Six Degrees of Separation from Shelley

Spectator, The, Mar 1, 2003 by James, Clive

In the last year of her life I dined with Diana Cooper

Who told me she thought the best thing to do with the poor

Was to kill them. I think her tongue was in her cheek

But with that much plastic surgery it was hard to tell.

As a child she had sat on the knee of George Meredith,

More than forty years after he published Modem Love.

Though she must have been as pretty as any poppet

Who challenged the trousers of Dowson or Lewis Carroll,

We can bet Meredith wasn't as modern as that.

By then the old boy wouldn't have felt a twinge

Even had he foreseen she would one day arrive

In Paris with an escort of two dozen Spitfires.

The book lamented his marriage to one of the daughters

Of Peacock. Peacock when young rescued Shelley

From a coma brought on through an excess of vegetarianism

By waving a steak under his sensitive nose.

Shelley never quite said that the best thing to do with the rich

Was to kill them, but he probably thought so.

Whether the steak was cooked or raw I can't remember.

I should, of course. I was practically there:

The blaze of his funeral pyre on the beach at night

Was still in her eyes. At her age I hope to recall

The phial of poison she carried but never used

Against the day there was nothing left to live for.