Whilst Shelley was living in lodgings, and dating some of his letters from Cooke’s Hotel, Dover Street, he met his father at least on one occasion in society. The poet and Harriett were lodging in Half-Moon Street, when, on coming there to dine with them by invitation, Hogg was received by Harriett with excuses for the absence of her husband, who was dining at Norfolk House. Having called in the morning at the house, to pay his respects to the Duke, he was asked to return a few hours later to a dinner party. Considerations of prudence having made him accept the invitation Bysshe had gone to the dinner, leaving word that he would get away from the great people at Norfolk House as soon as possible. In Bysshe’s absence, therefore, Hogg dined with Harriett, who was reading aloud to him over the tea-cups when, after much vehement rapping at the street door, Shelley rushed into the room, ‘tumbling upstairs, with a mighty sound, treading upon his nose, as I accused him of doing, and throwing off his neckcloth, according to custom, stood staring about for some moments, as wondering why he had been in such a hurry.’ At the Norfolk House dinner (a large party of men) Percy, sitting at the bottom of the table, found himself next the Earl of Oxford, who (according to Bysshe’s account of the affair) inquired of him, ‘Who is that very strange old man at the top of the table, sitting next his Grace, who talks so much, so loudly, and in so extraordinary a manner, and all about himself?’
‘He is my father, and he is a very strange old man indeed!’ replied Shelley, who, on coming away from Norfolk House, was accompanied to the door of his lodgings by the Earl.
The Duke of Norfolk doubtless invited Bysshe to this dinner, in the hope that the meeting of the father and son, at war since the early autumn of 1811, might result in their reconciliation, or at least dispose the Squire to make the youngster a larger allowance, now that he was within a few months of his majority, and likely to have a child in a few weeks. Of course the Duke, under whose surveillance, influence, and approval, the Squire of Field Place had acted towards his son since the spring of 1811, was of opinion that Shelley should show larger consideration for his father’s feelings, before asking for a more liberal share of his father’s bounty; that concessions on the sire’s part must necessarily be preluded by concessions and conciliatory assurances on the part of the son; that the boy, in fact, must return clearly within the lines of filial dutifulness, before looking to his father for paternal sympathy and further pecuniary assistance. At the same time it may be assumed that Shelley’s ‘wheedling letter,’ written from Tanyrallt, had caused the Duke to think the youngster was returning to a reasonable frame of mind, and had determined to make concessions and promises, that would probably end in a satisfactory arrangement of his differences with his father. Hence it came about that, perhaps before the end of April, certainly not much later than the third week of May 1813, Shelley was in negotiation with his father, for a reconciliation that would be beneficial to himself.
It is not surprising that these negotiations were fruitless of better feeling between the father and the son. Since his elopement with Harriett to Edinburgh, Shelley had certainly done nothing to appease his father’s wrath. How far the Squire of Field Place had been kept au courant with his son’s doings in Dublin, at Lynton and Tanyrallt, does not appear; but several circumstances countenance the opinion that of Shelley’s doings in those places enough must have come to the Squire’s ears to confirm him in his unfavourable opinion of his heir. As Shelley instructed Miss Hitchener to send particulars of his doings in Dublin to the Sussex papers; as he sent the same lady copies of his revolutionary broadside (the Declaration of Rights) in order that they should be pasted on the walls of Sussex farmers; as during his first sojourn in Ireland he was incessantly writing to the lady letters, that may be presumed to have afforded much piquant gossip to her Hurstpierpoint acquaintance; as Shelley was at other pains to advertise his friends in Sussex of his Irish doings, the Squire of Field Place must have heard enough of those doings, to be acutely annoyed by them. It cannot have pleased him to hear in the summer of 1812, that the young schoolmistress had deserted her employment, and gone off to live with his son. Something had probably come to the Squire about that ugly business in Lynton. As Shelley asked the Duke of Norfolk to provide money for the Tremadoc Embankment, and seems to have sought in Sussex for other subscribers to the fund, it must have come to the Squire’s knowledge, that his son was busying himself with land-speculators in North Wales;—information which could not fail to confirm the Squire in his opinion, that old Sir Bysshe had done well to require by the codicil to his will, that Percy should resettle the estates A and B, under pain of forfeiting for himself and issue all the interest assigned to him and his issue by the testament. What wonder that the negotiations came to nothing?
That they came to nothing before the end of May, 1813, we know from a letter dated on the 26th day of that month by the Squire of Field Place to his son:—The letter (to be found in Notes and Queries: Second Series, vol. vi., p. 405) in which, after declining to have further communication with his son, till the latter should show signs of a change for the better, in respect ‘to some of the most unfavourable traits of his character,’ the Squire of Field Place remarked that, had he not imagined the change for the better to have already taken place, he should have persisted in his resolution to receive no communication from his dear boy, ‘but through His Grace the Duke of Norfolk.’ Thus closing the correspondence in terms less lucid than firm; the Member for New Shoreham still declared himself to be his dear boy’s ‘affectionate father.’
With this epistle the negotiations appear to have come to an end. To those who concur with Mr. Buxton Forman in thinking, that the author of Queen Mab and Laon and Cythna might under favourable circumstances have been ‘the Saviour of the World,’ the Squire of Field Place of course appears guilty of egregious impudence and irreverence in presuming to address his sacred son so familiarly; and it must be confessed that ‘my dear Boy’ appears a most inappropriate description of a young gentleman, worthy of being worshipt with the Deity. To persons, who concur with Mr. Froude, in thinking any extravagances and indiscretions should have been pardoned in Shelley, because he was young and enthusiastic, it must of course appear that, on receiving his son’s assurance that he had changed for the better, the Squire of Field Place should have hastened to Cooke’s Hotel, thrown his arms about the dear boy’s neck, and settled two thousand a-year upon him. To those of the Shelleyan enthusiasts who, because he lived to write incomparably fine poetry, think Shelley must always have been as faultless as his best verse, should never have been birched by the profane Keate, should never have been called to order by his father, it naturally seems insufferable insolence for a mere Member of Parliament, capable of writing nothing loftier than a barely intelligible letter, to venture to lecture so sublime a son on ‘the most unfavourable traits of his character.’ But to sober persons, who can enjoy fine poetry without thinking its producers demigods, it is not obvious why the poetic faculty should be held to exempt its possessor from any of the obligations of morality, or why a father should hesitate to reprove his son’s misconduct, because the youngster gives promise of developing into a man of genius. Even by those who recognize in Shelley’s character and career the resemblance which Mr. Buxton Forman was the first to detect in them, it will be conceded that the historic parallel would be closer, had the poet in his nonage shown more consideration for the feelings of his parents, and greater readiness to ‘be subject unto them.’
Of this brief letter nothing, perhaps, is more noteworthy than its announcement that, had it not been for misapprehension respecting his son’s temper and attitude, the writer should have declined to receive any communication from him except ‘through his Grace the Duke of Norfolk,’ on whom he relied for guidance in his chief domestic perplexity, no less than for protection from any social censure and discredit, likely to ensue from unjust reports of his action in respect to that trouble. After hearing so much during the last thirty or forty years of the sufferings Shelley endured from his father’s harshness and cruelty, it is well for the world to glance at the other side of the story, and commiserate the pain and shame that came to the Squire of Field Place from his son’s perversity and malice. The man may well be compassionated who is constrained to put his honour in the custody of another person, albeit of so august a personage as a duke of the realm. A little sympathy is due to the father, who relied on his patron to protect him from slanderous misrepresentation of his parental character and conduct.
After perusing the epistle, that closed the fruitless negotiations, Shelley sent it to the Duke of Norfolk with a ‘wheedling’ note (also to be found in Notes and Queries: Second Series, vol. vi., p. 405) in which, after suitable expressions of regret for the failure of the Duke’s intervention, and similar expressions of gratitude for His Grace’s sympathy and good offices, the writer observed,—
‘I was prepared to make my father every reasonable concession, but I am not so degraded and miserable a slave, as publicly to disavow an opinion which I believe to be true. Every man of common sense must see that a sudden renunciation of sentiments seriously taken up is as unfortunate a test of intellectual uprightness as can possibly be devised. I take the liberty of enclosing my father’s letter for your Grace’s inspection. I repeat what I have said from the commencement of this negociation, in which private communications from my father first induced me to engage, that I am willing to concede anything that is reasonable, anything that does not involve a compromise of that self-esteem without which life would be a burden and a disgrace.’
Had he written in this strain of the failure of the negotiation to William Godwin or Hogg, or indeed to almost any one but the Duke of Norfolk, cautious readers would hesitate to infer from the epistle that the Member for New Shoreham had made any demand, so extreme as to justify in any degree the poet’s way of referring to it. But in writing to the Duke whom he knew to be cognizant of the terms offered to him by his father, it is scarcely conceivable that Shelley permitted himself to speak of them in a style, that was without even the faintest colour of justification. It does not, however, follow that the Squire had any desire to reduce his son to the position of a ‘degraded and miserable slave,’ or made any demand to which no young man of honour and sensibility could assent, without losing his self-respect.