Shelley: The Pursuit Read online

  Charles Kilpatrick Sharpe, an MA of Christ Church College, wrote to his patron Lord Bury, with what he took to be an amusing piece of undergraduate scandal:

  Talking of books, we have lately had a literary sun shine forth upon us here, before whom our former luminaries must hide their undiminished heads — a Mr Shelley, of University College, who lives upon arsenic, aquafortis, half-an-hours sleep in the night, and is desperately in love with the memory of Margaret Nicolson. He hath published what he terms [her] Posthumous Poems, printed for the benefit of Mr Peter Finnerty, which, I am grieved to say, though stuffed full of treason, is extremely dull; but the author is a great genius, and if he be not clapped up in Bedlam or hanged, will certainly prove one of the sweetest swans on the tuneful margin of the Cherwell

  Sharpe, who was preparing for his later career as an anonymous Tory writer on the authoritarian Quarterly Review, completed his survey with genial disapproval.

  Our Apollo next came out with a prose pamphlet in praise of Atheism, which I have not as yet seen, and there appeared a monstrous Romance in one volume, called St. Irvyne or The Rosicrucian. . . . All the heroes are confirmed robbers and causeless murderers, while the heroines glide en chemise through the streets of Geneva, tap at the palazzo doors of their sweethearts, and on being denied admittance leave no card, but run home to their warm beds, and kill themselves.49

  The University authorities were at this moment considering Shelley’s case, and certainly took the untimely advertisements, together with the previous public subscription for Finnerty in the Herald, as strong evidence that Mr Shelley of University College was at the centre of a Whig agitation movement. It is known, from the previous election of Lord Grenville, that University College especially had the most staunch Tory prejudices; and Hogg firmly implies that the expulsion now became ‘an affair of party’.50 Medwin, with different sources, raises the same suspicion.51 Moreover, there was now little doubt in the authorities’ mind that the author of Posthumous Poems, of the Finnerty publicity, and of the scabrous tract The Necessity of Atheism were one and the same undergraduate, and a singularly dispensable troublemaker. Of Hogg’s co-partnership they were probably still uncertain.

  On the morning of 25 March, Shelley was summoned to a meeting of the Master and Fellows of University College. When he entered the room, Shelley saw that they had a copy of The Necessity of Atheism in front of them. Precisely what happened next has always been disputed, for Hogg published a heroic and fictionalized version, and Shelley himself apparently had printed the ‘text’ of a speech he made in an Oxford newspaper. Peacock says that Shelley, long after, talked as if he had debated with the dons in some large public assembly.

  One salient point is clear. Shelley refused to acknowledge the authorship of the pamphlet on the grounds that it had been published anonymously, and the assembled authority therefore had no legal right to ask him a leading question.52 Hogg makes a great deal of this in Shelley’s words to the Master: ‘Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country. . . . I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what vulgar violence is . . . .’

  The fact is that Shelley must have either lost his temper or his nerve in choosing to defend himself in this oblique way. The pamphlet stood on the proposition that ‘disbelief’ could not be criminal; and that the whole object of the argument was to seek a serious intellectual rebuttal. The authorship of the pamphlet was clearly known. If, then, Shelley had freely admitted that he (with Hogg) was the author, and that he had never claimed to make an outright statement of atheism, but merely demanded a proper intellectual inquiry into the matter on the logical principles of Hume and Locke (both academically respectable), his position would have been very strong indeed. He could not have been accused of actual atheism; he could only have been convicted of debating unpalatable arguments in public. Even at Oxford in 1811, it would not have been altogether easy to expel a man merely for showing academic initiative. Shelley’s case was in reality very sound, but he abandoned it by deliberately inflammatory tactics and a tendentious defence. The result was that he was expelled, according to the bureaucratic formula, for ‘contumacy in refusing to answer certain questions put to (him)’.53 This was of course extremely convenient for the college, for the expulsion did not turn upon anything so embarrassing as a question of belief, of political allegiance, or of the right of intellectual inquiry. It was a simple flouting of college discipline.

  Shelley was, for the instant, appalled. He rushed to Hogg’s room and ‘sat on the sofa, repeating with convulsive vehemence, the words, “Expelled! Expelled!” his head shaking with emotion and his whole frame quivering’.54 Medwin was to observe similar emotion when Shelley burst into his rooms in the Temple, two days later, at 4 in the morning: ‘ “Medwin, let me in, I am expelled:” here followed a sort of loud, half-hysterical laugh, and a repetition of the words — “I am expelled”, with the addition of “for Atheism”.’55

  Meanwhile, Hogg, the sacred friend and co-author of the tract, rapidly presented himself at the Master’s meeting to protest, as he subsequently wrote, at the injustice of the proceedings. But his protestations were useless, and he fell into the same trap as Shelley, refusing to admit the authorship.56 He too was expelled immediately, with a signed and sealed document that he claims was already prepared on the Master’s desk. They were flamboyant to the last, as C.J. Ridley, a member and later a Fellow of the College recalled. ‘Towards afternoon a large paper bearing the College seal, and signed by the Master and Dean, was affixed to the hall door, declaring that the two offenders were publically expelled. . . . The aforesaid two made themselves as conspicuous as possible by great singularity of dress, and by walking up and down the centre of the quadrangle as if proud of their anticipated fate.’57

  Ridley summed up the general feeling about Shelley and Hogg together when they came to leave the university, in the following measured terms. ‘I believe no one regretted their departure for there were but few, if any, who were not afraid of Shelley’s strange and fantastic pranks, and the still stranger opinions he was known to entertain; but all acknowledged him to have been very goodhumoured and of a kind disposition. T. J. Hogg had intellectual powers to a great extent, but unfortunately, misdirected. He was not popular.’58

  The following bleak March morning, after hectic dreamlike hours of packing and bidding a few bravado farewells, they caught the 8 o’clock mail to London. Shelley had been round to Munday’s shop and thoughtfully borrowed £20 from John Slatter.59 Almost twelve years later, in January 1823, Slatter was still trying to collect the debt.

  In London, Shelley visited the Groves and took tea, then went to his friend Graham and put up for a couple of nights. Later he saw Medwin. He was testing all their reactions and the degree of their sympathy; he was also steeling himself for the real confrontation: with his father. The exchange of letters which took place in the next fifteen days was one of the most decisive of his career. They reflect on all that had gone before in the relationship, and in Shelley’s childhood; and also set the pattern for much of what subsequently occurred.

  The evidence of the newspaper editor Joseph Merle in his reminiscences is important at this point, as to Shelley’s state of mind. Merle, who had met Shelley at Graham’s and was of the same age, recalled in 1841 the period immediately after Shelley had quitted Oxford:

  On all other subjects he was one of the mildest and most modest youths I have ever known; but once let religion be mentioned, and he became alternately scornful and furious. If his opinions were contradicted, he contented himself in the first instance with jeers on the weakness of the person who dissented from his views. If the contradiction was kept up, and his adversary became animated in defence of revealed religion, his countenance underwent a fearful change, and his eye became one of fire.60

  That fearful change in countenance is to be met with more than once. Merle even suggested that Shelley at times showed definite unbalance. ‘Overstudy h
ad made him mad on religious subjects; and as on all others, his mind was fresh and vigorous, he was in the condition of a monomaniac who is incurable, because his insanity is concentrated in one faculty.’ Looking back, Merle was to conclude that Shelley, with his intelligence, his social standing and his ‘pecuniary means’ had become with such a temperament and such principles ‘a dangerous member of society’.61

  These views are to be borne in mind in the general impression Shelley made during the crucial exchange between himself and Timothy. Three days after his expulsion Shelley wrote to his father from Edward Graham’s address. The letter is worth quoting very fully; it has both an innocence and a kind of mocking worldly wisdom:

  My dear Father, you have doubtless heard of my misfortune and that of my friend Mr Hogg. . . . The case was this, . . . we found to our surprise that (strange as it may appear) the proofs of an existing Deity were as far as we had observed, defective. We therefore embodied our doubts on the subject, & arranged them methodically in the form of ‘The Necessity of Atheism’, thinking thereby to obtain a satisfactory, or unsatisfactory answer from men who had made Divinity the study of their lives. — How then were we treated? not as our fair, open, candid conduct might demand, no argument was publickly brought forward to disprove our reasoning, & it at once demonstrated the weakness of their cause, & their inveteracy on discovering it, when they publickly expelled myself & my friend. . . . I know too well that your feeling mind will sympathise too deeply in my misfortunes. I hope it will alleviate your sorrow to know that for myself I am perfectly indifferent to the late tyrannical violent proceedings of Oxford. Will you present my affectionate duty to my mother, my love to Elizabeth. . . . May I turn your attention to the advertisement, which surely deserved an answer, not expulsion. Believe me, my dear Father, ever most affectionately dutifully yours, Percy B. Shelley.62

  On his copy of the pamphlet at Field Place, Timothy scrawled the single word ‘Impious’.

  It must be recalled that Shelley was not yet 19 when he had to face this crisis, and he had no real idea of its implications, or the scale on which his father was disappointed in him. Even so, the letter is a curious mixture: a bold, not to say supercilious self-defence, coupled with a rather naïve distortion of the true facts (‘our open, fair, candid conduct’). Most curious of all, there is about the general tone of the letter a kind of self-satisfaction.

  While Shelley was awaiting his father’s reaction, he took rooms at 15 Poland Street with Hogg. It was a dark little back sitting-room on the first floor, with trellised vines on the wallpaper. Timothy, shocked and dismayed, hurried to London and put up at Miller’s Hotel, his usual Town residence, just over Westminster Bridge. It was here, on Sunday, 7 April, that the famous meeting between Timothy and the two young men took place. Edward Graham’s father was also present. As far as we can gather from Hogg, Shelley tried to brazen it out, putting on his wildest manner, and was soon involved in bitter recriminations with his father. Hogg plays the scene as follows:

  Mr Timothy Shelley received me kindly; but he presently began to talk in an odd, unconnected manner; scolding, crying, swearing, and then weeping again: no doubt he went on strangely. . . . Shelley was sitting at that moment, as he often used to sit, quite on the edge of his chair. Not only did he laugh aloud, with a wild, demoniacal burst of laughter, but he slipped from his seat, and fell on his back at full length on the floor. ‘What is the matter, Bysshe? Are you ill? are you dead? are you mad? Why do you laugh?’ It was not easy to return a satisfactory answer to his father, or to Mr Graham. . . .63

  Hogg’s account is certainly stylized, and he was careful at the same time to show how he, Hogg, quickly struck up an understanding with the ‘poor old governor’. Nevertheless it tallies in general outline with the impression that Merle, quite independently, gave of Timothy’s clumsy anxiety and Shelley’s maddening, and sometimes frightening irrepressibility at this time. Merle saw Timothy at Field Place, where Timothy ‘had a long conversation, in the course of which he almost shed tears when alluding to the doctrines which his son professed, and took a pleasure in promulgating’.64 Merle later saw Shelley at Horsham, and remonstrated with him:

  As I proceeded he became angry; indeed almost furious. ‘Do not,’ said he, ‘talk such stuff to me; I hear enough of it at home. There is my father, who with a painting of that imposter Christ, hanging up in his library, is sometimes vain enough to suppose that he can bring reason prostrate before absurdity. I have too many of these follies before my eyes: they drive me mad!’ And mad, indeed, he was. I think I see him still. His eyes flashed fire; his words rolled forth with the impetuosity of a mountain-torrent; and even [sic] attitude aided the manifestation of passion.65

  This interview of Merle’s with Shelley ended in Shelley storming out of the tavern. Hogg is guarded on the point, but something similar probably occurred at Miller’s Hotel.

  This is implied in Timothy’s subsequent letter to his son, apparently written on the next day, then corrected and sent off more calmly on Tuesday morning, 9 April. Timothy was still determined to reason with Shelley, and the letter, though grave and severe, is not by any means completely hostile. He began by refusing to accept Shelley’s intransigence:

  I am unwilling to receive and act on the information you gave me on Sunday, as the ultimate determination of your mind. The disgrace which hangs over you is most serious, and though I have felt as a father, and sympathized in the misfortune which your criminal and improper acts have begot: yet, you must know, that I have a duty to perform to my own character, as well as to your younger brother and sisters. Above all, my feelings as a Christian require from me a decided and firm conduct towards you

  Timothy then laid down two proposals; that Shelley should go at once to Field Place and should be placed under the care of such tutors as Timothy felt were suitable. This was to be the basis of a reconciliation between them. Otherwise, Timothy wrote sternly: ‘I am resolved to withdraw myself from you, and leave you to the punishment and misery that belongs to the wicked pursuit of an opinion so diabolical and wicked as that which you have dared to declare, if you shall not accept the proposals I shall go home on Thursday — I am, your affectionate and most afflicted father, T. Shelley.’66

  Shelley’s reaction to this letter was bitterly contemptuous. He instantly wrote a note in which he dismissed Timothy’s peace formula: ‘I feel it my Duty altho’ it gives me pain to wound the Sense of Duty to your own character to that of your family & your feelings as a Christian decidedly to refuse my assent to both the Proposals in your letter . . . .’67 The flippancy of this reply, and the deliberately insulting sarcasm tell us a good deal about Shelley’s state of mind. Undoubtedly he was deeply wounded by Timothy’s threat to ‘withdraw’ himself — a threat far more disturbing for him than any persecution — and reacted with blind desire to hurt in return. Though he wrote in the language of one gentleman coolly insulting another, his feelings were those of a child betrayed. He was quite deaf to the note of entreaty in his father’s painful defence of his own motives.

  But most damaging of all, Shelley was too young and too self-absorbed to realize that Timothy’s letter was the product of a man desperately unsure of himself. It was partly personal uncertainty, torn between anger and disappointment for his son; but much more it was social uncertainty. Timothy was fearful of the social effects of such a disgrace. At the centre of Timothy’s feelings lay the terror of the social arriviste who dreads compromising his standing in the society of his peers and his overlords. The emphasis on Duty, especially the duty to his family, the duty as a respectable Christian, all indicate the presence of this pressure. But Shelley could see no more than theological hypocrisy and paternal treachery; while Timothy could see no more than a spoilt and over-confident son dragging the whole family into social disgrace. So they were content to wound each other in the dark.

  Four days later, Shelley, marginally calmed by the reasonableness of Hogg’s father’s reaction, allowed himself to be talked
into submitting his own set of ‘peace proposals’ to Timothy. These included an immediate return to Field Place, and a promise to make certain apologies and refrain from further publications. But he boldly insisted on ‘unrestrained correspondence’, and announced that ‘Mr P.B. Shelley may be permitted to select the situation in life, which may be consonant with his intentions, to which he may judge his abilities adequate.’68

  The deliberate condescension in the tone only infuriated Timothy further, and hid from him Shelley’s attempt at a gesture of goodwill. He had by this time learnt from his solicitor Whitton that a public prosecution of The Necessity of Atheism was possible and even likely, for blasphemous libel, and his fear of the social stigma now carried the day. He made the fatal mistake of putting all further communications with Shelley through the intermediary of the solicitor, ‘to guard my character and honour in case of any prosecutions in the courts’.69 Whitton was a sententious high Tory, narrowly legalistic in outlook, easily offended and totally unable to comprehend how Shelley’s mind worked. Timothy’s appointment of him as intermediary thus put a hopeless barrier between father and son, preparing for an endless fund of misunderstanding and mutual recrimination to be built up. It was a fatal mistake, and one made primarily from fear.

  Shelley reacted to this news, on 17 April, with renewed violence. He now felt utterly betrayed by his father, and struck back with an overwhelming desire to cause pain in return. Hogg had agreed to return to his own paternal roof, and left London the same day, thus leaving Shelley unsupported and unrestrained. He dashed off a note to Whitton from his Poland Street sitting-room, announcing that he intended to resign his claim to the family inheritance of Sir Bysshe Shelley’s property, and accept a £2,000 annuity if the remainder should be broken up ‘equally with my sisters and my mother’.70 When the news reached his father on 22 April — Whitton had attempted to forestall it — Timothy wrote back to his solicitor with profound dismay. ‘I never felt such a shock in my life, infinitely more than when I heard of his expulsion.’71 Shelley had instinctively struck at his father’s most sensitive point: the ambition, inherited from grandfather to father, to secure the family name in the undivided and orderly inheritance from generation to generation of a solid body of English landed estates.