Volume 2 — CHAPTER VII. (continued 2)

In her annoyance at Percy’s devotion to his spiritual bride, the whiteness of Maimuna’s tresses afforded Harriett little comfort. To the young wife it was a poor consolation to reflect that the enchantress was old enough to be Percy’s mother, that he valued her chiefly for the subtlety of her intellect and the delicacy of her affections, that he worshiped her platonically. Of given forces, acting under certain conditions, the scientist can predict the consequences with unerring precision. The chemist does not require evidence of what ensued from the combination of particular elements in stated proportions. In like manner the competent personal historian knows what must have resulted from certain positions. Without direct documentary evidence to their existence, Lady Shelley would have been justified in saying that towards the close of 1813 ‘estrangements had been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley,’ and that the estrangements came at that time to a crisis. But she had documentary evidence for both assertions. Towards the close of 1813 Shelley wrote those six words to Hogg, ‘I shall return to London alone.’

If Peacock knew nothing of these dissensions, it only shows that Shelley and Harriett had the good taste and discretion to keep their discord from his cognizance. It is, however, conceivable that he was aware of the Edinburgh dissensions, without regarding them of sufficient magnitude to be termed estrangements. A subsequent passage of his second Shelleyan paper indicates that this was the case. There are, of course, estrangements and estrangements; and it is usual for conjugal estrangements to have several crises before coming to the extreme crisis—of separation. An estrangement may be nothing more than a serious quarrel, which, though ‘made up,’ results in a weakening of mutual affection; it may be a more or less complete alienation of affection, unattended with personal severance, or even any wish for personal severance; it may be such a state of discord as quickly results in personal severance; it may be the total cessation of all intercourse. Peacock was obviously thinking of one or the other of the two most aggravated kinds of estrangement when he wrote, ‘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.’ Peacock may have been right in this opinion, and certainly had fairly good grounds for it, though I question whether they were sufficient. But if he, using the word in one of its extreme senses, was justified in holding his opinion, it would still remain that Lady Shelley, using the word in one of the less vehement senses, was justified in speaking of the estrangements, which came to a crisis before the end of 1813. But even so, Lady Shelley was wrong in writing so as to lead her readers to infer that the crisis of 1813 was the direct and immediate cause of the separation of 1814.

One of the noteworthy facts connected with Shelley’s journey in the autumn of 1813 to the Cumberland lakes, and Edinburgh, is that he made the trip in his own carriage drawn by post horses,—the costliest way of travelling seventy years since. In London he could get horses from a livery-stable on credit; but for post-horses taken for the stage, ‘the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes of England’ must have paid at once. As Peacock was at that time a poor man of letters he cannot be supposed to have contributed anything towards the cost of the journey, though he possibly paid his own hotel-bills. The charges of the trip must have fallen chiefly, if not altogether, on Shelley,—the young gentleman who, at this term of his career, is represented as wearing furbished-up clothes, because he could not afford to buy new ones. Mr. Medwin, of Horsham, could probably have told how his youthful client obtained the money that enabled him to execute this feat of prodigality.

Before the present narrative deals with incidents of 1814 notice should be taken of a trivial literary performance, and a piece of important literary labour, that pertain to the record of the year in which the poet attained his majority. Reprinting the Vegetarian Note to Queen Mab, with a few alterations and additions of no moment, he published it in the form of a tract that was offered for sale by a medical bookseller at eighteen pence a copy; the date of publication being subsequent to the secret issue of the poem. To the later months of the same year may also be attributed the labour of writing the Refutation of Deism, which is believed to have been published (at least in the legal sense of the term) at the beginning of 1814,—the year given on the title-page.