The Scotch Marriage—The Trio at Edinburgh—‘Wha’s the Deil?’—Posting from Edinburgh to York—Dingy Lodgings and Dingy Milliners—Shelley’s run South—Did Harriett accompany him?—The Squire stops the Supplies—The Earl’s Description of Harriett Westbrook—The Squire’s Anger at the Mésalliance—The Course Shelley could not take—Eliza Westbrook in Possession—The Ouse at full Flood—One too many—Designs on Greystoke Castle—Shelley’s Appeal to the Duke of Norfolk—The Codicil to Sir Bysshe’s Will—The Flight to Richmond—Miss Westbrook strikes her Enemy—The Trio at Keswick—Shelley’s affectionate Letters from Keswick to Hogg at York—John Westbrook’s Daughters at Greystoke Castle—Ducal Benignity and Policy—The Calverts of Greta Bank—Shelley’s Means during his first Marriage—How to live on Three-Hundred-a-year—How not to live on Four-Hundred-a-year.
During the latest stages of their long journey in the London and Edinburgh mail, Shelley and Harriett had for their travelling companion a young Scotch advocate, who, on being taken into their confidence, told them the right and speediest steps to marriage in accordance with the usage of the land. Hence, on embracing his friend in the handsome front-parlour of a high and roomy house in George Street, and taking his first view of Harriett, ‘bright, blooming, radiant with youth, health and beauty,’ Hogg was in the presence of husband and wife.
For particulars of the way in which the young people spent the next three weeks in the Scotch capital, readers must go to Hogg’s much-abused book. For the purpose of the present chapter, it is enough to indicate how life went there with the trio, who in the dead season of a never too lively city, laughed over trivial matters with youth’s light-heartedness, and found in themselves all the society they needed. Hogg’s only disappointment was that Harriett’s disinclination for exercise denied him opportunities for the long walks he had hoped to take in the surrounding country. Otherwise he was abundantly happy in regarding the happiness of the incomparable Shelley, and in studying the charms, the character, and endowments of the girl his friend had taken for better or worse. Rising for an early breakfast, passing the morning in studious or literary labour (Shelley was busy on his translation of a treatise by Buffon; Harriett on her translation of Madame Cottin’s Claire d’Albe), and dining in the middle of the day, they spent the afternoon in exploring the high-ways and by-ways, the grand places and the nooks and corners, of the picturesque town. Having taken tea freely and talked philosophy with equal freedom, the young men surrendered themselves to the music of their official reader (Harriett of the clear and mellifluous voice), till the deepening shades of evening reminded them it was time to admire the stars, and gaze at the famous comet that gave our grandfathers the wine, whose flavour lingers on tradition’s tongue.
For their higher happiness indebted to the heavens and themselves, these young people were indebted to Scotch sabbatarianism for some of their heartiest peals of laughter. With unintentional profanity the future poet was laughing in his own peculiarly shrill and vehement fashion in Prince’s Street, on the day that is still the saddest of the seven in North Britain, when he was admonished for his scandalous levity by the austere wayfarer, who remarked, ‘You must not laugh openly in that fashion, young man: if you do, you’ll most certainly be convened;’—a warning that may have been fruitful of the curiosity, which determined Shelley on a subsequent Sabbath to go to kirk, for the purpose of hearing the servants and children catechized on matters touching religion.
The drollery of Hogg’s account of this visit to the kirk is due to the narrator’s lively humour, rather than to any unusual absurdity in the proceedings for instructing an assemblage of servants and children in the rudiments of theology. From dullness and shyness, the pupils were slow in catching their catechist’s meaning, and still slower in answering the questions that were shouted to them by a teacher, whose Scotch accent was the more effective on his auditors from the south, because at moments of displeasure, his vocal pitch indicated that he was not devoid of Scotch irritability. In asking his class ‘Who is the devil?’ this catechist cannot be said to have travelled beyond the lines of ordinary official routine; but his vocal peculiarities and the sharpness of his manner gave the simple question a startling piquancy and grotesqueness, that, sending Shelley into shrieks of laughter, drove him to the open streets where, though inopportune, and highly scandalous, such laughter would be less outrageous than in a place of religious instruction.
Six weeks having slipt away quickly, after the wont of time that passing agreeably passes without exciting incidents, the morning came, on which the trio entered a postchaise and began the return-journey to York. Hogg would have preferred the mail or the slowest stage-coach to the private chaise,—a mode of travelling scarcely appropriate to the financial position of the three travellers; the law-student, who had nothing more than a liberal allowance for a student from his father, and the happy pair, who had married on the 200l. a-year, which they had reason to apprehend would be withheld from them by the indignant Squire of Field Place. But Harriett had suffered too much on her northward journey to be desirous of resuming her seat in the mail, whilst as a matron of only sixteen summers she wished to travel in a way more befitting a gentlewoman of quality. So Shelley, who hated restraint of any kind, and Hogg, ever averse to costly ostentation, consented to the young lady’s desire for a chaise, in which they could converse freely, and she could read one of Holcroft’s novels to them. Whatever the book had been, Hogg would have enjoyed hearing it read by so charming a reader. But the tale was tedious to Shelley, who, after sighing in a significant way, vainly entreated Harriett to skip some of the less entertaining parts of the narrative. The conflict on so trifling a matter may be noticed as an indication that, even thus early in their married life, the poet and his bride had trivial differences, in which she had her own way, and he was constrained to let her have it. Not that Harriett insisted on reading aloud the whole of the time from Edinburgh to York. There were moments when, if not glad to give her throat a rest, she was pleased to enlarge her knowledge of rural matters by listening to the talk of her travelling companions. How much it needed enlargement at this point of her career, appears from the earnestness with which the little Cockney (as Shelley styled her) besought her husband to teach her how to discriminate between turnips and barley.
Hogg’s comfortable lodgings in York having been let ‘over his head’ during his absence in Scotland, the trio had no sooner alighted from the last of their successive post-chaises, than they went forth in the rainy twilight to look for other rooms. Hogg suggested, was indeed urgent, that they should pass the night at an inn, and defer the search for lodgings till the morrow. But Shelley flatly refused to acquiesce in the proposal;—a refusal that may well have perplexed Hogg at the moment, as the cause of the future poet’s impatience to get into rooms in a private house did not appear till the following morning. Shelley declaring thus stoutly for an immediate entrance on lodgings—any lodgings rather than rooms in a tavern for a single night,—and Harriett of course concurring with her husband, Hogg was in a minority, and could not decline to join them in the search for a temporary home, which, in the course of the damp and chilly October evening, made them the joint-tenants of certain rooms in ‘the dingy dwelling of certain dingy old milliners’ (the Misses Dancer of Coney Street), who, in the course of a week or ten days, were as glad to be quit of their lodgers, as the lodgers were glad to be quit of the austere and reasonably suspicious needlewomen.
On the morrow Hogg, who had overrun his leave of absence by a few days, went early to the chambers of the conveyancer with whom he was reading; but he did not return thus early to the scene of legal labour and study, without having heard of Shelley’s intention to start for London by the next night-mail. The future poet’s announcement of this intention to run southward, whilst leaving his bride at York under his friend’s care in the rooms they had occupied for a single night, of course showed Hogg why Harriett’s youthful and erratic husband had been so urgent for an immediate choice of lodgings,—so averse to tarrying in a tavern for a few hours. On the journey from Edinburgh to York, Shelley had been secretly nursing his project for running off to London and Sussex,—to see his father’s attorney (Mr. Whitton), to take counsel with his Uncle Pilfold, and to come to a financial understanding, either by personal interview or through the attorney’s intervention, with the Squire of Field Place. The charges of six weeks’ residence at Edinburgh, followed by the charges of the southward journey, had reduced his money in hand to so insignificant a sum, that, on approaching York, he could not think of taking Harriett with him on the meditated trip to Middlesex and Sussex. It was manifest to him that she must remain at York, whilst he went on the expedition for ‘raising supplies.’ At the same time it was obvious, even to the harum-scarum Shelley, that he could not with propriety leave his girlish bride in a York tavern, where she would not fail to become the one subject of gossip, with the landlady and her chamber-maids, the gentle folk of the coffee-room, the bagmen of the commercial-room, the tipplers and loiterers at the public bar. Left to the accidents of life in a tavern, the lovely school-girl—staying by herself in a provincial hotel, without husband or lady’s maid, without any companion of her own sex—would be liable to various kinds of insult and annoyance, from which she would be secure in a quiet lodging-house. Hence Shelley’s determination to lose not an hour in settling his bride in lodgings after their arrival at York, as he was set on leaving her for a while, in little more than four-and-twenty hours.
Hogg had several reasons for opposing his friend’s resolve to go south so abruptly. Seeing what mischief might be made by gossips at York, and by gossips in London and Sussex, of the young husband’s voluntary withdrawal from his childish wife, at a moment when she stood in peculiar need of his presence,—when nothing short of overpowering necessity should make him leave her side for an entire day,—and when the very circumstances of their union required them to be more than ordinarily thoughtful for appearances and the world’s opinion, Hogg saw the impropriety and insufficiency of the arrangements for her comfort during Shelley’s absence. Whilst he was too much a man of the world to think himself the fittest guardian for the lovely girl, on the point of being thrown so completely and unceremoniously on his hands, or to imagine the ladies of York would think him so, Hogg had grounds for a strong opinion, that his friend would gain nothing more by interviews with Mr. Whitton and Mr. Whitton’s client than he could gain from them by letters sent through the post,—that he would, in fact, be wasting on a profitless journey the few guineas still remaining to him of borrowed money,—the last lingering guineas, which in a few weeks he might need for bare necessities. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that the more worldly-wise of the two youngsters advised his comrade to postpone the journey for a few days. Even so short a time would have given Hogg opportunities for introducing the Shelleys to ladies of the northern city; for inducing some of those ladies to take an interest in Harriett who, wedded woman though she was, needed a chaperon as much as any recently emancipated school-girl; and for withdrawing from a domiciliary relation to the young lady that, during Shelley’s absence, was likely to give rise to equally egregious and undesirable misconceptions in the northern capital. In pleading for delay, Hogg could not, of course state frankly his reasons for the prayer. The questions at issue were too delicate for candour. All the north-countryman could do was to recommend postponement. Of course, the counsel was in vain.
Holding to his purpose, Shelley went for the south, leaving his bride and the incomparable Hogg fellow-lodgers in the same dingy dwelling, and sharers of the same dingy parlour. Surely the circumstances of the case may be held to justify, or at least to excuse, suspicion on the part of the two ancient and austere milliners, careful for their own characters and the reputation of their house in a provincial city, abounding, like all other provincial towns, with people more curious about their neighbours’ doings than heedful of their own affairs. Here is the case from a milliner’s point of view.—Late one evening, Mr. Hogg (a sprightly young bachelor of the city) enters the house, in the company of Mr. Shelley (a very young gentleman, looking no older than his wife) and Harriett Shelley (looking less than her sixteen summers); the entrance of the trio being covered with assertions that the sprightly Mr. Hogg’s juvenile friends are husband and wife. Twenty-four hours later, the young gentleman with the aspect of a schoolboy goes off by the London mail, leaving the sixteen-years-old girl in the house, under the charge of the sprightly Mr. Hogg, whose way of saying strange things makes it doubtful to maiden ladies of mature age and lowly station, whether they should smile or frown. Who is the young lady? Who the young gentleman who has gone off to London? Are they really husband and wife? If so, why has the young gentleman gone off without her? Why has he left her under the care of the sprightly Mr. Hogg, of all people in the world? Can it be that the Scotch marriage, instead of making her the very young gentleman’s wife, made her the sprightly Mr. Hogg’s wife? The austere and suspicious milliners may well have asked themselves these and half-a-hundred other questions.