tice'. His energy in entering upon ecstatic personal
relations was as great as that which he threw into philanthropic
schemes; but the relations, like the schemes, were formed with no notion
of adapting means to ends, and were often dropped as hurriedly. Eliza
Westbrook, at first a woman of estimable qualities, quickly became "a
blind and loathsome worm that cannot see to sting", Miss Hitchener, who
had been induced to give up her school and come to live with them "for
ever," was discovered to be a "brown demon," and had to be pensioned
off. He loved his wife for a time, but they drifted apart, and he found
consolation in a sentimental attachment to a Mrs. Boinville and her
daughter, Cornelia Turner, ladies who read Italian poetry with him
and sang to guitars. Harriet had borne him a daughter, Ianthe, but she
herself was a child, who soon wearied of philosophy and of being taught
Latin; naturally she wanted fine clothes, fashion, a settlement. Egged
on by her sister, she spent on plate and a carriage the money that
Shelley would have squandered on humanity at large. Money difficulties
and negotiations with his father were the background of all this period.
On March 24, 1814, he married Harriet in church, to settle any possible
question as to the legitimacy of his children; but they parted soon
after. Attempts were made at reconciliation, which might have succeeded
had not Shelley during this summer drifted into a serious and relatively
permanent passion. He made financial provision for his wife, who gave
birth to a second child, a boy, on November 30, 1814; but, as the months
passed, and Shelley was irrevocably bound to another, she lost heart for
life in the dreariness of her father's house. An Irish officer took her
for his mistress, and on December 10, 1816, she was found drowned in the
Serpentine. Twenty days later Shelley married his second wife.

This marriage was the result of his correspondence with William Godwin,
which had ripened into intimacy, based on community of principles, with
the Godwin household. The philosopher, a short, stout old man, presided,
with his big bald head, his leaden complexion, and his air of a
dissenting minister, over a heterogeneous family at 41 Skinner Street,
Holborn, supported in scrambling poverty by the energy of the second
Mrs. Godwin, who carried on a business of publishing children's books.
In letters of the time we see Mrs. Godwin as a fat little woman in
a black velvet dress