Жизнь приключенца Эдварда Трелавни: от скандалов с любовницами до дружбы с Байроном и Шелли

Jonathan Rowe looks at the colourful life and many loves of adventurer Edward John Trelawny. His first wife’s adultery in Bristol wasn’t even the half of it … Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881) was a writer, adventurer and fantasist who briefly touched the lives of Lord Byron and Shelley and outlived all his contemporaries, having been married three times, had seven children, numerous mistresses and “intense male friendships”. Sir Jonathan Trelawny, his great-great-uncle, was Bishop of Bristol in the 1680s and the character of Squire Trelawny in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) was inspired by him. He hated his tyrannical father who, after he was caught stealing apples aged eight, sent him to Rev. Samuel Seyer’s notoriously strict Royal Fort School, in the gatehouse on Royal Fort Road, off St Michael’s Hill. Here, he endured frequent corporal punishment and was bullied by other boys. In 1802, he was expelled for violent behaviour and starting a fire after being confined to his room for punishment. From 1805–12, Trelawny served in the Royal Navy. In 1813, he married Caroline Julia Addison (1793–1830), daughter of an East India merchant. Their first child, Maria Julia, was born in 1814 and in January 1816 they moved into lodgings in College Street, Bristol (demolished 1957, now the car park behind City Hall). In March, Caroline began an affair with Captain Thomas Coleman, a much older man who lodged below them; Trelawny and Caroline were divorced in 1819. At the Consistory Court hearing at Bristol Cathedral, landlady Mrs Sarah Prout stated she had seen “criminal intimacy” between Caroline and Coleman who were “guilty of many improper familiarities with each other”. Mrs Prout said she saw “Mrs Trelawny reclining on a sofa” with Coleman whose “right hand was thrust into her bosom and he was kissing her”. In June 1816, Trelawny invited Caroline and Mrs Prout to the Theatre Royal, King Street, where he often went. They declined and he went alone. On the same evening, Caroline asked Mrs Prout to accompany her to Woolford and West’s Circus, who were performing off Broad Street with attractions including “Master Woolford, The Equestrian Hero”, “Mademoiselle Godeau, Empress of Tight Rope Dancers” and a panorama of the Battle of Waterloo. The two women set off but Caroline (who was pregnant) said she felt ill and returned home. Mrs Prout followed her later and saw Caroline and Coleman in bed together. He was half undressed, “with his pantaloons down” and lying on top of Caroline “in the Act of Sexual Intercourse together”. Later, Mrs Prout confronted Caroline who at first denied it but then confessed, yet begged Mrs Prout not to tell Trelawny. Mrs Prout agreed, but in July, Caroline and Trelawny moved to Vue Cottage, Bath (now probably 9–11 Gladstone Road, Combe Down) with a Captain George White and family. Here, Caroline asked various members of the family to collect mail for her under fictitious names from addresses all over Bath. Caroline and Trelawny’s second daughter, Mary Eliza, was born in October 1816 and baptised at St Thomas à Becket, Widcombe, in April 1817 when Trelawny was living with the Whites at Cottage Crescent (now Bloomfield Crescent). In December 1816, Caroline and Coleman eloped to Southampton. The White family supported Trelawny but tragically, debt-ridden and depressed, Captain White took his own life in February 1817. Caroline did not stay with Coleman but returned to Calcutta, her birth city, where she married and had a son, and died there in 1830 aged 37. Maria Julia was raised by friends of the Whites, married, had a daughter, and died in 1904 aged 90. Mary Eliza Christie Trelawny was adopted by a military family and died at Vittoria Place (now site of Vittoria pub), Whiteladies Road, Clifton in June 1829 aged 12 and is buried in St Andrew’s churchyard, Birdcage Walk. Trelawny travelled to the Continent and in 1822, in Italy, met Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont (1798–1879), Mary’s Brislington-born stepsister, who he fell in love with. She was attracted by his “animal magnetism”. They never married but kept in contact for 35 years. Six foot tall, dark, dashing, swarthy and muscular, Trelawny was attractive to both sexes. Bisexual Lord Byron described Trelawny as “a personification of my Corsair” (his 1814 poem, “The Corsair”, about a pirate). Trelawny was also attracted to Shelley and wrote later about often seeing Shelley “in a state of nudity”, describing his body and appearance. Aged 29, Shelley drowned in July 1822 off the coast of Sardinia in a boat designed by Trelawny. Its flaws may have contributed to Shelley’s death. His body was washed up and cremated on the beach at Viareggio. Trelawny snatched Shelley’s heart from the flames and presented it to Mary Shelley, who kept it in her writing desk for the rest of her life. In 1823, Trelawny and Byron travelled to Greece to fight in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. They swam, boxed, fenced and talked of living together on a South Seas Island, but Byron died of fever at Missolonghi in 1824 aged 36. Trelawny arranged for his body to be sent to England for burial. He viewed the embalmed body and later wrote Byron was “more beautiful in death than in life”. In 1825, 19-year-old Gloucestershire-born neurotic William Guise Whitcombe, shot him. Trelawny was bedridden for five weeks and never totally recovered from his injuries. The following year, on the island of Zante, Trelawny (aged 31) married Tersitza, 13-year-old half-sister of Greek revolutionary, Odysseus Androutsos. They lived in a beach cave and had two daughters, Zella, and a child who died. It is believed Trelawny was abusive and the couple were divorced after four years. Tersitza went to a nunnery and died in 1856. Returning to England, Trelawny proposed marriage to Mary Shelley but was rejected. In 1828, he visited Claire Clairmont in Italy who also declined his marriage proposal. In 1831, Trelawny’s The Adventures of a Younger Son was published, a fictionalised account of his life. The following year he returned to England and was treated as a hero by literary society. In 1838, he began an affair with Augusta Goring (1807–1875), estranged wife of M.P. Sir Harry Dent Goring. Augusta gave birth to two sons. She divorced her husband in 1841 and married Trelawny in 1846. They lived in Usk, Wales for twelve years and had a daughter but in 1858 Augusta left him when he moved in with his mistress, known only as ‘Miss B’. In his later years, Trelawny lived in Sompting, Sussex with Emma Taylor who he purported was his niece. He swam in the nude, never wore socks or underwear and was a vegetarian and teetotaller. He died in 1881 aged 88. His ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, next to Shelley. His epitaph reads: These two friends whose lives were undivided, So let their memory be, now they have glided, Under the grave, let not their bones be parted, For their two hearts in life were single hearted.