not rest satisfied with reading and discussions with Hogg on theological and moral questions, and, being debarred debate on these subjects in the university, he felt he must appeal to a larger audience, the public, and consequently he brought out, with the cognisance of Hogg, a pamphlet ent.i.tled _The Necessity of Atheism_. This work actually got into circulation for about twenty minutes, when it was discovered by one of the Fellows of the College, who immediately convinced the booksellers that an _auto-da-fe_ was necessary, and all the pamphlets were at once consigned to the back kitchen fire; but the affair did not end there. Sh.e.l.ley's handwriting was recognised on some letters sent with copies of the work, and consequently both he and Hogg were summoned before a meeting in the Common room of the College.

First Sh.e.l.ley, and then Hogg, declined to answer questions, and refused to disavow all knowledge of the work, whereupon the two were summarily expelled from Oxford. Sh.e.l.ley complained bitterly of the ungentlemanly way they were treated, and the authorities, with equal reason, of the rebellious defiance of the students; yet once more we must regret that there was no one but Hogg who realised the latent genius of Sh.e.l.ley, that there was no one to feel that patience and sympathy would not be thrown away upon a young man free from all the vices and frivolities of the time and place, whose crime was an inquiring mind, and rashness in putting his views into print. Surely the dangers which might a.s.sail a young man thus thrown on the world and alienated from his family by this disgrace might have received more consideration. This seems clear enough now, when Sh.e.l.ley's ideas have been extolled even in as well as out of the pulpit.

So now we find Sh.e.l.ley expelled from Oxford and arrived in London in March 1811, when only eighteen years of age, alone with Hogg to fight the battle of life, with no previous experience of misfortune to give ballast to his feelings, but with a brain surcharged with mysteriously imbibed ideas of the woes of others and of the world--a dangerous age and set of conditions for a youth to be thrown on his own resources.

Admission to his father's house was only to be accorded on the condition of his giving up the society of Hogg; this condition, imposed at the moment when Sh.e.l.ley considered himself indebted to Hogg for life for the manner in which he stood by him in the Oxford ordeal, was refused. Sh.e.l.ley looked out for lodgings without result, till a wall paper representing a trellised vine apparently decided him. With twenty pounds borrowed from his printer to leave Oxford, Sh.e.l.ley is now settled in London, unaided by his father, a small present of money sent by his mother being returned, as he could not comply with the wishes which she expressed on the same occasion. From this time the march of events or of fate is as relentless as in a Greek drama, for already the needful woman had appeared in the person of Harriet Westbrook, a schoolfellow of his sisters at their Clapham school.

During the previous January Sh.e.l.ley had made her acquaintance by visiting her at her father's house, with an introduction and a present from one of his sisters. There seems no reason to doubt that Sh.e.l.ley was then much attracted by the beautiful girl, smarting though he was at the time from his rupture with Harriet Grove; but Shakespeare has shown us that such a time is not exempt from the potency of love shafts.

This visit of Sh.e.l.ley was followed by his presenting Harriet Westbrook with a copy of his new romance, _St. Irvyne_, which led to some correspondence. It was now Harriet's turn to visit Sh.e.l.ley, sent also by his sisters with presents of their pocket money. Sh.e.l.ley moreover visited the school on different occasions, and even lectured the schoolmistress on her system of discipline. There is no doubt that Harriet's elder sister, with or without the cognisance of their father, a retired hotel-keeper, helped to make meetings between the two; but Sh.e.l.ley, though young and a poet, was no child, and must have known what these dinners and visits and excursions might lead to; and although the correspondence and conversation may have been more directly upon theological and philosophical questions, it seems unlikely that he would have discoursed thus with a young girl unless he felt some special interest in her; besides, Sh.e.l.ley need not have felt any great social difference between himself and a young lady brought up and educated on a footing of equality with his own sisters.

It is true that her family acted and encouraged him in a way incompatible with old-fashioned ideas of gentility, but Sh.e.l.ley was too p.r.o.ne at present to rebel against everything conventional to be particularly sensitive on this point.

In May Sh.e.l.ley was enabled to return to his father's house, through the mediation of his uncle, Captain Pilfold, and henceforth an allowance of two hundred a year was made to him. But there had been work done in the two months that no reconciliations or allowances afterwards could undo; for while Sh.e.l.ley was bent on proselytising Harriet Westbrook, not less for his sisters' sake than for his own, Harriet, in a school-girl fashion, encouraged by her sister and not discouraged by her father, was falling in love with Sh.e.l.ley. How were the _bourgeois_ father and sister to comprehend such a character as Sh.e.l.ley's, when his own parents and all the College authorities failed to do so? If Sh.e.l.ley were not in love he must have appeared so, and Harriet's family did their best by encouraging and countenancing the intimacy to lead to a marriage, they naturally having Harriet's interests more at heart than Sh.e.l.ley's.

However, the fact remains that Sh.e.l.ley was a most extraordinary being, an embryo poet, with all a poet's possible inconsistencies, the very brilliancy of the intellectual spark in one direction apparently quelling it for a time in another. In most countries and ages a poet seems to have been accepted as a heaven-sent gift to his nation; his very crimes (and surely Sh.e.l.ley did not surpa.s.s King David in misdoing?) have been the _lacrymae rerum_ giving terrible vitality to his thoughts, and so reclaiming many others ere some fatal deed is done; but in England the convention of at least making a show of virtues which do not exist (perhaps a sorry legacy from Puritanism) will not allow the poet to be accepted for what he really is, nor his poetry to appeal, on its own showing, to the human heart. He must be a.n.a.lysed, and vilified, or whitewashed in turn.

At any rate Sh.e.l.ley was superior to some of the respectable vices of his cla.s.s, and one alleged concession of his father was fortunately loathsome to him, viz.--that he (Sir Timothy) would provide for as many illegitimate children as Percy chose to have, but he would not tolerate a _mesalliance_. To what a revolt of ideas must such a code of morality have led in a fermenting brain like Sh.e.l.ley's! Were the mothers to be provided for likewise, and to be considered more by Sh.e.l.ley's respectable family than his lawful wife? We fear not.

A visit to Wales followed, during which Sh.e.l.ley's mind was in so abstracted a state that the fine scenery, viewed for the first time, had little power to move him, while Harriet Westbrook, with her sister and father, was only thirty miles off at Aberystwith; a hasty and unexplained retreat of this party to London likewise hastened the return of Sh.e.l.ley. Probably the father began to perceive that Sh.e.l.ley did not come forward as he had expected, and so he wished to remove Harriet from his vicinity. Letters from Harriet to Sh.e.l.ley followed, full of misery and dejection, complaining of her father's decision to send her back to school, where she was avoided by the other girls, and called "an abandoned wretch" for sympathising or corresponding with Sh.e.l.ley; she even contemplated suicide. It is curious how this idea seems to have constantly recurred to her, as in the case of some others who have finally committed the act.

Sh.e.l.ley wrote, expostulating with the father. This probably only incensed him more. He persisted. Harriet again addressed Sh.e.l.ley in despair, saying she would put herself under his protection and fly with him; a difficult position for any young man, and for Sh.e.l.ley most perplexing, with his avowed hostility to marriage, and his recent a.s.sertions that he was not in love with Harriet. But it must be put to Sh.e.l.ley's credit that, having intentionally or otherwise led Harriet on to love him, he now acted as a gentleman to his sister's school friend, and, influenced to some extent by Hogg's arguments in a different case in favour of marriage, he at once determined to make her his wife. He wrote to his cousin, Charles Grove, announcing his intention and impending arrival in London, saying that as his own happiness was altogether blighted, he could now only live to make that of others, and would consequently marry Harriet Westbrook.

On his arrival in London, Sh.e.l.ley found Harriet looking ill and much changed. He spent some time in town, during which Harriet's spirits revived; but Sh.e.l.ley, as he described in a letter to Hogg, felt much embarra.s.sment and melancholy. Not contemplating an immediate marriage, he went into Suss.e.x to pay a visit to Field Place and to his uncle at Cuckfield. While here he renewed the acquaintance of Miss Kitchener, a school mistress of advanced ideas, who had the care of Captain Pilfold's children. To this acquaintance we owe a great number of letters which throw much light on Sh.e.l.ley's _exalte_ character at this period, and which afford most amusing reading. As usual with Sh.e.l.ley, he threw much of his own personality into his ideas of Miss. .h.i.tchener, who was to be his "eternal inalienable friend," and to help to form his lovely wife's character on the model of her own. All these particulars are given in letters from Sh.e.l.ley to his friends, Charles Grove, Hogg, and Miss. .h.i.tchener; to the latter he is very explanatory and apologetic, but only after the event.

Sh.e.l.ley had scarcely been a week away from London when he received a letter from Harriet, complaining of fresh persecution and recalling him. He at once returned, as he had undertaken to do if required, and then resolved that the only thing was for him to marry at once. He accordingly went straight to his cousin Charles Grove, and with twenty-five pounds borrowed from his relative Mr. Medwin, a solicitor at Horsham, he entered on one of the most momentous days of his life--the 24th or 25th August 1811. After pa.s.sing the night with his cousin, he waited at the door of the coffee-house in Mount Street, watching for a girlish figure to turn the corner from Chapel Street.

There was some delay; but what was to be could not be averted, and soon Harriet, fresh as a rosebud, appeared. The coach was called, and the two cousins and the girl of sixteen drove to an inn in the city to await the Edinburgh mail. This took the two a stage farther on the fatal road, and on August 28 their Scotch marriage is recorded in Edinburgh. The marriage arrangements were of the quaintest, Sh.e.l.ley having to explain his position and want of funds to the landlord of some handsome rooms which he found. Fortunately the landlord undertook to supply what was needed, and they felt at ease in the expectation of Sh.e.l.ley's allowance of money coming; but this never came, as Sh.e.l.ley's father again resented his behaviour, and took that easy means of showing as much.

Sh.e.l.ley's wife had had the most contradictory education possible for a young girl of an ordinary and unimaginative nature--the conventional surface education of a school of that time followed by the talks with Sh.e.l.ley, which were doubtless far beyond her comprehension. What could be the outcome of such a marriage? Had Sh.e.l.ley, indeed, been a different character, all might have gone smoothly, married as he was to a beautiful girl who loved him; but at present all Sh.e.l.ley's ideas were unpractical. Without the moral treadmill of work to sober his opinions, whence was the ballast to come when disappointment ensued-- disappointment which he constantly prepared for himself by his over-enthusiastic idea of his friends? Troubles soon followed the marriage, in the nonarrival of the money; and after five weeks in Edinburgh, where Hogg had joined the Sh.e.l.leys, followed by a little over a week in York, the need became so pressing that Sh.e.l.ley felt obliged to take a hurried journey to his uncle's at Cuckfield, in order to try and mollify his father; in this he did not succeed.

Though absent little over a week, he prepared the way by his absence, and by leaving Harriet under the care of Hogg, for a series of complications and misunderstandings which never ended till death had absolved all concerned. Harriet's sister, Eliza, was to have returned to York with Sh.e.l.ley; but hearing of her sister's solitary state with Hogg in the vicinity, she hurried alone to York, and from this time she a.s.sumed an ascendency over the small _menage_ which, though probably useful in trifles, had undoubtedly a bad effect in the long run. Eliza, rightly from her point of view, thought it necessary to stand between Hogg and her sister. It seems far more likely that Hogg's gentlemanly instincts would have led him to treat his friend's wife with respect than that he should have really given cause for the grave suspicions which Sh.e.l.ley writes of in subsequent letters to Miss. .h.i.tchener. Might not Eliza be inclined to take an exaggerated view of any attention shown by Hogg to her sister, and have persuaded Harriet to the same effect? Harriet having seen nothing of the world as yet, and Eliza's experience before her father's retirement from his tavern not having been that in which ladies and gentlemen stand on a footing of equality. It is true that Sh.e.l.ley writes of an interview with Hogg before leaving York, in which he describes Hogg as much confused and distressed; but perhaps allowance ought to be made for the fanciful turn of Sh.e.l.ley's own mind. However this may have been, they left York for Keswick, where they delighted in the glorious scenery. At this time we see in letters to Miss. .h.i.tchener how Sh.e.l.ley felt the necessity of intellectual sympathy, and how he seemed to consider this friend in some way necessary for the accomplishment of various speculative and social ideas. Here at Chestnut Cottage novels were commenced and much work planned, left unfinished, or lost. While at Keswick he made the acquaintance of Southey and wrote his first letter to William G.o.dwin, whose works had already had a great influence on him, and whose personal acquaintance he now sought. The often quoted letter by which Sh.e.l.ley introduced himself to G.o.dwin was followed by others, and led up to the subsequent intimacy which had such important results.

Sh.e.l.ley with his wife and sister-in-law paid a visit to the Duke of Norfolk at Greystoke; this led to a quasi reconciliation with Sh.e.l.ley's father, owing to which the allowance of two hundred a year was renewed, Harriet's father making her a similar allowance, it is presumed, owing to feeling flattered by his daughter's reception by the d.u.c.h.ess. Shortly afterwards some restless turn in the trio caused a further move to be contemplated, and now Sh.e.l.ley entered on what must have appeared one of the strangest of his fancies--a visit to Ireland to effect Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation and to procure the repeal of the Union Act. Hogg pretends to believe that Sh.e.l.ley did not even understand the meaning of the phrases, and most probably many English would not have cared to do so. In any case Sh.e.l.ley's enthusiasm for an oppressed people must be admired, and it is noticeable that our greatest statesman of the present day has come to agree with Sh.e.l.ley after eighty years of life and of conflicting endeavour.

The plan adopted by Sh.e.l.ley caused infinite amus.e.m.e.nt to Harriet, who entered with animation into the fun of distributing her husband's pamphlets on Irish affairs, and could not well understand his seriousness on the subject. The pamphlets and the speeches which he delivered were not likely to conciliate the different Irish parties.

The Catholics were not to be attracted by an Atheist or Antichristian, however tolerant he might be of them, and of all religions which tend to good. Lord Fingal and his adherents were not inclined to follow the Ardent Republican and teacher of Humanitarianism; nor were the extreme party likely to be satisfied with appeals, however eloquent, for the pursuit and practice of virtue before any political changes were to be expected. Sh.e.l.ley's exposition of the failure of the French Revolution by the fact that although it had been ushered in by people of great intellect, the moral side of intellect had been wanting, was not what Irish Nationalists then wished to consider. In fact, Sh.e.l.ley had not much pondered the character of the people he went to help and reform, if he thought a week of these arguments could have much effect.

Sh.e.l.ley was much sought after by the poor Irish, during another month of his stay in Dublin, on account of his generosity. Here, also, they met Mrs. Nugent. Harriet's correspondence with her has recently been published. With the views which she expresses, those of the present writer coincide in not casting all the blame of the future separation on Sh.e.l.ley; Harriet naturally feels Mary most at fault, and does not perceive her own mistakes. Failing in his aim, and being disheartened by the distress on all sides which he could not relieve, and more especially owing to the strong remonstrance of G.o.dwin, who considered that if there were any result it could only be bloodshed, the poet migrated to Nantgwilt in Wales. Here the Sh.e.l.leys contemplated receiving G.o.dwin and his family, Miss. .h.i.tchener with her American pupils; and why not Miss. .h.i.tchener's father, reported to have been an old smuggler? Here Sh.e.l.ley first met Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k. They were unable to remain at Nantgwilt owing to various mishaps, and migrated to that terrestrial paradise in North Devon, Lynmouth. This lovely place, with its beautiful and romantic surroundings loved and exquisitely described by more than one poet, cannot fail to be dear to those who know it with and through them. Here, in a garden in front of their rose and myrtle covered cottage, within near sound of the rushing Lynn, would Sh.e.l.ley stand on a mound and let off his fire-balloons in the cool evening air. Here Miss. .h.i.tchener joined them. What talks and what rambles they must have had, none but those who have known a poet in such a place could imagine; but perhaps Sh.e.l.ley, though a poet, was not sufficient for the three ladies in a neighbourhood where the narrow winding paths may have caused one or other to appear neglected and left behind. Poor Sh.e.l.ley, recalled from heaven to earth by such-like vicissitudes, naturally held by his wife; and forthwith disagreements began which ended in Miss. .h.i.tchener's being called henceforth the "Brown Demon." What a fall from the ideal reformer of the world!--another of Sh.e.l.ley's self-made idols shattered.

The Sh.e.l.leys wished f.a.n.n.y G.o.dwin to join their party at Lynmouth; but this G.o.dwin would not permit without more knowledge of his friends, although Sh.e.l.ley wrote affecting letters to the sage, trusting that he might be the stay of his declining years. Amid the romantic scenery of Lynmouth, Sh.e.l.ley wrote much of his _Queen Mab_; he also addressed a sonnet, and a longer poem, to Harriet, in August. These poems certainly evince no falling off in affection, although they are not like the glowing love-poems of a later period.

From Lynmouth Sh.e.l.ley, with his party, moved to Swansea, and thence to Tremadoc, where they agreed to take a house named Tanyrallt, and then they moved on to London to meet G.o.dwin, who, in the meanwhile, had paid a visit to Lynmouth just after their flitting. Here Sh.e.l.ley had the delight of seeing the philosopher face to face, and now visits were exchanged, and walks and dinners followed, and, among other friends of G.o.dwin, Sh.e.l.ley met Clara de Boinville and Mrs. Turner, who is said to have inspired his first great lyric, "Away the moor is dark beneath the moon," but whose husband strongly objected to Sh.e.l.ley visiting their house.

On this occasion f.a.n.n.y G.o.dwin was the most seen; Mary G.o.dwin, who was just fifteen, only arriving towards the end of Sh.e.l.ley's stay in London from a visit to her friends, the Baxters, in Scotland. No mention is made of her by Sh.e.l.ley, though she must have dined in his company about November 5, 1812. During this visit to London Sh.e.l.ley became reconciled with Hogg, calling on him and begging him to come to see him and his wife. This certainly does not look as if Sh.e.l.ley still thought seriously of his former difference with Hogg--scarcely a year before. Shortly after, on the 8th, we find the poor "Brown Demon"

leaving the Sh.e.l.leys, with the promise of an annuity of one hundred pounds. She reopened a school later on at Edmonton, and was much loved by her pupils. Sh.e.l.ley now returned to Tremadoc, where he pa.s.sed the winter in his house at Tanyrallt, helping the poor through this severe season of 1812-13. Here one of Sh.e.l.ley's first practical attempts for humanity was a.s.sisting to reclaim some land from the sea; but Sh.e.l.ley's early effort, unlike the last one of Gothe's _Faust_, did not satisfy him, and shortly afterwards another real or fancied attempt on his life, on February 26th, 1813, obliged the party to leave the neighbourhood, this time again for Ireland. He spent a short time on the Lake of Killarney, with his wife and Eliza. In April we again find him in London, in an hotel in Albemarle Street; thence he pa.s.sed to Half Moon Street, where in June their first child, Ianthe, was born. The baby was a great pleasure to Sh.e.l.ley, who, however, objected to the wet nurse. He wrote a touching sonnet to his wife and child three months later. All this time there is no apparent change of affection suggested. Soon afterwards, while at Bracknell, near Windsor, they kept up the acquaintance of the De Boinville family, and Sh.e.l.ley began the study of Italian with them while Harriet relinquished hers of Latin. From Bracknell Sh.e.l.ley paid his last visit to Field Place to see his mother, in the absence of his father and the younger children. An interview with his father followed, and a journey to Edinburgh, and then in December a return to London; certainly an ominous restlessness, caused, no doubt, considerably by want of money, but moving about did not seem the way to save or to make it. Sh.e.l.ley visited G.o.dwin several times during his stay in London. At this time Sh.e.l.ley had to raise ruinous post-obits on the family property, and for legal reasons he now thought it desirable to follow the Scotch marriage by one in the English church, and he and Harriet were re-married on March 22, 1814, at St. George's Church.

But even now little rifts seem to have been growing, small enough apparently, and yet, like the small cloud in the sky, indicating the coming storm. This very time of trials, through want of money, seems to have been chosen by Harriet to show a hankering after luxuries which their present income could not warrant. A carriage was purchased, and was with its accompanying expenses added to the small _menage_; silver plate was also considered a necessity; and, perhaps the thing most distasteful to Sh.e.l.ley's natural tastes, the wet nurse was retained, although Harriet had always appeared to be a strong young woman capable of undertaking her maternal duty. This fact was considered by Peac.o.c.k to have chiefly alienated Sh.e.l.ley's affection.

Apart from this, poor Harriet, with the birth of her child, seems to have given up her studies, which she had evidently pursued to please Sh.e.l.ley, and to have awakened to the fact that it was a difficult task to take up the whole cause of suffering humanity and aid it with their slender purse, and keep their wandering household going. It is difficult to imagine the genius that could have sufficed, and it certainly needed genius, or something very like it, to keep the Faust-like mind of Sh.e.l.ley in any peace.

There is a letter from f.a.n.n.y G.o.dwin to Sh.e.l.ley, after his first visit, speaking of his wife as a fine lady. From this accusation Sh.e.l.ley strongly defended her, but now he felt that this disaster might really be impending. Poor pretty Harriet could not understand or talk philosophy with Sh.e.l.ley, and, what was worse, her sister was ever present to prevent any spontaneous feeling of dependence on her husband from endearing her to him. Even before his second ceremony of marriage with Harriet we find him writing a letter in great dejection to Hogg. He seemed really in the poet's "premature old age," as he expressed it, though none like the poet have the power of rejuvenescence. His detestation of his sister-in-law at this time was extreme, but he appears to have been incapable of sending her away. It was a perfect torture to him to see her kiss his baby. He writes thus from Mrs. de Boinville's at Bracknell, where he had a month's rest with philosophy and sweet converse. Talking was easier than acting philosophy at this juncture, and planning the amelioration of the world pleasanter than struggling to keep one poor soul from sinking to degradation; but who shall judge the strength of another's power, or feel the burden of another's woe? We can only tell how the expression of his agony may help ourselves; but surely it is worthy of admiration to find Sh.e.l.ley, four days after writing this most heart-broken letter to Hogg, binding his chains still firmer by remarrying, so that, come what would, no slur should be cast on Harriet.

Harriet, who had never understood anything of housekeeping, and whose _menage_, according to Hogg, was of the funniest, now that the novelty of Sh.e.l.ley's talk and ways was over, and when even the constant changes were beginning to satiate her, apparently spent a time of intolerable _ennui_. It is still remembered in the Pilfold family how Harriet appeared at their house late one night in a ball dress, without shawl or bonnet, having quarrelled with Sh.e.l.ley. A doctor who had to perform some operation on her child was struck with astonishment at her demeanour, and considered her utterly without feeling, and Sh.e.l.ley's poem, "Lines, April 1814," written, according to Claire Clairmont's testimony, when Mr. Turner objected to his visiting his wife at Bracknell, gives a touching picture of the comfortless home which he was returning to; in fact, they seem to have no sooner been together again than Harriet made a fresh departure.

There is one imploring poem by Sh.e.l.ley, addressed to Harriet in May 1814, begging her to relent and pity, if she cannot love, and not to let him endure "The misery of a fatal cure"; but Harriet had not generosity, if it was needed, and, according to Thornton Hunt, she left Sh.e.l.ley and went to Bath, where she still was in July. What Harriet really aimed at by this foolish move is doubtful; it was certainly taken at the most fatal moment. To leave Sh.e.l.ley alone, near dear friends, when she had been repelling his advances to regain her affection, and making his home a place for him to dread to come into, was anything but wise; but wisdom was not Harriet's _forte_; she needed a husband to be wise for her. Sh.e.l.ley, however, had most gifts, except such wisdom at this time.

Beyond these facts, there seems little but surmises to judge by. It may always be a question how much Sh.e.l.ley really knew, or believed, of certain ideas of infidelity on his wife's part in connection with a Major Ryan--ideas which, even if believed, would not have justified his subsequent mode of action.

But here, for a time, we must leave poor Harriet--all her loveliness thrown away upon Sh.e.l.ley--all Sh.e.l.ley's divine gifts worthless to her.

What a strange disunion to pa.s.s through life with! Only the sternest philosophy or callousness could have achieved it--and Sh.e.l.ley was still so young, with his philosophy all in theory.

CHAPTER IV.

MARY AND Sh.e.l.lEY.

We left G.o.dwin about to write in answer to the letter referred to from Sh.e.l.ley. The correspondence which followed, though very interesting in itself, is only important here as it led to the increasing intimacy of the families. These letters are full of sound advice from an elderly philosopher to an over-enthusiastic youth; and one dated March 14, 1812, begging Sh.e.l.ley to leave Ireland and come to London, ends with the pregnant phrase, "You cannot imagine how much all the females of my family, Mrs. G.o.dwin and _three_ daughters, are interested in your letters and your history." So here, at fourteen, we find Mary deeply interested in all concerning Sh.e.l.ley; poor Mary, who used to wander forth, when in London, from the Skinner Street Juvenile Library northwards to the old St. Pancras Cemetery, to sit with a book beside her mother's grave to find that sympathy so sadly lacking in her home.

About this time G.o.dwin wrote a letter concerning Mary's education to some correspondent anxious to be informed on the subject. We cannot do better than quote from it:--

Your inquiries relate princ.i.p.ally to the two daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft. They are neither of them brought up with an exclusive attention to the system and ideas of their mother. I lost her in 1797, and in 1801 I married a second time. One among the motives which led me to choose this was the feeling I had in myself of an incompetence for the education of daughters. The present Mrs. G.o.dwin has great strength and activity of mind, but is not exclusively a follower of the notions of their mother; and, indeed, having formed a family establishment without having a previous provision for the support of a family, neither Mrs. G.o.dwin nor I have leisure enough for reducing novel theories of education to practice; while we both of us honestly endeavour, as far as our opportunities will permit, to improve the mind and characters of the younger branches of our family.

Of the two persons to whom your inquiries relate, my own daughter is considerably superior in capacity to the one her mother had before.

f.a.n.n.y, the eldest, is of a quiet, modest, unshowy disposition, somewhat given to indolence, which is her greatest fault, but sober, observing, peculiarly clear and distinct in the faculty of memory, and disposed to exercise her own thoughts and follow her own judgment.

Mary, my daughter, is the reverse of her in many particulars. She is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible. My own daughter is, I believe, very pretty. f.a.n.n.y is by no means handsome, but, in general, prepossessing.

By this letter necessity appears to have been the chief motor in the education of the children. Constantly increasing difficulties surrounded the family, who were, however, kept above the lowering influences of narrow circ.u.mstances by the intellect of G.o.dwin and his friends. Even the speculations into which Mrs. G.o.dwin is considered to have rashly drawn her husband in the Skinner Street Juvenile Library, perhaps, for a time, really a.s.sisted in bringing up the family and educating the sons.

Before the meeting with Sh.e.l.ley, Mary was known as a young girl of strong poetic and emotional nature. A story is still remembered by friends, proving this: just before her last return from the Highlands preceding her eventful meetings with Sh.e.l.ley, she visited, while staying with the Baxters, some of the most picturesque parts of the Highlands, in company with Mr. Miller, a bookseller of Edinburgh; and he told of her pa.s.sionate enthusiasm when taken into a room arranged with looking-gla.s.ses round it to reflect the magic view without of cascade and cloud-capped mountains; how she fell on her knees, entranced at the sight, and thanked Providence for letting her witness so much beauty. This was the nature, with its antecedents and surroundings, to come shortly into communion with Sh.e.l.ley, at the time of his despondency at his wife's hardness and supposed desertion; Sh.e.l.ley then, so far from self-sufficiency, yearning after sympathy and an ideal in life, with all his former idols shattered. G.o.dwin's house became for him the home of intellectual intercourse. G.o.dwin, surrounded by a cultivated family, was not thought less of by Sh.e.l.ley, owing to the accident of his then having a book-shop to look after--Sh.e.l.ley, whose childhood, though pa.s.sed in the comforts of an English country house, yet lacked the riches of the higher culture.

Through two months of various trials Sh.e.l.ley remained on terms of great intimacy, visiting G.o.dwin's house and constantly dining there.

This was during his wife's voluntary withdrawal to Bath, from May--when he seems to have entreated her to be reconciled to him--till July, when she, in her turn, becoming anxious at a four days'

cessation of news, wrote an imploring letter to Hookham, the Bond Street bookseller, for information about her husband.

In the meantime, what had been pa.s.sing in G.o.dwin's house? The Philosopher, whom Sh.e.l.ley loved and revered, was becoming inextricably involved in money matters. What was needed but this to draw still closer the sympathies of the poet, who had not been exempt from like straits? He was thus in the anomalous position of an heir to twenty thousand a year, who could wish to raise three thousand pounds on his future expectations, not for discreditable gambling debts, or worse extravagances, but to save his beloved master and his family from dire distress.

What a coil of circ.u.mstances to be entangling all concerned! Mary returning from the delights of her Scottish home to find her father, whom she always devotedly loved, on the verge of bankruptcy, with all the hopeless vista which her emotional and highly imaginative nature could conjure up; and then to find this dreaded state of distress relieved, and by her hero--the poet who, for more than two years, "all the women of her family had been profoundly interested in."

And for Sh.e.l.ley, the contrast from the desolate home, where sulks and ill-humour a.s.sailed him, and which, for a time, was a deserted home for him; where facts, or his fitful imagination, ran riot with his honour, to the home where all showed its roseate side for him; where all vied to please the young benefactor, who was the humble pupil of its master; where Mary, in the expanding glow of youth and intellect, could talk on equal terms with the enthusiastic poet.

Were not the eyes of G.o.dwin and his wife blinded for the time, when still reconciliation with Harriet was possible? Surely grat.i.tude came in to play honour false. The one who--were it only from personal feeling--might have tried to turn the course of the rushing torrent was not there. f.a.n.n.y, who had formerly written of Sh.e.l.ley as a hero of romance, was in Wales during this period.

So, step by step, and day by day, the march of fate continued, till, by the time that Hookham apparently unbandaged G.o.dwin's eyes, on receiving Harriet's letter on July 7, 1814, pa.s.sion seemed to have subdued the power of will; and the obstacle now imposed by G.o.dwin only gave added impetus to the torrent, which nothing further could check.

Such times as these in a life seem to exemplify the contrasting doctrines of Calvin and of Schopenhauer; of two courses, either is open. But at that time Sh.e.l.ley was more the being of emotion than of will--unless, indeed, will be confounded with emotion.

We have seen enough to gather that Sh.e.l.ley did not need to enter furtively the house of his benefactor to injure him in his nearest tie, but that circ.u.mstances drew Sh.e.l.ley to Mary with equal force as her to him. The meetings by her mother's grave seemed to sanctify the love which should have been another's. They vaguely tried to justify themselves with crude principles. But self-deception could not endure much longer; and when G.o.dwin forbade Sh.e.l.ley his house on July 8, Sh.e.l.ley, ever impetuous and headstrong, whose very virtues became for the time vices, thrust all barriers aside.