of Lord Byron, and begged him to use his influence in obtaining for her an engagement at Drury Lane. She was the type of young woman who aspires to a career on the stage, or in any other field, without regard to qualifications, and without the burden of study. She wrote in her first letter (it had many successors): "The theatre presents an easy method of independence." She objected vehemently to "the intolerable drudgery of provincial boards." She wanted to appear at once in London. And she signed her name, "Clara Clairmont," which was prettily alliterative, and suited her better than Jane.
It was an inauspicious beginning of an unhappy intimacy, destined to bring nothing but disaster in its train. Miss Clairmont's stepfather, William Godwin, had confessed, not without reason, "a feeling of incompetence for the education of daughters." His own child, Mary, had fled to Europe eighteen months before, with the poet Shelley. Miss Clairmont accompanied their flight; and their inexplicable folly in taking her with them was punished—as folly always is—with a relentless severity
