File:Old love stories retold (1904) (14581485320).jpg

Identifier: oldlovestoriesre00lega (find matches)
Title: Old love stories retold
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Le Gallienne, Richard, 1866-1947
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Baker & Taylor
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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been ontheir side. Their love story has come to have avalue for humanity at large. It belongs to theimportant world-series of First Examples. Manylovers, indeed, before Shelley and Mary, hadtaken the law into their own hands, but the dif-ference between their stories and this story isthat they have rather represented lawlessness,whereas Shelley and Mary break an old law onlyto make a new and better law, or, at least, merelyto illustrate its necessity. Shelley and Marystand, not so much for rebellious passion, as forcommon sense in the regulation of the difficultpartnership of the sexes. They represent theright of human beings to correct their matrimonialmistakes, a right even yet stupidly and super-stitiously denied. Their example was not, asoften misrepresented, in favour of any facilepromiscuity. Quite the reverse, its significancewas that of a marriage conceived on the principlesof the only real monogamy, an instinctive monog-amy, based on natural selection, spiritual, mental,(68)
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Percy Bysshe Shelley Shelley and Mary Godwinand physical — a spontaneous, even an eager,monogamy, and not merely an arbitrary legalfiat. Of all people, Shelley and Mary held thedoctrine of One Man for One Woman — only,they insisted, it must be the Right Man for theRight Woman. Shelley first became acquainted with Harrietthrough his sister Mary, who was her schoolmateat Mrs. Fennings genteel academy for youngladies, at Church House, Clapham. In January,1811, Shelley had called at the schoolhouse witha letter of introduction to Harriet, and also apresent to her from Mary. Harriet was thenabout fifteen and a half, Shelley about eighteenand a half. Harriet was sixteen on August first,and Shelley nineteen on August fourth. Harrietappears to have been a pretty, attractive girl, ofwhat one might call the May queen type. Good-natured, bright in her manner, and accomplishedafter polite boarding-school standards, she wasthe typical, pretty, popular queen of the school.Her nature, while esse

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