Shelley: The Pursuit (26 page)

Yet his anxiety showed through in other ways. The gothic imagination, which he had been assuring Godwin he no longer possessed, crept back into his conversation. He began to frighten Harriet again with ghostly talk. He was planning his radical community once more, but he gave it a nightmare twist. ‘I shall try to domesticate in some antique feudal castle,’ he told Miss Hitchener, ‘whose mouldering turrets are fit emblems of decaying inequality and oppression. . . . As to the ghosts I shall welcome them, altho Harriet protests against my invoking them, but they would tell tales of old, and it would add to the picturesqueness of the scenery to see their thin forms flitting thro the vaulted charnels.’
⁷⁵
Of course, he was joking; and yet, not entirely.

Fears and suspicions began to grow in the little household at Chesnut Cottage. Shelley could not keep quiet about his plans; he certainly told all the Calvert family and the Southeys. Opinion in the locality had been gradually polarizing against him, ever since it had been first aroused by the strange night-time activities of which Mr Dare had complained.

On 19 January this was brought to a head by a violent incident. It was reported in the local
Cumberland Pacquet
for 28 January 1812, as follows:

Several attempts at robbery have been made within the last fortnight, at Keswick and in its neighbourhood. One of the most remarkable was about seven o’clock, on the night of Sunday 19th inst. at Chesnut Cottage near Keswick, the seat of Gideon Dare, Esq. — A part of the house, it seems, is
occupied by Mr Shelley and his family. — Mr Shelley being alarmed by an unusual noise, (but not knowing, or suspecting the cause) went to the door; was knocked down by some ruffians, and had remained senseless for a time, when Mr Dare, hearing the disturbance, rushed out of the house. The villains, no doubt perceiving that he was armed, fled immediately. It could not be ascertained how many the gang consisted of; but the attack was of a very formidable nature, and must stimulate the magistrates and inhabitants of the vicinity to make the most speedy exertions, and adopt the most effectual measures for the security of the town and of the neighbourhood.
⁷⁶

The report is written from the point of view of Mr Dare, who appears to be the main source of information, and there seems to be no doubt at all in the reporter’s mind that such a ‘very formidable’ attack did actually take place. The motives of the ruffians is of course a moot point, since the reporter has no evidence that Shelley was robbed.
[10]

Harriet, frightened that Miss Hitchener might hear the story by rumour ‘much more dreadful than it really was’, wrote at once to her ‘sister’ in Sussex. A week later she wrote again, in a more reassured tone, ‘quite angry’ that she might have frightened Miss Hitchener with her own fears: ‘but do not my dear Madam suffer yourself to be alarmed at it; for now all is quiet and tranquil; nor do we expect any more alarms, and if we have which is not at all likely, we are well guarded’.
⁷⁷
The guard must refer to Shelley’s pistols, which he always carried in his personal baggage from the time of his elopement onwards. This letter is the first we have in Harriet’s hand, and it shows at once her direct and pleasant frankness, combined with the sort of
naïveté
which might be put upon. Harriet’s note, included in one of Shelley’s, indicated that Shelley had a strong nervous reaction to this attack, and it was probably for this reason that he did not himself write to Elizabeth Hitchener with the news. ‘He is much better than he has been for some time,’ confided Harriet, ‘and I hope as he gets stronger he will outgrow his nervous complaints — next week we think of going to Ireland.’
⁷⁸

Shelley, when he finally felt up to writing himself, on 26 January, seven days after the attack, tried to dismiss the incident, but he did so in an ambiguous way. ‘Harriet has told you of the circumstance which has alarmed her. I consider it as a complete casual occurrence which having met with once we are more likely not to meet with again. The man evidently wanted to rifle my pockets; my falling within the house defeated his intention. There is nothing in this to alarm you. I was afraid you might see it in the newspaper or fancy that the blow had
injured me. Dismiss all fears of assassins, and spies and prisons, let me have your confident hopes of safety and success. . . .’
⁷⁹
But by the very fact of mentioning what they all feared, the spies and assassins, Shelley managed to sound an ominous note. Once again, he may have done this deliberately, for at the very end of this letter, in his postscript, he touches the delicate spot once more: ‘I am now as Harriet can tell you quite recovered from the little nervous attack I mentioned. Do not alarm yourself either about murderers, spies, governments, prisons, or nerves. — I must as I said have hopes and those very confident ones from
you
to fill the sails of our Packet to Dublin.’
⁸⁰
Noticing the alarm in the little household, the Calverts kindly offered to put them up during these final weeks in Keswick. The offer was gratefully accepted.
⁸¹
The weather was stormy.

The pressures of Shelley’s last days at Keswick, leading to the climactic attack, were to be repeated more than once at later residences. Since they are biographically controversial, it is important to note the overall pattern. The first thing is the growing evidence of the friction between the Shelley household and the neighbourhood. Shelley, with his strange, deliberately ‘devilish’ ways, his outspoken political views and his unusual menage of ladies, clearly came into confrontation with much of the traditionally respectable and conservative element at Keswick. The row with Southey is just one of the symptoms of this which happens to be well documented; but it is highly probable, remembering for example his conduct in Edinburgh with Hogg, that he also publicly affronted or mocked the owners of the manufactory for which he had expressed so much distaste in private correspondence. The difficulty with Mr Dare, his landlord, is another case in point. Shelley was frequently outspoken in every kind of company, and if aroused, he could show a furious temper and contempt for his opponents. It is not surprising that his behaviour eventually met with retaliation.

As this social friction built up, it also began to have its psychological effect on Shelley. He reacted, despite himself, to the hostility around him. His sensitive, fundamentally unstable disposition produced a painful state of nerves, and ‘nervous attacks’. Shelley tried to combat these with laudanum, which would normally only be taken to kill a specific physiological pain. The combined effect was to produce morbid trains of fantasy, suspicions and fears. Quite often he was able to joke about these, and this admirable presence of humour and distancing appears sporadically in his letters. But at the same time his fears, reflecting the suspicion and dislike of his neighbours, tended to grow upon him.

Next appeared an intensification of the ‘ghostly’ talk, the grim gothic fantasies, with which he partly amused and partly frightened Harriet. At their most extreme, the fantasies came near to hallucinations, but this was rare, and Shelley knew when they had occurred, and distinguished them from reality. The outlet for his own tension, found in the tendency to terrorize his feminine companions,
has been noted from his earliest childhood. The themes of ghosts and hauntings were endemic to his poetry, providing a powerful source of private imagery, which reflected his alienation from the society around him. Moreover, the imaginative investigation of these abnormal states in himself and in others, conducted almost in the spirit of the psychologist, had a permanent fascination for him, and later informed many of his prose speculations. The ‘antique castle’ and its ‘ghosts’ with which he taunted and discomforted Harriet at Keswick was a fairly mild example of what Shelley was capable of doing in this respect.

The actual attack on Shelley that Sunday evening brought all this to a climax. The anger and dislike of the community finally manifested itself in a real assault. Shelley, always brave in the moment of physical crisis, was subsequently overcome by extreme ‘nerves’. By this one can understand that he probably had attacks of hysteria; at its most extreme this could involve a screaming fit and complete prostration, and he would have to be put to bed and nursed.
[11]
It was doubtless to help Harriet to cope with all this that the Calverts extended their timely invitation. After this Shelley would be weak, listless, unable to work, and have a tendency to sleepwalk at night and be plagued by bad dreams.

As he recovered, Shelley began to dramatize what had actually occurred; Harriet’s anger seems to have been partly caused by the realization that she had been unduly frightened by Shelley’s accounts. Gradually, as he completely regained his normal state, the dramatized accounts would attain a more overtly gothic twist, making them both more grim and more humorously exaggerated. Thus the experience was brought more easily under control. Another, and more obvious defence mechanism was the way in which Shelley moved out of the district as soon as possible after the climactic incident. The definite decision that they were leaving for Dublin was given in Shelley’s first letter to Miss Hitchener after the attack, on 26 January.

Just before they had left Keswick, there was a slight excitement about Harriet being pregnant. But it turned out to be a false alarm. Both were disappointed, Shelley saying that it was ‘a piece of good fortune I could not expect’.
⁸²
Children definitely fitted into Shelley’s idea of the commune. ‘I hope to have a large family of children,’ he confided to Miss Hitchener. ‘It will bind
you
and me close & Harriet.’ It was perhaps a slightly curious way of explaining his enthusiasm. Harriet was more immediately practical, but slightly wistful about it. ‘Now I can bear the Journey better than if I were you know what, which I do not expect will be the case for some time, years perhaps — but now adieu to that subject.’
⁸³
There is no further hint why Harriet did not expect to be pregnant for ‘years
perhaps’, though writing from Dublin in February, Shelley again mentions the possibility of a ‘little stranger’.
⁸⁴
From the very beginning there is evidence in the Hitchener correspondence, that Shelley’s sexual life with Harriet was not satisfying. Subsequent remarks made by Shelley confirm this. Harriet always remained silent. Nevertheless Shelley found her deeply attractive, and made a motif of her radiant glance and gorgeous hair. At Keswick he wrote her a little clumsy two stanza poem which is full of gratitude and reassurance. The second stanza is:

O Ever while this frail brain has life

Will it thrill to thy love-beaming gaze,

And whilst thine eyes with affection gleam

It will worship the spirit within.

And when death comes

To quench their fire

A sorrowful rapture their dimness will shed

As I bind me tight

With thine auburn hair

And die, as I lived, with thee.
⁸⁵

Harriet came out well from the crisis at Keswick. It was the first time in her life that she had been called upon to act with some independence. Instead of being organized by Shelley, she had had to organize him; to arrange the move to the Calverts, to judge the seriousness of Shelley’s symptoms and the general situation, to correspond with Shelley’s intellectual partner Miss Hitchener. She did all this effectively, and Shelley found a new appreciation for her. From this time on her letters and postscripts became a central part of Shelley’s story.

Harriet was not as politically radical as Shelley, but she had her own strong sympathies which she could express with boldness and simplicity. ‘I cannot wait till Summer,’ she wrote to Miss Hitchener, ‘you must come to us in Ireland. I am Irish, I claim kindred with them; I have done with the English, I have witnessed too much of John Bull and I am ashamed of him.’
⁸⁶
Often in her talk and her actions she unconsciously mimicked her husband, using his phrases and gestures and references. But she was distinguished from him by her thoroughly feminine sense of proportion, and a very quick sense of the ridiculous. She even managed to tease Shelley in her own quiet way, which must have been very good for him; but she was too young and too inexperienced to stand up to him completely. She was easily overruled or overawed by him, and often refers, rather pathetically, to her own youth and ignorance in comparison with someone like Miss Hitchener.

On 29 January, Shelley’s mood was fluctuating between expectancy and
gloom. ‘I hope to be compelled to have recourse to laudanum no more; my health is reestablished and I am strong in hope and nerve; your hopes must go with me. I must have no horrible forebodings. Everybody is not killed that goes to Dublin — perhaps many are now on the road for the very same purpose as that which we propose.’
⁸⁷
Harriet also noted that the reports from Ireland were bad, but still she hoped ‘Percy will escape all prosecutions’.
⁸⁸
Leaving the neighbourhood, in which they had made both known and unknown enemies, was clearly a relief to them all. They loaded several stout trunks with books and belongings; Shelley carried pistols and laudanum; and the manuscripts of the pamphlet, the broadsheet, and the collection of poems — the sacred words of liberty — were stowed safely away in their baggage.