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Shelley's “The Triumph of Life”: The Biographical Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Donald H. Reiman
Donald H. Reiman*
Affiliation:
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
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Extract

It two articles based on his study of the Bodleian MS of Shelley's “The Triumph of Life” G. M. Matthews has presented evidence which, he suggests, proves that, during the weeks immediately preceding Shelley's trip to Leghorn with Edward Williams and their subsequent drowning, Shelley and Jane Williams engaged in “a love-affair, passionate on Shelley's part and at least complaisant on Jane's, cutting across the pattern of marriages within the confined little community of Casa Magni,” and that much of the somber tone of “The Triumph of Life” can be attributed to this domestic crisis.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 1963 , pp. 536 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963

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References

1 “Shelley and Jane Williams,” RES, N. S. xii (February 1961), 46. (Hereafter cited as “S and JW.”)

2 “On Shelley's ‘The Triumph of Life’,” Studio. Neophilo-logica, xxxiv (1962), 133. (Hereafter cited as “On Shelley's TL.”)

3 That such an intelligent critic of Shelley as Peter Butter accepts the theory as fact is clear evidence of this likelihood (“Sun and Shape in Shelley's The Triumph of Life,” RES, N. S. xiii [February 1962], 50).

4 “S and JW,” p. 46.

5 Shelley: His Life and Work, ii (Boston, 1927), 199. Discussed in “On Shelley's TL,” pp. 130–131.

6 Shelley, ii (New York, 1940), 626–628. White's discussion of Peck's allegation is a model of judicious and responsible biographical analysis.

7 The setting for Peck's statement concerns the Pisan circle; he mentions that the Williamses lived “in the same house with the Shelleys, though on another floor” as they did at Pisa (see Trelawny's Recollections, Chapter iii) but not atLerici (cf. Mary Shelley's descriptions of Casa Magni to Maria Gisborne, 15 August 1822, Letters of Mary W. Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones, I [Norman, Okla., 1944], 180. [Hereafter cited as Letters]).

8 The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (London and New York, 1926), x, 402. (Hereafter cited as “Julian.”) See also Shelley's letter to Hunt, 2 March 1822 (Julian, x, 361).

9 “S and JW,” p. 40.

10 All quotations from “The Triumph of Life” and from “Lines written in the Bay of Lerici” are based on Shelley's holographs in Bodleian MS Shelley adds. c. 4 and are printed with the kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press. Those who are interested in consulting the MS can compare this doubtful cancellation (f. 35v) with indisputable occurrences of capital “J's” and “G's” in the same MS: “God” (canceled), f. 27v; “God” and “Good,” f. 30r; “Gregory,” f. 37v; “June,” f. 22r; “Janus,” f. 23r; “Jane,” f. 56r (in a draft of the opening of “To Jane: ‘The keen stars were twinkling’ ”).

11 “S and JW,” p. 46. See also Matthews' notes on the text of ll. 25–26, 29, 33 of the poem (p. 43).

12 “ ‘The Triumph of Life’: A New Text,” Studia Neophilo-logica, XXXII (No. 2, 1960), 303. (Hereafter cited as “New Text.”)

13 Matthews dates this letter 19 June 1822 (“S and JW,” p. 48n and “New Text,” p. 304), but it was probably written 24 June. Hunt wrote to Shelley from “on board the David Walter, Genoa / 15th June, 1822,” (Correspondence, ed. Thornton Hunt, i [London, 1862], 181–182), the letter reaching Shelley on 19 June; Shelley replied the same day (Julian, x, 406–407) describing the situation at Casa Magni, telling of Mary's miscarriage, and welcoming Hunt to Italy. Hunt responded on receipt of this letter (21 June, Correspondence, I, 182–183); Thornton Hunt has apparently edited out the conclusion of this letter, but from Shelley's reply on 24 June it is reasonably clear that Hunt was in some kind of financial difficulty and had written an alarmed appeal. After telling Hunt what steps he has taken to solve the problem, Shelley assures Hunt that “This morning, on the receipt of your letter, I was on the point of setting sail to Genoa … and Williams had already gone on board to weigh anchor, when poor Mary suffered a relapse, which … was sufficient to warn me of the necessity of remaining with her for the present” (Julian, x, 408).

14 That Matthews does not mention this alleged appearance of “Jane” in “On Shelley's TL” suggests that he might have felt this one to be less certain than the other two.

15 In “New Text” (p. 285“) he wrote, ”From 164–175 the draft continues in scrawled pencil,“ and in ”On Shelley's TL“ (p. 131), ”at this point in the draft (unless I am misreading it) the words ‘Jane & I’ are inserted in pencil. … “

16 Since 1952 the bulk of Lord Abinger's collection has been available on microfilms made for Duke University, copies of which are in the Bodleian and other centers of Shelley studies. See Lewis Patton, “The Shelley-Godwin Collection of Lord Abinger,” Library Notes (Duke University), No. 27 (April 1953), 11–17. Quotations from the Abinger Collection are printed here with the kind permission of Professor Patton, who supervises the use of these microfilms.

17 “On Shelley's TL,” p. 129; Shelley, II, 361.

18 Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams, Shelley's Friends: Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Norman, Okla., 1951), pp. 146, 150. (Hereafter cited as Shelley's Friends) “Beta” or “Betta” was the cook that Shelley asked Claire to find a replacement for.

19 Shelley, ii, 36–39; ii, 91–96; Julian, x, 87; Shelley, ii, 354–356; ii, 367–368; Julian, x, 401; Letters, I, 179–180.

20 Shelley, II, 628. White dates Mary's discovery of Jane's talk “1828” instead of 1827. Mary discovered that her friend was “false & treacherous” about 13 July 1827 and, on the advice of Tom Moore, disclosed her discovery to Jane on 12 February 1828 (Mary Shelley's Journal, ed. Frederick L. Jones [Norman, Okla., 1947], pp. 198–200. [Hereafter cited as Journal.]). Between these dates Mary increased her correspondence with Jane (writing at least ten times between 27 July and October), praising Jane very highly, perhaps in an attempt to prick her conscience (Abinger Collection, Duke Microfilms, Reel 14).

21 Matthews writes that Jane “was certainly no strict moralist: married at sixteen and deserted, she lived unmarried first with Edward Williams, and then with Hogg—apparently not far from her real husband” (“On Shelley's TL,” p. 128). Such an argument is unconvincing on two counts: first, the stringent divorce laws of the time made it virtually impossible for many worthy people to achieve legal release from their marriages. (Jane's letters to Mary of 13 November 1822 and 27 March 1823 reveal that her “legal tyrant” was a fraudulent adventurer who, when exposed, hired an assassin to kill the man who exposed him [Abinger Collection, Duke Microfilms, Reel 10].) There is, moreover, no evidence that Jane Williams' fidelity first to Edward Williams and, later, to Hogg was ever seriously questioned by anyone who knew her (any more than was George Eliot's fidelity to George Henry Lewes during his lifetime). In 1870 W. M. Rossetti recorded in his diary after a visit to Trelawny: “I am to dine with T[relawny] next Tuesday, and may perhaps meet Mrs Hogg: she never professed to be in love with Hogg, but to have been passionately in love with Williams, and incapable of loving any one else. ‘I have kissed the shirt off his back’ ” {Rossetti Papers: 1862–1870 [London, 1903], 501).

22 On 18 January 1824 Mary wrote in her Journal: “I love Jane [Williams] better than any other human being, but I am pressed upon by the knowledge that she but slightly returns this affection” (Journal, p. 192).

23 See the Gisbornes' letters and journal in Shelley's Friends.

24 At the end of this note Shelley adds: “Of course you will not suppose that Mary has seen … this transverse writing —so take no notice of it in any letter intended for her inspection” (Frederick L. Jones, “Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne: New Letters, 1818–1822,” SP, LII [January 1955], 66–67).

25 Winifred Scott, Jefferson Hogg (London, 1951), p. 195. See Mary to Jane, 14 February 1828, Letters, i, 369–371.

26 Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley … Amended and Extended by the Author, ed. H. Buxton Forman (London, 1913), pp. 318–319.

27 Chapter x (London: George Routledge & Sons, n.d.), pp. 91–92.

28 Shelley's Friends, p. 162. Cf. Trelawny's remark in Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron: “I … found Shelley in ecstasy with his boat, and Williams as touchy about her reputation as if she had been his wife” [The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley …, ed. Humbert Wolfe [London, 1933], ii, 209).

29 In “New Text” (p. 272) Matthews points out that an earlier version of 11. 389–390 of “The Triumph” is to be found in Bodleian MS Shelley adds. e. 8, f. 130r reverso; on internal evidence Shelley's use of this notebook can be dated from late 1819 through early 1821; there are in other Bodleian Shelley notebooks fragments that relate very closely in theme and imagery to the early lines of “The Triumph,” particularly to the rejected openings printed by Matthews in TLS (5 August 1960). This suggests that, although the actual draft of “The Triumph” in MS Shelley adds, c 4 probably postdates the removal to Lerici, Shelley's mind had been grappling with some of the ideas and even words of “The Triumph of Life” for at least several months.

30 Shelley to Hogg, 14 May 1811, quoted from the corrected text of this letter edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron, Shelley and his Circle: 1773–1822, ii (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 785.

31 9 May 1811, Shelley and his Circle, ii, 781. This letter is misdated in both Hogg's Life (9 August 1811) and the Julian Edition (?May 13, 1811). The eighteenth-century English translation of Julie was entitled Eloisa and the name of the heroine altered throughout (Eloisa: Or, a Series of Original Letters. Collected and published by J. J. Rousseau. Translated from the French.3rd edition. 4 vols. London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1764). This reference to “Eloisa” may indicate that Shelley first read Julie in translation.

32 Julian, ix, 167. (This letter continues through ix, 177.)

33 Julian, x, 372. Such an exact reference suggests that either Shelley knew Julie almost by heart or else that he had recently re-read it; Shelley's remark on Goethe's use of a particular passage of Rousseau's novel suggests that use of such conscious correlative to other well-known works was not foreign to his own artistic method. Cf. Julian, x, 371: “Cypri-ano evidently furnished the germ of Faust, as Faust may furnish the germ of other poems; although it is different from it in structure and plan, as the acorn from the oak.”

34 In “On Shelley's TV Matthews, who says that ”Rousseau … stands, ideologically speaking, at the centre of the ‘Triumph’ “ (p. 105), provides the most complete discussion of parallels between Rousseau's works and ”The Triumph“ that has hitherto appeared, though he makes only one passing allusion to Nouvelle Heloise (p. 126).

35 (Euvres completes de J. J. Rousseau …, 2nd edition (Paris: Baudouin Freres, 1826), xvi, 263, 268.

36 “The ‘Epipsychidion’ I cannot look at …. If you are anxious, however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings.” To John Gisborne, 18 June 1822 (Julian, x, 401).

37 Shelley's interpretation is authorized by Rousseau's statement that the two beings he created (Julie and Claire) were embodiments of “the two idols” of his heart, “love and friendship.” That Rousseau, like Shelley, adorned his ideal “de tous les charmes du sexe que j'avois toujours adore” {(Euvres, xvi, 268), provides one more instance of the inherent tendency observed by Jung and others for each person to envision his antitypical ideal as one of the opposite sex. Cf. S. K. Heninger, Jr., “A Jungian Reading of ‘Kubla Khan’,” JAAC, xviii (March 1960), 358–367.

38 All quotations from Julie are from (Euvres completes …, 2nd edition (Paris, 1826), Vols, viii–x.

39 Here are other selected verbal or thematic parallels between “The Triumph” and Julie (TL = “The Triumph”; NH = Nouvelle Heoise, listed by Part [Roman numeral] and Letter [Arabic]): TL, 155–157: “quelques heures agreables s'eclipsent comme un eclair et ne sont plus” (NH, I, 39); TL, 201–202, 206–207: “c'est … du premier transport de mon cceur, que s'alluma dans lui cette flamme eternelle que rien ne peut plus eteindre” (NH, ii, 13); TL, 228–229: “n'as-tu point plutot consulte ton desir que ton pouvoir?” (NH, vi, 2); TL, 305–308: “Je trouve aussi que c'est une folie de vouloir etudier le monde en simple spectateur… . On ne voit agir les autres qu'autant qu'on agit soi-meme: … il faut commencer par pratiquer ce qu'on veut apprendre” (NH, II, 17); TL, 382–390: “c'est de te che'rir quoique tu m'eclipses… . tu me subjugues, tu m'atterres, ton genie ecrase le mien, et je ne suis rien devant toi” (NH, iv, 2); TL, 434–450: “J'entre avec une secrete horreur dans ce vaste de'sert du monde” (NH, ii, 14); TL, 465–468: “Enfin me voila tout-a-fait dans le torrent” (NH, ii, 17); TL, 480–538: “En attendant, juge si j'ai raison d'appeler cette foule un desert … ou je ne trouve qu'une vaine apparence de sentiments et de verite, qui change a chaque instant et se detruit elle-meme, ou je n'apercois que larves et fantomes qui frap-pent l'ceil un moment et disparoissent aussitoit qu'on les veut saisir. Jusqu'ici j'ai vu beaucoup de masques; quand verrai-je des visages d'hommes?”(NH, ii, 14).

40 Besides the “Lines written in the Bay of Lerici” the following Shelley lyrics can reasonably be associated with JaneWilliams: “To ——-” (“One word is too often profaned”);“The Magnetic Lady to her Patient”; “To Jane: The Invitation” and “To Jane: The Recollection” (originally, “The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa”); “With a Guitar, to Jane”; “To Jane: ‘The keen stars were twinkling’ ”; “Lines: ‘We meet not as we parted’.”

Irving Massey has shown that the two stanzas of the lyricknown as “To ——-: ‘Music when soft voices die’ ” werereversed by Mary Shelley and that the poem is not about love at all but about immortality {JEGP, LIX [July 1960], 430–438; see also E. D. Hirsch, Jr., JEGP, LX [April 1961], 296–298). “Lines: ‘When the lamp is shattered’,” which Medwin says (p. 318) was “addressed to Mrs. Williams,” is also demonstrably not a love poem but a metaphysical poem about the limitations of the human situation.

41 See also Julian, x, 353, 363, 370, 376, 377, 401.

42 Julian, x, 410. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that Smith's letter of 5 June 1822 (Abinger Collection, Duke Microfilms, Reel 14), which Shelley is answering, deals exclusively with Godwin's financial crisis and does not mention English politics.

43 Note to Hellas, Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London, 1943), pp. 478–479.

44 “To Jane: The Invitation,” Poetical Works, p. 669.

45 “Hymn of Pan,” Poetical Works, pp. 613–614.