Harriet de Boinville
Harriet de Boinville (1773–1847) was a British woman who entertained widely in London and Paris. She influenced important writers of her day, including Frances Burney, William Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Giovanni Ruffini. She welcomed guests of all social classes at her popular salons and befriended destitute refugees. She held progressive views and believed in the benefits of a vegetarian diet.
Early life[edit]
Childhood[edit]
Harriet, as she was called, was born Henriette Collins, the oldest child of John Collins and his wife (name unknown).[1] Harriet was born in 1773 in the British colony of St. Christopher, now St. Kitts and Nevis. Her mother, possibly biracial, is not mentioned in the family memoir. She had two siblings, Cornelia Collins and Alfred Collins.
In 1785 Harriet’s father bought a half-share of a sugar estate in St. Vincent. Enslaved Africans toiled on his plantation. A medical doctor, Collins wrote a book of recommended treatments for the slaves of his peers: Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies by a Professional Planter (published anonymously in 1803 and now digitized). William Wilberforce recommended this book to other abolitionists.[2]
Harriet lived in St. Vincent and in England as a child. Her exposure to Europeans’ mistreatment of Africans and indigenous Caribs influenced the egalitarian views she adopted as an adult.
Marriage[edit]
In the early 1790s in London, Harriet fell in love with Jean Baptiste de Boinville.[3] Jean Baptiste was once a wealthy nobleman, with land and property in the south of France, but he had lost everything during the French Revolution. When Harriet's father realized her romantic interest in the penniless French exile, he forbade her from seeing him again.
Harriet and Jean Baptiste eloped to Scotland and were married in 1793 in Gretna Green. When John Collins discovered his daughter had fled, he followed after her and they reconciled. Collins persuaded the couple to marry in England to ensure the legality of any heirs.
Influence on Writers[edit]
Percy Bysshe Shelley[edit]
Percy Bysshe Shelley idolized Harriet de Boinville in numerous letters. "I could not help considering Mrs. B. when I knew her as the most admirable specimen of human being I had ever seen,” he once wrote. "Nothing earthly ever appeared to be more perfect than her character & manners.”[22] In the spring of 1813 Shelley gave her a present: Queen Mab. “I value highly this copy,” she wrote his widow in 1839, “a relic of genius, of friendship, of past happy days which it would really grieve me to lose.”[23]
The friendship between the poet and Harriet de Boinville was brief (from the spring of 1813 to the spring of 1814). Shelley’s ardent interest in her daughter and later love affair with Mary Godwin effectively killed their rapport as did the subsequent tragedy, the suicide of Harriet Boinville's friend Harriet Shelley. After Harriet Shelley’s death, however, she said yes when Shelley asked her to mediate with his dead wife’s family for custody of the children, Ianthe and Charles Shelley. Shelley lost the custody fight.
After he moved to Italy Shelley continued to think about Harriet de Boinville. From Rome he wrote to Thomas Love Peacock on April 6, 1819: "It is improbable that I shall ever meet again this person whom I once so much esteemed, & still admire. I wish however that when you see her you would tell her that I have not forgotten her, or any of the amiable circle once assembled round her.”[24] Three months later he referred to Harriet de Boinville as his “lost friend” in a letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg and praised her “freedom from certain prejudices” and “the elegance and delicate sensibility of her mind.”[25]
The influence Harriet de Boinville had on Shelley is revealed in other letters. For example:
Bibliography[edit]
de Boinville, Barbara. At the Center of the Circle: Harriet de Boinville (1773-1847) and the Writers She Influenced During Europe's Revolutionary Era. (2023). Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing.