Ariel: The Life of Shelley

In the year 1809 George III appointed as Headmaster of Eton, Dr. Keate, a terrible little man who considered the flogging-block a necessary station on the road to perfection, and who ended a sermon on the Sixth Beatitude by saying, “Now, boys, be pure in heart! For if not, I’ll flog you until you are!”

The county gentlemen and merchant princes who put their sons under his care were not displeased by such a specimen of pious ferocity, nor could they think lightly of the man who had birched half the ministers, bishops, generals, and dukes in the kingdom.

In those days the severest discipline found favour with the best people. The recent French Revolution had proved the dangers of liberalism when it affects the governing classes. Official England, which was the soul of the Holy Alliance, believed that in combating Napoleon she was combating liberalism in the purple. She required from her public schools a generation of smooth-tongued hypocrites.

Scratching and slapping, he fought with open hands like a girl.

An organized “Shelley-bait” became one of the favourite amusements. Some scout would discover the strange lad reading poetry by the riverside, and at once give the “view hallo!” Shelley, with his hair streaming on the wind, would take flight across the meadows, through the college cloisters, the Eton streets. Finally, surrounded like a stag at bay, he would utter a prolonged and piercing shriek, while his tormentors would “nail” him to the wall with balls slimy with mud.

A voice would cry “Shelley!” And “Shelley!” another voice would take it up. The old walls would re-echo to yells of “Shelley!” in every key. A lickspittle fag would pluck at the victim’s jacket; another would pinch him; a third would kick away the books he squeezed convulsively under his arm. Then, every finger would be pointed towards him, while fresh cries of “Shelley!” “Shelley!” “Shelley!” finally shattered his nerves.

The crisis was reached for which his tormentors waited—an outburst of mad rage, in which the boy’s eyes flashed fire, his cheeks grew white, his whole body trembled and shook.

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A few days later a porter appeared in Hogg’s rooms with the Dean’s compliments to Mr. Shelley, and would he go down to him immediately. He went down to the Common Room where he found the Master and several of the Fellows; a little group of learned puritans, all classical and muscular Christians who had always abhorred Shelley because of his long hair, his eccentricities of dress, and his really low taste for experimental science.

The Dean showed him a copy of The Necessity of Atheism, and asked him if he were the author. As he spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent voice, Shelley did not reply.

“Are you, yes or no, the author of this pamphlet?”

“If you can prove that it is by me, produce your evidence. It is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in this fashion. Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country.”

“Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?”

“I refuse to reply.”

“Then you are expelled, and I desire that you will quit the college to-morrow morning at the very latest.”

An envelope sealed with the college seal was immediately handed to him by one of the Fellows. It contained the sentence of expulsion.

Shelley dashed back to Hogg’s rooms, flung himself down on the sofa, and trembling with rage repeated “Expelled! . . . Expelled!”

His only condition was that Shelley should treat him and his friends to a supper on the wedding night.

So it was in the midst of Edinburgh tradesmen that the grandson of Sir Bysshe ate his wedding-feast. The fumes of the wines and the spectacle of the young people going to the heads of the guests, these honest Puritans became a trifle too wanton for Shelley’s taste. The jests grew ribald. The modest Harriet blushed crimson, and Shelley rising announced that he and his wife would say good night.

A roar of laughter was the reply.

A little later there came a knock at their door. Shelley opened it to find his landlord, followed by all his friends. He spoke tipsily: “It’s the custom here when there’s a wedding, to come up in the middle of the night and wash the bride with whisky. . . .”

“Take another step into the room, and I blow your brains out!” cried Shelley, seizing a pistol in each hand.

Perceiving that there was something dangerous in this young man who looked so like a girl, the intruders wished him a respectful good night, and tumbled precipitately downstairs.

Thus Shelley and Harriet found themselves husband and wife, free and alone in a big unknown city. They looked at each other in rapture.

Byron pointed out the patrician city that the setting sun suffused with gold and sombre purple. “Let us get into the gondola again,” he said, “I want to show you something.” When they had glided for some moments over the lagoon, “Look over to the west. Don’t you hear the clang of a bell?”

Shelley, looking, saw on a small island a windowless, deformed, and dreary building, and on the top of it an open tower in which a bell swung in black relief against the crimson sky. With the splash of the oars seemed to mingle distant, stifled cries for help.

“That,” Byron said, “is the madhouse. Every evening when I cross the water at this hour, I hear the bell clanging the maniacs to vespers.”

“No doubt that they may thank the Creator for his mercy towards them?”

“Always the same Shelley!” laughed Byron. “Infidel and blasphemer! You who can’t swim, beware of providence! But you spoke just now of vanquishing our instincts. Does it not seem to you that this spectacle rather is an image of our life? Conscience is the bell that calls us to virtue. We obey it like the madmen without knowing why. Then the sun sets, the bell stops, it is the night of death.”