The Maie and her Elfin Knight."

We next find Mary at Clifton, July 27, 1815, writing in much
despondency at being alone while Shelley is house-hunting in South
Devon. Although she wishes to have a home of her own, she dreads the
time it will take Shelley to find it. He ought to be with her the next
day, the anniversary of their journey to Dover; without him it will be
insupportable. And then the 4th of August will be his birthday, when
they must be together. They might go to Tintern Abbey. If Shelley does
not come to her, or give her leave to join him, she will leave in the
morning and be with him before night to give him her present with her
own hand. And then, is not Claire in North Devon? If Shelley has let
her know where he is, is she not sure to join him if she think he is
alone? Insufferable thought! As Professor Dowden shows, Mary must have
been very soon joined by Shelley after this touching appeal. In all
probability a house was fixed on, but in a very opposite direction,
before the end of the week, and the lease or arrangements made by
August 3, as the following year he writes from Geneva to Langdill to
give up possession of his house at Bishopsgate by August 3, 1816. So
here, far from Devonshire, by the gates of Windsor Forest, near the
familiar haunts of his Eton days, we again find Shelley and Mary. Here
Peacock was not far distant at Marlow, and Hogg could arrive from
London, and here they were within reach of the river. No long time
elapsed before they were tempted to experience again the delights of a
holiday on the Thames. So Mary and Shelley, with Peacock and Charles
Clairmont to help him with an oar, embarked and went up the river.
They passed Reading and Oxford, winding through meadows and woods,
till arriving at Lechlade, fourteen miles from the source of the
Thames, they still strove to help the boat to reach this point if the
boat would not help them. This proved impossible. After three miles,