Harriet Shelley's suicide letter
Harriet Shelley
In this section:
- Shelley and Oxford
- Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin
- The Young Shelley
- Shelley and Mary
- Copy of the portrait of Shelley as a boy
- Portrait of Mary Shelley
- Early letter from Shelley to Godwin
- Shelley's and Mary's elopement journal
- Shelley and Mary, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour
- Journal of Mary Shelley's step-sister, Claire Clairmont
- Copy of a letter from Shelley to his first wife, Harriet
- Mary's earliest surviving letter to Shelley
- Letter to Shelley and Mary from Mary's Step-sister Fanny Imlay
- Letter from Godwin to Shelley following Fanny Imlay's suicide
- Shelley's jottings and doodlings
- Harriet Shelley's suicide letter
- Harriet Shelley’s engagement ring
- Harriet Shelley’s scarf holder
- Mary's journal entry on Harriet Shelley's suicide
- Shelley's letter to Mary on Harriet
- Copy of the best-known portrait of Shelley
- Mary's letter to friends on her son's final illness
- Godwin's draft letter to Mary after her son's death
- Portrait of Lord Byron
- Letter from Claire Clairmont to Byron on their daughter Allegra
- Letter from Byron to Shelley on his daughter Allegra
- Letter from Allegra to her father Lord Byron
- Letter from Shelley to Mary denying scandalous rumours
- Frankenstein
- Shelley's Notebooks
- Shelley’s Last Days
- Mary Shelley in England
- William Godwin & Mary Shelley
- Mary Shelley, Editor
- The Poet's Son & Daughter-in-Law
- The Shelley Sanctum
Credit: The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library
Object details
London, ?7 December 1816
Related information
Description
Harriet Shelley drowned herself in December 1816, aged twenty-one. Her body was recovered from the Serpentine on 10 December, and an inquest into the death of one ‘Harriet Smith’ was held the following day. Although her precise movements in the months leading up to her death are uncertain, it is clear that she was living away from home, that she had taken a lover, and that she was pregnant. This is Harriet’s last letter. Muddled and full of self-recrimination, it reveals the nervous exhaustion and profound depression of her final days.
The existence of this letter did not become generally known until 1895, when the London bookseller George Suckling discovered it among a number of Godwin papers he had purchased from an unknown woman. Kenneth Neill Cameron argues that the letter was once in Shelley's possession, and that it was left in England along with other papers when he and his family departed for Italy in 1818.
Transcript
To you my dear Sister I leave all my things as they more properly belong to you than any one & you will preserve them for Ianthe . Hog bless you both My dearest & much belod Sister
Sat. Eve.
When you read this letr. I shall be [no] more an inhabitant of this miserable world. do not regret the loss of one who could never be anything but a source of vexation & misery to you all belonging to me. Too wretched to exert myself lowered in the opinion of everyone why should I drag on a miserable existence embittered by past recollections & not one ray of hope to rest on for the future. The remembrance of all your kindness which I have so unworthily repaid has often made my hert ache. I know that you will forgive me because it is not in your nature to be unkind or severe to any. dear amiable woman that I have never left you oh! that I had always taken your advice. I might have lived long & happy but weak & unsteady have rushed on my own destruction I have not written to Bysshe. oh no what would it avail my wishes or my prayers would not be attended to by him & yet I should he see this perhaps he might grant my last request to let Ianthe remain with you always dear lovely child, with you she will enjoy much happiness with him none My dear Bysshe let me conjure you by the remembrance of our days of happiness to grant my last wish – do not take your innocent child from Eliza who has been more than I have, who has watched over her with such unceasing care. – Do not refuse my last request – I never could refuse you & if you had never left me I might have lived but as it is, I freely forgive you & may you enjoy that happiness which you have deprived me of. There is your beautiful boy. oh! be careful of him & his live may prove one day a rich reward. As you form his infant mind so you will reap the fruits hereafter Now comes the sad task of saying farewell – oh I must be quick. God bless & watch over you all. You dear Bysshe. & you dear Eliza. May all happiness attend ye both is the last wish of her who loved ye more than all others. My children I dare not trust myself there. They are too young to regret me & ye will be kind to them for their own sakes more than for mine. My parents do not regret me. I was unworthy your love & care. Be happy all of you. so shall my spirit find rest & forgiveness. God bless you all is the last prayer of the unfortunate Harriet S–––
Owners
George Suckling; H. Buxton Forman (The Anderson Galleries, 16 March, 1920, lot 615); A. Edward Newton (Parke-Bernet, 30 October 1941, lot 238).
References
Shelley and his Circle, iv, pp. 769-810.
Comments