Because these epistles began in kindly fashion with ‘My Dear Boy,’ the writer was suspected of wishing to imitate the style of Chesterfield’s Letters, and also of thinking he resembled the courtly Earl in elegance, accomplishments, and worldly wisdom. It was easy, and no less pleasant than easy to the two undergraduates, to make fun of the epistles, so curiously deficient in coherence and perspicacity. Always franked by the member for New Shoreham, the letters sometimes ‘scolded the dear boy nobly, royally, gloriously.’ One of these franked, furious and fiery missives having moved Hogg to speak of it derisively, and with a sprightly reference to a familiar line of Campbell’s ‘Hohenlinden,’ Shelley henceforth took to speaking of his father as ‘the fiery Hun.’ The son had other nicknames for the father, whom he so often offended,—sometimes unintentionally, and sometimes with deliberate and malicious purpose to rouse and exasperate the irritability, that afforded the two youthful Oxonians so much diversion;—the irritability which the son (of whose poetical light and sweetness so much has been written by fantastic adulators) was bound by filial duty to consider tenderly and soothe to the utmost of his ability; was bound by honour and care for his own dignity to screen and palliate. Writing and talking of him as ‘the Fiery Hun,’ Shelley could also speak of his father contemptuously as ‘Killjoy’ and ‘the Old Boy,’ in the letters that passed between him and Hogg after their dismissal from University College.
Whilst Hogg was exquisitely droll about the defects of Mr. Timothy Shelley’s letters, he of course heard all about his friend’s passion for his cousin, Harriett Grove, which, though it never touched the boy’s deepest and strongest affections, was still a sufficiently fervid sentiment to justify him in thinking it a grand and eternal devotion. It is not surprising that Shelley opened his heart on this interesting topic to his constant companion. On the contrary, it would be strange had he done otherwise. It is rare for a boy to pass through his first love-fever without confiding to a sympathetic hearer of his own sex, how he fares under the violent delights and still more violent anxieties of his heart’s unrest. In speaking to his dear and incomparable Hogg of Miss Harriett Grove’s beauty and accomplishments, her irresistible voice and richly radiant tresses, her composure that too nearly resembled coldness, and the circumspection that might not be imputed to her for unkindness, young Bysshe Shelley only did as most youngsters would have done under similar circumstances,—as most youngsters under similar circumstances will do, to the end of Time and Love.
But though he did nothing unusual or otherwise remarkable in talking of his love and his Harriett’s loveliness to his one familiar male friend, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley did what few young Englishmen of gentle lineage and culture would have done,—what no young gentleman could do, without lacking in some degree the delicate fastidiousness and proud reserve befitting a youth of breeding and quality,—when, out of fraternal concern for the young lady’s welfare, and in the fervour of his generous affection for so incomparable a friend, he invited Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg to visit Field Place on the first convenient opportunity, for the express purpose of seeing the eldest daughter of the house, falling in love with her, and marrying her. It is not often that a young lady (ætat. sixteen, living under the protection of her father and mother) is thus offered in marriage by her elder brother (ætat. eighteen) to a young gentleman whom she has never seen. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Bysshe Shelley that his father and mother were entitled to a voice on the disposal of their daughter in marriage, that before entering on negotiations on so delicate a subject, with a gentleman of whose person and family they were alike ignorant, he should consult the Fiery Hun on the business, and learn from the Fiery Hun’s wife, whether the arrangement would be agreeable to her feelings.
From what is known of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s character and lively humour in his later time, one may imagine that in the lightness and levity of his earlier time he was vastly tickled by his young friend’s flattering proposal for this alliance of their respective houses; that he saw the probable advantage of wedding the daughter of so wealthy a baronet, as Mr. Timothy Shelley would become on the death of his aged father; and that he was strongly predisposed to admire his young friend’s sister, who was said to resemble her brother in the colour of her eyes and hair, no less than in the pink-and-white freshness of her complexion, and to surpass him greatly in facial comeliness, by virtue of the delicate symmetry of a countenance, whose most prominent feature was faultless in size and shape. Anyhow, the undergraduate from the northern county, who, on account of its remoteness, had no intention of returning to his father’s roof at Christmas or Easter, consented readily to a project that, even if nothing more came of it, would enable him to pass the shorter vacations in congenial society at no inconvenient distance from the University.
It was doubtless a matter for regret and apologetic explanation with Mr. Bysshe Shelley, that, owing to the Fiery Hun’s peculiarities, he could not safely carry his friend with him to Sussex at the close of the Michaelmas term, but was under the necessity of preceding him to Field Place and foregoing the delights of his society, until he should be authorized by the capricious, and too often austere Killjoy, to invite him thither for the gaieties of Christmas and the New-Year. The evidences are not conclusive on the point; but they afford particulars from which it may be fairly assumed that, for several days after Shelley’s withdrawal from the University for the Christmas holidays, Hogg (whether lingering at Oxford, or staying at the London Hotel, where he received several letters from Shelley in the closing days of December, 1810, and the opening days of January, 1811) looked to each successive post for an invitation to Field Place, and to the presence of the young lady, with whom he was predisposed to fall in love, and had promised to fall in love, if he found it in his power to do so.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CHRISTMAS VACATION OF 1810-11.
Presentation copies of St. Irvyne—Shelley resorts to Deception—Shelley in Disgrace at Field Place—Harriett Grove’s Dismissal of her Suitor—The Squire’s Anger—Mrs. Shelley’s Alarm for her Girls—Shelley’s Troubles—His Rage against Intolerance—His Wild Letters to Hogg—‘Married to a Clod’—Stockdale’s Design—His Intercourse with Shelley’s Father—More Negotiations with the Pall-Mall Publisher—Shelley a Deist—Controversial Correspondence—Shelley’s Attempt to enlighten his Father—His Passage from Deism to Atheism—The Squire relents to his Son—Hogg invited to Field Place—Stockdale’s Disappointment—Hogg invited to Field Place—Stockdale’s Character—His Scandalous Budget.