The Orphan Angel by Elinor Wylie

First published: 1926; issued in Great Britain as Mortal Image, 1927

Type of plot: Historical romance

Time of work: July 8, 1822, to May, 1823

Locale: Italy, the Atlantic Ocean, and North America

Principal Characters:

• Shiloh, the fictional counterpart of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
• David Butternut, a young sailor from Maine

The Novel

The Orphan Angel combines elements of the historical romance and picaresque novel by bringing back to life, on the day he died, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and setting him on a quest across the United States to rescue a young woman.

The novel is divided into ten chapters, each of which is titled with a quotation from Shelley. The first chapter, “Western Wave,” pairs the Shelley character, named Shiloh, with David Butternut, a young, kind, but unsophisticated New England sailor. This chapter recounts the fantastic premise on which the historical romance is built. David Butternut, after killing a fellow sailor—in a fashion reminiscent of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd—rescues a man from drowning in Italy’s Leghorn Harbor. The young man is pulled from the shores of Italy at about the same time Shelley is said to have drowned, about 6:30 p.m. on July 8, 1822. Butternut believes that the rescue of the man, who resembles Jasper Cross, the scoundrel sailor he accidentally killed, atones for his own crime, and he vows to become the man’s loyal friend. Butternut, who would not have heard of the poet Shelley, mishears his name and calls him Shiloh (a nickname the Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, gave to Shelley). Shelley accepts the new identity and sails to Boston on the New England clipper ship Witch of the West in place of the dead Jasper Cross.

The picaresque element of the novel is established in chapter 2, set in Boston. Butternut and Shiloh decide to search for Jasper’s twin sister Silver. They assume that Silver needs their help because she is a poor orphan living somewhere in frontier America. Butternut goes to ease his conscience over killing Jasper, while Shiloh goes because the pursuit of a young woman in need of his aid appeals to his romantic and humane tendencies.

The remaining eight chapters follow the pair as they search for Silver, baptized Maria Solidad de Sylva. At first, all they know is that Jasper came from Kentucky, so they begin walking in that direction. As their travels continue, further clues lead them to Louisville, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; and ultimately to San Diego, California. Along the way, they meet various types of Americans and experience adventures befitting life in early nineteenth century America. As the two men travel, with little money and little comfort, strangers occasionally help them with their basic needs of food and sleeping accommodations or with information about Silver. Despite his haggard condition, Shiloh’s nobility of spirit is immediately apparent to all. Every young woman—and some not so young—falls in love with him at first sight. Shiloh’s spiritual qualities contrast with David’s more practical qualities. Throughout the journey, Shiloh is true to the character of Shelley. Shelley’s eating habits and mannerisms are mimicked in Shiloh. Shelley’s dismissal from Oxford University, his atheism, and his problems associated with his family, all are alluded to in the novel.

David and Shiloh are ultimately rewarded for their trek across frontier America. David has gone to Silver to apologize for the accidental death of her brother and to promise to be her friend and protector; Shiloh, meanwhile, walks at dawn to the summit of a cliff near the sea and thinks of lines from Shelley’s poem “To Jane, The Recollection” (1822). Shiloh, his quest complete, returns to poetry.

The Characters

As is typical of picaresque fiction, the characters in The Orphan Angel are static. Most of the characters play brief roles as they encounter Shiloh and Butternut on their trek across North America. Most are stock characters, playing types to complicate or further the adventures of the two heroes. Two characters, Captain Ffoulkastle and Captain Appleby, consider the likelihood that Shiloh is actually the poet Shelley. Captain Ffoulkastle doubts it, although presumably Shiloh tells him as much in order to explain the ties he has in Italy—a wife and children; Captain Appleby surmises that Shiloh is Shelley based upon his knowledge of the historical poet’s works and philosophies and his own observation of Shiloh and the epithalamium he pens for Professor Lackland as a wedding gift. Both captains play minor roles, but they keep alive the Shiloh/Shelley motif and subtly remind the reader of Butternut’s naïveté as he travels with Shiloh and never recognizes his fellow traveler as the famed poet.

Melissa Daingerfield, a fourteen-year-old Virginia daughter; Miss Rosalie Lillie of Louisville, the professor’s fiancée; Deborah Bartlett, a young widow living in Kentucky; Anne, an adopted daughter of a Cheyenne chief; and Maria Solidad de Sylva (Silver), the object of the heroes’ quest, all play the same role, young women instantly smitten by Shiloh. These five women characters allow Wylie to emphasize the ideal side of Shiloh/Shelley’s character, but they also remind the reader of the difficulties the historical Shelley had with young women. As Shiloh finds himself again expected to whisk a young woman away from her Cinderella existence, he reflects on Harriet Westbrook and Mary Godwin, Shelley’s two wives, and on Jane Clairmont, Teresa Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams, other women who interested Shelley.

The two protagonists, David Butternut and Shiloh, act as foils throughout the novel. Both men are young, although Shiloh’s being eight years older is significant. Shiloh turns thirty during the action of the novel, and Butternut is twenty-one when the action begins. Both men are kindhearted and loyal to each other, but their differences are abundant. Butternut, the American, represents the new, raw country; he is uncultured and unsophisticated. Shiloh, well-educated and well-traveled, represents the older European culture. Their physical descriptions, mannerisms, philosophies, tastes, and language all contrast, often to comic effect. Butternut urges Shiloh not to speak about poetry in front of the other sailors, recognizing the difference in values and culture between the typical American clipper-ship sailor and the poet. Butternut also urges Shiloh to keep his atheistic views to himself after they accept a ride up a long hill from a deacon. Butternut himself finds Shiloh’s distaste for American whiskey puzzling and is surprised by Shiloh’s lack of self-consciousness about his effect on young women. Wylie often juxtaposes the language of Butternut and Shiloh to highlight their differences and to mock both characters at once, one using uneducated and the other inflated language.

Critical Context

The Orphan Angel, chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection for December, 1926, was published at the height of Elinor Wylie’s literary career. Blending the traditions of the historical romance and the picaresque novel, The Orphan Angel carries forward traditional genres with the creative premise of resurrecting Shelley in America.

Elinor Wylie throughout her adult life was preoccupied by the Romantic poet Shelley; by the 1920’s, when she was writing The Orphan Angel, her preoccupation could be considered an obsession. When young, she was drawn to Shelley’s poetry. A serious poet herself, Wylie looked to Shelley as a model for herself and to his poetry as a model for her own. Later, Wylie came to see her own life reflected in Shelley’s in a more personal way. Both poets experienced censure because of their marital arrangements. Just as Shelley abandoned his first wife Harriet to elope with the young Mary Godwin, Wylie left her young son and husband to live in Europe with a married man, Horace Wylie. In both cases, the poets eventually married the partners with whom they went off, but the difficulties of their personal relationships were always a concern. Both Harriet’s and Wylie’s first husbands were suicides. For long periods, the poets were estranged from their children. Yet both seemed to believe their actions and love relationships were based on truth and beauty and that, spiritually, their choices were valid. In The Orphan Angel, then, Wylie is bringing back to life the poet she idealized and is showing him to be an angelic figure, one committed to truth and beauty. Shelley, not the orphan Silver that David and Shiloh seek, is the “angel” of the title. In reviving Shelley from the water in Italy and bringing him to America, Wylie is situating Shelley in the land of freedom, where his temperament may have a more conducive environment; of course, in traveling the country, it is clear that Shiloh/Shelley runs into just as many, and many of the same kinds of, predicaments that faced him in Europe.

Bibliography

Cluck, Julia. “Elinor Wylie’s Shelley Obsession.” PMLA 56 (September, 1941): 841-860. Outlines the references to Shelley in two of Wylie’s novels and in her poetry. The first third of the article details the parallels in appearance, habits, attitudes, personal history, and language between Shiloh in The Orphan Angel and Shelley.

Farr, Judith. The Life and Art of Elinor Wylie. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. Critical analysis of Wylie’s poetry and novels placed within the context of her life. See especially chapters 6 and 7 for discussions of Wylie’s interest in and of The Orphan Angel.

Gray, Thomas A. Elinor Wylie. New York: Twayne, 1969. Generally unfavorable critical evaluation of Wylie’s poetry and novels. Chapter 5 deals with the novels, including The Orphan Angel. Contains a chronology and a bibliography.

Hoyt, Nancy. Elinor Wylie: The Portrait of an Unknown Lady. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935. Breezy biography by Wylie’s sister, seventeen years Wylie’s junior. Contains family photographs and poems from Wylie’s first, privately printed, book.

Olson, Stanley. Elinor Wylie: A Biography. New York: Dial Press, 1979. Detailed, well-researched biography divided into three sections: Wylie’s upbringing and her first marriage in the context of her prominent family (her grandfather was governor of Pennsylvania, and her father was solicitor-general under President Theodore Roosevelt); her ostracism from Washington society; and her enormous literary output in the 1920’s.

Tomalin, Claire. Shelley and His World. New York: Scribner’s, 1980. Brief biography providing the necessary information about Shelley for a reader to follow the parallels to Shiloh in The Orphan Angel. Includes a Shelley chronology, a select bibliography, an index, and numerous illustrations.