There is small reason to fear that the Free Contract of the Shelleyan innovators will be established on the ruins of an institution, rooted in the affections of the people, and hallowed by the practice of centuries. The notion that an institution so venerable and salutary, and all but universally honoured, may perish, because three or four English women of letters in the course of a century have consented to live in Free Contract with lawless spouses, and because a handful of philosophers and half-a-hundred journalists think it would be well to endow every man with the power of changing his wife at pleasure, is a notion, too ridiculous for serious consideration.
But though they are foredoomed to failure, the Shelleyan Socialists have done and are doing no little harm to individuals. People, who delight in literature, without knowing how little its producers differ from the followers of other vocations, are apt to overrate egregiously the wisdom and virtue of the individuals, to whose writings they are most largely indebted for mental refreshment and edification. To a veteran, whose way of life has afforded him good opportunities for observing the lives and studying the characters of the producers of the higher literature, it may well seem droll that the author of good books should be so generally and confidently assumed to live no less well than he writes. But the disposition of readers to think too highly of their favourite writers should not be overlooked by those who would take a perfect view of the various forces, that, resulting in social opinion, determine the conduct of individuals. Influential in all sorts and conditions of general readers, this disposition is especially influential amongst the sympathetic, the imaginative, and the inexperienced. By the many young men and women of our rural homes—indeed of all homes, lying well away from the literary coteries—who, drawing their liveliest contentment, take their clearest views of life, from current belles lettres, the works of supremely powerful poets and novelists are not more prized as sources of diversion, than as sources of intellectual enlightenment and moral guidance; and their delight in the literature they admire, is usually attended with a dangerous readiness to regard with approval whatever they may know of the personal conduct of its producers.
On a considerable proportion of these young readers, what must be the effect of the strenuous and fascinating literature which, now in separate books, now in the pages of popular magazines, and now in the columns of powerful journals, instructs them, that, whilst living in Free Contract, Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay were living innocently in the eyes of God and man; that Mary Godwin should be commended for her generous courage in flying from her father’s roof with another woman’s husband; that Marian Evans acted justifiably in associating herself conjugally with a man who could not marry her; that it is as honourable for a woman to mate in Free Contract as to become a wife; that reverence for lawful and holy matrimony should be rated as a mediæval superstition; that Shelley was only in the smallest degree to blame for carrying off his intimate friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter.
Can it be questioned that the literature which teaches all this must at least tend in many cases to weaken, and in some cases to overpower utterly, the principles and considerations, which in certain seasons of temptation, withhold young men and women from the shortest and quickest road to shame and depravation? Can it be doubted that this elegant and hurtful literature is at this moment causing many a young Englishwoman to be saying to herself, as she hesitates at the entrance to this common highway to ruin, ‘Why can it be wrong for me to do what Mary Wollstonecraft is defended for doing ninety years since; what Mary Godwin is commended for doing in an early time of the present century; what the wise and lofty-natured Marian Evans did only a generation since? If it was not wrong for Marian Evans, and Mary Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft to live connubially with men to whom they were not married, it surely cannot be wrong for me to do likewise?’
Can it be doubted that, through the influence of the same elegant and hurtful literature, many a young Englishman is now saying to himself, ‘As Shelley was guilty of nothing very heinous, nothing more reprehensible than “the sin of acting on emotional theories of liberty,” in carrying off his familiar friend’s daughter, when he had no prospect of ever being able to marry her; as he, notwithstanding this emotional indiscretion, is offered to our reverential admiration as a man who, might under auspicious circumstances “have been the Saviour of the World,” it cannot be very wrong for me to take to my arms in free promise a girl whom I have a fair prospect of being able to marry a few years hence, and whom I mean to marry as soon as it shall be convenient for me to do so?’
Had Field Place merely garnished the poet’s pedigree, and varnished his portraits, and dressed the main incidents of his career into a pretty memoir, I should have been silent about the genealogical record and personal narrative, and held my peace about the falsity of the pictures. But Field Place has exceeded its reasonable powers and privileges, in dealing with the story of a remarkable man, whose fame is less the property of his nearest kindred than of the nation, to whose literature his genius gave new lustre. Had the Shelleyan Enthusiasts confined their eulogies to the excellences of their favourite poet’s achievements in his proper art, I should have concurred cordially in their admiration of his poetical services, and been content to smile in my sleeve at their simplicity, in thinking he spoke like a peer, when he was only speaking like a peasant. But it is not enough for the Enthusiasts, that Shelley’s incomparably fine poetry should be valued at its full worth. To satisfy them, we must declare him no less virtuous as a man, than masterly as a songster. And whilst Field Place and the Enthusiasts have committed indiscretions, that provoke remonstrance and demand correction, the extreme Shelleyan Socialists have placed his strongest title to social homage, on his courageous avowal of sentiments, that are unutterably distasteful to the great majority of conscientious and right-minded people.
When a man is taken from the long roll of our mighty poets, and offered to the world’s admiration as a rare example of all the human virtues, it is well for people to examine the grounds of such extraordinary commendation. Now that Queen Mab, with its anti-matrimonial note, is put into the hands of our boys; now that Laon and Cythna, with its monstrous doctrine, is seen on our drawing-room tables; now that the author of so reprehensible a book is proclaimed a being of unqualified goodness, who, under auspicious circumstances, ‘might have been the Saviour of the World,’ it is time for the world to be told, that the recent efforts to win for Shelley a kind of regard, to which he is in no degree whatever entitled, are only part of a social movement, that, so far as the extreme Shelleyan Socialists are concerned, is a movement for the Abolition of Marriage,—in accordance with the spirit and purpose of his Social Philosophy.
THE END.
LONDON:
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