Some thirty or more years later Captain Kennedy recalled how, before setting out for a walk beyond the limits of the Field Place demesne, he (a sixteen-years-old ensign) and the poet used to exchange their outer garments, so that the disguise of a scarlet uniform should render the Warnham peasants less likely to recognize their Squire’s son. It lived in Captain Kennedy’s recollection how, though he had a small pate, his military cap was so much too large for Percy that it was found needful to pad the lining liberally for his use. But because Shelley saw a necessity for dressing himself out in this fashion, and, doubtless, enjoyed the fun of masquerading about the Warnham lanes in a red coat, it does not follow there was any need for the disguise. That Captain Kennedy resembled the biographer for whose benefit he racked his recollection, and all other persons who try to recall clearly what they can only remember vaguely, in permitting his fancy to aid his memory, appears from one or two passages of his entertaining narrative. Though the exchange of costumes was a matter to live in the memory of either masquerader, it is difficult to believe the Captain could recollect (some thirty or forty years afterwards) that Shelley wore ‘an old black coat,’ which had been ‘done up, and smartened with metal buttons and a velvet collar.’ To believe all the Captain says about this seedy and re-trimmed garment, is to believe that Shelley (the young gentleman who a few weeks since had set up his carriage) dressed thus meanly because he was too generous ever to have any money in his pocket, and too precisely honourable to run in debt.
A passage from the Captain’s narrative, as it was originally offered to the world in Hogg’s second volume, may be given both as an example of the deponent’s evidence, and as an illustration of the editorial carelessness by which Hogg enabled his enemies to charge him with falsifying documents:—
‘He told me,’ says Captain Kennedy, ‘Sir James was intimate with one to whom, as he said, he owed everything; from whose book, Political Justice, he had derived all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue. He discoursed with eloquence and enthusiasm, but his views seemed to me exquisitely metaphysical, and by no means clear, precise, or decided. He told me he had already read the Bible in Hebrew four times. He was then only twenty-two years of age. Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint. He spoke of the Supreme Being as of infinite mercy and benevolence. He disclosed no fixed views of spiritual things; all seemed wild and fanciful.’
Observe the words of the extract which I have printed in italics. To any careful peruser of those words and their context, it is obvious that the words, though printed as a substantial part of the Captain’s narrative, were not penned by him. The words ‘twenty-two years of age,’ that immediately precede them, and the words ‘He spoke of the Supreme Being,’ that follow them immediately, are words of the Captain’s writing. But he cannot be imagined to have written the words, ‘Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint.’ The interpolation is one of Hogg’s editorial notes, which he intended to be printed between brackets and duly ‘initialed.’ Printed thus, ‘(Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint. T. J. H.)’ the interpolation could not have been maliciously declared a falsification of the text.
When Lady Shelley, after staying Hogg’s work midway and discharging him with public discourtesy, produced her not invariably accurate Shelley Memorials, she reproduced Hogg’s portions of Captain Kennedy’s narrative with alterations in amendment, omitting (as she surely had a right to do) Hogg’s editorial interpolation; omitting Captain Kennedy’s words ‘in Hebrew’ (which she surely had no right to do without stating she had the Captain’s authority for doing so), and changing ‘twenty-two years old’ into ‘twenty years’ (an alteration she would have been fully justified in making on the strength of sufficient documentary evidence without consulting Captain Kennedy on the point). One point more in respect to Captain Kennedy’s narrative. As Shelley had no sure belief in the existence of the Supreme Deity at this period of his existence, it must be concluded either that he did not speak of the Supreme Being’s infinite mercy and benevolence in the manner alleged by Captain Kennedy, or that he, in so speaking, was insincere.
In connection with Shelley’s last visit to his home a few words may be here said more appropriately than they would have been said in a previous chapter. In the letter written by Shelley on 26th November, 1811, from Keswick to Mr. Medwin, Sen., appear these words:—
‘Whitton has written to me to state the impropriety of my letter to my mother and sister; this letter I have returned with a passing remark on the back of it. I find that the affair on which those letters spoke is become the general gossip of the idle newsmongers of Horsham—they give me credit for having invented it. They do my invention much honour, but greatly discredit their own penetration.’
From these words it is obvious that Shelley, before 26th November, 1811, had written to his mother and sister a letter that appeared to his father an epistle, to be answered by the family solicitor, Mr. Whitton. It is also obvious that the letter, so answered by the family solicitor, and the letter written in reply to it by the same solicitor, related to some affair which, on coming to the knowledge of certain persons of Horsham, had caused them to declare it no true affair, but a thing invented by Shelley. Apart from this information respecting the affair which Horsham people declared a falsehood, I know nothing, except that Medwin (vide Life, p. 169, 170) speaks of it thus:—
‘The affair here referred to is little to the purpose; but during Sir Timothy’s absence in London, on his parliamentary duties, Lady Shelley invited Shelley to Field Place, where he was received, to use his own words, with much shew-affection. Some days after he had been there his mother produced a parchment deed which she asked him to sign, to what purport I know not; but he declined so doing, and which he told me he would have signed had he not seen through the false varnish of hypocritical caresses. This anecdote is not idle gossip, but comes from Shelley himself.’
If Shelley had the folly in or before his twentieth year to write or say that, when only just nineteen years old or younger, he was at a private conference between them entreated by his mother to sign a legal instrument, which she then and there produced for him to sign, the Horsham gossip-mongers on coming to hear the story may well have burst out laughing and declared it an invention. But till I have better evidence to the point than this statement by Medwin, I must decline to believe that his note describes accurately ‘the affair,’ which occasioned the exchange of letters, though I am quite prepared to find that the correspondence referred to some cock-and-bull story. I cannot, however, refuse to believe that Shelley, on being spoken to about the passage of the Keswick letter, did really give the explanation which Medwin declares he received from Shelley himself. Medwin’s inexactness is proverbial. He is almost as inaccurate as Lady Shelley. But none of his inaccuracies, nor all of them taken together, raise suspicion of his good faith. He was gullible and at times curiously addle-pated; but he was no inventor of untruths. When the errors of his book about Byron raised an outcry, he could produce note-books to show he was an honest collector of gossip, though a credulous and undiscerning one. The wild fictions of the Conversations were not Medwinian falsehoods, but pure Byronic ‘bams.’ Distrustful though I am of Medwin’s statements, I have no mistrust of his honour. When he gives me his word of honour that a certain statement was made to him, I neither doubt that some such statement was made, nor doubt that he reports honestly, though with a greater or less degree of inexactness. I do not question that Shelley spoke to him about the affair, and the passage of the Keswick letter; and I am disposed to think that, on being questioned about the passage of the epistle, Shelley may have imagined it to refer, and said that it referred, to some vaguely remembered matter, which instead of taking place in 1811 was an incident of his last visit to Field Place in 1813.