ABSTRACT
Following a speculation of Dowden’s (Dowden Life i 48) that ‘the title may refer to some incident of February in that year, which might be viewed as a starting-point in the course of [S.’s and Harriet Grove’s] love’, Cameron makes a good case (Esd Nbk 305–9) for dating this poem 1810. The most likely date is 24–25 Feb. The title-date cannot be that of composition: S. was then only twelve; and besides looking back to a love-episode in a previous August the poem echoes a line of Byron’s published in 1807 (see note to line 1, below). But S. and Harriet G. were acquainted as children (Medwin i 66), and Harriet G.’s brother Charles remembered S.’s staying for the Easter holidays-which included part of February-at Fern near Shaftesbury, Wiltshire (the Groves’s estate) in a year which may easily have been 1805 (Hogg ii 550). Moreover Harriet G. wrote in her diary on 28 February 1809 ‘sent my letter to [S.]’, and on 1 March ‘Received an immensely long letter from [S.]’ (SC ii 514), which suggests an anniversary exchange (no earlier diary is extant to confirm this, and correspondence ceased from September 1809). There had been a high wind in the West Country on the night of 28 February 1805 (GM xxv (March 1805) 194), and it was ‘stormy’ throughout southern England on 24 and 25 February 1810, which could have prompted an ‘anniversary’ poem. There is some indication that Harriet G. had been to Field Place before her recorded visit in April 1810 (see her diary entries for 25 January and 4 August 1809, SC ii 511, 526); if so, the visit could plausibly have been in August 1808 (see note to No. 16) during S.’s Eton holidays. This poem, which is the last in Esd, is in the hand of Harriet S. who has written underneath it ‘To H Grove’.
