Defence of Harriet Shelley | Page 7

worship appear:
Exhibit A
"O thou Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path Which this
lone spirit travelled, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . wilt thou not turn Those
spirit-beaming eyes and look on me. Until I be assured that Earth is
Heaven And Heaven is Earth? . . . . . . . . Harriet! let death all mortal
ties dissolve, But ours shall not be mortal."
Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in
celebration of her birthday:
Exhibit B
"Ever as now with hove and Virtue's glow May thy unwithering soul
not cease to burn, Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts
o'erflow Which force from mine such quick and warm return."
Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy? We may
conjecture that she was.
That was the year 1812. Another year passed still happily, still
successfully--a child was born in June, 1813, and in September, three
months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, Ianthe, in which

he points out just when the little creature is most particularly dear to
him:
Exhibit C
"Dearest when most thy tender traits express The image of thy mother's
loveliness."
Up to this point the fabulist counsel for Shelley and prosecutor of his
young wife has had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins, for Shelley
is getting ready to make some unpleasant history for himself, and it will
be necessary to put the blame of it on the wife.
Shelley had made the acquaintance of a charming gray-haired, young-
hearted Mrs. Boinville, whose face "retained a certain youthful beauty";
she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia
Turner, who was equipped with many fascinations. Apparently these
people were sufficiently sentimental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville:
"The greater part of her associates were odious. I generally found there
two or three sentimental young butchers, an eminently philosophical
tinker, and several very unsophisticated medical practitioners or
medical students, all of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners.
They sighed, turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was,"
etc.
Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27th (this is still 1813) purposely to
be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs' nest. The fabulist says: "It was
the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet
known."
"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