XX. LORD BYRON'S PRIDE
Among Lord Byron's biographers, we remark some who doubtless believed it useless to count on success, if their work did not contain a large tribute to human wickedness, and who, seeing it nevertheless impossible to accuse Lord Byron of any vice emanating from heart or soul, gave themselves the pleasure of imagining a host of defects. Besides the faults produced by impetuosity and irritability of temper,--those we have just explained,--they dwell on I know not what exaggerated esteem of himself, and immoderate desire of esteem from others, so as to insinuate that Lord Byron was a prey to pride, ambition, and even vanity.
Though all we have remarked in a general way, with regard to his modesty, might be considered a sufficient response to these accusations, we are willing to take up the theme again and examine more particularly all these forms of self-love.
To assert that Lord Byron was not at all proud, might cause surprise, so much has been said of his pride confounding the man with the poet, and the poet with the heroes of his creation. But assuredly those who would feel surprise could not have known him or studied his character.
Pride is easily recognized by a thousand traits. It is one of those serious maladies of soul, whose external symptoms can no more be hidden from moral psychologists than the symptoms of serious physical infirmities can be hidden from physiologists. Now, what says the moralist of the proud man? That he never listens to the counsels of friendship; that every reproach irritates him; that a proud man can not be grateful, because the burden is too great for him; that he never forgives, makes excuses, or acknowledges his faults, or that he is to blame; that he is extremely reserved and proud in the habits of social life; that he is envious of the goods enjoyed by others, deeming them so much subtracted from his own merits; that hatred toward his rivals fills his heart; finally, that, satisfied with himself almost to idolatry, he is incapable of any moral improvement.
Now, let it be said in all sincerity, what analogy can there be between the proud man and Lord Byron? By his words, his actions, and the testimony of all those who approached him, was not Lord Byron the reverse of all this? Was it he who would have refused the counsels of friendship? turned aside from admonition? been indignant at blame? Let those who think so, only read the accounts of his childhood, his youth, his life of affection, and they will see whether he was not rather the slave of his loving heart; if he did not always give doubly what he had received.
Without even speaking of his childhood, when he was really so charming, of his docility toward his nurses and preceptors, toward good Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, and afterward at Harrow, toward the excellent Dr. Drury; let us consider him at that solemn moment for a boy of eighteen, when he was about to publish his poetic compositions. Did he not burn the whole edition, because a friend whom he respected, disapproved some parts?[130] See him again accepting the blame of another friend about "Childe Harold," and when, before publishing it, yielding to the advice of Dallas and Gifford, he suppressed the stanzas that most pleased him. See him also ceasing to write "Don Juan," because the person he loved had expressed disapprobation of it, not even substantiated by reasons.
Was it Lord Byron who would have been incapable of forgiving? Why, the pardon of injuries was, on the contrary, a habit with him, a necessity, his sole vengeance, even when such conduct might appear almost superhuman. It was thus, that when cruelly wounded in his self-love, even more than in his heart, by Lady Byron's behavior, he wrote that touching "Farewell," which might have disarmed the fiercest resentment: and that afterward, yielding to Madame de Stael's entreaties, he consented to propose a reconciliation, which was refused: and not even that aggravation prevented him from often speaking well of Lady Byron.
Gratitude, that proves such an insupportable load to the proud man, did it not rather seem a happiness to him?
When he had done some wrong, far from refusing to make excuses, was he not the first to think of it, saying that he could not go to rest, with resentment in his heart? While a mere boy, and when he had been wounded in his most enthusiastic feelings by a fortunate rival, Mr. Musters, was not Byron the first to hold out his hand and express regret for the bitterness of a few words?
Far from hiding his faults, and not satisfied with avowing them, did he not magnify them, exaggerate them to such a degree that this generous impulse became a real fault in him?
Far from having been too proud and reserved in his habits of life, have we not seen him reproached with being too familiar?
Did envy or rivalry ever enter into his soul?
And lastly, far from conceiving too much self-satisfaction, far from rendering his own mind the homage characteristic of pride, did not Lord Byron, looking at himself through the weaknesses of other men, constantly depreciate himself?
All the ways in which genius is wont to manifest itself were assuredly alike familiar to him; neither philosophy nor art had any secrets for him. But he only made use of them to produce continual acts of humility instead of pride; saying, that if philosophy were blind, art was no less incapable of fulfilling the aspirations of mind, and realizing the ideal beheld in imagination.
His very skepticism, or rather what has been called by this name, affords another great proof of his modesty. "Skepticism," says Bacon, "is the great antagonist of pride."
But, the most striking proof of all, undoubtedly, consists in the improvement of his moral being that was perpetually going on; for, to carry it out, he must have dived into the depths of his secret soul, sternly and conscientiously, undeterred by the great obstacle to all self-amelioration, namely--pride.
So many facts, in support of the same assertions, are to be found spread through the different chapters of this work, that we forbear to lengthen the present view of Lord Byron's character by adducing any more. Let us sum up by saying, that not only was Lord Byron devoid of pride, but that it would be difficult to find in any man more striking examples of the opposite virtues; unless, indeed, we sought them in souls completely swayed by the sublimest teachings of Christianity.
And yet it is easy to understand how he might be accused of pride. His contempt for opinion, augmenting as he further appreciated its little worth; a certain natural timidity, of which Moore, Galt, and Pigott have all spoken, though without drawing thence the logical inferences; his eagerness to put down the unfounded ridiculous pretensions of human nature; his own dignity under misfortune; his magnanimity and passion for independence; all these qualities might easily betray those superficial minds into error, who do not study their subjects sufficiently to discover the truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 130: See what Moore says of this trait in Lord Byron.]
XXI. THE VANITY OF LORD BYRON
But it is incomprehensible that any one should have been found to accuse Lord Byron of vanity. For is not the vain man one who lies in order to appear better and more highly gifted than he really is; who knows full well that the good opinion he so ardently seeks is not what he deserves; who endeavors by every means to attract the attention of others; who flatters in order to be flattered; whose willingness to oblige, whose care and kindness, all flow from interested motives; whose whole character savors of ostentation and show; and who despises humble friends, in order to run after brilliant society and wear borrowed plumes? All these signs indicate vanity. Can a single one be found in Byron's character?
Surely our readers will not have forgotten that, for fear of making himself out better, he always wished to appear worse than he was; that he exaggerated the weaknesses common to most of us, and which every body else hides, magnifying them into serious faults; that he never flattered others, nor wished to be flattered himself; that he concealed the services he rendered, the good he did; and kept aloof from those in power so as to give himself more to true friendship.
We know besides that his love of meriting, rather than obtaining, admiration, went so far as to make undeserved praise quite offensive to him. If eulogiums did not seem to him duly bestowed, his soul, athirst for justice and truth, repelled them indignantly. Blame, or harsh criticism, annoyed him far less than unmerited praise or suffrages obtained through favor or intrigue. At the moment he was about to publish his first poem, "Childe Harold," which might naturally be expected to prove the making of his literary reputation, Dallas having given him some advice with a view to gaining popularity, Lord Byron answered:--
"My work must make its way as well as it can; I know I have every thing against me, angry poets and prejudices; but if the poem is a poem, it will surmount these obstacles, and if not, it deserves its fate."
And then, when he discovered that his publisher had been taking steps to obtain the approbation of Gifford, the great critic, he wrote indignantly to Dallas, calling this proceeding of Murray's a paltry transaction.
"The more I think, the more it vexes me," said he. "It is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to such shifts to extort praise or deprecate censure, ... and all without my wish, and contrary to my express desire....[131]
"I am angry with Murray: it was a bookselling, back-shop, paltry proceeding.... I have written to him as he never was written to before by an author, I'll be sworn."
Why, then, accuse a man of vanity when he never complained of criticism and never solicited praise? Was it on account of some of his tastes, particularly the importance he attached to his superiority in boyish games, in bodily exercises, on those which showed dexterity in swimming, fencing, shooting? But all these tastes were as manly as they were innocent. The really trifling tastes common to the youth of his rank and country Lord Byron did not share.
It has also been said that he attached far too much importance to his noble birth. Much, perhaps; too much, by no means. His ancestors were all illustrious. They were illustrious for their military exploits, and were already nobles in France when they shared the dangers and successes of William the Conqueror; they had followed their kings to Palestine; seven brothers bearing the name of Byron had fought on the same battle-field, and four fell there in defense of their true sovereign and their new country. By his mother he was descended from the kings of Scotland. "Nothing is nobler," says a moralist of our day, "than to add lustre to a great name by our own deeds."
Many of his early compositions testify to the desire he felt of increasing the fame that belonged to his family. For instance, in the poem written at fourteen, and which is entitled "Verses composed on leaving Newstead Abbey," after having sung the valor of his ancestors displayed on the plains of Palestine, in the valley of Crecy, and at Marston, where four brothers moistened the field with their blood, he exclaims:--
"Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu! Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting New courage, he'll think upon glory and you. * * * * * * * Far distant he goes, with the same emulation, The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
"That fame and that memory still will he cherish; He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown: Like you will he live, or like you will he perish." 1803.
The same sentiments appear in other poems, and particularly in the "Elegy on Newstead," written at sixteen. His wish of adding fresh lustre to the family name was all the stronger because the last lord, his great uncle, had somewhat blemished it by his eccentric conduct.
But there is a vast difference between this just feeling of pride and the vanity that leads to exultation in mere titles of nobility, which often owe their origin to the favor of princes. Besides, although Lord Byron was aristocratic by birth, and in his every instinct and taste, he was nevertheless truly liberal on principle and through virtue, in politics as well as in private life; for he always admitted into his affections those who possessed fitting qualities of head and soul, without any consideration of their birth.
After having studied Lord Byron's character under the headings of pride and vanity, we must now examine him with regard to ambition: a third form of self-love, which, though separated from the other two by scarcely perceptible shades, and even being often confounded with them, so as to appear one and the same feeling, does not, however, less retain its permanent and distinguishing traits.
Was Lord Byron ambitious?
"Ambitious men must be divided into three classes," says Bacon; "some seek only to raise themselves, forming a common and despicable species; others, with like intent, make the elevation of country enter into the means they employ; this is a nobler ambition, one more refined, and perhaps more violent; lastly, others embrace the happiness and glory of all men in the immensity of their projects.... Ambition is, then, sometimes a vice, and sometimes a virtue."
That Lord Byron's ambition did not range him among either of the two first classes was abundantly proved by the actions of his whole life; and as to his writings, letters, or poetic works, we should vainly seek a single word in them that could be attributed to any low ambition.
An ambitious man has generally been an ambitious child. Now, according to unanimous and competent testimony, Lord Byron was not an ambitious child. The usual emulation founded on ambition had no effect on his progress. All his advancement proceeded from heart and imagination. It was his heart, as we have seen, that made him take his pen in hand, that dictated his first verses; and he was likewise actuated by the need and the pleasure of trying and exercising the strength of his intellectual faculties, of keeping up the sacred fire that warmed his breast, and appeasing his ardent thirst after truth. We have given too many proofs of all this to require to insist upon it any further.
We have also seen that it was disagreeable to him to be admired and praised without having merited it. He felt the same repugnance to seeking for popularity. When "Childe Harold" appeared, Dallas advised him to alter some passages, because, he said, certain metaphysical ideas expressed in the poem might do him harm in public opinion, and that, at twenty-three years of age, it was well to court in an honorable way the suffrages of his countrymen, and to abstain from wounding their feelings, opinions, and even their prejudices.[132] Lord Byron replied:--
"I feel that you are right, but I also feel that I am sincere, and that if I am only to write ad captandum vulgus, I might as well edit a magazine at once, or concoct songs for Vauxhall."[133]
And yet when he wrote thus to Dallas he had not arrived at any popularity.
Soon, however, it came to him unsought; but he did not appreciate it nor flatter it to stay, as an ambitious man would not have failed to do. On the contrary, his noble independence of character and incapacity for flattering the multitude gained strength every day. Proofs of the same abound at every period of his life.
"If I valued fame," he said in his memoranda, 1813, "I should flatter received opinions, which have gathered strength by time, and which will last longer than any living works that are opposed to them. But, for the soul of me, I can not and will not give the lie to my own thoughts and doubts, come what may. If I am a fool, I am, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom."
And then, at the same time, he wrote:--
"If I had any views in this country they would probably be parliamentary. But I have no ambition; at least, if any, it would be 'aut Caesar aut nihil.' My hopes are limited to the arrangement of my affairs, and settling either in Italy or in the East (rather the last), and drinking deep of the language and literature of both."
The catastrophe that overtook Napoleon, his hero, and the success of fools, quite overcame him at this time:--
"Past events have unnerved me, and all I can now do is to make life an amusement and look on while others play. After all, even the highest game of crosses and sceptres, what is it? Vide Napoleon's last twelvemonth," etc., etc.
The following year (1814), when political feeling ran so high against him as to threaten his popularity on account of the lines addressed to the Princess Charlotte, which had offended the regent, who had just gone over from the Whigs to the Tories, Byron wrote to Rogers:--
"All the sayings and doings in the world shall not make me utter one word of conciliation to any thing that breathes. I shall bear what I can, and what I can not I shall resist. The worst they could do would be to exclude me from society. I have never courted it, nor, I may add, in the general sense of the word, enjoyed it--and 'there is a world elsewhere.'"
When once he had quitted England his indifference to popularity and its results further increased. He wrote from Venice to Murray:--
"I never see a newspaper, and know nothing of England, except in a letter now and then from my sister" (1816).
But that did not at all suit his publisher, who set about sending him reviews, criticisms, and keeping him up to all that was going on in the literary and political world, thinking thus to stimulate and keep alive the passions that kindle genius. Then it was that Lord Byron, considering this intellectual regime unwholesome for mind and heart, signified to Murray that their correspondence could not continue unless he consented to six indispensable conditions. We regret not being able to give the whole of this beautiful letter, circumscribed as we are by certain necessary limits. Thus we shall only quote what more particularly relates to our subject:[134]--
"I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to propose to you the following articles for our future:--
"1st. That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health, wealth, and welfare of all friends; but of me (quoad me) little or nothing.
"2dly....
"3dly....
"4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever, no 'Edinburgh,' 'Quarterly,' 'Monthly,' or any review, magazine, or newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.
"5thly. That you send me no opinion whatsoever, either good, bad, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or others, concerning any work of mine, past, present, or to come.
"6thly.... If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires notice, Mr. Kinnaird will let me know; but of praise I desire to hear nothing.
"You will say, 'To what tends all this?' I will answer--to keep my mind free, and unbiased by all paltry and personal irritabilities of praise or censure; to let my genius take its natural direction. All these reviews, with their praise or their criticism, have bored me to death, and taken off my attention from greater objects."
Byron wished, he said, to place himself in the position of a dead man, knowing nothing and feeling nothing of what is done and said about him.[135] At the same time he gave the greatest proof of the reality of the sentiments expressed in this letter by continuing to stay at Ravenna, where people were ignorant of his language, his genius, and his reputation, and where consequently he could only be remarked and appreciated for his external gifts and his deeds of benevolence. When he went from Ravenna to Pisa, Murray, who had not been discouraged by the six conditions, and who was really attached to Lord Byron more as a friend even than as a publisher, became alarmed at the angry feeling stirred up by "Cain," the "Vision of Judgment," "Don Juan," etc., and feared seeing him lose his popularity. So he wrote begging him to compose something in his first style, which had excited such general enthusiasm. But Lord Byron answered:--
"As to 'a poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without considering whether women or men are or are not to be pleased."
His whole conduct in Greece was one long act of abnegation, of disinterested and sublime self-devotion. Let people read Parry, Gamba, even Stanhope.[136] He sacrificed for Greece all his revenue, his time, pleasures, comforts, even life itself, if necessary, and at the age of thirty-five; and then, after success, he refused every honor, satisfied with having deserved them.
"My intentions with regard to Greece," said he to Parry, at Missolonghi, "may be explained in a few words. I will remain here until Greece either throws off the Turkish yoke, or again sinks beneath it. All my revenue shall be spent in her service. All that can be done with my resources, and personally, I will do with my whole heart. But as soon as Greece is delivered from her external enemies, I will leave without taking any part in the interior organization of the government. I will go to the United States of America, and there, if requisite and they like it, be the agent for Greece, and endeavor to get that free and enlightened government to recognize the Greek federation as an independent State. England would follow her example, and then the destiny of Greece would be assured. She would take the place that belongs to her as a member of Christendom in Europe."
One day, at Missolonghi, a Prussian officer came to complain to Lord Byron, saying, that his rank would not allow him to remain under command of Mr. Parry, who was his inferior both in a civil and military capacity, and consequently that he was going to retire. After having done all he could to bring the German to more reasonable sentiments, after having even joked him on his quarterings of nobility, and the folly of wishing to introduce such prejudices into a country like Greece, Lord Byron did not scruple adding:--
"As to me, I should be quite willing to serve as a simple soldier, in any corps, if that were considered useful to the cause."
But if Lord Byron's absence of ambition under the two first categories, as established by Bacon, is well proved; the same can not be said with regard to the third. To deny it would be not only contrary to truth, but especially would it be contrary to all justice; for the third order of ambition ceases to be a fault; it is the love of glory, and, according to Bacon, that is a virtue. At least it is a quality pertaining to noble minds; and could it, then, be wanting in Lord Byron? He had always had a presentiment that glory would not fail him. But he was not satisfied with obtaining it, his special wish was to deserve it with just and undeniable right. While yet a child in his fourteenth year, he wrote, in
A FRAGMENT.
"When to their airy hall my fathers' voice Shall call my spirit * * * * * * * Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, or with that forgot."
Another time, replying in verse to a poetic composition of one of his comrades which spoke of the common lot of mortals as lying in Lethe's wave, Lord Byron, after some charming couplets, ends thus:--
"What, though the sculpture be destroy'd, From dark oblivion meant to guard; A bright renown shall be enjoy'd By those whose virtues claim reward.
"Then do not say the common lot Of all lies deep in Lethe's wave; Some few, who ne'er will be forgot, Shall burst the bondage of the grave."
Several other compositions belonging to the same period prove that this child, who was so unambitious, and devoid of the usual sort of emulation, did, however, desire to excel in great and virtuous things. In his adieu to the seat of his ancestors, he says, that,--
"Far distant he goes, with the same emulation, The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget. That fame, and that memory still will he cherish; He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown; Like you will he live, or like you will he perish."
And when the Rev. Mr. Beecher, his friend and guide during the college vacation passed at Southwell, reproached him with not going enough into the world, young Byron answered, that retirement suited him better, but that when his boyhood and years of trial should be over, if the senate or the camp claimed his presence, he should endeavor to render himself worthy of his birth:--
"Oh! thus, the desire in my bosom for fame Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise; Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame, With him I could wish to expire in the blaze."
But the fame to which he aspired was not literary fame. Garlands weaved on Mount Parnassus had no perfume for him, and to seek after them would have appeared in his eyes a frivolous, unmeaning pastime. This severe and unjust judgment, this sort of antipathy, could they have been a presentiment of the dangers with which the glory obtained by literary fame threatened his repose? However that may be, it is certain that he endured rather than sought after it; and we may be equally sure that the glory to which his soul aspired was such as could be reaped in the senate, the camp, or amid the difficulties of an active, virtuous life. At sixteen he wrote:--
"For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave! Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath; Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave." 1806.
We find the following in his examination of conscience, written when he was given up to fashionable London life, and in the heyday of his poetic fame:--
"To be the first man--not the dictator, not the Sylla, but the Washington or the Aristides--the leader in talent and truth--is next to the Divinity!" (1813.)
These lines show that he did not feel himself in the position he could have wished to occupy, and that he would fain have achieved other success.
But the destiny that was evidently contrary to his tastes, and which through a thousand circumstances carried him away both from a military and a parliamentary career, to keep him almost perforce in the high walks of literature, was this destiny in accordance at least with his nature? Lord Byron's brilliant debut in the senate, and his whole conduct in Greece when that country was one great military camp, prove certainly that he might have reaped full harvest in other fields, if fate had so allowed. But nevertheless when we see how prodigious were his achievements, concentrated within the domain of poetry; when we see that, despite himself, despite the resolution he occasionally took of writing no more, that yet, tortured by the energy of his genius, there was no remedy for him but to seize his pen; that he wrote sometimes under the influence of fever; that sleep did not still his imagination, nor travelling interrupt his works; that sorrow did not damp his ardor, nor amusement and pleasure weaken his wondrous energy. When we think that he united to this formidable vigor of genius such a luxuriant poetic vein; that his poems, unrivalled for depth of thought, conciseness, and magic beauty of style, were composed with all the ease of ordinary prose; that he could write them while conversing, interrupt his thread of ideas, and take it up again without difficulty, carry on his theme without previous preparation, not stay his pen except to turn the leaf, not change a single word in whole pages, generally only correcting when the proof-sheets came. When we know that a poem like the "Bride of Abydos" was written in four nights of a London season, the "Corsair" in ten days, "Lara" in three weeks, his fourth Canto of "Childe Harold" in twenty days, the "Lament of Tasso" in the space of time requisite for going from Ferrara to Florence; the "Prisoner of Chillon" by way of pastime during the day bad weather forced him to spend at a hotel on the borders of the Lake of Geneva; when we know that he wrote the "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina" amid the torments caused by his separation, and when besieged with creditors; that at Ravenna, in the space of one year, while torn by many sorrows, and annoyed by conspiracies, though he generously aided the conspirators, he yet found leisure to write "Marino Faliero," the "Foscari," "Sardanapalus," "Cain," the "Vision of Judgment," and many other things; that the fifth act of "Sardanapalus" was the work of forty-eight hours, and the fifth act of "Werner" of one night; that during another year passed between Pisa and Genoa, in the midst of annoyances, sorrows, perpetual changes, he wrote ten cantos of "Don Juan," his admirable mystery of "Heaven and Earth," his delightful poem of the "Island," the "Age of Bronze," etc. When we see all that, it must be acknowledged that if Lord Byron, in devoting himself to poetry, took a false step for his own happiness, it did not mar the manifestation of his genius. But if the world had cause to applaud, he did not share this sentiment. It might almost be said that he always wrote unwillingly; and certainly it may be added that fame never inspired him with vanity. That noble desire might, doubtless, have made his heart beat for a while, but it yielded to his philosophical spirit. If at twenty-six, being repelled from public business by the political bias of the day, and from a military career by other circumstances, he could write in his memoranda "I am not ambitious," how much more disposed did he feel to renounce every kind of ambition two years later, when he was leaving England, full of disgust, and having sounded all the depths of the human soul.
"The wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself," says La Bruyere; "he tends toward such great things that he can not confine himself to what are called treasures, high posts, fortune, and favor. He sees nothing in such poor advantages good or solid enough to fill his heart, to deserve his cares and desires; and it even requires strong efforts for him not to disdain them too much. The only good capable of tempting him is that sort of fame which ought to be the meed of pure, simple virtue; but men are not wont to give it, and he is fain to go without it."
The only advantage Lord Byron wished to derive from his reputation was to render it subservient to his heart--the true focus of his noble existence. Even in the first days of youth, when his pulses beat strongly for glory, it is evident that he would make it tributary to heart--a means rather than an end. But this became more and more conspicuous when he had really attained to fame. In Italy especially he had become quite indifferent to the pompous praise accorded by reviews, while a single word emanating from the heart made an impression on him, ofttimes causing tears to start. He wrote to Moore from Ravenna, in 1821:--
"I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England (I never saw her), who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the world without thanking me for the delight which my poesy for several years, etc., etc., etc. It is signed simply N.N.A., and has not a word of 'cant' or preachment in it upon my opinions. She merely says that she is dying, and that, as I had contributed so highly to the pleasure of her existence, she thought that she might say so, begging me to burn her letter--which, by the way, I can not do, as I look upon such a letter in such circumstances as better than a diploma from Gottingen.
"I once had a letter from Drontheim, in Norway (but not from a dying woman), in verse, on the same score of gratulation. These are the things which make one at times believe one's self a poet."[137]
And in "Detached Thoughts," which he wrote at Ravenna, we find:--
"A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not many months ago. He was intelligent, very handsome, and not more than twenty years old, according to appearance; a little romantic--but that sits well upon youth--and mighty fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me in my cavern. He brought me a message from an old servant of my family (Joe Murray), and told me that he (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my bust from Thorwaldsen at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more flattered by this young enthusiasm of a solitary trans-Atlantic traveller, than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals even in my own time, and Grattan's name razed from the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered by it, because it was simple, unpolitical, and was without motive or ostentation, the pure and warm feeling of a boy for the poet he admired."
The lines written on the road between Ravenna and Pisa, scarcely two years before his death, beginning with--
"Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story,"
would alone suffice to prove that his love of fame had both its source and its sole gratification in his heart. These charming verses end thus:--
III.
"Oh FAME!--if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
IV.
"There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee: Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee: When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory."
Some days before setting out for Genoa, while walking in the garden with Countess G----, he went into a retrospective view of his mode of life in England. She, on hearing how he passed his time in London, perceiving what an animated existence it was, so full of variety and occupation, showed some fears lest his stay in Italy, leading such a peaceful, retired, concentrated sort of life, away from the political arena presented by his own country, might entail too great a sacrifice offered on the altar of affection. "Oh no," said he, "I regret nothing belonging to that great world, where all is artificial, where one can not live to one's self, where one is obliged to be too much occupied with what others think, and too little with what we ought to think ourselves. What should I have done there? Made some opposition speeches in the House of Lords, that would not have produced any good, since the prevailing policy is not mine. Been obliged to frequent, without pleasure or profit, society that suits me not. Have had more trouble in keeping and expressing my independent opinions. I should not have met you.... Ah, well! I am much better pleased to know you. What is there in the world worth a true affection? Nothing. And if I had to begin over again, I would still do what I have done." When Lord Byron thus unfolded the treasures concealed in his heart, his countenance spoke quite as much as his words.
It was at this same period that he wrote in his drama of "Werner:"--
"Glory's pillow is but restless, If love lay not down his cheek there."
And now to sum up, let us say that, after having considered Lord Byron not only in his actions, and their most apparent motives; not only in the exercise of all his faculties, and in his sentiments sincerely expressed, but that, having likewise confronted him with all the forms of self-love, it is impossible for us to see aught else in him but that legitimate pride belonging to great souls, and the noble passion for glory--sentiments united in him with the peculiar feature of being under control of his affections. Thus, then, when the day came that he was called upon to sacrifice his affections, not only in the name of humanity, but also in the name of his love for glory, which was already a virtue, since he only desired and sought it to become a benefactor of mankind; then, by this new sacrifice, and by that even of life, his noble passion for glory attained to the height of a sublime virtue.
Although our impartial examination of Lord Byron's faults end really in demonstrating their absence, let us beware nevertheless of raising him above humanity by asserting that he had none. La Bruyere thus sums up his portrait of the great Conde:--"A man who was true, simple, and magnanimous, and in whom only the smallest virtues were wanting." This fine sentence may partly apply to Lord Byron also. Only, to be just, we must substitute the singular for the plural. And instead of declaring that the lesser virtues were wanting in him, we must say one of the smaller virtues. In truth, he had not that prudence which proposes for our supreme end the preservation of our prosperity, fortune, popularity, tranquillity, health--in a word, of all our goods--and which constitutes Epicurean wisdom. But this virtue is really so mixed up with personality and egotism, that one may hesitate ere granting it the rank of a virtue; and we ought not to be astonished if it were wanting in Lord Byron, for it can with difficulty be found united to great sensibility of heart and great generosity of character. Nevertheless, had he possessed it, his life might have been much happier. Had he possessed it, instead of devoting his revenue and all his literary gains to friends, disappointed authors, and unfortunates of all kinds, he would have kept them for himself; and thus he might have been able to brave almost all the storms of his sad year of married life, when his annoyances were greatly increased by the embarrassed state of his affairs. Had he possessed this prudence, he would not in his boyish satire have attacked so many powerful persons, nor, at a later period, would he have made to himself idols of truth and justice. He would have spared the powers that be, and respected national prejudices, in order not to draw down on his own head so much rancor and calumny; he would not have given a hold to slander, nor suffered himself to be insulted by being identified with the heroes of his poems; he would not have compromised his fine health by an anchorite's regimen; he would not have depreciated himself; he would have extended to himself the indulgence with which he knew so well how to cloak the faults of others, and instead of confiding to indiscreet companions, as subjects for curiosity and study, adventures somewhat strange, and the usual routine of juvenile follies, he would have profited by the system so current in our day of satisfying inclinations silently and covertly; lastly, and above all, he would not have married Miss Milbank.
All these reproaches are well founded. But if we may say with reason that he wanted prudence for his own interests, we ought at the same time to add that he never wanted it for the interests of others. Did we not see him, even in earliest youth, burn writings, or abstain from writing, through excess of delicacy and fear of wounding his neighbors?
"I have burned my novel and my comedy," said he in 1813. "After all, I see that the pleasure of burning one's self is as great as that of printing. These two works ought not to have been published. I fell too much into realities; some persons would have been recognized, and others suspected."
When he sent Murray his stanzas to the Po, he forbade him to print it, because it gave intimate details.
His greatest fear at Pisa and Genoa was lest the newspapers should have spoken of his feelings for the Countess G----.
But without seeking other examples, it suffices to glance at his conduct in Greece, where his prudence formed matter of astonishment to every body. Monsieur Tricoupi, the best historian of the war of Greek independence, has rendered him the most complete justice on this head.
Let us then sum up by saying that, contrary to what is found in most, even virtuous men, Lord Byron possessed great and sublime virtues in the highest degree, and the lesser ones only in a secondary degree. As to his faults, it is evident they all sprang from his excellent qualities. Endowed with all kinds of genius, except the one of calculating his personal interest, he failed in different ways to discharge his duty toward himself; and though he only harmed himself by his want of prudence, yet was he cruelly punished for it by sorrows, regrets, and even by a fatally premature death.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 131: Letter 68, to Dallas, 17th September, 1811.]
[Footnote 132: Dallas, Letter 45.]
[Footnote 133: Lord Byron to Dallas, Letter 66; Moore, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 134: See Moore, Letter 456.]
[Footnote 135: See Moore, Letter 456 (Ravenna, 24th September, 1821).]
[Footnote 136: See his "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 137: Letter 436, Moore.]
XXII. LORD BYRON'S MARRIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Lord Byron's marriage exercised such a deplorable influence over his destiny, that it is impossible to speak of it succinctly, and without entering into details; for this one great misfortune proved the fruitful source of all others.
If we were permitted to believe that Providence sometimes abandons men here below to the influence of an evil genius, we might well conceive this baneful intervention in the case of Lord Byron's conjugal union, and all the circumstances that led to it.
It was but a few months after having returned from his travels in the East, that Lord Byron published his first cantos of "Childe Harold," and obtained triumphs as an orator in the House of Lords. Presenting himself thus for the first time to the public, surrounded by all the prestige belonging to a handsome person, rank, and youth,--in a word, with such an assemblage of qualities as are seldom if ever found united in one person--he immediately became the idol of England. The enemies created by his boyish satire, and augmented by the jealousy his success could not fail to cause, now hid themselves like those vile insects that slink back into their holes on the first appearance of the sun's rays, ready to creep out again when fogs and darkness return. Living then in the midst of the great world, in the closest intimacy with many of the fair sex, and witnessing the small amount of wedded happiness enjoyed by aristocratic couples within his observation, intending also to wing his flight eventually toward climes more in unison with his tastes, he no longer felt that attraction for marriage which he had experienced in boyhood (like most youths), and he said, quite seriously, that if his cousin, George Byron, would marry, he, on his part, would willingly engage not to enter into wedlock. But his friends saw with regret that his eyes were still seeking through English clouds the blue skies of the East; and that he was kept in perpetual agitation by the fair ones who would cast themselves athwart his path, throwing themselves at his head when not at his feet. Vainly did he distort himself, give himself out to the public as a true "Childe Harold," malign himself; his friends knew that his heart was overflowing with tenderness, and they could not thus be duped. If he had wished to cull some flowers idly, for the sake of scattering their leaves to the breeze, as youth so often does, this sort of amusement would have been difficult for him, for the fine ladies of his choice, if once they succeeded in inspiring him with some kind of tender feeling, fastened themselves upon him in such a passionate way that his freedom became greatly shackled, and they generally ended by making the public the confidante of their secret.
Lord Byron had some adventures that brought him annoyance and grief. They made him fall into low spirits,--a sort of moral apathy and indifference for every thing. His best friends, and the wisest among them, thought that the surest way of settling him in England, and getting him out of the scrapes into which he was being dragged by female enthusiasm, would be for him to marry, and they advised him to it pertinaciously. Lord Byron, ever docile to the voice of affection, did not repel the counsels given, but he made them well understand that he should marry from reason rather than choice; and the letter he wrote, when Moore insisted on his choosing a certain beautiful girl of noble birth,[138] well explains his whole state of mind at this time:--
"I believe," said he, "that you think I have not been quite fair with that Alpha and Omega of beauty with whom you would willingly have united me. Had Lady ---- appeared to wish it, I would have gone on, and very possibly married with the same indifference which has frozen over the Black Sea of almost all my passions. It is that very indifference which makes me so uncertain and apparently capricious. It is not eagerness of new pursuits, but that nothing impresses me sufficiently to fix. I do not feel disgusted, but simply indifferent to almost all excitements; and the proof of this is that obstacles, the slightest even, stop me. This can hardly be timidity, for I have done some imprudent things, too, in my time; and in almost all cases opposition is a stimulus. In this circumstance it is not; if a straw were in my way I could not stoop to pick it up. I have sent you this long tirade, because I would not have you suppose that I have been trifling designedly with you or others. If you think so, in the name of St. Hubert (the patron of antlers and hunters) let me be married out of hand, I don't care to whom, so it amuses any body else, and don't interfere with me much in the daytime."
But that to which Lord Byron most aspired was always to wing his flight to brighter skies.
"Your climate kills me," he wrote to Hodgson, directly after his return from the East. And then again, "My inclinations and my health make me wish to leave England; neither my habits nor constitution are improved by your customs or your climate. I shall find employment in making myself a good Oriental scholar. I shall buy a mansion in one of the fairest islands, and describe, at intervals, the most interesting portions of the East."
Lord Byron wrote this before he had attained great celebrity, but this did not change either his sentiments or his tastes. Notwithstanding the embarrassments arising from the legacy left him by his great uncle, and which were principally caused by the action brought against him on account of the illegal sale of the Rochdale mines (a suit which Lord Byron gained, but the expenses of which were ruinous), he was nevertheless sufficiently rich to live at ease, to let his needy friends enjoy the profits arising from his works, and to allow himself acts of beneficence and generosity that were the joy of his heart. And when he had done all that, he still found that he could not spend the surplus in England according to his tastes. After the death of his mother, no longer bound by his promise to her of not selling Newstead, he resolved on effecting the sale so as to settle his affairs definitively. The sale having failed, the forfeit brought him in L25,000; and he wrote to Moore, in September, 1814:--
"I shall know to-morrow whether a circumstance, of importance enough to change all my plans, will occur or not.[139] If it does not, I am off for Italy next month.
"I have a few thousand pounds which I can't spend after my own heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the south. Hobhouse, I think and hope, will go with me; but whether he will or not, I shall. I want to see Venice and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look at the coasts of Greece, or rather Epirus, from Italy as I once did, or fancied I did, that of Italy, when off Corfu."
A few days before writing this letter, his evil destiny had led him to take a step fatal to all his future happiness.
A person, for whom he entertained both affection and deference, observing one day how unsettled he appeared in his state of mind and projects for the future, again reiterated, with more earnestness than ever, the advice to marry.
After long discussions Lord Byron promised to do so. But who should be the object of his choice? A young lady was named who seemed to possess all the qualities requisite for giving happiness in marriage. Lord Byron, on his side, suggested Miss Milbank, with whom he was then in correspondence. She was a niece of Lady Melbourne, who had thought of this union a year before; a circumstance which probably decided Lord Byron's preference, for he liked Lady Melbourne very much.
On hearing Miss Milbank's name his friend protested with great energy, begging him to remark, among other things, that Miss Milbank had no actual fortune, that his affairs were too much embarrassed for him to be able to marry a woman without money, and moreover that Miss Milbank was a learned lady, a blue-stocking, who could not possibly suit him. Ever docile to the voice of friendship, Lord Byron yielded, and allowed his friend to write a proposal to the other lady. Soon after a negative answer arrived, one morning, that the two friends were together.
"You see," said Lord Byron, "that after all it is Miss Milbank I am to marry; I shall write to her!" He did so immediately; and when the letter was finished, his friend feeling more and more opposed to such a choice, took it from him. After having read it, he exclaimed:--
"Truly, this letter is so charming that it is a pity for it not to go. I never read a better effusion." "Then go it shall," replied Lord Byron, who sealed and sent it off, thus signing his own misfortune!
We have said that he was in correspondence with Miss Milbank. This is how he had made her acquaintance.
Two years previously, at a London soiree, he saw sitting in the corner of a sofa a young girl whose simplicity of dress made her look as if she belonged to a less elevated position than most of the other girls in the room; Moore told him, however, that she was a rich heiress, Miss Milbank, and that if he would marry her she might help him to restore the old Abbey of Newstead. Her modest look, in striking contrast with the stiffness and formality common to the aristocracy, interested Lord Byron. He had himself introduced, and some time after ended by asking her to marry him. His proposal, from motives that could not wound him, was not accepted then. But a year later Miss Milbank testified the desire of entering into correspondence with him. Thus the ground was prepared. When he sent his letter with a fresh proposal, it was accepted all the more eagerly that a report had been spread of his wishing to marry a young and beautiful Irish girl, which did not please Miss Milbank. Her answer was couched in very flattering terms, and the fatal marriage was thus decided on. This was perhaps the only time in his life that Lord Byron did not follow the counsels of friendship. It would indeed seem as if an evil genius had taken possession of his will. Warnings were not wanting; but he refused to listen to them. "If you have any thing to say against my decision," wrote he to Moore, in his usual jesting way, after the marriage had been agreed on, "I beg you to say it. My resolve is taken, so positively, fixed, and irrevocably, that I can very well listen to reason, since now it can do me no more harm."
And so he married Miss Milbank three months afterward. During the interval between the promise exchanged and the ceremony concluded, Lord Byron saw his betrothed frequently. Had he no warning, no inspiration from his good genius during all that time? Had he no fear of such perfection? Did he not feel that a faultless coat of mail, like hers, might so have pressed upon her heart that no pulse would be left giving earnest of life? Might not tenderness, piety, indulgence, forbearance, the most amiable and sublime virtues belonging to a Christian woman, have their place filled in the breast of this perfect creature by another kind of sublimity? and was it not very possible that she would increase by one the number of those chaste wives who judge, condemn, punish, and never forgive any thing that does not enter into the category of their virtues, or rather of the single virtue they practice, and under shadow of which they consider themselves able to dispense with all others? Did he not fear that the profound mathematical knowledge of that learned person might have slightly deadened her heart and given a dogmatic tone to her mind, of which he doubtless with his usual penetration suspected the narrowness, likely to render its science pernicious to the heart? All this is easily to be believed, when we see how preoccupied he was before marriage.
"At the beginning of the month of December, being called up to town by business, I had opportunities, from being a good deal in my noble friend's society, of observing the state of his mind and feelings under the prospect of the important change he was now about to undergo; and it was with pain I found that those sanguine hopes with which I had sometimes looked forward to the happy influence of marriage, in winning him over to the brighter and better side of life, were, by a view of all the circumstances of his present destiny considerably diminished. While, at the same time, not a few doubts and misgivings, which had never before so strongly occurred to me, with regard to his own fitness, under any circumstances, for the matrimonial tie, filled me altogether with a degree of foreboding anxiety as to his fate, which the unfortunate events that followed but too fully justified."
Lord Byron might still have avoided this misfortune by giving up marriage; but the die was cast. His evil genius presented him with no other alternative than to rush on to the catastrophe.
We must add that if, unfortunately, the halo of perfection supposed to encircle the heiress was calculated to make him tremble, it was also of a nature to flatter his self-love. This reputation was, in the eyes of Moore, the principal cause of his preference for Miss Milbank. However that may be, in the last days of December, accompanied by his friend Mr. Hobhouse, he set out for Seaham, the residence of Sir Ralph, Miss Milbank's father. And on the morning of the 2d of January, surrounded by visions of the past, by gloomy forebodings, having in his hand the fatal ring that had been dug up in his garden at the moment when Miss Milbank's consent arrived; with a beating heart, and eyes all dizzy, that would have made him draw back, if his honor had not been too far engaged, Lord Byron advanced toward the altar. From that fatal day, if his star of glory did not cease to shine, or even if it shone more brightly seen through the atmosphere of misfortune, nevertheless repose and lasting happiness were gone for him.
An heiress for a wife, but who had no actual fortune, naturally forced him into great expenses, that soon went beyond his resources. His creditors, lured by the riches said to belong to Miss Milbank, came down upon him, as if the wife's fortune could be used to pay the husband's debts.
His marriage had taken place in January, and already, in October, he was obliged to sell his library. Shortly afterward his furniture was seized, and he had to undergo humiliations, all the more keenly felt, that they were quite unmerited, since his debts were inherited with the property. Lord Byron--who had a real horror of debt--with his spirit of justice, moderate desires, simple tastes, detached as he was from material enjoyments, and even, perhaps, through pride, would never have fallen into such embarrassments if he had remained unmarried. Indeed, his creditors were patiently awaiting the sale of some property. Besides, he was rich enough while unmarried; he could exercise hospitality, travel in good style, not even keep for himself the produce of his works, and, above all, never refuse to perform works of charity and benevolence. He wrote to one of his friends before marriage that his affairs were about to be settled, that he could live comfortably in England, and buy a principality, if he wished, in Turkey.
Thus, then, marriage alone drew upon him this new disaster, which he must have felt severely, and which, doubtless, led him to make reflections little favorable to the tie so fatally contracted. Then it was that he would have required to meet with kindness, indulgence, and peace at home; thus supported, his heart would have endured every thing.
Instead of that, what did he find? A woman whose jealousy was extreme, and who had her own settled way of living, and was unflinching in her ideas; who united a conviction of her own wisdom to perfect ignorance of the human heart,[140] all the while fancying that she knew it so well; who, far from consenting to modify her habits, would fain have imposed them on others. In short, a woman who had nothing in common with him, who was unable to understand him, or to find the road to his heart or mind; finally, one to whom forgiveness seemed a weakness, instead of a virtue. Is it, then, astonishing that he should have suffered in such a depressing atmosphere; that he should sometimes have been irritable, and have even allowed to escape him a few words likely to wound the susceptible self-love of his wife?
Lady Byron possessed one of those minds clever at reasoning, but weak in judgment; that can reason much without being reasonable, to use the words of a great philosophical moralist of our day; one of those minds that act as if life were a problem in jurisprudence or geometry; who argue, distinguish, and, by dint of syllogisms, deceive themselves learnedly. She always deceived herself in this way about Lord Byron.
When she was in the family way, and her confinement drawing near, the storm continued to gather above her husband's head. He was in correspondence with Moore, then absent from London. Moore's apprehensions with regard to the happiness likely to result from a union that had never appeared suitable in his eyes, had, nevertheless, calmed down on receiving letters from Lord Byron that expressed satisfaction. Yet during the first days of what is vulgarly termed the "honey-moon," Lord Byron sent Moore some very melancholy verses, to be set to music, said he, and which begin thus:--
"There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away."
Moore had already felt some vague disquietude, and he asked why he allowed his mind to dwell on such sorrowful ideas? Lord Byron replied that he had written these verses on learning the death of a friend of his childhood, the Duke of Dorset, and, as his subsequent letters were full of jests, Moore became reassured. Lord Byron said he was happy, and so he really was; for Lady Byron, not being jealous then, continued to be gentle and amiable.
"But these indications of a contented heart soon ceased. His mention of the partner of his home became more rare and formal, and there was observable, I thought, through some of his letters, a feeling of unquiet and weariness that brought back all those gloomy anticipations which I had, from the first, felt regarding his fate."
Above all, there were expressions in his letters that seemed of sad augury. For instance, in announcing the birth of his little girl, Lord Byron said that he was absorbed in five hundred contradictory contemplations, although he had only one single object in view, which would probably come to nothing, as it mostly happens with all we desire:--
"But never mind," he said, "as somebody says, 'for the blue sky bends over all.' I only could be glad if it bent over me where it is a little bluer, like skyish top of blue Olympus."
On reading this letter, dated the 5th of January, full of aspirations after a blue sky, Moore was struck with the tone of melancholy pervading it; and, knowing that it was Lord Byron's habit when under the pressure of sorrow and uneasiness, to seek relief in expressing his yearnings after freedom and after other climes, he wrote to him in these terms:--
"Do you know, my dear Byron, there was something in your last letter--a sort of mystery, as well as a want of your usual elasticity of spirits--which has hung upon my mind unpleasantly ever since. I long to be near you, that I might know how you really look and feel, for these letters tell nothing, and one word a quattr' occhi, is worth whole reams of correspondence. But only do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied."
"It was," says Moore, "only a few weeks after the exchange of these letters, that Lady Byron took the resolution of separating from him. She had left London at the end of January, on a visit to her parents, in Leicestershire, and Lord Byron was to come and join her there soon after. They had parted with mutual demonstrations of attachment and of good understanding. On the journey Lady Byron wrote a letter to her husband, couched in playful, affectionate language. What, then, must have been his astonishment when, directly after her arrival at Kirby Mallory, her father, Sir Ralph, wrote to tell Lord Byron that his daughter was going to remain with them, and would return to him no more."
This unexpected stroke fell heavily upon him. The pecuniary embarrassments growing up since his marriage (for he had already undergone eight or nine executions in his own house), had then reached their climax. He was then, to use his own energetic expression, alone at his hearth, his penates transfixed around; and then was he also condemned to receive the unaccountable intelligence that the wife who had just parted from him in the most affectionate manner, had abandoned him forever.
His state of mind can not be told, nor, perhaps, be imagined. Still he describes it in some passages of his letters, showing at the same time the firmness, dignity, and strength of mind that always distinguished him. For example, he wrote to Rogers, two weeks after this thunderbolt had fallen upon him:--
"I shall be very glad to see you if you like to call, though I am at present contending with the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,' some of which have struck me from a quarter whence I did not, indeed, expect them; but, no matter, there is a 'world elsewhere,' and I will cut my way through this as I can. If you write to Moore, will you tell him that I shall answer his letter the moment I can muster time and spirits. Ever yours,
BYRON."
This strength of mind he only found a month afterward, and then he wrote to him:--
"I have not answered your letter for a time, and at present the reply to it might extend to such a length that I shall delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it as much as I can. I am at war with all the world and my wife, or, rather, all the world and my wife are at war with me, and have not yet crushed me, and shall not crush me, whatever they may do. I don't know that in the course of a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or abroad, in a situation so completely uprooted of present pleasure, or rational hope for the future, as this time. I say this because I think so, and feel it. But I shall not sink under it the more for that mode of considering the question. I have made up my mind.
"By the way, however, you must not believe all you hear on the subject; but don't attempt to defend me. If you succeeded in that it would be a mortal, or an immortal, offense. Who can bear refutation?"[141]
And, after having spoken of his wife's family, he concludes in these terms:--
"Those who know what is going on say that the mysterious cause of our domestic misunderstandings is a Mrs. C----, now a kind of house-keeper and spy of Lady N----, who was a washer-woman in former days."
Swayed by this idea, he went so far then in his generosity as to exonerate his wife, and accuse himself; whereupon Moore answered that, "after all, his misfortunes lay in the choice he had made of a wife, which he (Moore) had never approved."
Lord Byron hastened to reply that he was wrong, and that Lady Byron's conduct while with him had not deserved the smallest reproach, giving her, at the same time, great praise. But this answer, which, according to Moore, forces admiration for the generous candor of him who wrote it while adding to the sadness and strangeness of the whole affair--this answer, of such extraordinary generosity, will better find its place elsewhere. It contains expressions that show his real state of soul under the cruel circumstances:--
"I have to battle with all kinds of unpleasantness, including private and pecuniary difficulties, etc.
" ...It is nothing to bear the privations of adversity, or, more properly, ill-fortune, but my pride recoils from its indignities. However, I have no quarrel with that same pride, which will, I think, be my buckler through every thing. If my heart could have been broken it would have been so years ago, and by events more afflicting than these.... Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year? I don't wish to claim the character of 'Vates' the prophet, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning: 'There's not a joy the world can,' etc. They were the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote."
To this letter Moore answered immediately:--
"I had certainly no right to say any thing about the unluckiness of your choice, though I rejoice now that I did, as it has drawn from you a tribute which, however unaccountable and mysterious it renders the whole affair, is highly honorable to both parties. What I meant in hinting a doubt with respect to the object of your selection, did not imply the least impeachment of that perfect amiableness which the world, I find, by common consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been too perfect, too precisely excellent, too matter-of-fact a paragon for you to coalesce with comfortably, ... and that a person whose perfection hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by some of 'those fair defects which best conciliate love,' would, by appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better chance with your good-nature. All these suppositions, however, I have been led into by my intense anxiety to acquit you of any thing like a capricious abandonment of your wife; and, totally in the dark as I am with respect to all but the fact of your separation, you can not conceive the solicitude--the fearful solicitude--with which I look forward to a history of the transaction from your own lips when we meet--a history in which I am sure of at least one virtue, manly candor."
Those who knew Lord Byron, gifted as he was with so much that seemed to render it impossible for any woman to resign herself to the loss of his love; with so much to make a wife proud of bearing his name; may well ask what strange sort of nature Lady Byron could have possessed to act as she did toward him; and whether, if she really married out of vanity (as Lord Byron one day told Medwin, at Pisa), and her heart being full of pride only, she found some greater satisfaction for her vanity in the courage and perseverance she fancied displayed in deserting him. But, in order to view her inexplicable conduct with any sort of indulgence, we must say that Lady Byron was an only and a spoilt child, a slave to rule, to habits and ideas as unchanging and inflexible as the figures she loved to study; that, being accustomed to the comforts of a rich house, where she was idolized, she could not do without her regular comforts, so generally appreciated and considered necessary by English people. But it was no easy matter to satisfy all her tastes with mathematical regularity, to let her keep up all her habits, and, above all, to make Lord Byron share them in their married life. In the first place, Lord Byron, who was naturally un-English in taste, had, moreover, through his long stay abroad, given up the peculiarities of English habits. He did not dine every day, and when he did it was a cenobite's meal, little suited to the taste of a true Englishman. He breakfasted on a cup of green tea, without sugar, and the yolk of an egg, which was swallowed standing. The comfortable fireside, the indispensable roast-beef, and the regular evening tea, were not appreciated by him; and, indeed, it was a real pain to him to see women eat at all. Not one of his young wife's habits was shared by him. He did not think his soul lost by going to bed at dawn, for he liked to write at night; or by doing other things at what she called irregular hours; and he must have been at least astonished on hearing himself asked, three weeks after marriage, when he intended giving up his versifying habits?
But he did not give them up; nor could he have done so had he wished it. Lady Byron must have flattered herself with the idea of ruling him, of showing the world her power over her husband. As long as their resources sufficed for a life of luxury, both parties might have cherished illusion, and put off reflection. But when creditors, attracted by the name of the wealthy heiress--who in reality had only brought her expectations with her--began to pour in, and that pecuniary embarrassment and humiliations were added to home incompatibilities, then, perhaps, Lord Byron became irritable sometimes, and Lady Byron must have felt more than ever the painful absence of those comforts whose enjoyment cause many other annoyances to be forgotten. She must often have compared her life then, full of mortifications, and, perhaps, of solitude, with the one so comfortable and agreeable (for her) she formerly led at Kirby Mallory, in the midst of her relatives. Indeed, they had spent two months there, both saying they were happy; for at this period of the honey-moon, Lord Byron, kind as he was, doubtless yielded to all the caprices and habits of his hosts. Nevertheless, through the veil of his customary jests and assurances to Moore that he was quite satisfied, it is easy to see how tired he was, and how little the life at Seaham was suited to him.
"I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read old 'Annual Registers' and the daily papers, and gathering shells on the shore, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberry bushes in the garden, that I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours ever,
BYRON."
And then another time he wrote,--
"I have been very comfortable here, listening to that d----d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, and in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, except when he plays upon the fiddle. However, they have been very kind and hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly."
Again, feeling his thought in bondage at Seaham, when it would fain have wandered free beneath some sunny sky, he wrote to Moore, "By the way, don't engage yourself in any travelling expedition, as I have a plan of travel into Italy, which we will discuss. And then, think of the poesy wherewithal we should overflow from Venice to Vesuvius, to say nothing of Greece, through all which--God willing--we might perambulate."
But on quitting Seaham to return home, without preventing Lady Byron from continuing to follow her own tastes, it is likely that he wished to resume his old habits: his beloved solitude, so necessary to him, his fasts, his hours for study and rest, very different from those of Seaham. And then she must have found it troublesome to have a husband, who was not only indifferent to English comforts, but who even disliked to see women eat! who, despite his embarrassments, continued to refuse appropriating for his own use the money given and offered by his publisher, making it over instead to the poor, and even borrowing to help his friends and indigent authors.[142] She could not have known how he would ever get disentangled. Being extremely jealous, she became the easy dupe of malicious persons; and under the influence of that wicked woman, Mrs. Claremont, allowed herself to be persuaded that her husband committed grave faults, though in reality they were but slight or even imaginary ones. She forced open his writing-desk, and found in it several proofs of intrigues that had taken place previous to his marriage. In the frenzy of her jealousy, Lady Byron sent these letters to the husband of the lady compromised, but he had the good sense to take no notice of them. Such a revolting proceeding on the part of Lady Byron requires no commentary: it can not be justified. Meanwhile the conjugal abode was given up to bailiffs, and desolation reigned in Lord Byron's soul. He had lately become a father. This was the moment that his wife chose for leaving him; and the first proof of love she gave their daughter, as soon as she set foot in her own home, was to abandon that child's father and the house where she could no longer find the mode of life to which she had been accustomed. At Kirby Mallory, the vindictive Lady Noel, who detested Lord Byron, doubtless did the rest, together with the governess. And the young heiress, just enriched by a legacy inherited from an uncle, thus newly restored to wealth, had not courage to leave it and them all again. With the kind of nature she possessed, she must have taken pride in a sort of exaggerated firmness; thus seeking to gain strength for trampling under foot all heart-emotions, as if they were so many weaknesses, incompatible with the stern principles that she considered virtues. By assuming the point of view proper to some minds, it is easy to conceive all this, especially when one knows England.
But was it really for the purpose of allowing her to give such a spectacle to the world, and to secure for herself the comforts of life, that God had given to her keeping Lord Byron's noble spirit? Did she forget that it was not simply a good, honest, ordinary man, like the generality of husbands, that she had married; but that Heaven, having crowned his brow with the rays of genius, imposed far other obligations on his companion? Did she forget that she was responsible before God and before that country whose pride he was about to become? Ought she to have preferred an easy life to the honor of being his wife; of sustaining him in his weaknesses; of consoling and forgiving him, if necessary; in short, of being his guardian angel? If she aspired to the reputation of a virtuous woman, could true virtue have done otherwise? Ere this God has judged her above; but, here below, can those possessing hearts have any indulgence for her?
We hear constantly repeated--because it was once said--that men of great genius are less capable than ordinary individuals of experiencing calm affections and of settling down into those easy habits which help to cement domestic life. By dint of repeating this it has become an axiom. But on what grounds is it founded? Because these privileged beings give themselves to studies requiring solitude, in order to abstract and concentrate their thoughts; because, their mental riches being greater, they are more independent of the outer world and the intellectual resources of their fellow-creatures; because, through the abundance of their own resources, their mind acquires a certain refinement, likely to make them deem the society of ordinary persons tiresome; does it therefore necessarily follow that the goodness and sensibility of their hearts are blunted, and that there may not be, amid the great variety of women, hearts and minds worthy of comprehending them, and of making it their duty to extend a larger amount of forbearance and indulgence in return for the glory and happiness of being the companions of these noble beings? It is remarked, in support of the above theory, that almost all men of genius who have married--Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, Dryden, Byron, and many others--were unhappy. But have these observers examined well on which side lay the cause of unhappiness? Who will say that if Dante, instead of Gemma Donati, "the ferocious wife" (a thought expressed by Lord Byron in his "Prophecy," evidently to appropriate it to himself, speaking of "the cold companion who brought him ruin for her dowry);" who will say that if Dante, instead of Gemma Donati, had married his Beatrice Portinari, she would not have been the companion and soother of his exile? that the bread of the foreigner shared with her would not have seemed less bitter? and that he would not have found it less fatiguing to mount, leaning on her, the staircase leading to another's dwelling?--
"Lo scendere e il salio per l'altrin scale."--DANTE.
And can we doubt that Milton's misfortune was caused by his unhappy choice of a wife, since almost directly after her arrival at their conjugal home she became alarmed at her husband's literary habits and also at the solitude and poverty reigning in the house, and finally abandoned him after a month's trial? To speak only of England, was it not from similar causes, or nearly so, that the amiable Shakspeare's misfortune arose--also that of Dryden, Addison, Steele? And, indeed, the same may be said of all the great men belonging to whatsoever age or country.
If we were to enter into a polemic on this subject, or simply to make conscientious researches, there would be many chances of proving, in opposition to the axiom, that the fault of these great men lay in the bad choice of their helpmates. In truth, if there have been a Gemma Donati and a Milbank, we also find in ancient times a Calpurnia and a Portia among the wives of great men; and, in modern times, wives of poets, who have been the honor of their sex, proud of their husbands, and living only for them. Ought not these examples at least to destroy the absolute nature of the theory, making it at best conditional? The larger number of great men, it is true, did not marry; of this number we find, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Voltaire, Pope, Alfieri, and Canova; and many others among the poets and philosophers, Bacon, Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, and Leibnitz.
What does that prove, if not that they either would not or could not marry, but certainly not that they were incapable of being good husbands? Besides, a thousand causes--apart from the fear of being unhappy in domestic life, considerations of fortune, prior attachments, etc.--may have prevented them. But as to Lord Byron, at least, it is still more certain with regard to him than to any other, that he might have been happy had he made a better choice: if circumstances had only been tolerable, as he himself says. Lord Byron had none of those faults that often disturb harmony, because they put the wife's virtue to too great a trial. If the best disposition, according to a deep moralist, is that which gives much and exacts nothing, then assuredly his deserves to be so characterized. Lord Byron exacted nothing for himself. Moreover, discussion, contradiction, teasing, were insupportable to him; his amiable jesting way even precluded them. In all the circumstances and all the details of his life he displayed that high generosity, that contempt of petty, selfish, material calculations so well adapted for gaining hearts in general, and especially those of women. Add to that the prestige belonging to his great beauty, his wit, his grace, and it will be easy to understand the love he must have inspired as soon as he became known.
"Pope remarks," says Moore, "that extraordinary geniuses have the misfortune to be admired rather than loved; but I can say, from my own personal experience, that Lord Byron was an exception to this rule."[143]
Nevertheless, Lord Byron, though exceptional in so many things, yet belonged to the first order of geniuses. Therefore he could not escape some of the laws belonging to these first-rate natures: certain habits, tendencies, sentiments--I may almost say infirmities--of genius deriving their origin from the same sympathies, the same wants.
He required to have certain things granted to him: his hours for solitude, the silence of his library, which he sometimes preferred to every thing, even to the society of the woman he loved. It was wrong to wish by force to shut him up to read the Bible, or to make him come to tea and regulate all his hours as a good priest might do. When he was plunged in the delights of Plato's "Banquet," or conversing with his own ideas, it was folly to interrupt him. But this state was exceptional with him. "One does not have fever habitually," said he of himself, characterizing this state of excitement that belongs to composition; and as soon as he returned to his usual state, and that his mind, disengaged from itself, came down from the heights to which it had soared, what amiability then, what a charm in all he said and did! Was not one hour passed with him then a payment with rich usury for all the little concessions his genius required? And lastly, if we descend well into the depths of his soul, by all he said and did, by all his sadness, joy, tenderness, we may be well convinced that none more than he was susceptible of domestic happiness.
"If I could have been the husband of the Countess G----," said he to Mrs. B----, a few days only before setting out for Greece, "we should have been cited, I am certain, as samples of conjugal happiness, and our retired domestic life would have made us respectable! But alas! I can not marry her."
It is also by his latest affections that he proved how, if he had been united to a woman after his own heart, he might have enjoyed and given all the domestic happiness that God vouchsafes us here below, and that when love should have undergone the transformations produced by time and custom, he would have known how to replace the poetic enchantments of love's first days, by feelings graver, more unchanging too, and no less tender and sacred.
But we must interrogate those who knew and saw him personally, and in the first place Moore; for not only was Moore acquainted with Lord Byron's secret soul, but to him had the poet confided the treasure of his memoirs, whose principal object was to throw light on the most fatal event of his life, and whose sacrifice, made in deference to the susceptibilities of a few living nullities, will be an eternal remorse for England. Now this is how Moore expresses himself on this subject:--
"With respect to the causes that may be supposed to have led to this separation, it seems needless, with the characters of both parties before our eyes, to go in quest of any very remote or mysterious reasons to account for it."
After observing that men of great genius have never seemed made for domestic happiness, through certain habits, certain wants of their nature, and certain faults, which appear, he says, like the shade thrown by genius in proportion to its greatness, Moore adds that Lord Byron still was, in many respects, a singular exception to this rule, for his heart was so sensitive and his passions so ardent, that the world of reality never ceased to hold a large place in his sympathies; that for the rest, his imagination could never usurp the place of reality, neither in his feelings nor in the objects exciting them.
"The poet in Lord Byron," says Moore, "never absorbed the man. From this very mixture has it arisen that his pages bear so deeply the stamp of real life, and that in the works of no poet with the exception of Shakspeare, can every various mood of the mind--whether solemn or gay, whether inclined to the ludicrous or the sublime, whether seeking to divert itself with the follies of society or panting after the grandeur of solitary nature--find so readily a strain of sentiment in accordance with its every passing tone."
Nevertheless he did not completely escape the usual fate of great geniuses, since he also experienced, though rarely, and always with good cause, that sadness which, as Shakspeare says,--
"Sicklies the face of happiness itself."
"To these faults, and sources of faults, inherent in his own sensitive nature, he added also many of those which a long indulgence of self-will generates--the least compatible, of all others, with that system of mutual concession and sacrifice by which the balance of domestic peace is maintained. In him they were softened down by good-nature. When we look back, indeed, to the unbridled career, of which this marriage was meant to be the goal--to the rapid and restless course in which his life had run along, like a burning train, through a series of wanderings, adventures, successes, and passions, the fever of all which was still upon him, when, with the same headlong recklessness, he rushed into this marriage, it can but little surprise us that, in the space of one short year, he should not have been able to recover all at once from his bewilderment, or to settle down into that tame level of conduct which the close observers of his every action required. As well might it be expected that a steed like his own Mazeppa's--
'Wild as the wild deer and untaught, With spur and bridle undefiled,'
should stand still, when reined, without chafing or champing the bit.[144]
"Even had the new condition of life into which he passed been one of prosperity and smoothness, some time, as well as tolerance, must still have been allowed for the subsiding of so excited a spirit into rest. But, on the contrary, his marriage was at once a signal for all the arrears and claims of a long-accumulating state of embarrassment to explode upon him; his door was almost daily beset by duns, and his house nine times during that year in possession of bailiffs; while, in addition to these anxieties, he had also the pain of fancying that the eyes of enemies and spies were upon him, even under his own roof, and that his every hasty word and look were interpreted in the most perverted light.
"He saw but little society, his only relief from the thoughts which a life of such embarrassment brought with it was in those avocations which his duty, as a member of the Drury Lane Committee, imposed upon him. And here, in this most unlucky connection with the theatre, one of the fatalities of his short year of trial, as husband, lay. From the reputation which he had previously acquired for gallantries, and the sort of reckless and boyish levity to which--often in very bitterness of soul--he gave way, it was not difficult to bring suspicion upon some of those acquaintances which his frequent intercourse with the green-room induced him to form, or even (as in one instance was the case) to connect with his name injuriously that of a person to whom he had scarcely ever addressed a single word.
"Notwithstanding, however, this ill-starred concurrence of circumstances, which might have palliated any excesses either of temper or conduct into which they drove him, it was, after all, I am persuaded, to no such serious causes that the unfortunate alienation, which so soon ended in disunion, is to be traced.
"'In all the unhappy marriages I have ever seen,' says Steele, 'the great cause of evil has proceeded from slight occasions,' and to this remark, I think, the marriage under our consideration would not be found, upon inquiry, to be an exception. Lord Byron himself, indeed, when at Cephalonia, a short time before his death, seems to have expressed, in a few words, the whole pith of the mystery.
"An English gentleman, with whom he was conversing on the subject of Lady Byron, having ventured to enumerate to him the various causes he had heard alleged for the separation, the noble poet, who had seemed much amused with their absurdity and falsehood, said, after listening to them all: 'The causes, my dear sir, were too simple to be easily found out.'
"In truth, the circumstances, so unexampled, that attended their separation, the last words of the wife to the husband being those of the most playful affection, while the language of the husband toward the wife was in a strain, as the world knows, of tenderest eulogy, are in themselves a sufficient proof that, at the time of their parting, there could have been no very deep sense of injury on either side. It was not till afterward that, in both bosoms, the repulsive force came into operation, when, to the party which had taken the first decisive step in the strife, it became naturally a point of pride to persevere in it with dignity, and this unbendingness provoked, as naturally, in the haughty spirit of the other, a strong feeling of resentment which overflowed, at last, in acrimony and scorn. If there be any truth, however, in the principle, that they never pardon who have done the wrong, Lord Byron, who was, to the last, disposed to reconciliation, proved, at least, that his conscience was not troubled by any very guilty recollections.
"But though it would have been difficult perhaps, for the victims of this strife themselves to have pointed out the real cause for their disunion, beyond that general incompatibility which is the canker of all such marriages, the public, which seldom allows itself to be at fault on these occasions, was, as usual, ready with an ample supply of reasons for the breach, all tending to blacken the already-darkly painted character of the poet, and representing him, in short, as a finished monster of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of his choice for every possible virtue, was now turned against him by his assailants, as if the excellences of the wife were proof positive of every enormity they chose to charge upon the husband. Meanwhile, the unmoved silence of Lady Byron under the repeated demands made for a specification of her charges against him, left to malice and imagination the fullest range for their combined industry. It was accordingly stated, and almost universally believed, that the noble lord's second proposal to Miss Milbank had been but with a view to revenge himself for the slight inflicted by her refusal of the first, and that he himself had confessed so much to her on their way from the church. At the time when, as the reader has seen from his own honey-moon letters, he in all faith fancied himself happy, and even boasted, in the pride of his imagination, that if marriage were to be upon lease, he would gladly renew his own for a term of ninety-nine years!
"At this very time, according to these veracious chronicles, he was employed in darkly following up the aforesaid scheme of revenge, and tormenting his lady by all sorts of unmanly cruelties--such as firing off pistols, to frighten her as she lay in bed, and other such freaks.[145] To the falsehoods concerning his green-room intimacies, and particularly with respect to one beautiful actress, with whom, in reality, he had hardly ever exchanged a single word, I have already adverted; and the extreme confidence with which this tale was circulated and believed affords no unfair specimen of the sort of evidence with which the public, in all such fits of moral wrath, is satisfied. It is, at the same time, very far from my intention to allege that, in the course of the noble poet's intercourse with the theatre, he was not sometimes led into a line of acquaintance and converse, unbefitting, if not dangerous to, the steadiness of married life. But the imputations against him on this head were not the less unfounded, as the sole case in which he afforded any thing like real grounds for such an accusation did not take place till after the period of the separation.
"Not content with such ordinary and tangible charges, the tongue of rumor was emboldened to proceed still further; and, presuming upon the mysterious silence maintained by one of the parties, ventured to throw out dark hints and vague insinuations, of which the fancy of every hearer was left to fill up the outline as he pleased. In consequence of all this exaggeration, such an outcry was now raised against Lord Byron as, in no case of private life, perhaps, was ever before witnessed; nor had the whole amount of fame which he had gathered, in the course of the last four years, much exceeded in proportion the reproach and obloquy that were now, within the space of a few weeks, heaped upon him. In addition to the many who, no doubt, conscientiously believed and reprobated what they had but too much right, whether viewing him as poet or man of fashion, to consider credible excesses, there were also actively on the alert that large class of persons who seem to think that inveighing against the vices of others is equivalent to virtue in themselves, together with all those natural haters of success who, having long been disgusted with the splendor of the poet, were now enabled, in the guise of champions for innocence, to wreak their spite on the man. In every various form of paragraph, pamphlet, and caricature, both his character and person were held up to odium. Hardly a voice was raised, or at least listened to, in his behalf; and though a few faithful friends remained unshaken by his side, the utter hopelessness of stemming the torrent was felt as well by them as by himself, and, after an effort or two to gain a fair hearing, they submitted in silence."
As to Lord Byron, he hardly attempted to defend himself. Among all these slanders, he only wished to repel one that wounded his generous pride beyond endurance; and so he wrote to Rogers:--
"You are of the few persons with whom I have lived in what is called intimacy, and have heard me at times conversing on the untoward topic of my recent family disquietudes. Will you have the goodness to say to me at once, whether you ever heard me speak of her with disrespect, with unkindness, or defending myself at her expense by any serious imputation of any description against her? Did you never hear me say, 'that when there was a right or a wrong, she had the right?' The reason I put these questions to you or others of my friends is, because I am said, by her and hers, to have resorted to such means of exculpation."
It makes one's heart bleed to see this noble intellect forced by the stupid cruel persecution of wicked fools to descend into the arena and justify himself. But he soon ceased all kind of defense. A struggle of this sort was most repugnant to him. At first Lord Byron had counted on his wife's return, which would, indeed, have proved his best justification. When he saw this return deferred, he asked simply for an inquiry, but could not obtain what he solicited. His accusers, unable to state any thing definite against him, naturally preferred calumny and magnanimous silence to inquiry! At last, when he felt that reunion had become improbable, and that his friends, for want of moral courage and independence, confined themselves to mere condolence, he sought for strength in the testimony of conscience and in his determination of one day making the whole truth known. And he did so in effect, a year later, while he was in Italy, and when all hope of reunion was over. Then it was that he wrote his memoirs.
Here perhaps I ought to speak of one of England's greatest crimes, or rather, of the crime committed by a few Englishmen: I mean the destruction of his memoirs, a deed perpetrated for the sake of screening the self-love and the follies, if not the crimes, of a whole host of insignificant beings. But, having already spoken of that in another chapter, I will content myself with repeating here that these memoirs were all the more precious, as their principal object was to make known the truth; that the impression they left on the mind was a perfect conviction of the writer's sincerity; that Lord Byron possessed the most generous of souls, and that the separation had no other cause but incompatibility of disposition between the two parties. Had he not given irrefragable proof of the truth of these memoirs, by sending them to be read and commented on by Lady Byron? We know with what cruel disdain she met this generous proceeding. As to their morality, I will content myself with quoting the exact expressions used by Lady B----, wife of the then ambassador in Italy, to whom Moore gave them to read, and who had copied them out entirely:--
"I read these memoirs at Florence," said she to Countess G----, "and I assure you that I might have given them to my daughter of fifteen to read, so perfectly free are they from any stain of immorality."
Let us then repeat once more, that they, as well as the last cantos of "Don Juan," and the journal he kept in Greece, were sacrificed for the sole purpose of destroying all memento of the guilty weakness of persons calling themselves his friends, and also of hiding the opinions, not always very flattering, entertained by Lord Byron about a number of living persons, who had unfortunately survived him. It is difficult to conceive in any case, how these memoirs written at Venice, when his heart was torn with grief and bitterness, could possibly have been silent as to the injustice and calumny overwhelming him, or even as to the pusillanimous behavior of so-called friends; while even writers generally hostile no longer took part against him.
For example, this is how Macaulay speaks of him,--Macaulay who was not over-lenient toward Lord Byron, whom he never personally knew, and who is seldom just as well from party spirit as from his desire of shining in antithesis and high-sounding phrases:--
"At twenty-four he found himself on the highest pinnacle of literary fame, along with Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and a crowd of other distinguished writers. There is scarcely an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence. Every thing that could stimulate, and every thing that could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the acclamation of the whole nation, the applause of applauded men, the love of lovely women,--all this world, and all the glory of it, were at once offered to a youth to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education had never taught to control them. He lived as many men live who have no similar excuse to plead for their faults. But his countrymen and countrywomen would love and admire him. They were resolved to see in his excesses only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery mind which glowed in his poetry. He attacked religion; yet in religious circles his name was mentioned with fondness, and in many religious publications his works were censured with singular tenderness. He lampooned the prince regent, yet he could not alienate the Tories. Every thing, it seemed, was to be forgiven to youth, rank, and genius.[146]
"Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its indignation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshiped with an irrational idolatry. He was persecuted with an irrational fury. Much has been written about those unhappy domestic occurrences which decided the fate of his life. Yet nothing is, nothing ever was, positively known to the public but this,--that he quarrelled with his lady, and that she refused to live with him. There have been hints in abundance, and shrugs and shakings of the head, and 'Well, well, we know,' and 'We could if we would,' and 'If we list to speak,' and 'There be that might an they list.' But we are not aware that there is before the world, substantiated by credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord Byron was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife."
And after having said how the persons consulted by Lady Byron, and who had advised her to separate from her husband, formed their opinion without hearing both parties, and that it would be quite unjust and irrational to pronounce, or even to form, an opinion on an affair so imperfectly known, Mr. Macaulay continues in these words:--
"We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. We can not suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offenses have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken, and our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more. It is clear that those vices which destroy domestic happiness ought to be as much as possible repressed. It is equally clear that they can not be repressed by penal legislation. It is therefore right and desirable that public opinion should be directed against them. But it should be directed against them uniformly, steadily, and temperately; not by sudden fits and starts. There should be one weight and one measure. Decimation is always an objectionable mode of punishment. It is the resource of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It is an irrational practice, even when adopted by military tribunals. When adopted by the tribunal of public opinion, it is infinitely more irrational. It is good that a certain portion of disgrace should constantly attend on certain bad actions. But it is not good that the offenders should merely have to stand the risks of a lottery of infamy, that ninety-nine out of every hundred should escape, and that the hundredth, perhaps the most innocent of the hundred, should pay for all. We remember to have seen a mob assembled in Lincoln's Inn to hoot a gentleman against whom the most oppressive proceeding known to the English law was then in progress. He was hooted because he had been an unfaithful husband, as if some of the most popular men of the age, Lord Nelson for example, had not been unfaithful husbands. We remember a still stronger case. Will posterity believe that, in an age in which men whose gallantries were universally known, and had been legally proved, filled some of the highest offices in the state and in the army, presided at the meetings of religious and benevolent institutions, were the delight of every society, and the favorites of the multitude, a crowd of moralists went to the theatre, in order to pelt a poor actor for disturbing the conjugal felicity of an alderman? What there was in the circumstances either of the offender or of the sufferer to vindicate the zeal of the audience we could never conceive. It has never been supposed that the situation of an actor is peculiarly favorable to the rigid virtues, or that an alderman enjoys any special immunity from injuries such as that which on this occasion roused the anger of the public. But such is the justice of mankind. In these cases the punishment was excessive, but the offense was known and proved. The case of Lord Byron was harder. True Jedwood justice was dealt out to him. First came the execution, then the investigation, and last of all, or rather not at all, the accusation. The public, without knowing any thing whatever about the transactions in his family, flew into a violent passion with him, and proceeded to invent stories which might justify its anger. Ten or twenty different accounts of the separation, inconsistent with each other, with themselves, and with common sense, circulated at the same time. What evidence there might be for any one of these the virtuous people who repeated them neither knew nor cared. For in fact these stories were not the causes, but the effects of the public indignation. They resembled those loathsome slanders which Lewis Goldsmith, and other abject libellers of the same class, were in the habit of publishing about Bonaparte; such as that he poisoned a girl with arsenic when he was at the military school, that he hired a grenadier to shoot Desaix at Marengo, that he filled St. Cloud with all the pollutions of Capreae. There was a time when anecdotes like these obtained some credence from persons who, hating the French Emperor without knowing why, were eager to believe any thing which might justify their hatred.
"Lord Byron fared in the same way. His countrymen were in a bad humor with him. His writings and his character had lost the charm of novelty. He had been guilty of the offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely; he had been overpraised; he had excited too warm an interest; and the public, with its usual justice, chastised him for its own folly. The attachments of the multitude bear no small resemblance to those of the wanton enchantress in the Arabian Tales, who, when the forty days of her fondness were over, was not content with dismissing her lovers, but condemned them to expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under cruel penances, the crime of having once pleased her too well.
"The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as might well have shaken a more constant mind. The newspapers were filled with lampoons. The theatres shook with execrations. He was excluded from circles where he had lately been the observed of all observers. All those creeping things that riot in the decay of nobler natures hastened to their repast; and they were right; they did after their kind. It is not every day that the savage envy of aspiring dunces is gratified by the agonies of such a spirit, and the degradation of such a name. The unhappy man left his country forever. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea, up the Rhine, over the Alps; it gradually waxed fainter; it died away; those who had raised it began to ask each other, what, after all, was the matter about which they had been so clamorous, and wished to invite back the criminal whom they had just chased from them. His poetry became more popular than it had ever been; and his complaints were read with tears by thousands and tens of thousands who had never seen his face."
These observations of Macaulay are applied by Mr. Disraeli to Lord Cadurcis, who, in his novel called "Venetia," is no other than Lord Byron:--
"Lord Cadurcis," says he, "was the periodical victim, the scapegoat of English morality, sent into the wilderness with all the crimes and curses of the multitude on his head. Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a great crime, not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was not an unprecedented offense; nor his duel with her husband, for after all it was a duel in self-defense: and, at all events, divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or authorized the storm which was now about to burst over the late spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis had been guilty of the offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely. Lord Cadurcis had been overpraised. He had excited too warm an interest; and the public, with its usual justice, was resolved to chastise him for its own folly. There are no fits of caprice so hasty and so violent as those of society. Cadurcis, in allusion to his sudden and singular success, had been in the habit of saying to his intimates that he 'woke one morning and found himself famous.' He might now observe, 'I woke one morning and found myself infamous.' Before twenty-four hours had passed over his duel with Lord Monteagle, he found himself branded by every journal in London as an unprincipled and unparalleled reprobate. The public, without waiting to think, or even to inquire after the truth, instantly selected as genuine the most false and the most flagrant of the fifty libellous narratives that were circulated of the transaction. Stories, inconsistent with themselves, were all alike eagerly believed, and what evidence there might be for any one of them, the virtuous people, by whom they were repeated, neither knew nor cared. The public, in short, fell into a passion with their daring, and, ashamed of their past idolatry, nothing would satisfy them but knocking the divinity on the head."
And this same Mr. Disraeli, whose testimony is all the more precious as coming from a Tory celebrity, after having described the shameful reception given by the noble House to Lord Cadurcis, when he presented himself there after the duel, and the atrocious conduct of the stupid populace clamoring against him outside, goes on in these terms:--
"And indeed to witness this young, and noble, and gifted creature, but a few days back the idol of the nation, and from whom a word, a glance even, was deemed the greatest and most gratifying distinction--whom all orders, classes, and conditions of men had combined to stimulate with multiplied adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the world, as it were, forced upon him--to see him thus assailed with the savage execrations of all those vile things who exult in the fall of every thing that is great and the abasement of every thing that is noble, was indeed a spectacle which might have silenced malice and satisfied envy!"
To these just appreciations formed by some of Lord Byron's biographers we might add many more; but the limits we have assigned to this work not admitting of it, we will only add, as a last testimony, the most severe of all; him of whom Moore said, "that, if one wished to speak against Lord Byron, one had only to apply to him," that is, to Lord Byron himself.
In 1820, when Lord Byron was at Ravenna, an article from "Blackwood's Magazine," entitled "Observations on Don Juan," was sent him.
It contained such unfounded strictures on his matrimonial conduct, that, for once, Lord Byron infringed his rule and could not help answering it. The extracts from his defense, "if defense it can be called," says Moore, "where there has never yet been any definite charge, will be read with the liveliest interest." Here, then, is a part of these extracts:--
"It is in vain, says my learned brother, that Lord Byron attempts in any way to justify his own behavior with regard to Lady Byron.
"And now that he has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen."
"How far the openness of an anonymous poem, and the audacity of an imaginary character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady Byron, may be deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their most sweet voices, I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I can not 'in any way justify my own behavior in that affair,' I acquiesce, because no man can justify himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never had--and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it--any specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumor and the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such.
"But is not the writer content with what has been already said and done? Has not the general voice of his countrymen long ago pronounced upon the subject sentence without trial, and condemnation without a charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is, I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall cease to remember either.
"The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his cause, real or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will retrieve his circumstances; he who is condemned by the law as a term to his banishment, or a dream of his abbreviation; or, it may be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law, or of its administration, in his own particular. But he who is outlawed by general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics, illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile, without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion I am not aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry, was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why, because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances. The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the rage of the day that the unfortunate publication of two copies of verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects of both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumor and private rancor; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and breathed upon by the light. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the waters.
"If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity."
One regrets not being able to go on reproducing these fine pages written by Lord Byron, but the limits we have assigned ourselves force the sacrifice.
And now, after all that has been placed before the reader, will he not be curious to learn whether Lord Byron truly loved Lady Byron. The answer admits of no doubt. Could love exist between two natures so widely dissonant? But then it will be said, why did he marry her? This question may be answered by the simple observation that two-thirds of the marriages in high life, and indeed in all classes, are contracted without any love, nor are the parties, therefore, condemned to unhappiness. Still it is as well to recall that not only it did not enter into Lord Byron's views to marry for love and to satisfy passion, but that he married rather for the sake of escaping from the yoke of his passions! "If I were in love I should be jealous," said he, "and then I could not render happy the woman I married." "Let her be happy," added he, "and then, for my part, I shall also be so." Then again we find, "Let them only leave me my mornings free." Lastly, he wrote in his journal, before marrying Miss Milbank, and while in correspondence with her, "It is very singular, but there is not a spark of love between me and Miss Milbank." If, then, Miss Milbank married Lord Byron out of self-love, and to prevent his marrying a young and beautiful Irish girl, Lord Byron, on his part, married Miss Milbank from motives the most honorable to human nature. It was her simple modest air that attracted him and caused his delusion, and the fame of her virtues quite decided him. As to interested motives, they were at most but secondary; and his disinterestedness was all the more meritorious, since the embarrassed state of his affairs made him really require money, and Miss Milbank had none at that period. She was an only daughter, it is true; but her parents were still in the prime of life, and her uncle, Lord Wentworth, from whom her mother was to inherit before herself, might yet live many years. His marriage with Miss Milbank was thus not only disinterested as regards fortune, but even imprudently generous; for she only brought him a small dowry of L10,000--a mere trifle compared to the life of luxury she was to lead, in accordance with their mutual rank.[147] And these L10,000 were not only returned by Lord Byron on their separation, but generously doubled.
And now let us hasten to add that although Lord Byron was not in love with Miss Milbank, he had no dislike to her person, for she was rather pretty and pleasing in appearance. Her reputation for moral and intellectual qualities, standing on such a high pedestal, Lord Byron naturally conceived that esteem might well suffice to replace tenderness. It is certain that, if she had lent herself to it more, and if circumstances had only been endurable, their union might have presented the same character common to most aristocratic couples in England, and that even Lord Byron might have been able to act from virtue in default of feeling; but that little requisite for him was wholly wanting.
His celebrated and touching "Farewell" might be brought up as an objection to what we have just advanced. It might be said that the word sincere is a proof of love, and insincere a proof of falsehood. Lastly, that in all cases there was a want of delicacy and refinement in thus confiding his domestic troubles to the public. Well, all that would be ill-founded, unjust, and contrary to truth. This is the truth of the matter. Lord Byron had just been informed that Lady Byron, having sent off by post the letter wherein she confirmed all that her father, Sir Ralph, had written, namely, her resolution of not returning to the conjugal roof, had afterward caused this letter to be sought for, and on its being restored, had given way to almost mad demonstrations of joy. Could he see aught else in this account save a certainty of the evil influences weighing on her, and making her act in contradiction to her real sentiments? He pitied her then as a victim, thought of all the virtues said to crown her, the illusive belief in which he was far then from having lost; he forgot the wrongs she had inflicted on him--the spying she had kept up around him--the calumnies spread against him--the use she had made of the letters subtracted from his desk. Yes, all was forgotten by his generous heart; and, according to custom, he even went so far as to accuse himself--to see in the victim only his wife, the mother of his little Ada! Under this excitement he was walking about at night in his solitary apartments, and suddenly chanced to perceive in some corner different things that had belonged to Lady Byron--dresses and other articles of attire. It is well known how much the sight of these inanimate mementoes has power to call up recollections even to ordinary imaginations. What, then, must have been the vividness with which they acted on an imagination like Lord Byron's? His heart softened toward her, and he recollected that one day, under the influence of sorrows which well-nigh robbed him of consciousness, he had answered her harshly. Thinking himself in the wrong, and full of the anguish that all these reflections and objects excited in his breast, he allowed his tears to flow, and, snatching a pen, wrote down that touching effusion, which somewhat eased his suffering.
The next day one of his friends found these beautiful verses on his desk; and, judging of Lady Byron's heart and that of the public according to his own, he imprudently gave them to the world. Thus we can no more doubt Lord Byron's sincerity in writing them than we can accuse him of publishing them. But what may cause astonishment is that they could possibly have been ill-interpreted, as they were; and, above all, that this touching "Farewell"--which made Madame de Stael say she would gladly have been unhappy, like Lady Byron, to draw it forth--that it should not have had power to rescue her heart from its apathy, and bring her to the feet of her husband, or at least into his arms. Let us add, in conclusion, that the most atrocious part of this affair, and doubtless the most wounding for him, was precisely Lady Byron's conduct; and in this conduct the worst was her cruel silence!
She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra[148] of her husband. Such a surname is severe; but the repugnance we feel to condemning a woman can not prevent our listening to the voice of justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favor of the guilty one of antiquity. For she, driven to crime by fierce passion overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of physical life, and in committing the deed exposed herself to all its consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals, in the stormy sea of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him from the tempests of life. Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel than Clytemnestra's poniard, that only killed the body; whereas Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul, and such a soul! leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused, and the only favor she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to see whether he were not mad. Happily Lord Byron only discovered at a later period the purport of this strange visit.
In vain did Lord Byron's friend, the companion of all his travels, throw himself at Lady Byron's feet, imploring her to give over this fatal silence. The only reply she deigned was, that she had thought him mad!
And why, then, had she believed him mad? Because she, a methodical inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul;--because she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life! Not to be hungry when she was--not to sleep at night, but to write while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up--in short, to gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to hers:--all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be madness! or if not, it betokened depravity that she could neither submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality!
Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord Byron to the most malignant interpretations--to all the calumny and revenge of his enemies.
She was perhaps the only woman in the world so strangely organized--the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity! and fatally was it decreed that this woman alone of her species should be Lord Byron's wife!
Before closing this chapter it remains for us to examine if it be true, as several of his biographers have pretended, that he wished to be reunited to his wife. We must here declare that Lord Byron's intention, in the last years of his life, was, on the contrary, not to see Lady Byron again. This is what he wrote from Ravenna, to Moore, in June, 1820:--
"I have received a Parisian letter from W. W----, which I prefer answering through you, as that worthy says he is an occasional visitor of yours. In November last he wrote to me a well-meaning letter, stating for some reasons of his own, his belief that a reunion might be effected between Lady Byron and myself.
"To this I answered as usual; and he sent me a second letter, repeating his notions, which letter I have never answered, having had a thousand other things to think of. He now writes as if he believed that he had offended me by touching on the topic; and I wish you to assure him that I am not at all so, but on the contrary, obliged by his good-nature. At the same time acquaint him the thing is impossible. You know this as well as I, and there let it end."
A year later, at Pisa, he again said to M----"that he never would have been reunited to Lady Byron; that the time for such a possibility was passed, and he had made quite sufficient advances."
Let us add likewise that during the last period of his stay at Genoa, a person whose acquaintance he had just made, thought fitting, for several reasons and even by way of winning golden opinions among a certain set in England, to insist on this matter with Lord Byron.
In order to succeed, this person represented Lady Byron as a victim, telling him she was very ill physically and morally, and declaring the secret cause to be, no doubt, grief at her separation from him and dread of his asserting his rights over Ada.
Lord Byron, kind and impressionable as he was, may have been moved at this; but assuredly his resolution of not being reunited to Lady Byron was not shaken. His only reply was to show me a letter he had written some little time before:--
"The letter I inclose," said he, "may help to explain my sentiments.... I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and am so still. But it is difficult for me to withstand the thousand provocations on that subject, which both friends and foes have for seven years been throwing in the way of a man whose feelings were once quick, and whose temper was never patient. But 'returning were as tedious as go o'er.' I feel this as much as ever Macbeth did; and it is a dreary sensation, which at least avenges the real or imaginary wrongs of one of the two unfortunate persons whom it concerns."
Here is the letter he wrote from Pisa to Lady Byron:--
"I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's hair, which is very soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve years old, if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's possession, taken at that age. But it don't curl, perhaps from its being let grow.
"I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name, and I will tell you why: I believe that they are the only two or three words of your handwriting in my possession. For your letters I returned, and except the two words, or rather the one word, 'household,' written twice in an old account-book, I have no other. I burnt your last note for two reasons:--firstly, it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to take your word without documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious people.
"I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's birthday--the 10th of December, I believe. She will then be six, so that in about twelve more I shall have some chance of meeting her; perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business or otherwise. Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or nearness: every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists, which I presume we both hope will be long after either of her parents.
"The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer one of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and irrevocably so. For at thirty-three on my part, and a few years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of life, still it is one when the habits and thoughts are generally so formed as to admit of no modification; and as we could not agree when younger, we should with difficulty do so now.
"I say all this, because I own to you that, notwithstanding every thing, I considered our reunion as not impossible for more than a year after the separation; but then I gave up the hope entirely and forever. But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me, at least, a reason why, on all the few points of discussion which can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve, perhaps more easily than nearer connections. For my own part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my resentment. To you, who are colder and more concentrated, I would just hint that you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty. I assure you that I bear you now (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever. Remember that if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something; and that if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it be true, as moralists say, that the most offending are the least forgiving.
"Whether the offense has been solely on my side or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things, viz., that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again. I think if you also consider the two corresponding points with reference to myself, it will be better for all three. Yours ever,
"NOEL BYRON."
This letter, though never sent, requires no further proofs. It can now be understood, although the contrary has been said, that Lord Byron's resolution never again to unite with Lady Byron was irrevocable; but that, however, a reconciliation would have pleased him, on account of his daughter, and because no feeling of hatred could find room in his great soul.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 138: "In none of the persons he admired," says Moore, "did I meet with a union of qualities so well fitted to succeed in the difficult task of winning him into fidelity and happiness as in the lady in question. Combining beauty of the highest order with a mind intelligent and ingenuous, having just learning enough to give refinement to her taste, and far too much taste to make pretensions to learning; with a patrician spirit proud as Lord Byron's, but showing it only in a delicate generosity of spirit, a feminine high-mindedness, which would have led her to tolerate the defects of her husband in consideration of his noble qualities and his glory, and even to sacrifice silently her own happiness rather than violate the responsibility in which she stood pledged to the world for his."]
[Footnote 139: This circumstance was his proposal for Miss Milbank; we shall see presently how it had taken place.]
[Footnote 140: "Lady Byron," said Lord Byron at Pisa, "and Mr. Medwin were continually making portraits of me; each one more unlike than the other."]
[Footnote 141: Moore, Letter 233.]
[Footnote 142: At this time of embarrassment he borrowed a large sum to give to Coleridge.]
[Footnote 143: Moore, p. 389.]
[Footnote 144: Moore's Life, vol. iii. p. 209.]
[Footnote 145: It is true that once Lord Byron discharged a pistol, by accident, in Lady Byron's room, when she was enciente. This action, coupled with the preoccupations and sadness overwhelming Lord Byron's mind at this time, and further aided by the insinuation of Mrs. Claremont, made Lady Byron begin and continue to suspect that he was mad, and so fully did she believe it, that from that hour, she could never see him come near her without trembling. It was under the influence of this absurd idea that she left him. Lady Byron was not guilty of the reports then current against him. They were spread abroad by her parents: she, on the contrary, as long as she thought him mad, felt great sorrow at it. It was only when she had to persuade herself that he was not mad, that she vowed hatred against him, convinced as she was that he had only married her out of revenge, and not from love. But if an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy may be her excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons which kill at once, and defy all remedies, thus insuring the culprit's safety. This silence it is which will ever be her crime, for by it she poisoned the life of her husband.]
[Footnote 146: All this is either false or exaggerated. Religious criticisms were not so mild, though he had not in any way attacked religion, and the Tories never forgave his attack on the prince regent, which they made a great noise about.]
[Footnote 147: See the description of her life made by him to Medwin during his stay at Pisa.]
[Footnote 148: Lord Byron, in lines wrung from him by anguish and anger, says the moral Clytemnestra of thy lord.]
XXIII. LORD BYRON'S GAYETY AND MELANCHOLY
HIS GAYETY.
A great deal has been said about Byron's melancholy. His gayety has also been spoken of. As usual, all the judgments pronounced have been more or less false. His temperament is just as little known as his disposition, when people affect to judge him in an exclusive way.
Let me, then, be permitted in this instance also to re-establish truth on its only sure basis, namely, facts.
Lord Byron was so often gay that several of his biographers had thought themselves justified in asserting that gayety and not melancholy predominated in his nature. Even Mr. Galt, who only knew him at that period of his life when melancholy certainly predominated, nevertheless uses these expressions:--"Singular as it may seem, the poem itself ('Beppo,' his first essay of facetious poetry) has a stronger tone of gayety than his graver works have of melancholy, commonly believed to have been (I think unjustly) the predominant trait in his character."[149]
Many others have said the same thing. The truth is, that if by giving way to reflection--which was a necessity of his genius--and through circumstances--which were a fatality of his destiny--he has shown himself melancholy in his writings and very often in his dispositions, it is no less certain that by temperament and taste, by the activity, penetration, and complex character of his mind, he very often showed himself to be extremely gay. No one better than he seized upon the absurd and ridiculous side of things or more easily found cause for laughter. His gayety--the result of a frank, open, volatile nature, full of varying moods--was easily excited by any absurdities, ridiculous pretensions, or witty sallies; and then he became so expansive and charming, body and soul with him both seemed to laugh in such unison, that it was impossible not to catch the contagion; but his laughter was ever devoid of malice. Slight defects of harmony in things, or proportion, or mutual relation, easily gave rise to mirthful sensations in him. Being full of admiration for the beautiful, and having, moreover, a great sense of mutual fitness, and much activity of mind, it was with extraordinary and instinctive promptitude that he seized upon the contradictory relations existing between objects, and indeed on all showing a voluntary absence of order and beauty in the conduct of free reasonable beings. His laughter was then quite as aesthetical as it was innocent. And even if it were not admitted, as it is by all philosophical moralists, that no sort of personal calculation enters into this entirely spontaneous emotion, no sentiment of superiority over the being we are laughing at--for selfishness and laughter never coexist--if it were possible, I say, to doubt all this, even then to see Lord Byron laugh would have sufficed to give the right conviction. For truly his mirth was a charming thing; the very air surrounding him appeared to laugh.
Then would his soul, that often required to emerge from its deep reflections, unbend itself, and alternately disport or repose in utter self-abandonment. It dismissed thought, as it were, in order to become a child again; to deliver itself over to all the caprices of those myriad changeful fugitive impressions that course through the brain at moments of excitement.
Moore often recurs to Byron's liveliness. "Nothing, indeed, could be more amusing and delightful.... It was like the bursting gayety of a boy let loose from school, and seemed as if there was no extent of fun or tricks of which he was not capable." When Moore visited him at Mira, in the autumn of 1812, and accompanied him to Venice, the former expressed himself as follows in his memorandum of that occasion:--
"As we proceeded across the lagoon in his gondola the sun was just setting, and it was an evening such as Romance would have chosen for a first sight of Venice, rising 'with her tiara of bright towers' above the wave; while to complete, as might be imagined, the solemn interest of the scene, I behold it in company with him who had lately given a new life to its glories, and sung of that fair City of the Sea thus grandly:--
'I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles!'
"But whatever emotions the first sight of such a scene might, under other circumstances, have inspired me with, the mood of mind in which I now viewed it was altogether the reverse of what might have been expected. The exuberant gayety of my companion, and the recollections--any thing but romantic--into which our conversation wandered, put at once completely to flight all poetical and historical associations; and our course was, I am almost ashamed to say, one of uninterrupted merriment and laughter till we found ourselves at the steps of my friend's palazzo on the Grand Canal. All that ever happened, of gay or ridiculous, during our London life together; his scrapes and my lecturings; our joint adventures with the Bores and Blues, the two great enemies, as he always called them, of London happiness; our joyous nights together at Walter's, Kinnaird's, etc.; and that 'd--d supper of Rancliffe's, which ought to have been a dinner;' all was passed rapidly in review between us, and with a flow of humor and hilarity on his side of which it would have been difficult for persons even far graver than even I can pretend to be, not to have caught the contagion."
Lord Byron was especially prone to mirth and fun in the society of those he liked; to jest and laugh with any one was a great proof of his sympathy for them. When he wrote to absent dear ones, he would constantly say, "I have many things to tell you for us to laugh over together." In several letters addressed from Greece to Madame G----, he informs her of these treasures of mirth, held in reserve for the day of meeting, that they might laugh together. Lord Byron rarely used flattering language to those he loved. It was rather by looks than by words that he expressed his feelings and his approbation. His delight with intimates was to bring out strongly their defects, as well as their qualities and merits, by dint of jests, clever innuendo, and charming sallies of humor. The promptitude with which he discovered the slightest weakness, the faintest symptom of exaggeration or affectation, can hardly be credited. It might almost be said that the persons on whom he bestowed affection became transparent for him, that he dived into their thoughts and feelings.
It was this state of mind especially that gave rise to those sallies of wit which formed such a striking feature of his intelligence. Then his conversation really became quite dazzling. In his glowing language all objects assumed unforeseen and picturesque aspects. New and striking thoughts followed from him in rapid succession, and the flame of his genius lighted up as if winged with wildfire. Those who have not known him at these moments can form no idea of what it was from his works. For, in the silence of his study, when, pen in hand, he was working out his grand conceptions, the lightning strokes lost much of their brilliant intensity; and although we find, especially in "Don Juan" and "Beppo," delightful pages of rich comic humor, only those who knew him can judge how superior still his conversation was. But in this gay exercise of his faculties, which was to him a real enjoyment in all his sallies or even in his railleries, not one iota of malice could be traced--unless we call by that name the amusement springing from mirth and wit indulged. Even if his shafts were finely pointed, they were at the same time so inoffensive that the most susceptible could not be wounded.
The great pleasure he took in jesting appears to have belonged to his organization, for it accompanied him throughout life. We have already seen what his nurses, his preceptors, and the friends of his childhood said on this subject. We have observed his sympathy for the old cup-bearer of his family mansion; the pleasantries expended on the quack Lavander, who was always promising to cure his foot, and never did; the jesting tone of his boyish correspondence; afterward the masqueradings that took place at Newstead Abbey; then again his gay doings with Moore and Rogers in London; the jests pervading the correspondence of his maturer years; then their concentration in "Beppo" and "Don Juan;" and finally, how often, even in Greece, when he was already unwell at Missolonghi, he could not help giving way to pleasantry and childish play to such a degree that good Dr. Kennedy, when he wished to convert him to his somewhat intolerant orthodoxy at Cephalonia, found one of the obstacles to consist in the difficulty of keeping Lord Byron serious.
"He was fond," says the doctor, "of saying smart and witty things, and never allowed an opportunity of punning to escape him.... He generally showed high spirits and hilarity.... I have heard him say several witty things; but as I was always anxious to keep him grave and present important subjects for his consideration, after allowing the laugh to pass I again endeavored to resume the seriousness of the conversation, while his lordship constantly did the same."
And then Kennedy adds:--"My impression from them was, that they were unworthy a man of his accomplishments: I mean the desire of jesting."[150]
These words well characterize the honest Methodist, who, like many other good and noble minds, yet could not understand fun. This incapability is also sometimes the case with persons of a sour, ill-natured, or susceptible disposition, whose excessive vanity is shocked at all simple, innocent explosions of gayety and pleasantry.[151] Colonel Stanhope, who knew Lord Byron at the same period, and who was not a Methodist, but who from other causes could not appreciate the poet's vivacious wit, said:--
"The mind of Lord Byron was like a volcano, full of fire and wrath, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful.... As a companion," he adds, "no one could be more amusing than Lord Byron; he had neither pedantry nor affectation about him, but was natural and playful as a boy. His conversation resembled a stream; sometimes smooth, sometimes rapid, and sometimes rushing down in cataracts. It was a mixture of philosophy and slang, of every thing,--like his 'Don Juan.' He was a patient, and in general a very attentive, listener. When, however, he did engage with earnestness in conversation, his ideas succeeded each other with such uncommon rapidity that he could not control them. They burst from him impetuously; and although he both attended to and noticed the remarks of others, yet he did not allow these to check his discourse for an instant."
"There was usually," writes Count Gamba, his friend and companion in Greece, in his interesting work, entitled "Last Travels of Lord Byron in Greece," "a liveliness of spirit and a tendency to joke, even at times of great danger, when other men would have become serious and pre-occupied. This disposition of mind gave him a kind of air of frankness and sincerity which was quite irresistible with those persons even who were most prejudiced against him."
This allusion of Count Gamba refers to the letter which Byron wrote in the midst of the Suliotes, among whom he had taken refuge during the storm and to escape the Turks.
"If any thing," writes Lord Byron, on the point of embarking for Missolonghi, and in his last letter to Moore, "if any thing in the way of fever, fatigue, famine, or otherwise, should cut short the middle age of a brother warbler, like Garcilasso de la Vega, I pray you remember me in 'your smiles and wine.'
"I have hopes that the cause will triumph; but, whether it does or no, still 'honor must be minded as strictly as a milk diet.' I trust to observe both.
BYRON."
"It is matter of history," continues Count Gamba, "that Lord Byron, in consequence of vexations to which he was ever a victim, added to the rigorous diet which he followed (he only fed upon vegetables and green tea, to show that he could live as frugally as a Greek soldier), and from the impossibility which he found to take any exercise at Missolonghi, had a nervous fit, which deprived him of the power of speech and alarmed all his friends and acquaintances. When the crisis had worn off, he merely laughed over it."
"Even at Missolonghi," says Parry, who knew him there only in the midst of troubles and vexations of every description and quite at the close of his life, "he loved to jest in words and actions. These pleasantries lightened his spirits, and prevented him from dwelling on disagreeable thoughts."
Perhaps this disposition of character was the result of his French origin, for it is scarcely known or even appreciated in England.
"Yet," exclaims the greatest-minded woman of our day (Madame G. Sand), "it is that disposition which forms the charm of every delicate intimacy, and which often prevents our committing many follies and stupidities.
"To look for the ridiculous side of things is to discover their weakness. To laugh at the dangers in the midst of which we find ourselves is to get accustomed to brave them; like the French, who go into action with a laugh and a song. To quiz a friend is often to save him from a weakness in which our pity might perhaps have allowed him to linger. To laugh at one's self is to preserve one's self from the effects of an exaggerated self-love. I have noticed that the people who never joke are gifted with a childish and insupportable vanity."
Nevertheless, there are high and noble natures that never laugh, and are incapable of understanding the pleasures of gayety. But minds like these have some vacuum; they certainly lack what is called wit.
Lord Byron's gayety, full of dazzling wit and varied tints, like his other faculties, never went beyond the limits befitting its exercise in a beautiful soul. As much as the truly ridiculous, that which a great writer has defined, "the strength, small or great, of a free being, out of proportion with its end,"--as much, I say, as the truly ridiculous attracted and amused him, just as much did grave, moral, and physical disorders, produced by corruption of body or soul, sadden and repel his nature, so full of harmony. He could never laugh at these latter. The grave disorders of soul that exist in free beings, and that are therefore voluntary, raised sadness, anger, or indignation in him, according to the degree of vice or disorder. We need seek no other origin for his bitterest satires in verse and prose. Great ugliness and physical defects certainly inspired him with great disgust, consequent upon his passion for the beautiful; but, at the same time, involuntary misfortunes excited his liveliest compassion, often testified by the most generous deeds.
We know, for instance, that Lord Byron had a defect in one of his feet, but a defect so slight--although it has been greatly exaggerated--that people have never been able to say in which of the two feet it did exist. Nor did it in any way diminish the grace and activity all his movements displayed. If its existence were painful for him, that must have been because his sense of harmony looked upon this defect as detrimental to the perfection of his physical beauty. But whatever may have been the cause of this sensibility, it sufficed in any case to make him feel a generous compassion for all those afflicted with any defect analogous to his own. Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, says:--
"Contrary to what we observe in most people, Lord Byron, who was always very sensitive to the sufferings of others, showed greatest sympathy for those who had any imperfection akin to his own." At Ravenna, his favorite beggar limped. And on him Lord Byron bestowed the privilege of picking up all the largest coins struck down by his dexterous pistol-shots in the forest of pines. We have said he never laughed at any involuntary defect, not even at a person falling (as is so often the case), for fear it might have been caused by bodily weakness, neither did he ridicule any of the weaknesses or shortcomings of intelligence.
He did not laugh at a bad poet on account of his bad verses. When he was at Pisa, an Irishman there was engaged in translating the "Divine Comedy." The translation was very heavy and faulty; but the translator was most enthusiastic about the great poet, and absolutely lived on the hope of getting his work published. All the English at Pisa, including the kind Shelley, were turning him into ridicule. Lord Byron alone would not join in the laugh. T----'s sincerity won for him grace and compassion. Indeed Lord Byron did still more; for he wrote and entreated Murray to publish the work, so as to give the poor poet this consolation. Not content with that step, he wrote to Moore to beg Jeffrey not to criticise him, undertaking himself to ask Gifford the same thing, through Murray. "Perhaps they might speak of the commentaries without touching on the text," said he; and then he added with his usual pleasantry, "However, we must not trust to it. Those dogs! the text is too tempting."[152]
Nor did he laugh at exaggerated devotion, even if it were extravagant or superstitious, provided he thought it sincere. Countess G----, paternal aunt of Countess G----, the greatest beauty of Romagna in 1800, had fallen into such extreme mystical devotion, through the brutal jealousy of her husband, that she died in the odor of sanctity. This lady wrote to her brother, Count G----, at Genoa, saying how happy she was, and giving no end of praise to "the good Jesuit Fathers," and speaking of her devotion to St. Teresa. Madame G----, having sent one of these letters to Lord Byron, he answered: "I consider all that as very respectable, and, moreover, enviable. The aunt is right; I wish I could love the good fathers and St. Teresa. After all, what does this devotee of St. Teresa, this friend of the good Jesuit Fathers, want? Happiness; and she has found it! What else are we seeking for?"
We have already seen elsewhere[153] that Lord Byron never, at any period of his life, laughed at religion or its sincere votaries, whatever might be their creed of belief. Provided their errors came from the heart, they commanded his respect. Dallas himself, in reference to the skeptical stanzas of his twenty-second year, can not help rendering him justice.
"I have not noticed," says he, "a spirit of mockery in you; and you have the little-known art of not wishing that others should be of your opinion in matters of religious belief. I am less disinterested; I have the greatest desire, nay, even a great hope, to see you some day believe as I do." We have seen, also, what Kennedy said of him in Greece[154]. Dr. Millingen bears the same testimony:--
"During the whole of the time that I visited him, I never heard him utter a single word of contempt for the Christian religion. On the contrary, he used often to say, that nothing could be more reprehensible than to turn into ridicule those who believed in it, since in this strange world it is equally difficult to arrive at knowing what one is or is not to believe; and since many freethinkers teach doctrines which are as much beyond the reach of human comprehension as the mysteries of the revelation itself."
When, by habit of looking at serious things from their absurd and ridiculous side, he feared he had done the same with regard to some religious ceremony, he at once hastened to explain himself. Thus he writes to Moore from Pisa:--
"I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you believe me in this, I do not know."
But much as he respected sincere religious feelings, equally did he detest that hypocrisy which despises in secret the idol it adores in public. Even at the transition period of what has been called his skepticism, it was extremely distasteful to him to speak against religion, to despise and mock even the hollow worship practiced outwardly from human motives and personal interest. In Livadia at this time he met with a Greek bishop, whose actions were quite at variance with his language. How great the antipathy Lord Byron conceived for him, may be seen by the notes appended to the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." For the Pharisees of our days he felt all the anger due to whited sepulchres. No, certainly, it was not true virtue in general, nor any one virtue in particular, that he laughed at sometimes; nor was it friendship, or love, or religion, or any truly respectable sentiment that ever excited his mirth. He only ridiculed semblances, vain appearances, when those who paraded them did so from personal interest. Lord Byron knew too well, by experience, that many virtues admired and set forth as such do but wear a mask in reality; and he thought it useful for society to divest them of it, and show the hidden visage. Why should he have shown any consideration for the virtue that patronizes charity-balls, in order to acquire the right of violating, with impunity, the duties of a Christian wife? or that other female virtue which weighs itself in the balance with the privilege of directing Almacks? or that, wishing to unite the advantages of modesty with the gratification of passion? In short, why should he have shown consideration for persons whose merit consists in never allowing themselves to be seen as they are? He was very disrespectful, likewise, toward certain friendships that he knew by experience to be full of wordy counsel, but finding nothing to say in the way of consolation or defense. This peculiar variety of friendship had made him suffer greatly. In his serious poems he calls it "the loss of his illusions;" and expresses himself with misanthropical indignation, or with a bleeding heart. But, returning to a milder philosophy, he ended by smiling and jesting at it, in words like these:--
"Look'd grave and pale to see her friend's fragility, For which most friends reserve their sensibility."
Seriously; was he bound to any great tenderness toward such friendship as that? And does it not suffice to set Lord Byron right with true friendship to hear him say, after having laughed about false friends:--
"But this is not my maxim: had it been, Some heart-aches had been spared me: yet I care not-- I would not be a tortoise in his screen Of stubborn shell, which waves and weather wear not. 'Tis better, on the whole, to have felt and seen That which humanity may bear, or bear not: Twill teach discernment to the sensitive, And not to pour their ocean in a sieve."[155]
Friendship was so necessary to him that he wrote to Moore, on the eve of his marriage, 15th of October, 1814:
"An' there were any thing in marriage that would make a difference between my friends and me, particularly in your case, I would none on't."
People should read all he said of Lord Clare and Moore, and see with what almost jealous susceptibility he guarded the title of friend,[156] before they can understand the value he attached to true friendship. But among many of the privileges he conceded to friendship, duties also held their place.
And if we pass from friendship to love, could he really bestow such respect on the loves of a Lady Adeline, or of those who, he said, "embrace you to-day, thinking of the novel they will write to-morrow." His ideal of true love has been noticed; and he became impatient when he saw it confounded with any thing else. At twenty-two years of age he wrote to his young friend, the Rev. Mr. Harness:--
"I told you the fate of B---- and H---- in my last. So much for these sentimentalists, who console themselves in their stews for the loss--the never-to-be-recovered loss--the despair of the refined attachment of a couple of drabs! You censure my life, Harness: when I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence--a walking statue--without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general hath given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love--romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!"
Yes, Lord Byron never did respect the love that can be bartered for dollars. And afterward, when irritation had given way to a milder and more tolerant philosophy, he took the liberty of laughing at it, both in prose and verse. It may however, be urged against him, that he sometimes turned into ridicule even his deepest sentiments; and Moore remarks this as a defeat, apropos of the jesting tone he assumed once at Bologna, when writing to Hoppner. But Moore forgets to say, that while his heart called him to Ravenna, he was speaking against the counsels given by Hoppner, who, in order to deter him from this visit, for reasons previously cited,[157] had made the darkest prognostications regarding its consequence; and though he could not shake Lord Byron's determination, it is very probable that he may have upset his imagination. Thus he was trying to show himself ready for every thing. Such pleasantries are like the song of one who is alarmed in the dark. Moreover, from his manner of judging human nature, and his lively sense of the ridiculous, Lord Byron was well aware that a light tone is alone admissible for speaking to others of a love they do not share, and more especially when they disapprove of it. He felt that the gayety of Ovid and the gallantry of Horace are better suited to indifferent people than Petrarch's high-flown phrases and sentimentalities, or Werther's despair. It was through this same nice perception of the sentiments entertained by indifferent individuals that he sometimes adopted a light, playful tone in conversation, or in his correspondence, when speaking of friendship, devoted feelings of any kind, and a host of sentiments very serious and deep within his own heart, but which he believed less calculated to interest others. And if sometimes his singular penetration of the human heart called forth mockery, it sprang more frequently from seeing fine sentiments put forth in flagrant contradiction with conduct, or morality looked upon as a mere thing of outward decorum, speedily to be set aside, if once the actors were removed from the eyes of the world. He would not grant his esteem to fine sentiments expressed by writers who could be bribed; to the promises of heroes who noisily enroll combatants, while themselves remaining safe by their fireside; or to the generosity that displays itself from a balcony. And, assuredly, he had a right to be particular in his estimate of this latter virtue, which he himself always practiced secretly, and in the shade. He would not consent to its being bartered, nor that people should have the honor of it without any sacrifice on their part. Thus he replied to Moore, who was in an ecstasy about the generosity of Lord some one:--"I shall believe all that when you prove to me that there is no advantage in openly helping a man like you." With wonderful, and, I might almost say, supernatural perspicacity, Lord Byron penetrated into the arcana of souls, and did not come out thence with a very good opinion of what he had seen. But, kind as he was, he did not like to probe too deeply the motives of others, especially as a rule of action for himself. As he says in his admirable satire of "Don Juan,"--
"'Tis sad to burrow deep to roots of things, So much are they besmeared with earth."
Lastly, his mockeries were all directed against the vice he most abhorred--hypocrisy; for he looked upon that as a gangrene to the soul, the cause of most of the evils that afflict society, and certainly of all his own misfortunes. As long as he was obliged to bear it, under the depressing influence of England's misty atmosphere, he felt by turns saddened and indignant. But when he reached Italy, his soul caught the bright rays that emanate from a southern sky, and he preferred to combat hypocrisy with the lighter weapons of pleasantry. But whichsoever arm he wielded, he always pursued the enemy remorselessly, following into every fastness, of which none knew better than himself each winding and each resource. For hypocrisy had been the bane of his life; it had rendered useless for happiness that combination he possessed of Heaven's choicest gifts; the plenitude of affections, numberless qualities most charming in domestic life, for he had been exiled from the family circle. Hypocrisy had forced him to despise a country also that could act toward him like an unnatural parent, rather than a true mother, wounding him with calumnies, and obstinately depreciating him, solely because she allowed hypocrisy to reign on her soil. Such, then, were the virtues which he permitted himself to mock at.
"We must not make out a ridicule where none exists," says La Bruyere; but it is well to see that which has a being, and to draw it forth gracefully, in a manner that may both please and instruct.
As to true, holy, pure, undeniable virtues, no one more than he admired and respected them. "Any trait of virtue or courage," says one of his biographers, "caused him deep emotion, and would draw tears from his eyes, provided always he were convinced that it had not been actuated by a desire of shining or producing effect."
"A generous action," says another, "the remembrance of patriotism, personal sacrifice, disinterestedness, would cause in him the most sublime emotions, the most brilliant thoughts." The more his opinion as to the rarity of virtue appeared to him well-founded, the more did he render homage when he met with it. The more he felt the difficulty of overcoming passions, the more did a victory gained over them excite his admiration.
"Pray make my respects to Mrs. Hoppner, and assure her of my unalterable reverence for the singular goodness of her disposition, which is not without its reward even in this world. For those who are no great believers in human virtues would discover enough in her to give them a better opinion of their fellow-creatures, and--what is still more difficult--of themselves, as being of the same species, however inferior in approaching its nobler models."
At Coppet he was more touched by the conjugal affection of the young Duchesse de Broglie for her husband, than he was attracted by the genius even of her mother, Madame de Stael. "Nothing," says he in his memoranda, "was more agreeable than to see the manifestation of domestic tenderness in this young woman." When he received at Pisa the posthumous message sent by a beautiful, angelic young creature, who had caught a glimpse of him but once, and who, nevertheless, in the solemn hours of her agony, thought of him, and prayed to God for him, it made a deep impression on his mind.
"In the evening," says Madame G----, "he spoke to me at great length of this piety and touching virtue."
Mr. Stendhall, who knew him during his stay at Milan in 1816, says:--"I passed almost all my evenings with Lord B. Whenever this singular man was excited and spoke with enthusiasm, his sentiments were noble, great, and generous; in short, worthy of his genius."
And then when Mr. Stendhall speaks of walking alone with him in the large green-room at La Scala, he adds:--
"Lord Byron made his appearance for half an hour every evening, holding the most delightful conversation it was ever my good-fortune to hear. A volume of new ideas and generous sentiments came pouring out in such novel form, that one fancied one's self enjoying them for the first time. The rest of the evening the great man lapsed into the English noble."
Even biographers most hostile to Lord Byron render justice to his sensibility and respect for real virtue, for all that is true and estimable. And if we seek proofs of the same in his poems and correspondence, we shall find it at every page, not excepting "Don Juan,"--the satire that most exposed him to the anger and calumny of cant. This is why I shall confine myself to borrowing quotations from this poem. For instance, in speaking of military glory, he says:--
"The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.
"And why?--because it brings self-approbation; Whereas the other, after all its glare, Shouts, bridges, arches, pensions from a nation, * * * * * * * Are nothing but a child of Murder's rattles."[158]
And then again:--
"One life saved ... ... is a thing to recollect Far sweeter than the greenest laurels sprung From the manure of human clay, though deck'd With all the praises ever said or sung; Though hymn'd by every harp, unless within Your heart join chorus, Fame is but a din."[159]
When he speaks of Souvaroff, who, with a hand still reeking from the massacre of 40,000 combatants, began his dispatch to the Autocrat in these words:--
"Glory to God and to the Empress [Catharine]! Ismail's ours!"
Lord Byron exclaims:--
"Powers Eternal! such names mingled!
"Methinks these are the most tremendous words Since 'Mene, Mene, Tekel,' and 'Upharsin,' Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords. Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson: What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord's, Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on The fate of nations;--but this Russ so witty Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er a burning city.
"He wrote this Polar melody, and set it, Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans, Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it-- For I will teach, if possible, the stones To rise against earth's tyrant's."[160]
And then when he speaks of truly virtuous men--the Washingtons and Franklins--those who preferred a quiet, retired life; so as better to walk in the paths of justice and goodness, like the ancient heroes of Sparta, one feels that his words come really from the heart. But if I wished to make extracts of all the proofs contained in his works, of respect and enthusiasm for true virtue, a volume of quotations would be requisite. Thus I have only chosen some at hazard, selecting them principally from that admirable satire of "Don Juan," which combines more deep philosophy and true morality than is to be found in the works of many moralists; and I may likewise say more wit, and knowledge of the human heart, more kindness and indulgence, than ever before were united in a volume of verse or prose, and more, perhaps, than ever will be. Yet, despite of all this, the independence, boldness, and above all, the true state of things revealed in "Don Juan," excited great anger throughout the political, religious, and moral world of England; indeed, passion went so far in distorting, that the tendency and moral bearing of the poem were quite misunderstood. With regard to France, where this satire is only known through a prose translation, which mars half its cleverness, "Don Juan" serves, however, the purpose of an inexhaustible reservoir, whence writers unwittingly draw much they deem their own. Besides, from analogy of race, he is, perhaps, better appreciated in France than in his own country; for few English do understand what true justice he rendered himself when he said,--that, in point of fact, his character was far too lenient, the greatest proof of his muse's discontent being a smile.
But if, despite all this evidence, people should still persist, as is very possible, in asserting that Lord Byron ridiculed, satirized, and denied the existence of real virtues, at least we would ask to have these virtues named, so as to be able to answer. What are the virtues so insulted? Is it truth, piety, generosity, firmness, abnegation, devotedness, independence, patriotism, humanity, heroism? But if he denied not one of these, if he only ridiculed and satirized their semblances, their hypocritical shadows, then let critics and envious minds--the ignorant, or the would-be ignorant--let them cease, in the name of justice, thus to offer lying insult to a great spirit no longer able to defend himself.
Perhaps he did not render sufficient homage to that great and respectable virtue of his country--conjugal fidelity; but he has told us why. It appeared to him that this virtue, supposed to stamp society, was, in truth, more a pretense than a reality among the higher classes in England; and, if he examined his own heart, this virtue wore a name for him that had been the martyrdom of his whole life.
I may say, farther, that when he saw a truth shining at the expense of some hypocrisy, he did not shut it up in his casket of precious things, to carry them with him to the grave, nor did he only name them in a low voice to his secretaries, because by speaking aloud he might have done some harm to himself (as, however, the great Goethe did and acknowledged). Lord Byron, without thinking of the consequences that might ensue to himself, deemed, on the contrary, that truth ought to be courageously unveiled: and to the heroism of deeds he added the heroism of words.
It must not be forgotten, either, that there existed a certain kind of timidity among the other elements of his character, and that jesting often helps to season a tiresome conversation, rendering it less difficult, besides enabling us to hide our real sentiments.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 149: Galt, p. 218.]
[Footnote 150: Kennedy, p. 301.]
[Footnote 151: See Galt, with regard to Hunt.]
[Footnote 152: Moore, Letter 468.]
[Footnote 153: See chapter on "Religion."]
[Footnote 154: Ibid.]
[Footnote 155: "Don Juan," canto xiv.]
[Footnote 156: See Lord Byron's letter to Mrs. Shelley.]
[Footnote 157: See his "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 158: "Don Juan," canto viii.]
[Footnote 159: "Don Juan," canto ix.]
[Footnote 160: Ibid. canto viii.]