At a time when he and Mary were being avoided by society for
openly defying its laws, they might well reflect whether they could
afford to avow the new complication which had sprung up in their small
circle. Claire, in hopes of finding some theatrical engagement, had
called upon Lord Byron at Drury Lane Theatre, apparently about March
1816, during the distressing period of his rupture with his wife. The
result of this acquaintance is too well known, and has been too much a
source of obloquy to all concerned in it, to need much comment here,
and it is only as the facts affect Mary that we need refer to them at
all.
At this time Byron was about to leave England, pursued, justly or
unjustly, by the hatred of the British mob for a poet who dared to
quarrel with his wife and follow the low manners of some of the
leaders of fashion whom he had been intimate with. Their obscurity has
sheltered _them_ from opprobrium. He was accompanied by the young
physician, Dr. John Polidori, who has somehow passed with Byron's
readers as a fool; yet he certainly could have been no fool in the
ordinary sense of the word, as he had taken full degrees as a doctor
at an earlier age perhaps than had ever been known before.
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