Meanwhile, what had happened to Shelley and his three ladies? Almost immediately after returning from seeing Dan in Barnstaple, they had started discreet preparations for leaving. For transport, a boat to Wales was the obvious answer. But as Henry Drake discovered, the fishermen at Lynmouth would not cooperate, and in the end they had to bargain for a boat further up the coast at Ilfracombe. Money was also difficult, but here they were more lucky. The lady at Hooper’s Lodgings, who did their domestic work, had befriended them. Shelley managed to borrow twenty-nine shillings directly from her, and through her good offices, a further three pounds from a helpful neighbour. Shelley also borrowed a further small sum from one of the Lynmouth people, but how much is not known.76 In exchange, he left a surely rather optimistic draft on ‘the Honourable Mr Lawless’. The tiny amounts here involved suggest Shelley was very nearly penniless, and one wonders how he was even able to leave fifteen shillings a week to keep Dan in necessary comforts during his six months’ imprisonment. However, it was not quite as bad as it seemed, for Shelley had received through the post one half of a large banknote (in the usual manner of splitting large denominations for safe keeping), and it was merely a question of waiting for the other half. This banknote was probably one of the quarterly payments of fifty pounds due from either Timothy or Mr Westbrook on 1 September. When they got to Ilfracombe, the split banknote was apparently cashed, and Shelley faithfully returned all the borrowed money.[12] It is clear that whatever the general hostility of the Lynmouth population, Shelley had, as ever, charmed at least’ a few of its poorer residents. When questions were asked in Lynmouth, Shelley’s domestic lady gave little information beyond the fact that they had left for Ilfracombe and would be ‘in London within a fortnight’.77 This was clearly a diversion, for the Shelleys went north, not east. The actual date of Shelley’s departure remains a mystery: somewhere, at any rate, between 28 and 31 August. From Swansea, they hurried north deep into the mountains of Wales, and steering clear of Rhayader, they headed for the long rolling valley of Llangollen, a strategic spot on the main connecting route between North Wales and London. They could then decide what to do next.
Much of the detail of Shelley’s rapid and secretive departure has reached us by a strange irony. For William Godwin had at last decided to visit the Shelleys himself, and after writing to them on 31 August, he set out on 9 September on a autumn tour of the South-West, via Bristol and Tintern Abbey, which eventually brought him to Lynmouth at 3 o’clock in the afternoon of the 18th. To his great surprise and disappointment he found: ‘The Shelleys are gone! They have been gone these three weeks . . . . I have been to the house where Shelley lodged, and I bring good news. I saw the woman of the house, and I was delighted with her. She is a good creature, and quite loved the Shelleys . . . the best news is that the woman says they will be in London in a fortnight.’78[13] Godwin thereafter continued his tour in a leisurely fashion via Salisbury and Stonehenge, and arrived back at Skinner Street in time for tea on Friday, 25 September, confidently expecting his peripatetic friends to appear at any moment on his doorstep.
[1]Samuel Bamford (1788–1872), Manchester weaver and poet, author of the classic Passages in the Life of a Radical (1841). William Lovett (1800–77), Cornish carpenter, radical leader and author of Life and Struggles in Pursuit of Bread, Knowledge and Freedom (1871). Richard Carlile (1790–1843), publisher, polemicist, editor of the Republican, and one of the great figures in the history of the struggle for a free press in England. From 1821 he was to play an important role in the publishing and popularizing of Shelley’s writing.
[2]The forerunner of classical nineteenth-century physics, chemistry and botany.
[3]First published in Germany in 1800; later translated into French; finally published in England by Thomas Hookham in 1811.
[4]Shelley’s voice was actually far from ‘solitary’; both Cobbett and Hunt roundly attacked the trial in their papers and the Examiner reported that when Eaton appeared for his statutory two hours in the public pillory, he was greeted by a barrage of cheers and applause.
[5]The Letter to Lord Ellenborough reappeared twice on its own merits as part of later campaigns against blasphemous libel. In New York, 1897, when the editor of the Truth Seeker was imprisoned for thirteen months; and in London, 1883, when the editor and staff of the Free Thinker suffered similar persecution.
[6]These essays mostly remained in his MS Notebooks during his lifetime, and they are still the least known or appreciated part of his work. They are often difficult to date, since the surrounding poems and notes were written at different times, sometimes quite haphazardly, in margins, upside down, and even occasionally right across the original entry. Shelley seems to have seized whatever notebook was nearest. Several early notebooks were re-used years later in Italy, e.g. Bod. MS Shelley Adds. e. 8; and Bod. MS Shelley Adds. e. 11.
[7]A letter of 19 December 1812 which Shelley wrote from London appears to show that he borrowed a further thirty pounds from Mrs Hooper, of which twenty pounds was only then being returned. But the dating and provenance of this note are uncertain. See Letters, I, No. 207, p. 331.
[8]Neither Godwin at this moment, nor Hogg much later, were fully informed of Shelley’s political activities at Lynmouth, or the real reasons for his sudden flight. Their understanding of Shelley’s political fears and commitments, and how serious they were, suffered in consequence.
[9]Miss Hitchener, after considerable thought had chosen it herself. As Harriet said: ‘I do not like the name you have taken but mind only the name.’ Subsequently Portia became ‘Bessy’, an apt indicator that she had passed her perihelion.
[10]Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763–1804) who headed the military committee of the United Irishmen.
[11]The question of Shelley’s ill-health is a problematic one, and becomes increasingly important after 1815. It seems to have three elements: hysterical and nervous attacks after periods of great strain and emotional upheaval; the spasmodic symptoms of a chronic disease associated with his kidneys and bladder; and a shadowy, psychosomatic area in which the two inter-reacted and fed upon each other’s symptoms. In general, Shelley was healthy when he was happy; none the less in Italy he became subject to periods of nephritic spasms which caused the most acute physical pain, and probably required surgical treatment. The first medical description we have of Shelley dates from 1816, where he is described as ‘consumptive’. As a young man, he showed traces of hypochondria and undoubtedly cultivated the pose of ill-health for the benefit of such as Godwin; his childhood was certainly not ‘a series of illness’.
[12]Booksellers at this time performed a wide range of functions: publishing their own and private editions; mail order; organizing extensive circulating libraries which often reached as far as the Continent; and functioning as author’s post office and coffee shop.
[13]Fanny (Imlay), Mary Wollstonecraft’s child by the American in Paris, and Godwin’s eldest stepdaughter.
[14]Notably the egalitarian communities of New Harmony in Indiana, and Orbiston in Scotland, 1825–8. For a detailed account of these Utopian experiments, which throw considerable light on Shelley’s communal ideas at this time, see J.F.C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (1969); and W.H.G. Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560–1960 (1961).
7. The Tan-yr-allt Affair
But from Llangollen the Shelleys had travelled east, deeper and deeper into Wales. Passing by the famous traveller’s inn and bridge of Dolgelley, on the edge of Merionethshire, and still hearing of no suitable accommodation, they moved northwards into the wilds of Caernarvonshire and forded the great tidal estuary of Treath Bach. They were now in desolate country, of rocks and heather and sea, with a few tiny farmsteads and villages. Welsh, not English, was universally spoken. Ahead of them lay the Caernarvon peninsula, barely inhabited, which stretched out dividing Caernarvon Bay from Cardigan Bay, thus forming the upper claw of the Welsh seacoast. At the end of the peninsula lay Hell’
s Mouth and Bardsey Island. It was a bleak moment, and the Shelleys felt that they were beyond civilization. At this very time, rumours were flying from village to village of the savage murder of a young farmhouse maid, Mary Jones, which had recently been committed in the area. She was found hacked to death with a pair of sheep-shears. The assailant was said to be a giant man, well over six foot, who was known locally as ‘the King of the Mountains’. In late August and early September, armed bands were enlisted to protect the scattered populace and search out the killer.[1]
Crossing a second, sand-bound estuary, Treath Mawr, they discovered themselves to be on the site of an enormous building operation, involving nearly a hundred workmen, who were reinforcing a massive embankment across the mouth of the estuary to the little port of Portmadoc, and draining and clearing the land behind it. Continuing some two miles inland, they found themselves in the main street of a trim, newly built grey-stone village, with a central market square, two chapels, several shops, a tavern and a surprisingly imposing town hall with a classically pillared portico. All these buildings were geometrically arranged on a spacious T-shaped ground plan, and were clearly part of a harmonious and integrated design. The head of the T, formed by the town hall and the tavern, faced southwards down the length of the village, and was set flushly up against the base of a dramatic cliff of rocks and undergrowth which rose several hundred feet above the village, ending in jagged tips and pinnacles, beyond which, far out of sight, lay a stony upland moor and a natural reservoir.1 They had fallen by chance on the site of one of the most advanced community and commercial experiments of the period. They put up at the tavern, which was called the Madoc Arms. The village was the contemporary ‘wonder of Wales’, the brain-child of William Alexander Madocks, Foxite Whig, reformer and speculator, and its name was, naturally, Tremadoc. Moreover, there was a house for sale.
In 1794, Madocks had rebuilt a little cottage high up on the mountainside above Tremadoc known as Tan-yr-allt (Under-the-hill). The new design was simple and delicate: a set of large, gently vaulted south-facing parlours, with bedrooms above, commanding a magnificent view across the Treath and into Merionethshire. Madocks had added a new slate roof, not conventionally steep and square, but hipped outwards in a gentle flare which formed a ground floor verandah on three sides, supported by an elegant colonnade of carved wood and lattice work. The refurbished windows were not conventional sash, but unexpectedly large casements, opening in a series of glass doors or French windows on to the verandah, and filling the rooms with air and light. To offset the bleak and mountainous aspect of its position, the house was surrounded by freshly planted lawns, vines and a rich vegetable garden, sheltering behind sun-trap walls. The verandah was encircled with thousands of old-fashioned roses (according to Madocks’s specification), and the lattice-work clothed in honeysuckle, clematis and other clambering blossoms. Tan-yr-allt had originally been intended as the throne from which Madocks could watch his Great Scheme unfold in the valley below. But in 1812, threatened by accumulated debts, he was forced to sell the lease to a creditor, Girdlestone, and the house was now unoccupied.[2] Shelley instantly applied for the property.
After their long and uncertain travels, the Shelleys were delighted with the prospect of staying at Tan-yr-allt. The New Town and the Embankment project appealed to Shelley as a direct attempt to reform both man and his surroundings, and promised a wider and more practical view of how an ideal community might be developed. Moreover Madocks, who was at that time in London, brought Shelley back into the orbit of the Whig ginger-group. When Shelley met Madocks’s manager on the spot, John Williams, they struck up an immediate rapport. Williams promised he would do all in his power to obtain the lease of Tan-yr-allt from Girdlestone, while Shelley in his turn promised his enthusiastic support for the Embankment and appointed himself as a sort of unofficial chief of fund-raising. He also made it clear to Williams that his own prospects, once he had come of age, would be a great asset to the fund. Shelley rapidly assimilated the history of Tremadoc. William Madocks’s scheme had been to reclaim and cultivate the whole estuary, by building a Grand Cob across the mile-long sea mouth. He intended to turn the new township into a centre of culture and entertainment in North Wales, with the Grand Cob as its living masterpiece, along which he hoped would run the main north-south road between Caernarvon and London. Tremadoc had been steadily built up during the Napoleonic Wars; the Grand Cob was started in 1808 and finished in September 1811, when a ‘Tremadoc Embankment Jubilee’, complete with roast ox, Eisteddfod and Horse Races was held. Much of the success was due to the steadiness of the local manager John Williams, who became Madocks’s aide-de-camp and bosom friend. Meanwhile Madocks, entering Parliament in 1802, allied himself with the reforming wing of the Whigs, forming a close alliance with the circle of Norfolk and Sir Francis Burdett, attacking the corrupt management of the Peninsular War, and finally, seconding Burdett in the dramatic impeachment of Spencer Percival and Castlereagh in 1809. Continuing his alliance with Burdett and Cartwright, and outside Parliament with Cobbett, Madocks became a founder member of that very Shelleyan kind of association, the Hampden Clubs, in 1810.[3]
In February 1812 (when Shelley had been in Keswick) disaster struck when the Grand Cob’s central section collapsed in the high spring tides. Madocks and Williams summoned the whole county to their aid, and put pressure on the North Wales Gazette to play down the possibilities of bankruptcy and failure. (This ability to muzzle the local press is important in the light of later events.) No less than 892 men with 727 horses came in response. For the time being the dam was saved, but Madocks was now in severe financial straits, and much of his property, including Tan-yr-allt, had been sold or leased over to his main London debtor, Mr Girdlestone.
So rapidly and enthusiastically did Shelley identify himself with the Embankment cause, that John Williams took him to an important public meeting with the Corporation of Beaumaris on Monday, 29 September, to drum up more money. Having listened to accounts of the Fishamble Street meeting, Williams presented Shelley as his main guest speaker to plead for the Embankment fund. Shelley’s speech, which glowingly reflected his new-found feelings for the Tremadoc community, caused considerable local excitement and was reported at great length in the North Wales Gazette of the following Wednesday. The reporter himself was so enchanted that he slipped into direct speech and the present tense without noticing it. In the next issue the editor of the Gazette had to apologize for giving disproportionate coverage to the meeting. As reported Shelley’s speech read in part:
Mr J. Williams, who had just sat down, would testify to them the sincerity and disinterestedness of his (Mr Shelley’s) intentions. That man he was proud to call his friend — he was proud that Mr Williams permitted him to place himself on an equality with him; inasmuch as one yet a novice in the great drama of life, whose integrity was untried, whose strength was unascertained, must consider himself honoured when admitted on an equal footing with one who had struggled for twelve years with incessant and unparallelled difficulties, in honesty, faithfulness, and fortitude. As to Mr Madocks, he had never seen him — but if unshaken public spirit and patriotism — if zeal to accomplish a work of national benefit, be a claim, then has he the strongest. The Embankment at Tremadoc, is one of the noblest works of human power — it is an exhibition of human nature as it appears in its noblest and most natural state — benevolence — it saves, it does not destroy. Yes! the unfruitful sea once rolled where human beings now live and earn their honest livelihood. Cast a look round these islands, through the perspective of these times, — behold famine driving millions even to madness; and own how excellent, how glorious, is the work which will give no less than three thousand souls the means of competence. How can anyone look upon that work and hesitate to join me, when I here publicly pledge myself to spend the last shilling of my fortune, and devote the last breath of my life to this great, this glorious cause.2
This was certainly a valiant performance, and Shelley’s health was
drunk by the assembled company. To give weight to his words, Shelley’s name appeared heading the list with that of William Madocks, and the local Solicitor-General David Ellis-Nanney, pledging £100 each to boost a new public subscription advertised in the same number of the Gazette. John Williams and Ellis-Nanney must have been delighted at the prospect of a substantial Sussex fortune being transfused into the Embankment so unexpectedly. But Shelley’s financial promises were not altogether substantial. Even on the way back from this meeting, Shelley was arrested for sixty or seventy pounds of debts by the authorities in Caernarvon, and would have been immediately committed to prison if John Williams and a certain Dr William Roberts had not volunteered bail to exculpate their new found champion.[4]
When Shelley returned from Beaumaris a second difficulty awaited him. Mr Girdlestone had been making inquiries about his prospective tenants, and concluded that they were most unsuitable: ‘you must take especial care not to let Mr Shelley into possession of the House or Furniture’, he wrote to John Williams from London, ‘for if he gets in, we may have great difficulties in getting him out again’.3 Girdlestone had had an unsatisfactory interview with old Westbrook — who would underwrite nothing — and he had discovered all about Shelley being ‘at variance with his own family’, and having offended them by marrying, as he suspected, ‘much beneath him’. Girdlestone summarized: ‘with a confined & dependent income, [Mr Shelley] wd. most probably be ill able to pay his rent, & wd. besides incur debts with all the tradesmen in the town which he wd. be unable to pay’. In all this, he was proved perfectly correct.