Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard—I saw them not —
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming, —
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
— “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” Percy Shelley, 1816
S
INCE HIS YOUTH,
Percy Bysshe Shelley had been fascinated with the supernatural. As a boy, he collected “blue books,” cheap editions of Gothic
novels about haunted castles, murders, ghosts, pirates, magicians, and bandits. One of his favorites was
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man,
about a race of flying people, the “glumms” and “glowries,” and Wilkins, their Prometheus, who brought them the arts and
civilization. Shelley fantasized about having a winged wife who would give birth to little flying cherubs.
He felt that there were mysteries hidden beneath the veneer of everyday reality and that, somehow, he could discover them.
Secret societies such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati held great interest for him, and he recalled perusing “ancient
books of Chemistry and Magic . . . with an enthusiasm and wonder, almost amounting to belief.”
One of Shelley’s scientific interests was astronomy, and he often speculated on the possibility that people would one day
travel to the planets. His cousin Thomas Medwin wrote that Shelley hoped that, in the same way schoolboys were promoted from
one grade to another, humans “should rise to a progressive state from planet to planet, till we become Gods.”
Fantasizing about all these marvels and horrors often gave Percy vivid and terrifying dreams, and he was a lifelong sleepwalker.
Like Mary Godwin, he had “waking dreams” as well, though his were virtually hallucinations. Medwin recalled that “a sort of
lethargy and abstraction” would come over Percy, after which “his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous
with emotion, a sort of ecstasy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel than a human being.”
Shelley often saw himself as a solitary genius or a wandering poet, but though he would roam, he also liked to be the center—and
leader—of a group. Indeed, his life and career were devoted to bringing others along with him toward his envisioned, more
perfect, existence. His large blue eyes and high-pitched, hypnotic voice invited others to join in the visions he saw clearly.
From his youth, when he had four younger, adoring sisters to enlist in the fantasies he concocted, he was able to persuade
others to share his dreams. Eccentric and rebellious, Shelley was forever to be a visionary looking for a harem.
T
he Shelleys were part of a minor branch of an old aristocratic family in Sussex, south of London. Percy’s great-grandfather
had gone to America to seek his fortune, and his grandfather Bysshe had been born in Newark, New Jersey. Through the deaths
of his father’s elder brothers, Bysshe came to inherit the estate of his branch of the Shelley family, which included a property
called Field Place. He came to England and increased the family fortunes by eloping with two wealthy heiresses. The first
one was only sixteen, the same age of the two women his grandson would fall in love with. Bysshe’s first wife bore him a son
and heir, the poet’s father, Timothy.
Bysshe was an eccentric and a dreamer who spent much of his time building a castle which he called his “Folly.” It was never
completed, nor did anyone ever want to live in it. Through political connections, Bysshe became a baronet but he took the
title with a grain of salt. His son Timothy, on the other hand, proved to be a pompous snob, lived the life of a country squire
at Field Place, and also served in Parliament. The elder Bysshe showed a talent for versifying when he joked of his son:
It’s not my wish
To be Sir Bysshe,
But it’s my son’s whim
To be Sir Tim.
Timothy Shelley married Elizabeth Pilfold, a beautiful woman of high birth. On August 4, 1792, their first child was born
and christened Percy Bysshe, though the family always called him Bysshe. His birth was followed by those of five little sisters—one
died in infancy—and a brother who was born after Percy was a teenager. Timothy and Elizabeth did not seem close to any of
their children, and Percy always displayed a virulent hatred for his father, who in turn forbade anyone to use his son’s name
in his presence for years after Percy’s death. Timothy had hoped for a political career for his first-born son and disapproved
of his literary efforts. He gave his younger son this advice: “Never read a book, Johnnie, and you will be a rich man.” Percy
later wrote, “The habits of thinking of my father and myself never coincided. Passive obedience was inculcated and enforced
in my childhood. I was required to love, because it was my
duty
to love.”
Percy’s mother was a beautiful woman and she has been described as clever but lacking imagination—not a perfect fit for her
son. Edward Dowden, an authorized biographer of the poet who talked to Shelley’s siblings, wrote that Elizabeth’s “temper
was violent and domineering,” and that she felt her elder son had inadequate enthusiasm for hunting and fishing. She had been
brought up in a sporting household and wanted her son to conform. Sometimes she would force Percy to go out with the gamekeeper
to hunt. As soon as they were out of sight, Percy would curl up under a tree with a book while the gamekeeper proceeded to
shoot enough rabbits and squirrels to satisfy Elizabeth.
But in some ways, growing up at Field Place was Edenic for Percy. He could romp in the gardens with his adoring sisters. He
invented fabulous stories about fantastic creatures who lived there, such as the Great Old Snake that lurked in the gardens.
Sometimes he dressed as an alchemist, casting spells, while his sisters would don costumes to impersonate spirits that Percy
would summon up. Percy had little contact with boys his own age, and he became accustomed to having a circle of young females
around him to entertain and play games with. He enjoyed nature and often rode on his pony through the woods; his sister Hellen
recalled that he loved to sneak out and look at the stars at night. The estate also had a pond where young Percy sailed toy
boats. Throughout his life he would love being near water, though he never learned to swim.
Percy learned to read quite early and started to devour books with what would be a lifelong gusto. He learned Latin from the
local clergyman; even at this time it was clear that the young boy had a wonderful memory and his sisters remembered him reciting
Latin verses. He soon started to compose his own poetry. The earliest surviving effort, written when he was eight, is “Verses
on a Cat.” The second stanza shows that a strain of melancholy was already part of his personality:
You would not easily guess
All the modes of distress
Which torture the tenants of earth;
And the various evils
Which like so many devils,
Attend the poor souls from their birth.
Shelley received a shock in 1802, when he was sent to the Syon House Academy, a boys’ school in Brentford. Here there were
no adoring sisters to obey his instructions—instead, only boys who felt he was not “one of them.” His classmates, used to
rough play, thought Percy was girlish because he didn’t want to take part in their sports or games. Shelley, recalled his
cousin Thomas Medwin, who was also a student there, was mocked because he did not know how to play marbles, leapfrog, hopscotch,
or cricket. Another schoolmate remembered him as “like a girl in boy’s clothes, fighting with open hands and rolling on the
floor when flogged, not from the pain, but from a sense of indignity.” Yet another reported that because Shelley talked about
“spirits, fairies, fighting, volcanoes, etc.” he was considered “almost on the borders of insanity.”
In such a situation a lesser person would try to change, to adapt, become more like others. That was not Shelley, who claimed
that it was at Syon House that it became clear to him that he must change the world. Years later he wrote about this experience
in the introduction to “The Revolt of Islam.”
Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass
I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit’s sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
From the near schoolroom, voices, that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes —
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and foes.
The one good thing Shelley acquired at Syon House was a love of science, acquired from attending the talks given by Dr. Adam
Walker, a traveling lecturer who was a friend of the chemist Joseph Priestley. Walker introduced Percy to electricity, magnetism,
and telescopes. Among the facts that fascinated the boy was that, as Benjamin Franklin and others had shown, electricity could
be collected, stored in a device called a Leyden jar (an early type of storage battery), and used to perform experiments.
On holidays and school vacations, Shelley returned to Field Place to introduce surreptitiously the world of scientific inquiry
to his sisters, who were distressed as gunpowder, fire balloons, and “electrical kites” appeared in Shelley’s repertoire of
practical jokes. When he offered to cure one sister’s chilblains by “electrifying” her, she turned traitor, informed their
mother, and the scientific experiments were reined in.
After two years at Syon House, Shelley went to Eton, where he spent the next six years, the longest time he was ever to remain
in one place during his entire life. Shelley, still stubbornly averse to games and “manly” activities, once more found school
a hostile environment. The headmaster, a Dr. Keate, was generally known as “Flogger,” and the school authorities tolerated
the “fagging” system by which the younger boys had to get protection from bullies by performing menial tasks for the older
students. Here, the harassing of Shelley became so commonplace that it received a name: the “Shelley bait.” A classmate recalled
hearing cries of “Shelley! Shelley! Shelley!” thundering through the hallways as groups chased him down, surrounded him, knocked
his books from under his arm, pulled at him, and tore his clothes. “The result was . . . a paroxysm of anger which made his
eyes flash like a tiger’s, his cheeks grow pale as death, his limbs quiver, and his hair stand on end.” Such demonstrations
of rage only prompted the crowd to taunt him some more. He soon picked up the nickname “Mad Shelley.”
During his later years at Eton, things improved. Many of the younger students liked him because he refused to abuse the fagging
system. Shelley developed a crush on a boy during these years. “Every night when we parted to go to bed, I remember we kissed
each other,” Shelley wrote in some autobiographical notes he made years later. A strong bisexual component to his personality
would always be with him.
A classmate recalled him as
a thin, slight lad, with remarkably lustrous eyes, fine hair, and a very peculiar shrill voice and laugh. . . . At his tutor,
Bethell’s, where he lodged, he attempted many mechanical and scientific experiments. By the aid of a common tinker, he contrived
to make something like a steam-engine, which, unfortunately, one day suddenly exploded, to the great consternation of the
neighbourhood and to the imminent danger of a severe flogging from Dr. Goodall.
But his scientific pursuits did not overshadow his fascination with the supernatural. One time during the Eton years, he spent
the night in a charnel house at Warnham Church, waiting nervously for the spirits of the dead to appear. Indeed, the invisible
world, whether explained by science or spirits, was to him a tangible reality.
An elderly teacher at Eton, Dr. James Lind, took a keen interest in Shelley and encouraged his scientific pursuits. Lind had
been one of King George III’s doctors and was a member of the Lunar Society, whose members included such pioneers of science
as Joseph Priestley, James Watt, and Erasmus Darwin. (The group took its name from the fact that its meetings were held on
the night of the full moon so that the members could get home safely.) Lind had traveled to China and was interested in many
phases of knowledge and new ideas. He introduced Shelley to the study of French and German, which were not stressed in Eton’s
curriculum of classical learning. Under Lind’s guidance, Shelley began to read seriously the writings of such thinkers as
Lucretius, Pliny, Franklin, and Condorcet. Most important, Lind put a copy of William Godwin’s
Political Justice
in Shelley’s hands. Godwin’s opposition to government and all other large societal institutions, as well as his optimism
that free inquiry would lead to a happy anarchy, appealed enormously to Shelley. The future envisioned by Godwin meshed with
Shelley’s emerging ideas about the importance of small self-sustaining groups with which he could pursue intellectual inquiry.
During his last year at Eton, Shelley wrote what was to be his first published work:
Zastrozzi,
a Gothic story of passion, betrayal, and vengeance. It was similar to the popular books that he had devoured since his years
at Syon House. He took the name of the female protagonist, Matilda (along with many other “borrowed” elements), from the evil
heroine in Matthew Lewis’s notorious 1796 novel,
The Monk
. (Lewis’s work was a favorite of both Percy and Mary, and Percy would meet Lewis at Lord Byron’s chateau during the memorable
summer of 1816.) Shelley’s novel made its appearance in 1810; he modestly claimed authorship as “P.B.S.” The title page, significantly,
contained an epigraph taken from John Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
a passage in which Beelzebub declares his intention to take revenge on God by attacking the creatures most dear to him. A
few years later, Mary would employ a similar epigraph, and the same plot device, for
Frankenstein
.