Shelley: The Pursuit
Page 111
55. ibid.
56. Prose, p. 74.
57. T.B. Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, 1823, XXI, pp. 928–9.
58. Prose, p. 76.
59. ibid., p. 80.
60. ibid.
61. Letters, I, No. 199, p. 319.
62. ibid., No. 202, p. 324.
63. ibid.
64. ibid., No. 170, p. 259.
65. ibid., No. 200, p. 321.
66. ibid.
67. Letters, I, No. 200, p. 322.
68. ibid., No. 202, p. 324.
69. Rossetti, op. cit., p. 68.
70. ibid.
71. ibid., p. 78.
72. ibid.
73. ibid., p. 77.
74. ibid., p. 78.
75. ibid., p. 80.
76. See Godwin’s cheerful letter to Mrs Godwin, Letters, I, No. 202, p. 326 n. 8. Godwin, as usual, only had half the story.
77. ibid.
78. ibid.
Chapter 7, The Tan-yr-allt Affair
1. See the picturesque engraving in Elizabeth Beazley, Madocks and the Wonder of Wales, 1967, opposite p. 177. The village square has barely changed over the intervening 160 years, except for the parking lines. It is a minor Mecca for architectural students from the north-western universities, which would have pleased Madocks.
2. North Wales Gazette, 1 October 1812, from the archives of the University of North Wales at Bangor.
3. J. Girdlestone to John Williams, 17 September 1812. Breese, Jones and Casson; Box 168, letter 146, from County Record Office, Caernarvon.
4. Letters, I, No. 205, p. 328.
5. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 202, p. 327 n. 8.
6. An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. K.C. Carter, 1971. His text is from the third edition, 1798. Book III, Chapter 6, p. 120.
7. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 202, p. 327 n. 8.
8. William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age, 1824–5; essay on ‘William Godwin’.
9. Letters, I, No. 213, p. 338. To Fanny Godwin, 10 December 1812. This letter has some curious passages, in which one can sense that Fanny too was undergoing the Shelley treatment. For example, ‘I am one of those formidable & longclawed animals called a Man, & it is not until I have assured you that I am one of the most inoffensive of my species, that I live on vegetable food, & never bit since I was born that I venture to intrude myself on your attention.’ The letter deserves reading in full.
10. See Claire, p. 19 n. 20. One of William’s lectures was on ‘The Influence of Governments on the Character of People’.
11. ibid., pp. 16–18.
12. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 202, p. 327 n. 8.
13. Claire, p. 15.
14. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 202, p. 327 n. 8. This is one of Professor Jones’s admirable and epic footnotes of 97 lines length.
15. Dowden, op. cit., I, p. 304.
16. Letters, I, No. 206, p. 330.
17. ibid.
18. Hogg, op. cit., I, pp. 364–5.
19. ibid., p. 172.
20. Letters, I, No. 210, p. 334.
21. Cameron, Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical, p. 366 n. 61.
22. ibid.
23. Letters, I, No. 211, p. 336.
24. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 207, p. 331 n. 3.
25. Esdaile Notebook, ed. Cameron, pp. 53–5.
26. Letters, I, No. 223, p. 352.
27. ibid., No. 210, p. 333.
Chapter 8, One Dark Night
1. Letters, I, No. 214, p. 339.
2. Beazley, Madocks and the Wonder of Wales, p. 197.
3. ibid., p. 181.
4. Robert Leeson in Beazley, p. 181.
5. See H. M. Dowling, ‘The Attack at Tanyrallt’, in Keats — Shelley Memorial Bulletin, 1961.
6. See the hitherto unpublished typescript ‘The Miltown Leesons’, 1963; BM. CUP. 504. E.15.
7. Breese, Jones and Casson papers, Box. 168, letter 148, from County Record Office, Caernarvon.
8. Harriet to Hookham, Letters, I, No. 225, p. 356 n. 2 (12 March, 1813).
9. Beazley, op. cit.
10. Dowling, op. cit.
11. Letters, I, No. 215, p. 339.
12. Poetical Works, p. 832.
13. ibid.
14. Letters, I, No. 211, p. 336.
15. ibid., No. 216, p. 340.
16. Godwin to Shelley, Letters, I, No. 216, p. 341 n. 3 (10 December 1812).
17. ibid.
18. See booklists in Letters, I, No. 216, No. 217, and No. 218 (17 to 24 December 1812).
19. Letters, I, No. 221, p. 349.
20. ibid., No. 222, p. 350.
21. Letters, I, No. 220, p. 348.
22. ibid. (In fact twelve degrees below freezing.)
23. ibid., No. 223, p. 352.
24. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 221, p. 349 n. 2.
25. Letters, I, No. 223, p. 351.
26. ibid.
27. ibid.
28. ibid., No. 224, p. 354.
29. ibid., No. 211, p. 335.
30. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 221, p. 350 n. 2.
31. Letters, I, No. 219, p. 347.
32. ibid., No. 223, p. 353.
33. Breese, Jones and Casson papers; Box 168, letter 151, from County Record Office, Caernarvon.
34. Harriet to Hookham, Letters, I, No. 223, p. 351 n. 2.
35. Leeson’s letter to Shelley is in Letters, I, No. 227, pp. 357–8 n. 2.
36. Harriet to Hookham, Letters, I, No. 225, pp. 355–6 n. 2.
37. Letters, I, No. 219, p. 346.
38. ibid., No. 224, p. 353.
39. ibid.
40. North Wales Gazette, 5 March 1813.
41. Harriet to Hookham, Letters, I, No. 225, p. 355 n. 2. This letter is henceforth referred to as ‘Harriet’s account, March 1813’.
42. Thornton Hunt, ‘Shelley, by One Who Knew Him’, Atlantic Monthly, February 1863.
43. Letters, I, No. 225, p. 355.
44. ibid. (Harriet’s postscript.)
45. Leeson to Shelley, Letters, I, No. 227, p. 358 n. 2.
46. Letters, I, No. 228, p. 359.
47. ibid., No. 230, p. 361.
48. Hogg, op. cit., I, p. 389.
49. Harriet’s account, Dublin, 2 March 1813, Letters, I, No. 225, pp. 355–6 n. 2.
50. Hogg, op. cit., I, p. 388.
51. Peacock, p. 36.
52. Hogg, I, p. 388.
53. Hogg, I, p. 389.
54. Peacock: Memoirs, Essays and Reviews, pp. 36–7.
55. Letters, I, No. 228, p. 359.
56. Breese, Jones and Casson papers; Box 168, letter 332, from County Record Office, Caernarvon. (In the manuscript, Madocks has inserted his comments on the motives for the attack on Shelley, as an afterthought, between the lines.)
57. Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 117.
58. Medwin, op. cit., p. 116.
59. Lady Jane Shelley, p. 56.
60. Breese, Jones and Casson papers; Box 168, letter 152 (April 1813), from County Record Office, Caernarvon.
Chapter 9, A Poem and a Wife: Queen Mab 1813
1. Letters, I, No. 233, p. 364.
2. ibid.
3. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 236, p. 368 n. 3.
4. Letters, I, No. 234, p. 365.
5. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 236, p. 367 n. 3.
6. ibid., p. 368.
7. Letters, I, No. 223, p. 352.
8. See the excellent appendix in White, Shelley, II, p. 408. Also Cameron, Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical, pp. 273–4.
9. Poetical Works, p. 777.
10. ibid., p. 773.
11. ibid., p. 778.
12. ibid., p. 801.
13. ibid., p. 763.
14. ibid., p. 782.
15. This celebrated note on Free Love is in Poetical Works, p. 806–8; and Prose, pp. 115–17.
16. ibid., p. 793.
17. ibid., p. 794.
18. ibid., pp. 797–8.
19. Pen Portraits and Reviews, George Bernard Shaw, Constable, 1932. ‘Shaming the Devil about Shelley’, (1892), pp. 236–46.
20. Republican, 27 December 1822. This and other contemporary newspaper articles and magazine reviews are usefully collected in The Unextinguished Hearth, ed. Newman Ivey White, New York, Octagon Books Inc., 1966, p. 97.
21. The Unextinguished Hearth, pp. 96–7.
22. H. B. Forman, The Vicissitudes of Queen Mab, 1887. ‘Baldwin’ was probably Benbow himself: see BM 11644. e. 2. (i–2).
23. ibid. For the 1832 edition, see BM 11660. a. 14. For the Chartist copies, see (1839) BM 11642. a. 70; and (1847) BM 11644. eee. 73.
24. Cameron, op. cit., p. 274.
25. Ernest Rose, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XXVI, 1927.
26. The Unextinguished Hearth, p. 98.
27. A Reply . . . to Queen Mab, published by William Clark, July 1821. See The Unextinguished Hearth, pp. 62–95.
28. E.S. Boas, Modern Language Notes, LXX, 1955.
29. Forman, op. cit.
30. Edward Williams, ‘Journal’ for Sunday, 30 June 1822; in Maria Gisborne and Edward E. Williams: Their Journals and Letters, ed. F. L. Jones, 1951, p. 156.
31. Poetical Works, pp. 794–5.
32. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 236, p. 367 n. 3.
33. ibid.
34. Letters, I, No. 236, pp. 366–7.
35. Timothy Shelley in Letters, I, No. 236, p. 368 n. 4.
36. Letters, I, No. 237, pp. 368–9.
37. Harriet to Mrs Nugent in Letters, I, No. 242, p. 372 n. 1.
38. Letters, I, No. 238, p. 369 n. 1.
39. ibid., No. 243, pp. 372–3.
40. Breese, Jones and Casson papers; Box 168, letter 165. David Ellis–Nanney to John Williams, 20 June 1815; from County Record Office, Caernarvon.
41. ibid.
42. Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, p. 5.
43. ibid., p. 3.
44. Letters, I, No. 239, p. 370.
45. ibid., No. 245, p. 374.
46. ibid., No. 247, p. 375.
47. Hogg quoted in Peacock: Memoirs, Essays and Reviews, p. 37.
48. Peacock, p. 37.
49. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 248, p. 377 n. 2. (From High Elms, 8 August 1813.)
50. Peacock, p. 38.
51. Hogg, op. cit., II, p. 39.
52. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 248, p. 377 n. 2. (From High Elms, 10 September 1813.)
53. ibid.
54. Letters, I, No. 249, p. 377.
55. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 249, p. 378 n. 3. (From Ambleside, 11 October 1813.)
56. Letters, I, No. 250, p. 380.
57. ibid., No. 250, p. 381 n. 5.
58. Prose, pp. 91–2.
59. ibid., p. 94.
60. Letters, I, No. 250, p. 380.
61. ibid.
62. Peacock, p. 43.
63. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, Letters, I, No. 249, p. 379 n. 3. (From Edinburgh, 23 November 1813.)
64. Letters, I, No. 250, pp. 379–80.
65. Godwin’s ‘Diary’ yet remains unpublished, but extracts appear in Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. White, op. cit., and Professor Jones’s footnotes in Letters. Letters, I, No. 252, p. 382 n. 2.
66. Godwin’s letters to Shelley between December 1813 and April 1814 are listed in Letters, I, No. 255, p. 386 n. 1.
67. Letters, I, No. 253, p. 385.
68. Hogg, op. cit., II, p. 134.
69. ibid., pp. 143–4.
70. Letters, I, No. 252, p. 382.
71. See Letters, I, No. 255, p. 386.
72. Godwin’s ‘Diary’ in Letters, I, No. 257B, p. 388 n. 2.
73. Letters, I, No. 258, p. 390.
74. Hogg, op. cit., I, pp. 337–8.
75. Letters, I, No. 253, p. 384.
76. Claire, pp. 60–3.
77. Letters, I, No. 265, p. 402.
78. ibid.
79. Hogg, op. cit., II, p. 154.
80. Letters, I, No. 255 (probably 14 April 1814); No. 257 (14 May, 1814).
81. Letters, I, No. 257, p. 387.
82. ibid., No. 257A, pp. 387–8.
83. Claire, p. 431. The punctuation strokes are Jane’s own: I think she was attempting to write a kind of poetic prose description, which expressed something of the intensity of her feelings for her stepsister.
84. Poetical Works, p. 522.
85. For a preliminary discussion of Mary’s fictional portraits of Shelley, see Peck, ‘The Biographical Element in the Novels of Mary Shelley’, in P.M.L.A., XXXVI, 1923.
86. R. Glynn Grylls, Claire Clairmont, John Murray, 1939, p. 15.
87. Godwin to John Taylor, Letters, I, No. 258, p. 391, n. 3.
88. Godwin’s ‘Diary’ in Letters, I, No. 256, p. 386, n. 1. The entry reads, ‘M . . . . fr Nash, fin.’
89. ibid., Letters, I, No. 257B, p. 388 n. 1.
90. Peacock, p. 54.
91. Letters, I, No. 258, pp. 389–90.
92. Quoted in Claire, p. 22, from the original entry in Mary’s journal, Abinger MSS.
Chapter 10, Three for the Road: Europe 1814
1. All quotations in this chapter, unless otherwise stated, are from the journal kept by Mary and Shelley together during the tour, and published in the inappropriately named Mary Shelley’s Journal, ed. F. L. Jones, 1947. It is important to note that this edition is not taken directly from the original MS Journal now in the Abinger MSS collection, and since 1952 on microfilm at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Duke University Library, North Carolina. In particular, Professor Jones’s allocations of sections either to Mary or Shelley is unreliable; and occasional interesting phrases and remarks of a personal nature are missing. I have incorporated the MS rather than the published readings into my text wherever suitable. Some of the MS readings are given in M.K. Stocking’s excellent footnotes in Claire, to which I have not hesitated to refer.
2. Claire, 27 August 1814, p. 31.
3. Claire, p. 442. Mary Shelley’s whole review, ‘The English in Italy’ of October 1826, printed in Appendix A.
4. Abinger MS reading of the Journal for 12 August 1814, quoted in Stocking, p. 22.
5. Letters, I, No. 259, p. 392.
6. Harriet to Mrs Nugent, 25 August 1814. Letters, I, No. 259, p. 393 n. 5.
7. Letters, I, No. 259, p. 392.
8. Claire, August 15, 1814, p. 22.
9. ibid., 17 August, p. 26.
10. Pforzheimer III, p. 350. The Pforzheimer library’s MS of Jane’s (Claire’s) journal is a later and revised one, separate from B.M. Ashley MS, which Marion Stocking has used.
11. Claire, 18 August, p. 26.
12. ibid., 19 August, p. 27.
13. Prose, pp. 146–7.
14. Claire, p. 29.
15. ibid., 24 August, p. 30.
16. In Mary’s published History of a Six Weeks Tour, 1817.
17. Prose, p. 149.
18. ibid., p. 148.
19. ibid., p. 150.
20. Claire, 27 August, p. 31.
21. Journal, 27 August, p. 12.
22. Claire, 27 August, p. 31.
23. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, H. B. Forman (ed.), 1880. ‘History of a Six Weeks Tour’, (1817); Vol. II, p. 145.
24. Claire, 4 September, p. 36.
25. ibid.
Chapter 11, Bad Dreams: Kentish Town 1814
1. Claire, p. 43.
2. Letters, I, No. 261, p. 395.
3. Journal, p. 15.
4. Claire, p. 44.
5. Letters, I, No. 260, p. 395.
6. ibid., No. 261, p. 396.
7. ibid., No. 262, p. 397.
8. ibid., No. 263, p. 399.
9. Journal, p. 17.
10. Letters, I, No. 264, pp. 399–400.
11. ibid., No. 266, p. 405.
12. ibid., No. 265, pp. 401–3.
13. Claire, p. 48.
14. Journal, p
. 17.
15. This section of the entry is taken directly from the Abinger MS. In the printed version, by the simple effect of miscopied punctuation, Professor Jones’s text alters the total implication of the whole passage, by assigning the strange facial expression to Jane, and the fearful reaction to Shelley, thus: ‘Did you ever read the tragedy of Orra?’ said Shelley. ‘Yes.’ ‘How horrible you look — take your eyes off.’ This effectively reverses the roles. See Chapter 10, Ref. 1.
16. Claire, pp. 48–9.
17. Journal, pp. 18–19.
18. ibid., p. 20.
19. Claire, p. 52.
20. ibid., p. 49.
21. Poetical Works, p. 16.
22. Claire, p. 51.
23. Journal, p. 21.
24. ibid.
25. ibid., p. 20.
26. Claire, p. 53.
27. Letters, I, No. 273, pp. 412–13.
28. ibid., No. 280, p. 420.
29. ibid., No. 270, p. 410.
30. ibid., No. 271, p. 411.
31. Journal, p. 24.
32. Letters, I, No. 270, p. 410.
33. Mary, No. 4, p. 5.
34. Claire, p. 54.
35. ibid., p. 58.
36. ibid., p. 59.
37. Mary, No. 4, p. 6.
38. ibid., No. 274, p. 414.
39. ‘Epipsychidion’, Poetical Works, p. 418.
40. Journal, p. 25.
41. Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, Appendix A, Mrs Godwin to Lady Mountcashell, p. 547. Mrs Godwin also informs us that the prices Shelley was rumoured to have paid her husband were: Mary £800 and Claire £700.
42. Stocking in Claire, p. 3, gives an admirable summary of the history and vicissitudes of this MS.
43. Journal, pp. 25–6.
44. ibid., p. 29.
45. Prose, p. 304.
46. ibid., pp. 305–6.
47. Letters, I, No. 281, p. 421 n. 2.
48. Journal, p. 28.
49. Letters, I, No. 281, p. 422 n. 2.
50. Poetical Works, p. 526.
51. Journal, p. 32.
52. ibid., pp. 35–6.
53. These omissions are noted by F. L. Jones in his edition of the journal. The original suppressions were presumably carried out by Lady Jane Shelley before she handed the MS of the journal to Dowden for his official biography; Dowden’s connivance is possible, but unlikely.
54. Journal, p. 40.
55. ibid., p. 40.
56. ibid., p. 35.
57. Mary to Hogg in New Shelley Letters ed. W.S. Scott, Golden Cockerel Press, 1948, p. 80.
58. New Shelley Letters, p. 81. Letters, I, No. 283, p. 423.
59. New Shelley Letters, p. 82.
60. ibid., p. 83.
61. Letters, I, No. 284, p. 424 n. 3.