Only Elizabeth remained faithful to Shelley in secret. But she saw that her admiration was no longer shared by her cousin Harriet, who grew colder and more evasive every day.
The letters which Harriet had received from Oxford, filled with enthusiastic dissertations extremely difficult to follow, had troubled and annoyed her. The quotations from Godwin bored her to tears, and her terror was even greater than her boredom. It is rare that pretty women show a taste for dangerous ideas. Beauty, the natural expression of law and order, is conservative by essence; it upholds all established religions of which it adorns the ceremonies; Venus was always the right hand of Jupiter.
Harriet showed Shelley’s letters to her mother, who advised her to pass them on to her father. This gentleman pronounced Shelley’s doctrines to be abominable. Both parents took gloomy views as to the young man’s future. Ought Harriet to unite herself with an eccentric creature whose follies alienated everybody? She loved elegance, county balls, and admiration. What sort of a life would she lead with this mad boy who respected nothing, not even marriage? Yet, after all, religion has claims. . . .
Before Shelley’s arrival the two young girls had some violent discussions. Elizabeth pleaded his cause. How could Harriet weigh a few poor worldly successes against the happiness of passing her life with the most marvellous of men?
“You make your brother out to be an extraordinary person, but how can I be sure he really is as you represent him? We have always lived in the country, we know nothing of life. Our parents, your own father even, who is in Parliament, disapprove of Bysshe’s ideas. However, let us admit that he is a genius. What right have I to enter into an intimacy with him which must end in disappointment when he discovers how really inferior I am to the being his imagination has pictured? I am just an ordinary young girl like all the rest. He has idealized me and he would be very much surprised if he knew me as I am.”
So much modesty gives one to think: Love does not reason like this.
When Shelley arrived Elizabeth explained the situation to him. Instantly he sought Harriet out. He found her cold and distant, exactly as Elizabeth had described her. She did not ask Shelley to justify himself: all she asked was that he should leave her alone. She reproached him with his universal scepticism.
“But really, Harriet,” Shelley protested, “it is monstrous that I should not be allowed to express opinions which I have reached by the most logical of arguments. And how can my theological opinions disqualify me as brother, friend, or lover?”
“You may think what you please,” replied Harriet, “I do not care in the least what you think, but don’t ask me to unite my lot with yours.”
It was the first time Shelley had come in contact with a woman’s indifference, which she can spring upon a man with the suddenness of night falling in the centre of Africa.