Author: Medwin, Thomas
Biography:
MEDWIN, Thomas (1788-1869: ODNB)
He was born at Horsham, Sussex, on 20 Mar. 1788 and baptised there on 23 Apr, the second son of Thomas Charles Medwin, a solicitor and steward to the Duke of Norfolk, and his wife Mary Pilfold, a cousin of Elizabeth Pilfold, the mother of Percy Bysshe Shelley (q.v.). Both boys attended Syon House Academy (but Medwin was four years older) and went on to Oxford; about 1807 they collaborated on a lost novel, “The Nightmare.” Medwin matriculated at Trinity College on 2 Dec. 1805 but left without a degree and went to live in London at Lincoln’s Inn, perhaps beginning studies in law. In the end he rejected both the university and the law and persuaded his father to purchase a cornetcy and later a lieutenancy in the army for him. He served in India with the 24th Light Dragoons from Nov. 1813 until the unit disbanded in England in 1819 and he went on half-pay. In the autumn of 1820 he joined the Shelleys and Byron (q.v.) in Italy; it is for his biographical records after their deaths in 1822 and 1824 respectively that Medwin is remembered today. On 2 Nov. 1824 he married a widow, Anne Henrietta Starnford, Countess of Starnford, at Lausanne and they had two daughters born to them in Florence. Unfortunately, Medwin’s extravagance exhausted his wife’s fortune and he was not rescued from ruin by the death of his father in 1829 because he had been cut out of the will. He abandoned his family, sold his army commission, and tried to live cheaply on the Continent, with the income from writing. His memoirs, especially his Conversations of Lord Byron (1824), were controversial but popular; an autobiographical work, The Angler in Wales(1834), included further anecdotes of the two poets. From about 1844, when they met in Germany, he was a close friend (possibly no more) of the poet Caroline de Crespigny (q.v.), whom he assisted with some of her translations. Medwin returned to England in 1862, after she had died, and continued to work on notes to his Life of Shelley. He died on 2 Aug. 1869 and was buried at St. Mary’s, Horsham, on 6 Aug. (ODNB 15 May 2023; findmypast.com 15 May 2023; Alumni Oxonienses; ancestry.com 15 May 2023)
Other Names:
- T. Medwin