The summer of 1815 spent in rambles in various parts of the country, saw the creation of Alastor.Early in 1816 Mary gave birth to her first child, a boy, William, and in the spring, accompanied by the baby and Claire, they made a second expedition to Switzerland.A little in advance another poet left England for ever.George Gordon, Lord Byron, loaded with fame and lacerated by chagrin, was beginning to bear through Europe that 'pageant of his bleeding heart" of which the first steps are celebrated in 'Childe Harold'.Unknown to Shelley and Mary, there was already a link between them and the luxurious "pilgrim of eternity' rolling towards Geneva in his travelling-carriage, with physician and suite: Claire had visited Byron in the hope that he might help her to employment at Drury Lane Theatre, and, instead of going on the stage, had become his mistress.Thus united, but strangely dissimilar, the two parties converged on the Lake of Geneva, where the poets met for the first time.Shelley, though jarred by Byron's worldliness and pride, was impressed by his creative power, and the days they spent sailing on the lake, and wandering in a region haunted by the spirit of Rousseau, were fruitful.The 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' and the 'Lines on Mont Blanc'
were conceived this summer.In September the Shelleys were back in England.
But England, though he had good friends like Peacock and the Leigh Hunts, was full of private and public troubles, and was not to hold him long.The country was agitated by riots due to unemployment.The Government, frightened and vindictive, was multiplying trials for treason and blasphemous libel, and Shelley feared he might be put in the pillory himself.Mary's sister Fanny, to whom he was attached, killed herself in October; Harriet's suicide followed in December; and in the same winter the Westbrooks began to prepare their case for the Chancery suit, which ended in the permanent removal of Harriet's children from his custody, on the grounds that his immoral conduct and opinions unfitted him to be their guardian.
His health, too, seems to have been bad, though it is hard to know precisely how bad.He was liable to hallucinations of all kinds; the line between imagination and reality, which ordinary people draw quite definitely, seems scarcely to have existed for him.There are many stories as to which it is disputed how far, if at all, reality is mixed with dream, as in the case of the murderous assault he believed to have been made on him one night of wind and rain in Wales; of the veiled lady who offered to join her life to his; of the Englishman who, hearing him ask for letters in the post-office at Pisa or Florence, exclaimed, "What, are you that damned atheist Shelley?" and felled him to the ground.Often he would go half frantic with delusions--as that his father and uncle were plotting to shut him up in a madhouse, and that his boy William would be snatched from him by the law.Ghosts were more familiar to him than flesh and blood.Convinced that he was wasting with a fatal disease, he would often make his certainty of early death the pretext for abandoning some ill-considered scheme; but there is probably much exaggeration in the spasms and the consumptive symptoms which figure so excitedly in his letters.Hogg relates how he once plagued himself and his friends by believing that he had elephantiasis, and says that he was really very healthy The truth seems to be that his constitution was naturally strong, though weakened from time to time by neurotic conditions, in which mental pain brought on much physical pain, and by irregular infrequent, and scanty meals.
In February 1817 he settled at Marlow with Mary and Claire.
Claire, as a result of her intrigue with Byron--of which the fruit was a daughter, Allegra, born in January--was now a permanent charge on his affectionate generosity.It seemed that their wanderings were at last over.At Marlow he busied himself with politics and philanthropy, and wrote 'The Revolt of Islam'.But, partly because the climate was unsuitable, partly from overwork in visiting and helping the poor, his health was thought to be seriously endangered.In March 1818, together with the five souls dependent on him-- Claire and her baby, Mary and her two babies (a second, Clara, had been born about six months before)--he left England, never to return.
Mary disliked hot weather, but it always put Shelley in spirits, and his best work was done beneath the sultry blue of Italian skies, floating in a boat on the Serchio or the Arno, baking in a glazed cage on the roof of a Tuscan villa, or lying among the ruins of the Coliseum or in the pine-woods near Pisa.
Their Italian wanderings are too intricate to be traced in detail here.It was a chequered time, darkened by disaster and cheered by friendships.Both their children died, Clara at Venice in 1818, and William at home in 1819.It is impossible not to be amazed at the heedlessness--the long journeys in a rough foreign land, the absence of ordinary provision against ailments--which seems to have caused the death of these beloved little beings.The birth in 1819 of another son, Percy (who survived to become Sir Percy Shelley), brought some comfort.
Claire's troubles, again, were a constant anxiety.Shelley worked hard to persuade Byron either to let her have Allegra or to look after his daughter properly himself; but he was obdurate, and the child died in a convent near Venice in 1822.
