FROM GENEVA TO VENICE--THE AFFAIR WITH THE DRAPER'S WIFE
As long as Hobhouse remained with Byron nothing memorable happened. There
was a good deal of the schoolmaster about Hobhouse, though he could
sometimes unbend in a non-committal way; and in the presence of
schoolmasters life is seldom a drama and never an extravaganza. The
change, therefore, in the manner of Byron's life did not occur until,
tiring of his friend's supervision, he declined to accompany him to Rome.
In the meantime, first at Milan and then at Verona, he held up his head,
and passed like a pageant through the salons of the best continental
society.
Milan, he told Murray, was "very polite and hospitable." He parted there
from Polidori, who was expelled from the territory on account of a brawl
with an Austrian officer in a theatre; and he dined with the Marquis de
Brême--an Italian nobleman equally famous for his endeavours to popularise
vaccination and suppress mendicity--to meet Monti the Italian poet and
Stendhal the French novelist. "Never," wrote Stendhal of that meeting,
"shall I forget the sublime expression of his countenance; it was the
peaceful look of power united with genius." And a long account of Byron's
sojourn at Milan was contributed by Stendhal to the _Foreign Literary
Gazette_.
The introductions, Stendhal says, "passed with as much ceremonious gravity
as if our introducer had been de Brême's grandfather in days of yore
ambassador from the Duke of Savoy to the court of Louis XIV." He describes
Byron as "a dandy" who "expressed a constant dread of augmenting the bulk
of his outward man, concealed his right foot as much as possible, and
endeavoured to render himself agreeable in female society;" and he
proceeds to relate how female society sought to make itself agreeable to
him:
"His fine eyes, his handsome horses, and his fame gained him the
smiles of several young, lovely, and noble females, one of whom, in
particular, performed a journey of more than a hundred miles for the
pleasure of being present at a masked ball to which his Lordship was
invited. Byron was apprised of the circumstance, but either from
_hauteur_ or shyness, declined an introduction. 'Your poets are
perfect clowns,' cried the fair one, as she indignantly quitted the
ball-room."
And then again:
"Perhaps few cities could boast such an assemblage of lovely women as
that which chance had collected at Milan in 1817. Many of them had
flattered themselves with the idea that Byron would seek an
introduction; but whether from pride, timidity, or a remnant of
dandyism, which induced him to do exactly the contrary of what was
expected, he invariably declined the honour. He seemed to prefer a
conversation on poetical or philosophical subjects."
The explanation of his aloofness, Stendhal thought, might be that he "had
some guilty stain upon his conscience, similar to that which wrecked
Othello's fame." He suspected him of having, in a frenzy of jealousy,
"shortened the days of some fair Grecian slave, faithless to her vows of
love." That, it seemed to him, might account for the fact that he so often
"appeared to us like one labouring under an access of folly, often
approaching to madness." But, of course, as this narrative has
demonstrated, Stendhal was guessing wildly and guessing wrong; and the
thoughts which really troubled Byron were thoughts of the wreck of his
household gods, and the failure of his sentimental life, and perhaps also
of the failure of Miss Clairmont's free offering of a naïve and passionate
heart to awaken any answering emotion in his breast, or do more than tide
him over the first critical weeks following upon the separation. So he
wrote Moore a long letter from Verona, relating his kind reception by the
Milanese, discoursing of Milanese manners and morals, but then concluding:
"If I do not speak to you of my own affairs, it is not from want of
confidence, but to spare you and myself. My day is over--what then--I
have had it. To be sure, I have shortened it."
From Verona, too, he wrote on the same day to his sister, saying, after
compliments and small-talk: "I am also growing _grey_ and _giddy_, and
cannot help thinking my head will decay; I wish my memory would, at least
my remembrance." All of which seems to show Byron defiant, but not yet
reckless, preferring, if not actually enjoying, the society of his equals,
and still paying a very proper regard to appearances. The change occurred
when he got to Venice and Hobhouse left him there. Then there was a moral
collapse, just as if a moral support had been withdrawn--a collapse of
which the first outward sign was a new kind of intrigue.
Hitherto his amours had been with his social equals; and the daughters of
the people had, since his celebrity, had very little attraction for him.
Now the decline begins--a decline which was to conduct him to very
degraded depths; and our first intimation of it is in a letter written to
Moore within a week of his arrival. He begins with a comment on the decay
of Venice--"I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike
desolation"--and he proceeds:
"Besides, I have fallen in love, which next to falling into the canal
(which would be of no use as I can swim), is the best or the worst
thing I could do. I have got some extremely good apartments in the
house of a 'Merchant of Venice,' who is a good deal occupied with
business, and has a wife in her twenty-second year. Marianna (that is
her name) is in her appearance altogether like an antelope.... Her
features are regular and rather aquiline--mouth small--skin clear and
soft, with a kind of hectic colour--forehead remarkably good: her hair
is of the dark gloss, curl, and colour of Lady Jersey's: her figure is
light and pretty, and she is a famous songstress."
And so on at some length. Our only other witness to Marianna's charms and
character--a manuscript note to Moore's Life quoted in Murray's edition of
the Letters--describes her as "a demon of avarice and libidinousness who
intrigued with every resident in the house and every guest who visited
it." It is possible--it is even probable--that this description, made from
a different point of view than Byron's, fits her. Byron's enthusiasm was
for her physical, not her moral, attributes; and it does not appear that
he was under any illusion as to the latter. The former, however,
fascinated him; and we find him dwelling on them, in letter after letter,
to Murray as well as Moore--the publisher, indeed, being the first
recipient of the confidence that "Our little arrangement is completed; the
usual oaths having been taken, and everything fulfilled according to the
'understood relations' of such liaisons." Which means, very clearly, that
the draper's wife has become the poet's mistress, with the knowledge of
her husband, and to his pecuniary advantage.
The story is not one on which to dwell. It is less a story, indeed, than a
string of unrelated incidents. Though spun out and protracted, it does
not end but leaves off; and of the circumstances of its termination there
is no record. Marianna's avarice may have had something to do with it. So
may her habit, above referred to, of intriguing with all comers. But
nothing is known; and the one thing certain is that, though Byron was
attracted, sentiment played no part in the attraction. It would seem too
that he was only relatively faithful.
One gathers that from the account which he gives to Moore of a visit
received from Marianna's sister-in-law, whom Marianna caught in his
apartment, and seized by the hair, and slapped:
"I need not describe the screaming which ensued. The luckless visitor
took flight. I seized Marianna, who, after several vain attempts to
get away in pursuit of the enemy, fairly went into fits in my arms;
and, in spite of reasoning, eau de Cologne, vinegar, half a pint of
water, and God knows what other waters beside, continued so till past
midnight."
Whereupon enter Signor Segati himself, "her lord and master, and finds me
with his wife fainting upon the sofa, and all the apparatus of confusion,
dishevelled hair, hats, handkerchiefs, salts, smelling-bottles--and the
lady as pale as ashes, without sense or motion." And then, explanations
more or less suitable having been offered and accepted, "The
sister-in-law, very much discomposed at being treated in such wise, has
(not having her own shame before her eyes) told the affair to half Venice,
and the servants (who were summoned by the fight and the fainting) to the
other half."
And so forth, and so forth. It is all very vulgar, and none of it of the
faintest importance except for the sake of the light which it throws on
Byron's mind and disposition, though its importance is, from that point of
view, considerable. It shows Byron sick of sentiment because sentiment has
failed him and played him false, but grasping at the sensual pleasures of
love as the solid realities about which no mistake is possible. It shows
him, moreover, socially as well as sentimentally, on the down grade,
consorting with inferiors, and in some danger of unfitting himself for the
company of his equals.
The reckless note of the man resolved to enjoy himself, or at any rate to
keep up the pretence that he is doing so, although his heart is bankrupt,
is struck in one of the letters to Augusta. It refers to a previous
letter, not published, in which the tidings of the "new attachment" has
already been communicated, and to a letter addressed, some time
previously, to Lady Byron; and it continues:
"I was wretched enough when I wrote it, and had been so for many a
long day and month: at present I am less so, for reasons explained in
my late letter; and as I never pretend to be what I am not, you may
tell her, if you please, that I am recovering, and the reason also if
you like it."
Which is to say that he wishes Lady Byron to be told, _totidem verbis_,
and on authority which she cannot question, that, having lived connubially
with both, he very much prefers the draper's wife to her. And so, no
doubt, he did; for though the draper's wife, as well as Lady Byron, had
her faults, they were the faults of a naughty child rather than a pedantic
schoolmistress, and therefore less exasperating to a man in the mood to
which Byron had been driven. She might be--indeed she was--very jealous
and very violent; but at least she did not assume airs of moral
superiority and deliver lectures, or parade the heartlessness of one who
is determined to be always in the right.
So that Byron delighted to have her about him. "I am very well off with
Marianna, who is not at all a person to tire me," he told Murray in one
letter; and in another he wrote: "She is very pretty and pleasing, and
talks Venetian, which amuses me, and is naïve, and I can besides see her,
and make love with her at all or any hours, which is convenient to my
temperament." Just that, and nothing more than that; for such occasional
outbursts of sentiment and yearnings after higher things as we do find in
the letters of this date leave Signora Segati altogether on one side.
There is something of sentiment, for instance, in a letter to Mrs. Leigh
informing her that Miss Clairmont has borne Byron a daughter. The mother,
he says, is in England, and he prays God to keep her there; but then he
thinks of the child, and continues:
"They tell me it is very pretty, with blue eyes and _dark_ hair; and,
although I never was attached nor pretended attachment to the mother,
still in case of the eternal war and alienation which I foresee about
my legitimate daughter, Ada, it may be as well to have something to
repose a hope upon. I must love something in my old age, and probably
circumstances will render this poor little creature a great, and,
perhaps, my only comfort."
There is sentiment there; and there also is sentiment, although of a
different kind, in a letter written at about the same date to Moore:
"If I live ten years longer you will see, however, that it is not over
with me--I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may
seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will
see that I shall do something or other--the times and fortune
permitting--that, 'like the cosmogony, or creation of the world, will
puzzle the philosophers of all ages.' But I doubt whether my
constitution will hold out. I have exorcised it most devilishly."
This is a strikingly interesting, because an unconsciously prophetic,
passage. Byron's ultimate efforts to "do something"--something quite
unconnected with literature--is the most famous, and some would say the
most glorious, incident in his life. We shall come to it very soon, and we
shall see how his constitution, so sorely tried by an indiscreet diet and
excessive indulgence in all things from love to Epsom Salts, just allowed
him to begin his task, but did not suffer him to finish it. Enough to note
here that Byron saw the better even when he preferred the worse, and never
lost faith in himself even in his most degraded years, but always looked
forward, even then, to the day when he would shake off sloth and
sensuality in order to be worthy of his higher self.
He divined that the power to do that would be restored to him in the
end--that social outlawry, though it might daze him, could not crush
him--that it would come to be, in the end, a kind of education, and a
source of self-reliance. But not yet, and not for a good many years to
come. Before the moral recovery could begin, the moral collapse had to be
completed; and the affair with the draper's wife was only the first
milestone on the downward path. We shall have to follow him past other
milestones before we see him turning back.