Chapter V

If, as is here maintained, Shelley suffered from a repression of homosexual impulses, an experienced psychoanalyst should be able to trace the effects of this on his life and behaviour. The writer is not such an expert, but he would nevertheless indicate in a general way how psychoanalytic theories may confirm his views as to Shelley’s nature.

Shelley suffered from Paranoia, in a distinct, though not acute, degree. Paranoia is a mental disease characterised by delusions of persecutions, jealousy, or grandeur. These delusions are usually intermittent, and often change in their content. For example, the persecutor may first be one person and later another, or several others, or a whole class (e.g. the “Kings, Priests, and Statesmen” of _Queen Mab_).

Sometimes a delusion of persecution is replaced by one of jealousy, or vice versa.

Shelley’s delusions have been described, but only very inadequately discussed, by his biographers, and I can only summarise them here. The earliest of them is the most important, for it probably reveals the cause of them all.[21] It concerned his father, who was a bluff Country Squire, rather boorish, and totally incapable of understanding Shelley’s nature. What the relations between Shelley and his father were before this delusion, we do not know; but for the rest of his life the poet was hostile and antagonistic to Mr. Timothy, and, moreover, suspicious of him.

At one time in his boyhood Shelley contracted a fever, and, presumably during his convalescence, he became convinced that his Father was secretly plotting to have the boy (who was indubitably erratic) locked up in a mad-house. Shelley appealed to Dr. Lind who, so the story goes, came over and spoke strongly to Mr. Timothy, and thus rescued Shelley. The date of this delusion is not known, but it occurred while the boy was at school, probably in the earlier Eton days. Peacock, after quoting Hogg’s account of Shelley’s description of this scheme, adds: “However this may have been, the idea that his father was continually on the watch for a pretext to lock him up haunted him through life, and a mysterious intimation of his father’s intention to effect such a purpose was frequently received by him, and communicated to his friends as a demonstration of the necessity under which he was placed of changing his residence and going abroad.”

In canto 3 of _The Revolt of Islam_ we have a record of this fever and of Shelley’s delirium. Laon is imprisoned, and suffers the horrors of temporary madness.

With chains which eat into the flesh alas!
With brazen links my naked limbs they bound:

After lying in chains for three days, madness overcomes him:

My brain began to fail when the fourth morn
Burst o’er the golden isles--a fearful sleep,
Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn
Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep
With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep--
A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness--
These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep
Their watch in some dim charnels loneliness,
A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!

The forms which peopled this terrific trance
I well remember--like a choir of devils,
Around me they involved a giddy dance;

And then comes the old Hermit (or, in real life, Dr. Lind) whose mere presence heals the disordered brain.

In the deep,
The shape of an old man did then appear,
Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake to weep.

* * * * *

He struck my chains and gently spake and smiled:
As they were loosened by that Hermit old,
Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,
To answer those kind looks.

The significance of all this lies in the fact that the authorities on psychoanalysis mostly seem to agree in attributing Paranoia, with its delusions of persecution and of jealousy, to a repression of homosexuality.[22] Dr. E. Jones (_Papers on Psychoanalysis_) states: “In Paranoia, for instance, it is now known that such delusions always arise to begin with in connexion with persons whom the patient has tried to love, but for internal reasons (repression of homosexuality) has been unable to.”

In Shelley’s case, we have seen that the original delusion concerned his father, which is conclusive evidence of his inversion.

After this it will not seem too rash to say that Shelley’s various persecutory delusions sprang, in all probability, from a like cause. We have, indeed, brought forward considerable positive evidence, from Shelley’s life and writings, to show that in him was a strangely double nature, and that there was certainly a homosexual _component_ in his make-up. His character was complex, and full of contradictions, and he showed an unusual number of physical and mental traits which are common in women rather than in men. More than any other English poet, he was the minstrel of Love; and his own erotic nature was surely the most important thing about him. Yet on this hardly a significant word has been written by his biographers. Until we understand the inner tragedy of his life, we can hardly understand the poet or his song.