Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/59

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DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

And so perhaps while Harriet was walking the

floor nights, trying to get her poem by heart her

husband was doing a fresh one for the other girl

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin with sentiments

like these in it :

Exhibit G

To spend years thus and be rewarded, As thou, sweet love, requited me When none were near. . . . thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly; . . .

Gentle and good and mild thou art, Nor can I live if thou appear Aught but thyself. . . .

And so on. " Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and Shelley that each was inex pressibly dear to the other." Yes, Shelley had found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in the graveyard. But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children.

However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. ; ^If she had occupied the only kind and gentle Harriet s place in March it would have been a thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the riot act. That holi day of Shelley s would have been of short duration, and Cornelia s hair would have been as gray as her mother s when the services were over.

Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner

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