After dinner there were mysterious whisperings from Eliza into Harriet’s ear, who came obediently to bid Hogg good night, and to invite him to come again on Sunday morning.
“It’s the day the Brown Demon is going, conversation will be so difficult. But you are always such good fun, you would be the greatest help to us. . . . Percy has told you about our Tormentor?”
At the mention of Miss Hitchener’s name Eliza exhibited a deep but silent disgust.
“She’s a horrible woman,” Harriet went on. “She tried to make Percy fall in love with her. She pretended that he did really love her, and that I was only good for the housekeeping. Percy has promised her £100 a year if only she will go.”
Shelley confirmed this. He saw the imprudence of thus sacrificing a quarter of his income, but it was necessary. The young woman had lost her situation through him, and her reputation and health into the bargain, she added, thanks to their barbarous conduct.
“She is really a horrible creature!” he said shuddering. “A superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman. I’ve never been so astonished at my bad taste as after spending four months with her. . . . How would Hell be, if such a woman were in Heaven? And she writes poetry! She has written an Elegy on the Rights of Woman, which begins:
“All, all are men, the woman like the rest. . . .”
He burst into one of his wild shouts of laughter.
Next day Hogg did not fail to turn up. The Heroine of the day appeared to him boring but inoffensive. She was a big, bony, masculine woman, dark-skinned, and with traces of a beard.
Shelley presently declared he must go out, Harriet had a bad headache and needed quiet; Hogg’s fate was to take the two Eliza’s for a walk.