CHAPTER XVII. Shelley’s Widow and her Sister-by-Affinity 453 The Widow in Italy—Her Return to England—Sojourn in the Strand—Life at Kentish Town—Residence at Harrow—She is forbidden to write her Husband’s ‘Life’—‘Moonshine’ and ‘Celestial Mate’—Her closing Years—Claire in her Later Time—Trelawny’s inaccurate Talk about Shelley’s Will—Claire’s Double Legacy—She becomes a Catholic—Dies in the Catholic Faith.   CHAPTER XVIII. Last Words 458 A Schedule of Significant Matters—Delusion and Semi-delusion—Certain phenomenal Peculiarities of Shelley’s Mind—The Psychological Problem—The Story that would have opened Southey’s Eyes—How it would be received by Critical Persons—Misconceptions of Field Place—Bootlessness of publishing the Story—Shelley and Socialistic Literature—Marian Evans’ Great Error—Her Marriage—Mischievous Effects of the Apologies for Shelleyan Socialism—The Homage to which Shelley is entitled—The Homage to which he has no Title.

 

 

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THE REAL SHELLEY.

 

CHAPTER I.

WILLIAM GODWIN.

To guard against imputations of error, that may be unjustly preferred against this work on the authority of another man of letters, it is needful for me to call attention to certain inaccuracies of Mr. Kegan Paul’s chief literary performance. In Chapter VII., Vol. II., of William Godwin; his Friends and Contemporaries, Mr. Kegan Paul remarks, ‘The attraction which Godwin’s society always possessed for young men has often been noticed, nor did it decrease as years passed on. Two young men were drawn to him in the year 1811, fired with zeal for intellectual pursuits, and desiring help from Godwin. They were different in their circumstances, but were both unhappy, and both died young. The first was a lad named Patrickson, the second Percy Bysshe Shelley.’ In this characteristic sentence, Mr. Kegan Paul makes at least three blunders. As Patrickson was corresponding with William Godwin in December, 1810, the youth was drawn to the man of letters before 1811. As Shelley never saw William Godwin, never wrote him a line, before 1812 (though Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy states otherwise, on the strength of a misread passage of one of the Oxonian Shelley’s epistles), he certainly did not make Godwin’s acquaintance in 1811. As he was corresponding with him for many months before he set eyes on him, Shelley was not in the first instance drawn to the author of Political Justice by his social charms. It is characteristic of Mr. Kegan Paul that the page on which he declares Patrickson to have made Godwin’s acquaintance, no earlier than 1811, faces the very page that exhibits the greater part of a letter from the man of letters to his ill-fated protégé, dated ‘Skinner Street, London, December 18th, 1810.’

At the opening of the next chapter of his book of blunders, Mr. Kegan Paul holds stoutly to his statement that Shelley and Godwin were in correspondence twelve months before they exchanged letters. Instead of being headed ‘1812-14,’ as it would have been, had it not been for this droll misconception, Chapter VIII., Vol. II., of the book is headed ‘The Shelleys, 1811-14,’ and opens with a short paragraph containing these words, ‘The first notice of Shelley in the Godwin Diaries is under date January 6th, 1811, “Write to Shelley.”’ To heighten the confusion, for which I am slow to think Godwin’s diary in any degree accountable, the biographer says in his next paragraph, ‘Shelley was at this time living at Keswick, in the earlier and happier days of his marriage with Harriet Westbrook.... He had already, in this manner, made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt, when, in January, 1811, he wrote thus to Godwin’:—the letter thus submitted to the reader’s notice being Shelley’s well-known first letter to Godwin, which appears in Hogg’s Life under the right date, ‘January 3rd, 1812,’ but in Mr. Kegan Paul’s medley of mistakes under the wrong date of ‘January 3rd, 1811.’ As Shelley’s first letter to Leigh Hunt was dated 2nd March, 1811, it was not written before 3rd January, 1811. As Leigh Hunt took no notice of that letter, Shelley did not make Leigh Hunt’s acquaintance by writing it. Though Leigh Hunt saw and spoke with Shelley on one or two occasions of earlier time, he cannot be fairly said to have made his acquaintance before a day long subsequent to 3rd February, 1815.

What an assemblage of errors in half-a-page of print! It is conceivable that the usually careful Godwin in his diary gave the wrong number to the new year,—a mistake made occasionally even by precise journalists. But if it was so, instead of being misled by the slip into a series of bad blunders, Mr. Kegan Paul should have detected and amended it. Here is the list of blunders:—

Blunder No. 1.—A wrong date of 1811 for 1812 at the head of the chapter.

Blunder No. 2.—The same wrong date to the extract from the diary.

Blunder No. 3.—The same wrong date in the author’s original writing.

Blunder No. 4.—The same error in the date given to the letter.

Blunder No. 5.—The biographer’s own mistake of saying that Shelley was living at Keswick in January, 1811,—months before his expulsion from Oxford.

Blunder No. 6.—The biographer’s own mistake of saying that Shelley and Harriett Westbrook were husband and wife on 3rd January, 1811,—eight calendar months before the date of their wedding.

Blunder No. 7.—The biographer’s own mistake of saying Shelley’s first letter to Leigh Hunt was dated before 3rd January, 1811.

Blunder No. 8.—The biographer’s own mistake of saying Shelley made Leigh Hunt’s acquaintance by writing that letter.

Blunder No. 9.—The biographer’s own mistake (of years), touching the date when Shelley made Leigh Hunt’s acquaintance.

Nine errors of fact in half-a-page of light print by a gentleman who has put himself before the world as an authority on matters of Shelleyan story, and who in doing so has done not a