Indications are not wanting that for a brief while after coming to Tremadoc, Shelley was less loquacious than he had been for some years about those of his views on politics and religion, that could not fail to be as offensive to the people of Carnarvonshire as they had proved to persons of other counties. But it was not in his nature to be so discreet for many weeks together. Hence it came to pass that before leaving Wales he was superlatively distasteful to several of his Tanyrallt neighbours on account of his infidelity and ultra-radicalism. By some means or other one of his Irish pamphlets fell into the hands of a certain Mr. Leeson, who, discovering treason in the essay, sent it up to the Government, and then went about the neighbourhood, saying the author of the pamphlet was a pestilent Republican, who ought to be driven out of the country. Shelley and Harriett tried to persuade themselves that Mr. Leeson’s animosity against them was due to their firmness in refusing to receive him within their doors, because they knew him to be ‘malignant and cruel to the greatest degree,’—a view of the case that, on coming to Mr. Leeson’s ears, cannot have rendered him less desirous of ridding the neighbourhood of those pestilent Shelleys.
In one of the earlier weeks (probably towards the end of the second week) of November, 1812, whilst the Shelleys were still at the St. James’s Coffee-house, Hogg appears to have urged his friend for pecuniary ends to make overtures for a reconciliation with his father, and to appeal to the Duke of Norfolk for his good offices in rendering the overtures successful. It being obvious to Hogg that the Shelleys were living greatly beyond their means, he may well have pressed this scheme upon them as the only plan of preserving them from a scandalous exposure of their financial troubles. The advice thus given in the first instance by word of mouth, was renewed by words of the pen, to which Shelley (more truth-loving, be it remembered, than most men) replied from Tanyrallt, on 3rd December, 1812, in a letter, containing these remarkable words:—‘I will, this instant, sit down and do penance for my involuntary crime by writing a long wheedling letter to his Grace, and you shall be informed of the success of the experiment.’ At the same time, whilst avowing his despair of influencing his father by any but selfish considerations, Shelley declared his intention of approaching old Killjoy with an air of good humour and a conciliatory countenance, and essaying to conquer his austerity with civil speeches. ‘When I see him,’ he remarks, ‘though I shall say the civilest things imaginable, yet I shall not look as if I liked him, because I do not like him.’
To wheedle, is to entice, coax, cajole with flattering and false words for the attainment of an end. To write a wheedling letter is to write false and flattering words for the attainment of an end. Such a letter Shelley coolly declares his intention of writing to his father’s patron, in order to get money by doing so. At the same time he coolly declares his intention to say ‘the civilest imaginable things’ to his father (whilst hating him cordially), in order to get money out of his pocket.
An incident of English public affairs to stir Shelley greatly during his residence at Tanyrallt was the punishment of the Hunts for libelling the Prince Regent in the Examiner newspaper, the sentence on each of the brothers being a fine of 500l. with imprisonment for two years. Though the facts of the case have been strangely misrepresented (the virulent libel on the Prince Regent in his private character having been minimized into a saucy reference to his age and corpulence), there is no need to set them forth precisely in this chapter. Whether the libel was well deserved (as Mr. Rossetti avers, whilst admitting with his usual honesty the extreme virulence of the attack) is a question beside the main question, viz., whether the ministers responsible for the efficient government of the country would have been justified in allowing clever and resolute journalists to use such violent and scurrilous language, in order to inflame the public against the individual who was the ipso facto sovereign. On this question no opinion is here offered. It is enough to record that the poet (by this time slightly acquainted with Leigh Hunt) felt that the Hunts had been punished with excessive severity, and should be relieved of the pecuniary part of their punishment. Acting on this sentiment Shelley wrote, on some day of February, 1813, from Tanyrallt, to Mr. Hookham of Old Bond Street,—‘I am rather poor at present, but I have 20l. which is not immediately wanted. Pray begin a subscription for the Hunts; put my name down for that sum, and, when I hear that you have complied with my request, I will send it to you.... P S.—... On second thoughts I enclose the 20l.’
Applauding Shelley for subscribing 500l. for the Tremadoc embankment, Lady Shelley applauds him for coming forward with 20l. ‘to vindicate and support an oppressed fellow-struggler for liberty and justice.’ A matter, to be mentioned in connexion with the gift to the Hunts, is that Shelley was in debt to divers of the petty tradesmen of his neighbourhood, who, in the opinion of some readers, may have had a stronger claim to the money so gallantly sent off to the journalists in trouble; his debts to small tradesmen being the more worthy of notice, because they did not give him their goods on the understanding that they should wait for payment till he came of age.
Shelley’s letters from Tanyrallt show that he was reading history and philosophy in the last month of 1812 and the opening months of 1813. The books sent him in this period by his London bookseller comprise works by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Spinoza, and Kant, it being worthy of notice that, whilst ordering Greek classics, he requires editions having ‘Latin or English translations printed opposite.’
At the same time he is at work on Queen Mab. In a former chapter reference was made to metrical compositions, that were in course of time expanded and worked into Queen Mab. But though there are grounds for a confident opinion, that it comprised a considerable quantity of his earlier verse, the first of Shelley’s compositions to be mentioned amongst the fruits of his poetical genius, was the production of 1812 and the opening months of 1813. Queen Mab was unquestionably the work of which he wrote on 18th August, 1812, from Lynton to Mr. Thomas Hookham: ‘I conceive I have matter for six more cantos.... Indeed, a poem is safe; the iron-souled Attorney-General would scarcely dare to attack.’ Writing of the same poem from Tanyrallt to Hogg on 7th February, 1813, he says, ‘Mab has gone on but slowly, although she is nearly finished.’ On a later day of the same month he wrote to Mr. Hookham, ‘Queen Mab is finished and transcribed.’ The use made of old material does not touch the fact that the poem was mainly written in his twenty-first year, instead of his nineteenth year. When he wrote (June, 1821) in the Examiner the words, ‘a poem, entitled Queen Mab, was written by me at the age of eighteen—I dare say in a sufficiently intemperate spirit,’ he was guilty of an error to be grouped with his misstatements to Godwin, respecting the time when he wrote Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. After announcing the completion of the poem to Hookham, the poet adds, ‘I am now preparing the notes, which shall be long and philosophical.’ It is worthy of remark that he was working upon the notes when he was at a distance from Godwin, who, on no evidence whatever, has been declared personally accountable for the note touching love and marriage,—a note comprising sentiments which Godwin had promulgated when Shelley was playing with his corals, and abandoned before the close of the last century.
The most agreeable aspect of Shelley’s life at Tanyrallt affords a view of his intercourse with his wife. As she gave birth to Shelley’s eldest child, Ianthe Eliza, in London, on 28th June, 1813, Harriett, at the turn of the year 1812-13, had for some time been in a state of health, to animate Shelley with a renewal of tenderness for her, and to quicken their mutual affection. Stirred with the hope of becoming a father in the ensuing summer, the poet who had longed at Dublin and Nantgwillt for the delights of conversation with his philosophical school-mistress, now found in his wife the sufficient mate she had not been to him either in Ireland or at Keswick. Possibly his discovery of a Brown Demon in the whilom angelical Miss Hitchener was, in some degree, accountable for his contentment with the wife who promised soon to give him an heir. Anyhow there can be no question that the moderate satisfaction with which he may be said to have regarded his bride for several months after the subsidence of the first excitements of the honeymoon, was now replaced by a state of feeling that caused him to write of her with mingled pride and gladness. The letter in which, whilst defending her from the imputation of being ‘a fine lady,’ he spoke admiringly of ‘the uncalculating connexion of her thoughts and speech,’ was dated to Fanny Imlay on 10th December, 1812. In a letter of later date, referring to his unconcern whether he came to terms with his father, he associates Harriett’s happiness with his own contentment;—‘Harriett is very happy as we are, and I am very happy.’ Though he writes complainingly in a yet later letter (7th February, 1813) of vexation coming to him from ‘the embankment affair,’ he speaks of his home as a place where he forgets the annoyance, and knows nought but joy in Harriett’s society;—‘for when I come home to Harriett I am the happiest of the happy.’ Whilst reading Greek classics with the help of ‘cribs,’ he is teaching Harriett Latin so as to give her a general notion of Horace’s Odes and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. ‘Harriett,’ he writes to Hogg on the 7th February, 1813, ‘has a bold scheme of writing you a Latin letter. If you have an Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she will thank you to bring it.’
Whilst Hogg (who had promised to stay with his friends at Tanyrallt in the next month) is thus invited to take part and interest in her higher education, Harriett is corresponding with the man who (according to the Shelleyan idolaters) was guilty of trying to seduce her some sixteen months since. Even to these idolaters it must appear that Shelley’s confidence in his wife’s goodness was perfect, when he encouraged her to live in affectionate intimacy with the man whom he still (according to the idolaters) thought guilty of having so recently essayed to seduce her. By them also it must be admitted that this confidence in her goodness was at Tanyrallt associated in Shelley’s breast with lively affection for her. The happy state of feeling was in its brightest season and tenderest hour when Shelley produced the famous dedicatory lines of Queen Mab.
‘To Harriet * * * * *
‘Whose is the love that, gleaming through the world,
Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?
Whose is the warm and partial praise,
Virtue’s most sweet reward?
Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul
Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?
Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,
And loved mankind the more?
Harriet! on thine:—thou wert my purer mind;
Thou wert the inspiration of my song;
Thine are these early wilding flowers,
Though garlanded by me.
Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;
And know, though time may change and years may roll,
Each floweret gathered in my heart
It consecrates to thine.’