‘Disperse the Declarations. Percy says the farmers are very fond of having something posted upon their walls.
‘Percy has sent you all his Pamphlets with the Declaration of Rights, which you will disperse to advantage. He has not many of his first Address, having taken pains to circulate them through the city.
‘All thoughts of an association are given up as impracticable. We shall leave this noisy town on the 7th of April, unless the Habeas Corpus Act should be suspended, and then we shall be obliged to leave here as soon as possible. Adieu.’
Though he married for love, Shelley did not live many weeks with Harriett before he felt the need of another companion. Had his girlish wife been all the world to him in their honeymoon, and the days immediately following it, he would not have welcomed Hogg so cordially to the Edinburgh lodgings, or left her at York, whilst he made the flying trip to London and Sussex. That he surrendered himself so completely to his sister-in-law’s control, was due chiefly to the insufficiency of the pleasure afforded him by Harriett’s society. Had he delighted in the music of her voice, the charms of her beauty, and the manifestations of her sensibility, as he would have delighted in them had she been his perfect mate, there would have been in his breast no yearning for another companion, whose presence and sympathy would perfect his felicity. At the moment of setting forth for Ireland, and at the moment of arriving at Dublin, he entreated Miss Hitchener to come to him and Harriett and Eliza, so that an imperfectly happy trio might with her co-operation become a happy party of four. Throughout his sojourn in the Irish capital, he needed Portia for his contentment; and after Portia’s refusal to come to him in Ireland, was looking forward to the meeting in Wales or elsewhere, when the Sussex schoolmistress would make it possible for him and Harriett and Eliza to be happy for ever. Had he been fitly mated, he would not so soon after his wedding have desired the society of any woman but his wife. Had Harriett been to him all that a bride usually is to her mate, Miss Hitchener would have been no less out of his mind than she was out of his sight.
As he needed Portia for the completion of his own happiness, the equally vehement and egotistic Shelley imagined she was no less needful for the contentment of his companions. Whilst it says much for his egotism, it speaks no less strongly of his ignorance of feminine nature, that he could think his wife and her sister especially desirous of associating themselves closely with the young woman, of whose wisdom and goodness he was so extravagantly eloquent. It also speaks for his ignorance of womanly nature, that he imagined the Hurstpierpoint schoolmistress would be eager to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Shelley and her sister on terms that would render it difficult for her to get away from them, should she find them otherwise than congenial companions. That he erred so egregiously on these points, is the more remarkable, because the ladies displayed no strong desire for the arrangement on which he was set.
Instead of fixing herself on the trio, as soon as Shelley afforded her an occasion for doing so, Miss Hitchener more than once displayed a reasonable reluctance to surrender her independent position at Hurstpierpoint for the questionable advantages of a perilous connexion with the sisters whom she had never seen. On the other hand, though they humoured Shelley in writing cordially to his friend at Hurstpierpoint, it is obvious, from several matters, that Mrs. Shelley and her sister were no less doubtful than Miss Hitchener, whether Shelley’s scheme for a happy domestic circle would be fruitful of felicity to any one of the party.
Entreated, from Keswick, by Shelley to accompany him to Ireland, Miss Hitchener declined the invitation, on account of her engagements at Hurstpierpoint. Entreated by Shelley to come to him and his wife at Dublin, she held to her purpose of remaining in Sussex. To the proposal that she should come to Wales in the spring, and there make the acquaintance of her Percy’s wife and sister-in-law, Miss Hitchener assented; but when spring came, instead of acting on the invitation, she discovered new reasons for remaining at Hurstpierpoint, and wrote to Shelley that, instead of requiring her to break up her school, it would be better for him to bring his wife and sister-in-law to her in Sussex. That Shelley would have relinquished the notion of a meeting in Wales, and acted on this proposal for a meeting in Sussex, had he been master of his own movements, instead of being under the government of two ladies who had no strong desire to make Miss Hitchener’s acquaintance, appears from the letter he wrote to the schoolmistress from 17 Grafton Street, Dublin, on 10th March, 1812. ‘Your new suggestion,’ he exclaims gushingly in this curious epistle, ‘of our joining you at Hurst is divine. It shall be so. I have not shown Harriett or E. your letter yet; they are walking with a Mr. Lawless (a valuable man), whilst I write this.’ The words exhibit the whole position. To Shelley, yearning for reunion with Miss Hitchener, the proposal for a speedy restoration to her society was so delightful, that no word less eloquent of felicity than ‘divine’ could express the gratification he anticipated from the meeting. ‘It shall be so,’ he wrote bravely, before conferring on the matter with the ladies who owned him. But when those ladies returned from their walk with the valuable Jack Lawless, and were invited to join in the assurance that ‘it should be so,’ the enthusiasm of the subject man was checked by their decision that ‘it should not be so.’
Thinking in their hearts that the meeting with Miss Hitchener could not be deferred for too long a time, and having obvious and sufficient reasons for thinking Sussex the particular county in which a close intimacy with Miss Hitchener would be most hurtful to their interests, Harriett and Miss Westbrook discovered nothing delightful in the suggestion which had seemed ‘divine’ to Percy. If they must be brought into familiar intercourse with Percy’s schoolmistress, Mrs. Shelley and her sister would rather live with her in Wales, or Devonshire, or Scotland, than at a village within a drive of Field Place, and a stone’s throw of Cuckfield. Hence the firmness with which they overruled Shelley’s ‘it shall be so.’ They declined to forego the pleasures of the Welsh trip, to which they had been looking forward so long, simply because Miss Hitchener could not join them. Of course, the pleasure of living in Wales would be enhanced to both of the ladies by the presence of so sympathetic and delightful a woman as Miss Hitchener. But to give up Wales, and travel all the way to Sussex for her acquaintance, would be to pay too high a price for the delight of knowing her. They must go to Wales, hoping that Portia would even yet arrange her affairs so as to join them before they should withdraw from the Principality. The divine suggestion was dismissed as an impracticable suggestion. So sagacious a young woman as Miss Hitchener had no need to ask Shelley why he had, on second thoughts, changed his mind with respect to the suggestion which had pleased him so vastly at first view. By those who know aught of human nature, it will not be questioned that the fight between Miss Westbrook and Miss Hitchener began some months before the July day on which they kissed one another for the first time at Lynton, in North Devon.
(2.)—Nantgwillt, Rhayader, Radnorshire, South Wales.