Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/63

 DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she preferred to call herself) Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was very young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what she could to make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off with her part-sister Mary, she be came the guest of the pair, and contributed a natural child to their nursery Allegra. Lord Byron was the father.

We have named the several members and advan tages of the new paradise in Skinner Street, with its crazy book-shop underneath. Shelley was all right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway, and more different kinds of fra grance. One could turn out poetry here without any trouble at all.

The way the new love-match came about was this : Shelley told Mary all his aggravations and sorrows and griefs, and about the wet-nurse and the bonnet- shop and the surgeon and the carriage, and the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making so much of him; and how he had deserted Harriet and then Harriet had deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet getting her poem by heart; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied him, for she had had trouble herself. But I am not satisfied with this. It reads too much like statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and is too earthy and business-like. It has the sordid look of a trades- union procession out on strike. That is not the

4Q

�� �