Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 17 Apr 2019

Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock

I think that any list of once popular but now almost completely neglected authors would require the inclusion of Thomas Love Peacock. Born in 1785, Peacock had aspirations to poetry but outside academic circles this is now almost totally forgotten. It could be argued however that his lasting legacy is the creation of a form of literary satire that was, at the time, unprecedented and which, although it has influenced many writers (P.G. Wodehouse in particular springs to mind), is still not common enough to have an obvious comparator today. The unusual nature of Peacock’s satires was noted even in his prime as this rather bewildered assessment testifies to:

“It would be difficult to say what his books are, for they are neither romances, novels, tales, nor treatises, but a mixture of all these combined.” (The Literary Gazette December 1818)

What is clear is that Peacock hit on a formula for gently satirizing the philosophical ideas and personalities of the day in a format that doesn’t try to be a rounded or sophisticated prose – the characters are two-dimensional, the plots thin and formulaic and the dialogue conventionally stilted but his point wasn’t to produce great literary art but to knock out satisfyingly barbed satires that would deflate some of the windy egos of the day.

His books frequently take the setting of a country house location with guests discoursing around a well-laden dinner table. Flimsy love plots are used to hold the storyline together and push the narrative forward but in all honesty the pleasure of reading Peacock lies in his ability to wickedly ape or dissect the ideas, fads and intellectual fashions of the day. One reason that Peacock is probably little read today is the fact that the contemporary reader needs to have some background understanding of ideas and writing in the first half of the 19th century to be able to dig into the different layers he is trying to expose.

This is very well illustrated by Marilyn Butler’s preface to the delectable Nightmare Abbey in which she slowly unwraps both the literary personalities that lie behind the paper-thin disguises Peacock gives them but also demonstrates how Peacock can take you to the very heart of both the ideas and the gossip that was obsessing the dinner-party set of the day.

I think it’s fair to say that Peacock’s friendship with the poet Shelley was one of the most important influences on his writing career and in Nightmare Abbey it is clear that he’s having tremendous fun (with Shelley’s collusion) at the expense of the poet. He‘s also taking a hefty swipe at the absurdities of the Gothic novel, William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and George, Lord Byron. Actually, just about anyone who might be called part of the Romantic Movement. As the Poetry Foundation entry for Peacock explains:

“Not surprisingly, the Shelleys and their penchant for reform eventually proved to be irresistible subjects waiting for Peacock to translate into the medium of satiric fiction. With two satiric novels to his credit, Peacock was ready to try his skill once again. The result was Nightmare Abbey, which Peacock offered to the public in October 1818. By far Peacock’s least serious novel, Nightmare Abbey concerns the unhappy love interests of one Scythrop Glowry, as those interests take shape at various times in the persons of Miss Marionetta O’Carroll and Miss Celinda Toobad. One must approach with caution the idea that these characters represent deliberate portraits of Percy Shelley, his first wife, Harriet, and Mary Shelley. However, most readers of Peacock now agree with the editors of the Halliford Edition of Peacock’s Works: ‘To regard Scythrop and his ladies as deliberate portraits, even of persons unknown to the public, would be as absurd as to ignore the resemblances.’”

The book is short (another good thing) running to about 110 pages in the Folio Society edition that I read and that’s just about enough I think – much longer and the reader would tire of the rather repetitive and knowing set of in-jokes (a number of which I must confess flew past me without my spotting them). Esoteric as Peacock now may appear be, for those interested in the literature of the first half of the 19th century he’s a diversion well worth taking because he offers an insiders alternative critique of the Romantic Movement and that’s something well worth having.

This Folio Society edition has the afore-mentioned introduction by Marilyn Taylor and a tremendous set of woodcuts and drawings by Peter Forster. You can pick it up second hand and it is one of the cheaper Folio publications at about £5-£10.

 

Terry Potter

April 2019

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