"He had married a woman who,as he now persuaded himself,had never truly loved him,who loved only his fortune and his rank,and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery."I think that that is not quite fair to Harriet.We have no certainty that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house.He went back to Cornelia,and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her as ever.Still,it was judicious to begin to lay on the whitewash,for Shelley is going to need many a coat of it now,and the sooner the reader becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get reconciled to it and stop fretting about it.
After Shelley's (conjectured)visit to Harriet at Bath--8th of June to 18th--"it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner."Nothing could be handier than this;things will swim along now.
"Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded union with Harriet was a thing of the past,he had not ceased to regard her with affectionate consideration;he wrote to her frequently,and kept her informed of his whereabouts."We must not get impatient over these curious inharmoniousnesses and irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character.You can see by the biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable about them.Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young creatures happy:he was regarding the one with affectionate consideration by mail,and he was assuaging the other one at home.
"Unhappy Harriet,residing at Bath,had perhaps never desired that the breach between herself and her husband should be irreparable and complete."I find no fault with that sentence except that the "perhaps"is not strictly warranted.It should have been left out.In support--or shall we say extenuation?--of this opinion I submit that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies.The only "evidence"offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out against a reconciliation is a poem--the poem in which Shelley beseeches her to "bid the remorseless feeling flee"and "pity"if she "cannot love."We have just that as "evidence,"and out of its meagre materials the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum;conjectures which convince him,the prosecuting attorney,but ought to fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.
Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence,but we know well that they are "good for this day and train only."We are able to believe that they spoke the truth for that one day,but we know by experience that they could not be depended on to speak it the next.The very supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy person could have gotten to the bank with it.
Hardness,stubbornness,pride,vindictiveness--these may sometimes reside in a young wife and mother of nineteen,but they are not charged against Harriet Shelley outside of that poem,and one has no right to insert them into her character on such shadowy "evidence"as that.Peacock knew Harriet well,and she has a flexible and persuadable look,as painted by him:
"Her manners were good,and her whole aspect and demeanor such manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once in her company was to know her thoroughly.She was fond of her husband,and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society,she adorned it;if they lived in retirement,she was satisfied;if they 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."
