Thomas Medwin
Thomas Medwin was an early 19th-century English writer, poet and translator. He is known chiefly for his biography of his cousin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and for published recollections of his 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. His two older brothers John and Henry died in early adulthood.He was a second cousin on both his parents' sides to Percy Bysshe Shelley, who lived two miles away at Field Place, Warnham, and with whom Medwin formed a friendship from childhood onwards.
Medwin was from a prosperous rather than a wealthy family that expected their sons to work for a living. He attended Syon House Academy in Isleworth in 1788–1804, as did Shelley in 1802–1808. Medwin related that Shelley and he remained close friends at Syon House, forming a bond so close that Shelley apparently sleepwalked his way to Medwin's dormitory. After a further year in a public school, Medwin matriculated at University College, Oxford in the winter of 1805, but left without taking his degree. He was initially articled as a clerk in his father's law firm in Horsham.
Medwin showed aptitude in foreign languages and was to become fluent in Greek, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese. He 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 for pursuits such as fishing and fox-hunting. Their romantic attachments included their cousin Harriet Grove, with whom Shelley was deeply committed by the spring of 1810, although he was to elope with Harriet Westbrook in 1811 using money he had borrowed under false pretences from Medwin senior.
Medwin rebelled against his father's wish for him to become a lawyer, running up gambling debts and causing a quarrel with his father, the result of which was the omission of Thomas from his father's will, executed in 1829. Considerable debts appear to have been paid by his family. His activities involved much carousing and gambling at his club in Brighton and 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." Medwin's financial situation could not continue as it was, and by 1812 he had accepted a military commission in the 24th Light Dragoons, a regiment where he could pursue his social pretensions.
India
Although he had no military training, Medwin was gazetted as a cornet in June 1812, joining his regiment at Cawnpore in Uttar Pradesh in northern India shortly thereafter. Cawnpore, far removed from the scene of the Gurkha or Nepal War of 1814–16, in which Medwin's regiment did not participate, was amongst the largest military stations in India, with an organised social life and stores stocked with European goods.The heat was stultifying and few duties were required of an officer. Judging from Medwin's description, he spent many enthusiastic hours hunting wildlife. He saw action rarely, but was present at the siege of Hathras in 1817 and involved in 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. He enthusiastically toured the classical Hindu temples of Gaur, Palibothra, Jagannath and Karla, and the Elephanta and Ellora Caves. Medwin may have had an affair with a Hindu woman that ended badly, but through whom he was introduced to the doctrines of Rammohan Roy.
Medwin's regiment was disbanded at the end of 1818 and Medwin went on half-pay, attached to a regiment of the Life Guards until 1831, when he sold 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.
Whilst waiting in Bombay for a berth back to England in October 1818, he rediscovered on a bookstall the poetry of his cousin Shelley, in a copy of The Revolt of Islam. Shelley was to provide the central experience and focal point of his literary life. Recalling the incident under his persona Julian in The Angler in Wales in 1834, he was "astonished at the greatness of genius" and declared that "the amiable philosophy and self-sacrifice inculcated by that divine poem, worked a strange reformation in my mind." Medwin's sobriquet Julian is likely to have been a reference to Shelley's Julian and Maddalo, a poem in which Julian has characteristics of Shelley.
Reunion with Shelley
In September 1820 he arrived in Geneva to stay with Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams, the latter of whom was to drown with Shelley. There he finished his first published poem, Oswald and Edwin, An Oriental Sketch, dedicated to Williams. This ran to 40 pages with 12 pages of notes. It was revised in 1821 as the Lion Hunt for Sketches From Hindoostan.In the autumn of 1820, Medwin joined his cousin Shelley in Pisa, moving in with him and his wife Mary Shelley, with whom he was to develop an uneasy relationship. Mary couldn't stand Medwin's nagging presence, and found him extremely boring: "The burden of Tom grows very heavy!". 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 also read Schiller, Cervantes, Milton and Petrarch, and throughout early 1821 pursued a vigorous intellectual life. Shelley was working on Prometheus and would read drafts each evening to Medwin, who was continuing 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 Byron
Shelley introduced Medwin to Lord Byron on 20 November 1821. Byron and Medwin were to form a friendship. They enjoyed the company of various 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 Trelawny. The last would feature as friend and rival throughout Medwin's life, as both sought to be arbiters of Byron's reputation. Medwin provided a translation of part of Petrarch's "Africa" for Byron, while Byron finished Cantos 6–12 of Don Juan. When Medwin decided to continue his tour of Italy in April 1822, Byron insisted on holding a splendid leaving party for him.Death of Shelley
Medwin travelled first to Rome, where he was introduced to the sculptor Antonio Canova, and then to Naples, before sailing to Genoa. It was at Genoa that he heard a rumour of an English schooner being lost with two Englishman aboard, 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 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. He met the widows and his friends Byron, Trelawny and Leigh Hunt, who were present at Shelley's cremation, and he put the horror of those days into "Ahasuerus, The Wanderer", a poetic tribute, dedicated to Byron and laid at the feet of the dead Shelley. A melancholic Medwin left Pisa shortly after to visit Genoa, Geneva, Paris, and finally London.Controversy over Byron
The restless Medwin moved to Paris in 1824, where he met Washington Irving, an American author who shared his enthusiasm for Byron and the Spanish poets, particularly Calderón. A lasting correspondence was formed. Shortly afterwards Medwin learned of the death of Lord Byron on 19 April 1824. The news was published in London on 15 May, and by 10 July Medwin had compiled a volume, his Conversations of Lord Byron. The manuscript received short shrift from Mary Shelley and many other critics. John Galt and William Harness published negative appraisals in the November Blackwood's Magazine, and John Cam Hobhouse wrote a withering assault on Medwin for the Westminster Review of January 1825, questioning the truth of much of the book's contents. Lady Caroline Lamb, one of Byron's mistresses, was deeply upset by Medwin's comments and wrote him letters putting her view of their affair to him. John Murray, the Scottish publisher whose family house owned the copyright to Byron's works, was also outraged at the revelations and threatened to sue.However supporters of Medwin's book included several eminent writers, including Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, who incorporated 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, and since the publication of Byron's letters in Thomas Moore's biography and Lady Blessington's Conversations, Medwin's recollections of Byron have come to be seen as not always faithful in detail, but essentially an accurate portrayal. There were at least twelve impressions in the United States, and it was published in Germany, France and Italy. It remains in print to this day. Captain Medwin was by then famous, well-off, and able to marry Anne Henrietta Hamilton, Countess of Starnford, on 2 November 1824 in Lausanne.