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bably about this time that Shelley, with exquisite audacity, wrote to the Rev. Rowland Hill in an assumed name, proposing to preach to his congregation at Surrey Chapel. The eminent divine did not reply.

A young girl named Harriett Westbrook, a fellow-pupil of the Misses Shelley at a school at Clapham,* was in the habit of bringing round to Percy their sisterly remittances. She was not, however, altogether unknown to Shelley even before his expulsion from Oxford; he saw her first in January 1811, having taken her a present from his sister Mary, and a letter of introduction. This was at any rate as early as the 11th of that month, for he then ordered a copy of St Irvyne to be sent to her at her father's address, 10 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square.+

Harriett was a charming girl, even a beauty; beauty enough to be designated for the part of Venus in some school fête champêtre "with a complexion brilliant in pink and white, with hair quite like a poet's dream, and Bysshe's peculiar admiration," colour light brown. She was small and delicately made, and was now nearly or quite sixteen. Her father had been a hotel-keeper, and had for some years past retired from the business, with competent means. His house of entertainment, a place of some fashionable resort, was named "The Mount Street Coffeehouse," but was in fact a tavern. He looked Jewish; and both aspect and character co-operated in procuring him the nickname of "Jew Westbrook." The mother was a nonentity. Besides Harriett, there was an unmarried sister, perhaps twice as old, named Eliza; with dark eyes, dark and much-brushed hair, marks of the smallpox, and meagre figure. She also had a Jewish aspect.

Shelley's first flame for his cousin Miss Grove was now flickering in the socket. He indeed retained his love for her, and still did retain it for at any rate a month or two to come. But her father, though he had not interdicted the match, was not in favour of it; she herself had been raising objections to the

* Clapham, according to Shelley; Brompton, according to Lady Shelley; Wandsworth, according to Mr. Hogg: Balham Hill, according to Mr. Middleton, who terms the establishment "a second-rate boarding-school." Mrs. Fenning was the schoolmistress. As everything however remotely connected with Shelley is contested, even such a point as the spelling of Harriett's name has had its pros and cons. Perhaps a business letter from Shelley (Medwin, Life, vol. i. p. 373) may be taken as conclusive: "The maiden name is Harriett Westbrook, with two t's-Harriett." Hogg, however, is positive that she habitually signed only one t.

This is the number, 10, given in Shelley's letter. Elsewhere it is 23 Chapel Street, and that is probably correct.

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lover's increasingly sceptical opinions;* and somewhere about August of this year she was the bride of another man-a gentleman of property, and inevitably a clod of earth" in Shelley's eyes. His letters addressed to Mr. Hogg towards this time of suspense and dereliction expatiate much on his wounded feelings, the atrocities of intolerance, his suicidal proclivities, and the like-and indeed the family did perceive these proclivities to be to some extent real, and used to watch him anxiously when he went out with dog and gun. One cannot, however, lay very much stress on his letters of the period in question. They are flighty, scattered, and excitable, in an extreme degree; and lend themselves equally to the supposition that he was thrown off his balance by all sorts of things, or that he overdid in words every passing matter that affected him. That he felt keenly at the time the loss of his beautiful cousin will be believed by every one who reflects on the character and constitution of the youth, and the probabilities of the case: but the biographers who will have it that this proved a lifelong sorrow to him are probably indulging themselves in applying to Shelley one of the pet resources of the memoir-writing tribe. No doubt, however, his disappointment with Miss Grove may have precipitated his dallyings or entanglements with Miss Harriett Westbrook.

Harriett was not only delightful to look at, but altogether most agreeable. She dressed with exquisite neatness and propriety; her voice was pleasant, and her speech cordial; her spirits were cheerful, and her manners good. She was well educated; a constant and agreeable reader; adequately accomplished in music. She had great fortitude, if it should not rather be called insensibility, of temperament.§ Perfectly frank * "She abhors me as a sceptic-a -as what she was before!" (Letter of Shelley, 3d January 1811, in Hogg's Life, vol. i. p. 156).

This date is named to me on good authority and very positively as being about correct: moreover, Lady Shelley says (Shelley Memorials, p. 13) that Miss Grove made another choice after her cousin's expulsion from Oxford. If this is correct, there is something strangely wrong about a letter of Shelley's published by Hogg under the date of 11th January 1811, in which the marriage of Miss Grove is announced as a fact already accomplished. From various points in connexion with that letter, and others amid which it is inserted, I find it extremely difficult to suppose that there has been, in this instance, any serious misdating on Hogg's part, and cannot at all account for the discrepancy.

I find no hint of any sporting habits of Shelley in after life. He seems however to have done some fishing with Williams in the Bay of Lerici-Letter of Williams, 4th May 1822, in the Essays and Letters, vol. ii. p. 282. In the notes to Queen Mab he speaks of "the brutal pleasures of the chase."

§ See, in Hogg, vol. ii. p. 509, the account of her impassive demeanour during a surgical operation performed on her infant daughter Ianthe.

in character and manner, she became under Shelley's guidance perfectly "unprejudiced" in mind. This, however, took some while Harriett was a Methodist in bringing-up, and felt at first a lively horror at learning that he was an atheist. In process of time, ethical ideas had a considerable attraction for her, religious ideas none at all. So far she seemed excellently fitted both to acquire and to retain a hold upon Shelley's affections. Yet there was in reality a fatal deficiency. When we have summed up all Harriett's attractions and merits—and they were neither few nor unsubstantial—we find that we have described at best a sweet young creature qualified to adorn any ordinary position in life; we have not described a poet's ideal, but only the simulacrum and external imitation of such. Depth of character or of mind—a real distinctive personality of whatever sort —was not included among Harriett Westbrook's qualifications. There was indeed no absolute reason why the void should make itself painfully felt; but, once felt by so ardent and penetrating a nature as Shelley's, it remained, neither to be filled nor forgotten-an aching void, a craving and persecuting want. Harriett was beautiful, amiable, good, accommodating, affectionate; but-deadly and at last unevadeable discovery-she was commonplace.

I fail to find any evidence that Shelley was ever deeply or even impulsively in love with Harriett; and have come across only one suggestion that there was anything like a romantic passion on her part either. He visited at her father's house, and took pleasure in inducing upon her mental faculties something that might be regarded as a conformity to his own daring and fervent tone of opinion; he escorted her back to school to wards the end of April after an illness which had laid her up; lent a ready ear to tales, more or less genuine, of domestic coercion and incompatibilities. And it is easily open to conjecture that the family, though they may have done nothing underhand or entrapping, seconded to the utmost of their power any uncertain chances of a possible alliance with the grandson and eventual heir of a very wealthy baronet.

The letters of Shelley show that he was now eagerly bent upon promoting a match between Mr. Hogg and his eldest sister Elizabeth. She also wrote verses, of which some specimens, far from good, are preserved, and she painted besides : her mental gifts impressed him intermittently, but at times

strongly; at other times he gave her up as a victim of conventionality and prejudice.* The project, however, resulted in nothing-Shelley's advocacy being no doubt a minus quantity under the circumstances; and Elizabeth died unmarried in 1831. By the middle of May the inconvenient son was readmitted to Field Place, and came to an arrangement with his father, under which he was to receive an allowance of £200 per annum, with liberty to choose his own place of abode. His maternal uncle Captain Pilfold, residing at Cuckfield, a naval officer who had seen service under Nelson at the Nile and Trafalgar, exerted a conciliatory influence; and stands out indeed as a very pleasant figure amid the various family complications which Percy's erratic course gave rise to. The latter next, from about the beginning of July, paid a visit of two or three weeks to his cousin Mr. Thomas Grove, at Cwm Elan, Rhayader, in Radnorshire.

A storm was now brewing in the Westbrookian teapot; and the liquor boiled over into Shelley's lips, guided thereto by steady female manipulation. The details appear in print, in letters addressed by Shelley to Hogg from Cwm Elan, undated, and seemingly misplaced in the printing. Presumably they were written towards the middle or end of July.t

During Shelley's stay at Cwm Elan, Eliza and Harriett Westbrook were going to a house of their father at Aberystwith. Percy expected to meet them there, the father having invited him. The letter printed next after the one which names this fact contains the following passage :-"Your jokes on Harriett Westbrook amuse me. It is a common error for people to fancy others in their own situation; but, if I know anything about love, I am not in love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." The next following letter is momentous. "I shall certainly come to York, but

One of his letters, dated 4th July 1811, printed by Hogg (vol. i. p. 411) claims attentive pondering by the student of Shelley's life. A very grave conjecture might be built upon its terms; but I suspect that, owing to Hogg's slovenly editorship, there is a serious misprint in it, and shall leave it without further comment. This course I adopt not because the question raised is "painful," for that I consider no adequate ground for biographic reticence in the case of so important a man as Shelley: but because the document which raises the question is unsafe-and one cannot afford to rummage cupboards for skeletons, if a strong presumption exists that the skeletons themselves are only plaster of Paris.

Lady Shelley (Shelley Memorials, p. 22) refers to two of these letters, and says she is "not able to guarantee" their authenticity. No doubt Lady Shelley speaks advisedly but a biographer who knows nothing to the contrary must accept as genuine letters printed by Hogg as having been addressed to himself, and by himself received at the date of the transactions.

Harriett Westbrook will decide whether now or in three weeks.
Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way by en-
deavouring to compel her to go to school.
She asked my

advice. . . . I advised her to resist. She wrote to say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me; and threw herself upon my protection. We shall have £200 a-year : when we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love. Gratitude and admiration, all demand that I should love her for ever. We shall see you at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am now almost convinced." The upshot was that Shelley returned to London, where he lodged with his cousin, Mr Grove, a surgeon; and in August or September 1811, after some half-dozen stolen interviews with Harriett, eloped with her from her father's house.* He had been much moved by finding her pining, and suffering in health; and learning, from her lips or her not less expressive silence, that love for him was the cause. They went off straight to Edinburgh, and there became man and wife according to the law of Scotland.

Until we reject the above-cited letters as spurious, or as written with an intention to deceive, we must conclude from them that the advances, immediately leading to elopement, came from Harriett to Shelley, and not from Shelley to Harriett, and were founded on complaints of domestic tyranny seemingly exaggerated or frivolous; that Harriett (a schoolgirl of sixteen, hardly more than a child, and lately philosophized out of the ordinary standard of propriety) was quite ready to be Shelley's mistress,† and professedly-not perhaps in truth-aspired to nothing higher; and that it was wholly and solely the poet's strong sense of honour which induced him, and this in the teeth of some pet theories of his own, to make her at once his wife. Consequently, instead of pulling long

*I do not find the exact date stated: it was either the last week in August or the first in September; see Hogg, Life, vol. i. p. 425. Mr. C. H. Grove, who saw Shelley and Harriett off from London, inclines to September (vol. ii. p. 554.)

So at least I interpret the phrase "threw herself upon my protection;" which phrase, however, we must in fairness recollect, is at the utmost Shelley's summingup of Harriett's expressions, and not the ipsissima verba of Harriett herself.

The MS. diary of Dr. Polidori, written while he was in habits of daily intercourse with the Shelleys on the shores of the Lake of Geneva in 1816 (30th May) makes a noticeable statement which, though certainly not to be accepted as conclusive, deserves to be borne in mind. The primary likelihood is that the diarist made his jotting direct from what he had heard Shelley say-or at farthest from what Byron reported to him as said by Shelley.-"Gone through much misery, thinking he was dying. Married a girl for the mere sake of letting her have the jointure that would

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