Shelley | Page 9

into their dingy, squabbling
family. If it was inevitable that her interest, touched with pity (for he
was in despair over the collapse of his life with Harriet), should quickly
warm to love, we must insist that the rapture with which he leaped to
meet her had some foundation in reality. That she was gifted is
manifest in her writings-- chiefly, no doubt, in 'Frankenstein',
composed when she had Shelley to fire her imagination; but her other
novels are competent, and her letters are the work of a vigorous
intellect. She had her limitations. She was not quite so free from
conventionality as either he or she believed; but on the whole they were
neither deceiving themselves nor one another when they plighted faith

by Mary Wollstonecraft's grave. With their principles, it was nothing
that marriage was impossible. Without the knowledge of the elder
Godwins, they made arrangements to elope, and on July 28, 1814,
crossed from Dover to Calais in an open boat, taking Jane Clairmont
with them on the spur of the moment. Jane also had been unhappy in
Skinner Street. She was about Mary's age, a pert, olive-complexioned
girl, with a strong taste for life. She changed her name to Claire
because it sounded more romantic.
Mrs. Godwin pursued the fugitives to Calais, but in vain. Shelley was
now launched on a new life with a new bride, and--a freakish
touch--accompanied as before by his bride's sister. The more his life
changed, the more it was the same thing--the same plunging without
forethought, the same disregard for all that is conventionally deemed
necessary. His courage is often praised, and rightly, though we ought
not to forget that ignorance, and even obtuseness, were large
ingredients in it. As far as they had any plan, it was to reach
Switzerland and settle on the banks of some lake, amid sublime
mountain scenery, "for ever." In fact, the tour lasted but six weeks.
Their difficulties began in Paris, where only an accident enabled
Shelley to raise funds. Then they moved slowly across war-wasted
France, Mary and Claire, in black silk dresses, riding by turns on a
mule, and Shelley walking. Childish happiness glows in their journals.
From Troyes Shelley wrote to the abandoned Harriet, in perfect good
faith, pressing her to join them in Switzerland. There were sprained
ankles, dirty inns, perfidious and disobliging drivers--the ordinary
misadventures of the road, magnified a thousand times by their
helplessness, and all transfigured in the purple light of youth and the
intoxication of literature. At last they reached the Lake of Lucerne,
settled at Brunnen, and began feverishly to read and write. Shelley
worked at a novel called 'The Assassins', and we hear of him "sitting on
a rude pier by the lake" and reading aloud the siege of Jerusalem from
Tacitus. Soon they discovered that they had only just enough money
left to take them home. Camp was struck in haste, and they travelled
down the Rhine. When their boat was detained at Marsluys, all three sat
writing in the cabin--Shelley his novel, Mary a story called 'Hate', and
Claire a story called 'The Idiot'--until they were tossed across to
England, and reached London after borrowing passage-money from the

captain.
The winter was spent in poverty, dodging creditors through the
labyrinthine gloom of the town. Chronic embarrassment was caused by
Shelley's extravagant credulity. His love of the astonishing, his
readiness to believe merely because a thing was impossible, made him
the prey of every impostor. Knowing that he was heir to a large fortune,
he would subsidise any project or any grievance, only provided it were
wild enough. Godwin especially was a running sore both now and later
on; the philosopher was at the beginning of that shabby 'degringolade'
which was to end in the ruin of his self-respect. In spite of his
anti-matrimonial principles, he was indignant at his disciple's
elopement with his daughter, and, in spite of his philosophy, he was not
above abusing and sponging in the same breath. The worst of these
difficulties, however, came to an end when Shelley's grandfather died
on January 6, 1815, and he was able, after long negotiations, to make
an arrangement with his father, by which his debts were paid and he
received an income of 1000 pounds a year in consideration of his
abandoning his interest in part of the estate.
And now, the financial muddle partly smoothed out, his genius began
to bloom in the congenial air of Mary's companionship. The summer of
1815 spent in rambles in various parts of the country, saw the creation
of Alastor. Early in 1816 Mary gave birth to her first child, a boy,
William, and in the spring, accompanied by the baby and Claire, they
made a second expedition to Switzerland. A little in advance