Shelley's Ghost

While accompanying Shelley and Mary around the Continent in 1814 Claire Clairmont made a journal of her own. Late in life she returned to her journal (now in the British Library) and made this fair copy, perhaps with the intention of publishing it just as the Shelleys had included their journal in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour. While copying she added further details which, although perhaps distorted by the unreliability of memory, threw new light on that vivid time. Claire recalled, for example, an exchange between Shelley and Mary on 19 August:

Mary laughed and said Men always were the sources of a thousand difficulties – then Shelley asked her why she all of a sudden looked so sad – and she answered I was thinking of my father – and wondering what he was now feeling. He then said, “Do you mean that as a reproach to me? – ” and she answered “Oh! No! Don’t let us think more about it.” But I think the something or other had brought her flight into her mind and the sorrow her father must feel – and she loves him so much.

Claire Clairmont; Paola Clairmont; H. Buxton Forman.

Shelley and his Circle, iii, pp. 342-75.

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