Shelley: The Pursuit (52 page)

There is no reliable account of the next fraught ten days of Shelley’s life. Mrs Godwin recalled awful scenes at Skinner Street, with Shelley bursting in furious and hysterical, and on one occasion threatening to commit suicide by poisoning himself with an overdose of laudanum in their front room.
[14]
The bottle had to be wrested from him by Mary. Godwin’s diary records serious ‘Talks’ held first with Mary, and then with Jane. Peacock remembered Shelley in the grip of ‘a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable passion’, torn between loyalty to Harriet and love for Mary. ‘His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and said: “I never part from this.”’
⁹⁰
He also implies that Shelley considered suicide.

As a result of Hookham’s news, Shelley summoned Harriet from Bath, and she arrived in London about 13 July. Harriet, in her own person, was now Godwin’s last hope of avoiding either tragedy or scandal, and there is evidence that he tried to bring all available forces to control the situation. He had private consultations with Harriet, took Shelley out on a coach drive, and even summoned Mrs Boinville from Bracknell for her advice and support. But Shelley, at his first meeting, had effectively stunned Harriet, by withholding nothing and insisting that he loved Mary with passion while he had only ever felt a brotherly attachment to
her
. Yet he insisted that he was remaining loyal to Harriet. His explanation was devastatingly simple:

I repeat (& believe me, for I am sincere) that my attachment to you is unimpaired: I conceive that it has acquired even a deeper & more lasting
character, that it is now less exposed than ever to the fluctuations of phantasy or caprice. Our connection was not one of passion & impulse. Friendship was its basis, & on this basis it has enlarged & strengthened. It is no reproach to me that you have never filled my heart with an all sufficing passion . . . may you find a lover as passionate and faithful, as I shall ever be a friend affectionate & sincere!
⁹¹

If this struck coldly into Harriet’s heart, the more so because it was basically true, with what an icy chill she recognized the ghost of her former self in Shelley’s description of Mary: ‘I wish you could see Mary; to the most indifferent eyes she would be interesting only from her sufferings, & the tyranny which is exercised upon her. I murmur not if you feel incapable of compassion & love for the object & sharer of my passion.’ Shelley later discovered that, probably on Godwin’s advice, Harriet wrote to Mary about him in a letter which recommended that Mary should write to Shelley asking her lover to ‘calm’ himself and ‘subdue’ his passion for her.
⁹²
It does not seem likely that Mary wrote such a letter. Harriet, who saw the Chapel Street history repeating itself at Skinner Street, at once suspected the denouement. As far as one can gather, she took shelter in the idea that this was a passing infatuation, and that Shelley would eventually be drawn back by the ties of loyalty to his legal wife, and above all by the ties of affection for his children: for Harriet had told Shelley that she was pregnant again. She was consoled by Peacock.

Having received his share of the
post obit
on the 19th, Godwin was more than ever determined to crush Shelley’s fatal and inconvenient passion. Both Mary and Jane were confined to the house, and Godwin wrote long letters to Harriet on the 22nd, and Shelley on the 25th. But it was all in vain. When he rose early on the morning of 28 July, he found a letter leaning on his mantelpiece. Shelley had gone one better than his great-grandfather: on his second elopement he had taken two girls.

[1]
It is also interesting to note Cooper’s admiring reference to another of Shelley’s political poems,
The Revolt of Islam
(1817). See his
Purgatory of Suicides
, written in Stafford jail, 1845, Canto II, stanza 7. Chapter 15.

[2]
These should not be confused with Benbow’s pirate edition of 1826, which was a book that Robert Browning later picked up on a London bookstall, thus changing his whole life, and precipitating
Pauline
(1833). This was entitled
Miscellaneous Poems
, and did
not
contain
Queen Mab
, which in the circumstances was a pity for Browning. See Frederick A. Pottle,
Shelley and Browning
, 1965; and Ref. 22.

[3]
By November 1816 this sum had somehow risen to £1,000 in respect to further borrowings which Shelley apparently secured from Charters. There is no evidence that at any time did Shelley repay this extra sum. See Ingpen,
Shelley in England
, p. 638.

[4]
The honours for this patient and not altogether edifying research must go to Roger Ingpen, op. cit. For Shelley’s own estimate of his debts by 1822, see pp. 710–11.

[5]
One cannot altogether dismiss the possibility that the exasperation of Ellis-Nanney and others in the district had some effect on the way in which the history of the Tan-yr-allt affair in February 1813 was eventually transmitted to posterity.

[6]
In a footnote to
Queen Mab
he praised Newton’s children as ‘the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive; the girls are perfect models for a sculptor; their dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating’.
Poetical Works
, p. 834.

[7]
The bond was eventually settled by Timothy Shelley in May 1815 for £833 7s. 6d., a mere 33 per cent. This reflects on the comparative sagacity with which father and son chose their respective lawyers.

[8]
There is still no definite record of this chronic disorder until some eighteen months later. But it does seem likely that Shelley’s increasing interest in vegetarianism was as much prompted by misplaced medical considerations as by ideological ones.

[9]
Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810).
Wieland
(1789);
Ormond
(1799),
Edgar Huntley
(1799). From a Philadelphian Quaker background, he worked in New York and supported himself by magazine articles and fiction. His psychosomatic interests, and his gothic penetrations into the world of horror, obsession, seduction, cruelty and mania, make him the direct precursor of Edgar Allen Poe. He had a genius for complex plot-lines. Characteristically it was Peacock, not Hogg, who first realized his fascination for Shelley, and who noticed how Shelley playfully named many of his friends after Brown’s heroes and heroines. It was however not altogether play.

[10]
However, in late March, it may be observed that Shelley and Harriet were still on terms of sexual intimacy. For in July Harriet announced that she was again pregnant, and her second child by Shelley was eventually born on 30 November 1814, one month premature.

[11]
‘Nondum amabam, sed amare amabam, quiesebar quid amarem amans amare.’ St Augustine,
Confessions
, Book III, Chap. I.

[12]
The somewhat involved terms and implications of this settlement are discussed on pp. 283–5.

[13]
Godwin later implied that Shelley there and then ‘seduced’ his daughter on top of Mary Wollstonecraft’s gravestone. In one of her subsequent novels,
Falkner
(1837), Mary staged a passionate declaration of love in a cemetery. The girl declares her love first, and the man responds by weeping on the girl’s breasts. In a letter of October 1814, Shelley wrote emphatically that ‘no expressions’ could convey ‘the
manner
’ in which Mary declared herself.
⁸⁵

[14]
Mrs Godwin’s account, though not altogether reliable, gives some impression of Shelley’s alarming force when roused. ‘Then, one day when Godwin was out, Shelley suddenly entered the shop and went upstairs. I perceived him from the counting-house and hastened after him, and overtook him at the schoolroom door. I entreated him not to enter. He looked extremely wild. He pushed me aside with extreme violence, and entering, walked straight to Mary. “They wish to separate us, my beloved; but Death shall unite us,” and offered her a bottle of laudanum. “By this you can escape from tyranny; and this,” taking a small pistol from his pocket, “shall reunite me to you.” Poor Mary turned as pale as a ghost, and my poor silly [Jane], who is so timid even at trifles, at the sight of the pistol filled the room with her shrieks. . . . With tears streaming down her cheeks, [Mary] entreated him to calm himself and go home. . . . “I won’t take this laudanum; but if you will only be reasonable and calm, I will promise to be ever faithful to you.” This seemed to calm him, and he left the house leaving the phial of laudanum on the table.’ Mrs Godwin to Lady Mountcashell, 20 August 1814. Dowden II, Appendix A, p. 544.

10. Three for the Road: Europe 1814

Shelley ordered a chaise for 4 a.m. and stood waiting at the corner of Skinner Street ‘until the lightening and the stars became pale’.
¹
The air was still and oppressive, and the city seemed to slumber uneasily. At long last Mary and Jane appeared at a side-door clutching small bundles, their faces drawn and pale from lack of sleep. They mounted up and clattered away over the cobbles. At Dart-ford, they hired four horses to outstrip pursuit, but Mary became ill with the stormy summer heat and the speed, so that they had to halt at each stage for her to recover, while Shelley like a character out of one of his own romances, was ‘divided between anxiety for her health and terror lest our pursuers should arrive’. Jane gazed listlessly from the carriage window, silent and close to tears. At 4 p.m. they had reached Dover, and by six they hired a small open channel boat, and were drawing out from the white cliffs while the sun set and the sails flapped in the flagging breeze. Jane looked at the English cliffs and thought ‘I shall never see these more’.
²
As the moon came up, a heavy swell set in, and the sailors debated whether to make for Calais or Boulogne. The wind moved to the opposing quarter, and blew stiffly all night, while the summer sheet lightning shook out constantly from an ominous horizon. Mary sat exhausted between Shelley’s knees, and slept fitfully. At dawn, the wind veered and waves broke violently into the undecked boat, and the three of them huddled together under travelling cloaks, too tired to feel more than discomfort and disappointment at the prospect of being drowned. Mary did not speak or look, but Shelley was content merely to feel her presence. Then suddenly the wind was blowing them fast into Calais, and the boat drove upon the sands, and they were safe. Shelley looked down and found Mary was asleep. He woke her gently and said: ‘Look, Mary, the sun rises over France.’ Together they disembarked and the three of them walked wearily and happily over the sands to the inn.

By the evening their pursuers in the shape of Mrs Godwin had arrived. Shelley refused to allow her to see Mary, but Jane spent the night with her mother, and
was almost persuaded to return by the ‘pathos of Mrs Godwin’s appeal’. But the next morning, Saturday the 30th, after Shelley had talked to Jane and advised her to reconsider for half an hour, she told her mother she would continue with Shelley and Mary. Mrs Godwin, speechless with fury, returned to England on the next boat: it was complete victory for Shelley. Refreshed and heartened by sleep, the three set out for Paris, with a vague scheme to travel to Switzerland, and take a house on Lake Lucerne where their friends might join them to form the community of like spirits as Shelley had attempted at Lynmouth, Tan-yr-allt and Nantgwillt. Now after the fears and uncertainties they were overwhelmed by a sense of relief and everything seemed strange and delightful. Mary recalled: ‘We saw with extasy the strange costume of the French women, read with delight our own descriptions in the passport, looked with curiosity on every
plât
, fancying that the fried-leaves of artichokes were frogs; we saw shepherds in opera-hats, post-boys in jack-boots, and (
pour comble de merveille
) heard little boys and girls talk French: it was acting a novel, being an incarnate romance.’
³
That, at any rate, was how she remembered it twelve years afterwards.

At the time, however, their continental expedition was very far from being all marvels and delights. Once in Paris, they took cheap lodgings in the Hotel Vienne, and Shelley and Mary were too happy to sleep. Then they embarked on a frustrating week trying to arrange passports with the police, and to borrow money. Shelley was forced to sell his watch, chain and various personal valuables, for amazingly he had not waited long enough in London to secure any actual coin from the Nash
post obit
. He had hoped that Hookham might be persuaded to forward a bridging loan from London, but all they received was ‘a dull and insolent letter’; Hookham had apparently joined the general condemnation of Shelley’s behaviour, with Peacock, Godwin and the Boinvilles (to whom Shelley was in debt for forty pounds). Negotiations with a French banker came to nothing, but finally a lawyer called Tavernier, ‘an insupportable fool’ according to Shelley, promised to secure them sixty pounds of credit, while arranging their passports, and providing a forwarding address for their English letters. Jane, who could speak the most French of the three, helped Shelley with his negotiations, and was sent out to walk with Tavernier on the boulevard.