Percy Bysshe Shelley remains one of the most celebrated poets in English Literature. His genius helped create the Romantic movement and he was married to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein (for a full account of the Shelleys’ sojourn on the shores of Lake Geneva and the genesis of Frankenstein, see Maria J Pérez Cuervo, “A Summer of Monsters”, FT343:38-44). Despite detailed biographical studies, many key aspects of the poet’s life and death are marked by enigmas that replicate the gothic themes of forbidden love, dark secrets, mysterious individuals and sudden death.
Shelley’s wandering lifestyle led him to Ireland, Wales, and finally Italy, where he drowned at sea in 1822 – a death preceded by a series of uncanny events and strange portents. His cousin Thomas Medwin recalled that in the weeks after Shelley’s death, he and Lord Byron mourned their friend and conversed about the “strange occurrences” in Shelley’s life. They would have had much to talk about.
“VISIONARY AND DANGEROUS”
Shelley grew up in a grand house in Sussex, Field Place, where his family belonged to the minor nobility. He was the only son, with four younger sisters, and therefore an heir with no rival as the centre of attention. As a youth, he began to clash with his father: he was a bookish, creative-minded son who asked questions about everything, while his parent was a traditionalist landowner who wanted to conserve the family’s wealth and reputation. The rift was not just a passing phase.
Shelley was fascinated by flames, and was said to have set fire to one of the servants. He liked ghost stories, and legends of the alchemists, and as a youth studied both scientific experiments and occult rituals. His early interest in magic may have been why he ascribed significance to 27 June and 27 December, dates linked to the Summer and Winter Solstice. He described 27 June as his “true birthday”. In fact, he was born on 4 August 1792.
Thomas Medwin was at school with him and wrote that: “He was subject to strange, and sometimes frightful dreams, and was haunted by apparitions that bore all the semblance of reality.” One night, Shelley sleepwalked into his room, and Medwin had to rouse him before he carried on straight out the window. These waking dreams were to recur in the last weeks of Shelley’s life.
Shelley’s talents and oddities were noticed when he was a student at Oxford University. Charles Sharpe, of Christ Church College, wrote to Lord Bury that: “We have lately had a literary sun shine forth upon us here… a Mr Shelley, of University College, who lives upon arsenic, aquafortis, half-an-hour’s sleep in the night…” Sharpe said that the poet would achieve greatness, “if he be not clapped up in Bedlam or hanged”. 1
Shortly after this, in 1811, Shelley published a booklet, The Necessity of Atheism, and was expelled from the University. Medwin was a great admirer of Shelley’s poetry, but found that his belief in the perfectibility of human nature to be “wild and visionary, and dangerous”.
In the early 1800s, the insurgent forces of the French Revolution were still abroad. Assassinationssuppression of dissent occurred throughout Britain, and laws were passed to restrict freedom of speech. Shelley entered eagerly into the spirit of radicalism, and wrote pamphlets urging people to throw off the chains of accepted beliefs and authoritarianism. His famous phrase: “You are many – they are few” continues to inspire.
