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“In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual”—and presently it grew to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, “responding like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment,” had his chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia’s attractions to begin to dim Harriet’s. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which “one detects already the little rift in the lover’s lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was written”—in September, we remember:
Exhibit D
“Evening. To Harriet
“O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line
Of western distance that sublime descendest,
And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,
And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream
Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,
Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;
What gazer now with astronomic eye
Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
And turning senseless from thy warm caress
Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness.”
I cannot find the “rift”; still it may be there. What the poem seems to say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great, satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a “little rift which had seemed to be healed, or never to have gaped at all.” That is, “one detects” a little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that? How does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist’s secret; he knows how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet Shelley’s deep damage.
“As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley’s happiness it was no more than a speck”—meaning the one which one detects where “it may never have gaped at all”—“nor had Harriet cause for discontent.”
Shelley’s Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. “From a teacher he had now become a pupil.” Mrs. Boinville and her young married daughter Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no “cause for discontent.”
Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned. The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is dog-tired when he gets home, and he can’t teach his wife Latin; it would be unreasonable to expect it.
Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia “perhaps” is sole teacher. Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from causes purely imaginary; she required consolation, and found it in Petrarch. He also says, “Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest melancholy, as every true poet ought.”
Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well “in later years.” It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt deserved it in her “later years,” when she had for generations ceased to be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives. But why is that compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young, sentimental husband? The biographer’s device was not well planned. That old person was not present – it was her other self that was there, her young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.
“In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and discrimination.” That is the fabulist’s opinion – Harriet Shelley’s is not reported.
Early in August, Shelley was in London trying to raise money. In September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from. In the first week of October Shelley and family went to Warwick, then to Edinburgh, arriving there about the middle of the month.
“Harriet was happy.” Why? The author furnishes a reason, but hides from us whether it is history or conjecture; it is because “the babe had borne the journey well.” It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices – flung in in his favorite casual way – the way he has when he wants to draw one’s attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle that is less obvious but more useful – in a history like this. The obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory between her husband and Cornelia Turner now; and because the perilous Italian lessons were taking a rest; and because, if there chanced to be any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by Hogg, who also dubbed it “Shelley’s paradise” later, she might hope to persuade him to stay away from it permanently; and because she might also hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and both brain and heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and loved by the man that had promised these things, and so be made happy and kept so. And because, also – may we conjecture this? – we may hope for the privilege of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that used to be so pleasant, and brought us so near together – so near, indeed, that often our heads touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons; and our hands met in casual and unintentional, but still most delicious and thrilling little contacts and momentary clasps, just as they inevitably do over Italian lessons. Suppose one should say to any young wife: “I find that your husband is poring over the Italian poets and being instructed in the beautiful Italian language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson”—would that cozy picture fail to rise before her mind? would its possibilities fail to suggest themselves to her? would there be a pang in her heart and a blush on her face? or, on the contrary, would the remark give her pleasure, make her joyous and gay? Why, one needs only to make the experiment – the result will not be uncertain.
However, we learn – by authority of deeply reasoned and searching conjecture – that the baby bore the journey well, and that that was why the young wife was happy. That accounts for two per cent of the happiness, but it was not right to imply that it accounted for the other ninety-eight also.
Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the Shelleys, was of their party when they went away. He used to laugh at the Boinville menagerie, and “was not a favorite.” One of the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said, “The Shelleys have made an addition to their party in the person of a cold scholar, who, I think, has neither taste nor feeling. This, Shelley will perceive sooner or later, for his warm nature craves sympathy.” True, and Shelley will fight his way back there to get it – there will be no way to head him off.
Towards the end of November it was necessary for Shelley to pay a business visit to London, and he conceived the project of leaving Harriet and the baby in Edinburgh with Harriet’s sister, Eliza Westbrook, a sensible, practical maiden lady about thirty years old, who had spent a great part of her time with the family since the marriage. She was an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of Shelley’s plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with the Newtons—members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas, when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my duty to supply one. I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who interfered with that game. I think she tried to do what she could towards modifying the Boinville connection, in the interest of her young sister’s peace and honor.
If it was she who blocked that game, she was not strong enough to block the next one. Before the month and year were out – no date given, let us call it Christmas – Shelley and family were nested in a furnished house in Windsor, “at no great distance from the Boinvilles”—these decoys still residing at Bracknell.
What we need, now, is a misleading conjecture. We get it with characteristic promptness and depravity:
“But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras, the friend of his boyhood, in any wanderings to Windsor. Dr. Lind had died a year since, and with his death Windsor must have lost, for Shelley, its chief attraction.”
Still, not to mention Shelley’s wife, there was Bracknell, at any rate. While Bracknell remains, all solace is not lost. Shelley is represented by this biographer as doing a great many careless things, but to my mind this hiring a furnished house for three months in order to be with a man who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels for him – that is but natural, and does us honor besides – yet one is vexed, for all that. He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras before taking the house. He may not have had the address, but that is nothing – any postman would know the aged Zonoras; a dead postman would remember a name like that.
And yet, why throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it merely a sniff for certainty’s sake and then walk around it and leave it lying. Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras; he was pointed for Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature was craving sympathy.