Shelley's Ghost

Locks of hair taken from friends and loved ones were an important element of Lady Shelley’s sanctum at Boscombe Manor, following Mary Shelley’s own practice in collecting and preserving them. This elaborate case contains (mounted in the trademark gold gilt of the sanctum) locks of hair taken from six of Shelley’s friends: Lord Byron (1822); Leigh Hunt (1817); Byron’s mistress Teresa Guiccioli (no date); the Greek independence fighter Alexander Mavrocordato (1820); Edward John Trelawny (1822); Edward Williams (1821); and the Irish poet Thomas Moore (no date).

Trelawny’s place in the sanctum was threatened when he published, in 1878, Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, a work sharply critical of Mary Shelley. After reading this strangely vindictive book Lady Shelley wrote to Trelawny:

     At Boscombe, there is a room built expressly to receive all that we hold most sacred. One side is occupied by a niche in which is placed the life sized model of the monument raised to the memory of Shelley & Mary by their son …
     This same room is never entered but by kindred feet, or by those in whose hearts Shelley lives – Amongst other things in it, there is a glass case containing locks of hair – They belong to those he and Mary valued as friends & with whom they had been most closely associated –
 Leigh Hunt – Byron – Ed^d Williams & one marked – “Trelawny 1822” it is black, as yet, & was given, no doubt, at the time when Mary possessed in the giver a true & generous friend – But the Trelawny of those days, where is he? – Alas! that the snows of age should not only have fallen on his head but should have frozen the heart that beat so warmly in 1822 … (MS. Abinger, c. 73, fols. 109-18).