Let me now pass to the reasons why the statements of this journal should be received with caution. The journal was in Mrs. Shelley’s keeping after her husband’s death, some portions of it having been published during his life, whilst other portions are even yet withheld from critical scrutiny. It will be admitted that primâ facie the poet’s widow was far less likely to alter the printed and published portions of the record than to alter the MS. and undivulged entries; since in tampering with the published portions she would be more or less liable to exposure, whereas in altering the unpublished portion she would feel secure from detection. It will also be admitted that to show Mrs. Shelley did, after her husband’s death, tamper with and alter the published portions, for the express purpose of removing an important matter of evidence from them, is to prove her quite capable of tampering with, and altering the unpublished portions, should she be tempted strongly to do so. I charge Mrs. Shelley with having thus tampered with the published portions of the record.
In 1814 Mary and Claire were sisters, ever thinking and speaking of one another as sisters. In 1814 years had still to pass (albeit they often had smart tiffs and differences) before they ceased to think and speak of one another with sisterly love and in sisterly fashion. Hence, at Paris in August, 1814, it was natural for Mary Godwin to write in her journal:—
‘We resolved to walk through France; but as I was too weak for any considerable distance, and my sister could not be supposed to walk as far as S*** each day, we determined to purchase an ass to carry our portmanteau and one of us by turns.’
To call attention to ‘my sister’ I have printed the two words in italics. In December, 1817, when Claire had been for some time Byron’s mistress, and after being discarded by him had given birth to Allegra, Shelley and Mary published the journal (in which these words occur), together with certain well-known letters and the poem on Mont Blanc, under the title of History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: With letters descriptive of a sail round the Lake of Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni: the book being provided with a preface written by Shelley himself, which contains these words:—
‘Those whose youth has been past as their’s (with what success it imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests the visible world, will perhaps find some entertainment in following the author, with her husband and sister, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she visited them, a great poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature.’
Thus in the journal, which has been dealt with by the Shelleyan specialists as the joint-production of Shelley and Mary, and in the Preface of which Shelley was the sole author, Claire is styled Mary’s sister. This is conclusive evidence of the regard in which Claire was held by Shelley and Mary from 1814 to the end of 1817. Jointly they style her ‘sister.’ Shelley by himself styles Claire his wife’s sister. What does Mrs. Shelley do in 1840, when she has ceased to love Claire, and lived to think of her as a vexatious and discreditable connexion? In the last named year, on producing a new edition of the Six Weeks’ Tour, she does her utmost to obliterate the evidence of her relationship to her old playmate and travelling companion, by substituting the word ‘friend,’ for the word ‘sister,’ in each of the above-given passages. She thus tampers with the text of the journal of which her husband was joint-author, and the text of the Preface, written altogether by her husband, in order to withdraw evidence which he put before the world. Am I wrong in saying that the widow, who dealt thus with her husband’s printed words, was capable of altering the unpublished entries of diaries kept by herself and her husband?
Posting to Paris, where they stayed for a week, the trio entered the French capital with so little money that Shelley was compelled to sell his watch and chain for eight Napoleons and five francs, a part of which sum he is said to have remitted to Harriett. On the arrival of a remittance from England of 60l., which is noticed in the diary as setting them ‘free’ from a kind of imprisonment which they found very irksome, the travellers made a curious plan for enjoying their financial liberty and acted upon it promptly; in spite of the dissuasive eloquence of their landlady, who assured Mary and Claire, that in traversing a country populous with recently disbanded soldiers, they would expose themselves to insult and to outrage far worse than mere insolence. Mainly from considerations of economy, though in some degree, perhaps, from appetite for novel adventure, they determined to walk through France.
With clothing that could be packed in a single portmanteau and a dear little donkey that, besides carrying the portmanteau, would carry them by turns, Mary and Claire were certain they could journey to Switzerland with keen enjoyment and no excessive fatigue; whilst Shelley (an excellent walker) could, of course, trudge the whole way on foot, bearing a small basket of provisions for their frugal meals. The scheme looked well on paper; and had circumstances been as compliant as the adventurers were imaginative the plan would have worked admirably. The portmanteau would have been none too heavy and the donkey none too weak; every village in which they desired to rest would have afforded them clean beds and sufficient cookery; the weather would never have been too hot, the roads never too stony. But the circumstances were too rigorous and unyielding. It was to their misfortune that, instead of buying a competent ass in the Parisian ass-market, Claire and Shelley selected a diminutive animal, that in less than twenty-four hours proved insufficient for the place. Still it was all merriment at the outset to the girls, who prattled merrily on the way from Paris (which they left at four p.m.) to Charenton, which they entered some six hours later. Dressed in black silk, the sisters (on leaving coach and taking the donkey at the barrier) congratulated themselves on their choice of a costume, the lightness of their portmanteau, the mild intelligence of their dear little donkey. At the first view of Charenton in the valley watered by the Seine, Claire (in sly raillery at Shelley) ejaculated, ‘Oh! this is beautiful enough: let us live here.’ In the morning, when, on recognizing the donkey’s incompetence they replaced it with a mule (bought for ten Napoleons), the girls may have been troubled with doubts whether ‘black’ was the best ‘colour for standing white dust.’ Soon the temper of the tourists was tested by trials more grievous than fatigue and the dust of hot highways. The fare of the cabarets was coarse, the company in them not chiefly remarkable for refinement, the bedding neither comfortable nor clean. The peasants might have been something less morose to gentle strangers, in no degree responsible for the excesses of the brutal Cossacks. On nearing Trois Maisons, Shelley sprained his ankle so badly that the girls were compelled to walk an entire day’s journey and let him ride on their mule. At Troyes he could scarcely put his lame foot to the ground; Mary was ‘dead-beat’ with fatigue; Claire could no longer cry out gleefully, ‘I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but let us live here.’ The bright girl’s cheeriest cry just then may well have been ‘Beds,—and let’s sleep here for ever.’
On the morrow, 13th August, 1814 (and maybe in the absence of Mary and Claire, capable of strolling through the town), Shelley, whose lameness kept him a prisoner to the hotel, took pen in hand and wrote his wife a remarkable epistle. Opening with an assurance that it is written, in order that she may realize how he holds her in remembrance, this epistle from Shelley to the wife he has left in England begins with ‘My dearest Harriett,’ and closes with a declaration of enduring affection for her:—a declaration preceded by a message of love to their sweet little Ianthe. ‘I write,’ he says, ‘to urge you to come to Switzerland, where you will, at least, find one firm and constant friend, to whom your interests will be always dear,—by whom your feelings will never be wilfully injured.’ It is scarcely conceivable that in his heart Shelley believed Harriett guilty of any heinous offence against his honour, when he thus begged her to join him in Switzerland. After chatting to her about the scenes and circumstances and incidents of her journey from Paris to the town where he is staying, Shelley enjoins Harriett ‘not to part with any of her money’ (words implying that he knows her to be in possession of a considerable sum), and bids her bring with her to Switzerland the two deeds which Tahourdin has been instructed to prepare for her. The settlement may have been a deed for her pecuniary benefit. The other two deeds may have been duplicates of an instrument, defining the terms of their separation, to which (I think) she may be regarded as having assented (in a legal sense) before Shelley left England. Thus Shelley wrote from Troyes to his wife, whom he hoped soon to have the pleasure of welcoming to some sweet retreat in the Swiss mountains.
By the writer of the well-known Edinburgh ‘Shelley and Mary’ article, it is remarked of this letter,—