Shelley: The Pursuit Read Free Page B

easily made. From Torquay, on 22 June, he had written to John Williams in North Wales inquiring if there was ‘any remote or solitary situation of a house to let for a time, with the prospect of purchase when my affairs will permit’. On the 24th he received the first quarterly payment of his £1,000 annuity. With funds actually in hand, he changed his mind about going to Wales and sealing himself off alone with Mary. On the 30th he sent a brief note to Williams saying he had altered his plans and was leaving Torquay early the following day ‘for Windsor in whose neighbourhood a friend has seen & highly recommended a furnished house’. 1 This was a result of correspondence with Peacock, who was already living in a house at Marlow on the Thames. But Mary was only told that he was going house hunting, and he left her behind in rooms at Clifton. More than three weeks later she was still writing miserably and now rather desperately to him, asking when he would find a house, andwhen she would see him again. She was particularly upset by the fact that they were to be apart on 28 July, the anniversary of their elopement. She could see only small hope of seeing him on his birthday on 4 August — and then only if she forced matters, and jumped into a London coach herself, which he obviously did not want. Her letter is eloquent of her distress, and shows in places that she had real fears of losing him:
We ought not to be absent any longer — indeed we ought not — I am not happy at it — when I retire to my room no sweet Love — after dinner no Shelley — though I have heaps of things very particular to say — in fine either you must come back or I must come to you directly — You will say shall we neglect taking a house — a dear home? No my love I would not for worlds give up that. . . . Dearest, I know how it will be — we shall both of us be put off day after day with the hopes of the success of the next days search for I am frightened to think how long — do you not see it in this light my own love.
    She added a few lines later with rather more force, ‘indeed, my love, I cannot bear to remain so long without you — so if you will not give me leave — expect me without it some day’. 2
    The real basis of her fears was revealed in a brief paragraph that came unexpectedly in the middle of her letter. ‘Pray is Clary with you? for I have enquired several times & no letters — but seriously it would not in the least surprise me if you have written to her from London & let her know that you are there without me that she should have taken some such freak — ’. Whether Mary’s fears were unfounded or not, there is no way of knowing, as Claire’s exact whereabouts are a mystery all this summer. Not until October, when Shelley sent her a draft for ten pounds at Enniscorthy, County Wexford, is it known that she was definitely in Ireland with her brother Charles. Peacock has no remarks upon the point.
    For the most part, it would seem that Shelley spent July alone with Peacock, visiting his doctor, Lawrence, and arranging for a house. He was assailed by a curious sense of detachment and vacancy, as if suddenly he had seen through life and all it had to offer. One anecdote of Peacock’s seems to belong to the month which he spent coming to the decision to take the house at Bishopsgate, and join his life irreparably with Mary.
He had many schemes of life [recalled Peacock] amongst them all, the most singular that ever crossed his mind was that of entering the church. . . . We were walking in the early summer through a village where there was a good vicarage house, with a nice garden, and the front wall of the vicarage was covered with corchorus in full flower, a plant less common then than it hassince become. He stood some time admiring the vicarage wall. The extreme quietness of the scene, the pleasant pathway through the village churchyard, and the brightness of the summer morning, apparently concurred to