Eliza Westbrook was chiefly accountable for Shelley’s passage from the state of mind, in which he regarded Hogg as nothing worse than Harriett’s inconveniently emotional but loyal admirer, to the state of mind, in which he regarded him as a treacherous libertine, set on seducing her. Even as she had been at York the influence to carry Shelley from a condition of unqualified confidence in his friend’s discretion and moral robustness into a condition of feverish apprehension for the consequences of his tempestuous sentimentality, Eliza Westbrook became at Keswick the baneful tutor, who educated him into thinking Hogg an egregious villain.
From the moment of her arrival at Keswick, to the moment when she could congratulate herself on having effected her purpose, the woman whom Hogg had hoped and tried to separate from her sister and brother-in-law, found her chief occupation in bringing Shelley to the conviction that Hogg was a black-hearted knave. In justice to the woman who accomplished this evil work, it should be remembered that she had received no ordinary provocation. She may have imagined she was rendering good service to her childish and inexperienced sister. Though she was a person of some culture and more than average cleverness, it is not to be supposed that John Westbrook’s elder daughter had, together with the superficial refinement, acquired the delicate sensibility of a gentlewoman. Whilst there is nothing to countenance an opinion that Miss Westbrook was remarkable for mental purity and elevation, there is abundant evidence that in feeling and temper she resembled the average womankind of the London bourgeoisie. Born in a tavern, reared from infancy to girlhood’s later term in a bar-parlour, and shaping her course in accordance with Miss Warne’s canons of feminine propriety, she held on numerous questions the views and notions, generally favoured, by people of the decent but unrefined class, in which she had found her earliest teachers. It was natural for her to think no young man could approach her beautiful sister without regarding her passionately, and seizing the earliest occasion for the gratification of his desire. Taking this view of Hogg and his peculiar intimacy with Harriett, it is conceivable that Miss Westbrook was at times less mindful of her strictly personal reasons for disliking the young gentleman, than of the dangers from which she desired to save her sister. It is not surprising that she resolved to put an end to an intimacy so likely to tarnish Harriett’s reputation, and even make her a faithless wife.
Nor is it surprising that Miss Westbrook accomplished at Keswick the purpose she formed at York,—the purpose she could scarcely have accomplished at York, or anywhere else, so long as Shelley was in daily personal intercourse with his incomparable friend. At York, with his radiant smiles and racy humour, his cordial looks and sympathetic hints, Hogg was more than a match for the enemy who, so long as he was on the spot to answer precise charges of wickedness, could only hint that her dear Harriett was embarrassed by his extravagant gallantry. But at Keswick Shelley was altogether at the mercy of the quick-witted spinster, who, recalling to his memory countless trivial incidents, knew well how to give them a suspicious colour, and manipulate them into evidence that, instead of being Harriett’s chivalric admirer, Hogg had been her wicked pursuer.
Resembling Byron in being easily governed by any woman with whom he was thrown, so long as he was pleased with her, Shelley went to Keswick in the best of humours with his wife’s sister. Grateful to her for favouring his pursuit of Harriett, and cheering him in sisterly fashion at a moment of many troubles, he magnified her considerable cleverness into marvellous sagacity, and discovered angelic sweetness in her transient complaisance. At Keswick, and for several weeks after leaving Keswick, the youngster, who had found a tyrant in his kindly father and rebelled against his mother’s mild control, surrendered himself to the government of his wife’s sister with comical submissiveness. When a freakish and petulant man consents to petticoat rule, he usually reserves his freedom of action in regard to a few matters of minor importance. But for awhile no spirit of petty mannishness put a limit to Miss Westbrook’s authority over her brother-in-law. Pleased to be managed by her in great things, such as his attitude towards Hogg, he was no less pleased to be governed by so wonderful a woman in the smallest things. So long as he delighted in his marvellous sister-in-law, Shelley was content to go about with empty pockets, and take his sixpences from the diplomatic Eliza as he wanted them. ‘Eliza,’ he wrote meekly from Dublin to Miss Hitchener, ‘keeps our common stock of money for safety in some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, although she gives it out as we want it.’
Of course the lady, who gave money to her two children as they wanted it, was aware that, to control them for any considerable period, she must be mindful of their humours and govern them with gentleness; that to retain her power over them she must drive with a light rein and seldom crack the whip. Having opened Shelley’s eyes to Hogg’s iniquity, she was clever enough to see and say what he saw and said on questions of poetry and social science. To reward her brother-in-law for banishing the perfidious Hogg from his breast, she promised to receive Miss Hitchener to her heart in the ensuing summer, when the Sussex schoolmistress should come to them in North Wales. In his altercations with Southey she was, of course, altogether on her brother-in-law’s side. If she doubted whether The Address would do all the author hoped of it, for the good of the Irish people, she kept the doubt to herself. It may also be assumed confidently that, on entering Dublin with Harriett’s husband, she had never expressed in his hearing any misgiving of his ability to emancipate the Catholics and cancel the Act of Union. Miss Westbrook did not govern her erratic brother-in-law for any long period; but her control over him would have been less enduring by several months, had she not known that to rule a freakish and wayward man on matters of moment a woman must agree with him on matters about which she is indifferent.
How far in her measures for Hogg’s humiliation Miss Westbrook was aided by Shelley’s bride; how far the assistance Harriett gave her sister to this end was given with a clear knowledge of the object for which the latter was working; and how far Mrs. Shelley was in her sister’s confidence, are questions for differences of opinion. It cannot, however, be questioned that, either with malice aforethought, or in the heedlessness of girlish simplicity, Harriett contributed to the matters of testimony which brought the future poet to the amazing conclusion that Hogg, at some time or times before the flight from York, had wished and essayed to seduce her. It is conceivable that from first to last in this unsavoury business the sisters were in perfect mutual confidence; but I cannot believe that so young a girl as Mrs. Shelley deliberately conspired with her sister at York to trump up so monstrous a charge against her husband’s closest friend. I can, however, imagine that in her amazement at the view taken by Shelley of some of her admissions respecting Hogg’s demeanour to her, she may have lacked the courage to protest against the misconstruction put on innocent occurrences, and may have been betrayed by such weakness at Keswick into acquiescing in a hideous story which she knew to be untrue. I can imagine that after her arrival at Keswick she was schooled and terrorized by her elder sister into conspiring with her to impose the vile romance on her husband. After practising alternately on Harriett’s imagination and Shelley’s imagination, Miss Westbrook may, by sheer force of will, have constrained Harriett to think that, to preserve her husband’s confidence, it was necessary for her to affect to think what he thought of Hogg,—that by speaking in Hogg’s defence she would cause Shelley to suspect her of having connived at his wicked design. Miss Westbrook may even have talked Harriett at Keswick into thinking Hogg had tried to make her a faithless wife. It must be remembered how young and inexperienced Harriett was,—and how greatly under her sister’s influence.
But I think it more probable that Harriett was never admitted fully into her sister’s confidence,—was never permitted either by Miss Westbrook or Shelley to know all the evil they thought of Hogg. Perplexed by the conditions of her recent association with Hogg, it was natural in the young wife at York to wish to escape for awhile from an intimacy that, during her husband’s absence, had exposed her to the suspicion of the prying milliners. On Miss Westbrook’s arrival at the lodging-house, it was natural for the girlish bride to speak to her sister of the uneasiness and the mingled feelings of irritation and shame she had experienced. On Shelley’s reappearance it was no less natural for her to speak to him on the same subjects. She may have felt that her position would have been less trying if Mr. Hogg had been something less attentive to her; that he would have shown greater delicacy in either withdrawing from the lodgings, or spending his evenings elsewhere so long as Shelley was away. Feeling this, she may have said so to Shelley as well as to her sister. It cannot be questioned that she joined her sister in urging Shelley to withdraw hurriedly from York; but in doing so Harriett may not have been actuated, like her sister, by a desire to offer Mr. Hogg a great affront. She may have been told by Miss Westbrook that Hogg was aware what would take place during his absence. Anyhow it is certain that Harriett left York without thinking Hogg guilty of harbouring infamous designs on her honour, and also without conceiving her sister and Shelley suspected him of such wickedness. Had she thought either the one or the other, it is inconceivable that she would have written friendly letters to him from Cumberland.
At Keswick, during the earlier weeks of November, Shelley and Harriett had several conversations about Hogg and his behaviour to her; conversations in which they reviewed all the circumstances of his sojourn with them at Edinburgh and at York; conversations in which Shelley questioned and cross-questioned her respecting the incidents of her life in the dingy lodging-house, whilst he was absent from the cathedral town; conversations in which they examined critically the letters Hogg had sent her from York since her arrival at Keswick. Whilst there is good reason to believe Harriett spoke freely with her husband in these Cumberland conferences, there is no reason to think she spoke otherwise than honestly. But it is in the nature of such conferences (where the memory of one speaker feeds the curiosity of another) to magnify words and deeds of no moment into matters of the highest moment, and to play strange tricks with the colour and quality of remembered circumstances. Unconscious inventiveness is ever at hand to help the memory. If Harriett’s recollections were severely historic, and wholly free from the delusive effects of mental excitement, she was a strangely cold and unsympathetic young woman. Instead of being offered to a listener of sober intellect and judicial temper, her recollections were offered to a young man of quick fancy, impetuous spirit, vehement emotionality. Given to such a mind, the recollections were necessarily fruitful of false impressions.
In these conversations Harriett unquestionably played into the hands of Miss Westbrook, and greatly furthered her elder sister’s machinations for Hogg’s chastisement; but I have a strong (though possibly erroneous) opinion that this aid was rendered by Mrs. Shelley in ignorance of all her sister’s purpose. She certainly had no strong liking for Hogg. She disliked him to the extent of wishing to be relieved of an embarrassing intimacy with him, and may even have desired her husband to regard him coldly. In proportion as she is young and foolish, a bride is apt to regard her husband’s closest male friend with jealousy and antagonism. Harriett was a mere girl, and no wiser than most girls of her age. Of her own mere motion she would have been sure to think Hogg was overvalued by her husband. Living so much under Eliza’s influence she necessarily wished him to stand lower in her husband’s favour. But I cannot think she did or said anything for the purpose of causing Shelley to imagine Hogg had made an attempt on her virtue.
Whilst these conversations (having for their avowed object the discovery of the degree in which Hogg’s admiration of Mrs. Shelley had exceeded the limits of conventional propriety and virtuous behaviour) gave an unhealthy direction to the thoughts of the girlish bride, they worked the nervous and emotional Shelley into states of excitement favourable to Miss Westbrook’s designs. Each of his conversations with Harriett may be presumed to have been followed by confidential talk with Eliza, in which Shelley gave her the particulars of Harriett’s latest admissions, and she (in Harriett’s absence) taught Shelley what views to take of those admissions, what inferences he should draw from them. The preciseness with which Shelley wrote to Miss Hitchener about Hogg’s iniquity justifies a strong suspicion that Miss Westbrook’s operations on her brother-in-law’s jealousy and credulity closed with some definite statement to Hogg’s infamy. It is difficult to imagine that even Shelley could have been brought to the final conviction by mere hints and inferential suggestions. On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive any statement, likely to have been made by Miss Westbrook for her brother-in-law’s conviction of Hogg’s guilt, that would not have rudely shaken his confidence in the virtue of his wife, who had herself written to Hogg from Keswick in friendly terms. It is enough that the moment came when Shelley wrote of Hogg to the Hurstpierpoint schoolmistress, ‘He attempted to seduce my wife.’