Thomas Love Peacock a Critical Study

TH OMAS L OVE PEA COCK A C R I T I C A L S T U D Y BY ' Az MARTIN FREEMAN N EW Y ORK MITCHELL KENNERLEY T O F. A . H . N OTE My thanks are due to Professor Dowden for permission to make use of biographical matter contained in his Life of Shelley and to Mes r a s ren h Tr ne nd . rs . Kegan Paul, T c , ub Co , Ltd s or r t e rmi sion . ,f confi ming h pe There is in the British Museum a privately issu d T si B un entitled The e he s r . Yo by D A . g, ” Li T is e a Peacock . h w r nd s . L o k f N ovel of T . contains a good deal of collected information ,and ’ has a considerable space devoted to Peacock s oliti a s s Althou h p c l and literary critici m . g I have made little or no use of this work,not having r d ea it u il s . and . were nt my chapter I V. , V VI , except for excisions for the sake of shortening,in their resent or it is l air t Dr Youn p f m, on y f o . g, especially as his book has never been published in England,to state here that he was the first to write anything like a complete study of Peacock from this oint o vie p f w. M F A . C O N TE N T S EARLY INFLUENCES Y OUTHFUL COMPOSITIONS PSUEDO - CLASSICISM BEGINNINGS OF SATIRE SHELLEY IN ENGLAND SHELLEY IN ITALY “ THE AUTHOR OF HEADLONG HALL w & THE EAST INDIA HOUSE PERIOD GRY LL GRANGE I EARLY INFLUENCES N one of his letters from Italy, Shelley mentions an early belief of his own, I h hi that anyt ing w ch a man does, spe aks, thinks, suffers, may be i nterpreted as an allegory or image of his whole life . The investigation of this theory with regard to an entertaining biography might conceivably lead to interesting developments and m odific a tions, and these, in addition to the many in stances that might be found of its absolute truth,woul d doubtless afford an amusing if not a li overwhelmingly instructive study. Its pp cation to the life of Thomas Love Peacock is not possible except in a very fragmentary The d manner. published recor s are so broken, and the references of his contemporaries are of such disparate interest and of such varying degrees of biographical importance, that it is difficul t to see his life as a whole or to recognise - In in it any well developed scheme . tracing the course of the Thames, on that romantic 13 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK expedition which he made in order to provide himself with material for his anti - Romantic poem ,hi s only difficul ty was in locating exactly T m its source . hat once acco plished,the towing path and the barge brought him easily and o inevitably to the sea. But the c urse of his life is that of a remote and lonely stream, approachable only at certain points,the greater part of its channel being hidden in impenetrable mystery. His career, unl ike those of many men of his time, with whom h e was acquainted at r w as l va ious periods, what is called uneventfu . He h ad not the popularity as an author nor the fondness for society which might bring him into newspaper notoriety,or cause him to figure prominently in the journal s of the more notable men of his day. His favourite pursuits were solitary ; the occupation of his mature years made him almost completely anonymous ; hi s wanderings took him ,generally alone,to remote parts of England or Wales,and were not diver sified even by that most fashionable of the da Co amusements of the y,a visit to the ntinent. He was neither a modish nor a voluminous writer, and was not constantly called upon by publishers for reminiscences or articles of a To personal nature for the magaz ines . write a 14 EARLY INFLUENCES full and satisfactory account of hi s life would consequently only be practicable if there were a large m ass of detailed material available ; and it would then resolve itself into a chronicle of study and rambling,of boating and walking, of c onversations and theorising, of work and of gradually accumul ated knowledge and widening s m interests . It would lowly unfold the inti ate and reflective progress of a personality so pro nounce d that the slightest anecdote seems to add something vital to it s effect, of a writer of such intense individuality that his shortest fragments of prose possess a tantalising interest, and whose thoughts and fancies coul d never l fai to charm . But in the extreme scarcity ( so far as is yet known) of letters or journals, it seems highly improbable that such an account can ever be put together. Our knowledge of his life is limited to a number of scattered unconnected facts . His writings are not con tinuous . There are long intervals of time b e tween m any of his books—years during which his commentary on public affairs is sil ent and the course of hi s life disappears like a sunken stream . Young m e n who read Crotchet Ca stle, the sixth of his novels,m arried and had chil dren, and the childr en grew up to manh ood and read Gryll Grange, his seventh and last, when their 15 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK h ad h fathers forgotten its author. Between t e publication of his first and last poem sixty years h ad elapsed ; but t he records of his existence would, if placed in close juxtaposition, hardly fill out t e n years . Yet as w e piece together the scanty and ln ’ sufii cient notices, Shelley s discarded theory hovers near and obtrudes itself at intervals, now callin g for confirmation, now emphasising a remarkable contradiction, and anon arresting the attention at some hardl y noticeable cir cumst ance , asking whether or no this is a true m t instance of the anifesta ion of the principle. There is a strange congruence, a harmonious cohesion in some of his otherwise unrelated actions, utterances and aspirations, as though Nature and Fortun e, making use of him some times as a confederate and at other moments as an un conscious agent, were striving to impart ‘ to his fe ,with its experiences and accomplish ments, that unity which he as a philo sopher woul d have approved, and which seems so signally lacking in the careers of most men, whose history more often presents a uniformity of aiml essness . For the purposes of our criticism we have to notice the influences of his early y so far as they can be traced, and in so 16 EARLY INFLUENCES they have any recognisable bearing on his intellectual and artistic development ; his first productive period,when he attem pted to storm the citadel of Fame with volumes of antiquated descriptive and philosophical verse ; the years passed in contact with Shelley,and his first four satires the years following,when he wrote his three romances and the conversation-novel of his matur ity. An occasional glance is all that can be obtained of the long succeeding portion of his life, sparsely scattered over with some interesting reviews, some charming articles of more personal interest, includin g his re colle c tions of Shelley, and culminating in the con - - versation romance epilogue of his old age. It is at least noticeable that,being the son of a merchant who h ad married into a naval family, he developed great aptitude both for e To t busin ss and navigation . tha extent his nativity seems to lend support to the theory of unity and plan in his life. But there imme diately arises to combat this presumption a consideration, which appears at first sight seriously to invalidate it. His first employ ’ ment was in a merchant s office, his second on board a man- of- war : both were very soon s abandoned as hopelessly un uitable . His final and permanent appointment however may lead 17 B THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK a i again to the origin l po nt of view. The East India House was the sphere in which he found a compromise between a common clerkship and a governm ent appointment while the work of his department, chiefly administrative and financial, afforded a good opportunity for the exercise of a union of the aristocratic and commercial qualities . But we have skipped His father was Samuel Peacoc k, a glass ’ his merchant, carrying on trade in St. Paul s o Chur chyard. N thing of any interest seems m m to be known of his fa ily or hi self. A frag ment of an old day- book proves that he was in Th e business in the year 1768 . birth of his only child took place at Weymouth in October, 1785, but as he had him baptised in London at the end of the year,it is to be presumed that s he was still in bu iness at that date . He died r His about three years afte wards . wife was Sarah, daughter of Thomas Love, a naval d - five captain. She survived her husban thirty ’ years,and was her son s best and most intimate e friend.

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