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The definitive critical
biography of Shelley
SHELLEY. The Pursuit. Second Edition. By
Richard Holmes. HarperCollins. 830pp.
$49.95.
Reviewer: S. K. KELEN.
IN THE introduction, Holmes surveys
previous studies of Shelley, including
sanitised biographies by the poet's
family and friends, who, by the time
they got around to writing their mem-
oirs, had grown considerably more con-
servative than when they had lived like
poets. The "Shelley industry" gets a
mention, the generations of scholars
poring over the literary remains, and
some of the later accounts, notably An-
dre Maurois's Ariel, are seen as over-ro-
manticised, perhaps written under the
influence of the late poet's lingering
charm. The Pursuit aims to be the de-
finitive Shelley critical biography.
The book begins by piecing together
Shelley's background and childhood, his
time boarding at Syron House and Eton
where he was perceived as an eccen-
tric, and constantly bullied. His friend
Tom Medwin's memoirs record that in
the playground and dormitory he gave
as good as he got. Shelley's egalitarian
spirit and anti-authoritarianism are
seen to have stemmed from his public-
school experiences. The detail that
Holmes gleans from various sources is
remarkable, and this is true for the en-
tire book.
Shelley's youthful fascination with
fire, explosives, galvanism, science, and
the supernatu-
ral was a worry
to his respect-
able arriviste
parents, partic-
ularly an epi-
sode in which
he emulated
Ben Franklin's
experiment
with lightning
and a kite, sub-
stituting a pet cat for the key. At home
he created a world of hobgoblins, mon-
sters and faeries to entertain and terri-
fy his younger sisters. The childhood
obsessions remained with Shelley
throughout his life, and Holmes shows
how these were incorporated into a rep-
ertoire of ideas, images, and metaphors
that enriched the poems. The monsters
would mature into an "aesthetic of ter-
ror" and doppelganger experiences that
informed much of Shelley's work and
also provided the inspiration for Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein.
Shelley's belief in spirits contrasted
with a robust atheism, but his spiritual-
ity was located in the human psyche
and the beauty of nature. The atheism
articulated in a well-argued pamphlet
that Shelley published anonymously re-
sulted in the poet's expulsion from Ox-
ford, and Holmes debunks the myth
that Shelley defended his stance; in ac-
tuality the undergraduate Firebrand de-
nied any knowledge of the pamphlet's
authorship. Holmes suggests that had
Shelley defended the work from an in-
tellectual point of view, he may not
have been expelled.
Shelley's outspokenness on religious
------------------------------------
Shelley's belief in spirits
contrasted with a robust
atheism, but his spirituality
was located in the
human psyche and the
beauty of nature.
------------------------------------
matters earned the enmity of his fami-
ly, particularly his father, who pun-
ished young Percy's nonconformism by
withholding money. Money was the
first of many paradoxes that would dog
the poet's life. His desire to be free of
the shackles and injustices of capital-
ism had its counterpoint in an obses-
sive dealing with it — taking loans
from whoever would provide, balancing
books, and running from bailiffs. Of
course, taking a job was out of the
question. But by the time he left Eng-
land he seems to have worked out a
way of living off credit and the kind-
ness of admirers.
His antagonism towards the institu-
tion of marriage did not prevent his
marrying twice, with the separation
from his first wife eventually resulting
in her suicide. The democratic, revolu-
tionary spirit of "ye are many, they are
few" contrasted with a privileged life
style (albeit on credit) with most of the
accoutrements like servants and pala-
tial, if rented, resi-
dences. Shelley was
often at odds with
the downtrodden he
championed in his
poetry and pam-
phlets. Still, his
works stand as re-
volutionary paeans,
and tracts of his
writing like the po-
ems Queen Mab and
The Revolt of Islam were adopted by
working-class movements for a century
afterwards.
Fighting for the causes of liberty and
social justice, trying to make free love
respectable, and pioneering the menage
a trois proved the happy hunting
grounds for Shelley's poems.
After a stint as a political orator in
Ireland Shelley returned to England to
work with reformers and radicals like
Leigh Hunt and William Godwin, and
with local Luddite movements. The
British Home Office kept Shelley and
his first wife Harriet under surveil-
lance as they moved about Britain. Af-
ter an attempt on his life sponsored by
the neighbouring gentry in Wales, Shel-
ley gave up "direct activism" to become
a "trumpet of prophecy". Life in Britain
had become dangerous for him, though
it's only fair to say that the poet also
made things difficult for himself, so he
headed off with his new wife Mary and
her half-sister to permanent exile in It-
aly. The rest is legend. In The Pursuit,
we do not find Shelley so much attain-
ing romantic godhead, as in other bio-
graphies, but emerging as an avatar, a
self-styled poetic representative of the
Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819, by Aemelia Curran. Help
Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819, by Aemelia Curran.
future, an unacknowledged legislator of
the world, and a dedicated writer.
The Pursuit flows seamlessly between
Holmes's narrative and extracts of po-
ems, journals, drafts, and letters, as in
this passage that gives an insight to the
esthetic and creative processes that fu-
elled the writing of Ode to the West
Wind:
"On Monday afternoon he went for
another solitary walk along the Arno,
and watched in the sky above Casciano
the gathering of a violent storm against
the clear cold blue. The wind was hard
from the west. When he returned to the
Palazzo Marini he had his poem. 'This
poem was conceived and chiefly written
in a wood that skirts the Arno ... on a
day when that tempestuous wind,
whose temperature is at once mild and
animating, was collecting the vapours
which pour down the autumnal rains.
They began, as I foresaw, at sunset
with a violent tempest of hail and rain,
attended by that magnificent
thunder . . .' Shelley picked up the same
pen . . . turned the notebook upside
down and entered a clean draft of his
poem."
Much of Shelley's poetry has not
stood the test of time; his forays into
the psychological are couched in too
much "thou", "wilt" and "wherefore"
for most modern tastes, though these
old words work naturally in the best of
the lyric poems, Blythe spirit, etc. But
The Pursuit leads the reader to the best
of Shelley's writing, often rescuing pas-
sages of fine poetry from brutal tor-
rents of versifying.
The account of Shelley's friendship
with Lord Byron reveals an ambiguous
association that had a detrimental ef-
fect on the former's writing. While in
Byron's company, he could not write.
Shelley at times seemed to be intimidat-
ed and resentful of Byron's status as
the best-selling author of his time.
The author makes no attempt to ex-
plain Shelley's equivocation and two-fa-
cedness over the affair of Claire Clair-
mont's struggle with Byron to gain
custody of her young daughter. Readers
can make up their own minds as to the
ethics of Shelley's behaviour in his per-
sonal dealings, particularly with the
women in his life.
The Bohemian lifestyle of Shelley's
touring party provided the British es-
tablishment and its fledgling yellow
press with much salacious scandal, and
we get it all here, but with the added
perspective of the point of view of par-
ticipants who were not unaware of the
irony that the press whose freedom
they championed was having a field
day with them.
Though his love life had no difficulty
making it into print, the poet had some
difficulty getting his work published.
The Mask of Anarchy, a passionate call
to the people to arms, and one of de-
mocracy's grandest poems, was first
published in 1832, 10 years after the au-
thor's death. The political climate of
post-Napoleonic Britain was viciously
oppressive, and large sections of the
population were close to revolution.
Publishers were being imprisoned for
publishing "seditious" material and
were not inclined to publish the poem
and other of Shelley's incendiary
pieces. Publication would have been
much more likely had he been in Eng-
land to face the consequences of his
own work.
Shelley was among the first artists
whose lifestyle brought a notoriety that
would permanently overshadow the
achievement of his work. His life was a
flaming star that burned out young,
and reading this book one could be for-
given for thinking the poet planned it
that way, for he lived out the curricu-
lum vitae of the romantic poet: love, a
dash of laudanum, and rebellious fever.
The index is thorough and actually
enjoyable to read, and at 830 pages,
Shelley: The Pursuit is long-distance
reading, a great book for airports and
intercity bus trips.
But enough's enough, and with this
definitive biography, the Shelley indus-
try might turn its attention to publish-
ing a popular and authoritative collec-
tion of the writings.
$