Doppelgänger

"Ere Babylon was dust, 

The Magus Zoroaster, my dear child, 

Met his own image walking in the garden. 

That apparition, sole of men, he saw. 

For know there are two worlds of life and death: 

One that which thou beholdest; but the other 

Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit 

The shadows of all forms that think and live 

Till death unite them and they part no more...."

Act I

Prometheus Unbound 

1820

…he told me that he had had many visions lately 

— he had seen the figure of himself which met him as he walked on the terrace and said to him 

— “How long do you mean to be content” 

— No very terrific words & certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing is that Mrs Williams saw him. 

Now Jane, though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination & is not in the slightest degree nervous — neither in dreams or otherwise. 

She was standing one day, the day before I was taken ill, [June 15] at a window that looked on the Terrace with Trelawny — it was day — she saw as she thought Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without a coat or jacket — he passed again — now as he passed both times the same way — and as from the side towards which he went each time there was no way to get back except past the window again (except over a wall twenty feet from the ground) she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus & looked out & seeing him no more she cried — 

“Good God can Shelley have leapt from the wall?…. Where can he be gone?” 

Shelley, said Trelawny — “No Shelley has past — What do you mean?” 

Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly when she heard this & it proved indeed that Shelley had never been on the terrace & was far off at the time she saw him. [emphasis added]

A map of the 1814 and 1816 journeys taken by Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Claire Clairmont. 

Based on the map found in The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley. Vol. 8. 

Ed. Jeanne Moskal. London: William Pickering, 1996, pg. 10. 

The 1814 trip is represented by a dotted line and the 1816 trip is represented by a solid line. Green dots indicate towns visited or stayed at during the 1816 trip, which ended in a three-month stay at Lake Geneva. 

Red dots indicate towns visited or stayed at during the 1814 trip. 

Black dots indicate towns not visited but perhaps helpful to the reader. 

The source map does not indicate what route the Shelleys used on the return trip to England for the 1816 trip.