Of this brief letter nothing, perhaps, is more noteworthy than its announcement that, had it not been for misapprehension respecting his son’s temper and attitude, the writer should have declined to receive any communication from him except ‘through his Grace the Duke of Norfolk,’ on whom he relied for guidance in his chief domestic perplexity, no less than for protection from any social censure and discredit, likely to ensue from unjust reports of his action in respect to that trouble. After hearing so much during the last thirty or forty years of the sufferings Shelley endured from his father’s harshness and cruelty, it is well for the world to glance at the other side of the story, and commiserate the pain and shame that came to the Squire of Field Place from his son’s perversity and malice. The man may well be compassionated who is constrained to put his honour in the custody of another person, albeit of so august a personage as a duke of the realm. A little sympathy is due to the father, who relied on his patron to protect him from slanderous misrepresentation of his parental character and conduct.
After perusing the epistle, that closed the fruitless negotiations, Shelley sent it to the Duke of Norfolk with a ‘wheedling’ note (also to be found in _Notes and Queries_: Second Series, vol. vi., p. 405) in which, after suitable expressions of regret for the failure of the Duke’s intervention, and similar expressions of gratitude for His Grace’s sympathy and good offices, the writer observed,--
‘I was prepared to make my father every reasonable concession, but I am not so degraded and miserable a slave, as publicly to disavow an opinion which I believe to be true. Every man of common sense must see that a sudden renunciation of sentiments seriously taken up is as unfortunate a test of intellectual uprightness as can possibly be devised. I take the liberty of enclosing my father’s letter for your Grace’s inspection. I repeat what I have said from the commencement of this negociation, in which private communications from my father first induced me to engage, that I am willing to concede anything that is reasonable, anything that does not involve a compromise of that self-esteem without which life would be a burden and a disgrace.’