Thomas Medwin
Thomas Medwin | |
---|---|
Born | Horsham, Sussex, England | 20 March 1788
Died | 2 August 1869 Horsham, Sussex, England | (aged 81)
Resting place | St. Mary's Churchyard, Horsham |
Occupation |
|
Nationality | English |
Education | Syon House |
Literary movement | Romanticism |
Notable works | Journal of the conversations of Lord Byron (1824), The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, translated into English verse 1832, The life of P. B. Shelley 2 vols. (1847) |
Thomas Medwin (20 March 1788 –2 August 1869) was an early 19th-century English writer, poet and translator. He is known chiefly for his biography of his cousin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and for published recollections of his friend, Lord Byron.
Early life
Thomas Medwin was born in the market town of Horsham, West Sussex on 20 March 1788, the third son of five children of Thomas Charles Medwin, a solicitor and steward, and Mary Medwin (née Pilford). His two older brothers John and Henry died in early adulthood. [1] He was a second cousin on both his parents' sides to Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), who lived two miles away at Field Place, Warnham, and with whom Medwin formed a friendship from childhood onwards.[2]
Medwin was from a prosperous rather than a wealthy family that expected their sons to work for a living.[2] He attended Syon House Academy in Isleworth in 1788–1804, as did Shelley in 1802–1808. Medwin related that Shelley and he remained close friends at Syon House, forming a bond so close that Shelley apparently sleepwalked his way to Medwin's dormitory.[3] After a further year in a public school, Medwin matriculated at University College, Oxford in the winter of 1805, but left without taking his degree. He was initially articled as a clerk in his father's law firm in Horsham.[2]
Medwin showed aptitude in foreign languages and was to become fluent in Greek, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese. He began writing poems, including a contribution to The Wandering Jew, a poem attributed to Shelley. The young Shelley and Medwin met during their respective holidays for pursuits such as fishing and fox-hunting. Their romantic attachments included their cousin Harriet Grove, with whom Shelley was deeply committed by the spring of 1810, although he was to elope with Harriet Westbrook in 1811 using money he had borrowed under false pretences from Medwin senior.[1]
Medwin rebelled against his father's wish for him to become a lawyer, running up gambling debts and causing a quarrel with his father, the result of which was the omission of Thomas from his father's will, executed in 1829.[2] Considerable debts appear to have been paid by his family. His activities involved much carousing and gambling at his club in Brighton[2] and spending money on collecting art. Shelley recalled Medwin as painting well and "remarkable, if I do not mistake, for a particular taste in, and knowledge of the belli arti – Italy is the place for you, the very place – the Paradise of Exiles.... If you will be glad to see an old friend, who will be glad to see you... come to Italy."[4] Medwin's financial situation could not continue as it was, and by 1812 he had accepted a military commission in the 24th Light Dragoons, a regiment where he could pursue his social pretensions.[1]
India
Although he had no military training, Medwin was gazetted as a
The heat was stultifying and few duties were required of an officer. Judging from Medwin's description,
Whilst waiting in Bombay for a berth back to England in October 1818, he rediscovered on a bookstall the poetry of his cousin Shelley, in a copy of The Revolt of Islam. Shelley was to provide the central experience and focal point of his literary life.[3] Recalling the incident under his persona Julian in The Angler in Wales in 1834, he was "astonished at the greatness of (Shelley's) genius" and declared that "the amiable philosophy and self-sacrifice inculcated by that divine poem, worked a strange reformation in my mind."[5] Medwin's sobriquet Julian is likely to have been a reference to Shelley's Julian and Maddalo, a poem in which Julian has characteristics of Shelley.[7]
Reunion with Shelley
In September 1820 he arrived in Geneva to stay with Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams, the latter of whom was to drown with Shelley. There he finished his first published poem, Oswald and Edwin, An Oriental Sketch, dedicated to Williams. This ran to 40 pages with 12 pages of notes. It was revised in 1821 as the Lion Hunt for Sketches From Hindoostan.[2]
In the autumn of 1820, Medwin joined his cousin Shelley in Pisa, moving in with him and his wife Mary Shelley, with whom he was to develop an uneasy relationship. Medwin was periodically ill during his months in Pisa but worked with Shelley on a number of poems and on the publication of his journal Sketches From Hindoostan. Shelley and Medwin started to study Arabic together. They also read Schiller, Cervantes, Milton and Petrarch, and throughout early 1821 pursued a vigorous intellectual life.[2] Shelley was working on Prometheus and would read drafts each evening to Medwin, who was continuing with a second volume of Oswald and Edwin, An Oriental Sketch. In January they were joined by Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams. Medwin left Shelley in March 1821 to visit Florence, Rome and then Venice, where he continued to write and socialise. In November 1821 he returned to Pisa.
Meeting with Byron
Shelley introduced Medwin to
Death of Shelley
Medwin travelled first to Rome, where he was introduced to the sculptor
Controversy over Byron
The restless Medwin moved to Paris in 1824, where he met
However supporters of Medwin's book included several eminent writers, including Sir
High life and downfall
Medwin was 36 when he married and took a long honeymoon at Vevey before settling in Florence. The union produced two daughters, Henrietta and Catherine.[note 1] Medwin settled into a life of style and substance among an English émigré community. Unfortunately he was still living beyond his means and lost large sums buying and selling Italian art works. By 1829, when his father died, he was in dire financial straits, with creditors repossessing his goods. His marriage came under strain, and Medwin abandoned his wife and two daughters, leaving friends such as Trelawny and Charles Armitage Brown to sort out his and his wife's affairs.[2] Many of his debts were subsequently paid off by his long suffering brother Pilford Medwin.[1]
Medwin moved to Genoa, where he worked assiduously on a play, Prometheus portarore del fuoco (Prometheus the Fire-Bearer). Though never published in English, it was translated into Italian and published in Genoa in 1830, where it was reviewed enthusiastically.[17] In typical fashion, Medwin dedicated the play to the memory of Shelley. Genoa, however, turned out to be only an interlude, as Medwin was expelled for writing a tragedy called The Conspiracy of the Fieschi, which alarmed the Genoese authorities, believing it to be anti-government propaganda.[2] By January 1831 Medwin was back in London, still hoping to earn a living as a writer.[18]
Translating Aeschylus
In 1832 his Memoir of Shelley was published in six weekly instalments in
Medwin had also embarked on well-received translations of Aeschylus' plays into English. Prometheus Unbound and Agamemnon appeared in companion volumes in May 1833, followed by The Seven Tribes Against Thebes, The Persians, The Eumenides and The Choephori. He did not translate The Suppliants, apparently because he disapproved of "its corruptions".[19] The translations were warmly reviewed by major literary magazines, including The Gentleman's Magazine, and published in Fraser's Magazine. Some criticised him for straying from the original meaning, which he had intentionally done, where he felt the occasion demanded. Medwin's skill lay in bringing alive Aeschylus's characters through believable dialogue that uses traditional metres and measure. [2]
Medwin's output in the middle years of the 1830s was extensive. He contributed a series of short stories to
Heidelberg
In 1837–47 Medwin published 26 tales and sketches for publication in
In Heidelberg he formed a deep attachment to the poet
In the early 1840s Lady Fanny Lindon, John Keats's former fiancée and literary muse, moved to Heidelberg with her husband, and through her Medwin was involved once again in a controversy concerning a dead, but highly influential English Romantic poet. Medwin and Lady Lindon collaborated to correct the allegation provided by Mary Shelley in her Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840) that Keats had become insane in his final days. Lady Lindon showed Medwin letters that suggested otherwise. Medwin used this new information formation in his Life of Shelley, where he published extracts from letters by Keats and his friend Joseph Severn.[27]
Life of Shelley
Medwin began his biography of Percy Shelley in 1845, corresponding with relatives and friends in England, including Percy Florence Shelley, the poet's son, and in 1846 requesting information from Mary Shelley. She was uncooperative, wishing to hinder publication of the biography and claiming that Medwin had attempted to bribe her with the sum of £250. The work took two years to finish, appearing in September 1847. It was not a coolly dispassionate account of Shelley's life. It is passionate and opinionated, and includes attacks on Medwin's personal enemies. There are numerous errors of date, fact and quotation, some of the later outright bowdlerised. (Most of the errors were removed by Harry Buxton Forman in 1913.)[note 4][28] Yet it remains an important source for the poet's early life and work. Medwin is the main source on the childhood of Shelley, a major source for the events of 1821–1822, and a mine of personal recollections. It was also the primary source of knowledge in Germany of the life and work of Shelley, who since his death had become something of a divisive figure.[29]
Criticism was to be expected and Medwin's biography of Shelley duly received a withering attack in The Athenaeum, which opened its review: "We are not in any way satisfied with this book."[30] "The Spectator" wrote "Medwin's labours... are chiefly remarkable for the art of stuffing... nor does the author forget a scandal when he can pick any up." Medwin was even more strongly reviled by the surviving members of the Pisan circle. Mary Shelley's reaction was to be expected, given her antipathy towards him, but Trelawny was equally cutting, calling the work "superficial" as late as 1870.[31] However, it was received better by some critics, including William Howitt and W. Harrison Ainsworth, who began their review in Howitt's Journal by saying the subject "could not possibly have fallen into more competent hands."[32]
Medwin returned to Heidelberg from a visit to London and Horsham in time for the 1848 Revolution that swept through Germany. He and Caroline de Crespigny took flight to a more peaceable Weinsberg in Wurttemberg. He continued to work there, producing some poetry and translations for his host, Justinus Kerner, to whom in 1854 he published a poem. He returned to Heidelberg the same year and published a further poetry volume, The Nugae. This was international in content, with original poems and translations in Greek, Latin, English, and German. A further book of poetry published in 1862 in Heidelberg was entitled Odds and Ends, with translations from Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Scaliger, and additional poems by Caroline de Crespigny, who died shortly before its publication.
Final years
Medwin returned finally to England in 1865 [1] and began rewriting his "Life of Shelley", although the revision exists only in handwritten form. In 1869 he was visited by his old friend and sometime rival Trelawny, who found him constant and "always faithful and honest in his love of Shelley."[33]
Thomas Medwin died on 2 August 1869 at the house of his brother Pilfold Medwin (1794–1880) in the Carfax, Horsham, where he was buried in Denne Road Cemetery. At his request, his grave faces east to India, Italy and Germany, and reads: "He was a friend and companion of Byron, Shelley and Trelawny."
Legacy
Thomas Medwin's legacy tends to raise more questions than answers.[11] His writings on Byron and Shelley are often imprecise and he had a tendency to fall out with former associates, including Shelley's widow and Trelawny. These caveats aside he remains the main source of information on Shelley's childhood. His Conversations of Lord Byron is now generally recognised as an essentially true picture of the man.[11]
The few writers to highlight Medwin concentrate on his popular writings on Shelley and Byron, but his legacy includes numerous translations from Greek, Latin, Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish. His translations of Aeschylus and his early travel writings are vivid and memorable.
Selected bibliography
- Oswald and Edwin, an Oriental Sketch (Geneva 1821)
- Sketches in Hindoostan with Other Poems (London 1821)
- Ahasuerus, The Wanderer; Dramatic Legend in Six Parts (London 1823)
- The Death of Mago translated from Petrarch's Africa; in Ugo Foscolo, Essays on Petrarch (London 1823) pp. 215 and 217
- Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (Noted during a residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822, London, 1824)
- Prometheus Bound (translated from Aeschylus), Siena 1927; London 1832; Fraser's Magazine XVI (August 1837), pp. 209–233
- Agamemnon (translated from Aeschylus), London 1832; Fraser's Magazine XVIII (November 1838), pp. 505–539
- The Choephori (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser's Magazine VI, (London 1832), pp. 511–535
- The Shelley Papers, Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1833)
- The Persians (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser's Magazine VII (January 1833) pp. 17–43
- The Seven Against Thebes (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser's Magazine VII (April 1833) pp. 437–458
- The Eumenides (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser's Magazine IX (May 1834) pp. 553–573.
- The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of Sportsmen (London 1834)
- The apportionment of the world, from Schiller, translated by Thomas Medwin, Bentley's Miscellany IV p. 549 (December 1837)
- The Three Sisters. A Romance of Real Life, Bentley's Miscellany III (January 1838)
- The Two Sisters, Bentley's Miscellany III (March 1838)
- Canova: Leaves from the Autiobiography of an Amateur, Frasers Magazine XX (September 1839)
- My Moustache, Ainsworth's Magazine, I, pp. 52–54 (1842)
- Lady Singleton, or, The world as it is, Cunningham and Mortimer (London, 1843)
- The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London 1847)
- Oscar and Gianetta: From the German of a Sonnetten Kranz, by Louis von Ploennies The New Monthly Magazine XCI (March 1851) pp. pp. 360–361
- To Justinus Kerner: With a Painted Wreath of Bay-Leaves, The New Monthly Magazine XCI (November 1854) p. 196
- Nugae (Heidelberg, 1856), edited by Medwin and including his own poems.
- Odds and Ends (Heidelberg, 1862)
- The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1913). A new edition, edited by H. Buxton Forman
Biographies
- Lovell Jr, Ernest J (1962). Captain Medwin: Friend of Byron and Shelley. University of Texas.
- Jeremy Knight, Susan Cabell Djabri (1995). Horsham's Forgotten Son: Thomas Medwin, Friend of Shelley and Byron. Horsham District Council, Horsham Museum.
Notes
- ^ Henrietta Medwin married an Italian aristocrat, Ferdinando Pieri Nerli, and their son, born in 1860, became known as G. P. Nerli, an artist working in the Antipodes who notably painted Robert Louis Stevenson. His other daughter Catherine also married an Italian aristocrat, Cavaliere Enca Arrighi.
- ^ Sources differ for the birth and death dates of de Crespigny. There is a baptismal record in the register of Durham Cathedral dated 24 October 1797, whilst Probate records of 28 February 1862 record her death in Heidelberg on 26 December 1861, letters of administration having been granted to her son Albert Henry.
- ^ Caroline Bathurst was the daughter of Henry Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich and niece of Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst. In 1820 she married Heaton Champion de Crespigny, an ultimately unsuccessful union that produced at least five children, but had ended by 1837 with her husband pursued by creditors. She settled in Heidelberg shortly thereafter.
- John Carterand Graham Pollard in An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets.
References
- ^ a b c d e f Susan C Djabri (2002), Medwin: A Man of Horsham, a Victorian Gentleman, Horsham Museum Society ISBN 1 902484177
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Ernest J Lovel.Jr (1962), "Captain Medwin: Friend of Byron and Shelley", University of Texas.
- ^ a b Thomas Medwin (1847), The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (2 vols), T. C. Newby, London
- ^ Percy Bysshe Shelly. Private letter to Medwin; The Works X, 141.
- ^ a b c d The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of Sportsmen, 2 vols, 1834.
- ^ Nigel Leask: British Romantic Writers and The East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 68–70.
- ^ "Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation". The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. West Sussex County Library Service. 24 December 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t113.e4098>; H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.) The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 50, p. 207.
- ^ a b Journals of the Conversations, of Lord Byron, noted at a residence with His Lordship at Pisa in the years 1821 and 1822 ,Thomas Medwin, Henry Colburn, London (1824).
- ^ Byron's letters and Journals VI, 7: Thomas Medwin "Conversations"
- ^ Leaves from the Autobiography of an Amateur, Thomas Medwin, Frasers's Magazine Sept 1839
- ^ a b c d e f Susan Cabell Djabri, Jeremy Knight (1995), Horsham's Forgotten Son: Thomas Medwin, Friend of Shelley and Byron ,Horsham District Council, Horsham Museum
- ^ Ahasuerus, The Wanderer: A Dramatic Legend, in Six Parts, Thomas Medwin (London, 1823).
- ^ Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 16 No. 94 (November 1824), pp. 530–540.
- ^ Thomas Medwin: Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron https://lordbyron.org/contents.php?doc=ThMedwi.1824.Contents>
- ^ Letters & Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life (vol. 1, January 1830)/(vol. 2, January 1831), Thomas Moore
- ISBN 978-1108033930.
- ^ Antologica magazine, July 1830.
- ^ Thomas Medwin, My Moustache, published in Ainsworth Magazine, I (1842), pp. 52–54.
- ^ Forman's edition of Shelley by Thomas Medwin, p. 243.
- ^ Karl A. E. Enenkel & Mark S. Smith (2007). Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts. BRILL.
- ^ Letters in the archive of The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, New York Library https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/pforzheimer-collection-shelley-and-his-circle
- ^ a b Anglo-German and American-German Crosscurrents By Arthur Orcutt Lewis, W. Lamarr Kopp, Edward J. Danis
- ISBN 978-1179928494.
- ^ Letters of Julie Gmelin, 19 June 1849, published in Badische Post that describes her as a former mistress of Byron, 21 March 1924.
- ^ An Autobiography: Mary Howitt (London, 1891), p. 154.
- ^ Memoirs of Charles Godfrey Leland, Heinemann Press, London, October 1893
- ISBN 1179928490.
- ISBN 0-85967-754-0
- ISBN 9781474245975.
- ^ Athenaeum, 18 September 1847
- ^ Letters of Edward John Trelawny, quoting a letter from Trelawny to W. M. Rossetti dated 1870.
- ^ Howitt's Journal II (1847)
- ^ Letters of Trelawny p. 221