At a time when ‘Mad Shelley’ was the butt of the playing-grounds, Eton was visited by an itinerant lecturer, who received permission to deliver a course of lectures on astronomy, chemistry, electricity, and mechanics, to the boys of the school. Familiarly designated ‘Old Walker,’ this vagrant professor used to go about the country with his assistant-demonstrator, orrery, solar microscope, electrical machine, and other scientific apparatus; lecturing at the superior boys’ schools and girls’ schools of the provincial towns. Without Medwin’s testimony to the point, it would have been safe to assume that the wandering lecturer, who was permitted to enlighten the boys of the most aristocratic of our great public schools, had also the honour of rendering the same service to the boys of Dr. Greenlaw’s academy. Medwin, however, speaks so precisely of the visit Old Walker paid Sion House during Bysshe’s second or third year at the school, and of the lively interest taken by Shelley in the professor’s demonstrations, that he is not, in consideration of his frequent inaccuracies, to be declared guilty of error on the main facts of this part of his narrative. It is, of course, conceivable that blundering Tom Medwin assigned to the great room of the Brentford Academy incidents of a later date and another scene. But it is more probable he was guiltless of the mistake. Anyhow, Shelley had not long suffered under imputations of madness at Eton, when he heard Old Walker’s course of lectures for the second time, if Medwin was right—for the first time, if Medwin was wrong in the matter.
At Eton, ‘Old Walker’ had an eager devourer of his words, a delighted witness of his experimental demonstrations, in Mad Shelley. The lectures had on Shelley all the effect they were designed to produce on intelligent lads. Producing on him all the effect desired by the Professor, they were also fruitful of results, that in the opinion of the Eton masters far exceeded the limits of wholesome interest. It is conceivable that, had Dr. Keate, and Mr. Bethell, and Mr. Hexter, known how the boy would be stirred and excited by the lectures, Old Walker would not have received permission to deliver them to the collegians, or Mad Shelley would not have been allowed to be present at their delivery. Like many other boys before and after his time, Mad Shelley was so taken by the lectures, that it is only a permissible figure of speech to say, he ‘went mad’ on natural science. Before Old Walker cleared out of Eton, the boy had become the owner of a solar microscope, and bought an electrical machine of Old Walker’s assistant.
In Mr. Hexter’s house the boy (ætat. thirteen and fourteen) had shown more concern for English literature than for any other accessible means of pastime,—reading works of prose (as he had done at Brentford), learning by rote passages from the English poets, and composing childish dramas with the assistance of a fellow-pupil and fellow-fag of the same house, named Amos; amusing himself, in short, in accordance with his genuine and strongest intellectual taste and ambition. One of the happiest and most agreeable glimpses to be had of Mad Shelley in his earlier time of Eton, affords a view of the boy, running nimbly up and down the stairs of Mr. Hexter’s house, and singing out cheerily the witches’ song of Macbeth:—
‘Double, double, toil and trouble:
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’
Of the plays composed by the two boys nothing is known at the present date, save that they were performed by the author before a third fag of their house, Matthews, who was the solitary witness of the performances, and, it may be hoped, an enthusiastically applausive one.
In the new excitement and interests, to which Old Walker’s lectures gave birth, Shelley’s care for English literature languished. Like other children he cared only for the new toy. Like other boys possessed by the scientific mania, he for a while delighted in nothing but his scientific apparatus, contrivances, experiments. For a time it was true that he cared for no learning that his masters taught. During this passion for the experimental study of scientific phenomena, one of his exploits was to lay a long train of gunpowder between a decaying tree and a point, at some distance from the tree, and then to fire the gunpowder by means of a burning-glass,—with a result altogether satisfactory to the youthful experimentalist,—but less satisfactory to the owner of the ancient tree, and by no means to the approval of the masters, who were responsible for the behaviour of the boys, and for the safety of the buildings of Eton College. On another occasion, after his transference from Mr. Hexter’s house to the house of the gentleman described by Mr. Packe as ‘one of the dullest men of the establishment,’ he was busy at dead of night in his bedroom with his ‘chemical studies’ (as they are grandly styled by the Shelleyan enthusiasts), when he upset a frying-pan full of ingredients into the fire, with consequences that roused all the sleepers in the house, and made them in the morning congratulate themselves on not having been burnt to death in their beds by Mad Shelley.
It certainly does not sustain Mr. Packe’s contemptuous opinion of the tutor, that Mr. Bethell was bright enough to think he had better check his pupil’s enthusiasm for scientific inquiry. It can scarcely be regarded as evidence of his dullness that this gentleman felt it his duty to see what Mad Shelley was after, and take steps to preserve his house and its inmates from the quick destruction, with which they were threatened by the rather lawless proceedings of an eccentric boy. With this purpose in view, Mr. Bethell paid Shelley’s room a visit at a moment, when the young gentleman was then and there enlarging his knowledge of nature, by the scientific production of a blue flame, though the boys of Mr. Bethell’s house had been forbidden to produce blue or any other flame in their bedrooms.
‘Chemical experiments,’ airily remarks Lady Shelley, who, taking the story from the page of a previous writer, seems to think it even more to her father-in-law’s credit than to the tutor’s manifest shame, ‘were prohibited in the boys’ chambers; and the tutor (Mr. Bethel) somewhat angrily asked what the lad was doing. Shelley jocularly replied that he was raising the devil. Mr. Bethel seized hold of a mysterious implement on the table, and in an instant was thrown against the wall, having grasped a highly charged electrical machine. Of course the young experimentalist paid dearly for this unfortunate occurrence.’
And equally, of course, he deserved to pay dearly for the ‘unfortunate occurrence.’
Positively this story is told in proof that young Bysshe Shelley was a youth of parts, genius, and exceeding sweetness of disposition. A boy (probably fifteen years old, possibly a year older by this time) is caught in his bedroom doing what he has been forbidden to do. Coming upon the boy when he is so occupied, his tutor says, somewhat angrily, ‘What are you doing?’ Instead of answering this by no means impertinent question in the respectful tone required by mere good breeding, the boy answers ‘cheekily’ (the Shelleyan enthusiasts must pardon me for using a schoolboy’s word, to describe the schoolboy’s misdemeanour), ‘I am raising the devil.’ On seeing his tutor approach a powerfully charged electric battery, with outstretched hand, instead of crying out ‘Don’t touch it, sir; it will do you injury,’ the boy (‘the young experimentalist!’), holding his tongue, allows his tutor to touch the machine, and to be thrown violently against a wall. Lady Shelley would have us think this ‘young experimentalist’ a nice, loyal, fine-natured, gentlemanly boy; would have us join in a shout of derision at ‘one of the dullest men of the establishment;’ would have us think this pleasant boy badly treated, because he was whipt for his misbehaviour. I cannot do as Lady Shelley would have me. On the contrary, knowing the temper and gracious qualities of public schoolboys, I have no doubt they will, for the most and best part, concur with me in saying, that Shelley (superb poet though he became in later time) behaved badly in this business, and deserved all that he ‘caught’ from Dr. Keate for unruliness, so wholly ‘out of form.’