They never, I think, went out of their own grounds but to church, or to take their regular daily airing in the old family-carriage. The young lady was an adept at preserving: she had one room, in a corner of the hall, between the front and the great staircase, entirely surrounded with shelves in compartments, stowed with classified sweetmeats, jellies, and preserved fruits, the work of her own sweet hands. These wee distinguished ornaments of the supper-table; for the family dined early, and maintained the old fashion of supper. A child would not easily forget the bountiful and beautiful array of fruits, natural and preserved, and the ample variety of preparations of milk, cream, and custard, by which they were accompanied. The supper-table had matter for all tastes. I remember what was most to mine.
The young lady performed on the harpsichord. Over what a gulph of time this name alone looks back! What a stride from that harpsichord to one of Broadwood’s last grand-pianos! And yet with what pleasure, as I stood by the corner of the instrument, I listened to it, or rather to her! I would give much to know that the worldly lot of this gentle and amiable creature had been a happy one. She often gently remonstrated with me for putting her harpsichord out of tune by playing the bells upon it; but I was never in a serious scrape with her except once. I had insisted on taking from the nursery-maid the handle of the little girl’s garden-carriage, with which I set off at full speed; and had not run many yards before I overturned the carriage, and rolled out the little girl. The child cried like Alice Fell, and would not be pacified. Luckily she ran to her sister, who let me off with an admonition, and the exaction of a promise never to meddle again with the child’s carriage.
Charles was fond of romances. The Mysteries of Udolpho, 4 and all the ghost and goblin stories of the day, were his familiar reading. I cared little about them at the time; but he amused me by narrating their grimmest passages. He was very anxious that the Abbey House should be haunted; but it had no strange sights or sounds, and no plausible tradition to hang a ghost on. I had very nearly accommodated him with what he wanted.
The garden-front of the house was covered with jasmine, and it was a pure delight to stand in the summer twilight on the top of the stone steps inhaling the fragrance of the multitudinous blossoms. One evening, as I was standing on these steps alone, I saw something like the white head-dress of a tall figure advance from the right-hand grove, — the dark grove, as we called it, — and, after a brief interval, recede. This, at any rate, looked awful. Presently it appeared again, and again vanished. On which I jumped to my conclusion, and flew into the parlour with the announcement that there was a ghost in the dark grove. The whole family sallied forth to see the phenomenon. The appearances and disappearances continued. All conjectured what it could be, but none could divine. In a minute or two all the servants were in the hall. They all tried their skill, and all were equally unable to solve the riddle. At last, the master of the house leading the way, we marched in a body to the spot, and unravelled the mystery. It was a large bunch of flowers on top of a tall lily, waving in the wind at the edge of the grove, and disappearing at intervals behind the stem of a tree. My ghost, and the compact phalanx in which we sallied against it, were long the subject of merriment. It was a cruel disappointment to Charles, who was obliged to abandon all hopes of having the house haunted.
One day Charles was in disgrace with his elderly relation, who had exerted sufficient authority to make him captive in his chamber. He was prohibited from seeing anyone but me; and, of course, a most urgent messenger was sent to me express. I found him in his chamber, sitting by the fire, with a pile of ghostly tales, and an accumulation of lead, which he was casting into dumps in a mould. Dumps, the inexperienced reader must know, are flat circles of lead, — a sort of petty quoits, — with which schoolboys amused themselves half a century ago, and perhaps do so still, unless the march of mind has marched off with such vanities. No doubt, in the “astounding progress of intellect,’’ the time will arrive when boys will play at philosophers instead of playing at soldiers, — will fight with wooden arguments instead of wooden swords, — and pitch leaden syllogisms instead of leaden dumps. Charles was before the dawn of this new light. He had cast several hundred dumps, and was still at work. The quibble did not occur to me at the time; but, in after years, I never heard of a man in the dumps without thinking of my schoolfellow. His position was sufficiently melancholy. His chamber was at the end of a long corridor. He was determined not to make any submission, and his captivity was likely to last till the end of his holidays. Ghost-stories, and lead for dumps, were his stores and provisions for standing the siege of ennui. I think, with the aid of his sister, I had some share in making his peace; but, such is the association of ideas, that, when I first read in Lord Byron’s Don Juan,
‘I pass my evenings in my long galleries solely,
And that’s the reason I’m so melancholy,”
the lines immediately conjured up the image of poor Charles in the midst of his dumps and spectres at the end of his own long gallery.
ENDNOTES.
1 “The Abbey House appeared in the February number of Bentley’s Miscellany for 1837 (Vol. I. pp.187-90), under a heading which suggests that Peacock was then contemplating a series of early reminiscences: ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD. | BY THE AUTHOR OF HEADLONG HALL. | [short rule] | THE ABBEY HOUSE.’” from H.F.B. Brett-Smith & C.E. Jones, vol viii, p. 495.
2 The family in the Abbey House were surnamed Barwell: “The Barwell family had strong associations with East India House.” — note 14, on p. 291 in Thomas Love Peacock by Felix Felton, London, George Allen & Unwin (1972).
3 and all of that kind (Latin)
4 The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), was first printed in 1794. See Chapter VI of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (published posthumously in 1818), for Catherine Morland’s similar literary tastes.
Memoirs of Shelley
This memoir is made up of pieces first published in Fraser’s Magazine. Part I appeared in 1858 as a review of three new books about Shelley, while Part II appeared in 1860 as a stand-alone article. They were first printed together in 1875 as part of the three-volume edition of Peacock’s complete works, edited by Sir Henry Cole.
Peacock first made the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s acquaintance in 1812 and the two not only became great friends, but also influenced each other’s work. As well as commenting on and revising each other’s poetry; it was to Peacock that Shelley’s descriptive letters from Italy were addressed and the latter’s celebrated Defence of Poetry was written as a response to Peacock’s Four Ages of Poetry. Peacock was also intimately acquainted with Shelley’s private life. He was a daily comfort to Shelley following the latter’s separation from his first wife Harriet and assisted Shelley and his new wife Mary Godwin in finding a residence near his own home at Great Marlow. In his turn, Peacock received a pension from Shelley for a time and was put into requisition to keep off wholly unauthorised intruders upon Shelley’s household.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) by Alfred Clint, 1829
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
MEMOIRS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
MEMOIRS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. PART II
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE.
The Shelleys’ house in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Peacock secured the house on Shelley’s behalf in 1816.
PREFACE
ALL PEACOCK’S REMINISCENCES of Shelley made their first appearance in the pages of Fraser’s Magazine. Part I was the first article in the July number of 1858, and was printed as a review of the following volumes: —
Shelley and his Writings. By Charles S. Middleton. London: Newby, 1856. [An error, repeated in Cole’s edition, for 1858.]
Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron. By E. J. Trelawny. London: Moxon, 1858.
The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas Jefferson Hogg. In Four Volumes. Vols. I and II. London: Moxon, 1858.
It is to the t
itles of these works that Peacock refers on page 4. Part II of the Memoirs appeared in the January number of 1860, after the publication of the Shelley Memorials; the Supplementary Notice was added in the March number of 1862; and the seventeen letters, with the introductory note on pp. 93-4, formed the first article in the March number of 1860.
Of these, Shelley’s letters have been included in various collections, but the Memoirs have been reprinted only once, in the three volume edition of Peacock’s works edited in 1875 by Sir Henry Cole. From the sheets of this edition the present text has been prepared, but every word has been collated with the original articles in Fraser, and their earliest form has been strictly preserved. Cole’s editing was far from satisfactory; he frequently omitted or inserted words, and made other alterations; these errors have been corrected, and Peacock’s original punctuation retained except when it is untenable. Occasionally, however, it has been necessary to follow the later version when the earlier is manifestly wrong; Cole, for example, tacitly corrects a mistake in the age of Brown the novelist, which was originally printed as twenty-nine instead of thirty-nine.
The most difficult question has been that of quotations. Peacock very rarely gave a reference (not always correct), and invariably quoted with peculiar inaccuracy. In the present edition, every citation of more than half a dozen words from an English, Greek or Latin author, except in the case of legal documents, has been traced or verified, and the reference supplied. Where Peacock merely altered the punctuation, the reference has been considered sufficient; where he altered the text, the correct version is supplied in a footnote. In the case of quotations in French, Italian, Portuguese and Welsh, I have been content to reproduce the exact words of the Fraser text. In justice to Peacock, it must be admitted that many of his sins in reforming his quotations are due to a reluctance to soil his pen with the abominable English of Medwin and Hogg. For the verification of two references which the Bodleian Library did not afford, and the generous sacrifice of time far more valuable than my own, I have to thank Mr. Percy Simpson.
In regard to the letters, my gratitude is due to Mr. H. Buxton Forman, who kindly permitted the text of his monumental edition of Shelley’s Prose Works to be used for purposes of revision and amplification. From his high authority I have rarely departed, and never, except in a point of typography or the correction of an obvious misprint, without due acknowledgement. To his edition I am indebted also for a few identifications, and for one essential note, all of which are marked by the initials H. B. F. Notes added by Mary Shelley are subscribed M. S., and I have occasionally given variae lectiones from the text of her edition and those of Garnett and Rhys. It was found necessary to distinguish Peacock’s own notes throughout the volume by his initials; note 3 on page 133 has unluckily escaped this process. For all other unsigned notes and references the editor is alone responsible.
The text of the letters is now reproduced as fully as possible: Peacock, editing them in 1860, omitted besides the markedly anti-Christian passages all the more pointed references to Mr. Gisborne, and the names of some persons — Barry Cornwall, for example — who are ungently used. To preserve his lacunae would have been needless and annoying, but it is necessary to call attention to his original scrupulosity, and to the note on pp. 201-2.
Letters 1 and 3 — those which Middleton pirated — are particularly imperfect. From the sale catalogue of Peacock’s library, however, it is possible to supply one interesting passage selected from the third letter by an astute auctioneer:
Lord Byron is an exceedingly interesting person, and as such is it not to be regretted that he is a slave to the vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad as the winds?
The same source yields an explanation of the opening of the twenty-seventh letter, which enclosed ‘a letter from a creditor pressing for settlement or threatening outlawry’, and an addition to the Gisborne passages of the twenty-eighth:
Cobbett persuaded you, you persuaded me, and I have persuaded the Gisbornes that the British funds are very insecure. They come to England accordingly to sell out their property.
H. F. B. B-S.
Finally, it ought perhaps to be mentioned that Professor Dowden, in his Life of Shelley, observes that ‘the dates of Shelley’s letter from Ferrara, November 8 and 9 [1818], must be incorrect. The journal shows that the true dates are November 6 and 7.’ But for this explanation, a comparison of the heading of this letter with that of the next — Bologna, Nov. 9th — would certainly have been liable to breed suspicion.
INTRODUCTION
AMONG THE EARLY accounts of Shelley, the Memoirs of Thomas Love Peacock hold an important but isolated position, which resembles in many points that of Matthew Arnold’s Essay among the later lives. The likeness, indeed, is somewhat marked. Each piece made its first appearance as a review, by a writer of acute observation and comparatively impartial judgement, of a more pretentious and more biased piece of Shelley biography; and each review has become a classic on this very limited subject. Their authority, indeed, differs in its essence. Peacock combines with the sympathy and comprehension of a personal friend of Shelley, the impartiality of a man, never subject to enthusiasms, who looks back on his companion’s lifetime with the added disinterestedness of six and thirty years; while the criticism of Arnold, with equal clarity of thought, is strong in the breadth of view and the complete candour which could only come with a later and quite unprejudiced generation. Yet in the biography of Shelley — an unsavoury and debatable tract, from which that reader is fortunate who escapes no more a partisan than he entered in — the short critical papers of Peacock and Arnold are alike in their value as purges for the petty disingenuousness of apologists, who have not yet perceived that Shelley’s vindication, as Peacock claimed, is best permitted to rest on the grounds on which it was placed by himself.
When biography becomes controversial, it should hibernate for a century; Shelley’s biography, cradled in a limbo of conflicting witness, has never had a fair chance. The first fault lay with the reviewers of his own day, who regarded him, very naturally, as ‘a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look even might infect’. They were faced with the opinions of his early poems, and the facts of his early life; and it was inevitable that they should attack him with the utmost bitterness of a moral and uncensored press. From this assault the writers on Shelley’s life have never recovered; they either compile or demolish needless defences, and the chaos is made worse by the untrustworthy nature of many of the best qualified accounts. Medwin’s Life is highly inaccurate. That of Hogg is unrivalled for the Oxford period, but is somewhat discredited in its later development, both by the writer’s peculiar relations with Shelley and his first wife, and by his tendency to indulge in lurid detail and caustic satire. Lady Shelley’s Shelley Memorials were written to counteract the influence of Hogg; and Trelawny, who gives a pleasing and vigorous picture of the last months of Shelley’s life, reminds us by frequent discrepancies of Lord Byron’s statement that even to save his life he could not tell the truth. The value of all these books lies chiefly in their material: method, disinterestedness, and just perspective could only come with the professional, not the amateur historian. Yet it is not too much to say that the latter qualities are more conspicuous in the Memoirs of Peacock, which were written, be it remembered, as a critical review, than in any of the accounts of contemporaries; and during the period between Shelley’s residence at Bracknell and his final departure from England, Peacock had unequalled opportunities of observation. Nor is his authority lessened by the fact that he long refused to write on Shelley’s life; most lovers of the poet will sympathize with such reluctance; and his desire that Shelley, ‘like his own Skylark, had been left unseen in his congenial region, and that he had been only heard in the splendour of his song,’ is echoed with a more poignant regret in the pages of Arnold’s Essay, Thomas Love Peacock, the son of a London merchant, was born towards the end of 1785, and lost his father before he was four years old. His mother settled at Ch
ertsey, and the boy was educated at a private school in Englefield Green. A short experience as a city clerk at fourteen, and an equally short one at twenty-three as under-secretary to Sir Home Popham on board a man-of-war, seem to have been little to his liking, and certainly did not interrupt the course of classical study which he pursued after leaving school. In 1804 and 1806 he published small collections of verses, and in 1810 appeared his first venture of importance, The Genius of the Thames. He met Shelley for the first time two years later.
Peacock, at all times an attractive figure, must have made a considerable impression on the younger poet, now only in his twentieth year. He was seven years older, a fine, tall, handsome man, with a profusion of bright brown hair, eyes of fine dark blue, massive brow, and regular features, a Roman nose, a handsome mouth which, when he laughed, as I well remember, turned up at the corners, and a complexion, fair as a girl’s; his hair was peculiar in its wild luxuriant growth, it seemed to grow all from the top of his head, had no parting, but hung about in thick locks with a rich wave all through it.
So says his grand-daughter, Edith Nicolls, describing a portrait taken about 1810.
In mind, he was little less distinguished; he possessed already the keenness of intellect, the wit, and the half-contemptuous, half-amused insight into the springs of human conduct, which mark his subsequent novels. Moreover, he had a genuine knowledge and love of the classics, and in ancient literature Shelley found him a guide of greater learning and no less devotion. And while their pursuits were harmonious, their natures and views were dissimilar enough for mutual interest, for Peacock was to Shelley that curious creature, a man of the world, and Shelley to Peacock, that rara avis, a genius. Yet Peacock was no worldling, except in a combination of clear-headedness, humour, and genial good- fellowship; his affections were deep, if unobtrusive, and his friendships were permanent. In one respect, indeed, he was most unworldly; a distaste for uncongenial work had kept him out of any regular profession, and his means were consequently restricted.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 148