"
"Oh! why not true to me?" has been taken by some very few who were
cognizant of the facts as constituting an imputation on the one whom
he first married; but I am convinced that the interpretation is wrong,
although the surmise on which that interpretation is based was partly
correct. Nothing is more evident than the fact that Harriet possessed
rather an unusual degree of ability, but enormously less than Shelley
desired in the being whom he sought, and equally less than his
idealizing estimate originally ascribed to her. It is also plain, from
her own letters, that she courted his approval in a way far too common
with the wives of the artist-tribe, and perhaps with most wives: not
being exactly what he wished her to be, and lacking the faculties to
become so, she tried to seem it. The desire was partly sincere, partly
an affectation, as we discern in such little trifles as her suddenly
using the word "thou" in a letter to Hookham where she had previously
been using the ordinary colloquial "you." That she was not quite
ingenuous we also detect in the fast-and-loose conduct which enabled
her, while affecting to become what Shelley deemed her to be, also to
play into the hands of very inferior people, who must sometimes have
counselled her against him behind his back; and this, I am sure, is
what he means by "Oh! why not true to me?" though he may include
in the question a fervent regret for the fate which attended her
wandering from him.
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