next settled at Bishopgate, near Windsor Forest. In May 1816 they went
abroad, along with Miss Clairmont and their infant son William, and
joined Lord Byron on the shore of the Lake of Geneva. An amour was
already going on between Byron and Miss Clairmont; it resulted in the
birth of a daughter, Allegra, in January 1817; she died in 1822, very
shortly before Shelley. He and Mary had returned to London in September
1816. Very shortly afterwards, 9th of November, the ill-starred Harriet
Shelley drowned herself in the Serpentine: her body was only recovered
on the 10th of December, and the verdict of the Coroner's Jury was
'found drowned,' her name being given as 'Harriet Smith.' The career of
Harriet since her separation from her husband is very indistinctly
known. It has indeed been asserted in positive terms that she formed
more than one connexion with other men: she had ceased to live along
with her father and sister, and is said to have been expelled from their
house. In these statements I see nothing either unveracious or unlikely:
but it is true that a sceptical habit of mind, which insists upon
express evidence and upon severe sifting of evidence, may remain
unconvinced[2]. This was the second suicide in Shelley's immediate
circle, for Fanny Wollstonecraft had taken poison just before under
rather unaccountable circumstances. No doubt he felt dismay and horror,
and self-reproach as well; yet there is nothing to show that he
condemned his conduct, at any stage of the transactions with Harriet, as
heinously wrong. He took the earliest opportunity--30th of December--of
marrying Mary Godwin; and thus he became reconciled to her father and to
other members of the family.

It was towards the time of Harriet's suicide that Shelley, staying in
and near London, became personally intimate with the essayist and poet,
Leigh Hunt, and through him he came to know John Keats: their first
meeting appears to have occurred on 5th February, 1817. As this matter