Thomas Love Peacock is perhaps the least read of the Romantic writers. He was a
close friend of Percy Shelley, and they spent many happy hours together. In
Peacock’s novel Nightmare Abbey, the main character, Scythrop, is based upon
Shelley, and Shelley wrote to Peacock, after the novel was published, that he
“knew not how to praise sufficiently the lightness, chastity, and strength of
the language.” Peacock can be seen as an Anti-Romantic, in that he satirizes his
Romantic contemporaries in the novels Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle, but
he can also be seen as having Romantic leanings, since these novels have a few
Romantic descriptions as well as romances in them.
There are a few Romantic passages in Peacock’s novels. These can be seen in two
ways, either as satire on the Romantics, or as his Romantic side. These passages
occur most frequently in Crotchet Castle. The novel begins with a description of
where the castle is located:
"In one of those beautiful valleys, through which the Thames…rolls a clear flood
through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beach woods, and the smooth
mossy greensward of the chalk hills…in one of those beautiful valleys, on a bold
round-surfaced lawn, spotted with juniper, that opened itself in the bosom of an
old wood, which rose with a steep, but not precipitous ascent, from the river to
the summit of the hill, stood the castellated villa of a retired citizen."
Another Romantic passage occurs when Mr. Chainmail is exploring the countryside:
"The pass opened on a lake, from which the stream issued, and which lay like a
dark mirror, set in a gigantic frame of mountain precipices…Mr. Chainmail…sat
down on a large smooth stone; the faint murmur of the stream he had quitted, the
occasional flapping of the wings of the heron, and at long intervals the
solitary flapping of a trout, were the only sounds that came to his ear."
Both of these passages are unquestionably Romantic, but they leave the question
as to what purpose Peacock intended them to serve.
Also, each of Peacock’s novels contains a romance. In Nightmare Abbey, Scythrop
has to choose between two women, but ends up choosing neither of them. In
Crotchet Castle, there are two romances, between Captain Fitzchrome and Lady
Clarinda, and between Mr. Chainmail and Miss Touchandgo. These romances can also
be seen as either Peacock’s Romanticism, or just satire.
Of course, the obvious satire in Peacock’s novels results from his characters.
In each book, he draws his characters from his Romantic contemporaries, such as
Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley. When they talk, they often quote things that they
have written. When Byron appears in Nightmare Abbey as Mr. Cypress, the things
he says are largely taken from the fourth stanza of Childe Harold, which Byron
had just written. Shelley (Scythrop) is in love with two women in Nightmare
Abbey, just as Shelley was in real life. Coleridge (Mr. Flosky and Mr. Skionar)
is always mumbling about metaphysics, and quoting poems like Christabel or Kubla
Khan. Peacock’s other characters are largely based upon other lesser-known
contemporaries, such as J. F. Newton (Mr. Toobad and Mr. Ramsbottom), Robert
Owen (Mr. Toogood), Tom Moore (Mr. Trillo), Sir Lumley Skeffington (Mr.
Listless), Benjamin Collins Brodie (Mr. Henbane), and J. R. McCulloch (Mr. Mac
Quedy). Other characters are either a mixture of a few people or speak for
Peacock himself.
Using these characters, Peacock has discussions about many different subjects,
ranging from education (as one group visits Oxford) to Athenian theatre. Each
character only exists to insert his views on the subject being discussed or to
be part of a romance. These discussions are highly amusing, since characters
like Mr. Toobad will say things like “the devil is come among us,” while other
characters will spot mermaids or ghosts.
Peacock also satirizes the German novel in Nightmare Abbey, similarly to Jane
Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The novel is set in an ancient country house, where
Scythrop lives in a tower. He builds secret passages, in which he later hides
Stella. At the end of the novel, he threatens to kill himself just as Werther
does in the German novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Goethe. Also,
references are made to the play Stella, also by Goethe. The character based upon
Shelley’s second wife, Mary Godwin, is named Stella, since in the play, the hero
is trapped between two women, just as Scythrop is. Also, at the end of the
novel, after Scythrop asks the servant for a pistol and some wine, Mr. Glowry
tells him he cannot have both of the women, “Both! That may do very well in a
German tragedy…but it will not do in Lincolnshire.” This may either be a
specific reference to Stella, or it may just refer to German literature in
general.
In Peacock’s novels Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle, he satirizes his
Romantic contemporaries and their views by using them the sources for his
characters. He also includes romances as well as scenic descriptions that could
be seen as either Romantic or more satire. These all combine to form an amusing
read, full of witty comments and sly jibes at the world in which Peacock was
living.
Bibliography
Marilyn Butler, Peacock Displayed: A Satirist in His Context (Routledge and
Kegan
Paul, 1979).
A. Martin Freeman, Thomas Love Peacock: A Critical Study (Martin Secker,
MCMXI).
Howard Mills, Peacock: His Circle and His Age (Cambridge University Press,
1986).
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey/Crotchet Castle (Penguin, 1969).
J. B. Priestley, Thomas Love Peacock (Macmillan, 1927).
Lorna Sage, Editor, Peacock: The Satirical Novels-A Selection of Critical Essays
(Macmillan, 1976).
Raymond Wright, Introduction and Notes, Nightmare Abbey/Crotchet Castle
(Penguin, 1986).
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