What caused this sudden relinquishment of Mr. Westbrook’s plans for his summer holidays is matter for conjecture. But from matters of indisputable record, it may be safely inferred that the worthy taverner returned to town because he thought it better Mr. Bysshe Shelley and his younger daughter should not come together at Aberystwith; and that he was bent on sending her again to school, because he thought a regular and professional schoolmistress better qualified than Miss Elizabeth Westbrook to take good care of the giddy girl. Possibly Mr. Westbrook had peeped into one of the several letters which Shelley sent the sisters from Rhayader, and learnt from it enough to convince him he had better return abruptly with his daughters to London. Anyhow he decided to do so, alike to Shelley’s annoyance and Miss Harriett’s chagrin.

Like Byron, Shelley never brooked aught that thwarted his will, or in any way threatened to withhold from him a pleasure, on which he had set his heart. On being told she must go back to London and to school, instead of onwards to Aberystwith, Miss Harriett Westbrook wrote to Shelley for advice. On receiving Harriett’s shocking intelligence, Shelley overflowed with indignation at the monstrous cruelty of the father, who could think of sending his sixteen-years-old daughter to school for another half-year. Should she, Harriett asked in her letter, submit to her father’s tyranny or resist it? Shelley, of course, answered, ‘Resist it.’ At the same time he wrote to Mr. Westbrook a letter which, though it was intended to mollify the stern and inhuman parent, only confirmed him in his hideous and revolting purpose. Powerless to subdue by tears and tragic threats the father, who only fumed and sneered at Percy’s mollifying epistle, Harriett wrote to Shelley that she threw herself on his protection, and would fly with him anywhere. Shelley was delighted. For weeks and months he had been nursing the hope that his darling Harriett would rise so far superior to the dwarfing prejudices, which disposed ordinary women to prefer wedlock to Free Love, as to commit herself to his custody without regard to the laws of Priests and the requirements of tyrannic custom. For weeks and months he had been educating her to see in Love a sufficient sanction of the union requisite for fulfilment of its desire. And here was the fruit of his instruction. Snapping the ties of parental tyranny and filial thraldom, Harriett had thrown herself on him for protection, and would fly with him anywhere,—to be happy with him for ever. Had he not reason, in the first and liveliest exultations of his triumph, to write to Hogg, ‘Gratitude and admiration, all demand, that I should love her for ever?’ How could he be sufficiently grateful to the girl who had thus surrendered herself to his honour, in her absolute confidence in his goodness? How could he sufficiently admire the girl, whose magnanimity had enabled her to say to him, ‘Do your will with me; take me on your own terms, so long as you are good enough to make me yours?’ If Shelley went to Wales, without a project for elopement with Harriett Westbrook, he certainly returned from Radnorshire to London, with the intention of taking her from her father at the earliest opportunity.

With the judicial fairness and critical moderation, that are not the only qualities to distinguish him from the poet’s other worshipful biographers, Mr. Rossetti hesitates in inferring from Shelley’s words (‘she ... threw herself upon my protection’) that, whilst writing to Shelley at Cwm Elan, Harriett Westbrook was ready to be his mistress. Reminding his readers that, instead of being the girl’s own words, the phrase is at the utmost nothing more than Shelley’s ‘summing up’ of her expressions,—Shelley’s way of packing into half-a-dozen words the most momentous of her passionate communications,—Mr. Rossetti also bids his readers qualify their censure of her indelicacy with considerations, arising from the reflection that ‘the school-girl of sixteen, hardly more than a child,’ had been ‘lately philosophised out of the ordinary standard of propriety’ by Shelley himself.

The biographer who writes with so much conscientious circumspection cannot be charged with straining words to Harriett’s disadvantage. Still I am disposed to think he goes something too far. More doubtful even than Mr. Rossetti, I hesitate to accept or reject his inference from the words which, instead of being the school-girl’s own words, are nothing more than Shelley’s summary of them. The inexact Shelley’s mere summary of the written words is no evidence to be accepted with unqualified confidence in its accuracy. Moreover, could it be shown that the summary was a fair representation of the purport of her written words, it would still be conceivable that in her haste and excitement the angry girl put them on paper without seeing their full force and realizing to what they committed her. Yet, further, it may be urged in palliation of the child’s want of maidenly decorum that, if she was ready for flight without marriage at the moment of penning the letter, she changed her mind on coming out of her anger against her father, and subsiding to a temper that permitted her to reflect with comparative calmness on all that had passed between herself and her lover. Instead of finding her ready to fly with him on any terms, when he saw her in London after his return from Wales, Shelley found her in a state of indecision. ‘My unfortunate friend, Harriett,’ he wrote from London to Hogg at York, on 15th August, 1811, ‘is yet undecided, not with respect to me, but herself.’

But though I am far from confident that Harriett ever threw herself on Shelley’s protection in the sense imagined by Mr. Rossetti, or even gave Shelley sufficient grounds for saying she had done so, I am in no degree disposed to suspect Shelley of wilfully misrepresenting the nature of her confidence in, and appeal to, him. On the contrary, I have no doubt that Shelley meant to make his friend at York understand the girl was ready to become his mistress, and that he felt himself justified by the words of her letter in crediting her with this readiness. I have no doubt that the future poet wrote to Hogg in perfect good faith, and for the mere purpose of letting his correspondent see the exact state of the case. The evidences leave no room for doubt that, after spending weeks and months in training and educating his sister’s schoolmate to take a philosophic view of marriage, he accepted with equal sincerity and delight the expressions of her tempestuous letter as a declaration that she was willing to be his mistress, or (in the language of the Free Lovers) to become his wife without the intervention of the priest and the sanction of legal matrimony. Under this impression he wrote to Hogg from Rhayader with jubilant boyishness,—‘We shall have 200l. a-year; when we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love!... We shall see you at York.... I can get lodgings at York, I suppose.’ Under the same exhilarating impression he journeyed from Wales to London, thinking how he and Harriett would be journeying northwards a week or ten days later, how happy they would be for ever in lodgings at York, and how furious his tyrannical father would be on hearing he had carried Harriett away from her tyrannical father and taken her to the city he was forbidden to enter,—to the dear, delightful, incomparable Hogg, with whom he was forbidden to have personal intercourse. But on arriving in town he found Harriett in no humour for immediate elopement. She was undecided, not in respect to her choice of a lover, but in respect to the time at which, and the terms on which, she should commit herself to his custody.

It is, therefore, by no means so manifest to me as it is to Mr. Rossetti, that had he cared to take advantage of her simplicity and romantic trustfulness, Shelley could easily have seduced his sister’s schoolfellow, or, rather (I beg pardon of the Free Lovers), could have made her his wife without marrying her.

With all his desire to deal fairly with Harriett Westbrook’s reputation, Mr. Rossetti is less than fair to her in arguing that up to the moment of her Scotch wedding she was ready to become Shelley’s mistress, because she threw herself on his protection (by letter) three weeks earlier. Ladies have a proverbial right to change their minds; and if we must concede that Harriett had a mind to be Shelley’s mistress when he was at Rhayader, it cannot be questioned she had changed her mind on that particular matter before he came to her again in London. Living in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, under the eye of an elder sister, who, possessing her confidence, knew how to keep her well in hand, Harriett was not so completely at Shelley’s mercy as Mr. Rossetti would have us think. It is inconceivable that Shelley would have been allowed to possess himself of the school-girl on terms which wanted the elder sister’s approval; and it is not to be imagined that Miss Elizabeth Westbrook, favouring Shelley’s suit, partly from romantic affectionateness, and partly from social ambition, would have consented to an arrangement for making her sister the mere kept mistress of a gentlemanly scapegrace, who might one day become a baronet. The elder Miss Westbrook was no person to allow herself to be treated as a nonentity, or aught less than a very considerable personage, in an affair touching her dignity and self-respect so delicately and deeply. Under these circumstances it is in the highest degree improbable that Miss Westbrook, who facilitated the elopement which promised to make her younger sister eventually a lady of title and estate, would have permitted herself to be made the sister of such a person as Harriett would have become, on passing to Shelley’s keeping without marriage.

There are other reasons for questioning whether Shelley should be credited with nobility of conduct, in forbearing to do what he would not have been permitted to do. Had he in May or June made Harriett his mistress without marrying her, he would only have acted in accordance with his notions of morality. He did no more at the end of August or the beginning of September when he made her his wife by marriage. If he should be credited with distinctly noble conduct merely for taking what he thought the right course in September, he would have been no less distinctly noble three months earlier for merely taking what he thought the right and moral course in May and June. Had the future poet, however, made the girl his mistress in either of those last-named months, Mr. Rossetti would scarcely have ventured to credit him with distinct nobility of action in doing so, merely because he conceived himself under a moral obligation to do so. It should be observed that Shelley’s sentiments respecting marriage were during this period of his career greatly modified by Hogg’s arguments against them; and that, in commending the future poet’s conduct in making Harriett Westbrook a wife instead of a mistress, Mr. Rossetti applauds him for conduct largely, if not altogether referable to Hogg’s influence, and may, therefore, be said to give Shelley the praise that should rather be given to his friend.

The evidence of Hogg’s beneficial, though only transient, influence on his friend in this respect is conclusive. The shrewd and humorous north-countryman, who nursed the hope of marrying his friend’s sister Elizabeth, was, at this stage of his story, a robust and resolute defender of matrimony and the laws for its protection; and in the many letters that passed between him and Shelley in the spring and summer of 1811, he seized every opportunity for combating and correcting what he deemed his friend’s perverse and erroneous views on the usages and ethics of marriage. It is to Hogg’s credit (at least in the opinion of those who regard marriage with reverential jealousy) that on seeing his friend more and more strongly set on some kind of domestic association with Harriett Westbrook, he made the most strenuous efforts to induce him to marry the girl in a legal way, instead of uniting himself to her in a way that would, at least in law and social sentiment, render her only his mistress. Besides being strenuous, these efforts were successful. Having regard to the miserable consequences of the match, some readers may, perhaps, regret that Hogg was so busy and successful. Perhaps it would have been better for both parties to the disastrous union, had Hogg left ill alone. Had the north-countryman been less energetic, it is conceivable that Mr. Westbrook’s pretty daughter would have escaped the misery of being Shelley’s wife, without falling to the shame of being his mistress. But Hogg’s action was none the less meritorious, because it may have been hurtful to the friend he wished to serve.

Shelley’s stay in Radnorshire did not end before he admitted the force of his friend’s demonstrations of the convenience and beneficence of lawful marriage. In the very letter that declared his puerile delight in Harriett’s appeal to him for protection from her inhuman father, he says, ‘We shall see you at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am now almost convinced.’ Some ten days later (15th August, 1811), when he had passed through London, made a flying visit to Horsham and Cuckfield, and returned to town for stolen interviews with Harriett, he wrote to his incomparable Hogg at York, stating most precisely that he had relinquished his purpose of making Harriett his mistress, and had determined to make her his wife, in pure submission to Hogg’s counsel, and to the force of the arguments with which that counsel was enforced. ‘I am become,’ Shelley wrote, ‘a perfect convert to matrimony, not from temporising, but from your arguments.... The one argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can give,—this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from an inquiring submission to your superior intellect.’ Shelley’s words respecting himself and his own affairs must of course be always used with caution and lively suspicion. But the words written by him to Hogg himself on 15th August, 1811, are good evidence that, on finding Shelley set on taking Harriett Westbrook to himself, either as a mistress or as his wife, and strongly disposed to take her in the former capacity, Hogg used all his power to make him see that he was bound to marry her.

It does not speak much for Shelley’s innate chivalry and generous tenderness for womankind, of which so much extravagant stuff has been written by his idolaters, that he could not discover for himself the most obvious considerations why no man of honour should place a woman of sensibility and refinement in the ignominious position of a kept mistress; that he could not without Hogg’s assistance see, how much the woman sacrifices of her social dignity and legal rights, who humours masculine insolence and selfishness, by sinking to a position, which, giving her all the trials and responsibilities, withholds from her all the higher privileges of a wife. On the other hand, it is something to the credit of the youngster, who could not discover these facts for himself, that he could see them when they were pointed out to him, and was withheld by the timely expostulations of sober common-sense from the sin of acting on his ‘hasty decision.’

In the letter, from which the last extract is taken, Shelley says, ‘I am now returned to London; direct to me as usual at Graham’s. My father is here; wondering, possibly, at my London business. He will be more surprised soon, possibly.’ At the same moment, on the same sheet of paper, he chuckles over the surprise his speedy elopement with Harriett Westbrook will occasion his father, and pretends to think it unlikely he shall soon be called upon to make a choice between Marriage and Free Love. It was like Shelley, to contradict himself in this fashion almost in the same breath.

The particulars of Shelley’s movements between the 15th of August and the end of the month are unknown, with the exception of a few details, which, in the absence of positive testimony, the imagination would furnish as matters of course. For the expenses of the elopement, Shelley obtained 25l. from Tom Medwin’s father (the Horsham attorney), who lent him the money without knowing or suspecting the purpose for which it was needed; a slender sum, that seems to have been reduced considerably before the future poet paid the fares for two inside places in the mail from London to Edinburgh. There were secret interviews between the lovers; interviews of which Mr. Westbrook probably knew nothing, and Miss Eliza Westbrook was doubtless cognizant, even when she was not present at them. Charles Henry Grove (younger than Shelley by something less than two years) was in his cousin’s confidence during these days of pleasant excitement and romantic conspiracy, and accompanied the future poet on some of his visits to Harriett. There were understandings and misunderstandings, decisions and changes of purpose, arrangements and re-arrangements. Then came the hour of early morning when Harriett Westbrook, in all the brightness of her still childish beauty—the lovely girl who, a few years later, escaped from unendurable shame and wretchedness by self-murder—stept from her father’s house, and entered the hackney-coach, that conveyed her, together with the two cousins (Shelley and Charles Henry Grove), to the ‘Green Dragon,’ in Gracechurch Street, where they remained all day, till the northern mail was packed and ready to start. Another minute, and the two childish adventurers were at the outset of their long journey for Edinburgh, viâ York, whilst the guard’s horn sounded cheerily, and Charley Grove (left standing on the pavement) waved a last farewell to the departing vehicle.

It is a question whether the elopement was made at the end of August or in the beginning of September. I have little hesitation in saying Harriett left her father’s house in September; none in saying she was married to Shelley in Edinburgh in the first week of that month. The girl may have crossed her father’s threshold on the morning of Saturday 31st August, but it is more probable she did so on Sunday the 1st, or Monday the 2nd of September. On passing through York at midnight, after spending an entire night and the following day (allowance made for the usual stoppages) in the coach, Shelley, with care for the replenishment of his almost empty purse, wrote a hasty and careless note to Hogg, begging for the loan of 10l., and saying that he and Harriett would ‘have 75l. on Sunday.’

‘On Sunday,’ of course, meant ‘next Sunday.’ After answering the brief note, as soon as it was brought to him on the following morning by a messenger from the Inn, Hogg packed his portmanteau, and in the afternoon of the same day ‘in the first week of September,’ was on the road to Edinburgh, where he arrived some two or three days before the Sunday, when Shelley hoped to get the 75l. Dating from Field Place on Sunday, 8th September, 1811, immediately on hearing his son and Hogg were together in the Scotch capital, Mr. Timothy Shelley wrote from Field Place on 8th September, 1811, to Mr. John Hogg, of Norton: announcing that Shelley had ‘withdrawn himself from’ the writer’s ‘protection, and set off for Scotland with a young female.’

Hogg is certain that he answered Shelley’s note immediately on getting it, that he started for Edinburgh in the afternoon of the same day, and that he made the journey to Edinburgh in the first week of September. Mr. Timothy Shelley’s letter makes it certain the young men were together in Edinburgh in that week. Had the ‘on Sunday’ of Shelley’s note pointed to Sunday, 1st September; had he written for the 10l. for his expenses till that Sunday, Hogg’s run to the Scotch capital would have been made in the last week of August.

CHAPTER XV.

Mr. Garnett (vide his Shelley in Pall Mall) assures us that whenever certain documents, hitherto withheld from the world, shall be made public, i.e. when Field Place shall issue its authoritative biography for the ending of all controversies on Shelleyan matters, ‘it will for the first time be clearly understood how slight was the acquaintance of Shelley with Harriet, previous to their marriage; what advantage was taken of his chivalry of sentiment, and her compliant disposition, and the inexperience of both; and how little entitled or disposed she felt herself to complain of his behaviour.’ It is certain that before submitting to what she could not prevent, Harriett complained with passionate vehemence of her husband’s behaviour to her. Let that matter, however, pass for the present. What are the grounds for saying that unfair advantage was taken of Shelley’s inexperience, and that Shelley, by reason of the slightness of his acquaintance with her, when he stole her from her father, knew much less of Harriett than young men usually know of girls they are on the point of marrying?

Strange things may of course be looked for from the people, who have recently required the world to believe that, instead of taking Claire from London to Byron at Geneva, Shelley and Mary Godwin were taken (like two little children) by Claire to Switzerland,—and so taken there by her, although they (as the Field Place story goes) disliked her exceedingly, even to the point of disgustful aversion. But even the authorities of Field Place will scarcely declare the documents published in Hogg’s Life to be spurious documents. They will scarcely declare that Hogg (the writer with a peculiar style from which he could not liberate himself for an instant) forged the multitude of letters, published in his book as letters written to him by Shelley,—the epistles, some of which Lady Shelley herself used for evidential purposes in writing her Shelley Memorials,—the epistles which are so Shelleyan in thought and diction, feeling and language, form and style, that no other human being but Shelley could have written them. Field Place has dared to do strange things, but its daring will stop short of this extravagance. To produce documents, drawn by Shelley’s hand or at his dictation, in contradiction of these letters, would not be to discredit the letters, but only to produce fresh illustration of one of Shelley’s most perplexing infirmities,—fresh evidence that he often made statements contrary to the truth.

From documentary evidences of unimpeachable genuineness and irresistible cogency, it is certain that Shelley made Harriett Westbrook’s acquaintance in January, 1811, eight lunar months before his elopement with her; that he corresponded with her between the day on which he made her acquaintance and the date of his expulsion from Oxford; that in the spring of 1811 he saw her repeatedly at her home and elsewhere,—receiving her at least on one occasion at his lodgings in Poland Street, attending her from her father’s house to her school on Clapham Common, walking about with her on Clapham Common, and sitting up with her (at least on one occasion) till past midnight, at Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, in the absence of a third person; that he corresponded with her from March to September; that the wooing, which began at Oxford by letter, if not on the occasion of their first meeting, was strenuously prosecuted by Shelley to the day of the elopement; that he had opportunities for seeing and influencing her, which enabled him to illuminate her out of Christianity and (to use Mr. Rossetti’s expression) to ‘philosophise her out of the ordinary standard of propriety’; that he had opportunities, and used them, for making her think lightly of the matrimonial rite; that he had opportunities, and used them, for encouraging her in rebellion against her own father; that instead of being kept in the dark as to the chief, and indeed the only important defect of her temper—a constitutional proneness to discontent—he was peculiarly interested in her manifestations of this significant quality, and sympathized cordially with her groundless grievances and imaginary sorrows. Though he was uncertain as to the day on which Shelley determined to win Harriett Westbrook’s affections, Hogg had no doubt his friend had begun to woo the girl before he left Oxford. ‘Shelley’s epistles show the progress of his courtship,’ he says, ‘and that his marriage was not quite so hasty an affair as it is commonly represented to have been. The wooing continued for half-a-year at least, and this is a long time in the life,—in the life of love, of such young persons.’ The interval, between Shelley’s withdrawal from Oxford and his marriage at Edinburgh, wanted at least three weeks of an entire half-year. Yet, Field Place requires us to believe slightness was a principal characteristic of the prenuptial intercourse of these young people!

How about the charge of inveiglement? No one has ever suggested that Mr. Westbrook was an accomplice in measures for luring the heir of the heir to a wealthy Sussex baronetcy into wedlock with his younger daughter. On the contrary there were reasons why he should regard any such project with disfavour. If he was not a gentleman, Mr. Westbrook was a man of the world, who came in contact with gentlemen, and knew something of the ways of the higher world and fashionable society, from the gossip of the gentlemen who used his public-house. The west-end taverner, who had risen to comfortable circumstances by attention to his affairs, was not the man to be keenly desirous of having for his son-in-law the scatterbrain youngster who only the other day was expelled from Oxford. He had seen too many youngsters of quality drop to grief and ruin, not to know that a young gentleman of Shelley’s parentage and expectations and story might prove a very poor match for a prosperous tradesman’s daughter. He knew the value of his money too well, not to be aware that his pretty daughter, to whom he could make a good allowance during his life and perhaps leave ten thousand pounds at his death, might do much better for herself than marry the harum-scarum son of the Member for New Shoreham. Mr. Westbrook did not need to be told that, so married, his pretty daughter and her children might drain his pocket to his last hour. Like a prudent man, he did nothing to hurry his daughter into the unfortunate marriage.

When Shelley came to Chapel Street with his sister’s present and letter of introduction in his hand, he was received with courtesy at the taverner’s private house. Mr. Westbrook received the youngster with civility in the ensuing spring: a civility that would have seemed less ‘strange’ to Shelley (vide Letter to Hogg, of 28th April, 1811), had he not been conscious how little he deserved it. Though he writes disdainfully of the tradesman, whom he calls alternately a coffeehouse-keeper and ex-coffeehouse-keeper, and charges him with pitiful stinginess to his daughter, whose disobedience raised her so considerably in the scale of social dignity, Hogg forbears to accuse Mr. Westbrook of imposing his younger daughter on the youth of quality, who made her so poor a husband. According to Hogg, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook made up the match, her father being guilty of nothing worse than prudent and hypocritical anger at the event on which he secretly congratulated himself. Perhaps Mr. Westbrook, after the elopement, made the most of Harriett’s unfilial disobedience, and feigned more displeasure than he felt at her misbehaviour, in order to have and preserve a good pretext for tightening the string of his purse. But no one can suspect him of busying himself to bring about the match. Compelling Harriett to return to her prison on Clapham Common after the Easter holidays, he did nothing to facilitate their intercourse, before Shelley, in the middle of May, went from town to Sussex. At the beginning of August, on finding how matters had been going on with the lovers, without his consent or suspicion, Mr. Westbrook determined to send Harriett again to school, returned with his wife and daughters to Chapel Street, and on Shelley’s reappearance in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor Square, shut his door against him.

Miss Elizabeth Westbrook no doubt had a hand in making up the match. But what of that? To make matches is the privilege and convenient diversion of mature woman-kind, and a successful taverner’s daughter is not to be denied the rights and privileges of her sex, because her father is a licensed victualler. In doing what she did to oblige Shelley in the matter, she was moved partly by affection for her sister, and partly by a desire to become, sooner or later, the sister-in-law of a wealthy baronet, the sister of a lady of quality. Actuated by ambition and sisterly affection, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook obeyed precisely the same motives that determine any gentlewoman of high condition to make the heir of a peerage, or any other highly eligible parti, duly sensible of her eldest daughter’s manifold graces and virtues. Standing to Harriett in the relation of a mother rather than a sister, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook merely did for her younger sister’s advantage and her own gratification, what a mother bent on marrying her daughter advantageously is permitted to do for the achievement of her purpose. Shelley besought Miss Westbrook for opportunities of seeing Harriett, as he was disposed to love her, and Miss Westbrook gave him what he wanted.

If this is to lure and inveigle a young man into wedlock, the elder Miss Westbrook was guilty of that offence. But I cannot think her action should be described by such offensive words. She did not seek Shelley; it was he who in a very remarkable way sought her and her people out. He was not the mild and compliant youth to be led into wedlock against his will, because a rather mature maiden told him it would be good for him. Miss Elizabeth Westbrook of all women was the least qualified to exercise such control over him. She was not beautiful, and at the outset of their acquaintance she was by no means acceptable to Shelley. He thought her affected, and suspected her of unamiability. He felt for her a dislike that almost amounted to repulsion, and would soon have quickened into aversion, had she irritated him by opposing his scheme. Till he had made her clearly understand he did not visit Chapel Street to talk of love with her, but to talk of it with her sister, and she had consented to his design, Shelley saw nothing to approve and much to disapprove in the elder Miss Westbrook. On changing his mind about her, he found the lady amiable merely because she acquiesced in his scheme. When a person consents to be the tool of another, the tool usually has a reward. Sometimes in addition to the reward agreed upon by both parties, the tool has in view an end unimagined by the person using the tool. Sometimes also it happens that, turning the tables, the tool becomes the tyrant of its former employer. It was so in the present instance. After Shelley’s marriage, Miss Elizabeth Westbrook insisted on the reward of former services, and for a while exacted heavier payment for them than Shelley was willing to pay. Amiable in his eyes, whilst she was only his tool, Miss Westbrook soon grew hateful to him when she had become his tyrant.

Why should we assume, why was it ever assumed, that Shelley was inveigled and drawn into the association, which was so completely an affair of his own desire and contrivance? The notion that he was made to do the thing which he did of his own accord, and in spite of numerous obstacles, probably originated from regard for the disparity of the Westbrooks and Shelleys in respect to social station. The disparity, no doubt, was considerable. Though he was not of aristocratic ancestry as biographers have so stubbornly declared, the young man who, besides being the son of a Member of Parliament, stood in the direct line of succession to a good estate and a hereditary dignity, married greatly beneath him when he took a licensed victualler’s daughter for his wife; and in the majority of the cases, where a young man marries a girl so greatly his inferior in social quality, the marriage is found on inquiry to have been brought about by the artifice and influence of a third person. Shelley’s marriage, however, was one of those unequal marriages that are distinctly referable to other causes. Having in his boyhood a sentimental repugnance to lawful matrimony, that had steadily grown in power from the time when he wrote Zastrozzi, the Oxonian Shelley had no sooner been discarded by Harriett Grove, than he desired a conjugal partner, whom he could attach to himself by a tie less enduring than the bond of marriage,—a girl, in fact, with whom he could live in Free Love. He could not hope to find such a partner in his own social grade. The prejudices against Free Love were stronger in Shelley’s time, even as they are at the present time, in the higher than in the lower grades of English society. In descending from his own social grade, to the grade of the prosperous London bourgeoisie, he descended no lower than the highest social grade, in which he could conceive it possible for him to find a girl of beauty, culture, refinement, and delicacy, whom he would be allowed to ‘philosophise out of the ordinary standard of propriety,’ till she should ‘throw herself upon him for protection.’ To win Harriett Westbrook, he descended (at least in the eyes of fashionable society) no lower, than he descended to win Mary Godwin. Of course, in being a very considerable man of letters, Godwin (in the opinion of the present writer) was greatly Mr. Westbrook’s superior; but this superiority was in Shelley’s time more obvious to persons of education moving in the middle way of life, than to people of fashion and patrician quality. Moreover, Godwin’s superiority to Mr. Westbrook in this particular was attended with circumstances that would render ‘society’ more than usually indifferent to it. By birth and familiar associations, William Godwin and Mr. Westbrook were of the same social degree. They were also of the same social degree in respect to the avocations, by which the one had acquired sufficient affluence, and the other maintained his family in Skinner Street. Whilst the prosperous man of business lived with the port and bearing of a gentleman in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, the man of letters was a struggling and needy bookseller in the city. In eloping with Mary Godwin in 1814, the poet associated himself with a family no less distinctly beneath people of quality than the family from which he took his first wife. Yet it has never been suggested that he was lured and inveigled into his alliance with the Skinner Street family.

The notion that Shelley was ‘caught’ and ‘trapt,’ inveigled and drawn against his will into his first marriage, becomes still more ludicrous, when regard is had to the personal charms of Harriett Westbrook,—charms that, had she been of far lowlier origin, would account for the young man’s action in making her his wife. Shapely in figure and graceful in her movements, she possessed a face of singular loveliness, and the air of high breeding that is so often wanting in damsels of high birth. It is no exaggeration to say that she was a rare and faultless example of the girlish beauty, which was most delightful and charming to Shelley. Her features were delicate and regular; her light-brown hair was of a colour peculiarly acceptable to her admirer; no girl ever had a more transparent complexion, or alluring lips; and in her sunnier moods, her countenance brightened with looks curiously expressive of intellectual alertness and childish naïveté. At the same time in a laugh, equally spontaneous and joyous, and a voice so musical, that people delighted in hearing her read unentertaining books for the hour together, she possessed two natural endowments that have been known to inspire passion, when they have been associated with features plain even to ugliness. The air and style of this lovely girl were such, that fifteen months after their wedding, Shelley wrote of her and them, ‘The ease and simplicity of her habits, the unassuming plainness of her address, the uncalculated connexion of her thought and speech, have ever formed, in my eyes, her greatest charms.’ Speaking of the pleasure he experienced in hearing her read aloud, Hogg says, ‘If it was agreeable to listen to her, it was not less agreeable to look at her; she was always pretty, always bright, always blooming; without a spot, without a wrinkle, not a hair out of its place.’ Peacock admired the taste and simplicity with which she arranged her light-brown tresses, and the simple elegance of her costume. Be it also remarked that for a girl of her period (more than seventy years since) Harriett was well educated,—writing excellent letters of gracefully fluent penmanship: so familiar with French, that during her six weeks’ stay at Edinburgh, she found a congenial occupation in translating one of Madame Cottin’s novels into English; fond of reading sound literature by herself, no less than to attentive auditors; and possessing so much taste and aptitude for study that Shelley delighted in teaching her Latin, and brought her so quickly forward in it, that before the end of 1812, she was reading the Horatian Odes with interest, if not without difficulty.

Such was the Harriett Westbrook of 1811 and 1812. And yet Field Place cannot account for Shelley’s weakness in wedding so lovely and winsome a creature, without assuming that he was ‘caught’ and inveigled into the match by a designing third person,—the artful and scheming Elizabeth Westbrook.

CHAPTER XVI.

For particulars of the way in which the young people spent the next three weeks in the Scotch capital, readers must go to Hogg’s much-abused book. For the purpose of the present chapter, it is enough to indicate how life went there with the trio, who in the dead season of a never too lively city, laughed over trivial matters with youth’s light-heartedness, and found in themselves all the society they needed. Hogg’s only disappointment was that Harriett’s disinclination for exercise denied him opportunities for the long walks he had hoped to take in the surrounding country. Otherwise he was abundantly happy in regarding the happiness of the incomparable Shelley, and in studying the charms, the character, and endowments of the girl his friend had taken for better or worse. Rising for an early breakfast, passing the morning in studious or literary labour (Shelley was busy on his translation of a treatise by Buffon; Harriett on her translation of Madame Cottin’s Claire d’Albe), and dining in the middle of the day, they spent the afternoon in exploring the high-ways and by-ways, the grand places and the nooks and corners, of the picturesque town. Having taken tea freely and talked philosophy with equal freedom, the young men surrendered themselves to the music of their official reader (Harriett of the clear and mellifluous voice), till the deepening shades of evening reminded them it was time to admire the stars, and gaze at the famous comet that gave our grandfathers the wine, whose flavour lingers on tradition’s tongue.

For their higher happiness indebted to the heavens and themselves, these young people were indebted to Scotch sabbatarianism for some of their heartiest peals of laughter. With unintentional profanity the future poet was laughing in his own peculiarly shrill and vehement fashion in Prince’s Street, on the day that is still the saddest of the seven in North Britain, when he was admonished for his scandalous levity by the austere wayfarer, who remarked, ‘You must not laugh openly in that fashion, young man: if you do, you’ll most certainly be convened;’—a warning that may have been fruitful of the curiosity, which determined Shelley on a subsequent Sabbath to go to kirk, for the purpose of hearing the servants and children catechized on matters touching religion.

The drollery of Hogg’s account of this visit to the kirk is due to the narrator’s lively humour, rather than to any unusual absurdity in the proceedings for instructing an assemblage of servants and children in the rudiments of theology. From dullness and shyness, the pupils were slow in catching their catechist’s meaning, and still slower in answering the questions that were shouted to them by a teacher, whose Scotch accent was the more effective on his auditors from the south, because at moments of displeasure, his vocal pitch indicated that he was not devoid of Scotch irritability. In asking his class ‘Who is the devil?’ this catechist cannot be said to have travelled beyond the lines of ordinary official routine; but his vocal peculiarities and the sharpness of his manner gave the simple question a startling piquancy and grotesqueness, that, sending Shelley into shrieks of laughter, drove him to the open streets where, though inopportune, and highly scandalous, such laughter would be less outrageous than in a place of religious instruction.

Six weeks having slipt away quickly, after the wont of time that passing agreeably passes without exciting incidents, the morning came, on which the trio entered a postchaise and began the return-journey to York. Hogg would have preferred the mail or the slowest stage-coach to the private chaise,—a mode of travelling scarcely appropriate to the financial position of the three travellers; the law-student, who had nothing more than a liberal allowance for a student from his father, and the happy pair, who had married on the 200l. a-year, which they had reason to apprehend would be withheld from them by the indignant Squire of Field Place. But Harriett had suffered too much on her northward journey to be desirous of resuming her seat in the mail, whilst as a matron of only sixteen summers she wished to travel in a way more befitting a gentlewoman of quality. So Shelley, who hated restraint of any kind, and Hogg, ever averse to costly ostentation, consented to the young lady’s desire for a chaise, in which they could converse freely, and she could read one of Holcroft’s novels to them. Whatever the book had been, Hogg would have enjoyed hearing it read by so charming a reader. But the tale was tedious to Shelley, who, after sighing in a significant way, vainly entreated Harriett to skip some of the less entertaining parts of the narrative. The conflict on so trifling a matter may be noticed as an indication that, even thus early in their married life, the poet and his bride had trivial differences, in which she had her own way, and he was constrained to let her have it. Not that Harriett insisted on reading aloud the whole of the time from Edinburgh to York. There were moments when, if not glad to give her throat a rest, she was pleased to enlarge her knowledge of rural matters by listening to the talk of her travelling companions. How much it needed enlargement at this point of her career, appears from the earnestness with which the little Cockney (as Shelley styled her) besought her husband to teach her how to discriminate between turnips and barley.

Hogg’s comfortable lodgings in York having been let ‘over his head’ during his absence in Scotland, the trio had no sooner alighted from the last of their successive post-chaises, than they went forth in the rainy twilight to look for other rooms. Hogg suggested, was indeed urgent, that they should pass the night at an inn, and defer the search for lodgings till the morrow. But Shelley flatly refused to acquiesce in the proposal;—a refusal that may well have perplexed Hogg at the moment, as the cause of the future poet’s impatience to get into rooms in a private house did not appear till the following morning. Shelley declaring thus stoutly for an immediate entrance on lodgings—any lodgings rather than rooms in a tavern for a single night,—and Harriett of course concurring with her husband, Hogg was in a minority, and could not decline to join them in the search for a temporary home, which, in the course of the damp and chilly October evening, made them the joint-tenants of certain rooms in ‘the dingy dwelling of certain dingy old milliners’ (the Misses Dancer of Coney Street), who, in the course of a week or ten days, were as glad to be quit of their lodgers, as the lodgers were glad to be quit of the austere and reasonably suspicious needlewomen.

On the morrow Hogg, who had overrun his leave of absence by a few days, went early to the chambers of the conveyancer with whom he was reading; but he did not return thus early to the scene of legal labour and study, without having heard of Shelley’s intention to start for London by the next night-mail. The future poet’s announcement of this intention to run southward, whilst leaving his bride at York under his friend’s care in the rooms they had occupied for a single night, of course showed Hogg why Harriett’s youthful and erratic husband had been so urgent for an immediate choice of lodgings,—so averse to tarrying in a tavern for a few hours. On the journey from Edinburgh to York, Shelley had been secretly nursing his project for running off to London and Sussex,—to see his father’s attorney (Mr. Whitton), to take counsel with his Uncle Pilfold, and to come to a financial understanding, either by personal interview or through the attorney’s intervention, with the Squire of Field Place. The charges of six weeks’ residence at Edinburgh, followed by the charges of the southward journey, had reduced his money in hand to so insignificant a sum, that, on approaching York, he could not think of taking Harriett with him on the meditated trip to Middlesex and Sussex. It was manifest to him that she must remain at York, whilst he went on the expedition for ‘raising supplies.’ At the same time it was obvious, even to the harum-scarum Shelley, that he could not with propriety leave his girlish bride in a York tavern, where she would not fail to become the one subject of gossip, with the landlady and her chamber-maids, the gentle folk of the coffee-room, the bagmen of the commercial-room, the tipplers and loiterers at the public bar. Left to the accidents of life in a tavern, the lovely school-girl—staying by herself in a provincial hotel, without husband or lady’s maid, without any companion of her own sex—would be liable to various kinds of insult and annoyance, from which she would be secure in a quiet lodging-house. Hence Shelley’s determination to lose not an hour in settling his bride in lodgings after their arrival at York, as he was set on leaving her for a while, in little more than four-and-twenty hours.

Hogg had several reasons for opposing his friend’s resolve to go south so abruptly. Seeing what mischief might be made by gossips at York, and by gossips in London and Sussex, of the young husband’s voluntary withdrawal from his childish wife, at a moment when she stood in peculiar need of his presence,—when nothing short of overpowering necessity should make him leave her side for an entire day,—and when the very circumstances of their union required them to be more than ordinarily thoughtful for appearances and the world’s opinion, Hogg saw the impropriety and insufficiency of the arrangements for her comfort during Shelley’s absence. Whilst he was too much a man of the world to think himself the fittest guardian for the lovely girl, on the point of being thrown so completely and unceremoniously on his hands, or to imagine the ladies of York would think him so, Hogg had grounds for a strong opinion, that his friend would gain nothing more by interviews with Mr. Whitton and Mr. Whitton’s client than he could gain from them by letters sent through the post,—that he would, in fact, be wasting on a profitless journey the few guineas still remaining to him of borrowed money,—the last lingering guineas, which in a few weeks he might need for bare necessities. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that the more worldly-wise of the two youngsters advised his comrade to postpone the journey for a few days. Even so short a time would have given Hogg opportunities for introducing the Shelleys to ladies of the northern city; for inducing some of those ladies to take an interest in Harriett who, wedded woman though she was, needed a chaperon as much as any recently emancipated school-girl; and for withdrawing from a domiciliary relation to the young lady that, during Shelley’s absence, was likely to give rise to equally egregious and undesirable misconceptions in the northern capital. In pleading for delay, Hogg could not, of course state frankly his reasons for the prayer. The questions at issue were too delicate for candour. All the north-countryman could do was to recommend postponement. Of course, the counsel was in vain.

Holding to his purpose, Shelley went for the south, leaving his bride and the incomparable Hogg fellow-lodgers in the same dingy dwelling, and sharers of the same dingy parlour. Surely the circumstances of the case may be held to justify, or at least to excuse, suspicion on the part of the two ancient and austere milliners, careful for their own characters and the reputation of their house in a provincial city, abounding, like all other provincial towns, with people more curious about their neighbours’ doings than heedful of their own affairs. Here is the case from a milliner’s point of view.—Late one evening, Mr. Hogg (a sprightly young bachelor of the city) enters the house, in the company of Mr. Shelley (a very young gentleman, looking no older than his wife) and Harriett Shelley (looking less than her sixteen summers); the entrance of the trio being covered with assertions that the sprightly Mr. Hogg’s juvenile friends are husband and wife. Twenty-four hours later, the young gentleman with the aspect of a schoolboy goes off by the London mail, leaving the sixteen-years-old girl in the house, under the charge of the sprightly Mr. Hogg, whose way of saying strange things makes it doubtful to maiden ladies of mature age and lowly station, whether they should smile or frown. Who is the young lady? Who the young gentleman who has gone off to London? Are they really husband and wife? If so, why has the young gentleman gone off without her? Why has he left her under the care of the sprightly Mr. Hogg, of all people in the world? Can it be that the Scotch marriage, instead of making her the very young gentleman’s wife, made her the sprightly Mr. Hogg’s wife? The austere and suspicious milliners may well have asked themselves these and half-a-hundred other questions.

Whilst Shelley was away, Harriett spent lonely days at York. The weather was rainy, but there were hours when the sky cleared or its clouds forbore to spend themselves on the roofs and open spaces of the city. It speaks for the girl’s uneasiness in a position from which she should have been preserved, and also for her sense of womanly fitness and delicacy, that during her boyish husband’s absence she kept herself within the doors of the dingy lodging-house,—forbearing to visit the Minster and other sights of the city, and declining the many invitations Hogg gave her to take exercise in the open air under his escort. In Edinburgh she took daily walks, usually with her husband and Hogg, sometimes with no other companion than her husband’s friend; but at York, during her husband’s absence, she remained at home. ‘When it was fair,’ says Hogg of her triste and uneventful days at York, ‘she did not go out, having unfortunately transplanted her London notions of propriety to York: she considered it incorrect to walk in the streets of that quiet city by herself.’ As Shelley was certainly absent from York on one Sunday (20th October, 1811),—a day on which Mr. Hogg’s work at chambers did not preclude him from walking about the town—it may be fairly assumed that Harriett’s notions of propriety forbade her to walk in the streets with him no less than by herself. Certainly in her circumspection the sixteen-years-young gentlewoman gave the grim and vigilant milliners no grounds for speaking of her with disapproval, apart from the fact that she continued to share the same parlour with Mr. Hogg. In this matter, how could the poor child do otherwise? How could she help herself?

Having so much of her own company by day, whilst her fellow-lodger was ‘at chambers,’ Harriett may well have enjoyed Hogg’s company in the evening, when they talked together of her husband, and his projects for the regeneration of human kind, her papa and his affairs, her Clapham boarding-school and its discipline, her mamma and sister,—the mamma who looked so ladylike in black satin, and the sister Eliza (in the fulness of her Christian name, Elizabeth) who had so elegant a figure and so noble a crop of black hair. When these and other domestic topics did not hold their attention, Harriett’s fellow-lodger used to sit with unqualified contentment for hours together, whilst she read aloud to him Holcroft’s Anna St. Ives, Dr. Robertson’s historical works, and other staid and instructive books. It may be inferred from expressions in Hogg’s book that, though she often read aloud to him at Edinburgh, Harriett read aloud to him at York, during Shelley’s absence from the city, more copiously than during any other time of their acquaintance. Noteworthy, also, is it, that (by Hogg’s admission), Harriett’s audible readings became much less frequent and lengthy when Miss Westbrook appeared upon the scene, just four-and-twenty hours before Shelley returned to the city, and that they ceased almost entirely before the Shelleys went away abruptly to Keswick. Possibly, Hogg was wrong in attributing this change of Harriett’s conduct altogether to Miss Westbrook’s influence. Possibly, also, he was mistaken in attributing the copiousness of Harriett’s audible readings, during her husband’s absence, altogether to her delight in reading aloud. Harriett read no less clearly than musically. ‘Hers,’ says Hogg, ‘was the most distinct utterance I ever heard.’ It is conceivable that, instead of reading thus distinctly either for her own pleasure or for Mr. Hogg’s pleasure, Harriett at York read thus audibly for the protection of her own character, and the edification of hearers listening in the passage outside the parlour door.

It cannot be doubted that the poor child, left as she should not have been left, in a position of vexatious and humiliating embarrassment, knew that she, Hogg and her husband were each and all objects of suspicion to the austere and dingy milliners. So placed, she was, of course, painfully jealous for her reputation, and resolute that she would shape her course, so as to be able to extort evidence to her goodness from the very women who suspected her of evil. Never leaving the house, she put it beyond the power of the austere milliners to accuse her of going about the town in pursuit of pleasure. Never receiving any visitor but her fellow-lodger, she confined the milliners’ suspicions within narrow limits. Whilst she and her fellow-lodger were together, it was her practice to be incessantly conversing with him or reading to him in a voice, clearly audible outside their room,—so that the milliners should have the evidence of their own ears, that she and her fellow-lodger were no fit objects of suspicion. I have no direct and conclusive evidence that Harriett talked and read aloud for this end. But that she talked and read aloud mainly for this end, is a fair inference from what Hogg says of her talking, reading, and other behaviour during her husband’s absence. Reading Hogg’s evidence in this way, I have no doubt it was to Harriett’s relief, if not at her suggestion, that Miss Westbrook, immediately after her arrival at York, forbade the readings as exercises too exhausting for her sister’s nervous system.

In passing through London, Shelley made attempts to see Miss Westbrook and Mr. Whitton, and, probably, saw both of them. If he did not see the attorney, he communicated with him by letter, saying that he should quickly return from Sussex to London. If he saw Miss Westbrook, one may be sure she told him plainly he had done ill in leaving his bride at York under Hogg’s care, at a moment when he was especially bound to be thoughtful for her comfort and character. It cannot be doubted that, on coming to Cuckfield, he found his Uncle Pilfold of Miss Westbrook’s opinion on this matter. If the old sailor did not say so in words, we may be sure the expression of his countenance told his nephew, that he should not have come to Sussex without his wife; that in leaving her at York he had given people another reason for talking lightly of her and to his disadvantage; that he would do well to withhold from the Field Place and Horsham people a matter they would not fail to report with unfavourable comments, should it come to their knowledge. Under these circumstances it was natural for the young gentleman to take measures to make the Field Place and Horsham people imagine that Harriett had accompanied him to Sussex. The evidence in his own hand-writing, which has caused some writers to imagine she accompanied him to Sussex, is only evidence of the pains taken by Shelley to conceal the indiscretion of which he had been guilty. Dating from his uncle’s house at Cuckfield, on Monday 21st October, 1811, the future poet wrote Mr. Medwin (the Horsham attorney) a letter which has been produced in testimony that, instead of being at York (as Hogg truthfully represented), Harriett was on that day with her scatterbrain husband under Captain Pilfold’s roof.

Instructing the lawyer that Mrs. Shelley spelt her Christian name with a second t, Shelley further instructed him to prepare a deed of marriage settlement (assigning 700l. a-year for Mrs. Shelley’s provision during her life, in case of her husband’s death). Further, Mr. Medwin was directed to address to his youthful client ‘at Mr. Westbrook’s, 23 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square.’ After giving these directions, and announcing his purpose of remarrying Harriett (by English form) in the course of three weeks or a month, before which renewal of his nuptials he intended to execute the settlement, Shelley added: ‘We most probably go to London to-morrow. We shall probably see Whitton, when I shall neither forget your good advice, nor cease to be grateful for it.’

The instructions by the nineteen-years-old boy for a deed of settlement on his wife, to be executed by him in a few weeks, are amusing. What induced him to say she spelt her Christian name with two t’s, when she spelt it in the ordinary manner with only one, is unknown. The main object of the epistle was the purpose of the two delusive sentences beginning with ‘we,’—sentences intended to create an impression, or to confirm Mr. Medwin in the impression, that Harriett had accompanied the writer from York. Even in the absence of evidence to the point, the young gentleman (who ten months earlier ‘resorted to deception’ in order to escape a trivial annoyance) might be presumed to have written other letters to make the Horsham and Field Place gossips imagine his wife was with him in Sussex and London, when she was at York. Taken by itself the evidence that, instead of leaving her at York, Shelley took Harriett with him to London and Sussex is considerable. Indeed, standing by itself, it would justify the historian in representing that the boyish husband carried her southward in his company. But the counter evidence that he left her in York is so much stronger, that I do not hesitate in adopting Hogg’s narrative, and in regarding the contradictory evidence as fallacious testimony, arising from Shelley’s wish to conceal, and his measures for concealing, the impropriety of which he had been guilty.

Shelley had better have remained at York in submission to Hogg’s counsel, instead of spending the greater part of his few remaining guineas on the costly journey, from which he got nothing but disappointment. Refusing to see him, the Squire of Field Place declined for the present to hold any communication with him except through Mr. Whitton. At the same time the Squire declined to give his unruly son any more money, till he should promise to amend his ways and submit himself to his father’s authority with fit expressions of penitence. Acting doubtless at his client’s instance, Mr. Whitton begged he might not be troubled with a call from his client’s son, who could say all that was needful under the circumstances on a sheet of paper. The attitude of the Squire and the attitude of the attorney are clearly defined in two notes dated by the latter to Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley on the same day (23rd October, 1811); the one note being addressed to the poet at Cuckfield, the other being directed to him at the Turk’s Coffee-House, Strand.

The young gentleman, who in August chuckled over anticipations of his father’s surprise and fury at his runaway match with an innkeeper’s daughter, had not made his account for his father’s steady persistence in displeasure. The young gentleman who had just travelled southward by mail from York, to talk matters over and settle them with the ‘old boy’ (Shelley’s expression), found the ‘old buck’ (also Shelley’s expression) in no haste to talk matters over, found him resolute to leave matters as they were till he could rearrange them in his own way. Kept at a distance in this way by ‘old Killjoy’ (also one of the son’s nicknames for his sire), Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley was treated with similar insolence by old ‘Killjoy’s’ attorney, who enjoined him to say what he wished to say in writing. It was Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s turn to feel surprise and indignation. Baffled and resentful the young gentleman returned to York with a heavy heart and a light purse.

At length there was war to the bitter-end between the long-suffering father who had endured so much, and the son, who had now exhausted his sire’s patience. At length he was excluded from Field Place, not for his religious opinions, but for his successive extravagances of deceit, disloyalty, and disobedience to an affectionate father, and for the escapade by which he sought to introduce a tavern-keeper’s daughter to his mother’s drawing-room as the young lady, who in the course of time would be Lady Shelley of Field Place.

Successive writers have insisted that the poet would never have been drawn into this disastrous marriage had it not been for the excessive chivalry of his nature, that placed him at the mercy of the designing, artful, unscrupulous Eliza Westbrook. A chivalrous boy usually has some care for the feelings and dignity of the women of his own blood and hearth. If Shelley really surpassed other boys in chivalry, even as he surpassed them (according to Lady Shelley) in truthfulness and candour, he would surely have been more thoughtful for his mother’s feelings and his sister’s dignity, than for Miss Westbrook’s wishes. It does not appear to have occurred even for a single moment to this chivalrous youth that, in choosing a wife, he should not be absolutely without concern for his mother’s sensibility, his sister’s honour and social interest. From first to last he seems to have assumed that his own feelings were the only sensibilities for which he was required to think. By those who (with the present writer) think Shelley ran away with Harriett Westbrook because he was thoroughly in love with her, it may, of course, be urged in his excuse that love is proverbially selfish, and that in choosing their wives young men are always more bent on pleasing themselves than on pleasing their mothers and sisters. But such considerations cannot be urged in the youngster’s behalf by those, who maintain (with Mr. Garnett) that, instead of marrying the young lady, because he desired her passionately, Shelley fell with passionless weakness into the mésalliance through Miss Eliza Westbrook’s artful treatment of his sense of chivalry. Moreover, even by those who believe him to have been honestly in love, it must be conceded that he was less thoughtful for his mother and sisters, than a generous and chivalric young man must necessarily be when he is choosing a wife.

Had he thought for a moment how the mésalliance would affect his mother, he must have seen it would occasion her sorrow and acute mortification. Had he given a thought for the interests of his sisters, he must have seen the match would be greatly injurious to them. Had he taken thought for the honour of the family, which his father and grandfather had raised to the dignity of a territorial house, he must have seen that the gentlewomen of many of the neighbouring families would be slow to recognize and visit John Westbrook’s daughter. If he thought with indifference of these sure consequences of the mésalliance, the chivalrous Shelley was strangely wanting in chivalric care for the women of his nearest kindred. If he did not think of them at all, his selfishness exceeded the selfishness permitted to lovers.

When ‘society’ is invited to consider and pass judgment on a new mésalliance, it is in the nature of things for the unpleasant and reprehensible features of the affair to be magnified and multiplied by social sentiment. On hearing that young Shelley of Field Place had surpassed all his previous offences by running off to Scotland with an innkeeper’s daughter, to his father’s unutterable wrath and his mother’s grief and dismay, the Sussex families imagined something far more shocking than the actual incident. Knowing nothing of Harriett’s beauty and refinement, of her father’s respectability, and the care expended on her education, the people of the county houses thought of what was least agreeable in inns and innkeepers, and of all that was most disagreeable in the smart girls usually employed in the inns along the posting roads of the country; and having thus surrounded themselves with more or less repulsive recollections of simpering damsels, the Sussex families leapt to the conclusion that the boy, who was expelled from Oxford last spring, had thrown himself into the arms of some pert barmaid or saucy chamber-woman. In the correspondence (preserved at the Record Office) touching the box of Shelley’s pamphlets, that was opened by the Surveyor of Customs at Holyhead in March, 1812, a letter is preserved, which affords curious evidence respecting the view taken of Shelley and his marriage by the great families of the poet’s county. Dating from Stanmer, near Brighton, on 8th April, 1812 (just seven months after the elopement) the Earl of Chichester—the chief of Sussex Pelhams and Postmaster-General (in conjunction with ... )—wrote to Mr. Francis Freeling, Secretary of the Post Office:—