Shelley: The Pursuit

  Liberty and, characteristically, Virtue were now the watchwords. On second thoughts Shelley, ignoring his grocery bills, suggested a public advertisement in the papers, and enclosed a twenty-pound note for good measure, a daring piece of generosity.39 With Shelley in this mood, the tides at their peak, Leeson and his friends acutely sensitive to the least shift of opinion in Tremadoc and conscious that the defence of the social order lay completely in their hands, the least incident would have been enough to bring matters to a crisis.

  The week of Sunday, 19 February, blew dark and stormy; gale-force winds came in from Caernarvon Bay, and rains lashed the roads into rivers of mud. Water poured through the gullies and clefts from the surrounding mountains; communications virtually closed down; and the North Wales Gazette reported that a coach-driver had been blown off the top of the Capel-Curig to Shrewsbury mail.40 The papers in February also carried another notice which either Shelley or Leeson might have observed: ‘Associations for the Prosecution of Felons’ were being formed in several Caernarvonshire districts, as a defence against the increasingly unsettled state of the county. Rewards for arrest were advertised, the highest of which was five guineas for information concerning ‘Feloniously Breaking and Entering any Dwelling House, in the night time.’

  On Friday, 26 February a triggering incident occurred. It was of an unexpected kind. Dan Healy arrived in Tremadoc, fresh from his six months’ sentence in Barnstaple gaol for posting unlicensed and seditious papers. He must have been very dedicated to travel in such weather. The Shelleys welcomed him with open arms, and in Tremadoc, the story spread that Shelley’s personal servant, an ex-convict, had arrived to abet his master’s activities. Whether Dan himself had suspicions that the authorities had trailed him from Devon to Wales, or whether Shelley simply feared the reaction of the Leeson faction, is not known. But it is certain that Shelley expected immediate repercussions, and prepared for trouble. When he went upstairs to bed that stormy night with Harriet, he took his pair of pistols, and he loaded them.41

  What happened next has been one of the most fiercely disputed points in Shelley biography. Afterwards, Shelley’s closest friends, Peacock and Hogg, both concluded that he was suffering from hallucinations, one of the ‘thick-coming fancies’ which they found so convenient to cover up those parts of his career which they did not know, did not approve of, or which they simply did not understand. Their evidence is obviously partial, but they successfully distorted all subsequent interpretations.[2]

  The external events seem clear. During the night the house was twice disturbed; several shots were fired; at least two, and possibly more, of the large glass windows on the ground floor were smashed; the lawn outside the east front of the house was trampled and Shelley rolled in the mud; Shelley’s nightgown was shot through; and one pistol ball was found embedded in the wainscot under one of the windows in the main drawing-room. By the next morning the whole household was in a state of terror and exhaustion. Shelley especially was in a state of severe nervous shock, amounting to something like nervous breakdown, and his stomach seems to have been strained or kicked during a violent struggle.42 John Williams was called, and the Shelleys moved at once some seven miles out of Tremadoc to stay with the Solicitor General, Ellis-Nanney; they moved the same day (Saturday) without waiting for the weather to abate, or their things to be packed. Shelley wrote the following partially coherent note as they left, to Hookham. ‘I have just escaped an atrocious assassination. — Oh send the £20 if you have it. — you will perhaps hear of me no more, friend Percy Shelley.’43 To this Harriet appended a hurried explanation. ‘Mr Shelley is so dreadfully nervous today from having been up all night that I am afraid what he has written will alarm you very much. We intend to leave this place as soon as possible as our lives are not safe so long as we remain. — it is no common Robber we dread but a person who is actuated by revenge & who threatens my life & my Sisters as well. — if you can send us the money it will greatly add to our comfort.’44

  The Shelleys stayed with the Solicitor General and his wife between 27 February and 6 March.[3] During this time Shelley slowly recovered; he was increasingly anxious to obtain money to get himself out of Wales, and in vain he attempted to have proper inquiries into the affair instigated. But under no circumstances would he himself go back to Tan-yr-allt. One surviving letter from these ten days, to Williams, reads: ‘I am surprised that the wretch who attacked me has not been heard of. — Surely the inquiries have not been sufficiently general or particular? Mr Nanney requests that you will order that some boards should be nailed against the broken windows of Tanyrallt.’ He also asked Williams for a loan of twenty-five pounds. All report of the attack was suppressed from the local papers, despite the fact that their columns were showing great interest in such night incidents. By 6 March Shelley was ready to leave for Ireland. He had recovered his health, but he was now convinced that some kind of conspiracy of silence was being organized, and he had little hope of justice. News that Leeson, who was putting about a story that Shelley was only trying to avoid paying his bills, had originally obtained the Irish pamphlet through John Williams only confirmed his worst suspicions.45

  From Bangor, on the first stage of the Dublin mail, Shelley wrote to Williams that unless he did not know ‘the unalterable goodness’ of his heart, he would have felt ‘staggered at this deceit’ over the pamphlet. ‘As I told you when we parted unless you are explicit and unreserved to me I am fighting in the dark.’ But Shelley was no longer fighting, he was running. The moment he left the district, it was clearly to everyone’s advantage to smooth things over and ask no awkward questions: the reputation of the Embankment could best be served in this way. If Shelley had stubbornly remained, the matter could not have been hushed up. At Bangor, Shelley picked up Hookham’s loan, and was cheered that he was not entirely surrounded by ‘the suspicion coldness and villainy of the world’. As the miles unrolled between him and Tremadoc, his confidence returned. ‘I am now recovered from an illness brought on by watching fatigues and alarm,’ he told Hookham, ‘& we are proceeding to Dublin to dissipate the unpleasing impressions associated with the scene of our alarm. We expect to be there on the 8th. You shall then hear the details of our distresses. The ball of the assassin’s pistol (he fired at me twice) penetrated my night gown & pierced the wainscot. He is yet undiscovered tho’ not unsuspected as you will learn from my next.’ In a p.s., Shelley was once again talking of ‘liberty and virtue’, saying he still wanted to contribute the twenty-pound subscription to Hunt. The sight of the sea had cheered him up.46

  After a rough and unpleasant crossing, they were safely in Dublin by 9 March, and took rooms with John Lawless at 35 Cuffe Street. The following days were spent sending a series of letters to friends, such as Hogg and Hookham, explaining in detail what had occurred at Tan-yr-allt and asking for money. It does not appear that Shelley got the twenty-five pounds from Williams. The full explanatory letter to Hookham, written by Harriet, since Shelley still felt unable to recount the events coolly and accurately without her aid, is our chief source for Shelley’s version of the occurrence. As they waited for their books to arrive from Wales, Shelley was able to complete a fair copy of the manuscript of Queen Mab and send it to Hookham for a first reading. His comment was dry. ‘I expect no success. — Let only 250 copies be printed. A small neat Quarto, on fine paper & so as to catch the aristocrats: They will not read it, but their sons and daughters may.’47 With that, the whole party — he and Harriet, Eliza and Dan — swept out of the capital and headed for a western fastness. As far as is known Shelley took a cottage on one of the islands of the Killarney lakes, and stocked it with his library; he covered his traces well, and for the time being left behind fears of Welsh assassins, debtors and Home Office spies. There were even the ‘wiles of a scorned disappointed woman’ to escape, for letters had been arriving, containing news of ‘desperate views and dreadful passions’ from poor, abandoned Miss Hitchener.

  From the mere outline of these eve
nts, it is quite clear that Shelley’s actions were motivated by something far more substantial than ‘a hallucination’, that night at Tan-yr-allt. The overall pattern of physical shock and fear, helpless suspicion and headlong flight is only consistent with a genuine assault. Though points of detail may remain at issue, it is evident that the whole incident was a product not of psychological, but of social and political pressures, building up within Tremadoc itself, as a result of the tension connected with the Embankment, and the deep feelings of resentment and hostility which Shelley’s views and actions had attracted.

  Despite the contrary evidence of Peacock and Hogg, the reports extracted years after from John Williams’s widow,[4] and the story of ‘Shelley’s ghost’,[5] all the evidence which is contemporaneous with the incident unites to confirm the reality of the assault. The evidence comes under six heads. First, there are Shelley’s brief notes of that fortnight to Williams and Hookham, which we have already seen. Second, there is Harriet’s long and circumstantial account to Hookham written from Dublin. Third, there is a letter from Eliza Westbrook to John Williams, also written from Dublin. Fourth, there is a significant note from William Madocks to John Williams at Tremadoc commenting on the attack. Fifth, there is the suggestion of a local conspiracy of silence, supported by the actions of Williams, Leeson and Ellis-Nanney, and the extraordinary silence of the local press over the incident. Sixth, there are the serious flaws and omissions in Peacock’s own version of the so-called ‘hallucinations’, which tend to invalidate his whole position. From the combination of all this evidence, it is possible to reconstruct in some detail, and with a good degree of certainty, the sequence of singular and unpleasant events which finally drove Shelley from Wales.

  Harriet’s letter of 12 March is the most detailed exposition of the events of that night. It is addressed to Hookham, but according to Hogg is one of a series of identical ‘descriptive circulars’48 which Shelley had sent to his friends, to explain what had happened. The account is therefore not tailored to one particular correspondent, but represents Shelley’s absolute version of the attack. This is important, and the whole letter has the air of a careful, detailed, coldly factual deposition; at no point does it refer to the feelings of those concerned, except in the first paragraph where Harriet explains why she, and not Shelley, is writing. It is necessary to distinguish where Harriet is recounting what she herself observed, and where she is merely giving Shelley’s version. Harriet’s own evidence can be regarded, prima facie, as sound; while Shelley’s requires corroboration. The first half of the letter is as follows:

  Mr S. promised you a recital of the horrible events that caused us to leave Wales. I have undertaken the task, as I wish to spare him, in the present nervous state of his health, every thing that can recal to his mind the horrors of that night, which I will relate.[6] On Friday night, the 26th February, we retired to bed between ten and eleven o’clock. We had been in bed about half an hour, when Mr S. heard a noise proceeding from one of the parlours.[7] He immediately went down stairs with two pistols, which he had loaded that night, expecting to have occasion for them.[8] He went into the billiard room, where he heard footsteps retreating. He followed into another little room, which was called an office. He there saw a man in the act of quitting the room through a glass window which opens into the shrubbery.[9] The man fired at Mr S., which he avoided. Bysshe then fired, but it flashed in the pan. The man then knocked Bysshe down, and they struggled on the ground.[10] Bysshe then fired his second pistol, which he thought wounded him in the shoulder, as he uttered a shriek and got up, when he said these words: By God I will be revenged! I will murder your wife. I will ravish your sister. By God. I will be revenged.[11] He then fled — as we hoped for the night. Our servants were not gone to bed, but were just going, when this horrible affair happened. This was about eleven o’clock. We all assembled in the parlour, where we remained for two hours. Mr S. then advised us to retire, thinking it impossible he would make a second attack.

  Up to this point, it is clear that we are really dealing with an intrusion rather than an attack. By his prudent act of assembling all his servants, and by his confident decision not to send to the village for help, Shelley showed that he was still entirely capable and in command of the situation at this point. There are two slight anomalies: the misfiring of Shelley’s carefully prepared pistol, and the intruder’s cry of ‘revenge’.

  These may be accounted for together. Other evidence indicates that the glass window of the office was smashed in the shooting; and yet strangely there is no mention by either Shelley or Harriet, or later Peacock, of any bullet mark within the office or billiard room. This surely suggests that the glass was smashed by a bullet travelling outwards, i.e. fired by Shelley as he chased his retreating enemy ‘in the act of quitting the room by the glass window’. It is therefore possible that either deliberately, or in the rush of action, Shelley was muddled over the shooting roles, and reversed them in his account. In that case, what may have happened was that Shelley rushed into the office with pistols ready, and fired first. Moreover an intruder, who had come in from a storm, was more likely to have misfiring pistols than Shelley who had carefully prepared his indoors. The actual sequence would therefore read: ‘Mr S. then saw a man in the act of quitting the room through a glass window which opens into the shrubbery. Bysshe fired, which he avoided. (The glass door smashed.) The man fired at Mr S. but it flashed in the pan. (No bullet entered the house.) The man then knocked Bysshe down, and they struggled on the ground.’ The crucial switch involved here has the effect of making Shelley to some extent the aggressor, having used fire-arms first. This is perfectly in character. It fits the evidence better, and is the best way of explaining why the intruder threatened revenge as he did. Most significant of all, it explains how what began as a simple night intrusion, a search for incriminating papers, was transformed into an outright attempt at murder, preceded by a terrifying ordeal of vigilance. Harriet’s letter continues:

  We left Bysshe and our manservant, who had only arrived that day, and who knew nothing of the house, to sit up.[12] I had been in bed three hours when I heard a pistol go off. I immediately ran downstairs, when I perceived that Bysshe’s flannel gown had been shot through, and the window curtain.[13] Bysshe had sent Daniel to see what hour it was, when he heard a noise at the window. He went there, and a man thrust his arm through the glass and fired at him. Thank heaven! the ball went through his gown and he remained unhurt, Mr S. happened to stand sideways; had he stood fronting, the ball must have killed him. Bysshe fired his pistol, but it would not go off.[14] He then aimed a blow at him with an old sword which we found in the house.[15] The assassin attempted to get the sword from him, and just as he was pulling it away Dan rushed into the room, when he made his escape.[16]

  This was at four in the morning. It had been a most dreadful night; the wind was as loud as thunder, and the rain descended in torrents. Nothing has been heard of him; and we have every reason to believe it was no stranger, as there is a man of the name of Leeson, who the next morning that it happened went and told the shopkeepers of Tremadoc that it was a tale of Mr Shelley’s to impose upon them, that he might leave the country without paying his bills. This they believed, and none of them attempted to do anything towards his discovery. We left Tanyrallt on Saturday, and staid till every thing was ready for our leaving the place, at the Sol. General of the county’s house, who lived seven miles from us.49

  This concludes the account of the second part of the attack. It seems clear that the intruder had retired after the midnight incident, and either returned himself some hours later, or, more likely, sent a friend or servant to take his ‘revenge’ by attempting to kill Shelley. He had waited outside the window for an opportune moment, and when Dan left the room, he broke the glass with his pistol for a clear shot and fired. A bullet that passes through the target’s nightgown is not intended in jest. The evidence of the bullet hole is conclusive. One shot was fired; it passed through Shelley’s nig
htgown, through the curtain, and into the wainscot. The physical evidence is confirmed by Harriet, and later, incidentally, by Peacock. The ‘hallucination’ theory finally collapses here, unless one concludes either that Harriet was deliberately lying, or that Shelley had deliberately staged this second attack and fired the shot himself. This first objection makes no sense either with regard to Harriet’s known character, or her situation. The second objection assumes that in the few seconds that Dan was out of the room, Shelley had the time, the motivation and the forethought to smash in the window and fire a single shot that penetrated at convincing heights and angles his own nightgown, the curtain and the wainscot; then to rush back, seize the sword, smash out a window and put on a convincing display of fighting with a non-existent assailant. This makes even less sense.

  In the third and last part of the letter, which follows, Harriet put her own interpretation on the events. It is here that textual evidence becomes suggestive. In his published version of the letter, Hogg had already altered the day of leaving Tan-yr-allt from ‘Saturday’ to ‘Sunday’ in order to make their flight look less urgent.50 Peacock, in his reprinting of the letter, sustained the alteration of the date, and carefully omitted the reference to Leeson.51 He then closed his excerpt having omitted all the subsequent part of Harriet’s explanation, without a single word of comment. This effectively served to distort the whole incident for a generation of subsequent readers and biographers, by giving it the appearance of a totally unexplained, unmotivated, nightmare experience. Harriet’s final paragraphs, omitted by Peacock, read: