Chapter III

The second unusual feature in Shelley’s life of the heart was that his many friendships with men were no less romantic, and on the whole much more permanent and successful, than his affairs with women. Certainly they showed some of the same ideal character, but they also seemed real and concrete, in a way that his heterosexual affairs did not. We know little of his early affections, except for two instances. While he was at Eton, probably at the age of thirteen or fourteen, he had a remarkable affection for the Windsor physician, Dr. Lind. It is well known, of course, that at this period of puberty boys do quite normally tend to fall in love with men or older boys,[16] and to worship them as heroes. But Shelley’s love for Dr. Lind was unusually strong and tender, as is shown by the fact that it did not fade from his memory, as such boyish enthusiasms normally do, but persisted as one of his most precious recollections. In _Prince Athanase_ we find the good Doctor described as:

An old, old man with hair of silver-white
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words.

And the third and fourth cantos of _The Revolt of Islam_ contain a description of Dr. Lind, and record Shelley’s worship of him. It was not only on account of his anarchist teachings that Shelley loved this old man; nor merely because of his evident genius for soothing the troubled mind of the poet. There was also a certain tender physical attraction, which Shelley reveals by his description of the Hermit in _The Revolt of Islam_.

The old man is “stately and beautiful.” His very looks are sufficient to heal: “And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.” Shelley recalled, or imagined, the joy of being embraced by this “divine old man” when he wrote of the Hermit’s care for the sick Laon.

He did enfold
His giant arms around me to uphold
My wretched frame.

* * * * *

And two stanzas later:

the pillow
For my light head was hollowed in his lap
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap....

Then again in the second stanza of the fourth canto:

When the old man his boat had anchoréd
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
And very few but kindly words he said,
And bore me through the tower adown a stair

There is evident in these quotations a certain desire to be caressed by this grand old rebel, and when we remember that Shelley had very little sympathy from either his Father or his Mother, this desire seems not unnatural; he demanded of Dr. Lind some of the physical love and tenderness which his parents had withheld. It would be a great mistake to imagine that, because the poet, with his unrivalled command over language and his tendency to express abstract emotion, normally seems to dwell in ethereal regions, Shelley the man was not often acutely susceptible to the cravings for contact with the beloved. On the contrary, numerous passages express this yearning; only, as they are written with consummate art, and not put in narrative but in lyric form, most people seem to fail to realise their meaning.

What are kisses, whose fire clasps
The failing heart in languishment, or limb
Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
In one caress?

The other romance of Shelley’s early boyhood concerned a schoolboy friend at Sion House. Apparently the two boys were both of about the same age, eleven or twelve years. The episode is recorded in a fragmentary essay on the subject of Friendship, written shortly before Shelley’s death, and given in Hogg’s _Life_.

“The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of human feeling seemed to have been from his birth genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manner inexpressibly attractive.... The tones of his voice were so soft and winning that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so deep that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship. I remember in my simplicity writing to my mother a long account of his admirable qualities and my own devoted attachment. I suppose she thought me out of my wits, for she returned no answer to my letter. I remember we used to walk the whole playhours up and down by some moss-covered palings, pouring out our hearts in youthful talk.... I recollect thinking my friend exquisitely beautiful. Every night, when we parted to go to bed, we kissed each other like children--as we still were!”

There is a passion and intensity of emotion in all this which raises it above the level of the ordinary schoolboy friendship, even when we have allowed for the fact that this passage was written during the poet’s last years, and is therefore perhaps idealised. Still, in spite of the warmth of emotion, this idyll would not of itself, and taken apart from all corroborative evidence, show the poet’s fundamental inversion if it were not for the fact that Shelley cherished the memory of it in manhood. Many boys have a similar romance at that age, or a little later, but it is hardly remembered with emotion except by those who are in some degree inverted.

The bosom friend of Shelley’s early manhood was Thomas Hogg, for whom he had an extraordinary affection. During their short career at Oxford, the two inseparables spent almost all their time together. Every day they either breakfasted or lunched together, went for a country ramble, or sat in Shelley’s room, reading, or re-modelling the universe. When Shelley was expelled, Hogg voluntarily put himself in the same position, and the pair went to live together in London. Their parents separated them, but they maintained an intimate correspondence.

After Shelley’s marriage with Harriet, Hogg joined the couple at Edinburgh, and then took them to his house at York. Here he apparently began to pay unwelcome attentions to Harriet, who informed her husband. Shelley appears not to have expressed the normal feelings of jealousy, and freely forgave Hogg; but he was disappointed to find that his idol, Hogg, had feet of clay. Shelley took Harriet away from York, and went to Keswick. From here he wrote several letters to his friend, in which we find such passages as these: “But pray write often; your last letter I have read as I would read your soul.” “If I thought we were to be long parted I should be wretchedly miserable--half-mad!” “I never doubted you--you, the brother of my soul.” “I do not know that absence will certainly cure love; but this I know, that it fearfully augments the intensity of friendship.”

Later on Shelley renewed his intimacy with Hogg, though never on the old terms of ardent affection. It has been suggested that he was mistaken in his suspicions, and that Hogg was really quite innocent. This view is quite tenable, since the evidence is very slender, and delusions of jealousy often accompany delusions of persecution; which latter Shelley certainly suffered from.

While at Keswick he wrote several long letters to Miss Elizabeth Hitchener, whom for a few months he regarded as his dearest friend. In these letters he tells her of Hogg’s crime, of his confession, and of his demands to be allowed again to live with the couple. In one letter Shelley states: “I do not love him” (dated November 26, 1811). In December, however, he writes to Hogg: “Think not that I am otherwise than your friend, a friend to you now more fervent, more devoted than ever, for misery endears us to those whom we love. You are, you shall be my bosom friend.”[17]

Altogether this episode is complicated and confusing. The evidence against Hogg is confined to statements made by Shelley, in letters to Miss Hitchener, and these statements do not harmonise with Shelley’s extravagant expressions of affection for Hogg. The fact is that he both loved Hogg intensely and suspected him. For my own part, I think that Hogg was probably quite innocent of any great indiscretion, and that Shelley simply magnified some mild familiarity out of all proportion. That Shelley was subject to such mental exaggerations is well known, and the words which he imputed to the imaginary assassin at Tanyrallt: “By God, I will be revenged. I will murder your wife and ravish your sister,” sound very much like a stronger development of the idea that someone was making overtures to Harriet. As to his definite statements on the subject, they cannot weigh very heavily, as his statements were often only subjectively true. In addition, there are two stanzas in _The Revolt of Islam_ which may refer to Hogg, and which, in that case, would indicate that Shelley did finally admit that he was mistaken.

In canto 2, stanza xviii:

And that this friend was false, may now be said
Calmly--that he, like other men, could weep
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.

But in canto 5, stanza v, the friends are reconciled again:

Then suddenly I knew it was the youth,
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
While he was innocent and I deluded.

This last line probably represents the real truth of the whole matter; although, indeed, we have now no means of being certain about the affair.

Shelley’s short-lived enthusiasm for Miss Hitchener, whose name was mentioned above, is also instructive. It was based on the very slightest practical acquaintance with her, though their correspondence was lengthy and intimate; for Shelley always needed some recipient for his emotional or philosophical outpourings. After many letters had been exchanged, Shelley thought that at last his ideal being, the intellectual heroine, had been found; and Miss Hitchener came to live with him and Harriet as their “Spiritual Sister.” Unfortunately, they soon came to detest her. In December 1812 Shelley wrote to Hogg, telling him of the good lady’s departure, in these terms: “She is an artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste was never so great as after living four months with her as an inmate.” Surely there would have to be something extraordinarily repulsive in this lady to justify such an outburst. Yet she would seem to have been quite a reasonable woman. This apparently unreasonable outburst is paralleled in another letter from Shelley to Hogg. After living with Harriet’s sister (Elizabeth) in his house, he wrote: “I certainly hate her with all my soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I hereafter may find the consolation of sympathy.”

In thus idealising women before making their acquaintance, and yet in some cases being strongly repelled by them directly he lived at close quarters with them, Shelley behaved unreasonably, but it was a purely instinctive, and even unconscious, reaction.

Shelley was also strongly attached to two older and rather virile men, Trelawny and Peacock, to both of whom he appealed apparently as much by reason of his feminine charm as by his intellectual and poetic gifts.

I have already quoted Trelawny’s description of his first meeting with the “beardless boy, with a feminine, artless face.” To Peacock, Shelley seemed a wayward and innocent child, totally incapable of guiding himself safely through the hard world of practical affairs. Peacock was a practical man, and enjoyed playing the rôle of father and worldly guide; Shelley, moreover, liked to be allowed to be a child, and to let Peacock manage things for him. In the company of these two men he seemed instinctively to have become more naïve and feminine than he normally was; in other words, like all bisexual people, he automatically altered his polarity in accordance with his company.

Later on in his life he was much attracted by “Kind Hunt,” and a letter referring to _The Cenci_ reveals his sentiment rather artlessly and charmingly: “I have written something different from anything else, and mean to dedicate it to you. I should not have done so without approval, but I asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent.”

Several writers have sneered at Leigh Hunt’s friendship for Shelley because of the amount of money he received from the generous poet. Hunt has been called a parasite in consequence. I am not concerned with the genuineness of Hunt’s affection for Shelley, though I do not doubt it myself. What is certain is that Shelley had a very keen affection for Hunt, whom he addresses as “My dearest Friend,” and on whom he lavished money which he could ill afford to spend. It is noteworthy that an extravagent generosity towards friends is such a frequent characteristic of Uranians. One has only to think of the cases of Edward II, or of Michelangelo,[18] both of whom were shamelessly sponged on by their favourites, to realise that such men are an easy prey for parasites. Perhaps this is due to the fact that such generosity forms a channel along which some of the repressed sexual impulses may obtain an indirect expression.

Even if we call Shelley a fool for allowing men like Hunt and Godwin to drain his purse, we cannot but admire him for many of his other benefactions. Trelawny relates a touching instance, when Shelley divided a bag of Scudi between the Housekeeping expenses, Mary, and himself. Then, says Trelawny, he whispered to Mary: “I will give this to poor Tom Medwin, who wants to go to Naples and has no money.” “Why, Shelley has nothing left for himself,” said Trelawny, who had overheard. In his friendship for his cousin Medwin he revealed another typically Uranian characteristic, namely a gift for nursing. Medwin fell ill at Pisa, and a letter of his describes Shelley’s care for him.

“Shelley tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered my medicines, and, during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was assiduous and unremitting in his affectionate care of me.”

When we thus survey the whole range of Shelley’s affections, and compare his love-affairs with his friendships, can we readily distinguish any great difference between them? Surely the erotic nature of his feelings towards his young school-friend, and towards Dr. Lind, Hogg, Hunt and the rest, is obvious enough, and were it not that these were balanced by obviously erotic relationships with women, we should be led to class him as a pure Uranian. Indeed, we must always remember that, since the whole weight of herd-suggestion actively fosters and encourages the expression of all feelings of love towards the opposite sex and actively represses any patently homosexual expression, one clear indication of the latter is worth more as evidence than a dozen conventional signs of the former. It is because this herd-suggestion is so strong and so persistent that many naturally inverted people are artificially induced to appear as lovers of women, and to behave in a manner that is for them unnatural. This appears to have been the grand tragedy of Shelley’s life, and the source of all his melancholy, his mental troubles, and his inconsistencies. As has been pointed out by Stopford Brooke, in his edition of Shelley’s Lyrics, “Love was felt by Shelley not quite naturally; not as Burns, or even Byron, felt it. Love, in his poetry, sometimes dies into dreams, sometimes likes its imagery better than itself. It is troubled with a philosophy.” And Stopford Brooke adds, “Of course, he was therefore fickle.” This is typical of all those who suffer from repressed (and hence unconscious) homosexual impulses of comrade-love; for with their _conscious_ mind they seek love in the form of a woman. The quest is for them necessarily hopeless, and they are tormented and baffled by finding an inner falsity in each new object of their affections. One after another the dreams, the hopes, the ideals, are shattered, because the conscious mind is seeking a goal which is the polar opposite of that desired by the whole unconscious, but _purposive_, self.