DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
However, he will get over this by and by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and has to be guessed out of it at Harriet s expense.
"We may rest content with Shelley s own words" in a Chancery paper drawn up by him three years later/ They were these: "Delicacy forbids me to say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."
As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with anything of the sort. It is not a very definite statement. It does not necessarily mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the tedious details of those family quarrels. Deli cacy could quite properly excuse him from saying, "I was in love with Cornelia all that time; my wife kept crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging me to cut myself free from a connec tion which was wronging her and disgracing us both; and I being stung by these reproaches re torted with fierce and bitter speeches for it is my nature to do that when I am stirred, especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly loved and respected before, as witness my various attitudes tow r ard Miss Kitchener, the Gisbornes, Har riet s sister, and others and finally I did not improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a whole month with the woman who had infatuated me."
No, he could not go into those details, and we excuse him; but, nevertheless, we do not rest con tent with this bland proposition to puff away that whole long disreputable episode with a single mean ingless remark of Shelley s.
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