Amiable and accommodating at first, and neither ill-educated nor stupid, Harriet did not improve in tone as she advanced in womanhood.  Her sympathy or tolerance for her husband’s ideals and vagaries flagged; when they differed she gave him the cold shoulder; she wanted luxuries—­such as a carriage of her own—­which he neither cared for nor could properly afford.  He even said—­and one can hardly accuse him of saying it insincerely—­that she had been unfaithful to him:  this however remains quite unproved, and may have been a delusion.  He sought the society of the philosopher Godwin, then settled as a bookseller in Skinner Street, Holborn.  Godwin’s household at this time consisted of his second wife, who had been a Mrs. Clairmont; Mary, his daughter by his first wife, the celebrated Mary Wollstonecraft; and his young son by his second wife, William; also his step-children, Charles and Clare Clairmont, and Fanny Wollstonecraft (or Imlay), the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft by her first irregular union with Gilbert Imlay.  Until May 1814, when she was getting on towards the age of seventeen, Shelley had scarcely set eyes on Mary Godwin:  he then saw her, and a sudden passion sprang up between them—­uncontrollable, or, at any rate, uncontrolled.  Harriet Shelley has left it on record that the advances and importunities came from Mary Godwin to Shelley, and were for a while resisted:  it was natural for Harriet to allege this, but I should not suppose it to be true, unless in a very partial sense.  Shelley sent for his wife, who had gone for a while to Bath (perhaps in a fit of pettishness, but this is not clear), and explained to her in June that they must separate—­a resolve which she combated as far as seemed possible, but finally she returned to Bath, staying there with her father and sister.  Shelley made some arrangements for her convenience, and on the 28th of July he once more eloped, this time with Mary Godwin.  Clare Clairmont chose to accompany them.  Godwin was totally opposed to the whole transaction, and Mrs. Godwin even pursued the fugitives across the Channel; but her appeal was unavailing, and the youthful and defiant trio proceeded in much elation of spirit, and not without a good deal of discomfort at times, from Calais to Paris, and thence to Brunen by the Lake of Uri in Switzerland.  It is a curious fact, and shows how differently Shelley regarded these matters from most people, that he wrote to Harriet in affectionate terms, urging her to join them there or reside hard by them.  Mary, before the elopement took place, had made a somewhat similar proposal.  Harriet had no notion of complying; and, as it turned out, the adventurers had no sooner reached Brunen than they found their money exhausted, and they travelled back in all haste to London in September,—­Clare continuing to house with them now, and for the most part during the remainder of Shelley’s life.  Even a poet and idealist might have been expected to show a little more worldly wisdom than this.