Chapter IX: Bishopgate (2)

When it shall be produced to the world, it will be time enough to give an opinion whether this marvellous letter was written by Claire to screen Mary from her father’s censure; or at a later time to whitewash her sister Mary in the eyes of Sussex society; or was a fabrication, for which Claire was in no degree accountable. Should it appear that Claire really wrote the letter, it will only be additional evidence of her faculty for fibbing. To support the letter’s manifest untruths, with words written by Mary (who, as we have seen, was often curiously inaccurate in her biographical statements), or with words written by Shelley (who seldom let a month pass without penning something wholly devoid of historic truth about himself or his affairs), would be only to produce evidence of a conspiracy to impose an untruth on human credulity, for some purpose or other.

My way of dealing inferentially with admitted facts is this: On flashing in upon her sister and Shelley at Bishopgate, with joy in her face, Claire told them at once that she had won the great Byron’s heart, and was holding the place, for which Lady Byron had been found unworthy. On learning from her how she and Byron had arranged to journey to Geneva by different routes, in order that public attention should not be called to their movements and purpose, Shelley and Mary Godwin consented readily to her prayer, that they would take her out to her lover. In brief, this is my view of the case. Let readers decide for themselves, whether they should accept the view as reasonable or reject it as the reverse. What motive can Claire have had for concealing her tender and romantic intercourse with Byron from her sister Mary, living in Free Love with Shelley? Why should Claire have hesitated to avow her friendship with Byron to the poet and social reformer, who had taught alike, by precept and practice, that love should be free; that the love which yearned for marriage was the only sanction its marriage needed. The only motives a girl in Claire’s position could have for holding her passion from her sister’s knowledge would be motives of shame and delicacy. Such motives cannot be supposed to have influenced Claire’s action to her sister-by-affinity; the girl with whom she had studied _Queen Mab’s_ views about marriage, and the Chevalier Lawrence’s _Empire of the Nairs_; the spouse of a man to whom she was not married; the mother of a child who in the law’s eye, from one point of view, was no one’s child. What could Shelley discover of evil in Claire’s attachment to Byron? The thing he approved for himself was no thing for Shelley to disapprove in Byron’s case. The course which was virtuous for Mary, could not strike him as vicious for Mary’s sister.

Mr. Froude writes disdainfully of Claire’s probable presumption in ‘perceiving the analogy of Byron’s and Shelley’s situation.’ Mr. Froude remarks also that, ‘so far from Claire’s position being like that of Mary Godwin, it must have appeared to Shelley rather a hideous parody of it.’ Why a hideous parody? The cases were too similar for the resemblance to have escaped any one of the trio. Shelley had quarrelled with his wife and was living with another woman. Byron had differed from his wife and was attached to another woman. Separated from their wives by what is called ‘amicable arrangement,’ both poets were living in Free Contract with girls they could not marry. The similar cases had no doubt their points of dissimilarity. But on the whole these points tell in Byron’s favour. In taking Claire under his protection, he had not seduced a girl no more than sixteen years of age. He had not carried off by stealth the child of his most intimate friend. Nor had he taken such pains to win Claire as Shelley took to capture Mary. It is not certain when and how Byron made Claire’s acquaintance. On this point there are two different stories; one of them representing that he saw her for the first time at a point of Oxford Street, to which he had come at her written request; the other and more reliable story being that their first interview occurred at Drury Lane Theatre, under circumstances set forth in _The Real Lord Byron_. Anyhow the poet’s capture of the giddy and clever girl was an easy conquest, whereas Shelley’s triumph over Mary was a very difficult business. In palliation of Claire’s evil behaviour it should be remembered, that she did not act thus lightly until Shelley had educated her out of her early views, and that in becoming Byron’s mistress she followed an example set her by Mary.

Though in my _Real Lord Byron_ I followed previous biographers in saying Shelley and Byron met for the first time at Geneva, I am by no means confident that they had no intercourse in England before setting out for their separate journeys to the same foreign capital. Under the known circumstances it would be so natural for the poets to have a personal conference in the earlier weeks of April, 1816; that far from causing me surprise, it would only fulfil one of my reasonable expectations, to come upon documentary evidence of their having met in London shortly before Byron sailed for Ostend. For the present, however, readers must be content with the assurance that Shelley and Byron came together at the Sécheron Hotel on the 25th of May, 1816.

Having consented to accompany Claire to Geneva, Shelley, in his preparations for the journey, acted as though he were especially desirous to prevent his most familiar friends from discovering or suspecting the real object of the expedition. Had he felt no need for secrecy he would surely have told so close a friend as Peacock whither he and Mary were going, and the purpose of the trip. He would have said, ‘Mary’s sister, who went abroad with us last July twelve months, is set on going to Geneva, and has persuaded us to take her there.’ But for some reason he withheld the real purpose of the trip, and went abroad under cover of misstatements.

It must have been a day of early April, 1816 (though Peacock calls it a day of ‘early summer’), that witnessed a curious scene in the library of the Bishopgate cottage. Bethinking himself that he would take a mid-day stroll, Peacock (a visitor at the cottage) went for his hat to the hall, where he saw Shelley’s small hat, but looked in vain for his own large hat. As he did not care to walk about the country hatless, Peacock returned to the library, where he was joined by Mary Godwin, who at once gave him the particulars of certain stirring news, brought that very morning to Shelley by Mr. Williams, of Tremadoc; the particulars thus passed on by Mary having just come to her from Shelley’s lips. Instead of showing any excitement at the stirring news, Peacock took Mary’s gossip coolly, and declared frankly he could not believe Mr. Williams had been to the house, or believe Shelley had received the news from the Welsh agent. Slightly astonished, and perhaps slightly nettled at Peacock’s incredulity, Mary Godwin withdrew from the library. A few minutes later, Shelley (with Peacock’s big hat in his hand) entered the room. Now for the scene between the calm, sagacious, stolid Peacock, and the tall, slight, round-shouldered, stag-eyed, fresh-complexioned, boyish Shelley.

For the full enjoyment of the combat between the two poets, readers must go to an article preserved in Peacock’s _Collected Works_. In answer to a remark by his companion, Peacock admitted his inability to believe the account Mary had given him of Mr. Williams’s brief visit. Insisting on the truth of the story, Shelley declared that he had seen Mr. Williams and walked with him to Egham, adding (in reply to a question by Peacock) that, during the walk to Egham, he wore the hat he still held in his hand. On discovering how far too big the hat was for his small head, Shelley admitted having snatcht it up hastily, and remarked that perhaps, instead of wearing it, he had carried it in his hand the whole way to Egham and back. Peacock may well have smiled; it being, of course, obvious to him, that Shelley had snatched up the wrong hat, only a minute or two since, to put himself into walking costume, and give himself the appearance of having just returned from a walk.

Seeing that the hat-trick had only confirmed Peacock in his disbelief of the story, Shelley pleaded how hard it was for him, a man who had devoted his life to the pursuit of truth, and made great sacrifices and suffered much for the truth, to be treated as a visionary. It was thus that Shelley mistook himself for a martyr, and required his friends to regard him as a martyr for the truth’s sake. How had he proved his devotion to truth? The only sacrifices he had ever made of his interests were made from altogether selfish considerations. He had sacrificed his future interest in his grandfather’s property, _in order_ to preserve his interest in A and B, on which he could raise money for his immediate use. He had sacrificed a little of his interest in A and B, _in order_ to get an immediate income of 1000_l._ a-year. Seeing how little Peacock was affected by the plea _in misericordiam_, Shelley proposed that on the morrow they should go to London, and call on Mr. Williams. ‘He told me,’ said Shelley, ‘he was stopping at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house in the Strand, and should be there two days.’ Mr. Williams, of course, had told him nothing of the kind. Catching at the suggestion, Peacock declared he would willingly go to Mr. Williams, for proof that the marvellous story was a true story.

In accordance with this arrangement Peacock and Shelley set forth the next morning, to call on Mr. Williams at the Turk’s Head Coffee-house; Shelley (an excellent walker) putting forth his foot bravely, with the air of a man confident of achieving the purpose of the walk to London. But on getting half-way down Egham Hill, Shelley stayed the march to town by turning suddenly on his companion with a declaration, that after all he did not think they would find Mr. Williams at the Turk’s Head. Peacock declared himself of the same opinion. Still holding to his invention, but altering it in an important particular, Shelley explained that, when declaring his purpose to stay two days at the hotel, Mr. Williams had mentioned a contingency, which might cause him to leave London before night. To this explanation the merciless Peacock replied, that all the same they might, by going up to town, learn at the hotel whether Mr. Williams had been there. The suggestion was not acceptable to Shelley. Shrinking from the proposal to put the truth of his story to the test, he declared he would find some other way of convincing his incredulous friend. He would write to Mr. Williams on the matter. For the present, it would be more agreeable to him to stroll about the forest than walk along the road to London.

Peacock assenting with a scarcely perceptible smile, the walk to London was given up, and the friends passed the day in the forest.

A few days later, nothing having been said in the meantime about Mr. Williams’s visit, the question is reopened by Shelley with an announcement, that he had received from Mr. Williams a letter and a diamond necklace, in token and demonstration that the sender of the letter and necklace had visited Bishopgate in accordance with Shelley’s story. Would Peacock believe the story, if Shelley showed him the necklace? Peacock answering stoutly that the exhibition of the diamond necklace would only prove to him, that somehow or other his friend was in a position to display so costly an ornament, Shelley forbore to show the diamonds, and desisted from his efforts to get the better of his companion’s incredulity.

The matter was then dropt for ever. Shelley never renewed his attempt to impose the absurd fiction on Peacock’s clear and steady mind. Peacock says that he had, on one or two previous occasions, argued with his friend against ‘similar semi-delusions,’ ‘and,’ adds Peacock,

‘I believe if they had always been received with similar scepticism,
they would not have been so often repeated.... I call them
semi-delusions, because, for the most part, they had their basis in
his firm belief that his father and uncle had designs on his liberty.
On this basis his imagination built a fabric of romance, and when he
presented it as substantive fact, and it was found to contain more or
less of inconsistency, he felt his esteem interested in maintaining it
by accumulated circumstances, which severally vanished under the touch
of investigation, like Williams’s location at the Turk’s Head
Coffee-house.’

In other words, according to Peacock’s view, Shelley was in these affairs a victim of delusion at bottom, and a wilful utterer of untruths on the surface. What does the reader think? There is no question that the statements made by Shelley were untrue. His father and uncle were not plotting to put him in a lunatic asylum; Mr. Williams, of Tremadoc, had not been to call on him; Mr. Williams had not given him intelligence of a plot for locking him up; Mr. Williams had not sent him a diamond necklace. Let it be remembered that Shelley was a young man capable of stating on paper his intention to have recourse to deception and then deliberately acting on the intention. He was a writer of wheedling letters to get money. Of all his many spoken or written misstatements, only three or four are misstatements without an apparent object. All the other misstatements had a manifest motive and object, sufficient to account for the employment of untruth. In the present affair his object was to get out of England without letting people know, or giving them occasion to suspect the real purpose of the Continental trip. His motive in saying he must go abroad to escape from his father and uncle, was to hide the fact that he was going to take Claire out to Byron. What does the reader think? My own mind is quite clear. My readers are free to think him in this business the victim of delusions; but I cannot take that view of the case. Anyhow, whether he was insane or untruthful, or (as Peacock insists) semi-mad and semi-false, readers must allow he was a gentleman whose letters and other written statements are not worthy of the credit, to be accorded to the letters and other written statements of persons of average mental sobriety and exactness; that he was a gentleman whose diaries may be suspected of containing a good many inaccuracies and a few wild fictions; that his bare statement is no sufficient reason for believing that his most intimate friend was a villain, or that his first wife was a superlatively wicked woman.

Another thing to be observed is that, as she was cognizant of Peacock’s disbelief of Shelley’s statement respecting Mr. Williams’s alleged visit and news, and was in some degree a witness of the curious conflict of the two friends, Mary Godwin was aware of her husband’s peculiar mental or moral infirmity, at least as early as April, 1816. From the spring of 1816, she knew he sometimes uttered statements too marvellous for one of his closest friends to be capable of believing them. Of course, no woman could live in conjugal confidence with a man occasionally suffering in so remarkable a manner from hallucination or deceptive propensity, and be for any long period unobservant of the peculiarity. It is, however, well to remember from how early a date of their association she was cognizant of the fact that, either from delusion or wilful untruthfulness, he was likely to utter statements at variance with fact.

More than five and something less than six years later (1821-2) Shelley assured the trustful Medwin and the incredulous Byron that, on the night before he left London for Switzerland in 1816, he had a memorable interview with a young, rich, and singularly beautiful woman, who had never before set eyes upon him. A married lady, of noble connexions, this historically nameless gentlewoman knew the poet only by his writings, when, on the eve of his departure for the Continent, she sought his presence in order to declare herself enamoured of the author of _Queen Mab_, and desirous of being the mistress of so superlative a being. Offering Shelley her heart, she implored him to respond to her devotion. Mated in Free Contract with Mary Godwin, the poet could only decline the lady’s prayer, and soften his refusal of her suit by explaining that his heart belonged to the woman, whom he had taken in lieu of his wife. Two years and a half later he discovered that, instead of returning to her proper home and lord, the lady, whose flattering preference he was compelled to decline with suitable expressions of gratitude and regret, followed him and Mary and Claire across the channel, tracked them through France, and discovering their Genevese retreat, derived a melancholy satisfaction from regarding their movements. Of course, whilst she lingered on Leman’s marge, worshiping her poet and envying his mate in Free Love, this equally interesting and miserable anonyma took all proper care, that he should neither recognize her nor suspect her proximity. Thus following and adoring him in 1816, the unseen worshiper of his genius followed and adored him in 1818-19, till she died at Naples, after confessing to him how she had found an inadequate solace for her despair in pursuing him from land to land. Whilst Medwin swallowed this fantastic invention, Byron (laughing doubtless in his sleeve at the whole business) ascribed it to nothing worse than ‘an overwrought imagination.’

It is needless to say the whole story is referable to delusion or falsehood. No lady proffered her heart and person to the poet in May, 1816. No lady followed the trio through France to Switzerland in 1816, and again pursued them through foreign lands in 1818. No lady died at Naples in the winter of 1818-19 in the alleged manner. The whole story was a piece of romance, that may not have engaged the poet’s fancy for any long time before he communicated it to Byron and Medwin; though for reasons, to be indicated in a later chapter, I am disposed to think the fable had its birth during the poet’s sojourn in Naples, in the winter following his last withdrawal from his native country.