At the moment of the future poet’s departure for Eton, it is well to remind the readers of his story, that he was the eldest child of his parents,—being senior to his eldest sister by a year and nine months. Mistakes having been made about the poet in his earlier years, which would not have been made by his biographers, had they been aware of this fact, it is necessary to warn readers not to mistrust their present guide because he differs on this matter from several previous authorities. Here is the list of the offspring of Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Shelley, of Field Place, with some particulars of the children, taken from the pedigree, mentioned in a previous chapter:—
1. Percy Bysshe Shelley, eldest son and heir-apparent, born at Field Place 4th August, 1792, baptized at Warnham 7th September following.
2. Elizabeth Shelley, eldest daughter, born 10th May, 1794, baptized at Warnham 2nd July following.
3. Hellen Shelley, 2nd daughter, born 29th January, 1796, baptized 27th February following; died an infant, buried at Warnham 25th May, 1796.
4. Mary Shelley, 3rd daughter, born 9th June, 1797, baptized at Warnham 17th of July following.
5. Hellen Shelley, 4th daughter, born 26th September, 1799, baptized at Warnham 6th October following.
6. Margaret Shelley, 5th daughter, born 20th of January, 1801, baptized at Warnham 12th March following.
7. John Shelley, 2nd son, born 15th of March, 1806, baptized at Warnham 14th of August following.
A child of six years, when her brother went to Eton for the first time, Miss Hellen Shelley (who lived to be in her later middle age the chief source of information respecting his boyhood) may have still been in her seventh year, cannot have exceeded her seventh year by three full months, when he returned from Eton to Field Place for his first Etonian holidays. It follows that, instead of pertaining to an earlier period of his boyhood, Miss Hellen Shelley’s recollections of her brother relate to the Eton schoolboy; to the youth between the date of his gentle extrusion from Eton and entrance into Oxford, to the University undergraduate, and to the youthful lodger in Poland Street, immediately after his by no means undeserved expulsion from his Oxford college. It is not in the nature of things that his sister Hellen (his junior by seven years and something more than seven weeks) should have remembered aught of her brother previous to his Eton time, so clearly as she remembered the things narrated of him, by virtue of her own memory, in the letters of her pen published in Hogg’s first volume. It follows, therefore, that for a biographer to make the Shelley of the Warnham day-school, and the Brentford boarding-school, out of these reminiscences, is to produce a precocious infant very much unlike what the schoolboy can have been in his earlier childhood; in fact, to set the reader wrong at the story’s outset with a false Shelley, instead of the real Shelley.
If Miss Hellen Shelley may be trusted (and there is no reason to question the general fidelity of the lady’s reminiscences), the Etonian, at home for the holidays, taught his little sisters to personate angels of light and angels of darkness, spirits of the air and spirits of the fiery depths, with such eccentric and fantastic articles of clothing or other drapery as the children of big country-houses can usually discover in out-of-the-way wardrobes and closets when they have mind to ‘play at dressing up’ in the Christmas holidays. He used also to play under their curious eyes, and to their alternate delight and terror, with his chemical toys and electrical apparatus. Good cause had little Hellen to hold her breath with alarm, and wonder what would come of the magical performance, when the mysteriously clever and daring Bysshe was seen running through a principal passage of the old home towards the kitchen, whilst bearing in his outstretched hands a dish, that sent blue flames upwards even to the ceiling. Better reason still had the small damsel to cry aloud, in strains that brought the elders of the family to her rescue, when the scientific experimentalist (who had on previous occasions inspired her with a reasonable aversion to his electrical jar) declared his humane purpose of curing her chilblains with a series of small shocks.