Shelley: The Pursuit
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62. The Unextinguished Hearth, pp. 46–52; and Louise B. Boas, ‘Erasmus Perkins and Shelley’, Modern Language Notes, LXX, June 1955.
63. Journal, p. 37.
64. New Shelley Letters, pp. 84–5.
65. Journal, p. 39.
66. ‘Epipsychidion’, Poetical Works, p. 413.
67. Journal, p. 42.
68. New Shelley Letters, p. 86.
69. ibid., p. 87.
70. Letters, I, No. 287, p. 426.
71. ibid., No. 310, pp. 439–40.
72. ibid., No. 314, p. 445.
Chapter 12, Up the River: Bishopsgate 1815
1. Letters, I, No. 290, p. 429.
2. Mary, No. 17, p. 8.
3. Peacock, Memoirs, Essays and Reviews, pp. 41–2.
4. Poetical Works, pp. 525–6.
5. Letters, I, No. 291, p. 429.
6. ibid., No. 291, p. 430.
7. Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, I, p. 529.
8. ibid.
9. Peacock, p. 59.
10. Crotchet Castle, by T. L. Peacock, Ch. 10, in Works, 1875, Vol. II, p. 244.
11. Prose, p. 186.
12. Poetical Works, pp. 524–5.
13. Dowden, op. cit., I, p. 530.
14. Prose, p. 184.
15. ibid., p. 185.
16. ibid., pp. 193–4.
17. Letters, I, No. 294, p. 432.
18. Peacock, p. 60.
19. Prose, p. 172.
20. Prose, p. 174. See Arthur Koestler ‘A Conference on Brain Function’, paper given at UCLA, 1967, republished in Drinkers of Infinity, 1967.
21. Prose, p. 170.
22. Poetical Works, p. 25.
23. ibid., p. 26.
24. ibid., p. 28.
25. ibid., p. 20.
26. ibid., p. 21.
27. Peacock, p. 60.
28. Poetical Works, p. 18.
29. ibid., pp. 18–19.
30. Prose, p. 222.
31. But see Edward E. Bostetter, Shelley and the Mutinous Flesh, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, I, 1959.
32. Poetical Works, p. 30.
33. Godwin’s Diary, in Letters, I, No. 299, p. 435 n. 1.
34. Peck, Shelley: His Life and Work, II, p. 436.
35. Poetical Works, pp. 725–6.
36. ibid., p. 731.
37. The Unextinguished Hearth, p. 105.
38. ibid., pp. 105–6.
39. ibid., pp. 107–8.
40. Letters, I, No. 373, p. 517.
41. ibid., No. 327, p. 462.
42. From the ‘Journal of Maria Gisborne’ in Maria Gisborne and Edward E. Williams: their Journals and Letters ed. F. L. Jones, University of Oklahoma Press, 1951, p. 39.
43. Letters, I, No. 310, p. 440.
44. ibid., No. 315, p. 447.
45. ibid., No. 319, p. 450.
46. ibid., No. 322, p. 453.
47. Ingpen, Shelley in England, p. 461.
48. Letters, I, No. 324, p. 459.
49. ibid., No. 326, p. 460.
50. Godwin’s Diary in Letters, I, No. 334, p. 465 n. 2.
51. Marchand, Byron: a Biography Vol. II, p. 590.
52. ibid., p. 591.
53. Murray MSS.
54. ibid.
55. ibid.
Chapter 13, The Byron Summer: Switzerland 1816
1. Murray MSS.
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. Ingpen, Shelley in England, pp. 460–2.
5. Letters, I, No. 346, p. 471.
6. See Letters, I, No. 365.
7. Letters, I, No. 344, p. 470.
8. ibid., No. 346, p. 473.
9. Mary, No. 18, p. 9.
10. Murray MSS.
11. Mary, No. 18, p. 10.
12. History of a Six Weeks Tour (1817).
13. Letters, I, No. 348, p. 475.
14. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, 1817, Signet Classic, 1965, Ch. 22, pp. 183–4.
15. Letters, I, No. 348, p. 475. No. private journal of Mary’s survived for this year until the end of July. Claire’s diary for the whole of 1816 is also lost.
16. Maria Gisborne and Edward E. Williams: their Journals and Letters, F. L. Jones (ed.), p. 122.
17. R. Glynn Grylls (Lady Mander), Claire Clairmont, 1939, p. 64.
18. The Diary of William Polidori, ed. W. Rossetti, 1911. Entry for 27 May, 1815.
19. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, Vol. II, p. 627.
20. Polidori, 1–5 June 1816.
21. ibid.
22. Frankenstein, p. x.
23. Polidori, 18th June, 1816.
24. The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Rowland E. Prothero (ed.), John Murray, 1898–1901. Vol. IV, p. 297.
25. Frankenstein, p. x–xi.
26. ibid., Ch. 2.
27. ibid., Ch. 7.
28. ibid., Ch. 10.
29. ibid., Ch. 20.
30. ibid., Ch. 15.
31. ibid., Ch. 18.
32. ibid., Ch. 22.
33. ibid., Ch. 23.
34. ibid., Ch. 5, p. 57.
35. ibid., Ch. 10, pp. 95–6.
36. Prose, pp. 307–8.
37. Letters, I, No. 353, pp. 480–8.
38. Thomas Moore, A Life of Byron, 1844, p. 320.
39. Letters, I, No. 354, p. 490.
40. Journal, p. 51.
41. ibid., p. 52.
42. Letters, I, No. 358, p. 497.
43. ibid., No. 358, p. 499.
44. Poetical Works, p. 533.
45. ibid., p. 535.
46. Marchand, op. cit., II, p. 647.
47. On Shelley, Edmund Blunden et al., Oxford, 1938. ‘The Atheist: an Incident at Chamonix’, Gavin de Beer, pp. 43–54.
48. ibid.
49. Letters, I, No. 358, pp. 501–2.
50. Journal, p. 55.
51. Letters, II, No. 652, pp. 328–9.
52. Marchand, op. cit., II, p. 634. See also Murray MSS for a further undated fragment: ‘Everything is so awkward. We go so soon. Dearest pray come and see us, pray do. Goodbye. I cannot find a wafer S[helley] says he won’t look at my note so don’t be offended Goodbye dearest. Pray come and see us.’
53. Journal, p. 61.
54. Letters, I, No. 361, p. 504.
55. Ibid., No. 363, p. 508.
Chapter 14, The Suicides: London 1816
1. Poetical Works, p. 546.
2. Journal, p. 69.
3. Edinburgh Review, XXVIII, 1816.
4. Letters, I, No. 370, p. 513.
5. Peck, Shelley: His Life and Work, II, p. 437.
6. Letters, I, No. 373, p. 516.
7. ibid., p. 518.
8. ibid., p. 517.
9. Mary, No. 20, p. 14.
10. Letters, I, No. 374, p. 520.
11. ibid., p. 521.
12. ibid., p. 520 n. 1.
13. ibid., No. 376, pp. 522–3.
14. Letters, I, No. 378, pp. 524–5.
15. Claire to Trelawney in a long letter dated 30 August to 21 September 1878. Pforzheimer, Vol. IV, pp. 787–8.
16. Letters, I, No. 381, p. 530.
17. Peacock: Memoirs, Letters and Reviews, pp. 88–9.
18. Poetical Works, p. 418.
19. A. H. Beaven, J. & H. Smith, 1899, pp. 136ff.
20. The Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon ed. W. B. Pope, 1960, Vol. II, 23 January 1817.
21. Peter Bell the Third, Poetical Works, p. 359. Shelley’s own footnote reads: ‘See [Wordsworth’s] description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonizing death of a number of trout . . . [The Excursion] contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding.’
22. Haydon, op. cit., 5 August 1822.
23. The Autobiography of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1846.
24. John Keats to Leigh Hunt, 10 May 1817. Letters of John Keats, Robert Gittings (ed.), Oxford, 1970, p. 11.
25. John
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817. Gittings, op. cit., p. 27.
26. John Keats to George and Tom Keats, 23 January 1818. Gittings, op. cit., p. 56.
27. The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, A.B. Waller (ed.), Dent, 1903. ‘On Paradox and Commonplace’, Vol. VI, pp. 48–9.
28. Thornton Hunt in Atlantic Monthly, February 1863.
29. R.J. White, Waterloo to Peterloo, 1957, pp. 160–1.
30. Mary, No. 24, pp. 22–4.
31. This description of Cashman’s execution was assembled from three contemporary newspaper reports by E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 664.
32. Samuel Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical, 1841.
33. Prose, pp. 161–2.
34. H. B. Forman, The Vicissitudes of Queen Mab, 1887.
Chapter 15, The Garden Days: Marlow 1817
1. Thornton Hunt in Atlantic Monthly, February 1863.
2. Mary, No. 28, p. 24.
3. Letters, I, No. 395. pp. 539–40.
4. Bod. MSS. Shelley Adds. e. 10.
5. Poetical Works, p. 551.
6. Letters, I, No. 398, pp. 542–3.
7. Poetical Works, p. 539.
8. Bod. MSS. Shelley e. 4. Poetical Works, p. 549.
9. Letters, I, No. 399, p. 543.
10. Elizabeth Kent, Flora Domestica, 1831, p. XIX.
11. Mary’s Note in Poetical Works, p. 157.
12. Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, pp. 123–4. Dowden’s information was collected verbatim from Polly Rose in old age, and I have used it selectively, leaving out the more obvious Victorian filigree about Shelley’s ‘eyes like a deer’, etc.
13. Miss Rose in a letter to Lady Shelley, Dowden, op. cit., II, p. 120.
14. ibid.
15. Dowden, op. cit., II, p. 123.
16. A. H. Beaven, J. & H. Smith, 1899, p. 171.
17. Letters, I, No. 405, p. 551.
18. The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock, David Garnett (ed.), 1970, Vol. 1, Nightmare Abbey, Ch. 2.
19. ibid.
20. Letters, II, No. 501, p. 98.
21. David Garnett (ed.), op. cit., Nightmare Abbey, Ch. 10.
22. Letters, I, No. 409, p. 553.
23. Mary, No. 44, p. 42.
24. Letters, I, No. 411, p. 557.
25. Poetical Works, p. 37.
26. Letters, I, No. 411, p. 557.
27. Mary, No. 35, p. 33.
28. Mary, No. 35, pp. 33–4.
29. ibid., No. 37, p. 37.
30. Letters, I, No. 415, pp. 560–1.
31. Mary, No. 39, p. 41
32. Ingpen, Shelley in England, pp. 523–6.
33. Poetical Works, pp. 178–9.
34. Letters, I, No. 417, p. 564.
35. Poetical Works, p. 886.
36. Journal, p. 85.
37. Poetical Works, pp. 34–5.
38. ibid., p. 32.
39. ibid., pp. 33–4.
40. The Diary of Henry Crabbe Robinson, ed. Thomas Sadler, 1869, Vol. II, pp. 67–8.
41. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 727.
42. The Hammonds quoted in E. P. Thompson, op. cit., p. 730.
43. Letters, I, No. 420, p. 566.
44. Prose, p. 168.
45. ibid., p. 167.
46. ibid., pp. 166–7.
47. ibid., pp. 168–9.
48. Letters, I, No. 431, p. 575 n. 2.
49. Letters, I, No. 439, p. 586, n. 1.
50. ibid., No. 441, pp. 587–8.
51. ibid., No. 423, p. 568.
52. ibid., No. 426, p. 569.
53. ibid., No. 427, p. 571.
54. ibid., No. 432, pp. 577–8.
55. ibid., No. 433, pp. 579–80.
56. Journal, p. 87.
57. Letters, I, No. 435, p. 582.
58. Peacock: Memoirs, Letters and Reviews, p. 89.
59. Letters, I, No. 436, p. 584.
60. ibid., No. 429, pp. 572–3.
61. Bod. MS Shelley Adds. e. 19. There is also an earlier reference in the MS to ‘William Godwin’; unlike the rest of the poem which appears in a separate notebook the first two cantos are written neatly in ink; Shelley later used much of the historical material as the basis for his ‘Ode to Liberty’ of 1820.
62. The poem is printed in Poetical Works, pp. 31–156, Revolt of Islam II, stanza 23.
63. ibid., II, stanza 43.
64. ibid., V, stanza 53.
65. ibid., VI, stanzas 16–17.
66. ibid., VI, stanzas 33–6; 38.
67. ibid., IX, stanzas 24–5.
68. ibid., X, stanzas 14–15.
69. ibid., X, stanzas 18–19.
70. ibid., X, stanzas 21–2.
71. Poetical Works, p. 887.
72. The Revolt of Islam, XII, stanza 5.
73. ibid., XII, stanza 13.
74. The Purgatory of Suicides, Bk II, stanza 7 in Thomas Cooper, Poetical Works, 1877.
75. See Toller: Transfiguration, 1919, and Masses and Man, 1920; Also Kaiser’s trilogy, Gas, 1919–20. Toller in fact wrote one play actually about the English Luddites of 1812, Die Maschinenstürmer (The Machine Wreckers).
76. Letters, I, No. 448, p. 593.
77. ibid., No. 450, p. 594.
78. ibid., No. 453, p. 596.
79. The Unextinguished Hearth, p. 123.
80. The Unextinguished Hearth, p. 125.
81. ibid.
82. ibid., p. 128.
83. Journal, p. 91.
84. Letters, I, No. 436, p. 584.
85. ibid., No. 436, ibid.
86. ibid., No. 429, p. 573.
87. Poetical Works, p. 161.
88. ibid.
89. Claire, p. 80.
90. Letters, I, No. 454, p. 598.
91. Edmund Blunden, Shelley: A Life Story, 1946, p. 173.
92. Claire, p. 83.
93. ibid., p. 85.
94. Hogg to J.F. Newton in New Shelley Letters, p. 107.
95. Dowden, op. cit., II, p. 182.
96. Mary to Hogg, 3 October 1824, New Shelley Letters, p. 151.
97. Poetical Works, p. 552.
98. ibid., p. 550. ‘Ozymandias’ was first published in Hunt’s Examiner, January 1818.
99. See N.I. White, Shelley, I, pp. 743–4 (notes) for discussion of this complicated deal. The documents are confusing and Dowden, Ingpen, Peck and White all believe the loan was only £2,000. But to me this seems inadequate in the light of Shelley’s debts by 1822.
100. Letters, I, No. 455, p. 597 n. 3.
101. ibid., No. 455, pp. 597–8 n. 3.
102. ibid., which gives Godwin’s Diary for February 1818.
103. Claire, p. 86.
104. Letters, I, No. 457, p. 599.
105. Claire, p. 87.
106. Letters, II, No. 459, p. 2.
Chapter 16, The Platonist: Bagni di Lucca 1818
1. Letters, II, No. 460, p. 4.
2. Journal, p. 93.
3. ibid., p. 94.
4. ibid.
5. ibid., pp. 94–5.
6. Claire, p. 88.
7. Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, II, p. 190n.
8. Claire, p. 88.
9. Letters, II, No. 460, p. 4.
10. Claire, p. 89 n. 46.
11. Letters, II, No. 462, pp. 7–8.
12. ibid.
13. Claire, pp. 90–1, n. 48.
14. ibid., p. 91.
15. Letters II, No. 462, p. 9.
16. ibid., No. 461, p. 5.
17. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, II, p. 731.
18. Neither of Byron’s letters about Claire and Allegra are extant, but their contents can be clearly inferred from Shelley’s replies.
19. Letters, II, No. 463, pp. 10–11.
20. Marchand, op. cit., II, p. 730.
21. ibid., p. 772.
22. Letters, II, No. 464, p. 12.
23. ibid., No. 465, p. 16.
24. ibid., No. 468, p. 18.
25. Dowde
n, op. cit., II, p. 205; and Mary, No. 51, p. 50.
26. Poetical Works, pp. 552–3.
27. Mary, No. 51, p. 52.
28. Journal, p. 98.
29. Letters, II, No. 468, p. 18.
30. Poetical Works, p. 559.
31. Journal, p. 98.
32. Bod. MS Shelley Adds. e. 13, p. 2.
33. Mary, No. 73, p. 77.
34. Claire, Appendix C, p. 469.
35. Letters, II, No. 472, p. 26.
36. Claire’s Diary is not extant for the period July 1818 to February 1819. It commences again in Rome on Sunday 7 March 1819. The Diary for ‘April 23 to June’ is held in MS by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library; but the present editor, Donald H. Reiman, has advised me in answer to an inquiry about the personal contents of entries during this period, ‘once the MSS have been published in Shelley & His Circle, they will be available to qualified scholars upon approval of application. It may, however, be helpful to you to know in advance that the portion of Claire Clairmont’s Journal that remains unpublished contains no such revealing personal sidelights as that which you mention.’ (Reiman to Holmes, 8 November 1971.)
37. Mary, No. 53, pp. 54–5.
38. Letters, II, No. 472, p. 25.
39. ibid., No. 470, p. 20.
40. ibid., No. 472, p. 25.
41. ibid., No. 471, p. 22.
42. ibid., No. 472, p. 25.
43. ibid., No. 472, p. 27.
44. ibid., No. 475, p. 29.
45. Journal, pp. 101–3.
46. ‘Shelley’s Translations from the Greek’ by Benjamin Farrington, in Dublin Magazine, III, 1928.
47. ibid.
48. See the discussion of Plato’s standing in England during the early nineteenth century in James A. Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley, Duke University Press, 1949, pp. 375–401.
49. Mary, No. 54, p. 56.
50. Letters, II, No. 475, p. 29.
51. For example, H. B. Forman’s edition of Shelley’s prose in 4 volumes, 1880; and the authoritative Julian edition of 1926–30. Even D.L. Clark’s edition of the prose, 1954–67, does not print The Banquet.
52. Edward Carpenter, The Psychology of the Poet Shelley, 1925; and Herbert Read, The True Voice of Feeling, 1947.
53. Bod. MSS Shelley Adds. d. 8, printed by Sir John C. E. Shelley-Rolls, Bart., and Roger Ingpen as Plato’s Banquet, Translated from the Greek . . ., 1931. Also Notopoulos, op. cit.
54. Notopoulos, op. cit., p. 402.
55. ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in Prose, p. 280.
56. Notopoulos, op. cit., p. 411.
57. ibid., pp. 411–12.
58. ibid., pp. 407–8.
59. ibid., p. 412.
60. ibid.
61. Mary’s Note, in Poetical Works, pp. 158–9.
62. Notopoulos, p. 422.
63. ibid., pp. 429–30.
64. His remarks on Agathon are in Bod. MS Shelley Adds. e. 16.