Shelley returned to London, and had various colloquies with
Harriet: in due course he eloped with her to Edinburgh, and there on
28th August he married her. His age was then just nineteen, and hers
sixteen. Shelley, who was a profound believer in William Godwin's
_Political Justice_, rejected the institution of marriage as being
fundamentally irrational and wrongful. But he saw that he could not in
this instance apply his own pet theories without involving in discredit
and discomfort the woman whose love had been bestowed upon him. Either
his opinion or her happiness must be sacrificed to what he deemed a
prejudice of society: he decided rather to sacrifice the former.
For two years, or up to an advanced date in 1813, the married life of
Shelley and Harriet appears to have been a happy one, so far as their
mutual relation was concerned; though rambling and scrambling,
restricted by mediocrity of income (L400 a year, made up between the two
fathers), and pestered by the continual, and to Percy at last very
offensive, presence of Miss Westbrook as an inmate of the house. They
lived in York, Keswick in Cumberland, Dublin (which Shelley visited as
an express advocate of Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Union),
Nantgwillt in Radnorshire, Lynmouth in Devonshire, Tanyrallt in
Carnarvonshire, London, Bracknell in Berkshire: Ireland and Edinburgh
were also revisited.
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