Life of Lord Byron Volume III Part 27

LETTER 241. TO MR. MURRAY.

"February 20. 1816.

"To return to our business--your epistles are vastly agreeable.

With regard to the observations on carelessness, &c. I think, with all humility, that the gentle reader has considered a rather uncommon, and designedly irregular, versification for haste and negligence. The measure is not that of any of the other poems, which (I believe) were allowed to be tolerably correct, according to Byshe and the fingers--or ears--by which bards write, and readers reckon. Great part of 'The Siege' is in (I think) what the learned call Anapests, (though I am not sure, being heinously forgetful of my metres and my 'Gradus',) and many of the lines intentionally longer or shorter than its rhyming companion; and rhyme also occurring at greater or less intervals of caprice or convenience.

"I mean not to say that this is right or good, but merely that I could have been smoother, had it appeared to me of advantage; and that I was not otherwise without being aware of the deviation, though I now feel sorry for it, as I would undoubtedly rather please than not. My wish has been to try at something different from my former efforts; as I endeavoured to make them differ from each other. The versification of 'The Corsair' is not that of 'Lara;' nor 'The Giaour' that of 'The Bride;' Childe Harold is again varied from these; and I strove to vary the last somewhat from _all_ of the others.

"Excuse all this d----d nonsense and egotism. The fact is, that I am rather trying to think on the subject of this note, than really thinking on it.--I did not know you had called: you are always admitted and welcome when you choose.

"Yours, &c. &c.

"P.S. You need not be in any apprehension or grief on my account: were I to be beaten down by the world and its inheritors, I should have succ.u.mbed to many things, years ago. You must not mistake my _not_ bullying for dejection; nor imagine that because I feel, I am to faint:--but enough for the present.

"I am sorry for Sotheby's row. What the devil is it about? I thought it all settled; and if I can do any thing about him or Ivan still, I am ready and willing. I do not think it proper for me just now to be much behind the scenes, but I will see the committee and move upon it, if Sotheby likes.

"If you see Mr. Sotheby, will you tell him that I wrote to Mr.

Coleridge, on getting Mr. Sotheby's note, and have, I hope, done what Mr. S. wished on that subject?"

It was about the middle of April that his two celebrated copies of verses, "Fare thee well," and "A Sketch," made their appearance in the newspapers:--and while the latter poem was generally and, it must be owned, justly condemned, as a sort of literary a.s.sault on an obscure female, whose situation ought to have placed her as much _beneath_ his satire as the undignified mode of his attack certainly raised her _above_ it, with regard to the other poem, opinions were a good deal more divided. To many it appeared a strain of true conjugal tenderness, a kind of appeal, which no woman with a heart could resist: while by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feeling to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in the subject. To this latter opinion, I confess my own to have, at first, strongly inclined; and suspicious as I could not help regarding the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publication appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, however, his own account of all the circ.u.mstances in the Memoranda, I found that on both points I had, in common with a large portion of the public, done him injustice.

He there described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollections under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced,--the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them. Neither, from that account, did it appear to have been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye.

The appearance of these poems gave additional violence to the angry and inquisitorial feeling now abroad against him; and the t.i.tle under which both pieces were immediately announced by various publishers, as "Poems by Lord Byron on his domestic Circ.u.mstances," carried with it a sufficient exposure of the utter unfitness of such themes for rhyme. It is, indeed, only in those emotions and pa.s.sions, of which imagination forms a predominant ingredient,--such as love, in its first dreams, before reality has come to embody or dispel them, or sorrow, in its wane, when beginning to pa.s.s away from the heart into the fancy,--that poetry ought ever to be employed as an interpreter of feeling. For the expression of all those immediate affections and disquietudes that have their root in the actual realities of life, the art of the poet, from the very circ.u.mstance of its being an art, as well as from the coloured form in which it is accustomed to transmit impressions, cannot be otherwise than a medium as false as it is feeble.

To so very low an ebb had the industry of his a.s.sailants now succeeded in reducing his private character, that it required no small degree of courage, even among that cla.s.s who are supposed to be the most tolerant of domestic irregularities, to invite him into their society. One distinguished lady of fas.h.i.+on, however, ventured so far as, on the eve of his departure from England, to make a party for him expressly; and nothing short, perhaps, of that high station in society which a life as blameless as it is brilliant has secured to her, could have placed beyond all reach of misrepresentation, at that moment, such a compliment to one marked with the world's censure so deeply. At this a.s.sembly of Lady J * *'s he made his last appearance, publicly, in England; and the amusing account given of some of the company in his Memoranda,--of the various and characteristic ways in which the temperature of their manner towards him was affected by the cloud under which he now appeared,--was one of the pa.s.sages of that Memoir it would have been most desirable, perhaps, to have preserved; though, from being a gallery of sketches, all personal and many satirical, but a small portion of it, if any, could have been presented to the public till a time when the originals had long left the scene, and any interest they might once have excited was gone with themselves. Besides the n.o.ble hostess herself, whose kindness to him, on this occasion, he never forgot, there was also one other person (then Miss M * *, now Lady K * *,) whose frank and fearless cordiality to him on that evening he most gratefully commemorated,--adding, in acknowledgment of a still more generous service, "She is a high-minded woman, and showed me more friends.h.i.+p than I deserved from her. I heard also of her having defended me in a large company, which _at that time_ required more courage and firmness than most women possess."

As we are now approaching so near the close of his London life, I shall here throw together the few remaining recollections of that period with which the gleanings of his Memorandum-book, so often referred to, furnish me.

"I liked the Dandies; they were always very civil to _me_, though in general they disliked literary people, and persecuted and mystified Madame de Stael, Lewis, * * * *, and the like, d.a.m.nably. They persuaded Madame de Stael that A * * had a hundred thousand a year, &c. &c., till she praised him to his _face_ for his _beauty_! and made a set at him for * *, and a hundred fooleries besides. The truth is, that, though I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of dandyism[100] in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to conciliate the great ones at five-and-twenty. I had gamed, and drank, and taken my degrees in most dissipations, and having no pedantry, and not being overbearing, we ran quietly together. I knew them all more or less, and they made me a member of Watier's (a superb club at that time), being, I take it, the only literary man (except _two others_, both men of the world, Moore and Spenser,) in it. Our masquerade[101] was a grand one; so was the dandy-ball too, at the Argyle, but _that_ (the latter) was given by the four chiefs, B., M., A., and P., if I err not.

"I was a member of the Alfred, too, being elected while in Greece. It was pleasant; a little too sober and literary, and bored with * * and Sir Francis D'Ivernois; but one met Peel, and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties, or parliament, or in an empty season.

"I belonged, or belong, to the following clubs or societies:--to the Alfred; to the Cocoa Tree; to Watier's; to the Union; to Racket's (at Brighton); to the Pugilistic; to the Owls, or "Fly-by-night;" to the _Cambridge_ Whig Club; to the Harrow Club, Cambridge; and to one or two private clubs; to the Hampden (political) Club; and to the Italian Carbonari, &c. &c., 'though last, _not least_.' I got into all these, and never stood for any other--at least to my own knowledge. I declined being proposed to several others, though pressed to stand candidate."

"When I met H * * L * *, the gaoler, at Lord Holland's, before he sailed for St. Helena, the discourse turned upon the battle of Waterloo. I asked him whether the dispositions of Napoleon were those of a great general? He answered, disparagingly, 'that they were very simple.' I had always thought that a degree of simplicity was an ingredient of greatness."

"I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's manners in private life; they were odd, but they were natural. Curran used to take him off, bowing to the very ground, and 'thanking G.o.d that he had no peculiarities of gesture or appearance,' in a way irresistibly ludicrous; and * * used to call him a 'Sentimental Harlequin.'"

"Curran! Curran's the man who struck me most[102]. Such imagination!

there never was any thing like it that ever I saw or heard of. His _published_ life--his published speeches, give you _no_ idea of the man--none at all. He was a _machine_ of imagination, as some one said that Piron was an epigrammatic machine.

"I did not see a great deal of Curran--only in 1813; but I met him at home (for he used to call on me), and in society, at Mackintosh's, Holland House, &c. &c. and he was wonderful even to me, who had seen many remarkable men of the time."

"* * * (commonly called _long_ * * *, a very clever man, but odd) complained of our friend Scrope B. Davies, in riding, that he had a _st.i.tch_ in his side. 'I don't wonder at it,' said Scrope, 'for you ride _like a tailor_.' Whoever had seen * * * on horseback, with his very tall figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the repartee."

"When B * * was obliged (by that affair of poor M * *, who thence acquired the name of 'd.i.c.k the Dandy-killer'--it was about money, and debt, and all that) to retire to France, he knew no French, and having obtained a grammar for the purpose of study, our friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had made in French; he responded, 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.'

"I have put this pun into Beppo, which is 'a fair exchange and no robbery; for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the morning."

"* * * is a good man, rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He seizes you by the b.u.t.ton. One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope's, he had fastened upon me, notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was in love, and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time,)--*

* *, I say, had seized upon me by the b.u.t.ton and the heart-strings, and spared neither. W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetically bade me farewell; 'for,' said he, 'I see it is all over with you.' * * * then went away. _Sic me servavit Apollo._"

"I remember seeing Blucher in the London a.s.semblies, and never saw any thing of his age less venerable. With the voice and manners of a recruiting sergeant, he pretended to the honours of a hero,--just as if a stone could be wors.h.i.+pped because a man had stumbled over it."

[Footnote 100: Petrarch was, it appears, also in his youth, a Dandy.

"Recollect," he says, in a letter to his brother, "the time, when we wore white habits, on which the least spot, or a plait ill placed, would have been a subject of grief; when our shoes were so tight we suffered martyrdom," &c.]

[Footnote 101: To this masquerade he went in the habit of a Caloyer, or Eastern monk,--a dress particularly well calculated to set off the beauty of his fine countenance, which was accordingly, that night, the subject of general admiration.]

[Footnote 102: In his Memoranda there were equally enthusiastic praises of Curran. "The riches," said he, "of his Irish imagination were exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have ever seen written,--though I saw him seldom and but occasionally. I saw him presented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's;--it was the grand confluence between the Rhone and the Saone, and they were both so d----d ugly, that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respectively such residences."

In another part, however, he was somewhat more fair to Madame de Stael's personal appearance:--"Her figure was not bad; her legs tolerable; her arms good. Altogether, I can conceive her having been a desirable woman, allowing a little imagination for her soul, and so forth. She would have made a great man."]

We now approach the close of this eventful period of his history. In a note to Mr. Rogers, written a short time before his departure for Ostend[103], he says,--"My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow: we shall not meet again for some time, at all events--if ever; and, under these circ.u.mstances, I trust to stand excused to you and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening."

This was his last interview with his sister,--almost the only person from whom he now parted with regret; it being, as he said, doubtful _which_ had given him most pain, the enemies who attacked or the friends who condoled with him. Those beautiful and most tender verses, "Though the day of my destiny's over," were now his parting tribute to her[104]

who, through all this bitter trial, had been his sole consolation; and, though known to most readers, so expressive are they of his wounded feelings at this crisis, that there are few, I think, who will object to seeing some stanzas of them here.

"Though the rock of my last hope is s.h.i.+ver'd, And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd To pain--it shall not be its slave.

There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn-- They may torture, but shall not subdue me-- 'Tis of _thee_ that I think--not of them.

"Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though lov'd, thou forborest to grieve me, Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake, Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, Though parted, it was not to fly, Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, Nor mute, that the world might belie.

"From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, Thus much I at least may recall, It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd Deserved to be dearest of all: In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of _thee_.

On a sc.r.a.p of paper, in his handwriting, dated April 14. 1816, I find the following list of his attendants, with an annexed outline of his projected tour:--"_Servants_, ---- Berger, a Swiss, William Fletcher, and Robert Rushton.--John William Polidori, M.D.--Switzerland, Flanders, Italy, and (perhaps) France." The two English servants, it will be observed, were the same "yeoman" and "page" who had set out with him on his youthful travels in 1809; and now,--for the second and last time taking leave of his country,--on the 25th of April he sailed for Ostend.