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Tremadoc#3: Shelley's "singular stories"

7/27/2023

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This is the third post in a series about the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his dubious version of an assault that supposedly occurred in February 1818 in the town of Tremadog (formerly Tremadoc) in North Wales. For the first post, click here. Shelley's biographer Richard Holmes believes that an assault did occur. I don't, and here I explain why I don't believe Shelley.

PictureTremadoc, or Tremadog, circa 1865
Shelley's "singular stories"
    The morning after the mysterious attacks, the Shelleys fled to a nearby government official, the solicitor-general, who put them up until Shelley's publisher sent them some money to book passage to Ireland. (That's how broke Shelley was). Shelley was nearly prostrated with nerves. He and Harriet learned of the slanders from Tremadog accusing Shelley of fleeing to avoid his debts and renege on his promises of financial support for the embankment project. Although it was true that Shelley was leaving unpaid debts behind him, including his rent, the Shelleys were highly offended that their veracity was called into question concerning the attacks.
​    As we have seen, it was Harriet who responded to the slur that Shelley had faked the attacks, writing a letter to Shelley’s publisher and to his other close friends, giving Shelley's version of events on his behalf. In her letter, Harriet also named the man Shelley blamed for instigating the attack, the chief labour contractor for the embankment project, Robert Leeson. William Madocks, booster of the Tremadog embankment project, had initially welcomed Shelley's involvement as a well-connected and well-spoken son of a baronet and member of parliament. But as Shelley made himself known to the small community of gentry in the area, they realized how radical his political views were. Leeson thought Shelley would bring discredit to the embankment project. Leeson was a High Tory; during Shelley’s brief stay in Tremadog, political and personal animosity had arisen between them. Harriet boasted that Leeson was refused entry into their house on account of his support for the politicians that Shelley despised. Leeson reciprocated the disdain, and in fact sent a copy of Shelley's printed speech about Irish emancipation to the authorities, to alert them to his radical views (they already knew).
   Would Leeson have hired English-speaking thugs to go up to the house and fire off their pistols at Shelley? He definitely wanted to drive Shelley out of Tremadog, but what would have been the best way of doing it, supposing that Leeson was a man of more than moderate intelligence, which he was?


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Tremadoc#2  What happened at Tremadog?

7/24/2023

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     In my previous post, I began an examination of the curious attack allegedly made on the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in late February 1813 in Tremadog, North Wales.  Shelley claimed that a stranger came to his house late at night and fired a pistol at him, then escaped, wounded, into the night. The descriptions referred to below of that night come from a letter written by Shelley's young wife Harriet some days after the event. This post picks up the narrative from after the first attack.

What Happened at Tremadog?
PictureHealy got in trouble for posting seditious handbills
​     After two hours of anxious watching, and no doubt much discussion, Shelley told his wife, sister-in-law, and the female servants to go to bed. It was about one in the morning. Shelley sat up with his Irish manservant, Daniel Healy, to guard the household. Almost three hours passed.
      Healy (also known as Daniel Healey or Dan Hill) had arrived in Tremadog that very day, after serving six months in prison for posting anonymous handbills in North Devon. It was against the law to post or sell printed material that didn't state the identity of the publisher. But what really bothered the authorities was the critical-- and to their minds, seditious--content of the handbills. Healy had posted the handbills on Shelley’s behalf and at his behest. The authorities had been watching Shelley but couldn’t prove that he authored the handbills, so Shelley was not charged. Healy could have stayed out of prison if he had paid a fine of 200 pounds. Shelley didn't have that kind of money, so Healy went to prison.
      There is no indication that, at this point, Healy resented the fact that he'd spent six months in prison--no doubt in dire conditions--for something Shelley had written. The faithful Irishman made the journey to Wales in miserable weather, and now, after a tiring trip, he was sitting up in the small hours of the morning with his employer, guarding the safety and virtue of the women of the household from the parting threat made by the assailant to murder Shelley's wife and rape his sister-in-law. It is hard to see Healy's behaviour as anything but devoted, and in fact Harriet later described him as being “greatly attached” to them.

    At some time before four a.m., according to Harriet’s account, Shelley “sent Daniel to see what hour it was,” which left Shelley all alone in one of the downstairs rooms.


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Shelley at Tremadog: "The horrors of that night"

7/21/2023

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Just taking an interval from my Jane Austen postings to share some thoughts about Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley appears in my novel A Different Kind of Woman, and his part of the story is also excerpted and expanded in my novella, Shelley and the Unknown Lady. My Shelley story has to do with his time in Italy, but this series will discuss another mysterious episode in his life--the "ghost" assailant in Tremadog, North Wales.

“The horrors of that night”
PicturePBS, 1792-1822
    The written word was the vehicle by which the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley expressed himself. His writing, ignored during his lifetime, has since elevated him to the highest rank of English poets. Writing was the way Shelley processed the experiences of his life. Anyone who writes understands this phenomenon, this urge to write after some dramatic event. If you’re a painter, you paint. If you’re a writer, you write. Apart from transmuting the events of his own life into poetry, Shelley also wrote about social issues and politics so fearlessly, so passionately, that he courted being arrested for sedition.
   But on two occasions when his behaviour was called into question, Shelley fell silent and turned to someone else to speak for him. One occasion, which I’ve already written about, was when his former nursemaid accused him of having sex with his sister-in-law Claire (probably true), of trying to obtain an abortion for her (possibly true), and abandoning the resulting infant in a foundling home (untrue). On that occasion, he turned to his wife Mary Godwin Shelley to defend him, which she did, in a passionate letter.
    Now I want to turn back to his first wife, the tragic Harriet (also spelled Harriett) Westbrook Shelley, and the circumstances which led her to take up her pen to defend her husband. It had to do with his precipitate departure from an isolated Welsh coastal town called Tremadog (then spelled as Tremadoc).


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CMP#54  Amelia Mansfield: the fainting heroine

6/23/2021

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​“In this novel we certainly find much to admire, and much even to approve, but there are some things so improper as to disgrace and discredit the whole work… every person of good morals will concur in reprobating the indelicacy of certain passages…”         -- Review of Amelia Mansfield, 1809

CMP#54  Amelia Mansfield: Similar to Mansfield Park?
Picture"Art of Fainting in Company" by G.M. Woodward, 1797
    In my series of posts about Mansfield Park, I listed some of the theories about why Austen chose the name Mansfield. I won’t review them here, but I recently learned of another theory: In her entertaining and informative Great Courses series on Jane Austen, Professor Devoney Looser mentions a novel called Amelia Mansfield (English translation 1809) which features a niece controlled by her powerful family. I’m not saying that Looser is endorsing this particular theory; she mentioned it together with the more widely-held notion that the book is named after Lord Mansfield.
   Well, I was curious, so I read the novel to see what parallels there might be to Mansfield Park. I’ll get back to that connection later, but first, here’s a book review with spoilers:
    This is a sentimental novel in which the author, Sophie Cottin, skillfully arranges her characters in situations which exploit emotion and pathos to the fullest. I really have to admire the talent with which the author set up the doomed romance and the facility with which she wrung every last possible drop of angst, hope, and despair out of the various misunderstandings and obstacles.    
​    The whole fraught unfolding of events drew me in and kept me turning the pages to find out what would happen—despite not respecting the heroine and especially not liking the hero (for reasons I'll explain).


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    I blog about my research into Jane Austen and her world, plus a few other interests. Welcome! My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China (just click on "China" in the menu below). More about me here. 


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