Read Online Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard Holmes
Tags: Literary, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, European, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, Poetry
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and went to stay for several days at Skinner Street, perhaps as part of the plan to melt Godwin and assuage Mrs Godwin. Shelley wrote to Godwin in much more openly warm terms from Hogg’s rooms on 16 February. ‘I intended to have left Town at 2 o’clock tomorrow. I will not do so if you wish to see me. In that latter case send a letter by a porter to Mr Hoggs, 1 Garden Temple Court, making your own appointment. Yet I do not know that it is best for you to see me. On me it would inflict deep dejection. But I would not refuse anything which I can do, so that I may benefit a man whom in spite of his wrongs to me I respect & love. Besides, I shall certainly not delay to depart from the haunts of men.’ 45 But these hopes were ill-founded, Godwin refused bluntly to see Shelley, and moreover, Longdill gave him a most depressing analysis of his prospects in the Chancery case.
One thing which did strike an anxious cord in Godwin’s heart was Shelley’s vague threat to depart from the haunts of men. Shelley had hinted before toGodwin that he might shortly die from a recurrence of supposed consumption, but Godwin had been used to these prognostications of doom ever since he first corresponded with Shelley in 1812, and they had little effect. But the threat simply to leave English society, and go into voluntary exile did terrify Godwin, for he realized that Shelley had already adopted this course twice previously. At worst Shelley might choose to leave England altogether, and Godwin would be left to fend for himself among the money-lenders and buyers. At the end of February, he detailed Thomas Turner, the husband of Shelley’s old friend of the Bracknell days, Cornelia Boinville, to act as a personal intermediary on his behalf. After the first of Turner’s visits on 20 February, Shelley had detected Godwin’s concern which indicated softening, and played upon it with considerable skill in a long letter of the following day. First, he sweepingly denied that he had any such intention. ‘I shall certainly not leave this country, or even remove to a greater distance from the neighbourhood of London, until the unfavourable aspect assumed by my affairs shall appear to be unalterable, or until all has been done by me which it is possible for me to do for the relief of yours.’
But then, carefully moving in the opposite direction, he allowed Godwin to see further into his mind. For the first time Shelley explicitly stated the full implications of a lifelong exile. This was an important moment of realization in his own mind, and he approached it first of all as a personal and family matter, rather than a literary one. The moral which Godwin was intended to draw about his own ostracism of Shelley was unavoidable.
‘You are perhaps aware that one of the chief motives which strongly urges me either to desert my native country, dear to me from many considerations, or resort to its most distant and solitary regions, is the perpetual experience of neglect or enmity from almost everyone but those who are supported by my resources.’ This last was indeed a formidable realization, and contained a great deal of truth.
‘I shall cling, perhaps, during the infancy of my children to all the prepossessions attached to the country of my birth, hiding myself and Mary from that contempt which we so unjustly endure. I think, therefore, at present only of settling in Cumberland or Scotland. In the event the evils which will flow to my children from our desolate and solitary situation here point out an exile as the only resource to them against that injustice which we can easily despise.’ 46 Godwin had much food for thought.
In the beginning of March, negotiations demanded Shelley’s presence in London so frequently that he took lodgings first at 13 and then at 32 Norfolk Street. Preliminaries for the Chancery case were already on hand, and Shelley had among other things to present in court his son by Harriet, little Charles, in order to have
One thing which did strike an anxious cord in Godwin’s heart was Shelley’s vague threat to depart from the haunts of men. Shelley had hinted before toGodwin that he might shortly die from a recurrence of supposed consumption, but Godwin had been used to these prognostications of doom ever since he first corresponded with Shelley in 1812, and they had little effect. But the threat simply to leave English society, and go into voluntary exile did terrify Godwin, for he realized that Shelley had already adopted this course twice previously. At worst Shelley might choose to leave England altogether, and Godwin would be left to fend for himself among the money-lenders and buyers. At the end of February, he detailed Thomas Turner, the husband of Shelley’s old friend of the Bracknell days, Cornelia Boinville, to act as a personal intermediary on his behalf. After the first of Turner’s visits on 20 February, Shelley had detected Godwin’s concern which indicated softening, and played upon it with considerable skill in a long letter of the following day. First, he sweepingly denied that he had any such intention. ‘I shall certainly not leave this country, or even remove to a greater distance from the neighbourhood of London, until the unfavourable aspect assumed by my affairs shall appear to be unalterable, or until all has been done by me which it is possible for me to do for the relief of yours.’
But then, carefully moving in the opposite direction, he allowed Godwin to see further into his mind. For the first time Shelley explicitly stated the full implications of a lifelong exile. This was an important moment of realization in his own mind, and he approached it first of all as a personal and family matter, rather than a literary one. The moral which Godwin was intended to draw about his own ostracism of Shelley was unavoidable.
‘You are perhaps aware that one of the chief motives which strongly urges me either to desert my native country, dear to me from many considerations, or resort to its most distant and solitary regions, is the perpetual experience of neglect or enmity from almost everyone but those who are supported by my resources.’ This last was indeed a formidable realization, and contained a great deal of truth.
‘I shall cling, perhaps, during the infancy of my children to all the prepossessions attached to the country of my birth, hiding myself and Mary from that contempt which we so unjustly endure. I think, therefore, at present only of settling in Cumberland or Scotland. In the event the evils which will flow to my children from our desolate and solitary situation here point out an exile as the only resource to them against that injustice which we can easily despise.’ 46 Godwin had much food for thought.
In the beginning of March, negotiations demanded Shelley’s presence in London so frequently that he took lodgings first at 13 and then at 32 Norfolk Street. Preliminaries for the Chancery case were already on hand, and Shelley had among other things to present in court his son by Harriet, little Charles, in order to have
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