Eloise is left in good hands. ‘He is an Irishman,’ the Chevalier has remarked to Eloise of the gentleman to whose care she is consigned, ‘and so very moral, and so averse to every species of gaieté de cœur that you need be under no apprehensions. In short, he is a love-sick swain, without ever having found what he calls a congenial female.’ The virtues of this Irish gentleman are regarded by Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy as indicative that, whilst writing St. Irvyne in the summer of 1810, Shelley was already disposed to regard the Irish with favour.
In Eloise this ‘love-sick swain’ discovers the ‘congenial female’ for whom he has long been seeking. Admiring her beauty, he hangs upon the music of her lips, pining for the time when he shall be permitted to salute them. Nothing in her history moderates his passion for Nempere’s abandoned mistress. In his judgment it is nothing to her disadvantage that she has been seduced, and is on the point of giving birth to a child of shame. When she answers his prayer for their immediate union by saying: ‘Know you not that I have been another’s?’ he replies with passionate fervour: ‘Oh, suppose me not the slave of such vulgar and narrow-minded prejudice. Does the frightful vice and ingratitude of Nempere sully the spotless excellence of my Eloise’s soul?’ When Eloise gives birth to Nempere’s son, Fitzeustace officiates by turns as the mother’s doctor and the infant’s nurse. At moments when he is necessarily ‘absent from the apartment of the beloved Eloise, his whole delight is to gaze on the child, and trace in its innocent countenance the features of the mother he adores.’
Eloise having at length consented to become his wife, this Irish gentleman remarks: ‘But before we go to England, before my father will see us, it is necessary that we should be married. Nay, do not start, Eloise: I view it in the light that you do; I consider it as but a chain which, although it keeps the body, still leaves the soul unfettered; it is not so with love. But still, Eloise, to those who think like us, it is, at all events, harmless; ’tis but yielding to the prejudices of the world wherein we live, and procuring moral expediency at a slight sacrifice of what we conceive to be right.’
Thus admonished, Eloise consents to the slight sacrifice of what she conceives to be right, and promises to pass to her Fitzeustace’s conjugal embraces through the narrow gate of lawful matrimony, instead of by the broad and higher way of Free Love. ‘Well, well,’ she says reluctantly, ‘it shall be done, Fitzeustace; but take the assurance of my promise that I cannot love you more.’ Partly, in palliation of the lady’s weakness and Fitzeustace’s excessive care for the world’s opinion in this business, the author of the romance remarks in his own person: ‘They soon agreed on a point, in their eyes of so trifling importance, and arriving in England, tasted that happiness, which love and innocence alone can give. Prejudice may triumph for awhile, but virtue will be eventually the conqueror.’
Reappearing, in the last chapter, to compass the high-souled Wolfstein’s destruction, Ginotti, alias Nempere, is left eventually in the darksome vaults of St. Irvyne’s ruinous abbey, to endure ‘a dateless and hopeless eternity of horror,’ as a gigantic and conscious skeleton, with ‘two pale and ghastly flames glaring in his eyeless sockets.’ The way in which the narrative is wound up surpasses all human understanding. After ‘fitting’ the manuscript for the press, Mr. John Joseph Stockdale may well have entreated Shelley to reconsider some passages of the story, and to explain or alter, certain matters of the dénouement. In answer to the publisher’s request for explanations and further instructions, Shelley wrote lightly from University College, Oxford, on 14th November, 1810:—
‘Dear Sir,—I return you the Romance by this day’s coach. I am much obligated by the trouble you have taken to fit it for the press. I am myself by no means a good hand at correction, but I think I have obviated the principal objections which you allege.
‘Ginotti, as you will see, did not die by Wolfstein’s hand, but by the influence of that natural magic which, when the secret was imparted to the latter, destroyed him.—Mountfort being a character of inferior import, I did not think it necessary to state the catastrophe of him, as at best it could be but uninteresting.—Eloise and Fitzeustace, are married and happy I suppose, and Megalena dies by the same means as Wolfstein.—I do not myself see any other explanation that is required.—As to the method of publishing it, I think, as it is a thing which almost mechanically sells to circulating libraries, &c., I would wish it to be published on my own account.
‘I am surprised that you have not received the Wandering Jew, and, in consequence write to Mr. Ballantyne to mention it; you will doubtlessly therefore, receive it soon.—Should you still perceive in the romance any error of flagrant incoherency, &c., it must be altered, but I should conceive it will (being wholly so abrupt) not require it.
I am your sincere humble servant,
Percy B. Shelley.
‘Shall you make this in one or two volumes? Mr. Robinson, of Paternoster Row, published Zastrozzi.’