Beschreibung:

Clairmont (Claire, a member of the Shelley-Byron circle, 1798-1879).- Trelawny (Edward John, writer and adventurer, friend of Shelley and Byron, 1792-1881) Autograph Letter signed "J.E. Trelawny" to Claire Clairmont at Toplitz, ("Between 1828 and 1831 he called himself John Edward Trelawny" - Oxford DNB), 3pp. & address panel, sm. 4to, Plymouth, 30th July 1828, an affectionate letter from a devoted admirer, "My Dearest Claire, Reproach me not with my long silence - you will pardon it when I can orally explain the cause of it - you will wrong me if you think my affection for you is diminished; I am unchanged, dear - at least in heart - and nothing could touch me so near as to find there was a falling off on your side. I have been in England two months nearly - have not seen Mary [Shelley] - but in a letter I have received from her to-day she tells me you have left Russia - this gives me great pleasure; the distance is diminishing between us and my hopes of soon seeing you awakened. Write, sweet friend, and tell me your movements - say you are unaltered - and that it will give you pleasure our meeting. It is impossible on this miserable sheet of paper to fill up the blank in our correspondence by a narration of intervening events - we may now look forward to seeing each other; it is not being too sanguine to say so now. But when you were in Russia and I in Greece [with Byron] - the very antipodes of each other - our chance of again meeting was indeed but little. A slow and wasting fever has long been undermining my health and sapping my strength - but I am now getting over it... ", folds, slightly browned; and 2 other works by Edward John Trelawny, The Relations of Percy Bysshe Shelley 1920, and The Relations of Lord Byron and Augusta Leigh, 1920, both signed presentation copies from T.J. Wise, original printed wrappers, Printed for Private Circulation Only, all preserved in a red cloth portfolio case, sm. 4to (3). ⁂ A fine letter from a friend of Percy and Mary Shelley and Byron. Trelawny met the Shelley - Byron circle in Pisa in 1822 and soon formed a close friendship with Shelley, Byron, Mary Shelley and Jane Williams He formed a romantic attachment to Claire Clairmont and though she refused to marry him they remained friends for the rest of their long lives. Famously, Trelawny took charge of the burning of Shelley's body on the shore at Leghorn and plucked his unburnt heart from the flames. In 1823 he agreed to accompany Byron to Greece. Byron wrote, "I shall like your company of all things," but soon after they arrived on the Ionian Islands they separated, and Trelawny was not present at his death at Missolonghi in 1824. Provenance: Published in Letters of Edward John Trelawny, edited by H. Buxton Forman, Oxford University Press London, 1910. Ink inscription by John Drinkwater on pastedown of cloth portfolio, "Inserted is a letter from Trelawny to Claire Clairmont given to me by Wise. J.D." Wise was Buxton Forman's executor when he died in 1920 and it is most likely that Buxton Forman acquired this letter when he purchased the Clairmont collection of Shelley documents and relics which included over fifty years of correspondence from Trelawny, from Paola Clairmont.