Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  O that I could return to England! How heavy a weight when misfortune is added to exile; and solitude, as if the measure were not full, heaped high on both. O that I could return to England!

  I hear you say: ‘Desire never fails to generate capacity.’ Ah! but that ever-present Malthus, necessity, has convinced desire, that even though it generated capacity its offspring must starve.

  Again from Livorno; August 1819 (they had changed their design of going to Florence):

  I most devoutly wish that I were living near London. I don’t think that I shall settle so far off as Richmond, and to inhabit any intermediate spot on the Thames, would be to expose myself to the river damps Not to mention that it is not much to my taste. My inclination points to Hampstead; but I don’t know whether I should not make up my mind to something more completely suburban. What are mountains, trees, heaths, or even the glorious and ever- beautiful sky, with such sunsets as I have seen at Hampstead, to friends? Social enjoyment in some form or other is the Alpha and Omega of existence. All that I see in Italy, and from my tower window I now see the magnificent peaks of the Apennine, half enclosing the plain, is nothing — it dwindles to smoke in the mind, when I think of some familiar forms of scenery, little perhaps in themselves, over which old remembrances have thrown a delightful colour. How we prize what we despised when present! So the ghosts of our dead associations rise and haunt us, in revenge for our having let them starve and abandoned them to perish.

  This seems to contrast strangely with a passage in Mrs. Shelley’s journal; written after her return to England:

  Mine own Shelley! What a horror you had of returning to this miserable country! To be here without you is to be doubly exiled; to be away from Italy is to lose you twice. — Shelley Memorials, p. 2”

  It is probable, however, that as Mrs. Shelley was fond of Italy, he did not wish to disturb her enjoyment of it, by letting her see fully the deep-seated wish to return to his own country, which lay at the bottom of all his feelings.

  It is probable also that, after the birth of his last child, he became more reconciled to residing abroad..

  In the same year the parents received the best consolation which nature could bestow on them, in the birth of another son, the present Sir Percy, who was born at Florence on the 12th of November, 1819.

  Shelley’s life in Italy is best traced by his letters. He delighted in the grand aspects of nature; mountains, torrents, forests, and the sea; and in the ruins, which still reflected the greatness of antiquity. He described these scenes with extraordinary power of language, in his letters as well as in his poetry; but in the latter he peopled them with phantoms of virtue and beauty, such as never existed on earth. One of his most striking works in this kind is the Prometheus Unbound. He only once descended into the arena of reality, and that was in the tragedy of The Cenci. This is unquestionably a work of great dramatic power, but it is as unquestionably not a work for the modern English stage. It would have been a great work in the days of Massinger. He sent it to me to introduce it to Covent Garden Theatre. I did so; but the result was as I expected. It could not be received; though great admiration was expressed of the author’s powers, and great hopes of his success with a less repulsive subject. But he could not clip his wings to the littleness of the acting drama; and though he adhered to his purpose of writing for the stage, and chose Charles I for his subject, he did not make much progress in the task. If his life had been prolonged, I still think he would have accomplished something worthy of the best days of theatrical literature. If the gorgeous scenery of his poetry could have been peopled from actual life, if the deep thoughts and strong feelings which he was so capable of expressing, had been accommodated to characters such as have been and may be, however exceptional in the greatness of passion, he would have added his own name to those of the masters of the art. He studied it with unwearied devotion in its higher forms; the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, and Calderon. Of Calderon, he says, in a letter to me from Leghorn, September 21st, 1819:

  C. C. is now with us on his way to Vienna. He has spent a year or more in Spain, where he has learnt Spanish; and I make him read Spanish all day long. It is a most powerful and expressive language, and I have already learnt sufficient to read with great ease their poet Calderon. I have read about twelve of his plays. Some of them certainly deserve to be ranked among the grandest and most perfect productions of the human mind. He excels all modern dramatists, with the exception of Shakespeare, whom he resembles, however, in the depth of thought and subtlety of imagination of his writings, and in the one rare power of interweaving delicate and powerful comic traits with the most tragic situations, without diminishing their interest. I rank him far above Beaumont and Fletcher.

  In a letter to Mr. Gisborne dated November, 1820, he says: “lam bathing myself in the light and odour of the flowery and starry Autos. I have read them all more than -once.” These were Calderon’s religious dramas, being of the same class as those which were called Mysteries in France and England, but of a far higher order of poetry than the latter ever attained.

  The first time Mr. Trelawny saw him, he had a volume of Calderon in his hand. He was translating some passages of the Magico Prodigioso.

  I arrived late, and hastened to the Tre Palazzi, on the Lung’ Arno, where the Shelleys and Williamses lived on different flats under the same roof, as is the custom on the Continent. The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams’s eyes followed the direction of mine, and going to the doorway, she laughingly said

  “Come in, Shelley; it’s only our friend Tre just arrived.”

  Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment; was it possible this wild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with all the world? — excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as a founder of a Satanic school? I would not believe it; it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and trowsers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his “sizings.” Mrs. Williams saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly —

  “Calderon’s Magico Prodigioso; I am translating some passages init.”

  “Oh, read it to us!”

  Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly become oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which he analyzed the genius of the author, his lucid interpretations of the story, and the ease with which he translated into our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity. A dead silence ensued; looking up, I asked —

  “Where is he?”

  Mrs. Williams said, “Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.” — Trelawny, pp. 19-22.

  From this time Mr. Trelawny was a frequent visitor to the Shelleys, and, as will he seen, a true and indefatigable friend.

  In the year 1818, Shelley renewed his acquaintance with Lord Byron, and continued in friendly intercourse with him till the time of his death. Till that time his life, from the birth of his
son Percy, was passed chiefly in or near Pisa, or on the sea-shore between Genoa and Leghorn. It was unmarked by any remarkable events, except one or two, one of which appears to me to have been a mere disturbance of imagination. This was a story of his having been knocked down at the post-office in Florence, by a man in a military cloak, who had suddenly walked up to him, saying, “Are you the damned atheist Shelley?’ This man was not seen by any one else, nor ever afterwards seen or heard of; though, a man answering the description had on the same day left Florence for Genoa, and was followed up without success.

  I cannot help classing this incident with the Tan-yr-allt assassination, and other semi-delusions, of which I have already spoken.

  Captain Med win thinks this “cowardly attack” was prompted by some article in the Quarterly Review. The Quarterly Reviewers of that day had many sins to answer for in the way of persecution of genius, whenever it appeared in opposition to their political and theological intolerance; but they were, I am satisfied, as innocent of this “attack” on Shelley, as they were of the death of Keats. Keats was consumptive, and fore-doomed by nature to early death. His was not the spirit “to let itself be snuffed out by an article.

  With the cessation of his wanderings, his beautiful descriptive letters ceased also. The fear of, losing their only surviving son predominated over the love of travelling by which both parents were characterized. The last of this kind which was addressed to me was dated Rome, March 23rd, 1819. This was amongst the letters published by Mrs. Shelley. If is preceded by two from Naples — December 22nd, 1818, and January 26th, 1819. There was a third, which is alluded to in the beginning of his letter from Rome. “I wrote to you the day before our departure from Naples.” When I gave Mrs. Shelley the other letters, I sought in vain for this. I found it, only a few months since, in some other papers, among which it had gone astray.

  His serenity was temporarily disturbed by a calumny, which Lord Byron communicated to him. There is no clue to what it was; and I do not understand why it was spoken of at all. A mystery is a riddle, and the charity of the world will always give such a riddle the worst possible solution.

  An affray in the streets of Pisa was a more serious and perilous reality. Shelley was riding outside the gates of Pisa with Lord Byron, Mr. Trelawny, and some other Englishmen, when a dragoon dashed through their party in an insolent manner. Lord Byron called him to account. A scuffle ensued, in which the dragoon knocked Shelley off his horse, wounded Captain Hay in the hand, and was dangerously wounded himself by one of Lord Byron’s servants. The dragoon recovered; Lord Byron left Pisa; and so ended an affair which might have had very disastrous results.

  Under present circumstances the following passage in a letter which he wrote to me from Pisa, dated March, 1820, will be read with interest: —

  ‘I have a motto on a ring in Italian: ‘Il buon tempo verrà.’ There is a tide both in public and in private affairs which awaits both men and nations.

  “I have no news from Italy. We live here under a nominal tyranny, administered according to the philosophic laws of Leopold, and the mild opinions which are the fashion here. Tuscany is unlike all the other Italian States in this respect.”

  Shelley’s last residence was a villa on the Bay of Spezzia. Of this villa Mr. Trelawny has given a view.

  Amongst the new friends whom he had made to himself in Italy were Captain and Mrs. Williams. To these, both himself and Mrs. Shelley were extremely attached. Captain Williams was fond of boating, and furnished a model for a small sailing vessel, which he persisted in adopting against the protest of the Genoese builder and of their friend Captain Roberts, who superintended her construction. She was called the Don Juan. It took two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and even then she was very crank in a breeze. Mr. Trelawny despatched her from Genoa under the charge of two steady seamen and a boy named Charles Vivian. Shelley retained the boy and sent back the two sailors. They told Mr. Trelawny that she was a ticklish boat to manage, but had sailed and worked well, and that they had cautioned the gentlemen accordingly.’

  It is clear from Mr. Trelawny’s account of a trip he had with them, that the only good sailor on board was the boy. They contrived to jam the mainsheet and to put the tiller starboard instead of port. “If there had been a squall,” he said, “we should have had to swim for it.”

  “Not I,” said Shelley; “I should have gone down with the rest of the pigs at the bottom of the boat,” meaning the iron pig-ballast.

  In the meantime, at the instance of Shelley, Lord Byron had concurred in inviting Mr. Leigh Hunt and his family to Italy. They were to co-operate in a new quarterly journal, to which it was expected that the name of Byron would ensure an immediate and extensive circulation. This was the unfortunate Liberal, a title furnished by Lord Byron, of which four numbers were subsequently published. It proved a signal failure, for which there were many causes; but I do not think that any name or names could have buoyed it up against the dead weight of Its title alone. A literary periodical should have a neutral name, and leave its character to be developed in its progress. A journal might be pre-eminently, on one side or the other, either aristocratical or democratical in it” tone; but to call it the “Aristocrat” or the “Democrats would be fatal to it.

  Leigh. Hunt arrived in Italy with his family on the 14th of June, 1822, in time to see his friend once and no more.

  Shelley was at that time writing a poem called the Triumph of Life. The composition of this poem, the perpetual presence of the sea, and other causes (among which I do not concur with Lady Shelley in placing the solitude of his seaside residence, for his life there was less solitary than it had almost ever been),

  contributed to plunge the mind of Shelley into a state of morbid excitement, the result of which was a tendency to see visions. One night loud cries were heard issuing from the saloon. The Williamses rushed out of their room in alarm; Mrs. Shelley also endeavoured to reach the spot, but fainted at the door. Entering the saloon, the Williamses found Shelley staring horribly into the air, and evidently in a trance. They waked him, and he related that a figure wrapped in a mantle came to his bedside and beckoned him, He must then have risen in his sleep, for he followed the imaginary figure into the saloon, when it lifted the hood of its mantle, ejaculated “Siete sodisfatto?” and vanished. The dream is said to have been suggested by an incident occurring in a drama attributed to Calderon.

  Another vision appeared to Shelley on the evening of May 6th, when he and Williams were walking together on the terrace. The story is thus recorded by the latter in his diary: —

  Fine. Some heavy drops of rain fell without a cloud being visible After tea, while walking with Shelley on the terrace, and observing the effect of moonshine on the waters, he complained of being unusually nervous, and, stopping short, he grasped me violently by the arm, and stared steadfastly on the white surf that broke upon the beach under our feet. Observing him sensibly affected, I demanded of him if he was in pain; but he only answered by saying, “There it is again! there!” He recovered after some time, and declared that he saw, as plainly as he then saw me, a naked child (Allegra, who had recently died) rise from the sea, and clasp its hands as if in joy, smiling at him. This was a trance that it required some reasoning and philosophy entirely to wake him from, so forcibly had the vision operated on his mind. Our conversation, which had been at first rather melancholy, led to this, and my confirming his sensations by confessing that I had felt the same, gave greater activity to his ever- wandering and lively imagination. — Shelley Memorials, pp. 191-193.

  On the afternoon of the 8th of July, 1822, after an absence of some days from home, Shelley and Williams set sail from Leghorn for their home on the Gulf of Spezzia. Trelawny watched them from Lord Byron’s vessel, the Bolivar. The day was hot and calm. Trelawny said to his Genoese mate, “They will soon have the land breeze.”

  “May be,” said the mate, “they will soon have too much breeze. That gaff- topsail is foolish, in a boat
with no deck and no sailor on board. Look at those black lines, and the dirty rags hanging under them out of the sky. Look at the smoke on the water. The devil is brewing mischief.” Shelley’s boat disappeared in a fog.

  Although the sun was obscured by mists, it was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the harbour. The heaviness of the atmosphere, and an unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a noise over-head and went on deck. The men were getting up a chain cable to let go another anchor. There was a general stir amongst the shipping; shifting berths, getting down yards and masts, veering out cables, hauling in of hawsers, letting go anchors, hailing from the ships and quays, boats scudding rapidly to and fro. It was almost dark, although only half-past six o’clock. The sea was of the colour, and looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead, and covered with an oily scum. Gusts of wind swept over without ruffling it, and big drops of rain fell on its surface, rebounding, as if they could not penetrate it. There was a commotion in the air, made up of many threatening sounds, coming upon us from the sea. Fishing-craft and coasting-vessels under bare poles rushed by us in shoals, running foul of the ships in the harbour. As yet the din and hubbub was that made by men, but their shrill pipings were suddenly silenced by the crashing voice of a thunder-squall that burst right over our heads. For some time no other sounds were to be heard than the thunder, wind, and rain. When the fury of the storm, which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had abated, and the horizon was in some degree cleared, I looked to seaward anxiously, in the hope of descrying Shelley’s boat amongst the many small craft scattered about. I watched every speck that loomed on the horizon, thinking that they would have borne up on their return to the port, as all the other- boats that had gone out in the same direction had done. — Trelawny, pp. 116-118.