Fortunately there is another witness to be called, who is in some respects a better witness than either Peacock or Hogg; for, on making his observations, he had come to a period of life entitling him to be credited with more discretion than either of them possessed in 1813. Moreover, in 1822, when, Trelawny knew the poet, Shelley had arrived at a period of life when parental love is invariably stronger than at manhood’s threshold, and in burying his eldest boy by Mary Godwin, had made acquaintance with the sorrow that never fails to quicken the sufferer’s disposition to love his offspring. On the other hand, it must be admitted, somewhat to his discredit, that this witness opens his evidence with a most erroneous statement. A clever man of the world, and a shrewd student of character, Trelawny came to a confident opinion that Shelley was not the ‘pre-eminently affectionate father’ Peacock declares him. Trelawny’s testimony to this point is weakened by the fact that he prefaced it with a declaration which no student of the poet’s story will hesitate to reject as wrong. On 22nd April, 1872, towards the close of his career, Trelawny reiterated to Mr. Rossetti an opinion, which he had expressed on previous occasions, ‘that Shelley cared nothing for children;’ and in illustration of the poet’s comparative indifference for his own child, told how in his presence ‘Shelley stepped over his own child, Percy, near the threshold of the house, without observing that it was Percy until the nurse told him.’ On this occasion, to Trelawny’s jocular reference to the proverbial saying that a man must be wise to know his own children, the poet remarked, ‘A wise man wouldn’t have any.’
In saying that Shelley cared nothing for children, Trelawny, of course, made a mistake, showing how little the shrewd man of the world knew of the poet; a mistake to be regarded as a rash inference from insufficient data. To remember how Shelley fed the little girl with bread-and-milk at Oxford; to remember how the troop of nakedized children rushed downstairs on hearing his rap at the street-door; to remember how he nursed Allegra in her infancy, rolled the billiard-balls about the table with her at Venice, and raced at her heels along the passages of the Bagna Cavallo convent; to remember all the pleasant stories of his intercourse with little people, is to remember how he resembled Byron in liking to make playmates of children. But, though Shelley certainly cared enough for children to enjoy their prattle, it does not follow that Trelawny (an honest and unimaginative man) is otherwise than a good witness to facts which took place under his eyes. Wrong in the mere matter of opinion, he holds the confidence of his hearers when he speaks to facts. Few readers will hesitate in accepting the Cornish gentleman’s evidence that he saw Shelley step over his little boy, and could remember Shelley did not recognize the minute urchin till the nurse spoke to him. The man, who, on stumbling over the infant, failed to recognize his own two-years-old child (a child ever about the house; a child with whom he had played for hours together in the previous year) cannot have been a father, in whom parental instinct was strongly operative. Such a man may be a conscientious and beneficent parent, but it is impossible for him to be a pre-eminently affectionate father to his children during their tender infancy. To enjoy playing with children is not the same thing as to love them. A kindly man will soothe them when they are fretful, and yet feel for them no sort of tenderness that is akin to parental affection. That Peacock inferred too much from Shelley’s practice of nursing and lulling Ianthe, appears from the fact that at Marlow he acted in the same way to Allegra.
To say that parental affection was not powerful in Shelley is not to raise a question respecting his general elevation of character, for the mere strength and activity of the parental sentiment afford no data for estimating the degree in which a man is endowed with the higher virtues. The mean and selfish often delight in their children, and on the other hand the humane and lofty-natured are sometimes by no means remarkable for solicitude for their own offspring. Why then am I at so much pains to call attention to the evidence that Shelley was not strongly interested in his first-born child, and that in this particular Harriett resembled him? In order that, whilst considering the circumstances which resulted in the poet’s separation from his wife, the reader may remember there is no reason for thinking the youthful couple were strongly influenced by the affection, that so often draws a husband and wife into stronger sympathy, and sometimes counteracts the forces that, but for it, would drive them asunder.
It was probably before Harriett’s accouchement, and whilst her physical condition, without disposing her to keep indoors, rendered bodily exercise more and more trying to her, that Shelley gave his wife the carriage which afforded Hogg the materials for one of his drollest anecdotes. How the carriage was horsed, and in what way the occupant of lodgings procured the servants needful for putting the vehicle on the London pavement, does not appear. Probably the requisite men and animals were provided on credit by the keeper of the livery-yard where the carriage was housed. It is, however, certain that, instead of being ‘jobbed,’ the vehicle was bought by Shelley of a coach-maker, who had not parted with the coach many weeks when he sued his customer for its price, one of the consequences of the tradesman’s efforts to get his money being that Hogg, through the blundering of a brace of bailiffs, was momentarily arrested on the writ issued for his friend’s apprehension. The coach-builder’s action shows clearly that, in selling the carriage to Shelley, he imagined himself selling it to a customer of legal age. It does not, however, follow that Shelley made any misstatement of his years in order to get possession of the vehicle. On buying the carriage, it was, of course, incumbent on him to let the tradesman know he was dealing with a minor; and it is conceivable that Shelley either spoke to the man in terms which should have enlightened him on this point, or had reason for believing the tradesman knew him to be under age. Had Shelley been heir to an estate, into the actual possession of which he would come a few months later, the purchase of the coach would have been no act of egregious imprudence, but as the estate to which he might eventually succeed would not come to him till the death of his father, the poet’s action in setting up his carriage, when he was deeply in debt, and had no income apart from the precarious 400l., may be fairly called a droll extravagance.
9.—Bracknell.
Under the circumstances, no reader will suspect Lady Shelley of wanting evidence to support her statement that, in the summer of 1813, ‘Shelley was in severe pecuniary distress.’ However successful they may be in getting credit and staving off their creditors, people who live showily on just nothing a-year are usually in severe pecuniary distress. What with the cost of producing 250 copies of Queen Mab on fine paper, the cost of lodgings in so fashionable a thoroughfare as Half-Moon Street, the expenses of Harriett’s carriage, the fees to the taciturn Quaker physician who attended her, and now the wages of Ianthe’s wet-nurse, Shelley certainly lived in London from April to mid-July as extravagantly as he had lived at Tanyrallt. It is, therefore, conceivable that, before ‘going out of town,’ Shelley often found himself sorely in want of a five-pound note, a sovereign, ay, even of half-a-crown.
Conceivable also is it that Shelley imagined he could retrench his expenses at Bracknell, and that therefore Lady Shelley may be in possession of documentary evidence that he spoke of his migration to Bracknell as an economical movement. But writing ‘from authentic sources’ of information, Lady Shelley can scarcely have been justified in writing of her husband’s father that, ‘for the purpose of economy, he retired to a small cottage in Berkshire,’ as though he went to Bracknell solely for cheap rural existence. Shelley went to Bracknell in order to be near Maimuna, who had her country-house there. Lady Shelley, with her ‘authentic sources,’ cannot have been unaware that the youthful poet moved to Bracknell for the enjoyment of gentle and soothing intercourse with Maimuna. It is inconceivable that Lady Shelley never heard of Maimuna, her home at Bracknell, and Shelley’s passion for her. Yet she represents that Shelley’s motive for going to Bracknell was purely economical. There is no reference to Maimuna in the whole of Lady Shelley’s book. It is thus that Shelley’s extravagant admirers produce biography of him from ‘authentic sources.’
Taking a cottage at Bracknell, in order to be near Mrs. Boinville, Shelley, during his tenure of the ‘High Elms,’ lived in a way that, instead of being economical, might almost be styled prodigal. He made a costly trip to Edinburgh and the English lakes, posting in his carriage. He was frequently running from the Berkshire parish up to town, journeying sometimes on foot, but necessarily spending money or running deeper into debt for accommodation at London hotels. At least, on one occasion, he had seven guests staying with him in his Berkshire cottage at the same time, the whole family of the vegetarian Newtons. It is true that Shelley at this period of his career was a vegetarian, and abstained from wine and all spirits, except the spirit that came to him through the neck of the laudanum-bottle; but at times during this term he drank laudanum freely, and laudanum, bought of West-London druggists, is no cheap drink. There was not much economy in this way of living.
There is a conflict between the authorities as to the particular year in which Shelley paid his last visit to Field Place; for whilst Hogg represents the visit to have been made in the early summer of 1814, Lady Shelley is no less certain that it was an affair of the late summer of 1813. Though with all his inaccuracy Hogg is much less inaccurate than Lady Shelley, several circumstances cause me to think the lady right on this point, albeit two or three matters dispose me to think she may have been mistaken. The balance of the evidence is, however, so greatly in her favour that (whilst cautioning readers that they may even yet be required to postpone the visit into the following year) I venture to record that, soon after migrating to Bracknell, Shelley started from his cottage on foot for his old home, whither his mother had invited him to come in the absence of his father and the three younger children.
At Field Place the poet was received cordially by his mother and two eldest sisters, and had the society of Mr. Kennedy, a young officer (ætat. 16) stationed at Horsham, to whose pen we are indebted for the greater part of what is known of Bysshe’s last visit to his former home. From this chronicler it appears that Bysshe accepted his mother’s invitation on the understanding that his father and the younger children would be away, and that his visit would be withheld from the Squire’s knowledge. There are, however, grounds for suspecting that the Squire on leaving his home for a few days was aware who would visit it in his absence, though Shelley came to Field Place under the impression that, to shield his mother from the wrath that would visit her in case of discovery, he must take care to keep his presence at the house from the cognizance of neighbours.