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Shelley still continued to call, coming via Saint Pancras Church. In a few months, Mary confided to Jane that she and Shelley were about to elope, and Jane must make peace and explain matters after they were gone.

Jane cried and declared she would go, too–she would go or die: she would go as servant, scullion–anything, but go she would. Shelley was consulted, and to prevent tragedy consented to Jane going as maid to Mary, his well-beloved.

So the trinity eloped. It being Shelley’s second elopement, he took the matter a little more coolly than did the girls, who had never eloped before. Having reached Dover, and while waiting at a hotel for the boat, the landlord suddenly appeared and breathlessly explained to Shelley, “A fat woman has just arrived and swears that you have run away with her girls!”

It was Mrs. Godwin.

The party got out by the back way and hired a small boat to take them to Calais. They embarked in a storm, and after beating about all night, came in sight of France the next morning as the sun arose.

Godwin was very much grieved and shocked to think that Shelley had broken in upon established order and done this thing. But Shelley had read Godwin’s book and simply taken the philosopher at his word: “The impulses of the human heart are just and right; they are greater than law, and must be respected.”

The runaways seemed to have had a jolly time in France as long as their money lasted. They bought a mule to carry their luggage, and walked. Jane’s feet blistered, however, and they seated her upon the luggage upon the mule, and as the author of “Queen Mab” led the patient beast, Mary with a switch followed behind. After some days Shelley sprained his ankle, and then it was his turn to ride while Mary led the mule and Jane trudged after.

Thus they journeyed for six weeks, writing poetry, discussing philosophy; loving, wild, free and careless, until they came to Switzerland. One morning they counted their money and found they had just enough to take them to England.

Arriving in London the Godwins were not inclined to take them back, and society in general looked upon them with complete disfavor.

Shelley’s father was now fully convinced of his son’s depravity, but doled out enough money to prevent actual starvation. Shelley began to perceive that any man who sets himself against the established order–the order that the world has been thousands of years in building up–will be ground into the dust. The old world may be wrong, but it can not be righted in a day, and so long as a man chooses to live in society he must conform, in the main, to society usages. These old ways that have done good service all the years can not be replaced by the instantaneous process. If changed at all they must change as man changes, and man must change first. It is man that must be reformed, not custom.

Shelley and Mary Godwin were mates if ever such existed. In a year Mary had developed from a child into splendid womanhood–a beautiful, superior, earnest woman. By her own efforts, of course aided by Shelley (for they were partners in everything), she became versed in the classics and delved deeply into the literature of a time long past. Unlike her mother, Mary Shelley could do no great work alone. The sensitiveness and the delicacy of her nature precluded that self-reliant egoism which can create. She wrote one book, “Frankenstein,” which in point of prophetic and allegorical suggestion stamps the work as classic: but it was written under the immediate spell of Shelley’s presence. Shelley also could not work alone, and without her the world’s disfavor must have whipped him into insanity and death.

As it was they sought peace in love and Italy, living near Lord Byron in great intimacy, and befriended by him in many ways.