The great English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Gulf of La Spezia, off the northwestern Italian coast, 200 years ago on July 8th at the young age of 29. His poems, such as Ozymandias and Ode to the West Wind, have stood the test of time and are well known but his interest in Ireland and support for its independence may not be as well known.
The late 18th-century revolutionary upheavals greatly influenced the Romantic poets and although Shelley was too young to have lived through them, he was committed to the republicanism and egalitarianism that they proclaimed. Paul O’Brien, author of Shelley and Revolutionary Ireland (2002), suggests that his interest in Irish politics was inspired by Irish revolutionaries who frequented London’s coffee-shops. He particularly loathed Lord Castlereagh, who forced through the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland, and while at Oxford University, he published his support for an Irish journalist, Peter Finnerty, who was jailed for libelling Castlereagh.
He came to Ireland in early February 1812 because, according to Paul O’Brien, “he believed the struggle in Ireland could ignite a movement that would revive the ideals of the French Revolution”. Having studied Irish history closely, he published a pamphlet, An Address to the Irish People, 1,500 copies of which were printed and distributed in Dublin. There he explained his political views and urged the Irish people to take action for themselves.
Not long after his arrival in Dublin, he got to know Catherine Nugent, who’d been active in the United Irishmen during 1798. She advised him about problems in his Address to the Irish People and persuaded him to write a second pamphlet with more practical steps; this was entitled Proposals for an Association and he also published a 32-point Declaration of Rights, which was pasted up in prominent places around Dublin.
Shelley’s plan was that survivors of the United Irishmen movement would combine with other radicals to form an organisation that would campaign for Catholic Emancipation and repeal of the Act of Union. His publications did arouse some political interest and John Lawless, a member of the Catholic Association and associate of Daniel O’Connell made contact with him and they agreed to cooperate.
A new radical newspaper was planned, as well as a book on the course of Irish history (the Compendium of Irish History was published in 1814 but it’s not known if Shelley contributed to it). Lawless arranged for him to speak at a Catholic Association public meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, alongside O’Connell. His speech went down well and was widely reported in the newspapers.
Shelley had long admired Robert Emmet and visited St Michan’s Church, where Emmet was believed to be buried. He revised his elegiac poem, The Monarch’s Funeral: An Anticipation: “For who was he, the uncoffined slain/That fell in Erin’s injured isle,/Because his spirit dared disdain /To light his country’s funeral pile?” In On Robert Emmet’s Tomb, he proposed that because unknown, Emmet’s grave would “remain unpolluted by fame/Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,/Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.”
When he returned to London from Dublin, he took with him an account of Emmet’s trial containing his famous speech from the dock, and Emmet again appears as the “patriot” in The Devil’s Walk, a long attack on a corrupt, unreforming government. But while in Dublin and distributing An Address to the Irish People, he pleaded for no repeat of Emmet’s attempted rebellion as he believed the violence would be futile.
His time in Dublin probably achieved little and his lack of experience and impatience didn’t help. Paul O’Brien believes that had he put in the time and work with people such as Catherine Nugent and John Lawless, “a small but significant movement could have been built”. But O’Brien also points out that his Irish sojourn was the most intensive period of practical political education that Shelley experienced and that it had a lasting effect on his life and writing.
He kept up an interest in Irish affairs until his premature death. Among his circle in Italy was the Irish painter Amelia Curran, who painted the only known portrait of Shelley made during his lifetime, according to Paul O’Brien.
While in Dublin, he wrote the poem To Liberty and a Paradise on Earth, the title of which reflects the nobility of his hopes and aspirations. His ashes were buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome and on his tombstone are inscribed the lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange”.