Hitchener, Elizabeth |
| TEACHER, POET (ENGLAND) |
| BORN 1782 - DIED 1822 |
|
Elizabeth Hitchener was the daughter of an innkeeper and former
smuggler. She worked as a schoolmistress at Hurstpierpoint and
met the young poet Shelley when he was 19 and she was 29 (One
of her pupils was a daughter of shelley's ncle, Captain Pilford). She was tall, dark and handsome and Shelley wasted no time in starting to idolize her. They developed a close intellectual as well as romantic relationship with the young poet Shelley after she met him when she was 29 (and a spinster) and he was ten years younger. She was the teacher of a daughter of Shelley's uncle Captain Pilfold. They exchanged lots of letters and he regarded her as a soulmate and as somebody he could educate and would probably one day live with him and others in a community. Elizabeth helped Shelley with the spreading of copies of "The Devil's Walk". She finally gave up her school to join the shelleys at Lyndmouth, but this turned out to be a huge mistake. They soon got tired of her even called het "The Brown Demon". They subsequently got rid of her and her relationship with Shelley was destroyed. Back in Hurstpierpoint she was ridiculed and generally regarded as Shelley's mistress (it's unknown if this was true) and soon she moved away. In 1822 she published a poem on the Weald of Kent in which she speaks warmly about her fiendship with Shelley and expresses her political views. She had also started another school. She married an Austrian officer afterwards, deposited her letters from and to Shelley with a solicitor and moved to Austria. She died in the same year. Her letters to Shelley were first published in 1890. She also wrote poetry: "The Fireside-Bagatelle: Containing Enigmas on the Chief Towns of England and Wales" (London, 1818); "Enigmas, historical and geographical, by a clergyman's daughter" (1834, completed shortly before her death). Related persons • was a friend of Shelley, Percy Bysshe Sources • Holmes, Richard, Shelley, The Pursuit, Penguin Books, London, 1987 |