The year 1813 is just ended now, and we step into 1814.
To recapitulate, how much of Cornelia's society has Shelley had, thus
far? Portions of August and September, and four days of July. That is to
say, he has had opportunity to enjoy it, more or less, during that brief
period. Did he want some more of it? We must fall back upon history, and
then go to conjecturing.
“In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a frequent
visitor at Bracknell.”
“Frequent” is a cautious word, in this author's mouth; the very
cautiousness of it, the vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes
one suspect that this frequency was more frequent than the mere common
everyday kinds of frequency which one is in the habit of averaging up
with the unassuming term “frequent.” I think so because they fixed up
a bedroom for him in the Boinville house. One doesn't need a bedroom
if one is only going to run over now and then in a disconnected way to
respond like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of
sentiment and rub up one's Italian poetry a little.
The young wife was not invited, perhaps. If she was, she most certainly
did not come, or she would have straightened the room up; the most
ignorant of us knows that a wife would not endure a room in the
condition in which Hogg found this one when he occupied it one night.
Shelley was away--why, nobody can divine. Clothes were scattered about,
there were books on every side: “Wherever a book could be laid was an
open book turned down on its face to keep its place.” It seems plain
that the wife was not invited. No, not that; I think she was invited,
but said to herself that she could not bear to go there and see another
young woman touching heads with her husband over an Italian book and
making thrilling hand-contacts with him accidentally.
As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there, “where he found an
easeful resting-place in the house of Mrs. Boinville--the white-haired
Maimuna--and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner.” The aged Zonoras was
deceased, but the white-haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see.
“Three charming ladies entertained the mocker (Hogg) with cups of tea,
late hours, Wieland's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the celestial manna
of refined sentiment.”
“Such,” says Hogg, “were the delights of Shelley's paradise in
Bracknell.”
The white-haired Maimuna presently writes to Hogg:
“I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures. Shelley is
making a trial of them with us--”
A trial of them. It may be called that. It was March 11, and he had been
in the house a month. She continues:
Shelley “likes them so well that he is resolved to leave off
rambling--”
But he has already left it off. He has been there a month.
“And begin a course of them himself.”
But he has already begun it. He has been at it a month. He likes it
so well that he has forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his
reveals.
“Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest.”
Yet he has been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and
manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young
husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore
conscience, and a nagging sense of shabbiness and treachery.
“His journeys after what he has never found have racked his
purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved to take a little
care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and
shall second with all my might.”
But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely
yonder, wants another woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so
much inflamed interest on her husband or not. That young wife is always
silent--we are never allowed to hear from her. She must have opinions
about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approving or
disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed--even to-day
and from her grave she would, if she could, I think--but we get only the
other side, they keep her silent always.
“He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy
he must have made you feel what we now feel for him. He is
seeking a house close to us--”