Life of Lord Byron Volume I Part 15

"N.A., Notts. October 4. 1808.

"You will make as good a bargain as possible with this Master Jekyll, if he is not a gentleman. If he is a _gentleman_, inform me, for I shall take very different steps. If he is not, you must get what you can of the money, for I have too much business on hand at present to commence an action. Besides, Ambrose is the man who ought to refund,--but I have done with him. You can settle with L. out of the balance, and dispose of the bidets, &c. as you best can.

"I should be very glad to see you here; but the house is filled with workmen, and undergoing a thorough repair. I hope, however, to be more fortunate before many months have elapsed.

"If you see Bold Webster, remember me to him, and tell him I have to regret Sydney, who has perished, I fear, in my rabbit warren, for we have seen nothing of him for the last fortnight.

"Adieu.--Believe me," &c.

LETTER 28.

TO MR. JACKSON.

"N.A., Notts. December 12. 1808.

"My dear Jack,

"You will get the greyhound from the owner at any price, and as many more of the same breed (male or female) as you can collect.

"Tell D'Egville his dress shall be returned--I am obliged to him for the pattern. I am sorry you should have so much trouble, but I was not aware of the difficulty of procuring the animals in question. I shall have finished part of my mansion in a few weeks, and, if you can pay me a visit at Christmas, I shall be very glad to see you.

"Believe me," &c.

The dress alluded to here was, no doubt, wanted for a private play, which he, at this time, got up at Newstead, and of which there are some further particulars in the annexed letter to Mr. Becher.

LETTER 29.

TO MR. BECHER.

"Newstead Abbey, Notts. Sept. 14. 1808.

"My dear Becher,

"I am much obliged to you for your enquiries, and shall profit by them accordingly. I am going to get up a play here; the hall will const.i.tute a most admirable theatre. I have settled the dram. pers., and can do without ladies, as I have some young friends who will make tolerable subst.i.tutes for females, and we only want three male characters, beside Mr. Hobhouse and myself, for the play we have fixed on, which will be the Revenge. Pray direct Nicholson the carpenter to come over to me immediately, and inform me what day you will dine and pa.s.s the night here.

"Believe me," &c.

It was in the autumn of this year, as the letters I have just given indicate, that he, for the first time, took up his residence at Newstead Abbey. Having received the place in a most ruinous condition from the hands of its late occupant, Lord Grey de Ruthyn, he proceeded immediately to repair and fit up some of the apartments, so as to render them--more with a view to his mother's accommodation than his own--comfortably habitable. In one of his letters to Mrs. Byron, published by Mr. Dallas, he thus explains his views and intentions on this subject.

LETTER 30.

TO THE HONOURABLE[93] MRS. BYRON.

"Newstead Abbey, Notts. October 7. 1808.

"Dear Madam,

"I have no beds for the H----s or any body else at present. The H----s sleep at Mansfield. I do not know, that I resemble Jean Jacques Rousseau. I have no ambition to be like so ill.u.s.trious a madman--but this I know, that I shall live in my own manner, and as much alone as possible. When my rooms are ready I shall be glad to see you: at present it would be improper and uncomfortable to both parties. You can hardly object to my rendering my mansion habitable, notwithstanding my departure for Persia in March (or May at farthest), since _you_ will be _tenant_ till my return; and in case of any accident (for I have already arranged my will to be drawn up the moment I am twenty-one), I have taken care you shall have the house and manor for _life_, besides a sufficient income. So you see my improvements are not entirely selfish. As I have a friend here, we will go to the Infirmary Ball on the 12th; we will drink tea with Mrs.

Byron at eight o'clock, and expect to see you at the ball. If that lady will allow us a couple of rooms to dress in, we shall be highly obliged:--if we are at the ball by ten or eleven it will be time enough, and we shall return to Newstead about three or four. Adieu.

"Believe me yours very truly,

"BYRON."

The idea, entertained by Mrs. Byron, of a resemblance between her son and Rousseau was founded chiefly, we may suppose, on those habits of solitariness, in which he had even already shown a disposition to follow that self-contemplative philosopher, and which, manifesting themselves thus early, gained strength as he advanced in life. In one of his Journals, to which I frequently have occasion to refer,[94] he thus, in questioning the justice of this comparison between himself and Rousseau, gives,--as usual, vividly,--some touches of his own disposition and habitudes:--

"My mother, before I was twenty, would have it that I was like Rousseau, and Madame de Stael used to say so too in 1813, and the Edinburgh Review has something of the sort in its critique on the fourth Canto of Childe Harold. I can't see any point of resemblance:--he wrote prose, I verse: he was of the people; I of the aristocracy:[95] he was a philosopher; I am none: he published his first work at forty; I mine at eighteen: his first essay brought him universal applause; mine the contrary: he married his housekeeper; I could not keep house with my wife: he thought all the world in a plot against him; my little world seems to think me in a plot against it, if I may judge by their abuse in print and coterie: he liked botany; I like flowers, herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees: he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by _ear_--I never could learn any thing by _study_, not even a _language_--it was all by rote, and ear, and memory: he had a _bad_ memory; I _had_, at least, an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet--a good judge, for he has an astonis.h.i.+ng one): he wrote with hesitation and care; I with rapidity, and rarely with pains: _he_ could never ride, nor swim, nor 'was cunning of fence;' _I_ am an excellent swimmer, a decent, though not at all a das.h.i.+ng, rider, (having staved in a rib at eighteen, in the course of scampering), and was sufficient of fence, particularly of the Highland broadsword,--not a bad boxer, when I could keep my temper, which was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves on), in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms in 1806, during the sparring,--and I was, besides, a very fair cricketer,--one of the Harrow eleven, when we played against Eton in 1805. Besides, Rousseau's way of life, his country, his manners, his whole character, were so very different, that I am at a loss to conceive how such a comparison could have arisen, as it has done three several times, and all in rather a remarkable manner. I forgot to say that _he_ was also short-sighted, and that hitherto my eyes have been the contrary, to such a degree that, in the largest theatre of Bologna, I distinguished and read some busts and inscriptions, painted near the stage, from a box so distant and so _darkly_ lighted, that none of the company (composed of young and very bright-eyed people, some of them in the same box,) could make out a letter, and thought it was a trick, though I had never been in that theatre before.

"Altogether, I think myself justified in thinking the comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great man; and the thing, if true, were flattering enough;--but I have no idea of being pleased with the chimera."

In another letter to his mother, dated some weeks after the preceding one, he explains further his plans both with respect to Newstead and his projected travels.

LETTER 31.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Newstead Abbey, November 2. 1808.

"Dear Mother,

"If you please, we will forget the things you mention. I have no desire to remember them. When my rooms are finished, I shall be happy to see you; as I tell but the truth, you will not suspect me of evasion. I am furnis.h.i.+ng the house more for you than myself, and I shall establish you in it before I sail for India, which I expect to do in March, if nothing particularly obstructive occurs. I am now fitting up the _green_ drawing-room; the red for a bed-room, and the rooms over as sleeping-rooms. They will be soon completed;--at least I hope so.

"I wish you would enquire of Major Watson (who is an old Indian) what things will be necessary to provide for my voyage. I have already procured a friend to write to the Arabic Professor at Cambridge, for some information I am anxious to procure. I can easily get letters from government to the amba.s.sadors, consuls, &c., and also to the governors at Calcutta and Madras. I shall place my property and my will in the hands of trustees till my return, and I mean to appoint you one. From H---- I have heard nothing--when I do, you shall have the particulars.

"After all, you must own my project is not a bad one. If I do not travel now, I never shall, and all men should one day or other. I have at present no connections to keep me at home; no wife, or unprovided sisters, brothers, &c. I shall take care of you, and when I return I may possibly become a politician. A few years' knowledge of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a fair chance:--it is from _experience_, not books, we ought to judge of them. There is nothing like inspection, and trusting to our own senses.

"Yours," &c.

In the November of this year he lost his favourite dog, Boatswain,--the poor animal having been seized with a fit of madness, at the commencement of which so little aware was Lord Byron of the nature of the malady, that he more than once, with his bare hand, wiped away the slaver from the dog's lips during the paroxysms. In a letter to his friend, Mr. Hodgson,[96] he thus announces this event:--"Boatswain is dead!--he expired in a state of madness on the 18th, after suffering much, yet retaining all the gentleness of his nature to the last, never attempting to do the least injury to any one near him. I have now lost every thing except old Murray."

The monument raised by him to this dog,--the most memorable tribute of the kind, since the Dog's Grave, of old, at Salamis,--is still a conspicuous ornament of the gardens of Newstead. The misanthropic verses engraved upon it may be found among his poems, and the following is the inscription by which they are introduced:--

"Near this spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.

This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of BOATSWAIN, a Dog, Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18. 1808."

The poet, Pope, when about the same age as the writer of this inscription, pa.s.sed a similar eulogy on his dog,[97] at the expense of human nature; adding, that "Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends." In a still sadder and bitterer spirit, Lord Byron writes of his favourite,