Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) by Thomas Moore

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5.

"Let the young and the brilliant aspire
To sing what I gaze on in vain;
For sorrow has torn from my lyre
The string which was worthy the strain.

"B."

The following letters written during the stay of this party at Genoa
will be found,--some of them at least,--not a little curious.

LETTER 512. TO THE EARL OF B----.

"April 5. 1823.

"My dear Lord,

"How is your gout? or rather, how are you? I return the Count ----'s
Journal, which is a very extraordinary production[1], and of a most
melancholy truth in all that regards high life in England. I know, or
knew personally, most of the personages and societies which he
describes; and after reading his remarks, have the sensation fresh
upon me as if I had seen them yesterday. I would however plead in
behalf of some few exceptions, which I will mention by and by. The
most singular thing is, _how_ he should have penetrated _not_ the
_fact_, but the _mystery_ of the English ennui, at two-and-twenty. I
was about the same age when I made the same discovery, in almost
precisely the same circles,--(for there is scarcely a person
mentioned whom I did not see nightly or daily, and was acquainted
more or less intimately with most of them,)--but I never could have
described it so well. _Il faut etre Francais_, to effect this.

[Footnote 1: In another letter to Lord B---- he says of this
gentleman, "he seems to have all the qualities requisite to have
figured in his brother-in-law's ancestor's Memoirs."]

"But he ought also to have been in the country during the hunting
season, with 'a select party of distinguished guests,' as the papers
term it. He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the
hunting days), and the soiree ensuing thereupon,--and the women
looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could
have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect
at Lord C----'s--small, but select, and composed of the most amusing
people. The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I
counted _five asleep_; of that five, there were _Tierney_, Lord ----,
and Lord ---- --I forget the other two, but they were either wits or
orators--perhaps poets.

"My residence in the East and in Italy has made me somewhat indulgent
of the siesta;--but then they set regularly about it in warm
countries, and perform it in solitude (or at most in a tete-a-tete
with a proper companion), and retire quietly to their rooms to get
out of the sun's way for an hour or two.

"Altogether, your friend's Journal is a very formidable production.
Alas! our dearly beloved countrymen have only discovered that they
are tired, and not that they are tiresome; and I suspect that the
communication of the latter unpleasant verity will not be better
received than truths usually are. I have read the whole with great
attention and instruction. I am too good a patriot to say
_pleasure_--at least I won't say so, whatever I may think. I showed
it (I hope no breach of confidence) to a young Italian lady of rank,
_tres instruite_ also; and who passes, or passed, for being one of
the three most celebrated belles in the district of Italy, where her
family and connections resided in less troublesome times as to
politics, (which is not Genoa, by the way,) and she was delighted
with it, and says that she has derived a better notion of English
society from it than from all Madame de Stael's metaphysical
disputations on the same subject, in her work on the Revolution. I
beg that you will thank the young philosopher, and make my
compliments to Lady B. and her sister.

"Believe me your very obliged and faithful

"N. B.

"P.S. There is a rumour in letters of some disturbance or complot in
the French Pyrenean army--generals suspected or dismissed, and
ministers of war travelling to see what's the matter. 'Marry (as
David says), this hath an angry favour.'

"Tell Count ---- that some of the names are not quite intelligible,
especially of the clubs; he speaks of _Watts_--perhaps he is right,
but in my time _Watiers_ was the Dandy Club, of which (though no
dandy) I was a member, at the time too of its greatest glory, when
Brummell and Mildmay, Alvanley and Pierrepoint, gave the Dandy Balls;
and we (the club, that is,) got up the famous masquerade at
Burlington House and Garden, for Wellington. He does not speak of the
_Alfred_, which was the most _recherche_ and most tiresome of any, as
I know by being a member of that too."

LETTER 513. TO THE EARL OF B----.

"April 6. 1823.

"It _would_ be worse than idle, knowing, as I do, the utter
worthlessness of words on such occasions, in me to attempt to express
what I ought to feel, and do feel for the loss you have sustained[1];
and I must thus dismiss the subject, for I dare not trust myself
further with it _for your_ sake, or for my own. I shall _endeavour_
to see you as soon as it may not appear intrusive. Pray excuse the
levity of my yesterday's scrawl--I little thought under what
circumstances it would find you.

[Footnote 1: The death of Lord B----'s son, which had been long
expected, but of which the account had just then arrived.]

"I have received a very handsome and flattering note from Count ----.
He must excuse my apparent rudeness and real ignorance in replying to
it in English, through the medium of your kind interpretation. I
would not on any account deprive him of a production, of which I
really think more than I have even _said_, though you are good enough
not to be dissatisfied even with that; but whenever it is completed,
it would give me the greatest pleasure to have a _copy_--but _how_ to
keep it secret? literary secrets are like others. By changing the
names, or at least omitting several, and altering the circumstances
indicative of the writer's real station or situation, the author
would render it a most amusing publication. His countrymen have not
been treated, either in a literary or personal point of view, with
such deference in English recent works, as to lay him under any very
great national obligation of forbearance; and really the remarks are
so true and piquante, that I cannot bring myself to wish their
suppression; though, as Dangle says, 'He is _my_ friend,' many of
these personages 'were _my friends_, but much such friends as Dangle
and his allies.

"I return you Dr. Parr's letter--I have met him at Payne Knight's and
elsewhere, and he did me the honour once to be a patron of mine,
although a great friend of the other branch of the House of Atreus,
and the Greek teacher (I believe) of my _moral_ Clytemnestra--I say
_moral_, because it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that
it enables them to do any thing without the aid of an AEgisthus.

"I beg my compliments to Lady B., Miss P., and to your _Alfred_. I
think, since his Majesty of the same name, there has not been such a
learned surveyor of our Saxon society.

"Ever yours most truly, N. B."

"April 9. 1823.

"P.S. I salute Miledi, Mademoiselle Mama, and the illustrious
Chevalier Count ----; who, I hope, will continue his history of 'his
own times.' There are some strange coincidences between a part of his
remarks and a certain work of mine, now in MS. in England, (I do not
mean the hermetically sealed Memoirs, but a continuation of certain
Cantos of a certain poem,) especially in _what_ a _man_ may do in
London with impunity while he is 'a la mode;' which I think it well
to state, that he may not suspect me of taking advantage of his
confidence. The observations are very general."

LETTER 514. TO THE EARL OF B----.

"April 14. 1823.

"I am truly sorry that I cannot accompany you in your ride this
morning, owing to a violent pain in my face, arising from a wart to
which I by medical advice applied a caustic. Whether I put too much,
I do not know, but the consequence is, that not only I have been put
to some pain, but the peccant part and its immediate environ are as
black as if the printer's devil had marked me for an author. As I do
not wish to frighten your horses, or their riders, I shall postpone
waiting upon you until six o'clock, when I hope to have subsided into
a more christian-like resemblance to my fellow-creatures. My
infliction has partially extended even to my fingers; for on trying
to get the black from off my upper lip at least, I have only
transfused a portion thereof to my right hand, and neither
lemon-juice nor eau de Cologne, nor any other eau, have been able as
yet to redeem it also from a more inky appearance than is either
proper or pleasant. But 'out, damn'd spot'--you may have perceived
something of the kind yesterday, for on my return, I saw that during
my visit it had increased, was increasing, and ought to be
diminished; and I could not help laughing at the figure I must have
cut before you. At any rate, I shall be with you at six, with the
advantage of twilight.

Ever most truly, &c.

"Eleven o'clock.

"P.S. I wrote the above at three this morning. I regret to say that
the whole of the skin of about an _inch_ square above my upper lip
has come off, so that I cannot even shave or masticate, and I am
equally unfit to appear at your table, and to partake of its
hospitality. Will you therefore pardon me, and not mistake this
rueful excuse for a '_make-believe_,' as you will soon recognise
whenever I have the pleasure of meeting you again, and I will call
the moment I am, in the nursery phrase, 'fit to be seen.' Tell Lady
B. with my compliments, that I am rummaging my papers for a MS.
worthy of her acceptation. I have just seen the younger Count Gamba,
and as I cannot prevail on his infinite modesty to take the field
without me, I must take this piece of diffidence on myself also, and
beg your indulgence for both."

LETTER 515. TO THE COUNT ----.

"April 22. 1823.

"My dear Count ---- (if you will permit me to address you so
familiarly), you should be content with writing in your own language,
like Grammont, and succeeding in London as nobody has succeeded since
the days of Charles the Second and the records of Antonio Hamilton,
without deviating into our barbarous language,--which you understand
and write, however, much better than it deserves.

"My 'approbation,' as you are pleased to term it, was very sincere,
but perhaps not very impartial; for, though I love my country, I do
not love my countrymen--at least, such as they now are. And, besides
the seduction of talent and wit in your work, I fear that to me there
was the attraction of vengeance. I have _seen_ and _felt_ much of
what you have described so well. I have known the persons, and the
re-unions so described,--(many of them, that is to say,) and the
portraits are so like that I cannot but admire the painter no less
than his performance.

"But I am sorry for you; for if you are so well acquainted with life
at your age, what will become of you when the illusion is still more
dissipated? But never mind--_en avant!_--live while you can; and that
you may have the full enjoyment of the many advantages of youth,
talent, and figure, which you possess, is the wish of
an--Englishman,--I suppose, but it is no treason; for my mother was
Scotch, and my name and my family are both Norman; and as for myself,
I am of no country. As for my 'Works,' which you are pleased to
mention, let them go to the Devil, from whence (if you believe many
persons) they came.

"I have the honour to be your obliged," &c. &c.

During this period a circumstance occurred which shows, most
favourably for the better tendencies of his nature, how much allayed
and softened down his once angry feeling, upon the subject of his
matrimonial differences, had now grown. It has been seen that his
daughter Ada,--more especially since his late loss of the only tie of
blood which he could have a hope of attaching to himself,--had become
the fond and constant object of his thoughts; and it was but natural,
in a heart kindly as his was, that, dwelling thus with tenderness
upon the child, he should find himself insensibly subdued into a
gentler tone of feeling towards the mother. A gentleman, whose sister
was known to be the confidential friend of Lady Byron, happening at
this time to be at Genoa, and in the habit of visiting at the house
of the poet's new intimates, Lord Byron took one day an opportunity,
in conversing with Lady ----, to say, that she would render him an
essential kindness if, through the mediation of this gentleman and
his sister, she could procure for him from Lady Byron, what he had
long been most anxious to possess, a copy of her picture. It having
been represented to him, in the course of the same, or a similar
conversation, that Lady Byron was said by her friends to be in a
state of constant alarm lest he should come to England to claim his
daughter, or, in some other way, interfere with her, he professed his
readiness to give every assurance that might have the effect of
calming such apprehensions; and the following letter, in reference to
both these subjects, was soon after sent by him.

LETTER 516. TO THE COUNTESS OF B----.

"May 3. 1823.

"Dear Lady ----,

"My request would be for a copy of the miniature of Lady B. which I
have seen in possession of the late Lady Noel, as I have no picture,
or indeed memorial of any kind of Lady B., as all her letters were in
her own possession before I left England, and we have had no
correspondence since--at least on her part.

My message, with regard to the infant, is simply to this effect--that
in the event of any accident occurring to the mother, and my
remaining the survivor, it would be my wish to have her plans carried
into effect, both with regard to the education of the child, and the
person or persons under whose care Lady B. might be desirous that she
should be placed. It is not my intention to interfere with her in any
way on the subject during her life; and I presume that it would be
some consolation to her to know,(if she is in ill health, as I am
given to understand,) that in _no_ case would any thing be done, as
far as I am concerned, but in strict conformity with Lady B.'s own
wishes and intentions--left in what manner she thought proper.

"Believe me, dear Lady B., your obliged," &c.

This negotiation, of which I know not the results, nor whether,
indeed, it ever ended in any, led naturally and frequently to
conversations on the subject of his marriage,--a topic he was himself
always the first to turn to,--and the account which he then gave, as
well of the circumstances of the separation, as of his own entire
unconsciousness of the immediate causes that provoked it, was, I
find, exactly such as, upon every occasion when the subject presented
itself, he, with an air of sincerity in which it was impossible not
to confide, promulgated. "Of what really led to the separation (said
he, in the course of one of these conversations,) I declare to you
that, even at this moment, I am wholly ignorant; as Lady Byron would
never assign her motives, and has refused to answer my letters. I
have written to her repeatedly, and am still in the habit of doing
so. Some of these letters I have sent, and others I did not, simply
because I despaired of their doing any good. You may, however, see
some of them if you like;--they may serve to throw some light upon my
feelings."

In a day or two after, accordingly, one of these withheld letters was
sent by him, enclosed in the following, to Lady ----.

LETTER 517. TO THE COUNTESS OF ----.

"Albaro, May 6.1828.

My dear Lady ----,

I send you the letter which I had forgotten, and the book[1], which I
ought to have remembered. It contains (the book, I mean,) some
melancholy truths; though I believe that it is too triste a work ever
to have been popular. The first time I ever read it (not the edition
I send you,--for I got it since,) was at the desire of Madame de
Stael, who was supposed by the good-natured world to be the
heroine;--which she was not, however, and was furious at the
supposition. This occurred in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816, and
the last season in which I ever saw that celebrated person.

[Footnote 1: Adolphe, by M. Benjamin Constant.]

"I have a request to make to my friend Alfred (since he has not
disdained the title), viz. that he would condescend to add a _cap_ to
the gentleman in the jacket,--it would complete his costume,--and
smooth his brow, which is somewhat too inveterate a likeness of the
original, God help me!"

"I did well to avoid the water-party,--_why_, is a mystery, which is
not less to be wondered at than all my other mysteries. Tell Milor
that I am deep in his MS., and will do him justice by a diligent
perusal."

"The letter which I enclose I was prevented from sending by my
despair of its doing any good. 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."

"But I am going to be gloomy;--so 'to bed, to bed.' Good night,--or
rather morning. One of the reasons why I wish to avoid society is,
that I can never sleep after it, and the pleasanter it has been the
less I rest."

"Ever most truly," &c. &c.

I shall now produce the enclosure contained in the above; and there
are few, I should think, of my readers who will not agree with me in
pronouncing, that if the author of the following letter had not
_right_ on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings
which are found in general to accompany it.

LETTER 518. TO LADY BYRON.

(TO THE CARE OF THE HON. MRS. LEIGH, LONDON.)

Pisa, November 17. 1821.

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 thought 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 re-union as not impossible for more than a
year after the separation;--but then I gave up the hope entirely and
for ever. But this very impossibility of re-union 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
resentments. 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 the moralists say, that the most offending
are the least forgiving.

"Whether the offence 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."

It has been my plan, as must have been observed, wherever my
materials have furnished me with the means, to leave the subject of
my Memoir to relate his own story; and this object, during the two or
three years of his life just elapsed, I have been enabled by the rich
resources in my hands, with but few interruptions, to attain. Having
now, however, reached that point of his career from which a new start
was about to be taken by his excursive spirit, and a course, glorious
as it was brief and fatal, entered upon,--a moment of pause may be
permitted while we look back through the last few years, and for a
while dwell upon the spectacle, at once grand and painful, which his
life during that most unbridled period of his powers exhibited.

In a state of unceasing excitement, both of heart and brain,--for
ever warring with the world's will, yet living but in the world's
breath,--with a genius taking upon itself all shapes, from Jove down
to Scapin, and a disposition veering with equal facility to all
points of the moral compass,--not even the ancient fancy of the
existence of two souls within one bosom would seem at all adequately
to account for the varieties, both of power and character, which the
course of his conduct and writings during these few feverish years
displayed. Without going back so far as the Fourth Canto of Childe
Harold, which one of his bitterest and ablest assailants has
pronounced to be, "in point of execution, the sublimest poetical
achievement of mortal pen," we have, in a similar strain of strength
and splendour, the Prophecy of Dante, Cain, the Mystery of Heaven and
Earth, Sardanapalus,--all produced during this wonderful period of
his genius. To these also are to be added four other dramatic pieces,
which, though the least successful of his compositions, have yet, as
Poems, few equals in our literature; while, in a more especial
degree, they illustrate the versatility of taste and power so
remarkable in him, as being founded, and to this very circumstance,
perhaps, owing their failure, on a severe classic model, the most
uncongenial to his own habits and temperament, and the most remote
from that bold, unshackled license which it had been the great
mission of his genius, throughout the whole realms of Mind, to
assert.

In contrast to all these high-toned strains, and struck off during
the same fertile period, we find his Don Juan--in itself an epitome
of all the marvellous contrarieties of his character--the Vision of
Judgment, the Translation from Pulci, the Pamphlets on Pope, on the
British Review, on Blackwood,--together with a swarm of other light,
humorous trifles, all flashing forth carelessly from the same mind
that was, almost at the same moment, personating, with a port worthy
of such a presence, the mighty spirit of Dante, or following the dark
footsteps of Scepticism over the ruins of past worlds, with Cain.

All this time, too, while occupied with these ideal creations, the
demands upon his active sympathies, in real life, were such as almost
any mind but his own would have found sufficient to engross its every
thought and feeling. An amour, not of that light, transient kind
which "goes without a burden," but, on the contrary, deep-rooted
enough to endure to the close of his days, employed as restlessly
with its first hopes and fears a portion of this period as with the
entanglements to which it led, political and domestic, it embarrassed
the remainder. Scarcely, indeed, had this disturbing passion begun to
calm, when a new source of excitement presented itself in that
conspiracy into which he flung himself so fearlessly, and which
ended, as we have seen, but in multiplying the objects of his
sympathy and protection, and driving him to a new change of home and
scene.

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