After his grievous experiences with Eliza Westbrook, the sister of his first wife, Shelley might have managed to steer clear of Clare Clairmont, the sister by affinity of his second partner in life.  He would not take warning, and he paid the forfeit:  not indeed that Clare was wanting in fine qualities both of mind and of character, but she proved a constant source of excitement and uneasiness in the household, of unfounded scandal, and of harassing complications.

In London Shelley and Mary lived in great straits, abandoned by almost all their acquaintances, and playing hide-and-seek with creditors.  But in January 1815 Sir Bysshe Shelley died, and Percy’s money affairs improved greatly.  An arrangement was arrived at with his father, whereby he received a regular annual income of L1000, out of which he assigned to Harriet L200 for herself and her two children—­a son, Charles Bysshe, having been born in November 1814 (he died in 1826).  Shelley and Mary next settled at Bishopgate, near Windsor Forest.  In May 1816 they went abroad, along with Miss Clairmont and their infant son William, and joined Lord Byron on the shore of the Lake of Geneva.  An amour was already going on between Byron and Miss Clairmont; it resulted in the birth of a daughter, Allegra, in January 1817; she died in 1822, very shortly before Shelley.  He and Mary had returned to London in September 1816.  Very shortly afterwards, 9th of November, the ill-starred Harriet Shelley drowned herself in the Serpentine:  her body was only recovered on the 10th of December, and the verdict of the Coroner’s Jury was ‘found drowned,’ her name being given as ‘Harriet Smith.’  The career of Harriet since her separation from her husband is very indistinctly known.  It has indeed been asserted in positive terms that she formed more than one connexion with other men:  she had ceased to live along with her father and sister, and is said to have been expelled from their house.  In these statements I see nothing either unveracious or unlikely:  but it is true that a sceptical habit of mind, which insists upon express evidence and upon severe sifting of evidence, may remain unconvinced[2].  This was the second suicide in Shelley’s immediate circle, for Fanny Wollstonecraft had taken poison just before under rather unaccountable circumstances.  No doubt he felt dismay and horror, and self-reproach as well; yet there is nothing to show that he condemned his conduct, at any stage of the transactions with Harriet, as heinously wrong.  He took the earliest opportunity—­30th of December—­of marrying Mary Godwin; and thus he became reconciled to her father and to other members of the family.

It was towards the time of Harriet’s suicide that Shelley, staying in and near London, became personally intimate with the essayist and poet, Leigh Hunt, and through him he came to know John Keats:  their first meeting appears to have occurred on 5th February, 1817.  As this matter bears directly upon our immediate theme, the poem of Adonais, I deal with it at far greater length than its actual importance in the life of Shelley would otherwise warrant.