The life of Lord Nelson

Front matter

from

the estate of

J. Stuart Fleming

Preface

recollection ofhaving known a person so celebrated, and I believe myself incapable of intentional injustice. I can only regret the impression he made upon me, if it shall be thought I have spoken of him with prejudice.

It will be seen by a note, relative to a circumstance which took place in Lord Byron’s conduct towards the Countess Guiccioli, that Mr. Hobhouse has enabled me to give two versions of an affair not regarded by some of that lady’s relations as having been marked by generosity; but I could not expunge from the text what I had stated, having no reason to doubt the authenticity of ray information. The reader is enabled to form his own opinion on the subject.

I cannot conclude without offering my best acknowledgments to the learned and ingenius Mr. Nicolas, for the curious genealogical fact of a baton sinister being in the escutcheon of the Byrons of Newstead. Lord Byron, in his pride of birth, does not appear to have been aware of this stain.

N. B. Since this work was completed, a small pamphlet, judiciously suppressed, has been placed in my hands, dated from the 4 Chateau de Bionai,’ 20th August, 1825, in which Mr. Medwin vindicates the correctness of those statements in his conversations with Lord Byron, which Mr. Hobhouse had impugned in the Westminster Review. Had I seen it before expressing my opinion of Mr. Medwin’s publication, I am not sure it would have in any degree affected that opinion, which was formed without reference to the errors imputed by Mr. Hobhouse.

London, 12th August, 1830.

. THE liSFE OF BYR OMT.

Chapter I

Ancient Descent — Pedigree — Birth-Troubles of his Mother — Early Education — Accession to the Title.

The English branch of the family of Byron came in with William the Conqueror: and from that era they have continued to be reckoned among the eminent families of the kingdom, under the names of Huron and Biron, It was not until the reign of Henry II. that they began to call themselves Byron, or de Byron.

Although for upwards of seven hundred years distinguished for the extent of their possessions, it does not appear, that, before the time of Charles I., they ranked very highly among the herioc families of the kingdom.

Erneis and Ralph were the companions of the Conqueror; but antiquaries and genealogists have not determined in what relation they stood to each other. Erneis, who appears to have been the most considerable parsonage of the two, heid numerous manors in the counties of York and Lincoln. In the Doomsday Hook, Ralph, the direct ancestor of the poet, ranks high among the tenants of the crown, in Notts and Derbyshire ; in the hitter county he resided at Horestan Castle, from which he took his title. One of the lords of Horestan was a hostage for the payment of the ransom of Richard Cmur de Lion ; and in the time of Edward 1., the possessions ofhis descendants were augmented by the addition of the land of Rochdale, in Lancashire. On what account this new grant was given has not been ascertained ; nor is it of importance that it should be.

In the wars of the three Edwards, the de Byrons appeared with some distinction : and they were also noted in the time of Henry V.— - Sir John Byron joined Henry VII. on his landing at Milford, and fought gallantly at the battle of Boswortb, against Richard III.; for which he was afterward appointed Constable ol Nottingham Castle, and Warden of Sherwood Forest. At his death, in 1488, he was succeeded by Sir Nicholas, his brother, who, at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales Jin 1501, was made one of the Knights of the Bath.

tSir Nicholas died in 1550, leaving an only son, Sir John Byron, whom Henry VIII. made Steward of Manchester and Rochdale, and Lieutenant of the Forest of Shcnvood. It was to him that, on the dissolution of the monasteries, the church and priory of Nevvstead, in the county of Nottingham, together with the manor and rectory of P.tpeiwick, were granted. The abbey from that period became the family seat, and continued so till it was sold by the poet.

Sir John Byron left Nevvstead, and his other possessions, to John Byron, whom Collins and other writers have called his fourth, but who was in fart his illegitimate son. He was knighted by Queen

Elizabeth in 1570, and his eldest son, Sir Nicholas, served with distinction in the wars of the Netherlands. When the great rebellion broke out against Charles I., he vv*s one of the earliest who armed in his defence. After the battle of Edgehiil, where he courageously distinguished himself, he was made Governor of Chester, and gallantly defended that city against the Parliamentary army. Sir John Byron, the brother and heir of Sir Nicholas, was, at the coronation of James I., made a Knight of the Bath. By his marriag-e with Anne, the eldest daughter of Sir Richard Molyneux, he had eleven sons and a daughter. The eldest served under his uncle in the Netherlands; and, in the year 1641, was appointed by King Charles I., Governor of the Tower of London. In this situation he became obnoxious to the refractory spirits in the Parliament ; and was in consequence ordered by the Commons to answer at the bar of their House certain charges which the sectaries alleged against him. But he refused to leave his post without the kind’s command; and, upon this, the Commons applied to the Lords to join them in a petition to the King, to remove him. The peers rejected the proposition,

On the 84th October, 1643, Sir John Byron was created Lord Byron of Rochdale, in the county of Lancaster, with remainder of the title to his brothers, and their male issue, respectively. He was also made Field-marshal general of all his Majesty’s forces in Worcestershire, Cheshire, Shropshire, and North Wales ; nor were these trusts and honours unwon, for the Byrons, during the. civil war, were eminently distinguished. At the battle of Newbury, seven of the brothers were in the held, and all actively engaged.

Sir Richard, the second brother of the first lord, was knighted by Charles I. for his conduct at the battle of Edgehill, and appointed Governor of Appleby Castle, in Westmoreland, and afterward of Newark, which he defended with great honour. Sir Richard, on the death of his brother, in 1652, succeeded to the peerage, and died in 1670.

His eldest son, William, the third lord, married Elizabeth, the daughterof Viscount Chaworth, of Ireland, by whom he had five sons, four of whom died young. William, the fourth lord, his son, was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, and married, for his first wife, a daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater, who died eleven weeks after their nuptials. His second wife was a daughter of the Earl of Portland, by whom he had three sons, who all died before their father. Mis third wife was Frances, daughter of Lord Berkley, of Stratton, from whom the Poet is descended. Her eldest son, William, born in 1722, succeeded to the family honours on tho death of his father, in 1786. He entered the naval service, and become a lieutenant under Admiral Balchen. In the year 1763, he was made Master of the Stagbounds ; and, in 1765. ho was sent to the Tower, and tried before the House of Peers, for killing his relation and neighbour, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel fought at the Star and Garter Tavern, in Pall-Mall.

This Lord William was naturally boisterous and vindictive. It appeared in evidence that he insisted on fighting with Mr. Chaworth in the room where the quarrel commenced. They accordingly fought without seconds by the dim light of a single candle; and, although Mr. Chaworth was tho most skilful swordsman of the two, he received a mortal wound; but he lived long enough to disclo.se some particulars of

JLOKil BYK0X.

the rencounter, which induced the coroner’s jurynto return a virdict of wilful murder, and Lord Byron was tried for the crime.

The trial took place in WetminstGr Hall, and the public curiosity was so great, that thO Peers’ tickets of admission were publicly sold for six guineas each. It lasted two days, and at the conclusion, he was unanimously pronounced guilty of manslaughter. On being brought up for judgment he pleaded his privilege, and was discharged. It was to this lord that the Poet succeeded, for he died without leaving issue.

His brother, the grandfather of the Poet, was the celebrated “ Hardy Byron;” or, as the sailors called him, “ Foulweather Jack,” whose adventures and services are too well known to require any notice here. He married the daughter of John Trcvannion Esq., of Carbais, in the county of Cornwall, by whom he had two sons and three daughters.' — John, the eldest, and the father of the Poet, was born in 1751, educated at Westministier-school, and afterward placed in the Guards, where his conduct became so irregular and profligate that his father, the admiral, though a good-natured man, discarded him long* before his death. In 1778, he acquired extraordinary eclat by the seduction of the Marchioness of Carmarthen, under circumstances which have few parallels in the licentiousness of fashionable life. The meanness with which ho obliged his wretched victim to supply him with money, would have been disgraceful to the basest adulteries of the cellar or garret. A divorce ensued, the guilty parties married ; but, within two years after, such was the brutal and vicious conduct of Captain Byron, that the ill-fated lady died literally of a broken heart, after having given birth to two daughters, one of whom still survives.

Captain Byron then married Miss Catharine Gordon, of Gight, a lady of hanourable decsent, and of a respectable fortune for a Scottish heiress, the only motive which this Don Juan had in forming the connexion. She was the mother of the Poet.

Although the Byrons have for so many ages been among the eminent families of the realm, they have no claim to the distinction which the poet has set up for them as warriors in Palestine, even though he says —

Near Ascalon’s tower’s John of Horestan slumbers

for unless this refers to the Lord of Horestan, who was one of the hostages for the ransom of Richard I., it will not be easy to determine to whom he alludes ; and it is possible that the poet has no other authority for this legend, than the tradition which he found connected with two groups of heads on the old panels of Newstead. Yet the account of them is vague and conjectural, for it was not until ages after the crusades, that the Abbey came into the possession of the family ; and it is not possible that the figures referred to any transactions in Palestine, in which the Byrons were engaged, if they were put up by the Byrons at all. They were, probably, placed in their present situation while the building was in possession of the churchmen.

One of the groups, consisting of a female and two Saracens., with eyes earnestly fixed upon her, may have been the old favourite ecclesiastical

8'

story oi Susannah and the eiders ; the other, which represents a Saracen with a European female between him and a Christian soldier, is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory, descriptive of the. Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for the liberation of the Church. These sort of allegorical stories were common among monastic ornaments, and the famous legend of St. George and the Dragon is one of them.*

Into the domestic circumstances of Captain and Mrs. Byron, it would be impertinent to institute any particular investigation. They were exactly such as might be expected from the sins and follies of the most profligate libertine of the age.

The fortune of Mrs. Byron, consisting of various property, and amountinr* to about <£23,500, was all wasted in the space of two years ; at the end of which the unfortunate lady found herself in possession of only £150 per annum.

Their means being thus exhausted she accompanied her husband, in the summer of 1736, to France, from which she returned to England at the close of the year 1787, and on the 22d of January, 1788, gave birth, in Holles-street, London, to her first and only child, the poet. The name of Gordon was added to that of his family in compliance with a condition imposed by will on whoever should become the husband of the heiress of Gight. The late Duke of Gordon and Colonel Duff, of Fet- , teresso, were god-fathers to the child.

In the year 1790, Mrs. Byron took up her residence in Aberdeen, where she was soon after joined by Captain Byron, with whom she lived in lodgings in Q,ueen-street ; but their re-union was comfortless, and a separation soon took place. Still their rupture was not final, for they occasionally visited and drank tea with each other. The Captain also paid some attention to the boy, and had him, on one occasion, to stay with him for a night, when he proved so troublesome that he was sent home next day.

Byron himself has said, that he passed his boyhood at Marlodge, near Aberdeen; but the statement is not correct ; he visited, with his mother, occasionally among their friends, and among other places passed some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his god-father, Colonel Duff. In 1796, after an attack of the scarlet fever, he passed some time at Ballater, a summer residence for health and gayety, about forty miles up the Dee from Aberdeen. Although the circumstances of Mrs. Byron

* Gibbon says, that St. George was no other than the Bishop of Cappadocia, a personage of very unecclesiastical habits, and expresses some degree of surprise that such a person should ever have been sanctified in the ca!endar. But the whole story of this deliverer of the Princess of Egypt is an allegory of the sufferings of the church, which is typified as the daughter of Egypt, driven into the wilderness, and exposed to destruction by the dragon, the ancient emblem over all the East of imperial power. The Bishop of Cappadocia manfully withstood the attempts of the emperor, and ultimately succeeded in procuring an imperial recognition of the church in Egypt. — We have adverted to this merely to show the devices in which the legends of the church were sometimes embodied ; and the illuminated missals — even the massbooks in the early stages of printing — abundantly prove and illustrate the opinions expressed.

LOliD were at this period exceedingly straitened, she received a visit from her husband, the object of which was to extort more money ; and he was so far successful, that she contrived to borrow a sum, which enabled him to proceed to Valenciennes, where in the following year he died, greatly to her relief, and the gratification of all who were connected with him.

By her advances to Captain Byron, and the expences she incurred in furnishing the flat of the house she occupied after his death, Mrs. Byron fell into debt to the amount of £300, the interest on which reduced her income to £135 ; but, much to her credit she contrived to live without increasing her embarrassments, until the death of her grandmother, when she received £1122, a sum which had been set apart for the old gentlewoman’s jointure, and which enabled her to discharge her pecuniary obligations.

Notwithstanding the manner in which this unfortunate lady was treated by her husband, she always entertained for him a strong affection ; insomuch that, when the intelligence of his death arrived, her grief was loud and vehement She was indeed a woman of quick feelings and strong passions ; and probably it was by the strength and sincerity of her sensibility that she retained so long the affection of her son, towards whom it cannot be doubted that her love was unaffected, fn the midst of the neglect and penury to which she was herself subjected, she bestowed upon him all the care, the love, and watchfulness of the tendereat mother.

In his fifth year, on the 19th of November, 1792, she sent him to a day-school, where she paid about five shillings a quarter, the common rate of the respectable day-schools at that time in Scotland. It was kept by a Mr. Bowers, whom Byron has described as a dapper, spruce person, with whom he made no progress. How long he remained with with Mr. Eowers is not mentioned, but by the day-book of the school if was at least twelve months ; for on the I9th of November of the following year there is an entry of a guinea having been paid for him.

From this school he was removed and placed with a Mr. Ross, one of the ministers of the city churches, and to whom he formed some attachment, as he speaks of him with kindness, and describes him as a devout, clever little man of mild manners, goodnatured, and pains-taking. His third instructor was a serious, saturnine, kind young man, named Faterson, the son of a shoemaker, but a good scholar and a rigid Presbyterian. It is somewhat curious in the record which Byron has made of his early years, to observe the constant endeavour with which he, the descendant of such a limitless pedigree and great ancestors, attempts to magnify the condition of his mother’s circumstances.

Paterson attended him until he went to the grammar-school, where his character first began to be developed ; and his school-fellows, many of whom are alive, still recollect him as a lively, warm-hearted, and high-spirited boy, passionate and resentful, but withal affectionate and companionable ; this, however, is an opinion given him after he had become celebrated ; for a very different impression has unquestionably re-

THE LITE OF mined among some, who cany their recollections back to his childhood. By them he has been described as a malignant imp : was often spoken of for his pranks by the worthy housewives of the neighbourhood, as “ Mrs. Byron’s crockit deevil,” and generally disliked for the deep vindictive anger he retained against those with whom he happened^ to quarrel.

By the death of William, the fifth lord, he succeeded to the estates and titles in the year 1798 ; and in the autumn of that year, Mrs. Byron, with her sou and a faithful servant of the name of Mary Gray, left Aberdeen for Newstead. Previously to their departure, Mrs. Byron sold the furniture of her humble lodging, with the exception of her little plate and scanty linen, which she took with her, and the whole amount of the sale did not yield Seventy Pounds.

Chapter II

Moral Effects of Local Scenery ; a Peculiarity in Taste — Early Love — Impressions and Traditions.

Before I proceed to the regular narrative of the character and adventures of Lord Byron, it seems necessary to consider the probable effects of his residence, during his boyhood, in Scotland. It is generally agreed, that while a schoolboy in Aberdeen, he evinced a lively spirit, and sharpness enough to have equalled any of his schoolfellows, had he given sufficient application. In the few reminiscences preserved of his childhood, it is remarkable that he appears in this period, commonly of innocence and playfulness, rarely to have evinced any symptom of generous feeling. Silent rages, moody sullenness, and revenge are the general characteristics of his conduct as a boy.

He was, undoubtedly, delicately susceptible of impressions from the beauties of nature, for he retained recollections of the scenes which interested his childish wonder, fresh and glowing, to his latest days; nor have there been wanting plausible theories to ascribe the formation of his poetical character to the contemplation of those romantic scenes. But, whoever has attended to the influential causes of character, will reject such theories as shallow, and betraying great ignorance of human nature. Genius of every kind belongs to some innate temperament; it does not necessarily imply a particular bent, because that may possibly be the effect of circumstances : but, without question, the peculiar quality is inborn, and particular to the individual. All hear and see much alike ; but there is an undefinable though wide difference between the ear of the musician, or the eye of the painter, compared with the hearing and seeing organs of ordinary men ; and it is in something like that indifference in which genius consists. Genius is, however, an ingredient of mind more easily described by its effects than by its qual-

LUR1) BYRON.

II ities. It is as the fragrance, independent of the freshness and complexion of the rose ; as the light on the cloud ; as the bloom on the cheek of beauty, of which the possessor is unconscious until the charm has been seen by its influence on others ; it is the internal golden flame of the opal ; a something which may be abstracted from the thing in which it appears, -without changing the quality of its substance, its form, or its affinities. I am not, therefore, disposed to consider the idle and reck less childhood of Byron as unfavourable to the developernent of his gen! ius; but, on the contrary, inclined to think, that the indulgence of his mother, leaving him so much to the accidents of undisciplined impression, was calculated to cherish associations which rendered them, in the maturity of his powers, ingredients of spell that ruled his memory.

It is singular, and I am not aware it has been before noticed, that with all his tender and impassioned apostrophes to beauty and love, Byron has in no instance, not even in the freest passages of Don Juan, associated either the one or the other with sensual images. The extravagance of Shakspeare’s Juliet, when she speaks of Romeo being cut after bis death into stars, that all the world may be in love with night, is flame and ecstacy compared to the icy metaphysical glitter of Byron’s amorous allusions. The verses beginning with

She walks in beauty like the light

Of eastern climes and starry skies,

is a perfect example of what I have conceived of his bodiless admiration of beauty, and objectless enthusiasm of love. The sentiment itself is unquestionably in the highest mood of the intellectual sense of beauty; the simile is, however, any thing but such an image as the beauty of woman would suggest. It is only the remembrance of some impression or imagination of the loveliness of a twilight applied to an object that awakened the same abstract general idea of beauty. The fancy which could conceive in its passion the charms of a female to be like the glow of the evening, or the general effect of the midnight stars, must have been enamoured of some beautiful abstraction, rather than aught offlesh and blood. Poets and lovers have compared the complexion of their mistresses to the hues of the morning or of the evening, and their eyes to the dew-drops and the stars ; but it has no place in the feelings of man to think of female charms in the sense of admiration which the beauties of the morning or the evening awaken. It is to make the simile the principal. Perhaps, however, it may be as well to defer the criticism to which this peculiar characteristic of Byron’s amatory effusions give rise, until we shall come to estimate his general powers as a poet. There is upon the subject of love, no doubt, much beautiful composition throughout his works ; but not one line in all the thousands which shows a sexual feeling of female attraction — all is vague and passionless, save in the delicious rhythm of the verse.

But these remarks, though premature as criticisms, are not uncalled for here, even while we are speaking of a child not more than ten years old. Before Byron had attained that age, he describes himself as ha-

THE LIFE 01 ving felt the passion. Dante is said as early as nine years old to have fallen in love with Beatrice ; Alfieri, who was himself precocious in the passion, considered such early sensibility to be an unerring sign of a sou! fbrmed for the fine arts ; and Canova UsOd to say that he was in love when but five yearfe old. But these instances* however, prove nothing. Calf-love, as it is called in the pountfy, is common ; and in Italy it may arise earlier than in the bleak and barren regions of Lochynagaf. This movement of juvenile sentiment is not* however* love — that strong masculine avidity, which, in its highest excitement, is unrestrained by the laws alike of God and man. In truth, the feeling of this kind of love is the very reverse of the irrepressible passion : it is a mean, shrinking, stealthy awe, and in no one of its symptoms, at least in none of those which Byron describes, has it the slightest resemblance to that bold energy which has prompted mbn to undertake the most improbable adventures.

lie was not quite eight years old when, according to his own account* he Formed an impassioned attachment to Mary Duff; and he gives the following account of his recollection of her, nineteen years afterward.

44 I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word and the effect ! ' My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour, and at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 4 O Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to Mr. C*#**.’ And what was my answer ? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment, but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that after I grew bettei* she generally avoided the subject — to me — and contented herself With telling it to all her acquaintance.” But was this agitation the effect of natural feeling, or of something in the manner in which his mother may have told the news? He proceeds to inquire. 44 Now what could this be ? I had never seen her since her mother’s faux pas at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grand-mother’s at Banff. We were both the merest children. I had* and have been, attached fifty times since that period ; yet t recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness* sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother’s maid to write for me to her, which she at last did to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remembertoo our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children’s apartment, at their house, not far from the Plainstones, at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister, Helen* played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love in our own way.

“ How the deuse did all this occur so early ? Where could it originate ? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterward, and yet my misery, my love for that girl, were so violent, that I sometimes doubt, if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage, several years afterwards, was a thunderstroke. It nearly

L0RD BYROX'

W

choked me, to the horror of my mother, and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body ; and it is a phenomenon in my existence, for I was not eight years old, which has puzzled and will puzzle me ttf the latest hour of it. And lately, 1 know not why, the recollection {riot the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever : I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me, or remember pitying her sister Helen, for not having an admirer too. How very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory. Her brown dark hair and hazel eyes, her very dress — I should be quite grihved to see her now. The reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least confuse, the features of the lovely Peri, which then existed in her, and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than sixteen years ”

Such precocious and sympathetic affections are as I have already mentioned, common among children, and is something very different from the love of riper years : but the extract is curious, and shows how truly little and vague Byron’s experience of the passion must have beem In his recollection of the girl, be it observed, there is no circumstance noticed which shows* however strong the mutual sympathy, the slightest influence of particular attraction. He recollects the colour of her hair, the hue of her eyes, her very dress, and he remembers her as a Peri, a spirit ; nor does it appear that his sleepless restlessness, in which the thought of her was ever uppermost, was produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fear, or any other concomitant of the passion.

There h another most important circumstance in what may be called ilie Aberdonian epoch of Lord Byron’s life.

That Byron, in his boyhood, was possessed of lively sensibilities, is sufficiently clear ; that he enjoyed the advantage of indulging his humour and temper without restraint, is not disputable , and that his natural temperament, made him sensible, in no ordinary degree, to the beatties of nature, is also abundantly manifest in all his productions ; but it is surprising that this admiration of the beauties of nature is but an ingredient in Byron’s poetry, and not its most remarkable characteristic. Deep feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment are far more obvious; they constitute, indeed, the very spirit of his works, and a spirit of such qualities is the least of all likely to have arisen from the contemplation of magnificent nature, or to have been inspired by studying her storms or serenity ; for dissatisfaction and disappointment are the offspring of moral experience, and have no natural association with the forms of external things. The habit of associating morose sentiments with any particular kind of scenery only shows that the sources of the sullenness arose in similar visible circumstances. It is from these premises I would infer, that the seeds of Byron’s misanthropic tendencies were implanted during the “silent rages” of his childhood, and that the effect of mountain scenery, which continued so strong upon him after he left Scotland, producing the sentiments which he has imbued his heroes in the wild circumstances in which he places them, was mere reminiscence and association. For although the sullen tone of his mind was not fully brought out until he wrote Childe Harold, it is yet evident from his