Once, early in the morning,
Beelzebub arose,
With care his sweet person adorning,
He put on his Sunday clothes.
He drew on his boot to hide his hoof,
He drew on a glove to hide his claw,
His horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau,
And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau
As Bond-street ever saw.
Then at the Inns of Court . . .
He peeped in each hole, to each chamber stole,
His promising live-stock to view;
Grinning applause, he just showed them his claws,
And they shrunk with affright from his ugly sight,
Whose work they delighted to do.
Then observing the Prince Regent . . .
For he is fat, — his waistcoat gay,
When strained upon a levee day,
Scarce meets across his princely paunch;
And pantaloons are like half-moons
Upon each brawny haunch.63
It has been suggested that this sort of work was merely characteristic of Shelley’s juvenilia. But Shelley was to return to the raw material and style of ‘The Devil’s Walk’ nine years later, and to use it with vastly more sophisticated effect, though with an essentially similar target, in Peter Bell the Third and in The Mask of Anarchy. In 1812 it served to make the simple propaganda point that the established officials of the English rule were corrupt, cowardly and obscene, as they busied themselves with the satanic task of cheating and oppressing the under-privileged masses of society.
The ‘Esdaile Notebook’ shows evidence of other, more private poems also written on political themes during these weeks. In all of them one can sense Shelley trying to work towards an expression of his new-found awareness of the radical cause. In ‘The Crisis’ he attempted to produce a kind of litany of his new beliefs, a sapphic chant with an oddly psalmic, stumbling rhythm. But as yet it is hollow and rhetorical:
When we see Despots prosper in their weakness,
When we see Falsehood triumph in its folly,
When we see Evil, Tyranny, Corruption,
Grin, grow and fatten;
When Virtue toileth through a world of sorrow,
When Freedom dwelleth in the deepest dungeon,
When Truth, in chains and infamy, bewaileth
O’er a world’s ruin;
When Monarchs laugh upon their throne securely
Mocking the woes which are to them a treasure,
Hear the deep curse, and quench the Mother’s hunger
In her child’s murder;
Then we may hope the consummating hour
Dreadfully, sweetly, swiftly is arriving,
When light from Darkness, peace from desolation,
Bursts unresisted. . . .64
What Shelley meant by all these capitalized abstracts, and in particular the line about the child’s murder, is partly clarified by his observations on Keswick and its surroundings. Though the Lake District was beautiful in itself, he found that man’s presence made it morally and socially ugly. ‘The manufacturers with their contamination have crept into the peaceful vale and deformed the loveliness of Nature with human taint,’ he observed, as many a tourist has done since. But then he continued with that characteristic puritanism, ‘The debauched servants of the great families who resort contribute to the total extinction of morality. Keswick seems more like a suburb of London than a village of Cumberland. Children are frequently found in the River which the unfortunate women employed at the manufactory destroy.’65 From this situation, Shelley in his poem was trying to extrapolate a broad picture of England in that bad winter of 1811–12, and vaguely invoking that ‘dreadfully, sweetly, swiftly’ arriving moment of revolution. Of his Irish campaign he had written to Miss Hitchener: ‘You see my friend what I am about. I consider the State of Ireland as constituting a part of a great crisis in opinions.’66
In another poem, Shelley tried to relate the Irish social conditions more closely to his own political ambitions. Imitating Southey’s oriental frames of mythology, he created an Indian tale involving two lovers, Zeinab and Kathema, who are separated by tyrannic authority. The girl, Zeinab, is eventually hanged at a crossroad gibbet, and Kathema later hangs himself by the same chain in a moment of despairing desire to rejoin her. At the end of the poem, Shelley turns Zeinab’s career into an apocalyptic symbol of revolt, burning like a fiery comet through the darkness of society. It is clear that he was partially identifying himself with this early heroine of rebellion against the great ‘Them’ of established society:
Therefore against them she waged ruthless war
With their own arms of bold and bloody crime, —
Even like a mild and sweetly beaming star
Whose rays were wont to grace the matin-prime
Changed to a comet, horrible and bright,
Which wild careers awhile then sinks in dark-red night.
Thus, like its God, unjust and pityless,
Crimes first are made and then avenged by man,
For where’s the tender heart, whose hopes can bless
Or man or God’s unprofitable plan, —
A universe of horror and decay,
Gibbets, disease, and wars, and hearts as hard as they.67
In Edinburgh, during the autumn, Shelley, Hogg and Harriet had watched a comet that appeared for some days in the evening sky.
Of all Shelley’s Keswick poems, easily the most striking is the long Wordsworthian ‘A Tale of Society as It Is’, which he posted to Miss Hitchener on 7 January. It deserves to be counted as the first of Shelley’s important poems, though it is undramatic, indeed markedly flat and factual in its narrative style. It keeps as close as possible to the story of a poor woman whose only son is pressed into the Army, while she is left in solitude and poverty; Shelley had learnt of the incident at Keswick. This style, with its plain-faced, austere quality of statement and reflection was to mature gradually, like the other satiric style, until Shelley used it in his Italian poems to carry and present some of his finest human material. It is quite different from the gaseous, hyperbolic manner traditionally associated with Shelley’s lyricism.
For seven years did this poor woman live
In unparticipated solitude.
Thou might have seen her in the desert rude
Picking the scattered remnants of its wood.
If human, thou might’st there have learned to grieve.68[9]
While Shelley was arming himself for the Irish expedition with propaganda pamphlets and poems, he had received more practical aid in the form of an unexpected stabilization of his finances. Both Timothy Shelley and old Westbrook, after hearing of Shelley’s successful visit to the Duke of Norfolk’s at Greystoke, had agreed to contribute an allowance of £200 a year each. As Timothy put it, it was to prevent his son ‘cheating strangers’.69 The money was important, for it at last gave Shelley a degree of freedom of choice and movement, however ironically Timothy chose to concede it.
Timothy’s irony had some point, for the final gaining of this allowance has its own special twist. Immediately after returning from Greystoke, Shelley wrote to his father to broach the question of the £200. He stated his own point of view with an air of calm resolution which perhaps owed something to the duke’s influence. ‘Now let me say’, he wrote, ‘that a reconciliation with you is a thing which I very much desire, accept my apologies for the uneasiness which I have occasioned, believe that my wishes to repair any uneasiness is firm, & sincere — I regard family differences as a very great evil. . . . I hope you will not consider what I am about to say an insulting want of respect or contempt, but I think it my duty to say that however great advantages might result from such concessions, I can make no promise of concealing my opinions in political and religious matters.’70 On the face of it this looked admirably fair and sincere.
Yet on the very same day Shelley posted a secret letter to his little sister Hellen, who was
then 12 years old. He sent it clandestinely via Sir Bysshe Shelley’s huntsman, Mr Allen Etheridge, with instructions to leave it in the summer-house at Field Place where Hellen might find it. Etheridge was to pick up the return correspondence. As a reward, there was a promise of favours to come: ‘Remember Allen, that I shall not forget you.’71 The contents of this remarkable cloak and dagger missive were not exactly consistent with a ‘sincere & firm’ wish to repair the ‘uneasiness’ among the senior members of the family. It was imaginatively written from ‘Summer House. Evening.’, in order to convince little Hellen of her brother’s magical powers, liable to appear at a window or in the shadow of the redwoods at any moment. ‘Show this letter to no one,’ Shelley began dramatically. ‘Because everybody else hates me, that is no reason that you should. Think for yourself my dear girl, and write to me to tell me what you think. Where you are now you cannot do as you please. — You are obliged to submit to other people. — They will not let you walk and read and think (if they knew your thoughts) just as you like tho’ you have as good a right to do it as they. — But if you were with me you would be with some one who loved you, you might run & skip read write think just as you liked.’72 The simplicity of this appeal, its offer of unimpeded love and freedom, is in one way exquisitely Shelleyan. But it is also, in the context of what he had been promising to his father at the same day and at the same desk, exquisitely treacherous — a machiavellian attempt to take the stronghold from within.
Later in the letter Shelley touched, very lightly and subtly, on the note of fear, as in the old days: ‘. . . nobody can suspect you, you may easily write and put your letter into the Summer House where I shall be sure to get it. I watch over you, tho’ you do not think I am near, I need not tell you how I love you. — I know all that is said of me — but do not believe it. You will perhaps think I’m the Devil, but no, I am only your brother who is obliged to be put to these shifts to get a letter from you.’73 He aroused the fear by denying it.
Needless to say, Etheridge the huntsman saw how the land lay, and turned over both this letter and the covering one to Sir Bysshe, who passed it on to Timothy. Timothy was, naturally, infuriated. Once again, he turned all correspondence over to his solicitor Whitton, and refused to have any more direct contact with his son. Later in the spring, when Shelley was trying to raise capital to set himself up in a farmhouse for his little community, he found all his overtures peremptorily rejected. His father was disillusioned with him. Ever after he seems to have felt that Shelley might have designs on his other children. One recalls the plan that Shelley outlined to Merle. Certainly in 1814 Shelley was to consider a plan to kidnap Hellen and Mary.
The violent disagreement with Southey, combined with the nervous tension of planning a semi-subversive campaign, began to put considerable stress on Shelley. This made itself apparent in the middle of January. The references to the possibility of prison and government persecution lose their lightheartedness in his letters to Miss Hitchener. On 16 January he refers in passing to a ‘terrible headache’. ‘I have been obliged by an accession of nervous attack to take a quantity of laudanum which I did very unwillingly and reluctantly, and which I should not have done had I been alone. — I am now quite recovered.’74 But he was not really; the symptom passed, but the cause remained. He compared what he was planning to the radical work of Godwin, Tom Paine and Sir Francis Burdett, and, as he said, ‘Tom Paine died a natural death — his writings were far more violently in opposition to government than mine perhaps will ever be.’ Thus he tried to reassure both Miss Hitchener and himself.
Yet his anxiety showed through in other ways. The gothic imagination, which he had been assuring Godwin he no longer possessed, crept back into his conversation. He began to frighten Harriet again with ghostly talk. He was planning his radical community once more, but he gave it a nightmare twist. ‘I shall try to domesticate in some antique feudal castle,’ he told Miss Hitchener, ‘whose mouldering turrets are fit emblems of decaying inequality and oppression. . . . As to the ghosts I shall welcome them, altho Harriet protests against my invoking them, but they would tell tales of old, and it would add to the picturesqueness of the scenery to see their thin forms flitting thro the vaulted charnels.’75 Of course, he was joking; and yet, not entirely.
Fears and suspicions began to grow in the little household at Chesnut Cottage. Shelley could not keep quiet about his plans; he certainly told all the Calvert family and the Southeys. Opinion in the locality had been gradually polarizing against him, ever since it had been first aroused by the strange night-time activities of which Mr Dare had complained.
On 19 January this was brought to a head by a violent incident. It was reported in the local Cumberland Pacquet for 28 January 1812, as follows:
Several attempts at robbery have been made within the last fortnight, at Keswick and in its neighbourhood. One of the most remarkable was about seven o’clock, on the night of Sunday 19th inst. at Chesnut Cottage near Keswick, the seat of Gideon Dare, Esq. — A part of the house, it seems, is occupied by Mr Shelley and his family. — Mr Shelley being alarmed by an unusual noise, (but not knowing, or suspecting the cause) went to the door; was knocked down by some ruffians, and had remained senseless for a time, when Mr Dare, hearing the disturbance, rushed out of the house. The villains, no doubt perceiving that he was armed, fled immediately. It could not be ascertained how many the gang consisted of; but the attack was of a very formidable nature, and must stimulate the magistrates and inhabitants of the vicinity to make the most speedy exertions, and adopt the most effectual measures for the security of the town and of the neighbourhood.76
The report is written from the point of view of Mr Dare, who appears to be the main source of information, and there seems to be no doubt at all in the reporter’s mind that such a ‘very formidable’ attack did actually take place. The motives of the ruffians is of course a moot point, since the reporter has no evidence that Shelley was robbed.[10]
Harriet, frightened that Miss Hitchener might hear the story by rumour ‘much more dreadful than it really was’, wrote at once to her ‘sister’ in Sussex. A week later she wrote again, in a more reassured tone, ‘quite angry’ that she might have frightened Miss Hitchener with her own fears: ‘but do not my dear Madam suffer yourself to be alarmed at it; for now all is quiet and tranquil; nor do we expect any more alarms, and if we have which is not at all likely, we are well guarded’.77 The guard must refer to Shelley’s pistols, which he always carried in his personal baggage from the time of his elopement onwards. This letter is the first we have in Harriet’s hand, and it shows at once her direct and pleasant frankness, combined with the sort of naïveté which might be put upon. Harriet’s note, included in one of Shelley’s, indicated that Shelley had a strong nervous reaction to this attack, and it was probably for this reason that he did not himself write to Elizabeth Hitchener with the news. ‘He is much better than he has been for some time,’ confided Harriet, ‘and I hope as he gets stronger he will outgrow his nervous complaints — next week we think of going to Ireland.’78
Shelley, when he finally felt up to writing himself, on 26 January, seven days after the attack, tried to dismiss the incident, but he did so in an ambiguous way. ‘Harriet has told you of the circumstance which has alarmed her. I consider it as a complete casual occurrence which having met with once we are more likely not to meet with again. The man evidently wanted to rifle my pockets; my falling within the house defeated his intention. There is nothing in this to alarm you. I was afraid you might see it in the newspaper or fancy that the blow had injured me. Dismiss all fears of assassins, and spies and prisons, let me have your confident hopes of safety and success. . . .’79 But by the very fact of mentioning what they all feared, the spies and assassins, Shelley managed to sound an ominous note. Once again, he may have done this deliberately, for at the very end of this letter, in his postscript, he touches the delicate spot once more: ‘I am now as Harriet can tell you quite recovered from the little nervous
attack I mentioned. Do not alarm yourself either about murderers, spies, governments, prisons, or nerves. — I must as I said have hopes and those very confident ones from you to fill the sails of our Packet to Dublin.’80 Noticing the alarm in the little household, the Calverts kindly offered to put them up during these final weeks in Keswick. The offer was gratefully accepted.81 The weather was stormy.
The pressures of Shelley’s last days at Keswick, leading to the climactic attack, were to be repeated more than once at later residences. Since they are biographically controversial, it is important to note the overall pattern. The first thing is the growing evidence of the friction between the Shelley household and the neighbourhood. Shelley, with his strange, deliberately ‘devilish’ ways, his outspoken political views and his unusual menage of ladies, clearly came into confrontation with much of the traditionally respectable and conservative element at Keswick. The row with Southey is just one of the symptoms of this which happens to be well documented; but it is highly probable, remembering for example his conduct in Edinburgh with Hogg, that he also publicly affronted or mocked the owners of the manufactory for which he had expressed so much distaste in private correspondence. The difficulty with Mr Dare, his landlord, is another case in point. Shelley was frequently outspoken in every kind of company, and if aroused, he could show a furious temper and contempt for his opponents. It is not surprising that his behaviour eventually met with retaliation.
As this social friction built up, it also began to have its psychological effect on Shelley. He reacted, despite himself, to the hostility around him. His sensitive, fundamentally unstable disposition produced a painful state of nerves, and ‘nervous attacks’. Shelley tried to combat these with laudanum, which would normally only be taken to kill a specific physiological pain. The combined effect was to produce morbid trains of fantasy, suspicions and fears. Quite often he was able to joke about these, and this admirable presence of humour and distancing appears sporadically in his letters. But at the same time his fears, reflecting the suspicion and dislike of his neighbours, tended to grow upon him.
Shelley: The Pursuit Page 18