“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.
Toward 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.