I will repeat, that virtue and wisdom are necessary to true happiness and liberty.
Before the restraints of government are lessened, it is fit that we should lessen the necessity for them. Before government is done away with, we must reform ourselves. It is this work which I would earnestly recommend to you. O Irishmen, reform yourselves.[1]
Whatever evil results Godwin may have apprehended from Shelley’s proceedings, these sentiments taken in the abstract could not but enlist his sympathies to some extent on behalf of the deluded young optimist, nor did he keep the fact a secret. Shelley’s letters, as well as the Irish pamphlet, were eagerly read and discussed by all the young philosophers of Skinner Street.
“You cannot imagine,” Godwin wrote to him, “how much all the females of my family—Mrs. Godwin and three daughters—are interested in your letters and your history.”
Publicly propounded, however, Shelley’s sentiments proved insufficiently attractive to those to whom they were addressed. At a public meeting where he had ventured to enjoin on Catholics a tolerance so universal as to embrace not only Jews, Turks, and Infidels, but Protestants also, he narrowly escaped being mobbed. It was borne in upon him before long that the possibility, under existing conditions, of realising his scheme for associations of peace and virtue, was doubtful and distant. He abandoned his intention and left Ireland, professedly in submission to Godwin, but in fact convinced by what he had seen. Godwin was delighted.
“Now I can call you a friend,” he wrote, and the good understanding of the two was cemented.
After repeated but fruitless invitations from the Shelleys to the whole Godwin party to come and stay with them in Wales, Godwin, early in the autumn of this year (1812) actually made an expedition to Lynmouth, where his unknown friends were staying, in the hope of effecting a personal acquaintance, but his object was frustrated, the Shelleys having left the place just before he arrived.
They first met in London, in the month of October, and frequent, almost daily intercourse took place between the families. On the last day of their stay in town the Shelleys, with Eliza Westbrook, dined in Skinner Street. Mary Godwin, who had been for five months past in Scotland, had returned, as we know, with Christy Baxter the day before, and was, no doubt, very glad not to miss this opportunity of seeing the interesting young reformer of whom she had heard so much. His wife he had always spoken of as one who shared his tastes and opinions. No doubt they all thought her a fortunate woman, and Mary in after years would well recall her smiling face, and pink and white complexion, and her purple satin gown.
During the year and a half that had elapsed since that time Mary had been chiefly away, and had heard little if anything of Shelley. In the spring of 1814, however, he came up to town to see her father on business,—business in which Godwin was deeply and solely concerned, about which he was desperately anxious, and in which Mary knew that Shelley was doing all in his power to help him. These matters had been going on for some time, when, on the 5th of May, he came to Skinner Street, and Mary and he renewed acquaintance. Both had altered since the last time they met. Mary, from a child had grown into a young, attractive, and interesting girl. Hers was not the sweet sensuous loveliness of her mother, but with her well-shaped head and intellectual brow, her fine fair hair and liquid hazel eyes, and a skin and complexion of singular whiteness and purity, she possessed beauty of a rare and refined type. She was somewhat below the medium height; very graceful, with drooping shoulders and swan-like throat. The serene eloquent eyes contrasted with a small mouth, indicative of a certain reserve of temperament, which, in fact, always distinguished her, and beneath which those who did not know her might not have suspected her vigour of intellect and fearlessness of thought.
Shelley, too, was changed; why, was in his case not so evident. Mary would have heard how, just before her return home, he had been remarried to his wife; Godwin, the opponent of matrimony, having, mysteriously enough, been instrumental in procuring the licence for this superfluous ceremony; superfluous, as the parties had been quite legally married in Scotland three years before. His wife was not now with him in London. He was alone, and appeared saddened in aspect, ailing in health, unsettled and anxious in mind. It was impossible that Mary should not observe him with interest. She saw that, although so young a man, he not only could hold his own in discussion of literary, philosophical, or political questions with the wisest heads and deepest thinkers of his generation, but could throw new light on every subject he touched. His glowing imagination transfigured and idealised what it dwelt on, while his magical words seemed to recreate whatever he described. She learned that he was a poet. His conversation would call up her old day-dreams again, though, before it, they paled and faded like morning mists before the sun. She saw, too, that his disposition was most amiable, his manners gentle, his conversation absolutely free from suspicion of coarseness, and that he was a disinterested and devoted friend.