It is not surprising that after living together for seven months, Claire and Mary determined to dwell apart. In truth the reasons why they should not cohabit (to use one of Godwin’s favourite words) were so numerous and weighty that nothing but the strength of the mutual affection, underlying their mutual jealousies and emotional discrepancies of sentiment, will account for the long postponement of the outbreak of temper on either side that, in the spring of 1815, severed them for awhile. A young married woman usually likes to have her home to herself and her husband, and though she was not Shelley’s wife it was natural for Mary to rate herself as his wife, and all the more for the peculiarity of her alliance with him to wish for the full measure of the domestic privacy, to which a wife is entitled. Mary was too well acquainted with the troubles arising from Miss Westbrook’s permanent residence with Percy and Harriett, not to fear that similar troubles might ensue to him and herself should Claire be always with them. She was the more desirous for Claire to leave them to themselves, because, though she had no doubt of the strength and completeness of Shelley’s attachment to herself, she could not blind herself to his admiration of and liking for Claire,--an admiration and liking that influenced him to the day of his death, although his affection for her was sometimes sorely tried by Claire’s waywardness and freakish impetuosity. At the same time, though the witty and vivacious girl amused and delighted him even when she was most perverse and unmanageable, Shelley had in former times suffered too much from a sister-in-law’s influence and continual presence at his hearth, not to shrink from the thought of having another sister-in-law incessantly on his hands. Hence it came to pass that, on 11th March, 1815, Mary wrote in her diary,-- ‘March 11th, 1815.--Talk about Claire’s going away. Nothing settled. I fear it is hopeless; she will not go to Skinner Street. Thus our house, I see plainly, is the only remaining place--what is to be done?’ Two months later, after numerous tiffs and interchanges of sarcastic speech, the two hot-tempered sisters parted for awhile, not more to the relief and contentment of the one than of the other, Claire taking up her abode in a solitary cottage (presumably on an allowance made by Shelley), whilst her sister and the poet entered on the enjoyment of the furnished house at Bishopgate (the eastern entrance of Windsor Park) that was their usual place of abode from the summer of 1815 to the early summer (or, to speak more precisely, the late spring) of 1816. That Mary and Claire separated none too soon appears from the letter in which the latter wrote on 15th May, 1815, to Fanny Imlay (_alias_ Wollstonecraft, _alias_ Godwin),--