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The couple went to Scotland. In a few months they came back from Scotland, because no one can really be happy away from home. Besides they were out of money and neither one had ever earned any money and as the Westbrooks were willing to forgive, even if the Shelleys were not, they came back.
Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT in love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows!
Shelley became intimate with the Westbrooks, and set about saving the soul of Harriet, who had a pretty rosy face, a neat figure, and a glib school-girl mind quick to catch up and reproduce his doctrines.
Charles and Ianthe were finally placed under the care of Dr. and Mrs. Hume, who were to receive two hundred pounds a year eighty pounds settled on them by Westbrook, and one hundred and twenty pounds to be paid by Shelley for the charge. Shelley might see them twelve times a year in the presence of the Humes, the Westbrooks twelve times alone, and Sir Timothy and his family when they chose.
Mary's sister Fanny, to whom he was attached, killed herself in October; Harriet's suicide followed in December; and in the same winter the Westbrooks began to prepare their case for the Chancery suit, which ended in the permanent removal of Harriet's children from his custody, on the grounds that his immoral conduct and opinions unfitted him to be their guardian.
But the Westbrooks were only willing to forgive in consideration of Percy and Harriet being properly married by a clergyman of the Church of England. Now, Shelley had not wavered in his Godwin-Wollstonecraft theories, but he was chivalrous and Harriet was tearful, and so he gracefully waived all private considerations and they were duly married. It was a quiet wedding.
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