1. At age 22 Shelley insisted on a diet of bread, butter and "a sort of spurious lemonade" until a friend, Thomas Love Peacock, convinced him to start eating meat again. Shelley's complexion improved.
2. The writer John William Polidori developed a serious crush on 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft and "jumped from a wall in an effort to impress her, spraining his ankle badly in the process." A few days later she told him that she thought of him mostly as a little brother.
3. Lord Byron enjoyed singing Albanian songs consisting of "strange, wild howls" while boating with Shelley in order to exacerbate their "contest with the elements."
4. Upon his release from Surrey Gaol for libel charges, Leigh Hunt, a critic and writer, created for himself a new study "which bore a startling resemblance to his prison bower." His books, busts, flowers and piano were all carefully transported from his prison cell. "His new room was lily- rather than rose-themed, but in all other respects it was similar to his prison accommodation."
5. Leigh Hunt gave John Keats the nickname of "Junkets", which Keats hated. "What has become of Junkets," Hunt wondered to Charles Cowden Clarke in the summer of 1817. "I suppose Queen Mab has eaten him."
(The last one is my favorite. Dear me, what has become of Junkets?)
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Oh honey, don't let me walk away from this. If I'm trying to fuck up my own life, then until I figure out why, I think it's best you keep your distance lest I fall in love.
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No one is with me, going fearlessly--that’s the way I live in the dream I saw. I must put my loneliness away, and protect myself, and I’ll learn to be strong. Country road, it’ll take me back to my home. I can feel it now, if I just keep to this far-off country road. It won’t matter how lonely the times get; you’ll never see me cry, I’ll keep my tears at bay. I know I must take heart, and that hurrying is all I can do. Only that way can I forget.
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