But one hesitates to trust in this matter to the biographer who seems to have erred in recording that Shelley acquired a taste for boating, even at a time considerably prior to the period in which this secret and lawless trip to the Richmond Theatre is said to have been made. Peacock, who can scarcely have been mistaken, was certain the poet’s ‘affection for boating began at a much later date’ than his time at Eton. Walter S. Halliday (Shelley’s friend at the public school) was no less certain, in February, 1857, that at Eton Shelley ‘never joined in the usual sports of the boys, and, what is remarkable, never went out in a boat on the river.’ Had Shelley enjoyed boating at Sion House, it is inconceivable that he (so passionately fond of the water in later time) would have avoided the river, or could have been kept from it at Eton. As Halliday was no such reliable authority as successive writers have thought, I should have hesitated to prefer his evidence to Medwin’s testimony on this point, had not the Etonian witness been so emphatically sustained by Love Peacock. In regard to what he says of Shelley’s boating at Brentford, Mr. Medwin professes to speak from his own knowledge. On the other hand, he acknowledges that, with respect to the poet’s alleged love of boating at Eton, he speaks on the worst possible authority—the poet’s own equally delusive and retentive memory. ‘He told me,’ says Medwin, vide The Life, v. I., p. 52, ‘the greatest delight he experienced at Eton was from boating, for which he had, as I have already mentioned, early acquired a taste.’ Such unsupported evidence from Shelley is scarcely anything better than no evidence at all, on being opposed by such witnesses as Halliday and Peacock.
From this chapter on Shelley’s school-days at Brentford, one should not omit a pleasant glimpse that is afforded of the boy (in the company of his cousins, the Groves, sons of Thomas Grove, of Fern House, Wiltshire, who married Charlotte Pilford, sister of the poet’s mother) by a letter, dated to Hogg, February 16th, 1857, by Charles Henry Grove. At that date it was in the memory of Charles Henry Grove how, when a tender Harrovian, ætat. nine, he saw his cousin Bysshe for the first time. On this occasion the nine-year old Harrovian, attended by his brother George, ætat. ten, and protected by a sufficient body-servant, picked Bysshe up at Brentford and carried him off, on the roof of the stage-coach to Wiltshire, for the Easter holidays. It lived in Charles Grove’s memory, how, during these holidays he and his brother joined Shelley in a feat of mischief that no doubt made the Squire of Fern wish them back at school. Acting on Bysshe’s suggestion, the three took the carpenter’s axes, and set to work cutting down some of the young fir-trees of Fern Park. As Charles Grove, ætat. nine at the time of this occurrence, was born in 1794 (vide Burke’s Landed Gentry), and Shelley was born in August, 1792, this pretty ‘piece of boys’ mischief’ may be assigned to the Easter holidays of Bysshe’s twelfth year,—i.e. Easter, 1804; about the middle of his whole time at Sion House.
It seems to have been towards the end of his time at Brentford, that Shelley experienced the delights of his tender attachment to the gentle schoolmate of his own age, with whom he used to hold romantic converse in the playground, and exchange ‘good-night kisses’ at the time for going to bed—the childish attachment so sweetly commemorated in the Essay on Friendship. What is the biographical value of that charming story, which one could believe no less readily than gladly, were it not told of Shelley by Shelley?
Had it proceeded from a man far less imaginative than Shelley, and far less prone to mistake the creations of his fancy for sincere recollections, no cautious reader would regard this pleasant record of infantile affection as faithful in every particular to the actual circumstances of the childish attachment. On the other hand, the coldest and most suspicious peruser will be disposed to think the story substantially truthful, due allowance being made for the force of imagination, the deceitfulness of the equally retentive and fallacious memory, and the peculiar infirmity of the man who could not be trusted to give twelve fairly consistent accounts of any matter, however much he might desire to be precisely accurate. It is in favour of this estimate of the story that the essayist’s portraiture of his former self harmonizes with the several other accounts he has given elsewhere of his character in childhood. In his later time Shelley always thought of the child, from which he had developed, as a mild-mannered, tractable, gentle child. The attachment being remembered, as an affair of his twelfth or thirteenth year, it may be presumed to have stirred and held his heart towards the close of his time at Brentford,—probably after Tom Medwin (who says nothing of the matter) left Sion House. To see the Brentford schoolboy’s prominent blue eyes overflowing with tears of delight, under the music of his friend’s voice, to watch the two urchins exchanging kisses, is to remember the girlishness of Byron’s early attachments, as well as the girlishness of his affectionate care for his Harrow ‘favourites.’ From his first to his last hour at Sion House the masculine forces of Bysshe’s two-sided nature were in abeyance. He was a gentle English girl rather than a gentle English boy.
CHAPTER V.
THE ETON SCHOOLBOY.
First year at Eton—Creation of the Castle-Goring Baronetcy—Sir Bysshe Shelley’s Last Will—Timothy Shelley’s Children—Miss Hellen Shelley’s Recollections—The Etonian at Home—The Big Tortoise—The Great Snake—Dr. Keate—Mr. Packe at fault—Walter Halliday—Mr. Hexter—Mr. Bethell—Fagging—Mad Shelley—‘Old Walker’—Enthusiasm for Natural Science—The Rebel of the School—Lord High Atheist—Dr. Lind’s Pernicious Influence on Shelley—Poetical Fictions about Dr. Lind—Shelley’s Illness at Field Place—His Monstrous Hallucination touching his Father—John Shelley the Lunatic—Zastrozzi—Premature Withdrawal from Eton.
Respecting the year of Shelley’s first term at Eton, the authorities differ: one set of writers averring that he entered the school in his fourteenth year (1806), whilst other biographers record that he entered it in his fifteenth year (1807). Lady Shelley says, ‘At the age of thirteen Shelley went to Eton.’ On the other hand, the usually exact Thomas Love Peacock says, ‘On leaving this academy’ (i.e. Sion House) ‘he was sent in his fifteenth year to Eton,’ and Mr. William Rossetti says, ‘He passed to Eton in his fifteenth year.’ Though no prudent writer ventures to set aside lightly a date given by so careful and conscientious a biographer as the author of the Memoir of Shelley, I venture to think that Mr. Rossetti is at fault in this particular, having perhaps erred through reasonable reliance on the accuracy of Mr. Peacock, who seems, in taking a date from one of the books he was reviewing for Fraser’s Magazine (June, 1858), to have gone a barley-corn beyond Mr. Middleton’s words. Instead of saying that Shelley went to Eton in his fifteenth year for the first time, Mr. Middleton (in his Shelley and his Writings, 1858) keeps to historic truth in merely stating, ‘In 1807, when Shelley was in his fifteenth year, we find him at Eton.’ He neither says nor implies that the future poet could not have been found there in the previous year. On the contrary, his words indicate uncertainty as to the precise date of the poet’s first appearance at the school. Gaining his knowledge of the poet’s career at Eton from old Etonians who were schoolmates there, Mr. Middleton was probably instructed in this matter by an old Etonian who, whilst certain Shelley was at the school in 1807, could not speak positively to his being there in an earlier year.