for him, and was included in the sum which Sir Timothy paid for his
debts. Claire--or Jane, as she was still called in Skinner
Street--supposed her family would be comfortable for a month or two.

Shelley and Mary now yearned for the country, and truly their eight
months' experience in London had been a trying period, from various
causes, but redeemed by their love and intellectual conversation. Now
they felt unencumbered by pressing money troubles, and free from the
burden of Claire's still more trying presence, at least to Mary. In
June we find them together at Torquay, and we can imagine the
delight of the poet and his loved Mary in their first unshared
companionship--the quiet rambles by sea and cliff in the long June
evenings, the sunsets, the quiet and undisturbed peace which
surrounded them. They were able to give each other quaint pet names,
which no one could or need understand--which would have sounded silly
in the presence of a third person. This was a time in which they could
grow really to know each other without reserve, when there need be no
jealous competition as to who was most proficient in Greek or Latin;
when Shelley was drawn to poetry, and _Alastor_ was contemplated,
the melancholy strain of which seems to indicate love as the only
redeeming element of life, and which might well follow the time of
turmoil in Shelley's career. May not this poem have been his
self-vindication as exhibiting what he might have become had he not
followed the dictates of his heart? "Pecksie" and the "Elfin Knight"
were the names which still stand written at the end of the first
journal, ending with Claire's departure. Mary added some useful
receipts for future use. One is: "A tablespoonful of the spirit of
aniseed, with a small quantity of spermaceti;" to which Shelley adds
the following: "9 drops of human blood, 7 grains of gunpowder, 1/2 oz.
of putrified brain, 13 mashed grave-worms--the Pecksie's doom salve.