This last line probably represents the real truth of the whole matter; although, indeed, we have now no means of being certain about the affair.
Shelley’s short-lived enthusiasm for Miss Hitchener, whose name was mentioned above, is also instructive. It was based on the very slightest practical acquaintance with her, though their correspondence was lengthy and intimate; for Shelley always needed some recipient for his emotional or philosophical outpourings. After many letters had been exchanged, Shelley thought that at last his ideal being, the intellectual heroine, had been found; and Miss Hitchener came to live with him and Harriet as their “Spiritual Sister.” Unfortunately, they soon came to detest her. In December 1812 Shelley wrote to Hogg, telling him of the good lady’s departure, in these terms: “She is an artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste was never so great as after living four months with her as an inmate.” Surely there would have to be something extraordinarily repulsive in this lady to justify such an outburst. Yet she would seem to have been quite a reasonable woman. This apparently unreasonable outburst is paralleled in another letter from Shelley to Hogg. After living with Harriet’s sister (Elizabeth) in his house, he wrote: “I certainly hate her with all my soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I hereafter may find the consolation of sympathy.”
In thus idealising women before making their acquaintance, and yet in some cases being strongly repelled by them directly he lived at close quarters with them, Shelley behaved unreasonably, but it was a purely instinctive, and even unconscious, reaction.
Shelley was also strongly attached to two older and rather virile men, Trelawny and Peacock, to both of whom he appealed apparently as much by reason of his feminine charm as by his intellectual and poetic gifts.
I have already quoted Trelawny’s description of his first meeting with the “beardless boy, with a feminine, artless face.” To Peacock, Shelley seemed a wayward and innocent child, totally incapable of guiding himself safely through the hard world of practical affairs. Peacock was a practical man, and enjoyed playing the rôle of father and worldly guide; Shelley, moreover, liked to be allowed to be a child, and to let Peacock manage things for him. In the company of these two men he seemed instinctively to have become more naïve and feminine than he normally was; in other words, like all bisexual people, he automatically altered his polarity in accordance with his company.
Later on in his life he was much attracted by “Kind Hunt,” and a letter referring to The Cenci reveals his sentiment rather artlessly and charmingly: “I have written something different from anything else, and mean to dedicate it to you. I should not have done so without approval, but I asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent.”
Several writers have sneered at Leigh Hunt’s friendship for Shelley because of the amount of money he received from the generous poet. Hunt has been called a parasite in consequence. I am not concerned with the genuineness of Hunt’s affection for Shelley, though I do not doubt it myself. What is certain is that Shelley had a very keen affection for Hunt, whom he addresses as “My dearest Friend,” and on whom he lavished money which he could ill afford to spend. It is noteworthy that an extravagent generosity towards friends is such a frequent characteristic of Uranians. One has only to think of the cases of Edward II, or of Michelangelo,[18] both of whom were shamelessly sponged on by their favourites, to realise that such men are an easy prey for parasites. Perhaps this is due to the fact that such generosity forms a channel along which some of the repressed sexual impulses may obtain an indirect expression.
Even if we call Shelley a fool for allowing men like Hunt and Godwin to drain his purse, we cannot but admire him for many of his other benefactions. Trelawny relates a touching instance, when Shelley divided a bag of Scudi between the Housekeeping expenses, Mary, and himself. Then, says Trelawny, he whispered to Mary: “I will give this to poor Tom Medwin, who wants to go to Naples and has no money.” “Why, Shelley has nothing left for himself,” said Trelawny, who had overheard. In his friendship for his cousin Medwin he revealed another typically Uranian characteristic, namely a gift for nursing. Medwin fell ill at Pisa, and a letter of his describes Shelley’s care for him.
“Shelley tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered my medicines, and, during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was assiduous and unremitting in his affectionate care of me.”
When we thus survey the whole range of Shelley’s affections, and compare his love-affairs with his friendships, can we readily distinguish any great difference between them? Surely the erotic nature of his feelings towards his young school-friend, and towards Dr. Lind, Hogg, Hunt and the rest, is obvious enough, and were it not that these were balanced by obviously erotic relationships with women, we should be led to class him as a pure Uranian. Indeed, we must always remember that, since the whole weight of herd-suggestion actively fosters and encourages the expression of all feelings of love towards the opposite sex and actively represses any patently homosexual expression, one clear indication of the latter is worth more as evidence than a dozen conventional signs of the former. It is because this herd-suggestion is so strong and so persistent that many naturally inverted people are artificially induced to appear as lovers of women, and to behave in a manner that is for them unnatural. This appears to have been the grand tragedy of Shelley’s life, and the source of all his melancholy, his mental troubles, and his inconsistencies. As has been pointed out by Stopford Brooke, in his edition of Shelley’s Lyrics, “Love was felt by Shelley not quite naturally; not as Burns, or even Byron, felt it. Love, in his poetry, sometimes dies into dreams, sometimes likes its imagery better than itself. It is troubled with a philosophy.” And Stopford Brooke adds, “Of course, he was therefore fickle.” This is typical of all those who suffer from repressed (and hence unconscious) homosexual impulses of comrade-love; for with their conscious mind they seek love in the form of a woman. The quest is for them necessarily hopeless, and they are tormented and baffled by finding an inner falsity in each new object of their affections. One after another the dreams, the hopes, the ideals, are shattered, because the conscious mind is seeking a goal which is the polar opposite of that desired by the whole unconscious, but purposive, self.