Mr. Froude writes disdainfully of Claire’s probable presumption in ‘perceiving the analogy of Byron’s and Shelley’s situation.’ Mr. Froude remarks also that, ‘so far from Claire’s position being like that of Mary Godwin, it must have appeared to Shelley rather a hideous parody of it.’ Why a hideous parody? The cases were too similar for the resemblance to have escaped any one of the trio. Shelley had quarrelled with his wife and was living with another woman. Byron had differed from his wife and was attached to another woman. Separated from their wives by what is called ‘amicable arrangement,’ both poets were living in Free Contract with girls they could not marry. The similar cases had no doubt their points of dissimilarity. But on the whole these points tell in Byron’s favour. In taking Claire under his protection, he had not seduced a girl no more than sixteen years of age. He had not carried off by stealth the child of his most intimate friend. Nor had he taken such pains to win Claire as Shelley took to capture Mary. It is not certain when and how Byron made Claire’s acquaintance. On this point there are two different stories; one of them representing that he saw her for the first time at a point of Oxford Street, to which he had come at her written request; the other and more reliable story being that their first interview occurred at Drury Lane Theatre, under circumstances set forth in _The Real Lord Byron_. Anyhow the poet’s capture of the giddy and clever girl was an easy conquest, whereas Shelley’s triumph over Mary was a very difficult business. In palliation of Claire’s evil behaviour it should be remembered, that she did not act thus lightly until Shelley had educated her out of her early views, and that in becoming Byron’s mistress she followed an example set her by Mary. Though in my _Real Lord Byron_ I followed previous biographers in saying Shelley and Byron met for the first time at Geneva, I am by no means confident that they had no intercourse in England before setting out for their separate journeys to the same foreign capital. Under the known circumstances it would be so natural for the poets to have a personal conference in the earlier weeks of April, 1816; that far from causing me surprise, it would only fulfil one of my reasonable expectations, to come upon documentary evidence of their having met in London shortly before Byron sailed for Ostend. For the present, however, readers must be content with the assurance that Shelley and Byron came together at the Sécheron Hotel on the 25th of May, 1816.