Thomas Medwin

Thomas Medwin
Born	Thomas Medwin (1788-03-20)20 March 1788 Horsham, West Sussex, England
Died	2 August 1869(1869-08-02) (aged 81) Horsham, West Sussex, England
Resting place	St. Mary's Churchyard, Horsham
Occupation	Poet, biographer, novelist, translator
Nationality	English
Education	Syon House
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable work(s)	Journal of the conversations of Lord Byron (1824), The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, translated into English verse 1832, The life of P. B. Shelley 2 vols. (1847)

Thomas Medwin (1788–1869) was an early 19th-century English poet and translator, who is chiefly known for his biographies of his cousin Percy Bysshe Shelley and his recollections of his close friend Lord Byron.

Early life

Thomas Medwin was born in the market town of Horsham, West Sussex on 20 March 1788, the third son of five children of Thomas Charles Medwin, a solicitor and steward and Mary Medwin (née Pilford). He was a second cousin on both his parents' sides to Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) who lived two miles away at Field Place, Warnham and with whom Medwin formed a childhood friendship that continued into adulthood.^[1]

He was from a prosperous rather than a wealthy family that expected their sons to work for a living and to this end he attended Syon House Academy in Isleworth between 1788 and 1804, the alma mater of Shelley from 1802–1808. Medwin related that at Syon House Shelley and he remained close friends forming a bond that was close enough for Shelley to apparently sleep walk his way to Medwin’s room.^[2] Following a further year in a public school, Medwin matriculated at University College, Oxford in the winter of 1805 but left without taking his degree.

Medwin showed considerable aptitude in the study of foreign languages and was to become fluent in: Greek, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese and began writing poems including a contribution to The Wandering Jew, a poem attributed to Shelley. The young Shelley and Medwin met during their respective holidays and took part in typical pursuits of the times which in their case included fishing and hunting. This was the age of Romanticism and the two young friends were also pursuing with some success female liaisons including that of their cousin Harriet Grove with whom Shelley was deeply committed by the spring of 1810. (not that this appears to have lastingly affected Shelley given his elopement with Harriet Westbrook in 1811)

Medwin’s father wished for Thomas to follow the Law and they appear to have quarrelled when the idea was rejected by his son, the consequence of which was that the younger Thomas was largely omitted from his Father’s will executed in 1829. There was a period of drift in Medwin’s life whereby he attempted to live beyond his means as a gentleman. This appears to have involved a great deal of carousing and gambling at his club in Brighton ^[1] and generally spending money on collecting art. Shelley recalled Medwin as painting well and ‘remarkable, if I do not mistake, for a particular taste in, and knowledge of the belli arti – Italy is the place for you, the very place- the Paradise of Exiles… If you will be glad to see an old friend, who will be glad to see you…come to Italy’^[3] Medwin’s financial situation could not continue as it was and by 1812 he had decided on a living as a commissioned soldier albeit one with social pretensions the 24th Light Dragoons.

India

Although he had had no military training Medwin was gazetted as a cornet in the 24th Light Dragoons in June 1812 joining his regiment at Cawnpore in Uttar Pradesh in northern India shortly thereafter. Far removed from the scene of the Gurkha or Nepal War of 1814–1816, in which Medwin’s regiment did not participate, Cawnpore was one of the largest military stations in India, with a highly organized social life and stores stocked with European goods.^[1] In the stultifying heat, few duties were required of an officer. Judging from Medwin’s description in his book The Angler,^[4] he spent many hours enthusiastically hunting wildlife. He saw action rarely, but was present at the siege of Hathras in 1817 and advances against the Pindaris on the banks of the river Sindh in December 1817. He witnessed at least one incident of sati, the ritual burning of a widow, on the Narmuda river in 1818, and enthusiastically toured the classical Hindu temples of: Gaur, Palibothra, Jagganath and Karle, as well as the Elephanta Caves and the Ellora caves. Medwin may have had an affair with a Hindu woman which ended badly, but through whom he was introduced to the doctrines of Rammohan Roy (Rammuhan Ray).^[5] He was almost drowned in an accident on the Ganges. Medwin proved a competent, rather than a commendable soldier. He also suffered from dysentery that recurred at regular intervals during his life.

While waiting in Bombay for a berth back to England in October 1818, he rediscovered the poetry of his cousin Shelley, finding a copy of The Revolt of Islam in a bookstall. Shelley was to provide the central experience and the focal point of his literary life.^[6] He recalled the incident under his persona Julian in his book The Angler in Wales in 1834. Julian was "astonished at the greatness of (Shelley's) genius" and declared that "the amiable philosophy and self-sacrifice inculcated by that divine poem, worked a strange reformation in my mind."^[7] Medwin's representation of himself as Julian is likely to have been a reference to Shelley's Julian and Maddolo, a poem in which Julian has characteristics of Shelley.

Medwin's regiment was disbanded at the end of 1818 and Medwin went on to half-pay, attached to a regiment of the Life Guards until 1831, when he sold out his commission. He was by this time known as Captain Medwin, although there is no evidence that he was ever promoted beyond the rank of lieutenant

Reunion with Shelley

Percy Shelley

In September 1820 he arrived in Geneva to stay with Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams, the latter to drown with Shelley. It was in Geneva that he finished his first published poem Oswald and Edwin, An Oriental Sketch, dedicated to Williams. The poem of forty pages with no less than twelve pages of notes was later revised in 1821 as the Lion Hunt for Sketches From Hindoostan ^[1]

He joined his cousin Shelley in Pisa in the autumn of 1820 moving in with him and his wife Mary Shelley with whom he was to develop an uneasy relationship. Medwin was periodically ill during his months in Pisa but worked with Shelley on a number of poems and on the publication of his journal Sketches From Hindoostan. Shelley and Medwin started to study Arabic together.They read Schiller, Cervantes, Milton and Petrarch together and throughout the beginning of 1821 the two cousins continued to pursue a vigorous intellectual life.^[1] Shelley was working on Prometheus and would read the drafts to him each evening whilst Medwin continued with a second volume of Oswald and Edwin, An Oriental Sketch. In January they were joined by Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams. Medwin left Shelley in March 1821 to visit Florence, Rome and then Venice where he continued to write and socialise. In November 1821 he returned to Pisa.

Meeting with Lord Byron

Byron

Shelley introduced Medwin to Lord Byron on 20 November 1821 ^[8] and it is clear that Byron was impressed with the personable Medwin and they were to form a lasting friendship. Medwin and Byron enjoyed the company of different women as can be seen by their correspondence with each other and formed a male bond that was missing from Medwin’s relationship with Shelley. He joined Byron for episodes of pistol shooting and riding and dined within Byron’s inner circle with other friends that included Shelley, Edward E Williams, Leigh Hunt and the recently arrived Edward John Trelawney. The latter would feature as friend and rival throughout Medwin’s long life as both sought to be arbiters of Byron’s reputation. Medwin provided a translation of part of Petrarch’s “Africa” for Byron ^[9] whilst Byron finished Cantos 6–12 of Don Juan . When Medwin decided to continue his tour of Italy in April 1822 Lord Byron insisted on providing him with a splendid leaving party.

The death of Shelley

The impecunious Medwin travelled first to Rome, where he was introduced to the sculptor Antonio Canova,^[10] and then to Naples, before sailing to Genoa. It was whilst at Genoa that he heard a rumour that an English schooner had been lost with two Englishman drowned; but only on his arrival in Geneva did he learn that it was Shelley and Edward Williams who had drowned on 8 July 1822. Medwin was devastated and immediately returned to Italy where he learned at Spezia that his friends' bodies had been thrown up out of the sea. He arrived in Pisa on 18 August, a few hours after the bodies had been cremated. Throughout the rest of his life, he was bitter about being late, even claiming at one time that he had been present.^[11] He met with the widows and with his friends Byron, Trelawney and Leigh Hunt, who were present at Shelley's cremation; and he put the horror of these days into “Ahasuerus, The Wanderer”, his poetic tribute, dedicated to Byron and laid at the feet of the dead Shelley.^[12] A sad, melancholic Medwin left Pisa shortly after to visit Genoa, Geneva, Paris, and finally London.

Controversy over Byron

The ever restless Medwin moved to Paris in 1824 where he met Washington Irving, the American author who shared his enthusiasm for Lord Byron and for the Spanish poets particularly Calderon and a lasting correspondence was formed. It was shortly afterwards that Medwin learned of the death of Lord Byron on the 19 April 1824. The news of Byron’s death had been published in London on 15 May and by 10 July Medwin had compiled a volume, his Conversations of Lord Byron. The manuscript had received short thrift from Mary Shelley and many other critics. John Galt^[13] and William Harness published negative appraisals in Blackwood's Magazine for November, and John Cam Hobhouse wrote a withering assault on Medwin, published in the Westminster Review for January 1825, questioning the veracity of much of the book's contents.Lady Caroline Lamb, one of Byron’s most important mistresses was deeply upset by Medwin’s comments and wrote him letters putting her view of their affair to him. John Murray (1778-1843) the Scottish publisher and member of the publishing house that owned the copyright to Byron's works was also outraged at the revelations and threatened to sue. (Murray had destroyed Byron's memoirs as being unfit for publication.)

However there were supporters, and it was well received by several eminent writers including Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges who included in his edition of Edward Phillips’ Theatrum Petarum Anglicanorum a memoir of Shelley, written by Medwin. Leigh Hunt, as might be expected, took a more tolerant view of Medwin in Lord Byron and his Contemporaries (1828) and since the publication of Byron’s letters in Thomas Moore's biography(1830/31)^[14] and Lady Blessington's Conversations(1832–33) Medwin's recollections of Byron have come to be seen, if not always faithful in detail, as an essentially accurate portrayal.

Although the book was certainly a piece of populist opportunism by Medwin and it affected his relationships with some of his friends, it proved a tremendous financial success. There were at least twelve reprints in the United States and it was published in Germany, France and Italy. It remains in print to this day. Captain Medwin was famous (or infamous), well-off and able to marry Anne Henrietta Hamilton, Countess of Starnford (a Swedish title) on 2 November 1824 in Lausanne.

High life and downfall

Medwin was thirty-six when he married and continued a long honeymoon at Vevey in Switzerland before settling to live in Florence. The union produced two daughters^{[note 1]} and Medwin settled into a life of style and substance amongst an English émigré community. Unfortunately Medwin lived beyond his means and lost considerable sums buying and selling Italian artworks. By 1829, when his father died, he was in dire financial straits, with creditors repossessing his goods. His marriage came under strain, and Medwin appears to have ducked his responsibilities and abandoned his wife and two daughters, leaving friends such as Trelawney and Charles Armitage Brown to sort out his and his wife’s affairs.^[1]

Medwin moved to Genoa, where he at last worked assiduously on a play, Prometheus portarore del fuoco (Prometheus the Fire-bearer). Though never published in English, it was translated into Italian and published in Genoa in 1830, where it was reviewed enthusiastically.^[15] In typical fashion, Medwin dedicated the play to the memory of Shelley. Genoa, however, turned out to be only an interlude, as Medwin was expelled for writing a tragedy called The Conspiracy of the Fieschi, which alarmed the Genoese authorities, who believed it to be anti-government propaganda.^[1] By January 1831 Medwin, without his family, was back in London, still hoping to earn a living as a writer.^{[note 2]}

Translations of Aeschylus

In 1832 his Memoir of Shelley was published in six weekly instalments in The Athenaeum with the Shelley Papers, following at eighteen weekly intervals until April 1833. These were then collected in 1833 and published as The Shelley Papers; Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by which time Medwin was editor of the New Anti-Jacobin: A Monthly Magazine of Politics, Commerce, Science, Art, Music and the Drama, which appeared only twice, with contributions from the poet Horace Smith and John Poole, as well as the editor.

Medwin had also embarked on what may be regarded as his finest achievements, the translations of Aeschylus's plays into English. It was a prodigious piece of work with Prometheus Unbound and Agamemon appearing in companion volumes in May 1833, followed by The Seven Tribes Against Thebes, The Persians, The Eumenides and The Choephori.He did not translate The Suppliants, apparently because he disapproved of "its corruptions".^[16] The translations were enthusiastically reviewed by important literary magazines, including The Gentleman's Magazine, and published in Fraser's Magazine but there was some criticism that he had strayed from the original meaning, which Medwin had intentionally done when he felt the occasion demanded. Medwin's skill lay in bringing alive Aeschylus's characters through believable dialogue that uses traditional metres and measure. ^[1]

Medwin's output in the middle years of the 1830s was prodigious. He contributed a series of short stories to Bentley's Miscellany. He departed from his usual classical fare in The Angler in Wales or Days and Nights of Sportsmen, which is in the tradition of Isaac Walton's The Compleat Angler and chiefly takes the form of dialogue. It provides a defence of angling and insight into Medwin’s love of the countryside and its pursuits. At various points there are cameo appearances by Shelley and Byron. By this time Medwin was earning a decent living, but it was not enough to repay his creditors. Wanderlust returned and he announced in 1837 that he was moving to Heidelberg in Germany.

Heidelberg

In the years 1837 to 1847 Medwin published twenty six tales and sketches for publication in The Athenaeum and in other literary magazines. The prose that he was now producing was essentially that of a traveller with settings associated with his many former lives in: India, Rome, Switzerland, Paris, Venice, Florence and later in Jena, Mannheim and Strasbourg. He became de facto a German correspondent for a series of magazines including The Athenaeum and The New Monthly Magazine providing impressions of all things German. He became a member of the influential Heidelberg museum and participated fully in the literary life of the city. He went to the theatre regularly and then reviewed the plays for his English readers. He read the works of German poets including: Karl Gutzkow, Ludwig Tieck, Ludwig Achim von Arnim, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Rauch and Diefenbach. The poetry of Diefenbach was favoured with a translation for English readers. He thus became an influential figure in the cross fertilisation of cultural relations between England and Germany by giving English and British readers a greater knowledge and understanding of the literature in Germany.^[17] He was to live in Heidelberg for most of the next twenty years although the travelling continued at regular intervals with several stays at fashionable Baden-Baden, the setting for much of his only novel, Lady Singleton, published in 1842.

In Heidelberg he formed one of the great attachments of his life with the poetess Caroline Champion de Crespigny (1798-1862), a former mistress of Lord Byron.^[1] Their relationship was essentially intellectual as neither were able to afford a divorce settlement from their estranged spouses. The English colony in Heidelberg was small and intimate. His acquaintances included Mary and William Howitt who found Medwin to be a man of ‘culture and refinement, aristocratic in his tastes’.^[18]

In the early 1840s Fanny Brawn(e) Lindon, once John Keats lover, moved to Heidelberg and through her Medwin was in touch with the other great poet of the romantic age. Medwin and Lindon collaborated to correct the impression provided by Mary Shelley in her Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840) that Keats had gone insane in his final days. Lindon showed letters to Medwin that suggested otherwise and Medwin used this new knowledge in his major Life of Shelley, where he published extracts from these letters by Keats himself and his friend Joseph Severn.

The Life of Shelley 1847

He began writing his biography of Percy Shelley in 1845 corresponding with relatives and friends in England including Percy Florence Shelley, the poet’s son and in 1846 he requested information from Mary Shelley. She was not co-operative wishing to hinder the publication of a Shelley biography by Thomas Medwin and claiming that Medwin had attempted to bribe her for the sum of £250. The work took two years to conclude appearing in September 1847. It was not a coolly dispassionate account of Shelley’s life. It is passionate, opinionated with attacks on Medwin’s personal enemies. There are numerous errors in date, fact and quotation, some of the later outright bowdlerizing. (Most of these errors were removed by Harry Buxton Forman in 1913)^{[note 3][19]} Whatever its manifest faults it remains a major source for those interested in studying the poet’s early life and work. Medwin is the main provider of information on the childhood of Shelley, a major source of information of the events of 1821-1822 and a mine of personal recollections. It was also the major source of knowledge in Germany of Shelley’s life and work. Shelley had become in the years since his death something of a divisive figure so criticism was to be expected. Medwin's biography duly came in for a withering attack in The Athenaeum which opened thunderously its review ‘We are not in any way satisfied with this book.’^[20] "The Spectator" wrote 'Medwin's labours .. are chiefly remarkable for the art of stuffing .. nor does the author forget a scandal when he can pick any up'. Medwin was even more reviled by the remaining members of the Pisan circle. Mary Shelley's reaction was as expected given her antipathy towards him but Trelawney was equally cutting describing the work as 'superficial' as late as 1870^[21] It was, however, received sympathetically by some journals. These included William Howitt and W. Harrison Ainsworth who began their review in Howitt’s Journal with ‘it could not possibly have fallen into more competent hands^[22]

Justinus Kerner in old age

He returned to Heidelberg from a visit to London and Horsham in time for the 1848 Revolution that swept through Germany. He and Caroline de Crespigny took flight to Weinsberg in Wurttemberg which remained free of active revolution. He continued to work from here,some poetry and translations for his hostJustinus Kerner. (In 1854 he was to publish a poem entitled “To Justinus Kerner”). He returned to Heidelberg the following year and in 1862 published a book of poetry entiled “The Nugae”. It was internationalist in content with poems in Greek, Latin, English, and German. There were translations from Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Scaliger, and some by Caroline de Crespigny, who died shortly after the book was published. It confirmed that Thomas Medwin was a thoroughly learned man, if occasionally imprecise and careless.

Final years in England

He returned to England to live at the age of seventy two in 1862 and began with revisionist zeal rewriting his “Life of Shelley” although the revision exists only in hand written form. In 1869 he was visited by his old friend and sometime rival Trelawny who found him constant and ‘always faithful and honest in his love of Shelley’^[23] Thomas Medwin died on 2 August 1869, at the house of his brother Pilford Medwin (right)in the Carfax in Horsham in West Sussex. He was buried in the Denne Road Cemetery in Horsham in a tomb that now lies obscured and poorly kempt in the old part of the cemetery. The tomb faces east at his request towards India, Italy and Germany and is inscribed with the epithet ‘He was a friend and companion of Byron, Shelley and Trelawney’.

Legacy

An assessment of Thomas Medwin's legacy tends to raise more questions than answers.^[24] Was Medwin a chancer who lived beyond his means and ruined his father and wife? He tended to fall out with former associates including Shelley's widow and Trelawney whilst his writings on Byron and Shelley are often imprecise. Shelley's fame grew throughout the nineteenth century and his legacy became an obsession for Medwin as it did for others in the Pisan circle. Medwin was opportunistic and disregarding of the feelings of many former friends but he remains the main source for information on Shelley's childhood. His 'Conversations of Lord Byron' is now generally regarded as vivid and essentially a true picture of the man'.^[24]

The few writers who have highlighted Medwin have concentrated on his popular writings on Shelley and Byron but his legacy also includes numerous translations from Greek, Latin, Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish . His translations of Aeschylus are of lasting importance and his early travel writings are vivid and memorable.Medwin's poetry, however, remains neglected with little critical comment available in the years since their publication. His importance in the mid 19th century cultural crosscurrents between England, United States of America and Germany has only recently been assessed.^[17] Medwin introduced many German writers to the English speaking world particularly poets such as Karl Gutzkow, Ludwig Tieck and Ludwig Achim von Arnim and more work on this facet of his career is needed. Thomas Medwin 'deserves to be reassessed in the light of the new evidence that is now available'^[24]

Selected bibliography

• ‘’Oswald and Edwin, an Oriental Sketch’’ (Geneva 1821)
• "Sketches in Hindoostan with Other Poems" (London 1821)
• ‘’Ahasuerus, The Wanderer; Dramatic Legend in Six Parts’’ (London 1823)
• “The Death of Mago” translated from Petrarch’s Africa; in Ugo Foscolo, Essays on Petrarch (London 1823) pp. 215, 217
• “Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron” Noted during a residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822” (London, 1823)
• “Prometheus Bound “ (translated from Aeschylus), Siena 1927; London 1832; Fraser’s Magazine XVI (August 1837), 209–233
• “Agamemnon” (translated from Aeschylus), London 1832; Fraser’s Magazine XVIII (November 1838), pp. 505–539
• “The Choephori” (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser’s Magazine VI, (London 1832), pp. 511–535
• “The Shelley Papers; Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley” (London, 1833)
• “The Persians” (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser’s Magazine VII (January 1833) pp. 17–43
• “The Seven Against Thebes” (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser’s Magazine VII (April 1833) pp. 437–458
• “The Eumenides” (translated from Aeschylus), Fraser’s Magazine IX (May 1834) pp. 553–573.
• “The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of Sportsmen (London 1834)
• " The apportionment of the world, from Schiller, Transl. by Thomas Medwin. Bentley's Miscellany IV p. 549 (December 1837).
• “The Three Sisters” A Romance of Real Life, Bentley’s Miscellany III (January 1838)
• “The Two Sisters” Bentley’s Miscellany III (March 1838)
• “Canova: Leaves from the Autiobiography of an Amateur” Frasers Magazine XX (September 1839)
• " My Moustache", Ainsworth's Magazine, I, pp. 52–54 (1842)
• "Lady Singleton, or, The world as it is". Cunningham & Mortimer, (London, 1843)
• “The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley” (London 1847)
• “Oscar and Gianetta: From the German of a Sonnetten Kranz, by Louis von Ploennies” The New Monthly Magazine XCI (March 1851) pp. 360–361
• “To Justinus Kerner: With a Painted Wreath of Bay-Leaves” The New Monthly Magazine XCI (November 1854) p. 196
• “Nugae” (Heidelberg, 1856), Edited by Medwin and includes his own poems.
• “Odds and Ends” (Heidelberg, 1862)
• “The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley” (London, 1913). A new edition, edited by H.Buxton Forman.

Biographies

• Captain Medwin: Friend of Byron and Shelley by Ernest J Lovell Jr. University of Texas 1962
• Horsham's Forgotten Son: Thomas Medwin, Friend of Shelley and Byron by Susan Cabell Djabri, Jeremy Knight, Horsham District Council, Horsham Museum 1995

Notes

References