1798-1851
[Sidenote: _Anecdote Biography of P. B. Shelley._]
“... At the time I am speaking of, Mrs. Shelley was twenty-four. Such a
rare pedigree of genius was enough to interest me in her, irrespective
of her own merits as an authoress. The most striking feature in her
face was her calm gray eyes; she was rather under the English standard
of woman’s height, very fair and light-haired, witty, social, and
animated in the society of friends, though mournful in solitude.”--1821.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of Writers_.]
“Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, with her well-shaped,
golden-haired head, almost always a little bent and drooping; her
marble-white shoulders and arms statuesquely visible in the perfectly
plain black velvet dress, which the customs of that time allowed to be
cut low, and which her own taste adopted; ... her thoughtful, earnest
eyes; her short upper lip and intellectually curved mouth, with a
certain close compressed and decisive expression while she listened,
and a relaxation into fuller redness and mobility when speaking; her
exquisitely formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosy palms,
and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and
delicate as those in a Vandyck portrait,--all remain palpably present
to memory.”--About 1824.
[Sidenote: _The Cornhill_, 1875.]
“Shelley’s second love, who was five years his junior, is described
as ‘rather short, remarkably fair, and light-haired with brownish
gray eyes, a great forehead, striking features, and a noticeable air
of sedateness.’ One writer has compared her with the classic bust of
Clytie.”