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Vegetarianism and vitality in the work of Thomas Forster, William Lawrence and P.B. Shelley
Article in Keats-Shelley Journal · January 2005
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SHARON RUSTON
HE recent publication of Thomas Love Peacock’s collected letters, edited by Nicholas Joukovsky, has brought into the public domain correspondence between Peacock and one of his earliest friends, Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster (–).₁ Forster is hardly mentioned in the major critical or biographical accounts of the life and work of Peacock or P.B. Shelley,and yet dur- ing the formative years – it seems likely that he was an important figure in both their lives, connecting them to such politi- cally-inflected scientific issues as vegetarianism and animal rights that would continue to feature in their life and work.² Forster was a nat- uralist, with a dizzying array of interests and publications. Many of these interests dovetail with Shelley’s own concerns at this period in his life. Forster was a vegetarian, a follower of Franz Joseph Gall’s and Johann Caspar Spurzheim’s theories (he invented the word “phrenol- ogy”); he was interested in “atmospheric phenomena,” the effects of “spiritous liquors,”balloon travel and classical languages. He was also active in his efforts to prevent cruelty to animals, eventually helping Lewis Gompertz to set up the Animals’ Friend Society. He was the friend of William Lambe, the doctor who, with John Frank Newton, influenced Shelley’s vegetarianism. Indeed Forster’s scientific and
. The Letters of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. by Nicholas A. Joukovsky, vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). . Forster is discussed in Nicholas A. Joukovsky,“Peacock before Headlong Hall: A New Look at his Early Years,” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin (): –. He is mentioned once in Marilyn Butler’s Peacock Displayed: A Satirist in his Context (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ), p. . [ ] Keats-Shelley Journal medical acquaintances figure large in Shelley’s London and Bracknell circles of –. Forster also provides a link between his better-known contempo- raries and the debate on the nature of vitality,which took place in the Royal College of Surgeons from –, between surgeons John Abernethy and William Lawrence. Forster had been the pupil of Abernethy, at St. Bartholomew’s hospital in London, and there, pre- sumably,met William Lawrence, who became Forster’s lifelong friend and Shelley’s friend and doctor.This essays builds on and confirms the research I have published in my monograph,Shelley and Vitality, offer- ing further evidence of the influence of the teachings of Abernethy and Lawrence on Forster’s and Shelley’s vegetarianism and interest in animal rights, and, indeed, finds suggestive similarities in the writings of Forster and Shelley.³ The work Timothy Morton has done in this area asserts a link between comparative anatomy, the study of differ- ent species of living creatures, vegetarianism and the fledgling animal rights’ movement, which Forster’s life and work, unknown to Mor- ton, confirms.⁴ In this essay, for the first time, Forster’s writings are discussed at length and compared to Shelley’s own writings on vege- tarianism and animal rights. The debate between Abernethy and Lawrence was at its most pub- lic during the second decade of the nineteenth century,when the two surgeons gave lectures to the Royal College of Surgeons on the nature of vitality, which they then published. In , after he had been denounced as a materialist and an atheist in a number of pamphlets issued in the wake of his Lectures on the Natural History of Man, Law- rence was suspended from his hospital posts.⁵ In his final, public word on their dispute, Abernethy alluded to a group of medical students who disagreed with his theories.₆ This group, whom he had previ- ously labeled the “Modern Sceptics,”had, like Lawrence, Forster and even Shelley,been taught anatomy and surgery by Abernethy,but they
. Sharon Ruston, Shelley and Vitality (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, ), pp. –, –. .Timothy Morton,Shelley and the Revolution in Taste (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,). . William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology,Zoology,and The Natural History of Man, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons (London: J. Callow, ). . John Abernethy, The Hunterian Oration for the Year , delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons, in London (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, ), p. . Vegetarianism and Vitality openly expressed skepticism at what he presented as “Mr Hunter’s Theory of Life.”⁷ As I have established in Shelley and Vitality, Shelley had decided to become a surgeon after being expelled from Oxford in and spent his time in London before his elopement with Har- riet Westbrook in the company of his two medical cousins, John and Charles Grove, attending Abernethy’s anatomical lectures and some- times accompanying them to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (pp. –). Forster had also been enrolled as a student physician in Bart’s.⁸ He, too, had attended Abernethy’s lectures on anatomy (Illustrations,p.). By Forster had met and become friends with Abernethy’s erst- while apprentice and demonstrator,William Lawrence.⁹ Abernethy’s teachings clearly influenced both Shelley and Forster, but their friendship with Lawrence, encouraged by shared political convic- tions, ensured their support of him in the ideologically-motivated debate concerning the nature of life.A mutual interest in comparative anatomy binds Forster, Lawrence and Shelley during this first half of the s, and Forster’s many publications offer a new source of evi- dence for Shelley’s circle and its interests in vegetarianism and animal rights. In this essay I first briefly examine the Romantics’ preoccupation with defining life and consider the ways in which the study of com- parative anatomy fed into the rights movements of the period. An early letter from Peacock to Forster offers an insight into their theo- ries on comparative anatomy at this time. New evidence drawn from
. John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, Exhibiting a General View of Mr Hunter’s Physiology, and of his researches in Comparative Anatomy, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons, in the year (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, ), p. . . Forster writes that he was “entered as physician’s pupil at St.Bartholomew’s hospital”where he “was struck with the simple but effective practice of Mr. Abernethy,” Illustrations of the Atmospherical Origin of Epidemic Disorders of Health (Chelmsford: Meggy and Chalk, London:T.and G. Underwood, ), p. v. There is a “Mr. Forster” enrolled as a student of Abernethy in a register of students at Bart’s, for the – session (commencing October ). I am very grateful to Samantha Searle (Archivist for St. Bartholomew’s Hospital library) for this information, which was obtained from Ludford Harvey’s Jour- nal, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Archives MS, BHA X /.The preface of Illustrations, however, suggests that Forster began his studies at Bart’s earlier than , since he dates his interest in atmospherical phe- nomena from “About the same time”and suggests that it was his education at Bart’s that introduced him to Abernethy’s theories of the importance of diet (p. ). He published on these topics in and respectively. . Thomas Forster, Recueil des Ouvrages et des Pensées d’un Physicien et Metaphysicien (Francfort sur le Mein, ), p. . Keats-Shelley Journal Godwin’s diaries reveals more about Lawrence’s involvement in the London and Bracknell circles to which Shelley introduced Peacock. I then consider Forster’s publication on the destructive effects of alco- hol as evidence of his indebtedness to the work of Lambe and Aber- nethy.Shelley’s writings on vegetarianism are regarded similarly as the work of someone immersed in this circle. The question of what life was necessitated an investigation into how living beings differed from dead or inanimate ones. What was life, if it was experienced by creatures as diversely organized as humans, animals and plants? During the Romantic period, a number of scientific discoveries coalesced in a new perception of the term “life.”The possibility that life existed on other planets seemed a great deal more likely after Sir William Herschel’s assertions that the uni- verse was far bigger than had been thought and that the moon’s sur- face had both seas and volcanoes. Shelley understood both assertions as signs that the moon could potentially contain life. Conversely, microscopic study proved that the Earth was teeming with invisible microscopic lifeforms, and Thomas Paine, among others, argued that the existence of such life made the idea that space was also inhabited much more likely.₁⁰ In a letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, in , Shelley wrote: I will say then, that all nature is animated, that miscroscopic [sic] vision as it hath discovered to us millions of animated beings whose pursuits and passions are as eagerly followed as our own, so might it if extended find that Nature itself was but a mass of organized animation.₁₁ The political implications of such statements are clear. Man was less the focus of attention than part of a new, all-encompassing “life” of which human life was simply one variant; Wordsworth’s and Cole- ridge’s view of the “one life” shared by all can be seen as a statement of this new understanding. Indeed, at this time the term “man” was difficult to pin down.₁²
. See Paine’s The Age of Reason, in Political Writings, ed. by Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . . The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. F. L. Jones, vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), , – ( November ). . The term is often used in texts of the period, including Shelley’s, to denote humans, rather than Vegetarianism and Vitality Understanding of man’s relationship to other animals was shifting and comparative anatomy was an important part of these discussions. Pea- cock’s first extant letter to Forster, dated October , discusses the problem of even using the term “man” (Letters, , ). Peacock’s discussion arises from his consideration of Robert Forsythe’s opinions “relative to the immortality of the soul,”in his Principles of Moral Sci- ence (Letters, , ).₁³ When Forsythe argues that “every man is immor- tal,”Peacock argues that: the term man remains to be defined. Locke has satisfactorily shewn that there are no precise boundaries of the human species. . . . If we define man to be a reasoning animal, idiots and children are excluded from this definition:and how shall we draw the line between New- ton and an idiot? (Letters, , , Peacock’s emphasis). The problem is central to the science of comparative anatomy: Pea- cock is asking what single characteristic do all humans share? What is their defining trait? This was a question that extended beyond Locke’s opinion to the science of Peacock’s day: humans appeared to share far more with other species than had previously been thought. Even plants were now acknowledged to have the equivalent of lungs and to respire.The question Peacock asks has political resonance because, in order to argue for the rights of man, we have to be sure that we can define “man.” As Peacock argues, if reason is recognized as the one thing all men must have to be considered men, then idiots and chil- dren are disqualified.This was an argument Mary Wollstonecraft had countered in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: woman needs to be recognized as being of the same species as man to be entitled to equivalent rights.While Wollstonecraft is willing to accept momen- tarily,and for the sake of argument, the possibility that woman forms the “link which unites man with brutes,”she attacks those men who have increased the inferiority of women, till they “are almost sunk below the standard of rational creatures.”₁⁴ Anna Barbauld’s poem “A
specifically man.That said, there is an interesting debate going on at this time, which this essay will only touch on, concerning whether women or children have the same kind of vitality as men. . Robert Forsythe, The Principles of Moral Sciences (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, ). . Mary Wollstonecraft, The Vindications, ed. by D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, ), pp. , . Keats-Shelley Journal Mouse’s Petition”also uses the tactic of comparing animal and human life; the mouse asks his captor to consider their similar means of life, their mutual need for air and water in order to live, as well as philo- sophical arguments such as the Pythagorean theory of the transmigra- tion of souls, when judging whether it has a right to life.₁⁵ The “chain of terrestrial being” Peacock presents in his letter to Forster should be seen in this light (Letters, , ). He offers a hierar- chy, the links between which he admits are “intimate” and “often imperceptible,”which has “White Man” above “Red Man,”“Negro,” and “Albino” (Letters, , –).₁₆ Peacock is concerned with the closeness rather than the distance between the links: the chain is offered as evidence of the problem of assigning “precise boundaries” around the human species.Forster,in his reply,disagreed on one point with Peacock, inserting “Dog!” above “Albino” on Peacock’s scale, thus elevating dogs to a position farther up the chain than Peacock had given them (Letters, , , n. ). Forster’s love of animals, and of dogs in particular, was bound up with his vegetarianism and his theory of life, both of which were influenced by his understanding of comparative anatomy.Though I can find no independent evidence of a meeting between Shelley and Forster, their mutual interests in the early s are highly suggestive of a shared intellectual circle. By , the date of this first extant let- ter, Peacock and Forster were correspondents and friends; Peacock met Shelley in late October or early November and was intro- duced by Shelley in to the “Bracknell circle” of vegetarian rad- icals, including Godwin’s friends the Newtons, Turners, and de Boinvilles. Lawrence, it seems, was one of this circle, as was Peacock.₁⁷ Around this time, Forster had become a vegetarian himself.₁⁸ Forster repeatedly links the radical politics and vegetarianism of a circle that
. The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, with a Memoir by Lucy Aikin, vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Browne and Green, ), , –. . Lawrence’s theories of life, based as they were on comparative anatomy,proffered a similarly racist view; see Lectures, pp. –. . See Cornelia Newton’s letter to Hogg,Shelley and his Circle,–,ed.Kenneth Neill Cameron and D. H. Reiman, vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, –), , . . In a late publication he recalls how on June he received a serious wound to his hand, which healed “by first attention,”“owing to my living at that time entirely on fruits,” Philozoia; or, moral reflections on the actual condition of the animal kingdom, and on the means of improving the same ...addressed to Lewis [sic] Gompertz (Brussels:W.Todd, ), p. . Vegetarianism and Vitality includes himself, Shelley, and the surgeon Lawrence. He insists in many publications that Lawrence was a vegetarian, which, if true, would accord with Lawrence’s early inclusion in the Godwin-Shelley circle, but would have further embarrassed the surgeon in his later move away from such radicalism.₁⁹ Indeed Forster’s writings, coupled with manuscript evidence from the Godwin diaries, reveal more about Lawrence’s participation in this circle than was known previ- ously. Forster may also have corresponded with these figures; Jou- kovsky found the letters from Peacock in a folder on which Forster had written “Philosophers | Of my Early Days | Peacock | Lawrence | Shelley | Beaufoy | Byron | Moore,”though the folder no longer contained letters from Lawrence, Shelley, Byron, Lawrence or Moore.²⁰ He clearly felt that he had been close enough to Shelley to contemplate writing a biography of the poet sometime around (Letters, , l).²₁ By , Forster had already published his Physiological Reflections on the Destructive Operation of Spiritous and Fermented Liquors on the Animal System,a book which would have interested the teetotaler Shelley and which was explicitly influenced by the medical theories of William Lambe and John Abernethy,both of whom urged patients to look to their diet as treatment for disease.²² In his memoirs Forster recalls first meeting Abernethy through Lambe in , the year in which Shel- ley was attending Abernethy’s lectures and immersing himself in the medical culture of Bart’s hospital (Recueil des Ouvrages,p.). Forster here claims that his vegetarianism was influenced by reading Italian Renaissance drama, histories of the Hindu people, treatises on the inhumane treatment on animals, Pythagorean philosophy and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.²³ He draws his sources from classical, pastoral and ori-
. See, for example, Philozoia, pp. –. Lawrence voices a very different opinion of vegetarianism in his Lectures,pp.–. . I am grateful to Nicholas A. Joukovsky for letting me know that the folder did not contain any letters to Lawrence. . Forster wrote: “J’avais l’intention d’écrire la vie de Shelley, mais je n’ai pas assez de matériaux” (Recueil des Ouvrages, p. ). . Physiological Reflections on the Destructive Operation of Spiritous and Fermented Liquors on the Animal System (London:Thomas Underwood, ). For more information on the diets prescribed by Lambe and Abernethy, see Shelley and Vitality, pp. –. . Forster uses the phrase cibo di latte et del frutto a number of times, as though he is quoting Giambat- tista Guarini’s pastoral drama Il Pastor Fido (“The Faithful Shepherd”).The line nearest in sense in Keats-Shelley Journal ental traditions. Forster, like Lambe and Abernethy,believed that diet influenced health and it is no surprise that his book on the destruc- tive effects of alcohol would have brought him to their attention. While Forster and Lambe clearly kept in touch beyond their initial introduction, the former fell out with Abernethy,transferring his alle- giances, as did Shelley,to Abernethy’s erstwhile apprentice Lawrence. Forster opens his Physiological Reflections with the declaration: “I believe there are few medical facts more generally acknowledged, than that drunkenness and gluttony are destructive of health” (p. ). He uses the politicized language of writers such as Lambe when he speaks of contemporary “artificial society”: among the “evil habits” that presently “act to our detriment” are “sedentary occupations and slothful habits of life, confinement in the impure air of cities, irregu- larities of diet, peculiarities of atmosphere, and the reciprocal influence of the mind and body on each other” (p. ).²⁴ Abernethy’s influence can be seen in this emphasis on a “sympathy” between the body, specifically the stomach, and mind. In the book, Forster refers the reader to Abernethy’s Constitutional Origin of Local Diseases, which he hopes his work will publicize further (p. , n.). Abernethy’s thesis in his Constitutional Origin was that the stomach was the most important part of the body: unhealthy diet irritated the stomach and damaged the constitution, to the extent that it was sus- ceptible to diseases and illness. He believed in a “sympathy” that existed between the stomach and the rest of the body, and between the body and the mind. Forster considers his tract as simply extend- ing the work of both Abernethy and Lambe, to whom he refers with admiration and respect: the ingenious Dr. Lambe has even considered animal food as hurt- ful, by becoming a stimulus more than sufficient to counterbalance the nourishment it affords, and therefore ultimately exhausting. the play comes in Act Four, when the Chorus laments “quand’era cibo il latte / del pargoletto mondo e cull ail bosco,” translated by Richard Fanhsawe, in as:“Fair golden age! when milk was the only food, / And cradle of the infant world the wood,” Five Italian Comedies, ed. by Bruce Penman (Har- mondsworth: Penguin, ), p. . Forster may also be responding to a sentiment offered in the next few lines:“None yet did fear / The sword or poison,”p. . . His interest in the effects of atmosphere on health were to be extended in his Researches about Atmospherical Phenomena (London:Thomas Underwood, ). Vegetarianism and Vitality And he has recommended a strictly vegetable diet and distilled water apparently with success.The ill effects of wine and spirits in diseases wherein even common water proves too great a stimulus, may easily be conceived. (Physiological Reflections,pp.–) He uses Lambe’s theory of exhausting and exciting stimuli, regarding alcohol as a stimulus that exhausts the body. Elsewhere in the book, Forster encourages medical practitioners to use Lambe’s vegetable and distilled water regimen on patients, a regime that John Frank New- ton declared had cured him of his chronic asthma (p.,n.).²⁵ Lambe’s influence on Forster is clear. Forster traces a path between Lambe’s and Abernethy’s theories, considering them as offering, between them, a complete pathology: I am induced, in conclusion, to advert to the principal authorities on which my notions respecting diseases have been in part founded; and to state my opinion, firstly, with Doctor Lambe, that the origin of all diseases is from without, that their foundation has been laid from time to time by a departure from the instinctive appetencies of our nature, manifested in the eating of animal food, and acquiring, as a consequence, a morbid appetite for unwhole- some drinks, and a desire for other destructive habits of life, which the increased action necessary to affect the elimination of the poi- son has rendered necessary to temporary comfort: secondly; that the predisposition to diseases being thus formed, and subsequently varied by the combination of different evil habits in individuals,and by varieties of climate, morbific actions of the nervous system are at length set up for their production, which are marked by appear- ances indicative of disorder of the digestive organs in general; for the most useful and scientific account of which, the public are indebted to Mr.Abernethy.(Physiological Reflections, pp. –) In this model, the body is naturally healthy but has been corrupted by civilization and the bad habits of society. Forster’s political beliefs are clear. His sympathies are very much with Lambe, and show the early
. John Frank Newton, The Return to Nature, or,A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen; with some account of an experiment made during the last three or four years in the author’s family (London:T.Cadell and W.Davies, ). Newton’s case is described in the concluding pages of Lambe’s Reports on the Effects of a peculiar Regimen in Scirrhous Tumours and Cancerous Ulcers (London: J. Mawman, ). Keats-Shelley Journal influence of Rousseau.²₆ In Physiological Reflections, a diet of animal food is held responsible for our taste for alcohol and “other destruc- tive habits of life.”The body then has to work harder to compensate for the effects of this “poison.”This situation creates a constitution predisposed to disease, though each constitution is unique according to the various foods each person consumes, and the climate in which they live. Shelley’s A Vindication of Natural Diet was published in by J. Callow,a medical bookseller who also published Lawrence’s and lectures to the Royal College attacking Abernethy’s theory of life. In Natural Diet Shelley specifically refers the reader to Lawrence’s essay on “Man” in Abraham Rees’s Cyclopedia.²⁷ Godwin’s diaries reveal that Lawrence had been an acquaintance since at least June .²⁸ This meeting was only a few days before Mary went to stay with the Baxters in Dundee from June till Nov and Miranda Seymour claims that Lawrence was in fact called in on this occasion to offer a second opinion on Mary’s health, after Godwin had first consulted Henry Cline.²⁹ On January Godwin even attended one of John Abernethy’s lectures, presumably influenced by Lawrence and John Frank Newton:“Lecture,Abernethy,w.Parkman” (Bod. Dep. e. ).³⁰ Shelley continued to see the Newtons and Law- rence without Godwin always being present, and Godwin also saw Lawrence without the Newtons or Shelley, calling on him on March and May during Lawrence’s public altercation with Abernethy.³₁ Godwin also appears to have met Forster in Edin- burgh (Bod. Dep. e. ).³² Godwin’s interest in Abernethy’s lectures
. Elsewhere, Forster refers also to Joseph Ritson (Philozoia, p. ). . A Vindication of Natural Diet is quoted here from The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. E. B. Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). Lawrence’s essay “Man”is in Abraham Rees, The Cyclopædia: or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, with the assistance of eminent professional gentlemen, vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, ), (pages are unnumbered). . Bodleian Library,University of Oxford, Bod. Dep. e. William Godwin Diary.For details of the meetings listed in Godwin’s diaries between him and Lawrence, see Shelley and Vitality,pp.–, . . Miranda Seymour, Mary Shelley (London: Picador, ), p. . . I am grateful to The Bodleian Library,University of Oxford,for permission to quote from William Godwin’s diaries. . Bodleian Library, University of Oxford,William Godwin Diaries, Bod. Dep. e. , Bod. Dep. e. . . For more information, see Shelley and Vitality,p.. Vegetarianism and Vitality and acquaintance with Forster and Lawrence are suggestive of an interest in science and medicine that have not yet been accounted for in either biographical or critical accounts of Godwin’s life and work. Shelley’s Natural Diet, written under the same influences of Aber- nethy,Lambe, Newton and Lawrence, comes to many of the conclu- sions Forster had in Physiological Reflections. Shelley’s conviction that the physical and moral nature of man are intimately connected is shared by Forster, who wishes that someone would undertake an “inquiry into the mutual dependence of physical and moral evil on each other” (Physiological Reflections, pp. –). Natural Diet begins with the sentence:“I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life” (Prose Works, p. ). As Forster does, Shelley believes that man in his natural state is healthy, but in civilization has acquired habits that over generations have formed constitutions prone to sickness and disease.The use of fermented liquors is related,as in Forster’s book,to an animal diet,and Shelley continually refers to alcohol as one of society’s most harmful habits: How many thousands have become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented liquors; who, had they slaked their thirst only at the mountain stream, would have lived but to diffuse the happi- ness of their own unperverted feelings? (Prose Works,p.) You are what you eat and drink, according to Shelley, as he offers a diagnosis of Buonaparte whose “bile-suffused cheek,” “wrinkled brow,”“yellow eye” and “the ceaseless inquietude of his nervous sys- tem” “speak no less plainly the character of his unresting ambition than his murders and his victories” (Prose Works, p. ). Shelley, too, describes “animal flesh and fermented liquors,as slow,but certain poi- sons”(p.).Importantly,in Natural Diet,Shelley is at pains to empha- size the similarity between man and his “fellow denizens of nature” (p. ). He questions the extent to which we are different from them, given that we share the same air, water (if distilled to its natural state) and earth (p. ). He refers to Lawrence’s essay on “Man” here and in A Refutation of Deism for proof that “man” is naturally a “frugivorous” animal, and compares man to the other animals he is most like, such Keats-Shelley Journal as the orang-outang (p. ). Shelley’s emphasis throughout Natural Diet is upon all that “we are or do in common” with other living species (p. ). Comparative anatomy was used in the arguments of many vegetar- ian writers, including Lambe, John Oswald, Newton and Joseph Rit- son. Teeth, jaws and digestion were among the anatomical features used to argue that it was not natural for humans to eat meat.While Lawrence expressly states in his Cyclopedia essay that he does not want his findings to be used to argue that “man is designed by nature to feed on vegetables,” he does acknowledge the specific point Shelley refers to: “In general, then, the human teeth and joint of the jaw resemble most those of herbivorous animals” (Cyclopedia, “Man”). Lawrence’s caution throughout the piece, which offers equal weight to advocates and critics of a vegetable diet, may be due to an attempt to ensure scientific objectivity, but it is also indicative of his charac- teristic emphasis on experience. He acknowledges the truth of vege- tarian arguments: That men can be perfectly nourished, and that their physical and intellectual capabilities can be fully developed in any climate, by a diet purely vegetable, has been proved by such abundant experi- ence, that it will not be necessary to adduce any formal arguments on the subject. (Cyclopedia,“Man”) But he also refers to a number of great men who have lived upon an animal diet.He points out that “A few hundreds of all Europeans hold in bondage the vegetable eating millions of the East” (Cyclopedia, “Man”). In this matter, Shelley’s emphasis would have been different, pointing out that the tyranny which enabled such bondage was a direct result of the diet of meat that Europeans ate. In his unfinished “On the Vegetable System of Diet,” Shelley takes the link he perceives between moral actions and physical conditions even further. Confronting the Godwinian belief that society’s “insti- tutions” are to blame, Shelley argues that all society’s problems can ultimately be traced back to the diseased organization that is caused by man’s animal diet (Prose Works, p. ). His argument is the logical extension of a belief in the “sympathy” which exists between the mind and the body,that there is a connection between “conduct”and Vegetarianism and Vitality “organization” (Prose Works,p.). Lawrence suggests something similar when he ascribes a physical constitution to temperament, while also acknowledging that external factors have a part to play.He includes Napoleon in a list of those who evince a “bilious” tempera- ment, and this temperament is held responsible for his ability to com- mand “the dread or admiration” of others (Cyclopedia, “Man”). Forster’s Physiological Reflections also make repeated reference to the sympathy between the state of the mind and the digestive organs, ascribing many mental disorders to physical ailments and vice versa. In his essay, Shelley refers the reader to Abernethy for evidence that “The remotest parts of the body sympathise [with] the stomach; groundless terrors, vertigo and delirium are frequently consequent upon a disease of the digestive organs” (Prose Works,p.). By the time Forster’s Somatopsychonoologia (a word created from the Greek words meaning body, life and mind) had been published defending Lawrence, the debate between Abernethy and Lawrence had already been won.³³ Between and the two surgeons had offered opposing theories of life in their alternate lectures to the Royal College of Surgeons. Despite his insistence on “sympathy,” Abernethy argued that the vital principle was a subtle, mobile “some- thing,” superadded to the body, and in no way dependent upon the body’s organization. Lawrence ridiculed this idea, claiming that there was no mysterious vital principle, and that, instead, life depended on the body,just as thought depended on the brain. In arguing his point, Lawrence was taking on more than just his medical superiors; follow- ing the publication of his Lectures a number of religious figures came forward, arguing that Lawrence was a materialist and an atheist, and that his theory of life left no place for the existence of a soul. These figures successfully called for Lawrence to be suspended and for his Lectures to be withdrawn. After writing a letter renouncing his theory of life and promising never to state such opinions again, Lawrence was allowed back to his hospital posts.³⁴The political affili-
. Philostratus, [T. I. M. Foster], Somatopsychonoologia: Showing that the Proofs of Body, Life and Mind, Considered as Distinct Essences,Cannot be Deduced from Physiology,but Depend upon a Distinct Sort of Evidence; Being an Examination of the Controversy Concerning Life carried on by MM Laurence [sic],Abernethy, Rennell, and others (London: R. Hunter, ). . Lawrence’s letter to the governors of Bridewell and Bethlem hospitals, dated April , was published in parallel columns alongside “the never-to-be-forgotten abjurations of Galileo,”Monthly Mag- Keats-Shelley Journal ations of the opposing parties were explicit: Forster published Somatopsychonoologia under the name Philostratus; Joseph Riston, another vegetarian writer, had referred to Philostratus as one who “hated tyrants.”³⁵ Forster states in Somatopsychonoologia that he feels duty bound to defend Lawrence and “freedom of discussion” (p. v). The years of anatomical experience Forster has had, he writes, has convinced him that “that every distinct faculty of the mind has its appropriate organ, as much as the senses have” (Somatopsychonoologia,p.). Despite this conviction, Forster writes that he is nevertheless conscious of a personal identity ...that I am something distinct from the circumexistent matter of the universe, of which my body forms a part,and that I am likewise distinct from the mov- ing principle of the surrounding universe,of which my vitality may be a modification. (Somatopsychonoologia, pp. viii–ix) One of his main purposes in Somatopsychonoologia is to defend Law- rence against the charges of having “published irreligious doctrines,” pointing out that in fact Lawrence “had pointedly guarded his read- ers against any application of his doctrine detrimental to Christianity [sic], and reminded them that the proofs of spiritual things rested on an entirely distinct species of evidence, intangible by any anatomical researches” (Somatopsychonoologia, p. ).³₆ Phrenology is offered as the proof of Forster’s physiological beliefs, and the “Holy Catholic Church” as the repository of proof of the existence of the soul (pp. viii, ).This rather playful book ends with a “Somatopsychonoologial Catechism” (pp. ff ). While Lawrence may ridicule Abernethy’s ideas,Somatopsychonoologia clearly also has a serious purpose,to defend his friend and, by implication, himself, against Abernethy’s accusa- tions. We can see Shelley’s similar move from the teachings of Abernethy to Lawrence when the issue of vitality is raised in his early vegetarian azine (), –. Sir Richard Phillips (–), who owned the Monthly Magazine, was a strict vegetarian (DNB). . Joseph Ritson, An Essay on Abstinence from Animal food, as a Moral Duty (London: Richard Phillips, ), p. . . Forster and Shelley consistently do not capitalize Christianity. Vegetarianism and Vitality writings. In his essay “On the Vegetable System of Diet” he speaks of the sympathy that exists among all the parts of man: Man is an [sic] whole the complicated parts of which are so inter- woven with each other, that the most remote and subtile springs of his machine are connected with those which are more gross and obvious, and reciprocally act and react upon each other.The vital principle by some inexplicable process influences, and is influenced [by], the nerves and muscles of the body.(Prose Works,p.) The degree of sympathy described here suggests less Abernethy’s notion of a separate and independent vital principle, and more Lawrence’s insistence upon the dependence of vitality on the body’s organs. As Forster put it in his defence of Lawrence: “every vital action,as well as every propensity,every intellectual and reflective fac- ulty, and every sentiment of the mind, is the necessary consequence of the active state of an appropriate material organ” (Somatopsycho- noologia, p. viii). Discussions of Abernethy’s and Lawrence’s debate focused on what the consequences were for the soul.³⁷ For vegetarians and animal rights supporters the question of whether animals had souls was also a key topic of discussion. As already mentioned, the Mouse in “A Mouse’s Petition,” running through all possible arguments to per- suade his captor to release him, cautions: “Beware, lest in the worm you crush / A brother’s soul you find” (lines –). Barbauld alludes to the doctrine of transmigration of souls; the bodily destinations were determined by the merit with which the possessors had lived. Consequently, an animal could have a soul that had once been human.It is doubtful that Forster actually believed in Pythagoras’the- ory of metempsychosis (popularized by Ovid’s Metamorphoses), though he used it to promote the causes he championed.³⁸ In his mis-
. This was a sticking point in the Chancery Court case that Lawrence fought for copyright of his Lectures; see Shelley and Vitality,pp.–. . Forster writes about the “new sect”of Brahmins in Europe in An Apology for the Doctrine of Pythago- ras as compatible with that of Jesus Christ, being a defense of the new sect of Christians. By the Hon. Foreign Sec. to the Animals[’] Friend Society (Boulogne sur Mer: Charles Aigre, –).Telling Peacock about this book, Forster wrote:‘The Transmigration people are wonderfully encreasing [sic] here[.] But I am not one of them. . . . I wrote or rather constructed the Pamphlet under orders: the only part truly mine in writing & fully in sentiment begins at Page and was part of a Eulogy which I pronounced over the Keats-Shelley Journal chievous defence of Lawrence, Somatopsychonoologia, comparative anatomy is enlisted to ridicule Abernethy further. If, as Abernethy believes, the existence of a separate and independent soul and mind is proved because vitality cannot account for perception, then, Forster demands,“must not, therefore, mind equally belong to other animals as to men?” (Somatopsychonoologia,p.). Forster argues that animals fulfill the criteria Abernethy had set out in his lectures: For animals perceive; and that they can reason also has been clearly proved. Indeed, though the gap between the most perfect animal and man seems wide when we consider only perfect specimens of each,yet if we compare an idiot with an ouran outan,or with a sen- sible dog, we shall find the intellectual powers much the strongest in the animals: the nature of the proud lord of the creation being thus, by the casual imperfections to which he is subject, made to stoop to the level of the beasts, and thus fill up an apparent hiatus in the scale of living creatures. (Somatopsychonoologia,p.) Forster rehearses the same arguments as those discussed with Peacock in , in which he had asserted that “Dog!” should come above “Albino” in the scale of being. Indeed in Forster’s Elegy to Shargs, his poodle, Forster remembers his “sweet mild and beautiful expression beaming with the benevolence which reigned in his heart, and ex- pressive in the highest degree of all that intellect which distinguishes dogs in general” (Philozoia,p.). Shargs’s sagacity had tempted For- ster to believe in Pythagoras’ theory, though he still considered it in a similar light to the “cherished impressions of infancy” (Philozoia, p. ). In Somatopsychonoologia, though, Forster demands of Abernethy, “where is this to stop? Are we to regard polypihydatids, and starfish, as having souls?” with the obvious inference being that this conclu- sion clearly is ridiculous (p. ). Whatever were their private convictions, the possibility that ani- mals had souls was used by advocates of humane treatment of animals. Forster was foremost in this movement; he met Lewis Gompertz in , while the latter was secretary to the Society for the Prevention grave of a Dog, and which I printed in order to silen[ce] a vulgar Priest who was always telling my wife that she must go to Hell for believing that Animals had souls.You know Julia is actually a believer in ani- mal immortality,” Letters, , , March , Forster’s emphasis. Vegetarianism and Vitality of Cruelty to Animals. In he and Forster founded the Animals’ Friend Society.³⁹ Shelley’s feelings towards animal cruelty are also well documented. In his essay “On the Vegetable System” he endeavors to portray animals as capable of “social feelings” and “attachment” to their young (Prose Works,p. and n.).⁴⁰ For Shelley it is again a ques- tion of rights, and his description of the diseases caused by the “domestication” of animals is highly suggestive of other forms of col- onization, tyranny and slavery (p. ). Throughout his writings Forster argued for vegetarianism on a number of grounds, not solely medical, and when he mentions vege- tarianism he presents a list of the people he has known who did not eat meat, repeatedly referring to Byron and Shelley in his list. In Somatopsychonoologia, published only a year after Shelley’s death, he wonders whether William Paley’s “false reasoning,”as he perceives it, is in fact due to his diet: Now,Paley was known to be an extravagant gormandizer; and it is recorded of him, on good authority, that he often ate a whole shoulder of mutton at one meal.The learned Dr. Lambe, of Lon- don, has clearly proved that a light vegetable diet clarifies the intel- lect; and the classic author of Pastor Fido has long ago extolled the power of the Cibo di latte e del frutto over the wanderings of the enthusiast. So well was the great [Isaac] Newton aware of the clear- ness of head produced by “Spare Fast that with the Gods doth diet” that when composing his Principia he ate only of a little bread, and drank only a little water. Now, may we not, after the perusal of Paley’s Natural Theology,argue, that his inordinate meals made his mind stop short of those piercing and ethereal coruscations of genius which the late herbivorous Percy Bysshe Shelley displayed in advocating the cause he had espoused? (Pp. –) Shelley, Byron and Lawrence appear repeatedly in Forster’s writings. He often remarks upon Shelley’s amiable qualities, his evident humanitarianism, and Byron’s love of animals, particularly as it is expressed in his poem “Inscription on the Monument of a New-
. DNB; Forster recalls meeting Gompertz on June , Philozoia,p.. . See Christine Kenyon-Jones,Kindred Brutes:Animals in Romantic-Period Writing (Aldershot:Ashgate, ). Keats-Shelley Journal foundland Dog.”Forster includes a number of Shelley’s poems in his Perennial Calendar: extracts from Queen Mab, “A Summer Evening Churchyard,” and “The Sensitive Plant,” which had been published with Prometheus Unbound in .⁴₁ Many years later, Forster claimed to recall a conversation with Shelley some decades before, which explained why Shelley’s opinions were not in fact incompatible with Christianity: “I am not singular[”], said Shelley to me one day walking by New- gate, [“]in disbelieving in christianity,I am only singular in confess- ing it. Do you think if men really believed in the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount they would hang their fellow creatures for stealing something from a dwelling house to keep a family of chil- dren from starving, or send a soul to howl for ever in the regions of the damned, according to their professed belief, merely for forging a draft; or would attend bullbaitings cockfights and brothels of [young] women seduced away from the comforts of their homes and now working their own perdition here and hereafter in order to gratify those, clerical or lay it matters not, who with fiendish hypocrisy preach the gospel of peace with the dagger of the assas- sin in their hand, and roll like swine in sensual infamy, while they profess to [mortify] the flesh and to do to others as they would that others should do to them.What has been the object of the crusades of old, in times of ascetic christianity, but the plunder of oriental riches, and what is modern merchandize in the west, but the traffic in human blood: the christian [scourging] the negroe at his work; and canting [about] carrying his own cross on his back. No, let me hide my head from the world in honest infidelity and dwelling amidst the beauties of Nature still hope that there may be a of God justice! [sic]”The answer to all this is [obvious]: Shelley who was all kindness was [violently] shocked at the conduct of mankind;but he forgot that those who thus act are not Christians but hypocrites; Christianity may be still only in its infancy and slowly [developing] itself.⁴²
. The Perennial Calendar (London: Harding, Mavor, and Lepard, ), pp. , , . . Recueil de ma Vie, mes Ouvrages et mes Pensées, rd edn. (; Brussels: Stapleaux, ), pp. –; original emphasis.This text is very poorly printed and my conjectural corrections are in square brack- ets. Vegetarianism and Vitality It seems likely that here Forster was using Shelley as a mouthpiece for his own political opinions. Forster also claimed to represent Shelley’s views through a character in his long poem, Pan, which he repub- lished in various forms throughout his life.⁴³ The character, Pyrrho, is a skeptic and a Lucretian, believing that “From empty nothing, nought can emanate” (Pan,p.). He believes, as Shelley did, that there is life on other planets, and microscopic life on this planet that is equally abundant: that “Nature people’s [sic] every leaf /And water- drop with nations as important” (Pan,p.). Not only is microscopic life as important as extra-terrestrial life, but also insects, whales and bees are “quite as great” as man, in this all-levelling republic of life (Pan,p.). Pyrrho is a skeptic, aware of man’s lack of knowledge of the “origin”or “scope”of causes (Pan,p.).The implications of these thoughts, particularly that of “man’s deep ignorance” often over- whelms Pyrrho, and he thinks of himself as a “lonely monad placed / Amidst a shadowy theatre of forms” (Pan, p. ). Forster’s Pan presents ideas that can be clearly identified as Shelleyan. Whether or not such late recollections of Shelley are indeed authentic,Forster does seem to have occupied a significant position as part of an intimate vegetarian community in London whose mem- bers included Shelley and Shelley’s closest companions from this time. Comparison of Forster’s and Shelley’s medical writings reveal the similar origin of their ideas in the work and teachings of Lambe and Abernethy, while, on the question of the nature of life, their radical politics aligned them with their friend William Lawrence in his fight against the medical establishment.Vegetarian principles were inspired in both by Lambe’s and Abernethy’s insistence on the importance of diet, coupled with a horror of the inhumane treatment of animals. In his applications of Lawrence’s comparative anatomy, Shelley went beyond Lawrence’s own conclusions to argue, characteristically, that the European meat diet was responsible for the worst elements of his society,citing cruelty,tyranny and slavery as direct results. Repeatedly,
. Pan: A Pastoral of the First Age, together with some other poems (Brussels: Belgian Printing and Pub- lishing Society, ). Nicholas Joukovsky kindly alerted me to the existence of “an almost illegible copy of a letter to Peacock dated January , in which Forster briefly mentions his defence of Lawrence in Somatopsychonoologia and says that the arguments of Pyrrho in Scene III of his Pan: A Pastoral of the First Age () represent those of Shelley.” Keats-Shelley Journal both Forster and Shelley choose evidence selectively to support their own theories, regardless of whether they personally believe the evi- dence. Examining Shelley’s arguments further, and in parallel with Forster’s, reveals that the teachings of a number of vegetarian and medical writers were skilfully marshalled to bolster a personally-held conviction that meat gradually poisoned the constitution, which, in its sympathy with the morals and conduct of man had produced an “artificial” society that was cruel and unjust.The evidence used in the debates surrounding vegetarianism and vitality in the Romantic period offered a means to argue for the equal rights of all men, whether white or black, for women to be regarded as deserving equal rights to men,for dissenters to ask for toleration and enfranchisement, and for the rights of animals. As Shelley put it in his note to Queen Mab:“the use of animal flesh and fermented liquors, directly militates with this equality of the rights of man.”⁴⁴ University of Wales, Bangor
. Percy Bysshe Shelley,The Poems of Shelley,ed.Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews, vols.(Lon- don and NewYork: Longman, ), , .
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