‘Yes,’ returned Hogg, ‘it is very wonderful. But, dear Harriett, how nicely that dearest Eliza would spin down the river! How sweetly she would turn round and round, like that log of wood! And, gracious heaven, what would Miss Warne say?’—Miss Warne being a maiden lady (daughter of a London taverner) who held so high a place in Miss Westbrook’s affection and esteem, that the latter, in her ordinary talk on things in general, was in the habit of referring admiringly to the lady’s discretion and faultless taste.
At this piquant suggestion, that it would be well to pitch Eliza into the river, and give Miss Warne a fine opportunity for saying something remarkable, Harriett (says Hogg) ‘turned her pretty face away, and laughed—as a slave laughs, who is beginning to grow weary of an intolerable yoke.’ It speaks much for Hogg’s rashness, that he ventured to speak in this fashion of Miss Westbrook to her younger and admiring sister;—for his self-sufficiency, that he imagined a few words from him would put the girl in revolt against her only sister;-for the excessive familiarity of his bearing to her, that he addressed her as ‘dear Harriett,’ as he spoke thus lightly of the ‘dearest Eliza,’ and her super-excellent Miss Warne;—for his vanity and ignorance of human nature, that he imagined Harriett would respect his confidence so far as to keep his saucy words from her sister. Of course the sixteen-years-old girl did not deem herself under an obligation of honour to withhold from her only sister the flippant utterances of so recent an acquaintance. Honour and loyalty required her to tell Eliza that Hogg wished to separate them,—was set on compassing their estrangement. On learning that Hogg meant Shelley and Harriett to discard her, Miss Westbrook resolved that they should discard him. Whatever may be thought of the means she used for the achievement of her end, it cannot be denied, that she could plead extreme provocation in excuse of what was reprehensible in her extreme measures;—and that it was natural for her to determine her sister and brother-in-law should banish the man who wanted them to dismiss her. It was a fight between an angry and unscrupulous young woman and an overbearing young man. The fight was sharp and short: for the moment, the victory was with the woman.
In fighting Mr. Hogg,—in taking for his humiliation and discomfiture a course, which she probably never thought of taking till he struck her, and possibly would never have thought of taking, had he treated her in a courteous and conciliatory manner,—it is conceivable that Miss Westbrook persuaded herself she was actuated by pure concern for her sister’s happiness, and righteous disapproval of masculine wickedness, and in no degree whatever by personal spite and resentment. The lady was in just the position to imagine she did altogether for her sister’s good what she did chiefly for the gratification of her own vindictiveness. Travelling northward to guard her darling from Hogg’s indiscretion, she made the journey in a mood to suspect him of something worse than indiscretion. By no means wanting in self-esteem, or disposed to underrate her charms, the lady naturally inferred from Hogg’s desire to extrude so fascinating a person as herself from so small a circle, that her presence was distasteful to him, because it promised to defeat his insidious designs on Harriett’s honour and happiness. The young man, who would deprive Harriett of her sister’s society and protection, desired to get the dear child into his power,—to have her at his mercy. For what end did he desire to have the dear child in his power, at his mercy? The answer to this question determined Miss Westbrook to preserve the dear child from a villain.
Tractable and docile in the hands of the elder sister, whom she admired and loved enthusiastically, the dear child in perfect simplicity and purity of thought provided Miss Westbrook with evidence that Shelley’s incomparable friend was a young man of incomparable wickedness. Here are the damnatory admissions and confessions of the younger sister. Mr. Hogg had been extremely attentive to her in Edinburgh, and also (during her husband’s absence) at York. At Edinburgh he had taken her for walks, unattended by Shelley. He certainly admired her beauty, for he had said so outright on several occasions. He had paid her extravagant compliments,—indeed compliments so extravagant, that they caused her embarrassment. He was very kind and attentive to her; but she had often wished he would not commend her so immoderately to her face. She had refused to take walks with him in York during Shelley’s absence, but it cost her no little effort to hold to her decision on this point, so urgent was he in begging her to walk abroad. When he was not at Chambers, or on the way to and fro between them and the dingy lodging-house, Hogg had spent all his time at the house. Taking tea with her every evening, he had passed the whole of each evening in the dingy parlour with her, till she retired to rest for the night. It had been very awkward for her, to live in the same house and share the same parlour with him, during her husband’s absence:-all the more awkward, because he persisted in paying her such extravagant compliments. The milliners had been disobliging and suspicious in their bearing to her. Possibly they would have been less so, had Hogg left her under their protection altogether, or been less attentive to her in her husband’s absence. Such were Harriett’s admissions and confessions to her sister,—admissions and confessions made afterwards to her husband. Miss Westbrook knew how to manipulate and dress up these simple admissions into evidence to Shelley, that his friend’s gallantry to Harriett had been excessive, that his admiration of her was embarrassing to Harriett, that he might have been more thoughtful for the delicate sensibilities of the simple and innocent child, that they had been too much together for her contentment and reputation, that the dear child had been worried and harassed by her admirer, that her husband should put a distance between them. Care for the dear child’s nerves and feelings required that she should be removed from York as soon as possible.
Committing herself to no statement of fact, in which her sister would not concur, Miss Westbrook was careful to say nothing that would make Shelley suspicious of his wife’s goodness, or render him wrathful with Hogg. It was enough for the present to suggest that Harriett’s mere beauty had inspired Hogg with a sentiment of strong admiration, trembling on the verge of passion;—that, without doing or saying aught to justify Shelley in quarreling with him outright, Hogg had permitted Harriett to see the state of feeling which he should have been most careful to conceal from her; that Harriett was secretly troubled by her sense of Hogg’s regard for her;—a regard for which of course she was in no degree to be blamed, and he was to be pitied rather than condemned. Of course Miss Westbrook (a clever woman) knew how the seeds of distrust and jealousy would grow in the breast to which she was committing them; knew that by charging Hogg at first with nothing worse than weakness, she would be able to persuade Harriett’s boyish and fanciful husband a few weeks or months later, that his incomparable friend was a false friend.
Whilst he was being thus educated to regard his friend with distrust and pity, Shelley was living with his wife and her sister in Mr. Stickland’s (? Strickland’s) lodging-house, Blake Street, York;—lodgings to which they migrated from the dingy dwelling of the austere milliners, within a day or two of Shelley’s return from London. Though certain expressions of Hogg’s second volume would countenance a contrary opinion, it is not probable that he was permitted to accompany them to this new abode. In the absence of definite evidence to the point, it may be assumed from divers circumstances that, whilst the newly constituted trio rested in Mr. Stickland’s house, the fourth member of the party had quarters elsewhere. If it was so, however, Hogg was a daily visitor on uneasy terms at the Blake Street lodging-house; talking as freely as heretofore with his friend and Harriett, but painfully conscious that they spoke less unreservedly with him, and that forces were in operation to sever him from them. There seems to have been no distinct rupture between Hogg and his friend, before the latter went off abruptly for Keswick.
It having been decided by the trio, that they must get away from York and Hogg, they spoke openly to him of their intention to migrate to Keswick. He was pressed to go thither with them,—pressed the more cordially because the trio knew his legal studies and other obligations constrained him to remain at York. But whilst telling him of their intention to go to Keswick, and begging him to accompany them, they forbore to tell him their real reason for selecting Keswick as their next resting place. To the last, Hogg was under the impression that they were drawn to Keswick by the picturesqueness and the poetical associations of the district, dwelt in and beloved by Wordsworth and Southey, Coleridge and De Quincey; and under the quite erroneous notion that they were pining for the beauties of Derwentwater and the Lodore Falls, he urged them to postpone their journey to the lovely region till a season more favourable for the enjoyment of its scenery. ‘If you dislike York,’ he urged, ‘and the neighbourhood of York, so much do not remain there—quit it at once; but go to the south, to a part of the world with which you are acquainted, and where you are known; to a milder and more genial climate, and where you will be nearer your supplies? Why expose youselves to the bleak north at this unkindly season? Why go out of the way of everybody and of everything? Why go out of the reach of money, and bury yourselves alive amongst rude and uncivilised barbarians?’ The counsel (adds Hogg bitterly and compassionately) was offered in vain.
To Miss Westbrook the advice was only another reason why she and her young charges should go farther north. On leaving Mr. Hogg at York, for them to do the very thing he urged them not to do would be a fit humiliation to the overbearing gentleman. It would show him how lightly they regarded his opinion, and make him feel that he was the discarded one. That he might take this view of their action was another reason with Miss Westbrook, why he should be kept in ignorance of its chief object. When he told them, with mingled pomposity and vehemence, that in going to Keswick they would be going ‘out of the way of everybody and everything,—out of the reach of money,’ and into the society of ‘rude and uncivilised barbarians,’ the trio smiled in their sleeves at one another. And well might they do so, as they were set on the journey because they hoped it would bring them to the house of somebody of no common account, to society in the like of which their monitor had never moved, and to the money which they so urgently needed. Thinking the while of Greystoke, and the Duke of Norfolk, and the exalted people they hoped to meet at ‘the Castle,’ the sisters could scarcely keep their smiles in their sleeves, as Mr. Hogg prated of ‘rude and uncivilised barbarians.’ Had he known that the march on Keswick was a march on Greystoke Castle; that the march on the northern potentate had for its end the conciliation of the southern powers; that instead of going to Keswick for the pleasure of drinking tea with Southey, the trio were going thither to fix themselves on the great Duke, who would in ten days or a fortnight be at his northern seat, Hogg would either have refrained from opposing the project, or would have opposed it on other grounds. It shows how completely he had fallen out of favour with the trio, how completely Eliza and Harriett had extruded him from Shelley’s confidence, that Hogg had no notion why his companions were set on going to the lakes at a time when the hardiest tourists were leaving them.
From Blake Street, York, without conferring with his incomparable Hogg on the matter, Shelley on 28th October, 1811, wrote (vide Notes and Queries, second series, Vol. vi., p. 405) to his father’s patron, the Duke of Norfolk, entreating his Grace to use his influence again, even as he used it in the last spring, to mediate between the writer and his too indignant father, and induce the same too indignant father to allow his son a sufficient income. A letter to be looked up by readers, who have the Notes and Queries volumes on their shelves, this remarkable epistle from the future poet to his father’s patron comprises these extremely noteworthy words:—
‘... As I experienced from you such an undeserved instance of friendly interposition in the spring, as I am well aware how much my father is influenced by the mediation of a third person, and as I know none to whom I could apply with greater hopes of success than to yourself, I take the liberty of soliciting the interference of your Grace with my father in my behalf. You have probably heard of my marriage. I am sorry to say that it has exasperated my father to a great degree, surely greater than is consistent with justice, for he has not only withheld the means of subsistence which his former conduct and my habits of life taught me to expect as reasonable and proper, but has even refused to render me any the slightest assistance. He referred me on application to a Mr. Whitton, whose answer to my letter vaguely complained of the disrespectfulness of mine to my father. These letters were calculated to make his considerations of my proceedings less severe. My situation is consequently most unpleasant; under these circumstances I request your Grace to convince my father of the severity of his conduct, to persuade him that my offence is not of the hideous nature he considers it, to induce him to allow me a sufficient income to live with tolerable comfort. I am also particularly anxious to defend Mr. Medwin from any accusations of aiding and assisting me, which my father may bring against him. I am convinced that a statement of plain truth on this head will remove any prejudice against Mr. M. from the mind of your Grace. That he did lend me 25l. when I left Field Place is most true. But it is equally true he was ignorant of my intentions; that he was ignorant of the purposes to which I was about to apply the money....’