tiTj-i ^•r '«-; 432^ A3r74 I 1/0 Letters of Edward John Trelawny Oxford : Horace Hart Printer to the University MEMORANDUM From The Bookman St. Pauls House, Warwick Square, EDITOR : W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, LL.D. y/ London ^^^ ^7 Z£! The Editor will he glad to have Review of the accompanying (Book Words. The Copy should reach the Editor not later " than the morning of the 2/ ><fe- C^ ^f^f^ic^ Jf't^^pu^^ Oxford University Amhn Corner/ Lond/bn, E.G. Jlf^;^^ Mil. Henry Frowde has pleasure in submitting for review a copy of ^a^. /^.^^4£^:^I^ Vvmt./d/.^ .^ij^..., He requests that ho notioo be printed before the/ of day pubheation r^^^/ ; aftd-Aat, when a review appears, a copy may be sent to him. Letters of Edward John Trelawnj Edited with a brief Introduction and Notes by H. Buxton Formaii C.B. Henry Frowde Oxford University Press London, Edinburgh, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1910 DEDICATION. TO WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. If there is any man living who knew Trelawny better than you did, and helped him more faithfully, I do not know that man. That there is none to whom I owe more than to you in regard to the prosecution of the present work is certain, and equally certain that to connect your name with it and record my gratitude for this latest of your many acts of disinterested friendship is, unlike most obvious duties, a pleasure dictated by the highest esteem and by sincere affection. H. Buxton Forman. 46 Marlborough Hill, St. John's Wood, 25 September 1910. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Trelawny as an OcTOGENARiAN^n Sir John Millais's picture "The North-West Passage": Photogravure by Emery Walker Frontispiece Portrait of Claire Clairmont : Photogravure by Emery Walker from an oil-painting by Amelia Curran 46 Facsimile of a Letter to Claire Clairmont written in the Cave of Odysseus ... 87 The Scene of Shelley's Cremation near Viareggio : Facsimile of a drawing by Trelawny's daughter . 252 Marianne Hunt's Posthumous Bust of Shelley: Burin-etching on steel by William Bell Scott . 270 Shelley's Grave as seen and painted in 1873 by William Bell Scott ; Etched by Arthur Evershed . 274 INTRODUCTION. In this attempt to bring together the letters of Edward John Trelawny, I have been actuated by the desire to illustrate his unique personality by means of his own utterances, and fill up as many gaps as possible in his life-record. Such indomitable force of character as Trelawny evinced up to the end of his long life could not fail to leave its impress upon every sheet of paper which he took up for the purpose of com- municating with man or woman. The very uncon- ventionality—nay, even the frequent incorrectness of his and a certain attractiveness style vocabulary, have ; and when one realizes how expressive of his character that style and that vocabulary are, one feels something akin to revolt against any endeavour to revise the text of his letters. For my part, I have never yet seen a letter or note of Trelawny's which was expressed just as other it nor is any man would have expressed ; there anything in the present collection which is not more or less redolent of the vigour and directness, the transparent honesty and complete fearlessness, of this traveller by sea and land, this warrior for the cause of freedom, in both the moral and the physical sense of those words. Conspicuous among the memorable figures of the nineteenth century, both as a public man and as a private individual, Trelawny was less tainted with the sordid commercialism and ever-increasing snobbery of that century than almost any man one X INTRODUCTION. could name as having lived through so large a part of it. " When by good hap I acquired that splendid pig- in-a-poke" the Clairmont collection of Shelley docu- ments and relics of various kinds, it was not wholly without disappointment that I found the sealed-up collection, on being opened, did not include certain items which, as I think rightfully, I had expected to find. There was, it is true, good value for my money, even at the comparatively low prices then current for such articles as I was buying without even a pre- of a one of but it liminary glimpse single them ; grieved me not to find the book of manuscript poems which Claire Clairmont possessed, or the miniature portrait of AUegra, daughter of Byron and Claire, or the long series of letters which I believed that lady to have received from Trelawny. I have never regretted that, in those circumstances, I made a pilgrimage to the gay city of Vienna in search of the coveted treasures in question, found the late Miss Paola Clair- mont, from whom I had bought the elder lady's collection, still in possession of two of the important items named, paid her her price for the annexation of them to the main body of the papers, books, and relics, and brought them home with joy to the house from which I am sending these belated remarks to press. Of the mutilated manuscript volume, containing Shelley's fair copies of many of his published poems, which also should be here, there is a sad tale to tell. An American who had been residing in the same house at Florence with the Clairmonts had been bidding for the collection as his rather free bids against me ; but, turned out to be only in bills at long date, the executrix INTRODUCTION. XI decided to accept my cash rather than his paper, in which she lacked confidence. This man, however, had "borrowed" and not restored the precious manuscript book,—which now graces the classic precincts of " Harvard College, while I am left lamenting." Leaving the unpleasant subject of this ancient grievance, I recall the pleasure and keen interest with which I first read the whole of the letters fromTrelawny, spreading over fifty- three years of his long life, the earliest indited shortly after Shelley's death in 1822, when Trelawny was just upon thirty years of age, the last written in 1875, when he was eighty-three. That perusal accomplished, I said to the other man who is me— "Well, if you don't know anything else, you it is bounden to know Trelawny now ; and your duty see that those letters are not lost to the world." From that position I have never for one moment but the other is me until the swerved ; man who had, summer of 1907, a position in the public service with ever-increasing demands upon his time and mental resources and the of the 1866 ; literary output years to 1907, though not inconsiderable in mass, was but the occupation of his so-called leisure, and, ipso facto, strictly limited. What wonder, then, if the golden moment for setting about the arrangement of that treasured bundle of letters for the press was put off and off by sheer stress of circumstances 1 Fifteen or it may be twenty years ago my son Maurice Buxton Forman them all out for five I had had copied me ; years ago made some attempt to fit and annotate them for and two I determined to omit publication ; years ago some portions that might still be obnoxious to the feelings of a few living persons, combine my letters Xll INTRODUCTION. with others of Trelawny's from all available sources, public or private, and publish without further delay than fate willed. Retarded once more by the return of the Garnett Shelley Note-books from America to be deciphered and edited, I had yet some luck with Trelawny. My son was once more under my roof after long absence from England, and was working upon his Meredith books at the British Museum, where he was able to help me in certain researches that it would have been very inconvenient to do single- and still old and valued friend handed ; better, my Mr. William Rossetti decided without hesitation, when I approached him cap in hand, that Trelawny's letters to him, the unpublished mass with the few already published, should form part of the present chronologically arranged collection, and thus greatly increase its autobiographic value. This decision was the more generous in that Mr. Rossetti had already allocated most of the unpublished letters to certain works of his own compiling, not yet added to that valuable row of books which, since his retirement from the public service, he has contributed to English literature, and especially to our knowledge of the lives and genius of the distinguished family of which he is the last of his generation. Equally if not even more deserving of gratitude has been his ready assistance in the removal of difficulties which need not now be specified, and his kindness in making me free of his knowledge of matters Trelawnian acquired in the period from 1869 up to the present time. The renewal of an acquaintanceship of long ago with Mrs. Julian Marshall, the author and editor of the Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, INTRODUCTION. XUl has proved fortunate as well as agreeable. Mrs. Marshall had access to those documents of prime importance which were in the hands of the late Sir Florence when her book came out Percy Shelley ; and I am indebted to her not only for the influence of her book in keeping me from too strong a leaning to Trelawny's side in the never-ending Trelawny- Mary discussion, but also for the frank alacrity with which she gave me helpful information apart from the book itself.