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MRS. SHELLEY
BY LUCY MADOX ROSSETTI.
1890.
PREFACE.
I have to thank all the previous students of Shelley as poet and man—not last nor least among whom is my husband—for their loving and truthful research on all the subjects surrounding the life of Mrs. Shelley. Every aspect has been presented, and of known material it only remained to compare, sift, and use with judgment. Concerning facts subsequent to Shelley's death, many valuable papers have been placed at my service, and I have made no new statement which there are not existing documents to vouch for.
This book was in the publishers' hands before the appearance of Mrs. Marshall's Life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and I have had neither to omit, add to, nor alter anything in this work, in consequence of the publication of hers. The passages from letters of Mrs. Shelley to Mr. Trelawny were kindly placed at my disposal by his son-in-law and daughter, Colonel and Mrs. Call, as early as the summer of 1888.
Among authorities used are Prof. Dowden's Life of Shelley, Mr. W. M. Rossetti's Memoir and other writings, Mr. Jeaffreson's Real Shelley, Mr. Kegan Paul's Life of William Godwin, Godwin's Memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Pennell's Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, &c. &c.
Among those to whom my special thanks are due for original information and the use of documents, &c., are, foremost, Mr. H. Buxton Forman, Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, Mrs. Call, Mr. Alexander Ireland, Mr. Charles C. Pilfold, Mr. J. H. Ingram, Mrs. Cox, and Mr. Silsbee, and, for friendly counsel, Prof. Dowden; and I must particularly thank Lady Shelley for conveying to me her husband's courteous message and permission to use passages of letters by Mrs. Shelley, interspersed in this biography.
LUCY MADOX ROSSETTI.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PARENTAGE.
CHAPTER II. GIRLHOOD OF MARY—PATERNAL TROUBLES.
CHAPTER III. SHELLEY.
CHAPTER IV. MARY AND SHELLEY.
CHAPTER V. LIFE IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER VI. DEATH OF SHELLEY'S GRANDFATHER, AND BIRTH OF A CHILD.
CHAPTER VII. "FRANKENSTEIN".
CHAPTER VIII. RETURN TO ENGLAND.
CHAPTER IX. LIFE IN ITALY.
CHAPTER X. MARY'S DESPONDENCY AND BIRTH OF A SON.
CHAPTER XI. GODWIN AND "VALPERGA".
CHAPTER XII. LAST MONTHS WITH SHELLEY.
CHAPTER XIII. WIDOWHOOD.
CHAPTER XIV. LITERARY WORK.
CHAPTER XV. LATER WORKS.
CHAPTER XVI. ITALY REVISITED.
CHAPTER XVII. LAST YEARS.
CHAPTER I.
PARENTAGE.
The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin, the wife of Shelley: here, surely, is eminence by position, for those who care for the progress of humanity and the intellectual development of the race. Whether this combination conferred eminence on the daughter and wife as an individual is what we have to enquire. Born as she was at a time of great social and political disturbance, the child, by inheritance, of the great French Revolution, and suffering, as soon as born, a loss certainly in her case the greatest of all, that of her noble-minded mother, we can imagine the kind of education this young being passed through—with the abstracted and anxious philosopher-father, with the respectable but shallow-minded step-mother provided by Godwin to guard the young children he so suddenly found himself called upon to care for, Mary and two half-sisters about her own age. How the volumes of philosophic writings, too subtle for her childish experience, would be pored over; how the writings of the mother whose loving care she never knew, whose sad experiences and advice she never heard, would be read and re-read. We can imagine how these writings, and the discourses she doubtless frequently heard, as a child, between her father and his friends, must have impressed Mary more forcibly than the respectable precepts laid down in a weak way for her guidance; how all this prepared her to admire what was noble and advanced in idea, without giving her the ballast needful for acting in the fittest way when a time of temptation came, when Shelley appeared. He appeared as the devoted admirer of her father and his philosophy, and as such was admitted into the family intimacy of three inexperienced girls.
Picture these four young imaginative beings together; Shelley, half-crazed between youthful imagination and vague ideas of regenerating mankind, and ready at any incentive to feel himself freed from his part in the marriage ceremony. What prudent parents would have countenanced such a visitor? And need there be much surprise at the subsequent occurrences, and much discussion as to the right or wrong in the case? How the actors in this drama played their subsequent part on the stage of life; whether they did work which fitted them to be considered worthy human beings remains to be examined.
* * * * *
As no story or life begins with itself, so, more especially with this of our heroine, we must recall the past, and at least know something of her parents.
Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most remarkable and misunderstood women of even her remarkable day, was born in April 1759, in or near London, of parents of whose ancestors little is known. Her father, son of a Spitalfields manufacturer, possessed an adequate fortune for his position; her mother was of Irish family. They had six children, of whom Mary was the second. Family misery, in her case as in many, seems to have been the fountainhead of her genius. Her father, a hot-tempered, dissipated man, unable to settle anywhere or to anything, naturally proved a domestic tyrant. Her mother seems little to have understood her daughter's disposition, and to have been extremely harsh, harassed no doubt by the behaviour of her husband, who frequently used personal violence on her as well as on his children; this, doubtless, under the influence of drink.
Such being the childhood of Mary Wollstonecraft, it can be understood how she early learnt to feel fierce indignation at the injustice to, and the wrongs of women, for whom there was little protection against such domestic tyranny. Picture her sheltering her little sisters and brother from the brutal wrath of a man whom no law restricted, and can her repugnance to the laws made by men on these subjects be wondered at? Only too rarely do the victims of such treatment rise to be eloquent of their wrongs.
The frequent removals of her family left little chance of forming friendships for the sad little Mary; but she can scarcely have been exactly lonely with her small sisters and brothers, possibly a little more positive loneliness or quiet would have been desirable. As she grew older her father's passions increased, and often did she boldly interpose to shield her mother from his drunken wrath, or waited outside her room for the morning to break. So her childhood passed into girlhood, her senses numbed by misery, till she had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of a Mr. and Mrs. Clare, a clergyman and his wife, who were kind to the friendless girl and soon found her to have undeveloped good qualities. She spent much time with them, and it was they who introduced her to Fanny Blood, whose friendship henceforth proved one of the chief influences of her life; this it was that first roused her intellectual faculty, and, with the gratitude of a fine nature, she never after forgot where she first tasted the delight of the fountain which transmutes even misery into the source of work and poetry.
Here, again, Mary found the story of a home that might have been ruined by a dissipated father, had it not been for the cheerful devotion of this daughter Fanny, who kept the family chiefly by her work, painting, and brought up her young brothers and sisters with care. A bright and happy example at this moment to stimulate Mary, and raise her from the absorbing and hopeless contemplation of her own troubles; she then, at sixteen, resolved to work so as to educate herself to undertake all that might and would fall on her as the stay of her family. Fresh wanderings of the restless father ensued, and finally she decided to accept a situation as lady's companion; this her hard previous life made a position of comparative ease to her, and, although all the former companions had left the lady in despair, she remained two years with her till her mother's illness required her presence at home. Mrs. Wollstonecraft's hard life had broken her constitution, and in death she procured her first longed-for rest from sorrow and toil, counselling her daughters to patience. Deprived of the mother, the daughters could no longer remain with their father; and Mary, at eighteen, had again to seek her fortune in a hard world—Fanny Blood being, as ever, her best friend. One of her sisters became housekeeper to her brother; and Eliza married, but by no means improved her position by this, for her marriage proved another unhappy one, and only added to Mary's sad observation of the marriage state. A little later she had to help this sister to escape from a life which had driven her to madness. When her sister's peace of mind was restored, they were enabled to open a school together at Stoke Newington Green, for a time with success; but failure and despondency followed, and Mary, whose health was broken, accepted a pressing invitation from her friend Fanny, who had married a Mr. Skeys, to go and stay with her at Lisbon, and nurse her through her approaching confinement. This sad visit—for during her stay there she lost her dearly loved friend—broke the monotony of her life, and perhaps the change, with sea voyage which was beneficial to her health, helped her anew to fight the battle of life on her return. But fresh troubles assailed her. Some friend suggested to her to try literature, and a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, was her first attempt. For this she received ten guineas, with which she was able to help her friends the Bloods.
She shortly afterwards accepted a situation as governess in Lord Kingsborough's family, where she was much loved by her pupils; but their mother, who did little to gain their affection herself, becoming jealous of the ascendency of Mary over them, found some pretext for dismissing her. Mary's contact, while in this house, with people of fashion inspired her only with contempt for their small pleasures and utterly unintellectual discourse. These surroundings, although she was treated much on a footing of equality by the family, were a severe privation for Mary, who was anxious to develop her mind, and to whom spiritual needs were ever above physical.
On leaving the Kingsboroughs, Mary found work of a kind more congenial to her disposition, as Mr. Johnson, the bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard who had taken her pamphlet, now gave her regular work as his "reader," and also in translating. Now began the happiest part of Mary's life. In the midst of books she soon formed a circle of admiring friends. She lived in the simplest way, in a room almost bare of furniture, in Blackfriars. Here she was able to see after her sisters and to have with her her young brother, who had been much neglected; and in the intervals of her necessary work she began writing on the subjects which lay nearest to her heart; for here, among other work, she commenced her celebrated Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a work for which women ought always to be grateful to her, for with this began in England the movement which, progressing amidst much obloquy and denunciation, has led to so many of the reforms in social life which have come, and may be expected to lead to many which we still hope for. When we think of the nonsense which has been talked both in and out of Parliament, even within the last decade, about the advanced women who have worked to improve the position of their less fortunate sisters, we can well understand in what light Mary Wollstonecraft was regarded by many whom fortunately she was not bound to consider. Her reading, which had been deep and constant, together with her knowledge of life from different points of view, enabled her to form just opinions on many of the great reforms needed, and these she unhesitatingly set down. How much has since been done which she advocated for the education of women, and how much they have already benefited both by her example and precept, is perhaps not yet generally enough known. Her religious tone is always striking; it was one of the moving factors of her life, as with all seriously thinking beings, though its form became much modified with the advance in her intellectual development.
Her scheme in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman may be summed up thus:—
She wished women to have education equal to that of men, and this has now to a great extent been accorded.
That trades, professions, and other pursuits should be open to women.
This wish is now in progress of fulfilment.
That married women should own their own property as in other European countries. Recent laws have granted this right.
That they should have more facilities for divorce from husbands guilty of immoral conduct. This has been partially granted, though much still remains to be effected.
That, in the case of separation, the custody of children should belong equally to both parents.
That a man should be legally responsible for his illegitimate children. That he should be bound to maintain the woman he has wronged.
Mary Wollstonecraft also thought that women should have representatives in Parliament to uphold their interests; but her chief desires are in the matter of education. Unlike Rousseau, she would have all children educated together till nine years of age; like Rousseau, she would have them meet for play in a common play-ground. At nine years their capacities might be sufficiently developed to judge which branch of education would be then desirable for each; girls and boys being still educated together, and capacity being the only line of demarcation.
Thus it will be seen that Mary's primary wish was to make women responsible and sensible companions for men; to raise them from the beings they were made by the frivolous fashionable education of the time; to make them fit mothers to educate or superintend the education of their children, for education does not end or begin with what may he taught in schools. To make a woman a reasoning being, by means of Euclid if necessary, need not preclude her from being a charming woman also, as proved by the descriptions we have of Mary Wollstonecraft herself. Doubtless some of the most crying evils of civilisation can only be cured by raising the intellectual and moral status of woman, and thus raising that of man also, so that he, regarding her as a companion whose mind reflects the beauties of nature, and who can appreciate the great reflex of nature as transmitted through the human mind in the glorious art of the world, may really be raised to the ideal state where the sacrilege of love will be unknown. We know that this great desire must have passed through Mary Wollstonecraft's mind and prompted her to her eloquent appeal for the "vindication of the rights of woman."
With Mary's improved prospects, for she fortunately lived in a time when the strong emotions and realities of life brought many influential people admiringly around her, she was able to pay a visit to Paris in 1792. No one can doubt her interest in the terrible drama there being enacted, and her courage was equal to the occasion; but even this journey is brought up in disparagement of her, and this partly owing to Godwin's naïve remark in his diary, that "there is no reason to doubt that if Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of their acquaintance he would have been the man of her choice." As the little if is a very powerful word, of course this amounts to nothing, and it is scarcely the province of a biographer to say what might have taken place under other circumstances, and to criticise a character from that standpoint. If Mary was attracted by Fuseli's genius, and this would not have been surprising, and if she went to Paris for change of scene and thought, she certainly only set a sensible example. As it was, she had ample matter of interest in the stirring scenes around her—she with a heart to feel the woes of all: the miseries however real and terrible of the prince did not blind her to those of the peasant; the cold and calculating torture of centuries was not to be passed over because a maddened people, having gained for a time the right of power by might, brought to judgment the representatives, even then vacillating and treacherous, of ages of oppression. Her heart bled for all, but most for the longest suffering; and she was struck senseless to the ground by the news of the execution of the "twenty-one," the brave Girondins. Would that another woman, even greater than herself, had been untrammelled by her sex, and could have wielded at first hand the power she had to exercise through others; and might not France have been thus again saved by a Joan of Arc—not only France, but the Revolution in all its purity of idea, not in its horror.
In France, too, the women's question had been mooted; Condorcet having written that one of the greatest steps of progress of the human intellect would be the freedom from prejudice that would give equality of right to both sexes: and the Requête des Dames à l'Assemblée Nationale 1791, was made simultaneously with the appearance of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman. These were strong reasons to attract Mary to France, strange as the time was for such a journey; but even then her book was translated and read both in France and Germany. So here was Mary settled for a time, the English scarcely having realised the turmoil that existed. She arrived just before the execution of Louis XVI., and with a few friends was able to study the spirit of the time, and begin a work on the subject, which, unfortunately, never reached more than its first volume. Her account, in a letter to Mr. Johnson, shows how acutely she felt in her solitude on the day of the King's execution; how, for the first time in her life, at night she dared not extinguish her candle. In fact, the faculty of feeling for others so acutely as to gain courage to uphold reform, does not necessarily evince a lack of sensitiveness on the part of the individual, as seems often to be supposed, but the very reverse. We can well imagine how Mary felt the need of sympathy and support, separated as she was from her friends and from her country, which was now at war with France. Alone at Neuilly, where she had to seek shelter both for economy and safety, with no means of returning to England, and unable to go to Switzerland through her inability to procure a passport, her money dwindling, still she managed to continue her literary work; and as well as some letters on the subject of the Revolution, she wrote at Neuilly all that was ever finished of her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Her only servant at this time was an old gardener, who used to attend her on her rambles through the woods, and more than once as far as Paris. On one of these occasions she was so sickened with horror at the evidence of recent executions which she saw in the streets that she began boldly denouncing the perpetrators of such savagery, and had to be hurried away for her life by some sympathetic onlookers. It was during this time of terror around and depression within that Mary met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American, at the house of a mutual friend.
Now began the complication of reasons and deeds which caused bitter grief in not only one generation. Mary was prompted by loneliness, love, and danger on all hands. There was risk in proclaiming herself an English subject by marriage, if indeed there was at the time the possibility of such a marriage as would have been valid in England, though, as the wife of an American citizen, she was safe. Thus, at a time when all laws were defied, she took the fatal step of trusting in Imlay's honour and constancy; and, confident of her own pure motives, entered into a union which her letters to him, full of love, tenderness, and fidelity, proved that she regarded as a sacred marriage; all the circumstances, and, not least, the pathetic way she writes to him of their child later on, prove how she only wished to remain faithful to him. It was now that the sad experiences of her early life told upon her and warped her better judgment; she who had seen so much of the misery of married life when love was dead, regarded that side, not considering the sacred relationship, the right side of marriage, which she came to understand later—too late, alas!
So passed this année terrible, and with it Mary's short-lived happiness with Imlay, for before the end we find her writing, evidently saddened by his repeated absences. She followed him to Havre, where, in April, their child Fanny was born, and for a while happiness was restored, and Mary lived in comfort with him, her time fully occupied between work and love for Imlay and their child; but this period was short, for in August he was called to Paris on business. She followed him, but another journey of his to England only finished the separation. Work of some sort having been ever her one resource, she started for Norway with Fanny and a maid, furnished with a letter of Imlay's, in which he requested "all men to know that he appoints Mary Imlay, his wife, to transact all his business for him." Her letters published shortly after her return from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, divested of the personal details, were considered to show a marked advance in literary style, and from the slow modes of travelling, and the many letters of introduction to people in all the towns and villages she visited, she was enabled to send home characteristic details of all classes of people. The personal portions of the letters are to be found among her posthumous works, and these, with letters written after her return, and when she was undoubtedly convinced of Imlay's baseness and infidelity, are terrible and pathetic records of her misery—misery which drove her to an attempt at suicide. This was fortunately frustrated, so that she was spared to meet with a short time of happiness later, and to prove to herself and Godwin, both previous sceptics in the matter, that lawful marriage can be happy. Mary, rescued from despair, returned to work, the restorer, and refused all assistance from Imlay, not degrading herself by receiving a monetary compensation where faithfulness was wanting. She also provided for her child Fanny, as Imlay disregarded entirely his promises of a settlement on her.
As her literary work brought her again in contact with the society she was accustomed to, so her health and spirits revived, and she was able again to hold her place as one of its celebrities. And now it was that her friendship was renewed with that other celebrity, whose philosophy ranged beyond his age and century, and probably beyond some centuries to come. His advanced ideas are, nevertheless, what most thinking people would hope that the race might attain to when mankind shall have reached a higher status, and selfishness shall be less allowed in creeds, or rather in practice; for how small the resemblance between the founder of a creed and its followers is but too apparent.
So now Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, the author of Political Justice, have again met, and this time not under circumstances as adverse as in November 1790, when he dined in her company at Mr. Johnson's, and was disappointed because he wished to hear the conversation of Thomas Paine, who was a taciturn man, and he considered that Mary engrossed too much of the talk. Now it was otherwise; her literary style had gained greatly in the opinion of Godwin, as of others, and, as all their subjects of interest were similar, their friendship increased, and melted gently into mutual love, as exquisitely described by Godwin himself in a book now little known; and this love, which ended in marriage, had no after-break.
But we must now again retrace our steps, for in the father of Mary Shelley we have another of the representative people of his time, whose early life and antecedents must not be passed over.
William Godwin, the seventh of thirteen children, was born at Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire, on March 3, 1756. His parents, both of respectable well-to-do families, were well known in their native place, his great-great-grandfather having been Mayor of Newbury in 1706. The father, John Godwin, became a dissenting minister, and William was brought up in all the strictness of a sectarian country home of that period. His mother was equally strict in her views; and a cousin, who became one of the family—a Miss Godwin, afterwards Mrs. Sotheran, with whom William was an especial favourite—brought in aid her strongly Calvinistic tendencies. His first studies began with an "Account of the Pious Deaths of many Godly Children"; and often did he feel willing to die if he could, with equal success, engage the admiration of his friends and the world. His mother devoutly believed that all who differed from the basis of her own religious views would endure the eternal torments of hell; and his father seriously reproved his levity when, one Sunday, he happened to take the cat in his arms while walking in the garden. All this naturally impressed the child at the time, and his chief amusement or pleasure was preaching sermons in the kitchen every Sunday afternoon, unmindful whether the audience was duly attentive or not. From a dame's school, where, by the age of eight, he had read through the whole of the Old and New Testament, he passed to one held by a certain Mr. Akers, celebrated as a penman and also moderately efficient in Latin and Mathematics. Godwin next became the pupil of Mr. Samuel Newton, whose Sandemanian views, surpassing those of Calvin in their wholesale holocaust of souls, for a time impressed him, till later thought caused him to detest both these views and the master who promulgated them. Indeed, it is not to be wondered at that so thinking a person as Godwin, remembering the rules laid down by those he loved and respected in his childhood, should have wandered far into the abstract labyrinths of right and wrong, and, wishing to simplify what was right, should have travelled in his imagination into the dim future, and have laid down a code beyond the scope of present mortals. Well for him, perhaps, and for his code, if this is yet so far beyond that it is not taken up and distorted out of all resemblance to his original intention before the time for its possible practical application comes. For Godwin himself it was also well that, with these uncongenial early surroundings, he, when the time came to think, was of the calm—most calm and unimpassioned philosophic temperament, instead of the high poetic nature; not that the two may not sometimes overlap and mingle; but with Godwin the downfall of old ideas led to reasoning out new theories in clear prose; and even this he would not give to be rashly and indiscriminately read at large, but published in three-guinea volumes, knowing well that those who could expend that sum on books are not usually inclined to overthrow the existing order of things. In fact, he felt it was the rich who wanted preaching to more than the poor.
Apart from sectarian doctrines, his tutor, Mr. Newton, seems to have given Godwin the advantage of the free range of his library; and doubtless this was excellent education for him at that time. After he had acted as usher for over a year, from the age of fifteen, his mother, at his father's death in 1772, wished him to enter Homerton Academy; but the authorities would not admit him on suspicion of Sandemanianism. He, however, gained admittance to Hoxton College. Here he planned tragedies on Iphigenia and the death of Cæsar, and also began to study Sandeman's work from a library, to find out what he was accused of. This probably caused, later, his horror of these ideas, and also started his neverending search after truth.
In 1777 he became, in his turn, a dissenting minister; until, with reading and fresh acquaintances ever widening his views, gradually his profession became distasteful to him, and in 1788, on quitting Beaconsfield, he proposed opening a school. His Life of Lord Chatham, however, gained notice, and he was led to other political writing, and so became launched on a literary career. With his simple tastes he managed not only for years to keep himself till he became celebrated, but he was also a great help to different members of his family; several of these did not come as well as William out of the ordeal of their strict education, but caused so little gratification to their mother and elder brother—a farmer who resided near the mother—that she destroyed all their correspondence, nearly all William's also, as it might relate to them. Letters from the cousin, Mrs. Sotheran, show, however, that William Godwin's novel-writing was likewise a sore point in his family.
In the midst of his literary work and philosophic thought, it was natural that Godwin should get associated with other men of advanced opinions. Joseph Fawcet, whose literary and intellectual eminence was much admired in his day, was one of the first to influence Godwin—his declamation against domestic affections must have coincided well with Godwin's unimpassioned justice; Thomas Holcroft, with his curious ideas of death and disease, whose ardent republicanism led to his being tried for his life as a traitor; George Dyson, whose abilities and zeal in the cause of literature and truth promised much that was unfortunately never realised: these, and later Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were acknowledged by Godwin to have greatly influenced his ideas. Godwin acted according to his own theories of right in adopting and educating Thomas Cooper, a second cousin, whose father died, ruined, in India. The rules laid down in his diary show that Godwin strove to educate him successfully, and he certainly gained the youth's confidence, and launched him successfully in his own chosen profession as an actor. Godwin seems always to have adhered to his principles, and after the success of his Life of Chatham, when he became a contributor to the Political Herald, he attracted the attention of the Whig Party, to whose cause he was so useful that Fox proposed, through Sheridan, to set a fund aside to pay him as Editor. This, however, was not accepted by Godwin, who would not lose his independence by becoming attached to any party.
He was naturally, to a great extent, a follower of Rousseau, and a sympathiser with the ideas of the French Revolution, and was one of the so-called "French Revolutionists," at whose meetings Horne Tooke, Holcroft, Stanhope, and others figured. Nor did he neglect to defend, in the Morning Chronicle, some of these when on their trial for high treason; though, from his known principles, he was himself in danger; and without doubt his clear exposition of the true case greatly modified public opinion and helped to prevent an adverse verdict. Among Godwin's multifarious writings are his novels, some of which had great success, especially Caleb Williams; also his sketch of English History, contributed to the Annual Register. His historical writing shows much research and study of old documents. On comparing it with the contemporary work of his friends, such as Coleridge, it becomes evident that his knowledge and learning were utilized by them. But these works were anonymous; by his Political Justice he became famous. This work is a philosophical treatise based on the assumption, that man, as a reasoning being, can be guided wholly by reason, and that, were he educated from this point of view, laws would be unnecessary. It must be observed here that Godwin could not then take into consideration the laws of heredity, now better understood; how the criminal has not only the weight of bad education and surroundings against him, but also how the very formation of the head is in certain cases an almost insuperable evil. He considered many of the laws relating to property, marriage, &c., unnecessary, as people guided by reason would not, for instance, wish for wealth at the expense of starving brethren. Far in the distance as the realisation of this doctrine may seem, it should still be remembered that, as with each physical discovery, the man of genius must foresee. As Columbus imagined land where he found America; as a planet is fixed by the astronomer before the telescope has revealed it to his mortal eye; so in the world of psychology and morals it is necessary to point out the aim to be attained before human nature has reached those divine qualifications which are only shadowed forth here and there by more than usually elevated natures. In fact Godwin, who sympathised entirely with the theories of the French Revolution, and even surpassed French ideas on most subjects, disapproved of the immediate carrying out of these ideas and views; he wished for preaching and reasoning till people should gradually become convinced of the truth, and the rich should be as ready to give as the poor to receive. Even in the matter of marriage, though strongly opposed to it personally (on philosophical grounds, not from the ordinary trite reasoning against it), he yielded his opinion to the claim of individual justice towards the woman whom he came to love with an undying affection, and for whom, fortunately for his theories, he needed not to set aside the impulse of affection for that of justice; and these remarks bring us again to the happy time in the lives of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, when friendship melted into love, and they were married shortly afterwards, in March 1797, at old St. Pancras Church, London.
This new change in her life interfered no more with the energy for work with Mary Wollstonecraft than with Godwin. They adopted the singular, though in their case probably advantageous, decision to continue each to have a separate place of abode, in order that each might work uninterruptedly, though, as pointed out by an earnest student of their character, they probably wasted more time in their constant interchange of notes on all subjects than they would have lost by a few conversations. On the other hand, as their thoughts were worth recording, we have the benefit of their plan. The short notes which passed between Mary and Godwin, as many as three and four in a day, as well as letters of considerable length written during a tour which Godwin made in the midland counties with his friend Basil Montague, show how deep and simple their affection was, that there was no need of hiding the passing cloud, that they both equally disliked and wished to simplify domestic details. There was, for instance, some sort of slight dispute as to who should manage a plumber, on which occasion Mary seems to have been somewhat hurt at its being put upon her, as giving an idea of her inferiority. This, with the tender jokes about Godwin's icy philosophy, and the references to a little "William" whom they were both anxiously expecting, all evince the tender devotion of husband and wife, whose relationship was of a nature to endure through ill or good fortune. Little Fanny was evidently only an added pleasure to the two, and Godwin's thought of her at a distance and his choice of the prettiest mug at Wedgewood's with "green and orange-tawny flowers," testify to the fatherly instinct of Godwin. But, alas! this loving married friendship was not to last long, for the day arrived, August 30, 1797, which had been long expected; and the hopeful state of the case is shown in three little letters written by Mary to her husband, for she wished him to be spared anxiety by absence. And there was born a little girl, not the William so quaintly spoken of; but the Mary whose future life we must try and realise. Even now her first trouble comes, for, within a few hours of the child's birth, dangerous symptoms began with the mother; ten days of dread anxiety ensued, and not all the care of intelligent watchers, nor the constant waiting for service of the husband's faithful intimate friends, nor the skill of the first doctors could save the life which was doomed: Fate must wreak its relentless will. Her work remains to help many a struggling woman, and still to give hope of more justice to follow; perchance at one important moment it misled her own child. And so the mysteries of the workings of Fate and the mysteries of death joined with those of a new life.
CHAPTER II.
GIRLHOOD OF MARY—PATERNAL TROUBLES.
And now with the beginning of this fragile little life begin the anxieties and sorrow of poor Godwin. The blank lines drawn in his diary for Sunday 10th September 1797, show more than words how unutterable was his grief. During the time of his wife's patient agony he had managed to ask if she had any wishes concerning Fanny and Mary. She was fortunately able to reply that her faith in his wisdom was entire.
On the very day of his wife's death Godwin himself wrote some letters he considered necessary, nor did he neglect to write in his own characteristic plain way to one who he considered had slighted his wife. His friends Mr. Basil Montague and Mr. Marshall arranged the funeral, and Mrs. Reveley, who had with her the children before the mother's death, continued her care till they returned to the father on the 17th. Mrs. Fenwick, who had been in constant attendance on Mary, then took care of them for a time. Indeed, Mary's fame and character brought forward many willing to care for the motherless infant, whose life was only saved from a dangerous illness by this loving zeal. Among others Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson appeared with offers of help, and as early as September 18 we find that Godwin had requested Mr. Nicholson to give an opinion as to the infant's physiognomy, with a view to her education, which he (with Trelawny later) considered could not begin too soon, or as the latter said: "Talk of education beginning at two years! Two months is too late."
Thus we see Godwin conscientiously trying to bring in an imperfect science to assist him in the difficult task of developing his infant's mind, in place of the watchful love of an intelligent mother, who would check the first symptoms of ill-temper, be firm against ill-placed determination, encourage childish imagination, and not let the idea of untruth be presented to the child till old enough to discriminate for itself. A hard task enough for any father, still harder for Godwin, beset by all kinds of difficulties, and having to work in the midst of them for his and the two children's daily sustenance. Friends, and good friends, he certainly had; but most people will recognise that strength in these matters does not rest in numbers. The wet nurse needed by little Mary, though doubtless the essential necessity of the time, would not add to the domestic comfort, especially to that of Miss Louisa Jones, a friend of Harriet Godwin, who had been installed to superintend Godwin's household. This latter arrangement, again, did not tend to Godwin's comfort, as from Miss Jones's letters it is evident that she wished to marry him. Her wish not being reciprocated, she did not long remain an inmate of his house, and the nurse, who was fortunately devoted to the baby, was then over-looked from time to time by Mrs. Reveley and other ladies.
Of anecdotes of Mary's infancy and childhood there are but few, but from the surroundings we can picture the child. Her father about this time seems to have neglected all his literary work except the one of love—writing his wife's "Memoirs" and reading her published and unpublished work. In this undertaking he was greatly assisted by Mr. Skeys. Her sisters, on the contrary, gave as little assistance as possible, and ended all communication with Godwin at this difficult period of his life, and for a long while utterly neglected their poor sister's little children, when they might have repaid to some extent the debt of gratitude they owed to her.
All these complicated and jarring circumstances must have suggested to Godwin that another marriage might he the best expedient, and he accordingly set to work in a systematic way this time to acquire his end. Passion was not the motive, and probably there was too much system, for he was unsuccessful on two occasions. The first was with Miss Harriet Lee, the authoress of several novels and of The Canterbury Tales. Godwin seems to have been much struck by her, and, after four interviews at Bath, wrote on his return to London a very characteristic and pressing letter of invitation to her to stay in his house if she came to London, explaining that there was a lady (Miss Jones) who superintended his home. As this letter met with no answer, he tried three additional letters, drafts of all being extant. The third one was probably too much considered, for Miss Lee returned it annotated on the margin, expressing her disapproval of its egotistical character. Godwin, however, was not to be daunted, and made a fourth attempt, full of many sensible and many quaint reasons, not all of which would be pleasing to a lady; but he succeeded in regaining Miss Lee's friendship, though he could not persuade her to be his wife. This was from April to August 1798.
About the same time there was a project of Godwin and Thomas Wedgewood keeping house together; but as they seem to have much differed when together, the plan was wisely dropped. Godwin's notes in his plan of work for the year 1798 are interesting, as showing how he was anxious to modify some of his opinions expressed in Political Justice, especially those bearing on the affections, which he now admits must naturally play an important part in human action, though he avers his opinion that none of his previous conclusions are affected by these admissions. Much other work was planned out during this time, and many fresh intellectual acquaintances made, Wordsworth and Southey among others. His mother's letters to Godwin show what a constant drain his family were upon his slender means, and how nobly he always strove to help them when in need. These letters are full of much common sense, and though quaintly illiterate are, perhaps, not so much amiss for the period at which they were written, when many ladies who had greater social and monetary advantages were, nevertheless, frequently astray in these matters.
Godwin's novel of St. Leon, published in 1799, was another attempt to give the domestic affections their due place in his scheme of life; and the description of Marguerite, drawn from Mary Wollstonecraft, and that of her wedded life with St. Leon, are beautiful passages illustrative of Godwin's own happy time of marriage.
In July 1799, the death of Mr. Reveley suggested a fresh attempt at marriage to Godwin; but now he was probably too prompt, for, knowing that Mr. Reveley and his wife had not always been on the best of terms, although his sudden death had driven her nigh frantic, Godwin, relying on certain previous expressions of affection for himself by Mrs. Reveley, proposed within a month after her husband's death, and begged her to set aside prejudices and cowardly ceremonies and be his. As in the previous case, a second and a third lengthy letter, full of subtle reasoning, were ineffectual, and did not even bring about an interview till December 3rd, when Godwin and Mrs. Reveley met, in company with Mr. Gisborne. To this gentleman Mrs. Reveley was afterwards married. We shall meet them both again later on.
All this time there is little though affectionate mention of Mary Godwin in her father's diary. Little Fanny, who had always been a favourite, used to accompany Godwin on some of his visits to friends.
Many of Godwin's letters at this time show that he was not too embarrassed to be able to assist his friends in time of need; twenty pounds sent to his friend Arnot, ten pounds shortly afterwards through Mrs. Agnes Hall to a lady in great distress, whose name is unknown, prove that he was ready to carry out his theories in practice. It is interesting to observe these frequent instances of generosity, as they account to some extent for his subsequent difficulties. In the midst of straits and disappointments Godwin managed to have his children well taken care of, and there was evidently a touching sympathy and confidence between himself and them, as shown in Godwin's letters to his friend Marshall during a rare absence from the children occasioned by a visit to friends in Ireland. His thought and sincere solicitude and messages, and evident anxiety to be with them again, are all equally touching; Fanny having the same number of kisses sent her as Mary, with that perfect justice which is so beneficial to the character of children. We can now picture the scarcely three year old Mary and little Fanny taken to await the return of the coach with their father, and sitting under the Kentish Town trees in glad expectancy.
But this time of happy infancy was not to last long; for doubtless Godwin felt it irksome to have to consider whether the house-linen was in order, and such like details, and was thus prepared, in 1801, to accept the demonstrative advances of Mrs. Clairmont, a widow who took up her residence next door to him in the Polygon, Somers Town. She had two children, a boy and a girl, the latter somewhat younger than Mary. The widow needed no introduction or admittance to his house, as from the balcony she was able to commence a campaign of flattery to which Godwin soon succumbed. The marriage took place in December 1801, at Shoreditch Church, and was not made known to Godwin's friends till after it had been solemnised. Mrs. Clairmont evidently did her best to help Godwin through the pecuniary difficulties of his career. She was not an ignorant woman, and her work at translations proves her not to have been without cleverness of a certain kind; but this probably made more obvious the natural vulgarity of her disposition. For example, when talking of bringing children up to do the work they were fitted to, she discovered that her own daughter Jane was fitted for accomplishments, while little Mary and Fanny were turned into household drudges. These distinctions would naturally engender an antipathy to her, which later on would help in estranging Mary from her father's house; but occasionally we have glimpses of the little ones making themselves happy, in childlike fashion, in the midst of difficulties and disappointments on Godwin's part. On one occasion Mary and Jane had concealed themselves under a sofa in order to hear Coleridge recite The Ancient Mariner. Mrs. Godwin, unmindful of the delight they would have in listening to poetry, found the little ones and was banishing them to bed; when Coleridge with kind-heartedness, or the love ever prevalent in poets of an audience, however humble, interceded for the small things who could sit under a sofa, and so they remained up and heard the poet read his poem. The treat was never afterwards forgotten, and one cannot over-estimate such pleasures in forming the character of a child. Nor were such the only intellectual delights the children shared in, for Charles Lamb was among Godwin's numerous friends at this period, and a frequent visitor at his house; and we can still hear in imagination the merry laughter of children, old and young, whom he gathered about him, and who brightened at his ever ready fun. One long-remembered joke was how one evening, at supper at Godwin's, Lamb entered the room first, seized a leg of mutton, blew out the candle, and placed the mutton in Martin Burney's hand, and, on the candle being relit, exclaimed, "Oh, Martin! Martin! I should never have thought it of you."
This and such like whimsies (as when Lamb would carry off a small cruet from the table, making Mrs. Godwin go through a long search, and would then quietly walk in the next day and replace it as if it were the most natural thing for a cruet to find its way into a pocket), would break the monotony of the children's days. It was infinitely more enlivening than the routine in some larger houses, where poor little children are frequently shut up in a back room on a third floor and left for long hours to the tender mercies of some nurse, whose small slaves or tyrants they become, according to their nature. And when we remember that the Polygon at that time was touching fields and lanes, we know that little Mary must have had one of the delights most prized by children, picking buttercups and daisies, unmolested by a gardener. But during this happy age, when the child would probably have infinitely more pleasure in washing a cup and saucer than in playing the scales, however superior the latter performance may be, Godwin had various schemes and hopes frustrated. At times his health was very precarious, with frequent fainting fits, causing grave anxiety for the future. In 1803 his son William was born, making the fifth member of his miscellaneous family. At times Mrs. Godwin's temper seems to have been very much tried or trying, and on one occasion she expressed the wish for a separation; but the idea appears to have been dropped on Godwin's writing one of his very calm and reasonable letters, saying that he had no obstacle to oppose to it, and that, if it was to take place, he hoped it would not be long in hand; he certainly went on to say that the separation would be a source of great misery to himself. Either this reason mollified Mrs. Godwin, or else the apparent ease with which she might have carried out her project, made her hesitate, as we hear no more of it. Godwin, however, had occasion to write her philosophically expostulatory letters on her temper, which we must hope, for the children's sake, produced a satisfactory effect; for surely nothing can be more injurious to the happiness of children than to witness the ungovernable temper of their elders; but with Godwin's calm disposition, quarrels must have been one-sided, and consequently less damaging.
Godwin superintended the education of his children himself, and wrote many books for this purpose, which formed part of his juvenile library later on. "Baldwin's" fables and his histories for children were published by Godwin under this cognomen, owing to his political views having prejudiced many people against his name. His chief aim appears to have been to keep a certain moral elevation before the minds of children, as in the excellent preface to the History of Rome, where he dwells on the fact of the stories of Mucius, Curtius, and Regulus being disputed; but considers that stories—if they be no more—handed down from the great periods of Roman history are invaluable to stimulate the character of children to noble sentiments and actions. But in Godwin's case, as in many others, it must have been a difficult task counteracting the effect of example; for we cannot imagine the influence of a woman to have been ennobling who could act as Mrs. Godwin did at an early period of her married life; who, when one of her husband's friends, whom she did not care about, called to see Godwin, explained that it was impossible, as the kettle had just fallen off the hob and scalded both his legs. When the same friend met Godwin the next day in the street, and was surprised at his speedy recovery, the philosopher replied that it was only an invention of his wife. The safe-guard in such cases is often in the quick apprehension of children themselves, who are frequently saved from the errors of their elders by their perception of the consequences. Unfortunately, Mrs. Godwin's influence must have been lessened in other matters where her feeling for propriety, if with her only from a conventional and time-serving point of view, might have averted the fatal consequences which ensued later. Could she have gained the love and respect of the children instead of making them, as afterwards expressed by Mary, hate her, her moral precepts would have worked to more effect. It may have appeared to the girls, who could not appreciate the self-devotion of Godwin in acting against theories for the sake of individual justice, that the cause of all their unhappiness (and doubtless at times they felt it acutely) was owing to their father not having adhered to his previous anti-matrimonial opinions, and they were thus prepared to disregard what seemed to them social prejudices.
In the meantime Godwin struggled on to provide for his numerous family, not necessarily losing his enthusiasm through his need of money as might be supposed, for, fortunately, there are great compensations in nature, and not unfrequently what appears to be done for money is done really for love of those whom money will relieve; and so through this necessity the very love and anguish of the soul are transfused into the work. On the other hand, we see not infrequently, after the first enthusiasm of youth wears off, how the poetic side of a man's nature deteriorates, and the world and his work lose through the very ease and comfort he has attained to, so that the real degradation of the man or lowering of his nature comes more from wealth than poverty: thus what are spoken of as degrading circumstances, are, truly, the very reverse—a fact felt strongly by Shelley and such like natures who feel their ease is to be shared. We find Godwin working at his task of Chaucer, with love, daily at the British Museum, and corresponding with the Keeper of Records in the Exchequer Office and Chapter of Westminster, and Herald College, and the Librarian of the Bodleian Library; also writing many still extant letters pertaining to the subject. The sum of three hundred pounds paid to Godwin for this work was considered very small by him, though it scarcely seems so now.
Godwin found means and time occasionally to pay a visit to the country, as in September 1803, when he visited his mother and introduced his wife to her, as also to his old friends in Norwich; and during the sojourn of Mrs. Godwin and some of the children at Southend, a deservedly favourite resort of Mrs. Godwin, and later of Mrs. Shelley (for the sweet country and lovely Essex lanes, of even so late as thirty or forty years ago, made it a resort loved by artists) Godwin superintended the letter-writing of his children. We ascertain, also, from their letters to him during absence, that they studied history and attended lectures with him; so that in all probability his daughter Mary's mind was really more cultivated and open to receive impressions in after life than if she had passed through a "finishing" education at some fashionable school. It is no mere phrase that to know some people is a liberal education; and if she was only saved from perpetrating some of the school-girl trash in the way of drawing, it was a gain to her intellect, for what can be more lowering to intelligence of perception than the utterly inartistic frivolities which are supposed to inculcate art in a country out of which the sense of it had been all but eradicated in Puritan England, though some great artists had happily reappeared! Mary at least learnt to love literature and poetry, and had, by her love of reading, a universe of wealth opened to her—surely no mean beginning. In art, had she shown any disposition to it, her father could undoubtedly have obtained some of the best advice of his day, as we see that Mulready and Linnell were intimate enough to spend a day at Hampstead with the children and Mrs. Godwin during Godwin's absence in Norfolk in 1808; in fact, Charles Clairmont, as seen in his account written to his step-father, was at this time having lessons from Linnell. Perhaps Mrs. Godwin had not discovered the same gift in Mary.
At this same date we have the last of old Mrs. Godwin's letters to her son. She speaks of the fearful price of food owing to the war, says that she is weary, and only wishes to be with Christ. Godwin spent a few days with her then, and the next year we find him at her funeral, as she died on August 13, 1809. His letter to his wife on that occasion is very touching, from its depth of feeling. He mourns the loss of a superior who exercised a mysterious protection over him, so that now, at her death, he for the first time feels alone.
Another severance from old associations had occurred this year in the death of Thomas Holcroft who, in spite of occasional differences, had always known and loved Godwin well, and whose last words when dying and pressing his hands were, "My dear, dear friend." Godwin, however, did not at all approve of Hazlitt, in bringing out Holcroft's life, using all his private memoranda and letters about his friends, and wrote expostulatory letters to Mrs. Holcroft on the subject. He considered it pandering to the worst passion of the malignity of mankind.
There do not appear to be many records of the Godwin family kept during the next two or three years. Mary was intimate with the Baxters. It was Mr. Baxter whom Mrs. Godwin tried to put off by the story of Godwin's scalded legs. We also find Mary at Ramsgate with Mrs. Godwin and her brother William, in May 1811, when she was nearly fourteen years old. As Mary and Mrs. Godwin were evidently unsuited to live together, these visits, though desirable for her health, were probably not altogether pleasant times to either, to judge by remarks in Godwin's letters to his wife. He hopes that, in spite of unfavourable appearances, Mary will still become a wise, and, what is more, a good and happy woman; this, evidently, in answer to some complaint of his wife. During these years many fresh acquaintances were made by Godwin; but as they had little or no apparent influence on Mary's after career, we may pass them over and notice at once the first communications which took place between Godwin and another personage, by far the greatest in this life drama, even great in the world's drama, for now for the first time in this story we come across the name of Shelley, with the words in Godwin's diary, "Write to Shelley." Having arrived at a name so full of import to all concerned in this Life, we must yet again retrace the past.
CHAPTER III.
SHELLEY.
Shelley, a name dear to so many now, who are either drawn to him by his lyrics, which open an undreamed-of fountain of sympathy to many a silent and otherwise solitary heart, or who else are held spell-bound by his grand and eloquent poetical utterances of what the human race may aspire to. A being of this transcendent nature seems generally to be more the outcome of his age, of a period, the expression of nature, than the direct scion of his own family. So in Shelley's case there appears little immediate intellectual relation between himself and his ancestors, who seem for nearly two centuries preceding his birth to have been almost unknown, except for the registers of their baptisms, deaths, and marriages.
Prior to 1623, a link has been hitherto missing in the family genealogy—a link which the scrupulous care of Mr. Jeaffreson has brought to light, and which his courtesy places at the service of the writer. This connects the poet's family with the Michel Grove Shelleys, a fact hitherto only surmised. The document is this:—
SHELLEY'S CASE AND COKE'S REPORT, 896.
25 Sept. 1 & 2 Philip and Mary. Between Edward Shelley of Worminghurst, in the county of Sussex, Esqre., of the one part, and Rd. Cowper and Wm. Martin of the other part.
90a. Covt. to suffer recovery to enure as to Findon Manor, etc.
90b. To the use of him the said Edward Shelley and of the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten, and for lack of such issue.
To the use of the heirs male of the body of John Shelley, Esqre., sometime of Michael Grove, deceased, father to the said Edward Shelley, etc.
It will be obvious to all readers of this important document that the last clause carries us back unmistakably from the Worminghurst Shelleys to the Michel Grove Shelleys, establishing past dispute the relationship of father and son.
The poet's great grandfather Timothy, who died twenty-two years before Shelley's birth, seems to have gone out of the beaten track in migrating to America, and practising as an apothecary, or, as Captain Medwin puts it, "quack doctor," probably leaving England at an early age; he may not have found facilities for qualifying in America, and we may at least hope that he would do less harm with the simple herbs used by the unqualified than with the bleeding treatment in vogue before the Brunonian system began. Anyway, he made money to help on the fortunes of his family. His younger son, Bysshe, who added to the family wealth by marrying in succession two heiresses, also gained a baronetcy by adhering to the Whig Party and the Duke of Norfolk. He appears to have increased in eccentricity with age and became exceedingly penurious. He was evidently not regarded as a desirable match for either of his wives, as he had to elope with both of them; and his marriage with the first, Miss Michell, the grandmother of the poet, is said to have been celebrated by the parson of the Fleet. This took place the year before these marriages were made illegal. These facts about Shelley's ancestors, though apparently trivial, are interesting as proving that his forerunners were not altogether conventional, and making the anomaly of the coming of such a poet less strange, as genius is not unfrequently allied with eccentricity.
Bysshe's son Timothy seems to have conformed more to ordinary views than his father, and he married, when nearly forty, Elizabeth Pilfold, reputed a great beauty. The first child of this marriage, born on August 4, 1792, was the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, born to all the ease and comfort of an English country home, but with the weird imaginings which in childhood could people the grounds and surroundings with ancient snakes and fairies of all forms, and which later on were to lead him far out of the beaten track. Shelley's little sisters were the confidants of his childhood, and their sympathy must have made up then for the lack of it in his parents. Some of their childish games at diabolical processions, making a little hell of their own by burning a fagot stack, &c., shows how early his searching mind dispersed the terrors, while it delighted in the picturesque or fantastic images, of superstition. Few persons realise to themselves how soon highly imaginative children may be influenced by the superstitions they hear around them, and assuredly Shelley's brain never recovered from some of these early influences: the mind that could so quickly reason and form inferences would naturally be of that sensitive and susceptible kind which would bear the scar of bad education. Shelley's mother does not appear so much to have had real good sense, as what is generally called common sense, and thus she was incapable of understanding a nature like that of her son; and thought more of his bringing home a well-filled game bag (a thing in every way repulsive to Shelley's tastes) than of trying to understand what he was thinking; so Shelley had to pass through childhood, his sisters being his chief companions, as he had no brother till he was thirteen. At ten years of age he went to school at Sion House Academy, and thence to Eton, before he was turned twelve. At both these schools, with little exception, he was solitary, not having much in common with the other boys, and consequently he found himself the butt for their tormenting ingenuity. He began a plan of resistance to the fagging system, and never yielded; this seems to have displeased the masters as much as the boys. At Eton he formed one of his romantic attachments for a youth of his own age. He seems now, as ever after, to have felt the yearning for perfect sympathy in some human being; as one idol fell short of his self-formed ideal, he sought for another. This was not the nature to be trained by bullying and flogging, though sympathy and reason would never find him irresponsive. His unresentful nature was shown in the way he helped the boys who tormented him with their lessons; for though he appeared to study little in the regular way, learning came to him naturally.
It must not, however, be supposed that Shelley was quite solitary, as the records of some of his old schoolfellows prove the contrary; nor was he averse to society when of a kind congenial to his tastes; but he always disliked coarse talk and jokes. Nature was ever dear to him; the walks round Eton were his chief recreation, and we can well conceive how he would feel in the lovely and peaceful churchyard of Stoke Pogis, where undoubtedly he would read Gray's Elegy. These feelings would not be sympathised with by the average of schoolboys; but, on the other hand, it is not apparent why Shelley should have changed his character, as the embryo poet would also necessarily not care for all their tastes. In short, the education at a public school of that day must have been a great cruelty to a boy of Shelley's sensitive disposition.
One great pleasure of Shelley's while at Eton was visiting Dr. Lind, who assisted him with chemistry, and whose kindness during an illness seems to have made a lasting impression on the youth; but generally those who had been in authority over him had only raised a spirit of revolt. One great gain for the world was the passionate love of justice and freedom which this aroused in him, as shown in the stanzas from The Revolt of Islam—
Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first
The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
There can be no doubt that these verses are truly autobiographical; they indicate a first determination to war against tyranny. The very fact of his great facility in acquiring knowledge must have been a drawback to him at school where time on his hands was, for lack of better material, frequently spent in reading all the foolish romances he could lay hold of in the neighbouring book-shops. His own early romances showed the influence of this bad literature. Of course, then as now, fine art was a sealed book to the young student. It is difficult to fancy what Shelley might have been under different early influences, and whether perchance the gain to himself might not have been a loss to the world. Fortunately, Shelley's love of imagination found at last a field of poetry for itself, and an ideal future for the world instead of turning to ruffianism, high or low, which the neglect of the legitimate outlet for imagination so frequently induces. How little this moral truth seems to be considered in a country like ours, where art is quite overlooked in the system of government, and where the hereditary owners of hoarded wealth rest content, as a rule, with the canvases acquired by some ancestor on a grand tour at a date when Puritan England had already obliterated perception; so that frequently a few chefs d'oeuvre and many daubs are hung indiscriminately together, giving equal pleasure or distaste for art. This is apposite to dwell on as showing the want of this influence on Shelley and his surroundings. From a tour in Italy made by Shelley's own father the chief acquisition is said to have been a very bad picture of Vesuvius.
It is becoming difficult to realise at present, when flogging is scarcely permitted in schools, what the sufferings of a boy like Shelley must have been; sent to school by his father with the admonition to his master not to spare the rod, and where the masters left the boy, who was undoubtedly unlike his companions, to treatment of a kind from which one case of death at least has resulted quite recently in our own time. Such proceedings which might have made a tyrant or a slave of Shelley succeeded only in making a rebel; his inquiring mind was not to be easily satisfied, and must assuredly have been a difficulty in his way with a conservative master; already, at Eton, we find him styled Mad Shelley and Shelley the Atheist.
In 1810 Shelley removed to University College, Oxford, after an enjoyable holiday with his family, during which he found time for an experiment in authorship, his father authorising a stationer to print for him. If only, instead of this, his father had checked for a time these immature productions of Shelley's pen, the youth might have been spared banishment from Oxford and his own father's house, and all the misfortune and tragedy which ensued. Shelley also found time for a first love with his cousin, Harriet Grove. This also the unfortunate printing facilities apparently quashed. There is some discussion as to whether he left Eton in disgrace, but any way the matter must have been a slight affair, as no one appears to have kept any record of it; and should one of the masters have recommended the removal of Shelley from such uncongenial surroundings, it would surely have been very sensible advice.
Oxford was, in many respects, much to Shelley's taste. The freedom of the student life there suited him, as he was able to follow the studies most to his liking.
The professional lectures chiefly in vogue, on divinity, geometry, and history, were not the most to his liking—history in particular seemed ever to him a terrible record of misery and crime—but in his own chambers he could study poetry, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. The outcome of these studies, advanced speculative thought, was not, however, to be tolerated within the University precincts, and, unfortunately for Shelley, his favourite subjects of conversation were tabooed, had it not been for one light-hearted and amusing friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a gentleman whose acquaintance Shelley made shortly after his settling in Oxford in the Michaelmas term of 1810. This friendship, like all that Shelley entered on, was intended to endure "for ever," and, as usual, Shelley impulsively for a time threw so much of his own personality into his idea of the character of his friend as to prepare the way for future disappointment.
Hogg was decidedly intellectual, but with a strong conservative tendency, making him quite content with the existing state of things so long as he could take life easily and be amused. His intellect, however, was clear enough to make him perceive that it is the poet who raises life from the apathy which assails even the most worldly-minded and contented, so that he in his turn was able to love Shelley with the love which is not afraid of a laugh, without the possibility of which no friendship, it has been said, can be genuine. Many are the charming stories giving a living presence to Shelley while at Oxford, preserved by this friend; here we meet with him taking an infant from its mother's arms while crossing the bridge with Hogg, and questioning it as to its previous existence, which surely the babe had not had time to forget if it would but speak—but alas, the mother declared she had never heard it speak, nor any other child of its age; here comes also the charming incident of the torn coat, and Shelley's ecstasy on its having been fine drawn. These and such-like amusing anecdotes show the genuine and unpedantic side of Shelley's character, the delightfully natural and loveable personality which is ever allied to genius. With the fun and humour were mixed long readings and discussions on the most serious and solemn subjects. Plato was naturally a great delight to him; he had a decided antipathy to Euclid and mathematical reasoning, and was consequently unable to pursue scientific researches on a system; but his love of chemistry and his imaginative faculty led him to wish in anticipation for the forces of nature to be utilised for human labour, &c. Shelley's reading and reading powers were enormous. He was seldom without a pocket edition of one of his favourite great authors, whose works he read with as much ease as the modern languages.
This delightful time of study and ease was not to endure. Shelley's nature was impelled onwards as irresistibly as the mountain torrent, and as with it all obstacles had to yield. He could not rest satisfied with reading and discussions with Hogg on theological and moral questions, and, being debarred debate on these subjects in the university, he felt he must appeal to a larger audience, the public, and consequently he brought out, with the cognisance of Hogg, a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. This work actually got into circulation for about twenty minutes, when it was discovered by one of the Fellows of the College, who immediately convinced the booksellers that an auto-da-fé was necessary, and all the pamphlets were at once consigned to the back kitchen fire; but the affair did not end there. Shelley's handwriting was recognised on some letters sent with copies of the work, and consequently both he and Hogg were summoned before a meeting in the Common room of the College. First Shelley, and then Hogg, declined to answer questions, and refused to disavow all knowledge of the work, whereupon the two were summarily expelled from Oxford. Shelley complained bitterly of the ungentlemanly way they were treated, and the authorities, with equal reason, of the rebellious defiance of the students; yet once more we must regret that there was no one but Hogg who realised the latent genius of Shelley, that there was no one to feel that patience and sympathy would not be thrown away upon a young man free from all the vices and frivolities of the time and place, whose crime was an inquiring mind, and rashness in putting his views into print. Surely the dangers which might assail a young man thus thrown on the world and alienated from his family by this disgrace might have received more consideration. This seems clear enough now, when Shelley's ideas have been extolled even in as well as out of the pulpit.
So now we find Shelley expelled from Oxford and arrived in London in March 1811, when only eighteen years of age, alone with Hogg to fight the battle of life, with no previous experience of misfortune to give ballast to his feelings, but with a brain surcharged with mysteriously imbibed ideas of the woes of others and of the world—a dangerous age and set of conditions for a youth to be thrown on his own resources. Admission to his father's house was only to be accorded on the condition of his giving up the society of Hogg; this condition, imposed at the moment when Shelley considered himself indebted to Hogg for life for the manner in which he stood by him in the Oxford ordeal, was refused. Shelley looked out for lodgings without result, till a wall paper representing a trellised vine apparently decided him. With twenty pounds borrowed from his printer to leave Oxford, Shelley is now settled in London, unaided by his father, a small present of money sent by his mother being returned, as he could not comply with the wishes which she expressed on the same occasion. From this time the march of events or of fate is as relentless as in a Greek drama, for already the needful woman had appeared in the person of Harriet Westbrook, a schoolfellow of his sisters at their Clapham school. During the previous January Shelley had made her acquaintance by visiting her at her father's house, with an introduction and a present from one of his sisters. There seems no reason to doubt that Shelley was then much attracted by the beautiful girl, smarting though he was at the time from his rupture with Harriet Grove; but Shakespeare has shown us that such a time is not exempt from the potency of love shafts.
This visit of Shelley was followed by his presenting Harriet Westbrook with a copy of his new romance, St. Irvyne, which led to some correspondence. It was now Harriet's turn to visit Shelley, sent also by his sisters with presents of their pocket money. Shelley moreover visited the school on different occasions, and even lectured the schoolmistress on her system of discipline. There is no doubt that Harriet's elder sister, with or without the cognisance of their father, a retired hotel-keeper, helped to make meetings between the two; but Shelley, though young and a poet, was no child, and must have known what these dinners and visits and excursions might lead to; and although the correspondence and conversation may have been more directly upon theological and philosophical questions, it seems unlikely that he would have discoursed thus with a young girl unless he felt some special interest in her; besides, Shelley need not have felt any great social difference between himself and a young lady brought up and educated on a footing of equality with his own sisters. It is true that her family acted and encouraged him in a way incompatible with old-fashioned ideas of gentility, but Shelley was too prone at present to rebel against everything conventional to be particularly sensitive on this point.
In May Shelley was enabled to return to his father's house, through the mediation of his uncle, Captain Pilfold, and henceforth an allowance of two hundred a year was made to him. But there had been work done in the two months that no reconciliations or allowances afterwards could undo; for while Shelley was bent on proselytising Harriet Westbrook, not less for his sisters' sake than for his own, Harriet, in a school-girl fashion, encouraged by her sister and not discouraged by her father, was falling in love with Shelley. How were the bourgeois father and sister to comprehend such a character as Shelley's, when his own parents and all the College authorities failed to do so? If Shelley were not in love he must have appeared so, and Harriet's family did their best by encouraging and countenancing the intimacy to lead to a marriage, they naturally having Harriet's interests more at heart than Shelley's.
However, the fact remains that Shelley was a most extraordinary being, an embryo poet, with all a poet's possible inconsistencies, the very brilliancy of the intellectual spark in one direction apparently quelling it for a time in another. In most countries and ages a poet seems to have been accepted as a heaven-sent gift to his nation; his very crimes (and surely Shelley did not surpass King David in misdoing?) have been the lacrymæ rerum giving terrible vitality to his thoughts, and so reclaiming many others ere some fatal deed is done; but in England the convention of at least making a show of virtues which do not exist (perhaps a sorry legacy from Puritanism) will not allow the poet to be accepted for what he really is, nor his poetry to appeal, on its own showing, to the human heart. He must be analysed, and vilified, or whitewashed in turn.
At any rate Shelley was superior to some of the respectable vices of his class, and one alleged concession of his father was fortunately loathsome to him, viz.—that he (Sir Timothy) would provide for as many illegitimate children as Percy chose to have, but he would not tolerate a mésalliance. To what a revolt of ideas must such a code of morality have led in a fermenting brain like Shelley's! Were the mothers to be provided for likewise, and to be considered more by Shelley's respectable family than his lawful wife? We fear not.
A visit to Wales followed, during which Shelley's mind was in so abstracted a state that the fine scenery, viewed for the first time, had little power to move him, while Harriet Westbrook, with her sister and father, was only thirty miles off at Aberystwith; a hasty and unexplained retreat of this party to London likewise hastened the return of Shelley. Probably the father began to perceive that Shelley did not come forward as he had expected, and so he wished to remove Harriet from his vicinity. Letters from Harriet to Shelley followed, full of misery and dejection, complaining of her father's decision to send her back to school, where she was avoided by the other girls, and called "an abandoned wretch" for sympathising or corresponding with Shelley; she even contemplated suicide. It is curious how this idea seems to have constantly recurred to her, as in the case of some others who have finally committed the act.
Shelley wrote, expostulating with the father. This probably only incensed him more. He persisted. Harriet again addressed Shelley in despair, saying she would put herself under his protection and fly with him; a difficult position for any young man, and for Shelley most perplexing, with his avowed hostility to marriage, and his recent assertions that he was not in love with Harriet. But it must be put to Shelley's credit that, having intentionally or otherwise led Harriet on to love him, he now acted as a gentleman to his sister's school friend, and, influenced to some extent by Hogg's arguments in a different case in favour of marriage, he at once determined to make her his wife. He wrote to his cousin, Charles Grove, announcing his intention and impending arrival in London, saying that as his own happiness was altogether blighted, he could now only live to make that of others, and would consequently marry Harriet Westbrook.
On his arrival in London, Shelley found Harriet looking ill and much changed. He spent some time in town, during which Harriet's spirits revived; but Shelley, as he described in a letter to Hogg, felt much embarrassment and melancholy. Not contemplating an immediate marriage, he went into Sussex to pay a visit to Field Place and to his uncle at Cuckfield. While here he renewed the acquaintance of Miss Kitchener, a school mistress of advanced ideas, who had the care of Captain Pilfold's children. To this acquaintance we owe a great number of letters which throw much light on Shelley's exalté character at this period, and which afford most amusing reading. As usual with Shelley, he threw much of his own personality into his ideas of Miss Hitchener, who was to be his "eternal inalienable friend," and to help to form his lovely wife's character on the model of her own. All these particulars are given in letters from Shelley to his friends, Charles Grove, Hogg, and Miss Hitchener; to the latter he is very explanatory and apologetic, but only after the event.
Shelley had scarcely been a week away from London when he received a letter from Harriet, complaining of fresh persecution and recalling him. He at once returned, as he had undertaken to do if required, and then resolved that the only thing was for him to marry at once. He accordingly went straight to his cousin Charles Grove, and with twenty-five pounds borrowed from his relative Mr. Medwin, a solicitor at Horsham, he entered on one of the most momentous days of his life—the 24th or 25th August 1811. After passing the night with his cousin, he waited at the door of the coffee-house in Mount Street, watching for a girlish figure to turn the corner from Chapel Street. There was some delay; but what was to be could not be averted, and soon Harriet, fresh as a rosebud, appeared. The coach was called, and the two cousins and the girl of sixteen drove to an inn in the city to await the Edinburgh mail. This took the two a stage farther on the fatal road, and on August 28 their Scotch marriage is recorded in Edinburgh. The marriage arrangements were of the quaintest, Shelley having to explain his position and want of funds to the landlord of some handsome rooms which he found. Fortunately the landlord undertook to supply what was needed, and they felt at ease in the expectation of Shelley's allowance of money coming; but this never came, as Shelley's father again resented his behaviour, and took that easy means of showing as much.
Shelley's wife had had the most contradictory education possible for a young girl of an ordinary and unimaginative nature—the conventional surface education of a school of that time followed by the talks with Shelley, which were doubtless far beyond her comprehension. What could be the outcome of such a marriage? Had Shelley, indeed, been a different character, all might have gone smoothly, married as he was to a beautiful girl who loved him; but at present all Shelley's ideas were unpractical. Without the moral treadmill of work to sober his opinions, whence was the ballast to come when disappointment ensued— disappointment which he constantly prepared for himself by his over-enthusiastic idea of his friends? Troubles soon followed the marriage, in the nonarrival of the money; and after five weeks in Edinburgh, where Hogg had joined the Shelleys, followed by a little over a week in York, the need became so pressing that Shelley felt obliged to take a hurried journey to his uncle's at Cuckfield, in order to try and mollify his father; in this he did not succeed. Though absent little over a week, he prepared the way by his absence, and by leaving Harriet under the care of Hogg, for a series of complications and misunderstandings which never ended till death had absolved all concerned. Harriet's sister, Eliza, was to have returned to York with Shelley; but hearing of her sister's solitary state with Hogg in the vicinity, she hurried alone to York, and from this time she assumed an ascendency over the small ménage which, though probably useful in trifles, had undoubtedly a bad effect in the long run. Eliza, rightly from her point of view, thought it necessary to stand between Hogg and her sister. It seems far more likely that Hogg's gentlemanly instincts would have led him to treat his friend's wife with respect than that he should have really given cause for the grave suspicions which Shelley writes of in subsequent letters to Miss Hitchener. Might not Eliza be inclined to take an exaggerated view of any attention shown by Hogg to her sister, and have persuaded Harriet to the same effect? Harriet having seen nothing of the world as yet, and Eliza's experience before her father's retirement from his tavern not having been that in which ladies and gentlemen stand on a footing of equality. It is true that Shelley writes of an interview with Hogg before leaving York, in which he describes Hogg as much confused and distressed; but perhaps allowance ought to be made for the fanciful turn of Shelley's own mind. However this may have been, they left York for Keswick, where they delighted in the glorious scenery. At this time we see in letters to Miss Hitchener how Shelley felt the necessity of intellectual sympathy, and how he seemed to consider this friend in some way necessary for the accomplishment of various speculative and social ideas. Here at Chestnut Cottage novels were commenced and much work planned, left unfinished, or lost. While at Keswick he made the acquaintance of Southey and wrote his first letter to William Godwin, whose works had already had a great influence on him, and whose personal acquaintance he now sought. The often quoted letter by which Shelley introduced himself to Godwin was followed by others, and led up to the subsequent intimacy which had such important results.
Shelley with his wife and sister-in-law paid a visit to the Duke of Norfolk at Greystoke; this led to a quasi reconciliation with Shelley's father, owing to which the allowance of two hundred a year was renewed, Harriet's father making her a similar allowance, it is presumed, owing to feeling flattered by his daughter's reception by the Duchess. Shortly afterwards some restless turn in the trio caused a further move to be contemplated, and now Shelley entered on what must have appeared one of the strangest of his fancies—a visit to Ireland to effect Catholic Emancipation and to procure the repeal of the Union Act. Hogg pretends to believe that Shelley did not even understand the meaning of the phrases, and most probably many English would not have cared to do so. In any case Shelley's enthusiasm for an oppressed people must be admired, and it is noticeable that our greatest statesman of the present day has come to agree with Shelley after eighty years of life and of conflicting endeavour.
The plan adopted by Shelley caused infinite amusement to Harriet, who entered with animation into the fun of distributing her husband's pamphlets on Irish affairs, and could not well understand his seriousness on the subject. The pamphlets and the speeches which he delivered were not likely to conciliate the different Irish parties. The Catholics were not to be attracted by an Atheist or Antichristian, however tolerant he might be of them, and of all religions which tend to good. Lord Fingal and his adherents were not inclined to follow the Ardent Republican and teacher of Humanitarianism; nor were the extreme party likely to be satisfied with appeals, however eloquent, for the pursuit and practice of virtue before any political changes were to be expected. Shelley's exposition of the failure of the French Revolution by the fact that although it had been ushered in by people of great intellect, the moral side of intellect had been wanting, was not what Irish Nationalists then wished to consider. In fact, Shelley had not much pondered the character of the people he went to help and reform, if he thought a week of these arguments could have much effect. Shelley was much sought after by the poor Irish, during another month of his stay in Dublin, on account of his generosity. Here, also, they met Mrs. Nugent. Harriet's correspondence with her has recently been published. With the views which she expresses, those of the present writer coincide in not casting all the blame of the future separation on Shelley; Harriet naturally feels Mary most at fault, and does not perceive her own mistakes. Failing in his aim, and being disheartened by the distress on all sides which he could not relieve, and more especially owing to the strong remonstrance of Godwin, who considered that if there were any result it could only be bloodshed, the poet migrated to Nantgwilt in Wales. Here the Shelleys contemplated receiving Godwin and his family, Miss Hitchener with her American pupils; and why not Miss Hitchener's father, reported to have been an old smuggler? Here Shelley first met Thomas Love Peacock. They were unable to remain at Nantgwilt owing to various mishaps, and migrated to that terrestrial paradise in North Devon, Lynmouth. This lovely place, with its beautiful and romantic surroundings loved and exquisitely described by more than one poet, cannot fail to be dear to those who know it with and through them. Here, in a garden in front of their rose and myrtle covered cottage, within near sound of the rushing Lynn, would Shelley stand on a mound and let off his fire-balloons in the cool evening air. Here Miss Hitchener joined them. What talks and what rambles they must have had, none but those who have known a poet in such a place could imagine; but perhaps Shelley, though a poet, was not sufficient for the three ladies in a neighbourhood where the narrow winding paths may have caused one or other to appear neglected and left behind. Poor Shelley, recalled from heaven to earth by such-like vicissitudes, naturally held by his wife; and forthwith disagreements began which ended in Miss Hitchener's being called henceforth the "Brown Demon." What a fall from the ideal reformer of the world!—another of Shelley's self-made idols shattered.
The Shelleys wished Fanny Godwin to join their party at Lynmouth; but this Godwin would not permit without more knowledge of his friends, although Shelley wrote affecting letters to the sage, trusting that he might be the stay of his declining years. Amid the romantic scenery of Lynmouth, Shelley wrote much of his Queen Mab; he also addressed a sonnet, and a longer poem, to Harriet, in August. These poems certainly evince no falling off in affection, although they are not like the glowing love-poems of a later period.
From Lynmouth Shelley, with his party, moved to Swansea, and thence to Tremadoc, where they agreed to take a house named Tanyrallt, and then they moved on to London to meet Godwin, who, in the meanwhile, had paid a visit to Lynmouth just after their flitting. Here Shelley had the delight of seeing the philosopher face to face, and now visits were exchanged, and walks and dinners followed, and, among other friends of Godwin, Shelley met Clara de Boinville and Mrs. Turner, who is said to have inspired his first great lyric, "Away the moor is dark beneath the moon," but whose husband strongly objected to Shelley visiting their house.
On this occasion Fanny Godwin was the most seen; Mary Godwin, who was just fifteen, only arriving towards the end of Shelley's stay in London from a visit to her friends, the Baxters, in Scotland. No mention is made of her by Shelley, though she must have dined in his company about November 5, 1812. During this visit to London Shelley became reconciled with Hogg, calling on him and begging him to come to see him and his wife. This certainly does not look as if Shelley still thought seriously of his former difference with Hogg—scarcely a year before. Shortly after, on the 8th, we find the poor "Brown Demon" leaving the Shelleys, with the promise of an annuity of one hundred pounds. She reopened a school later on at Edmonton, and was much loved by her pupils. Shelley now returned to Tremadoc, where he passed the winter in his house at Tanyrallt, helping the poor through this severe season of 1812-13. Here one of Shelley's first practical attempts for humanity was assisting to reclaim some land from the sea; but Shelley's early effort, unlike the last one of Göthe's Faust, did not satisfy him, and shortly afterwards another real or fancied attempt on his life, on February 26th, 1813, obliged the party to leave the neighbourhood, this time again for Ireland. He spent a short time on the Lake of Killarney, with his wife and Eliza. In April we again find him in London, in an hotel in Albemarle Street; thence he passed to Half Moon Street, where in June their first child, Ianthe, was born. The baby was a great pleasure to Shelley, who, however, objected to the wet nurse. He wrote a touching sonnet to his wife and child three months later. All this time there is no apparent change of affection suggested. Soon afterwards, while at Bracknell, near Windsor, they kept up the acquaintance of the De Boinville family, and Shelley began the study of Italian with them while Harriet relinquished hers of Latin. From Bracknell Shelley paid his last visit to Field Place to see his mother, in the absence of his father and the younger children. An interview with his father followed, and a journey to Edinburgh, and then in December a return to London; certainly an ominous restlessness, caused, no doubt, considerably by want of money, but moving about did not seem the way to save or to make it. Shelley visited Godwin several times during his stay in London. At this time Shelley had to raise ruinous post-obits on the family property, and for legal reasons he now thought it desirable to follow the Scotch marriage by one in the English church, and he and Harriet were re-married on March 22, 1814, at St. George's Church.
But even now little rifts seem to have been growing, small enough apparently, and yet, like the small cloud in the sky, indicating the coming storm. This very time of trials, through want of money, seems to have been chosen by Harriet to show a hankering after luxuries which their present income could not warrant. A carriage was purchased, and was with its accompanying expenses added to the small ménage; silver plate was also considered a necessity; and, perhaps the thing most distasteful to Shelley's natural tastes, the wet nurse was retained, although Harriet had always appeared to be a strong young woman capable of undertaking her maternal duty. This fact was considered by Peacock to have chiefly alienated Shelley's affection.
Apart from this, poor Harriet, with the birth of her child, seems to have given up her studies, which she had evidently pursued to please Shelley, and to have awakened to the fact that it was a difficult task to take up the whole cause of suffering humanity and aid it with their slender purse, and keep their wandering household going. It is difficult to imagine the genius that could have sufficed, and it certainly needed genius, or something very like it, to keep the Faust-like mind of Shelley in any peace.
There is a letter from Fanny Godwin to Shelley, after his first visit, speaking of his wife as a fine lady. From this accusation Shelley strongly defended her, but now he felt that this disaster might really be impending. Poor pretty Harriet could not understand or talk philosophy with Shelley, and, what was worse, her sister was ever present to prevent any spontaneous feeling of dependence on her husband from endearing her to him. Even before his second ceremony of marriage with Harriet we find him writing a letter in great dejection to Hogg. He seemed really in the poet's "premature old age," as he expressed it, though none like the poet have the power of rejuvenescence. His detestation of his sister-in-law at this time was extreme, but he appears to have been incapable of sending her away. It was a perfect torture to him to see her kiss his baby. He writes thus from Mrs. de Boinville's at Bracknell, where he had a month's rest with philosophy and sweet converse. Talking was easier than acting philosophy at this juncture, and planning the amelioration of the world pleasanter than struggling to keep one poor soul from sinking to degradation; but who shall judge the strength of another's power, or feel the burden of another's woe? We can only tell how the expression of his agony may help ourselves; but surely it is worthy of admiration to find Shelley, four days after writing this most heart-broken letter to Hogg, binding his chains still firmer by remarrying, so that, come what would, no slur should be cast on Harriet.
Harriet, who had never understood anything of housekeeping, and whose ménage, according to Hogg, was of the funniest, now that the novelty of Shelley's talk and ways was over, and when even the constant changes were beginning to satiate her, apparently spent a time of intolerable ennui. It is still remembered in the Pilfold family how Harriet appeared at their house late one night in a ball dress, without shawl or bonnet, having quarrelled with Shelley. A doctor who had to perform some operation on her child was struck with astonishment at her demeanour, and considered her utterly without feeling, and Shelley's poem, "Lines, April 1814," written, according to Claire Clairmont's testimony, when Mr. Turner objected to his visiting his wife at Bracknell, gives a touching picture of the comfortless home which he was returning to; in fact, they seem to have no sooner been together again than Harriet made a fresh departure. There is one imploring poem by Shelley, addressed to Harriet in May 1814, begging her to relent and pity, if she cannot love, and not to let him endure "The misery of a fatal cure"; but Harriet had not generosity, if it was needed, and, according to Thornton Hunt, she left Shelley and went to Bath, where she still was in July. What Harriet really aimed at by this foolish move is doubtful; it was certainly taken at the most fatal moment. To leave Shelley alone, near dear friends, when she had been repelling his advances to regain her affection, and making his home a place for him to dread to come into, was anything but wise; but wisdom was not Harriet's forte; she needed a husband to be wise for her. Shelley, however, had most gifts, except such wisdom at this time.
Beyond these facts, there seems little but surmises to judge by. It may always be a question how much Shelley really knew, or believed, of certain ideas of infidelity on his wife's part in connection with a Major Ryan—ideas which, even if believed, would not have justified his subsequent mode of action.
But here, for a time, we must leave poor Harriet—all her loveliness thrown away upon Shelley—all Shelley's divine gifts worthless to her. What a strange disunion to pass through life with! Only the sternest philosophy or callousness could have achieved it—and Shelley was still so young, with his philosophy all in theory.
CHAPTER IV.
MARY AND SHELLEY.
We left Godwin about to write in answer to the letter referred to from Shelley. The correspondence which followed, though very interesting in itself, is only important here as it led to the increasing intimacy of the families. These letters are full of sound advice from an elderly philosopher to an over-enthusiastic youth; and one dated March 14, 1812, begging Shelley to leave Ireland and come to London, ends with the pregnant phrase, "You cannot imagine how much all the females of my family, Mrs. Godwin and three daughters, are interested in your letters and your history." So here, at fourteen, we find Mary deeply interested in all concerning Shelley; poor Mary, who used to wander forth, when in London, from the Skinner Street Juvenile Library northwards to the old St. Pancras Cemetery, to sit with a book beside her mother's grave to find that sympathy so sadly lacking in her home.
About this time Godwin wrote a letter concerning Mary's education to some correspondent anxious to be informed on the subject. We cannot do better than quote from it:—
Your inquiries relate principally to the two daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft. They are neither of them brought up with an exclusive attention to the system and ideas of their mother. I lost her in 1797, and in 1801 I married a second time. One among the motives which led me to choose this was the feeling I had in myself of an incompetence for the education of daughters. The present Mrs. Godwin has great strength and activity of mind, but is not exclusively a follower of the notions of their mother; and, indeed, having formed a family establishment without having a previous provision for the support of a family, neither Mrs. Godwin nor I have leisure enough for reducing novel theories of education to practice; while we both of us honestly endeavour, as far as our opportunities will permit, to improve the mind and characters of the younger branches of our family.
Of the two persons to whom your inquiries relate, my own daughter is considerably superior in capacity to the one her mother had before. Fanny, the eldest, is of a quiet, modest, unshowy disposition, somewhat given to indolence, which is her greatest fault, but sober, observing, peculiarly clear and distinct in the faculty of memory, and disposed to exercise her own thoughts and follow her own judgment. Mary, my daughter, is the reverse of her in many particulars. She is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible. My own daughter is, I believe, very pretty. Fanny is by no means handsome, but, in general, prepossessing.
By this letter necessity appears to have been the chief motor in the education of the children. Constantly increasing difficulties surrounded the family, who were, however, kept above the lowering influences of narrow circumstances by the intellect of Godwin and his friends. Even the speculations into which Mrs. Godwin is considered to have rashly drawn her husband in the Skinner Street Juvenile Library, perhaps, for a time, really assisted in bringing up the family and educating the sons.
Before the meeting with Shelley, Mary was known as a young girl of strong poetic and emotional nature. A story is still remembered by friends, proving this: just before her last return from the Highlands preceding her eventful meetings with Shelley, she visited, while staying with the Baxters, some of the most picturesque parts of the Highlands, in company with Mr. Miller, a bookseller of Edinburgh; and he told of her passionate enthusiasm when taken into a room arranged with looking-glasses round it to reflect the magic view without of cascade and cloud-capped mountains; how she fell on her knees, entranced at the sight, and thanked Providence for letting her witness so much beauty. This was the nature, with its antecedents and surroundings, to come shortly into communion with Shelley, at the time of his despondency at his wife's hardness and supposed desertion; Shelley then, so far from self-sufficiency, yearning after sympathy and an ideal in life, with all his former idols shattered. Godwin's house became for him the home of intellectual intercourse. Godwin, surrounded by a cultivated family, was not thought less of by Shelley, owing to the accident of his then having a book-shop to look after—Shelley, whose childhood, though passed in the comforts of an English country house, yet lacked the riches of the higher culture. Through two months of various trials Shelley remained on terms of great intimacy, visiting Godwin's house and constantly dining there. This was during his wife's voluntary withdrawal to Bath, from May—when he seems to have entreated her to be reconciled to him—till July, when she, in her turn, becoming anxious at a four days' cessation of news, wrote an imploring letter to Hookham, the Bond Street bookseller, for information about her husband.
In the meantime, what had been passing in Godwin's house? The Philosopher, whom Shelley loved and revered, was becoming inextricably involved in money matters. What was needed but this to draw still closer the sympathies of the poet, who had not been exempt from like straits? He was thus in the anomalous position of an heir to twenty thousand a year, who could wish to raise three thousand pounds on his future expectations, not for discreditable gambling debts, or worse extravagances, but to save his beloved master and his family from dire distress.
What a coil of circumstances to be entangling all concerned! Mary returning from the delights of her Scottish home to find her father, whom she always devotedly loved, on the verge of bankruptcy, with all the hopeless vista which her emotional and highly imaginative nature could conjure up; and then to find this dreaded state of distress relieved, and by her hero—the poet who, for more than two years, "all the women of her family had been profoundly interested in."
And for Shelley, the contrast from the desolate home, where sulks and ill-humour assailed him, and which, for a time, was a deserted home for him; where facts, or his fitful imagination, ran riot with his honour, to the home where all showed its roseate side for him; where all vied to please the young benefactor, who was the humble pupil of its master; where Mary, in the expanding glow of youth and intellect, could talk on equal terms with the enthusiastic poet.
Were not the eyes of Godwin and his wife blinded for the time, when still reconciliation with Harriet was possible? Surely gratitude came in to play honour false. The one who—were it only from personal feeling—might have tried to turn the course of the rushing torrent was not there. Fanny, who had formerly written of Shelley as a hero of romance, was in Wales during this period.
So, step by step, and day by day, the march of fate continued, till, by the time that Hookham apparently unbandaged Godwin's eyes, on receiving Harriet's letter on July 7, 1814, passion seemed to have subdued the power of will; and the obstacle now imposed by Godwin only gave added impetus to the torrent, which nothing further could check.
Such times as these in a life seem to exemplify the contrasting doctrines of Calvin and of Schopenhauer; of two courses, either is open. But at that time Shelley was more the being of emotion than of will—unless, indeed, will be confounded with emotion.
We have seen enough to gather that Shelley did not need to enter furtively the house of his benefactor to injure him in his nearest tie, but that circumstances drew Shelley to Mary with equal force as her to him. The meetings by her mother's grave seemed to sanctify the love which should have been another's. They vaguely tried to justify themselves with crude principles. But self-deception could not endure much longer; and when Godwin forbade Shelley his house on July 8, Shelley, ever impetuous and headstrong, whose very virtues became for the time vices, thrust all barriers aside.
What deceptions beside self-deception must have been necessary to carry out so wild a project can be imagined; for certainly neither Godwin nor, still less, his wife, was inclined to sanction so illegal and unjust an act. We see, from Hogg's description, how impassioned was a meeting between Mary and Shelley, which he chanced to witness; and later on Shelley is said to have rushed into her room with laudanum, threatening to take it if she would not have pity on him. These and such like scenes, together with the philosophical notions which Mary must have imbibed, led up to her acting at sixteen as she certainly would not have done at twenty-six; but now her knowledge of the world was small, her enthusiasm great—and evidently she believed in Harriet's faithlessness—so that love added to the impatience of youth, which could not foresee the dreadful future. Without doubt, could they both have imagined the scene by the Serpentine three years later, they would have shrunk from the action which was a strong link in the chain that conduced to it.
But now all thoughts but love and self, or each for the other, were set aside, and on July 20, 1814, we find Mary Godwin leaving her father's house before five o'clock in the morning, much as Harriet had left her home three years earlier.
An entry made by Mary in a copy of Queen Mab given to her by Shelley, and dated in July 1814, shows us how a few days before their departure they had not settled on so desperate a move. The words are these:—"This book is sacred to me, and as no other creature shall ever look into it, I may write in it what I please. Yet what shall I write—that I love the author beyond all powers of expression, and that I am parted from him? Dearest and only love, by that love we have promised to each other, although I may not be yours I can never be another's. But I am thine, exclusively thine."
Mary in her novel of Lodore, published in 1835, gave a version of the differences between Harriet and Shelley. Though Lord Lodore is more an impersonation of Mary's idea of Lord Byron than of Shelley, Cornelia Santerre, the heroine, may be partly drawn from Harriet, while Lady Santerre, her match-making mother, is taken from Eliza Westbrook. Lady Santerre, when her daughter is married, still keeps her under her influence. She is described as clever, though uneducated, with all the petty manoeuvring which frequently accompanies this condition. When differences arise between Lodore and his wife the mother, instead of counselling conciliation, advises her daughter to reject her husband's advances. Under these circumstances estrangements lead to hatred, and Cornelia declares she will never quit her mother, and desires her husband to leave her in peace with her child. This Lodore will not consent to, but takes the child with him to America. The mother-in-law speaks of desertion and cruelty, and instigates law proceedings. By these proceedings all further hope is lost. We trace much of the history of Shelley and Harriet in this romance, even to the age of Lady Lodore at her separation, which is nineteen, the same age as Harriet's. Lady Lodore henceforth is regarded as an injured and deserted wife. This might apply equally to Lady Byron; but there are traits and descriptions evidently applicable to Harriet. Lady Santerre encourages her to expect submission later from her husband, but the time for that is passed. We here trace the period when Shelley also begged his wife to be reconciled to him in May, and likewise Harriet's attempt at reconciliation with Shelley, all too late, in July, when Shelley had an interview with his wife and explanations were given, which ended in Harriet apparently consenting to a separation. The interview resulted in giving Harriet an illness very dangerous in her state of health; she was even then looking forward to the birth of a child. It is true that Shelley is said to have believed that this child was not his, though later he acknowledged this belief was not correct. The name of a certain Major Ryan figures in the domestic history of the Shelleys at this time; but certainly there seems no evidence to convict poor Harriet upon, although Godwin at a later date informed Shelley that he had evidence of Harriet having been false to him four months before he left her. This evidence is not forthcoming, and the position of his daughter Mary may have made slender evidence seem more weighty at the time to Godwin; in fact, the small amount of evidence of any kind respecting Shelley's and Harriet's disagreements and separation seems to point to the curious anomaly in Shelley's character, that while he did not hesitate to act upon his avowed early and crude opinions as to the duration of marriage—opinions which he later expressed disapproval of in his own criticism of Queen Mab—yet the innate feeling of a gentleman forbade him to talk of his wife's real or supposed defects even to his intimate friends. Thus when Peacock cross-questioned him about his liking for Harriet, he only replied, "Ah, but you do not know how I hated her sister."
However more or less faulty, or sinned against, or sinning, we must now leave Harriet for a while and accompany Shelley and Mary on that 28th of July when she left her father's house with Jane, henceforth called "Claire" Clairmont, to meet Shelley near Hatton Garden about five in the morning. Of the subsequent journey we have ample records, for with this tour Mary also began a life of literary work, in which she was fortunately able to confide much to the unknown friend, the public, which though not always directly grateful to those who open their hearts to it, is still eager for their works and influenced by them. And so from Mary herself we learn all that she cared to publish from her journal in the Six Weeks' Tour, and now we have the original journal by Mary and Shelley, as given by Professor Dowden. We must repeat for Mary the oft-told tale of Shelley; for henceforth, till death separates them, their lives are together.
On July 27, 1814, having previously arranged a plan with Mary, which must have been also known to Claire in spite of her statement that she only thought of taking an early walk, Shelley ordered the postchaise, and, as Claire says, he and Mary persuaded her to go too, as she knew French, with which language they were unfamiliar. Shelley gives the account of the subsequent journey to Dover and passage to Calais, of the first security they felt in each other in spite of all risk and danger. Mary suffered much physically, and no doubt morally, having to pause at each stage on the road to Dover in spite of the danger of being overtaken, owing to the excessive heat causing faintness. On reaching Dover they found the packet already gone at 4 o'clock, so, after bathing in the sea and dining, they engaged a sailing boat to take them to Calais, and once more felt security from their pursuers; for, undoubtedly, had they been found in England, Shelley would have been unable to carry out his plan.
They were not allowed to pass the Channel together without danger, for after some hours of calm, during which they could make no progress, a violent squall broke, and the sails of the little boat were well nigh shattered, the lightning and thunder were incessant, and the imminent danger gave Shelley cause for serious thought, as he with difficulty supported the sleeping form of Mary in his arms. Surely all this scene is well described in "The Fugitives"—
While around the lashed ocean.
Though Mary woke to hear they were still far from land, and might be forced to make for Boulogne if they could not reach Calais, still with the dawn of a fresh day the lightning paled, and at length they were landed on Calais sands, and walked across them to their hotel. The fresh sights and sounds of a new language soon restored Mary, and she was able to remark the different costumes; and the salient contrast from the other side of the Channel could not fail to charm three young people so open to impressions. But before night they were reminded that there were others whom their destiny affected, for they were informed that a "fat lady" had been inquiring for them, who said that Shelley had run away with her daughter. It was poor Mrs. Godwin who had followed them through heat and storm, and who hoped at least to induce her daughter Claire to return to the protection of Godwin's roof; but this, after mature deliberation, which Shelley advised, she refused to do. Having escaped so far from the routine and fancied dulness of home life, the impetuous Claire was not to be so easily debarred from sharing in the magic delight of seeing new countries and gaining fresh experience. So Mrs. Godwin returned alone, to make the best story she could so as to satisfy the curious about the strange doings in her family.
Meanwhile the travellers proceeded by diligence on the evening of the 30th to Boulogne, and then, as Mary was far from well, hastened on their journey to Paris, where by a week's rest, in spite of many annoyances through want of money and difficulty in procuring it, Mary regained sufficient strength to enjoy some of the interesting sights. A pedestrian tour was undertaken across France into Switzerland. In Paris the entries in the diary are chiefly Shelley's; he makes some curious remarks about the pictures in the Louvre, and mentions with pleasure meeting a Frenchman who could speak English who was some help, as Claire's French does not seem to have stood the test of a lengthy discussion on business at that time. At length a remittance of sixty pounds was received, and they forthwith settled to buy an ass to carry the necessary portmanteau and Mary when unable to walk; and so they started on their journey in 1814, across a country recently devastated by the invading armies of Europe. They were not to be deterred by the harrowing tales of their landlady, and set out for Charenton on the evening of August 8, but soon found their ass needed more assistance than they did, which necessitated selling it at a loss and purchasing a mule the next day. On this animal Mary set out dressed in black silk, accompanied by Claire in a like dress, and by Shelley who walked beside. This primitive way of travelling was not without its drawbacks, especially after the disastrous wars. Their fare was of the coarsest, and their accommodation frequently of the most squalid; but they were young and enthusiastic, and could enter with delight into the fact that Napoleon had slept in their room at one inn. And the picturesque though frequently ruined French towns, with their ramparts and old cathedrals, gave them happiness and content; on the other hand, the dirt, discomfort, and ignorance they met with were extreme. At one wretched village, Echemine, people would not rebuild their houses as they expected the Cossacks to return, and they had not heard that Napoleon was deposed; while two leagues farther, at Pavillon, all was different, showing the small amount of communication between one town and another in France at that time.
Shelley was now obliged to ride the mule, having sprained his ankle, and on reaching Troyes Mary and Claire were thoroughly fatigued with walking. There they had to reconsider ways and means; the mule, no longer sufficing, was sold and a voiture bought, and a man and a mule engaged for eight days to take them to Neuchatel. But their troubles did not end here, for the man turned out far more obstinate than the mule, and was determined to enjoy the sweets of tyranny: he stopped where he would, regardless of accommodation or no accommodation, and went on when he chose, careless whether his travellers were in or out of the carriage. Mary describes how they had to sit one night over a wretched kitchen fire in the village of Mort, till they were only too glad to pursue their journey at 3 A.M. In fact, in those days Mary was able, in the middle of France, to experience the same discomforts which tourists have now to go much farther to find out. Their tour was far different from a later one described by Mary, when comfortable hotels are chronicled; but, oh! how she then looked back to the happy days of this time. The trio would willingly have prolonged the present state of things; but, alas! money vanished in spite of frugal fare, and they decided, on arriving in Switzerland, and with difficulty raising about thirty-eight pounds in silver, that their only expedient was to return to England in the least expensive way possible. They first tried, however, to live cheaply in an old chateau on the lake of Arx, which they hired at a guinea a month; but the discomfort and difficulties were too great, and even the customary resources of reading and writing failed to induce them to remain in these circumstances. They at one time contemplated a journey south of the Alps, but, only twenty-eight pounds remaining to live on from September till December, they naturally felt it would be safer to return to England, and decided to travel the eight hundred miles by water as the cheapest mode of transit. They proceeded from Lucerne by the Reuss, descending several falls on the way, but had to land at Loffenberg as the falls there were impassable. The next day they took a rude kind of canoe to Mumph, when they were forced to continue their journey in a return cabriolet; but this breaking down, they had to walk some distance to the nearest place for boats, and were fortunate in meeting with some soldiers to carry their box. Having procured a boat they reached Basle by the evening, and leaving there for Mayence the next morning in a boat laden with merchandise. This ended their short Swiss tour; but they passed the time delightfully, Shelley reading Mary Wollstonecraft's letters from Norway, and then, again, perfectly entranced, as night approached, with the magic effects of sunset sky, hills surmounted with ruined castles, and the reflected colours on the changing stream. They proceeded in this manner, staying for the night at inns, and taking whatever boat could be found in the morning. Thus they reached Cologne, passing the romantic scenery of the Rhine, recalled to them later when reading Childe Harold. From this point they proceeded through Holland by diligence, as they found travelling by the canals and winding rivers would be too slow, and consequently more expensive. Mary does not appear to have been impressed with the picturesque flat country of Holland, and gladly reached Rotterdam; but they were unfortunately detained two days at Marsluys by contrary winds, spending their last guinea, but feeling triumphant in having travelled so far for less than thirty pounds.
The captain, being an Englishman, ventured to cross the bar of the Rhine sooner than the Dutch would have done, and consequently they returned to England in a severe squall, which must have recalled the night of their departure and banished tranquillity from their minds, if they had for a time been soothed by the changing scenes and their trust in each other.
This account, taken chiefly from Mary's Six Weeks' Tour, published in 1817 first, differs in some details from the diary made at the time. In the published edition the names are suppressed. Nor does Mary refer to the extraordinary letter written by Shelley from Troyes on August 13, to the unfortunate Harriet, inviting her to come and stay with them in Switzerland, writing to her as his "dearest Harriet," and signing himself "ever most affectionately yours." Fortunately the proposal was not carried out; probably neither Harriet nor Mary desired the other's company, and Shelley was saved the ridicule, or worse, of this arrangement.
CHAPTER V.
LIFE IN ENGLAND.
On leaving the vessel at Gravesend, they engaged a boatman to take them up the Thames to Blackwall, where they had to take a coach, and the boatman with them, to drive about London in search of money to pay him. There was none at Shelley's banker, nor elsewhere, so he had to go to Harriet, who had drawn every pound out of the bank. He was detained two hours, the ladies having to remain under the care of the boatman till his return with money, when they bade the boatman a friendly farewell and proceeded to an hotel in Oxford Street.
With Shelley and Mary's return to England their troubles naturally were not at an end. Instead of money and security, debts and overdue bills assailed Shelley on all sides; so much so, that he dared not remain with Mary at this critical moment of their existence, when she, unable to return to her justly indignant father, had to stay in obscure lodgings with Claire, while Shelley, from some other retreat, ransacked London for money from attorneys and on post obits at gigantic interest. We have now letters which passed between Mary and Shelley at this time; also Mary's diary, which recounts many of their misadventures.
Day after day we have such phrases as (October 22) "Shelley goes with Peacock to the lawyers, but nothing is done," till on December 21 we find that an agreement is entered into to repay by three thousand pounds a loan of one thousand. Godwin, even if he would have helped, could not have done so, as his own affairs were now in their perennial state of distress; and before long, one of Shelley's chief anxieties was to raise two hundred pounds to save Mary's father from bankruptcy, although apparently they only communicated through a lawyer. It is curious to note how Mary complains of the selfishness of Harriet; poor Harriet who, according to Mrs. Godwin, still hoped for the return of her husband's affection to herself, and who sent for Shelley, after passing a night of danger, some time before her confinement. At one time Mary entertained an idea, rightly or wrongly conceived, that Harriet had a plan for ruining her father by dissuading Hookham from bailing him out from a menaced arrest. And so we find, in the extracts from the joint diary of Mary and Shelley, Harriet written of as selfish, as indulging in strange behaviour, and even, when she sends her creditors to Shelley, as the nasty woman who compels them to change their lodgings.
Before this entry of January 2, 1815, Harriet had given birth (November 30) to a second child, a son and heir, which fact Mary notes a week later as having been communicated to them in a letter from a deserted wife. What recriminations and heart-burnings, neglect felt on one side and "insulting selfishness" on the other! In April, Mary writes, "Shelley passes the morning with Harriet, who is in a surprisingly good humour;" and then we hear how Shelley went to Harriet to procure his son who is to appear in one of the courts; and yet once more Mary writes, "Shelley goes to Harriet about his son, returns at four; he has been much teased by Harriet"; and then a blank as to Harriet, for the diary is lost from May 1815 to July 1816.
In the meantime we see in the diary how Mary, far from well at times, is happy in her love of Shelley—how they enjoy intellectual pleasures together. They fortunately were satisfied with each other's company, as most of their few friends fell from them, Mrs. Boinville writing a "cold and even sarcastic letter;" the Newtons were considered to hold aloof; and Mrs. Turner, whom they saw a little, told Shelley her brother considered "you've been playing a German tragedy." Shelley replied, "Very severe, but very true." About this time Hogg renewed his acquaintance with Shelley and made that of Mary, though at first his answer to Shelley's letter was far from sympathetic. On his first visit they also were disappointed with him; but a little later (November 14) Hogg called at his friend's lodging in Nelson Square, when he made a more favourable impression on Shelley by being himself pleased with Mary. She in return found him amusing when he jested, but far astray in his opinions when discussing serious matters—in fact, on a later visit of his, she finds Hogg makes a sad bungle, quite muddled on the point when in an argument on virtue. In spite of being shocked by Hogg in matters of philosophy and ethics, she gets to like him better daily, and he helps them to pass the long November and December evenings with his lively talk. On one occasion he would describe an apparition of a lady whom he had loved, and who, he averred, visited him frequently after her death. They were all much interested, but annoyed by the interruption of Claire's childish superstitions. In fact, Hogg glides back to the old friendship of the university days, and his witticisms must have beguiled many a leisure hour, while he would also help Mary with her Latin studies now commenced. Claire frequently accompanied Shelley in his walks to the lawyers and other business engagements, as Mary's health not infrequently prevented her taking long walks, and Claire stated later that Shelley had a positive fear of being alone in London, as he was haunted by the fear of an attack from Leeson, the supposed Tanyrallt assassin.
Claire's cleverness and liveliness made her a pleasant companion at times for Shelley and Mary; but even had they been sisters—and they had been brought up together as such—Mary might have found her constant presence in confined lodgings irksome, especially as Claire tormented herself with superstitious alarms which at times, even in reading Shakespeare, quite overcame her. Her fanciful imagination also conjured up causes of offence where none were intended, and magnified slight changes of mood on Shelley's or Mary's part into intentional affronts, when she ought rather to have taken Mary's delicate health and difficult position into consideration. Mary, by all accounts, seems naturally to have had a sweet and unselfish disposition, although she had sufficient character to be self-absorbed in her work, without which no work is worth doing. It is true that her friend Trelawny later appeared to consider her somewhat selfishly indifferent to some of Shelley's caprices or whims; but this was with the pardonable weakness of a man who, although he liked character in a woman, still considered it was her first duty to indulge her husband in all his freaks. However this may be, we have constantly recurring such entries in the joint diary as:—"Nov. 9.—Jane gloomy; she is very sullen with Shelley. Well, never mind, my love, we are happy. Nov. 10.—Jane is not well, and does not speak the whole day…. Go to bed early; Shelley and Jane sit up till twelve talking; Shelley talks her into good humour." Then—"Shelley explains with Clara." Again—"Shelley and Clara explain as usual."
Mary writes—"Nov. 26.—Work, &c. &c. Clara in ill humour. She reads The Italian. Shelley sits up and talks her into humour." Dec. 19.—A discussion concerning female character. Clara imagines that I treat her unkindly. Mary consoles her with her all-powerful benevolence. "I rise (having already gone to bed) and speak with Clara. She was very unhappy; I leave her tranquil." Clara herself writes as early as October—"Mary says things which I construe into unkindness. I was wrong. We soon became friends; but I felt deeply the imaginary cruelties I conjured up."
It is clear that where such constant explaining is necessary there could not be much satisfaction in perpetual intimacy.
Mary is amused at the way Shelley and Claire sit up and "frighten themselves" by different reasons or forms of superstition, and on one occasion we have their two accounts of the miraculous removal of a pillow in Claire's room, Claire avowing it had moved while she did not see it; and Shelley attesting the miracle because the pillow was on a chair, much as Victor Hugo describes the peasants of Brittany declaring that "the frog must have talked on the stone because there was the stone it talked upon." The result might certainly have been injurious to Mary, who was awakened by the excited entrance of Claire into her room. Shelley had to interpose and get her into the next room, where he informed Claire that Mary was not in a state of health to be suddenly alarmed. They talked all night, till the dawn, showing Shelley in a very haggard aspect to Claire's excited imagination (Shelley had been quite ill the previous day, as noted by Mary). She excited herself into strong convulsions, and Mary had finally to be called up to quiet her. The same effect tried a little later fortunately fell flat; but there seemed no end to the vagaries of Claire's "unsettled mind" as Shelley calls it, for she takes to walking in her sleep and groaning horribly, Shelley watching for two hours, finally having to take her to Mary. Certainly philosophy did not seem to have a calming effect on Claire Claremont's nature, and often must Shelley and Mary have bemoaned the fatal step of letting her leave her home with them. It was more difficult to induce her to return, if indeed it was possible for her to do so, with the remaining sister, Fanny, still under Godwin's roof. Fanny's reputation was jealously looked after by her aunts Everina and Eliza, who contemplated her succeeding in a school they had embarked in in Ireland. But it is not to be wondered at that the excitable, lively Clara should have groaned and bemoaned her fate when transferred from the exhilaration of travel and the beauties of the Rhine and Switzerland to the monotony of London life in her anomalous position; and although both Mary and Shelley evidently wished to be kind to her, she felt more her own wants than their kindness. Want of occupation and any settled purpose in life caused pillows and fire-boards to walk in poor Claire's room, much as other uninteresting objects have to assume a fictitious interest in the houses and lives of many fashionably unoccupied ladies of the present day, who divide their interest between a twanging voice or a damp hand and the last poem of the last fashionable poet. Shelley is not the only imaginative and simple-minded poet who could apparently believe in such a phenomenon as a faded but supernatural flower slipped under his hand in the dark, other people in whom he has faith being present, and perchance helping in the performance. Genius is often very confiding.
Peacock was perhaps the one other friend who, during these sombre, if not altogether unhappy, days of Mary, visited them in their lodgings. Shelley, through him, hears of some of the movements of his family, and at one time Mary enters with delight into the romantic idea of carrying off two heiresses (Shelley's sisters) to the west coast of Ireland. This idea occupies them for some days through many delightful walks and talks with Hogg. Peacock also frequently accompanied Shelley to a pond touching Primrose Hill, where the poet would take a fleet of paper boats, prepared for him by Mary, to sail in the pond, or he would twist paper up to serve the purpose—it must have been a relaxation from his projects of Reform.
We must not leave this delightfully unhappy time without making reference to the series of letters exchanged between Mary and Shelley during an enforced separation. Unseen meetings had to be arranged to avoid encounters with bailiffs, at a time when the landlady refused to send them up dinner, as she wanted her money, and Shelley, after a hopeless search for money, could only return home—with cake. During this time some of their most precious letters were written to each other. We cannot refrain from quoting some touching passages after Mary had received letters from Shelley expressing the greatest impatience and grief at his separation from her, appointing vague meeting-places where she had to walk backwards and forwards from street to street, in the hopes of a meeting, and fearful animosity against the whole race of lawyers, money-lenders, &c., though all his hopes depended on them at the time. The London Coffee House seemed to be the safest meeting-place.
Mary, not very clear about business matters at the time, felt most the separation from her husband: the dangers that surrounded them she only felt in a reflected way through him. They must have confidence in each other, she thinks, and their troubles cannot but pass, for there is certainly money which must come to them!
She thus writes (October 25):
For what a minute did I see you yesterday! Is this the way, my beloved, we are to live till the 6th? In the morning when I wake, I turn to look for you. Dearest Shelley, you are solitary and uncomfortable. Why cannot I be with you, to cheer you and press you to my heart? Ah! my love, you have no friends. Why then should you be torn from the only one who has affection for you? But I shall see you to-night, and this is the hope that I shall live on through the day. Be happy, dear Shelley, and think of me! Why do I say this, dearest and only one? I know how tenderly you love me, and how you repine at your absence from me. When shall we be free from fear of treachery? I send you the letter I told you of from Harriet, and a letter we received yesterday from Fanny (this letter made an appointment for a meeting between Fanny and Clara); the history of this interview I will tell you when I come, but, perhaps as it is so rainy a day, Fanny will not be allowed to come at all. I was so dreadfully tired yesterday that I was obliged to take a coach home. Forgive this extravagance; but I am so very weak at present, and I had been so agitated through the day, that I was not able to stand; a morning's rest, however, will set me quite right again; I shall be well when I meet you this evening. Will you be at the door of the coffee-house at five o'clock, as it is disagreeable to go into such places? I shall be there exactly at that time, and we can go into St. Paul's, where we can sit down.
I send you "Diogenes," as you have no books; Hookham was so ill-tempered as not to send the book I asked for.
Two more distracted letters from Shelley follow, showing how he had been in desperation trying to get money from Harriet; how pistols and microscope were taken to a pawnshop; Davidson, Hookham, and others are the most hopeless villains, but must be propitiated. Trying letters also arrive from Mrs. Godwin, who was naturally much incensed with Mary, and of whom Mary expresses her detestation in writing to Shelley. One more short letter:
October 27.
MY OWN LOVE,
I do not know by what compulsion I am to answer you, but your letter says I must; so I do.
By a miracle I saved your £5, and I will bring it. I hope, indeed, oh, my loved Shelley, we shall indeed be happy. I meet you at three, and bring heaps of Skinner St. news.
Heaven bless my love and take care of him.
HIS OWN MARY.
As many as three and four letters in a day pass between Shelley and Mary at this time. Another tender, loving letter on October 28, and then they decide on the experiment of remaining together one night. Warned by Hookham, who regained thus his character for feeling, they dared not return to the London Tavern, but took up their abode for a night or two at a tavern in St. John Street. Soon the master of this inn also became suspicious of the young people, and refused to give more food till he received money for that already given; and again they had to satisfy their hunger with cakes, which Shelley obtained money from Peacock to purchase. Another day in the lodgings where the landlady won't serve dinner, cakes again supplying the deficiency. Still separation, Shelley seeking refuge at Peacock's. Fresh letters of despair and love, Godwin's affairs causing great anxiety and efforts on Shelley's part to extricate him. A Sussex farmer gives fresh hope. On November 3 Mary writes very dejectedly. She had been nearly two days without a letter from Shelley, that is, she had received one of November 2 early in the morning, and that of November 3 late in the evening. That day had also brought Mary a letter from her old friends the Baxters, or rather from Mr. David Booth, to whom her friend Isabel Baxter was engaged, desiring no further communication with her. This was a great blow to Mary, as, Isabel having been a great admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary had hoped she would remain her friend. Mary writes:—"She adores the shade of my mother. But then a married man! It is impossible to knock into some people's heads that Harriet is selfish and unfeeling, and that my father might be happy if he chose. By that cant of selling his daughter, I should half suspect that there has been some communication between the Skinner Street folks and them."
But now the separation was approaching its end, and the danger of being arrested past, they move from their lodgings in Church Terrace, St. Pancras, to Nelson Square, where we have already seen Hogg in their company and heard of the sulks, fears, and bemoanings of poor Claire.
Mary Shelley's novel of Lodore gives a good account of the sufferings of this time, as referred to later. The great resource of intellectual power is manifested during all this period. During a time of ill-health, anxieties of all kinds, constant moves from lodgings where landladies refused to send up dinner, while she was discarded by all her friends, while she had to walk weary distances, dodging creditors, to get a sight from time to time of her loved Shelley, while Claire bemoaned her fate and seems to have done her best to have the lion's share of Shelley's intellectual attention (for she partook in all the studies, was able to take walks, and kept him up half the night "explaining"), Mary indefatigably kept to her studies, read endless books, and made progress with Latin, Greek, and Italian. In fact, she was educating herself in a way to subsist unaided hereafter, to bring up her son, and to fit him for any position that might come to him in this world of changing fortunes. Whatever faults Mary may have had, it is not the depraved who prepare themselves for, and honestly fight out, the battle of life as she did.
CHAPTER VI.
DEATH OF SHELLEY'S GRANDFATHER, AND BIRTH OF A CHILD.
After Shelley had freed himself, for a time, of some of his worst debts towards the close of 1814, the year 1815, with the death of his grandfather on January 6, brought a prospect of easier circumstances, as he was now his father's immediate heir.
Although Shelley was not invited to the funeral, and only knew of the death through the papers, he determined at once to go into Sussex, with Claire as travelling companion, as Mary was not well enough for the journey. Shelley left Claire at Slinfold, and proceeded alone to his father's house, where he was refused admittance; so he adopted the singular plan of sitting in the garden, before the door, passing the time by reading Comus. One or two friends come out to see him, and tell him his father is very angry with him, and the will is most extraordinary; finally he is referred to Sir Timothy's solicitor—Whitton. From him, Mary writes in her diary, Shelley hears that if he will entail the estate he is to have the income of one hundred thousand pounds.
The property was really left in this way, as explained by Professor Dowden. Sir Bysshe's possessions did not, probably, fall short of £200,000. One portion, valued at £80,000, consisted of certain entailed estates, but without Shelley's concurrence the entail could not be prolonged beyond himself; the rest consisted of unentailed landed property and personal property amounting to £120,000. Sir Bysshe desired that the whole united property should pass from eldest son to eldest son for generations. This arrangement, however, could not be effected without Shelley. Sir Bysshe, in his will, offered his grandson not only the rentals, but the income of the great personal property, if he would renew the entail of the settled property and would also consent to entail the unsettled property; otherwise he should only receive the entailed property, which was bound to come to him, and which he could dispose of at his pleasure, should he survive his father. He had one year to make his choice in.
Shelley is considered to have been business-like in his negotiations; but to have retained his original distaste of 1811 to entailing large estates to descend to his children—in fact, he appears to have considered too little the contingency of what would come to them or to Mary in the event of his death prior to that of his father. Pressing present needs being paramount at this time, he agreed to an arrangement by which a portion of the estate valued at £18,000 could be disposed of to his father for £11,000, and an income of £1,000 a year secured to Shelley during his and his father's life. At one time there was an idea of disposing of the entailed estate to his father, as a reversion, but this was not sanctioned by the Court of Chancery. Money was also allowed by his father to pay his debts.
So now we see Mary and Shelley with one thousand pounds a year, less two hundred pounds which, as Shelley ordered, was to be paid to Harriet in quarterly instalments.
Now that the money troubles were over, which for a time absorbed their whole attention, Mary began to perceive signs of failing health in Shelley, and one doctor asserted that he had abscesses on the lungs, and was rapidly dying of consumption. Whatever these symptoms were really attributable to they rapidly disappeared, although Shelley was a frequent sufferer in various ways through his life.
In February, we see also the effect of the mental strain and fatigue on Mary, as she gave birth, about the 22nd of that month, to a seven-months' child, a little girl, who only lived a few days, but long enough to win her mother's and father's love, and leave the first blank in their lives. The diary of this time, kept up first by Claire, and then by Mary, gives some details of the baby's short life. On February 22—
Mary is well and at ease, the child not expected to live, Shelley sits up with Mary. Much agitated and exhausted. Hogg sleeps here.
23.—Mary well; child unexpectedly alive. Fanny comes and stays the night…. 24.—Mary still well; favourable symptoms of the child. Dr. Clarke confirms our hope…. Hogg comes in evening. Shelley unwell and exhausted. 25.—Child and Mary very well. Shelley is very unwell. 26.—Mary rises to-day. Hogg calls; talk. Mary retires at 6 o'clock…. Shelley has a spasm. On 27 Shelley and Clara go about a cradle. 28.—Mary goes down-stairs; nurses the baby, and reads Corinne and works. Shelley goes to consult Dr. Pemberton. On March 1st nurse baby, read Corinne, and work. Peacock and Hogg call; stay till half-past eleven.
On March 2 they move to fresh lodgings. It is uncertain whether it was to 26 Marchmont Street, from which place letters are addressed in April and May. or whether they were in some other lodgings in the interval. This early move was probably detrimental to Mary and the baby, for on March 6 we find the entry: "Find my baby dead. Send for Hogg. Talk. A miserable day."
Mary thinks, and talks, and dreams of her little baby, and finds reading the best palliative to her grief.
March 19.—Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake to find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in good spirits. Shelley is very unwell.
March 20.—Dream again about my little baby.
Mrs. Godwin had sent a present of linen for the infant, and Fanny Godwin repeated her visits; but the little baby, who might have been a link towards peace with the Godwins, has escaped from a world of sorrow, where, in spite of a mother's love, she might later on have met with a cold reception.
Godwin at this time was in the anomalous position of communicating with Shelley on his business matters; but for the very reason that Shelley lent him, or gave him, money, he felt it the more necessary to hold back from friendly intercourse, or from seeing his daughter—a curious result of philosophic reasoning, which appears more like worldly wisdom.
From this time the company of Claire was becoming insufferable to Mary and Shelley. At least for a time, it was desirable to have a change. We find Mary sorely puzzled in her diary at times, as on March 11 she writes—"Talk about Clara's going away; nothing settled. I fear it is hopeless. She will not go to Skinner Street; then our house is the only remaining place I plainly see. What is to be done?
March 12.—"Talk a great deal. Not well, but better. Very quiet in the morning and happy, for Clara does not get up till four…." Again on the 14th March—"The prospect appears more dismal than ever; not the least hope. This is, indeed, hard to bear."
At one time Godwin, Shelley, and Mary tried to induce Mrs. Knapp to take her, but she refused. Claire also tried to get a place as companion, but that fell through, till at length the bright idea occurred to them of sending her into Devonshire, under the excuse of her needing change of air; and there, according to a letter from Mrs. Godwin to Lady Mountcashell, she was placed with a Mrs. Bicknall, the widow of a retired Indian officer. Two more entries in Mary's journal, of this time, show with what feelings of relief she contemplates the departure of Shelley's friend, as she now calls Claire. Noting that Shelley and his friend have their last talk, the next day, May 13, Shelley walks with her, and she is gone! and Mary begins "a new diary with our regeneration."
There is a letter from Claire to Fanny Godwin, of May 28, apparently from Lynmouth, describing the scenery in a very picturesque manner, and saying how she delights in the peace and quiet of the country after the turmoil of passion and hatred she had passed through. She also expresses delight that their father had received one thousand pounds—this was evidently part of what Shelley had undertaken to pay for him, and was included in the sum which Sir Timothy paid for his debts. Claire—or Jane, as she was still called in Skinner Street—supposed her family would be comfortable for a month or two.
Shelley and Mary now yearned for the country, and truly their eight months' experience in London had been a trying period, from various causes, but redeemed by their love and intellectual conversation. Now they felt unencumbered by pressing money troubles, and free from the burden of Claire's still more trying presence, at least to Mary. In June we find them together at Torquay, and we can imagine the delight of the poet and his loved Mary in their first unshared companionship—the quiet rambles by sea and cliff in the long June evenings, the sunsets, the quiet and undisturbed peace which surrounded them. They were able to give each other quaint pet names, which no one could or need understand—which would have sounded silly in the presence of a third person. This was a time in which they could grow really to know each other without reserve, when there need be no jealous competition as to who was most proficient in Greek or Latin; when Shelley was drawn to poetry, and Alastor was contemplated, the melancholy strain of which seems to indicate love as the only redeeming element of life, and which might well follow the time of turmoil in Shelley's career. May not this poem have been his self-vindication as exhibiting what he might have become had he not followed the dictates of his heart? "Pecksie" and the "Elfin Knight" were the names which still stand written at the end of the first journal, ending with Claire's departure. Mary added some useful receipts for future use. One is: "A tablespoonful of the spirit of aniseed, with a small quantity of spermaceti;" to which Shelley adds the following: "9 drops of human blood, 7 grains of gunpowder, 1/2 oz. of putrified brain, 13 mashed grave-worms—the Pecksie's doom salve. The Maie and her Elfin Knight."
We next find Mary at Clifton, July 27, 1815, writing in much despondency at being alone while Shelley is house-hunting in South Devon. Although she wishes to have a home of her own, she dreads the time it will take Shelley to find it. He ought to be with her the next day, the anniversary of their journey to Dover; without him it will be insupportable. And then the 4th of August will be his birthday, when they must be together. They might go to Tintern Abbey. If Shelley does not come to her, or give her leave to join him, she will leave in the morning and be with him before night to give him her present with her own hand. And then, is not Claire in North Devon? If Shelley has let her know where he is, is she not sure to join him if she think he is alone? Insufferable thought! As Professor Dowden shows, Mary must have been very soon joined by Shelley after this touching appeal. In all probability a house was fixed on, but in a very opposite direction, before the end of the week, and the lease or arrangements made by August 3, as the following year he writes from Geneva to Langdill to give up possession of his house at Bishopsgate by August 3, 1816. So here, far from Devonshire, by the gates of Windsor Forest, near the familiar haunts of his Eton days, we again find Shelley and Mary. Here Peacock was not far distant at Marlow, and Hogg could arrive from London, and here they were within reach of the river. No long time elapsed before they were tempted to experience again the delights of a holiday on the Thames. So Mary and Shelley, with Peacock and Charles Clairmont to help him with an oar, embarked and went up the river. They passed Reading and Oxford, winding through meadows and woods, till arriving at Lechlade, fourteen miles from the source of the Thames, they still strove to help the boat to reach this point if the boat would not help them. This proved impossible. After three miles, as cows had taken possession of the stream, which only covered their hoofs, the party had perforce to return, still contemplating proceeding by canal and river, even as far as the Clyde, the poet ever yearning forwards. But this, money and prudence forbade, as twenty pounds was needed to pass the first canal; so they returned to their pleasant furnished house at Bishopsgate. On this trip Mary saw Shelley's old quarters at Oxford, where they spent a night, and they must have lingered in Lechlade Churchyard, as the sweet verses there written indicate. Shelley and Mary were now settled for the first time in a home of their own: she was making rapid progress with Latin, having finished the fifth book of the Aeneid, much to Shelley's satisfaction, as recounted in a letter to Hogg. Hogg was expected to stay with them in October, and in the meanwhile, under the green shades of Windsor Forest, Shelley was writing his Alastor, and, as his wife describes in her edition of his poems, "The magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest scenery we find in the poem." She writes:—
None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that exists throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, and the breedings of a poet's heart in solitude—the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspire with the sad and trying pangs which human passion imparts—give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near, he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout; it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative; it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.
Poetry was theirs, Nature their mutual love: Nature and two or three friends, if we may include the Quaker, Dr. Pope, who called on Shelley and wished to discuss theology with him, and when Shelley said he feared his views would not be to the Doctor's taste replied "I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley. I see thou art very deep." But beyond these all friends had fallen off, and certainly Godwin's conduct seems to have been most extraordinary. He did not hesitate to put Shelley to considerable inconvenience for money, for not long after the one thousand pounds had been given, we find Shelley having to sell an annuity to help him with more money. Yet Godwin all this time treated Shelley and Mary with great haughtiness, much to their annoyance, though neither let it interfere with the duty they owed Godwin as father and philosopher. These perpetual worries helped to keep them in an unsettled state in their home. Owing perhaps to the loss of the diary at this period, we have no information about Harriet. Already in January, we find there is an idea of residing in Italy, both for the sake of health, and on account of the annoyance they experienced from their general treatment. Shelley had the poet's yearning for sympathy, and Mary must have suffered with and for him, especially when her father, for whom he did so much, treated him with haughty severity by way of thanks. Mary attributed Godwin's conduct to the influence of his wife, whom she cordially disliked at this time. She was loth to recognise inconsistency in her father, whom she always revered. Godwin on his side was by no means anxious for his daughter and Shelley to leave for Italy in a few weeks' time, as intimated to him by Shelley as possible on the 16th February. We thus see that a trip to the Continent was contemplated some months prior to the journey to Geneva. This idea arose after the birth of Mary's first son, William, born January 24, 1816, who was destined to be only for a few short years the joy of his parents, and then to rest in Rome, where Shelley was not long in following him.
It is evident from Godwin's diary that Claire must have been on a visit or in direct communication with Mary at the beginning of January, as Godwin notes "Write to P.B.S. inviting Jane"; and it does not seem to have been possible for Shelley and Mary to have borne resentment. The facts of this meeting early in the year, and that Mary and Shelley contemplated another of their restless journeys abroad, certainly take off from the abruptness of their departure for Geneva in May with Claire Claremout. Undoubtedly Shelley was in a worried and excited state at this period, and he acted so as to rouse the doubts of Peacock as to the reason of the hurried journey. The story of Williams of Tremadock suddenly appearing at Bishopsgate, to warn Shelley that his father and uncle were engaged in a plot to lock him up, seems without foundation. But when, in addition to this story, we consider Claire's history, we can well understand that, in spite of Shelley's love of sincerity and truth, circumstances were too strong for him. At a time when he and Mary were being avoided by society for openly defying its laws, they might well reflect whether they could afford to avow the new complication which had sprung up in their small circle. Claire, in hopes of finding some theatrical engagement, had called upon Lord Byron at Drury Lane Theatre, apparently about March 1816, during the distressing period of his rupture with his wife. The result of this acquaintance is too well known, and has been too much a source of obloquy to all concerned in it, to need much comment here, and it is only as the facts affect Mary that we need refer to them at all.
At this time Byron was about to leave England, pursued, justly or unjustly, by the hatred of the British mob for a poet who dared to quarrel with his wife and follow the low manners of some of the leaders of fashion whom he had been intimate with. Their obscurity has sheltered them from opprobrium. He was accompanied by the young physician, Dr. John Polidori, who has somehow passed with Byron's readers as a fool; yet he certainly could have been no fool in the ordinary sense of the word, as he had taken full degrees as a doctor at an earlier age perhaps than had ever been known before. His family, a simple and highly educated family (his father was Italian, and had been secretary to Alfieri), caring very much for poetry and intellectual intercourse, were delighted at the prospect of the young physician having such an opening to his career, as his sister, the mother of poets, has told the writer. It is true that this exciting short period with Byron must have had an injurious effect on the young physician's after career, though he was still able to obtain the deep interest of Harriet Martineau at Norwich. It might be added that his nephew, not only a poet but a leader in poetic thought, deeply resented the insulting terms in which Byron wrote of Polidori, and, although h deeply admired the genius of Byron, did not fail to note where any weakness of form could be found in his work—such is human nature, and so is poetic justice meted out. This might appear to be a slight digression from our subject, if it were not for the fact that when Mary wrote Frankenstein at Sécheron, as one of the tales of horror that were projected by the assembled party, it was only John Polidori's story of The Vampire which was completed along with Mary's Frankenstein, The Vampire, published anonymously, was at first extolled everywhere under the idea that it was Byron's, and when this idea was found to be a mistake the tale was slighted in proportion, and its author with it. The fact is that as an imaginative tale of horror The Vampire holds its place beside Mary's Frankenstein, though not so fully developed as a literary performance or as an invention.
So on the eve of Byron's starting for Switzerland, we find Shelley and Mary contemplating a journey with Claire in the same direction by another route, but to the same place and hotel, previously settled on and engaged by Byron. It certainly might appear that Shelley and Mary in this dilemma did not feel justified in acting towards another in a way contrary to their own conduct in life. In all probability Claire confided her belief in Byron's attachment to herseif, after his wife had discarded him, to Mary or even to Shelley. Mary, however distasteful the subject must have been to her, would not perhaps allow herself to stand in the way of what, from her own experience, might appear to be a prospect of a settlement in life for Claire, especially as she must deeply have felt their responsibility in having induced or allowed her to accompany them in their own elopement. In fact, the feeling of responsibility in this most trying case might, to a highly imaginative mind, almost conjure up the invention of a Frankenstein.
We now (May 3, 1816) find Shelley, Mary, and Claire at Dover, again on a journey to Switzerland. From Dover Shelley wrote a kind letter to Godwin, explaining money matters, and promising to do all he could to help him. They pass by Paris, then by Troyes, Dijon, and Dôle, through the Jura range. This time is graphically described by Shelley in letters appended to the Six Weeks' Tour; the journey and the eight days' excursion in Switzerland. We read of the terrific changes of nature, the thunderstorms, one of which was more imposing than all the others, lighting up lake and pine forests with the most vivid brilliancy, and then nothing but blackness with rolling thunder. These letters are addressed to Peacock, but in them we have no reference to the intimacy with Byron now being carried on; how he arrived at the Hotel Sécheron, nor their removal to the Maison Chapuis to avoid the inquisitive English.
There is, fortunately, no further reason to refer to the rumours which scandal-mongers promulgated—rumours which undoubtedly hastened the rupture between Byron and Claire; although evil rumours, like fire smouldering in a hold, are difficult to extinguish, and, as Mr. Jeaffreson shows, the slanders of this time were afterwards a trouble to Shelley at Ravenna, in 1821, when his wife had to take his part. These rumours were the source of certain poems, and also, later, stories about Byron. All lovers of Shelley owe a debt of deep gratitude to Mr. Jeaffreson, who, although, severe to a fault on many of the blemishes in his character (as if he considered that poets ought to be almost superhuman in all things), nevertheless proves in so clear a way the utter groundlessness of the rumours as to relieve all future biographers from considering the subject. At the same time he shows how distasteful Claire's presence must have become to Byron, who was hoping for reconciliation with his wife, and who naturally construed fresh obduracy on her part as the result of reports that were becoming current. Anyway, it is manifest that Byron did not regard Claire in the light that Mary may have hoped for—namely, that he would consider her as a wife, taking the place of her who had left him. Byron had no such new idea of the nature of a wife, but only accepted Claire as she allowed herself to be taken, with the addition that he grew to dislike her intensely.
So after Shelley and Byron had made their eight days' tour of the lake, from June 23, unaccompanied by Mary and Claire, we find a month later Shelley taking them for an eight days' tour to Chamouni, unaccompanied by Byron. Of this tour Shelley each day writes long descriptive letters to Peacock, who is looking out for a house for them somewhere in the neighbourhood of Windsor. They return by July 28 to Montalègre, where he writes of the collection of seeds he has been making, and which Mary intends cultivating in her garden in England.
For another month these young restless beings enjoy the calm of their cottage by the lake, close to the Villa Diodati, while the poets breathe in poetry on all sides, and give it to the world in verse. Mary notes the books they read, and their visits in the evening to Diodati, where she became accustomed to the sound of Byron's voice, with Shelley's always the answering echo, for she was too awed and timid to speak much herself. These conversations caused her, subsequently, when hearing Byron's voice, to feel a sad want for "the sound of a voice that is still."
It is during this sojourn by the Swiss Lake that Mary began her first serious attempt at literature. Being asked each day by Shelley whether she had found a story, she answered "No," till one evening after listening to a conversation between Byron and Shelley on the principle of life—whether it would be discovered, and the power of communicating life be acquired—"perhaps a corpse might be reanimated; galvanism had given tokens of such things"—she lay awake, and with the sound of the lake and the sight of the moonlight gleaming through chinks in the shutters, were blended the idea and the figure of a student engaged in the ghastly work of creating a man, until such a horror came to light that he shrank in fear from his own performance. Such was the original idea for this imaginative work of a girl of nineteen, which has held its place among conspicuous works of fiction to the present day. Frankenstein was the outcome of the project before mentioned of writing tales of horror. One night, when pouring rain detained Shelley's party at the Villa Diodati over a blazing fire, they told strange stories, till Byron, leading to poetic ideas, recited the witch's scene from "Christabel," which so excited Shelley's imagination that he shrieked, and ran from the room; and Polidori writes that he brought him to by throwing water in his face. Upon his reviving, they agreed to write each a supernatural tale. Matthew Gregory Lewis, the author of The Monk, who visited at Diodati, assisted them with these weird fancies.
CHAPTER VII.
"FRANKENSTEIN."
That a work by a girl of nineteen should have held its place in romantic literature so long is no small tribute to its merit; this work, wrought under the influence of Byron and Shelley, and conceived after drinking in their enthralling conversation, is not unworthy of its origin. A more fantastically horrible story could scarcely be conceived; in fact, the vivid imagination, piling impossible horror upon horror, seems to claim for the book a place in the company of a Poe or a Hoffmann. Its weakness appears to be that of placing such an idea in the annals of modern life; such a process invariably weakens these powerful imaginative ideas, and takes away from, instead of adding to, the apparent truth, and cannot fail to give an affectation to the work. True, it might add to the difficulty to imagine a different state of society, past or future, but this seems a sine quâ non. The story of Frankenstein begins with a series of letters of a young man, Robert Walton, writing to his sister, Mrs. Saville in England, from St. Petersburg, where he is about to embark on a voyage in search of the North Pole. He is bent on discovering the secret of the magnet, and is deluded with the hope of a never absent sun. When advanced some distance towards his longed-for goal, Walton writes of a most strange adventure which befalls them in the midst of the ice regions—a gigantic being, of human shape, being drawn over the ice in a sledge by dogs. Not many hours after this strange sight a fresh discovery was made of another man in another sledge, with only one living dog to it: this time the man was seen to be a European, whom the sailors tried to persuade to enter their ship. On seeing Walton the stranger, speaking English, asked whither they were bound before he would consent to enter the ship. This naturally caused intense excitement, as the man, reduced to a skeleton, seemed to have but a short time to live. However, on hearing that the vessel was bound northwards, he consented to enter, and with great care he was restored for the time. In answer to an inquiry as to his object in thus exposing himself, he replied, "To seek one who fled from me." An affection springs up and increases between Walton and the stranger, till the latter promises to tell his sad and strange story, which he had hitherto intended should die with him.
This commencement leads to the story being told in the form (which might with advantage have been avoided) of a long narrative by the dying man. The stranger describes himself as of a Genevese family of high distinction, and gives an interesting account of his father and juvenile surroundings, including a playfellow, Elizabeth Lavenga, whom we encounter much later in his history. All his studies are pursued with zest, till coming upon the works of Cornelius Agrippa he is led with enthusiasm into the ideas of experimental philosophy; a passing remark of "trash" from his father, who does not explain the difference between past and modern science, is not enough to deter him and prevent the fatal consequence of the study he persists in, and thus a pupil of Albertus Magnus appears in the eighteenth century. The effects of a thunderstorm, described from those Mary had recently witnessed, decided him in his resolution, for electricity now was the aim of his research. After having passed his youth in his happy Swiss home with his parents and dear friends, on the death of his loved mother he starts for the University of Ingolstadt. Here he is much reprehended by the professors for his useless studies, until one, a Mr. Waldeman, sympathises with him, and explains how Cornelius Agrippa and others, although their studies did not bring the immediate fruit they expected, nevertheless helped on science in other directions, and he advises Frankenstein to pursue his studies in natural philosophy, including mathematics. The upshot of this advice is that two years are spent in intense study and thought, till he becomes thin and haggard in appearance. He is contemplating a visit to his home, when, making some fresh experiment, he finds that he has discovered the principle of life; this so overcomes him for a time that, oblivious of all else, he is bent on making use of his discovery. After much perplexing thought he determines to create a being superior to man, so that future generations shall bless him. In the first place, by the help of chemistry, he has to construct the form which is to be animated. The grave has to be ransacked in the attempt, and Frankenstein describes with loathing some of the details of his work, and shows the danger of overstraining the mind in any one direction—how the virtuous become vicious, and how virtue itself, carried to excess, lapses into vice.
The form is created in nervous fear and fever. Frankenstein being the ideal scientist, devoid of all feeling for art (whose ideas of it, indeed, might be limited to the elevation and section of a pot), without any ideal of proportion or beauty, reaches the point where he considers nothing but the infusion of life necessary. All is ready, and in the first hour of the morning he applies his fatal discovery. Breath is given, the limbs move, the eyes open, and the colossal being or monster, as he is henceforth called, becomes animated; though copied from statues, its fearful size, its terrible complexion and drawn skin, scarcely concealing arteries and muscles beneath, add to the horror of the expression. And this is the end of two years work to the horrified Frankenstein. Overwhelmed by disgust, he can only rush from the room, and finally falls exhausted on his bed, only to wake to find his monster grinning at him. He runs forth into the street, and here, in Mary's first work, we have a reminiscence of her own infant days, when she and Claire hid themselves under the sofa to hear Coleridge read his poem, for the following stanza from the Ancient Mariner might seem almost the key-note of Frankenstein:—
Like one who on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Frankenstein hurries on, but coming across his old friend Henri Clerval at the stage coach, he recalls to mind his father, Elizabeth, his former life and friends. He returns to his rooms with his friend. Reaching his door, he trembles, but opening it, finds himself delivered from his self-created fiend. His frenzy of delight being attributed to madness from overwork, Clerval induces Frankenstein to leave his studies, and, finally (after he had for months endured a terrible illness), to accompany him to his native village. Various delays occurring, they are detained too late in the year to pass the dangerous roads on their way home.
Health and peace of mind returning to some degree, Frankenstein is about to proceed on his journey homewards, when a letter arrives from his father with the fatal news of the mysterious death of his young brother. This event hastens still further his return, and gives a renewed gloomy turn to his mind; not only is his loved little brother dead, but the extraordinary event points to some unknown power. From this time Frankenstein's life is one agony. One after another all whom he loves fall victims to the demon he has created; he is never safe from his presence; in a storm on the Alps he encounters him; in the fearful murders which annihilate his family he always recognises his hand. On one occasion his creation wished to have a truce and to come to terms with his creator. This, after his most fearful treachery had caused the innocent to be sentenced as the perpetrator of his fearful deeds. On meeting Frankenstein he recounts the most pathetic story of his falling away from sympathy with humanity: how, after saving the life of a girl from drowning, he is shot by a young man who rushes up and rescues her from him. He became the unknown benefactor of a family for some period of time by doing the hard work of the household while they slept. Having taking refuge in a hovel adjoining a corner of their cottage, he hears their pathetic and romantic story, and also learns the language and ways of men; but on his wishing to make their acquaintance the family are so horrified at his appearance that the women faint, the men drive him off with blows, and the whole family leave a neigbourhood, the scene of such an apparition. After these experiences he retaliates, till meeting Frankenstein he proposes these terms: that Frankenstein shall create another being as repulsive as himself to be his companion—in fact, he desires a wife as hideous as he is. These were the conditions, and the lives of all those whom Frankenstein held most dear were in the balance; he hesitated long, but finally consented.
Everything now had to be put aside to carry out this fearful task—his love of Elizabeth, his father's entreaties that he should marry her, his hopes, his ambitions, go for nothing. To save those who remain, he must devote himself to his work. To carry out his aim he expresses a wish to visit England, and, with his friend Clerval, descends the Rhine, which is described with the knowledge gained in Mary's own journey, and the same route is pursued which she, Shelley, and Claire had taken through Holland, embarking for England from Rotterdam, and thence reaching the Thames. After passing London and Oxford and various places of interest, he expresses a desire to be left for a time in solitude, and selects a remote island of the Orkneys, where an uninhabited hut answers the purpose of his laboratory. Here he works unmolested till his fearful task is nearly accomplished, when a fear and loathing possess his soul at the possible result of this second achievement. Although the demon already created has sworn to abandon the haunts of man and to live in a desert country with his mate, what hold will there be over this second being with an individuality and will of its own? What might be the future consequences to humanity of the existence of such monsters? He forms a resolution to abandon his dreaded work, and at that moment it is confirmed by the sight of his monster grinning at him through the window of the hut in the moonlight. Not a moment is lost. He tears his just completed work limb from limb. The monster disappears in rage, only to return to threaten eternal revenge on him and his; but the time of weakness is passed; better encounter any evils that may be in store, even for those he loves, than leave a curse to humanity. From that time there is no truce. Clerval is murdered and Frankenstein is seized as the murderer, but respited for worse fate; he is married to Elizabeth, and she is strangled within a few hours. When goaded to the verge of madness by all these events, and seeing his beloved father reduced to imbecility through their misfortunes, he can make no one believe his self-accusing story; and if they did, what would it avail to pursue a being who could scale the Alps, live among glaciers, and pass unfathomable seas? There is nothing left but a pursuit till death, single-handed, when one might expire and the other be appeased—onward, with a deluding sight from time to time of his avenging demon. Only in sleep and dreams did Frankenstein find forgetfulness of his self-imposed torture, for he lived again with those he had loved; he endured life in his pursuit by imagining his waking hours to be a horrible dream and longing for the night, when sleep should bring him life. When hopes of meeting his demon failed, some fresh trace would appear to lead him on through habited and uninhabited countries; he tracks him to the verge of the eternal ice, and even there procures a sledge from the wretched and horrified inhabitants of the last dwelling-place of men to pursue the monster, who, on a similar vehicle, had departed, to their delight. Onwards, onwards, over the eternal ice they pass, the pursued and the pursuer, till consciousness is nearly lost, and Frankenstein is rescued by those to whom he now narrates his history; all except his fatal scientific secret, which is to die with him shortly, for the end cannot be far off.
The story is told; and the friend—for he feels the utmost sympathy with the tortures of Frankenstein—can only attempt to soothe his last days or hours, for he, too, feels the end must be near; but at this crisis in Frankenstein's existence the expedition cannot proceed northward, for the crew mutiny to return. Frankenstein determines to proceed alone; but his strength is ebbing, and Walton foresees his early death. But this is not to pass quietly, for the demon is in no mood that his creator should escape unmolested from his grasp. Now the time is ripe, and, during a momentary absence, Walton is startled by fearful sounds, and then, in the cabin of his dying friend, a sight to appal the bravest; for the fiend is having the death struggle with him—then all is over. Some last speeches of the demon to Walton are explanatory of his deed, and of his present intention of self-immolation, as he has now slaked his thirst to wreak vengeance for his existence. Then he disappears over the ice to accomplish this last task.
Surely there is enough weird imagination for the subject. Mary in this work not merely intended to depict the horror of such a monster, but she evidently wished also to show what a being, with no naturally bad propensities, might sink to when under the influence of a false position—the education of Rousseau's natural man not being here possible.
Some weak points, some incongruities, it would be unreasonable not to expect. Whether the eternal light expected at the North Pole, if of the sun, was a misapprehension of the author or a Shelleyan application of the word eternal (as applied by him to certain friendships, or duration of residence in houses) may be questioned. The question as to the form used for the narrative has already been referred to. The difficulty of such a method is strangely exemplified in the long letters which are quoted by Frankenstein to his friend while dying, and which he could not have carried with him on his deadly pursuit. Mary's facility in writing was great, and having visited some of the most interesting places in the world, with some of the most interesting people, she is saved from the dreary dulness of the dull. Her ideas, also, though sometimes affected, are genuine, not the outcome of some fashionable foible to please a passing faith or superstition, which ought never to be the raison d'etre of a romance, though it may be of a satire or a sermon.
The last passage in the book is perhaps the weakest. It is scarcely the climax, but an anticlimax. The end of Frankenstein is well conceived, but that of the Demon fails. It is ridiculous to conceive anyone, demon or human, having ended his vengeance, fleeing over the ice to burn himself on a funeral pyre where no fuel could be found. Surely the tortures of the lowest pit of Dante's Inferno might have sufficed for the occasion. The youth of the authoress of this remarkable romance has raised comparison between it and the first work of a still younger romancist, the author of Gabriel Denver, written at seventeen, who died before he had completed his twentieth year.
While this romance was being planned during the latter part of the stay of the Shelley party in Switzerland, after their return from Chamouni, the diary gives us a charming idea of their life in their cottage of Montalègre. We have the books they read, as usual; and well did Mary, no less than Shelley, make use of that happy reading-time of life—youth. The Latin authors read by Shelley were also studied by Mary. We find her reading "Quintus Curtius," ten and twelve pages at a time; also on Shelley's birthday, August 4, she reads him the fourth book of Virgil, while in a boat with him on the lake. Also the fire-balloon is not forgotten, which Mary had made two or three days in advance for the occasion. They used generally to visit Diodati in the evening, after dinner, though occasionally Shelley dined with Byron, and accompanied him in his boat. On one occasion Mary wrote: "Shelley and Claire go up to Diodati; I do not, for Lord Byron did not seem to wish it." Rousseau, Voltaire, and other authors cause the time to fly, until their spirits are damped by a letter arriving from Shelley's solicitor, requiring his return to England. While in Switzerland Mary received some letters from Fanny, her half-sister; these letters are interesting, showing a sweet, gentle disposition, very affectionate to both Shelley and Mary. One letter asks Mary questions about Lord Byron. There are also details as to the unfortunate state of the finances of Godwin, who seemed in a perennial state of needing three hundred pounds. Fanny also writes of herself, on July 29, 1816, as not being well—being in a state of mind which always keeps her body in a fever—her lonely life, after her sister's departure, with all the money anxieties, and her own dependence, evidently weighed upon her mind, and led to a state of despondency, although her letters would scarcely give the idea of a tragedy being imminent. She writes to Shelley and Mary that Mrs. Godwin—mamma she calls her—tells her that she is the laughing-stock of Mary and Shelley, and the constant "beacon of their satire." She shows much affection for little William, as well as for his parents; but there is certainly no word in these letters showing more than sisterly and friendly feeling; no word showing jealousy or envy. Claire afterwards alleged that Fanny had been in love with Shelley. Mr. Kegan Paul states the reverse most strongly. It is not easy to conceive how either should have been sure of the fact. Even Shelley's beautiful verses to her memory do not indicate any special reason for her sadness, as far as he was concerned.
Her voice did quiver as we parted,
Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From which it came, and I departed,
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery—oh Misery!
This world is all too wide for thee.
From these lines we see that Fanny was in a very depressed state of mind when her sister left England for her second Continental tour in 1816. This being two years from the time when Mary had first left her home, it does not seem probable that Shelley was to blame, or rather was the indirect cause of Fanny's sadness. She felt herself generally useless and unneeded in the world, and this idea weighed her down.
CHAPTER VIII.
RETURN TO ENGLAND.
On leaving the Lake of Geneva on August 28, without having accomplished anything in the way of a settlement for Claire, but with pleasant reminiscences of Rousseau's surroundings, and the grandeur of the Alps, the party of three returned towards England by way of Dijon, and thence by a different route from that by which they had gone, returning by Rouvray, Auxerre, Fontainebleau, and Versailles. Here Mary and Shelley visited the palace and town, which a few years hence she would revisit under far different circumstances. Travelling—in those days so very unlike what it is in ours, when Europe can be crossed without being examined—allowed them to become acquainted with the towns they passed through. Rouen was visited; but for some reason they were disappointed with the cathedral. Prom Havre they sailed for Portsmouth, when, with their usual fate, they encountered a stormy passage of twenty-seven hours. It must have been a trying journey for them in more ways than one, for if there was any uncertainty as to Claire's position on leaving England, Mary could now no longer have been in any doubt. On arriving in England she proceeded, with Claire and her little William, with his Swiss nurse Elise, to Bath, where Claire passed as Mrs. Clairemont. Shelley addressed her as such at 5 Abbey Churchyard, Bath. During this time Shelley was again house-hunting, while staying with Peacock on the banks of the Thames; and Mary paid a visit to Peacock at the same time, leaving little William to the care of Elise and Claire at Bath. From here Claire writes to Mary about the "Itty Babe's" baby ways, and how she and Elise puzzled and puzzled over the little night-gowns, or, quoting Albè, as they called Byron (it has been suggested a condensation of L. B.), "they mused and coddled" without effect. Claire certainly did her best to take care of the baby, walking out with it, and so forth.
Now the three hundred pounds written of by Fanny was falling due. Mary must also have been kept in great apprehension, as we see by a letter from Shelley to Godwin, dated October 2, 1816, that the money was not forthcoming, as hoped. So the fatal Rhine gold is again helping to a tragedy, which the romantic prefer to impute to a still more fatal cause; for, so short a time after the 2nd as October 10, we find Fanny already at Bristol, writing to Godwin that she is about to depart immediately to the place whence she hopes never to return. On October 3 there is a long letter from her to Mary, written just after Shelley's letter had reached Godwin, when she had read its contents on Godwin's countenance as he perused it. Her letter is most clear-sighted, noble, and single-minded; she complains of Mary's way of exaggerating Mrs. Godwin's resentment to herself, explaining that whatever Mrs. Godwin may say in moments of extreme irritation to her, she is quite incapable of making the worst of Mary's behaviour to others. She shows Mary her own carelessness in leaving letters about for the servants to read, so that they and Harriet spread the reports she complains of rather than Mrs. Godwin. She tells how she had tried to convince Shelley that he should only keep French servants, and she endeavours to persuade Mary how important it is that they should prevent bad news coming to Godwin in a way to give a sudden shock, as he is so sensitive. She saw through certain subterfuges of Shelley, and wrote in a calm, affectionate way, trying to set everything right, with a wonderful clearness of vision; for everyone but herself—for herself there was no outlet but despair, no rest but the grave; she, the utterly unselfish one, was useless—all that remained was to smooth her way to the grave. Not for herself, but others, she managed to die where she was unknown, travelling for this purpose to Swansea, where only a few shillings remained to her, and a little watch Mary had brought her from Geneva. She wrote of herself in a letter she left, which neither compromised anyone nor indicated who she was, as one whose birth was unfortunate, but whose existence would soon be forgotten. Poor Fanny! Is she not rather likely to be remembered as a type of self-abnegation? Certainly hers was not the nature to cause her sister a moment's jealous pang, even though her death called forth one of Shelley's sweetest lyrics.
There was nothing to be done. Godwin paid a brief visit to the scene, and ascertained that all was too true. The door that had had to be forced, the laudanum bottle, and her letter told all that need be known. Shelley visited Bristol to obtain information; but there was no use in giving publicity to this fresh family sorrow—discretion was the only sympathy that could be shown. Mary bought mourning, and worked at it. Claire envied for herself Fanny's rest; but life had to proceed, awaiting fresh events.
Work was the great resource. Mary was writing her Frankenstein. She persisted with the utmost fortitude in intellectual employment, as poor Fanny wrote to Mary on September 26:—"I cannot help envying your calm, contented disposition, and the calm philosophical habits of life which pursue yon; or, rather, which you pursue everywhere; I allude to your description of the manner in which you pass your days at Bath, when most women would hardly have recovered from the fatigues of such a journey as you had been taking."
This is, indeed, the key-note of Mary's character, which, with her sensitive, retiring nature, enabled her to live through the stormy times of her life with equanimity.
Mary had Shelley's company through November, but at the beginning of December she writes to Shelley, who is again staying with Peacock house-hunting. Mary tells him what she would like: "A house (with a lawn) near a river or lake, noble trees, or divine mountains"; but she would be content if Shelley would give her "a garden and absentia Claire." This is very different from her way of thinking of Fanny, who, she says, might now have had a home with her. This expression occurs in a letter to Shelley when she was on the point of marrying him, and might have had Fanny with her. Mary also speaks of her drawing lessons, and how (thank God!) she had finished "that tedious, ugly picture" she had been so long about. This points to that terrible way of teaching Art, by accustoming its students to hideousness and vulgarity, till Art itself might become an unknown quantity. Mary also tells, what is more interesting, that she has finished the fourth chapter, a very long one, of her Frankenstein, which she thinks Shelley will like. She wishes for his return. On December 13 Mary receives a letter from Shelley, who is with Leigh Hunt. On December 15, 1816, he is back with Mary at Bath, when a letter from Hookham, who had been requested by Shelley to obtain information about Harriet for him, brought further fatal news—for Harriet had now committed suicide, and had been found drowned in the Serpentine. Unknown, she was called Harriet Smith; uncared for, she had gone to her grave beneath the water—unloved, the lovely Harriet cared not to live. What may have happened, it is not for those who may not have been tried to question; of cause and effect it is not for us to judge; but that her memory must have been a haunting shadow to Shelley and to Mary no one would wish to think them heartless enough to deny. Surely the lovely "Lines," with no name affixed, must be the dirge to Harriet's fate, and Shelley's life's failure:—
The cold earth slept below;
Above, the cold sky shone;
And all around
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.
The wintry hedge was black;
The green grass was not seen;
The birds did rest
On the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway-track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light.
As a fen-fire's beam
On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there;
And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair,
That shook in the wind of night.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill:
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.
These lines are dated 1815 by Mary in her edition, but she says she cannot answer for the accuracy of all the dates of minor poems.
The death of Harriet was necessarily quickly followed by the marriage of Shelley and Mary. The most sound opinions were ascertained as to the desirability of an early marriage, or of postponing the ceremony for a year after the death of Harriet; all agreed that the wedding ought to take place without delay, and it was fixed for December 30, 1816, at St. Mildred's Church in the City, where Godwin and his wife were present, to their no little satisfaction, as described by Shelley to Claire. Mary notes her marriage thus in her diary: "I have omitted writing my journal for some time. Shelley goes to London, and returns; I go with him; spend the time between Leigh Hunt's and Godwin's. A marriage takes place on the 30th December 1816. Draw. Read Lord Chesterfield and Locke."
No sooner was the marriage over than their one anxiety was to return to Bath; for now the time of Claire's trial was approaching, and on January 13 a little girl was born, not destined to remain long in a world so sad for some. Little Allegra, a child of rare beauty, was welcomed by Shelley and Mary with all the benevolence they were capable of, and Byron's duty to his child devolved, for the time at least, on Shelley.
During this period, Shelley's and Mary's chief anxiety was to welcome and care for the little children left by poor Harriet. They had been placed, before her death, under the care of a clergyman who kept a school in Warwick, the Rev. John Kendall, vicar of Budbrooke. Shelley had hoped that his marriage with Mary would remove all difficulty, and Mary was waiting to welcome Ianthe and Charles; but in this matter they were doomed to disappointment.
On January 8 a Bill was filed in the Court of Chancery, on the part of the infants Charles and Ianthe Shelley, John Westbrook, their maternal grandfather, acting on their behalf, praying that they might not be transferred to the care of their father, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had deserted their mother; who was the author of Queen Mab, and an avowed atheist, who wrote against the institution of marriage, and who had been living unlawfully with a woman whom Eliza Westbrook (as Shelley had written to her) might excusably regard as the cause of her sister's ruin. Shelley filed his answer on the 18th, denying the desertion of his wife, as she and he had separated with mutual consent, owing to various causes. He had wished for his children on parting with her, but left them with her at her urgent entreaty. He had given her two hundred pounds to pay her debts, and an allowance of a fifth of his income. As to his theological opinions, he understands that they are abandoned as not applicable to the case. His views on matrimony, he alleged, were only in accordance with the ideas of some of the greatest thinkers that divorce ought to be possible under various conditions.
Lord Eldon gave his judgment on March 27, 1817. In fifteen carefully worded paragraphs he showed his reasons for depriving Shelley of his children. He insists through all that it is Shelley's avowed and published opinions, as they affected his conduct in life, which unfitted him to be the guardian of his children.
The wording in some passages caused grave anxiety to Shelley and Mary (as shown in their letters) as to whether they would be deprived of their own children; and they were prepared to abandon everything, property, country, all, and to escape with the infants. The poem "To William" was written under this misapprehension, although when he left England in 1818, Shelley's chief reason, as given in his letter to Godwin, was on account of his health. Undoubtedly the judgment, and all the trying circumstances they had been passing through ever since their return from Geneva, helped to decide them in this determination.
Charles and Ianthe were finally placed under the care of Dr. and Mrs. Hume, who were to receive two hundred pounds a year—eighty pounds settled on them by Westbrook, and one hundred and twenty pounds to be paid by Shelley for the charge. Shelley might see them twelve times a year in the presence of the Humes, the Westbrooks twelve times alone, and Sir Timothy and his family when they chose.
While these proceedings were progressing, Mary with Claire and the two children had moved to Marlow, having previously joined Shelley in London on January 26, as she feared to leave him in his depressed state alone. The intellectual society they met at Hunt's and at Godwin's helped to pass over this trying period. One evening Mary saw together the "three poets"—Hunt, Shelley, and Keats; Keats not being much drawn towards Shelley, while Hazlitt, who was also present, was unfavourably impressed by his worn and sickly appearance, induced by the terrible anxieties and trials which be had recently passed through. Horace Smith also proved a staunch friend: Shelley once remarked it was odd that the only truly generous wealthy person he ever met should be a stockbroker, and that he should write and care for poetry, and yet make money. In the midst of her anxieties, Mary Shelley enjoyed more social intercourse and amusement than before. We find her noting in her diary, in February, dining with the Hunts and Horace Smith, going to the opera of Figaro, music, &c. But now they had found their Marlow retreat—a house with a garden as Mary desired, not with a river view, but a shady little orchard, a kitchen garden, yews, cypresses, and a cedar tree. Here Mary was able to live unsaddened for a time; the Swiss nurse for the children, a cook and man-servant, sufficed for in-door and out-door work, and Mary, true to her name, was able to occupy herself with spiritual and intellectual employment, not to the neglect of domestic, as the succession of visitors entertained must prove; study, drawing, and her beloved work of Frankenstein were making rapid progress. Nor could Mary have been indifferent to the woes of the poor, for Shelley would scarcely have been so actively benevolent as recorded during the residence at Marlow without the co-operation of his wife. While Shelley enquired into cases of distress and gave written orders for money, Mary dispensed the latter. Here Godwin paid them his first visit, and the Hunts passed a pleasant time. Shelley wrote his Revolt of Islam under the Bisham Beeches, and Mary had the pleasure of welcoming her old friend Mr. Baxter, of Dundee, although his daughter Isabel, married to Mr. Booth, still held aloof. Peacock, Horace Smith, and Hogg were also among the guests. We find constant references to Godwin having been irritated and querulous with Mary or Shelley. A forced, unnatural, equanimity during one period of his life seems to have resulted in a querulous irritability later—a not unusual case—and he had to vent it on those who loved and revered him most, or in fact, on those who would alone endure it from amiability of disposition, a quality not remarkable in his second wife.
On May 14 we find Mary has finished and corrected her Frankenstein, and she decides to go to London and stay with her father while carrying on the negotiations with Murray whom she wishes to publish it. Shelley accompanies Mary for a few days at Godwin's invitation, but returns to look after "Blue Eyes," to whom he is charged with a million kisses from Mary. But Mary returns speedily to Shelley and "Blue Eyes," having felt very restless while absent. She soon falls into a plan of Shelley's for partially adopting a little Polly who frequently spent the day or slept in their house, and Mary would find time to tell her before she went to bed whatever she or Shelley had been reading that day, always asking her what she thought of it.
Mary, who was expecting another child in the autumn, was not long idle after the completion of Frankenstein, but set to work copying and revising her Six Weeks' Tour. This work, begun in August, she completed after the birth of her baby Clara on September 2. In October the book was bought and published by Hookham.
She tells, in her notes on this year 1817, how she felt the illness and sorrows which Shelley passed through had widened his intellect, and how it was the source of some of his noblest poems, but that he had lost his early dreams of changing the world by an idea, or, at least, he no longer expected to see the result.
A letter from Mary to her husband, written soon after the birth of her baby, shows how anxious she was at that time about his health. It had been a positive pain to her to see him languid and ill, and she counselled him obtaining the best advice. Change being recommended by the physician, Mary has to decide between going to the seaside or Italy. With all the reasons for and against Italy, Mary asks Shelley to let her know distinctly his wish in the matter, as she can be well anywhere. One strong reason for their going to Italy is that Alba, as Allegra was then called, should join her father. Evidently the embarrassment was too great to settle how to account for the poor child longer in England; and had not she a just claim upon Byron?
In another letter, September 28, Mary speaks of Claire's return to Marlow in a croaking state—everything wrong; Harriet's debts enormous. She had just been out for her first walk after the birth of Clara, and was surprised to find how much warmer it was out than in. Shelley is commissioned to buy a seal-skin fur hat for Willy, and to take care that it is a round fashionable shape for a boy. She is surrounded by babies while writing—William, Alba, and little Clara. Her love is to be given to Godwin when Mrs. Godwin is not there, as she does not love her. Frankenstein is still undisposed of.
The house at Marlow is soon found to be far too cold for a winter residence. Italy or the sea must speedily be settled on. Alba is the great consideration in favour of Italy, Mary feels she will not be safe except with them; Byron is so difficult to fix in any way, and the one hope seems to be to get him to provide for the child. Anxiety for Alba's future ruled their present, so impossible is it to foretell the future, which, read and judged as our past, is easy to be severe upon. This dream of health and rest in Italy was not to be so easily realised. Instead of being there, they were still dispensing charity at Marlow at the end of December, in spite of various negotiations for money in October and November. Horace Smith had lent two hundred pounds, and, Shelley thought, would lend more. Mary continued extremely anxious on Alba's account. If she could only be got to her father! Who could tell how he might change his mind if there be much delay? Might he not "change his mind, or go to Greece, or to the devil; and then what happens?" The lawyers' delays were heavy trials, and they could not go and leave Godwin unprovided for; he was a great anxiety to Mary at this time. It was not till December 7 that Shelley wrote to tell Godwin how he felt bound to go to Italy, as he had been informed that he was in a consumption.
Owing to a visit of Mr. Baxter to them at Marlow, when he wrote a most enthusiastic letter about Shelley and Mary to his daughter Isabel Booth, Mary had hoped for a renewal of the friendship which had afforded her so much pleasure as a girl, and she invited Isabel to accompany them to Italy; but this Mr. Booth would not allow, and, in fact, he appears to have treated his father-in-law, Mr. Baxter, who was six years younger than himself, with much severity, and wished him to stop all intimacy with Shelley. He did not, however, prevent him having a friendly parting with Shelley on March 2, although he would not allow his wife to have any communication with Mary—much to their sorrow. Mary was in constant anxiety about Shelley in the last months of 1817, writing of his suffering and the distress she feels in seeing him in such pain and looking so ill. In January 1818, the month before they left Marlow, his sufferings became very great. But two thousand pounds being borrowed on the promise of four thousand five hundred pounds on his father's death, and the house at Marlow being sold on January 25th, we find the packing and flitting taking place soon after. By February 7, Shelley leaves for London, and on Tuesday 10th Mary follows. Godwin, as usual now, had been beseeching for money, and then, feeling his dignity wounded by the effort, retaliated on the giver with haughtiness and insulting demands. In a biography, unfortunately, characters cannot always be made the consistent beings they frequently become in romances.
One more happy month Mary is to pass in England with Shelley. We, again, have accounts of visits to the opera, to museums, plays, dinners, and pleasant evenings spent with friends. Keats is again met, and Shelley calls on Mr. Baxter, who is not allowed by his son-in-law to say farewell to Mary Shelley: such a martinet may a Scotch schoolmaster be. Mary Lamb calls, and visits are paid and received till the last evening arrives, when Shelley, exhausted with ill-health, fatigue, and excitement, fell into one of his profound sleeps on the sofa before some of his friends left the lodgings in Great Russell Street, and thus the Hunts were unable to exchange with him their farewells. This small band of literary friends were all to bid Shelley and Mary farewell on his last few days in England. The contrast is indeed marked between that time and this, when Shelley societies are found in various parts of the world, when enthusiasts write from the most remote regions and form friendships in his name, when, churches, including Westminster Abbey, have rung in praise of his ideal yearnings, and when, not least, some have certainly tried to lead pure unselfish lives in memory of the godlike part of the man in him; but he now left his native shores, never to return, with Claire and Allegra, and his own two little children, and certainly a true wife willing to follow him through weal or woe.
CHAPTER IX.
LIFE IN ITALY.
A third time, on March 11, 1818, Shelley, Mary, and Claire are on the road to Dover, this time with three young lives to care for—Willie, aged two years and two months; Clara, six months; and Allegra, one year and two months. These small beings kept well during their journey, and it is touching to note how Claire Clairmont, in her part of the diary recording their progress, mentions bathing her darling at Dover, and then cancels the passage from her diary, as many others where her name is given—surely one of the saddest of things for a mother to fear to mention her child's name! After another stormy passage the party again reached Calais, which they found as delightful as ever, and where they stayed at the Grand Cerf Hotel.
Mary continues to note the journey. They took a different route this time—by Douai, La Fère, Rheims, Berri-le-bac, and St. Dizier, the road winding by the Marne. They sleep at Langres, which ramparted town surely ought to have left a pleasant reminiscence; but they had hitherto found the route uninteresting and fatiguing. Mary finds more interest in the country after Langres, and with the help of Schlegel, from whom Shelley read out loud to her, the time passed pleasantly; no long weary evenings in hotels; no complaints when a carriage broke down and they were kept three hours at Macon for it to be repaired: they had with them the friends of whom they never tired.
At Lyons they rested three days. Mary much admired the city, and they visited the theatre, where they saw L'homme gris et le Physionomiste; and on Wednesday, March 25, they set out towards the mountains whose white tops were seen at a distance.
In crossing the frontier there was a difficulty in getting their books allowed to enter Sardinian territory, until a Canon, who had met Shelley's father at the Duke of Norfolk's, helped to get them through. After leaving Chambéry, where Mary stayed to allow her nurse Elise to see her child, they crossed Mont Cenis and dined on the top. The beauty of the scenery greatly raised Shelley's spirits, causing him to sing with exultation. They stayed one night at Turin, visiting the opera; and after reaching Milan, Shelley and Mary went to Lake Como for a few days, having some idea of spending the summer on its banks; but not being able to suit themselves with a house they returned to Milan on April 12 and rejoined Claire, who had remained with the children. During the stay at Milan till the end of April there had been frequent letters from Claire to Byron. These were evidently far from satisfactory, as we find Shelley writing letters of caution to Claire in 1822, with regard to Byron and Allegra: he mentions having warned her against letting Byron get possession of Allegra in the spring of 1818, but Claire thought it for the interest of the child, whom she undoubtedly loved, to let her go to her father. Walks in the public gardens with the "Chicks" are noted by Claire several times, and the last entry in her diary, before April 28, when Allegra was taken by the nurse Elise to Byron, mentions a walk with the "Chicks" in the morning and drive in the evening with them, Mary and Shelley. Mary had sent her own trusted nurse Elise with the little Allegra, feeling that she would remain and in some degree replace the mother; and Claire believed that the child would stay with its father, though certainly this did not seem desirable or likely to last for long.
A change of scene being needed after these trying emotions, Mary, with her husband and two children, and Claire, now left for Pisa and Leghorn. They slept on the way at Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and then passed a night at a little inn among the Apennines, the fifth at Barberino, the sixth at La Scala, and on the seventh reached Pisa, where they lodged at Le Tre Donzelle. On this journey Mary was able to enjoy the Italian scenery under the unclouded Italian sky—the vine-festooned trees amid the fields of corn, the hedges full of flowers; all these seen from the carriage convey a lasting impression, and poor Claire remarks that, driving in a long, straight road, she always hopes it will take her to some place where she will be happier. They pass through beautiful chestnut woods on the southern side of the Apennines, and along the fertile banks of the Arno to Pisa. After a few days' stay at Pisa, where the cathedral, "loaded with pictures and ornaments," and the leaning tower are visited, and where, perhaps, the quiet Campo Santo, with its chapel covered with the beautiful frescos of Orcagna and Gozzoli, &c., was enjoyed, they proceed to Leghorn; here, after a few days at L'Aquila Nera, they move into apartments. They meet and see much of Mary's mother's friend, Mrs. Gisborne, who grew much attached to both Shelley and Mary, and who, from her acquaintance with literary people, must have been a pleasant companion to them. They had letters of introduction to the Gisbornes from Godwin. While here Mary made progress with Italian, reading Ariosto with her husband. Leghorn was not a sufficiently interesting place to detain the wandering Shelleys long, in spite of the attractions of the Gisbornes. On June 11 Mary, with her two children and Claire, follows Shelley to Bagni di Lucca, where he had taken a house. Here Mary much enjoyed the quiet after noisy Leghorn, as she wrote to Mrs. Gisborne, hoping to attract her to visit them. Mary was in her element in shady woods within the sound of running waters; her only annoyance was the number of English she came in contact with in her walks, where the English nursery-maid flourished, "a kind of animal I by no means like" she wrote; neither was she pleased by "the dashing, staring Englishwomen, who surprise the Italians (who always are carried about in sedan chairs) by riding on horseback."
Mary and Claire used to visit the Casino with Shelley, and look on at the dancing in which they did not join. Mary, however, did not agree with Shelley in admiring the Italian style of dancing; but those things on which they were ever of the same mind they had in plenty, for their beloved books arrived after being scrutinised by the Church authority; and while Shelley revelled in the delights of Greek literature, Mary shared those of English with him, for who can estimate the advantage of hearing Shakespeare and other poets read by Shelley! It was at the baths of Lucca also that Mary found her husband's unfinished Rosalind and Helen, and prevailed on him to complete it, for, as she says in her notes, "Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth." Without doubt, Mary was the ideal wife for Shelley. At this stage in the career of the poet one can but deplore that relentless destiny should only bring Mary to Shelley when a victim had already been sacrificed on the altar of fate; and the more one realises the sympathetic and intellectual nature of Claire, the less possible is it to help wasting a regret that Byron could not have met with the philosopher bookseller's adopted daughter earlier, instead of ruining his nature and his life by the fashionable follies he tampered with. But who would alter the workings of destiny? Does not the finest Lacryma Christi grow on the once devastated slopes of Vesuvius? Life, too, has its earthquakes, and the eruptions of its hidden depths seen through the minds of its poets, though causing at times agony to those who come in contact with them, work surely for the good of the whole. Mary had the years of pleasure, which are inestimable to those who can appreciate them, of contact with a great mind; but few among poets' wives have had the gifts which allow them fully to participate in such pleasures. Well for Mary that she also inherited much of her father's philosophic nature, which enabled her to endure some of the trials inherent in her position. What Shelley wrote Mary would transcribe—no mere task for her—for did she not, through Shelley, enjoy Plato's Symposium, a translation of which he was employed upon at Lucca? How could the fashionable idlers at the Baths find time to drink in inspiration from the poet and his wife? The poet gives the depths of his nature, but it is not he who writes with the fever or the tear of emotion who can stoop to be his own interpreter to the uninitiated, which seems to be a necessity of modern times, with few exceptions. Mary's education, defective though it may have been in some details, made her a fitting companion for some of the greatest of her day, and this quality in a woman could scarcely exist without a refinement of manner and tastes which, at times, might be misleading as to her disposition.
The spirit of wandering now came over Claire, and by the middle of August her desire to see her child again could no longer be suppressed. Accordingly she set out with Shelley on August 19, and reached Florence the next day, when Shelley wrote to Mary the impression the lovely city made on him, begging her, at the same time, not to let little William forget him before his return—little Clara could not remember. Claire thought at one time of remaining at Padua, but on reaching that city could not endure being left alone, and they reached Venice in the middle of the night, during a violent storm, which Shelley did not fail to write an account of to his wife. He also told her how the Hoppners, whom they called on (Mr. Hoppner being the British Consul in Venice), advised them to act with regard to Byron. By their advice Shelley called alone on him, and Byron proposed to send Allegra to Padua for a week on a visit; he would not like her to remain longer, as the Venetians would think he had grown tired of her. He afterwards offered them his villa at Este, thinking they were all at Padua. Shelley accepted this proposal, and wrote requesting Mary to join him there with the children, not knowing whether he was acting for good or harm, but looking forward to be scolded if he had done wrong, or kissed if right—the event would prove. The event did prove; but it was out of their power to rule it.
Mary had invited the Gisbornes to stay with her at the Baths. They arrived on August 25, but the circumstances seemed imperative for Mary to go to Este, and she left on the 31st with a servant, Paolo, as attendant. They were detained a day at Florence, and did not reach Este till poor little Clara was dangerously ill from dysentery, which reduced her to a state of fever and weakness. Mary endured the misery of an incompetent doctor at Este; neither had they confidence in the Paduan physician. Shelley proceeded to Venice to obtain further advice, and prepare for the arrival of his wife and child, writing from there that he felt somewhat uneasy, but trusted there was no cause for real anxiety. This arrangement made, Mary set out with her baby and Claire to meet Shelley at Padua, and then proceeded to Venice, Claire returning to mind William and Allegra at Este; and now Mary had to endure that terrible tension of mind, with her dying child in her arms, driving to Venice, the time remembered by her so well when, on the same route, nearly a quarter of a century later, each turn in the road and the very trees seemed as the most familiar objects of her daily life; for had they not been impressed on her mental vision by the strength of despair? The Austrian soldiers at the frontier could not detain them, though without passports, for even they would not prevent a dying child from being conveyed on a forlorn hope. Such grief could scarcely be rendered more or less acute by circumstances. They arrived at their inn in a gondola, but only for Clara to die in her mother's arms within an hour.
In this trial the Hoppners proved most kind friends, taking Mary to their house, and relieving the first hopelessness of grief by kindness, which it seemed ingratitude not to respond to. Mary, whatever she may have felt, knew that no expression of her feelings in her diary would nerve her to endure. She went about her daily occupations as usual. One idle day elapsed, after her little Clara had been buried on the Lido; we find her as usual reading, shopping, and seeing Byron, with whom she hoped to make better terms for Claire with regard to Allegra. There is a curious passage in a letter from Godwin to his daughter, illustrative of his own turn of mind, and not without some general truth:—"We seldom indulge long in depression and mourning except when we think secretly that there is something very refined in it, and that it does us honour."
On September 29, Shelley and Mary return to Este. Claire had taken the children to Padua, but returned the next day to the Villa I Cappuccini. In the evening they went to the Opera. Their house was most beautifully situated. Here Shelley wrote his "Lines among the Euganean Hills," for no intense feeling could come to the poet without the necessity of expressing himself in poetry; and it was during this September month that Shelley wrote the first act of his Prometheus Unbound. Mary revisited Venice with her husband, little William, and the nurse Elise, on October 12. The impression then formed of Byron and his surroundings was so painful as to render it a matter of surprise that they could think of returning Allegra to him; but her extreme youth was her safeguard in this respect, and Shelley returned to Este on September 24, to take Allegra a second time from her mother who, with all her love for her "darling," as she always wrote of her in the effaced passages of her diary, could not get over the insuperable difficulties of her birth. On January 22 of this same year Claire had entered in her diary the fact of its being Byron's (Albé's) birthday; a note carefully effaced soon after. Shelley and Mary having decided to spend the winter further south, after a few days of preparation they left Este on November 5, and spent the night at Ferrara, where they visited the relics of Ariosto and Tasso, and the dungeon where the latter was incarcerated. Thence to Bologna, where they endured much fatigue in the picture galleries, poor Shelley being obliged to confess he did not pretend to taste. From Bologna, by Faenza and Cesena, they followed the coast from Rimmi to Fano, and passed an uncomfortable night at an inn at Fossombrone among the Apennines. Mary was greatly impressed by the beauty and grandeur of Spoleto. The impressive falls at Terni are duly chronicled by her; and November 19 and 20 are spent in winding through the Apennines, and then crossing the solitude of the Roman Campagna, and then Rome is reached.
In Italy, where wonder succeeds wonder, and where no place is a mere repetition of another, Mary may well have been impressed by her first visit to the Eternal City. Here, in November, she was able to sit and sketch in the Coliseum with her child and her husband, who found the wonderful ruin a source of inspiration. But Rome was now only a resting-place on their road to still sunnier Naples; and on November 27 Shelley set out a day in advance of Mary and her child to secure rooms in Naples, where Mary arrived on December 1. In the best part of the city, facing the royal gardens in front of the marvellous bay, with Shelley for her guide, who himself made use of Madame de Staël's Corinne as a handbook, Livy for the antiquities, and Winckelmann for art, Mary could enjoy the sights of Naples as no ordinary sightseer would. December was devoted to expeditions—Baiæ, Vesuvius, and Pompeii. The day at Baiæ was perhaps the most delightful, with the return by moonlight in the boat to Naples. Vesuvius, with its stupendous spectacle as of heaven and hell made visible, naturally produced a profound impression, but it was a very tiring expedition, as apparently it was only Claire who had a chaise à porteurs for the ascent of the cone; Mary and Shelley rode on mules as far as they could go, and Claire was carried all the way in a chair—though this seems scarcely possible—from Resina. How Mary could walk through the cinders up the cone seems incomprehensible. She must have had great strength, as it is a trying task for a man, and no wonder Shelley, in spite of his pedestrian strength, was exhausted when they arrived at the hermitage of San Salvador. The winter at Naples seems to have been a trying one to Mary, in spite of sunshine and the beauties of Nature; for Shelley was in a state of depression, as is exemplified in the "Stanzas written in dejection near Naples." What the immediate cause of this was cannot be said; it seems to be one of the mysteries, or perhaps rather the one mystery, of Shelley's life. He asserted to Medwin that a lady, young, married, and of noble connections, had become infatuated with him, and declared her love of him on the eve of his departure for the Continent in 1816; that he had gently but firmly repulsed her; that she arrived in Naples on the day he did, and had soon afterwards died. It is suggested that a little girl who was left under his guardianship in Naples, and whom he spoke of as his poor Neapolitan, might possibly be the child of this lady; others doubt the story altogether, which is not to be wondered at, although nothing can be declared impossible in a life where truth is frequently so much stranger than romance.
Mary was also troubled while at Naples by her servants, an unusual subject with her; but Paolo, having gone far beyond the limits of cheating, was detected by Mary, and also obliged by her to marry Elise, whom he had betrayed. They left for Rome, but Paolo declared he would be revenged on the Shelleys, and wrote threatening letters, which a lawyer disposed of for a time. This is known to be the origin of later calumnies, which Mr. Jeaffreson has now carefully and finally refuted.
Mary, later, with the regret of love that would be all sufficient, wished that at Naples she had entered more into the cause of the grief, which Shelley had kept from her, in order not to add to the melancholy she was then feeling with regard to her father.
Before leaving Naples they succeeded in visiting the Greek ruins at
Paestum, which give still a fresh impression in Italy; and then, on
February 28, 1819, Mary takes leave of Naples, never to revisit it
with any of her companions of that time.
In Rome they found rooms in the Villa Parigi, but removed from them to the Palazzo Verospi on the Corso, and we soon find them busy exploring the treasures of Rome the inexhaustible. Here they had not to take fatiguing journeys as in Naples to visit the chief points of interest, for they were to be found at every turn. Visits to St. Peter's and the museum of the Vatican are mentioned; walks with Shelley to the Forum, the Capitol, and the Coliseum, which is visited and re-visited. Frequent visits are paid in the evening to the Signora Marianna Dionigi, and with her they hear Mass in St. Peter's, where the poor old Pope Pius VII was nearly dying. The Palazzo Doria and its picture gallery are examined, where the landscapes of Claude Lorraine particularly strike them. Then to the baths of Caracalla, where the romantic beauty of the ruins forms one of their chief attractions in Rome. They also take walks and drives in the Borghese Gardens. The statue of Pompey, at the base of which Cæsar fell, is not passed over—but it would be impossible to tell of all they saw and enjoyed in Rome. Mary made more acquaintances in Rome, nor did the English altogether neglect to call on Shelley. Mary also recommenced lessons in drawing, while Claire had singing lessons, and they met some celebrities at the Signora Dionigi's conversazioni. Altogether this early part of their stay in Rome was happy, but Shelley's health always fluctuating made them contemplate taking a house for the summer at Castellamare, as a doctor recommended this for him. But the days were hurrying towards a fresh calamity, for little William now fell ill, and we find the visits of a physician, Dr. Bell, chronicled, and on June 2nd three visits are noted. Claire helps to her utmost; Shelley does not close his eyes for sixty hours, and Mary, the hopes of whose life were bound up with the child, could only endure, watch the wasting of fever, and see the last of three perish on "Monday, June 7th, at noonday," as Claire enters in her diary. Mary and Shelley were deprived of their gentle, blue-eyed darling, by a stronger hand than that of the Court of Chancery, and little William was buried where Shelley was soon to follow, in the cemetery which "might make one in love with death."
CHAPTER X.
MARY'S DESPONDENCY AND BIRTH OF A SON.
Before the fatal illness of her child Willie, Mary had encountered an old friend in Rome, and had renewed her acquaintance with Miss Curran whom she had formerly known at her father's. Congenial tastes in drawing and painting drew these ladies together, and Miss Curran did or began portraits of Mary, Shelley, and, what was of more importance to them at the time, of little Willie. The portraits of Mary and of Shelley, unfinished, and by an amateur, are by no means satisfactory; certainly not giving in Mary's case an idea of the beauty and charm which are constantly referred to by her friends, and which seem to have endured up to the time when, much later, an attack of small-pox altered her appearance. The portrait of Mary, although not artistic, is interesting as painted from life. Her oval face is here given with the high forehead. The complexion described as delicate and white was not in the gift of Miss Curran, who was not a colourist. To depict the eyes grey, tending to brown near the iris, agrees with Shelley's, "brown" and Trelawny's "grey" eyes, but the beauty of expression is wanting. The mouth, thin and hard, might have caught a passing look, but certainly not what an artist would have wished to portray; while a certain stiffness of pose is not what one would expect in the high-strung, sensitive Mary Shelley. The beauty of gold-brown hair was not in the painter's power to catch. Mary was of middle height, tending towards short; her hands were considered very beautiful, and by some she was supposed to be given to displaying them, although concealing them would have been difficult and unnecessary. Her arms and neck were also beautiful. Leigh Hunt refers to her at the opera, décolletée, with white, gleaming, sloping shoulders. Her "voice the sweetest ever heard," added to her gifts of conversation, described as resembling her father's with an added softness of manner and charm of description, with elegance and correctness, devoid of reserve or affectation. Cyrus Redding, who much admired and esteemed her, obtained her opinion about Miss Curran's portrait of her husband, for his article in the Galignani edition of Shelley. She considered it by no means a good one, as unfinished, but with some striking points of resemblance. She consented to superintend the engraving from it for Galignani's volume, which was regarded as far more successful. Miss Curran kindly assisted with advice.
While these portraits were being executed Mary was gaining the sympathy of the painter, a boon soon much needed, for after the death of her third child her courage for a while broke down entirely. In a very delicate state of health at the time, she could not rouse herself to think of anything but her losses. With no other child needing her care, she could only abandon herself to inconsolable grief. Shelley felt that he was out of her life for the first time; that her heart was in Rome in the grave with her child. They revisited the Falls of Terni, but the spirit had fled from the waters. They pass through bustling Leghorn, and visit the Gisbornes, but the noise is intolerable, and Shelley, ever attentive in such matters, finds a house at a short distance in the country, the Villa Valsovano, down a quiet lane surrounded by a market garden. Olives, fig trees, peach trees, myrtles, alive at night with fire-flies, must have been soothing surroundings to the wounded Mary, to whom nature was ever a kind friend. Nor were they in solitude, for they were within visiting distance of friends at Leghorn.
Two months after her loss she recommences her diary on Shelley's birthday, this time not without a wail. She writes to Mrs. Hunt of the tears she constantly sheds, and confesses she has done little work since coming to Italy. She had read, however, several books of Livy, Antenor, Clarissa, some novels, the Bible, Lucan's Pharsalia, and Dante. Shelley is reading her Paradise Lost, and he is writing the Cenci, where
That fair, blue-eyed boy,
Who was the lodestar of your life,
Mary tells us refers to William. Shelley wrote that their house was a melancholy one, and only cheered by letters from England.
On September 18 Mary wrote to her friend, Miss Curran, that they were about to move, she knew not whither. Then Shelley, with Charles Clairmont, went to Florence and engaged rooms for six months, and at the end of September Shelley returned and took his wife by slow and easy stages to the Tuscan capital, for her health was then in a very delicate state for travelling. There, in the lovely city of Florence, on November 12, 1819, she gave birth to her son Percy Florence, who first broke the spell of unhappiness which had hung for the last five months like a cloud over them; he, as events proved, was to be her one comfort with her memories, when the supreme calamity of her life fell on her, and he was mercifully spared to be the solace of her later years.
CHAPTER XI.
GODWIN AND "VALPERGA."
At this time while political events were absorbing England, and Shelley was weaving them into poetry in Italy during the remainder of his residence in Florence, Godwin's personal difficulties were reaching their climax. When he lost, in an action for the rent of his house, Shelley came to his help, but in some way Godwin expected more than he received, and became very unpleasant in his correspondence, so much so that Shelley had to beg him not to write to Mary on these subjects, as her health was not then, in October 1819, able to bear the strain, and the subject of money was not a fitting one to be pressed on her by him. Mary had not the disposal of money; if she had she would give it all to her father. He assured Godwin that the four or five thousand pounds already expended on him might have made him comfortable for the remainder of his life. Mrs. Godwin, naturally, would not hear of abandoning the Skinner Street business, as being the only provision for herself when Godwin should die. It is extremely painful at this stage of Godwin's career to witness the lowering effects of his wife's smaller nature upon him, as he certainly allowed himself to be unduly influenced by her excited and not always truthful views, as known since the early days of their married life. We have Mrs. Gisborne's diary showing how Mrs. Godwin could not endure to see anyone in 1820 who had an attachment for Mary, whom (as Godwin told Mrs. Gisborne) she considered her greatest enemy; and although he described his wife as of "the most irritable disposition possible," he listened to, and repeated her conjectures to the disparagement of Shelley and Mary at the time when she did not hesitate to accept with her husband the large sums of money which Shelley with difficulty raised for them. All the facts shown in this diary prove that Mary and Fanny must have had a sufficiently trying life at home to account for the result in either case, especially when we consider that Claire and her brother Charles both preferred to leave Godwin's house on the first possible occasion, Charles having left for France immediately after Mary's and Claire's departure with Shelley. William alone remained at home, but four years passed in a boarding school at Greenwich, from 1814, must have helped him to endure the discomforts of the time. Before Mrs. Gisborne's return to Italy Godwin gave her a detailed account, in writing, of his money transactions with Shelley, which had become very painful to both. In January, 1820, Florence proving unsuitable for Shelley's health, they left for Pisa, the mild climate of which city made it a favourite resort of the poet during most of the short remainder of his life. Mary, ever hospitable, although, as Shelley said, the bills for printing his poems must be paid for by stinting himself in meat and drink, hoped that Mrs. Gisborne would have stayed with them during her husband's visit to England in 1820, as they had moved into a pleasant apartment in March. This idea was not carried out. About this time Mary and Claire, both with their own absorbing anxieties, became again irksome to each other. Mary found relief when Claire was absent, and Claire notes how "the Claire and the Mai find something to fight about every day," a way of putting it which indicates differences, but certainly no grave cause of disturbance. This was after their removal to Leghorn, where they went towards the end of June to be near the lawyer on account of Paolo. At the beginning of August the heat at Leghorn caused the Shelleys to migrate to the baths of San Giuliano, where Shelley found a very pleasant house, Casa Prini. The moderate rent suited their slender purse, which had so many outside calls upon it.
In October Claire's departure for Florence, as governess in the family of Professor Bojti, where she went by the advice of her friend Mrs. Mason, formerly Lady Mountcashell, brought an end to her permanent residence with the Shelleys, although she was still to look upon their house as her home, and she visited them either for her pleasure or to assist them. Her absence from her friends gives us the advantage of letters from them, letters full of a certain exaggeration of affection and sympathy from Shelley, who felt more acutely than Mary that Claire might be unhappy under a strange roof. Mary, less anxious on those grounds, writes about the operas she has seen, giving good descriptions of them. One of her letters is full of anxiety as to Allegra, who has been placed in the convent of Bagnacavallo by Byron. She feels that the child ought, as soon as possible, to be taken out of the hands of so "remorseless and unprincipled a man"; but advises caution and waiting for a favourable opportunity. She hopes that he may be returning to England. "He may be reconciled with his wife." At any rate, Bagnacavallo is high and in a healthy position, quite different from the dirty canals of Venice, which might injure any child's health. Mary thus tries to console Claire, who is planning, in her imagination, various ways of getting at her child, and corresponding with and seeing Shelley on the subject. Mary dissuades Claire from attempting anything in the spring—their unlucky time. It was in the second spring Claire met L. B., &c.; the third they went to Marlow—no wise thing, at least; the fourth, uncomfortable in London; fifth, their Roman misery; the sixth, Paolo at Pisa; the seventh, a mixture of Emilia and a Chancery suit. Mary acknowledges this superstitious feeling is more in Claire's line than her own, but thinks it worth considering; but this letter to Claire carries us a year in advance.
During the summer of 1820 Mary had some of the delightful times she loved so dearly, of poetic wanderings with Shelley through woods and by the river, one of which she remembers long afterwards, when, making her note to the "Skylark," she recalls how she and Shelley, wandering through the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the firefly, heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems. Precious memories which helped her through many after years devoid of the sympathy she yearned for. At the Baths they had the pleasure of a visit from Medwin, who gave a description of how Shelley, his wife and child, had to escape from the upper windows of their house in a boat when the canal overflowed and inundated the valley. Mary speaks of it as a very picturesque sight, with the herdsmen driving their cattle.
During the short absence of Shelley, when he took Claire to Florence, Mary was occupied planning her novel of Valperga, for which she studied Villani's chronicle and Sismondi's history.
On leaving the baths of San Giuliano, after the floods, the Shelleys returned to Pisa, where they passed the late autumn and winter of 1820 and the spring of 1821. Here they made more acquaintances than heretofore, Professor Pacchiani, called also "Il Diavolo," introducing them to the Prince Mavrocordato, the Princess Aigiropoli, the improvisatore Sgricci, Taafe, and last, not least, to Emilia Viviani. Here Mary continued to write Valperga, and pursued her Latin, Spanish, and Greek studies; the latter the Prince Mavrocordato assisted her with, as Mary writes to Mrs. Gisborne: "Do not you envy me my luck? that, having begun Greek, an amiable, young, agreeable, and learned Greek prince comes every morning to give me a lesson of an hour and a half."
But the person of most moment at this time was undoubtedly the Contessina Emilia Viviani, whom, accompanied by Pacchiani, Claire, then Mary, and then Shelley, visited at the Convent of Sant' Anna. This beautiful girl, with profuse black hair, Grecian profile, and dreamy eyes, placed in the convent till she should be married, to satisfy the jealousy of her stepmother, became naturally an object of extreme interest to the Shelleys. Many visits were paid, and Mary invited her to stay with them at Christmas. Shelley was convinced that she had great talent, if not genius. Shelley and Mary sent her books, and Claire gave her English lessons at her convent, while she was taking a holiday from the Bojtis. Many letters are preserved from the beautiful Emilia to Shelley and Mary, letters which, translated into English, seem overflowing with sentiment and affection, but which to Italians would indicate rather the style cultivated by Italian ladies, which, to this day, seems one of their chief accomplishments if they are not gifted with a voice to sing. To Mary she complains of a certain coldness, but certainly this could not be brought to the charge of Shelley, who was now inspired to write his Epipsychidion. To him Emilia was as the Skylark, an emanation of the beautiful; but to Mary for a time, during Shelley's transitory adoration, the event evidently became painful, with all her philosophy and belief in her husband. She could not regard the lovely girl who took walks with him as the skylark that soared over their heads; and the Epipsychidion was evidently not a favourite poem of Mary. Surely we may ascribe to this time, in the spring of 1821, the poem written by Shelley to Lieutenant Williams, whose acquaintance he had made in January. There is no month affixed to—
The Serpent is cast out from Paradise….
and it might well apply, with its reference to "my cold home," to the time when Mary, in depression and pique, did not always give her likewise sensitive husband all the welcome he was accustomed to, and Shelley took refuge in a poem by way of letter; for this is the time referred to by Mary in her letter to Claire as their seventh unfortunate spring—a mixture of Emilia and a Chancery suit! It was not till the next spring that Emilia was married, and led her husband and mother-in-law, as Mary puts it, "a devil of a life." We have only to be grateful to Emilia for having inspired one of the most wondrous poems in any language.
The Williamses, to whom Shelley's poem is addressed, were met by them in January. Mary writes of the fascinating Jane (Mrs. Williams) that she is certainly very pretty, but wants animation; while Shelley writes that she is extremely pretty and gentle, but apparently not very clever; that he liked her much, but had only seen her for an hour.
Mary, among her multifarious reading, notes an article by Medwin on Animal Magnetism, and Shelley, who suffered severely at this time, shortly afterwards tried its effect through Medwin. The latter bored Mary excessively; possibly she found the magnetising a wearisome operation, although Shelley is said to have been relieved by it. His highly nervous temperament was evidently impressed. When Medwin left, Mrs. Williams undertook to carry on the cure.
The Chancery suit referred to by Mary was an attempt between Sir Timothy's attorney and Shelley's to throw their affairs into Chancery, causing great alarm to them in Italy, till Horace Smith came to their rescue in England, and with indignant letters settled the inconsiderate litigation.
Mrs. Shelley, in her Notes to Poems in 1821, recounts how Shelley was nearly drowned, by a flat boat which he had recently acquired being overturned in the canal near Pisa, when returning from Leghorn. Williams upset the boat by standing up and holding the mast. Henry Reveley, Mrs. Gisborne's son, rescued Shelley and brought him to land, where he fainted with the cold. At this same time, at Pisa, Mary had to consider with Shelley a matter of great importance to Claire.
Byron, now at Ravenna, had placed Allegra, as already stated, in the convent of Bagnacavallo. He told Mrs. Hoppner that she had become so unmanageable by servants that it was necessary to have her under better care than he could secure, and he considered that it would be preferable to bring her up as a Roman Catholic with an Italian education, as in that way, with a fortune of five or six thousand pounds, she would marry an Italian and be provided for, whereas she would always hold an anomalous position in England. At this proposal Claire was extremely indignant; but Shelley and Mary took the opposite view, and considered that Byron acted for the best, as the convent was in a healthy position, and the nuns would be kind to the child. This idea of Mary would naturally be agreed with by some, and disapproved of by others; but at that time there was certainly no cause to indicate that Bagnacavallo would be more fatal to Allegra than any other place, although Claire's apprehensions were cruelly realised. From this time Claire and Byron wrote letters of recrimination to each other, which, considering Byron's obduracy against the feelings of the mother, Shelley and Mary came to hold as tyrannically unfeeling.
In May, Shelley and his wife and son returned to the baths of San Giuliano, and while here Shelley's Adonais was published. In 1820, when the Shelleys heard of Keats's fatal illness from Mrs. Gisborne, she having met him the day after he had received his death warrant from the doctor, they were the first to beg him to join them at Pisa. A small touch of poetical criticism, however, appears to have weighed more with the sensitive Keats than these friendly considerations for his health, and as he was about to accompany his friend Mr. Severn to Rome, he did not accept their kind offer, though in all probability Pisa would have been better for him.