Shelley: The Pursuit

by Richard Holmes

  At Bath, Shelley had time to take in and read much of the liberal press, including the Examiner and Cobbett’s Register. More and more, he was drawn back into the reform movement. The revival of the political impulse, which had begun at the end of the summer in Switzerland, showed in the increasing space it took up in his letters. Throughout England generally there was a powerful renaissance of the reform movement in the autumn of 1816. Men like Cobbett, Henry Hunt the orator, Francis Burdett the MP for Westminster and Francis Place the radical, re-emerged as public leaders who were prepared to encourage at the grass roots a new pattern of mass meetings and local associations. New figures also arose, who had not been soured by the experiences of the nineties, and believed passionately in the processes of self-education and democratic reform. These were men like Samuel Bamford the radical weaver from Manchester, and Richard Carlile the London publisher. They were not revolutionaries in the conspiratorial or Jacobin sense, though they held the monarchy and Liverpool’s administration in contempt. They did not believe in the Tory nightmares of mass violence of Parisian-style revolution, but they were doggedly prepared to go to jail in the name of democratic rights that had not yet become English laws. They also believed in the power of class solidarity in a new way. Shelley clearly saw a major confrontation on the horizon, and described his attitude, in terms of deliberate moderation, in his letters to Byron.

  Of course you have received intimations of the tumultuous state of England. The whole fabric of society presents a most threatening aspect. What is most ominous of an approaching change is the strength which the popular party have suddenly acquired, and the importance which the violence of demagogues has assumed. But the people appear calm, and steady even under situations of great excitement; and reform may come without revolution. Parliament will meet on 28th January; until which — for the populace have committed no violence — they only meet, resolve and petition — all classes will probably remain in a sullen and moody expectation of what the session will produce. The taxes, it is said, cannot be collected — if so, the national debt cannot be payed — and are not the landed proprietors virtually pledged to the payment? I earnestly hope that, without such an utter overthrow as should leave us the prey of anarchy, and give us illiterate demagogues for masters, a most radical reform of the institutions of England may result from the approaching context.4

  Shelley’s caveats are almost as interesting as his hopes. His distrust of democratic leadership — automatically ‘demagogic’ — was still typical of the Whig-liberal pattern which he himself had rejected; and his attitude to the arm-lever which the tax-payers could assert over the landowners was still markedly ambiguous. Such political attitudes remained in a state of flux, and only matured slowly and painfully. But his feeling that reform must be ‘most radical’ never changed; nor his fear that a revolution, though he himself might support it in principle, could easily overreach itself and run through the grim dialectical pattern exemplified by the Paris Revolution: anarchy followed by military dictatorship. But even this fear itself matured, for finally Shelley was to recognize that under certain degrees of social extremity the risk of anarchy, and even civil war, not only could be but must be embraced, in order to prevent the moral and political suppression of an entire stratum of the population.

  Some light is thrown on Shelley’s more private feelings in this matter, in the remarkable friendship with Leigh Hunt which sprang up at the end of November and the beginning of December. The opening was not altogether auspicious. A letter from Hunt arrived at Bath on 1 December, which apparently stated that Hunt had mislaid the manuscript of the ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’, though he wished to publish it in the Examiner. At the same time Hunt asked Shelley for help in a financial matter. From Shelley’s cheques,5 it would appear that Hunt had asked for a loan, rather than an outright gift, probably in aid of a reform cause or prison fund that he was organizing, and Shelley immediately sent fifty pounds, explaining that it came from ‘a friend’ who required no interest. Hunt then wrote back, feeling slightly awkward at Shelley’s ‘precipitancy’ and insisting that at least he would pay interest in a proper businesslike fashion.6 His letter contained five pounds. As Hunt had just given Shelley a favourable notice in the famous Young Poets issue of the Examiner on 1 December, which also mentioned Keats and John Reynolds, he found the situation was potentially embarrassing. But Shelley was in no way abashed. He wrote back on the 8th that he had actually missed the current number of the Examiner by ‘some fatality’, and that though his friend ‘accepts the interest & is contented to be a Hebrew’,7 he was himself returning a gift of five pounds. This happened conveniently to match Hunt’s ten per cent ‘interest’ on the loan. Shelley’s two cheques were cashed on the 9th and the 19th, the fifty pounds last, suggesting that it had indeed been transferred to some other account or fund. But how far Shelley was making a personal payment to Hunt remains a mystery, for Hunt had also mentioned personal ‘distress’.

  The exciting breakthrough of a favourable review in the Examiner, and the kindly interest of an important editor, led Shelley to unburden himself in the long personal letter of the 8th. Compared with the elegant formality of his letters to Byron, and the icy business tone of his exchanges with Godwin, the correspondence with Hunt was from the start passionately confidential. The letter was written from Peacock’s house at Marlow, where Shelley had gone to choose a new house, leaving Mary and Claire at Bath.

  Shelley wrote:

  I am undeceived in the belief that I have powers deeply to interest, or substantially to improve, mankind. How far my conduct and my opinions have rendered the zeal & ardour with which I have engaged in the attempt ineffectual, I know not . . . . But thus much I do not seek to conceal from myself, that I am an outcast from human society; my name is execrated by all who understand its entire import, — by those very beings whose happiness I ardently desire. — I am an object of compassion to a few more benevolent than the rest, all else abhor and avoid me. With you, & perhaps some others (tho in a less degree, I fear) my gentleness & sincerity finds favour, because they are themselves gentle & sincere; they believe in self-devotion and generosity because they are themselves generous & self-devoted. Perhaps I should have shrunk from persisting in the task which I had undertaken in early life, of opposing myself, in these evil times and among these evil tongues, to what I esteem misery & vice; if [so] I must have lived in the solitude of the heart.8

  This personal confession is no less remarkable for the fact that it was sent to a man that Shelley had only once seen, more than five years before. It is to be classed with Shelley’s introductory letter to Godwin, written from Keswick in 1812. Shelley still identified himself primarily as a reformer, although the persecution of the world in general had replaced the persecution of his father in particular. Like his letter to Godwin, it was a leap in the dark towards a man he admired intellectually. Like Godwin, though to a lesser extent, Hunt was to accept the role of mentor and father figure. In return, though with infinitely more grace than Godwin, he received financial aid.

  While Shelley stayed house-hunting in Marlow, Mary wrote with a mixture of sourness and sentimentality she frequently employed when unsure of herself: ‘Ah — were you indeed a winged Elf and could soar over mountains & seas and could pounce on the little spot — A house with a lawn a river or lake — noble trees and divine mountains that should be our little mousehole to retire to. But never mind this — give me a garden & absentia Clariae and I will thank my love for many favours.’9

  For two days, between the 11th and 14th, Shelley left Marlow and travelled to the Vale of Health in Hampstead, where he was eagerly welcomed by Hunt, his wife Marianne, the children and also at least two members of the Hunt circle, Horace Smith and John Keats. Hunt, though he was an editor, essayist and poet of some distinction, had one overwhelming art: the art of hospitality. Shelley travelled back to Bath on the 15th in the highest spirits, his entrance into London literary and liberal circles suddenly and delightfully
assured. Hunt moreover promised to review Alastor and publish the ‘Hymn’. The latter appeared in the Examiner for 19 January 1817.

  But even as Shelley returned with his good news to Mary and Claire at Bath, the second blow fell. His old publisher Thomas Hookham wrote from London in reply to a casual inquiry which Shelley had made about Harriet and the children in a letter of mid-November. Shelley had not bothered to follow up this letter, busy as he was with Mary and Claire and Hunt. Now Hookham’s answer finally arrived. In September Harriet had left the children with their grandparents at Chapel Street and taken lodgings in Chelsea near the barracks, under the name of Harriet Smith. A month later, on 9 November, she had disappeared; her body had been discovered in the lower reach of the Serpentine on 10 December. On receiving this news, Shelley went instantly to London: the jury had returned a kindly verdict of ‘found drowned’, but the Times had stated bluntly that the ‘respectable lady with an expensive ring on her finger’ was ‘far advanced in pregnancy’ and had committed suicide. Her landlady at Elizabeth Street also testified to Harriet’s solitary state, her depression and her appearance of being in the family way.

  The death of Harriet presented Shelley with one of the most severe emotional crises of his life. The circumstances were so appalling, and Harriet was still officially his wife, with all that that implied in terms of social and moral responsibility. A confrontation with the Westbrooks was immediately necessary in order to obtain custody of the children, but it was soon clear that this would be fiercely contested. Further, there was the sudden alteration of his position with regards to Mary, who knew that if she was to marry Shelley the critical moment had now arrived. Enormous pressures were put on him from every side. In the event Shelley reacted, as he always did in emergency, with energy and determination. His first move, on the 15th, was to call upon the aid and friendship of Hunt, who knew nothing of Harriet or the Westbrooks. Hunt responded magnificently and stood by Shelley during the last fortnight of the year with unfailing sympathy and kindness. Shelley stayed with the Hunts at the Vale of Health for much of the time, and later when Mary came to London she also stayed with them. Shelley’s second cheque to Hunt, for fifty pounds, is dated 18 December.

  Shelley consulted with his solicitors immediately, and was told that legalizing his union with Mary would make the custody of the children automatic. Otherwise Longdill saw severe complications and the need to proceed with ‘utmost caution and resolution’. Shelley did not realize at the time that his marriage to Mary would make little difference if the Westbrooks decided to contest. After talking the implications over with Hunt, Shelley wrote decisively to Mary on the 16th. ‘I told [Longdill] that I was under contract of marriage to you; &he said that in such an event all pretences to detain the children would cease. Hunt said very delicately that this would be soothing intelligence for you.’10 Mrs Godwin, in a letter years later, endorsed by Claire, wrote to her friend Lady Mountcashell that Mary forced Shelley into the marriage by threatening suicide: a kind of reversal of the situation in July 1814. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Mary would resort to such a melodramatic gesture, and Mrs Godwin’s evidence was notoriously unreliable about Mary whom she hated. Yet there is a certain psychological truth in the accusation, and to Claire, Shelley was to write at the time in very different and mocking tones about the marriage. Claire herself regarded the marriage as unnecessary. It is characteristic of Shelley that he showed quite different aspects of himself and his feelings during this crisis to his various friends.

  No difference is more marked than over the vexed question of blame and responsibility for Harriet’s death. In a letter to Mary, he repudiated all feelings of guilt, and turned them on to the Westbrooks with a blind fury reminiscent of some of his letters of 1811. Considerable dispute has arisen of the authenticity of the manuscript, and Lady Shelley, who could never accept this facet of Shelley’s personality, became involved with printing a forgery.[1] Shelley wrote to Mary: ‘It seems that this poor woman [Harriet] — the most innocent of her abhorred & unnatural family — was driven from her father’s house, & descended the steps of prostitution until she lived with a groom of the name of Smith, who deserting her, she killed herself. — There can be no question that the beastly viper her sister [Eliza], unable to gain profit from her connection with me — has secured to herself the fortune of the old man — who is now dying — by the murder of this poor creature. Everything tends to prove, however, that beyond the mere shock of so hideous a catastrophe having fallen on a human being once so nearly connected with me, there would, in any case, have been little to regret. Hookham, Longdill, — every one does me full justice; — bears testimony to the uprightness & liberality of my conduct to her: — There is but one voice in condemnation of the detestable Westbrooks.’11 That Shelley should write like this was perfectly in character. The only doubtful thing is whether he really had any idea of the care and affection the detestable Westbrooks had lavished on the children when Harriet could not longer cope; or of the loyal efforts that Eliza had made to keep Harriet’s illegitimate pregnancy a secret and to help her with finding decent lodgings.

  It was Claire alone of the intimate Shelley circle who came to view these circumstances in a reasonably balanced light.

  After calling on Eliza unsuccessfully twice on the following day, 17 December, Shelley wrote to her expressing his feelings in a totally different manner. It seems from the way in which he discussed only the eldest child Ianthe, that the Westbrooks had offered him the uncontested custody of little Charles, provided he would respect a last wish which Harriet had expressed that he should allow Ianthe to continue to live with Eliza. It seems certain that they must have shown Shelley Harriet’s last letter, addressed to Eliza and with clear indications that she was about to commit suicide; for it contributed to their case over the children. But if Shelley saw it, he was unmoved. It was, nevertheless, a painfully moving and absolutely direct appeal. The central paragraph read: ‘My dear Bysshe, let me conjure you by the rememberance of our days of happiness to grant my last wish, Do not take your innocent child from Eliza who has been more than I have, who has watched over her with such unceasing care. Do not refuse my last request. I never could refuse you & if you had never left me I might have lived, but as it is I freely forgive you & may you enjoy that happiness which you have deprived me of. There is your beautiful boy. Oh! be careful of him, & his love may prove one day a rich reward. As you form his infant mind so will you reap the fruits hereafter. Now comes the sad task of saying farewell — oh! I must be quick. God bless and watch over you all. You dear Bysshe & you dear Eliza. May all happiness attend ye both is the last wish of her who loved ye more than all others.’12 Perhaps Shelley could not accept the request so clearly and poignantly made, without also accepting the accusation of guilt, a grim piece of blackmail from beyond the grave, inextricably bound up in it. At any rate, Shelley was adamant towards this proposal, though quite prepared to absolve the Westbrooks from blameworthy conduct. He was even prepared to accept that he and Mary had some responsibility. The volte face is indeed remarkable. Shelley wrote to Eliza Westbrook:

  You will spare me & yourself useless struggles on this occasion when you learn, that there is no earthly consideration which would induce me to forgo the exclusive & entire charge of my child. She has only one parent, & that parent, if he could ever be supposed to have forgotten them,[2] — is awakened to a sense of his duties & his claims which at whatever price must be asserted & performed . . . . As it is, allow me to assure you that I give no faith to any of the imputations generally cast on your conduct or that of Mr Westbrook towards the unhappy victim. I cannot help thinking that you might have acted more judiciously but I do not doubt that you intended well — My friend Mr Leigh Hunt, will take charge of my children & prepare them for their residence with me. I cannot expect that your feelings towards the lady whose union with me you may excusably regard as the cause of your sister’s ruin should permit you to mention her with the honour with which Ianthe
must be accustomed to regard the wife of her father’s heart.13

  Mary Godwin herself might have been more than surprised to find Shelley now describing the Westbrooks’ view of her guilt ‘excusable’.

  Shelley’s diplomacy however came to nothing as far as the Westbrooks were concerned. If they did ever offer him the uncontested custody of Charles, the offer was now withdrawn. Hunt, and others, may have rightly urged that the sanest course was, in the end, to draw a line and to start again with Mary and not look back. Perhaps they were right. He decided to marry Mary at once, and then fight for his children in the courts.

  On 30 December, Shelley and Mary were married at St Mildred’s Church, Bread Street in the City. They had dined, for the first time, at Skinner Street on the previous evening, and Godwin was present and beaming at the church. ‘Call on Mildred’ he entered in his diary, and wrote self-satisfied letters to his friends, stressing Shelley’s family and wealth. Armed now with legitimacy to fight the law, Shelley returned immediately with Mary to Bath. Ahead of him, a letter reached Claire which suggests at least a touch of cynicism about what he had done. He seemed to be admitting her into confidences he had not revealed to Mary. ‘Dearest Claire . . . Thank you too, my kind girl, for not expressing much of what you must feel — the loneliness and the low spirits which arise from being entirely left. Nothing could be more provoking than to find all this unnecessary. However, they will now be satisfied and quiet.’ Shelley’s ‘they’ is clearly the Godwins, but it is not evident if he included Mary among their number. He appeared to be referring to the ‘necessity’ of marriage in order to secure Ianthe and Charles legally. He implied to Claire that this, beyond anything else, was why he succumbed a second time to an institution which he still in theory rejected. He continued: ‘. . . The ceremony, so magical in its effects, was undergone this morning at St Mildred’s Church in the City. Mrs G. and G. were both present, and appeared to feel no little satisfaction. Indeed Godwin throughout has shown the most polished and cautious attentions to me and Mary. He seems to think no kindness too great in compensation for what has past. I confess I am not entirely deceived by this, though I cannot make my vanity wholly insensible to certain attentions paid in a manner studiously flattering. Mrs G. presents herself to me in her real attributes of affectation, prejudice, and heartless pride.’14