Thomas Trelawny

“ He was in England again in 1835, went into society, and married for the third time, to make another woman miserable. For a number of years he lived at Putney Hill, and then took a farm at Usk, in Monmouthshire, and amused himself with farming.
In or about 1870, Trelawny, then seventy-eight years old, bought a house and a small plot of land at Sompting, near Wortham, and occupied himself with gardening. ”

“ What Trelawny cared for in literature was Imagination, the more sublime the better, while in life he had a taste for Truth and Freedom. He was always something of an oddity. He loathed superstition, cant and snobbery and said so in a way that gave much pain to the nicest people. He was of that disconcerting sort which, excelling in all that ordinary people admire, admires, for its part, what they hate—the abnormal and distinguished. He was a man of action who mistrusted common sense, a good fellow on the side of cranks: the race has never been common and is now almost extinct. ”

“ To the active loyalty inherited from his ancestors and from his cavalier father, Trelawny united as bishop the passive obedience of his order. He accepted the papistry of the king until it became aggressive. While at Dorchester, on his first visitation, he severely reprimanded a preacher who made insinuations in a sermon against the king's good faith. By 1 June 1686 Trelawny had finished his visitation, and laid before the archbishop the results which pointed to gross neglect by the clergy of their duties (Tanner MSS. xxx. 50) . ”

“ With the return from Greece, the great days of adventure are at an end, the rest of Trelawny’s long life is the story of the kind of man the world calls a “character.”
The pause in England was brief, and in 1829 he returned to Italy, took a house in Florence, and busied himself bringing up his little daughter Zela, born to him of his Greek wife, and writing his autobiographical romance. It seems reasonably sure that sometime during these Italian years he proposed to Mary Shelley, but without success; the lady was not exactly a person to be an incident in anybody’s life. ”

“ Educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, Trelawny took holy orders in 1673, and in 1685, his elder brother having died in 1680, became third baronet in succession to his father. Having rendered good service to James II. during Monmouth’s rebellion, Trelawny was consecrated bishop of Bristol on the 8th of November 1685. He was loyal to King James until the first declaration of indulgence in April 1687, when, as a bishop, he used his influence with his clergy against the king, and, as a Cornish landowner, resisted the attempt to assemble a packed parliament. ”

“ The following extract may help us to a conclusion:
"I say! the poet [Shelley] was a thorough mormon—why did he not declare himself and anticipate the sect? I would have joined him and found him a settlement—it would not hold together without a superstition—for man all over the world are [sic] superstitious—it's the nature of the animal—your mother was a simpleton to have never heard of a man being in love with two women; when we are young we are in love with all women—the bible would call it by its proper name, lust."
So wrote Trelawny in 1869 (he had recovered his style) to Claire Clairmont. ”

“ Rose.
[Snatching up Sir William's snuff-box, which he has left upon the table.] His snuff-box! I wish I could poison his snuff, as Lucrezia Borgia would have done. She would have removed him within two hours of my arrival—I mean, her arrival. [Opening the snuff-box and mimicing Sir William.] And here he sits and lectures me, and dictates to me! to Miss Trelawny! "I venture to put a question to my grandson, Miss Trelawny!" Ha, ha! [Talcing a pinch of snuffy thoughtlessly but vigorously.] "Yah—h—h—h! pish! Have we no cheers? do we lack cheers here, Trafalgar?" [Suddenly.] Oh!
Arthur. ”

“ One day two men with guns in their hands requested permission to enter his grounds after a bird that had taken refuge there. He answered fiercely, "All the leave I will accord you is to shoot one another."
At Sompting, Trelawny died on August 13th, 1881, at the age of eighty-six. In accordance with his wish to be laid beside Shelley, his body was embalmed in England, cremated at Gotha, and the ashes taken to the Protestant burial-ground in Rome, and laid in the tomb he had bought fifty-eight years before, next to those of his friend. ”

“ The people of Cornwall, a fierce, bold, and athletic race, among whom there was a stronger provincial feeling than in any other part of the realm, were greatly moved by the danger of Trelawney, whom they reverenced less as a ruler of the Church than as the head of an honourable house, and the heir through twenty descents of ancestors who had been of great note before the Normans had set foot on English ground. All over the county the peasants chanted a ballad of which the burden is still remembered:
"And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die? ”

“ Let my liege and dread Sovereign intend to do what he pleases to me or mine: yet my hand shall never be upon him, so much as to cut off the skirt of his garment.' Not only (to the Dean's intense grief) did his elder brother, the Earl of Bath, now desert the Stuart cause, but another Cornish Church dignitary of this period—Bishop Jonathan Trelawney—took the bolder course of opposing the King's views, thus exemplifying the old Cornish saying that a Trelawny never wanted courage, nor a Grenville loyalty. It is needless to repeat that the Dean of Durham found himself in a very small minority. ”

“ Many letters to ‘Dear Bekkie’ are preserved at Trelawne. She died on 11 Feb. 1710 (Luttrell, vi. 545) . Their six sons and six daughters were: John, fourth baronet (d. 1756) ; Henry, drowned with Sir Clowdisley Shovell; Charles, prebendary of Winchester; Edward [q. v.] , governor of Jamaica; Hele (d. 1740) , rector of Southill and Landreath; Jonathan, died in infancy; Charlotte, Lætitia, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Mary, Anne.
Trelawny was through life of a convivial temper, and scandals were spread, notably by Burnet, that at times he drank wine too freely. ”

“ Why, whenever I find that I am recognized by people, and pointed out—people in the pit of a theatre, in the street, no matter where; and when I can fancy they're saying to each other, "Look! that was Miss Trelawny! you remember—Trelawny! Trelawny of the 'Wells!'"——
[They cry "Trelawny!" and "Trelawny of the 'Wells!'" and again "Trelawny!" wildly. Then there is the sound of a sharp rat-tat at the front door. Imogen leaves the piano and looks out of the window.]
Imogen.
[To somebody below.] What is it?
A Voice.
Miss Trelawny, ma'am. We can't wait.
Rose. ”

“ Trelawny came to England in 1832. In January 1833 he went to America, and remained there until June 1835. Among his achievements there were his holding Fanny Kemble in his arms to give her a view of Niagara; his swimming across the river between the rapid and the falls; and his buying the freedom of a man slave, a circumstance which remained unknown until after his death. After 1837 the principal authority for his life ceases with the discontinuance of his affectionate correspondence with Mary Shelley. ”

“ Some fellows thought that Thompson would be sent away at once, to avoid the affair becoming serious; others fancied we should be starved out or expelled to a man. Trelawny never hazarded any guess at what would be the end of it. “We are doing our duty in the interests of the school,” he said, “and whatever happens we mean well; and if it gets into print the sympathy of all chaps in public schools will be on our side.”
30 II When the gas was turned out at the meter on the night preceding the siege, Trelawny made a short speech. First he lighted two candles and made us sign the protest ”

“ Trevelyan was in the house at the time and heard the knock at the door. During those two or three days of absolute wretchedness, he spent most of his hours under the same roof with his wife and sister-in-law, though he spoke to neither of them. He had had his doubts as to the reception of Lady Milborough, and was, to tell the truth, listening with most anxious ear, when her ladyship was announced. His wife, however, was not so bitterly contumacious as to refuse admittance to his friend, and he heard the rustle of the ponderous silk as the old woman was shown up-stairs. ”

“ TRELAWNY, CHARLES (1654–1731) , major-general, was fourth son of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, second baronet, by Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy, near Totnes. Sir Jonathan Trelawny [q. v.] , bishop of Winchester, was his elder brother. ”

“ We agree heartily; but, of course, there is more to be said—for instance, that Trelawny sometimes reminds us of an extraordinarily intelligent schoolboy, at others of a rather morbid minor poet. Only, the vitality of few schoolboys amounts almost to genius, and minor poets are not always blest with feelings fundamentally sound. Most of his vices were the defects of good qualities. A powerful imagination may be fairly held accountable for his habit of romancing, and a brave vocabulary for some of his exaggeration. ”

“ He appears to have been a jovial sportsman, much addicted to hawking and cock-fighting. He married in 1620 Ann, daughter of Sir Jonathan Trelawny of Trelawne, and, when the stress of the civil war in 1643 passed into Cornwall, was busily engaged in the western part of Cornwall in raising money and drilling forces for the king. ”

“ Trevelyan, as he spoke, advanced close up to his father-in-law; and at last hissed out his words, with his lips close to Sir Marmaduke's face. "Your right in her is gone, sir. She is mine,—mine,—mine! And you see the way in which she has treated me, Mr. Glascock. Everything I had was hers; but the words of a grey-haired sinner were sweeter to her than all my love. I wonder whether you think that it is a pleasant thing for such a one as I to come out here and live in such a place as this? I have not a friend,—a companion,—hardly a book. There is nothing that I can eat or drink. ”

“ Of course, we were done, because only half of us were fighters, the rest being kids; and Trelawny himself being just fifteen and Bradwell fourteen and Ashby major twelve and a half, and I only eleven and a half, it was no good.
45“We surrender,” said Trelawny.
“Surrender, you little brute, I should think you did yield!” said Mannering, who had cut his hand getting the slates off the roof, and was in a rare bate.
“You needn’t insult a defeated force, sir,” said Trelawny, keeping his nerve jolly well. “We are prepared to pay the penalty of failure, and having meant well we--we don’t care.” ”

“ There is so much in a turn of the eye and in the tone given to a word when such things have to be said,—so much more of importance than in the words themselves. As Trevelyan thought of this, and remembered what his manner had been, how much anger he had expressed, how far he had been from having his arm round his wife's waist as he spoke to her, he almost made up his mind to go up-stairs and to apologise. But he was one to whose nature the giving of any apology was repulsive. He could not bear to have to own himself to have been wrong. ”

“ How could you, James Chattaway, dare to horsewhip a Trevlyn? Your wife's nephew, and her brother's son! Whatever might be the provocation—but, so far as I can learn, there was no just provocation—how came you so far to forget yourself and your temper as to strike him? One, possessing the tamest spirit ever put into man, might be expected to turn at the cruel insult you inflicted on Rupert. Did you do it with the intention of calling up the Trevlyn temper? ”

“ Nothing could surpass his devotion to his dead friends and their widowed survivors; he promoted the recovery of the bodies, superintended their cremation on shore, snatched Shelley's heart from the flames, prepared the tomb in the protestant cemetery at Rome, purchased the ground, added the proverbial lines from the ‘Tempest’ to Leigh Hunt's ‘Cor Cordium,’ and crowned his services by providing Mary Shelley with funds for her journey to England.
On 23 July 1823 Trelawny put to sea from Leghorn with Byron in the Hercules, bound for Greece, to aid in the Hellenic struggle for independence. ”

“ After returning from Salona, Trelawny was with Odysseus in Eastern Greece, carrying on the war in guerilla fashion without any great results.
In the autumn he was at Argos, whence a letter (certainly his, though unsigned) was sent to his brother Lieutenant Harry Trelawny, r.n.
"... To give you an idea of the misery existing here is beyond all expression. The town is nothing more or less than a chaos of ruins; not a house inhabitable. The fever making great havoc, people actually falling down in the streets. ”

“ Trevelyan. "Somebody is wanted, and nobody can know more of the service than papa does. But as the other man is a lord, I suppose papa must give way. Does he say anything about mamma, Nora?"
"You had better read the letter yourself," said Trevelyan, who was desirous that his wife should know of the threatened visit.
"No, Louis, I shall not do that. You must not blow hot and cold too. Till the other day I should have thought that Colonel Osborne's letters were as innocent as an old newspaper. ”

“ Squire Trevlyn paused. "Rupert Trevlyn is my heir," he slowly said, "and I will have him found. James Chattaway, I insist on your producing Rupert."
"Nobody can insist upon the impossible."
"Then listen. You don't know much of me, but you knew my father; and you may remember that when he willed a thing, he did it: that same spirit is mine. Now I register a vow that if you do not produce Rupert Trevlyn, or tell me where I may find him, dead or alive, I will publicly charge you with the murder." ”