friends and esteem by compromising with his father, at the moderate
expense of throwing overboard one or two indifferent details of his cargo
of principles.
He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got married. They took lodgings in
Edinburgh of a sort answerable to their purse, which was about empty, and
there their life was a happy, one and grew daily more so. They had only
themselves for company, but they needed no additions to it. They were as
cozy and contented as birds in a nest. Harriet sang evenings or read
aloud; also she studied and tried to improve her mind, her husband
instructing her in Latin. She was very beautiful, she was modest, quiet,
genuine, and, according to her husband’s testimony, she had no fine lady
airs or aspirations about her. In Matthew Arnold’s judgment, she was
“a pleasing figure.”
The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh, and then took lodgings in
York, where Shelley’s college mate, Hogg, lived. Shelley presently ran
down to London, and Hogg took this opportunity to make love to the young
wife. She repulsed him, and reported the fact to her husband when he got
back. It seems a pity that Shelley did not copy this creditable conduct
of hers some time or other when under temptation, so that we might have
seen the author of his biography hang the miracle in the skies and squirt
rainbows at it.
At the end of the first year of marriage–the most trying year for any
young couple, for then the mutual failings are coming one by one to
light, and the necessary adjustments are being made in pain and
tribulation–Shelley was able to recognize that his marriage venture had
been a safe one. As we have seen, his love for his wife had begun in a
rather shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep
and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may
admit. He addresses a long and loving poem to her, in which both passion
and 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,”