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Title: Ariel - A Shelley Romance
Author: Maurois, André
Language: English
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= A R I E L =
A SHELLEY ROMANCE
BY
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
TRANSLATED BY
ELLA D’ARCY
First published in 1924
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I KEATE’S WAY 11
II THE HOME 17
III THE CONFIDANT 23
IV THE NEIGHBOURING PINE 29
V QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM 35
VI TIMOTHY SHELLEY’S VIGOROUS DIALECTICS 40
VII AN ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES 47
VIII THIS DESPOTIC CHAIN 54
IX A VERY YOUNG COUPLE 59
X HOGG 65
XI HOGG (_continued_) 72
XII FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH MIDDLE AGE 76
XIII SOAP BUBBLES 85
XIV THE VENERATED FRIEND 92
XV MISS HITCHENER 97
XVI HARRIET 102
XVII COMPARISONS 108
XVIII SECOND INCARNATION OF THE GODDESS 116
PART II
XIX A SIX WEEKS’ TOUR 125
XX THE PARIAHS 130
XXI GODWIN 138
XXII DON JUAN CONQUERED 144
XXIII ARIEL AND DON JUAN 150
XXIV GRAVES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE 159
XXV THE RULES OF THE GAME 166
XXVI “QUEEN OF MARBLE AND OF MUD” 175
XXVII THE ROMAN CEMETERY 184
XXVIII “ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND” 189
XXIX THE CAVALIER’ SIRVENTE 198
XXX A SCANDALOUS LETTER 204
XXXI LORD BYRON’S SILENCE 207
XXXII MIRANDA 214
XXXIII THE DISCIPLES 220
XXXIV II SAMUEL XII. 23 226
XXXV THE REFUGE 232
XXXVI ARIEL SET FREE 239
XXXVII LAST LINKS 247
ARIEL
PART I
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves.
WILLIAM BLAKE
CHAPTER I
KEATE’S WAY
In the year 1809 George III appointed as Headmaster of Eton, Dr. Keate,
a terrible little man who considered the flogging-block a necessary
station on the road to perfection, and who ended a sermon on the Sixth
Beatitude by saying, “Now, boys, be pure in heart! For if not, I’ll flog
you until you are!”
The county gentlemen and merchant princes who put their sons under his
care were not displeased by such a specimen of pious ferocity, nor could
they think lightly of the man who had birched half the ministers,
bishops, generals, and dukes in the kingdom.
In those days the severest discipline found favour with the best people.
The recent French Revolution had proved the dangers of liberalism when
it affects the governing classes. Official England, which was the soul
of the Holy Alliance, believed that in combating Napoleon she was
combating liberalism in the purple. She required from her public schools
a generation of smooth-tongued hypocrites.
In order to crush out any possible republican ardour in the young
aristocrats of Eton, their studies were organized on conventional and
frivolous lines. At the end of five years the pupil had read Homer twice
through, almost all Virgil, and an expurgated Horace; he could turn out
passable Latin epigrams on Wellington and Nelson. The taste for Latin
quotations was then so pronounced, that Pitt in the House of Commons
being interrupted in a quotation from the _Æneid_, the whole House,
Whigs and Tories alike, rose as one man to supply the end. Certainly a
fine example of homogeneous culture.
The study of science, being optional, was naturally neglected, but
dancing was obligatory. On the subject of religion Keate held doubt to
be a crime, but that otherwise it wasn’t worth talking about. He feared
mysticism more than indifference, permitted laughing in chapel and
wasn’t strict about keeping the Sabbath.
Here, in order to make the reader understand the—perhaps
unconscious—Machiavellism of this celebrated trainer of youth, we may
note that he did not mind being told a few lies: “A sign of respect,” he
would say.
Barbarous customs reigned amongst the boys themselves. The little boys
were the slaves or “fags” of the big boys. The fag made his master’s
bed, fetched from the pump outside and carried up his water in the
morning, brushed his clothes, and cleaned his shoes. Disobedience was
punished by torments to fit the crime. A boy writing home, not to
complain, but to describe his life, says: “Rolls, whose fag I am, put on
spurs to force me to jump a ditch which was too wide for me. Each time I
funked it he dug them into me, and of course my legs are bleeding, my
‘Greek Poets’ reduced to pulp, and my new clothes torn to tatters.”
The glorious “art of self-defence” was in high honour. At the conclusion
of one strenuous bout, a boy was left dead upon the floor. Keate, coming
to look at the corpse, said simply: “This is regrettable, of course, but
I desire above all things that an Eton boy should be ready to return a
blow for a blow.”
The real, but hidden, aim of the system was to form “hard-faced men,”
all run in the same mould. In action you might be independent, but any
originality of thought, of dress, or of language, was the most heinous
of crimes. To betray the smallest interest in ideas or books was a bit
of disgusting affectation to be forcibly pulled up by the roots.
Such a life as this seemed to the majority of English boys quite right.
The pride they felt in carrying on the traditions of a school like Eton
founded by a king, and under the protection of and near neighbour to all
the succeeding kings, was balm of Gilead to their woes.
Only a few sensitive souls suffered terribly and suffered long.
One of these, for example, the young Percy Bysshe Shelley, son of a rich
Sussex landowner, and grandson to Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart., did not
seem able to acclimatize himself at all.
This boy, who was exceptionally beautiful, with brilliant blue eyes,
dark curling hair, and a delicate complexion, displayed a sensitiveness
of conscience most unusual in one of his class, as well as an incredible
tendency to question the Rules of the Game.
When first he appeared in the school, the Sixth Form captains, seeing
his slender build and girlish air, imagined they would have little need
to enforce their authority over him. But they soon discovered that the
smallest threat threw him into a passion of resistance. An unbreakable
will, with a lack of the necessary physical strength to carry out its
decrees, forefated him to rebellion. His eyes, dreamy when at peace,
acquired, under the influence of enthusiasm or indignation, a light that
was almost wild; his voice, usually soft and low, became agonized and
shrill.
His love of books, his contempt for games, his long hair floating in the
wind, his collar opened on a girlish throat, everything about him
scandalized those self-charged to maintain in the little world of Eton
the brutal spirit of which it was so proud.
But Shelley, from his first day there, having decided that fagging was
an outrage to human dignity, had refused obedience to the orders of his
fag-master, and in consequence was proclaimed an outlaw.
He was called “Mad Shelley.” The strongest of his tormentors undertook
to save his soul as by fire, although they gave up attacking him in
single combat, when they found he would stop at nothing. Scratching and
slapping, he fought with open hands like a girl.
An organized “Shelley-bait” became one of the favourite amusements. Some
scout would discover the strange lad reading poetry by the riverside,
and at once give the “view hallo!” Shelley, with his hair streaming on
the wind, would take flight across the meadows, through the college
cloisters, the Eton streets. Finally, surrounded like a stag at bay, he
would utter a prolonged and piercing shriek, while his tormentors would
“nail” him to the wall with balls slimy with mud.
A voice would cry “Shelley!” And “Shelley!” another voice would take it
up. The old walls would re-echo to yells of “Shelley!” in every key. A
lickspittle fag would pluck at the victim’s jacket; another would pinch
him; a third would kick away the books he squeezed convulsively under
his arm. Then, every finger would be pointed towards him, while fresh
cries of “Shelley!” “Shelley!” “Shelley!” finally shattered his nerves.
The crisis was reached for which his tormentors waited—an outburst of
mad rage, in which the boy’s eyes flashed fire, his cheeks grew white,
his whole body trembled and shook.
Tired at length of a spectacle that was always the same, the school went
back to its games.
Shelley picked up his mud-stained books and lost in thought wandered
away through the meadows that border the Thames and, flinging himself
down on the sun-flecked grass, watched the river glide past him. Running
water, like music, has the power to change misery into melancholy. Both,
through their smooth, unceasing flow, pour over the soul the anodyne of
forgetfulness and peace. The massive towers of Windsor and Eton,
typified to the young rebel a hostile and unchanging world, but the
reflection of the willow-trees trembling in the water soothed him by its
tenuous fragility.
He returned to his books, to Diderot, to Voltaire, to the system of M.
d’Holbach. To love these Frenchmen, so hated by his masters, seemed an
act of defiance worthy of his courage. An English work condensed them
all. Godwin’s _Political Justice_. It was his favourite reading.
Godwin made all things seem simple. Had men studied him the world would
have attained to a state of idyllic happiness. Had they listened to the
voice of reason, that is of Godwin, two hours’ work a day would have
been sufficient for all their needs. Free love would have replaced the
stupid conventions of marriage, and philosophy have banished the terrors
of superstition.
Unfortunately, “prejudices” still shut men’s minds to truth.
Shelley closed his book, stretched himself out upon the sunny,
flower-starred grass, and meditated on the misery of man. From the
school buildings behind him a confused murmur of stupid voices floated
out over the exquisite landscape of wood and stream, but here at least
no mocking eye could spy upon him. The boy’s tears ran down, and
pressing his hands together, he made this vow: “I swear, to be just and
wise and free, if such power in me lies. I swear never to become an
accomplice, even by my silence, of the selfish and the powerful. I swear
to dedicate my whole life to the worship of beauty.”
Had Dr. Keate been witness to the above outburst of religious ardour, so
deplorable in any well-regulated school, he would certainly have treated
the case in his favourite way.
CHAPTER II
THE HOME
In the holidays the refractory slave became the hereditary prince. Mr.
Timothy Shelley, his father, owned the manor of Field Place in Sussex, a
well-built, low, white house surrounded by a park, and extensive woods.
There Shelley found his four pretty sisters, a little brother three
years old, whom he had taught to say “The devil!” so as to shock the
pious, and his beautiful cousin Harriet Grove, who people said resembled
him.
The head of the family, Sir Bysshe Shelley, lived in the market-town of
Horsham. He was a gentleman of the old school who boasted of being as
rich as a duke and of living like a poacher. Six feet high, of
commanding presence and a handsome face, Sir Bysshe was of cynical mind
and energetic temperament. Unlike the rest of the Shelleys, who all had
bright blue eyes, Sir Bysshe’s eyes were brown, inherited presumably
from his New Jersey mother, the wealthy widow Plum.
He had sunk eighty thousand pounds in building Castle Goring, but could
not finish it because of the expense. So he lived in a cottage close to
the Horsham Town Hall, with one man-servant as eccentric as himself. He
dressed like a peasant and spent his days in the tap-room of the Swan
Inn, talking politics with all and sundry. He had a rough sort of humour
that frightened the slow-witted country-folk. He had made his two
daughters so unhappy at home that they had run away, which afforded him
an excellent pretext for not giving them any dowry.
His one desire was to round off an immense estate and to transmit it
intact to innumerable generations of Shelleys. With this in view he had
entailed the greater part of it on Percy, to the total exclusion of his
other children. Considering his grandson as the necessary upholder of
his posthumous ambition, he had a certain affection for him. But for his
son, Timothy, who dealt in stilted phrases, he had nothing but contempt.
Timothy Shelley was member of Parliament for the pocket borough of New
Shoreham. Like his father, he was tall and well made, fair, handsome and
imposing. He had a better heart than Sir Bysshe but less will-power. Sir
Bysshe was rather attractive, as avowed egoists and cynics often are.
Timothy had good intentions and was insupportable. He admired intellect
with the irritating want of tact of the illiterate. He affected a
fashionable respect for religion, an aggressive tolerance for new ideas,
a pompous philosophy. He liked to call himself liberal in his political
and religious opinions, but was careful not to scandalize the people of
his set. A friend of the Duke of Norfolk, he spoke with complacency of
the emancipation of the Irish Catholics. He was proud of his own
boldness and not a little scared by it. He had tears at command, but
became ferocious if his vanity was touched. In private life he plumed
himself on his urbanity, but tried to combine the mailed fist with the
velvet glove. Diplomatic in small things he was boorish in big ones;
inoffensive yet exasperating, he was well fitted to try the temper of
any young critic; and it was the vexation caused by the silly
bibble-babble of his father which had done much to throw Shelley into
intellectual isolation. As to Mrs. Shelley, she had been the prettiest
girl in the county, she liked a man to be a fighter and a gentleman, and
she would watch with disgust her eldest son go off into the woods
carrying a book under his arm instead of a gun.
In the eyes of his sisters, however, Shelley was a Superman. The moment
he arrived from Eton the house was filled with fantastic guests, the
park was alive with confused murmurs as in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
The little girls lived in a continual but agreeable terror. Percy
delighted in clothing with mystery the everyday objects of life. There
was no hole in the old walls into which he did not thrust a stick in the
search for secret passages. In the attics he had discovered a locked
room. Here, said he, lived an old alchemist with a long beard, the
terrible Cornelius Agrippa. When a noise was heard in the attics, it was
Cornelius upsetting his lamp. During a whole week the Shelley family
worked in the garden, digging out a summer shelter for Cornelius.
Other monsters woke again with the boy’s arrival. There was the great
tortoise which lived in the pond, and the great old snake, a formidable
reptile, that once had really frequented the underwood, and which one of
the Squire’s gardeners had killed with a scythe. “This gardener, little
girls, this gardener who had the look of a human being like you and me,
was in reality Father Time himself who causes all legendary monsters to
perish.”
What rendered these inventions so fascinating was that the teller
himself was not too sure he was inventing them. Stories of witches and
ghosts had troubled his sensitive childhood. But the more he feared
ghostly apparitions the more he forced himself to brave them. At Eton,
having drawn a circle on the ground, and set fire to some alcohol in a
saucer, which enveloped him in its bluish flame, he began his
incantation: “Demons of the air, and of fire. . . .” “What on earth are
you doing, Shelley?” said his Master, the solemn and magnificent Bethel,
interrupting him one day: “Please, sir, I’m raising the devil. . . .” In
the country likewise the Lord of Darkness was often called up by a
shrill young voice, and sometimes to their great joy the children
received an order from the sovereign brother to dress up as ghosts or
demons.
The discipline of science was quite alien to Shelley’s nature, but he
liked its romantic side. Armed with a machine which had just been
invented, he gave electric shocks to the admiring bevy of little girls.
But whenever little Hellen, the youngest, saw him coming with a bottle
and a bit of wire she began to cry.
His dearest and most faithful disciples were Elizabeth his eldest
sister, and his lovely cousin, Harriet Grove. These three children were
drawn together by their dawning senses and their impassioned love of
Truth. The first awakening of instinct always sheds over ideas an
extraordinary charm. Shelley led his fair pupils to the churchyard to
which the mysterious presence of the dead lent, in his eyes, a poetic
fascination, and safe from the pursuit of his father, seated between
them on some rustic tomb in the shadow of the old church, arms round
swaying waists, he discoursed eloquently on all things in heaven and
earth while lovely eyes drank up his every word.
The picture he drew of the world was a simple one. On the one side Vice:
kings, priests, and the rich. On the other Virtue: philosophers, the
wretched, and the poor. Here, religion in the service of tyranny: there,
Godwin and his _Political Justice_. But more often he spoke to the girls
of Love.
“Men’s laws pretend to regulate our natural sentiments. How absurd! When
the eye perceives a lovely being the heart takes fire. How is it under
man’s control to love or not to love? But the essence of love is liberty
and it withers in an atmosphere of constraint. It is incompatible with
obedience, jealousy, or fear. It requires perfect confidence and
absolute freedom. Marriage is a prison. . . .”
Scepticism extended to marriage is a form of wit which unmarried ladies
do not much appreciate. Metaphysical heresy may sometimes amuse them,
matrimonial heresy smells of the faggot.
“Bonds?” repeated Harriet. “No doubt. . . . But what matter if the bonds
are light ones?”
“If they are light they are useless. Does one shackle a voluntary
prisoner?”
“But religion . . .”
Shelley called Holbach to the aid of Godwin. “If God is just, how can we
believe that he will punish creatures whom he himself has created weak?
If he is All-Powerful, how is it possible either to offend him or resist
him? If he is reasonable, why is he angry with the hapless beings to
whom he has left the liberty to be unreasonable?”
“Custom . . .”
“What can custom matter to us in this short moment of eternity which we
call the nineteenth century?”
Elizabeth took her brother’s side, and it was impossible for Harriet to
oppose a demi-god with flashing eyes, a shirt-collar open on a delicate
throat, and hair as fine as spun-silk.
She sighed; then to change the conversation, “Let us go on with
_Zastrozzi_?” she proposed.
This was a novel which the three were writing together. It dealt with a
robber chief, a haughty tyrant, and an “elegantly proportioned heroine
all tenderness and purity.”
The hours passed pleasantly in _Zastrozzi’s_ company; the evening closed
in. Elizabeth left the guileless lovers alone in the darkness.
Shelley and Harriet, their arms interlocked, wandered back to the house
through the white mist rising from the meadows. The breeze waved the
topmost leaves of the trees across the face of the moon. The anemones
shut their pale cups and drooped their heads. The sadness of twilight
reminded Shelley of his approaching return to the sombre cloisters of
Eton. But conscious of the warm loveliness of his cousin, who trembled
and vibrated beneath his touch, he felt himself filled with new courage
for a life of apostleship and combat.
CHAPTER III
THE CONFIDANT
In October, 1810, Timothy Shelley took his son up to Oxford. The member
for New Shoreham was in the best of tempers.
Objecting to hotels, he put up at his old lodgings in the High—“the
leaden horse”—appropriate house-sign of John Slatter, Plumber and
Glazier. This Slatter was a son of Mr. Shelley’s former landlord, whom
he had succeeded in the lodging-house and plumbing businesses. Another
son, with whom to his chagrin he was to have much to do, had gone into
partnership with Munday, bookseller at Carfax.
Mr. Shelley had come to enter a future baronet in the books of
University College; through which he himself had passed many years
earlier, without distinction. Such ceremonies are always agreeable to an
Englishman, and would be particularly so to a man of the consequential
turn of mind of Timothy Shelley. So soon as the rite was satisfactorily
accomplished, he went down with Bysshe to the bookseller, and there
opened for him an unlimited credit in books and paper.
“My son here,” he said, pointing good-humouredly to the wild-haired
youth with luminous eyes who stood by, “has a literary turn, Mr.
Slatter. He is already the author of a romance”—it was the famous
_Zastrozzi_—“and if he wishes to publish again, do pray indulge him in
his printing freaks.”
Shelley was delighted with college. To have rooms of his own, where he
could sport his oak; to be free to attend lectures or shirk them; to
follow the studies of his choice; to read, write, or go walking as he
pleased; this was to combine the charm of the monastic life with the
freedom of thought of the philosopher. It was thus he had dreamed of
passing his life “for ever.”
That evening in hall he found himself seated by the side of a young man,
a freshman like himself, who after introducing himself as “Jefferson
Hogg,” relapsed into the high-bred reserve which Oxford manners require.
However, towards the middle of the meal the two young men, incapable of
maintaining silence any longer, began to talk of their reading.
“The best poetical literature of these days,” said Shelley, “is German
literature.”
Hogg, with a smile, asserted the German’s want of nature. So much
romanticism made him tired. . . .
“What modern literature can you compare with theirs?”
Hogg named the Italian.
This roused all Shelley’s impetuosity, and started such an endless
discussion that the servants were able to clear the tables before the
two perceived they were alone.
“Will you come up to my rooms?” said Hogg. “We can go on talking there.”
Shelley eagerly accepted, but he lost the thread of his discourse on the
way and the whole of his enthusiasm in the cause of Germany. While Hogg
was lighting the candles, his guest said calmly that he was not
qualified to maintain such a discussion, being as ignorant of Italian as
he was of German, and that he had only talked for talking’s sake.
Hogg replied smiling that his own indifference and ignorance were
profound, and proceeded to set out on the table a bottle, glasses, and
biscuits.
“Besides,” declared Shelley, “all literature is vain trifling. What is
the study of ancient or modern tongues but merely a study of words and
phrases, of the names of things? How much wiser it were to investigate
the things themselves!”
How was this to be done, Hogg wanted to know.
“Through the physical sciences, and especially through chemistry,” said
Shelley, and raising his voice he discoursed with a degree of animation
that far outshone his zeal in defence of the Germans, on chemical
analysis, on the recent discoveries in physics, and on electricity.
Feeling no interest in these subjects Hogg had leisure to examine the
appearance of his new friend. His clothes were expensive, and made
according to the most approved mode of the day, but they were tumbled,
rumpled, unbrushed. His figure was slight and fragile, he was tall, but
appeared less tall than he really was, being round-shouldered, through
an habitual eagerness of mood which always made him thrust his face
forward. His gestures were both graceful and abrupt, his complexion red
and white like a girl’s; his hair dark-brown, long and bushy. His
features breathed an animation, a fire, a vivid and preternatural
intelligence. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the
intellectual, for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness about
it, and that air of profound religious veneration which characterizes
the frescoed saints of the great masters of Florence.
Shelley was still talking when some clock chimed—he uttered a cry. “My
mineralogy class!” and fled downstairs.
* * *
Hogg had promised to call on him next morning. He found him in a violent
dispute with the scout who wanted to tidy up his rooms.
Books, boots, papers, pistols, linen, ammunition, phials, and crucibles
were scattered on the floor and on every chair and table. An electrical
machine, an air pump, and a solar microscope were conspicuous amidst the
mass of matter. Shelley turned the handle of the machine so that the
fierce crackling sparks flew out, and presently getting upon the stool
with glass feet, his long wild locks bristled and stood on end. Hogg,
with a look of amusement, followed his movements with anxiety, watching
in particular over the glasses and tea-cups. Just as his host was going
to pour out tea, the guest removed in haste from the bottom of his cup a
small gold seven-shilling piece partly dissolved by the nitromuriatic
acid in which it was immersed.
The young men became inseparable. Every morning they went for a long
walk, during which Shelley behaved like a child, climbing all the banks,
jumping all the ditches.
When he came to any water he launched paper boats, and sent little
argosies trembling down the Isis. He followed them until they sank,
while Hogg, compliant but exasperated, waited for him at the starting
point by the water’s edge.
After the walk they went up to Shelley’s rooms where, worn out by his
continual expenditure of energy, he would be overcome by extreme
drowsiness. He would lie stretched out upon the rug before a large fire
and, curled round upon himself like a cat, would sleep thus from six to
ten. At ten he would suddenly start up, and rubbing his eyes with great
violence and passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, he would
enter at once into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses with
an energy which was almost painful.
At eleven he supped, but his meals were very simple. Eating no meat on
principle, he liked bread, and his pockets were always full of it. He
would walk reading and nibbling as he went, and his path was marked by a
long line of crumbs. Next to bread he liked pudding raisins and dried
prunes bought at the grocer’s. A regular sit-down meal was intolerably
boring to him, and he hardly ever remained to the end.
After supper his mind was clear and his conversation brilliant. He spoke
to Hogg about his cousin Harriet, to whom he wrote long letters in which
outbursts of love alternated with Godwin’s philosophy; about his sister
Elizabeth, a valiant enemy of convention. Or he read the last solemn
letter from his father with shrieks of laughter. Or he took up one of
his favourite books, Locke, Hume or Voltaire, and commented on it with
enthusiasm.
Hogg often asked himself why these writers exercised so great a
fascination over the religious and mystical nature of his friend. It
seemed as though in suddenly discovering in the by-ways of his extensive
reading the immense variety of systems, resembling an entanglement of
deep valleys and rocky precipices, that a sort of vertigo must have
seized Shelley and only a clear and simple doctrine such as Godwin’s
could relieve his metaphysical giddiness. He amused himself by
substituting for the titanic and confused accumulations of History, an
aëry edifice of crystalline theories, and he preferred to the real
world, the incoherence of which terrified him, the more agreeable vision
which the soul gains by looking at facts through the vaporous meshes of
clouds.
Then the college clock struck two. Hogg got up, and in spite of the
protestations of his friend went off to bed.
“What an extraordinary creature!” thought he as he went up to his room
. . . “the grace of a young girl, the purity of a maiden who has never
left her mother’s side . . . and nevertheless an indomitable force . . .
the soul of a Benedictine monk, with the ideas of a Jacobin.”
It was certainly a strange mixture, well worth thinking over. But Master
Jefferson Hogg didn’t care about tiring his brain, and his dear friend
Shelley always gave him an overwhelming desire to sleep.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEIGHBOURING PINE
A few days before Christmas Mr. Shelley found in his letter-bag a
communication from a London publisher, a certain Mr. Stockdale, who
called his attention to the extraordinary productions which young Mr.
Percy Shelley desired to have published. Stockdale had received the MS.
of a novel, _St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian_, filled with the most
subversive ideas, and the worthy tradesman could not see without
misgiving the son of so estimable a gentleman as Mr. Shelley treading
this dangerous path. He considered it to be his duty to warn the young
man’s father; and above all to call his attention to the young man’s
evil genius, his comrade Mr. Jefferson Hogg, son of a good old Tory
family in the north of England, but thoroughly false and dangerous in
character.
Mr. Shelley replied by informing Stockdale that he refused to pay one
penny of the printing bill, which greatly increased the metaphysical and
doctrinal anxieties of the publisher. Then, while awaiting the arrival
of his son, who was to spend the first week of the Christmas holidays at
Field Place, he prepared one of his incoherent, affectionate, and
blustering sermons, in the bombastic style of which he was past master.
Arguments have never convinced anybody yet. But to imagine that the
arguments of a father can change the ideas of a son is the height of
argumentative madness. At the close of the conversation Shelley went
away sickened by the stupidity of his family, filled with a righteous
fury at the behaviour of Stockdale so unworthy of a gentleman, and more
than ever attached to Jefferson Hogg, his only friend. That very evening
he sat down and confided every thing to him in a long letter:
“Everybody attacks me for my detestable principles; I am
reckoned an outcast; there lowers a terrific tempest, but I
stand as it were on a pharos, and smile exultingly at the vain
beating of the billows below. I attempted to enlighten my
father. _Mirabile dictu!_ He, for a time, listened to my
arguments; he allowed the impossibility of any direct
intervention of Providence. He allowed the utter incredibility
of witches, ghosts, legendary miracles. But when I came to
_apply_ the truths on which we had agreed so harmoniously, he
started . . . and silenced me with an equine argument ‘I believe
because I believe.’
“My mother believes me to be in the high-road to Pandemonium.
She fancies I want to make a deistical coterie of all my little
sisters. How laughable!”
Field Place, usually so gay during the holidays, was overshadowed by
these happenings. Mrs. Shelley advised her daughters not to speak too
much with Percy, and the little girls became shy and silent. They
continued their Christmas preparations through force of habit, but no
one took any further interest in them; the little amusements and
surprises were arranged as usual, but without the laughter and fun which
makes Christmas Day so delightful in happy families.
Only Elizabeth remained faithful to Shelley in secret. But she saw that
her admiration was no longer shared by her cousin Harriet, who grew
colder and more evasive every day.
The letters which Harriet had received from Oxford, filled with
enthusiastic dissertations extremely difficult to follow, had troubled
and annoyed her. The quotations from Godwin bored her to tears, and her
terror was even greater than her boredom. It is rare that pretty women
show a taste for dangerous ideas. Beauty, the natural expression of law
and order, is conservative by essence; it upholds all established
religions of which it adorns the ceremonies; Venus was always the right
hand of Jupiter.
Harriet showed Shelley’s letters to her mother, who advised her to pass
them on to her father. This gentleman pronounced Shelley’s doctrines to
be abominable. Both parents took gloomy views as to the young man’s
future. Ought Harriet to unite herself with an eccentric creature whose
follies alienated everybody? She loved elegance, county balls, and
admiration. What sort of a life would she lead with this mad boy who
respected nothing, not even marriage? Yet, after all, religion has
claims. . . .
Before Shelley’s arrival the two young girls had some violent
discussions. Elizabeth pleaded his cause. How could Harriet weigh a few
poor worldly successes against the happiness of passing her life with
the most marvellous of men?
“You make your brother out to be an extraordinary person, but how can I
be sure he really is as you represent him? We have always lived in the
country, we know nothing of life. Our parents, your own father even, who
is in Parliament, disapprove of Bysshe’s ideas. However, let us admit
that he is a genius. What right have _I_ to enter into an intimacy with
him which must end in disappointment when he discovers how really
inferior I am to the being his imagination has pictured? I am just an
ordinary young girl like all the rest. He has idealized me and he would
be very much surprised if he knew me as I am.”
So much modesty gives one to think: Love does not reason like this.
When Shelley arrived Elizabeth explained the situation to him. Instantly
he sought Harriet out. He found her cold and distant, exactly as
Elizabeth had described her. She did not ask Shelley to justify himself:
all she asked was that he should leave her alone. She reproached him
with his universal scepticism.
“But really, Harriet,” Shelley protested, “it is monstrous that I should
not be allowed to express opinions which I have reached by the most
logical of arguments. And how can my theological opinions disqualify me
as brother, friend, or lover?”
“You may think what you please,” replied Harriet, “I do not care in the
least what you think, but don’t ask me to unite my lot with yours.”
It was the first time Shelley had come in contact with a woman’s
indifference, which she can spring upon a man with the suddenness of
night falling in the centre of Africa.
He went away mad with grief. Through the naked, frozen woods, he
wandered back towards Field Place; unconscious of the drifting snow, he
paced for hours the village graveyard, which had been the background for
love’s young dream.
He got home at two o’clock in the morning, and went to bed after placing
a loaded pistol, and various poisons taken from his chemical arsenal, by
his side. But the thought of Elizabeth’s grief on finding his corpse
prevented him from killing himself.
Next day he wrote to Hogg. Against Harriet herself he expressed no
resentment, none against his father nor Mr. Grove. The Spirit of
Intolerance alone was responsible for the tragedy:
“Here I swear—and as I break my oaths, may Infinity, Eternity
blast me—I swear that I will never forgive Intolerance! It is
the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge;
every moment I can spare shall be devoted to my object.
Intolerance is of the greatest disservice to Society; it
encourages prejudices which strike at the root of the dearest,
the tenderest of its ties. Oh how I wish I were the
avenger!—that it were mine to crush the demon; to hurl him to
his native hell, never to rise again and thus to establish for
ever perfect and universal toleration.
“I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in poetry.
You shall see, you shall hear, how it has injured me. _She_ is
no longer mine! _She_ abhors me as a sceptic, as what _she_ was
before! O bigotry! When I pardon this last, this severest of thy
persecutions, may Heaven—if there be wrath in Heaven—blast me!
“Forgive me, I have done. I am afraid there is selfishness in
the passion of love, for I cannot avoid feeling every instant as
if my soul were bursting. But I _will_ feel no more. It is
selfish. I would feel for others, but for myself—oh how much
rather would I expire in the struggle! Yes, that were a relief!
Is suicide wrong? I slept with a loaded pistol and some poison
last night, but did not die. Had it not been for my sister, for
_you_, I should have bidden you a final farewell.”
There still remained a fortnight of the holidays to be passed at Field
Place, an unhappy fortnight owing to the displeasure of his father and
mother, and the embarrassment of his sisters.
In spite of Elizabeth’s invitations Harriet refused to come over and see
them while he was there.
People began to whisper, under the seal of secrecy, that she was engaged
to someone else.
Seeking to appease his spirit in the endeavour to make others happy,
Shelley had resolved that Hogg should fall in love with Elizabeth, whom
he had never seen. He sent Hogg some verses written by her, which were
filled with good intentions, hatred of tyranny, and faults of prosody.
“All are brethren,” sang Elizabeth like the good pupil she was, “even
the African bending to the stroke of the hard-hearted Englishman’s rod”
. . . and more in the same strain.
In return, Shelley gave his sister Hogg’s poems which he declared to be
“extremely beautiful” and in which he himself was compared to a young
oak, and Harriet Grove to the ivy which stifles the tree by its
embraces.
“You have not said,” wrote Shelley, “that the ivy after it had destroyed
the oak, as if to mock the miseries which it had caused, twined around a
pine which stood near.”
The neighbouring pine was Mr. Heylar, a wealthy landowner, and a man of
sound doctrines, who had been expressly created by Providence to escort
his wife to county balls.
“She is lost to me for ever! She is married! Married to a clod of earth!
She will become as insensible herself. All those fine capabilities will
moulder. Let us speak no more on the subject.”
He would have liked to invite Hogg to Field Place, so that Elizabeth
might judge for herself of his admirable qualities. But the squire,
remembering Stockdale’s warnings concerning a certain Evil Genius,
forbade the invitation.
CHAPTER V
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM
About a month after these unfortunate holidays, Messrs. Munday &
Slatter, the Oxford booksellers to whom Timothy Shelley had recommended
the literary freaks of his son, saw that young man burst into their
shop, his hair flying, his shirt-collar wide open, and a fat parcel of
pamphlets under his arm. He wished these to be sold at sixpence each,
and to be displayed conspicuously in the shop-window. To be sure of this
being well done, he set about doing it himself.
The booksellers watched him at work with the amused and fatherly
benevolence which Oxford tradesmen show to Oxford freshmen who have
plenty of money. Had they looked closer they would have been horrified
at the explosive matter with which their young customer strewed their
counters and windows.
The title of the pamphlet, _The Necessity of Atheism_, was the most
scandalous imaginable in a mealy-mouthed, theological city like Oxford.
It was signed by the unknown name of “Jeremiah Stukeley,” and had
Messrs. Munday & Slatter turned over its pages they would have been more
horrified still by the insolent logic of the imaginary Stukeley.
“A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support
any proposition, has ever been allowed to be the only sure way of
attaining truth, upon the advantages of which it is unnecessary to
descant.”
It was with this bold axiom that the pamphlet began, and written in the
form of a geometrical theorem it proceeded to prove the impossibility of
the existence of God. It ended triumphantly with the three letters
Q.E.D., _quod erat demonstrandum_.
To Shelley who knew nothing of mathematics, this formula had always
seemed like a magician’s spell for the evocation of Truth. Although he
had an ardent belief in a Spirit of universal Goodness, the creator and
director of all things; although he professed the personal theology of
an anglican “_Vicaire Savoyard_”; the word “Atheist” pleased him because
of its vigour. He loved to fling it in the face of Bigotry. He picked up
the epithet with which he had already been pelted at Eton, as a Knight
Errant picks up a glove. To the physical and moral courage of his race,
he added intellectual courage, thus affronting great dangers and an
inevitable scandal.
_The Necessity of Atheism_ had been published just twenty minutes, when
the Rev. John Walker, a Fellow of New College, a man of a sinister and
inquisitorial turn of mind, passed the shop-window and looked in.
_The Necessity of Atheism!_ . . . Astounded and outraged, the Rev. John
strode into the shop, calling out in stentorian tones, “Mr. Munday! Mr.
Slatter! What is the meaning of this?”
“Really, sir, we know nothing about it. We have not personally examined
the pamphlet. . . .”
“_The Necessity of Atheism!_ . . . But the title in itself is sufficient
to inform you.”
“Quite so, sir. Quite so. And now that our attention has been called to
it . . .”
“Now that your attention, gentlemen, has been called to it, you will
have the goodness to withdraw immediately every copy from your window,
and to carry them, as well as any other copies you may possess, into
your kitchen and throw them all into the fire.”
Mr. Walker had not, of course, the smallest right to give any such
order, but the booksellers knew that he had only to complain to the
University authorities, and they would see their shop put out of bounds.
So they obeyed with obsequious smiles, and sent one of their clerks to
beg young Mr. Shelley to step round for a few minutes’ conversation with
them.
“We are very sorry, Mr. Shelley, very sorry indeed, but really we
couldn’t help ourselves. Mr. Walker insisted on it, and in your own
interest . . .”
But his “own interest” was the last thing Shelley ever thought of. In
his piercing, urgent voice, he asserted to the much-worried booksellers
his right to think as he pleased, and to communicate his thoughts to the
world.
“And,” he told them triumphantly, “I have done worse than spread my net
in the sight of callow Oxford birds. I have sent a copy of _The
Necessity of Atheism_ to every bishop on the Bench, to the Chancellor of
the University, and to every college Master, Warden, and Dean, with the
compliments of ‘Jeremiah Stukeley’ in my own handwriting!”
* * *
A few days later a porter appeared in Hogg’s rooms with the Dean’s
compliments to Mr. Shelley, and would he go down to him immediately. He
went down to the Common Room where he found the Master and several of
the Fellows; a little group of learned puritans, all classical and
muscular Christians who had always abhorred Shelley because of his long
hair, his eccentricities of dress, and his really low taste for
experimental science.
The Dean showed him a copy of _The Necessity of Atheism_, and asked him
if he were the author. As he spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent
voice, Shelley did not reply.
“Are you, yes or no, the author of this pamphlet?”
“If you can prove that it is by me, produce your evidence. It is neither
just nor lawful to interrogate me in this fashion. Such proceedings
would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free
country.”
“Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?”
“I refuse to reply.”
“Then you are expelled, and I desire that you will quit the college
to-morrow morning at the very latest.”
An envelope sealed with the college seal was immediately handed to him
by one of the Fellows. It contained the sentence of expulsion.
Shelley dashed back to Hogg’s rooms, flung himself down on the sofa, and
trembling with rage repeated “Expelled! . . . Expelled!”
The punishment was terrible. It put a stop to his studies; made it
impossible for him to enter any other university; deprived him of the
peaceful life he so much enjoyed; and drew down on his head his father’s
grotesque and inextinguishable anger.
Hogg was as indignant as his friend, and carried away by a youthful
generosity, instantly addressed a note to the Master and Fellows,
expressing his grief and astonishment that such treatment could have
been meted out to such a man as Shelley. He trusted that the sentence
was not final.
The note was dispatched. The Conclave was still sitting. In a moment the
porter returned with “the Dean’s compliments to Mr. Hogg and would he go
down at once.”
The audience was brief.
“Did you write this?”
It was the letter he had just written and he acknowledged it.
“And this?” putting into Hogg’s hand the pamphlet on Atheism.
With a wealth of arguments and the subtleties of a K.C., Hogg pointed
out the absurdity of the question, and the injustice of punishing
Shelley for having refused to answer it, the obligation lying on every
man conscious of his rights. . . .
“That’s enough!” shouted the Master in a furious voice. “You’re expelled
too!” . . . He seemed in a mood to have expelled every man in the
college. Hogg was handed the sealed envelope in his turn.
In the course of the day a large official paper was affixed to the door
of hall. It was signed by the Master and Dean, bore the college seal,
and declared that Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Percy Bysshe Shelley were
publicly expelled for refusing to answer certain questions put to them.
CHAPTER VI
TIMOTHY SHELLEY’S VIGOROUS DIALECTICS
The exiles set off bag and baggage in the Oxford coach. Shelley had
borrowed £20 from his booksellers, in order to pay his way in London
while waiting news from his father.
Every lodging which he visited with Hogg appeared to him impossible,
either the street was too noisy, the district too dirty, the
maid-servant too plain. Finally, the name of Poland Street reminded him
of Warsaw . . . of Freedom . . . he was certain that in Poland Street
any one of the rooms must be worthy of a free man’s choice, and the very
first which he visited, where there was a trellised paper, vine leaves,
and huge bunches of green and purple grapes, seemed to him the most
beautiful room in the world.
“Here we will settle down,” said he, “and begin our Oxford days over
again, our readings by the fireside, our rambles, our delightful
experiences. Here we will live for ever.”
Nothing was wanting to his programme but the consent of the two fathers,
Mr. Shelley and Mr. Hogg.
* * *
When Timothy Shelley heard of the events at Oxford, he was enraged
beyond measure. Evidently, for a wealthy landowner, a Member of
Parliament, and a J.P. for his county, it was a most disagreeable
occurrence. The accusation of atheism annoyed him most, because he
himself was known as a Liberal, and such advanced thought in politics
required to balance it orthodoxy in religion.
He sat down and wrote a solemn letter to Mr. Hogg senior, deploring “the
unfortunate affair that has happened to my son and yours at Oxford,” and
urging him to get his “young man home” as soon as possible. “As for me,”
he added, “I shall recommend mine to read Paley’s _Natural Theology_: it
is extremely applicable. I shall read it with him.”
Then he wrote a second letter to his own “young man,” very strongly
worded: “Though I have felt as a father and sympathized in the
misfortune which your criminal opinions and improper acts have begot:
yet you must know that I have a duty to perform to my own character, as
well as to your young brother and sisters. Above all my feelings as a
Christian require from me a firm and decided conduct toward you.
“If you shall require aid or assistance from me—or any protection—you
must please yourself to me:
“1st. To go immediately to Field Place, and to abstain from all
communication with Mr. Hogg for some considerable time.
“2nd. That you shall place yourself under the care and society of such
gentleman as I shall appoint and attend to his instructions and
directions he shall give.”
If these conditions were not accepted Timothy Shelley would abandon his
son to all the misery which such wicked and diabolical opinions justly
entail.
Shelley’s reply was brief:
“MY DEAR FATHER,
“As you do me the honour of requesting to hear the determination
of my mind as the basis of your future actions I feel it my
duty, although it gives me pain to wound ‘the sense of duty to
your own character, to that of your family and your feelings as
a Christian,’ decidedly to refuse my assent to both the
proposals in your letter and to affirm that similar refusals
will always be the fate of similar requests. With many thanks
for your great kindness,
“I remain your affectionate, dutiful son,
“PERCY B. SHELLEY.”
* * *
The chief obstacle in the diplomatic relations between father and son is
that the former desires above all things to avoid a rupture, which
renders disciplinary measures difficult. His “conditions” having been
succinctly refused, Timothy Shelley found himself at a loss what to do.
Not a bad man at bottom, he believed in the powerful persuasion of a
bottle of old port. He resolved to go up to town and invite the
delinquents to dinner at Miller’s Hotel, where the wine was good.
“After all,” he said to himself, while waiting for the two young men,
“one must treat young people with good humour, and even go so far,
ridiculous as it may seem, as to discuss things with them. . . . A
ripened and thoughtful mind should get the better, without any
difficulty, of a philosopher of eighteen, and serious misfortune may be
avoided, by a word of wisdom in the nick of time. . . . I mustn’t forget
that Percy is my heir and that he will succeed to the title: he must be
led back into the fold.”
And the excellent man, while marshalling into order Paley’s chief
arguments, rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
Meanwhile, the friends, going on foot from Poland Street to Southwark,
read aloud to each other passages from Voltaire’s _Philosophical
Dictionary_ which Shelley had picked up on a stall. They found it
extremely amusing and laughed immoderately at the old Frenchman’s
ridicule of the Jewish people, the intolerance with which the Bible is
packed, and Jehovah’s sickening and useless cruelties.
When they reached the hotel, a certain Mr. Graham, the factotum of
Timothy Shelley, was already there with his friend and patron. Mr.
Shelley received Hogg with a wheedling benevolence, then turning to his
son, began to talk in an odd, unconnected manner, punctuating his
discourse with dramatic gestures, which appeared highly ridiculous to
the two young men.
“What do you think of my father?” Shelley whispered to Hogg.
“Oh, it is not your father. It is the God of the Jews, the Jehovah you
have been reading about.”
Percy gave a wild demoniacal burst of laughter, slipped from his seat
and fell on his back at full length on the floor.
“What’s the matter, Bysshe? Are you ill? Are you mad? Why do you laugh?”
asked his father, scandalized.
Fortunately, at the same moment, dinner was announced, and proving
excellent, the conversation became almost cordial. When the dessert was
put on the table, the squire sent his son off to order the post-horses
for the next morning, while he undertook the conquest of Hogg.
“You are a very different person, sir, from what I expected to find; you
are a nice, moderate, reasonable, pleasant gentleman. Tell me what you
think I ought to do with my poor boy? He is rather wild, is he not?”
“Yes, rather.”
“Then what am I to do?”
“If he had married his cousin he would perhaps have been less so. . . .
He wants somebody to take care of him; a good wife. What if he were
married?”
“But how can I do that? It is impossible. If I were to tell Bysshe to
marry a girl he would refuse immediately. I know him so well.”
“I have no doubt he would refuse if you were to order him to marry, and
I should not blame him. But if you were to bring him in contact with
some young lady who you believed would make him a suitable wife, without
saying anything about marriage, perhaps he would take a fancy to her,
and if he did not like her you could try another.”
Mr. Graham, interposing, said it was an excellent plan, and the two men
talking in low voices were going over a list of the young women of their
acquaintance, when Shelley returned. His father ordered a bottle of a
still older port than any they had yet had, and began to speak in praise
of himself. He was so highly respected in the House of Commons: he was
respected by the whole House and by the Speaker in particular, who said
to him, “Mr. Shelley, I do not know what we should do without you.” He
was greatly beloved in the county; he was an admirable Justice of the
Peace; he told a very long story of how he had lately committed two
poachers: “You know the fellows, Graham. You know what they are?” Graham
assented. “Well, when they got out of prison one of them came and
thanked me.”
Why the poacher was so grateful for a pitiless sentence Hogg never knew,
for the worthy magistrate, believing the wine to have by now produced
its effect, attacked the principal subject of his thoughts.
“There is certainly a God,” said he. “There can be no doubt of the
existence of a Deity; none whatever.”
Nobody present expressed any doubt.
“You, sir,” said he, addressing himself to Hogg, “you have no doubt on
the subject, have you?”
“None whatever.”
“If you have, I can prove it to you in a moment.”
“But I have no doubt.”
“Ah . . . still you might perhaps like to hear my argument?”
“Very much.”
“I will read it to you then.”
He searched in all his pockets, pulling out various bills and letters,
producing finally a half-sheet of note-paper, which he began to read.
Bysshe, leaning forward, listened with profound attention.
“I have heard this argument before,” said he, at the end of a few
minutes, and turning to Hogg, “Where have I heard that?”
“They are Paley’s arguments.”
“Yes,” the reader observed with much complacency. “They are Paley’s
arguments. I copied them out of Paley’s book this morning, but Paley had
them originally from me; everything in Paley’s book he had from me.”
On this he folded up the paper, and returned it to his pocket. His son
watched him with more disdain than ever, and the dinner terminated
without having brought about a reconciliation. Shelley refused to go
with his father. His father refused to give him a penny. The only two
who seemed satisfied with one another were Hogg and his host. Timothy
Shelley had found his son’s friend to be far more human than his son. He
was not like Percy, always with bristling quills, always on the strain,
always dug in behind principles which one could not attack without
wounding his infernal pride. Young as he was, Hogg understood life. His
notions on marriage were sensible. Hogg, on his side, declared that
though the oratorical eloquence of the member for New Shoreham was
certainly a bit foggy, nevertheless he was very hospitable and a good
sort.
A few days later he gave another proof that he understood life by making
up his quarrel with his own father, who, head of a True Blue Tory
family, well known for its orthodoxy, had no need to display the same
horror at the actions of his “young man” as had the Whig owner of Field
Place.
Hogg senior advised his son to read for the Bar and got him into a
conveyancer’s chambers at York. Hogg was, therefore, obliged to abandon
Shelley in the Poland Street lodgings, a wistful, bright-eyed fox in the
midst of the green and purple bunches of grapes.
CHAPTER VII
AN ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES
Alone in London, without friends, work, or money, Shelley fell into
despair. He passed his time in writing melancholy poems, or letters to
Hogg. Not knowing what to do with his evenings he went to bed at eight
o’clock. Sleep alone stopped him from going over and over the story of
his woes. The moment he let himself think, the image of his beautiful
and shallow-hearted cousin rose to torture him. He tried to steel his
heart against the painful vision by syllogisms.
“I loved a being,” he told himself. “The being whom I loved is not what
she was: consequently, as love appertains to mind and not to body, she
exists no longer. . . . I might as well court the worms, which the
soulless body of a beloved being generates in the damp unintelligent
vaults of a charnel-house.”
This appeared to him such excellent logic that he was astounded it
brought him no consolation.
The money question grew serious. His father gave no sign of life.
Shelley meeting him one day by chance, politely hoped he was well? All
he got was a look black as a thunder cloud and a majestic “Your most
humble servant, sir!”
Fortunately, his sisters did not forget him and sent him their
pocket-money. It was all he had to live on. Elizabeth at Field Place was
too well watched to do anything, but the younger girls were now at Mrs.
Fenning’s Academy for Young Ladies on Clapham Common, and very soon Mrs.
Fenning’s pupils made acquaintance with the fine eyes, the open
shirt-collar and tossed curls of Hellen Shelley’s wonderful brother.
He would arrive, his pockets bulging with biscuits and raisins, and
begin to discourse on ultimate themes to an adoring circle of little
girls. He had undertaken to “illuminate” the prettiest amongst them. He
could not endure the idea that so much loveliness should be abandoned to
“prejudices.”
He admired most of all his sisters’ greatest friend, Harriet Westbrook,
a lovely child of sixteen, with light brown hair and a complexion of
milk and roses. She was small, slightly and delicately formed, and had
an air of youthful gaiety, of delicious freshness. She came to the
rescue when Mrs. Fenning, acting on the orders of Timothy Shelley,
requested Percy to visit his sisters less often. Harriet, whose family
lived in Chapel Street, Mayfair, often went home: the little sisters,
therefore, entrusted her with the cakes and the money intended for
Percy, and she taking these to the hermit of Poland Street, the two
young people became naturally the greatest friends.
Harriet Westbrook’s father was a retired publican; he had made money,
and desired to give his youngest daughter a genteel education. Her
mother was dead, and she had been brought up by Eliza, a much older
sister. One can easily imagine the interest which the Westbrook family
took in the grandson of a baronet, the heir to an immense fortune, who
was beautiful as a young god, lived in lodgings on bread and pudding
raisins, and to whom the youngest of the Westbrook girls carried his
sisters’ pocket-money to prevent him from starving to death.
Eliza being keen to see the hero, Harriet took her with her on the next
visit. Shelley was somewhat intimidated by the elder Miss Westbrook, a
mature virgin, dried-up and bony, with a dead-white skin seamed with
scars, and fish-like eyes that stared without intelligence, the whole
crowned with an immense crop of black hair. Eliza was particularly proud
of her hair. Her affected manners were in striking contrast with
Harriet’s spontaneous gaiety. But Bysshe soon forgot she was plain when
he saw that her intentions were friendly. Not only she made no
objection, as might have been feared, to Harriet’s visits to Poland
Street, but she offered to bring her there, and on several occasions
invited Shelley to come and dine with them when Mr. Westbrook was away.
She completely won the heart of the young philosopher by asking to share
with Harriet in his teaching, and undertook to read the _Philosophical
Dictionary_ under his guidance.
Harriet’s walks with Shelley soon became the talk of the Young Ladies’
Academy. One of the mistresses thought fit to warn her: “Young Mr.
Shelley is notorious for his advanced opinions, and it is probable that
his morals are no better than his ideas.” Harriet had to give up a
letter from him, filled with the most pernicious arguments, and for
corresponding with an “atheist,” she was threatened with expulsion. The
county gentlemen’s daughters gave the cold shoulder to the publican’s
daughter, and life in the school was made exceeding bitter to her.
One night as Shelley sat alone, reading by his fireside, a message was
brought him from Eliza to say that Harriet was sick, and would he come
and keep her company. He found her in bed, very pale, but lovelier than
ever, with all her chestnut hair spread about her.
Old Westbrook came upstairs to say “How-d’ye-do,” and Shelley was rather
embarrassed on seeing him, for however free he was from convention, he
could not help feeling that his presence at that late hour in a young
girl’s bedroom was hardly discreet.
Westbrook, however, showed himself all geniality. “Sorry I can’t stop
with you but I’ve got friends downstairs. Perhaps you’ll join us
presently?”
Shelley thanked him and declined. The friends of Westbrook had no
attraction for him. He sat beside Harriet’s bed, with Eliza near by. She
was in eloquent vein, speaking at great length on the enthralling
subject of Love. Harriet complained of a headache; she could not stand
the noise of conversation.
“Very well then,” said Eliza, “I’ll go away.”
The two young things were left alone until long after midnight, while
Westbrook’s friends drank and roared below.
Next day Harriet was quite well.
* * *
Shelley’s exile was less hard to bear from the moment he could receive
the visits of a young girl and “illuminate” her soul. Nevertheless, he
suffered from being separated from his sister Elizabeth. She no longer
even answered his letters. Could she be shut up in her room? He
determined at all costs to make a secret visit to Field Place so as to
see her. At times he thought of a pacific invasion. What could happen to
him, after all, if one evening he turned up there without notice, and
opposed a Quaker-like silence to the cursings of his father? But the
adventure was simplified when Captain Pilfold, a brother of Mrs.
Shelley, offered his nephew most opportunely a jumping-off place for his
attack on Field Place.
Pilfold was a hearty and jovial old sea-dog who, under Nelson, had
commanded a frigate at Trafalgar. He infinitely preferred his fantastic
nephew to his solemn brother-in-law. That Percy were an atheist or not,
the Captain did not care a hang. The boy had energy, and that was the
important thing. He invited him to run down to Cuckfield, ten miles from
Field Place, and received him with open arms.
Shelley, out of gratitude, offered to “illuminate” his host, and the
Captain proved such an apt scholar that at the end of ten days he
staggered the Rector and the Doctor by his fiery syllogisms.
At Cuckfield, Shelley made acquaintance with Miss Kitchener, a
school-teacher, from the neighbouring town of Hurstpierpoint. She was
rather good-looking, had a Roman nose, and was in her twenty-ninth year.
She was a republican in politics, and enjoyed the reputation of being
sentimental and conceited. She, on her side, lamented that there was not
one who understood her. Shelley having admired as was natural to him the
nobility of her attitude, perceived with regret that she was still a
deist. He proposed “a polemical correspondence,” in the course of which
he undertook to cure her of this infirmity. She agreed.
Captain Pilfold, meanwhile, set off courageously to grapple and board
Timothy Shelley. He had the bright idea of enrolling in the cause the
Duke of Norfolk, chief of the Whig party. Snobbism triumphed over
paternal tyranny. Shelley walked back into Field Place with all the
honours of war. He was given £200 a year unconditionally.
* * *
He could now again see Elizabeth, but he was overwhelmed by the change
he found in her. She was livelier, and gayer, than formerly, but had
become incredibly frivolous. He remembered her serious, enthusiastic; he
found her apathetic to everything but dancing, trivial amusements, and
silly chatter. She lived now for nothing but society.
He wished to read to her Hogg’s letters as he had been used to do.
“Oh, you and your ridiculous friend! Every one I know thinks you are
both mad.”
On this she spoke of matrimony: she thought of little else, and nothing
disgusted Shelley more. She seemed to have forgotten all they had read
together on the subject, and all Godwin’s elevated ideas.
“Marriage is odious and hateful,” he told her. “I am sickened when I
think of this despotic chain, the heaviest forged by man to shackle
fiery souls. Scepticism and free love are as necessarily associated
together as religion and marriage. Honourable men have no need of laws.
For heaven’s sake, Elizabeth, read over the Marriage Service and ask
yourself if any decent man could wish the girl he loved to submit to
such degradation.”
“Yet you want me to marry your friend Hogg?”
“Yes, but not by a clergyman nor according to man’s laws, but freely and
with Love only as high priest.”
“This then is the honourable advice of a brother?” said Elizabeth with
disdain.
It was useless to hope to make any impression on a character become
futile beyond any possible cure. “Why should I deceive myself? She is
lost, lost to everything. She talks nothing but cant and twaddle. What
she wants of me is that, like a fashionable brother, I should act as a
jackal for husbands, well, I refuse! I refuse emphatically.”
He had returned to Field Place merely to see Elizabeth. There was no
good in remaining. Invitations elsewhere were not wanting. Captain
Pilfold would have been glad to have him again at Cuckfield. Westbrook
was going to pass the summer in Wales, and his daughters pressed Shelley
to join them. Hogg wanted him to come for a month to York; it was this
last idea which tempted him most. But his father, who doubtless saw a
symbolic value in the separation of the two Oxford criminals, would not
have tolerated it, and as the first quarter’s allowance was due on the
first of September it was better to be patient. Hogg wrote jestingly
that it was easy to see the lovely Harriet took precedence over old
friends.
“Your jokes amuse me,” Shelley answered.
“If I know anything about love I am _not_ in love. But I have heard from
the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem.”
While he still hesitated where to go, Thomas Grove, a cousin of his
mother’s, invited him to Cwm Elan, a wild corner of Radnorshire. Here he
could economize while awaiting his allowance. He accepted the Groves’
invitation.
On his way through London he would have liked to have seen Miss
Kitchener and have taken her to lunch. But the school-teacher with the
Roman nose feared this would not be quite a proper thing to do, there
was such an immense social difference between her and Mr. Shelley.
Indignant at the mere idea, Shelley wrote her a long letter on equality,
in which he addressed her as “his soul’s sister.” Miss Kitchener began
to think that Lady Shelley was a fine name and to study her reflection
in the looking-glass.
CHAPTER VIII
THIS DESPOTIC CHAIN . . .
Now for the first time Shelley was among mountain solitudes, and heard
the voices of mountain torrents, but the power of hills was not upon
him. “This is most divine scenery,” he wrote to Hogg, “but all very
dull, stale, flat, and unprofitable; indeed, the place is a very great
bore.” Sitting near some tree-shaded waterfall he passed his time in
reading and re-reading the letters he received from his friends. He was
the director of innumerable “souls”: Miss Kitchener, the faithful Hogg,
Captain Pilfold, the terror of the pious, Eliza and Harriet Westbrook,
without counting many whose names are unknown.
The Westbrooks had just gone back to London when he received from
Harriet a most disturbing letter. Her father insisted on her returning
to Mrs. Fenning’s school where she had been so miserable, where her
schoolfellows had sent her to Coventry, and called her “an abandoned
wretch.” Rather than exist in such a prison she would kill herself. “Why
live? No one loves me, and I have no one to love. Is suicide a crime in
one who is useless to others and insupportable to herself? Since there
is no law of God, has the law of man any right to forbid so natural an
action?”
A sort of terror seized Shelley. This schoolgirl logic appeared
irrefutable, and it was he who had formed her mind. How then could he
answer her with calculated coldness and abandon her to death? He wrote
advising firmness; before despairing she should resist, she should
refuse to return to school, and he himself wrote Mr. Westbrook a letter
of expostulation.
The old publican was outraged. What right had this young sprig of
nobility to interfere? He had been dangling after the Westbrook girls
for six months or more, and Eliza imagined he would marry Harriet, but
when had a future baronet ever married the daughter of a tavern-keeper?
The young fellow wanted, evidently, something very different.
Westbrook had sized him up the evening he had first met him in Harriet’s
bedroom. He had invited him to come down and take a glass in the
parlour, and Mr. Shelley had refused with disdain.
How could the grandson of Sir Bysshe Shelley, the wealthy baronet, be a
Friend of the People, or a believer in Equality? Bah! the Upper Ten were
all exactly the same.
Harriet was ordered to get ready for Clapham. She wrote to Shelley again
a letter in which a somewhat less lugubrious plan replaced that of
suicide. She was too miserable at home, too cruelly persecuted, but she
was ready to elope with him if he would consent.
He instantly took the coach for London in indescribable agitation of
mind.
That he was partly responsible for Harriet he could not doubt. He had
formed her, he had inspired her with exalted courage, and the horror of
injustice. It was a letter from him which had brought about her first
disgrace.
But if he eloped with her how should they live? He had no profession, no
prospects—and did he really love her? Could he love anyone again after
the blighting of his young hopes by his cousin?
Still, Harriet was charming, and there was something intoxicating in the
idea of a journey in the company of the lovely creature he had seen one
night in bed, with unbound auburn hair.
It was difficult to repel even warmer ideas.
When he saw her again her face was pale, wasted, tragic.
“They have made you suffer?”
“No, no. . . .” She hesitated to say, “I suffer because I am in love
with you,” but her eyes, lifted to his, confessed the truth. She was
madly in love with him. He had completely transformed her. Before
meeting him she had had all the normal tastes of the British schoolgirl.
She had adored the red coats of the military, and when she wove
day-dreams the hero was always an officer. But when she dreamed of
marriage the hero became a black-coated clergyman.
Shelley had overthrown all such reasonable ideals. The first time she
had heard him declaim on religion or politics, she had been frightened,
and made up her mind to convert him. But at the outset his logic had
crushed her, and conquered by an antagonist so greatly her superior, she
found nothing but pleasure in her defeat.
When he had decided not to join them in Wales, she was afraid she had
lost him, and in writing to him had exaggerated her hardships in order
to bring her hero back.
Shelley had little admiration for Knight Errantry, which struck him as
senseless. A man has no right to devote to Woman a life which should be
consecrated to the service of Humanity. But looking on Harriet’s
exquisite face, which a single word from him could suffuse with
happiness, he gave his principles the go-by. He took her hand in his,
and declared himself hers heart and soul.
A last rag of prudence made him decide against an immediate elopement.
It was dangerous and needless to force events. If they tried to coerce
her, she had but to make a sign to him, he would fly to her from the
ends of the earth and carry her off.
Once more her face glowed with the rosy happiness of the young girl who
knows she is beloved.
* * *
But the moment he had left her, he sighed deeply and fell into
embarrassment and melancholy. He wrote to describe the situation to
Hogg, and Hogg replied strongly urging his friend not to elope with
Harriet without marrying her first. He knew all Shelley’s hostility to
marriage, but he used powerful arguments. “If you don’t marry her, which
will suffer? You or she? Evidently she alone. It is she whom the world
will scorn. It is she who must make the sacrifice of her reputation and
her security. Have you the right to ask this of her?” The appeal was
cleverly turned, as selfishness was of all vices the one which Shelley
most despised. But he felt too that marriage was a shameful and immoral
action. The chapters in _Political Justice_ against matrimonial chains
stuck in his mind. It was now that some one reassured him by telling him
that the great Godwin himself had been married twice.
“It is evidently useless,” he wrote to Hogg, “to seek by an individual
example to rejuvenate the forms of society until such time as reason
shall have brought about so great a change, that the reformer be no
longer exposed to stoning.”
At the same time he was in no hurry to apply his new tenets. Captain
Pilfold invited him to Cuckfield; he knew he would see there his “soul’s
sister,” the handsome school-teacher with the Roman nose. He desired to
complete her initiation in the Truth. So, again promising Harriet to
return at the first sign she should make him, he left London.
One would need to be nineteen years old to have the smallest doubt as to
what must happen. A young girl very much in love and armed with such a
promise, does not long resist her heart’s desire. Before a week was out
an ardent message recalled Shelley to town. The tyrants insisted on
delivering up Andromeda to the Scholastic Dragon!
Shelley realized that there was no help for it but to elope with
Harriet, and marry her afterwards—as soon as possible.
Next day the Edinburgh Mail Coach carried northwards these two young
things whose united ages did not exceed thirty-five.
“An act of will, not an act of passion,” the young Knight told himself,
as he sat facing his exquisite little sweetheart, while the stage jolted
and rumbled on its way.
CHAPTER IX
A VERY YOUNG COUPLE
A pair of young lovers, persecuted and charming, exercises a fascination
which is almost irresistible. The citizens of Edinburgh, difficult to
get at where their purse is concerned, could not prevent themselves from
giving an amused and indulgent welcome to the very young couple who
arrived at their gates in such brilliant penury.
Before leaving London Shelley had borrowed a few pounds from a friend.
When he got to Edinburgh he hadn’t a penny left. It was useless to hope
for help from his father, whom the news of his elopement must have
thrown into paroxysms of rage.
However, he found a good-humoured landlord to whom he told his story;
this, with Harriet’s beauty and a promise of speedy payment, induced him
to give the travellers an excellent ground-floor flat in his house.
Better still, he advanced them the money they needed to pay their way
during the first few days, and to arrange the wedding, according to the
simple rites of the Scottish Church. His only condition was that Shelley
should treat him and his friends to a supper on the wedding night.
So it was in the midst of Edinburgh tradesmen that the grandson of Sir
Bysshe ate his wedding-feast. The fumes of the wines and the spectacle
of the young people going to the heads of the guests, these honest
Puritans became a trifle too wanton for Shelley’s taste. The jests grew
ribald. The modest Harriet blushed crimson, and Shelley rising announced
that he and his wife would say good night.
A roar of laughter was the reply.
A little later there came a knock at their door. Shelley opened it to
find his landlord, followed by all his friends. He spoke tipsily: “It’s
the custom here when there’s a wedding, to come up in the middle of the
night and wash the bride with whisky. . . .”
“Take another step into the room, and I blow your brains out!” cried
Shelley, seizing a pistol in each hand.
Perceiving that there was something dangerous in this young man who
looked so like a girl, the intruders wished him a respectful good night,
and tumbled precipitately downstairs.
Thus Shelley and Harriet found themselves husband and wife, free and
alone in a big unknown city. They looked at each other in rapture.
A few days had sufficed to render the young husband, who in the stage
had reflected with melancholy, “An act of will and not of passion,” over
head and ears in love.
Harriet was really delightful to look upon: always pretty, always
bright, always blooming, her head well dressed, not a hair out of its
place; smart, usually plain in her neatness, without a wrinkle, without
a spot, she resembled some pink-and-white flower.
Without being really cultivated she was remarkably well-informed. She
had read a prodigious number of books, she still read all day long, and
works of a high ethical tone for choice.
Her master, who was her lover, had given her his own veneration for
Virtue, and Fénelon’s _Télémaque_ was his favourite hero. She practised
saying over the magic words “Intolerance,” “Equality,” “Justice,” and
her child-lips uttered maxims which would have staggered the Lord
Chancellor. As to the Anglican religion she ignored it as completely as
did Calypso and Nausicaa.
Children are delightful, but their society is fatiguing. Fully alive to
the charm, sweet temper, and unselfishness of Harriet, nevertheless
Shelley now and again sighed for Hogg’s caustic talk, or Miss
Hitchener’s ardent enthusiasm. He asked himself uneasily what the latter
would think of his marriage.
“My dearest Friend,” he wrote to her, “if I may still address
you so? Or have I lost, through my equivocal conduct, the esteem
of the virtuous and the wise? . . . How in one week all my plans
have changed, and to what an extent are we the slaves of
circumstance! You will ask how I, an atheist, could submit
myself to the marriage ceremony, how my conscience could ever
consent to it? This is what I want to explain to you. . . .”
Thereupon, treading in Hogg’s footsteps, he proved that one has not the
right to deprive a beloved being of all the advantages which are bound
up with a good reputation.
“Blame if thou wilt, dearest friend, for _still_ thou art
dearest to me, yet pity even this error if thou blamest me. If
Harriet be not at sixteen all you are at a more advanced age,
assist me to mould a really noble soul into all that can make
its nobleness useful and lovely. . . . Charming she is already
unless I am the weakest of error’s slaves.”
The letter finished with an invitation that the lady should join them at
Edinburgh, where Harriet’s presence would prevent any thought of
impropriety. Miss Kitchener did not accept. Evidently the poetic
“thee’s” and “thou’s” were not sufficient to buy pardon for the somewhat
unfortunate reference to Harriet’s and Miss Hitchener’s respective ages.
But though the virgin of Cuckfield declined to come and help in the
moulding of Harriet’s soul, one sunny morning Shelley heard a knock at
the door of his flat, and looking out of the window was overjoyed to see
Hogg standing in the street, bag in hand.
Having just given himself a few weeks’ holiday, he came to pass them in
Edinburgh. He received a triumphal reception.
“We have met at last once more!” cried Shelley. “And we will never part
again! You must have a bed in the house!”
Harriet came in. Hogg was charmed with her. He had never seen such
blooming, radiant youth and beauty. The landlord was summoned.
“We want another bedroom, instantly, urgently, indispensably!” When the
poor man was permitted to answer, he offered them a room at the top of
the house.
The three friends had a thousand things to tell and to ask. They all
talked at once, while a dirty little nymph, the servant of the house,
brought in tea, with many discordant ejaculations.
So soon as the excitement had somewhat subsided Shelley proposed a walk,
and they went to visit the palace of Mary Stuart.
Harriet, as an excellent pupil of the Academy for Young Ladies and a
tireless reader of historical romances, explained the history of the
unhappy Queen. On leaving Holyrood House Shelley declared he must go
home and write letters, but he wished Hogg and Harriet to climb to
Arthur’s Seat, whence they would get a view of the whole city.
Hogg having admired the scene, they sat there a long time together, and
probably in such delightful company he would have found any view
admirable.
As they came down, the wind having begun to blow, displayed Harriet’s
ankles, which Hogg by a side glance examined with interest.
This made Harriet sit down again upon a rock and declare she would
remain there “for ever”!
Hogg who was desperately hungry, protested in vain. So he left her . . .
and presently she came running down after him.
Thus began for the three young people some delightful weeks.
The money question remained an anxious one, but jolly Uncle Pilfold sent
frequent presents. “To be confoundedly angry with his son is all very
well, but to stop the supplies is a great deal too bad.” Hogg also had
some spare cash, although Timothy Shelley had taken the trouble to write
to Hogg senior: “I think it my duty to warn you that my young man has
just set off for Scotland with a young female, and that your young man
has joined them.”
Every morning Shelley would go out to fetch his letters, the number of
which remained prodigious. After breakfast he worked at a translation of
Buffon which he had undertaken, while Hogg and Harriet went for a walk.
If the weather were bad she read aloud to Hogg. She was fond of reading
aloud and she read remarkably well, with a very distinct enunciation and
an agreeable voice.
Hogg listened to the greater part of _Télémaque_ and never complained.
The virtuous Idomeneus giving wise laws to Crete was horribly boring,
but the reader was so lovely to look upon that he would have listened
without complaining the whole day through.
Shelley, less polite, would sometimes drop off to sleep, and his
innocent slumbers gave serious offence. His friend would support his
wife in stigmatizing him as an inattentive wretch, Hogg taking an
unconscious pleasure in making common cause with Harriet.
It was the year of the famous comet and of the still more famous vintage
1811. The nights were clear and bright.
CHAPTER X
HOGG
At the end of six weeks it was necessary that Hogg should return to
York. As Shelley and Harriet had nothing to retain them in Edinburgh,
nor indeed anywhere else in the world, they decided to go with him. They
would remain with him in York during the year which he must still spend
in that city, and then all three would remove to London where they would
live “for ever,” writing, reading, and being read to.
Not to overtire Harriet they hired a post-chaise. On either side of the
road fields of turnips alternated monotonously with fields of barley.
“But which are the turnips and which is the barley?” Harriet asked.
“Why, you little Cockney!” Shelley, the heir to broad lands, exclaimed
with indignation.
Silent in his corner, Hogg, the scoffer, asked himself how it came about
that the virtuous Idomeneus had taught his disciple so little.
To while away the time, Harriet read aloud in the chaise Holcroft’s
novels. The rigid, spartan, iron tone of that stern author was not
encouraging. Bysshe sometimes sighed deeply.
“Is it necessary to read all that, Harriet dear?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Cannot you skip some part?”
“No, it is impossible.”
At the first relay, Shelley vanished. He had always possessed the
astonishing power of vanishing like an Elf. He was recaptured by Hogg,
who found him standing on the seashore—it was at Berwick—gazing
mournfully at the setting sun.
He took a violent dislike to York. The theological and civic
pre-eminence of the old city had no charm for him, and the only lodgings
they could find were dingy rooms kept by a couple of dingy milliners in
a dingy street. “It’s impossible to stay here,” Bysshe declared. But to
move elsewhere money was needed. He decided to go and see Captain
Pilfold, protector of the good and free; there, too, at Cuckfield, he
would again meet Miss Kitchener; perhaps he could persuade her to go
back with him to York, and on their way through London they could pick
up Eliza Westbrook, whose company was much desired by Harriet. And thus,
for the first time, all Shelley’s spiritual sisters would find
themselves together.
He therefore took the coach, and Harriet and Hogg were left by
themselves, a strange and delicious situation. In this city, where they
had no acquaintances, they were as free as on some desert island, and
Harriet found a childish pleasure in playing at “housekeeping” with her
young and witty companion. Hogg’s sarcastic tongue amused her greatly,
and was a relief to Shelley’s burning seriousness which she admired so
much. Hogg was always paying her compliments, both in Edinburgh and on
the journey to York, and she saw no harm in it. Percy was always a
little bit of “the school-master.” He had taught her all she knew. He
gravely corrected her mistakes. He was conscious of her limitations.
Hogg, on the contrary, admired everything she did, noticed her frocks,
and the way she did her hair. He listened to _Télémaque_, and praised
the voice of the reader. He was always gay. It was really very pleasant.
Hogg’s own sentiments were quite other and less commendable. Living
continually in the company of this charming girl, he began to desire her
with passion. At first he told himself that this was a terrible desire
and that the wife of his best friend could never be an object of his
pursuit. But when one is intelligent, one knows how to put intelligence
at the service of one’s desires.
“Am I to blame,” said he, “if Bysshe throws her in my arms? What a mad
notion of his to sit and write long letters on Virtue when he possesses
an adorable creature like Harriet! For she is ravishingly pretty. When
she walks in the street the most Puritanical run to the windows to look
at her. . . . Does Bysshe really love her? He shows her a rather
contemptuous sort of affection, and has some excuse for it. For Harriet
is . . . what? The daughter of a publican. . . . She can’t be very
stand-off. . . .”
Ever since he first knew Shelley, two contradictory sentiments had
divided his soul. He admired his friend’s moral courage, frankness, and
ardent loyalty. He knew him to be unique, a diamond of the purest water.
Yet, at the same time, his sense of humour was tickled by Percy’s
declamatory vehemence, by his feverish energy that yet accomplished
nothing.
At Oxford Hogg had acted the cultured Sancho Panza to this fair-skinned
Don Quixote, and had taken his share of the punishment meted out by the
terrible windmills. His admiration in the beginning had triumphed over
his irony, which simply served to lend the former a more tender hue.
Now, stirred up by a guilty passion, his irony visibly increased.
On the first day of Shelley’s absence, when Hogg left his chambers he
took Harriet for a walk by the river. He gazed in her eyes with delight,
and murmured a thousand foolish things. She talked of her husband whose
return she longed for, partly for his own sake but chiefly because he
was to bring with him her dearest Eliza. “Eliza is very beautiful as you
will see, she has splendid hair, jet black, glossy . . . she is awfully
clever . . . it is she who has always guided me in the important affairs
of my life.”
“The child has had important affairs in its life?”
Harriet spoke of her martyrdom at school . . . of the obstacles to her
marriage . . . she remained pensive a moment plunged in the past . . .
then, “What is your opinion of suicide? Did you never think of
destroying yourself?”
“Never! Nor you either, I should hope?”
“Oh yes, very often. Even at school I used to get up in the night with
the fixed intention of killing myself. I would look out of the window,
and say good-bye to the moon and the stars, to the sleeping girls . . .
and then I would go back to bed again and fall asleep.”
The walk continued, so did their intimate talk. Then they went home to
make the tea, a ceremony during which Hogg was always extremely funny.
After tea Harriet offered to read to him, but of what she read to him
that evening he retained no notion. When she said “good night” and left
him, he asked himself, “Is she really _good_?”
When he saw her next day he told her he was madly in love with her.
Harriet was upset and indignant. For a child of sixteen, she defended
herself fairly well. She spoke of Shelley and of Virtue. “Don’t you see
how odious your behaviour is? Percy gave me into your care and you
betray his confidence. . . . But I’m sure you are cured already. . . .
Please don’t say another word about it. . . . And I will say nothing to
Percy so as not to grieve him.”
She spoke with vivacity. Love scenes are a pretty woman’s battlefields
and soldiers enjoy fighting. Harriet’s courage was victorious, and Hogg
promised to be good.
That evening, when he returned from work, he saw sitting by Harriet’s
side on the sofa a big woman, with raven-black hair, a face of a dead
white, and a horse-like profile. “Hogg, this is Eliza, she is come,
isn’t it kind of her? Eliza, this is Hogg, our greatest friend, of whom
Percy has so often spoken to you.”
Eliza shadowed him a bow from the nape of her neck.
“I thought Bysshe was to have brought you with him?”
“Oh dear no!” said Eliza, and she went on talking to Harriet and paid
him no further attention.
Hogg was not used to such treatment in the Shelleys’ house.
“So this is Eliza?” he thought. “She is hideous and common-looking.
Here’s an end to my flirtation with Harriet—though perhaps that’s just
as well. . . .”
“Harriet, dearest,” he said aloud, “aren’t we going to have any tea
to-day? You don’t take tea, Miss Westbrook?” he inquired, turning to her
politely.
“Oh dear no!” replied that lady.
“And you, Harriet?”
“No, I won’t either.”
Hogg resigned himself to making his own tea, and to drinking it in
silence.
From this day forth the house became insupportable. Eliza took over, or
rather resumed, the management of everything. She had managed Harriet
her whole life through, and though she had been obliged to relinquish
her post to Shelley during the first few weeks of marriage, she now
again took her place on the bridge like a captain on his ship, who runs
his flag up to the mast-head, and tolerates no other authority on board.
She began by criticizing severely Shelley’s conduct. “So if I hadn’t
come you would have been left alone with this young man? It’s
unbelievable! And he calls you ‘dearest’? And you permit him to do so!
Good heavens! What would Miss Warne say!”
When Hogg proposed a walk, “What are you thinking of?” said Eliza.
“Harriet is very tired, not well at all. . . .”
Hogg was astounded. “Harriet?” he repeated. “What on earth’s the matter
with her?”
“It’s her poor nerves, you must be blind not to see it.”
When Harriet wanted to read aloud to Hogg the virtuous counsels of
Idomeneus, of which he stood so much in need: “Read aloud, Harriet?
Whatever will become of your poor nerves? What would Miss Warne say?”
“Who the deuce _is_ Miss Warne?” Hogg asked Harriet so soon as Eliza had
gone to her room.
“She is Eliza’s greatest friend, and we have the highest opinion of
her.”
“Why? Is she anything extraordinary by birth and education?”
“Oh dear no, her father keeps a public-house like ours.”
Hogg heaved a sigh and lifted his eyebrows.
“What does that dear Eliza do in her bedroom? Does she read?”
“No.”
Harriet leaned over him to say in tones of mystery: “She brushes her
hair.”
“Let’s go out, Harriet. . . .”
At first Harriet refused, but as the hair-brushing was prolonged she
agreed to accompany Hogg for a few minutes.
Since his first attempt on her virtue he had kept his promise “to be
good.” She was pleased—but disappointed. Quite sure of herself, she
would have enjoyed temptation.
They stood on the high centre of the old Roman bridge, there was a
mighty flood. The Ouse had overflowed his banks, carrying away with him
timber and what not.
“Harriet dearest, think how nicely Eliza would spin down the river! How
sweetly she would turn round and round like that log of wood. . . . And
gracious heavens! What would Miss Warne say?”
Harriet turned away her head to hide her laughter. Hogg said dreadful
things, but really he was too funny.
“You have such a delightful laugh, Harriet! . . . so musical, so gay!”
Harriet, full of courage, felt the battle was close at hand.
CHAPTER XI
HOGG (_continued_)
Shelley returned next day, sooner than was expected. He had had no
success. His father had refused to see him. From very different motives
to Shelley’s he too considered his son’s marriage the unforgivable
crime.
“I’d have willingly supported any amount of illegitimate children,” he
told Captain Pilfold. “But that he should have _married_ her . . . never
speak to me of him again!”
Miss Hitchener, afraid for her reputation, had refused to make the
journey with Shelley. In London he learned that Eliza had not waited for
him. He reached York, tired and out of spirits, hoping to find
consolation in the society of his wife and his friend. What he found was
an atmosphere of embarrassment and constraint.
Eliza, shut up in her room, brushed her hair all day long. Harriet and
Hogg, instead of their former gay nonsense round the tea-tray, treated
each other with studied coldness. When Hogg spoke to her, she replied
very shortly. There was something mysterious in the air.
The moment Harriet and Shelley were alone, “Dear,” he began, “I don’t
like this haughty attitude you take with Hogg. He is my best friend. He
has looked after you in my absence. That you now have your sister with
you is no reason for giving the cold shoulder to Hogg, whom I look on as
a brother.”
Harriet sighed. “He’s a nice sort of friend!” said she, in a tone heavy
with insinuations.
Shelley, astonished, urged her to explain.
She told the story. “He has made love to me . . . twice. The first time
he told me he was passionately in love with me. . . . I pretended it was
a joke. . . . I made him be quiet. I imagined it was all over, and I
even had no intention of speaking to you about it. But yesterday he
began again. He declared he couldn’t live without me, and that he will
kill himself if I don’t consent.”
Shelley felt his blood freeze. His heart seemed to stand still.
“Hogg? Hogg did this? But did you not point out to him . . .?”
“Oh, I said everything I could say . . . that he was a false friend,
that he was betraying your confidence. . . . ‘What does all that matter
when one is in love?’ he replied. ‘It’s all right for Percy, who is a
cold and pure spirit, to talk of virtue . . . but I’m in love with you,
and the rest doesn’t count. . . . Besides, what harm should we do
Shelley? He need never know. Why not give me your love, and give him
your affection? Does he think so much about you?’”
“He said that?”
“Yes, and lots of other things as well. He said you mix logic with
things where it has no business, that you are a flame for ideas, and ice
for the sentiments which alone count in life. . . . I answered him as
well as I was able. . . .”
Shelley let himself fall upon the sofa. Suddenly the world seemed
eclipsed behind a veil of grey. He was seized with giddiness, his head
swam, he shivered with cold.
“That Hogg should have tried to seduce my wife, taking advantage of the
moment that I had confided her to his protection . . . Hogg, on whose
countenance I have sometimes gazed till I fancied the world could be
reformed by gazing too. . . . Never was there a more shameful
attempt. . . . And yet when I think of Oxford, of his nobility and
disinterestedness. . . . I must talk with him, I must make him see
reason. . . .”
He kissed Harriet tenderly, and begged Hogg to walk with him to the
fields beyond York. Hogg knew there must be a scene. He was prepared for
it. He denied nothing.
“Yes, it’s true. I’ve been in love with Harriet since the first day I
saw her in Edinburgh. Is it my fault? I can’t resist beauty in women,
and Harriet is admirably beautiful. I repeat I fell in love with her at
once.”
“It is not love but lust. A low animal instinct. Not the exalted passion
which differentiates Man from the brute. Love? Think a little, Hogg.
Love supposes self-forgetfulness, and the desire for the happiness of
the beloved object. You could only bring about Harriet’s misery.
Therefore, your feelings are not those of love, but of egotism. . . .”
“Call it what you like. . . . What do words signify? It is, anyhow, a
terrible passion, which I should have fought against had I not felt it
was invincible.”
“No passion is invincible. Our will can always be victorious. Had you
thought of me . . . This revelation has aged and broken me more than
twenty years of misery could have done. . . . my heart seems seared
. . . and then there is Harriet, do you not suppose that all this has
been very painful for her?”
Hogg was pale, cast-down. He looked ashamed and unhappy, and he felt so.
For he too loved Shelley and he blamed his own conduct severely. “No
woman in the world,” he thought, “is worth the sacrifice of such a
friend.” Then aloud, “I’m awfully sorry, Bysshe, for what has happened.
I’ll try to forget, and do you and Harriet try to forgive me. Let us
begin life anew as it was before. Don’t be angry with me any
longer. . . .”
“I’m not angry with you, I hate your crime, but not yourself. I hope
that one day you will regard this horrible error with as much disgust as
I do. When that day comes, you will no longer be responsible for it. The
man who feels remorse is no longer the man who was guilty. It is
certainly not I who would ever reproach you, for I value a human being
not for what it has been, but for what it is.”
Shelley felt such satisfaction at having trodden down his anger and his
jealousy, at having discovered for Hogg the way of salvation, that the
offence was almost forgotten.
But women are much less indulgent. When Shelley on going home announced
that he had forgiven the criminal: “What!” cried Eliza, “you mean to go
on living with that fellow? Good heavens! What will become of Harriet’s
poor nerves?”
Hogg, coming in from his chambers next day, found an empty house.
CHAPTER XII
FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH MIDDLE AGE
Shelley and the two girls, in their flight from the deplorable Hogg, had
decided to go to the Lakes. There was a sentimental reason for this,
very like his choice of Poland Street. Two great poets, both Liberals,
Southey and Coleridge, had long lived in the Lake District and by some
happy chance it might be that Shelley would make their acquaintance.
Nothing could have delighted him more than to meet some of the rare
great minds that shared his ideas.
The Shelleys found at Keswick a small furnished cottage set in flowers.
They had no right to the garden, but the landlord, who looked upon
Shelley and Harriet as little better than a pair of strayed children,
allowed them to run about in it.
The postman soon came to know the weight of Shelley’s letter-bag. First,
there was the correspondence with Hogg, which was very discouraging. He
wrote long letters to Harriet in which he swore to respect her, and at
the same time, to adore her during time and eternity. Such unasked-for
constancy wearied her, yet her pride fed on it. When Shelley said, “Time
and distance will make him forget you,” she shook her head with an air
of scepticism. Really sorry for the unhappiness of her admirer, she
would perhaps have been more sorry to believe it could be cured:
“Distance,” said she, “may ease trifling griefs, but only increases
great ones.” When Hogg wrote, “Either Harriet must forgive me or I’ll
blow out my brains at her feet,” she triumphed and was sad. But when no
pistol-shot came to shatter their flowery solitude, she was
reassured—and disappointed.
Then, there were the letters of Miss Hitchener who, since the fall of
Hogg, had become Shelley’s only confidante. Nearly every day he sent her
a few urgent and exemplary pages. Harriet would often add to her
husband’s eloquent dissertations a warm invitation to come and join
them.
The Duke of Norfolk lived in the neighbourhood. He had already brought
about one reconciliation between Shelley and his father, and as the
money question became more and more serious they decided to write to him
again. The Duke replied by inviting Shelley, his wife, and his
sister-in-law to spend the week-end at Greystoke. He took an interest in
the young man possibly through natural benevolence, possibly because it
was his duty, as head of a great political party, to win the friendship
of one, destined it would seem when he came of age, to go into
Parliament, and to inherit £6,000 a year.
Harriet, at Greystoke, bore herself with grace. The Duchess, who had
been told the story of Shelley’s extraordinary marriage, was agreeably
surprised by the beauty and good manners of his wife. Even Eliza was
considered “quite charming,” at least according to Harriet. The visit
was successful. When Mr. Westbrook knew that his daughters had stayed
with a duke, and that his son-in-law had arrived at the castle with only
a guinea in his pocket, he felt the sudden need to show himself
generous, and he offered the young couple an allowance of £200 a year.
Mr. Shelley could not be less open-handed, above all when his suzerain
and chief asked him to be clement. He agreed once more to allow his son
£200 a year: and thus all danger of poverty came to an end.
But in Percy’s eyes the chief satisfaction lay in having obtained these
important results without any concessions on his part: “I think it my
duty to say that however great advantages might result from such
concessions I can make no promise of concealing my opinions in political
or religious matters. . . . Such methods as these would be unworthy of
us both.” His father answered: “If I make you an allowance it is simply
to prevent you from swindling strangers.” So incapable was he of rising
to the height of Shelley’s ideas.
* * *
At Greystoke Shelley made acquaintance with William Calvert, a friend of
Southey’s, who offered to take him to call on the poet. Thus, for the
first time, he was to see in the flesh one of the writers he most
admired. But when he actually met Southey he was intensely surprised,
for he had always associated the idea of a poet with the most entrancing
and aerial of beings.
What he found, in a well-furnished and well-warmed house, was a Mrs.
Southey resembling far more a cook-housekeeper than a Muse. She had been
in point of fact a dressmaker, and she bound her husband’s books with
remnants of the gowns she had made. Her linen-closets were the
sanctuaries in which she exercised her talents, and her conversation was
of money, cooking, and servants, like the most boring of housewives. The
poet seemed insensible to the ignominy of it all. He was an honest
creature, but with no reasoning powers. He admitted the social system
needed changing, but declared that change could only come very slowly.
He made use of the odious formula, “Neither you nor I will live to see
it.” He was opposed to Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary reform.
Worst of all, he called himself a Christian! Grieved to the heart,
Shelley left him.
Southey, worthy man, was far from imagining the impression he had made.
“An extraordinary boy!” thought he, after his visitor had gone. “His
chief sorrow seems to be that he is heir to an immense property, and he
is as much worried by the notion that he will have £6,000 a year, as I
used to be at his age by the knowledge that I hadn’t a penny. Apart from
this, he acts upon me as my own ghost would do. He is just what I was in
1794. He thinks himself an Atheist but is really a Pantheist: a childish
ailment through which we have all passed. It is lucky he has fallen on
me. He could not have a better doctor. I have prescribed Berkeley and
before the week is out he will be a Berkeleian. It has surprised him a
good deal to meet for the first time in his life with a man who
perfectly understands him and does him full justice. . . . God help us!
The world wants mending, though he does not set about it exactly in the
right way. Yet I do not despair of convincing him that he may do a great
deal of good with £6,000 a year.”
Thus did Youth and Middle Age meet upon their way, and the former looked
at the latter with respect, but with impatience. But the Middle Age
looked at Youth with a kindly irony, and promised himself to dominate it
by the strength of a more cultivated mind.
Middle Age forgot that the minds of different generations are as
impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz.
Southey and his wife did all in their power to be of service to the
young couple. He persuaded Shelley’s landlord to reduce the weekly rent
of Chestnut Cottage. Mrs. Southey gave poor Harriet, who knew nothing of
housekeeping, excellent advice on cookery and laundry work. She even
lent her bed-and-table-linen, which was the high-water mark of favour.
But a discovery which Shelley now made rendered useless every advance on
the part of Middle Age.
He read by chance in a review an article by Southey in which he spoke of
George III as “the best King who had ever sat upon a throne.” A blatant
piece of flattery, of course, but Southey aspired to be Poet Laureate,
and the road to official honours is steep to climb. Shelley never
pardoned baseness of this sort. He wrote to him that henceforward he
should look upon him as a wage-earning slave, an upholder of crime, and
he would see him no more.
And at this precise moment he troubled himself very little about
Southey, for he had just discovered Godwin, the great Godwin, the author
of _Political Justice_, the destroyer of marriage, the enemy of the
divinity, the atheist, republican and revolutionary. Godwin was still
alive, he lived in London, he had a postal address like everybody else,
one could send letters on Virtue to Virtue’s own high prophet!
“You will be surprised,” he wrote, “to receive a letter from a
stranger. No introduction has authorized that which ordinary men
would describe as a liberty. But it is a liberty, which if not
sanctioned by custom, is far from being blamable by reason. The
dearest interests of humanity demand that fashionable etiquette
should not divide man from man.
“The name of Godwin has been used to excite in me feelings of
reverence and admiration. I have been accustomed to consider him
a luminary too dazzling for the darkness which surrounds
him. . . . You will not, therefore, be surprised at the
inconceivable emotions with which I learnt your existence and
your dwelling. I had enrolled your name in the list of the
honourable dead. It is not so. You still live, and I firmly
believe are still planning the welfare of human kind.
“I have but just entered on the scene of human operations, yet
my feelings and my reasonings correspond with what yours were.
My course has been short, but eventful. . . . The ill-treatment
I have met with has more than ever impressed the truth of my
principles on my judgment.”
When Godwin received this letter he was well pleased. Much talked of at
the moment that _Political Justice_ appeared, he had fallen back since
into comparative neglect. He, too, though with less reason than his
young disciple, could talk of an “eventful life.” He began his career as
a clergyman, and at the age of thirty was an avowed atheist and
republican.
In 1793 he had published his famous book. Pitt was in half a mind to
have him prosecuted for it, but the high price of the work—it was sold
at six guineas—had seemed to the Prime Minister a sufficient protection
against its dangerous teaching.
Four years later Godwin had married Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman writer
of genius, with whom he had been living. She had died in giving birth to
a daughter, and the inveterate enemy of marriage at once married a
second time, a certain Mrs. Clairmont. This lady, who was a widow, lived
in the next house to his, and had made his acquaintance by addressing
gross flattery to him from her balcony.
The couple led a thorny life. There were five children, the offspring of
complicated crossings. First, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and
Godwin, by Genius out of Genius; she was named Mary. Then two children
from Mrs. Clairmont’s first marriage, Jane and Charles. Thirdly, a
little boy, son of Godwin and Mrs. Clairmont. Finally, the eldest in
age, was a young girl who no longer belonged to anyone in the house, the
daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and her American lover, Captain Gilbert
Imlay. This was the gentle and attractive Fanny Imlay, the Cinderella of
the household.
The second Mrs. Godwin, “a disgusting woman who wore green spectacles,”
had a mendacious tongue and a nasty temper. She treated Fanny and Mary
with harshness, and managed the Juvenile Library in Skinner Street,
which Godwin had started in order to earn the living of his own
juveniles. The poor Philosopher led a sorrowful and difficult existence,
entirely weaned from any sops to his vanity. On this account, a disciple
writing him an enthusiastic letter from Keswick was extremely welcome.
For a publisher of Children’s Books snowed under by Bills of Exchange,
nothing could be more opportune than the acquaintance of a man who
considered him as a luminary too dazzling for close inspection.
He answered Shelley’s letter by saying he should be glad to have a few
personal details concerning his unknown correspondent. By return of post
he received an autobiography, in which Timothy Shelley and the Dean of
Oxford played ignoble parts. He was informed that his correspondent
would inherit £6,000 a year, that he was married to a woman who shared
all his ideas, and that he had already published two novels and a
pamphlet, all of which he was sending to “the regulator and former” of
his mind.
This enthusiastic epistle was read with great excitement by the young
girls of the Godwin-Clairmont household, but the author of _Political
Justice_ was somewhat dubious about it. Since becoming himself the
father of a family, he valued paternal authority more highly than
heretofore. Possibly, Mr. Timothy Shelley had only acted in his son’s
interests? One ought not to criticize the powers that be when one is
young, above all one ought not to publish such criticisms. While yet a
scholar, one ought to have no intolerable itch to become a teacher.
Had anyone but the “venerated” Godwin written this he would have been
relegated at once to the class of stipended upholders of Intolerance.
But Authority and Hierarchies are so essential to Youth, even to
rebellious Youth, that it humbles itself with delight before the chosen
director of its conscience.
The mystic side of Shelley’s nature had more need than another’s of some
shrine at which to worship. “I am willing to become a scholar; nay a
pupil,” he replied. “My humility and confidence is unfeigned and
complete, where I am conscious that I am not imposed upon, and where I
perceive talents and powers so undoubtedly superior.”
In his delight at having discovered Godwin, he mapped out the vastest
schemes. To completely change the lives of others, to join their destiny
to his own, appeared to him child’s play. Hadn’t he succeeded perfectly
in the case of Harriet and of Eliza? What could be simpler than to hire
a big house in Wales and there have Miss Kitchener, Godwin, his
“venerated” friend, and the whole of Godwin’s charming family to live
with him.
But first, being slightly stung by Godwin’s scepticism, he wished to
prove in a striking manner that despite his youth he knew how to act.
Before settling down “for ever” in the Welsh “Home of Meditation,” he
would go to Ireland with Harriet and Eliza, and there spend three months
working for Catholic Emancipation in particular, and the improvement of
the distressful country in general.
How were the fair Harriet and Eliza of the much-brushed hair going to
emancipate the Irish Catholics? The question was left unanswered, but
Shelley took with him “An Address to the Irish,” so full of philosophy,
wise counsels, and love of humanity, that it seemed impossible the mere
reading of it would not touch every heart.
Thus did the young Knight Errant of the luminous eyes take ship to
conquer the Green Island. In place of a lance he carried a manuscript,
the Beauteous Harriet was his lady and the Black Eliza his squire; the
latter being in charge of the money, the housekeeping, and all the dirty
jobs.
CHAPTER XIII
SOAP BUBBLES
The Knight of the Rueful Countenance got stoned by the galley-slaves
whom he wished to free. Shelley was greeted with cat-calls when, at a
meeting of the friends of Catholic Emancipation, he affirmed that it was
harmful to refuse public employment to the Irish because of their
religion, since one religion is as good as another. His audience much
preferred the fanaticism of its persecutors to the scepticism of its
defender.
The famous Address was on the same subject. It showed that Catholic
Emancipation is a step on the road to total emancipation, and that
morality and not expediency should be the principle of politics. Instead
of expecting their freedom from the British, the Irish should free
themselves by becoming sober, just, and charitable. Shelley imagined
that his teaching would go straight to the heart of the poor Dubliners,
and he held himself ready for martyrdom in the cause.
Harriet was not less enthusiastic, and her reforming ardour was a joy to
behold. With pockets stuffed with pamphlets, the young couple walked up
and down Sackville Street, and when they met anyone with a “likely air”
they slipped a soul-saving paper into his hand; or from the balcony of
their lodgings they spread sound doctrine by dropping Addresses on the
heads of the passers-by. When Shelley put one adroitly into the hood of
an old woman’s cloak, Harriet, ready to die of laughter, was obliged to
rush away. The conversion of the Irish was assuredly the most amusing of
games. Godwin and Miss Kitchener expected every day to hear of Shelley’s
arrest. The school-teacher even considered the possibility of a
political assassination. But Dublin Castle learned with composure that a
young Englishman, nineteen years of age, had just made a speech on
Virtue.
The police sent a copy of the Address to the Secretary of State, and
Shelley’s advice to the Irish on sobriety and toleration struck the
official mind as a screaming joke.
Such impunity was very discouraging, nor were the ways of the Irish
themselves any less so. “The reason they drink so much whisky,” said
kind-hearted Harriet, “is because meat is so dear.” When Shelley tried
to save some wretched creature run in for theft or brawling, the
policeman, with a smile of pity, would prove to him the man was drunk.
On St. Patrick’s Night everybody was drunk, and there was a ball at the
Castle. Percy and Harriet watched the starving people crowd round the
State carriages to admire the finery. Such a want of dignity reduced
Percy to despair.
That they themselves might set an example of plain living, all three
became vegetarians, and Shelley thus freed himself from the remorse he
felt when thinking of the “horrors of the slaughterhouse” and the
“massacre of the bird-innocents.” They only broke the rule when Mrs.
Nugent came to dinner. She was their sole acquaintance in Dublin, a
dressmaker by trade. It was just one of the difficulties of their
position that they knew nobody amongst these Irish whom they loved so
much. “I suppose,” said Harriet, “that the moment Percy becomes famous
we shall know everybody all at once.”
But Shelley himself hadn’t much hope. In the land of baseless and
visionary fabrics where he usually wandered down-trodden Ireland figured
as a proud and beautiful female, Shelley as a knight-errant and apostle,
ready to fight for her and die if need be: crowds of tatterdemalions
followed them in the streets: barbarous British soldiers stopped him and
cudgelled him: but the heroic sweetness of his gospel tamed the brutes
themselves, and philosophy worked the miracle of reconciling hostile
races.
Little by little this brilliant fantasy melted away, the last shred of
rainbow-tinted mist floated over dirt-blackened houses, and the real
Ireland loomed up, a huge solid mass of towns, farms, forests, an
incalculable number of obscure and dissimilar men, a heap of immemorial
traditions and laws; the land of gambling, hunting, and blood-feuds;
seat of the magistrature, garrison for the soldiery, centre for the
police; Ireland wretched but jeering, suffering but garrulous,
discontented, and rejoicing in her discontent. The Enigmatical Island
. . . the Absurd Island. . . . Gazing at the terrifying Reality, what
could he do? What could he hope for? He was crushed and tired out.
With growing insistence Godwin urged his disciple to give up the game.
Ever since Shelley had hailed him as a spiritual father he had adopted
the paternal tone, a grumbling and hostile one.
“Believe me, Shelley,” he prophesied, “you are preparing a bath of
blood!”
Could he have seen his spiritual son drawing up an inoffensive “Proposal
for an Association for the Good of Mankind,” with Eliza on one side
sewing at a crimson cloak, and Harriet, preparing a meal of bread and
honey on the other, he might have felt more tranquil.
However, his exhortations were so far useful that they gave Shelley a
decent excuse to give up rescuing the oppressed who didn’t want to be
rescued.
Minus a few poor creatures who knew how to sponge on him successfully,
no one in Dublin took him seriously. For if in the eyes of an Irishman
there is any one being more ridiculous than an Englishman, it is an
Englishman who loves Ireland, and if in the whole world there is any one
spectacle which an old Eton boy and Oxford man cannot endure, it is
Irish disorder and dirt.
Having seen close at hand the folly and the misery of the people, his
thoughts turned with longing to the beauty and peace of the English
country-side.
“I give in,” he wrote to his “venerated” friend. “Never again will I
address myself to the ignorant. . . . I will content myself with being
the cause of an effect which will manifest itself years after I myself
am dust.”
Harriet packed up all the remaining pamphlets and forwarded them to Miss
Kitchener, who could have very well done without this “inflammable
matter.”
Eliza folded up the crimson cloak, and the three apostles took the boat
back to England.
* * *
The second part of their programme was now to be carried out, the house
in Wales, where the “spiritual flock” could be brought together, and
_all_ problems solved. They thought they had found just the very thing,
in the district where Shelley had stayed before his marriage. The
wildness and beauty of the country attracted him. Near the house a
mountain torrent brawled over the stones, and formed pools on which he
had floated a little boat a foot long. His sail had been a £5 note: a
terrified cat his passenger. He hoped that Miss Hitchener would persuade
her father to come and farm the property of one hundred and thirty
acres.
But the affair hung fire. The house was too dear. Mr. Hitchener,
indignant at the Cuckfield slanders concerning Shelley and his daughter,
refused to let her go to Nantgwillt. The school-teacher, proud of the
invitation she had received, had very imprudently boasted of it to every
one, and every one, led by Aunt Pilford, construed it in the worst
possible way.
Once again was Shelley astounded by the world’s malignancy. He, who had
run away with his wife, and made a Scotch love-marriage, how could
anyone suppose he would be unfaithful to Harriet! The idea caused him
such an overwhelming surprise that a less virtuous woman than Miss
Hitchener might have been offended by it.
As for Mr. Hitchener, he got the treatment he merited. He, too, was a
retired public-house keeper, for the gods seemed to delight in putting
the crystalline Shelley in connection with “the trade.” “Sir,” he wrote
to the lady’s father, “I have some difficulty in repressing my indignant
astonishment on hearing that _you_ refuse my invitation to _your
daughter_. By what right? Who made you her master? . . . Neither the
laws of Nature nor yet those of England have put children on the footing
of personal property. . . . Adieu. When next I hear from you I hope that
time will have liberalized your sentiments.”
* * *
As the Shelleys were going to leave Wales, Godwin mentioned to them a
most desirable cottage which one of his friends wanted to let. His
advice was always respected. Shelley and Harriet went to see the cottage
and found it hopeless. The house was commonplace, scarcely finished and
far too small for them. But, on their way back from this useless
journey, they discovered a very picturesque village. Thirty cottages
with thatched roofs covered with climbing roses and myrtles, formed the
delightful hamlet of Lynmouth. By a miracle, one of the cottages was to
let. It was the best situated, above a wooded gorge. From the windows
you looked down upon the sea, three hundred feet below. They instantly
decided to settle there “for ever.”
The “venerated friend,” on news of this, wrote a stiff letter. He said,
harshly, that the tastes of the Shelleys were too luxurious, and that a
small house, modest as it might be, ought to suffice for one who called
himself Godwin’s disciple. Had Timothy Shelley written such a letter the
most violent epithets would have been hurled at his head, but one
naturally accepts from a stranger what one would never put up with from
one’s own father.
Shelley did not think of complaining, but of justifying himself. If he
had said that the house recommended by his guide, philosopher, and
friend was too small, this was not from a wish for luxury, or even for
comfort. But the number of rooms was too few, and it seemed to him
hardly the thing for two persons of opposite sex and unmarried to share
the same bedroom. He knew that in a regenerated society this prejudice
would disappear, but in the present state of things, promiscuity
appeared to him imprudent. However, he advanced this opinion—which he
feared was rather reactionary—with precaution. The Master was good
enough to forget it.
The adorable cottage at Lynmouth was soon the scene of a great event,
the arrival of Miss Hitchener. Shelley promised himself that she would
add to his life the element of intellectual collaboration, so far rather
wanting to it. Nor would Harriet lose anything by the arrangement, for
her “spiritual sister” would help him to form her, both young women
being, he thought, sufficiently high-minded to accept these parts.
With surprise the Lynmouth villagers now saw him set off of a morning on
long expeditions with this gaunt, bony stranger. And henceforth it was
with her that he discussed all plans for the propagation of his ideas.
The diffusion of Virtue was growing difficult. A London printer had just
been sentenced to the pillory. The fate of Galileo did not frighten
Shelley for himself, but he would not thrust an innocent printer into
danger.
Luckily, the Magician had at his disposal ways and means which defied
the police of Lord Castlereagh. When he had written some fine incendiary
pamphlet, he would put it in a little box, well resined and waxed, with
a lead below and a tiny mast and sail above, and launch it on the ocean,
or he would make small fire-balloons, and having loaded them with Wisdom
set them sailing up into the summer sky. Or he would watch entranced a
flotilla of dark-green bottles tightly corked, and each containing a
divine remedy, rise and sink as the emerald waves swayed them seaward.
After he had “worked” hard in this manner, his favourite relaxation was
blowing soap-bubbles. Seated before the door, churchwarden in hand, he
blew glassy spheres that reflected all the forms and colours of heaven
and earth upon their tenuous surfaces. He watched them float away until
they broke and vanished.
Then quitting for a short time the aërial, translucent palaces of Logic,
he experienced the need of fixing in verse, the intangible beauty of
these shimmering violets, greens, and golds.
CHAPTER XIV
THE VENERATED FRIEND
The roses of Lynmouth were fading, and autumn winds swept the loose
clouds like dead leaves across the sky. Miss Hitchener’s star was about
to set. The constant presence of a stranger wearied Harriet. Shelley
himself saw the dream dissolve, revealing grosser forms, and was
surprised to find installed at his side a mediocre and twaddling woman.
He sought his heroine in vain, and repented of his folly.
After having insisted so strenuously in dragging her from her school it
was difficult to send her back there. Yet to go on living with her in an
autumnal solitude was becoming unbearable. Perhaps in a big city other
friends and other distractions might help him to forget the obsession of
her company. At the same time, Godwin urged the Shelleys to come back to
London. They resolved to go and make a long stay.
* * *
It was with great excitement that one day in October 1812, they left
their hotel in St. James’s Street to pay their first visit to Godwin and
his family. Harriet, tiny, fair, and rosy, tripped by the side of her
tall and round-shouldered boy-husband. They wondered what sort of
welcome the Great Man was going to give them? Miss Hitchener, who had
called in Skinner Street on her way through London, had met with a cold
welcome. But maybe that proved nothing but the perspicacity of Godwin.
They found the whole family gathered together in the dwelling-house
above the Juvenile Library, for the Godwins, on their side, were
devoured with curiosity to see the Shelleys. There was the Philosopher
himself, short, fat, bald, intellectual-looking, with the appearance of
a Methodist parson, like almost all the theorists of Revolution.
The second Mrs. Godwin had put on her best black silk, and only wore the
green-glasses just for the time needed to take stock of the Baronet’s
grandson and his pretty wife. The Shelleys had been warned that she was
a back-biter, but on this occasion she showed herself amiable.
Fanny Imlay was there too, gentle and pensive; and Jane Clairmont, a
beautiful and vivacious brunette of the Italian type.
“The only one absent,” said Godwin, “is my daughter Mary now in
Scotland. She is very like her mother whose portrait I will show you.”
He took the young couple into his study, and Shelley, much moved, looked
long at the portrait of the fascinating Mary Wollstonecraft. Then every
one sat down and Godwin and Percy talked of the relativity of matter to
spirit, of the position of the clergy, and of German literature. The
women listened in mute admiration. Harriet thought that Godwin resembled
Socrates; he had the same bulgy forehead; and that Percy sitting beside
him was like one of the handsome Greek youths whose ardent impatience
was tempered with respect.
* * *
A close intimacy began between the Shelleys and the Godwins. Godwin
often came round to the hotel to take Shelley for a walk, or Mrs. Godwin
invited Harriet and Percy to dinner. She even invited Eliza and Miss
Hitchener, but the last very unwillingly. Sometimes Harriet ventured to
give a dinner herself.
On the 5th November, Guy Fawkes’ Day, the Shelleys dined with the
Godwins. After dinner little William Godwin, aged nine, said he was
going round to let off fireworks with his friend and neighbour, young
Newton. Shelley at this moment was discussing some profound question or
other with his venerated friend. But the word “fireworks” instantly
brought to life the alchemist of Field Place. He hesitated just a second
between Godwin and his discourse, and the joy of rockets and catherine
wheels lighting up with their many-coloured fires the old London
streets.
Then, “I’ll go with you,” he said to the little boy, and off they went.
When the fireworks were over, young Newton, enchanted by this grown-up
friend who played like a boy and could tell such wonderful stories, took
him home to introduce him to his parents. Shelley made no resistance,
and never had to regret it. He found the Newtons adorable. They fell at
once into free, cultured and agreeable talk.
Newton was just the man to please Shelley. He had endless theories which
he put into practice. One of his favourite ideas was that when Man
migrated from the equatorial regions and pushed northwards, he adopted
unnatural habits and that from these sprang all his woes. One of such
bad habits was the wearing of clothes: Newton’s children ran about the
house entirely naked. Another bad habit was the eating of flesh food;
the whole Newton family was vegetarian. Nothing could arouse more surely
Shelley’s enthusiasm, and Mr. Newton supplied him with new arguments.
“Man has no similarity with any carnivorous animal; he is without claws
to hold his prey; the formation of his teeth points out that his food
should be vegetables and fruit. He first knew sickness after taking to
flesh-eating which, for him, is poison. Here you have the meaning of the
story of Prometheus which is evidently a vegetarian myth. Prometheus,
that is to say Man, discovered fire and invented cooking; immediately a
vulture began to gnaw at his liver. The vulture is hepatitis, that’s
quite clear.”
Since the Newtons had taken to vegetarianism they had never needed any
doctors nor any drugs. The children were the healthiest in the world,
and Shelley, who had many opportunities of seeing the little girls,
found them beautiful as sculptor’s models.
He became a constant visitor, and the moment his voice was heard in the
hall the five children rushed downstairs to meet him, and take him up
with them to the nursery. Mrs. Newton and her sister Madame de Boinville
were just as infatuated with him as were the children.
At Godwin’s Fanny and Jane passed whole evenings in listening to him
with ecstasy. They raved of his beauty, and his arguments appeared to
them unassailable. Even in a family of republicans this young
aristocrat, heir to an immense fortune and so disdainful of money, shone
with a romantic light.
As for him, between the two young girls, Fanny, gentle and reserved,
Jane, hot-blooded and vehement, he seemed to be back again in those
happy days of youthful fervour and high enthusiasm, when a bevy of
adoring sisters and cousins clipt him round.
Harriet pleased the Godwin girls less. They noticed that she never
thought for herself but simply repeated her husband’s favourite phrases
and that her grammar was faulty.
“Poor dear Shelley!” said they, as soon as the couple had left them. “He
certainly has not got the wife he ought to have.”
This is an impression very general amongst young women who see the man
they would have liked themselves in the possession of another. They even
ventured to attack Harriet, in her absence, with tiny pin-pricks; they
guessed intuitively those criticisms to which her doctrinaire husband
would be most sensitive.
“Harriet frightens me,” wrote Fanny, “she is such a fine lady.” Shelley
was indignant.
“Harriet a ‘fine lady’? And it is you who accuse her of this crime, in
my eyes, the most unforgivable of any. The ease and simplicity of her
manners have always been her greatest charm, and are incompatible with
the vulgar brilliancy of fashionable life. You will not convert me to
your opinion, so long as I have before my eyes the living witness of its
falsity.”
Later on, this letter of Fanny’s came back to Shelley’s mind.
CHAPTER XV
MISS HITCHENER
Hogg, now fully reconciled with his family, returned to London after a
year’s exile at York to finish his law studies.
One evening as he sat reading in a comfortable arm-chair wrapped in a
warm dressing-gown, a pot of hot tea by his side, he heard a tremendous
knocking at the outer door of the house. Then this door was flung
violently back against the wall, so that the whole building shook; Hogg
recalled a pair of luminous eyes, a tall and stooping figure. . . .
“If Shelley were still friends with me, I should imagine . . .”
Some one rushing upstairs recalled rapid footsteps heard long ago on an
Oxford staircase.
“No one but Shelley ever ran upstairs like that!”
The room-door opened, and there Shelley stood, hatless, with
shirt-collar wide open, wild-looking, intellectual, always the image of
some heavenly spirit come down to earth by mistake.
“I got your address from your ‘special pleader’ fellow, and not without
trouble! He took me for a swindler of some kind and didn’t want to give
it to me. What has become of you all this last year? . . . I’ve just got
back from Ireland. . . . I went to preach humanity to the Irish
Catholics. . . . Then we returned to Wales, a lovely country. . . .
Harriet’s all right . . . she expects a child. . . . Have you read
Berkeley? . . . At this moment I’m reading Helvetius . . . very clever,
but dry stuff. . . .”
Hogg looked at him with the admiration, affection, and irony, of former
days. Who but Shelley would start off to discuss Helvetius with a friend
from whom he had parted on such bad terms a year back?
Shelley, full of animation and joy, walked about the room, opened books,
put questions to which he never waited the answers, and seemed to have
forgotten completely that Hogg had ever offended him.
He talked far into the night, and the men in the chambers next to Hogg
knocked furiously on the walls to warn him that the high and piercing
voice of his visitor prevented them from sleeping.
Hogg, alarmed for his good name, suggested Shelley should go. Shelley
continued to talk. He explained that he had just opened a subscription
list to finish a dyke which would enable the Welsh at Tremadoc to regain
5,000 acres of land from the sea. He had headed the list with £100 and
he was devoting his life, his strength, and his fortune to the
enterprise. . . . Hogg taking him gently by the arm led him to the door,
but he resisted.
“Your neighbours bore me! They are brutes who don’t understand that it
is only during the night that the soul feels really free.”
Hogg had managed to get him out upon the landing.
“I’ll go, but on one condition, and that is that you come and dine with
us to-morrow. Harriet will be delighted to see you. I apologize for
having a horrible creature with us, Miss Hitchener . . . but she will be
leaving in a day or two.”
“Miss Hitchener? The sister of your soul?”
“_She_, the sister of my soul?” cried Shelley. “She’s a crawling and
contemptible worm. . . . We call her the Brown Demon.”
But they had now reached the street. Hogg gently pushed his friend out
of the house and closed the door behind him.
* * *
Next day at six o’clock, Hogg sent in his name to Harriet. She received
him with enthusiasm. She looked younger, more blooming, and lovelier
than ever.
“What a separation this has been!” she said. “But it will not happen
again. We are now going to live in London for ever!”
Eliza sat apart in haughty silence. She gave Hogg a limp hand, without
condescending to speak to him.
“You’re looking delightfully well, Harriet.”
“She? Oh, no, poor dear thing!” said Eliza in a lackadaisical voice.
“Her nerves are in a fearful state. Most dreadfully shattered!”
Hogg thought, “Nothing is changed in this house, one must take care what
one says.”
Shelley at this moment burst into the room like a cannon ball, and
dinner was brought up.
After dinner there were mysterious whisperings from Eliza into Harriet’s
ear, who came obediently to bid Hogg good night, and to invite him to
come again on Sunday morning.
“It’s the day the Brown Demon is going, conversation will be so
difficult. But you are always such good fun, you would be the greatest
help to us. . . . Percy has told you about our Tormentor?”
At the mention of Miss Hitchener’s name Eliza exhibited a deep but
silent disgust.
“She’s a horrible woman,” Harriet went on. “She tried to make Percy fall
in love with her. She pretended that he did really love her, and that I
was only good for the housekeeping. Percy has promised her £100 a year
if only she will go.”
Shelley confirmed this. He saw the imprudence of thus sacrificing a
quarter of his income, but it was necessary. The young woman had lost
her situation through him, and her reputation and health into the
bargain, she added, thanks to their barbarous conduct.
“She is really a horrible creature!” he said shuddering. “A superficial,
ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman. I’ve never been so astonished
at my bad taste as after spending four months with her. . . . How would
Hell be, if such a woman were in Heaven? And she writes poetry! She has
written an Elegy on the Rights of Woman, which begins:
“All, all are men, the woman like the rest. . . .”
He burst into one of his wild shouts of laughter.
Next day Hogg did not fail to turn up. The Heroine of the day appeared
to him boring but inoffensive. She was a big, bony, masculine woman,
dark-skinned, and with traces of a beard.
Shelley presently declared he must go out, Harriet had a bad headache
and needed quiet; Hogg’s fate was to take the two Eliza’s for a walk.
With the Brown Demon on his right arm, and the Black Diamond, as he
nicknamed Eliza Westbrook, on his left, he directed their steps towards
St. James’s Park. “I could say, like Cornelia: ‘These are my jewels!’”
he thought.
The two fair rivals attacked each other across him in phrases of haughty
contempt. The languishing Eliza woke up to deal formidable blows with a
calm soft acrimony. Miss Hitchener made a show of speaking only to Hogg.
She discoursed on the Rights of Woman. Eliza who could not talk on this
subject, nor on any other, found herself reduced to ignominious silence.
When they got home she penned Hogg into a corner of the hall.
“How could you talk to that nasty creature so much? How could you permit
her to prate so long to you? Harriet will be seriously displeased with
you, I assure you! She will be very angry.”
But Harriet merely smiled up at him and asked, “Were you not tired of
the Brown Demon?”
When luncheon was over he wickedly led the conversation back to Woman’s
Rights, and the Goddess of Reason was at once let loose. Shelley rose
from his chair, came and stood before her and fell into animated
discussion. The sisters Westbrook looked at him with sorrowful dismay as
at one guilty of communication with the enemy.
Eliza whispered to Hogg, “If you only knew how dirty she is you wouldn’t
go near her!”
But the moment of release came when the exile’s bags and boxes were
piled into a hackney-coach, and the women of Shelley’s household were
left dancing and singing for joy.
CHAPTER XVI
HARRIET
The few months which followed the departure of Miss Hitchener were happy
months. The Shelleys were still penniless wanderers, but an immense
interior satisfaction replaced for them money and home. He had begun a
long poem, “Queen Mab,” and to work at it made life worth living.
Harriet, who was with child, was sunk in an agreeable torpor, reserving
all her strength for creative purposes, and so amused by and interested
in her own sensations and hopes, as to be quite insensible to boredom.
During this period they made short visits to Wales, and returned a
second time to Ireland, but no longer dabbled in politics. To please
Percy, Harriet began to learn Latin. He taught her on a method of his
own. Discarding grammars he plunged her straight into Horace and Virgil.
While she studied, he went on with his poem or read history. Godwin had
assured him that his ignorance of history was one great cause of his
errors of judgment, and though he loathed the subject he set at it
courageously. In the evening, Harriet sang old Irish songs, “Robin
Adair,” and “Kate of Kearney,” or they read the newspapers together,
which at that time were filled with accounts of the prosecutions of
Liberal writers.
Often to these unknown comrades, condemned for their opinions, Shelley
would write offering to pay the fine, but never having ten pounds in
hand, he was obliged to borrow at 400 per cent, in order to do so.
Presently, it was necessary to go back to London as Harriet’s time was
near. Shelley was also approaching his twenty-first birthday, an
important date for him, for it seemed possible he might then come to
terms with his father.
They took rooms at Cooke’s Hotel in Albemarle Street. Eliza, who was
with them, looked after Harriet with exaggerated care. Her fussiness
annoyed Shelley always in favour of letting Nature have her way. When he
was absent Eliza would prime her sister in matrimonial strategy.
“It’s most extraordinary that at twenty-one years of age Percy can’t
find a way of making up with his father, so that you could be received
by the family, and lead the proper sort of life for a future baronet’s
wife! If you were a little more skilful and persuasive with him, things
would be very different, I’m sure! You ought to have a town house of
your own, your own silver, your own carriage; and all that could easily
be had if Percy chose.”
Harriet was of the same mind. She was a pretty woman and she knew it,
and for a pretty woman a life without luxury is as hard to bear as a
subordinate position for a clever man. The street admiration she meets
with tells her of her power, and she knows too that youth’s a stuff that
won’t endure. Just as a strongly armed nation desires to ensure her
place in the sun, before demobilizing, Woman wishes to exact good terms
from her enemy Man, before resigning herself to the pacifism of old age.
Besides which Eliza was continually pitying Harriet, and self-pity comes
so naturally to all of us that the most solid happiness can be shaken by
the compassion of a fool.
Moved thereunto by Harriet at the instigation of Eliza, and also by
renewed counsel from the Duke of Norfolk, Shelley decided to write again
to his father. He would not have taken this step had he not judged it to
be both honourable and necessary. He desired earnestly to see his
mother, and even the Squire seen from a distance of time and place
appeared to him a pathetic and inoffensive figure.
“MY DEAR FATHER,
“I once more presume to address you to state to you my sincere
desire of being considered as worthy of a restoration to the
intercourse with yourself and my family which I have forfeited
by my follies. . . . I hope the time is approaching when we
shall consider each other as father and son with more confidence
than ever, and that I shall no longer be a cause of disunion to
the happiness of my family. I was happy to hear from John Grove
who dined with us yesterday, that you continue in good health.
My wife unites with me in respectful regards.”
Unfortunately, Timothy Shelley, with characteristic wrong-headedness,
chose a test of Bysshe’s obedience to which it was impossible for him to
submit; he could not write to the authorities of University College that
he was now a sincere and dutiful son of the Church. And, failing this,
his father declined all further communication with him.
“I am not so degraded and miserable a slave,” wrote Shelley to
the Duke of Norfolk, “as publicly to disavow an opinion which I
believe to be true. Every man of common sense must plainly see
that a sudden renunciation of sentiments seriously taken up is
as unfortunate a test of intellectual uprightness as can
possibly be devised. . . . I am willing to concede everything
that is reasonable, anything that does not involve a compromise
of that self-esteem without which life would be a burden and a
disgrace.”
Eliza considered such obduracy absurd. “Thus Harriet, so soon to be
brought to bed, will not even have a carriage to save her running about
the streets on foot!” Shelley, exasperated, bought a carriage on credit,
and refused to use it. He hated being shut up in a closed carriage, and
much preferred long tramps with Hogg on foot.
Though sick to death of Eliza at home, there were plenty of pleasant
houses where he could take refuge. There was the Godwins’ in Skinner
Street, where Fanny and Jane Clairmont always received him with open
arms. There was the Newtons’ in Chester Square, where he found
affection, intelligence, and old-world courtesy. Mrs. Newton, a
first-rate musician, the favourite pupil of Dussek, would sit down to
the piano, while Shelley seated on the rug amidst the children would
tell them tales of ghosts and phantoms in a low voice.
Very often Madame de Boinville was on a visit to her sister. These two
ladies, daughters of a wealthy St. Vincent planter, had received a mixed
Anglo-French education that Shelley, tremendous admirer of the French
philosophers, much appreciated. Madame de Boinville, in particular,
charmed him. Her romantic marriage with a ruined _émigré_, a friend of
André Chénier and of La Fayette, invested her with a poetic fascination.
She was a woman with white hair, but with so childlike a face, such
speaking eyes, a mind so lively and up-to-date, that one had more
pleasure in talking with her than with many a younger woman. For the
first time in his life Shelley found, in her and her sister, women whose
intellectuality was on a par with his own.
The conversation of Eliza and Miss Hitchener now appeared to him
thoroughly despicable.
From living with Harriet, he had fallen into the habit of looking on
women as children, for whom an abstract idea must be reduced to its
simplest expression. With Madame de Boinville he was astonished to find
that he could not only tell her all his ideas, but that by the charm and
precision of her language she gave them a new attraction. For her and
her sister, as for Shelley himself, the play of thought was the finest
of pastimes. Learning is nothing without cultivated manners, but when
the two are combined in a woman you have one of the most exquisite
products of civilization.
With a secret joy and a delicious feeling of attained perfection,
Shelley realized that he had at last found surroundings propitious to
his happiness, and that everything he had previously known was
grotesquely unworthy of him.
The ladies, on their side, were enchanted by their discovery of Shelley,
for this very good-looking and well-born young man loved ideas as they
did and expressed them with warmth. He had got rid of the rather
intolerant dogmatism of his sixteen years, and now in discussion showed
modesty and forbearance. Never had they met a man so selfless, so
generous, so free from materialism as he. Generally serious, he yet was
capable of fun, and he had the ease of manner, the contempt for
ceremony, and the perfect politeness, which is the hall-mark of the
young aristocrat. “What more charming,” they asked themselves, “than a
saint who is at the same time a man of the world?”
With a tinge of jealousy, but also with affectionate interest, Hogg
watched the manœuvrings of all these pretty women round his ingenuous
friend. At the Godwins’ the girls called Shelley the Elf-King or the
King of Faery; at the Newtons’ he was known as Ariel and Oberon. The
moment he appeared the women gathered about him. But he was a Spirit
difficult to call up at any fixed hour. He was subject to strange
caprices, sudden frights, panic terrors. Sometimes falling into a poetic
vision, he forgot that he was expected to a tea-party. At other times,
when he was actually caught and supposedly held fast, all at once some
imaginary duty called him one knew not where.
“In certain countries,” Hogg told him, “it is believed that goats, which
are children of the devil, pass one hour out of every twenty-four in
hell. I think you’re like the goats, Shelley.”
On the other hand, when engaged with a woman after his own heart in one
of the serious and animated talks which he so much enjoyed, he forgot
both time and place. The night waned, and Adonis still led his rather
breathless priestesses conversationally onwards. Dawn broke; he was
talking still. Then, as it was too late to go to bed, a walk in the
delicious morning air rounded things off.
“What the devil were you talking about all night to your circle of
beauties?” the puzzled Hogg would inquire.
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
Harriet also wondered what her husband could have to say to all these
women. She was now near her term, and seldom went out of doors. Shelley
often left her alone. In the houses where he was a favourite, she felt
that she was unwelcome. At the Godwins’ she could not get on with Mrs.
Godwin. At the Boinville’s she had been thought at first charming
because she was so pretty and the wife of a poet, but she was soon set
down as a very ordinary woman.
CHAPTER XVII
COMPARISONS
The child was a girl, fair, with blue eyes. Her father named her Ianthe.
Her mother added Elizabeth. Thus Ovid and Miss Westbrook clasped hands
over the cradle. Shelley walked about with the baby in his arms singing
to it a monotonous tune of his own making. The idea of bringing up a new
being that he might save from prejudices was delightful to him. As an
admirer of Rousseau he expected Harriet to suckle the child herself and
he was eager to give the tenderest care to both. In the excitement of
his new rôle, the odious Eliza was forgotten.
But Harriet, egged on by her sister, refused to nurse the child. She
engaged a wet nurse, “a hireling” as Shelley declared resentfully. But
on this point Harriet was gently but firmly obstinate.
A curious change came over her after Ianthe’s birth. It seemed as though
she wished to make up for nine months’ inactivity. Her Latin lessons
were not resumed. She wanted nothing now but to be out of doors looking
into the bonnet-shops and jewellers’ windows. To find pleasure in such
idle trifling seemed to Shelley monstrous and unintelligible. He was
willing to pay for any of Harriet’s “reasonable” fancies, even at the
price of loans and endless annoyances, but to spend the money so
necessary to “persecuted writers” and other just causes, on mere “glad
rags,” appeared to him scandalous, and he made his wife and
sister-in-law feel it.
Eliza was careful to show up Shelley’s failings.
“Percy finds money enough to pay the debts of his dear Godwin, who
plucks him and whose wife is rude to us. He finds money to pay the fines
for a set of miserable scribblers, but he can’t afford to dress his own
wife decently! He’s a fool if he thinks it odd that a young and pretty
woman should like bonnets. If you don’t dress now at eighteen, when
_can_ you do so?”
Miss Westbrook encouraged at the house the visits of an army man, a
certain Major Ryan, whom they had first met in Ireland, and now found
again in London. He, too, was of opinion that so charming a young woman
as Harriet ought to lead a more normal life. Harriet was inclined to
agree with him. Latin and philosophy had really been a great strain on
her. She had borne it without complaint because of her love and
admiration for Percy. But shopping and gay chatter were just as much to
her taste as were the Newtons to Shelley’s, and the pleasure she found
in these frivolities contrasted with the rather painful attention she
had given to her “lessons.”
Shelley thought that town life and its temptations was the cause of the
trouble, and he had the very natural idea of all lovers who feel a
shadow falling between them, to go back to these scenes where their love
had been unclouded. Harriet’s famous carriage was got ready. Shelley
raised £500 by a post-obit bond for £2,000, and, accompanied by the
inevitable Eliza, went on pilgrimage to Keswick and Edinburgh.
The constant change of scene on the journey made them forget their
worries, and they returned to London in much better spirits, but they
had hardly settled down again when the old disagreements were renewed.
Harriet and Eliza pined for a fine house, fashionable life, gowns, and a
social circle. Shelley detested all these things but detested still more
the idea that his wife wanted them. He still loved her, but he began to
feel a touch of contempt.
Hogg came to see them. He found Harriet quite recovered, prettier and
more blooming than ever. But she no longer offered to read to him the
wise counsels of Idomeneus. She asked him instead to go with her to her
milliner’s. She vanished into the shop, leaving him waiting on the
pavement. She began to bore him, and as a man has little indulgence
towards the woman who has rejected his advances he let Shelley see it.
Shelley, too, could no longer hide his impatience. The Shelleys had
reached the dangerous moment of confidences with a third person.
* * *
When Madame de Boinville invited Shelley and Hogg to pass a few days
with her in the country, they accepted with joy. They found there her
daughter Cornelia, who was cultured, pensive and pretty, and her sister
Mrs. Newton. Shelley again knew the delightful sensations of former
evenings passed with them in town. He called Madame de Boinville,
Maimouna, because she reminded him of the heroine of _Thalaba_ whose
“. . . face was as a damsel’s face
And yet her hair was grey.”
The attractive Cornelia gave the two young men lessons in Italian, and
Madame de Boinville expounded in her delicious voice the indulgent
teaching of the French philosophers. “To enjoy life, and help others to
enjoy it, without harming anyone, herein lies the whole of morality.”
This dictum of Chamfort’s, which was a great favourite of Madame de
Boinville, ought by rights to have roused Shelley’s wrath. Poor Harriet
had never said anything so flatly opposed to virtue. . . . But then she
would have said it much less well.
At Bracknell even fooling seemed pleasant to Shelley, because there the
simplest games were imbued with the cast of thought. Cornelia had the
habit, when she first woke up, of reading over and often learning by
heart, one of Petrarch’s sonnets. This sonnet she thought over and fed
upon all day long. When they said good morning to her, Shelley and Hogg
would inquire which the day’s sonnet might be. Sometimes the poem was so
moving she did not trust herself to recite it, but opened the little
pocket Petrarch always carried with her, and pointed out the passage.
Walking between the two young men in the garden, she would comment the
love text with eloquence and simplicity.
“It is so good to begin the day,” she said, “with a draught of
tenderness which sweetens all our thoughts, words and deeds until the
night.”
These walks, these talks, seemed to Shelley the only things of any real
importance. The house, fine yet simple, charmed him by its perfection
and the absence of the luxury which disgusted him so much. It was for
him a place of repose and of freedom from care. Harriet was invited to
join them. Madame de Boinville received her with kindness. “She’s a very
pretty little creature,” she told Hogg. “But she seems to me a rather
frivolous companion for our dear, delightful Stoic. However, she’s not
yet eighteen, I think?”
Harriet, unfortunately, saw quite well that she was not treated on a
footing of equality. She saw that Percy took far more pleasure in
reading Petrarch with Cornelia than in discussing with his wife how to
improve their style of living; and by a reaction against an environment
which she dimly felt to be hostile to her in spite of an appearance of
cordiality, she put on cold and ironical airs.
When the rest of the party were solemnly debating on Virtue, or the
Reform Bill, Shelley saw her exchange mocking smiles with Hogg and
Peacock, a new and very sceptical friend they had just discovered.
He could forgive Hogg’s irony. His wife’s irritated him. Hogg’s mind was
an entirely different world from his, and he permitted the difference.
But Harriet’s mind was his very own handiwork. He had formed it, trained
it, cultivated it. He was accustomed to think of it as his echo. On
suddenly discovering that this other self had detached itself from him,
and could sometimes even make fun of what he said, he was surprised and
profoundly hurt.
There is nothing which makes a woman appear stupider than secret
jealousy. Instead of attacking the foe openly, which would be natural
and pathetic, she criticizes with spite innocent words and inoffensive
actions, and showing a terrible want of tact gives an air of meanness to
a sentiment which is perfectly justifiable. Harriet found fault with
everything at Bracknell because she had good cause to be jealous of
Cornelia Turner. But Shelley, who put down her scornful looks and her
mocking remarks to an incredible childishness, treated her with cool
contempt.
At this her pride was up in arms, and her behaviour became worse. “Eliza
is right,” she thought, “Percy is absolutely selfish, and thinks
everything he does is perfect. Because he likes this dull life, these
silly discussions, and this Italian poetry, he wants to force me to like
them too. But what right has he to prevent me from living _my_ life? How
is Cornelia Turner reading Petrarch so superior to me? These women whom
he admires are neither so young nor so good-looking as I. He would very
soon want me back.”
With this idea in her head she announced her intention of returning to
London to join Eliza. Her hostesses did nothing to dissuade her, beyond
the few words of regret which politeness requires. “Poor Shelley,” these
ladies remarked, just as the Godwin girls had done, “he has not got the
wife he ought to have.”
Harriet fell into the way of going up to stay with Eliza for weeks at a
time, leaving her husband alone at Bracknell. Soon the usual “kind
friend” let Shelley know that his wife was going about with Major Ryan.
For the first time since his marriage the idea of a possible infidelity
occurred to him. It was a question which in the abstract he had always
treated with the greatest contempt. Suddenly brought up against it with
Harriet and himself as possible actors, he was overwhelmed with the most
violent grief he had yet known.
Reason told him he ought to consider himself lucky if he were freed from
a very ordinary woman. If at that moment he loved at all, was it not
rather the heavenly Cornelia than Harriet whose miserable spite had
recently annoyed him so much? And, if he no longer loved her, to break
with her would be best. He had always taught that when passion’s trance
is over-past each should be free again. But it was in vain that he
reasoned thus with himself. He discovered with stupefaction that Percy
Shelley and Harriet Westbrook were no longer two separate and free
beings. The sum of past memories, caresses, joys, and sufferings
enmeshed them both in a web from which there was no escape.
He rushed up to town, determined either to offer Harriet his excuses or
to confess his faults. But she received him with harshness and irony.
Any heart-to-heart talk was out of the question.
His child-wife, so gentle and submissive only three months ago, now
showed herself cold and haughty. How had such a change come about? There
were instants when Shelley thought he detected, beneath pride’s hard
surface, a fleeting image of the other Harriet, but when he sought to
hold it by a loving word, it was gone. Against the steely armour of her
heart he knocked in vain.
Wandering about the streets without any object, he thought: “What a fool
I have been! Here I am tied for ever to a woman who does not love me,
who has never loved me. Evidently she only married me for the money and
title. . . . Now that she sees her hopes upset, she punishes me for her
mistake. . . .” And he repeated with disgust: “A heart of ice . . . a
lump of ice!”
Perhaps had he ever seen her alone he would have succeeded in thawing
it, but Eliza, prim, hostile, formidable, stood always between them, and
the gallant Major Ryan was in the wings, ready to commiserate the
cruelties of a doctrinaire husband.
After struggling for a few days, Shelley’s ardour was suddenly quenched.
Capable by fits and starts of an energy when nothing was impossible to
him, he fell as formerly after his long tramps at Oxford into an
insurmountable torpor, and his will-power like a dying candle-flame
threw up a final blaze of light before it expired.
When he saw that Harriet was obdurate, he gave up all hope of saving the
remnants of his married happiness, and he wrote to Bracknell to announce
he was coming on a month’s visit, and coming alone. He knew well that
after a month’s interval he would find Harriet completely ruined by her
hateful surroundings, he knew that a catastrophe would be the result of
the Bracknell interlude, but he was too tired to carry on the fight.
“What more am I now but an insect warming itself in a ray of sunshine?
The next cloud that passes will plunge me into the frozen darkness of
death.” And, in melancholy mood, he recited the lines from Burns:
“But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-fall in the river,
A moment white, then melts for ever.”
It seemed to him that into the translucent domes of crystal wherein his
fancy dwelt, Harriet, Ianthe and Elizabeth had been suddenly flung like
so many blocks of living and rebellious matter. In vain did he try with
all the forces of logic to drag them out. His feeble weapons were
crushed beneath the ponderous reality.
CHAPTER XVIII
SECOND INCARNATION OF THE GODDESS
There were days when Shelley, recalling the sweet and childlike face of
his eighteen-year-old wife, thought it might still be possible to forget
and make up. In a pathetic poem he tried to tell her how miserable it
was for one who had lived in the warm sunshine of her eyes to die
beneath her scorn. Did the lines move her? He never knew. She shut
herself up more and more in feelings of pride and revenge. He had left
her on several occasions. No doubt it was as a reprisal that the moment
he came back to London she set off with Ianthe for Bath.
Shelley was obliged to remain in town. He had come of age, yet his
affairs were no further advanced thereby. His solicitor gave him to
understand there might be a family law-suit to deprive him of his
rights. Although crippled with debts himself, he persisted in trying to
free others from theirs. The Juvenile Library founded by Godwin had been
a failure, and the sight of this old fighter for justice, impoverished
and saddened by money troubles, was inexpressibly painful to his young
disciple and friend.
But three thousand pounds were needed to save Godwin, a big sum. Yet
from the moment he knew of Shelley’s wish to save him, he again
exhibited great friendliness, and as Shelley was now a “bachelor” in
London, his “beauteous half” being in the country for an indefinite
period, he was invited to dine in Skinner Street every night.
He accepted all the more readily that he wished to see the girls again,
and Godwin had informed him he would find an extra one, Mary, who had at
length come home from Scotland. He gave an attractive portrait of her;
seventeen years old, quick and lively, a great wish to learn, and
immense perseverance. Already Fanny and Jane had described her to
Shelley as being as intelligent as she was beautiful. For her mother,
Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley had the warmest admiration. He was greatly
moved at the thought he was about to meet her unknown daughter.
He needed for his happiness to embody in the form of a beautiful woman
the mysterious and benevolent Forces which he imagined as scattered
throughout the Universe. Love was, for him, an impassioned admiration,
an integral act of faith, an exquisite and perfect mixture of the
sensuous and the intellectual.
Had Mary not appeared at that juncture, or had she proved a
disappointment, the sentiment which hovered and hesitated in his wounded
heart, would have dedicated itself to Fanny or to Jane, but Mary came,
and his fate was settled.
Her face was very pale and pure, her golden hair arranged in smooth
bands on either side of a shapely head, she had a great slab of a
forehead, and earnest hazel eyes. An air of sensibility and mournful
courage instantly inspired in Shelley the same enthusiasm that he found
in reading Homer or Plutarch. He saw something heroic in this delicate
young girl, and the mixture of the heroic and the feminine was ever that
which most appealed to him.
“What seriousness and what feeling!” thought he, listening with ecstasy
to her young fresh voice. A maiden standing where brook and river meet,
having the grace of the woman and the intellectual eagerness of the
youth, had always seemed to him one of the most exquisite works of art.
He longed to put a brotherly arm round those slender shoulders, and to
make those questioning eyes sparkle, as he bore her away on some
astonishing gallop through the realms of aërial metaphysics.
Harriet Westbrook had only imperfectly realized his ideal. For a moment
he had hoped to find in her the delightful blend of beauty and
intelligence that he would so greatly have loved, but poor Harriet had
not withstood the difficult test of time. She was wanting in any real
brain-power; even when she had the air of being interested in ideas, her
indifference was proved by the blankness of her gaze. Worst of all, she
was coquettish, frivolous, versed in the tricks and wiles of woman, and
this alone was sufficient to chill him to the marrow.
But Mary, of the nut-brown eyes, was slim and true as a Toledo blade.
Brought up by the author of _Political Justice_, her mind appeared free
from all feminine superstition; and the clear if rather piercing tones
of her voice emphasized delightfully its cultivated precision. Dining
every evening in the little house in Skinner Street, Shelley passed the
time in looking at Mary, while he seemed to listen to Godwin, who
explained the regrettable state of his own affairs, and discussed the
Budget, or the laws of the Press.
Mary, on her side, was quite ready to fall in love with Shelley. The
romance had been prepared by the sisters, who for a month previously had
talked of nothing in their letters but the handsome poet. Yet no
description of Shelley ever came up to the reality.
Mary saw, at once, how much she interested him. Although he had made no
complaint of life—he never did—she realized he was unhappy, and so one
evening when they found themselves alone in the room where her mother’s
portrait hung she spoke to him of her own troubles. She adored her
father, but detested Mrs. Godwin on whose account the home in Skinner
Street was become odious to her. The only place in the world where she
felt herself at peace was by her mother’s tomb in the churchyard of old
St. Pancras. She went there book in hand every fine day to read and
meditate. Shelley, thrilled, asked if he might go with her.
* * *
Thus, after an interval of five years, he found himself sitting again at
a young girl’s side in a graveyard, but this time his companion was of a
serious and impassioned soul. For the second time the Word was made
Woman. But, alas, Shelley was no longer free. He felt himself drawn to
Mary by an irresistible force. He longed to take her hand, to press his
lips to her delicately curved ones, he knew that she desired him, as he
did her, and they dared not let their eyes meet. What could he offer
her? He was a married man. It is true that marriage is only a
convention. When one loves no longer, one is free. He had never promised
Harriet more than this; besides, believing her to be the mistress of
Major Ryan, he felt no scruples on her account. But his marriage was
legally indissoluble. He had nothing to offer Mary but that reprobate
existence which he had not dared to impose on his first love, Harriet
Grove.
Nevertheless, a love shared, even though hopeless, is better than
uncertainty and moral isolation. He determined to tell Mary the whole
truth about his wife. Married love, even as it dies, long holds out
behind a mask of silence against the world’s assaults, but there comes a
moment when a man finds a bitter joy in laying bare his wounds.
Shelley drew a picture of Harriet as he now saw her, and by an
unconscious change of values lent, to his very human deception, motives
of a spiritual order. He had needed a companion who could appreciate
poetry and understand philosophy. Harriet was incapable of either. He
took a painful pleasure, also very human, in depreciating the grapes
which he had lost.
He gave Mary a copy of _Queen Mab_. Under the printed dedication of that
poem to Harriet, he wrote the words, “Count Slobendorf was about to
marry a woman who, attracted solely by his fortune, proved her
selfishness by deserting him in prison.” Back in her own room, Mary
added, “This book is sacred to me, and as no other creature shall ever
look into it, I may write in it what I please—yet what shall I
write—that I love the author beyond all powers of expression and that I
am parted from him, dearest and only love—by that love we have promised
to each other although I may not be yours, I can never be another’s. But
I am thine, exclusively thine.
‘By the kiss of love, the glance none saw beside,
The smile none else might understand,
The whispered thought of hearts allied,
The pressure of the thrilling hand.’
“I have pledged myself to thee and sacred is the gift.”
Meanwhile, these glances and smiles that none might see nor understand,
had been seen and perfectly understood by Godwin. The intrigue of his
daughter with a married man troubled him. He pointed out the danger to
her, and wrote to Shelley in the same strain. He advised him to make
things up with his wife: and he begged him to discontinue, for the
present, his visits to Skinner Street.
The prohibition, kindly as it was, simply hastened on events, which,
without it, might have tarried. Shelley, passionately in love with Mary
and deprived of her society, determined to take a decisive step. He felt
no remorse on Harriet’s account, for he persisted in thinking her
guilty, in spite of the assertions of Peacock and Hogg, both impartial
witnesses. “There’s just one thing only she cares about,” he thought,
“and that is money. I’ll provide for her future, and then she’ll be glad
to be free.” Accordingly he wrote to her begging her to come to London.
She came; she was four months gone with child, and very unwell. When,
calmly and kindly, Percy told her he was going to live without her and
elope with some one else, but that he would always remain her best
friend, the shock brought on an alarming illness.
Shelley nursed her with devotion, which made her more unhappy still, and
the moment she was better he resumed his inflexible arguments. “The
union of the sexes is sacred only so long as it contributes to the
happiness of husband and wife, and it is dissolved automatically from
the moment that its evils exceed its benefits. Constancy has nothing
virtuous in itself, on the contrary it is often vicious, leading one to
condone the gravest faults in the object of one’s choice.”
When he wove round her these diaphanous but insuperable webs, Harriet
knew she was lost, just as formerly when she had tried to defend her
religious beliefs against him she had seen herself overwhelmed on every
side. She knew that some answer _must_ exist; that so much anguish and
sorrow and horror should find some expression, and might have found it
had her mind been clearer; as it was she never knew what she ought to
say. She dreamed she was struggling to free herself from invisible
bonds. Her one relief was in terrible outbursts of rage against Mary. It
was she who was the cause of all, she who had separated Percy from his
wife, taking advantage of his romantic tendencies to entice him to meet
her at a grave-side, which was just the kind of thing that would appeal
to him. She had made a shameful use of her mother’s memory.
Mary, on her side, had not the slightest pity for Harriet. She had
formed an odious conception of her. A woman who, having had the felicity
of marrying Shelley, had yet been incapable of making him happy could
only be selfish, futile, second-rate. She knew that he would treat
Harriet with generosity, that he was going to give an order to his
banker to pay over to her the greater part of his allowance, and this
knowledge quieted her conscience. “She’ll have the money, and that’s all
she cares about,” Mary said with disdain.
Shelley was in a condition of extreme nervous agitation. All sorts of
contrary sentiments warred in his soul. When he saw Harriet fall into
heartbreaking fits of despair, he could not forget the delicious moments
passed with her long ago, but he had only to be again in Mary’s presence
to consecrate himself anew to her tranquil charm.
To calm his mind he began to take laudanum as he had formerly done at
Berwick, but now in stronger doses. He showed the bottle to Peacock, and
said: “I never part from this.” He added, “I am always repeating to
myself your lines from Sophocles:
‘Man’s happiest lot is not to be;
And when we tread life’s thorny steep,
Most blest are they who earliest free
Descend to death’s eternal sleep.’”
PART II
ARIEL: “Was’t well done?”
PROSPERO: “Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.”
CHAPTER XIX
A SIX WEEKS’ TOUR
The post-chaise was ordered for four o’clock in the morning. Shelley
waited up all night opposite Godwins’ house. At length he saw the stars
and the oil-lamps grow pale. Mary noiselessly opened the hall door. Jane
Clairmont, who at the last moment had decided to go with her sister,
looked after the luggage with zeal.
The long carriage journey greatly tired Mary, but Shelley dared not stop
lest Godwin were pursuing them. At about four in the afternoon they
reached Dover, where after the usual difficulties with custom-house
officials, and sailors, they found a small boat which agreed to take
them over to Calais.
The weather was fine. The white cliffs of Albion slowly faded away. The
fugitives were safe. Presently the wind rose and freshened into a gale.
Mary, very ill, passed the night lying upon Shelley’s knees, who,
himself worn out with fatigue, supported her head on his shoulder. The
moon sunk to a stormy horizon; then, in total darkness, a thunderstorm
struck the sail, and the fast-flashing lightning revealed a dark and
swollen sea. When morning broke the storm passed, the wind changed, and
the sun rose broad, and red, and cloudless, over France.
Mary shook off her somnolence in the streets of Calais; the gay bustle
of the harbour, the picturesque costume of the fisherfolk, the confused
buzz of voices speaking a strange language, revived her. The day was
spent at the inn, as they had to wait for the luggage coming by the
Dover Packet, but when this arrived it brought also Mrs. Godwin and her
green spectacles. The fat lady hoped to persuade Jane, at least, to go
back with her to Skinner Street, but Shelley’s eloquence won the day,
and Mrs. Godwin returned alone. At six o’clock the travellers left
Calais for Boulogne in a cabriolet drawn by three horses running
abreast.
* * *
Their plan was to get to Switzerland, but after a few days in Paris
their purse was empty. Shelley had a letter for a certain Tavernier, a
French man of business, who was to act as banker for them. They invited
him to lunch at the hotel, and put him down as a perfect idiot, for he
seemed to have a difficulty in understanding the absolute necessity of
this journey by two little girls, and a tall and excitable young man.
Shelley had to pawn his watch and chain; he got eight napoleons for
them. This would give them bread and cheese for a fortnight, so with
minds at ease, they began to explore the Boulevards, the Louvre, and
Notre Dame. Later on they preferred to remain in the hotel and re-read
together the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Byron’s poems.
At the end of the week, Tavernier, a good fellow in the main, agreed to
lend them sixty pounds. But, as this was not enough to pay for their
places by diligence, they decided to start on foot, and to buy an ass to
carry the luggage, and each of them ride it by turns.
Shelley went to the cattle-market and came back to the hotel with a very
small donkey. Next morning a hackney-coach took them to the Barrier of
Charenton, the ass trotting behind the carriage.
The roads in France in the year 1814 were not particularly safe. The
armies had just been demobilized, and bands of marauders robbed those
who travelled on them. The peasants working in the fields by the
road-side stared with all their eyes at this extraordinary caravan of
two pretty girls in black silk gowns, a stripling with curly hair, and a
ridiculously small donkey. At the end of a few miles, the last appeared
so tired that Shelley and Jane had to carry him! In the village where
they slept they sold him to a peasant and bought a mule in his place.
The whole of the district had been devastated by the war, the villages
were half-destroyed, the houses mostly roofless with fire-blackened
beams; if they asked a farmer for milk he replied by cursing the
Cossacks who had carried off his cows.
In the wretched inns the beds were so dirty that Mary and Jane dared not
use them. Enormous rats brushed by them in the darkness. They fell into
the habit of sitting up all night in the farm-kitchens. The big stove,
still alight, made the atmosphere heavy, and between sleeping and
waking, the crying of children and the creakings of the old woodwork
were woven into their dreams. Mary thought of her father, and wondered
was he suffering terribly from her flight? Shelley was preoccupied with
the fate of Harriet.
From Troyes he wrote her a long letter, urging her to come out and join
them in Switzerland. She should live near them, and there, at least,
find one firm and constant friend. He gave her news of Mary’s health,
which appeared to him a natural thing to do, and he felt quite sure that
Harriet would very soon be with them. Maybe, the “world” would think
this life in common immoral, but why trouble about “the world’s”
opinion? Was it not better to obey the dictates of love and kindness
than those of absurd prejudices? Harriet made no reply.
Going by Pontarlier and Neufchâtel they reached the Lake of the Four
Cantons. Shelley wished to settle at Brunnen, near the Chapel of William
Tell, the Defender of Liberty. The only empty house in the place was an
old château, deserted, and falling into ruin. They hired two rooms in it
for six months, and bought furniture, beds, chairs, wardrobes, and a
stove. The curé and the village doctor came to call upon the new-comers,
and on the same day Shelley began to write a great novel, _The
Assassins_. They had settled down “for ever.”
But the new stove refused to draw, and Shelley who was not clever with
his fingers, tinkered at it in vain. The room was glacial and filled
with smoke. Outside the rain beat against the windows. The three young
exiles found themselves desperately lonely. They recalled the comfort of
their English houses, English tea, hot and scented, England’s mild sky,
the cool, good-natured Englishmen speaking their language and able to
pronounce their names. Even the English usurers, though of course
rapacious, were always courteous.
Shelley counted up the common purse. There remained just twenty-eight
pounds. The same eager desire rose in all three, which Shelley expressed
by the words “Let’s go home!”
No sooner said than the decision was taken, and their spirits rose.
“Most laughable to think,” writes Jane, “of our going to England the
second day after entering a new house for six months, and all because
the stove don’t suit! As we left Dover, and England’s white cliffs
disappeared, I thought I should never see them again, and now . . .”
Having made up their minds at midnight, the next morning, in driving
rain, they took a boat to Lucerne. Great was the surprise of Brunnen’s
curé when he learnt that they were gone.
From Lucerne they reached Bale by passenger-boat and thence on to
Cologne. The weather was delightful. Beneath the evening stars, the
boatmen chanted love-songs. Shelley worked at _The Assassins_. Mary and
Jane had each started a novel too, and the hills crowned with ruins on
either side gave them a good background for the romantic adventures of
their heroes. Then the Dutch mail-coach carried them through a sleepy
land of comfortable wooden houses, canals, and windmills. When they
reached Rotterdam they were again penniless. After long discussion, a
ship’s captain agreed to take them aboard. The sea was as rough as on
the day of their departure.
Shelley employed his time arguing the question of slavery with one of
the passengers. Mary and Jane backed him up with warmth. They did not
know in the least if they would have anything to eat the next day, but
they did know that Percy was a genius, and that Man is perfectible.
CHAPTER XX
THE PARIAHS
On arriving in London, Shelley could not pay the cab fare, so with Mary,
Jane, and the trunks, he drove round to his bankers, merely to learn
that Harriet had withdrawn the entire balance to his credit. At this
news the two girls were highly indignant. The only way to get out of the
scrape, and avoid the police-station, was to go and see Harriet herself.
Shelley had her address, and thither they now drove. Harriet thought at
first that her husband had come back to her, and was very indignant, in
her turn, when she knew that her rival was waiting below at the door.
However, she lent Shelley a few pounds, which enabled the three
wanderers to take furnished lodgings in a mean street.
Things looked black. Godwin absolutely refused to see them. Shelley
pleaded that he had given a practical application to the principles of
_Political Justice_, but this merely exasperated the author of the
treatise still more. _Political Justice_ was in his eyes a theoretical
work, the principles of which might be excellent in some
Utopia—although it was also very long since he had written it—but in
London in the midst of a pitiless society, in his own house, to expose
Godwin and his only daughter to the scorn of his friends, thus to
pervert his teaching . . . No, he would never forgive them.
When he mentioned the adventure it was in the most severe terms. Writing
to a Mr. John Taylor of Norwich, he said:
“I have a story to tell you of the deepest melancholy. . . . You
are already acquainted with the name of Shelley. . . . Not to
keep you longer in suspense, he, a married man, has run away
with my daughter. I cannot conceive of an event of more
accumulated horror.
“Mary, my only daughter, was absent in Scotland for her health,
and returned to me on the 30th of March last. Shelley came to
London on the 18th June and I invited him to take his meals at
my house. On Sunday, June 26th, he accompanied Mary and her
sister, Jane Clairmont, to the tomb of Mary’s mother, and there
it seems the impious idea first occurred to him of seducing
her. . . . He had the madness to disclose his plans to me and to
ask my consent. I expostulated with him with all the energy of
which I was master. . . . I seemed to have succeeded, but in the
night of the 27th July, Mary and her sister Jane escaped from my
house, and the next morning when I rose I found a letter on my
dressing table informing me what they had done.”
He begs Taylor to preserve the utmost secrecy about the affair, so that
no stigma may be attached to the names of these unfortunate girls, and
goes on: “When I use the word stigma I am sure it is wholly unnecessary
to say that I apply it in a very different sense to the two girls. Jane
has been guilty of an indiscretion only . . . Mary has been guilty of a
crime.”
Yet Shelley, in former days, had borrowed large sums to lend to Mary’s
father, and on this account the bailiffs, so soon as they heard of his
return, had begun to dun him. Godwin not only was unable to repay
Shelley, but had fresh need of money himself, and it was these financial
questions which compelled him, most reluctantly, to continue a
correspondence with a depraved and perfidious young man. His conscience
suffered greatly . . . or at least he said it did in every letter.
So much hypocrisy in a man they had so venerated, was grievous to Mary
and Shelley. “Oh, philosophy!” they said, and sighed. As to Mrs. Godwin,
she reproached them above all with corrupting her daughter, and she
forbade the gentle Fanny to visit them. She herself went to see Jane
once, but meeting Shelley on the stairs she turned away her head.
Their intercourse with Harriet was sometimes easy, sometimes difficult,
according to her changes of mood. She wanted for nothing, having still
some of Shelley’s money, besides receiving an allowance from the old
tavern-keeper, but she was with child and very unhappy. She passed her
days in telling her story to the gossips of the neighbourhood, or in
writing in pathetic phrases to her friend Catherine Nugent, the Dublin
dressmaker:
“Every age has its cares. God knows I have mine. Dear Ianthe is
quite well. She is fourteen months old and has six teeth. What I
should have done without this dear babe and my sister I know
not. This world is a scene of heavy trials to us all. I little
expected ever to go thro’ what I have. But time heals the
deepest wounds, and for the sake of that sweet infant I hope to
live many years. Write to me often. . . . Tell me how you are in
health. Do not despond, though I see nothing to hope for when
all that was virtuous becomes vicious and depraved. So it
is—nothing is certain in this world. I suppose there is
another, where those that have suffered keenly here will be
happy. Tell me what you think of this. My sister is with me. I
wish you knew her as well as I do. She is worthy of your love.
Adieu, dear friend, may you still be happy is the first wish of
your ever-faithful friend,
“H. SHELLEY.
“Ianthe is well and very engaging.”
Sometimes she was full of hope. Her friends told her that love affairs
of this sort were short-lived and that her husband would come back to
her. Then she felt gay and wrote Shelley friendly letters. She was sure
that it was Mary who had made all the mischief: that she had seduced
Percy by telling him extravagant tales: that in reality he was good,
that he would never desert her and his two children.
At other times she had fits of depression and rage. Then she did all she
knew to make the life of the hated couple more difficult still. She ran
into debt, and sent the creditors to Shelley. She declared that he was
living in promiscuity with two of Godwin’s daughters. She found out
Godwin’s creditors in order to urge them to be pitiless, and Mary, who
had never seen her, would say with a sigh: “That frightful woman!”
One day in November, Harriet was in a state of discomfort and pain, and
imagined herself very ill. Her first thought at such moments was always
to call her husband. She sent for Shelley during the night and he came
at once. Without again becoming the lover, he would have liked to remain
her most devoted friend. But, not understanding the shade of difference,
the moment he showed attention, she grew fond. Then he checked her with
gentle firmness.
At the end of November, she gave birth to a boy, an eight-months’ child.
It brought about no reconciliation. Shelley doubted if the child was
his.
With Mary, in spite of their misfortunes, he was deliciously happy. They
shared the same tastes, and both looked upon Life as an opportunity for
learning prolonged into old age. They read the same books and often
aloud. She went with him in his visits to his lawyers, or the sheriff’s
officers. When he amused himself by the Serpentine, just as he used to
do at Oxford, in launching a paper flotilla, Mary, sitting beside him,
fashioned the boats with tireless fingers.
Under his direction, she set herself to learn Latin and even Greek. More
cultured than Harriet, she did not see in these studies, as did the
first Mrs. Shelley, a rather boring game, but an extension of her
enjoyment. The greatest charm of literary culture is that it humanizes
love. Catullus, Theocritus, and Petrarch united to render more exquisite
our lovers’ kisses. Shelley, watching his new companion at work, was
filled with admiration for her strength of character, and was delighted
to consider her as much superior to himself.
The only shadow, and that a light one, was the presence of Jane, or
rather of Claire, for, having decided that her name was ugly, she had
changed it for another which was more to her taste. A brilliant and
beautiful girl, she suffered from nerves and was terribly susceptible.
Nothing was worse for her than to live in close contact with an amorous
young couple. She had a passionate admiration for Percy, and showed it a
little too plainly. Mary complained, but Shelley could not agree that
there was anything in the sentiment either disagreeable or shocking.
He hated being alone, so when Mary, who was expecting a child, had to
give up walks and late hours he took Claire with him to the lawyers, the
bailiffs, and the banks of the Serpentine, and every day he begged her
to pass the evening with him. He talked to her of Harriet, of Miss
Hitchener, and of his sisters. He had always loved confidential talks,
and long analyses of thought; sincerity appeared to him easy with Claire
because she was not his mistress. But Mary could not conceal her
impatience, and Claire, vexed by her sister’s reproaches, remained
silent and gloomy a whole day through.
In the evening when Mary had gone to bed, Shelley undertook to pacify
Claire. Cleverly and patiently he explained until midnight the somewhat
complicated sentiments of their little group. Such was his gentle
kindness that Claire ceased to sulk.
“But I’ve suffered so much!” she said.
“Imaginary sufferings, my dear Claire! You misunderstand words and
gestures to which Mary attaches no importance whatever.”
“All the same, I have really suffered, but how I like good, kind,
explaining people!”
Shelley went up to repeat the conversation to Mary. In the room overhead
they heard Claire talking and walking in her sleep. Presently she came
down, she was feeling terribly nervous, and could not remain alone. Mary
took her into her own bed, and Shelley went to sleep upstairs.
This little scene with slight variations was often repeated. Claire’s
nervousness was communicated to Shelley. Having talked of ghosts and
hobgoblins the greater part of the night, they ended by frightening each
other.
“What is the matter with you, Claire? You’re deathly pale. . . . Your
eyes . . . No! Don’t look at me like that!”
“You, too, Percy, you look strange . . . the air is heavy, full of
monsters . . . don’t let us stay here any longer!”
They said good night and went to their rooms, but almost immediately
after, Shelley and Mary heard a loud cry; somebody tumbled down the
stairs, and Claire, with disordered features, came to relate that her
pillow had been pulled from under her head by an invisible hand.
Shelley listened to the tale with terrified interest, but Mary shrugged
her shoulders. If only this crazy girl would take herself off!
* * *
The outcasts saw few friends. The Boinville-Newton set, despite their
broad-minded French philosophy, had turned a cold shoulder when they
were told by Shelley of his new life. With them, as with Godwin, actions
did not run on all fours with speech, and indulgence in theory allied
itself for some mysterious reason with inclemency in practice. On the
other hand, it was the sceptical Hogg and Peacock who came at the first
call. They believed in the innocence of Harriet, and did not approve of
Shelley’s conduct, but they were full of human interest, and looked upon
the passion of love as a somewhat comic disease.
Shelley had invited Hogg with misgivings. He was afraid such a cynic
would not please the two girls. Nor was Mary’s first impression
favourable. “He’s amusing enough when he jokes,” she said, “but the
moment he treats of a serious subject, one sees that his point of view
is altogether wrong.”
Hogg, in fact, became every day more British and conservative, singing
the praises of tradition, sport, Public Schools, and naming the best
port-wine years. But finding Mary very pretty and intelligent, he told
Shelley so, who repeated it to her. On Hogg’s next visit she thought him
much more sympathetic. No doubt he spoke of virtue as a blind man does
of colours; in this family of enthusiastic “souls” he was the “hardened
sinner”; but his charm was acknowledged. Mary thought his coldness a
cloak, and that he was better than he appeared. He was afraid to be
sincere with himself or to delve deep, which would have driven him to
forgo so many things that he liked, but he was really too intelligent
not to feel the weakness of his position.
Being both good-natured and cultivated, he was ready to give a helping
hand to Mary and Claire in translating Ovid or Anacreon, when their
usual master had mysteriously vanished. He also accompanied the ladies
to their bonnet-maker without grumbling, for they, too, visited
bonnet-shops just like poor Harriet, although they went in quite another
frame of mind. If she bought bonnets with rapture, Mary bought them with
a lofty condescension, so that Shelley did not even have to excuse in
her a concession to fashion which she herself was the first to deplore.
CHAPTER XXI
GODWIN
The lodging-house servant brought up a letter from a lady who was
waiting on the opposite pavement. It was from Fanny, to warn Shelley
that his creditors were plotting to have him arrested. He and Mary ran
down to the street, but, on seeing them, Fanny hastened away. She was in
terror of Godwin who had forbidden all communication with the outcasts,
and she, perhaps, had cared too much for Percy to wish to see him again
now that he belonged to her sister. But, being a swift runner, he soon
caught up with her. She told him the bailiffs were looking for him, that
it was his publisher who had given them his address, and that Godwin
wouldn’t lift a finger to save him.
Not having money to free himself, the only thing he could do was to
disappear. He decided to find another lodging while Mary and Claire
should remain quietly where they were, so as to trick the enemy. Thus,
for the first time, the lovers had to separate, a separation which
seemed terrible to both. They were forced to make appointments in
out-of-the-way taverns, to take a few stealthy kisses, and to part
immediately, lest Mary might be followed. On Sundays, when arrests are
illegal, they remained together till midnight.
One evening the courage to separate failed them, and Mary followed
Shelley into a miserable hotel. The landlord looked with a suspicious
eye on this couple who had no luggage, and refused to serve them with a
meal unless they paid him in advance. Shelley sent round to Peacock, and
while waiting for the money took out the pocket Shakespeare he always
carried, and read aloud to Mary _Troilus and Cressida_. It made them
forget their hunger a whole day through. Next morning at breakfast-time
Peacock, penniless himself, sent them some cakes. If life was difficult
there was joy in suffering together. Love and misfortune made a happy
pair.
When they were apart, waiting for night-time, they sent each other by a
confidential messenger, tender little notes, scribbled in haste.
“Oh! my dearest love,” wrote Shelley, “why are our pleasures so short
and so interrupted? How long is this to last? . . . Meet me to-morrow at
three o’clock in St. Paul’s if you do not hear before. Adieu: remember
love at vespers before sleep. I do not omit _my_ prayers.”
“Good night, my love,” replied Mary, “to-morrow I will seal this
blessing on your lips. Dear good creature, press me to you, and hug your
own Mary to your heart. Perhaps she will one day have a father: till
then be everything to me, love, and indeed I will be a good girl and
never vex you. I will learn Greek and—but when shall we meet when I may
tell you all this, and you will so sweetly reward me?”
In January, 1815, this trying existence was brought to an end by an
event they had long expected without desiring it, but which they also
accepted without any hypocritical regret. Old Sir Bysshe died at the age
of eighty-three. Timothy Shelley became second baronet, and Percy the
direct heir.
He set out for his father’s house, accompanied by Claire, who was in a
state of great excitement and eager curiosity. Sir Timothy, puffed up
with his new title, and more indignant than ever that a baronet should
have such a son, refused him admission to Field Place by the footman. He
sat down on the doorstep and read _Comus_ from Mary’s pocket-copy of
Milton.
Presently the doctor came out to tell him his father was greatly
incensed with him. Then, his cousin, Shelley Sidney, stealthily appeared
to give the Prodigal Grandson details of the Will.
A most extraordinary Will. The fixed idea of old Sir Bysshe had been to
found an enormous hereditary fortune, and for that purpose to increase
the entailed estates as much as possible. He left in real and personal
property, possessions which probably did not fall short of £200,000. One
portion of this, valued at £80,000, formed the estate entail which must
necessarily pass to Percy on his father’s death. But Sir Bysshe desired
that this accumulation of his long life should be kept together by his
descendants, and should pass from eldest son to eldest son through
future generations of Shelleys. For this purpose, the consent and
signature of his grandson were necessary, and he had hoped to obtain
them in the following manner. If Percy would concur in prolonging the
entail, and further, would agree to entail the unsettled estates, he
should, after his father’s death, enjoy the usufruct of the entire
fortune. If he should refuse, then he would only inherit, always after
the death of Sir Timothy, the £80,000 of which it was impossible to
deprive him.
Shelley went back to London musing over this strange news, and called on
his solicitor to discuss it with him. He did not feel he could consent
to the extension of the entail, since he disapproved of all such
plutocratic legislation: nor did he desire, either for himself or his
children, the ownership of so huge a fortune. What he wanted was an
immediate income sufficient to live on, according to his inclinations,
and a certain sum down, so as to settle his debts. To secure these
moneys, he proposed, through his lawyer, to sell to his father the
reversion of the settled estates. The proposal pleased Sir Timothy who
had abandoned all hope of ever bringing Percy to heel, and who now
thought only of his second son, John. Unfortunately the lawyers were not
sure that the arrangement was legally possible under the terms of the
Will. These only authorized the re-sale by Percy to his father of the
estate of a grand-uncle, valued at £18,000. This transaction took place
and Shelley received in exchange an income of one thousand pounds a year
during the joint lives of Sir Timothy and himself, and in addition three
thousand pounds were advanced by Sir Timothy towards the payment of his
son’s debts. If this was not a big fortune, it was at least the end of
straitened means, of furnished lodgings, and of duns.
His first thought was to make Harriet an allowance. He promised her £200
a year, which in addition to the £200 which her father allowed her,
should be sufficient for all her wants. Next he undertook to pay off
Godwin’s debts, and set apart for that purpose the whole of his first
year’s annuity.
The “venerated friend” found the offer of one thousand pounds far below
his expectations. To hear him talk, nothing was easier than to borrow,
on an inheritance now soon to fall in, the many thousands of pounds of
which the Skinner Street book-shop stood so much in need.
Shelley, exasperated but courteous, informed Godwin, with an indignation
which he restrained, of his surprise that Mary’s father should think it
proper to write to the seducer of his daughter to ask him for money, and
at the same time to refuse to enter into any relations with that
daughter herself, who was foolish enough to suffer from it. Godwin
replied that it was precisely because he was borrowing money from the
seducer that he could not receive Mary: his dignity would not allow it!
He could not risk having it said that he had bartered his daughter’s
honour for the payment of his debts. His scruples were so exaggerated
that he returned a cheque drawn by Shelley in his favour, with the
remark that the names of Shelley and of Godwin must not figure on the
same cheque. Shelley could make it payable to Joseph Hume or James
Martin, and then he, Godwin, might consent to cash it. On which the
following letters were exchanged:
_Shelley to Godwin._
“I confess that I do not understand how the pecuniary
engagements subsisting between us in any degree impose
restrictions on your conduct towards me. They did not, at least
to your knowledge or with your consent, exist at the period of
my return from France, and yet your conduct towards me and your
daughter was then precisely such as it is at present. . . .
“In my judgment neither I nor your daughter nor her offspring
ought to receive the treatment which we encounter on every side.
It has perpetually appeared to me to have been your especial
duty to see that, so far as mankind value your good opinion, we
were dealt justly by, and that a young family, innocent and
benevolent and united, should not be confounded with prostitutes
and seducers. My astonishment, and I will confess when I have
been treated with most harshness and cruelty by you, my
indignation has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my nature,
any considerations should have prevailed on you to have been
thus harsh and cruel. Do not talk of forgiveness again to me,
for my blood boils in my veins, and my gall rises against all
that bears the human form, when I think of what I, their
benefactor and ardent lover, have endured of enmity and contempt
from you and from all mankind.”
_Godwin to Shelley._
“I am sorry to say that your letter—this moment received—is
written in a style the very opposite of conciliation, so that if
I were to answer it in the same style we should be involved in a
controversy of inextinguishable bitterness. As long as
understanding and sentiment shall exist in this frame, I shall
never cease from my disapprobation of that act of yours which I
regard as the great calamity of my life.”
_Shelley to Godwin._
“We will confine our communications to business. . . .
“I plainly see how necessary immediate advances are to your
concerns, and will take care that I shall fail in nothing which
I can do to procure them.”
The cold contempt of this letter did not discourage the borrower.
CHAPTER XXII
DON JUAN CONQUERED
Mary’s child was born before its time, and the doctor said it would not
live. Shelley kept watch between the cradle and the bed in company with
Livy and Seneca. Fanny came round with baby-clothes sent by Mrs. Godwin
in her capricious way, but the Philosopher remained inflexible. Hogg
dropped in to gossip, to tell the great news of the day, the return from
Elba, and he did Mary good by his common sense and sarcasm. With a
temperature, and always in the society of Shelley, she had the rather
terrifying if pleasant impression of slipping away out of life. Hogg
brought her back to a sense of reality.
In spite of predictions the child did live and grew. Mary began to feel
easy about it, when at the end of the month she found on waking one
morning that it was dead. This was a great sorrow.
Shelley and Claire continued their walks together, while Mary stayed at
home. She sat knitting and thinking of her little child. “I was a
mother, and am so no longer,” she kept repeating, and at night she
dreamed that the baby was not dead, and that by rubbing it before the
fire they had brought it back to life. Then she awoke to find the cradle
empty. From the streets floated up the hoarse shouting of crowds. It was
a time of riots. France threatened war. Mary saw everything through a
mist of tears.
Claire’s presence in the house vexed her more and more. She was certain
that Claire was in love with Shelley, had always been in love with him.
Percy’s loyalty was self-evident, his morality super-human, angelic; but
he thought it possible to read Petrarch with an impassioned girl, to
direct her studies, to sit up with her the whole night through, without
danger. Mary said to herself: “My charming Shelley understands the elves
better than he does women.”
When she was alone with him in the evening, she confessed her jealousy.
It was a sentiment he could not understand. He thought it base, and that
it belittled his divine Mary. He knew his capacity for love to be
infinite, and that in dividing it with another woman he took away
nothing from his mistress. The company of the wild and brilliant Claire
was very precious to him, but he had to acknowledge that the atmosphere
of this threefold union was becoming irrespirable.
Mary besought him to send Claire away. “Your friend,” as she now always
called her. They tried, during many weeks, to find a place for her as
governess or companion, but the unfortunate reputation which her flight
to France had earned her rendered all such attempts futile.
Claire herself had not the smallest desire to leave. She delighted in
her intellectual intimacy with Percy, and she awaited its inevitable
result without fear. Finally, however, Mary’s gentle firmness carried
the day, and it was arranged that Claire should go to Lynmouth, and
lodge there with a friend of Godwin’s, a Mrs. Bricknell, a widow.
_Mary’s Journal._
“_Friday._—Not very well. After breakfast read Spenser. Shelley
goes out with his friend, he returns first. Construe Ovid—90
lines—Jefferson Hogg returns. Read over the Ovid to Jefferson.
Shelley and the lady walk out. After tea talk. Shelley and his
friend have a last conversation.
“_Saturday._—Claire goes; Shelley walks with her. Jefferson
does not come till five. Gets very anxious about Shelley, goes
out to meet him: returns: it rains. Shelley returns at half-past
six; the business is finished. Read Ovid. Charles Clairmont
comes to tea. Talk of pictures. I begin a new journal with our
regeneration.”
* * *
Claire, exiled to the country, enjoyed after such storm and stress her
first days of profound peace. But she was not the girl to put up for
long with rural solitude. She must have a reason for living—and she did
not fail to find one.
When people are in love they always imagine, quite wrongly, that it is
because they have come across an exceptional being who has inspired them
with the passion. The truth is that love, existing already in the soul,
seeks out a suitable object, and if it does not find one, then creates
it. But if, in an ordinary girl, this love-seeking is unconscious, it
was otherwise with the brilliant and hot-blooded Claire. Realizing the
impossibility of taking Shelley from her sister, or even of sharing him
with her, she deliberately looked round for some other hero on whom to
expend her unemployed affection. Some women in such case send letters to
great writers, or soldiers, or actors. But Claire, who was poetical,
desired a poet.
She found none more worthy of her than George Gordon, Lord Byron, the
man the most worshipped and the most hated in the whole of England. She
knew his poems by heart, Shelley had so often read them to her with
enthusiasm. She knew the stories of vice and wit, of diabolical charm
and infernal cruelty which were woven round his name.
His extraordinary beauty, his title, his genius as a writer, the
boldness of his ideas, the scandals of his love affairs, all contributed
to make of him the perfect hero. He had had mistresses among the highest
in the land, the Countess of Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, and the
unfortunate Lady Caroline Lamb, who the first day that she met him wrote
in her journal: “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”: and then underneath,
“But this pale handsome face holds my destiny.”
He had married, and all London repeated the tale that, when he got into
the carriage after the ceremony, he said to Lady Byron: “You are now my
wife, and that is enough for me to hate you. Were you some one else’s
wife, I might perhaps care about you.” He had treated her with such
contempt that she had been driven to ask for a separation from him at
the end of the first year.
Claire, who sought only for difficult adventures, and had supreme
confidence in herself, found out Byron’s address and decided to chance
her luck.
_Claire to Byron._
“An utter stranger takes the liberty to addressing you. . . . It
is not charity I demand for of that I stand in no need. . . . I
tremble with fear at the fate of this letter. I cannot blame if
it shall be received by you as an impudent imposture. It may
seem a strange assertion, but it is not the less true that I
place my happiness in your hands. . . . If a woman, whose
reputation has yet remained unstained, if without either
guardian or husband to control, she should throw herself on your
mercy, if with a beating heart she should confess the love she
has borne you many years, if she should return your kindness
with fond affection and unbounded devotion, could you betray
her, or would you be silent as the grave? . . . I must entreat
your answer without delay. Address me as E. Trefusis, 21 Noley
Place, Mary Le Bonne.”
Don Juan made no reply. This unknown writer of ornate style was small
game for him. But there is no one more tenacious than a woman tired of
her virtue. Claire returned to the attack a second time. “Sunday
Morning. Lord Byron is requested to state whether seven o’clock this
evening will be convenient to him to receive a lady to communicate with
him on business of peculiar importance. She desires to be admitted alone
and with the utmost privacy.”
Lord Byron sent out word by the servant that he had left town.
Then Claire wrote in her own name that, wanting to go on the stage, and
knowing that Lord Byron was interested in Drury Lane Theatre, she would
like to ask his advice. Byron’s reply was to recommend her to call on
the stage manager. Undeterred, she made, at once, a skilful change of
front. It was not a theatrical career but the literary life which she
now desired. She had written half a novel and would so very much like to
submit it to Byron’s judgment. As he continued to keep silence, or to
send evasive replies, she risked offering him the only thing which a man
with any self-respect seldom refuses.
“I may appear to you imprudent, vicious, but one thing at least time
shall show you, that I love gently and with affection, that I am
incapable of anything approaching to the feeling of revenge or malice. I
do assure you your future shall be mine.
“Have you any objection to the following plan? On Thursday evening we
may go out of town together by some stage or mail about the distance of
ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and unknown; we can return
early the following morning. I have arranged everything here so that the
slightest suspicion may not be excited. Pray do so with your people.
“Will you admit me for two moments to _settle_ with you _where_? Indeed,
I will not stay an instant after you tell me to go. . . . Do what you
will or go where you will, refuse to see me and behave unkindly, I shall
ever remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of
your countenance.”
It was then that Don Juan, trapped and tired by the long pursuit,
decided to accept his defeat. He had already decided to leave England
and fix himself in Switzerland or Italy, and the prospect of a speedy
departure set welcome limits to this unwelcome amour.
CHAPTER XXIII
ARIEL AND DON JUAN
Don Juan counted, however, without the energy of Elvira. Claire had made
up her mind to follow him to Switzerland, and this dark-eyed girl was a
flame and a force. She arranged that the Shelleys should chaperon her,
knowing that they, too, would welcome the idea of a change.
Since she left them, they had been living at Bishopsgate, on the border
of Windsor Forest, and beneath the oak-shades of the Great Park Shelley
had composed his first long poem since _Queen Mab_. This was _Alastor,
or the Spirit of Solitude_, an imaginative interpretation of his
spiritual experiences, and a record of the exquisite mountain, river,
and woodland scenery of the past year. The tone differs from that of his
previous works. Melancholy and resignation soften down the confident
assertions of earlier years, and religious and moral theories, if still
serving as a peg, get somewhat pushed into the background.
In the preface he shows the Poet thirsting for love and dying because he
cannot find it. But, says Shelley, it is better to die than to live as
do the comfortable worldlings, “who, deluded by no generous error,
instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no
illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing
no hopes beyond—yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind,
rejoicing neither in human joy, nor mourning with human grief; these and
such as they have their appointed curse. . . . They are morally dead.
They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the
world, nor benefactors of their country . . . they live unfruitful
lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.”
While Shelley had no regrets for his actions, all the same, life in
England had become odious to him. Mary, as an unmarried wife, suffered
from her social ostracism, and thought that if they went abroad, where
their story would be unknown, she would have more chance of making
friends.
She had given birth to a second child in January, 1816, a fine little
boy whom she had named William, after Godwin. The expenses of the
household, with the addition of a nurse, were heavy, the income small.
Life in Switzerland was said to be cheap; Claire, at least, had little
difficulty in persuading her that it was so.
As in the time of their first flight from London the extraordinary trio
crossed France, Burgundy, the Jura, and, reaching Geneva, settled down
at Sécheron, one of its suburbs, in the Hôtel d’Angleterre. The house
was on the edge of the lake, from its windows they saw the sun sparkling
on every wave-crest of the blue water, and in the distance the black
mountain-ridges that seemed to quiver in the sunny atmosphere. Farther
away still, a brilliant and solid-looking white cloud spoke of the snow
peaks of the Alps. The change to this golden climate after English
greyness and London gloom was delicious. They hired a boat, and passed
long days upon the water, reading and sleeping.
* * *
While they lived thus, a band of happy children, with the blue sky above
them, and the blue lake beneath, Childe Harold in the most sumptuous of
travelling carriages was crossing Flanders on his way to join them.
England, in one of those crazy fits of virtue which alternate with
periods of the most amazing licence, had just hounded Byron from her
shores. When he entered a ball-room every woman would leave it, as
though he were the devil in person. He determined to shake for ever from
his shoes the dust of so hypocritical a land.
His departure was accompanied by the most frenzied curiosity. Society,
which punishes cruelly any revolt of the elemental instincts,
nevertheless, in her heart of hearts, admires the rebel and envies him.
At Dover, where the Pilgrim embarked, a double line of spectators stood
on either side of the gangway. Great ladies borrowed the clothes of
their chamber-maids, so as to mix unobserved with the crowd. People
pointed out to one another the enormous packing-cases containing his
sofa, his books, his services of china and glass.
The sea was rough, and Byron reminded his travelling companions that his
grandfather Admiral Byron was nicknamed “Foul-weather Jack” because he
never put to sea without a squall blowing up. He took a certain pleasure
in painting his own portrait against this traditional stormy background.
Unfortunately, he would have his misfortunes transcendent.
* * *
A few days later there was great commotion at the Hôtel d’Angleterre.
Every one was on edge expecting the arrival of the noble lord. Claire
was tremulous in spite of her audacity, Shelley, in the happiest
spirits, was impatient. He was not shocked by the affair between Byron
and Claire. On the contrary he hoped to see the same ties formed between
Byron and his sister-in-law as existed between himself and Mary.
The Shelleys were not disappointed by Byron’s first appearance. His
beauty was extraordinary. To begin with, you were struck by his air of
pride and intellect; next, you noticed the moonlight paleness of his
skin, his splendid dark blue eyes, his black and slightly curling hair,
the perfect line of his eyebrows. The nose and chin were firm and
well-drawn, the mouth full and voluptuous. His only defect appeared in
his walk. “Club-footed” was said of him. “Cloven-footed” he insinuated
of himself, for he preferred to be considered diabolic rather than
infirm. Mary saw that his lameness embarrassed him, for whenever he had
to take a few steps before spectators he made some satanic jest. In the
register-book of the hotel, against the word “age” he wrote “a hundred.”
Byron and Shelley got on well together. Byron was glad to find him a man
of his own class, who in spite of hardships had retained the charming
ease of manner peculiar to the young aristocrat. His cultivation was
astounding. Byron, too, had read enormously, but without Shelley’s
serious application. Shelley had read to know, Byron had read to dazzle,
and Byron was perfectly well aware of the difference. He felt, too, the
instant conviction that Shelley’s will was a force, a bent bow, while
his own floated loose on the current at the mercy of his passions and of
his mistresses.
Shelley, the least vain of men, did not observe this admiration for him,
which Byron took care to hide. While listening to the third canto of
_Childe Harold_ he was moved to enthusiasm and discouragement. In the
superb energy of the poem, which rose and swelled, irresistibly like a
flood, he recognized genius and despaired of ever equalling it.
But if the poet filled him with admiration, the man filled him with
astonishment. He had expected a Titan in revolt, and he found a wounded
aristocrat fully alive to the pleasures and pains of vanity, which
seemed to Shelley so puerile. Byron had outraged convention, but, all
the same, he believed in it. It had stood in the path of his desires,
and he had flung it aside, but with regret. That which Shelley had done
ingenuously, he had done consciously. Banished from society, he valued
nothing so much as social success. A bad husband, it was only to
legitimate love that he paid respect. His mouth overflowed with
cynicism, but it was by way of reprisals, not from conviction. Between
marriage and depravity he recognized no middle path. He had sought to
terrify his compatriots by acting an audacious part, but only because he
had despaired of conquering them by acting a traditional one.
Shelley looked to women as a source of exaltation, Byron as a pretext
for idling. Shelley angelic, too angelic, venerated them. Byron human,
too human, desired them and talked of them in the most contemptuous
fashion. “It is the plague of these women,” said he, “that you cannot
live with them or without them. . . . I cannot make up my mind whether
or not women have souls. My beau-ideal would be a woman with talent
enough to understand and value mine, but not sufficient to be able to
shine herself.”
The upshot of certain of their conversations was surprising. Shelley,
mystical without knowing it, managed to scandalize Byron, a Don Juan in
spite of himself.
This did not prevent them from being excellent company one for the
other. When Shelley, always a great fisher of souls, tried to win over
his friend to a less futile conception of life, Byron defended his point
of view by brilliant paradoxes which delighted Shelley the artist, as
much as they pained Shelley the moralist. Both were passionately fond of
the water. They bought a boat, keeled and clinker-built, in which they
went on the lake every evening with Mary, Claire, and Byron’s medical
attendant, the handsome young Italian, Polidori. Byron and Shelley,
sitting silent, would ship their oars to follow with their gaze fleeting
shapes amidst the moon-lit clouds; Claire would sing, and her warm,
delicious voice carried their thoughts with it over the starry waters in
a voluptuous flight.
One night of strong wind Byron, defying the storm, said he would sing
them an Albanian song. “Now be sentimental and give me all your
attention.” It was a strange wild howl that he gave forth, laughing the
while at their disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody.
From that day onward Mary and Claire named him “the Albaneser,” and
“Albé” for short.
The two poets made a literary pilgrimage round the lake. They visited
the spot where Rousseau has placed his _Nouvelle Héloïse_, “Clarens,
sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love”; and Lausanne and Ferney, full
of memories of Gibbon and Voltaire.
Shelley’s enthusiasm gained Byron, who wrote under its influence some of
his finest lines. Near Meillerie one of the sudden lake-storms nearly
upset the boat. Byron began to strip. Shelley, who could not swim, sat
still with folded arms. His calmness increased Byron’s admiration for
him, although he hid it more carefully than ever. Long afterwards
Shelley, speaking of this storm, said, “I knew that my companion would
try to save me, and it was a humiliating idea.”
Sick of hotel life and the impertinent curiosity of their
fellow-boarders, the Shelleys hired a cottage at Coligny on the edge of
the lake. Byron settled himself at the Villa Diodati, a short distance
away. The two houses were only separated by a vineyard. Here, some
vine-dressers at work in the early morning saw Claire come out of
Byron’s villa and run across to Shelley’s. She lost a slipper on the
way, but ashamed of being seen did not stop to pick it up. The honest
Swiss peasants, chuckling hugely, made haste to carry the slipper of the
English “Miss” to the mayor of the village.
Her love affair did not prosper. She was with child, and Byron was
utterly tired of her. He let her see it. For a moment perhaps he had
admired her voice, and her vivacity, but very soon she bored him. Nor
did he feel himself in any way bound to this young woman who had thrust
herself upon him with such pertinacity. . . .
“‘Carry off’ quotha! and ‘girl.’ I should like to know _who_ has been
carried off except poor dear _me_. I have been more ravished myself than
anybody since the Trojan War. I am accused of being hard on women. It
may be so, but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been
sacrificed _to_ them and _by_ them.”
Shelley went to talk with him of Claire’s future, and of the child’s. As
to Claire’s, Byron was perfectly indifferent. All he wanted was to get
rid of her as soon as possible and never to see her again. Shelley had
nothing to say on this point, but he defended the rights of the unborn
child.
At first Byron had the idea of confiding it to his sister Augusta.
Claire refusing her consent, he then undertook to look after the child
himself as soon as it was a year old, on condition that he should be
absolutely master of it.
It became difficult for the Shelleys to remain in his neighbourhood. Not
that there was any coldness between the two men, for while Shelley had
found the negotiations for Claire painful, they had seemed to him
perfectly natural. But Claire herself suffered, and Mary was often
indignant at Byron’s cynical talk. When he declared that women had no
right to eat at the same table with men, that their proper place was in
the harem or gynæceum, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft trembled with
anger. Once more she was homesick for English scenes. A house beside
some English river now appeared to her, at this distance away, a haven
of peace. Shelley wrote to his friends, Peacock and Hogg, to find
something for them, and the journey home began.
* * *
After they had gone, Byron wrote to his sister:
“Now don’t scold; but what could I do? A foolish girl, in spite
of all I could say or do, would come after me, or rather went
before—for I found her here—and I had all the plague possible
to persuade her to go back again, but at last she went. Now,
dearest, I do most truly tell thee that I could not help this,
that I did all I could to prevent it. I was not in love nor have
any love left for any; but I could not exactly play the Stoic
with a woman, who had scrambled eight hundred miles to
unphilosophize me. . . . And now you know all that I know of the
matter, and it’s over.”
Shelley remained in correspondence with Byron and did not give up hopes
of “saving” him. Mingled with an immense deference for the great poet,
Shelley’s letters show a trace of haughty disapproval of the character
of the man. He opposed to Byron’s constant anxiety concerning his
reputation, his success, and what was said of him in London, a picture
of true glory.
“Is it nothing to create greatness and goodness, destined
perhaps to infinite extensions? Is it nothing to become a source
whence the minds of other men will draw strength and beauty?
. . . What would Humanity be if Homer and Shakespeare had never
written? . . . Not that I advise you to aspire to Fame. Your
work should spring from a purer, simpler source. You should
desire nothing more than to express your own thoughts, and to
address yourself to the sympathy of those who are capable of
thinking as you do. Fame follows those whom she is unworthy to
guide.”
Lord Byron, who was then on his way to Venice, read these lofty counsels
with a weary indifference. Exacting veneration bored him.
CHAPTER XXIV
GRAVES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE
Of the three young girls who had given life and gaiety to the house in
Skinner Street, one only, Fanny Imlay, was left. She alone, who was
neither Godwin’s child, nor yet Mrs. Godwin’s, lived at home with them
and called them “papa” and “mamma.” She alone, so gentle and so loving,
had found neither lover nor husband. Modest and unselfish, these are
virtues which men praise—and pass by. For a moment she had wondered
whether Percy would not think of her, and with a beating heart had begun
a correspondence with him. But Mary’s hazel eyes had quenched the hopes
to which the timid Fanny had never given definite form.
In this silent home, saddened by money-worries, it was on Fanny that
Mrs. Godwin wreaked her ill-humour, while Godwin let her understand that
he could not continue to keep her, and that she ought to see about
earning her own living. She asked nothing better, and would have liked
to become a teacher, but the flight of Mary and Jane had thrown a mantle
of disrepute over the household, and the heads of schools distrusted the
way in which the Godwin girls had been brought up.
Sick at heart and with a touch of envy, Fanny admired from afar her
sisters’ life of wild adventure, a life which was sometimes dangerous,
but always amusing. How she, too, would have loved to be over there at
Lake Leman, in the company of the famous Lord Byron, of whom all London
was talking!
“Is his face as fine as in your portrait of him? . . . Tell me
also if he has a pleasing voice, for that has a great charm with
me. Does he come into your house in a careless, friendly,
dropping-in manner? I wish to know, though not from idle
curiosity, whether he was capable of acting in the manner that
London scandal-mongers say he did. I cannot think from his
writings that he can be such a _detestable being_. Do answer me
these questions, for where I love the poet, I should like to
respect the man.
“Shelley’s boat excursion with him must have been very
delightful. . . . I long very much to read the poems the ‘Poet’
has written on the spot where Julie was drowned. When will they
be published in England? May I see them in manuscript? Say you
have a friend who has few pleasures, and is very impatient to
read them. . . . It is impossible to tell the good that POETS do
their fellow creatures, at least those that can feel. Whilst I
read I am a poet. I am inspired with good feelings—feelings
that create perhaps a more permanent good in me than all the
everyday preachments in the world; it counteracts the dross
which one gives on the everyday concerns of life and tells us
there is something yet in the world to aspire to—something by
which succeeding ages may be made happy and perhaps better.”
Mary and Claire would read these charming letters with a condescending
pity. Poor Fanny! How Skinner Street! Always thinking that Godwin’s
novels, Godwin’s debts, and Mrs. Godwin’s bad tempers were the most
important things in the world! Fanny’s slavery gave the two others a
more vivid appreciation of their own freedom. Her loneliness enhanced
for them the value of their lovers’ society, and, in their compassion
for her, Mary got Shelley to buy her a watch before leaving Geneva.
When the Shelleys and Claire came back to England, to settle down at
Bath, they saw Fanny as they passed through London. She was depressed,
and spoke of nothing but her loneliness and her uselessness; no one
wanted her. In saying good-bye to Shelley, her voice quivered. Yet she
wrote to him at Bath with the same affectionate frankness as before,
although her letters now had that indefinable note of reproach which
those who lead a death-in-life feel towards those whose life is filled
with living. Godwin, his literary work broken into by fresh money
troubles, became more and more grumpy; an aunt, Everina Wollstonecraft,
who had promised to take Fanny as governess in her school, wrote to say
that a sister of Mary and Claire would certainly be too terrifying a
teacher for the narrow-minded middle-class parents.
One morning the Shelleys received from Bristol a curious letter, in
which Fanny bade them farewell in mysterious sentences: “I am going to a
place whence I hope never to return.”
Mary implored Shelley to go to Bristol at once. He came home during the
night without any news. Next morning he went again, and this time
brought Mary lamentable tidings. Fanny had left Bristol for Swansea by
the Cambrian Coach, and had put up at the Mackworth Arms Inn. She had
gone at once to her room telling the chamber-maid that she was tired.
When she did not come down next morning, her door was forced, and she
was found lying dead, her long brown hair spread about her. By her was
the little Genevan watch given her by Mary and Shelley. On the table was
a bottle of laudanum and the beginning of a letter:
“I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to
put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was
unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to
those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to
promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you
pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that
such a creature ever existed as . . .”
Godwin had taught in _Political Justice_ that suicide is not a crime;
the only difficulty being to decide in each individual case whether the
social advantage of thirty supplementary years of life forbids recourse
to a voluntary death. After the tragedy he wrote to Mary for the first
time since her flight. It was to implore the three outcasts to avoid
anything leading to publicity, “which to a mind in anguish is one of the
severest of all trials.”
* * *
Shelley’s nerves were badly shaken by Fanny’s terrible death, and Mrs.
Godwin in her amiable way insinuated she had killed herself for love of
him. He then remembered certain signs of emotion he had seen in her, and
reproached himself for having always considered her as of a slightly
lower status. Perhaps he had, though quite unwittingly, awakened her
love at the moment when, deserted by Harriet, he sought a shelter in any
feminine tenderness. Perhaps she had weighed and counted and analysed
with care, words and glances, into which he had meant to put mere
friendliness. “How difficult it is to understand the soul of another;
How much suffering one may cause without wishing it, or knowing it; How
one may live in presence of the most profound, sometimes of the most
despairful feelings without even suspecting their existence!” It does
not suffice therefore to be sincere, nor to have good intentions. You
can do just as much harm through not understanding as through
unkindness. He was plunged into a blank despondency.
To shake it off, he went to spend a few days alone with a young literary
critic, Leigh Hunt, who had praised his poetry with intelligence and
enthusiasm. Hunt lived on Hampstead Heath in the Vale of Health, a spot
as tree-embowered and almost as charming to-day as it was then. His wife
Marianne was homely and hospitable. He had a whole brood of jolly
children with whom Shelley could walk and play. There, he could forget
for a time poor Fanny and Godwin. The visit was short but delicious, and
he came home much cheered.
On his return, he found awaiting him a letter from Hookham, which he
opened eagerly, for he had asked Hookham to find out for him what
Harriet was doing. He had had no news of her for two months. She had
drawn her allowance in March and in September, being then in her
father’s house. But since October nothing was known of her.
“My dear Sir,” Hookham wrote, “It is nearly a month since I had
the pleasure of receiving a letter from you, and you have no
doubt felt surprised that I did not reply to it sooner. It was
my intention to do so; but on enquiring, I found the utmost
difficulty in obtaining the information you desire relative to
Mrs. Shelley and your children.
“While I was yet endeavouring to discover Mrs. Shelley’s
address, information was brought me that she was dead—that she
had destroyed herself. You will believe that I did not credit
the report. I called at the house of a friend of Mr. Westbrook;
my doubt led to conviction. I was informed that she was taken
from the Serpentine river on Tuesday last. . . . Little or no
information was laid before the jury which sat on the
body. . . . The verdict was _found drowned_. Your children are
well and are both, I believe, in London.”
Shelley went up to town in an agonizing condition of mind. With horror
he saw in imagination the blonde and childlike head, which he had so
loved, befouled by the mud of the river-bed, green and swollen through
its sojourn in the water. He asked himself how was it possible she could
have abandoned her children and chosen so dreadful a death.
The Hunts and Hookham showed him every kindness, and told him all they
knew. A paragraph in _The Times_ stated: “On Thursday a respectable
female far advanced in pregnancy was taken out of the Serpentine river,
and brought home to her residence in Queen Street, Brompton, having been
missed for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger. A
want of honour in her own conduct is supposed to have led to this fatal
catastrophe, her husband being abroad.”
The gossips of Queen Street repeated the little they had gleaned:
Harriet no longer received letters from her husband, because her former
landlady had failed to forward them, and she had given up all hope of
his ever coming back to her. She had fallen, from despair. Living first
with an army officer, he had been obliged to leave her on his regiment
being ordered to India. Then, unable to endure the loneliness of life,
she found a protector of humble grade, said to be a groom, and that he
deserted her. The Westbrooks had deprived her of her children, and
refused to receive her back. She was said to be in the family way,
absolutely alone, and terrified at the approaching scandal. Then, came
the body in the river.
Shelley passed an appalling night. . . . “Far advanced in
pregnancy. . . .” What an end to her life . . . what madness. . . .
Detailed and intimate memories of poor Harriet crowded back into his
mind against his will, and he saw in imagination with terrible vividness
the last scenes. . . . Harriet in love, Harriet in terror, Harriet in
despair . . . every expression he knew too well. Ah, this name which
during a few years had meant the whole world to him, for the future he
must associate with all that is basest and most vile! “Harriet, my wife,
a prostitute! Harriet, my wife, a suicide!”
There were moments when he asked himself if he were not responsible, but
he pushed this idea from him with all his strength. “I did my duty.
Always on every occasion in life, I have done what seemed to me the
loyal and disinterested thing to do. When I left her, I no longer loved
her. I assured her existence to the utmost of my means, and even beyond
them. Never have I treated her with unkindness . . . it is those odious
Westbrooks alone. . . . Ought I to have sacrificed my sanity and my
life, to one who was unfaithful to me, and second-rate?”
His reason told him “No.” Hogg and Peacock, who surrounded him with
affectionate attentions, told him “No.” He besought them to repeat it to
him, for at instants he seemed to glimpse some mysterious and
super-human duty towards Harriet, in which he had failed. “In breaking
traditional ties one sets free in man unknown forces, the consequences
of which one cannot foresee. . . . Freedom is only good for the strong
. . . for those who are worthy of it. . . . Harriet’s soul was
weak. . . .” Ah, little head, blonde and childlike, of drowned
Harriet. . . .
Next day he wrote a tender letter to Mary, eager to dwell by contrast on
her gentle serenity. He asked her to become a mother to his “poor babes,
Ianthe and Charles.” His counsel had just informed him that the
Westbrooks would take action to contest his guardianship of the
children, on the pretext that his irreligious opinions, and his living
in concubinage with Miss Godwin, rendered him unfit to bring them up.
CHAPTER XXV
THE RULES OF THE GAME
In what way does a marriage ceremony, religious or civil, add to the
happiness of a pair of lovers, deeply smitten and full of confidence in
one another? The event proved that it can at least make joy blossom on
the countenance of a pedant. Godwin’s exhibited an incredible
satisfaction on learning that “the seducer” was going to make “an honest
woman” of his daughter, and that, eventually, she would become Lady
Shelley. He thus inspired in his ex-disciple a contempt for his
character, full measure, pressed down, and running over.
At first there had been some hesitation as to whether it were decent to
celebrate the marriage so soon after Harriet’s death, but the
authorities on social etiquette declared that it would not do to wait
any longer for the Church’s blessing on a union which Nature had already
blessed twice over.
Just a fortnight after the body of the first Mrs. Shelley had been taken
out of the Serpentine, Mary and Percy were married by a clergyman in the
church of St. Mildred, Bread Street. Godwin, beaming all over his face,
and Mrs. Godwin, simpering and pretentious, signed as witnesses. That
evening, for the first time since they ran away, the Shelleys dined in
Skinner Street.
The family feast was a lugubrious one. There, in the little dining-room,
Fanny had moved to and fro; there, Harriet had sat in her happy early
wedded days; their ghosts, suffering and unsatisfied, continued to haunt
the room and torture the living. It is true that Godwin’s ill-temper had
been changed by the morning’s ceremony into an excess of urbanity, but
too many memories troubled the guests to make any real cordiality
possible.
That night Mary wrote in her journal: “Go to London. A marriage takes
place. Draw. Read Lord Chesterfield and Locke.” Mary had good nerves.
Poor drowned Harriet was never a patch on her.
* * *
Nevertheless, it was but right that the news of so splendid a marriage
should be sent to every Godwin in the land. The Philosopher wrote to
Hull Godwin:
“DEAR BROTHER,
“Were it not that you have a family of your own, and can see by
them how little shrubs grow into tall trees, you would hardly
imagine that my boy, born the other day, is now fourteen, and
that my daughter is between nineteen and twenty. The piece of
news I have to tell, however, is that I went to church with this
tall girl some little time ago to be married. Her husband is the
eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, of Field Place, in the county
of Sussex, Baronet. So that according to the vulgar ideas of the
world she is well married, and I have great hopes that the young
man will make her a good husband. You will wonder, I daresay,
how a girl without a penny of fortune should make so good a
match. But such are the ups and downs of the world. For my part,
I care but little comparatively about wealth, so that it should
be her destiny in life to be respectable, virtuous, and
contented.”
The letter closes with a word of cool thanks for a ham and a turkey sent
to the Skinner Street household at Christmas.
But the formal marriage brought about one real advantage. The
“concubinage” argument, advanced by those who wished to deprive Shelley
of his children, fell to the ground. The Westbrooks, however, did not
give in. By the voice of the retired publican, the young Ianthe aged
three, and Charles aged two, addressed a petition to the Lord Chancellor
in which they said: “Our father avows himself to be an Atheist, and has
written and published a certain work called _Queen Mab_ with notes, and
other works, wherein he blasphemously denies the existence of God as the
Creator of the Universe, the sanctity of marriage, and all the most
sacred principles of morality.” For which reasons these precocious and
virtuous infants prayed that their persons and fortunes might not be
placed in the power of an unworthy father, but under the protection of
persons of the highest morality, such as their maternal grandfather and
their kind Aunt Eliza.
Shelley’s counsel took care to say nothing in defence of _Queen Mab_:
there was nothing to be said at that time, and in that place, the Court
of Chancery. He confined himself to denying the importance of a work
written by a boy of nineteen.
“Notwithstanding Mr. Shelley’s violent philippics against marriage, Mr.
Shelley marries twice before he is twenty-five! He is no sooner
liberated from the despotic chains which he speaks of with so much
horror and contempt, than he forges a new set, and becomes again a
willing victim of this horrid despotism! It is hoped that a
consideration of this marked difference between his opinions and his
actions will induce the Lord Chancellor not to think very seriously of
this boyish and silly publication.” As to the proposal of placing the
children with their mother’s family: “We think it right to say that Mr.
Westbrook formerly kept a coffee-house, and is certainly in no respect
qualified to be the guardian of Mr. Shelley’s children. To Miss
Westbrook there are more decided objections: she is illiterate and
vulgar, and it was by her advice, with her active concurrence, and it
may be said by her _management_, that Mr. Shelley, when of the age of
nineteen, ran away with Miss Harriet Westbrook, then of the age of
seventeen, and married her in Scotland. Miss Westbrook, the proposed
guardian, was then nearly thirty, and, if she had acted as she ought to
have done as the guardian and friend of her younger sister, all this
misery and disgrace to both families would have been avoided.”
His counsel’s ingenious notion of winning his client’s case by
renouncing in that client’s name the opinions of his youth, seemed to
Shelley a piece of disgusting hypocrisy. He, therefore, drew up for the
Lord Chancellor a statement in which he set forth that his ideas on
marriage had not changed, and that if he had made his conduct conform to
the customs of society, he in no way had renounced the liberty to
criticize those customs.
The Lord Chancellor in his judgment remarks: “This is a case in which a
father has demonstrated that he must and does deem it to be a matter of
duty to recommend to those whose opinions and habits he may take upon
himself to form conduct as moral and virtuous, which the law calls upon
me to consider as immoral and vicious. . . . I cannot, therefore, in
these conditions, entrust him with the guardianship of these children.”
But the Lord Chancellor refused to confide them to the odious
Westbrooks. He put them under the care of an Army doctor, named Hume, of
Brent End Lodge, Hanwell, who would place the boy, when seven years old,
at a good private school under the superintendence of an orthodox
clergyman. As to the little Ianthe, she would be brought up at home by
Mrs. Hume, who would see that she said her morning prayers, and asked a
blessing on her food. Mrs. Hume would also put into her hands improving
books, and, to a certain extent would encourage the reading of poetry,
Shakespeare for instance, if carefully Bowdlerized. The whole cost, one
hundred a year for each child. Mr. Shelley might visit them twelve times
a year, but in the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Hume. Mr. John Westbrook
might see them the same number of times, but, if he wished it, he might
see them without the Humes being present.
This sentence was very bitter to Shelley. It sanctioned officially so to
say, and in reasonable and moderate formulas, his exile from the
community of civilized men. It was like a brevet of incurable folly.
* * *
While the case was being fought out, he had bought a house in the
pleasant little country town of Great Marlow. Ariel at last consented to
have a home like other people. One room, big enough for a village
ball-room, was fitted up as a library, and decorated with casts of Venus
and Apollo. There was a very big garden: in this during the spring and
summer of 1817 might be seen two babies, William and Clara Shelley, and
a third child of unusual beauty, Alba, daughter of Lord Byron and
Claire. Her father was said to be leading a wild life at Venice. Claire
received no news from him.
Shelley’s recent trials had left their traces on his countenance. He was
thinner, more hectic, and stooped more than ever. A violent pain in his
side prevented him from sleeping, and the doctors, unable to cure it,
said it was “a nervous disorder.”
His state of mind was despondent. Life had brought him so much
suffering, his good intentions had been repaid by such evil results,
that he had taken a horror of every sort of action. He felt an intense
but undefined desire to withdraw from the perilous throngs of men, men
whose reactions cannot be predicted, and who are swayed by such terrible
gusts of passion. The regeneration of the real world now appeared to him
so unrealizable that he no longer sought satisfaction therein for his
loves and hatreds, but looked for it in the more docile and malleable
world of the imagination. Subjects for poems, vague and shadow-like,
floated round him, which feeding on his sorrowful thoughts, gradually
took form at the expense of his powers of action.
The aërial edifices, the crystalline palaces, which with their filmy
vapours had so long hidden from him the actual world, seemed to detach
themselves from earth and to float up as though drawn by an invisible
force. They did not melt away, but swaying with a gentle movement rose
in all their translucent glory to the high realms of pure Poetry. In the
place which they had occupied, Shelley now saw the world as it is, the
brown earth arduous to cultivate, the harsh faces of men, women full of
nerves and hysteria, the cruel and obstructive society from which he
longed to escape.
The poem which occupied his thoughts the oftenest was the story of an
ideal Revolution. He did not want the scenes of bloodshed which ruined
for him the otherwise inspiring story of the French Revolution. He
wanted his Revolution to be the work of a pair of lovers. His personal
experience had taught him that only the love of a woman can inspire a
sublime courage.
Laon and Cythna, two ideal anarchists, were to be the transfigured
portraits of himself and Mary. He would make them die at the stake, for
their ideas, as he would have liked to die himself, exchanging a last
kiss in the midst of the flames, a kiss so delicious that the agony
would become a sort of voluptuous refinement of ecstasy. For him love
did not attain its maximum unless he could associate it with thoughts
and sufferings shared in common. Now that he and Mary, married and
fairly well off, seemed about to begin an easier life, he desired to
escape from this somewhat commonplace happiness, and to live in
imagination the magnificent and perilous destiny which might have been
his in other lands and other ages.
He passed his time among the little islands of the Thames where the
swans build their nests. Lying at the bottom of his boat completely
hidden by the high grasses, he sought his inspiration in gazing up at
the changing skies. The study of fleeting, interweaving colour and form
had always given him immense pleasure, and every day he felt more
strongly that his real mission in life was to seize the most transitory
shades of beauty, and to fix them for ever in words buoyant and
beautiful as themselves.
The entire summer was given to this entrancing work. Then he was obliged
to go up to London. Money was getting scarce; he had so many mouths to
feed. Besides Mary and the children, Claire and Allegra were dependent
on him, and very often the entire Godwin household. His new friend,
Leigh Hunt, with a wife and five children, needed help. He had promised
Peacock a hundred a year so that he might go on writing his fine novels.
Charles Clairmont, who was nothing to him, had fallen in love when in
France with an ugly woman several years older than himself and of course
penniless; it was Shelley who provided the means for marriage. Just as
formerly, he had to go to the money-lenders in order to satisfy these
endless claims. “You’re a thoroughbred,” Godwin once told him, “whom the
horse-flies prevent from taking your spring.”
Happily for him, Mary managed to bring him back to earth, and he forgave
her, seeing her now only as the Cythna of his poem. But she, an
over-anxious hostess, did not care for their too assiduous visitors,
such as Peacock, who dropped in every evening “without being asked,” and
drank up a whole bottle of wine. She wanted Shelley to find a purchaser
for the Marlow House which they had bought too hastily. She saw he
suffered from cold, and wished to take him away to a warmer climate,
perhaps to Italy.
“Dearest love,” she wrote to him in London. . . . “Pray in your letters
do be more explicit! You have advertised the house, but have you given
Madocks any orders about how to answer applicants? And have you settled
yet for Italy or the sea? And do you know how to get money to convey us
there, and to buy the things that will be absolutely necessary before
our departure? And can you do anything for my father before you go? Or,
after all, would it not be as well to inhabit a small house by the
seashore where our expenses would be much less than they are at present?
You have not yet mentioned to Godwin your thoughts of Italy; but if you
determine soon, I would have you do it, as those things are always
better to be talked of some days before they take place.
“I took my first walk to-day! What a dreadfully cold place this house
is! I was shivering over a fire and the garden looked cold and dismal,
but so soon as I got into the road I found to my infinite surprise that
the sun was shining and the air warm and delightful.
“I wish Willy to be my companion in my future walks; to further which
plan will you send down if possible by Monday’s coach, a sealskin fur
hat for him? It must be a fashionable round shape, _for a boy_ mention
particularly, and have a narrow gold ribbon round it, that it may be
taken in if too large. . . . I am just now surrounded by babes. Alba is
scratching and crowing, William amusing himself with wrapping a shawl
round him, and Miss Clara staring at the fire. . . . Adieu, dearest
love! I want to say again that you may fully answer me, how very, very
anxious I am to know the whole extent of your present difficulties and
pursuits.”
One source of annoyance to Mary was the presence of Alba in the house.
The neighbours had been told that she was the child of a lady in London
and had been sent to the country for her health, but anyone could see
from Claire’s behaviour that the child was hers. The pure-minded jumped
at once to the conclusion that Shelley was the father. The old
accusations of promiscuity again reared their heads, and Mary’s
prudishness suffered from it. One of the reasons for which she wished to
go to Italy was that the journey would enable them to take the little
girl out to Lord Byron.
Shelley’s one wish also was to depart. The ties of family, of
friendship, of business, had raised round him intangible walls behind
which he was stifling. His will was rock-like, but life’s little waves,
perfidious and unconcerned, ate away at it ceaselessly. In England where
the highest legal dignity had taken from him his civic rights, he had
the sensation of standing always in the pillory. It seemed to him that
in flying from England, he would become again a free and aërial spirit,
that in a new country his life would be like a sheet of white paper on
which he could compose a new existence in the same way that he could
compose a poem.
When their departure was fixed, Mary asked to have the children
baptized. She thought it was better for them to start in life by
observing the Rules of the Game. Shelley agreed, and at the same time
that William Shelley and Clara Everina Shelley were christened, Byron’s
daughter was christened too under the names of Clara Allegra.
CHAPTER XXVI
“QUEEN OF MARBLE AND OF MUD”
The clear sky of Italy, the constant cloudless sky. Once more the
caravan of three went down towards the lands of forgetfulness and
sunshine. The babies and nursemaids who this time went with it, were
hardly any drag on its rapid and whimsical progress.
Milan was reached by way of the Mont Cenis, where the first halt was
made to await news of Byron to whom Shelley had written informing him of
the arrival of his daughter. Shelley passed his days in the Cathedral
reading the _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_, in a solitary spot behind the
altar where the light of day beneath the storied window is yellow and
dim. Churches no longer inspired in him the horror they used to do. He
was surprised to find that since he had suffered so keenly, no place now
seemed to fit his feelings better or to be a finer background to the
greatness of human passions than a church. In the company of Dante, and
in the midst of a symphony of warm, rich colours, the Catholic religion
no longer seemed to be the invention of charlatans.
Byron’s answer came. Nothing on earth would induce him to see Claire,
and he would leave at once any town to which she should come. As to the
child, he was willing to undertake the charge of its education, but his
possession must be absolute. Shelley considered that this condition was
cruel, and pleaded with Byron to soften it. But Byron, who above all
things dreaded scenes with Claire, refused to cede an iota. A Venetian
met in Milan gave tidings that the “English Lord” was leading a life of
debauchery, and keeping a whole harem. Such news was hardly reassuring
for Allegra’s education, and Shelley begged Claire to give up all idea
of help from Byron rather than let him have the child. As usual he
undertook to pay for everything himself. But Claire, proud of Allegra’s
birth, wanted to obtain for her all the advantages of it. She had every
confidence in Elise the Swiss nurse who had brought the baby up, and she
decided to send them both to Venice. In spite of Shelley’s affectionate
remonstrances Allegra was handed over to her father.
* * *
Disquieting news of the child soon came to trouble Claire. Byron had
only kept it a few weeks. At first very proud of its beauty and of
seeing it admired and made much of by the Venetians on the Piazza, he
soon tired of this and allowed Mrs. Hoppner, wife of the English Consul,
to take charge of it. Who was this Mrs. Hoppner? Elise wrote that she
was a very kind lady, but Claire began to suffer from terrible remorse.
During a whole year she had never been parted from the child for a
single hour. She adored it. Allegra was the only creature in the whole
world she could call her very own, since her family renounced her, and
her lover refused to see her. Shelley, unable to bear the sight of her
misery, offered to go with her to Venice. Mary consented to the
arrangement in spite of her dislike at seeing these two start on a
journey together. Paolo, the servant, who was energetic and seemed
reliable, went with them as courier. In order not to irritate Byron who
had forbidden Claire to enter any town where he might happen to be, it
was decided that she should stop at Padua and wait there the upshot of
Shelley’s embassy. But finding herself so near to Allegra, she could not
resist going on. She thought that by keeping her presence secret she
could manage to see the child, and so she and Shelley took a gondola and
went down the Brenta. They crossed the lagoon in the middle of the
night, in a violent storm of wind, rain and lightning, while in the
distance the lights of Venice shone dimly behind a curtain of mist.
The next morning they went to the Hoppners who received them with
courtesy and kindness. Mrs. Hoppner sent at once for Elise and the baby.
She was much grown, was pale, and had lost a great deal of her
liveliness, but was as beautiful as ever. Then they had a long
conversation on the subject of Byron. The Hoppners, worthy people of
conventional ideas, young lovers much excited by all the intrigues going
on round them though humanized a little by Venetian indulgence, related
with many head-shakes:
From the third day of his arrival Byron had provided himself, as he
liked to boast, with a gondola and a mistress. The mistress was Marianna
Segati, wife of a cloth-merchant, who was the poet’s landlord, for he
had let rooms to Byron in his house. A most imprudent proceeding, but
the cloth-business was doing badly. Marianna was twenty-two, had
splendid black eyes, and a delicious voice. Although belonging to the
middle classes, she was received by the aristocracy of Venice on account
of her singing. That she should lose her heart to the noble lord who was
as generous as he was handsome, and who lived under the same roof, was
as inevitable as are the simplest chemical reactions. As to the Merchant
of Venice, Byron was free with his ducats, and Venetian morals always
permitted _one_ lover. Mrs. Hoppner, a friendly little woman with
intelligent eyes, had told this story with that mixture of Christian
sorrow and mundane relish which the virtuous employ in talking of the
vicious. Her husband, with many hums and haws, added that this was not
all. The Venetian populace circulated a tale that somewhere in the city
the English Lord had a closed villa, in which, one Muse not sufficing
him, he had gathered together the whole Nine. A legendary history was
growing up concerning Byron, and the travelling British spoke with bated
breath of Nero and Heliogabalus. The lower classes adored him, and at
Carnival time the women took advantage of their masks and dominoes to
hook themselves on to his person.
Such gossip was far from reassuring to Claire. She asked what ought she
to do? The Consul advised her above all things not to let Byron suspect
she was in Venice, for he often expressed his extreme horror of her
arrival.
At three o’clock Shelley went to the Palazzo Mocenigo to call on Byron,
who was delighted to see him, Shelley being perhaps the only man in the
world with whom Byron would talk seriously and as crowned head to
crowned head. Even when told of the reason for Shelley’s journey, and
Claire’s great desire to see the child again, he remained calm and
reasonable. He said he understood perfectly Claire’s anxiety, but that
he could not send Allegra back to her, because the Venetians who already
accused him of capriciousness, would say he had grown tired of her.
However, he would think the matter over, and find some way to arrange
everything. On which, he invited Shelley to go for a ride with him along
the Lido.
The gondola took them across the lagoon, and they disembarked on the
long, sandy island which defends Venice from the Adriatic. Nothing grows
here but sea-wrack and thistle. They found Byron’s horses waiting for
them. Shelley loved all wild and solitary places, and this gallop along
the edge of the sea was delightful to him. Only the knowledge that
Claire, at the Hoppners’, anxiously awaited his return, spoiled his
pleasure.
Byron inveighed against the stupidity of the English. Those who came to
Venice persecuted him with their curiosity, and even offered money to
his servants to allow them to see his bedroom. Then he spoke of
Shelley’s own misfortunes with many protestations of friendship. “Had I
been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, I would have moved
heaven and earth to get you back your children.”
This led him on to speak of the wickedness of humanity which he judged
to be infinite. “Men are filled with hatred of one another, to expect or
hope for anything else is the mark of the visionary.”
“Why?” asked Shelley. “You appear to believe that man is the victim of
his instincts without being able to direct them. . . . My faith is quite
different. I think that our will creates our virtue. . . . And though
wickedness may be natural that does not prove it to be invincible.”
Byron pointed out the patrician city that the setting sun suffused with
gold and sombre purple. “Let us get into the gondola again,” he said, “I
want to show you something.” When they had glided for some moments over
the lagoon, “Look over to the west. Don’t you hear the clang of a bell?”
Shelley, looking, saw on a small island a windowless, deformed, and
dreary building, and on the top of it an open tower in which a bell
swung in black relief against the crimson sky. With the splash of the
oars seemed to mingle distant, stifled cries for help.
“That,” Byron said, “is the madhouse. Every evening when I cross the
water at this hour, I hear the bell clanging the maniacs to vespers.”
“No doubt that they may thank the Creator for his mercy towards them?”
“Always the same Shelley!” laughed Byron. “Infidel and blasphemer! You
who can’t swim, beware of providence! But you spoke just now of
vanquishing our instincts. Does it not seem to you that this spectacle
rather is an image of our life? Conscience is the bell that calls us to
virtue. We obey it like the madmen without knowing why. Then the sun
sets, the bell stops, it is the night of death.”
He looked towards Venice, which, huddled in the twilight, had become a
rose-tinged grey.
“We Byrons,” said he, “die young . . . on my father’s side, and on my
mother’s as well. . . . It’s all the same to me, but I intend first to
enjoy my youth.”
* * *
The next day Shelley, who had come to Byron filled with forebodings, was
agreeably surprised to find him quite reasonable. He offered to lend
Shelley and Claire for two months a villa he owned at Este, and to allow
Allegra to go and stay there with her mother. Shelley joyfully accepted
this generous offer, and he wrote to Mary to come at once and join them:
“I have been obliged to decide on all these things without you.
I have done for the best; and, my own beloved Mary, you must
soon come and scold me if I have done wrong, and kiss me if I
have done right, for I am sure I do not know which, and it is
only the event that will show. We shall at least be saved the
trouble of introduction, and have formed acquaintance with a
lady (Mrs. Hoppner) who is so good, so beautiful, so angelically
sweet, that were she as wise too, she would be quite a Mary, but
she is not very accomplished. Her eyes are like a reflection of
yours; her manners are like yours when you know and like a
person. . . . Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and do not let
Willmouse forget me. Ca cannot recollect me.”
Mary’s journey was slow and disagreeable. At Florence she was held up by
passport difficulties. The baby Clara, who was cutting her teeth,
suffered from heat, fatigue and the change of milk; when Este was
reached, she was dangerously ill.
During fourteen days she remained in a state of fever. The doctor seemed
a stupid fellow, and Mary decided to go on to Venice that she might call
in a better one. At Fusina the Austrian custom-house officers stopped
them and attempted to prevent them from crossing the lagoon. Shelley,
who had gone to meet them at Padua, insisted with extraordinary violence
on passing, and rushed for a gondola. The baby had curious convulsive
twitchings of the eyes and mouth. During the voyage she was almost
unconscious. When the hotel was reached her condition was still more
alarming. Examined by a doctor, he said at once there was no hope.
Within an hour she died silently and without pain.
Mary found herself standing in the hall of a strange inn with her dead
child in her arms. Mr. Hoppner came and took her and Shelley away to his
own house. The next morning Shelley carried the little corpse in a
gondola for burial on the Lido, and Mary tried to shake off her grief.
It was one of Godwin’s doctrines that only weak and cowardly natures
abandon themselves to sorrow, which could not last did we not feed it in
secret by finding a sort of painful vanity in our sufferings. His
daughter shared his ideas on this point. The day after little Ca was
buried, she wrote in her journal:
“_Sunday, September 27._ Read fourth canto of _Childe Harold_.
It rains. Go to the Doge’s Palace, Ponte dei Sospiri, etc. Go to
the Academy with Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, and see some fine
pictures, call at Lord Byron’s and see the Fornarina.”
* * *
The Fornarina was Byron’s latest mistress, a peasant woman with a face
of the fine antique Venetian type. “You will see how beautiful she is,”
Byron had told Shelley. “Very fine black eyes and the figure of a Juno,
wavy black hair which reflects the moonlight: one of those women who
would go to hell for love. I like that sort of animal, and I should
certainly have preferred Medea to any other woman in the world.”
Certainly this beautiful baker’s wife was a strange sort of animal, and
quite untamable. She was so fierce that all the servants were terrified
of her, even Tita, the gigantic gondolier. She was jealous,
insupportable, and false as the devil, besides being perfectly
ridiculous from the moment she had insisted on replacing her veil and
shawl by fashionable gowns and hats with ostrich feathers. Byron flung
these into the fire every time he saw them, and then she went out and
bought others. But he put up with her follies because she amused him. He
liked her vivacity, her Venetian dialect, her violence. Her coarse and
animal nature was, he imagined, more of a rest to him than anything else
after intellectual labour. Thanks to her his poem advanced with a
splendid motion, with something of the wild and natural movement of the
sea or the passionate love of a woman.
To the Shelleys, who were ultra-refined, this magnificent animal was
highly displeasing. They exchanged sorrowful glances. During the few
days they spent in Venice, Shelley became better acquainted with Byron’s
mode of life and he judged it with severity. The Poet admitted to his
orgies the lowest women picked up by his _gondolieri_ in the streets.
Then, despising himself, he decreed that man is despicable. His cynicism
now appeared to Shelley to be nothing but a graceful mask for his
sensuality.
At length the Shelleys went back to Este, depressed by their return
there without their little girl. Yet the house was cheerful. In the
garden a vine-covered pergola led to a summer-house which Shelley made
his study. From thence you saw the ruins of the ancient castle of Este
in the foreground, then, like a green sea, Lombardy’s waveless plains,
on which cities and villages seemed like islands bounded by vaporous air
. . . in the distance many-domed Padua, a peopled solitude, and the
towers of Venice glittering in the sunshine against a sapphire sky.
He worked hard. He had begun _Prometheus Unbound_, a lyrical drama on
the Book of Job. He tried to fix in verse light as wing-beats the
melancholy beauty of these autumn days. But no sooner had the
intoxicating joy of composition faded than he felt himself once more
alone and forgotten. It seemed to him that in the frail bark which
carried beneath an alien sky his group of youthful exiles Misery stood
at the helm.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ROMAN CEMETERY
At the end of another month the villa must again be given up to Byron
and Allegra restored to him. The cold and rainy weather gave Shelley the
idea of pushing farther south. To feel happy he needed warmth and
sympathy. New climates and new places might cheat his sorrow.
The road to Rome wound along among already reddening vineyards. At every
step the travellers passed teams of cream-coloured oxen of Virgilian
beauty. They went through Ferrara and Bologna, where they saw such
quantities of statues, pictures and churches that Shelley’s brain became
like the portfolio of an architect or a print-shop or a commonplace
book. Passing by the romantic cities of Rimini, Spoleto and Terni, they
reached the Campagna di Roma, an absolute solitude, yet picturesque and
charming. When they entered Rome an immense hawk was sailing in the air
over their heads.
The majestic ruins of Rome impressed Shelley tremendously. The English
burying-place, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, appeared to him the
most beautiful and solemn cemetery he had ever seen. The wind whispered
in the leaves of the trees overhanging tombs which were mostly of women
and young people. If one were to die, it is there one might desire to
sleep.
From Rome they went on to Naples, where they took rooms which looked
across the Villa Nazionali to the blue waters of the bay, for ever
changing and for ever the same. Vesuvius was in a state of eruption, and
day and night they saw volumes of smoke rolling up and fountains of
liquid fire. The black bituminous vapour and the fiery light were
reflected in the sea. The climate was that of an English spring, though
lacking a little that crescendo of sweetness which delights one in
England when April’s there.
They went to Pompeii, to Salerno, to Pæstum, getting exquisite but
transitory glimpses, that leave in the memory dim white visions as of
some half-remembered dream. But, in spite of all this beauty, they were
not happy. They knew no one and their perpetual loneliness was hard to
bear.
Basking in the splendid Italian sunshine they thought with longing of
Windsor, of Marlow, even of London. What was the use of all these
mountains, of all this blue sky without any friends? Social enjoyment,
in some form or other, is the Alpha and Omega of existence, and, no
matter how real or how beautiful the actual landscape may be, it
dwindles into smoke in the mind when one thinks of some familiar forms
of scenery, commonplace perhaps in themselves, but over which old
memories throw a delightful hue.
In the streets they looked with envy at the workmen and even at the
beggars with whom other workmen and other beggars passed the time of
day. Shelley, who felt himself so full of affection for mankind, was
painfully surprised to find himself always alone in the midst of
multitudes. Mary disliked particularly being “a foreigner” where-ever
she went. She was at the beginning of a new pregnancy; Claire got on her
nerves insupportably. She had serious domestic troubles: The Italian
valet, Paolo, had seduced the Swiss nurse. Mary insisted he should marry
her, and when at last he consented to do so, it was to take his
departure immediately with his wife, vowing vengeance against Shelley.
Next Claire fell ill of a mysterious malady which Mary misunderstood.
Discontented and tired of Naples they decided to return to Rome. A need
of constant change ate up their tranquillity; they were like a sick man
who for ever seeks a fresher, cooler place in the bed, and seeks in vain
since he takes with him his fever wherever he moves. The heat of the
southern spring had tired the little boy, “Willmouse,” his father’s
darling. The doctor advised them to take him northwards immediately to
Lucca. They were on the point of starting when he was seized with a
violent attack of dysentery.
During sixty hours, Shelley held the child’s hand in his; he loved him
more and more. Willie was an affectionate, intelligent and sensitive
child. He had beautiful hair, fair and silky, a transparent complexion,
Shelley’s eyes, blue and animated. While he slept the Italian maids
would come on tiptoe in to the room to point him out one to the other.
Already in the convulsions of death, the doctor still hoped to save him.
He lived three days longer and then died at noon on a day of gorgeous
sunshine. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery which on his first
visit to Rome had so impressed Shelley by its loveliness and solemn
seclusion. The wind was still whispering in the leaves of the trees.
Near an ancient tomb in the sunny flower-starred grass, Shelley saw his
dead child disappear.
Fanny . . . Harriet . . . Baby Clara . . . William. . . . It seemed to
him that he was surrounded by a pestilential atmosphere which infected
one after the other all those he had loved best.
* * *
The young couple, whom the gods thus amused themselves in persecuting,
had, so far, bravely borne the blows. But now Mary gave up the struggle.
Shelley took her away to a pleasant villa in the country, but she was
indifferent to everything. Always she saw little feet running over the
sands at Naples, heard delicious childish phrases expressing mingled
love and glee. Motionless, gazing away in a sort of torpor, she only
roused herself to talk of the tomb in Rome. She wanted for her beautiful
boy a block of white marble, and flowers.
Godwin, hearing of her condition, and using “the privilege of a father
and a philosopher,” expostulated with her. She was putting herself quite
among “the commonalty and mob of her sex.” What did she need that she
had not? She possessed the husband of her choice, and all the goods of
fortune, and thereby the means of being useful to others. “But you have
lost a child, and all the rest of the world, and all that is beautiful,
and all that has a claim upon your kindness is nothing, because a child
of three years old is dead!”
Shelley himself gently complained:
“My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one—
But _thou_ art fled, gone down the dreary road
That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode.”
As for him, he had his aërial refuges, and once safely shut therein the
lugubrious tragedies of his life seemed like absurd nightmares. He
occupied himself with _Prometheus_, a new presentation of the one and
only theme of his genius: the war of the Spirit against Matter, the war
of Free Man against the World. In it Jupiter becomes a sort of Lord
Castlereagh, the Titan another Shelley, a victim filled with hope and
confident in the ultimate triumph of Good. The cloudless skies, the
eddyings of the wild west wind, each and all were a pretext for singing
his faith filled with the optimism of despair, and which no misfortune
could quell.
When the moment for Mary’s confinement was near, they went on to
Florence, in order to be within reach of a good doctor. But the best
doctor was Florence herself, a city in which solitude has no bitterness.
At Florence one lives with Dante; one sits by the side of Savonarola;
one watches Giotto pass by. In the churches Brunelleschi and Donatello
are still in friendly rivalry. The statues in the streets live with a
more intense life than anywhere else. On the Piazza di San Miniato,
Michael Angelo’s _David_ triumphantly challenges Bandinelli’s silly
_Neptune_ and clumsy _Hercules_. One suffers less from not knowing the
children who play near one, because one possesses the children of Della
Robbia.
From the hill of San Miniato Shelley loved to gaze over the city. The
red roofs stood out sharply, the Arno rolled its yellow, rain-swollen
waters between the old houses, which seemed to huddle along the quays
and bridges like a crowd of human beings; in the distance the valley
touched a horizon of bluish hills.
In the intellectual atmosphere of Florence, Mary began to take a new
interest in life. At the boarding-house she “mixed a little with the
people downstairs.” She got through the birth-time quickly and well.
When once more she found herself with a baby in her arms, she smiled for
the first time since the death of William.
She had her son christened Percy Florence.
CHAPTER XXVIII
“ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND”
Everything in life comes in series. One friend brings another. Mary and
Percy, after suffering so much from loneliness, suddenly found
themselves, without having sought it, the centre of a gay and pleasant
circle.
Chance had worked the miracle. First of all Shelley had begun to suffer
again from the pain in his side. The wind from the Apennines, so
boisterous in Florence during the winter, tried him greatly, and the
doctor recommended Pisa as more sheltered.
Tom Medwin, one of his cousins, came to join him there. Medwin had been
in a dragoon regiment in India, from which he was now retired with the
rank of Captain. He had literary aspirations, and on this account sought
the society of the only literary member of the family. He was a good
fellow, though a deadly bore, but he introduced to the Shelleys a
charming couple, the Williamses.
Edward Williams, after three years in the Navy, had exchanged from that
branch of the service into the 8th Dragoon Guards, then quartered in
India, where he had made Medwin’s acquaintance. He had been obliged to
sell out, he always explained, because of his health. Frank, fearless,
quite without side, and interested in everything, the Shelleys liked him
extremely, and they found his wife charming. She was a very pretty woman
with much sweetness of manner, and an excellent musician. The two
couples became great friends and at last the Shelleys knew the delights
of informal visiting, of ungrudging admiration and praise, and of the
perfect confidence which makes the joy of any real friendship.
The moment a social circle exists it attracts to its centre all the
lonely souls drifting round its circumference. Thus, came Taaffe, the
Irish count; Mavrocordato, the Greek prince; and an extraordinary
Italian priest with the diabolic and piercing eye of a Venetian
inquisitor. This was the reverend professor, Pacchiani, known as the
Devil of Pisa, abbé without religion, professor without a chair, amateur
of women and pictures, antiquary, pimp, dilettante, and go-between in
general.
Always with some _palazzo_ or other to let, he would take his commission
from the tenant as well as from the landlord; he would warmly recommend
a teacher of Italian, and divide with him the price paid for the
lessons; to the rich Englishman passing through Venice he would give, in
strictest confidence, the address of a _marquese_ wishing to sell an
Andrea del Sarto.
On familiar terms in every house the moment he had got his foot within
the door, he called Mary and her friend Jane, “la belle Inglese,” and
amused them by telling them tales of the great ladies of Pisa, to whom
he was father confessor and tame cat.
* * *
One of Pacchiani’s stories made a deep impression on Shelley. Count
Viviani, a great Florentine nobleman, had just married, for the second
time, a woman much younger than himself. By his first wife he had two
lovely daughters, and the new countess, jealous of their beauty, had
persuaded her husband to send them to Pisa and shut them up each in a
separate convent, until husbands were found who would take them without
dowries. The professor, who had known the _contessine_ since their
childhood, spoke with enthusiasm of their wit and beauty. The eldest in
particular was almost a genius.
“Poverina!” said Pacchiani. “She pines like a bird in a cage. She sees
her youth slipping away unused, and she is made for love. Yesterday she
was watering some flowers in her cell—she has nothing else to love but
her flowers—‘Yes,’ she told them, ‘you were born to vegetate, but we,
thinking beings, we were created for action and not to wither away in
one place. . . .’ A miserable place too is that convent of St. Anna; at
this moment the poor inmates are shivering with cold, being allowed
nothing to warm them but a few ashes which they carry about in an
earthen vase. You would pity them.”
This story reawoke in Shelley all his instincts of knight-errantry,
which the comforts of conjugal life had stilled during recent years. He
asked dozens of questions, and showed such hot indignation with the
Count, such interest in the fair victim, that Pacchiani could not resist
the pleasure—always delicious to an old man of his sort—of bringing
two young people together. He offered to take Shelley to the convent of
St. Anna.
It was in all conscience a miserable place, a ruinous building situated
in an unfrequented street in the suburbs. The visitors crossed a gloomy
portal and the abbé went to find Emilia. Mephistopheles came back
accompanied by Gretchen. He had not exaggerated her beauty. Her black
hair was tied in a simple knot, after the manner of a Greek Muse. Her
faultless contour seemed the work of Praxiteles: the marble-like pallor
of her skin made more resplendent her large black eyes full of a sleepy
voluptuousness, in which certain Italian women surpass even Orientals.
The moment she appeared in the sombre parlour, Shelley felt that he
loved her, and love with him was no desire of the flesh, but a need for
self-sacrifice to that which he adored. Ever at the back of his mind
dwelt his ideal of perfect physical beauty united to perfect spiritual
beauty, the myth of a lovely and persecuted woman whose knight he would
become, some Andromeda to whom he would play Perseus, some Princess for
whom he would be St. George; a myth which had always been the motive of
his love adventures, which had led him to run away with Harriet to save
her from her father, and to love Mary because she was unhappy. It was a
sentiment made up in proportions unknown to himself, of desire and pity,
which earthly perhaps in the beginning, had been so purified that it now
merely raised to the highest point his creative power in poetry.
In Mary he had long believed this mystic love had been found. She fell
indeed as little short of a goddess as any woman may be. For the first
time, perhaps, the real woman coincided with the Shelleyan image of her.
Nevertheless, daily life with her had shown him traits quite
incompatible with divinity. Mary, mother of a family and housekeeper,
was a drier, a more practical Mary, than the loving and courageous young
girl of Skinner Street. What Shelley had been used to praise as her
diamond-like purity now seemed to him to partake of the coldness of ice,
while her jealousy had become inconceivably petty. Worst of all, he now
knew her too intimately to be able any longer to find in her a
quickening of his ideas.
In the beautiful and mysterious Emilia, on the contrary, he could
incarnate his whole soul, because he knew nothing about her. At long
last, he discovered in this Italian convent, the adorable and fleeting
vision which he had pursued since boyhood, and which, every time that he
had thought to seize it, had vanished away, leaving him in presence of a
flesh-and-blood woman capable of wounding his sensitive soul.
On coming into the parlour, Emilia addressed herself to a caged bird in
terms which appeared to Shelley the most poetic in the world:
“Poor little bird, you are dying of languor! How I pity you! How much
you must suffer hearing the other birds calling to you, ere they depart
for warmer climes! But you are doomed, like me, to finish in this prison
your miserable life. . . . Ah, why can I not free you!”
She was fond of improvising thus in Italian fashion all sorts of spoken
poems that did not fail in quality—nor in quantity either. But Shelley
saw in her true genius. He begged leave to come and call upon her again,
and to bring with him his wife and his sister-in-law. She graciously
gave her permission.
When he described the visit to Mary, he made no secret of the sentiments
with which it had inspired him. Both of them were great readers of
Plato, and Mary was familiar with that love which is merely the
contemplation of supreme beauty. She would, however, have been better
pleased to see it awakened by a statue, or that Shelley, like Dante, had
never had the chance of speaking to his Beatrice. However, when Shelley
begged her to go with him to see the beautiful prisoner, she willingly
went.
She admitted that Emilia was beautiful in a Greek statue style, and of
surprising eloquence, but at the bottom of her heart she felt that she
preferred the chaste reserve of the viaggetory Englishwoman to this too
effusive Italian genius. She thought that Emilia’s voice was over-loud,
that her gestures, if expressive, were wanting in grace, and that she
was most agreeable when she held her tongue—which was seldom. However,
Mary was careful not to let her real sentiments appear on the surface;
on the contrary she expressed for Emilia the warmest friendship.
Claire, more impressionable than Mary, fell, like Shelley, an immediate
victim to Emilia’s charms. While Mary took the prisoner little presents,
books, a gold chain, Claire, who was poor, offered the only thing she
could give, namely, lessons in English. Emilia accepted with joy. An
endless correspondence began between the convent and Pisa, and it was
nothing but “Dear Sister!” “Adored Mary!” “_Sensible_ Percy! . . . _Caro
fratello!_” and even, in a mystic sense needless to say, “_Adorato
sposo!_” Strangely enough, “dear sister Mary” sometimes showed a slight
coldness. “But your husband tells me that this apparent coldness is only
the ashes which cover an affectionate heart.”
The truth is, that Emilia was beginning to get on dear sister Mary’s
nerves, for Shelley was busy in raising round her one of those aërial
worlds into which he loved to escape. He was writing, in her honour, a
magnificent love-poem, which he intended to make as mysterious as
Dante’s _Vita Nuova_, or the _Sonnets_ of Shakespeare.
“I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True love in this differs from gold and clay
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light
Imagination! . . .
Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates . . .
One object, and one form.”
He drew a picture of Emilia which was one long pæan to her beauty:
“Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress
And her loose hair: and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind.”
“The brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June,
Amid the splendour of winged stars, the Moon
Burns inextinguishably beautiful.”
“Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate
Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Beloved! O too soon adored by me!”
“Emily
A ship is floating in the harbour now. . . .”
It was the most impassioned of invitations to set sail for some lovely
and impossible Elysian isle. There
“We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? . . .
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together. . . .
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One heaven, one hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love’s rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire——
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!”
Although Mary consoled herself by repeating that all these fine phrases
were addressed to the divine essence of Emilia and not a very pretty
girl with black eyes and black tresses, yet, at the same time, it was
vexing to see Shelley writing with such enthusiasm. Happily, he was so
engrossed by the ardour of composition that he had no time to go and see
the poem’s heroine. And while her platonic lover multiplied his aërial
metaphors, Emilia received from the Count, her father, a cynical
message. He had found a husband who would take her without a penny, and
he requested her to let him know whether she accepted. The gentleman in
question, a certain Biondi, was not attractive, and he inhabited a
distant castle, surrounded by swamps. Emilia had never seen him, nor was
she to see him before the wedding-day. Such Turkish customs were
supremely disgusting, yet what could she do? The Elfin king, married to
a very real Mary, could not, evidently, free her from her dungeon. Were
she to marry Biondi, this might be perhaps the beginning of a happier
life. And if she didn’t like the man, she would meet others she might
like, for _cavalieri sirventi_ are to be found even in the midst of a
swamp.
Shelley had not finished his poem before he learnt that Emilia was
married.
* * *
Six months later Mary wrote to a friend:
“Emilia has married Biondi; we hear that she leads him and his
mother—to use a vulgarism—a devil of a life. The conclusion of
our friendship, _à la Italiana_, puts me in mind of a nursery
rhyme which runs thus:
‘As I was going down Cranbourne Lane,
Cranbourne Lane was dirty,
And there I met a pretty maid
Who dropt to me a curtsy.
I gave her cakes, I gave her wine,
I gave her sugar-candy;
But oh! the little naughty girl,
She asked me for some brandy.’
“Now turn ‘Cranbourne Lane’ into Pisan acquaintances, which I am
sure are dirty enough, and ‘brandy’ into the wherewithal to buy
brandy, and you have the whole story of Shelley’s Italian
Platonics.”
And Shelley added: “I cannot look at my poem! The person whom it
celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno. . . . I think one is always in
love with something or other; the error—and I confess it is not easy
for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it—consists in seeking in
a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.”
CHAPTER XXIX
THE CAVALIER’ SIRVENTE
During the early days which followed her departure from Venice, Claire
had received news of Allegra fairly often through the Hoppners. The
child suffered from the cold. She had become quiet and grave as a little
old woman. Mr. Hoppner thought it would be better to remove her from
Venice. But it was impossible to have a conversation to any purpose with
her father who was sinking deeper and deeper into debauchery.
Some months went by without any news. Claire, very anxious, wrote letter
after letter to the Hoppners, who did not reply. Then she learnt that a
great change had taken place in Byron’s existence. It had begun by his
being seriously ill and obliged to keep his bed. Hoppner, who came to
chat with him, had told him that his love affairs, far from scandalizing
the Venetians any longer as he believed and hoped, now merely amused the
_conversazioni_ at his expense. He was spoken of as the prey of artful
trollops who stole from him, tricked him, and then made fun of him in
their Venetian dialect. Don Juan fell into a red-hot rage, and instantly
all the priestesses of the Palazzo Mocenigo were turned out of doors,
and sent back, each to her midden.
The moment he was well, he was seen again at the Venetian receptions,
which he had so long forsaken. Thus he met the beauty of the season, a
lovely blonde, seventeen years of age, just married to a noble
greybeard, the Count Guiccioli. The Pilgrim admired the lady’s figure,
her bust and arms in particular. The very first day he slipped into her
hand, as he took leave, a note which she adroitly concealed. It was an
assignation. She came. He who said he adored her was a great Poet,
young, handsome, highly born, and rich. Though surrounded by all that
makes life desirable, she instantly gave herself to him without a
struggle.
A few days later, the Count took his wife to Ravenna, and Teresa begged
Byron to go too. “The charmer forgets that a man may be whistled
anywhere _before_ but that _after_—a journey in an Italian June is a
conscription, and therefore she should have been less liberal in Venice,
or less exigent at Ravenna.” The notion of romantic and constant love
was odious to him. He did not budge, and was rather proud of his
strength of mind.
From Ravenna she wrote again that she was very ill, and, where an appeal
to love had failed, an appeal to pity succeeded. Don Juan set off, but
not without stopping at Ferrara and other towns on the way, to sample
the local beauties. Although making a show of indifference and even of
boredom, he was very glad to join Teresa. Intelligent women such as Lady
Byron or Claire got on his nerves: he had too great a contempt for the
sex to ask from a mistress intellectual companionship. The bakers’ wives
and other wantons of Venice were of a species too far below him. But the
Countess Guiccioli united a restful and affectionate stupidity with the
elegance of a well-born woman. She kept and held without too much
trouble this Everlasting Rover. Don Juan now played the part of a
faithful and devoted sick-nurse. “Were I to lose her,” he wrote, “I
should lose a being who has run great risks for my sake, and whom I have
every reason to love—but I must not think this possible. I do not know
what I _should_ do were she to die, but I ought to blow my brains out,
and I hope that I should.”
When his conquering Conquest had to leave Ravenna for Bologna, he
followed. He had become the classic _cicesbeo_: “But I can’t say I don’t
feel the degradation of it. Better to be an unskilful Planter, an
awkward settler, better to be a hunter, or anything, than a flatterer of
fiddlers and fan carrier of a woman . . . and now I am _cavalier’
sirvente_! By the holy! It’s a strange sensation.”
* * *
Claire was told all this story, and that Byron had sent orders for
Allegra to be brought to Bologna. The idea that her child was to live in
the house of Byron’s new mistress, who would have no reasons for loving
her and possibly some for hating her, terrified Claire. She wrote a
passionate letter asking to have her back. Byron replied:
“I disapprove so completely of the way children are brought up
in the Shelley household that I should think in sending my
daughter to you I was sending her into a hospital. Is it not so?
Have they _reared_ one?—Either she will go to England or I
shall put her into a convent. But the child shall not quit me
again to perish of starvation and green fruit, or be taught to
believe that there is no Deity.”
On receiving this letter, Claire notes in her caustic way: “Letter from
Albé concerning green fruit and God”; but she wept over it too. Allegra
in a convent of Italian nuns, who have no notion of cleanliness and no
love for children, seemed to her a frightful idea. She sent despairful,
violent, almost insolent letters to Byron, who wrote to complain of her
to Shelley, and to inform him that for the future he should refuse all
correspondence with her.
“I have no conception,” Shelley answered, “of what Claire’s
letters to you contain, and but an imperfect one on the subject
of her correspondence with you at all. One or two of her
letters, but not lately, I have indeed seen; but as I thought
them extremely childish and absurd, and requested her not to
send them, and she afterwards told me she had written and sent
others in the place of them, I cannot tell if those which I saw
on that occasion were sent you or not. I wonder, however, at
your being provoked at what Claire writes, though that she
should write what is provoking is very probable. You are
conscious of performing your duty to Allegra, and your refusal
to allow her to visit Claire at this distance you consider to be
part of that duty. That Claire should wish to see her is
natural. That her disappointment should vex her, and her
vexation make her write absurdly, is all in the usual order of
things. But, poor thing, she is very unhappy and in bad health,
and she ought to be treated with as much indulgence as possible.
The weak and the foolish are in this respect the kings—they can
do no wrong.”
* * *
He himself had need of a similar loftiness of soul, to rise above the
women’s quarrels which distracted his household. Mary grew more and more
short-tempered. Godwin overwhelmed her with requests for money, to which
Shelley had decided no longer to reply. He had already given her father
nearly five thousand pounds without any results and had gained, at this
high price, a chastened wisdom and a painful knowledge of Godwin’s ugly
soul. As the bitter reproaches which the Philosopher now showered on
Mary turned her milk, Shelley informed him that for the future he would
intercept and suppress all letters likely to upset her: “Mary has not,
nor ought she to have, the disposal of money. If she had, poor thing,
she would give it all to you. Such a father—I mean a man of such high
genius—can be at no loss to find subjects on which to address such a
daughter. . . . I need not tell you that the neglecting entirely to
write to your daughter from the moment that nothing could be gained by
it, would admit of but one interpretation.”
Mary, worried about her father, Claire, worried about her child, got
terribly on each other’s nerves, and their common admiration for the
only man of the household was far more an obstacle to a good
understanding than a help. Mary did all she knew to make Claire perceive
she was unwanted, and once more Claire as before had to recognize it. An
old lady of the English colony found her a place as governess in
Florence, Shelley took her thither, and left her in the family of
Professor Bojti.
He wrote her long and loving letters, but though these were quite
innocent he did not show them to Mary, and he asked Claire not to
mention them when she wrote to her sister, although such a want of
frankness was little to his taste. His early conception of love had been
of a unity of ideas and actions so perfect that any explanation was
quite uncalled for between lovers. But life had taught him that
perfection is not to be had, and something short of it must be accepted.
There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison. Mary could
not take it except in very diluted doses.
CHAPTER XXX
A SCANDALOUS LETTER
On the 16th September, 1820, R. B. Hoppner wrote from Venice to Lord
Byron:
“MY DEAR LORD,
“. . . You are surprised, and with reason, at the change of my
opinion respecting Shiloh; it certainly is not that which I once
entertained of him; but if I disclose to you my fearful secret,
I trust, for his unfortunate wife’s sake, if not out of regard
to Mrs. Hoppner and me, that you will not let the Shelleys know
that we are acquainted with it. This request you will find so
reasonable that I am sure you will comply with it, and I
therefore proceed to divulge to you what indeed on Allegra’s
account it is necessary that you should know, as it will fortify
you in the good resolution you have already taken never to trust
her again to her mother’s care.
“You must know then that at the time the Shelleys were here
Claire was with child by Shelley: you may remember to have heard
that she was constantly unwell, and under the care of a
Physician, and I am uncharitable enough to believe that the
quantity of medicine she then took was not for the mere purpose
of restoring her health. I perceive too why she preferred
remaining alone at Este, notwithstanding her fear of ghosts and
robbers, to being here with the Shelleys.
“Be this as it may, they proceeded from here to Naples, where
one night Shelley was called up to see Claire who was very ill.
His wife, naturally, thought it very strange that he should be
sent for; but although she was not aware of the nature of the
connection between them she had had sufficient proof of
Shelley’s indifference, and of Claire’s hatred for her: besides
as Shelley desired her to remain quiet she did not dare to
interfere.
“A Mid-wife was sent for, and the worthy pair, who had made no
preparation for the reception of the unfortunate being she was
bringing into the world, bribed the woman to carry it to the
Pieta, where the child was taken half an hour after its birth,
being obliged likewise to purchase the physician’s silence with
a considerable sum. During all the time of her confinement Mrs.
Shelley, who expressed great anxiety on her account, was not
allowed to approach her, and these beasts, instead of requiting
her uneasiness on Claire’s account by at least a few expressions
of kindness, have since increased in their hatred of her,
behaving to her in the most brutal manner, and Claire doing
everything she can to engage her husband to abandon her.
“Poor Mrs. Shelley, whatever suspicions she may entertain of the
nature of their connection, knows nothing of their adventure at
Naples, and as the knowledge of it could only add to her misery,
’tis as well that she should not. This account we had from
Elise, who passed here this summer with an English lady who
spoke very highly of her. She likewise told us that Claire does
not scruple to tell Mrs. Shelley that she wishes her dead, and
to say to Shelley in her presence that she wonders how he can
live with such a creature. . . .
“I think after this account you will no longer wonder that I
have a bad opinion of Shelley. His talents I acknowledge, but I
cannot concur that a man can be as you say ‘crazy against
morality’ and have honour. I have heard of honour among thieves,
but there it means only interest, and though it may be to
Shelley’s interest to cut as respectable a figure as he can with
the opinions he publickly professes, it is clear to me that
honour does not direct any one of his actions.
“I fear my letter is written in a very incoherent style, but as
I really cannot bring myself to go over this disgusting subject
a second time; hope you will endeavour to comprehend it as it
stands. . . .
“Adieu, my dear Lord, Believe me, Ever your——faithful Servant,
“R. B. HOPPNER.”
_Byron to Hoppner._
“MY DEAR HOPPNER,
“Your letters and papers came very safely, though slowly,
missing one post. The Shiloh story is true no doubt though Elise
is but a sort of _Queen’s evidence_. You remember how eager she
was to return to them, and then she goes away and abuses them.
Of the facts, however, there can be little doubt; it is just
like them. You may be sure that I keep your counsel.
“Yours ever and truly,
“BYRON.”
CHAPTER XXXI
LORD BYRON’S SILENCE
Shelley, invited by Lord Byron to come to Ravenna so that they might
discuss important matters, found the Pilgrim in brilliant fettle. He
looked in splendid health; for the reign of the Guiccioli had rescued
him from the degrading libertinage of Venice. Fletcher himself had grown
fatter, as the shadow increases in proportion with the body which throws
it.
The Palazzo Guiccioli was a splendid affair, the household mounted on a
royal scale. On the marble staircase Shelley met with every kind of
animal making himself at home. Eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five
cats, an eagle, a parrot, and a falcon quarrelled together and made it
up as it suited them. There were ten horses in the stables.
Byron welcomed him with great friendliness, and the night was passed in
reading and discussing Byron’s poems. The new cantos of _Don Juan_
appeared admirable to Shelley. His contact with Byron’s genius always
reduced him to despair. Beside the solid structure of Byron’s verse, his
own seemed strangely fragile. He told Byron he ought to write a poem
which would be for his time what the _Iliad_ was for the Greeks. But
Byron affected to despise posterity, and to take no interest in poetry
except at a thousand guineas the canto.
Once again Shelley, the Ascetic, was obliged to adapt himself to the
habits and customs of Byron the Magnificent. They got up at mid-day,
they breakfasted at two, and worked until six in the evening. They rode
from six to eight, dined, and spent the night talking until six o’clock
next morning.
Byron did not talk merely of poetry. From the very first day, and with
the most friendly air in the world, he posted Shelley up in the
scandalous stories circulating about him amongst the English in Italy.
In spite of having promised the Hoppners not to give them away, he
showed Shelley the letter containing the calumnies of Elise. He
declared, of course, that he had never given the smallest credence to
the ridiculous tale, but that the Hoppners should have been so ready to
believe it was to Shelley a heart-breaking blow. He wrote immediately to
Mary.
_Shelley to Mary Shelley._
“RAVENNA, _Aug. 7, 1821_.
“Lord Byron has told me of a circumstance that shocks me
exceedingly, because it exhibits a degree of desperate and
wicked malice, for which I am at a loss to account. When I hear
such things, my patience and my philosophy are put to a severe
proof, whilst I refrain from seeking out some obscure hiding
place, where the countenance of man may never meet me more. It
seems that Elise, actuated either by some inconceivable malice
for our dismissing her, or bribed by my enemies, or making
common cause with her infamous husband, has persuaded the
Hoppners of a story so monstrous and incredible that they must
have been prone to believe any evil to have believed such
assertions upon such evidence. Mr. Hoppner wrote to Lord Byron
to state this story as the reason why he declined any further
communications with us, and why he advised him to do the same.
Elise says that Claire was my mistress; that is very well, and
so far there is nothing new; all the world has heard so much,
and people may believe or not believe as they think good. She
then proceeds to say that Claire was with child by me; that I
gave her most violent medicine to procure abortion; that this
not succeeding she was brought to bed, and that I immediately
tore the child from her and sent it to the Foundling Hospital—I
quote Mr. Hoppner’s words—and this is stated to have taken
place in the winter after we left Este. In addition, she says
that I treated _you_ in the most shameful manner; that I
neglected and beat you, and that Claire never let a day pass
without offering you insults of the most violent kind, in which
she was abetted by me.
“As to what Reviews and the world says, I do not care a jot, but
when persons who have known me are capable of conceiving of
me—not that I have fallen into a great error, as would have
been the living with Claire as my mistress—but that I have
committed such unutterable crimes as destroying or abandoning a
child, and that my own! Imagine my despair of good!
“Imagine how it is possible that one of so weak and sensitive a
nature can run further the gauntlet through this hellish society
of men! _You_ should write to the Hoppners a letter refuting the
charge, in case you believe, and know, and can prove that it is
false, stating the grounds and proofs of your belief. I need not
dictate what you should say, nor, I hope, inspire you with
warmth to rebut a charge which you only can effectually rebut.
If you will send the letter to me here, I will forward it to the
Hoppners.”
_Mary Shelley to Shelley._
“MY DEAR SHELLEY,
“Shocked beyond measure as I was, I instantly wrote the
enclosed. If the task be not too dreadful, pray copy it for me.
I cannot.
“Read that part of your letter which contains the accusation. I
tried, but I could not write it. I think I could as soon have
died. I send also Elise’s last letter: enclose it or not as you
think best.
“I wrote to you with far different feeling last night, beloved
friend. Our barque is indeed ‘tempest-tost,’ but love me, as you
have ever done, and God preserve my child to me, and our enemies
shall not be too much for us.
“Adieu, dearest! Take care of yourself—all yet is well. The
shock for me is over, and I now despise the slander; but it must
not pass uncontradicted. I sincerely thank Lord Byron for his
kind unbelief.
“P.S. Do not think me imprudent in mentioning Claire’s illness
at Naples. It is well to meet facts. They are as cunning as
wicked. I have read over my letter; it is written in haste, but
it were as well that the first burst of feeling should be
expressed.”
_Mary Shelley to Mrs. Hoppner._
“PISA, AUG. 10, 1821.
“After a silence of nearly two years, I address you again, and
most bitterly do I regret the occasion on which I now
write. . . .
“I write to defend him to whom I have the happiness to be
united, whom I love and esteem beyond all living creatures, from
the foulest calumnies; and to you I write this, who were so
kind, and to Mr. Hoppner, to both of whom I indulged the
pleasing idea that I have every reason to feel gratitude. This
is indeed a painful task. Shelley is at present on a visit to
Lord Byron at Ravenna, and I received a letter from him to-day,
containing accounts that make my hand tremble so much that I can
hardly hold the pen.
“He says Claire was Shelley’s mistress, that . . . Upon my word,
I solemnly assure you that I cannot write the words. I send you
a part of Shelley’s letter that you may see what I am now about
to refute, but I had rather die than copy anything so vilely, so
wickedly false, so beyond all imagination fiendish.
“But that you should believe it! That my beloved Shelley should
stand thus slandered in your minds—he, the gentlest and most
humane of creatures—is more painful to me than words can
express. Need I say that the union between my husband and myself
has ever been undisturbed? Love caused our first
imprudence—love which, improved by esteem, a perfect trust one
in the other, has increased daily and knows no bounds. . . .
“Those who know me well believe my simple word—it is not long
ago that my father said, in a letter to me, that he had never
known me utter a falsehood—but you, easy as you have been to
credit evil, who may be more deaf to truth—to you I swear by
all that I hold sacred upon heaven and earth, by a vow which I
should die to write if I affirmed a falsehood—I swear by the
life of my child, by my blessed beloved child, that I know the
accusation to be false. But I have said enough to convince you,
and you are not convinced? Repair, I conjure you, the evil you
have done by retracting your confidence in one so vile as Elise,
and by writing to me that you now reject as false every
circumstance of her infamous tale.
“You were kind to us, and I will never forget it; now I require
justice. You must believe me, and do me, I solemnly entreat you,
the justice to confess that you do so.”
Shelley showed this letter to Byron and asked for the address of
Hoppner, but Byron begged to be allowed to send it himself.
“The Hoppners,” he said, “had extracted a promise from me not to speak
to you of this affair; in openly confessing that I have not kept my
promise I must observe some form. That is why I wish to send the letter
myself. My observations, besides, will give more weight to it.”
Shelley readily consented and gave the letter to his host. Mary never
received an answer.
* * *
The important question that Byron wished to discuss with Shelley was the
fate of Allegra in case he—Byron—should leave Ravenna. Countess
Guiccioli wished to go to Switzerland; Byron, who preferred Tuscany,
begged Shelley to write to the Countess to describe life in Florence and
Pisa in such attractive fashion that she would agree to go to one or the
other.
Shelley had never seen his friend’s mistress, but he was so used to be
asked to intervene in the affairs of his acquaintance that he did not
hesitate to write the letter asked, and it was so vigorous that it
carried the day. It was suddenly decided that Byron and the Countess
should join the Shelleys at Pisa. As to Allegra, Byron agreed to take
her also. Claire not being there, he saw no reason for not doing so.
Before leaving Ravenna, Shelley went to see the child at the Convent of
Bagna-Cavallo. He found her taller, but also more delicate and paler.
Her lovely black hair fell in curls over her shoulders. She appeared in
the midst of her companions as a being of a finer and nobler race. A
kind of contemplative seriousness seemed to overlie her former vivacity.
She was shy at first, but Shelley having given her a gold chain which he
brought from Ravenna, she became more friendly. She led him to the
convent garden, running and skipping so quickly that he could scarcely
follow her; she showed him her little bed, her chair. He asked her what
he should say to her mama.
“Che mi manda un baccio e un bel vestituro.”
“E come voi il vestituro sia fatto?”
“Tutte di seta e d’oro.”
And to her father:
“Che venga farmi un visitino e che porta seco la mammina.”
A difficult message to transmit to her noble father.
The dominant trait of the child seemed to Shelley to be vanity. Her
education was defective, but she could recite a great many prayers by
heart, spoke of Paradise, dreamed of it, and knew long lists of saints.
This was the sort of training that Byron desired.
CHAPTER XXXII
MIRANDA
Great excitement such as travelling royalties always arouse reigned in
the Pisan circle at the expected arrival of the Pilgrim. Mary, at
Shelley’s request, had taken for him the Palazzo Lanfranchi, stateliest
on the Lung’ Arno. Helped by the Williamses, she had done what she could
to put this ancient palace in order. The vanguard arrived in the persons
of the Guiccioli and her father, Count Gamba; the Shelleys gave them a
cordial welcome. The Countess was an agreeable surprise. “She is a very
pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian,” Shelley wrote, “who, if I know
anything of human nature and my Byron, will hereafter have plenty of
opportunity to repent her rashness.”
When Don Juan himself followed, all Pisa was at the windows to see the
English Devil and his menagerie. The procession was well worth seeing;
five carriages, six men-servants, nine horses, dogs, monkeys, peacocks,
and ibises, all in line. The Shelleys were a little anxious as to what
Byron would think of the palazzo, but fortunately it pleased him. He
said he liked these old places dating back to the Middle Ages. In
reality it dated to the sixteenth century, and was said to have been
built from designs by Michael Angelo, but the noble lord always mixed up
hopelessly architectural styles. The dark and damp cellars in particular
delighted him. He spoke of them as dungeons and subterranean cells, and
had cushions taken down so that he might sleep there.
He became at once the social centre of the Pisan circle, while Shelley
remained its moral centre. Byron was visited from curiosity and
admiration; Shelley from sympathy. Shelley got up early and read Goethe,
Spinoza or Calderon until midday; then he was off to the pine-woods,
where he worked in solitude until evening. Byron got up at midday and,
after a light breakfast, went for a ride, or to practise
pistol-shooting. In the evening he visited the Guiccioli, and coming
home at eleven, would often work until two or three in the morning. Then
in a state of feverish cerebral excitement, he would go to bed, sleep
badly, and remain in bed half the following day.
The English in Pisa made a dead set at him. Even the most Puritan
amongst them could not be severe on an authentic lord who brought to
them on foreign soil so delightful an epitome of London’s Vanity Fair.
The pleasure he took in giving scandal, what was it but a mark of
orthodox respect? If indifference is justly considered an offence,
surely defiance must be accepted as a token of humility? And was it not
patent that he could not exist without going into society, paying court
to women, accepting dinners and returning them? He met with the greatest
indulgence. But when he tried to win the same for Shelley, the
resistance was thoroughly British. In society Shelley was bored and did
not hide it. In questions of morality it was easy to guess that he put
the Spirit before the Letter, that he believed in Redemption rather than
in Original Sin. Faith in the perfectibility of man is naturally the
most heinous of crimes, since if believed in, it would force one to work
for man’s perfectibility. The mere smell of it makes society fly to arms
for its destruction. All “nice” women treated the Shelleys as pariahs
and outcasts.
Shelley laughed at this, preferring a thousand times the cool fresh air
of night to the hot and smoky atmosphere of card-rooms. But Mary
hankered to go everywhere. There was a certain Mrs. Beauclerc, gayest of
English ladies in Pisa, who gave balls, “being afflicted,” as Byron
said, “with a litter of seven daughters all at the age when these
animals are obliged to waltz for their livelihood.” Mary’s fixed idea
was to be invited to one of these balls. “Everybody goes to them,” she
said. Shelley, distressed, looked up at the sky, “Everybody! Who is this
mythical monster? Have you ever seen it, Mary?”
To win the favour of “everybody” she even went to Church Service, but
the parson preached against Atheists, and kept looking at her in such a
marked manner that, in spite of her desire to conform, her dignity as a
wife prevented her from ever going again.
All these social worries, balls and dinner parties, seemed to Shelley of
an incredible vulgarity. When he was a boy of twenty, he had judged
fashionable life as criminal, now it appeared to him contemptible, which
was much more serious. To escape from Mary’s absurd reproaches and
regrets, he would take refuge with the Williamses. There he found anew
the harmonious and affectionate atmosphere that was essential to him.
Edward Williams had a gay, generous nature in which there was nothing
petty. Jane’s grace and sweetness, the gentleness of her movements, the
soothing beauty of her voice, were as reposeful and pleasant as some
delightful garden. Perhaps in his youth she would have pleased Shelley
less. Then he dreamed always of heroic qualities in women, but to-day he
asked from them the gift of forgetfulness rather than courage and
strength.
Jane sang, and her voice carried him momentarily away from his tragic
memories, and the chilly rectitude of his home. Just as formerly, when
Harriet wounded him, and he read in Mary’s eyes all the consolation they
promised him, so now he contemplated in Jane’s an image of the Antigone
whom he had surely known and loved in a previous existence.
But he no longer considered it necessary to destroy in order to rebuild,
to abandon Mary in order to fly with Jane. She was married to a good
fellow, whose friend he wished loyally to remain, and it was necessary
also to consider the feelings of Mary, poor unhappy woman. He was in
love with Jane, but it was an immaterial love, without hope, and almost
without desire.
She lent herself cleverly to the romantic business, would pass her hand
through his hair, smooth his forehead, try to cure his sadness by her
personal magnetism. She and her husband were as a marvellous fountain of
friendship, at which a poet, weary of suffering, could cool his fever.
Jane and Edward were Ferdinand and Miranda, the splendid, princely
couple, and Shelley was their faithful Ariel. . . . Round the happy
lovers flitted a captive and guardian Spirit serving their will and
doing his spiriting gently.
The Williamses had often spoken to Shelley of one of their friends,
Trelawny, an extraordinary man, corsair and pirate, who at twenty-eight
had already led a life of adventure all the world over, on land as well
as on sea. He now desired ardently to be admitted to the Pisa circle,
and he overwhelmed the Williamses with letters: “If I come, shall I be
able to know Shelley? Above all, shall I be able to know Byron? Is it
possible to approach him?”
Williams, in daily intercourse with the two Poets, no longer held them
in any awe, so he replied with a touch of impatience, “Of course you
will see them. Shelley is the simplest of men. . . . As to Byron, that
will depend entirely on yourself.”
Trelawny reached Pisa late one evening and went at once to the Tre
Palazzi on the Lung’ Arno where the Williamses and the Shelleys lived on
different stories under the same roof. He and the Williamses were in
animated conversation when he perceived in the passage near the open
door a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on his. Jane going to the
doorway laughingly said, “Come in, Shelley, it’s only our friend Tre
just arrived.”
Shelley glided in, blushing like a girl, and holding out his two hands
gave the sailor’s a warm pressure. Trelawny looked at him with surprise.
It was hard to believe that this flushed and artless face could be that
of the genius and rebel, reviled as a monster in England, and whom the
Lord Chancellor had deprived of his rights as a father. Shelley, on his
side, admired Trelawny’s bold, wild face, raven-black moustache,
handsome half-Arab type. Both of them were so astounded they could find
nothing to say. To relieve their embarrassment Jane asked Shelley what
book he had in his hand.
His face brightened and he answered briskly: “Calderon’s _Magico
Prodigioso_. I am translating some passages in it.”
“Oh, read it to us!”
Immediately Shelley, shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents
that could not interest him, began to translate from the open book, in
so masterly a manner with such perfection of form that Trelawny no
longer doubted his identity.
A dead silence followed the reading. Trelawny looked up and seeing no
one asked, “Where is he?”
“Who?” said Jane. “Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit no one
knows when or where.”
The next day it was Shelley himself who took Trelawny to call on Byron.
Here the surroundings were very different. A large marble hall, a giant
staircase, powdered footmen and surly dogs. Trelawny, like every one
else, saw in Byron’s external appearance all the traits with which
imagination endows genius, but the great man’s conversation struck him
as commonplace. He seemed too to be playing a part, and an out-of-date
one—that of a rake-hell of the Regency. He told stories about actors,
boxers and hard-drinkers, and of how he had swum the Hellespont. Of this
exploit he was very proud.
At three the horses were brought round. After riding for a couple of
hours, the party dismounted at a small _podere_, pistols were sent for,
a cane was stuck into the ground behind the house and a piece of money
placed in a slit at the top of the cane. Byron, Shelley and Trelawny
fired at fifteen paces, and their firing was pretty equal. Each time the
cane or the coin was hit by one or the other. Trelawny was pleased to
see that despite his feminine appearance, Shelley could hold his own
with men.
On the way back they talked poetry, and Trelawny cited a couplet from
_Don Juan_ as an example of felicitous rhyming. Byron, won over, brought
his horse round to trot beside him.
“Confess now,” said he, “you expected to find me a Timon of Athens or a
Timur the Tartar, and you’re surprised to find a man of the world—never
in earnest—laughing at all things mundane?”
Then he muttered as to himself:
“The world is a bundle of hay,
Mankind are the asses who pull.”
* * *
Trelawny returned with Shelley and Mary. “How different Byron is to
anything one expects of him!” said he. “There’s no mystery about him at
all. On the contrary he talks too freely, and says things he had much
better not say. He seems as jealous and impulsive as a woman, and maybe
is more dangerous.”
“Mary,” said Shelley, “Trelawny has found out Byron already. How stupid
we were—how long it took us.”
“The reason is,” said Mary, “that Trelawny lives with the living, and we
live with the dead.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DISCIPLES
The sailor who had come to Pisa to admire two great men found that it
was he, on the contrary, who was admired by them. It is true that when
Trelawny was absent, Byron said of him: “If we could get him to wash his
hands and not to tell lies, we might make a gentleman of him,” but when
he was present Byron treated him with the greatest respect. Like all
artists, Byron and Shelley wrote in order to console themselves for not
living, and a man of action appeared to these two men of dreams as a
strange and enviable phenomenon.
Shelley consulted Trelawny as to nautical terms, and drew with him, on
the sandy shores of the Arno, keels, sails, and sea-charts. “I’ve missed
my vocation,” said he. “I ought to have been a sailor.”
“A man who neither smokes nor swears can never be a sailor,” Trelawny
told him.
Byron, an imaginary corsair, would have liked to learn from a real
corsair the ways and customs of the brotherhood, and did his utmost in
Trelawny’s company to talk in cynical and bravado fashion. Trelawny,
quick to perceive his influence over Byron, tried to make use of it in
the service of Shelley.
“You know,” said he as they rode together one day, “that you might help
Shelley a good deal at small cost by a friendly word or two in your next
work, such as you have given to other writers of much less merit.”
“All trades have their secrets,” Byron answered. “If we crack up a
popular author, he repays us in the same coin, capital and interest. But
Shelley! A bad investment. . . . Who reads the Snake? . . . Besides, if
he cast off the slough of his mystifying metaphysics, he would want no
puffing.”
“But why do your London friends treat him so cavalierly? They rarely
notice him when they meet him at your place. Yet he is as well-born and
bred as any of them. What are they afraid of?”
Byron smiled and whispered in Trelawny’s ear:
“Shelley is not a Christian.”
“Are they?”
“Ask them.”
“If I met the Devil at your table,” said Trelawny, “I should treat him
as a friend of yours.”
The Pilgrim looked at him keenly to see if there were a double meaning,
then moving his horse up nearer said in a low voice of admirably acted
fear and respect:
“The Devil is a Royal Personage.”
* * *
With the Williamses, Trelawny was more outspoken. The three of them
formed the chorus to the tragedy; knowing they were not made for the
chief parts, they took pleasure in commenting the acting of those who
were.
“One might imagine,” said Trelawny, “that Byron is jealous of Shelley.
Yet Murray is obliged to call on the police to protect his premises
every time he publishes a new canto of _Childe Harold_, while poor
Shelley hasn’t got ten readers. Byron has high birth, riches, beauty,
glory, love . . .”
“Yes,” Williams interrupted, “but Byron is the slave to his passions and
to any woman who is at all decided. Shelley in his nutshell of a boat
floats in mid-stream on the Arno, and refuses to let it carry him away.
His ideas are well-grounded, he holds a doctrine. Byron is incapable of
holding one for two consecutive hours. He is well aware of this, and
can’t forgive himself for it. You see it in the triumphant tone in which
he speaks of Shelley’s misfortunes.”
“Byron,” said Jane, “is a spoiled child, but neither he nor Shelley
understands men. Shelley loves them too much, and Byron not enough.”
“What’s so terrible about Shelley,” said Trelawny, “is that he has not
the smallest instinct of self-preservation. . . . The other day when I
was diving in the Arno, he said he so much regretted not being able to
swim. ‘Try,’ said I. ‘Put yourself on your back, and you’ll float to
begin with.’
“He stripped and jumped in without the smallest hesitation. He sank to
the bottom and lay there like a conger-eel, not making the least
movement to save himself. He would have drowned if I had not instantly
fished him out.”
Jane sighed, knowing how much the thought of suicide haunted Shelley’s
mind. He often repeated that nearly every one he had loved had died in
this way.
“Yet he doesn’t seem unhappy?”
“No, because he lives in his dreams. But in real life don’t you think he
suffers from the impossibility of spreading his ideas, from his books
that don’t sell, from his unhappy home life? Death must often appear to
him like the awakening from a nightmare.”
“He believes in a future life,” said Trelawny. “Those who call him an
Atheist don’t know him. He has often told me that he thinks the French
philosophy of the eighteenth century false and pernicious. Plato and
Dante have overcome Diderot for him. All the same he doesn’t regret his
attitude towards established religion. . . . ‘Why,’ I asked him, ‘do you
call yourself an Atheist? It annihilates your chances in this world.’
‘It is a word of abuse,’ said he, ‘to stop discussion, a painted Devil
to frighten fools. I used it to express my abhorrence of superstition. I
took it up as a knight takes up a gauntlet, in defiance of injustice.
The delusions of Christianity are fatal to genius and originality; they
limit thought.’”
Thus spoke the chorus in unanimity, and did not perhaps perceive that
their adoration of Shelley fed and grew on his misfortunes. We are more
inclined to love that which we can pity than that which we must admire.
Man finds in the spectacle of unmerited failure flattering arguments
which explain his own ill-luck. The blend of admiration and compassion
is one of the surest recipes for love. It would have needed much
humility of mind for Williams and Trelawny to have the same affection
for the brilliant Byron that they had for poor dear Shelley.
While the disciples discoursed in this fashion, the Master worked in the
pine-woods outside Pisa. There the sea-winds had thrown down one of the
pines, which now hung suspended over a deep pool of glimmering water.
Under the lee of the trunk, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet like some
wild thing, the way to his retreat pointed out by quantities of
scattered papers, covered with the scrawls of unfinished poems.
When in his day-dreaming he forgot everything, even the dinner hour,
Mary and Trelawny would go off to find him. Tre had constituted himself
_cavalier’ sirvente_ to the forsaken lady, and paid her court in corsair
fashion which she, in her honest woman-way, found very amusing.
The loose sand and hot sun soon knocked her up. She sat down under the
cool canopy of the pines and Trelawny continued the Poet-chase alone. He
found him at last, but so absorbed by some inner vision, that to avoid
startling him, Trelawny drew his attention first by the crackling of the
pine-needles. He picked up an Æschylus, a Shakespeare, then a scribbled
paper: “To Jane with a guitar”: but he could only make out the two first
lines:
“Ariel to Miranda. Take
This slave of music. . . .”
He hailed him, and Shelley, turning his head, answered faintly, “Hello!
Come in.”
“Is this your study?” Trelawny asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “and these trees are my books—they tell no lies. In
composing, one’s faculties must not be divided: in a house there is no
solitude: a door shutting, a footstep heard, a bell ringing, a voice,
causes an echo in your brain, and dissolves your visions.
“Here you have the river rushing by you, the birds chattering . . .
“The river flows by like Time, and all the sounds of Nature
harmonize. . . . It is only the human animal that is discordant and
disturbs me. Oh, how difficult it is to know why we are here, a
perpetual torment to ourselves and to every living thing!”
Trelawny interrupted to tell him that his wife was waiting for him at
the edge of the wood. He started up, snatched up his scattered books and
papers and thrust them into his hat and jacket pockets, sighing, “Poor
Mary! hers is a sad fate. She can’t bear solitude, nor I society—the
quick coupled with the dead.”
He began to proffer excuses to her, but she, either to hide her emotions
or form a Godwinesque lack of any, began in a bantering tone: “What a
wild goose you are, Percy! If my thoughts have strayed from my book, it
was to the Opera, and my new dress from Florence, and especially to the
ivy wreath so much admired for my hair, and not to you, you silly
fellow! When I left home my satin slippers had not arrived. These are
serious matters. . . .”
But in Mary’s pleasantries there was always a note which rang false.
CHAPTER XXXIV
II SAMUEL XII. 23
Byron, after promising Shelley to bring Allegra to Pisa, arrived without
her, and Claire, who had come expressly from Florence to wait about the
city in the hopes of seeing the child, was horribly alarmed on learning
she had been left in the convent of Bagna-Cavallo. Her Italian friends
gave her a sinister description of this convent, set down in the middle
of the marshes of the Romagna, and in the most unhealthy climate. The
nuns—Capucins—ignored hygiene, fed the children disgracefully, and did
not warm them at all. Claire could not see a fire without thinking of
her poor little darling who never saw or felt a cheerful blaze.
This high-spirited young woman was brought, through maternal anguish, to
an abnegation that was sublime. She wrote to Byron that she would
renounce ever seeing Allegra again so long as she lived, if he would
consent to put her in a good English School. “I can no longer resist,”
she said, “the internal inexplicable feeling which haunts me that I
shall never see her any more.”
Byron made no reply. There was some talk amongst Claire’s friends of
rescuing Allegra by stratagem, but Shelley begged her to have patience.
While agreeing with her as to Byron’s cruelty, he disapproved of
thoughtless violence. . . . “Lord Byron is inflexible and you are in his
power. Remember, Claire, when you rejected my earnest advice, and
checked me with that contempt which I had never merited from you at
Milan and how vain is now your regret! This is the second of my
sibylline volumes. If you wait for the third, it may be sold at a still
higher price.”
He called upon Byron to plead Claire’s cause, but the moment Byron heard
her name he gave an impatient shrug of the shoulders. “Oh, women can’t
exist without making scenes!” Shelley told him what Claire had heard
about the unsuitability of the convent. “What do I know about it?” he
said. “I have never been there.” Then, when Claire’s anguish and her
fears were described to him, a smile of malicious satisfaction passed
over his face.
“I had difficulty in restraining myself from knocking him down,” said
Shelley afterwards at Lady Mountcashell’s. “I was furious but I was
wrong. He can no more help being what he is than that door can help
being a door.”
But old Mr. Tighe told him, “You are quite wrong in your fatalism. If I
were to horsewhip that door it would still remain a door, but if Lord
Byron were well horsewhipped my opinion is he would become as humane as
he is now inhumane. It’s the subserviency of his friends that makes him
the insolent tyrant he is.”
On hearing of Shelley’s failure, Claire fell into such despair that Mary
and Shelley would not allow her to return to Florence alone amongst
strangers. They were going to spend the summer at the sea with the
Williamses and they invited her to go with them.
Shelley looked forward with eagerness to this plan. Williams and he had
consulted Trelawny about a boat, and he was having one built for them at
Genoa by Captain Roberts, a friend of his. They had already christened
her the _Don Juan_ in honour of Byron, who had also commissioned Roberts
to build him a schooner with a covered-in deck; the _Bolivar_.
Shelley and Williams saw themselves masters of the Mediterranean. Their
wives were less enthusiastic. While the two young men drew charts of the
bay upon the sand, Mary and Jane walked together, philosophized, and
picked violets by the road-side.
“I hate this boat!” said Mary.
“So do I,” Jane agreed. “But it’s no use saying anything, it would do no
good and merely spoil their pleasure.”
So as to put their projects into action, two houses were necessary at
the seaside. They thought of the Bay of Spezzia. Shelley and Williams
hunted for these houses along its shores in vain. Lord Byron, who wished
to join them, must have a palazzo, but he was obliged to give up the
idea at once, since even two fishermen’s houses were not to be had.
Williams and his wife determined to make one last search; to distract
Claire from her troubles they took her with them.
They had left Pisa but a few hours when Lord Byron wrote to Shelley that
he had received bad news of Allegra. An epidemic of typhus had broken
out in the Romagna. The nuns had taken no preventative measures. The
child, already weak and tired, had caught the fever. She was dead. “I do
not know,” he added, “that I have anything to reproach in my conduct and
certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions towards the dead. But it
is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that had been done
such events might have been prevented—though every day and hour shows
us that they are the most natural and inevitable. I suppose that Time
will do his usual work—Death has done his.”
The Shelleys went to call on him. He was paler than usual, but as calm
as ever.
Two days later the Williamses and Claire came back from their
expedition. Shelley, fearing some act of violence on her part if she
were told of her misfortune while in Byron’s neighbourhood, resolved to
say nothing to her so long as they remained in Pisa.
Williams had not found the two furnished houses he sought. Along the
entire coast there was but one house to let, a big unfurnished and
abandoned building known as the Casa Magni at Lerici, with a veranda
facing the sea and almost over it.
Shelley, who desired above all things to get Claire out of Pisa, decided
to take the Casa Magni. The two households must live together.
Inconvenient? That didn’t matter. No furniture? Furniture could be sent
from Pisa. When Shelley was really determined on a thing, nothing could
resist him. “I go forward,” said he, “until I am stopped. But nothing
ever does stop me.”
The Custom House officials, the boatmen, raised scores of difficulties.
Shelley brushed them aside by the sheer force of a will-power that takes
no notice of the outside world, and in a few days the two families were
settled in at the seaside.
* * *
Casa Magni has been a Jesuit convent. It was a white house standing
almost in the sea, and backing against a forest. A terrace, supported on
arches, overhung the superb Bay of Spezzia. The ground floor was unpaved
and uninhabitable, being reached by the waves when the sea was rough. It
was used simply for storing boat-gear and fishing tackle. The single
storey over this was divided into a large hall or saloon, and four small
bedrooms which opened from it: two for Shelley and Mary, one for the
Williamses and one for Claire. The accommodation was scanty, and the
first evening depressing. Down below the waves beat against the rocks
with a mournful persistency. The Williamses and Shelleys could think of
nothing but Claire, and she, with no idea of the dreadful truth,
imagined they were annoyed at having her there with them in a house
which was obviously too small. She said so, and offered to go back to
Florence. Every one cried out against this. Jane whispered something to
Mary, and the two withdrew to the Williamses’ room. Shelley joined them.
Claire went towards the room after a moment or two: she found them in
eager conversation which instantly ceased as they saw her. Then before a
single word had been uttered, she said:
“Allegra is dead?”
The next day she wrote Byron a terrible letter, which he returned to
Shelley complaining of Claire’s harshness towards him, and begging
Shelley to let her know he would allow her to make any arrangements she
liked for the burial of their child.
She replied with a sombre irony that for the future she left everything
to him, and that all she asked was a portrait of Allegra and a piece of
her hair. Byron became surprisingly pliable, sent almost at once a very
pretty miniature and a dark curl. Claire took leave of her friends at
Casa Magni, and went back to Florence to live amongst strangers, who,
knowing nothing of her grief, could do nothing to revive it.
Byron decided to have his daughter buried in England, in the church of
Harrow-on-the-Hill, where he had been at school, and to place on the
wall above the grave a marble tablet with the words:
TO THE MEMORY OF ALLEGRA
DAUGHTER OF GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON
DIED AT BAGNA-CAVALLO, THE 20TH APRIL, 1822.
AGED FIVE YEARS AND SIX MONTHS.
I shall go to her, but she
shall not return to me.
II Sam. xii. 23.
But the Rector of Harrow and the church-wardens considered it immoral to
admit into their church the body of an illegitimate child, more
particularly if the epitaph disclosed the name of the father. Allegra
was therefore buried outside the church, and with no inscription, which
was of course the proper thing to do.
Lord Byron, who had never set foot inside the convent of Bagna-Cavallo
while Allegra was alive, went to visit it some time after the child’s
death, for now his regrets lent it a romantic and sentimental interest,
inspired him with a fine meditation on death and on himself: “I shall go
to her, but she shall not return to me.”
The second Samuel was quite right.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE REFUGE
Shelley was charmed with Casa Magni. He liked the wild solitude of the
place, the forest behind the house, the rocky and wooded bays and the
fisherman’s poor villages.
But Mary felt lost and unhappy. Again pregnant, anxious, irritable, she
would have much preferred to live in a city near a good doctor. She
thought the peasantry uncouth and hateful, their _Genovese_ jargon
disgusted her as much as the dialect of Tuscany had pleased her. The
presence of Jane Williams, so appreciated by her at Pisa, began to get
on her nerves. Housekeeping in common is for women the acid test. There
were stupid quarrels over servants and frying pans. Shelley spoke too
warmly of Jane’s perfection, and wrote her too divine serenades.
To all Mary’s grumblings he replied with his usual sweetness. With the
utmost tenderness he caressed and consoled her. “Poor Mary,” he said of
her, “it is the curse of Tantalus to be endowed with such fine
qualities, and yet unable to excite the sympathy indispensable to their
application to domestic life.”
He knew he could not change her, that her physical condition explained a
good deal of her peevishness, which he bore with patient affection. What
she constantly reproached him with was his complete indifference to the
things that other men thought worth while. She still admired him as much
as ever, in him alone she found the strength on which to lean. But why
could he never use this strength to his own advantage? He seemed to have
no notion of his own interests. His personality was not in his own eyes
what theirs is for men in general, something strictly limited by
definite boundaries; no, his poured outwards in a sort of luminous
fringe melting into that of his friends, and even into that of perfect
strangers. As to the customs and cares of human societies he continued
to ignore them.
Every month he went to Leghorn to draw his allowance. He brought back a
bagful of _scudi_ which he emptied out upon the floor. Then with the
fire-shovel he gathered the coins together in a heap, which he flattened
out into a sort of cake with his foot. Always with the shovel he cut the
cake into two parts. One was for Mary: rent and housekeeping. The other
half was again divided into two, of which one went to Mary as pin-money,
and the other remained for Percy. But Mary knew what was meant by “for
Percy”: it was for Godwin despite all vows, for Claire, for the
Hunts. . . .
One day Captain Roberts was expected over to luncheon from Genoa.
Conscious that their anchorite way of living would not suit ordinary
mortals, there was considerable commotion at the villa, but
notwithstanding the bother and turmoil the three women, as is woman’s
wont, seemed to enjoy it. The visitor came and he was most anxious to
see the Poet of whom he had heard so much, but Shelley had disappeared.
They sat down to table without him. Suddenly one of the trio of ladies
cried out, “Oh my gracious!” and Mary, turning round, saw Shelley
completely naked crossing the room, and trying to hide behind the
maid-servant.
“Percy, how dare you!” she cried, which was imprudent, for Shelley,
considering himself unjustly attacked, abandoned his refuge and came up
to the table to explain. The ladies covered their faces with their
hands. Yet he was good to look at, his hair full of seaweed, his slender
body wet and scented with the salt of the sea.
But the daughter of William Godwin had a horror of such unconventional
happenings.
* * *
Shelley and Williams waited for their boat with the impatience of
schoolboys, and the moment a strange sail, coming from the direction of
Leghorn, doubled the point of Lerici, they rushed down to the beach.
After Allegra’s death Shelley had written to Roberts to change the name
of his boat from the _Don Juan_ to the _Ariel_. Everything which
reminded him of Byron was now hateful to him. Great therefore was his
surprise and anger, when on the arrival of his little yacht, he saw
painted in enormous letters in the middle of the mainsail: _Don Juan_.
Byron, told of the change of name, had forced Roberts, in spite of
Shelley’s orders, to print the sign of the Devil upon the Platonic bark.
Armed with hot water, soap and brushes, Shelley and Williams set to work
to wash out the infamy from their poor boat. They had no success. They
tried turpentine, which failed equally. Then they consulted specialists,
who were of opinion that a bit of sail would have to be cut clean out
and a new piece inserted; nothing short of this could mend the case.
Shelley had the operation performed at once.
The Genoese captain who had sailed the boat to Lerici, said that she
sailed and worked well, but was a ticklish boat to manage. Shelley and
Williams, enthusiastic but incompetent yachtsmen, had insisted on having
her built to a design made by a naval officer for Williams, before he
left England. The lovely sweeping lines of the model enchanted them, but
the boat when built to plan required a couple of tons of iron ballast to
bring her down to her bearings, and even then was very crank in a
breeze.
The two owners of the _Ariel_ determined to man her themselves, with the
help of Charles Vivian, a young sailor. Shelley was awkward as a woman
in all things appertaining to boats, but full of good intentions. He
tangled himself up in the rigging, read Sophocles while trying to steer,
and several times just missed falling overboard. But never in his life
had he been so happy. When Trelawny saw his seamanship, he took Williams
by the arm and advised him to add to the crew a Genoese accustomed to
the coast. Williams was hurt . . . three seasoned sailors such as they
. . . and was he not Captain? And had he not Shelley?
“Shelley! You’ll never do any good with him until you shear the wisps of
hair that hang over his eyes, heave his Greek Poets overboard, and
plunge his arms up to the elbow in a tar-bucket.”
The _Ariel_ drew too much water to be run on shore at Casa Magni, so
Williams with the aid of a carpenter built a tiny dinghy of basketwork,
covered with tarred canvas. It was a fragile toy which upset at a touch.
The Poet was delighted with it, although it capsized continually, and
gave him many a ducking.
One evening, as he dragged the skiff out from the house, he saw Jane and
her two children on the sands. He invited her to bring them for a row.
“With careful stowage,” said he, “there is room for us all in my barge.”
She squatted in the bottom of the frail skiff with her babies, and the
gunwale sank to within six inches of the water; a puff of wind, the
smallest movement of any one of them, and it must cant over, fill, and
glide from under them.
Jane understood that Percy intended to float on the water near the
shore, but he, proud to show a lovely woman how well he sculled, bent to
his oars, and they were soon out on the blue waters of the bay. Then,
shipping the oars, he fell into a deep reverie. Jane was seized with the
most awful terror. There was no eye watching them, no boat within a
mile, the shore was fast receding, the water deepening, and the Poet
dreaming. She made several remarks, but they met with no response.
Suddenly he raised his head, his face brightened as with a bright
thought, and he exclaimed, joyfully, “Now let us together solve the
great mystery!”
Had Jane uttered a cry, her children were lost. Shelley might made a
sudden movement, the bark would capsize, the waters wrap them round as a
winding-sheet. . . . Suppressing her terror, she answered promptly, “No,
thank you, not now, I should like my dinner first and so would the
children. . . . And look, there is Edward coming on shore with Trelawny
. . . they’ll be so surprised at our being out at this time, and Edward
says this boat is not safe.”
“Safe!” cried the Poet, “I’d go to Leghorn or anywhere in her.”
Jane felt that the Angel of Death, who always attended the Poet on the
water, now spread his wings and vanished.
“You haven’t yet written the words for the Indian air,” she said
carelessly.
“Yes, I have,” he answered, “but you must play me the air again, and
I’ll try and make the thing better.”
Meanwhile he had paddled his cockleshell into shallow water; as soon as
Jane saw the sandy bottom, she snatched up her babies, and clambered out
so hurriedly that the punt was turned over and the Poet pinned down
underneath it. He rose with it on his back, like a hermit-crab in any
old empty shell.
“Jane, are you mad?” cried her husband, surprised at her lubberly way of
getting out of a boat. “Had you waited a moment, we would have hauled
the boat up.”
“No, thank you. Oh, I have escaped the most dreadful fate! Never will I
put my foot in that horrid coffin again. ‘Solve the great mystery!’
. . . Why, he is the greatest of all mysteries! Who can predict what he
will do? . . . He is seeking after what we all avoid—death. I wish we
were away. I shall always be in terror.”
But the Poet’s boyish face wore its accustomed innocent and radiant
expression. During this glorious summer, nothing seemed able to mar his
joy. Of an evening he liked to go sailing in the _Ariel_ by moonlight.
Mary sitting at his feet, her head against his knees, remembered how she
had sat thus on the stormy cross-channel journey ten years ago. Ten
years . . . what quantities of things had happened in ten years. How
much subtler, crueller, and more treacherous Life had been, than either
of them had then imagined.
Sitting in the stern, Jane sang an Indian serenade, accompanying it on
the guitar, while Shelley gazed up into the dark blue sky of June, where
the moon burned inextinguishably beautiful, suffusing the
mountain-clouds with intolerable brilliancy. His mind was emptied of
thought, his senses annihilated in a delicious ecstasy, his soul clipt
in a net woven of dew-beams, seemed to be floating on waves of love and
odour and deep melody. He walked again among the splendid visions, the
crystalline palaces, the iridescent vapours, which during so long a time
had appeared to him the sole reality. He knew to-day that there existed
another universe, a harsh and inflexible one but in these higher
regions, only animated by the liquid and undulating sweetness of song,
by the invisible movement of luminous spheres, in these regions the
jealousy of women, money-worries, political quarrels, appeared so
infinitely petty that they could hot touch his wild, sweet,
incommunicable happiness. He would have liked to swoon away in
ravishment while saying with Faust to the passing moment, “Verweile
doch! Du bist so schön.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
ARIEL SET FREE
For a long time, Shelley had wished to bring out to Italy his friends
the Hunts, to whom their creditors and political enemies gave a hard
life in England. He offered to pay the journey, but he would not be
able, naturally, to support them and their seven children. He had talked
so much about this to Byron that he had obtained from him a promise to
found with Hunt a liberal newspaper to be published in Italy, and which
would enjoy copyright of all Byron’s works, a privilege sufficient in
itself to assure the success of the newspaper, and to make Hunt’s
fortune. It was a very generous offer on Byron’s part, who had nothing
to gain by the association with Hunt, but a good deal to lose. He did
more, however; he would allow the Hunts to occupy the ground floor of
the Palazzo Lanfranchi, which Shelley on his side undertook to furnish.
Everything being thus settled, the whole Hunt tribe set out.
After incredible difficulties and delays they arrived at Leghorn by the
end of June, 1822. Trelawny on the _Bolivar_ was waiting for them in the
harbour. Shelley and Williams arrived on the _Ariel_, scudding into port
in fine style. Shelley was inexpressibly delighted to see Hunt, and set
off with him and the tribe for Pisa. Williams remained at Leghorn to
await the return of his friend when they would sail home together.
Unfortunately Hunt’s immediate contact with Byron was far from pleasant.
Although Byron considered Hunt’s political ideas extreme, nevertheless
he had a sort of protective affection for him, considering him an honest
writer, a good father and husband, a decent sort of fellow. But he had
never been able to endure Hunt’s wife, whom he considered a dowdy and
disagreeable woman as impertinent as she was silly. Marianne Hunt was a
type of the equalitarian who can never for a moment forget inequalities.
To show that she was not impressed by Byron’s wealth and position, she
treated him with an insolence that a chimney-sweep would not have
tolerated. With the kind-hearted and charming Countess Guiccioli she put
on the airs and graces of an outraged British matron.
Byron remained courteous, but became glacial. At the end of twenty-four
hours he could endure no more. Seven disorderly children romped up and
down the Palazzo, spoiling everything. “A Kraal of Hottentots, dirtier
and more mischievous than Yahoos.” He looked with disgust on such human
vermin, and put his big bull-dog to guard the staircase: “Don’t let any
little cockneys pass our way!” he told him and patted his head.
Already he was sick of the newspaper.
Shelley, who should have left the same day, could not forsake Hunt
without having settled the business. He got round Byron, lectured
Marianne, consoled poor Hunt, and delayed his departure from day to day
until everything was arranged. His tenacity always triumphed over
Byron’s haughty lassitude.
He obtained the promise that the first number of the new paper should
have the copyright of _The Vision of Judgment_ which Byron had recently
finished. This would give Hunt a first-rate send-off.
Williams, waiting at Leghorn, grew impatient and testy. Never before, he
complained, had he been separated from his wife for so many days.
Shelley sent him letter after letter to explain the delay.
The July heat was suffocating; “_le soleil d’ltalie au rire
impitoyable_.” The peasants stopped working in the fields from ten to
five. There was a water shortage, and processions of priests carried
round miraculous statues and prayed for rain.
On the morning of the 8th, Trelawny and Shelley arrived from Pisa. They
went to Shelley’s bank, made purchases for the housekeeping at Casa
Magni, and then the two friends and Williams went down to the harbour.
Trelawny wanted to accompany the _Ariel_ on the _Bolivar_. The sky was
clouding over, and a light wind blowing in the direction of Lerici.
Captain Roberts predicted a storm. Williams, who was in a hurry to be
off, declared that in seven hours they would be at home.
At midday Shelley, Williams, and Charles Vivian were on board the
_Ariel_. Trelawny on the _Bolivar_ was getting ready too. The guard-boat
boarded them to overhaul their papers: “La barchetta _Don Juan_? Il
capitano Percy Shelley? Va bene.”
Trelawny, who had not got his port-clearance, tried to brazen it out.
The officer of the Health Office threatened him with fourteen days’
quarantine. He proposed to go instantly and obtain the clearance papers,
but Williams, fretting and fuming, would not hear another word. There
was no more time to be lost. It was two o’clock already, and there was
so little wind they would have great difficulty in reaching home before
night.
Between two and three o’clock the _Ariel_ sailed out of harbour almost
at the same moment with two feluccas. Trelawny re-anchored sullenly,
furled his sails, and with the ship’s glass watched the progress of
their friends. His Genovese mate said to him, “They should have sailed
this morning at three or four a.m. instead of three p.m. She is standing
too much in-shore; the current will fix her there.”
Trelawny replied, “She will soon have the land-breeze.”
“Maybe she will soon have too much breeze,” remarked the mate. “That
gaff top-sail is foolish in a boat with no deck and no sailor on
board. . . . Look at those black lines and the dirty rags hanging on
them out of the sky, look at the smoke on the water! The Devil is
brewing mischief.”
Standing on the end of the mole Captain Roberts also kept the boat in
view. When he could see her no longer, he got leave to ascend the
lighthouse-tower whence he could again discern her about ten miles out
at sea. A storm was visibly coming from the Gulf, and he perceived that
the _Ariel_ was taking in her top-sail. Then the haze of the storm hid
her completely.
In the harbour it was oppressively sultry. The heaviness of the
atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed the senses. Trelawny went
to his cabin and fell asleep in spite of himself. He was aroused by
noises overhead: the men were getting up a chain cable to let go another
anchor. There was a general stir amongst the shipping, getting-down
yards and masts, veering out cables, letting-go anchors. It was very
dark. The sea looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead and was
covered with an oily scum: gusts of wind swept over it without ruffling
it, and big drops of rain fell on its surface rebounding as if they
could not penetrate it. Fishing-craft under bare poles rushed by in
shoals running foul of the ships in the harbour. But the din and hubbub
made by men and their shrill pipings were suddenly silenced by the
crashing voice of a thunder-squall that burst right overhead.
When twenty minutes later the horizon was in some degree cleared,
Trelawny and Roberts looked anxiously seaward in the hopes of descrying
Shelley’s boat amongst the many small craft scattered about. No trace of
her was to be seen.
* * *
On the other side of the bay two women waited for news. Mary was uneasy
and depressed. The excessive heat of the summer frightened her. It was
during such a summer that little Willie had died, and she looked at the
baby in her arms with terror. He seemed certainly in the best of health,
nevertheless, standing on the terrace gazing on one of the most lovely
views in the world, she was oppressed with wretchedness. Her eyes kept
filling with tears she knew not why. “Yet,” thought she, “when he, when
my Shelley returns, I shall be happy—he will comfort me; if my boy be
ill, he will restore him and encourage me.”
On the Monday, Jane had a letter from her husband dated Saturday. He
said that Shelley was still detained at Pisa, “but if he should not come
by Monday, I will come in a felucca, and you may expect me on Thursday
evening at furthest.” This Monday was the fatal Monday, the day of the
storm.
But Mary and Jane never imagined for a moment that the _Ariel_ could
have put to sea in such weather. On Tuesday it rained all day, and the
sea was calm. On Wednesday the wind was fair from Leghorn, and several
feluccas arrived thence. The skipper of one of these said that the
_Ariel_ had sailed on the Monday, but neither Jane nor Mary believed
him. Thursday was another day of fair wind, and the two women kept
continuous watch from the terrace. Every instant they hoped to see the
tall sails of the little boat double the promontory. At midnight they
were still watching and still without any sight of the boat, and they
began to fear—not the truth—but that some illness, some disagreeable
occurrence, had detained their husbands in Leghorn. As the hours went
on, Jane became so miserable that she determined to hire a boat next day
and go to Leghorn herself. But next day brought with it a heavy sea and
a contrary wind. No boatman would venture out.
At midday came letters. There was one from Hunt for Shelley. Mary opened
it trembling all over. Hunt said: “Pray write to tell us how you got
home, for they say that you had bad weather after you sailed on Monday,
and we are anxious.”
The letter fell from her hands. Jane picked it up, read it, and said,
“Then it is all over!”
“No, my dear Jane, it is not all over, but this suspense is dreadful!
Come with me—we will go to Leghorn. We will post to be swift and learn
our fate.”
The road from Lerici to Leghorn passes by Pisa. They stopped at Lord
Byron’s house to see if there was any news. They knocked at the door,
and some one called out “Chi è?” for it was already late in the evening.
It was the Guiccioli’s maid. Lord Byron was in bed, but the Countess,
all smiles, came down to meet them. On seeing the terrifying aspect of
Mary’s face, very white, looking like marble, she stopped astonished.
“Where is he? Sapete alcuna cosa di Shelley?” said Mary. Byron who
followed his _dama_ knew nothing more than that Shelley had left Pisa
the preceding Sunday, and had sailed on Monday in bad weather.
It was now midnight, but refusing to rest the two women went on to
Leghorn, which they reached at two o’clock in the morning. Their
coachman took them to the wrong inn where they found neither Trelawny
nor Captain Roberts. They threw themselves dressed on their beds and
waited for daylight. At six o’clock they visited all the inns of the
town one after the other, and at the _Globe_ Roberts came down to them
with a face which told them that the worst was true. They learned from
him all that occurred during that agonizing week.
Yet hope was not entirely extinct. The _Ariel_ might have been blown to
Corsica, or Elba, or even farther. They sent a courier from tower to
tower along the coast as far as Nice to know if anything had been seen
or found, and at 9 a.m. they quitted Leghorn for Casa Magni. Trelawny
went with them. At Via Reggio they were told that a punt, a water-keg,
and some bottles had been cast up on the beach. Trelawny went to look at
them and recognized the little skiff of the _Ariel_. But there was the
possibility that, finding it cumbersome in bad weather, they had thrown
it overboard.
When Jane and Mary reached home, the village was holding high festival.
The noise of dancing, laughing and singing kept them awake the whole
night through.
* * *
Five or six days later Trelawny, who had promised a reward to any of the
coastguard who should send him news, was called to Via Reggio where a
body had been washed up by the sea. It was a corpse terrible to look
upon, for the face and hands and those parts of the body not protected
by the clothes had been eaten away by the fish. But the tall slight
figure, the jacket, the volume of Sophocles in one pocket and Keats’
poems in the other, doubled back as if the reader, in the act of
reading, had hastily thrust it away, were all too familiar to Trelawny
to leave a doubt on his mind that this mutilated body was any other than
Shelley’s. Almost at the same time the corpse of Williams was found not
far off, more mutilated still, and three weeks later a third body was
found, that of Charles Vivian, the sailor boy, about four miles from the
other two. It was a mere skeleton.
Trelawny had the remains buried temporarily in the sand to preserve them
from the sea, and galloped off towards Casa Magni.
At the threshold of the house he stopped. There was no one to be seen
. . . a lamp burned in the big room . . . perhaps the two widows were
suggesting to one another new grounds for hope. . . . Trelawny thought
of his last visit there. Then the two families had all been on the
terrace overhanging a sea so calm and clear that every star was
reflected in the waters. Williams had cried “Buona notte!” and Trelawny
had rowed himself on board the _Bolivar_ at anchor in the bay. From afar
he had listened to Jane singing some merry tune to the accompaniment of
her guitar. Shelley’s shrill laugh had pierced the quiet night, and
Trelawny had looked back with regret on a set of human beings who had
seemed to him the happiest and most united in the whole world.
His reverie was broken by a shriek from the nurse Caterina, as crossing
the hall she saw him in the doorway. He went upstairs and unannounced
entered the room where Mary and Jane sat waiting. He could not speak a
word. Mary Shelley’s hazel eyes fixed themselves on his with a terrible
intensity. She cried out: “Is there no hope?” Trelawny, without
answering, left the room, and told the servant to take the children to
the two poor mothers.
CHAPTER XXXVII
LAST LINKS
Mary wished to have Shelley buried near their little boy in the Roman
cemetery which he had thought so beautiful, but the sanitary laws
forbade that bodies once buried in quicklime on the sands, should be
transferred elsewhere. Trelawny suggested, therefore, that the remains
should be burned on the shore, according to the custom of the ancient
Greeks. When the day was fixed for this ceremony, he sent word to Byron
and Hunt, who wished to be present, and came himself on the _Bolivar_.
The Tuscan authorities had provided a squad of soldiers armed with
mattocks and spades.
The remains of Williams were dug out first. Standing round on the loose
sand that scorched their feet his friends watched the soldiers at work
and waited with curiosity and horror the first appearance of the body. A
black silk handkerchief was pulled out, then some shreds of linen, a
boot with the bone of the leg and the foot in it, then a shapeless mass
of bones and flesh. The limbs separated from the trunk on being touched.
The soldiers performed their work with long-handled tongs, nippers,
poles, with iron hooks, spikes, and divers other tools all resembling
implements of torture.
“Is that a human body?” exclaimed Byron. “Why, it’s more like the
carcase of a sheep!”
He was greatly moved, and tried to hide his emotion, which he thought
maudlin and unmanly, under an air of indifference. When they were
lifting the skull, “Stop a moment, let me see the jaw,” he said. “I can
recognize by the teeth anyone with whom I have talked. I always watch
the mouth, it tells me what the eyes try to conceal.”
A funeral pyre had been prepared, Trelawny applied the fire, and the
materials being dry and resinous the pine-wood flamed furiously, and the
heat drove the spectators back. The body and skull, burning fiercely,
gave the flames a silvery and wavy look of indescribable brightness and
purity. When the heat was a little diminished Byron and Hunt threw on to
the fire frankincense, salt and wine.
“Come,” said Byron suddenly, “let us try the strength of these waters
that drowned our friends. . . . How far out do you think they were when
their boat sunk?”
Perhaps mingled with his grief was the thought that he, who had swum the
Hellespont, would not have let himself be drowned in this less dangerous
sea.
He stripped, went into the water, and swam out. Trelawny and Hunt
followed him. When they turned to look back at the pyre it seemed a mere
little glittering patch upon the sand.
* * *
The ceremony was repeated next day for Shelley, who had been buried in
the sand, nearer to Via Reggio, between the sea and a pine-wood.
The weather was glorious. In the strong sunlight, the yellow sands and
the deep violet sea made a wonderful contrast. Above the trees, the
snow-capped Appenines paved the sky with a cloudy and marmoreal
background such as Shelley would have loved. All the children of the
country-side were gathered round to witness so unusual a spectacle, but
not a word was spoken among them. Byron himself was silent and
thoughtful. “Ah, Will of iron! This then is all that remains of your
splendid courage. . . . Like Prometheus you defied Jupiter, and behold
. . .”
The soldiers dug for nearly an hour without finding the exact place.
Suddenly a dull hollow sound following the blow of a mattock warned them
that the iron had struck a skull. Byron shuddered. He thought of Shelley
during the storm on Lake Leman, whose crossed arms, heroic yet impotent,
had seemed to him at the time an accurate symbol of his life. “How
brutally mistaken men have been about him! He was without exception the
_best_ and least selfish man I ever knew. And as perfect a gentleman as
ever crossed a drawing-room.”
The body had been covered with lime, which had almost completely
carbonized it. Once more incense, oil and salt were thrown upon the
flames, and more wine was poured over Shelley’s dead body than he had
ever consumed during life. The intense heat made the atmosphere
tremulous and wavy. At the end of three hours the heart, which was
unusually big, remained unconsumed. Trelawny snatched it from the fiery
furnace, burning his hand severely in doing so. The frontal bone of the
skull where it had been struck by the mattock fell off, and the brains
literally seethed, bubbled and boiled as in a cauldron for a very long
time.
Byron could not face this scene. As on the previous day he stripped and
swam to the _Bolivar_, which was anchored in the bay. Trelawny gathered
together the fragments of bone and human ashes, and placed them in an
oaken casket lined with black velvet, which he had brought with him.
The village children, looking on with all their eyes, told each other
that from these bones, once they reached England, the dead man would
come to life.
* * *
Now to tell what became of the other actors in this story.
Sir Timothy Shelley lived to the age of ninety-one, dying in 1844. He
made Mary a small allowance, but she had to promise not to publish her
husband’s posthumous poems, nor any biography of him so long as the old
baronet lived. At his death, Percy Florence came into the title and the
fortune, Harriet’s son Charles having died in his eleventh year.
A common misfortune had united the two widows, Mary and Jane. For a long
time they lived together in Italy, and afterwards in London. Shelley’s
friends were so faithful to them that Trelawny asked the hand of Mary in
marriage, and a little later Hogg, the sceptic, asked the hand of Jane.
Mary refused, saying that she thought Mary Shelley so pretty a name she
wished to have it on her tombstone. Jane accepted, but then had to
confess she had never been married to Williams. She still had a husband
somewhere in India. This did not trouble Hogg, and freed them both from
any ceremony. They never left each other, and lived under decorous
appearances. Although Hogg was accurate and a hard worker, he was
considered mediocre at the Bar, where he pleaded without warmth or
eloquence. Towards the end of his life he became a timorous,
disillusioned old gentleman, reading Greek and Latin all day long to
kill time and cheat his immense boredom.
Claire remained on the Continent, was a governess in Russia, and at the
death of Sir Timothy inherited the twelve thousand pounds left her by
Shelley, and was freed from poverty.
The older they grew the more these three women quarrelled amongst
themselves. Jane declared to everyone that during the last months at
Casa Magni Shelley had loved her alone. These assertions repeated to
Mary exasperated her so much that she refused to see Jane again. Little
by little Miranda became an old woman, a trifle deaf, but always
charming. Her eyes would still sparkle when she spoke of the Poet.
During many years Claire occupied herself in writing a book in which she
intended to point out, by the examples of Shelley, Byron and herself,
how necessary it is to have only conventional ideas on the question of
love. But, having had a mental illness, she was obliged to give up work
during a long period. She passed the end of her life in Florence, where
she became a Roman Catholic and occupied herself in charities.
One day in the spring of 1878 a young man searching for documents on
Byron and Shelley came to ask her for reminiscences of them. When he
pronounced these two names, there appeared beneath the old lady’s
wrinkles one of those smiles, girlish yet full of promises, which had
made her so fascinating at eighteen.
“Come,” she said, “I suppose you are as crass as most men, and think
that I loved Byron?”
Then, as he looked at her with surprise:
“My young friend,” said she, “no doubt you will know a woman’s heart
better some day. I was dazzled, but that does not mean love. It might
perhaps have grown into love, but it never did.”
There was a silence. The visitor, hesitating a little, asked:
“Have you never loved, Madame?”
A delicate blush suffused the withered cheeks, and this time she made no
reply, gazing on the ground.
“Shelley?” he murmured.
“With all my heart and soul,” she replied, without raising her eyes.
Then with a charming coquetry she gave him a tap on the cheek with her
closed fan.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Minor changes to spelling and punctuation have been made silently to
achieve consistency.
[The end of _Ariel (A Shelley Romance)_ by Maurois, André (Emile Salomon
Wilhelm Herzog), and Ella D’Arcy (translator)]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Ariel - A Shelley Romance" ***
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