The Story of The Mask of Anarchy, from Shelley to the Triangle Factory Fire

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I have a treat in store for members of the Shelley Nation: Michael Demson’s graphic novel (or radical comic - your choice of terminology), “Masks of Anarchy: The History of a Radical Poem, From Percy Shelley to the Triangle Factory Fire”.

In it, Demson tells the story of two political radicals and the poem that brought them together:  Percy Shelley and the early 20th Century union organizer he inspired, Pauline Newman.  Demson, in collaboration with illustrator Summer McClinton, accomplishes this through an unusual medium: a radical political graphic novel! This gets my RPBS "Stamp of Champ, You Must Read This" recommendation!

Let’s dig in. Pauline Newman came to America in 1901 as a child, the daughter of immigrant Lithuanian Jews. She spoke no English, lived in appalling poverty and was subjected to brutal labour conditions. According to Annelise Orleck (writing for the Jewish Women’s Archive) as a child worker Newman began working among other children “in the ‘kindergarten’ at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the most infamous of early twentieth-century garment shops” - she would work there for 7 years, leaving just before the infamous fire which killed 146 people. Yet, incredibly, at the age of around 16, Newman started fighting for change. Orleck:

In 1907, with New York City in the grip of a depression and thousands facing eviction, the sixteen-year-old Newman took a group of “self-supporting women” to camp for the summer on the Palisades above the Hudson River. There they planned an assault on the high cost of living. That winter, Newman and her band led a rent strike involving ten thousand families in lower Manhattan. It was the largest rent strike New York City had ever seen, and it catalyzed decades of tenant activism, which eventually led to the establishment of rent control.

At age 15 Newman joined the Socialist Reading Society. There, according to Orleck (“Common Sense and a Little Fire”, 40), she was introduced to the writings of Shakespeare, George Eliot and Thomas Hood and actually met Jack London. Inspired by this she would invite other young girls from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to join her in her room where they would read poetry aloud to better educate themselves. Eventually she came to Shelley of which she said, “he appealed to us because it was a time when we were ready to rise.” (Orleck, 40) Later on she peppered her speeches with references to Shelley.

As Michael Demson suggests here, a poem like “The Mask of Anarchy” not only offered common people a language for understanding their problems, but also helped workers to build a sense of community from culture and shared political goals.

Newman went on to be a driving force in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (henceforth, “ILGWU”).  According to Orleck,

Pauline Newman was a labor pioneer and a die-hard union loyalist once described by a colleague as “capable of smoking a cigar with the best of them.” The first woman ever appointed general organizer by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), Newman continued to work for the ILGWU for more than seventy years—first as an organizer, then as a labor journalist, a health educator, and a liaison between the union and government officials. Newman played an essential role in galvanizing the early twentieth-century tenant, labor, socialist, and working-class suffrage movements. She also left an important legacy through her writings, as one of the few working-class women of her generation who chronicled the struggles of immigrant working women.

Demson tells us that “Newman was aware that Shelley had two audiences in America in the early twentieth century.” She traveled widely at the behest of the ILGWU in order to win sympathy from upper-class women's groups in New York and across the country. In her letters, Newman recounts two stories which specifically mention Shelley. In upstate New York she recounts that the women’s group,

“…began asking questions – not only about the strike [of 1909], but about me personally – did I like to read? Shelley? How nice! However, like all good things the afternoon came to an end – an afternoon which once again pointed to the comfort and plenty of some and the poverty with all its resulting misery of/for others…”

In Indianapolis, Newman was asked by the secretary of the Woman's Poetry Club:

“…whether I liked poetry and who my favorite poet was…I need not tell you that I had no difficulty in telling them that I did like poetry, very much indeed, and that I regard Shelley and Keats as my favorite poets although there were others whom I like, too. My reply was my passport to enter the inner sanctum of the Women's Poetry Club of Indianapolis!”

In 1923, Newman was appointed as the educational director for the ILGWU Union Health Center - a position she would keep for 60 years. According to Orleck, she used her position “to promote worker health care, adult education, and greater visibility for women in the union.” She died in 1986 at approximately 99 years of age. And she most decidedly had changed the world in which she lived.

Shelley himself had set out to change the world - through poetry. And, across the centuries, a poem that was not even published in his lifetime, did just that: “The Mask of Anarchy”.

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Through the medium of a radical comic, Demson tells the story of the creation of Shelley's poem and the incredible real world influence it had a century later and on the other side of the world.  Regular visitors to this site will know that my goal is to introduce Shelley to a new generation of readers in an accessible, approachable manner. Thus, when I stumble on something like “Masks of Anarchy “I get very excited: it is something I can recommend to the burgeoning Shelley Nation without reserve. I know this will fire your interest in Shelley and inflame your passion for him. “Masks of Anarchy” is thrilling to read. I found myself emotionally overwhelmed at several points - most particularly as I read the story of Pauline Newman’s activism.

Poetry, writes Demson in his introduction, "is our most fundamental weapon against alienation, isolation, automation, apathy and despair." Coupled with skepticism, that ancient philosophy that Shelley so admired, the liberal arts and the humanities may be the only trump card we have to play in the face of a wave of 21st century intolerance, hypocrisy, xenophobia and cyber-libertarianism.

Paul Buhle, self portrait from Verso Press

Demson’s technique is to interweave the two narratives, a chapter on Shelley followed by a chapter on Newman and then a flashback to Shelley, and so on.  In his forward, Paul Buhle, places this work in the context of the history of comic art and notes that “Masks of Anarchy” is “one of the most remarkable works of comic art to date.” Buhle should know, he is a formerly a senior lecturer at Brown University who now produces radical comics full time. He founded the SDS Journal Radical America and the archive Oral History of the American Left and, with Mari Jo Buhle, is coeditor of the “Encyclopedia of the American Left”. Buhle believes “Masks of Anarchy” will “cast its influence widely over future non-fiction graphic works, especially as regards the uses of poetry and meanings of social, labour and women’s history.”

If I have a quibble about “Masks of Anarchy”, it is that some of the details about Shelley’s life have been somewhat distorted. The reason for this is not obvious to me.  Demson has Claire Clairmont meeting Byron for the first time in Geneva and getting pregnant by him there. We know this is incorrect. He also has Shelley, Mary and Claire leaving Geneva in 1816 to go straight to Italy, when it is well known that they returned to England so Claire’s child could be born there. While somewhat troubling, these flaws are no reason to turn away.

But what of the poem Demson celebrates? “The Mask of Anarchy” was written by Shelley as a response to the massacre of unarmed protestors (including children) in Manchester on 16 August 1819. Shelley was in Italy at the time, hence the famous opening lines of the poem, “As I lay asleep in Italy / There came a voice from over the Sea.”  Shelley had been cut off from the politics of England for some years, so he does not mean he was literally asleep, he means this figuratively. As Paul Foot has pointed out, the people of England had endured the worst government in their history for Shelley's entire adult life (1810-1822); Shelley called it the "ghastly masquerade." (Foot, 19) Living in Italy, Shelley felt cut off and impotent for years. He was outraged by what he heard and it motivated him to drop everything else he was doing and focus on a response. Now he wanted to get plugged back in. You can read an excellent summary of what happened at Peterloo - and Shelley’s reaction to it - in Paul Bond’s superb article The Peterloo Massacre and Shelley (originally published by the World Socialist Web Site). Or, why not try the young Irish Marxist and Poet Ciaran O’Rourke’s review of Paul O’Brien’s “Shelley’s Revolutionary Year.”

“The Mask of Anarchy” was the first of a stream of highly charged political poems and essays including:

(i) his letter in support of the radical journalist Richard Carlile (one of the words great defenses of free speech),

(ii) “Peter Bell the Third” (a scathing attack on Wordsworth's callow, shameless black-sliding into conservatism),

(iii) “A Philosophical View of Reform” (a brilliant set of philosophical proposals that anticipated socialism by decades) and

(iv) “The Mask of Anarchy”. 

Not one of these works of genius were published in his life time.  He wrote with increasing desperation to his friend Leigh Hunt, but to no avail.  The letters are tinged with a deeply moving, plaintive desperation:

You do not tell me whether you have received my lines on the Manchester affair. - Florence, 14 November 1819

I don't remember if I acknowledged the receipt of "Robin hood" - no more than you did of "Peter Bell". - Pisa, 5 April 1820

I wish to ask you if you know of any bookseller who would like to publish a little volume of popular songs, wholly political. Pisa, 1 May 1820

One thing I want to ask you - do you know any bookseller who wd publish for me an octavo volume entitled "a Philosophical View of Reform? It is boldly by temperately written - and I think readable - ... will you ask and think for me? Pisa, 26 May 1820

All of the works were either ignored or actively repressed until very recently.  Even modern collections of Shelley's poetry routinely omit “The Mask of Anarchy”; a work Richard Holmes has called "the greatest poem of political protest every written in English". It is time to restore this poem to its rightful place in the history of protest - and not a moment too soon considering the election of Donald Trump in America. If ever there was a poet speaking to our times, it is Percy Bysshe Shelley. So let's learn more about the events that inspired him to write his great poem.

What happened in Manchester in 1819 was an outrage, an outrage that has been perpetuated by a failure by English authorities to honestly and respectfully recognize the tragedy.  You can find out more about this here. I almost never recommend Wikipedia as a source for reliable information on the internet, however, here you will find an unusually well written and researched document with appropriate sources.  Demson pictures Shelley’s reaction when he heard of the massacre thusly:

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On the morning of 16 August, a peaceful assembly of some sixty thousand English men, women and children began to gather in what is now St. Peter’s Square in Manchester (hence the name the massacre was popularly given: Peterloo). They did so quietly and with discipline. The protest was organized by the Manchester Patriotic Union and was to feature the famed orator Henry Hunt. Hunt was to speak from a simple platform in front of what is now the Gmex Center. The crowd brought homemade banners that proclaimed REFORM, UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, EQUAL REPRESENTATION and (touchingly) LOVE. But before the speeches could begin, local magistrates ordered the local militia (known as ‘yeomanry”) to break up the meeting.  This was done with extraordinary violence.  As many as 12 protestors died and over 500 were wounded.

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In the aftermath, journalists attempting to cover the massacre were arrested and news of the event suppressed. The businessman John Edwards Taylor was so shocked by what had happened that he went on to help set up the Guardian newspaper to ensure that the people would have a voice. For years, the event was commemorated in Manchester only by a blue plaque which described the massacre as a “dispersal”:

“The site of St Peters Fields where on 16th August 1819 Henry Hunt, radical orator addressed an assembly of about 60,000 people. Their subsequent dispersal by the military is remembered as “Peterloo”.

That the term “dispersal” is used to describe what was a massacre is an unconscionable euphemism.  It was only in 2007 that it was replaced by a more appropriate red plaque:

Finally, in 2019, on the 200th Anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre, the local authorities bowed to a fierce advocacy campaign mounted by the Peterloo Memorial Campaign, and created a permanent memorial to the event and the people who participated in (and some of who died during) the protest.

Photograph from the Peterloo Memorial Campaign website

In a partnership with the Age of Revolution, The University of Kent and the authors and publishers of the full graphic novel “Peterloo: Witnesses to a Massacre” (Polyp, Schlunke, and Poole) created a twenty-page schools’ version of the innovative graphic novel specially adapted for teachers wishing to explore the events of 16 August 1819 in the classroom. You can download the student version at the Age of Revolution website here or buy the full version from the publisher’s Ethicalshop here.

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Excerpt from the graphic novel Peterloo: Witnesses to a Massacre. The cover on the right.

According to Michael Scrivener, “the response of the radical leadership to Peterloo was surprisingly timid…the leaders must have been more alarmed than inspired by the revolutionary situation”. (Scrivener, 207) Hunt, for example, called for passive resistance in a variety of forms (such as tax resistance) and others sought a Parliamentary investigation. Only Richard Carlile (a radical journalist championed by Shelley and who later did much to keep Shelley’s reputation alive) proposed a meaningful response: he and a few others proposed a general strike – which never materialized. Shelley as we shall see went much further. Scrivener notes: ‘the key to understanding the uniqueness of Shelley’s poem is his proposal for massive non-violent resistance.”  (Scrivener, 208)

Shelley's poem opens with a poetic, allegorical vision of the true nature of social reality a reality which must be "unmasked' - hence the title of our poem. We are shown a parade (Shelley calls it the "ghastly masquerade") of political figures; exposed for what they really represent.  Shelley sets out to expose the manner in which Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy and Anarchy operate in society: they can only come to life through the actions of people. The individuals he names, leading members of government, can be thought of as having completely given up their humanity as they take on their roles: Castlereagh as Murder, Eldon as Fraud, and Sidmouth as Hypocrisy.  Daringly, the skeletal Anarchy represents the entire social order and is described in such a way as to invite a connection to the Prince Regent. These monsters are shown trampling the people of England, aided and abetted by lawyers and priests. Shelley therefore daring executes one of the ironic inversions for which he is justly famous. Anarchy is not to be seen in it’s traditional sense; anarchy is what happens when society is perverted by the ruling classes.

The allegorical figure of Hope however intervenes and overthrows Anarchy; that is to say the existing social order.  It is unclear how Anarchy’s downfall is accomplished and exactly who kills it. One gets the sense that tyranny self-destructs in the face of massive non-violent protest. The most famous stanza of the poem, and the only one which is repeated, is this:

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

lines 151-54 and 369-72

Scrivener notes that “What is foremost here is struggle, unity and revolutionary consciousness: this is not moral argument, but political exhortation, and appeal to physical superiority.” (Scrivener, 209).

“The Mask of Anarchy” is neatly divided into two sections: the first is the visionary dream just described, and the second (which PMS Dawson considers “the main substance of the poem”) is Shelley’s address to the people of England in which he outlines the nature of the political problem and proposes a solution. Shelley’s economic analysis has been widely praised for its sophistication and for anticipating socialism. Dawson wrote that Shelley addressed himself “responsibly, and with a realism that does not shun the banal, to directing the efforts of those who seek to redeem [the plight of the people of England]". (Dawson, 207)

Following his economic analysis, Shelley issues his call not to arms, but to peaceful assembly:

'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -'

It is this assembly (made up of people from every walk of society and without class distinction) upon which Shelley imagines liberty will be founded. His description of that liberty is celebrated:

What are thou Freedom? O! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
This demand - tyrants would flee
Like a dream's dim imagery:'

Thou art not, as imposters say,
A shadow soon to pass away,
A superstition, and a name
Echoing from the cave of Fame.'

'For the labourer thou art bread,
And a comely table spread
From his daily labour come
In a neat and happy home.'

Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude -

Lines 209-222

For an engrossing look at the events at Peterloo as well as Shelley’s reaction to the massacre through a Marxist lens, you can read Paul Bond’s essay, “The Peterloo Massacre and Shelley”.

Even reading this poem at a distance of 200 years, it is impossible not to be inspired. And very clearly it inspired Newman. She incorporated a lot of Shelley’s poetry into her speeches and Demson and McClinton beautifully capture this in their book. The final chapter brings Shelley and Newman, graphically, face to face.  This has a quite electrifying effect as we are presented with situations in Newman’s life that caused her to draw directly from Shelley’s poetry for inspiration.

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Very clearly, Shelley’s calls for unity, struggle and revolutionary consciousness, for a great assembly and general strikes, had a profound effect on Newman and therefore on the development of one of the most powerful and effective unions of the 20th Century. It also led to the creation of the Worker's University, where course on the radical poets of the French Revolution were taught.

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I had to laugh at poke at George Gordon (Lord Byron).

Well done Percy.  And well done Pauline. We will need a lot more of your help in the 21st Century. Thanks to Michael Demson and his illustrator Summer McClinton you both feel closer than ever.

If you want to read more about Pauline Newman, try this: “Common Sense and a Little Fire” by Annelise Orlek.

Michael Demson's wonderful graphic novel can be purchased directly from Verso.  Verso is a terrific imprint of New Left Books. Demson is currently professor of English at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

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References

Dawson, P.M.S.  The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Print.

Demson, Michael. “‘Let a Great Assembly Be’: Percy Shelley’s ‘The Mask of Anarchy,’” published in The European Romantic Review, Volume 22, Number 5, p. 641-665

Foot, Paul. Red Shelley, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980. Print.

Orleck, Annelise, Common Sense and a Little Fire: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Digital Edition.

Scrivner, Michael. Radical Shelley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Print.

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Other Reviews

“Absorb these words and pictures. Read them carefully. This is your history on the verge of oblivion. An unbroken thread of labor activism through the centuries, across oceans, is skillfully woven together here. Art and activism are the warp and woof of this unforgettable story: allow it to seep deeply into your soul and inspire you.”

         – Eric Drooker, author of Flood! A Novel in Pictures

“With spectacular panache, Demson and McClinton weave together two passionate tales across the ages that come together to transform the world. An inspirational testament to the longevity and power of poetry.”

          – Kennith Goldsmith, author of Uncreative Writing, founder of UbuWeb, and the Museum of Modern Art's 2013 Poet Laureate

“The historical scholarship is impressive”

          – Publishers Weekly

“It’s a fascinating book for all sorts of reasons, not least its portrayal of America’s ongoing antipathy toward immigrants, which, of course, remains very much in the news.”

            – LA Times

“A stunning yet nuanced story… In collaboration with talented illustrator Summer McClinton this short graphic novel reaches deep within one's sense of humanness.”

            – SWANS Commentary

Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary by Jacqueline Mulhallen

For those of you with a desire to connect to the radical and revolutionary politics of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jacqueline Mulhallen’s slim but trenchant volume Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary is the answer. First published in 2015 by Pluto Press Mulhallen’s book is in the grand tradition of those biographers who were primarily concerned with and inspired by Shelley’s reformist, even revolutionary ideas. Biographers such as Kenneth Neill Cameron (The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical. Paul Foot (The Red Shelley), Michael Scrivener (Radical Shelley: the Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley) and PMS Dawson (The Unacknowledged Legislator). Indeed, Shelley has of late been attracting increased attention from the writers and thinkers on the left and so her book is very much of its time. Just recently Paul Bond, writing on the World Socialist Web Site (published by the International Committee of the Fourth International which was founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938) published a thrilling account of the left’s reception of Shelley’s reaction to the Peterloo Massacre. I republished this article here with introductory comments.

Before we get to Mulhallen’s volume, let’s talk about the four books mentioned above. First, while there have been many books on the question of Shelley's radicalism, perhaps the most important is Kenneth Neill Cameron's The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical. 

One of the greatest Shelley scholars of all time, Neil Fraistat, recently told me that it was his favourite book on Shelley and that he was "in awe of it."  It is deserving of that accolade because it manages to put all of Shelley's youthful poetry and prose (often condemned as juvenile and not worth reading) into context and restores it to a place of respect and honour. But alas,The Young Shelley is out of print and almost impossible to get. 

The second is Paul Foot's extraordinary 1980 book, Red Shelley. Foot's style is polemical, uncompromising and intoxicating.  But this book too is out of print and hard to find.  I recently published for the first time the transcript of a speech Paul delivered to the London Marxism Conference in 1981.  The speech, Paul Foot Speaks!! The Revolutionary Percy Bysshe Shelley, was based on the book and is a must read; find it here.

PMS Dawson's book, The Unacknowledged Legislator, also published 1980, is another favourite. Unlike Foot, Dawson's style is dry and academic - but also shrewd and perceptive. And unlike a staggering number of academic texts from the post 1980 era, Dawson is immensely readable and approachable. He and Foot are two sides of the same stylistic coin and young members of the academy would do well to pay close attention to the ability of these writers to convey complex intellectual ideas in straightforward English that one does not require a thesaurus to understand.

Then there is Michael Scrivener’s book Radical Shelley: the Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley - also published in 1980 - making 1980 a sort of annus mirabilis for Shelley’s radicalism. Written in a vein similar to that of Dawson (although guilty of rather too much academic jargon) Scrivener seeks to place Shelley in a sort of “utopian-anarchist” tradition; whereas Dawson sought to rather "tone down" Shelley's radicalism and place him within the orbit of Whig reformers.

Now, if there is ONE thing I think Shelley is not, it is a utopian. And for this reason Scrivener got under my skin - much the same way as do writers who attempt to read a pure form of "idealism" into Shelley's thinking.  For me, Shelley was a life long skeptic in the tradition of Drummond, Hume and Cicero. In an article published in the Edinburgh Press (The Modern Disciple of the Academy: Hume, Shelley, and Sir William Drummond), Thomas Holdon demonstrated Drummond’s “decisive influence on Shelley’s philosophical development”. You can read it here.

For an excellent summary of these three books, Red Shelley, The Unacknowledged Legislator and Radical Shelley, look no further than the great Willian Keach's article Rise Like Lions: Shelley and the Revolutionary Left, which may be found here.

It is worth quoting Keach's typically trenchant summary in full:

The task of reclaiming Shelley’s poetry for the revolutionary left, most notably undertaken by Paul Foot in his book Red Shelley, inevitably raises difficulties and complications which I would like to address. I worried about some of these difficulties and complications several years ago in a 1985 review essay that considered Foot’s Red Shelley together with Michael Scrivener’s Radical Shelley and Paul Dawson’s The Unacknowledged Legislator. My judgement then was that, while Foot’s desire to claim Shelley for the real socialist left was deeply important, his book did not address some of the difficult questions of Shelley’s political writing as convincingly as Scrivener’s and Dawson’s had done. My perspective today has shifted substantially from what it was in 1985, when I had just finished an avowedly formalist study of Shelley’s style and was still a member of a social democratic group called the Democratic Socialists of America. I have come to have a much stronger commitment to the political tradition from which Foot’s work on Shelley springs, and I see strengths in Red Shelley that I had not seen or had not been able fully to realise before. However, I still think that the questions posed by Scrivener in his case for an anarchist and utopian Shelley, and by Dawson in his case for a reformist Shelley, need to be confronted.

All three of these incredibly important books are out of print and difficult to obtain.  So what is one to do?!  Obviously, we must turn to Jacqueline Mulhallen’s book, Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary. Mulhallen is very much in the tradition of Cameron, Foot, Dawson and Scrivener and her book has the advantage of being available! Here are just a few of the well-earned accolades:

A compelling and eye-opening study. Reminds us of Shelley's robust socio-political vision, that remains as relevant and vital for our own volatile times. (Stephen C. Behrendt; George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English, University of Nebraska)

Highly readable, this is an absorbing study of Shelley’s life, thought, and writing. Jacqueline Mulhallen has written a valuable book. (Michael O’Neill, Professor of English, Durham University)

A fresh and impassioned account of the significance of Shelley's radical life and writings. A fine and highly readable achievement. (Michael Rossington, Professor of Romantic Literature, Newcastle University)

[Mulhallen's book is] Fresh, clear and compelling, this is the best compact account of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s revolutionary life currently available. (Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews)

And when these professors say it is readable, they mean it is readable by the general public - a rare distinction in the modern era. Mulhallen, for this reason alone, would have earned my "Stamp of a Champ - Must Read" recommendation. But in addition to being readable it is an also an accurate and concise portrayal of the real Shelley: Shelley the revolutionary, the atheist, the skeptic, the leveler.  Mulhallen gives us a clear-eyed modern image of the Shelley the great Victorian Henry Salt described as follows:

"...there can be no mistake whatever about the attitude Shelley took up...in the whole body of his writing toward the established system of society, which, as he avowed in one of his later letters, he wished to see, "overthrown from the foundations with all of its superstructure, maxims and forms." His principles are utterly subversive of all that orthodoxy holds most sacred, whether in ethics or in religion..." (Salt, Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Pioneer, 4)

As I cast my eye back over the chaotic political events of the past year I can see that Shelley's programmes of reform and resistance have enormous relevance.  Take for example two separate events: the election of Donald Trump and the near-election of Jeremy Corbyn. In the case of the former, Shelley's brand of revolutionary, non-violent resistance to authoritarianism provides important sign posts as to how best to oppose Trump.  You can find my take on this here: What Should We Do to Resist Trump" by Sandy Grant and here: Percy Bysshe Shelley in Our Time.

In the case of the latter, it is very clear to me that a general election was fought out in Britain in part on territory staked out by Shelley 200 years ago, as evidenced by the Labour Party's slogan: For the Many. Not the Few (a direct, intentional, lift from Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy).  And by the way, we know for a fact that Corbyn reads Mulhallen’s book prior to the 2017 election. You can read about this here: Jeremy Corbyn is Right: Poetry can Change the World.

Of all Shelley's poems that I think we might turn our attention to at this point, I am increasingly wondering if it should not be Queen Mab. Every single one of the authors I have just written about place Queen Mab at or near to the heart of his radicalism. It is the poem that was most influential on the radical reformists of the 19th century and those people are the ones largely responsible for preserving his radicalism.  Roland Duerksen said of Queen Mab,

"...so far as overt, discernible effects are concerned, [Queen Mab] appears historically to have had as great effect on society as any of his other works. It touched an inspired the Chartists of the mid-nineteenth century in a kinetic way and to an effect whose importance no amount of aesthetic condemnation of this work has been able to diminish" The source of this effect must lie in the genuineness of feeling and the correlation of the poem's successful artistic devices with the human condition of its nineteenth century readers....they responded enthusiastically to what their experience told them was true an genuine in the poem". (Duerksen, Shelley's Poetry of Involvement, 68)

In other words, ignore the critics and read with your heart.  Kenneth Neill Cameron also offers a valuable comment on the appeal of Queen Mab:

If at times the language, in its revolutionary bluntness, short-circuits finer aesthetic transmutations, its cascading sincerity gives it a rugged intensity of power unique in English poetry. In spite of the higher harmonies and soaring visionariness of Prometheus Unbound, Queen Mab, dealing with the same theme cannot simple be regarded as a juvenile precursor. It is a great poem in its own right. (Cameron, Young Shelley, 254)

Shelley's themes revolved around the correct response to authoritarians and tyrants, political and religious repression, massive concentration of wealth, and exploitation of the working class and the environment.  Reading Shelley today engenders a very disturbing feeling of deja vu; his concerns appear to be eerily familiar to us.  How much have things changed?  Are they in fact worse? Certainly Paul Foot seemed to think so in 1981 when he gave his famous speech, The Revolutionary Percy Bysshe Shelley. Read it all here. He shrewdly perceived the importance of Shelley to the modern world, saying,

Of all the things about Shelley that really inspired people [in the] a hundred and sixty years since his death, the thing that matters above all is [his] enthusiasm [for the idea] that the world can be changed. It shapes all his poetry. And when you come to read [Ode to the West Wind] where he writes about the “pestilence stricken multitudes” and the leaves being blown by the wind; [then you understand that] he sees the leaves as multitudes of people stricken by a pestilence. You begin to see his ideas, his enthusiasm and his love of life. He believed in life and he really felt that life is what mattered. That life could and should be better than it is. Could be better and should be better. Could and should be changed. That was the thing he believed in most of all.

I think readers of this blog share Shelley's enthusiasm. Foot believed that our job as activists, as people who care about our world, was to "unlock the enthusiasm, the excitement that exists in every human being." He and I believe that Shelley can provide us with an inspiration and a vocabulary to help us do this. Mulhallen is a kindred spirit:

The Universe,

In nature's silent eloquence, declares

That all fulfil the works of love and joy -

All but the outcast man. He fabricates

The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth

The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up

The tyrant, whose delight is his woe,

Whose sport is his agony.

Shelley, Queen Mab, 3. 196-203

I hate to end with a quibble, but I know Mulhallen shares my concern. The one thing I find troubling about this book is the selection of the cover image. This child-like, effeminate image is a misrepresentation; it bears no relation to what he must have looked like. It is not a portrait. This plays directly into the stubbornly resistant narrative of the "ineffectual angel" created over a century ago by Matthew Arnold. People are surprisingly influenced by visual images; therefore this is the wrong one to have chosen. Apparently this was a choice made by the publisher and NOT the author.

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Jacqueline Mulhallen wrote and performed in the plays Sylvia and Rebels and Friends. She is the author of The Theatre of Shelley (Open Book Publishers, 2010) and contributed a chapter on Shelley to The Oxford Handbook to Georgian Theatre (OUP, 2014), which was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2015. Click the button above and order her wonderful book, Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary. You will thank me. You can visit her website here.

Alexander Larman's "Byron's Women" and the conjoined but contrasting myths of Shelley and Byron

Last week Byron's Women was released in paperback. In recognition of this, I have re-released my original recommendation as part of Throwback Thursday at TRPBS.  I suppose it is fair enough to draw a line between the character of a poet and his or her poetic output, however, the Byron that emerges from these pages is so odious, so repellent that I find it impossible to do so.  I can understand why Shelley was increasingly troubled by his behaviour and why he was so worried for the well-being of Allegra.

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Alexander Larman's new book Byron's Women is just out and you need to buy it; now.  In what may be one of the best written blogs I have come across in a very long time, he encapsulates his thesis. Larman does not mince words:

The greatest falsehood propagated about Byron is that he loved women. On the contrary, his attitude towards those in his life was mainly a mixture of contempt, violence and lordly dismissal.

In the pages of his book it would appear that we finally we have someone speaking truth to power and by power I mean what Larman calls the "Byron establishment"; an establishment which he asserts has been "permeated by a lazy misogyny for decades". You can find his article here. If his blog is in any way representative of what is to come in his book Byron's Women, it will be a blockbuster.

Larman's book interests me for a very particular reason: I am fascinated by "reputational history." Students and advocates for Shelley have battled for literally 200 years over who the "real" Percy Bysshe Shelley is. I think there is an important lesson for fans, students and critics alike: and that is that very little can be taken at face value when we speak about "cultural heroes".  In the case of Byron, in order to maintain his place in the pantheon, his supporters have chosen to almost completely ignore a dark side.  In the case of Shelley, advocates constructed a version of Shelley which never existed.  Byron's reputation benefited when what can only be called a "coalition of the willing"  either ignored his misogyny or painted out of existence.  Shelley's reputation suffered when his advocates (for a multiplicity of reasons, some of them well-meaning) chose to block out his political radicalism.

Let me give a stark example.  Here are two descriptions of Shelley drawn by two famous, erudite Victorians:

This:

“Enchanted child, born into a world unchildlike; spoiled darling of Nature, playmate of her elemental daughters; "pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift," laired amidst the burning fastnesses of his own fervid mind; bold foot along the verges of precipitous dream; light leaper from crag to crag of inaccessible fancies; towering Genius, whose soul rose like a ladder between heaven and earth with the angels of song ascending and descending it;--he is shrunken into the little vessel of death, and sealed with the unshatterable seal of doom, and cast down deep below the rolling tides of Time.”

and this:

"...there can be no mistake whatever about the attitude Shelley took up...in the whole body of his writing toward the established system of society, which, as he avowed in one of his later letters, he wished to see, "overthrown from the foundations with all of its superstructure, maxims and forms." His principles are utterly subversive of all that orthodoxy holds most sacred, whether in ethics or in religion..."

The first comes from Francis Thompson's arch-Victorian paean to Shelley that was published in 1909.  The second comes from the roughly contemporary Henry Stephens Salt, writing in his seminal book "Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Pioneer" in 1896 .  Can these possibly be the same person?  Clearly not. Yet in the contest of competing visions, I would suggest that Thompson's image of Shelley has for the most part won out, to the detriment of Shelley. One scholar (Karsten Klejs Engleberg) produced a bibliography of over one thousand essays and monographs that were written about Shelley up until 1860. Mark Kipperman commented in his 1992 article, "Absorbing a Revolution: Shelley Becomes a Romantic, 1889-1903" that these essays invariably,

"centered on the spectacular events - the elopement, the rumors of hallucination and madness, the death, cremation, and ghoulish passing on of relics - to sustain the myth of a poet either ludicrously incapable, criminally irresponsible, or gloriously and ineffably transcendent."

Newman Ivey White's landmark 1940 biography of Shelley devoted an entire chapter to Shelley's posthumous reputation.  At the time of his death, Byron was literally the world's first superstar; Shelley, on the other hand, was virtually unknown. It is a quirk of history that the survival of Shelley's reputation as a poet in the early years after his death owed a noticeable debt to the accidental factor of his connection with Byron. Thereafter, it slowly gathered steam and within 20 years Shelley had accomplished one of the greatest and most unlikely comebacks in literary history - he joined his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Byron in the accepted pantheon of the great writers of the 19th Century.

White traces the manner in which the feat was pulled off but a detailed analysis of this is beyond the scope of this short note.  What I will say is this: what Shelley became famous for would most likely have been anathema to him.  The man who was, according to White, "perhaps the greatest radical voice in poetry since Lucretius" became a sentimentalized caricature of himself. The later Victorian critics, whose voice I think dominates to this day the lay perception of Shelley, believed that while he was one of the great poets, “on everything that really mattered to him except his purely personal emotions and his fine art, he was dead wrong.”  In short, the Shelley ends up widely regarded as one of the great 19th Century writers based upon a completely erroneous understanding of what he actually stood for.  As White observes, "Matthew Arnold's 'beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain', was protested by Stopford Brooke in his Shelley Society inaugural address [1886], but it remains today one of the most influential critical dicta on Shelley." Thus White concludes, "undoubtedly a large part of Shelley’s popularity for a hundred years has been based upon an evasion of the real Shelley."

Shelley's admirers went to absolutely extraordinary lengths to cement his reputation as anything other than the "atheist, lover of humanity and democrat" which he described himself as.   For example look at these images:

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A biographer of Shelley's, Buxton Forman, actually commissioned this 'portrait' of Shelley. The drawing was explicitly imitative of da Vinci's "Head of Christ" and bore no relation to what Shelley looked like at all (yeah, okay, he got the open-necked shirt right).  Forman then went on to present this falsified image as a "portrait" of Shelley in two successive editions of his biography. I have an article coming on the manner in which Shelley has been represented throughout the last two centuries.

Let's now turn to Byron and go back to that opening salvo of Larman's:

"The greatest falsehood propagated about Byron is that he loved women. On the contrary, his attitude towards those in his life was mainly a mixture of contempt, violence and lordly dismissal."

There has to be an irony in this somewhere.  To promote their hero, Byron's advocates have disguised or ignored distinctly unappealing aspects of his character.  Exactly the same could be said about Shelley.  But in Shelley's case the character traits which were suppressed and considered to be unappealing had nothing to do with misogyny, contempt or violence; they had to do with political radicalism, republicanism and in particular atheism. Let us also not forget that Byron was more a cynic than a skeptic and that his republican values were a thin gruel indeed; a fact that grated continually on Shelley. Marx brilliantly and succinctly captured the contrast between the two poets:

"The real difference between Byron and Shelley is this: those who understand and love them rejoice that Byron died at 36, because if he had lived he would have become a reactionary bourgeois; they grieve that Shelley died at 29, because he was essentially a revolutionist and he would always have been one of the advanced guard of socialism."

Byron, unlike Shelley, never demonstrated the slightest desire to repudiate his aristocratic title and privilege. He was a man born as George Gordon, who by accident of birth (and a lot of other fortuitous circumstances) manged to inherit a title. Perhaps it is an accident of my birth in Canada that I find this uncomfortable and irksome. George Gordon is never referred to by his real name - only his lordly title.  And I think his reputation has benefited from this for the simple reason that title and aristocratic privilege clearly matter - and not just in England, around the world.  I think this dismaying deference to aristocracy has in many ways contributed to the Byron cult. You can imagine what Shelley might have thought of that.  Here is Larman on the subject:

"In a hurry to put their beloved lordly poet on a pedestal, scholars, critics and general readers alike have been all too keen to overlook the obvious faults that he had as a man."

So, Shelley and Byron, two remarkably dissimilar poets, at least share this much: they each have a carefully cultivated myth. Larman's stated objective is to "delve beneath the surface of the myth" and warns his readers to "be prepared for what we may find there."  As a student of Shelley, I find the contrast between the history of the reputations fascinating.  Like many other Shelley scholars, I have spent much of my life engaged in my own archeological project - delving beneath the surface of Shelley's own myth to resurrect the "real" Percy Bysshe Shelley. This is a theme I will continue to develop in this blog

Larman recounts movingly the obstacles he faced in writing his book:

"And what of ‘the Manager’ himself, as Annabella and Augusta nicknamed Byron? At times, as I wrote about his grotesque cruelty towards Annabella and Claire, I found myself loathing him so much that it was almost an ordeal to continue to chart his misdeeds. Yet I must confess that I have, like so many others, been at least been half-seduced by Byron. Like the women he associated with, he was a pioneer in thought and deed. Of all the Romantic poets, it is his writing that speaks most clearly to us today, as his hatred of ‘the cant’ will find a warm reception with readers who have themselves long since wearied of being told what they should think and feel."

I hope you will allow me a little advocacy for Shelley.  On the question of who speaks most clearly to us today, Larman and I must part company.  Shelley despised much more than "cant". It was Shelley's politics and philosophy that inspired generations of Chartists and socialists; not Byron's. Newman Ivey White goes so far as to say, "If Robert Owen was the founder of British socialism, it is possible for modern socialism to claim Shelley as a sort of grandfather.”  I think it is reasonably clear today that even the political event Byron is most famous for - the Greek war for independence - was something he poorly understood. He was heard to remark shortly before his death in Greece: "this is Shelley's war"; as in, I think, "What am I doing here?" Marx had so much wrong, but in his opinion of Byron and Shelley, I think we can see a startlingly accurate insight.

I suppose it is controversial of me to pit Byron against Shelley, but history has conjoined them. Therefore is it perhaps not so terribly wrong to open the door to a contest of ideas and philosophies.  In any event, for my part, I can't wait until my copy of Byron's Women arrives from my local book seller.

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Alexander Larman is an author and journalist who read English at Oxford and graduated with a First.  He writes regularly about literature and the arts for publications including The Guardian, TLS, New Statesman, Spectator, Telegraph, Five Dials, the Erotic Review and the Observer. He also reviews restaurants and hotels for luxury titles such as The Arbuturian, The Resident, Quintessentially Insider and Mr and Mrs Smith. You can find him online here. His blog about his book can be found for the Wordsworth Trust here. Follow him on Twitter.

Elizabeth Rawson - "Cicero; A Portrait"

I wish I could find a simple way to convince people to read about one of my heroes, Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Today he seems so remote.  However a very great deal of our modern world (our laws, our language, our philosophy) is founded upon his thinking. And for those of you who are interested in Shelley, Cicero is actually extremely important.  Shelley was very familiar with his writings and said of him, "Cicero is, in my estimation, one of the most admirable characters in the world." Much of the underpinning for Shelley's philosophical skepticism is derived from his reading of Cicero; whose philosophical dialogues are cited in his letters as a "favourite".  The "Tusculan Disputations" were an extremely important source for aspects of "Prometheus Unbound". If you want to know Shelley, you must understand Cicero.

Early manuscript copy of The Tuscan Disputations

Elizabeth Rawson's biography of Cicero is probably the ONE indispensable modern portrait that we have. Cicero has, of course, been the subject of innumerable books. His importance to any understanding of his age (or indeed our own) simply can not be underestimated. So prolific was he that during the middle ages he was actually thought by many to have been two people: Tullius and Cicero! He was referred to as "Tully" by generations of aristocrats who often gave this name to their daughters. Sir John Harrington poignantly brought Cicero to the attention of the Elizabethan generation with his moving translation of what he called , "Cicero's Book of Friendship" (he was also the inventor of the flush toilet!!). Today we know this volume as "On Friendship" and I much recommend it.  Cicero was, in short, revered.

However, Cicero's reputation has, of late, suffered somewhat. A fantastic example of this is the crudely distorted and utterly unhistorical treatment he receives in one of the books in Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series. I remember how excited I was when the first of these books appeared: "The First Man in Rome".  It was fantastic! But the series seemed to steadily deteriorate in quality and coherence from volume to volume - it was as if she started mailing it in. By the time she reached the fourth volume, "The October Horse" McCullough's abject and unreasoned hero worship of Caesar had reached its apogee and her vilification of Cicero had reached its nadir. The books were becoming unreadable.   In McCullough's portrayal, Cicero, the greatest orator of his age (and one of the greatest in history), squeaks and grovels his way through some of the most momentous moments in Roman history. McCollough (who comically purports in one of her "After Words" to have her "nose glued to the historical record") is not alone -- but her supposedly "historical" portrait surely remains the most distempered and dyspeptic view of Cicero in recent memory. She should, were she alive, be ashamed.

Rawson, on the other hand,  offers a readable, erudite, accessible biography that canvasses all of the important aspects of Cicero's life and thought. It is true that she is sympathetic and an admirer, but she is not blind to his many foibles.

As a young man I had a perhaps unreasoning admiration for Cicero. I held him in a somewhat old-fashioned esteem.  I confess I named a succession of dogs after him - though not a daughter!

But it was Rawson who provided me with the necessary perspective on him. You really need no other. I think that what is important about this volume is the careful attention devoted to Cicero's political and philosophical works. Mary Beard has best described what we were all waiting for: "a biographical account that tried to explore the way his life-story has been constructed and reconstructed over the last two thousand years; how we have learned to read Cicero through Jonson, Voltaire, Ibsen and the rest; what kind of investment we still have, and why, in a thundering conservative of the first century BC and his catchy oratorical slogans. Why, in short, is Cicero still around in the 21st century? And on whose terms?" Her review of Anthony Everitt's much inferior biography can be found here.

Cicero's reputation gets a much needed shot in the arm in Rawson's volume. She writes, "whatever the shortcomings of Cicero's political works, there is no evidence that any of his contemporaries understood the problems of the time as clearly or indeed produced nearly so positive a contribution towards solving them as he did."

Her penultimate chapter on his final year in Rome also offers a closely argued reassessment of his place in the "final conflict". In Rawson's view, it was in 43 BCE that he became the "true ruler of Rome" -- for however brief a period.

This book is filled with little gems. It is often remarked that one of Cicero's principal contributions to Rome was his elevation of the Latin language itself. But it was unknown to me that words such as "quality", "essence" and "moral" were first found in Cicero (though derived from Greek roots).
Also reproduced here are some of the marvelous witticisms for which he was so justly famous. Upon hearing that Brutus deemed Caesar to have "joined the boni" (by which he meant the privileged class), Cicero remarked that he did not know "where Caesar would find them, unless he first hanged himself." Cicero is also famous for the oft quoted expression "O tempore, O mores" which we can translate as "Oh what times! Oh what customs!" This was a phrase designed to deplore the viciousness and corruption of his age and comes from his famous attack on Cataline that began, "How far, then Cataline, will you go on abusing our patience. How long, you madman, will you mock at our vengeance? Will there be no end to your unbridled audacity".

Perhaps the most poignant assessment of Cicero was Plutarch's, though he puts the words in, of all people, Augustus' mouth. According to Plutarch, Augustus discovers one of his grandsons reading a volume of Cicero. The terrified boy trembles while his grandfather leafs through the book at length. At last the great emperor hands the book back with the famous words: "an eloquent man, my boy, an eloquent man....and a patriot."

Cicero is one of the most important personages in all of history. Indeed it is almost impossible for us to understand the roots of our culture unless we understand him. Percy Bysshe Shelley commented in one of his letters that he admired him above all other writers - a reason to love Shelley and a reason to love Cicero. If you read nothing else of him, read this wonderful book.

Gabriel Charton - Glaciers of Chamonix

Tony Astill has been a bookseller for over 40 years and specializes in rare mountaineering books and mountain art. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an Associate Member of the Alpine Club.  A visit to his websites www.mountaineeringbooks.org and www.mountainpaintings.org is like a stepping out of time and into the finest of rare book rooms.  He is also a congenial and helpful proprietor who is quick to respond with assistance, suggestions and ideas.

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Tony Astill's facsimile edition of Charton's 1821 "Glaciers of Chamonix

I encountered an extraordinary book of his while in Chamonix in May of this year: Tony Astill's facsimile edition of Gabriel Charton’s 1821 “tour guide”: “Souvenirs Pittoresques des Glaciers de Chamouny” (Glaciers de Chamouny).  I was there to follow in the footsteps of Percy Bysshe Shelley who visited the area almost 200 years ago in July of 1816.  His time there was very important for it was in Chamonix that Shelley found his literary footing, his poetic voice and where he developed the tailored skeptical philosophy that was to influence his literary output for the rest of his life.

To get to Chamonix most people follow the Viaduct des Egratz which in under an hour takes you effortlessly into the heart of the alpine valley that Shelley took several days to reach. It cuts through the heart of the valley of the Arve, avoids the historic alpine villages that dot the countryside and burrows through granite mountainsides.  It is a busy, smelly, noisy thoroughfare. 

However, it is also possible to follow the old “Ancienne Route Imperiale” which takes you through Bonneville, Saint Martin, St Gervais, Le Lac de Chede, Col de Voza and Servoz (where I stopped and had one of the greatest lunches I have even had at La Sauvageonne).  At this point the valley narrows into what Shelley called the Gorge of the Arve and the old imperial highway was erased forever – there was simply no room for both old and new.  After exiting the gorge, the road jinks hard left and a majestic view of the Vale of Chamonix opens.

This would have been Shelley’s route, and Tony Astill has done students of Shelley an inestimable favour by offering a gorgeous facsimile edition of Charton’s "Glaciers de Chamouny".   If you want to get a sense of what Shelley saw with his own eyes, this is the book for you because it EXACTLY follows the route he followed and contains startling, contemporary images of Chamonix, the Mont Blanc Massif and the Glaciers of Chamonix: Glace de Mer and Bossons.

For example, here is Charton's Bonneville:

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Bonneville, 1821

And here is how it looks today:

Bonneville, 2015

If you can not make the trip yourself, Charton's tour guide will take you step by step into the Chamonix. The valley narrows dramatically at Servox, a fact Charton's images clearly captures:

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Saint Gervais, 1821

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Servoz, 1821

Snow capped peaks appear and the road climbs up on the shoulder of the ravine reaching a considerable height at Servox which today is a gorgeous little village where properties are on sale for almost USD $2,000,000. When Shelley visited, it was little more than a hamlet. So far, Shelley would have seen nothing that he had not seen in one form or an another in Wales. After Servoz, the road then descends to the valley floor (you can see clearly the gap through which Shelley needed to go in the second image above) before it makes a sharp turn to the left which dramatically reveals the Mont Blanc Massif in all of its majesty. Here is what Shelley wrote:

“As we proceeded, our route still lay through the valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains whose immensity staggers the imagination. We crossed the path of a torrent, which three days since had descended from the thawing snow, and torn the road away…."

‘Glaciers de Chamouny” was produced in 1821 and despite Astill’s best efforts, he has managed to locate a mere handful of surviving copies. As Astill notes, the original publication was aimed at the “wealthy traveller of the day and the elite of Genevoise society”.  No such volume was available for Shelley; a fact that raises some important considerations which I intend to write about in an article soon to be published here.

Charton was an artist and engraver and Astill notes that he was:

“one of the first to introduce the process of lithographic printing in Switzerland.  It was the very first illustrated guide for those who desired to travel the road from Geneva to Chamonix…The original French text…provides a lively descriptive account of the journey and accompanies a series of delightful views that lead the traveller to their destination.”

His process was novel. The facsimile’s forward, by Jacques Perret, notes that he followed in the footsteps of a father and son team, the Lorys, who:

 “painted from nature and then engraved their works from nature.”  Charton, on the other hand “took his inspiration from the works of landscape painters and reproduced them resorting to the new lithographic process, the colouring being done in the workshop. These gouache and watercolour lithographies were then assembled into albums presented to travellers.”

While this facsimile has obvious interest to art historians and those who cherish the Alps, it is of a particular interest to any student of the Shelleys (for both Mary and Percy derived inspiration for major works of literature from their visit to Chamonix).  This may be the only book that traces their path and gives us a sense of what they saw.

But it gives us only a sense, because despite the closeness in time to 1816, the Shelley’s visited Chamonix under very different conditions – in the depths of the “Year without Summer”. The images reproduced by Charton are for the most part “picturesque” scenes (as suggested by the title itself).   Paintings such as "The Priory"

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The Priory, Chamonix, 1821

show us a calm, serene countryside, peopled by well dressed travellers; even the glaciers themselves seem somehow tamed. One of Shelley’s own descriptions should suffice to suggest his very different experience.

"As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact may be considered as a continuation of those we have followed from Bonneville Cluses) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6000 from the earth but so as effectually conceal not only Mont Blanc but other aiguilles as they call them here, attached and subordinate to it. We were travelling along the valley suddenly we heard a sound as of burst of smothered thunder rolling above; yet there was something earthly in the sound that told us it could not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path among the rocks and continued to hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent which it displaced and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves over the ravine which was their couch."

Avalanches in July!! I will write further about the startling differences in my soon to be published series on “Shelley and the Sublime.”

For now, I am here simply to extol this beautiful facsimile, to recommend that you acquire it and to congratulate and thank Tony for the service he has done to Shelley scholarship.