Free Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

a legal guardian assigned. Harriet prevented him from doing thisuntil an order of attachment was delivered by the Messenger of the Court and the child was apprehended. 47 No immediate decision was forthcoming, and, even more frustrating, Godwin still refused to grant a personal interview. Without Mary’s calming influence, for she was still at Bishopsgate with William, Shelley’s patience finally gave way and he wrote to Godwin from Norfolk Street in a fury of reproach and scorn. The letter reminds one instantly of his notes to Sir Timothy of 1811. Whatever social arrangements were subsequently patched up, neither Shelley nor Godwin ever recrossed the emotional gulf opened up by this explosive letter. The explosion had, in effect, been delayed since the winter of 1814.
In my judgement neither I, nor your daughter, nor her offspring ought to receive the treatment which we encounter on every side. It has perpetually appeared to me to have been your especial duty to see that, so far as mankind value your good opinion, we were dealt justly by, and that a young family, innocent and benevolent and united, should not be confounded with prostitutes and seducers. My astonishment, and I will confess when I have been treated with most harshness and cruelty by you, my indignation has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my nature, any considerations should have prevailed on you to be thus harsh and cruel. I lamented also over my ruined hopes, of all that your genius once taught me to expect from your virtue, when I found that for yourself, your family, and your creditors, you would submit to that communication with me which you once rejected and abhorred, and which no pity for my poverty or sufferings, assumed willingly for you, could avail to extort. Do not talk of forgiveness again to me, for my blood boils in my veins, and my gall rises against all that bears the human form, when I think of what I, their benefactor and ardent lover, have endured of enmity and contempt from you and from all mankind. 48
    But Shelley was still trapped in his own emotional contradictions. The following day, he sent Godwin a note, confirming that the financial negotiations were still continuing, and pitifully asking for understanding. ‘I must appear the reverse of what I really am, haughty & hard, if I am not to see myself & all that I love trampled upon and outraged.’ 49 Yet still Godwin did not relent, and several days later, when Shelley actually called at Skinner Street, he was refused admittance: not once, but three times. 50 Gradually and painfully the resolution to see the Chancery case through, and leave Godwin to his fate was forming in Shelley’s mind.
    March too saw another event which was decisive in Shelley’s departure from England. Claire, after shuttling between London and Bishopsgate, took advantage of Shelley’s residence in London to make the first moves in a littleproject of her own. This was the invasion, storm and capture of Byron. It says much for Claire, still only just 18, that where many others, more powerful and more beautiful, had failed, she — at least temporarily — succeeded.
    Lord Byron was at this time aged 28. His life had been disordered and made directionless by a desperately unhappy marriage to Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815. The legal separation proceedings were now drawing to a close in a storm of bills and claims after months of separations and rapprochements . The basis of the settlement was agreed on 17 March. 51 His emotional tangle was further complicated by an intimate relationship with his half-sister Augusta, in an advanced state of pregnancy, who had just removed from his house at 13 Piccadilly Terrace to lie in at her rooms at St James’s Palace. The friendship had caused Byron endless public acrimony. He wished above all to leave England before he should be caught in further scandals, legal complications or even in the clutches of the bailiffs. He planned his escape for April. His old friends