Life of Lord Byron Volume II Part 2

[Footnote 10: "'h.e.l.l,' a gaming-house so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal: 'Club,' a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all."]

[Footnote 11: "As Mr. Pope took the liberty of d.a.m.ning Homer, to whom he was under great obligations--'And Homer (d.a.m.n him) calls'--it may be presumed that any body or any thing may be d.a.m.ned in verse by poetical license; and in case of accident, I beg leave to plead so ill.u.s.trious a precedent."]

[Footnote 12: "This well-meaning gentleman has spoilt some excellent shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersets.h.i.+re singing. Nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt, too (who once was wiser), has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow, named Blackett, into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of 'Remains' utterly dest.i.tute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well, but the 'Tragedies' are as rickety as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize-poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end, and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done; for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes, these rakers of 'Remains' come under the statute against resurrection-men.

What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath than his soul in an octavo? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may be,' and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has pa.s.sed through life with a sort of eclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child. Now, might not some of this 'sutor ultra crepidam's' friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then, his inscriptions split into so many modic.u.ms! 'To the d.u.c.h.ess of So Much, the Right Honble. So-and-so, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are,' &c. &c. Why, this is doling out the 'soft milk of dedication' in gills; there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt! hadst thou not a puff left? dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication to the d-v-l."]

[Footnote 13: That he himself attributed every thing to fortune, appears from the following pa.s.sage in one of his journals: "Like Sylla, I have always believed that all things depend upon fortune, and nothing upon ourselves. I am not aware of any one thought or action worthy of being called good to myself or others, which is not to be attributed to the good G.o.ddess, FORTUNE!"]

[Footnote 14: The grounds on which the Messrs. Longman refused to publish his Lords.h.i.+p's Satire, were the severe attacks it contained upon Mr. Southey and others of their literary friends.]

"Reddish's Hotel, St. James's Street, London, July 23. 1811.

"My dear Madam,

"I am only detained by Mr. H * * to sign some copyhold papers, and will give you timely notice of my approach. It is with great reluctance I remain in town. I shall pay a short visit as we go on to Lancas.h.i.+re on Rochdale business. I shall attend to your directions, of course, and am,

"With great respect, yours ever,"

"BYRON.

"P.S.--You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine; and me only as a visitor."

On his going abroad, she had conceived a sort of superst.i.tious fancy that she should never see him again; and when he returned, safe and well, and wrote to inform her that he should soon see her at Newstead, she said to her waiting-woman, "If I should be dead before Byron comes down, what a strange thing it would be!"--and so, in fact, it happened.

At the end of July, her illness took a new and fatal turn; and, so sadly characteristic was the close of the poor lady's life, that a fit of rage, brought on, it is said, by reading over the upholsterer's bills, was the ultimate cause of her death. Lord Byron had, of course, prompt intelligence of the attack. But, though he started instantly from town, he was too late,--she had breathed her last.

The following letter, it will be perceived, was written on his way to Newstead.

LETTER 55. TO DR. PIGOT.

"Newport Pagnell, August 2. 1811.

"My dear Doctor,

"My poor mother died yesterday! and I am on my way from town to attend her to the family vault. I heard _one_ day of her illness, the _next_ of her death. Thank G.o.d her last moments were most tranquil. I am told she was in little pain, and not aware of her situation. I now feel the truth of Mr. Gray's observation, 'That we can only have _one_ mother.' Peace be with her! I have to thank you for your expressions of regard; and as in six weeks I shall be in Lancas.h.i.+re on business, I may extend to Liverpool and Chester,--at least I shall endeavour.

"If it will be any satisfaction, I have to inform you that in November next the Editor of the Scourge will be tried for two different libels on the late Mrs. B. and myself (the decease of Mrs. B. makes no difference in the proceedings); and as he is guilty, by his very foolish and unfounded a.s.sertion, of a breach of privilege, he will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour.

"I inform you of this as you seem interested in the affair, which is now in the hands of the Attorney-general.

"I shall remain at Newstead the greater part of this month, where I shall be happy to hear from you, after my two years' absence in the East.

"I am, dear Pigot, yours very truly,

"BYRON."

It can hardly have escaped the observation of the reader, that the general tone of the n.o.ble poet's correspondence with his mother is that of a son, performing, strictly and conscientiously, what he deems to be his duty, without the intermixture of any sentiment of cordiality to sweeten the task. The very t.i.tle of "Madam," by which he addresses her,--and which he but seldom exchanges for the endearing name of "mother[15],"--is, of itself, a sufficient proof of the sentiments he entertained for her. That such should have been his dispositions towards such a parent, can be matter neither of surprise or blame,--but that, notwithstanding this alienation, which her own unfortunate temper produced, he should have continued to consult her wishes, and minister to her comforts, with such unfailing thoughtfulness as is evinced not only in the frequency of his letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead to her use, redounds, a.s.suredly, in no ordinary degree, to his honour; and was even the more strikingly meritorious from the absence of that affection which renders kindnesses to a beloved object little more than an indulgence of self.

But, however estranged from her his feelings must be allowed to have been while she lived, her death seems to have restored them into their natural channel. Whether from a return of early fondness and the all-atoning power of the grave, or from the prospect of that void in his future life which this loss of his only link with the past would leave, it is certain that he felt the death of his mother acutely, if not deeply. On the night after his arrival at Newstead, the waiting-woman of Mrs. Byron, in pa.s.sing the door of the room where the deceased lady lay, heard a sound as of some one sighing heavily from within; and, on entering the chamber, found, to her surprise, Lord Byron, sitting in the dark, beside the bed. On her representing to him the weakness of thus giving way to grief, he burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Oh, Mrs. By, I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone!"

While his real thoughts were thus confided to silence and darkness, there was, in other parts of his conduct more open to observation, a degree of eccentricity and indecorum which, with superficial observers, might well bring the sensibility of his nature into question. On the morning of the funeral, having declined following the remains himself, he stood looking, from the abbey door, at the procession, till the whole had moved off;--then, turning to young Rushton, who was the only person left besides himself, he desired him to fetch the sparring-gloves, and proceeded to his usual exercise with the boy. He was silent and abstracted all the time, and, as if from an effort to get the better of his feelings, threw more violence, Rushton thought, into his blows than was his habit; but, at last,--the struggle seeming too much for him,--he flung away the gloves, and retired to his room.

Of Mrs. Byron, sufficient, perhaps, has been related in these pages to enable the reader to form fully his own opinion, as well with respect to the character of this lady herself, as to the degree of influence her temper and conduct may have exercised on those of her son. It was said by one of the most extraordinary of men[16],--who was himself, as he avowed, princ.i.p.ally indebted to maternal culture for the unexampled elevation to which he subsequently rose,--that "the future good or bad conduct of a child depends entirely on the mother." How far the leaven that sometimes mixed itself with the better nature of Byron,--his uncertain and wayward impulses,--his defiance of restraint,--the occasional bitterness of his hate, and the precipitance of his resentments,--may have had their origin in his early collisions with maternal caprice and violence, is an enquiry for which sufficient materials have been, perhaps, furnished in these pages, but which every one will decide upon, according to the more or less weight he may attribute to the influence of such causes on the formation of character.

That, notwithstanding her injudicious and coa.r.s.e treatment of him, Mrs.

Byron loved her son, with that sort of fitful fondness of which alone such a nature is capable, there can be little doubt,--and still less, that she was ambitiously proud of him. Her anxiety for the success of his first literary essays may be collected from the pains which he so considerately took to tranquillise her on the appearance of the hostile article in the Review. As his fame began to brighten, that notion of his future greatness and glory, which, by a singular forecast of superst.i.tion, she had entertained from his very childhood, became proportionably confirmed. Every mention of him in print was watched by her with eagerness; and she had got bound together in a volume, which a friend of mine once saw, a collection of all the literary notices, that had then appeared, of his early Poems and Satire,--written over on the margin, with observations of her own, which to my informant appeared indicative of much more sense and ability than, from her general character, we should be inclined to attribute to her.

Among those lesser traits of his conduct through which an observer can trace a filial wish to uphold, and throw respect around, the station of his mother, may be mentioned his insisting, while a boy, on being called "George Byron Gordon"--giving thereby precedence to the maternal name,--and his continuing, to the last, to address her as "the Honourable Mrs. Byron,"--a mark of rank to which, he must have been aware, she had no claim whatever. Neither does it appear that, in his habitual manner towards her, there was any thing denoting a want of either affection or deference,--with the exception, perhaps, occasionally, of a somewhat greater degree of familiarity than comports with the ordinary notions of filial respect. Thus, the usual name he called her by, when they were on good-humoured terms together, was "Kitty Gordon;" and I have heard an eye-witness of the scene describe the look of arch, dramatic humour, with which, one day, at Southwell, when they were in the height of their theatrical rage, he threw open the door of the drawing-room, to admit his mother, saying, at the same time, "Enter the Honourable Kitty."

The pride of birth was a feeling common alike to mother and son, and, at times, even became a point of rivalry between them, from their respective claims, English and Scotch, to high lineage. In a letter written by him from Italy, referring to some anecdote which his mother had told him, he says,--"My mother, who was as haughty as Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right line from the _old Gordons_,--_not_ the _Seyton Gordons_, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch,--told me the story, always reminding me how superior _her_ Gordons were to the southern Byrons, notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine, descent, which has never lapsed into a female, as my mother's Gordons had done in her own person."

If, to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions, it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price of mastery. Few as were the ties by which his affections held, whether within or without the circle of relations.h.i.+p, he was now doomed, within a short s.p.a.ce, to see the most of them swept away by death.[17] Besides the loss of his mother, he had to mourn over, in quick succession, the untimely fatalities that carried off, within a few weeks of each other, two or three of his most loved and valued friends. "In the short s.p.a.ce of one month," he says, in a note on Childe Harold, "I have lost _her_ who gave me being, and most of those who made that being tolerable."[18] Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favourites, died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at college, was drowned while bathing in the waters of the Cam.

The following letter, written immediately after the latter event, bears the impress of strong and even agonised feeling, to such a degree as renders it almost painful to read it:--

LETTER 56. TO MR. SCROPE DAVIES.

"Newstead Abbey, August 7. 1811.

"My dearest Davies,

"Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? I received a letter from him the day before yesterday. My dear Scrope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me--I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written on _Friday_,--on Sat.u.r.day he was not. In ability, who was like Matthews? How did we all shrink before him? You do me but justice in saying, I would have risked my paltry existence to have preserved his. This very evening did I mean to write, inviting him, as I invite you, my very dear friend, to visit me. G.o.d forgive * *

* for his apathy! What will our poor Hobhouse feel? His letters breathe but or Matthews. Come to me, Scrope, I am almost desolate--left almost alone in the world--I had but you, and H., and M., and let me enjoy the survivors whilst I can. Poor M., in his letter of Friday, speaks of his intended contest for Cambridge[19], and a speedy journey to London. Write or come, but come if you can, or one or both.

"Yours ever."

[Footnote 15: In many instances the mothers of ill.u.s.trious poets have had reason to be proud no less of the affection than of the glory of their sons; and Ta.s.so, Pope, Gray, and Cowper, are among these memorable examples of filial tenderness. In the lesser poems of Ta.s.so, there are few things so beautiful as his description, in the Canzone to the Metauro, of his first parting with his mother:--

"Me dal sen della madre empia fortuna Pargoletto divelse," &c.

[Footnote 16: Napoleon.]

[Footnote 17: In a letter, written between two and three months after his mother's death, he states no less a number than six persons, all friends or relatives, who had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away from him by death between May and the end of August.]

[Footnote 18: In continuation of the note quoted in the text, he says of Matthews--"His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the _ablest candidates_, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired." One of the candidates, thus described, was Mr.

Thomas Barnes, a gentleman whose career since has kept fully the promise of his youth, though, from the nature of the channels through which his literary labours have been directed, his great talents are far more extensively known than his name.]

[Footnote 19: It had been the intention of Mr. Matthews to offer himself, at the ensuing election, for the university. In reference to this purpose, a ma.n.u.script Memoir of him, now lying before me, says--"If acknowledged and successful talents--if principles of the strictest honour--if the devotion of many friends could have secured the success of an 'independent pauper' (as he jocularly called himself in a letter on the subject), the vision would have been realised."]

Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews[20], I have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held in Lord Byron's affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler tribute to his memory.