Free Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes Page A

Scrope Daves and John Cam Hobhouse were making preparations for a secret departure, and Byron’s faithful valet Fletcher was discreetly preparing trunks at No. 13. The city firm of Baxter’s were engaged to construct a new Napoleonic carriage for his travels, for which he paid £500. Byron hoped that escape to the Continent in the spring might also restart the creative mechanism which had faltered in 1813, after the completion of two cantos of Childe Harold . The delights of marriage and the glitter of social and literary celebrity both seemed to him intolerably faded. He desperately needed the break.
    At that moment, in March, his life seemed to be suspended between two distinct theatres of action, and, without indicating his intention to depart, he was in the mood to write to James Hogg in Scotland: ‘And so you want to come to London? It’s a damned place to be sure, but the only one in the world (at least the English world) for fun; though I have seen parts of the globe that I like better, still upon the whole it is the completest either to help one in feeling oneself — alive — or forgetting that one is so.’ 52 By luck, by ill-luck or by instinct, it was in this fatalistic mood that Claire and Byron’s paths crossed; and their lives irretrievably tangled.
    Claire first came to Byron’s attention, very mildly, with a series of pseudonymous notes addressed to him in his capacity as a member of the Drury Lane Theatre Committee. After achieving a first interview, which was rather more prosaic than she would have desired, she followed up her advantageous opening with a spirited correspondence. Claire filled her billets doux with discussions of new poetry, her own fiction, and advanced ideas on social institutions, including, scornfully, marriage: ‘I can never resist the temptation of throwing a pebble at it as I pass by.’ 53 Of the story she sent him, probably ‘The Idiot’ of 1814, she noted progressively that ‘the story might appear to be a highly moral warningto young people about irregular opinions’, but nevertheless ‘atheists might see and understand my meaning’. Shelley’s teaching and influence were being put to good use.
    How far Shelley was actively engaged in Claire’s campaign can only be judged from minor details. But it is important in the light of Shelley’s subsequent behaviour towards Claire. During the six weeks she was conducting her siege of Byron, Claire was staying at least part of the time with Shelley in Norfolk Street. In March alone she received notes of hand from him providing her with no less than forty-one pounds. Moreover, Shelley, though he had not yet met Byron, featured actively in Claire’s correspondence. She explained to Byron about the events of 1814; about Mary and Godwin; and about the underground publication of Queen Mab . Byron was prepared to be impressed, and Claire wrote in reply: ‘Shelley is now turned three and twenty, and interested as I am in all he does, it is with the greatest pleasure I receive your approbation.’ 54 The news was passed on to Shelley, and later Claire sent Byron a copy of Alastor as well.
    Claire next asked Shelley for a summation of her own character, and Shelley provided an apt one. She passed this on to Byron verbatim; she implies that Shelley did not know to what use she was putting the description, but if so, it is curiously appropriate to the situation. ‘My Sweet Child,’ Shelley said, adopting his best tones of guide and mentor, ‘there are two Clares — one of them I should call irritable if it were not for the nervous disorder, the effects of which you still retain: the nervous Clare is reserved and melancholy and more sarcastic than violent; the good Clare is gentle yet cheerful; and to me the most engaging of human creatures; one thing I will say for you that you are easily managed by the person you love as the reed is by the wind; it is your weak side.’ 55
    Charmed by Claire’s quickness, her warmth, her