In saying that he could not leave his wife in her present state, the writer can scarcely have meant he could not leave for a few hours the house in which she was lying, though affectionate concern forbade him to leave her for so long a time as would be consumed by journeying to Horsham and back. Notwithstanding some statement to the contrary, which had come under his notice, Hogg remained under the impression that Harriett’s first accouchement took place at the Pimlico lodgings, and (for reasons with which I will not trouble the reader, as the question is of scarcely any importance) I have little doubt Hogg was right on this point.
In reviewing Shelley’s course during the spring and summer of 1813, readers may be certain that, after resting a night or two in Chapel Street, he stayed for awhile (perhaps a fortnight) with his wife at Cooke’s Hotel; that he then went with her into the lodgings in Half-Moon Street, which they occupied for several weeks (possibly eight or nine weeks;—in speaking of them as living in the Half-Moon Street for ‘several months,’ Hogg used too ample an expression); that, on leaving Half-Moon Street, the young couple went to the Pimlico lodging-house, before going to Bracknell; and that after ceasing to reside at the Dover-Street Hotel, Shelley often went to it in May, June, and July, to see friends and write letters. It is, of course, conceivable that he lived at the hotel for some days and nights between the stay in Half-Moon Street, and the migration to Pimlico, and again between his withdrawal from the Pimlico lodging-house and his retirement to Bracknell, where he had his home, towards the end of July, 1813.
The state of Shelley’s purse is enough to account for the fact that he and Harriett journeyed from Killarney to London, unattended by Miss Westbrook, whom they left in charge of ‘the many useful volumes’ which the trio carried with them from Tanyrallt to Dublin, and from Dublin to the South of Ireland, where Eliza possibly sold them for the money that enabled her in the course of a few days to follow her sister and brother-in-law. Having barely enough money in hand for the charges of posting to Cork and ‘mailing’ on to Dublin, Shelley and Harriett would have been constrained to leave their sister behind, even had they wished for her company. It is, however, certain that, whilst Shelley was greatly delighted, Harriett was in no degree pained by the circumstances which enabled them to escape for a brief while from Miss Westbrook’s society.
Printed on the fine paper especially ordered by the author (for the gratification of his natural pride in the offspring of his brain, and also, as he averred, that the work might be more attractive to the sons and daughters of aristocrats), the first ‘bound copies’ of Queen Mab may be assumed to have come to Shelley’s hands soon after he took possession of the lodgings in Half-Moon Street. It may also be assumed that, in the earlier weeks of their residence in the thoroughfare, which seventy years since enjoyed the favour of fashion, both Harriett and Shelley found congenial diversion in sending out copies of the new book to men of letters whom they knew, to men of letters whom they wished to know, and to those persons of their small circle of acquaintance who, without being ambitious of literary distinction, were of a philosophical quality that rendered the young poet desirous of standing high in their regard, or of converting them to his particular views.
An early copy was despatched to Byron, still in the enjoyment of the celebrity, pertaining to him as the author of Childe Harold. But Byron failed to acknowledge the book, as he, of course, and in mere courtesy, would have done, had it not been for the miscarriage of the letter, which would have given him Shelley’s address. Having been on his pilgrimage during the occurrences, that had rendered the younger poet somewhat (but only in a slight degree) notorious, it is more than probable that, on looking for the first time on Queen Mab’s title-page, Byron had never heard anything of Shelley’s personal story,—never even heard his name. Anyhow, Byron took no notice of the book. To Shelley, yearning to know the author of Childe Harold, and ignorant of the circumstances that were accountable for the apparent disrespect, Byron’s silence must have been extremely mortifying.
Society, in the larger and higher sense of the word, of course, knew nothing of the poem which appeared in no bookseller’s shop, and which would have been inquired for in vain at the circulating libraries, whilst it was being secretly lent under the rose to their friends by the hundred or more persons, who had been so fortunate as to get copies of the surreptitious publication. It is unknown how many of the 250 copies were thus floated into covert circulation; but it is certain that the work was read and talked about by a sufficient number of people (the majority of them being Londoners), for Shelley to acquire from it,—at least, in the cliques and coteries of literary London,—a certain measure of poetical reputation, and a recognized place amongst the young and rising poets of the period. In certain circles the precautions he had taken for his safety quickened the desire to see the daring poem, and win a personal introduction to the author. One can readily believe what Hogg tells us of the way in which strangers of both sexes forced their way into the Half-Moon-Street lodgings, in order to make the acquaintance of the author of Queen Mab; but, in professing to be offended and irked by these intrusive worshipers of his genius, Shelley was no more sincere than when he affected, in one of his letters to Godwin, to have perused with indifference the eulogia of the article which, although he knew the commendations to have proceeded from honest Jack Lawless’s pen, delighted him so greatly, that he entreated Miss Hitchener to compass its reproduction in the Sussex newspapers.
Though she now and then gave signs of emancipation from Miss Westbrook’s authority, Harriett still lived in friendliness with the admirable sister, who, whilst residing again under her father’s roof in Chapel Street, seldom allowed a day to pass without spending a few hours with her child in Half-Moon Street. That Shelley had, at least for the moment, passed from her control, Miss Westbrook cannot have been insensible; but, as the rapid development of Harriet’s person required more and more liberal rearrangements of her dresses, it is probable that the elder sister cheered herself by looking forward to a time, when she would be in a position to reclaim Percy from a state of mutiny, and re-establish her dominion over him. In the meantime, though she came almost daily to her sister’s lodgings, Miss Westbrook did nothing for the comfort of its proper occupants, who, at an expenditure which, with good management, would have maintained them in luxury, lived as wastefully and comfortlessly as any young couple of their condition ever lived, on the drawing-floor of a West-End lodging-house. In partaking of such dinners as Harriett set before him in the front drawing-room, Hogg certainly gave no ordinary proof of attachment to his friends. To say that Shelley was a stricter vegetarian in the spring and summer of 1813, is not to say much of his abstinence from the more luxurious fare of his own table; for the bread and raisins, the penny-buns and raspberry tartlets, from the nearest confectioner’s shop, were the daintiest food offered to his guests, either in the Half-Moon-Street or Pimlico lodgings. The poet’s favourite food at this stage of his career was cold bread-poultice (made like the poultices of medical practice), which he devoured with the keenest relish, after sprinkling them with powdered lump sugar and grated nutmeg. A few months later he was living chiefly on pulse.
The strange people who gathered about Shelley in the two sets of rooms were, with two or three exceptions, of no finer quality than the fare with which he regaled them. For the most part, enthusiastic vegetarians, and fervid believers in the perfectibility of the human species, they exercised themselves in debating the best and quickest means of raising mankind to the perfection of which it was capable, and in disputing whether it was lawful for vegetarians to eat eggs and butter, to drink milk and put cream to their strawberries. In comparison with most of the men, who talked excitedly on these momentous questions, the Chevalier de Lawrence was a discreet and sober intellect. But the men were surpassed by the women of the coterie in piquant eccentricity and grotesque fancifulness. With her placid interest in self-murder, and her avowed purpose of putting an end to her own existence, should it become a few degrees less tolerable, Harriett may be presumed to have sympathized with the dejection of the equally languid and miserable gentlewoman, who would have perished under the burden of her imaginary woes, had it not been for the solace of Petrarch sonnets.
Another gentlewoman of the circle was chiefly remarkable for holding that, to enjoy perfect health of mind and body, it was necessary for the British matron to begin every day by sitting for three or four hours in unqualified nudity,—hours which, of course, every fair practitioner of nakedness was expected to pass in the strictest privacy; it being further recommended that she should employ them in reading high literature or in writing letters. In society, after telling how she had passed the first three hours of the well-spent morning, she sometimes added, for the edification of listeners, ‘I feel so innocent during the rest of the day.’ Finding the regimen of matutinal nakedness so beneficial to herself, this exemplary gentlewoman trained her children to go without clothing about the house for the greater part of the day. One of the drollest pages of Hogg’s delightful book tells how, on hearing Shelley’s familiar rap at the front door, this lady’s brood of infants (a twelve-years old boy, a girl ætat. ten, a boy ætat. nine, and two wee girls, the younger of whom was only five years of age) rushed downstairs in perfect nudity, in order to greet so favourite a friend even on the door-mat.
But of all the ladies who thronged about Shelley in Half-Moon Street (to Harriett’s perplexity and Eliza Westbrook’s secret wrath), even as women of higher quality crowded round and ‘suffocated’ Byron in the salons of lordly houses, none had more influence over the author of Queen Mab from the spring of 1813, to the end of the spring of 1814, than Mrs. Boinville—an Englishwoman by birth and education, who was indebted to a French husband for her style and tastes, as well as for the name which gives her peculiar distinctiveness in the Shelleyan annals. The mother-in-law of Mr. Newton (the vegetarian enthusiast, who, after living in affectionate intimacy with Shelley during the greater part of 1813, quarrelled with him in an early month of the following year), Mrs. Boinville, at the time of making Shelley’s acquaintance, was through her daughter, Cornelia (Mr. Newton’s wife), the grandmother of a brood of handsome children. Nor were these children the only evidence that Mrs. Boinville had come to an age when it is unusual for an Englishwoman to conceive a sentimental fondness for a youngster in his nonage. The whiteness of her abundant tresses proclaimed her old enough for grand-maternal dignity. She was, however, a young-looking woman for her age; the contrast of her snow-white hair and comparatively girlish face causing Shelley to name her Maimuna, after the poetical creation of whom it is written in Southey’s Thalaba: