CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1811.
Arrival in Town—The Poland-Street Exiles—The Squire’s Correspondence with Hogg’s Father—His gentle Treatment of Shelley—Dinner at Miller’s Hotel—Hogg’s Testimony to the Squire’s Worth—Shelley’s Nicknames for his Father—Shelley rejects his Father’s Terms—Shelley offers Terms to his Father—The Squire’s Indignation—He Relents—He makes Shelley a Liberal Allowance—Lady Shelley’s Misrepresentations—The Exiles about Town—The Separation of ‘The Inseparables’—Shelley’s Intimacy with the Westbrooks—John Westbrook’s Calling and Character—Taking the Sacrament—Harriett Westbrook’s Conversion to Atheism—Her Disgrace at School—Shelley’s Measures for illuminating his Sister Hellen—Tourists in Wales—The Change in Elizabeth Shelley—Arrangements for a Clandestine Meeting—Mrs. Shelley’s Treatment of her Son—Captain Pilford’s Kindness to his Nephew—Harriett Westbrook’s Appeal to Shelley—Her Decision and Indecision—From Wales to London—Hogg’s Influence—The Elopement to Scotland—Hogg starts for Edinburgh.
Leaving Oxford on 26th March, 1811 (Tuesday), the expelled Oxonians reached London at the close of the day, and after dining at the coffee-house near Piccadilly (where they put up for the night) took tea in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with Shelley’s cousins, described by Hogg as ‘taciturn people, the maxim of whose family appeared to be, that a man should hold his tongue and save his money.’ Though the Groves never wasted words, it is conceivable that their extreme taciturnity on the present occasion was in some degree due to Hogg’s embarrassing presence. In the hearing of the stranger, whom they most likely held accountable for the catastrophe that had befallen their kinsman, they could scarcely talk, even in their usual guarded manner, of the news the visitors brought with them from the seat of learning. ‘Bysshe,’ says Hogg, ‘attempted to talk, but the cousins held their peace, and so conversation remained cousin-bound.’ The position so fruitful of embarrassment cannot have induced the two comrades in misfortune to prolong the visit to a late hour; and it may be presumed that before midnight they were at Piccadilly, in the beds for which the long day on the roof of the stage-coach had disposed them. The next morning they sallied forth to look for lodgings, and before dusk they were settled in the Poland Street lodgings, where they lived together till about 18th April, 1811. Hogg says they ‘lived together nearly a month,’ before he went off to North Wales, whence he journeyed to York, to make the acquaintance of the provincial conveyancer who had undertaken to introduce him to the mysteries of the law. But as they did not take possession of the lodgings till 27th March, 1811, and Shelley’s first letter addressed to his absent friend is dated 18th April, 1811, their joint-tenancy of the Poland Street rooms barely exceeded three weeks.
Mr. Timothy Shelley was not in town when his scapegrace heir alighted from the coach in Piccadilly; but the news of ‘the late occurrence at University College’ was not long in travelling to the Squire of Field Place, who, putting pen to paper just about the time when the naughty boys were settling into their temporary quarters in Poland Street, wrote from Sussex a characteristic note, recalling the invitation Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg had received to visit Field Place in the Easter holidays. Nine days later (5th April, 1811) the honest and kindly gentleman was in town, and writing from the House of Commons a no less characteristic and even more comical letter (vide Hogg’s Life) to Hogg’s father. Thinking it needful in the highest degree that the Oxonian ‘Inseparables’ should be separated, Mr. Timothy Shelley invited Mr. Hogg, senr., to co-operate with him for that end. ‘These youngsters,’ the Member for New Shoreham wrote from the House of Commons, ‘must be parted, and the fathers must exert themselves.’ On the same day the Member for New Shoreham (who without seeing his son had corresponded with him since Lady-day) wrote his ‘dear boy’ a kindly, reasonable, and affectionate letter, to be found in Hogg’s book. Alluding briefly to his son’s serious disgrace, the father expressed sympathy with the offender under the shame and trouble he had brought upon himself by ‘criminal opinions and improper acts,’—no harsh words, surely, for the description of the youngster’s misconduct. In this letter (worded the more cogently because Shelley had already shown his resolve to oppose his father’s wishes) the Squire of Field Place set forth the terms on which he would forgive his errant child: (1) Shelley was directed ‘to go immediately to Field Place and abstain from all communication with Mr. Hogg for some considerable time.’ (2) The Squire wrote to his son, ‘Place yourself under the care and society of such gentleman as I shall appoint, and attend to his instructions.’ The gentleman, who has been charged with driving his boy from his boyhood’s home for publishing The Necessity of Atheism, only required that the lad (ætat. 18) should go straight home, forego the pleasure of Hogg’s society for a time, and pursue his studies under the direction of a private tutor. Were these terms hard and unreasonable? After setting them forth, the Squire no doubt wrote a few big words about his boy’s unjustifiable and wicked and diabolical opinions, in the fashion of fathers of the period. But these were the father’s terms:—Go home, where you will see me next Thursday; keep clear for awhile of your partner in mischief, and be a good boy with the tutor who will be found to take charge of you.
On the morrow (6th April, 1811) the honest and troubled gentleman wrote again (vide Hogg’s Life) to Mr. Hogg the Elder, urging that their boys should be parted, instead of being allowed ‘to go into professions together,’ as they wished. It was the Squire’s intention to use Paley’s arguments for the correction of his dear boy’s erroneous views; to make his young man read Paley’s Natural Theology; to go through the Natural Theology with him. ‘I shall,’ wrote the sorrowful father of Field Place to the other sorrowful father near Stockton-on-Tees, ‘read it with him. A father so employed must impress his mind more sensibly than a stranger.’ This is droll and comical from one point of view, no doubt. But it is also pathetic, and very much to Squire Timothy’s credit.
Hitherto Mr. Timothy Shelley had not seen his son since ‘the late occurrence at University College;’ but on the day following the date of his second letter to Mr. Hogg, senior—i.e. on 7th April, 1811, the first Sunday of the month—the young men dined with the Member for New Shoreham, by invitation, at his hotel (Miller’s) on the Surrey side of the river, hard by Westminster Bridge. Leaving Poland Street at an early hour, the two youngsters prepared themselves for the repast, to which they had been bidden, with a long walk, during which Shelley read aloud several passages, to the excessive ridicule of the Jews and their religion, from some critical work on the Old Testament.
On coming to Miller’s Hotel, with faces brightened by exercise in the spring breezes, and complexions reddened by laughter at their author’s satirical jocosities, they were welcomed with kindness by Mr. Timothy Shelley, and with cordiality by Mr. Graham, the Squire’s ‘factotum.’ The reception was courteous, but the genial warmth and courtesy of Mr. Shelley’s manner did not render Mr. Hogg blind to its comical extravagances. ‘He presently,’ Hogg remarks of the Squire’s demeanour, ‘began to talk in an odd, unconnected manner; scolding, crying, swearing, and then weeping again; no doubt, he went on strangely;’—even as honest gentlemen of an old school were apt to do under impulses of strong and conflicting feelings. Glad to see his boy who had offended him, angry with himself for letting this pleasure appear, and feeling it incumbent on his parental dignity to affect an air of sternness, Mr. Timothy Shelley was stirred far too deeply to play the part he wished to play, and ‘broke down’ in an absurd and rather ludicrous fashion, scolding a little, swearing a great deal, and blubbering hysterically in his want of self-control. Most young men would have been touched by these exhibitions of feeling, but to Hogg and his friend nothing was more obvious than that the ‘old boy’ was going on strangely.
‘What do you think of my father?’ Shelley inquired in a whisper of Hogg, whilst the senior was contending with too powerful emotion.
‘He is not your father,’ Hogg replied slily in reference to the Pater Omnipotens, of whom they had been reading in the satirical treatise on their way to the hotel. ‘It is the God of the Jews: the Jehovah you have been reading about!’—an answer that tickled Shelley’s never fine sense of humour so acutely, that he slipt from the edge of his chair, and ‘laughing aloud with a wild, demoniacal burst of laughter,’ measured his length on the floor, to the surprise and alarm of his father, and Mr. Graham, who hastened to raise him from the ground. If Mr. Shelley the Elder ‘went on strangely,’ Mr. Shelley the Younger cannot be said to have behaved in an orderly and commonplace manner.