Chapter XIV: The Spring and Summer of 1811 (2)

On seeing the goal to which her brother's influence and cautious teaching would carry her, Elizabeth started back in horror. Trustful in his superior wisdom so long as he only required her to think the legends of Christianity were in some particulars fabulous, she fell away from her confidence in the brother who had proclaimed himself an atheist. Instructed that Hogg's influence had brought her brother to this extreme point of infidelity, she was of opinion that her father was right in determining to separate Bysshe from so hurtful a friend. Thinking that in this determination her father was only showing proper care for his son's welfare, she thought Bysshe's opposition to his father's will undutiful and wicked. She was not brave enough to deny the existence of God; she had the courage to tell her brother he was not behaving like a good son. In the religious conflict, she was on the side of the Almighty. In the domestic conflict, she went with her father. No wonder Bysshe was disappointed by her servility and meanness of spirit. Hogg had barely left London when he was informed by Shelley of his sister's deflection from the path of religious freedom and philosophy,--that she was lost to them. Hogg's reply to this melancholy announcement was to the effect that, though lost for the moment, she was _not_ lost for ever,--a sentiment which, on 26th April, 1811, moved the exile of Poland Street, to reply, 'She is _not_ lost for ever? How I hope that may be true! but I fear I can never ascertain; I can never influence an amelioration, as she does not any longer permit a _philosopher_ to correspond with her. She talks of duty to her _Father_. And this is your amiable religion.'

Instead of writing to him in her old vein of enthusiastic and worshipful admiration, Elizabeth had the presumption to remind him of his and her duty to their parents; sending him the letters that moved him to charge her with 'talking cant and twaddle.' Had he not cause to think with sorrow and bitterness of the 'young female,' who, after asserting for a brief while her 'claim to an unfettered use of reason,' had returned to the sway of the bigots. How could he be sanguine of again reclaiming her from the darkness of mediæval superstition to the clear sunshine of philosophy, when to do so he must conquer her countless hateful prejudices, teach her to despise the world's opinion; nerve her to repudiate the doctrines of 'the tremendous Gregory,' and purge her mind of the absurd notion that she ought to respect her father's wishes. Fretted by her letters, he was depressed by her subsequent silence. On returning to Field Place in the middle of May, 1811, it was a relief to him to learn that, instead of resulting from unconcern for his misery, this silence was due to an attack of scarlet fever. At times, during her convalescence from this illness, he could hope faintly that even yet she would show herself worthy of his former confidence, and not unworthy to be the wife of his incomparable Hogg. But these passages of flickering hope closed in a renewal of his conviction, that she was far too weak a creature for the high place and service to which he had too hastily appointed her. There were moments when, instead of thinking her changed for the worse, he attributed her apparent deterioration to his own recently acquired power of perceiving mental and moral infirmities to which he had been formerly blinded by fraternal partiality. Possibly the sister, whom he used to adore and extol to Hogg, had been a creature of his imagination. Obviously it was his duty to put this view of the case before Hogg, so that so excellent a man should not be under misconceptions, arising from a friend's imaginativeness and delusive speech, link himself for life with an uncongenial and miserably insufficient spouse. To Shelley it was no small trouble that his pen was powerless to make Hogg believe, either that Elizabeth was greatly altered, or that she had been greatly misrepresented to him. Whilst the humorous Hogg laughed secretly at the change of Shelley's regard for his sister, the romantic Hogg declined to think either that she had changed for the worse, or that she had been offered in delusive colours to his fancy. To the humorous and romantic law student, it was clear that the change in Elizabeth was wholly referable to her brother's changefulness, and to the lightness and activity of his imagination. Whilst Hogg refused to be enlightened, Shelley despaired of showing him by written words, so much less potent than speech, how 'a change, a great and important change, had taken place in' the girl who had been offered to him in marriage. Oh, that he could speak with his dear Hogg face to face! 'Unwilling as I am,' Shelley wrote from Horsham, on 16th June, 1811, 'conviction stares me in the face. _Oh, that you were here!_'

This wish may have caused Hogg to entertain the notion of making a clandestine visit to Field Place, to inspect the home of the young lady he hoped to marry, and to get a furtive view of her personal attractions, which were still known to him only by her brother's report. Or the wish may have been followed by a definite proposal from Bysshe that his friend should come to him. Anyhow, the friends now entertained a project for seeing one another in Sussex.

The Squire having recalled his invitation to Hogg, and Shelley (in consideration of his 200_l._ a-year allowance being under bond to hold no personal communication with his former college-friend), Hogg could not visit Field Place openly. It was therefore arranged that he should enter the house secretly, and by night, and that during his clandestine sojourn in the mansion, he should share Shelley's study and bedroom,--two rooms never entered by Elizabeth (under the new rules for limiting her intercourse with her brother), and never entered by any one but Shelley himself, and the servant who attended to them. Taking his sleep by day, it was arranged that Hogg should take his exercise by night, when he would be able to pass through a window into the garden without fear of being observed. Through the same window, commanding a view of the lawn, he would be able to get a view of Elizabeth, when she walked in the garden. This project for a secret meeting of the separated 'Inseparables' at Field Place was dropt, probably on account of the risks the conspirators would run in carrying it into effect. But though it was not pursued to a point, at which the intruder could have been ejected ignominiously from the Sussex mansion, the boyish scheme came to the Squire's knowledge,--possibly from the lips of a treacherous servant, in whom the future poet had confided; but more probably from a letter Shelley had written and forgotten to post to his especial friend. The project for a clandestine meeting at Field Place having fallen to the ground, Shelley (albeit, bound by honour, and the terms of his 200_l._ a-year allowance to have no personal intercourse with Hogg) bethought himself he would go to Wales _viá_ York, and pass a few days with his peculiar friend at the archiepiscopal city. Could he do so without risk of forfeiting his allowance, he would go there openly _on_ the way to Wales. Should 'old Killjoy' be too sharp for him he would outwit the 'old buck' by running from Wales to York under the assumed name of Peyton, in order that his movements should be less likely to come to the knowledge of the tyrant, who eventually threatened to stop the allowance, should his son carry out his purpose of paying Hogg a visit.

Too prudent to take openly a step that might result in a withdrawal of the allowance, and at the same time too wary to ask for a direct liberation from his promise to keep away from Hogg, the wily and diplomatic Shelley bethought himself of alluding to his purpose of visiting York in a letter, which his father might neglect to answer, or might answer without referring to the particular project. In either of those cases silence could be construed as consent; and to any subsequent expressions of displeasure at his breach of a chief article of their agreement, the son could reply by pleading that he had not gone to York without giving his father timely notice of his wish, or without grounds for supposing he had his father's tacit permission to go there. In thus 'trying it on' with 'the old buck,' at a peculiarly inauspicious moment, Shelley encountered a rebuff for which he was not unprepared. Instead of overlooking the announcement, or treating it with indifference, the Squire of Field Place answered promptly, 'Go to York if you like; but _not_ with my money.' Finding his father thus resolute in holding him to the terms of their compact, Shelley deferred his trip to the north, and went straight to Radnorshire. At the same time he determined that before many weeks had passed he would go to York under a false name, and breaking his promise do secretly what he dared not do openly. 'Do not think, however, but that I shall come to see you long before you come to reside in London; but open warfare will never do, and Mr. Peyton, which will be my _nom-de-guerre_, will easily swallow up Mr. Shelley.' In a later letter from Radnorshire, Shelley says of his motives for deceiving his father in this business:--'When I come, I will not come under my own name. It were to irritate my father needlessly; this is entirely a _philautian_ argument, but without the stream, of which he is the fountain-head, I could not get on. We must live; that is, we must eat, drink, and sleep, and money is the necessary procurer of these things!' This from the young gentleman whose averseness to underhand ways is extolled so cordially by Lady Shelley!

Whilst the future poet was thus at open war and hollow truce with his father, the evidence is conclusive that he was treated (from the date of his expulsion from Oxford to the date of his first marriage) with sympathetic and conciliatory tenderness by his mother, who has been charged by successive historians with coldness and severity towards her perplexing and troublesome son. In the letter (of 28th April, 1811), which declares his disgust at the intolerance of his sister, who 'talks cant and twaddle,' Shelley speaks of his mother as a woman 'who is mild and tolerant,' though 'narrow-minded.' On the 15th of May, when the exile has come to terms with his father, and returned to the home from which he had been so inhumanly excluded, Shelley writes to Hogg, 'My mother is quite rational.' She says, 'I think prayer and thanksgiving are of no use. If a man is a good man, philosopher, or Christian, he will do very well in whatever future state awaits us. This I call liberality.' It was not in the nature of the callow philosopher and atheist, who wrote so bitterly of his sister's 'cant and twaddle,' to bear this evidence to his mother's liberality, had she vexed him with sorrowful censure or irritated him with bootless opposition. Between the naturally indignant father and the unnaturally rebellious son, this anxious and sorely troubled wife and mother seems to have played a difficult part with exemplary dutifulness and affectionateness to the husband she honoured and the boy she loved. It is conceivable, that once and again the Squire of Field Place may have had grounds for charging her with defective loyalty during the cruel contention, but the unruly boy certainly had no right to complain of the imperfect devotion of the mother who, in her desire to hold his affection and confidence, assured him she was tenderly interested in his friend at York.

Yet biographers have insisted that Shelley suffered in heart and fortune from the intolerance and frigid hardness of his mother; the intolerant mother who spoke to him on their differences of religious opinion with so much leniency and forbearance and large-hearted sympathy that he was constrained to extol her liberality: the unsympathetic mother who won so large a measure of his confidence, that he submitted some of Hogg's letters to her perusal, and (probably because he had cautiously sounded her on the subject) was assured she would not use her influence to prevent the marriage of his sister to his friend.

To complete the view of the future poet's relations with the principal members of his familiar circle, one must glance at the way in which he was treated by his Uncle Pilfold, and the characteristic way in which he repaid the cheery sailor for his good services. Instead of eyeing him askance, regarding him coldly, holding aloof from him, denouncing him as an incorrigible young reprobate, this kindly uncle grasped his nephew by the hand, as though it were a greater honour to be expelled from Oxford than to win 'the Newdigate.' Welcoming the boy to his house, the old sailor opened at the same moment his heart and his purse to the youngster in disgrace. When Mr. Timothy Shelley's wrath at his boy's rebellion had in ten days or a fortnight scolded off its fiercest heat, Uncle Pilfold became a mediator between the father and son, inducing the former to let the boy have intercourse with his sister, and at the same time making the latter see that he must concede something to his father who, though he had gone a deuced deal too far in stopping the supplies, was not without grounds for displeasure. 'I am now with my uncle,' the future poet wrote from Cuckfield to Hogg, on Sunday, 19th May, 1811; 'he is a very hearty fellow, and has behaved very nobly to me, in return for which I illuminated him. A physician, named Dr. J----, dined with us last night, who is a red-hot saint; the Captain attacked him, warm from _The Necessity_, and the Doctor went away very much shocked.' Grateful for his uncle's kindness, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley rewarded him with characteristic munificence,--by illuminating him out of Christianity.

What reason had Shelley to complain of the way in which he was treated by his kindred in the season of his heavy disgrace? Expelled from Oxford for the gravest offence of which an undergraduate could be guilty, he was enjoined by his father to go home before being placed under a sufficient tutor. Having refused to obey his father's orders, he was angrily told to keep away from the home he had declined to visit, when ordered to do so. Consenting for a few weeks to this barbarous exclusion from his boyhood's home,--an exclusion which he knew he could terminate at any moment by simply walking into the house, and which he did terminate by that simple process,--the exile passed a few weeks very agreeably in London. During this so-called exclusion and banishment he was in affectionate communication with his mother, his sisters, his Uncle Pilfold, and his cousins Grove. On returning to his 'boyhood's home,' within a month or five weeks of the sentence of exclusion, he was received with a measure of affectionate indulgence and consideration by his mother, that may well have surprised him. He was also treated affectionately by his sister Elizabeth, though she kept away from his study, and instead of assenting to his sceptical opinions, met them with much exasperating 'cant and twaddle,' and made him despair of illuminating her into a fit mate for his incomparable Hogg. At the same time he was treated with substantial kindness by his father (who, in return for a liberal allowance, only required him to desist for awhile from personal intercourse with Hogg), and with a flattering show of sympathetic concern by his father's patron,--the Duke of Norfolk. Unless Shelley's cousin, Charles Henry Grove, is in error as to the year, his Grace of Norfolk and the Squire of Field Place talked (in the spring of 1811) over a plan for bringing the youngster into Parliament, on the earliest opportunity, as Member for Horsham. It was thus that the future poet was persecuted by his kindred, and thus that he endured persecution at their hands in the months ensuing immediately on his expulsion. There must be an end of the wild nonsense about the poet's sufferings for truth and conscience at this stage of his career. Perhaps no youngster was ever treated more tenderly by his nearest kindred, so soon after earning signal disgrace by extravagant misbehaviour.

Relinquishing his design to go to York before going to Radnorshire, when he saw the breach of promise and act of disobedience would be fruitful of pecuniary inconvenience, Shelley went (as we have seen) direct to Cwm Elan, Rhayader, in the middle of July, 1811, with the intention of staying there till the Westbrooks should have arrived at Aberystwith, when it was his purpose to run over to them, and enjoy the society of the young lady, with whom he was not at all in love. Had the Westbrooks' movements accorded with Mr. Bysshe Shelley's anticipations and wishes, there is reason to think he would have eloped with the sixteen-years-old school girl from Aberystwith, instead of eloping with her from London. Possibly on leaving town he had not fully made up his mind to do so. Possibly he took coach for Radnorshire, with no more definite programme of proceedings than that in the course of three weeks he should be with the Westbrooks at Aberystwith; after which event he would, somehow or other, be happy with Harriett for ever. It is, however, sufficiently manifest from the records, that he accepted his cousin's invitation to Cwm Elan, because it afforded him a pretext for going to Wales, which would cover the real purpose of the journey from his father, and because the neighbourhood of Rhayader would be a convenient resting-place, whence he could slip away to Aberystwith, some thirty miles distant. Moreover, it is clear in the superlative degree that Shelley and Harriett had both set their hearts on meeting one another at Aberystwith; and that it was an occasion of the sharpest disappointment to both of them, when, after proceeding towards Aberystwith, as far as the place, called Condowell in one of Shelley's letters, Mr. Westbrook suddenly faced about, and returned to London, with the intention of sending his younger daughter again to boarding-school, when she imagined herself to have 'left school for good.'

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 200_l._ 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.

'If the calculating habit is still strong upon us,' says Mr. Rossetti,
'we may compute what percentage of faultlessly Christian young heirs
of opulent baronets would have acted like the atheist Shelley, and
married a retired hotel-keeper's daughter offering herself as a
mistress. To deny that the act was foolish would be absurd under any
circumstances, and doubly so when we reflect upon the ultimate issue
of it to Shelley and Harriett themselves; let us then distinctly
recognize that it was foolish, and no less distinctly that it was
noble.'

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 25_l._ 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 10_l._, and saying that he and Harriett would 'have 75_l._ 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 75_l._ 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 10_l._ for his expenses _till_ that Sunday, Hogg's run to the Scotch capital would have been made in the last week of August.