Thomas Love Peacock
Encyclopedia
Thomas Love Peacock was an English satirist
and author.
Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley
and they influenced each other's work. He wrote satirical novel
s, each with the same basic setting — characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.
He worked for the British East India Company
.
Peacock was born in Weymouth, Dorset, the son of Samuel Peacock and his wife Sarah Love, daughter of Thomas Love a retired master of a man-of-war in the Royal Navy
. His father was a glass merchant in London, partner of a Mr Pellatt, presumed to be Apsley Pellatt (1763–1826). Peacock went with his mother to live with her family at Chertsey
in 1791 and in 1792 went to a school run by Joseph Harris Wicks at Englefield Green
where he stayed for six and a half years. His father died in 1794 in "poor circumstances" leaving a small annuity. His first known poem was an epitaph for a school fellow written at the age of ten and another on his Midsummer Holidays was written when he was thirteen. Around that time in 1798 he was abruptly taken from school and from then on was entirely self educated.
In February 1800, Peacock became a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, who were merchants in the City of London
. He lived with his mother on the firm's premises at 4 Angel Court Throgmorton Street. He won the eleventh prize
from the Monthly Preceptor for a verse answer to the question "Is History or Biography the More Improving Study?". He also contributed to "The Juvenile Library", a magazine for youth whose competitions excited the emulation of several other boys including Leigh Hunt, de Quincey
, and W. J. Fox
. He began visiting the Reading Room
of the British Museum
, which he frequented for many years, a diligent student of all the best literature in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra.Some of Peacock's juvenile compositions were privately printed by Sir Henry Cole
.
In around 1806 he left his job in the city and during the year made a solitary walking tour of Scotland. The annuity left by his father expired in October 1806. In 1807 he returned to live at his mother's house at Chertsey. He was briefly engaged to Fanny Faulkner, but it was broken off through the interference of her relations. His friends, as he hints, thought it wrong that so clever a man should be earning so little money. In the autumn of 1808 he became private secretary
to Sir Home Popham, commanding the fleet before Flushing
. By the end of the year he was serving Captain Andrew King aboard in the Downs. His preconceived affection for the sea did not reconcile him to nautical realities. "Writing poetry", he says, "or doing anything else that is rational, in this floating inferno
, is next to a moral impossibility. I would give the world to be at home and devote the winter to the composition of a comedy
". He did write prologue
s and addresses for dramatic performances on board HMS Venerable. His dramatic taste then and for nine years subsequently found expression in attempts at comedies and pieces of a still lighter class, all of which fail from lack of ease of dialogue and the over-elaboration of incident and humour. He left the Venerable in March 1809 at Deal and walked around Ramsgate in Kent before returning home to Chertsey. He had sent his publisher Edward Hookham a little poem of the Thames which he expanded during the year into "The Genius of the Thames". On 29 May he set out on a two week expedition
to trace the course of the River Thames
from its source to Chertsey and spent two or three days staying in Oxford.
Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Tremadog
and settled at Maentwrog
in Merionethshire
. At Maentwrog he was attracted to the parson's daughter Jane Gryffydh, whom he referred to as the "Caernavonshire nymph". Early in June 1810, the "Genius of the Thames" was published by Thomas and Edward Hookham. Early in 1811 he left Maentwrog to walk home via South Wales. He climbed Cadair Idris
and visited Edward Scott at Bodtalog near Towyn
. His journey included Aberystwyth
and Devil's Bridge, Ceredigion
. Later in 1811, his mother's annuity expired and she had to leave Chertsey and moved to Morven Cottage Wraysbury
near Staines with the help of some friends. In 1812 they had to leave Morven Cottage over problems paying tradesmen's bills.
's Life of Shelley, vol. 2, pp. 174, 175.) Thomas Hookham, the publisher of all Peacock's early writings, was possibly responsible for the introduction. It was Hookham's circulating library which Shelley used for many years, and Hookham had sent The Genius of the Thames to Shelley, and in the Shelley Memorials, pp. 38–40, is a letter from the poet dated 18 August 1812, extolling the poetical merits of the performance and with equal exaggeration censuring what he thought the author's misguided patriotism. Personal acquaintance almost necessarily ensued, and hence arose an intimacy not devoid of influence upon Shelley's fortunes both before and after his death.
For some years, the course of Peacock's life is only known in connection with Shelley. In the winter of 1813 he accompanies Shelley and his first wife Harriet to Edinburgh. Peacock was fond of Harriet, and in his old age defended her reputation from slanders spread by Jane, Lady Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Shelley's second wife Mary.
After Shelley deserted Harriet, Peacock throughout the winter of 1814–15 became an almost daily visitor of Shelley and his mistress, Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), at their London lodgings. In 1815 he shares their voyage to the source of the Thames. "He seems", writes Charles Clairmont, Mary Godwin's stepbrother and a member of the party, "an idly-inclined man; indeed, he is professedly so in the summer; he owns he cannot apply himself to study, and thinks it more beneficial to him as a human being entirely to devote himself to the beauties of the season while they last; he was only happy while out from morning till night". During the winter of 1815–16 Peacock was continually walking over from Marlow, where he had established himself some time in this year, to visit Shelley at Bishopgate. There he met Hogg, and "the winter was a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively Greek". The benefit which Shelley derived from such a course of study cannot be overrated. Its influence is seen more and more in everything he wrote to the end of his life. The morbid, the fantastic, the polemical, gradually faded out of his mind; and the writer who began as the imitator of the wildest extravagances of German romance would, had not his genius transcended the limits of any school, have ended as scarcely less of a Hellene than Keats
and Landor
.
In 1815 Headlong Hall
was written, and it was published the following year. With this book Peacock definitively takes the place in literature which he was to maintain throughout his life, without substantial alteration or development beyond the mellowing which wider experience and increasing prosperity would naturally bring.
In 1816 Shelley went abroad, and Peacock appears to have been entrusted with the task of finding the Shelleys a new residence. He fixed them near his own home at Great Marlow. Melincourt
was published at this time; and Nightmare Abbey
and "Rhododaphne" written. Before these works were published in 1818, Shelley was again on the wing, and Peacock and he were never to meet again.
: "I now pass every morning at the India House, from half-past 10 to half-past 4, studying Indian affairs. My object is not yet attained, though I have little doubt but that it will be. It was not in the first instance of my own seeking, but was proposed to me. It will lead to a very sufficing provision for me in two or three years. It is not in the common routine of office, but is an employment of a very interesting and intellectual kind, connected with finance and legislation
, in which it is possible to be of great service, not only to the Company, but to the millions under their dominion
."
It would appear that the East India Company
had become aware that their home staff was too merely clerical, and had determined to reinforce it by the appointment of four men of exceptional ability to the Examiner
's office, including Peacock and James Mill
.
Mill's salary is said to have been £800 a year; we do not know whether Peacock received as much. The latter's appointment is said by Sir Henry Cole to have been owing to the influence of Peter Auber, the Company's secretary and historian, whom he had known at school, though probably not as a school-fellow. Mill appears to have undergone no probation: Peacock did, but the test papers which he drafted were returned to him with the high commendation, "Nothing superfluous, and nothing wanting".
We learn from Hogg that it was on 1 July 1819 that Peacock slept for the first time in "a house in Stamford Street (No 18) which, as you might expect from a Republican, he has furnished very handsomely."
In 1820, Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh. In his "Letter to Maria Gisborne", Shelley referred to Jane as "the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope." Peacock and his wife had three daughters. One of them, Mary Ellen, married the novelist George Meredith
as her second husband in August 1849. Jane Peacock died in 1865.
In 1822 Maid Marian, begun in 1818, was completed and published. It was soon dramatised with great success by Planché, and enjoyed the honour of translation into French and German. Peacock's salary was now £1000 a year, and in 1823 he acquired the residence at Lower Halliford
which continued his predilection to the end of his life. In 1829 came The Misfortunes of Elphin
, and in 1831 Crotchet Castle
, the most mature and thoroughly characteristic of all his works.
In 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence, in succession to James Mill. The post was one which could only be filled by someone of sound business capacity and exceptional ability in drafting official documents: and Peacock's discharge of its duties, it is believed, suffered nothing by comparison either with his distinguished predecessor or his still more celebrated successor, Stuart Mill
.
It is much to be regretted that so little is known of the old India House, or of its eminent occupants in their official capacity. It does not seem to have afforded an employment of predilection to any of them. Peacock has let in a little light in another direction:—
Peacock's occupation seems to have principally lain with finance, commerce, and public works. The first clear glimpse we obtain of its nature is the memorandum prepared by him at the request of a Director respecting General Chesney's projected Euphrates expedition, and reprinted in the preface to the General's narrative as a tribute to its sagacity. The line of inquiry eventually resulted in the construction under his superintendence of iron steamboats designed to demonstrate his view of the feasibility of steam navigation round the Cape.
For many years after his appointment Peacock's authorship was in abeyance with the exception of the operatic criticisms which he regularly contributed to the "Examiner
", and an occasional article in the Westminster Review
or Bentley's Miscellany
.
In 1837, Headlong Hall
, Nightmare Abbey
, Maid Marian, and Crotchet Castle
appeared together as vol. 57 of Bentley's Standard Novels. About 1852, taste or leisure for authorship returned, and he commenced a series of contributions to Fraser's Magazine
with the first, and most interesting, paper of his "Horae Dramaticae", a delightful restoration of the "Querolus
", a Roman comedy probably of the time of Diocletian.
Peacock had in the interim retired from the India House on an ample pension (29 March 1856). Throughout 1860 his last novel, Gryll Grange
, continued to appear in Fraser's Magazine.
Peacock died at Lower Halliford
, 23 January 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in which he had attempted to save his library, and is buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton
. His granddaughter remembered him in these words:
His comedy combines the mock-Gothic
with the Aristophanic
. He suffers from that dramatist's faults and, though not as daring in invention or as free in the use of sexual humour, shares many of his strengths. His greatest intellectual love is for Ancient Greece, including late and minor works such as the Dionysiaca
of Nonnus
; many of his characters are given punning names taken from Greek to indicate their personality or philosophy.
He tended to dramatize where traditional novelists narrated; he is more concerned with the interplay of ideas and opinions than of feelings and emotions; his dramatis personae is more likely to consist of a cast of more or less equal characters than of one outstanding hero or heroine and a host of minor auxiliaries; his novels have a tendency to approximate the Classical unities
, with few changes of scene and few if any subplots; his novels are novels of conversation rather than novels of action; in fact, Peacock is so much more interested in what his characters say to one another than in what they do to one another that he often sets out entire chapters of his novels in dialogue form. Plato's
Symposium
is the literary ancestor of these works, by way of the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus
, in which (as in much of Peacock) the conversation relates less to exalted philosophical themes than to the points of a good fish dinner.
Most of the text of this article was extracted from the Introduction written by Richard Garnett for the edition of Thomas Love Peacock's novels published by J. M. Dent & Co. in 1891.
Lists of Peacock's works from The Thomas Love Peacock Society.
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and author.
Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
and they influenced each other's work. He wrote satirical novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, each with the same basic setting — characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.
He worked for the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
.
Early life
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
. His father was a glass merchant in London, partner of a Mr Pellatt, presumed to be Apsley Pellatt (1763–1826). Peacock went with his mother to live with her family at Chertsey
Chertsey
Chertsey is a town in Surrey, England, on the River Thames and its tributary rivers such as the River Bourne. It can be accessed by road from junction 11 of the M25 London orbital motorway. It shares borders with Staines, Laleham, Shepperton, Addlestone, Woking, Thorpe and Egham...
in 1791 and in 1792 went to a school run by Joseph Harris Wicks at Englefield Green
Englefield Green
Englefield Green is a large village in northern Surrey, England. It is home to Royal Holloway, University of London, the south eastern corner of Windsor Great Park and close to the towns of Egham, Windsor, Staines and Virginia Water...
where he stayed for six and a half years. His father died in 1794 in "poor circumstances" leaving a small annuity. His first known poem was an epitaph for a school fellow written at the age of ten and another on his Midsummer Holidays was written when he was thirteen. Around that time in 1798 he was abruptly taken from school and from then on was entirely self educated.
In February 1800, Peacock became a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, who were merchants in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
. He lived with his mother on the firm's premises at 4 Angel Court Throgmorton Street. He won the eleventh prize
Prize
A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people to recognise and reward actions or achievements. Official prizes often involve monetary rewards as well as the fame that comes with them...
from the Monthly Preceptor for a verse answer to the question "Is History or Biography the More Improving Study?". He also contributed to "The Juvenile Library", a magazine for youth whose competitions excited the emulation of several other boys including Leigh Hunt, de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
, and W. J. Fox
William Johnson Fox
William Johnson Fox was an English religious and political orator.-Life:He was born near Southwold, Suffolk. He trained for the Independent ministry, at the dissenting academy known as Homerton College...
. He began visiting the Reading Room
British Museum Reading Room
The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, but the Reading Room remains in its original form inside...
of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, which he frequented for many years, a diligent student of all the best literature in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra.Some of Peacock's juvenile compositions were privately printed by Sir Henry Cole
Henry Cole
Sir Henry Cole was an English civil servant and inventor who facilitated many innovations in commerce and education in 19th century Britain...
.
In around 1806 he left his job in the city and during the year made a solitary walking tour of Scotland. The annuity left by his father expired in October 1806. In 1807 he returned to live at his mother's house at Chertsey. He was briefly engaged to Fanny Faulkner, but it was broken off through the interference of her relations. His friends, as he hints, thought it wrong that so clever a man should be earning so little money. In the autumn of 1808 he became private secretary
Private Secretary
In the United Kingdom government, a Private Secretary is a civil servant in a Department or Ministry, responsible to the Secretary of State or Minister...
to Sir Home Popham, commanding the fleet before Flushing
Flushing, Netherlands
Vlissingen is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an important harbour for centuries. It was granted city rights in 1315. In the 17th century...
. By the end of the year he was serving Captain Andrew King aboard in the Downs. His preconceived affection for the sea did not reconcile him to nautical realities. "Writing poetry", he says, "or doing anything else that is rational, in this floating inferno
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, is next to a moral impossibility. I would give the world to be at home and devote the winter to the composition of a comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
". He did write prologue
Prologue
A prologue is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance...
s and addresses for dramatic performances on board HMS Venerable. His dramatic taste then and for nine years subsequently found expression in attempts at comedies and pieces of a still lighter class, all of which fail from lack of ease of dialogue and the over-elaboration of incident and humour. He left the Venerable in March 1809 at Deal and walked around Ramsgate in Kent before returning home to Chertsey. He had sent his publisher Edward Hookham a little poem of the Thames which he expanded during the year into "The Genius of the Thames". On 29 May he set out on a two week expedition
Thames meander
Thames meander refers to a long-distance journey over all or part of the River Thames in England. Walking the Thames Path is itself a meander, but the term usually applies to journeys using other methods such as rowing, running, or swimming....
to trace the course of the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
from its source to Chertsey and spent two or three days staying in Oxford.
Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Tremadog
Tremadog
Tremadog is a village on the outskirts of Porthmadog, in Gwynedd, north west Wales. It was a planned settlement, founded by William Madocks, who bought the land in 1798...
and settled at Maentwrog
Maentwrog
Maentwrog is a village and community in the Welsh county of Gwynedd, lying in the Vale of Ffestiniog, within the Snowdonia National Park. The River Dwyryd runs alongside the village...
in Merionethshire
Merionethshire
Merionethshire is one of thirteen historic counties of Wales, a vice county and a former administrative county.The administrative county of Merioneth, created under the Local Government Act 1888, was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972 on April 1, 1974...
. At Maentwrog he was attracted to the parson's daughter Jane Gryffydh, whom he referred to as the "Caernavonshire nymph". Early in June 1810, the "Genius of the Thames" was published by Thomas and Edward Hookham. Early in 1811 he left Maentwrog to walk home via South Wales. He climbed Cadair Idris
Cadair Idris
Cadair Idris or Cader Idris is a mountain in Gwynedd, Wales that lies at the southern end of the Snowdonia National Park. The peak, which is one of the most popular in Wales for walkers and hikers, is composed largely of Ordovician igneous rocks, with classic glacial erosion features such as...
and visited Edward Scott at Bodtalog near Towyn
Towyn
Towyn , is a seaside resort in the County Borough of Conwy, Wales.It is located between Rhyl, in Denbighshire, and Abergele in Conwy. According to the 2001 Census, together with neighbouring Kinmel Bay , it had a population 7,864, of which 10.7% could speak Welsh...
. His journey included Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth is a historic market town, administrative centre and holiday resort within Ceredigion, Wales. Often colloquially known as Aber, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Ystwyth and Rheidol....
and Devil's Bridge, Ceredigion
Devil's Bridge, Ceredigion
Devil's Bridge is a village in Ceredigion, Wales.- Description :The bridge spans the Mynach, a tributary of the Rheidol. The bridge is unusual in that three separate bridges are coexistent, each one built upon the previous bridge...
. Later in 1811, his mother's annuity expired and she had to leave Chertsey and moved to Morven Cottage Wraysbury
Wraysbury
Wraysbury, traditionally spelt Wyrardisbury, is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. It is located in the very east of the county, in the part that was in Buckinghamshire until 1974...
near Staines with the help of some friends. In 1812 they had to leave Morven Cottage over problems paying tradesmen's bills.
Friendship with Shelley
In 1812 Peacock published another elaborate poem, "The Philosophy of Melancholy", and in the same year made the acquaintance of Shelley: he says in his memoir of Shelley, that he "saw Shelley for the first time just before he went to Tanyrallt", whither Shelley proceeded from London in November 1812 (HoggThomas Jefferson Hogg
Thomas Jefferson Hogg was a British barrister and writer best known for his friendship with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Hogg was raised in County Durham, but spent most of his life in London. He and Shelley became friends while studying at University College, Oxford, and remained close...
's Life of Shelley, vol. 2, pp. 174, 175.) Thomas Hookham, the publisher of all Peacock's early writings, was possibly responsible for the introduction. It was Hookham's circulating library which Shelley used for many years, and Hookham had sent The Genius of the Thames to Shelley, and in the Shelley Memorials, pp. 38–40, is a letter from the poet dated 18 August 1812, extolling the poetical merits of the performance and with equal exaggeration censuring what he thought the author's misguided patriotism. Personal acquaintance almost necessarily ensued, and hence arose an intimacy not devoid of influence upon Shelley's fortunes both before and after his death.
For some years, the course of Peacock's life is only known in connection with Shelley. In the winter of 1813 he accompanies Shelley and his first wife Harriet to Edinburgh. Peacock was fond of Harriet, and in his old age defended her reputation from slanders spread by Jane, Lady Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Shelley's second wife Mary.
After Shelley deserted Harriet, Peacock throughout the winter of 1814–15 became an almost daily visitor of Shelley and his mistress, Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), at their London lodgings. In 1815 he shares their voyage to the source of the Thames. "He seems", writes Charles Clairmont, Mary Godwin's stepbrother and a member of the party, "an idly-inclined man; indeed, he is professedly so in the summer; he owns he cannot apply himself to study, and thinks it more beneficial to him as a human being entirely to devote himself to the beauties of the season while they last; he was only happy while out from morning till night". During the winter of 1815–16 Peacock was continually walking over from Marlow, where he had established himself some time in this year, to visit Shelley at Bishopgate. There he met Hogg, and "the winter was a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively Greek". The benefit which Shelley derived from such a course of study cannot be overrated. Its influence is seen more and more in everything he wrote to the end of his life. The morbid, the fantastic, the polemical, gradually faded out of his mind; and the writer who began as the imitator of the wildest extravagances of German romance would, had not his genius transcended the limits of any school, have ended as scarcely less of a Hellene than Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
and Landor
Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...
.
In 1815 Headlong Hall
Headlong Hall
Headlong Hall is the first novel by Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1815 .As in his later novel Crotchet Castle, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humor and social satire from their various interactions and conversations. The setting...
was written, and it was published the following year. With this book Peacock definitively takes the place in literature which he was to maintain throughout his life, without substantial alteration or development beyond the mellowing which wider experience and increasing prosperity would naturally bring.
In 1816 Shelley went abroad, and Peacock appears to have been entrusted with the task of finding the Shelleys a new residence. He fixed them near his own home at Great Marlow. Melincourt
Melincourt (novel)
Melincourt is the second novel of Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1817. It centers around the "idea of an orang-outang mimicking humanity." An orangutan called Sir Oran Haut-Ton is put forward as a candidate for election as a member of parliament....
was published at this time; and Nightmare Abbey
Nightmare Abbey
Nightmare Abbey was the third of Thomas Love Peacock's novels to be published. It was written in late March and June 1818, and published in London in November of the same year by T. Hookham Jr of Old Bond Street and Baldwin, Craddock & Joy of Paternoster Row...
and "Rhododaphne" written. Before these works were published in 1818, Shelley was again on the wing, and Peacock and he were never to meet again.
East India Company
On 13 January 1819, he writes from 5 York Street, Covent GardenCovent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
: "I now pass every morning at the India House, from half-past 10 to half-past 4, studying Indian affairs. My object is not yet attained, though I have little doubt but that it will be. It was not in the first instance of my own seeking, but was proposed to me. It will lead to a very sufficing provision for me in two or three years. It is not in the common routine of office, but is an employment of a very interesting and intellectual kind, connected with finance and legislation
Legislation
Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...
, in which it is possible to be of great service, not only to the Company, but to the millions under their dominion
Dominion
A dominion, often Dominion, refers to one of a group of autonomous polities that were nominally under British sovereignty, constituting the British Empire and British Commonwealth, beginning in the latter part of the 19th century. They have included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland,...
."
It would appear that the East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
had become aware that their home staff was too merely clerical, and had determined to reinforce it by the appointment of four men of exceptional ability to the Examiner
Examiner
The Examiner was a weekly paper founded by Leigh and John Hunt in 1808. For the first fifty years it was a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles, but from 1865 it repeatedly changed hands and political allegiance, resulting in a rapid decline in readership and loss of...
's office, including Peacock and James Mill
James Mill
James Mill was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was a founder of classical economics, together with David Ricardo, and the father of influential philosopher of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill.-Life:Mill was born at Northwater Bridge, in the parish of...
.
Mill's salary is said to have been £800 a year; we do not know whether Peacock received as much. The latter's appointment is said by Sir Henry Cole to have been owing to the influence of Peter Auber, the Company's secretary and historian, whom he had known at school, though probably not as a school-fellow. Mill appears to have undergone no probation: Peacock did, but the test papers which he drafted were returned to him with the high commendation, "Nothing superfluous, and nothing wanting".
We learn from Hogg that it was on 1 July 1819 that Peacock slept for the first time in "a house in Stamford Street (No 18) which, as you might expect from a Republican, he has furnished very handsomely."
In 1820, Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh. In his "Letter to Maria Gisborne", Shelley referred to Jane as "the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope." Peacock and his wife had three daughters. One of them, Mary Ellen, married the novelist George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
as her second husband in August 1849. Jane Peacock died in 1865.
In 1822 Maid Marian, begun in 1818, was completed and published. It was soon dramatised with great success by Planché, and enjoyed the honour of translation into French and German. Peacock's salary was now £1000 a year, and in 1823 he acquired the residence at Lower Halliford
Lower Halliford
Lower Halliford is a hamlet in the parish of Shepperton in Surrey, formerly Middlesex on the banks of the River Thames. It lies on the road from Kingston upon Thames to Chertsey on a loop of the Thames across the river from Walton on Thames....
which continued his predilection to the end of his life. In 1829 came The Misfortunes of Elphin
The Misfortunes of Elphin
The Misfortunes of Elphin is the fifth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1829. It is set in a somewhat historically-fanciful Arthurian Britain which incorporates many Welsh legends, but avoids all supernatural and mystical elements. Seithenyn appears as a major character.-External links:*...
, and in 1831 Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle is the sixth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1831.As in his earlier novel Headlong Hall, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations.The...
, the most mature and thoroughly characteristic of all his works.
In 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence, in succession to James Mill. The post was one which could only be filled by someone of sound business capacity and exceptional ability in drafting official documents: and Peacock's discharge of its duties, it is believed, suffered nothing by comparison either with his distinguished predecessor or his still more celebrated successor, Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
.
It is much to be regretted that so little is known of the old India House, or of its eminent occupants in their official capacity. It does not seem to have afforded an employment of predilection to any of them. Peacock has let in a little light in another direction:—
- A DAY AT THE INDIA HOUSE
- From ten to eleven, have breakfast for seven;
- From eleven to noon, think you've come too soon;
- From twelve to one, think what's to be done;
- From one to two, find nothing to do;
- From two to three, think it will be
- A very great bore to stay till four.
Peacock's occupation seems to have principally lain with finance, commerce, and public works. The first clear glimpse we obtain of its nature is the memorandum prepared by him at the request of a Director respecting General Chesney's projected Euphrates expedition, and reprinted in the preface to the General's narrative as a tribute to its sagacity. The line of inquiry eventually resulted in the construction under his superintendence of iron steamboats designed to demonstrate his view of the feasibility of steam navigation round the Cape.
Later life
Examiner
The Examiner was a weekly paper founded by Leigh and John Hunt in 1808. For the first fifty years it was a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles, but from 1865 it repeatedly changed hands and political allegiance, resulting in a rapid decline in readership and loss of...
", and an occasional article in the Westminster Review
Westminster Review
The Westminster Review was a quarterly British publication. Established in 1823 as the official organ of the Philosophical Radicals, it was published from 1824 to 1914. James Mill was one of the driving forces behind the liberal journal until 1828....
or Bentley's Miscellany
Bentley's Miscellany
Bentley's Miscellany was an English literary magazine started by Richard Bentley. It was published between 1836 and 1868.-Contributors:Already a successful publisher of novels, Bentley began the journal in 1836 and invited Charles Dickens to be its first editor...
.
In 1837, Headlong Hall
Headlong Hall
Headlong Hall is the first novel by Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1815 .As in his later novel Crotchet Castle, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humor and social satire from their various interactions and conversations. The setting...
, Nightmare Abbey
Nightmare Abbey
Nightmare Abbey was the third of Thomas Love Peacock's novels to be published. It was written in late March and June 1818, and published in London in November of the same year by T. Hookham Jr of Old Bond Street and Baldwin, Craddock & Joy of Paternoster Row...
, Maid Marian, and Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle is the sixth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1831.As in his earlier novel Headlong Hall, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations.The...
appeared together as vol. 57 of Bentley's Standard Novels. About 1852, taste or leisure for authorship returned, and he commenced a series of contributions to Fraser's Magazine
Fraser's Magazine
Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. It was founded by Hugh Fraser and William Maginn in 1830 and loosely directed by Maginn under the name Oliver Yorke until about 1840...
with the first, and most interesting, paper of his "Horae Dramaticae", a delightful restoration of the "Querolus
Querolus
Querolus or Aulularia is an anonymous Latin comedy from late antiquity, the only Latin drama to survive from this period and the only ancient Latin comedy outside the works of Plautus and Terence.-Title and Origins:...
", a Roman comedy probably of the time of Diocletian.
Peacock had in the interim retired from the India House on an ample pension (29 March 1856). Throughout 1860 his last novel, Gryll Grange
Gryll Grange
Gryll Grange is the seventh and final novel of Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1860.-External links:...
, continued to appear in Fraser's Magazine.
Peacock died at Lower Halliford
Lower Halliford
Lower Halliford is a hamlet in the parish of Shepperton in Surrey, formerly Middlesex on the banks of the River Thames. It lies on the road from Kingston upon Thames to Chertsey on a loop of the Thames across the river from Walton on Thames....
, 23 January 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in which he had attempted to save his library, and is buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton
Shepperton
Shepperton is a town in the borough of Spelthorne, Surrey, England. To the south it is bounded by the river Thames at Desborough Island and is bisected by the M3 motorway...
. His granddaughter remembered him in these words:
Works
Peacock's own place in literature is pre-eminently that of a satirist. That he has nevertheless been the favourite only of the few is owing partly to the highly intellectual quality of his work, but mainly to his lack of ordinary qualifications of the novelist, all pretension to which he entirely disclaims. He has no plot, little human interest, and no consistent delineation of character. His personages are mere puppets, or, at best, incarnations of abstract qualities such as grace or beauty, but beautifully depicted.His comedy combines the mock-Gothic
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
with the Aristophanic
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
. He suffers from that dramatist's faults and, though not as daring in invention or as free in the use of sexual humour, shares many of his strengths. His greatest intellectual love is for Ancient Greece, including late and minor works such as the Dionysiaca
Dionysiaca
The Dionysiaca is an ancient epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus. It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from antiquity at 20,426 lines, composed in Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameters, the main subject of which is the life of Dionysus, his expedition to India, and his...
of Nonnus
Nonnus
Nonnus of Panopolis , was a Greek epic poet. He was a native of Panopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid, and probably lived at the end of the 4th or early 5th century....
; many of his characters are given punning names taken from Greek to indicate their personality or philosophy.
He tended to dramatize where traditional novelists narrated; he is more concerned with the interplay of ideas and opinions than of feelings and emotions; his dramatis personae is more likely to consist of a cast of more or less equal characters than of one outstanding hero or heroine and a host of minor auxiliaries; his novels have a tendency to approximate the Classical unities
Classical unities
The classical unities, Aristotelian unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics. In their neoclassical form they are as follows:...
, with few changes of scene and few if any subplots; his novels are novels of conversation rather than novels of action; in fact, Peacock is so much more interested in what his characters say to one another than in what they do to one another that he often sets out entire chapters of his novels in dialogue form. Plato's
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
Symposium
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
is the literary ancestor of these works, by way of the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus
Athenaeus
Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...
, in which (as in much of Peacock) the conversation relates less to exalted philosophical themes than to the points of a good fish dinner.
Novels
- Headlong HallHeadlong HallHeadlong Hall is the first novel by Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1815 .As in his later novel Crotchet Castle, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humor and social satire from their various interactions and conversations. The setting...
(published 1815 but dated 1816) [lightly revised, 1837] - MelincourtMelincourt (novel)Melincourt is the second novel of Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1817. It centers around the "idea of an orang-outang mimicking humanity." An orangutan called Sir Oran Haut-Ton is put forward as a candidate for election as a member of parliament....
(1817) - Nightmare AbbeyNightmare AbbeyNightmare Abbey was the third of Thomas Love Peacock's novels to be published. It was written in late March and June 1818, and published in London in November of the same year by T. Hookham Jr of Old Bond Street and Baldwin, Craddock & Joy of Paternoster Row...
(1818) [lightly revised, 1837] - Maid Marian (1822)
- The Misfortunes of ElphinThe Misfortunes of ElphinThe Misfortunes of Elphin is the fifth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1829. It is set in a somewhat historically-fanciful Arthurian Britain which incorporates many Welsh legends, but avoids all supernatural and mystical elements. Seithenyn appears as a major character.-External links:*...
(1829) - Crotchet CastleCrotchet CastleCrotchet Castle is the sixth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1831.As in his earlier novel Headlong Hall, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations.The...
(1831) [lightly revised, 1837] - Gryll GrangeGryll GrangeGryll Grange is the seventh and final novel of Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1860.-External links:...
(1861) [serialised first in 1860]
Verse
- The Monks of St. Mark (1804?)
- Palmyra and other Poems (1805)
- The Genius of the Thames: a Lyrical Poem (1810)
- The Genius of the Thames Palmyra and other Poems (1812)
- The Philosophy of Melancholy (1812)
- Sir Hornbook, or Childe Launcelot's Expedition (1813)
- Sir Proteus: a Satirical Ballad (1814)
- The Round Table, or King Arthur's Feast (1817)
- Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spirit (1818)
- Paper Money Lyrics (1837)
- The War-Song of Dinas Vawr
Essays
- The Four Ages of Poetry (1820)
- Recollections of Childhood: The Abbey House (1837)
- Memoirs of Shelley (1858–62)
- The Last Day of Windsor Forest (1887) [composed 1862]
- Prospectus: Classical Education
Plays
- The Three Doctors
- The Dilettanti
- Gl'Ingannati, or The Deceived (translated from the Italian, 1862)
Unfinished tales and novels
- Satyrane (c. 1816)
- Calidore (c. 1816)
- The Pilgrim of Provence (c. 1826)
- The Lord of the Hills (c. 1835)
- Julia Procula (c. 1850)
- A Story Opening at Chertsey (c. 1850)
- A Story of a Mansion among the Chiltern Hills (c. 1859)
- Boozabowt Abbey (c. 1859)
- Cotswald Chace (c. 1860)
Sources
- Garnett, RRichard GarnettRichard Garnett C.B. was a scholar, librarian, biographer and poet. He was son of Richard Garnett, an author, philologist and assistant keeper of printed books in the British Museum....
. (1891). Introduction. In T. L. Peacock, Headlong Hall, pp. 7–43. J. M. Dent & Co. - The Thomas Love Peacock Society. Retrieved 2004-12
External links
Most of the text of this article was extracted from the Introduction written by Richard Garnett for the edition of Thomas Love Peacock's novels published by J. M. Dent & Co. in 1891.
Lists of Peacock's works from The Thomas Love Peacock Society.