Mrs. Shelley by Lucy M. Rossetti

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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-fe_ 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.

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