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Harriet Westbrook Shelley |
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Harriet Shelley (née Westbrook , August 1, 1795 to December 1816) was the first wife of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Early Life
editWestbrook's father was John Westbrook and her mother's name is now known. She was born on August 1, 1795 in London. Mr. Westbrook was a London businessman who owned several inns and a cafeteria.[1] Her older sister was Eliza (born 1782).
Relationship with Percy Shelley
editWestbrook was studying at a boarding school for ladies in Clapham with Mary and Helen Shelley, when in January In 1811 they were visited by their older brother Percy and Helen introduced her. They corresponded until August 25 when she eloped with him to Scotland, where they married three days later in the face of family opposition. After the marriage, Percy invited his comrade Thomas Jefferson Hog to share his house and his wife, according to the ideals he defended of free love. Before Harriet's refusal, Shelley abandoned his pretensions and returned with her to England willing to be a writer.
They left for Ireland when her husband became involved in Irish radicalism, although he did not share his ideas, he supported him and helped in the distribution of pamphlets. After their daughter Ianthe was born in June 1813, they remarried in March 1814 in England in case the validity of their Scottish marriage was questioned, 1 but by then Shelley was already spending a lot of time away from home, increasingly frequenting the home. of the author and philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary was infatuated with although she continued to visit Harriet. The poet repeated the play and fled with Mary to Europe, while Harriet gave birth to her second son, Charles in November 1814.
Death
editHarriet returned to her father, but eventually left the family home and settled in a boarding house on Queen Street under the false name Harriet Smith. The reason is probably that she had become pregnant by a short-lived lover, identified by some as one Ryan, an officer stationed at Chelsea Barracks. Alone and abandoned, probably on December 9, 1816, she walked to Hyde Park and there she jumped into Serpentine Lake. Her body, in an advanced state of pregnancy, appeared floating the next day. Thomas Hookham, Shelley's former editor, posted a notice in The Times on December 12, 1816:
On Tuesday a respectable female, far advanced in pregnancy, was taken out of the Serpentine River and brought to her residence in Queen Street, Brompton, having been missed for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger. A want of honour in her own conduct is supposed to have led to this fatal catastrophe, her husband being abroad.
— The London Times, December 12, 1816
As was customary in such cases, the body was taken to the Fox and Bull Tavern in Knightsbridge for a quick investigation. Coroner John Gell did not see signs of violence, the landlady testified that she had said that her husband was abroad, that he had never received any visitors and seemed sad and lonely. The suicide seemed obvious, but the jury gave the compassionate verdict of "found dead in the Serpentine River" and thus she was buried on December 13 in Saint Mary's Cemetery in Paddington Green. So the suicides were not buried in a sacred place, but on the other side of the wall or near the same place where they had been found.
He had previously written a letter to his sister Eliza and Shelley, whose nervous and careless handwriting betrays his despair:
"When you read this letter. I will no longer be an inhabitant of this miserable world. Do not regret the loss of someone who could never be anything other than a source of affliction and misery for all of you who belong to me (...) My dear Bysshe (...) if he had never left me, I could have lived, but that's right, I freely forgive you and you can enjoy that happiness you have deprived me of (...) so my spirit will find rest and forgiveness. bless everyone is the last prayer of the unfortunate Harriet S."
— Harriet Shelley, suicide letter
Shelley was back in the country, in Bath, when he received the news and returned to London to start a bitter battle with the Westbrooks for custody of their children. Just three weeks later, Percy and Mary were married, mostly thinking of getting custody, but were still put up for adoption.
Already William Godwin spread the slander that he had been unfaithful to Shelley and afterwards, Mary Shelley and her son were careful to misrepresent her figure by underestimating her abilities and social status, although a friend of Percy who knew her, Thomas Love Peacock, describes her favorably. Author Mark Twain defended her in an essay and a biography of Shelley published by John Cordy Jeaffreson in 1885 also helped to dismantle the legend created by the Shelleys in their favor.[3]
References
edit- ^ Due to confusion in some biographies, he was incorrectly a simple innkeeper.
- ^ "Harriet Shelley's suicide letter - Shelley's Ghost - Reshaping the image of a literary family". shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. 2012. Archived from the original on 2018-04-26. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
- ^ Lauritsen, John. "Harriet Shelley". paganpressbooks.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
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[[Category:Suicides by drowning]] [[Category:Female suicides]]
Notes
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