It is to-day a hundred years since that sultry afternoon when Edward
John Trelawny, aboard Byron’s schooner-yacht _Bolivar_, fretted
anxiously in Leghorn Harbour and watched the threatening sky. The
thunderstorm that broke about half-past six lasted only twenty minutes,
but it was long enough to drown both Shelley and his friend Williams,
very haphazard yachtsmen, who had set off a few hours earlier in their
small craft. It was only some foolish red tape about quarantine that
had prevented Trelawny from convoying them in the _Bolivar_; in which
case, probably, that dauntless and all-competent adventurer could
have saved them. He was already dubious of their navigating skill.
So, if there is any comfort in the thought, one may conclude that
Shelley--though of course doomed to some tragic end, for skylarks do
not die in nests--was partly the victim of that invincible social and
bureaucratic stupidity against which he had always nobly chafed.
Those of our clients who care to devote this week-end to some
meditation on Shelley and what he still means to us can well begin
with Professor Firkins’s excellent essay. Mr. Firkins, with his usual
clarity, lays pen upon a number of considerations that have always
occurred to Shelley’s readers, but are not often carefully thought out.
For our own part, we also have a mind to reread Francis Thompson’s
essay, which remains in our memory as a prismatic dazzle of metaphor.
But there are two items which, if our high-spirited clients have not
read, they should certainly take steps to meditate. Hogg’s description
of Shelley at Oxford is as lovely a picture of youthful genius as one
is likely to find: and Trelawny’s _Recollections of the Last Days of
Shelley and Byron_ gives the other panel of the portrait. It is surely
not often that chance bequeaths us such sympathetic observers for both
beginning and end of a great life. And then, of course, it is not
impossible for our clients to recruit their imaginations by reading
some of Shelley himself. If your hearts are what we like to think they
are, you may
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
But, for information about Shelley, Trelawny is the darling of all
hearts. There is something indescribably manly in his rough, cheery,
potent narrative, with its amazing vigour and humour. “As a general
rule,” says he, “it is wise to avoid writers whose works amuse or
delight you, for when you see them they will delight you no more.”
But Shelley, he adds, was a grand exception to this very wise rule.
One could happily spread several pages with excerpts from his
good-humoured, observant companionship with Shelley and Byron. But,
to commemorate the date now here, we intend to copy out part of his
description of the burning of Shelley’s body on the Italian coast. Fine
and gruesome as it is, we cannot help believing it not well enough
known among those younger clients whom we daily cudgel towards virtue.
Trelawny says:
The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly
harmonized with Shelley’s genius that I could imagine his
spirit soaring over us. The sea was before us ... not a human
dwelling was in sight. As I thought of the delight Shelley felt
in such scenes of loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt
we were no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs,
in tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure yellow
sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to the light
of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to check
the sacrilege.... Even Byron was silent and thoughtful. We
were startled and drawn together by a dull hollow sound that
followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had struck a skull,
and the body was soon uncovered. Lime had been strewn upon it;
this, or decomposition, had the effect of staining it of a
dark and ghastly indigo color. Byron asked me to preserve the
skull for him; but remembering that he had formerly used one
as a drinking-cup, I was determined Shelley’s should not be so
profaned. The limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the
case of Williams’s body, so that the corpse was removed entire
into the furnace. I had taken the precaution of having more and
larger pieces of timber, in consequence of my experience of
the day before of the difficulty of consuming a corpse in the
open air with our apparatus. After the fire was well kindled we
repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was
poured over Shelley’s dead body than he had consumed during his
life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten
and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that
the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and
the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where
it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back
of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace,
the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a
cauldron, for a very long time.
Byron could not face this scene; he withdrew to the beach and
swam off to the _Bolivar_. Leigh Hunt remained in the carriage.
The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron,
and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. The only portions
that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the
jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the
heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery
furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do
the act I should have been put into quarantine.
After cooling the iron machine in the sea, I collected the
human ashes and placed them in a box, which I took on board the
_Bolivar_.
There are those still living who have shaken the hard, quick hand
that snatched Shelley’s heart from the coals. Sir Sidney Colvin, for
instance, who tells much about Trelawny in his _Memories and Notes of
Persons and Places_. And ghastly as the above account may seem to
those of tender sensibility, the parable it implies is too rich to be
omitted. Lo! were they not words of Shelley’s that winged the greatest
popular success in recent fiction?[A] And, though lulled long ago by
the blue Mediterranean--
that burning, reckless heart survives to us little corrupted by
time--survives as a symbol of poetic energy superior to the common
routines of life. “Mighty meat for little guests, when the heart of
Shelley was laid in the cemetery of Caius Cestius!”
[A] If Winter Comes.
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams--
[Illustration]