But though she cannot have rated him highly as a partner in the dance, and does not seem at any moment to have thought seriously of taking him for a partner through life, the cousins played together prettily for two summer months. The moonlight walks at Strode and about St. Irving’s Hills were followed by no less agreeable visits to the sights of the town. And when Miss Harriett returned to Wiltshire, and the youthful poet went back to Field Place, there was a commencement or renewal (Mr. Charles Henry Grove is uncertain which it was) of their correspondence through the post, that came to an end in, or shortly before, the ensuing Christmas holidays. It is not surprising that spectators of the game, who, of course, could see but little of it, mistook for an engagement what to outsiders seemed so likely to become an engagement, though it never was an affair (if I read the facts aright) that could have ended in marriage.
Peacock was justified in saying far too much had been made of this affair. On Shelley’s side, it certainly was no grand passion. On Harriett’s side it probably was nothing more than an innocent, perfectly feminine, and scarcely avoidable, flirtation. To please her parents rather than herself, she was something more complaisant to her cousin than she need have been. To please him, she answered the letters he rained down upon her—letters it would have been uncivil in her to leave altogether unnoticed. After fuming for a week or ten days, on being told he might not write to her again, Shelley never pretended that his heart had been seriously concerned in the affair, that he was a blighted being, that Harriett Grove had dealt him a blow comparable with the blow that drove Byron in anguish from Annesley. In this matter, at least, he was wholly guiltless of affectation, even whilst in his first annoyance he fumed and blustered in a very absurd fashion, vowing war to the bitter end with the demon Intolerance, that had severed him from his Harriett. He played a perfectly natural, though scarcely heroic, part, when he had taken time to wipe his eyes and recover his temper. The affair with his cousin had been ended only a few months, when he went off cheerily to Scotland with the sixteen-years-old daughter of a licensed victualler.
After leaving Oxford, Shelley never talked any nonsense about Harriett Grove’s unkindness, never affected to have suffered much from her rejection of his suit, never accused her of having treated him badly. And so long as he lived, no nonsense was written or talked about the matter by the poet’s friends. But when he had been dead for some few years, it occurred to the Shelleyan zealots, who were decrying Byron on serious questions for the advantage of their peculiar bard, that less important matters might be handled in the same way to the benefit of the poet, whom (to use an Americanism) they were ‘running’ against the author of Childe Harold. Hence the extravagant talk about Shelley’s ancient lineage and patrician quality. If the opposition poet was a baron of the realm, a man of splendid lineage, a descendant from the Norman Buruns, the poet of ‘the zealots’ was next in succession to an English baronetcy, a gentleman of Norman ancestry, a worshipful personage, who had reason to value himself on his relationship to the Penshurst Sidneys, and on being heir to wealth that could purchase a score such places as Newstead Abbey. Hence, also, the talk about Byron’s egotistic selfishness, insincerities, and affectations, which made him show disadvantageously in comparison with Shelley, who was (of course) so remarkable for simplicity and devotion to the truth, so invariably considerate for the feelings of other people, and so incapable of talking about himself in his poetry! Hence, also, the disparagement of Byron’s singular facial loveliness. When he discovered that Byron’s nose was too big for his face, and declared it had the appearance of having been imposed upon the face instead of growing naturally out of it, Leigh Hunt was trying (even in respect to so trivial a matter as a single feature) to reduce the poet he hated, to an equality with the poet, whose too small nose was ‘a turn up,’—a blemish, that the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ have done their best to withhold from the poet’s posterity.
Hence, also, the practice of making far too much of Shelley’s passion for Harriett Grove, and its disappointment. Readers do not need to be reminded what good running Byron made during life with his droll piece of romance about his passion for Mary Chaworth, and the ruin that came to him from its disappointment;—the fiction, that originated in vanity and sentimentalism, being subsequently embellished and emphasized at the instigation of the poet’s spite against his unforgiving wife. But the sympathy and admiration, that came to Byron during his life from this fantastic and lovely bit of poetical fibbing, were trivial in comparison with the compassion and charity, lavished upon him in the grave by the thousands and hundreds of thousands of simple persons, who had been taught by his verse to believe he would have abounded in all the social virtues, had it not been for that unfortunate business with Mary Chaworth. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the zealots, who persisted in ‘running’ Shelley against Byron, determined to ‘run’ Harriett Grove against Mary Chaworth, and to teach mankind that Byron’s passion for Mary was no grander an affair than Shelley’s passion for his Harriett (the First).
CHAPTER VIII.
ST. IRVYNE; OR, THE ROSICRUCIAN: A ROMANCE. BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
Venal Villains—‘Jock’ instructed to ‘Pouch’ them—At Work on another Novel—The Dog of a Publisher—Devil of a Price—St. Irvyne—Irving’s Hill—Review of St. Irvyne—Wolfstein the Magnanimous—Megalena de Metastasio—Olympia della Anzasca—Eloise St. Irvyne—The Virtuous Fitzeustace—Ginotti’s Doom—The Oxonian Shelley’s Repugnance to Marriage—His Commendation of Free Love—Parallel Passages of Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne—The Verses of St. Irvyne.
As the hour drew near for the publication of Zastrozzi, Shelley was urgent with his publisher to spend money in getting favourable reviews of the superlatively foolish book. The publisher declining to part with his money for that purpose, the literary aspirant (more truth-loving though he was than other boys, if Lady Shelley may be trusted) discovered a grievance in Mr. Robinson’s niggardly reluctance to bribe the reviewers. As the man of business would not make needful arrangements with the ‘gentlemen of the press,’ Shelley declared his intention (in a letter dated 1st April, 1810), to see that the ‘venal villains’ were properly ‘pouched.’ Many a boyish author has talked and written in the same vein, and even tipt a ‘venal villain’ for a lying paragraph, without bearing himself in later time so as to acquire a reputation for untruthfulness or for labouring under semi-delusions. A biographer might well disdain to notice so trivial an indication of a readiness to tamper with the truth and fib by deputy, had Shelley’s veracity never been called in question in later time. Under the circumstances of the case, one does not make too much of the small matter, in remarking that, whilst it accords with the action of the young man who offered verse for sale as ‘original poetry’ with the knowledge that it was not ‘original,’ this resolve to buy insincere praise, in order to deceive the public and win money or homage from credulous readers, is out of harmony with the fine things that have been said of the poet’s sublime sincerity and passionate abhorrence of falsehood. If Medwin was right in saying Zastrozzi was favourably reviewed and declared ‘a book of much promise,’ the critic must have been a sufficiently ‘pouched’ and ‘venal villain.’