When I was doing my reading and research on Mary Shelley, I did
veer off the Shelley Turnpike now and then—as these pages well certify—to
explore some local by-ways. The story of poor Harriet Westbrook is among the
most wrenching of all.
While Bysshe Shelley, 18, was at Oxford University, he met
Harriet, 15, who attended a school in Clapham with Shelley’s sister Hellen.[1] The
young man dazzled the bright and attractive Harriet, daughter of the owner of a
popular coffee shop. Bysshe was handsome, brilliant, wildly articulate, an Oxford student!—and had even
published two Gothic novels, Zastrozzi
and St. Irvyne (both in 1810). His
enthusiasm about life—and the life of the mind—was, well, viral.
And Harriet caught the virus.
In about three months things changed--drastically. Oxford expelled
Shelley (and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg) for their publication The Necessity of Atheism. Shelley had
turned 19 and was sort of hanging out, avoiding his (justifiably) irate father,
and visiting his sister at school—and, of course, Harriet, who soon became the
cynosure of his attention.
By August, Bysshe had convinced Harriet, now sixteen, to run away
with him to be married in Scotland (where marriage laws were less restrictive).
She agreed, and on August 29, 1811, off they flew (sort of—by carriage) to
Edinburgh, where they married. Her father was not all that disturbed: Bysshe was
the son of Sir Timothy; he would eventually be Sir Percy Bysshe Shelley. Not a
bad arrangement, class-wise.
But Sir Timothy was not
pleased. When he learned the news, he cut off Bysshe’s allowance—£200 a year—and
wrote a harsh note to Hogg’s father: God
knows what can be the end of all this disobedience. He and his son would
remain estranged—an estrangement that outlived Bysshe and transferred most bitterly
to Mary Shelley. And ended only with his own death at 90, only seven years
before Mary died. He did, however, eventually (and grudgingly) contribute funds
both to his son and, later, to Mary.
But Harriet Westbrook Shelley must have realized very, very early
in their marriage that she had been pulled into the vortex of a cyclone. She
had no idea how dark her life would become—and how short it would be.
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