Ashley MS 2820 (1)

Two Pamphlets. Pamphlet originally of twenty four leaves of white wove paper, of which ten leaves remain, stitched in a purple paper wrapper. No watermarks. Following f. 7 fourteen leaves have been cut out, leaving stubs, of which the first four are blank, the fifth has text on the verso (f. 8b), the sixth on the recto (f. 9a), the seventh on both sides (ff. 10a, 10b), the eighth on the recto (f. 11a), the ninth on the verso (f. 12b), and the last five are blank. On ff. 2a, 4b, 5a, 7a and 9a are pencil notes and marks apparently made by Edward Dowden when he was lent the volume by Harry Buxton Forman to assist the preparation of his Life of P. B. Shelley, 1886. Since f. 9 is one of the leaves of which only a stub remains, it appears that the missing leaves were cut out after the use of the MS. by Dowden. The contents of the pamphlet are headed 'Anecdotes, Remembrances & c & c.', and are:―

a. Anecdote concerning three pious old maids. ff. 1-2a.

b. Description of a man speaking. f. 2a.

c. Anecdote of the story of Noah being told to a child Nicolas. The name has been deleted, and the letter 'A.' written above it by a hand apparently not Claire's, since she habitually forms the letter differently. Dowden in turn has added the note 'Allegra'. ff. 2a, 2b.

d. Comment on Thomas Medwin, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron, 1824. ff. 2b, 3a.

e. Description of the effect of the death of a child. f. 3a.

f. Description of the recovery of her spirits. f. 3a.

g. Anecdote concerning the reactions of the public to a non-existent book supposedly of a horrible nature. The anecdote is unfinished. ff. 3b, 4a.

h. Two quatrains, the first on Life, the second on Fame. f. 4b.

i. Description of Mary Shelley's hair and nature, and of her attendance at an execution in Pisa. At the beginning of the passage Dowden has written 'Mrs Shelley' in pencil. At the head of f. 5a is the line 'Tete a Tete avec une fleur'. Mrs Stocking suggests that this, together with the quatrains at the head of f. 4b (h), may indicate that Claire originally used the pamphlet for copying poems or songs. ff. 4b, 5a.

j. Sentence likening a certain man to a porcupine. f. 5b.

k. Description of Dresden in winter. Claire spent the winter of 1829 / 1830 in Dresden with Natalie Kaisaroff. This description was apparently written after that of P. B. Shelley (l), since part of it occupies the bottom third of a page (f. 7a) the rest of which has been used for (l). ff. 6a-7b.

l. Description of P. B. Shelley. f. 7a.

m. Description of her own fortitude at Lerici [after the news of her daughter Allegra's death?]. f. 13b.

n. Her reasons for going to Russia. f. 13b.

o. Expression of her desire that her memory should not pass into oblivion. f. 13b.

p. Description of the difficulty of her life. f. 13b.

q. Exclamation at the discordant nature of man in the midst of the harmony of the Universe. f. 13b.

r. Passage contrasting the Gothic, Norman or Moorish architecture with that of the Greeks and Romans. ff. 13b, 14a.

s. Description, in lyrical terms, of Naples. f. 15a.

Quarto; ff. 15.