The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life. Vol. 2 (of 2)

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

CHAPTER V.

NORTH DEVON.

Mr. Eton’s Cottage near Tintern Abbey—Shelley’s reason for not taking the Cottage—His Letter to Mr. Eton—Godwin’s expostulatory Epistle—His Grounds for thinking Shelley prodigal—Reasonableness of Godwin’s admonitions—Hogg and MacCarthy at fault—Shelley’s Letters from Lynton to Godwin—Miss Hitchener at Lynton—Porcia alias Portia—Letter to Lord Ellenborough—Printed at Barnstaple—Mr. Chanter’s Sketches of the Literary History of Barnstaple—Fifty copies of the Letter sent to London—Shelley’s Measures for the political Enlightenment of North Devon Peasants—His Irish Servant, Daniel Hill—Commotion at Barnstaple—Daniel Hill’s Arrest and Imprisonment—Mr. Syle’s Alarm—Shelley’s humiliating and perilous Position—His Flight from North Devon to Wales—William Godwin’s Trip from London to Lynton—His Surprise and Disappointment—His ‘Good News’ of the Fugitives.

(3.)—Lynton, near Lynmouth, North Devon.

Hogg having erroneously inferred from certain letters of the Shelley-Godwin correspondence, which he failed to read with lawyer-like care, that Shelley went from the neighbourhood of Rhayader to Lynmouth, in North Devon, in order to settle himself in a cottage belonging to a certain Mr. Eton, at the last-named place, he has been followed in one of the several errors of his book by Mr. MacCarthy, and other biographers, who are scarcely more clever in discovering mistakes in those pages of the lawyer’s narrative, that are altogether accurate, than ready to rely on those of his statements that are seriously inexact. Instead of lying in Lynmouth, Mr. Eton’s cottage lay in the neighbourhood of Tintern Abbey, as Hogg might have discovered from the letter in which William Godwin expressed his surprise and regret to Shelley that, after looking at the little house, he should have declined to take it on account of its smallness.

Mrs. William Godwin had suggested that the Shelleys should settle for a time in Mr. Eton’s cottage near Tintern Abbey, and ‘all the females’ (to use Godwin’s expression) of the Skinner-Street household ‘were on the tiptoe to know,’ whether the Shelleys would act on the suggestion, when the postman laid on William Godwin’s shop-counter a letter, addressed by Shelley’s hand to Mr. Eton. As there could be no secrets from them, between Shelley and their friend, the curious and excited people in Skinner Street opened the epistle and read it, before passing it on to Mr. Eton. To Godwin’s slight surprise, and to his wife’s slight disappointment, the epistle announced that Shelley declined to take the cottage, because it was too small for his purpose. The consequence was that Godwin, whilst stating how the letter’s purport came to his knowledge sooner than to Mr. Eton’s cognizance, wrote to Shelley these words:—

‘I am a little astonished, however, with the expression in your letter, that “the insufficiency of house-room is a vital objection.” This would sound well to Mr. Eton from the eldest son of a gentleman of Sussex, with an ample fortune. But to me, I own, it a little alarms me.... But you, my dear Shelley, have special motives for wariness in this matter, you are at variance with your father, and I think you say in one of your letters that he allows you only 200l. a-year. If by unnecessary and unconscientious expense you heap up embarrassments at present, how much do you think that will embitter your days and shackle your powers hereafter?... Prudence, too, a just and virtuous prudence, in this most essential point, the dispensation of property, will do much to make you and your father friends: and why should you not be friends?’

The letter, from which these passages have been transcribed, is given in Hogg’s book without date or address; but whilst the contents show it to have been written before Godwin had heard either of Shelley’s arrival at Lynton, or of his intention to journey thither, the evidence is conclusive that it was addressed to Shelley at Chepstow;—a fact to be held in remembrance by the critical reader of the absurd passage of Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy’s very absurd book, in which it is suggested that the sharpness of Godwin’s reflections (in the undated letter), on Shelley’s manifest inclination to live beyond his means, was due to the philosopher’s petty pique at the terms in which Shelley wrote to him, from Lynmouth, on 5th July, 1812, about Miss Hitchener’s virtues and services to humanity.

Though he seldom says anything, that is comparable for absurdity with Mr. MacCarthy’s wilder notes on Shelleyan questions, Hogg provokes ridicule by his animadversions on Godwin’s undated letter. Insisting that it was for Shelley to decide whether the cottage was large enough for his purpose, he smiles disdainfully at the impertinent busy-bodyism of Godwin’s admonitory epistle, and insinuates that it would not have been written, had not the philosopher’s temper been curiously ruffled by his young friend’s audacity, in presuming to decline the modest mansion, which Mrs. Godwin had advised him to hire of one of her friends. On perusing the letter and reviewing all the circumstances that resulted in its composition, the discreet and impartial reader fails to discover the writer’s ill-temper, or the grounds for charging him with exceeding the limits of the position, into which he had been drawn by his correspondent’s repeated solicitations for parental counsel and guidance.

Had Godwin no grounds for thinking Shelley was disposed to live beyond his means? Shelley had himself told Godwin, that his allowance from his father was no more than 200l.; and the veteran of letters may at that time have had no reason for supposing that his young friend received any allowance from his father-in-law, or had any means in addition to the money from his father. At the most Shelley’s precarious income was only 400l. a-year; and though Godwin probably thought it so much, he cannot have thought it more, and may have thought it less than that amount by one half. Immediately on coming to Nantgwillt, Shelley had invited the whole Godwin family (six persons, viz., Godwin, Mrs. Godwin, Fanny, Mary, Claire, and the small boy William) to visit him at Nantgwillt House. At the same time, Godwin had been informed by Shelley of his intention to invite another dear friend to stay with him at Nantgwillt during their sojourn with him. Godwin had no reason to suppose that he and his people and the one other dear friend (viz. Miss Hitchener) were all the persons, whom Shelley designed to entertain during the summer. On the contrary, he had reason to assume Shelley was no less hospitably disposed to old Oxford friends, and half-a-hundred other people, than to persons whom he had not yet seen. Some few weeks after receiving the invitation to Nantgwillt, Godwin is informed by Shelley that the smallness of Mr. Eton’s cottage was a sufficient reason why he should not take it, the rooms being too few for the requirements of his family and friends. Godwin may well, under these circumstances, have come to the conclusion that his young friend—a minor, with certainly no more than 400l. a-year, set on taking a large house and filling it with company—was disposed to outrun the constable. At the same time, it is conceivable that Godwin suspected the suddenness of Shelley’s withdrawal from Nantgwillt House was due to financial distress. For (as I remarked in the last chapter) the sage of Skinner Street, with no information respecting the farm and its recent change of occupiers, may well have drawn the inference and entertained the suspicion, which Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy (with better means of information) had no excuse for drawing and entertaining.