That he acquired a detestation of the
relative is a certain fact. He must have been expecting a second child
when he formally remarried Harriet in England on the twenty-fourth of
March, 1814; and that ceremony has been mentioned by several writers
to prove the most opposite conclusions,--that Shelley was devoted to
his first wife, and that he behaved to her with the basest hypocrisy.
It proves nothing but his desire to place the hereditary rights of the
second child, who might be a boy, beyond doubt; and the precaution
was justified by the event. Before the close of the same year Harriet
returned to her father's house, and there she gave birth to a son,
Charles, who would have inherited the baronetcy, if he had not died
in 1826, after his father's death. The parting took place about the
twenty-fourth of June, 1814; and at the same time Shelley wrote a
poem, of which fragments are given in the recently published "Relics."
The verse shows, first, that Shelley was suffering severely from the
chronic conflict which he had undergone, and, secondly, that he had
found some novel comfort in the intercourse with Mary.
"To sit and curb the soul's mute rage,
Which preys upon itself alone;
To curse the life which is the cage
Of fettered grief that dares not groan,
Hiding from many a careless eye
The scorned load of agony.
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