The second unusual feature in Shelley’s life of the heart was that his
many friendships with men were no less romantic, and on the whole much
more permanent and successful, than his affairs with women. Certainly
they showed some of the same ideal character, but they also seemed real
and concrete, in a way that his heterosexual affairs did not. We know
little of his early affections, except for two instances. While he was
at Eton, probably at the age of thirteen or fourteen, he had a
remarkable affection for the Windsor physician, Dr. Lind. It is well
known, of course, that at this period of puberty boys do quite normally
tend to fall in love with men or older boys,[16] and to worship them as
heroes. But Shelley’s love for Dr. Lind was unusually strong and
tender, as is shown by the fact that it did not fade from his memory, as
such boyish enthusiasms normally do, but persisted as one of his most
precious recollections. In _Prince Athanase_ we find the good Doctor
described as:
An old, old man with hair of silver-white
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words.
And the third and fourth cantos of _The Revolt of Islam_ contain a
description of Dr. Lind, and record Shelley’s worship of him. It was not
only on account of his anarchist teachings that Shelley loved this old
man; nor merely because of his evident genius for soothing the troubled
mind of the poet. There was also a certain tender physical attraction,
which Shelley reveals by his description of the Hermit in _The Revolt of
Islam_.
The old man is “stately and beautiful.” His very looks are sufficient to
heal: “And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.” Shelley
recalled, or imagined, the joy of being embraced by this “divine old
man” when he wrote of the Hermit’s care for the sick Laon.
He did enfold
His giant arms around me to uphold
My wretched frame.
* * * * *
And two stanzas later:
the pillow
For my light head was hollowed in his lap
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap....
Then again in the second stanza of the fourth canto:
When the old man his boat had anchoréd
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
And very few but kindly words he said,
And bore me through the tower adown a stair
There is evident in these quotations a certain desire to be caressed by
this grand old rebel, and when we remember that Shelley had very little
sympathy from either his Father or his Mother, this desire seems not
unnatural; he demanded of Dr. Lind some of the physical love and
tenderness which his parents had withheld. It would be a great mistake
to imagine that, because the poet, with his unrivalled command over
language and his tendency to express abstract emotion, normally seems to
dwell in ethereal regions, Shelley the man was not often acutely
susceptible to the cravings for contact with the beloved. On the
contrary, numerous passages express this yearning; only, as they are
written with consummate art, and not put in narrative but in lyric form,
most people seem to fail to realise their meaning.
What are kisses, whose fire clasps
The failing heart in languishment, or limb
Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
In one caress?
The other romance of Shelley’s early boyhood concerned a schoolboy
friend at Sion House. Apparently the two boys were both of about the
same age, eleven or twelve years. The episode is recorded in a
fragmentary essay on the subject of Friendship, written shortly before
Shelley’s death, and given in Hogg’s _Life_.
“The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a
character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of
human feeling seemed to have been from his birth genially compounded
within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manner
inexpressibly attractive.... The tones of his voice were so soft and
winning that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so
deep that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from
my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred
sentiments of friendship. I remember in my simplicity writing to my
mother a long account of his admirable qualities and my own devoted
attachment. I suppose she thought me out of my wits, for she returned no
answer to my letter. I remember we used to walk the whole playhours up
and down by some moss-covered palings, pouring out our hearts in
youthful talk.... I recollect thinking my friend exquisitely beautiful.
Every night, when we parted to go to bed, we kissed each other like
children--as we still were!”
There is a passion and intensity of emotion in all this which raises it
above the level of the ordinary schoolboy friendship, even when we have
allowed for the fact that this passage was written during the poet’s
last years, and is therefore perhaps idealised. Still, in spite of the
warmth of emotion, this idyll would not of itself, and taken apart from
all corroborative evidence, show the poet’s fundamental inversion if it
were not for the fact that Shelley cherished the memory of it in
manhood. Many boys have a similar romance at that age, or a little
later, but it is hardly remembered with emotion except by those who are
in some degree inverted.
The bosom friend of Shelley’s early manhood was Thomas Hogg, for whom he
had an extraordinary affection. During their short career at Oxford, the
two inseparables spent almost all their time together. Every day they
either breakfasted or lunched together, went for a country ramble, or
sat in Shelley’s room, reading, or re-modelling the universe. When
Shelley was expelled, Hogg voluntarily put himself in the same position,
and the pair went to live together in London. Their parents separated
them, but they maintained an intimate correspondence.
After Shelley’s marriage with Harriet, Hogg joined the couple at
Edinburgh, and then took them to his house at York. Here he apparently
began to pay unwelcome attentions to Harriet, who informed her husband.
Shelley appears not to have expressed the normal feelings of jealousy,
and freely forgave Hogg; but he was disappointed to find that his idol,
Hogg, had feet of clay. Shelley took Harriet away from York, and went to
Keswick. From here he wrote several letters to his friend, in which we
find such passages as these: “But pray write often; your last letter I
have read as I would read your soul.” “If I thought we were to be long
parted I should be wretchedly miserable--half-mad!” “I never doubted
you--you, the brother of my soul.” “I do not know that absence will
certainly cure love; but this I know, that it fearfully augments the
intensity of friendship.”
Later on Shelley renewed his intimacy with Hogg, though never on the old
terms of ardent affection. It has been suggested that he was mistaken in
his suspicions, and that Hogg was really quite innocent. This view is
quite tenable, since the evidence is very slender, and delusions of
jealousy often accompany delusions of persecution; which latter Shelley
certainly suffered from.
While at Keswick he wrote several long letters to Miss Elizabeth
Hitchener, whom for a few months he regarded as his dearest friend. In
these letters he tells her of Hogg’s crime, of his confession, and of
his demands to be allowed again to live with the couple. In one letter
Shelley states: “I do not love him” (dated November 26, 1811). In
December, however, he writes to Hogg: “Think not that I am otherwise
than your friend, a friend to you now more fervent, more devoted than
ever, for misery endears us to those whom we love. You are, you shall be
my bosom friend.”[17]
Altogether this episode is complicated and confusing. The evidence
against Hogg is confined to statements made by Shelley, in letters to
Miss Hitchener, and these statements do not harmonise with Shelley’s
extravagant expressions of affection for Hogg. The fact is that he both
loved Hogg intensely and suspected him. For my own part, I think that
Hogg was probably quite innocent of any great indiscretion, and that
Shelley simply magnified some mild familiarity out of all proportion.
That Shelley was subject to such mental exaggerations is well known, and
the words which he imputed to the imaginary assassin at Tanyrallt: “By
God, I will be revenged. I will murder your wife and ravish your
sister,” sound very much like a stronger development of the idea that
someone was making overtures to Harriet. As to his definite statements
on the subject, they cannot weigh very heavily, as his statements were
often only subjectively true. In addition, there are two stanzas in _The
Revolt of Islam_ which may refer to Hogg, and which, in that case, would
indicate that Shelley did finally admit that he was mistaken.
In canto 2, stanza xviii:
And that this friend was false, may now be said
Calmly--that he, like other men, could weep
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.
But in canto 5, stanza v, the friends are reconciled again:
Then suddenly I knew it was the youth,
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
While he was innocent and I deluded.
This last line probably represents the real truth of the whole matter;
although, indeed, we have now no means of being certain about the
affair.
Shelley’s short-lived enthusiasm for Miss Hitchener, whose name was
mentioned above, is also instructive. It was based on the very slightest
practical acquaintance with her, though their correspondence was lengthy
and intimate; for Shelley always needed some recipient for his emotional
or philosophical outpourings. After many letters had been exchanged,
Shelley thought that at last his ideal being, the intellectual heroine,
had been found; and Miss Hitchener came to live with him and Harriet as
their “Spiritual Sister.” Unfortunately, they soon came to detest her.
In December 1812 Shelley wrote to Hogg, telling him of the good lady’s
departure, in these terms: “She is an artful, superficial, ugly,
hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity,
inconsistency, and bad taste was never so great as after living four
months with her as an inmate.” Surely there would have to be something
extraordinarily repulsive in this lady to justify such an outburst. Yet
she would seem to have been quite a reasonable woman. This apparently
unreasonable outburst is paralleled in another letter from Shelley to
Hogg. After living with Harriet’s sister (Elizabeth) in his house, he
wrote: “I certainly hate her with all my soul. It is a sight which
awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her
caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I hereafter may find the
consolation of sympathy.”
In thus idealising women before making their acquaintance, and yet in
some cases being strongly repelled by them directly he lived at close
quarters with them, Shelley behaved unreasonably, but it was a purely
instinctive, and even unconscious, reaction.
Shelley was also strongly attached to two older and rather virile men,
Trelawny and Peacock, to both of whom he appealed apparently as much by
reason of his feminine charm as by his intellectual and poetic gifts.
I have already quoted Trelawny’s description of his first meeting with
the “beardless boy, with a feminine, artless face.” To Peacock, Shelley
seemed a wayward and innocent child, totally incapable of guiding
himself safely through the hard world of practical affairs. Peacock was
a practical man, and enjoyed playing the rôle of father and worldly
guide; Shelley, moreover, liked to be allowed to be a child, and to let
Peacock manage things for him. In the company of these two men he seemed
instinctively to have become more naïve and feminine than he normally
was; in other words, like all bisexual people, he automatically altered
his polarity in accordance with his company.
Later on in his life he was much attracted by “Kind Hunt,” and a letter
referring to _The Cenci_ reveals his sentiment rather artlessly and
charmingly: “I have written something different from anything else, and
mean to dedicate it to you. I should not have done so without approval,
but I asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent.”
Several writers have sneered at Leigh Hunt’s friendship for Shelley
because of the amount of money he received from the generous poet. Hunt
has been called a parasite in consequence. I am not concerned with the
genuineness of Hunt’s affection for Shelley, though I do not doubt it
myself. What is certain is that Shelley had a very keen affection for
Hunt, whom he addresses as “My dearest Friend,” and on whom he lavished
money which he could ill afford to spend. It is noteworthy that an
extravagent generosity towards friends is such a frequent characteristic
of Uranians. One has only to think of the cases of Edward II, or of
Michelangelo,[18] both of whom were shamelessly sponged on by their
favourites, to realise that such men are an easy prey for parasites.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that such generosity forms a channel
along which some of the repressed sexual impulses may obtain an
indirect expression.
Even if we call Shelley a fool for allowing men like Hunt and Godwin to
drain his purse, we cannot but admire him for many of his other
benefactions. Trelawny relates a touching instance, when Shelley divided
a bag of Scudi between the Housekeeping expenses, Mary, and himself.
Then, says Trelawny, he whispered to Mary: “I will give this to poor Tom
Medwin, who wants to go to Naples and has no money.” “Why, Shelley has
nothing left for himself,” said Trelawny, who had overheard. In his
friendship for his cousin Medwin he revealed another typically Uranian
characteristic, namely a gift for nursing. Medwin fell ill at Pisa, and
a letter of his describes Shelley’s care for him.
“Shelley tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered
my medicines, and, during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was
assiduous and unremitting in his affectionate care of me.”
When we thus survey the whole range of Shelley’s affections, and compare
his love-affairs with his friendships, can we readily distinguish any
great difference between them? Surely the erotic nature of his feelings
towards his young school-friend, and towards Dr. Lind, Hogg, Hunt and
the rest, is obvious enough, and were it not that these were balanced by
obviously erotic relationships with women, we should be led to class him
as a pure Uranian. Indeed, we must always remember that, since the whole
weight of herd-suggestion actively fosters and encourages the expression
of all feelings of love towards the opposite sex and actively represses
any patently homosexual expression, one clear indication of the latter
is worth more as evidence than a dozen conventional signs of the former.
It is because this herd-suggestion is so strong and so persistent that
many naturally inverted people are artificially induced to appear as
lovers of women, and to behave in a manner that is for them unnatural.
This appears to have been the grand tragedy of Shelley’s life, and the
source of all his melancholy, his mental troubles, and his
inconsistencies. As has been pointed out by Stopford Brooke, in his
edition of Shelley’s Lyrics, “Love was felt by Shelley not quite
naturally; not as Burns, or even Byron, felt it. Love, in his poetry,
sometimes dies into dreams, sometimes likes its imagery better than
itself. It is troubled with a philosophy.” And Stopford Brooke adds, “Of
course, he was therefore fickle.” This is typical of all those who
suffer from repressed (and hence unconscious) homosexual impulses of
comrade-love; for with their _conscious_ mind they seek love in the form
of a woman. The quest is for them necessarily hopeless, and they are
tormented and baffled by finding an inner falsity in each new object of
their affections. One after another the dreams, the hopes, the ideals,
are shattered, because the conscious mind is seeking a goal which is the
polar opposite of that desired by the whole unconscious, but
_purposive_, self.