Shelley: The Pursuit

by Richard Holmes

  This period of summer study gradually bore fruit. In a package to Hookham, dated 29 July, Shelley delivered twenty-five copies of his completed pamphlet, the Letter to Lord Ellenborough; and on 18 August, he sent fifty more. The work, printed locally in Barnstaple, was an essay of some 4,000 words, in which Shelley argued the case for complete freedom of the press and toleration of all published opinion on the classic ground that ‘That which is false will ultimately be controverted by its own falsehood. That which is true needs but publicity to be acknowledged.’56

  Eaton had been tried and found guilty of ‘blasphemous libel’ by a jury directed by Lord Ellenborough. His defence had been that he was a deist, and not an atheist; that the Scriptures were open to the kind of criticism that Tom Paine was making, since the God of the Old Testament was a revengeful and primitive deity, and Christ was ‘an exceedingly virtuous, good man, but nothing supernatural or divine’.57 With great relish Shelley chose to defend a highly polemic version of this position. ‘Mr Eaton asserted that the Scriptures were, from beginning to end, a fable and imposture, that the Apostles were liars and deceivers. He denied the miracles, the resurrection, and ascension of Christ. He did so, and the Attorney General denied the propositions which he asserted, and asserted those which he denied. What singular conclusion is deducible from this fact? None, but that the Attorney General and Mr Eaton sustained two opposite opinions.’58

  There are several other passages in which Shelley writes with this kind of clarity and verve. But as in the Irish pamphlets, he still had no clear idea what kind of audience he was speaking to, and his argument shows little coherent development, but swirls away to itself without ever reaching any definite set of conclusions, except the need to raise his ‘solitary voice’ in ‘disapprobation’.[9] Shelley missed one crucial point about the larger significance of Eaton’s trial. His letter was based on the idea that Eaton’s persecution was, strictly speaking, theological. ‘Wherefore, I repeat, is Mr Eaton punished? Because he is a Deist? And what are you, my Lord? A Christian. Ha then! the mask is fallen off; you persecute him because his faith differs from yours.’ But in fact the legal instrument of ‘blasphemous libel’ had become far more a political weapon used by the government to suppress socially subversive ideas. The very name of Tom Paine signified social subversion. Eaton’s trial for publishing Paine was really the opening of the second phase of political repression — the first had been conducted by Pitt in the nineties — which took place between 1812 and 1824, and involved all the most distinguished members of the early free press movement: Wooler, Hone, Carlile, Cobbett, Burdett and Hunt. In every case prosecutions were mounted on one of two counts: blasphemous libel or seditious libel. Shelley did not see, at the time of writing his Letter to Lord Ellenborough, the full political implications of what was taking place. Later he came to see only too well: the open letter he wrote for Hunt’s Examiner on the occasion of Carlile’s trial in 1819 is a far more penetrating and forceful plea for liberty of the press and published opinion than this early pamphlet.

  But Shelley did see that the central issue was not one of a true or false opinion, as it would be in, say, a purely scientific debate over Newton’s laws, but a question of relative standards, of values developing historically with a society. He saw that ways must be kept open for one system of belief to lose its sectarian and institutionalized character and broadened out to embrace a much wider and more diverse kind of society. He wrote:

  The thinking part of the community has not received as indisputable the truth of Christianity as they have that of the Newtonian system. A very large portion of society, and that powerfully and extensively connected, derives its sole emolument from the belief of Christianity as a popular faith. To torture and imprison the asserter of a dogma, however ridiculous and false, is highly barbarous and impolitic. How, then, does not the cruelty of persecution become aggravated when it is directed against the opposer of an opinion yet under dispute, and which men of unrivalled acquirements, penetrating genius, and stainless virtue, have spent, and at last sacrificed, their lives in combating.59

  He closed the pamphlet on a high note: ‘The time is rapidly approaching, I hope, that you, my Lord, may live to behold its arrival, when the Mahometan, the Jew, the Christian, the Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally sharing the benefits which arise from its association, and united in the bonds of brotherly love.’60

  Altogether, Shelley’s Letter to Lord Ellenborough, though a much more lively and economic piece of work than the Irish pamphlets, was still too politically naïve to carry much weight. It begged too many questions. Where it was most lively, his style had become almost colloquial, and this was promising, and undoubtedly reflected the ‘fire of discussion’ that was taking place in the little circle at Lynmouth. The pamphlet was a brave piece of work to circulate, for in its boisterous lack of deference either to the machinery of justice, in the person of Lord Ellenborough, or to the tenets of the Christian religion, it was itself open to possible prosecution.[10]

  Of the seventy-five copies which Shelley sent to Hookham for ‘gratuitous distribution’,61 only one is still known to exist, in the Bodleian Library. Hookham would not publish the pamphlet under his own imprint, because it was too dangerous. Shelley himself, who did not sign the work, was only too aware of the possibilities of government interference, and wrote prudently: ‘I beg you to accept of them that you may shew your friends who are not informers.’ Copies were mailed to Godwin, Mrs Nugent, Chevalier Lawrence, Lord Stanhope, Sir Francis Burdett and many others, and this partly accounted for the stream of Shelley’s mail which left Lynmouth by the twice-weekly post, and which subsequently so intrigued the Home Office.

  August at Lynmouth also saw other literary projects in the making, for the attentions of Godwin as a reader, and Hookham as a possible publisher, encouraged Shelley to collect what material he already had, and to get down to composing new works. Stockdale, his publisher in Dublin, still held the manuscripts of Shelley’s collection of ‘songs of liberty’, but he refused to complete the printing or to render up the manuscript until Shelley paid his outstanding bills. Shelley, with no intention of paying bills that he could no longer afford, tried to get John Lawless to intercede for him, but without apparent success. Stockdale also held manuscripts of a collection of ‘essays moral and religious’62 which Shelley had been preparing. Lawless’s reputation dropped steadily in the Shelley household as he failed to procure these manuscripts. Later Mrs Nugent was to be importuned, but with no greater success.

  Shelley hoped to persuade Hookham to publish his two Irish pamphlets, with ‘annexed suggestions’, altogether in one cheap volume ‘with an explanatory preface, in London’. The work could then be secretly conveyed into Ireland and circulated.63 A second venture was to involve polishing and expanding the ‘essays moral and religious’ from the Stockdale manuscript for Hookham to publish. But in the event Shelley never retrieved it. The idea for such a collection of essays remained with Shelley, and in the next ten years he wrote on such varied subjects as vegetarianism, religious belief, free love, marriage, Christianity, poetry, the Devil and methods of political reform.[11] The subjects were ones that Shelley returned to again and again throughout his life, continually reexamining and reappraising them. For precisely this reason they form some of the most intimate autobiographical material that we have from him. ‘My publications will present to the moralist and the metaphysician a picture of a mind however uncultured and unpruned which had at the dawn of its knowledge taken a singular turn, and to leave out the early lineaments of its appearance could be to efface those which the attrition of the world had not deprived of right angled originality.’64 Egotistical or not, he was quite correct.

  A third scheme which Shelley had lined up for Hookham was the publication by subscription of an American history of Irish republicanism, extremely antagonistic towards the English colonists, called ‘Pieces of Irish History’.65 Shelley thought it was an excellent piece of
radical propaganda, and Miss Hitchener was ‘so much enraged with the characters there mentioned’ — these would be English landlords and politicians — ‘that nothing will satisfy her desire of revenge but the printing & publishing of them, to exhibit to the world those characters which are (shameful to say) held up as beings possessing every amiable quality, whilst their hearts are as bad as possible to be’.66 In fact the book put Miss Hitchener in such low spirits about the fate of Ireland and the Irish that Harriet was quite worried about her. ‘I shall print proposals for publishing it by subscription’, Shelley wrote to Mrs Nugent, ‘if you cd send us any names you would benefit the Cause.’67 But the work did not materialize.

  During these summer weeks at Lynmouth, the long poem which Shelley had contemplated at Keswick in the winter was finally taking shape. He worked at it on the beach in the daytime, and in the cottage in the evening. On 18 August Shelley was able to send Hookham a ‘specimen’ consisting of about 700 lines. He had been writing this, his first major work, very much aware of the political climate, the need for propaganda and the dangers of persecution. The Irish expedition was fresh in his mind, and the potentially violent condition throughout the depressed regions of England. His letters to Godwin from Dublin had shown how Shelley fluctuated between the extremes of revolutionary political association and despairing political quietism. Queen Mab as the poem was called, offered a third alternative, a third way. It was politics conducted by propaganda; polemics, visions, prophecies and philosophical disquisitions. Because it was also politics parading as poetry, Shelley hoped it might find a weak spot in the government’s armour.

  He wrote to Hookham: ‘I enclose also by way of specimen all that I have written of a little poem begun since my arrival in England. I conceive I have matter enough for 6 more cantos. You will perceive that I have not attempted to temper my constitutional enthusiasm in that Poem. Indeed a Poem is safe, the iron-souled Attorney General would scarcely dare to attack “Genus irritabile vatum”. The Past, the Present, & the Future are the grand and comprehensive topics of this Poem. I have not yet half exhausted the second of them.’68

  But, even as he wrote, the attack was closing on him. Of all the propaganda methods he had been employing, the simplest and most prosaic let him down. The following evening, 19 August, Dan Healy was caught putting up posters in Barnstaple, and taken into custody by the magistrates. When the posters which Dan was carrying, the Declaration and ‘The Devil’s Walk’, were read, the case was treated as a matter of urgency. Dan was called before the mayor of Barnstaple later that night and interrogated.

  The correspondence between the Home Office and the town clerk has survived in the Public Records Office, so we know fairly accurately what happened. Dan did not inform on Shelley, but he faithfully gave the cover story. ‘On being asked how he became possessed of these papers, he said, on his road from Linton to Barnstaple yesterday, he met a gentleman dressed in black, whom he had never seen before, who asked him to take the papers to Barnstaple, and post and distribute them; and on Hill [sic] consenting, the gentleman gave him five shillings for his trouble.’69 Barnstaple is seventeen miles from Lynmouth, so one must suppose that if Dan was found there in the evening, as the clerk reported, he must have been spending at least two days in the area on a distributing expedition; Shelley might well have been with him, but of this we have no information. The mayor, ‘interrogating him more particularly concerning his master’, elicited various details about Shelley’s residence in Lynmouth, his travels in Dublin, his marriage to Harriet and his family connections in Sussex. But he obtained nothing further on Shelley’s political activities.

  The mayor then instituted immediate inquiries about Shelley’s activities in Lynmouth. It is interesting, and slightly disquieting, how quickly this information was obtained. By the following morning, 20 August, the mayor knew all about Shelley’s massive correspondence, about the bottle-launching expeditions, and what the bottles contained. He was, in general, informed that ‘Mr Shelley had been regarded with a suspicious eye since he has been at Lynmouth’. Armed with this background, the mayor again summoned Dan before him and, acting in his capacity as magistrate, he tried and convicted him ‘in ten penalties of £20 each for publishing and dispersing papers printed without the printer’s name being on them, under the Act of 39 George III c. 79’. Dan was then ‘committed to the common gaol of this borough for not paying the penalties, and having no goods on which they could be levied’.70 The town clerk wrote his report to Lord Sidmouth, dating and dispatching it ‘Barnstaple, August 20th, 1812’. This was an extremely rapid and astute piece of legal work. Dan had been convicted on a technical, not a political offence. The penalty for not paying the £200 fine was six months’ imprisonment. The fine was too heavy for him to be able to pay it himself, but not too heavy for his well-connected master. The mayor therefore confidently sat back and awaited the appearance of Mr Shelley, and the chance to conduct a further discreet interrogation.

  Shelley came at once; either on that day, or the following. But, to the authorities’ surprise, he did not offer to pay the fine, nor did he volunteer any further information. The interview between Dan and Shelley was apparently brief, and calm, as if the whole thing was already understood between them. ‘Mr Shelley came here to apply for his discharge; and, on visiting the jail, did not, I apprehend, express any astonishment at his situation, or reprove him for his conduct, which appears rather extraordinary.’71 Shelley then returned alone to Lynmouth. It was impossible for him to pay that size of fine — exactly half his annual income.

  While the authorities at Barnstaple awaited Home Office instructions, they also alerted the Post Office. Sir Francis Freeling was once again informed, as Secretary to the Post Office in London, of Shelley’s activities. Once again the papers were passed on to Lord Chichester. This time Lord Chichester felt it was really a matter for official action. He endorsed Freeling’s covering letter: ‘I think it right to communicate the circumstances to the Secretary of State. It will have no effect to speak to Mr Shelley’s family, they suffer enough already from his conduct.’72 But Chichester may nevertheless have passed on a word of warning to the Shelley family in Sussex, and it is possible that this news reached Shelley at Lynmouth and so alerted him in time to what was afoot.

  The first official reaction was a note from Lord Sidmouth, in his capacity as Secretary of State for the Home Office. It was dated 22 August, and probably reached Barnstaple about the 24th. It was short and to the point. ‘Recommend that Mr Shelley’s proceedings be watched if he is still at Linton. It would also be desirable to procure the address of his different correspondents, to whom he writes from the post-office. Lord S. will be obliged for any further information respecting Mr S., and, in the meantime, inquiries will be made about him here. Lord S. quite approves of the steps that have been taken respecting Daniel Hill [sic].’73

  The Post Office at Barnstaple were informed of the Home Office’s instructions, and the town clerk, Henry Drake, set about collecting a dossier on Shelley. But this time he was not quick enough. About ten days after receiving his instructions, he found his sources of information were beginning to dry up, and that no more news of Shelley was arriving in Barnstaple. After another three or four days had elapsed, the suspicions of the mayor were aroused, and Henry Drake was rapidly dispatched to Lynmouth to make first-hand inquiries. Drake arrived in Lynmouth on 7 September. His report to the Home Office, dated 9th, speaks for itself: ‘I beg to inform your lordship, that not being enabled to obtain here sufficient information respecting Mr Shelley, I went to Lynmouth, where he resided, and returned yesterday. On my arrival there, I found he, with his family, after attempting in vain to cross the Channel to Swansea from that place, had lately left Lynmouth for Ilfracombe; and, on my following him there, found he had gone to Swansea, where I imagine he at present is.’74 Further details followed about Shelley’s menage, and his political propaganda methods. There was also a description: ‘Mr Shelley is rather thin, and very young
; indeed, his appearance is, I understand, almost that of a boy.’ But the fact remained, despite the assiduity of the authorities at Barnstaple, Shelley had managed to escape from under their noses.

  At this juncture, Sidmouth had all the relevant papers passed along to his legal department, the standing council who advised on matters of public prosecution. The last note in the Records Office collection is addressed from a Mr Litchfield, at Lincoln’s Inn on 18 September, and states the result of a legal conference on the Shelley affair. One of the factors which must have played an important role in the decision was Shelley’s legal minority. Counsel advised not to prosecute, but to have Shelley closely followed and observed. Mr Litchfield wrote: ‘It did not appear either to Mr Becket or himself that any steps could with propriety be taken with respect to Mr Shelley, in consequence of his very extraordinary and unaccountable conduct; but that it would be proper to instruct some person to observe his future behaviour, and to transmit any information which might be obtained respecting him.’ A note on this memorandum adds: ‘Write to the Mayor of Barnstaple accordingly.’75

  In view of events the following winter in Wales, it is important to see these exchanges, and the final instructions, in their full perspective. The Home Office had now received information on Shelley’s subversive and possibly seditious activities on three separate occasions: from Dublin, from Holyhead and from Barnstaple. They also knew a good deal about his Sussex background, his ‘unsuitable’ marriage, and his ‘connection’ with Miss Hitchener. He was politically suspect, and there was no hope of curbing him through his family. Prosecution had been considered, but he was a minor. The temporary solution to this dilemma was typical of Sidmouth’s policy of establishing a network of spies and informers during this period. Addresses of his correspondents must be noted and filed, and Shelley’s activities must be closely observed. The difficulty now was that Shelley had successfully disappeared. The security system, though surprisingly quick and efficient locally, had one outstanding weakness; it was not co-ordinated nationally. The chances of trailing Shelley after Swansea were negligible. The Home Office had therefore, for the time being at least, lost their contact. Two possibilities now remained. Either Shelley would be informed on yet again, from whatever new locality he settled in. Or else, failing this, in five months’ time, when Dan Healy was released, the servant would unwittingly lead the authorities’ spies to his new residence. But one way or the other, Shelley’s pursuing shadows would eventually catch up with him.