Payne have seen in her attitude toward him nothing but a
desire for marriage with Washington Irving and for free
opera tickets. ³ A biographer of Trelawny sneered at her
"correct, genteel little soul," ⁴ and insisted that she never
truly loved Shelley. For Trelawny--that same Trelawny
who had once tentatively proposed marriage to her--had
written to Claire in the 1870's, "Mary Shelley's jealousy
must have sorely vexed Shelley--indeed she was not a suit-
able companion for the poet--his first wife Harriett must
have been more suitable--Mary was the most conventional
slave I have ever met . . . she was devoid of imagination
and Poetry--she felt compunction when she had lost him
--she did not understand or appreciate him." ⁵

But she deserves the sneers and innuendoes of Trelawny,
Massingham, or Professor R. M. Smith as little as she does
the blind adulation of Lady Shelley or Mrs. Marshall. She
won the love of Shelley and at least a part of the fickle
affections of Trelawny; she was courted by John Howard
Payne and Prosper Mérimée; she was liked and respected
by the Hunts, the Lambs, the Novellos, the Gisbornes,
Bryan Procter, Sir John Bowring, Robert Dale Owen, and
--at certain moments--Lord Byron. She proved herself a
woman not only of charm but also of a liberal and inde-
pendent mind. After Shelley's death, it is true, she slipped
more easily into the ways of polite society. If this is slav-
ery to convention, however, it must be remembered that
Trelawny said of the whole Pisa circle, "Left to ourselves,
we degenerated apace."

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