Life of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 13

[Footnote 21: I had said, I think, in my letter to him, that this practice of carrying one stanza into another was "something like taking on horses another stage without baiting."]

[Footnote 22: I had, in first transcribing the above letter for the press, omitted the whole of this caustic, and, perhaps, over-severe character of Mr. Hunt; but the tone of that gentleman's book having, as far as himself is concerned, released me from all those scruples which prompted the suppression, I have considered myself at liberty to restore the pa.s.sage.]

During the greater part of the period which this last series of letters comprises, he had continued to occupy the same lodgings in an extremely narrow street called the Spezieria, at the house of the linen-draper, to whose lady he devoted so much of his thoughts. That he was, for the time, attached to this person,--as far as a pa.s.sion so transient can deserve the name of attachment,--is evident from his whole conduct. The language of his letters shows sufficiently how much the novelty of this foreign tie had caught his fancy; and to the Venetians, among whom such arrangements are mere matters of course, the a.s.siduity with which he attended his Signora to the theatre, and the ridottos, was a subject of much amus.e.m.e.nt. It was with difficulty, indeed, that he could be prevailed upon to absent himself from her so long as to admit of that hasty visit to the Immortal City, out of which one of his own n.o.blest t.i.tles to immortality sprung; and having, in the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks, drunk in more inspiration from all he saw than, in a less excited state, possibly, he might have imbibed in years, he again hurried back, without extending his journey to Naples,--having written to the fair Marianna to meet him at some distance from Venice.

Besides some seasonable acts of liberality to the husband, who had, it seems, failed in trade, he also presented to the lady herself a handsome set of diamonds; and there is an anecdote related in reference to this gift, which shows the exceeding easiness and forbearance of his disposition towards those who had acquired any hold on his heart. A casket, which was for sale, being one day offered to him, he was not a little surprised on discovering them to be the same jewels which he had, not long before, presented to his fair favourite, and which had, by some unromantic means, found their way back into the market. Without enquiring, however, any further into the circ.u.mstances, he generously repurchased the casket and presented it to the lady once more, good-humouredly taxing her with the very little estimation in which, as it appeared, she held his presents.

To whatever extent this unsentimental incident may have had a share in dispelling the romance of his pa.s.sion, it is certain that, before the expiration of the first twelvemonth, he began to find his lodgings in the Spezieria inconvenient, and accordingly entered into treaty with Count Gritti for his Palace on the Grand Ca.n.a.l,--engaging to give for it, what is considered, I believe, a large rent in Venice, 200 louis a year. On finding, however, that, in the counterpart of the lease brought for his signature, a new clause had been introduced, prohibiting him not only from underletting the house, in case he should leave Venice, but from even allowing any of his own friends to occupy it during his occasional absence, he declined closing on such terms; and resenting so material a departure from the original engagement, declared in society, that he would have no objection to give the same rent, though acknowledged to be exorbitant, for any other palace in Venice, however inferior, in all respects, to Count Gritti's. After such an announcement, he was not likely to remain long unhoused; and the Countess Mocenigo having offered him one of her three Palazzi, on the Grand Ca.n.a.l, he removed to this house in the summer of the present year, and continued to occupy it during the remainder of his stay in Venice.

Highly censurable, in point of morality and decorum, as was his course of life while under the roof of Madame * *, it was (with pain I am forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so unrestrainedly and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of the state of his mind on leaving England I have already endeavoured to convey some idea, and, among the feelings that went to make up that self-centred spirit of resistance which he then opposed to his fate, was an indignant scorn of his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought they had done him. For a time, the kindly sentiments which he still harboured towards Lady Byron, and a sort of vague hope, perhaps, that all would yet come right again, kept his mind in a mood somewhat more softened and docile, as well as sufficiently under the influence of English opinion to prevent his breaking out into such open rebellion against it, as he unluckily did afterwards.

By the failure of the attempted mediation with Lady Byron, his last link with home was severed; while, notwithstanding the quiet and un.o.btrusive life which he had led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found, no cessation of the slanderous warfare against his character;--the same busy and misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at home having, with no less malicious watchfulness, dogged him into exile. To this persuasion, for which he had but too much grounds, was added all that an imagination like his could lend to truth,--all that he was left to interpret, in his own way, of the absent and the silent,--till, at length, arming himself against fancied enemies and wrongs, and, with the condition (as it seemed to him) of an outlaw, a.s.suming also the desperation, he resolved, as his countrymen would not do justice to the better parts of his nature, to have, at least, the perverse satisfaction of braving and shocking them with the worst. It is to this feeling, I am convinced, far more than to any depraved taste for such a course of life, that the extravagances to which he now, for a short time, gave loose, are to be attributed. The exciting effect, indeed, of this mode of existence while it lasted, both upon his spirits and his genius,--so like what, as he himself tells us, was always produced in him by a state of contest and defiance,--showed how much of this latter feeling must have been mixed with his excesses. The altered character too, of his letters in this respect cannot fail, I think, to be remarked by the reader,--there being, with an evident increase of intellectual vigour, a tone of violence and bravado breaking out in them continually, which marks the high pitch of re-action to which he had now wound up his temper.

In fact, so far from the powers of his intellect being at all weakened or dissipated by these irregularities, he was, perhaps, at no time of his life, so actively in the full possession of all its energies; and his friend Sh.e.l.ley, who went to Venice, at this period, to see him[23], used to say, that all he observed of the workings of Byron's mind, during his visit, gave him a far higher idea of its powers than he had ever before entertained. It was, indeed, then that Sh.e.l.ley sketched out, and chiefly wrote, his poem of "Julian and Maddalo," in the latter of which personages he has so picturesquely shadowed forth his n.o.ble friend[24]; and the allusions to "the Swan of Albion," in his "Lines written among the Euganean Hills," were also, I understand, the result of the same access of admiration and enthusiasm.

In speaking of the Venetian women, in one of the preceding letters, Lord Byron, it will be recollected, remarks, that the beauty for which they were once so celebrated is no longer now to be found among the "Dame," or higher orders, but all under the "fazzioli," or kerchiefs, of the lower. It was, unluckily, among these latter specimens of the "bel sangue" of Venice that he now, by a suddenness of descent in the scale of refinement, for which nothing but the present wayward state of his mind can account, chose to select the companions of his disengaged hours;--and an additional proof that, in this short, daring career of libertinism, he was but desperately seeking relief for a wronged and mortified spirit, and

"What to us seem'd guilt might be but woe,"--

is that, more than once, of an evening, when his house has been in the possession of such visitants, he has been known to hurry away in his gondola, and pa.s.s the greater part of the night upon the water, as if hating to return to his home. It is, indeed, certain, that to this least defensible portion of his whole life he always looked back, during the short remainder of it, with painful self-reproach; and among the causes of the detestation which he afterwards felt for Venice, this recollection of the excesses to which he had there abandoned himself was not the least prominent.

The most distinguished and, at last, the reigning favourite of all this unworthy Harem was a woman named Margarita Cogni, who has been already mentioned in one of these letters, and who, from the trade of her husband, was known by the t.i.tle of the Fornarina. A portrait of this handsome virago, drawn by Harlowe when at Venice, having fallen into the hands of one of Lord Byron's friends after the death of that artist, the n.o.ble poet, on being applied to for some particulars of his heroine, wrote a long letter on the subject, from which the following are extracts:--

"Since you desire the story of Margarita Cogni, you shall be told it, though it may be lengthy.

"Her face is the fine Venetian cast of the old time; her figure, though perhaps too tall, is not less fine--and taken altogether in the national dress.

"In the summer of 1817, * * * * and myself were sauntering on horseback along the Brenta one evening, when, amongst a group of peasants, we remarked two girls as the prettiest we had seen for some time. About this period, there had been great distress in the country, and I had a little relieved some of the people. Generosity makes a great figure at very little cost in Venetian livres, and mine had probably been exaggerated as an Englishman's. Whether they remarked us looking at them or no, I know not; but one of them called out to me in Venetian, 'Why do not you, who relieve others, think of us also?' I turned round and answered her--'Cara, tu sei troppo bella e giovane per aver' bisogna del' soccorso mio.' She answered, 'If you saw my hut and my food, you would not say so.'

All this pa.s.sed half jestingly, and I saw no more of her for some days.

"A few evenings after, we met with these two girls again, and they addressed us more seriously, a.s.suring us of the truth of their statement. They were cousins; Margarita married, the other single.

As I doubted still of the circ.u.mstances, I took the business in a different light, and made an appointment with them for the next evening. In short, in a few evenings we arranged our affairs, and for a long s.p.a.ce of time she was the only one who preserved over me an ascendency which was often disputed, and never impaired.

"The reasons of this were, firstly, her person;--very dark, tall, the Venetian face, very fine black eyes. She was two-and-twenty years old, * * * She was, besides, a thorough Venetian in her dialect, in her thoughts, in her countenance, in every thing, with all their _navete_ and pantaloon humour. Besides, she could neither read nor write, and could not plague me with letters,--except twice that she paid sixpence to a public scribe, under the piazza, to make a letter for her, upon some occasion when I was ill and could not see her. In other respects, she was somewhat fierce and 'prepotente,' that is, over-bearing, and used to walk in whenever it suited her, with no very great regard to time, place, nor persons; and if she found any women in her way, she knocked them down.

"When I first knew her, I was in 'relazione' (liaison) with la Signora * *, who was silly enough one evening at Dolo, accompanied by some of her female friends, to threaten her; for the gossips of the villeggiatura had already found out, by the neighing of my horse one evening, that I used to 'ride late in the night' to meet the Fornarina. Margarita threw back her veil (fazziolo), and replied in very explicit Venetian, '_You_ are _not_ his _wife_: _I_ am _not_ his _wife_: you are his Donna, and _I_ am his _Donna_: your husband is a _becco_, and mine is another. For the rest, what _right_ have you to reproach me? If he prefers me to you, is it my fault? If you wish to secure him, tie him to your petticoat-string.--But do not think to speak to me without a reply, because you happen to be richer than I am.' Having delivered this pretty piece of eloquence (which I translate as it was related to me by a bystander), she went on her way, leaving a numerous audience with Madame * *, to ponder at her leisure on the dialogue between them.

"When I came to Venice for the winter, she followed; and as she found herself out to be a favourite, she came to me pretty often.

But she had inordinate self-love, and was not tolerant of other women. At the 'Cavalchina,' the masked ball on the last night of the carnival, where all the world goes, she s.n.a.t.c.hed off the mask of Madame Contarini, a lady n.o.ble by birth, and decent in conduct, for no other reason, but because she happened to be leaning on my arm. You may suppose what a cursed noise this made; but this is only one of her pranks.

"At last she quarrelled with her husband, and one evening ran away to my house. I told her this would not do: she said she would lie in the street, but not go back to him; that he beat her, (the gentle tigress!) spent her money, and scandalously neglected her.

As it was midnight I let her stay, and next day there was no moving her at all. Her husband came, roaring and crying, and entreating her to come back:--_not_ she! He then applied to the police, and they applied to me: I told them and her husband to _take_ her; I did not want her; she had come, and I could not fling her out of the window; but they might conduct her through that or the door if they chose it. She went before the commissary, but was obliged to return with that 'becco ettico,' as she called the poor man, who had a phthisic. In a few days she ran away again. After a precious piece of work, she fixed herself in my house, really and truly without my consent; but, owing to my indolence, and not being able to keep my countenance, for if I began in a rage, she always finished by making me laugh with some Venetian pantaloonery or another; and the gipsy knew this well enough, as well as her other powers of persuasion, and exerted them with the usual tact and success of all she-things; high and low, they are all alike for that.

"Madame Benzoni also took her under her protection, and then her head turned. She was always in extremes, either crying or laughing, and so fierce when angered, that she was the terror of men, women, and children--for she had the strength of an Amazon, with the temper of Medea. She was a fine animal, but quite untameable. _I_ was the only person that could at all keep her in any order, and when she saw me really angry (which they tell me is a savage sight), she subsided. But she had a thousand fooleries. In her fazziolo, the dress of the lower orders, she looked beautiful; but, alas! she longed for a hat and feathers; and all I could say or do (and I said much) could not prevent this travestie. I put the first into the fire; but I got tired of burning them, before she did of buying them, so that she made herself a figure--for they did not at all become her.

"Then she would have her gowns with a _tail_--like a lady, forsooth; nothing would serve her but 'l'abita colla _coua_,' or _cua_, (that is the Venetian for 'la cola,' the tail or train,) and as her cursed p.r.o.nunciation of the word made me laugh, there was an end of all controversy, and she dragged this diabolical tail after her every where.

"In the mean time, she beat the women and stopped my letters. I found her one day pondering over one. She used to try to find out by their shape whether they were feminine or no; and she used to lament her ignorance, and actually studied her alphabet, on purpose (as she declared) to open all letters addressed to me and read their contents.

"I must not omit to do justice to her housekeeping qualities. After she came into my house as 'donna di governo,' the expenses were reduced to less than half, and every body did their duty better--the apartments were kept in order, and every thing and every body else, except herself.

"That she had a sufficient regard for me in her wild way, I had many reasons to believe. I will mention one. In the autumn, one day, going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril--hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, night coming, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a tight struggle, I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo palace, on the Grand Ca.n.a.l, with her great black eyes flas.h.i.+ng through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows and breast. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin tall figure, and the lightning flas.h.i.+ng round her, and the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected, but calling out to me--'Ah! can' della Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido?' (Ah! dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to Lido?) ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the 'temporale.' I am told by the servants that she had only been prevented from coming in a boat to look after me, by the refusal of all the gondoliers of the ca.n.a.l to put out into the harbour in such a moment; and that then she sat down on the steps in all the thickest of the squall, and would neither be removed nor comforted. Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs.

"But her reign drew near a close. She became quite ungovernable some months after, and a concurrence of complaints, some true, and many false--'a favourite has no friends'--determined me to part with her. I told her quietly that she must return home, (she had acquired a sufficient provision for herself and mother, &c. in my service,) and she refused to quit the house. I was firm, and she went threatening knives and revenge. I told her that I had seen knives drawn before her time, and that if she chose to begin, there was a knife, and fork also, at her service on the table, and that intimidation would not do. The next day, while I was at dinner, she walked in, (having broken open a gla.s.s door that led from the hall below to the staircase, by way of prologue,) and advancing straight up to the table, s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife from my hand, cutting me slightly in the thumb in the operation. Whether she meant to use this against herself or me, I know not--probably against neither--but Fletcher seized her by the arms, and disarmed her. I then called my boatmen, and desired them to get the gondola ready, and conduct her to her own house again, seeing carefully that she did herself no mischief by the way. She seemed quite quiet, and walked down stairs. I resumed my dinner.

"We heard a great noise, and went out, and met them on the staircase, carrying her up stairs. She had thrown herself into the ca.n.a.l. That she intended to destroy herself, I do not believe; but when we consider the fear women and men who can't swim have of deep or even of shallow water, (and the Venetians in particular, though they live on the waves,) and that it was also night, and dark, and very cold, it shows that she had a devilish spirit of some sort within her. They had got her out without much difficulty or damage, excepting the salt water she had swallowed, and the wetting she had undergone.

"I foresaw her intention to refix herself, and sent for a surgeon, enquiring how many hours it would require to restore her from her agitation; and he named the time. I then said, 'I give you that time, and more if you require it; but at the expiration of this prescribed period, if _she_ does not leave the house, _I_ will.'

"All my people were consternated. They had always been frightened at her, and were now paralysed: they wanted me to apply to the police, to guard myself, &c. &c. like a pack of snivelling servile b.o.o.bies as they were. I did nothing of the kind, thinking that I might as well end that way as another; besides, I had been used to savage women, and knew their ways.

"I had her sent home quietly after her recovery, and never saw her since, except twice at the opera, at a distance amongst the audience. She made many attempts to return, but no more violent ones. And this is the story of Margarita Cogni, as far as it relates to me.

"I forgot to mention that she was very devout, and would cross herself if she heard the prayer time strike.

"She was quick in reply; as, for instance--One day when she had made me very angry with beating somebody or other, I called her a _cow_ (_cow_, in Italian, is a sad affront). I called her 'Vacca.'

She turned round, courtesied, and answered, 'Vacca _tua_, 'celenza' (_i.e._ eccelenza). '_Your_ cow, please your Excellency.'

In short, she was, as I said before, a very fine animal, of considerable beauty and energy, with many good and several amusing qualities, but wild as a witch and fierce as a demon. She used to boast publicly of her ascendency over me, contrasting it with that of other women, and a.s.signing for it sundry reasons. True it was, that they all tried to get her away, and no one succeeded till her own absurdity helped them.

"I omitted to tell you her answer, when I reproached her for s.n.a.t.c.hing Madame Contarini's mask at the Cavalchina. I represented to her that she was a lady of high birth, 'una Dama,' &c. She answered, 'Se ella e dama _mi_ (_io_) son Veneziana;'--'If she is a lady, I am a Venetian.' This would have been fine a hundred years ago, the pride of the nation rising up against the pride of aristocracy: but, alas! Venice, and her people, and her n.o.bles, are alike returning fast to the ocean; and where there is no independence, there can be no real self-respect. I believe that I mistook or mis-stated one of her phrases in my letter; it should have been--'Can' della Madonna cosa vus' tu? esto non e tempo per andar' a Lido?'"

[Footnote 23: The following are extracts from a letter of Sh.e.l.ley's to a friend at this time.

"Venice, August, 1818.

"We came from Padua hither in a gondola; and the gondolier, among other things, without any hint on our part, began talking of Lord Byron. He said he was a 'Giovanotto Inglese,' with a 'nome stravagante,' who lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of money.

"At three o'clock I called on Lord Byron. He was delighted to see me, and our first conversation of course consisted in the object of our visit. He took me in his gondola, across the Laguna, to a long, strandy sand, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his own wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, with great professions of friends.h.i.+p and regard for me. He said that if he had been in England, at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision. He talked of literary matters,--his fourth Canto, which he says is very good, and indeed repeated some stanzas, of great energy, to me. When we returned to his palace, which is one if the most magnificent in Venice," &c. &c.

[Footnote 24: In the preface also to this poem, under the fict.i.tious name of Count Maddalo, the following just and striking portrait of Lord Byron is drawn:--

"He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His pa.s.sions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men, and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentred and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and una.s.suming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries."]

It was at this time, as we shall see by the letters I am about to produce, and as the features, indeed, of the progeny itself would but too plainly indicate, that he conceived, and wrote some part of, his poem of 'Don Juan;'--and never did pages more faithfully and, in many respects, lamentably, reflect every variety of feeling, and whim, and pa.s.sion that, like the wrack of autumn, swept across the author's mind in writing them. Nothing less, indeed, than that singular combination of attributes, which existed and were in full activity in his mind at this moment, could have suggested, or been capable of, the execution of such a work. The cool shrewdness of age, with the vivacity and glowing temperament of youth,--the wit of a Voltaire, with the sensibility of a Rousseau,--the minute, practical knowledge of the man of society, with the abstract and self-contemplative spirit of the poet,--a susceptibility of all that is grandest and most affecting in human virtue, with a deep, withering experience of all that is most fatal to it,--the two extremes, in short, of man's mixed and inconsistent nature, now rankly smelling of earth, now breathing of heaven,--such was the strange a.s.semblage of contrary elements, all meeting together in the same mind, and all brought to bear, in turn, upon the same task, from which alone could have sprung this extraordinary poem,--the most powerful and, in many respects, painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for succeeding ages to wonder at and deplore.

I shall now proceed with his correspondence,--having thought some of the preceding observations necessary, not only to explain to the reader much of what he will find in these letters, but to account to him for much that has been necessarily omitted.

LETTER 318. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, June 18. 1818.

"Business and the utter and inexplicable silence of all my correspondents renders me impatient and troublesome. I wrote to Mr.