________________________________________________
_ 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 then 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--"
Ah! he is not close enough yet, it seems--
"and if he succeeds we shall have an additional motive to
induce you to come among us in the summer."
The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's
comment upon the above letter. It is this:
"These sound like words of s considerate and judicious friend."
That is what he thinks. That is, it is what he thinks he thinks. No,
that is not quite it: it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particularly
and unspeakably dull reader into thinking it is what he thinks. He makes
that comment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this woman's
daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these two that
Shelley has deserted his wife--for this month, considering all the
circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time,
amounted to desertion; that is its rightful name. We cannot know how the
wife regarded it and felt about it; but if she could have read the letter
which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess
her thought and how she felt. Hear him:
. . . . . . .
"I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month;
I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and
friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself."
It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed.
"They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life.
I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing
of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the
view of that necessity which will quickly divide me from the
delightful tranquillity of this happy home--for it has become
my home.
. . . . . . .
"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when
the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart."
Eliza is she who blocked that game--the game in London--the one where we
were purposing to dine every night with one of the "three charming
ladies" who fed tea and manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell.
Shelley could send Eliza away, of course; could have cleared her out long
ago if so minded, just as he had previously done with a predecessor of
hers whom he had first worshipped and then turned against; but perhaps
she was useful there as a thin excuse for staying away himself.
"I am now but little inclined to contest this point.
I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul . . . .
"It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of
disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe,
in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy.
I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the
overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable
wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm,
that cannot see to sting.
"I have begun to learn Italian again . . . . Cornelia
assists me in this language. Did I not once tell you that I
thought her cold and reserved? She is the reverse of this, as
she is the reverse of everything bad. She inherits all the
divinity of her mother . . . . I have sometimes forgotten
that I am not an inmate of this delightful home--that a time
will come which will cast me again into the boundless ocean of
abhorred society.
"I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning,
and that I have only written in thought:
"Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;
Thy gentle words stir poison there;
Thou hast disturbed the only rest
That was the portion of despair.
Subdued to duty's hard control,
I could have borne my wayward lot:
The chains that bind this rained soul
Had cankered then, but crushed it not.
"This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which
passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing
excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than
the color of an autumnal sunset."
Then it did not refer to his wife. That is plain; otherwise he would
have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for
if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the
way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the
person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and
ruddy Italian poets during a month.
The biography observes that portions of this letter "read like the tired
moaning of a wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of the wound are
permissible; we will hazard one.
Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be
the cry of a tortured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience
that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of
one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an
ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of
these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shelley had been
master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as
nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now,
with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his
previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter.
He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never
a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at,
but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself;
you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was
noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them
which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem
profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to
homage.
Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay--
treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing--baseness
was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing that also was new to
him.
This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his
young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house
which had become a "home" to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly
because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is mainly
for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the house?
No, in his life he had never attached importance to such things. Then
the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a person--to the
person whose "dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing
words had "stirred poison there."
He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him. He was the
slave of a degrading love; he was drunk with his passion, the real
Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This is the verdict which his previous
history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.
One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when
trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many
misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.
We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and
perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met with--
where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most of them
pointing diligently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by the
biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with
Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs
and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet
and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his
home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."
It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way:
1st. Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage.
2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and
studying.
3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable
bonnet-shop."
4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.
5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood
by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the
operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."
6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.
The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more. Upon
these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband
into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the
biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving
upon her.
Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution?
No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless,
disinterested, impartial judge on the bench. He holds up his judicial
scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so
fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false
weights in.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage.
I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set
up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence? Was it
unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed
it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he
set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do
such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this
girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses
down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge
finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money--
necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way--to pay her father's
debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and
imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her
even for this.
First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant's lap a sum
which cost him--for he borrowed it at ruinous rates--from eighty to one
hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the
supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's
strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode
in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, "by one of the best
makers in Bond Street, "yet the good judge makes not even a passing
comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. 1 against Harriet
Shelley as being far-fetched, and frivolous.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, secondly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled away to nothing,
Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them." At what time was
this? It was when Harriet "had fully recovered from the fatigue of her
first effort of maternity,. . . and was now in full force, vigor, and
effect." Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June.
It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect;
this brings us to July 27th and the deadly Cornelia. If a wife of
eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another
woman, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's studies for that
reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish
for the same reason? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers
sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a
mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with
Shelley's re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from
that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that
person's society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the
indictment against Harriet.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, thirdly, because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly led to some
fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer no palliation; I only ask why the
dispassionate, impartial judge did not offer one himself--merely, I mean,
to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran
away with Harriet's husband was the shopper. There are several occasions
where she interested herself with shopping--among them being walks which
ended at the bonnet-shop--yet in none of these cases does she get a word
of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed
with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to find
easement for her mind, her child having died.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fourthly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse. The wet-nurse
was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after
Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which
broke up his wife's studies and destroyed his personal interest in them.
Why, by this time, nothing that Shelley's wife could do would have been
satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never
going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been
still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would
care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed.
Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now, Shelley's conscience
was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley
needed excuses for his altered attitude towards his wife; Providence
pitied him and sent the wet-nurse. If Providence had sent him a cotton
doughnut it would have answered just as well; all he wanted was something
to find fault with.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation
which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment of
the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his
operation, she betrayed "not the smallest sign of emotion." The author
of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander.
He was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into
his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and
veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at
the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, "We may
not infer from this that Harriet did not feel"--why put it in, then?--
"but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and
insensible." Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He hated
her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course that
is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse? She
does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of them.
"Those about her" are reduced to one person--her husband. Who reports
the circumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was there--we do not know.
But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as it was the
operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not
given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have
said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but
after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. "Among those who were
about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish
all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, and not
callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the
oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons--the
baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would
not do us any good--a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious
"if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of
judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety.
The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and
motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her
firstborn child." That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands
proved--and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader
a chance to infer that there isn't any extant evidence but words, and
that he doesn't take much stock in them. How seldom he shows his hand!
He is always lurking behind a non-committal "if" or something of that
kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison
here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position
to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and
examined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to
make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin--but it is
in the general view that this is revealed, not in the details. His
insidious literature is like blue water; you know what it is that makes
it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of
microscopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary can dip up a
glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it; and
he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is
white, and prove it to any one's eye--and yet that lake was blue and you
can swear it. This book is blue--with slander in solution.
Let the reader examine, for example, the paragraph of comment which
immediately follows the letter containing Shelley's self-exposure which
we have been considering. This is it. One should inspect the individual
sentences as they go by, then pass them in procession and review the
cake-walk as a whole:
"Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from this
pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken; it is evident,
also, that he knew where duty lay; he felt that his part was to
take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it
henceforth with the quietness of despair. But we can perceive
that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful
for success in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself
was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of
blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household; for
gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not
fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which
could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly
exclude from his imagination."
That paragraph commits the author in no way. Taken sentence by sentence
it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of anybody, pleads for
nobody, accuses nobody. Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as
moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader;
its intent is to remove the feeling which the letter must leave with him
if let alone, and put a different one in its place--to remove a feeling
justified by the letter and substitute one not justified by it. The
letter itself gives you no uncertain picture--no lecturer is needed to
stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain
what they mean. The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful
picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself; an
angel who beats his soiled wings and cries, who complains to the woman
who enticed him that he could have borne his wayward lot, he could have
stood by his duty if it had not been for her beguilements; an angel who
rails at the "boundless ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his poor
judicious sister-in-law. If there is any dignity about this spectacle it
will escape most people.
Yet when the paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is
full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble
spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered;
tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle
coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at
any peril of life or limb. Curtain--slow music.
Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take the bad taste of Shelley's
letter out of the reader's mouth? If that was not it, good ink was
wasted; without that, it has no relevancy--the multiplication table would
have padded the space as rationally.
We have inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a
man of conspicuous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and
iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved
and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell.
These are six infinitely little reasons; but there were six colossal
ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley
persists in not considering very important.
Moreover, the colossal six preceded the little six and had done the
mischief before they were born. Let us double-column the twelve; then we
shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a
retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insignificant:
1.__Harriet_sets_up_carriage.______1.__CORNELIA_TURNER.
2.__Harriet_stops_studying.________2.__CORNELIA_TURNER.
3.__Harriet_goes_to_bonnet-shop.___3.__CORNELIA_TURNER.
4.__Harriet_takes_a_wet-nurse._____4.__CORNELIA_TURNER.
5.__Harriet_has_too_much_nerve.____5.__CORNELIA_TURNER.
6.__Detested_sister-in-law_________6.__CORNELIA_TURNER.
As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia Turner and the Italian lessons
happened before the little six had been discovered to be grievances,
we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and
bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on
Harriet. Shelley and Cornelia are the responsible persons, and we cannot
in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the
unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste
time and tears over six sentimental justifications of an offence which
the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist in justifying.
Six? There were seven; but in charity to the biographer the seventh
ought not to be exposed. Still, he hung it out himself, and not only
hung it out, but thought it was a good point in Shelley's favor. For two
years Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food and all that at home;
there was enough for spiritual and mental support, but not enough for
luxury; and so, at the end of the contented two years, this latter detail
justifies him in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia Turner and
supplying the rest of his need in the way of surplus sympathy and
intellectual pie unlawfully. By the same reasoning a man in merely
comfortable circumstances may rob a bank without sin. _
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