The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 3

They first met in London, in the month of October, and frequent, almost daily intercourse took place between the families. On the last day of their stay in town the Sh.e.l.leys, with Eliza Westbrook, dined in Skinner Street. Mary G.o.dwin, who had been for five months past in Scotland, had returned, as we know, with Christy Baxter the day before, and was, no doubt, very glad not to miss this opportunity of seeing the interesting young reformer of whom she had heard so much. His wife he had always spoken of as one who shared his tastes and opinions. No doubt they all thought her a fortunate woman, and Mary in after years would well recall her smiling face, and pink and white complexion, and her purple satin gown.

During the year and a half that had elapsed since that time Mary had been chiefly away, and had heard little if anything of Sh.e.l.ley. In the spring of 1814, however, he came up to town to see her father on business,--business in which G.o.dwin was deeply and solely concerned, about which he was desperately anxious, and in which Mary knew that Sh.e.l.ley was doing all in his power to help him. These matters had been going on for some time, when, on the 5th of May, he came to Skinner Street, and Mary and he renewed acquaintance. Both had altered since the last time they met. Mary, from a child had grown into a young, attractive, and interesting girl. Hers was not the sweet sensuous loveliness of her mother, but with her well-shaped head and intellectual brow, her fine fair hair and liquid hazel eyes, and a skin and complexion of singular whiteness and purity, she possessed beauty of a rare and refined type. She was somewhat below the medium height; very graceful, with drooping shoulders and swan-like throat. The serene eloquent eyes contrasted with a small mouth, indicative of a certain reserve of temperament, which, in fact, always distinguished her, and beneath which those who did not know her might not have suspected her vigour of intellect and fearlessness of thought.

Sh.e.l.ley, too, was changed; why, was in his case not so evident. Mary would have heard how, just before her return home, he had been remarried to his wife; G.o.dwin, the opponent of matrimony, having, mysteriously enough, been instrumental in procuring the licence for this superfluous ceremony; superfluous, as the parties had been quite legally married in Scotland three years before. His wife was not now with him in London. He was alone, and appeared saddened in aspect, ailing in health, unsettled and anxious in mind. It was impossible that Mary should not observe him with interest. She saw that, although so young a man, he not only could hold his own in discussion of literary, philosophical, or political questions with the wisest heads and deepest thinkers of his generation, but could throw new light on every subject he touched. His glowing imagination transfigured and idealised what it dwelt on, while his magical words seemed to recreate whatever he described. She learned that he was a poet. His conversation would call up her old day-dreams again, though, before it, they paled and faded like morning mists before the sun. She saw, too, that his disposition was most amiable, his manners gentle, his conversation absolutely free from suspicion of coa.r.s.eness, and that he was a disinterested and devoted friend.

Before long she must have become conscious that he took pleasure in talking with her. She could not but see that, while his melancholy and disquiet grew upon him every day, she possessed the power of banis.h.i.+ng it for the time. Her presence illumined him; life and hopeful enthusiasm would flash anew from him if she was by. This intercourse stimulated all her intellectual powers, and its first effect was to increase her already keen desire of knowledge. To keep pace with the electric mind of this companion required some effort on her part, and she applied herself with renewed zeal to her studies. Nothing irritated her stepmother so much as to see her deep in a book, and in order to escape from Mrs. G.o.dwin's petty persecution Mary used, whenever she could, to transport herself and her occupations to Old St. Pancras Churchyard, where she had been in the habit of coming to visit her mother's grave. There, under the shade of a willow tree, she would sit, book in hand, and sometimes read, but not always. The day-dreams of Dundee would now and again return upon her. How long she seemed to have lived since that time! Life no longer seemed "so commonplace an affair," nor yet her own part in it so infinitesimal if Sh.e.l.ley thought her conversation and companions.h.i.+p worth the having.

Before very long he had found out the secret of her retreat, and used to meet her there. He revered the memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, and her grave was to him a consecrated shrine of which her daughter was the priestess.

By June they had become intimate friends, though Mary was still ignorant of the secret of his life.

On the 8th of June occurred the meeting described by Hogg in his _Life of Sh.e.l.ley_. The two friends were walking through Skinner Street when Sh.e.l.ley said to Hogg, "I must speak with G.o.dwin; come in, I will not detain you long." Hogg continues--

I followed him through the shop, which was the only entrance, and upstairs we entered a room on the first floor; it was shaped like a quadrant. In the arc were windows; in one radius a fireplace, and in the other a door, and shelves with many old books. William G.o.dwin was not at home. Bysshe strode about the room, causing the crazy floor of the ill-built, unowned dwelling-house to shake and tremble under his impatient footsteps. He appeared to be displeased at not finding the fountain of Political Justice.

"Where is G.o.dwin?" he asked me several times, as if I knew. I did not know, and, to say the truth, I did not care. He continued his uneasy promenade; and I stood reading the names of old English authors on the backs of the venerable volumes, when the door was partially and softly opened. A thrilling voice called "Sh.e.l.ley!" A thrilling voice answered "Mary!" and he darted out of the room, like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting king. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him out of the room.

He was absent a very short time, a minute or two, and then returned.

"G.o.dwin is out, there is no use in waiting." So we continued our walk along Holborn.

"Who was that, pray?" I asked, "a daughter?"

"Yes."

"A daughter of William G.o.dwin?"

"The daughter of G.o.dwin and Mary."

Hogg asked no more questions, but something in this momentary interview and in the look of the fair-haired girl left an impression on his mind which he did not at once forget.

G.o.dwin was all this time seeking and encouraging Sh.e.l.ley's visits. He was in feverish distress for money, bankruptcy was hanging over his head; and Sh.e.l.ley was exerting all his energies and influence to raise a large sum, it is said as much as 3000, for him. It is a melancholy fact that the philosopher had got to regard those who, in the thirsty search for truth and knowledge, had attached themselves to him, in the secondary light of possible sources of income, and, when in difficulties, he came upon them one after another for loans or advances of money, which, at first begged for as a kindness, came to be claimed by him almost as a right.

Sh.e.l.ley's own affairs were in a most unsatisfactory state. 200 a year from his father, and as much from his wife's father was all he had to depend upon, and his unsettled life and frequent journeys, generous disposition and careless ways, made fearful inroads on his narrow income, notwithstanding the fact that he lived with Spartan frugality as far as his own habits were concerned. Little as he had, he never knew how little it was nor how far it would go, and, while he strained every nerve to save from ruin one whom he still considered his intellectual father, he was himself sorely hampered by want of money.

Visits to lawyers by G.o.dwin, Sh.e.l.ley, or both, were of increasingly frequent occurrence during May; in June we learn of as many as two or three in a day. While this was going on, Sh.e.l.ley, the forlorn hope of Skinner Street, could not be lost sight of. If he seemed to find pleasure in Mary's society, this probably flattered Mary's father, who, though really knowing little of his child, was undoubtedly proud of her, her beauty, and her promise of remarkable talent. Like other fathers, he thought of her as a child, and, had there been any occasion for suspicion or remark, the fact of Sh.e.l.ley's being a married man with a lovely wife, would take away any excuse for dwelling on it. The Sh.e.l.leys had not been favourites with Mrs. G.o.dwin, who, the year before, had offended or chosen to quarrel with Harriet Sh.e.l.ley. The respective husbands had succeeded in smoothing over the difficulty, which was subsequently ignored. No love was lost, however, between the Sh.e.l.leys and the head of the firm of M. J.

G.o.dwin & Co., who, however, was not now likely to do or say anything calculated to drive from the house one who, for the present, was its sole chance of existence.

From the 20th of June until the end of the month Sh.e.l.ley was at Skinner Street every day, often to dinner.

By that time he and Mary had realised, only too well, the depth of their mutual feeling, and on some one day, what day we do not know, they owned it to each other. His history was poured out to her, not as it appears in the cold impartial light of after years perhaps, but as he felt it then, aching and smarting from life's fresh wounds and stings. She heard of his difficulties, his rebuffs, his mistakes in action, his disappointments in friends.h.i.+p, his fruitless sacrifices for what he held to be the truth; his hopes and his hopelessness, his isolation of soul and his craving for sympathy. She guessed, for he was still silent on this point, that he found it not in his home. She faced her feelings then; they were past mistake. But it never occurred to her mind that there was any possible future but a life's separation to souls so situated. She could be his friend, never anything more to him.

As a memento of that interview Sh.e.l.ley gave or sent her a copy of _Queen Mab_, his first published poem. This book (still in existence) has, written in pencil inside the cover, the name "Mary Wollstonecraft G.o.dwin," and, on the inner flyleaf, the words, "You see, Mary, I have not forgotten you." Under the printed dedication to his wife is the enigmatic but suggestive remark, carefully written in ink, "Count Slobendorf was about to marry a woman, who, attracted solely by his fortune, proved her selfishness by deserting him in prison."[2] On the flyleaves at the end Mary wrote in July 1814--

This book is sacred to me, and as no other creature shall ever look into it, I may write what I please. Yet what shall I write? That I love the author beyond all powers of expression, and that I am parted from him. Dearest and only love, by that love we have promised to each other, although I may not be yours, I can never be another's. But I am thine, exclusively thine.

By the kiss of love, the glance none saw beside, The smile none else might understand, The whispered thought of hearts allied, The pressure of the thrilling hand.[3]

I have pledged myself to thee, and sacred is the gift. I remember your words. "You are now, Mary, going to mix with many, and for a moment I shall depart, but in the solitude of your chamber I shall be with you." Yes, you are ever with me, sacred vision.

But ah! I feel in this was given A blessing never meant for me, Thou art too like a dream from heaven For earthly love to merit thee.[4]

With this mutual consciousness, yet obliged inevitably to meet, thrown constantly in each other's way, Mary obliged too to look on Sh.e.l.ley as her father's benefactor and support, their situation was a miserable one. As for Sh.e.l.ley, when he had once broken silence he pa.s.sed rapidly from tender affection to the most pa.s.sionate love. His heart and brain were alike on fire, for at the root of his deep depression and unsettlement lay the fact, known as yet only to himself, of complete estrangement between himself and his wife.

CHAPTER V

JUNE-AUGUST 1814

Perhaps of all the objects of Sh.e.l.ley's devotion up to this time, Harriet, his wife, was the only one with whom he had never, in the ideal sense, been in love. Possibly this was one reason that against her alone he never had the violent revulsion, almost amounting to loathing, which was the usual reaction after his other pa.s.sionate illusions. He had eloped with her when they were but boy and girl because he found her ready to elope with him, and because he was persuaded that she was a victim of tyranny and oppression, which, to this modern knight-errant, was tantamount to an obligation laid on him to rescue her. Having eloped with her, he had married her, for her sake, and from a sense of chivalry, only with a quaint sort of apology to his friend Hogg for this early departure from his own principles and those of the philosophic writers who had helped to mould his views. His affection for his wife had steadily increased after their marriage; she was fond of him and satisfied with her lot, and had made things very easy for him. She could not give him anything very deep in the way of love, but in return she was not very exacting; accommodating herself with good humour to all his vagaries, his changes of mood and plan, and his romantic friends.h.i.+ps. Even the presence of her elder sister Eliza, who at an early period established herself as a member of their household, did not destroy although it did not add to their peace. It was during their stay in Scotland, in 1813, that the first shadow arose between them, and from this time Harriet seems to have changed. She became cold and indifferent. During the next winter, when they lived at Bracknell, she grew frivolous and extravagant, even yielding to habits of self-indulgence most repugnant to one so abstemious as Sh.e.l.ley. He, on his part, was more and more drawn away from the home which had become uncongenial by the fascinating society of his brilliant, speculative friend, Mrs. Boinville (the white-haired "Maimuna"), her daughter and sister. They were kind and encouraging to him, and their whole circle was cheerful, genial, and intellectual. This intimacy tended to widen the breach between husband and wife, while supplying none of the moral help which might have braced Sh.e.l.ley to meet his difficulty. His letters and the stanza addressed to Mrs. Boinville[5] show the profound depression under which he laboured in April and May. His pathetic poem to Harriet, written in May, expresses only too plainly what he suffered from her alienation, and also his keen consciousness of the moral dangers that threatened him from the loosening of old ties, if left to himself unsupported by sympathy at home. But such feeling as Harriet had was at this time quite blunted. She had treated his unsettled depression and gloomy abstraction as coldness and sullen discontent, and met them with careless unconcern. Always a puppet in the hands of some one stronger than herself, she was encouraged by her elder sister, "the ever-present Eliza,"

the object of Sh.e.l.ley's abhorrence, to meet any want of attention on his part by this att.i.tude of indifference; presumably on the a.s.sumption that men do not care for what they can have cheaply, and that the best way for a wife to keep a husband's affection is to show herself independent of it.

Good-humoured and shallow, easy-going and fond of amus.e.m.e.nt, she probably yielded to these counsels without difficulty. She was much admired by other men, and accepted their admiration willingly. From evidence which came to light not many years later, it appears Sh.e.l.ley thought he had reason to believe she had been misled by one of these admirers, and that he became aware of this in June 1814. No word of it was breathed by him at the time, and the painful story might never have been divulged but for subsequent events which dragged into publicity circ.u.mstances which he intended should be buried in oblivion. This is not a life of Sh.e.l.ley, and the evidence of all this matter,--such evidence, that is, as has escaped destruction,--must be looked for elsewhere. In the lawsuit which he undertook after Harriet's death to obtain possession of his children by her, he was content to state, "I was united to a woman of whom delicacy forbids me to say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."

That time only confirmed his conviction of 1814 is clearly proved by his letter, written six years afterwards, to Southey, who had accused him of guilt towards both his first and second wives.

I take G.o.d to witness, if such a Being is now regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself if we meet, as perhaps you expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence, that you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended, the consequences you allude to flowed in no respect from me. If you were my friend, I could tell you a history that would make you open your eyes, but I shall certainly never make the public my familiar confidant.

It is quite certain that in June 1814 Sh.e.l.ley, who had for months found his wife heartless, became convinced that she had also been faithless. A breach of the marriage vow was not, now or at any other time, regarded by him in the light of a heinous or unpardonable sin. Like his master G.o.dwin, who held that right and wrong in these matters could only be decided by the circ.u.mstances of each individual case, he considered the vow itself to be the mistake, superfluous where it was based on mutual affection, tyrannic or false where it was not. Nor did he recognise two different laws, for men and for women, in these respects. His subsequent relations with Harriet show that, deeply as she had wounded him, he did not consider her criminally in fault. Could she indeed be blamed for applying in her own way the dangerous principles of which she had heard so much? But she had ceased to care for him, and the death of mutual love argued, to his mind, the loosening of the tie. He had been faithful to her; her faithlessness cut away the ground from under his feet and left him defenceless against a new affection.

No wonder that when his friend Peac.o.c.k went, by his request, to call on him in London, he

showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind, "suffering like a little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection." His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress disordered.

He caught up a bottle of laudanum and said, "I never part from this!"

He added, "I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles--

Man's happiest lot is not to be, And when we tread life's th.o.r.n.y steep Most blest are they, who, earliest free, Descend to death's eternal sleep."

Harriet had been absent for some time at Bath, but now, growing anxious at the rarity of news from her husband, she wrote up to Hookham, his publisher, entreating to know what had become of him, and where he was.

G.o.dwin, who called at Hookham's the next day, heard of this letter, and began at last to awaken to the consciousness that something he did not understand was going on between Sh.e.l.ley and his daughter. It is strange that Mrs. G.o.dwin, a shrewd and suspicious woman, should not before now have called his attention to the fact. His diary for 8th July records a "Talk with Mary." What pa.s.sed has not transpired. Probably G.o.dwin "restricted himself to uttering his censures with seriousness and emphasis,"[6] probably Mary said little of any sort.

On the 14th of July Harriet Sh.e.l.ley came up to town, summoned thither by a letter from her husband. He informed her of his determination to separate, and of his intention to take immediate measures securing her a sufficient income for her support. He fully expected that Harriet would willingly concur in this arrangement, but she did no such thing; perhaps she did not believe he would carry it out. She never at any time took life seriously; she looked on the rupture between herself and Sh.e.l.ley as trivial and temporary, and had no wish to make it otherwise. G.o.dwin called on her two or three times; he was aware of the estrangement, and probably hoped by argument and discussion to restore matters to their old footing and bring peace and equanimity to his own household. But although Harriet was quite aware of Sh.e.l.ley's love for G.o.dwin's daughter, and knew, too, that deeds were being prepared to a.s.sure her own separate maintenance, she said nothing to G.o.dwin, nor did her family give him any hint. The impending elopement, with all its consequences to G.o.dwin, were within her power to prevent, but she allowed matters to take their course. G.o.dwin, evidently very uncomfortable, chronicles a "Talk with P. B. S.," and, on 22d July, a "Talk with Jane." But circ.u.mstances moved faster than he expected, and these many talks and discussions and complicated moves and counter-moves only made the position intolerable, and precipitated the final crisis. Towards the close of that month Sh.e.l.ley's confession was wrung from him: he told Mary the whole truth, and how, though legally bound, he held himself morally free to offer himself to her if she would be his.

To her, pa.s.sionately devoted to the one man who was and was ever to remain the sun and centre of her existence, the thought of a wife indifferent to him, hard to him, false to him, was sacrilege; it was torture. She had not been brought up to look on marriage as a divine inst.i.tution; she had probably never even heard it discussed but on grounds of expediency.

Harriet was his legal wife, so he could not marry Mary, but what of that, after all? if there was a sacrifice in her power to make for him, was not that the greatest joy, the greatest honour that life could have in store for her?

That her father would openly condemn her she knew, for she must have known that G.o.dwin's practice did not move on the same lofty plane as his principles. Was he not at that moment making himself debtor to a man whose integrity he doubted? Had he not, in twice marrying, taken care to proclaim, both to his friends and the public, that he did so _in spite_ of his opinions, which remained unchanged and unretracted, until some inconvenient application of them forced from him an expression of disapproval?

Her mother too, had she not held that ties which were dead should be buried? and though not, like G.o.dwin, condemning marriage as an inst.i.tution, had she not been twice induced to form a connection which in one instance never was, in the other was not for some time consecrated by law? Who was Mary herself, that she should withstand one whom she felt to be the best as well as the cleverest man she had ever known? To talent she had been accustomed all her life, but here she saw something different, and what of all things calls forth most ardent response from a young and pure-minded girl, _a genius for goodness_; an aspiration and devotion such as she had dreamed of but never known, with powers which seemed to her absolutely inspired. She loved him, and she appreciated him,--as time abundantly showed,--rightly. She conceived that she wronged by her action no one but herself, and she did not hesitate. She pledged her heart and hand to Sh.e.l.ley for life, and she did not disappoint him, nor he her.

To the end of their lives, tried as they were to be by every kind of trouble, neither one nor the other ever repented the step they now took, nor modified their opinion of the grounds on which they took it. How Sh.e.l.ley regarded it in after years we have already seen. Mary, writing during her married life, when her judgment had been matured and her youthful buoyancy of spirit only too well sobered by stern and bitter experience, can find no harder name for it than "an imprudence." Many years after, in 1825, alluding to Sh.e.l.ley's separation from Harriet, she remarks, "His justification is, to me, obvious." And at a later date still, when she had been seventeen years a widow, she wrote in the preface to her edition of Sh.e.l.ley's _Poems_--

I abstain from any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as the pa.s.sions they engendered inspired his poetry.

This is not the time to relate the truth, and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as n.o.ble and generous as Sh.e.l.ley, may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary.

But they never "made the public their familiar confidant." They screened the erring as far as it was in their power to do so, although their reticence cost them dear, for it lent a colouring of probability to the slanders and misconstruction of all kinds which it was their constant fate to endure for others' sake, which pursued them to their lives' end, and beyond it.