16

London

In January 1819, Polidori was living in lodgings in Covent Garden

Chambers (by November, he would be back in his father's house on
Great Pulteney Street). On the thirteenth, he once again wrote to Murray
to ask for work:
My dear Sir
Having come to London in consequence of finding it
necessary to attempt gaining some thing by writing as my
profession on account of my youth is without profit - I apply to
you as the only one amongst my friends who have it in their
power to help me - I should wish to write in some review
and if you think fit I should wish very much to do so for the
Quarterly ... If you can grant my request I should like to be put
to the test by reviewing either Carey's Dante or Cancellieri's
work on the origin of his Commedia ... But I should wish to
undertake any thing to which I thought myself capable of
doing justice ... the best subject would be an account of the
Papal power & lives of the popes marking chiefly the steps
they trod towards gaining the great influence they ultimately
attained - It would fill about 3 octavo volumes - I think that
from my previous knowledge not only as a Catholick but as
having read during my whole life historians connected with
Italian annals and from the interest such a subject naturally
would excite in my mind, that, I should be able to make an
interesting picture of perhaps the most surprizing power that
was ever known -
I should however wish that I might immediatly find some
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London 169

something like an independence - If it is in your power I hope

you will be so good as to put me in the way of so doing - If at
the same time you think me competent to undertake any
greater work I should be obliged to you - I do not know what
excuse to offer for troubling you in this way except your own
kindness ...1

Murray did not express an interest in the history of the papacy. It

would have been a timely topic. The campaign for Catholic Emancipa-
tion would finally succeed in 1829; in the meantime, it seems to have
intensified anti-Catholic prejudice as the English worried about the
consequences of allowing such a surprising foreign power into their
public life. The hysterical anti-Catholicism of Gothic novels like The
Monk (1796), The Italian (1797), and Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) may be
compared to the sadistic pornography which has proliferated in re-
sponse to the campaign for the emancipation of women in our own time.
Ernestus Berchtold, with its kindly priest, is Polidori's attempt at a re-
joinder; discussing the power of the papacy from a Catholic point of view
would have offered an opportunity for a more direct rejoinder.
Murray still would not employ Polidori to write for the Quarterly
either. Polidori ended up reviewing Cary's translation of the Divine
Comedy for the Eclectic Review. He had been interested in the Divine
Comedy since his early childhood, when (if Gaetano is to be believed) he
used to get up at dawn to read it. He called Cary's work 'not only the best
translation of Dante which has appeared in our language, but... perhaps
... the best translation of any poet in the whole compass of English
literature.' This may not, however, have been intended to be as extrava-
gant as it looks: Polidori in fact found most translations, at least from
Italian, 'miserably inadequate' - with the notable exception of the 'ele-
gant paraphrase' of Pulci by John Herman Merivale, also the author of
the vampire poem 'The Dead Men of Pest.' Polidori considered this
deficiency particularly unfortunate because of the importance of Italian
literature to such English poets as Milton: 'The Italian character of some
of his smaller poems is ... obvious; so much so, that were Comus,
Lycidas, or L'Allegro, and II Penseroso, adequately translated into that
language, they might be taken for the native productions of Italian
genius.'2 Gaetano had translated all these poems into that language,
apparently not adequately.
Polidori devoted most of his article, not to an evaluation of Cary's
translation, but to an ostentatiously learned discussion of the dates of the
Divine Comedy and to an investigation of its sources, or rather a defence
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170 After Byron: 1816-1821

of its originality, which drew on the work of Cancellieri he had also

wanted to review. In this context, he mentioned 'a monstrous and
disgusting fiction, which represents Lucifer as allaying his perpetual
thirst by taking up a heap of his victims, and crushing them like a bunch
of grapes, in order to drink their blood.' 3 He may have forgotten that he
had written The Vampyre, but he had not lost his interest in the subject.
He also referred briefly to the subject of papal power, which he had
wanted to write up for Murray.
Polidori later reviewed Henry Hallam's View of the State of Europe
during the Middle Ages (1818) for the Eclectic Review. He was not as
extravagantly generous to Hallam as to Cary, but he was still generous:
This is one of the most valuable additions to historical literature, which
has appeared since the Greece of Mr. Mitford.' He implicitly compared
Hallam's work with Hobhouse's, to the detriment of the latter: 'It has not
been hastily got up, with a show of quotations at the bottom of the pages,
taken from the labours of some precursor; but appears to be the product
of genuine insearch, and of original and philosophic thinking.'4 Most of
the review is devoted to an account of the development of the feudal
system in the different countries of Europe; it is interesting chiefly for
what Polidori's praise of the British landed aristocracy implies about his
increasing conservatism - about the waning influence of Taylor and
Byron.
Polidori was not happy in London. In February, he wrote to Frances:
I am very unwell and am very low spirits in consequence of my
ill health - I am busy writing & fag like a horse uncertain
whether I may not be wanting even of the power of fagging
next day not from illness but the caprice of a bookseller -
Despite his public praise of Hallam, he referred sarcastically to the
'mighty importance' of such subjects as 'whether a prince did nothing as
usual during the year 1212 or went upon a chase of butter flies or power
amongst his feudal Lords.' What bothered him more than anything else
was the loneliness of the metropolis:
But in spight of the self importance I feel from so great & lofty
subjects I still am very miserable - I am so solitary - London is
the curse of those who praise solitude let Zimmerman or any
foolish man come to London & feel what solitude is then if he
dare write a book in its praise he will certainly go [to] the devil
for a malicious liar[.]
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London 171

The reference is to Johann Georg Zimmermann (1728-95), a German

physician, whose book on solitude went through three versions, each
larger than the last. There were several English translations; the preface
to one of them (1798) provides a summary:
It is under the peaceful shades of Solitude that the mind
regenerates and acquires fresh force; it is there alone that the
happy can enjoy the fulness of felicity, or the miserable forget
their woe; it is there that the bosom of sensibility experiences
its most delicious emotions; it is there that creative Genius frees
itself from the thraldom of society, and surrenders itself to the
impetuous rays of an ardent imagination.5
Zimmermann has in mind a classical, pastoral solitude, not the modern,
urban version Polidori is complaining about. Polidori's complaint
continues:
Those who have a family may feel ve[ry] comfortable in their
own circle but the moment they are beyond the door that
infolds their flock they find themselves in worse than the
deserts of Arabia for there if they find no one with whom to
communicate their thoughts or to sympathize with it is from
their having no individual near them they still however can
commune with himself & nature - but in this crowd he is
obliged to notice others from their hustling him in their paths
while he communes as much with them as with the post at the
corner of the St -6
A short moral tale, set in the spring of 1819, gives a sense of Polidori's
loneliness at this time, as well as of his fondness for dogs (which may
have been intensified by his isolation from people). The narrator is
walking in Hyde Park with his Newfoundland dog Carlo when they
come across two little girls, Miss Anne and Miss Emma, who have been
gathering flowers. Carlo wants to play, and Emma, though frightened at
first, is friendly to him, but Anne, who is 'of a bad temper and very cross,'
wants her footman to beat him. Later, while the narrator is throwing
sticks into the Serpentine for Carlo to fetch, Anne and Emma fall into the
water. Carlo instantly rescues Emma, leaving the narrator to rescue
Anne. Emma asks the narrator to come home with them: 'as she said to
her Mama, that she might thank me, for she said she would be so
thankful to one who had saved her dear Anne.' The narrator accepts a
ride as far as his lodgings.
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172 After Byron: 1816-1821

But I was not willing to have any body feel the weight of
gratitude towards me so I left them - I since heard that tho
Miss Emma did not escape a cold that still she did not suffer
afterwards from ill health whereas Miss Anne never entirely
recovered the bad effects of that accident and from the dog
having neglected her while it helped Miss Emma who had
been kind to him. 7

I do not know whether Polidori had a dog in London; since he lived in

chambers it seems unlikely. Carlo is considerably more robust than the
dog who followed Polidori from Geneva to Arezzo; he is evidently an
ideal pet rather than a portrait of a real one. 8 But what is particularly
touching is the narrator's refusal to allow himself to be thanked by the
girls' mother. The hypertrophied concept of tact dramatized - appar-
ently quite unselfconsciously - in this gesture suggests a sensibility so
habituated to loneliness as to shrink instinctively from human contact.
Ximenes, The Wreath, and other Poems was published by Longman
early in 1819. Its envoi - as well as alluding to Polidori's loneliness and to
his difficult relationship to his father (inverted, as in Ximenes itself) -
portrays its author as steeling himself against disappointment:
Farewell! farewell! the hopes I've built on thee
Will fail too like the rest. - I heed it not.
Far bitt'rer pangs than thou canst give to me,
I've borne withal. - Though such may be thy lot,
I will no more revile thee, than the sire
His son, though graceless he may prove, and leave
His grey hairs hopeless. - No; whate'er my lyre
Has sung, thou hast; thou chronicler of grief!
And I shall be most glad to read thy page
When memory lags, and life is lost in age;
Though thou mayst tell of hope for ever gone,
Of heart that wither'd finds itself alone
Midst crowds, - a stranger midst its friends,
To which its sympathy no being lends.9
In fact, the book was Polidori's greatest critical success. The Monthly
Review, which reviewed it together with the Essay, did say that Polidori's
'powers as the Apollo ... are not beyond mediocrity,' but at least it
allowed that he was a better poet than a philosopher.10 The European
Magazine declared that the volume displayed 'much proof of an original
genius' and 'evident signs of good taste and vivid fancy.'11 Colburn's
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London 173

New Monthly Magazine had a long and generous review. It began in

terms that may not have been pleasing to Polidori: 'We were anxious to
examine how far a youthful and enthusiastic imagination would be
effected [sic] by an intimacy with, certainly, the greatest poet of the day.'
It went on, however, to make a comparison that must have gratified him:
Having waded through the verses of Mr. Hobhouse, which,
in spite of his intimacy with such a character, are flat and
artificial, and possess few, if any, redeeming points to save
them from unqualified condemnation, we were anxious to
observe how far a writer, really possessed of imagination,
would be affected by an intercourse with our modern poetical
Colossus. Nor have we, upon the whole, been disappointed in
the idea we had formed upon the subject...
The review defined the difference between Polidori's poetry and Byron's
in a way that suggests its author had even read the Essay sympathetically
(even though the New Monthly Magazine had reviewed the latter so
contemptuously):
The melancholy observable in all these poems does not seem
to have resulted from satiety [like Byron's], but from the
consciousness of the unsubstantiality of those forms of bliss
which spring up in beautiful succession beneath the wand of
the enchantress, Fancy.
The review did point out some awkward repetitions and inversions, and
a few unpoetical expressions, but concluded indulgently that these were
merely the result of the author's 'haste to make his debut [sic] before the
public.'12 This praise must have been overshadowed, however, by the
debut of The Vampyre in the same issue.
Later in 1819 - Robert Harson sarcastically calls it Polidori's annus
mirabilis13 - Longman also published Ernestus Berchtold. In November,
Polidori reported to Frances: T have just written to Longman to see if
they would undertake to buy a second part of the Vampyre from me - as I
must have something to engage my mind & I now find nothing to do.'
The disappearance of Lord Ruthven at the end of the tale had certainly
left room for a sequel. Polidori was also negotiating with Robert William
Elliston, the manager of Drury Lane, and Chandos Leigh, a poet, about
one of his plays.14 Leigh (1791-1850), the author of Trifles Light as Air
(1813) and Fragments of Essays (1816), was extremely wealthy; Polidori
may have hoped he would sponsor a production.15 Nothing came of
these negotiations, however.
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174 After Byron: 1816-1821

Bridgens's book of sketches, with Polidori's text, and Polidori's last

book, The Fall of the Angels: A Sacred Poem, both appeared in 1821. But by
August 1820, Polidori had given up literature as a career and decided to
study law.16 This still involved keeping terms for five years at one of the
Inns of Court, but by Polidori's time, they had fallen into a state of near-
total decay as educational institutions: they offered no instruction, and
their examinations were pure formalities. Students simply read on their
own, and often apprenticed themselves, for one to three years at about a
hundred guineas a year, to practising lawyers.17 In September, Polidori
wrote to Sir George Jerningham to ask for his help in becoming an
apprentice. The letter begins with what is intended to be an elegantly
ironic apology but is also another confession of loneliness:

My dear Sir
I believe you must begin to be aware of the nature of my
letters the moment you see them, they are always asking some
kindness from you. I hope you will pardon it, for I am one of
those who having but few friends am obliged to throw all my
requests upon these, & consequently to appear as if I made
more than any other mortal, while perhaps others make twice
as many, but dividing them amongst their thousand intimates
no one is troubled by them.
I have at last thrown off my Doctorship and am as late as it is
about to begin a new profession that of law. As you know my
situation in life you must be aware of how great importance it
is to me to make every step in such a way that I neither lose
time nor money, the first because I am at an age when others
begin to gain, only beginning to study, the second because I
have nothing of my own & depend upon others for the very
means of making my first steps. My present intentions are to
put myself under an conveyancer and at the same time to keep
my terms in Lincolns Inn. As I am quite unacquainted person-
ally with any in the profession I am particularly anxious to
be known to some one of talent who could help me by his
advice and direct me in a career in which I do not know either
highroad or footpath. I am told that Mr Charles Butler is one of
the first Conveyancers in London, I am already aware of his
talents & condition; I have therefore almost resolved to go
under him in my study and am very anxious at any rate of
having the advantage of his experience, as being like myself a
Catholick, he is the person most competent to give me good
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London 175

and useful information in my future pursuit. My request to you

would be that as you must have personal influence with him
that you would give me a line to him & at the same time write
a letter introducing me to his notice and recommending me to
his kindness. You would by this do me the greatest service
possible by ensuring that my 200 guineas were well spent and
my lost time if possible, recovered. I must begin on the first of
November I wish I could before for I am as idle as possible and
have but few acquaintances at present in London.18

Charles Butler (1750-1832) was a prominent Catholic lawyer; he had

also been campaigning for the repeal of the Penal Laws since 1788. He
was a barrister as well as a conveyancer, and although he did not practise
as a barrister, his rank was of considerable symbolic significance: he was
the first Catholic to have been called to the bar since the Glorious
Revolution of 1688. The Jerninghams were his clients. In 1824, he would
manage the restoration of Sir George's peerage, which had been under
attainder since the execution (or martyrdom) of Sir George's ancestor,
the Venerable Sir William Howard, in 1680; it was not until the Eman-
cipation of 1829, however, that Sir George could sit in the House of Lords
as Baron Stafford.19
At the same time, Polidori was also corresponding with Thomas
Burgess, a former schoolmate who was now the prior of Ampleforth:
Polidori had returned to his old ambition of entering the priesthood. The
composition of The Fall of the Angels suggests a genuine revival of his
religious interests; but (leaving aside for the moment the heterodoxy of
the poem) his simultaneous gestures towards two such different futures
suggest desperation more than anything else. Burgess was clearly dis-
turbed by Polidori's letter (which has not survived):
It gives me inexpressible pleasure & satisfaction to see you
returning to the old way, fully convinced I dare say, of the
truth of what you have heard frequently repeated within the
walls of Ampleforth; [']Vanitas Vanitatum et omnia est Vanitas
praeter Deum amare et eum solum servire [Vanity of vanities
and all is vanity except to love God and serve him alone].'
However my Dr Sir following the directions of the Holy Spirit
do not suffer yourself to be carried to extremes. I must say that
I think that our state of life is much too difficult for you now.

These doubts may have been inspired partly by 'certain publications,' for
which Burgess gently reproached Polidori: 'I must tell [you] as a friend, I
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176 After Byron: 1816-1821

wish you had not been [their] author.' He did his best to confirm Polidori
in his newly recovered faith by explaining Pascal's wager, and men-
tioned the fees for ecclesiatical students (£40 per year); but he tried
tactfully to dissuade him from his plan. 20 He succeeded; Polidori went
into law.
He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 7 November. The admissions
register notes that he was about to take his mother's maiden name,
Pierce (or Pearce, as the register spells it).21 It is striking that he should
reject his father's name at the same time as he finally rejected both
medicine, the career his father had chosen for him, and literature, his
father's own career. But it is possible that he was simply tired of the
prejudice to which an Italian name had exposed him.
Less than ten months later, he was dead.

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