On the following afternoon I heard the step of Fred upon the stairs. He came into the room alone. “Where is Mr. Shelley?”
“He sends his regrets, sir. He was ever so tearful.”
Fred then handed me a letter, addressed to me in Bysshe’s characteristic large and sprawling hand. He apologised for remaining in Marlow, but blamed his wretched and enfeebled state; he did not have the strength to attend Harriet’s funeral, which would only add another burden of woe to the sorrow he now felt. Although he bitterly remonstrated with himself for his incapacity, he knew that it would be a blow to shatter him:
I cannot as yet comprehend Harriet’s death, and to see her lowered in a few feet of churchyard earth, and to hear the nonsense of the parson, would diminish the significance of her loss to me.
He then went on to inform me that the Godwins had taken a house at Marlow to be near him:
I have spoken before of Mr. Godwin, the social philosopher. He is a great exponent of Progress, and offers me much comfort. He is accompanied by his daughter, Mary, who is the child of the revered Mary Wollstonecraft. Mr. Godwin tells me that she has all of her mother’s fire and intelligence. I can quite believe it. Pray kiss the Westbrook sisters for me. I will be writing to them. Your ever devoted Bysshe.
I was surprised by the brevity of the letter, and by Bysshe’s reluctance to be present at the funeral, but I ascribed both to his overwhelming grief.
I ATTENDED THE FUNERAL on that Friday morning, in the little church of St. Barnabas just beyond the Whitechapel High Road. Harriet’s sisters were blank with grief. Emily was carrying the infant, Ianthe, who remained quite silent throughout the ceremony. Once I had looked upon Emily with affection, but the faint stirrings of that emotion had long since left me. Their father seemed more robust and, if I may say it, more cheerful than on the occasion when I had last encountered him. It was snowing thickly when we stepped into the churchyard, and the open grave was already fringed with white when poor Harriet’s coffin was laid into the soil. Just as it reached the level earth there was a sudden rustling in the bank of trees behind us, as if someone or something was thrashing in the branches. I am convinced that all of us at that moment experienced a sudden horror-for me it was evidence of the creature, as I thought, but for the others the object of some unknown fear.
“A fox,” Mr. Westbrook said in a loud voice. “The little foxes that spoil the vines.”
Emily came up to me afterwards, still holding Ianthe in her arms. “Daniel’s trial is set for Monday morning,” she said. “Will you come?”
“Of course.”
“Is there hope?”
“I cannot pretend to you, Emily, that I harbour any.”
“I thought not. But you will be there?” I promised once more to attend. “Mr. Shelley has written to us about Ianthe.”
“He told me so.”
“He strongly desires that we should continue to be her guardians. It is what we wish to do.”
“She could have no better care.”
“We will teach her to respect her father and to venerate the memory of her mother.” I was struck, as I had been on first meeting her, by Emily’s strength of purpose.
I WENT TO THE COURT OF JUSTICE at the Old Bailey on that Monday morning; the Sessions House, where the trial was to be held, looked to me more like a cardboard puppet theatre than a place of justice. The judge was adorned with scarlet and white, and he held a linen handkerchief up to his nose to ward off the lingering putrescence of gaol fever. The jurors sat on two rows of benches on the left-hand side of the court; they were London rate-payers, of course, with all the smugness and self-sufficiency of their type. There was a large crowd in the body of the courtroom itself, made up of shopmen and apprentices, of vagrant boys and ballad singers, of anyone who had no other pastime or occupation that afternoon. There were reporters and sketch-makers there, too, all of them causing an incessant bustle and noise. It was very like watching the activity of a London street. On the right-hand side of the court was a small wooden witness box into which, much to the excitement of the spectators, Daniel was now led. His wrists were bound with manacles, and he was wearing the same clothes that I had seen on him in the cell at Clerkenwell. The judge then called all those present to be silent, as a prayer was intoned by the clerk of the court to the Divine Judge who-it must be presumed-would watch over these proceedings. Daniel did not join in the prayer, but stood calmly looking down at his manacled hands. Then, in a round and portentous voice, one of the attorneys sitting at a table immediately beneath the judge began to read out the charges. Daniel stood almost at attention, without any perceptible movement; he was intent upon every word, as if it were a story of someone else’s crime. When the attorney had finished his account, Daniel looked around at the court with an expression of impatience.
He was asked if he wished to enter any plea, and he replied with an earnest “Not guilty!” The officers of the watch were then called to a witness box, directly opposite that in which Daniel stood. The first of them, Stephen Martin, explained the circumstances of finding “the accused” sleeping beneath a tree by the Serpentine. “That is a lake,” the judge told the jurors, “to be found in the Hyde Park.” The jurors, who must have known this very well already, received the information with great seriousness. Martin then went on to explain how the hands and cheeks of the accused were bloodied. When the accused was thereupon taken into custody, at the watch-house on the corner of Queen’s Gate, a necklace was found in the pocket of his breeches. Martin spoke rapidly, much to the dismay of the penny-a-liners, and in a high voice that caused amusement among the more vulgar spectators.
It seems that in English law the accused is able to question and to challenge witnesses, in a way that would seem unfitting on the Continent, and Daniel at once asked Martin if he, Daniel, had seemed surprised by the discovery of the necklace.
“Yes. Oh, yes,” he replied in his rapid way. “You seemed to be much taken aback. But that was because you was play-acting. Lawks.”
“You found me sleeping beneath a tree?”
“Of course I did.”
“Why should a murderer and a thief fall asleep at the scene of his own crime?”
“For why? For the reason that the person accused, being yourself, is touched.” Martin tapped his forehead, much to the delight of the spectators.
“Well, Mr. Martin, am I a lunatic or an actor? I really do not think I can be both.”
“Whatever you wish, Mr. Westbrook. I am not particular.” Martin laughed quite gaily.
The second and third members of the watch described, in identical terms, the discovery of Harriet’s body. She had been found by two children, in the shadow of a bridge that crossed over the middle point of the Serpentine. Daniel listened to the testimony of the witnesses with great attention, his manacled hands stretched out before him, and at the end he merely bowed his head. He did not wish to question them. The account of the discovery of his sister seemed to have left him momentarily without the power of speech.
But then, when asked by the judge if he wished to make any final statement, he raised his head and looked steadily at the jurors. “I do not expect justice in this place,” he said. “I have long since concluded that the judicial system of our country is a tissue of corruption.”
At which point the judge interrupted him. “You are here to defend yourself, sir. You are not here to deliver your opinion of English law.”