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.
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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.