The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-01-01
,sHELLEY's HALLuCINArIoN.

SHELLEY'S HALLUCINATION.
Shelley was often i'll, PROSTATE, suf-
fering from real or imaginary pains
and hysterical symptoms. On one oc-
casion he Travelled in a coach with an
old lady with thick ankles, whom he
concluded was suffering from elephan-
tiasis, and imagined that the contagion
had infected himself. He was forever
feeling and stroking his skin to see il
it was swollen, and used to alarm Ia
dies, at the parties he attended, by
turning to them and strolsing their
necks or arms to see, not If they were
sufferers from the disease, but whether
the outlines of their forms correspond
ed with his own. On one occasion at
the Newtons' he slipped from his chair
on the ground, groaned aloud and
writhed like an eel. What is the mat
ten, Shelley?" said his host. II have
got elephantiass he replied in a hol-
low tone of dreary conviction. This
grotesque fear was at last banished by
a. classical quotation made by Hogg to
the effect that the disease could only be
contracted in Arabia.
This leads us to the singular event
which was the cause of his leaving
Tan yr-allt, and which has never been
satisfactorily explained. On Friday,
February rs, 1918, night of storm and
rain, he appears to have told his wife
that he expected an attack from an as
sassin, loaded brace of pistols, and
gone to bed about eleven. Shortly af-
ter he declared that he heard a noise,
went down stairs, and found man
leaving the house by a glass door open
ing on shrubbery. The man fired a
pistol at him. Shelley discharged one
Of his own in answer but the powder
only flashed in the pan. The man then
leaped upon him, knocked him down
and closed with him. Shelley thereup-
on fired the second pistol, wounding his
assailant, he thought, in the shoulder,
N,hereupon the man broke out into ex-
ecrations; BY God, I will be re-
venged! I will murder your wife, I
will ravish your sister! BY God, will
be revenged" He then made his es-
cape. The others now rushed down
stairs, but did not see the assailant
and after while all retired again to
bed, except Shelley and Daniel Hill, the
servant who had lately been released
from prison. At four o'clock Shelley
sent Daniel Hill to see what time 1t
was, and instantly, as II he had been
waiting for Shelley to be left alone, a
man thrust his arm through the glass
of the window and fired at him. The
bah passed through Shelley's dressing
gown and curtain, and buried itself
l,n11a Ate,fo al Nil
not go off, and he attacked the ruffian
with an old sword that he had found in
the house. The servant rushed in, but
the man had again escaped.
Such is Mrs. Shelley's account of the
transaction; but be it observed that on
neither occasion was the man seen by
any one but Shelley, and that on the
| first attempt the man was leaving the
house and not entering it.
| Shelley afterwards gave a totally diff
| ferent account of the second attack.
He said that he saw a face pressed
against the window, fired, and followed
| the assassin out on to the lawn, where
he saw him, "a ghost or devil" leaning
against tree; on Shelley's approach
he slipped into the wood. Shelley i'm
mediately set fire to the wood Che sadly
in several places, to burn the devil and
| the conflagration was with difficulty
extinguished. This last incident Mrs.
| Shelley does not mention in her letter,
yet it could hardly have escaped her.
The official investigation of the affair
showed two things: First, that there
was trampled place on the lawn, but
no footsteps leading to it except from
the house. so that the prints were pre-
sumably made by Shelley himself; sec
ondly, that the shot, which pierced
Shelley's dressing-gown and the wains-
cot. was not fired from the window,
but from near the door, leading to the
| Irresistible conclusion that it was fired
| by Shelley himself. probably while ner-
vously lingering his pistol. This also
accounts for Shelley's statement that
his pistol would not afterwards so off
The next day the whole party. in a
! condition Of extreme nervous agitation
escaped to the house of Mr.. Nancy, a
| friend and neighbor, who was also SO.
licitor-general for the county.
Shelley declared that the assassin
was a man called Leeson, into whose
| hands one of his Irish pamphlets had
| fallen, and who had sent it 70 govern
ment He added that a mysterious
stranger had on the following day gone
round Tremadoc and told the story to
the tradespeoplc, saying that it was d
ruse OF Mr.. Shelley to escape from the
| place without paying his debts; an ex-
PLANTATION unhappily not inconsistent
with the facts; though Mr.. Dowden
says that this cruel assertion Is amply
| disproved by the state of nervous ex-
element in which Shelley was found
1 next morning by the agent Williams
| Afterwards Shelley used to say that
the internal pain he suffered from orig
! mated from the place where the assail-
ants knee had pressed against his
side; and there seem to have been days
| long after when he said that he was
| logged by Leeson, and refused to leave
the house.
| From Mr.. Nanney's, on February ~
| Shelley wrote to his friend Hookham
| MY Dear Sir: I have just escaped ar
atrocious assassination. Oh. send the
twenty pounds if you have it. You viii
perhaps hear of me no more
friend, Percy Shelley" He was toe
much agftated to finish the letter prop
erly. and his wife added a postscript
A few days afterwards the party
crossed to Ireland and settled at Xii.