Shelley | Page 9

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 another poet left England for ever. George Gordon, Lord Byron, loaded with fame and lacerated by chagrin, was beginning to bear through Europe that 'pageant of his bleeding heart" of which the first steps are celebrated in 'Childe Harold'. Unknown to Shelley and Mary, there was already a link between them and the luxurious "pilgrim of eternity' rolling towards Geneva in his travelling-carriage, with physician and suite: Claire had visited Byron in the hope that he might help her to employment at Drury