The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume I Part 26

Mention in your answer when you would like to receive the ma.n.u.scripts that they may be sent. By the bye, I must have the proofs of the Ma.n.u.scripts sent to Cambridge as they occur; the proofs from the printed copy you can manage with care, if Mr. Becher will a.s.sist you.

Attend to the list of _Errata_, that we may not have a _Second Edition_ of them also.

The Preface we have done with, perhaps I may send an Advertis.e.m.e.nt, a dedication shall be forthcoming in due Season.

You will send a proof of the first Sheet for Inspection, and soon too, for I am about to set out for London next week. If I remain there any time, I shall apprize you where to send the Ma.n.u.script Proofs.

Do you think the others will be sold before the next are ready, what says Curly? remember I have advised you not to risk it a second time, and it is not too late to retract. However, you must abide by your own discretion:

Etc., etc.,

BYRON.

P.S.--You will print from the Copy I sent you with the alterations, pray attend to these, and be careful of mistakes. In my last I gave you directions concerning the t.i.tle page and Mottoes.

[Footnote 1: A view of Harrow was given.]

83.--To John Hanson.

Trin. Coll., Cambridge, Dec. 2nd, 1807.

My Dear Sir,--I hope to take my New Years Day dinner with you _en famille_. Tell Hargreaves I will bring his Blackstones, and shall have no objection to see my Daniel's _Field Sports_, if they have not escaped his recollection.--I certainly wish the expiration of my minority as much as you do, though for a reason more nearly affecting my magisterial person at this moment, namely, the want of twenty pounds, for no spendthrift peer, or unlucky poet, was ever less indebted to _Cash_ than George Gordon is at present, or is more likely to continue in the same predicament.--My present quarter due on the 25th was drawn long ago, and I must be obliged to you for the loan of twenty on my next, to be deducted when the whole becomes tangible, that is, probably, some months after it is exhausted. Reserve Murray's quarter, [1] of course, and I shall have just 100 _!_. to receive at Easter, but if the risk of my demand is too great, inform me, that I may if possible convert my t.i.tle into cash, though I am afraid twenty pounds will be too much to ask as Times go, if I were an Earl ... but a Barony must fetch ten, perhaps fifteen, and that is something when we have not as many pence. Your answer will oblige

Yours very truly,

BYRON.

P.S.--Remember me to Mrs. H. in particular, and the family in general.

[Footnote 1: Joe Murray. (See page 21 [Letter 7], [Foot]note 3 [4].)]

84.--To John Murray. [1]

Ravenna, 9bre 19, 1820.

What you said of the late Charles Skinner Matthews [2] has set me to my recollections; but I have not been able to turn up any thing which would do for the purposed Memoir of his brother,--even if he had previously done enough during his life to sanction the introduction of anecdotes so merely personal. He was, however, a very extraordinary man, and would have been a great one. No one ever succeeded in a more surpa.s.sing degree than he did as far as he went. He was indolent, too; but whenever he stripped, he overthrew all antagonists. His conquests will be found registered at Cambridge, particularly his _Downing_ one, which was hotly and highly contested, and yet easily _won_. Hobhouse was his most intimate friend, and can tell you more of him than any man. William Bankes [3] also a great deal. I myself recollect more of his oddities than of his academical qualities, for we lived most together at a very idle period of _my_ life. When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow, to which I had become attached during the two last years of my stay there; wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford (there were no rooms vacant at Christchurch); wretched from some private domestic circ.u.mstances of different kinds, and consequently about as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop. So that, although I knew Matthews, and met him often _then_ at Bankes's, (who was my collegiate pastor, and master, and patron,) and at Rhode's, Milnes's, Price's, d.i.c.k's, Macnamara's, Farrell's, Gally Knight's, and others of that _set_ of contemporaries, yet I was neither intimate with him nor with any one else, except my old schoolfellow Edward Long [4] (with whom I used to pa.s.s the day in riding and swimming), and William Bankes, who was good-naturedly tolerant of my ferocities.

It was not till 1807, after I had been upwards of a year away from Cambridge, to which I had returned again to _reside_ for my degree, that I became one of Matthews's familiars, by means of Hobhouse, [5]

who, after hating me for two years, because I wore a _white hat_, and a _grey_ coat, and rode a _grey_ horse (as he says himself), took me into his good graces because I had written some poetry. I had always lived a good deal, and got drunk occasionally, in their company--but now we became really friends in a morning. Matthews, however, was not at this period resident in College. I met _him_ chiefly in London, and at uncertain periods at Cambridge. Hobhouse, in the mean time, did great things: he founded the Cambridge "Whig Club" (which he seems to have forgotten), and the "Amicable Society," which was dissolved in consequence of the members constantly quarrelling, and made himself very popular with "us youth," and no less formidable to all tutors, professors, and heads of Colleges. William Bankes was gone; while he stayed, he ruled the roast--or rather the _roasting_--and was father of all mischiefs.

Matthews and I, meeting in London, and elsewhere, became great cronies. He was not good tempered--nor am I--but with a little tact his temper was manageable, and I thought him so superior a man, that I was willing to sacrifice something to his humours, which were often, at the same time, amusing and provoking. What became of his _papers_ (and he certainly had many), at the time of his death, was never known. I mention this by the way, fearing to skip it over, and _as_ he _wrote_ remarkably well, both in Latin and English. We went down to Newstead together, [6] where I had got a famous cellar, and _Monks'_ dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, with an occasional neighbour or so for visiters, and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the _skull-cup_, and all sorts of gla.s.ses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments. [7] Matthews always denominated me "the Abbot," and never called me by any other name in his good humours, to the day of his death. The harmony of these our symposia was somewhat interrupted, a few days after our a.s.sembling, by Matthews's threatening to throw Hobhouse out of a _window_, in consequence of I know not what commerce of jokes ending in this epigram. Hobhouse came to me and said, that "his respect and regard for me as host would not permit him to call out any of my guests, and that he should go to town next morning." He did. It was in vain that I represented to him that the window was not high, and that the turf under it was particularly soft. Away he went.

Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant. "Come," said he, "don't let us break through--let us go on as we began, to our journey's end;" and so he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He had previously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones, [8] the tutor, in his odd way, had said, on putting him in,

"Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage any of the moveables, for Lord Byron, Sir, is a young man of _tumultuous pa.s.sions_."

Matthews was delighted with this; and whenever anybody came to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with caution; and used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner. There was a large mirror in the room, on which he remarked, "that he thought his friends were grown uncommonly a.s.siduous in coming to _see him_, but he soon discovered that they only came to _see themselves_." Jones's phrase of "_tumultuous pa.s.sions_" and the whole scene, had put him into such good humour, that I verily believe that I owed to it a portion of his good graces.

When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed against one of his white silk stockings, one day before dinner; of course the gentleman apologised.

"Sir," answered Matthews, "it may be all very well for you, who have a great many silk stockings, to dirty other people's; but to me, who have only this _one pair_, which I have put on in honour of the Abbot here, no apology can compensate for such carelessness; besides, the expense of was.h.i.+ng."

He had the same sort of droll sardonic way about every thing. A wild Irishman, named Farrell, one evening began to say something at a large supper at Cambridge, Matthews roared out "Silence!" and then, pointing to Farrell, cried out, in the words of the oracle, "Orson is endowed with reason." You may easily suppose that Orson lost what reason he had acquired, on hearing this compliment. When Hobhouse published his volume of poems, the _Miscellany_ (which Matthews would call the "_Miss-sell-any_"), all that could be drawn from him was, that the preface was "extremely like _Walsh_." Hobhouse thought this at first a compliment; but we never could make out what it was, [9] for all we know of _Walsh_ is his Ode to King William, [10] and Pope's epithet of "_knowing Walsh_." [11] When the Newstead party broke up for London, Hobhouse and Matthews, who were the greatest friends possible, agreed, for a whim, to _walk together_ to town. They quarrelled by the way, and actually walked the latter half of the journey, occasionally pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, without speaking. When Matthews had got to Highgate, he had spent all his money but three-pence halfpenny, and determined to spend that also in a pint of beer, which I believe he was drinking before a public-house, as Hobhouse pa.s.sed him (still without speaking) for the last time on their route. They were reconciled in London again.

One of Matthews's pa.s.sions was "the fancy;" and he sparred uncommonly well. But he always got beaten in rows, or combats with the bare fist.

In swimming, too, he swam well; but with _effort_ and _labour_, and _too high_ out of the water; so that Scrope Davies [1] and myself, of whom he was therein somewhat emulous, always told him that he would be drowned if ever he came to a difficult pa.s.s in the water. He was so; but surely Scrope and myself would have been most heartily glad that

"the Dean had lived, And our prediction proved a lie."

His head was uncommonly handsome, very like what _Pope's_ was in his youth.

His voice, and laugh, and features, are strongly resembled by his brother Henry's, if Henry be _he_ of _King's College_. His pa.s.sion for boxing was so great, that he actually wanted me to match him with Dogherty [13] (whom I had backed and made the match for against Tom Belcher [14]), and I saw them spar together at my own lodgings with the gloves on. As he was bent upon it, I would have backed Dogherty to please him, but the match went off. It was of course to have been a private fight, in a private room.

On one occasion, being too late to go home and dress, he was equipped by a friend (Mr. Baillie, I believe,) in a magnificently fas.h.i.+onable and somewhat exaggerated s.h.i.+rt and neckcloth. He proceeded to the Opera, and took his station in Fop's Alley. During the interval between the opera and the ballet, an acquaintance took his station by him and saluted him:

"Come round," said Matthews, "come round."

"Why should I come round?" said the other; "you have only to turn your head--I am close by you."

"That is exactly what I cannot do," said Matthews; "don't you see the state I am in?"

pointing to his buckram s.h.i.+rt collar and inflexible cravat,--and there he stood with his head always in the same perpendicular position during the whole spectacle.

One evening, after dining together, as we were going to the Opera, I happened to have a spare Opera ticket (as subscriber to a box), and presented it to Matthews.

"Now, sir," said he to Hobhouse afterwards, "this I call _courteous_ in the Abbot--another man would never have thought that I might do better with half a guinea than throw it to a door-keeper;--but here is a man not only asks me to dinner, but gives me a ticket for the theatre."

These were only his oddities, for no man was more liberal, or more honourable in all his doings and dealings, than Matthews. He gave Hobhouse and me, before we set out for Constantinople, a most splendid entertainment, to which we did ample justice. One of his fancies was dining at all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Somebody popped upon him in I know not what coffee-house in the Strand--and what do you think was the attraction? Why, that he paid a s.h.i.+lling (I think) to _dine with his hat on_. This he called his "_hat_ house," and used to boast of the comfort of being covered at meal times.

When Sir Henry Smith [15] was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named "Hiron," Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows every evening,

"Ah me! what perils do environ The man who meddles with _hot Hiron_."