Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes Page A

office. Once again he put himself under the treatment of Sir William Lawrence. His health was in a ‘miserable state’ and he gloomily told Mary that he was consumptive and sometimes feared that he would die during the coming winter. His separation from Mary was to last, apart from fleeting weekend visits, for almost the whole of the rest of September and October, and was to worry her into a state of irritation and nervous anxiety reminiscent of the separation of 1815.
    Shelley’s sudden plunge into the gloom and despondency of September was caused by the sense of circumstances closing around him once more. There were his debts; the responsibility of Alba and Mary’s complaints about Claire which had increased since the birth of her own little Clara; and the collapse of his health in the autumnal damps of Albion House. A mood of martyrdom and self-sacrifice assailed him, and writing to Byron from Hunt’s new address in Paddington, he described the future of Laon and Cythna with lurid relish. ‘I have been engaged this summer, heart and soul, in one pursuit. I have completed a poem . . . in the style and for the same object as “Queen Mab”, but interwoven with a story of human passion . . . . It is to be published — for I am not of your opinion as to religion, etc, and for this simple reason, that I am careless of the consequences as they regard myself. I only feel persecution bitterly, because I bitterly lament the depravity and mistake of those who persecute. As to me, I can but die; I can but be torn to pieces, or devoted to infamy most undeserved . . . .’ 26
    Shelley now decided that the house at Marlow could never be their permanenthome. This was to be a momentous decision. By the end of September, he was already advertising the lease for sale, and asking Mary to decide between wintering in Italy or somewhere on the Kent coast. Mary was aware that details of their financial difficulties were being kept from her, and when Claire returned from London without Shelley, Mary cross-questioned her. Afterwards she wrote anxiously to Shelley, ‘whether it might be that [Claire] was in a croaking humour (in ill spirits she certainly was) or whether she represented things as they really were I know not but certainly affairs did not seem to wear a very good face — She talks of Harriet’s debts to a large amount & something about Longdill’s having undertaken for them so that they must be payed — She mentioned also that you were entering into a post-obit transaction . . . .’ 27
    In other letters to Shelley she urged him in turn to come to a decision about Italy, and in the meantime badgered him with domestic requests, telling him to get his hair cut, and demanding his immediate return to Marlow. Mary in her domestic mood is well illustrated by her instructions concerning a hat for William. ‘I wish Willy to be my companion in my future walks — to further which plan will you send down if possible by Monday’s coach (and if you go to Longdill’s it will be very possible — for you can buy it at the corner of Southampton buildings and send it to the coach at the Old Bailey) a seal skin fur hat for him it must be a fashionable round shape for a boy mention particularly and have a narrow gold riband round it, that it may be taken in if too large; it must measure [ blank ] round & let it rather be too large than too small — but exactly the thing would be best — He cannot walk with me until it comes . . . .’ Several paragraphs later, she cancels the whole request, ‘as it may not fit him or please me’. 28 This nagging, carping side of Mary’s personality gradually emerged through her craving for complete emotional security, which Shelley’s temperament could never satisfy.
    From trivial complaints about Peacock ‘drinking his bottle’, and Claire’s moods, and her own depressions with the children she turned increasingly to his own lack of efficiency and decision. On 2 October her letter