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Dina Šimunić
Ivica Pavić

Standards and
Innovations in
Information
Technology and
Communications
Standards and Innovations in Information
Technology and Communications
Dina Šimunić • Ivica Pavić

Standards and Innovations


in Information Technology
and Communications
Dina Šimunić Ivica Pavić
Faculty of Electrical Engineering Faculty of Electrical Engineering
and Computing and Computing
University of Zagreb University of Zagreb
Zagreb, Croatia Zagreb, Croatia

ISBN 978-3-030-44416-7    ISBN 978-3-030-44417-4 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44417-4

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface

This book is important, because we believe that the reader will get better insight into
the processes of standardization and innovation, as well as in their interaction and
mutual interdependence.
We have been teaching the subject on technical standardization for more than 10
years at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing,
Croatia. We received positive feedbacks from our former students once they became
young engineers. This is the reason why we are so enthusiastic about this book, hop-
ing that it will shine more light to the topic of standardization and innovation for
the reader.
Thank you so much for reading!

Zagreb, Croatia  Dina Šimunić


 Ivica Pavić

v
About the Book

This book is written in eight chapters, discussing various aspects of innovations and
standards.
Chapter 1 is the introduction.
Chapter 2 gives an overview of innovation and standards geography, discussing
innovation types and pillars and geographical connection to standards. It also shows
sustainability of an ecosystem consisting of the technical standardization process,
technical standards, and technical deployment of the overall country progress and of
the innovation.
Chapter 3 discusses innovation and standardization stakeholders, starting with
the four stakeholders in the innovation process. It also discusses introduction of the
fifth stakeholder in the innovation process that avoids efforts in relation to the cru-
cial standardization deliverable and prevents the so-called island solutions that are
always an issue for the users.
Chapter 4 gives an overview of innovation and technical standardization docu-
ments with explanation of their mutual support and interactions.
Chapter 5 discusses innovation and technical standards life cycles and their orga-
nizations and perpetual interconnections in the time domain: when one process is
coming to its end, the other process starts.
Chapter 6 introduces global innovation and standards circles or as they are
named here global innovation circle (GIC) and global standard circle (GSC), which
are discussed with all their elements and configurations. It also discusses three big-
gest and most recognized global standardization organizations: International
Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC), and International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Chapter 7 presents further overview of supranational innovation and standards
circles with their main stakeholders and configurations. It also discusses and pres-
ents, in relation to the supranational standards bodies on the European level, three
European Standards Organizations (ESOs), i.e., European Committee for
Standardization (CEN), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization
(CENELEC), and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

vii
viii About the Book

Chapter 8 gives insight into usual and possible national innovation and standards
circles with the stakeholders and the most important configuration types.
The book finishes with this chapter, hoping that the reader will get a flavor and
clear idea into the complexity and interactions of the world of innovations and
standards.
Contents

1 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
1.1 Introduction to the Innovations and Standards
in the ICT Domain������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    2
2 Innovation and Standards Geography����������������������������������������������������    3
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations ��������������������������    3
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   13
3 Innovation and Standardization Stakeholders����������������������������������������   15
3.1 Innovation Stakeholders����������������������������������������������������������������������   15
3.2 Standardization Stakeholders��������������������������������������������������������������   17
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   28
4 Innovation and Technical Standardization Documents��������������������������   31
4.1 Innovation Documents������������������������������������������������������������������������   31
4.2 Technical Standardization Documents������������������������������������������������   36
4.2.1 Normative Documents������������������������������������������������������������   38
4.2.2 Function of Standards ������������������������������������������������������������   41
4.2.3 Standard Types������������������������������������������������������������������������   42
4.2.4 Contents of Normative Documents����������������������������������������   43
4.2.5 Structure of Normative Documents����������������������������������������   44
4.2.6 Implementation of Normative Documents������������������������������   44
4.2.7 References to Standards in Regulations����������������������������������   45
4.2.8 Global (International) Normative Documents������������������������   45
4.2.9 Supranational Normative Documents ������������������������������������   48
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   51

ix
x Contents

5 Innovation and Technical Standards Life Cycles������������������������������������   55


5.1 Innovation Life Cycle ������������������������������������������������������������������������   55
5.2 Technical Standards Life Cycle����������������������������������������������������������   58
5.2.1 International Standards Life Cycle ����������������������������������������   58
5.2.2 Supranational Standards Life Cycle: EU��������������������������������   71
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   78
6 Global Innovation and Standards Circles ����������������������������������������������   81
6.1 Global Innovation Circle��������������������������������������������������������������������   81
6.2 Global Standard Circle������������������������������������������������������������������������   85
6.2.1 ISO������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   86
6.2.2 IEC������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   91
6.2.3 ITU������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 114
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 122
7 Supranational Innovation and Standards Circles���������������������������������� 125
7.1 Supranational Innovation Circle �������������������������������������������������������� 125
7.2 Supranational Standards Circle���������������������������������������������������������� 128
7.2.1 CEN���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 129
7.2.2 CENELEC������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 144
7.2.3 CEN-CENELEC Joint Activities�������������������������������������������� 150
7.2.4 KEYMARK���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 164
7.2.5 ETSI���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 165
7.2.6 International Cooperation and Global Integration
of ESOs ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 169
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 170
8 National Innovation and Standards Circles�������������������������������������������� 173
8.1 National Innovation Circle������������������������������������������������������������������ 173
8.2 National Standards Circle ������������������������������������������������������������������ 178
Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 185

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 187
Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 I ntroduction to the Innovations and Standards


in the ICT Domain

It is quite incredible how the human society is, based on the technology, developing
in the last 150 years. As a matter of fact, it corresponds to the development of the
technical standardization in general. Therefore, it is not complex to conclude that
the technical progress, which is based on the technical innovations, has the solid
foundations and pillars in the technical standardization. This is an especial case for
the development of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that
finally brought the human society to a completely unpredictable (we can say: almost
science fiction) future in a very short time period of cca 50 years.
Throughout this book, we will try to discover the connection, if any, between the
innovation process and the technical standardization process.
Technical standards are voluntary documents, which help facilitate the trade
between countries, create new markets, cut compliance costs, and support the devel-
opment of national, supranational, and global markets. They enable much faster
development of the innovations in the ICT sector, due to the spreading and interact-
ing of the technical knowledge on the global level. Exactly the globally developed
and accepted standards enabled a fast development and interoperability of ICT
innovations and technologies steered by it. The winning case was the development
of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) [1]. GSM is the second gen-
eration digital cell phone technology that was the first effort of mobile technology
environment to create a transnational mobile system with the idea of seamless com-
munications anywhere and anytime. GSM is developed as a set of ETSI specifica-
tions, becoming “de facto standard,” that will be later explained in Chap. 3. This fact
enabled GSM to spread all over the globe, and furthermore, it contributed to the
global interoperability. After GSM, the world tried to develop the third-generation
system (3G) of mobile telephony: Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS) that was supposed to enable user to travel around the globe with only one

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1


D. Šimunić, I. Pavić, Standards and Innovations in Information Technology
and Communications, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44417-4_1
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2 1 Introduction

cell phone and without experiencing any kind of poor communication. However,
this was not successful till now (even with the enrollment of 4G), but the world is
getting closer and closer there. The next chance is 5G, where big changes of the
society will appear in the relation to the society organization. 5G communications
will enable platforms for vertical development of the society that never existed
before. Therefore, we can expect frog leap and explosion of new approaches related
to the concept: anything, anywhere, and anytime and in unlimited amounts.
Autonomous traffic, energy grid, factories of the future, smart agriculture, and qual-
ity of human life, including personal health monitoring and treatment as well as
environmental health monitoring, are only the most promising near-future use cases
of 5G deployment in the smart city. Complexity of the smart city cannot be over-
come without enough computational power in terms of artificial intelligence that is
organized via wireless and wired communications, i.e., mighty variant of ICT. The
5G requires definition of clearly developed interfaces between 5G and all the older
technologies than 5G (starting from 2G to 4G). All the mentioned goals are achiev-
able only by global standards development that will be valid and applicable all over
the globe.
The next successful global ICT story is the one of the Bluetooth [2]. Bluetooth
was created and developed by few individuals within company Ericsson, with the
simple idea for wireless connection of computers with printers. Instead of staying
with the proprietary standard, the inventors decide to go for a global standard [3].
Nowadays, Bluetooth is applied for all kinds of connections, and it develops con-
tinuously all over the Earth.
Only the two presented examples can already indicate that there is a defined con-
nection between standards and innovations. Standards are firing the innovations –
innovations are integrated into standards. This is a perpetual life cycle that we tried
to explain in the book, especially for the domain of information and communication
technologies.

Bibliography

1. Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM, 3rd Generation Partnership Project,
Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network, GSM/EDGE Physical layer on the radio
path, General description, (Release 15), 2018
2. IEEE 802.15.1-2005, IEEE Standard for Information technology, Local and metropolitan area
networks, Specific requirements, Part 15.1a: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and
Physical Layer (PHY) specifications for Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN), 2005
3. “Standardization and Innovation”, Speech 2.1, Bringing radical innovations to the market-
place, Lars Montelius, Director General, International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory
(INL), Professor of Nanotechnology at the Sweden Nanometer Structure Consortium at Lund
University, ISO innovation, ISO-CERN conference proceedings, 13–14 Nov 2014
Chapter 2
Innovation and Standards Geography

2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations

Standardization is known as a well-defined process that produces excellently orga-


nized documents the best possible organized documents at the current state of
knowledge. It is a process that never stops. It is closely coupled with innovation and
industry. However, perception of a “boring standardization” is present in our every-
day life. Most probably, it is because very few people on this planet speak so-called
standard language. It also means that most of the population in any country is
defined as a nonspeaker of “standard language.” Nonspeakers are most probably not
aware of the importance of standardization processes and their role in the society,
especially of their role in the innovation process.
A second kind of spoken language present in the research community may be
called “research and innovation.” Currently, this language is not understood by all
the speakers of the “standard” language. The speakers of the two languages cannot
understand each other. This is the factual case, because only a very small part of
inhabitants of any of the two planets visit the other planet. It is also a perception of
many that innovation and standard never meet: the two processes develop in entirely
different directions (Fig. 2.1).
The inhabitants of the “research and innovation” planet live in a dynamic and
exciting environment, usually without too many rules and restrictions. Innovation is
defined as a “new idea, creative thought or new imaginations in form of device or
method” [1]. This means that the innovation is a process of implementation of a new
idea or an invention (as a creation of a new idea or a method) in a product, service,
or process.
Technical innovation is, furthermore, related to a process of implementation of a
new idea or an invention in a technical product, service, and process with a result in
lower production costs and/or greater value added, as, e.g., higher product quality or
new features. One may discuss how many forms innovation types can take. The
“classical” innovation division can be set up according to the geography: it can be

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 3


D. Šimunić, I. Pavić, Standards and Innovations in Information Technology
and Communications, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44417-4_2
4 2 Innovation and Standards Geography

Fig. 2.1 Perception of the interaction between standards and innovations. Current perception
shows no interaction at all between standards and innovations

on individual, company, governmental, national, regional, and international level.


However, it is more usual to speak of four basic types of innovations:
1. Sustaining or incremental
2. Disruptive or creative destruction
3. Technology transferable
4. Transformational or radical
The sustaining or incremental innovation is probably the most common innovation
type. It is used mostly in large companies. The sustaining innovation is based on the
evolutionary changes of the products and markets to the best of the existing custom-
ers’ satisfaction.
The disruptive or “creative destruction” [2] creates new markets. It is most com-
mon to a start-up mirrored in the “creative destructive” or disruptive shifts of tech-
nology, regulatory changes, or customers.
The technology transfer-based innovation means that the certain existing tech-
nology is applied in a technical, economic, or societal sector. Suddenly, an idea may
come to apply this technology in some other sector or for some other application. If
this new application brings much better results than the previous applications, we
talk about technology transfer-based innovation.
The transformational or radical innovation opens completely new horizons and
transforms paradigms in the technology (new industries), economy, or society.
All the four innovation types are shown on Fig. 2.2. The first innovation type,
sustainable, is denoted as 1. S, the second, disruptive as 2.D, the third, technology
transfer as 3.TT, and the fourth type, transformational innovation type as 4.T. They
are placed in the society-technology plane. The abscissa represents society well-­
being value, or how large is the contribution of the innovation to the society well-­
being. The ordinate shows technology innovation level. For example, the most
common innovation type, sustainable (1.S), brings certain technology innovation
level and certain value to the society well-being, but the highest contribution in the
whole plain is brought by the transformational innovation type (4.T). The disruptive
innovation type has arrows, meaning that its society well-being value varies, depen-
dent on the innovation itself, from giving the contribution as the sustainable innova-
tion type (1.S) toward the technology transfer innovation type (3.TT) to the
transformational innovation (4.T).
Usually, the free-spirited and innovative people tend not to bother about an exis-
tence of any kind of rules, which they perceive as being quite boring and even
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations 5

Fig. 2.2 Four innovation


types in the society-­ technology
technology plane. The innovation 4. T
sustaining innovation is level
denoted 1.S; the disruptive
is denoted 2.D; the
2. D
technology-transfer is
denoted 3.TT; the
transformational is
denoted 4.T 1. S 3. TT

society
well-being
value

“killing” creation. The other reason is that sometimes the innovative and creative
people are introduced to rather old existing standards, being locked to the legacy
systems. Thus, they conclude that the population of the “standard” planet generates
the results that are of no interest for them. Furthermore, they withdraw from any
interaction with the inhabitants of the non-exciting “standard” planet and also of
their results. Another possibility is that if an average innovator bumps into the very
new standards, she/he is so much challenged in terms of a possible not-yet-existing
infrastructure that she/he loses interest in creating a new product according to the
very new standard. Therefore, albeit without knowledge about it, the “standard”
planet is defined as “boring,” and, according to them, it should not be visited too
often. Although the innovators are very creative, and, on the top, quite knowledge-
able persons, the interaction and, what is even worse, the communication between
the “innovator” and “standard” planets stop there.
In the other world of the “standard” planet, inhabitants use its own separate and
completely different language and logic. On this planet, inhabitants hardly under-
stand the life on other, much less organized, planets, especially on the “innovation”
planet without the strict administrative rules.
Therefore, even though it is self-evident that the world of innovations and the
world of standards makes a perfect match for an eternal happy life, the two worlds
seldom talk to each other. Most probably, it is the consequence of two different
cultures speaking in two different languages on two different planets, as depicted in
Fig. 2.3.
Therefore, we can compare the innovation and standard planets to the stars. One
planet can be the Sun, the other one the Moon. Most of us on the planet Earth are
oriented toward the Sun. However, it is evident that the life on the Earth is not sus-
tainable without a continuous change of the Sun and the Moon.
It is a fact presented later in this book that the first technological, and especially,
electricity progress started exactly with the creation of standardization activities
and bodies. To be even more precise, in the case of the electricity progress, the first
two international standardization organizations that were established more than 150
6 2 Innovation and Standards Geography

Fig. 2.3 The planets of


innovations and standards
are like the Sun and the
Moon for the Earth, being
the progress of the
human society

and 100 years ago still exist (International Telecommunication Union (ITU) [3];
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) [4]).
Everyone involved in any kind of technology standardization knows that there is
a lot of knowledge and global coordination involved in each and every of the pub-
lished standards, being on the global (international), transnational, or national level
(Chaps. 6, 7, and 8 of the book, respectively). The most important characteristic of
the standards is that they are, in principle, not a subject to intellectual property
rights. This allows anybody, either in a private arrangement or in a small (or big)
company to buy the standard and its contained knowledge for a relatively low price.
Low price of a standard is enabled by the voluntary work of all the experts involved
in its writing, as well as by the fact that the work is done by the nonprofit organiza-
tions (e.g., in the EU these are the European Committee for Standardization (CEN)
[5] and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC)
[6] and the national standardizations organizations). The operational way of the
standardization organizations ensures building in of all the existing technology
knowledge from all the experts, independently of whether they are coming from
small or big companies, from universities, or it they are independent researchers.
The most significant property of the standard is that it is built by consensus, not only
within the committee that develops the standard but also within various committees.
For example, CEN has the agreement with International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) [7] (so-called Vienna Agreement, 1991), CENELEC with the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) [4] (so-called Dresden Agreement,
1996, and Frankfurt Agreement, 2016), and the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) [8] with the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) [3] (Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, 2000 and 2012). This means that
all the relevant European Standards Organizations (ESOs) with a mandate from the
European Commission (only three CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI) are coordinated
with the global standardization. Furthermore, this means that ESOs are completely
harmonized with the actions in the global standardization arena. This coordination
saves a lot of effort and unnecessary additional work and time. On the other hand, it
also ensures that any European standard contains global knowledge and is of global
importance. Therefore, anybody who fetches any European standard is completely
sure that it contains up-to-date global knowledge and that it is completely compat-
ible and compliant on the global level.
The next factor contributing to the enormously important relationship between
innovation and standards is a high dependence of the country’s overall and,
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations 7

Fig. 2.4 Sustainable ecosystem consisting of technical standardization process, technical stan-
dards, technology deployment, overall country progress, and innovation

specifically, technological progress on the total knowledge in the country. One can
specify a direct linear relationship between the overall state-of-the-art knowledge
and its application in the country and the overall country progress [9].
Figure 2.4 depicts the whole closed self-reproductive ecosystem of the technical
standardization process, technical standards, technology deployment, overall coun-
try progress, and innovation. The visible clear link between technical standards and
overall country progress results in the innovation that again starts the process of
technical standardization and technology deployment without an end. If this is
applied to the whole region, or to the whole international arena, it means that the
innovation takes place overall.
Thus, it can be easily concluded that use of standards is a “cheap-and-easy” way
toward economic development of the country. This is since the variety of products
can be introduced to the market. Also, the standardization process enables much
quicker and broader (the speed and degree) adoption of new products and services.
This places all national and, especially, international standardization organizations
at the very specific location that enlightens continuous economic growth simply by
taking care of sustainable dissemination of all the standards and especially of all the
emerging technological standards on the national and international level. European
Union is a special case related to the international scene, since it encompasses 27
different European countries, which follow the same legislation and standardization
processes. It means that all the European countries follow also the same standards.
Only if a certain national standard is of no interest to other European countries, it
stays only as a national standard. Otherwise, it is in a definite timescale converted
or transformed to a European standard. European standards are being developed in
8 2 Innovation and Standards Geography

harmony with global standards (according to the previously mentioned agreements


between CEN and ISO, CENELEC and IEC, and ETSI and ITU). Thus, it can be
concluded that once when a country is connected to the global standardization pro-
cesses, it has all the necessary tools and resources for a strong economic growth.
Our conclusion is that there is a strong interaction between the standardization
and the innovation process. The standardization process ensures and shapes innova-
tion pattern. Without the standardization process, the innovation process would
either develop on the base of the previous innovation or it would spread too wide. In
the latter case, there would be a plethora of products (as final products of a plethora
of technical innovations) that are completely incompatible. As it is known from the
past, incompatibility leads to the very local production and usage, meaning that the
use of the same and compatible products outside a specific region, especially related
to ICT, would be almost impossible. The global component of the development of
the human society that started to explode the human science in an unseen dimen-
sions would be lost. Since we would like to continue to enjoy the increasing com-
fort, healthcare, and the living standard, we would like to support the growth of the
standardization process for the benefit of all.
Now we can redraw Fig. 2.1 from the beginning of the chapter. It is shown on
Fig. 2.5.
According to [10], standards provide as much knowledge as imported knowledge
from licenses and as half of knowledge deriving from patents.
The Oslo Manual [11] defines innovation as a new idea or an invention and its
implementation. The diffusion and overall application of innovation in the society
define social and economic impact of the innovation. Thus, the innovation can have
a societal, a technical, or an economic nature, or any combination of all three.
Furthermore, this proves once more that the innovation impacts productivity, eco-
nomic growth, and, thus, the general well-being. At societal level, innovation serves
to satisfy current and future human needs. At individual and company levels, inno-
vation serves to increase market shares or general profits. Therefore, it is quite
important to measure the extent of the innovation results on the societal and private
levels. So, what are the innovation outcomes? They could be productivity, profits,
jobs, higher well-being, or better environmental care. But the real question is how
to measure innovation results, when they can be distributed over longer period of
time, over many organizations and individuals, over larger geographical area, etc.

Fig. 2.5 Actual


relationship between
standards and innovations:
The clear intersection area
of the interaction between
innovations and standards
in the both directions
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations 9

United Nations’ (UN) System of National Accounts (SNA) [12] provides a glob-
ally adopted framework for measuring the economic activities of production, con-
sumption, and accumulation. SNA defines concepts of income and wealth. This
framework permits an integration of innovation data with other SNA consistent sta-
tistical sources. Therefore, SNA is considered as the best measuring innovation plat-
form, and its terminology should be consistently followed.
SNA defines four major relevant economic sectors for an innovation, relevant for
performing innovation measurements in institutional units with the legal responsi-
bility of their actions:
–– Business enterprise [13]/corporate sectors are corporations/business entities
whose main products are physical products, processes, and services.
–– General government units redistribute income and wealth with the nonprofit
institutions included. Their main products are physical products and services,
usually on a nonmarket basis.
–– Households units are in reality one or more individuals. Their role is to provide
labor and consumption of good and services and to produce market products,
processes, and services, as entrepreneurs.
–– Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISHs) do not produce market
services, because their main mode of operation is voluntary. NPISHs can be a
part of a business enterprise or, equally well, of a general government sector.
It must be noted that in SNA the product can be a good or a service. It results
from production activities for a final consumption, for further exchange or as a
beginning of the new production or for investment. Goods are objects with estab-
lished ownership rights (that are easily transferable from one owner to another) and
with existing current or potential demand. Service affects user conditions or facili-
tates the exchange of products (e.g., in financial sector). Examples of changes of
user conditions are changes in the condition of users goods (e.g., materials from one
company are transported to another company which makes a certain product), in the
physical condition of a person (e.g., producer provides accommodation, transfer,
medical or physiotherapy treatments), and in the psychological condition of a per-
son (e.g., producer provides education, advice, and entertainment service; these are
often digitally delivered services).
One of the logical measures is an innovation project. It is a logical measurable
unit in large companies, as a result of internal policies, processes, and procedures
(examples are research and development engineering, design and other creative
activities; marketing and brand equity activities, Intellectual Property (IP)-related
activities, employee training activities, software development and database activi-
ties, activities related to the acquisition or lease of tangible assets, and innovation
management activities). However, the situation is not the same for a small start-up
company that invests full resources to a single innovation, not even considering call-
ing it an innovation project.
The innovation measurement can be performed at the household level, because
of the recently developed required changes in terms of users’ behavior in recycling
and sustainability. The measurement can also be performed in a certain geographic
area for data collection with defined measurement strategies.
10 2 Innovation and Standards Geography

However, it seems that there is no simple relationship between innovation and


macroeconomic effects on industries, markets, or economy. The first who intro-
duced the concept of disruption, as relevant factor in the relationship between inno-
vation and economy, was Schumpeter [2]. As mentioned earlier, the concept was
called a “creative destruction.” The term describes the phenomenon quite well. This
is the reason for the later use in the “transposed” version, simply as the “disruption.”
Disruptive processes give possibility of finding new ways of production or of find-
ing completely new industries. Therefore, we can conclude that the long-term eco-
nomic growth depends on the innovation processes, giving it the utmost priority to
study them in order to ensure it. The OECD study of innovation in 1997 [14] resulted
in understanding that the innovation is the result of complex interaction of various
inputs and that it is not a linear and sequential process. Therefore, the only way of
understanding interrelationship between all the inputs of innovation systems is to
follow the long-term systematic and interdisciplinary approach. The entities from
the four mentioned SNA economic sectors are innovation systems that are often
related and interrelated to systems on the local, regional, and global scene. Therefore,
all measurements are responsible to collect data not only on an entity level but also
on the national, regional, and global level. Fortunately, nowadays is the collection
enabled by using disruptive innovative tools and networks from Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) industry. This is also why the current systematic
perspective is very much developed, when compared to the earlier times without the
global interconnection. It is even possible to coordinate global innovative systems
to develop a healthier planet Earth with happier and healthier individuals [15]. As a
matter of fact, the awareness of the latter brings the item of evaluation of innovation
processes high on the world’s agenda.
In short, the subject innovation is based on the four pillars, according to the Oslo
Manual [11]:
–– Knowledge (K)
–– Novelty (N)
–– Implementation (I)
–– Value creation (V)
Figure 2.6 shows four pillars of innovation, with K denoting knowledge, N nov-
elty, I implementation, and V value creation). It is important to understand that
together they form the necessary condition for the innovation appearance. It is their
interaction, their interplay, and, finally, their synergy that brings the innovation.

Fig. 2.6 Four pillars of


innovation appearance are
knowledge (K), novelty
(N), implementation (I),
and value creation (V)
2.1 Perpetual Interaction of Standards and Innovations 11

Knowledge is the obvious, the most important, and the obligatory pillar for any
innovation. An especial aspect of knowledge is that it can be gathered by own exper-
imental and research work or by a knowledge transfer in a direct or indirect way. In
any case, the knowledge is apprehended and gathered by cognitive processes, mean-
ing that it requires initiation of certain learning processes in the recipient. Knowledge
was very exclusive in the past, where only the certain layers of the societies had
exclusive access to it. The increase of the global interconnection, enabled by the
ICT systems, showed the need for a transparency of all aspects and layers of the
modern complex societies, driving the further dynamic progress of the planet.
Consequently, many societies concluded that the exclusive rights, like Intellectual
Property Right (IPR) that previously served to protect from rivalry, presents a cer-
tain degree of inhibition of innovation in the field of technology. Not only that, it
was concluded that the society and the economic growth could feel the conse-
quences of the inhibition. Therefore, the current strategy of the European
Commission is the promotion of an open society, founded on an open-source soft-
ware and open scientific publications [16]. This policy motivation enables such a
society to make wide available knowledge overflow for the creation of new knowl-
edge and, thus, the new innovative and yet unknown social and economic values.
However, the first and necessary condition for this is a digitalization of the society,
of all the systems in the country and, e.g., in the European Union, opening all the
new possibilities for the citizens. Only after proper digitalization, an information
can be accessed and organized, opening the way to any entity of the society to be
able to achieve the desired level of knowledge to generate an innovation. As stated
earlier in this chapter, standards contain a lot of knowledge as a result of internation-
ally driven and coordinated consensus. Thus, we are free to conclude that the stan-
dards with their inherent knowledge represent the main pillar of the innovation.
Novelty of a product, process, or service is characterized by its use, primarily by
the comparison with already existing products, processes, or services on the market.
Novelty can be assessed or measured either in terms of physical technical measures,
like material properties (e.g., weight), electrical properties (e.g., dissipated power,
heating), or communication properties (e.g., velocity of communication, through-
put), or in terms of user experience measures, like usability of the service, etc. The
user experience measures are much more difficult for a cold and objective data
gathering and their organization, since different users respect more of some than of
other qualities (e.g., easy use in relation to data processing).
Implementation is the very next important pillar of innovation, because the defi-
nition of an innovation is related to it. If there is no implementation, an innovation
is not the innovation, but it remains an idea, an invention, or maybe a prototype.
Therefore, an implementation must be carefully planned after a clear definition and
understanding of the innovation’s novelty. Implementation usually requires a lot of
work related to understanding user’s needs and wishes, as well as current technol-
ogy level for all the aspects of the innovation, being a product, a process, or a ser-
vice. Finally, it means that the group of experts dealing with the implementation
needs to take care of following it and redesigning it when necessary.
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12 2 Innovation and Standards Geography

Value creation is the fourth pillar, related to the economic or social growth. It can
be assessed only after some period of implementation, because various stakeholders
can benefit with various values. The value creation, especially for government pol-
icy makers, is not only about economic profitability, but rather as a measure of the
sustainable society progress in total.
In the modern world, it is crucial to understand the potential of digitalization, as
a means not only for the business transformation but also for the society and the
economy in general.
The digital service has the unique property of a rapid obsolescence and a replace-
ment that was never present before to such an extent in the human society. Exactly
this property is the basis for an incredible growth of innovation, connecting the
whole globe to a huge single innovation process, and to the growth of transparency,
happiness, and economic growth, leading to an overall well-being. The innovation
processes are initiated for digitalization itself but also as a key driver for all other
economic and societal growth.
Examples of such innovation processes in digitalization are:
–– Information gathering, a core business of companies selling and developing
information content
–– Data development activities, a core business for companies working on improve-
ment of business decision process in relation to innovations
–– Data management knowledge, a core business of companies performing surveys
and trying to assess innovation probability based on the data management and
advanced technology development and use
–– Knowledge flows, a core business of companies that analyze innovation process,
relevant to digitized world and its decentralized collaboration model
–– External factors, a core business of companies studying influence of, e.g., digital
platforms and users’ trust used by other entities, in order to produce another
innovation-based product
–– Measurement activities, a core business of companies collecting information on
an innovation outside business sector
–– Measurement activities for a visualization and analysis of innovation activities
–– Measurement activities of identifying the key business/innovation partner
–– Measurement activities of implementing more secure and easier electronic col-
lecting methods
–– Measurement activities of using statistical data on innovation and business
In order to be able to perform all the measurement activities in innovation by
means of digital technologies, it is necessary to define user needs and to understand
drivers and factors of innovation in various countries, communities, industries, and
individuals. According to the Oslo Manual [11], three stakeholders are very much
interested in usage of innovation data: academics, managers, and policy makers or
policy analysts.
Bibliography 13

Bibliography

1. Merriam-Webster, Internet page: www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 27.8.2019


2. J.A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital,
Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle, translated from the German by Redvers Opie, (2008)
(Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick/London, 1934)
3. ITU, Internet page: www.itu.int. Retrieved 17.8 2019
4. IEC, Internet page: www.iec.ch. Retrieved 20.8.2019
5. CEN, Internet page: www.cen.eu. Retrieved 20.8.2019
6. CENELEC, Internet page: www.cenelec.eu. Retrieved 19.8.2019
7. ISO, Internet page: www.iso.org. Retrieved 19.8.2019
8. ETSI, Internet page: www.etsi.org. Retrieved 18.8.2019
9. K. Blind, The Impact of Standardization and Standards on Innovation (Manchester
Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester,
Manchester, 2013)
10. K. Blind, R. Bekkers, Y. Dietrich, E. Iversen, B. Müller, T. Pohlmann, J. Verweijen (2011) EU
Study on the Interplay between Standards and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), 2011, com-
missioned by the DG Enterprise and Industry
11. OECD/Eurostat, Oslo Manual 2018: Guidelines for Collecting, Reporting and Using Data on
Innovation, 4th edn. (The Measurement of Scientific, Technological and Innovation Activities,
OECD Publishing, Paris/Eurostat, Luxembourg, 2018)
12. European Communities, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, United Nations and World Bank, System of National
Accounts (European Commission, 2009)
13. OECD, Frascati Manual 2015: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and
Experimental Development (The Measurement of Scientific, Technological and Innovation
Activities, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2015)
14. OECD/Eurostat, Proposed Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological
Innovation Data, Oslo Manual (OECD Publishing, Paris, 1997)
15. G20 Innovation Report (2016) Report prepared for the G20 Science, Technology and
Innovation Ministers Meeting, Beijing, China, 4 Nov 2016, OECD, Better policies for better
lives, OECD Publishing
16. European Commission, Policy Recommendations – Study, Cost-benefit Analysis for FAIR
Research Data (European Commission, 2018)
17. OECD, The Innovation Imperative, Contributing to Productivity, Growth and Well-Being
(OECD Publishing, Paris, 2015)
18. OECD, The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow (OECD Publishing,
Paris, 2010)
19. OECD, The Future of Productivity (OECD Publishing, Paris/Eurostat, Luxembourg, 2015)
Chapter 3
Innovation and Standardization
Stakeholders

3.1 Innovation Stakeholders

In general, there are four main stakeholders in the innovation process:


–– Inventors
–– Entrepreneurs
–– Marketers
–– Users
An innovation starts with inventors, without whose idea the innovation would
not be possible. As an example, the inventor can be a lone inventor, or she/he can
work in a more organized environment, e.g., in a company. The lone inventor is
committed to the invention of a novel product. In most cases, the invention is based
on an idea that could make a radical change in one of the basic activities of human
life. Inventors may be scientists, artists, and/or any active societal player. They may
or may not handle product design, marketing, and sales well.
The next most logical stakeholder is the entrepreneur. He brings the invention to
the market, by financing the development, production, and diffusion of a product
into the marketplace. Examples of the entrepreneur include industries, foundations,
and governments.
Another stakeholder is the marketer, whose role encompasses creative, analyti-
cal, digital, commercial, and administrative responsibilities. The responsibilities of
the marketer include overseeing and developing marketing campaigns, conducting
research and analyzing data for an identification and a definition of an audience,
presenting ideas and strategies and promotional activities, organizing events and
product exhibitions, coordinating internal marketing events, monitoring whole per-
formance, and managing campaigns on social media.
The fourth and the last, but not the least, stakeholder is the user. Without the user
input, the cycle of innovation does not exist. The circle of innovation stakeholders
is shown in Fig. 3.1.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 15


D. Šimunić, I. Pavić, Standards and Innovations in Information Technology
and Communications, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44417-4_3
16 3 Innovation and Standardization Stakeholders

Fig. 3.1 The closed circle


of innovation stakeholders’
interaction

Fig. 3.2 Recently updated


innovation stakeholders
circuit with the four basic
stakeholders from Fig. 3.1
and with the added fifth
stakeholder: SDO

Any of the four stakeholders can be an intellectual property owner. In the recent
history, Fig. 3.1 is expanded by another stakeholder: this is the Standards Developing
Organization (SDO). SDO becomes an innovation stakeholder (Fig. 3.2) to avoid
wasting duplicating effort on the elaboration of a standardization deliverable that
could subsequently have serious problems with issuing or maybe that could be even
blocked by the existing essential Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Another reason
for the SDO to become one of the innovation stakeholders is to enable another inno-
vation stakeholder and very important societal stakeholder (a user) to overcome the
so-called island solutions. “Island solutions” are based on a single technology, and
it is impossible or almost impossible to combine them with any other already exist-
ing products. If the IPR is incorporated to the standard, users (consumers) will have
all interoperable products in action from the start of the system operation.
Another set of stakeholders is involved in innovation measurement activities by
means of digital technologies. The measurements are a necessity due to the required
definition of user needs and due to the necessity to understand drivers and factors of
3.2 Standardization Stakeholders 17

innovation in various countries, communities, industries, and individuals. According


to the Oslo Manual [1], there are three possible users of innovation data:
1. Academics
2. Managers
3. Policy makers/policy analysts
According to the same source, all three kinds of users would like to obtain com-
parable data across industries, regions, and time. They would like to keep up with
changes of innovation (an example is an open innovation). Also, they would like to
enable analyses of innovation impacts on innovative organizations or supranational
and national economies. Finally, they would like to provide data on the factors
enabling or hindering innovation as they would like to link innovation data to other
data, such as individual users of innovations.
1. Academics would like to try to improve society’s understanding of innovation
and its socioeconomic effects. The main goals of the research are understanding
and independent interpreting innovation outcomes, so that it can be an important
contribution to innovation policy development. In addition, the researchers can
provide hypotheses for new theories of innovation development that could con-
tribute to the economic development and growth.
2. Managers can be the main drivers for innovation in the company, if they under-
stand their role well. They should appoint persons/teams for the collection of the
data on innovation, which then directly influence their own innovation capabili-
ties. This is a sister process to one in ISO 9000 [2], i.e., an improvement of the
management of the own company.
3. Policy makers, as well as policy analysts, have a tremendous interest in the inno-
vation [3, 4] in all industries and SNA sectors [5]. Therefore, they require results
of the research and the main indicators, as results of the measurement studies.
All indicators have to be benchmarked, in order to achieve international harmo-
nization on use in different national economies. Even though it is possible to
benchmark indicators for a majority of cases, it is unfortunately not possible for
all, due to contextual and, in general, cultural differences. However, digitaliza-
tion contributes to the harmonization of defining new data collection or links to
the existing publicly available sources. All the data are available due to the pos-
sibility of digital storage. Therefore, these can always be pulled from the storage,
and together with newly gathered data, they may contribute to even higher reveal
of the innovation process.

3.2 Standardization Stakeholders

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) [6] defines a standardization


as “an activity of establishing, with regard to actual or potential problems, provi-
sions for common and repeated use, aimed at the achievement of the optimum
degree of order in a given context.” Thus, processes of formulating, issuing, and
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estate entail which must necessarily pass to Percy on his father’s
death. But Sir Bysshe desired that this accumulation of his long life
should be kept together by his descendants, and should pass from
eldest son to eldest son through future generations of Shelleys. For
this purpose, the consent and signature of his grandson were
necessary, and he had hoped to obtain them in the following
manner. If Percy would concur in prolonging the entail, and further,
would agree to entail the unsettled estates, he should, after his
father’s death, enjoy the usufruct of the entire fortune. If he should
refuse, then he would only inherit, always after the death of Sir
Timothy, the £80,000 of which it was impossible to deprive him.
Shelley went back to London musing over this strange news, and
called on his solicitor to discuss it with him. He did not feel he could
consent to the extension of the entail, since he disapproved of all
such plutocratic legislation: nor did he desire, either for himself or
his children, the ownership of so huge a fortune. What he wanted
was an immediate income sufficient to live on, according to his
inclinations, and a certain sum down, so as to settle his debts. To
secure these moneys, he proposed, through his lawyer, to sell to his
father the reversion of the settled estates. The proposal pleased Sir
Timothy who had abandoned all hope of ever bringing Percy to heel,
and who now thought only of his second son, John. Unfortunately
the lawyers were not sure that the arrangement was legally possible
under the terms of the Will. These only authorized the re-sale by
Percy to his father of the estate of a grand-uncle, valued at £18,000.
This transaction took place and Shelley received in exchange an
income of one thousand pounds a year during the joint lives of Sir
Timothy and himself, and in addition three thousand pounds were
advanced by Sir Timothy towards the payment of his son’s debts. If
this was not a big fortune, it was at least the end of straitened
means, of furnished lodgings, and of duns.
His first thought was to make Harriet an allowance. He promised
her £200 a year, which in addition to the £200 which her father
allowed her, should be sufficient for all her wants. Next he undertook
to pay off Godwin’s debts, and set apart for that purpose the whole
of his first year’s annuity.
The “venerated friend” found the offer of one thousand pounds
far below his expectations. To hear him talk, nothing was easier than
to borrow, on an inheritance now soon to fall in, the many
thousands of pounds of which the Skinner Street book-shop stood so
much in need.
Shelley, exasperated but courteous, informed Godwin, with an
indignation which he restrained, of his surprise that Mary’s father
should think it proper to write to the seducer of his daughter to ask
him for money, and at the same time to refuse to enter into any
relations with that daughter herself, who was foolish enough to
suffer from it. Godwin replied that it was precisely because he was
borrowing money from the seducer that he could not receive Mary:
his dignity would not allow it! He could not risk having it said that he
had bartered his daughter’s honour for the payment of his debts. His
scruples were so exaggerated that he returned a cheque drawn by
Shelley in his favour, with the remark that the names of Shelley and
of Godwin must not figure on the same cheque. Shelley could make
it payable to Joseph Hume or James Martin, and then he, Godwin,
might consent to cash it. On which the following letters were
exchanged:

Shelley to Godwin.

“I confess that I do not understand how the pecuniary


engagements subsisting between us in any degree impose
restrictions on your conduct towards me. They did not, at
least to your knowledge or with your consent, exist at the
period of my return from France, and yet your conduct
towards me and your daughter was then precisely such as
it is at present. . . .
“In my judgment neither I nor your daughter nor her
offspring ought to receive the treatment which we
encounter on every side. It has perpetually appeared to me
to have been your especial duty to see that, so far as
mankind value your good opinion, we were dealt justly by,
and that a young family, innocent and benevolent and
united, should not be confounded with prostitutes and
seducers. My astonishment, and I will confess when I have
been treated with most harshness and cruelty by you, my
indignation has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my
nature, any considerations should have prevailed on you to
have been thus harsh and cruel. Do not talk of forgiveness
again to me, for my blood boils in my veins, and my gall
rises against all that bears the human form, when I think of
what I, their benefactor and ardent lover, have endured of
enmity and contempt from you and from all mankind.”

Godwin to Shelley.

“I am sorry to say that your letter—this moment


received—is written in a style the very opposite of
conciliation, so that if I were to answer it in the same style
we should be involved in a controversy of inextinguishable
bitterness. As long as understanding and sentiment shall
exist in this frame, I shall never cease from my
disapprobation of that act of yours which I regard as the
great calamity of my life.”

Shelley to Godwin.

“We will confine our communications to business. . . .


“I plainly see how necessary immediate advances are to
your concerns, and will take care that I shall fail in nothing
which I can do to procure them.”

The cold contempt of this letter did not discourage the borrower.
CHAPTER XXII

DON JUAN CONQUERED


Mary’s child was born before its time, and the doctor said it
would not live. Shelley kept watch between the cradle and the bed in
company with Livy and Seneca. Fanny came round with baby-clothes
sent by Mrs. Godwin in her capricious way, but the Philosopher
remained inflexible. Hogg dropped in to gossip, to tell the great
news of the day, the return from Elba, and he did Mary good by his
common sense and sarcasm. With a temperature, and always in the
society of Shelley, she had the rather terrifying if pleasant impression
of slipping away out of life. Hogg brought her back to a sense of
reality.
In spite of predictions the child did live and grew. Mary began to
feel easy about it, when at the end of the month she found on
waking one morning that it was dead. This was a great sorrow.
Shelley and Claire continued their walks together, while Mary
stayed at home. She sat knitting and thinking of her little child. “I
was a mother, and am so no longer,” she kept repeating, and at
night she dreamed that the baby was not dead, and that by rubbing
it before the fire they had brought it back to life. Then she awoke to
find the cradle empty. From the streets floated up the hoarse
shouting of crowds. It was a time of riots. France threatened war.
Mary saw everything through a mist of tears.
Claire’s presence in the house vexed her more and more. She
was certain that Claire was in love with Shelley, had always been in
love with him. Percy’s loyalty was self-evident, his morality super-
human, angelic; but he thought it possible to read Petrarch with an
impassioned girl, to direct her studies, to sit up with her the whole
night through, without danger. Mary said to herself: “My charming
Shelley understands the elves better than he does women.”
When she was alone with him in the evening, she confessed her
jealousy. It was a sentiment he could not understand. He thought it
base, and that it belittled his divine Mary. He knew his capacity for
love to be infinite, and that in dividing it with another woman he
took away nothing from his mistress. The company of the wild and
brilliant Claire was very precious to him, but he had to acknowledge
that the atmosphere of this threefold union was becoming
irrespirable.
Mary besought him to send Claire away. “Your friend,” as she
now always called her. They tried, during many weeks, to find a
place for her as governess or companion, but the unfortunate
reputation which her flight to France had earned her rendered all
such attempts futile.
Claire herself had not the smallest desire to leave. She delighted
in her intellectual intimacy with Percy, and she awaited its inevitable
result without fear. Finally, however, Mary’s gentle firmness carried
the day, and it was arranged that Claire should go to Lynmouth, and
lodge there with a friend of Godwin’s, a Mrs. Bricknell, a widow.

Mary’s Journal.

“Friday.—Not very well. After breakfast read Spenser.


Shelley goes out with his friend, he returns first. Construe
Ovid—90 lines—Jefferson Hogg returns. Read over the Ovid
to Jefferson. Shelley and the lady walk out. After tea talk.
Shelley and his friend have a last conversation.
“Saturday.—Claire goes; Shelley walks with her.
Jefferson does not come till five. Gets very anxious about
Shelley, goes out to meet him: returns: it rains. Shelley
returns at half-past six; the business is finished. Read Ovid.
Charles Clairmont comes to tea. Talk of pictures. I begin a
new journal with our regeneration.”


Claire, exiled to the country, enjoyed after such storm and stress
her first days of profound peace. But she was not the girl to put up
for long with rural solitude. She must have a reason for living—and
she did not fail to find one.
When people are in love they always imagine, quite wrongly, that
it is because they have come across an exceptional being who has
inspired them with the passion. The truth is that love, existing
already in the soul, seeks out a suitable object, and if it does not
find one, then creates it. But if, in an ordinary girl, this love-seeking
is unconscious, it was otherwise with the brilliant and hot-blooded
Claire. Realizing the impossibility of taking Shelley from her sister, or
even of sharing him with her, she deliberately looked round for some
other hero on whom to expend her unemployed affection. Some
women in such case send letters to great writers, or soldiers, or
actors. But Claire, who was poetical, desired a poet.
She found none more worthy of her than George Gordon, Lord
Byron, the man the most worshipped and the most hated in the
whole of England. She knew his poems by heart, Shelley had so
often read them to her with enthusiasm. She knew the stories of
vice and wit, of diabolical charm and infernal cruelty which were
woven round his name.
His extraordinary beauty, his title, his genius as a writer, the
boldness of his ideas, the scandals of his love affairs, all contributed
to make of him the perfect hero. He had had mistresses among the
highest in the land, the Countess of Oxford, Lady Frances Webster,
and the unfortunate Lady Caroline Lamb, who the first day that she
met him wrote in her journal: “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”:
and then underneath, “But this pale handsome face holds my
destiny.”
He had married, and all London repeated the tale that, when he
got into the carriage after the ceremony, he said to Lady Byron: “You
are now my wife, and that is enough for me to hate you. Were you
some one else’s wife, I might perhaps care about you.” He had
treated her with such contempt that she had been driven to ask for
a separation from him at the end of the first year.
Claire, who sought only for difficult adventures, and had supreme
confidence in herself, found out Byron’s address and decided to
chance her luck.

Claire to Byron.

“An utter stranger takes the liberty to addressing


you. . . . It is not charity I demand for of that I stand in no
need. . . . I tremble with fear at the fate of this letter. I
cannot blame if it shall be received by you as an impudent
imposture. It may seem a strange assertion, but it is not
the less true that I place my happiness in your hands. . . .
If a woman, whose reputation has yet remained unstained,
if without either guardian or husband to control, she should
throw herself on your mercy, if with a beating heart she
should confess the love she has borne you many years, if
she should return your kindness with fond affection and
unbounded devotion, could you betray her, or would you be
silent as the grave? . . . I must entreat your answer without
delay. Address me as E. Trefusis, 21 Noley Place, Mary Le
Bonne.”

Don Juan made no reply. This unknown writer of ornate style was
small game for him. But there is no one more tenacious than a
woman tired of her virtue. Claire returned to the attack a second
time. “Sunday Morning. Lord Byron is requested to state whether
seven o’clock this evening will be convenient to him to receive a lady
to communicate with him on business of peculiar importance. She
desires to be admitted alone and with the utmost privacy.”
Lord Byron sent out word by the servant that he had left town.
Then Claire wrote in her own name that, wanting to go on the
stage, and knowing that Lord Byron was interested in Drury Lane
Theatre, she would like to ask his advice. Byron’s reply was to
recommend her to call on the stage manager. Undeterred, she
made, at once, a skilful change of front. It was not a theatrical
career but the literary life which she now desired. She had written
half a novel and would so very much like to submit it to Byron’s
judgment. As he continued to keep silence, or to send evasive
replies, she risked offering him the only thing which a man with any
self-respect seldom refuses.
“I may appear to you imprudent, vicious, but one thing at least
time shall show you, that I love gently and with affection, that I am
incapable of anything approaching to the feeling of revenge or
malice. I do assure you your future shall be mine.
“Have you any objection to the following plan? On Thursday
evening we may go out of town together by some stage or mail
about the distance of ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and
unknown; we can return early the following morning. I have
arranged everything here so that the slightest suspicion may not be
excited. Pray do so with your people.
“Will you admit me for two moments to settle with you where?
Indeed, I will not stay an instant after you tell me to go. . . . Do
what you will or go where you will, refuse to see me and behave
unkindly, I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and
the wild originality of your countenance.”
It was then that Don Juan, trapped and tired by the long pursuit,
decided to accept his defeat. He had already decided to leave
England and fix himself in Switzerland or Italy, and the prospect of a
speedy departure set welcome limits to this unwelcome amour.
CHAPTER XXIII

ARIEL AND DON JUAN


Don Juan counted, however, without the energy of Elvira. Claire
had made up her mind to follow him to Switzerland, and this dark-
eyed girl was a flame and a force. She arranged that the Shelleys
should chaperon her, knowing that they, too, would welcome the
idea of a change.
Since she left them, they had been living at Bishopsgate, on the
border of Windsor Forest, and beneath the oak-shades of the Great
Park Shelley had composed his first long poem since Queen Mab.
This was Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, an imaginative
interpretation of his spiritual experiences, and a record of the
exquisite mountain, river, and woodland scenery of the past year.
The tone differs from that of his previous works. Melancholy and
resignation soften down the confident assertions of earlier years,
and religious and moral theories, if still serving as a peg, get
somewhat pushed into the background.
In the preface he shows the Poet thirsting for love and dying
because he cannot find it. But, says Shelley, it is better to die than to
live as do the comfortable worldlings, “who, deluded by no generous
error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by
no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and
cherishing no hopes beyond—yet keep aloof from sympathies with
their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy, nor mourning with human
grief; these and such as they have their appointed curse. . . . They
are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers,
nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country . . . they
live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.”
While Shelley had no regrets for his actions, all the same, life in
England had become odious to him. Mary, as an unmarried wife,
suffered from her social ostracism, and thought that if they went
abroad, where their story would be unknown, she would have more
chance of making friends.
She had given birth to a second child in January, 1816, a fine
little boy whom she had named William, after Godwin. The expenses
of the household, with the addition of a nurse, were heavy, the
income small. Life in Switzerland was said to be cheap; Claire, at
least, had little difficulty in persuading her that it was so.
As in the time of their first flight from London the extraordinary
trio crossed France, Burgundy, the Jura, and, reaching Geneva,
settled down at Sécheron, one of its suburbs, in the Hôtel
d’Angleterre. The house was on the edge of the lake, from its
windows they saw the sun sparkling on every wave-crest of the blue
water, and in the distance the black mountain-ridges that seemed to
quiver in the sunny atmosphere. Farther away still, a brilliant and
solid-looking white cloud spoke of the snow peaks of the Alps. The
change to this golden climate after English greyness and London
gloom was delicious. They hired a boat, and passed long days upon
the water, reading and sleeping.


While they lived thus, a band of happy children, with the blue sky
above them, and the blue lake beneath, Childe Harold in the most
sumptuous of travelling carriages was crossing Flanders on his way
to join them. England, in one of those crazy fits of virtue which
alternate with periods of the most amazing licence, had just
hounded Byron from her shores. When he entered a ball-room every
woman would leave it, as though he were the devil in person. He
determined to shake for ever from his shoes the dust of so
hypocritical a land.
His departure was accompanied by the most frenzied curiosity.
Society, which punishes cruelly any revolt of the elemental instincts,
nevertheless, in her heart of hearts, admires the rebel and envies
him. At Dover, where the Pilgrim embarked, a double line of
spectators stood on either side of the gangway. Great ladies
borrowed the clothes of their chamber-maids, so as to mix
unobserved with the crowd. People pointed out to one another the
enormous packing-cases containing his sofa, his books, his services
of china and glass.
The sea was rough, and Byron reminded his travelling
companions that his grandfather Admiral Byron was nicknamed
“Foul-weather Jack” because he never put to sea without a squall
blowing up. He took a certain pleasure in painting his own portrait
against this traditional stormy background. Unfortunately, he would
have his misfortunes transcendent.


A few days later there was great commotion at the Hôtel
d’Angleterre. Every one was on edge expecting the arrival of the
noble lord. Claire was tremulous in spite of her audacity, Shelley, in
the happiest spirits, was impatient. He was not shocked by the affair
between Byron and Claire. On the contrary he hoped to see the
same ties formed between Byron and his sister-in-law as existed
between himself and Mary.
The Shelleys were not disappointed by Byron’s first appearance.
His beauty was extraordinary. To begin with, you were struck by his
air of pride and intellect; next, you noticed the moonlight paleness
of his skin, his splendid dark blue eyes, his black and slightly curling
hair, the perfect line of his eyebrows. The nose and chin were firm
and well-drawn, the mouth full and voluptuous. His only defect
appeared in his walk. “Club-footed” was said of him. “Cloven-footed”
he insinuated of himself, for he preferred to be considered diabolic
rather than infirm. Mary saw that his lameness embarrassed him, for
whenever he had to take a few steps before spectators he made
some satanic jest. In the register-book of the hotel, against the word
“age” he wrote “a hundred.”
Byron and Shelley got on well together. Byron was glad to find
him a man of his own class, who in spite of hardships had retained
the charming ease of manner peculiar to the young aristocrat. His
cultivation was astounding. Byron, too, had read enormously, but
without Shelley’s serious application. Shelley had read to know,
Byron had read to dazzle, and Byron was perfectly well aware of the
difference. He felt, too, the instant conviction that Shelley’s will was
a force, a bent bow, while his own floated loose on the current at
the mercy of his passions and of his mistresses.
Shelley, the least vain of men, did not observe this admiration for
him, which Byron took care to hide. While listening to the third canto
of Childe Harold he was moved to enthusiasm and discouragement.
In the superb energy of the poem, which rose and swelled,
irresistibly like a flood, he recognized genius and despaired of ever
equalling it.
But if the poet filled him with admiration, the man filled him with
astonishment. He had expected a Titan in revolt, and he found a
wounded aristocrat fully alive to the pleasures and pains of vanity,
which seemed to Shelley so puerile. Byron had outraged convention,
but, all the same, he believed in it. It had stood in the path of his
desires, and he had flung it aside, but with regret. That which
Shelley had done ingenuously, he had done consciously. Banished
from society, he valued nothing so much as social success. A bad
husband, it was only to legitimate love that he paid respect. His
mouth overflowed with cynicism, but it was by way of reprisals, not
from conviction. Between marriage and depravity he recognized no
middle path. He had sought to terrify his compatriots by acting an
audacious part, but only because he had despaired of conquering
them by acting a traditional one.
Shelley looked to women as a source of exaltation, Byron as a
pretext for idling. Shelley angelic, too angelic, venerated them.
Byron human, too human, desired them and talked of them in the
most contemptuous fashion. “It is the plague of these women,” said
he, “that you cannot live with them or without them. . . . I cannot
make up my mind whether or not women have souls. My beau-ideal
would be a woman with talent enough to understand and value
mine, but not sufficient to be able to shine herself.”
The upshot of certain of their conversations was surprising.
Shelley, mystical without knowing it, managed to scandalize Byron, a
Don Juan in spite of himself.
This did not prevent them from being excellent company one for
the other. When Shelley, always a great fisher of souls, tried to win
over his friend to a less futile conception of life, Byron defended his
point of view by brilliant paradoxes which delighted Shelley the
artist, as much as they pained Shelley the moralist. Both were
passionately fond of the water. They bought a boat, keeled and
clinker-built, in which they went on the lake every evening with
Mary, Claire, and Byron’s medical attendant, the handsome young
Italian, Polidori. Byron and Shelley, sitting silent, would ship their
oars to follow with their gaze fleeting shapes amidst the moon-lit
clouds; Claire would sing, and her warm, delicious voice carried their
thoughts with it over the starry waters in a voluptuous flight.
One night of strong wind Byron, defying the storm, said he would
sing them an Albanian song. “Now be sentimental and give me all
your attention.” It was a strange wild howl that he gave forth,
laughing the while at their disappointment, who had expected a wild
Eastern melody. From that day onward Mary and Claire named him
“the Albaneser,” and “Albé” for short.
The two poets made a literary pilgrimage round the lake. They
visited the spot where Rousseau has placed his Nouvelle Héloïse,
“Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love”; and Lausanne and
Ferney, full of memories of Gibbon and Voltaire.
Shelley’s enthusiasm gained Byron, who wrote under its influence
some of his finest lines. Near Meillerie one of the sudden lake-storms
nearly upset the boat. Byron began to strip. Shelley, who could not
swim, sat still with folded arms. His calmness increased Byron’s
admiration for him, although he hid it more carefully than ever. Long
afterwards Shelley, speaking of this storm, said, “I knew that my
companion would try to save me, and it was a humiliating idea.”
Sick of hotel life and the impertinent curiosity of their fellow-
boarders, the Shelleys hired a cottage at Coligny on the edge of the
lake. Byron settled himself at the Villa Diodati, a short distance away.
The two houses were only separated by a vineyard. Here, some
vine-dressers at work in the early morning saw Claire come out of
Byron’s villa and run across to Shelley’s. She lost a slipper on the
way, but ashamed of being seen did not stop to pick it up. The
honest Swiss peasants, chuckling hugely, made haste to carry the
slipper of the English “Miss” to the mayor of the village.
Her love affair did not prosper. She was with child, and Byron
was utterly tired of her. He let her see it. For a moment perhaps he
had admired her voice, and her vivacity, but very soon she bored
him. Nor did he feel himself in any way bound to this young woman
who had thrust herself upon him with such pertinacity. . . .
“ ‘Carry off’ quotha! and ‘girl.’ I should like to know who has been
carried off except poor dear me. I have been more ravished myself
than anybody since the Trojan War. I am accused of being hard on
women. It may be so, but I have been their martyr. My whole life
has been sacrificed to them and by them.”
Shelley went to talk with him of Claire’s future, and of the child’s.
As to Claire’s, Byron was perfectly indifferent. All he wanted was to
get rid of her as soon as possible and never to see her again. Shelley
had nothing to say on this point, but he defended the rights of the
unborn child.
At first Byron had the idea of confiding it to his sister Augusta.
Claire refusing her consent, he then undertook to look after the child
himself as soon as it was a year old, on condition that he should be
absolutely master of it.
It became difficult for the Shelleys to remain in his
neighbourhood. Not that there was any coldness between the two
men, for while Shelley had found the negotiations for Claire painful,
they had seemed to him perfectly natural. But Claire herself
suffered, and Mary was often indignant at Byron’s cynical talk. When
he declared that women had no right to eat at the same table with
men, that their proper place was in the harem or gynæceum, the
daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft trembled with anger. Once more
she was homesick for English scenes. A house beside some English
river now appeared to her, at this distance away, a haven of peace.
Shelley wrote to his friends, Peacock and Hogg, to find something
for them, and the journey home began.

After they had gone, Byron wrote to his sister:

“Now don’t scold; but what could I do? A foolish girl, in


spite of all I could say or do, would come after me, or
rather went before—for I found her here—and I had all the
plague possible to persuade her to go back again, but at
last she went. Now, dearest, I do most truly tell thee that I
could not help this, that I did all I could to prevent it. I was
not in love nor have any love left for any; but I could not
exactly play the Stoic with a woman, who had scrambled
eight hundred miles to unphilosophize me. . . . And now
you know all that I know of the matter, and it’s over.”

Shelley remained in correspondence with Byron and did not give


up hopes of “saving” him. Mingled with an immense deference for
the great poet, Shelley’s letters show a trace of haughty disapproval
of the character of the man. He opposed to Byron’s constant anxiety
concerning his reputation, his success, and what was said of him in
London, a picture of true glory.

“Is it nothing to create greatness and goodness,


destined perhaps to infinite extensions? Is it nothing to
become a source whence the minds of other men will draw
strength and beauty? . . . What would Humanity be if
Homer and Shakespeare had never written? . . . Not that I
advise you to aspire to Fame. Your work should spring from
a purer, simpler source. You should desire nothing more
than to express your own thoughts, and to address yourself
to the sympathy of those who are capable of thinking as
you do. Fame follows those whom she is unworthy to
guide.”

Lord Byron, who was then on his way to Venice, read these lofty
counsels with a weary indifference. Exacting veneration bored him.
CHAPTER XXIV

GRAVES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE


Of the three young girls who had given life and gaiety to the
house in Skinner Street, one only, Fanny Imlay, was left. She alone,
who was neither Godwin’s child, nor yet Mrs. Godwin’s, lived at
home with them and called them “papa” and “mamma.” She alone,
so gentle and so loving, had found neither lover nor husband.
Modest and unselfish, these are virtues which men praise—and pass
by. For a moment she had wondered whether Percy would not think
of her, and with a beating heart had begun a correspondence with
him. But Mary’s hazel eyes had quenched the hopes to which the
timid Fanny had never given definite form.
In this silent home, saddened by money-worries, it was on Fanny
that Mrs. Godwin wreaked her ill-humour, while Godwin let her
understand that he could not continue to keep her, and that she
ought to see about earning her own living. She asked nothing better,
and would have liked to become a teacher, but the flight of Mary and
Jane had thrown a mantle of disrepute over the household, and the
heads of schools distrusted the way in which the Godwin girls had
been brought up.
Sick at heart and with a touch of envy, Fanny admired from afar
her sisters’ life of wild adventure, a life which was sometimes
dangerous, but always amusing. How she, too, would have loved to
be over there at Lake Leman, in the company of the famous Lord
Byron, of whom all London was talking!

“Is his face as fine as in your portrait of him? . . . Tell


me also if he has a pleasing voice, for that has a great
charm with me. Does he come into your house in a
careless, friendly, dropping-in manner? I wish to know,
though not from idle curiosity, whether he was capable of
acting in the manner that London scandal-mongers say he
did. I cannot think from his writings that he can be such a
detestable being. Do answer me these questions, for where
I love the poet, I should like to respect the man.
“Shelley’s boat excursion with him must have been very
delightful. . . . I long very much to read the poems the
‘Poet’ has written on the spot where Julie was drowned.
When will they be published in England? May I see them in
manuscript? Say you have a friend who has few pleasures,
and is very impatient to read them. . . . It is impossible to
tell the good that Poets do their fellow creatures, at least
those that can feel. Whilst I read I am a poet. I am inspired
with good feelings—feelings that create perhaps a more
permanent good in me than all the everyday preachments
in the world; it counteracts the dross which one gives on
the everyday concerns of life and tells us there is
something yet in the world to aspire to—something by
which succeeding ages may be made happy and perhaps
better.”

Mary and Claire would read these charming letters with a


condescending pity. Poor Fanny! How Skinner Street! Always thinking
that Godwin’s novels, Godwin’s debts, and Mrs. Godwin’s bad
tempers were the most important things in the world! Fanny’s
slavery gave the two others a more vivid appreciation of their own
freedom. Her loneliness enhanced for them the value of their lovers’
society, and, in their compassion for her, Mary got Shelley to buy her
a watch before leaving Geneva.
When the Shelleys and Claire came back to England, to settle
down at Bath, they saw Fanny as they passed through London. She
was depressed, and spoke of nothing but her loneliness and her
uselessness; no one wanted her. In saying good-bye to Shelley, her
voice quivered. Yet she wrote to him at Bath with the same
affectionate frankness as before, although her letters now had that
indefinable note of reproach which those who lead a death-in-life
feel towards those whose life is filled with living. Godwin, his literary
work broken into by fresh money troubles, became more and more
grumpy; an aunt, Everina Wollstonecraft, who had promised to take
Fanny as governess in her school, wrote to say that a sister of Mary
and Claire would certainly be too terrifying a teacher for the narrow-
minded middle-class parents.
One morning the Shelleys received from Bristol a curious letter, in
which Fanny bade them farewell in mysterious sentences: “I am
going to a place whence I hope never to return.”
Mary implored Shelley to go to Bristol at once. He came home
during the night without any news. Next morning he went again,
and this time brought Mary lamentable tidings. Fanny had left Bristol
for Swansea by the Cambrian Coach, and had put up at the
Mackworth Arms Inn. She had gone at once to her room telling the
chamber-maid that she was tired. When she did not come down
next morning, her door was forced, and she was found lying dead,
her long brown hair spread about her. By her was the little Genevan
watch given her by Mary and Shelley. On the table was a bottle of
laudanum and the beginning of a letter:

“I have long determined that the best thing I could do


was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth
was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of
pain to those persons who have hurt their health in
endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of
my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the
blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as
. . .”

Godwin had taught in Political Justice that suicide is not a crime;


the only difficulty being to decide in each individual case whether
the social advantage of thirty supplementary years of life forbids
recourse to a voluntary death. After the tragedy he wrote to Mary
for the first time since her flight. It was to implore the three outcasts
to avoid anything leading to publicity, “which to a mind in anguish is
one of the severest of all trials.”

Shelley’s nerves were badly shaken by Fanny’s terrible death, and
Mrs. Godwin in her amiable way insinuated she had killed herself for
love of him. He then remembered certain signs of emotion he had
seen in her, and reproached himself for having always considered
her as of a slightly lower status. Perhaps he had, though quite
unwittingly, awakened her love at the moment when, deserted by
Harriet, he sought a shelter in any feminine tenderness. Perhaps she
had weighed and counted and analysed with care, words and
glances, into which he had meant to put mere friendliness. “How
difficult it is to understand the soul of another; How much suffering
one may cause without wishing it, or knowing it; How one may live
in presence of the most profound, sometimes of the most despairful
feelings without even suspecting their existence!” It does not suffice
therefore to be sincere, nor to have good intentions. You can do just
as much harm through not understanding as through unkindness.
He was plunged into a blank despondency.
To shake it off, he went to spend a few days alone with a young
literary critic, Leigh Hunt, who had praised his poetry with
intelligence and enthusiasm. Hunt lived on Hampstead Heath in the
Vale of Health, a spot as tree-embowered and almost as charming
to-day as it was then. His wife Marianne was homely and hospitable.
He had a whole brood of jolly children with whom Shelley could walk
and play. There, he could forget for a time poor Fanny and Godwin.
The visit was short but delicious, and he came home much cheered.
On his return, he found awaiting him a letter from Hookham,
which he opened eagerly, for he had asked Hookham to find out for
him what Harriet was doing. He had had no news of her for two
months. She had drawn her allowance in March and in September,
being then in her father’s house. But since October nothing was
known of her.

“My dear Sir,” Hookham wrote, “It is nearly a month


since I had the pleasure of receiving a letter from you, and
you have no doubt felt surprised that I did not reply to it
sooner. It was my intention to do so; but on enquiring, I
found the utmost difficulty in obtaining the information you
desire relative to Mrs. Shelley and your children.
“While I was yet endeavouring to discover Mrs. Shelley’s
address, information was brought me that she was dead—
that she had destroyed herself. You will believe that I did
not credit the report. I called at the house of a friend of Mr.
Westbrook; my doubt led to conviction. I was informed that
she was taken from the Serpentine river on Tuesday
last. . . . Little or no information was laid before the jury
which sat on the body. . . . The verdict was found drowned.
Your children are well and are both, I believe, in London.”

Shelley went up to town in an agonizing condition of mind. With


horror he saw in imagination the blonde and childlike head, which he
had so loved, befouled by the mud of the river-bed, green and
swollen through its sojourn in the water. He asked himself how was
it possible she could have abandoned her children and chosen so
dreadful a death.
The Hunts and Hookham showed him every kindness, and told
him all they knew. A paragraph in The Times stated: “On Thursday a
respectable female far advanced in pregnancy was taken out of the
Serpentine river, and brought home to her residence in Queen
Street, Brompton, having been missed for nearly six weeks. She had
a valuable ring on her finger. A want of honour in her own conduct is
supposed to have led to this fatal catastrophe, her husband being
abroad.”
The gossips of Queen Street repeated the little they had gleaned:
Harriet no longer received letters from her husband, because her
former landlady had failed to forward them, and she had given up all
hope of his ever coming back to her. She had fallen, from despair.
Living first with an army officer, he had been obliged to leave her on
his regiment being ordered to India. Then, unable to endure the
loneliness of life, she found a protector of humble grade, said to be
a groom, and that he deserted her. The Westbrooks had deprived
her of her children, and refused to receive her back. She was said to
be in the family way, absolutely alone, and terrified at the
approaching scandal. Then, came the body in the river.
Shelley passed an appalling night. . . . “Far advanced in
pregnancy. . . .” What an end to her life . . . what madness. . . .
Detailed and intimate memories of poor Harriet crowded back into
his mind against his will, and he saw in imagination with terrible
vividness the last scenes. . . . Harriet in love, Harriet in terror, Harriet
in despair . . . every expression he knew too well. Ah, this name
which during a few years had meant the whole world to him, for the
future he must associate with all that is basest and most vile!
“Harriet, my wife, a prostitute! Harriet, my wife, a suicide!”
There were moments when he asked himself if he were not
responsible, but he pushed this idea from him with all his strength.
“I did my duty. Always on every occasion in life, I have done what
seemed to me the loyal and disinterested thing to do. When I left
her, I no longer loved her. I assured her existence to the utmost of
my means, and even beyond them. Never have I treated her with
unkindness . . . it is those odious Westbrooks alone. . . . Ought I to
have sacrificed my sanity and my life, to one who was unfaithful to
me, and second-rate?”
His reason told him “No.” Hogg and Peacock, who surrounded
him with affectionate attentions, told him “No.” He besought them to
repeat it to him, for at instants he seemed to glimpse some
mysterious and super-human duty towards Harriet, in which he had
failed. “In breaking traditional ties one sets free in man unknown
forces, the consequences of which one cannot foresee. . . . Freedom
is only good for the strong . . . for those who are worthy of it. . . .
Harriet’s soul was weak. . . .” Ah, little head, blonde and childlike, of
drowned Harriet. . . .
Next day he wrote a tender letter to Mary, eager to dwell by
contrast on her gentle serenity. He asked her to become a mother to
his “poor babes, Ianthe and Charles.” His counsel had just informed
him that the Westbrooks would take action to contest his
guardianship of the children, on the pretext that his irreligious
opinions, and his living in concubinage with Miss Godwin, rendered
him unfit to bring them up.
CHAPTER XXV

THE RULES OF THE GAME


In what way does a marriage ceremony, religious or civil, add to
the happiness of a pair of lovers, deeply smitten and full of
confidence in one another? The event proved that it can at least
make joy blossom on the countenance of a pedant. Godwin’s
exhibited an incredible satisfaction on learning that “the seducer”
was going to make “an honest woman” of his daughter, and that,
eventually, she would become Lady Shelley. He thus inspired in his
ex-disciple a contempt for his character, full measure, pressed down,
and running over.
At first there had been some hesitation as to whether it were
decent to celebrate the marriage so soon after Harriet’s death, but
the authorities on social etiquette declared that it would not do to
wait any longer for the Church’s blessing on a union which Nature
had already blessed twice over.
Just a fortnight after the body of the first Mrs. Shelley had been
taken out of the Serpentine, Mary and Percy were married by a
clergyman in the church of St. Mildred, Bread Street. Godwin,
beaming all over his face, and Mrs. Godwin, simpering and
pretentious, signed as witnesses. That evening, for the first time
since they ran away, the Shelleys dined in Skinner Street.
The family feast was a lugubrious one. There, in the little dining-
room, Fanny had moved to and fro; there, Harriet had sat in her
happy early wedded days; their ghosts, suffering and unsatisfied,
continued to haunt the room and torture the living. It is true that
Godwin’s ill-temper had been changed by the morning’s ceremony
into an excess of urbanity, but too many memories troubled the
guests to make any real cordiality possible.
That night Mary wrote in her journal: “Go to London. A marriage
takes place. Draw. Read Lord Chesterfield and Locke.” Mary had
good nerves. Poor drowned Harriet was never a patch on her.


Nevertheless, it was but right that the news of so splendid a
marriage should be sent to every Godwin in the land. The
Philosopher wrote to Hull Godwin:
“Dear Brother,
“Were it not that you have a family of your own, and
can see by them how little shrubs grow into tall trees, you
would hardly imagine that my boy, born the other day, is
now fourteen, and that my daughter is between nineteen
and twenty. The piece of news I have to tell, however, is
that I went to church with this tall girl some little time ago
to be married. Her husband is the eldest son of Sir Timothy
Shelley, of Field Place, in the county of Sussex, Baronet. So
that according to the vulgar ideas of the world she is well
married, and I have great hopes that the young man will
make her a good husband. You will wonder, I daresay, how
a girl without a penny of fortune should make so good a
match. But such are the ups and downs of the world. For
my part, I care but little comparatively about wealth, so
that it should be her destiny in life to be respectable,
virtuous, and contented.”

The letter closes with a word of cool thanks for a ham and a
turkey sent to the Skinner Street household at Christmas.
But the formal marriage brought about one real advantage. The
“concubinage” argument, advanced by those who wished to deprive
Shelley of his children, fell to the ground. The Westbrooks, however,
did not give in. By the voice of the retired publican, the young
Ianthe aged three, and Charles aged two, addressed a petition to
the Lord Chancellor in which they said: “Our father avows himself to
be an Atheist, and has written and published a certain work called
Queen Mab with notes, and other works, wherein he blasphemously
denies the existence of God as the Creator of the Universe, the
sanctity of marriage, and all the most sacred principles of morality.”
For which reasons these precocious and virtuous infants prayed that
their persons and fortunes might not be placed in the power of an
unworthy father, but under the protection of persons of the highest
morality, such as their maternal grandfather and their kind Aunt
Eliza.
Shelley’s counsel took care to say nothing in defence of Queen
Mab: there was nothing to be said at that time, and in that place,
the Court of Chancery. He confined himself to denying the
importance of a work written by a boy of nineteen.
“Notwithstanding Mr. Shelley’s violent philippics against marriage,
Mr. Shelley marries twice before he is twenty-five! He is no sooner
liberated from the despotic chains which he speaks of with so much
horror and contempt, than he forges a new set, and becomes again
a willing victim of this horrid despotism! It is hoped that a
consideration of this marked difference between his opinions and his
actions will induce the Lord Chancellor not to think very seriously of
this boyish and silly publication.” As to the proposal of placing the
children with their mother’s family: “We think it right to say that Mr.
Westbrook formerly kept a coffee-house, and is certainly in no
respect qualified to be the guardian of Mr. Shelley’s children. To Miss
Westbrook there are more decided objections: she is illiterate and
vulgar, and it was by her advice, with her active concurrence, and it
may be said by her management, that Mr. Shelley, when of the age
of nineteen, ran away with Miss Harriet Westbrook, then of the age
of seventeen, and married her in Scotland. Miss Westbrook, the
proposed guardian, was then nearly thirty, and, if she had acted as
she ought to have done as the guardian and friend of her younger
sister, all this misery and disgrace to both families would have been
avoided.”
His counsel’s ingenious notion of winning his client’s case by
renouncing in that client’s name the opinions of his youth, seemed
to Shelley a piece of disgusting hypocrisy. He, therefore, drew up for
the Lord Chancellor a statement in which he set forth that his ideas
on marriage had not changed, and that if he had made his conduct
conform to the customs of society, he in no way had renounced the
liberty to criticize those customs.
The Lord Chancellor in his judgment remarks: “This is a case in
which a father has demonstrated that he must and does deem it to
be a matter of duty to recommend to those whose opinions and
habits he may take upon himself to form conduct as moral and
virtuous, which the law calls upon me to consider as immoral and
vicious. . . . I cannot, therefore, in these conditions, entrust him with
the guardianship of these children.”
But the Lord Chancellor refused to confide them to the odious
Westbrooks. He put them under the care of an Army doctor, named
Hume, of Brent End Lodge, Hanwell, who would place the boy, when
seven years old, at a good private school under the superintendence
of an orthodox clergyman. As to the little Ianthe, she would be
brought up at home by Mrs. Hume, who would see that she said her
morning prayers, and asked a blessing on her food. Mrs. Hume
would also put into her hands improving books, and, to a certain
extent would encourage the reading of poetry, Shakespeare for
instance, if carefully Bowdlerized. The whole cost, one hundred a
year for each child. Mr. Shelley might visit them twelve times a year,
but in the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Hume. Mr. John Westbrook might
see them the same number of times, but, if he wished it, he might
see them without the Humes being present.
This sentence was very bitter to Shelley. It sanctioned officially so
to say, and in reasonable and moderate formulas, his exile from the
community of civilized men. It was like a brevet of incurable folly.


While the case was being fought out, he had bought a house in
the pleasant little country town of Great Marlow. Ariel at last
consented to have a home like other people. One room, big enough
for a village ball-room, was fitted up as a library, and decorated with
casts of Venus and Apollo. There was a very big garden: in this
during the spring and summer of 1817 might be seen two babies,
William and Clara Shelley, and a third child of unusual beauty, Alba,
daughter of Lord Byron and Claire. Her father was said to be leading
a wild life at Venice. Claire received no news from him.
Shelley’s recent trials had left their traces on his countenance. He
was thinner, more hectic, and stooped more than ever. A violent pain
in his side prevented him from sleeping, and the doctors, unable to
cure it, said it was “a nervous disorder.”
His state of mind was despondent. Life had brought him so much
suffering, his good intentions had been repaid by such evil results,
that he had taken a horror of every sort of action. He felt an intense
but undefined desire to withdraw from the perilous throngs of men,
men whose reactions cannot be predicted, and who are swayed by
such terrible gusts of passion. The regeneration of the real world
now appeared to him so unrealizable that he no longer sought
satisfaction therein for his loves and hatreds, but looked for it in the
more docile and malleable world of the imagination. Subjects for
poems, vague and shadow-like, floated round him, which feeding on
his sorrowful thoughts, gradually took form at the expense of his
powers of action.
The aërial edifices, the crystalline palaces, which with their filmy
vapours had so long hidden from him the actual world, seemed to
detach themselves from earth and to float up as though drawn by an
invisible force. They did not melt away, but swaying with a gentle
movement rose in all their translucent glory to the high realms of
pure Poetry. In the place which they had occupied, Shelley now saw
the world as it is, the brown earth arduous to cultivate, the harsh
faces of men, women full of nerves and hysteria, the cruel and
obstructive society from which he longed to escape.
The poem which occupied his thoughts the oftenest was the
story of an ideal Revolution. He did not want the scenes of
bloodshed which ruined for him the otherwise inspiring story of the
French Revolution. He wanted his Revolution to be the work of a pair
of lovers. His personal experience had taught him that only the love
of a woman can inspire a sublime courage.
Laon and Cythna, two ideal anarchists, were to be the
transfigured portraits of himself and Mary. He would make them die
at the stake, for their ideas, as he would have liked to die himself,
exchanging a last kiss in the midst of the flames, a kiss so delicious
that the agony would become a sort of voluptuous refinement of
ecstasy. For him love did not attain its maximum unless he could
associate it with thoughts and sufferings shared in common. Now
that he and Mary, married and fairly well off, seemed about to begin
an easier life, he desired to escape from this somewhat
commonplace happiness, and to live in imagination the magnificent
and perilous destiny which might have been his in other lands and
other ages.
He passed his time among the little islands of the Thames where
the swans build their nests. Lying at the bottom of his boat
completely hidden by the high grasses, he sought his inspiration in
gazing up at the changing skies. The study of fleeting, interweaving
colour and form had always given him immense pleasure, and every
day he felt more strongly that his real mission in life was to seize the
most transitory shades of beauty, and to fix them for ever in words
buoyant and beautiful as themselves.
The entire summer was given to this entrancing work. Then he
was obliged to go up to London. Money was getting scarce; he had
so many mouths to feed. Besides Mary and the children, Claire and
Allegra were dependent on him, and very often the entire Godwin
household. His new friend, Leigh Hunt, with a wife and five children,
needed help. He had promised Peacock a hundred a year so that he
might go on writing his fine novels. Charles Clairmont, who was
nothing to him, had fallen in love when in France with an ugly
woman several years older than himself and of course penniless; it
was Shelley who provided the means for marriage. Just as formerly,
he had to go to the money-lenders in order to satisfy these endless
claims. “You’re a thoroughbred,” Godwin once told him, “whom the
horse-flies prevent from taking your spring.”
Happily for him, Mary managed to bring him back to earth, and
he forgave her, seeing her now only as the Cythna of his poem. But
she, an over-anxious hostess, did not care for their too assiduous
visitors, such as Peacock, who dropped in every evening “without
being asked,” and drank up a whole bottle of wine. She wanted
Shelley to find a purchaser for the Marlow House which they had
bought too hastily. She saw he suffered from cold, and wished to
take him away to a warmer climate, perhaps to Italy.
“Dearest love,” she wrote to him in London. . . . “Pray in your
letters do be more explicit! You have advertised the house, but have
you given Madocks any orders about how to answer applicants? And
have you settled yet for Italy or the sea? And do you know how to

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