(15) To this extreme point had he gone in the social philosophy of the Free Lovers, the more moderate of whom discovered much to question, and no little to dissent from, in his manifesto on matters touching the intercourse of the sexes. But far as he had gone in Free Love, Shelley was appointed to go much further, and in the same department of social inquiry to arrive some three or four years later at a conclusion, far stronger and more startling than anything to be found in _Queen Mab’s_ Anti-matrimonial Note. There is no little of direct discrepancy and general confusedness in the many things told us by the authorities respecting Shelley’s several places of residence in London during the season of 1813. To believe all the authorities tell us is to believe that, after resting for a night or two in Chapel Street, he and Harriett lived for several weeks (and even months) in different London hotels, then for several months in lodgings in Half-Moon Street, and then for several weeks in lodgings at Pimlico, and also to believe that they lived some time in Cooke’s Hotel, Dover Street, and in the Half-Moon-Street lodging-house simultaneously, before they settled at Bracknell, in the third week of July, 1813;--which clearly is more than could have been accomplished, even by such singular persons as the Shelleys, between the 7th or 8th of April and the 20th or 21st of the following July. The conflict of the authorities respecting Shelley’s several homes during these fifteen weeks is in a large measure due to the indiscretion of writers, who infer from the dates of letters that he was residing at the hotel where the epistles were written. For instance, from the dates or post-marks of letters written by the poet in May, 1813, to his father and the Duke of Norfolk, and to Mr. Medwin of Horsham on 16th June, 21st June, 28th June, and 6th July, of the same year, it has been inferred that he was living in Cooke’s Hotel, Dover Street, instead of merely frequenting the hotel, in those months,--an inference that will be declined by readers who remember how hotels were used by their mere frequenters in the early days of the present century. To those who remember that between the middle of April and the middle of July, Shelley lodged successively in Half-Moon Street and Pimlico, and occupied each set of rooms for several weeks, the dates of the aforementioned letters are mere evidence that, whilst sleeping in Half-Moon Street and Pimlico, he was a frequenter of the hotel, in which he had previously occupied a bedroom, and that he continued to use the hotel as a place of address for some of his correspondents, also as a place for interview with those of his acquaintances, whom he did not care to receive at his lodgings. It follows that I question whether the accouchement, resulting in the birth of Shelley’s first-born child, took place at the hotel in Dover Street on 27th June, 1813, though he wrote on the following day from the hotel:--