‘Tanyralt, March 3rd, 1813.
‘Dear Sir,—I have just escaped an atrocious assassination. Oh send the twenty pounds, if you have it! You will probably hear of me no more!—Your Friend,
Percy Shelley.’
‘Mr. Shelley is so dreadfully nervous to-day from being up all night that I am afraid what he has written will alarm you very much. We intend to leave this place as soon as possible, as our lives are not safe as long as we remain. It is no common robber we dread, but a person who is actuated by revenge,—who threatens my life and my sister’s as well. If you can send us the money it will add greatly to our comfort.—Sir, I remain your sincere friend,
H. Shelley.’
The printed transcripts of this note and postscript differ in several minute particulars from the printed transcripts of the same writings in Lady Shelley’s book; but the only important difference between the two sets of printed transcripts is that, whilst it is given without any date in Lady Shelley’s book, the note is given in Hogg’s version with an obviously erroneous date.
One of the mistakes of Lady Shelley’s inaccurate book is the representation that, in writing the brief note to Mr. T. Hookham, Shelley merely asked the bookseller for a loan of 20l. ‘It would appear,’ the lady says, ‘that after sending off the 20l. for the Hunt subscription he was in want of money. Hence the request to Mr. Hookham for a little temporary accommodation to enable him to make the necessary removal from Tanyrallt.’ It is, however, certain that Shelley wished the receiver of his note to regard him as asking for the restoration of the 20l. sent a few days earlier to Bond Street, as a contribution to the Hunt fund. It has been already remarked that the letter accompanying this remittance to Mr. Hookham for the Hunt Fund was dated, ‘February, 1813,’ without a note of the particular day. Hence the precise day on which the money was despatched from Tanyrallt to London is unknown. But there is evidence for fixing the approximate date of the remittance. On 7th February, 1813, Shelley wrote to Hogg from Tanyrallt, ‘Mab has gone on, but slowly, although she is nearly finished.’ In the subsequent letter to Mr. Hookham, accompanying the contribution to the Hunt Fund, Shelley says, ‘Queen Mab is finished and transcribed.’ Consequently between the date of the earlier letter and the composition of the later epistle, Shelley had finished and transcribed his poem,—work that may be computed to have given him occupation for a fortnight. This computation would give the 22nd February as the approximate date of the letter, accompanying the remittance for the Hunt Fund, to Mr. Hookham. Written and posted on Monday, 22nd February at Tanyrallt, or Tremadoc, the letter would start on its journey by mail for London in the early morning of Tuesday, 23rd February, and arriving in London on the evening or night of Thursday, 25th February, would be delivered in Old Bond Street on the morning of Friday, 26th February—the morning of the very day, on whose night the first of the imaginary attacks was made by the imaginary assassin at Tanyrallt. According to this calculation Shelley found himself in urgent need of the money he had so recklessly given away, just twenty-four hours after the note or notes for the money came to the hands of the Bond-Street bookseller.
There are differences between Hogg’s transcript of the assassination-note to Mr. Hookham and Lady Shelley’s transcript of the same note. One of the discrepancies is that Lady Shelley gives us ‘Oh! send me 20l., if you have it,’ whereas Hogg gives us ‘O send the twenty pounds, if you have it.’ Whichever of the two versions is taken, it is clear that ‘if you have it’ signifies ‘if you have not parted with it to the Hunt Fund Committee,’ and that Shelley was asking for the return of his own money. As he had no reason to suppose the prosperous bookseller might be without twenty pounds either in his till or at the bank, by ‘if you have it’ Shelley cannot have meant ‘if you are the possessor of so much money.’ Affording no indication that Shelley felt he was putting himself under a pecuniary obligation to the man of business, the language of the note precludes the assumption that he was asking outright for a loan of money. Though he may have felt, and probably did feel, that his note would move Mr. Hookham to lend him 20l. if he had parted with the subscribed 20l., Shelley asked for the restoration of his own 20l. Much the same may be said of Mrs. Shelley and her postscript. Instead of writing as though she and her husband were asking Mr. Hookham to do them a considerable kindness, she wrote as though she were merely asking for their own money.
When the assassination-note came to Mr. Hookham’s hands on the morning of Tuesday, 3rd March, he had passed Shelley’s gift on to the Hunt Fund. In his inability to return the subscribed money, the bookseller sent him 20l. as a loan; a loan which Shelley acknowledged from Bangor Ferry, on 6th March, 1813, in terms affording proof that the present writer has not misconstrued the assassination-note. Lady Shelley’s printed transcript of the letter from Bangor Ferry, makes Shelley write thus,—
‘From the tenor of your letter I augur’ (argue ?) ‘that you have applied the 20l. I sent to the benefit of the Hunts.... By your kindness and generosity we are perfectly relieved from all pecuniary difficulties. We only wanted a little breathing time, which the rapidity of our persecutions was unwilling to allow us. We shall readily repay the 20l. when I hear from my correspondent in London; but when can I repay the friendship, the disinterestedness, and the zeal of your confidence?’