But even between Shelley and Mary the strain sometimes showed. His passionate letters were all very well, but Mary found he was often maddeningly vague about what actual progress had been made in negotiations. ‘You don’t say a word in your letter — you naughty love to ease one of my anxieties, not a word of Lambert of Harriet of Mrs Stewart of money or anything — but all the reasonings which you used to persuade Mr Peacock love was a good thing. Now you know I did not want converting. . . .’37 Yet sometimes, when Shelley had to contemplate the long week ahead without her, his notes broke into a kind of spontaneous lyricism. Under their poignancy, they contained a characteristic psychological penetration into the way his desire fluctuated in its objects.
‘Mary love — we must be united. I will not part from you again after Saturday night. We must devise some scheme. I must return. Your thoughts alone can waken mine to energy. My mind without yours is dead & cold as the dark midnight river when the moon is down. It seems as if you alone could shield me from impurity and vice. If I were absent from you long I should shudder with horror at myself. My understanding becomes undisciplined without you.’38
Ever after, he considered the moon to be Mary’s emblem. Six years later in Italy, looking back at the way the whole relationship had developed, he wrote with infinitely sad understanding in the classical austerity of his matured style:
She led me to a cave in that wild place
And sate beside me, with her downward face
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
Waxing and waning o’er Endymion.
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,
And all my being became bright or dim
As the Moon’s image in a summer sea,
According as she smiled or frowned on me;
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead. . . .39
The period of limbo was finally broken on 8 November by the securing of a loan, with the co-operation of Ballechy and Hookham and Peacock, for a sum somewhere in the region of £500. It is not known to what extortionate rate of interest Shelley was forced to agree. The following morning, Jane and Mary packed up their few books and belongings in a hired coach, picked Shelley up from Peacock’s, and drove southwards across the city shaking off the dust of St Pancras. Their new lodgings were more select, in the residential area off the Blackfriars Road, at No. 2 Nelson Square. Mary had arranged these, having first tried Pimlico and Sloane Street.
Soon after their arrival, Shelley was out in the city planning a further loan with Hookham. For almost unbelievably, Godwin had sent word through a third party that further financial aid was acceptable, since Shelley had achieved such striking success with Ballechy. That Godwin had the cold audacity to claim money at this juncture, and even more that Shelley was prepared to recognize the claim, gives some indication of the perverse influence that the philosopher still exercised over his erstwhile pupil. The Godwins also made one more attempt to extract Jane, when they heard that since moving she was in a sullen mood with Shelley. In Shelley’s absence a note arrived, brought by Fanny Godwin. Apparently, ‘the reason she comes is to ask Jane to Skinner Street to see Mrs Godwin, who they say is dying’.40 Mary did not oppose this obvious overture, and Fanny was sent back to pick up some suitable clothes for Jane to wear. She returned to Nelson Square and with Mary’s blessing, the two went off together. When Shelley, too late, came back, ‘he disapproves’. But Mary was rather pleased. ‘In the evening talk with my love about a great many things. We receive a letter from Jane saying she is very happy, and she does not know when she will return.’ This happened on the 13th; two days of silent suspense followed, during which Shelley noted ‘disgusting dreams’ in the journal. On the 15th, Shelley recorded: ‘Jane calls; converse with her. She goes back to Skinner Street; tells Papa that she will not return; comes back to Nelson Square with Shelley.’ Mary had been ill in bed and was unable to contribute much to the decision.
It turned out that Godwin had proposed to Jane a scheme that she should go and stay with his friends, the Taylors of Norwich, as a kind of governess. Jane had shown no enthusiasm for such a post, so Godwin suggested merely that she go to stay as a paying guest with some family outside London, where she could find her own feet. But Shelley had liberated his young protegée too well. Jane had agreed to go, but only on two conditions: ‘That she should in all situations openly proclaim and earnestly support, a total contempt for the laws and institutions of society, and that no restraint should be imposed upon her correspondence and intercourse with those from whom she was separated.’ That at any rate was how the Godwins remembered her outrageous response when the scheme had been abandoned, and Shelley had reclaimed Jane. Mrs Godwin was genuinely distraught for her daughter, and regarded Shelley as a madman and an immoralist. Among other things, Jane told her that she could not leave Shelley since he was fearful of walking alone in the streets in case a revengeful enemy called Leeson should ambush him with a knife.41 It was the sort of macabre joke only she and Shelley could fully appreciate.
Jane had resoundingly established her independence of Skinner Street and her parents, and she began to experiment with a new name, in a manner that resembled Miss Hitchener’s less fortunate changes of nomenclature. Various forms were tried: Clare, Clara, Claire, and these gradually entered their journal. Finally she settled on the firm and musically satisfying Claire Clairmont, and as such she is known to history. It is precisely at this point that Jane’s, or rather Claire’s diary would become of maximum interest. But the remaining pages of the notebook which Shelley had originally given her in France are torn away from 9 November 1814 onwards, and there is nothing left for the rest of the year. It is not known what hand destroyed this vital and fascinating record of her relationship with Shelley, but such wholesale annihilation is unlikely to have been her own. No further manuscript of Claire’s diary is known to exist, until that beginning on 1 January 1818.42
With the move to Nelson Square, the worst of Shelley’s financial tribulations were over. Yet there was still no definite source of a permanent income in sight. He was unable to set up proper house with Mary and Claire; he could not leave the network of lawyers and money-lenders so painfully built up in London; he could afford no journey, nor could he find in the countryside the tranquillity and concentration to embark on any solid piece of composition. There was no gleam of a reconciliation with Godwin, although his old philosophical master continued to make pressing inquiries about a loan through Thomas Turner, Cornelia Boinville’s husband. This was an intolerable situation which was eventually to goad Shelley to open fury, though not before he had surrendered further payments. Reconciliation with Field Place was more than ever unthinkable. Political action in any sphere was impossible, even a brotherly kidnapping, with his hands so tied. In the immediate future lay the birth of his second child by Harriet, and only slightly more distantly, in the spring, Mary’s child. He was hemmed in on all sides by personal responsibilities. It was ironic that the result of all his efforts to liberate himself and those around him from the trammels of morality and society seemed so far to be an almost total entrapment in the complications of his own daily existence.
It seemed certain now that Shelley, Mary and Claire would have to winter in London, and little remained to do, with Shelley visiting the money-lenders daily, except to cultivate books and friends. Mary seems to have been almost constantly unwell in November and December, and since Shelley liked to take Claire with him on his city visits, the reappearance of Hogg on the horizon promised to fill a social gap in their little community. Hogg first visited Nelson Square on 14 November. He had changed a good deal, Shelley found. Many of his liberal political sympathies had dropped away, and his shyness had been replaced by a jovial ironic mask behind which Hogg posed as a worldly-wise raconteur. ‘Perhaps he may still be my friend’, Shelley wrote in the journal, ‘in spite of the radical differences of sympathy between us; he was pleased with Mary; this was the te
st by which I had previously determined to judge his character. We converse on many interesting subjects, and Mary’s illness disappears for a time.’43
Hogg called again on the 16th, the 20th, 24th and 29th, and gradually assimilated himself to the household. At first Mary was inclined to be glacial, and only took pleasure in engaging and beating him in chess-like games of intellectual argument. ‘Get into an argument about virtue, in which Hogg makes a sad bungle — quite muddled on the point, I perceive.’ Several days later, when Shelley was out, Hogg called in the evening and ‘we have an argument upon the Love of Wisdom, and Free Will, and Necessity; he quite wrong, but quite puzzled; his arguments are very weak’. Slowly Hogg realized that he would do better by omitting to run the Wollstonecraft intellectual gauntlet. On 1 December when he called, they talked about ‘heaps of things, but do not argue tonight’; and three days later, Shelley was gratified to read Mary’s entry in the journal, which observed: ‘Walk about dusk a few times round the Square. Hogg comes in the evening. I like him better tonight than before, but still fear he is an enfant perdu.’ Provided Mary thought of Hogg as an enfant, whether perdu or not, all would be well. Soon he was calling regularly every few evenings, being ‘sincere’, and amusing them all with droll recollections of their early life together, like the ‘funny account of Shelley’s Father, particularly of his vision and the matrimonial morning’. This was very apt stuff.44
Hogg had brought with him a copy of his novel, Prince Alexy Haimatoff, and Shelley thought it would be suitable to sit down and write a critique. This was one of the very few pieces of composition he produced between their return from the Continent in September and the following spring. It was subsequently published in the Critical Review of December 1814. Shelley singled out for attention Hogg’s daring description of the advice given by young Prince Alexy’s tutor on matters of sexual morality. He attacked vigorously what he regarded as a debased version of ‘free love’, and the argument was partly ad hominem:
But we cannot regard his commendation to his pupil to indulge in promiscuous concubinage without horror and detestation. The author appears to deem the loveless intercourse of brutal appetite a venial offense against delicacy and virtue! He asserts that a transient connection with a cultivated female may contribute to form the heart without essentially vitiating the sensibilities. It is our duty to protest against so pernicious and disgusting an opinion. No man can rise pure from the poisonous embraces of a prostitute, or sinless from the desolated hopes of a confiding heart. Whatever may be the claims of chastity, whatever the advantages of simple and pure affection, these ties, these benefits are of equal obligation to either sex. Domestic relations depend for their integrity upon a complete reciprocity of duties.45
A ‘transient connection with a cultivated female’ would be, surely, a reasonably adequate description of ‘free love’ as normally understood. But Shelley attacked it with peculiar force on this occasion. The new emphasis on reciprocity and equal obligation within sexual relations was not entirely caused by Hogg’s reappearance. Shelley was thinking of his experience with Harriet, and the reproof of Hogg’s moral levity contained more than an element of self-reproach. Yet he was divided by the implications of Prince Alexy’s sentimental education, and concluded that the narrative was ‘an unweeded garden where nightshade is interwoven with sweet jessamine’. Shelley praised Hogg for his perceptive handling of female characters, and again stressed the need for moral sensitivity. Above all, the crudeness of conventional morality and the brutal slavishness of desire must be banished from intimate human relations.
In the delineation of the more evanescent feelings and uncommon instances of strong and delicate passion we conceive the author to have exhibited new and unparallelled powers. He has noticed some peculiarities of female character, with a delicacy and truth singularly exquisite. We think that the interesting subject of sexual relations requires for its successful development the application of a mind thus organized and endowed. Yet even here how great the deficiencies; this mind must be pure from the fashionable superstition of gallantry, must be exempt from the sordid feelings which with blind idolatry worship the image and blaspheme the deity, reverence the type and degrade the reality of which it is an emblem.46
This was, in its way, a formal if guarded invitation to Hogg.
By a curious irony, in the same week that Shelley was writing this review and gradually introducing Hogg back into his household, Harriet was writing to her old friend Mrs Nugent from Chapel Street. In a detailed letter dated 20 November, she finally revealed the full extent of the disaster that had wrecked her life. She took her own view of domestic reciprocity. ‘My dear Mrs Nugent, Your fears are verified. Mr Shelley has become profligate and sensual, owing entirely to Godwin’s Political Justice. The very great evil that book has done is not to be told. The false doctrines there contained have poisoned many a young and virtuous mind. Mr Shelley is living with Godwin’s two daughters — one by Mary Wollstonecraft, the other the daughter of his present wife, called Clairmont. I told you some time back Mr S. was to give Godwin three thousand pounds. It was in effecting the accomplishment of this scheme that he was obliged to be at Godwin’s house, and Mary was determined to seduce him. She is to blame . . . and here I am, my dear friend, waiting to bring another infant into this woeful world. Next month I shall be confined. He will not be near me. No, he cares not for me now. He never asks after me or sends me word how he is going on. In short, the man I once loved is dead. This is a vampire.’47
Shelley’s last letter, a request for thirty pounds to save him from prison, had been written to Harriet about a month previously, on 25 October. He had not informed her of his change of address, to Nelson Square, and he knew nothing about the state of her health or finances as the birth of the second child approached. Harriet in fact gave birth to a boy, rather sooner than she expected, on 30 November. She called him Charles. News only filtered through to Shelley a week later via Hookham. Shelley was walking out with Claire ‘as usual, to heaps of places’, as Mary put it, when a note arrived in the evening. Mary treated the event with considerable bitchiness in their shared journal. ‘A letter from Hookham, to say that Harriet has been brought to bed of a son and heir. Shelley writes a number of circular letters of this event, which ought to be ushered in with ringing of bells, &c, for it is the son of his wife. Hogg comes in the evening; I like him better, though he vexed me by his attachment to sporting. A letter from Harriet confirming the news, in a letter from a deserted wife!! and telling us he has been born a week.’48 Mary’s tone is understandable, considering her own pregnancy, her growing jealousy of Claire and the ill-health that kept her frequently marooned in the parlour at Nelson Square. The next day, Shelley went out with Claire to visit the lawyers, and then on to Harriet in Chapel Street. They came home irritable and dispirited, having been caught in the rain. He told Mary that Harriet had treated him ‘with insulting selfishness’, and as far as one can tell, he did not try to see Harriet again until the following April.
Harriet’s side of this last brief interview, as given to Mrs Nugent four days later, was profoundly miserable. ‘Ianthe has a brother. He is an eight month child, and very like his unfortunate father, who is more depraved than ever. Oh, my dear friend, what a dreadful trial it is to bring children into the world so utterly helpless as he is, with no kind father’s care to heal the wounded frame. After so much suffering my labour was a very good one, from nine in the morning till nine at night. He is a very fine healthy child for the time. I have seen his father; he came to see me as soon as he knew of the event; but as to his tenderness to me, none remains. He said he was glad it was a boy, because he would make money cheaper. You see how the noble soul is debased. Money now, not philosophy, is the grand spring of his actions.’49 There was a certain truth in what she said about money. It did fill most of Shelley’s day, as the journal showed, and as far as he was concerned, she and her children were now just one more of his financial problems.
A
s Christmas approached, they went out less, except to Pike’s the moneylender, and much of the day was spent reading. Their reading lists have survived, a macabre mixture: political philosophy and horror novels. The works of Tom Paine, Godwin, Voltaire and Mary Wollstonecraft stand beside Weber’s The Sorcerer, Lewis’s The Monk, Edgar Huntley and other Brockden Brown novels, Joanna Baillie’s Plays, and Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian. They also read travel books, and The Lives of the Revolutionists by John Adolphus. Shelley cleansed his palate in private with Cicero, Petronius and Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars.
Wordsworth’s Excursion, which Hookham had published that autumn, was passed from hand to hand with frowns of disapproval. Shelley still admired the spiritual penetration of Wordsworth’s poetry, and the quality of high moral austerity in his style was something that corresponded with a growing need in his own creative development. Yet Wordsworth was for Shelley a political traitor, a deserter of the French Revolution, branded with the same mark as Southey. It was about now that he first sketched out the lines which finally became his sonnet ‘To Wordsworth’, in which he expressed both his admiration and his disgust. The image of what Wordsworth once had been, reflected a continuing literary-political ambition for what Shelley himself might become.
Shelley: The Pursuit Page 42