No student ever read more assiduously than he; and one of his chums said to him, after he had literally read all day:—
"If I read as long as you read, Shelley, my hair and my teeth would be strewed about on the floor, and my eyes would slip down into my waistcoat pockets."
It was only by attracting his attention by some extravagance that he could be drawn away from his books. He seldom stopped to take a regular meal, but would have his pockets stuffed with bread, from which he ate from time to time, anywhere he chanced to be. When he was walking in London he would suddenly run into a baker's shop, purchase a supply, and breaking a loaf, offer half of it to his companion; if it was refused he would wonder that his friend did not like bread, and could scarcely appreciate the joke when they laughed at him for devouring two or three pounds of dry bread in the streets.
Very early in life he began to have decided opinions upon religious topics; and for some of his so-called atheistic tendencies, embodied in his writings, he was expelled from Oxford at the age of seventeen, without a word of friendly remonstrance upon the part of the authorities, or any attempt whatever to counteract the errors which he had imbibed from the reading of French philosophy. We can scarcely believe it at this day, but it was true.
"At seventeen," says Mrs. Shelley, "fragile in health and frame, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and universal kindness, glowing with ardor to attain wisdom, resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right, burning with a desire for affection and sympathy, he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal."
Even his father cast him off on account of his impious opinions, and added his curse; and had he been in the way of procuring a lettre de cachet, like Mirabeau's father, he would certainly have sent him to Newgate and kept him there. As it was, all his friends deserted him, and he lived in lodgings in London, in a very irregular manner, for some time. Even his cousin Harriet Grove, with whom he had been in love in his boyish way for a long time, gave him up, and soon after married another. The affair was not a serious one upon the part of either; but it cost Shelley some tears at the time. He soon consoled himself, however, with a schoolmate of his sisters whom he sometimes met when he went to visit them. Harriet Westbrook was empowered by his sisters to convey to Percy such sums of money as they could gather for him; for his father had refused to assist him, and he was in absolute want at this time. She appeared to Shelley in the guise of a ministering angel, and his imagination at once took fire. She was a comely, pleasing, amiable, ordinary girl, who felt herself oppressed because obliged to go to school, and excited Shelley's sympathy by appearing unhappy. He soon became entangled with her and her sister, who was older, and who is accused of furthering the intrigue out of ambition, thinking that the son of a baronet must be a great match. He writes to a friend in May, 1811:—
"You will perhaps see me before you can answer this; perhaps not; Heaven knows. I shall certainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook will decide whether now or in three weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way by endeavoring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice; resistance was the answer,—at the same time that I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain. And in consequence of my advice, she has thrown herself upon my protection."
The whole history of Shelley's courtship of Harriet—or of her courtship of him, as many of his friends put it—will probably never be written. It seems to have been promoted by others quite as much as by themselves. That her father was not averse to her marriage with the eldest son of a baronet may be taken for granted, and Shelley was the very man to be duped by designing parties; of this there can be no doubt. He was but nineteen years old, and she but sixteen, when they eloped,—of which proceeding there does not seem to have been any especial need,—and proceeded to Edinburgh, where they were married. By the time they reached Edinburgh their money was gone, and Shelley laid the case before his landlord, and asked him to advance money enough so that they might be married. To this the landlord consented, and the ceremony was performed. But the landlord, it appears, presumed somewhat upon the aid he had rendered, and in the evening, when Shelley and his bride were alone together, he knocked at the door and told them it was customary there for the guests to come in, in the middle of the night, and wash the bride with whiskey.
"I immediately," says Shelley, "caught up my brace of pistols, and pointing them both at him, said to him, 'I have had enough of your impertinence; if you give me any more of it I will blow your brains out;' on which he ran or rather tumbled downstairs, and I bolted the doors."
Even before the honeymoon was over, Harriet's sister Eliza, the evil genius of the pair, appeared upon the scene. The friend who was with them at the time thus describes her advent:—