The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives

by Diane Johnson

  •

  On December 27th 1810 Departed this Life Mrs Love of Chertsey (Widow of the late respectable Captain Thomas Love who was formerly in the Holy Land)—This aged Lady had arrived at the great Age of 83. She died in the full assurance of Faith of a Blessed Immortality—For Some time past a visible & gradual Decay of Nature had appeared in her, though not to impair her Memory or Mental Faculties which were Naturally Strong & vigorous.

  During a long Life, She had experienced very great troubles & difficulties. But the Mercy of Providence in Supporting Under them was deeply Engraved upon her Mind, & That Mercy was Evident in Sparing her, to the Last, the kind & dutiful attention of a Daughter who devoted her time & Care & thoughts, to the Comfort of this Aged Parent. —If her attention Can be Equalld, it Cannot be Exceeded! . . .

  Sometimes She would lament her Coldness & Languor in Devotion, & was anxious for Spiritual Fervour & freedom in Prayer. —As her illness increased & She beheld the affliction of her Daughter, She tenderly desired her to be Comforted, & to put her Trust in God, Saying He would not forsake her but that He had Blessings in Store for her upon Account of her filial kindness, & two nights before her decease She felt Sweetly Composed while Mrs P. was repeating some Hymns to her & began one herself

  God moves in a Mysterious Way &c

  Cowper

  The Night before her Death, it Seem’d as if her Soul was Strengthend & invigorated, as the moment of its Departure approached from its feeble & oppressive Tenement. —She Conversed for an Hour & an Half, with astonishing Clearness and Energy, & the powers of Speech Seem’d to be restored for that purpose, that She might give Glory to God & begin His Praises while She was Yet upon Earth. She Said —“Had I not put Trust in God What Should I have done? —what wou’d have become of me? —He Comforted & Supported me when my husband & Children were exposed to dangerous Climates Tempests & Battles & brought them home in Safety that we might Enjoy Comfort & Happiness together! God Supported me thro Life in all my troubles and “He promised never to Leave nor forsake me, and Shall I doubt His Goodness in my dying Moments?” . . .

  . . . Here her powers of utterance were Suspended—& Mrs P. Supplied the Last Line [of a hymn]—And Very Soon after the impatient & fervent Spirit was released—It winged its flight without my apprehension from a Scene of Weakness & Infirmity, from its Earthly perishing Tabernacle—to Immortal Happiness—Doubtless to be Re-united Again in the joyful Morning of the Resurrection—when Pain and Infirmity Shall be known No more for Ever—4

  •

  Peacock’s grandmother died in Chertsey with his mother beside her. Peacock, meantime, had come to a time of life when, besides making himself a famous poet, he began to find himself falling in love. This is an important time for Mary Ellen, for in Peacock’s young manhood, how it was spent or misspent—in the parlors of young ladies he was courting, in the beds of mistresses of a worldly sort, in the company of unconventional and intellectual women—he developed or confirmed a view of women rather peculiar for a man of his time. That is why, most Victorians would have agreed, he did not bring up Mary Ellen as he ought.

  Peacock was amorous. It is really better not to look at old pictures at all, and surely not at those that show the subjects of sympathetic biographies as old, portly people. But some drawings of the young Peacock survive, and are fairly satisfying. It is just possible to imagine the young man animate; tall and very slim, strong because of much walking and rowing, with a pretty V-shaped mouth, its expression somewhat arch, and large, bright blue eyes looking right past you. The golden curls are darker now, growing every which way; the skin is very fair, and he has a long, slim nose for looking down.

  When he was old a lady wrote to him of himself: “I never can think of you otherwise than as that young and brilliant personage we used to know . . . when you used to repeat poetry, drink champagne, and seem not to have a single link to heavy earth.”

  This letter is signed by “ever your affectionate Clarinda Atkyns,” who had caught a glimpse of him in Grosvenor Square, now white-haired but not “looking any older—and your voice and laugh were still the same.” Who, poor lady, was she, and what had her life been, to write so wistfully to this old man, from Ombersly Vicarage, Droitwich?

  •

  Peacock fell in love a lot. Cousin Harriet remembered “once saying to him ‘if ever I write a book it shall be on the plan of the Arabian Nights.—The thousand and one loves of Thomas Love Peacock.’—He laughed most heartily and replied ‘Well, I don’t think you would be very far out!’” (The Biographer wondered about leaving this out.5 Victorians minded, in their delicate way, the notion that people might have fallen in love with anyone but the one they married. If your early love had died, and you remained sentimentally single, they would put it in your biography.)6

  Peacock himself, and Cousin Harriet too, seemed to relish his role of Romantic roué. Cousin Harriet proudly says he was very like the description he makes Miss Ilex give of her lover in Gryll Grange: “. . . he was very much of an universal lover, and was always overcome by the smiles of present beauty. He was of a romantic turn of mind: he disliked and avoided the ordinary pursuits of young men: he delighted in the society of accomplished young women, and in that alone.”

  It was really only his friend Shelley, ardent and excitable, who, when piqued a time or two, referred to Peacock as “cold,” or “sensible,” and fixed as cold and sensible a disposition that was quixotic and impulsive. Though not as dashing as Shelley—which few people could be—Peacock was dashing, even dissolute, in a sentimental, Romantic way, and was not at all the dispassionate exponent of pure reason we think him. He had, for example, a picturesque, hopeless love, for a maiden named Fanny whom he would meet in secret by some ruins, in the best fashion of his day, and to whom he was engaged until she Married Another, also in the best fashion of the day—after which she died. Little Edith maintained that, until his death, Grandpapa wore a locket of Fanny’s hair next to his bosom. One wonders how he explained this to his wife. And there were Lucindas, Clarindas, Matildas, and Mariannes besides.

  •

  In those days one of the things it was necessary to do, to make yourself a Romantic Poet, was to travel and look at beautiful scenery. It was therefore Thomas’s custom, like that of Miss Ilex’s lover, to “disappear for weeks at a time, wandering in forests, climbing mountains, and descending into the dingles of mountain-streams, with no other companion than a Newfoundland dog; a large, black dog, with a white breast, four white paws, and a white tip to his tail.” Peacock was captivated by the country around Maentwrog, in Wales, and went there, as he wrote to a friend, “resolved to devote the whole interval to exploring the vicinity, and . . . climbing about the rocks and mountains, by the rivers and the sea, with indefatigable zeal, carrying in my mind the bardic triad, that a poet should have an eye that can see nature, a heart that can feel nature, and a resolution that dares follow nature; in obedience to which latter injunction I have nearly broken my neck.”7 In 1811 he settled in one of the cottages in a tiny village, writing poems and affecting a Romantic, hermitlike life of study, scenery, and seclusion. A lady who knew him then told Shelley, “Ah! . . . there Mr. Peacock lived in a cottage near Tan y bwylch, associating with no one, and hiding his head like a murderer. . . . But, he was worse than that, he was an Atheist.” Small wonder if the daughter of the local parson fell in love with him, though there is no evidence that she did. It was she who would become Mary Ellen’s mother.

  This girl was Jane Gryffydh, and her father, whom Peacock described as a “dumpy, drunken, mountain-goat,” was the rector of the local parish, a man of some learning and called “Doctor” by courtesy, having taken an Oxford B.A. Peacock was very glad to have met him, for in spite of his hermitish intentions he was secretly glad of company out there in the wilds. He saw Dr. Gryffydh occasionally, and he must have become acquainted with Jane, but how well it is difficult to tell. His only surviving ment
ion of her from this time describes their parting.

  Suddenly one morning he resolved to leave Wales, and he strolled up to the parsonage (“I could not leave the Vale without taking leave of Jane Gryffydh,—the most innocent, the most amiable, the most beautiful girl in existence”) and asked her to walk with him to his rooms. “The old lady being in the way, I could not speak to her there: asked her to walk with me to the Lodge. She was obliged to dress for church immediately: but promised to call on her way. She did so. I told her my intention of departing that day, and gave her my last remaining copy of the Genius,” his poem. Jane, with whatever feelings of relief or regret, walked on to church, and that was the last she saw of the handsome poet for eight years. Thomas made another trip to Wales in 1813, but does not seem to have looked her up.

  •

  It was the year after his first Wales trip, 1812, that Peacock, now back in London, met Percy Bysshe Shelley, through their mutual friends, the Hookhams. Shelley knew Peacock’s poetry. He didn’t like it—he had trouble feeling as Peacock did that “the glory of the British Flag is the Happiness of the British People”—but he admired it, and felt at least “the conclusion of Palmyra to be the finest piece of poetry I ever read.” People have always felt that the friendship of Shelley and Peacock was an odd one between men of most dissimilar temperaments, but they were probably not so dissimilar at this point in time. More is known about this period of Shelley’s life than of Peacock’s, but they were together a lot. Shelley’s life was a harried one of bailiffs, angry parents, elopements, death, delusion, passion, semi-madness, wife-sharing, and suicides. Almost anybody else’s life would have seemed tame by comparison, but Peacock, on his own account, at least had an affair with an heiress whom he lived with and who turned out to have no money, got thrown into prison for debt, and fell seriously in love with a lady who refused him.

  The affair with the heiress and his subsequent imprisonment for debt are known only through laconic entries in Mary Shelley’s diary: “a rich heiress has fallen in love with Peacock and lives with him—she is very miserable—God knows why—P. is on her account & that of M. St. C. & M. is miserable on her own account.”

  Then, a couple of weeks later: “Letter from Peacock to say that he is in prison—the foolish man lived up to Charlottes expectancies who turns out to have nothing—her behavior is inexplicable—there is a terrible mystery in the affair—his debt is £40—a letter also from Gray who knows nothing about her—this is a funny man also—write to Peacock & send him £2.”

  The other terrible mystery in the affair is “M. St. C.,” or Marianne de St. Croix of Homerton, a shadowy young woman whose family Peacock had known for many years and whom Peacock had evidently planned to marry as early as 1814. Their courtship was interrupted by the escapade with the “heiress,” but later, after he had been out of jail awhile, he discussed with the Shelleys his plan of taking Marianne to Canada, so their engagement must have been on again.

  His friends were diverted by the off-again, on-again marital plans of Peacock; they were dumbfounded, and perhaps secretly impressed, when to everybody’s surprise he procured a probationary training period with the East India Company, with a view to taking an examination and, possibly, a job. His friends, and he, had thought of him as an homme de lettres; now he was to be a bureaucrat. Would he find time to write his charming novels under the press of heavy responsibilities? they must have asked him. (By now he had almost abandoned poetry and had already written Nightmare Abbey, Melincourt, and Maid Marian.)8 After six weeks of study, and after a period of consideration, the East India Company appointed four new officials: an Examiner, Edward Strachey; and three assistants, James Mill, Peacock, and a J. J. Harcourt. Leigh Hunt writes to Mary Shelley: “You have heard, of course, of Peacock’s appointment in the India House; we joke him upon his new Oriental grandeur, his Brahminical learning, and his inevitable tendencies to be one of the corrupt; upon which he seems to apprehend Shelleian objurgation. It is an honour to him that ‘prosperity’ sits on him well. He is very pleasant and hospitable.” And Thomas Jefferson Hogg writes to Shelley that Peacock “is well pleased with his change of fortune, and has taken a house in Stamford Street, which, as you might expect from a Republican, he has furnished very handsomely.”

  He was now well settled, and thirty-four years old, and, very naturally, began to think of marriage, a matter of utmost consequence to Mary Ellen.

  •

  We can see that Thomas, with a clever mother and grandmother, and friends like Mary Shelley, who wrote books, and like Claire Clairmont, Byron’s mistress, and like Percy Shelley and Hogg and Hookham and Hunt—was part of the kind of set that preferred advanced females; these were by no means the sort of female recommended for marriage in those days. “I own I often feel uneasy,” wrote his family minister to young Hogg just after he and Shelley were sent down from Oxford, “at the thoughts of the set to whom your new opinions will introduce you. Many of these women of Genius as they wish to be thought are entertaining and fascinating to a young man—Of the sect of Shellyites you must have several—but I think if you compare them with the women with whom you were bred up—your mother & etc., you will own that a man’s conjugal happiness is much more likely to be preserved in the old school than the new.”9

  Perhaps Thomas Hogg passed along this advice to Thomas Peacock, and Peacock bore it in mind. In any case he first proposed to Marianne and she, after all those years, refused him. It is a great puzzle. And so Peacock turned around and dashed off a letter of proposal to that Welsh girl he hadn’t seen in eight years but remembered thinking of as “the most innocent, amiable girl in existence,”—a nice, old-fashioned girl.

  Cousin Harriet was living with Thomas and Sarah in Stamford Street at the time, and remembers that this letter was written under a “feeling of bitter disappointment,” whose causes after an “unlooked-for call at the East India House from an old acquaintance who suggested it, are now known only to myself.” Well, Thomas was nothing if not resourceful, and you can’t go wrong with a nice, old-fashioned girl.

  •

  Of Mary Ellen’s mother there remains only one of her letters, so we may imagine her how we please. She was a little Welsh village girl, the daughter of a parson (like everyone else then, it seems), the child of her father’s second wife, who, having married in 1783, produced five children by 1789, when Jane was born, and another after. Because her father was called “Dr.” Gryffydh (for he had taken a bachelor’s degree), Jane may have thought herself a little better than the other villagers, or at least more privileged.

  Dr. Gryffydh held the parish living in the tiny village of Maentwrog (pronounced Mantoorog), which Peacock had described to a friend as “a delightful spot, enchanting even in the gloom of winter: in summer it must be a terrestrial paradise. It is a beautiful narrow vale, several miles in length, extending in one direction to the sea, and totally embosomed in mountains, the sides of which are covered, in many parts, with large woods of oak.” Eight years before his letter of proposal, Peacock had taken a sitting room in a lodging that was too expensive, looking out on a “lovely river, which flows through the vale. In the vicinity are many deep glens,—along which copious mountain-streams, of inconceivable clearness, roar over rocky channels,—and numerous waterfalls. . . .” The handsome, visiting poet, who had stayed in the area for fifteen months or so, was a great addition to the neighborhood. Jane had talked to him of Scipio and Hannibal, though she did not apparently talk well enough, because one day he paid that final call, settled with the inn-keeper, and walked back to London, which was the last anybody in Maentwrog had seen of him for eight years.

  How Jane spent those eight years we do not know. Perhaps she had suitors—but we do not know about them. Her mind, in any case, cannot have been much occupied with Peacock, because she was beset by misfortunes. Her father died in August 1812, and another minister came to live at the parsonage at Maentwrog. Jane and her mother had t
o go to live nearby in Tan y bwylch, where their hopes and circumstances were straitened next by the death of the oldest brother, a medical doctor, in February 1813. The only remaining sister, Anne, married and moved off, and the younger brother, David, was probably still at Oxford, and certainly more of a liability than a help. Whatever small resources the family had would have had to be directed to his education; whatever energies Jane had must have partly gone to the care of the “old lady,” her mother, nearly seventy by the time Jane hears from Peacock again.

  In the eight years since he had left, Jane Gryffydh first of all had become an old maid, aged thirty years and without prospects. Her life may have been rather like that of the old maids in Mrs. Gaskell’s village of Cranford a few years later—concerned with daily tasks, with the rituals of visiting, church and charitable activities, all the tasks of a poor household, with “only an occasional little quarrel, spirted [sic] out in a few peppery words and angry jerks of the head; just enough to prevent the even tenor of their lives from becoming too flat. Their dress is very independent of fashion; as they observe: ‘What does it signify how we dress here in Cranford, where everybody knows us?’ And if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent: ‘What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?’”

  It was a limited and doubtless tedious little society where Jane Gryffydh lived until she was thirty, with sore troubles and deaths in the family, and about her personal lot her thought was, perhaps, “What does it signify?”

  •

  During his stay the young poet Peacock had written rhapsodically of the beauties of Wales in winter: “I wish I could find language sufficiently powerful to convey to you an idea of the sublime magnificence of the waterfalls in the frost—when the old overhanging oaks are spangled with icicles; the rocks sheeted with frozen foam, formed by the flying spray; and the water, that oozes from their sides, congealed into innumerable pillars of crystal. Every season has its charms. The picturesque tourists, those birds of summer, see not half the beauties of nature.” These were probably also less apparent to the small cottagers of Wales, worn by many winters of the bitter cold. One cannot know whether Jane Gryffydh had much sympathy for the beauty of her native place. In any case, it was cold, and it was necessary to walk along down the cobbled steep hill between the cottages to the post office. You can imagine a bitter cold morning, late November, ice, perhaps, on the street, all the streams stopped with ice, all the people indoors keeping the fires going, working at their lap-crafts, mending and storing; Jane Gryffydh putting on her heaviest bonnet and warmest boots. A somewhat perilous short walk, slipping on the slick curbings, but bearing this with a mild, customary fortitude, not grimly. At thirty she has waned but is not extinguished, and her life, though she thought of it as “possessing none of the good things,” has been growing bleaker only gradually, by stages, and she could still redden from a brisk walk, a greeting in the street, or a sense of possibility which only a sterner sense of reality could correct. She was for those days a middle-aged woman.