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