not;
Heaven knows. I shall certainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook
will decide whether now or in three weeks. Her father has
persecuted her in a most horrible way by endeavoring to compel her
to go to school. She asked my advice; resistance was the
answer,--at the same time that I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain.
And in consequence of my advice, _she_ has thrown herself upon _my_
protection."

The whole history of Shelley's courtship of Harriet--or of her courtship
of him, as many of his friends put it--will probably never be written.
It seems to have been promoted by others quite as much as by themselves.
That her father was not averse to her marriage with the eldest son of a
baronet may be taken for granted, and Shelley was the very man to be
duped by designing parties; of this there can be no doubt. He was but
nineteen years old, and she but sixteen, when they eloped,--of which
proceeding there does not seem to have been any especial need,--and
proceeded to Edinburgh, where they were married. By the time they
reached Edinburgh their money was gone, and Shelley laid the case
before his landlord, and asked him to advance money enough so that they
might be married. To this the landlord consented, and the ceremony was
performed. But the landlord, it appears, presumed somewhat upon the aid
he had rendered, and in the evening, when Shelley and his bride were
alone together, he knocked at the door and told them it was customary
there for the guests to come in, in the middle of the night, and wash
the bride with whiskey.

"I immediately," says Shelley, "caught up my brace of pistols, and
pointing them both at him, said to him, 'I have had enough of your
impertinence; if you give me any more of it I will blow your brains
out;' on which he ran or rather tumbled downstairs, and I bolted
the doors."

Even before the honeymoon was over, Harriet's sister Eliza, the evil
genius of the pair, appeared upon the scene. The friend who was with
them at the time thus describes her advent:--

"The house lay, as it were, under an interdict; all our accustomed
occupations were suspended; study was forbidden; reading was
injurious; to read aloud might terminate fatally. To go abroad was
death; to stay at home the grave. Bysshe became nothing; I of
course much less than nothing,--a negative quantity of a very high
figure."

That Harriet alr