In Defence of Harriet Shelley eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 62 pages of information about In Defence of Harriet Shelley.

In Defence of Harriet Shelley eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 62 pages of information about In Defence of Harriet Shelley.
travelled, she enjoyed the change of scene.”

“Perhaps” she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and complete.  The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at all at this time.  We know that the husband and wife went before the altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each other until death—­and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges.  Then Harriet went away, and the sister-in-law removed herself from her society.  That was in April.  Shelley wrote his “appeal” in May, but the corresponding went right along afterwards.  We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a “reconciliation,” or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to be reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade her to it—­as the biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry.  For we have “evidence” now—­not poetry and conjecture.  When Shelley had been dining daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier, he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the next.  During four days Harriet got no letter from him.  Then her fright and anxiety rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley’s publisher which seems to reveal to us that Shelley’s letters to her had been the customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to: 

                                   “Bath(postmark July 7, 1814). 
          “My dear sir,—­You will greatly oblige me by giving the
          enclosed to Mr. Shelley.  I would not trouble you, but it is
          now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an
          age.  Will you write by return of post and tell me what has
          become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has
          happened if I do not hear from him.  If you tell me that he is
          well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you
          or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful
          state of suspense.  You are his friend and you can feel for me. 
                              “I remain yours truly,
                                                  “H.  S.”

Even without Peacock’s testimony that “her whole aspect and demeanor were manifest emanations of a pure and truthful nature,” we should hold this to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter; it bears those marks; I think it is also the letter of a person accustomed to receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have been of a welcome and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back—­ever since the solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely.

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In Defence of Harriet Shelley from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.