Shelley: The Pursuit

  As the November days drew in at Frederick Street, Shelley and Peacock found themselves thrown together, studying, talking and reading Peacock’s beloved Greeks, while the women busied themselves with the baby. Peacock was at his most discreet and diplomatic, and Shelley had not yet penetrated into the wittiest and most original side of his character; his immediate impression was of the bland, well-mannered pedant. ‘He is a very mild, agreeable man, and a good scholar. His enthusiasm is not very ardent, nor his views very comprehensive: but he is neither superstitious, ill-tempered, dogmatical, nor proud.’61 Which, coming from Shelley, was apt praise.

  Peacock, if we are to believe his own evidence, quickly seized on the more extraordinary and eccentric elements of Shelley’s personality. He noted that Shelley was ‘especially fond’ of the horror-romances of Charles Brockden Brown, the American novelist[9] whose tales were ‘remarkable for the way in which natural causes were made to produce supernatural effects’. Shelley was ‘captivated by the picture of Clitheroe in his sleep digging a grave under a tree’ in Edgar Huntley; and he was always searching for a summerhouse like the one in Wieland where the hero’s father ‘died of spontaneous combustion’. Peacock argued that this gothic element, the mysterious and ‘superstitious terror of romance’ were permanent and central features of Shelley’s personality. Many years after Shelley’s death, Peacock still held the same view, and summarized it by literary analogy:

  [Charles Brockden] Brown’s four novels, Schiller’s Robbers, and Goethe’s Faust, were, of all the works with which he was familiar, those which took the deepest root in his mind, and had the strongest influence in the formation of his character. . . . He devotedly admired Wordsworth and Coleridge, and in a minor degree Southey . . . but admiration is one thing and assimilation is another; and nothing so blended itself with the structure of his interior mind as the creations of Brown.62

  But for the time being, Peacock was really closer to Harriet than to Shelley, and perhaps not altogether consciously he was helping her to get a slightly more mature and objective opinion of her husband. Certainly by 23 November she showed in a letter to Mrs Nugent that she had no more illusions about how far father and son were divided over the inheritance, and an acid note has crept in: ‘There has been no conciliation between Mr S. and his father. Their opinions are so contrary, that I do not think there is the least chance of their being reconciled. His father is now ill with the gout; but there is no danger I suppose. If there was he would send for his son and be reconciled to him.’63

  Shelley was cheered by one chance meeting in Edinburgh, with a young Brazilian medical student called Joachim Baptista Pereira, who qualified as a doctor in 1815. Pereira talked to Shelley about the revolutionary movements in South America, the news of which had so excited him in Dublin in 1812, and they compared notes on cordially abominated fathers. Pereira was swept off his feet by Shelley, and began a translation of Queen Mab into Portuguese as his contribution to the cause in South America. He showed Peacock a sonnet he had written as a preface to the translation, of which Peacock remembered two lines, the first and the last:

  Sublime Shelley, cantor di verdade! . . .

  Surja Queen Mab a restaurar o mundo

  The two remained in touch for several months, and there is a letter from Shelley as late as September 1815 which seems to suggest that Pereira was going to Europe, and from there home to Brazil. Peacock says he ‘died early’ from a disease of the lungs.

  The enthusiasm of Pereira, and the agreeableness of Peacock were not enough to see Shelley through the winter in Edinburgh. He seems to have discussed with Harriet the possibility of their spending Christmas apart. Within three days of each other, Harriet wrote to Mrs Nugent, who was poorly, suggesting that she might come to Dublin to ‘attend’ her; while Shelley wrote briskly to Hogg, on the 26th: ‘I am happy to hear that you have returned to London, as I shall shortly have pleasure of seeing you again. I shall return to London alone. My evenings will often be spent at the Newtons’, where, I presume, you are no unfrequent visitor.’64 Shelley was also drawn by Godwin, who although he had not featured much in their social life in London during the summer, had been writing to Shelley assiduously, as his diary shows. Since Shelley had left Bracknell in October, Godwin had dispatched six missives, most of which, as later evidence shows, were concerned not so much with political justice, as with the problems of Shelley’s inheritance, and the ways in which he might still raise money on his prospects.

  Shelley finally decided, perhaps on the advice of Peacock, that it would be better if they all went south together, and at the very end of November the coach was once again loaded up and they rattled south through the foul weather on their brand-new springs. Peacock, Harriet and the baby, and Eliza were deposited at Bracknell, and on 10 December Godwin’s diary records that Shelley took breakfast with him alone at Skinner Street. This meeting marked a new stage in the relationship between Shelley and his philosophical mentor; William Godwin was now elevated to the position of paternal adviser in matters both spiritual and financial — an odd combination which produced some otherwise inexplicable results. Shelley’s filial dependence on Godwin lasted only in complete form for six months, until June 1814, when it was dramatically broken. But in fragmentary forms of guilt, admiration and the sense of accountability, this dependency hung on for many years after, with the direst consequences for Shelley’s financial affairs. For the time being, Godwin was the fount of wisdom and sympathy.

  For the next four months, that is to say until mid-March of 1814, Shelley’s life is very largely a mystery. We do not know in any detail or with any certainty where he was living, who his companions were, or what he was thinking and writing. What evidence we do have suggests that this was one of the most desperately unhappy periods of his whole adult life, when he was constantly racked by worries about money and his inheritance, when his relationship with Harriet was inexorably breaking down in mutual dissatisfaction and bitterness, and when he could find no steady place of residence, but moved restlessly between addresses in Berkshire and London, alternatively leaning on his friends’ shoulders and quarrelling violently with them. Godwin alone remained beyond reproach.

  On 13 December, Shelley had the first of many financial conferences with his new solicitor, Amory, of 59 Old Bond Street. Godwin’s diary records that this was held at Took’s Court with himself, Dr Newton, the publisher Hookham, and a gentleman called Sorrel in attendance.65 Both Godwin and Hookham certainly had their own interests as well as Shelley’s at heart: Hookham was owed money on the printing of Queen Mab, and Godwin was already taking up Shelley’s repeated offers of support, since, despite the success of Mrs Godwin’s library his position was very precarious. Shelley had first promised to help him in the summer, when he had still thought that his majority would automatically bring extensive funds. At this meeting, only tentative plans and immediate needs were met. Before returning to the country, Shelley had a long talk with Hookham and arranged to keep a private room for himself in Hookham’s house at 15 Old Bond Street. He was already thinking in terms of a retreat.

  On 19 December, just in time to make arrangements for a family Christmas, Shelley took a house at Windsor, some eight miles and an easy ride from the Boinvilles’ at Bracknell. We have no record of this Christmas, the last one he spent with Harriet and his child. Likewise, January and February 1814 are largely a blank. Godwin’s diary shows that he was writing to Shelley about once a week, except at the end of February when letters stopped for a while.66 On short trips to London, when Shelley was beginning to think in terms of procuring a really large post obit loan in the region of £3,000 (about seven times his annual income), he saw Godwin several times, and dined with him thrice. At the Newtons’ there was a quarrel, and relations were broken off.67 In Berkshire, domestic relations became more and more difficult, and increasingly Shelley took to riding over to Bracknell, and sometimes he stayed the night. As the spring approached, Cornelia Boinville suggested that she give him regula
r lessons in Italian to help pass the time.

  At the beginning of March, things seemed to be approaching a crisis, and Mrs Boinville and Shelley decided that for a temporary period at least Shelley should leave Harriet and Eliza at Windsor. Shelley packed a few things and moved over to Bracknell, while Mrs Boinville wrote to apprise his friend Hogg of the situation in a lightly handled letter: ‘I will not have you despite homespun pleasures. Shelley is making a trial of them with us, and likes them so well, that he is resolved to leave off rambling, and to begin a course of them himself. Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest. His journeys after what he has never found have racked his purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved to take a little care of the former in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and shall second with all my might. He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy he must have made you feel what we feel for him now.’68 To give Shelley’s visit a certain propriety, Mrs Boinville explained that he was seeking a house in the district. ‘Excuse a thousand blunders and much confusion of expression,’ she wrote in an expressive P.S., ‘. . . for I write, talking occasionally to Shelley of twenty different subjects.’

  Hogg seems to have visited Bracknell during this month, but happened to miss Shelley, who was visiting London. In one of his most elusive passages Hogg describes Shelley’s bedroom scattered over with clothes and books — mostly French — turned face downwards at the point where he had broken off reading; and he relates some strange history of Shelley using the wooden wash-tubs to go boating on the stream at the bottom of the garden. Apparently, he managed to knock out the bottoms of all the washtubs in the house. There is also a description of Shelley being given endless cups of tea in the drawing-room by ‘a lovely young creature’, presumably Cornelia. The intention is, as ever with Hogg, comic; but the physical facts described suggest Shelley was on the verge of breakdown: ‘He was greedily swallowing the nectar, discussing and disputing the while, and trembling with emotion; and pouring the precious liquor into his bosom, upon his knees, and into his shoes, and spilling it on the carpet.’ Meanwhile, Cornelia stood by him listening, refilling his cup, and mopping him gently with a white cambric handkerchief.69

  From Bracknell, Shelley wrote to his father, after Amory had gone to negotiate with him at Field Place. Timothy had politely turned Amory off with the explanation that the settlement now lay in Chancery and only Shelley’s grandfather, old Sir Bysshe, had it in his power to remove the impediments. Shelley coldly deployed his most pointed argument: ‘I lament to inform you that the posture of my affairs is so critical that I can no longer delay to raise money by the sale of Post Obit bonds to a considerable amount . . . surely my Grandfather must perceive that his hopes of preserving and perpetuating the integrity of the estate will be frustrated by neglecting to relieve my necessities; he knows that I have the power, which however reluctantly I shall be driven to exert of dismembering the property should I survive himself & you.’70 The letter was received in silence, and despite Amory’s own remonstrations,71 Shelley now decided he would clinch the biggest loan he could conveniently get his hands on in London. A large part of this was destined for Godwin.

  Shelley’s state of mind in March and April was enough to cause those who were still in touch with him increasing uneasiness. A rare letter to Hogg of 16 March reveals febrile and conflicting emotions, and fluctuates between apathy and something like hysteria. Referring to Bracknell Shelley wrote, ‘I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself. They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have felt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but its transitoriness . . . .’ But only a few lines later he is writing: ‘I have sunk into a premature old age of exhaustion, which renders me dead to everything, but the unenviable capacity of indulging the vanity of hope, and a terrible susceptibility to objects of disgust and hatred.’ Looking back over his life to the Oxford days, he glanced ‘with wonder at the hopes which in the excess of my madness I there encouraged’. Harriet is simply not mentioned, but Shelley is bitterly explicit about his feelings for Eliza Westbrook, which had been building up for months: ‘I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. It is a sight which wakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind & loathsome worm, that cannot see to sting.’ All barriers of pretence and politeness were now down.

  Yet not all, for astonishingly, a mere week after this letter was written, Shelley agreed to go through the form of a second marriage with Harriet to remove possible legal irregularities resulting from the Scottish marriage of 1811. This may have been the result of a request from John Westbrook, who attended the ceremony and was determined to have his daughter’s legal position in relation to Shelley’s inheritance made absolutely certain, especially since the emotional position was steadily deteriorating for all to see. But Shelley himself may also have needed the clarification of the legal position for tying up his post obit arrangements. Shelley called with Godwin at Doctors Commons for the licence on 22 March, and two days later he was remarried to Harriet at St George’s Church, Hanover Square — where little Ianthe had been christened — with Westbrook and others as witnesses. Whether this hollow rite, which Shelley still abominated on principle, served to increase or reduce the tension between them is not known.[10] The only writing we have from him at this period is a note to his father imperiously requesting that a certain Mr Shourbridge should be granted shooting rights on the Field Place estate. Possibly this was in exchange for an introduction to useful financiers. Timothy’s note scrawled angrily on the back of the letter when he received it reads: ‘Hatter in Bond Street, Dashing Man, the latter goes to Brighthelmstone in his Barouche & fine Blood Horses in Summer. No sort of acquaintance with them [the Shourbridge brothers] whatever.’ The letter was written from 16 Charing Cross, which was Francis Place’s address, and suggests that Godwin was busy introducing Shelley into the radical London set. At around this time Shelley found two money-lenders, the brothers Andrew and George Nash, and negotiations for a sum in the region of £3,000 were commenced. Godwin hoped to collect about half of this figure.

  By the end of the month Shelley was again back in Bracknell, sheltering with the Boinvilles. It is not certain at what date he returned, but he was not long enough in London to witness the arrival of Godwin’s daughter Mary at Skinner Street. She had returned from one of her stays with the Baxter family in Scotland on 30 March, and dined that evening with her beloved father.72

  At Bracknell during April, Shelley continued his conversations with Mrs Boinville, and his Italian lessons with Cornelia. Relations with Harriet showed little signs of improvement, and Harriet herself decided to leave Windsor and take a spring holiday. Accompanied by Ianthe and Eliza, she travelled down to the West Country, staying first at Southampton, and later at Bath, according to Mrs Boinville’s letter of 18 April to Hogg. Thus the separation which had tacitly existed between Shelley and Harriet since the beginning of March was now openly recognized. There is no evidence that Harriet was in London again before July. Mrs Boinville’s attitude to these developments may be gathered from what Shelley later wrote to Harriet: ‘Mrs Boinville deeply knows the human heart; she predicted that these struggles would one day arrive; she saw that friendship & not passion was the bond of our attachment.’73

  Taking tea with Godwin and Shelley and several others at about this time, Hogg heard a voice inquire of the author of Political Justice what he considered the nature of love to be? Godwin remained silent, but Shelley with a half mocking, half defiant glance interrupted the master’s cogitations: ‘My opinion of love is that it acts upon the human heart precisely as a nutmeg grater acts upon a nutmeg.’ The company waited solemnly for this piece of levity to be rebu
ked, but Godwin merely looked across the room and nodded silently.74

  At Bracknell Shelley moved in a dream world, totally disillusioned with Harriet’s love, but desperately seeking some alternative relationship. He half thought he had fallen in love with Cornelia Boinville, and to Hogg he sent a poem addressed in secret to her, ‘I have written nothing but one stanza’:

  Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;

  Thy gentle words stir poison there;

  Thou hast disturbed the only rest

  That was the portion of despair!

  But then, with a moan, he dismissed it: ‘This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than the colour of an autumnal sunset.’75

  But there was more reality in this transient passion for Cornelia than he admitted to Hogg. In the first few pages of a notebook dating from this period, and subsequently given to Jane Clairmont for her journal in August,76 there are several fragmentary entries, in Latin, in Italian and in English which were the product of this half-suppressed passion. He copied out the section of Dante’s Inferno, Canto V, in which Paulo and Francesca fall violently in love while innocently studying a book together; and from Augustine’s Confessions he drew one of his favourite tags which he afterwards used as the epigraph to Alastor: ‘I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love itself; and I sought for something to love, since I loved loving.’[11] Then in a piece of rather stumbling Latin dog prose, he constructed a vague erotic fantasy of desire and fulfilment. Part of this may be rendered: ‘She (he) pressed kisses upon my lips! Suddenly the whole world was clothed with the everlasting colours of heaven. . . . Out of a terrible solitude I contemplated love, as if I were a prisoner, both wretched and contented. . . . I rose up from sleep, denied all delicious desires. . . . She (he) held me in her (his) arms in bed, and I nearly died from delirium and delight. Sweet lips called back the mutual kisses of life! She (he) calmed my fears.’ The gender of the narrator is not clear from the Latin. The manuscript has been burnt in several places. There are also several lines of blank verse in this section of the notebook, most of which are loose and undistinguished; but the opening three lines present with simple force a familiar image: