Thereupon, treading in Hogg’s footsteps, he proved that one has not the right to deprive a beloved being of all the advantages which are bound up with a good reputation.

The letter finished with an invitation that the lady should join them at Edinburgh, where Harriet’s presence would prevent any thought of impropriety. Miss Kitchener did not accept. Evidently the poetic “thee’s” and “thou’s” were not sufficient to buy pardon for the somewhat unfortunate reference to Harriet’s and Miss Hitchener’s respective ages.

But though the virgin of Cuckfield declined to come and help in the moulding of Harriet’s soul, one sunny morning Shelley heard a knock at the door of his flat, and looking out of the window was overjoyed to see Hogg standing in the street, bag in hand.

Having just given himself a few weeks’ holiday, he came to pass them in Edinburgh. He received a triumphal reception.

“We have met at last once more!” cried Shelley. “And we will never part again! You must have a bed in the house!”

Harriet came in. Hogg was charmed with her. He had never seen such blooming, radiant youth and beauty. The landlord was summoned.

“We want another bedroom, instantly, urgently, indispensably!” When the poor man was permitted to answer, he offered them a room at the top of the house.

The three friends had a thousand things to tell and to ask. They all talked at once, while a dirty little nymph, the servant of the house, brought in tea, with many discordant ejaculations.

So soon as the excitement had somewhat subsided Shelley proposed a walk, and they went to visit the palace of Mary Stuart.

Harriet, as an excellent pupil of the Academy for Young Ladies and a tireless reader of historical romances, explained the history of the unhappy Queen. On leaving Holyrood House Shelley declared he must go home and write letters, but he wished Hogg and Harriet to climb to Arthur’s Seat, whence they would get a view of the whole city.

Hogg having admired the scene, they sat there a long time together, and probably in such delightful company he would have found any view admirable.

As they came down, the wind having begun to blow, displayed Harriet’s ankles, which Hogg by a side glance examined with interest.

This made Harriet sit down again upon a rock and declare she would remain there “for ever”!

Hogg who was desperately hungry, protested in vain. So he left her . . . and presently she came running down after him.

Thus began for the three young people some delightful weeks.

The money question remained an anxious one, but jolly Uncle Pilfold sent frequent presents. “To be confoundedly angry with his son is all very well, but to stop the supplies is a great deal too bad.” Hogg also had some spare cash, although Timothy Shelley had taken the trouble to write to Hogg senior: “I think it my duty to warn you that my young man has just set off for Scotland with a young female, and that your young man has joined them.”

Every morning Shelley would go out to fetch his letters, the number of which remained prodigious. After breakfast he worked at a translation of Buffon which he had undertaken, while Hogg and Harriet went for a walk. If the weather were bad she read aloud to Hogg. She was fond of reading aloud and she read remarkably well, with a very distinct enunciation and an agreeable voice.

Hogg listened to the greater part of Télémaque and never complained. The virtuous Idomeneus giving wise laws to Crete was horribly boring, but the reader was so lovely to look upon that he would have listened without complaining the whole day through.

Shelley, less polite, would sometimes drop off to sleep, and his innocent slumbers gave serious offence. His friend would support his wife in stigmatizing him as an inattentive wretch, Hogg taking an unconscious pleasure in making common cause with Harriet.

It was the year of the famous comet and of the still more famous vintage 1811. The nights were clear and bright.

At the end of six weeks it was necessary that Hogg should return to York. As Shelley and Harriet had nothing to retain them in Edinburgh, nor indeed anywhere else in the world, they decided to go with him. They would remain with him in York during the year which he must still spend in that city, and then all three would remove to London where they would live “for ever,” writing, reading, and being read to.

Not to overtire Harriet they hired a post-chaise. On either side of the road fields of turnips alternated monotonously with fields of barley.

“But which are the turnips and which is the barley?” Harriet asked.

“Why, you little Cockney!” Shelley, the heir to broad lands, exclaimed with indignation.

Silent in his corner, Hogg, the scoffer, asked himself how it came about that the virtuous Idomeneus had taught his disciple so little.

To while away the time, Harriet read aloud in the chaise Holcroft’s novels. The rigid, spartan, iron tone of that stern author was not encouraging. Bysshe sometimes sighed deeply.

“Is it necessary to read all that, Harriet dear?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Cannot you skip some part?”

“No, it is impossible.”

At the first relay, Shelley vanished. He had always possessed the astonishing power of vanishing like an Elf. He was recaptured by Hogg, who found him standing on the seashore—it was at Berwick—gazing mournfully at the setting sun.

He took a violent dislike to York. The theological and civic pre-eminence of the old city had no charm for him, and the only lodgings they could find were dingy rooms kept by a couple of dingy milliners in a dingy street. “It’s impossible to stay here,” Bysshe declared. But to move elsewhere money was needed. He decided to go and see Captain Pilfold, protector of the good and free; there, too, at Cuckfield, he would again meet Miss Kitchener; perhaps he could persuade her to go back with him to York, and on their way through London they could pick up Eliza Westbrook, whose company was much desired by Harriet. And thus, for the first time, all Shelley’s spiritual sisters would find themselves together.

He therefore took the coach, and Harriet and Hogg were left by themselves, a strange and delicious situation. In this city, where they had no acquaintances, they were as free as on some desert island, and Harriet found a childish pleasure in playing at “housekeeping” with her young and witty companion. Hogg’s sarcastic tongue amused her greatly, and was a relief to Shelley’s burning seriousness which she admired so much. Hogg was always paying her compliments, both in Edinburgh and on the journey to York, and she saw no harm in it. Percy was always a little bit of “the school-master.” He had taught her all she knew. He gravely corrected her mistakes. He was conscious of her limitations. Hogg, on the contrary, admired everything she did, noticed her frocks, and the way she did her hair. He listened to Télémaque, and praised the voice of the reader. He was always gay. It was really very pleasant.

Hogg’s own sentiments were quite other and less commendable. Living continually in the company of this charming girl, he began to desire her with passion. At first he told himself that this was a terrible desire and that the wife of his best friend could never be an object of his pursuit. But when one is intelligent, one knows how to put intelligence at the service of one’s desires.

“Am I to blame,” said he, “if Bysshe throws her in my arms? What a mad notion of his to sit and write long letters on Virtue when he possesses an adorable creature like Harriet! For she is ravishingly pretty. When she walks in the street the most Puritanical run to the windows to look at her. . . . Does Bysshe really love her? He shows her a rather contemptuous sort of affection, and has some excuse for it. For Harriet is . . . what? The daughter of a publican. . . . She can’t be very stand-off. . . .”

Ever since he first knew Shelley, two contradictory sentiments had divided his soul. He admired his friend’s moral courage, frankness, and ardent loyalty. He knew him to be unique, a diamond of the purest water. Yet, at the same time, his sense of humour was tickled by Percy’s declamatory vehemence, by his feverish energy that yet accomplished nothing.

At Oxford Hogg had acted the cultured Sancho Panza to this fair-skinned Don Quixote, and had taken his share of the punishment meted out by the terrible windmills. His admiration in the beginning had triumphed over his irony, which simply served to lend the former a more tender hue. Now, stirred up by a guilty passion, his irony visibly increased.

On the first day of Shelley’s absence, when Hogg left his chambers he took Harriet for a walk by the river. He gazed in her eyes with delight, and murmured a thousand foolish things. She talked of her husband whose return she longed for, partly for his own sake but chiefly because he was to bring with him her dearest Eliza. “Eliza is very beautiful as you will see, she has splendid hair, jet black, glossy . . . she is awfully clever . . . it is she who has always guided me in the important affairs of my life.”

“The child has had important affairs in its life?”

Harriet spoke of her martyrdom at school . . . of the obstacles to her marriage . . . she remained pensive a moment plunged in the past . . . then, “What is your opinion of suicide? Did you never think of destroying yourself?”

“Never! Nor you either, I should hope?”

“Oh yes, very often. Even at school I used to get up in the night with the fixed intention of killing myself. I would look out of the window, and say good-bye to the moon and the stars, to the sleeping girls . . . and then I would go back to bed again and fall asleep.”

The walk continued, so did their intimate talk. Then they went home to make the tea, a ceremony during which Hogg was always extremely funny. After tea Harriet offered to read to him, but of what she read to him that evening he retained no notion. When she said “good night” and left him, he asked himself, “Is she really good?”

When he saw her next day he told her he was madly in love with her.

Harriet was upset and indignant. For a child of sixteen, she defended herself fairly well. She spoke of Shelley and of Virtue. “Don’t you see how odious your behaviour is? Percy gave me into your care and you betray his confidence. . . . But I’m sure you are cured already. . . . Please don’t say another word about it. . . . And I will say nothing to Percy so as not to grieve him.”

She spoke with vivacity. Love scenes are a pretty woman’s battlefields and soldiers enjoy fighting. Harriet’s courage was victorious, and Hogg promised to be good.

That evening, when he returned from work, he saw sitting by Harriet’s side on the sofa a big woman, with raven-black hair, a face of a dead white, and a horse-like profile. “Hogg, this is Eliza, she is come, isn’t it kind of her? Eliza, this is Hogg, our greatest friend, of whom Percy has so often spoken to you.”

Eliza shadowed him a bow from the nape of her neck.

“I thought Bysshe was to have brought you with him?”

“Oh dear no!” said Eliza, and she went on talking to Harriet and paid him no further attention.

Hogg was not used to such treatment in the Shelleys’ house.

“So this is Eliza?” he thought. “She is hideous and common-looking. Here’s an end to my flirtation with Harriet—though perhaps that’s just as well. . . .”

“Harriet, dearest,” he said aloud, “aren’t we going to have any tea to-day? You don’t take tea, Miss Westbrook?” he inquired, turning to her politely.

“Oh dear no!” replied that lady.

“And you, Harriet?”

“No, I won’t either.”

Hogg resigned himself to making his own tea, and to drinking it in silence.

From this day forth the house became insupportable. Eliza took over, or rather resumed, the management of everything. She had managed Harriet her whole life through, and though she had been obliged to relinquish her post to Shelley during the first few weeks of marriage, she now again took her place on the bridge like a captain on his ship, who runs his flag up to the mast-head, and tolerates no other authority on board.

She began by criticizing severely Shelley’s conduct. “So if I hadn’t come you would have been left alone with this young man? It’s unbelievable! And he calls you ‘dearest’? And you permit him to do so! Good heavens! What would Miss Warne say!”

When Hogg proposed a walk, “What are you thinking of?” said Eliza. “Harriet is very tired, not well at all. . . .”

Hogg was astounded. “Harriet?” he repeated. “What on earth’s the matter with her?”

“It’s her poor nerves, you must be blind not to see it.”

When Harriet wanted to read aloud to Hogg the virtuous counsels of Idomeneus, of which he stood so much in need: “Read aloud, Harriet? Whatever will become of your poor nerves? What would Miss Warne say?”

“Who the deuce is Miss Warne?” Hogg asked Harriet so soon as Eliza had gone to her room.

“She is Eliza’s greatest friend, and we have the highest opinion of her.”

“Why? Is she anything extraordinary by birth and education?”

“Oh dear no, her father keeps a public-house like ours.”

Hogg heaved a sigh and lifted his eyebrows.

“What does that dear Eliza do in her bedroom? Does she read?”

“No.”

Harriet leaned over him to say in tones of mystery: “She brushes her hair.”

“Let’s go out, Harriet. . . .”

At first Harriet refused, but as the hair-brushing was prolonged she agreed to accompany Hogg for a few minutes.

Since his first attempt on her virtue he had kept his promise “to be good.” She was pleased—but disappointed. Quite sure of herself, she would have enjoyed temptation.

They stood on the high centre of the old Roman bridge, there was a mighty flood. The Ouse had overflowed his banks, carrying away with him timber and what not.

“Harriet dearest, think how nicely Eliza would spin down the river! How sweetly she would turn round and round like that log of wood. . . . And gracious heavens! What would Miss Warne say?”

Harriet turned away her head to hide her laughter. Hogg said dreadful things, but really he was too funny.

“You have such a delightful laugh, Harriet! . . . so musical, so gay!”

Harriet, full of courage, felt the battle was close at hand.

Shelley returned next day, sooner than was expected. He had had no success. His father had refused to see him. From very different motives to Shelley’s he too considered his son’s marriage the unforgivable crime.

“I’d have willingly supported any amount of illegitimate children,” he told Captain Pilfold. “But that he should have married her . . . never speak to me of him again!”

Miss Hitchener, afraid for her reputation, had refused to make the journey with Shelley. In London he learned that Eliza had not waited for him. He reached York, tired and out of spirits, hoping to find consolation in the society of his wife and his friend. What he found was an atmosphere of embarrassment and constraint.

Eliza, shut up in her room, brushed her hair all day long. Harriet and Hogg, instead of their former gay nonsense round the tea-tray, treated each other with studied coldness. When Hogg spoke to her, she replied very shortly. There was something mysterious in the air.

The moment Harriet and Shelley were alone, “Dear,” he began, “I don’t like this haughty attitude you take with Hogg. He is my best friend. He has looked after you in my absence. That you now have your sister with you is no reason for giving the cold shoulder to Hogg, whom I look on as a brother.”

Harriet sighed. “He’s a nice sort of friend!” said she, in a tone heavy with insinuations.

Shelley, astonished, urged her to explain.

She told the story. “He has made love to me . . . twice. The first time he told me he was passionately in love with me. . . . I pretended it was a joke. . . . I made him be quiet. I imagined it was all over, and I even had no intention of speaking to you about it. But yesterday he began again. He declared he couldn’t live without me, and that he will kill himself if I don’t consent.”

Shelley felt his blood freeze. His heart seemed to stand still.

“Hogg? Hogg did this? But did you not point out to him . . .?”

“Oh, I said everything I could say . . . that he was a false friend, that he was betraying your confidence. . . . ‘What does all that matter when one is in love?’ he replied. ‘It’s all right for Percy, who is a cold and pure spirit, to talk of virtue . . . but I’m in love with you, and the rest doesn’t count. . . . Besides, what harm should we do Shelley? He need never know. Why not give me your love, and give him your affection? Does he think so much about you?’ ”

“He said that?”

“Yes, and lots of other things as well. He said you mix logic with things where it has no business, that you are a flame for ideas, and ice for the sentiments which alone count in life. . . . I answered him as well as I was able. . . .”

Shelley let himself fall upon the sofa. Suddenly the world seemed eclipsed behind a veil of grey. He was seized with giddiness, his head swam, he shivered with cold.

“That Hogg should have tried to seduce my wife, taking advantage of the moment that I had confided her to his protection . . . Hogg, on whose countenance I have sometimes gazed till I fancied the world could be reformed by gazing too. . . . Never was there a more shameful attempt. . . . And yet when I think of Oxford, of his nobility and disinterestedness. . . . I must talk with him, I must make him see reason. . . .”

He kissed Harriet tenderly, and begged Hogg to walk with him to the fields beyond York. Hogg knew there must be a scene. He was prepared for it. He denied nothing.

“Yes, it’s true. I’ve been in love with Harriet since the first day I saw her in Edinburgh. Is it my fault? I can’t resist beauty in women, and Harriet is admirably beautiful. I repeat I fell in love with her at once.”

“It is not love but lust. A low animal instinct. Not the exalted passion which differentiates Man from the brute. Love? Think a little, Hogg. Love supposes self-forgetfulness, and the desire for the happiness of the beloved object. You could only bring about Harriet’s misery. Therefore, your feelings are not those of love, but of egotism. . . .”

“Call it what you like. . . . What do words signify? It is, anyhow, a terrible passion, which I should have fought against had I not felt it was invincible.”

“No passion is invincible. Our will can always be victorious. Had you thought of me . . . This revelation has aged and broken me more than twenty years of misery could have done. . . . my heart seems seared . . . and then there is Harriet, do you not suppose that all this has been very painful for her?”

Hogg was pale, cast-down. He looked ashamed and unhappy, and he felt so. For he too loved Shelley and he blamed his own conduct severely. “No woman in the world,” he thought, “is worth the sacrifice of such a friend.” Then aloud, “I’m awfully sorry, Bysshe, for what has happened. I’ll try to forget, and do you and Harriet try to forgive me. Let us begin life anew as it was before. Don’t be angry with me any longer. . . .”

“I’m not angry with you, I hate your crime, but not yourself. I hope that one day you will regard this horrible error with as much disgust as I do. When that day comes, you will no longer be responsible for it. The man who feels remorse is no longer the man who was guilty. It is certainly not I who would ever reproach you, for I value a human being not for what it has been, but for what it is.”

Shelley felt such satisfaction at having trodden down his anger and his jealousy, at having discovered for Hogg the way of salvation, that the offence was almost forgotten.

But women are much less indulgent. When Shelley on going home announced that he had forgiven the criminal: “What!” cried Eliza, “you mean to go on living with that fellow? Good heavens! What will become of Harriet’s poor nerves?”

Hogg, coming in from his chambers next day, found an empty house.

Shelley and the two girls, in their flight from the deplorable Hogg, had decided to go to the Lakes. There was a sentimental reason for this, very like his choice of Poland Street. Two great poets, both Liberals, Southey and Coleridge, had long lived in the Lake District and by some happy chance it might be that Shelley would make their acquaintance. Nothing could have delighted him more than to meet some of the rare great minds that shared his ideas.

The Shelleys found at Keswick a small furnished cottage set in flowers. They had no right to the garden, but the landlord, who looked upon Shelley and Harriet as little better than a pair of strayed children, allowed them to run about in it.

The postman soon came to know the weight of Shelley’s letter-bag. First, there was the correspondence with Hogg, which was very discouraging. He wrote long letters to Harriet in which he swore to respect her, and at the same time, to adore her during time and eternity. Such unasked-for constancy wearied her, yet her pride fed on it. When Shelley said, “Time and distance will make him forget you,” she shook her head with an air of scepticism. Really sorry for the unhappiness of her admirer, she would perhaps have been more sorry to believe it could be cured: “Distance,” said she, “may ease trifling griefs, but only increases great ones.” When Hogg wrote, “Either Harriet must forgive me or I’ll blow out my brains at her feet,” she triumphed and was sad. But when no pistol-shot came to shatter their flowery solitude, she was reassured—and disappointed.

Then, there were the letters of Miss Hitchener who, since the fall of Hogg, had become Shelley’s only confidante. Nearly every day he sent her a few urgent and exemplary pages. Harriet would often add to her husband’s eloquent dissertations a warm invitation to come and join them.

The Duke of Norfolk lived in the neighbourhood. He had already brought about one reconciliation between Shelley and his father, and as the money question became more and more serious they decided to write to him again. The Duke replied by inviting Shelley, his wife, and his sister-in-law to spend the week-end at Greystoke. He took an interest in the young man possibly through natural benevolence, possibly because it was his duty, as head of a great political party, to win the friendship of one, destined it would seem when he came of age, to go into Parliament, and to inherit £6,000 a year.

Harriet, at Greystoke, bore herself with grace. The Duchess, who had been told the story of Shelley’s extraordinary marriage, was agreeably surprised by the beauty and good manners of his wife. Even Eliza was considered “quite charming,” at least according to Harriet. The visit was successful. When Mr. Westbrook knew that his daughters had stayed with a duke, and that his son-in-law had arrived at the castle with only a guinea in his pocket, he felt the sudden need to show himself generous, and he offered the young couple an allowance of £200 a year.

Mr. Shelley could not be less open-handed, above all when his suzerain and chief asked him to be clement. He agreed once more to allow his son £200 a year: and thus all danger of poverty came to an end.

But in Percy’s eyes the chief satisfaction lay in having obtained these important results without any concessions on his part: “I think it my duty to say that however great advantages might result from such concessions I can make no promise of concealing my opinions in political or religious matters. . . . Such methods as these would be unworthy of us both.” His father answered: “If I make you an allowance it is simply to prevent you from swindling strangers.” So incapable was he of rising to the height of Shelley’s ideas.

⁂

At Greystoke Shelley made acquaintance with William Calvert, a friend of Southey’s, who offered to take him to call on the poet. Thus, for the first time, he was to see in the flesh one of the writers he most admired. But when he actually met Southey he was intensely surprised, for he had always associated the idea of a poet with the most entrancing and aerial of beings.

What he found, in a well-furnished and well-warmed house, was a Mrs. Southey resembling far more a cook-housekeeper than a Muse. She had been in point of fact a dressmaker, and she bound her husband’s books with remnants of the gowns she had made. Her linen-closets were the sanctuaries in which she exercised her talents, and her conversation was of money, cooking, and servants, like the most boring of housewives. The poet seemed insensible to the ignominy of it all. He was an honest creature, but with no reasoning powers. He admitted the social system needed changing, but declared that change could only come very slowly. He made use of the odious formula, “Neither you nor I will live to see it.” He was opposed to Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary reform. Worst of all, he called himself a Christian! Grieved to the heart, Shelley left him.

Southey, worthy man, was far from imagining the impression he had made. “An extraordinary boy!” thought he, after his visitor had gone. “His chief sorrow seems to be that he is heir to an immense property, and he is as much worried by the notion that he will have £6,000 a year, as I used to be at his age by the knowledge that I hadn’t a penny. Apart from this, he acts upon me as my own ghost would do. He is just what I was in 1794. He thinks himself an Atheist but is really a Pantheist: a childish ailment through which we have all passed. It is lucky he has fallen on me. He could not have a better doctor. I have prescribed Berkeley and before the week is out he will be a Berkeleian. It has surprised him a good deal to meet for the first time in his life with a man who perfectly understands him and does him full justice. . . . God help us! The world wants mending, though he does not set about it exactly in the right way. Yet I do not despair of convincing him that he may do a great deal of good with £6,000 a year.”

Thus did Youth and Middle Age meet upon their way, and the former looked at the latter with respect, but with impatience. But the Middle Age looked at Youth with a kindly irony, and promised himself to dominate it by the strength of a more cultivated mind.

Middle Age forgot that the minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz.

Southey and his wife did all in their power to be of service to the young couple. He persuaded Shelley’s landlord to reduce the weekly rent of Chestnut Cottage. Mrs. Southey gave poor Harriet, who knew nothing of housekeeping, excellent advice on cookery and laundry work. She even lent her bed-and-table-linen, which was the high-water mark of favour. But a discovery which Shelley now made rendered useless every advance on the part of Middle Age.

He read by chance in a review an article by Southey in which he spoke of George III as “the best King who had ever sat upon a throne.” A blatant piece of flattery, of course, but Southey aspired to be Poet Laureate, and the road to official honours is steep to climb. Shelley never pardoned baseness of this sort. He wrote to him that henceforward he should look upon him as a wage-earning slave, an upholder of crime, and he would see him no more.

And at this precise moment he troubled himself very little about Southey, for he had just discovered Godwin, the great Godwin, the author of Political Justice, the destroyer of marriage, the enemy of the divinity, the atheist, republican and revolutionary. Godwin was still alive, he lived in London, he had a postal address like everybody else, one could send letters on Virtue to Virtue’s own high prophet!

When Godwin received this letter he was well pleased. Much talked of at the moment that Political Justice appeared, he had fallen back since into comparative neglect. He, too, though with less reason than his young disciple, could talk of an “eventful life.” He began his career as a clergyman, and at the age of thirty was an avowed atheist and republican.

In 1793 he had published his famous book. Pitt was in half a mind to have him prosecuted for it, but the high price of the work—it was sold at six guineas—had seemed to the Prime Minister a sufficient protection against its dangerous teaching.

Four years later Godwin had married Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman writer of genius, with whom he had been living. She had died in giving birth to a daughter, and the inveterate enemy of marriage at once married a second time, a certain Mrs. Clairmont. This lady, who was a widow, lived in the next house to his, and had made his acquaintance by addressing gross flattery to him from her balcony.

The couple led a thorny life. There were five children, the offspring of complicated crossings. First, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin, by Genius out of Genius; she was named Mary. Then two children from Mrs. Clairmont’s first marriage, Jane and Charles. Thirdly, a little boy, son of Godwin and Mrs. Clairmont. Finally, the eldest in age, was a young girl who no longer belonged to anyone in the house, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and her American lover, Captain Gilbert Imlay. This was the gentle and attractive Fanny Imlay, the Cinderella of the household.

The second Mrs. Godwin, “a disgusting woman who wore green spectacles,” had a mendacious tongue and a nasty temper. She treated Fanny and Mary with harshness, and managed the Juvenile Library in Skinner Street, which Godwin had started in order to earn the living of his own juveniles. The poor Philosopher led a sorrowful and difficult existence, entirely weaned from any sops to his vanity. On this account, a disciple writing him an enthusiastic letter from Keswick was extremely welcome. For a publisher of Children’s Books snowed under by Bills of Exchange, nothing could be more opportune than the acquaintance of a man who considered him as a luminary too dazzling for close inspection.

He answered Shelley’s letter by saying he should be glad to have a few personal details concerning his unknown correspondent. By return of post he received an autobiography, in which Timothy Shelley and the Dean of Oxford played ignoble parts. He was informed that his correspondent would inherit £6,000 a year, that he was married to a woman who shared all his ideas, and that he had already published two novels and a pamphlet, all of which he was sending to “the regulator and former” of his mind.

This enthusiastic epistle was read with great excitement by the young girls of the Godwin-Clairmont household, but the author of Political Justice was somewhat dubious about it. Since becoming himself the father of a family, he valued paternal authority more highly than heretofore. Possibly, Mr. Timothy Shelley had only acted in his son’s interests? One ought not to criticize the powers that be when one is young, above all one ought not to publish such criticisms. While yet a scholar, one ought to have no intolerable itch to become a teacher.

Had anyone but the “venerated” Godwin written this he would have been relegated at once to the class of stipended upholders of Intolerance. But Authority and Hierarchies are so essential to Youth, even to rebellious Youth, that it humbles itself with delight before the chosen director of its conscience.

The mystic side of Shelley’s nature had more need than another’s of some shrine at which to worship. “I am willing to become a scholar; nay a pupil,” he replied. “My humility and confidence is unfeigned and complete, where I am conscious that I am not imposed upon, and where I perceive talents and powers so undoubtedly superior.”

In his delight at having discovered Godwin, he mapped out the vastest schemes. To completely change the lives of others, to join their destiny to his own, appeared to him child’s play. Hadn’t he succeeded perfectly in the case of Harriet and of Eliza? What could be simpler than to hire a big house in Wales and there have Miss Kitchener, Godwin, his “venerated” friend, and the whole of Godwin’s charming family to live with him.

But first, being slightly stung by Godwin’s scepticism, he wished to prove in a striking manner that despite his youth he knew how to act. Before settling down “for ever” in the Welsh “Home of Meditation,” he would go to Ireland with Harriet and Eliza, and there spend three months working for Catholic Emancipation in particular, and the improvement of the distressful country in general.

How were the fair Harriet and Eliza of the much-brushed hair going to emancipate the Irish Catholics? The question was left unanswered, but Shelley took with him “An Address to the Irish,” so full of philosophy, wise counsels, and love of humanity, that it seemed impossible the mere reading of it would not touch every heart.

Thus did the young Knight Errant of the luminous eyes take ship to conquer the Green Island. In place of a lance he carried a manuscript, the Beauteous Harriet was his lady and the Black Eliza his squire; the latter being in charge of the money, the housekeeping, and all the dirty jobs.

The Knight of the Rueful Countenance got stoned by the galley-slaves whom he wished to free. Shelley was greeted with cat-calls when, at a meeting of the friends of Catholic Emancipation, he affirmed that it was harmful to refuse public employment to the Irish because of their religion, since one religion is as good as another. His audience much preferred the fanaticism of its persecutors to the scepticism of its defender.

The famous Address was on the same subject. It showed that Catholic Emancipation is a step on the road to total emancipation, and that morality and not expediency should be the principle of politics. Instead of expecting their freedom from the British, the Irish should free themselves by becoming sober, just, and charitable. Shelley imagined that his teaching would go straight to the heart of the poor Dubliners, and he held himself ready for martyrdom in the cause.

Harriet was not less enthusiastic, and her reforming ardour was a joy to behold. With pockets stuffed with pamphlets, the young couple walked up and down Sackville Street, and when they met anyone with a “likely air” they slipped a soul-saving paper into his hand; or from the balcony of their lodgings they spread sound doctrine by dropping Addresses on the heads of the passers-by. When Shelley put one adroitly into the hood of an old woman’s cloak, Harriet, ready to die of laughter, was obliged to rush away. The conversion of the Irish was assuredly the most amusing of games. Godwin and Miss Kitchener expected every day to hear of Shelley’s arrest. The school-teacher even considered the possibility of a political assassination. But Dublin Castle learned with composure that a young Englishman, nineteen years of age, had just made a speech on Virtue.

The police sent a copy of the Address to the Secretary of State, and Shelley’s advice to the Irish on sobriety and toleration struck the official mind as a screaming joke.

Such impunity was very discouraging, nor were the ways of the Irish themselves any less so. “The reason they drink so much whisky,” said kind-hearted Harriet, “is because meat is so dear.” When Shelley tried to save some wretched creature run in for theft or brawling, the policeman, with a smile of pity, would prove to him the man was drunk.

On St. Patrick’s Night everybody was drunk, and there was a ball at the Castle. Percy and Harriet watched the starving people crowd round the State carriages to admire the finery. Such a want of dignity reduced Percy to despair.

That they themselves might set an example of plain living, all three became vegetarians, and Shelley thus freed himself from the remorse he felt when thinking of the “horrors of the slaughterhouse” and the “massacre of the bird-innocents.” They only broke the rule when Mrs. Nugent came to dinner. She was their sole acquaintance in Dublin, a dressmaker by trade. It was just one of the difficulties of their position that they knew nobody amongst these Irish whom they loved so much. “I suppose,” said Harriet, “that the moment Percy becomes famous we shall know everybody all at once.”

But Shelley himself hadn’t much hope. In the land of baseless and visionary fabrics where he usually wandered down-trodden Ireland figured as a proud and beautiful female, Shelley as a knight-errant and apostle, ready to fight for her and die if need be: crowds of tatterdemalions followed them in the streets: barbarous British soldiers stopped him and cudgelled him: but the heroic sweetness of his gospel tamed the brutes themselves, and philosophy worked the miracle of reconciling hostile races.

Little by little this brilliant fantasy melted away, the last shred of rainbow-tinted mist floated over dirt-blackened houses, and the real Ireland loomed up, a huge solid mass of towns, farms, forests, an incalculable number of obscure and dissimilar men, a heap of immemorial traditions and laws; the land of gambling, hunting, and blood-feuds; seat of the magistrature, garrison for the soldiery, centre for the police; Ireland wretched but jeering, suffering but garrulous, discontented, and rejoicing in her discontent. The Enigmatical Island . . . the Absurd Island. . . . Gazing at the terrifying Reality, what could he do? What could he hope for? He was crushed and tired out.

With growing insistence Godwin urged his disciple to give up the game. Ever since Shelley had hailed him as a spiritual father he had adopted the paternal tone, a grumbling and hostile one.

“Believe me, Shelley,” he prophesied, “you are preparing a bath of blood!”

Could he have seen his spiritual son drawing up an inoffensive “Proposal for an Association for the Good of Mankind,” with Eliza on one side sewing at a crimson cloak, and Harriet, preparing a meal of bread and honey on the other, he might have felt more tranquil.

However, his exhortations were so far useful that they gave Shelley a decent excuse to give up rescuing the oppressed who didn’t want to be rescued.

Minus a few poor creatures who knew how to sponge on him successfully, no one in Dublin took him seriously. For if in the eyes of an Irishman there is any one being more ridiculous than an Englishman, it is an Englishman who loves Ireland, and if in the whole world there is any one spectacle which an old Eton boy and Oxford man cannot endure, it is Irish disorder and dirt.

Having seen close at hand the folly and the misery of the people, his thoughts turned with longing to the beauty and peace of the English country-side.

“I give in,” he wrote to his “venerated” friend. “Never again will I address myself to the ignorant. . . . I will content myself with being the cause of an effect which will manifest itself years after I myself am dust.”

Harriet packed up all the remaining pamphlets and forwarded them to Miss Kitchener, who could have very well done without this “inflammable matter.”

Eliza folded up the crimson cloak, and the three apostles took the boat back to England.

⁂

The second part of their programme was now to be carried out, the house in Wales, where the “spiritual flock” could be brought together, and all problems solved. They thought they had found just the very thing, in the district where Shelley had stayed before his marriage. The wildness and beauty of the country attracted him. Near the house a mountain torrent brawled over the stones, and formed pools on which he had floated a little boat a foot long. His sail had been a £5 note: a terrified cat his passenger. He hoped that Miss Hitchener would persuade her father to come and farm the property of one hundred and thirty acres.

But the affair hung fire. The house was too dear. Mr. Hitchener, indignant at the Cuckfield slanders concerning Shelley and his daughter, refused to let her go to Nantgwillt. The school-teacher, proud of the invitation she had received, had very imprudently boasted of it to every one, and every one, led by Aunt Pilford, construed it in the worst possible way.

Once again was Shelley astounded by the world’s malignancy. He, who had run away with his wife, and made a Scotch love-marriage, how could anyone suppose he would be unfaithful to Harriet! The idea caused him such an overwhelming surprise that a less virtuous woman than Miss Hitchener might have been offended by it.

As for Mr. Hitchener, he got the treatment he merited. He, too, was a retired public-house keeper, for the gods seemed to delight in putting the crystalline Shelley in connection with “the trade.” “Sir,” he wrote to the lady’s father, “I have some difficulty in repressing my indignant astonishment on hearing that you refuse my invitation to your daughter. By what right? Who made you her master? . . . Neither the laws of Nature nor yet those of England have put children on the footing of personal property. . . . Adieu. When next I hear from you I hope that time will have liberalized your sentiments.”

⁂

As the Shelleys were going to leave Wales, Godwin mentioned to them a most desirable cottage which one of his friends wanted to let. His advice was always respected. Shelley and Harriet went to see the cottage and found it hopeless. The house was commonplace, scarcely finished and far too small for them. But, on their way back from this useless journey, they discovered a very picturesque village. Thirty cottages with thatched roofs covered with climbing roses and myrtles, formed the delightful hamlet of Lynmouth. By a miracle, one of the cottages was to let. It was the best situated, above a wooded gorge. From the windows you looked down upon the sea, three hundred feet below. They instantly decided to settle there “for ever.”

The “venerated friend,” on news of this, wrote a stiff letter. He said, harshly, that the tastes of the Shelleys were too luxurious, and that a small house, modest as it might be, ought to suffice for one who called himself Godwin’s disciple. Had Timothy Shelley written such a letter the most violent epithets would have been hurled at his head, but one naturally accepts from a stranger what one would never put up with from one’s own father.

Shelley did not think of complaining, but of justifying himself. If he had said that the house recommended by his guide, philosopher, and friend was too small, this was not from a wish for luxury, or even for comfort. But the number of rooms was too few, and it seemed to him hardly the thing for two persons of opposite sex and unmarried to share the same bedroom. He knew that in a regenerated society this prejudice would disappear, but in the present state of things, promiscuity appeared to him imprudent. However, he advanced this opinion—which he feared was rather reactionary—with precaution. The Master was good enough to forget it.

The adorable cottage at Lynmouth was soon the scene of a great event, the arrival of Miss Hitchener. Shelley promised himself that she would add to his life the element of intellectual collaboration, so far rather wanting to it. Nor would Harriet lose anything by the arrangement, for her “spiritual sister” would help him to form her, both young women being, he thought, sufficiently high-minded to accept these parts.

With surprise the Lynmouth villagers now saw him set off of a morning on long expeditions with this gaunt, bony stranger. And henceforth it was with her that he discussed all plans for the propagation of his ideas. The diffusion of Virtue was growing difficult. A London printer had just been sentenced to the pillory. The fate of Galileo did not frighten Shelley for himself, but he would not thrust an innocent printer into danger.

Luckily, the Magician had at his disposal ways and means which defied the police of Lord Castlereagh. When he had written some fine incendiary pamphlet, he would put it in a little box, well resined and waxed, with a lead below and a tiny mast and sail above, and launch it on the ocean, or he would make small fire-balloons, and having loaded them with Wisdom set them sailing up into the summer sky. Or he would watch entranced a flotilla of dark-green bottles tightly corked, and each containing a divine remedy, rise and sink as the emerald waves swayed them seaward.

After he had “worked” hard in this manner, his favourite relaxation was blowing soap-bubbles. Seated before the door, churchwarden in hand, he blew glassy spheres that reflected all the forms and colours of heaven and earth upon their tenuous surfaces. He watched them float away until they broke and vanished.

Then quitting for a short time the aërial, translucent palaces of Logic, he experienced the need of fixing in verse, the intangible beauty of these shimmering violets, greens, and golds.