Thomas Medwin

Thomas Medwin (20 March 1788 - 2 August 1869) was an English poet and prose writer, the cousin, schoolmate, and biographer of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Thomas Medwin (1788-1869), from Medwin's Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1913. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Youth and education

Medwin was born at Horsham, the 3rd son of Thomas Charles Medwin, of a good Sussex family, by Mary, daughter of John Pilfold and 1st cousin to Elizabeth Pilfold, the mother of Shelley.

Medwin was educated at Sion House, Brentford, where Shelley followed him, and as boys they spent most of their vacations together at Horsham.

Medwin enrolled in Trinity College, Oxford in 1805, but there is no record of him taking a degree.

Career

Medwin entered the army, and on 16 September 1813 became a lieutenant in the 24th dragoon guards. Later he went with his regiment to India, where he had numerous adventures, probably the basis, more or less slight, of those afterwards described in The Angler in Wales. About this time he published anonymously 2 short poems, called "The Pindarries" and "Sketches in Hindoostan," but they attracted no notice. From 25 July 1819 he remained for several years on half-pay, with the rank of captain, and, after having apparently served in the 1st life-guards, finally left the service.

In the autumn of 1821 he went to Italy for his health, and joined the party of literary Englishmen then living in Tuscany. At Pisa Shelley introduced him as his cousin and schoolfellow to Lord Byron, who had rented the Palazzo Lanfranchi. Medwin stayed at Pisa from 20 November 1821 until 15 March 1822, and (after a visit to Rome) the following August 18-28, during which time he was constantly in Byron's society and took notes of his talk.

On Byron's death in 1824 Medwin, who was then in Switzerland, published a Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron, and the book excited great interest, being republished in Paris and New York, and translated into French and German before the end of the year. At home it created considerable controversy, especially over the statements made therein in regard to Lady Byron, some impugning Medwin's veracity or his recollection, others holding that Byron, with his love of half mystifying confidences, had deliberately misled him. Byron's friend, Hobhouse, wrote a pamphlet contradicting some of Medwin's statements. Robert Southey, who had fiercely attacked Don Juan in his Vision of Judgment, and had been roughly handled in the Journal, treated Medwin as an authentic chronicler, and, denouncing the "impudent lies" in the volume, declared the liar to be Byron, "and not his blunderbuss, who had only let off what it was charged with."

In 1823 Medwin had brought out a dramatic poem on the subject of the Wandering Jew, published anonymously in London. He spent much of his time travelling on the continent, and in 1825, in Italy, married Anne, baroness Hamilton of Sweden, by her 1st marriage Countess of Stainfort or Starnford. The couple had 2 daughters, who were born in Florence, and afterwards married to Italian noblemen.

He soon fell into debt, deserted his wife, and led an unsettled life. But he continued his literary work, and in 1833 wrote a memoir of Shelley, afterwards expanded into a life of the poet. He also made himself a fair classical scholar, and translated the Agamemnon into English verse. He moved about for some time between England and the continent, engaged in various literary schemes, and contributed to the Athenæum and other periodicals.

After spending some 20 years in retirement at Heidelberg he returned to Horsham, where he died in his brother's house in the Carfax. His wife, who was born in London on 26 Feb. 1788, died in Siena on 28 June 1868.

Publications

• The Pindarries. [1815?]
• Oswald and Edwin: An oriental sketch. Geneva: J.J. Paschoud, 1820.
• Sketches in Hindoustan, with other poems. London: C. & J. Ollier, 1821.
• Ahasuerius, the Wanderer: A dramatic legend, in six parts. London, G. & W.B. Whittaker, 1823.

Novel

• Lady Singleton; or The world as it is. (3 volumes), London: Cunningham & Mortimer, 1843.

Non-fiction

• Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron. London: Henry Colburn, 1824; Paris: A. & W. Galignani, 1824; New York: Wilder & Campbell / Philadelphia: E. Littell, 1824.
  • Conversations of Lord Byron (edited by Ernest J. Lovell). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.
• The Shelley Papers: Memoir of Shelley. London: Whittaker, Treacher, 1833.
• The Angler in Wales; or, Days and nights of sportsmen. (2 volumes), London: Bentley, 1834. Volume I, Volume II
• The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. (2 volumes), London: T.C. Newby, 1847. Volume I, Volume II
  • (edited by H. Buxton Foreman). (1 volume), Oxford, UK, & New York: Humphrey Milford, for Oxford University Press, 1913.
• Odd and Ends. Heidelberg, Germany: J.S. Wolff, 1862.

Translated

• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound: A tragedy from the Greek. Siena, Italy: printed by Onorato Porri, 1827; London: W. Pickering, 1832.
• Aeschylus, Agamemnon: A tragedy, translated. London: W. Pickering, 1832.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Saunders, Thomas Bailey (1894) "Medwin, Thomas" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 37 London: Smith, Elder, p. 208  . Wikisource, Web, Aug. 16, 2916.

External links

Poems

• "Stanzas"

Books

• Thomas Medwin at Amazon.com

About

• Thomas Medwin (1788-1869) at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley reviewed
• Medwin's Conversations of Lord Byron

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Medwin, Thomas