Thomas Medwin

Did You Know?

• Medwin was gazetted as a cornet in June 1812 and served as a lieutenant in the 24th Dragoon guards in India, seeing action at the siege of Hathras in 1817.
• He witnessed an incident of sati on the Narmuda river in 1818.
• In September 1820 he arrived in Geneva to stay with Jane and Edward Ellerker Williams, the latter of whom drowned with Shelley.

Early life

Thomas Medwin was born in Horsham, West Sussex, the third son of five children of Thomas Charles Medwin, a solicitor and steward, and Mary Medwin. He was a second cousin on both sides to Percy Bysshe Shelley, who lived two miles away at Field Place, Warnham. Medwin and Shelley formed a childhood friendship, meeting during holidays for fishing and fox-hunting. Medwin attended Syon House Academy in Brentford from 1798 to 1804, as did Shelley from 1802 to 1804; Medwin claimed they remained close friends there, with Shelley once sleepwalking to his dormitory. After a year in a public school, Medwin matriculated at University College, Oxford in 1805 but left without a degree. He was articled as a clerk in his father's law firm in Horsham but preferred aristocratic pursuits with Shelley. Their romantic attachments included their cousin Harriet Grove, with whom Shelley was deeply involved in spring 1810 until her parents ended the relationship. A year later Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook using money borrowed under false pretences from Medwin senior.

Translating Aeschylus

In 1832 Medwin's Memoir of Shelley appeared in six weekly instalments in The Athenaeum, followed by the Shelley Papers at 18 weekly intervals until April 1833; these were collected and published as The Shelley Papers; Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By then Medwin was editor of the New Anti-Jacobin, a conservative monthly that ran for only two issues. He also undertook well-received translations of Aeschylus' plays into English, influenced by the German dramatic theorist August Wilhelm Schlegel and his depiction of Prometheus as 'the representation of constancy under suffering'. Prometheus Bound, a translation Medwin worked on with Shelley, was first published in 1827 and reprinted in Fraser's Magazine in 1832. Further translations followed: The Choephori, The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, and The Eumenides in 1834, and Agamemnon in November 1838. He did not translate The Suppliants, apparently disapproving of 'its corruptions'. The Athenaeum praised his translations as standing 'alone in naked majesty unapproached and unapproachable', though some critics said he strayed too far from the original meaning for dramatic effect, a criticism Medwin appeared to accept in the preface to Prometheus Bound.

Heidelberg

In Heidelberg Medwin regularly published articles for journals such as The Athenaeum and Ainsworth's Magazine, acting as a foreign correspondent with selections from his earlier periods in India, Rome, Switzerland, Paris, Venice, Florence, and later Jena, Mannheim and Strasbourg. He became a de facto correspondent for British readers, providing insights into German society and culture. A gregarious man, he settled into Heidelberg's cultural life, critiquing German theatre for English readers and translating German poets including Karl Gutzkow, Ludwig Tieck, Ludwig Achim von Arnim, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Rauch and Diefenbach. Sources for this period are scarce, but he evidently introduced several German poets to English-speaking readers as part of a cultural cross-fertilisation between England and Germany. He lived in Heidelberg for most of the next twenty years, travelling regularly to Baden-Baden, the setting for his only novel, Lady Singleton, Or The World As It Is, published in 1843. A silver-fork novel popular in the 1840s, it attempted to adumbrate the mercenary nature of some upper-class marriages and the harm caused by England's strict divorce laws; it first appeared serially in Fraser's Magazine as The Sacrifice; or, the Country, Town, and the Continent.

Life of Shelley

Medwin began preparing his biography of Percy Shelley in 1845, corresponding with relatives and friends in England, including Percy Florence Shelley, the poet's son. In 1846 he requested information from Mary Shelley, who was uncooperative, wishing to hinder publication because she was concerned about Shelley's reputation; she claimed Medwin attempted to bribe her with £250, which Medwin denied. The work took two years to finish, appearing in September 1847. It was not a dispassionate account but passionate and opinionated, including attacks on Medwin's personal enemies, with numerous errors of date, fact and quotation, some outright bowdlerised. Nevertheless, it remains an important source for the poet's early life and work, the main authority on Shelley's childhood, a contemporary fountainhead for events of 1821–1822, and a mine of personal recollections. It was also the primary source of knowledge in Germany on Shelley's life and work. Criticism was expected: The Athenaeum opened its review with 'We are not in any way satisfied with this book', and The Spectator wrote that Medwin's labours 'are chiefly remarkable for the art of stuffing'. Mary Shelley's reaction was hostile, and Trelawny called the work 'superficial' as late as 1870. However, some critics received it better, including William Howitt and W. Harrison Ainsworth, who began their review by saying the subject 'could not possibly have fallen into more competent hands.'