THE GRAND TOUR--FLIRTATIONS IN SPAIN
The glory has long since departed from the grand tour. We all take it
nowadays, with less and less sense of adventure, and more and more
expectation of home comforts. Sir Henry Lunn has pegged out the course,
and stationed lecturers along it at intervals, to prevent us from
confounding Scylla and Charybdis with Sodom and Gomorrah. They stir
appropriate emotions in our breasts like stokers making up a fire. We play
bridge in the evening on steamers "replete with every modern convenience";
and we are back again, in about six weeks, with a smattering of
second-hand culture which goes the way of all smatterings in a very brief
period of time. It is a shadowy, unreal, unsatisfactory business--a poor
imitation of the grand tour as our forefathers knew it.
Some of them, no doubt, travelled frivolously and superficially. The Earl
of Carlisle did so when he and Fox, as Samuel Rogers tells us, "travelled
from Paris to Lyons for the express purpose of buying waistcoats and,
during the whole journey, talked of nothing else." But there was plenty of
emotion in travel for those who cared for it--a real impression of a
widening horizon on which unusual figures might be expected to appear--a
sense of escaping from the familiar crowd and plunging into an unknown
world in which anything might happen. The temptation was strong for the
traveller of temperament to strike an attitude and say: "Behold me! The
old moorings were impossible; the old lights gave no guidance. I prefer to
be adrift on a strange sea, seeking I know not what. Travel is my escape
from life. A woman tempted me, and tortured me, and so, unless a woman
heals the wound a woman gave----"
Chateaubriand sought the Orient in that spirit. Disgust and disillusion,
as he tells us, drove him forth. Pauline de Beaumont was dead, and Madame
de Chateaubriand was a woman hard to live with. He needed the consolations
of religion; he needed to meditate at the tomb of Christ. Above all he
needed, when his meditations had fortified his mind, to meet Natalie de
Noailles-Mouchy in the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra. He met her
there, and travelled with her for three months in Spain, and presently
found that he had only plucked yet another Dead Sea apple. And so he
cried: "Behold me!" Similarly, in spite of the differences, with Byron.
It was a fixed article of faith with Chateaubriand that Byron had
plagiarised his personality without acknowledgment. It was an act of
envious vengeance, he said, for his own neglect to reply to a letter which
Byron had written him while a schoolboy. That accusation, of course, is
incredible and may be dismissed; but the resemblance between the two men
was nevertheless as close as the differences of race allowed. Byron was as
distinctly British, at intervals, as Chateaubriand was, at all times,
distinctly French; and their points of view were to diverge widely as they
grew older. Chateaubriand, an artistic Catholic, was to become one of the
pillars of the Holy Alliance. Byron was to do more than any other man
except Canning to pull the pillars of that temple down. But, in the
meantime, the likeness was striking. There was about them both an equal
air of cultivated gloom, an equal tendency to introspection, an equally
intense interest in their personalities--that sense of the significance of
the ego which was to be of the essence of the Romantic Movement--an equal
readiness, as has been re-marked, to exclaim: Behold me!
The likeness is specially striking in the case of their journeys to the
Orient. They sailed the same seas in the same spirit--with the one
difference that Byron, who had a deadly hatred of certain kinds of
hypocrisy, made no pretence in his quest for peace, of looking to and fro
between love and religion. In both cases alike, disgust for life was
understood to have given the impulsion to the journey. A leading incident
in both journeys was, as Byron bluntly puts it, "a passion for a married
woman." Neither passion gave the lover any lasting satisfaction. Both
passions were proclaimed in enigmatic pæans to the world.
The two cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" which chronicle the
journey are also the record of the beginning of the Byronic pose. The
picture of the Childe is the picture of René, with a difference--the
difference being that, whereas Chateaubriand could never, even in a work
of art, depreciate himself, Byron rejoiced in doing so. For the rest, the
Childe was "tameless and swift and proud," and worthless, and weary, and
disillusioned, and disgusted. He had "spent his days in riot most
uncouth": he had "felt the fulness of satiety." It was well that he had
not won the woman whom he loved because his kiss "had been polution unto
aught so chaste." His boon companions were only "flatterers of the festal
hour," and "none did love him, not his lemans dear." Wherefore behold him,
on the Lisbon packet, in flight from himself, and seeking his "escape from
life."
That is the picture; that, as perhaps it would be better to put it, is the
pose. It was to become a sincere and natural posture before the end; but
it is impossible, at this early stage, to take it very seriously. Byron
would himself have been the first to repudiate the suggestion that such
men as Matthews, Hobhouse, and Hodgson were "heartless parasites of
present cheer." He had more respect for Matthews than for any man of his
acquaintance; Hodgson was to be his most regular correspondent, and
Hobhouse the chosen companion of his journey. Moreover, he was only
twenty-one--an age at which a young man is eager to see the world and
needs no excuse for setting out to do so. His conception of himself as a
forlorn exile impelled to wander because the world has betrayed and
trifled with him is, in the main, a young man's literary affectation.
An affectation, no doubt, for which certain realities had furnished a
hint. The fear of impending pecuniary embarrassment may sometimes have
given the sound of revelry a hollow ring. The sarcasm of the _Edinburgh_,
though repaid in kind, had certainly left a thin skin sore. The icy
politeness of Carlisle had chilled an expansive heart, and given Byron the
impression that he was regarded as an intruder in his own domain.
Conjoined with his mother's nagging, it had made something of a
three-cornered quarrel from which it was good to escape. He had also found
himself more sentimental than he ought to be about Mary Chaworth. Here, at
any rate, was something to exaggerate--a foundation of bad temper on which
a superstructure of pessimism might be raised. Byron duly raised it, for
literary purposes. But he had his high spirits as well as his low spirits;
and the farewell lines which he sent from Falmouth to Hodgson suggest
anything rather than a heart bowed down with woe.
"_Now at length we're off for Turkey,
Lord knows when we shall come back!
Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But since life at most a jest is,
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on--as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things,
Sick or well, at sea or shore;
While we're quaffing,
Let's have laughing--
Who the devil asks for more?--
Some good wine! and who would lack it,
Ev'n on board the Lisbon packet?_"
Those verses, quite as much as "'Tis done, and shivering in the gale"--and
much more than anything in "Childe Harold,"--indicate the frame of mind in
which Byron wished his native land good-night. He was travelling with all
the paraphernalia of the grand tourist--with more servants than he could
afford, and with the hearty, matter-of-fact John Cam Hobhouse for his
companion to keep him out of mischief. Whatever he fled from, adventure
was what he was looking for--not only the adventures which belong to the
exploration of barbarous countries, but also those which are to be
encountered in the boudoirs of garrison towns.
He landed at Lisbon and went to Cintra. He rode across Spain to Seville
and Cadiz. He proceeded to Gibraltar, to Malta, to Albania, to Athens, and
thence to Smyrna and the Dardanelles. He returned to Athens, and spent
some time in exploring the interior of Greece. That, in outline, was the
itinerary; and there were two adventures of which the letters to Hodgson
show him to have been particularly proud. He swam the Hellespont, in
imitation of Leander--a feat of which he boasts, over and over again, in
every letter to every correspondent--and he indulged in "a passion for a
married woman at Malta."
Nor was that his only passion. If it was the only passion which he
felt--which is doubtful--it certainly was not the only passion which he
inspired. "Lord Byron," says Hobhouse, in his matter-of-fact way, "is, of
course, very popular with all the ladies, as he is very handsome, amusing,
and generous; but his attentions to all and sundry generally end, as on
this occasion, in _rixæ femininæ_." We shall come to that story in a
moment. It is preceded by a story of which the hint is in the lines
beginning:
"_Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But formed for all the witching arts of love_:"
a story of which the memory is in "Don Juan":
"_'Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes--that is I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case, at least, where I have been._"
It happened at Seville, where the travellers, as Hobhouse writes, "made
the acquaintance of Admiral Cordova, with whose daughter Byron contrived
to fall in love at very short notice."
Admiral Cordova was the Admiral who put up the fight which gained Sir John
Jervis the title of Earl Saint Vincent. Byron had an introduction to the
family, met Señorita Cordova at the theatre, and was invited to escort her
home. It is not quite clear from the correspondence whether it was
Señorita Cordova or some other lady who quarrelled with him because he
would not give her the ring which he wore, as pledge of his affection; nor
is it certain whether the ring was, or was not, a memento of Mary
Chaworth. Whatever its origin, it was to be yielded up at the hour of the
"passion for a married woman"; and meanwhile there was another little
incident of which Byron speaks, of all places in the world, in a letter to
his mother:
"We lodged in the house of two Spanish unmarried ladies.... The eldest
honoured your _unworthy_ son with very particular attention, embracing
him with great tenderness at parting ... after cutting off a lock of
his hair, and presenting him with one of her own, about three feet in
length, which I send and beg you will retain till my return.... She
offered me a share of her apartment, which my _virtue_ induced me to
decline."
That is all, and it is of no importance. The next stage was Gibraltar, and
it is there, and on the voyage thence to Malta, that we get our first
glimpse of Byron from the pen of an observer who observed, not as a matter
of course, but as a matter of curiosity, and had a turn for picturesque
description.
John Galt, afterwards famous as a Scotch novelist, was at Gibraltar when
Byron arrived there. He had been sent to the Levant by a firm of traders
to ascertain how far British goods could be exploited in defiance of the
Berlin and Milan Decrees. He was to try hard, though in vain, to introduce
such goods into the Greek archipelago, and to smuggle them into Spain.
Half man of action and half dreamer, he went about denouncing priests and
kings, and exhorting the British Government to seize all the islands
everywhere for the supposed advantage of British commerce. Byron,
condescendingly asking Hodgson to review one of his books favourably,
describes him, with more or less of justice, as "a cock-brained man," and,
remembering him at a later date, told Lady Blessington that he "could not
awe him into a respect sufficiently profound for my sublime self, either
as a peer or an author."
This means, of course, that Galt, though he perceived the pose, did not
abase himself in ecstasy before it. Seeing that he was a man of thirty,
whereas Byron was only just of age, it was hardly to be expected that he
would. Moreover, as a Scotsman, he would naturally take the side of the
_Edinburgh_ and maintain that Byron had done nothing to be conceited
about. So he observed Byron--and we may be grateful to him for doing
so--in a spirit of criticism and detachment.
"His physiognomy," Galt writes, "was prepossessing and intelligent,
but ever and anon his brows lowered and gathered; a habit, as I then
thought, with a degree of affectation in it, probably first assumed
for picturesque effect and energetic expression, but which I
afterwards discovered was undoubtedly the occasional scowl of some
unpleasant recollection: it was certainly
disagreeable--forbidding--but still the general cast of his features
was impressed with elegance and character."
That was the first impression, and the second impression was not more
favourable:
"In the little bustle and process of embarking their luggage, his
lordship affected, as it seemed to me, more aristocracy than befitted
his years or the occasion; and I then thought of his singular scowl,
and suspected him of pride and irascibility. The impression that
evening was not agreeable, but it was interesting; and that forehead
mark, the frown, was calculated to awaken curiosity and beget
conjectures."
Galt, in short, contrasted Byron unfavourably with Hobhouse, whom he found
"a cheerful companion" and "altogether an advantageous specimen of a
well-educated English gentleman;" but it was Byron who intrigued him. He
noticed what Byron ate--"no animal food, but only bread and
vegetables"--and he reflected that "he had not acquired his knowledge of
the world by always dining so sparingly." He even found his way "by
cautious circumvallations into his intimacy"--though not very far into it,
for "his uncertain temper made his favour precarious"; and finally we find
him, as if in return for this precarious favour, drawing a picture of
Byron which really can be called Byronic. The scene is the ship which
conveys them both from Gibraltar to Malta:
"When the lights were placed, he made himself a man forbid, took his
station on the railing between the pegs on which the sheets are
belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in silence,
enamoured, it may be, of the moon. All these peculiarities, with his
caprices, and something inexplicable in the cast of his metaphysics,
while they served to awaken interest, contributed little to conciliate
esteem. He was often strangely rapt--it may have been from his genius;
and, had its grandeur and darkness been then divulged, susceptible of
explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as it were, round him the
sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amidst the shrouds and rattlings,
churming an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional,
suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as
a mystery in a winding sheet, crowned with a halo."
One quotes the passage in full because it is the earliest coloured picture
of the theatrical Byron--the fatal man of gloom and splendour on whom so
much limelight was presently to be thrown. Whether Byron was posing for
Galt--or whether Galt magnified the pose in the light of subsequent
events--it is, of course, at this date, impossible to say. Perhaps both
things happened, and the picture owes a little to each of them. At all
events the beginning of Byronism--of the outward, visible Byronism, that
is to say--is there. It is just the picture which we feel we have a right
to look for of the fatal man divining the doom which he is unable to
resist--alone in the midst of the crowd--his own personality creating a
void around him--proceeding to his first "passion for a married woman."
That passion awaited him as soon as he landed at Malta. The woman who
inspired it was Mrs. Spencer Smith--the "Florence" of "Childe Harold:"
"_Sweet Florence! could another ever share
This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine._"
But Mrs. Spencer Smith has a story of her own which it is worth while to
turn aside and tell.