Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  I am, yours truly,

  WALTER S. HALLIDAY.

  This is the only direct testimony to Shelley’s Eton life from one who knew him there. It contains two instances of how little value can be attached to any other than such direct testimony. That at that time he never went out in a boat on the river I believe to be strictly true: nevertheless Captain Medwin says:— ‘He told me the greatest delight he experienced at Eton was from boating.... He never lost the fondness with which he regarded the Thames, no new acquaintance when he went to Eton, for at Brentford we had more than once played the truant, and rowed to Kew, and once to Richmond.’ But these truant excursions were exceptional. His affection for boating began at a much later period, as I shall have occasion to notice. The second instance is:— ‘I think he said he was just come from Ireland.’ In the autumn of 181’it was not from Ireland, but from the Continent that he had just returned.

  Captain Medwin’s Life of Shelley abounds with inaccuracies; not intentional misrepresentations, but misapprehensions and errors of memory. Several of these occur in reference to Shelley’s boyish passion for his cousin Harriet Grove. This, like Lord Byron’s early love for Miss Chaworth, came to nothing. But most boys of any feeling and imagination have some such passion, and, as in these instances, it usually comes to nothing. Much more has been made of both these affairs than they are worth. It is probable that few of Johnson’s poets passed through their boyhood without a similar attachment, but if it came at all under the notice of our literary Hercules, he did not think it worth recording. I shall notice this love-affair in its proper place, but chiefly for the sake of separating from it one or two matters which have been erroneously assigned to it.

  Shelley often spoke to me of Eton, and of the persecutions he had endured from the elder boys, with feelings of abhorrence which I never heard him express in an equal degree in relation to any other subject, except when he spoke of Lord Chancellor Eldon. He told me that he had been provoked into striking a penknife through the hand of one of his young tyrants, and pinning it to the desk, and that this was the cause of his leaving Eton prematurely: but his imagination often presented past events to him as they might have been, not as they were. Such a circumstance must have been remembered by others if it had actually occurred. But if the occurrence was imaginary, it was in a memory of cordial detestation that the imagination arose.

  Mr. Hogg vindicates the system of fagging, and thinks he was himself the better for the discipline in after life. But Mr. Hogg is a man of imperturbable temper and adamantine patience: and with all this he may have fallen into good hands, for all big boys are not ruffians. But Shelley was a subject totally unfit for the practice in its best form, and he seems to have experienced it in its worst.

  At Eton he became intimate with Doctor Lind, ‘a name well known among the professors of medical science,’ says Mrs. Shelley, who proceeds: —

  ‘This man,’ Shelley has often said, ’is exactly what an old man ought to be. Free, calm-spirited, full of benevolence, and even of youthful ardour; his eye seemed to burn with supernatural spirit beneath his brow, shaded by his venerable white locks; he was tall, vigorous, and healthy in his body, tempered, as it had ever been, by his amiable mind. I owe to that man far, ah! far more than I owe to my father; he loved me, and I shall never forget our long talks, when he breathed the spirit of the kindest tolerance and the purest wisdom. Once, when I was very ill during the holidays, as I was recovering from a fever which had attacked my brain, a servant overheard my father consult about sending me to a private madhouse. I was a favourite among all our servants, so this fellow came and told me, as I lay sick in bed. My horror was beyond words, and I might soon have been mad indeed if they had proceeded in their iniquitous plan. I had one hope. I was master of three pounds in money, and with the servant’s help I contrived to send an express to Dr. Lind. He came, and I shall never forget his manner on that occasion. His profession gave him authority; his love for me ardour. He dared my father to execute his purpose, and his menaces had the desired effect.’

  Mr. Hogg subjoins: —

  I have heard Shelley speak of his fever, and this scene at Field Place, more than once, in nearly the same terms as Mrs. Shelley adopts. It appeared to myself, and to others also, that his recollections were those of a person not quite recovered from a fever, and still disturbed by the horrors of the disease.

  However this may have been, the idea that his father was continually on the watch for a pretext to lock him up, haunted him through life, and a mysterious intimation of his father’s intention to effect such a purpose was frequently received by him, and communicated to his friends as a demonstration of the necessity under which he was placed of changing his residence and going abroad.

  I pass over his boyish schemes for raising the devil, of which much is said in Mr. Hogg’s book. He often spoke of them to me; but the principal fact of which I have any recollection was one which he treated only as a subject of laughter — the upsetting into the fire in his chamber at Eton of a frying-pan full of diabolical ingredients, and the rousing up all the inmates in his dame’s house in the dead of the night by the abominable effluvia. If he had ever had any faith in the possible success of his incantations, he had lost it before I knew him.

  We now come to the first really important event of his life — his expulsion from Oxford.

  At University College, Oxford, in October, 1810, Mr. Hogg first became acquainted with him. In their first conversation Shelley was exalting the physical sciences, especially chemistry. Mr. Hogg says: —

  As I felt but little interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to examine, and I may add to admire, the appearance of my very extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest white and red; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun... His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were in fact unusually small; yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy... he often rubbed it up fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers through his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough.... His features were not symmetrical (the mouth perhaps excepted); yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual.... I admired the enthusiasm of my new acquaintance, his ardour in the cause of science, and his thirst for knowledge. But there was one physical blemish that threatened to neutralize all his excellence.’

  This blemish was his voice.

  There is a good deal in these volumes about Shelley’s discordant voice. This defect he certainly had; but it was chiefly observable when he spoke under excitement. Then his voice was not only dissonant, like a jarring string, but he spoke in sharp fourths, the most unpleasing sequence of sound that can fall on the human ear: but it was scarcely so when he spoke calmly, and not at all so when he read; on the contrary, he seemed then to have his voice under perfect command: it was good both in tune and in tone; it was low and soft, but clear, distinct, and expressive. I have heard him read almost all Shakespeare’s tragedies, and some of his more poetical comedies, and it was a pleasure to hear him read them.

  Mr. Hogg’s description of Shelley’s personal appearance gives a better idea of him than the portrait prefixed to his work, which is similar to that prefixed to the work of Mr. Trelawny, except that Mr. Trelawny’s is lithographed and Mr. Hogg’s is en- graved. These portraits do not impress themselves on me as likenesses. They seem to me to want
the true outline of Shelley’s features, and above all, to want their true expression. There is a portrait in the Florentine Gallery which represents him to me much more truthfully. It is that of Antonio Leisman, No. 155 of the Ritratti de’ Pittori, in the Paris republication.

  The two friends had made together a careful analysis of the doctrines of Hume. The papers were in Shelley’s custody, and from a small part of them he made a little book, which he had printed, and which he sent by post to such persons as he thought would be willing to enter into a metaphysical discussion. He sent it under an assumed name, with a note, requesting that if the recipient were willing to answer the tract, the answer should be sent to a specified address in London. He received many answers; but in due time the little work and its supposed authors were denounced to the college authorities.

  It was a fine spring morning, on Lady-day, in the year 1811 (says Mr. Hogg), when I went to Shelley’s rooms. He was absent; but before I had collected our books he rushed in. He was terribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened.

  ‘I am expelled,’ he said, as soon as he had recovered himself a little. ‘I am expelled! I was sent for suddenly a few minutes ago; I went to the common room, where I found our master, and two or three of the fellows. The master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and asked me if I were the author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. I begged to be informed for what purpose he put the question. No answer was given; but the master loudly and angrily repeated, “Are you the author of this book?”

  “If I can judge from your manner,” I said, “you are resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your evidence; it is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such a purpose. Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country.”

  “Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?” the master reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.

  Shelley complained much of his violent and ungentlemanlike deportment, saying, ‘I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what vulgar violence is, but I never met with such unworthy treatment. I told him calmly but firmly that I was determined not to answer any questions respecting the publication on the table.’

  ‘He immediately repeated his demand; I persisted in my refusal. And he said furiously, “Then you are expelled; and I desire you will quit the college early to-morrow morning at the latest.”

  ‘One of the fellows took up two papers, and handed one of them to me; here it is.’ He produced a regular sentence of expulsion, drawn up in due form, under the seal of the college. Shelley was full of spirit and courage, frank and fearless; but he was likewise shy, unpresuming, and eminently sensitive. I have been with him in many trying situations of his after-life, but I never saw him so deeply shocked and so cruelly agitated as on this occasion.

  A nice sense of honour shrinks from the most distant touch of disgrace — even from the insults of those men whose contumely can bring no shame. He sat on the sofa, repeating with convulsive vehemence the words, ‘Expelled, expelled!’ his head shaking with emotion, and his whole frame quivering.’

  A similar scene followed with Mr. Hogg himself, which he very graphically describes. The same questions, the same refusal to answer them, the same sentence of expulsion, and a peremptory order to quit the college early on the morrow. And accordingly, early on the next morning, Shelley and his friend took their departure from Oxford.

  I accept Mr. Hogg’s account of this transaction as substantially correct. In Shelley’s account of it to me there were material differences; and making all allowance for the degree in which, as already noticed, his imagination coloured the past, there is one matter of fact which remains inexplicable. According to him, his expulsion was a matter of great form and solemnity; there was a sort of public assembly, before which he pleaded his own cause, in a long oration, in the course of which he called on the illustrious spirits who had shed glory on those walls to look down on their degenerate successors. Now, the inexplicable matter to which I have alluded is this: he showed me an Oxford newspaper, containing a full report of the proceedings, with his own oration at great length. I suppose the pages of that diurnal were not deathless, and that it would now be vain to search for it; but that he had it, and showed it to me, is absolutely certain. His oration may have been, as some of Cicero’s published orations were, a speech in the potential mood; one which might, could, should, or would, have been spoken: but how in that case it got into the Oxford newspaper passes conjecture.’

  His expulsion from Oxford brought to a summary conclusion his boyish passion for Miss Harriet Grove. She would have no more to say to him; but I cannot see from his own letters, and those of Miss Hellen Shelley, that there had ever been much love on her side; neither can I find any reason to believe that it continued long on his. Mr. Middleton follows Captain Med win, who was determined that on Shelley’s part it should be an enduring passion, and pressed into its service as testimonies some matters which had nothing to do with it. He says Queen Mab was dedicated to Harriet Grove, whereas it was certainly dedicated to Harriet Shelley; he even prints the dedication with the title, ‘To Harriet G.,’ whereas in the original the name of Harriet is only followed by asterisks; and of another little poem, he says, ‘That Shelley’s disappointment in love affected him acutely, may be seen by some lines inscribed erroneously, “On F. G.,” instead of “H. G.”, and doubtless of a much earlier date than assigned by Mrs. Shelley to the fragment.’ Now, I know the circumstances to which the fragment refers. The initials of the lady’s name were F. G., and the date assigned to the fragment, 1817, was strictly correct. The intrinsic evidence of both poems will show their utter inapplicability to Miss Harriet Grove.

  First let us see what Shelley himself says of her, in letters to Mr. Hogg: —

  Dec. 23, 1810. — Her disposition was in all probability divested of the enthusiasm by which mine is characterized.... My sister attempted sometimes to plead my cause, but unsuccessfully. She said: ‘Even supposing I take your representation of your brother’s qualities and sentiments, which, as you coincide in and admire, I may fairly imagine to be exaggerated, although you may not be aware of the exaggeration, what right have I, admitting that he is so superior, to enter into an intimacy which must end in delusive disappointment when he finds how really inferior I am to the being his heated imagination has pictured?’

  Dec. 26, 1810. — Circumstances have operated in such a manner that the attainment of the object of my heart was impossible, whether on account of extraneous influences, or from a feeling which possessed her mind, which told her not to deceive another, not to give him the possibility of disappointment.

  Jan. 3, 1811. — She is no longer mine. She abhors me as a sceptic, as what she was before.

  Jan. 11, 1811. — She is gone. She is lost to me for ever. She is married — married to a clod of earth. She will become as insensible herself: all those fine capabilities will moulder.

  Next let us see what Miss Hellen Shelley says of the matter: —

  His disappointment in losing the lady of his love had a great effect upon him.... It was not put an end to by mutual consent; but both parties were very young, and her father did not think the marriage would be for his daughter’s happiness. He, however, with truly honourable feeling, would not have persisted in his objection if his daughter had considered herself bound by a promise to my brother; but this was not the case, and time healed the wound by means of another Harriet, whose name and similar complexion perhaps attracted the attention of my brother.’

  And lastly, let us see what the young lady’s brother (C. H. G.) says of it: —

  After our visit at Field Place (in the year 1810), we went to my brother’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Bysshe, his mother, and Elizabeth joined us, and a very happy month we spent. Bysshe was full of life and spirits, and very well pleased with his successful devotion to my
sister. In the course of that summer, to the best of my recollection, after we had retired into Wiltshire, a continual correspondence was going on, as I believe, between Bysshe and my sister Harriet. But she became uneasy at the tone of his letters on -speculative subjects, at first consulting my mother, and subsequently my father also, on the subject. This led at last, though I cannot exactly tell how, to the dissolution of an engagement between Bysshe and my sister which had previously been permitted both by his father and mine.

  We have here, I think, as unimpassioned a damsel as may be met in a summer’s day. And now let us see the poems.

  First, the dedication of Queen Mab: bearing in mind that the poem was begun in 1812, and finished in 1813, and that, to say nothing of the unsuitability of the offering to her who two years before had abhorred him as a sceptic and married a clod, she had never done or said any one thing that would justify her love being described as that which had warded off from him the scorn of the world: quite the contrary: as far as in her lay, she had embittered it to the utmost.