Peacock's Memoirs of Shelley

[Around 1811]. Harriet Westbrook, he said, was a schoolfellow of one of his sisters; and when, after his expulsion from Oxford, he was in London, without money, his father having refused him all assistance, this sister had requested her fair schoolfellow to be the medium of conveying to him such small sums as she and her sisters could afford to send, and other little presents which they thought would be acceptable. Under these circumstances the ministry of the young and beautiful girl presented itself like that of a guardian angel, and there was a charm about their intercourse which he readily persuaded himself could not be exhausted in the duration of life. The result was that in August, 1811, they eloped to Scotland, and were married in Edinburgh.¹ Their journey had absorbed their stock of money. They took a lodging, and Shelley immediately told the landlord who they were, what they had come for, and the exhaustion of their resources, and asked him if he would take them in, and advance them money to get married and to carry them on till they could get a remittance. This the man agreed to do, on condition that Shelley would treat him and his friends to a supper in honour of the occasion. It was arranged accordingly; but the man was more obtrusive and officious than Shelley was disposed to tolerate. The marriage was concluded, and in the evening Shelley and his bride were alone together, when the man tapped at their door. Shelley opened it, and the landlord said to him — It is customary here at weddings for the guests to come in, in the middle of the night, and wash the bride with whisky." "I immediately," said Shelley, "caught up my brace of pistols, and pointing them both at him, said to him, — I have had enough of your impertinence; if you give me any more of it I will blow your brains out; on which he ran or rather tumbled down stairs, and I bolted the doors."

Note 1. Not at Gretna Green, as stated by Captain Medwin. [T. L. P.]

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The custom of washing the bride with whisky is more likely to have been so made known to him than to have been imagined by him.

Leaving Edinburgh, the young couple led for some time a wandering life. At the lakes they were kindly received by the Duke of Norfolk, and by others through his influence. They then went to Ireland, landed at Cork, visited the lakes of Killarney, and stayed some time in Dublin, where Shelley became a warm repealer and emancipator. They then went to the Isle of Man, then to Nant Gwillt¹ in Radnorshire, then to Lymouth [Map] near Barnstaple,¹ then came for a short time to London; then went to reside in a furnished house belonging to Mr. Maddocks at Tanyrallt,³ near Tremadoc, in Caernarvonshire. Their residence at this place was made chiefly remarkable by an imaginary attack on his life, which was followed by their immediately leaving Wales.

Note 1. Nant Gwillt, the Wild Brook, flows into the Elan (a tributary of the Wye), about five miles above Rhayader. Above the confluence, each stream runs in a rocky channel through a deep narrow valley. In each of these valleys is or was a spacious mansion, named from the respective streams. Cwm Elan House was the seat of Mr. Grove, whom Shelley had visited there before his marriage in 1811. Nant Gwillt House, when Shelley lived in it in 1812, was inhabited by a farmer, who let some of the best rooms in lodgings. At a subsequent period I stayed a day in Rhayader, for the sake of seeing this spot. It is a scene of singular beauty. [T. L. P. ]

Note 2. He had introduced himself by letter to Mr. Godwin, and they carried on a correspondence some time before they met. Mr. Godwin, after many pressing invitations, went to Lymouth on an intended visit, but when he arrived the birds had flown. [T. L. P.]

Note 3. Tan-yr-allt— Under the precipice. [T. L. P.]

Mr. Hogg inserts several letters relative to this romance of a night: the following extract from one of Harriet Shelley's, dated from Dublin, March 12th, 1813, will give a sufficient idea of it: —

Mr. Shelley promised you a recital of the horrible events that caused us to leave Wales. I have undertaken the task, as I wish to spare him, in the present nervous state of his health, everything that can recall to his mind the horrors of that night, which I will relate.

On the night of the 26th February we retired to bed between ten and eleven o'clock. We had been in bed about half an hour, when Mr. S heard a noise proceeding from one of the parlours. He immediately went down stairs with two pistols which he had loaded that night, expecting to have occasion for them. He went into the billiard-room, when he heard footsteps retreating; he followed into another little room, which was called an office. He there saw a man in the act of quitting the room through a glass window which opened into the shrubbery; the man fired at Mr. S, which he avoided. Bysshe then fired, but it flashed in the pan. The man then knocked Bysshe down, and they struggled on the ground. Bysshe then fired his second pistol, which he thought wounded him in the shoulder, as he uttered a shriek and got up, when he said these words — ' By God, I will be revenged. I will murder your wife, and will ravish your sister! By God, I will be revenged! ' He then fled, as we hoped for the night. Our servants were not gone to bed, but were just going when this horrible affair happened. This was about eleven o'clock. We all assembled in the parlour, where we remained for two hours. Mr. S then advised us to retire, thinking it was impossible he would make a second attack. We left Bysshe and our man-servant — who had only arrived that day, and who knew nothing of the house — to sit up. I had been in bed three hours when I heard a pistol go off. I immediately ran down stairs, when I perceived that Bysshe's flannel gown had been shot through, and the window-curtain. Bysshe had sent Daniel to see what hour it was, when he heard a noise at the window; he went there, and a man thrust his arm though the glass and fired at him. Thank heaven! the ball went through his gown and he remained unhurt. Mr. S happened to stand sideways; had he stood fronting, the ball must have killed him. Bysshe fired his pistol, but it would not go off; he then aimed a blow at him with an old sword which we found in the house. The assassin attempted to get the sword from him, and just as he was pulling it away Dan rushed into the room, when he made his escape. This was at four in the morning. It had been a most dreadful night; the wind was as loud as thunder, and the rain descended in torrents. Nothing has been heard of him, and we have every reason to believe it was no stranger, as there is a man.... who, the next morning,¹ went and told the shopkeepers that it was a tale of Mr. Shelley's to impose upon them, that he might leave the country without paying his bills. This they believed, and none of them attempted to do anything towards his discovery. We left Tanyrallt on Sunday.

Note 1. Hogg prints: "as there is a man of the name of Luson, who, the next morning that it happened, went" — &c. Life of Shelley, vol. ii, pp. 208-10. The name was really Leeson.

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[1812]. I saw Shelley for the first time in 1812, just before he went to Tanyrallt. I saw him again once or twice before I went to North Wales in 1813. On my return he was residing at Bracknell, and invited me to visit him there. This I did, and found him with his wife Harriet, her sister Eliza, and his newly-born daughter Ianthe.

Mr. Hogg says:—

This accession to his family did not appear to afford him any gratification, or to create an interest. He never spoke of this child to me, and to this hour I never set eyes on her.¹

Note 1. Hogg wrote * his child ', not * this child ' (Life of Shelley, vol. ii, p. 462).

[1812]. Mr. Hogg is mistaken about Shelley's feelings as to his first child. He was extremely fond of it, and would walk up and down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it a monotonous melody of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his own making. His song was i Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yahmani.'¹ It did not please me, but, what was more important, it pleased the child, and lulled it when it was fretful. Shelley was extremely fond of his children. He was pre-eminently an affectionate father. But to this first-born there were accompaniments which did not please him. The child had a wet-nurse whom he did not like, and was much looked after by his wife's sister, whom he intensely disliked. I have often thought that if Harriet had nursed her own child, and if this sister had not lived with them, the link of their married love would not have been so readily broken. But of this hereafter, when we come to speak of the separation.

Note 1. The tune was the uniform repetition of three notes, not very true in their intervals. The nearest resemblance to it will be found in the second, third, and fourth of a minor key: BCD, for example, on the key of A natural: a crotchet and two quavers. [T. L. P.]

                    [10th December 1812]. The Scotch marriage had taken place in August, 1811. In a letter which he wrote to a female friend sixteen months later (Dec. 10, 1812), he had said —
                
                    How is Harriet a fine lady? You indirectly accuse her in your letter of this offence — to me the most unpardonable of all. The ease and simplicity of her habits, the unassuming plainness of her address, the uncalculated connexion of her thought and speech, have ever formed in my eyes her greatest charms: and none of these are compatible with fashionable life, or the attempted assumption of its vulgar and noisy eclat. You have a prejudice to contend with in making me a convert to this last opinion of yours, which, so long as I have a living and daily witness to its futility before me, I fear will be insurmountable. — Memorials, p. 44.
                
                    Thus there had been no estrangement to the end of 1812. My own memory sufficiently attests that there was none in 1813.
                
                    From Bracknell, in the autumn of 1813, Shelley went to the Cumberland lakes; then to Edinburgh. In Edinburgh he became acquainted with a young Brazilian named Baptista, who had gone there to study medicine by his father's desire, and not from any vocation to the science, which he cordially abominated, as being all hypothesis, without the fraction of a basis of certainty to rest on. They corresponded after Shelley left Edinburgh, and subsequently renewed their intimacy in London. He was a frank, warm-hearted, very gentlemanly young man. He was a great enthusiast, and sympathized earnestly in all Shelley's views, even to the adoption of vegetable diet. He made some progress in a translation of Queen Mab into Portuguese. He showed me a sonnet, which he intended to prefix to his translation. It began —
                
                    Sublime Shelley, cantor di verdade!
                
                    and ended —
                
                    Surja Queen Mab a restaurar o mundo.

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                    [24th March 1814]. Shelley returned to London shortly before Christmas, then took a furnished house for two or three months at Windsor, visiting London occasionally. In March, 1814, he married Harriet a second time, according to the following certificate: —
                
                    Marriages in March 1814.
                
                    164. Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 21) and Harriet Shelley (formerly Harriet Westbrook, Spinster, a Minor), both of this Parish, were remarried in this Church by Licence (the parties having been already married to each other according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of Scotland), in order to obviate all doubts that have arisen, or shall or may arise, touching or concerning the validity of the aforesaid Marriage (by and with the consent of John Westbrook, the natural and lawful father of the said Minor), this Twenty-fourth day of March, in the Year 1814.
                
                    By me,
                
                    Edward Williams, Curate.
                
                    This Marriage was solemnized between us: Harriet Shelley, formerly Harriet Westbrook, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
                
                    In the presence of John Westbrook, John Stanley.
                
                    The above is a true extract from the Register Book of Marriages belonging to the Parish of Saint George, Hanover-square; extracted thence this eleventh day of April, 1859.— By me, H. Weightman, Curate.

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                    [28th July 1814]. Again, he said more calmly: 'Every one who knows me must know that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriet is a noble animal, but she can do neither.' I said, 'It always appeared to me that you were very fond of Harriet.' Without affirming or denying this, he answered: 'But you did not know how I hated her sister.' 
                
                    The term 'noble animal' he applied to his wife, in conversation with another friend now living, intimating that the nobleness which he thus ascribed to her would induce her to acquiesce in the inevitable transfer of his affections to their new shrine. She did not so acquiesce, and he cut the Gordian knot of the difficulty by leaving England with Miss Godwin on the 28th of July, 1814.
                
                    Shortly after this I received a letter from Harriet, wishing to see me. I called on her at her father's house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. She then gave me her own account of the transaction, which, as I have said, decidedly contradicted the supposition of anything like separation by mutual consent.
                
                    She at the same time gave me a description, by no means flattering, of Shelley's new love, whom I had not then seen. I said, 'If you have described her correctly, what could he see in her?' 'Nothing,' she said, but that her name was Mary, and not only Mary, but Mary Wollstonecraft.'
                
                    The lady had nevertheless great personal and intellectual attractions, though it is not to be wondered at that Harriet could not see them.
                
                    Shortly after this I received a letter from Harriet, wishing to see me. I called on her at her father's house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. She then gave me her own account of the transaction, which, as I have said, decidedly contradicted the supposition of anything like separation by mutual consent.

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[1814]. Few are now living who remember Harriet Shelley. I remember her well, and will describe her to the best of my recollection. She had a good figure, light, active, and graceful. Her features were regular and well proportioned. Her hair was light brown, and dressed with taste and simplicity. In her dress she was truly simplex munditiis [simple in elagance]. Her complexion was beautifully transparent; the tint of the blush rose shining through the lily. The tone of her voice was pleasant; her speech the essence of frankness and cordiality; her spirits always cheerful; her laugh spontaneous, hearty, and joyous. She was well educated. She read agreeably and intelligently. She wrote only letters, but she wrote them well. Her manners were good; and her whole aspect and demeanour such manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature, that to be once in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes. If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed the change of scene.

[9th November 1816]. In December, 1816, Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine river, not, as Captain Medwin says, ill a pond at the bottom of her father's garden at Bath. Her father had not then left his house in Chapel Street, and to that house his daughter's body was carried.

On the 30th of December, 1816, Shelley (age 24) married his second wife [Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 19)]; and early in the ensuing year they took possession of their house at Marlow. It was a house with many large rooms and extensive gardens. He took it on a lease for twenty-one years, furnished it handsomely, fitted up a library in a room large enough for a ball-room, and settled himself down, as he supposed, for life. This was an agreeable year to all of us. Mr. Hogg was a frequent visitor. We had a good deal of rowing and sailing, and we took long walks in all directions. He had other visitors from time to time. Amongst them were Mr. Godwin and Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Hunt. He led a much more social life than he had done at Bishopgate; but he held no intercourse with his immediate neighbours. He said to me more than once, 'I am not wretch enough to tolerate an acquaintance.'

Georgian Books, Peacock's Memoirs of Shelley