View from the North-west.
This reckless act coloured all his subsequent life: it led to his expulsion from college, to the breaking off of a match with his cousin, and to his being discarded by his father. Soon afterwards young Shelley married Miss Westbrook, at Gretna Green, and resided first at Keswick, next in Ireland (where he published some political pamphlets), and afterwards in Wales. After three years of married life and the birth of two children, Shelley and his wife separated in 1814, and he went to Switzerland, where he formed the friendship of Lord Byron, which closed only with his death. In 1816 he was recalled from Switzerland by the tragic fate of his wife, who committed suicide by drowning; and shortly afterwards, her father, Mr. Westbrook, succeeded in an application to deprive him of the guardianship of his children. Soon after the death of his wife, Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of the notorious free-thinker William Godwin, and herself the authoress of “Frankenstein,” and they settled at Great Marlow, where he published his “Alastor” and “The Revolt of Islam.” In 1818 they quitted England for Italy, and from that time to his death every year “gave evidence of Shelley’s untiring intellectual energy in the production of numerous poems and other pieces,” including “Adonais,” “The Cenci,” “Prometheus Bound,” &c. After spending some time in Rome and Naples and various places, “Mr. and Mrs. Shelley engaged a house at Lerici, on the Bay of Spezzia, and it was here that he met his premature and lamented death. On the 8th of July, 1822, he set sail in his little schooner-yacht, a vessel wholly unfit to encounter the squalls of the Mediterranean, accompanied by his friend Captain Williams, to meet Leigh Hunt, who was with Lord Byron at Pisa. A few days afterwards Shelley left his friends, intending to return with Captain Williams, and set sail, in spite of the unfavourable change in the weather, with an English boy, named Charles Vivian, added to the party. They were off Via Reggio, at some distance from the shore, when a storm was driven over the sea which enveloped all in darkness; the cloud passed onwards, but the little schooner had vanished. At the end of a dreadful week of suspense the worst fears of his friends were confirmed. The body of Shelley was washed on shore near Via Reggio, that of Captain Williams at a spot about four miles distant, but that of Charles Vivian was not found for three weeks afterwards. The bodies were burnt in accordance with the Italian laws of quarantine, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, and Shelley’s ashes were afterwards enclosed in an urn, and deposited in the English cemetery at Rome, by the side of his infant son William.” “You will have heard by this time,” says Byron, when writing to Moore on the 2nd of August, 1822, “that Shelley and another gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a month yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezzia. There is thus another man gone about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will perhaps do him justice now, when he can be no better for it.” Dying before his father (Sir Timothy), Shelley did not, of course, succeed to the family estates; but, on the death of Sir Timothy in 1844, the son of the poet succeeded, and is the present head of the family, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, Bart., of Field Place, Warnham.
Around Warnham the neighbourhood is one unbroken succession of pleasant scenery and of delightful “nooks and corners;” and the district is studded with many pleasant residences. Within a few miles, too, are Horsham, with its fine old church and other objects of interest; St. Leonard’s Forest, Longhurst, Graylands, Rusper, and a score or two other places that are full of beauty and interest, and show well what charms are furnished by the scenery of Sussex.
LOWTHER CASTLE
