Harriet, who evidently hoped that the alienation was only temporary. In December she gave birth to a son. The death of Sir Bysshe Shelley in the beginning of 1815 made a great change for the better in the poet's pecuniary condition. It was Sir Bysshe's desire that the property should be entailed; but only £80,000 of the whole fortune of £200,000 was thus settled, and even this entail did not extend beyond Percy's life. Accordingly, at his father's death, Shelley would be complete master of this £80,000. To prevent this result, Sir Bysshe in his will made provision that Percy, should he consent to prolong this entail and also agree to the entail of the unsettled estates, was, upon the death of his father, to enjoy all the rentals and also the income from the large amount of personal property; on the other hand, should Percy not consent, then he was to receive nothing except that of which his grandfather could not deprive him, the reversion of the entailed estates. The poet was, in principle, opposed to entailing property, and had no desire for great wealth; what he did wish for, was an immediate competence which would leave him perfectly free. His father, Sir Timothy, was anxious that Percy's younger brother John should be the heir, and was willing to buy his elder son's interest in the reversion. The grandfather's will, however, put legal difficulties in the way of such an arrangement, and the negotiations dragged on interminably. It is sufficient to say that in June, 1815, Sir Timothy advanced money to pay his son's debts; and during the remainder of his life Percy received an income of £1,000 a year. He immediately sent Harriet £200 to discharge her debts, and gave directions that she should henceforth be paid £200 per annum. Mr. Westbrook allowed her a simi lar sum. The excitement and anxiety of the year told unfavorably upon Shelley's health; in the spring an eminent physician pronounced him to be rapidly dying of consumption. The summer was spent in wanderings to and fro. In autumn Shelley and Mary took a furnished house at Bishopsgate, on the borders of Windsor Forest. It was here that Shelley wrote Alastor. Hitherto, though poetry had always engaged his attention, his main interests and work had rather been philosophical than poetical. Henceforward this relation is reversed, and he produces a continuous series of poems of a far higher character than anything he had previously written. There was a disturbing factor in the even tenor of his life at Bishopsgate, Godwin and Godwin's debts. One thousand pounds which Shelley had given him in the previous spring were already exhausted, and creditors still harassed the philosopher for money. Godwin, in turn, harassed Shelley, whilst denouncing him in bitter terms. The combination of meanness, arrogance, and self-righteousness which Godwin exhibits in his correspondence even now arouses the gall of the reader. Shelley's letters, on the other hand, are in the highest degree creditable to both head and heart. Their clearness and business-like character are utterly at variance with the usual conception of the poet; and they exhibit a self-contained patience and persistent effort to do the best for Godwin, combined with dignity and, at times, with pathos. On March 16 he writes: In my judgment, neither I nor your daughter nor her offspring ought to receive the treatment which we encounter on every side. It has perpetually appeared to me to be your especial duty to see that, so far as mankind value your good opinion, we were justly dealt by, and that a young family, innocent and benevolent and united, should not be confounded with prostitutes and seducers. My astonishment, and, I will confess, when I have been treated with most harshness and cruelty by you, my indignation has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my nature, any consideration should have prevailed on you to be thus harsh and cruel. I lamented also over my ruined hopes of all that your genius once taught me to expect from your virtue, when I found that for yourself, your family, and your creditors, you would submit to that communication with me which you once rejected and abhorred, and which no pity for my poverty and sufferings, assumed willingly for you, could avail to extort. Do not talk of forgiveness again to me, for my blood boils in my veins, and my gall rises against all that bears the human form when I think of what I, their benefactor and ardent lover, have endured of enmity and contempt from you and from all mankind. To this Godwin answered in his lofty and unrelenting vein, and Shelley rejoined: The hopes which I had conceived of receiving from you the treatment and consideration which I esteem to be justly due to me were destroyed by your letter dated the 5th. The feelings occasioned by this discovery were so bitter and so excruciating that I am resolved for the future to stifle all those expectations which my sanguine temper too readily erects on the slightest relaxation of the contempt and the neglect in the midst of which I live. I must appear the reverse of what I really am, haughty and hard, if I am not to see myself and all that I love trampled upon and outraged. Pardon me, I do entreat you, if, pursued by the conviction that where my true character is most entirely known I there meet with the most systematic injustice, I have expressed myself with violence. Overlook a fault caused by your own equivocal politeness, and I will offend no more. We will confine our communications to business. In May, 1816, Shelley, accompanied by Mary and Miss Clairmont, made a second journey to Switzerland, and rented a cottage on the shore of the Lake of Geneva. In the neighboring villa lived Byron, and the two households were much together. Shelley had a profound admiration for Byron's genius; of his morals and principles he did not approve. Together, he and Byron circumnavigated the lake. In no amusement did Shelley take more delight than in boating; water had a special fascination for him; in his poetry he loves to follow the course of a river, and dwells with peculiar fondness on scenery reflected in the water. There was a kindred but more childish pursuit in which he delighted to indulge. "He had a passion," says Peacock, "for sailing paper boats. . . The best spot he had ever found for it was a large pool of transparent water on a heath above Bracknell, with determined borders free from weeds, which admitted launching the miniature craft on the windward and running round to receive it on the leeward side. On the Serpentine he would sometimes launch a boat constructed with more than usual care and freighted with half-pence. He delighted to do this in presence of boys, who would run round to meet it, and when it landed in safety, and the boys scrambled for the prize, he had difficulty in restraining himself from shouting as loudly as they did." Enjoyable though Shelley's visit to Switzerland was, he soon yearned for his native land. "My present intention," he writes, "is to return to England and to make that most excellent of nations my perpetual resting place." Accordingly, at the end of September, the Shelleys returned, and whilst seeking for a suitable house took temporary lodgings at Bath. It would appear that when they reached England, Harriet was no longer at her father's house, and Shelley's efforts to discover her were futile. In the middle of December, he suddenly learned that her body had been found in the Serpentine. There she had drowned herself a month before. Whatever may have been the immediate causes of this deed, it cannot be doubted that Shelley's desertion of her was a remote antecedent. And, though through life he continued to believe that his action towards her was justi fiable, her suicide was at the time a terrible shock and continued to haunt him with horror. Shelley's two children, Ianthe and Charles, were in the hands of their maternal grandfather and aunt, who refused to surrender them. The consequence was a suit in Chancery, which dragged itself out for many months, and caused Shelley wearing anxieties during its continuance, and bitter pain by its result. On the grounds that Shelley had published immoral views with regard to marriage in Queen Mab, and had to some extent carried them out in practice, the Lord Chancellor, Eldon, decided that the latter was not a proper person to have the control of his children. Accordingly, it was decreed that they should be educated under the supervision of the court and by persons of whom the court approved. Shelley was permitted to nominate these persons, subject to the Chancellor's approval; but was not allowed to see his children more than twelve times a year, and then only in presence of their guardians. He was, therefore, virtually to have no influence in their upbringing, and they were to be instructed in those orthodox views in religious and social matters of which he utterly disapproved. His indignation found vent in his poem To the Lord Chancellor: I curse thee by a parent's outraged love, By hopes long cherished and too lately lost, By those unpracticed accents of young speech, To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach Thou strike the lyre of mind! O grief and shame ; |