Miss Westbrook and Hogg were enemies even before they set eyes on one another. The lady had travelled to York to encounter the enemy of her sister’s reputation. On hearing she would soon appear in the dingy lodging-house, Hogg knew that on her arrival he would be face to face with a foe. At the moment of their first meeting, Shelley’s incomparable friend and Shelley’s sister-in-law exchanged glances of aversion. When he bowed before her, at their introduction to one another in the dingy parlour, the ‘barmaid by origin’ (to use Hogg’s words) scarcely deigned to notice him.
‘I thought Bysshe was to have brought you with him,’ observed Hogg to the lady, who, in her haste to shelter her darling, had not waited to travel with her brother-in-law.
‘Oh dear, no!’ Miss Westbrook replied, with cold and disdainful significance.
‘Shall I make tea?’ Hogg inquired, glancing at the tea-things on the table; and as he was not forbidden to do so, he brewed the tea, and brought Miss Westbrook a cup of the beverage, which she regarded contemptuously when it was placed before her. This was embarrassing to the gentleman who was joint-tenant of the dingy parlour.
If it was not farce, what followed this meeting of the enemies was very broad comedy. Miss Westbrook, thinking Hogg in the way, was of opinion he ought to get out of the way as quickly as possible. Thinking Miss Westbrook had come where she was not wanted, Hogg was of opinion she ought to be ordered back to London. On reappearing in the dingy lodging-house just twenty-four hours after Miss Westbrook’s arrival, Shelley found himself between an incomparable friend who said, ‘You must get rid of Miss Westbrook,’ and an incomparable sister-in-law who said, ‘You must get quit of Mr. Hogg.’ As Harriett was on her sister’s side, the future poet could not act on Hogg’s advice. There was another reason why the youthful husband could not deal thus summarily with his sister-in-law.
Thinking that Miss Westbrook should be sent back immediately to London, and seeing that Shelley was scarcely the person to tell her and constrain her to go home, Hogg was of opinion that his friend ought to put strong pressure on his bride, to tell her sister she must retire from the scene where she was unwelcome,—that he should say firmly to Harriett, ‘Choose between me and your sister: I leave York if she doesn’t. If you wish me to remain by your side, you must tell your sister to go and leave us alone.’ Five-and-forty years later, when he reviewed this critical passage of the poet’s career, and all the miserable consequences of Miss Westbrook’s transient power of him, Hogg felt as firmly as ever that Harriett’s husband might have preserved his conjugal contentment for a much longer period, by saying stoutly to her ‘either Eliza goes or I go,’ and showing he would forthwith act on the menace, if the intruder did not at once retire. The happiness, coming to him from his marriage, might not have been great and enduring under any circumstances; but by shaking Eliza from him at York, he would have rid himself of the creature, whose scheming spirit and false tongue made it so miserably brief and insufficient. This was Hogg’s one-sided and possibly erroneous view of the case. Holding it honestly, he may well have deplored the weakness that incapacitated ‘the divine Shelley’ for casting from him so promptly the influence which extinguished for ever his confidence and delight in his young wife, after having placed him for a while at war with the friend, who induced him to make the lovely child his wife, when he was thinking of making her his mere mistress.
Thinking Eliza should be dismissed in this fashion, Hogg doubtless told Shelley so. As Shelley, whilst differing from Byron in being able to keep a secret, resembled him also in a habit of blabbing to others what he should have kept to himself, it may be assumed that, if he did not impart it directly to Miss Westbrook, he communicated Hogg’s counsel to his wife, without requiring her to act upon it. Further, as Harriett’s confidence in her sister was perfect at this point of their curious story, it cannot be questioned, that whatever Shelley told his wife of Hogg’s view of the position, was speedily communicated by her to Miss Westbrook.
It is not probable that under any circumstances Shelley would just then have concurred in Hogg’s opinion, and decided to act upon it. But even if he approved the advice on general grounds, circumstances forbade him to adopt it. Returning to York with an almost empty purse, and no hope that it would be speedily replenished by his father, Shelley could not afford to quarrel with his sister-in-law, who had a little money in her pocket, and was influential with her father, to whom he was already looking for pecuniary relief. Though he could lend Shelley 10l. from time to time, Hogg (as he tells us) was unable to provide him with enough money for his own and his wife’s maintenance. At that moment, the law-student’s store of money in hand had been reduced to a trifle by the charges of his recent trip to Scotland. Captain Pilford had already done his utmost for his nephew’s pecuniary relief. Having incurred the Squire’s vehement displeasure by lending Shelley the 25l., which enabled him to fly with Harriett to Edinburgh, Mr. Medwin (the Horsham attorney) was in no mood to incense his powerful neighbour and relative to fiercer wrath, and to provoke further censure from the Squire’s patron, the Duke of Norfolk, by lending the young gentleman any more money. Under these circumstances, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley could not afford to quarrel with Miss Westbrook, the only person to whom he could just then look for the relief of his immediate necessities,—‘the influence’ through which he was hoping to get a regular allowance from his father-in-law.
Seeing that Shelley would not put the needful pressure on his wife, the brilliant thought occurred to Hogg that, doing what his friend dared not do, he would indicate the ‘necessary course’ to Harriett, and urge her with equal delicacy and firmness to take it. Miss Westbrook spent much time in brushing the black hair, which Harriett regarded admiringly, and Mr. Hogg spoke and wrote about with profane flippancy. One day, whilst the elder sister was brushing her hair, Hogg persuaded Mrs. Shelley to walk with him to the old Roman bridge, and have a look at the Ouse, which had just then overflowed its banks, and was in divers ways behaving with picturesque and sensational extravagance.
‘Is it not an interesting, a surprising sight?’ remarked Harriett, whilst viewing ‘the floods’ from the middle of the bridge.