While she studied, he went on with his poem or read history. Godwin had assured him that his ignorance of history was one great cause of his errors of judgment, and though he loathed the subject he set at it courageously. In the evening, Harriet sang old Irish songs, “Robin Adair,” and “Kate of Kearney,” or they read the newspapers together, which at that time were filled with accounts of the prosecutions of Liberal writers. Often to these unknown comrades, condemned for their opinions, Shelley would write offering to pay the fine, but never having ten pounds in hand, he was obliged to borrow at 400 per cent, in order to do so. Presently, it was necessary to go back to London as Harriet’s time was near. Shelley was also approaching his twenty-first birthday, an important date for him, for it seemed possible he might then come to terms with his father. They took rooms at Cooke’s Hotel in Albemarle Street. Eliza, who was with them, looked after Harriet with exaggerated care. Her fussiness annoyed Shelley always in favour of letting Nature have her way. When he was absent Eliza would prime her sister in matrimonial strategy. “It’s most extraordinary that at twenty-one years of age Percy can’t find a way of making up with his father, so that you could be received by the family, and lead the proper sort of life for a future baronet’s wife! If you were a little more skilful and persuasive with him, things would be very different, I’m sure! You ought to have a town house of your own, your own silver, your own carriage; and all that could easily be had if Percy chose.” Harriet was of the same mind. She was a pretty woman and she knew it, and for a pretty woman a life without luxury is as hard to bear as a subordinate position for a clever man. The street admiration she meets with tells her of her power, and she knows too that youth’s a stuff that won’t endure. Just as a strongly armed nation desires to ensure her place in the sun, before demobilizing, Woman wishes to exact good terms from her enemy Man, before resigning herself to the pacifism of old age. Besides which Eliza was continually pitying Harriet, and self-pity comes so naturally to all of us that the most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool. Moved thereunto by Harriet at the instigation of Eliza, and also by renewed counsel from the Duke of Norfolk, Shelley decided to write again to his father. He would not have taken this step had he not judged it to be both honourable and necessary. He desired earnestly to see his mother, and even the Squire seen from a distance of time and place appeared to him a pathetic and inoffensive figure. “MY DEAR FATHER,