As Lady Shelley’s published book about her husband’s father is still regarded as a work of authority, readers should examine this curious conglomerate of misrepresentations. (1) Instead of being exasperated by his son’s avowal of atheism, Mr. Timothy Shelley, though naturally shocked and grieved by the incident, treated the eighteen-years-old youngster with affectionate consideration and tenderness, in respect to that serious offence. (2) Instead of excluding him from Field Place for that reason, he told him to go home quickly, when the boy’s Atheism was his only reason for displeasure. (3) Mr. Timothy Shelley’s vehement anger with the youngster was due to his contumacious refusal to comply with the reasonable requirement touching his intercourse with Hogg. (4) Lady Shelley speaks of ‘the young controversialist,’ as though the profession of atheism were one of the Liberal professions, and as though Mr. Timothy Shelley should have been grateful to the boy for embracing so honourable a vocation. (5) Instead of inflicting a bitter pang on his sensitively affectionate feelings, the sentence of exclusion from his boyhood’s home merely caused Shelley a little irritation and a vast amount of amusement. (6) Instead of ‘determining to bear it, for the sake of what he believed to be right and true,’ Shelley resolved to treat the sentence of exclusion with contempt; to go to Field Place whenever it should please him to go there, ‘to enter his father’s dominions, preserving a quaker-like carelessness of opposition ... and turning a deaf ear to any declamatory objections,’—and he was as good as his word. The sentence of exclusion had been delivered barely a month, when (15th May, 1811) Shelley was back at Field Place; from which date till the middle of July, 1811, when he went to stay with his cousins at Radnorshire, he remained in Sussex staying alternately with his uncle Pilfold at Cuckfield, and with his mother and sisters in the home of his boyhood, from which he is said to have been so barbarously excluded. The sentence ceased to be operative as soon as the exile cared to disregard it. Keeping out of his father’s way, so long as the ‘old buck’ was in his hottest ‘rage’ (to use the gentle Shelley’s nice way of talking of his father and his father’s displeasure), the exile of Poland Street went down to Field Place as soon as he thought life in the country would be pleasanter than life in London. The sentence of exclusion was from the first a mere brutum fulmen. It is absurd to speak of this exclusion as a real exclusion. At the worst it was nothing more than such an exclusion from his boyhood’s home, as most undergraduates undergo, when they are ‘rusticated’ for one or two terms.
It is needful to return to Poland Street, and the time when the exiles lodged there. Reading divers books, besides The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, writing letters, and blotting no little paper in the composition of essays that never found publishers, the expelled students lived as far as they could in the manner of Oxonians. The cousins Grove dropt in upon them in the afternoons, and were less taciturn than they had been in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the evening of March 26th. Sometimes by themselves, sometimes with a Grove to conduct them by ‘the shortest cuts,’ the exiles perambulated the town, and amused themselves after the manner of young gentlemen from the country, thrown upon the London pavements seventy years since. One day they dined in the chambers of a smart Templar (given to talk about duchesses and countesses) on ‘steaks and other Temple messes.’ Another day they roamed about Kensington Gardens to the delight of Shelley, who was charmed with the sylvan aspect of the timbered lawns. On a third day they walked out to Mrs. Fenning’s boarding-school for young ladies on Clapham Common, where Shelley saw his little sister Hellen, scampering about with her light locks streaming over her shoulders. One of their favourite places for lounging was St. James’s Park, where Bysshe, after watching the soldiers at drill, inveighed against standing armies, as hostile to the liberties of the people. At least on one occasion Shelley was seen at the British Forum near Covent Garden, where he harangued the assembled Radicals on the vices of all governments:—the sentiments of the orator being so acceptable to his auditors that, when he ceased to scream at them in his shrillest notes, they rushed upon him to discover who he was and whence he came,—inquiries to which the apostle of liberty (with a large stock of aliases at command) replied with a false name and address.
Because the Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things was advertised in the Times of the 10th April, and 11th April, 1811, and because Hogg says never a word about that perplexing publication (that in all probability was never published), Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy maintains that the poem was on sale during that month in London, and that (without letting Hogg know aught of the matter), Shelley made daily runs from Poland Street to Messrs. B. Crosby and Co.’s shop, to inquire how much the sale of the poem was doing for Mr. Finerty’s advantage. It may be taken for certain that if Shelley made daily calls on the booksellers, Hogg knew why his friend called on them. It may also be assumed that, instead of appearing in the Times because the poem was then on sale, the advertisements appeared in the morning journals because their insertion had been ordered (with the usual prepayment) from Oxford some three weeks earlier, when there was, perhaps, an intention to publish the poem, that probably never was published. But if he never crossed the bookseller’s threshold, Shelley was seen more than once at Mr. Abernethy’s anatomical lectures, and oftener in the dissecting-room of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where Charles Henry Grove (nearly two years Shelley’s junior) was at that time a medical student.
Hogg would have us believe that to his people in Durham Co. and Yorkshire, Mr. Timothy Shelley (known to them by his not uniformly perspicuous epistles) appeared a ‘bore of the first magnitude, and a serious impediment to carrying into effect any ordinary arrangement.’ Facts, however, make it certain that Mr. Hogg, the Elder of Norton, agreed with this bore of the first magnitude in thinking their boys must be parted, and kept from one another, at least for a considerable period. The letter, in which Mr. Shelley spoke his mind to his afflicted fellow-sufferer, through the afflicted fellow-sufferer’s London agent, was dated 14th of April, 1811. Four days later (18th April, 1811), Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg was on the roof of a stage-coach, journeying from London towards North Wales, where he was allowed to visit a few friends, before going into pupilage under the conveyancer at York. The dates are eloquent. The joint rebellion against parental authority, which put Shelley in conflict with the Squire of Field Place, was fruitful of a paternal command to Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, that he should pack his traps and move out of London without delay. Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg did as he was bid, and for nearly twenty weeks the young men were separated. Thus rudely severed by domestic tyranny, they cheered one another through the post.
On Hogg’s withdrawal from London, Shelley had more time and a stronger disposition for the society of the Westbrooks, of Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. Something has already been said of charming Harriett Westbrook, of the influences that caused Shelley to be curious of her, of the circumstances under which he made the young lady’s acquaintance, and of the correspondence he held with her through the post during his second term of residence at Oxford. But the time has come for further particulars about the family, of which the poet became a member by marriage. The family consisted of Mr. John Westbrook (who must have been in the main a respectable person, as so little has been discovered to his discredit by the many persons who, at divers times, have hunted for evidence against him), his wife Mrs. Westbrook (‘a nonentity,’ as Mr. Rossetti styles her, so far as the Shelleyan drama is concerned), his daughter Harriett—the pretty child with whom Shelley fell in love, and her elder sister Elizabeth,[7] who has the reputation of making up the match, and the misery between her sister and the poet. The private residence of these people was in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square,—not far from Mr. Westbrook’s place of business in Mount Street.
Who was John Westbrook?—What was John Westbrook?—What was his place of business? Mr. Westbrook was a successful taverner, and as he was sometimes styled ‘Jew Westbrook,’ though he was Christian, it may be assumed that he was a taverner who (after the wont of successful tavern-keepers in London’s western quarters, in the earlier decades of the present century) lent money to those of his modish and more trustworthy customers, who cared to borrow it of him ‘on the usual terms.’ The development of modern club-life has affected in various ways the character and quality of the taverns in the western quarters of London, and nearly extinguished the sociable, and, in some degree, confidential relations that sometimes existed between the keepers and frequenters of those places of entertainment. Before clubs were numerous, modish gentlemen about town lived very much at their favourite taverns (or coffee-houses as they were usually styled), eating and drinking and seeing company at them, using them in fact very much as a gentleman about town now-a-days uses his club. Using his coffee-house in this fashion, it was natural for the gentleman about town, after losing heavily at cards, or emptying his pockets at the hazard-table, to look to his tavern-keeper for relief from urgent financial embarrassment. On the other hand, the business of a money-lender fitted in excellently well with the business of coffeehouse-keeper. Living sociably with his regular customers, who gossiped of one another as well as with one another, the tavern-keeper gathered from their gossip no little information that saved him from losses in the money-lending department of his business. Mr. Westbrook was a coffeehouse-keeper whose daughters had heard him spoken of as ‘Jew Westbrook.’ As he was a Christian by profession and bore a surname which countenances the assumption, it may be assumed that he was sometimes spoken of as ‘Jew Westbrook,’ not because he was of Israel, nor because he had an Israelitish look, but because he was known to lend money: ‘Jew’ being a familiar designation in the days of our grandfathers for every man of business who lent small sums of money, for short periods, on personal security.
Mr. Westbrook’s two-fold vocation may not have been in the highest social favour, but it was followed by many respectable men, and there is evidence that Mr. Westbrook was one of its most creditable followers. Living with the fear of God and good society before his eyes, he shaped his ways discreetly. Whilst his tavern was well spoken of for its wines and dinners, no evil stories were told of the transactions of the little parlour in which he counted out his money. With the views and tastes of a self-respecting and slightly ambitious tradesman, he was not wholly without the manners and feelings of a gentleman. Mrs. Westbrook (the nonentity) may have been a cook in early life; if so, she was a good cook, for Mr. Westbrook was not at all likely to have married a bad one. If he was a butler before keeping a tavern, we may be sure he was an honest butler. Without having grown inordinately rich by lawful business, he had acquired the measure of wealth that is styled a ‘comfortable independence’ or ‘moderate fortune.’ It is to his credit that on rising to easy affluence he withdrew his wife and daughters from the coffee-house, which was necessarily at times a rather noisy place, and planted them in a private house, where they lived as far as possible after the manner of gentle people. It is to his credit that he was at pains and charges to rear his daughters as far as possible to be ladies. Miss Elizabeth Westbrook and Miss Harriett Westbrook were every whit as well educated as Shelley’s sisters, that is to say, in all matters of book-learning and school-culture.
Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, late of University College, Oxford, had not been a week in Poland Street without calling at the house, where he made the acquaintance of the young lady, with whom he had been corresponding for more than a couple of months. In walking out to Clapham Common he was moved by a desire to see his sisters’ schoolfellow no less than by a desire to see his sisters. If she was not a weekly boarder at the Clapham School, Harriett used to visit her father’s house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, during the scholastic terms, and on these trips to town used to bring the poet money from his sisters. He saw her also during the Easter holidays.
Having seen something of the Westbrooks, whilst Hogg was staying in Poland street, Shelley saw more of them when Hogg had left London. Hogg had scarcely started for North Wales, when Miss Elizabeth Westbrook called upon the future poet at his lodgings, bringing her sister with her. On the evening of the 18th of April, 1811, the day of Hogg’s departure, Shelley wrote to his friend, ‘Miss Westbrook has this moment called on me with her sister. It certainly was very kind of her.’ Three days later (Sunday, 21st April, 1811), Shelley ‘took the Sacrament’ with the lady who had paid him so acceptable an attention. Another three days later (24th April, 1811), Shelley wrote to the same correspondent of the elder Miss Westbrook’s kindness, charity, and goodness. In a subsequent letter, recalling words he had uttered to her discredit, he commended her for cleverness. Thinking so well of the lady, with whom he had so lately taken the Sacrament, it was natural for Shelley to think he ought to illuminate her, as well as her sister, out of the Christian religion. Resolute to kill religious intolerance by killing creed, and to slay creed by converting people to his own views, he thought he should deal heavy and crushing blows to prevalent superstition by withdrawing John Westbrook’s daughters from the faith in which they had been educated. ‘The fiend, the wretch,’ he wrote of Christianity to Hogg on 28th April, 1811, ‘shall fall! Harriett will do for one of the crushers, and the eldest, Elizabeth, with some training, will do too.’
From the date of Hogg’s departure from London (18th April) to the middle of May, when he went into Sussex, Shelley saw much of both sisters. Seeing Harriett in Chapel Street, he saw her also at the Clapham school, which he described as the young lady’s ‘prison-house.’ Accompanying Elizabeth in an excursion to the ‘prison-house,’ he on one occasion spent two hours, walking about Clapham Common with the two sisters. On another occasion, he hastened in the evening (at the elder sister’s invitation) to Chapel Street, where he found Harriett ill and suffering from headache. After talking for some time with the elder sister, on love and other interesting subjects, he found himself closeted with Harriett, in the absence of Elizabeth, who left the boy and girl together: her complaisance going so far that Shelley sate in private conference with the beauty of the Clapham boarding-school till past midnight. Shelley, of course, availed himself of so good an opportunity for enlarging the child’s views of love and religion. By this time, Harriett had learnt a good deal on these matters from her future husband, and had proved so apt a pupil as to be in disgrace at Clapham for uttering sentiments of his teaching. The girls of the school were holding aloof from Harriett, on account of her awfully wicked opinions: some of them even going so far as to call her ‘an abandoned wretch.’ Shelley was under the impression that his little sister Hellen was the only one of the girls brave enough to hold friendly intercourse with Harriett, under the odium she had provoked. In his delight at his little sister’s courage, he determined to seize the earliest opportunity of illuminating her out of the Christian faith. ‘There are,’ he wrote to Hogg, ‘hopes of this dear little girl: she would be a divine little scion of infidelity. I think my lesson to her must have taken effect.’ Thus he was already taking measures to convert his little sister (still in her thirteenth year) to atheism. At Keswick (1811-12) Shelley told Southey (vide Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, 1881) that he endeavoured to make proselytes to atheism in Mrs. Fenning’s school; that he succeeded in making a proselyte of Harriett; and that he married her, because she was expelled from the school for accepting his doctrine, and doing her best to induce her schoolfellows to accept it. ‘One of the girls,’ Southey wrote to Shelley in August, 1820, ‘was expelled for the zeal with which she entered into your views, and you made her the most honourable amends in your power by marrying her.... I had this from your own lips.’ The words thus spoken by Shelley to Southey must be read with suspicion, like all Shelley’s other statements about himself and his own affairs. There is the more need for caution in this case, as Shelley certainly suffered from delusions at Keswick, and made Southey other statements clearly referable to hallucination. But his statements at Keswick, respecting his measures for making proselytes at Clapham in the previous spring, are notably confirmed in some particulars by what he wrote at the time to Hogg, of his measures for illuminating Harriett Westbrook and his little sister Hellen.