Shelley

The letters of Shelley to Elilabeth Hitchener of Hurstpierpoint are one of the most remarkable chapters of his remarkable life.

One of the most remarkable passages in the tempestuous career of Shelley took its rise here in 1811, when he paid a visit to his uncle Captain Pilfold, at Cuckfield. A daughter of Pilfold was a pupil of Elizabeth Hitchener, who, a dark and stately beauty of some ability, daughter of a smuggler turned innkeeper, was mistress of a school at Hurstpierpoint. Through the pupil the poet made the acquaintance of her mistress.

With his habit of idealising his acquaintances, Shelley saw in Elizabeth a paragon of virtue, wisdom, and exalted genius, and embarked on an ecstatic year's correspondence with her, which, opening on a high philosophical note, quickly centred about the personality of Elizabeth herself.

She was 29 and Shelley was 19 and he was busy writing and talking about the Necessity of Atheism and reform of society in general and his parents in particular. She was steeped in the stilted convention of the novels of the period.

From his "Dear Madam" she progresses rapidly to the dear friend, the dearest friend, and the "soul's sister" of the poet, with whom he must share his fortune, once he attains it. She, he says, having raised herself from poverty to intellectual eminence, is his superior, and he sets himself the breathless task of emulating the simple splendour of her life.

The letters begin in June of 181l, within two months Shelley has taken pity on the sorrows of pretty Harriet Westbrook, his sister's schoolfellow, and has married her, a girl of 16; two months later he writes to Elizabeth the one full account we have of the unhappy marriage that was to drive Harriet to suicide. It does not make gallant reading.

Shelley has no secrets from Elizabeth; he discusses with her his family, his friends, his politics, and tells her the full story of the treachery of Hogg, who had been the brother of his soul. The letters grow in fervour and frequency; it is Elizabeth and not Harriet who has the bridegroom's heart. Elizabeth, at ease in the diction of the current fiction, on reading of the baseness of Hogg, finds her blood frozen and is prompted "to forswear her kindred with mankind."

The upshot of the correspondence is that Elizabeth must forsake her school and join the Shelley household, now including Harriet's sister. This impossible group held together for five months and then was split by insatiable jealousies and by Shelley's discovery that his goddess of wisdom was a very ordinary fallible creature, daily contact with whom dispels illusions and turns idolatry into indifference and indifference into hate.

The inevitable parting came, Elizabeth being compensated with a promise of £100 a year to make good the loss of her school. Shelley now transferred his affections to Mary Godwin.

 

He was drowned in 1822, and in that year Elizabeth, then 40, published a poem on the Weald of Kent, which reflects her political opinions and fondly commemorates her friendship with the poet. Soon afterwards she married an Austrian officer, deposited Shelley's letters and copies of her own with a solicitor, and vanished from knowledge in the country of her husband. There is one letter of poor Harriet's, written to Elizabeth from Dublin in 1812, which is curious enough to quote:

'I believe I have mentioned a new acquaintance of ours, a Mrs Nugent, who is sitting in the room now and talking to Percy about Virtue, while the poor of the city are drinking whiskey because they cannot afford bread and being hanged for stealing 13s 4d.'

 

 

 

 

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