Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
In October 1810, Shelley traveled with his father to Oxford to enroll in the university. His father had studied there and
wanted to give his son a good start by establishing him in comfortable surroundings. The Oxford that Shelley attended was
not the great institution of today. The pace was leisurely and gentlemen often did little scholarly work at all. The Bodleian
Library went almost unused.
Within the first few days, Shelley met Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a son of a Yorkshire barrister, and an intimate, lifelong friendship
sprang up. We learn about Shelley at this time through Hogg’s biography of his friend: a tall, thin, stooped young man with
a high-pitched voice who walked briskly around Oxford always with a book in his hand, nearly covering his face. Though clumsy
looking, he never seemed to trip over others’ outstretched feet while reading and walking. “His features, his whole face,
and particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually small; yet the last
appeared
of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy and . . . he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands . . . so that
it was singularly wild and rough.” The nickname he had picked up at Eton was now flaunted; to Hogg and others, Shelley admitted
that he and his behavior were odd, explaining merely, “I myself am often mad.”
Hogg left a memorable description of Shelley in his room at New College:
Books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials innumerable,
with money, stockings, prints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered on the floor and in every place; as if the young
chemist, in order to analyse the mystery of creation, had endeavored first to reconstruct the primeval chaos. The tables,
and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of
fire. An electrical machine, an air-pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers, were
conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. Upon the table by his side were some books lying open, several letters, a bundle of
new pens, and a bottle of japan ink, that served as an inkstand . . . and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife.
There were bottles of soda water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported
the tongs, and those upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor
in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a most disagreeable odour. Shelley snatched
the glass quickly, and dashing it in pieces among the ashes under the grate, increased the unpleasant and penetrating effluvium.
He then proceeded, with much eagerness and enthusiasm, to show me the various instruments, especially the electrical apparatus;
turning the handle very rapidly, so that the fierce, crackling sparks flew forth; and presently standing upon the stool with
glass feet, he begged me to work the machine until he was filled with the [electrical] fluid, so that his long, wild locks
bristled and stood on end. Afterwards he charged a powerful battery of several jars; labouring with vast energy, and discoursing
with increasing vehemence of the marvellous powers of electricity, of thunder and lightning; describing an electrical kite
that he had made at home, and projecting another and an enormous one, or rather a combination of many kites, that would draw
down from the sky an immense volume of electricity, the whole ammunition of a mighty thunderstorm; and this being directed
to some point would there produce the most stupendous results.
It was, in so many ways, the image of the mad scientist that would be re-created on the Universal Studios backlot 122 years
later.
Hogg noted Shelley’s hypochondria and his charming effect on women. After traveling with a fat lady in a coach Shelley feared
that he was catching elephantiasis and that others might be infected as well. So at a country dance, using the excuse of medical
inspection, Shelley placed “his eyes close to [the women’s] necks and bosoms” and “felt their breasts and their bare arms”
until the hostess told him to stop.
Seldom did any woman tell him to stop. Hogg somewhat enviously noted, “The moment he entered a house, he inspired the most
lively interest into every woman in the family; not only the mistress of the house, her daughters, and other lady relatives,
but even the housekeeper and the humblest females in the establishment were animated alike by an active desire to promote
and secure his well-being, in every way and to the utmost in their power.”
Very likely Shelley enjoyed his first sexual experience with a woman around this time. He wrote a poem celebrating Margaret
Nicholson, who had attempted to murder George II. It includes a fragment that seems to be a paean to oral sex:
Soft, my dearest angel, stay,
Oh! You suck my soul away:
Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow!
Tides of maddening passion roll,
And streams of rapture drown my soul.
Now give me one more billing kiss,
Let your lips now repeat the bliss,
Endless kisses steal my breath,
No life can equal such a death.
Shelley and Hogg’s own relationship was so intense that it was like a love affair, though there was no overt sexual component.
Shelley wrote Hogg twenty-three letters over the thirty-one-day Christmas holiday, when they were separated for the first
time. Shelley developed the idea that Hogg should fall in love with Shelley’s sister Elizabeth and talked her up so much that
his friend became attracted without even meeting her.
Shelley’s study of Godwin hardened the young man’s belief that any true reform required the destruction of religion. When
he and Hogg returned to Oxford after Christmas, they set out to expose the “fraud” of Christianity by writing a pamphlet,
The Necessity of Atheism
. It got the two friends expelled from Oxford; Shelley borrowed enough money to take them to London. The expulsion caused
a breach with his father that never healed. His father wrote a letter about his son to his solicitor, in which he blamed Percy’s
trouble on the pernicious influence of Godwin. “He is such a Pupil of Godwin,” he wrote, “that I can scarcely hope he will
be persuaded that he owes any sort of obedience or compliance to the wishes or directions of his Parents.”
Refusing his father’s demands to renounce his atheism and to abandon his friend Hogg, Shelley set out to make a living with
his pen. One of his first purchases in London was a copy of a poem entitled
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
in a shop on Oxford Street. Shelley had never heard of the author, Lord Byron, but was impressed by Byron’s taking poetic
revenge on the reviewers who had been harshly critical of his earlier poetry. Shelley read the poem aloud to Hogg and was
inspired.
In the spring Shelley went home to try to make peace with his father and family. His uncle interceded for him, and Sir Timothy
granted Percy an allowance of two hundred pounds a year. For someone else this might have been adequate, but for Shelley it
was never enough; he would spend much of his life trying to avoid financial disaster and keeping ahead of debt collectors.
While at Field Place, Shelley again tried to get his favorite sister Elizabeth interested in Hogg. She was not enthusiastic
but Percy smuggled Hogg into Field Place, where he hid in Shelley’s bedroom. Nevertheless, Elizabeth still refused to see
him. Hogg only got a peep at the girl through the windows of the local church. Such matchmaking efforts were ultimately doomed.
Three of Percy’s sisters never married and the fourth, after giving birth to three children, deserted her husband for another
man, causing a scandal that had to be settled in the House of Lords.
Hogg went home to York to pursue a legal career, leaving Shelley alone in London. He was plagued by bad dreams and, as he
often did in times of stress, started to sleepwalk again. Two of his sisters, Hellen and Mary, went to a boarding school in
the city and Shelley often visited them. On one occasion he met their fifteen-year-old friend Harriet Westbrook, who soon
became another of Shelley’s hero worshippers. She parroted his opinions on everything, including atheism. Soon Harriet claimed
that she was picked on by her teachers and others at the school because of her new, enlightened views. Shelley had found a
disciple.
Thomas Peacock, another young author who became Shelley’s friend, said of Westbrook: “Her complexion was beautifully transparent;
the tint of the blush rose shining through the lily. The tone of her voice was pleasant; her speech the essence of frankness
and cordiality; her spirits always cheerful; the laugh spontaneous, hearty and joyous.” Hellen Shelley thought she looked
“quite like a poet’s dream.” Though Percy probably never passionately loved Harriet, the idea of rescuing her from a school
where she was being persecuted, and from her overbearing father as well, increased his desire for her. “I was in love with
loving,” he later wrote, quoting what was originally a Latin epigram by St. Augustine, “I was looking for something to love,
loving to love.” At the same time that he was courting Harriet he wrote to Hogg, “
Your
noble and exalted friendship, the prosecution of your happiness, can alone engross my impassioned interest.”
Percy had learned from reading Godwin that the institution of marriage was a form of slavery, but changed his mind after reading
Amelia Opie’s novel
Adeline Mowbray,
which Harriet sent to him. The novel, written by a former friend of Mary Wollstonecraft who was now the wife of John Opie
(whose portrait of Mary hung in the Godwin home), showed that the problems for a woman who lived with a man and gave birth
outside of marriage were far worse than for the man in the relationship. (Ironically, the novel appears to have been roughly
based on Mary Wollstonecraft’s own life; life and art constantly intersected for Shelley.) On August 25, Shelley and Harriet,
aged nineteen and sixteen respectively, met in London and spent the day hiding in a coffeehouse. They took the night coach
to Scotland, where after three days of travel they married.
Because Shelley was low on money, he wrote Hogg, asking him to meet them in Edinburgh. Hogg was enchanted with Shelley’s wife,
finding her “radiant with youth, health and beauty.” Shelley departed to attempt to pry more money from his family, and in
his absence Hogg made an attempt to seduce Harriet. She turned him down. After Shelley heard of the refusal, he was strangely
disturbed because he cared as much about Hogg as Harriet and did not want to lose his friendship. After Hogg left, Shelley
wrote to him, “Jealousy has no place in my bosom. I am indeed at times very much inclined to think that the Godwinian plan
is best. . . . But Harriet does not think so. She is prejudiced: tho I hope she will not always be so—And on her opinions
of right and wrong alone does the morality of the present case depend.” Clearly Shelley would have shared Harriet with Hogg
if she had agreed. His second wife would face similar problems.
Joined by Harriet’s sister Eliza, the newlyweds traveled around, trying to find a place to settle. Eliza was twelve years
older than Harriet, and Shelley resented her influence on her sister; he referred to Eliza as a “loathsome worm.” Their travels
included a stop in the Lake District, where they visited the poet Robert Southey, a flaming radical in his youth, now turned
conservative. Shelley had once loved the older man’s poetry but came away unimpressed. They moved on.
Shelley had thought about establishing a community in which people would live according to Godwin’s principles, with the goal
of providing an example to guide the world to a higher form of civilization. In early 1812 Shelley and Harriet became part
of a commune in Wales; a little later he tried to form his own commune in Lynmouth. Failing at these efforts, he and Harriet
went to Dublin, where they distributed in the streets copies of a tract Shelley had written in support of home rule for Ireland.
Sometimes Shelley threw the pamphlet into the windows of passing carriages; he knew that the wealthy passengers might not
read it, but hoped their sons and daughters might. Next the earnest couple moved to the north coast of Devon, where Shelley
tucked into bottles copies of a manifesto titled
Declaration of Rights,
based on the American and French revolutionary documents, and set them adrift in the sea. A local official found one of the
bottles and reported that it appeared “intended to fall into the hands of the Sea-faring part of the People . . . and do incalculable
mischief among them.” Shelley seemed to take up almost any popular cause that presented itself: protesting the executions
of Yorkshire workmen who had deliberately destroyed spinning machines that put hand laborers out of work; protesting the prison
sentences meted out to writer Leigh Hunt and his brother for “libelling” the prince regent in their magazine. The causes and
places went by in a blur. All this activity must have been a strain on Harriet, but she loyally stuck by her husband through
every new enthusiasm.
Even those who sympathized with Shelley sometimes found his radical sentiments a little extreme. His friend Thomas Love Peacock
satirized him in his novel
Nightmare Abbey
as a perpetual do-gooder:
He now became troubled with the
passion for reforming the world
. He built many castles in the air, and peopled them with secret tribunals, and bands of illuminati. . . . As he intended
to institute a perfect republic, he invested himself with absolute sovereignty over these mystical dispensers of liberty.
He slept with Horrid Mysteries under his pillow, and dreamed of venerable elutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight
conversations in subterranean coves. He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the
room in his nightcap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing gown about him like
the mantle of a conspirator.