Whilst telling William Godwin of his benevolent purpose towards Ireland, Shelley was silent on the subject to the incomparable Hogg. How was this? Hogg had fallen out of Shelley’s favour. Incomparable till circumstances caused Miss Eliza Westbrook to regard him with enmity, Hogg became incomparably evil in Shelley’s eyes before the trio bade the Calverts farewell with tearful emotion, and set their faces for Whitehaven. What evil had the alternately ductile and unmanageable Shelley been educated into thinking of his no longer incomparable friend?
There is no need to answer the question, readers having been already informed that Shelley did not leave Keswick, without coming to the conviction that Hogg had attempted to seduce Harriett, either on the journey from Edinburgh to York, or in the last-named city. Shelley did not charge Hogg with seducing Harriett, but only with attempting to seduce. Had he charged Hogg with the larger offence, he would have preferred against his familiar friend the accusation that, even when it is supported by considerable primâ facie evidence, is so often found on enquiry to have proceeded from unreasonable marital jealousy. In charging him with the mere attempt, Shelley charged his friend with an offence which, though no less flagitious, is by no means so easily proved as the more comprehensive crime. There are crimes, whose preliminary circumstances are necessarily too manifest and unequivocal to admit of any doubt of the culprit’s purpose. But seduction is one of the secret and insidious offences, that are seldom preceded by circumstances affording evidence of clear and unmistakable attempt to perpetrate them. No doubt cases arise from time to time, where a seducer’s measures for the accomplishment of his purpose may be fairly described as a manifest attempt to commit the crime. But these cases are rare. In most cases, where a man is charged with attempting to seduce, the accusation rests altogether on circumstances that, admitting of another construction, are compatible with the innocence of the accused person.
To Field Place, animated by bitter memories of the biographer’s ‘two volumes;’ to the Shelleyan enthusiasts, quick to think evil of the personal historian, who, refusing to write the poet’s life into harmony with the straight-nosed pictures, gave them a faulty instead of a faultless Shelley; and to the Free Lovers, who, disliking Hogg for his ridicule of their substitute for lawful marriage, see, in his alleged attempt on Harriett’s virtue, a way of accounting creditably for the instability of the poet’s devotion to his first wife,—Shelley’s conviction is a sufficient proof of Hogg’s guilt. Years since, it was enough for Hogg’s enemies to hint vaguely that his intimacy with Harriett was in no slight degree accountable for the briefness of Shelley’s affection for her. Of late, they have spoken of Hogg’s iniquity with greater freedom and boldness. No long while since, an Edinburgh Reviewer declared roundly that Hogg essayed to seduce Harriett within a few weeks of her wedding. At the present time it is the fashion of the Shelleyan specialists to speak of Hogg’s egregious and revolting turpitude, as a matter admitting of no doubt. To readers, however, who, whilst delighting in Shelley’s verse, are neither Shelleyan zealots, nor Free Lovers, nor Field Place partisans, it may appear well to make some enquiries respecting the nature and quality of the evidence that Hogg was so monstrous an example of perfidy and uncleanness. If Hogg (who, from certain points of view, was a typical English gentleman) can be proved innocent of the flagrant iniquity, with which he has been charged, it is desirable for the credit of his nation and race, that his innocence should be established. Even by his most vehement admirers it is admitted that, during his brief stay at Keswick, Shelley suffered from hallucination on another matter:—that he imagined he suffered from a violent assault, when no violence had been done him. According to one of his letters (26th January, 1812) Shelley, only a day or so earlier, was assailed by a robber, from whose felonious hands he escaped by falling fortunately into Mr. Calvert’s house. No robbery had been attempted on the poet’s person: no robber had assaulted him. He was the victim of hallucination, in thinking himself attacked by a robber under the very eaves of his dwelling-place, and in imagining he escaped his assailant, by dropping within the bounds of his own temporary home. The whole affair was the mere whimsey of his own freakish imagination. If the fancy originated in nervous derangement caused by opium, it was none the less a delusion. This affair happened closely upon the time when Shelley came to think so ill of Hogg. Even by the most cautious readers it will be admitted that the young man, who experienced an imaginary attack on his person, was a likely young man to experience a no less imaginary attack on his honour. The evidence is superabundant that Shelley suffered at times from grotesque delusions. This is admitted by his more discreet apologists, who use the mental infirmity to account for circumstances that, but for the infirmity, would prove him superlatively untruthful. To show, therefore, that Shelley was deluded in thinking Hogg an incomparable villain, is only to exhibit him as suffering from mental disorder, to which he was certainly liable. Moreover, it is my purpose to show that my view of the circumstances, resulting in the transient severance of the two friends, is not more favourable to Hogg’s reputation, than needful for Shelley’s honour.
What is the evidence that Hogg made the attempt? At this distance from 1811, the evidence must be sought for in MSS. or printed pages, exhibiting,—(1), words written by Shelley, or credibly reported to have been spoken by him; (2), words written by Hogg, or credibly reported to have been spoken by him; (3), words written by Harriett, or credibly reported to have been spoken by her; (4), words written by persons, who (like Southey at Keswick, or Miss Hitchener at Hurstpierpoint) derived their information directly or indirectly from Shelley, Hogg, or Harriett, or from more than one of them, or credibly reported to have been spoken by persons, so informed directly or indirectly by Shelley, Hogg, or Harriett; (5), words proceeding from persons who, without being known, may be reasonably assumed to have derived their information from Hogg, Shelley, or Harriett. Of statements made by unreliable diarists, letter-writers, and other literary tattlers, who merely recorded gossip that came to them from uncertain sources, no account should be taken. There exists no small mass of matters (written or printed), to be placed in one or another of these five classes of evidential statements. It is in the nature of things that the information gained from such sources should be more or less unsatisfactory. No one of the givers of information can be cross-examined respecting his or her testimony; much need though there is for such cross-examination, in order to render the evidence fairly reliable. For the production of a credit-worthy account of the most puzzling business of Shelley’s perplexing story, all one can do is to pick out from a mass of matters the apparently credit-worthy statements, and deal cautiously, whilst dealing inferentially, with them.
Were evidence weighty in proportion to the number of the sources, from which it is gathered, the evidence of Hogg’s guilt would not be light. But the testimony of a single scrap of paper may countervail and even annihilate the testimony of a hundred different documents. One fact in this affair of manifold uncertainties is, however, indisputable:—that for several months from some date of his residence at Keswick, Shelley believed Hogg to have made an attempt on Harriett’s honour. Shelley spoke and wrote too freely of Hogg’s iniquity for there to be any room for doubt whether he really thought so ill of his friend. And it cannot be questioned, that, had Shelley been constituted like most other young Englishmen of his social degree,—had he been as discreet in judgment, as accurate in statement, as unlikely to be carried away from common-sense by the forces of a lawless imagination, as exempt from proneness to delusion, as most young English gentlemen,—his bare utterance of his deliberate conviction, that Hogg had essayed to compass Harriett’s dishonour, would be strong primâ facie evidence that the conviction was no less reasonable than dismal. But Shelley was not constituted like other young men. Instead of being evenly balanced, his mind was often swayed by delusive fancies. He was habitually inaccurate in his statements. At the very time of thinking so ill of his friend, he suffered from hallucination on another subject. Instead of being an accurate observer of facts, he could believe himself assailed by a robber, when no one attacked him. The young man who thought Hogg capable of trying to seduce his wife, was the young man who thought his father was set on locking him up in a lunatic asylum. To see how far Shelley’s conviction about Hogg was reasonable or unreasonable, it is needful to know the facts that determined his judgment in the matter. My view of those facts will soon be given. But before it is submitted to readers of this chapter, it is well for them to be reminded that the original mere facts, pointing to Hogg’s infamy, can, in the first instance, have been known to no one but Hogg, Harriett, and Shelley. It is inconceivable that Hogg attempted to seduce Harriett under the very eyes of her sister. Whatever he did to provoke the hideous charge must have been done at some time prior to Miss Eliza Westbrook’s arrival at York; and her knowledge of the criminatory facts must have been derived from one or more of the three. As Hogg cannot be imagined to have given her any evidence against himself, she must have gained her knowledge of the criminatory facts from Shelley or her sister, or from both. Shelley’s knowledge of facts, which he came to regard as evidential of his friend’s guilt, may have resulted altogether from his own personal observation; but he may be presumed to have gathered the knowledge from his wife’s words, no less than from personal observation. Hogg certainly was not likely to tell his friend, or any other person, anything that could fairly be construed into evidence that he was a villain. As the criminatory facts (i.e. of Hogg’s conduct) cannot have been known in the first instance to anyone but Shelley, Hogg, and Harriett, all our knowledge of those facts (in whatever forms and through whatever channels it has reached us) must have proceeded originally from Hogg, Shelley, or Harriett. It is not to be supposed that Hogg either confessed having made the attempt, or admitted to anyone that he had done aught incompatible with his innocence of so serious an offence. It follows, therefore, that our knowledge of facts, in any degree evidential of Hogg’s guilt, is referable, in some way or other, to the ex-parte statements of the husband or wife, or both of them.
That Shelley went from York to Cumberland without thinking that Hogg had made an attempt on Harriett’s virtue, appears,—(1), from the passionate affectionateness with which he wrote to Hogg from Keswick; (2), from the fact that, for some time, Hogg was permitted to write letters to Harriett at Keswick; (3), from the fact that Harriett was permitted and encouraged by her husband to answer the letters she received at Keswick from Hogg. It is inconceivable that Shelley would have allowed his young bride to correspond with the man who, to his belief, had only a few weeks since tried to seduce her; that he would himself have continued to write letters, overflowing with protestations of friendship and love, to the man whom he regarded as having essayed to compass her ruin and her husband’s dishonour. Is it suggested that Shelley’s peculiar notions, touching the intercourse of the sexes, qualified him to live in amity with a man so lately desirous of seducing his wife? There is conclusive evidence that he was not a man to consent thus tamely to his own dishonour. On coming to the conviction that Hogg had been guilty of the attempt, Shelley broke with him promptly, and ceasing to correspond with him denounced him for a villain. It was thus Shelley acted towards Hogg, after he had been fully educated into thinking Hogg had not only admired Harriett with embarrassing and dangerous fervour, but had actually tried to seduce her. Here, surely, is sufficient proof that, had he thought so ill of Hogg on leaving York, he could not have written affectionately to him from Keswick, and at the same time have encouraged Harriett to correspond with him.
Whilst requiring Hogg to keep away from Harriett, till his admiration of her should have survived an enthusiasm too passionate for her ease and his safety, Shelley wrote to him from Keswick, ‘Think not I am otherwise than your friend:—a friend to you now more fervent, more devoted than ever, for misery endears to us those whom we love. You are, you shall be, my bosom friend:’—words to be found in the heart of the long and remarkable epistle, which Hogg published in the second volume of the unfinished Life (vide pp. 490-497), describing it as a ‘Fragment of a Novel,’ and saying of it lightly—‘This epistle from Albert to Werter is forcibly written, with great power and energy; but it wants the warmth, the tenderness, of Goethe and Rousseau.’ The more effectually to disguise the real nature of the composition from his ordinary readers, the biographer substituted ‘Charlotte’ for ‘Harriett’ in his printed copy of the epistle.
What was the object of this mystification? Why did Hogg thus misdescribe the letter, and substitute Charlotte for Harriett? These questions are answered in two very different ways,—by the wildest of the Shelleyan idolaters, who believe that the biographer (unquestionably guilty of declining to write Shelley’s story into harmony with the delusive portraits) must have been an unutterably wicked person; and by those of the poet’s discreet admirers, who, whilst recognizing in Hogg’s Life many inaccuracies and a considerable element of untruthfulness, believe the book to have been written on the whole with a sincere design of giving the world a fair view of the poet’s life and nature.
By the wildest of the Shelleyan idolaters it is maintained that Hogg had scarcely set eyes on his friend’s girlish bride, when he tried to lure her from the ways of wifely goodness; that entertaining this infamous design on the young lady, who but for him would not have been married at all, Hogg set about seducing her either at Edinburgh, or on the road from Edinburgh to York, or in the dingy dwelling of the dingy milliners; that Shelley withdrew her precipitately from York, in order to remove her from the baneful influence of his false friend; and that, after vainly combating Hogg’s wicked passion with affectionate expostulations, Shelley broke with the man who had proved himself so unworthy of his regard, and ceasing to answer his letters, held no intercourse with him for a considerable period. To those, who take this view of Hogg’s character and of the incidents that unquestionably resulted in a temporary estrangement of the two friends, it appears obvious that the misdescription and misleading alterations of the letter proceeded from Hogg’s desire to conceal the shameful circumstances that caused it to be written.
On the other hand, to those who can admire Shelley’s poetry without shutting their eyes to his various infirmities, and who on more than sufficient grounds hold a strong opinion that Hogg never entertained evil designs on his friend’s wife, and that Shelley was under an equally absurd and monstrous hallucination in thinking his familiar comrade capable of such wickedness, it is no less obvious that the mystification Hogg practised in his way of dealing with the epistle, instead of resulting from care for his own honour, proceeded altogether from delicate concern for the poet’s reputation.