Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  I have forgotten the intermediate lines. But he died early, of a disease of the lungs. The climate did not suit him, and he exposed himself to it incautiously.

  Shelley returned to London shortly before Christmas, then took a furnished house for two or three months at Windsor, visiting London occasionally. In March, 1814, he married Harriet a second time, according to the following certificate: —

  MARRIAGES IN MARCH 1814.

  164. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Harriet Shelley (formerly Harriet Westbrook, Spinster, a Minor), both of this Parish, were remarried in this Church by Licence (the parties having been already married to each other according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of Scotland), in order to obviate all doubts that have arisen, or shall or may arise, touching or concerning the validity of the aforesaid Marriage (by and with the consent of John Westbrook, the natural and lawful father of the said Minor), this Twenty-fourth day of March, in the Year 1814.

  It is, therefore, not correct to say that ‘estrangements which had been slowly growing came to a crisis towards the close of 1813. The date of the above certificate is conclusive on the point. The second marriage could not have taken place under such circumstances. Divorce would have been better for both parties, and the dissolution of the first marriage could have been easily obtained in Scotland.

  There was no estrangement, no shadow of a thought of separation, till Shelley became acquainted, not long after the second marriage, with the lady who was subsequently his second wife.

  The separation did not take place by mutual consent. I cannot think that Shelley ever so represented it. He never did so to me: and the account which Harriet herself gave me of the entire proceeding was decidedly contradictory of any such supposition.

  He might well have said, after first seeing Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, ‘Ut vidi! ut peril!’ Nothing that I ever read in tale or history could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouring when, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him in London. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he was not then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind ‘suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection’. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and said: ‘I never part from this.’ He added: ‘I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles :

  Man’s happiest lot is not to be:

  And when we tread life’s thorny steep,

  Most blest are they, who earliest free

  Descend to death’s eternal sleep.’

  Again, he said more calmly: ‘Every one who knows me must know that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriet is a noble animal, but she can do neither.’ I said, ‘It always appeared to me that you were very fond of Harriet.’ Without affirming or denying this, he answered: ‘But you did not know how I hated her sister.’

  The term ‘noble animal’ he applied to his wife, in conversation with another friend now living, intimating that the nobleness which he thus ascribed to her would induce her to acquiesce in the inevitable transfer of his affections to their new shrine. She did not so acquiesce, and he cut the Gordian knot of the difficulty by leaving England with Miss Godwin on the 28th of July, 1814.

  Shortly after this I received a letter from Harriet, wishing to see me. I called on her at her father’s house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. She then gave me her own account of the transaction, which, as I have said, decidedly contradicted the supposition of anything like separation by mutual consent.

  She at the same time gave me a description, by no means flattering, of Shelley’s new love, whom I had not then seen. I said, ‘If you have described her correctly, what could he see in her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘but that her name was Mary, and not only Mary, but Mary Wollstonecraft.’

  The lady had nevertheless great personal and intellectual attractions, though it is not to be wondered at that Harriet could not see them.

  I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such conduct are held most in honour.

  Mr. Hogg says: ‘Shelley told me his friend Robert Southey once said to him, “A man ought to be able to live with any woman. You see that I can, and so ought you. It comes to pretty much the same thing, I apprehend. There is no great choice or difference.”’ — Hogg: vol i, p. 423. Any woman, I suspect, must have been said with some qualification. But such an one as either of them had first chosen, Southey saw no reason to change.

  Shelley gave me some account of an interview he had had with Southey. It was after his return from his first visit to Switzerland, in the autumn of 1814. I forget whether it was in town or country; but it was in Southey’s study, in which was suspended a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraff. Whether Southey had been in love with this lady, is more than I know. That he had devotedly admired her is clear from his Epistle to Amos Cottle, prefixed to the latter’s Icelandic Poetry (1797); in which, after describing the scenery of Norway, he says: —

  Scenes like these Have almost lived before me, when I gazed

  Upon their fair resemblance traced by him,

  Who sung the banished man of Ardebeil;

  Or to the eye of Fancy held by her,

  Who among women left no equal mind

  When from this world she passed; and I could weep

  To think that she is to the grave gone down!

  Where a note names Mary Wollstonecraft, the allusion being to her Letters from Norway.

  Shelley had previously known Southey, and wished to renew or continue friendly relations; but Southey was repulsive. He pointed to the picture, and expressed his bitter regret that the daughter of that angelic woman should have been so misled. It was most probably on this occasion that he made the remark cited by Mr. Hogg: his admiration of Mary Wollstonecraft may have given force to the observation: and as he had known Harriet, he might have thought that, in his view of the matter, she was all that a husband could wish for.

  Few are now living who remember Harriet Shelley. I remember her well, and will describe her to the best of my recollection. She had a good figure, light, active, and graceful. Her features were regular and well proportioned. Her hair was light brown, and dressed with taste and simplicity. In her dress she was truly simplex munditiis. Her complexion was beautifully transparent; the tint of the blush rose shining through the lily. The tone of her voice was pleasant; her speech the essence of frankness and cordiality; her spirits always cheerful; her laugh spontaneous, hearty, and joyous. She was well educated. She read agreeably and intelligently. She wrote only letters, but she wrote them well. Her manners were good; and her whole aspect and demeanour such manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature, that to be once in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes. If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed the change of scene.

  That Shelley’s second wife was intellectually better suited to him than his first, no one who knew them both will deny; and that a man, who lived so totally out of the ordinary world and in a world of ideas, needed such an ever-present sympathy more than the general run of men, must also be admitted; but Southey, who did not want an intellectual wife, and was contented with his own, may well have thought that Shelley had equal reason to seek no change.

  After leaving England, in 1814, the newly-affianced lovers took a tour on the Continent. He wrote to me several letters from Switzerland, which were subsequently published, together with a Six Weeks’ Tour, written in the form of a journal by the lady with whom his fate was thenceforward indissolubly bound. I was introduced to her on their return.

  The
rest of 1814 they passed chiefly in London. Perhaps this winter in London was the most solitary period of Shelley’s life. I often passed an evening with him at his lodgings, and I do not recollect ever meeting any one there, excepting Mr. Hogg. Some of his few friends of the preceding year had certainly at that time fallen off from him. At the same time he was short of money, and was trying to raise some on his expectations, from ‘Jews and their fellow- Christians’, as Lord Byron says. One day, as we were walking together on the banks of the Surrey Canal, and discoursing of Wordsworth, and quoting some of his verses, Shelley suddenly said to me: ‘Do you think Wordsworth could have written such poetry, if he had ever had dealings with money-lenders?’ His own example, however, proved that the association had not injured his poetical faculties.

  The canal in question was a favourite walk with us. The Croydon Canal branched off from it, and passed very soon into wooded scenery. The Croydon Canal is extinct, and has given place to the, I hope, more useful, but certainly less picturesque, railway. Whether the Surrey exists, I do not know. He had a passion for sailing paper-boats, which he indulged on this canal, and on the Serpentine river. The best spot he had ever found for it was a large pool of transparent water, on a heath above Bracknell, with determined borders free from weeds, which admitted of launching the miniature craft on the windward, and running round to receive it on the leeward, side. On the Serpentine, he would sometimes launch a boat constructed with more than usual care, and freighted with halfpence. He delighted to do this in the presence of boys, who would run round to meet it, and when it landed in safety, and the boys scrambled for their prize, he had difficulty in restraining himself from shouting as loudly as they did. The river was not suitable to this amusement, nor even Virginia Water, on which he sometimes practised it; but the lake was too large to allow of meeting the landing. I sympathized with him in this taste: I had it before I knew him: I am not sure that I did not originate it with him; for which I should scarcely receive the thanks of my friend, Mr. Hogg, who never took any pleasure in it, and cordially abominated it, when, as frequently happened, on a cold winter day, in a walk from Bishopgate over Bagshot Heath, we came on a pool of water, which Shelley would not part from till he had rigged out a flotilla from any unfortunate letters he happened to have in his pocket. Whatever may be thought of this amusement for grown gentlemen, it was at least innocent amusement, and not mixed up with any ‘sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.’

  In the summer of 1815 Shelley took a furnished house at Bishopgate, the eastern entrance of Windsor Park, where he resided till the summer of 1816. At this time he had, by the sacrifice of a portion of his expectations, purchased an annuity of £1,000 a year from his father, who had previously allowed him £200.

  I was then living at Marlow, and frequently walked over to pass a few days with him. At the end of August 1815 we made an excursion on the Thames to Lechlade, in Gloucestershire, and as much higher as there was water to float our skiff. It was a dry season, and we did not get much beyond Inglesham Weir, which was not then, as now, an immovable structure, but the wreck of a movable weir, which had been subservient to the navigation, when the river had been, as it had long ceased to be, navigable to Cricklade. A solitary sluice was hanging by a chain, swinging in the wind and creaking dismally. Our voyage terminated at a spot where the cattle stood entirely across the stream, with the water scarcely covering their hoofs. We started from, and returned to, Old Windsor, and our excursion occupied about ten days. This was, I think, the origin of Shelley’s taste for boating, which he retained to the end of his life. On our way up, at Oxford, he was so much out of order that he feared being obliged to return. He had been living chiefly on tea and bread and butter, drinking occasionally a sort of spurious lemonade, made of some powder in a box, which, as he was reading at the time the Tale of a Tub, he called the powder of pimperlimpimp. He consulted a doctor, who may have done him some good, but it was not apparent. I told him: ‘If he would allow me to prescribe for him, I would set him to rights’. He asked: ‘What would be your prescription?’ I said: ‘Three mutton chops, well peppered’. He said: ‘Do you really think so?’ I said: ‘I am sure of it’. He took the prescription; the success was obvious and immediate. He lived in my way for the rest of our expedition, rowed vigorously, was cheerful, merry, overflowing with animal spirits, and had certainly one week of thorough enjoyment of life. We passed two nights in a comfortable inn at Lechlade, and his lines: A Summer Evening on the Thames at Lechlade, were written then and there. Mrs. Shelley (the second, who always bore his name), who was with us, made a diary of the little trip, which I suppose is lost.

  The whole of the winter 1815-16 was passed quietly at Bishopgate. Mr. Hogg often walked down from London; and I, as before, walked over from Marlow. This winter was, as Mr. Hogg expressed it, a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively Greek. To the best of my recollection, we were, throughout the whole period, his only visitors. One or two persons called on him; but they were not to his mind, and were not encouraged to reappear. The only exception was a physician whom he had called in; the Quaker, Dr. Pope, of Staines. This worthy old gentleman came more than once, not as a doctor, but a friend. He liked to discuss theology with Shelley. Shelley at first avoided the discussion, saying his opinions would not be to the doctor’s taste; but the doctor answered: ‘I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley; I see thee art very deep’.

  At this time Shelley wrote his Alastor. He was at a loss for a title, and I proposed that which he adopted: Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude. The Greek word Άλάστωρ is an evil genius, κακοΒαίμων, though the sense of the two words is somewhat different, as in the Φανείς Αλάστωρ η κακός Βαίμων ποθέν, of Æschylus. The poem treated the spirit of solitude as a spirit of evil. I mention the true meaning of the word because many have supposed Alasior to be the name of the hero of the poem.

  He published this, with some minor poems, in the course of the winter.

  In the early summer of 1816 the spirit of restlessness again came over him, and resulted in a second visit to the Continent. The change of scene was preceded, as more than once before, by a mysterious communication from a person seen only by himself, warning him of immediate personal perils to be incurred by him if he did not instantly depart.

  I was alone at Bishopgate, with him and Mrs. Shelley, when the visitation alluded to occurred. About the middle of the day, intending to take a walk, I went into the hall for my hat. His was there, and mine was not. I could not imagine what had become of it; but as I could not walk without it, I returned to the library. After some time had elapsed, Mrs. Shelley came in, and gave me an account which she had just received from IÏ — z himself, of the visitor and his communication. I expressed some scepticism on the subject, on which she left me, and Shelley came in, with my hat in his hand. He said: ‘Mary tells me, you do not believe that I have had a visit from Williams’. I said: ‘I told her there were some improbabilities in the narration’. He said: ‘You know Williams of Tremadoc?’ I said: WI do’. He said: ‘It was he who was here to-day. He came to tell me of a plot laid by my father and uncle, to entrap me and lock me up. He was in great haste, and could not stop a minute, and I walked with him to Egham’. I said: ‘What hat did you wear?’ He said: ‘This, to be sure’. I said: ‘I wish you would put it on’. He put it on, and it went over his face. I said: ‘You could not have walked to Egham in that hat’. He said: ‘I snatched it up hastily, and perhaps I kept it in my hand. I certainly walked with Williams to Egham, and he told me what I have said. You are very sceptical’. I said: ‘If you are certain of what you say, my scepticism cannot affect your certainty’. He said: ‘It is very hard on a man who has devoted his life to the pursuit of truth, who has made great sacrifices and incurred great sufferings for it, to be treated as a visionary. If I do not know that I saw Williams, how do I know that I see you?’ I said: ‘An idea may have the force of a sensation; but the oftener a sensation is repeated, the greater is the
probability of its origin in reality. You saw me yesterday, and will see me to-morrow’. He said: ‘I can see Williams to-morrow if I please. He told me he was stopping at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house, in the Strand, and should be there two days. I want to convince you that I am not under a delusion. Will you walk with me to London to-morrow, to see him?’ I said: ‘I would most willingly do so’. The next morning after an early breakfast we set off on our walk to London. We had got half way down Egham Hill, when he suddenly turned round, and said to me: ‘I do not think we shall find Williams at the Turk’s Head’. I said: ‘Neither do I’. He said: ‘You say that, because you do not think he has been there; but he mentioned a contingency under which he might leave town yesterday, and he has probably done so’. I said: ‘At any rate, we should know that he has been there’. He said: ‘I will take other means of convincing you. I will write to him. Suppose we take a walk through the forest’. We turned about on our new direction, and were out all day. Some days passed, and I heard no more of the matter. One morning he said to me: ‘I have some news of Williams; a letter and an enclosure’. I said: ‘I shall be glad to see the letter’. He said: ‘I cannot show you the letter; I will show you the enclosure. It is a diamond necklace. I think you know me well enough to be sure I would not throw away my own money on such a thing, and that if I have it, it must have been sent me by somebody else. It has been sent me by Williams,’ ‘For what purpose?’ I asked. He said: ‘To prove his identity and his sincerity’. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘your showing me a diamond necklace will prove nothing but that you have one to show.’

  ‘Then’, he said, ‘I will not show it you. If you will not believe me, I must submit to your incredulity.’ There the matter ended. I never heard another word of Williams, nor of any other mysterious visitor. I had on one or two previous occasions argued with him against similar semi-delusions, and I believe if they had always been received with similar scepticism, they would not have been often repeated; but they were encouraged by the ready credulity with which they were received by many who ought to have known better. I call them semi-delusions, because, for the most part, they had their basis in his firm belief that his father and uncle had designs on his liberty. On this basis his imagination built a fabric of romance, and when he presented it as substantive fact, and it was found to contain more or less of inconsistency, he felt his self-esteem interested in maintaining it by accumulated circumstances, which severally vanished under the touch of investigation, like Williams’s location at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house.