“I have pledged myself to thee and sacred is the gift.”

Meanwhile, these glances and smiles that none might see nor understand, had been seen and perfectly understood by Godwin. The intrigue of his daughter with a married man troubled him. He pointed out the danger to her, and wrote to Shelley in the same strain. He advised him to make things up with his wife: and he begged him to discontinue, for the present, his visits to Skinner Street.

The prohibition, kindly as it was, simply hastened on events, which, without it, might have tarried. Shelley, passionately in love with Mary and deprived of her society, determined to take a decisive step. He felt no remorse on Harriet’s account, for he persisted in thinking her guilty, in spite of the assertions of Peacock and Hogg, both impartial witnesses. “There’s just one thing only she cares about,” he thought, “and that is money. I’ll provide for her future, and then she’ll be glad to be free.” Accordingly he wrote to her begging her to come to London. She came; she was four months gone with child, and very unwell. When, calmly and kindly, Percy told her he was going to live without her and elope with some one else, but that he would always remain her best friend, the shock brought on an alarming illness.

Shelley nursed her with devotion, which made her more unhappy still, and the moment she was better he resumed his inflexible arguments. “The union of the sexes is sacred only so long as it contributes to the happiness of husband and wife, and it is dissolved automatically from the moment that its evils exceed its benefits. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, on the contrary it is often vicious, leading one to condone the gravest faults in the object of one’s choice.”

When he wove round her these diaphanous but insuperable webs, Harriet knew she was lost, just as formerly when she had tried to defend her religious beliefs against him she had seen herself overwhelmed on every side. She knew that some answer must exist; that so much anguish and sorrow and horror should find some expression, and might have found it had her mind been clearer; as it was she never knew what she ought to say. She dreamed she was struggling to free herself from invisible bonds. Her one relief was in terrible outbursts of rage against Mary. It was she who was the cause of all, she who had separated Percy from his wife, taking advantage of his romantic tendencies to entice him to meet her at a grave-side, which was just the kind of thing that would appeal to him. She had made a shameful use of her mother’s memory.

Mary, on her side, had not the slightest pity for Harriet. She had formed an odious conception of her. A woman who, having had the felicity of marrying Shelley, had yet been incapable of making him happy could only be selfish, futile, second-rate. She knew that he would treat Harriet with generosity, that he was going to give an order to his banker to pay over to her the greater part of his allowance, and this knowledge quieted her conscience. “She’ll have the money, and that’s all she cares about,” Mary said with disdain.

Shelley was in a condition of extreme nervous agitation. All sorts of contrary sentiments warred in his soul. When he saw Harriet fall into heartbreaking fits of despair, he could not forget the delicious moments passed with her long ago, but he had only to be again in Mary’s presence to consecrate himself anew to her tranquil charm.

To calm his mind he began to take laudanum as he had formerly done at Berwick, but now in stronger doses. He showed the bottle to Peacock, and said: “I never part from this.” He added, “I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles:

The post-chaise was ordered for four o’clock in the morning. Shelley waited up all night opposite Godwins’ house. At length he saw the stars and the oil-lamps grow pale. Mary noiselessly opened the hall door. Jane Clairmont, who at the last moment had decided to go with her sister, looked after the luggage with zeal.

The long carriage journey greatly tired Mary, but Shelley dared not stop lest Godwin were pursuing them. At about four in the afternoon they reached Dover, where after the usual difficulties with custom-house officials, and sailors, they found a small boat which agreed to take them over to Calais.

The weather was fine. The white cliffs of Albion slowly faded away. The fugitives were safe. Presently the wind rose and freshened into a gale. Mary, very ill, passed the night lying upon Shelley’s knees, who, himself worn out with fatigue, supported her head on his shoulder. The moon sunk to a stormy horizon; then, in total darkness, a thunderstorm struck the sail, and the fast-flashing lightning revealed a dark and swollen sea. When morning broke the storm passed, the wind changed, and the sun rose broad, and red, and cloudless, over France.

Mary shook off her somnolence in the streets of Calais; the gay bustle of the harbour, the picturesque costume of the fisherfolk, the confused buzz of voices speaking a strange language, revived her. The day was spent at the inn, as they had to wait for the luggage coming by the Dover Packet, but when this arrived it brought also Mrs. Godwin and her green spectacles. The fat lady hoped to persuade Jane, at least, to go back with her to Skinner Street, but Shelley’s eloquence won the day, and Mrs. Godwin returned alone. At six o’clock the travellers left Calais for Boulogne in a cabriolet drawn by three horses running abreast.

⁂

Their plan was to get to Switzerland, but after a few days in Paris their purse was empty. Shelley had a letter for a certain Tavernier, a French man of business, who was to act as banker for them. They invited him to lunch at the hotel, and put him down as a perfect idiot, for he seemed to have a difficulty in understanding the absolute necessity of this journey by two little girls, and a tall and excitable young man.

Shelley had to pawn his watch and chain; he got eight napoleons for them. This would give them bread and cheese for a fortnight, so with minds at ease, they began to explore the Boulevards, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Later on they preferred to remain in the hotel and re-read together the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Byron’s poems.

At the end of the week, Tavernier, a good fellow in the main, agreed to lend them sixty pounds. But, as this was not enough to pay for their places by diligence, they decided to start on foot, and to buy an ass to carry the luggage, and each of them ride it by turns.

Shelley went to the cattle-market and came back to the hotel with a very small donkey. Next morning a hackney-coach took them to the Barrier of Charenton, the ass trotting behind the carriage.

The roads in France in the year 1814 were not particularly safe. The armies had just been demobilized, and bands of marauders robbed those who travelled on them. The peasants working in the fields by the road-side stared with all their eyes at this extraordinary caravan of two pretty girls in black silk gowns, a stripling with curly hair, and a ridiculously small donkey. At the end of a few miles, the last appeared so tired that Shelley and Jane had to carry him! In the village where they slept they sold him to a peasant and bought a mule in his place.

The whole of the district had been devastated by the war, the villages were half-destroyed, the houses mostly roofless with fire-blackened beams; if they asked a farmer for milk he replied by cursing the Cossacks who had carried off his cows.

In the wretched inns the beds were so dirty that Mary and Jane dared not use them. Enormous rats brushed by them in the darkness. They fell into the habit of sitting up all night in the farm-kitchens. The big stove, still alight, made the atmosphere heavy, and between sleeping and waking, the crying of children and the creakings of the old woodwork were woven into their dreams. Mary thought of her father, and wondered was he suffering terribly from her flight? Shelley was preoccupied with the fate of Harriet.

From Troyes he wrote her a long letter, urging her to come out and join them in Switzerland. She should live near them, and there, at least, find one firm and constant friend. He gave her news of Mary’s health, which appeared to him a natural thing to do, and he felt quite sure that Harriet would very soon be with them. Maybe, the “world” would think this life in common immoral, but why trouble about “the world’s” opinion? Was it not better to obey the dictates of love and kindness than those of absurd prejudices? Harriet made no reply.

Going by Pontarlier and Neufchâtel they reached the Lake of the Four Cantons. Shelley wished to settle at Brunnen, near the Chapel of William Tell, the Defender of Liberty. The only empty house in the place was an old château, deserted, and falling into ruin. They hired two rooms in it for six months, and bought furniture, beds, chairs, wardrobes, and a stove. The curé and the village doctor came to call upon the new-comers, and on the same day Shelley began to write a great novel, The Assassins. They had settled down “for ever.”

But the new stove refused to draw, and Shelley who was not clever with his fingers, tinkered at it in vain. The room was glacial and filled with smoke. Outside the rain beat against the windows. The three young exiles found themselves desperately lonely. They recalled the comfort of their English houses, English tea, hot and scented, England’s mild sky, the cool, good-natured Englishmen speaking their language and able to pronounce their names. Even the English usurers, though of course rapacious, were always courteous.

Shelley counted up the common purse. There remained just twenty-eight pounds. The same eager desire rose in all three, which Shelley expressed by the words “Let’s go home!”

No sooner said than the decision was taken, and their spirits rose. “Most laughable to think,” writes Jane, “of our going to England the second day after entering a new house for six months, and all because the stove don’t suit! As we left Dover, and England’s white cliffs disappeared, I thought I should never see them again, and now . . .” Having made up their minds at midnight, the next morning, in driving rain, they took a boat to Lucerne. Great was the surprise of Brunnen’s curé when he learnt that they were gone.

From Lucerne they reached Bale by passenger-boat and thence on to Cologne. The weather was delightful. Beneath the evening stars, the boatmen chanted love-songs. Shelley worked at The Assassins. Mary and Jane had each started a novel too, and the hills crowned with ruins on either side gave them a good background for the romantic adventures of their heroes. Then the Dutch mail-coach carried them through a sleepy land of comfortable wooden houses, canals, and windmills. When they reached Rotterdam they were again penniless. After long discussion, a ship’s captain agreed to take them aboard. The sea was as rough as on the day of their departure.

Shelley employed his time arguing the question of slavery with one of the passengers. Mary and Jane backed him up with warmth. They did not know in the least if they would have anything to eat the next day, but they did know that Percy was a genius, and that Man is perfectible.

On arriving in London, Shelley could not pay the cab fare, so with Mary, Jane, and the trunks, he drove round to his bankers, merely to learn that Harriet had withdrawn the entire balance to his credit. At this news the two girls were highly indignant. The only way to get out of the scrape, and avoid the police-station, was to go and see Harriet herself. Shelley had her address, and thither they now drove. Harriet thought at first that her husband had come back to her, and was very indignant, in her turn, when she knew that her rival was waiting below at the door. However, she lent Shelley a few pounds, which enabled the three wanderers to take furnished lodgings in a mean street.

Things looked black. Godwin absolutely refused to see them. Shelley pleaded that he had given a practical application to the principles of Political Justice, but this merely exasperated the author of the treatise still more. Political Justice was in his eyes a theoretical work, the principles of which might be excellent in some Utopia—although it was also very long since he had written it—but in London in the midst of a pitiless society, in his own house, to expose Godwin and his only daughter to the scorn of his friends, thus to pervert his teaching . . . No, he would never forgive them.

When he mentioned the adventure it was in the most severe terms. Writing to a Mr. John Taylor of Norwich, he said:

He begs Taylor to preserve the utmost secrecy about the affair, so that no stigma may be attached to the names of these unfortunate girls, and goes on: “When I use the word stigma I am sure it is wholly unnecessary to say that I apply it in a very different sense to the two girls. Jane has been guilty of an indiscretion only . . . Mary has been guilty of a crime.”

Yet Shelley, in former days, had borrowed large sums to lend to Mary’s father, and on this account the bailiffs, so soon as they heard of his return, had begun to dun him. Godwin not only was unable to repay Shelley, but had fresh need of money himself, and it was these financial questions which compelled him, most reluctantly, to continue a correspondence with a depraved and perfidious young man. His conscience suffered greatly . . . or at least he said it did in every letter.

So much hypocrisy in a man they had so venerated, was grievous to Mary and Shelley. “Oh, philosophy!” they said, and sighed. As to Mrs. Godwin, she reproached them above all with corrupting her daughter, and she forbade the gentle Fanny to visit them. She herself went to see Jane once, but meeting Shelley on the stairs she turned away her head.

Their intercourse with Harriet was sometimes easy, sometimes difficult, according to her changes of mood. She wanted for nothing, having still some of Shelley’s money, besides receiving an allowance from the old tavern-keeper, but she was with child and very unhappy. She passed her days in telling her story to the gossips of the neighbourhood, or in writing in pathetic phrases to her friend Catherine Nugent, the Dublin dressmaker:

Sometimes she was full of hope. Her friends told her that love affairs of this sort were short-lived and that her husband would come back to her. Then she felt gay and wrote Shelley friendly letters. She was sure that it was Mary who had made all the mischief: that she had seduced Percy by telling him extravagant tales: that in reality he was good, that he would never desert her and his two children.

At other times she had fits of depression and rage. Then she did all she knew to make the life of the hated couple more difficult still. She ran into debt, and sent the creditors to Shelley. She declared that he was living in promiscuity with two of Godwin’s daughters. She found out Godwin’s creditors in order to urge them to be pitiless, and Mary, who had never seen her, would say with a sigh: “That frightful woman!”

One day in November, Harriet was in a state of discomfort and pain, and imagined herself very ill. Her first thought at such moments was always to call her husband. She sent for Shelley during the night and he came at once. Without again becoming the lover, he would have liked to remain her most devoted friend. But, not understanding the shade of difference, the moment he showed attention, she grew fond. Then he checked her with gentle firmness.

At the end of November, she gave birth to a boy, an eight-months’ child. It brought about no reconciliation. Shelley doubted if the child was his.

With Mary, in spite of their misfortunes, he was deliciously happy. They shared the same tastes, and both looked upon Life as an opportunity for learning prolonged into old age. They read the same books and often aloud. She went with him in his visits to his lawyers, or the sheriff’s officers. When he amused himself by the Serpentine, just as he used to do at Oxford, in launching a paper flotilla, Mary, sitting beside him, fashioned the boats with tireless fingers.

Under his direction, she set herself to learn Latin and even Greek. More cultured than Harriet, she did not see in these studies, as did the first Mrs. Shelley, a rather boring game, but an extension of her enjoyment. The greatest charm of literary culture is that it humanizes love. Catullus, Theocritus, and Petrarch united to render more exquisite our lovers’ kisses. Shelley, watching his new companion at work, was filled with admiration for her strength of character, and was delighted to consider her as much superior to himself.

The only shadow, and that a light one, was the presence of Jane, or rather of Claire, for, having decided that her name was ugly, she had changed it for another which was more to her taste. A brilliant and beautiful girl, she suffered from nerves and was terribly susceptible. Nothing was worse for her than to live in close contact with an amorous young couple. She had a passionate admiration for Percy, and showed it a little too plainly. Mary complained, but Shelley could not agree that there was anything in the sentiment either disagreeable or shocking.

He hated being alone, so when Mary, who was expecting a child, had to give up walks and late hours he took Claire with him to the lawyers, the bailiffs, and the banks of the Serpentine, and every day he begged her to pass the evening with him. He talked to her of Harriet, of Miss Hitchener, and of his sisters. He had always loved confidential talks, and long analyses of thought; sincerity appeared to him easy with Claire because she was not his mistress. But Mary could not conceal her impatience, and Claire, vexed by her sister’s reproaches, remained silent and gloomy a whole day through.

In the evening when Mary had gone to bed, Shelley undertook to pacify Claire. Cleverly and patiently he explained until midnight the somewhat complicated sentiments of their little group. Such was his gentle kindness that Claire ceased to sulk.

“But I’ve suffered so much!” she said.

“Imaginary sufferings, my dear Claire! You misunderstand words and gestures to which Mary attaches no importance whatever.”

“All the same, I have really suffered, but how I like good, kind, explaining people!”

Shelley went up to repeat the conversation to Mary. In the room overhead they heard Claire talking and walking in her sleep. Presently she came down, she was feeling terribly nervous, and could not remain alone. Mary took her into her own bed, and Shelley went to sleep upstairs.

This little scene with slight variations was often repeated. Claire’s nervousness was communicated to Shelley. Having talked of ghosts and hobgoblins the greater part of the night, they ended by frightening each other.

“What is the matter with you, Claire? You’re deathly pale. . . . Your eyes . . . No! Don’t look at me like that!”

“You, too, Percy, you look strange . . . the air is heavy, full of monsters . . . don’t let us stay here any longer!”

They said good night and went to their rooms, but almost immediately after, Shelley and Mary heard a loud cry; somebody tumbled down the stairs, and Claire, with disordered features, came to relate that her pillow had been pulled from under her head by an invisible hand.

Shelley listened to the tale with terrified interest, but Mary shrugged her shoulders. If only this crazy girl would take herself off!

⁂

The outcasts saw few friends. The Boinville-Newton set, despite their broad-minded French philosophy, had turned a cold shoulder when they were told by Shelley of his new life. With them, as with Godwin, actions did not run on all fours with speech, and indulgence in theory allied itself for some mysterious reason with inclemency in practice. On the other hand, it was the sceptical Hogg and Peacock who came at the first call. They believed in the innocence of Harriet, and did not approve of Shelley’s conduct, but they were full of human interest, and looked upon the passion of love as a somewhat comic disease.

Shelley had invited Hogg with misgivings. He was afraid such a cynic would not please the two girls. Nor was Mary’s first impression favourable. “He’s amusing enough when he jokes,” she said, “but the moment he treats of a serious subject, one sees that his point of view is altogether wrong.”

Hogg, in fact, became every day more British and conservative, singing the praises of tradition, sport, Public Schools, and naming the best port-wine years. But finding Mary very pretty and intelligent, he told Shelley so, who repeated it to her. On Hogg’s next visit she thought him much more sympathetic. No doubt he spoke of virtue as a blind man does of colours; in this family of enthusiastic “souls” he was the “hardened sinner”; but his charm was acknowledged. Mary thought his coldness a cloak, and that he was better than he appeared. He was afraid to be sincere with himself or to delve deep, which would have driven him to forgo so many things that he liked, but he was really too intelligent not to feel the weakness of his position.

Being both good-natured and cultivated, he was ready to give a helping hand to Mary and Claire in translating Ovid or Anacreon, when their usual master had mysteriously vanished. He also accompanied the ladies to their bonnet-maker without grumbling, for they, too, visited bonnet-shops just like poor Harriet, although they went in quite another frame of mind. If she bought bonnets with rapture, Mary bought them with a lofty condescension, so that Shelley did not even have to excuse in her a concession to fashion which she herself was the first to deplore.

The lodging-house servant brought up a letter from a lady who was waiting on the opposite pavement. It was from Fanny, to warn Shelley that his creditors were plotting to have him arrested. He and Mary ran down to the street, but, on seeing them, Fanny hastened away. She was in terror of Godwin who had forbidden all communication with the outcasts, and she, perhaps, had cared too much for Percy to wish to see him again now that he belonged to her sister. But, being a swift runner, he soon caught up with her. She told him the bailiffs were looking for him, that it was his publisher who had given them his address, and that Godwin wouldn’t lift a finger to save him.

Not having money to free himself, the only thing he could do was to disappear. He decided to find another lodging while Mary and Claire should remain quietly where they were, so as to trick the enemy. Thus, for the first time, the lovers had to separate, a separation which seemed terrible to both. They were forced to make appointments in out-of-the-way taverns, to take a few stealthy kisses, and to part immediately, lest Mary might be followed. On Sundays, when arrests are illegal, they remained together till midnight.

One evening the courage to separate failed them, and Mary followed Shelley into a miserable hotel. The landlord looked with a suspicious eye on this couple who had no luggage, and refused to serve them with a meal unless they paid him in advance. Shelley sent round to Peacock, and while waiting for the money took out the pocket Shakespeare he always carried, and read aloud to Mary Troilus and Cressida. It made them forget their hunger a whole day through. Next morning at breakfast-time Peacock, penniless himself, sent them some cakes. If life was difficult there was joy in suffering together. Love and misfortune made a happy pair.

When they were apart, waiting for night-time, they sent each other by a confidential messenger, tender little notes, scribbled in haste.

“Oh! my dearest love,” wrote Shelley, “why are our pleasures so short and so interrupted? How long is this to last? . . . Meet me to-morrow at three o’clock in St. Paul’s if you do not hear before. Adieu: remember love at vespers before sleep. I do not omit my prayers.”

“Good night, my love,” replied Mary, “to-morrow I will seal this blessing on your lips. Dear good creature, press me to you, and hug your own Mary to your heart. Perhaps she will one day have a father: till then be everything to me, love, and indeed I will be a good girl and never vex you. I will learn Greek and—but when shall we meet when I may tell you all this, and you will so sweetly reward me?”

In January, 1815, this trying existence was brought to an end by an event they had long expected without desiring it, but which they also accepted without any hypocritical regret. Old Sir Bysshe died at the age of eighty-three. Timothy Shelley became second baronet, and Percy the direct heir.

He set out for his father’s house, accompanied by Claire, who was in a state of great excitement and eager curiosity. Sir Timothy, puffed up with his new title, and more indignant than ever that a baronet should have such a son, refused him admission to Field Place by the footman. He sat down on the doorstep and read Comus from Mary’s pocket-copy of Milton.

Presently the doctor came out to tell him his father was greatly incensed with him. Then, his cousin, Shelley Sidney, stealthily appeared to give the Prodigal Grandson details of the Will.

A most extraordinary Will. The fixed idea of old Sir Bysshe had been to found an enormous hereditary fortune, and for that purpose to increase the entailed estates as much as possible. He left in real and personal property, possessions which probably did not fall short of £200,000. One portion of this, valued at £80,000, formed the estate entail which must necessarily pass to Percy on his father’s death. But Sir Bysshe desired that this accumulation of his long life should be kept together by his descendants, and should pass from eldest son to eldest son through future generations of Shelleys. For this purpose, the consent and signature of his grandson were necessary, and he had hoped to obtain them in the following manner. If Percy would concur in prolonging the entail, and further, would agree to entail the unsettled estates, he should, after his father’s death, enjoy the usufruct of the entire fortune. If he should refuse, then he would only inherit, always after the death of Sir Timothy, the £80,000 of which it was impossible to deprive him.

Shelley went back to London musing over this strange news, and called on his solicitor to discuss it with him. He did not feel he could consent to the extension of the entail, since he disapproved of all such plutocratic legislation: nor did he desire, either for himself or his children, the ownership of so huge a fortune. What he wanted was an immediate income sufficient to live on, according to his inclinations, and a certain sum down, so as to settle his debts. To secure these moneys, he proposed, through his lawyer, to sell to his father the reversion of the settled estates. The proposal pleased Sir Timothy who had abandoned all hope of ever bringing Percy to heel, and who now thought only of his second son, John. Unfortunately the lawyers were not sure that the arrangement was legally possible under the terms of the Will. These only authorized the re-sale by Percy to his father of the estate of a grand-uncle, valued at £18,000. This transaction took place and Shelley received in exchange an income of one thousand pounds a year during the joint lives of Sir Timothy and himself, and in addition three thousand pounds were advanced by Sir Timothy towards the payment of his son’s debts. If this was not a big fortune, it was at least the end of straitened means, of furnished lodgings, and of duns.

His first thought was to make Harriet an allowance. He promised her £200 a year, which in addition to the £200 which her father allowed her, should be sufficient for all her wants. Next he undertook to pay off Godwin’s debts, and set apart for that purpose the whole of his first year’s annuity.

The “venerated friend” found the offer of one thousand pounds far below his expectations. To hear him talk, nothing was easier than to borrow, on an inheritance now soon to fall in, the many thousands of pounds of which the Skinner Street book-shop stood so much in need.

Shelley, exasperated but courteous, informed Godwin, with an indignation which he restrained, of his surprise that Mary’s father should think it proper to write to the seducer of his daughter to ask him for money, and at the same time to refuse to enter into any relations with that daughter herself, who was foolish enough to suffer from it. Godwin replied that it was precisely because he was borrowing money from the seducer that he could not receive Mary: his dignity would not allow it! He could not risk having it said that he had bartered his daughter’s honour for the payment of his debts. His scruples were so exaggerated that he returned a cheque drawn by Shelley in his favour, with the remark that the names of Shelley and of Godwin must not figure on the same cheque. Shelley could make it payable to Joseph Hume or James Martin, and then he, Godwin, might consent to cash it. On which the following letters were exchanged:

Shelley to Godwin.

Godwin to Shelley.

Shelley to Godwin.

The cold contempt of this letter did not discourage the borrower.

Mary’s child was born before its time, and the doctor said it would not live. Shelley kept watch between the cradle and the bed in company with Livy and Seneca. Fanny came round with baby-clothes sent by Mrs. Godwin in her capricious way, but the Philosopher remained inflexible. Hogg dropped in to gossip, to tell the great news of the day, the return from Elba, and he did Mary good by his common sense and sarcasm. With a temperature, and always in the society of Shelley, she had the rather terrifying if pleasant impression of slipping away out of life. Hogg brought her back to a sense of reality.

In spite of predictions the child did live and grew. Mary began to feel easy about it, when at the end of the month she found on waking one morning that it was dead. This was a great sorrow.

Shelley and Claire continued their walks together, while Mary stayed at home. She sat knitting and thinking of her little child. “I was a mother, and am so no longer,” she kept repeating, and at night she dreamed that the baby was not dead, and that by rubbing it before the fire they had brought it back to life. Then she awoke to find the cradle empty. From the streets floated up the hoarse shouting of crowds. It was a time of riots. France threatened war. Mary saw everything through a mist of tears.

Claire’s presence in the house vexed her more and more. She was certain that Claire was in love with Shelley, had always been in love with him. Percy’s loyalty was self-evident, his morality super-human, angelic; but he thought it possible to read Petrarch with an impassioned girl, to direct her studies, to sit up with her the whole night through, without danger. Mary said to herself: “My charming Shelley understands the elves better than he does women.”

When she was alone with him in the evening, she confessed her jealousy. It was a sentiment he could not understand. He thought it base, and that it belittled his divine Mary. He knew his capacity for love to be infinite, and that in dividing it with another woman he took away nothing from his mistress. The company of the wild and brilliant Claire was very precious to him, but he had to acknowledge that the atmosphere of this threefold union was becoming irrespirable.

Mary besought him to send Claire away. “Your friend,” as she now always called her. They tried, during many weeks, to find a place for her as governess or companion, but the unfortunate reputation which her flight to France had earned her rendered all such attempts futile.

Claire herself had not the smallest desire to leave. She delighted in her intellectual intimacy with Percy, and she awaited its inevitable result without fear. Finally, however, Mary’s gentle firmness carried the day, and it was arranged that Claire should go to Lynmouth, and lodge there with a friend of Godwin’s, a Mrs. Bricknell, a widow.

Mary’s Journal.

⁂

Claire, exiled to the country, enjoyed after such storm and stress her first days of profound peace. But she was not the girl to put up for long with rural solitude. She must have a reason for living—and she did not fail to find one.

When people are in love they always imagine, quite wrongly, that it is because they have come across an exceptional being who has inspired them with the passion. The truth is that love, existing already in the soul, seeks out a suitable object, and if it does not find one, then creates it. But if, in an ordinary girl, this love-seeking is unconscious, it was otherwise with the brilliant and hot-blooded Claire. Realizing the impossibility of taking Shelley from her sister, or even of sharing him with her, she deliberately looked round for some other hero on whom to expend her unemployed affection. Some women in such case send letters to great writers, or soldiers, or actors. But Claire, who was poetical, desired a poet.

She found none more worthy of her than George Gordon, Lord Byron, the man the most worshipped and the most hated in the whole of England. She knew his poems by heart, Shelley had so often read them to her with enthusiasm. She knew the stories of vice and wit, of diabolical charm and infernal cruelty which were woven round his name.

His extraordinary beauty, his title, his genius as a writer, the boldness of his ideas, the scandals of his love affairs, all contributed to make of him the perfect hero. He had had mistresses among the highest in the land, the Countess of Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, and the unfortunate Lady Caroline Lamb, who the first day that she met him wrote in her journal: “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”: and then underneath, “But this pale handsome face holds my destiny.”

He had married, and all London repeated the tale that, when he got into the carriage after the ceremony, he said to Lady Byron: “You are now my wife, and that is enough for me to hate you. Were you some one else’s wife, I might perhaps care about you.” He had treated her with such contempt that she had been driven to ask for a separation from him at the end of the first year.

Claire, who sought only for difficult adventures, and had supreme confidence in herself, found out Byron’s address and decided to chance her luck.

Claire to Byron.

Don Juan made no reply. This unknown writer of ornate style was small game for him. But there is no one more tenacious than a woman tired of her virtue. Claire returned to the attack a second time. “Sunday Morning. Lord Byron is requested to state whether seven o’clock this evening will be convenient to him to receive a lady to communicate with him on business of peculiar importance. She desires to be admitted alone and with the utmost privacy.”

Lord Byron sent out word by the servant that he had left town.

Then Claire wrote in her own name that, wanting to go on the stage, and knowing that Lord Byron was interested in Drury Lane Theatre, she would like to ask his advice. Byron’s reply was to recommend her to call on the stage manager. Undeterred, she made, at once, a skilful change of front. It was not a theatrical career but the literary life which she now desired. She had written half a novel and would so very much like to submit it to Byron’s judgment. As he continued to keep silence, or to send evasive replies, she risked offering him the only thing which a man with any self-respect seldom refuses.

“I may appear to you imprudent, vicious, but one thing at least time shall show you, that I love gently and with affection, that I am incapable of anything approaching to the feeling of revenge or malice. I do assure you your future shall be mine.

“Have you any objection to the following plan? On Thursday evening we may go out of town together by some stage or mail about the distance of ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and unknown; we can return early the following morning. I have arranged everything here so that the slightest suspicion may not be excited. Pray do so with your people.

“Will you admit me for two moments to settle with you where? Indeed, I will not stay an instant after you tell me to go. . . . Do what you will or go where you will, refuse to see me and behave unkindly, I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance.”

It was then that Don Juan, trapped and tired by the long pursuit, decided to accept his defeat. He had already decided to leave England and fix himself in Switzerland or Italy, and the prospect of a speedy departure set welcome limits to this unwelcome amour.