Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  Mrs. Shelley and. Mrs. Williams passed some days in dreadful suspense. Mrs. Shelley, unable to endure it longer, proceeded to Pisa, and rushing into Lord Byron’s room with a face of marble, asked passionately, “Where is my husband’?”’ Lord Byron afterwards said he had never seen anything in dramatic tragedy to equal the terror of Mrs. Shelley’s appearance on that day.

  At length the worst was known. ‘The bodies of the two- friends and the boy were washed on shore. That of the boy was buried in the sand. That of Captain Williams was burned on the 15th of August. The ashes were collected and sent to England for interment. The next day the same ceremony was performed for Shelley; and his remains were collected to be interred, as they subsequently were, in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. Lord Byron and Mr. Leigh Hunt were present on both occasions. Mr. Trelawny conducted all the proceedings, as he had conducted all the previous search. Herein, and in the whole of his subsequent conduct towards Mrs. Shelley, he proved himself, as I have already observed, a true and indefatigable friend. In a letter which she wrote to me, dated Genoa, September 29th, 1822, she said:—” Trelawny is the only quite disinterested friend I have here; the only one who clings to the memory of my loved ones as I do myself; but he, alas! is not one of them, though he is really kind and good.”

  The boat was subsequently recovered; the state in which everything was found in her, showed that she had not capsized. Captain Roberts first thought that she had been swamped by a heavy sea; but on closer examination, finding many of the timbers on the starboard quarter broken, he thought it certain that she must have been run down by a felucca in the squall.

  I think the first conjecture the most probable. Her masts were gone, and her bowsprit broken. Mr. Trelawny had previously despatched two large feluccas with ground-tackling to drag for her. This was done for five or six days. They succeeded in finding her, but failed in getting her up. The task was accomplished by Captain Roberts. The specified damage to such a fragile craft was more likely to have been done by the dredging apparatus than by collision with a felucca.

  So perished Percy Bysshe Shelley, in the flower of his age, and not perhaps even yet in the full flower of his genius; a genius unsurpassed in the description and imagination of scenes of beauty and grandeur; in the expression of impassioned love of ideal beauty; in the illustration of deep feeling by congenial imagery; and in the infinite variety of harmonious versification. What was, in my opinion, deficient in his poetry, was, as I have already said, the want of reality in the characters with which he -peopled his splendid scenes, and to which he addressed or imparted the utterance of his impassioned feelings. He was advancing, I think, to the attainment of this reality. It would have given to his poetry the only element of truth which it wanted; though at the same time, the more clear development of what men were would have lowered his estimate of what they might be, and dimmed his enthusiastic prospect of the future destiny of the world. I can conceive him, if he had lived to the present time, passing his days like Volney, looking on the world from his windows without taking part in its turmoils; and perhaps like the same, or some other great apostle of liberty (for I cannot at this moment verify the quotation), desiring that nothing should be inscribed on his tomb, but his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the single word, “DÉSILLUSIONNÉ.”

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE.

  [Reprinted from Fraser’s Magazine of March, 1862.]

  IN Macmillan’s Magazine for June, 1860, there is an article entitled “Shelley in Pall-Mall; by Richard Garnett,” which contains the following passage: —

  Mach has been written about Shelley during the last three or four years, and the store of materials for his biography has been augmented by many particulars, some authentic and valuable, others trivial or mythical, or founded on mistakes or misrepresentations. It does not strictly fall within the scope of this paper to notice any of these, but some of the latter class are calculated to modify so injuriously what has hitherto been the prevalent estimate of Shelley’s character, and, while entirely unfounded, are yet open to correction from the better knowledge of so few, that it would be inexcusable to omit an opportunity of comment which only chance has presented, and which may not speedily recur. It will be readily perceived that the allusion is to the statements respecting Shelley’s separation from his first wife, published by Mr. T. L. Peacock, in Fraser’s Magazine for January last. According to these, the transaction was not preceded by long-continued unhappiness, neither was it an amicable agreement effected in virtue of a mutual understanding. The time cannot be distant when these assertions must be refuted by the publication of documents hitherto withheld, and Shelley’s family have doubted whether it be worth while to anticipate it. Pending their decision, I may be allowed to state most explicitly that the evidence to which they would in such a case appeal, and to the nature of which I feel fully competent to speak, most decidedly contradicts the allegations of Mr. Peacock.

  A few facts in the order of time will show, I will not say the extreme improbability, but the absolute impossibility, of Shelley’s family being in possession of any such documents as are here alleged to exist.

  In August, 1811, Shelley married Harriet Westbrook in Scotland.

  On the 24th of March, 1814, he married her a second time in the Church of England, according to the marriage certificate printed in my article of January, 1860. This second marriage could scarcely have formed an incident in a series of “long-continued unhappiness.”

  In the beginning of April, 1814, Shelley and Harriet were together on a visit to Mrs. B., at Bracknell. This lady and her family were of the few who constituted Shelley’s most intimate friends. On the 18th of April, she wrote to Mr. Hogg:—” Shelley is again a widower. His beauteous half went to town on Thursday with Miss Westbrook, who is gone to live, I believe, at Southampton.”

  Up to this time, therefore, at least, Shelley and Harriet were together; and Mrs. B.’s letter shows that she had no idea of estrangement between them, still less of [permanent separation.

  I said in my article of January, 1860: “There was no estrangement, no shadow of a thought of separation, till Shelley became acquainted, not long after the second marriage, with the lady who was subsequently his second wife.”

  When Shelley first saw this lady, she had just returned from a visit to some friends in Scotland; and when Mr. Hogg first saw her, she wore “a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time.” She could not have been long returned.

  Mr. Hogg saw Mary Godwin for the first time on the first day of Lord Cochrane’s trial. This was the 8th of June, 1814. He went with Shelley to Mr. Godwin’s. “We- entered a room on the first floor.... William Godwin was not at home.... The door was partially and softly opened.

  A thrilling voice called ‘Shelley!’ A thrilling voice answered ‘Mary!’ And he darted out of the room like an arrow from Shelley’s acquaintance with Miss Godwin must, therefore, have begun between the 18th of April and the 8th of June; much nearer, I apprehend, to the latter than the former, but I cannot verify the precise date.

  On the 7th of July, 1814, Harriet wrote to a mutual friend, still living, a letter in which “she expressed a confident belief that he must know where Shelley was, and entreating his assistance to induce him to return home.” She was not even then aware that Shelley had finally left her.

  On the 28th of the same month, Shelley and Miss Godwin left England for Switzerland.

  The interval between the Scotch and English marriages was two years and seven months. The interval between the second marriage and the departure for Switzerland, was four months and four days. In the estimate of probabilities, the space for voluntary separation is reduced by Mrs. B.’s letter of April 18, to three months and thirteen days; and by Harriet’s letter of July 7, to twenty-one days. If, therefore, Shelley’s family have any document which demonstrates Harriet’s consent to the separation, it must prove the consent to have been given on one of these twenty-one days. I know, by my subse
quent conversation with Harriet, of which the substance was given in my article of January, 1860, that she was not a consenting party; but as I have only my own evidence to that conversation, Mr. Garnett may choose not to believe me. Still, on other evidence than mine, there remain no more than three weeks within which, if at all, the “amicable agreement” must have been concluded.

  But again, if Shelley’s family had any conclusive evidence on the subject, they must have had some clear idea of the date of the separation, and of the circumstances preceding it. That they had not, is manifest from Lady Shelley’s statement, that “towards the close of 1813, estrangements, which for some time had been slowly growing between Mr and Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisis: separation ensued, and she returned to her father’s house.’ Lady Shelley could not have written thus if she had known the date of the second marriage, or had even adverted to the letter of the 18th of April, 1814, which had been published by Mr. Hogg long before the production of her own volume.

  I wrote the preceding note immediately after the appearance of Mr. Garnett’s article; but I postponed its publication, in the hope of obtaining copies of the letters which were laid before Lord Eldon in 1817. These were nine letters from Shelley to Harriet, and one from Shelley to Miss Westbrook after Harriet’s death. These letters were not filed; but they are thus alluded to in Miss Westbrook’s affidavit, dated 10th January, 1817, of which I have procured a copy from the Record Office: —

  Elizabeth Westbrook, of Chapel-street, Grosvenor-square, in the parish of Saint George, Hanover-square, in the county of Middlesex, spinster, maketh oath and saith, that she knows and is well acquainted with the handwriting of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, one of the defendants in this cause, having frequently seen him write; and this deponent saith that she hath looked upon certain paper writings now produced, and shown to her at the time of swearing this her affidavit, and marked respectively 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; and this deponent saith that the female mentioned or referred to in the said letters, marked respectively 2, 4, 6, 9, under the name or designation of “Mary,” and in the said other letters by the character or description of the person with whom the said defendant had connected or associated himself, is Mary Godwin, in the pleadings of this cause named, whom the said defendant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, in the lifetime of his said wife, and in or about the middle of the year 1814, took to cohabit with him, and hath ever since continued to cohabit, and still doth cohabit with; and this deponent saith that she hath looked upon a certain other paper writing, produced and shown to this deponent now at the time of swearing this her affidavit, and marked 10; and this deponent saith that the same paper writing is of the handwriting of the said defendant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and was addressed by him to this deponent, since the decease of her said sister, the late wife of the said Percy Bysshe Shelley. And this deponent saith that the person referred to in the said last mentioned letter as “the Lady whose union with the said defendant this deponent might excusably regard as the cause of her Sister’s Ruin,” is also the said Mary Godwin.

  The rest of the affidavit relates to “Queen Mab.”

  The words marked in italics could not possibly have been written by Shelley, if his connection with Miss Godwin had not been formed till after a separation from Harriet by mutual consent.

  In a second affidavit, dated 13th January, 1817, Miss Westbrook stated in substance the circumstances of the marriage, and that two children were the issue of it: that after the birth of the first child, Eliza Ianthe, and while her sister was pregnant with the second, Charles Bysshe, Percy Bysshe Shelley deserted his said wife, and cohabited with Mary Godwin; and thereupon Harriet returned to the house of her father, with her eldest child, and soon afterwards the youngest child was born there; that the children had always remained under the protection of Harriet’s father, and that Harriet herself had resided under the same protection until a short time previous to her death in December, 1816. It must be obvious that this statement could not have been made if the letters previously referred to had not borne it out; if, in short, they had not demonstrated, first, that the separation was not by mutual consent; and secondly, that it followed, not preceded, Shelley’s first acquaintance with Mary Godwin. The rest of the affidavit related to the provision which Mr. Westbrook had made for the children.

  Harriet suffered enough in her life to deserve that her memory should be respected. I have always said to all whom it might concern, that I would defend her, to the best of my ability, against all misrepresentations. Such are not necessary to Shelley’s vindication. That is best permitted to rest, as I have already observed, on the grounds on which it was placed by himself.

  The Quarterly Review for October, 1861, has an article on Shelley’s life and character, written in a tone of great fairness and impartiality, with an evident painstaking to weigh evidence and ascertain truth. There are two passages in the article, on which I wish to offer remarks, with reference solely to matters of fact.

  Shelley’s hallucinations, though not to be confounded with what is usually called insanity, are certainly not compatible with perfect soundness of mind. They were the result of an excessive sensibility, which, only a little more severely strained, would have overturned reason altogether. It has been said that the horror of his wife’s death produced some such effect, and that for a time at least he was actually insane. Lady Shelley says nothing about this, and we have no explicit statement of the fact by any authoritative biographer. But it is not in itself improbable. — P. 323.

  It was not so, however. He had at that time taken his house at Marlow, where I was then living. He was residing in Bath, and I was looking after the fitting-up of the house and the laying out of the grounds. I had almost daily letters from him or Mary. He was the first to tell me of Harriet’s death, asking whether I thought it would become him to interpose any delay before marrying Mary. I gave him my opinion that, as they were living together, the sooner they legalized their connection the better. He acted on this opinion, and shortly after his marriage he came to me at Marlow. We went together to see the progress of his house and grounds. I recollect a little scene which took place on this occasion. There was on the lawn a very fine old wide- spreading holly. The gardener had cut it up into a bare pole, selling the lop for Christmas decorations. As soon as Shelley saw it, he asked the gardener, “What had possessed him to ruin that beautiful tree?” The gardener said, he thought he had improved its appearance. Shelley said: “It is impossible that you can be such a fool.” The culprit stood twiddling his thumbs along the seams of his trousers, receiving a fulminating denunciation, which ended in his peremptory dismissal. A better man was engaged with several assistants, to make an extensive plantation of shrubs. Shelley stayed with me two or three days. I never saw him more calm and self-possessed. Nothing disturbed his serenity but the unfortunate holly. Subsequently, the feeling for Harriet’s death grew into a deep and abiding sorrow: but it was not in the beginning that it was felt most strongly.

  It is not merely as a work of art that the Revolt of Islam must be considered. It had made its first appearance under the title of Laon and Cythna, but Laon and Cythna was still more outspoken as to certain matters than the Revolt of Islam, and was almost immediately. withdrawn from circulation, to appear with alterations under its present name. There is something not quite worthy of Shelley in this transaction. On the one hand, merely prudential reasons, mere dread of public indignation, ought not to have induced him to conceal opinions which for the interest of humanity he thought it his duty to promulgate. But those who knew most of Shelley will be least inclined to attribute to him such a motive as this. On the other hand, if good feeling induced him to abstain from printing what he knew must be painful to the great majority of his countrymen, the second version should have been suppressed as well as the first.” — Pp. 314, 315.

  Shelley was not influenced by either of the motives supposed. Mr. Ollier positively refused to publish the poem as it was, and Shelley had no hope of another publisher. He
for a long time refused to alter a line: but his friends finally prevailed on him to submit. Still he could not, or would not, sit down by himself to alter it, and the whole of the alterations were actually made in successive sittings of what I may call a literary committee. He contested the proposed alterations step by step: in the end, sometimes adopting, more frequently modifying, never originating, and always insisting that his poem was spoiled.

  The Last Day of Windsor Forest

  MANY of my younger, and some of my maturer years, were passed on the borders of Windsor Forest. I was early given to long walks and rural explorations, and there was scarcely a spot of the Park or the Forest, with which I was not intimately acquainted. There were two very different scenes, to which I was especially attached: Virginia Water, and a dell near Winkfield plain.

  The bank of Virginia Water, on which the public enter from the Wheatsheaf Inn, is bordered, between the cascade to the left and the iron gates to the right, by groves of trees, which, with the exception of a few old ones near the water, have grown up within my memory. They were planted by George the Third, 1 and the entire space was called the King’s Plantation. Perhaps they were more beautiful in an earlier age than they are now: or I may so think and feel, through the general preference of the past to the present, which seems inseparable from old age. In my first acquaintance with the place, and for some years subsequently, sitting in the large upper room of the Inn, I could look on the cascade and the expanse of the lake, which have long been masked by trees.

  Virginia Water was always open to the public, through the Wheatsheaf Inn, except during the Regency and Reign of George the Fourth, who not only shut up the grounds, but enclosed them, where they were open to a road, with higher fences than even the outside passengers of stage-coaches could look over, that he might be invisible in his punt, while fishing on the lake. William the Fourth lowered the fences, and re-opened the old access.