Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/25

 DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

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 &quot; retained a certain youthful beauty&quot;; she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia Turner, who was equipped with many fasci nations. Apparently these people were sufficiently sentimental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville:

&quot; The greater part of her associates were odious. I generally found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an emi nently 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,&quot; etc.

Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 2 7th (this is still 1813) purposely to be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs nest. The fabulist says: &quot;It was the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet known.&quot;

&quot;In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual&quot; and presently it grew to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley,

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