Now to tell what became of the other actors in this story.
Sir Timothy Shelley lived to the age of ninety-one, dying in 1844. He made Mary a small allowance, but she had to promise not to publish her husband’s posthumous poems, nor any biography of him so long as the old baronet lived. At his death, Percy Florence came into the title and the fortune, Harriet’s son Charles having died in his eleventh year.
A common misfortune had united the two widows, Mary and Jane. For a long time they lived together in Italy, and afterwards in London. Shelley’s friends were so faithful to them that Trelawny asked the hand of Mary in marriage, and a little later Hogg, the sceptic, asked the hand of Jane. Mary refused, saying that she thought Mary Shelley so pretty a name she wished to have it on her tombstone. Jane accepted, but then had to confess she had never been married to Williams. She still had a husband somewhere in India. This did not trouble Hogg, and freed them both from any ceremony. They never left each other, and lived under decorous appearances. Although Hogg was accurate and a hard worker, he was considered mediocre at the Bar, where he pleaded without warmth or eloquence. Towards the end of his life he became a timorous, disillusioned old gentleman, reading Greek and Latin all day long to kill time and cheat his immense boredom.
Claire remained on the Continent, was a governess in Russia, and at the death of Sir Timothy inherited the twelve thousand pounds left her by Shelley, and was freed from poverty.
The older they grew the more these three women quarrelled amongst themselves. Jane declared to everyone that during the last months at Casa Magni Shelley had loved her alone. These assertions repeated to Mary exasperated her so much that she refused to see Jane again. Little by little Miranda became an old woman, a trifle deaf, but always charming. Her eyes would still sparkle when she spoke of the Poet.
During many years Claire occupied herself in writing a book in which she intended to point out, by the examples of Shelley, Byron and herself, how necessary it is to have only conventional ideas on the question of love. But, having had a mental illness, she was obliged to give up work during a long period. She passed the end of her life in Florence, where she became a Roman Catholic and occupied herself in charities.
One day in the spring of 1878 a young man searching for documents on Byron and Shelley came to ask her for reminiscences of them. When he pronounced these two names, there appeared beneath the old lady’s wrinkles one of those smiles, girlish yet full of promises, which had made her so fascinating at eighteen.
“Come,” she said, “I suppose you are as crass as most men, and think that I loved Byron?”
Then, as he looked at her with surprise:
“My young friend,” said she, “no doubt you will know a woman’s heart better some day. I was dazzled, but that does not mean love. It might perhaps have grown into love, but it never did.”