Shelley: The Pursuit (67 page)

Alastor
was finished by the end of autumn, and Shelley did not attempt to pursue his introspection any further. He turned instead to concentrate on his Greek reading, which now widened to include his introduction to Homer, the
historians Thucydides and Herodotus, and several Greek lyric poets. He was also teaching Mary, and his book-lists to Lackington, Allen and Co., include Locke’s
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
, Bacon’s
Essays
and Lemprière’s
Classical Dictionary
.

Outside events were pressing once again, mainly in the shape of Godwin, who began to write to him directly once more on 11 November about a £250 debt to a certain Hogan who threatened to sue him.
³³
Claire almost certainly came back from Ireland before Christmas, and she seems to have shuttled rapidly between the Godwins at Skinner Street, Shelley’s old flat in Arabella Road and Bishopsgate. We know from Godwin’s diary that she spent the New Year, 1816, with Shelley and Mary, and it is clear from the cheques which he paid out to her that Shelley regarded her as his own responsibility. In March alone he drew her three cheques totalling £41.
³⁴
In the six months between October 1815 and March 1816, Claire had received cash equivalent to one-third of the money Shelley was paying his wife Harriet annually. Harriet herself had applied for an increase in Shelley’s annuity, but he had turned her down, and demanded custody of his daughter Ianthe by way of reply. In return the Westbrooks threatened to bring him to court on settlement proceedings and expose his atheism. On both sides these seem to have been strategic moves in the hope of obtaining more funds from Sir Timothy, rather than genuinely intended threats. At any rate, there was no reaction from Field Place, stalemate was reached, and no further advances were made on either side. There is no evidence that Shelley attempted to visit his children, or make any special provision for them. Nor is there anything on record at this time to show he had any particular feeling or attachment for either Ianthe or Charles. This is significant in the light of Shelley’s subsequent actions in the winter of 1816-17.

Encouraged by Mary and Peacock, Shelley decided to publish his first volume of poetry, consisting largely of the title poem,
Alastor
, with its preface, and the other introspective poems of the previous summer. His sonnets to Wordsworth, and on the fall of Bonaparte were also included. The opening lyric section to
Queen Mab
— ‘How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!’ — in prudently edited form, filled out the end of the collection, together with a shorter but rather more daring statement of atheism, also taken from
Queen Mab
, and re-entitled ‘Superstition’. Finally there were two charming pieces of translation which hinted at the increasingly serious and agile scholarship upon which Shelley was embarked. The first was from the Greek of Moschus; and the second a sonnet from Dante. The Dante, which is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, shows how quickly Shelley recognized and assimilated what was congenial to his temper in a foreign author. The longing for a community of intimate friends, combined with the surprising and perfectly Shelleyan
image of a magic airship, is brilliantly caught in one of the few and one of the best sonnets he ever wrote: ‘Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti’ —

Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I,

Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend

A magic ship, whose charmèd sails should fly

With winds at will where’er our thoughts might wend,

And that no change, nor any evil chance

Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be,

That even satiety should still enhance

Between our hearts their strict community:

And that the bounteous wizard then would place

Vanna and Bice and my gentle love,

Companions of our wandering, and would grace

With passionate talk, wherever we might rove,

Our time, and each were as content and free

As I believe that thou and I should be.
³⁵

Shelley also translated a sonnet from Cavalcanti to Dante, which was not published until 1876, in which another bitterer facet of Dante’s relationship is revealed:

              Once thou didst loathe the multitude

Of blind and madding men — I then loved thee —

I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood

When thou wert faithful to thyself and me . . . .

                               Again and yet again

Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly

And leave to thee thy true integrity.
³⁶

Shelley chose to translate it because of its obvious connection with his attitude to Wordsworth; and also, perhaps, in a more oblique way, to his old and unreliable friend Hogg.
[7]

In December 1815 Shelley sent the manuscript of this slim volume to Samuel Hamilton, printers, in Weybridge, Surrey, for 250 copies to be run off. On 6 January, with high hopes, he sent a complete set of unbound sheets — all but the title page and last sheet — to John Murray at Albemarle Street, in the hope that no less than Byron’s publisher might consent to bring the work out under their imprint. Sadly, Murray did not make any offer; but by the first week in February,
Shelley had managed to get two lesser publishers to take on the book jointly; Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy of Paternoster Row, and Carpenter & Son, of Old Bond Street. It is significant that Thomas Hookham, also of Old Bond Street, did not take on
Alastor
, for the personal breach caused by the events of 1814 was not really healed, nor would it ever be. Shelley suffered unnecessarily from this, for he never achieved another close or long-standing friendship with his publishers, and, especially after he had left London, this was to mean that his manuscripts were never treated with any particular care or enthusiasm. As for the Weybridge printer, his bill was still unpaid in July 1820.

Counting
Queen Mab
, but not counting the juvenile novels and poems, Shelley was to publish ten separate volumes of work during his lifetime. The last seven of these appeared only in the final three years of his life, when Shelley was isolated from his reading public, in Italy. The first three alone appeared in England while he was still living there, and
Alastor
is the second of these. As
Queen Mab
remained for several more years an underground poem, the critical and public reception of
Alastor
thus takes on very considerable importance. In the event, the book sold badly, and the reviews were scanty, uncomprehending and hostile. In April 1816, the
Monthly Review
carried a brief paragraph, without quotation from any of the poems, in which the anonymous reviewer remarked: ‘We perceive, through the “darkness visible” in the which Mr Shelley veils his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions; but . . . we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well of his other readers (if he has any), to subjoin to his next publication an
ordo
, a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and explanatory of his meaning.’
³⁷
Relatively, this was good-natured, although the stupid sarcasm of the closing jab — after the extensive Notes of
Queen Mab
— must have wounded Shelley. In May, the
British Critic
, a stolid Tory cudgel, decided to give its reviewer a little space for a facetious interlude, and it genially quoted from
Alastor
: ‘we are therefore not a little delighted with the nonesense which mounts, which rises, which spurns the earth, and all its dull realities’. Extracting the Narcissus passage, where the Poet gazes through his hair at his own image in the stream, the reviewer commented: ‘Vastly intelligible. Perhaps, if his poet had worn a wig, the case might have been clearer . . .’
³⁸

Only much later, in October 1816, did the
Eclectic Review
show the beginnings of some serious understanding. ‘The poem is adapted to show the dangerous, the fatal tendency of that morbid ascendancy of the imagination over the other faculties, which incapacitates the mind for bestowing an adequate attention on the real objects of this “work-day” life, and for discharging the relative and social duties . . . It cannot be denied that very considerable talent for descriptive poetry is displayed in several parts.’ Yet even here the reviewer concluded that
Alastor
was a ‘heartless fiction’, ‘wild and specious, untangible and incoherent as a dream’.
³⁹
But it seems unlikely that either Shelley or any of his immediate circle ever saw this review, and anyway it was really too late to affect the public sale of the book. Shelley was to write to Godwin in December 1816, ‘You will say that . . . I am morbidly sensitive to what I esteem the injustice of neglect — but I do not say that I am unjustly neglected, the oblivion which overtook my little attempt of Alastor I am ready to acknowledge was sufficiently merited in
itself
; but then it was not accorded in the correct proportion considering the success of the most contemptible drivellings.’
⁴⁰
Yet whatever explanation he protested, it was a bad blow, and one to be repeated over and over again in Italy, until he was almost dumb. The terrible bitterness against reviewers was finally put to work in
Adonais
, on the death of John Keats. The failure to reach a regular readership, even a small one, was to have the most important consequences for the direction in which Shelley’s work developed. Nor can it ever be forgotten as an underlying element in the friendship with Byron, the best-selling author of the age, which was to commence in the coming summer.

One curious anomaly was the copy which Shelley suddenly sent to Southey at Keswick. He decided apparently on the spur of the moment, and posted it on 7 March 1816 from his lawyers, Messrs Longdill & Co, in Gray’s Inn. Remembering the opinions which Shelley had expressed to Miss Hitchener in 1812, and was again to give vent to in 1817, it seems strange that he should have treated Southey with such deference. But perhaps it is not so strange when one recalls his tactics with his father. The letter demonstrates how important Southey’s opinion still was to him, and the significance that Shelley had always attached to their early conversations. Shelley enclosed a copy of
Alastor
with his note: ‘I shall never forget the pleasure which I derived from your conversation, or the kindness with which I was received in your hospitable circle during the short period of my stay in Cumberland some years ago. The disappointment of some youthful hopes, and subsequent misfortunes of a heavier nature, are all that I can plead as my excuse for neglecting to write to you, as I had promised from Ireland . . . . Let it be sufficient that, regarding you with admiration as a poet, and with respect as a man, I send you, as an intimation of those sentiments, my first serious attempt to interest the best feelings of the human heart, believing that you have so much general charity as to forget, like me, how widely in moral and political opinions we disagree . . . . Very sincerely yours, Percy B Shelley.’
⁴¹
He received no response; but Southey was alerted, and watched the press for any subsequent publications. His vigilance was to be rewarded in the following spring of 1817.

The publication of
Alastor
coincided roughly with the birth of Shelley’s first surviving child by Mary, a little boy, on 24 January 1816. He was christened
William, after his grandfather. Of all his children, this first grandson of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin was the one to whom Shelley was most obviously and most intensely attached. Beside William, his other children, whom he often treated with such careless unconcern, sometimes seem like mere domestic appendages. William is the only child who features in his poetry. The happy birth of this son, and the depressing failure of
Alastor
, also mark one of the main watersheds in Shelley’s creative output.

For the next twelve months Shelley was to write virtually nothing except one poem of rather less than 150 lines, and a few scattered slight or fragmentary effusions. Of prose essays, pamphlets or speculations, he produced nothing at all. Mary noted that his normal practice of study-reading declined except for a few select classical authors like Aeschylus and Lucretius. Even his private correspondence thinned out, and except for four long descriptive letters to Peacock in the middle of the summer, his letters are concerned almost exclusively with matters of his own inheritance and complicated negotiations to settle Godwin’s apparently bottomless debts. The greatest part of his effort and energy was transferred into his family life, and turned to the minds and faculties of those around him. It is not coincidental that 1816 was a highly creative year for his immediate companions — Peacock completed
Headlong Hall
and commenced
Melincourt
; Mary embarked on the sensational novel that was to make her own literary career at a single stroke; and Lord Byron, after two years of relative inactivity, dabbling in Oriental Tales and marriage, at last took up and completed his Third Canto of
Childe Harold
and his celebrated bad poem ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’. There is a sense indeed in which the year 1816 almost lost Shelley altogether as a writer, and relegated him to the ranks of the comfortable, domesticated
littérateurs
, who encourage the glow of creativity in others and are then content to bask in it themselves. This did not happen, because the old core of disturbance was still active, as certain strange occurrences were to show; and events at the end of 1816 threw Shelley mercilessly back into the maelstrom. But it nearly happened.