In representing that these verses were written in 1810, and addressed in the first instance to Harriett Grove, Medwin committed the most ludicrous blunder of his unreliable book;—the mistake, moreover, that, of all his multitudinous blunders about Shelley, is most easily shown to be a mistake. (1) The critical reader has only to compare these verses with the puerile sets of rhymes in St. Irvyne to be satisfied that in 1810 Shelley could not have written them, to save his own life or compass his father’s death. (2) The first two stanzas are so completely out of harmony with the certain facts of Shelley’s pursuit of his cousin’s affection, as to prove conclusively that she was not in his mind when he wrote the verses. Instead of ‘gleaming through the world,’ Harriett Grove’s love of her cousin was less than apparent even to his own sister. Instead of warding off the poisonous arrow of the world’s scorn, the world had no sooner displayed a disposition to speak scornfully of him, than Harriett Grove told him to go about his business. Instead of speaking of him with ‘warm and partial praise,’ Harriett Grove never discovered anything to commend in him. Shelley and Harriett Grove had parted company for ever, months before he had endured the disgrace, from whose withering effects he describes himself as recovering under the sympathetic looks of the Harriett to whom the poem is addressed. (3) On the other hand, the descriptive lines are appropriate to the circumstances under which he won Harriett’s love, and she gave him her heart, whilst social disgrace was new to him. (4) In June, 1821, though forgetful of the exact year of his life in which Queen Mab was written, Shelley remembered so clearly having dedicated the poem to his first wife that he wrote from Italy to Mr. Ollier in that month:—
‘I ought to say, however, that I am obliged to this piratical fellow in one respect: that he has omitted, with a delicacy for which I thank him heartily, a foolish dedication to my late wife, the publication of which would have annoyed me, and indeed is the only part of the business that could seriously have annoyed me, although it is my duty to protest against the whole.’
These facts notwithstanding, some of the Shelleyan enthusiasts (in their reluctance to believe that Shelley ever cared much for Harriett Westbrook) insist that Medwin may have been right in this business, because the verses appeared in the original edition of Queen Mab under this heading, ‘To Harriet *****,’ the number of the asterisks being the same as the number of the letters in the surname ‘Grove,’ whereas there are nine letters in ‘Westbrook,’ and seven in ‘Shelley.’ ‘The number of asterisks,’ says Mr. Buxton Forman, ‘it will be observed, corresponds with the name of Grove; and they might have been left simply by oversight when the dedication went to press as for Harriet Shelley.’
For the argument to have the faintest force, it would be needful to show that, when indicating a name by asterisks, Shelley was careful to use the same number of asterisks as the name had letters. Was this Shelley’s practice? Though the History of a Six Weeks’ Tour was made up chiefly of a journal kept by Mary Godwin, it comprises letters and other original writing by Shelley, who saw the little book through the press, and made himself responsible for its typographical details. In the ‘journal’ ‘Shelley’ (a name of seven letters) is indicated by ‘S***,’ the initial letter and three asterisks; ‘Claire,’ a name of six letters, being also indicated by ‘C***,’ the initial letter and three asterisks. In the original writing by Shelley, the names ‘Mary’ and ‘Claire’ are indicated thus: ‘We dined (M***, C***, and I) on the grass:’ the initial of the name of four letters and the initial of the name of six letters being alike followed by three asterisks.
Though he was happy in Harriett’s society, there is reason for thinking Shelley was much out of health towards the end of his stay at Tanyrallt. In the middle of February, 1813, he had been living for three months on vegetables. Living at this period of his story ‘on what he could get,’ i.e. chops and steaks, when he was on journeys and feeding at inns, Shelley persisted in the diet of vegetarians when he was at home. ‘I continue vegetable,’ he wrote to Hogg on 27th December, 1812; ‘Harriet means to be slightly animal until the arrival of spring.’ Of course, he persuaded himself that this diet favoured his health; but we know from Peacock, who may be termed the physiological observer of his friend’s peculiarities, that, instead of being good for him, it was hurtful to the delicate and nervous Shelley in various ways.
‘When,’ says Peacock, ‘he was fixed in a place, he adhered to this diet consistently and conscientiously, but it certainly did not agree with him: it made him weak and nervous, and exaggerated the sensitiveness of his imagination. Then arose those thick-coming fancies which almost invariably preceded his change of place.’
The maker of these discreet observations gives a remarkable example of the quickness, with which Shelley rose from a condition of physical weakness to a high state of bodily vigour and enjoyment under the stimulus of animal food. During the excursion (August, 1815) on the Thames, from Old Windsor to Lechlade in Gloucestershire, Shelley, on ‘the way up,’ was so weak and otherwise out of order, as to feel he ought to return. Having taken medical advice at Oxford with no apparent advantage, he was entreated by Peacock to eat three well-peppered mutton-chops. Acting on the wise counsel, Shelley forthwith ate with keen relish three well-peppered mutton-chops, and went on his way rejoicing. ‘He lived in my way,’ says Peacock, ‘for the rest of our expedition, rowed vigorously, was cheerful, merry, overflowing with animal spirits, and had certainly one week of thorough enjoyment of life.’ Living thus carnivorously at the comfortable inn at Lechlade, where the party rested for two nights, he there wrote the Lines in Lechlade Churchyard.
How Byron and Shelley came to resemble one another in eccentricity of diet is uncertain. The older poet had recourse to his regimen of Epsom salts and vegetarian starvation in the first instance for the reduction of his fatness; but Shelley’s natural habit of body forbids the suspicion that he took to abstinence for the same purpose. Nor can the influence of the vegetarians, with whom he lived intimately in London and at Bracknell, be held accountable for his first trial of a diet, which he adopted in Dublin, before making their acquaintance. Perhaps he adopted the Byronic diet just as he adopted the Byronic shirt-collar, in imitation of the poet whom he admired so greatly. It is conceivable that, had he not heard of Byron’s dinners of hard biscuits or mashed vegetables, washed down with soda-water, he would have continued to eat and drink, as he had done from boyhood to the middle of his twentieth year. Anyhow, it is certain that Shelley’s vegetarianism, attended with intermissions of the regimen when he was on his journeys and ‘ate what he could get,’ differed little from Byron’s general rule of abstinence from the luxuries of the table, broken with occasional dinners and suppers, at which he devoured whatever came in his way. For thus feeding themselves, the two poets have fared differently at the hands of history. Whilst Byron has been generally ridiculed for living low in order to preserve his beauty; Shelley has been no less generally applauded for his indifference to the pleasures of the table.
The diet, which affected them so differently in reputation, had the same results on their nerves and health. Under the regimen of starvation (accompanied in the case of Byron, by far the stronger man, with a more free use of purgative medicine) they became weak and nervous sufferers from a peculiar kind of spasmodic dyspepsia, that in its sharper assaults disposed them to seek relief from pain in laudanum, and may perhaps have been the first and chief cause of their perilous familiarity with opium. In drinking laudanum to deaden the pangs of spasmodic dyspepsia, consequent on long persistence in a lowering, and otherwise hurtful diet, Shelley (be it observed) took opium when he had been slowly reduced to a condition, that rendered the drug more powerful to derange his nerves for several days, than it would have been had he been previously sustained by sufficient food. This is a matter for readers to bear in mind whilst considering circumstances soon to be narrated.
It follows that, after living for three months on the diet usual with him in this period of his career, Shelley may be regarded as in a state of health that, besides making him restless and disposing him to have recourse to opium, would be fruitful of ‘those thick-coming fancies which almost invariably preceded his change of place.’